The Happiness Letter (Joseph Smith’s Proposition to Nancy Rigdon) w/ LDS Discussions – 28

Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's September 14, 2022, and we are here back for our weekly series titled LDS Discussions), where we are dealing with various Mormon truth claims. We're going to deal with at least 40 to 50 Mormon truth claims. We're kind of smack dab in the middle. We are in the polygamy section, which is going to have probably at least five, if not more individual episodes. Today, the topic is Joseph Smith's happiness letter as it relates to the practice of polygamy. Just to make sure, as I mentioned, in all of these LDS discussions episodes, there is a website@ LDSDiscussions.com where our dear friend Mike, who is a convert to Mormonism who married into the church and then went through a faith crisis afterwards after learning a bunch of things that he was never taught as an adult investigator, Mike has spent countless hours putting together this amazing website@ LDS discussions.com examining Mormon truth claims, and I highly recommend it. Today, the essay that corresponds with this episode is LDS discussions.com happiness. And just for those who love this series, specifically, we want to remind you all that you can access it through the Mormon Stories podcast feed on the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel, but you can also access it individually, these episodes separately, either through the Apple podcast app, wherever you get your podcasts in audio form, or on Spotify. There's an LDS Discussions) podcast standalone where you can access it both in audio and video format. And there's a YouTube playlist where you can just watch all of the LDS discussions episodes in sequence. And I have to say that I've just been getting incredibly positive feedback about this series. And now, without any further ado, I'll bring on Mike and Nemo. Hey, Mike, thanks for joining us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:02 Hey, everybody. Good to be back.

John Dehlin 2:04 And Nemo, we're so glad this is an issue Nemo, you feel strongly about. You've actually done a Nemo the Mormon review of the Happiness Letter. And so you've got some passion that you're going to be masking as we try to be as objective as possible and just lay out the facts. Is that right?

Nemo 2:24 Absolutely right. I'm going to be this monkey like this monkey, and John could be like this monkey. Yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna keep it objective. We're gonna keep it to the facts. We're gonna be gracious as best we

John Dehlin 2:36 can because we want. We want viewers and listeners to be able to reach their own conclusions. And our goal is just for someone Wanting to learn the evidence, like you, Mike, that you never learned as an investigator, like you, Nemo, that you never learned as a lifelong Mormon. We just want to educate people and then allow them to reach their own decisions. Having said that, we're all going to bring passion, that we're going to try and, and control and bridle as much as we can.

Nemo 3:02 Yeah, it's an emotive issue.

John Dehlin 3:04 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:04 Yeah. This, this one, you know, we've done what, 20 something episodes and I've gotten to a point where I can talk about the first vision, the priesthood, restoration, a lot of those issues with biblical scholarship. I don't really feel that when I'm talking about now because I'm. I'm far enough away from it. I feel like I have gotten enough time to kind of grasp all of that stuff to where I don't feel emotional. But this one still does because this is, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, polygamy was the thing that always bothered me as a member of the church. I'm still a member, but as an active member of the church because I used to sit there and I don't want to go too much into my personal story, but my wife and I started dating when we were very young. And I just remember when we were still young and you're around a lot of people, you still have a lot of that getting jealousy when you're with other groups and all that. And I remember thinking like in my head, like, how does polygamy make people happy for eternity if the wife is subject to watching her husband go around with different women all the time? Like, that was the thought that never left my head as a convert and as a believing member. And so when you finally start to dive into this stuff, it's just really difficult sometimes to be able to read this and to not have an emotional response. So we're going to do our best to keep it as temperate as we can. As I've mentioned in previous episodes, we're not cherry picking the worst data. We're not cherry picking the most salacious detail that we can to make Joseph Smith look bad. This is just trying to find what we feel are the most important events. And this one is, in my opinion, the most important document and I would argue event with Joseph Smith and polygamy because it gives us a bird's eye view into a proposal that he made with a letter in his own words as to how he's justifying polygamy to these women. And we have a lot of accounts from women that we've talked about when they talk about how Joseph Smith approached them. But this is in his own words and is being dictated by a scribe from his mouth. So this is a direct source of Joseph Smith's justification of polygamy and the ways that he's proposing to women. And so for me, this is one of the most important episodes we're going to do for this whole series. And I would say it's the most important polygamy episode we're going to do because I think a lot of people who might be listening or watching have seen some of the details of polygamy from CES Letter or Fair Mormon or even the church's Gospel Topics essay. But this one is one that has been rarely talked about until Jonathan Streeter brought it through a presentation at Sunstone, which we're going to touch on a lot. And so I'm just going to give him a quick shout out now. He's going to be mentioned multiple times. Jonathan Streeter is one of those people that not only has a great YouTube channel, but he does a fantastic job of keeping his material very level, not very over the top emotional. He does a great job of making it so that someone who's a believer can watch it and not feel constantly attacked. So if you've never checked out thoughts on things and stuff, do that. And we're going to cover a lot of his work in this episode and then also some of our own thoughts tying into previous episodes as well.

John Dehlin 6:10 Absolutely. Huge fan of Jonathan Streeter. I'll put thoughts on things and stuff link in the show notes. It's super important. And also we'll put a link to Nemo's summary. Nemo, you're able to do the happiness letter in like five minutes, isn't that right?

Nemo 6:25 Yeah, yeah, I can cover this in five minutes.

John Dehlin 6:27 And even Streeter, even Streeter said that was brilliant. So. All right, without any further ado, let's jump to what is Joseph Smith's happiness letter?

What Is the Happiness Letter?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:36 Yeah, and so the opening line of the letter, it says, happiness is the object and design of our existence. And it's a line that's been cited by church leaders, by educators and by prophets over the last 150 years. And by itself, it's a truly uplifting idea from Joseph Smith. And what most people do not know is that this quote comes from a letter that Joseph smith wrote in 1842 to then 19 year old Nancy Rigdon. And so by April of 1842, Joseph Smith was already married to about 10 women and would marry about 13 more in 1842 alone. Joseph Smith made proposals to many women that year. And one of those women was 19 year old Nancy Rigdon, who is the daughter of Sidney Rigdon, who was kind of like the number two in the church. And keep in mind, this is after Oliver Cowdery is excommunicated. So Sidney is really one of Joseph's top men. Him and John C. Bennett got very, you know, John C. Bennett did get very close to him at this time, but Sidney Rigdon was there the whole time. And the one thing we'll note right away is we can't know with exact certainty what happened during this proposal because obviously we weren't there. But we do know that Nancy Rigdon rejected Joseph's original overtures and proposal. This is confirmed both by her brother, which is a late recollection, but he does confirm it. And then also by the fact that we have this letter and the more contemporaneous accounts from John C. Bennett, who got the letter and released it. So we know that Joseph Smith dictates and authors a letter to Nancy Rigdon to explain why this proposal is from God and why this is the right choice for her to marry Joseph Smith. And so, as I mentioned earlier, just a huge, huge, huge shout out to Jonathan Schrader. Christopher C. Smith was also on the podcast. Both of them did a podcast with Bill Real on the happiness letter. And I would absolutely recommend anyone, when you're done with this one, to listen to theirs because they're going to go over a lot more historical detail about things surrounding the letter. They're going to give you different perspectives on the letter. And it was really one of those, you know, there's a handful of podcasts that I listened to and I just thought, wow, this completely just blew me away. And this one absolutely is one of them. So just a huge shout out to him for bringing this to, at least to my attention because I had never heard of this and I know for a fact that most members do not. I've asked people that I've had conversations with about, and they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. So this is a really important one.

Setting the Stage: Nancy Rigdon and Joseph Smith

John Dehlin 8:52 Okay, so Nancy Rigdon is to set the stage. Nancy Rigdon is 19 years old. She's the daughter of Sidney Rigdon. Joseph's already married 10 women. I think we'll, you know, just to reiterate, the main reason Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated is because as we mentioned in past episodes, he, he found out about Joseph Smith Having sex with Fanny Alger, likely in the barn, called it an adult, filthy, nasty, dirty, adulterous affair. And that's why Joseph excommunicated him. And so, you know, that's why people at Signor Rigdon and John C. Bennett ascend, because they had to fill the vacuum created by Oliver Cow, who called Joseph out on sexual impropriety. Right.

Nemo 9:36 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:36 I mean, I think. I think there's other reasons that are claimed, but obviously him believing Joseph had an affair with Fanny Alger, I think was obviously a massive or at least a significant reason why they had a falling away. Because as we talk about our priesthood restoration episode, Oliver Cowdery gets elevated to second in the church in 1835, after he is the first one to introduce the story of the angelic restoration of the priesthood in 1834. So to. To have a revelation that they kind of backdate to say that Oliver is supposed to be the number two in the Church. And then a few years after that he's excommunicated, tells you that Oliver made serious charges against Joseph that could not basically be allowed to stay. So Oliver's excommunicated. And as you said, that allows Sidney Rigdon to kind of reclaim his number two spot. And then when John C. Bennett shows up, he, you know, him and Joseph Smith become close very quickly. And that allows him both inside information and also creates a lot of headaches for Joseph Smith later on, both with polygamy and just as the church as a whole.

John Dehlin 10:36 Okay, all right, let's go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:41 And so this is where the story kind of to give background on what leads up to this letter. So around April 9, 1842, Joseph Smith proposes to Nancy Rigdon. This proposal was actually set up by Nancy Miranda Hyde.

John Dehlin 10:55 And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:55 And some records go by Mirinda Nancy. But just for the sake of this, we're going to go with Nancy Marinda Hyde, who was living in the printing office that the Church had taken over, and she was actually sealed to Joseph Smith in either, April of 1842 or May of 1843. Joseph Smith's own journal says April of 1842. And that to me, seems to line up a little better with the story. What's interesting about this is that Joseph Smith is going to give this revelation to Nancy Marinda Hyde in December of 1841, which is right after he sends, or I should say, it's after he sends her husband, Orson Hyde, on a mission. And so the revelation says the following. Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph, that in as much as you have called upon me to know my will concerning my handmaid Nancy Miranda Hyde, behold, it is my will that she should have a better place prepared for her than that which she now lives in order that her life may be spared unto her. Therefore go and say unto my servant Ebenezer Robinson, and to my handmaid, his wife, let them open their doors and take her and her children into their house and take care of them faithfully and kindly. Unto my servant Orson Hyde returns from his mission, or until some other provision can be made for her welfare and safety, let them to these things and spare not. And I, the Lord, will bless them and heal them if they do not do it grudgingly, saith the Lord God. And she shall be a blessing unto them. And let my handmaid, Nancy Miranda Hyde, hearken to the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things whatsoever he shall teach unto her. And it shall be a blessing upon her and upon her children after her, unto her justification, saith the Lord.

John Dehlin 12:31 So, Nemo, I'm going to ask you, can you restate what that letter is. Is saying in your words?

Nemo 12:36 Joseph, you've asked me about Miranda, about Nancy Miranda Hyde. And I want to tell you while her husband's away in the Middle east preparing the work of the gospel out there, I need you to look after her. She's going to go live with some other people. She needs a better place to live, and she is to listen to you and hearken into whatever you say. And I think that might become important.

John Dehlin 12:58 Okay.

Speaker D 12:59 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:00 Yeah.

Nemo 13:00 That seems to be in. In as it is kind of in as clear a way as I can put it. That is what God is saying to Joseph in that revelation.

John Dehlin 13:08 Yeah.

Speaker D 13:09 Yes.

John Dehlin 13:09 And I think the next slide puts a fine point on it. Is that right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:13 Yeah.

John Dehlin 13:13 Okay, so let's go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:16 So, as I mentioned, Joseph Smith is going to give this revelation to Nancy Miranda after sending Orson on a mission. So Orson Hyde is sent on a mission to Jerusalem in April of 1841. And in December of 1841, Joseph Smith is going to give Nancy the revelation which states that she needs to hearken to the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things whatsoever he shall teach unto her. And it shall be a blessing upon her and upon her children after her, unto her justification, saith the Lord. And so we talked about this. Her role in the Nancy Rigdon proposal is going to become important to the story, but she's also going to become one of Joseph Smith's polyandrous wives. And this is going to be almost certainly without the knowledge of her husband, Orson Hyde, because as we mentioned in Joseph's journal, they are married together in April of 1842, and Orson Hyde is still gone. And this is going to be tying perfectly to the Nancy Rigdon proposal. And so what I would point out and what Nemo just said is that Joseph Smith is using the voice of God. Whether you believe it's a revelation or Joseph Smith, but through the voice of God, he's saying to Nancy that she needs to basically listen to Joseph Smith in any possible thing that he tells her. And this is happening at the same time that Joseph Smith is literally taking control of Nancy's, Nancy Miranda Hyde's living situation, so he's putting her in a better place to live, while at the same time telling her that she needs to basically accept anything that Joseph Smith teaches her. And of course, Nancy Miranda Hyde took this revelation seriously because not only is she going to agree to become a polyandrous wife of Joseph Smith, but she becomes a willing recruiter to help Joseph Smith obtain more wives. And this is another thing that I think a lot of people don't understand because they'll say, well, Joseph Smith did marry some women that he didn't have sex with, or he married some women that were a little older. But what they don't understand is that there are a handful. I think there's at least three, maybe more of these older women or these women he doesn't have sex with that he uses to recruit other wives. And I think one of the terms that that was used was mothers in Zion, I believe was a term for that. And so in this case, there are rumors that Joseph Smith has a sexual relation with Nancy marinheid. But more, you know, more tangibly, we can see that Nancy is going to be used as basically a go between for Joseph and potential polygamous wives, which serves Joseph Smith's purpose really well, because then if the wives recoil and it gives Joseph a little bit of plausible deniability to say, well, you know, they were kind of just talking to them and just asking questions as opposed to Joseph being in the room doing it. And I think that's a really important note.

Polygamy's Effects on Women and Men

John Dehlin 15:54 And if I'm thinking about some of, I don't want to say, let's say documentaries from either high demand religions or if you want to say cult, not to call Mormonism a cult, but there is this pattern, whether it's Keith Ranieri with nxivm or David Koresh of the Wake, Branch Davidian, the Waco stuff or Warren Jeffs or whatever that, number one, the leader having multiple women seems to be just this endless pattern. But also using the women to recruit other women. That's absolutely. For example, what, what Keith Rer did with Nexium. So this is kind of. This is kind of following that pattern.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:38 Yeah.

Nemo 16:39 And the other thing I would, I would say is we often reflect heavily on the effect that polygamy has on women, and they are ultimately the victims in this. But you also have the effect this will have on Orson Hyde. Orson Hyde is thousands of miles away from home. He has gone there on his sincere belief that he is doing what God wants and what God has commanded him to do through his servant, Joseph Smith. Yep, that's. That's his headspace. He gives a beautiful dedicatory prayer while he's out there. He dedicates the land to the work of the building up of the gospel. And while that's happening, that trust that he has placed in Joseph is certainly not being upheld, if not betrayed, when Joseph is essentially secretly marrying his wife while he's away. And that is heartbreaking to me and is one of the maybe less talked about effects of polygamy is that these men have their wives stolen away from them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:34 Yeah. And I think if I remember correctly, I'd have to look it up. I think Nancy Miranda Hyde might get a divorce from Joseph and resale to Orson later on. I'm not positive on that. But with polyandry, we talked about it in a previous episode. The fact is, if Joseph Smith takes a wife who is married to a member of the church, Joseph then in theory is sealed to both her and her kids and kind of takes the family of the other man. And that is not to say that polygamy is more difficult for men, but just to say that there are implications that are really horrific within polyandry as well, polygamy too, that are kind of not talked about as much, like you said. And the fact that he sends, you know, almost certainly would give Orson Hyde a revelation to go to, to. To Jerusalem. And so he gives Orson Hyde this revelation, you know, go and preach the gospel and you'll be blessed. And then while he's gone, he's telling his wife basically that, you know, God is telling her to marry Joseph Smith because they're going to get married while he's gone. It's just.

Nemo 18:36 And then we look at the, the Warren Jeffs and other characters like that. And you know, particularly in one recent documentaries that's been done about kind of the flds Community. You look at what effect it has on young men because there's the jealousy of those older men who are accruing wives. And that especially is important because we have to take it out of this often held apologist narrative or context, or certainly what a lot of people grew up believing is that polygamy only existed because there was a dearth of men. There wasn't enough men around. And that's just not the case because Joseph was taking wives of men that were already married.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:15 Yeah.

Nemo 19:15 So it wasn't. These women needed someone. That's not, that's not the case. But that's what a lot of people grow. The church often believe about polygamy. Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:24 And you know, the, the thing we talked about in one of our earlier episodes on polygamy is the fact that Joseph Smith introduces this law of adoption, which is where you conceal men to other men as like adopted stepchild or adopted. Adopted sons or whatever. And so Joseph Smith in this case could have sealed himself to Orson Hyde and had Orson Hyde as like a adoptive son or whatever the case might be, which would then seal himself to Nancy and Miranda Hyde without actually needing to take her as a polyandrous wife, which would then leave Orson Hyde really out in the cold, just as any other man who would be in that situation would be. And so the fact is. Yeah, and we're going to get, we'll. We'll talk about the law of adoption with Nancy Rigging as well, because that, that is something. When apologists say that Joseph Smith needed to do this for a dynastic ceiling or to create this eternal bond that kills the law of adoption, kills that apologetic right off the bat. Because he could have done that with Nancy Rigdon and adopted her as a daughter and avoided all of this. And yet he chooses the other path. And we'll get into that as we do.

Nemo 20:20 So what that does is essentially that puts you in the position that you say, okay, well, Joseph had this alternative and he may have had a reason not to use this alternative. But then the question becomes why? And that's what the apologists need to answer. They need to ask the question of why didn't he use this established and available option.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:38 Yep.

Nemo 20:39 Instead of just taking them as straight up wives.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:41 Yeah, exactly. Because if you want to argue that this isn't. I'm not saying it's 100% about sex, but if you want to argue that polygamy wasn't about sex, then you have to ask why didn't Joseph Smith use the law of adoption, which was readily available and used to seal himself to these families, which would have accomplished the exact same thing without the need for sex, without the need for blowing up the potential of other people's families through polyandry. And that, to me, tells you that whether or not sex was the primary motivation, it's a motivation. It's an important motivation. And I think that's something that apologists want to try to escape by because of the fact that it basically really shakes a lot of people when they find out these details, especially about things like this. But we also have to be aware of the fact that it's a motivating factor, because Joseph Smith is making a delivered choice to make it a motivating

Nemo 21:29 factor and also possibly control, because you look at essentially, Joseph inserting himself into the marital relationships of members of his congregation, which gives him an incredible amount of control over the men in his congregations, because he's like, well, I'm married. I'm sealed to your wife, so you better kind of stay with the program. And also, then they're all sharing in. If it was just some kooky Mormon. Some kooky Mormon belief about Joseph was gathering all these families around him, there wouldn't have been the objection. That.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:02 Exactly.

Nemo 22:03 From a lot of the people at the time. Yeah. Whereas it was very much something that needs to be kept secret because a lot of people objected to this idea of polygamous marriages, of plural marriages. And so you're gathering people into this shared secret that could destroy them just as much as it could destroy Joseph.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:17 Yep, that's. And that was one of the things, I think we talked about our first Plague Me episode, which is. Sorry, no, no, no, it's not that. It's just Joseph Smith with polygamy. A lot of times he'll bring these men in and talk to him about it, and then once they accept it, it's almost like they have mutually assured destruction if anyone talks about it or if anyone accuses each other. And. And I think that plays a role in. In the fact that I think Lindsay Hansen park talked about this in some of her podcasts as well, which is that Joseph Smith often would bring people into the circle because once they're in that circle, they're complicit. And once they're complicit, Joseph does hold power over them, because there is that. There is that. He can basically take them down. And then, like, as you said, you're also holding this power because you are now approving their marriages. You're approving their eternal belief that they're going to be with their family. And so Joseph Smith does hold a lot of power. Once he is the person at the top of all of these marriages, which he makes himself because he has to approve of all of them. So this is a big. You know, there's sex, there's power. Some people argue there's money in some of them, but, I mean, there's no way to get around it because he could avoid all of that by using the law of adoption if he wanted to. And he always chose not. I mean, shouldn't say always. He chose not to with these women.

Nancy Marinda Hyde and the Path to Nancy Rigdon

John Dehlin 23:22 Okay, so back to the slide. Nancy Marinda Hyde, who Joseph has sent her husband on to be out of the country, she becomes the. The means by which Nancy Rigdon becomes recruited or the attempt at recruitment comes through.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:39 Yes. And can you do me one favor, John? Can you go back a slide real quick?

John Dehlin 23:42 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:43 Okay, so I just want to point this out because this. Something that came that I kind of thought of when I was doing these slides. If you read the last. The very last part, it says, and let my handmaid, Nancy Marina Hyde, hearken to the. My servant Joseph in all things whatsoever he shall teach unto her. The language there is very similar to DNC132, which I realize, you know, if you believe they're from God, of course he'd use similar language. I do find it just noteworthy, though, that Joseph is using very similar language about the. And let my handmade stuff, you know, do. And it's just a small note. We can go, you know, go forward. I just think it's interesting for me,

John Dehlin 24:14 the question that this sort of invokes in my head is, why are some. Why are some revelations included in the Doctrine and Covenants and others left out?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:27 This one's not in there.

John Dehlin 24:28 If this is clearly. It's clearly the Lord saying something to Nancy, and that's. That matches the format of pretty much every DNC verse that I'm aware of. If it's the Lord telling Nancy what she should do, why in the heck wouldn't that be included? There's so many mundane sections of the Doctrine and Covenants where God's like, go try and sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon or Martin Harris, give me all your money, or, you know, like, Oliver, you can't translate this or that without the power of God. Why wouldn't this be included? That seems a little bit sketchy to me.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:07 Yeah, it's definitely interesting because obviously, as we've talked about throughout these episodes, there are deliberate choices being made as to what the Church is willing to present. I don't know if this is because they don't want to advertise that Joseph was engaging in polyandry at this point. I don't know, but it's definitely, definitely a deliberate choice.

John Dehlin 25:27 Yeah.

Nemo 25:27 So just. Just to add some facts and figures to that for you real quick, John, because that was December 1841, correct?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:33 Yes.

Nemo 25:34 So in July 1841, DNC126 is revealed, and that is Brigham Young being commended for his labors and is relieved of future travel abroad. Then the next revelation in chronological order that is recorded in Doctrine Covenants doesn't come until September 1842. Over a year later. There's. There's no. There's no DNC added until every year later. And that's 127, which is Joseph Smith giving directions on baptism for the dead.

John Dehlin 26:04 Interesting. And what do you make of that, Nemo?

Nemo 26:07 I. I just. I find it. And I. I'm not sure what I make of it just yet, because I just thought of it on the fly. But there's. There's. It's very interesting that there's over a year of Joseph's been getting revelations. Clearly, we can see evidence here. He's been getting them, but not recording them. Yeah.

John Dehlin 26:23 Okay.

Nemo 26:23 Maybe this is a. A time in his life when he's amassing, he's trying to consolidate. And so just a lot of his revelation is very interpersonal, and it's. Yeah, a lot of those interpersonal revelations maybe aren't being included. I know. Put it in the comments. What you think, people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:37 Okay.

Nemo 26:37 Because I think that's a. It's an interesting.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:40 Yeah, I mean, it's. You know, we talk about secrecy with. When we talked. We did our episode on. On the Masons in the temple and with polygamy. A lot of this is about secrecy. And so it could just be that this is one of those areas where the Church just didn't want to put it out publicly, whereas we obviously know it was recorded because we have the. The record of the revelation. But again, it's a deliberate choice, and they chose, like you said, to leave a little bit of a black hole of revelation in that time frame when he's ramping up polygamy.

John Dehlin 27:03 Okay.

Nemo 27:04 Yeah.

The Secret Meeting in the Printing Office

John Dehlin 27:04 All right, let's go to Joseph clears out the printing office for private meetings.

Nemo 27:09 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:09 And so, as we talked about in the last Revelation, Nancy Miranda Hyde is ordered to live with Ebenezer Robinson and his wife because he controls the printing office. And of course, Ebenezer takes her in because it's a revelation from God. So of course he's going to take her in and her kids to live with them. But just a month and a half later, Joseph then gets another revelation that the church is to take control of the printing office, which they do, and they purchase it from ebenezer Robinson for $6,000 on February 4, 1842. So just a week later, after Joseph claims this revelation, Ebenezer Robinson sells, because he realizes at this point, if he refuses, he's going against what he believes is the word of God on the day that the deed was transferred. And you got to keep in mind, this is February 4th, in the dead of winter in Nauvoo, Illinois. Willard Richards, who would then live in the printing office with Nancy Hyde, which was very scandalous at the time, told Ebenezer Robinson, you must get out tonight, or I will put you in the street. So imagine that this guy is living in this printing office. He brings in Nancy Marin to Hyde at the request of Joseph through God. And then another revelation comes a month later, just upending this guy's life and saying, we're basically taking the. We're going to buy the printing office. And then the day it's sold, he's told, get out or I'll put you in the street in the middle of the winter. And the reason this is important is because this is right, as everything's ramping up with polygamy. And now Joseph Smith has a place where he can conduct meetings, polygamous proposals, any of that which is in secret, away from his wife Emma. It's in a printing office which gives great cover. It's not like you're just going to some random person's house or some empty, abandoned building. And, you know, just a few months later, Joseph is going to instruct Nancy Miranda Hyde to request Nancy Rigdon to go to this printing office to speak to Joseph following a funeral that her father, Sidney Rigdon, was speaking at on the subject of happiness. And so all of these things are leading up to this letter, and it's showing how Joseph Smith is creating different ways to create secret meetings with these potential wives away from Emma. And also, you know, I think in a lot of ways, it's the cruelty of what he used, what he did to Ebenezer Robinson. And if you believe that Joseph Smith was an author of his revelations, then it's incredibly cruel because he's putting him out on the street in the middle of winter because he wants a place where he can conduct meetings. And if you believe it is from God. It's still pretty cruel because it gave him no chance to find a warm place to live after selling the printing office that he had been living in.

Nemo 29:42 Joseph gets a revelation from God saying, oh, I need to put Nancy in better housing and in better condition. It is the will of God that she be in a better circumstance. Yeah. Why is it not the will of God that this guy doesn't get moved to a nicer house?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:54 Right.

Nemo 29:54 Gets kicked out. Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to put it like that, you know, and that's the thing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:00 One of the things. And we might need to do an episode on this because I had typed up on the website, one of the first things I did was, you know, a lot of these revelations are awfully convenient. And it's one of the things, especially when you will do. We've got a bunch of episodes on Revelation down the road. But this is an area where you go, how in the world is Joseph getting these very specific revelations in one area? And obviously both Joseph and the church cannot do it on others. And as you said, all of these seem to point to benefiting Joseph's immediate needs and not the needs of the other people who are basically, you know, in the way of those needs. And, and Ebenezer Robinson obviously wasn't going to fight Joseph Smith. He would have lost if he had tried. But yeah, it's just, it's, it's awful convenient. I guess that would be just the way I'd put it.

John Dehlin 30:43 Got it. I mean, to me, I almost am wondering whether he's setting Nancy Marinda Hyde up to be a kept woman, so to speak.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:54 Well, yeah, there's. So there's rumors that Willard Richards and Nancy Miranda Hyde were having sexual relations. There's a, there's a lot of rumors of that. And I believe John C. Bennett said that Willard Richards was hiding in the printing office as a, like a pun, you know, hiding with Nancy Miranda Hyde. So there's a lot of rumors that, that Willard Richards, because his wife was in Boston, I think in Massachusetts, I think she stayed behind. So this was awful convenient for Willard Richards as well, which again, it just blurs the lines even more because Joseph is going to be sealed to her in April of 1842. But it does appear there are multiple accounts that she was having a relationship with Willard Richards, which would make sense because they're living alone in a printing office. Willard Richards boarded the windows up so no one could see in. He shot a gun off in the, in the middle of the street one of the accounts said as a way to give cover that maybe they had to board the windows because they were under threat of mobs or theft. But all of these things, all of these accounts are contemporaneous, whether or not you think that they're. I think John C. Bennett has a lot of them. So some people want to dismiss them. But we do know that this happened, that they were living together, which was very scandalous and was set up directly by Joseph Smith. So.

Nemo 32:06 So of course, rumors fly because it was scandalous.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:09 Exactly.

John Dehlin 32:10 Okay. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:12 So.

John Dehlin 32:14 So Willard Richards is out on his ear. Nancy Marinda Hyde is set up, and Joseph's now got a place.

Nemo 32:20 Ebenezer Robinson's out on his ear.

John Dehlin 32:21 Sorry, Sorry. Ebenezer Robinson's out on his ear. Thank you, Nemo. And Joseph's got a place to make proposals or conduct whatever transactions he wants to conduct.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:31 All right, now, this is from 1845. This is from Orson Hyde. So this is after the fact. But this quote is important because it confirms that Joseph Smith did have a secret meeting with Nancy Rigdon. And so he says, during my absence to Palestine, the conduct of his daughter Nancy became so notorious in the city, according to common rumor, she was regarded generally little, if any, better than a public prostitute. Joseph Smith, knowing the conduct she was guilty of, felt anxious to reprove and reclaim her if possible. He accordingly requested my wife to invite her down to her house. He wished to speak with her and show her the impropriety of being gallanted shoot by so many different men, many of whom were comparatively strange strangers to her. Nancy, I presume, considered her dignity highly insulted at the plain and sharp reproofs she received from this servant of God. She ran home and told her father that Mr. Smith wanted her for a spiritual wife and that he employed my wife to assist in obtaining her. We don't have to go into how horrific Orson's quote is. It's just important to note that we have a negative source who, like Nancy Rigden, who even. Who still has to admit that Joseph used his wife to get a secret meeting with her. And there is absolutely no contemporaneous record of Nancy having any kind of rumors about, you know, shacking up with a bunch of dudes. This is typically what happens in early Mormonism. When you talk about what some of the leaders are doing, they literally will turn that same thing back around on you. And so Nancy Rigdon let out that Joseph Smith wanted her for a polygamous wife. She rejected him. And because of that, then they threw basically sexual Charges back at her. And we'll get into this at the end because this is part of the fallout from it. But this is a pattern within Joseph Smith, especially where as soon as you turn on him, he will throw everything he has at you. And we'll get to that later. But I just want to use this quote to show that we have a negative source who doesn't like Nancy Rigdon confirming that this meeting took place.

Nemo 34:25 It's important to point that out about the negative source that essentially actually it happened. And whatever reason Orson Hyde is giving for it having happened, whatever reason he was told by Joseph because he arrived back in after the fact, or by his wife. He arrived back in after the fact. Doesn't matter why they told him that it happened. They told him that it happened. That meeting did take place.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 34:46 Yes, and. And I'll point out if. If Joseph Smith really believed that Nancy Rigden was such a. That she was out. I believe. I believe the phrase Orson used at one point was that if he had asked her to be a carnal wife, she would have. Or some. But, you know, they called her a whore in the newspapers. They called her whore everywhere. If you really believe that, would he need to have a secret meeting? Wouldn't he. Couldn't he call her in when Emma's there to talk to her?

Nemo 35:12 I mean, it would publicly rebuke her.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:14 Yeah. It just shows how nonsensical it is to go through all of this work to have a secret meeting with someone who apparently was so notoriously shacking up with everyone in the town. Like, it's so ridiculous.

Nemo 35:26 Opening himself up to rumors that he is sleeping with the public prostitute, as it were. Yeah, by having a secret meeting with her. Whereas if he proved her publicly and

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:35 out in the open, I mean, I guess you could.

John Dehlin 35:37 I guess you could argue that he's being like Jesus and like, you know, how Jesus talked to everybody, including the prostitute or whatever. You could argue that he's being Christ. Like.

Nemo 35:46 I mean. Yeah, but Jesus knelt down with him in the street often. He didn't go to the printing press with them.

John Dehlin 35:51 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:51 Jesus didn't sense Jesus. Jesus didn't send someone out in the middle of the night in the cold so they could bring the prostitute in in the quiet of day when no one could see them.

John Dehlin 35:59 That we know of. That we know of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:01 Right.

John Dehlin 36:02 I'm just being. I'm being a little silly.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:04 No, I. I know. It's just this stuff. This is where it just makes me. Just makes my blood.

Nemo 36:07 Well, it is important to say that John and, and to, to try it is. And you know, Joseph could have had motives other than the ones that we are possibly ascribing as him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:18 Absolutely. I mean we weren't there and so we weren't there at the meeting. But unfortunately for Joseph, we have the letter which would tell you that absolutely this is not what happened. And it just shows the, the punishment in this time for speaking out against Joseph Smith was, you know, pretty, pretty strong, Very strong. And like I said, we've got, we'll get into that a little bit at the end after the letter, we'll talk about some of the follow up from it. But this is something that happens a lot in early Mormonism. Whereas if you speak out against what Joseph Smith is doing, he will put everything he has against you because he would rather, you know, obviously you be, be pulled down than him. So this is a case where I just wanted to confirm that it happened. And so one thing we want to get into here is that this proposal to Nancy Riggs and is happening at a time when there are rumors flying around the area. And John C. Bennett is this guy that if you read the Saints book, if you're, you know, in church, he has just talked about as like the worst human being. He is the guy that everyone associates with spiritual wifery. But one of the things to point out is that John C. Bennett was very close to Joseph Smith when this all happens and they were, you know, hand in hand. Joseph Smith kept promoting him throughout the church. It was one of the things when I was reading the Saints book and doing the check by check, I did not know that because as a convert I didn't go through seminary. And so I, you know, I don't even know if they talk about John C. Bennett in seminary. But this dude was, yeah, this dude was just pulled up through the ranks. And Joseph Smith knew what he was, you know, I think Joseph Smith knew what he was doing when he pulled him up. And so the fact is, what John C. Bennett was doing, what he's being charged with as far as spiritual wifery, is not much different than what Joseph Smith is accused of doing here with Nancy Rignan, with other women. And the thing that's really, that blew me away when I was listening to Jonathan Streeter's podcast is John C. Bennett was accused of spiritual wifery. But Joseph Smith's own brother, William Smith, Apostle William Smith, was also doing the same things and telling these women that he learned these teachings directly from Joseph Smith. And the only reason that people don't know about William Smith is. Because when they're doing this trial, Brigham Young is conducting this church trial, and Joseph Smith stands up and says, brother Brigham, I will not listen to the abuse of my family a minute longer. I will wade in blood up to my knees before I will do it. And as soon as he does that, Brigham Young drops the charges against William Smith and the church after that kind of never mentions the fact that Apostle William Smith was telling his women that Joseph Smith endorsed and gave them the teachings on spiritual wifery. And so that is such an important detail to understand. All of this stuff is swirling around at the same time, and it just shows that Joseph Smith is willing to protect his family here in an apostle of the church who is literally telling his women what Joseph Smith was teaching them. So John C. Bennett is the one that takes the fall within church history as far as what's taught. But this is really the Apostle William Smith's trial as well.

Bennett, Spiritual Wifery, and Mutually Assured Destruction

Nemo 39:20 And this is where terms become really important and labels become really important, and that mutually assured destruction we talked about earlier becomes really important. Because what Joseph is able to do is he's able to label the exact same behavior he was enacting as something different so that he can carry on enacting it. But, yeah. Publicly shame and. And denigrate someone for doing something that's very similar to what he was doing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:44 Yeah.

Nemo 39:44 And that person can't turn around and kick back at Joseph because, well, it's called something different. And he's not going to do that necessarily, because anything he accuses Joseph of, he's doing the same.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:55 Yeah. I mean, it's. It's. You know, we've talked about this in previous episodes, and I. I should have gotten the video. There's the. The meme from the Office where it's like they show two things, and Pam says it's the same picture. It's.

Nemo 40:04 It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:05 Joseph Smith is basically like spiritual wifery is of the devil. Plural marriage. It's righteous, you know, and it's just like, I'm being facetious. But it's all about. This is like marketing 101. This is marketing 101 is you're labeling one thing bad and labeling the exact same thing with maybe some minor tweaks as being completely different. It's not.

Nemo 40:24 And especially because what they say about Joseph Smith and polygamy is what a lot of apologists say, is that a lot of these ceilings were only spiritual. They weren't sexual wives. They weren't physical wives. It was just spiritual, not spiritual wifery.

John Dehlin 40:39 I'll just, I'll just. If it's okay, I'll just add my, my meager knowledge of John C. Bennett is that when Joseph Smith comes to Nauvoo, he needs someone to go to the Nauvoo legislature and get the Nauvoo charter approved so that the city of Nauvoo can operate. And that's when the relationship with John C. Bennett is forged. John C. Bennett successfully gets the charter of Nauvoo approved by the Illinois State Legislature. And as a reward for that, as I understand it, at least at one point, John C. Bennett was viewed as co president of the church and, or in the first presidency. So what, what people need to really understand is even though they've never heard of John C. Bennett and there's reasons why they've never heard of it because he was so scandalous and he ends up betraying Joseph Smith and turning on him is that he was as high as Henry B. Eyring or Dallin H. Oaks is right now in the church hierarchy at the time. And so if then it's discovered that John C. Bennett again, along with Joseph's own brother William, are practicing, quote, unauthorized polygamy or spiritual wifery, yet they're as close to Joseph as possible. What that makes it look like is, number one is that, is that Joseph was privately sanctioning the same thing he was doing, but that they got caught. And so Joseph needed to kind of fix that scandal. And so like you said, Mike, he creates arbitrary distinction between what the unauthorized people are doing, which is spiritual wifery bad. But what Joseph is doing is, you know, the new and everlasting government or eternal marriage. And that's good. But if it's the people closest to Joseph, including co presidents or first presidency members, it's really questionable. The only other thing I'll say is my understanding is the other way that John C. Bennett is often mentioned is, and you'll probably cover this, and if you don't, we'll cover it. If you do, we'll cover it really briefly is that John C. Bennett is mentioned as one person who possibly conducted abortions in Nauvoo. That's not something that historians, even secular historians jump to and say, yes, for sure that happened. But it's one of those perennial questions that all often comes up is, wait a minute, is it true that abortions were conducted in Nauvoo and that John C. Bennett was the guy doing it? So that's what I know about John C. Bennett. Do you guys agree or disagree with That I agree.

Nemo 43:28 I think the distinction ultimately comes down to that greatest of Monty Python quotes. We're not the Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea. They are the same thing. They just have a slightly different name.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:38 Yep, that's perfect. And I would argue. I don't talk about John C. Bennett with abortion. There's no evidence for it. So it's. It's speculative. And there are always going to be. When you're speculating, there's always gonna be ways to find those parallels that could be. But for me, there's nothing that's solid enough to go on. So I don't cover that at all because I don't think there's. I just don't think there's anything to go on. And for me, if there's not evidence, it's just not worth.

John Dehlin 44:02 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:03 Wading into. So. I know. I know the rumors are there. I see it mentioned a lot. I just. For me, I've never found anything that says, oh, y. That's something you could. Could really pull as a source that gives you an indication. I. I just don't see it. So, yeah. So, yeah, I don't cover that.

John Dehlin 44:16 That's why I mentioned it carefully. Not as something that did happen, just something where there's always questions as to whether it happened. Okay, let's go on to John C. Bennett and what leads to the happiness letter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:27 Can you do me a favor, John? Go two slides ahead.

John Dehlin 44:30 Oh, okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:31 I. I screwed up a bit. So go one more.

John Dehlin 44:34 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:34 Okay. It's perfect.

Nemo 44:35 All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:35 This is going to piggyback off our last slide. And so these are two different women who are in this trial of the men who are teaching spiritual wifery. And this is what they testify of. I just think this is really important. And this is Joseph Smith. This is Kathryn Fuller talking about Joseph Smith's brother, William, Apostle William Smith, who is telling her she should not get married so that they can continue having sexual relations. And so she says, William Smith has also been to my house on the 27th of last month, being the day I was married, and proposed unlawful connection. I don't know how to say that, but unlawful sexual relations. But I refused and told him that it was contrary to the teaching of Joseph on the stand. He answered that Joseph was obliged to teach to the contrary on the stand to keep down prejudice and keep peace at home. First, William Smith insisted very much that I should not marry and propose to supply me with food. And I'm assuming food and other rations if I should remain unmarried and grant his requests, which were sexual. And then we also have Sarah Miller, who's going to testify that she was told that these teachings originate with Joseph Smith as well. Some two or three weeks since, in consequence of Brother Joseph Smith's teaching to the singers, I began to be alarmed concerning myself and concerning teachings which I had received from Chauncey Higbee and question about his teaching. For I was pretty well persuaded from Joseph's public teachings that Chauncey had been telling falsehood. But Chauncey said that Joseph Smith now taught as he did through necessity, on account of the prejudices of the people in his own family, particularly as they had not become full believers in the doctrine. And I just want to point out this actually lines up really well with the fact that Joseph is doing all of this behind Emma's back and doing it in secret because of the fact that, you know, they don't, you know, Emma's not a big fan of Joseph having sex with other women. I can't imagine why. And so these quotes are telling us that Joseph Smith is teaching these other men about this idea of concubines, polygamous marriages, however you want to phrase it. And these men might be running a little bit ahead of things without Joseph's permission, but the fact is these are not ideas that these men are just creating. These are ideas that Joseph Smith is at least telling them in some form. And it's his brother, an apostle. I mean, to put it into, you know, today's things, I mean, imagine, you know, Apostle Uchtdorf going out and doing this. I mean, that's how high level this is. And this is not coming from nothing. This is coming from Joseph Smith. And these women are testifying in a trial where they're, you know, the victims. They're explaining this in a way that actually lines up historically with how Joseph Smith is teaching this. And I just think it's really important. And this is all swirling around as the happiness letter comes. And. Yeah, this is hard for me. It's just this stuff makes me mad.

Nemo 47:21 But it's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:22 Nicole said it's the same thing. Okay.

John Dehlin 47:24 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:25 Yeah.

John Dehlin 47:25 So basically, Joseph. I mean, and this all makes sense for what we know about everything that, you know, Joseph is 22 wives in before he ever really tells Emma that The revelation, the DNC132, comes, like three to 13 years into the practice of polygamy, depending on when you start the clock.

Nemo 47:44 Is it the Partridge sisters? He remarried once Emma found out.

John Dehlin 47:47 Yeah. Yep. And then. Yep. That Joseph Remarries people in front of Emma because he married him before, but he thought she'd get too mad. So he remarries the sisters. And also that Joseph lied to the public, you know, to the church membership and even to many of his closest followers for many, many years. So, like the idea that it would be a mess and that William and John C. Bennett and there would be confusion about what spiritual wifery and what's not. That all seems to track with the narrative. I would have expected it to be no other way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:20 Yeah.

John Dehlin 48:21 Totally confusing and. Yeah, Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:24 Absolutely. That's just.

Speaker D 48:26 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:27 Yeah.

John Dehlin 48:27 Okay. Is this the next slide? John C. Bennett. Back to John C. Bennett now.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:31 Yeah, that's perfect. Okay. Sorry, I. I had an extra slide in there on accident. So this is from John Bennett's account of what is going to happen that is going to lead to the letter being written. And so this is about Nancy meeting with Joseph Smith. And so he says Nancy went down. Joe was there and took her into a private room, locked the door and commenced by telling her that he had long loved her and had asked the Lord for her, and that it was his holy will that he should have her. He told her that it would not prevent her from marrying any other person, that he had the blessings of Jacob granted to him, and that all was right. He desired to kiss her and wished her to kiss him. But Joe couldn't come it. She said she would alarm the neighbors if he did not open the door and let her out. He did so and requested Mrs. Hyde to explain matters to her. Joe swore her to a eternal secrecy. Mrs. Hyde told her that these things look strange to her at first, but she would become more reconciled. On mature reflection, Ms. Rigdon replied, I never shall. Joe agreed to write her and did so in a few days through Dr. Richards. That letter is now safe in the hands of her friends. I have seen it so as her father and various other persons. On Tuesday last, Joe came up to Mr. Rigdon's accompanied by his high priest, George Miller of Sable Sister notoriety for a witness and by boisterous words and violent gestures tried to deny the attempted seduction and alarm the girl. But she told him he was a curse of liar and that he could not and that he could not face her to it. Joe then made a full acknowledgment of the whole affair. All the family and many other persons were present. The Holy George observed, you must not harm the lines that the Lord's anointed. The Lord will not suffer his anointed to fall. And we'll just point out that John C. Bennett is obviously at this point, not a fan of Joseph Smith. So I'm sure there are exaggerations here, as you might expect. But the fact is, a lot of this does line up with what is happening with the letter being written. It also lines up with the Martha Brotherton where they put her in a room, locked the door, and tried to get Brigham to kiss her because he wanted her for a polygamous bride and she refused. There are a lot of things here that have connections to other things that are going on. So it's not to say that everything in this letter is probably perfect. It's just to say it confirms the account. It kind of mirrors some of the other proposals that we have, some of the ways that Joseph used those other polygamous brides to recruit the other ones. And when they didn't want to do it, he used those other wives to kind of take. To convince them to do it. It's just got a lot of connections, a lot of threads. And so say what we can.

What the Historical Record Confirms About the Proposal

Nemo 51:00 What we can safely pull from it is that Joseph did in fact, meet with her in a secret form of meeting. Yeah. And that it was to do with her becoming a polygamous bride to Joseph Smith. I think the details of how he made that approach, like he said, could very well be altered or exaggerated.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:17 But yes.

Nemo 51:18 Yeah, definitely approach itself.

John Dehlin 51:20 For me, just reading this, this comes across as very disturbing because I think in today's sensibilities, but I think in 1840s sensibilities, too. It portrays Joe as kind of. Well, he's married. He's coming on to a young woman. She's declining his advances, but he's almost pushing himself on her. She's not liking it. But then he's running, as we mentioned earlier, to Mrs. Hyde, and he's getting her to say, you know, Nancy, don't freak out. Nancy Rigdon, don't freak out. This is. Okay, you'll understand it. He'll send you a letter. This is. This is kind of highly disturbing behavior. And I'll just say that it's so common for like, Brian Hales and others to just start by saying John C. Bennett is not credible, as you kind of alluded to, Mike, because he later apostatizes from the church. But this is the mind shift that I think is really important that I had to make. In reality, when somebody apostatizes from early Mormonism, in my mind, that often makes them more credible, not less so. The examples would be, you know, David Whitmer kind of falling away from Mormonism. Well, he was one of the first witness. He was one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon and he was the one that remembers no Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood. That makes him credible, not less credible, when the documentation supports his memory. Another example is William Law. He was in the First Presidency and he's the one who published the Nauvoo Expositor which told the truth about polygamy. And so even though he now is viewed as anti Mormon, he's the one that told the truth. And that means that he deserves to be respected more than the people who are complicit in the COVID ups. And so even though John C. Bennett may have been a scalawag in many ways, I, I have a bias of trusting apostates more, not less. And I know that's probably going to be a controversial opinion. Nemo, what do you think about that?

Nemo 53:39 That I, I think, and I'm not

John Dehlin 53:42 asking you to agree with me, no,

Nemo 53:44 I, I think we. Personally, I think you have to weigh up the merits of all the sources based on the context in which they're written and on other corroborating sources that may or may not kind of support them or disprove them. I think what you're, or what I'm hearing from what you're saying is certainly what I would agree with, from what you're saying is that there is a certain level of moral fortitude, particularly in an environment where someone like Joseph Smith is very powerful in a very unstable environment such as frontier America, to stand up to someone like that, who is powerful over a community and say no and to tell the truth. And so because of that, I would be very inclined to give weight to what they say because that takes, there's a lot of personal risk in, in doing that. So they wouldn't do it lightly. I think that's what, that's certainly how I would look at it. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:31 I mean, like I said, I, you wouldn't want to read something that John C. Bennett wrote and go, oh man, I agree because I agree that Joseph Smith was doing bad things. I agree with what he's saying. But I do think what Nemo said is you take the statement and you say, does it track with other things we do know? If it does, then you take those points and you say, okay, at least we can corroborate this. And then maybe there are going to be some of the specific details that you can't know one way or the other and you don't have to focus on those because you don't need, you don't need to like, have every one of those details line up. You just need to be able to kind of use what you can to find the points that are backed up by other sources, and then from there you can try to piece it back together. And I think.

Nemo 55:12 Oh, go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:12 No, go ahead.

Nemo 55:13 I was gonna say, I think what I. What gets said to me a lot is context matters. Context absolutely matters. Every single little detail doesn't always.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:22 Yeah.

Nemo 55:22 And I think people confuse context with, with a complete understanding of every minute detail. Yeah, but actually context is broader than that. Context by definition is broad. And so if you're looking at something like this, understanding that Joseph was making a. A assertion that he would like her to be a polygamous wife is the context of the happiness letter. The context isn't exactly how he did that, because those details are what apologists can pull you into and fight with you over to, to then take you away from the main issue.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:57 Yeah, I mean, I would argue, and we don't need to go into a tangent here, but if you read the CES letter, the first chapter has like, the maps in there and it's got some of the plagiarism stuff. And I would argue those parts are parts I don't really agree with because I think that the way the sources are set up aren't really good. And so if you listen to, for example, Jim Bennett when he did his interview about his response to CSL with Bill Real, and I think with John, he mentioned it too, he will constantly go back to that first part to use that to say if he is get these parts wrong, you can't trust them elsewhere. But the problem is the rest of the CS letter, when you talk about the priesthood restoration, the first vision, those things are very solid. And so as you're saying, Nemo apologists want to pull those little details that you get wrong to say everything's wrong, but that's not how it works. And so that's why for me, I try not to focus as much on those tiny details because it's not that they're not important, they're of course important, but because we can't know them for sure, it's not worth fighting in the, fighting in the mud over those little details when you can look at all of these massive problems that are sitting there that we can show with evidence, that we can show with accounts. And so that's, I guess, why I don't necessarily worry about those as much it's not because they don't matter, because of course they matter, but it's because we can't know, and we have enough that we do know to make a lot of educated guesses as to what happened overall without worrying about those little details.

John Dehlin 57:16 Yeah. Okay, so the next slide is back to this idea of rumors of spiritual wifery. Or already.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:25 So we can actually skip this one. This was the one I added on accident. Okay, so this is one we talked about in our first episode on polygamy, which is Joseph Smith is teaching at this time that if there's no accuser, then there's no sin. And this plays hugely into this. So I'll read this again. This is from November 7, 1841, which, as you'll know, is right before everything happens with Nancy Miranda Hyde moving into the printing office and obviously about, what, six months before, five months before the proposal to Nancy Rigdon. And Joseph says in a public sermon. Well, he writes in his journal that he told the church this. He says, I charge the saints not to follow the example of the adversary in accusing the brethren. And said, if you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser, you will enter heaven. And if you follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my backload. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you. If you will throw a cloak of charity over my sins, I will over yours. For charity covereth a multitude of sins. What many people call sin is not sin. I do many things to break down superstition, and I will break it down. And so this shows you a couple things. One, it shows you that what John C. Bennett and his brother William Smith were doing, their error wasn't the fact that they were doing it. Their error was the fact that they got caught and accused publicly. Because once it got public, then all of a sudden, Joseph Smith's teaching goes out the window. And this teaching factors not just into the happiness letter, but into all of Joseph Smith's polygamous proposals, because he's outright saying what you think is sin is not sin. And if you don't accuse me of doing anything wrong, I won't accuse you. And we talked about mutually assured destruction. This is another way of doing it, which is to say, if you don't accuse me of sin, I'm not going to accuse you. But the flip side of that is, if you do accuse me of it, I'm coming after you as well. And we see that with this, we See, that with other instances, not just with polygamy, but as we mentioned earlier, with all the, you know, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, all those people that got run out of the church, Joseph Smith never really speaks well of them again. And I think this is a very important teaching for this letter because it really factors into Joseph Smith's thought process, which is that you can get away with. You can do whatever you want as long as the other person doesn't, you know, accuse you of sin. And so the whole idea of sin just gets thrown out the window now, and sin just becomes basically anything that is spoken of publicly that would go against the common morality.

John Dehlin 59:46 This is such a weird teaching to me. Cause if you think about. Think of all the things that Joseph has said that we quote just mindlessly now in the modern church and take it as gospel. What if this quote got out and modern teenagers in the Mormon Church were to just say, well, Joseph said that if there's no accuser, there's no sin, then there would never be a conversation about masturbation, about petting, about breaking the BYU honor code. You could even murder someone. And if there's no witness to the murder, there's no sin. Like, this seems to be a very dangerous teaching that's very incompatible with modern Mormonism that comes directly from the mouth of the prophet Profit.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:31 Yeah, I mean, imagine. Oh, yeah, go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 1:00:34 These sorts of logic and loopholes are what leads to things like soaking at byu. I mean, sorry to be crass, but you take this idea that, well, if I don't do something that would technically make it a sin, then it's not a sin. If no one sees it, it's not a sin. If no one accuses me of it, it's not a sin. It's the exact kind of moral relativism that is taught against by modern church leaders. The idea that, well, as long as you don't fill certain criterias, then you're fine. So. No, it's more about the spirit of what's going on. Really?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:04 Yeah, it's just. I mean, just picture a guy and a girl at byu and we'll just call them Joseph and Emma just for sake of argument. And they're called in the bishop's office and like, hey, you know, we've heard reports that you guys are having sex, and they look at each other like, we're not accusing each other of that. And then the bishop would be like, that's not good enough. And you pull out this quote. I mean, and I think that that's where the whole idea of, you know, cafeteria Mormonism, people always go, oh, you're a cafeteria Mormon if you don't wear your garments 24 7. Or you're a cafeteria Mormon if you drink coffee or you drink tea or you swear the Mormon Church is cafeteria Mormonism. Because they absolutely leave out in 2022 a lot of teachings of Joseph Smith and a lot of teachings of the, of the scriptures. Like, you know, we talked about with the race and the, the race and the priesthood episodes. Those things are still scriptural and yet today they don't ban members with dark skin from the priesthood. And this just shows you that Joseph Smith's teachings are very much cherry picked as to what we follow and what we don't. And I would love to see this quote talked about in General Conference. I would love to see Russell Nelson get up there in October and say, hey, you know what? There's no sin if there's no accuser. They're not going to do that because they want people accused. They want to have that control over members. And I'm sorry if I feel like I'm getting upset here. This stuff drives me nuts.

John Dehlin 1:02:20 Nemo.

Nemo 1:02:21 But the thing is, they could turn that around and actually say, well, don't accuse us kind of like Joseph Smith did. They don't want to be accused themselves. You know, there is a problem of, of dishonesty amongst modern church leaders. I've talked about this a lot. There is that issue. But, you know, they'll say, well, if no one's accusing us, then, if no one's pointing it out, then is it a problem?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:44 Yep. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin 1:02:45 Yeah. The other, the other thing I'll say is this kind of leaves the door open for modern Mormon fundamentalism. Kind of like the Denver Snuffer stuff or the Chad and Laurie Daybell stuff. Because you, you, you, you know, once you start to really get into Mormonism and really get into Joseph Smith as an adult, you can find these types of quotes that can justify almost any, any horrible, horrible.

Nemo 1:03:10 I think it's because Joseph Smith is a great example of expedient justification. Yeah, he's a great example of that. And so if you look back at enough of his stuff, you'll find an excuse to do something.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:21 Yeah, and we'll see a lot of that in these letters. I mean, just the fact that he's saying, if you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you. And he's telling a church, basically telling a church as he's ramping up polygamy, don't you dare accuse me? Because if you do, I'm coming after you. But if you don't, we're cool. I think this is a quote that seeks to. To benefit Joseph more than it does to tell the average everyday church member not to rat on their neighbor. I think this is just about. Basically, he knows he's doing stuff that is causing rumors, and he's telling them, if you accuse me, I'm gonna come after you. But if you don't accuse me, I'll make sure you're taken care of. And I think that that's a pattern we see with Joseph Smith, which is he takes care of people that take care of him. And the second you don't, you're out. So that's just my thought.

Delivering the Letter and Attempts to Suppress It

John Dehlin 1:04:02 Okay, so Nancy was told. Okay, so Joseph delivers a letter to Nancy.

Nemo 1:04:07 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:04:08 Now we have we told that story yet of Joseph giving a letter to Nancy?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:12 Well, I think the letter is given by one of the head apostles. I can't remember who it was actually, but it would be like, almost be like the equivalent of Russell Nelson sending down oaks with a letter to somebody. He doesn't. Joseph Smith does not take it himself.

John Dehlin 1:04:24 So let me, let me.

Nemo 1:04:25 It was in that slide from. From John C. Bennett. He said, Dr. Somebody.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:04:32 Oh, yeah, Dr. Richards. Right.

John Dehlin 1:04:33 Willie Richards, basically. So. So just to kind of advance the timeline, Nancy Rigdon refuses Joseph's advancements. But then through Mrs. Hyde and through Dr. Richards, Joseph writes Nancy Rigdon a letter basically saying, hey, give me a chance to explain. This is complicated. God's involved. There's new doctrine I want to reveal to you. And Nancy. Don't, don't. Don't decline yet. Right.

Nemo 1:05:04 Yeah. Because. Because Nancy Hyde basically said, come on. No, you'll understand it through more mature. It was basically a. Actually, you just need. You're kind of being a little belittling by the sounds of it. She's saying, no, you need. You need to have more mature attitude towards this. Then she goes, I never shall. And that's when he agrees to write to her. And then. Okay, Dr. Richardson's. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:05:24 Okay, so now we're. We haven't read the letter yet, but we're jumping to it being burned. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:29 No, no, I'm just saying that when they deliver the letter, according to John C. Bennett, Nancy is told to burn the letter after she reads it. And I just wanted to point out that this is a pattern Joseph Smith used with polygamy. So with Emily Partridge, she says, Joseph said that he intended to tell me something, but he had no opportunity to do so. And so he would write me a letter if I would agree to burn it as soon as I read it. And with that, I looked frightened for I thought there was something about it that was not just right. So I told him that I would rather he would not write to me, that he would not write me any letter. And then he asked me if I wanted him to not say anymore, and I said yes. I did not want to hear anything more about it at all. For I got a little frightened about it. Which is to say that Emily Partridge knew. When someone says, I want to give you a letter, but you need to burn it, after that, things are not right. It just tells you in your internal conscience, like, run. Which is something I think you see a lot with these polygamous proposals. And then there's a fairly infamous letter he writes to Sarah Whitney and her family, which is talked about a lot. And in that letter, Joseph Smith is writing to Sarah Whitney, who is one of his polygamous brides and her parents to come and comfort him. And a lot of people think that means sex. That's not really too important here. It's just to say that the letter says, I will tell you all of my plans. I cannot write them on paper. Burn this letter as soon as you read it. Keep all locked up in your breasts. My life depends on it. It's just to say Joseph Smith tells a lot of women when he writes some letters to burn it. And the fact that the happiness letter survives is kind of a miracle because I can only imagine what letters actually were burned. Because if you believe Joseph is a prophet and he asked you to burn a letter, you're likely going to burn that letter. And so it's just to point out that this is another one of those patterns where we look at John C. Bennett saying that and go, you know, John C. Bennett's just making that up. But we do have other instances that we can show. Joseph Smith was asking him to burn letters, which tells you there's at least something to the fact that he probably did tell her, burn this, because I don't want this getting out.

John Dehlin 1:07:22 And that is just fundamentally sketchy behavior where Joseph is giving these personal revelations to people about sex, basically, but then telling them to burn it and destroy the evidence so that it never is found.

Nemo 1:07:34 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:07:35 Yeah. Which explains why. Why his letter to Nancy Hyde or whoever isn't isn't canonized. Because a lot of these revelations were intended to be burned, not canonized. The opposite of canonized. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:51 Yeah. And Like I said, I don't know if the revelation itself was. Was implying polygamy, because, of course, it's very carefully worded. It's a blanket statement. It's just say, you know, to abide in Joseph Smith and all things he teaches her. So, I mean, obviously you could, you know, from an apologetic standpoint, you'd be like, oh, he didn't mean. He didn't mean polygamy. He just meant, you know, spiritual matters. But of course, we know what happened. So we know that there was at least some thought in Joseph Smith at that point that she was being picked for, you know, a possible polyandrous marriage because of the fact that he was already doing polygamy at that point and wrote that into the revelation. But, yeah, it's. Right, it's a problem.

John Dehlin 1:08:25 Yeah. Okay. All right, so now we get to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:30 Now we're finally getting close. So this is just a quote. Nemo had put this together in his video about this. And it's just a really quick clip just showing a bunch of church leaders citing this letter. And so when people say that the letter wasn't written by Joseph Smith or that. That, you know, we're taking, you know, that no one really, you know, uses that quote. It's just a good clip to kind of get into the letter to show that this has been cited multiple times in general conference by high, you know, prophetseers and revelators. And I think it's just important just to look at it real quick before we get going.

John Dehlin 1:08:59 So the point here is how often the church cites this letter that we're about to dig into to establish its. Its credibility, its reality. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:07 Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 1:09:08 Here we go. There's Howard W. Hunter. I recognize him. Okay, one second.

Nemo 1:09:16 So just while you're sorting that out, John, I just want to say to me the most. The reason I put this at the beginning of my video, the most important bit about this was that.

John Dehlin 1:09:29 Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 1:09:30 If you are going to make the apologetic argument that Joseph Smith didn't write this letter, and it's an argument that's made about so many things while his scribe wrote it, and his scribe could have been wrong, Joseph didn't write this himself. There's so much apologetics around what Joseph did or didn't write himself. If you're going to make that argument, then you need to explain why all of these prophets, seers, and revelators believed that Joseph Smith was the author of this, because he is the one they attribute it to. That's all I've got to Say, yeah, absolutely

John Dehlin 1:10:04 makes sense. Okay. And I am just totally not sure why, why, why we're not hearing this. So if you guys can talk for just one more second.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:15 Yeah, no, it's fine. Yeah, I think like, like Nemo said, the fact is, you know, if you want to play this kind of apologetic game, that Joseph didn't write it. Even though every single leader believed it was Joseph Smith's own words. And it just would. I mentioned this in previous episodes. At some point you start to run into this problem, like, why didn't God tell these leaders? Like, dude, Joseph didn't write this. This was, you know, I'm getting cond. Same thing we've talked about with other areas with power of discernment and all that, where the leaders just don't seem to know what's from God and what's from themselves. And in this case, they're taking this letter and some leaders might not know the context. I would imagine a lot of them don't. But the fact is they're repeating this letter as if it's from Joseph. It's written into the church's history as from Joseph Smith. There's absolutely no reason to think it's not from Joseph. A lot of these teachings are going to be in other sermons. He's given other journal entries. So it's not like this stuff's being pulled out of thin air. And as Jonathan Streeter mentioned in his podcast, if John T. Bennett was, was completely making this up to make Joseph look bad, he would have done a lot of different things here. But instead this is written in a

John Dehlin 1:11:21 very,

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:23 in a way that is very subtle unless you know the context. And I think that if John C. Bennett was trying to expose Joseph, he would not have been this light handed with it.

Nemo 1:11:32 You've got a cutesy frig fridge magnet slogan and a lot of them will just be picking up on it from that. They'll say, happiness is the object and design of our existence. That's their oh, fridge packet slogan. That's lovely. A little wooden plaque in someone's home. And they don't necessarily need to know the context to want to share that. Yeah, but they have to own the context of it once it is pointed out to them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:56 Yep, they do. And I've had a few people where I've talked to them over the last few years since I started doing the website. And, and I'll say, hey, do you know the phrase happiness is the object and design of our existence? I'll go, oh yeah, yeah. And I'll say, Do you know what the letter's from? And they'll be like, no, it's from Joseph Smith. And I'll go, yeah, will you read it? And they'll go, yeah, okay. And then I give it to them. Usually they won't read it because once you get into the context of it, most a lot of believing members, until you're ready for it, that is something that's going to just completely shut you down. Because it's horrific and we're going to get into it. But to what Nemo's point is, when the church cites that first line over and over again, and then all of a sudden you get to a point where you can no longer even acknowledge the context of it. I think that is a pretty good indicator that this is. This is not good.

Nemo 1:12:45 And it's pervasive. And, you know, it's. It's. It's widely accepted as a piece of Joseph Smith's works and words, you know. Yeah. And. And maybe. Maybe what we should do is we should write them a letter and say, look, this quote keeps getting used. Could you please not unless you're willing to talk about what the context of this quote.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:06 Yeah, I just.

Nemo 1:13:08 It's, you know, I know we're riffing here, but it's a command intended to cause someone to enact a behavior that they don't want to be enacting.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:18 Yeah. And they certainly don't want anyone talking about it in its correct context today. For sure.

John Dehlin 1:13:24 Okay, I think I got it back. Let's try this again. Thanks, brethren.

Reading the Happiness Letter Aloud

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 1:13:29 Happiness, my brothers and sisters, is the

Video Clip 1 1:13:33 object and the design of our existence.

Video Clip 1 1:13:36 The prophet Joseph Smith said, happiness is the object and design of our existence. The prophet Joseph Smith taught us, happiness

Video Clip 1 1:13:45 is the object and design of our existence.

Video Clip 1 1:13:48 The prophet Joseph Smith Smith said, happiness

Video Clip 1 1:13:50 is the object and design of our existence. The prophet Joseph Smith taught, happiness is

Video Clip 1 1:13:57 the object and design of our citizens.

John Dehlin 1:14:01 That was brilliant, Brilliant work, Nemo. Brilliant.

Nemo 1:14:03 I forgot that I had. I had purposely included the fact that they start with the prophet Joseph Smith taught because it just makes it so unequivocal that they absolutely believe those are his words. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:15 There's no way around it. And I. The end of that clip that you did, Nemo, is both creepy and also very well done. Just to show that it's just recited without a second thought as to where it came from, or at least it's recited without a worry that the members are going to look this up, because I will say for the website, the most read web page, the most read Page on the entire website is the happinessletter. It comes up, it gets the most Google hits. It gets the most because most people don't talk about it. And so after I saw the, listened to the Jonathan Streeter podcast, I had done a webpage on it because no one else really had done it. And I remember asking Jonathan if he was okay with it. And he, I think at the time was just like, yeah, we had. I think he said he meant to do it. He never did. It's certainly getting more, more, more coverage than it used to. And, and it just shows sometimes that when the church cites these things, like you said, putting it right directly in Joseph's mouth, it becomes that much harder to then disassociate it from him later.

Nemo 1:15:14 So, yeah, and, and I just want to say that if you do check out my video where that compilation is found, you will find in the description all of the citations for every single time one of those people said it. So you can try and come after me and say, well, those people didn't say that, but they did.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:29 Yeah, I mean, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:15:31 Yep, it's pretty irrefutable. So this is, this happiness letter is legit it. All right, so what's the next.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:38 Okay, so this is Jonathan Streeter on his thoughts and things and stuff channel did this video. It's like four minutes. This is a straight reading of the Happiness Letter without any stopping any context or anything. And so I thought it would be good for the listeners to hear this letter read in entirety. It's like four minutes. So that as we go to then dissect it afterwards, at least you've heard it all at once. And I think, think it's important because when you listen to it without us going through the sections, it will read a lot differently than it will after we do it. And I think that is the intention of Joseph Smith in writing it. And so this way it'll give you like a four minute reading of the letter and then we're going to go into it and look at it kind of paragraph by paragraph.

John Dehlin 1:16:19 All right, here is a full reading of the Happiness Letter by Jonathan Streeter on thoughts and things and stuff.

Speaker D 1:16:40 Happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it. And this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. But we cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them. And we cannot expect to know all or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we have already received. That which is wrong under one circumstance may be, and often is right under another. God said, thou shalt not kill. At another time he said, thou shalt utterly destroy. This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire. If we seek first the kingdom of God, all good things will be added. So with Solomon. First he asked wisdom, and God gave it him, and with it every desire of his heart, even things which might be considered abominable to all who understand the order of heaven only in part, but which in reality were right because God gave and sanctioned by special revelation. A parent may whip a child, and justly too, because he stole an apple. Whereas if the child had asked for the apple apple, and the parent had given it, the child would have eaten it with a better appetite, and there would have been no stripes. All the pleasures of the apple would have been secured, and the misery of stealing lost. This principle will justly apply to all of God's dealings with his children. Everything that God gives us is lawful and right. And it is proper that we should enjoy his gifts and blessings whenever and wherever he is disposed to bestow. But if we should seize upon those same blessings and enjoyments without law, without revelation, without commandment, those blessings and enjoyments would prove cursings and vexations in the end. And we should have to lie down in sorrow and wailings and everlasting regret. But in obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed. And as God has designed our happiness, the happiness of all his creatures, he never has, as he never will, institute an ordinance or give a commandment to his people that is not calculated in its nature to promote that happiness which he has designed, and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory. To those who become the recipients of his law and ordinances. Blessings offered but rejected are no longer blessings, but become like the talent hid in the earth by the wicked and slothful servants. Servant. The proffered good returns to the giver. The blessing is bestowed on those who will receive and occupy. For unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundantly. But unto him that hath not or will not receive shall be taken away. That which he hath or might have had be wise today. Tis madness to defer. Next day. The fatal precedent may plead thus on till wisdom is pushed out of time into eternity. Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in his views and boundless in his mercies and blessings than we are ready to believe or receive. And at the same time is more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of his punishments, and more ready to detect every false way than we are apt to suppose him to be. He will be inquired of by his children. He says, ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. But if ye will take that which is not your own or which I have not given you, you shall be rewarded according to your deeds. But no good thing will I withhold from them who walk uprightly before me and do my will in all things. Who will listen to my voice and to the voice of my servant whom I have sent for I delight in those who seek diligently to know my precepts and abide by the laws of my kingdom. For all things shall be made known unto them in mine own due time, and in the end, they shall have joy.

Analyzing the Letter Paragraph by Paragraph

John Dehlin 1:20:58 Okay, well, I. I kind of want to jump in and start with the analysis, but I know that's what the next several slides are going to be about, so just want to say something

Nemo 1:21:07 before we jump in. To anyone who says that no one's trying to argue that Joseph Smith didn't write this letter, I would point you to an article called. Or a. A. A published article called Happiness. Joseph Smith's alleged authorship of the 1842 letter to Nancy Rigdon by Garrett Dirkmaat, who is a professor at byu, and he tries to basically blame John Bennett for writing the letter and says that Joseph Smith didn't write it. So it is out there.

John Dehlin 1:21:35 Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that in a second, but thanks for that preview, Nemo. All right, Mike, so you want to break down the Happiness letter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:42 Yes. And we're just going to do this, like, paragraph by paragraph. We'll just give our thoughts and then, you know, kind of go through it. But yeah, so the first part, the start of the letter, says, happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it. And this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping, all the commandments of God. And as we've talked about, this is the part you're going to hear church leaders reference. They're going to reference this one chunk because by itself, it sounds really good. It sounds uplifting. It sounds kind of like nothing new. You know, they will always tell you that, you know, obeying the commandments is going to lead you to happiness. And so what is really telling to me in this letter is that Joseph Smith is starting off by not addressing polygamy directly, which is what, you know, you would think Joseph would do when he's writing a letter to Nancy to try to convince her to enter into this relationship with him. But instead, Joseph is going to focus on this idea of polygamy. And I think one of the things that you see that's pretty common with high demand fundamentalist religious leaders is that they're going to kind of frame virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, on the equal footing with keeping the commandments of God, because they are the people that are giving you the commandments of God. And so if you show this to any Christian in general, they'll likely look at the statement and go, yeah, this makes sense. But if you then were to tell them that keeping all the commandments of God means the commandments of God through Joseph Smith, that's where you start to see the problems, and that's where you start to see the subtlety of this letter shine through. Just in this first paragraph, which is that Joseph Smith is setting up the commandments of God equating to happiness. And of course, the commandments of God are going to be the ones that come through Joseph.

John Dehlin 1:23:27 Anything you want to respond to that, Nemo?

Nemo 1:23:29 No, it's just, you know, Joseph Smith. Yeah. Puts his desires essentially as the ultimate good in this situation, and getting what he wants is conflated with the ultimate good and with the proper outcome that God is also pushing for. Yes.

John Dehlin 1:23:44 Yeah. It's basically, let me tell you how you can achieve happiness. And it's all going to be virtuous and moral. And I'm thinking it's going to be because I say so, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're talking about morality, virtue, but as defined by Joseph Smith, which by today's Mormon standards is probably going to be not viewed as virtuous, immoral, but we'll get to that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:04 Yeah, absolutely not. And so right after this, Joseph Smith is going to turn morality upside down on Nancy Rigdon here. And so you get that beginning, which is just this very, very nice, flowery kind of language. And then it says, but we cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them. And we cannot expect to know all or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we had already received. That which is wrong under one circumstance may be and often is right under another. God said, thou shalt not kill. At another time, he said, thou shalt Utterly destroy. This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire. And so Joseph is immediately turning that kind of happy intro into a message to Nancy, which is saying that she cannot keep all of her commandments unless she listens to God, God's commandments, which come through Joseph Smith. And so he's telling her right now that what you think is wrong, which is his polygamous proposal, what you recoil at, you think it's wrong, but it's actually right. And this is where I was mentioning that 1841 teaching, because he says in there, what some think of sin is not sin. And here he's doing the same thing. He's basically saying, you might think it's a sin, but if it's coming through God via Joseph Smith, it's not sin. And this is setting up the rest of the letter and basically turning Nancy's moral compass upside down on her right off the bat.

Nemo 1:25:35 And what's really important here is that this starts, but we cannot keep all the commandments of God. And what that's connected to is the earlier sentence that said, happiness is the object and sign of our existence and will be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it. And the path is virtue, uprightness, and keeping all the commandments of God. So keeping all the commandments of God is being seen as a caveat to make sure that you are happy and you receive your eternal happiness. And now just is saying that's under threat. You can't keep all the commandments if you're not doing xyz. So you're putting her happiness on the line.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:11 Yeah, that's just it. And he's saying you can't know the commandments without following it. I'm trying to give you one, which is that you're supposed to marry me. It's. Yeah, we're seeing it right off the bat.

John Dehlin 1:26:20 The other thing I'm going to just say is I attended. This is going to be a little bit of just kind of history on my part. I attended Brigham Young University in the late 80s, early 90s, during a time where there was a cultural war in the United States around this idea of moral relativism that, you know, the idea was, was that there's different cultures and there's not one true standard of morality for the world, for the human experience, but Instead, and this is kind of an obvious point to anyone who thinks about it, what may be moral or upright in one, in one culture may be offensive or immoral in another. And the conclusion, the practical conclusion from that within academia and even a broader cultural war would be, you can't really be too super judgmental of cultures that have different moral standards than you because you're judging them by your moral framework and not theirs. And when I was at byu, there was this really hard push by people like Ralph Hancock and Frank Fox and others to say, no, moral relativism is an evil idea. There's truth and there's one truth, and it's God's truth, and we need to figure out what that is. But this idea of moral relativism is literally one of the most evil modern inventions. And so it's. It's shocking for me to hear this quote. On the one hand, it makes total sense because if you read the Bible, I, I figured this out in high school. On the one hand, God's saying, don't kill. On the other hand, he's saying to. To Nephi to kill Laban. On. On the one hand, you know, God's saying, don't, don't lie. And then he's telling Nephi to put on Laban's clothes and pretend like he's Laban, which is, in effect, is lying. Like you. You. If you read the scriptures, you can see that in effect, morality is whatever God says. But when it comes to actually ruling the church, I don't think the church wants to really emphasize this moral relativism piece because what it would lead to would be members doing whatever the f they wanted, just claiming that the Holy Ghost or God said it was okay. And so the church has tried to be walking this dance of no moral relativism. But then it's got. It's got this type of argument from Joseph Smith, which opens up a real can of worms. Right.

Nemo 1:28:40 And so this doesn't feel moral relativism.

John Dehlin 1:28:43 Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 1:28:45 Let's just say moral relativism, it doesn't exist in the church, but moral expedience absolutely does.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:49 Yeah.

Nemo 1:28:49 You know, if it benefits the church, then it, I mean, detot. Christofferson's still on this moral relativism bent now, like several of his past conference talks in recent years have been about moral relativism. And talking down about it, I believe he once famously said, said, just because you don't believe in the law of gravity doesn't mean you won't fall when you step off A cliff. And it's the same with God's laws. Just because you don't believe them in them doesn't mean they don't factor onto you. So moral relativism doesn't work because God's laws are unchanging and eternal. But then you've got Joseph Smith saying, well, yeah, God's laws shift.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:21 Yeah. And they shift quickly under Joseph. So, I mean, yeah, that's just.

John Dehlin 1:29:25 And it's just occurring to me, like this type of logic could be used today to say, hey, same sex marriage is okay. Being LGBT is okay, because in this context it's fine. So, like, Down H. Oaks and Russell and Nelson would have an opportunity to embrace the LGBTQ community and just say, hey, in past context it was wrong, but now it's fine.

Nemo 1:29:47 But that's the exact dance they've had to do with black members of the church in the priesthood. That's the exact dance they've had to say, well, it wasn't right then, but it's right now because God said so. And so you could make. You could use it to do that. But it's not expedient at the moment for them to do that for whatever reason. And so they don't. It was expedient to give black members of the church the priesthood because there was, you know, all sorts of social implications at the time, all sorts of problems the church was facing because of it that they felt were insurmountable and so pressed God on the issue. If you take the faithful perspective.

John Dehlin 1:30:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this could actually be a really good thing for the church that they used it in the right way instead

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:26 of just trying to help and so gratify himself. I wanted to play this clip. This is from a fairly recent podcast called I think Follow Him. And you guys did a couple episodes with Sandra Tanner about this. And this is with Kate Holbrooke, who is a church historian. They're talking about DNC132. And Gerardo had sent this to me before you guys did the episodes. And I was listening to it and this part shocked me because Hank Smith is actually going to invoke the Happiness Letter, basically kind of conflating it with the teachings of DNC 132. And I really feel like this little video clip is important because it shows how even today, the church is going to use this teaching to basically say that, yeah, morality is whatever the church needs it to be. And I think this is a really dangerous line of thought. So this is just a quick clip I thought would Be important to play.

John Dehlin 1:31:16 Yeah. And I'm just going to say at the outset that Kate Holbrooke passed away just within the past month of cancer. She is a much beloved historian. And so we don't, we, we send out condolences and honor to her family and we don't play this to dishonor her or shame her, especially in the light of her recent passing. But she was viewed as a major polygamy apologist for many years. And, and so I think it's fair game to kind of to play this at the same time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:47 Yeah. And I, I had absolutely no idea that Kate had passed away. And so obviously just a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I had no idea.

John Dehlin 1:31:54 So just a couple weeks ago.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:55 And this clip really is more about Hank Smith talking and just obviously to pass along condolences because I really did not know. So.

John Dehlin 1:32:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's play the clip where Joseph Smith says this.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 1:32:07 I, he says that which is wrong

Video Clip 2 1:32:10 under one circumstance maybe and often is right under another. God said thou shalt not kill.

Video Clip 2 1:32:16 At another time, he has said, thou shalt utterly destroy. This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted. Revelation adapted to circumstance. Revelation adapted to circumstance. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is.

Video Clip 2 1:32:31 Although we may not see the reason

Video Clip 2 1:32:33 till long after the events transpire.

Video Clip 2 1:32:35 I bring this up with Nephi killing Laban in the Book of Mormon, that we've grown up with it and so

Video Clip 2 1:32:41 we're pretty used to it.

Video Clip 2 1:32:42 But someone who is a first time

Video Clip 2 1:32:43 reader of the Book Mormon might be

Video Clip 2 1:32:45 horrified by the idea of Nephi killing Laban. Right. And so I don't think anyone needs to come into plural marriage feeling good about it.

Video Clip 2 1:32:55 Like, oh, this is, this is a good thing.

Video Clip 2 1:32:57 This is.

Video Clip 2 1:32:58 I feel so warm and fuzzy inside. Right. I don't think that's the Lord's expectation. He's just saying this is revelation adapted to circumstance. This is my law. This is how we're going to do this.

Video Clip 2 1:33:12 So I, I don't know.

Video Clip 2 1:33:13 I, I like the comparison with Nephi killing Laban, that it's, it's an exception, not the rule. But I, you have to trust Nephi and trust the Lord that this is really from him. I think that's another really powerful explanation for why we have this verse 36 that otherwise doesn't seem to, to fit. And it's because that is the, the rule is do not sleep with any, anyone other than your, your spouse, your wife, the person you're married to. But then here's the situation just Like Abraham's situation, just like Nephi's situation, where you do something different. I think that's exactly why it's in there.

John Dehlin 1:33:53 All right, Nemo, what's your reaction?

Nemo 1:33:55 He says, that's exactly why it's in there. Well, why what's in there? Because where what was just read as a just justification isn't.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:03 Can you hear me?

John Dehlin 1:34:04 All right, yeah, go ahead.

Nemo 1:34:05 Yeah, so. So what? What was read as a justification isn't readily available to members of the church, and it's certainly not included in D&C132 as they're discussing it. So they're using something that Joseph Smith fully intended to be burned and destroyed as evidence to justify a public teaching, which is very strange because the justification for that should surely also have been included along with DNC132.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:32 Absolutely.

John Dehlin 1:34:33 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:34 Yeah. I just. And I like the fact that Hank Smith invoked it because it shows, again, that this is a letter that is by Joseph Smith. This is not something even in 2022, that. That they're trying to basically say wasn't written by him. I think he should, because Hank Smith is not going to give the context of it in this episode. You can listen to it. He does not. But it also shows. And this is the problem for me is Hank Smith is basically saying, yeah, these are really horrible ideas, but we're going to do them if we believe God tells us to. And in this case, it's not God telling him to, it's Joseph Smith through God. And so this is why we've talked about this in other episodes. The fact that in the Mormon Church, personal revelation goes out the window if it contradicts another leader. So if Joseph Smith, or I guess today, in today's term, Russell Nelson comes to me and says, God tells me you need to do this. And then I pray about it. I'm like, yeah, God's telling me no. Russell Nelson's gonna say, no, I have more authority than you do. So my revelation is stronger than yours. It's like, yeah, this is telling people, even if you think something is wrong, you're gonna do it because the Church is telling you to. And that is the same thing we have today with when the church did the Prop 8 stuff and they have people going out and fundraising and campaigning against LGBT stuff. And it's. When you, you know, all of this, a word of wisdom, you know, people like, coffee's healthy, but I'm not going to do it because I'm, you know, and that's obviously nothing compared to polygamy it's just, it allows people to justify bad things, allows good people to justify bad things. And Hank Smith here is literally making that case. And I just find that to be a really dangerous teaching.

John Dehlin 1:36:06 Yeah, I mean in 2022 the, the series under the Banner of Heaven just came out and it's a, you know, or, or the whole Chad Dabel and Lori Valo outbreak where Chad in real life, Chad kills his own wife and Lori Valo kills at least one husband, if not more, plus several of of of Chad's children through, through accomplices. It just once you start going down this road of murder can be justified. It can lead to some really dark things, you know. Yeah.

Nemo 1:36:42 And I think an observation to make about Joseph Smith just really quickly is that that people like to often talk about him as being this person who just went around and took in everything he could find and it was a very dynamic and thriving and evolving religion. And that's fine. And actually you're going to see a lot of that in what Joseph did here. A lot of this expedience. He's justifying things as he's going because you know, he's driven to actions for whatever motivations that we can't necessarily ascribe to him. But then you contrast that with the very pharisaical rules heavy church that we live in now. And no wonder members are going to come up against this dichotomy of well, here's a very liberal view of the church. Here's someone who was able to run around getting revelation for this and that and constantly dynamically changing. And now we live in a church where obedience to one person is very important and that person is the prophet of the church. Yep. Yeah, yeah, there's a big dichotomy there.

John Dehlin 1:37:38 Okay, so Jonathan Streeter. More wisdom from Jonathan.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:42 Yeah, I think I read this in the first polygamy episode we did. But this is the exact same tactic that other religious leaders have used to coerce women to have relations with them. And so this is from Jonathan Streeter's presentation at Sunstone. He says, keep in mind that special divine permission is nothing new. Self proclaimed prophet David Koresh and the Branch Davidians claim special divine permission to take child brides for the purpose of producing the 24 elders foretold in the book of Revelations. Self proclaimed prophet Wayne Bent of the Lord Our Righteousness church claims special divine permission for having sexual relations with children, even his own daughter in law in order to avoid gun God's punishment. Self proclaimed prophet Julius Shack now of the Sect known as the Work claims special privilege to promise salvation in exchange for sexual intercourse with women and children, including his own stepdaughter. Self proclaimed prophet Tony Alamo of Alamo Christian Ministries claimed special biblical permission to illegally marry multiple women and children. Self proclaimed prophet David Berg of the Children of God claim special divine permission to normalize sexual relations with children. Prophets justifying their own predations, especial divine permission through the use of pious language and religious sentiment is nothing new. And this is the same thing we have here, where all of these leaders are doing the exact same thing Joseph is doing, which is to flip morality on its head by saying, God told me so. And the moment you want to say that this happiness letter is from God is the moment you have to then look at every one of these leaders and tell me why this is not from God. And I think that's a problem that oftentimes the church doesn't want to get into, which is to say that, you know, we're a very unique. You know, they'll say, our church is unique, our church is, you know, we're a peculiar people. But you never want to look at the comparisons to how Joseph Smith did things with other leaders who are doing the exact same things with the exact same methods.

John Dehlin 1:39:28 Yeah, Yep, it's a problem. It's a problem for sure. All right, so let's read this letter in the context it was written.

Nemo 1:39:37 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:37 And so just to say that, you know, Joseph in this letter is seeking to assure Nancy that what seems horrible and wrong to her, which in this case is having a sexual relationship or marriage to Joseph, is often right under different circumstances. And so when you read these, when we go through this letter, you have to look at it in the context in which it is written, which is Joseph Smith promises to explain to Nancy why it is right and proper to consent to this relationship with him. And so, you know, let's just look at how Joseph Smith uses the Bible to assure Nancy Rigdon that entering this relationship is actually from God and not just Joseph's desires. He says, God said, thou shall not kill. And at another time he said, thou shalt utterly destroy. And so Jonathan Streeter mentions this in his podcast with Bill Real, where he says, you know, if God can not only condone, but command both murder and destruction when the situation calls for it, then entering into a relationship of polygamous marriage or a concubine situation with Joseph would seem small by comparison. And I think in a lot of ways that's true. As you're trying to say, like, oh my goodness, God's done so much more what we would think is wrong. So what I'm asking you is small by comparison. And I really do think that these words that Joseph is using are very carefully chosen to create that environment for Nancy where she's going to read this and say, oh, I really do need to do this. And I think that as we talked about, this is the same exact thing you're going to see with all of these other religious leaders. And that's why we need to read this letter in the context it was written now, as opposed to earlier when we listened to it, without that context. And I think that's again to what Nemo is saying. Like why when Hank Smith invokes us to DNC132, he's not going to give you the context of where it is or that the Church is not going to put this next to DNC132 for additional context because they don't want you to know that.

Nemo 1:41:21 And this is exactly what is done with the atoning sacrifice as it's portrayed in Mormonism. It's used to minimize your own sacrifices or your own struggles. Struggles. It's like, well, God can command someone to kill when we usually say that's not okay. So this is small by comparison. Like you said, oh well, Jesus suffered and died for you, so you can go through this going hungry or whatever it is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:41 Yep, you hear that a lot. I mean, and I, I think you hear that in other religions too, where people are going through a hard time. They're like, Jesus died on the cross. What you're doing is not a big deal. And it's like, well, yeah, that's true. And you know, yeah, it's, it's, it's can be a very manipulative way to, to frame your situation, especially in the,

John Dehlin 1:41:56 like, one of the, you know, we're, we, we're airing my interview with Patrick Mason this week who is probably the church's, in my view, the church, the Mormon Church's leading faithful scholar in Mormon studies, bar none. I mean, Richard Bushman's amazing and Terrell Givens is amazing. But for me, Patrick Givens is like, has the whole package in ways that the others don't. And Patrick, Patrick just full on admits in my interview with him that he thinks polygamy was a huge mistake. And he's faithful. He believes there are golden plates in an angel. So when like top faithful. I don't know if apologist is the right word for Patrick, but I mean it in a Non pejorative way. If top faithful apologists for the Mormon Church are also saying that polygamy was a big mistake, then when you read something like this letter, it gives it a whole new meaning because you have to look at it in this context, which is literally just justification for bad behavior.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:00 Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin 1:43:02 I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:03 No, I agree. I mean, I think this is just Joseph trying to justify to Nancy why he's doing what he's doing and using the voice of God to do it. And so what I wanted to do here is we're kind of. We've covered some of the other proposals already, but. But when we talk about using the language of revelation to convince women to say, yes, I want to read you three examples of how Joseph Smith does this to other women. And so Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner says that when she was 12 years old in 1831, that Joseph told me about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife. In 1834, he was commanded to take me for a wife. In 1842, I went forward and was sealed to him, Brigham Young, before the ceiling for time and all eternity. I did just as Joseph told me to do. Emily Partridge said, Joseph said the Lord had commanded him to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him. And although I had got badly frightened, he knew I would yet have him. And then Lucy Walker said, In the year 1842, President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me and said, I have a message for you. I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman. And so. So Joseph is going to these women that revere him as a prophet of God and using that authority that they give to Joseph and wielding it as a weapon back onto them to say, you view me as a prophet. Like, he literally goes to Lucy Walker and says, do you believe I'm a prophet? Lucy Walker says, I do. And then he says, I have a message where I've been commanded of God to take another wife. And so he's using their trust in him to then say, okay, you believe I talk to God. Here's what God wants. And it just happens to be you as a polygamous wife. And so this is a pattern. And this is a pattern of using the voice of God to get women to throw away their moral compass and submit to these requests from Joseph. And as we keep mentioning, this is the same tactics that every other religious leader that have relations with their followers use. This is nothing new. This is just following a pattern that's as old as time. And with Joseph Smith, unfortunately for Joseph, we have just a lot of documentation of it. It.

John Dehlin 1:45:10 Yeah. So this is. This is standard Joseph behavior in Nauvoo.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:16 Yeah, this is just nothing new that. The only difference here is that we have a letter that Joseph Smith dictated which gives us more of a first person perspective of how he's proposing. Because, like Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, that's a late recollection. Emily Partridge and Lucy Walker are both giving us what are probably better recollections, but at the same time, it's still filtered through years after the fact. And so the Happiness letter just gives us more of a pure look at how Joseph was doing it.

Nemo 1:45:44 It's a great primary source.

John Dehlin 1:45:47 That reminds me, I'm going to put in Sacred Loneliness as a reference in the show notes. And also Year of Polygamy by Lindsay Hansen park, for those who really want to dig into polygamy, in Sacred Loneliness is the book that Lindsay bases Year of Polygamy on, for the most part. And also I interviewed Todd Compton very early in the History of Mormon Stories podcast, so I'll include that as well, because it's just. It's great stuff for those who want to go down the polygamy rabbit hole.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:22 Absolutely. And so one other key element that Jonathan Streeter notes in his Sunstown presentation is when we read this letter, Joseph Smith continues to lean heavily into this inclusive language by saying, like using the word we as he gives these commandments. And this framing allows Joseph to present his proposal to Nancy as if they're both under the same requirements, under the same pressure from God. But the truth is, they're under very different circumstances in this proposal. Joseph Smith's exaltation is not on the line of Nancy rejects his commandment. But Nancy's future and current blessings in the church and for eternity are put at stake, as we'll see as we go through this letter. And so Joseph Smith has known Nancy Rigdon since she was a kid. And in all these years, she's revered him as a prophet. And Joseph, Joseph Smith did with some of his other polygamous wives, as we just noted, he's going to use the reverence for him against them to gain their consent. And so when Joseph Smith says whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire, he is using his claimed authority, his claimed authority as God's prophet to tell Nancy what is right, even if she knows deep down, hope horrendous the idea of marrying and having sexual relations with Joseph is to her. And so Joe, you know, it's just, you know, I didn't really notice this until Jonathan pointed out in his podcast, but the fact that he's using we here, it would almost be like if, you know, you were a boss and you called one of your subordinates in and, you know, made an advance on them and then kind of kept saying that, that, you know, we need this, we need this. Well, if, if, if the subordinates promotions are dependent upon her having a relationship, you have nothing to lose outside of, I guess, her speaking publicly. She has everything to lose. And in this case, Joseph Smith is doing this as if they both have something to lose. Whereas the only way Joseph Smith loses is Nancy comes out publicly, which she did. But at the time that all of the pressure is on Nancy here.

Coercion, Promises, and Psychological Pressure in the Letter

John Dehlin 1:48:14 Totally, totally agree. Yeah, it's, it's psychologically kind of coercive.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:20 Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin 1:48:20 To, to be using that, especially in his position of authority. Like, it's not until modern times where we really understand consent and coercion and authority, but in his role as prophet, sir and revelator. Is she still a teenager at this point?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:36 Yeah, she's 19.

John Dehlin 1:48:37 To be saying, I'm, I speak for God and we need to obey God.

Nemo 1:48:41 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:48:41 It's just way too much power. It's why bosses shouldn't sleep with their employees.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:46 It's. Yeah, it's why. And it's why religious leaders shouldn't sleep with their followers. And it's why.

John Dehlin 1:48:50 That's why psychologists, Psychologists don't sleep with their clients. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:53 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:48:54 Doctors, medical doctors don't sleep with their clients. There's a whole ethical code.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:58 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:48:58 That when you're in a power of authority, you don't, you don't.

Nemo 1:49:01 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:49:01 You're in your position of authority. You don't use that to coerce. Using undue influence.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:06 Yes, absolutely. And so this is where we're going to start to get into the. The where the letter really lets us know. This is about polygamy. And so people will say that if you read the happiness letter, he's not talking about polygamy, he's just talking about blessings and promises. And I just want to point out this section makes it crystal clear. He's talking about polygamy. So he says if we, if we seek first the kingdom of God, all good things will be added. So with Solomon first he asked wisdom, and God gave it him, and with it every desire of his heart, even things which might be considered abominable. To all who understand the order of heaven only in part, but which in reality were right, because God gave and sanctioned by special revelation. And I just want to point out this part of the letter makes perfectly clear somehow a sexual relationship, whether it's polygamy or concubinage, because Joseph Smith is directly involving or invoking Solomon, who is famous for his 700 wives and 300 concubines. But this is the part of the letter that to me, is the absolute most important one. And the reason is because Joseph Smith is throwing God under the bus here, because he is going to say this, this line right here with Solomon when he says that Solomon desired even things which might be considered abominable to all those who understand the order of heaven only in part, he is directly contradicting and undercutting the Book of Mormon, because the Book of Mormon tells us that God himself said that Solomon had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. And so in the Book of Mormon, God says that Solomon's wives and concubines were abominable. In Joseph Smith's happiness letter, he's saying that anyone who calls what Solomon did abominable knows the order of heaven only in part, which means that God in the Book of Mormon understood the order of heaven only in part. So Joseph Smith here we talk about moral relativism. And in the wiggle room Joseph Smith creates here, Joseph Smith makes clear he's willing to throw God directly under the bus and then run him over a few times, because he is basically keeps taking the Book of Mormon and setting it on fire because he wants to say that anyone who considers the salmon did abominable doesn't understand heaven. And God directly says it in the Book of Mormon. This one actually wasn't in Jonathan's podcast, and I was going through it myself, and when I saw that line, I was like, I gotta look at the word. Abominable is what made me think of Book of Mormon. I can't say it enough. Joseph Smith here is literally telling Nancy Rigdon that, that God in the Book of Mormon knows the order of heaven only in part. It's mind blowing to me that he would put this in a letter.

Nemo 1:51:36 That's. That's incredible. That's. That's some hubris right there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:42 Yeah, I. I couldn't believe it. Like, I seriously, I've tried to explain this to people, and people, like, sometimes are like, what are you talking about? It's like, read the Book of Mormon. That Line, then read the happiness letter where Joseph Smith claims to be speaking for God and he's literally, he's not just contradicting the Book of Mormon, he's saying that God in the Book of Mormon knows the order of Heaven only in part, like what a statement to be made. And he's only doing it because he's trying to convince a 19 year old girl that she needs to marry him. This is like, to me, this is like the, I hate the word smoking guns sometimes, but this is like for me the most important takeaway to show how Joseph Smith is willing to completely upend his theology, upend everything in order to get what he needs to done.

John Dehlin 1:52:23 And it kind of, it, I mean, just like when we cover it in the Doctrine and Covenants, changes to the Doctrine and Covenants section where he. Or where a revelation would be actually published in print and then a couple years later, later completely rewritten, sometimes even to change the original meaning.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:43 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:52:43 Or changes to the Book of Mormon or even changes to patriarchal blessings years after the fact that once you, once you see how everything could be changed, including changed in ways to contradict the original meaning, it just makes you want, you know, it sort of leads you to wonder, well then what, what can we believe? What is solid? There's nothing solid. If anything could be changed and reversed in its meeting at any time. Again, Nemo, to your point, for expedience, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:14 Yeah, yeah. I mean in this case, Joseph Smith just completely throws the God of the Book of Mormon under the bus for expedience in order to convince Nancy to marry him. Because I don't know if Joseph is thinking about the Book of Mormon here. I kind of think he's not. Because if he is, he's just doing a terrible job of wording this. But the fact is, you know, he's using the exact same phrasing in the Book of Mormon by using the word abominable. This one blew me away. Like, this one seriously blew me away. Just because of the fact that Joseph Smith is, is saying that God understands heaven only in part, but Joseph Smith apparently understands it fully. And that is just, I mean, I don't know what else to say. That is the takeaway of the letter from me. But obviously it gets a lot worse as far as morality as we go. But that one I thought was just such a big one and I just wanted to keep saying it because it's just so important to me.

John Dehlin 1:53:58 Yeah. Okay. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 1:54:00 I was going to say if you view Joseph Smith as The author of the Book of Mormon, then those are his words that he's contradicting. And the level of hubris or arrogance or whatever you'll call it, it's a view directly into the psyche of Joseph Smith that he's willing to undermine the message of the book that he calls the truest book of any book on the face of the earth. He's willing to undermine that to get what he wants. That shows the level of self importance.

John Dehlin 1:54:25 I think, if I recall, I recall Richard Bushman noting how little Joseph Smith referenced the Book of Mormon once he starts the church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:35 Yeah, that's true.

John Dehlin 1:54:37 That. You know, now that we see we did an episode about how none of the Nauvoo, almost none of the innovative, distinctive Mormon doctrine that comes out of Nauvoo ever shows up in the Book of Mormon. It would, it would make sense to me at some point that the Book of Mormon, if it's really just a snapshot of Joseph Smith view Joseph Smith's theology and doctrinal WorldView as of 1829, it would make sense that not only would he try and ignore it, it, or downplay it, but openly contradict it at some point because it becomes, it would become a ball and chain to him. If he's creative, if he's expansive, if he's wanting to like grow his understanding of God in the universe, then the Book of Mormon is just a ball and chain because it basically links him to traditional Christian, you know, Protestant, you know, 19th century theology. And so, yeah, he's going to contradict it. That makes pretty perfect, perfect sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:55:33 Yeah. I don't. To your point, he didn't talk about it much after he wrote it. And I think Dan Vogel talks about how when Joseph Smith was doing his treasure digging, the rock was the source of the charisma. People believed that that rock held power once he creates the Book of Mormon. People believe the Book of Mormon is the source of the charisma because he produced it. You could see that today. I mean, look, go on social media today and watch how people say he couldn't have possibly written it. And when you explain why he could have, they just, just throw that out. Because that Book of Mormon is the source of the charisma, which means that can't be challenged. And so to your point, once that's created, once he has that source, he doesn't need to keep working on it because it's already there. And then he's creating the other stuff as he gets going in Nauvoo. And I don't even know if he's aware of the fact that he's undercutting the Book of Mormon because he does not seem to talk about it enough to. He talks about Bible stuff all the time, but the Book of Mormon, he doesn't. And so to me, I bet you when he's writing this letter to Nancy, he's not thinking about that, that part of the Book of Mormon. I think he's just trying to justify why polygamy is right. Even though everybody says what Solomon did was horrible. And I think it's just, it's an interesting development in the sense of he's undercutting the entire authority of the Book of Mormon and God in order to get Nancy Rigdon to accept his proposal. And I think that's a massive problem, not just for the character of Joseph Smith, but the fact that, that these are, this is someone speaking for God and also undercutting God at the same time. And that's just, That's a huge problem.

John Dehlin 1:56:57 Yeah.

Nemo 1:56:58 Because it's emphatic. We believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

John Dehlin 1:57:01 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 1:57:01 No caveat.

John Dehlin 1:57:02 The fullness, containing the fullness of the gospel, most perfect book, most correct book, all that stuff.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:57:07 Yep, absolutely. And so, yeah, we just covered this. So, you know, yeah, we can just skip it because, you know, know, it would just be more or less to say if God only knows heaven only in part, then we got a problem here. And yeah, so, you know, it's. We covered all that so we could skip it.

John Dehlin 1:57:25 Okay. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:57:27 And then this is another area and you know, we covered this a little bit. DNC132 but you know, Joseph Smith says God gave it him Solomon, and with it every desire of his heart. In his letter to Nancy, making clear that the desire of Joseph Smith's heart is to enter into relationship with 19 year old Nancy Rigdon. It's like, otherwise, why would Joseph Smith be using this language to assure Nancy that God has chosen for her to be in relationship with Joseph? And this is the same rhetorical move we see in D&C132, which is going to be written the next year, where Joseph makes clear that Joseph is the one who's asking about polygamy when it says, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I the Lord justified my servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and also as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of having many wives and Concubines. And so it's just to point out that Joseph Smith here is unintentionally kind of telling Nancy that God's giving Joseph his desires by telling Joseph that Nancy needs to be his wife. And I do feel like this is one of those areas where Joseph, of course, is trying not to frame it that way, but when you're using, when you're invoking this language, it's making clear that it's not Nancy's desire to marry Joseph. So it's, it's, it's Joseph's, you know, and it's kind of a gross thing in this letter to put Nancy as basically a pawn in this plan. Whereas, you know, you know, Joseph is literally saying God gave Solomon the desire of his heart by giving him wives and concubine. And in this case, he's saying, and that's why you need to marry me, because you're the desire of my heart. And that's. That backs up John C. Bennett's account too, that Joseph says he loves her and all that because he's making clear here that this is his desire and it's, it, you know, it's kind of gross.

John Dehlin 1:59:14 Yeah. So where, where does God end in Joseph Smith's own carnal desires begin? You know?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:21 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:59:21 Or did or is God involved at all?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:24 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:59:24 And I think that's why Patrick Mason concludes the polygamy wasn't of God. That the, the most likely Occam's Razor explanation is that Joseph just got too power hungry, saw that. That he was sexually desirable or that he could obtain sexual conquest through the power of his positions. And that's the, the most rational, logical explanation. Everything else either makes God a monster or twists logic in ways that just. Okay. Does it make sense? Do you want to add anything to that, Nemo?

Nemo 1:59:58 No, that's perfect.

John Dehlin 1:59:59 Okay. Okay. All right. So the happiness letter alternates promises and threats, which is also disturbing.

Nemo 2:00:06 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:00:07 And this is just a real quick slide because we're going in, we're kind of getting into the meat of the letter here. And I just wanted to point out, because we talked about this with DNC132, but Joseph Smith does this rhetorical move where he alternates between promises and blessings when it comes to his polygamous proposals. And, and he kind of alternates the blessings you get versus the eternal threats that come if you refuse his commandment. And I think this is important to note because this is not a revelation that Joseph Smith is writing. This is his letter that he's dictating. Nancy, he does invoke the voice of God, which we'll get in, which we'll see as we go. But it does seem interesting that Joseph Smith is going to write a DNC132 a year later, which he claims is directly from God. That is going to follow a lot of the patterns he's using in this dictated letter to Nancy Rigdon a year earlier. And so I just wanted to note that because of those similarities and kind of the alternate alternation between promises and threats. And also just to point it out, because as we read the rest of this letter, you're going to see him constantly go between making these. These promises of blessings and then immediately giving you the threats if you don't basically submit to what Joseph is. Is commanding of you.

John Dehlin 2:01:15 Yeah. And that. That just sounds exactly like what he does to Emma and DNC 132, which we've covered in past episodes and may cover it again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01:24 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:01:26 All right, so Joseph Smith compares an apple to a polygamous marriage.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01:31 Yes. Okay, so this section is from Joseph. A parent may whip a child, and justly too, because he stole an apple. Whereas if the child had asked for the apple and the parent had given it it, the child would have eaten it with a better appetite. There would have been no stripes, all the pleasures of the apple would have been secured, all the misery of stealing, lost. This principle will justly apply to all of God's dealings with his children. Everything that God gives us is lawful and right. And it is proper that we should enjoy his gifts and blessings whenever and wherever he is disposed to bestow. But if we should seize upon those same blessings and enjoyments without law, without revelation, without commandment, those blessings and enjoyments would prove cursings and vexations in the end, and we would have to lie down in sorrow and wailings of everlasting regret. And this, this part of the letter is crazy because Joseph Smith is indirectly telling Nancy if she would just enter into the relationship with Joseph without, with, with Joseph Smith, without revel, reservation, all of the pleasures of the apple, which is sexual relations with Joseph, would have been secured. And he's also making clear she rejects or that if she accepts this proposal, not only is it the lawful thing to do, but it is a proper thing for her to do, to consent. And so, in other words, Joseph is trying to assure Nancy that if she accepts his proposal, there will be no punishments for it, but instead will be pleasures, gifts, and blessings. And then he also kind of says at the end here, if you're going to enter into a relationship like this without Joseph Smith's permission, that's a sin. And I just feel like this is. This one. This is where it just gets so hard for me. Because once you know the context, Joseph is literally telling her, you can enjoy this a whole lot more if you just consent, but if you don't, you're going to always wish you had done it. You know, it's just. It's so gross. It makes me. Yeah.

Nemo 2:03:13 This idea as well, that, like, she's something that God can bestow to him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:17 Yeah.

Nemo 2:03:17 Essentially, like, she is chastel to be traded.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:20 Yep. Yeah. And again, this is just all of the benefit here is for Joseph Smith. And yet he's sitting here telling her, if you would just accept my proposal, you're going to enjoy it a whole lot more than if you would, instead of you putting up this fight and then eventually doing it anyways. It's just. It's. It's gross. I mean, it's. But then he's.

Nemo 2:03:37 Language. We should have to lie down.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:39 Exactly.

Nemo 2:03:41 So he's almost a guilt, saying, look, I'm gonna suffer too if you don't go through with this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:03:44 Yeah. Oh, yeah. I. Yeah. I mean, he's already married, like, a dozen women here, and so he's like saying, oh, you know, we're gonna have to lie down in sorrow and ever. Except he's already married. Yeah. I struggle with this.

John Dehlin 2:03:57 Mike doesn't like this. It's also interesting to use the. The analogy of an apple, because the apple in the Garden of Eden kind of represents sin, right? It represents the forbidden fruit, right?

Nemo 2:04:08 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:09 Yep.

Nemo 2:04:09 It does.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:10 Yeah. I mean, saying.

Nemo 2:04:11 Because Adam and Eve ate it without they stole it, therefore they were punished. Yep. And if only they'd done it when it was lawful.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:18 Yeah.

Speaker D 2:04:19 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:04:19 This is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:20 Yeah. And only Joseph, through God, can tell you when the apple's okay to eat, when it's just.

John Dehlin 2:04:24 Just. Yeah.

Speaker D 2:04:24 This is hard.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:25 Yeah. I struggle with this.

John Dehlin 2:04:26 Mike's not liking this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:27 No, I. This stuff really makes me angry still. All right, so then Joseph is. This is the next part of the letter. But in obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed. And as God has designed our happiness, the happiness of all his creatures, he never has. He never will institute an ordinance or give a commandment to his people that is not calculated in its nature to promote that happiness which he has designed and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of his laws and ordinances. And so Joseph Smith now is kind of bouncing off of that, you know, everlasting regret and just saying, you're going to have so much joy if you just do this. And in saying. And this is similar to what Russell Nelson said when they implemented the November 15 policy, which is that when they prayed to God, they literally thought about every single. I think the word uses this permutation of what could happen if they implemented that policy. And that was the best one for the people of the church. And yet we found out that it was such a bad decision that they had to reverse it 3 1/2 years later. And here Joseph Smith is telling Nancy Rigdon that the only reason Joseph is getting the revelation to marry her is because this is what God has determined will give her the most happiness in life, is to marry and have sex with him. And I just. It's so manipulative to have somebody that you revere as a prophet, it telling you at the age of 19, without your parents with you, that God is telling you that he. That God himself or herself calculated this proposal to Nancy and determined that not only will she be happy with it, but it will give her the greatest amount of good and glory if she enters into it, whether it's a polygamous wife or a concubine. I just. This is. This is stuff where if you show this to anyone in the church and you said this is how Warren Jeffs proposed to women, they'd be like, oh, holy frick, this is horrible. And I, Yeah, I just want to scream right now, this stuff is just making me so uncomfortable, just so angry. And it's just. It's very. The wording is very intentional here to tell her this is what you need to do. And. And the only person that seems to want this to be happy is Joseph. And that also tracks with the previous part of the letter where he talks about Solomon, you know, getting what he. What he heard, what his heart desired. Doesn't talk about what Solomon's wife's desired. And you're not going to see that here either.

John Dehlin 2:06:48 Yeah. Yep. Yeah. It's basically saying, I want something and it's going to be good for you, you know?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:06:58 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:06:58 Telling you it's going to be good for you, even though Nancy clearly doesn't want it. Like, she clearly doesn't want it. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:07:04 Yeah, she doesn't want it. And he's saying, you know, we. So I want to tie these episodes back to earlier episodes. We've been doing that the whole series. We talked in the first. The very first episode about treasure digging Is you talk about how treasure digging ends when you cannot produce a physical treasure and you have to stop the digging. And I talked about how when you start a religion, you could keep people digging forever because you keep promising them things. You keep promising them these eternal blessings that you never have to produce, you just have to tell them they're there. And in this case it feels similar to that where he's trying to get Nancy to keep on this path with him by promising all these things he never has to deliver. He doesn't have to deliver eternal happiness because he's going to be long gone, you know, when she dies and when he dies. And I'm not even talking about him being killed early, I'm just saying in general, this just feels like he's doing this trick of promising these blessings that he never actually has to give and telling her that he can foresee them through God in order for Joseph to get the immediate reward. And, and I know it's not the same as treasure digging. It's just those tactics of stringing people along, in my opinion, by giving them promises he never has to actually provide to them in order to convince them to do something for him in the present. And it's a trend we see in his revelations, not just with polygamy. And it's just horrible when it's being used to take someone who clearly doesn't want to do something, who has learned their whole life that this is morally wrong and being told to flip it upside down because this is what God wants. And not only is it what God wants, but it is God's calculation that this will make you the happiest person you can possibly be. And it's just, it's bad.

John Dehlin 2:08:41 Nemo. Anything? Ned?

Nemo 2:08:44 I, I'm horrified by this sort of language being leveled at anyone. The idea that someone's eternal happiness is threatened by their inaction. And I, I think again, I just want to point out that Joseph seems to paint himself as a co recipient of God's wrath or of the revocation of these blessings. Yeah. And he kind of puts himself in the position of, well, Nance, if you don't do this, we're both going to suffer. So he's outlined all the benefits for him. He keeps trying to say that it'll be benefit to her too, but it's really what he wants. And then, yeah, as kind of a last ditch effort or throughout he's kind of saying, well, this is going to hurt me too, so do you want to hurt me?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:25 Yep.

Speaker D 2:09:27 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:27 This is very similar to the angel.

John Dehlin 2:09:30 It comes across as very manipulative.

Nemo 2:09:33 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:34 And, you know, one point about this, this last section we did, is just to say, you know, Joseph Smith says that God has designed our happiness, the happiness of all of his creatures. He never has. He never will institute an ordinance or give a commandment to his people that is not calculated in its nature to promote that happiness which he has designed. And the church's own Gospel Topics essay on polygamy concedes plural marriage was difficult for all involved. For Joseph Smith's wife, Emma, it was an excruciating ordeal. So how in the world do you get off. Excuse me. This stuff is so angry to me, saying that God has designed this to be the most happy we can be when everything we know about how polygamy went tells us that this did not make women as happy as they could be. And in a lot of cases, it didn't make the men as happy as they could be because a lot of them bit off more. They can chew. They had problems with the different wives. So if polygamy was calculated and intended to promote the most happiness and good, why was it so difficult for so many of the women who were sub. Who are subjected to it? And the church's own essay admits this. It's not just me putting out an opinion. And it becomes much easier to see why the men who claim to speak for God found happiness in taking their younger followers than the younger followers found in taking these men. And it's just the history bears out the fact that Joseph Smith is either full of crap here or God is not good at calculating happiness. So. So pick your poison here, because what Joseph Smith is promising here, we know from the historical record, is flat out wrong.

Personal Polygamy Legacy and Broader Impact

John Dehlin 2:10:59 Well, this is really personal to me, Mike, because, you know, my grandmother, my mom's mom, Karma Benson Parkinson, she was the daughter of a third wife in a polygamous marriage. And I knew my grandma, and when I was growing up, my grandma Karma always told me how awesome and wonderful polygamy was. And so. And how happy the wives were and how happy the children were. And I would say, like most Mormons today, I was raised thinking everything was hunky dory and peachy and wasn't problematic. And so your. Your assertion that polygamy was actually problematic and horrific for many women and children isn't going to ring true and familiar to most Mormons of pioneer ancestry. Now, what. What changed for me is I was able to go back and read the actual historical accounts of my great grandfather, Dr. I think his name was Richard Parkinson. But it turns out that he ended up being divorced from the first wife, divorced from the fourth wife. Two children of the second wife died while he was on a mission, and he missed their funerals. One of the wives got addicted to the. The. The equivalent of opiates and was like, wandering around the street on opiates. Several of the children's children died. You know, infant mortality rates that were super high while the doctor, medical doctor, was off visiting other wives or traveling to foreign countries. It was a nightmare for my great grandfather and his four wives, but my grandma either didn't know it or didn't tell me what actually. Plus, there were some really nasty public divorces where the divorces were written up in the paper, and there were custody battles and false accusations of. Of adultery and. And several of them were imprisoned. So, like. Yeah. What's hard is, Mike, is those things you say about polygamy being a nightmare for the people who lived it. It's just not known by modern Mormons that that's. That's actually what happened.

Nemo 2:13:17 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:13:18 I mean. And that's why I point out that it's from the Gospel topics essay where they. They admit it was excruciating for Emma. It was. It was a hard ordeal for most. I mean, I think to your point, there's always going to be some people. You're always going to find some women who will paint it in a good light. And you see that a lot when you look at some of the accounts, and that's why you see a lot in the essay. They'll say, these women didn't want to do it, but then they had a spiritual experience. And my point is not to say that their experiences are invalid, because I have spiritual experiences. I look back on and I know they weren't what I thought they were. That doesn't mean they were wrong at the time. At the time, I felt them. At the time, I believed it was that. But you're always going to find some women, I think, who are like, I think this was the right thing for me. And you're also going to have one of the things. I didn't put this clip in here, but. But it's also from Kate Holbrooke from a different event. And she was talking about how the second wife was always the one that was taken around town, that was taken out, that was treated the best, while the first wife had to stay home and cook and clean. And I forgot who the apostle was with her. I don't know if I think it

Nemo 2:14:16 was Quentin o' Cook with Face to Face.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:14:19 He's kind of giggling in the background as she's explaining how the first wife got completely screwed. And so the second wife in that situation probably was pretty happy because she got all of the benefits of being the favorite wife. So, of course, it's not a blanket statement to say every woman was miserable, but it is to say that to make the statement that entering into polygamy will give you the greatest amount of happiness. Even the church's essay admits that is absolutely wrong. And so Joseph Smith's words here again fail to be true. And so to me, it shows that either Joseph Smith was making it up to advance his own desires or that God cannot figure out what makes people happy. And I think the only option you could go with there is the first one, because the second one has a lot worse implications. But I just got it. Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:15:08 Nemo, anything you want to add before we jump to the next slide?

Nemo 2:15:11 Kind of.

John Dehlin 2:15:12 Okay, yeah, please.

Nemo 2:15:14 When it says that it is intended to bring happiness, there's the argument that could be made that God intended it, but he's working through imperfect people, and so therefore it didn't bring happiness. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:15:28 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:15:29 It's kind of like this loophole, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:15:31 Yeah.

Nemo 2:15:31 But the problem with that is you still have to take ownership of how something turned out, even if it was God included needs to take ownership of how something turned out, even if it was intended to create happiness. It's the same with the church and their abuse helpline. The church's answer to the article by Mike Resendes was, well, this helpline is intended to help members, and no one's arguing with that. Intention intended to help. No one's arguing intention. It's what it was actually used for or how it was actually used in certain cases caused a lot of harm, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. And it's the same with polygamy. Now, you would expect better from God because, you know, he's a perfect being, but if that's what God intended and then we saw the result, maybe God should have come out and said something about that.

John Dehlin 2:16:20 Yep. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:16:21 Yeah, that's a good point.

Nemo 2:16:25 Sorry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:16:26 No, no, it's a good point. And it's one of the ones we've talked about a lot where it's like, isn't it convenient that God always tells Joseph which wives he's given to him, but never goes to the wives ahead of time to say, hey, by the way, I want you to marry Joseph? It's, you know, it's a convenient Thing that only one person is able to, to discern the will of God. And that happens through today as well. Where, where we have, you know, well, we go through in more episodes. But you know, Russell Nelson wants the name of the church to be changed. Got two prophets to rebuke them. Nelson lives long enough to be prophet while, you know, voila, you know, this is what God wants. And you see this here, it's whoever is the one person that is revered as a prophet gets to tell everyone else what God wants and that that leads to bad things. It can doesn't always, but it does often.

Nemo 2:17:08 His 14 fundamentals following the prophet, I believe said the living prophet is more important than previous prophets is. Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:17:14 So yeah, absolutely.

Speaker D 2:17:16 Yeah.

Threats, Urgency, and Manipulation in the Letter's Final Arguments

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:17:17 All right, so this one is where Joseph Smith is, is going to go back to, to threats against Nancy in the letter. And this says blessings offered but rejected are no longer blessings, but become like the talent hidden the earth by the wicked and slothful servant. The proffered good returns to the giver. The blessing is bestowed on those who will receive and occupy. For unto him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundantly. But unto him that hath not or will not receive shall be taken away that which he hath or might have had. And so Joseph Smith is telling Nancy that if he doesn't accept his proposal, not only is Nancy going to lose all the blessings she would receive from being married and having sex with Joseph, but she's going to lose all the blessings that she's received in her life through the church. And so, you know, if you think about that in today's terms, you know, say you're a 19 year old girl and you know, Russell Nelson or somebody else comes up to you and wants to marry you and you say no. They say, hey, not only are you going to lose all the things you'd have, you'd lose all of your blessings,

John Dehlin 2:18:16 like everything.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:18:16 Yep, all that's gone. And so you know, when Joseph Smith uses the word offered here, it's not by accident. Given the context of why the letter is written, Joseph is making it clear that rejecting his offer, which he terms as a blessing, would end up costing Nancy Rigdon all that she hath or might have had. And so this is not just a manipulative tactic to gain her consent, this is spiritual extortion. Because not only is he trying to manipulate her, he is now basically saying if you don't do this, you are going to lose everything you've worked your whole life for. And I don't know, Jonathan Streeter in his podcast kind of compares it to the Mafia, saying, it'd be a shame if those blessings were taken away. I don't know how else to phrase it. This is spiritual extortion. And I just want to say once again, if you showed this to a member of the church, if I got to go to a gospel doctrine class and I said, hey, this is what Warren Jeffs was teaching, what do you think? They'd be like, this guy is a monster. And then if you said it was Joseph Smith, be like, oh, there is no world in which someone would read this under the context of a being trying to explain why you should be a polygamous bride and think this is anything other than spiritual extortion. This is horrible.

John Dehlin 2:19:24 Yeah, yeah, Yep. No, nothing really to add. There. There should be.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:19:31 It should be, yeah.

John Dehlin 2:19:32 God should say, hey, if. If this feels right to you, then do it, but if it feels wrong to you, don't do it. It shouldn't be. This is, you know, a 30, what year old man with claiming to speak for God, telling a teenage girl, yeah, do this or lose all your gospel blessings. There's just. Yeah, that's why someone like Patrick Mason is going to just say, none of this can be from God or God's a monster. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:19:56 Yeah.

Nemo 2:19:57 And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:19:57 And he's right, because this is. I mean, I think Joseph is 36 at this point. So it's a 36 year old man telling a 19 year old girl that if you don't marry me, you're going to lose everything that you, that you believe you're going to get. It's just when he's already got.

John Dehlin 2:20:11 When he's already got 12 wives.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:20:13 Yeah, he doesn't need her. I mean, like, he does not need her, like.

Speaker D 2:20:16 And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:20:16 Yeah, sorry. I'm sure people watching this can tell I'm not really in the same headspace I normally am because this stuff just really bothers me.

John Dehlin 2:20:23 All right, let's go to the next slide.

Nemo 2:20:25 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:20:26 So this is using the sense of urgency to circumvent Nancy's reluctance to accept his proposal. So he says, be wise today. Tis madness to defer next day. The fatal precedent may plead thus until wisdom is pushed out of time into eternity. And so the sentence is trying to use this poetic language to basically apply pressure to accept his proposal. Because you just don't know when an offer might disappear. And it's kind of like if you're at a car dealership and someone's like, hey, you know, if you, if you want if you, before you walk out, we can knock an extra thousand dollars off of this car. But if you walk out that that sale price is gone. And this is of course a much more serious situation. But this is a very similar tactic that he uses with, with Lucy Walker. And so when Lucy Walker, we've talked about her in previous episodes, but her mother dies and he sends her father off on a mission and says that he'll have them live with, with with the Smith household. He calls her an adoptive daughter and everyone in town kind of thinks of her as like Joseph Smith's adoptive daughter. Not in a legal sense, but just that he's taking care of her. So her father's on a mission and Joseph Smith proposes to her for a polygamous marriage. And Lucy hesitates and rejects it at first. And so Joseph then goes back to her later on and says, says it is a command of God to you. I will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message, the gate will be closed forever against you. And so just with Lucy Walker, Joseph Smith has somebody who is refusing his request to marry him and he's after a period of time, he then uses a sense of urgency to get them to consent to the proposal. And in so both situations we have these young girls who are teenagers who are alone without their parents with them, which again is something that you would see from other self proclaimed prophets who had relations with their followers to get them to consent to the proposal and circumvent their hesitancy because of the fact that now Joseph Smith is putting this idea of urgency that if you don't accept it, you never know when it might be pulled away and you might lose all of your blessings. And this is just, this is a tactic you would use when someone's hesitating to try to almost short circuit that hesitancy and get them to just do it it because they're afraid of missing out.

Nemo 2:22:36 It's a tactic as old as religion itself though.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:22:39 Yeah, it is.

Nemo 2:22:40 The second coming is always around the corner, especially when people are shorter lifespans. You never know when you're going to get some disease and die, so you better make sure you're all square with God. Those sorts of pressure tactics have been used for a long time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:22:53 Yeah, absolutely. There was a clip I saw recently from, I think it was a prophet, but it was definitely a leader of the church. And they're talking about some, a couple that got married in a civil marriage and they got into a car accident shortly after. And so he's like Basically. Basically saying that they're. They're now separated for eternity. You know, and this is why you don't put off having a temple marriage, because you might die tomorrow. And it's Kimball.

John Dehlin 2:23:18 I think that was Kimball.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:23:18 Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right.

John Dehlin 2:23:19 And so, and, and I'll just say, as a psycho, you know, someone with the psychology. PhD, it. You manufacture the perception of. Of urgency or scarcity because it makes someone more likely to say yes. So when I, like you said, when a car salesman says, well, when the tv. When the TV advertisement says, you know, five left by today, there's no. There's no way that there's actually an inventory guy counting how many inventory items are left and then saying, okay, now it's four. Okay, now it's three. That's literally contrived to wield undue influence to make you feel like you got to decide now.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:23:59 Yeah, I mean, I have a mark. My degree is in marketing. And, you know, one of the things you learn in your sales classes and in any sales job is that when you sense that somebody's about to walk out the door or someone's about to hang up the phone, you try to do things to make it seem like there's more urgency to getting it done now, because if you wait until later, you're going to miss out. And the reason is because as a salesperson, you're afraid of missing out.

John Dehlin 2:24:20 Out.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:24:21 Not. You're not afraid for them, you're afraid for yourself.

Nemo 2:24:23 And you're essentially projecting your own necessity for speed onto them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:24:27 Absolutely.

John Dehlin 2:24:28 Well, it's worse because it's. It's fundamentally manipulative.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:24:32 Oh, yeah. And it's from somebody claiming to speak for God. And in this letter, it points. Speaks in the voice of God, and it's just. I don't know what to say.

John Dehlin 2:24:40 Yeah. Yep. So it's not good. And here we learn about how liberal. How liberal God is. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:24:47 Yes. So now Joseph Smith is going to continue to tell us that, you know, what we think God really wants is not really what he wants, because I'm going to tell you what he really wants. And so he says, our Heavenly Father is more liberal in his views and boundless in his mercies and blessings than we are ready to believe or receive. And at the same time is more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of his punishments, and more ready to detect every false way than we were apt to suppose him to be. He will be inquired of by his children. And so Joseph here is doing A mix of the promises of blessings and threats in one little blurb here. By assuring Nancy that a polygamous relationship with Joseph is not as immoral as it might sound because God's actually more liberal than we are ready to believe, which means what you read in the Bible and all that can be thrown out the window because God's way more liberal than that. And this is the problem that comes from having only one person who claims to be the authority to speak for God because they can use that authority to claim what God wants for those who believe in anyone or who believes that they're a prophet. And so when a commandment from the self proclaimed prophet seems immoral and wrong, the prophet can then claim God's actually much more liberal than we're ready to believe in order to circumvent the sense of morality that the target has been taught since birth, in this case, in the church. And at the same time that Joseph's working to convince Nancy that polygamy is approved by God, he also switches to make sure, sure that Nancy is well aware that not only are his punishments bad, but they're more awful in the execution of his punishments to let her know that if she, you know, rejects the proposal, that's what she's going to get. And this is just, this is, yeah, Nemo, Nemo.

John Dehlin 2:26:22 Anything you want to say about.

Nemo 2:26:23 Well, it's, it's just, is that no more Mr. Nice Guy card. It's like, well, I'm telling you that, that I know more about God and God is more liberal, so God will be fine with this. We haven't touched yet upon just how awful God will be if you're not cool with this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:26:39 Yeah, this. I, yeah, it's like saying, look, if you're hesitant about the fact that polygamy has been taught to you since you were a kid, that it's wrong. I'm telling you, God's actually way more liberal and way more okay with this stuff.

John Dehlin 2:26:57 Super cool. God's cousin's super, super cool. Cool.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:27:00 You don't have to worry about that. Oh, but by the way, if you don't do it, you're screwed. You think burning in hell is bad? Oh, he's way worse. You know, it's just, it's so bad.

Nemo 2:27:07 But there's a dichotomy there in God's attitude. It's like God's really liberal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:27:12 Yeah.

Nemo 2:27:12 But also super authoritarian.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:27:14 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 2:27:16 It's like where he, where is he on the chart?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:27:18 Yeah, he's like, he's everywhere.

John Dehlin 2:27:21 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. It's good. Let's keep going.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:27:26 Yeah. And so, you know, piggybacking off the line that God. Yeah, that, you know, he says that God is more liberal than we're, you know, ready to believe. I would argue the God of Mormonism is more inconsistent than we're ready to believe. Because, you know, on one hand, you know, we're being told that God is more liberal. On the other hand, as we see from the different prophets in church history, that liberal view change tends to change based on the worldview of each prophet. So we have early prophets all the way up until 1978 that believes that people with black skin should not hold the priesthood. Russell Nelson today believes the word Mormon should not be used after past prophets publicly called Nelson out for suggesting that. And then, of course, as we talked about earlier in this episode, God's views on LGBT members had changed in just three and a half years after the public outcry following their 2015 revelation caused it to be reversed in 2019. And so, you know, we talk about all the changes. You know, the garments have gotten shorter. The word of wisdom has gotten stricter. The God of Mormon went. God of Mormonism went from threatening people if they don't get into polygamy to threatening them if they do.

John Dehlin 2:28:25 And so don't forget the temple ceremony was super violent and Masonic, and they've slowly. Which. And it was supposed to be revelation, and now all of a sudden, they're cutting down the violent parts and the culty parts of the temple ceremony, you know, and really in response to surveys, membership surveys, and public pressure from people like, you know, the evangelicals that put out the God makers. And so. So on the one hand, it just shows either God's changing all the time, or prophets are really responding to public pressure. But if prophets are truly either responding to public pressure or their own self interest or their own, like in Nelson's case, in their own personal pet projects or opinions, then you just realize it's too much power to give men. I've often said on Mormon stories that should be illegal to claim you speak for God because you're. It just gives you too much power, and it should be illegal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:29:25 Yeah, I just, you know, like I said, if you want to believe he's more liberal than we're ready to believe, it opens up other doors because it. It doesn't track through the history of the church. It only tracks with Joseph Smith when he's trying to get something he wants. And we're showing that through these Episodes. It's not just me throwing that out there. I mean, we could show how God seems to respond with revelation to everything Joseph wants. And I think Nemo pointed this out earlier today. Ask for a revelation who Heavenly Mother is. And they're like, instead of getting a revelation who Heavenly Mother is, they're going on general conference and telling members not to. Not to speculate because it's like, what are you here for? You know, it's just so inconsistent. And. Yeah, so this is where Joseph is going to go back to making promises of great blessings for obeying Joseph through God. And so he says, the letter goes, continues. He says, ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. But if ye will take that which is not your own or which I have not given you, you shall be rewarded according to your deeds, but no good thing, while I withhold from them who walk uprightly before me and do my will in all things, and who will listen to my voice. And that's the important part. And to the voice of my servant whom I have sent for I delight in those who seek diligently to know my precepts and abide by the laws of my kingdom. For all things shall be made known unto them in my own due time, and in the end, they shall have joy. And so this is another really quick and seamless switch to go from the voice of God when he needs to. When he says, you know, ask and he shall receive, seek and shall. Then he goes immediately into, you know, that in. We talk about that. Sorry, with DNC132. We talked about how he dictates that entire thing in. In a single sitting. And it's what, 3200 words after Hyrum asked him to use the rock. And so it just shows how good Joseph is at using these words and switching between the voice of God and the voice of his own. And as I mentioned earlier, read the way Joseph Smith translations from the voice of himself speaking for God to speaking in the voice of God as if he's receiving a revelation. In that final section, he says, listen to my voice and to the voice of my servant whom I have sent. So that's not Joseph Smith saying, that's Joseph Smith channeling God in this letter. And. And it just shows how Joseph Smith is so good at seamlessly switching between the two. And when people say, Joseph couldn't have written the revelations, written the Book of Mormon, this shows you how good Joseph Smith is doing it. And as I said, this whole letter is set up to say that God wants Us for Nancy. So listen to the voice of my servant because he's the only one that can speak to you because you can't get that for yourself and Nemo.

Nemo 2:31:55 What do you want to go to Dale G. Renlund. Go to Dale G. Renlund from his latest conference talk where he talks about Heavenly Mother. He said, ever since God appointed prophets, they have been authorized to speak on his behalf, but they do not pronounce doctrines fabricated of their own mind or teach what has not been revealed. And then he goes on to say, demanding revelation from God is both arrogant and unproductive. So, you know, if you want an answer, if you, if you plead with God for an answer, if you demand an answer from God and say, I need an answer to this, this. I mean, it's okay for Joseph Smith to demand a time sensitive answer from Nancy on whether she will be his polygam's bride, but it's not okay for her to demand from God. Well, I need to know what's going on here. Yeah, that's arrogant and unproductive.

John Dehlin 2:32:38 Yeah. Yeah. So what was the. So what did Nancy do? So did Nancy accept or not? Did she acquiesce or did she not acquiesce?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:32:47 Yeah. So Nancy obviously does not feel that marrying Joseph would give her the greatest amount of happiness. And so she.

John Dehlin 2:32:53 Can we, can we pause on that? Like, like that's a pretty miraculous thing. Like it is. She's living. I'm assuming she lives in Nauvoo. Joseph is mayor. He's head of the militia. He's prophet of God. He's chief cook and bottle washer. He's got all the money, all the power in the entire town. And she has the gumption to stand up to him and say no when so many other people don't, including oftentimes parents. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:33:24 Yeah.

Nemo 2:33:25 Nancy Rigden's a legend. I think we need to get that out there.

John Dehlin 2:33:27 Yeah.

Nemo 2:33:28 Nancy Rigden is a legend.

John Dehlin 2:33:29 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:33:30 Yeah. I wish everyone in this church in 2022 could be more like Nancy Rigden and be willing to call out things that need to be called out instead of constantly defending the indefensible. And Nancy Rigdon was in a position of being the daughter of one of the top people in the church who knew and revered Joseph from the time as a child. And she still was willing to listen to her inner sense and be like, yeah, this is, this is absolutely not from God and you're full of crap and reject him. I mean, the amount of courage that must have taken in that situation, I can't imagine. And for her to do that, she deserves respect from everyone because that should be an episode.

John Dehlin 2:34:06 Is like the top 10 heroes of.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:34:08 Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin 2:34:08 Unknown. Unknown heroes of Mormonism. William Law is up there. You know, I think. I think Lucy Harris has to be up there, there. And I think Nancy Rigdon. Rigden has to be there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:34:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Fallout: Denials, Confrontations, and Aftermath

John Dehlin 2:34:23 So what was the. What was the fallout?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:34:26 So after John Bennett releases the letter, Joseph Smith and I talked about this earlier. Joseph Smith uses his authority to just basically trash her name. They have the local newspaper printing articles that she was having sex with John Bennett. And what happens is basically Sidney Rigdon, by the accounts, is obviously upset with Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith, by John C. Bennett's account, Joseph Smith admits he wrote the letter after denying it. And so Sidney Rigdon is going to release what the church, in their Gospel Topics essay, might call a carefully worded denial about the letter. He says, dear sir, I am fully authorized by my daughter Nancy to say to the public through the medium of your paper that the letter which has appeared in the San Gamo Journal, making part of General Bennett's letters to said paper purporting to have been written by Mr. Joseph Smith tour was unauthorized by her and that she never. I don't know what salt means, but gave to General Bennett or any other person that said letter was written by said Mr. Smith, nor in his handwriting, but by another person and in another person's handwriting. She further wishes me to say that she never at any time authorize General Bennett to use her name in the public papers as she has done, which has been greatly to the wounding of her feelings. And she considers that the obtruding of her name before the public in the manner in which it has been done, to say the best of it is a flagrant violation of the rules of gallantry and cannot avoid to insult her feelings, which she wishes the public to know. I would further state that Mr. Smith denied to meet the authorship of that letter. And what's really interesting about this letter is what he's not saying. So, Joe, you know, they talk about this in the podcast with Jonathan Streeter, but he's constantly saying it's not in Joseph's handwriting, which is always true because he is the scribes. And so. So it's true. It doesn't really answer. And then he also talks about Mr. Smith denied to me the authorship of that letter, but by the accounts, he does deny it. And then eventually comes back and says, yeah, I did it, because Nancy won't back down. And so I feel like this letter allows Sidney Rigdon to basically not let Joseph completely off the hook, but write it in a way where he's not outright lying and to try to put the matter behind them. But you can kind of read through the lines here to show that it seems like Sidney Rigdon's being very careful here to not completely let Joseph off the hook, in my opinion.

John Dehlin 2:36:45 Nemo, what's your reaction to that statement?

Nemo 2:36:47 That's some down h oaks level of like carefully worded lawyer language that shows that, well, I'm technically telling the truth but as I've said, I'm not concerned necessarily with whether people are technically telling the truth truth, but whether what they're saying is in the spirit of the truth. So that's really important. And, and the spirit of what is being said here is actually that of trying to like, like Mike said, put this thing behind them and try not to give ammo to either side when actually the spirit of the truth would be to say, right, this is what happened. Joseph wrote a letter to my daughter her and she didn't want to go through with it. Yeah, that's important to me.

John Dehlin 2:37:32 Yeah. For me just to reiterate one of the most disturbing things I ever encountered about Joseph Smith are the times where he uses his power and his prep, you know, power with the printed press to defame and completely denigrate and smear the women who publicly outed him for propositioning them regarding polygamy and sex. And Nancy Rigdon wasn't the only one, but she was one. And he would full on in my memory call them harlots and sluts and whores in, in the newspapers and their only crime was saying, I don't want to have sex with you Joseph, and I'm going to tell people you're propositioning me. That is for sure one of the worst things Joseph ever did in my view. The only other thing I'll say just, just in response to this letter, it just shows, you know, Sidney Rigdon is the dad of Nancy Rigdon and it just shows how much power Joseph Smith had, whether it's Heber C. Kimball regarding Helen Markimbell, the 14 year old that ends up Joseph's wife, wife. Joseph had so much power, like almost like Yoda or you know, Obi Wan Kenobi level power over the minds of his followers that he could make, he could make the parents of teenage daughters that Joseph Smith is sexually propositioning want to defend Joseph and not their own daughters.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:39:13 Yep, I was, yeah, I was going to mention that too because he's being careful here, but he is not. He's. He's participating in a lot of ways in what is happening in Nancy Rigden here by not standing out for. More forcefully. And I can't. I can't imagine having. I can't. I can't imagine having a daughter and having a person almost twice her age using the voice of God to try to get her into polygamous relationship, then having that guy putting out people to write articles calling her a whore, saying she's having sex with all these people, and then writing a letter, being like, yeah, you know, we figured it out. She didn't authorize the letter. Joseph said it wasn't in his handwriting. You know, we're cool. I'd be like, screw you guys. You know. But, yeah, it just shows the pressure.

Nemo 2:39:57 The thing is, he came back into the country to this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:40:01 Yeah.

Nemo 2:40:03 No, no, he didn't. My bad. My bad. No.

John Dehlin 2:40:07 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:40:08 Well, but no, but he wasn't aware of it obviously when it happened because it doesn't seem like he was aware of it until the letter got out. Or maybe it was before the letter got out, but it was after the proposal because that's when she, you know, by the account, Nancy Rigman, he. He says it didn't happen. Then Nancy comes out and says, you're a liar. And.

John Dehlin 2:40:24 Yeah, and. And it, you know, you get this when. When either Joseph Smith's treasure digging. One of the apologetic responses to defend Joseph's treasure digging is, hey, but a lot of people still retain belief in Joseph's power even though he never found any treasure. Or, or you'll get all these people who lived polygamy say, you know, that they never denied their belief that. That it was of God. That doesn't speak to me to the truthfulness of those behaviors. It speaks to me to the unhealthy level of power and influence that Joseph had over his followers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:41:05 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 2:41:05 Joseph's ability to convince people of his divine authority isn't proof of his divine authority exactly is how you could. You could put that.

John Dehlin 2:41:13 It's proof of the danger of his claims. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo 2:41:17 What I do want to say is the image that comes to my head as I've researched this is essentially of Sidney calling Joseph out and saying, joseph, what's going on? Nancy's told me about this. This Joseph coming over and said, no, I didn't write that letter. Nancy going, I have it. And then Joseph going, ah, well, yeah, I did, but is that kind of what happened? As. As far as I understand it, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:41:40 And if I understand correctly, and I believe from the podcast, they talk about how Joseph immediately says he was trying to test her virtue by making the proposal, which is another thing. You hear that when he asked Heber Kimball for his wife, and Heber finally gives it, then he says, oh, it was an Abrahamic test. I was just testing you. And by doing that line, it allows you, when you propose to someone and they reject you, to say, I was just testing to see if you were virtuous. Which is a really good way for a person that is using the manipulative tactics of Joseph Smith to then give himself this plausible deniability. But, guys, I am the righteous one here. I was just making sure that she was, too. And she rejects me because she knows, you know, it's just.

John Dehlin 2:42:21 It's the loyalty test stuff that Jim Jones used with the Koolaid. It's basically, hey, everyone, drink this poisonous Kool Aid to show that you're loyal. They drink it. It's not poisonous. But now he knows who's going to follow him to the death and who's not.

Nemo 2:42:36 Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:42:39 It's like saying there was an Abrahamic test and Abraham went up and he's like, yeah, I can't kill my kid. And all of a sudden God's like, abraham, I will write you a letter. I mean, it's just.

John Dehlin 2:42:48 It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:42:49 I don't mean to be facetious. I'm just. This. The apologetics for this are awful. And to compare this to an Abrahamic test is stupid, because an Abrahamic test doesn't require you to go through fully and have sex with the prophet. It would require you to accept his proposal. And then Joseph to be like, we're not going to go through with it. I was just saying if you were loyal to God and. And, yeah, yeah. Anyways, so the. So City of Riggin writes that letter. And then just three days after they publish in the WASP this letter where it says, we are authorized to say by General Joseph Smith because he called himself General at this point, that the affidavit of Stephen, Stephen Markham relative to Ms. Nancy Rigdon, as published in the Hand Bill of affidavits, was unauthorized by him, the certificate of Elder Rigdon relative to the letter being satisfactory. So just a few days earlier, in that same paper, on the same day that Sidney Rigdon's statement was printed, Markham wrote in the WASP that he had witnessed Nancy early on in a compromising situation with John Bennett. Markham claimed that many vulgar, unbecoming and indecent sayings and motions passed between them and testified that he was convinced that they were guilty and of unlawful and illicit intercourse with each other. Now, there are a number of people who rushed out to say that this was bull crap, including George W. Robinson, Oliver Olney, Joseph H. Jackson, and John Olney. Joseph Jackson added that when, as happens in the case of Ms. Martha Brotherton and Ms. Nancy Rigdon, the prophet's overtures were rejected with disdain and exposure. He threatened he would set a hundred hellhounds on them to destroy the reputation. And that's a pattern that occurs beyond this example. Anytime Joseph Smith is attacked, he flips those accusations against the accuser. And that's from Richard S. Van Wagoner's Mormon Polygamy in History. And it's true. I mean, we see it where, when Joseph Smith is accused of things, he usually accuses the accuser of the same things. And we see that not just with polygamy. We'll see it when we go through some of the other stuff as well. And it's just. It's a pattern.

Concluding Reflections and Final Thoughts

John Dehlin 2:44:46 Okay. All right, Well, I think we're coming to the end. So two more slides. What's this one about?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:44:54 So this one is also from Nemo's presentation. It's just, you know, now that you've heard the context of the letter, now that you've heard the letter are broken apart, this is just a shorter clip. It's just like, listen to these leaders. This is Thomas S. Monson, who at this point was the second counselor in the First Presidency. But listen to them recite this letter and ask yourself, you know, what you think of hearing them use these words.

John Dehlin 2:45:14 All right, let's roll the tape.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:45:16 Happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof if we but pursue the path which leads to it. And that path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness,

John Dehlin 2:45:31 holiness, and keeping all of the commandments of God. We cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them. And we cannot expect to know all or more than we now know unless we comply with or keep those we have already received. Yeah, I'm just thinking if there was a general knowledge among the membership about the true origins of the happiness letter and the context behind it. I could just see all of those past church leaders cringing that they ever referenced it. But since the Church has done such a great job keeping its factual history from the membership, the church isn't cringing in its use of that quote because the members have no idea what's actually being quoted.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:46:21 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just once, you Know the context and you hear them making those statements. And you know, from, from a leadership standpoint, it's a great statement because you're basically saying you'll be happiest if you obey what we tell you because that's, that's what it's all about. And yeah, it's just. Oh my goodness, I hear it now. It's just after hearing that podcast and reading the letter and doing, you know, it's just, it makes my blood boil, as you can tell from the, this, this episode.

John Dehlin 2:46:44 So, Nemo, you want to add anything.

Nemo 2:46:47 It's just like anything else that has a hidden context in the LDS Church, when you, once you hear it, you will struggle to unhear it.

John Dehlin 2:46:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure that right now, if it hasn't already been done, the correlation committee is basically adding an addendum to its curriculum guidelines to never reference the Happiness Letter ever again in any future. Yeah, General conference talk or curriculum. It's gotta, that will happen if it hasn't already happened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:47:16 I'd be shocked if you hear those phrases in General Conference ever again. Because I think once Jonathan Streeter did a podcast with Christopher C. Smith. I think putting it on the map, it, if people want to, like, if you Google that quote, I think my website's like the second entry, you know, and so the church is not going to want that to be something people can find because it's so damning and yeah, it'll disappear.

John Dehlin 2:47:39 All right, well, this takes us to the final concluding slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:47:44 Yeah. So again, I just want to give a huge shout out to Jonathan Streeter for his work on this letter to Christopher C. Smith, he was on the podcast as well. And to Nancy Rigdon for not burning the letter and being willing to stand up to Joseph Smith. You know, to me this letter is just 100% manipulation in the name of God. And in the process of doing this to a very vulnerable 19 year old, Joseph Smith throws God directly under the bus, as we talked about, directly stating that anyone who calls, you know, Solomon having wives and concubines, an abominable thing, knows the order of heaven only in part, which is exactly what God says in the Book of Mormon. So I think to me that's a huge takeaway that Joseph Smith basically upends the Book of Mormon in order to give himself more justification to Nancy Rigdon to enter into this relationship. And you know, we've talked about this in all of these episodes we've done, not just with polygamy, but every member needs to know these things. And in this case, this is a document that survived when it was not supposed to. And it gives us a direct look into what I consider to be predatory tactics to manipulate women who do not want to be in a relationship with you, to manipulate them to enter into that relationship because you are using the voice and the commands of God in order to flip their moral compass. And while Russell Nelson isn't asking members to marry him today in polygamous relationships, church leaders continue to use manipulative tactics to keep members from looking under the hood at these problems. And I really think that this one in particular is one that every member should know. And as I've said in previous episodes, if you. If you want to listen to this and you still think Joseph Smith was righteous in what he did, more power to you. I don't know what else to say, but I do think one way or the other, you should know it. And at that point, you're going to do with it what you want. But the fact that the church has cited this without giving context tells you just how damning this letter is. And I hope it continues to get more exposure because every woman in this church, I feel like, should know this, because they should know how women were viewed and. And treated in the implementation of polygamy, because it is still doctrine today.

John Dehlin 2:49:59 Yeah, God's got some explaining to do. Nemo. What? How do you want to conclude, you know, your observations for this episode, other

Nemo 2:50:07 than it's a letter full of very manipulative wording. And I think the fact that that came from someone that we hold up to be a prophet of God and someone who is invoking the voice of God to do that, that really needs to sit on the consciousness of members of this church. Because if people want to write off as him making a mistake, him being flawed, they can do that, but they really need to be aware that this. You want to talk about the level of mistakes, mistakes, if that's what you call them, that Joseph Smith made, this is up there with some of the more egregious things that he did. And so it really needs to factor into your calculation. If you are looking at, at his, his, you know, divine authority and, and what you think of him.

John Dehlin 2:50:54 All right. Well, thanks, Nemo. We love your channel. Nemo the Mormon on YouTube. Check it out. Subscribe to Nemo. Donate to Nemo. Nemo, we're honored that you're part of the Mormon Stories family.

Nemo 2:51:05 I'm absolutely pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to general conference. I'm gonna be doing my halftime shows as usual. Shameless plug with the other revengers. Time difference. Staying up late at night with the

John Dehlin 2:51:16 Brit vengers or just you?

Nemo 2:51:18 Yeah. Other members of the Brit Vengeance will come on. A couple of viewers come on as guests normally as well. It's a good laugh. But, yeah, after every single general conference session, I go live within 15 minutes, and we'll be talking about what we just heard.

John Dehlin 2:51:29 Awesome.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:51:30 Yeah, I'll just note that for anyone who's listening. You know, I try not to get emotional with this stuff, and usually I don't really feel that, but this one does. So I apologize if I came off a little more upset with this one. But, you know, just. Just that's. That's my reaction. This stuff. This stuff has always bothered me, even as a believing member. As I said, I'm still. Still a member, but not a believing member. And. And so, you know, if anyone was kind of taken aback by that, yeah, this one is one that. That gets me. And I was trying not to, but obviously failed a little bit. But, you know, like. Like we said, this is. This is something that I think everyone needs to know. And, you know, as Nemo said, when you talk about mistakes, when you talk about Joseph Smith making mistakes, these are mistakes being made with using the voice of God. And we talked about this all the way back in the treasure digging episode, which is to say, once you can show Joseph Smith is willing to use intentional deception, which we talked about with the feather and the dirt, then all of a sudden you have to go, well, then what is he not deceiving about? Or where else is he deceiving? And in this case, if he's willing to deceive in the voice of God to get women to marry him, using kind of bad biblical scholarship, using reasons that are upending the Book of Mormon, you then do have to then justify either if Joseph's making a mistake in the voice of God, then how do we know everything else he's saying in the voice of God is true? Especially when, as Nemo said, they're all full of mistakes as well. And so this one just happens to hit me a little harder because this goes beyond the whole, like, is the church true? Like, I could talk about the first vision. Is that true or false? Priesthood restoration. This one is more like, not only is the church true or not, but it's like, is it good or not? Is Joseph Smith good or not? And. And that's one everyone's gonna have to answer on their own. But for me, this One is just horribly problematic because this is someone that we are told to revere as really the second best person in modern times to Jesus. And this is intentional manipulation. And as Nemo said, there's so many mistakes that at some point, you can't just keep calling them mistakes. This is a pattern.

Nemo 2:53:26 I'm just cold and British, Mike, So I think you have every right to be upset by this. I mean, understanding what this is as just as an interpersonal reaction between two people is upsetting, and I think that's perfectly valid.

John Dehlin 2:53:41 Yeah, well, Mike, you don't have to apologize. We're just all, on behalf of my viewers and listeners, we're just so grateful for all the work you've done on LDS discussions and for your mastery of this content and for your willingness to come on Mormon Stories for this amazing series. So we thank you for that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:53:58 Well, thank you. And Nemo, thanks so much for being with us. I know you're across the pond, as they say, so thank you for taking the time and doing. I know it's late there, so thank you again.

Nemo 2:54:08 No worries.

John Dehlin 2:54:08 Yeah. All right. And for those who, you know, just need the reminder, this LDS discussions series is available as part of the Mormon Stories Podcast main feed, but it's also available as its own playlist on YouTube, all the episodes listed in order. You can also get it on Spotify, both audio and video format on Spotify, wherever you get your audio podcast apps. And we have, you know, many episodes to come once we finish off polygamy. We still have Book of Abraham, Kinderhook plates, Joseph Smith's translations, spiritual witnesses, and testimonies to the Book of Mormon and elsewhere. You know, epistemology, how the church handles doubt, revelation. So much more to come. So stay tuned for more episodes from my Mike and Nemo. We hope you can join us again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:55:00 Absolutely.

Closing Remarks and Support Information

John Dehlin 2:55:01 All right, thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please donate if you value this content. You can go to MoreMore Stories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor. Your donations will make this possible. We lose donors every week. People that lose interest or move on or hit financial hard times or choose to support other things. So we need new donors to step up to support old, old donors, former donors. So you can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor, and we'll keep providing this content and serving the mission of the Open Stories foundation for as long as we have the support. Your tax donations are deductible in the US and we're transparent in our finances and we live to serve your mission. And we we do our best to pay our staff and our contributors if they want to be paid. So please support us if you can. Please spread the word. Please share this episode, these episodes, and give us feedback. If you're not outraged by the Happiness Letter, like Mike or me or Nemo, then then email us or comment and tell us why you're not outraged, why you don't think this necessarily is a problem. We would love to hear that as well. So take care, everyone. Be kind, everyone, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care.

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