Joseph had said, after a dream, “I told Phelps a dream that the history must go ahead before anything else.” 13 To several others he spoke of the necessity of accurate record-keeping, and he lamented in a priesthood meeting with “deep sorrow” that the Church had not kept adequate minutes. One of them was Willard Richards, a loyal man who often burned candles until midnight, writing with his quill pen. 12 Six men were working around the clock to bring the history up to date. That was the responsibility of several of his scribes. Joseph’s anxiety about the temple was compounded by his anxiety concerning the records of the Church, that they be kept, preserved, and accurately transmitted.
For he anticipated and prophesied that they would be driven and scattered. 10 Often he would ride out on his horse, Old Charlie, sometimes accompanied by his dog, Major, ride up on the hill, that commanding eminence, to the temple site, longing and praying that the Saints would be able to complete it and receive the blessings to be given therein before they were driven and scattered.
8 Hyrum said, “Great things are to grow out of that house.” 9 Joseph did some of the physical work himself, quarrying rock with his bare hands. 7 He himself gave sermons and so did Hyrum. For example, he with Hyrum went from house to house in Nauvoo in the role, we would say now, of home teachers, and recommitted the Saints to give of time and means to the speedy erection of that building. I am as liable to die as other men.” 6ĭuring that last winter he manifested four dominant anxieties and did all in his power to relieve them, as he had been commanded. In one sermon he said, in response, “Some have supposed that Brother Joseph could not die but this is a mistake.” He added, “Having now accomplished, I have not at present any lease of my life. On the other hand, because he had so often escaped the vilifyings and the attacks of his enemies, some believed that he was invincible. Then, looking him through and through, he said, “Brother Woodruff, I want you to go, and if you do not, you will die.” And he looked “unspeakably sorrowful, as if weighed down by a foreboding of something dreadful.” 5 Wilford Woodruff, who conversed with the Prophet just after April Conference 1844, recalled that he later sent ten of the Twelve East on a mission, and that the Prophet seemed to linger in saying goodbye to him. Brigham Young, for one, recalled: “I heard Joseph say many a time, ‘I shall not live until I am forty years of age.’” 3 At another time Brigham Young added, “Yet we all cherished hopes that that would be a false prophecy, and we should keep him for ever with us we thought our faith would outreach it, but we were mistaken.” 4 The brethren became anxious about his life, so often did he express the sentiment that they must carry on in his absence. 2 The depth of that doctrine is beyond me-why death should somehow be the full glorifying sanction of life why blood must be shed as the price of freedom and of truth, and most of all of the witness of Christ. To Elizabeth Rollins he had confided in the spring of 1844, “I must seal my testimony with my blood.” 1 The testament is of no force, Paul said, until the death of the testator. But he is a man whose time is running out. It is winter 1844, and the Prophet Joseph Smith is Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, mayor of the city which has become the largest and most flourishing in all of Illinois, and revelator to the Saints. Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Lecture 3 Lecture 4 Lecture 5 Lecture 6 Lecture 7 Lecture 8
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