Joseph Smith Biography

Eight (1813)

Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of

Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.^32

Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman

that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that

have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.^33

And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his

sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly

destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left

none to remain: Only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the

spoil of the cities which we took.^34

If the Bible is true and considered to be the infallible “word of God,” then the god of the
Old Testament is just as Thomas Paine described him. Any reasonable person could
agree that it would be “more consistent that we called it [the Bible] the word of a demon,
than the word of God.”^35
The wars of the Bible are abundant and spectacular and present a theater of human
civilization where “God’s people” supposedly justified killing and plundering as long as
“God commanded it.” According to what has been written in these Bible legends, if “God’s
chosen people” were the protagonists in a war, then they rationalized that it was “God”
who would step in and fight and protect them while slaughtering their enemies.
The Book of Mormon is no different, in this respect. Its pages are filled with many
wars and contentions, with “God” delivering the people and destroying their enemies.
In fact, one of the first deaths accounted for in the Book of Mormon is a murder committed
by the book’s first hero, Nephi. Nephi was to secure some “plates of brass,” as he had
been ordered by his father, who had received the commandment from the Lord in a
“dream.” While the account of this event offers extenuating circumstances surrounding
the killing of Laban, the undisputable evidence shows that Nephi committed murder
and robbery. Here again, those who accept the Book of Mormon as the “word of God,”
justify this killing and thievery because of their unquestioned belief in the book.^36 They
are willing to set aside their common sense and human decency and support the brutal
slaughter and beheading of Laban because of their belief in the feeling which Nephi
dubbed as “the Spirit” which “commanded him” to do so.^37
And what is it that Nephi murdered for? What was contained in the plates of brass?
That’s right! The Bible!^38
Lehi, Nephi’s father, had listened to a couple of true messengers^39 who had
convinced him that his church and its leaders were corrupt. Lehi believed their message
because it made sense to him. Unfortunately, when the Book of Mormon was finally
published, an entire section of the record that told about what Lehi heard from these
messengers was lost by one of Joseph’s early scribes,^40 leaving the reader without an
understanding of what it was, exactly, that Lehi heard which made so much sense to him.
As the record goes, when Lehi attempted to share this light with others, he was
mocked by his peers who “were angry with him; yea, even as with the prophets of old, whom
they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they also sought his life, that they might take it
away.”^41 For his own safety and that of his family and a few others, Lehi was compelled to
leave everything behind and take off into the wilderness to start a new life. Besides leaving