Without Disclosing My True Identity
come forth. The Book of Mormon is right in front of their eyes! They claim belief in it! They
sell it throughout the world as another witness of Jesus Christ! But in the end, it will
condemn them for their hypocrisy, blindness, and hardness of heart!
NOTES
(^1) BOM, Jacob 4:14; 2 Nephi 26:20.
(^2) BOM, 3 Nephi 20:11; 23:1.
(^3) Compare Isaiah 54:2.
(^4) Isaiah 33:20.
(^5) Compare DHC, 5:256–7: “Some say the kingdom of God was not set up on the earth until the
day of Pentecost, and that John did not preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; but I
say, in the name of the Lord, that the kingdom of God was set up on the earth from the days of Adam to
the present time. Whenever there has been a righteous man on earth unto whom God revealed His
word and gave power and authority to administer in His name, and where there is a priest of God—a
minister who has power and authority from God to administer in the ordinances of the gospel and
officiate in the priesthood of God, there is the kingdom of God; ...What constitutes the kingdom of
God? Where there is a prophet, a priest, or a righteous man unto whom God gives His oracles, there is
the kingdom of God; and where the oracles of God are not, there the kingdom of God is not.”
(^6) “The History of the Church was the first attempt to provide the raw sources of history in
convenient book form. It is written in the form of a first-person daily journal kept by Joseph. It was
begun in 1839, five years before Joseph’s death, using materials from the Prophet’s diaries and
writings, letterbooks, minute books, diaries of prominent church leaders (like Heber C. Kimball) and
church clerks, and other documents that pertained to Joseph’s life and the history of the Church. Its
deficiencies are well known. Unfortunately but understandably, its compilers, consistent with the
comparatively loose editorial prerogatives of the era, assumed certain liberties which had the effect of
making the documents less credible. Historians Howard Searle, Dean Jessee, and others have
painstakingly studied the sources of History, and noted the various problems. Probably the two most
important studies that deal with the challenges inherent in using it are Searle’s doctoral dissertation
at UCLA in 1979, “Early Mormon Historiography: Writing the History of the Mormons, 1830–1858,”
and Jessee’s, “The Reliability of Joseph Smith’s History,” in Journal of Mormon History in 1976. In an
article in the recent Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Searle referred to the unacknowledged ghostwriting,
edited sources, lack of balance, and changing of third person accounts to first person accounts. All of
Joseph Smith’s clerks, including Willard Richards, Thomas Bullock, and George Smith—those
basically responsible for putting the History together—saw nothing wrong with such practices (nor
should they necessarily have). The course of noted historian B. H. Roberts may be more difficult to
justify. Roberts bore the responsibility for putting the volumes into book form and making it more
available to historians and general readers alike. A prodigious and indefatigable thinker and scholar,
Roberts worked on the history project, along with a plethora of other things, intermittently between
1902 and 1932. Unfortunately, Roberts failed to compare what had been published with the original
manuscripts and perpetuated the errors of earlier recorders and compilers. Lamentably, he even
added to the confusion by making hundreds of unacknowledged editorial changes (Bitton and
Arrington 75-76).” (Paul H. Peterson, “Understanding Joseph: A Review of Published Documentary
Sources,” in Joseph Smith: The Prophet, The Man, eds. Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate, Jr.
[Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1993]103–4.)
(^7) DHC, 5:256–9.
(^8) Luke 9:49–50.
(^9) Compare BOM, Moroni 10:31; D&C, 82:14; 107:36–7; 119:7.
(^10) BOM, 2 Nephi 4:34; see also 2 Chron. 32:8; D&C, 1:19.
(^11) E.g., “Lucifer,” See SNS, 87.