Without Disclosing My True Identity
First, Joseph asked the two men what they thought the pictures meant. The two men
fasted and prayed that “the Lord” would reveal the meaning to them. They came to Joseph
with their conclusion: the pictures were a corrupted version of the ancient temple endowment
that the Lord had given the Jews, who eventually incorporated it into their religious practice
in their own temples. That was good enough for Joseph. With Cowdery’s and Phelps’s
“inspiration,” he gave spurious explanations for the characters, even going so far as to
produce an Egyptian alphabet and grammar based on the characters of the parchment.^58
The tens of hundreds of dollars ($2,400) spent on the mummies could have been
used to provide a lot of food for the suffering poor of the Church in dire need. Doing this
would have been the appropriate thing to do to meet the mark set by the “fullness of the
everlasting Gospel delivered by the Savior.” “But behold, the [LDS people] were a
stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness.”^59 And they would one day be
directly and indirectly responsible for the murder of their own prophet (“killing the
prophets”), because they
sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their
blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must
needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered
unto them many things [among which was the Book of Abraham^60 ] which
they could not understand, because they desired it. And because they desired
it God hath done it, that they may stumble.^61Joseph was becoming very proficient at fulfilling his role and “God’s will.”
NOTES
(^1) See DHC, 1:407–9; see also DHC, 1:342; 6:331, 368.
(^2) DHC, 1:408.
(^3) John 17:23.
(^4) Compare D&C, 1:30.
(^5) Matthew 23:15.
(^6) As quoted from the LDS Temple Endowment in SNS, 153; compare D&C, 42:35. Also,
Brigham Young said, “A man or a woman who places the wealth of this world and the things of time
in the scales against the things of God and the wisdom of eternity, has no eyes to see, no ears to hear,
no heart to understand. What are riches for? For blessings, to do good. Then let us dispense that
which the Lord gives us to the best possible use for the building up of his Kingdom, for the
promotion of the truth on the earth that we may see and enjoy the blessings of the Zion of God here
upon this earth.” (JD, 15:18.)
(^7) “What We Believe: Priesthood is the Authority to Act in God’s Name,” Ensign, Jun. 2011: 8–
- Compare D&C, 113:8.
(^8) “LUCIFER: Then with that enmity I will take the treasures of the earth, and with gold and
silver I will buy up armies and navies, popes and false priests who oppress, and tyrants who destroy, and