Without Disclosing My True Identity
The Labor and Loyalty of the Converts
The influx of European converts immigrating to Nauvoo over the next few years
padded Brigham Young’s support group, which he would need after Joseph was killed.
Nauvoo became exactly what the American missionaries had promised the immigrants,
according to the emerging and illusory “American Dream.”^34 It provided them
opportunities for material wealth and land ownership that would have been otherwise
impossible had they stayed in England (although not always realized, in fact). The converts
were some of the hardest working laborers among the Saints. They built the houses, the
roads, the buildings for business and commerce and, eventually, their own beloved “House
of God.” The temple became the great attraction and the fulfillment of the promises they
had heard from the American missionaries.
When the LDS/Mormons were all expelled from Nauvoo and their beloved temple
burned,^35 they had nowhere to go. Almost every one of the converts followed Young out
West to Utah (then part of Mexico), not because he had the “fullness of the everlasting
Gospel,” but because the people had been promised their Zion full of “gold, and the
silver”^36 and prosperity. It wasn’t hard for Brigham Young to convince them to follow him
so that he could stand by the promise that he and the Twelve had made to them in England.
The majority of the converts of the time were illiterate and had no personal access to
the Book of Mormon. They could not read the Book of Mormon to get its true message for
themselves any more than the early Jews and Christians could obtain and read the Bible. They
didn’t understand what the actual desires of “the church of the devil” mentioned in the Book of
Mormon were. Like their early Jewish and Christian predecessors, scripture was read to them
and mingled with Young’s and other leaders’ philosophies.^37 The hard-working Europeans
built the city of Salt Lake out West just like they did Nauvoo, and finally obtained what they
had been promised—their own material stake in “the church of the devil.”^38
Handpicked Stumbling Blocks for the LDS/Mormon Experiment
Joseph secretly detested Brigham Young and his enormous ego, but realized he was
the perfect man for the job of continuing the stumbling blocks meant for the people
according to their desires. After the Three Nephites left, Joseph purposefully looked for the
specific men he knew would build up the stumbling blocks. From the time that Timothy left
him in 1839, Joseph’s full intent was not to try to teach the people anything about real truth
or any of the mysteries of God, or the gospel of Christ that they had rejected, but instead,
dedicate himself more fully to giving them the desires of their hearts. In his writings and
speeches, Joseph bolstered these men and gave them value in the eyes of the people. He
spoke of them as if the Lord condoned them and their authority. Joseph became quite an
architect of the Saints’ stumbling blocks.
In the summer of 1840, he found another man whom he secretly had a great distaste for,
but upon whom he would rely to shore up the foundation of the stumbling blocks—John C.
Bennett.^39 John C. Bennett was a certified medical doctor and the Illinois Quartermaster General,
among other things, who had the political and business expertise to aid the city of Nauvoo
through all its steps of legal incorporation. Bennett was personally influential in helping
Nauvoo prosper more quickly than any other city ever had in the history of the United States of
America. He was also responsible for the establishment in Nauvoo of a manmade institution
that Joseph hated more than any other upon the earth—Freemasonry.^40