Thirty-Nine (1844)When Joseph realized his death was imminent and that there was going to be a
great struggle for the Saints’ hearts among the Nauvoo leaders, he created yet another
type of mortar to secure more stumbling blocks for the Saints. Because he knew Strang’s
mind was often influenced with dreams and visions of his own personal importance,
Joseph wrote a letter to Strang a few days before turning himself into authorities. The
letter gave Strang permission to establish the Voree, Wisconsin Stake. In the letter, which
was one of Joseph’s last, he flowered it with religious innuendo and prose that he knew
Strang’s ego would devour.
James J. Strang, posthumously, did not let Joseph down. After Joseph was killed,
Strang started his own following of Latter-day Saints, patterned after the way in which
Joseph’s own calling and mission had transpired, almost in exact detail. Strang claimed he
received a visitation from an angel, who gave him the plates and the Urim and Thummim. He
manufactured and hid some small plates and then miraculously discovered them to prove his
claim to prophetic legitimacy. These, along with many other claims that Strang made, gave
the world another example of what a man is capable of doing when given a little authority, as
he supposes.^32
Strang never translated what he claimed was the sealed portion of the plates. Other
similar claims eventually mocked the actuality of the real plates’ existence and the writings
of Moroni contained therein. However, it was Joseph himself who would return to the earth
in 1987 and commission the translation of the “sealed” plates by following the proper
protocol.^33 The translation of the sealed portion was published in 2004. It substantiated,
without doubt, the foolishness and ego-based designs of the men who tried to test their
hands at the task and prove their value to the world.
When one reads The Sealed Portion—The Final Testament of Jesus Christ with a sincere
heart and real intent, there will be little doubt in the reader’s mind that the record came
forth in the same manner and from the same source as the Book of Mormon.^34 When the
correct translation is compared to James Strang’s writings and what the other claimants
have produced, there is little room to doubt which of the records is true.^35
Joseph Smith III—Joseph’s Successor and Future Guardian of the U&T
Joseph called and ordained his own son, Joseph Smith III, to become his successor.^36
What is not mentioned in that appendix is what Joseph did with the Urim and Thummim
before he was killed. In his last goodbye to his wife and children, Joseph gave the rocks to
his son, and under Emma’s watchful guidance, told him never to tell another living soul that
he had possession of them, even at the peril of his own life, “for every wretched devil in the
world will want to take them from you.”
It was widely believed, and correctly so, that Joseph had a fake copy of the rocks that
he would use to show the people at times. Joseph III later entrusted the Urim and
Thummim that his father gave him to the leaders of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, who were not convinced that they were the real stones—because none
of the leaders could get them to work. Assuming they were the fake stones, they became
nothing more to the RLDS than old relics. The RLDS church eventually sold them to the Salt
Lake City LDS Church, along with other items that the LDS Church was led to believe
belonged personally to Joseph. With divine care, the rocks ended up where they needed to
be so that they could be recovered by Timothy^37 and given to the true translator of the sealed
portion of the gold plates.^38