Without Disclosing My True Identity
could care for Emma himself and work on a small farm he was attempting to purchase
from his father-in-law. He needed the break from the responsibility.
His family and friends, unfortunately, were not as understanding as to why Joseph
would stop the “work of the Lord” in spite of the loss of his son or Martin’s indiscretions.
They often considered him to be more than a mortal man—without human weaknesses. As
it turned out, they were the ones who were most distraught and overwhelmed that the book
was not being translated and that the plates were not with Joseph. To give himself a few
more months of solitude and quiet, Joseph took Emma back to his father’s house for a few
weeks and composed a couple of his very first “revelations” to calm their minds and explain
the circumstances.^76
Joseph’s Attempt to Give a “Great Mystery”
Joseph’s purpose in composing these first revelations the way that he did was to
impress upon peoples’ minds that they had better leave him to his work and quit trying to
give him advice on what he should be doing. His family and friends wanted him to form a
new church and a religion right away. But in every way that he could, without impeding
their free will, Joseph tried to teach them that a church wasn’t needed. He incorporated
into one of his first revelations his first mention of “unfold[ing] unto them [a] great
mystery.”^77 He prepared his revelation concerning “establish[ing] my church among
them.”^78 The revelation was ripe with the real truth about the purpose of the Book of
Mormon in presenting “the gospel” as it does. The “great mystery” was a plain and
precious explanation of what “my church” (the Lord’s) actually means.
Joseph revealed, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who “repenteth and cometh
unto me, the same is my church.”^79 And then in the same plainness he says, “Whosoever
declareth more or less than this, the same is not of me, but is against me; therefore he is not
of my church.”^80 He wanted them to see that the Lord’s “church” was the individual and
how the person acted, not a group of people that gathers in a building, prays, and performs
ordinances and rituals. The Lord’s “church” was a “kingdom of God” found within a person
who is determined to keep the commandments that the Lord gave from his own mouth.^81
Joseph continued the profound “mystery,” writing, “And now, behold, whosoever is
of my church, and endureth of my church to the end, him will I establish upon my rock,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.”^82 Joseph was simply attempting to
remind the people the final words that Jesus said about his gospel, his rock, his church:
“Therefore, whoso heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a
wise man, who built his house upon a rock.”^83
Joseph lived to see the people reject the simplicity of the gospel and desire much
more and much less than the “fullness of the everlasting Gospel as delivered by the Savior
to the ancient inhabitants.”^84 They never did understand “this great mystery.”^85 Joseph
was eventually commanded to “take away [the] plainness from them, and deliver unto
them many things which they [could not] understand, because they desired it. And
because they desired it God hath done it that they may stumble.”^86 They got everything
that comes under “the law of carnal commandments:” their church, their religion, their
meetinghouses, their temples, their priesthood, their ordinances, their rituals, and all the
other stumbling blocks that caused them continual misery and unhappiness throughout
their mortal lives.