Twenty-Four (1829)LUCIFER: Oh, you want someone to preach to you. You want religion, do you? I
will have preachers here presently.^48
Once it has been pointed out, one can understand what Joseph hoped the people
who honored his name as a “prophet, seer, and revelator,” and who accepted the Book of
Mormon as the “word of God,” would learn about religion: it all comes from “Lucifer,” just
as Christ had revealed to him as a fourteen-year-old boy.
As mentioned previously, in 1990 the modern LDS/Mormon church changed the
above part of the presentation of the LDS endowment.^49 Their blind and deaf leaders took
out the part about having “preachers here presently,” and introduced their own idea about
what religion is. In fact, they included a definitive and clear expression of their own religion
by replacing the last line with this: “There will be many willing to preach to you the
philosophies of men mingled with scripture.”^50
NOTES
(^1) BOM, 3 Nephi 12:47.
(^2) Matthew 9:16–17.
(^3) Luke 17:21.
(^4) Matthew 6:10; BOM, 3 Nephi 13:10. See also Luke 11:2.
(^5) See Genesis, chapter 18.
(^6) See BOM, “Introduction, The Testimony of Three Witnesses” (Oliver Cowdery, David
Whitmer, Martin Harris) and “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses” (Christian Whitmer, Jacob
Whitmer, Peter Whitmer, Jr., John Whitmer, Hiram Page, Samuel Harrison Smith, Hyrum Smith, and
Joseph Smith, Sr.)
(^7) See ch. 12, n. 2.
(^8) Matthew 12:48–50.
(^9) See ch. 14, “Securing Land for the Smith Family.”
(^10) See, for example, “Lesson 5: Joseph Smith Receives the Gold Plates,” Primary 5: Doctrine and
Covenants: Church History, (Salt Lake City: LDS Church, 1997) 20, which includes reference to all three
supposed hiding places.
(^11) Lucy Smith, Progenitors, 131; Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
(New York: Knopf, 2005) 63.
(^12) Lucy Smith, Progenitors, 125.
(^13) Lucy Smith, Progenitors, 131. See also JSH 1:60.
(^14) BOM, 3 Nephi 28:27–8.
(^15) BOM, 3 Nephi 28:26.
(^16) Compare BOM, 3 Nephi 21:9.
(^17) TSP, 17:82; 18:58, 61; 21:16–22, 61–4, 91; 31:15, 83; 35:16, 57, 64; 36:72; 39:51; 40:50, 52;
47:39; 48:45–52; 50:10; 51:8, 11; 52:50; 57:43, 75; 61:121–3; 67:85; 79:64–76; 81:49, 54; 83:58–9, 67–
79; 87:86–8; 89:20; 91:64.
(^18) D&C, 5:24.
(^19) For example, see William Alexander Linn, The Story of the Mormons: from the date of their origin
to the year 1901 (New York: Macmillan, 1902) 44;