Introductionwas once asked, “Will everybody be damned, but Mormons?” He responded, “Yes, and a
great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness.”^29
To “consider themselves fools before God,”^30 which their own Book of Mormon
instructs them to do, is something that both the early and modern-day Mormons have a hard
time doing. They are commanded by their own scripture to “come down in the depths of
humility.”^31 It was this required deep humility and acceptance of his own lack of knowledge
that allowed Joseph to have God “open up unto him”^32 the real truth about the vain and
foolish religious imaginings of his day. Unfortunately, few (if any) of those who believed in
Joseph throughout his lifetime, or those who believe in him today, share this same attitude.
Deservingly, “the things of the wise and the prudent shall be hid from them forever.”^33
In Joseph’s day, the people wanted a leader. In fact, they eventually even desired a
General to lead them in war against their enemies. Under mandate to give the people what
they wanted, Joseph organized the Nauvoo Legion.^34 In this regard, American Mormons,
more than any other recognizable denomination of citizens, are quintessential patriots, and
very supportive of a strong military that can crush their enemies. What neither group of
“Saints” realized then, nor realizes now, is that fighting against anyone—for any reason—is
contrary to the “fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”^35 Their natural tendencies toward
visceral protection and unrelenting defense of their beliefs make them enemies of the very
God to whom they purport to pledge allegiance and subservience.
Joseph attempted to persuade them otherwise and to “submit to all things which the Lord
seeth fit to inflict upon [them], even as a child doth submit to his father.”^36 But the Mormons fought
their “Father” instead of submitting to Him. Neither could they then, nor do they today,
yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and
becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child,
submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love.^37If Joseph’s supporters had followed the example of the Anti-Nephi-Lehi people
mentioned in the Book of Mormon^38 —being pacifists who laid down their lives rather than
taking up arms against their fellow human beings—they would have been eligible to receive
the “endowment from on high” that Joseph wanted to give them. They had the choice to
turn the other cheek to their enemies—to bless those who cursed them, do good to those
who hated them, and pray for them who despitefully used and persecuted them^39 —or
complain and fight against them.^40 If they had chosen correctly, they would have won the
favor of their God instead of His sorrow for rejecting the words of His Son. Instead of Christ
becoming the hero of the Mormon people, Lieutenant General Joseph Smith and Orrin
Porter Rockwell did.^41
What Joseph never disclosed to his followers was how much he despised doing what
he was required to do. He was never comfortable with the mandate he received from
advanced humans who oversaw his work—to let the people stumble against their own
humanity by their own free will and choice.
The Mormon people do not know the real truth because they do not deserve (or better,
they are not ready) to know something that they do not seek to know. When one has been
pacified to believe that he or she is in possession of something (in this case, the alleged “truth”),
what would motivate one to search for it outside of their code of belief? Whether they will
accept it or not, no Mormon upon this earth, or any of their leaders, nor any other inhabitant,
has had access to the real truth about their existence as human beings in our endless Universe.