Without Disclosing My True Identity
(^30) D&C, 107:18, 64.
(^31) See n. 24 above.
(^32) D&C, 121:37, 39, 40–3.
(^33) See ch. 6, n. 5; also BOM, Alma 30:28: “Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their
own lest they should offend their priests, who do yoke them according to their desires, and have
brought them to believe, by their traditions and their dreams and their whims and their visions and
their pretended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offend some
unknown being, who they say is God—a being who never has been seen or known, who never was
nor ever will be.”
(^34) “For Brigham Young and his religion, the haunting consequences of mass murder at
Mountain Meadows are undeniable. ...[Brigham Young] could not change the past. He knew the
full truth of his complicity in the crime. The Mormon prophet...initiated the sequence of events
that led to the betrayal and murder of one hundred twenty men, women, and children. ***the
LDS church is caught [in a] dilemma. Its leaders cannot admit that the Lord’s anointed inspired,
executed, and covered up a mass murder.” (Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and
the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma P, 2004) 380, 382 and his
address Oct 5, 2002 in Salt Lake City, UT at the 8th Annual Ex-Mormon Conference posted here:
http://www.salamandersociety.com/interviews/willbagley/.)
See also William Wise, Mountain Meadows Massacre: An American Legend and a Monumental
Crime (Lincoln: iUniverse, Inc, 2000); Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1950; Norman:
University of Oklahoma P, 1962); and Josiah F. Gibbs, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Salt Lake City:
Salt Lake Tribune, 1910).
“I left Nauvoo in 1845 because my life was in danger if I remained there, because of my
objections and protests against the doctrine of blood atonement and other new doctrines that were
brought into the church.” (William Smith [brother of Joseph Smith, Jr.], The Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, complaint, vs. The Church of Christ at Independence, Missouri... [Known as the
“Temple Lot Case”] [Lamoni: Herald Pub. House and Bindery, 1893] 185–6.)
“The oath taken by the secret society called the ‘Danite band,’ was as follows, they declared,
holding up the right hand:—’In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I do solemnly obligate
myself, ever to conceal and never to reveal the secret purposes of this society. Should I ever do the
same, I hold my life as the forfeiture.’ —[Cong. Doc. 189, p. 1, 2.” (LaRoy Sunderland, “Mormon
Despotism,” Boston Investigator 9 May 1857: 1. See also Rollin J. Britton, Early Days on Grand River and
the Mormon War (Columbia: The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1920) 69 and John C. Bennett,
The History of the Saints; or, An Exposé of Joe Smith and Mormonism (Boston: Leland & Whiting, 1842)
325 for similar quotes.
“I married Jesse Hartly, knowing he was a ‘Gentile’ in fact, but he passed for a
Mormon...because he was a noble man, and sought only the right. By being my husband, he was
brought into closer contact with the members of the Church, and was thus soon enabled to learn
many things about us, and about the Heads of the Church, that he did not approve, and of which I
was ignorant, although I had been brought up among the Saints; and which, if known among the
Gentiles, would have greatly damaged us. I do not understand all he discovered, or all he did; but
they found he had written against the Church, and he was cut off, and the Prophet [Brigham Young]
required as an atonement for his sins, that he should lay down his life. ...William Hickman and
another Danite, shot him in the cañons.” (Miss Bullock, quoted by Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith in Nelson
Winch Green, Mormonism: Its Rise, Progress, and Present Condition [1858; Hartford: Belknap & Bliss,
1870] 310–11.)
“The people of Utah are the only ones in this nation who have taken effectual measures...to
prevent adulteries and criminal connections between the sexes. The punishment in that territory, for
these crimes is DEATH TO BOTH MALE AND FEMALE. And this law is written on the hearths and
printed in the thoughts of the whole people. ...[This] deals out justice to the vile seducer, adulterer
and whoremonger...and preserves the purity of the morals of the whole population. ...This is the