Without Disclosing My True Identity
pride-stricken members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who still believed
that they were God’s only chosen people upon the earth.
Joseph, in Anguish, Prepares for the Inevitable in Nauvoo
The Saints had their chance. They had the Three Nephites living among them
counseling with the man whom they accepted as their leader, just as the Nephite people had
accepted Mormon as theirs. The Three Nephites had left because they knew the people were
living in every way, “beyond the mark.”^34 There was nothing further the Brothers could say
or do for Joseph that might give the people another chance. They’d had their chances. The
Saints were fully ripe with rebellion, living the delusion that Joseph and their “god” gave
them according to their desires.
The failures of Independence, Kirtland, and now Far West, were not enough to convince
the Saints that they were far from “Saints.” As Mormon wrote, so thought Joseph a few days
after Timothy, the last of the “Three Nephites,” gave him his final instructions and left:
And I did endeavor to preach unto this people, but my mouth was shut, and I
was forbidden that I should preach unto them; for behold they had willfully
rebelled against their God; and the beloved disciples were taken away out of
the land, because of their iniquity.^35The effects of the war they had just experienced—especially the loss of women and
children at the Haun’s Mill Massacre on Shoal Creek on October 30, 1838—stayed strong in
the Saints’ minds.^36 Their hearts were filled with vengeance, instead of the love and
forgiveness for their enemies as “the fullness of the everlasting Gospel” mandated. But more
than the loss of life, they had also lost their property and material goods. The Saints were
extremely upset and would not quickly forget. Unwilling to be governed by correct principles
of the gospel or by a true messenger, they were ripe to be governed by those eager to take
authority into their own hands.
Joseph knew that the city of Nauvoo, Illinois was the Saints’ last stand. He also knew it
would be his last stand. In another “revelation,”^37 he named the city across the waters of the
Mississippi (the “waters of Sidon”^38 ), Zarahemla^39 —the name of the place where the Nephites
had made their last stand before being destroyed. Like Mormon, Joseph became not only the
people’s spiritual leader, but their military leader at Nauvoo as well. He eventually even ran
for President of the United States, not by his own will, but by the will of the people.^40
On a clear evening in June of 1839, Joseph found himself alone looking over the city
of Commerce and envisioning in his mind what he knew was coming for the “Saints.” His
mind wandered back to his own words as Mormon, hundreds of years before. His soul was
rent with anguish, and he cried:
O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye
fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to
receive you! Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But
behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss. O ye fair sons and daughters, ye
fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye
could have fallen! But behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your
return. And the day soon cometh that your mortal must put on immortality,