Without Disclosing My True Identity
received and recorded. He blasted Brigham Young and other leaders, who aspired for control of
the people’s minds, for changing the original revelations to fit their own agendas.^17
David Whitmer never denied the divine nature of the Book of Mormon, but in dealing
with the ever-evolving LDS Church, he eventually found it very difficult to accept Joseph’s
continual efforts to give the people the desires of their hearts. Whitmer did not understand
how unchangeable and everlasting truths could change.^18 Whitmer believed in the God of
early Mormonism. He could not accept the God that had evolved and developed by
Joseph’s neglecting to control the people, as he saw it. Whitmer never understood human
free agency like Joseph did. Like many men, Whitmer believed humans needed to be
controlled and told what to do to prevent chaos and anarchy. Joseph saw it a different way:
“I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.”^19 The people rejected the
“correct principles” Joseph taught them and, in governing themselves, received the
priesthood power and authority they desired. (It will later be revealed how Joseph gave
Whitmer a chance to have the priesthood his way by allowing him to choose the original
group of Twelve Apostles for the LDS Church.)
There was good justification for David Whitmer’s disgust with the way that the later
church leaders presented and changed what Joseph originally taught as the “holy order of
God” and the authority associated with it. Well did he write, “Authority is the word we used
for the first two years in the church. ...I do not think the word priesthood is mentioned in the New
Covenant of the Book of Mormon.”^20 The “new covenant” to which Whitmer was referring was
the message delivered to the people of the Book of Mormon during the visit of the resurrected
Christ. The covenant made between Christ and the Nephites was the “fullness of the
everlasting Gospel...as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants”^21 and that Gospel
did not include any priesthood authority.
To understand David Whitmer’s contentions, many of which appear to be
substantially valid, LDS/Mormon priesthood power and authority needs to be explained in
its entirety. Understanding how and why the meaning and intent of the priesthood was
introduced by Joseph, and then allowed to be changed and developed over time, will shed
much-needed light on the difficult position Joseph was in as he assumed the role of a true
messenger who could not disclose the real truth.
The Priesthood of the United States of America
There have been more arguments about the veracity and truth (or falsehood) of LDS
priesthood authority than about any other point of Mormon doctrine, from Joseph’s time
until now. Whoever has been “properly” ordained to the “right” priesthood, office, and
calling assumes that he has the authority to create doctrine through “divine revelation.”
Along with a pious fear of God that induces a believer to conjoin and subjugate himself to a
religious leader, all other allusions and illusions held, by which one thus resigns free will to
the supposed powers or “priesthoods” of another, gives the priesthood holder overt
authority over the believer. This dominion of one person over another keeps the world
chained in ignorance and in a state of continual hell (the opposite of peace). Joseph knew
this truth and symbolically presented it in the “emblem of...power and priesthoods” of
Lucifer’s apron that is in the presentation of the LDS Temple Endowment.^22 Joseph
instructed Lucifer’s character, thus adorned in his emblematic apron, to proclaim to the
actor in the role of God: “I will take the treasures of the earth, and with gold and silver I will buy
up armies and navies, popes and priests, and reign with blood and horror on the earth!”^23