Posted by:
axeldc
(
)
Date: August 01, 2014 03:53PM
JS was just making stuff up as he went along. He kept changing things and having new "revelations" and seeing what stuck. That is why so many early LDS left in disgust, especially when the polygamy issue arose. Finally, a few people had enough and they took him out.
BY was not JS's choice. He thought his son would take over, meaning JS did not foresee his death. Many thought his first counselor, Sidney Rigdon, was the obvious heir. The President of the 12 was a strange choice for next in line, like picking the House Speaker over the Vice President.
The controversy is obvious by the fact that JS died in 1844, and BY became President in 1847, 3 years later.
https://www.lds.org/churchhistory/presidents/leaders.jspToday, succession is immediate, but BY had to fight for 3 years to wrest leadership.
He knew that the church would flounder in Ohio and Missouri, so he decided to take them out west. He made JS's memory an icon, stripping out some of the darker stories of the Great Prophet. Out in remote Utah, BY had 30 years to shape the church in his image with JS as a mere icon. When he died, he had been head of the church for 2/3 of its history, and JS was just a distant memory whose story had been rewritten by BY.
Without someone like BY, the LDS Church would have floundered like the RLDS did. It would be a tiny footnote like the Shakers without the nice furniture, and no one would study the Mormon pioneers in high school history.