Percentage-wise? Does anybody have a reliable source on that? I found one estimate of 10-15% in an Institute manual but that hardly seems a shocking number, considering the problems that the church was experiencing at the time.

rt Wrote:
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> Percentage-wise? Does anybody have a reliable
> source on that? I found one estimate of 10-15% in
> an Institute manual but that hardly seems a
> shocking number, considering the problems that the
> church was experiencing at the time.

Didn't Heber C. Kimball later say that there were only
a handful of faithful members left in Ohio?

Most of "The Twelve" were then in England -- so I guess
they would not be numbered in Heber's count.

UD

Yes in JoD 4:108, Heber said that not 20 people on the face of the earth at that time of theKirtland Bank scandal believed Joseph was a prophet.

They may have not believed he was a prophet, but there were probably plenty of co-conspirators who were willing to stick it out for a chance at another big score.

I was recently reading about how things were going for Joe near his demise. It really looks like he was nearing his final days as a credible leader. His followers were beginning to fall away quickly. The SCC was only saved by the complete change of scenery and new leader. Bro Brigham was able to get things rolling with his faction because they were out of sight and out of mind in Utah for a while.

If they'd stayed in populated areas, he may have met the same fate as James Strang. By that time everyone was wise to the obnoxious Mormonites and would have no more of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2012 09:15AM by rationalguy.

The Kirtland Apostasy was not big enough

I often think the best missionary for the Mormon church was the guy that killed Joe Smith. Given a little more time I think the church would have crumbled under Horny Joe's power spiral.

Utah Spazz Wrote:
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> I often think the best missionary for the Mormon
> church was the guy that killed Joe Smith. Given a
> little more time I think the church would have
> crumbled under Horny Joe's power spiral.


We can sort of see how a cult responds to its leader
getting into major difficulties, in the case of Warren Jeffs.

Had Jeffs been assassinated years ago (and had the FLDS been
more of a missionary church) we might see them today as a
growing group, backed by considerable public sympathy.

But Jeffs just ended up in prison, unable to manage even
his own life. He will grow old and decrepit there. What
if Joseph Smith had ended up the same way? Had he been
convicted in Carthage, and sent to prison in Alton, maybe
Mormonism would have evolved differently.

But -- had Smith lived just a little longer -- I think he
was on the path to declaring himself God. Or, one of the
gods, resident on earth, as its rightful ruler.

Today some of the fundamentalist LDS portray Smith as the
living embodiment of the Holy Spirit -- part of the Christian
godhead. I suppose old Joe would have liked that sort of
adoration and worship.

UD

<But -- had Smith lived just a little longer -- I think he
was on the path to declaring himself God. Or, one of the
gods, resident on earth, as its rightful ruler>

Actually, you are not too far off the mark. Joseph Smith declared himself King of the Kingdom of God on the Earth just before his death.

Martyrdom does tend to galvanize the faithful and lend momentum to the cause, whatever it may be.

Has anyone considered the possibility that JS was preparing to become a martyr? He did make several statements towards the end of his life that seem to indicate he thought somebody might kill him.

Could it be that he might have preferred going out in a blaze of glory to rotting away in jail on sex charges?

If anyone knows of any research on this theory, please post a link. It would be interesting.

The Kirtland situation was pretty bad. Fawn Brodie wrote that at least six of the twelve apostles were in "open rebellion" Apostle Parley Pratt wrote Joseph a letter threatening to bring a lawsuit against him for his own banking losses. Joesph tried to have him excommunicated.

Joesph was sued thirteen times between June 1837 and April 1839, and was arrested seven times in four months.

In the middle of the crises, while Joesph was away on a five week mission to Canada, the Kirtland members that opposed him had started following a "dancing seeress" who claimed she could read the future using a black seer stone.

Joesph snuck away to Missouri to avoid further lawsuits and in his absence the church in Kirtland kind of fell apart, cuminating in a brawl inside the temple. After further fighting and chaos, Joesph fled Kirtland in the middle of the night.

Fawn Brodie makes it sound like things just collapsed in Kirtland, and if it wasn't for the Missouri membership, the church might have collapsed completely.

There is this tidbit those that years later in Salt Lake, Brigham Young insisted that the church redeem his old Kirtland banking notes for gold. So at least one person got restitution.

- taken from No Man Knows My History, Chapter 14, Disaster in Kirtland

Summarized Joseph's situation thusly on PBS's "The Mormons."

"Those things bothered Joseph terribly. He felt he had to do what he did..."

Which was skip town and hightail it to Missouri with Rigdon.

Once I get past the anger, I am actually starting to admire(?) Joesph upon a second reading of Brodie. He never seemed to let utter failure, humiliation, facts or reality stand in his way.

Honestly most people wouldn't be able to look themselves in the mirror afters those kinds of setbacks and humiliations, but Joesph just rolled with the punches and started some new wild scheme. Like in the middle of the Kirtland banking crisis, he went off to Salem with a convert named Burgess to look find for buried gold! The things that happened in Kirtland and Missouri just seem to strange to believe, like something out of Cormac McCarthy novel.

The guy must have had some kind charisma. It's hard to understand why people kept following him.

just a thought Wrote:
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> Fawn Brodie makes it sound like things just
> collapsed in Kirtland, and if it wasn't for the
> Missouri membership, the church might have
> collapsed completely.

Thanks, that is helpful information. Funny how nobody seems to have crunched the actual numbers. The official record only shows a 1,400 member drop in 1839 on a total of 17,881 members at the end of 1838 (about 8%). But maybe that tally includes exmo's just like today's 14.4 million does. Or in-transit members; after all, there was a lot of moving about at the time :-)

Some years ago when I did a short history of the church for my blog, I noticed quite a large range (from 4,000 to 15,000) in Missouri membership estimates. I guess the accurate record keeping skills that the church is so proud of are as baloney as everything else about that cult...

Somewhere around that time, ship loads of new converts from England starting arriving. So that might have more than offset the net loss of members from Kirtland.