The Real Story of Joseph Smith’s Death

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Show Introduction and Guest Background

One, two, three! Welcome to The Rap Report, with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide Biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community.

For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, well, welcome to another Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport. I have another special guest with us today. I wanted to, on this particular day, this is dropping a day earlier than typical, only because on the day that it drops is actually the 176th anniversary of the death of Joseph Smith.

Wait, should we be celebrating that? Hmm. Depends on your perspective. But this is the anniversary of his death, and the point that we want to do throughout this episode is show really what really happened, what led up to the death of the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons, but what happened that led up to his death, what really happened at his death, was he really a martyr?

This is what we hope to accomplish in this episode. So when you're going to talk about Latter-day Saints, there's only one person to bring in. Well, okay, there's some others you could bring in, but there's probably the one most world-renowned expert on Mormonism.

He's going to hate that I just said that, but it is Bill McKeever from Mormon Research Ministry, and you can check out Mormon Research Ministry at mrm .org. But Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson work there and have done probably more work.

The only person that may even be close would be Sandra Tanner, and I don't know now who we could say has done more research into Mormonism,.

But Bill, welcome to The Wrap Report. Thank you, Andrew. It's good to be with you, and I would probably concede that I wish I knew enough in my fingernail of what all Sandra Tanner knows. She's probably the most knowledgeable on all the historical aspects of Mormonism,.

That's for sure. She's an amazing lady. Yeah, I mean, I had researched when I was researching Mormonism, Sandra and Gerald Tanner, their stuff was invaluable.

Oh, yeah. I think all of us have certainly been benefited by the research of Gerald and Sandra,.

That's for sure. And they did so much research, and really, they were really the pioneers. I mean, they were doing it before the internet and things like this when you couldn't get access to documents, and they laid down a groundwork really for your ministry, and what you guys do now that we have the internet, I think it's having an impact on the Mormon Church.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

The question you get the most. They've even admitted that, Andrew. They've even admitted that the internet is having a severe impact on the Church, because all the information that, of course, we had been reporting on for decades can easily be looked up and checked out.

And they realized, and this is why I think they came out with the Gospel Topics Essays in 2013, they knew they could not just keep telling members, well, just don't go to that site, even though they kept doing that, but they knew that wasn't working.

And so the internet has caused them.

All sorts of headaches. You know, those Gospel Essays are things that cover stuff that you say antis, you know, those anti-Mormons would put out, like Joseph Smith having multiple wives, even young children, even sisters, the fact that African Americans were not allowed to be priests, all kinds of things that they would deny, because they would just change their history and just say, oh, no, that never happened.

I had some Mormon missionaries who had come to our house, and I had said, the Mormon Church will be accepting homosexuality soon. No, it would never! I wish I could get a hold of those missionaries now and say, so can you tell me about Brigham Young University's policy of accepting homosexuals now?

Things like that have certainly, boy, just made a lot of people just wonder what's going on here. But you know what? I don't think it should surprise us, because the LDS Church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its official title, they never really go to the Bible to begin with to justify a lot of what they teach.

So, why would we expect them on that issue to go to the Bible and use the Bible as a guide as to how to handle that behavior? They just don't normally. It all goes by what the leadership tells the membership.

They are the ones that are led by God to guide the Church as prophets and apostles in these modern days.

Temple Tours, Polygamy, and Mormon Historical Revisionism

Yeah, it was fun. You and I had gone with your organization to a temple opening, and that was really fun. I just didn't reveal that I was a Christian. I was spotted right away, and so I do know that our tour, we were on a silent tour.

None of us were allowed to ask questions, and they weren't allowed to answer any of our questions, supposedly to make up for time, but meanwhile the tours in front and behind us were having no problem with that, asking questions and all, but we weren't allowed to ask any questions, and then when I got out, they had the two missionaries start talking to me.

I just revealed that I was Jewish. They asked me what I thought of the temple, and I'm just saying, well, this is very interesting, but it's nothing like the Old Testament temple, and I revealed that I'm a Levite, a Korahite, which would be the family responsible for the temple elements.

So, I think they never actually dealt with a standing there, and they didn't know what to do, because they kept saying that this is the way the temple is, and I'm going, well, that's not the way it is in the Bible, and they had clearly never read the Bible, at least the Old Testament, with the temple, and I even had one, because we ended up having six missionaries, because the two called two others for backup, who called two others for backup, and when the last two, this woman says to me, she says, well, this is the way the temple is in Israel, and I said, there is no temple in Israel right now, and she goes, oh, yes, my professor at Brigham Young University told me that there's a temple in Israel, and they have marriages in it, and I went, and one of the other girls stopped her and said, he's a Levite, he understands the temple.

It was like, be quiet. You know? You're embarrassing yourself. Yeah, you and I had an experience at Brigham Young's house that you said was the... you've been on several tours. Maybe you could tell that story of what happened when you and I went to his house.

They didn't like us in that house too much.

Well, normally, the tour guides at the Beehive House, that's the name of Brigham Young's home, it was also the governor's office. In fact, that's the first part of the tour, is you're in the office area for the governor of the territory of Deseret, as it was known at that time, before it became a state in the 1890s, and so you go on the tour, and of course, they want to give you the best side of Mormonism, and they do talk about Brigham Young, and you gotta admit, Brigham Young was, if it wasn't for Brigham Young, I doubt if we'd even be talking about this right now, but he was quite a man, and so I oftentimes would like to bring up the subject of polygamy if they don't, and I've had tour guides bring it up on their own.

It's almost like they want to talk about it and get it over with, and then let's get on with the rest of the tour, and it's kind of strange. I remember one time, I don't know if this was the tour that I was with you, but I remember the young lady, and they're usually always women who take you around.

Usually, the young missionaries will take you on the tour, and so I asked about the polygamy issue, and of course, she gave a very standard answer that I've heard many times. Well, they did that in order to take care of the women who had lost husbands during the persecution time, and of course, how many men were lost during the persecution time?

They don't know. In fact, the largest number I've ever heard is probably maybe 50 to 100 men could have been killed during the time the Mormons were being harshly persecuted, and I even think that's quite a bit.

Certainly, one is too many. I don't think that violence is the cure for false doctrine at all, but they brought that up. I said, well, why did he have to marry them in order to take care of them? That doesn't seem necessary.

Why not just give the woman a stipend or a check and give her her own apartment or place to live, and you can take care of them that way, and then she said something about, well, it was because of the laws regarding land and inheritance.

Well, the problem is since 1862 in the Morrill Act, M-O-R-R-I-L-L, it was named after a politician, this was considered unlawful cohabitation to begin with. Now, I know Abraham Lincoln wasn't going to enforce the Morrill Act during the Civil War as long as the Mormons stayed out of the conflict, but later on with the Edmonds Act and then the Edmonds-Tucker Act, they weren't even recognized as marriages, so how would that even help?

But a lot of these kids, they don't know this. They don't study their history. They're given a script, and I always encourage people to be as polite as possible when you're going on these tours because these poor kids, you can imagine some of the questions they probably get from even Christians who probably, let's be honest, cannot be the nicest when dealing with this.

Subject. Yeah. Well, I think I tried to be nice. Again, when we went, I pretended. Well, I am Jewish. It's not that I pretended. I revealed my Judaism. I revealed my background, but we got right into the temple when she started talking about the temple, and I discussed what I knew of the temple, and when we left, you basically told me that they exit us out, door left really quick, and that they basically, the tour's much longer.

We go upstairs, and there was none of that. They just, have a nice day. Here's the exit door. Yeah. I think that they realize that if they.

Have some people on the tour that are asking questions that make them feel uncomfortable, they probably have an exit strategy to take us into the dining area. Remember, that's the last spot where we were at.

There was a dining room, and right next to it is a library, and there's a door that goes out to Main Street, and that's the end of the tour, but you're right. Sometimes, I've been on tours where they do take you upstairs and all around.

They talk about the kids. They talk about what life was like in the beehive house and such, and then I've been on some very short tours, and sometimes I wondered why they were so short because there was not a huge crowd waiting behind us to get in.

Now, during the summer, I can understand that because they're relatively busy during the summer, but that's not always been the case, but I do like to open up for some questions because they will ask towards the end for sure if there are any questions, and I look at that as a great opportunity to ask some things of the missionary personally when it comes to the forgiveness of their own sins, and what would I have to do if I was to join their church in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, and I just let the Mormon missionary answer that, and of course, the answer to that question is going to open up a whole huge discussion on how it's virtually impossible to get the forgiveness of sins by following the rules and outlines of the doctrines.

Of the LDS Church. Well, you know, as we want to talk about the real story of the death of Joseph Smith, the first question that you get asked a lot, and I think we should just get it out of the way because many people think that you must be from a Mormon background, you hate Mormons, or we should say Latter-day Saints, the proper title, and let me just preface, I mean no disrespect if I say Mormon or LDS, it's just shorter.

There's no disrespect. I know that they want the full title, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but for the sake of brevity, I'm going to call them LDS or Mormon, and so when you come upon them, you have done tons of research.

People always think there's got to be some acts that you have to grind against them that you would devote your life to this, so were you previously a Mormon, and what got you into studying Mormonism?

Why Bill McKeever Began Studying Mormonism

I never was. I was never a member. I actually became a Christian after I graduated from high school, and I grew up with a lot of LDS friends, and they were very nice to me. They never tried to convert me or anything like that, but I knew who they were, and I knew something of their church.

Naturally, I didn't know a lot of the details because I wasn't a believer at the time, and I didn't care, but after I became a Christian, I had conversations with some new LDS acquaintances that I had come across and started asking them some things because of my newfound faith in Christ, and I was just curious, and naturally, a lot of these people were friends of mine, and the answers that they gave me caused me some genuine concern, and I would ask them, well, what do you do with this passage in the Bible and things like this, and it almost didn't matter to them.

If they didn't have a good spin on what they thought that Bible verse meant, it was usually an answer of, well, that's why we have Latter-day Revelation. We have modern prophets and apostles that are guiding the church today, and we go by their guidance, and a lot of those things in the Bible are not absolutely necessary any longer, and besides, they would say things like, well, we believe the Bible only as far as it's translated correctly because that's Article VIII in their Articles of Faith.

What that really means to at least the scholars who explain Article VIII is it's not so much a translation problem as it's a transmission problem. They would like to argue that our Bible, as it was being handwritten, got a lot of mistakes put in there, either intentionally or unintentionally, and so the Bible we have today, even if it's a good translation, it would only be to them a good translation of a bad transmission, and so with that big huge question mark on the validity of biblical text, you can see why a Latter-day Saint, once they embrace the authority structure of the church, will go along with just about anything they're being told, and that becomes a problem.

That's why, in some cases, I like to use a Joseph Smith translation when I'm talking to Mormons. I should explain that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon movement, claimed that he was told by God to come up with a new translation of the Bible.

He started it in 1830, claims he finished it in July of 1833, but if you go through the Joseph Smith translation, and the reason why I like to use it, not that I think he did a good job on it, that's for sure, but he left a lot of the verses that I will probably be bringing up in a conversation intact.

The Isaiah passages in Isaiah 43, 44, and 45 regarding there only being one God, you also find Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 is left intact, Titus 3, 5 is left intact, Galatians 1, 8 is left intact, a lot of the verses that I would probably bring up, Joseph Smith did not touch them, or if he touched them, he didn't change the meaning, and that becomes very helpful when you're talking to a Latter-day Saint, because it's hard to say that this Bible, the Joseph Smith translation, or the inspired version as they call it, can't be translated badly because it was translated by inspiration from God himself.

So that's a good tactic that I've used over the years.

The Book of Abraham, the Seer Stone, and Official LDS Admissions

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I like the gospel essay on the golden plates, because they have a problem there. They always said it was a translation, now they have to say it's an inspired translation, because when Joseph Smith did that, no one knew Reformed hieroglyphics, and now that we have a Rosetta Stone, one of those gospel essays have to admit that, yeah, it's really not a good translation.

Well, I think you might be referring to the Book of Abraham. Yeah, Book of Abraham, I'm sorry. Or they use that, yeah. But you're still right when it comes to the Book of Mormon, because Joseph Smith, the Church has now admitted officially.

It's not that they've never admitted this, and I think that needs to be made clear. A lot of the things that we report on, well, where do we get them? We get them from their sources. So it's not like the Church has completely hidden this from existence, you might say, because we found it.

And I'll give you an example. Back in 1993, Russell M. Nelson, the 17th president of the LDS Church, gave a talk in General Conference where he mentions, for instance, the seer stone and the hat, how Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon from the Reformed Egyptian characters and such.

Even though he wasn't looking at the characters, the rock somehow had a magical power that he could look at this rock in a hat, and it would tell him what was on the gold plates written in Reformed Egyptian.

Now, when I would bring that up to a lot of Latter-day Saints, they thought I was crazy, and that was a terrible lie to make their leader look bad, even though their own scholars were very well aware of this.

Of course, Russell M. Nelson was very well aware of it when he talked about it in 1993. But that kind of a translation process was not spoken enough times for it to become part of the Mormon narrative.

It's certainly not like the First Vision account, where Joseph Smith claimed that he was visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ, who told him that all the churches were wrong, the creeds were an abomination, and their professors were all corrupt.

All Mormons seem to know that story, because it's told over and over and over again, but not the story of the seer stone in the hat. That was mentioned very rarely, and most Mormons probably didn't even know where to look to find that story written in.

Their own sources. But it's easily found on mrm .org for Mormon research ministry. And we actually,.

On mrm .org, point people to their official website so that people can see it on their website. That's what's so great, Andrew, about these Gospel Topics Essays. Once they started coming out, and they came out incrementally over about a three-year period, and then they came out with some even shorter ones, historical Gospel Topics Essays.

And what's great about them is you can send the Mormon to their own official website where they can read the same things that I might be saying or you might be saying, and it's really hard for them to assume I took it out of context or I embellished the account to make it sound bad.

It's right there in their own material, and I have referred people back to their own website numerous times saying, go read it for.

Yourself. Come back and let's talk about it. Yeah, and those essays have been great. I had the one, there was the missionaries that were coming to visit, and as soon as I gave them their own documents, they were like, they didn't want to come back.

The Church's Official History and the Need for a True Account of Joseph Smith's Death

So Joseph Smith, the accounting that led up to his death and how he actually died, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an account for this, and the question I'd like to ask is, is it accurate?

And so could you give us the history of first the Church's account of what happened, and then let's go through the real.

Account, what happened, and see if they both line up. Okay, let me first qualify this. What I'm going to be looking at are sources that the LDS Church has published, so that would be their account. Now there are some details in this account that have been, I guess you could say, whitewashed over time, but they're really under their minor accounts and not really all that important.

I think that as Christians, we can talk to a Latter-day Saint about the events leading up to Joseph Smith's demise just by referring to their own resources, whether it's the documentary History of the Church, which is what they call the Blue History because they were bound in a blue hardcover, and there were seven volumes, and very well-respected history that their historians often went to to recount Mormon history.

But then the Church in 2018 came out with a new history book called Saints, the Standard of Truth, and this is the first of four volumes that are going to be released over time. The second volume has already been released, and I've got to be quite honest with you, Andrew, I have been amazed at the transparency or honesty, if you will, of this new history book.

It brings things out that I think would probably embarrass a lot of faithful Latter-day Saints. And I said this, when Eric and I did a series on this book, the first volume, I often made the comment that if I was not a member of the Church and I was given this by a Mormon neighbor to read about the history of the Mormon movement, I would not join the Church after reading it.

Because Joseph Smith doesn't look all that great in this history. He looks like a man who was a bad judge of character, had a bad behavior, made dumb decisions, hardly what we would consider to be a prophet of God, because he's claiming revelations, and then a lot of these things don't happen the way the revelation said it was supposed to happen.

I'll give you an example. It talks about Zion's camp, or the camp of Israel, where Mormons were kicked out of Independence, Missouri. Joseph Smith claimed he had a revelation from God to raise a small army and go get that land back for the Saints.

Well, he raises the small army, but he never gets the land back for the Saints. It doesn't happen. They're actually stopped from doing that. Well, if I was an outsider reading an account like that, I would wonder, well, what kind of a prophet is this who claims to have revelations, but yet they don't seem to come forth?

And certainly, Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18, that would be a pretty telltale test of a true or false prophet. One is what he says going to happen really happened. And in many cases, it doesn't happen, which would show you that Joseph Smith was a fraud.

But when it comes to the death of Joseph Smith, really, it all boils down to some of the behavior that Joseph Smith was exhibiting in Nauvoo, Illinois, which is a town that you might say the Mormons really built up.

It wasn't that it was never there before. It just had a different name when they moved in. It was known as Commerce, Illinois. And then as the Mormons started migrating into this town, it started growing like crazy.

And some have said it even rivaled Chicago at the time. And so Joseph Smith, of course, is at this time in the 1840s, he's starting to marry a lot of women, polygamously. But at the same time, this is not something that's being proclaimed publicly.

Only a few select men that were very close to Joseph Smith knew about this. Many of them practiced it themselves secretly. But there were some men who became privy to this, that found it abhorrent. And they decided to get together at least seven of them.

In fact, I have their names here. They were William Law, who was a member of the first presidency since 1841. Wilson Law, his brother, who was a brigadier general in the Nauvoo Legion, which was like a militia that Joseph Smith had.

There was another guy by the name of Austin Cowles, who was a member of the Nauvoo High Council. There was James Blakeslee, who was a 70. Now, this is still a pretty prominent position in the LDS Church.

And then there were some prominent businessmen also involved, Robert Foster, Chauncey Higbee, and Charles Ivins. These guys got together to publish a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor. It was meant to expose Joseph Smith's abuse of power and the fact that he was practicing polygamy secretly.

And because of this newspaper, it only came out with one edition. It was supposed to be a weekly edition. It came out one time in early June. And when Joseph Smith found out about it, as you can imagine, he was pretty upset at what these men had said about him.

Now, he naturally accused them of lying and making up things or embellishing things, which that's very typical when a person is caught. That's usually the first response, you know, is to say that it's all made up and it's just meant to slander.

Well, that's exactly how Joseph Smith took it. Now, you have to understand Joseph Smith was the mayor of Nauvoo at this time. So he has some pretty significant power in this area of the state. So he has a city council meeting, and I'm reading from volume six of the History of the Church.

This is the blue bound volume, documentary History of the Church. And this is what it says. There was a decree made to the marshal and how they were supposed to handle this newspaper that had published these things about Joseph Smith that he was not very pleased about.

This is what it says. The following order was immediately issued by the mayor. Well, the mayor is Joseph Smith. And it says, to the marshal of said city, greeting. You are here commanded to destroy the printing press from whence issues the Nauvoo expositor and pie the type.

Now, pie the type is a phrase we don't normally use nowadays. But what that meant was to scatter the type. So take all those individual letters and everything else and scatter them out in the dirt so they can't be used any longer.

So you were to destroy the printing press, pie the type of said printing establishment in the street, and burn all the expositors and libelous handbills found in said establishment. And if resistance be offered to your execution of this order by the owners or others, demolish the house.

And if anyone threatens you or the mayor or the officers of the city, arrest those who threaten you and fail not to execute this order without delay and make due return here on. And it's signed by the order of the city council, Joseph Smith, mayor.

Now, the next entry, Andrew, is this. It says, marshals return. And in quotation marks, it says, the within named press and type is destroyed and pied according to order on this 10th day of June 1844 at about 8 o 'clock p .m.

Signed by J .P. Green, headquarters of the Nauvoo Legion. That's what gets everything rolling is this newspaper based on Joseph Smith's behavior and exposing Joseph Smith's behavior. So the question is, were the Mormons acting legally to destroy this printing press?

Some have said that if the printing was declared a nuisance, then yes, you could have done that. But even Dallin H. Oaks, who is the second in command in the LDS church right now as we speak, he was a lawyer.

He was a judge. And he said, well, they could have declared it to be a nuisance to go so far as to destroy the printing press. Even Dallin H. Oaks said that was out of line. He probably could have got away with destroying the printed paper, the paper itself.

But the printing press threatened to destroy the building? No, that was out of line. They were not allowed to do that even by the law at that time. So it seems almost as if what he's trying.

To do is damage control. He realizes he's been doing something, he's been trying to keep silent, and now it's going to get exposed. But he has the authority to do something about it. And so he tries to cover it up, get rid of the evidence.

Correct. And of course, the problem in a town.

Like this where you have a lot of non-Mormons living there, a lot of people don't realize that. Nauvoo wasn't all Latter-day Saints. There were a lot of non-Mormons that were living in that area at the time.

And you can imagine how quickly the word is going to get around. See, Joseph Smith was a very colorful, very controversial figure. And living in that area of the state, you couldn't help but know who this guy is.

And naturally, there were a lot of rumors circulating around about him, especially his plural wives, and that kind of behavior. And you can understand how a lot of people would not find favor with that.

These guys that put together the Nauvoo Expositor, they certainly didn't like the way he was behaving. And this was, in their estimation, the best way to, well, expose Joseph Smith so that people could know the other side about this guy.

And we should say for the record that the things that they were exposing and putting in this are things that now the LDS Church has put out and confirmed were actually true.

Yeah, you have to understand that the paper itself just wasn't about Joseph Smith. There were some other things in there that would have been of interest probably to some of the locals. But definitely, it was meant to expose his abuse of power, expose him as practicing polygamy.

And those things were true. I mean, he was doing that to a certain extent as far as abusing power, but definitely when it came to having more than one wife, even though Joseph Smith was publicly lying about it clear up to the end, really.

But the paper was correct in a lot of its accusations. I mean, why wouldn't it be? These men were close to Joseph Smith. These men at one time had respect for Joseph Smith. And so, why wouldn't it be truthful?

So, this is what really was leading.

Up to his arrest. Now, you know, for people who may not study Mormonism so much, there is this picture that the Mormon Church paints where he was, Joseph Smith, was this wonderful man. Yeah, he might have been a con artist in his early days, but God got a hold of him, and he even could have been the next president.

And that's, I heard one Mormon that actually argued the reason he was killed was to prevent him from getting to the White House.

Well, some may have had that as a reason. I don't know. But I don't think the chances of Joseph Smith becoming president were anything but slim to none. He was just too strange in his beliefs, and his character scared a lot of people.

So, I don't think he would have become president at all. But he was definitely running for president at the time of his death, and I'm sure he would have easily gotten the vote of his followers. Now, would those followers be enough to secure the White House?

I doubt it, but it just shows the ambition that this man had, and it scared a lot.

Of people. You say that, but we got Donald Trump in the White House now, so people could describe.

Him that way. A grassroots movement, you might say. So, you never know. You never know. You never know.

You know, let's get into what happened, the arrest, him, you know, in the jailhouse, and with that, it's going to take, and I want to do this after this break, but the thing that really helped me is when you took me to tour through the museum where they show you what that jailhouse was like, it gave a very different understanding of what it was like, and that helped me understand a little bit better what happened with his death, and then how it really.

Happened. So, let's cover that after this break. While you may have seen missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in their white shirts and black badges, you may not be familiar with the teachings of this American-born organization.

Did you know that while Mormons claim to be Christians, many of their doctrines cannot be supported by the New Testament? If you're curious as to what the Mormon people are taught to believe and how those beliefs differ from Christianity, you're invited to listen to a unique radio program called Viewpoint on Mormonism.

Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry, a Christian ministry based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mormonism Research Ministry has been challenging the claims of the Mormon Church since 1979 and have been effectively educating Christian believers about the teachings that separate Mormonism from the Christian faith.

We hope you will tune into Viewpoint on Mormonism as host Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson examine Mormonism from a Christian perspective. Looking for strategies that will help you engage in meaningful conversations with members of the Mormon Church?

Well, if so, take a look at Sharing the Good News with Mormons, a new book produced by Harvest House Publishers and edited by Mormonism Research Ministries' Eric Johnson and Sean McDowell. Sharing the Good News with Mormons includes 24 helpful essays from two dozen Christian apologists, scholars, and pastors.

Pick up your copy at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore or order directly from.

Mrm .org. And that book is also available at strivingforturning .org as I am one of the authors who was invited into that project, which I was very glad to be. But Bill, let's discuss this. The account of his death, he's described as a martyr.

Does martyrdom fit the account of his death? Walk us through, describe what the jailhouse was because it wasn't like what we think of, a room where he's got bars and there's a window that he can look out with bars in it.

It's very different. Could you describe that jailhouse and how the arrest came about and what happened there?

The Arrest at Carthage Jail and the Death of Joseph Smith

Well, okay, let's talk about how the arrest came about because there's a lot of things that took place before Joseph Smith leaves Nauvoo and heads towards Carthage, which was the county seat, about 20 miles away.

And what happens is the governor, Thomas Ford, actually tells Joseph Smith after the destruction of the paper that he needs to turn himself in. And Ford promised him an armed escort, which never materialized.

I often wonder about that. Why would Ford promise that and then not allow him to have this escort? Well, he didn't really need an armed escort to get to Nauvoo anyway. But still, it seems like there were some promises that were being made by the governor that never came about, which makes you wonder, were they kind of hoping something tragic might happen to this guy?

I don't know. I don't know. But the fact is, is after Joseph Smith was going to be turned in, he flees. He doesn't go to Carthage right away. He actually crosses the Mississippi River. And the new book, Saints, talks about this in the chapter titled, A Lamb to the Slaughter.