Equality wrote:Over 200 pages of instructions from Joseph Smith given just before he died--and not permitted to be viewed by anyone (not Quinn, not Bushman, no one).
I haven't heard anything about this before. Where does it say that this even exists?
"The Church is authoritarian, tribal, provincial, and founded on a loosely biblical racist frontier sex cult."--Juggler Vain "The LDS church is the Amway of religions. Even with all the soap they sell, they still manage to come away smelling dirty."--Some Schmo
"The Church is authoritarian, tribal, provincial, and founded on a loosely biblical racist frontier sex cult."--Juggler Vain "The LDS church is the Amway of religions. Even with all the soap they sell, they still manage to come away smelling dirty."--Some Schmo
Fascinating all right - and the bolded section makes it plain why this stuff is staying in the vault, does it not?
Legacy Although the Council of Fifty no longer exists as an organized body, there remains one of its contributions which historically outweighs any practical influences the Council may have exerted. After 1845, the Council of Fifty focused primarily on immediate issues of the Mormon community—from exterminating wolves to preparing for elections. By contrast, in 1844 and on occasion thereafter, the Council meetings departed from the immediate, often humdrum concerns of the temporal struggles of the Church. These minutes contain numerous discourses and instructions by Joseph Smith and others concerning the role of the U.S. Constitution in the present and millennial existence of the Latter-day Saints, the Nature of the all- encompassing Kingdom of God which the Council signified, and other crucial teachings that are in no other records than Council of Fifty minutes. For example, Benjamin F. Johnson reported that in the Council of Fifty meetings, Joseph Smith taught of “adopting the God Given Constatution [sic] of United States as a paladium of Liberty & eaqual [sic] Rights— But this of itself would Require a long Chapter.” Both Benjamin F. John- son and Orson Hyde affirmed that in a meeting of the Council of Fifty, Joseph Smith gave his famous charge to the Quorum of the Twelve to carry forth the Church and the Kingdom of God, which charge became the basis for the apostolic succession established after the death of Joseph Smith. These teachings of Joseph Smith to the Council of Fifty, found nowhere else, fill hundreds of pages. On 16 March 1880, nearly 200 pages of the Council’s minutes concerning only its “origin and Organization” were read to President John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith, and Franklin D. Richards. Elder Richards recorded that the “whole reading was exceedingly interesting & wonderful to contemplate.”112 Joseph F. Smith wrote that the Prophet’s 1844 instructions to the Council of Fifty were “grand & god like.”113 When Joseph Smith went to Carthage, Illinois, for his last imprisonment, the Church nearly lost these voluminous teachings of the Prophet to the Council of Fifty. Joseph Smith had already been charged by anti-Mormons with the ridiculous crime of treason for destroying the Nauvoo Expositor as a public nuisance. He knew that the frenzied anti-Mormons of June 1844 were incapable of understanding the symbolic nature of the prophet-king ordinance or the millennial context of his teachings about the Kingdom of God. Therefore, Joseph Smith told William Clayton to either burn or bury the records of the Council of Fifty. William Clayton trusted that calmer, more reasonable and more secure times would come for the Latter-day Saints and therefore preserved the records for future generations.114 Though not available at this time, those teachings of Joseph Smith and of his successors in the Council of Fifty are a far greater legacy to the Latter-day Saints than the often-mundane activities of the Council itself.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Ah, I thought the 200 pages was a reference to something other than the Council of Fifty minutes. Instead, there are over 200 pages of minutes from the Council of Fifty that the Church refuses to release. I got it now.