Coach T wrote:I'll listen to just about any criticism of the church and Joseph, but your sources are, at best, dubious and outright slander at worst. Come up with some other source of material to justify your hatred of the church. These sources have been around for years. This is not some groundbreaking new thing here.
Good grief, chief.
They're Brodie's sources. And the fact that the sources have been "around for years" has no bearing on whether or not the story is true. In fact, the longer they've been around, all other things being equal, the more likely they are to be accurate.
And the Kirtland Safety Society [Anti-] Banking Company was an
illegal sham, a
colossal failure, and the cause of Joseph Smith's having to flee the scene posthaste in order to avoid mob justice.
Wilford Woodruff recorded in his journal that Joseph Smith had received an audible revelation from God sanctioning the formation of the illegal "bank."
How ironic, then, that Joseph Smith, writing in the
Messenger and Advocate (3:560) shortly after the Society's ruin, had this to say:
"To the brethren and friends of the church of Latter Day Saints [Sorry, Floyd--this must not have been the true church], I am disposed to say a word relative to the bills of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank. I hereby warn them to beware of speculators, renegades and gamblers, who are duping the unsuspecting and the unwary, by palming upon them, those bills, which are of no worth here. I discountenance and disapprove of any and all such practices. I know them to be detrimental to the best interests of society, as well as to the principles of religion. - JOSEPH SMITH Jun."
The entire debacle might have been avoided had Smith simply obeyed the law. Maybe the legislature that denied the permit request in the first place had "the best interests of society" in view, a perspective Smith would only come to share after his illegal venture financially ruined folks and caused his name to be had for evil, even--I believe, primarily--amongst many of his former followers.
Whether or not the incident Wyl reports is factual or not, KSSABC was, again, an illegal sham and a colossal failure, though one ostensibly precipitated by divine revelation.
Chris