Joseph Smith's Memory

[_Uncle Dale]

...Looking at the night and day differences in the future her son would face if she went along with the story or denied it, it's hard to blame her for deciding to stick with it to the end.

Of course I was not there at Amboy on April 6, 1860 -- but I
am convinced that, had I been there, this would have been
the conversation:

Dale -- Sister Emma, must I pay tithing to your son Joseph III,
or to the Presiding Bishop, in order to be saved?

Emma -- Of course you must, Bro. Broadhurst. This is the
One True Church, you know.

Dale -- But I do not believe your late husband was a monogamist.

Emma -- You can trust me, Dale. Trust your immortal soul to
the godly truth of my honesty as a divine witness........

UD

[_Harold Lee]

All just speculation but if Emma was corroborating stories to support her husband/family/lifestyle, what's to say Joseph's family and parents didn't do the same for him also (especially when this was the first time they had a comfortable lifestyle together and looked like maybe their only shot)? The Whitmers did to support David given how promising a future he had with mormondom at the time?

Essentially the church could well have been filled with NOM's at the start, and became the cult it is today after BY and 150 years of isolation.

[_CaliforniaKid]

It's hard to blame Emma at all, in fact she's probably one of the few many that feel on the fringe can sympathize with. She was essentially a Mormon by marriage and locked in to be a good support, and tried to make the most of a hellish life it caused her. Some Mormons that call themselves NOM are only culturally Mormon and can't leave because they're tied so deeply into it for marriage/family/other reasons.

Emma as the archetypal NOM. Now there's an interesting thought.

[_Themis]

Why Me, why should we believe Emma's testimony about anything, when the second prophet of the Restoration assures us that she is one of the damnedest liars on this earth?

Why believe anybody?

We believe based on our experiences with them. I have a relative who tells lots of stories, but I still believe him on many other issues I know he has no reason to lie. Most people I know well don't lie almost with everything, so I tend to believe them even with things a little more unusual. With Emma we know she has lied about Joseph, so she cannot really be trusted in this regards, especially if there is motivation for her to lie. Considering she wanted her son to be the prophet, she has good motivation to lie with everything about Joseph and the religion he created.

[Guest]

I don't think Emma was an apostate, but it seems pretty clear that she was a liar, at least where her late husband was concerned.

The problem with lying is that eventually the lie catches up with that person until suddenly the lie becomes larger than life. Such was the case with Emma and polygamy. Once she lied about it the lie got out of hand. I do believe that she suffered emotionally from the lie. But she couldn't back track on it.

These things happen in life. White lies may go unnoticed but a black lie does and the effects can be devastating.

[_why me]

With Emma we know she has lied about Joseph, so she cannot really be trusted in this regards, especially if there is motivation for her to lie. Considering she wanted her son to be the prophet, she has good motivation to lie with everything about Joseph and the religion he created.

She lied about polygamy and this did have devastating effect. The lie got bigger and bigger until it got out of control. This can happen with a lie. And it happened to emma. She got caught out because such a lie could never be hidden. Her son joseph III found out that it was a lie too. But he most likely forgave his mother. He knew that his mother was suffering about his father's murder and the past persecution.

We are only human with human faults.

[_why me]

All just speculation but if Emma was corroborating stories to support her husband/family/lifestyle, what's to say Joseph's family and parents didn't do the same for him also (especially when this was the first time they had a comfortable lifestyle together and looked like maybe their only shot)?

Yea, being chased out of communities, fearing persecution from mobs and eventually ending with the death of their two sons would be a real comfortable lifestyle. Don't you wish you had the same lifestyle? Poor Lucy.

[Guest]

I don't think Emma was an apostate, but it seems pretty clear that she was a liar, at least where her late husband was concerned.

The problem with lying is that eventually the lie catches up with that person until suddenly the lie become larger than life. Such was the case with Emma and polygamy. Once she lied about it the lie got out of hand. I do believe that she suffered emotionally from the lie. But she couldn't back track on it.

These things happen in life. White lies may go unnoticed but a black lie does and the effects can be devastating.

Yep, just one of those things. Some days you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Some days you just make mistakes. And some days you systematically, methodically deceive thousands of people about your late husband's activities so your son can become the head of a church that is largely based on the self-serving deceptions you are promulgating.

Just one of those things that sometimes happens in life. I mean, who on the board can honestly say that he or she hasn't perpetrated a massive religious fraud at some time or other?

[_Darth J]

All just speculation but if Emma was corroborating stories to support her husband/family/lifestyle, what's to say Joseph's family and parents didn't do the same for him also (especially when this was the first time they had a comfortable lifestyle together and looked like maybe their only shot)?

Yea, being chased out of communities, fearing persecution from mobs and eventually ending with the death of their two sons would be a real comfortable lifestyle. Don't you wish you had the same lifestyle? Poor Lucy.

That being the case, please explain why Emma didn't go to Utah, since the purported reason for the Brighamites heading west was to escape the persecution of which you speak.

I wonder why Emma didn't continue to be mobbed and persecuted when she remained in the territorial United States and still professed that the Book of Mormon was true and her late husband was a prophet. Feel free to explain that, too.

[_why me]

That being the case, please explain why Emma didn't go to Utah, since the purported reason for the Brighamites heading west was to escape the persecution of which you speak.

I wonder why Emma didn't continue to be mobbed and persecuted when she remained in the territorial United States and still professed that the Book of Mormon was true and her late husband was a prophet. Feel free to explain that, too.

I believe that she left nauvoo and returned later when the smoke cleared. Who was going to mob her? The Mormons had left and no longer posed a threat to the nonmormons. And after losing her husband I am sure that the nonmormons did not care to bother her any more. Why didn't she go west? I think polygamy played a role but also life too. She wanted to stay where she was after being force to flee here and there. And who knows...maybe to be close to Joseph. I suppose that we will never really know.