Scott Woodward:
As the climax of the Kirtland Endowment on April 3, 1836, Joseph Smith received sacred keys in rapid succession from Moses, Elias, and Elijah. This was the primary purpose for which the Kirtland Temple was built. Joseph had now received all that was necessary for the next phase of temple building, which he hoped would take place in northern Missouri at the settlements of Far West and Adam-ondi-Ahman. But due to heinous persecution, neither of these temples ever came to be, and the saints found themselves in 1839 as refugees in a swampy, malaria-infested peninsula in Illinois that the prophet would name Nauvoo. It was there, over the next few years, that the theology, the rituals and those Kirtland keys, like pieces of a puzzle, began to come together to reveal the stunning purpose of the Nauvoo Temple and every temple that would be built thereafter. The Lord referred to this temple purpose as restoring the fullness of the priesthood. The prophet Joseph referred to it as the restoration of the priesthood or as the work of connecting the priesthood. But what does this mean? And how would temple ordinances given to men and women living and dead constitute the work of restoring or connecting the priesthood? In today’s episode of Church History Matters we’re excited to talk about all of this. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our third episode in this series about the development of Latter-day Saint temple worship. Now let’s get into it. Hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
Hi, Scott. How’s it going?

Scott Woodward:
Great. I’m excited to talk about more temples today.

Casey Griffiths:
More, more temples. And phew. Should we mention that we’re recording this on the day we found out the Kirtland Temple got sold?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, say it. Say it.

Casey Griffiths:
All right. All right. We did record a mini episode.

Scott Woodward:
Bonus episode.

Casey Griffiths:
We’re recording this about half hour after we found out that Community of Christ has sold the Kirtland Temple and all the historic sites they own in Nauvoo and a number of historic documents and artifacts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward:
Wow.

Casey Griffiths:
So if we seem a little distracted while we’re having this discussion, it’s because we have friends and family that are texting us, saying, oh my goodness. And we’re—I’m still processing the news myself.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. That’s a big day for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like . . .

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. This is like a “where were you at when this happened” sort of thing, where I’ll remember that I was in a zoom conversation with you, Scott, when we found out.

Scott Woodward:
I can’t think of anyone better to have learned this news with, Casey, than my fellow church history nerd.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Like, while we’re talking about temples, while we’re doing our temple series.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
What a cool coincidence.

Casey Griffiths:
Good timing here. And, I mean, last week when we talked about the Kirtland Temple, I was thinking maybe we do a little thing on ownership of the Kirtland Temple, but that story just got more complicated. By the way, shout out to the Joseph Smith Papers. They did an excellent podcast series on Kirtland, and there’s a great discussion. It’s now a little outdated, but there’s a great discussion on ownership of the Kirtland Temple and how it went from the Joseph Smith era into the hands of Community of Christ and now, as of today, back into the hands of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So go and check that out. The JSP does some great stuff, and Spencer McBride, who does their podcast, is excellent, so . . .

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I like Spencer a lot.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, he’s a good guy.

Scott Woodward:
So let’s keep that momentum of temple excitement going today, shall we, Casey?

Casey Griffiths:
Yes. Let’s definitely do it. So let’s recap what we’ve done so far, and then we’ll press on. So give us a little background on what we did.

Scott Woodward:
Yes. So in our last episode we talked about the Kirtland endowment, and we saw that this endowment was very different from what we think of when we talk about a temple endowment today. The word endowment means a gift, and the Lord had promised to give the saints in Ohio a gift, an endowment of power. He called it an endowment of power from on high, and so he wasn’t talking about a specific ordinance here. That being said, the gifts of power the Lord gave often did come on the heels of ordinances.

Casey Griffiths:
Correct.

Scott Woodward:
There are basically, as we broke it down, about three categories of gifts of power given during this time. For example, number one, one of the gifts of power the Lord gave the saints at this time was an abundant outpouring of spiritual manifestations in that early 1836 time period from January to April. We’re talking visions, speaking in tongues, singing in tongues—

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
—seeing pillars of light, seeing angels, some even seeing Jesus. And that type of empowerment came consistently after church leaders administered the simple ordinances of washing with water, anointing with oil, and sealing the anointing with a blessing. There was also another ordinance they were doing called the washing of feet, which was an ordinance of fellowship and of cleansing from the sins of that generation. And then there were more spiritual outpourings in the midst of the dedication of the Kirtland Temple. Another—we could call that an ordinance, right? Ordinance of dedication.

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
The second category of divine gifts of empowerment we talked about last time, Casey, was when the Lord entrusted the Prophet Joseph with significant doctrinal teachings related to the salvation of mankind.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The best example of this is now recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 137, where the Lord explained in the midst of a vision that, “All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God. Also all that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom.” Then he also goes on to explain that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of God. Wow. And, Casey, that gift of knowledge, by the way, again, comes on the heels of Joseph receiving the ordinances of washing and anointing and the sealing of that anointing. That’s when all heaven broke loose in the upper room of the Kirtland Temple. Now, the third and last category of gifts of power the Lord gave during this time came just on the heels of the ordinance of the sacrament, right there in the Kirtland Temple. This was the gift of temple keys, and by that I don’t just mean keys that happened to be restored in the Kirtland Temple. I mean the keys restored that would make possible the work that we do in temples today.

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
These keys were restored on April 3, 1836 by Moses, who brought the keys of gathering baptized Israel together to build temples; Elias, who brought the keys of temple marriage, all tied in with the blessings of Abraham; and then finally, Elijah, who brought the keys to seal the human family together into the family of God. These keys, I feel safe in saying, Casey, were unquestionably the most important fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to endow the saints with power from on high.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
As Elder Joseph Fielding Smith explained, he said, the Kirtland Temple was built primarily for the restoration of keys of authority. In the receiving of these keys, he says, the fullness of gospel ordinances is revealed. And so that’s the capstone of the Kirtland endowment. And with those keys, now the entirety of the Lord’s purposes for mankind can now be fulfilled. Without them, as Moroni explained to Joseph when he was 17, the earth would be utterly wasted, but with them, right, the earth can now fulfill the measure of its creation and mankind upon it.

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a quick, crash course rundown of last time. So, with those keys now entrusted to Joseph and Oliver, the stage is set for the next chapter of temple building in our history, which is what we want to talk about on today’s episode.

Casey Griffiths:
Right. And there’s some things that happen in the historical timeline that we’re not going to spend a ton of time on. For instance, we’ve talked at length about the Kirtland apostasy. To make a long story short, less than two years after the Kirtland Temple was dedicated and all these miraculous events happened, a financial crisis in Kirtland causes Joseph Smith to leave, and Kirtland, there’s still some people that stay there and hang in there, but for the most part, ceases to become the center of the church. Joseph Smith moves to Far West, Missouri, which becomes church headquarters, and as sad as that apostasy that happened was, and the fact that the Kirtland Temple is left behind, functionally the Kirtland Temple had served its purpose. Part of the announcement today that ownership of the Kirtland Temple would go into church hands was that it’s not going to be—the Kirtland Temple is not going to be converted into an ordinance temple like the ones that most Latter-day Saints are familiar with. It just wasn’t built for that purpose, and I think to convert it would destroy the historic nature of the building.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And so it’s going to be a historic site that all people can visit, and that’s partially what Kirtland was for. It’s sad that the temple was left behind, but it had served its purpose, essentially. It allowed them to receive this three-part endowment, the way you’ve described it, and it also kind of put into Joseph Smith’s hands all the puzzle pieces that he needs to start assembling the larger theology surrounding the redemption of the dead. Certain things like, he sees his brother in the Celestial Kingdom, but he’s not told exactly how he got to the Celestial Kingdom. He’s given keys from these three ancient prophets, but he’s not told exactly what they do. And it’s not until he has a couple years to kind of sort through and put the pieces together that the larger picture starts to emerge. Is that fair to say?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that’s super important as we tell this story: to just continue to highlight that Joseph Smith is getting this line upon line. He doesn’t have the full picture yet. 1836, he has the keys.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
He’s got a few core doctrines, but when we get to Nauvoo, we’re going to start to see that’s going to continue line upon line, year after year, all the way up, really, until, like, the month before he dies he’s dropping new nuggets that he’s learning and putting the whole picture together of temple theology and practice.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I like how you said that. He’s got all the puzzle pieces now, got those keys, and he got those in 1836, but he doesn’t seem to exercise them in any significant way until 18—I’d say ’41. And we’ll get to that today. So it’s interesting that we have this time period, and, you know, when I summarize this with my students, I’ll say, why didn’t he exercise those keys until 1841? And the short answer is because he was very busy, so we’ll tell some of that story today.

Casey Griffiths:
You ain’t just whistling Dixie, Scott. Like, a lot of things happen.

Scott Woodward:
So much happened.

Casey Griffiths:
Especially when Joseph Smith gets to Missouri, it’s sort of an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” type situation, where the Kirtland apostasy was bad, but when they get to Missouri, like, a full-scale war breaks out.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, man.

Casey Griffiths:
But to keep a tight focus on temples—

Scott Woodward:
You are exercising great restraint, Casey. I—that was—

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
—well done.

Casey Griffiths:
I want to go off on a tangent and talk about the Missouri persecutions, but that’s another discussion for another day.

Scott Woodward:
Liberty Jail, Quincy, oh, man.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
So much to talk about. What we do know is this: it’s clear that Kirtland was not going to be the only temple. We’ve already talked about this, but they had planned temples in Zion, a whole temple complex, the way they described it, that they built this temple at Kirtland kind of as plan B, to be honest with you. Plan A was to build the city of Zion with twenty-four temples at the center of it. And as soon as Joseph Smith arrives in Far West, it’s also clear that they’re going to build the temple there, too.

Scott Woodward:
Yes. How long are they there before it’s announced that there will be a temple in Far West?

Casey Griffiths:
So my understanding is Joseph Smith arrives in Far West in the spring of 1838 and almost immediately receives a revelation. This is section 115, which is kind of well known for giving the full name of the church in the latter days, and part of section 115, verses 7 and 8, “Let the city, Far West, be a holy and consecrated land unto me; and it shall be called most holy, for the ground upon which thou standest is holy. Therefore, I command you to build a house unto me, for the gathering together of my saints, that they may worship me.” So there’s the official commandment to build it.

Scott Woodward:
And that’s April, right? That’s April 1838.

Casey Griffiths:
April 1838. They probably had plans to build the temple from the time they started to build the settlement. It seems like the structure of Zion, that original idea of a city built around a temple or a temple complex, was being transferred to all Latter-day Saint settlements. So in Zion they were going to build twenty-four temples. In Kirtland we have a map that shows three structures that are very similar. We talked about this: a house for the presidency, like a church administration building; house of the Lord, the Kirtland Temple; and a house for printing the scriptures. We do have a plat for Far West. This is available on the Joseph Smith Papers site. And right at the center is a temple in the central square of the city.

Scott Woodward:
And that’s really all that’s left today, right? If you go to Far West, all you have is that tiny, little—

Casey Griffiths:
That’s all that’s left.

Scott Woodward:
—center plot, and everything else is just fields as far as the eye can see.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Scott and I have visited Far West together for a Scripture Central video. Go check it out. And, I mean, it’s the four cornerstones of the temple surrounded by a fence and a granite monument where, carved into stone, are excerpts from the revelations received at Far West. Then there’s a little Community of Christ chapel on the other side of the street, which you and I visited, too. We went in, and we had a lovely visit with the local Community of Christ congregants there.

Scott Woodward:
We did.

Casey Griffiths:
They were super, very gracious.

Scott Woodward:
They were very nice.

Casey Griffiths:
Outside of that, there’s nothing. And unique things happened at this temple. Section 118 commanded the apostles to leave from the temple site, which they do, but, again, that’s a whole other story for another day. This temple never really gets off the ground. They lay the cornerstones, but that’s about all they’re able to do. And Far West, unfortunately, is—I mean, it does hang on as a sort of town for a couple decades after the saints leave, but the saints are expelled from Missouri.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And I just want to say one more thing: look at verse 14 there in that revelation. D&C 115:14. I find it significant that the Lord says this, “But let a house be built unto my name according to the pattern which I will show unto them.” Oh, that’s interesting. The First Presidency would get a different pattern for temple building than, I assume, the Kirtland Temple.

Casey Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
This is not the Kirtland Temple pattern. This sounds like it’s going to be a new pattern, right? Joseph has the keys now for a different kind of temple, and no doubt the Far West Temple would have been a lot more like the Nauvoo Temple than the Kirtland Temple had it been built. I mean, that’s pure speculation, but I find it interesting the Lord says, we’re going to do a different kind of temple here. It’s a new pattern that I will show unto you. That’s fascinating.

Casey Griffiths:
We do have some rudimentary sketches of the Far West Temple, and it looks a lot like the Kirtland Temple, but you’re right: that could have been just them saying, oh, well, we’ve done this once before, let’s use this again, and then the Lord’s saying, I’m actually going to give you a different pattern this time, because the Nauvoo Temple ends up being similar in some ways to the Kirtland Temple, but in a lot of ways extremely different.

Scott Woodward:
It looks similar externally.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s the internal functions that are significantly different. Although even in the Nauvoo temple you still have the pulpits on the basement, right? Which, that’s a kind of a relic we don’t do in modern temples today with the—because the pulpits on the one side and the Aaronic Priesthood pulpits on the other side, that is in the Nauvoo temple, but then upstairs you have the endowment areas, you have sealing rooms, and in the basement a baptismal font. So, yeah, I just wonder if this verse the Lord is saying, there’s a new kind of a temple that I want to show you. Now that you’ve got the keys from Kirtland we’re going to do things a little differently now.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, I would bet that’s the case. But like I said, they never even get past the cornerstone foundation phase for this temple.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s all we’ve got: the cornerstones. And those are still there. You can go see them. They’re under glass now, but that’s it.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s as far as they got.

Casey Griffiths:
And go visit Far West. I mean, it’s lovely, and there’s nice bathrooms, but that’s about it.

Scott Woodward:
I don’t know if I want to travel that far for the bathrooms, but . . .

Casey Griffiths:
They’re very nice bathrooms, Scott.

Scott Woodward:
Guys, you have got to get out there and see the Far West bathrooms. They are amazing.

Casey Griffiths:
My wife, that is what she really admires about church history sites is there’s always a nice bathroom, and I appreciate that.

Scott Woodward:
So what happens after Far West?

Casey Griffiths:
Okay, so the Saints are primarily gathered in a string of settlements in northwest Missouri. The other largest one besides Far West is Adam-ondi-Ahman, which is formerly known as Spring Hill until Joseph Smith received section 116, which designates Spring Hill as Adam-ondi-Ahman, saying that it is the place where the Ancient of Days shall appear to his people, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet. This is all section 116 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Now Adam-ondi-Ahman was the main settlement of the church in Davies County. Caldwell County was where the Saints had been asked to settle by the Missouri legislature, but they needed more space, so they started to settle in Davies as well, and Adam-ondi-Ahman’s there.

Scott Woodward:
And this is just due north of Far West, right? Just straight up one county north. If you’re looking at it on a map, it’s, like, directly above the Far West area.

Casey Griffiths:
Correct. Correct. And if you go to Adam-ondi-Ahman today, there’s even less than there is in Far West. There’s a big sign. There’s a nice overlook. There’s bathrooms. The bathrooms aren’t as nice as the ones at Far West, but there are bathrooms there. That’s about it.

Scott Woodward:
But we think it’s the very bathrooms that were used by Parley P. Pratt.

Casey Griffiths:
Now you’re taking it too far.

Scott Woodward:
Sorry. Continue. Continue.

Casey Griffiths:
So Adam-ondi-Ahman is very much in its early planning stages when the Missouri persecutions break out. It’s that summer that Joseph Smith receives the revelation, and they decide to set up a settlement there. Lyman White and a couple people are already living there. And it’s in October of 1838, when things are just getting really bad, that they sort of quickly and hastily dedicate a site for the temple. And just to show how bad things are, Joseph Smith doesn’t dedicate the site. For the first time, dedication of a temple site is delegated to an apostle. So in the middle of this violence, Heber C. Kimball, who’s one of the apostles, writes this: he said, “While there we laid out a city on a high, elevated piece of land, set the stakes for the four corners of a temple block which was dedicated, Brother Brigham Young being mouth. There were from three to five hundred men present on this occasion under arms. This elevated spot was probably 250 to 500 feet above the level of the Grand River, so that one could look east, west, north, or south as far as the eye could reach. It was one of the most beautiful places I ever beheld,” and I agree with Heber: if anybody here has been to Adam-ondi-Ahman, it’s one of the prettiest places you’ll ever see.

Scott Woodward:
So serene and peaceful.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s special. Like, I know that it’s just a field with an overlook, but I have people all the time, when they go on church history tours, say, “That was my favorite spot.” You know, there’s just something wonderful and peaceful there.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
I want to emphasize, we do not know precisely where this temple was. We’ve got a rough idea of where the settlement was going to be laid out, and into the 20th century some of the buildings of the settlement, like Lyman White’s cabin, were still there, but we have a general sense of where the town square would have been, and that’s where the temple would go.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
But this doesn’t even make it to the cornerstone phase. Brigham Young dedicates the site, and then it’s within a matter of days before they have to evacuate Adam-ondi-Ahman.

Scott Woodward:
The extermination order is issued at the end of that month, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I mean, so things are bad, bad.

Casey Griffiths:
I mean, they couldn’t have picked a more challenging place to try and build two temples than Far West and Adam-ondi-Ahman because It’s like everybody around them wants them to leave, the governor’s against them, but they just keep persisting.

Scott Woodward:
Bless them for their temple focus.

Casey Griffiths:
They’ve got their priorities straight, but . . .

Scott Woodward:
The context is rough.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Open warfare breaks out between the Saints. This is when Haun’s Mill happens. This is when—the Battle of Crooked River, this is when Joseph Smith is arrested and dragged from jail to jail until he ends up in Liberty Jail. It just doesn’t happen for these Missouri temples, but these are part of the lost temples of Missouri. So Scott and I did a pretty good video on this where we visit the Temple Lot in Independence and then go to Far West and then go to Adam-ondi-Ahman. Go and check it out.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, we should put a link to it in our show notes today.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. But not only are these temples lost to the 19th-century saints, we have yet to build them in the 21st century. They’re still open ground, open space. I don’t know what the church plans to do, if they’d ever say we need to fulfill the command to build the Far West or Adam-ondi-Ahman temples, but we do own the land now, so that’s encouraging.

Scott Woodward:
There’s not a lot of people around, and so, you know, if you wanted to have humans actually going to the temple and doing ordinances in the temple, we would need to also build some settlements in the area.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Unless they became just, like, commuter temples for people interested in church history, but practically speaking, there’s not a big need for temples out in the open plains of the Far West area or on the rolling hills of Adam-ondi-Ahman, but that’d be super cool if it happened.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So failure to launch, I guess we’d say, in Missouri. The Saints wind up as refugees on the banks of the Mississippi River. I mean, they’re evicted from Missouri under threat of an extermination order. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And so where’s the next temple going to go, Scott? Where do we rebuild?

Scott Woodward:
They then set out to build yet another city. This one they will call the city of Nauvoo. Joseph will name it that. It’s Commerce, Illinois before that. It was a swamp land. Joseph and his family are going to move there in May of 1839. This is after he just got out of Liberty Jail just a month earlier. He negotiates the purchase of that land from Isaac Galland, and then he moves there in May 1839. He calls for all the Saints to gather there in July of 1839, but then that October Joseph will leave for several months. He’s going to go to Washington, D. C. to seek U. S. President Martin Van Buren’s help in getting redress for the material losses of the Saints in Missouri. That’s going to be a bust. He’s gone for several months. He won’t return back to Nauvoo until March of 1844, this is all part of what we meant, Casey, when we said that Joseph was busy.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
There’s the Kirtland apostasy, then there’s the Far West, there’s the Mormon War, there’s the extermination order, then there’s Joseph in Liberty Jail, and then when he gets finally out of jail and he comes to this place called Commerce, he’s only there for a few months before he then leaves to go to Washington, D. C. to try to get the President of the United States to help us, which President Van Buren does not, but when he finally gets back in March of 1840, nothing yet has happened very temple-y, very temple-centric, in Nauvoo, and it won’t until that August. August 15th of that year, he gives a sermon at the funeral of one of his friends and bodyguard Seymour Brunson. Casey, you and I have stood at Seymour Brunson’s grave together, haven’t we? In Nauvoo.

Casey Griffiths:
Yep.

Scott Woodward:
And he announces there something really important, which wasn’t clearly connected to the temple yet, but it will be. Do you want to talk about what happens there, Casey?

Casey Griffiths:
So maybe we ought to set the table a little bit here and talk about what’s going on in Nauvoo. So . . .

Scott Woodward:
Okay. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
A lot of historians have emphasized that when they get to Nauvoo, death is present. They’ve lost people in Missouri. This is the way Richard Bennett estimates it: he said, “Over fifty saints had died during the Missouri persecutions. At least sixty-one perished in 1839, another sixty-three in 1840, for an alarmingly high mortality rate of approximately 30 to 1,000.24. Now, when you and I were in Nauvoo we researched this and found that that’s higher than COVID.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a high death rate.

Casey Griffiths:
If I remember correctly, the death rate for COVID was something like 19 out of 1,000. This is 30 out of 1,000, and Nauvoo is not a pleasant place when they get there. For instance, Joseph Smith names Nauvoo “Nauvoo the beautiful,” but in another place he calls it a deathly sick, sickly hole.

Scott Woodward:
What’s the Hebrew word for the deathly sickly hole?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, they didn’t pull that one out. And he writes to a private friend where he says, we’re encouraging people to gather, but I’m worried about the mortality in this place, because Nauvoo is a swamp when they get there.

Scott Woodward:
So lots of sickness being spread by the mosquitoes there, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Was it malaria? What was the . . .

Casey Griffiths:
It’s malaria. They call it ague.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, ague.

Casey Griffiths:
But, I mean, a number of important church leaders die. We’re talking David Patten, first apostolic martyr of this generation; Frederick G. Williams, who was a former member of the First Presidency; Joseph Smith’s brother Don Carlos dies; Joseph Smith’s son, named after his brother Don Carlos, dies.

Scott Woodward:
Jeez.

Casey Griffiths:
And Joseph Smith’s dad dies, too. And on Joseph Smith’s father’s deathbed, he sees Alvin as well. So a second vision of Alvin takes place, this time with Joseph Smith, Sr.

Scott Woodward:
Bishop Partridge died that same year of 1840.

Casey Griffiths:
Bishop Partridge dies. I mean, a lot of people. A lot of people.

Scott Woodward:
These are deaths from the Missouri persecutions and the—

Casey Griffiths:
And the settlement of Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. It’s just kind of a one-two punch, that they lose a lot of people in Missouri, and then they lose a lot of people settling Nauvoo. So death is on everyone’s minds. And they have faith in Jesus Christ, they believe in the resurrection, and Joseph Smith also starts to put things together. In July 1838, this is when he’s in Far West, someone asks, what has become of all those who’ve died since the days of the apostles? Joseph Smith says, all those who have not had an opportunity of hearing the gospel and being administered unto by an inspired man in the flesh must have it hereafter before they can be finally judged. So summer of 1838, before he gets to Nauvoo, he’s starting to say, there’s got to be a way for people that haven’t had a chance to hear the gospel to be ministered to so that their judgment is fair.

Scott Woodward:
That’s another layer on top of what he learned in Kirtland, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
In Kirtland the Lord told him that all those who would have received the gospel, had they had the opportunity to receive it, will be heirs in that kingdom. What the Lord doesn’t say is what the mechanism is by which they’re going to get there. And now Joseph is, either by revelation or intuiting here, they must be administered to at some point before judgment.

Casey Griffiths:
There has to be a way to minister to them.

Scott Woodward:
Administer the ordinance of baptism, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So he puts that out in 1838, and then Seymour Brunson’s funeral is two years later. Seymour Brunson is a prominent member of the church in Nauvoo. He’s very well known. At the funeral Joseph Smith gets up, and Simon Baker is a young man who’s there. He described Joseph Smith reading 1 Corinthians 15, including verse 29, “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?” And then Joseph Smith, according to Simon Baker, said the Apostle Paul was, “talking to a people who understood baptism for the dead, for it was practiced among them.” Then Simon Baker says, “Seeing a widow whose son had died without baptism,” and we think we know who this widow is, too, “the prophet said except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, and that not one jot nor tittle of the Savior’s word should pass away, but all should be fulfilled. Then Joseph Smith announced that the time to act to fulfill the Savior’s teaching had arrived, and the saints could now act for their friends who had departed this life, that the plan of salvation was calculated to save all who were willing to obey the requirements of the law of God.” So Seymour Brunson’s funeral introduces the idea of baptisms for the dead, which is the next major development in temple work, right?

Scott Woodward:
And do we think that woman he was talking to was Jane Neyman?

Casey Griffiths:
That’s my money. Yeah, Jane Neyman is the first person to be baptized on behalf of the dead. She was baptized on behalf of her son, Cyrus.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And I think that’s the widow that Joseph Smith was probably referring to. Do I have anything to back that up?

Scott Woodward:
Nope.

Casey Griffiths:
But given the fact that she’s the first person to perform a baptism for the dead, and it’s for her son, I think she’s probably the person he was referring to in the audience.

Scott Woodward:
What I find so fun about that story, the fact that she went down and got baptized on behalf of her son, is that she just gets this guy named Harvey Olmstead to go baptize her. And the prophet Joseph doesn’t even know that they’re doing this, and there’s no set prayer yet or anything like that, and so when Joseph heard that the first baptisms for the dead had been done, he asked how it was done, and so they explained to him what Harvey did and what he said, and Joseph thought about it for a second, and then he said, basically, that counts. We’re going to count that. And so later on, you know, he’s going to have some letters to write in the Doctrine and Covenants 127, 128, which are going to kind of set in order and put a structure, talk about witnesses, how things need to be recorded when these things are done, but for that very first baptism for the dead, there was a great amount of grace.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And one other neat piece of trivia about this first baptism is the witness was Vienna Jacques. Vienna Jacques rode her horse into the river and observed the ordinance as a witness. So back in 2018 when the church changed its policy so that women could serve as witnesses to baptisms and to proxy baptisms and to sealings, this was actually a return—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
—to something we’d done in Nauvoo. You’ll also notice a ton of topsy turvy stuff. Jane was baptized on behalf of her son.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, a woman for a man.

Casey Griffiths:
Doesn’t seem like they had rules about that in Nauvoo. They didn’t have rules about women acting as witnesses or anything like that. And like you said, Joseph Smith actually said, how’d you do it? They’re figuring this out as they went, and they’re kind of feeling things out. So like most other things in the church, the principles and the authority were given to Joseph Smith, but the actual “how do we do this” was something that he was sort of left to figure out on his own in collaboration with the other members of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. I find that so fascinating. Again, back to your puzzle pieces analogy, like, he’s got all the pieces, and now he’s starting to roll them out, and they’re not in any systematic way yet, and that’s okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Shortly after this we have people that now start to go into the Mississippi River right there by Nauvoo, and they start to just baptize each other. Wilford Woodruff recalls going down there with Joseph and saying, “We went into the Mississippi River one Sunday night after meeting and baptized a hundred.” Joseph did, and he says, “I baptized another hundred. The next man a few rods from me baptized another hundred.” He says, “We were strung up and down the Mississippi baptizing for our dead. Why did we do it? Because of the feeling of joy that we had to think that we in the flesh could stand and redeem our dead.” Like, they’re just excited about this. They’re going into the river and doing it.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Was there a lot of recording going on? Was there a lot of witnesses? I don’t know.

Casey Griffiths:
A lot of enthusiasm, but not much structure is what it sounds like.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s kind of how it starts.

Casey Griffiths:
We should mention that at first baptisms for the dead weren’t even associated with the temple.

Scott Woodward:
Not at all.

Casey Griffiths:
It was just, like, here’s water: let’s do baptisms. But that starts to create problems. For instance, men and women are being baptized indiscriminately for deceased friends and ancestors. No consideration about systemization. No consideration of gender. Vilate Kimball said, “Since the order has been preached here, the waters have been continually troubled.” I don’t think she’s saying that they’re in trouble.

Scott Woodward:
Ripples continue to flow in the river because—

Casey Griffiths:
Ripples continue to flow.

Scott Woodward:
—people keep getting in there and getting baptized.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s a good troubled.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Just to illustrate, let me give you a couple of statistics, and this comes from Richard Bennett’s excellent book, Temples Rising. He said, “River baptisms continued through much of 1841. At least 6,818 baptisms for the dead were performed in the river, with most being done for deceased aunts, uncles, parents, followed closely by grandparents and great parents, while 55 percent were for males and 45 percent were for deceased females, 43.9 percent of those baptisms were done by women for men or men for women, many of which were redone in future years in Utah.” And the other thing that happened is people started to get baptized for famous people. Like Richard Bennett notes, people took it upon themselves to baptize for the dead leading political figures such as Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington. Emma Smith was baptized on behalf of her father, Isaac Hale, who had died just two years before and was very opposed to her marriage to Joseph Smith and to the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yes, he was.

Casey Griffiths:
Lucy Mack Smith was baptized for her parents, Solomon and Lydia Mack, and for her sister Louisa Tuttle. Hyrum Smith acted as proxy for his brother Alvin. Although Joseph Smith himself is never listed as proxy, he personally performed at least 105 baptisms in the Mississippi River. So it’s totally understandable that this would happen. Like, if you had just had revealed to you that you could be baptized for the dead, I mean, I’d get baptized for all my relatives, and then I have a list of celebrities I would get baptized for, too. Like, I’ve run this hypothetical discussion, and once my relatives were all taken care of, I would get baptized for Abraham Lincoln. He’s top person on my list.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Abraham Lincoln. I would get baptized for Harry Truman, and then I’d get baptized for Tom Petty.

Scott Woodward:
Wow.

Casey Griffiths:
So I don’t know who’s on your list, Scott, but . . .

Scott Woodward:
Well, once you were baptized for Tom Petty, then he would be free.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Free Fallin’.

Casey Griffiths:
Free Fallin’.

Scott Woodward:
Should we just queue him up right now?

*Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” plays*

Scott Woodward:
Okay. We’re ridiculous. For me, the famous person I first think of whose work I’d want to do is C. S. Lewis.

Casey Griffiths:
Oh, I should have thought of him. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Who else? I’m reading Marcus Aurelius right now, and I’m really liking Marcus Aurelius, the ancient Roman emperor, philosopher king. He’s awesome.

Casey Griffiths:
Nice.

Scott Woodward:
I’d do it for Marcus Aurelius. So many people.

Casey Griffiths:
Thomas More.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Chris Farley. You name it.

Scott Woodward:
Chris Farley.

Casey Griffiths:
Understandably, this was chaotic. This was not structured very well. And as is natural after a couple of months of doing it kind of willy nilly with enthusiasm and not much structure, the Lord has to start to impose structure on baptisms for the dead.

Scott Woodward:
If we put this on the timeline, Joseph introduces the doctrine of baptisms for the dead in August of 1840. There’s not even a temple announced yet in Nauvoo, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The temple’s not officially commanded until January of 1841 with Doctrine and Covenants 124, and then the Lord does say in section 124 that river baptisms will be accepted now while they’re still in their poverty, but there will come a time when river baptisms will not be accepted. That’s in verses 31 to 35 of section 124. And so they continue to do river baptisms, like you said, until October of 1841. Then Joseph Smith announces, I think in November of that year, there shall be no more baptisms for the dead until the ordinance can be attended to in the Lord’s house, and then Joseph dedicates a wooden baptismal font in the basement of the Nauvoo temple, which is very far from completion at this point, but he dedicates the font to be operative, and so they start to do baptisms there. Then, after the weather warms again, they go back out in May of 1842, back to the river, and they start doing baptisms for the dead in the river again. And so it’s on again, off again with the river.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But it’s going to be that September of 1842 where Joseph is going to write two letters that correct errors and teach the doctrine of baptisms for the dead. And that becomes sections 127 and 128 in our Doctrine and Covenants. But I want to back up a little bit before we go to those. Can we go back for a second to D&C 124—

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
—when the Lord officially commands the building of the Nauvoo Temple? I think there is a doctrinal booyah in here. There’s something very doctrinally significant about what the Lord says is the purpose of building the Nauvoo Temple, which we should talk about.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And this actually isn’t tangential to our discussion, because section 124 is where the Lord also says baptisms for the dead need to be performed in the temple.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Griffiths:
So this is the beginning of what he’s going to elaborate on further in section 127 and section 128. So go right ahead. Fire away.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. So I’m going to pick it up in verse 25. The Lord says, “And again, verily I say unto you, let all my saints come from afar. And send ye swift messengers, yea, chosen messengers, and say unto them: Come ye, with all your gold, and your silver, . . . and with all your precious things of the earth; and build a house to my name, for the Most High to dwell therein.” And then he drops verse 28, Casey. He says, “For there is not a place found on earth that he may come to and restore again that which was lost unto you, or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood.” There is the Lord’s thesis statement for why the Nauvoo Temple needs to be built. There is something called “the fulness of the priesthood” that he intends to restore, and this is significant because the Nauvoo Temple kind of becomes the prototype, right, of all future temples. And so as we practice in temples today, as we worship in temples today, as we receive ordinances in temples today, it would be good for us to remember that the purpose for these kind of temples is to restore the fulness of the priesthood.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, he writes about it like this: he said, “Be it remembered that it is only in a temple built to the name of the Lord and accepted by Him that the fulness of the priesthood can be obtained. This is the chief purpose of a temple,” he says, “that the fullness of blessings pertaining to exaltation may be given to those who are worthy, the living and the dead.” So this is really key, and what’s fascinating is the Lord doesn’t really elaborate on what he means by “the fullness of the priesthood.” Neither does Joseph Fielding Smith in that quote. But what we know is that the temples that we have today are about the restoration of the fullness of the priesthood. So that’s our first hint of what’s going on here without complete, helpful elaboration.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Then let’s fast forward from January of 1841 now to September of 1842. This is when Joseph is writing those letters. He’s in hiding. Governor Boggs has been shot in the head, but he didn’t die. People are saying that Joseph sent a hitman down there to shoot Boggs, and everyone assumed it would be Porter Rockwell that would be the guy, right? Anyway, so there’s a bounty on Joseph’s head, and so he’s in hiding. And while he’s in hiding, he is writing these letters. He’s in Nauvoo. He’s in the home of Edward Hunter, Jr. We’ve been in that house together, too, haven’t we, Casey?

Casey Griffiths:
We have.

Scott Woodward:
Fun little spot. The church recently rebuilt that home, which is significant because that’s where D&C 127 and 128 were written.

Casey Griffiths:
And for anybody that’s visiting, here’s a little Easter egg: there’s pineapple wallpaper in that home. Just FYI. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I want to just actually pay the closest attention to section 128, and we want to go over to verses 17 and 18. Now what we’re trying to decipher here is what is the fulness of the priesthood that the temples are all about, right? So here’s what Joseph says that I think is super related. He says, “I will give you a quotation from one of the prophets, who had his eye fixed on the restoration of the priesthood.” Remember that phrase: the restoration of the priesthood. “Malachi says, last chapter, verses 5th and 6th,” and he quotes the famous verse, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Notice how the prophet is using the phrase, “the restoration of the priesthood” to refer to the work of Elijah’s keys to connect children and parents down through the generations by forging what Joseph will next refer to as a welding link of some kind between the fathers and the children. He says, “The earth will be smitten with a curse unless there is a welding link of some kind or other between the fathers and the children upon some subject or other, and behold, what is that subject? It is the baptism for the dead,” he answers. So that’s fascinating, right? So Joseph is seeing this somehow connected with baptism for the dead. Now, he continues, “for it is necessary in the dispensation of the fullness of times that a whole and complete and perfect union and welding together of dispensations and keys and powers and glories should take place and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time. That is rich. Let’s just pause for a second and think about this in connection with his phrase, the restoration of the priesthood. What is he saying? What is the prophet Joseph saying here? He appears to be putting the restoration of the priesthood as synonymous with the end result of linking the human family back into that eternal priesthood order that was first instituted in the days of Adam. That’s something that’s referred to back in Doctrine and Covenants 107:40-41, that there’s this eternal holy order that was given to Adam, and it’s been kind of passed down through time, this patriarchal order, sometimes how we refer to it today, but it’s an eternal order that God belongs to, that inasmuch as there are priesthood orders on the earth today, such as the Aaronic .Priesthood order and Melchizedek Priesthood order, these exist to help funnel people into this eternal order of the gods, if we could say it like that. Sometimes it’s referred to as the Church of the Firstborn. Sometimes we just call it the Celestial Kingdom. But this is what Joseph is referring to as “the priesthood,” the eternal priesthood.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So the restoration of the priesthood is this intergenerational and interdispensational linking that occurs, Joseph is saying, through the ordinances of the temple received both for ourselves and for our dead. And here he only mentions the ordinance of baptisms for the dead because . . .

Casey Griffiths:
That’s the only ordinance that they’re aware of right now that they can do for the dead.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
And we should add, and we’ll flesh out in future episodes, that endowments and sealings for the dead don’t happen in Nauvoo. They don’t happen until the St. George Temple is dedicated in 1877, which is more than thirty years later, but Joseph is laying the framework here. He’s already set up this logical extension that if everybody has to be baptized and we can do baptisms for the dead, that is one way that we can save them. It’s completely logical that in a couple years, Brigham Young and the other leaders of the church are going to say, well, if we do baptisms for the dead, then we’re going to have to do endowments for the dead. Why wouldn’t we seal together a couple that was married in this life, even if they’re deceased now? So this is the framework that they’re going to use to construct the larger redemptive theology that has to do with how we save and exalt people that have passed on.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And Joseph will lay the breadcrumbs out here, not just in section 128, but all the way up to, you know, right before he passes. In fact, I have a quote from him on the 12th of May, 1844. This is just one month or so before he is martyred. He says this: he says, “Those who are baptized for their dead must receive their washings and their anointings for their dead, the same as for themselves, ‘til they are connected to the ones in the dispensation before us and trace their lineage to connect the priesthood again.” So now he’s adding in washings and anointings, and as you said, the other ordinances that we receive for the living will be added to the final redemptive picture when we get to Utah.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I just really want to emphasize and slow down on this idea of connecting the priesthood again, to use Joseph’s phrase. That normally we think about the priesthood as, you know, the authority of God that’s entrusted to mankind to do ordinances and stuff, and that’s an appropriate way to talk about priesthood in certain contexts, but in this original context, priesthood is talking about the people. It’s talking about an eternal order of people. It’s the order of the gods. And the purpose of the work that we’re going to be doing in temples is to connect the priesthood again, to use Joseph’s phrase there, or to restore the priesthood again, to use D&C 128, or back to D&C 124, to restore the fullness of the priesthood, to get as many people as we can sealed into God’s family, children to parents, parents to children, all the way back to Adam’s day, every dispensation being linked to every previous dispensation, until we’ve got everybody who’s willing to be part of the family of God into the family of God.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s huge. Only then can we consider the priesthood fully restored.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The purpose of the restoration, as articulated here, is about people. It’s always been about people. Yes, there needs to be truths restored. Yes, there needs to be keys of authority restored, but all of those are a means to the end of restoring people. It’s always been about people being restored into the family of God.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I’m thinking as early as, what, Joseph’s 17 years old, and Moroni is quoting Malachi to Joseph? It’s so significant the way that he phrases it that it gets put in our Doctrine and Covenants 2 later on. This idea that before the second coming of Christ, Elijah will return, which happened April 3, 1836, and restore the keys necessary to restore the fulness of the priesthood, which is going to now happen in our temples. And so that’s a lot of theology to bite off and to kind of chew on for a little while. If we don’t talk about that here, then the next pieces won’t make as much sense, but when we understand that the big picture of temples is about restoring God’s family into this thing called the Holy Order, Church of the Firstborn, the Celestial Kingdom, or the priesthood, then we’re going to be able to make sense of all the other pieces that are going to come.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Washing and anointing. The endowment. Sealing of husband and wife to each other, and then sealing husband and wife to their children. Each of these ordinances is going to play a key role in preparing us to participate in the eternal holy priesthood.

Casey Griffiths:
This is a nice setup for what we’re going to talk about next. Some of these pieces aren’t going to come together until they get to Utah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
But let me just close out with a couple of things that cap off baptisms for the dead. As commanded in section 124, they build a font in the Nauvoo temple. They dedicate the font and the basement before the rest of the temple because they’re so anxious to keep the work going. The first temple is a wooden font. There’s some evidence that baptisms continue to be performed outside of the temple on a limited basis. For instance, in August 1844, Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe went to the Mississippi River to be baptized for some of our dead friends. At the same time, in August 1844, several of the apostles were baptized for their dead in the font. They eventually replaced the wooden font with a stone font that’s more ornate that is finally dedicated in 1846. All this is left behind when the saints leave and the Nauvoo temple is—they actually try to sell it. We’ll talk about it. A couple other things: When it comes to just practice in the church, it appears that the idea of a temple recommend is first linked to baptisms for the dead. In order to have baptisms for the dead, to participate, to have access to the temple font, you had to be a full tithe payer, is one thing we see in Nauvoo. In fact, there’s a quote from John Taylor in Nauvoo where he said, “A man who has not paid his tithing is unfit to be baptized for his dead.” So this is where we start to have those requirements, those tests of fellowship to access the temple, to participate in temple ordinances. And you also see a shift in emphasis, too, as the saints leave Nauvoo. For instance, Richard Bennett notes that we don’t have any data for 1842, but in 1843 at least 1,329 proxy baptisms were performed. Another 3,359 the following year, and only twenty-four in all of 1845. And that’s mostly because in 1845 they’re getting ready to leave Nauvoo, and they’re really focused on getting everybody endowed, so baptisms are set aside temporarily. By the time they leave Nauvoo, about 15,000 proxy baptisms total were done there, and they don’t do any new baptisms for the dead until 1867, when a new font is built in the endowment house in Salt Lake City.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a big gap.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, there’s a big gap. That’s about a twenty-year gap, to be honest with you.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a big gap.

Casey Griffiths:
They don’t do baptisms for the dead, but once the endowment house is finished, then again, it’s an endowment house: it’s not a temple. It’s a temporary setup. They do have a font in the endowment house, and they do baptisms for the dead there. Then when the St. George temple is completed, that’s in 1877, baptisms for the dead were performed within that temple, and it’s been that way ever since. We don’t have any record of a baptism for the dead taking place outside a temple since St. George was dedicated. So marvelous stuff happening here, including this new wrinkle to temple work, which is temples are kind of a place where the living and the dead come together, where the keys that were given to Joseph Smith allow work to be done on both sides of the veil. Even while Joseph Smith is receiving these ordinances for the salvation of the living, he’s already thinking about, wait, we can’t just worry about saving the Latter-day Saints. We’ve got to save everybody. Like you said, all of the human family needs to have an opportunity to be ministered to. That’s the way Joseph would describe it. And also to have the opportunity to make these covenants, receive—this is a huge part of what the church does and why we build so many temples, and it all kind of starts here with this idea of being baptized for the dead. So you’ve set us up nicely for our next discussion, which is what I’m really looking forward to, which is to talk about the endowment in Nauvoo and how it develops.

Scott Woodward:
Next time, Nauvoo endowment. That should be fun.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
There’s a lot to talk about.

Casey Griffiths:
Tons.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week, Casey and I dig into the details of what we know or think we know about how the ritual of the temple endowment in Nauvoo came to be. We’ll look into what we believe are the primary source materials the Prophet Joseph drew from under inspiration in order to formulate this important ordinance. We hope to see you then. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Also, we’d love to hear your suggestions for future series on this podcast. If there’s a church history topic you think would be worth exploring for multiple episodes, send us your idea to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. We’ll consider all suggestions. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.