Thomas B. Marsh was the original president of the Quorum of the Twelve in this dispensation. If he had remained in this position, it is likely that he would have succeeded Joseph Smith as the President of Church. Had this happened, his name would likely be as well known among the Saints as Brigham Young’s is today. However, Elder Marsh’s gradual slide into apostasy is best captured in the Lord’s plea to him: “Be thou humble” (D&C 112:10). The Lord had earlier counseled him to “be patient in afflictions, revile not against those that revile” (D&C 31:9). After Joseph received Doctrine and Covenants 112, Marsh took his instructions from the Lord seriously. Heber C. Kimball later remembered that Marsh read the revelation to him and Brigham Young, remembering, “In it God told him what to do, and that was to sustain brother Joseph and to believe that what Brother Joseph said was true.”¹

In the months following, Marsh did make a genuine effort to increase unity in his quorum and support the Prophet. However, a series of events eventually led to his estrangement from the Church. Among the most well-known stories linked to his apostasy was the “cream strippings” incident, which took place in August or September 1838 in Far West, Missouri. According to the story, Marsh’s wife, Elizabeth, became embroiled in a controversy with Lucinda Harris, the wife of George W. Harris. The two women had an agreement to share milk from their cows for making cheese. Lucinda accused Elizabeth Marsh of keeping the cream strippings, considered the best part of the milk, for herself. The argument was mediated by a series of Church officials, with Marsh even appealing to the First Presidency, who sustained earlier rulings that Elizabeth was in the wrong. Thomas Marsh was so infuriated that he was said to have stated “that he would sustain the character of his wife, even if he had to go to hell for it.”² Though Marsh’s apostasy is more complicated than the result of this one situation, his pride is evident in the statements connected to this well-known story.

Shortly after this incident, Marsh left Far West with his family and began speaking out publicly against the Church. At the time the Saints were in the midst of a rising series of conflicts with other settlers in northern Missouri. Marsh swore out an affidavit against the Church leaders, in which he accused them of instigating violence, saying that “all the Mormons who refused to take up arms, if necessary in difficulties with the citizens, should be shot or otherwise put to death,” and charging that “no Mormon dissenter should leave Caldwell [County] alive.”³ The accusations made by Thomas Marsh contributed to the horrific persecutions suffered by the Church in Missouri in 1838–39, including the incarceration of Joseph Smith and other Church leaders in Liberty Jail. After making these accusations, Marsh became estranged from the Church for nearly twenty years.

1. Heber C. Kimball, in Journal of Discourses, 5:28.

2. Kay Darowski, “The Faith and Fall of Thomas Marsh,” Revelations in Context, 2016.

3. Darowski, “The Faith and Fall of Thomas Marsh.”

The contention and strife which infected the Church during 1837 came not only from Thomas B. Marsh but also from many other leaders of the Church, particularly the Quorum of the Twelve. To combat these feelings, the Lord asked Marsh, as president of the Twelve, to admonish the other Apostles for their sins and to help them find the proper path to repentance (D&C 112:12–13). During this time, Apostle Parley P. Pratt, one of the most stalwart missionaries of the Church, was beset with a series of tragedies, including the death of his wife, Thankful. Overwhelmed by grief and upset over financial losses suffered in relation to the Kirtland Safety Society, Pratt openly criticized Joseph Smith. Pratt later wrote, “There were jarrings and discords in the Church at Kirtland, and many fell away and became enemies and apostates. There were also envyings, lyings, strifes and divisions, which caused much trouble and sorrow. By such spirits I was also accused, misrepresented and abused. And at one time, I also was overcome by the same spirit in a great measure, and it seemed as if the very powers of darkness which war against the Saints were let loose upon me.”⁴

During this time of darkness, Pratt was pulled back from the brink of apostasy by a young British convert he brought into the Church several months earlier, John Taylor. When Taylor arrived in Kirtland, he was surprised when Parley began to criticize Joseph Smith. John Taylor spoke to Parley, saying:

I am surprised to hear you speak so, Brother Parley. Before you left Canada you bore a strong testimony to Joseph Smith being a Prophet of God, and to the truth of the work he has inaugurated; and you said you knew these things by revelation, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. You gave to me a strict charge to the effect that though you or an angel from heaven was to declare anything else I was not to believe it. Now Brother Parley, it is not man that I am following, but the Lord. The principles you taught me led me to Him, and I now have the same testimony that you then rejoiced in. If the work was true six months ago, it is true today; if Joseph Smith was then a prophet, he is now a prophet.⁵

Brought to repentance by John’s words, Pratt sought forgiveness from the Prophet. “I went to brother Joseph Smith in tears, and, with a broken heart and contrite spirit, confessed wherein I had erred in spirit, murmured, or done or said amiss,” Parley wrote years later. “He [Joseph] frankly forgave me, prayed for me and blessed me. Thus, by experience, I learned more fully to discern and to contrast the two spirits, and to resist the one and cleave to the other. And, being tempted in all points, even as others, I learned how to bear with, and excuse, and succor those who are tempted.”⁶

4. Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt: Revised and Enhanced Edition, 2000, 209–210.

5. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: John Taylor, 2001, 77.

6. Pratt, 210–211.

After addressing the growing discontent in the Quorum of the Twelve, the Lord affirms Thomas B. Marsh’s role as the leader of the Quorum and his status as a holder of the keys of the kingdom, with the responsibility to direct the work of his quorum (D&C 112:16). But the Lord also affirmed that the Quorum—and all organizations in the Church—acts under the direction of the First Presidency, who in turn act under the Lord’s direct supervision (D&C 112:20). This clarification is an important addition to the outline of Quorum responsibilities given earlier in Doctrine and Covenant 107, which said that the First Presidency and the Twelve were equal in authority and power (D&C 107:24). Doctrine and Covenants 112 affirms that revelation to the Church comes to the First Presidency and that the Twelve serve under their direction (D&C 112:20; 107:33).

As President of the Twelve, Thomas Marsh was expected to direct his quorum. But the First Presidency also had the right to receive revelation, as in the case with Heber C. Kimball and the other missionaries sent to Great Britain, on how the Apostles could best carry out their work.

The Lord in verses 21–29 addresses the severity of the apostasy occurring in Kirtland and specifically warns against those who “have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house” (D&C 112:26). Only a few weeks after this revelation was given, Warren Parrish, a former scribe to the Prophet, led a group of apostates in an attack on the Kirtland Temple,⁷ fulfilling the Lord’s earlier words. Other apostates sought to sustain David Whitmer, the president of the Missouri Stake of the Church, as a replacement for Joseph Smith. When these apostates attempted to sustain David Whitmer as Church President in a meeting, Brigham Young “rose up, and in a plain and forcible manner told them that Joseph was a Prophet, and [that Brigham] knew it, and they might rail and slander him as much as they pleased, they could not destroy the appointment of the Prophet of God, they could only destroy their own authority, cut the thread that bound them to the Prophet and to God and sink themselves to hell.”⁸

Brigham recalled, “This meeting was broken up without the apostates being able to unite on any decided measures of opposition. This was a crisis when earth and hell seemed leagued to overthrow the Prophet and Church of God. The knees of many of the strongest men in the Church faltered. During this siege of darkness I stood close by Joseph, and with all the wisdom and power God bestowed upon me, put forth my utmost energies to sustain the servant of God and unite the quorums of the Church.”⁹

7. Karl Ricks Anderson, Joseph Smith’s Kirtland, 1996, 220; see also Ronald K. Esplin, “Joseph Smith and the Kirtland Crisis, 1837,” in Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer, ed. Richard N. Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson, 2010.

8. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, 1997, 79.

9. Brigham Young, in Church Historian’s Office, Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 1844–46, vol. 1, p. 16, Church Archives.

Doctrine and Covenants 112 ends with a plea for the Twelve to accept the leadership of the First Presidency as their “counselors and leaders” (D&C 112:30). It is difficult to properly document how severe the apostasy became in Kirtland before Joseph Smith and the remaining faithful members of the Church were forced to leave. By one estimate, two or three hundred Church members apostatized, representing 10 to 15 percent of the total membership in Kirtland. The toll was even higher among the General Authorities of the Church. Almost one-third of the General Authorities were excommunicated, disfellowshipped, or removed from their callings during this apostasy. This included the witnesses of the Book of Mormon (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris), four Apostles (John F. Boynton, Lyman E. Johnson, Luke S. Johnson, and William E. McLellin), and one member of the First Presidency (Frederick G. Williams).¹⁰

Almost half of those who were excommunicated, disfellowshipped, or removed from the records of the Church later came back to the Church. Some, like David Whitmer, Lyman E. Johnson, and William E. McLellin, never returned. Thomas B. Marsh spent twenty years outside the Church but returned in 1857 after the death of his wife and suffering from ill health. Addressing the cause of his own apostasy, Marsh declared, “I became jealous of the Prophet, and then I saw double, and overlooked everything that was right, and spent all my time in looking for the evil; and then, when the Devil began to lead me, it was easy for the carnal mind to rise up, which is anger, jealousy, and wrath. I could feel it within me; I felt angry and wrathful; and the Spirit of the Lord being gone, as the Scriptures say, I was blinded, . . . I got mad, and I wanted everybody else to be mad.”¹¹

After Thomas B. Marsh expressed his desire to rejoin the Church, Brigham Young asked for a vote from the congregation accepting Brother Marsh back into full fellowship among the Saints. Not a single person raised a hand in opposition.¹²

10. Milton V. Backman, The Heavens Resound, 1983, 328.

11. Darowski, “The Faith and Fall of Thomas Marsh.”

12. Journal of Discourses, 5:209.