Did Lucy Harris Support the Book of Mormon?

Yet another of the products of our overall “Witnesses” film project went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation at 7 PM on Saturday evening, Utah time.  You can view it, along with the other “Insights” videos in this series, at absolutely no charge.  And we hope that you will share it with others.  That’s the use that we’ve designed these short videos to serve.  Please do share them with family members, aluminum siding salesmen, friends, office colleagues, ministering brothers and sisters, neighbors, Jehovah’s Witnesses at your door, pestilential political leaflet distributors, and anybody else that you know who might find them interesting or helpful.

“Witnesses of the Book of Mormon — Insights Episode 25: Did Lucy Harris Support the Book of Mormon?“

Early on, Lucy Harris was a supporter of the work, but later she fell out with the Smiths—and with her own husband. Who was Lucy Harris?

This is the twenty-fifth in a series compiled from the many interviews conducted during the course of the Witnesses film project. This series of mini-films is being released each Saturday at 7pm MDT. These additional resources are hosted by Camrey Bagley Fox, who played Emma Smith in Witnesses, as she introduces and visits with a variety of experts. These individuals answer questions or address accusations against the witnesses, also helping viewers understand the context of the times in which the witnesses lived. This week we feature Daniel C. Peterson, President of the Interpreter Foundation and Executive Producer of Witnesses. For more information, go to https://witnessesofthebookofmormon.org/ or watch the documentary movie Undaunted.

Short clips from this episode are also available on TikTok and Instagram.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://youtube.interpreterfoundation.org/ and our other social media channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

Back in April 2015, the following figures, which had been drawn from the previous twenty general conferences of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — indicating the frequency with which the name Joseph Smith was mentioned in those conferences — drew the attention of certain critics of the Church.  The numbers, they suggested, demonstrated that the Church was embarrassed by Joseph and that it was attempting to distance itself from the Prophet and, thereby, to go “mainstream.”

Average = 31.05 per conference (29.6 excluding the extremes).

Median = 28.

High = 84 in Oct 2005

Low = 4 in Apr 2015

I have no idea whether the figures given were accurate or not.  But, even if they were, there’s an obvious explanation for the very high spike shown October 2005:  We were approaching the bicentennial of Joseph’s birth.  And it’s probably not insignificant, that the April 2015 general conference of the Church fell on Easter weekend.  Jesus tends to be mentioned quite a bit at Easter.

Moreover, I wonder what the figures since April 2015 have been.  Does anybody know?  My guess is that that will typically have ranged from the low twenties to the high thirties, occasionally straying into the low forties — in other words, just as they were from October 2005 through October 2014.  In other words, April 2015 was very likely an outlier.

I’m unaware of even the slightest disposition among believing Latter-day Saints and their leaders to back away from the Prophet.  I’ve detected not a trace of such a retreat.

In any event, so as to remove any possible doubt about my own position, I quote the words of John Taylor, who nearly died with Joseph and Hyrum at the hands of that anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois, and who eventually succeeded Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as the third president of the Church of Jesus Christ in this dispensation:

Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. . . .  He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. . . .

Hyrum Smith was forty-four years old in February, 1844, and Joseph Smith was thirty-eight in December, 1843; and henceforward their names will be classed among the martyrs of religion; and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon, and this book of Doctrine and Covenants of the church, cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world; and that if the fire can scathe a green tree for the glory of God, how easy it will burn up the dry trees to purify the vineyard of corruption. They lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified.

They were innocent of any crime, as they had often been proved before, and were only confined in jail by the conspiracy of traitors and wicked men; and their innocent blood on the floor of Carthage jail is a broad seal affixed to “Mormonism” that cannot be rejected by any court on earth, and their innocent blood on the escutcheon of the State of Illinois, with the broken faith of the State as pledged by the governor, is a witness to the truth of the everlasting gospel that all the world cannot impeach; and their innocent blood on the banner of liberty, and on the magna charta of the United States, is an ambassador for the religion of Jesus Christ, that will touch the hearts of honest men among all nations; and their innocent blood, with the innocent blood of all the martyrs under the altar that John saw, will cry unto the Lord of Hosts till he avenges that blood on the earth. Amen.

I join my voice with that of John Taylor and millions of others; I’m not backing away from Joseph Smith, the Prophet who opened this last dispensation.  Not even close.

Posted from almost precisely east of New York City in the North Atlantic