American Crucifixion (20 page)

Benjamin West’s 1796 painting “Death on the Pale Horse.”
Credit: Detroit Institute of Arts

West was a Pennsylvania-born artist who had achieved phenomenal success in Europe. Twice elected president of London’s Royal Academy of Arts, he was also a court painter for King George III. The king had commissioned “Death,” but then rejected the painting as “a Bedlamite scene.” The tableau disturbed other audiences as well. Skeletal Death, mounted on the pale charger, has arrived on earth to slaughter its inhabitants. To his right and left ride the biblical killers of the Book of Revelation, one mounted on a white horse (“Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown”), the other on a red mount (“Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth”), together wreaking havoc among the mortals. Black, menacing storm clouds hover in the background.

Contemplating Benjamin West’s painting alone in his upstairs study, Joseph, who could recite long portions of the Bible from memory, could easily call to mind the famous verse from Revelation 6 that West had chosen to illustrate: “And I looked, and behold, a Pale Horse, and his name that sat on him was Death.”

Was Joseph experiencing a premonition of his own fate? It’s possible. The
Expositor
had violated the sanctity of his interlocking directorate of secret committees. The Laws and their confederates had betrayed him, exposing his secret Kingdom of God and multiple marriages for all the world to see. If Smith was despondent, he showed little hint of it, and his characteristic energy and optimism would re-surface again and again during the final days of his life.

THE PREVIOUS THURSDAY NIGHT, JOSEPH HAD SHARED A CURIOUS dream with the Saints:

I thought I was riding out in my carriage, and my guardian angel was along with me. We went past the Temple and had not gone much further before we espied two large snakes so fast locked together that neither of them had any power. I inquired of my guide what I was to understand by that. He answered, “Those snakes represent Dr. Foster and Chauncey L. Higbee. They are your enemies and desire to destroy you; but you see they are so fast locked together that they have no power of themselves to hurt you.”

In the dream, the Laws capture Joseph, bind him, and throw him into a “deep, dry pit,” not unlike Joseph the dreamer in Genesis, whose brothers heave him into a dry pit, expecting that animals will devour him.

Suddenly, in the dream, the tables are turned and the Laws need Joseph’s help:

I looked out of the pit and saw Wilson Law at a little distance attacked by ferocious wild beasts, and heard him cry out, “Oh! Brother Joseph, come and save me!” I replied, “I cannot, for you have put me into this deep pit.”

On looking out another way, I saw William Law with outstretched tongue, blue in the face, and the green poison forced out of his mouth, caused by the coiling of a large snake around his body. It had also grabbed him by the arm, a little above the elbow, ready to devour him. He cried out in the intensity of his agony, “Oh, Brother Joseph, Brother Joseph, come and save me, or I die!” I also replied to him, “I cannot, William; I would willingly, but you have tied me and put me in this pit, and I am powerless to help you or liberate myself.”

In a short time after my guide came and said aloud, “Joseph, Joseph, what are you doing there?” I replied, “My enemies fell upon me, bound me and threw me in.” He then took me by the hand, drew me out of the pit, set me free, and we went away rejoicing.

RAIN WAS THREATENING THE NEXT DAY WHEN JOSEPH APPEARED before several thousand Saints assembled in the Temple-side “grove,” sometimes called the Bowery. Weather be damned. “If it does rain, I’ll preach this doctrine, for the truth shall be preached,” Joseph insisted to the audience arrayed in the gently sloping glen in front of him, many of them perched on the stumps of harvested jack oaks. Bishop Newel Whitney offered a prayer, and the choir sang a Baptist hymn, “Mortals Awake!” which had been collected into the Mormon hymnal.

Joseph returned to the Book of Revelation as the inspiration for what would prove to be his fiery, final sermon to the faithful Saints. He began by reading Revelation 3, in which Christ, speaking through John of Patmos, chides three churches that have fallen away from orthodox Christianity. One of the retrograde churches “has a name of being alive, but you are dead . . . If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief” and “blot your name out of the book of life.” Another church is rich, prosperous, arrogant, and smug. “You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked,” Christ tells the church, hurling his famous imprecation: “I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

The message was clear: Nauvoo, Joseph’s latter-day Zion, had strayed from Christ’s message, just like the wayward churches of John’s time. The
Expositor
had hammered away at his doctrine of the plurality of gods, accusing Joseph of “holding forth a doctrine which is effectually calculated to sap the very foundation of our faith.” The arrow had struck home. “You know that of late some malicious and corrupt men have sprung up and apostatized from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Joseph proclaimed, “and they declare that the Prophet believes in a plurality of Gods, and, lo and behold! we have discovered a very great secret, they cry—‘The Prophet says there are many Gods, and this proves that he has fallen.’”

Joseph was recapitulating the famous argument of the King Follett sermon, that just as God was the father of Jesus Christ, “you may suppose that He had a Father also.”

Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? And everything comes in this way. . . . I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it.

He then cited biblical examples of the plurality of gods, claiming, for instance, that “Paul says there are Gods many and Lords many.”
^*
Smith also applied his modest knowledge of Hebrew, pointing out that “Elohim,” the Old Testament word for “god,” is a plural form, and is almost always used plurally when God, or Elohim, creates the world. It was a stretch to argue that the Old Testament Israelites were polytheists, although Joseph did just that. “In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation,” he declared. “The word Elohim ought to be in the plural all the way through—Gods. The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take [that] view of the subject, it sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness and perfection of the Gods.” Biblical scholars have called
Elohim
an example of the “plural of excellence,” akin to the “plural of majesty,” better known as the “royal we.”

The biblical precedents allowed Joseph to both sermonize and indulge in some self-pity. “Paul, if Joseph Smith is a blasphemer, you are. I say there are Gods many and Lords many. . . . But if Joseph Smith says there are Gods many and Lords many, they cry, ‘Away with him! Crucify him! Crucify him!’”

“They found fault with Jesus Christ because He said He was the Son of God, and made Himself equal with God,” Joseph continued. “They say of me, like they did of the Apostles of old, that I must be put down.”

The rain started to fall. “I wish I could speak for three or four hours; but it is not expedient on account of the rain,” Joseph told his audience. The mature Joseph Smith was not a man to turn the other cheek, and he concluded his remarks with a ritual thrashing of his enemies. “Oh, poor, blind apostates!” he thundered. “They swear that they believe the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and then you will get from them filth, slander, and bogus-makers plenty.”

“God never will acknowledge any traitors or apostates,” he continued. “All men are liars who say they are of the true Church without the revelations of Jesus Christ and the Priesthood of Melchizedek, which is after the order of the Son of God.” His opponents, he argued, “have apostatized from the truth and lost the priesthood” and “build upon other men’s foundations . . . without authority from God.”

“Did I build on any other man’s foundation?” Joseph asked, and then answered his own question. “I have got all the truth which the Christian world possessed, and an independent revelation in the bargain, and God will bear me off triumphant.” What of the Law brothers, the Fosters, and their followers in the Reformed Church? “When the floods come and the winds blow, their foundations will be found to be sand, and their whole fabric will crumble to dust.”

The rainfall became “severe,” Joseph reported, and the Saints scattered to their homes.

LATER THAT DAY, JOSEPH REACHED OUT, FOR THE SECOND TIME during the crisis, to Governor Thomas Ford. The previous week, Smith had orchestrated a letter-writing campaign by prominent Saints, regaling the former judge with legal arguments (“See Chitty’s Blackstone Bk. iii:v, and n., &c., &c”) to justify the assault on the
Expositor
. Ford never responded. Now Smith dispatched another letter, by courier, alerting Ford that “an energetic attempt is being made by some of the citizens of this and the surrounding counties to drive and exterminate ‘the Saints’ by force of arms.” Smith implored Ford “to come down in person with your staff and investigate the whole matter without delay, and cause peace to be restored to the country.” Fancifully, Joseph offered to place the Nauvoo Legion under Ford’s command, “to quell all insurrection and support the dignity of the common weal.”

The letter ended, “I remain, sir, the friend of peace, and your Excellency’s humble servant, JOSEPH SMITH.”

* In 1 Corinthians 8:5, Paul seems to be saying the opposite: “For though there be that are called gods . . . to us there is but one God, the Father.”

The Mormons, however, were becoming unpopular, nay odious, to the great body of the people.

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