Farrell Should Be More Skeptical!! (Matt, too!!)
Ralph Nielsen nielsen@uidaho.edu
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 14:29:16 -0800 (PST) (00917843356, v03007804b2da13c47026@[129.101.112.25])
><snip>
>
>> TILL
>> I live only 70 miles from Carthage, IL, where Joseph Smith was jailed and
>> lynched. I have twice taken the guided tour, and the guides, who are
>> admittedly Mormons, claimed that the gun was an invention of those who
>> wanted to smear the Mormons.
>
>Matthew Bell
>Next time you go give them the following reference and ask them if they still
>want to take that position:
>
>History of the Church Vol.6, pp.617-618
>
>'Immediately there was a little rustling at the outer door of the jail, and a
>cry of surrender, and also a discharge of three or four firearms followed
>instantly......Joseph sprang to his coat for his six-shooter, Hyrum for his
>single barrel,...
> When Hyrum fell, Joseph exclaimed, 'Oh dear, brother Hyrum!' and opening the
>door a few inches he discharged his six-shooter in the stairway (as stated
>before), two or three barrels of which missed fire.
> "Joseph seeing there was no safety in the room, and no doubt thinking that it
>would save the lives of his brethren in the room if he could get out, turned
>calmly from the door, dropped his pistol on the floor, and sprang into the
>window when two balls pierced him from the door, and one entered his right
>breast from without, and he fell outward into the hands of his murderers,
>exclaiming, 'O Lord, my God.!' (Quoted from Mormonism; Shadow or Reality,
>Jerald and Sandra Tanner, p259).
>
>Also the following taken from the Tanners:
<rest snipped>
NIELSEN
The Tanners are former Mormons, who do excellent work on Mormon history and
beliefs. They run the Utah Lighthouse Mission and publish some of the best
and certainly the most outspoken critiques of Mormonism that I know of (I
send them $25 each year). But, like Matt Bell, they are blind
true-believers in biblical inerrancy. They are able to see the beam in
others' eyes, but they fail to see the same beam in their own.
The Mormon church is busy rewriting its history in these latter days. Young
missionaries are not taught that Brigham Young had more than one wife (he
had 27 wives and 56 children). And after Brigham Young University students
wondered why they couldn't wear beards like the one on B.Y.'s statue on
campus, the statue simply disappeared overnight. I wonder if it went up to
heaven like Joseph Smith's golden plates. Or Elijah, or Jesus, for that
matter.
As for Smith's having a gun or not, he appears more like a martyr if they
say he didn't.