Gerald N. Lund - No Unhallowed Hand

Text illustrations by Robert T. Barrett

1996 Gerald N. Lund and Kenneth Ingalls Moe

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Forbehold, this is my work and my gloryto bring to pass the immortality andeternal life of man.

Moses 1:39

Preface

Ona hot, sultry afternoon late in June, 1844, four men sat in the upper bedroomof the small rock jail in Carthage, Illinois. Charged falsely with treason,they waited in a town that was filled with hate for a trial that offered themlittle hope of justice. Shortly after five p.m.,a mob, many with their faces painted black, stormed the jail. The guards postedthere, as much the enemy to the prisoners as the infuriated mob was, fired ashot or two in the air, then conveniently fled.

Ittook no more than minutes. The men rushed up the stairs, forced the door, andunleashed a withering hail of bullets into the room. Joseph and Hyrum Smithwere killed; John Taylor lay severely wounded beneath the bed. Only WillardRichards miraculously escaped. With roars of delight, the killers left the jailand went home to congratulate one another and celebrate their triumph. Josephwas dead. His most likely successor was dead with him. They had done what manyothers had tried to doin New York, in Ohio, in Missouri, and inIllinois. They had at last silenced the voice that was drawing people to TheChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in what outsiders saw as alarmingnumbers. They had struck down the man most responsible for the rise of thishated and abominable religion. Joe Smith was dead at last. And with him hiswork would die as well.

Howlittle did they know!

WhenJoseph Smith went into that grove of trees a short distance west of his home inthe spring of 1820, he learned in an instant that what he was about todoand to becomewould be implacably opposed by hell in all itsfury. From that moment on, the opposition began. He was mocked, ridiculed,criticized, and condemned. As he moved forward, following the will of the Lord,opposition rose around him in endless, bitter processions. When the mockery andthe ridicule were not sufficient to deter him, more serious means became thenorm. He was slandered, vilified, shot at, beaten, thrown into court again andagain, dragged from his home, cursed, spit upon, tarred and feathered.

Josephhad no illusions about how men felt about him. He once wrote: As for theperils which I am called to pass through, they seem but a small thing to me, asthe envy and wrath of man have been my common lot all the days of my life; andfor what cause it seems mysterious, unless I was ordained from before thefoundation of the world, for some good end, or bad, as you may choose to callit. Judge ye for yourselves. God knoweth all these things, whether it be goodor bad. But, nevertheless, deep water is what I am wont to swim in; it all hasbecome second nature to me. And I feel, like Paul, to glory in tribulation: forto this day has the God of my fathers delivered me out of them all, and willdeliver me from henceforth; for behold, and lo, I shall triumph over all myenemies, for the Lord God hath spoken it. (History of the Church5:143.)

Fromthe beginning, however, the Lord also made it clear that there would be noultimate triumph for those who sought to destroy the work. The works, and thedesigns, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, he said in July of1828, neither can they come to naught.... Remember, remember that it is notthe work of God that is frustrated, but the work of men. (D&C 3:1, 3.) Andagain he said, I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I willshow unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil(D&C 10:43).

Itdidnt take long for those who had shoved the muzzles of their rifles into theupper room of the Carthage jail to realize that while they had killed JosephSmith, they had not slowed in any way the work he had begun. Stunned,horrified, shocked into numbness by the brutal loss of their beloved leader,for a time it looked as though the Saints were vulnerable to collapse. Whowould lead the Church now? Who could possibly take over from one as gifted andinspired as Joseph Smith? Would the Church collapse into various splinters asthis man or that stepped forward to ever so humbly claim that he was the onechosen to take over the reins? To the outside observer, for a time it looked asthough the enemies had done their work well. But to those with eyes of faith,there was never any doubt. While Joseph was a prophet and leader of unusual andunique abilitiesone of the greatest of all the prophets to everlivethe Church was not his, nor did the work depend on him alone. JosephSmith was but an instrument in Gods hands. He himself testified to that againand again during his lifetime. It was not the Church of Joseph Smith ofLatter-day Saints. It was the Church of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ wasstill at the head.

Sixweeks to the day following the Martyrdom, the Lord gave a miraculous andmarvelous indication of how his church should be led and who should lead it.Brigham Youngbarely known outside the circles of the Church, but longfaithful in his servicewould now step forward and take the Churchonward. The work was only beginning, and it was time to move on to new tasks,new horizons, new visions, new places of settlement.

Itdidnt take long for the enemies of the Church to realize that they had notdestroyed the work after all. Nauvoo did not disintegrate with Josephs death.Instead, converts to the Church from all across America and Europe continued toflock to it. Over five hundred missionaries were sent into the world in 1844alone! By the time of the exodus in early 1846, there was an estimated elevento twelve thousand people in Nauvoo alone. There were more than a dozen othersurrounding communities with another four or five thousand Latter-day Saints.That could hardly be defined as a collapse.