Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Every year on this date I try to make a special effort to think about the Prophet and what he has done to aid in the restoration of Christ's Church upon the earth. I know that he was a prophet of God. I know that he saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and from that experience and subsequent ones gained priceless knowledge about the nature of God and man's relationship to Him. I know that he was not a fallen prophet as some claim, but lived his life in crescendo, giving some of his most profound and doctrinally potent sermons in the Nauvoo years.
Joseph Smith was not perfect, he never claimed to be, but as Lorenzo Snow said, "I thanked God that He would put upon a man who had these imperfections the power and authority which He placed upon him...for I knew that I myself had weakness and I thought there was a chance for me....I thanked God I saw these imperfections" (Diary of George Q. Cannon, Jan. 7, 1898).
Finally, when his work was finished, he died a martyrs death. Ezra Dalby once said, “When a man gives his life for the cause he has advocated, he meets the highest test of his honesty and sincerity that his own or any future generation can in fairness ask. When he dies for the testimony he has borne, all malicious tongues should ever after be silent, and all voices hushed in reverence before a sacrifice so complete” (Ezra Dalby, Ms, Dec. 12, 1926, quoted in Gordon B. Hinckley, “‘Praise to the Man’,” Ensign, Aug 1983, 2). God be thanked for the Prophet Joseph Smith.
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