Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey cover Doctrine and Covenants 10-11 while offering their insights into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of these important sections.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey interview John W. Welch about the miraculous translation of the Book of Mormon in this bonus "Voices of the Restoration" episode.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey cover Doctrine and Covenants 6-9 while offering their insights into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of these important sections.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey cover Doctrine and Covenants 3, 4, and 5 while offering their insights into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of these important sections.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Casey and guest-host Maclane Heward cover Doctrine and Covenants 2 and Joseph Smith—History 1:27-65, which covers the visitation of the angel Moroni, and offer their insights into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of this important history.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey interview Smith family expert Kyle Walker to do a deep dive into Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack's family as part of the Voices of the Restoration Bonus material for the Come Follow Me content for January 13-19.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode Scott and Casey cover Joseph Smith—History 1:1-26, which covers Joseph Smith's First Vision, and offer their insights into the context, content, controversies, and consequences of this important history.
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode we cover Doctrine & Covenants 1 and offer our own introduction to the context, content, controversies, and consequences of this section. We have a lot to talk about today, so let’s get into it!
Welcome to Church History Matters Come Follow Me Edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025! In this episode we cover the introductory material to the Come Follow Me curriculum and offer our own introduction to the context, content, controversies, and consequences to the book of the Doctrine & Covenants. We have a lot to talk about today. So let’s get into it!
Throughout this series on Peace and Violence in Latter-day Saint History, we’ve looked at how Church members have been the victims of violence, how they’ve engaged in defensive violence, and how they’ve even been the aggressors and perpetrators of inexcusable violence. In this episode of Church History Matters we sit down with our friend Patrick Mason, a Latter-day Saint historian, scholar on peace studies, and author of several books on violence and peace in Latter-day Saint history. We take a ...
In May 2023 Richard Turley and Barbara Jones Brown published a book through Oxford University Press entitled Vengeance is Mine, which documents the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, including the efforts of Church and civic leaders in southern Utah to conceal their involvement in the atrocity through witness silencing and misinformation, as well as evading or stalling investigations by both government agencies and church organizations by lack of cooperation and political maneuvering. T...
The unjustified slaughter of around 120 men, women, and children emigrants in Mountain Meadows Utah on September 11, 1857, was an unspeakable tragedy. For Latter-day Saints then and now, one of the many painful details about this event is that it was instigated under the direction of local LDS leaders in Iron County who served simultaneously as ecclesiastical, civil, and military leaders. On this episode of Church History Matters, we continue our discussion about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, w...
The Mountain Meadows Massacre—easily the darkest and most violent episode in our Church’s history—happened on September 11, 1857, when a group of Latter-day Saints, aided by some Paiute Native Americans, participated in the wholesale slaughter of around 120 men, women, and children belonging to a wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas en route to California. This atrocity occurred against the backdrop of the 1857 Utah War when the feelings of Latter-day Saints were already set on edge. As federa...
After the 1838 “Mormon War” and their official expulsion from Missouri, Latter-day Saints relocated to Illinois where they built up the city of Nauvoo and a number of other settlements in Hancock County. After a short time of relative peace, they were again embroiled in conflict with their enemies which culminated in the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. This was followed two years later by the battle of Nauvoo and yet another expulsion from a US state with the blessing of its governor. Then it ...
The fall of 1838 marked the first time the Latter-day Saints engaged in organized retaliation against their enemies. The setting was Northern Missouri and the situation was what is referred to as the “Mormon War.” Here the Saints marched on some nearby settlements that were supporting and equipping their enemies and conducted raids where they pillaged stores and torched buildings. Things only escalated from there and eventually culminated in the infamous “Extermination Order” of Missouri Governo...
In November 1833, ruthless mobs of local settlers drove over a thousand Church members out of Jackson County, Missouri, plundering their property and burning their homes to dissuade them from ever returning. These battered and scattered saints took refuge that winter in various nearby counties while local Church leaders sent desperate letters to Ohio to seek the counsel of the prophet Joseph Smith. As the prophet petitioned the Lord’s guidance on the matter he was told, among other things, to ha...
In the late summer of 1831, select groups of Church members began settling on the far western frontier of the United States in Jackson County, Missouri. Earlier that year the prophet Joseph Smith had received a revelation identifying the area as “the land of promise” and “the place for the city of Zion,” and shortly afterward the gathering to Zion had begun. Tensions between Church members and the non-Latter-day Saint locals in Jackson County existed almost immediately. By the spring of 1832 Mis...
Did you know that one of the best selling books in Latter-day Saint history on Amazon.com was not written by a Latter-day Saint or a historian? It was a controversial book written by atheist Jon Krakauer in 2003 titled, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which still tops the Amazon charts (in Kindle releases) in the category “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” And an adaptation of the book was released as a mini-series in 2022. One of the major premises of the book ...
From our brief survey of some of the various branches of the Restoration in this series, a few things have become apparent. First, it’s clear that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not have a monopoly on a love of the Book of Mormon. Many of our Restoration cousins also deeply revere this sacred text, have their faith in Christ strengthened because of it, and draw near to God by abiding by its precepts. Second, and perhaps more puzzling to some Latter-day Saints, it’s...
Most of the main branches of the Restoration were formed within roughly two decades of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. One clear exception, however, is the Mormon Fundamentalist movement. Here’s a little backstory: In 1890 President Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto announcing the Church’s intention to submit to those laws recently passed and declared constitutional by the US Supreme Court forbidding plural marriage. Then in 1904, as a result of the Reed Smoot hearings before the US...
Among many of those Nauvoo Saints who did not choose to follow Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles into the mountains of Utah, there was an emerging hope that someone from the Smith family would step forward and begin a reorganization of the Church Joseph Smith Jr. had established. In 1851 a soft reorganization began and built up to that culminating moment of 1860 when the eldest son of Joseph and Emma Smith, Joseph Smith III, stepped forward at the age of 28 and was ordained president of what...
Following the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844, Sidney Rigdon, who had been Joseph’s 1st Counselor, made the claim to Church members in Nauvoo that he was the rightful successor to lead the Church as its guardian. After his falling out with the Twelve apostles, Sidney left Nauvoo and travelled to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania where he built up a church there separate and apart from the Church Brigham Young and the Twelve led to Utah. And, today, the only branch of the Restoration that claims ...
Who was James J. Strang? And why were his claims so appealing to so many of those Latter-day Saints who did not follow Brigham Young and Twelve after the succession crisis of 1844? Why did his movement experience so much initial success but then dissipate so quickly? Some have made strong comparisons between James Strang and Joseph Smith, but how accurate are these comparisons really? On this episode of Church History Matters, we sit down with Dr. Kyle Beshears, a friend and expert researcher on...
After the succession crisis of 1844, not every member of the Church chose to sustain and follow Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. And many of these members eventually formed or joined alternative restoration movements which became separate, distinct, and independent churches from one another. In fact, over the last 180 years there have actually been hundreds of Churches that have branched off from the same Joseph Smith-era restoration trunk. Today on Church History Matters, fo...
In the unlikely event that the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve all died simultaneously, how would that affect succession? In this hypothetical worst-case scenario, would the keys of the kingdom be lost? And, if an apostle came down with a debilitating health problem, is there any precedent for making him an emeritus apostle? And speaking of apostles, is there a set procedure in calling them, or does the method vary from Church president to president? Also, sometimes in the Church peopl...
Between the presidencies of Lorenzo Snow in 1898 and Russell M. Nelson today, there have been a few key clarifications relative to the inner workings of Church government at the level of the Church presidency. And on today’s episode of Church History Matters we want to talk about them! The first of these clarifications deals with the confusion introduced during Joseph F. Smith’s presidency surrounding the role and position of the presiding Church Patriarch within the Church’s hierarchy. The seco...
From the history we’ve covered in this series so far, we know that the succession plan of having the most senior apostle become the next Church president took time to develop and wasn’t fully fleshed out in Joseph Smith’s lifetime. In fact, it was during the decades of President Brigham Young’s presidency that this plan was ultimately finalized … well, mostly. It turns out that prior to President John Taylor’s death, there was one young apostle who challenged this plan of succession one last tim...
Who is next in line to become the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Today this is not a difficult question. It is well understood that whoever is the next most senior apostle to the current Church president will be the next president, should he live long enough. The singular issue is seniority. It all boils down to seniority. So, what determines seniority among the apostles? Again, today there is a ready answer to this question. But it was not always so. In fact, in t...
Shortly after the Nauvoo Saints voted on August 8, 1844 to sustain the Twelve Apostles as the new leaders of Church, Sidney Rigdon was excommunicated (for reasons we will discuss in this episode). Then for more than three years, between 1844 and 1847, Brigham Young and the Twelve led the Church as a group of equals. Together they oversaw the completion of the Nauvoo temple and organized an exodus out of the United States. Yet after leading a vanguard company to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brig...
Aside from a small handful of events, like the First Vision, the translation of the Book of Mormon, and the restoration of priesthood keys, it is possible that what happened in Nauvoo on August 8th, 1844 was the most critical, pivotal moment in our history forever shaping the trajectory of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was the day Church members in Nauvoo voted on who would lead the Church following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. And the stakes could not have been ...
