Mormons: In the search for truth, are these claims true or false?

Question

1. Joseph Smith killed two people right before his 'martyrdom'

2. Blood Atonement was once taught as official doctrine by prophets of the LDS Church but was later abandoned

3. Death Penalty oaths were required of Temple Patrons previous to 1990 wherein they agreed to have the Lord inflict violent deaths upon them if they revealed the nature of the endowment (out of respect, let's not explicitly describe these; even though they are abandoned, they are still considered sacred to the LDS faith)

4. Four men secretly buried a set of fabricated plates in Kinderhook, IA and presented them to Joseph Smith as authentic. He then proceeded to 'translate' them, and after he was halfway done, the four pranksters told everyone and several families left the Church because of it

5. The Book of Abraham papyri have been found and translated, and allegedly date to 2000 years later than Abraham, and contain nothing about Abraham

Yes, he did have weapons (well, "a weapon"). One of the apostles smuggled a gun in to him, and he used it and fired it down into the stairwell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Joseph_Smith%2C_Jr.

LuvRock: all information that I have presented can be found in your History of the Church or else in the Journal of Discourses. The Kinderhook plates account in HC is a little sketchy, but many eyewitnesses wrote about it in their journals, so that helps piece the think together.

Here are a few links with much of this information, with documented sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Joseph_Smith%2C_Jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinderhook_Plates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_abraham#Loss_and_rediscovery_of_the_papyrus
http://www.lds-mormon.com/

Answer 1

Ivan, your parents would not be able to tell you if it was true. I was taught that you should never reveal anything that goes on in the temple. I couldn't even talk about it with my LDS friends,if we were not in the temple.
1. Yes, I've heard that one too. He did get off a couple of shots. Which makes me ask: If he was really "in jail" why in the world would they let a prisoner have a gun? Where they not as strict about checking their criminals for weapons back then?
2.I believe the Blood Atonement you are talking about is the one Brigham Young spoke of, the LDS don't believe this anymore. Although, a few off shoots of the church might.
3. I didn't go through the temple before 1990 either. As I said above the LDS are not suppose to talk about this kind of stuff even with LDS family and friends, unless they are in the temple. Joseph copied a lot from the Masonry temple ceremony and put it into the LDS temple ceremony. That is where the penalty of death thing comes from. You basically had to assimilate your own suicide. By drawing your hand across your neck. This is what was suppose to happen to you if you reveled anything that went on in the temple. After Ed Decker's movie came out the LDS changed there temple ceremony.
4. Yes, I've heard this as well. I read that he did try to translate them, but was killed before he could finish.
5. Yes, I heard this as well. The Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price is a bogus translation. Joseph Smith claimed that the papyrus he translated had been the original parchment written by the hand of Abraham himself, and up until 1967 the church taught that as well. In 1967 the church gave the papyrus to BYU scholars and other certified Egyptologists to verify the translation, only to find that it is a Pagan funerary ritual taken from the Book of Breathings/Book of the Dead.

I'm glad to see that you are doing your own research, and just not believing what others tell you.

Answer 2

1. John Taylor wrote in his journal (and I believe that this is the ONLY reference to this) that Joseph Smith fired three shots out the door, and MAYBE hitting one or two of the mob, and HE HEARD that two of them died. I doubt, however, that anyone was killed, because if they had, the mob would have done something, said something; instead, they didn't say thing one about who among them might have gotten hurt.

2. What do you mean by "BLOOD ATONEMent" and "taught as official doctrine"? If you mean, that they used what Brigham Young said about some sins needing the sinner to shed his own blood, to justify a lot of imaginary murders (a la Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), you are wrong. He said that, UNDER GOD'S LAW, this would always be so. Since we are not under GOD'S law, then all we have left is capital punishment.

3. No, that's not what it was. It was more just to show how important it was TO US to keep what we learned there sacred from the outside world.

4. There is no record of any attempt Joseph made to translate the Kinderhook plates. He allegedly glanced at them and said it LOOKED LIKE some sort of ancient langauge, but, that was as far as it got. I would love to see this "translation" and know who these poor families were. Cause there is no record of either, as far as I know.

5. The papyri that we have now is not a patch on what Joseph Smith had, and translated from. Several witness accounts say that the papyri were much, MUCH larger than what we have now. Also, that some of the writing was in red ink, but there is no red ink anywhere on the papyri we have now.

Answer 3

1. The following is an excerpt from a satirical article reviewing a book that speaks about that event. Yes, Joseph Smith did kill (but one may have survived, that is not concretely established) two men who were charging the door with guns and who had just murdered in cold blood, mind you, his brother Hyrum. Please read slowly and remember it is satire.
"Frolicking with their weapons and calling out the death threats that customarily accompanied that grand holiday in frontier Illinois—it was a simpler time, and June 27th had not yet been commercialized—the proto-Gandhian Greys had merely been playing the venerable party game known among these gentle rustics as "Eat Hot Lead, Mormon Scum!" Then, wholly without provocation, Joseph Smith opened fire on the revelers, using the "pepperbox" pistol that Cyrus Wheelock had smuggled into his cell. Naive historians, both Latter-day Saints and others, have always assumed that Joseph's action had something to do with the fact that his brother Hyrum had just been shot to death. (Presumably, Hyrum was killed by a stray bullet from a local hunter, or perhaps from an evil Mormon assassin.) When Joseph continued to shoot at them as they mounted the jail's interior staircase bearing a peace offering of cookies and punch, they had no choice. They killed him and his (already dead) brother in self-defense. It is true that they also shot John Taylor at least four times. But then, he had been very naughty to them with his cane, and needed to be taught a lesson."


2. This is from Wikipedia: "Another use of the term blood atonement is attributed to a controversial understanding of the words of some early Latter-day Saint ("LDS") leaders, particularly Brigham Young, that the crime of premeditated murder by one with full gospel knowledge was not atoned for fully by the suffering of Jesus Christ, and that this is why the prophet Noah was commanded, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." (Genesis 9:6) Young was quoted as saying that murderers should voluntarily "have their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins."[1]".

The misunderstood concept that was cited as "blood atonement" of murderers was repudiated as never having been an official Church doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("LDS Church"). This concept still has some adherents by other religious groups. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement saying that it neither supports nor opposes capital punishment, and that it is a matter to be decided entirely by civil law.[1]

Those critical of Mormonism suggest that this concept formed the basis for inciting the murders of some early Latter-day Saint apostates, dissenters, and critics. There is evidence that some early members may have used the idea of a blood atonement to justify these murders, but no evidence exists to suggest that Brigham Young even tacitly sanctioned such behavior."

So what is your point?

3. Although I did not go to the temple prior to 1990, both my parents did. They have no recollection of any Death Penalty Oaths. Do you have a source???

4. This is from a scholarly book review that touches, among other things, the Kinderhook plates. "More important, contrary to popular articles written by anti-Mormon writers, Joseph Smith did not make a translation of the fraudulent plate. The translation attributed to him has PROVEN (emphasis mine) to be an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. In fact, after viewing the Kinderhook plate, Joseph Smith never showed any interest in it."

As for the 5th point, I don't have time or space to answer it, but if you're interested in a "search for truth", here is an excellent article on the subject.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/bookschapter.php?bookid=48&chapid=286


‘Taint what a man don’t know that hurts him, it’s what he knows that just ain’t so.
~Frank McKinney Hubbard


Addendum:
Misty Ann: they did tell me.

Answer 4

1. True, He did have a gun but he shot it at the door in self defense as the mob was breaking through.

As for 2-5 I have never heard about any of these things. Where did you hear them?

Answer 5

Nice try. You know your self they are false.

I like how you twist the words to make them suit your purpose.

You must lead a pretty happy life to spend all your time and energy attacking what you know is true gospel of Christ.

I don't know if you realize you're helping the church by spreading deceitful information. Anyone with a brain can see you have it in for the church.

Good day.

Answer 6

No.1 is false. If you are talking about "right before" he was martyred, he couldn't have possibly killed anyone. He was in jail and therefore didn't have any weapons.

My bad, you right Mr. Penguin. However, it was in self-defense.

Answer 7

Another Mormon attack at your questions/motives rather than an answer. It's quite telling isn't it?

Free2B: Why don't you explain to us what's deceitful about the question? How did he twist them? Oh, that's right....you don't even know.