Replies

The author of this article is interesting. He seems to have written the primer for the arguments we see all the time on FR. Note that he presents everything as true, because it all started with a revelation from the Lord to Joseph Smith.

Correspondence between Doug Harris (ROT) and Dan Bachman

Letters from Daniel W. Bachman

In reading your introductory material on Mormonism, I came across a curious statement that Mormons believe Joseph Smith is more important that Jesus Christ. I could find no documentation for this statement, although I surveyed everything I could find on your pages. The only thing that I could find that would remotely suggest this, is your statement that Jesus will be the Judge not Joseph Smith.

This leads me to a comment and then a question. I teach in the Church Educational System for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been doing so for 31 years. I have never taught nor have any of the scores of colleagues with whom I have worked ever taught such a thing. I have been in hundreds, probably thousands of Church meetings, symposia, CES in-service and training meetings, at Church General Conferences and under the tutelage of many general authorities of the church in many of these settings. Never have I heard this doctrine taught. Moreover, I've read widely in LDS literature and I have never read anyone say that Joseph Smith is more important that Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I don't know anyone in the Church who believes it. If I were to say that in any congregation in the Church the audience would be appalled. Moreover, if perchance you harbor the notion that this is something we really believe but don't want the world to know, your equally mistaken. The Church nor its people are trying to cover up something here we secretly believe and only tell people on the QT after they have joined the Church. We are a quite open people. We publish our literature and sermons to the world. And I believe you know that there is plenty there for people to take pot shots at. But teaching that Joseph Smith is more important that Jesus Christ isn't one of them. To believe otherwise is a figment of the imagination.

If as I suspect you are deriving this notion from statements made by some early Mormon leaders to the effect that Joseph Smith will participate in the Judgment, which I do not deny, then I think you seriously misread those sources for two reasons. 1) Even in those statements, they do not say it is the belief of the Church that Joseph is more important than Jesus, therefore, it would be an interpretation of the meaning of that idea on your part, not on our part that is at question. No informed Mormon I know interprets those statements in that fashion. 2) Inasmuch as the Lord told his 12 apostles they would sit on twelve thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel (Lk. 22:30), would you say that Jesus and the early Christians, or anyone who believes in the Bible for that matter, would be guilty of saying the 12 were more important that Jesus? Nobody really believes that, because it is absurd. One may participate with the Lord in judgment and not supersede him. That is how Mormons interpret the statements about Joseph's participation in Judgment.

Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save^[*] Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. (Emphasis ours - SHIELDS)
(D&C 135:3 [written by John Taylor, an apostle at the time, and later President of the Church])

"....Joseph told us that Jesus was the Christ, the Mediator between God and man, and the Saviour of the world. He told us that there was no other name in the heavens nor under the heavens, neither could there be, by which mankind could be saved in the presence of the Father, but by and through the name and ministry of Jesus Christ, and the atonement he made on Mount Calvary." (Emphasis ours - SHIELDS)
(Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 9:364-365, 31 August 1862)
(Provided courtesy of Danel W. Bachman)

"I shall bow to Jesus, my Governor, and under him, to brother Joseph. Though he has gone behind the vail [sic], and I cannot see him, he is my head, under Jesus Christ and the ancient Apostles, and I shall go ahead and build up the kingdom." (Emphasis ours - SHIELDS)
(Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 4:41, 31 August 1856.)
(Provided courtesy of Danel W. Bachman)

From Joseph Smith among the Prophets

http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?locale=0&sourceId=d496425e0848b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

Robert L. Millet, "Joseph Smith among the Prophets", Ensign, June 1994, 19

President Brigham Young uttered this bold statement: “Joseph Smith holds the keys of this last dispensation, and is now engaged behind the vail in the great work of the last days. I can tell our beloved brother Christians … that no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith. From the day that the Priesthood was taken from the earth to the winding-up scene of all things, every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are—I with you and you with me. I cannot go there without his consent. He holds the keys of that kingdom for the last dispensation—the keys to rule in the spirit world; and he rules there triumphantly, for he gained full power and a glorious victory over the power of Satan while he was yet in the flesh, and was a martyr to his religion and to the name of Christ. …

“Should not this thought comfort all people? They will, by-and-by, be … thankful for such a man as Joseph Smith, junior. … It is his mission to see that all the children of men in this last dispensation are saved, that can be, through the redemption” (in Journal of Discourses, 7:289; emphasis added).