Transcript Doctrine and Covenants 122

Doctrine & Covenants 122
“The Mormons must be treated as
enemies and must be exterminated.”
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One morning, as you are leaving your
home, you find this declaration posted on
the doors of all the homes in your
neighborhood
Before Joseph Smith was imprisoned in Liberty Jail, he and several other
Church leaders, including Parley P. Pratt, were unjustly imprisoned in
Richmond, Missouri. While in the jail at Richmond, they heard the prison
guards describe, in filthy language, horrid deeds of robbery, rape, and murder
that had been committed against Latter-day Saints. Parley P. Pratt recounted
that after listening to this for some time, Joseph responded:
“On a sudden [Joseph] arose to his feet, and spoke in a voice of thunder, or as
the roaring lion, uttering, as near as I can recollect, the following words:
“‘SILENCE, ye fiends of the infernal pit. In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke
you, and command you to be still; I will not live another minute and bear
such language. Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS INSTANT!’”
The guards “begged his pardon, and remained quiet till a change of guards.”
Parley later recalled of this experience: “I have seen the ministers of justice
… in the Courts of England; I have witnessed a Congress in solemn session to
give laws to nations; … but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it
stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri”
(Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, ed. Parley P. Pratt Jr. [1938], 211; see also page 210).
Doctrine & Covenants 122
Some of Joseph Smith’s once loyal friends had
turned against him. Two of these former friends,
Thomas B. Marsh and Orson Hyde, were
members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Both of these men signed an affidavit (a sworn
statement) falsely accusing Joseph Smith and
other Church members of planning to drive their
enemies out by burning and destroying their
property. This affidavit influenced the governor
of Missouri to issue a statement, known as the
extermination order, declaring that all Mormons
must be exterminated or driven from the state.
The statement on the board is a direct quote
from the extermination order.
On October 30, 1838, just three days after the
extermination order was issued, approximately
240 men approached a Mormon settlement at a
place called Haun’s Mill. The women and children
fled into the woods, while the men sought
protection in the blacksmith shop. One of the
Saints’ leaders, David Evans, swung his hat and
cried for peace. The sound of a hundred rifles
answered him, most of them aimed at the
blacksmith shop. The mobbers shot mercilessly at
everyone in sight, including women, elderly men,
and children. Amanda Smith seized her two little
girls and ran with Mary Stedwell across the
millpond on a walkway. Amanda recalled, “Yet
though we were women, with tender children, in
flight for our lives, the demons poured volley
after volley to kill us” (in Andrew Jenson, The Historical
Record, July 1886, 84).
Members of the mob entered the blacksmith shop
and found and killed 10-year-old Sardius Smith, son
of Amanda Smith, hiding under the blacksmith’s
bellows. The man later explained, “Nits [young lice]
will make lice, and if he had lived he would have
become a Mormon” (in Jenson, The Historical Record, Dec. 1888,
673; see also James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the
Latter-day Saints [1976], 127–28). Alma Smith, Sardius’s
seven-year-old brother, witnessed the murder of his
father and brother and was himself shot in the hip.
He was not discovered by the mob and was later
miraculously healed through prayer and faith.
Although a few men along with women and children
escaped across the river into the hills, at least 17
people were killed, and about 13 were wounded.
(See Church History in the Fulness of Times Student Manual [Church
Educational System manual, 2003], 201, 203–4; see also History of the
Church 3:183–87.) No one in the violent mob was brought
to justice for their crimes in the courts of Missouri or
by federal authorities.

Gripe session on trials – list everything bad
that is happening in your life right now.
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D&C 122:5-7
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What are some things you remember during
trials that help you?
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D&C 122:8
Show a clip from: That We Might “Not … Shrink”
DAVID A. BEDNAR
CES Devotional for Young Adults • March 3, 2013
At Haun’s Mill, a heroic pioneer woman, Amanda Smith, learned by faith how to do something
beyond her abilities and the scientific knowledge of her time. On that terrible day in 1838, as the
firing ceased and the mobsters left, she returned to the mill and saw her eldest son, Willard,
carrying his seven-year-old brother, Alma. She cried, “Oh! my Alma is dead!”
“No, mother,” he said, “I think Alma is not dead. But father and brother Sardius are [dead]!” But
there was no time for tears now. Alma’s entire hipbone was shot away. Amanda later recalled:
“Flesh, hip bone, joint and all had been ploughed out. … We laid little Alma on a bed in our tent and
I examined the wound. It was a ghastly sight. I knew not what to do. … Yet was I there, all that long,
dreadful night, with my dead and my wounded, and none but God as our physician and help. ‘Oh my
Heavenly Father,’ I cried, ‘what shall I do? Thou seest my poor wounded boy and knowest my
inexperience. Oh, Heavenly Father, direct me what to do!’ And then I was directed as by a voice
speaking to me.
“… Our fire was still smouldering. … I was directed to take … ashes and make a lye and put a cloth
saturated with it right into the wound. … Again and again I saturated the cloth and put it into the
hole … , and each time mashed flesh and splinters of bone came away with the cloth; and the wound
became as white as chicken’s flesh.
“Having done as directed I again prayed to the Lord and was again instructed as distinctly as though
a physician had been standing by speaking to me. Near by was a slippery-elm tree. From this I was
told to make a … poultice and fill the wound with it. … The poultice was made, and the wound,
which took fully a quarter of a yard of linen to cover, … was properly dressed. …
“I removed the wounded boy to a house … and dressed his hip; the Lord directing me as before. I
was reminded that in my husband’s trunk there was a bottle of balsam. This I poured into the
wound, greatly soothing Alma’s pain.
“‘Alma my child,’ I said, ‘you believe that the Lord made your hip?’
“‘Yes, mother.’
“‘Well, the Lord can make something there in the place of your hip, don’t you believe he
can, Alma?’
“‘Do you think that the Lord can, mother?’ inquired the child, in his simplicity.
“‘Yes, my son,’ I replied, ‘he has showed it all to me in a vision.’
“Then I laid him comfortably on his face, and said: ‘Now you lay like that, and don’t move,
and the Lord will make you another hip.’
“So Alma laid on his face for five weeks, until he was entirely recovered—a flexible gristle
having grown in place of the missing joint and socket, which remains to this day a marvel to
physicians. …
“It is now nearly forty years ago, but Alma has never been the least crippled during his life,
and he has traveled quite a long period of the time as a missionary of the gospel and [is] a
living miracle of the power of God.”
The treatment was unusual for that day and time, and unheard of now, but when we reach
an extremity, like Sister Smith, we have to exercise our simple faith and listen to the Spirit
as she did. (James E Faust, October 1992 General Conference)
Lessons from Liberty Jail - Elder Jeffrey R. Holland - Sep 7, 2008. http://mormonchannel.org/ces
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOylYSEaqA
Doctrine & Covenants 122