Doctrine & Covenants 122

“The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated.”

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).

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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.

D&C 122:5-7 What are some things you remember

during trials that help you? 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

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