Why was God so hard on Joseph Smith?

[Hagoth]

Something ocurred to me while listening to the latest RFM podcast about Mormonism and Magic: https://radiofreemormon.org/2022/01/rfm ... m-part-1/

I have always wondered why God, supposedly, declared that Joseph Smith would be struck dead if an unauthorized person touched the Gold Plates. Why would God kill the messenger rather than the offender, like he did repeatedly in the Bible (e.g. the ark steadier, Ananias & Saphira, etc.) I realized there's a very practical reason for this. A skeptic could easily say, "I'll take my chances," which would leave Joseph in a bind, having to invent another excuse. But if Joseph is the target of the smiting he could just say, "I appreciate that you are willing to take your chances. I am not."

Similarly, we can ask why the girls and women who were targets of Joseph's affection did not receive a direct threat from the sword-bearing angel. The obvious reason, of course, is that there wasn't any such angel, but the equally real reason is that having Joseph see the angel and receive the death threat removed the girls from having to make a decision based on evidence. Just as the plate examiner could only see what Joseph permitted in a very controlled setup where he filled in all of the details himself, the only option left for the girls was to either believe or disbelieve Joseph, and either be willing or unwilling to be the cause of his death if he turned out to be telling the truth.

[2bizE]

I think to make JS look more legitimate.

[moksha]

I suspect more than one BYU boy has used the story of being shishkabobed by an angel with a drawn sword if ... you know what.

[no1saint]

Plausible (in his mind at least) deniability.

[hallew]

There are a lot of reasons I believe polygamy was never commanded by God and that Section 132 is BS. However, the fact that the angel only shared God’s will with JS just adds to my list of reasons that there was no angel. If an angel could tell Sarah that she would be a mother in old age, then surely an angel could have told Emma the same thing about polygamy...

[jfro18]

There are a lot of reasons I believe polygamy was never commanded by God and that Section 132 is BS. However, the fact that the angel only shared God’s will with JS just adds to my list of reasons that there was no angel. If an angel could tell Sarah that she would be a mother in old age, then surely an angel could have told Emma the same thing about polygamy...

Yep.

And we have the accounts where Joseph Smith tells these women they'll receive a sign, and then when they say something happened (I believe one of them - maybe Lucy Walker - claimed they had a vision) Joseph Smith then tells them they missed out and what it would've been...

It's amazing how these visions only happened to Joseph Smith and then he had to effectively tell these girls how to get a confirmation in a way that amounted to a 'heads I win, tails you lose' equation.

But I think God was hard on Joseph Smith because as Hagoth stated it both made it seem like Joseph Smith had to play by the rules (i.e. calling himself out in some revelations) and also put the burden and punishments on him to put more pressure on his followers to obey.

[Just This Guy]

I listened to RFM's podcast about Magic and Mormonism.* One of the things he talks about with stage magic is that there are two types of magic tricks. those with gimmicks and those without. In this case, a gimmick is a prop that is modified in some way to make the trick work. He talks about card tricks. You have tricks that use a normal deck of cards (non-gimmick) and there are tricks that you a trick deck (gimmick). The thing is that you never want the audience to look too closely at the gimmick props. If they look at it in detail, they can figure out the trick. IF you do let them look at it prop, then it needs to be done in very control conditions to minimize there ability to see the details.

Stage magic is all about miss directing people's expectations and attention. So, if a magician lets you examine their prop, they do so because the prop is not the gimmick. It's a normal prop and the audience can't learn anything by examining it. IF they don't let you examine something, then it is the gimmick. So you can know, if they let you look at the prop, then that is not where the trick is. The trick is in what they don't want you to look at.

To go back to his earlier stage magic podcasts, the trick with translating the BOM was not the rock in the hat. The rock was misdirection o take attention away from the hat where the real trick was hidden. At the 8 witness to the BOM, a portion of the gold plates are seal. Possibly to hide the fact that the "untranslated 2/3s" as too hard to fake and therefor not real plates with inscriptions. It is sealed to prevent close inspection that could reveal the trick. Throw in some divine anger in as well to further scare people off from looking too closely.

So my point here is with Mormonism, you always have to look at what they don't want you to look.


How better of a young man looking to get it on with a hot girl than to use a completely unprovable claim? Again, throw in some divine anger. someone who can fall for the line and you can get up her skirt. You use it once and find out that it works, then you can start using the same method on other girls and their families who all fall for it.

*https://radiofreemormon.org/2022/01/rfm ... sm-part-1/