I'm gonna be king! Yippee!

[Emower]

I have been working my way through Michael Quinn's book, Origins of Power. I wanted to know more about the priesthood restoration and the evolution of priesthood importance.
The fact that there was no succession structure in place in preparation for Josephs death has always struck me as odd. Why would he not set it up so that it could continue the way he wanted? Reading Quinn's book the other day gave some insight. Apparently, in a conversation with Willard Richards Joseph said "I will advance from Prophet, to Priest, and then to King [---]not to kingdoms of this Earth but of the most High God." Within the private understanding of the Quorum of the anointed, Joseph had designated the Presiding Patriarch as the Church's Prophet because Joseph was soon to receive the highest religious office --- that of eternal king in heaven-through the second anointing ceremony." (Quinn, Origins of Power pg. I don't know I am reading this on a kindle.)
Quinn had shown before this that at the time Joseph spoke the quote listed Hyrum was presiding patriarch. Joseph also announced that "Hyrum held the office of prophet to the Church by birthright."
So Joseph did have a plan. He was going to be promoted to King, Hyrum was going to advance to Prophet, and who the heck knows what kind of weirdness might have followed. I suppose he did not count on them both being killed.

[moksha]

Once you cross over into Narnia, you can be High King of Cair Paravel. If anyone questions you, just tell them you have been anointed by Aslan.

Things like this make you wonder if lithium could have restored Joseph to the lower rank of prophet once again. From an apologetic point of view, this episode never happened despite any documentation to the contrary.

[fh451]

Interesting - then I would assume that succession would be from father to son, just like the European monarchies. That would lend weight to Joseph Smith III's claim. This is one of those things that really made me wonder if Joseph was familiar with the story of John von Leiden and the Anabaptists. von Leiden was also elevated to the office of king from being prophet, which is a bit of an unusual move, and not one that would necessarily come from just being an Old Testament restorationist.

fh451

[deacon blues]

The "Joseph Smith Papers" that deal with the Council of Fifty meetings give a vivid description of the April 11th meeting where Joseph was unanimously sustained as "Prophet, Priest, and, King". It is as if their whole reality was based on an Armageddon coming in the near future. It is easy to see Joseph's megalomania. In a series of meetings Joseph assigns a committee to write a Constitution for "The Kingdom of God" and submit it to him. Then he will correct it by the power of God, and show them how its done. It's easy to see why secrecy was so important- it would be easy to interpret their actions as treason.

[LSOF]

"King of the Kingdom of God" = "King of God's Kingdom" = "God"

[Corsair]

"King of the Kingdom of God" = "King of God's Kingdom" = "God"

I suspect that Joseph and Brigham meant that we could become Kings in the Kingdom of God. It would be like living in the Roman empire and a "king" was like Juba in African Numidia or the Herodian dynasties in Judea. You are still king in your own domain and have broad powers in your kingdom. But Roman representatives are still on hand and you definitely will be paying taxes back to the Roman Emperor. On one hand you can call on the Roman legions if you got invaded, but you will be absolutely crushed if you ever make Rome angry.

In addition to this arrangement, Joseph and Brigham seemed to assume that they would have their own divine client states owing fealty to them. This is where it starts to sound like some celestial multi-level marketing group and the metaphor starts wandering into crazy territory. Figuring out the crazy details of how this works does not make the whole arrangement look particularly reasonable or authentic.