Who was Brigham Young?

We begin our enquiry by asking, Who is God? What have the Mormons to say as to this? The late Brigham Young, one of their very ablest leaders, elected the second “First President” of their Church, answers,

“Adam is God, the Creator of the world, our God, and the only Creator with whom we have to do.”

Mormonism was first organized into a Church on April 6th, 1830, in Fayette, Seneca County, New York State. This was composed of six members—Joseph Smith, Jr., Oliver Cowdery, Hyrum Smith (Joseph’s brother), Peter Whitmer, Jr., Samuel H. Smith, and David Whitmer. Of these, two were murdered in gaol, two apostatised, one became an anti-Brighamite and one died of over-exertion. Joseph was acclaimed the Prophet, who, laying his hands on Cowdery, ordained him to be an Elder of the infant Church. Cowdery then laid his hands on the Prophet, and ordained him to be an Elder. Joseph was twenty-two years old when this solemn farce took place.

One can only give a very brief sketch of the subsequent years, or else this small pamphlet would become a very large volume. In course of time a church of considerable size was formed at Kirtland, Ohio, near the City of Cleveland. According to the Mormon’s own story, John the Baptist appeared as sent by the Apostles Peter, James and John, and conferred on the Church the Aaronic priesthood, promising that higher honour, that of the Meichizedec priesthood, would be conferred on them later. Not long after, the Mormons affirmed, that the three Apostles, Peter, James and John, appeared to them, conferring on them this higher honour, stating that they themselves held this priesthood when in the flesh. Of this there is not the slightest trace in the Scriptures.

The Kirtland “saints” built a temple costing £8,000, and appointed twelve apostles, of whom Brigham Young was the most remarkable, and who became subsequently the second President of the Mormon Church. The Revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr., were published at this time, entitled, Book of Doctrine and Covenants.

The prejudice against the Mormons was so great that Joseph began to see that he must seek adherents from other lands. The feeling in the United States was on every hand against the movement. In August, 1839, a mission was sent to England under the leadership of Brigham Young, which met with brilliant success from their point of view. A thousand converts were added to Zion. These missionaries had to deal craftily. They did not proclaim the blasphemous doctrines, we have been examining, but put forth that which would not shock the public. The writer remembers listening to two young Mormon missionaries in Ireland years ago. The crowd were evidently impressed by what they heard. But when it was known what they were, Mormons and Polygamists, the crowd melted away in disgust. In 1912, it is stated, more than a thousand missionaries went to England, distributing annually five million tracts, and between one and two hundred thousand books. The writer has lying before him a fifteen-paged pamphlet, purporting to be written by Joseph Smith, Jr., himself, with his portrait on the cover, printed in Ipswich, Suffolk, England.

The Mormons had not been long in Kirtland before anti-Mormon feelings were aroused to such an extent that they felt they must seek fresh quarters. The Mormons were again on the move. They found a resting place, and as it turned out, a very temporary one, in the small village of Commerce on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. The ground was marshy, the climate was unhealthy, the place was ill-chosen.

Serious fighting had broken out, and as far as Joseph Smith was concerned, it ended with his being arrested, along with his brother Hyrum, John Taylor and Willard Richards. They were lodged in an upper room in the gaol at Carthage, Illinois on a charge of high treason, for which no bail was allowed. The angry Missourians, however, took the law into their own hands. An armed force of about one hundred men was seen approaching the prison, quickly overpowering the eight men on guard. They were soon inside, the foremost of them, firing his pistol at random, mortally wounding Hyrum Smith. Joseph tried to escape by an open window. When halfway out, he saw with terror the crowd in the prison yard below. The mob fired at him, and he fell wounded and unconscious to the ground below. The attackers made sure work of him. Propping the unconscious man in a sitting attitude against the kerb of a well, four men fired point-blank at his chest. So died Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Thus ended the earthly history of the man, who, less than a year before, had boastfully described himself in the blasphemous words, “Behold, I am Alpha and Omega. Amen,” dying at the early age of thirty-nine.

After his death a struggle ensued for the Presidency of the Mormon Church. Brigham Young was appointed. Meanwhile the U.S. Legislature revoked the charter it had granted to Nauvoo. With the powerful military power behind the Federal Government, resistance was out of the question. The Mormons knew the hour of their expulsion had arrived. The chief idea of their leaders was to reach some place outside the jurisdiction of the United States Government. Brigham Young had heard of the Salt Lake Valley, sparsely inhabited, belonging at that time to Mexico, not then under the jurisdiction of the United States. Afterwards it was incorporated in U.S.A. as Utah Territory. Thither Brigham Young turned his eyes. Some sixteen thousand Mormons set forth in search of a safe resting place. During the winter of 1845/46 timber was felled and boiled in brine to season it quickly. Thousands of wagons were built. The exiles had with them cattle, sheep, horses and mules.

In April, 1830, the first Mormon Church was founded in New York State. Visions began to be seen, miracles to be wrought, and prophets to receive revelations, and, as is usually the case with every new religion, converts, chiefly from among the ignorant and unstable classes, were made. Being a political as well as a religious sect, it appealed to a class easily found in the States, and from other attractions of a wholly different kind, which were, soon after its formation, developed in the Mormon community, it drew within its borders many who had not been characterized by excellence of moral rectitude, or who held in reverence the sanctity of the family circle, or considered obedience to the seventh commandment as any part of their code of morals. Colonies were founded in Jackson Co., Missouri, and Hancock Co., Illinois. From the former they were expelled, and in the latter they built a city, giving it the name of Nauvoo. Here, Joseph Smith began to practise polygamy, and in order to pacify his wife, to whom he had been lawfully married ten years previous, and have an answer to give to others who began to question his moral conduct, he alleges he received a revelation on July 12th, 1843, authorising “celestial marriage” with a plurality of wives, and commanding all “who have this law revealed to them, to obey the same.” Even if it extend to “any man having ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him,” and if any refuse to obey he “will be damned” (see Doctrine and Covenants, and Brigham Young's Journal of Discourses). In the practice of this, we are officially told in “Mormonism and its History” that the prophet Joseph Smith himself led the way, and although at the first it was “confined within a small circle of the faithful brethren and sisters,” it eked out, as such practices are apt to do, and then it was “publicly proclaimed as a doctrine of the Church,” and at once acknowledged by nearly the whole of the members as a “proper religious institution.” Just so. And this general acknowledgment of a flagrant breach of God's sacred law, and the canonization of a system of moral depravity under the name of Religion, such as is only found in the lowest ranks of uncivilized humanity, tells what the Mormon Church is, and the class who compose it. No man who fears God, who has respect to His Word, and regards the sacred bond of husband and wife as therein set forth, would for a moment remain within the pale of a community where these are ruthlessly set at nought, as they have been for over fifty years, and are today by the Mormons, who call themselves “Latter Day SAINTS,” forsooth!

It need scarcely be wondered that the State interfered, that prosecutions were instituted, fines levied, imprisonments made, with the result that the whole colony was removed to the distant wilderness of the Rocky Mountains, more than a thousand miles from government and civilization, where they would be free to continue the obnoxious institution of “celestial marriage” without molestation. The first company, headed by Brigham Young, arrived in Salt Lake Valley on 14th July, 1847, others following in succession, and there the New Zion, the city of the saints, with its gorgeous temple, which is to he their metropolis until the Mormon millennium, has been built.

The Book of Mormon

The bulky volume which bears this name, and claims to be a translation of the writing found on the golden plates, is a fictitious history written in imitation of the Bible, composed of various books, each bearing the name of its writer, beginning with Nephi, a Jew, who lived in Jerusalem B.C. 60, and ending with Moroni, who claims to have lived after Christ, and had been charged to give an account of the order and ordinances of the church, to be used for guidance of the Latter Day Saints. Its weird and frivolous stories are utterly groundless, and although interwoven with Scripture, can deceive none save the “simple” (Rom. 16:18), and such as are “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). Mormons claim that the book was written by “inspired men” and is “a volume of Scripture” of equal value at least with the Bible, which is acknowledged to be “the Jewish Scriptures,” for saints of the Eastern hemisphere, while the Book of Mormon is “also the Word of God of equal authority with the Bible,” especially for the Western hemisphere, of whose early saints the Bible knows and says nothing. The Bible, according to the Mormon creed, is a very faulty book, full of inaccuracies and errors, with whole books omitted, and at best it is only one of many “Revelations” given to men, “the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants and Doctrines,” and other works of the prophets being equal in authority. Isaiah, Paul, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young are all “Revelators,” the latter, if anything, being of a higher order than the former. The following, culled from many such deliverances in Salt Lake Tabernacle, gives the acknowledged position of the Mormon Prophets, Revelators, and Bible makers: “Joseph Smith was a prophet, Brigham Young was a prophet, Wildford Woodruff is a prophet, and I know that he has a great many prophets around him, and he can make Scriptures as good as those in the Bible.” And Joseph Smith's revelations are evidently of far greater value in the Mormon Church than those of the Apostles, for it is declared by Brigham Young, his successor, that “if any make light of, or treat them with indifference,” they will prove their “damnation.” Nor need we wonder when we are told that Joseph Smith was not only an inspired prophet, but “he spoke by the authority of an endless priesthood which was upon him,” and all who “hold the priesthood possess Divine authority thus to act for God; and by possessing part of God's power, they are in reality part of God.” Prodigious! This is surely the “spirit of Antichrist,” of which Scripture warns, which begins by men claiming to have Divine authority, and culminates in “THE Antichrist” claiming to be God, and demanding to be “worshipped as God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Any sect which claims to be receiving continuous revelations through its priests and prophets, which are to be regarded as the voice of God, equal to or greater in authority than the written Word, has in its hands a weapon whereby it can deceive its votaries to any extent, and hold them in its chains. Rome, whose “Tradition” is of equal authority with Scripture, was the first to introduce this deception, and in her hand it succeeded so well that every upstart sect has copied it, and must have in some form its “revelations” through pope, priest, or prophet, making as of old “the Word of God of none effect” (Mark 7:13). Irvingites, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Perfectionists, and numerous smaller sects, while differing in much, agree in this, that there is something besides, something beyond Scripture, through which God now speaks, supplementing, and in many instances overturning the Holy Scriptures He aforetime gave, whereas the Word claims for itself that it is complete—filled full (Col. 1:25), that nothing is to be added to it (Prov. 30:6) or taken from it (Deut. 12:31), under awful penalties (Rev. 20:18-19), and that it has within it ALL that is required for all stages of Christian life, from the making wise of a “child” unto salvation, unto the full equipment and furnishing of “the man of God” for “every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17).

Organization of the Mormon Church

In the Mormon plan of salvation there needed to be a savior: Jesus. But Jesus was a spirit in heaven. For him to be born on earth, Brigham Young the second prophet of the Mormon church said that instead of letting any other man do it, God the Father did it with Mary. He said that the birth of our savior was as natural as the birth of our parents. Essentially, what this means is that Brigham Young taught that ‘god the father' came down and had relations with Mary, his spirit daughter, to produce the body of Jesus. Though many Mormons will not entertain such incestuous thoughts about God and Mary, this is what Brigham Young taught and as far as we know, this has not been denied by the Mormon church. Nevertheless, Jesus was born, got married, and had children. [2]

At last, ragged and tired, they reached the Salt Lake Valley, 4,000 feet above sea level, surrounded by mountains more wonderful than those of the Swiss Alps. Travellers passing through the Valley shunned it as an inhospitable waste. Daniel Webster, the statesman, described it as “a vast worthless area.” At first the settlers had an amazingly difficult and uncomfortable time. Several times the whole community was faced with starvation. With tremendous effort, little by little the desert was made into a smiling, fruitful place of abode. Brigham Young stuck his stick into the ground, saying, “Here we shall build a temple,” but it took forty years before it was completed.

We may ask at this stage, What was the secret of the success of this strange religion? There are two attractions that stand out prominently. It was no question of appealing to purity and honesty, and the restraint of evil that marks the Christian faith. Here the appeal was to some of the worse features of sinful, fallen nature. First, there was the desire of the lawless to get to a place where they could gratify their wish to be rid of the grip of a Federal Government, and from the restrictions of civilization. An author writing on this subject has well expressed the second attraction: “Loose, questionable characters from all over the country joined the sect hoping to find a cover for their profligacy.” It was less than a year before Joseph Smith died, that he published his manifesto, giving out that plurality of wives was a mandate of God Himself to His people. One can trace in this the subtility of Satan. As soon as it was announced, Hyrum Smith took two extra wives, and Brigham Young also took two extra wives. When the latter died he left seventeen wives, sixteen sons and twenty-eight daughters, and a fortune of two or three million dollars. When Joseph Fielding Smith (nephew of Joseph Smith and fifth President) died, he left five wives and forty-two children. When any one dared to speak against this system of things, it was alarming to see how quickly they were put out of the way. Some were stabbed to death in the light of day, others suddenly disappeared, some fled into exile, where they were beyond the reach of this despotism. We believe the appeal to unrestrained lust accounts for large numbers of Latter-Day Saints, that went to swell this Mormon movement.

When the Territory of Utah applied to the Federal Government to be recognised as a State, the Legislature made one strong stipulation—that their application would be granted only on condition that polygamy should be strictly illegal, and that the practice should cease. President Woodruff put forth a manifesto agreeing with this demand. Polygamy became punishable by disfranchisement, a fine of not more than five hundred dollars and six months’ imprisonment. Polygamists could not act as jurors, nor hold any public office. Terrible scenes of grief and anger were seen when the Presidential acceptance of the Federal stipulation was made known. Was plurality of wives not announced as a revelation from God, and received as a command from Him? How then could President Woodruff declare that its abrogation was “the will of the Lord”?

It will be an astonishment doubtless to some, who have been inclined to think charitably of this people and of their doctrines, to learn that according to the Mormon creed, there is “no God,” that is, no Divine Being such as the Scriptures reveal. Here is what the Prophet, Joseph Smith, says: “God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.” “God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on earth the same as Jesus Christ did.” “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's.” And the following, by Brigham Young, leaves no doubt as to who this “exalted man” is, I who was “once as we are,” and is now a God. “When our father Adam came into the Garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his celestial wives. He helped to make and organize this world. He is our Father and our God, the ONLY God with whom we have to do” (Journal of Discourses). This is blasphemy! What is the need of a Gospel to convert sinners to fallen Adam, as the “only God” with whom they “have to do,” or of “preaching elders” evangelising to bring converts to worship “an exalted man,” who formerly lived in Eden with one of his celestial wives? The Mormon creed goes on to say that Jesus Christ was Adam's son by ordinary generation, that the Fall was a necessity, “that men might be,” and that those who practise celestial marriage on earth, will “pass by the angels” and “be God's themselves. This brands the Mormon faith as Polytheism of the lowest and grossest kind.

Brigham Young went still further in reckless statements without any warrant whatsoever. He asserted that God was a polygamist. Here are his words, “When our Father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives.”

Early in this pamphlet we saw that Brigham Young declared that Adam was God, and the remark was made of the subtility of his blasphemous statement, and that we should comment further on this more fully later on in the pamphlet. This promise is now fulfilled by quoting Parley P. Pratt’s Key to Theology: “All men are potential Gods. Thus Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, for instance, are in eternity developing themselves swiftly so that they shall one day be Gods over all their progeny. … All Gods have wives, and become the fathers of the souls of men by Divine generation. The Gods are in the form of men, of the same substance, but more ‘refined’ Man, if faithful, will advance until he has the same creative and designing power as the present Gods, who will go higher in the scale, the end of which is beyond our finite comprehension. … Joseph Smith, the first Mormon prophet, stands next to Christ (Smith being now one of the Gods of his generation), and Christ stands next to Adam. Above the latter is Jehovah, and above Jehovah is Elohim, who is the highest God of whom we in this world have any knowledge.”

Much more of this senseless, blasphemous stuff could be quoted, but we forbear. It shows, however, in what direction Brigham Young’s mind was travelling when he said Adam was God. Was he preparing his followers to believe in his own, falsely-claimed Godhead? What a terrible disillusionment awaits these dupes of Satan. There are not words strong enough in the English language to denounce the childishness, the utter stupidity, the uncleanness, the blasphemy of such wicked vapourings.