Our Relationship to God

JOSEPH SMITH’S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD   (From a talk by Dr. Richard Bushman, noted author and LDS Church Historian)

“…All the direction that Joseph Smith received, whether by angels or the voice of Christ may mislead us in understanding Joseph Smith’s relationship with God.  We may think that he was directed every minute and knew the end from the beginning.  The plan was all in his head; he was simply carrying it out, step by step.

The Lord was prompting him, guiding him.  Since the Lord commands history and knows what will happen, certainly it was the same with Joseph Smith. God was at his elbow, whispering in his ear, teaching him and showing him the way.  Of course, if we stop to think for a moment, we know that is not true.

In fact, many times it was just the opposite.  Joseph felt alone and abandoned.  He sometimes was not sure what to do next.  He worried that he was going to fail in God’s work.  In other words, his assignment in his life was very much like our own.  The Lord gave him commandments to carry them out and then left him on his own, to do the work, to find the means, to solve the problems, to organize the resources, to get things done.  That was the way the Prophet learned, that’s the way we learn.

The most obvious example of this is the establishment of Zion, designated to be constructed in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri.  In 1831, the Lord designated that place as the site to build this Holy City…This was Joseph’s great work.  The plan worked fine for two years.

Then suddenly, in 1833, in a tremendous shock to Joseph Smith, the citizens of Jackson County demanded that the saints leave…When they even engaged a lawyer to help them defend themselves, the people of Jackson County were up in arms and drove them out, even earlier than had been anticipated…When news of this came to Joseph, he admitted he was nearly driven to madness and desperation.  He could not understand what had happened. 

‘God will speedily deliver Zion, for I have His immutable covenant,’ he wrote the Missouri Saints, but confessed, ‘He keeps it hid from mine eyes, the means, how exactly the thing will be done.’…These are not the words of one who had been coddled by God.  Three months later, after a dark fall, one of the darkest in Joseph’s life, he was still searching for inspiration…Gradually the revelations came and the course was laid out…

What I am saying is that with Joseph Smith’s relationship with God, he is one with parents who lose a child to illness or sin, a young person frustrated in their desire to marry or find a job, a father unable to provide for his family, a bishop who cannot recover a lost soul of his congregation, the anguish that these people felt was experienced by Joseph Smith in depth, depth approaching the sufferings of the Savior himself.  We see that even in a righteous life, it was sometimes also too much for the Prophet as sometimes it is almost too much for us…”