ROMNEY'S SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
(OR HE DOESN'T KNOW THE TRUE HISTORY OF HIS OWN CHURCH)
Doug Wallace JD--- A Former Mormon High Priest
The recent attempt by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney to placate American concerns about his church's Christian view bespeaks his selective ignorance about his own church’s history.
Chief among the past woes of Mormons was the persecution complex. The story went that the church had suffered immeasurable harm from Christian persecution for its beliefs.
While it is true that there were some isolated incidents of unfair actions against members by non-Mormons, the overall scene was one of tolerance with a quiet smirk for the absurd claims of church founder Joseph Smith involving angels, golden plates, Book of Mormon and visions of God. Official Church History distorts most events alleged as persecution.
Between the time of the church organization on April 6, 1830 and the extermination order (infra) of Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri in 1838, Smith and his close cohort/conspirator, Sydney Rigdon, had created an unlawful bank in Kirkland, Ohio where they defrauded investors and fled to Missouri when Ohio officials were seeking their arrest. In Missouri, with a large swelling of converts, Smith declared the place at Far West to be the original site of the Garden of Eden and it would be there that the New Zion would be built. He also declared that the church would be the future ruler of Zion and the world both ecclesiastically and civilly.
Meanwhile Rigdon at the 1838 July 4th celebration used the word “exterminate” against locals and some dissidents who dared stand in the way of the church settlement and expansion. When the pressure of the church went against the locals with allegations of theft by church members, hostilities broke out called the Mormon War with Governor Boggs issuing his own “extermination” order against Mormons. In effect, a declaration of a state of war. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_War
Hostilities were ended by surrender of the church insurgents resulting in the arrest of Smith and close advisers to stand trial on treason and murder while the main body agreed in the peace terms to move east out of Missouri. Smith and associates were first tried, convicted and sentenced to death as war criminals by a military tribunal but that was halted and changed to a civil court where they were held prisoners in Liberty Jail awaiting trial. Smith, et al, later escaped and joined the main Mormon body on the east bank of the Mississippi river in Illinois on swampy land the main body had acquired for a city and named it Nauvoo.
Obtaining a special charter from the Illinois Legislature, for the city known as the Nauvoo Charter, Smith set himself up as a Theocratic dictator as (1) the Church leader, (2) the Mayor and (3) the General of a 5,000 man army called the Nauvoo Legion. He considered the charter granted him dictatorial autonomy as a state within the state of Illinois. HE WAS WRONG
At Nauvoo, Smith hired Gun slinger Orin Porter Rockwell to be his body guard and sent him on a mission back to Missouri in 1839 with instructions to kill Boggs. Boggs was seriously wounded in the shooting and not expected to live. Later an order for extradition of escaped felon Smith to be tried in Missouri was issued.
In 1844, Smith while a fugitive from justice in Missouri had declared himself a candidate for President of the US. He organized a semi secret group called the Council of the Fifty to bring about one world government but spelled backwards “YFTIF” in a clumsy attempt to conceal it. That group, which is perpetually organized, crowned Smith “King of the Earth”. The same crowning has occurred to each successive church leader to this day with Gordon B. Hinckley, Mormon president, as Christ's Vice Regent and Earth King. The Council continues to steer the church in that direction with involvement in the Heritage Foundation, the Bush war machine and international economic schemes raising poverty levels three fold in the past thirty years. Romney is a blood oath committed Priesthood subordinate to Hinckley in all matters!
Associated with that event, Smith ordered the destruction of a newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor that was about to publish information about Smith's plural sexual relationships in particular with 16 year old Fanny Alger who worked in the Smith household as a maid.
Some time prior to this. Smith had obtained a franchise for establishing a Masonic Lodge. Very quickly he elevated himself to a 33rd degree Mason. He also adapted some of the Masonic Initiation rituals into the Mormon Temple ceremonies and had its icons sewn on special underclothing which had to be worn thereafter by all initiates to the temple ceremony every day and night for the rest of their lives. See: http://www.religionfacts.com/about.htm For doing this, the franchise was withdrawn and he angered the Order by his actions in violating its trust and the secrets within it.
Smith was arrested and lodged in the Carthage Jail to await hearings on charges of violation of freedom of the press and the extradition order.
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