The 12th Article of Faith was a lie

The formal adoption of the 12th Article of Faith by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which reads, "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law, was a lie," is perplexing.

The decade between the canonization of the Articles of Faith in 1880 and their adoption as the rule of LDS faith and conduct in 1890 was characterized by rebellious LDS verbal opposition to federal law and continual criminal and civil violations of federal law. LDS leaders and members in the 1880s did not believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates, and in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law because polygamy was illegal and members felt that was unconstitutional. It was possible to challenge the law without violating it. LDS leaders and members chose instead to engage in criminal and unlawful civil acts rather than to obey while challenging the federal statutes directed at them. In fact, it would be hard to find a statement of belief that Mormons believed in less in the 1880s than the 12th Article of Faith. This photo shows convicted Mormon polygamists in the Utah Penitentiary in 1889.

For example, a year and a half before the canonization of the Articles of Faith, Daniel H. Wells, counselor to the quorum of the 12 pictured here, was jailed for two days for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions about a plural marriage he'd conducted in support of their defiant leader. An estimated 10,000 members of the church joined Elder Wells in a parade-style procession as he returned from his incarceration, with another 15,000 members lining the streets cheering his return. Some of the crowd held banners celebrating Mormon refusal to obey the law, while the American flag was reportedly dragged in the dust.

In early 1880, 9 months before the Articles of Faith were canonized, John Taylor, at the time senior apostle and president of the Quorum of the 12, declared, "We believe in loyalty to our country, but where they enact laws forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States, and when the government conflicts with heaven, we will be reigned under the banner of heaven against the government." "I defy the United States. I will obey the will of God. These are my sentiments, and all you who sympathize with me in this position, raise your right hand."

In the spring of 1880, in churches throughout the Utah Territory, a sermon was read after which members were asked to pledge that they would stand by the laws of God and take the consequences rather than obey the laws of man. George Q. Cannon, seated on the left, had a son named Frank, who was one of Utah's first two senators after achieving statehood. It was Frank's view that "no Mormon in those years I think had more hate than Smith," meaning Joseph F. Smith pictured here on the right, "for the United States government and surely none had better reasons to give himself for hate." These three men formed the First Presidency with John Taylor as president from 1880 to 1887.

This is technically how the Articles of Faith became canonized by the vote of those present at the church's general conference in October 1880. The Articles of Faith, not mentioned by name, were included as part of the Pearl of Great Price. The 12th Article of Faith had never been read in a general conference talk before the canonizing vote and wasn't mentioned in any general conference for the next 10 years.

The next year, in 1881, the Twelve Apostles held a special meeting. Apostle Charles C. Rich, who was near death, was carried to the gathering, and Apostle Orson Pratt, also feeble, came as well. Then, after a special prayer in which particular government officials were named as among their oppressors, they altogether washed their feet against such enemies. Wilford Woodruff, a participant in the ceremony, said, "It was truly a solemn scene, and I presume to say it was the first thing of the kind since the creation of the world."

In 1884, 32-year-old Roger Clawson, who would later become an apostle, was convicted of polygamy and unlawful cohabitation after marshals tracked him to a boarding house and found him with one of his wives. The Clawson case was the first prosecution using a jury in which those who practiced or believed in polygamy were excluded. At sentencing, Clawson declared to the judge, "I very much regret that the laws of my country should come in contact with the laws of God, but whenever they do, I shall invariably choose the latter. If I did not so express myself, I should feel unworthy of the cause I represent. The law of 1862 and the Edmunds Law were expressly designed to operate against marriage as practiced and believed in by the Latter-day Saints. They are therefore unconstitutional and of course cannot command the respect that a constitutional law would. That is all I have to say, your honor."

While the church had publicly argued for over 30 years that the Constitution protected polygamy under the First Amendment, which states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, 5 years before Clawson's conviction in 1879, the Supreme Court had ruled unanimously that a federal law prohibiting polygamy did not violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Although the church's claim of constitutional protection for polygamy was thus no longer valid, it was an argument they refused to abandon.

The next year, in 1885, Apostle Heber J. Grant stated, "No matter what restrictions we are placed under by men, our only consistent course is to keep the commandments of God. We should, in this regard, place ourselves in the same position as that of the three Hebrews who were cast into the fiery furnace." Elder Grant's reference to the three Hebrews ignores the fact that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego boldly defied King Nebuchadnezzar's death sentence, declaring, "We are not careful to answer thee in this manner. Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king." While Mormons, in contrast, continuously lied to avoid jail time. The LDS reaction to legal persecution was very different from that of the three Hebrews.

That same year in 1885, church member Sarah Nelson beat two deputies with a broomstick when they attempted to serve court documents on her husband's other wives. In November of 1885, Apostle Lorenzo Snow was captured by law enforcement officers. He'd been hiding in a secret room specially constructed underneath his living room floor. On July 4th, Independence Day in 1885, some US flags in Salt Lake City were flown at half-mast to mourn a fallen nation persecuting LDS polygamists.

In 1886, Apostle George Q. Cannon was arrested by federal officials in Nevada and escaped briefly by jumping from a train while being transported to Utah. He later claimed he had fallen from the train. He was recaptured and brought to Salt Lake under military guard only to forfeit an astronomical $45,000 in bail bonds, which is the equivalent of $1.5 million in 2025, after he fled again.

In July, the First Presidency, in which George Q. Cannon was the first counselor, declared, "God is superior to governments and courts, but he tells his church to befriend the constitutional law of the land. If it is not constitutional, he says it comes of evil. It must support the principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges. If not, it comes of evil. Who is the Lord directing? His church. Whatsoever is contrary to the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution, which includes not mere belief, but the free exercise of religion, he does not command his people to obey, but says they shall do his will."

In August of 1886, Apostle Wilford Woodruff arrived in the Utah city of St. George, where he hid in the home of John and Emma Squires to evade federal law enforcement officers. Sister Squires recalled that when Elder Woodruff was at the house, whenever anybody knocked on the door, she always waited for Wilford to retreat to his upstairs room before answering the door. She made Elder Woodruff a disguise consisting of a sunbonnet and what she called a Mother Hubbard dress, which he wore when he'd leave the house to hunt quail.

In February of 1887, this wanted poster was released offering rewards for Church President John Taylor and his first counselor, George Q. Cannon. The next day, Apostles Penrose and Richards wrote a letter to President Taylor stating, "We then say, 'We consider the law of God superior to the law of the state, and if we have to break the law of the state to keep the law of God, we will stand by the consequences.'" Five months later, Church President John Taylor died while in hiding as a federal fugitive.

In September of 1888, President George Q. Cannon, first counselor in the First Presidency, surrendered to federal authorities, after which he served 5 months in the penitentiary. He's in the circle in the middle of the picture holding a bouquet of flowers. President Cannon's son, describing the times, explained that "among the Mormons there was an unconquerable spirit of sanctified lawlessness and among the non-Mormons an equally indomitable determination to vindicate the law. Both were for the most part sincere. Both were resolute." President Cannon's son also recounted a story about the time a devout member visited the church leader in prison. He explained that "Charles Wilkin was visiting him," meaning George Q. Cannon, "one day in the prison office when a guard entered with his hat on. Wilkin snatched it from his head. Never enter his presence, he said without taking it off. And the guard never did again. I salute the memory."

So why, after more than a decade of documented defiance, with the church with many members in prison and on the run from federal law enforcement, formally adopt the Articles of Faith the next year in 1890 as the "rule of our faith and of our conduct during our mortal lives" when leaders and members clearly did not obey, honor, and sustain the law?

The answer lies in understanding that at the time the 12th was not the only disingenuous Article of Faith. The first statement of the 13th Article was equally problematic: "We believe in being honest" was patently false. The church's principal strategy to avoid punishment for breaking federal anti-polygamy laws was to lie. The LDS culture of deceit to protect polygamy was evident long before the 1880s, escalating in response to federal legislation that began in 1862.

The 1879 Supreme Court decision that declared the US Congress's anti-polygamy legislation constitutional was ironically initiated as a test case by the church whose legal strategy during the trial was to have Mormon witnesses lie. During the court proceedings, in response to questioning about the existence of records documenting plural marriage, Apostle Orson Pratt lied and said he couldn't recall whether the church kept records. When asked about his involvement in the defendant's plural marriage, which he'd performed, Apostle Pratt claimed he couldn't recall whether he'd officiated. All the Mormon witnesses denied any specific knowledge about the plural marriage in question, except one. When federal prosecutors unexpectedly produced the defendant's plural wife to testify, she hadn't heard Elder Pratt's disingenuous denials, nor had she been coached in the church's strategy of deception. She unwittingly told the truth and testified forthrightly that Apostle Pratt, who only minutes before couldn't recall if he'd been involved, had indeed performed their marriage.

An observer sent from Washington to report on the trial described this unexpected turn of events: "As the marshal stepped aside and revealed the person of Mrs. Reynolds number two, Amelia J., pictured lower left, framed in the doorway, the consternation of the Mormon crowd was startling. The ghost of Joe Smith would scarcely have produced a more profound sensation. Reynolds, the polygamist on trial, settled himself low in his seat with a look of hopeless terror, while the general look of dismay spread through the entire Mormon auditory." After conferring overnight, defense lawyers conceded that a plural marriage had been proven. They argued instead that polygamy for Mormons was a divine institution, and the jury returned a guilty verdict after half an hour's deliberation. When prosecutors later sought Amelia Jane Reynolds for further testimony, she could not be found, and her husband, George, pictured here with his sons in 1905, told the marshal at the time that all attempts to find his second wife would fail and that she would never testify. The church eventually appealed the decision to the Supreme Court and lost. An apostle was caught lying, and the church lost the ability legally and rationally to claim constitutional protection for polygamy. And yet, the lies continued.

Some of the lies were clever, like the Mormon couple intending to secretly legitimize a polygamist marriage in front of a magistrate who asked them if either had been married before. The groom answered yes, but she's in the cemetery. His first wife was indeed in the local cemetery, but she was standing up and very much alive. Most of the polygamy lies told were, ironically, more straightforward.

Legal historian Sarah Behringer Gordon, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who teaches in both the law school and the history department there, in her well-written book, *The Mormon Question*, explained how Mormon dishonesty typically manifested itself at the time: "A second defense strategy, which spanned the spectrum from combativeness to forgetfulness to actual falsehood, was also widely practiced, especially by Mormon women. Those who could not hide lied. Mormon witnesses, especially the wives and local leaders who were suspected of having performed or witnessed plural marriage ceremonies, would not provide meaningful testimony. In a few early cases before they learned that forgetting provided more protection than silence, wives were jailed for contempt of court after they refused to answer questions. Eventually, instead of refusing to answer questions, witnesses simply forgot the material elements of crimes associated with plural marriage. The records are full of testimony that meets this description in all kinds of cases. Members of an accused polygamist family would deny all knowledge of their husbands' or father's other wives, couldn't remember the last time they'd seen him, and didn't know where the other families lived, even if they all resided in a tiny village. Bishops forgot whether they'd performed marriage ceremonies and couldn't remember whether they'd ever heard if records were kept of marriages."

Frustrated federal prosecutors railed against this annoyingly effective tactic: "Mormons study the art of forgetting what they have seen and heard. And so it often happens that a Mormon goes upon the witness stand and testifies that he cannot remember having performed a marriage ceremony that took place within a week past. They all have wonderful powers of forgetting. I have never found one who had a retentive memory when a polygamy case was on trial." In legal terms, such deliberate forgetfulness to prevent the truth from becoming part of the court record is perjury. Whereas Mormon women were initially considered victims of polygamy, by the mid-1880s, Mormon women were revealed as active participants in the perpetuation of polygamy and its attendant vices; untruthfulness, for example, was widely perceived to be characteristic of all Mormons.

It wasn't just outsiders that viewed pervasive Mormon dishonesty as endemic. Charles W. Penrose, editor of the church's publication, *The Deseret News*, who would later become an apostle, wrote to church President John Taylor in 1887: "The endless subterfuges and prevarications which our present condition impose threatened to make our rising generation a race of deceivers."

Modern skepticism about the willingness of both church leaders and LDS women in the late 1800s to lie about polygamy is driven by a lack of awareness regarding the pervasive LDS polygamy-related dishonesty prevalent at the time. In a previous video entitled "Bogus Affidavit," I document several high-profile cases of LDS women lying to implicate Joseph Smith in polygamy. Emily Dow Partridge Young, for example, lied in an affidavit created in 1869, as well as in court testimony given in what's known as the Temple Lot case in 1892, less than a year and a half after the Articles of Faith were adopted as the rule of LDS faith and conduct.

During the same time frame, senior church leaders engaged in other activities that were not of good report or praiseworthy. This included a fake excommunication scheme in which church leaders conducted mass excommunications in Idaho so that members could still vote in political elections with a private understanding that it was a ruse to trick outsiders and that it didn't really affect the excommunicated members' worthiness.

Perhaps most noteworthy in this regard is the fact that the church presidency engaged in a large-scale bribery scheme to manipulate the nation's largest newspapers. In 1887, they committed $144,000, which is the equivalent of over $5 million in 2024, to manipulate newspaper coverage in favor of the church. The church president, his counselors, and the apostles were all aware of the church's relationship with a group known as the Railroad Lobby, which considered itself a secret combination capable of manipulating public opinion and political outcomes to help Utah become a state, which was the joint objective of both the railroad lobby and the church.

In his journal, Apostle Abraham Cannon claimed that a member of the railroad lobby got a bill passed by the Nevada legislature to prevent prosecution of his father, George Q. Cannon, for attempted bribery after President Cannon offered a Nevada marshal $1,000 to release him after he was apprehended. The power of the railroad lobby combination was real. In an 1887 letter to the president of the Quorum of the 12, Wilford Woodruff, a representative of the railroad lobby, explained that they had "a great and powerful combination and can and will use them for the benefit of the church." He noted that the Stanford group, meaning Leland Stanford, a founder of both the Southern Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads as well as Stanford University and who at the time was also a senator for the state of California, had friends in the various rings and syndicates who "almost sway the councils of the nation and that their influence reached into all the states and are a small army."

The inspiration, or more accurately the direction, to read the Articles of Faith in general conference in 1890 did not come from heaven. It came from a representative of the railroad lobby. Even though the Articles of Faith had been canonized 10 years before, they had never been read in general conference. The church's adoption of the Articles of Faith in 1890 was part of a coordinated public relations campaign intended to trick the American public and their representatives in Congress into believing that the church was going to give up the practice of plural marriage and become law-abiding citizens. The Articles of Faith were read for the first time ever in general conference right before church President Wilford Woodruff's manifesto was read aloud and voted on.

Isaac Trumbo, a representative of the railroad lobby, wrote the following to President Joseph F. Smith, second counselor in the First Presidency, four days prior to the church's 1890 general conference vote on the manifesto. As I read these words, consider who in the relationship between these two men seems to be in charge. Trumbo, a non-member, wrote to President Smith: "Don't you forget for one moment that I don't keep urging this thing," meaning statehood for Utah, "as hard as I can, as I want this to come to a quick ending. And I know we have got men now, and we want to work it. And with the assistance which President Willard," meaning Woodruff, "gave us the other day," meaning the manifesto, "we have used it for everything it was worth, as you will see, I got it into the dailies of this great republic. And just as it was sent to me in that dispatch, now I want it." The manifesto, published in *The Deseret News* on Monday afternoon and also read the Articles of Faith out in the Tabernacle on the beginning of conference. "There is nothing in this to do and I want you to do it and I don't want to explain why we want it done but you will see the benefit of it in a very short time as we intend to have it in all the leading dailies," meaning daily newspapers, "of this country telegraphed at that time. So don't fail on this point. I will entrust this little thing to you from Tobias," meaning Trumbo, "to Solomon," meaning Joseph F. Smith.

Tobias was Trumbo's alias and Solomon was President Joseph F. Smith's. They used code names to keep their communications confidential. Four days later, President Wilford Woodruff got up in general conference and said, "I will say, as the question is often asked, what do the Latter-day Saints believe in? We feel disposed to read the Articles of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and should there be any strangers present, they may understand our faith in this respect. The question is often asked, do the Mormon people believe in the Bible? So the principles that are read will show our faith and belief appertaining to the gospel of Christ." The articles were then read by Bishop Orson F. Whitney, after which Apostle Franklin D. Richards said, "Beloved brethren and sisters, I move that we as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in general conference assembled to accept and adopt these Articles of Faith which Bishop Whitney has now read as the rule of our faith and of our conduct during our mortal lives. It may be thought that it is superfluous to offer it, but it must be borne in mind that we have a rising generation since this was last presented to us, that are coming to years of judgment and understanding, and we wish to have all, old and young, rich and poor, bond and free, that have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in these articles to have a chance to express it by their vote if they wish." The vote to sustain Brother Richard's motion was unanimous. The Manifesto, or Official Declaration Number One, found in...

The back of the Doctrine of Covenants was then read and accepted by vote, which declared that, quote, "We are not teaching polygamy or a plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice."

Four days after that vote in general conference, Apostle John W. Taylor, pictured here, married his third wife. This picture of four of his wives was taken in 1901. In the 14 years after the manifesto was accepted by vote as binding upon the church, eight members of the quorum of the 12 took additional plural wives. The manifesto was a deception, and the 12th article of faith was a lie intended to help sell that deception.

When the deception later faced scrutiny, church leaders were forced to upgrade the manifesto from inspired administrative action to a revelation capable of offsetting DNC 132. They did not believe the manifesto was a real revelation, but they had to pretend that they did to avoid being exposed as base deceivers. The problem was in lying to the Gentiles; they also necessarily had to lie to members. And positioning the manifesto as a revelation is a lie that is still held by the church today. The manifesto started as a lie that later evolved into a revelation.

For years before the manifesto, President Woodruff had been clear in his conversations with the apostles. In May of 1888, he told them, quote, "We are not going to stop the practice of plural marriage until the coming of the Son of Man." Seven months later, he said, quote, "The Lord will never give a revelation to abandon plural marriage." In November of 1889, less than a year before the manifesto was published, President Woodruff recorded a revelation in his journal which directed the church to not abandon plural marriage and which assured the First Presidency that God would fight the polygamy battle for the saints. It read in part, quote, "Thus saith the Lord, let not my servants who are called to the presidency of my church deny my word or my law. Place not yourselves in jeopardy to your enemies by promise." President Joseph F. Smith reportedly wept when he heard the revelation.

Given church leaders' long-standing campaign of deception to pretend they had abandoned plural marriage, this revelation could not be shared publicly. So when President Woodruff published the manifesto less than a year later, while it may have been confusing to some members, senior leadership understood it was simply another trick to manipulate public opinion and help Utah attain statehood.

Accordingly, after President Woodruff had publicly released the manifesto, but before it was presented to the church for a vote, Apostle Francis M. Lyman, in a meeting with the other apostles, said, quote, "I design to continue to live with and have children by my wives, using the wisdom God gives me to avoid being captured by the officers of the law." Elder Lyman knew the manifesto was a lie, as did the other apostles. Ten months after the church voted to accept the manifesto, Apostle Mariner W. Merrill, in a meeting with the other apostles, reinforced this point. He said, quote, "I do not believe the manifesto was a revelation from God, but was formulated by President Woodruff and endorsed by his counselors and the twelve apostles for expediency to meet the president's situation of affairs in the nation or those against the church." Apostle John W. Taylor was more direct. He considered the manifesto, quote, a kind of cowardly submission, which explains in part why he took four new plural wives after the manifesto.

While the apostles generally considered President Woodruff's act of issuing the manifesto to be inspired, they did not consider the document to be a revelation. The document itself was filled with lies, which nobody knew better than the First Presidency and quorum of the 12. The actual revelation President Woodruff claimed to receive directed them to, quote, "Place not yourselves in jeopardy to your enemies by promise," which is exactly what the manifesto did.

Critics of the church were quick to point out that the manifesto, while nominally precluding new plural marriages, said nothing about unlawful cohabitation with existing plural wives and did not claim to be a revelation. Without a revelation to offset DNC 32, the critics countered, "The manifesto was just another meaningless trick from church leaders and should not be taken seriously."

About a year after the church voted to accept the manifesto, President Woodruff got stuck giving legal testimony that forced him to assert that the manifesto meant things that neither he nor the other apostles believed that it did. As Apostle Abraham Cannon explained, quote, President Woodruff said that he was placed in such a position on the witness stand that he could not answer other than he did. Through his testimony combined with pressure from the Salt Lake Tribune, President Woodruff claimed that unlawful cohabitation was forbidden by the manifesto and that the manifesto actually had been a revelation. The manifesto-as-revelation story grew and solidified over time, aided by President Woodruff's increasingly fanciful insinuations. The First Presidency and 12 did not believe either of these assertions and continued living their lives accordingly. The lie that the manifesto was a revelation is still held by the church today.

When Apostle Taylor, bottom right, took his third wife 4 days after the vote on the manifesto, Apostle Francis M. Lyman, top right, performed the ceremony in a carriage as they drove around Salt Lake City's Liberty Park at night.

About 20 years after the manifesto, when the church was finally really trying to stamp out further plural marriages, Apostle Francis M. Lyman was reportedly grilling a state president who had entered into a post-manifesto plural marriage. While he was chastising the leader, the state president's wife interrupted Lyman, demanding, quote, "Don't you say a word. Don't you say a word. You know very well that you proposed to me to become your plural wife since the manifesto, and I refused you. Don't you say a word against us. You proposed to me, and I have the black and white to show for it. You keep quiet. It's possible Elder Lyman thought the deceitful manifesto of 1890 applied to the stake president, but not to him as an apostle, as justification for his hypocritical behavior. Or maybe after 20 years of propping up a false manifesto storyline, he'd become fuzzy on what the truth really was. It's disturbing to consider how many women Elder Lyman might have proposed to if he'd forgotten about his one-time attraction to the state president's wife. Lies told long enough may eventually displace the truth, even in the minds of the original perpetrators.

The decades-long practice of lying deeply affected both the leadership and the rank and file members of the LDS church. When new apostles were called into the Latter-day Saints' highest ranks, they entered as the juniormost member and were subordinate to the other leaders who were practiced in lying and deception. Given the manner of ordering the leadership positions, the effect of these many years of deceit became embedded in the very fiber of LDS leadership, with the consequences remaining still today. It was a turn of events that altered forever the trajectory of the institution and has left an untrustworthy and dishonest legacy that haunts the church even now and can't be removed without a candid, honest, and contrite confession of the institution's true history.

Joseph F. Smith, who was deeply involved in the church's polygamy-related dishonesty, was ordained an apostle by Brigham Young in 1866. In 1866. As church president in 1910, he called his son Joseph Fielding Smith to be an apostle, who had become the president of the church at the time of his death in 1972. In a 1980 interview, Katherine C. Thomas, whose father, George M. Cannon, had married her mother as a polygamous wife in 1901, said she and her siblings were told not to ask their parents about their plural relationship and that, as a child, she was instructed to conceal from others the identity of her father and, as a first-grader in Salt Lake City, was required to attend school using a false name.

The manifesto, the adoption of the articles of faith, and other related lies eventually worked. Five years later, upon achieving statehood, the First Presidency sent a congratulatory telegram to three men, including Tobias, still using his pseudonym or Isaac Trumbo, and Clara Clarkson, the code name for James S. Clarkson, previously the chair of the Republican National Committee. The First Presidency characterized the advice, guidance, and actions of the railroad lobby as resulting in the political deliverance of the people of Utah and, by inference, the church. They wrote, quote, "We rejoice with and congratulate you on the successful termination of your labor, which has resulted in Utah's infranchisement and political deliverance to our people."

Three years after achieving statehood, President Woodruff and George Buchanan visited San Francisco, where they stayed at the home of Isaac Trumbo, who treated the senior church leaders to a visit to the Orpheum, identified as a place of amusement, as well as a noted restaurant and the Bohemian Club, where President Woodruff briefly spoke. Less than a week later, President Woodruff died while at the home of Isaac Trumbo from complications due to a faulty catheter. Trumbo's home, where President Woodruff died, still stands in San Francisco today.

There's something else noteworthy about the original articles of faith. The fourth article of faith today is not the same as what Joseph originally wrote in the Wentworth letter. In the original version, Joseph didn't consider faith and repentance the first principles of the gospel. He considered faith and repentance ordinances, probably in the same way we use the phrase municipal ordinances to mean municipal laws. The first principles of the gospel, according to the prophet Joseph, are to understand the path to godhood. Specifically, those principles involve understanding the character of God, that God was once a mortal on an earth like we are today, and that God became God by progressing from exaltation to exaltation through multiple probationary cycles.

In a talk given to members of the church less than 3 months before he died, the prophet Joseph identified the real first principles of the gospel. He explained, quote, "My first object is to find out the character of the only wise and true God and what kind of being he is. God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. That is the great secret. I am going to tell you how God came to be God. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and that he was once a man like us. Yay, that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did. You have got to learn to be gods yourselves, the same as all gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another and from one small capacity to a great one, from exaltation to exaltation until you attain to the resurrection of the dead and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings and to sit in glory as do those who sit enthroned in power. What did Jesus do? Why, I do the things I saw my father do? My father worked out his kingdom with fear and trembling, and I must do the same. Jesus treads in the tracks of his father and inherits what God did before. And God is thus glorified and exalted in the salvation and exaltation of his children. It is plain beyond disputation, and thus you learn some of the first principles of the gospel about which so much has been said."

The first principles of the gospel, according to the prophet Joseph, describe the path to godhood, which is to tread in the tracks of, or follow the path of, the father as Jesus did while passing from exaltation to exaltation until we attain to the resurrection. Meaning we acquire the power to resurrect all those dependent upon us as Jesus did. All the gods who've gone before us achieved godhood by going from one small degree to another while progressing from exaltation to exaltation. Multiple exaltations imply multiple cycles of probationary experience that each culminate in some form of resurrection that is described as exaltation. Although that term is not well defined and likely not well understood. Eternal progression, based on Joseph's sermon, is clearly not finalized after the one-and-done mortal probationary model popular in the church today. We won't be able to become what Jesus is until we've each done what Jesus did, which is the same thing our heavenly father did too. And that necessarily requires other future cycles of mortality involving ostensibly creation, atonement, and resurrection to complete each one. When Jesus attained to the resurrection, it meant he was able to resurrect all of us in this creation cycle that are dependent upon him. Each of us must eventually walk that same path to become like him that he did to become like our heavenly father. God's work is one eternal round. We ignore the prophet Joseph's teachings at our own peril.

While the manifesto Mormonism of 1890 may appear unrecognizable to modern members of the church, both are very different religions from what the prophet Joseph Smith restored. The adoption of the articles of faith highlights some of those disparities. Brigham's polygamous abomination, built and sustained on a foundation of lies, cheapened Joseph's expansive view of our exalting relationship with the gods and replaced it with a capricious, libidinous, misogynistic deity somehow beholden to a key-wielding hierarchy assured that all is well because of accumulated church resources. Thus was polluted the holy church of