Joseph Smith Expert: "My Biggest Discovery Happened While Out of The Church" | Don Bradley E0039 - Let’s Get Real with Stephen Jones

Episode Transcript
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(01:17):
I had an amazing mother,Patricia Bradley, and,
she, when I was little, shejust asked questions to me.
Like, she just really stokedmy curiosity.
She got me to askthe question. Why?
You know why.
Look at that field over there.
You know, why do you.
Why do you think she's doingthat?

(01:37):
You know?
And, every child is curious,
but she just really sometimesthat curiosity gets killed.
Him, it gets stoked.
Yeah,I got stoked. And my mother.
And so growing up, I wasa science kid, and it wasn't.
It was when I was a teenager,like ten years.

(01:57):
I started again in history.
And I really got an A history,right?
Like church history.
Yeah.
And that that grew outof being really devout.
I had a kind of
spiritual awakeningwhen I was 15, when I realized
that, like,
you know, whateverelse I could do with my life,
if there's eternity, theneternity is gonna outweigh,

(02:20):
you know, there's a passagein Second Corinthians
where Paul sayssomething like, you know,
don't fix your eyeson the things that you can see
them,the things that can't see,
things that you can seeare temporal, temporary,
the things that you can't seeare eternal.
And so that led to me really,

(02:42):
delving in to the scriptures,delving in religiously,
and then because
history is such an importantpart of the restoration,
and Joseph Smithwas such a crucial figure
in bringing forththe scriptures
of the restoration,
I wanted to knowmore about him, because,

(03:03):
you know,
the history of the restorationwas sacred history.
And so I wanted to understand.
And I thought of Joseph Smith,you know, like, Isaiah,
you know, most
authors in the Biblereceive this much revelation
or whatever Isaiah is.
I mean, this much.
And Moses is like this much,you know, attributed to him,

(03:23):
like the fivebooks of Joseph Smith.
And it's like thisgiant stack, you know,
so if I want to understandmore about
receiving personal revelation,well, like,
what did this guy do withthis guy?
Knew what he was doing,what did he do?
And so I really delvedinto Joseph Smith
and, like I said, I, I, I justI just wanted to know

(03:47):
what happened.
I mean, that's justa consistent theme always.
I've just wanted to knowwhat happened, you know?
Yeah.
And so that waswhere I got my start
in doing my own history.
So you're.
This is a passion for you.
This is a big.
I can feel it when you evenwhen you say it now.
I mean, I can feel it, right?
So do you remember,
was there a momentthat you were like,

(04:07):
yeah, that's the oneI want to go deep on.
Like, what was the catalystof that time?
I mean, some of my earlythings were sort
of crazy doctrinal.
All thethings he was written or or.
Oh, well, not alljust just a smile.
I mean, I heard people talkabout, wild things.
Adam. God. Period,or whatever.

(04:28):
Like what's this? Curiosity.
And so I, I wanted to
I knew thatthere was a connection between
where a doctrine came fromand how authoritative it was.
And so I wanted to see like,
you know, did this doctrineactually trace

(04:49):
back to a revelation to JosephSmith or did this idea
just come along later,you know, and so on.
And so that was kind oflike an initial prompt for me.
Some of the research.
So you want to get thisdeeper was
when did things change then?
So because you at one pointgot you found yourself

(05:10):
outside of the church,you're moved.
You even removed your recordsfrom the church.
It was a reallygradual process, you know.
So I startedthis research when I was 17.
And, you're going to thechurch archives when I was 17
and, and,
then in my, you know, 20s,I majored in history.

(05:31):
I was doing lots of research,just finding new things
and something that happenswhen you are doing
your own researchas opposed to
when you're reading
what someone else has writtenand published books
that you have to digest,make sense
of, integrate everythingyourself.
Whereas if you'rereading somebody else's book,

(05:52):
they've already done it.
They've already integratedeverything intellectually.
And if it's a spiritual topic,
maybe they've integrated itspiritually as well.
If you're doing
your own research,drawing your own conclusions,
the burden of both of thosethings falls squarely on you.
So I was having to make senseof things intellectually,

(06:14):
which at least took a exam.
I was right, I was making newdiscoveries, spiritually.
Like, well,part of the problem
was intellectual as well,because I, Joseph
Smith quoted this proverb,
A little knowledgeis a dangerous thing.
So I was making newdiscoveries
and making new discoveries.
Didn'tmean I had the giant picture.

(06:36):
If there's some new
giant picture that these newlittle discoveries fit
in, I didn't have it.
So what happened is, I the
things that I was findingin my research,
increasingly divergedfrom the story
of the restorationas I had been taught it.
It didn't line up, line up.

(06:57):
And so,
the more that happened,the more there was
this was at firstthat didn't bother me.
It was just like,interesting, exciting.
Oh, maybe here's how thingsfit together or whatever.
With time that there was more
and more of a divergence, moreand more of a dissonance.
And I wasn't relying on

(07:19):
maybe sometimes certainspiritual sources of knowledge
and understandingas much as I could also.
Right.
And so, when it comesto, you know,
certain areas like history,
I mean, you make sense of,through the tools of history,
if you're
if you're doing mathematics,you use

(07:41):
the tools of mathematics,right? Yeah.
Chemistry,you use experiments and so on.
If you're doing histories,the tools of history.
But if you're dealing withspiritual things, you also use
spiritual methodsof understanding, right?
Applying things, studying themby their fruits and so on.
And some of that balancegot really off for me,

(08:05):
issue.
Right.
But I was verymuch trying to find the truth,
no question about it.
And I when it cameto the history of the church,
I just wanted to knowwhat happened.
But my sense of what that was
increasingly was differentfrom story
I've been toldthat bothered me.

(08:26):
And, I went through a sort ofimplosion of my faith
where certain
things were actually sourcesthat I was relying on
that turned outto not be with German sources,
that I had used to kind ofprop up my faith.
Like what? Like what?
They're couple.
They're not well known.

(08:48):
But they were known to mefrom my research.
So one of them is a journalthat is ostensibly
the journalof, Sarah Stoddard.
And it describes some
miraculous events that JosephSmith was involved.
So this is the depthof the depth of it. Right.
And I was like,wow, look at look.

(09:09):
The miracle here is documentedin this journal.
And then later,as I delved into it more,
I discovered that what
it appeared to have happenedwas that a woman,
remembered as a child,a family story
about this miraculous event.

(09:30):
And it was a family storyand that had been passed down.
And she thoughtshe was remembering a journal.
And so in her old age,she attempted to reconstruct
the journey.
Yeah. Yeah.
But when I looked at itI discovered actually
that this has clear
a 20th century language in it,it has historical errors.

(09:53):
This is not whatit purports to be.
So I can't rely on thisfor its report of a miracle.
There was another similarsort of source where
or set of sources that
a descendant ofJoseph Smith's brother, Samuel
Harrison Smith, created againwith the best of intentions,

(10:15):
but it had all kinds of
prophecies that were like,fulfilled to the letter
and so on. And eventually,
using my historical methods,I figured out
made up writersmade up in the 20th century.
This isn't real.
And sospeaking of let's get real
that it was, it was real.
Right. And so.

(10:36):
Interesting.
There wereI was relying on these sorts
of historical sources to ask,
like a source of my faithunderstanding.
Right.
And so when those sourcescollapsed on me,
that was part of the collapsealso of my faith.
So you have this entityof mine is very detailed.

(10:57):
It's very, it's very sharp.
It's very powerful.
And it it didn't line up.
Some of the things you werediscovering didn't line up,
but it but it matters to you.
I think that's interesting
as I'm even hearingyou talk about it.
The truth matters is reallyis a big deal to you.
With that in mind.
What? Why?
What is it about Josephthat shifted for you
that you were unsatisfiedwith?

(11:20):
What was it?
So one of thethings I was doing is
I was looking at anythingthat Joseph Smith
would do or sayin a kind of micro context.
Right.
So there's something
there's an approach tobiblical studies that's called
historical critical method.
And I was using that. So

(11:40):
that forfor biblical scholars,
they're asking questions like,
in what decade was thisgospel written?
In what decade was Mark,you know,
Matthew or John written?
In what centurywere these certain parts?
The the penetrate the booksof Moses written what century?

(12:04):
Right. And in what?
Like they'renot trying to figure out
who the person was, evenwho wrote these things.
And they're not tryingto figure out any exact time,
and they're not tryingto share an exact place.
They're trying to figure out
which Kingdom of Israel,
the northern Kingdom of
Israel, or the southernkingdom of Judah.

(12:24):
Well, because JosephSmith was so recent
and he lived in a timewhen people were literate
and there was a printingpress.
And, you know,I mean, I've met, I, I've met
great greatgrandchild and Joseph Smith,
he wasn't that long ago,you know.
And so, like what,

(12:49):
I as I was looking
like,I'm not trying to figure out
what century did this happen,and I'm trying to figure out,
what day
did Joseph Smith dictatethis chapter
of the Book of Mormon?
What day did JosephSmith receive this revelation?
And who was the scribe
sitting therewith the pen in their hand,

(13:11):
you know, where were they?
What was going on around them?
What was in the newspaperthat day?
They might have read
what's what's going onin their community.
So, so bringing it
down to like micro context,like, like this moment
here, rightwhere there's a moment here
where you've asked mea question.
We're
in this particular place,that scripture central, right.

(13:34):
There are different thingsgoing on around us.
Like I want to reconstruct the moment I.
So Joseph Smith said,
he said,I have a key by which
I understand the scriptures.
I ask, what was the questionthat drew out the answer?
We have a revelation
in the Doctrine and Covenants,

(13:55):
and it's the answerto a question.
And we don't havethe question.
Like sometimes the question
is in the revelation,sometimes it's not,
want tofigure out the question?
You want to figure outthe context,
you want to figure outwho's involved.
I was taking it to alike macro levels,
and my idea was like basically
like when I had cometo disbelieve my I was like,

(14:18):
how did the assessment come upwith all of us?
You know,if Joe Smith came up with us,
how did he do itand what were his motives?
You know, what?
What was he trying to do?
Like why that that question,from early childhood.
So why why, why so so, yeah.
So now
you're outside the churchat the time

(14:39):
and you're startingto look deeper
and you'rewanting to know why.
And and you still havingthis open mindedness
and you're learning
more about him.What were some
of the discoveriesthat you were having?
I mean, I discovered some
things, mostlythat I still need to publish.
I discovered,for instance, that,

(14:59):
there was a correlationbetween
when,
there's a correlationbetween the restoration
of the Roman priesthoodand what's going on
in the unfolding translationwork on the Book of Mormon.
And of course, at the time,I didn't
see it as translation,so I, I stopped believing.

(15:22):
I thought that Joseph Smithwas making up the text
for his composing, and,he saw this translation,
but I thought, well, why,what's going on?
Right.
But some of the thingsthat I found,
even though my frameworkwas not one of faith

(15:43):
theory, I,
somewhere along the line,not at this point.
I'm just.
I'm going.
I made this discovery.
But later I came to thinkhe was an opportunist.
He was this kind of,
I didn't
believe, but my view of himwasn't that negative.
Kang.
And, there's this idea that some,

(16:05):
scholars, particularly
Mormon scholars, like,
the lateGrant Palmer, for instance.
They arguethat the restoration
of their own priesthoodnever happened.
There never was a Johnthe Baptist experience.
Really?
Again, Joseph SmithCowdery described.
And they say thatthe experience was made up

(16:28):
in the 1834 kind of thingsgoing on, man, they're gone.
So they're claimingthere's a context in which
they created this story.
And I'm all about context,right?
Yeah. Look at micro context.
And when I looked at OliverCowdery said
that experience happenedMay 15th, 1829.

(16:49):
And everything
that I could tell overCowdery, absolutely sincere.
I like nothing,even though I didn't think
that I came to seewhere it just.
Smith wasn't sincere.
I've always seen, when I look
at Oliver Cowdery, detailsabout him, like 100% sincere.
Yeah.
And he is the,

(17:11):
he's the number two guy,and he's there for,
you know, manyof the visionary experiences
with priesthood restorationexperiences. Right?
Portrayed by Joseph Smith.
He's the other witnesswhere he's totally sincere.
And so I was certain OliverCowdery had had a vision.
Oliver reported
that their experience happenedMay 15th, 1829.

(17:33):
So I tried to lookwhere were they
in the Book of Mormon?
Right as they're translatingread the text is unfolding.
At that time, where were they?
And what I came to findis that I could identify where
they were based on things.
And there were thingsin the Book of Mormon towns
that were preparingfor this experience

(17:56):
and sparkingthe new experience,
giving like providing a kindof focus, even alluding
to biblical prophecy had to dowith John the Baptist in 35.
Right.
That then could providea sort of focus
for faith,right? Anticipation.

(18:18):
Their encounteringJohn the Baptist.
And so, I, Iwhen I first found that,
I thought I realized thatthat would find was in some
ways kind of faith promoting,even though I did not believe
at the time. Right.
Now, later, as I went on,I was continuing to find
sort of connections rankbetween what's going on in

(18:41):
Joseph Smith's life,what's going on around him,
and the revelationsthat he's giving.
Yeah.
But I came to thinkthat his motives
were less than sincere.
I came to see himas an opportunist.
And so my question becamesort of questions guide.

(19:02):
Any inquiry that we're doing
is always guidedby a question.
Yeah. Of course.
And so what we tend to see
is, to some extent guidedby the question that we ask.
Right.
And so what I wasI was using a good method.
Looking at this micro context,

(19:24):
getting a really goodchronology working,
what's going on right at thismoment around Joseph Smith.
But I was askinga very singular, slanted
sort of questionwhat was in it for him?
Any timehe would open his mouth
and give a sermon, a prophecy,
revelation, anything I was,

(19:46):
I had this idea that there was
his intentions were not good.
They were self-servingintentions.
And so, I was not surprisingly,
seeing thingsthat would tend to confirm
that, you know,

(20:06):
you see,you find to some extent
what you're looking for.
And so you're looking for waysto prove that you think
that he's an opportunist andlike, oh, there's another one.
There's another one.
Perhaps I'm might
not waysto prove in the sense confirm.
Yeah.
I meanI want to know what happened.
This was my working model.
He was not opportunist.

(20:28):
And so I thought that that wasthe most valuable question.
Right.
If you think that someoneis basically self-serving,
then you'll find itlike what was in it for them.
Like seems likea reasonable question.
That is good.
So let's gooff with this idea.
I think this is important.
So it's important when you'relooking at history,

(20:51):
especially with Joseph Smith.
We get the scripture,we see this is what happened.
But what about the context?
Was the questionthat led to that? Yeah.
And one of the
one of the conversationsthat we've had lately,
I mean, it was just reallypowerful to me and just, like,
blew my mind, like, honestly,like just blew my mind.
And I never even considered
or even thought about itin this way.
It was surroundingthe word of wisdom,
because I think a lotof people, when they think of

(21:13):
because there's a story
that you always hear aboutJoseph Smith
when he's a boy
and he was seven years oldat the time,
he had the typhoid fever.
It like affected his,
I think it was firstin his shoulder
and moved down to histo his leg.
It's very severe.
We've heard that story
and we think, oh,he refuses alcohol.
Oh, word of wisdom.
But see, we don't even think
the Word of Wisdomdidn't even exist yet

(21:35):
in knowing that context.
Knowing that backgroundmakes a big difference, right?
So I'm curious
you, Don Bradley,you're outside of the church.
You'relooking at this history.
And from whatI'm understanding,
what you've told me before isthis was something that
I rememberyou told me like this.
You said it was.It is foundational.
You said this is probably
one of the mostfoundational discoveries

(21:58):
that I thinkthat I've had. Yeah.
And so can you take me backto that time?
I don't I can't even remember
if you were in the churchor out. Wait. Take it.
Take me to that timewhen you start
to consider this thoughtand to go deeper on that.
Sure. So,
yeah,this reflects tremendously
the subject of JosephSmith's like, surgery.

(22:20):
Does it say?
I mean, it's there's it's
thematically relatedto the word of wisdom, right?
Wisdom says no alcohol,no liquor, no wine.
And the youngest boy,Joseph Smith, refuses liquor
when it's offered him asan anesthetic for his surgery.
But like I said, it'salmost two decades.

(22:41):
Well,it is two decades. Is it?
It's two decadesbefore the word of wisdom.
Yeah.
Because wow that's a longtime.
And 33 and JusticeSmith it's like surgery
is an 1813 when he.
So that would be likeif it happened in 2005
I mean for us for the.
Yeah yeah yeahI'm just saying like that.

(23:02):
That's a long time ago.If you think. Right, right.
Something of a mystery.
Right.
Why Joseph Smithwould have refused the liquor.
Because another thingpeople went awry.
There was no temperancemovement at the time.
And tell metell me more about that.
What does that mean?
So temperance is abstinencefrom alcohol, right.

(23:25):
So the temperance movementreally gets going in the US.
I mean, it it starts to buildmomentum in the 1820s.
1826.
Really gets going in the 1830sand 40s.
It actuallyculminates a long time later
in the 1920s,when prohibition.

(23:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
It's basically progressiveAmerican Christians
kind of are able to passa constitutional amendment
forbiddingthe consumption of alcohol.
This is like thethe triumphant movement
that started, you know,nearly a century earlier.
And,

(24:09):
the so that'sthe temperance movement.
So it's familiarto us in our time, even though
the temperance movement
per se is in the realm,many of its effects
are still here.
You have people in certainProtestant
denominations where they'retheir denomination.

(24:29):
They don't drink alcohol or,lots of advice
about, you know, watching thethe level
of your alcohol consumption
for people who do drinkand so on.
These are legaciesof the temperance movement
as a movementthat did not exist
when JosephSmith was a young child.

(24:50):
Okay.
1813, it's 13 years
before the American TemperanceSociety is organized.
It's even longer
before the temperance movementreally against steam.
In fact, Joseph Smith's
child had surgerywhen he refused the alcohol
comes at the time of highestalcohol consumption

(25:14):
per capita in thehistory of the United States.
Wait wait wait wait.
That's significant. Right?
Even the way you're, like,emphasizing it.
tell me more?
I just there's a reasonwhy you're emphasizing that.
Because today,
if you think people consumequite a bit of alcohol,
you're sayingit was even more back then.
Is that when was it?They tell me, give us an idea.

(25:34):
Like what?Like how much it was.
I've got, oh, yeah.
Okay.
About, I think it comes upto about three times
the average alcohol
consumptionfor an American adult today.
The average.
And so it wasn't a bigit wasn't

(25:55):
considered a surprise, like,
for himto even consider alcohol,
it wouldn'thave even been a big deal.
It was so normal when,neighbor of the Smiths,
to an interviewer decadeslater when he was asked, did
the Smith family drink?
His answerwas everybody drank and then.

(26:19):
There wasno temperance for everybody.
On average, they drank a lot.
Three times.
I drink wow.
And that is when Joseph
Jr as a boy refused alcohol.
So he's kind of like what.It's a mystery.
It doesn't fit with him
of his time.
It's like

(26:40):
it's the
opposite of what's going onin the culture of his time.
So for us we hear thatand we're thinking whoa.
He drankbecause we're thinking
in our perspective rightof world wisdom back then.
It's the complete opposite.
Oh yeah. It was assumedpeople were going to drink.
Absolutely.And in fact, even okay.
I mean, just a complicatedstory a little bit.

(27:00):
Even JosephJr, later in his life,
he drank some.
Right?
I mean, yeah, we know thatSmith Junior drank some.
So why when he was sevenand this was the only
available anesthetic foran extremely painful surgery,
why did he refuse the alcohol?

(27:24):
So this is like deep contextfor the word of wisdom.
Very deep.
So people are familiarmaybe with some of
the more immediate context.
Let's do it.
So like a lot of timespeople are familiar with
the story of Emma.

(27:45):
And by the wayI should mention like this,
the storythat we're going to go on
today, as you've alludedto, it interweaves quite a bit
story of just Smith's like,yeah.
Anyways, quite a bit withmy own faith journey really,
substantiveand maybe even pivotal.
Interesting, right.
And it's also it's verypersonal to me because of this

(28:08):
theme of father son bonds.
That's an intense.
And so we're going towe're going
to go deep todayon all different levels okay.
Okay.
So that
familiar story that
people knowand it's by familiar
I'm not suggesting it'snot accurate. It's accurate.

(28:28):
Of course there's more to it.
Okay.
So familiar story is peopleknow that the word of wisdom
was given in the context
of the school of the prophetsin 1833.
And, the school,
the man of the schoolof prophets
met in a certain room,a council room.
And that's the storyI think Brigham Young tells,

(28:50):
is that the men of the school,the prophets, remember,
there's no word of wisdom.
They were spittingtheir tobacco.
Yeah, all over the place.
Yeah. We've heard this story.
And so spitting on the floorand mess cleaning it up. Hey.
And so this is one ofthe context in which
the Word of wisdomrevelation is given.

(29:11):
Okay.
Now there's deeper contexthere.
Going back
a little
further months earlier andlooking at a broader picture.
Why is this a big deal?
So alma has to clean uptobacco stains off the floor.
I mean yeah yeah yeah.
Grunge work unpleasant okay.

(29:32):
But we all do unpleasantthings in our lives.
Why is that.
That's the story you hear.
Yeah. That's the story here.
So something peopletend to not know
is that just four monthsbefore the word of wisdom
is given, or a little lessthan four months
beforethe Word of Wisdom is given?
Emma had had a child, okay,her first child

(29:54):
who survives this is JosephSmith, the third.
Right.
And she had an extremelydifficult labor that Joseph
the third, so difficultthat she nearly died.
Joseph Junior was actuallyI stayed he was rushing back.
He'd gone on a tripto Boston and New York City.
He's rushing back to be there

(30:16):
in early November 1832,when his child is born.
And he misses, just barely.
He misses the birthof his birth,
and he comeshome and, is close to death,
okay?
And she struggles withher health for months after.
She strugglesfor quite a while.

(30:38):
It's in that time thatthe word of wisdom is given.
Interesting.
And the Word of Wisdompromises
health in the navel, marrowin the bones,
the ability to run and not beweary and walk and not faint
and promises wisdomand treasures of knowledge.
Yet, interestingly,
the word of wisdom hereprobably requires it.

(30:58):
So there's a contextwhere am I
may have wanted to know
and needed to knowhow to become healthier.
How does interesting,
And and the Word of wisdomwould probably
require sacrificesfrom both Joseph and Emma.
Right?
So Emma is probably alreadya teetotaler
or someone who does not drinkalcohol.

(31:19):
She is a methodist.Okay, okay.
She comes in the church fromthe time she's a young girl.
She's a methodist.
Methodists were influencedby the temperance movement.
They did not drink alcohol.
Okay, so Emma probablybrought that in with her.
She's a non drinker. Okay.
Joseph Smith probably drinksmoderately during this time.
We know he smokes a pipeas do the other men of the

(31:44):
the. Andthey're chewing tobacco.
So Emma probably drinks
hot drinks.
Particularly common for.
Yeah. Come on you soundbut yeah.
Come on.
Particularly for women,I mean at least in the Brigham
Young's Utah sermonshe mentions a lot of women

(32:06):
drinking tea and so onin the journals, a journal.
Okay.
So, she.
Emma would have hadparticular reason
to try to get caffeine
during this period from coffeeand tea.
She's exhausted.
Her health is poor,she's struggling,
and she's taking care of thisbaby, nursing her baby.

(32:29):
And but of course,
trying to get more energyfrom caffeine,
particularly when you're inpoor health is a losing battle
because the body habitsyou it's the caffeine
fix the underlying healthissues.
The body habituate to it.
So you need moreand more and more.

(32:50):
We don't know here
Emma is essentiallyaddicted to caffeine.
During,
And, so.
So what?She's probably trying.
Probably not working.
Word of wisdom comesand it gives
health adviceand it's telling.
Here's a word of wisdom,a word to the wise.

(33:11):
Here's here are thingsyou can do for your health.
The man of the scroll.
The prophets throw their pipesinto the fire.
We have that story.
Why you.
Maybe you know that.
Yeah, actually,they've actually dug out,
like the ashesthat were thrown away
from the fireplace,and they found the pipes.
They really found it.
They found them.
Okay, so these arethis is this is real.

(33:33):
That's accurate.
This is accurate.
So, Joseph,
as me
in the matterof making sacrifices
and is probably making sacrifices to for their own benefit.
So that's sort of
immediate deep contextfor the word of wisdom.
Then we have thislike very deep context.
Right. You go back decades.
We've got the story of JosephSmith okay.

(33:56):
Yeah.
Well the Emmawith the caffeine.
Why do you feel thatthat is significant.
Because that is a factthat a lot people don't know.
Right.
And you think that she'shabitually
she has that habitpotentially.
What was the connectionthat you have
with thatin her health in general?
Why it would beimportant to her?
What were you sayingwith that?
Oh, the she had hada really difficult labor

(34:17):
connected to the labor.Okay, okay, okay.
And needing the caffeine okay.
With her health for monthsafterward.
This is less than four monthsafter that labor.
So she would have still been
struggling with herhealth, her energy.
And so it might have been achallenge for her to hear it.
Is what you're sayingmore than it was just,
hey, Joseph, we need to cleanthis stuff above the ground.

(34:39):
This is disgusting.We should consider this.
I've even heard facts.
Yeah, I think there'sa more significant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Disgustedby having to clean stuff up.
So seeing the Emma's
having to do housework,and she's really.
She's unable to actually,right around this time,
of the running.Now be wary that that's

(35:00):
why that you mentionedthat, right.
That blessing that promisedmeant something to him.
And let's discover it.Is that we saying right?
And right around this time,the Smiths had,
like, house girl, like, servant.
Yeah. In house helper.
Who had been very valuable.
I mean, she dies interesting.

(35:21):
Another one that they have,
he gets marriedmoves out around the time.
So it's way bigger than justhey this clean this up
right way deeper.
But Emmastill has a child to raise.
There are still householdchores to be taking care of.
Providing for a long runningthe church.
Like everybody's got thingsthey have to do.

(35:43):
It's.It's not a cushy existence.
I mean, our lives,we still have
all those same things to do
work, household workand so on.
But we haven't
really easy compared to thembecause we have
washing machinesand all these things.
Right? Yeah.
They didn't.
And so Emma,
life still goes oneven if you've got

(36:04):
terrible health and no energy.
And so Joseph is watchingEmma struggle day by day.
And this is partof the context.
And then the revelationcomes wisdom is coming.
That'sa that's an interesting.
Yeah.
It would have to be waybigger than just this.
Clean this stuff up.

(36:24):
So is there anythingthat you found of
what questionshe was asking or that.
Or that's only whatyou can imply that he asked.
That'sone thing that we can infer.
Infer some detailed
work done on
other potential questionsand context for the

(36:45):
immediate contextfor the word of wisdom,
looking at the differentaudiences who came
in or mentionedin the revelation, like
the High Council is mentionedas a specific audience.
Justice dad justice, a seniorwas on the High council
and then others, there.
And this is somethingthat I've delved into.

(37:06):
It's been that's beenso far on the back burner.
That that's something I'llhave to kind of dig up more.
I wanted to more. Yeah.
Specific delving into that,more exegesis.
Yeah, yeah.
Specific meanings in contextof the Word of wisdom.
So you're finding thatthere's more to it
in that idea in ability to godeeper helps
you give more power to whatthe actual revelation says.

(37:29):
And it hasthey can make so so let's
should we go backshould we go back to
when he was sevenor is there even
is there any more,
any other contextthat you think
that you hear about that
people make assumptionsabout that.
Some of what you've studiedcould help them clearly
see it more clearly,more than just, hey,
he's here's this list of stuffyou can't do, you know,
I mean, I think recognizingthat it's not just

(37:51):
a set of prohibitionsand it's actually more general
advice, counsel, divinecounsel on how to be healthy.
You look
at like if you look at itin the context of Emma.
Yeah.
That she's struggling with herhealth.
Yeah. Yeah.
Then seeing that it

(38:13):
the word of wisdomhas prohibitions on it.
Things done. Not.
Tobacco.
You knowno wine or strong drink.
And so on. Right.
That hot hot drinksand but it also says,
you know, the, the, the thingall the like herbs in there

(38:34):
seasoned the different herbsthere doesn't necessarily
just mean herbsthe way we think of them.
It includes that.
But it also vegetablesplant foods.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Encourages us to havethat be the primary
aspect of our dietover and against me.
It says eat sparingly and,
and you actually even underonly under certain conditions

(38:56):
and so on.
So, so
seeing the word of wisdom,
not just as a setof prohibitions,
but as advice for howto live a healthy life. And
I think it's importantto note here that the
this idea, that understandingthat does give power
to the actual revelationitself. Right?
Because,

(39:18):
it's more than just, a physical law to,
you know, like,
but if you understandthe history, it even gives it
more punch, right?
So and you could say thatand I love what you said
even earlier.
That's with every,any detail of history,
any detail of of of JosephSmith's past.
Yeah.So so take us back there.
And I thinkthat has significance
for much morethan the word of wisdom.

(39:41):
Childlike surgery has significance
not only for understanding
the backdropof the Word of Wisdom.
It has significancefor understanding Joseph
Smith himselfand the whole restoration.
Joseph Smith's leg surgeryhelps us answer the question,
what kind of personwas Joseph Smith?
And this was somethingI was very interested in.

(40:02):
And I had a working theory,
right, which ended up
in inadvertent ways,
being somewhat of aself-reinforcing theory thing.
And I was asking a questionthat was based on one theory.
Yeah.
Where the question itself,if you pursue that question,
you see thingsthrough its certain lenses.

(40:25):
Right?
You know, whatever the lensesare that I'm wearing, right?
Those are going to shape whatI see a question as a lens.
Yeah. Question waswhat was in it for me.
He said this,he gave this revelation
what was in it for him.
So that was going to shapewhat I saw.
Where, you know,if I ask a set of questions,

(40:45):
if I asked questionsabout you, where
everythingthe Stephen Jones guy does.
Right,I'm asking the question.
What's in it for him.
You know, why is he reallydoing this interview.
You know.
How can this,
you know help himget ahead in life or whatever.
If I ask whatever questionsthat I ask are going
to shape what I see.

(41:08):
Taking a certainangle of vision on something.
That's right.
You know if I look at thesebooks, these scriptures
from this angle,what I'm going to see is just
that, that angle,if I look at them
and I from here, I can't evensee what they are.
I already know, but I can't.If I did know, I can't see.
I can't seethe title on the side.

(41:28):
I can't see the contents.
And so if we limit ourselvesto just maybe
like a particular question
that's going to shape
what we see, thatthat happened for me
later, I was able to broadenthe set of questions that I
asked,where I was also asking,
you know,
how might Joseph
Smith have been tryingto serve other people?

(41:50):
How might have been tryingto serve God?
This was sort of the rootof that, this discovery
about his childhoodlike surgery that I'm going to
share with you today.
That was the root, startingto raise the question,
like what?
You know,what else was this guy about?
Like, what
what whowas he trying to help?

(42:13):
What was his relationshipwith his family and so on
that that grew out of thiskind of inadvertently.
I was looking forthose additional questions,
but I was trying to figure outwhat happened,
and I stumbledinto those questions.
So the, the,
the lens
that people might look at withthis, you're saying
it's important
to considerthe Word of Wisdom lens,
because that might bethe reason

(42:34):
why people don'tget this additional insight
that you that you found in mymy understanding that. Right.
So sometimes thingsspecifically are in about his.
Yeah. Yeah, that'swhat I'm saying.
When he didn't move,when he refuses,
when he refusesthe alcohol, we're assuming.
Oh yeah.
People
Joseph Smith
who came of the wordof wisdom, he refused
because he doesn'twant to have alcohol.
But now let's go deeperinto what was really going on.

(42:55):
And that'swhat you were really asking.
When we look at the context.Yeah.
So is the the setting here.
The larger. Yeah.
So there's a typhoid epidemic,
starts I think in 1812.
It's during the War of 1812.
And everybodyin the Smith family,
everybody and just the Joseph
Smith senior Lucy MattSmith family gets typhoid.

(43:18):
Everybody, all of themaccording to Lucy, her mama,
they all get typhoid. Okay.
Terrible deadly disease.
But they all recover.
Except the disease is sort oflingering or creating
secondary infectionsin two of the family members.
One of Joseph's sisters,
who then sort of recoverseventually,
and then JosephJunior himself,

(43:39):
who is at the timeseven years old.
Okay,so now it's it's in the 1813
and he is still struggling,as you mentioned earlier,
it starts outhe's got a shoulder infection.
Yeah.
And I might be pointingthe wrong shoulder
I can'tI know which leg it was
but I, I actually think it'sprobably the left shoulder
because it's the left leg.
But he has this terrible achein his shoulder.

(44:04):
And in fact,
Lucy says that one day,out of the blue,
Joseph junior sent her
seven year old sonsitting in a chair.
He suddenly screams.
He screams, all right.
And, he.
Joseph Jr, the child,she says, describes
the pain afterwards. So?

(44:24):
So he has enormous swellingand actually like lancet
like kind of doctor lancetand drain it, drain it.
And it's just terribly,hugely inflamed.
Infected.
Joseph says.
And then the pain shootslike lightning into his
leg, his left leg.
And she she says,

(44:48):
my poor boyat this was almost in despair.
And he cried, oh, father,the pain is so severe,
how can I bear it?
Okay, so here's a seven yearold in just unbearable pain.
You notice, by the way, therelationship with his father.
The person who's leaning onthem will come back to that.
He, Lucy says that to helphim, comfort him.

(45:12):
And so he doesn't have to walkor anything.
She carries him aroundfor much of the day.
Seven year old doing her,
you know, he's seven,praying for her to be able
to carry him around all daywhile she is in one arm.
Right?
Like when she's doing herhousework and everything.
How emaciated doeshe have to be?

(45:34):
You mean like lost weight?
Yeah. He's got to be tiny,tiny seven year old.
A pretty big I.You mean he's dying?
Okay. He's gradually dying.
This infection
and the weakeningfrom this infection.
And Lucy writes again,
she says
the pain was so excruciating,
he was scarcely ableto bear it.

(45:55):
They tried
all kinds of things,painful treatments and so on.
Nothing worked.
And eventually, you know, thisthis was going to kill him.
And they knew that.
And so there was an obvioussolution.
Amputate.
Amputate.
The Smiths happenedprovidentially

(46:17):
to livenear Dartmouth College,
which had, recentlyestablished a medical school.
It was established by DoctorNathan Smith,
who later went on to foundthe Yale Medical School.
I'd been to his graveat the amazing Yale Cemetery,
and it has this archat the front
that says, the deadshall rise.

(46:39):
What's this giant monumentinside to Doctor Nathan Smith,
who started the medical schoolthere, and Dartmouth.
He pioneered experimentalmethods of surgery.
And the big methodhe pioneered
was for how to save a limb.
So you didn't have toamputate.

(47:00):
Right.
It was basically
that was the go to I continuedto be the go to for decades
after the Civil War.
Terrible infection.
What do they do.They remove the limb. Right.
Well so this waswhat was expected.
And he suggests that they try
this experimental surgeryon Joseph Junior.

(47:21):
So he doesn't have to go
through his whole lifewith no leg.
And the doctors,
Lucy recalls in her memoir,
they ask Joseph Juniorto drink brandy.
He won't drink
brandy, liquorand strongest alcohol content.

(47:44):
Then he he refuses.
They say,Will you take some wine?
He refuses.That's interesting.
And the doctor, Lucy
recalls, tells him,you must take something,
or you can never endurethe severe operation
to which you must besubjected.
Right?
Joseph is defiant.

(48:05):
He won't not take the alcohol.
Any sons.
But I will tell you whatI will do.
I will havemy father sit on the bed.
And hold me in his arms.
And then I will do
whatever is necessary in orderto have the bone taken out.

(48:26):
Okay.
So Joseph Junior,then on her count
he sends his mother.
He knows thismother is exhausted
from carrying him allthe time, taking care of him
all the time and worn out.
And he'strying to protect her.
And he insists thatthey cannot do the surgery

(48:47):
unless she goes out far awayfrom the house.
She does.She I can't remember.
I think she describes maybehow many yards away she goes.
And when they start,
you have to understandwhat they did.

(49:07):
They used drills,not the modern drills.
Old fashionedhand crank drills.
And maybe you can put a
picture of one of these upand I've seen it.
This is like very terrible.
Like I can't even imagine.
To break the bone okay.
And then they're like sawing,hammering, chiseling

(49:28):
on a seven year old
tibia.
Okay.
His legbone is like shinbone okay.
And they take out
nine large pieces of bonethis way.
And then with time14 more fragments
that broke off in the processworked their way down.

(49:50):
No anesthesiaas soon as no anesthesia.
Okay.
By his insistence,no anesthesia
except his father holding him.
Okay.
As soon as they,

(50:12):
At the timethat I figured out,
when I figured out about this,I had a seven year
old son, my ex,
my younger son, my seven,a seven year old Nicholas.
So okay.
And I knew how, tenderhearted,
innocent and tenderhearted a seven year.
I knew it from me
and I

(50:34):
could imagine.
Right.
And, as soon as they started
taking the bone out,drilling his bone,
he screamed so loudlythat even though he had gone
far away from the house,she could still hear him.
And as any mother would,she came running back.

(50:55):
He made them stop,
and he made her leave.
And they did
the second piece of bone,and he screamed again.
And when they got to the thirdpiece of bone, he screamed
so loud that she camerunning back again.

(51:15):
And this time they madesomeone go with her
and restrain her sothat she would not come back.
And, and,
She described.
When the third piece was taken
away,I burst into the room again

(51:37):
and oh my God,what a spectacle for mothers.
I the wound tornopen, the blood still gushing
from it, and the bedliterally covered with blood.
Joseph was pale.
As a corpse emerged.
Drops of sweatwere rolling down his face
every upon every feature wasdepicted the utmost agony.

(52:01):
And he made her we forget.
And this waswhen they restrained her.
Okay, was after this.
So I said, I knowwhat a seven year old is like
emotionally,how tender hearted.
And at this time,as you know, I was
I was the next morning
and I was convincedJoe Smith was a scoundrel.
But I wanted to understand.
Okay.

(52:21):
And there are people who saythat the behavior
that Lucy describes was sortof has
what it's called,like hagiography.
It's like building him uptoo much.
He couldn't have been thisnoble at the age of seven.
And she's making this upor inflating the story.
I wasn't, I didn't know,but I was open, my eyes open

(52:42):
and and there are reasonswhy I became completely
and absolutely convinced thatLucy's account is accurate.
what was it about thatthat even now is you rethink
over that causes
that emotionto come across you
so tenderly,

(53:03):
the suffering of an innocentchild
and,
Yeah.
Just knowing how, like I said,how tender hearted, I mean,
so my own son, Nicholas,at that time,

(53:24):
I just remember how
how much he had Henrywas with us as his parents.
Like how how much he kind ofwould
tell us how much he loved usand try to show
how much he loved usand and realizing also,
young children at that age,they can't

(53:46):
they don't really get,
things that they suffer are
not like,not their fault, you know.
Do you think it's their fault?
And like, like,for instance, children
who go through divorceand so on when they're young,
I think it'ssomething they did somehow,

(54:09):
and so just,
children so innocent have tosuffer terrible things.
Like what?
The boy,Joseph Smith, went through. It
tugged at my heart,and it tug at my heart
even more as a father mighttugged at my father heart,
you know, and, and the storyalso really involves,

(54:33):
you know, thethe father son bond.
That's we'll talk moreabout that young Joseph had,
like he refusedthe anesthetic,
but he said, beif my father will hold me.
So that seems significantto you for a reason.
Yeah, yeah.

(54:53):
And and so, like,
there that detail.
Come back to, like, helped
convince me,I already thought.
I didn't think Lucy a storywasn't basically accurate.
I was I was very open to it,
but that really convinced meof the accuracy of it

(55:14):
when you put it in context.
And it ended up illuminatingwho Joseph Smith was.
Right.
Like looking at this question,
why did he refuse the alcohol?
And whatdoes that tell us about him?
Right.
So he didn't refusethe alcohol because there was
a word of wisdom at the time.
There wasn't anywhere the wisdom at the time,
he didn't refuse the alcohol

(55:35):
because there was amajor movement in the country
telling people not to drinkalcohol because there wasn't.
This is the time of highestdrinking in US history.
Everybody drank like so.
That wasn't the reason
you didn't refuse the alcohol,even because he had some,
you know, constitutionallike like basic temperamental,

(55:58):
distastefor alcohol or something.
I mean, he drank some laterin his life.
So what was it?
Why, why,why when he needed it most,
when he actually neededsomething to numb the pain,
why did he refuse it?
You know, so,
the amount that people drink,

(56:18):
per like,per adult at that time,
beer in Utah right nowI think is
this stuff people can get and this is like 5%
or 7% ofthe of the liquid is alcohol.
Yeah.
And so it's like, 1/20 of itis alcohol or whatever.
It's the actualamount of alcohol that can

(56:41):
right.
They're averaging an averageadult at that
time is averaging over sevengallons of actual alcohol
per year is what's estimated.
Wow. Okay.
Right.
That that's a lot
that the word of wisdomdid come along.

(57:03):
And that the temperance menalso did come along
because alcohol is, of course,addictive and harmful,
which is a terriblecombination
for somethingto be harmful and addictive.
Right.
And of course,
this would have been the case
for membersof the Smith family,
just like anybody else.
The Smiths were as humanas anyone am,

(57:24):
and so they
wouldn't have been immuneto the effects of alcohol.
Some later
things would have beenvery good for them as well.
So we have this questionright.
Why did the boy JosephSmith refuse?
Alcohol?
Was the only availableanesthetic in there hacking
or drillingand hacking at his bone.

(57:46):
And the key
is that Joseph
Smith didn'tjust refuse the alcohol.
We didn'twant to take it out of,
Okay,
don't just look at the fact
that JosephSmith refused the alcohol.
Look at what he paired that,
I won't have the alcohol, but

(58:07):
my my father.
I'll be okay if my father willhold me during the surgery.
Okay, so he juxtaposedthose two things.
He link, right.
I have my fathersat on the bed, he said,
and hold me in his arm for
his father.
Joseph Smith's.
And your and their bond
are the key to whyJoseph Smith refused.

(58:29):
I'll just make
sure she's not gone.
So what was it goingto tell us about Joseph
in a senior?
Like what was he like?
Right.
Like that would bethe next kind of question.
so what is it about his dad
the way
you want to have his dad holdhim have to do with his dad.
So we need to knowvarious things then
about justice mean senior.
What was JosephSmith senior character.

(58:52):
What was his bond with JosephSmith Jr.
What's going on in his life?
That might be real.
So you start digging this up.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so well some of itI already know.
Right.
So so for instance, JosephSmith's character,
we're fortunate that we havepatriarchal blessings
that Joseph Smith seniorgave to his children.

(59:13):
This right.He was a patriarchal man.
Patriarchal blessings.
In 1834he gives pictures of us.
He's just shownthey're so tender hearted.
Really. Oh yeah. Again we.
Can you give us an ideaexpressing
I one thing he thought of
doing in preparation for thisand didn't
for timereasons, is actually looking

(59:35):
for some actual quote.
Well, I have one quote later,but particular thing
like just that there'slike an overflow of emotion.
Well, gratitude expressesgratitude to Hiram,
which I'll get into laterfor,
like higher groundacceptance of his father

(59:58):
in spite of his father'sweakness.
There's this,in that blessing.
Now, if you think aboutwhat we know about men,
masculinity acrossgenerations.
Men in
like the current generationhere like more

(01:00:20):
have been taught
to be like kind of moreemotionally sensitive.
So on you go backa couple of generations right.
Like that the let's saythe guys who fought World War
two, that generationcrusty hard shell spin on it.
Yeah.
Show of emotionobviously there's variation.
Likethe norm was more like right.

(01:00:44):
And so that tends to be morethe case as we go back in time
as you have more masculinityshows
up in this more reserved,you know, less emotional.
I not Joseph Smith senioreven though he lives
in this earlier generation
very open hearted,very tender hearted, just

(01:01:05):
overflowing with affectionis the word I would use.
His patriarchal blessingsfor his children.
Just overflowingwith affection.
His affection for me,
is the kind of fatherthat Joseph Smith junior.
Their bond.
Okay. What about their bond?
Well,one notice their namesakes.

(01:01:28):
He names name Joseph Smith.
Glimpses into their bond.
Hey, when Joseph Juniortells us in this 1838 1839
history when he first receivesa visit from the angel and
who's the first personhe tells, tells his dad
and what's his dad's reaction?

(01:01:50):
He believes and immediatelysays,
go do whatthe angel told you to do.
Joseph Smith's reaction.
This is nothingI thought of like
providing the actual Warrenbecause it's just, it's
we have it from Lucy,an account
Joseph Smith junior baptizeshis father
after the organizationthe church in 1830.

(01:02:12):
And it is the account ofthat is one of the greatest
displays of emotion
from Joseph Juniorthat we have on record.
He just he weeps.
He cries and cries.
He's so overjoyed,he says, basically, like,
I can't believe I've livedto see my father
baptized into the Churchof Jesus Christ.

(01:02:35):
Wow. It'soverflowing with emotion.
Probably, as you know, childJoseph Smith
Senior had not been baptizedinto a church, even though,
like the mother Lucyand some of the other children
had right
is probably concernedabout the welfare of
his father's soul. And so.

(01:02:55):
He's lived to baptizehis father.
He's excited.
It's such a giant thingfor him.
Richard BushmanKeenan. Interesting.
I never knew I didn'tI didn't know this,
but you think it'ssignificant?
I am, And keyed in on it.Okay.
In his biography of Joseph
Smith junior,rough stone rolling.
He said that one of Joseph'sjuniors, most in life,

(01:03:20):
even in his prophetic calling,
was to serve his father,to benefit his father.
And he he says that.
Yeah.
Bushman says
if there was a personal motivefor Joseph Smith Jr's
revelations, it was to satisfyhis family's religious want
and above all,
to meet the need of hisof defeated, unmoored father.

(01:03:42):
This is Smith's in your hada lot of setbacks in his life.
His fault.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean poverty with
plan as a sort of entrepreneur,
you know, shippedginseng which grew wild
in where they lived in Vermontto China, where it was
very highly valued as an herb.

(01:04:03):
He did an amazing job with us.
And then he got swindledout of all the money
by a dishonest businesspartner.
Right. So,man went through a lot of.
You know,I found a source that has not
ever been used before. Okay.
Well I didn't find itdirectly, but I,
he'd just say that so casuallylike I got this source
and nobody's ever seen it.
I won't give the details.

(01:04:24):
I'm going to do more with it.
Publish it. Okay.
And, my friend, Niall
Davidson found it for me,but, share it with me that,
therewas a Danish in the source.
It's this guy.
It's from
this guywho gave sort of a travelog
of his travelsin America. Is from Denmark.

(01:04:44):
It's a Danish businessman.
He visits
Nauvoo, happens to be shortlybefore Joseph Smith dies.
And Josephtells him a little bit
about his young, his ownyoung life as a young man.
And he says
one of his main motivesas a young man
was, quote,I wished to honor my father.

(01:05:05):
My father, specificallyhis father. Me.
He has this intensebond with his father.
He when he's in pain,he cries out
for comfort to his from me.
He, he overflows with emotionwhen he baptizes his father.
His father's the first onehe tells about Moroni.
His father encourageshim. Right?

(01:05:27):
He wants to honor his father.
And. And so,going back to our question.
Okay, why did Joseph Smithrefuse the alcohol,
especially, in a timewhen everybody drank?
Okay.
So store records of the
time, in line with the factthat everybody drank
in my days.
Okay.

(01:05:47):
Store records in Palmyrashowed
Joseph Smith seniorpurchasing liquor.
Cider. Okay.
Fermented cider. Right.
Joseph Smith,senior patriarchal blessing
to his son, Hiram, December1834,
says, among many other things,it says to Hyrum.
Thou hast always thou hastalways stood by thy father.

(01:06:11):
And though he has beenout of the way through wine,
thou hast never forsaken him,nor left him to scorn bloom.
In this passage he goes onto really thank Hiram for
for accepting himwith all his humanness.
I mean, this is part of thatoverflow of emotion,
us talking about affection.
He says, like grabbingout of the way with wine.

(01:06:34):
And he's he's alludingto the biblical story of Noah.
Where like, Yeah.
Flood youknow, they grow grapes again.
He drinks
and he gets drunkand one of his sons mocks.
That's the wrong waywith wine.
And so, Richard Bushman

(01:06:55):
described Josephas having a weakness for wine.
Okay.
There are sourcesfrom Vermont, from New York
and from Ohio, all suggestingthree different states,
suggestingthat this was a challenge
and just a seniors live, rightalcohol DMC four
in our modern in the 1835.

(01:07:17):
Oh yeah when Iowawhen it says remember faith.
Virtue knowledge. Temperance.
Knowledge. Temperance.
In the earliest version
it starts out remembertemperance the first one.
Okay.
This is to JosephSmith senior.
I should mentionI guess that. Yeah.
That's thatthat that revelation.

(01:07:37):
Againsuggests that this is advice
needed at the time for JosephSmith senior.
Now does this mean just SmithSenior was a person
of low character and he was adrunk and omniscient.
No, no.
So RichardBushman is pointing out that
Joseph Smith senior'salcohol consumption

(01:07:59):
was likely not unusualfor the time.
Okay.
But what was the alcohol
consumptionon average at the time?
It was an average of fourdrinks a day.
The CDC standard nowcenter for Disease Control,
for what it considers heavydrinking, is about half that.

(01:08:19):
Okay.
Average alcohol consumptionfor an adult at that
time is twicethe standard for what
constitutesheavy drinking now.
Okay.
So if Joseph Smith senior,just drank what was average,
he would have beena very heavy drinker
by today's standards.

(01:08:39):
That's going to be a problem.
It's going to affect.
It's going to it'sgoing to affect.
So like
Joseph Smith senior goingback to the surgery kind.
He was watching.

(01:09:04):
Mr. Smith seniorwas watching his seven year
old sondie is watching his son die.
How do you cope
with watching your child God.
This is actually
something I can speak.
It's very.

(01:09:28):
I have two wonderful sons.
I've already mentionedmy younger son, Nicholas.
I also, have an older son,Donny, who is my namesake.
I mean, like, Joseph Juniorwas just the seniors namesake.
The close bond between fatherand son
is something that I understandvery deeply.

(01:09:56):
My son Donny.
I described how JosephSmith senior
was, very tender hearted.
And mentioned,you know, the tender heart in.
So my sonNicholas back in his seven.
My sonDonny was very tender hearted.

(01:10:18):
He also had a great,depth of character, like,
you know, described for,
both Joseph Smith.
When Donny was,
about seven, actually,it's about some,

(01:10:39):
when I, I had tucked DonnyNicholson into bed, as I did
every night.
And I went outto the front room and I was
thinking or somethingsitting on the couch,
and, I heard the pattingof little feet in the hall.
And I was like,oh, somebody is out of bed.
It was,it was like 45 minutes after
I took two minutesand somebody should not have

(01:10:59):
seven up. Right.
Somebody stood upand walked around the corner
and there was so many tearsstreaming down.
Donny.
Right, right, sweetheart.
What's wrong?
And he looked up at me.
He said, dad,I'll miss you when you die.

(01:11:25):
He was such a deep
thinker and feeler,even as a young child,
that he was already thinking
about the factthat someday I would die.
And he would miss me.
It turned out that.
Donny Hathaway not only got.

(01:11:48):
An eye
missing dad.
Brilliant, creative.
Just an open heart.
An open soul.
Philosopher, poet, a polymath.
As someone who's an expertin, a lot of different things.
Had a lot of strugglesin his life.

(01:12:08):
And maybe we can kindof a picture, of course.
Do this.
Donny and I,
Oh, and Tony, like, he hadso much to live for, right?
We I,he and I had a wonderful bond.
Like Joseph Smith senior,I had to face my son's death.

(01:12:29):
But unlike Joseph Senior,
I've had to
actually have it happen,
and I've had to actuallygo through it.
And, he died with so muchto live for.
Not long after he died,I found on his computer
his brotherand I found on his computer
a book of poetry
that he wrotethat he was close to getting
published, called
light of an Hourand Just Beautiful Poetry.

(01:12:52):
And of course,
and so, you know, the
as you know, we're talkingtoday
must be about the ProphetJoseph Smith
and about his like surgeryand his character, meaning
that there's
this giant larger context
and that isthe gospel of Jesus Christ,
because he worked to restore

(01:13:15):
the and,
that context is the context
in which, you know, the most.
The unexpecteddeath of my son.
Right. Like
I never knewI experienced so much pain.

(01:13:38):
But because of the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
Donnie will get to fulfillhis potential.
I will see down here.
We will be together again. We?
Donnie and he.
Film right in that same.
Father and son will continue

(01:14:01):
and will continue for eternity
and, like what,what we're talking about here.
This is whatthis is ultimately all about.
And wewant to understand Joseph
Smith the character JosephSmith understand his motives.
We want to understand

(01:14:21):
what he was doing as theprophet of the restoration.
We we also want to understandthe restoration.
The restoration of whattheir station of look like.
Yeah.
Aspects,because it wasn't all lost
in the Gospels thereand in the New Testament,
many aspects of the gospelof Jesus Christ and,

(01:14:45):
and so,
there
you were asking earlier aboutsort of why this hits me.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it it hit me.
This it hit mewith a lot of this force
years ago
when I first made this covershits me even more, no less.
Father son bond of

(01:15:06):
Joseph senior.
And Joseph iseven more obvious to you now.
Is that what you're saying?
It maybe more obvious, but it.
I feel it more keenly.
I mean.
Joseph senior
was watching his son die.

(01:15:26):
Right.
If something didn't happen,his son was going to die.
In the wake of my son,in the wake of Donnie's death.
Like, I'mso reassessing, like,
most of the things that peopletry to
trouble themselves about.
Certainlymost of the conflicts
that people get inwith other people.

(01:15:50):
From the vantage pointof having just lost my son.
It's like it's ridiculous.
It's, you know, so, like,
there are things that really,really matter.
There are thingsthat are permanent things
of permanent value,things that are.
And. Yeah.

(01:16:12):
Obviously,obviously, obviously,
like our, our relationshipwith God and
our families, our family
relationships and like,
the things that we can dofor other people, ways
we can contribute to
the lives of othersis actually something.
Donnie's, a lot inhis last couple of years was,

(01:16:36):
you know,
that he wantedus most of what he wanted,
most of all of usto contribute
to the lives of others. That'swhat,
like our relationship
with our father in heavenand our Savior, our families,
and what we can contributein this world.
Because it's like,

(01:16:57):
when Christ,
talked, gave the parable
of like the man who was like,he he he,
he stored up a lot of goodsfor himself, right?
He's like basically like,I want to live an easy life.
He's like, you know thatvery night, right?
He dies.

(01:17:18):
And what was that for?
What was all that for?
You know nothing.
And and so,
Yeah, it's the gospel pointsus to the things
that actually matter. And
so, as I think about,

(01:17:40):
just a
sinner watching his son die,right?
He's thinking this.
I can.
Understand.
I can sympathize and,
he I mean, it wouldn't
surprise me in the slightestif he didn't.

(01:18:01):
I mean, everybody drank,but we know he drank in
surprise me if he foundsome additional consolation.
Ignore it, ignore it.
The dull, the pain,all the intense pain
and anxiety he of wonderingif his son is going to live.
Watching his son helplessly.
Watching his son waste away.

(01:18:22):
So what am I getting at him?
I'm building something.
What am I building?
And my dear.
Hey, my insight
looking at all this.
And as the next morning I was.
What would make sense of us
is if Joseph Smith Jr refused

(01:18:44):
the alcohol in orderto be strong for his father.
We already know he's tryingto be strong for his mother.
Right.
Go far away.
I don't want you in the roomhere.
Right.
Here. This you see this.
But he's having his dadbe strong.

(01:19:07):
Right.
Is having his dad be strongand part for him as a child.
Right.
But why isn't he takingthe alcohol.
Having his dad hold him
instead of drinking alcohol.
He's trying to set an example
for his own father.

(01:19:27):
Right.
It's basically if I cando this without alcohol
so can you.
This would make sense of LucyMaximus narrative.
Right.
And the thing is
we know that alcoholconsumption is going on

(01:19:48):
in the background wallsbecause of other sources.
Because the store records.
Yeah. And so on. Right.
But Lucy never mentions it.
Lucy doesn'thint at it. Really?
So why would she worksomething into her narrative?
That makes sense
if you know about that.

(01:20:11):
Why would
why would she work in JosephJunior refusing alcohol.
Well she's not givingthe context that
if she's making the story up.Yeah. Yes.
This is nothow she would make up a story
that reflects a contextthat she's not disclosing.
For no reasonwhy she would just.

(01:20:33):
Why would you add thatwhat you're saying. Yeah.
So that as a historianwhat you do.
So so the different kindsof reasoning. Right.
So there's deductive reasonsis like what
philosophersand mathematicians use. Right.
There's inductive reasoning.
This is used a lotin the sciences we look at.
You know so deductivepeople know as like you

(01:20:54):
mortal Socrates was a man.
Of course advocates might likeInductive reasoning as well.
We look at their regularitiesin nature.
You know when,
when you put hydrogenand oxygen
together with a certain amount
of energy,you always get water. Right.
Like so we,we generalize that causation.

(01:21:15):
Historiansdo something called abductive
reasoning or inferenceto the best explanation.
That is what would bestexplain these events.
What would best explainthese events is
Joseph Junioris trying to help this stuff.
Now it turns out
there's research on dyingchildren.

(01:21:38):
Go, go.
There was a psychologist.
She thought to do something.
Apparently,nobody had thought to do.
And then
she started interviewingchildren
with terminal illnesses andinterviewing their parents.
How long ago was it?
Oh, pre current.
Current in the 80s.
Okay, okay.
It's a little bit ago.

(01:21:59):
But people hadn't done thisresearch before.
And what she found
is that dying children arewell aware that they're dying.
They know that
they're watching their parentswatch them die.
And one thing that theysometimes do
is tryto parent their parents.

(01:22:19):
Okay.
So far away I'm not.
No. You can't proceed withthe surgery till mom is gone.
It's screaming in agony.
But he's got the presenceof mind to insist.
Mom's gotta go.
There he is. Parent himthe parent.
Even kids who weren't dyingdo this. Yes.

(01:22:39):
Yeah. Children are dying.
Especially specially
to do this becausethey recognize the suffering.
They knowthey're watching their parents
sufferbecause of another parents.
They're sufferingbecause they're watching.
JosephJunior is parenting mom.
He's also parenting.
Okay.
He's trying to set an examplefor his father.

(01:23:02):
So back to the questionwe asked before.
What kind of person
was Joseph Smith.
What do you think.
When I was doingmy graduate work.
We read a book onhow to do history,
how the Landscape of Historyby a famous historian
in the Cold War.

(01:23:24):
He talks
about how do you do
different kinds of history,one unique kind of history
that talksabout his biography.
And what he says iswhen you're trying
to explainan extraordinary person,
look for extraordinary events
in their early life.

(01:23:44):
What was extraordinaryabout Joseph
Smith Junior's early life.
What is it that set him upto become the prophet
that the world chosethrough his first vision?
What is it that set him upfor this religious career?
And what is it earlyin his childhood
that shows something
exceptional and createssomething exceptional in him?

(01:24:08):
The most extraordinary thingabout Joseph Smith's childhood
was that he went throughexperimental surgery
without anestheticin order to help his father.
And you're sayingsimply extraordinary.
There were only a few dozenpeople in the history
of the United Stateswho ever had the surgery.

(01:24:30):
Only Nathan Smith,that doctor,
he was the only onewho knew how to do it.
He was the one who created it.
And the instructionsthat he left behind.
Otherpeople tried it after he died
and theyweren't able to make it work.
Very few
people ever had the surgery,and probably
only one of them ever had itwithout an esthetic.
And certainly probablyonly one

(01:24:51):
child ever wrotethat in the study.
Joseph Smith.
He's the only one.
There's maybe two.
Most certainly there isn't.
That is one.
So this was exceptionaland interesting.
So first of all,what a noble child would do
that he would do thisfor his parents.
So if we want a famousperson, Joseph Smith was

(01:25:15):
what kind of child?
Let's look at whatkind of child Joe Smith was.
He was this kind of time.
He was a noble child.
Was looking outfor other people, particularly
his family was parents,his farm.
I think this isthis is amazing to me.
This is like. Thisis like, mind blowing because
the,

(01:25:37):
we we've looked at that storyso many times,
and you're telling me thatthis is like one of the more
foundational ones and in fact,
and in fact, you're sayingthis is like to you
in your own words,this is the most foundational
of all of the insightsthat you have found.
What?
I'm just trying to imaginesome people might be thinking,
listening,or watching this and think

(01:25:59):
this might be a little bitof a stretch, right?
I'm not saying thatI think that it's amazing.
What would you sayto that idea of people
who might think, okay,this is a stretch.
What would you say to that?
I mean, it's a few thingsjust right off the bat.
First of all,
I'm not drawing this ideajust in the abstract.
We have research on childrenwho are dying,
and that research shows

(01:26:19):
that some of thesesome of those children, yeah,
they're parents.
Secondly,they can't self directly shows
without any inference
that he's trying to take care
of his motherin this situation.
He insists that she leave
and even in the middleof the surgery twice
when after the
they take outthe first piece of bone

(01:26:39):
and when they, you know,crack out
and pull out the second,the third piece of bone,
he won't allow them
to continue the surgeryunless his mother goes out.
He's trying to
we can tell he's
trying to parent his parents
because he's clearly tryingto take care of his mother.
Yeah. Third, third.
Like.
Okay, imaginethe intensity of the pain.

(01:27:01):
Imagine right now. Okay.
Your left leg. Right.
Somebody comes in.
No anesthetic. Nothing.
I mean, I hate shots, man.
I can't imagine that.
Oh my gosh.
With a an old fashioned 19thcentury there. Hey.

(01:27:21):
And he like, oh my gosh.
Drilling into your bone.
And then we've got hammersand chisels and saws.
And we do that for ninebig pieces of your shinbone.
No anesthesia. Okay.
And why
if you don't havea really strong motive

(01:27:43):
for this you're going to foldafter they start,
right afterthey start drilling
you're going to say, you know,
I thought I could do thiswithout anesthesia.
I've changed my mind.
Joseph Junior he's seven.
He goes throughwith the whole thing.
Yeah.
You're telling mewhat's the motive.
You're telling me this happenswithout some big mode?

(01:28:05):
No it does.
He's a he's got a giant motor.
He's got a strong motorand he links it directly
with his father.
No, I won't take the liquor,but I'll
have my father hold me.
Mom, you need to go.
God, Ineed you to hold me. Hey.

(01:28:25):
He, there's somethinggoing on inside him
that explains this.
What is it?
Okay, so
if someone were to rejectthe motive that he's trying to
parent the parent.
Well, first,
we have larger researchshowing some tall,
some dyingchildren. Douglas. Okay.
So this isn'tfrom out of the blue.
Yeah. Second.

(01:28:48):
He's trying totake care of his mother.
So why would we think he'snot trying
to take care of his father?
Third,what he's trying to do here,
what I'm telling you fitswith the context that we know
about his father already.
And it would actually explain.
So when we're trying
to come up with an inferto the best explanation,

(01:29:09):
an explanation that fits
the context that we know aboutalcohol in the household.
And the level of drinkingin the culture at the time,
of course.
JusticeSmith senior saying you've
been out of the way with wineand so on.
It that's where the actionssometimes of children who know

(01:29:29):
they're watching their parentswatch them die,
that they tryto take care of the parents
if it's with what he'sdoing with this mother.
And it would explain whyhe takes this
extraordinary actionof refusing the alcohol,
the alcohol, and continuingto refuse the alcohol
while pairing thatwith having his father
hold him instead ofusing the only anesthetic.

(01:29:50):
It explains it.
It explains.
It ties it all up with a bow.
This is a special kid.
So is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
You got a better explanation?
That's great.
But this you've gotmultiple arrows pointing
in the same thingand it ties it all up right.
Explains it in a simplestraightforward way.

(01:30:12):
So the surgery right.
Yes. This is an extraordinarychild.
This isn't normal.
I just try to make surethat I have
that is that would you that
your thesis,your perspective, your lens is
I'm saying like,yeah, he's a special kid.
You're saying like,this is significant.
Yeah. So.
So whywhy is this significant?

(01:30:34):
Yeah. Yeah.
So first off,it tells us something
about what kind of child were
what kind of human beingwe're starting with here. So.
So the theory.
Oh, the xthe common x mark and then.
Yeah, just Smith.
He's just like a he's terriblehuman being
who just comes up withthis whole religion

(01:30:55):
entirelyfor self-serving reasons.
That's what I thought.
That's what I thought, right?
This guy thought that right.I was wrong.
Okay.
This is by no means
the only thing that shows
that there areplenty of things
that show that we've talkedabout. Some of them.
We can talk about many more,
and there will be many morethat I'll publish on.
And that other people will.Yeah.
This showsthe nobility of the child,

(01:31:19):
the powerful, the,the child, as they say,
the child is the fatherto the man.
He's not going to bea totally different person
as an adultthan he was a child.
And in fact, this surgery,I would argue, both
reflects and shapesJoseph Smith's character.
Okay.
So it reflects this character

(01:31:40):
because we see what he'slike as a kid under pressure
that morning.
Determination. Iron.
Well,he follows this thing through.
He says he'sgoing to refuse the alcohol
and he follows thatthrough through
all nine of those
pieces of bone being drilledand hacked out. Wow.

(01:32:01):
Right.
He is doing thisfor other people.
He's, he does thisthe way he does for his mom.
His dad. Right.
He's other oriented.
His family focused. Right.
He's focused onsaving the father.

(01:32:21):
Right.Taking care of his parents.
Saving his fatherin particular.
There'ssomething in psychology called
post-traumatic growth.
Now people are filledwith post-traumatic stress.
And we would expect that.I'm sure just.
Smith did havepost-traumatic stress.
I don't see how it's possible
you could not from thatkind of experience.
Okay.
People, there's research nowshowing post-traumatic growth.

(01:32:44):
People go through trauma.
And this wasif this was anything.
No question, no question.
The peoplego through trauma can grow.
Amazing, man.
That's part of what makesJoseph Smith Joseph Smith.
That's that.
The things that he doesin his life,

(01:33:05):
he is the growth that he has.
Another thing I point outalso from psychology,
it's the psychologicalprinciple.
It's alsoa spiritual principle.
It's but it's documented
in psychological researchis this principle
that sacrificeincreases commitment.
What we sacrifice for we.

(01:33:26):
That's powerful right there.
Ooh ooh
wait a second.
I'm just trying to let itmarinate for a minute.
So you're sayingthis sacrifice is kind of
how this is like the whatdo you call it in like novels.
Right. The the becoming.

(01:33:46):
What is it like when in when,
you remember in middleschool, the, is that moment,
the transitional moment,the transformation moment.
You're that's.
Is that how you. Is thatwhat you're alluding to?
Is what I'm saying with this?Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. That's powerful.
We becomewhat we sacrifice for.
So. Sacrifice

(01:34:07):
for somecause for some purpose.
They become more of that.
They become morecommitted to that.
They can evaluate more.
It becomes more part of them.
I mean it part of their heart.
You could sense.
Okay.
And then like part of partof his bones. Right.
Like but in connectionto his son I think that that's
what makes itso interesting to me.

(01:34:29):
Is that what you'rereferring to?
His sacrifice for his dad
in the teaching in parentingis that the bond is very price
on behalfof his father, right?
He becomes this guy who?
This guy who works to save
his father, worksto save the father's.
So, so commitmentto saving his father

(01:34:51):
and even to savingthe father's.
The ancestorsbecomes it gets. Oh
it's reflectedby this, but it gets cemented
becomes more by the depth
of this child that sacrificingbecomes who he is.
Right.
So, so it's not just any boy
who does the various thingsthat Joe Smith does, okay?

(01:35:13):
It's this boy.
This boy becomes the manwho wanted to honor his father
when he was a teenager.
I told this visitorI wanted to honor my father.
That's partof what motivated him.
This boy who sees the fatherand the son.
Right.
It's this boy who works

(01:35:35):
to restorethe covenant of the fathers.
Put him for Abraham,Isaac and Jacob.
It's this boywho Institute goes on
to institute baptismfor the dead
to save the fathers,the ancestors.
So, so JosephSmith's revelations
come because of questionsright.

(01:35:55):
They come because of seeking
baptism.
They're not going to drop downfrom out of the blue.
It's because he cares.
But how do we savethe fathers, the ancestors.
And maybe what I'm suggestingis maybe part of that motive
is already therefor to save his father,

(01:36:15):
to care for his parents,to save his ancestors.
Part of that
motive is already there whenhe's seven and it's reflected.
The sacrificehe makes for his father,
his childhood surgery.
But part of that motiveis increased.
It's cemented.
It becomes a not just,
a value but a commitment.

(01:36:36):
It becomes an identitythat becomes who this guy is
so that as he goesthrough his life,
this is one of the big thingsthat's motivating him.
And it results
in the revelationof principles like that
of work for the dead,which is what he spends

(01:36:57):
the rest of his whole timedoing. Right? Right.
So that'swhat I'm understanding.
You're saying that thisif you want to know
about an extraordinary person,
you look at the extraordinaryevents.
This extraordinary eventwas the sacrifice.
This this sacrifice iswhat sealed his identity,
which he becomes, inwhich he which is why
he suited to be the guy tothat God would want to choose

(01:37:20):
to restore humanity, which iswhat Moroni tells him.
Right. Right.
And the very first revelation.
Right.
And when you look at rightwhat Moroni tells him,
he tells on, he's goingto fulfill various prophecies,
including the prophecyof Malachi,
of the turning of the heartsof the fathers to the children

(01:37:41):
and the hearts of the childrento the fathers.
Right. Joseph Jr
his heart is turned toward,
loving, tender, affectionate.
Father's heart is turnedtoward him, perhaps
the scene of the fulfillmentof this prophecy.

(01:38:03):
And the restoration
comes at the sacrificethat Joseph Smith junior
makes for his father, JosephSmith senior.
His leg surgerywhen he is seven years old.
And it helps cement this.
This is much of what his life,
much of whathis prophetic career is about.
So why would
the Lord have chosen JosephSmith Senior to do this work?

(01:38:26):
Well, why would he have notchosen him right?
He would have chosen him.
I'm suggesting.
Right, because of how he did.
Joseph Juniordemonstrated his commitment
to saving his fatherwhen he was seven.
And because of howthe sacrifice he made for
his father,that sacrifice itself
enhanced that commitmentand became who he was.

(01:38:49):
And that means somethingto you significantly
in this world.
To me, I mean, it didwhen I discovered it.
You know, it meansall the more to me now.
Right. As a father,even more than before.
I didn'twant to press too hard.
And I've just beensitting here listening
because this is so interesting

(01:39:10):
and it's so significant to youright now.
Yeah.
But I think it'd besignificant to many people.
I think that all of us
have these connections,these bonds, family in,
in family, whether we've been,abandoned or not.
We have this desireto have that connection.
We have this desire to be
to be restored to the past.

(01:39:34):
But just I just was curious.
I just wanted to go back to
that time you talkedabout your own son. Why?
And of course, it's obvious
that it means somethingto you.
But,
what are some of the thoughts
that have been on your mindlately
as you revisitthese ideas of Joseph as you,
consider the currentcircumstance grieving?

(01:40:02):
Over mourningthe loss of your son?
Yeah.
When Donnie was, not mucholder than Joseph Smith
was at the time of surgery,he was eight.
He became awareI didn't help him directly.
Because I wouldn't have wantedto burden him with that.
But he became aware

(01:40:22):
there's someone elsetelling him about just some
major things that I was goingthrough in my life.
And it reallyit unsettled him, you know.
And I remember Donnietrying to parent me
as children.
As children do.
Right.

(01:40:44):
That sometimes some children.
Right.
I remember him tryingto, like, take care of me,
My childrenand I had an intense bond.
Donnie and I certainly hada really intense
close father son connection.
And so Joseph,the connection between
Joseph Senior and Joseph Jr.

(01:41:06):
It makes all the sensein the world to me, right?
The the emotional intensity,the the depth,
the meaningof that connection and and
the to feel love and care
going both ways inboth direction in that poem.

(01:41:27):
Just the,the obvious affection
of the father to the sonand of the son to the father.
This is what my relationshipwith my son.
It's been like Donnieand Nicholas and this,
Donnie just

(01:41:47):
has been someoneof such extraordinarily
extraordinary emotional depthfrom the time he was young.
Right.
Like Joseph Smith wasat the time of his surgery.
And, you know, I think about,I alluded to earlier,
the first vision, is the

(01:42:08):
is an experience of the fatherand the son, right?
And it's an assuranceof the father and the son
in perfect alignmentwith one another.
We don't know who
the first person was
that Josephtold about his first vision,
but I have a suspicion. Okay.
We do knowbecause Joseph tells us.

(01:42:28):
JosephJunior tells us directly
that the first person he told
aboutthe visit of the angel Moroni
and hisfather believed immediately
and told him, go and do whatthey just told you to do.
We also know all thatwhen Joseph Junior came home
from the sacred grove,
he tells us the first personencounter was his mother,
and she saw that he wasexhausted and she asked him

(01:42:51):
what was the matter, and hesaid, it is all right, mother.
I'm well enough off.
I have learned for myself thatPresbyterianism is, true.
Full stop.
He didn't tell herhe'd seen God.
Who was the first personhe told?
I would say probably likelythe first person he tells
about his vision of the fatherand the son is his father,

(01:43:13):
Joseph Smith.
Just like his.
That's the first personhe tells about
the angelMoroni appears in certain
and not immediatelytelling his mother,
Christ in
his relationshipto the father.
And it's this relationship
of extraordinary intimacyand depth in

(01:43:36):
the scriptures, rightin our King James translation.
And it's usually translatedjust like father,
the word that Jesus used.
People pointed outthat in Aramaic it's ABBA,
daddy.
I have,I used to have neighbors
who were from the Middle East,and I heard the
the little ones, thereand they said,

(01:43:59):
I think it soundedmore like baba to me.
I got to hear itthrough the wall.
But, like, they saidsomething very similar.
Right. And the little ones.
And I've been told that, and,
if you visit the Middle East
now, parts of the Middle East,you hear the children
goingthere, they're daddy's other,

(01:44:21):
Jesus.
You know that he cameto do the will of his father.
He spoke with such affection.
Right.
And his prayers to his father.
We have a father in heavenwho just,
Jesus, of course, had this

(01:44:43):
absolutely unique week.
Relationship with the father,
but were brought into that,right?
Like we have a heavenly Fatherwho cares
so tenderly for us
and whom we can serve, right?
We can do as well.

(01:45:04):
When the father appears,the father and the son appear
to just smile.
This is the father'shouse for you.
So this is son in whom I amwell pleased.
So he's.
He's speaking his delightto his beloved son.
And, his love for
his son is expressing his lovefor his son.

(01:45:26):
And he says here him
the fatheris affirming the son,
and then the sonis giving a message,
from the father to Joseph Jr.
And by the way,Joseph says he addresses him.
Joseph, my son
and Joseph my son.
So there's this fatherson theme that's even woven

(01:45:50):
depth in Joseph Smith'sfirst prophetic experi.
It's the first visionand it's there.
Look at why choose this guyfor that experience.
Joseph Junior, under standsthe dad of the.
This brought his own father

(01:46:10):
son bond is
so intense and deep and he hastried to serve his father.
Right.
So he in that waycan understand this son
made him understandJesus Christ.
And he Christ speaks to him
as his son Joseph my son.

(01:46:31):
Right.
We all the scriptures
talk about us all as sonsand daughters of Christ.
Right?
We were
adopted in baptism.
You know, that's one waythat that happens, right?
And so there's this father sonlike spiritual intimacy
that's reflectedbetween the father and the son

(01:46:51):
in the first vision.
And then that's communicatedto Joseph Smith
as a child of God
in the first vision.
And, you know, parenting
provides a kind of glimpse

(01:47:12):
of that love, right?
That,
that exists between
the father and the sonand then also exists. And,
Our love for our childrenprovides a glimpse,
just a glimpse of the lovethat God has for us and I,

(01:47:34):
in getting to be a dad.
Of Donnie and of Nicholas.
Like I,I've gotten to have poems.
You know, don't get me wrong.
Like losing Donnie, I.
The pain that I go throughevery single day,
right, is more than I knewthat I could suffer.

(01:47:58):
But that, like
we, we grieve
in accordanceto how much we love him.
And so, yeah, he and.
The fact
that I suffer morethan I knew I could suffer
is because I love more thanI knew I could.

(01:48:22):
And that is,
a reflection to us.
Right?
It's an expression of the lovethat God has for us, right?
And the love that he manifestthrough his beloved son,
Jesus Christ,and extends to us

(01:48:42):
and, through which our bonds
with those we love virtually,
our sins and our
our spouses, our
can be secured forever.
Right?
And that whatever has happenedto them in this world where

(01:49:05):
there is so much injusticeand so much pain and so much
that people should not haveto suffer, right?
Like it's not the last one,not even not even close,
right?
That we and our loved oneswill thrive and flourish

(01:49:26):
for eternitywithin the love of our father
in Heaven, through his.
That's powerful man.
That vicarious connection
it teaches us more abouthim, is what you're saying
that it'shard to learn any other way.
And and I knowthat there are people who are,

(01:49:48):
you know,different circumstances,
don't have an abilityto have children in this life
sometimes.
And I know that's not evenclose to what you're saying,
and even that is in the planthat he has for us.
Experience is what I mean.
Understandingthe real experience of family.
It gives us a glimpse intowhat God experiences, and it's

(01:50:11):
what's divinely a part of usis what I'm hearing you say.
And even as you'vementioned it to me, it's
I agree with you is when I'mwhen to say I agree with you,
it's it's such a tender thing
you mentioned beforeand I wanted to touch on this
and I don't, I don't know,
because I think
that there might be peoplethat are coping, two
that are mourning with this.
You mentionedthe way that he coped.

(01:50:33):
Right.
And I don't want to alludeto the fact that
that you coped the same way.
I'm just saying,because I think it's
I don't think that
and I don't think thatthat's what you meant.
And who who caresif it is for you?
I'm saying
people might be challengingfor them
to consider this questionfor themselves.
How do you cope withsomething like that?
How do you copeand how do you how do you?

(01:50:55):
Because I don't think that
the pain goes away.
I don't think the pain
goes away.
I don't think the pain will goaway.
And there's a lot of itin the particulars.
Right?
There's a lot that Downeysuffered

(01:51:16):
before he died.
And there'sa lot of senselessness
in his death.
That makes the pain
that muchmore difficult to enter.

(01:51:39):
And I don't havesome sort of answer.
All right.
I do
know that,
I'm not.
I'm not angry with God.
Okay.
But I used to wonder. So.
So something that peoplewho've watched the previous,

(01:52:03):
the first interview that wedid, we've done more than one.
But the first interviewthat we did. Yeah.
How about myspiritual journey?
Something that they may knowor maybe not.
I talked about some.
There is.
When I was out of the church,I left the church officially.
I was out for five years.

(01:52:26):
When I left the church, I not
only have stopped believingin the restoration.
Excuse me?
I had stoppedbelieving in God.
And the main reasonthat I had stopped believing
in God was the problem of eviland suffering
is the fact that peopleI was aware of instances

(01:52:48):
were just the most horrendoushuman suffering.
And the the there were two.
The main one wasthe sufferings of children.
And the other, which was,
it wasn't as big inmy mind is that.
But it was a pretty bigtrigger for me in this regard

(01:53:10):
to my loss of beliefin God with mental illness,
because I got a glimpseof what people go
through with mental illness.
And my sonDanny had some struggles with,
much later on at that timehe was just you know boy them.
And so when

(01:53:34):
something thatI came to wonder about myself
when I did cometo believe in God
which people can watchour previous interview about.
Right. Like they wanna knowmore about that.
And there's moreI can say about that.
Maybe in the future as well.
Like, something I cameto wonder after I.
To believe in God againis, am I just believing

(01:53:54):
in God againin spite of human suffering?
Because it hasn't happenedto me in the big ways.
Me, to me or to my children?
Right.
Well, it's
a good question.
Tragic way possible.
I have the answerto that question.

(01:54:19):
When I found out.
Certain,
news about my son's death.
I screamed.

(01:54:44):
And while I was screaming.
Screaming and screaming.
I heard something
I don't even understand.
Deep inside of me.
Talk to Godand say I trust you, God.

(01:55:06):
And the pain didn't stop.
And the screaming to stop.
I kept screaming,
on some level.
And I don't even understandhow it's possible.
That I trust God.
And I can't say thatat every moment I feel that.
Right.
I mentioned sometimesbeing angry with God.

(01:55:29):
But I heard my own voice
from the depths of my soul
say, I trust you, God. In.
And so,
I don't have the answers.

(01:55:50):
Right.
I have a lot of thoughtsand that's.
I'm still working outsome of them.
Thoughts about suffering.
Right.
Why things happenthe way that they do.
And the thing that I
look at the most though is

(01:56:15):
We don't know all the whys
of suffering, but there arethings that we do know
and when Christ came.
He suffered.
And the Book of Mormon talksabout a title,

(01:56:36):
says Jesus is the Christ,the eternal God,
manifesting himselfin all nations.
I've been.
And I,
and King Benjaminboth refer to Christ coming
before he comes, saying,God Himself shall come down
among the children, men,and take upon him
our sufferings.
Right.
So God

(01:56:58):
in Christ, Godis suffering our suffering.
Right?
So we do not suffer alone.
And this is somethingthat Donny actually
just a few months before hedied, in a gratitude journal
that he wrote, he wrote abouthow much sense it made him
and how grateful he was thatChrist suffered all his pains.

(01:57:23):
He suffered anyway. Right.
Like we do not suffer alone.
What I suffer.
I am not suffering alone.
Right.
But Jesus didn't just cometo suffer our sufferings.

(01:57:43):
This enormous, enormous,enormous us, that is,
he also came to declare an endto those things.
Not yet. Right.
The sort of the beginning ofthe end of the fallen world.
Right.
And Jesus talked about Satanas sort of

(01:58:03):
like the prince of this world.
And other scripturestalk about,
right, that our world is not.
Things are not asthey should be.
We can see thisall the time, right?
When we see gratuitoussuffering, when we see even
death itself, the Scripturesay, talk about an apostle.
Paul said, death is the lastenemy that shall be overcome.

(01:58:26):
Right.
Ultimately,in the things as they are
in this world is nothow they're meant to be.
Creation is not complete.
God is still completingthe creation.
And when Christ came, you knowhis resurrection happened.
Interestingly,not on the Sabbath.

(01:58:46):
I'm going to do a song.
When God rested,
it happened on the morningof the first day
on the scriptures.
What's the significance of 77,you know, 60 years
God creates six days helabored, seven day he rested.
That's why,you know, people are commanded
to rest on that day.

(01:59:07):
Sundayis the first day of the week.
What did God doin the morning?
On the first dayhe began the creation.
Christ's resurrection is thebeginning of a new creation.
It's the creation of the worldas it ultimately
is supposed to be.
Praise
that in the resurrectionof Christ we see

(01:59:30):
how things are supposed to be,
that death is overcome.
Death is over.
Death is what has beenovercome in Christ.
It will be that will beextended to all of us. Death.
There will be no more death,
and there will be no moretears.
There will be no moregratuitous suffering.
Right?
And Jesus came.

(01:59:52):
He healed people.
He cast out devils.
He healedpeople of physical illness.
He healedpeople from mental illness.
Those thingsare not going to be any more.
After he comes again. Right?
And he invites usas the body of Christ.
Now we're in the churchis called the Body of Christ.

(02:00:13):
Christ's resurrectedbody is gone now.
But Paul talks about ushaving like the spirit
of the resurrection,he lives within us.
We are empoweredto do amazing things.
Christ said he healed people.
What he saidwho greater works than these.
So you do him not to

(02:00:34):
to heal, whether throughspiritual means for scientific
means as well increasinglyright to heal people,
to to bring back the dead.
People can die now and theycan sometimes be resuscitated.
Our ability, our abilityto bring back the dead
in the future,
as well as to heal peoplefrom all kinds of afflictions,

(02:00:54):
will increase.
We can grow in thatultimately.
Right?
Or promisesthe promise of a new creation
where things
are going to be the waythat they're supposed to be.
And so the hope offeredby Christ when he came in
the world was alwayswhat would be called
an eschatological hope,meaning hope that comes at the

(02:01:15):
end, rather
then thehope that lies in the future.
We don't just have to relyon the world as it is now.
This is not how things areultimately meant to be.
This is not,
you know, the world'snot going to go on forever
with in the grip of sufferingand death,
you know, death and sufferingof all different kinds.

(02:01:38):
Those things will have an end.
And Jesus's resurrection
shows us the beginningof a new creation,
how life is meant to be,how it will ultimately be done
is wherewho lives in the future.
I can't explain
everything that happenedhas happened in the past.

(02:01:58):
That happens now, right?
And these are thingsthat are known to God.
Like I said,I have thoughts right?
And I think about it a lot.
Of course, I was thinking,yeah, you've been
you've been deep into this.I can feel it.
This is what you've beenstudying, it sounds like.
Yeah, yeah. But yes.
But our, our ultimate hope

(02:02:21):
is in the future.
Love with other
people is always pointingtowards a future.
The past is to be learnedfrom, not to be lived in.
But I think this got to beso empowering for people
to experiencewhat you're saying,
to understandwhat you've been through
in the way that you can nowdeclare this to us. Now,

(02:02:41):
you know,it doesn't feel like you're
trying to prove it to me.
It doesn't feel like you'retrying to.
It feels like you believe it.
Why do you believe it?
Why do I believe? Yeah.
Why do you have hope,
you know, in thiswhat you just described?
Yeah.
So first of all,I think that there are

(02:03:01):
so many reasonsto believe in God,
and there are reasonsthat are personal
to my own experience,
and there are reasonsthat are more sort of larger
things where we God,we're endowed with reason,

(02:03:22):
we may have minds that areable, but seek truth, right?
This is another thing
that we've talkedabout of seeking truth.
We're givenlike this hunger for the truth
that's inherentin human beings.
We don't want to knowfalsehoods.
We want to know the truth.
We don't want to knowthe truth.
Often when we thinkthe truth might be painful.
Right.

(02:03:44):
But why do we have thislove of the truth
if the truth is in the somehow
also ultimately the good rightand the ultimate truth
we're all going to findis everything sucks.
Its meaningless.
Gone tomorrow. Right.
It would be strainsthat we have implanted in us

(02:04:07):
in our natures.
A love of truth.
We are endowed with reason.
We can use reason to thinkabout ultimate things.
Why is there somethinginstead of nothing.
Right. Like why.
Why are some, why is theresuch a thing as goodness?
Why is there such a thing
as reason that points usto truth? Why is there so?

(02:04:27):
Why do we have a moral sensethat points us to the good?
If we were to believejust like a sort of
naturalistic explanationof things, there's not really
good human could exist.
If all there is is particlesand forces, where is goodness?

(02:04:47):
Where is moral?
Where does moral is moraltruth?
Does it exist in electrons?
GravityI mean it wouldn't be real.
So and there are peoplewho say
that they don't believethe good.
Ultimatelythere is moral truth,
but who not becausethey don't believe in God.

(02:05:08):
They're naturalists right?
Yes, but they liveas if they did.
There's a sort of disconnectbetween
what they're sayingthey believe
and the fact thaton some level they believe
something.
Yeah.
All truth.
Something that I've noticedsince Darwin has died

(02:05:30):
I reflected on the what is
almost pretty muchI think every normal person,
if they have a loved one onsomething that they love, die,
they want to fulfillwishes of that person.
But if you really
believe the personno longer exists,

(02:05:53):
what difference does it make.
And yet we all,every normal person
wants to fulfill the hopes
and the wishesof their deceased loved ones.
It's like no matter whatwe say,
we believe
we still are living outa different truth, right?
We're living out the truth

(02:06:14):
that there is such a thingas goodness.
It matters.
Right.
There's such thingas moral truth.
We're living out
the truth.
Our loved ones continue.
And thereforeit matters to them if we
do things on their behalfand be free,
fulfill their hopeswhen we pursue truth.

(02:06:38):
Even if the truththat we think we're finding,
as I once thought,was that there wasn't a God.
You know, it just wasn't.
What? Why was I
pursuingthe truth that I liked?
It's not like I likedbelieving those things.
I thought that they were true,
but encodedin the very idea that

(02:07:01):
of pursuing the truth is,it is somehow, ultimately,
the truth is good.
But if you hold to certainbeliefs,
truth isn't good,the truth is bad.
And yet we have encoded in usin our natures the idea.
Ultimately the truth is good.
It's a good to be pursued,whatever it is,
I want to find it because it's

(02:07:22):
ultimately we have the senseit's going to be good.
Right.
Those are thingsthat are sort of
built into usas human beings, right?
That we can, we can denythey're still there.
Yeah.
Using our reason,asking questions
like other questions, like,

(02:07:42):
what is the nature of ultimatereality, for instance?
Like why is there somethinginstead of nothing?
Or looking at itas we talked about in our,
first interview. Right.
Are you like.
Yeah, kind of.
We brought you backversus like like
why should I do this exist.
Right. Like why should I wait.

(02:08:03):
Why should there be lifelike the chances.
There's a problem in sciencecalled the problem.
Fine tuning of the constants
of the universefor the existence of life.
The chances of our being here.
One, noted astronomerestimated at one in the ten
to the 200 power one.
The chances that the laws ofthe universe would favor life.

(02:08:26):
That you and I would.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
That number is lying right?
That is is is,
Nobody really understandsthe magnitude of a billion,
much less this number.
Right?
Like the natureof consciousness.

(02:08:49):
I mean,
you andI are both aware right now
that's
supposed to justbe me in our heads, right?
Yeah. Explain anything. Right.
There are.
And on and on and on. Right.
We go onfor quite a while. Right?
There are so many thingsthat point

(02:09:10):
to the existenceof something more,
that pointto the existence of God.
And there are things for me
in my life in particularthat point to God.
Right?
Like an experiencethat I talked about,
that that saved my life. Yeah.
I couldn't have known.
But something saved my life.
What am I going to believe.What am I going to think

(02:09:32):
about.
Am I going to be grateful.
For that or mejust going to dismiss it.
Am I going to try
to live in relationshipto the one who saved me,
or just put it out?Oh, you know, whatever.
I get to live my life.
But, you know, kind of like,
who cares, right?
And so,

(02:09:53):
there are ways
that we can each that the,
the promise of profit.
It's the promise of
spiritual,spiritually advanced
people down through the ageshas been not just that.

(02:10:13):
Like they know somethingthat we can't know.
It's that we can pursue thosethings and know them too.
Right.
And so as I said,if any man show
Any man shall do his.
Well he shall knowwhether I am, you know,
speak of myselfor my father basically.

(02:10:35):
Yeah.
And so like
we have to spiritualtruth is something that,
I mean, partly involvesthinking,
partly involves,like living for it.
Yeah.
To me, the, when you weretalking about Donny,
I just wanted to ask you.
Because you.
Because I'm understanding.

(02:10:56):
You saying there'sa pursuit of
something, is not itcan't be nothing.
Even people who don't believein God when they.
When people die,they still want to help them.
They want to help them,fulfill
the things that they didn'tget to fulfill. And so then,
if that's the case,then what do you believe?
And I just.
Right when you said that,I wanted to ask you will.
What is itthat you want to help him

(02:11:16):
to continue to pursueall kinds of things.
I mentioned his, I mentionedon his book of poetry.
Just profound,beautiful poetry.
Always had such a passionfor words.
In the time he was little,like, I, I'm going to,

(02:11:37):
I'm doing editingon it now, and so but I,
I'm going to publish his bookof poetry, light of an hour.
I just wanted to takea quick second
and let you know thatafter this episode,
there's going to be a bonus.
We're actually goingto have Don
read his son's poetry, DonnieJr, as a tribute to him.
So stick around for that.
And, let's getyou back to the episode.

(02:11:58):
He had so many brilliantthoughts on so many things
that I am gathering upand want to put out
to the worldand and different forms.
I will be starting a website,Donny Broadway.com.
I purchased the domain
pictures and even dabbled
a little bit years agoin creating music.

(02:12:18):
Well, actually, I actuallycreated a lot of rap songs.
And, Donny,
you know, later in his life,because of some struggles
that he had, this didn'talways manifest as much,
manifested more earlier.
But, like,I just had this deep passion

(02:12:42):
for life, like, as,like an energy.
I want to live deeply.
Donny wrote us, several years ago
when he was having healthproblems, and he wondered,
you know, because he did.
He he carriedsubstantial health problems.
He had an autoimmune disorder.

(02:13:02):
He never complained. Right.
But he carried a lot.
And, one time when he wasworried about himself,
he wrote a note in his journalto his family.
And it told us,
just out of the depths
of his heart, like,you know, I want, I want.
I'm going to ask you somethingvery difficult.
I'm going to ask youthat you'd be happy.

(02:13:23):
I want you to be happy for me.
I want you to, you know,
it's your job now to takecare of each other and to let
yourselves be taken care ofand let yourself be helped.
And just
really profound thingsI want to do those things.
I, want to, as much painas I'm going through.

(02:13:45):
I want to try to live deeperand have a lot of experiences
so that I can share,with Donny.
Find things, with the lighthand that we can share,
in a coming day,like in the resurrection.
And, there are thingsthat I've done to preserve,

(02:14:07):
Donnie's memories and,
like, a lot of things.
And, you know,we don't know everything
that we as humanbeings will be able to do.
In the future
with our technologies.
In terms of, you know,even doing remarkable things.

(02:14:33):
We might not
be able to envision now.
Even for peoplewho have passed on.
Right. Who knows what.
Ultimately, God has in store
for him.
Wow. That's beautiful,I love it.
Even just hearing you say it,I can feel it.

(02:14:53):
I can feel the care that youhave for him in the in the.
It's like he's still exists.
You know what I mean?
It's like, it's not that.It's like, done. It's over.
I mean, his body
is, you know, he'sburied in the earth,
but he's still somewhere,you know?
I don't want to put wordsin your mouth.
You didn't say that.

(02:15:13):
I just think it's justinteresting to think that.
And, I'msure give some type of hope.
You know, I think thatit's important for people.
Especially coming from you,
who has hadso many experiences, right,
going through,
you know, in the church,out of the church, believing
God, not believingGod at all and got it all.
And now you're sitting heredeclaring to us and to me.

(02:15:34):
That you have hope.
I have hope.
Even though you've been going
throughsome of the hardest the, the
I understand the hardest timeof your life by far,
by anything I've, I've lost.
My mom, I've lost a dadof two talents.
But I lost dad,

(02:15:56):
I lost my younger brotherCharles was I think we talked
about before. Yeah. Yeah.
I have suffered loss.
Losing a child.
There isn't anythingthat's, there's
this isn't another lossthat's like. Yeah.
And I mean I experience.

(02:16:22):
I experience
tremendous pain and I've had
moments of deep despair
as well as anguishjust and terrible grief.
Right. I have hope.
I have hopeI have like absolutely not
given up on my son.
Right. Like,

(02:16:43):
I have every expectationof seeing him again, of seeing
my two sons standing togetheragain, which will be
the greatest delight.
This father's heart to have.
Important.
Oh, there's so there'sso this so insightful.

(02:17:04):
I have four boys,
and it's just I can justI can't imagine.
I can't imagine what you'vebeen through in. Man.
With.
What do you what do you wantpeople to understand?
And Iand I think that's more of
what is Godteaching you about his son?

(02:17:26):
What is he teaching youabout his son?
You've already saidmany things in that regard.
I think what
I'm curiousof what these lessons are,
that that might be beneficialto other people, you know,
what are some of the thingsthat you're holding on to that
give you hope that you'relearning about the Son of God?
I mean, one
thing is certainly in just the

(02:17:49):
the importanceof resurrection.
We know each other
in this worldas physical beings.
We know, like, the soundof each other's voices.
Right?
Like,characteristic mannerisms.
Just,
Have sensory experiences.

(02:18:11):
And, you know,if if there were an afterlife
and it were justpurely mental,
that would be something.
But there would be deepdimensions
of our humanness missing.
Right.
And if you think aboutmost religions in the world
actually do, promise.

(02:18:38):
They promise life after death,
but they don't promise.
This.
Right. Life.
And that we will experienceeach other
the way that we do now. Right.
So and if you understandthere's a recognition

(02:18:59):
you sort of
be a different person.
And if you did encountera lot of them
in another incarnation,you'd be two different people
maybewith the same consciousness.
Peopleencountering each other.
Or if you just encouragespirit
like the, the bodily aspect,that is what

(02:19:21):
is part of what makes usfor biological families.
And that's part ofwhat makes you family. Right.
You have to have a bodyto make it
into a shared experience.That's right.
And so the,
the vital importanceof the resurrection
that Christ brings aboutfor us is one thing.
And.

(02:19:45):
Just I think
again, just the in Christ
we are promised.
That things will be madenew, right?
That the worldwill be different
and that his resurrectionis the.
It is it's first day of the.

(02:20:07):
It's the morningof the first day of the week.
It's it'sthe 88th day, isn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's anew cycle of creation and so,
the things that, so the, the
beautiful things from life,
we get to keep,

(02:20:28):
the, the pain
that we experiencehere, the illness.
Right. The things that make
the things that bringso much pain in life
are not the last word.
Then, forever. Right.
That there is new creation
coming for each of us

(02:20:51):
as it came for Christafter his crucifixion.
Right?
When at the momentthat Christ died,
it looked like the
the forces of evil had won.
Right. I mean,
what did his disciples think?
They thought he'dbeen crushed.
They thought he'dbeen defeated.

(02:21:13):
He told them, I'mgoing to rise again.
But they didn't get it.
They said wellwe thought he was the Messiah
but I guess we were wrongyou know.
They thought the,the power of death,
the power of evil,the power of Satan,
the power of the,the violence of empires of
the world, rule ruled by forcein the Roman Empire.

(02:21:36):
Right? Yeah.
Christ was killedby the Roman Empire.
Right?
I mean,that was a particularly Roman
form of execution and tortureand execution on the cross.
He with that was
ordered by Pontius Pilate,the Roman governor.
Right.
Appointed by the RomanEmperor.

(02:21:57):
Right.
Christ was crushed his,his, his body, his mortal body
was crushed by the, the,the big empire of the time.
So the ruling empirein the world.
That's interesting
actually it lookedat powers of this world.
Had that ruled by force,that ruled by violence

(02:22:19):
that that don't ruleby justice or mercy.
Right.
It looked like he was just,
just a backwater peasantin the Roman Empire,
just been crushedby the empire.
And then he overcomes,
and he's he's brought backhis body is created

(02:22:41):
a new in a waythat it will never suffer.
It will never die.
There's not a
there's not going to bea second crucifixion, right?
Mean that ends.
And Christ'sresurrection is the,
that there's a there'sa technical terms prolapse.
Right. It's like, prolapse.

(02:23:04):
This is where somethinghappens now, like portends
a future.
Yes. Christ'sresurrection is the prolapse.
This is.Which is the beginning.
The first.
It's God's firstact of this new creation.
And it shows ushow things are going to be
that the forces of evildon't win.

(02:23:27):
Right.
The forces of evil.
The forces of injustice.
The powers of darkness.
Death.
They don't win.
They didn't win for Christ.
And we didn't win for Christ.
And because of that,they say they don't win
over my son right thenand whenever

(02:23:49):
they want.
Whenever my son.
They won't win over any of us.
That'snot the end of the story.
Like
we livewith pain and loss now.
But with the
promise of what is to come
I can't help but think of whatthe, the, the,

(02:24:12):
because you saidthis is the most insightful,
the most foundational insightthat you found.
The man who is the JosephSmith ologist,
who swims in JosephSmith's history,
that it's impossible to swimin that history without
swimming in the truthof the restoration,

(02:24:33):
and from the very beginning,the first revelation recorded
back to that Malachi,which is in all chapters.
All books, by the way.
It sounds like you're sayingthat again,
that he is turning the hearts
of the children to the fathers
and then. But,but if it were not so
the earth would be utterlywasted at his coming.

(02:24:55):
It's worthless.
And I feel you say thatin your, the way that
you talk about your son.
It's like if I
can't be with Donnie again,what's the point of this
if I can't be with Donnieagain?
What are we doing?
I mean, I don't, you know, in
in the New Testamentwith Christ,

(02:25:17):
I mean,
Malachi is the last prophet
who prophesied in the HebrewBible, the Old Testament.
So at the time that Christcame, people were expecting
Malachi's propheciesto be fulfilled
when he predicted the turningof the hearts of the fathers
to the children.
And the childrenof the fathers,
predicted Elijah, or,as in Greek, Elias.

(02:25:39):
The the prepare.
The Baptist fulfilledthat role of
being a sort of Elijah rightfor the coming of Christ.
All right. And testament.
Well, Christ isthe son, is God's beloved son.
God declared this at Christ'sbaptism, right?
That he was his beloved son.
His heart, the father's heartwas turned to Christ.

(02:26:03):
Christ's heart.
He wanted onlyto do his father's will.
That's allwe wanted to do, is heart and
the father
right up to get so manyhis suffering and get so many.
And on the cross. Right.
His heart is turnedcompletely to the father.
There's that turning
of the heart of the father andthe son to each other there

(02:26:25):
and then in the restoration,we have this honor.
That's the on the divine right
in Christthe father and the son.
Then the father and the soncome to Joseph Smith
because he is seekingto save his father
and his familyand by extension, others.

(02:26:46):
Right.
He's seekingsalvation for his family.
And he has this built,you know,
from the time he's a childand cemented by the sacrifice
he makes for his earthlyfather. Right?
Yes. This designed to serve
and this desire to savehis family.

(02:27:06):
This he's chosen,
I think, in good measure.
Because of this.Because of what?
That moment of sacrifice.
His surgery showed aboutand demonstrated about him.
And also becauseof what it created in him,
the self that, sacrifice

(02:27:27):
helped him to behelped him to become.
So the father and the son
in perfect alignment againcome to him.
He says theythey look like each other near
the in the father declareshis beloved son and says, here
him and the son is declaringthe truth of the father.

(02:27:47):
Right to Joseph Smith,who is taking us, addressing
as his son Joseph. My sonand I.
I think that's so powerful.
Back to what you saidbefore, right?
That identitycomes from the sacrifice,
and that's where the bondthat they have together.
This is my beloved sonwho in whom I am well pleased.

(02:28:07):
Parents will recognize usfrom.
Yeah.
The sacrificesyou make for your children.
Yeah.
You become.
Your love for them growsbecause of that sacrifice.
Right?
But that can
that can gothe other direction
as well as it did for you,you know, just as mature
and you that wow as fatherbecause the sacrifice
he made for him.
So then this is part ofhow he becomes who he is,

(02:28:30):
how the restoration ends uphappening through him.
And the restoration
and good measureis about turning the hearts
of the fathers to the childrenand the children
to the fathers,and the filling the prophecy
on another level and carryingthat out to humankind.
This is this is so simple,but it's so deep, man.

(02:28:51):
It's so deep.
And I think that that study
that you showedis like an example of it.
It almost feels like,oh, why would kids do that?
Why would kids?
I think that it's
naturally in us and that'show God is restoring humanity.
We want that.
We want to help our parents
and their parentswant to help us.
For you right now.

(02:29:11):
And you've mentioneda few things.
How are you turning your heartback to your son?
In what waysare you doing that?
What does it look likefor you?
And you get very personal
when I go, I,

(02:29:32):
I wake up in the morning and,
I try to have my first,
the day be a greeting to God.
I thought of prayer
and gratitude and,
then,

(02:29:53):
I try to also feel,
tune into Donny and his presence,
and I.
I do a practice of lovingkindness.
Where I,
I think about Donny
and just all of the lovethat I have for him

(02:30:13):
and all the things that I.
That I wish for him,that I want for him.
My desire for him, my hopefor him, my is his happiness.
And I do that
for my son Nicholas.
I do that for others.
Expanding outand Yeah, for myself too.
So that

(02:30:33):
I can
heal and I spend time grievingwhile
I'm doing that.
I think I probably cryevery single time.
And I actively think about,
you know, I, I have a sonon the other side of the veil.

(02:30:55):
I have a sonon the side of the veil.
I actually think a great dealabout
how to be therefor them, obviously.
You know,
Donny went throughso much suffering and he's had
things taken from himthat pain me greatly
and also pains that.

(02:31:16):
My son
has to go through so much painand losing his brother.
And I just,
you know, the way thatyou do as a parent, your own
father heart, where you thinkabout your kids all the time.
You know, and I.

(02:31:38):
My, my heart
on the most fundamental levelis attuned to my children.
Right.
And Donny being
physically absent from,from us changes
doesn't changethat in the slightest.
Right.
I, I'm very, tuned into him.

(02:32:01):
I want to do things that he
hopes of his me
and pray
for things he wanted
to achieve in his lifethat can still be achieved
for, you know, caringfor others like in our family.
But he he loves to.

(02:32:22):
I know that he loves meand so I have whenever
someone dies we feel regretand we think about,
you know, maybe thingsI could have done differently.
I've wrestledwith a great deal of regret
and it's knowing in partknowing Donny's love for me,
knowing Nicholas's love for meand knowing my mom's love

(02:32:44):
for me havebeen things that really have,
led me to,
overcome anger that I hadof myself.
Right?
Because that's notwhat they want for me.
They don't want meto fall apart, you know?
And it's beautiful. And.
Oh, what's beenhas been a massive thing. I.

(02:33:07):
And I'm being waymore personal
than I expected to be here,but, like, I honestly, I,
I went through genuineself hatred
after my son died right after.
I just, I thought about thingsgoing back many, many years.
What if I'd done this?What if I'd done that right?

(02:33:28):
Like, things
maybe to prevent his death,but also just to make his life
better,you know, in various ways.
And I just.
I didn't want myselfto be happy.
I didn't want myself to live.
And I discovered something.
I was, Donnie's

(02:33:49):
grave one night.
Laying by his grave.
And I,
I was trying to
direct some loveand kindness to myself
and the suffering
I was going through,which had been really,
had become sort of impossiblefor me to do

(02:34:10):
because I had so much angertoward myself.
And I had to side,
Made Patricia's little point.
My mind.
You, Patricia's son,
be free from suffering.
And that just openedthe floodgates
of my being ableto have compassion for myself.

(02:34:33):
Because I realized that I amsomeone's
son, too, just like.
She just cared for me
the wayyour mom and I learned.
And I started realizingthat my sons
need me to take care of myself

(02:34:53):
so I can do the things I wantin this world for Donnie,
and so I can be there.
The thingsI want for Nicolas, too.
And I came to understand
something more about Grace.
Because I hated him.

(02:35:13):
I hated myself so.
But I realized thatbecause of their love
for me,I couldn't just let myself
fall apart, disintegrate.
I can't,even if I didn't feel love.
So at that point.

(02:35:35):
I needed to give myselfcompassion
for their selves.
And I never thought of gracelike that before.
But I thought of it
that waynow, and I have healed
from all the toxic,terrible hate of myself

(02:35:58):
because of their love.
And so,
I, I'm growing tremendously.
In the wake of Tony's passingand I don't I
that's, that'sactually not what I want.
I don't want to be growing.
I don't.

(02:36:19):
But I don't get tomake that choice right now.
And so
giventhe way things are right now,
I have the option ofwhat am I going to do?
This how I handlemy son's death is going to
shape more than anything else,who I become

(02:36:41):
and howI love the rest of my life.
It is.
There it is again.There it is again.
Killing me.
Yeah,there it is again. Right?
The sacrificecreates the identity
and yeah, this shape.
Who I will be, right.Just like.
Yeah.
Youngersister Smith, made a choice

(02:37:04):
where he was shaped,who he became.
I have a choice. Right?
Who I will be,I how I handle this.
Yeah.
His choice had to dowith his father, right.
And his own suffering.
At that point, I havea choice in my suffering.
Right.
For for,because of one of my sons.

(02:37:24):
And on behalfof both of my siblings.
Right.I have a choice right now.
And that choice shapeswho I will
be, what I will be able to
do for them,
and what I will be ableto do for God
and for other peoplein this world.
That choice shapesthat future more
than anything else in my life.

(02:37:48):
And I know what choice.
I'm just thinking about him.
And if he were here now,and he's listening to this,
what do you.
What do you want himto understand?
Yeah.
I thinkone of the great things
I want to say to Donnie isthank you.
Thank you for being my son.

(02:38:09):
Thank youfor your love and your depth.
Your how delightful you are.
And, you know,like Joseph Smith,
senior and Joseph Smith Jrwere namesakes to one another.
We share a name, Donnie.
I used to see youas sharing my name.

(02:38:32):
And now
I'm so proud to share yours.
And I want to make you proud
of what I dowith our name and carry
our legacy.
Thank you, my beautiful son.
My heart is turned to you
as yourshas always been turned.

(02:38:55):
in my class,
like, it's like the twogreat privileges of my life.
Our guess gifts my way.
I used to be there to.
You know, question that,

(02:39:16):
right?
I when Donny was an infantnewborn, he
he was in the nickeland newborn ICU because he,
he was,
look, basically healthy,but then he immediately
had arespiratory infection, and,
he mightnot have made it, you know,
and it's because of the,the miracles of sort
of modern medicineand technology.

(02:39:37):
And he livedfor all the years he did.
And I'm devastated atwhat the year that were lost
years ahead. Right.
But I'm also so gratefulto God.
I got to watch him.

(02:39:58):
Watch him.
Right.
Become
who he has made himselfin this world.
And, person
that I will,you know, get to know further
and watch him fully, you know,thrive in the resurrection.

(02:40:19):
And, just,
I'm grateful for how giving
he's always been forjust the openness of his heart
and his mind like such depth
of thought and feelings. So.
And the inspirationthat he is to me,

(02:40:40):
because Donniehad just, like a lot of,
he hadphysical health problems,
he had a lot of pain.
He never complained.
And, he didn't call attentionto it, you know, went
through a lot of emotionalsuffering as well.

(02:41:01):
And that's,you know, inspiration to me.
And that Donnie, I, in buryingmy own sufferings, you know,
I need to learn, you know, from, and the model
that he provides,you know, and just,
so I love him.

(02:41:24):
Infinitely. And,
I'm not gonna live my lifeas if
he's not there, you know?
Hang in there.
Live in anticipationof seeing him again.
I'm gonna,

(02:41:46):
Do things for him,
you know, thathe can appreciate, and,
fulfill hopesand dreams of his and,
preserve all sorts of things,
sorts of aspectsabout him in this world. And,
anything that Ican for him, you know, in the

(02:42:06):
in the gospel, we have thisprinciple, particularly
in the restoration,we have this principle
that we can do thingsfor those who have done the.
And if you think about it,there are a lot of
religious people,
in some the legendsinclude a kind of idea.
You can do thingsfor the deceased Catholics.

(02:42:29):
You can you can pray on behalfof the dead.
Right.
People in the faith,which has been part
of my spiritual journeyin the past. Right.
Like the way that we can dogood acts
on behalf of the deador benefit their souls.
Yeah.
We have an idea institutedby Joseph Smith, right?
Like, Yeah, yeah.

(02:42:51):
Through revelation. Right.
To do thingsfor the dead in line with his,
you know, like identity.
Right?
If, like, Jesus is not Saint,
the ancestors of family,
we have this ideathat we can do
things on behalf of thosewho passed on.

(02:43:13):
And yet, interestingly,
we seem to not generalizethat principle.
There's a principle there.
But we seem to generallythink of that principle
only in its applicationto baptism, like a handful
words, not his, confirmation

(02:43:35):
ordination endowment,
marriage, maybesealing parents or children.
You know,those are enormous things
that we can do onbehalf of those who passed.
But there's an underlyingprinciple underneath
those practicesthat we can do things

(02:43:57):
for those who passed on.
We can among,
I think,
the things that we can do,
I think it's somethingwe need to think more about.
That's true is, in a sense,certainly something I'm
thinking about personally iswhat are the things I can do
for those who pass on?

(02:44:18):
What are the things I can dofor my son Donnie and.
What would that be?
Right. Like.
Like what?
What would benefit him?
Like, can we pray for peoplewho are dead?
Well why not why can't we.
But usually they say oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah I've heard itbefore for deceased

(02:44:42):
family members who hadn'taccepted the gospel.
They would accept the gospelin the spirit world.
So we obviously recognize thatthere's a,
you can still prayfor people who passed on.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't,this is interesting.
Yeah. But yeah they
and you knowlike I mentioned earlier

(02:45:03):
I mean something that I thinkmost normal people
when they lostwhat they want to do
at least some thingsthat would
fulfill wishes, hopes ofthose who've passed on maybe.
How can Iextend that principle further?
How can you send that ideafurther for my son?
And so what are thewhat are the limits

(02:45:23):
of what we can do for thosewho've passed?
That's a great question.
This is a good question.
We pursue.
Wow. That's deep.
And I think.
Yeah.
I think this is one of,I think this
this is this this has beenso tender to me, man.

(02:45:45):
I really mean,it has been so tender.
It's been
it's been so honest.
And I think thatit will be very healing
to for people to knowthey're not alone,
for suffering that they facewhere there's people
who have passed onor that are here.
I kind of want toI want to go full circle
to Joseph Smith's story.Right. Bring it full circle.

(02:46:06):
What do you wishthat he would hear?
What do you if JosephSmith were here to hear
what you're explaining?What do you think?
What do you hope
that he heard ofwhat we've said today?
Yeah.
I mean,
there's a curious thing about.

(02:46:29):
Human beings where I think,
in some ways
we're all known intimatelyby other people or hopefully,
family members, loved ones,close friends and.
Yeah, sometimesI think there are things
that are seen

(02:46:50):
best.
Through the lens of time,like with distance.
And, one interesting way
the historian is in a uniqueposition is,
Emma knewcertain things about Joseph
Smiththat obviously we don't know.
I mean, she knows soclosely day to day
what kind of husband he was,what kind of father he was.

(02:47:11):
BrighamYoung knew Joseph Smith.
And certainly,as we don't know,
they knew thingslike the sound of his voice,
his mannerisms, thingsthat we can't know right now.
Right.
Oliver Cowdery,known in certain ways,
but we have records from allof those people and many more.
And we have
records of, I thinkprobably thousands of people
had interactionswith Joseph Smith

(02:47:32):
and patterns of his behavioracross time.
There arethings that we can get from
that sortof kaleidoscope vision,
putting all those thingstogether
that maybe people who knew himdirectly couldn't write.
And so there might be waysthat historian
Saint JosephSmith can come to understand.
Joseph Smith

(02:47:54):
sees that people couldn'tsee at the time, and something
that I would hopethat Joseph Smith
would
feel like,
they listening to this,
they hopehe would feel understood.
And,
because when he wasseven years old,
I don't think

(02:48:14):
he was explainingto his parents
if he even could haveexplained it at seven.
Mom, I'm trying to kind ofbe the parent to you now.
You need to be protectedfrom seeing this. Dad.
You know I need your comfort.
But I also am tryingto help you
and setan example for you right?

(02:48:34):
And so did the people
around himreally fully understand
what he was doing?
Did they get himin all these ways?
And if not, I hope that
as a historian, one of thethings that I hope to do
is I hope to understand himthe way he understood himself.

(02:48:56):
And so I would hope thatJoseph Smith,
they heard this nowor when I meet him will feel
something.
I hope, as a storyand as a human being is that
he'll feel
understood, like you, you,you you got it.
You understood what I wasfeeling.

(02:49:17):
You understoodwhat I was trying to do. This.
My hope.
My mom.
And like, looking,what he did, this child,
you know,
like, justfor you were this beautiful,
noble child, like,with such profound
depths of lovefor your father. And,

(02:49:41):
you know, you carriedthat further to try to serve
your your father furtherand your father's,
your heavenly fatherand other your family,
your immediate family,your human family.
And you had weaknesses,
human, you know, aspects,like we all do.

(02:50:04):
And you this larger than lifefigure with, you know, like
and so,
your, your strengthhad an outsized impact
and you're put in a positionwhere maybe
sometimes your weaknessescould have an outsize impact
or get more attention to themthan other people's
weakness as well. Right.

(02:50:25):
But I see this nobilityin you.
I see this these depths in you
that I admire.
And that moved me.
And I admire what you did
in your lifeand in the restoration.
And I am a beneficiary,

(02:50:47):
you know, as wewe are beneficiaries of that.
And so thank you.
Well, thank you,
thank you.
You shared some very,very intimate things.
And I think I believethat they will help people.
I believe that it will,
help be the catalystto a lot of healing.

(02:51:09):
And,
I believe thatwhat you said is true.
And as I always say,
don't take our word, forit is up to you
to go to Godand find out for yourself.
This is Stephen Jones.
This is let's get real.
Until next time.
So we talked abouthow Danny is a poet

(02:51:31):
and he wrotea great many poems.
He had a fantastic rangein his poetry,
from simple celebrationsof beauty to complex
explorations of the worldand ideas and symbolism.
And I found that after he diedthat he had a manuscript

(02:51:56):
that he wanted
to publish of his poemscalled light of an hour.
And so I'm going to be workingto get that published,
and also starting a websitewith his poetry and other
writings and picturesand things at Danny Bradley.
Outcome.
This first poem
is a simple explorationof the beauty of nature.

(02:52:17):
It's called quiet morning sun.
The bubblingof the rain against puddles.
The rainfalling against tin roofs
as if it were rubbleand pebbles.
The rainroiling in the gutters.
The commoners are shutteredinto their houses
as the real rabbleof the world awakes.

(02:52:37):
These blue breastedand red breasted birds,
to whom, in quiet morninghours, the puddle is a lake
and a ripple a breaking wave.
Danny also like sunny,
he had complexexplorations of things
he sometimes used earlier,much earlier

(02:52:57):
poetry that he would allude toor riff on.
He used concepts from science,and in this one
he does both.
This is.
This one's calledthe feeling of a freedom.
And here he talks about
how our hearts, he says,
are like detunedfacets of God.

(02:53:20):
And I thought the tune facetmust be some concept
from music.
It's actually from science.
A detuned facet is, place that a laser strikes
where the surface that it's
strikingis not aligned with the laser.
And so he's like, at us andhe talks about the Rubaiyat.

(02:53:42):
That's thisgreat mystical poem.
He talksalso about to understand
the poem talksabout ballast or ballast,
which is something that holdssomething down.
So like in a hot air balloon,the ballast or ballast
holds the balloon down.
So when they let goof this blast,

(02:54:04):
then the balloon will risehigher.
He likens that to us.
He experienced
a lot of
suffering in his life,and this poem is about
letting go of suffering.
And it'sabout finding freedom,
the feeling of a freedom.
Each facet of the heart isa detuned facet of God above

(02:54:24):
an infantile facetof God above, and each facet
carousing on busses,pretending to be nothing.
There is something like a rubyout to the world.
Trust in this ruby and how thetresses of this flawless
perfection are formedwhere piecemeal breaks occur.
Not a perfect existence,

(02:54:46):
but a perfection will emergefrom everything.
Still, God's unfilteredwill is beyond
the flaggingof the individual feelings.
Our pain abstainsfrom healing.
Our pain abstainsfrom healing only for moments
which may happen hours,decades, years.

(02:55:06):
Then the moments pass.
Our pain is just the strewnblast.
The heart.
The heart, after many hours
turns free at last.
Donny, as I mentioned, he sat.
He endured a lot of suffering.
Yes, I had tremendous

(02:55:26):
compassionfor other people suffering.
He told his brother Nicholasjust months before he died.
How sad it made him to thinkthat anyone in the world
was sad.
And when hewas a child, one of the ways
this manifested washe had a tremendous concern
for other childrenaround the world.
He and also Nicholasused to collect, Halloween,

(02:55:48):
not just candy for themselves,but they collected change
for what's called trickor treat for Unicef.
So they would donate thischange to the United Nations
Children's Fund to helpchildren around the world.
When Donny died,I actually found that
he received in the mail, just in within

(02:56:10):
maybe a week after he died,three letters from Unicef,
showing that he had continued
to support Unicefin his adult life.
So when he died,I started a Go
Fund Me for childrenthrough Unicef.
Where it goes, the donationsgo directly to Unicef.

(02:56:33):
Maybe Stephen can post a linkto that,
along with the videoin Danny's honor.
This next poem, it'scalled Variations Upon Lorca.
And here Danny is dialogingwith another poet
who was a young manwho died young.
Back in the 1930s,Spanish poet.
Lorca.He was killed by the fascists.

(02:56:56):
And Danny mentions herethe Sargasso Sea.
And that is a sea.
It's the only thing thatwe call a sea
that isn't bounded by land.
It's just boundedby the currents of the ocean.
So it circles in on itselfand Donny.
And using this Sargasso Seaas a metaphor,

(02:57:17):
he actually, as you say,he gets really playful here.
Variationsupon Lorca Sargasso.
Because the man in thoughtis the walls between realities
and metaphorshas fallen asleep again.
I hear you whenevermy hand covers my ears.
It's like evidencethat's growing in a cancer.
Ivy and roses.
Me and the Church of SaintPeter hearing

(02:57:39):
and the turning of rapid Biblepages.
Wind and wild grassThe rhythmic
rustling of the pages.
I am certain it is that thepanther, my dream prowling.
Whether it prowls for meor against me,
I do not know.
This is an excerpt from one
that he had called a trance.

(02:58:01):
It has this theme of darknessand light
and of hope.
Universe,whoever it is who has met
you knows your history.
The truce of peace and misery.
Interweaving,interweaving a moment's pause.
Dawn and sunset interlocked,the darkness leaving

(02:58:24):
and new light entering.
And on that same
theme of darkness and lightand hope.
Here is a line from Donnie'spoem of warmth.
And I'll end with this.
There is no darkness at all

(02:58:45):
that is not touched by light.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Joseph Smith Expert: "My Biggest Discovery Happened While Out of The Church" | Don Bradley E0039