Back in March, I looked at the KFD (the King Follett Discourse or the King Follett Funeral Discourse), and showed that what we have now is a reliable representation of what JS actually preached, so many years ago, including such controversial statements such as God was once a man, and men have to learn to become Gods. In this post and tomorrow’s post, I’m going to look more specifically at the sermon and summarize it, much like I have done and am doing with the “Come Follow Me” series on the D&Cs and the OT.

The sermon starts with JS saying he is going to speak generally “on the subject of the dead” rather than specifically a funeral sermon about the dead man himself (according to the sermon header, a man by the name of King Follett had been killed in an accident on March 9; this sermon was preached about a month later, and about 2 months before JS himself was killed). The opening paragraph includes the following:

I feel disposed to speak on the subject in general, and offer you my ideas, so far as I have ability, and so far as I shall be inspired by the Holy Spirit to dwell on this subject.

This sounds like JS is claiming inspiration from God for what he says, though I can see an LDS arguing that he says “my ideas”, and saying that this isn’t necessarily claiming inspiration. But why bring up “so far as I shall be inspired by the Holy Spirit” if we are to understand that there was no inspiration? It very much sounds like JS wanted his audience to believe him inspired, especially since the next paragraph goes on to say, “I want your prayers and faith that I may have the instruction of Almighty God and the gift of the Holy Ghost, so that I may set forth things that are true and which can be easily comprehended by you, and that the testimony may carry conviction to your hearts and minds of the truth of what I shall say.” If he, as a claimed prophet sent from God, was not claiming inspiration and was only giving his opinion, why would he couch it in these terms of speaking “truth”? What is the point of a prophet who cannot reliably distinguish between truth and error, or one who can’t tell whether he’s giving merely his own opinion or if he’s speaking for God?

He then says he’s going to give some preliminaries, so that his audience can better understand the rest of his discourse when he comes to it, and begins by saying, “It is necessary for us to have an understanding of God himself in the beginning“, saying that most of mankind understand little to nothing about their relationship with God, and thus are little better than the animals.

The Character of God

Next, he asks the congregation to answer the question, “what kind of a being God is? Ask yourselves; turn your thoughts into your hearts, and say if any of you have seen, heard, or communed with Him?” Let me say that here would have been a great opportunity for him to have said, “I have!” and then to talk about the First Vision and what the Mormons of his day could learn about God from it. It is conspicuous by its absence, especially given the great prominence the 1838 FV account has in modern LDS Mormonism, though it wasn’t widely talked about at first.

JS then goes on to say that if he succeeds in his “first object”, then no one should ever say anything against him again, but if he fails, “it becomes my duty to renounce all further pretensions to revelations and inspirations, or to be a prophet” and to become like everybody else, in which case nobody would try to kill him. But then he continues to call everybody else “false teachers”, because of their [Biblical] beliefs about God.

The Privilege of Religious Freedom

JS then says that everyone has and ought to have freedom of religion, and to believe and teach what they want, without fear of reprisal — particularly of being killed for wrong beliefs. He points out that if he’s right and everybody else is wrong, then he should no more kill them for their wrong beliefs than that they should kill him for his supposedly wrong beliefs. Then he segues from that into saying that he will prove himself right and them wrong, “by showing what God is”.

Logically, if he fails to do this, then he proves himself to be wrong, or at least does not prove himself to be right.

God an Exalted Man

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.

JS claims that he derived this from the Bible — again, the First Vision is conspicuous by its absence! — by saying that Adam was created in God’s image, “and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.”

I must point out that his assertion does not logically follow from the text. Even if we were to say that God making Adam “in His image” was referring to physical similarity (which would contradict other passages of the Bible, particularly those that describe God as being Spirit and having no physical form), it does not follow that God must have necessarily once been a human on another earth like we are now humans on our earth. So, while JS asserted he was proving his claim, he actually was not.

Next, JS says that “in order to understand the subject of the dead… it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.“

This goes against not only the Bible but also the BOM, both of which say that God is God and has been God “from all eternity” (see Moroni 8:18, “For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity“). LDSs either have to reject what JS here taught (and thus by JS’s own standards throw him out as a false prophet), or they have to try to reconcile “God is not… a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity” from the BOM with the 1844 claim that “God came to be God”, and JS’s claim that he would “refute that idea” that “God was God from all eternity”.

I say that the two things cannot be reconciled, at least, not if the English language has any meaning whatsoever. However, LDSs I’ve talked to have tried to wriggle out of the conundrum by imagining some other meaning for the phrase “from all eternity to all eternity”. As it is written, it obviously is meaning “always”; however, some LDSs have changed the meaning to something more along the lines of “currently” or “for this world”. Essentially, they say that God became God before “this” world began, so “in this world’s timeline, God has always been God, but before this world’s timeline began, God was once a man”. Obviously, that’s not a good fit, and reminds me of Cinderella’s stepsisters forcing the shoe onto their foot, but if they are going to insist on that meaning, there’s not much I can do beyond pointing out the obvious mismatch.

He ends this section with the following statement (emphasis mine):

It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.

Keep this in mind as we go on, and see if JS does indeed prove it from the Bible, or if he proves himself to be a false prophet.

Eternal Life to Know God and Jesus Christ

The scriptures inform us that Jesus said, as the Father hath power in himself, even so hath the Son power—to do what? Why, what the Father did. The answer is obvious—in a manner to lay down his body and take it up again. Jesus, what are you going to do? To lay down my life as my Father did, and take it up again. Do you believe it? If you do not believe it you do not believe the Bible. The scriptures say it, and I defy all the learning and wisdom and all the combined powers of earth and hell together to refute it.

Say what? JS just said that the Bible says that “Jesus said, as the Father hath power in himself, even so hath the Son power… to lay down his body and take it up again.” Let’s look at that, shall we?

It’s a little difficult to know exactly what JS was referencing, but it seems to be from John 5 and John 10. Obviously, those two passages are very far apart from each other, so it seems a bit of a stretch to say that we can take a phrase from John 5 and import it into John 10 as if it was all a single passage — which is what it seems like JS is doing.

It would be good to skim through this whole section, from John 5-10, to catch the full flow. In brief, John 5 begins with Jesus healing the lame man by the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. The Jews found fault with Jesus for telling the man to “work” on the Sabbath (“take up thy bed and walk”), and Jesus responds by saying, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”, which made the Jews even angrier, and Jesus responded by saying they didn’t really believe Moses, or else they would believe Him. Then in ch. 6 there is the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus walking on water and saying, “I am the bread of life”, with the multitudes turning away from Him. Ch. 7 has Jesus at the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles; ch. 8 has Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world” and says that both He and the Father testify of Him (which is anti-modalism, since He says that they are two separate witnesses), and “if ye were Abraham’s seed, ye would do the works of Abraham”. Ch. 9 has Jesus healing the man born blind, and finally ch. 10 is “the Good Shepherd” who gives his life for the sheep (see also Mormon problems with “other sheep” in John 10 and “Other Sheep” of 3 Nephi 15). Obviously, a lot happens in these intervening chapters, so it behooves us to be mindful of similarities and also differences.

The main passages that were on JS’s mind seem to be from 5:19, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise“, and from 10:17-18, “I lay down my life, that I might take it again… I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.“

At first glance, it seems like the KFD might have a point, since in ch. 5 Jesus does say that He does what He sees the Father doing. But does that bear scrutiny? No, I don’t think it does. For one thing, let’s look at the broader context and flow of ch. 5:

17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.
18 Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. 20 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. 21 For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. 22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:….
25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. 26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; 27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.

The first issue I’d like to bring up is that the KFD includes a misquote of this section, with John saying “as the Father hath life in Himself…” but the KFD says “as the Father hath power in Himself…” Then note also that the whole point of Jesus’s response is to show that He is Lord of the Sabbath and equal to God the Father, as evidenced by the fact that Jesus can and does do everything the Father can and does do. And it is in this context, of the Son having power equal to the Father, that we have the key quote. Notice also that it is given in the present tense — whatever the Father is doing is what the Son also is doing — with the context being that both Father and Son uphold the universe even on the Sabbath, and both are Lord of the Sabbath. The KFD would have to change this to, “Whatever the Father did is what the Son is doing and will do“, and change Jesus to be a sort of mechanistic “copycat”.

So, already, we have several problems, just from ch. 5, but now let’s look at ch. 10, and we’ll find even more:

14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. 15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. 17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. 18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

In contrast to the claims of the KFD, we see that Jesus is nowhere even hinting that the Father laid down His life on some other earth, the way Jesus is going to lay down His life on this earth. So, sorry, Joseph Smith, you’re a false prophet, by your own admission, because you did not prove your claims by the Bible. The Bible disproves them, once again.

But even if these passages were teaching “Jesus as copycat of the Father”, that still wouldn’t support sinful man becoming Gods, as the KFD goes on to say: “and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.“

The Righteous to Dwell in Everlasting Burnings

The next section once again co-opts Biblical language, of being “heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ” (as in Rom. 8:17), but instead of leaving it where the Bible does, the KFD goes on to define this as, “To inherit the same power, the same glory and the same exaltation, until you arrive at the station of a god, and ascend the throne of eternal power, the same as those who have gone before.” Since this is all couched in terms of man learning how to be a God, and God having become God and had to learn to be a God, that must mean that we are to understand ourselves and our fellow humans as becoming precisely what our Heavenly Father is, though modern LDSs tend to shrink back from declaring such a thing with such boldness.

The KFD goes on to explicitly say that Jesus’s “Father worked out His kingdom with fear and trembling”, and has Jesus saying, “When I get my kingdom, I shall present it to my Father, so that… He will then take a higher exaltation, and I will take His place… and God is thus glorified and exalted in the salvation and exaltation of all His children.” And this is supposedly “plain beyond disputation”!

The analogy is then given of climbing a ladder step by step, from the bottom “until you arrive at the top”, with the context showing that we are to understand this as us learning in this life, and then continuing to learn even after death.

JS then says something about not being “allowed” to say things not in the Bible, so he goes back to the Bible to “turn commentator” — and to make absolute mincemeat of the Hebrew in the opening verses of Genesis.

By the time of the KFD, JS had studied Hebrew for a few years with a Jewish man by the name of Josiah Sexius. I would be hesitant to judge Mr. Sexius’s knowledge based on anything JS said, and I would not believe anything JS says about the Hebrew, unless I could get it confirmed by a qualified modern Hebrew scholar. What makes it even worse, is that for some reason, JS claims that the Hebrew we have for Gen. 1:1 is wrong, so that it does not mean, “In the beginning God created”, but “The head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods”! What an amazing skill, to know what was “originally” written, when there are no manuscripts with that “original” writing anywhere!

JS then makes a little detour into saying he had been reading the NT in German, and has found it “to correspond nearest to the revelations which God has given to me for the last fourteen years”. I would want to know how it is “nearest”, when JS had claimed such widely divergent revelations, with the BOM originally saying there was one, changeless God and He had been God from eternity to all eternity, then in the late 1830s, the BOA changes Genesis to saying, “the Gods created the heavens and the earth”, and now in 1844 JS’s “revelations” include that “the head one of the Gods brought forth the Gods”! So which of these revelations is the NT German “nearest”?

Another little segue that JS makes is to point out that the English has two different names for James and Jacob, when they were both originally the single name “Jacob”. That by itself would be unremarkable, but the KFD makes a big deal of the difference of names, saying, “Now, if Jacob had the keys, you might talk about James through all eternity and never get the keys.” Why should this make a difference? If it does, wouldn’t it logically require us to use the original Hebrew/Aramaic names of Yeshua instead of Jesus? After all, could we not just as easily say, “if Yeshua had the keys, you might talk about Jesus through all eternity and never get the keys”? Why is it acceptable to use the English transliteration “Jesus” for Yeshua, but not “James” for “Yakov”?

Somehow — but it is not at all clear how — JS seems to claim that the English “James” instead of “Jacob” supports his contention that the “real” Hebrew of Genesis supports his claim of “the head, the Father of the Gods”. [Obviously, it does nothing of the sort. However, I am willing to be open to the possibility that it was somehow supported in the original sermon, and we just lost all the specifics in the notes.]

A Council of the Gods

JS next claims that (somehow, not very sure how!) knowing that “the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods” to plan to create the world, causes us to “know how to approach Him, and how to ask so as to receive an answer”. JS points out and admits that the preachers of his day “say that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing”, but calls them “unlearned in the things of God”. JS then claims to be “learned, and know more than all the world put together. The Holy Ghost does, anyhow, and he is within me, and comprehends more than all the world; and I will associate myself with him.” Since he is obviously claiming inspiration from God at this point, if he is wrong, that is yet another proof of him being a false prophet.

Finally (for this section, anyway), JS claims that the Hebrew word “create” does not mean “to create out of nothing” but “it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship”. Again, Hebrew scholars would disagree, and I’m going to rely on them and their years upon years of scholarship, compared to the little studying JS did. For more in-depth articles on the topic, I would recommend the following:

I strongly suspect that by the time of the KFD, JS had learned some part of “the law of the conservation of matter and of energy”, and that made him think that matter must be eternal. I’ve seen modern-day LDSs say something along those lines. However, pretty much all modern scientists believe in the conservation of matter and energy and also believe that the universe had a beginning, which means that the KFD/LDS view of matter being eternal is wrong.

We’ll look at the rest of the KFD tomorrow.

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