Has Joseph Smith Been Resurrected?

I would like to look specifically at the view that Joseph Smith was not resurrected by the time of his 1886 visitation to John Taylor, as related by Lorin Woolley.  I have chosen this subject because it is perhaps the least ambiguous – either he was resurrected or not.  It is my sincere belief and that of most Fundamentalists that he was, but as you point out, others (notably anti-Fundamentalists Anderson and Hales) argue that his body was dug up by the Reorganized church after 1886, and that this ‘proves’ the events of 1886 could not have happened.

I personally always look for the simplest answer, and in this case in this case it seems to me that the simplest answer is that the bodies dug up were not those of Joseph and Hyrum Smith!

It seems to me that the Reorganized church is not the most trustworthy of sources for verifying the identity of the bodies, as they had an agenda for claiming that the body was that of Joseph Smith, as Samuel Bennion, an LDS authority who was shown the skeletons at the time noted – “It is my impression brethren that he had heard reports that Brigham Young took the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum to Utah and that he wanted to prove it untrue.”(1)

The fact that there were reports of Brigham Young taking Joseph’s body to Salt Lake raises that as a possibility, even though Brigham Young seemed to give the public impression that Joseph had been buried back East.  Perhaps President Young just wanted the real graves left undisturbed.

It must be asked though, “how did Frederick Smith know where to find the bodies (presuming they were buried in the East)?”  They were meant to have been in an unmarked grave (as the Saints were worried about the bodies being desecrated), and even Joseph’s son David Hyrum did not know its whereabouts as he lamented in the old hymn, “the Unknown Grave”, which was once part of both the LDS and RLDS hymnals.(2)  Interestingly the Old Testament speaks of no man knowing the sepulcher of Moses, yet we know that he was translated and that his body didn’t lie in the dust.(3)

Could the President of the RLDS Church have dug up some other men?  Could the other legend be true that they buried a man who looked like Joseph in his place?  How do we explain the differences between the death mask and the skull found?  The science of forensics was practically non-existent in the 1920s, and it was a period when skeletal fossil hoaxes were common.  We have no DNA preserved of the Prophet with which to prove even to the convincing of Gentile scientists who was buried and who was dug up.  So we cannot claim with absolute certainty that the body was that of Joseph and that he wasn’t resurrected, no matter how strong the desire of some to disbelieve Woolley’s account is.

Another question also raises itself with the timing of the ‘discovery’ of the bodies:  Why would Lorin Woolley even attempt to claim Joseph was resurrected a year after his body had supposedly been unearthed?  If he was fabricating his story, surely he would have avoided giving the impression Joseph was resurrected so that it wouldn’t undermine his tale.  It might be concluded that it was only if he had actually seen what he said he did would he feel duty bound and unafraid to declare what he really saw, despite what the Reorganized Church claimed.

All of this is only a list of possibilities, but it shows that there are alternative explanations, and that it was indeed possible for Joseph to have been resurrected.  Besides this there are also other indications that he was indeed resurrected some time after his death and before the 1920s, that further substantiate Lorin Woolley’s testimony.

As early as 1847, Brigham Young told the Saints whilst “clothed with the Spirit” that, “… we should yet have Brothers Joseph and Hyrum and many of the Saints in their resurrected bodies with us on earth.”(4)  In the 1880s Erastus Snow prophesied that the day would come very soon after, “The time is drawing near (much nearer than scarcely any of us can now comprehend) when Joseph will be clothed upon with immortality …”(5)

Heber C. Kimball even gave a description of the conditions in which Joseph Smith would return embodied to earth, “… the Saints will be put to tests that will try the integrity of the best of them. The pressure will become so great that the more righteous among them will cry unto the Lord day and night until deliverance comes. Then the Prophet and others will make their appearance, …”(6)  Surely the events of the 1880s with the Prophet John Taylor in hiding and thousands of men having been put in jail for their belief in Mormonism, there was no better time for this prediction to be fulfilled.

Indeed the Lord himself said in 1882 to his Prophet in a revelation that, “Joseph Smith … was slain … but he yet lives, and is with me where I am.”(7)  The Lord testified of a living Joseph Smith, just as his servants have sometimes proclaimed of a living Jesus Christ.  How could Joseph Smith be where a resurrected and glorified Saviour and His heavenly Father lives without he himself having a resurrected body with which to endure their glory and that of their kingdom?

Apart from the testimony of Lorin Woolley, two other men who had John Taylor stay at their home left their witness that the Prophet Joseph had been visiting President John Taylor during the time he was in hiding.  The first was whilst he was at the William Hill home, during part of 1885, when “he was visited at least once by Joseph Smith” according to two Hill and Barbara O. Kelsch(8).  The second occasion was in the summer of 1886, when Taylor “had been conversing with the Prophet Joseph Smith” at the Alfred Carlisle home, according to Carlisle himself(9), Philo Dibble (who confirmed Joseph had come “in his body”(10), and Marriner W. Merrill(11), who was told of it by John Taylor himself.

A devout Latter-day Saint (and non-Fundamentalist) had the truth of Joseph’s resurrected status revealed to him when visiting the spirit world in June 1898, and related, “as to whether or not the Prophet Joseph Smith is now a resurrected being. While I did not ask the question, they read it in my mind and immediately said, ‘You wish to know whether the Prophet has his body or not?’  I replied, ‘Yes, I would like to know.’ I was told that the Prophet Joseph Smith has his body, as does also his brother Hyrum”(12)

Perhaps some will place greater faith in the findings of the Reorganized Church, the arguments of anti-Fundamentalists, or the reasoning of those who do not have the same testimony that Lorin Woolley and others have had.  But as for this author and many thousands of others we have had a witness of the events of September 1886 that kept alive the authority to live all of God’s laws, and have little doubt that Joseph the Prophet is preparing to return again to the earth to fulfill his mission, for we remain in a day of spiritual and physical bondage, in which God’s Church is wandering in the wilderness, and all things must be set in order before the coming of the Savior.

Footnotes -

1. Samuel O. Bennion to Heber J. Grant, January 21, 1928, Church Archives.
2. #8 in 1909 edition of the Deseret Sunday School Union hymnal.
3. Deuteronomy 34:5-6, Alma 45:18-19
4. 30 July 1847, Wilford Woodruff Journal 3:244
5. 1884, Journal of Discourses 25:32-34.
6. Deseret News, May 23, 1931; Modern Times, Cleon Skousen, p. 31-2.
7. Unpublished Revelations 81:19.
8. Hill manuscript collection, LDS Church Archives.
9. Alfred Carlisle, submitted to LDS Archives, April 1978.
10. John Moon Clements journal, 31 July 1886.
11. Abraham H. Cannon Journal, July 7th, 1891
12. Peter E. Johnson, “Mission Unfinished”, Relief Society Magazine, Aug. 1920.