In spite of Elder Packers warnings, they continue to rise to the forefront. During the printing of the Joseph Smith papers, I took them to task on Amazon, only to be declared a heretic, for pointing out their flaws. What made them angry was my use of the Spirit to point out the unimpeachable truths about Joseph Smith, the Danites, the Missouri persecutions etc, which caused their flesh based reasoning and “historical” claims to fall apart. But the false claims persist because so many, who quench the spirit, or who like the people in the children’s story Charlotte’s Web, adopt a lemming mentality that it must be true if it is in writing” are so easily deceived. Such fact brings joy to academia, and shame of the true followers of Jesus Christ. The same false historical claims that plagued the Joseph Smith papers have also found their way unto essays posted on LDS.ORG. However, that does NOT change the fact that they remain based in flawed human history. Revisionist history remains revisionist no matter where it is portrayed, and simply posting an essay on LDS.ORG is NOT equivalent to making flawed history into absolute or Gospel truth. The same holds truth with the alleged plural marriages of Joseph Smith. I recently received this EMAIL from a concerned saint who thankfully truly gets it.
“Hi!! So I'm sure you heard about the latest polygamy essays getting on cnn and in the news everywhere now and the church's response. It is all over my newsfeed and what bugs me is that the one thing everyone agrees on is that these essays are true. The progressive say they are true and Joseph was wrong (immoral), the moderates say the essays are true and Joseph was mistaken, the conservative mormons say the essays are true but it must be all from God so Joseph was still in the right. But nobody questions the essays!!!!!! It's like we are now so sure prophets are fallible but now history is infallible! Anyways, I've been doing my own investigation and I am more annoyed at the essays than ever. When you read the sources it is all SO wishy washy. Ex: the sword and angel account, nothing of that came from Joseph but was "remembered" 20-30 years after the event would have happened from people other than Jospeh obviously. And then the essay makes it to sound like it absolutely happened. Then the Fanny Alger account, read those sources and there is NOTHING from Joseph, Emma, Fanny, or Fanny's family! Just the gossipy towns people! Even the historians admit that! But everyone talks about it like they were there and it happened! It's so aggervating and I think those essays are deceptive and it's really bothering me bc so may people are being deceived! “
I strongly recommend that any who want to know the truth about Joseph Smith recognize what this wise Sister points out and set aside the flawed methodologies employed by the flesh reliant, and seek truth from God, by revelation. That is the only truth that will, as Jesus Christ declared, set you free!
BTW in case you didn’t realize it, the Salamander letter, declared by Academia to be authentic, was at long last found to be a forgery………If we are to learn anything from history, maybe it should be from Mark Hoffman’s?