Joseph Smith Just The Facts Please Summary

Another report reads as follows: In 1822 Joseph Smith caught a spark of Methodism and became a very passable exhorter in the evening meetings”. (History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase, 1851, p. 214)

Emma Smith’s uncle, Nathaniel Lewis, preached and acted as a lay minister of the local Methodist Episcopal church. His congregation met in the homes of the members for Sunday services. On Wednesdays a regular circuit preacher visited Harmony. In the spring or summer of 1828 Joseph Smith asked the circuit rider if his name could be included on the class roll of the church. Joseph “presented himself in a very serious and humble manner” and the minister obliged him.

When Emma’s cousin, Joseph Lewis, discovered Joseph’s name on the roll, he “thought it was a disgrace to the church to have a practicing necromancer” as a member. He took the matter up with a friend, and the following Sunday, when Joseph and Emma arrived for church, the two men took Joseph aside. “They told him plainly that such character as he…could not be a member of the church unless he broke off his sins by

Bushman’s first story in “Just the Facts Please” and his position as editor of the Joseph Smith Papers. He gives us two different opinions. Which is the correct one? First he says that without magic his family would have scoffed at his story about Moroni (Nephi). Then he claims treasure seeking did not lead him to the person he had become. In his seeking for treasure didn’t he use magic including the stone mentioned above? Isn’t this one of the men who wrote the book “Joseph Smith Papers”? Keep reading.

Oliver Cowdery stated in his fourth letter to Wm W. Phelps (Page 56 Histories) “You will recollect that I mentioned the time of a religious excitement, in Palmyra and vicinity to have been in the 15th year of our brother J. Smith Jr.s age-that was an error in the type-It should have been in the 17th