In the weeks before
he was murdered,
Joseph Smith feared
for his own life. He was also concerned about the
well-being of his followers,
what was going to become of
the Latter-day Saints if
he should be killed.
The last document in the Histories
1 volume is an essay by Joseph Smith called
“Latter-say Saints.”
Joseph Smith had been
concerned for quite a while about getting some good
press from the non-Mormon media.
But books and newspapers across the country usually printed
attacks of the Church.
But in 1843, he received an
invitation to contribute
a chapter to a book that was to
be titled A History of All the Religious Denominations
in the United States. A few weeks before he was killed,
the finished book arrived
on his doorstep.
And they're right there next
to the Lutherans, the Jews, the Catholics, the Presbyterians,
the Methodists,
all these other very
well-established religions, was an essay called “Latter-day
Saints” by Joseph Smith.
Imagine what this book meant
to him at that time. It’s as if the Lord were
saying: “Joseph,
don’t worry, the Church
will endure.
Everything will be all right.
The Church has legitimacy,
and it has permanency. This little denomination
will flourish.”
He wrote a warm letter of thanks
to the publisher after he got the volume and he promised that
he would endorse the book in the local newspaper. On the
26th of June 1844,
one day before the martyrdom,
the endorsement appeared in the
Nauvoo Neighbor. Joseph had
kept his promise.