Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat (21:15)
Yeah. Yeah, that's what it looked like. So, yeah, Baba is. Like I said, he's an enigma because he's an early member of the church. I mean, he's one of the first people baptized in the whole expansion of the church in this early New York, Ohio period. So, I mean, he's probably among the first couple hundred of people that are members of the church. He immediately starts serving missions, and he's apparently pretty good at it. People are being converted by it. He's one of the people who's on the Zion's Camp expedition to go Redeem Missouri in 1834. He gets appointed to be a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1835. And I don't know if it was just that. That little taste of power. But things are going to go downhill for him and then back uphill and then downhill for the remainder of his time in the church. He gets disfellowshipped in 1835 and then gets restored to fellowship almost, you know, immediately thereafter In January of 1836, he, among all the people that are apostatizing, he sticks with Joseph and actually leads a group of saints out of Ohio to Missouri, primarily leading Canadian Latter Day Saints, many of whom he'd converted from Canada to Missouri. And so it seems like things are solid again. Okay, you had the one little hiccup. I mean, what's one disfellowshipment among friends? You know? I mean, we all. We all have that friend, of course. Yeah. Are you a member? Not this year. Next year, maybe. Well, he is. He's made the president of the stake of Kirtland in 1840. And this seems to be where things really start to go awry. And it's going to lead to some of the great, perhaps, as far as I'm concerned, poetically, the most poetic or lyrical condemnation in the Doctrine and Covenants of somebody. So he's appointed to be the president of the Kirtland stake. And after. Well, actually, let's talk about. Let me back up a little bit. First of all, he's just out serving in Kirtland. He's not the president of the stake yet. He's one of the members that's there in. In May, June, July of 1840. Now, of course, the church's headquarters have moved not only from Kirtland to far west now, they've been driven out of Missouri. Now they're in Quincy and then into Nauvoo. And so you still have many members that are converted in places like England and Canada and all over the East. And, of course, there are many of them that kind of flow through Kirtland on their way to Nauvoo. And it's in this summer of 1840 that Joseph Smith is going to respond to several letters that he gets talking about Almond Babbitt's conduct in Kirtland. And this is a. It's a little bit lengthy, but I'll read it anyway. He says, while you are endeavoring, this is Joseph Smith writing to Oliver Granger. Okay, he's writing to Oliver Granger, who's actually the one in charge of Kirtland at this time in the summer of 1840, while you're endeavoring to do so and attending to the duties laid upon you by the Authorities of the Church in this place. I am sorry to be informed, not only in your letter, but from other respectable sources, of the strange conduct pursued in Kirtland by Elder Almond Babbitt. I am indeed surprised that a man having the experience which Brother Babbitt has had should take any steps whatsoever calculated to destroy the confidence of the brethren in the presidency or any of the authorities of the Church in order to conduct the affairs of the kingdom in righteousness. It is all important that the most perfect harmony, kind feeling, good understanding and confidence should exist in the hearts of all the brethren, and that true charity, love one towards another, should characterize all their proceedings. If there are any uncharitable feelings, any lack of confidence, then pride and arrogancy and envy will soon be manifested, and confusion must inevitably prevail and the authorities of the church set at naught. So this is a pretty good counsel already, right, that there needs to not be conflict among the leaders of the church. Whatever you think you're standing on business for, it probably doesn't rise to the level of having contention or speaking badly of these other leaders. Under such circumstances, Joseph continues, kirtland cannot rise and free herself from the captivity in which she is held and become a place of safety for the Saints, nor can the blessings of Jehovah rest upon her. So this idea of the Saints that were still in Kirtland, because not all of them made it to Missouri before the extermination order in Missouri in 1838, well, for a while, it was very uncertain where the church would go. And the church still had buildings in Kirtland. There were still many members there. And, of course, many of the early members still had family there. They were mainly from Ohio. So there was still a considerable presence of the Saints in the Kirtland area. And Joseph here seems to be expressing that the hope is that maybe there might be a resurgence there in Kirtland, but not if people like Hellman Babbitt are going around doing what they're doing. A great example of this is what Heber C. Kimball wrote to his wife. And he basically said, look, I came to Kirtland hoping that I would find, you know, saints that were unified and that we're together. And instead, he said that he found that they were all broken up and divided into several different parties. You know, George A. Smith said something very similar. He said that instead of holding each other up through prayer and faith, the elders are pulling each other down. So it kind of gives you an idea. There's this infighting now, a Lot of that is going on in the aftermath of both the commandment to leave Kirtland in January of 1838, and then the destruction of the church in Missouri and just the widespread violence. You have these mass excommunications and apostasies from people like, you know, all of the three Witnesses, part of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It is a very unsettled and unstable time. And apparently in Kirtland, there was a great deal of infighting among the leaders who were there. And one of those leaders, Alma Babbitt, Joseph goes on to say, if the revelations we've received are true, who is to lead the people? If the keys of the kingdom have been committed to my hands, who shall open out the mysteries thereof? As long as my brethren stand by me and encourage me, I can combat the prejudices of the world and can bear the calumny and abuse of the world with joy. But then he goes on to say, but when my brethren stand aloof, when they begin to faint and endeavor to retard my progress and enterprise, then I feel to mourn, but am no less determined to prosecute my task, being confident that although my earthly friends may fail and even turn against me, yet my heavenly Father will bear me off triumphant. However, I hope that even in Kirtland there are some who do not make a man an offender for a word, but are disposed to stand forth in defense of righteousness and truth and attend to every duty enjoined upon them, and who have wisdom to direct them against any movement or influence calculated to bring confusion and disorder into the camp of Israel and to discern between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So you can already tell that we don't have. Unfortunately, we don't have the letter that Oliver Granger wrote to Joseph Smith talking about Alman Babbitt. So all we could do is kind of read between the lines as Joseph's responding to these various things. So what seems to be clear is Almond Babbitt is not accepting some of the revelations that Joseph Smith has received. He's criticizing the leadership of the Church generally, but also Joseph in particular. And where Almond Babbitt is, this member of the first Quorum of the Seventy, he's clearly in a position of power and authority. So that's kind of an issue. Joseph goes on in his letter, it would be gratifying to my mind to see the saints in Kirtland flourish, but think the time has not yet come, and I assure you it will never until a different order of things be established. And a different spirit be manifested when confidence is restored, when pride shall fall, and every aspiring mind be clothed with humility as with a garment and selfishness give place to benevolence and charity. And a united determination to live by every word which proceedeth forth out of the mouth of the Lord is observable then. And not until then can peace and order and love prevail. So again, you don't. We can't tell exactly what's going on, but clearly what Joseph is responding to here is part of what Oliver Granger is telling him is that there's no unity. We get that from the letters of George A. Smith and Hebrew C. Kimball. There's a lot of infighting, but the infighting appears to be of the nature of whether or not they should follow everything that Joseph is saying. And notice that last chastisement there, whether you should proceed to live by determination to live by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord. And not until then can peace, order and love prevail. I've thought about this multiple times in my life, going back to this letter that Joseph wrote, because we live in a time right now where there are supposedly, or at least avowedly faithful Latter Day Saints who thump their chest and tell everyone just what a great believer they are and at the same time talk about how President Nelson is wrong because of X or the church is wrong because of Y. Look, I'm a believer. I absolutely believe. It's just that President Nelson shouldn't have done this. I mean, how often? I'm not encouraging anyone, certainly not the missionaries listening to go to an X feed. But for those of you who are on any type of social media, how often do you hear people publicly? I mean, social media is by definition public. And. And not just public, it's publicly random. This isn't just like me saying to Richard, hey, you know what, Richard? I've got a mind that President Nelson's wrong about two hour church. I think it should be seven hour church. Only Seven hour church will do. Now, I don't know what Richard's response to that would be, except he's in a bishopric. So he's like, church is already 13 hours. Thanks. I love how you think increasing church, the church service itself, would have any effect on how long I'm in the building.
