How have you felt God being with you through your suffering?
"33 How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints." (Doctrine and Covenants 121: 33)
"1 O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?" (Doctrine and Covenants 121: 1)
"9 Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever." (Doctrine and Covenants 122: 9)
"August 6, 1838, was Election Day in Missouri. That morning, John Butler rode to the town of Gallatin, the seat of Daviess County government, to vote.
John had been a Latter-day Saint for a few years. He and his wife, Caroline, had moved to a small settlement near Adam-ondi-Ahman that summer. He was a captain in the local militia and a Danite.
Founded just a year earlier, Gallatin was little more than a cluster of houses and saloons. When John arrived at the town square, he found it teeming with men from around the county. A polling place had been set up in a small house on the edge of the square. As men filed in to cast their votes, campaigners mingled with the crowd outside.
John joined a small group of Saints standing apart from the main group. Attitudes in Daviess County had never favored the Saints. After Joseph had established a stake in Adam-ondi-Ahman, the settlement blossomed and more than two hundred houses had been built. The Saints could now influence the county vote, and that angered many other settlers. To avoid problems, John and his friends planned to vote together and return home quickly.
As John approached the polling place, William Peniston, a candidate for state representative, climbed on top of a whiskey barrel to make a speech. William had tried to court the Saints’ vote earlier that year, but when he learned that most of them favored the other candidate, he lashed out against them.
“The Mormon leaders are a set of horse thieves, liars, and counterfeiters,” William bellowed to the men gathered nearby. John grew uneasy. It would not take much for William to turn the crowd against him and his friends. Most of the men were already angry with them, and many had been drinking whiskey since the polls opened.
William warned the voters that the Saints would steal their property and overwhelm their vote. They did not belong in the county, he said, and had no right to take part in the election. “I headed a mob to drive you out of Clay County,” he boasted, turning to John and the other Saints, “and would not prevent you from being mobbed now.”
More whiskey passed through the crowd. John heard some men curse the Saints. He started to back away. He was over six feet tall and powerfully built, but he had come to Gallatin to vote, not fight.
Suddenly, a man in the crowd tried to punch one of the Latter-day Saints. Another Saint leapt to his defense, but the crowd knocked him back. A third Saint grabbed a piece of lumber from a nearby woodpile and clubbed the attacker across the head. The man fell close to John’s feet. Men on both sides grabbed clubs and pulled out knives and whips.
The Saints were outnumbered four to one, but John was determined to protect his fellow Saints and their leaders. Spotting a pile of fence rails, he grabbed a thick piece of oak and rushed to the fight. “Oh yes, you Danites,” he cried out, “here is a job for us!”
He clubbed the men attacking the Saints, measuring each swing to knock his opponents down, not kill them. His friends fought back as well, improvising weapons from sticks and rocks. They knocked down anyone who rushed at them, ending the fight after two minutes.
Catching his breath, John looked out across the town square. Wounded men lay motionless on the ground. Others were slinking away. William Peniston had jumped off his whiskey barrel and fled up a nearby hill.
A man from the crowd approached John and said the Saints could vote now. “Put down your stick,” he said. “There’s no use for it.”
John gripped the fence rail tighter. He wanted to cast his vote, but he knew he would be trapped if he went into the small house and tried to vote unarmed. Instead, he turned around and started to walk away.
“We must take you prisoner,” another man called out. He said some of the men John had struck would probably die.
“I am a law-abiding man,” John said, “but I do not intend to be tried by a mob.” He mounted his horse and left town.
The next day, John rode to Far West and told Joseph about the fight. Reports of deaths at Gallatin were spreading rapidly through northern Missouri, and mobs were preparing to attack the Saints. Fearing John would be a target for retaliation, Joseph asked him if he had moved his family out of Daviess County yet.
“No,” said John.
“Then go and move them directly,” Joseph told him, “and do not sleep another night there.”
“But I don’t like to be a coward,” John replied.
“Go and do as I tell you,” Joseph said.
John left immediately for home, and Joseph soon rode out with a group of armed volunteers to defend the Saints in Daviess County. When they arrived in Adam-ondi-Ahman, they learned that no one on either side of the fight at Gallatin had died. Relieved, Joseph and his company stayed the night with Lyman Wight.
The next morning, Lyman and an armed band of Saints rode out to the home of Adam Black, the local justice of the peace. Rumors claimed that Adam was rallying a mob to come after the Saints. Lyman wanted him to sign a statement saying that he would guarantee fair treatment of the Saints in Daviess County, but Adam refused.
Later that day, Joseph and more than a hundred Saints returned to Adam’s cabin. Sampson Avard, a leader of the Danites in Far West, took three of his men into the house and tried to force the justice of the peace to sign the statement. Adam again refused, demanding to see Joseph. At that point the prophet joined the negotiations and settled the matter peacefully, agreeing to let the justice write up and sign his own statement.
But the peace did not last long. Soon after the meeting, Adam demanded that Joseph and Lyman be arrested for surrounding his cabin with an armed force and intimidating him. Joseph avoided arrest by asking to be tried in his home county of Caldwell rather than Daviess, where so many of the citizens were outraged at the Saints.
People throughout northern Missouri, meanwhile, called meetings to discuss the reports from Gallatin and the rising numbers of Saints settling among them. Small mobs vandalized church members’ homes and barns in Daviess County and targeted Latter-day Saint settlements nearby.
To calm tensions, Joseph returned to Daviess County in early September to answer the charges against him. During the hearing, Adam admitted that Joseph had not forced him to sign the statement. Even so, the judge ordered the prophet to return in two months for a trial.
The Saints had some allies in the Missouri government, and soon the state militia was mustered to disperse vigilante groups. But people in and around Daviess County were still set on driving the Saints from their borders.
“The persecutors of the Saints,” Joseph wrote to a friend, “are not asleep in Missouri.”
On the last day of August, Phebe and Wilford Woodruff rode along a white sandy beach not far from her parents’ house in Maine. It was low tide. Waves rolled in from the Atlantic Ocean and crashed on the shoreline. In the distance, not far from the horizon, ships passed silently by, their heavy canvas sails billowing in the breeze. A flock of birds circled overhead and alighted on the water.
Halting her horse, Phebe dismounted and collected seashells that lay scattered in the sand. She wanted to take them with her as a keepsake when she and Wilford moved west to Zion. Phebe had lived near the ocean for most of her life, and shells were part of the landscape of home.
Since his call to the Quorum of the Twelve, Wilford had been anxious to get to Missouri. His recent visit to the Fox Islands had lasted only long enough to urge the small group of Saints to go with him and Phebe to Zion. He returned to the mainland disappointed. Some members of the branch had agreed to go with them. Others—including Justus and Betsy Eames, the first people baptized on the islands—were staying behind.
“They will all see their folly when it is too late,” Wilford said.
But Phebe was not especially eager to go, either. She had loved living with her parents again. Their home was comfortable, warm, and familiar. If she stayed in Maine, she would never be far from family and friends. Missouri, on the other hand, was fifteen hundred miles away. If she left, she might not see her family again. Was she ready to make that sacrifice?
Phebe confided her feelings to Wilford. He was sympathetic to her anxiety about leaving family, but he did not share her attachment to home. He knew, as she did, that Zion was a place of safety and protection.
“I would go to the land of Zion or wherever God sent me,” he noted in his journal, “if I had to forsake as many fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters as could stand between Maine and Missouri—and subsist upon boiled herbs on the way.”
Through September, Phebe and Wilford waited for the Fox Islands branch to come to the mainland and start their journey west. But as each day passed and the branch members did not appear, Wilford became impatient. It was getting late in the year. The longer they delayed their journey, the more likely they were to encounter bad weather on the road.
Other circumstances were making Phebe more hesitant to leave. Their daughter, Sarah Emma, had come down with a severe cough, and Phebe wondered if it was wise to take her on such a long journey in cold weather. Then an exaggerated report of the election-day brawl in faraway Daviess County appeared in the local newspaper. The news startled everyone.
“It will not do to go,” neighbors told Phebe and Wilford. “You will be killed.”
A few days later, about fifty Fox Islands Saints arrived, ready to journey to Zion. Phebe knew it was time to leave, that Wilford had to join the Twelve in Missouri. But she felt the strong pull of home and family. The road to Missouri would be hard, and Sarah Emma’s health was still frail. And there was no guarantee that they would be safe from mobs once they arrived in their new home.
Still, Phebe believed in the gathering. She had left home to follow the Lord before, and she was willing to do it again. When she said goodbye to her parents, she felt like Ruth in the Old Testament, forsaking home and family for her faith.
As hard as it was to leave, she placed her trust in God and climbed into the wagon.
In late September, twenty-one-year-old Charles Hales arrived with a company of Canadian Saints in De Witt, Missouri. One of thousands answering the call to gather to Zion, he had left Toronto with his parents and siblings earlier that year. De Witt was seventy miles southeast of Far West and provided wagon trains a place to rest and resupply before pushing on to Caldwell County.
But when Charles arrived, the town was under siege. About four hundred Saints lived in De Witt, and neighbors in and around the settlement were pressuring them to move out of the area, insisting they go by October 1 or face expulsion. George Hinkle, the leader of the Saints in De Witt, refused to leave. He said the Saints would stay and fight for their right to live there.
Feeding tensions in De Witt were rumors that Danites were preparing to wage war against the Missourians. Many citizens had begun to mobilize against the Saints and were now camped on the outskirts of De Witt, ready to attack the town at any moment. The Saints had sent an appeal to Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs for protection.
Most of the Canadian Saints pushed on to Far West, anxious to avoid conflict, but George asked Charles to stay and defend De Witt against mobs. As a farmer and musician, Charles was more accustomed to a plow or trombone than a gun. But George needed men to build up fortifications around De Witt and prepare for battle.
On October 2, the day after the Saints’ deadline to abandon the settlement, the mob started shooting at them. At first, the Saints did not return fire. But after two days, Charles and some two dozen Saints took positions along their fortifications and fired back, wounding one man.
The mob charged the fortifications, sending Charles and the others scrambling for cover in some log homes nearby. The mob blocked roads going into De Witt, cutting the Saints off from food and other supplies.
Two nights later, on October 6, Joseph and Hyrum Smith slipped into town with Lyman Wight and a small band of armed men. They found the Saints nearly out of food and other provisions. Unless the siege ended soon, hunger and sickness would weaken the Saints before the mob had to fire another shot.
Lyman was ready to defend De Witt to the end, but after Joseph saw how desperate the situation was, he wanted to broker a peaceful solution. He was sure that if any Missourians were killed in the siege, mobs would descend on the town and wipe the Saints out.
Joseph sent a plea for Governor Boggs’s help, enlisting a friendly Missourian to carry the appeal. The messenger returned four days later with news that the governor would not defend the Saints against attacks. Boggs insisted the conflict was between them and the mob.
“They must fight it out,” he said.
With enemies assembling in nearly every nearby county, and the Saints receiving no reliable support from the state militia, Joseph knew he had to end the siege. He hated to give in to the mob, but the Saints in De Witt were exhausted and desperately outnumbered. Defending the settlement further could be a fatal mistake. Reluctantly, he decided it was time to abandon De Witt and retreat to Far West.
On the morning of October 11, the Saints loaded up what little property they could carry in wagons and set out across the prairie. Charles wanted to go with them, but another Canadian Saint, who was not yet ready to leave, asked him to stay behind and help him. Charles agreed, expecting that he and his friend would quickly be able to catch up with the rest of the Saints.
But after they finally slipped out of town, his friend turned back when his horse gave out. Unwilling to stay any longer in hostile territory, Charles set off alone and on foot over the unfamiliar prairie. He headed northwest, in the direction of Caldwell County, with only a vague idea of where he was going.
On October 15, a few days after the De Witt Saints arrived in Far West, Joseph called together every man in town. Hundreds of Saints had retreated to Far West, fleeing mob activities across northern Missouri. Many of them now lived in wagons or tents scattered throughout the town. The weather had turned cold, and the Saints were cramped and miserable.
Joseph could see the situation was spiraling out of control. He was getting reports that their enemies were gathering from all directions. When mobs had attacked them in Jackson and Clay counties, the Saints had tried to bear it meekly, retreating from conflicts and relying on lawyers and judges to restore their rights. But where had it gotten them? He was tired of the abuse, and he wanted to take a bolder stand against their enemies. The Saints were out of options.
“We have tried long enough,” Joseph cried out to the men around him. “Who is so big a fool as to cry, ‘The law! The law!’ when it is always administered against us and never in our favor?”
Years of stolen land and unpunished crimes against the Saints had left him with little trust in politicians and lawyers, and the governor’s unwillingness to help the Saints only reinforced that view. “We will take our affairs into our own hands and manage for ourselves,” Joseph said. “We have applied to the governor, and he will do nothing for us. The militia of the county we have tried, and they will do nothing.”
He believed the state itself was no better than a mob. “We have yielded to the mob in De Witt,” he said, “and now they are preparing to strike a blow in Daviess.” He refused to let anything else be taken from the Saints.
They would defend themselves, the prophet declared, or die in the attempt." (Chapter 28 Tried Long Enough, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1, The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846)
"On December 1, 1838, a Latter-day Saint named Caleb Baldwin was incarcerated in the lower level of Liberty Jail in Clay County, Missouri, on charges of “crimes of High Treason.” His prison companions included members of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Sidney Rigdon, as well as Lyman Wight and Alexander McRae. The six detainees’ nearly four-month confinement became the final episode of an eventful and often troubled history of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri.
Within the walls of Liberty Jail, Baldwin scribed some of Joseph Smith’s most profound reflections in letters to the scattered and destitute Latter-day Saints—portions of which were later canonized as Doctrine and Covenants sections 121, 122, and 123. Some of these passages have become scriptural gems, often cited in Latter-day Saint discourse over the years.
While the story of Liberty Jail has been told and retold from the perspective of Joseph Smith, the experience of the other incarcerated men provides additional insight. Baldwin, who was the most senior of the group, struggled physically and emotionally in the dungeon level of Liberty Jail. The inspiring words that came to Joseph as he dictated his letter provided comfort and counsel to Baldwin, the 47-year-old father of 10 who longed to be with his family during his four-month confinement.
Early Conflict in Missouri
The Latter-day Saints’ eventful history in Missouri began in 1831, when a revelation to Joseph Smith identified Jackson County as the site of Zion, the New Jerusalem (see D&C 57:1–3). By 1833, the Latter-day Saints in Jackson County numbered more than a thousand—about a third of the county’s population—and religious, political, and cultural differences created inevitable tension between the new and old settlers. After peaceful requests that the Latter-day Saints relocate their faith and families went unheeded, a large group of organized Missourians raided the home of William W. Phelps, destroyed the printing press of the Evening and Morning Star, and tarred and feathered Edward Partridge and Charles Allen.
While the Latter-day Saints sought redress through written petitions, they also organized themselves militarily to protect their families in case of armed conflict. Even after the Latter-day Saints moved to Caldwell County in northwestern Missouri, which had been created by the state legislature exclusively for them, “battles” were fought at Gallatin, DeWitt, Blue River, Crooked River, and Hawn’s Mill in what became known as the Missouri-Mormon War.
In October and November 1838, General Samuel D. Lucas, a leader in the Missouri Militia, imprisoned several prominent Latter-day Saints, including Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt, George W. Robinson, and Amasa Lyman. Caleb Baldwin, Lyman Wight, and other indicted Latter-day Saints joined Joseph and his cohorts at a preliminary hearing in Richmond, Missouri, bringing the total number of arraigned Latter-day Saints to 64. During the hearing, Judge Austin A. King singled out Baldwin and offered him his freedom if he would renounce his religion and forsake the Prophet Joseph—an offer Baldwin rejected. The same deal was then made to the other detainees, all of whom “returned an answer similar to that of Mr. Baldwin.”
Judge King ultimately found sufficient probable cause to lock away a number of the Latter-day Saint leaders. Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight, Alexander McRae, and Caleb Baldwin were to be taken to Liberty Jail in Clay County, as the jails in the counties where the alleged crimes occurred were not large enough for so many prisoners. On December 1, 1838, Joseph Smith entered the jail and “lifting his hat, he said, in a distinct voice, ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen.’ The next moment he had passed out of sight. The heavy door swung upon its strong hinges and the Prophet was hid from the gaze of the curious populace who had so eagerly watched.”
Liberty Jail
Spending more than four months in the snug jail proved a daunting experience. Four-foot-thick stone walls, a six-foot ceiling, and constant harassment by guards caused Joseph and his companions to describe the structure as “hell surrounded with demons.” The detainees were placed in the lower-level dungeon, where temperatures dropped, light dimmed, odors reeked, and time seemed to slow. Only “dirty straw couches” prevented the prisoners from sleeping on the stone floor, but even those wore out after a while.
As was the case in other 19th-century county jails, the food sickened the prisoners. Joseph and his companions described their daily meals as “very coarse and so filthy that we could not eat it until we were driven to it by hunger.” When the prisoners finally ate their servings, the food caused them to vomit “almost to death.” Some of the detainees suspected the guards of poisoning their food and water or even feeding them human flesh.
Word spread of the Latter-day Saint prisoners at Liberty Jail, and “the place took on some aspects of a zoo.” Locals visited the jail in droves to gape at the prisoners, and their taunts and jeers echoed through the stone walls. Hyrum Smith complained, “We are often inspected by fools who act as though we were elephants or dromedarys or sea hogs or some monstrous whale or sea serpents.”
Day after day the men languished in jail, and the emotional sting slowly and continuously tested their faith. “Our souls have been bowed down and we have suffered much distress … and truly we have had to wade through an ocean of trouble,” Joseph wrote.
The four-month confinement in Liberty Jail also took a heavy physical toll on the prisoners. Sunlight barely crept through two small, iron-barred windows that were too high to see through, and long hours in the darkness caused the men’s eyes to strain, as one of the jailers later remembered. While a small fire was allowed, without a chimney to channel the smoke, the prisoners’ eyes became even more irritated. Their ears ached, their nerves trembled, and Hyrum Smith even went into shock at one point. Sidney Rigdon, the second-oldest member of the company next to Baldwin, was in such poor health that, lying in an inclined bed, he petitioned for an early release. His eloquent speech and severe infirmity caused the judge to discharge Rigdon ahead of schedule.
Perhaps most disheartening to the remaining prisoners was the idea of Latter-day Saint families, including their own, scattered, destitute, and driven throughout the state of Missouri. Baldwin and his fellow prisoners felt loneliness and separation in Liberty Jail, but while the other inmates were regularly reassured of their friends’ and families’ well-being through visits and letters, Baldwin received only one brief visit from his wife, Nancy, just before Christmas in 1838, and there is no record of further communication with her or their 10 children during the three months that followed.
Seemingly helpless, the prisoners twice attempted to flee the jail, on February 6 and March 3, 1839, but watchful guards put a stop to their daring getaways. Two weeks later, on March 15, the five men petitioned to be released for unlawful detention. Baldwin’s two-page appeal evidenced his desperate desire to be reunited with his family, who had “been driven out of the State since his confinement without any means for their support.” In addition, Baldwin had learned that his son, also named Caleb, had been “beaten nearly to death by Missourians with hickory sticks.” Thus, having been detained “without the least shadow of testimony against him,” Baldwin asked that the “high hand of oppression” cease and he be acquitted of all charges. Despite the prisoners’ petitions, sufficient evidence apparently existed to keep them detained.
Two days later, on March 17, Samuel Tillery, one of the jailers, inspected the lower-level dungeon and found an auger handle, which he believed was being used by the prisoners to chisel their way through the thick walls. Tillery ordered 25 men downstairs to finish the search, then ordered his contingent to chain Joseph Smith and the prisoners to the floor. Having already bottled up three and a half months of stress, anguish, and frustration, Baldwin furiously rose to his feet, looked the jailer in the eye, and affirmed, “Tillery, if you put those chains on me I will kill you, so help me God!” In the words of Hyrum Smith, Tillery “soon calmed down and agreed to call again and settle the matter.” While Baldwin’s fiery threat temporarily settled the dispute, the prisoners were put under even heavier guard.
Just three days after the scuffle with Samuel Tillery, Baldwin was still on edge and wondered if he would ever see or hear from his family again. Joseph Smith began dictating a letter that undoubtedly lifted Baldwin’s spirit—a letter that has since brought comfort and counsel to millions of Latter-day Saints.
Letter to the Saints
Alexander McRae scribed most of the letter addressed to “the church of Latter-day saints at Quincy Illinois and scattered abroad and to Bishop Partridge in particular,” although Baldwin helped pen 2 of the letter’s 29 pages. Historians Dean Jessee and John Welch noted that Joseph Smith’s lengthy missive is a Pauline-like epistle. For example, Joseph called himself “a prisoner for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake” and wrote that “nothing therefore can seperate us from the love of God,” language similar to the Apostle Paul’s writings to the Ephesians and Romans. Joseph then detailed the sufferings of the “poor and much injured saints,” including the families wandering helplessly and hopelessly between Missouri and Illinois, as well as the dismal experience he and his companions were having in Liberty Jail.
After rendering a soul-wrenching account of the callous and merciless acts of some of their Missouri neighbors, Joseph uttered the first words of what is now section 121 of the Doctrine and Covenants: “O God where art thou and where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place how long shall thy hand be stayed and thine eye yea thy pure eye behold from the etearnal heavens the rongs of thy people and of thy servants and thine ear be penetrated with their c[ri]es yea o Lord how long shall they suffer these rongs and unlawfull oppressions before thine hart shall be softened towards them and thy bowels be moved with compassion to-words them.”
Joseph’s heavenly plea was not immediately answered. He continued to reflect on the violent acts against the Latter-day Saints and wondered when justice would come upon his oppressors. Finally, after narrating seven pages of misery and angst, a consoling reassurance came to the Prophet Joseph: “My son pease be unto thy soul thine advirsity and thy afflictions shall be but a small moment and then if thou indure it well God shall exalt the[e] on high thou shalt tryumph over all [thy] foes.” The Lord also assured Joseph that “if the verry jaws of hell shall gap[e] open her mouth wide after thee know thou my son that all these things shall give thee experiance and shall be for thy good. The son of man hath desended below them all art thou greater than he?”
These comforting words triggered a sense of confidence in Joseph. He said that God “would have a tried people” and that the Latter-day Saints’ experience in Missouri was “a tryal of our faith equal to that of Abraham.” Inasmuch as Abraham was saved from sacrificing his son Isaac, so would the Latter-day Saints be delivered from their trials if they remained faithful.
Joseph then provided instructions on a number of additional matters. First, he directed how to conduct upcoming conferences and council meetings, giving his prison companions hope that they would soon convene again with the Saints. Another item of business was the purchase of property in Iowa Territory. Joseph believed the land would “be of grate benefeit to the church” and counseled Edward Partridge and others on how to properly negotiate the transaction, emphasizing the importance of doing so without greed or self-indulgence. He also advised Church leaders to remember those in need and “bare the infermities of the weak.”
The letter then turned to why many are called but few chosen, words Jesus used in the New Testament (see Matthew 22:14). Joseph lamented that he and the Latter-day Saints had learned “by sad experience” of the destructive power of pride. Joseph may have been reflecting on some of his close friends, such as William W. Phelps and Frederick G. Williams, who had recently apostatized. (Both would eventually return to full fellowship in the Church.) Joseph laid out attributes that holders of the priesthood and all Latter-day Saints should seek to attain if they hope to have influence with others: gentleness, meekness, persuasion, long-suffering, kindness, charity, virtue, and love.
Near the end of the letter, Joseph returned to the persecution the Latter-day Saints had suffered in Missouri. Joseph believed the Constitution of the United States to be “a glorious standard” that ensured freedom of worship, and he asked the Saints to sign affidavits detailing their grievances and maltreatment. Without a guarantee of receiving anything in return, Joseph and the Saints were determined nonetheless to “present [their affidavits] to the heads of government,” fulfilling a commandment given by the Lord.
Joseph Smith’s lengthy letter has had a lasting impact. It not only counseled poor Baldwin in prison and the Saints suffering mayhem in Missouri but was continually republished for many years in the Times and Seasons, Millennial Star, and Deseret News. Eventually, extracts were canonized as Doctrine and Covenants sections 121, 122, and 123, and those passages continue to provide comfort and direction to anyone mining the scriptures for meaning.
The prison companions eventually managed to “escape” legal authorities while being escorted to a hearing in Boone County, Missouri, in April 1839. Their guards turned a blind eye and allowed the prisoners to flee from custody after leading them away from enemies of the Latter-day Saints in Clay County. Baldwin became separated from Joseph and the others on several occasions after their getaway, but all the prisoners ultimately crossed into Illinois, finally reuniting with family, friends, and the rest of the Latter-day Saint refugees." (Within the Walls of Liberty Jail D&C 121, 122, 123 Justin R. Bray)
And here's the introductory commentary for this week's reading assignment: "October 20–26: “O God, Where Art Thou?” Doctrine and Covenants 121–123" :
"The bottom level of the jail in Liberty, Missouri, was known as “the dungeon.” The walls were thick, the stone floor was cold and filthy, food was scarce and rotten, and the two narrow, iron-barred windows near the ceiling allowed for very little light. This is where Joseph Smith and a few others spent four frigid months during the winter of 1838–39. During this time, Joseph was constantly receiving news about the suffering of the Saints. The peace and optimism felt in Far West had lasted only a few months, and now the Saints were without a home once again, driven into the wilderness in search of yet another place to start over—this time with their Prophet in prison.
And yet, even in that miserable jail, “knowledge from heaven” came “pouring down” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:33). Joseph’s question “O God, where art thou?” was answered clearly and powerfully: “Fear not … , for God shall be with you forever and ever” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:1; 122:9).
See Saints, 1:323–96; “Within the Walls of Liberty Jail,” in Revelations in Context, 256–63."
Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, whether it be inside a miserable jail, whether we feel we are in bondage because of the situation that we are in, we need not fear because God is with us. "If God is with us, who can be against us?" God is fighting our battles. He is ordering things for our good. Everything is happening for our own good.
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