Chapter 11

 Seeking for even more religious history:

Shock and awe: another view of restoration history

As Joseph Smith demonstrated with his diligent efforts to compile what ended up as a multivolume history of the church, the context in which new gospel information was given to us is often very important in order for us to answer many detailed questions about what exactly was intended, and what the exact lesson was we were supposed to learn. I think Joseph Smith would have said that there is no such thing as too much church history. Apparently, historical events do not always come with a complete theoretical and theological explanation attached telling us their full significance.

Many of the church history issues that trouble so many people today were apparently incompletely recorded, leaving innumerable loose ends that can eventually confuse and torment people. (Maybe we need a current version of the Jewish Torah, the extensive commentaries on the Scriptures.) The ancient tribal concept of polygamy is one issue; the requirements for "tithing" and other contributions is another; and so on. Rather than let these issues fester until it drives a few people crazy, the correct interpretation needs to be discovered and described, with that study and decision-making process itself being a new segment of recorded church history.

It is certainly beneficial to have projects such as the Joseph Smith Papers, where materials are collected which provide more detail than might have been available before, but then the question arises as to what can ultimately be derived from those materials and presented as new wisdom. It is not obvious that we have an adequate analysis and interpretation system to go along with the new printed information.

Wouldn't it be nice if Christ had resolved every conceivable question while he was alive? Maybe he did, but we don't have the data. I have always been intrigued by these comments in the Book of John:

John 21:23 Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?

24 This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.

25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

But then, if we did have that comprehensive level of information about Christ's sayings and doings, we might then have the risk of eventually setting up an even more oppressive version of the law of Moses. Instead of about 600 rules for controlling our daily behavior under the original law of Moses, we might then have 6000 rules for controlling our daily behavior. That could again impinge on our intended freedom to choose the right based on inadequate information, as was intended to be our situation on this side of the veil.

Valuable startup information

One of the most fascinating kinds of history which I find terribly lacking and incomplete is the processes of how the church was restored in other times. We have more information about the experiences of Joseph Smith and the restoration that came through him, although there are still vast amounts of information about that process that we have not captured and do not understand. There have been any number of "dispensations" or restorations, but it is only the largest and most important ones that we know anything about at all. Heavenly values and thinking on numerous issues were surely revealed in all these cases, if we could only assemble and analyze the necessary information.

One way of looking at the final set of actions taken by Christ to finish all the steps of his restoration of the gospel is that he went out of his way to make sure that the new gospel had no connection whatsoever with the old law of Moses, which also meant that the members of the new church had no reason to have contact with Jerusalem, and in fact it was in their personal security interest to stay as far away from Jerusalem as possible. The fanatical Pharisees in Jerusalem were trying to kill them and were actually managing to jail and kill church members, giving the members extremely good reasons to get as far away from Jerusalem as possible. In one sense, the Pharisees were doing the church members a favor by helping convince them that they should get as far away as possible from Jerusalem and its old ways of thinking and behaving.

Christ seems to have stirred up a hornets' nest on purpose, to make sure that he would be killed and that all his followers would be driven out of Jerusalem and thus far away from the old law of Moses culture, both of those unpleasant steps apparently being necessary to make the gospel progress that was desirable on a much larger front.

Joseph Smith seems to have accomplished almost the exact same thing through his martyrdom and the saints fleeing and being driven westward. ("We wanted to go West because we had to.")  Joseph Smith suggested going West much earlier, but no one would go with him. They called him a coward for not staying and fighting for their land and freedom, even though they could not possibly win that battle, either physically or culturally. (Perhaps human psychology requires the death of the irreplaceable leader before members will finally act on their own as they should have in the first place if they had been wise.) If the Saints would not follow Joseph Smith willingly, and do the sensible thing when it would have been relatively easy and orderly to do, then they had to be driven out, and that is what actually happened.

It would be fascinating to know if Christ tried to designate a gathering place, a "Zion," somewhere far away from Jerusalem, and the Saints were not willing to move there, possibly helping to make his death necessary to get everyone moved. It appears to me that Christ was indeed checking out Samaria as one of the good places for his future church members, the new Christians, to go in the future, when the predicted persecutions had started in earnest. It seems he was doing some preparation for them to be well received when they arrived there. Unfortunately, I don't know of any information being available on this speculative "Zion" point, although Christ did teach the Samaritans, apparently before any other "Gentiles" were contacted. John 4:39-42.

(Maybe Samaria would be a good Zion place, since he spoke so highly of the good Samaritan, and the Jews wanted to stay away from Samaria, a place where the people of a slightly different religion were scorned and shunned and there was no full law of Moses Temple. Note that for the new Christians, having no law of Moses Temple available was a good thing, since they had no need for any such Temple and needed to wean themselves completely from the temple and the related society. The new church could conceivably advance quickly in Samaria, since the populace already knew a great deal about Israelite and gospel history and theology.) 

It is interesting that Christ cleansed the temple his last week while complaining that the Pharisees had made his father's house a den of thieves, but, at the same time, Christ had no intention whatsoever that either he or any of the members of his new church would have any need for that Jerusalem temple anymore in the future. One of the ironies of the church today is that the church leaders have done everything they can to bind members today to regular temple attendance when the gospel of Christ has no requirement for any temple structure anywhere whatsoever. It is really a return to the procedure-bound thinking and behavior of the Old Testament law of Moses for us to become so emotionally and practically (and financially) attached to some particular piece of architecture and real estate, almost allowing some of these structures to have some of the emotional and sociological functions of pagan Baroque idols and pagan temples, worshipped for their extravagant beauty or political significance. This is analogous to the extravagant structures built by the pope to try to win back Protestants through architecture, not through actual effective faith. It is a little bit challenging and even frightening how independent-minded Christ wanted his people to be, leaving behind all the ideological and psychological snares of rote behavior.

The members of Christ's original church thrived and grew quickly for 300 years without any chapels or temples, living widely scattered in completely autonomous groups where the entirety of the gospel was available, including all the higher priesthood ordinances. (There was at least one "Melchizedek" in each church charity group, so to speak.)  There was no such thing as a central headquarters, because there was no need for one. (In fact, as another lesson from religious history, we can say that having a central headquarters, and an associated paid bureaucracy like a Sanhedrin, is itself a sign of church decay and apostasy, a sign of the return to law of Moses thinking, where the economics of empire-building and profit overshadow spiritual matters, which are the "weightier matters of the law," so to speak.)

It would probably be a great shock to many people today to realize that the stake patriarchs at one point were the ones who had all of the higher priesthood ordinances. Under Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor, the various stakes and their patriarchs operated autonomously wherever they were located. It was only under Wilford Woodruff and later presidents that these priesthood ordinances, and those who had the authority to administer them, were centralized and controlled and monetized through the recommend system which required payment of a full tithing to the central offices before anyone could attend the temple as the only place to receive any of the higher ordinances. To repeat, this law of Moses-style money extraction system was not operating for at least the first 300 years in the original church of Christ, and it was not operating for the first 66 years of the church in our time. If tithing is really the first principle of the gospel as it is today, considered to be the critical feature and limiting factor in expanding the gospel, why is it not found in our Articles of Faith which were written during Joseph Smith's lifetime?

There were many seeming parallels between the saints living at the time of Christ and those living at the time of Joseph Smith. The Saints of Joseph Smith's time found it impossible to stay in the "promised land" of Missouri, because of the Saints' anti-slavery views. Christ and the new church members were against the slightly less intense version of slavery which was the law of Moses.

The big issue of Joseph Smith's day was whether Missouri would stay a slave state or become a non-slave state through a statewide vote to end slavery. Since there were already thousands of slaves on plantations in Missouri along the Missouri River, the immigration into Missouri of thousands of anti-slavery-voting Northerners like the Mormons was a huge threat to the property and economy of the slaveholders in the "Little Dixie" part of Missouri. Driving out or exterminating the quickly-assembling Mormons was the sensible thing to do from the standpoint of the slaveholders. No one cared a whit about what we believed, beyond the fact that we did not believe in slavery and would vote against it. The first significant contact between the Mormons and the old settlers was during a time of voting. The slaveholders tried to drive off the Mormons from the voting areas, but the Mormons were tougher than the slaveholders and won that skirmish. That made it even worse, because the Mormons made it clear that they would not be easily intimidated, requiring the slaveholders to escalate their attacks to rid themselves of the anti-slavery Mormon vote. We can certainly say that the early Mormons were far more stalwart for freedom than we are today.

Surely God knew from the beginning 1) that the Saints could not remain in Missouri, and 2) that they had to be driven to Utah. The Lord used the Mormons to end slavery while also using slavery issues to get the Mormons moved to the safe space of Utah where they were spared the ravages of the Civil War. Without that insight into the big picture, hardly anything that happened during those times makes any sense.

As it turned out, the Saints were not safe until they had passed through several situations such as Nauvoo and Winter Quarters to get to Utah where they were finally safe. The slavery issue was what determined where the Saints were able to live. The mobs drove out the Saints, against their will, naturally, until they were in the safe place which they were supposed to be in. Joseph Smith had earlier told the members that they needed to move to the Western states to be safe, but no one was willing to do it until their lives literally depended on it. This seems like an almost 100% parallel of the earlier Saints having to be driven by fears for their own lives to end up where they needed to be, somewhere outside of Jerusalem and out of the grip of the law of Moses culture. They might have understood where they needed to be, but almost no one was willing to go unless there were severe threats driving them forward.

One of the lessons learned from all of this is that, on a long-term basis, a church can choose between having temples and having Christian charity, but it can't have both. (This sounds like the old "guns or butter" choice in nation-level economics.) If you let the "camel's nose" of extravagant semi-pagan temples under the tent, then before long it will be taking all the extra resources and there will be essentially no resources devoted to Christian charity. ("If a religion cannot save you temporally, it cannot save you spiritually." – The gospel is intended to address and take care of all of our human needs, not just our fear of death, but also our fear of suffering in this life.) That is the way it was in Christ's time, as illustrated by the parable of the good Samaritan, where the priests had their living from tithing and they were not going to share with anyone, and no one else (except someone outside of the law of Moses strictures such as the good Samaritan) felt they had any money (or duty) left over to do it themselves.

With this law of Moses temple focus in control of the church, instead of the charity focus, everyone is concerned about themselves and their "personal purity," and, in general, striving to display symbols of their current worthiness for exaltation, rather than focusing their concerns on the practical welfare of everyone else.

That is the way it is today. All of our money, which would otherwise go to charity, goes to the central offices where they spend it on themselves and on temples and structures and questionable projects, while the amount of money spent on actual charity or humanitarian aid is nearly zero. Only about one-fourth of 1% of the total amount received by Salt Lake City appears to be devoted to such valuable charitable things. The church could make huge positive changes to the world through wise use of charity, but it prefers to keep all that money for its own internal use.

In the 1890s, the issue of church debts was used as a lever and an excuse to restart the law of Moses tithing system among the Saints, permanently redirecting their Christian charity to the use of the centralizing paid ministry "Judaizers" who saw the reintroduction of the law of Moses as a good thing for themselves personally. Fortunately, at least as far as I know, they did not try to re-institute circumcision, although I believe there has been significant confusion on even that small point.

A recurring problem throughout the 2000-year history of the Christian church has been the reappearance of "Judaizers" who thought the old law of Moses had some features which appealed to them, usually something having to do with collecting tithing to establish a paid ministry. This includes Roman Catholic priests beginning to wear a miter, the hat which Aaron wore to complete his priestly duties. The possibility of collecting unearned money using nothing but ideology and rhetoric is almost always an irresistible temptation, it appears.

So, what were those church debts that were used as an excuse to reintroduce law of Moses tithing? It seems that no one ever described them in public. If they were nothing more than promises of salaries to church leaders, then they were not valid. If they were left-over Perpetual Emigration Fund debts, then they were really individual debts, but it would be nice for the church to help pay them off to outsiders, but not to use that incident as way to set up a constant illegitimate inflow of money to the central offices. Normal charity processes apparently could have taken care of the PEF debts without involving the central church at all. Perhaps this was a case of standard leftist ideology and practice: No one should let a good crisis go to waste when leftist (anti-gospel) social engineering can occur.

Some more observations on this "sweep of history" view of restorations: the main reason the Saints had all the trouble they had in the United States was because of their anti-slavery position. It was realized at the time by the political representatives of the southern slave owners that an organized group such as the LDS who were anti-slavery, and amounted to about 30,000 individuals, could single-handedly determine the slave/no slave status of all the remaining western territories, if they chose to do so. That is why there were about six different "extermination orders" at different stages of the Saints' progress West, not just the one in Missouri. It happened in Nauvoo and Winter Quarters and in Utah itself, twice.

The preferred solution was simply to kill or scatter the Saints so that they were neutralized as a political influence. It was the nightmare of the southern slave plotters to allow the Saints to get out West where they could control the fate of Colorado, Utah, and California (a great place for plantations), and perhaps some other places.

Although we usually skip over this part, the southern slave strategists hoped that the "Mormon Battalion" maneuver would be a way to separate and kill off a large number of able Mormon men and thereby break up the whole movement and prevent the Mormons' migration West to interfere with slavery plans there. Our church history usually leaves out the significant point that the members of the Mormon Battalion were pressed into service at gunpoint and were treated as a prisoner battalion, with two other battalions sent along to be their guards.

However, fortunately, the evil plans of Southerners (who controlled most of the US government) backfired, because those Saints actually made it alive to California, and not only survived to make it to Utah, but also apparently were instrumental in starting the gold rush which brought tens of thousands of anti-slavery entrepreneurs to California to make sure that there could never be a successful state vote to legitimize slavery within the state of California.

Those same Mormon Battalion members made it back to Utah with their weapons and military experience in plenty of time to "stand like a stone wall" against the Army sent there, commanded by a Texas slave-holding general and manned mostly by proslavery Missourians. The Army had been sent there to first make Utah a slave state and then claim the associated seats in the US House of Representatives to help get control of that federal governing body, and then to move on to California and make it a slave state as well and claim its House seats. The southern states already controlled the federal Presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, but not the House of Representatives, so the southern states were just a whisker away from total control of the federal government so that they could declare slavery legal nationwide, as was their goal, winning that war almost without firing a shot.

But those machinations were stopped in their tracks by the 20,000 sturdy and determined Mormon mountain men who by then were inhabiting Utah, and were not about to be scattered or crushed by a hostile proslavery Army, as had happened at least twice before. Since the army could not accomplish its task in Utah, just as it had not been able to accomplish that exact same assignment in 1857 in Kansas, the army was stopped. And, a short time later, with the southern strategists having been stymied on their plan to turn the western territories into slave states, those southern leaders made the desperate and foolish decision that the only option they had left to spread slavery nationwide was war. That meant that some of the southern strategists and a goodly number of their proslavery followers were wiped out and their slave-based civilization almost completely destroyed. The Mormons had already done more than their share of fighting in the pre-Civil War conflicts, and were able to sit out most of the big war itself.

The Mormons were central to all of these activities of freeing the slaves. I'm sure the leftist propagandists today, Mormons or not, who claim that Brigham Young was a racist, have not even a tiny speck of information about what was going on in those pre-Civil War times, and how the ideological strength and determination of the Mormons brought down the entire proslavery movement in United States. I would call that a pretty good accomplishment. In truth, the Mormons were among the first warriors in the Civil War, and, because of their steadfastness, they were the linchpin force which brought down the whole history of national disgrace over the question of slavery. Even if today the Mormons themselves have forgotten and become confused about what happened concerning slavery, that does not lessen the great things that were accomplished by earlier Mormons.

Being a powerful pro-freedom force is what the gospel is all about. After the time of Christ, even with all the problems it developed, the Christian church was the basis for Western civilization with its emphasis on freedom and individual rights, found nowhere else in the world. Unfortunately, today the LDS church headquarters cares nothing about actively defending freedom, and so has intentionally and willfully "included itself out" of the long tradition of Christian-supported freedom.

The Saints at the time of Christ were surely a powerful force for freedom, although we don't seem to know very much about what they accomplished, except for the fact that they threw off the chains of the old law of Moses. Similar logic to the law of Moses has been used over and over again to impose slavery on peoples based on a twisted form of religion. So, getting rid of the law of Moses was itself a major step forward. That also meant that some of the associated structures such as the kingdoms of David and Solomon which were based on similar religious principles, such as "the divine right of Kings," etc., were denigrated.

(As a footnote observation, many people would say that the law of Moses concept of society reached its zenith under King David, but we might notice that the tax rate under King David has been estimated to be about 50%, demonstrating how far the Israelites were from freedom. It is interesting to read how persecuted the Nephites often felt in the Book of Mormon when they were being taxed at only a 20% rate. Mosiah 11:3. (King Noah). We can say that Christ was anti-tax of almost any kind, since taxation is a measure of the practical level of bondage and lack of freedom, and a limit on charity. Demanding that members pay tithing puts the church halfway to persecuting its own members without even considering any secular taxes.)

The early Saints probably had something to do with ending the Roman empire and allowing greater freedom, but I have not as yet accumulated specific information on that particular point.

The opening blast

Another fascinating aspect of restorations are that some of them involve a few miracles, including the violence of natural forces. We hear of Enoch being able to move mountains and rivers to defend his gospel sanctuary city of Zion. In the New World, at the death of Christ, we hear of earthquakes and volcanoes that changed the face of the land and destroyed the cities of the wicked. This presumably made it very easy for the true Christians to live freely without threats from their now-missing enemies and to expand without restraints for a time.

Concerning the Saints moving west to safety, there are tales of the mighty Mississippi River freezing over so that the Saints could make a quick escape from their enemies and not be trapped and possibly killed. When Johnson's Army was working so hard to pick a fight with the Mormons in Utah, so they could claim they had been attacked, and start a shooting war, there was an unusual snowstorm which kept that Army isolated and inactive so that literally their "hotheads" were cooled off. When Zion's Camp returned to Missouri to attempt to reclaim the Saints' property, it might have been destroyed by superior forces, except for a furious wind and rain and thunderstorm and flood which thoroughly convinced many of the would-be mobbers that the heavens were on the side of the Mormons.

It has occurred to me more than once that Christ could easily have made Jerusalem as much of a smoking crater as any of the destroyed cities in the New World, but obviously he had other plans for that place and those people. The new church members were mixed in with the old autocrats and it would have made no sense to destroy everything on a wholesale basis. It was not yet like the unmitigated sin and tyranny that led to a Noah situation where the entire world had to start over.

We might recall that Sodom and Gomorrah were wiped out completely, but only after the last few believers had escaped. Perhaps there is a connection here with Jerusalem, which was totally destroyed about 30 years after the death of Christ. That is quite a long time to delay such wrath, but, surely by that time, there were indeed no Christians left in Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, I believe there was some indication through clouds and earthquakes that the heavens disapproved of the actions of the local Jews. We might remember that Jerusalem was eventually completely obliterated, nearly as completely as some of the cities in the New World. There was a time delay of about 30 years between crime and punishment, but it still suffered a similar fate in 70 AD. [cite article on Jewish persecution of saints in the known world] Surely there is historical information available on the connection between the rejection of the Savior and the destruction of Jerusalem, but I don't personally know what it is yet. We know that Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, but, again, we don't know the doctrinal or sociological reason for his making that prophecy. The people around him could probably see the connection, but we cannot.

The effect of the destruction of Jerusalem could have been something as simple as a way to signify the total end of the law of Moses and the destruction of the hopelessly corrupt Jewish state which had been continually harassing the saints, causing a Jewish diaspora which was in effect for 2000 years, and only now is experiencing a revival of a new version of Jewish culture. Unfortunately, today, we seem to have confused ourselves about Christ's intentions about the law of Moses. We somehow imagine that bringing back the law of Moses and quoting scriptures from the Old Testament in support of the law of Moses tithing system is a way to make us more holy today. But I believe that this is having the exact opposite effect.

I believe we can say with certainty that for the members of the church at the time, they were very happy to be long gone from Jerusalem when the Roman soldiers showed up to destroy it in 70 AD, and presumably they understood the symbolic significance of an unequivocal end to the law of Moses and the Temple associated with it, with the whole society and all the related structures ground to powder. If they still had tendencies to listen to the Judaizers and keep going back to the law of Moses rules of tithing, circumcision, sacrifice, etc., that should have put all of those questions to rest.

When John the Revelator wrote his epistle known as the Book of Revelation to the seven churches in Asia in about 90 A.D., we can be fairly sure that all of the old errors and "traditions of the fathers" had been pretty well stamped out among the widely scattered Christians. Perhaps that was the high point of the early church having everything understood and figured out and applied in practice, especially including the vigorous application of individual charity and the complete lack of a religious/spiritual need for chapels and, especially, temples. They were "free at last" of the taxes and chains of the law of Moses, although they were not completely free of Roman influence.

Generations of priestcraft

When we read about the characters of Nehor and Korihor in the Book of Mormon, where Nehor was willing to kill to defend priestcraft, we might want to tie them in more closely with other aspects of similar religious history. We learn about Abraham almost being sacrificed in some pagan temple. We read of the priests of Pharaoh who were presumably behind the killing of the Israelite babies, plus later bringing on the many deadly plagues on Egypt because of their stubbornness . We continually read about the "fires of Moloch" where pagan Israelites and others discarded/sacrificed unwanted babies. We read about Christians in Rome rescuing discarded babies from the refuse piles.

Perhaps it would be useful to compare the corrupt priestcraft operatives of the time of Christ, the Pharisees and all their allies, with this very undistinguished group of actively evil people appearing throughout history. That comparison should be useful, because it should help emphasize how thoroughly and completely Christ wished to grind out of existence every last vestige of the law of Moses. Today we have readopted large portions of the law of Moses, including the rigid application of tithing, the re-emphasized importance of constant on-site temple worship, and expensive temple contributions, and we have a new Levite class that is supported by the tithing of the masses – all the essential accoutrements of the law of Moses, including the Sanhedrin, a central bureaucracy for governing that religion. Strangely enough, our Sanhedrin is probably 10 times or 100 times larger than was the original Sanhedrin, although perhaps we have just replaced the decentralized Levites with a more centralized version of that parasitic tribe. None of that has any place in the gospel Christ introduced. It only had a place in the old thinking of the law of Moses. The more we are drawn to it, the more we are drawn away from what Christ intended us to learn from New Testament concepts.

Just as the priests of Pharaoh killed the babies of the Israelites, Herod later killed the children of the people of Bethlehem, grisly murders for the sake of retaining political power. It is hard to imagine a more evil heart than that. But these are samples of powerful feelings and actions of evil which priestcraft creates and supports. The mass slaughter of infants in the womb, and infanticide after birth, supported today by pagan forces, is much the same.

Perhaps we specifically avoid today the studying of these aspects of priestcraft at the time of Christ simply because it would then be easy to see the parallels between what was done then and what is being done today, bringing all those old issues up on a recurring basis.

Priestcraft and Samaria

I was browsing through a book entitled The Parables Of Jesus: Revealing The Plan Of Salvation* and something caught my eye which related to the danger of priestcraft to a society. It appeared to me to be a possible old world application of the Alma 1 assertion that priestcraft will mean the end of a society:

Alma 1:12 "... And were priestcraft to be enforced among this people it would prove their entire destruction."

Here is the story:

Leaving Judea, where He had spoken with Nicodemus by night, Jesus and His disciples returned to Galilee by way of the high-country road through Samaria. Near the village that John called Sychar was the place given by the patriarch Jacob to His beloved son Joseph. Joseph's tomb was nearby, as was Jacob's well. Cut into the solid rock (possibly 100 to 170 feet deep), this is one of the best attested sites mentioned in the New Testament.

                This spot is located east of the mountain valley pass that runs east and west between Mount Gerizim (on the south) and its twin, Mount Ebal (on the north). These two mountains were especially holy to the Samaritans.

                There was no love lost between the Jews and the Samaritans. In 111-110 B.C.E., the Jews under John Hyrcanus (the Jewish high priest and son of Simon Maccabaeus) had destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim and had reduced the nearby ancient city of Shechem to a mere village as part of his expansive conquests in the regions around Jerusalem. At the time of Jesus, that village was called Sychar, and the people living there were still reminded of those losses by the remaining ruins. Even though all that was left of the temple on Mount Gerizim was rubble, the Samaritans continued to worship and sacrifice at that spot, a place that was rich in tradition for all the tribes of Israel. The Samaritans followed their version of the law of Moses as found in the first five books of their Bible.

Perhaps we could say that the high priest at Jerusalem had enforced his priestcraft with the sword. Perhaps there was a link between this unpleasant event and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., resulting in the end of the Jewish society.

* John W. And Jeannie S. Welch, The Parables Of Jesus: Revealing The Plan Of Salvation (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, Inc., 2019)

Some more historical background for the story:

Samaritans

The title is used to describe the people who inhabited Samaria after the captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel. They were the descendants of (1) foreign colonists placed there by kings of Assyria and Babylonia (2 Kgs. 17:24; Ezra 4:2, 10); (2) Israelites who escaped at the time of the captivity. The population was therefore partly Israelite and partly gentile. Their religion was also of a mixed character (see 2 Kgs. 17:24–41), though they claimed, as worshippers of Jehovah, to have a share in the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem (Ezra 4:1–3). This claim not being allowed, they became, as the books of Ezra and Nehemiah show, bitter opponents of the Jews, and started a rival temple of their own on Mount Gerizim. When Nehemiah ejected from Jerusalem a grandson of the high priest Eliashib on account of his marriage with a heathen woman (Neh. 13:28), he took refuge with the Samaritans, taking with him a copy of the Pentateuch, and according to Josephus became high priest at Gerizim. There are several references in the New Testament to the antagonism between the Jews and Samaritans (see Matt. 10:5; Luke 9:52–53; 10:33; 17:16; John 4:9, 39; 8:48); but the people of Samaria were included among those to whom the Apostles were directed to preach the gospel (Acts 1:8), and a very successful work was done there by Philip (Acts 8:4–25).

Temple on Mount Gerizim

Josephus gives the following account of the erection of this temple: Manasseh, brother of Jaddua the high priest, was threatened by the Jews with deprivation of his priestly office because of a marriage he had contracted with a foreign woman. His father-in-law, Sanballat, obtained permission from Alexander the Great, then besieging Tyre, to build a temple on Mount Gerizim. Manasseh was its first high priest. It became the refuge of all Jews who had violated the precepts of the Mosaic law. With this account must be compared Neh. 13:28, which from the names and circumstances probably relates to the same event. Josephus places the event 90 years later than the Bible. The establishment of the counterfeit worship on Gerizim embittered and perpetuated the schism between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans altered their copies of the Pentateuch by substituting Gerizim for Ebal in Deut. 27:4 and by making an interpolation in Ex. 20 and so claimed divine authority for the site of their temple. Antiochus Epiphanes, at the request of the Samaritans, consecrated it to Jupiter, the defender of strangers. John Hyrcanus destroyed it (109 B.C.). Though the Emperor Zeno (A.D. 474–491) ejected the Samaritans from Gerizim, it has continued to be the chief sacred place of the Samaritan community. There the Paschal Lamb has been almost continuously offered by them up to the present day.

Shock and Awe

We might imagine that the only restoration that was attended by massive displays of shock and awe was the one in the New World after Christ's resurrection, where the entire landscape was changed, cities were totally destroyed, being pushed up or buried, and the sun was unable to shine for three days. But that was not the only spectacular preparation for introducing the gospel. Apparently, these unusual events are actually common at times of restoration, if we know what to look for. The Book of Acts contains many amazing things:

Acts 1

Jesus ministers for forty days after His resurrection...

1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,

2 Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:

3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.

5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

The Acts 1 headnotes tell us that "Jesus ministers for 40 days after his resurrection." Although the Book of Acts only mentions Christ appearing to his apostles, unless all those meetings were held in secret rooms, and no one ever spoke to others about it, it seems very possible that Christ was seen in person by thousands of people, which would naturally include spies for the Pharisees. If the Pharisees weren't sure who they had just killed, and whether that had been a good idea or not, they would now be perfectly sure, since there could be no confusion about what happened. That sounds like some serious shock and awe all by itself. For a short time there was some consternation about the empty tomb, guarded by soldiers, but we never hear about later reactions by the Pharisees, but there must surely have been some reactions, as in the case of Gamaliel.

In verse four, Christ tells his apostles that they should not immediately "depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the father..." Perhaps we can assume that the apostles told a few thousand people what Christ had said about not leaving Jerusalem, making sure that there would be a large crowd gathered on the Day of Pentecost to be "baptized with the Holy Ghost," something rather exciting to look forward to.

Some details on the Day of Pentecost:

"Pentecost” is actually the Greek name for a festival known in the Old Testament as the Feast of Weeks... The Greek word [Pentecost] means 'fifty' and refers to the fifty days that have elapsed since the wave offering of Passover." https://www.gotquestions.org/day-Pentecost.html

Apparently, the Saints were very anxious to leave Jerusalem, for good reason, because of Jewish reactions, and were only held back by the instructions of the Savior so that they could receive the Holy Ghost before they left and became scattered far and wide. It's not clear to me whether any of them had received the Holy Ghost before, along with baptism, or if that particular ordinance was delayed until after the death of Christ, which seems to be the most likely situation. Perhaps it was done in that sequence for the very purpose of having a spectacular event with many in attendance. We can probably assume that a large, presumably open-air event of this magnitude would be well known to the Pharisees.

Acts 2 tells us the Pentecost story. This great event with "a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind" and "cloven tongues like as of fire," with every attendee hearing the words in his own language, being spoken by Galileans, was presumably attended by many more than 3000 people, since about 3000 souls were baptized and added to the church that day. These men were from every nation and could be ambassadors and missionaries to the known world and carry the gospel quickly as they returned to their homes after this great meeting. It would be interesting to know if all these people came for Passover and were able to stay the 50 days until the Feast of Weeks, or whether they might have arrived separately for this Feast of Weeks.

The events of the Day of Pentecost may be the most outwardly spectacular occasion at the time of the restoration of the gospel, but there were certainly many others only slightly less notable.

Events at the death of Christ

Matthew 27:50-54 deals with a time period about seven weeks before Pentecost. It contains a great deal of information about events surrounding Christ's death and the independent startup of the church without his constant physical presence and leadership, and is a good place to start this particular narrative.

Matthew 27:

50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

In evaluating the statement "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" perhaps we can say that that rent which opened the holy of holies to the impure outside world so that anyone could see it, not just the supposedly highly purified Temple priests, and possibly signaled that all the holiness was gone from the Temple, to the extent that there had been any holiness there recently. It certainly signaled that Christ was done with that structure (and any other structure like it) for a very long time.  We might additionally wonder if the centurion saw any resurrected beings, as is hinted at here.

We might note that this Temple was first built in the days of Solomon, sometime during his reign from 970 to 931 BC.

This [temple] was destroyed in 587 BC and rebuilt by Zerubbabal about 70 years later. The restored structure was partially burned in 37 BC and was partially rebuilt by Herod the Great, although the rebuilding continued until A.D. 64. It was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.  (Bible Dictionary "Temple")

Unfortunately, the Bible dictionary article about the Temple is inaccurate on several related points. That article does reflect current 21st century church teachings and practice, but it does not reflect the practice of the Christians for the 300 years after the death of Christ, which seems like it ought to be controlling on how to do things correctly. Those people had no temples and did not require any. They had all the necessary priesthood powers available at the local level without charge, as did the Saints in the time of Joseph Smith, up until the presidency of Wilford Woodruff. The article claims that "In cases of extreme poverty or emergency, these ordinances may sometimes be done on a mountaintop," but that is not correct. We know that work for the dead was done on a regular basis outside of any temples after the atonement of Christ initiated that process. 1 Cor. 15:29. This latter-day drive to return to the law of Moses policies concerning temples is apparently part of the more general drive to return the entire church to a law Moses operating basis, which is so beneficial to a paid ministry, especially including the rigorous central collection of tithing.

At the moment of Christ's death "the earth did quake, and the rocks rent." (There was a lot of "renting" of veils and rocks going on in the Jerusalem area.) This sounds an awful lot like the volcanic activity that went on at about the same time in the New World, although the New World activity was much more severe. This physical activity was surely noted by the centurion in charge of Christ's crucifixion:

54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

In a more modern vernacular, those soldiers might have said "It looks like we dodged a bullet. We could have been blown apart or boiled in lava by the tiniest twitch of Christ's little finger." Indeed, I have wondered about how easy it would have been to convert the Jerusalem area into a very large smoking crater just as happened in the New World, and Christ had some reason to do that, although he, as always, used wisdom and foresight and kept everything within appropriate bounds.

Continuing with the Bible Dictionary article on temples:

"From Adam to the time of Jesus, ordinances were performed in temples for the living only. After Jesus opened the way for the gospel to be preached in the world of spirits, ceremonial work for the dead, as well as for the living, has been done in temples on the earth by faithful members of the Church. Building and properly using a temple is one of the marks of the true church in any dispensation, and is especially so in the present day."

Again, we know that work for the dead was carried on after the death of Christ, and there were no temples available and none were required. Even the statement concerning Adam is not completely accurate. Living ordinances were clearly done on a regular basis without any temples at nearly every period of time, except perhaps during the time when the law of Moses was in effect. We might ask "Did Adam have to first build a magnificent "Temple of Solomon" before any of his many children and grandchildren could be married?" I believe the answer is no.

Resurrected saints

If the earthquakes were not enough to get everyone's attention, one might guess that a New Testament "Christian zombie apocalypse" surely got the attention of every living soul, especially including the Pharisees, who probably had spies everywhere to make sure that they did not miss anything of importance.

52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

I remember hearing that there were those who were resurrected at the time when Christ was resurrected, but I had not mentally registered the fact that these people "went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." The raising of Lazarus from the dead was a very recent event, which probably caused quite a stir in the Jerusalem area, especially among the Pharisees. So then we should try to imagine what perhaps 1000 Lazarus resurrections, all at once, as widely publicized as possible, with everyone in Jerusalem seeing those people walking around and talking to people, would do to the mental state of the Pharisees and everyone else in Jerusalem. We should not be too surprised to learn from history that some of the Pharisees had a mental breakdown about this time and were reduced to quivering and drooling in a fetal position.

We might recall that one of the Pharisees, Gamaliel, had suggested taking a low-key position and letting these things play out. He may have been wise and contemplative in his suggestion of conservative behavior, but he might also have been frightened out of his wits, and was suggesting that things might go very badly for the Pharisees if they aggressively intervened.

I am assuming that Gamaliel gave his advice after the death and resurrection of Christ, but it may not be clear whether he gave his advice before or after the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira. In the Book of Acts chapter 5, the story of the Gamaliel comes after the story of Ananias and Sapphira.  Surely, after the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, his worst fears would have been verified that if the Pharisees tried to intervene in any way to deflect or compromise or infiltrate this huge new religious movement, they might all end up dead through a similar process. The Savior had made it extremely clear throughout his life, and especially during the last week of his life, and also the weeks thereafter, that he was the Lord of life and death, and, in fact, the priests of the law of Moses were only allowed to live by his good graces, and perhaps they understood that rather personally. (Other prophets had killed all opposing priests on similar occasions. Elijah in 1 Kings 18:40)

We might mention the very public curse on the barren fig tree as Christ entered Jerusalem where that tree immediately died. Matt 21:19. It was just another one of hundreds of indicators of the vast powers that were at play here.

Priests joined the church

It must have been very disconcerting to the law of Moses paid ministry that many of their own, probably including such men as Nicodemus, joined this new church and left their previous station in society and ministry. 

Acts 6:7 And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.

Presumably those priests who joined would have included Zacharias, father of John the Baptist, assuming he lived long enough. It is likely that he learned the gospel from his own son, and presumably was baptized, and also learned of Christ. But the Scriptures don't seem to tell us exactly when he was murdered by the evil priests. One might wonder on what basis was his murder justified? Was he being interrogated by the evil priests about his son John, where those priests were probably intent on capturing and killing John?

Matt 23:34 ¶ Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:

35 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.

36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

This indicates that the Pharisees were very upset about the new religion and were willing to kill anyone who threatened their priestcraft way of life, making them as bad as Nehor. Besides Christ himself, we have John the Baptist, John's father Zacharias, Stephen, etc. We might wonder if church leaders today will be as incensed against any who challenge their self-appointed privileged positions.

Effects of "shock and awe"

I think some of this "shock and awe," even though it was not quite on the same scale as occurred in the New World, would still be quite enough to warn everyone who mattered that they should proceed very carefully, because their very lives were on the line. (We might recall that all the firstborn Egyptians were singled out for death in the last plague. Perhaps the Pharisees recalled the same frightening story.) It is possible that it would have an even more powerful effect on an individual psyche than seeing a distant and highly destructive earthquake or volcanic eruption. In the New World, if you lived through the cataclysms, that meant you were a good person. In the old world, you could never be sure which way the personal axe of destruction was going to fall, but most people were probably painfully aware that it could indeed fall on them at any moment.

In this setting of turmoil and uncertainty, it's a little bit surprising that someone like Saul the Pharisee was still so fanatical that he continued to persecute Christians. However, we might note that on one occasion he merely held the coats of those who killed Stephen as opposed to directly participating. Perhaps he was wisely testing the system to see whether they would all immediately die or whether they would be allowed to live. Since they were allowed to live, he probably took heart and decided to continue on the road to Damascus to persecute some more Christians. However, the system caught up with him there and dealt with him rather roughly, blinding and frightening him. Damascus, Syria, was about 135 miles away from Jerusalem, and presumably operated under a very different set of laws than existed in Jerusalem of Judea.

There might have been multiple messages in this event. Perhaps Saul's experience indicated that the Savior was encouraging the Saints to leave Jerusalem and go to other places, such as Damascus, preferably as far away from Jerusalem is possible. And, at the same time, any attempts by the Pharisees to follow the church members and continue the persecution would be dealt with harshly. We do read that the Saints had gathered to some new places, and apparently were not harassed there by the Jews, tending to demonstrate that there were heaven-protected sanctuary cities outside of Jerusalem. This would leave the Saints with enormous negative incentives to leave Jerusalem and with similarly positive welcoming incentives to relocate, knowing that they could find safe spaces.

We read that within two years, there simply were no more church members in Jerusalem, all of them having left town. "[A]nd they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." Acts 8:1. That becomes important a little bit later when we talk about the very revealing case of Ananias and Sapphira.  If we understand correctly the setting in which that story took place, then these people in Jerusalem who were helping each other were in an unusual "use it or lose it" situation. They were all planning to leave anyway, so if some could sell their property so that they could use some of their wealth to get themselves to a new town, and if they could help their friends get to a new town, then that would be as ideal as was possible at the time. Otherwise, they would just have to leave these things behind with no gain whatsoever. The wisest and most sensible thing then would be to sell the property, if possible, and use that money to get yourself and your friends out of town, because if you waited any longer, you might not be able to sell the property and you would simply lose it, perhaps along with your freedom or your life.

This high-pressure gathering scenario is very much the same as happened in the time of Joseph Smith. People were excited to hear about the gospel and anxious to join with other Saints, but many of them simply picked up stakes from their farms in New York or wherever, and went to Kirtland or Missouri and arrived penniless. They left behind valuable property simply because they didn't have the patience to wait to sell it. This became a nightmare in Kirtland and Missouri because a very large portion of the people who arrived there had nothing but the clothes on their back, even though they could have contributed thousands of dollars to the cause of Zion if they had been a little more wise in their dealings.

The strange situation that put these people in during the time of Joseph Smith was almost exactly the same thing which happened to the Saints right after the death of Christ. Behaving tribally and sharing everything makes a great deal of sense in the case where if you don't share it then everybody loses. (For example, if someone has a good hunt, they might as well share their good fortune with everyone, because they can't eat it all and they can't preserve it, so they might as well share it so that they can be eligible to share in someone else's successful hunt later on.) It is not a matter of being selfish or not being selfish. It is a matter of being practical in an obvious way.

It makes perfect practical sense to treat this initial restoration gathering situation much like a wagon train operation, where you rationally pool all your resources and get on with what needs to be done, doing as well as you can. No one in their right mind would think that this was an ideal situation that should go on for the rest of your life. It is simply a practical way to get through a critical hard spot so that normal life can resume in another location. People seem to continually make the shortsighted and foolish observation that just because one has to "join the Army" for a year or two as a way to save the whole group, that the ideal way to live life is to be in the army the rest of your life. That is just nonsense, and has no relationship to practicalities or people's feelings. Most certainly it is not something required by the gospel beyond the need to help others survive these hard times.

More on volcanoes, earthquakes, and destruction

I think it is interesting to know that there are 30 volcanoes in Italy, some of which have been active on and off. At the time of Christ's death, the most recent Italian eruption of note had occurred in 104 BC. In other words, it seems likely that the soldiers could easily imagine some very serious volcanic eruptions, the kind which they perhaps sensed that they had just barely escaped.

It is also interesting that in the year 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius exploded and completely destroyed the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and others. The historical notes concerning Pompeii mention that many people from Rome regularly ventured there on holiday. It is interesting to speculate whether there were certain important Roman citizens who died in that horrendous blast who might have been tempted to increase the persecution of Christians in Rome and the Roman Empire. (I believe the movie "Pompeii" implies that that was true.) That might have been one way to tamp down the persecutions against the Christians. We might wonder whether some people took that devastating blast as an indication that there was something wrong with the way the Romans were operating their country.

There might be an interesting connection here between the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., perhaps brought on by very unwise behavior by the Jews. That 70 A.D. event basically ended the kingdom of the Jews and their ability to have a major organized political influence anywhere in the world for the next 2000 years. Likely that had something to do with protecting the Saints from any long-term Jewish persecution. [see article]

To have an event on the scale of the Mount Vesuvius explosion just a few years later in 79 A.D., where possibly a large number of important Romans were wiped out, seems to offer the historical possibility that the Romans were being repaid for their fanatical attack on Jerusalem, even though it would have a good effect for many Christians, and that the loss of those Romans in Pompeii would also help to protect Christians from even more aggressive Roman persecution. It would be interesting if someone could review any detailed historical records of these times to see if any of my speculations contain any truth.

Various articles indicate the level of continuing Jewish persecution of the new Christians. Here is one:

Main article: Persecution of Christians in the New Testament

Early Christianity began as a sect among Second Temple Jews, and according to the New Testament account, Pharisees, including Paul of Tarsus prior to his conversion to Christianity, persecuted early Christians. The early Christians preached the second coming of a Messiah which did not conform to their religious teachings. However, feeling that their beliefs were supported by Jewish scripture, Christians had been hopeful that their countrymen would accept their faith. Despite individual conversions, the vast majority of Judean Jews did not become Christians.

Claudia Setzer asserts that, "Jews did not see Christians as clearly separate from their own community until at least the middle of the second century." Thus, acts of Jewish persecution of Christians fall within the boundaries of synagogue discipline and were so perceived by Jews acting and thinking as the established community. The Christians, on the other hand, saw themselves as persecuted rather than "disciplined."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians

It would be interesting to know if by considering persecution of Christians an internal matter, "synagogue discipline," that allowed the Jews to kill Christians where they would not be authorized to do so under Roman law. Why were the Jews allowed to kill Stephen but not Christ? Was it merely because they stoned him instead of crucifying him?

We do know that the Jerusalem church lasted much longer than the church in the New World, which was completely wiped out after 300 years, where the old world church was still doing reasonably well after 300 years, and continued on to basically create Western civilization where individual freedom was considered extremely valuable and necessary to human life.

The size of the early church

Is there any way to guess at the size of the church perhaps within a year of the death of the Savior? If we tally up the impressions Christ and his apostles made on many men, and, through them, their families, the numbers add up very quickly. We can probably assume that there were many events that were not recorded in the scriptures, so that would lead us to further multiply the available numbers. Here are a few examples:

Acts 4:1 And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them,

2 Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

3 And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day: for it was now eventide.

4 Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.

Here the apostles boldly used an area near the Temple, it appears, and added 5000 men. If they were all heads of families of five people, that would be 25,000 in one instance.

Matt. 14:19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

So another 5,000 men, or 25,000 people were added in all.

Matt. 15:29 And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there.

30 And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet; and he healed them:

31 Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.

32 ¶ Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.

33 And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?

34 And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes.

35 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.

36 And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

37 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full.

38 And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.

This time another 4,000 men, or 20,000 people were added in all.

We don't often talk about where the multitudes appeared from to celebrate Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but surely there were thousands of them if they could pave a long path for the king with their garments. It seems reasonable to assume that many of them were church members at that point.

Matt. 21:8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.

9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?

11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased,

Christ was certainly doing all he could to stir up a hornet's nest by cleansing the temple and then healing the blind and lame in the Temple and then hearing his followers shout Hosanna in the Temple. We don't have an estimate of crowd size for this event, but based on the crowd sizes he typically drew together and healed and converted, that might amount to another 5,000 men or 25,000 total family members.

Here we might take note of another interesting provocation on the part of Christ: Basically, on the first day that he announced his role as the Messiah, by speaking at the synagogue in Nazareth, he also infuriated most of the listeners so that they tried to kill him, and apparently, he never returned there again. Luke 4:16-30.  He obviously often stirred up very strong feelings among his observers. It is too bad in this case that his neighbors who knew him well could not perceive the good he had come to do.

The Day of Pentecost events added 3,000 men or 15,000 in all:

Acts 2:41 Then they that gladly received his [Peter's] word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

43 And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common;

45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. [Recall that the Christians were quickly leaving Jerusalem to escape persecution.]

46 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,

47 Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

So, we have estimated so far 25,000+25,000+20,000+25,000+15,000 = 110,000 and we have only described a few day's work for the Savior and his apostles. Based on this small sample of data about early church growth, I am going to guess that there were at least 200,000 church members within a few months of Christ's death, and at least 400,000 church members within a year of his death.

We need to say something about the members' economic arrangements:

Acts 2:44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common;

45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

We should recall that the Christians were quickly leaving Jerusalem to escape persecution. They had only delayed their leaving because Christ himself had requested they remain until the Day of Pentecost for a special experience. One example of their desire to quickly leave Jerusalem seems to come from the story about how Saul became Paul. I don't recall that any of the travels of Christ or the travels of the apostles had taken them anywhere near Damascus, Syria where they might have converted some local residents. (The scriptures seem to tell us that Caesarea Philippi was the northernmost extent of Christ's journeys, still quite a distance from Damascus, and no specific missionary work seems to have happened at that time.) We should probably assume that a large group of church members in Damascus was there because they had left the Jerusalem area where nearly all conversions had taken place. We might also wonder whether Saul was headed for Damascus, simply because his own actions, including the death of Stephen, Acts 7:54-60, had driven thousands of church members out of Jerusalem. Acts 11:19. If there were still many thousands of church members in Jerusalem, why wouldn't Saul be attacking them there rather than making the strenuous journey of about 135 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus where the outcome of his efforts could not be known in advance?

Ananias and Sapphira and Christian civilization

I wanted to cover some of this New Testament "shock and awe" material in preparation for perhaps the most powerful "shock and awe" incident recorded in the New Testament concerning the story of Ananias and Sapphira.  It may not actually exceed in significance having perhaps 1000 resurrected beings wandering the streets of Jerusalem a few days after Christ's resurrection, but it did have an enormous impact when it happened, and its correct interpretation has an overwhelming logical impact today, bringing some of that early "shock and awe" into our times.

It is important to revisit this incident because the usual account and interpretation of the story is not only wrong, but is exactly the opposite of the content and significance of the real event, and its constant incorrect retelling has been used for a damaging purpose in teaching the Gospel. 

What a Christian civilization is and is not

The story of Ananias and Sapphira has been used millions of times as part of an argument that one's religious salvation requires giving up large amounts of personal freedom, even though, I would argue, personal freedom is the first principle of the gospel, without which the gospel of Christ becomes the gospel of Satan.

In the ideal civilization, recommended and commanded by God in many different ways, there are no more important principles than that of maximum personal freedom concerning religion and politics. That naturally includes the maximum freedom of individual ownership and management of property, and that maximum freedom of property can only occur when a society leaves the maximum amount of discretion to the individual as to how he administers his resources through nongovernment charitable processes concerning his family and others. Today's aggressively socialist countries throughout the world do all in their power to extract through taxes on the people all the necessary resources for operating a secular government, but they also go perhaps 10 times beyond that minimum needed amount for good government and also try to take over all legitimate charitable and welfare functions as well, forcing a practical and secular religion of atheism on their people for the very purpose of crushing out the competing loyalties and mechanisms of Christianity.

It appears that the first and most powerful argument of Satan against Christianity is the biggest of "big lies" that the only way to be acceptable to Christ is to live perfectly the laws of Satan which always involve maximum force and control and maximum centralization of everything under principles which are variously known as socialism/Marxism/communism. The presence of the slightest hint of any of that set of principles is a sure sign that Satanism is being preached to a greater or lesser degree. Satan wants total control of everyone in his celestial slave state, with everyone marching in nice little rows and giving him all of their allegiance and all of their resources.

Ananias and Sapphira

Perhaps the single biggest piece of propaganda on this topic, the greatest single story and argument in the endless preaching of the various communalism/communism/Satanism perversions of Christianity comes to us from a conscious distortion and lie of the blackest and most egregious sort extracted from a single story in the New Testament.

This is the story about Ananias and Sapphira which appears in Acts 5. Ostensibly, as it is so often told, it is a story about how all the members of the church at that time were required, as a condition of membership, to convert all their goods into money and give it all to the church, making them paupers and giving themselves over to the complete temporal control of their church leaders. Based on that Acts 5 story, today we are told that tithing, which only requires 10% of our resources annually, instead of the supposedly original 100%, is the literally "lesser" law that has been given to us because we are too weak and foolish and faithless to live the 100% consecration law. If members complain that paying 10% is too much, they are then threatened with a reversion to the 100% level as a kind of punishment for their rebellion.

However, all of this propaganda about a church's right to control its members and all their property as a condition of achieving salvation is totally wrong, nothing but the manipulations and contrivances of evil people who wish to control and exploit the larger mass of people who have good intentions but are naïve and thus are easily exploited, making their leaders even more culpable for taking advantage of their trust.

Actually, I believe what we have here is Peter, in effect, denying that as a church leader he makes any claim on whatever property they may have. It was their property to do with as they wished. Although this is certainly a confusing situation, I take this all to mean that there was something else going on here besides "having all things in common." The fatal lie was not that Ananias and Sapphira were not turning over the full amount of the proceeds of their sale, or that they had any duty to do so, but that they were spending some particular amount of money to try to ingratiate themselves into the church organization, perhaps as a way to gain control of it and subvert it to some extent. To repeat, it's not even clear that these two people had been baptized – most likely not. In the spirit of "following the money," which affects all public activity, this looks like a good place for a transcribing priest to have modified the story slightly to make it more likely that he and others like him could collect money from ordinary members.

Acts 5:1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,

2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?

4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

As will be explained in much more detail later on, I think the interpretation I am giving here is accurate. As mentioned in verse 13 and 14, the ordinary members rushed to join the church in multitudes. That would be quite irrational if they feared that the tiniest accounting mistake on their part could end up in their deaths. That bit of logic should tell us that something else was indeed going on here.

Acts 5:12 And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.

13 And of the rest [rulers] durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.

14 And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)

It seems that the first thing that is forgotten in religious matters is that men are meant to be as free as Adam, who had no man who even COULD claim to rule over him. The book entitled The World In The Grip Of An Idea presents in great detail the constant attacks on man's freedom using sophistry and propaganda to convince man to accept his own bondage as actually desirable. Everyone knows about the war in heaven, but not everyone seems to realize that the intensity of that war has not receded in the least, and is still raging, now merely relocated to an earthly realm where real pain and real death can be used as further means of persuasion – forces presumably far beyond the means of argument available to competing advocates in the spirit world.

We can be sure that the use of any means of force, whether extreme arguments or threats or intimidation or mockery, or more direct physical attacks, are all counter to God's will for us and need to be resisted resolutely, even when they come from sources that seem to be within the church itself. This especially includes its leaders, who have the greatest temptation to take the wrong ideological position because they are the ones who stand to immediately benefit from impinging on individual freedom and receiving the world's goods in return.

Christ passed a series of critical temptations at the beginning of his earthly ministry, but most other men fail those tests. Such great men as Lehi, Nephi, King Benjamin, King Mosiah, Alma, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor all passed the test, even while under great pressure, but Wilford Woodruff, and all his contemporary and subsequent "prophets, seers, and revelators," have succumbed to those temptations and now defend their choices as matters of THEIR personal freedom and calling and "keys," even if other members are very specifically not treated the same way.

The temptations of Christ concerned earthly fame, power, and riches. Luke 4:1-13. He rejected them all, and instructed his disciples to do the same, but the results have been mixed in times since. Unfortunately, today, acceptance of these corrupt and anti-scriptural principles of earthly organization is now a prerequisite for being ordained to the apostleship, starting at the time of Wilford Woodruff and his doctrinal and policy disputes with Moses Thatcher and B. H. Roberts.

We might note that early in church history it was voted that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery should receive each receive a salary (of about $3000, I believe, a very large sum at the time, certainly equal to at least ($3,000*28.50=) $85,500 in today's currency.). Later that vote was rescinded, and I know of no repeated votes on the subject. I assume that kind of salary was far beyond the means of the church members at that time. They could barely survive themselves, let alone pay someone else's salary. (Find the church history citation on that point.)

https://www.officialdata.org/1832-dollars-in-2017

I think it is significant that the Articles of Faith document prepared by Joseph Smith makes no mention of tithing or of any other church contributions as part of this summary "creed." As an indicator of church policy change on this point over the years, we might notice that the church-prepared materials on "Self-reliance" place tithing (paid to the central offices) as the number one goal to be achieved by those wishing to achieve self-reliance. This may indeed be a church goal, but member-level goals should be much different, since they should be grounded in real charity. If Joseph Smith gave "tithing" the overwhelming importance assigned to it by the current church for members to be in good standing, he would surely have included tithing paid to the central offices as among the first articles of faith.

The most fascinating thing about the story of Ananias and Sapphira which appears in Acts 5 is that it was meant to teach, and did teach, at the time, the exact opposite of the lesson that it is used to teach today in a church where the first principle of salvation is paying tithing, and all other factors are clustered at a distant second level of importance. (Tithing as necessary fire insurance, etc.)  Obviously, a paid ministry clergy WOULD make tithing the number one doctrine since their desired generous livelihood depends on that constant income, independent of what their personal resources or needs might be. And, speaking sarcastically, how could the members possibly get along with only the Scriptures and personal revelation to guide them on every imaginable gospel question? Wouldn't they naturally need a huge set of Levites to help keep them in line?

Here is the article that provided the insight that all of our usual interpretations of the story of Ananias and Sapphira completely miss the point and are directly backwards from the truth. I don't think I could improve on his presentation or even shorten it much, by rewriting it, so I will just quote almost the entire thing:

Preachers for years have told us that Ananias and Sapphira were believers because they wanted to see it that way and they wanted their hearers to understand it that way. Fear of judgment on the believer is one of the false teachings out there that many use to keep the saints walking in obedience. It doesn’t work, but they try it any way. But the New Covenant knows nothing of a fear of judgment on the believer. The very “idea” is a misnomer. As John wrote, “We have confidence in the day of judgment and we have no fear for as Jesus is so are we in this world.”

In fact, the most glaring fact found in Chapter 5 of the Book of Acts that proves Ananias and Sapphira were not believers is the very event of judgment itself that fell on these two people. It should be our first reaction to say that they must have not been believers, but because we are not confident in the bold assertion of God Himself that “He will be merciful to all our iniquities and remember our sin no more” in this New Covenant because of the death of His Son, Jesus, we wonder about this scene.

The chapter does not state clearly that Ananias and Sapphira were believers, nor does it say that they were unbelievers. The reader must read the context with an understanding that judgment simply cannot fall on a believer, not a true believer, otherwise we don’t have a New Covenant and all the promises of God relative to the work of His Son are meaningless. So, what clues can we find in the passage that indicate they were not believers. To begin with, every time Luke refers to a believer in the book of Acts, he prefaces it by saying, “a certain disciple named . . .” But in the case of Ananias and Sapphira Luke writes, “A man named Annanias, with his wife Sapphira . . .” Because of this one statement one could say Luke is clearly saying that they were not believers. Also, Peter refers to Ananias as one in whom “Satan has filled his heart.” [Acts 5:3] The same phrase used of Judas and certainly not a phrase you can use when referring to any believer for the believer has a new heart and is filled with the Holy Spirit. As Peter says in the meeting in Jerusalem, recorded by Luke in chapter 15 of Acts, God “cleanses the heart” of all who believe on Jesus. Another clue is the reference to “the rest of the group” that Ananias and Sapphira came out of being in fear. The “rest of that group” that Ananias and Sapphira came out of “dared not try” the same thing. Ananias and Sapphira saw a good thing and tried to buy themselves a place among the believers.

Also, Luke writes that all the more people were constantly being added to the church. People were flocking to the church. True believers. There was no fear that they would suffer the same fate as Ananias and Sapphira if they committed some sin, but rather they had heard the joyful news that all their sins were placed on the Christ and through Him they could receive the complete forgiveness of all sin so that sin would no longer even be imputed to them ever again. And they also understood that there was a God in heaven, a Heavenly Father, who was going to watch over His sheep and protect His sheep from those who would try to enter in to the flock by another door, other than through faith in Jesus. This kind of drastic action is not something God does to unbelievers on a regular basis because He has provided forgiveness for all people and He is constantly reaching out to the unbeliever in great patience and mercy, but at the inception of the tiny church He was zealous to make clear that the only currency He recognizes in His kingdom is the currency of faith, not money.

The only fact in the entire passage that may indicate that Ananias and Sapphira were believers is the fact that they were trying to join the church. That’s it. That’s the only fact that might lead someone to see them as believers. All the other facts and clues in the passage clearly argue that they are unbelievers without doubt. Think of all the people in our society that join churches across the world every day for whatever reason (social, business, moral, etc.) and they are no more a true believer than, as it has been said, being in a garage makes you a car. Hopefully those people will become believers as they hear the good news but to say that Ananias and Sapphira were believers based on this one fact alone is not only intellectually dishonest but a sloppy reading of the text. It is sad to me to think of the millions of believers through the centuries that have been put in fear of judgment because of preachers who preached this passage wrongly. Without realizing it, they were doing the work of Satan himself. For as Paul said, think it not strange that Satan himself is able to make himself appear as an angel of light and his ministers as ministers of righteousness.

I’m so glad we can with all confidence proclaim the good news to all that whosoever believes on Jesus shall receive the forgiveness of all sin, past, present and future, and be given the gift of the Holy Spirit, joining them to God Himself through Christ. As Jesus said so clearly, “He who believes on Me shall not come into judgment but has already passed from death and into life!”

"Reconciling the Story of Ananias and Sapphira with the New Covenant of Grace" http://seeinggrace.com/blog/?p=25

We should note that this discussion is about the Protestant concept of the boundless nature of the Savior's grace, not about whether or not one should pay tithing or other resources to some religious official as a matter of religious duty required to gain salvation. However, the logic applies almost equally well in either case. Many Protestants do not teach or accept the concept of tithing, the Quakers being one group which is adamantly against it, based on their analysis of the Scriptures and of church history, but these Protestant commentators are concerned just as strongly about religious freedom and freedom from bondage to preachers who try to frighten people into contributing to their personal cause, their one-man priestcraft ambitions. So, I believe the argument works quite well either way.

This story of Ananias and Sapphira raises many other issues and has many other consequences for today's LDS religion, and all those other factors need to be spelled out.

Just as with the law of Moses or any other of many paid ministry situations, from the very beginning of the church in our time it was plagued with constant attempts to turn it into a source of profit for ambitious preachers. Enemies of the gospel within the church were constantly trying to turn it into corrupt but profitable priestcraft, while at the same time enemies on the outside of the church were charging Mormons with the evils of preaching required communalism in hopes of frightening people into not joining the church (which would likely lower the priestcraft income of the outsiders making false allegations).

There were innumerable discussions of the proper rules of religious life, with many asserting over and over again that only a strong communalism could meet the requirements for salvation (while also incidentally providing those advocates with a convenient temporal salvation or living of their own).

Joseph Smith constantly fought that strong tendency toward required communalism (alias paid ministry).

Here is another quotation defining the economic relationship of the members to the church:

Tuesday, 8. - I spent the day with Elder Rigdon in visiting Elder Cahoon at the place he selected for his residence, and in attending to some of our private, personal affairs; also in the afternoon I answered the questions which were frequently asked me, while on my last journey but one from Kirtland to Missouri, as printed in the Elders Journal, Vol. I, Number II, pages 28 and 29, as follows:

...Sixth - "Do the Mormons believe in having all things in common?"

No.

...Twelfth - "Do the people have to give up their money when they join his Church?" No other requirement than to bear their proportion of the expenses of the Church, and support the poor.

...I published the forgoing answers to save myself the trouble of repeating the same a thousand times over and over again.¹⁰      (HC 3:28-29. May 8, 1838, Far West.)

The comment "no other requirement than to bear their proportion of the expenses of the church, and support the poor," makes it clear that no complicated joinder of property was required. The "thousand times over" comment shows that the whole topic was one which people tediously refused to understand.

Kent W. Huff, Joseph Smith's United Order: A Non-Communalistic Interpretation (Orem, Ut., Cedar Fort, Inc., 1988), p.26.

This brings up the undying theme of the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

We might notice that the topic of tithing is not even mentioned here. There were indeed some financial transactions going on to care for the poor and help with the expenses of the church, but none of those were mandatory and none of them came under the category of religiously required tithing. As the headnote to Doctrine and Covenants 119 points out, the term "tithing" was used occasionally, but it meant nothing more than general free will contributions. Somehow, beginning with the fourth president of the church, old scriptural entries that were interpreted one way for 66 years, were suddenly reversed to mean the opposite for the convenience of the current leaders.

Brigham Young had also continued to resist these never-ending suggestions of religiously required financial advantages over others (some are always more equal than others in these strange communalist arrangements). He very specifically rejected the usual interpretation of Acts 5, but apparently did not have the historical background to explain the exact series of errors embodied in the story as usually told. Here is Brigham Young's treatment of the question. It was clear to him that whatever the doctrinal or historical issues may be, it would be a complete disaster as a practical matter and so should not be considered:

Those who are in favor of an equality in property say that that is the doctrine taught in the New Testament. True, the Savior said to the young man, “Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me,” in order to try him and prove whether he had faith or not.

In the days of the Apostles, the brethren sold their possessions and laid them at the Apostles’ feet. And where did many of those brethren go to? To naught, to confusion and destruction. Could those Apostles keep the Church together, on those principles? No. Could they build up the kingdom on those principles? No, they never could. Many of those persons were good men, but they were filled with enthusiasm, insomuch that if they owned a little possession they would place it at the feet of the Apostles.

Will such a course sustain the kingdom? No. Did it, in the days of the Apostles? No. Such a policy would be the ruin of this people, and scatter them to the four winds. We are to be guided by superior knowledge, by a higher influence and power. JD 4:29 BY Aug. 17, 1856 SLC. Discussed in Kent W. Huff, Brigham Young’s United Order: A Contextual Interpretation (Springville, Utah, Cedar Fort, Inc., 1992), p.127-8

We can at least say that Brigham Young got part of his scriptural history correct when he notes that the early Jerusalem members were scattered to the four winds, something he definitely wanted to avoid in Utah, although he doesn't describe here all the underlying factors in the Jerusalem situation.

I can't claim credit for these insights into Acts 5, although I can take credit for realizing during most of my life that there was a critical question contained in the normal telling of the story, and then asking an important question about other possible interpretations of this story which might have a contrary lesson to teach, and then confirming that Joseph Smith knew the right answer and was not misled by this story, as is indicated by a single word change in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. That single word substitution by Joseph Smith can serve as a powerful "smoking gun" level of evidence to indicate that those who came after him and taught a contrary interpretation of this New Testament story, as began with Wilford Woodruff and his two counselors and the 10 apostles holding office at the time, were at least extremely negligent in their studies of the most important principles of the gospel or, more likely, since this has always been a source of lively discussion and strong disagreement among members and leaders, they were conscious and intentional participants in a serious distortion of the gospel for their own personal benefit.

Brigham Young worries about prosperous saints

Brigham Young expressed his concern more than once that the Saints would only follow the gospel carefully as long as they were poor and persecuted.  He feared that as soon as they had a few extra worldly resources, they would start to rely on the arm of flesh and forget their faith in the Lord who had taken them through so much.  However, I think he was worrying about the wrong thing, as things turned out.  As church members improved their economic situation, the church members stayed faithful generally, but it is the church leaders who went rogue.  When the church members were poor, there was nothing that could be extracted from them to build a lucrative paid ministry system.  The leaders would "make a virtue of necessity" by not trying to collect money enough to allow them to have a salary, so that they could be proud of themselves for being so humble.  However, as soon as the members' economic situation improved, that meant that there was some excess which the church leaders could then siphon off to create their own class society with them being the beneficiaries.  And that is where we are today.

Ideally, the extra resources which the Saints were able to collect together should have been used for charitable purposes to make the Mormon society all that it ought to be and also use those resources to spread charity and prosperity and success to the rest of the nation.  But instead, the church leaders saw this small amount of excess as a chance for them to take that excess and spend it on themselves, including doing some prideful empire building and building up a permanent bureaucracy, a faithful staff of retainers, a king's court, who would offer them continual adulation.  The idea of vastly expanding charitable operations seems never to have occurred to them, but that is apparently typical of all priestcraft situations.  The only charity they recognized was themselves.

Joseph Smith's trillion-dollar one-word retranslation of Acts 5:13

I recently discovered something extremely fascinating about Acts 5 and the story about Ananias and Sapphira. I have presented above an interpretation which is the complete opposite of what most LDS people have probably heard about this story and its historical and doctrinal and economic meaning. Simply because we have heard this interpretation of the story possibly presented thousands of times as the exact opposite of what was actually true, a few people might not be willing to easily accept this opposite interpretation. The fascinating thing is that Joseph Smith appears to have completely understood the correct interpretation and even left some important evidence of his correct interpretation by changing one critical word in the Book of Acts.

More accurately, Joseph Smith's trillion dollar one-word retranslation of Acts 5:13 could have saved us about $1 trillion in mostly wasted and even counterproductive tithing collections if church members and leaders had not forgotten or misrepresented the correct interpretation of the Ananias and Sapphira story.

The one-word change

Joseph Smith certainly was adamant about presenting the correct interpretation of this story about Ananias and Sapphira, or at least the important related doctrinal points, and he did so many times throughout his life, never wavering. Brigham Young perfectly agreed with him on the relevant doctrinal points, although Brigham Young seems not to have been as well-informed as Joseph Smith on the actual scriptural history and interpretation. Here is the relevant text from the New Testament:

Acts 5:13 And of the ^arest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.

Note 13a  JST Acts 5:13 … rulers …

New reading:

Acts 5:13 And of the rulers durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.

Based on an apparently self-interested and intentional misunderstanding of the New Testament text, over the last 120 years the LDS church has collected and redirected at least $1 trillion of membership money into uses that were never authorized under the policies of Jesus Christ. Over that 120 year period the church leadership gradually build up a mythology based on misinterpreting the Scriptures and the history and the general doctrine of the Church of Christ, all for the purpose of creating a burgeoning paid ministry at the expense of the membership, where that process basically ended the original policies of individual charity and required the redirecting of all that money to support a very expensive and wasteful paid ministry.

Probably since about 1900, the church has consistently misrepresented the meaning of the story of Ananias and Sapphira found in Acts chapter 5 of the New Testament. Numerous misinterpretations of that story are continually propagated. The story is read as indicating that the early Saints lived in a form of required communalism, where everyone was required to put all their property into a single pool. But that requirement never existed. People had their own private property and only ever contributed to the needs of others as they saw fit. Without that complete and continual religious and political freedom, the concept of charity has no meaning at all.

Multiple major misinterpretations have been continually propagated. The logic goes like this: The true state of the gospel is to be in complete bondage to someone else. (Wasn't that Lucifer's plan?) To be acceptable to God one has to give up all private property and donate it to the church and become a pauper. Since that is difficult to do, the Lord has given us the lesser law of tithing which says we only have to give 10% to the church to earn a watered-down salvation. The threat is always in the air that if anyone complains about paying 10%, then the rule will be instituted of everyone having to pay 100%. Not only that, but if someone lies about paying their 100%, they might be struck down like Ananias and Sapphira were. But all of the elements of this narrative are lies and are gross misinterpretations of every involved factor.

If today's typical LDS interpretation is correct, one might wonder why, after the Ananias and Sapphira events, everyone wasn't instantly frightened out of their wits about the thought of joining the church instead of joining it joyfully in large numbers, as they did. I believe the answer is that the lesson they took from this event was completely different from the one today's leaders try to impose on it. This fatal incident was strong evidence that impostors were not to be tolerated and that there was good reason to believe that those who joined the church did so without fear that this church organization would be corrupted by the same people who had corrupted the law of Moses version of the gospel. That promise of purity would cause the true believers to join more quickly and more joyously than before as opposed to filling them with dread that they would be struck down at the slightest provocation.

Simon Magus

There was another case that might have ended in a way similar to that of Ananias and Sapphira, but instead ended happily, with a new and better informed church member keeping his money and his life:

Acts 8:9 But there was a certain man, called Simon [Magus], which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:

10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.

11 And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.

12 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

13 Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.

14 Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John:

15 Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost:

16 (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)

17 Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,

19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.

20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not aright in the sight of God.

22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

23 For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

24 Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.

Barnabas the Cyprian Levite

Here we have another case mentioned in close proximity to the Ananias and Sapphira case. In this case, it was all done without any problems. The Scriptures are again preaching "all things common," but also typically leaving out the rather critical information that the Saints were all leaving town this fast as they could:

Acts 4:32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that bought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.

34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,

35 And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

36 And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,

37 Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

One puzzling element of this story is that Joses/Barnabas was apparently a Levite, who might thus be living off the tithing of the church members, but who also lived in Cyprus which might mean that the law of Moses did not function that way in Cyprus, meaning that he might have had no special position as a member of the professional priesthood. That would certainly make it easier for him to make the transition to being a church member who earned his own living.