Minutes and Discourses, 6–8 April 1844, as Reported by William Clayton
Source Note
General conference of the church, Minutes, and JS, Discourses, Nauvoo, Hancock Co., IL, 6–8 Apr. 1844; handwriting of ; dockets in handwriting of Robert L. Campbell and Jonathan Grimshaw; thirty-eight pages; General Church Minutes, CHL.
You have either got to sustain them or go to hell. If you cant bear the doctrine clap your hands. You are got old enough to choose for yourselves— choose life or death which ever you choose. You may choose refuse— receive or reject and no body has a word to say. If they kill these men they will only damn themselves and save them. They are such characters because God has spoken to them— he has revealed himself to them— he has talked to them as a father to his child, You have men that you can scare nor turn out of the way— their face is set right before them and if you undertake to turn them out of their course they may kick you out of the way. The wicked have only one way to rid themselves and that is to kill them for you cant court favors of them. If the world love or hate them they do it voluntarly— they never gave them any cause for eithe[r] You have got a man that dont want to forsake God and if he did he could not— he could not turn away from God if he were to try. He dont say what will this man or that man say but what does my father say. Some of you say we could put up with these men if we could see them repent you may as well look for hell to repent. I hope you will never forget this point of the history of the church He would resume his subject of the kingdom. and if any one would hang him for treason he hoped they now get their— gallows and rope ready for he would tell his story.
He referred to the complaints of office seekers because there men are in their road— Great men are afraid they are going to be ruined because God said he would build a kingdom. God intends to keep them fretting and howling all the time. God raises his kingdom far above all human law. His people are bound by the laws of heaven which are far more strict that human laws We are above the laws all the while and that is the reason why they never could reach us— We are ready to support them, pay our taxes &c— [p. 10]