Today June 27 - marks 154 years since the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith, the Patriarch, in 1844 in a jail in Carthage, Ill., where they supposedly were under protective custody.

It is somewhat difficult in these times to comprehend the lawlessness that existed in those frontier areas. Promises by political leaders were all too often ignored by mobs of angry men who were riled to the boiling point by evil and conspiring leaders.The Saints had built a prosperous city in Nauvoo. It was the largest settlement in Illinois. Others envied its prosperity and coveted the possessions of the people. Many thought that if they could drive the Saints from their lovely homes they could take possession of them and profit thereby. Many politicians saw a growing power among the unified members of the Church, especially with the candidacy of Joseph Smith for the presidency of the United States. Various clergy saw a system of religious government that they could not deter. Others challenged the doctrines of the Church as it proclaimed them to be a restoration of the true Church of Jesus Christ.

Thus Joseph Smith was beset on every hand, but he willingly went as an innocent man to the Carthage Jail thinking he would be given a fair hearing by government officials. But what he got was a salvo of gunfire that killed Hyrum and then him. Elder John Taylor, a companion of the Prophet in the jail cell was critically wounded by the gunfire. Elder Willard Richards received only a superficial wound and because of his previous medical training was able to attend to Elder Taylor's wounds and save his life. A bullet that could have killed Elder Taylor struck his pocket watch instead and recorded the fateful time as 5:16 p.m.

One who knew first-hand wrote of these circumstances: "The enemies of truth were sure that they had now destroyed the work. And yet it lives, greater and stronger after the lapse of years. It is indestructible for it is the work of God. And knowing that it is the eternal work of God, we know that Joseph Smith who established it was a Prophet holy and pure." (Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet, by George Q. Cannon, 1888, p. 527.)

This great work does live on through the continuing leadership of the 14 men who have succeeded Joseph Smith and bear the same Prophet's mantle as he did. Joseph Smith's name is still had for good and evil among the peoples of the world, but believing Latter-day Saints know him as a prophet-leader without earthly peer.

In 1933 a very fitting tribute was penned about the Prophet by John Henry Evans, whose book, Joseph Smith an American Prophet, was published nationally by the Macmillan Company of New York City.

Though some of the statistics cited by the author in 1933 have dramatically improved, here is that thoughtful description: "Here is a man who was born in the stark hills of Vermont; who was reared in the backwoods of New York; who never looked inside a college or high school; who lived in six States, no one of which would own him during his lifetime; who spent months in the vile prisons of the period; who, even when he had his freedom, was hounded like a fugitive; who was covered once with a coat of tar and feathers, and left for dead; who with his following was driven by irate neighbors from New York to Ohio, from Ohio to Missouri, and from Missouri to Illinois; and who, at the unripe age of thirty-eight, was shot to death by a mob with painted faces.

"Yet this man became mayor of the biggest town in Illinois and the state's most prominent citizen, the commander of the largest body of trained soldiers in the nation outside the Federal army, the founder of cities and of a university, and aspired to become President of the United States.

"He wrote a book which has baffled the literary critics for a hundred years and which is today more widely read than any other volume save the Bible. On the threshold of an organizing age he established the most nearly perfect social mechanism in the modern world, and developed a religious philosophy that challenges anything of the kind in history, for completeness and cohesion. And he set up the machinery for an economic system that would take the brood of Fears out of the heart of man - the fear of want through sickness, old age, unemployment, and poverty.

"In thirty nations are men and women who look upon him as a greater leader than Moses and a greater prophet than Isaiah; his disciples now number close to a million; and already a granite shaft pierces the sky over the place where he was born, and another over the place where he is credited with having received the inspiration for his Book."

Praise be to Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration!