Joseph Smith Rebukes Guards

Parley P. Pratt, a member of the early Mormon Church, was imprisoned with Joseph Smith one night in the Richmond Jail. As guards in “dreadful blasphemies and filthy language” boasted of their participation in the Saints’ persecution, Joseph rebuked them in the name of Jesus Christ in a “voice of thunder”: “SILENCE, ye fiends of the infernal pit. … Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS INSTANT!” The “quailing guards … begged his pardon.” Parley wrote, “Dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri.”

To learn more about Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), visit their websites at http://www.lds.org and http://www.mormon.org.