June 27th

June 27, 1839 - Wilford Woodruff writes: "Among the vast number of the Keys of the Kingdom of God Joseph presented the following one to the Twelve for there benefit in there experience & travels in the flesh which is as follows: In order to detect the devel when he transforms himself nigh unto an angel of light. When an angel of God appears unto man face to face in personage & reaches out his hand unto the man & he takes hold of the angels hand & feels a substance the same as one man would in Shaking hands with another he may then know that it is an angel of God, & he should place all Confidence in him. Such personages or angels are Saints with there resurrected Bodies. But if a personage appears unto man & offers him his hand & the man takes hold of it & he feels nothing or does not sense any substance he may know it is the devel, for when a Saint whose body is not resurrected appears unto man in the flesh he will not offer him his hand for this is against the law given him & in keeping in mind these things we may detec the devil that he decieved us not."

June 27, 1840 - William Clayton writes in his diary: "At night Brother Green spake in tongues. The power of Satan was powerfully manifested upon some of the Sisters. Sarah [Crooks of whom the married Clayton was attracted towards] gave me a pint of porter."

June 27, 1843 - Vilate Kimball writes to her husband Heber C. Kimball: "I have had a visit from brother Parley [Pratt] and his wife, they are truly converted it appears that J[oseph] has taught him some principles and told him his privilege, and even appointed one for him. I dare not tell you who it is, you would be astonished and I guess some tried. She has been to me for council. I told her I did not wish to advise in such matters. Sister [Mary Ann] Pratt has been rageing against these things. She told me herself that the devil had been in her until within a few days past. She said the Lord had shown her it was all right. She wants Parley to go ahead, says she will do all in her power to help him; they are so ingagued I fear they will run to[o] fast. They ask me many questions on principle. I told them I did not know much and I rather they would go to those that had authority to teach." The "appointed one" was Elizabeth Brotherton, the sister of Martha Brotherton, who, had refused Brigham Young's offer of plural marriage (after being locked in a room) and gone public on the subject.

June 27, 1844, 10 a.m. - Illinois governor Thomas Ford arrives to disband the state militia, then travels with some of his troops to Nauvoo. Although he spares the city the bloody assault planned by the Illinois militia, he leaves Joseph Smith under protection of hostile Carthage Greys, knowingly enabling the assassination.

June 27, 1844 - Before leaving Carthage Jail at 1:30 p.m., Stephen Markham listens as Joseph Smith says he has lost the spirit of God for disobedience in returning to Nauvoo.

June 27, 1844, 5 p.m. - A large group of men approaches Carthage Jail disguised with blackened faces. Joseph Smith at first assumes it is the Nauvoo Legion he has secretly ordered to rescue him. However, major-general Jonathan Dunham has disobeyed orders knowing that a prison escape would beam the annihilation of Nauvoo. Instead the vigilantes storm the upstairs room, instantly killing Hyrum Smith and severely wounding John Taylor. Joseph defends himself with a pistol (smuggled in by Cyrus H. Wheelock who had a written pass from Governor Ford allowing him to go "unmolested" in and out of the jail), fatally wounding two men in the mob. He then jumps out of the window, and begins to shout the Masonic cry of distress: "Oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow's son?" Masons in the crowd show no mercy and prop the semi-conscious Smith against a nearby well and shoot him several times at point-blank range. The Carthage Grays arrive at the jail moments later from their encampment half a mile away.. Willard Richards is the only one not killed or severely wounded. Mormons immediately attribute this to the fact that he alone wore the undergarment given to endowed persons.

June 27, 1845 - On the anniversary of Joseph Smith’s murder, the Quorum of Twelve prays for God's vengeance on those who shed the prophet's blood. Six months later this formal prayer (sometimes called an "oath") of vengeance would become part of the endowment ceremony. This same day Lucy Mack Smith relates three visions that revealed to her that William Smith was already church president by virtue of his patriarchal office. Brigham Young, however, writes to Wilford Woodruff : "Since his [William Smith's] return to Nauvoo... he seems to think he ought to be President of the Church, and since he was ordained a Patriarch to the whole church he has endeavored to get up an influence among the saints to persuade them that the office of Patriarch necessarily makes him president .... He seems determined to cause us trouble, but our prayers continually ascend to our heavenly father to overrule William and save him if possible." Four months later William is dropped from the Council of the Twelve and then excommunicated. After relocating in Utah Brigham Young has Lucy Mack Smith's biography of Joseph Smith rewritten to eliminate its favorable description of William Smith.

June 27, 1847 - Pioneer company crosses the flat, almost imperceptible 7,750-foot-high continental divide at South Pass. The elevation is measured by Orson Pratt's barometer to assure they have crossed the high point.

June 27, 1864 - Strike for higher wages by laborers doing construction on East Temple Street (now Main Street) and on Salt Lake City Hall. DESERET NEWS on June 29 criticizes their "coercion . . . when the same end might be obtained in a more agreeable way."

June 27, 1871 - Brigham Young: "The Garden of Eden was where Jackson Co. is now in Mo. & when Adam was driven out, he crossed the river into what is now Daviess Co. The City of Enoch stood where the Gulf of Mexico is now, but these things are not written."

June 27, 1875 - Apostle Wilford Woodruff preaches that spirits "come from their eternal Father and their eternal Mother unto whom they were born in the eternal world."

June 27, 1882 - Council of Fifty (which includes First Presidency and Twelve) votes to accept as "the word and will of God" yesterday's revelation on polygamy, as well as another revelation John Taylor dictates this day about the Kingdom of God and its Council of Fifty. Texts of both revelations are available, but never canonized or officially published.

June 27, 1888 - James E. Talmage writes: "In the evening according to previous appointment, I went to Springville to lecture there under the auspices of the Improvement Associations, on the subject of "Nature and Nature's God." I have been requested by the Springville people, since before the time of the accident to my eye, that I should speak in that place on "Evolution" as a partial offset to the tendency of certain atheistical doctrine there through the teachings of a certain Dr. York. The subject was treated tonight according to my poor ability under the title first above named. I trust it did some good…" Talmage was sympathetic to evolutionary theory but held that it did not lead to atheism.

June 27, 1903 - Incorporation of W.H.Groves Latter-day Saint Hospital, with Presiding Bishop as president. Opened on Jan 1, 1905, LDS Hospital is first in church's hospital system.

June 27, 1949 - When stake president complains to First Presidency about pari-mutual betting on horse races, "Pres. Smith said that the position of the Church has always been against horse racing on Sunday." First counselor J. Reuben Clark immediately and emphatically adds, "on any other day, too, where there is betting."

June 27, 1955 - First Presidency letter instructs stake presidents that Native American Indian children may be legally taken into LDS homes "in Utah only through the agency of the Relief Society." Established July 1954 this Indian Placement Program seeks to give educational and acculturation advantages to Native Americans by placing their elementary and secondary school-age children in homes of LDS Anglo-Americans for each school year. This began in 1947 as innovation of Golden R. Buchanan, member of Sevier Stake presidency, who took first Native American Indian (sixteen-year-old Helen John) into his home. Later, this program is taken from jurisdiction of Relief Society and given to male church leaders. At its peak in 1972, program places 4,977 Indian children in Anglo-American homes. By 1990 participation declines to 500 because of increased resentment against this well-intentioned effort to "Americanize" Native peoples.

June 27, 1959 - CHURCH NEWS headlines, "Sweden's King is Reading Book of Mormon," referring to Gustav VI Adolf.

June 27, 1961 - Musa Bey Alami in company with daughter of Jordanian ambassador to United States expresses gratitude to President David O. McKay and to BYU for their joint donation of large heard of cows for Jerico Dairy Project in Jordan. By 1996 400 Jordanian boys have graduated from project's dairy school, and 160 are enrolled in project which is providing mile to 111 Palestinian and Jordanian villages. Alami says that "there has not been anything done in Jordan, in spite of the millions of dollars spent there that has met the success of this gift." Church called L. Burt Bigler, LDS bishop and dairyman from Jordan, Utah, to select cattle, transport them to Jerico, and supervise dairy in Kingdom of Jordan.

June 27, 1975 - Announcement of end of conferences at church headquarters for church's auxiliaries. This completes Harold B. Lee's previous efforts to dismantle autonomy of church's five auxiliaries for women, teenage girls, teenage boys, children, and Sunday schools. "Priesthood correlation" eliminates century of administrative autonomy exercised by LDS women over budgetary and administrative decisions in these auxiliaries.

June 27, 1993 - Counselor Gordon B. Hinckley dedicates former Hotel Utah as new Joseph Smith Memorial Building to serve primarily as additional office space for LDS central bureaucracy. Its large theaters also begin showing devotional film, "Legacy" (about Mormon pioneers), scripted by Academy award-winner Keith Merrill according to Hinckley's instruction: "I want them to leave the theater crying."

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