This is my first draft of a response to the papers you passed to my wife
on Sunday. I hope it does not seem critical in any way of you
personally. Please let me know if you feel I have misrepresented your
views in any way.
 
Dear Mr. Bingham,
 
I'd like to begin by thanking you for the pamphlet you gave me recently
(Fundamentalist Slavery). You undoubtedly wrote and delivered it at
your personal time and expense because you honestly believe I and others
are mistaken on several points of our beliefs, and you hope that given
your reasoning, we might come to the same conclusion which you have. 
However, it may surprise you to learn that I have studied the issues you
bring up in depth, and have come to an entirely different conclusion
from you.
 
I appreciate that with the questions you ask and evidences you present
that your views must seem pretty convincing to some, and it may be hard
to comprehend how others could view the matter differently. But I would
like to think that as I have studied these matters from a different
perspective, I might have some insight into how you have misunderstood
some of the 'evidence' and the conclusions you feel it leads to, and I'm
sure as a seeker of truth you will anxious to consider a different view
on your beliefs.
 
I would like to look specifically at your view that Joseph Smith was not
resurrected by the time of his 1886 visitation to John Taylor, as
related by Lorin Woolley. I have chosen this subject because it perhaps
the least ambiguous - either he was resurrected or not. It is my
sincere belief and that of most Fundamentalists that he was, but as you
point out, others (notably anti-Fundamentalists Anderson and Hales)
argue that his body was dug up by the Reorganized church after 1886, and
that this 'proves' the events of 1886 could not have happened.
Let us suppose for a moment that Joseph Smith's actually body was
unearthed in the 1920s (although I will make a case against this later),
this could mean that either Lorin Woolley was mistaken and that Joseph
Smith appeared as a Spirit, or that some of our views may be mistaken
about what the resurrection involves, or that the anti-Fundamentalists
are right in their views about the resurrection and their interpretation
of what Lorin Woolley said.
 
Most 'traditional' Fundamentalists do not seem to believe that Woolley
just saw the spirit of Joseph Smith in 1886, although perhaps a few may
indeed think that this is not just possible, but was what actually
occurred. The one line in Lorin's whole account that would tend to
discourage such a view is where he related that he and Charles Wilkins
shook hands with the Prophet Joseph. Some might argue that even this
though does not necessarily mean he was physically embodied - as we know
that the premortal Jesus touched the stones the Brother of Jared gave
him, and we have accounts of evil spirits exerting physical force. 
Nevertheless, there are admittedly challenges with this particular
interpretation and I will leave it at this point as just another theory.
 
As far as our knowledge of the resurrection is concerned, it is very
limited. The only detailed account we have in the scriptures is that of
Jesus, and it might be argued that His body was divinely removed
otherwise others would claim He was an imposter upon His return. The
Gospels do give the impression though it was the same body that He took
up again. There is another opinion of the resurrection I have heard
though, and tt is that the age at which Jesus died is the age at which
we will be resurrected. If we die at a later date then our bodies will
be different - having aged, and the cells (if not the atoms) would have
replaced themselves - and so the body we return to may still be our
body, but a younger version, whilst the older body is left to
deteriorate in the grave. You touched upon this briefly, but it is hard
to discount it entirely as some bodies are born with limbs missing, and
so we may not be able to assume that our resurrected bodies are made
entirely from our earthly ones. All of this said I do not favour this
interpretation either, and it raises as many questions as it may answer.
Despite giving some time to these other views, I personally always look
for the simplest answer, and in this case my answer would be - the
bodies dug up were not those of Joseph and Hyrum Smith!
 
It seems to me that the Reorganized church is not the most trustworthy
of sources for verifying the identity of the bodies, as they had an
agenda for claiming that the body was that of Joseph Smith, as Samuel
Bennion, an LDS authority who was shown the skeletons at the time noted
-
"It is my impression brethren that he had heard reports that Brigham
Young took the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum to Utah and that he wanted to
prove it untrue." (Samuel O. Bennion to Heber J. Grant, January 21,
1928, Church Archives)
 
The fact that there were reports of Brigham Young taking Joseph's body
to Salt Lake raises that as a possibility, even though Brigham Young
seemed to give the public impression that Joseph had been buried back
East. Perhaps President Young just wanted the real graves left
undisturbed.
 
It must be asked though, "how did Frederick Smith know where to find the
bodies (presuming they were buried in the East)?" They were meant to
have been in an unmarked grave (as the Saints were worried about the
bodies being desecrated), and even Joseph's son David Hyrum did not know
its whereabouts as he lamented in the old hymn, "the unknown grave",
which was once part of both the LDS and RLDS hymnals. Interestingly the
Old Testament speaks of no man knowing the spulchre of Moses, yet we
know that he was translated and that his body does lie in the dust
either.
 
Could the President of the RLDS Church have dug up some other men? 
Could the other legend be true that they buried a man who looked like
Joseph in his place? Could the skeletons have been tampered with? The
science of forensics was practically non-existent in the 1920s, and it
was a period when skeletal fossil hoaxes were common. We have no DNA
preserved of the Prophet with which to prove even to the convincing of
Gentile scientists who was buried and who was dug up. So we cannot
claim with absolute certainty that the body was that of Joseph and that
he wasn't resurrected, nomatter how strong the desire of some to
disbelieve Woolley's account is.
 
Another question also raises itself with the timing of the 'discovery'
of the bodies: Why would Lorin Woolley even attempt to claim Joseph was
resurrected a year after his body had supposedly been unearthed? If he
was fabricating his story, surely he would have avoided giving the
impression Joseph was resurrected so that it wouldn't undermine his
tale. It might be concluded that it was only if he had actually seen
what he said he did would he feel duty bound and unafraid to declare
what he really saw, despite the Reorganized Church claimed.
 
All of this is only a list of possibilities, but it shows that there are
alternative explanations, and that it was indeed possible for Joseph to
have been resurrected. Besides this there are also other indications
that he was indeed resurrected some time after his death and before the
1920s, that further substantiate Lorin Woolley's testimony.
 
As early as 1847, Brigham Young told the Saints whilst "clothed with the
Spirit" that, "... we should yet have Brothers Joseph and Hyrum and many
of the Saints in their resurrected bodies with us on earth." In the
1880s Erastus Snow prophesied that the day would come very soonafter,
"The time is drawing near (much nearer than scarcely any of us can now
comprehend) when Joseph will be clothed upon with immortality ..."
 
Heber C. Kimball even gave a description of the conditions in which
Joseph Smith would return embodied to earth, "... the saints will be put
to tests that will try the integrity of the best of them. The pressure
will become so great that the more righteous among them will cry unto
the Lord day and night until deliverance comes. Then the Prophet and
others will make their appearance, ..." Surely the events of the 1880s
with the Prophet John Taylor in hiding and thousands of men having been
put in jail for their belief in Mormonism, there was no better time for
this prediction to be fulfilled.
 
Indeed the Lord himself said in 1882 to his Prophet in a revelation
that, "Joseph Smith ... was slain ... but he yet lives, and is with me
where I am." (UR 81:19) The Lord testified of a living Joseph Smith,
just as his servants have sometimes proclaimed of a living Jesus
Christ. How could Joseph Smith be where a resurrected and glorified
Saviour and His heavenly Father lives without he himself having a
resurrected body with which to endure their glory and that of their
kingdom?
 
A devout Latter-day Saint (and non-Fundamentalist) had this truth
revealed to him when visiting the spirit world in June 1898, who later
related, "as to whether or not the Prophet Joseph Smith is now a
resurrected being. While I did not ask the question, they read it in my
mind and immediately said, "You wish to know whether the Prophet has his
body or not?" I replied, "Yes, I would like to know." I was told that
the Prophet Joseph Smith has his body, as does also his brother Hyrum"
 
Perhaps some will place greater faith in the findings of the Reorganized
Church, the arguments of anti-Fundamentalists, or the reasoning of those
who do not have the same testimony that Lorin Woolley and others have
had. But as for me and many thousands of others we have had a witness
of the events of September 1886 that kept alive the authority to live
all of God's laws, and have little doubt that Joseph the Prophet is
preparing to return again to the earth to fulfill his mission, for we
remain in a day of spiritual and physical bondage, in which God's Church
is wandering in the wilderness, and all things must be set in order
before the coming of the Savior.
 
As I have already discussed the question of Priesthood conferal which
you also bring up (in a previous article), as other historical aspects
of the 1886 meeting have been well treated by other scholars and it is
the anti-Fundamentalists who have been found wanting, and as your
criticisms of specific Fundamentalist groups seem very over-generalized
and are given without documentation, I will end my response here, hoping
it has led you to a better undertsanding of my own views as well as
those of many other Fundamentalists.
 
With sincerity,
 
The Editor
Messenger magazine