$0+
Joseph Smith turned his steps toward Carthage and martyrdom with the sad
comment, “If my life is of no value to my friends, it is of none to myself.” Before making
the fateful decision to go to Carthage, the Prophet received a revelation directing him in
the course he should take to preserve his life. But the Saints at Nauvoo failed to sustain
him in that action, so he set his face resolutely toward Carthage with the repeated
declaration: “I am going like a lamb to the slaughter.”
Years later Brigham Young spoke to the Saints in Salt Lake City about the
Prophet’s decision. “If Brother Joseph Smith had been led by the Spirit he would All products
never have given himself up and gone to Carthage, but he would have gone
right to these mountains, and would have been alive today to lead this people.” The lesson
the Saints should have learned from the Prophet’s death, President Young stressed, was
that “the sheep must follow the shepherd, not the shepherd follow the sheep.”