Hear Him Heal You
This podcast is for those who are looking to experience the Savior more in their lives because of the peace and healing that only He can offer through revelation. Come unto Christ to get out of the mental mire, find meaning in emotion, leave bad behind, and finally, be whole. This is where we hear Him to be healed.
Hear Him Heal You
The Militant Faith: Defending Truth in a World That Fears Conflict
The forgotten militant history of Mormonism reveals a legacy of spiritual and physical defense that should inspire believers today. Join hosts Morgan and Joel with special guest Ross Bracken (LatterDayAvenger on Instagram) as they uncover the surprising warrior heritage that shaped the early Church.
From Joseph Smith's pepper box pistol at Carthage Jail to organized militia groups like the Nauvoo Legion and Danites, early Saints understood the necessity of defending their faith. Historical events including the Battle of Crooked River, the Battle of Nauvoo, and the Utah War represent significant military engagements largely absent from typical Sunday School discussions. Why has this rich militant history been sanitized in modern Church education?
The parallels between this physical defense and today's spiritual battles become clear as the conversation shifts to modern applications. When Elder Holland called for "musket fire" in defense of the family, he echoed a long tradition of Saints willing to stand for truth against opposition. Christ Himself demonstrated that defending truth doesn't contradict Christian kindness, as evidenced by His confrontations with the Pharisees.
This episode challenges listeners to consider: Would your ancestors who physically risked everything for their faith be disappointed by your silence today? While modern Saints may not face physical persecution, prophetic warnings suggest challenging times ahead. The spiritual courage to defend beliefs now—online, at work, among friends—prepares believers for whatever conflicts may come.
Find renewed purpose in your own discipleship as you discover how to honor the legacy of your spiritual forebears through bold, unapologetic faith that refuses to compromise truth even when facing opposition. This isn't just history—it's preparation for the promised latter-day battles still to come.
Welcome to Hear Him. Heal you with Morgan and Joel. This podcast is for those that are imperfect, rough around the edges, but are still wanting to come unto Christ. Join us to get out of the mental mire, find meaning in emotion and leave bad behind. This is where we hear Him to be healed.
Speaker 2:All right, what's happening, folks? So today's a little bit of a different episode. Today, me and Morgan have decided to bring on a special guest. We are bringing on Ross Bracken. If you are curious who this random stranger might be, he is also known as latterdayavenger on Instagram. He makes great content. That's how we actually connected. I reposted one of his posts on my stories. I thought it was funny or cool, I can't remember one or the other. Anyways, really enjoyed his content. We ended up chatting more and found out that he got his degree in history. Is that right? Yeah, that's right At BYU, perfect.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Today we're going to have Ross kind of go over some cool things in church history and specifically we're going to talk about the militant past of the church. So, ross, the floor is yours, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one thing, my kind of my page and I'm also writing a book about this but one kind of interesting point of church. So my page covers church history, right, point of church. So my page covers church history right, and there's a lot of church history that we don't as members. It blows my mind that, like these crazy big events from church history that your average Latter-day Saint doesn't know about, we have a very militant past, our church and our heritage, but you don't really see that in gospel films and you know gospel topics. And I think just one example of this like a lot of people are blown away that when Joseph Smith was in Carthage jail he had a pepper box pistol. He was shooting that pistol through the door to defend himself, actually shot somebody in the shoulder, and you don't see that in church films, films, but the little pistol is there in the museum, you know, and it's kind of a culture thing is like why do we somewhat shy away from this? Well, just like a little brief overview um, the militant history of mormonism goes very far beyond just the mormon battalion that just kind of hiked around and the Nauvoo Legion that marched in cool parades. There's a lot more to it right. You know Zion's camp, that was a militia, it was a militant group. You had the Danites, who Porto Rocco was very much affiliated with them. They basically swore a blood oath that they would protect Joseph Smith, they would protect the saints, like very clear evidence that they were involved in assassinations. Governor Boggs himself had an assassination attempt where someone broke into his house and started shooting. We don't actually know who it was, but people are pretty confident it was the Danites. They tried to take him out. I mean, he was a corrupt governor. We all know that.
Speaker 3:Going a little bit forward, so there actually was. There was a battle of crooked river where an apostle named david patton got shot and killed. Um, it was straight up a battle. There was a battle of navoo, where the last saints in navoo to leave, like they, got attacked. And if you look at this wikipedia, there was a battle of navoo. They had cannons and the saints actually lost that one. But the milton history didn't end there. You had the utah war where literally lots miss cavalry was like torching wag, like the wagons of the us army and causing them to freeze and and then to reconcile from that war they sent lots miss cavalry, which was a group of mormon um former navu soldiers to go basically freak up the confederates um, which they were very successful at. There was the morrisite war, where a cultist declared himself the reincarnation of joseph smith and bringing me an apostate big battle. It's like how can we don't talk about this in seminary?
Speaker 1:Really. Because, the best parts of the Book of Mormon are the war chapters, right, and here we are just neglecting the war chapters of Mormon history, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is it just me? Or did every young Latter-day Saint boy grow up with a picture of Captain Moroni in your room with the title of Liberty? I feel like that was the hero of the book of mormon was captain moroni.
Speaker 1:Every little boy wanted to be like him and now I just wanted to be jacked like captain moroni you know or like the young women also had, they had that, they had that.
Speaker 3:Like it was like that that girl with night, that blonde girl with night armor and a shield.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm talking about I don't know if it's like joan of arc it's.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't know that, that I had no idea there was one like that yeah, and so I guess what's like interesting about all of this is, like you know, the book of mormons for sure doesn't shy away from war. It's nothing. But captain moroni, amin were like basically spartans of god and the old testament I don't need to say anything. You know the book of joshua I the lord, I'm a lord of war. New testament gets into some militantism. You had peter chopping off ears, you had simon the zealot basically killing r like a huge revolt against Rome.
Speaker 3:I think Paul persecuted Christians before his conversion and then Jesus says I came not to bring peace, but I came to bring a sword. And what does this mean? Right, we know the second coming of the Messiah isn't. And from Jesus sounds like a battlefield commander when you read the book of Isaiah, and so it's like how do we kind of like harmonize this and relate this to us as modern Latter-day Saints, where we're not necessarily getting driven from our homes yet?
Speaker 2:Paul. Even he draws a direct correlation when he talks about, you know, there's the sword of truth, right? Or of the spirit and the breastplate of knowledge. So I can't remember. I'm really out of touch with the New Testament right now, at least the epistles. But he and the shield of faith. I think that's what it is right. So you have all these these like warrior images painted, right. He's like be a warrior for your faith, so to speak. It's prophesied that in the last days there's going to be many wars that we're going to be a part of, we're going to participate in these battles, right? And I think it's really negligent to think that we can just be pacifists going into the future and never be prepared to fight, whether that's, as we've talked, physically fighting and defending our faith, as our ancestors have done, and defending and fighting off against the rhetoric, the attack on rhetoric.
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:No, and I like kind of going along those lines as well.
Speaker 1:Funny enough, like one of we were talking about patriarchal blessings a little bit about how people need to, like, stand up and talk, right, it's very interesting to me that part of my patriarchal blessing talks about my ancestors and all they sacrificed for me to have what I have today, or like the foundation of faith that my parents, my grandparents, were able to build upon, right, and I just like it kind of takes me back to this idea of like, well, I have my, some of my ancestors served in those militia groups and they were trying to defend their way of life, um, where they had to literally leave the United States, go to Utah, form a settlement, uh, in order to find religious freedom.
Speaker 1:And I just feel, like, to today's age, like there's so much more people trying to take away those freedoms or make our beliefs seem stupid or silly or childish. And how big of a disappointment would I be to those ancestors who sacrificed so much if I don't speak up who sacrificed their life and I'm just over here too, afraid to even speak up, even though it wouldn't even put my life at risk, right?
Speaker 1:So I just think we need to pay homage to our ancestors for what they've done for us already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think about one of mine personally, caleb Baldwin, I was sharing with you. He was very close friend of the prophet Joseph Smith. He was even in prison or jail with him at times and he was always known as someone who was there to not just physically or not just spiritually sustain, but to physically sustain the prophet as well. And I think I imagine, talking to him, he says so all right, joel, what have you done to sustain the prophet? What have you done? Have you stood by him through thick and thin? What did you do that was so special and important?
Speaker 2:Or did you find reasons to criticize him when policies changed? Did you try to, you know, find fault with the prophets and the apostles when you disagreed with their statements? Right, and it went against your views? So I think it's kind of interesting. It's like wow, like these men were willing to just give up everything. They were so humble right, that's a big part of this is like they were so humble and willing to submit to God that they were willing to put whatever other beliefs they had or other thoughts that they were willing to say.
Speaker 3:I'm going to put those below me right and focus on sustaining the prophet and I'm going to put those below me right and focus on sustaining the prophet, and I'm going to focus on spreading the gospel and defending the faith. You know, yeah, yeah, and like we need to be. You know, holland got so much slack because he said like musket fire was more than a metaphor when it comes to defending the family and people kind of take. When jesus said turn the other cheek, they interpret that as okay. Well, this person online or at work is absolutely humiliating and trashing my beliefs and spreading all these falsehoods. But I should just turn the other cheek right. But when you actually study Jesus's like encounters with Pharisees, he seldom stood quiet. He rebuked them, he in a way spiritually roasted them, called them out on their hypocrisy, you know, and yes, he said turn the other cheek, but he did not back down from defending the gospel, which he was divinely prepared to spread.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so interesting that people so often are like they'll say well, we need to just be peacemakers, and I think they use that phrase as a synonym for being a pacifist, whereas I don't think that's it always. I think, you know, we can still be a peacemaker and still stand up for our beliefs and our faith, and I think one way that I had a personal experience with this was you know, this may sound cheesy, but on Instagram, like we're sitting there some guys in the comments talking a lot of stuff on the Prophet Joseph Smith, so I just called him out, I said, hey, man, I said those are some pretty bold claims and I don't think you understand what you're talking about, but I would love to discuss this with you. And I was like let's go to the, let's hit me up in my DMs. And he did, and we had, we were able I was able to clear up a lot of things and really dispel some of this, of these misconceptions and these just false beliefs that he had about the prophet joseph smith and about polygamy, and was able to kind of bring some perspective to him.
Speaker 2:So I was able to defend and well, not defend, but to like declare what was true and that joseph smith was a prophet and not shy away from these things. Right, and I was able to leave in a very friendly manner with this guy, like we're friends now we chat and like we have a very, like it's really cool, right. So it's like, just because you are defending and protecting your beliefs and going out and dispelling falsehood and deception, right Does not mean there has to be this antagonistic feel to or this. You know you don't have to have anger, you don't have to have all these emotions. You can do this with a loving approach and still bring peace to others as well as to yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well and.
Speaker 1:I do think too, like there's, there's, there's it's really scary to go into conflict and try to defend something like just like that. Like sometimes we can't shy away from having to embrace conflict to find resolutions. And how often do we let like things fester in our lives or with other people who may have offended us or we offended them? And when we let those things fester it just kind of begins to run rampant and it ruins relationships. It actually causes more unpeace or unrest in our lives. When we're not willing to embrace the conflict and I think that's the key to really embracing the history of our militant past is like we can't be afraid of conflict. We have to be able to go into conflict and stand up for what we believe and then, only then, can resolution be found.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, yeah and how kind of I see it is like. No, we're not really in a phase where large numbers of people are, you know, driving us from our homes and trying to burn our temples down and persecuting us and trying to take away our freedoms. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that long ago that people were trying to do that and we know that. Russell M Nelson says that we won't be able to survive without the Spirit. Nelson says that we won't be able to survive without the Spirit. And you've watched the last couple of General Comps. They're making it sound like things are about to heat up. Take your vitamin pills, it's coming right.
Speaker 3:And we know from a hundred years of teachings of the church that persecutions are going to really ramp up in the last days. Persecutions are going to get so bad and we need to prepare for that. And it's like how are we going to be able to defend and be prepared to defend the gospel? You know, physically, if right now we're too scared to speak up online, speak up against our coworkers, speak up against maybe people in our family or friends that are trying to drag people away, right, and I think the kind of militant rhetoric if I think it's okay to engage in it, to defend the gospel, and that'll prepare us for when it hits the fan. We need to man up, we need to toughen up. It's not, you know, pray for peace, but prepare for war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had this little thought come to me as you were talking about that, like, don't think the real problem is silence, right, I think it's compromise. We cannot compromise on the doctrine of Christ. We can't, okay, because so often people I mean being quiet is one thing, right, but to compromise the standards of the church, the standards of the gospel, is far worse in my opinion. I feel I see people they get confronted with something they don't like on the doctrines, right, and so, instead of saying no, like boldly declaring this is what we believe, we sustain the family. We sustain that a marriage is between a man and a woman for the purpose of bringing children onto this earth, and no other reason. None, it doesn't matter what feelings you have, right, what matters is that you submit yourself to God. And we're so sensitive. We want to be kind to everyone. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. We can still have love and stand up for the truth. We can still have love and not compromise on the ways of God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so true, man, like I really do think it's such a temptation and we've talked about this before on the podcast of just always trying to fit in, like, I think, because we sometimes fear man over god, because, like, the fear of man is always, ever present, because it's so tangible people are in front of us but the fear of god is kind of like we might not experience like retribution until like after this life for certain things we've done, right, right, but we need to really try to kind of adjust our, to care more about what God thinks of us as a man, so we don't compromise, so that way we don't end up slipping into this place where we don't speak up for our beliefs, where we become more passive believers rather than active believers.
Speaker 1:And I think I think we could all say that at one point in our life we've been passive believers.
Speaker 1:And it's always that constant battle of trying how can we be constantly more engaged in the gospel and standing it up and not even I wouldn't even say standing up is like the only thing we need to be doing, but like how scary is it to go out and share the gospel and try to convince someone to come unto Christ, like we've all been missionaries, I think, on this, on this podcast, right, and when you're first out there, it's really scary to share, share the gospel with someone, and so we also need to do a better job of not only standing up for our beliefs but then also trying to help convince people to come under Christ as well, which is just as scary, yeah of course, I think about that all the time where, like, I just have some of these experiences I'm walking down the street and I see someone who very clearly looks as if they are not a member, right, and even when I'm like walking out with the missionaries and we'll walk by, like why didn't we go talk to that person?
Speaker 2:Why didn't we go stop and say, hi, right, I get it. They got a cigarette in their hand, they're smoking, right? Like why did we not go out and say, hey, man, like introduce ourselves? And that's another way we take the fight to Satan right and to the larger enemy at whole right.
Speaker 1:Is we're not afraid to go after those who look like they don't fit in Right. Part of this is that. How else do we change the world, though, too? I was thinking about this the other day, where I do feel like we live in a world that is constantly attacking morality like marriage, chastity, abstinence from drugs and alcohol. It's always trying to tear these down and make them look okay, and I realized that we can try to attack those things and try to put morality back into the world, but it doesn't happen on a grand scale. It has to happen individually, right, and if we really, like you're saying, go on the offensive. Sharing the gospel and changing lives is really how we do that. Now. There you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I was reading Hugh Nibley and he kind of says, like Zion doesn't make war with Babylon, but they will defend themselves from Babylon, right, and we need to take it to the enemy.
Speaker 3:We know that right before the second coming, there's going to be a huge battle called Armageddon and then, at the very end, there's going to be another battle called Gog and Magog, where Satan will be bound after a thousand years. You know, joseph Smith said it's going to be a battle where many of us are going to be involved and I'm just like do you think God is going to want you in his army if you were too scared in this life to speak up and defend your gospel against your neighbor, against your family member, online? The gospel is supposed to have spread over the whole earth. Largely it has with the internet. There's a spiritual battle going on there. That's the question you have to make is are you going to stay silent or are you going to defend the gospel like the prophets and elders of Zion have done throughout the entire historicity of our gospel?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, in closing, what we want to invite people to do is to go out there, share your testimony. Don't be ashamed, you know. Put that picture of Jesus up on your story with that quote from Joseph Smith, right, you know? Post-conference clips. Make sure that you're always seeking to share the gospel and make it known that you are a member of Christ's church on earth today. And know that, as we take the fight to the enemy in this spiritual war, that we will receive blessings. We will see miracles worked in the lives of God's children. We will be able to help our brothers and sisters to find the light, and that is the light of Christ. And we know this gospel blesses lives and families, and so let's do this, let's take it to them and let's fight this good cause for Christ Morgan. Take us away with that outro.
Speaker 1:All right, well, a little flock. Remember despair not do good. Build upon the rock and always hear him. See you guys, amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, little flock. If you found this episode beneficial to your testimony, remember to leave a review, share with others and follow for more.