Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is a theological presence in the book more than a participant in its narrated events. The text does not recount episodes from his life; instead, it traces how religious leaders and believers invoke Christian teaching and scripture to explain authority, conduct, and the shape of the community. His significance lies partly in this gap between the centrality of his name and the diverse claims made in the name of God: religious certainty can promise moral order and hope, yet also be recruited to justify control or defiance of civil law.

Theological Place in Joseph Smith’s Vision

Joseph Smith’s developing theology offered a strikingly hopeful account of human possibility. In contrast with the Calvinist emphasis on innate human evil and punishment, Smith’s teaching presented the Mormons as God’s chosen people and held out spiritual advancement for those who obeyed church authorities and received a testimony of Jesus. The book describes an afterlife in which the faithful could rise to divine status and continue forms of earthly life, including work, wealth, sex, and power. Jesus Christ belongs to this framework as the object of testimony and as a central religious reference, although the account emphasizes Smith’s own charismatic leadership and innovations rather than detailing Christ’s actions.

The book also connects this theology to Smith’s affirmation of earthly joy. It describes him as sociable and fond of ordinary pleasures, and notes that the teaching that human beings exist to experience joy remained consistent with his outlook. In the book’s account, Mormon thought combined supernatural belief with material aspirations: it did not require believers to reject earthly pleasures, but imagined their continuation in the next life. Jesus Christ’s place in this account is therefore not presented through a separate biography; it appears within a religious system that joins testimony of Jesus to an expansive promise about human destiny.

Revelation and the New Covenant

The book identifies the revelation recorded as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants as a major turning point in Mormon theology. Through Joseph Smith, God revealed the new and everlasting covenant of plural marriage. The text stresses the scale of the change: by the mid-1840s, Smith had received many commandments, and the religion practiced in Nauvoo had developed substantially from the church’s earlier form. The revelation about plural marriage brought severe consequences, nearly shattered the church, and became part of the longer history of conflict surrounding Mormon belief and practice.

This development is not described as a commandment spoken directly by Jesus Christ. Rather, its authority is attributed to God and recorded through Smith’s prophetic revelation. That distinction matters to the book’s portrait of religious authority: Christian faith is part of the wider context, but it is the claim of continuing revelation that makes the specific rule binding for believers. The narrative shows how a teaching can be presented as divine law while remaining a humanly transmitted and historically consequential commandment.

Scripture, Conscience, and Dan Lafferty

The book shows Dan Lafferty turning to Mormon scripture and historical documents as he formed his own religious and political convictions. In discussions with his brothers, he used the Book of Mormon to argue that the government had no right to require licenses, taxes, or Social Security numbers. His argument treated such requirements as unlawful control over ordinary life. He was not yet aligned with an established fundamentalist church or prophet, but his studies had made him an ardent Mormon Fundamentalist, convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had abandoned plural marriage under pressure from the government.

Dan’s interest in The Peace Maker illustrates how a religious claim could gain force through its perceived connection to a prophet. The treatise defended plural marriage as a divine law and warned readers against opposing it. Because Joseph Smith appeared on its title page as printer, the work reflected teachings associated with him, and its ending made authorship itself seem secondary, scholars had long speculated that Smith wrote it. Dan studied the question and prayed, eventually becoming satisfied that Smith was the author while acknowledging that he could not be certain. That belief made him especially receptive to the treatise’s strictures, which he applied in a household that included his wife, Matilda, her two daughters from an earlier marriage, and their four children. Jesus Christ is not presented as the author or direct source of this text; rather, Dan’s response shows how scripture, prophetic reputation, and claims about God’s law could reinforce one another in a believer’s moral world.

A Claim to Sacred Authority

A later and more extreme invocation of Jesus Christ appears in a revelation attributed to Ron Lafferty. In it, Ron’s voice from God declares that Moses, Jesus Christ, and Onias had each been one mighty and strong, and that Ron himself held the same distinction. The revelation thus places Jesus within a succession of figures described as able to set God’s church and kingdom in order, while expanding the category to include Ron and others. Rather than simply appealing to Jesus as an example or teacher, the passage incorporates him into Ron’s claim that prophetic authority could be newly bestowed.

The book places this revelation alongside the psychiatrist’s view that Ron’s visions were delusional and arose from depression and narcissism. Ron rejected that assessment, trusting what he understood as the Lord’s voice over the psychiatrist’s judgment. The juxtaposition does not resolve the competing accounts; it shows how sharply they conflict over the source and credibility of revelation. Jesus Christ’s inclusion in Ron’s declaration supplies a sacred precedent within the revelation itself, but the narrative identifies the statement as Ron’s claimed message, not as an independent confirmation of his authority.

Divine Law and Its Human Uses

Elsewhere, the book describes a broader struggle over whose commands govern public and private life. Brigham Young maintained that God’s laws took precedence over human laws, and Mormon leaders in Deseret built local legal arrangements that, in practice, favored religious authority when it conflicted with federal jurisdiction. Dan’s scriptural objections to government requirements express a later version of the same tension from an individual’s perspective. These episodes do not attribute those particular legal claims directly to Jesus Christ; they show the religious world in which appeals to God, scripture, and prophetic authority could challenge the state.

The book’s portrait of Jesus Christ is therefore inseparable from the question of interpretation. His name and religious importance remain present within a tradition that promises testimony, divine guidance, and a transformed human future. Yet the practical authority described in these passages often comes through leaders, revelations, institutions, and individuals who claim to speak for God. The contrast between shared religious language and competing claims to command gives Jesus Christ a quiet but consequential role: he is a central reference point in a story about how sacred authority is transmitted, contested, and put to use.