Absolute obedience to the prophet

Obedience to Prophetic Authority turns religious leadership into a claim over everyday conduct: a prophet’s direction may govern not only doctrine but family life, public behavior, and the limits of permissible dissent. Across the book, the principle appears both as a source of order and as a fault line. Leaders call for submission as the route to faith and salvation; followers who question their authority may be disciplined or excluded, while rival claims to revelation can split the very communities that obedience is meant to hold together.

From Personal Revelation to Prophetic Authority

The tension begins within the founding tradition. Joseph Smith encouraged believers to seek personal impressions from God, presenting direct revelation as a defining alternative to established churches that filtered religious truth through institutional hierarchies. But if each believer could receive divine commandments, the prophet’s authority could be challenged by revelations that contradicted his own. In 1830, the year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was incorporated, Joseph announced a restriction reserving church commandments and revelations to himself. The change established a boundary between personal spiritual experience and revelation with authority over the church, without extinguishing the appeal of speaking directly with God.

That boundary proved difficult to enforce. Believers continued to attend to revelations about theology and personal matters, even when church leaders said they could not receive authoritative commandments about doctrine. The book connects this continuing tension to the recurring emergence of splinter groups: a prophet’s institutional position may claim exclusive authority, but a competing believer can still claim that God has spoken. Robert Crossfield’s experience makes the contest concrete. In 1975 he received a commandment identifying him as Onias, the true prophet and rightful leader of the church, and assigning the United Effort Plan leadership to follow his direction. The leaders rejected his claim and excluded him from their prayer meetings; he moved away and later established the School of the Prophets. Rival revelations did not dissolve the demand for prophetic authority. They redirected it toward a new claimant and a new following.

Submission as a Rule for Daily Life

In the United Effort Plan communities, the principle was expressed as a demand for comprehensive submission. LeRoy Johnson, known to followers as Uncle Roy, repeatedly taught that the way to heaven required total obedience. After Rulon Jeffs succeeded him as leader in 1986, obedience remained central to religious instruction. Jeffs preached that obedience brought freedom and faith, while his authority extended beyond sermons: Colorado City’s mayor, employees, police force, and school superintendent answered to him. The authority claimed in religious life was thus entangled with local civic administration.

The rule also shaped access to information and relationships. Colorado City residents were forbidden to watch television or read newspapers and magazines, and were told not to maintain contact with people outside the United Effort Plan, including relatives who had left. DeLoy Bateman described a recurring pattern around the television ban: members secretly acquired satellite dishes, then discarded them after Jeffs preached against television and warned that the practice endangered their souls. After a few years, concealed dishes appeared again. The cycle shows how commands could produce public conformity without eliminating private desire or doubt; obedience was repeatedly asserted, evaded, and reasserted.

The cost of separation was especially visible in DeLoy’s relationship with his brother David. They had helped raise one another when their father was disabled, and their homes stood only yards apart, separated by a six-foot fence. Yet DeLoy’s departure from the religion meant David was not permitted to speak with him. DeLoy said that if David’s wife caught him talking to his brother, she could take the children, while David risked losing his family and remaining in the community without them. Here obedience operates not only through a leader’s instruction but through the threatened loss of family belonging. Leaving could unsettle a person’s understanding of faith and identity, while staying could require the abandonment of close relationships with those who had left.

Authority, Law, and Competing Orders

The principle also governs conflicts between religious and state authority. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith stood at the head of a theocratic city with unusual sovereign powers granted by Illinois. He commanded the Nauvoo Legion, a large and disciplined militia, and sought authority to create a much larger force under his personal control. The city’s structure made the question of obedience more than a private matter of belief: religious leadership was joined to civic and military power.

Under Brigham Young, the conflict took a legal form. Young maintained that divine law took precedence when it clashed with human law. The Utah Territorial Legislature, dominated by Mormons, expanded the authority of local probate courts, which Young controlled; many judges were Mormon bishops, and juries were largely drawn from church members. Federal officials complained that Utah had become a theocratic dictatorship, while local institutions gave church authority practical force in the courts. The arrangement illustrates competing sources of legitimacy: state and federal law claimed jurisdiction, while church leaders and their followers treated religious law as superior.

Dan Lafferty developed a related opposition to government requirements without initially joining an established fundamentalist church. In discussions with his brothers, he argued from scripture that the government had exceeded its proper reach, objecting to licensing, taxes, and Social Security numbers as forms of control. His position shows how appeals to higher religious authority could be directed against the state as well as used to reinforce church leadership. The same principle could authorize submission to a prophet or resistance to government, depending on which authority a believer understood to be legitimate.

Succession, Schism, and the Limits of Obedience

A demand for obedience cannot settle who deserves it. When LeRoy Johnson died in 1986, Rulon Jeffs assumed leadership, but followers loyal to Marion Hammon disputed his claim. Nearly a third of the community left and formed a separate congregation, the Second Ward; the two groups denounced one another as apostates. The split exposed a basic instability in prophetic authority: once succession is contested, the call to obey does not resolve the dispute but becomes one of its stakes.

The same pattern had shaped the wider fundamentalist movement. After John Y. Barlow died, Joseph Musser became its leader, but debilitating strokes made his succession a pressing question. In 1951, Musser appointed Rulon Allred as his second elder and heir apparent, against the wishes of those who believed Johnson should succeed him. The movement divided. After Musser’s death in 1954, Johnson led the larger group that remained in Short Creek and became associated with the United Effort Plan; Allred led the Apostolic United Brethren. Leadership passed through claims of designation, loyalty, and inherited religious authority, but each transfer also created grounds for dissent.

Crossfield’s appointment of Ron Lafferty as bishop of the School of the Prophets offers another small-scale instance of how recognition sustains authority. After receiving a revelation that the Lafferty brothers were a chosen people, Onias appointed Ron to lead the school’s Provo chapter. The younger brothers already looked up to Ron, and the appointment was accepted within the group. It joined a leader’s claimed revelation to followers’ existing respect for Ron, making spiritual authorization and social allegiance reinforce one another.

The book therefore presents obedience neither as a simple personal virtue nor as a rule confined to worship. It is a way of organizing authority across institutions, homes, and communities, and a means by which claims to revelation become consequential. But its reach has limits: believers may secretly evade commands, reject a leader’s jurisdiction, or follow a rival prophet. Every demand for unquestioning submission consequently carries a question it cannot answer by itself—whose authority is to be obeyed?