Go With Him

Doctrine and Covenants 25 is a revelation to Emma Smith, and it is a powerful witness to her goodness and commitment to the Restoration of the gospel. One phrase that is full of meaning but easy to miss the significance of is this one: “And thou shalt go with him at the time of his going” (v6). As I once heard it explained, this instruction was for Emma to leave her parents permanently. The revelation was given at Harmony in 1830 shortly before Joseph was to leave there for good. Soon the Lord would command them to gather to Ohio, and from there the work of the Lord would take them to Missouri and eventually Nauvoo. So when Emma left Harmony, it was goodbye to her family. She never saw her parents again: her father Isaac Hale passed away in 1839 and her mother Elizabeth in 1842. Emma followed the counsel of the Lord to stick with her husband, which she did faithfully. While it is true that she didn’t continue west with the Saints after Joseph’s death, she was true to this revelation: she went with Joseph at the time of his going and stayed with him. And the trials she went through to stay by Joseph’s side were unbelievably hard. And yet, with her faith she could write this to Joseph in a letter when he was imprisoned in Liberty Jail: “No one but God knows the reflections of my mind and the feelings of my heart when I left our house and home and almost all of everything that we possessed excepting our little children and took my journey out of the state of Missouri, leaving you shut up in that lonesome prison. But the reflection is more than human nature ought to bear, and if God does not record our sufferings and avenge our wrongs on them that are guilty, I shall be sadly mistaken.” Despite these terrible hardships, she was still able to write as well, “I shall live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind heaven that I should for your sake.” What incredible faith to say, in the midst of terrible trials, that she was willing to suffer even more for the Lord. She did indeed suffer more, and the Lord surely prepared a “crown of righteousness” for her because of her faithfulness to His work (v15).

Each month in the Come, Follow Me manual has a “Voices of the Restoration” section in which we find the words of the early Saints. This month has a description of Emma Smith by the Prophet Joseph and his parents. Lucy Mack Smith described her this way: “She was then young, and, being naturally ambitious, her whole heart was in the work of the Lord, and she felt no interest except for the church and the cause of truth. Whatever her hands found to do, she did with her might and did not ask the selfish question ‘Shall I be benefited any more than anyone else?’ If elders were sent away to preach, she was the first to volunteer her services to assist in clothing them for their journey, let her own privations be what they might.” She was indeed an “elect lady” who sacrificed all for the kingdom of God (Doctrine and Covenants 25:3). She said in another letter to Joseph: “I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself, that I might be able to overcome whatever of tradition or nature that would not tend to my exaltation in the eternal worlds. I desire a fruitful, active mind, that I may be able to comprehend the designs of God, when revealed through His servants without doubting.” Her desire was to come to know the Lord, and her contributions to the Restoration were extremely important. Even though she was never able to see the plates, she was instrumental in bringing forth the Book of Mormon with Joseph. She helped put together the first hymnal for the Saints, and later she became the first president of the Relief Society for women in Nauvoo. She was faithful to the “going” of Joseph until he died, and it is no wonder that he would declare, “She that was my wife, even the wife of my youth, and the choice of my heart. . . . Again she is here, even in the seventh trouble—undaunted, firm, and unwavering—unchangeable, affectionate Emma!”