‘You have got to learn how to be a God yourself’ — Revisiting Joseph Smith’s final LDS General Conference sermon

By early April 1844, Joseph Smith was searching for a way to quell growing doubts about his leadership. When the Saints in and around Nauvoo, Illinois, gathered for the church’s semiannual conference, the prophet told the congregation that he was “never in any nearer relationship to God than at the present time.” He would “show before the conference closed that God was with him.” Later that day, there was a vicious thunderstorm, followed by a double rainbow. It was auspicious.

Anticipation built overnight, and Joseph spoke to an enormous congregation the next afternoon. The prophet began by referencing the death of King Follett — not a royal figure, simply a church member with the given name King. He had been battered by a falling bucket of rocks while “stoning up a well” and died 11 days later. Follett had joined the church in 1831, endured repeated expulsions in Missouri, and then suffered imprisonment in the spring of 1839. Now he had been crushed in an unfortunate accident.

Joseph’s sermon was not a eulogy, however, nor did the prophet offer standard Christian words of consolation. Instead, he told members of the congregation that before he could address their grief, it was necessary for him to “go back to the beginning of creation,” to the nature of God. “What kind of a being is God?” Joseph asked. He staked his prophetic authority on his ability to bring forth a correct and compelling answer to that question. “If I do not do it,” he allowed, “I have no right to revelation.” Joseph knew that his critics accused him of being a “false teacher” and “false prophet.” He would rebut the notion. “If I can bring you to [God],” he suggested, “all persecution against me will cease and let you know that I am his servant.” Joseph was determined to reassert his prophetic leadership.

“God himself who sits enthroned in yonder heavens,” Joseph taught, “is a man like unto one of yourselves.” God once had dwelt on an earth. In turn, Joseph told the Saints, “you have got to learn how to be a God yourself.” This divine potential within humanity was “consoling to the mourner” in the wake of death. Yes, their earthly bodies would dissolve, but faithful men would “be heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ to inherit the same powers [and] exaltation.” Death was not the end but a necessary step toward eternal glory.

Joseph next returned to one of his favorite biblical passages. According to Joseph’s interpretation of the first several verses of Genesis, God had not created the world out of nothing. Instead, he had organized the world out of chaos. Matter was eternal and could not be destroyed. The body’s dissolution was not forever. This was a comfort to mourners but also a spur to action. Living Saints had an “awful responsibility” to their dead, to do the ritual work that would give departed spirits an opportunity to obey the gospel and receive eternal glory. Living Saints could be — had to be — saviors for the dead.

The “King Follett Discourse,” as the sermon became known, was not the first time Joseph had publicly taught these principles, but he distilled them with particular clarity on this occasion. Men could become gods. The only thing Joseph held back was exactly what was required in order for humans to achieve exaltation. The prophet alluded to the endowment, but he said not one word about marriage.

Before he finished speaking, Joseph stopped and reflected on his life. He knew what his many detractors said about him. The mockery and the accusations stung. The prophet maintained that he was misunderstood, or simply not understood, and he knew that his claims were incredible. “You never knew my heart,” Joseph lamented. “No man knows my history.” Joseph insisted that he would be vindicated after his death. Perhaps he sensed the end was near.

Joseph intended to continue on the subject of the resurrection the next day, but his voice was tired. Instead, he briefly disclosed what he termed a “great, grand, and glorious revelation.” He noted that there had been “great discussion” within the church about “where Zion is.” Joseph’s early 1830s revelations had pinpointed Zion to the Jackson County town of Independence. In recent years, though, talk of a return to Jackson County had faded, as had predictions of Christ’s imminent Second Coming. Now Joseph broadened Zion’s geography. “The whole [of] America is Zion,” he proclaimed. The elders would build churches across North and South America. Nauvoo would become a place of pilgrimage. The Saints would not only be baptized for the dead. In order to save their fathers, mothers, siblings, and friends, they also would be anointed and washed “same as for themselves.” As the ancient Israelites had journeyed to Jerusalem to perform certain required sacrifices, so the Saints would come to the Nauvoo Temple, perform ordinances for their deceased kin, and return to their homes.

The prophet was clear about his own position. The Latter-day Saints should understand that God had made him “their king and their God.” Joseph knew that such talk would strike some as blasphemous, or at least full of hubris. “If you don’t like it,” he stated, “you must lump it.” He wasn’t going to soften his tone or change his ways.

The members of the Council of Fifty gathered in the newly dedicated Masonic Hall several days after the conference. At one of the council’s first meetings, Joseph had appointed a committee to write a constitution. The men had made slow progress. How does one draft a constitution for the Kingdom of God on earth? William Phelps now motioned that Joseph be added to the committee charged with drafting the constitution. After all, Joseph was their divinely appointed lawgiver. Joseph declined. The committee should do its work, and he could correct any errors. Then he explained how he understood their task. “Theocracy,” he taught them, was “for the people to get the voice of God and then acknowledge it.” It was a twist on the common American understanding of vox populi, vox Dei. Instead of affirming the will of the people as the voice of God, Joseph called for “the voice of the people assenting to the voice of God.” The message was clear. Joseph was God’s mouthpiece, his chosen prophet. He was the medium through which the people received divine instruction. Hyrum Smith explained that his brother was akin to Moses and Enoch, only greater. Phelps added that Joseph’s work was like that of Jesus Christ.

Finally, Erastus Snow offered a motion that the council receive Joseph as their “prophet, priest, and king,” a common description of Jesus Christ’s offices. Council members shouted hosannas “to God and the Lamb [Jesus Christ]” as they affirmed the motion.

Joseph explained that they didn’t need anything like the “old dead horse’s head” of the U.S. Constitution. While speaking, Joseph held a two-foot ruler, one of the “implements” associated with new initiates in Freemasonry. He became so animated that he snapped the ruler in two. Brigham Young commented that the broken ruler symbolized tyrannical government’s downfall.

Joseph discarded the idea of a written constitution for the kingdom. Instead, he wrote a brief revelation on a scrap of paper. “Verily thus saith the Lord,” it stated. “Ye are my constitution, and I am your God, and ye are my spokesmen. From henceforth do as I shall command you.” The members of the council were the living constitution of the Kingdom of God, with Joseph as their king. In the American republic, however, there was no space for a theocratic kingdom and no place for a biblical prophet.

Note to readers • Adapted from “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet,” by John G. Turner. Published by Yale University Press in June 2025. Reproduced by permission.