In my
lengthy article Joseph
Smith Worship? Responding to Criticisms of the Role and Status of the Prophet
Joseph Smith in Latter-day Saint Theology, I discuss the few passages in
the Journal of Discourses where Joseph Smith is said to play a role in final
judgement, showing that early Latter-day Saints (e.g., Brigham Young) who spoke
about such clearly limited his role to those who lived in this dispensation.
In his diary
for 30 March 1862, Charles L. Walker noted the following from Brigham Young
which further substantiates this:
In the P.M. Bro Brigham spoke in very clear
and comprehensive manner on the judgment of the World. Showed that the Lord
would not judge all the Word no more than he preaches to all the world but
would do it by his Servants thro all the ramifications of his Priesthood.
Showed that the saints were judged all the time here by those that were placed
over them, so that if they were faithful here their sins were before them and
if the servants of God remitted their sins here they would be remitted in
heaven so that when the judgment day came there would be nothing found against
them. Showed that the twelve Apostles
would set upon 12 thrones and judge the 12 tribes of Israel, and that Joseph
Smith Junior would be the grand Judge of their
Latter day Dispensation, the Messiah in his Dispensation and so on.
(Diary of Charles Lowell Walker,
Volume 1, eds. A. Karl Larson and Katharine Miles Larson [Logan, Utah: Utah
State University Press, 1980], 222, emphasis added)
