The Stoddards and Pre-Adamites

 

The Stoddards (who are Young Earth Creationists and believe Adam and Eve were the first humans on this planet) wrote the following:

 

. . .God restored His priesthood through Joseph Smith, the restorer and Head of this dispensation, who stands next to the Son of God in righteousness and holiness as a pure and holy vessel. (L. Hannah Stoddard and James F. Stoddard III, Faith Crisis Volume 1: We Were Not Betrayed! [Salem, Utah: Joseph Smith Foundation 2020], 92)

 

In a footnote to the above, we read:

 

 . . . Hyrum Smith: “There were prophets before Adam, and Joseph has the spirit and power of all the Prophets.” Joseph Smith History, 1838-1856, volume E-1, April 28, 1844, p. 2025, Joseph Smith Papers. (Ibid., 92 n. 14)

 

The Stoddards shot themselves in the foot by referencing Hyrum Smith affirming belief in Pre-Adamites. Interestingly, Hyrum was not a lone voice in the early Church in affirming such. Firstly, the above, while a record of Hyrum's words, appears in the journal for Joseph Smith, so we have the founding prophet of the Restoration as a witness to pre-Adamites. Other LDS who knew Joseph and Hyrum also taught this. In a sermon dated October 6, 1854, Orson Hyde taught that Adam and Eve were not the first humans on this planet; instead, there was a pre-Adamite population:

I will go back to the beginning, and notice the commandment that was given to our first parents in the garden of Eden. The Lord said unto them, "Multiply and replenish the earth." I will digress here for a moment from the thread of the subject, and bring an idea that may perhaps have a bearing upon it. The earth, you remember, was void and empty, until our first parents began at the garden of Eden. What does the term replenish mean? This word is derived from the Latin; "re" and "plenus;" "re" denotes repetition, iteration; and "plenus" signifies full, complete; then the meaning of the word replenish is, to refill, recomplete. If I were to go into a merchant's store, and find he had got a new stock of goods, I should say—"You have replenished your stock, that is, filled up your establishment, for it looks as it did before." "Now go forth," says the Lord, "and replenish the earth; for it was covered with gloomy clouds of darkness, excluded from the light of heaven, and darkness brooded. upon the face of the deep. The world was peopled before the days of Adam, as much so as it was before the days of Noah. It was said that Noah became the father of a new world, but it was the same old world still, and will continue to be, though it may pass through many changes. When God said, Go forth and replenish the earth; it was to replenish the inhabitants of the human species, and make it as it was before. (JOD: 2:79)

Of course, the Stoddards will reject Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith and Orson Hyde and their affirmation of pre-Adamites. Again, this shows that the Stoddards and the others within the more cult-like segments of the Heartland movement engage in a double-standard. They are perfectly free to reject the teachings of Joseph Smith on an issue when it suits then, but when other Latter-day Saints (e.g., those at FairMormon) were to do the same, it is a sign of apostasy, regressive leftism, and other evils.