| 198 Strang. I had that authority by virtue of my eldership in the original church.
"It was in 1844 the church split up into these different factions.
"These people with whom I was associated in Wisconsin were people who were contending for the original doctrine of the church, for the maintenance of the original doctrine of the church, in its purity.
"When I say that I withdrew from Brigham Young and others I simply mean I repudiated them; I repudiated their claims to the Presidency as false, on the grounds that they were teaching false doctrine, and something that the church did not authorize; and when I say that I withdrew, I simply mean that I repudiated them, but I refused to have anything to do with the church as represented by them; that is, by Brigham Young and his adherents.
"And further, we were claiming all the time to be the church in succession from 1830, or were following what represented the church in 1830. All the time we claimed that the church we represented was the church in succession established in 1830.
"I claimed that I belonged to the original church; although we were under different leaders we claimed to belong to the original church, and as soon as we learned that any of our leaders were teaching false doctrine, we left it. That is the reason we left Strang and Smith, because we considered they were teaching false doctrine, or doctrine that was not authorized in the original church. It did not make any difference to us, for we still considered that we were in the church, although under these different leaders.
"The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could not properly be called a new movement or new organization, for that would mean a new organization of the church, which this was not; at least I never considered it so, nor did the church as an organization. It always contended and believed that it was the original church in succession; that was my individual opinion, and that was the attitude of the church as an organization."-Plaintiff's Abstract, pp. 401, 402.
(page 198) |
