Escaping Liberty Jail w/ Joseph Smith - John Turner Pt. 24 | Ep. 2090
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2025
⏱️ 101 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode (Part 24), we dive into one of the most dramatic and painful chapters in early Letter-day Saint history: Liberty Jail.
Joseph Smith was arrested on December 1, 1838 and eventually taken to Liberty Jail. Today we will cover his imprisonment, the chaotic legal proceedings that followed, and the eventual “escape” that allowed him to reunite with his family as the Saints resettled in Quincy, Illinois.
We explore how internal conflicts, political pressures, treason charges, and widespread anti-Mormon hostility shaped Joseph’s experience –and how his letters from Liberty Jail become some of the most cherished passages in Latter-day Saint scripture. We discuss betrayal, leadership crises, the brutality of Missouri’s expulsion, and the Saints’ struggle to survive amidst violence, sickness, and dislocation.
This chapter also raises hard questions:
Was Joseph Smith’s trial fair?
What role did dissenting church leaders play?
How much of the Liberty Jail narrative has been “whitewashed”?
What does Joseph Smith’s behavior tell us about his character?
We conclude by following Joseph’s escape, his emotionally charged reunion with the Saints in Illinois, and the lasting trauma and financial strain the Missouri experience left behind. This is an episode you won’t want to miss!
Please purchase the book here.
To support this series please donate here. One half of all donations will go to Dr. Turner for as long as he is participating in the series.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Joseph Smith podcast, brought to you by Mormon Stories podcast. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Dr. John DeLinn. It is December 3rd, 2025, and today we are on part 24 of our series on the life of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Dade Saints, |
| 0:21.9 | that being the third official name of the church and the one that the church uses today. |
| 0:27.1 | The book that we're using as the foundation for these first 30-plus episodes is Joseph |
| 0:34.8 | Smith, the rise and fall of an American prophet by Dr. John G. Turner. |
| 0:40.5 | And you're with us here today, John Turner. |
| 0:43.4 | Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:44.6 | I am thrilled to be back. |
| 0:47.1 | How was Thanksgiving? |
| 0:48.1 | Did you have turkey? |
| 0:49.0 | Did you have stuffing? |
| 0:49.8 | Did you have cranberry pie? |
| 0:51.6 | What happened? |
| 0:52.3 | I am an arch traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving food. |
| 0:57.2 | And so, yes, all of that. |
| 1:00.6 | In personal crushing news, I was half a minute slower in my hometown turkey trot than last year. |
| 1:08.5 | So I intend to either redouble my efforts or get on some PEDs this coming |
| 1:14.1 | year. Sounds like the job of OZMPIC. That, I don't know if that's my problem. I think it's just |
| 1:23.4 | aging and they haven't come up with a good good pill to reverse that do uh i have a really |
| 1:30.0 | important question back east do you do you Thanksgiving traditionalists have like some sort |
| 1:35.9 | of sweet potato casserole with like gobs of butter and brown sugar and and nuts or is that just a |
| 1:42.3 | Mormon thing that is not just a Mormon thing? That is not just a Mormon thing. |
... |
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