Welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmont,

where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church

and grow it by way of visions,

manifestations, and miracles.

Hi, welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast.

I'm your host, Garrett Dirkmont, and I'm joined by my co-host, Richard Leduke.

So in part one of the Word of Wisdom, we talked a little bit about the historical context

of when Joseph Smith received the Word of Wisdom. And in this podcast, we want to talk a little

bit about its progression from 1833 till today.

All right. Well, I think it's first important to understand that in the early church,

they didn't have the same kind of system of counsel and of punishment for lack of a better term that we have today. And we all have

just recently seen the terminologies and the ways that church councils have changed. I mean,

moving away from terminologies like excommunication to withdrawal of fellowship and things like that.

But we have a lot of varied levels of response.

I think one of the things would probably strike members of the church the most if they were reading

their early Latter-day St. History was how easily people got excommunicated from the church.

And I mean super easy.

Probably the guy that I feel the worst for,

and I've got a soft spot in my heart,

is a man who was excommunicated

because he was frequently falling asleep in meetings.

...