The first and only publication of the Nahu Expositor was issued on June 7, 1844.

It was an Exposay sheet, published by seven recently excommunicated dissenters of the church,

in which they lay bare their grievances against Joseph Smith as both a prophet and politician in the most

blistering, malignant, exaggerated, and provocative ways they could invent.

This move was a calculated trap set to force the hand of Joseph and those close to him to take action against the expositor's printing press, which would open them up to legal charges that could get him to the county seat of Carthage where he could be killed.

On this episode of Church History Matters, we take a close look at the details of that single published edition of the Nahu Expositor to understand just what was so inflammatory and untenable in it that Joseph and the city council determined to take action against it, despite the clear risks of doing so.

We also look at questions about the legality and wisdom of their actions.

I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths. And today

Casey and I dive into our third episode in this series about the martyrdom of

Joseph and Hiram Smith. Now let's get into it. Hello Scott.

Hi Casey. We're continuing this story that I think the two of us are getting pretty wrapped up in.

There is so much. Yeah. You actually texted me yesterday and said,

hey, I'm reading the whole Navao expositor. Do you want to join me? And I was like, no.

Dude, friends invite friends to read the Nabu Expositor with.

Yeah, yeah.

Not that that doesn't sound like a delightful way to spend an afternoon.

I was just in some meetings and stuff, but that's how you spent the day and was it fruitful?

Well it's a depressing text that angers people still today.

Yep. And we'll talk about how it also did so to the original audience, actually. But yeah, we've been just diving deep into original texts here and trying to figure out how exactly to tell the story we want to tell today.

Yeah, and I want to point out that all these

texts are available for you to read for yourself. The good people at the

Joseph Smith Papers have digitized and placed most of these online.

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