“It Was Needful That He Should Seal His Testimony with His Blood”
Doctrine and Covenants 136:39
39 Many have marveled because of his death; but it was needful that he should seal his testimony with his blood, that he might be honored and the wicked might be condemned.
President Wilford Woodruff said:
“I used to have peculiar feelings about [the Prophet Joseph Smith’s] death and the way in which his life was taken. I felt that if . . . Joseph could have had his desire, he would have pioneered the way to the Rocky Mountains. But since then I have been fully reconciled to the fact that it was according to the programme, that it was required of him, as the head of this dispensation, that he should seal his testimony with his blood, and go hence to the spirit world, holding the keys of this dispensation, to open up the mission that is now being performed by way of preaching the Gospel to the ‘spirits in prison.’”
(In Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 537.)
