Did Joseph Smith say that people lived on the moon?
Nearly 5 decades after Joseph’s death, the journal of Oliver Huntington reports that he heard Joseph say something of this nature while Oliver was a child. There is little reason to take Oliver’s statement at face value. There is no other evidence that Joseph believed such a thing. But even if Joseph did accept some of the common misconceptions of his day (even some scientists speculated about the moon being inhabited), that provides no reason to reject him as a prophet. Prophets don’t automatically become experts on all aspects of science. Even Moses had some basic scientific problems in classifying animals that appear as “errors” in the Bible (listing a bat as a “bird” and a hare as a cud chewer in Deut 14:7,18), but to those who get bent out of shape over that, I say “Get a life!
