“You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children’s children unto the third and fourth generation”. The oath of vengeance was an addition made to the Nauvoo endowment under the direction of Brigham Young by 1845 in the Nauvoo Temple, soon after the 1844 death of Joseph Smith.
The existence of this oath is supported by apologist website FairMormon It is interesting to note that a search on the official church website revealed no recognition of the above quote from the first fifty answers. An apologist would justly claim that no content of the temple will likely be found in a general search as the information is considered sacred. Similarly a search for “First token of the Aaronic priesthood”, did not show any answers (It is one of the phrases used in the temple endowment).
Beginning in 1919, LDS church president Heber J Grant appointed a committee charged with revising the endowment ceremony, which was done under the direction of apostle George F Richards from 1921 to 1929. Richards revised the ceremony to eliminate the oath of vengeance, and the revision was formally implemented in the early 1930.
Key Question Jesus forgave those who killed him, so why is it that those in his restored church should chose not to follow his example and supplicate him to avenge the killers of a prophet? Are we to follow Jesus’s example or some new path?