Page publicly renounced the stone in the first general church conference in September 1830, and it was generally understood that the spiritual gifts shared in common by the early disciples of Jesus were now concentrated in the person of the “First Elder.” For Joseph this was a salient victory. To have given either disciple free rein would have meant quick chaos, but so to deprive them of the privileges he himself enjoyed was the first step toward authoritarianism in his church. The pattern was set.
