Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - Voices of the Restoration • The Witnesses of the Book of Mormon • Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat • February 10-16 • Come Follow Me

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Follow Him. I'm here today with my very faithful and diligent co-host. Therefore, it is proper that Hank Smith should be our co-host today. Is that right, Hank? Hey, I know that quote, John. I know that quote. We're doing another Voices of the Restoration episode, Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. We brought with us again a familiar face, if you've been watching,

Dr. Garrett Dirkmont. Thanks for coming back again with us, Dr. Garrett. Dr. Garrett Dirkmont Thanks for having me back. Jared Suellentrop This topic can answer the question, did Joseph really have plates and who actually saw them? Who was willing to say, no, no, no, I actually saw them and I'm glad they're doing this little voices of the Restoration because we get to see Dr. Dirk not so many times So thanks for coming back help us introduce this Witnesses of the Book of Mormon topic today

Well, I love this section of the come follow me manual First of all, I love the whole idea of bringing individuals' testimonies and voices to the events that we're studying. But in particular, the selection that they've chosen here in the manual is from Lucy Mac Smith's book. She portrays an explanation of the aftermath of the witness event that we generally don't hear. I love the fact that they said, one of the things we need to have is we need to highlight the testimony of people that say the plates are real. This is real. This is a miraculous thing that's going on with the translation.

But Joseph isn't just dictating it from his head. He isn't reading it off of some kind of manuscript somewhere. He didn't memorize everything that there was to know about something and then regurgitate it back. There are real plates. There is really the gift and power of God operating through Joseph in order to give this translation. And the testimony of the three and eight witnesses is such that it makes refuting Joseph Smith's prophethood incredibly difficult. Especially the fact that a lot of them walk away from him, but not from their experience.

Yeah. All three of the three witnesses are going to apostatize and be disaffected at least for a time. Two will return, but one won't. A healthy portion of the eight witnesses as well will also apostatize. It really is the case that these people maintain their testimonies throughout their life. Now, you're always going to have people that will claim that they had conversations with them where they said they didn't believe, but you don't get to have any from them themselves. None of them ever deny their testimony. It's always someone saying something in a Missouri

newspaper like, I talked to David Whitmer last month and he told me he didn't even see the plates. And then, you know, you have David Whitmer responding angrily with his own articles saying that he may understand me now if he did not, then I have never denied my testimony. There's a key reason why the witnesses matter so much for the restoration. And we could get into all kinds of things about it between Joseph's own psychological relief that someone else has actually seen the plates. He can finally show them to defending the truths that Joseph is bringing forth.

There are many, many, many people who throughout the course of time have claimed to have some kind of communication with God. There are many people who believe that they've been inspired by God. There are people who believe that they've been visited by angels or talked to God. When you're a historian, we don't try to demonstrate the veracity of someone's claim like that. So you take someone like Anne White, who she said she received revelations from God telling her that the whole Christian world was worshiping on the wrong day, that really God intended Christians to worship on Saturday. This is where the Seventh-day Adventist Church originates. And as a historian,

when she says, I received this revelation from God, you don't write a book trying to prove that she didn't really have that experience. You just say, this is what she said happened. Matthew 15 This is what she said, yeah. Pete You don't spend the time like, I know she said this happened, but I'm pretty sure that's not what happened because that's not what I think. That's not what a historian does. And when you're doing history, you simply allow people to present what they said happened, and you faithfully recount that. As a Latter-day Saint, how do I deal with these other claims to miraculous visions? Well, I don't really know what happened with Anne White, but it's easy for us to simply

say I'm sure she earnestly believed that God had communicated with her. And you don't have to believe it. You can simply say, you know, she was honest, she believed that, she was a good person, and maybe that's what her inspiration was. But with Joseph Smith, his truth claims are entirely different than essentially almost every other person claiming to have religious communication with God. And that's because of the plates. You can't just think that you have 70, 80, however many pounds of gold plates. You either have them or you

don't have them. It's not a matter of, well, I'm sure it was common at one time for people to try to dismiss Joseph's visions as, well, maybe he was it was common at one time for people to try to dismiss Joseph's visions as, well, maybe he was just, you know, maybe he was sick or maybe he was anemic and he had an iron deficiency and he passed out. And so he just thought that he saw God. Okay. I mean, I guess that's a plausible explanation, except there's a giant stack of metal plates sitting there. I don't know of the iron deficiency that suddenly allows a giant stack of plates to be on your table and that for other people to feel those plates. And, and then I'm kind of being facetious about it, but the point is

Joseph has plates that Joseph has. Something is actually not even refuted by most non-Latter-day Saint scholars anymore, because there are so many people who aren't fans of Joseph Smith who feel them, who lift them. Maybe they don't see them, but Isaac Hale is saying he lifts the box the plates are in. He says that in an affidavit attacking Joseph Smith. So Joseph clearly has something. And that's the conclusion that scholars outside of our faith

come to. So that he has something is very different than simply Martin Luther saying, I felt inspired by God that true salvation came from having faith alone. Joseph is saying, an angel appeared to me, first of all showed me in vision, but told me that there were sacred plates that contained this sacred record and told me that God wanted me to go get them and I went and got them and here they are and these plates I then translated by the gift and power of God through these interpreters, these stones that he provided.

So the gold plates are tied directly to Joseph Smith's entire claim to prophethood. It makes it hard to have the watery position because it's easy for other people to say, you know, I'm sure Joan of Arc really believed that God was communicating with them. But Joseph either has plates or he doesn't have plates. And by all historical records, you have to say he has something. Well, what is the something that he has? the something that he has. He says that that something is sacred records delivered to him by an angel of God and not just him saying it. A shared collective vision where David Whitmer and Albert Cattery and Joseph all see the angel at the same time. All have the angel show them the plates.

So now we're not just saying that the Joseph Smith is lying about whether or not he had plates. Well, now it's also David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery. But wait, there's more because then after that event, he's going to have the same experience in another shared collective visionary experience with Martin Harris. So now Martin Harris is seeing the angel at the same time Joseph is seeing the angel. Martin Harris is seeing the plates at the same time Joseph is seeing the plates. David Whitmer is seeing the angel. Oliver Cowder is seeing the angel.

All at the same time. So it becomes very difficult to simply dismiss the entire thing. Now, you can, you can, and detractors of the faith do. Well, yeah, that's because they were just all liars. Okay, well, what's your evidence that they are liars? Because I don't want to believe it. Okay, well, that's not evidence. That's called an opinion.

Opinions are different than evidence. Opinions are what you want to believe. And evidence is what you actually have sources for. They're not the same thing. It would be very difficult for anyone to argue that any of those three witnesses didn't really believe an angel appeared to them. They repeat it throughout their life. They are challenged on it and repeat it. They repeat it after their apostasy from our church.

It is a central part of what they believe. So I think the nature of the witnesses is such that it doesn't allow a casual and to borrow a phrase from, you know, president Nelson, a lazy approach to the restoration. If you want to claim that Joseph Smith is just a liar and he just made everything up, then you better come with a better explanation than just that, because you have these shared witnesses. It's not just three Garret, you have three, the eight, then you have Lucy Mac,

then you have Mary Whitmer, then you are all these people liars or Josiah stole. And not all of them see the plates. It's true, but many more people than the ones who see the plates actually interact with and see the plates actually interact with and feel the plates. I was just reading an old newspaper article from the 1880s the other day where this is going to come as a surprise to all of your listeners, but Latter-day Saints were not well spoken of in the 19th century. Almost every article you read. It's a surprise. I know today people only say positive things, but back then they

were willing to say the vile and negative things, but, and it was a Harmony resident recounting that her brother had stopped by and actually felt the plates through a pillowcase. And it's like, so you actually have many people who appear to have felt and seen the physical reality of the plates. And then as Hank mentioned, you have others that will witness that they actually saw them like Josiah Stoll. Josiah Stoll will say that when Joseph is handing the plates through the window and he's got a covering on them, you know, the covering slips off a little bit and he actually sees the plates.

You have other people like Emma who certainly know the physical reality of the plates. She feels the plates. She moves up. She knows the plates are sitting there on her kitchen table. They are absolutely there. Now she is never allowed to look at them to see them, but she knows he's got plates. She knows it's the same with Lucy Mack.

They're able to see and feel the reality of the plates. I think that's the reason why God set up the three and eight witness experiences the way he did. It's interesting because it's actually more powerful to me today than I think it would have been in the 19th century because we become far more secular as a society. We are not as inclined to believe in the miraculous as a society. Now, of course, there's all kinds of people listening that definitely do, but as a society, we've moved away from using religion to explain the unexplainable and we've moved more toward, well, there has to be a scientific explanation for everything.

So the way that someone today who doesn't want to accept that the plates really were from God and the way that Joseph Smith really had his miraculous experiences, the way that they would try to denigrate that or to explain it away, they would take the three witness experience and they would say, well, I'm sure they all thought that they saw an angel. And maybe they thought that they saw plates, but that was a vision. It was a visionary experience. And maybe it was just something where you can even hear people that are super detractors say things like, well, they were probably just all inebriated and they all had mushrooms for dinner, right?

Yeah, exactly. Magic mushrooms. And so the argument from someone for the three witnesses today, the antagonistic argument would be they all clearly seem to think that they saw it, but of course they didn't because angels don't exist and neither does God or whatever. But it was just vision. It was just in their mind. They collectively in their mind thought they saw it. Okay. Well, then what do you say about the eight witnesses whose experience is entirely

tactile, is entirely physical, is entirely removed from the supernatural? Which was so brilliant. I mean, I love that there was a totally different way that they experienced seeing the plates than the three witnesses. For some it was an angel and a very spiritual revelation type thing, and for others it was a see that table right there, walk up there, see that, those are the plates right there. Yeah, it really does answer both criticisms because if all you took was the eight witnesses account, which again, very difficult to refute. You have eight people who are all on record saying, I lifted plates. I felt plates. I saw plates. I hefted and know of a surety that

the said Smith, they are adamant about the physical reality of these gold plates. So how would a detractor attack that? They would say, well, I'm sure Joseph had something. Maybe he found some like copper printing plates out in the woods. And even though, you know, people are always doing that. Oh yeah. People are just discarding them everywhere. Or, you know, if someone's even more antagonistic, they'll say, well, Joseph must've manufactured the plates.

Or, you know, if someone's even more antagonistic, they'll say, well, Joseph must have manufactured the plates. He stole a bunch of tin from a local tinsmith and figured out how to work it into sheets of metal himself and created a bellows and then etched it and then found a way to tarnish the tin to make it look like it was gold and look so much like gold that you could fool someone like Martin Harris who certainly knows what gold looks like. At some point, it's easier to believe that an angel brought it to him because there's so many things that you have to believe to get to that point. But someone would say, well, maybe Joseph Smith has something that he either mistakenly believes is from God or that he deliberately fabricated to try to fool people that came from God. So that's how someone would respond to the eight witnesses.

The problem is the three witnesses. The two arguments work together. The eight witnesses affirm that there is something. There is something physical and real, and it is not a vision, and I'm not suffering from an iron deficiency. These are real plates." The three witnesses affirm, and that something, that something that we know he has, is from God.

And the translation, by the way, is correct. I love what you've done here, especially with, at the very beginning you said something about like the first sections of the Doctrine of Covenants. The backstory is all of this. I got the plates, and now what do I do? And translation and everything. The human side of Joseph comes out in this part that Lucy Mac Smith wrote. So right at the very beginning of the manual is this excerpt from Lucy Mac Smith. It was between three and four o'clock, Mrs. Whitmer and Mr. Smith and myself were sitting in a bedroom. I sat on the bedside. When Joseph came in, he threw himself down beside me. Okay, he's 20 something, right? You run into a room and you jump on something, right?

He threw himself down beside me. Father, mother, said he, you do not know how happy I am. The Lord has caused the place to be shown to three more besides me who have also seen an angel and will have to testify to the truth of what I have said. For they know for themselves that I do not go about to deceive the people. And I do feel as though I was relieved of a dreadful burden, which was almost too much for me to endure, but they will now have to bear apart, and it does rejoice my soul that I am not any longer to be entirely alone in the world." I love that, because you think,

yeah, what would it be like to be defending? No, really, and then to have these others see it, and okay, you guys gotta bear your witness to the world now. And then she continues, I'm sorry. Martin Harris then came in. He seemed almost overcome with excess of joy. He then testified to what he had seen and heard, as did also the others, Oliver and David.

Their testimony was the same in substance as that contained in the Book of Mormon. And John Garrett, that whole circumstance right there, wouldn't he be doing this as a big act to three people who already believe him? There's no reason for him to go into the bedroom and go, oh, you can't tell you how relieved I am to people who already believe me. John That's how wide the conspiracy goes. I mean, even Lucy's part of it. So they, when they concocted this whole thing, that's the reality of, is that everything about what we have from Joseph Smith's writings, all of the documents that we have that well over 10,000 documents and the thousands and thousands

of pages, they all point to the fact that Joseph Smith absolutely believes that he was called by God. There is no little journal entry off to the side that's like, mental note, talk to Oliver about ways to continue to deceive people that he saw a place. I mean, you don't have any of those things. You have what appear to be someone who absolutely believes that they were called by God, and the witnesses are in that same boat. They will lose their faith in a lot of things over the course of time. They'll lose their faith in Joseph over

the course of time, but they won't lose their faith in the fact that at least the three witnesses that they saw an angel and they saw the plates or the eight witnesses that they hefted and lifted and leafed through those plates. Garrett, would it be fair to say that if I'm reading from someone maybe online who comes at this with the premise that Joseph, he knows he is lying. He knows he's not a prophet. He knows none of this is happening. If I'm listening to someone who has that premise, can I know that they have not really done the research on this? There's no way you can make that claim because there's no evidence.

Well, I would say first and foremost, what are that person's qualifications? I mean, before you listen to anybody who's telling you some wonderful new theory about where the Book of Mormon came from or who Joseph Smith really was, the first thing before you read the next word should be, is this published somewhere? Did other historians see this argument and think, my goodness, this is so incredible, how is it only on a YouTube back channel? If we're trying to learn in what you're saying, you're in a secular fashion, if I want to learn about just the facts behind Joseph Smith, well, they're not going to be found on someone's ex-Mormon subreddit. They're not going to be found on a place where non-experts are having a discussion.

You're not going to find actual historians who actually publish in the field that will be saying things like, it's clear that Joseph Smith was just lying about everything and that Joseph Smith was a fraud about everything and that Joseph Smith was a fraud and all the evidence points to that. Now look, you can find later statements from people in Palmyra who will say, oh yeah, the Smiths, they were always known as being a bunch of liars. You can find those, but you don't find that in Joseph Smith's writing. You don't find it in his letters.

You don't find it in his letters. You don't find it in his journals. When you have historians who treat the prophet who aren't Latter-day Saints, they do the historically responsible thing, and that is take what Joseph says and believe seriously. Trust, unless you have evidence to the contrary, it's irresponsible to argue that someone doesn't believe what they say they believe. Now, it does happen in history sometimes that people will say they believe things, and then in their private journal they'll be like, I don't believe this is all. I only said that because I was trying to win votes.

That happens. But it doesn't happen with Joseph Smith. We don't have him giving this sermon and then later in his journal saying, yeah, I don't actually believe any of this stuff. I'm just trying to push this along. Yeah. I would say it's very important. I know people have questions.

Everyone has questions about things that they care about. And if you care about the gospel, you're going to have questions, especially in a world where there are so many different voices that are trying to speak to us to say, no, no, you should know this. If you knew what I knew, then you wouldn't believe. Well, if what you're trying to do is to actually gain more knowledge, then it's important that you try to do it in a way that is responsible. Because you wouldn't do this with any other area of your life. You wouldn't trust your medical health to just someone who had a big following

online, you wouldn't trust non experts for any other area of your life. Don't trust your testimony to them. I have a PhD in history. I've written and published on Joseph Smith for years now for decades at this point. Your faith should be placed in the Savior Jesus Christ. Your faith should be in following what the current prophet of the church has to say. If you feel like I am ever saying something that is the opposite of those things, well,

don't listen to me. I am a historian. I have the ability to say this is what the sources say happened in the past. Your faith should be something that you desperately guard. If this is true, if this restoration is from God and it is, but just for rhetorical purpose, if this is true, it's the most important thing in anyone's life. It's more important than literally anything. If this is true. So we should treat it like that.

We should treat it as if it is so incredibly precious. And I would say to people who are struggling, if you find yourself spending more time reading antagonistic things about Joseph and about the early history and all these new things from someone's special, their special insights that no historians publish because they're not good insights. Then you are reading the actual revelations or reading the book of Mormon. Well, what do you think is going to happen to your faith? reading the Book of Mormon, well, what do you think is going to happen to your faith?

Do you think that if you continually go to someone who is attacking your faith, who is making claims about your faith that are detrimental, do you really think that your faith is going to somehow increase? Of course it's not. If you really want to know, did Joseph Smith receive these revelations? Read them. Read them and the Holy Spirit will touch your heart and tell you these are from God. I think that's what the prophet Joseph wanted us to do. What was his famous statement? God hath not made anything known unto Joseph, but what he will make known unto the twelve and even the least saint, as fast as he is able to bear them, something like that. Go ask yourself.

I love that. Pete Slauson Garrett, can I ask you a question and just see where you go with this? Pete Slauson It's very dangerous, but yes. Pete Slauson It's interesting to me that the primary antagonist argument today is the ludicrous idea that Joseph Smith had plates. How silly, how crazy, how stupid do you have to be to believe this? Yet the enemies of Joseph Smith in the late 1820s were the exact opposite.

They were wholeheartedly believed he had plates and wanted to get them. I mean, a great example of this is Lucy Harris. Lucy Harris goes down to Harmony and ransacks Emma's home. He'd come for a nice house visit and she spends a day rifling through every drawer and looking under every nook and cranny of Emma's home in Harmony, desperate to find the plates. And then when she can't find them in the house, she's out digging up the yard trying to find them. She's out everywhere looking for them.

I would say that those are not the actions of someone who believes plates don't exist. But you know what happens in the aftermath of that? She goes back up to Palmyra and attempts to undertake apparently a legal case against Joseph Smith for fraud because he doesn't actually have any plates. And you see this wild vacillation from people breaking into Joseph's home to try to find the plates, people assaulting him as he's coming home with the plates to try to steal the plates to, well, yeah, he never had any plates. I'm either committing a home invasion or actually you don't even have any. I mean, those couldn't be further apart. And frankly, the actions of people breaking into his home and trying to find them belies the later argument

that, oh yeah, everyone knew that Joseph Smith was a liar. Everyone did. Just everyone did. Really? That's why they're breaking into his house? Seems like if everyone knew that Joseph Smith was a liar, then when he said, I have gold plates, nobody would be breaking into his house. Everyone would laugh and go about their business. Yeah, you would just say, I mean, look, we all probably have people in our own lives who are a little bit hesitant on the truth. And when they say something, it doesn't change my life at all.

They're like, oh, you know, this happened. I'm like, probably not. That's what I think to myself. Probably not. And I just go about my business, but it is this wild swinging pendulum from he must have something to he lied and never had anything. And they skipped the step in between, right? That, well, he had something. It's just not really from God. I mean, cause that would be the next step. But I've always wondered, Joseph doesn't comment on this, but it must have been frustrating that the first two years I had these, you people are desperate to steal them from me. You're assaulting me. You're breaking into my home.

I'm hiding them as I'm about to be mobbed, going out of Palmyra to get out of town. And now you all say I never had them in the first place. I mean, it would seem a frustrating thing, which kind of goes to the point of what John read, you know, how relieved Joseph was when finally this burden wasn't his anymore. His alone. Yeah. When I introduced Hank, I called him my very faithful and diligent co-host. And there are the three witnesses, there are the eight witnesses, there's Joseph Smith, of course, which adds up to 12, which is kind of cool. But then we have this story about Mary Whitmer. Could you tell us more about that, Garrett? That's where that phrase, very faithful and diligent comes from that describes Hank so well.

Garrett Snell This is in the voices of the restoration. It's in that second part of your lesson here. This is the experience that's later told about Mary Whitmer seeing the plates for the Whitmers. They got involved heavily in the translation of the Book of Mormon, but in a very rapid time period. I mean, they went from not really knowing a whole lot about the translation to having the translation take place in their home and all of the accompanying really within just days.

I mean, it is Joseph and Oliver writing to David Whitmer saying, Hey, things are getting a little rough here in harmony. There's mounting opposition. Can we move to your dad's place there in Fayette? And can we translate there? And by the way, can you bring your wagon down to get us? Because we don't have any way to get there. There's nothing better than the friend who not only needs your help moving, but also needs your truck. Hey, is there any way you can help me move on Saturday? Yeah. Yeah. Where are you moving? Yeah. Texas. Okay.

And I'm going to need to borrow your truck too. Okay. And can you drive? Can you drive? I need you to drive, but that's essentially what happened. And you have the accounts of David Whitmer sharing this idea with his family and they're not super happy about it and David Whitmer, they're in the middle of their planning season and David Whitmer has the field miraculously plowed and plastered form and he then goes down to get them, but when he comes

up, what was already the busiest time of the year? I mean, you can go find any farmer and ask them, I'll bet you guys are just kicking back in June, you have nothing to do. I grew up working on farms in Idaho. June and July are not sit back and rest times for farmers. Maybe sometime in January, if you don't have any cattle, but it's the most intense time of everything that you're doing to provide for yourself.

And so the household itself is already incredibly busy. Now, if you're a woman in the 19th century, it most likely, most often is going to fall upon you as the perceived role to provide meals, to do laundry for not only the majority of the family, but also for the people that are your guests. Benjamin Franklin said that fish and house guests stink after three days. Right? I mean, but I don't care who you are. You could go on a trip with your best friend in the entire world.

If it's a two week trip by day eight, you're like, if he clears his throat one more time, I'll shove him out of the car. I will open the door of his, he's my best friend. I've known him my whole life. I will push him out on the highway. If he clears his throat again, it is difficult amidst all of the hard work that already was going on in the Fayette farm to now have two other adult males that are there who by the way, aren't doing any of the work in the fields.

I mean, maybe they are sometimes, but primarily they appear to just be translating. And then of course, to have Emma come later on as well. On top of all these mouths that you have to feed on top of all this laundry have to do now you're playing the hostess. And by the way, it's the busiest time of the entire year. I think for Mary, she had the very, very natural reaction of, what is going on? Why is my workload so much more than it was at the busiest time of the year because of some idea of these plates? And by the way, everyone says that Joseph is worshipping the devil

and you know, so all the, if she were to talk to anybody about it, they would say, well, what do you get when you have some kind of imposter come live at your house? I mean, she would have only heard negative things from the outside. And so in the midst of this, we don't know exactly when it happened. Obviously it happened when they were there and they were translating. It's a later reminiscing account, someone looking back and saying this would happen. An old man comes and appears to her is what the source says and shows her the plates and tells her that you, because she's been faithful, that she is going to have a view of these things. You do have these other people who saw the plates and not just saw the plates, apparently saw an

angel. I mean, this is not Joseph Smith Sr. that was a, Hey, here's the plates. It was apparently a miraculous visitation. There's actually in our church records, there's another record of another person seeing the plates and seeing the angel. And this is Lyman Johnson. Now Lyman Johnson is one of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In fact, he's actually the most original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles because

he's the first one that gets ordained. In the earliest days of the church. The way they structured seniority in the quorums was not by when you were ordained, but by how old you were. So that doesn't mean that he was the most senior apostle, but he certainly was the first that was ordained. And by the way, while I'm talking about that, let me just go off on a tangent, because that's what bad historians do. The three witnesses calling was so important that as you get further in the revelations, you're going to study Doctrine and Covenants section 18, where it is the three witnesses that are given the power by God to select the quorum

of the 12 apostles. And in in fact they're the ones given the power to ordain them apostles. The three witnesses have a very elevated position. I digress as I knew I would. It's good to know who I really am. The experience that Lyman Johnson had was he hears about the plates, hears about the witnesses, and apparently prays to God and asks to have the same experience and has the same experience. So this would have been in 1831 or 32. Joseph's already given those plates back. They're already well on their way to trying to figure out how to get things built in Zion. And Lyman Johnson has this miraculous experience that he apparently talks about publicly. You have people that are converted that he says, I saw the angel and I saw the place.

Now, unfortunately, Lyman Johnson is also going to apostatize, but there are these other witnesses. Okay. Is that an original source? Is that that Lyman wrote or is it others that heard him talk about it? Yeah, it's primarily other people. So Lyman Johnson, we do have people saying that they were converted by Lyman Johnson and Lyman Johnson's talking about it, but our best source for that actually comes from Brigham Young who talks about Lyman Johnson having that experience.

This is what Brigham Young, he describes this now, of course, Brigham Young, he knows Lyman Johnson really well. And the really interesting aspect of Lyman Johnson is even though he apostatizes surrounding the whole Kirtland safety society fiasco, he continues to move where the church moves. He's actually one of the founders or he's considered one of the founders of Keogh Cuck, Iowa. I don't know if anyone's ever been to Keogh Cuck.

It's a great place to find a Walmart if you're visiting Nauvoo, but it's across the river there. He builds what people believe to be the first brick building in Keogh Cuck, even though he's, he's not a member. Now, of course, other people in his family are still members, like his sister And of course, other people in his family are still members, like his sister, Miranda, who's married to Orson Hyde and Heber C. Kimball gives this account that when he was leaving to go on a mission, even though Lyman Johnson had apostatized.

When Lyman Johnson found out that he was going on his mission to England, that Lyman Johnson gave him a cloak and he was like, I wore that cloak back and forth from England, you know, multiple times Lyman's brother, Luke also apostatizes. He was also one of the original members of the core of the 12 apostles, but he will come back into the church and will come to Utah and actually be the first Bishop of Tewila is the only apostle we know that was an apostle and then became a bishop. Brigham Young, he talks about this in an 1864 sermon that he's giving. So this is in the midst of the American Civil War. This is what he said, I've heard Lyman Johnson say, he stayed at my house

after they came home from England and met with the 12, and Lyman said if I could believe Mormonism as I once did, I would give my right hand. I would not care for one farthing, whether it was true or not. I would never ask the question. I want happiness and the peace. I want comfort and consolation in my bosom. When I believed Mormonism and Joseph was a prophet, I was just as happy as any man that ever lived. And since I've given up my religion, I am as miserable as any man can be." He says, he was a man that was visited with a revelation. When Joseph

came to Ohio and preached to them, they believed and he was baptized. And Lyman went and he prayed for himself and he asked the Lord to give him the same manifestation and the revelation that he gave to Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris and David Whitmer concerning the Book of Mormon. And Lyman said that the angel came to him and laid before him the plates and he really thought he took up the plates and handled them and they conversed with each other. And soon the vision passed away and he testified of that for years. That's Brigham Young recounting Lyman Johnson's experience there. What does that tell you Lyman? Well, what can you connect the two? So I was happier

when I was, so what is that? What do you think that means? I have no way of explaining why. I don't know if the Lord did it on purpose, but we've got our three witnesses, our eight witnesses, 11 witnesses, we've got a woman named Mary. It sounds like a reboot of the resurrection, doesn't it? Was it George Mitten who wrote something about the Book of Mormon as a type of Christ? Yeah. He was entombed, he came out, he was wrapped in linen maybe, you know, like the plates were at a time.

12 witnesses plus a woman named Mary. Sometimes people ask, well, how come Emma didn't see the plates? Well, because her name wasn't married Because it needs to match on my PowerPoint that's why And you'll get to this when you get to section 25, you know, it really is a great background of that section Imagine if you are Emma you aren't kind of sort of involved. I mean, your entire life has been completely turned upside down by the fact that you have embraced what Joseph is saying is happening to him. And not only that, you aren't some person sitting on the sidelines.

You're one of the scribes of the translation. You are sitting next to Joseph as he is miraculously producing these words that you're writing down. Now, Martin Harris is going to lose those, but you're writing them down. And the guy who lost the pages, he gets to see the place, but you, his faithful wife, doesn't. DNC 25 will open up by saying, murmur not because of the things that you have not seen.

And the Lord says it's because there's a wise purpose in him that they've been kept back. I don't know exactly what all the wise purpose is, but I can tell you from my perspective, it makes Emma's later testimonies seem all the more honest and truthful when it regards the translation because she's giving these interviews, she's telling people, she's writing letters that Joseph Smith had plates and that Joseph Smith translated them. Since that's the point is to prove that her husband really was a prophet. Why doesn't she just say, Oh yeah, I saw the plates. Well, is someone going to be able to check up on that? I mean, if the point is to convince people that this is really true and she was lying

about it, then why wouldn't she just tell the bigger lie? Why wouldn't you just say, Oh yeah, I saw the plates. He really had them instead. She's very careful about it. I felt the plates. I saw the plates on the table. They were there. They about it. I, I felt the plates. I saw the plates on the table. They were there. They were real. I touched them.

I could feel the ridges. And to me, it almost makes her testimony even more powerful because again, does Joseph have plates Emma is saying that he does that he absolutely has plates. And she isn't lying about it because the lie would be, yeah I saw them. That's the lie. Though if you're trying to convince people then say that you saw them. They can't check that. But in fact she's saying they're physical, they're real, but I didn't see them. We often quote Emma when she said that at the time Joseph Joseph couldn't write a well worded

coherent letter, I'm just wondering if while Emma was ascribed, she was going, I have never heard Joseph talk like this. And if that was an evidence for her. Part of what she says, it was a marvel to me as it was to anyone else. Cause she knows Joseph best. She's the one who relates the story that they're translating. And Joseph dictates something about the walls of Jerusalem and Joseph stops and asks Emma, because she's far more educated, are there walls around Jerusalem? And

Emma's like, yeah, of course there's walls around Right. Again, for her, I think it is incredibly miraculous because I know my husband, I know what he has the ability to do and not do. He's doing something that he doesn't have the ability to do. I think for a lot of people, I think Martin Harris felt the same way. I think everyone who's connected to the miraculous translation of the Book of Mormon, they know that they're experiencing something that is beyond the ability of Joseph Smith. I want to quote Emma here. There's a great article I'm sure both of you have read it, our friend Anthony Sweatt wrote, Hefted and Handled Tangible Interactions with Book of

Mormon Objects. He quotes Emma, he says, other than Joseph Smith, the person who had the most interaction with the tangible reality of the plates was the Prophet's wife Emma Smith. She later recalled that after Joseph obtained the record the plates lay in a box under our bed for months, but I never felt at liberty to look at them. In a later interview with her son, Joseph Smith III, Emma recounted that when she and Joseph arrived in Harmony, Pennsylvania, she had given Joseph a small linen tablecloth to wrap the plates in. Emma explained that the plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment,

wrapped in this cloth. She also recalled, I once felt of the plates as they thus lay on the table tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book. That's pretty specific. She says later in the interview, my belief, this is what Garrett just said, these are her words, my belief is that the book of Mormon is of divine authenticity. I have not the slightest doubt of it.

Yeah. She bears a powerful witness and knows it closer than any detractor who will try to say that, that he didn't really have them. Right. Again, another person that you have to stack up in the long list of everyone who's part of the conspiracy. If you're claiming that Joseph didn't really have plates and didn't really translate them and is willing to go through as difficult of a life as anyone.

Yeah. William McClellan, another one of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who will also apostatize and he becomes quite a problematic figure over the course of his life in his various attempts to start his own church, he recounts something that one of the eight witnesses to the Book of Mormon goes through in Missouri. He talks about just how awful it was for Hiram Page when the mobbing and the violence happened. This is what he said. He said, in 1833, when mobbing reigned triumphant in Jackson County, Missouri, I and Oliver Cowdery fled

from our homes for fear of personal violence. On Saturday the 20th of July, the mob dispersed agreeing to meet again on the next Tuesday. They offered $80 reward for anyone who would deliver a Cowdery or McClellan in independence on Tuesday. I think he's quite proud of himself. I don't know if they wanted him. I said to them, Brethren, I have never seen an open vision in my life, but you men say you have, therefore you positively know. Now you know that our lives are in danger every hour. If the mob can only catch us, tell me in the fear of God, is that Book of Mormon true? Cowdery looked at me with solemnity depicted in his face and said,

Brother William, God sent his holy angel to declare the truth of the translation to us, and therefore we know. And though the mob kill us, yet we must die declaring its truth. David Whitmer said, Oliver has told you the solemn truth for we could not be deceived. I most truly declare to you its truth. Said I, boys, I believe you. I can see no object for you to tell me falsehood now when our lives are in danger. Eight men testified to the handling of that sacred pile of plates, and from which Joseph Smith read off the translation of that heavenly book." So here's another account he gets, so that's with David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery. This with Hiram Page at the same time.

While the mob was raging in Jackson County, Missouri in 1833, some young men ran down Hiram Page in the woods, one of the eight witnesses, and commenced beating him and pounding him with whips and with clubs. He begged, but there was no mercy. They said that he was a damn Mormon, and they meant to beat him to death. But finally one of them said to him, If you will deny that damn book, we'll let you go. Said he, How can I deny what I know to be true? Then they pounded him again. When they thought he was about to breathe his last, they said to him,

"'Now what do you think of your God, when he don't save you?' "'Well,' said he, "'I believe in God.' "'Well,' said one of the most intelligent among them, "'I believe the damned fool will stick to it through until we kill him.' Let us let him go, but his life was nearly run out. He was confined to his bed for a length of time. So much for a man who knows for himself. Knowledge is beyond faith or doubt. It is a positive certainty."

So here Hiram Page is brutally beaten over the fact that he refuses to recant his experience at seeing the Book of Mormon being one of the witnesses to it. He will actually be asked later in life directly. So we actually have a letter from Hiram Page. So that's William McClellan saying what happened. And he appears to be a witness of some of those events. Here we have a letter from Hiram Page where he's asked specifically about whether or not you still say that you saw those gold plates.

This is in 1847. He says, You want to know my faith relative to the Book of Mormon and the winding up of wickedness. As to the Book of Mormon, it would be doing injustice to myself and to the work of God of the last days to say that I could know a thing to be true in 1830 and to know that same thing to be false in 1847. To say my mind was so treacherous that I'd forgotten what I saw, to say that a man of Joseph's ability, who at that time did not know how to pronounce the word Nephi, could write a book of 600 pages as correct

as the Book of Mormon without supernatural power, and to say that those holy angels, who came and showed themselves to me as I was walking through the field, to confirm me in the work of the Lord of the last days, three of whom came to me afterwards and sang a hymn in their own pure language. Yea, it would be treating the God of heaven with contempt to deny these testimonies with too many others to mention here." So Hiram Page, even though we always list him as one of the eight witnesses who only saw the plates, he says he actually also saw angels, that angels also came to him individually to tell him that the plates were from God. Wow. And sang a hymn with him.

I don't know what the hymn was. It was probably, you know, in the leafy treetops. I don't know. When your life is on the line, and I think of Joseph in Liberty Jail too, you know, just, okay, never mind, guys, okay, forget it. And when they're beating you with the intent to beat you to death, like Hiram Page, and they give you a chance, I mean, the distinction that you made earlier, people left the church, but they never left their testimony of what they saw. That's personalities, but they never left. testimony of what they saw. That's personalities, but they never left. No, I saw that the plates.

I saw the book of Mormon. Yeah. You get a similar reaffirming of their testimony from Hiram Smith after the horrors of the incarceration in Missouri. When he is finally able to get out of prison, he writes a letter to the church where he recounts a lot of things that happen, but also he places it in the context of being someone who actually felt and lifted the plates. He says, you may judge what my feelings were when I escaped from

those whose feet were fast to shed blood and when I again was privileged to see my beloved family who had suffered so many privations and afflictions, not only while in far west but likewise in moving away in the inclement season of the year. Thus I have endeavored to give you a short account of my suffering while in the state of Missouri. But how inadequate is language to express the feelings of my mind while under them, knowing that I was innocent of crime and that I'd been dragged from my family at a time when my assistance was most needed.

If you remember, Hiram's wife was incredibly ill during the entirety of his incarceration. So sick that she couldn't even come visit him, at least not regularly. So things are going to be a problem when you're being driven out of your home by a mob. They're even more of a problem when your family's already not well to begin with. But he said, I had been abused. I was thrust into a dungeon and confined for months on account of my faith in the testimony of Jesus Christ. However, I thank God that I felt a determination to die rather than deny the things which my eyes had seen, which my hands had handled, and which I had borne testimony to. Whatever my law had been cast, I can assure my beloved brethren that I was enabled to

bear as strong a testimony when nothing but death presented itself as ever I did in my life. My confidence in God was likewise unshaken. I knew that he who suffered me, along with my brethren, to be thus tried, that he could and that he would deliver us out of the hands of our enemies, and in his own due time he did so, for which I desire to bless and praise his holy name." So you've got a testimony when times were easy, and you've got a testimony when times are really, really tough. It didn't change because it was, it was what happened.

And for these witnesses, I mean, they're going to have the stink of Mormonism, right? The antagonism surrounding Latter-day Saints hanging around their neck their entire lives. Even after they leave the faith, the fact that they were ever affiliated with it is going to be something that Oliver Cowdery likely loses his election as he's trying to be elected to a state office. He loses by only a few votes because his opponent ties the fact that he used to be a Mormon leader around his neck. At a time when Latter-day Saints are thoroughly despised and hated.

So you don't have any reason for these men to continue to defend their testimonies. Even after they're out of the church. Now we don't have records from all of them. Christian Whitmer and Peter Whitmer Jr. They die so early in the restoration. Whitmer Jr., they die so early in the restoration. They are the Whitmers that don't apostatize because they died before the great Whitmer apostasy happens in 1837, 1838. And so we don't have records of them later in life talking about it. You have Oliver Cowdery saying, you know, these are great men who always maintained their testimony. And then with some others, you don't have direct

statements. You have people like their children saying, oh yes, my dad always affirmed that he saw the plates. But the records we have is that these witnesses are certain that they saw plates, certain that this is a work from God, and certain that the Book of Mormon is the Word of God. I like what you just said because I think that reading the Book of Mormon 200 years later and seeing the testimony of the witnesses, we forget that they signed that and then they had to go on with their lives and they had to go on living in their communities and they had to go on interacting with people in their communities and like you said, and running for office and then having the consequences of that.

I'm sure that you have many listeners to your podcast who are in areas where there are not very many Latter-day Saints where they're the only one in the high school or they're the only one that they know that they're driving 25 minutes to get to the closest church building or even further. Probably at times they feel like they are isolated and alone in their testimony and in their belief in the restoration. Early witnesses, in fact, all of the early members are similar in a lot of ways. early witnesses, in fact, all of the early members are similar in a lot of ways. These men are signing their names to those documents in the summer of 1829. There's not 17 and a half million members in the summer of 1829.

There's not even a church in the summer of 1829. There's no evidence that anyone is going to believe any of this at all. Outside of the Smith family, outside of the Knight family, and outside of the Whitmer family, people who believe are pretty few and far between. So they are in the face of all kinds of opposition, all kinds of naysaying and comments that denigrate and attack their character, they are saying, we believe this to be true. People today like to believe that the leaders of the church, they testify that they believe just because that's, you know, that's why they're important.

And now they're famous and they're, of course, they're going to say that because they're part of it. This is first of all, a terrible argument. But second of all, in the earliest days of the church, no one knew that it was going to be successful at all. Certainly the people making fun of it when it was organized thought that it was going to collapse, and it didn't collapse, and it continued to grow. These witnesses, it's just a great point you make John, that they made these testimonies in a world that thoroughly rejected everything they said. And they didn't have the stability of the church to lean back on and say, well,

at least there's these other people that believe they had just their families. They had Joseph and A whole world that said this is all lies The books never gonna get published the book if it is published no one's going to read it You're all servants of Satan and all these other things that are being said and they still sign their names that document Sometimes we think they can see the future they can see this huge church that leans on them and loves them. None of that. None of that is reality to them. My guess is Hiram Page didn't know as he was being beaten to death by a Missouri

mob that he'd be mentioned in a podcast talking about his testimony. That's what my guess is. He's sitting there like, he's like, I can't deny. What will they say on the show? John Wittmer Yeah, right. One more I want to share is John Whitmer's. John Whitmer gets asked, so he's one of the eight witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and John Whitmer apostatizes. He's not a member of the church. So later in life, someone asks him, come on, you didn't really have plates.

We all know these later witnesses, by the way, when they're making these comments in the 1850s and 60s and 70s and 80s, they are making them in a world that believes as a scientific fact that Joseph Smith stole the Book of Mormon text from the Solomon's Balding manuscript because in the mid-19th century, all the way up to the end of it, basically, the claim made by antagonists, Iber Howe and Philastus Hurlbut, the entirety of the Book of Mormon actually came from this former preacher's novel that he wrote. That was so widely believed that if you read encyclopedia entries, the encyclopedia Britannica from the 1860s, it will say that the real origin of the Book of Mormon is from the Solomon's

Molding manuscript. So when these witnesses are being asked, do you still believe, do you still hold to your testimony in the 1860s and 1870s? They're being asked in the context of everybody knows that it's a fraud, that everyone knows. We know it just came from a book. We know, we know. Joseph just copied it from a book. So just say he copied it from a book. This is the letter that John Whitmer wrote. As for giving all the particulars that I know of the Book of Mormon, I could not on one sheet of paper therefore permit me to be brief.

Second, from what you have written, I conclude that you have read the Book of Mormon, together with the testimonies that are thereto attached, in which testimonies you read my name, subscribed as one of the eight witnesses to said book. That testimony was, is, and will be true, henceforth and forever." And he underlines, was, will, true, in his letter back. It's fantastic. And you talked about this in our last episode about the Solomon Spalding manuscript, so people can listen to that.

But that's what everybody thought, ah, that's where it came from. So you have to have a way to explain where the Book of Mormon came from. You know, as I talked about in our previous episode, early on, it was easy to just simply say only a stupid person would believe, but then thousands of people believe. So you can't just say that everyone's stupid. I mean, you can, but it's not a terribly great argument. They want to have what they think is a plausible explanation. This claim made by Dr. Philastus Hurlbut that most of the Book of Mormon and all the names in it and all the major things in it come from this novel that he claims to have found, it gives people who want to have an

excuse for why they reject the Book of Mormon and why they allow this kind of venom towards the Latter-day Saints, why it's okay to persecute them, it gives them this justification. Well, your whole religion is just a fraud. So yeah, of course we can persecute you because your whole religion is made up on this fake idea of a book. And then when they eventually find the actual Solomon Spalding manuscript, there's not even names that are similar. It's in no way similar to the actual Book of Mormon.

That whole argument dies down and there has to be new arguments made about where the book actually comes from because the Book of Mormon today is still not just a testament of Jesus. It is the greatest evidence that Joseph Smith was who he said he was. Where did that book come from? And yeah, people invent all kinds of fun theories. They want to try to find a way to explain it. They want some unison. They want to be able to sleep at night. They want to be able to figure out, well, this is where it came from.

So they'll run the gambit from saying, well, I don't really think the Book of Mormon's that great a literature. Okay, your opinion's duly noted and also wrong. Next, well, I think that Sidney Rigdon actually secretly was converted in Ohio previously and concocted the scheme with Joseph and secretly went there and they secretly wrote it all and then he went back and then pretended to get converted. Look, I guess if that's what helps you sleep at night, you're going to need several sleeping pills, because the reality is you don't have any evidence for that.

Outside of people later making conjecture and making claims, you don't have any contemporary sources for that. And I think that that's the reason why the Book of Mormon will always be this focal point of people trying to attack the church because what do I do with it? And very often these witnesses, they may not be being beaten in a field in Missouri anymore, but they are very often attacked by people who know that the witnesses' testimonies undermine their antagonistic attack.

You want to say that Joseph Smith just made it all up, but what you're really saying is that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer and Martin Harris and all of the eight witnesses and Mary Whitmer and all of the other people, what you're really saying is they all collectively made it all up because they all had these shared either physical or visionary or both experiences. I just wanted to throw a couple other quotes out there that I brought today. This is again from Hefted and Handled, that article from Anthony Sweat. He tries to create, I think, a comprehensive list of everyone. The list gets longer and longer.

Every time you look at it, you're like, oh, that person said that? You got Catherine Smith, who said she moved and hefted the plates in a box. She rippled the fingers of the edges of the plates. You've got William Smith, who was a teenager at the time. He said he was there. You've got a Mr. Beeman, maybe an Alva Beeman that Martin Harris says, oh yeah, he lifted the box. Isaac Hale says, he lifts the box in it.

And I love this one. This is from a different article called, Evaluating the Book of Mormon Witnesses by our friend Stephen Harper. The last surviving of the three witnesses, David Whitmer, spoke for all of them in 1887. I will say once more to all mankind that I have never at any time denied that testimony or any part thereof. I also testify to the world that neither Oliver Cowdery or Martin Harris ever at any time denied their testimony.

They both died reaffirming the truth of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. I was present at the deathbed of Oliver Cowdery and his last words were, Brother David, be true to your testimony of the Book of Mormon. Garrett, we could keep going. Yeah, when Oliver Cowdery, before he died, when he is rebaptized into the church and

speaks to the conference of the church assembled there in Iowa, he again refutes many of these false claims. Friends and brethren, my name is Cowdery, Oliver Cowdery. In the early history of the church, I stood identified with her and was one in her counsels. I wrote with my own pen the entire Book of Mormon, save a few pages as it fell from the lips of the Prophet Joseph Smith, as he translated it by the gift and power of God, by the means of the Urim and Thummim, or as it is called by that book, Holy Interpreters. I beheld with my eyes and handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was translated, and I also beheld the interpreters.

That book is true. Sidney Rigdon did not write it. Mr. Spalding did not write it. I wrote it myself as it fell from the lips of the prophet. I wrote it myself as it fell from the lips of the prophet. It's wonderful. And I love what you said earlier, the frustration of Joseph Smith saying, you were attacking me when you thought I had him. And now you're taking me again saying he never had him. I find Doctrine and Covenants Section 5 is right around where we're studying here, that the experience of Doctrine and Covenants, section five is a very helpful thing for all

of us when it comes to our own faith and the experience of miracles and witnesses, because our tendency and our belief is to think, well, if I saw the gold plates, if I had an angel appear to me, then I would believe. I mean, why are all these other people getting miracles? Where's mine? That if only I had something powerful and miraculous, then I would believe and I could be convinced that this is true. And what the Lord teaches Joseph Smith in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 5, because Martin Harris desperately wants to see the plates, Joseph wants to show him the plates because there's impending legal issues surrounding it. What he tells him in Section 5, Verse 7 is, Behold,

if they will not believe my words, they would not believe you, my servant Joseph, if it were possible that you should show them all these things which I've given, which I have committed unto you. People will say, even antagonists or non-Latter-day saints will say, well, I mean, I guess if I saw the gold plates, then I'd believe why don't you show me the plates? Well, actually you wouldn't believe because the same thing that makes you not accept the revelations as being the word of God or reading the Book of Mormon, the same thing that makes you not believe that that is another Testament of Christ.

It's the same thing that would make you see the plates and immediately start to say, well, probably he manufactured them. The reality is we know throughout the course of Scripture, there are people who witness incredible miracles and just as incredibly immediately turn their back. I love the steadfastness of the witnesses. They are certainly, many of them, disaffected from the church for a time. But in that disaffection, they will not deny that plates are real and that they saw an angel. Quick question, Hank. Where's the Tony Sweatt article?

It's on the Religious Studies Center. Yeah, we can just link it in our show notes though. The great Lisa will take care of that. Here's a fun one that Dr. Sweatt mentions. He shares an 1870 account from Edward Stevenson, a church member in Utah who traveled back to Palmyra, New York. He said he questioned a local farmer about the origin of the Book of Mormon. The man told him, oh, he had seen some good-sized flat stones that had rolled down and lay near the bottom of the hill. That had occurred after the contents of the box had been removed and these stones were doubtless

the ones that formerly composed the box the Book of Mormon came from. So this farmer said, oh yeah, that's where they all rolled down to the bottom. They're not there anymore, but I remember seeing them. Oh man. Isn't that great? I wish that were in the church history museum.

That'd be nice to have. Yeah, yeah. Garrett, I know a question that comes up when I'm talking about the three witnesses, especially from someone who's pretty new to church history. They say something to the effect of, well, how could these three have left the church at all? After having this incredible experience, how could they ever walk away? How do you address that? I'm sure you've had that question before.

First and foremost, life is a long time and early 19th century Latter-day Saints faced enormous amounts of difficulties and problems. When you're a Latter-day Saint in 2025, there's a pretty established way that things have been done and that they are going to be done, but for them, they don't have that luxury. They don't know what the next 200 years are going to bring. They don't have that inertia and that social construct around them. There's a lot more gray areas when it comes to things in the sense that one of

the issues that some of the witnesses find, you know, that really contributes to some of their leaving the church is the difficulty surrounding the collapse of the Kirtland safety society. And then also the difficulties for people like David Whitmer and John Whitmer of trying to run the church in Missouri when you're a thousand miles away from the rest of the church. So if you write a letter to Joseph Smith and say, hey, we really need to know what we should do about this, at best you're two months away from an answer. Well that becomes pretty difficult to respond to things as they come up.

So there were stresses, there were jealousies, there were tensions. Eventually these things are going to culminate in some people leaving the church or being excommunicated. And the Whitmers were a very, very tight knit family. They all came into the church together and they all went out of the church together, Oliver Cowdery and Hiram Page are both married into the Whitmer family by the time of David Whitmer's excommunication. It would take too long to go through each individual case, but in the heat of the

very, very difficult years of 1837 and 1838, that's when most of these happen. That can be troubling to someone like, well, I don't understand why would David Whitmer leave the church. Well, when we're talking about the testimony of the Book of Mormon, it should only strengthen what it is we believe about it. Because David Whitmer is saying that he thinks Joseph Smith's no longer a prophet, that Joseph's gone too far, that Joseph—David Whitmer is saying many negative things about Joseph Smith.

Well, the easiest way to destroy Joseph Smith would have been for David Whitmer to say, Joseph never had any plates. I just told people that he did, but he didn't have any. It's not like I saw an angel. He wrote that and then put my name on it. I never saw an angel. He wrote that and then put my name on it. I never saw an angel. Instead, his criticisms of Joseph Smith about how the church was being run, about how the finances were handled, his criticisms of Joseph Smith always stopped

incredibly short of the Book of Mormon and the gold plates. That as David Whitmer testifies, and so we see that the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God and not by any power of man. And that's him late in life saying that. That's David Whitmer nearly deceased, affirming despite despite his criticisms, that Joseph absolutely had plates, that they absolutely came from God, and that they were absolutely translated by the power of God. He doesn't seem to connect the Book of Mormon and the Church together like we do. I think for early Latter-day Saints, remember they're all coming out of a Protestant worldview.

For all of these Latter-day saints, they were all Protestants before they became Latter-day saints. And for them, the written word of scripture trumped everything on earth. So your pastor might be a great pastor, but if the Bible says something different than what he said, the pastor's wrong. What had developed for 300 plus years in Protestantism at this point was this idea that the Scriptures alone contained the Word of God. And you might have incredible teachers. You might have the greatest philosopher, thinker, teacher, wonderful believer, but if the scriptures disagree, then the only source of divine and revealed knowledge is actually the scriptures.

I honestly think that that plays a lot into this. It was really hard for people coming out of this sola scriptura worldview to say, actually, there's a person, there's a prophet who trumps the scriptures. That's hard for some Latter-day Saints today. It is hard for Latter-day Saints today when a prophet teaches something that they think is contradicted by the scriptures. Imagine if you were born and raised to believe that nothing is true outside of the scriptures. You actually see this very early on with Oliver Cowdery. In 1830, the church is organized and they present what is today Doctrine and Covenants,

Section 20 to the first church conference. So the church is organized in April, then they have a conference in June, and in that June conference they present Doctrine and Covenants Section 20, which is the articles and covenants of the church. They present it to the church, the church all approves it. I mean, I say the church, it's like 25 people, whatever, however many people they have, there's like 50 people there probably, but the church, you know, they all unanimously approve it as absolutely being the word of God. Well, then Joseph goes back home to Harmony, thinks everything's going fine, and he gets

a letter from Oliver Cowdery where Oliver Cowdery accuses him of teaching false doctrine. And what he's doing is he's pitting the Book of Mormon against Joseph's revelation, which is D&C 20. Because in Cowdery's mind, the written words in the Book of Mormon, they trump anything that Joseph says. And that's a normal and natural mentality for Oliver to have, because that's what he would have been told from the time he was a child and it took only with great difficulty Joseph says when he goes up to Fayette he finds it's not just Oliver Cowdery that thinks that he has taught false doctrine it's the entire Whitmer clan and Joseph says he couldn't even get them to reason calmly on the subject.

So he tries to bring it up and they're yelling at him, apparently. So that's why I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for Christian Whitmer, because he's one of the eight witnesses. He doesn't apostatize because he passes away before the great Whitmer apostasy. But Joseph says, at length, I was able to convince Christian Whitmer that the revelation was accurate. And with his help, I was able to convince everyone else. That always gives me a little bit of a soft spot in my heart for a Christian that when the whole rest of his family was absolutely opposed to Joseph, Christian was still on

Joseph's side. So it does make you wonder, had Christian lived, would he have apostatized with the others? I don't know. He'd stood up to his family once before. Maybe he would again. But that early on, that was in 1830, it arose because of this question that frankly all Latter-day Saints to one degree or another have to deal with, and that is we are not traditional Protestants. We don't believe that all the truth that you have to have or all the truth that exists is in the Bible or even in the Book of Mormon. There are many things that are true that aren't in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is absolutely the Word of God, but it doesn't describe baptisms for the dead in the Book of Mormon.

That doesn't mean that the baptisms for the dead are false. It means that truth is continually being revealed. And I think that that played a lot in those difficulties because it's easy for us to say, I don't know what you guys are doing. If there's a problem between what you think and the prophet, you go with prophet and their world is not that. Now, of course, the Lord's going to say that he's going to repeat it in multiple revelations, but you often do find people citing scripture as the reason why they're breaking with Joseph as the justification.

There are a lot of different reasons and reconciliation for Martin Harris and Oliver Cadbury takes a very long portion of their life. Joseph will be dead before that happens. Now, Oliver is actually probably on his way back before Joseph dies. He's already in correspondence with Latter-day Saints. He's already expressing positive things about Latter-day Saints and expresses great regret when he finds out that Joseph was murdered. But I think the takeaway from the fact that the three witnesses and then some of the eight witnesses apostatize, the real takeaway is what greater way to prove that their testimony

is true. If they no longer are in the church, they no longer follow Joseph, they no longer think that he is a prophet, but they're certain that those gold plates are from God. And they are certain that that translation is from God in a different sort of a way. Proves the point of what they're saying when they no longer have anything to gain. They are certain that the book of Mormon is the word of God, certain that they saw plates, certain that they saw angels. I wonder, Joseph Smith, to a lot of Latter-day Saints today, is larger than life.

We sing the songs, right? We have the movies about him and, you know, Martin Harris and the Whitmers and Oliver, they're dealing with the human Joseph from day to day. And I wonder if that has any impact. I am sure that it does. They say don't meet your heroes, right? I mean, I think the reality of life is we're all sinners. We all make mistakes. We all say things we wish we hadn't said. We all do things we wish we hadn't done. We all at some point are desperate on our knees begging God to forgive us. And I do think that that is more difficult to

know someone who is doing these great things, but to also see them when they are not so great to see them when they're angry to see them. I think that that human nature, I'm sure plays a part in it. So maybe he's also wrong about whether or not we should be putting money into this property. I saw him lose his temper. Got in a fist fight with William Smith, which frankly, I wish I could trade places with Joseph. I'd be ready for that punch.

The nature of life is that it's messy. We don't know everything that's going on inside someone's mind. We don't know what things they are struggling with. We don't know whatever the actual cause of them saying, you know what, that's it, I'm stepping away from the faith. They are not stepping away entirely. They're stepping away from being in the church, but they're not stepping away from being certain of their testimonies.

It reminds me of Elder Bednar telling the story of being called as president of Rick's college and his son looked at him and said, really? You? We know the people closest to us. We see them. And no one has lived a perfect life outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. Right. Which means that any single person that we ever take a close enough examination to, we are going to find their flaws and we are going to, if we choose to, throw off whatever mantle of charity we should be wearing and attack them on the grounds of every little thing that they did wrong.

But Joseph taught the Sisters and the Relief Society in 1842 how important mercy was. That if you would, that God would be merciful to you, you need to be merciful to others. It is a great marker of how close we actually are to the Savior. How willing we are to forgive others their faults. How willing we are to say, yeah, he's not perfect, but he's still a good guy. Yeah, she's made some mistakes, but he's still a good guy. Yeah, she's made some mistakes, but she's still a wonderful person. Our willingness to bear with, as Joseph said, bear with the faults of mankind. When you're close to the Lord, you desperately

want everyone to be able to repent. When we've been wronged and we're upset, we want justice. We want it and we want it bad. President Faust wants that I am frank to admit that when I'm on my knees, I don't ever pray for justice for myself, right? He's only praying for mercy. We need to offer that same grace. Every one of us wants God to judge us based upon our best day, based upon who we were when we finally left some sins behind. The one time I finally got it right, please God see me as that son and not the sinning

one. And yet often when we look at other people, we do the exact opposite. We say who they are on their worst day is who they are and who they will forever be. Joseph very much believes in the atonement. So that's part of the reason why he has arms open for people to return. He's excited at the prospect of people returning. There's a story told about Stephen Covey that he received an assignment where he would be in touch with some of the highest leaders of the church. Somebody said, well, don't let it shake your testimony when you get to know these people.

And Stephen Covey's best answer is said, they didn't give me my testimony and they can't take it away. I like that idea of what this is all about is a testimony. The Book of Mormon is a testimony of Jesus Christ. It's another witness of Christ. And that's what this is, the whole purpose of the Book of Mormon, this other testament of Christ, which is the stated purpose. Yeah. Garrett, before we let you go, tell us how things are going over at the Standard of Truth podcast with Dr. LeDuc. Give us an update. Well, things are going good. I mean, a paltry pittance compared to the Follyham podcast, but Standard Truth podcast is a podcast that is designed to try to help people answer

some of the questions they have about church history, to help people increase in their faith and knowledge. And yes, my co-host, Dr. Richard LaDuke, for a long time, he was just MBA Richard. He was working on his PhD and he completed it and defended. So now we get to give him that title. And, you know, I joked around with him on one of our last episodes that now he's just making everyone call him doctor. You know, you're in the drive through of McDonald's and they're like, will that be all sir? And he's like, will that be all doctor? Pete Slauson Oh, that's great. If anybody wants to go check out

Standard of Truth, you can go to standardoftruth.com. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. And it is wonderful. And we appreciate Garrett taking his time from his podcast to come over and help us with ours. We hope a lot of people will check out Standard of Truth. It's so wonderful that there are so many voices of the Restoration, right, Hank? That there's so many voices that are faithful that are rejoicing in what we've been given right now. Yeah, I don't think we see Garrett for a couple of weeks,

but he'll be back. I think we're going to talk about Emma Hill Smith and her history. So I'm excited for that. Wonderful. In Preach My Gospel, there's a couple of paragraphs there that I really like. It says, throughout history,

God has reached out to his people and made his will known through a prophet. Throughout history, people have had a pattern of rejecting him. And then it says, consider our evidence that God has reached out again to a prophet. The prophet's name is Joseph Smith and the evidence is the Book of Mormon, which you can read about and pray about. I love that idea. He's reached out again and this time he brought 600 pages with him, right? Consider our evidence and that's what we've been talking about today.

Thank you, Garrett, for being with us again today. We'll look forward to the next time. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Please join us again for another episode of Follow Him.