followHIM - Doctrine and Covenants 3-5 : Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat : Part II

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat is as exciting a  storyteller as his name is difficult to spell! He tells us about the Redemption of Martin Harris, explains how one of the smartest men in the Church gets from Manchester to Pennsylvania, and why we no longer have the plates. Join us for Part II for one of our most dramatic episodes yet.Show notes available at followhim.co 

Welcome to part two of this week's podcast. Give us a quick background on Joseph Smith Sr. from Dr. Dirkma. It's clear that Joseph Smith has a close relationship with his father, one in which his father both trusts and understands Joseph and that Joseph trusts him. Much of this is coming from, you know, Lucy Smith's account of things, but she's the one who tells us that Joseph, when he's having his operation, wants his dad to hold him, right? It is his father that Joseph tells about this vision that he's had. And to his father's credit, his father says,

you better go do what that angel told you to do then. I don't know that I would have the same reaction, right? If my son came to me and said, dad, I just saw an angel, I'd be like, okay, how much money do you need to have this conversation end? I don't know that my reaction would be to believe that that's the case. And my kids know what I'd say. I'd be like, well, why don't you go tell your mother? Tell the angel that until he appears to mom, it doesn't matter. The reality is that they're clearly close, right? And it's interesting because I don't want to say this in a very negative way, but by the world's standards, by the standards of the world, right, who we know, you know, look upon the outward appearance, right, but it's God

who judges by the heart. By the world's standards, Joseph Smith Sr. in many ways is a failure. He is not a competent farmer. He hasn't been able to provide for his family. They still don't even own their own land that they're living family. They still don't even own their own land that they're living on. They're still in a threat of having everything taken away from them. His business ventures have failed. His children are forced to work as day laborers for other people. As far as the world is concerned, they view Joseph Smith Sr. and say, there's a guy who clearly isn't capable. But it's very interesting to see Joseph's reaction to his father, that he sees his father as someone he can trust, as someone he clearly loves, as someone who he can tell something that is profoundly unbelievable and that his father's response is going to be positive

and supportive, right? So I think that Joseph Smith Sr. and Joseph had a very close bond, one that I think increases even more so after Alvin dies, after this mortality comes into full effect after Joseph's initial visions. We should probably say that Joseph Smith Sr.'s difficulties aren't all his fault. There are very few people on earth who all of their difficulties are all their own fault. He's had people rip him off. You know, he's had bad luck. The volcano.

Yeah, farmers today have crop failures, right? And it's not because, well, you're obviously a sinner. Now, again, though, in the 19th century, that was very much the way, especially in this kind of Calvinist, New England, you know, upper New York type of world. If things were going poorly for you, it would very easily be a sign that you were under God's condemnation. And why would you be under God's condemnation? Well, because you're a sinner. Certainly that would be the outward pressure that people would feel, right? You must not be favored of God, or your crops wouldn't fail. You'd get your ginseng money back. You wouldn't have ships

that don't make their markets. You'd succeed. And so, yes, it's not a question of whether or not Joseph Smith Sr. is willing to work hard or try different things. In the last great housing collapse, financial crisis in 2009, there are thousands of Latter-day Saints who lost their homes. And it would be a pretty cold-hearted, unfeeling thing to believe that the reason why they did is they just weren't paying their tithing. Right. The reality is we live in a mortal world that is at times terrible and that that's, that's something that we chose to accept.

We came to this world knowing that it would at times be terrible. But yeah, sometimes we're punished for things that we do. But other times it's incident to mortality that things happen that hurt us. I can see why when Dr. Harper told us that Joe Smith Sr. doesn't like the hypocrisy in the churches, why that might be part of it. You know, just this, look at you, look at you, you sinner. You could definitely see that.

We know that the Smiths are profoundly affected by the sermon that is delivered at Alvin's funeral. We haven't heard about that, Garrett. Why don't you just quickly go over that? Again, this is according to a later account, but that the Smiths, most of them anyway, were members of the Presbyterian church in Palmyra, especially Lucy. She's as poor as they are. She has donated enough to the Presbyterian church in town that they actually have a pew. You know, back in the day, all of you have had the experience of showing up to your local ward

and the row that you usually sit on, you know, there's some weird family there because it's a missionary farewell. And even though you shouldn't have the slightest, like it shouldn't put you out at all because it's not your bench. Like it's an open church, I guess. Come sooner, right? People will still be like, oh, well, they're sitting where we bench. It's an open church. I guess come sooner, right? People will still be like, oh, well, they're sitting where we are. That's our chair. The kids look lost. Exactly. Like, no, dad, we always sit on that furthest back row so that you can be on your iPhone while they're doing the sermon. Yeah. Back then, many pews were built with these little doors on the end of them. And in order to get the key to that door,

it was dependent upon how much you were donating to the church. And so, you know, they had their own pew, right? So clearly they were very religious in that regard. Lucy and obviously some of Joseph's sisters, they're very fervent. When Alvin dies, the preacher makes the, you know, what he thinks is speaking truth, right? He thinks that he's saying, look, I'm going to tell you the truth here. And the truth is that Alvin isn't saved. And the reason why he's not saved is he was never baptized. Now, Calvinists and almost all Protestant Christians in America at the time followed this Calvinist idea, the idea that God chose to save some people, again, not because of

their works, but because God could. As far as John Calvin was concerned, we are all sinners. All of us deserve to burn in hell. And God, because he's merciful, chooses a few of us to save. Not because we're good. Not because we helped a bunch of old ladies across the street. He does it because he can. Because he is good. So how do you know whether or not you're saved? Well, if you have a call towards God, right? So for a Latter-day Saint, you know, if they tell you their conversion story, they'll say, well, I read the Book of Mormon and I prayed about it and I felt the

Spirit and that's how I came to know it was true. For a Calvinist, it would be the exact opposite. It would be, God gave me the gift of faith that saved me. Because he gave me that gift of faith, it caused me to read the Bible and to learn more about Jesus, and it manifested in my Christian walk. But all of the actions are on God. The only actions are God's. God chose me. Exactly. Presbyterians don't believe that you have to be baptized to be saved. You have to have faith to be saved. But why is that preacher saying Alvin was never baptized? What he's saying is, well, Alvin was an adult. If Alvin didn't feel the call to faith because he'd been

given that gift of God to the point where he desired to be united with a church through baptism to publicly proclaim his faith in Jesus, then he probably was never given the gift. God didn't choose him. God never chose him. I think there's another internal conflict that's going on too for, for Joseph Smith senior. And that is when he comes down to harmony, he has a border at his house, who is Oliver Cowdery, right? According to Lucy, uh, Lucy's house back in New York yes yeah back in Palmyra right well again another example of the fact that you are not able to make ends meet is what do you start doing you start taking in borders right they're doing everything they can to pay their bills and it's just not cutting it right and so the money that Oliver Cowdery is paying to stay with them is essential money.

Cowdery, of course, has heard all about these crazy Smiths with the gold Bible thing, you know, all kinds of negative stories, right? He's heard that. So he asks Father Smith about, hey, tell me about your son, like found some plates or something, right? And Joseph Smith Sr., having seen the derision, I mean, it's not just derision, it's outright anger in Palmyra to the point where Joseph feels like they need to leave. Martin Harris will later say that there are threats of tarring and feathering Joseph as part

of the reason why they go down to Harmony, right? So it's not just, you know, oh, that silly little Joseph. There's anger. There is an animus there. And you could see that Father Smith, why he might not want to tell the source of income that, oh yeah, yeah, my son's got these plates and an angel spoke to him. And it's a whole thing. By the way, keep living here, please. Yeah, exactly. Please keep living here and don't go to the dozens of other places you could live. And so Father Smith, he demurs. You know, Cowdery asked him multiple times about it, and he just doesn't want to talk about it. I think one of the contexts that you can see Doctrine and Covenants section four in is that Father Smith is actually dealing with his own internal struggle. Every other person I've ever talked to about this

has hated my son, has hated me, has threatened us. I'm just not going to talk about it anymore. I'm done. I'm done talking about it. Joseph doesn't know any of that. He doesn't even know that there is an Oliver Cowdery, but he receives this revelation for his father and we don't have a connection to it. No one says this is the reason why Father Smith finally talked to Oliver. But what do we know? That right after this, he actually does go talk to Oliver Cowdery and tell him what the gold plates are.

So section four could have been a catalyst for that. It's the way that I see it. The timing is such that they receive it. He goes back up after being unwilling to talk to Cowdery before he suddenly seems to be willing to talk to him now. So, you know, what's interesting is section four has become a missionary section. It's basically been taken and said, this is for missionaries, but that's not how it was originally given. Well, first of all, there weren't any missionaries. In fact, there's no church. So, I mean, it's hard to make it fit into exactly the

way we use it. But while there wasn't a church, while there wasn't a missionary program, there was truth. And even though that was limited, even though they didn't fully understand it, there were certain things that they knew. They knew that God had called Joseph to translate this record and to bring it forth to the world. That they knew. And so I still see it in a way as a missionary record, a missionary revelation. If you want to be part of the team. There's so much that we don't know about what's going to happen, but there's one thing you can do. You can tell people the truth that you do know.

And Hank, I would just add that the whole President Nelson wants everyone involved in what has been termed the work of salvation. And this, you could say, this chapter is not just missionary work, it's anybody and everyone, all of us are supposed to be involved in the work of salvation. And just kind of a fun thing about this, years ago, the theme for the youth was section four, verse two,

oh, ye that embark in the service of God. And I just, for fun, I was doing, you know, word searches, guess how many times the word embark appears in the entire standard works? One time, it's in this verse. Now you'll see it in synopses before a chapter, but in the actual text, I found one time and it's here. And when I looked it up, and this is, again, an application type thing, it means to board an aircraft, a vehicle as for a journey. It's impossible to sort of embark. If you sort of get on an airplane, right?

If you sort of get on an airplane and it leaves, that can cause some great physical discomfort. And so I love the message of get both feet in. If you're going to embark, don't do it halfway. Do it with all your heart, mind, and strength. And so it's just something fun I thought. The word embark is nowhere except right there in the standard words. That's excellent. And go all in. Yeah. Don't be a halfway harv and just do everything halfway. If you serve with half your heart, half your mind, half your might, half your strength, then you will stand half

blameless before God at the last day, right? I've often said that standing in holy places takes both feet, right? You got to have both feet in. I like that, John, that idea of embark. Let's go. If you're going to embark in the service of God, give it your all. Both feet in type thing. And it is applicable to missionaries too.

Get both feet in the mission field and work hard. And then when you get home, you can get both feet in and say, okay, Heavenly Father, what have you got? What do I do next? You know? So I love the idea of embarking. I like combining the context Garrett has given us here with Joseph Smith Sr. That you went right home and talked to Oliver.

I think I love that. Yeah. It's the idea of like, you don't have to be this successful, grandiose, you know, Martin Harris type figure. You can be Joe Smith senior, who's been down on his luck. And all you have to do is desire. If you have desires to serve God, I can, then he says in verse five, I can qualify you for the work, right?

I can, if you have, and if you think about their culture that they're living in right it should be joseph's father that is providing the financial means for him to accomplish this great work but it can't be joseph's father because joseph's father is in the financial straits that joseph's in right and so you can almost see that the helpless feeling of the requirements of patriarchy in 19th century America, right? For Joseph Smith Sr. to feel like he was a successful man, he would need to be the one that can step in and help his son in a time of trouble. I mean, he's trying to do that halfway by going down to visit them. Joseph needs money. Joseph needs someone who's educated to help him with the translation.

Joseph needs time. And Father Smith can't give him any of those things. I think that in many ways, this is kind of a call like Jesus' calls to his apostles, right? I mean, what matters is that you want to spread the truth about God. Leave your nets and follow me. Yeah. So that's cool. I just put in my margin,

because here's this list of attributes in verses five and six. Faith, hope, charity, love. I singled with the glory of God. Faith, virtue, not a bank account. That's what I put in my margin. There's nothing about you need assets to be able to engage in the work of God. That is awesome, John. The context that Garrett has given us here, it makes me feel for Joseph Smith Sr., right?

Like, oh, because I'm a dad and I know that pressure of, oh, I want to provide and I just don't want to provide. I want my family to go, now look at what our dad has done for us, right? Look at this, look at this, you know, our dad provides. Aren't we lucky to have this dad and to have that, oh, you know, I dad provides, aren't we lucky to have this dad and to have that? Oh, you know, I don't know if my, I don't know if I can say that. I don't know if my, you know, I've, I've caused my kids maybe more problems than, than help. And, uh, and then the loss of Alvin, that was our, you know, he was the one kind of getting us up over the top.

He was successful. He was pulling us out. And then, you know, tragedy. This section becomes more beautiful to me with all of that in mind, that the Lord doesn't say anything about his failures or his poor choices or the poor choices of others that have led to this. It's a very positive section, which I think tells us something about the Lord too. And the thing I was talking to my kids about the other day as we're trying to go through this is, if you walked into a room of some of these, maybe the eight witnesses, Joseph Smith Sr. would probably be the oldest guy there. Is that right? And aren't most of them like young adults?

Yeah, they're all fairly young. That's just so cool to me. It looked like you walked in on a YSA group and the advisor over there is Joseph Smith Sr. Because they're, I just, I love that because a 14 year old boy prayed, we are here. And this initial group was a bunch of really young, young people. Is that fair? Yeah, I think obviously Joseph's being initially called to the work when he's 14.

He's having the angel appear to him when he's 17. I mean, he's not able to get the plates till he's 21. But I mean, they are young men, certainly those that are involved. And Emma and her help that she provides, she's also essentially a young woman as well. Garrett, before we go to section five, okay, all of this has happened. Martin comes to breakfast that turned into brunch, that turned into lunch, that turned into this cry fest.

What's their relationship now? And how does section five come about? Well, obviously to say that it's strained is an understatement. Unfortunately, we don't really have good sources that talk about what their relationship was. We know that Joseph left angry, depressed, crushed, upset, and that we don't know. They may have corresponded via letter. If they did, those letters don't exist. It's possible that when Lucy and Father Smith went down to visit Joseph, that they said, hey, we talked to Martin the other

day and he's wondering how things are. But we don't have any record of that. For all we know, for all we can discern, when Martin Harris shows up in March down in Harmony, they haven't seen each other since that fateful summer, right? Since the problems that existed. They obviously appear to reconcile fairly quickly. Martin Harris is going to again engage in helping him translate some of the Book of Mormon. I mean, so I wish I had a better backstory to say that Martin was thinking this. And surprisingly, so I wish I had a better backstory to say that this, you know, Martin was thinking this and, you know, surprisingly, Martin Harris doesn't talk a whole lot about the loss of the pages in his various accounts that he gives.

He talks a lot about other things, but he very rarely references the loss of the pages. Joseph doesn't really talk about his feelings towards Martin during this time period. So we're kind of, we're left, we're left assuming that things weren't on the highest of notes anyway, right? That would be devastating. And, and they do become friends again, that it seems. Everything, things have changed. changed for joseph a lot of things changed right when he got dnc3 when he received that revelation that said oh you're not condemned forever right that you actually that there's a way back that the project isn't lost forever that there's not gonna suffer eternally yeah i think that that already starts changing well there's there's a big difference between you know if you did something as permanent damage or if it's temporary. Martin still is one of the few people that believes Joseph.

He's still a man of means. He's still persevering. And in fact, that seems to be the reason why he's come down. At this point, you know, you think every time Joseph sees Martin Harris walking down the lane, he might be in a little bit of post-traumatic stress, actually. Brings back some bad memories. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, here he comes. He's sitting on the fence. We're in for it. But apparently Martin has at least another purpose in coming down. And that is that the tensions in Palmyra have not subsided, right? If the thought was that the loss of the 116 pages was going to end this whole project, it clearly doesn't, right? As Joseph is still planning on continuing the project,

he's still translating the Book of Mormon, the gold plates, and there start to be undertaken some legal efforts. Again, much of this is according to both Martin Harris and Lucy Mack Smith after the fact, but they report that there are legal efforts being undertaken to actually make at least a civil, but possibly a criminal case against Joseph Smith and his family for fraud. Why? Because they're saying that they have gold plates that they got from an angel. And if they don't actually have gold plates and anyone gives them money, well, then that's fraud. Just like if I told you I have a Bahamian island and I say you can visit it for this much money and I don't even own the island, that's a crime, right? It's a fraud. And so apparently Martin Harris's wife, other prominent residents of Palmyra, are seeking to take further court action against the Smiths.

And what they tell Martin Harris is that there is enough evidence against Smith to convict him and that if he won't participate as a witness, that they will indict him as a co-conspirator. Martin Harris is a key witness because he actually has given 50 to joseph smith he's given the most money the most money yeah you know joseph knight senior you know gives a half dollar but that you know i mean and he also gives a barrel of fish which you know fish is so terrible he's like well can you do better joseph obviously there's you's all kinds of differences in the way that we look at money. But you could look at it as Martin Harris has given Joseph a quarter of what Joseph's entire farm is worth. Joseph buys his farm for $200. Martin Harris gave

him $50. It is a massive amount of money, right that was to move right that was to get out of palmyra it was so that joseph could pay all of his debts that he had in palmyra and move down to to harmony and get out of get out of dodge because there's these threats of mob violence that are growing by the by the minute basically so for the people who want to proceed with a legal case against the smiths because they want you know all the Smiths, because they're all lying about it. They're all saying that Martin Harris is the key because he's actually given money. And if he says that, yeah, Joseph stole my money and told me there were plates, well, then Joseph's going to go to jail, right? This is going to work.

Now, you can indict people for fraud, even if the person who has been defrauded doesn't want to believe they've been defrauded. But regardless, it is certainly something that's very much on the mind of Martin Harris. And he comes down to Harmony. I don't know what else they all talk about, but at least one of the intentions, and at least it seems to be, the catalyst for this revelation. What is the question that Joseph is asking that causes this revelation to be received? A good thing is you study the Doctrine and Covenants

to always figure out what that question is, right? If I want to be able to apply this revelation to myself, I first need to figure out what question is, right? If I want to be able to apply this revelation to myself, I first need to figure out what question is Joseph asking God that causes this revelation to be received? The question here appears to be Martin Harris coming and saying, Joseph, I need to see the plates. I need to see them because there's all this criminal conspiracy talk up in Palmyra. And if you put me on the stand after I've seen the plates, then I can say, nope, not a fraud at all.

I've seen the plates. The plates exist. And the whole case falls apart, at least theoretically. So Martin Harris might actually have had good intentions in this desire to see the plates. And Joseph apparently wants him to be able to see the plates, again, both for himself and for Martin Harris. And so the context of Doctrine and Covenants section five is, again, these outward pressures that have driven Martin Harris to come there in the first place and Joseph's desire to find a practical means to remedy those, those outward,

you know, the easiest thing for all questions of fraud to be settled would be if Martin Harris saw the plates, then he wouldn't be telling his wife, I lifted the box just like you did. He'd be telling her, I saw them. He'd be telling the court, I saw them. Not, I trust Joseph. I've known him a long time and he's always been honest. That's fine. But how much more powerful is, I saw the plates. They exist. I saw them. And he's, Martin i don't i don't know the timeline here garrett but martin is also his marriage is in is is super strained at this point right she's almost kicked him out there are two homes on the harris property and he appears to not be living in the same home you know so i mean their marriage has had problems for a while.

Again, it's all hearsay and conjecture of what's going on, but it is clear that they do not have the best relationship. And clearly, the loss of the pages, Lucy stealing the character's document, making her own copies, the antagonism, the attempts to try to raise legal actions towards them is only putting further strain. It's very safe to say that the whole Joseph Smith problem is certainly not helping the Harris marriage.

Yeah. If you read Lucy Mack Smith's words, you almost are like good for Martin because she paints Lucy Harris as almost insane. Yeah, that she's flying about on her horse, going from door to door to try to find anyone who could testify against the Smiths. I mean, Lucy Smith certainly sees Lucy Harris as almost the antithesis of herself, right? I'm humble and I'm going to follow what God wants me to do. Here's this high-class woman who is not going to follow what God wants her to do. They really come across as opposites in Lucy's work. And again, that's coming from Lucy Smith's perspective. Maybe Lucy Harris wouldn't have said it the same way. But regardless, there is there certainly is problems that have led to Martin Harris coming down and Doctrine and Covenants Section 5 being received.

Well, what the thing that the one thing that sticks out to me is, is that the Lord tells Martin, OK, you're you're going to see him. You're going to be a witness. And these these are the words that you will say. It sounds like he's giving him the script. What do you, what do you think Garrett? Yeah, I think that, um, what's really interesting about this is as far as we know, um, Joseph hasn't translated this portion of the book of Mormon yet, right? The book of Mormon is going to reference the witnesses of the plates on two separate occasions, but especially in second Nephi, right? Well, in second Nephi, that's the last thing they translate

because they finished the book and then go back around to the small plates of Nephi. And so the last major thing they translate is second Nephi and Jacob, right? And so it's not till the summer that... So I don't know what was in the last 116 pages. Maybe there was a reference to witnesses of the book that they had already read at one point, but we don't know that. Here you have this declaration that Harris will be a witness. And in fact, this is what you're going to say, that he's going to not make this same

witness that you would make normally. He's not going to say, yeah, I saw the plates, right? Which is what he's going for. That it's going to be shown to him by the power of God, not of man. One thing I find really powerful for me in this is the Lord kind of tells Joseph and Martin both a further lesson about human nature. It's something that the Lord tells his apostles, right, that people that, you know, demand a sign, they're wicked and adulterous, and then they're not going to actually believe. It is probably one of the most horrifying aspects of the New Testament that Caiaphas determines that Jesus should be destroyed, not because he's a liar lying about

all these miracles he's claiming that he's done, but precisely because he raised Lazarus from the dead, right? The fact that it actually did happen is the problem. And it's hard for us, I think, sometimes to wrap our heads around someone who is witnessing God's power. I mean, really And it's hard for us, I think, sometimes to wrap our heads around someone who is witnessing God's power. I mean, really, it's what the people who stole the 116 pages did the same thing. They don't have a plan that says, hey, you know what we'll do? We'll just hold on to this. There's no way every word's going to be the same when he retranslates it because he's just, you know, if you're copying a book, you're going to make three errors per page, right? The reality is it's going to be different. We'll pull out what he already has and we'll demonstrate how wrong he is. Nope. They actually

say he's going to make the exact same words again. So we'll change what we have. The very plan that they have is an admission that this is being done miraculously, but Satan has gotten to their hearts to try to destroy the work, right? So this natural tendency that I think all of us have, I know that I have it. So let me just speak for myself. There are certainly times that I say, if I saw an angel, if an angel told me, hey, you need to do, I would, yes, I would do it, you know? And I think that's our natural tendency. We really believe, all of us believe that if we saw some powerful miracle, that that would transform who we are. We'd go from, from being, you know, you know, lukewarm Latter-day Saint to, to, to being, you know, dyed in the wool if we had some powerful experience. And what you get from

D&C 5 is a statement from the Lord that that's just not how belief comes. This is in verse 7. 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 have committed unto you. There are a lot of people who believe that if they saw the gold plates, then they'd believe. The reality is, the same part of you that can't feel the Spirit of God when you read the Book of Mormon, or the revelations of Joseph Smith. The same part of you that reads that and says, nope, that's not from God, is the same thing that would make you reject it even if you did see the gold plates. You'd probably spend your time instead trying to argue about what the alloy of it was or how,

well, you know what, I'm not entirely sure that that's how an Egyptian character would be. I mean, okay, so sure he has plate, but they can't really be from God. I mean, one of the great aspects of the witness experience is that it is both physical and spiritual. What's the easiest way to dismiss the three witnesses experience? You simply say, I guess you guys, you know, maybe, you know, got drunk or maybe you were, drunk or maybe you didn't get any good sleep. I'm sure you thought that you saw an angel who showed you these things. And that's how people would dismiss it, right? You don't have to be a liar.

You just have to be confused to think that you saw plates when, of course, you didn't. And yet the eight witnesses have an experience that's completely physical. It's not miraculous at all, except for that plates exist. But how would you dismiss the eight witnesses experience? You dismiss it by saying, well, okay, fine. Joseph has something. Even the most ardent antagonists of Joseph Smith today admit there's just too many sources of people who hate Joseph Smith saying that he had something to claim that he had. I mean, maybe he had a bunch of lead that he put together and told people was plates, or maybe he found copper printing plates out in the woods, or whatever the excuse is.

The eight witnesses experience demonstrates that Joseph has a physical item. Plates exist. And so antagonists could say, well, yes, they exist, but they're not what you think they are. The three witness experience says these plates are from God. Miraculously, they're from God. And so they really work together to refute both aspects of those people who'd want to reject it. This verse has always really struck me that even my own nature is, is wrong because I'll say to myself, if I saw this powerful miracle, I would somehow become a better person. Maybe I'd be closer to God. And I have seen miracles. The reality is I'm the product of what you see now, even after

having seen miracles. But the idea that you could just see the plates and then you would believe forever, it didn't even work for many of the witnesses, right? Yeah. It seems to me that it's a merciful thing that when the Lord says, I don't want anybody seeing them, he's almost saying, I don't want anybody to come under that kind of judgment, right? Because if you see them and then you show up and say, i did it's the same reason why the lord speaks in parables right i mean uh that way you aren't going to be condemned for hearing the full truth and just rejecting it right at least you're you're acting upon you know if if the spirit's speaking to you so i've always thought this matters that it's really important that we have our faith based upon the Holy Spirit of God

speaking to us what truth is. Because whatever we rested on as far as physical, you know, oh, this is the proof of why I believe, or this is the proof. The reality is, if the Holy Spirit of God is working with you, when you read D&C 5, the Holy Spirit is going to testify to you that this is a revelation from God. This is not Joseph Smith jotting something down. This is God speaking to you. If you're not able to discern that from the text or from the text of the Book of Mormon, then you're fooling yourself to believe that if an angel appeared to you and told you that you'd do it, you might for a day, you might for two days, you might for a week,

but it wouldn't create that lasting conversion that carries you through. Thank you so much. I love the fact that the Lord had a different experience in mind for the three witnesses and the eight. I just think that was brilliant isn't the word, but how wonderful that one was very spiritual, one was very physical. And the idea that if I just see it, it just reminded me of 1 Nephi 16, 38,

where Laman the Lemuel said, he says the Lord has talked to him and also that angels have ministered unto him, but behold, we know that he lies unto us. He tells us these things, and he worketh many things by his cunning arts, listen to this, that he may deceive our eyes. So once they do see it, they say, you deceived our eyes. I don't know how you did that. If you could show us a miracle, I'd believe. Oh, wait. Yeah.

You deceived our eyes somehow. And that's crazy. You can't trust your senses. How could you trust your senses? I thought you were the one who wanted to see it. So that is just a new, a new round of, okay, I need a better proof. You know, it seems to me that the Lord in section five is focusing on believe my words. If you, the one Garrett read verse seven, if you will not believe my words, they would not believe even if I showed them the plates. And then he goes over to verse 16. Behold, whosoever believeth on my words, not there, you know, not seeing the plates, they get the manifestation of the spirit.

I wanted to read this to you because I just love it. This is from Joseph Fielding Smith. It's a simple statement, but it helps us see why, you know, seeing some sort of miracle, seeing the plates doesn't create this all of a sudden I'm going to be a different person. He said this, he said, through the Holy Ghost, the truth, I love this, is woven into the very fiber and sinews of the body so that it cannot be forgotten. And I think that that's the type of conversion or the type of experience the Lord wants us to have. Not merely a physical, I see a miracle. He wants us to experience the manifestation, verse 16, of the Spirit because that weaves the truth

through our body. I love that idea. Yeah. And, you know, that's exactly what the Lord tells Martin Harris, right? I'm not going to let you see the plates to satisfy these physical inquiries of these potential enemies. I'm going to carry you through your enemies. He needs to have faith first. You're not going to see the plates so that you and others can believe. You're going to see the plates because you believe, and then you're going to testify to others. But you're actually already going to believe before you see them, right? Whatever lingering doubt you have, you're going to already

have conquered that. That's where he's told that he will have them, right? That if he will exercise faith in me, behold, I say unto him, if he will not, then he will have no such view, for I will grant unto him no views of the things which I have spoken. If he doesn't do the things he needs to do, if he doesn't humble himself, this is verse 28.

And now except he humble himself and acknowledge unto me the things which he has done, which are wrong. So apparently some part of this is that Martin Harris hasn't quite made it right with God, what he's done before yet. And covenant with me that he will keep my commandments and exercise faith in me. Behold,

I say to him, he shall have no such views, for I'll grant unto him no views of the things which I have spoken. If he wants to be able to see it, he needs to first make himself right. He needs to be right with God. He needs to exercise his own faith. And then after that, he'll have the ability to do that. That's a nice verse. That's kind of almost like a formula for all of us. We need to be humble. We need to acknowledge our weakness, keep our covenants, keep the commandments, exercise faith. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it reminds me tangentially of in the Council of 50 Minutes, which are the records of the church organization that was planning to prepare to move the saints out of Nauvoo. So this is the tail end of Joseph's life. He only has a few months before he's murdered. They're looking at going to Mexico.

They're looking at maybe going to Texas, the Republic of Texas, which was its own country at the time. They're looking to try to get out of the United States to go somewhere where they're going to be safe. And their plan is to go somewhere where no one else lives so that no one can complain about them. And that there they're going to establish the kingdom of God on earth. They're going to establish the actual government that could be in place for when Jesus returns. And so there's a committee of men that are assigned to write the constitution for that government. Imagine, you know, all committee work is terrible, but imagine the committee work assigned where your job is to write the constitution for Jesus when Jesus comes,

right? I mean, it's a heavy responsibility. And John Taylor is on it, and Willard Richards, and they do all kinds of work on it. And eventually, John Taylor kind of sheepishly comes back to Joseph and says, maybe you can just receive this as a revelation because no matter what we do, it's not going to be good. Joseph teaches him this very important principle. He says, you know, if I just receive it, I'm paraphrasing here, then that would allow you to think and criticize and say, you know what, he should have included this too. But if you expend all of your own efforts first and you create the best possible thing you possibly could, and then God gives revelation to provide greater details to change it,

then you'll know where the power of God comes from. And Joseph, he even uses the phrase, he says, there's always been some great big elders, right, to stand up and say, I am the great I, you know, essentially to say, oh, Joseph got this wrong. If it were me, I would have done this. But, you know, Joseph, you know, he was wrong. It's this really interesting principle that in some way related that God expects us to put forth all of our effort in part so that when the miracle does occur,

when that bit of revelation comes to us, when it enlightens our mind, when we have that flash of insight that we couldn't come up with on our own, that we actually know that it's from God, that it's not just what we came up with. It literally is the power of God. And at least Martin Harris is being taught something similar. You're going to repent. You're going to exercise faith. You are going to put in all of your own effort. And then, even through all these legal problems that God's somehow going to help you through, and then having come through that, you're prepared to see the plates. It reminds me of what Tony taught us in Doctrine and Covenants section one, where the three tried to write section one.

They tried to write a preface, and it was awful. The preface. Then the Lord said, let me show you. The conference proceeded to pick it all to pieces. Yeah, William McClellan is pretty bitter about that, it seems. I personally look for awkward moments in the scripture sometimes. I love verse 21, where it says, and now I command you, my servant Joseph, to repent, walk more uprightly before me and to yield to the persuasions of men no more. I wonder when Martin reads that, he's like, oh, right. Not to name any names. We're not going to name any names.

But the Lord does name names in the second half of that where he tells him, if Martin Harris isn't going to repent, you're not going to have anything else to do with him anymore. You know what I mean? It is interesting because that really is the problem with D&C 3. It's the problem with D&C 4. It's the problem with D&C 4, it's the problem with D&C 5. They're all different facets of the same problem. And that is, as Protestant Christians are so fond of saying, can I let go and let God, can I simply trust that even though I don't see any way that this could be resolved, that God will somehow do it as long as I put my faith in him.

And really, that's the problem surrounding the 116 pages. It's the problem surrounding Joseph Smith Sr. and his reticence. And it's the problem surrounding Martin Harris coming down with Doctrine and Covenants section five. It's as if none of these men are willing to fully say, God is going to take care of us somehow. Somehow this is going to work. We don't know how, but somehow it's going to work. And that he's trying to teach them that they aren't just leaning on God once in a while, or that it is going to be a complete surrendering or a complete embarking in the service of God, a complete surrendering to God's will. I want to just mention verse 34, and then I'm going to ask you a new

question, Garrett. In verse 34, he says, yea, for this cause I have said, stop, stand still until I command thee. I will provide means whereby thou mayest accomplish the thing which I have commanded thee. That seems to be a reference to Oliver Cowdery. Does that feel like that to you? I am certain in hindsight that that is what he thought, right? But when this revelation was received, I'm sure that Joseph said, how is it possible that he is going to deliver Laban into our hands? For he is a mighty man. When it's received, I am certain that Joseph has, I mean, as he says in his 1832 history, things are bad. In early 1829, things are really bad.

Not only is there growing tension and problems in harmony itself and with his father-in-law and with their family, there's also, you know, still the problem of how are we going to get it translated and published, right? Martin Harris problem. And then Joseph can't make the payments on his farm. And he says in his 1832 history that his father-in-law was about to cast him out of door. So his father-in-law is at this point threatening to evict his daughter and son-in-law from the property they bought from him. And so, you know, he says in his 1832 history that he cried into the ward, right? That he was really struggling. And then a few days later, Oliver Cowdery shows up. And unbeknownst to Joseph, God had actually been working the entire time behind the scenes. Joseph didn't know that Oliver Cowdery was at Josephus Sr.'s home.

He didn't know that he'd been asking about the plates. He certainly didn't know that when Josephus Sr. talks to Oliver Cowdery, it works on Oliver Cowdery so much that he actually has a vision. He's shown the plates and he has this powerful experience where he sees the Lord, he sees the plates, and that here comes Oliver Cowdery walking in the front gate, if there was one, in early April. All of that was already going on when Joseph is crying out to God for help, saying, aren't you going to do anything here? It's really... That's a lesson. Yeah. Yeah. Joseph's life is so tragic, right? I mean, his first child, he's in the middle of doing everything he can for God and his, his child dies. And then Emma and he are going to have two

more children. They're going to have twins and they're going to die. And they're going to adopt twins and one of them is going to die. I mean, it's hard to find more horrific struggles. And so I think it's really important for members of the church to realize in the world you are going to have tribulations. The fact that you're suffering is not an indicator necessarily that you're some kind of sinner. The fact that you're suffering is because we live in a veil of tears. We live in this sinful world, in this world that's filled with disease and sickness.

And yes, some of it's from the agency of others. Sometimes it's our own. But the suffering that you're going through will eventually end. Joseph teaches later, and maybe reflecting on his own circumstances, that everything will be made up to you in the resurrection. Now, I don't know how that's possible, that all of our sufferings, all of our loss of family members, all of our disappointments, the horrific, you know, long, dark nights of the soul that we've suffered, I don't know how Jesus is able to take those all away at some point. But that's part of what the Prophet Joseph Smith gave, is that in the world, you have this tribulation, but eventually, all of your losses will be made up to you in the next life. And that's the whole point of

Christianity. It's not about this life. It's about the life to come and believing that there is something that isn't this life, that the Lord, through the atonement, is giving us something that's better than this. You said something, Garrett, that I want to emphasize that I just, I hope I want to hit this over and over in the podcast is Joseph didn't know that this was, you know, such and such was going to happen. If we assume some of these people in the past kind of knew the future, it takes away the struggle. If Joseph's kind of knows that, oh yeah,

it's going to work out, we'll eventually go to Ohio, we'll eventually go to Nauvoo, and eventually there'll be hundreds of millions of copies of the book of Mormon. I'm not too worried about it. If we do that, then all of a sudden we take away the struggle. When you, when you say Joseph didn't know, he didn't know. He maybe had some inklings of what the church was going to become, but he didn't know how this was going to work out. I think he left Palmyra after the loss of those pages, thinking that not only had he lost the Book of Mormon, but that he was going to burn in hell forever.

And now he, of course, doesn't know anything about hell because he hasn't translated the Book of Mormon yet. So all he knows is God's in hell surrounding him, right? I think that is really key. You know, I think all of us have had experiences where we didn't know how the Lord was working. When I was applying for graduate school, right, I wanted to be a historian. I didn't want to be a church historian. My assumption was, look, I was a member and I loved the church, but I always assumed growing up that all of, you know, church history was already all done, you know. These experts

have already taken care of it, so I'll move on, you know? And so I never intended to go into church history or studying Joseph Smith. My plan was to study military history, actually. And I worked really hard as an undergraduate so that I could have the highest grades possible, so I could get the highest recommendations, so I could go to the graduate schools I wanted to go to. You know, I graduated summa cum laude. And I mean, I did, I literally did everything I could have done to get into one of these programs that I wanted to get into.

And when I got that rejection letter, it was devastating to me. I mean, even saying it out loud sounds really trite. Obviously, there's people in the world that actually are suffering, that actually have a real problem, right? Talk about your first world problems that I was so upset, but I'd spent so much of my life looking forward to this. And knowing that I'd expended all of the effort I could literally, you can't get higher grades, right? You can't get a higher speed. I did everything I could do. It was devastating. But the school I went to instead and the program I went to instead, it was because I was there that I started working with early Latter-day Saint history documents. And that's eventually how I ended up writing a dissertation that talked about Joseph Smith and working for the Joseph Smith Papers.

And, you know, maybe you're all thinking, maybe that wasn't a good thing by the end of the podcast. But the point is that I didn't know. I didn't know that God had a different plan for me. In the moment that I opened that rejection letter, I felt abandoned by God. And I was wrong. No doubt one of the many times I've been wrong in my relations with God. But I think that it's important for people to realize that you may not

see how God is working. And maybe it won't be in this life. Maybe it will be in the next life that you'll have all of those answers and all those sufferings made up to you. Yeah. But the pattern will be the same. The Lord already is having your personal Oliver Cowdery. He's already putting things in place. John, why don't you, do you want to ask that last question of Garrett? You know, back in April of 1999, Elder Dallin H. Oaks then, he gave this talk, which I will never forget about Martin Harris. In fact, the talk was called The Witness. And let me put on my baby boomer glasses. He said, having a special interest in Martin Harris, I have been saddened

at how he is remembered by most church members. He deserves better than to be remembered solely as the man who unrighteously obtained and then lost the initial manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon. And I'm editing a little bit or skipping down, actually. Fortunately, both Joseph and Martin were later forgiven by the Lord, and the work of translation resumed with other scribes. We obviously honor Joseph for his magnificent ministry, but Martin's subsequent faithfulness continues under a shadow from which this important man should be rescued. And then he goes on to review some of the high points of Martin Harris's life. But this is the paragraph that made me go, whoa, when I was listening to the talk live. He spoke about Martin and his brother Emer.

And he said, the Harris brothers baptized about a hundred persons. Among those baptized was a family named Oaks, which included my great-great-grandfather. Thus, my middle name and my last name come from the grandfathers who met in that missionary encounter in Susquehanna County in 1832 to 1833. And I thought, Dallin Harris Oaks. Wow. And so I loved that. Okay, nobody wants to be remembered for a big mistake they made in their life. The Lord has forgiven him and let him view the plates and we can treat others in kind of the same way. That's beautiful. That idea of not letting people's mistakes define who they are and how we talk about them. We have opportunities to do that every day in our family, in our friends, in our ward. When we are dealing with other people, we judge them by their worst day.

We judge them by their worst event, by their worst day, by their worst sentence. And we create a caricature of that person. Oh yeah, he always X, right? Judging by their worst interaction that we've had. But when we are dealing with other people ourselves, we want them to judge us by our best day. We want them to overlook the times that we were sinful. It's certainly how we want to approach God. We want to approach God

hoping that he views us on what we were on our best day. Our highlights. Certainly not what we were on our worst. And I think in the Book of Mormon, we all remember Corianton, you know, but it's so fun to see later in the text, hey, that he was out on a mission. I think Corianton would rather be remembered that he moved on from that long lecture his dad gave him in Alma 39, 40, 41, 42, and got back on the path. And so I appreciate that from President Oaks, now President Oaks. And I always want to emphasize that in my classes. Okay. You remember that about Martin Harris, but Lord forgave him for that. And so should we. We all want to be Nephi, but we're more layman and lemuel than we want to admit, right? I mean,

and that's the same thing. We all wish we were Joseph Smith, but the reality is it's much easier for me to identify with Martin Harris. Not that I have any wealth, but the idea that the way that people interact with me and the pressures that I have any wealth, but the idea that the way that people interact with me and the pressures that I have from the outside are driving some of my questions and some of my concerns. And yeah, he struggled and he sinned and he repented and then he sinned again and repented. And that sounds like mortal life is what it sounds like. And hopefully we can come to have that same kind of charity for, um, the reality is the book of Mormon was able to be published the way that it was because when push came to shove after all kinds of sins and missteps, Martin Harris

eventually put his money where his mouth was and put his faith in, in Joseph ahead of his entire fortune. He's going to go from being a middle-aged, well-off man to being essentially penniless if Joseph is wrong about the Book of Mormon. And so that leap of faith that he takes after Doctrine and Covenants section 19 probably should be remembered far more because we have the Book of Mormon. Because even though every professional bookseller that he talked to, every publisher said, this is never going to sell, Martin Harris still put the money up for the book. Yeah.

And a lot of people don't realize that the Kirtland Temple that I love to visit was basically watched over by Martin Harris for decades after the church left Ohio. He just, he's done so much good. And I love that we're, that we're talking about it. Wouldn't you be mortified if your biggest mistakes were in scripture and every four years people had to keep reviewing, right? I'd just be like, whoa, right. Well, they'd have to add a whole nother book to the Canon for mine, but yeah. It would just be mortifying that every year people are going, oh, who's this Martin Harris? This is one of those cases where if we want to have a merciful judgment, let's extend one to our brother, Martin Harris.

I had a wonderful history professor that you probably both know, church history, in Richard Bennett. Oh, yeah. He wrote an article in March of 2001, which has just really blessed my life, and it was called Carefully Schooled in First Principles. And I had never made this connection before, but here's the first principles of the gospel outlined in the Wentworth Letter, right? Article of Faith, number four.

And his whole thesis of his article was Joseph Smith didn't just have a... What are the first principles? Well, let me think about that. Let's see, it'd probably be this, this, this. Faith, repentance, but he experienced them. So faith in Christ, he kind of tied to the first vision, the faith to have the first vision, the faith to act on what he heard,

not just which church is right, but which should I join. Repentance, the loss of the 116 page manuscript. And I'm so glad today we've talked about the depth of the sorrow, the weeping, the sleepless nights he must have had of going through that. I've offended the Lord. I've lost my soul. Martin feeling it, Joseph probably too. Faith, repentance, what next? This hasn't even happened yet. But as they resume translating baptism, hey, are we supposed to be baptized? In section 13, we have John the Baptist appearing.

And any sin of losing the 116-page manuscript is now remitted through baptism. And then, of course, the gift of the Holy Ghost. And I thought, I have never thought about this, but Joseph Smith just didn't have an opinion about first principles. He experienced them. And he could write that with such power. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,

repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost. And as I've heard Hank say, it's one of my favorite quotations too, a man with experience is never at the mercy of what, Hank? A man with an opinion. Right. Joseph Smith didn't just have an opinion about first principles. He experienced them to the depths of his soul and then could write about those beautifully.

Some people, there's kind of a feeling, a myth that, hey, be careful. If you study too much church history, you know, you could put your testimony on shaky ground. And yet here you are, one of the leading experts on Martin Harris and the efforts we're talking about. And you've done this in so many ways already, but could you just close a little bit with your testimony about Joseph Smith and the Restoration? Here's someone who has made it their life's career to know about Joseph Smith and the history of the church. And I see nothing but faithfulness. First of all, I'm sure there are many people that are greater experts than I am on Joseph Smith and their work. they've spent more time. I have, for the last essentially 20 years of my life, pursued understanding Joseph Smith, his teachings, his life. And in the course of that, I've

read his revelations, published and unpublished his journals, his letters, the sermons, the minutes and meanings he participated in. My work at the Joseph Smith Papers has afforded me an opportunity that people rarely have. And that is that I've read the things that Joseph has had to say. And I'll just throw this in, Garrett. You're not just reading copies. You're reading. No, the originals when you have them. Yeah.

I mean, the original Dr. Handwriting. I mean, it is a powerful experience to have a letter written by Joseph sitting on your desk as you're looking at it. And you're experiencing that. There's a power in that. Like I said, my life led me to where I was every day, all day long, every day reading everything that Joseph Smith wrote,

every interaction that he had with others. I can't say as a blanket statement that I've read, you know, everything that I, everything I know of. Sometimes it's someone in a kind way saying, you know, I heard you worked up at the church history department. Have you ever like, you know, seen some stuff that kind of just made you think it wasn't true? You know, sometimes it's in a more negative way where someone, you know, is assuming that I must have seen those things and I'm just perpetuating the lie by pretending that I still believe. First and foremost, I would guess that most of the people that I have interactions with, they haven't done that, right? They haven't either gone to get a degree to know how to read those documents, nor have

they spent two decades doing it. And so when they say things like, well, if you studied more, you'd know it wasn't true. It's in some ways offensive because you're essentially saying that my belief isn't real. Because I've read all of those sermons of Joseph Smith and all the letters of Joseph Smith and all the journal entries of Joseph Smith and the minutes of the meetings he was in, and I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I believe that it matters far more what it is we study and why we're studying it than this idea that if you gain knowledge, it would... The problem isn't too much knowledge. The problem is deciding that something that is just a pittance of knowledge, that is just a slice of it, is actually an

overwhelming piece of the whole. It's a little bit of knowledge, right, that is the dangerous thing. It's thinking that you're an expert on something simply because you read something somewhere once. I can say unequivocally, my testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God has grown as I have read all of these various things that he wrote. I can feel the Holy Spirit speak to me. The more you study Joseph Smith's writings, his sermons, his revelations, the more you can know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, that he really did see God in Jesus. And it matters a lot to me because the reason why I believe that Jesus is my Savior

is because I believe that Joseph Smith saw him. I don't have the kind of mind that would naturally accept the supernatural. That's not the kind of mind that I have. I am grateful for the fact that I was born into a family where my father and mother taught me about the gospel, because I don't know that I would have accepted it otherwise. As I have read documents on my desk, one time I remember very clearly a colleague of mine, we were sitting on a desk going through a document together. It was a Joseph Smith document. And as we read it, we both felt the Spirit at the same time and looked up at one another because the impression we both had in that moment was, what we just read was entirely beyond the abilities of Joseph Smith. And yet here it is in what he's sending.

This is from God, that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet of God. And my testimony of Jesus, that he's my Savior, is based upon that. Because I believe that Joseph Smith saw him and that Joseph Smith conversed with him and that Joseph Smith learned the truth about the atonement and our preexistence, everything that I desperately need to believe about my father in heaven and my mother in heaven, they come from the fact that Joseph Smith's a prophet. So I would just say that when someone says to you, well, if only you've read what I've read, then you'd know that Joseph wasn't a prophet. I would say first and foremost, I don't care what it is that they think they've read. There are people who are faithful, educated members of the church who have read that, who know it, who can even tell you where it comes from.

And they're certain that Joseph Smith's a prophet of God. And I would add my testimony to all of theirs. I know it, and it's not because I just haven't read enough on it. The great thing is individual members of the church don't have to know everything. No one knows everything. No one else has the luxury of spending 20 years studying Joseph Smith documents. I mean, that's beyond the realm of most people. I'm not special or smart, okay? The reason why I know the things that I do are because I've had that luxury of being able to do that as my job. You don't have to read every single thing that Joseph Smith ever wrote.

You can know that Joseph was a prophet by the Holy Spirit speaking to you in this very moment. You don't even have to be able to read to feel the Holy Spirit speak to you and tell you that the words that Joseph delivered from the Lord Jesus Christ are true. And yet here you are. And your answer was beautiful. And like you said, Hank, people will say, okay, I'm staying. As a result, if we could keep putting out things like this. Here's some of the most well-trained historians that know this material so well. And look, they're firm in the faith.

I love it. Thank you so much, Garrett. Thank you, guys. Another episode of Follow Him is in the books. We hope that you'll come back and join us as we once again take a look at the Doctrine and Covenants and move on through the Come Follow Me curriculum with Dr. Janice Johnson next time we're together. But until then, we want to say thank you to our producer, Steve Sorensen, our production team, David Perry and Lisa Spice, and a bunch of others who help us in this project. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time. We would love it if you went and picked up the podcast on our turtle house. Yeah, the app is great.

A few years ago, Hank and I and a wonderful woman named Meg Johnson, who accidentally jumped off while hiking a place called Turtle Rock in southern Utah and became a quadriplegic and because of that we've named our little group our Turtle House. So please download the Our Turtle House app today.