The three witnesses, Martin Harris, David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery, of the gold plates gave a testimony which is printed at the start of the Book of Mormon. It reads that a voice from Heaven told them that the record of the Nephites and Lamanites and the Jaredites, in other words the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God. No proof is given that this voice was not a trick or from God. Sometimes people can be overcome with emotion and be led to misinterpret what was said to them.
No proof is given that though the plates may have been translated right that the Book of Mormon was not altered afterwards by Smith or that the manuscript given to the printer was the real translation. No details are given that would convince us leaving all our questions unanswered. They just state that they heard the voice and we have no details to rule out deception.
God might have proven the existence of the plates to them but might have let the translation be ruined intending for the plates to be translated again.
The testimony of the three is
useless. The Book of Mormon said it
needed the witnesses but when they proved useless that proves that the Book of
Mormon is a forgery. The witnesses
nullified their testimony when they let Joseph Smith make changes in the Book
of Mormon that were not allowed in the original manuscripts later on. The
We must remember that the
Mormon Church says that anybody who asks God if the Book of Mormon is true will
know for sure that it is for the Book of Mormon promises that (Moroni 10:4) so anybody who gets a testimony and a feeling
from God that the book is true is as much a witness as those who saw and
touched the gold plates. That means that
the three and the eight witnesses who came along later were hellbent
on declaring the book true just because a feeling said it was true. That is going very far and is
preferring fiction to fact.
People who would go that far are perfectly capable of visualising the
Book of Mormon plates and then persuading themselves that what they pictured
was real and a vision from God.
The three said that God said that the translation was done properly but we are not told that God said he meant the Book of Mormon as it was to be published. Perhaps Smith and his scribes reworked the translation and corrupted it. Perhaps they knew what was really on the plates in their heads and it was that that God was talking about.
Fraudulent
apparitions like Medjugorje and Fatima and countless
others have used the sun to induce visions in their victims. The shock to the system of looking directly
at the sun and the excitement has caused visions. The Smith visionaries needed only to see the
angel and the plates for a few seconds which makes a natural explanation
easy. The accounts stress the brightness
from Heaven may indicate that Smith got them to gaze at the sun. There is no proof of this. Mormons will respond that there is no
evidence that Smith did this so the apparition was a miracle. But you are only supposed to believe in
miracles when no natural explanation is possible. The sun not being mentioned is not evidence
that that it was not deployed to cause the vision.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE EIGHT
The later testimony of the eight says nothing about the translation being right but only testifies to the existence of the plates and significantly says they have the appearance of gold as if they were not sure what they were made of which supports the theory that Smith may have used wood carved to look like a book and covered in gold paint. It was dishonest of them to say they knew the engravings were ancient and genuine for they knew nothing about ancient languages and alphabets. What else did they lie about? The translation was the most important thing and they said nothing about it making their testimony rather useless - it only means they said they saw gold plates. We are left with no reason to believe in the translation.
These problems show that God could not have
let them see any plates for the time was not right. One wonders what kind of God would go to this
trouble and not make sure that characters were copied off the plates for the
academic world to examine. What kind of
God would let them see some plates and expect us to be satisfied with that?
The blunders and problems of the Book of Mormon might indicate that it was not a correct translation at all or that it was never a translation but just a forgery.
HOW DID SMITH FIND THE PLATES?
Smith claimed that the angel Moroni led him to find the plates in a hill near his home.
The earliest story
was that Smith found the Plates and the translator stones by looking in
a stone found at Mason Chase. Smith was
an occultist and a money-digger and Mormonism believes that occultism is
consorting with the Devil. Mormonism
argues: “The statements collected by Howe can all be fitted together to
corroborate the basic story of a Golden Bible found by Joseph Smith and when
different witnesses agree on the main details that is all we need.” One thing is for sure, you cannot accept what
Howe wrote about the plates as authenticating Mormonism unless you accept the
version the Howe book gave of the finding of the plates which undermines the
Mormon version and that the Smiths schemed to make money out of the plates story and even that Joseph denied they could be
translated. And Howe’s affidavits gave
no evidence whatsoever that there really were plates.
Howes work never denies the existence of the
plates which is an indication of honesty though Mormons put no trust in it except
where it suits them. But it only says
without expressing approval or disapproval regarding the report that Joseph
Smith’s father sometimes denied that the plates existed and that the Smiths
were often falsely claiming to have found buried treasure. The affidavits cannot be used to verify the
existence of the plates.
THE MAGIC GLASSES
Smith when he
first translated the Book of Mormon used magic glasses, two clear stones called
Urim and Thummim set in
bows that were worn like spectacles.
Sometimes Smith called them the Interpreters. We read in the Book of Mormon that these Interpreters
were used about 121 BC and we are told that God had forbidden any man to look
into them without authority for he might look for what he was not supposed to
look for and perish (Mosiah 8:13). That means then the stones could work on their own even when God didn’t want them to. What kind of God is this? Could he simply not let the stones fail to
work unless the right person was looking in them? The Book of Mormon itself implies that its
translation is not to be trusted.
Perhaps Smith used the stones to dictate a fictitious book, a pretended
translation of the plates?
The angel
Smith only made
all this up because it was necessary to explain why nobody saw this Urim and Thummim and they were a
problem for they were supposed to be diamonds in silver frames and where was he
going to get diamonds or even good cut glass?
When Smith used his own stone instead of the Urim and Thummim how do we know that the translation was correct? Perhaps he lost the power to translate and used it instead to fake. When God told Smith through the same stone that he would sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon and the prophecy proved false Smith said it was a revelation from the Devil (page 41, An Address to All Believers in Christ). What else was the Devil telling him? Was he telling it when he translated the Book of Mormon? Obviously, Joseph did not know the difference. David Whitmer stated that the revelations given through the stone which was used to translate the Book of Mormon though reliable are not as authorative as the Bible and the Book of Mormon (page 68, An Address to all Believers in Christ). He had no reason to say this and every reason not to so his evidence is very strong that the Book of Mormon translation is iffy though that is not what he meant to say but he certainly accidentally made it clear that it had to be. A stone that gives revelations from God that do not have full divine authority cannot give out a translation of a holy book that is fully reliable. Even if the Book of Mormon is regarded as reliable one cannot stake too much on it so it cannot be made scripture and people can reject it if they want while they are obliged by their duty to God to uphold real scripture. Deuteronomy 18 forbids depending on prophets that are not exercising full divine authority in their statements that they say God is inspiring and who are not totally right in these statements for God makes no mistakes. Joseph Smith used a stone that functioned itself as a prophet and which admitted that it was not fully trustworthy like God would be.
COWDERY DENIES BOOK OF MORMON
In the Mormon
newspaper, Times and Seasons, Vol 2, page
482), there was a poem written about 1841 that said Oliver Cowdery
denied the Book of Mormon in such a way that he attacked its status as being the
word of God. This would mean he denied
the existence of the plates or that the Book of Mormon was a true translation
or both. We don’t know which but we do
know if the plates did exist then the translation still was not a true
one. But it does seem that if you deny the
Book of Mormon you are denying that it is a divine translation. Denying
the plates would not amount to denying the book of Mormon but would only mean he
lied that he had a vision in which he saw the plates.
The Mormon Church
tries to make out that Oliver never said he disbelieved in the Book of Mormon
but denied it by his actions in the sense that he contradicted it by living in
a forbidden way. But Oliver, like the
rest, had often denied the Book this way so the poem was about something
else. It gives the impression of being
about a verbal denial. The Church then
says that Oliver denied the Book of Mormon the way Peter did Jesus. Peter believed in Jesus and denied him
without denying his belief. It was a
moment of weakness and Cowdery like Peter did not
mean what he said according to them and they give no evidence whatsoever that
this was the case and Oliver would have apologised if he had denied it that
way. The poem states that the Book of
Mormon is not proved to be fake scripture by Oliver’s denial indicating that he
was denying that it was God’s word.
Another tactic
used is to dismiss what was said about Oliver as hearsay. So when the Mormon Church does not want to
believe a testimony it is always hearsay.
That this is more than an impression is shown by the fact that the Book
of Mormon was singled out. If Cowdery had been denying the book any way apart from saying
it was not inspired it would follow he was denying the Doctrine and Covenants
and all the revelations given to Smith so singling out the Book of Mormon would
make no sense and the Mormons would not have singled it out for it looks bad to
do that unless it really was publicly renounced by Cowdery.
Would the
persecuted Mormon Church of 1841 publish a poem based on gossip about one of
its main figures? Joel H Johnson wrote
the poem and the Church says he did not hear Cowdery
deny the book for he was in Kirtland while Cowdery
was
YOUNG AND THE DOUBTING WITNESSES
Brigham Young
admitted in his Journal of Discourses, Vol
7, page 164, that some of the Book of Mormon witnesses doubted that they had
seen the angel though they had handled the plates and talked with a few
angels. This would mean two of the three
first and main witnesses. The three
witnesses alone were the important ones for only they claimed that the
translation was correct and divinely inspired.
The others only seen plates. Why should we believe the three when there
have been times that more reliable people have reported visions and were not
accused of being mean scoundrels by their own Church like the three were? The Catholic Church has had many visionaries
with better credentials. Also, the Book
of Mormon says that three witnesses are enough.
Why then are three witnesses not enough when there are a number of
visionaries of the plates and at least three of them doubt their experience and
think it was not real?
Incredibly the
Mormon Church uses the following answer to avoid the implications of what
Brigham wrote. “Immediately after
writing that some of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon who hefted the gold
plates and spoke to an angel and doubted Brigham referred to the case of a
young man in the quorum of the Twelve who had the same experience and
apostatised afterwards like many others.
Brigham did not accuse the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon or the
eight other ones of doubting afterwards.
He meant the other unofficial witnesses.”
But in fact when
he wrote of the first group of witnesses doubting he did not say if they were
the official ones whose witness appears in the Book of Mormon or not. This implies that they were for he would have
been clear in case he would weaken their testimony. Weakening the testimony of these witnesses
was not a big deal and especially when the people knew of people who had fallen
away. We know he meant the official
witnesses for he next mentions the young man of the Twelve Quorum and others
like him thus demarking them from the witnesses that went before in his text. Another reason the Mormon Church puts forward
for saying that Brigham did not mean the official witnesses was that there is
no evidence that any of them doubted.
But they would have been careful who they told their doubts to and
perhaps Brigham knew they doubted. Some
of them had other supernatural experiences that they doubted so why not their
experiences with Smith? For example,
Hiram Page doubted his visions for they were not in accord with Smith’s. There is psychological evidence that they had
to have doubted.
What the Mormon
Church likes to forget is that if hundreds who had visions of the plates
doubted afterwards they are giving testimony to the doubtfulness of their claim
or visions. Their testimony is as good
as that of the original eleven official witnesses. Brigham accepts the visions as all being
real. But if they doubted that is
evidence that they believed they had reason to doubt and that those who
remained faithful were too blind to see they should doubt. The point is, there
is no logic in saying the eleven witnesses must be reliable when they did not
doubt when there are other witnesses who did doubt for that is no better than
the eleven doubting. The fact that many
Mormons can and do claim visions of the plates need not disturb us for the
Shakers and other sects have reported visions that verify some alleged new
scripture. The Hindu mystics regularly
have visions of their guru appearing to them as a god.
ERRORS IN THE BOOK OF MORMON
Whitmer stated that Smith used his stone to translate and that a character from the plates and its interpretation or translation would appear and remain visible until the scribe Smith was dictating to wrote it down correctly. Harris also said that the translation remained on the stone until it was written down correctly. They were taking Smith's word for this. But it was a lie as we shall see.
Joseph Smith told his scribe to write Benjamin in Mosiah 21:28 which says that this man had a gift from God to translate though it should have been Mosiah for King Benjamin had been dead. This error was corrected in the second edition of the Book of Mormon. What else did Joseph change from what he saw in the Urim and Thummim?
The way the
witnesses were keen to adopt heretical doctrines that were not in the Book of
Mormon shows they knew the Book of Mormon was a revision of what was on the
Plates or that it was not supernatural.
Why? Because
only people who do not sincerely believe in a revelation from God suffer it to
be altered.
SMITH NEVER USED THE PLATES
There is the problem that Smith never used the Plates to translate from. He just used the seer stone and it is certain that that the plates were hardly ever there (God’s Word Final Infallible and Forever, Book 3, page 89). They were covered with a cloth when they were allegedly present. Smith was supposedly taking great care of these plates to prevent them being stolen so what were they doing in the room when they were not needed? The only thing that lay under the cloth was perhaps just an ordinary book.
Smith did not use
the Plates much when he translated. He
just focused on his magic stone. This
would suggest that he had little interest in what was on the Plates. He was going to write his own word of
God. Smith sometimes had the Plates
present but covered with a cloth which shows he knew he should use them if he
was planning to make an honest translation.
WAS SATAN DOING THE TRANSLATING?
If
the Devil led
Smith to find the Plates and decipher some of them it would follow that God
would prevent Smith from translating them all. This is what could have happened for two
thirds of the Plates could not be opened (page 39, An Address to All Believers in Christ). God did not trust Smith. This claim that he had only access to one
third of the book is supposed to be an indication of Smith’s sincerity. But Smith might have made up the story and
not seen the sealing this way. Smith had
always said that if he showed the plates to anybody God did not approve of they
would be struck dead. That was his
excuse for saying the book was not to be seen which was odd for it was only a
set of gold plates with inscription on them.
Smith’s purpose was to write the rest of the Book of Mormon later on in
life if the first part came to be accepted as scripture by a good number of
people. There is no way anybody could
translate the long and tedious Book of Mormon from the third which shows that
if Smith did translate the plates that he must have reworked what was on them
into a longer book.
It is suspicious
that the Book of Mormon has a sealed portion according to 2 Nephi 27 and the
witnesses said the book had a locked up section that nobody could get
into. It is as if God had to physically
lock a portion of the book to keep Smith from reading it. That clearly suggests that Smith was claiming
that it was not almighty God that was giving him the power to translate for
once Smith had the power he could do what he liked with it. Who gave it to him then? Satan?
Smith having satanic powers would mean he could use them to make the
witnesses hallucinate visions of the plates.
The devil and God
both gave Joseph Smith the power to dictate the Book of Mormon. Smith admitted once that he mistook a revelation
he got from the seer stone, which he used to translate the Book of Mormon, from
the Devil that he would sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon for one from
God (page 41, An Address to All Believers in Christ). He had to say this for his prophecy proved
false. He did not know how to distinguish
between the revelations of God and the Devil.
In Doctrine and
Covenants 129, Smith, we are told, received a revelation in 1843 which
disclosed that if anybody has a vision they must ask it to let them shake its
hand. If it tries and you feel nothing
then it is the Devil. If you feel a hand
in yours then it is from God. There is
no evidence that this test was employed when the angel allegedly appeared with
the golden plates. The Church did not
teach that God had a body in the first few years which proves that it was not
used. Smith did not check out the Father
and the Son when they appeared to him.
Smith never shook
PLATES WOULD STILL BE WITH US
If the translation
is so great why were the plates taken back to Heaven by
MORMON GOD NOT ALMIGHTY
The Mormons
believe that though God is almighty and omnipotent these terms only mean that
he has most of the power over the world.
They believe in finitism. In an excellent exposure of the vicious
Christian theodicies of the free will defence and the
idea that suffering is good for discipline, a Mormon philosopher, R. Dennis
Potter has argued that God does not allow evil to happen at all but is doing
his best to fight it. When something
terrible happens to you the reason is that God is away taking care of some
worse evil. His WebPage
is entitled Finitism and the Problem of
Evil. This theology opens the door
for the Mormon Church to survive God making false prophecies and making
mistakes. They can say he means
well. But the answer is that God has
billions of spirit children who could help him.
He could make a virus that makes many men infertile to reduce the world
population so that he will have a world he can handle. God can alter time so that he can do a
million years work in ten minutes. The
Mormon God is irresponsible and does not know how to handle power. We would know better. The Mormon solution to the problem of evil
fails. But anyway, if their God is not
literally omnipotent and there are strange laws in the universe that decree
that a man must live a normal life on an earth to become a God and be baptised
how can they be so sure of their gospel that they would be willing to suffer
and die for it? Remember, if the Gods
sent Jesus to atone for Adam’s sin which is a strange thing then how do you
know that some law just as odd didn’t force them to guide Smith to forge the
Book of Mormon?
Maybe somebody
should come up with a new Book of Mormon!
CONCLUSION
There is no
evidence that the Book of Mormon is correctly translated.
A GATHERING OF
SAINTS, Robert Lindsay, Corgi,
A MARVELLOUS WORK
AND A WONDER, LeGrand Richards, Deseret
Books,
AN ADDRESS TO ALL
BELIEVERS IN CHRIST, David Whitmer, Board of
Publications of The Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Lacy Road,
Independence, Missouri
ARE THE MORMON
SCRIPTURES RELIABLE? Harry L Ropp, IVP,
ASK YOUR BISHOP,
Ira T Ransom, 317 W 7th South,
CHANGES IN JOSEPH SMITH’S
HISTORY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1965
CHANGING OF THE
REVELATIONS, Apostle Daniel McGregor,
GOD’S WORD FINAL
INFALLIBLE AND FOREVER, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel
Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
CONCISE GUIDE TO
TODAY’S RELIGIONS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks,
1983
HOW TO ANSWER A
MORMON, Robert A Morey, Bethany House Publishers,
JOSEPH SMITH AND
MONEY DIGGING, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1970
JOSEPH SMITH’S
BAINBRIDGE NY COURT TRIALS, Wesley P Walters, Utah
Lighthouse Ministry,
LARSON’S BOOK OF
CULTS, Bob Larson, Tyndale,
MORMONISM
SHADOW OR REALITY? Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse
Ministry, 1972
MORMONISM, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press,
MORMONISM, MAGIC
AND MASONRY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1988
MORMONISM, MAMA
AND ME, Thelma Geer, Calvary Missionary Press,
MORMONISM, THE
PROPHET, THE BOOK AND THE CULT, Peter Bartley, Veritas,
NEW LIGHT ON
MORMON ORIGINS, Rev Wesley P Walters,
NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, Fawn M Brodie, Vintage, New York, 1995
SOME MODERN FAITHS,
Maurice C Burrell and J
THE BOOK OF
COMMANDMENTS,
THE BOOK OF
MORMON, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Deseret
Enterprises Ltd, Manchester, UK, 1972
THE CASE AGAINST
MORMONISM, VOL 2, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah
Lighthouse Ministry, 1968
THE FACTS OF
MORMONISM ARE STRANGER THAN FICTION, Charles Crane and J Edward Decker,
Christian Information Outreach,
THE HUMAN ORIGIN
OF THE BOOK OF MORMON, Wesley P Walters, Ex-Mormons for
WHY THE
THE WEB
FULFILLED
PROPHECIES OF JOSEPH SMITH
www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_prophecies.shtml
THE BOOK OF MORMON
WITNESSES
Excellent
refutation of the claims of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon
JOSEPH SMITH AS A
PROPHET by Richard Packham
Refutes
the Mormon claim that Smith was a real prophet of God. The
Mormons accept the validity of Ezekiel 12:21-28 which says that if a prophecy
is too long in being fulfilled then it is a false prophecy. A prophecy will come true by chance given
long enough. Smith made many prophecies
that have not come true yet so he was a false prophet. By the same criteria, the Old Testament
prophets failed and the Christian claim that they predicted Jesus and his life
by the power of God is false for even if the prophecies did come true it was
not God that was behind it. Doctrine and
Covenants 1:37 pledges that every word prophesised by Smith will come true for
God has spoken. On
JERALD AND SANDRA
TANNER’S DISTORTED VIEW OF MORMONISM: A RESPONSE TO MORMONISM, SHADOW OR
REALITY?
www.xmission.com/~country/reason/ldshist1.htm
This page shows plainly the harm that the Christian Church in general is doing
with its rotten Bible for the evil commanded by God in the Bible is defended on
the basis that it has a purpose known to God and this is used to justify the
terrible doctrines such as polygamy that the Mormons used to live out. The page does what all apologists for
religion does, ignore the major problems and nitpicks on rather minor errors in
the hope of showing the critics to be not worth listening to. For example, the Tanners believed that Joseph
Smith copied his father’s story of a dream he had in 1811 into the Book of
Mormon as the dream of Lehi because Joseph’s mother
Lucy wrote about the dream in 1845 and the two were identical in all serious
points. The page says that Lucy Smith
simply filled in her memory of her husband’s dream subconsciously from the Book
of Mormon. But she had family and
friends to help her remember. The page
says that since the Book of Mormon was written first and she was writing 15
years later it is wrong to say that the author of the Book of Mormon was the
one doing the copying. But how do you
know? It is still most probable that the
Tanners are right. If it is not then we
still have no reason to take one side or the other. Anyway, what about the more serious
objections to the Book of Mormon that the Tanners made? He’s nitpicking. The page says that since the
BY HIS OWN HAND ON
PAPYRUS, Charles Larson
At Mormons in
Transition Website www.irr.org
MORE PROBLEMS WITH
THE FIRST VISION, ANSWERING DR CLANDESTINE, Jerald and Sandra Tanner
www.xmission.com/~country/reason/clndst10.htm
PHILOSOPHICAL
PROBLEMS WITH THE MORMON CONCEPT OF GOD, Francis J Beckwith,
Barry R Bickmore
www.geocities.com/Athens/parthenon/2671/EC.html
MORMON
SCHOLARSHIP, APOLOGETICS AND EVANGELICAL NEGLECT, Carl Mosser
and Paul Owen,
www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/cpoint10-2.html#mosserowen
BOOK OF MORMON
QUESTIONS
www.lds-mormon.com/bookofmormonquestions.shtml
MORMONISM UNVAILED: MORE EVIDENCE THAT IT IS TRUE. Christian Apologetics and Research
Ministry
www.carm.org/lds/unveiled_defended.htm
THE ABRIDGEMENT OF
D&C 137
www.saintsalive./com/mormonism/falseprophetjs/htm
THE BOOK OF
MORMON: ONE TOO MANY M’S Stephen Van Eck
www.infidels.org/library/modern/stephen_eck/toomany.html
EGYPTIAN
CHARACTERS
www.mormonstudies.com/seer2.htm
This shows that
when Smith translated the book of Abraham he invented hieroglyphics where there
was a piece missing from the papyri. The
characters Smith added make no sense to translators. Yet he translated these imaginary
hieroglyphics! His mother and close
associate David Whitmer spoke of Joseph copying
characters of the gold plates of the Book of Mormon before he translated and
that like the Book of Abraham Smith often produced two lines in the manuscript
with the translation of a single character which shows that the whole Book of
Mormon thing was a hoax.
MORMON FARMS
www.xmission.com~country/reason/farms_1.htm
by Jerald and Sandra Tanner. Gathers evidence that
indicates that it was possible that Smith was insane and had manic depression.
DR CHARLES ANTHON
RE AUTHENTICITY OF WRITING SAMPLES ALLEGEDLY COPIED FROM THE GOLDEN PLATES
www.mormonism-web.com/anthon.htm
INTERVIEW OF
MARTIN HARRIS
www.xmission.com/~research/about/docum4.htm
COMMENTS ON THE
BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES: A RESPONSE TO JERALD AND SANDRA TANNER
www.mormons.org/response/bom/witnesses_Roper.htm
A
ridiculous rebuttal that has been taken into account for this book and refuted.
FACTS ON THE BOOK
OF MORMON WITNESSES, PART 1
Excellent
refutation of the reliability of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon
THE STOLEN
MANUSCRIPT
www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/goldenbible_stolenmanuscript.htm