Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome back to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. Active. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio again. Love the studio with our friend and this show's producer, my boy here, Nate the great Piper.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hey, buddy.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: How's it going, Nate?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: It's been a weird couple of weeks.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Filled with sickness, travel, holidays, celebration of the birth of our Lord and savior. Another new year.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Crazy way to wrap the year to end it.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Sorry for anybody that is upset at us for not posting regularly. It's been a wild couple of weeks.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: It was quite the ride. But we're here. We're back, dude.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: But the book of revelation, you can figure it out. There's going to be the apocalypse. It is what it is.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: I need to record some thoughts on that for you guys out there.
We do a really small Christmas message, and the reason we wanted to keep it small is because we wanted our gift to you to be the gift of time. To not have a whole hour episode, you had to listen to just some small, simple thoughts.
But boy, it got pretty wild at the end.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: It is what it is.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: But we're here. We're ready to dive into the book of this is, I don't know, to us, I think, and I'm maybe putting words in your mouth, Nate, but this seems like the culminating thing of this podcast, right? We've been looking up to is we're looking forward to this.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: We were saying when we were chatting a little bit about the idea that we started, luckily, with doctrine and covenants, which is great, but it was kind of a chance for us to figure out what we were doing a little bit without too much pressure. And so I'm sure if we were to go back and listen to doctrine of covenants, we were still catching our stride a little bit, but it was good because it warmed us up so that we knew what we were doing by the time we got to the Old Testament, which was a party for me, at least, the first half of the Old Testament, the second half of the old Testament is just kind of long, which then got us, I feel like, hopefully only better by the time we got to the New Testament, which I love and is still the gospels are still probably my favorite scripture that we have.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: What a great year.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: But it all is leading up to the chance to hopefully. Now we're prepped, ready to deliver the best we can by the time we're getting to the one we used to call it on our mission, the correct one when referring to that, to differentiate between that and the Bible. I'm sorry for anybody that that offends, but we do believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.
But by the end of Paul, like Paul's letters, I think it was a good chance to kind of go like, hey, we have to always keep in mind there is context and nuance here that we have to be very careful of how even at time it almost feels like Paul is contradicting what is in the gospels. You know, what it can, on its surface, it can sometimes feel like, wait, is this a different gospel being, is this the gospel of Paul or is this the gospel of think that it's. I only say that to say when I jokingly, but kind of not jokingly refer to the Book of Mormon as the correct one.
All I'm doing is highlighting. It's such a great opportunity to read a book that we really do believe is as pure scripture as we could possibly have at this.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Know. That's probably a great place to start with this episode because Joseph Smith makes the comment that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book here on earth. And I feel like that statement maybe needs qualification. What does he mean by the most correct book? And I think you've hit some really important points with that when we're talking about some of these letters. Some of these letters were in response to letters being sent, and we don't have that context. We don't understand what was being written to them in the first place, what they were responding to, what was happening.
And you get a lot of personal opinions and God says this, and here's what I think, and it's very, as you put it, nuanced in the New Testament. So when we get to the Book of Mormon, it is interesting the whole process of how we get it even compared to the Bible, right? And it's not to say anything derogatory about the Bible.
What do we mean when we're saying it is the most correct book? And is that supposed to be a backhanded comment or to lack appreciation from where the Book of Mormon gets its roots from?
And I don't think so. You look at the translational process, you go back to the Old Testament, you go back to the New Testament, and we're not even part of the conversation early on to decide what books should be included and what books shouldn't.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Completely, exactly.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Somebody's made those decisions and who made those decisions? Who was part of the council? What names are they? Do we understand what their motives were? Why did they include that? A lot of that shrouded in mystery.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: And even in the books themselves.
I don't know that we even have the author of a lot of the books.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: And I think that those are the least worrisome parts. I mean, you got to just consider the languages that these are being translated into, right? Just as it goes from language to language to language to language, when there isn't a perfect word, even with the best of intentions, you have to kind of fill in some holes or you have to do some work, is all I'm saying, to try to make it make sense. And you just can't sometimes fully grasp. I can't fully grasp at times probably how significant some of those changes could have been.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: One, for example, that we really didn't get to roll into in the Book of Revelation, when they're talking about the fall of Babylon.
And it sounded great when Isaiah said it hundreds of years before Babylon fell.
But when you have John talking about it hundreds of years after it fell, how prophetic is that? You're describing something that happened a couple hundred years ago. This is like if a prophet today were to stand up and prophesy that us was going to win the revolutionary war and England was going to end up losing its colony over here, like, oh, that doesn't seem very prophetic, does it? What in the world is John talking about? Why is he talking about the fall of Babylon when it already fell? Who is this Babylon? And then he starts talking about it in similar ways that Isaiah does, by the way, when he calls Babylon a virgin.
And then John says that Babylon is the light on a hill. And you're like, wait, what? And Babylon was the me, not the groom, the bridegroom, the groom's bride. And that Babylon's no longer going to have the voice of the groom within her. And you're like, wait, what? The voice of the Lord spoke through Babylon. Wait, Babylon was the candle on the hill. Wait, Babylon was the. And then for me, what kind of really hits it over the line is when he says, because Babylon killed the prophets, because BabyloN is the one that persecuted the lords, that kills Christ.
You're like, wait, this doesn't sound so much like Babylon. This sounds like Jerusalem. And then to understand that the actual word Babylon just means confused. Maybe he's not talking about the city of Babylon. He says the city is going to fall. He says this, but it's the city of the confused. It's just that that's what the word meant. And for us, we separate the meaning of the words with, oh, well, this is this location, this is what it means to us, which maybe it could take on a different nuance, understanding the language and realizing that when the people are confused, they persecute their own. When the people are confused, they chase out their prophets. They chase because of where they're at. I think when we talk about the correctness of the book, maybe the correctness of the book is part of it, our perception and a disconnect between the time it was written and how it's been translated and how it's been interpreted to the time that we have it now. And trying to make sense of it and where the Book of Mormon tends to have an edge on that, I think really relies in the translational process.
In the biblical history, you have people doing their best with an academic background, an academic understanding. What does this word mean? What should it mean? How should we translate this? And their best guess or their best approaches to get it to mean something, but they're also inadvertently oradvertently having to put in their own educational judgment, their own educational sounding of what I think this means and how this should read based on how I understand it, where in the Book of Mormon, what we have is a man who was not educated, who didn't have that background, and that leaning to be able to say, okay, here's what I think this should be. Who had to rely entirely on the Lord to provide him with an understanding of how this should read.
That space and time between where it was written and where it's now is, I think, in a large amount helped by this translational process of just relying on God saying, here's what it needs to sound like to help us. And it hasn't gone through as many.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Filters or passes or even language changes, at least from what we have. Right. And for whatever it's worth, though, then at least something to consider too, though, is that. But it did still have to go through a language translation, right? Like it did still have to go through a well.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: And even now it's been translated to so many different languages across the world. Right? So people can understand it.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: That is something to at least keep in mind if there is something that maybe is just like, if there's disconnect sometimes instead of, I think, critiquing well, the scripture must be wrong or the scripture is contradictory like anything else, you can just go like, hey, maybe this is something we just need to, it's hard to understand.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: I also think it's worth mentioning here that Joseph did not say that this is a perfect book.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: That's right. That's what I'm saying. You just said better what I've been trying to say. He said the most correct.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: And I think there's an important distinction between most correct and perfect. And totally, I'm looking forward to getting into some of this, because when we go into next week, when we talk about Lehi's family traveling in the wilderness, he says that they traveled in the borders which are near the borders. And you're like, wait, what? The borders which are near the borders? Isn't that what borders are? Is they border something? What do you mean? It seems like a weird phrase. And then you understand, in Hebrew, borders is the same word you use for mountains. And maybe, perhaps they traveled in the mountains which were near the borders of this area. So maybe there is some room for interpretation, maybe there is some room for error. And I think understanding that he said it was the most correct book does not state that this was a perfect book. And there is some room there. But I think that he does benefit from relying on the power of God to help him get something to where we understand. And it's very clearly written. We know who's writing. We know why they're writing, because they state that from the beginning. And we have a lot of things that are maybe hidden or not as clear when we look at some of the other records. So it's not to say it's the only record of God. It's not to say this is better than the other record of God. It's just to say this one, for whatever reason, tends to be more correct in its stated purpose. And not having to go through as many different filters, as many different people trying to put their spin or translational values in this.
It's gone through less man doing manly things through the book and remains a little bit more pure that way.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Great. Let's get in.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Okay.
In this introduction, we've got the title page. We've got the testimony of three witnesses, the testimony of eight witnesses, and there's some changes also made in the Book of Mormon over time.
And I really appreciate the most recent version of the Book of Mormon that the church has published, some of the changes that they've added. One thing, for example, is that they've added, you've got the three witnesses, the eight witnesses, but then they also add the testimony of Joseph Smith. And I think that's important. I wish that would have been included from the get go, they've also done something I just noticed in the Old Testament. You remember how I've told you, anytime a word is italicized, it's because it's not part of the original text, but the translators have added that word to try to make sense of it in the introduction here in the Book of Mormon, when they're describing this version, you're talking about the most recent version of the Book of Mormon. What they've done is identical. They've taken the chapter headings that were added after the fact, but not part of the original text, and they've italicized them so that you can understand what was in there and what wasn't. Because you're going to get parts of the Book of Mormon where Mormon or Nephi or whoever at the time is writing it actually adds an introduction or adds a little bit of a take or a little bit of something in there and to separate out what's part of the text, because it could be confusing versus what's part of the editorial comments of modern people, they've italicized anything there that's part of the modern and left everything in the text as is.
And this becomes significant for me because the first Book of Nephi, it says his reign and ministry, and it's regular typeface, not italicized. And so it's good to me to understand that either Nephi is referring to this book as his reign and ministry, or Mormon, who's added this in there, is saying that this is Nephi's reign. And why does that? It's such a little detail, but why is this so significant to me, and why am I making a big deal out of this?
If you read the Book of Mormon, you'll notice that it's not until the second book of Nephi, after they've landed in the promised land, after his brothers are going to kill him, that Nephi takes his brothers that are going to follow him, the righteous people that are going to go, and he gets out of town, right? And he goes and establishes himself somewhere else, and they make him a king, and he doesn't necessarily want to be a king, but they make him his ruler. And he takes copies of the sword of Laban, and he teaches the people to defend themselves. And you would think this is the reign of Nephi.
Yet the second book of Nephi is not his reign in ministry. It's the first book of Nephi that is his reign in ministry. Like, wait a second.
Why was he being called a king? Why is the first book referring to his reign when his dad's still alive, when he's still got older brothers that he's having to deal with.
And where this gets impactful for me is in the first book of Nephi.
The transference of power really happens. When Nephi slays Nate, you let me know how much down this road you want me to go down here. Now, in the introduction versus when we get to this part, if you read the Lakeish letters, let me give you a little bit of context.
When Assyria came through and was destroying all of Israel and all of Jerusalem, there is a city belonging to the southern kingdom. Jerusalem is the kingdom of Judah is the southern kingdom, and Lachish is the city outside of Judah.
And outside of Lachish, you have a commander of a smaller area, and he is writing letters to the leader in Lakesh in a way that you would expect someone to be writing their king.
And he grovels. I am not worthy. You are great. You are wonderful. We have problems out here. We need your help. And you would think, okay, he's writing to the king of Judah. Who would this be? It's not to the king of Judah. It's to the king of Lakesh. And so you think, well, wait a second.
In Judah, in Israel, in the ancient world, yes, you have this empire. But this empire, even the kingdom of Judah, consists of so many small regional, local areas that maybe we refer to these people as governors, but in their own rights, they were kings, local kings. And so even though you have a king of Judah that we know all about, because it's written about in the Old Testament, and we can read about the king of Judah in Jerusalem itself, you're going to have your local, your regional ruler. And this guy's not mentioned by name, and he's not talked about a lot. But now you have this guy show up whose name is Laban, who can command 50, which is a typical size of a unit that's meant to stay behind and protect and guard a city, or even his thousands, the thousands that Jerusalem can control as this small regional area.
Laban takes on this role of a regional king, a smaller local king, like you see in the lakeish letters, like you see in this ancient world, this context that many of us wouldn't have even known existed, let alone some boy, farm boy, writing the book of Mormon.
And Laban carries with him records. He has a servant that houses those records and takes care of them. He wears ceremonial garb, the military dress of somebody who's a commander, meeting with the elders of the Jews. The elders of the Jews are the ones that sit at the gate and make decisions. And he is in a position of power to be meeting with them, planning with them.
He is this local ruler, this local king.
And when Nephi slays him, there's this transference of power where Nephi takes that role. He takes his servant, he takes his plates, he takes his records, and these items are associated with the kingship.
And you'll see this happen when Nephi is ruling and he dies, and he passes this on. And it was the ruler that kept the records. It was the ruler, the king, that kept the plates. And so the sword of Laban was passed on as an emblem of kingship. The plates were passed on as an emblem of kingship.
It was this role that Nephi gets that solidified. Then, not only that, before Nephi goes to get the plates, he has a dream. And the lord says to him, in the dream, I will make you a ruler over your brothers.
And then when they go to get the plates, and his brothers are frustrated with him because the plates, the plans didn't work, and they start beating him. An angel stops them. And it's key because the angel says, know you not that the lord has chosen him to be a ruler over you. So you have, first, it's very similar to what you experience with David in kingship. First, you have the prophet quietly anointing David, and nobody knows about it. This is the vision, the personal experience that Nephi has. When the lord tells him and anoints him and makes him to be a king. Then you have it where his enemies find out this guy is anointed to be your king. This is how it's going to be. And then you have the actual act where he slays the king and takes possession of him, takes possession of his garb, his sword, his power, his plates, and assumes this title. And you'll notice that things shift even in the Book of Mormon and the family. First, it's Lehi who receives the instructions to take them into the wilderness and to go back and get the records. But at this point, Lehi now is going to take a backseat role.
When the bows break and they don't know where to get food, and Lehigh's not sure and kind of gives up. It's Nephi that takes the lead. It's Nephi that comes to his dad and says, tell me where to go, that I may hunt the food. This is a king going to his prophet. Tell me what to do so that we can go and fight our enemy. Tell me what the Lord wants us to do, he's seeking oracles from his prophet. Nephi becomes this ruler, this king Lehi, becomes this prophetic figure, like Isaiah, like Elijah. And so you're starting to see a maturation of ruling in this new family as they're going off. And Nephi's reign begins with him slaying Laban. In the first account of Nephi, this is not how we would have seen it. This is not how we would have imagined it for us. For Joseph Smith writing a book, it would make much more sense to say, second book of Nephi is his reign in ministry. But back then, this was what legitimized it. This was the transference of power. This is how it worked. This was his reign in ministry. And I'm sorry this is a long road to go down, but I think it highlights a point we want to make as we're starting. The Book of Mormon is that the Book of Mormon is so incredibly nuanced.
And so I don't know how anyone could have written a book and let's say, invented a book this nuanced, this accurate with the time period that it was describing. And get that right, or even been.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Because again, like, a lot of the modern argument against it, the critical thing as well, maybe it was influenced by this, and it was taken.
Bits and pieces were taken, kind of, from this and this and that, and again, whatever, we're all surrounded by it. We've all read the argument. It's, for me, the flimsiest thing in the entire world. Because what you're not accounting for is those details that you just brought up. Like, what you're not accounting for is the deep, deep cultural, religious, even, like, legal things that are included in these writings that literally were not copied from somewhere else. We have no evidence or proof that they were word for word copied from another thing. So even when you say, well, it could have been influenced by this and this and this, and there's a bunch of it that's quoted from old scripture and things like that. I'm like, okay, cool. Well, you've now accounted for 3% of the Book of Mormon.
Okay, fine. You've now explained away four and a half percent of the actual book.
Congratulations. I guess. I don't know. I guess I'm not trying to be overly rude about this, but your argument that the Book of Mormon as a whole doesn't hold up because it quotes things from the Old Testament. You mean, like, every scripture does, like, prophets quote other prophets?
Well, some of the names in this are kind of almost spelled the same way, kind of as another thing in the general area. And I'm like, okay, you've now accounted for 5% of the book. I guess I'm just sorry, but the idea that a young man made this up and did it over the space of a month and whatever, I mean, that is such a ludicrous claim that I think that even the critics of the Book of Mormon have given up on that one because of just how silly it makes them sound. So now that we're going to the. Well, it was influenced by all these other things, and bits and pieces may have been plagiarized from this, or somebody's great uncle's cousin was a professor at a school and his brother attended as an elementary school kid. I'm just saying it's like the claims are getting. I'm sorry. Like, more outlandish that it's like, okay, great. You've now covered 1% of the entire book.
Explain back to me what jason just explained to us, which, by the way, is actually 0.5% of the entire book. But the depth in what you just described to us is why? One, my contention always is back in response is, go read the book.
If you're still going to claim that a kid wrote this, even with influence, even with help over the amount of time that it actually was dictated, however you want to be critical of how or how it was not dictated, if at that point you've read the book and you're still going to die on that hill, like, okay, there's other things that are at play here than just the book of Mormon, right? There's other things.
If you're still going to do that and say, no, trust me, it could have been done. I mean, a lot of people bring up, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the lifetime that it took and the degrees, by the way, and the languages spoken by Tolkien to make that happen.
And it's still a fraction of the depth and the nuance that the book of Mormon is critically right. The languages, the places, the names, the people, the laws, the religious culture, all of these things with a kid who I believe and I am outspokenly. Joseph Smith was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant person. When we say that he didn't have lacked a formal education, I think we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of being like he was just some dumb farm. Because, again, we have to be very careful how we frame this, or else we don't do ourselves any, you know what I mean, favors in the future. My point is, I think the kid was brilliant, but he didn't have multiple degrees from universities. He didn't speak a bunch of different languages.
His world travel was incredibly limited at this point.
Right. At a certain point, you compare Lord of the Rings to the Book of Mormon, you could be like, cool. The Lord of the Rings might be a more entertaining. You know what I mean? It probably makes, as we've seen, sadly makes for a better movie than a lot of the Book of Mormon stories. But the point is, though, is that what you just described in ten minutes is the smallest bit of fraction of the depth of this entire book. And it's why I'm excited to get into the depth of the entire book is because the pages of this are filled with things that we still haven't even put pieces together. Right.
Like Jason and I are going to do our best to deliver. Hopefully, like we say in the intro, some new perspective, some different perspective. Hopefully we can tie some pieces together through our experience. And we are the smallest of small time compared to what's actually in this.
And. And so that's my two cent of what I kind of wanted to add to the know of Joseph Smith making it up or even being heavily influenced by just. It's just such a ludicrous claim.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Well, it's so exciting with the Book of Mormon because the Bible, we've had thousands of years to hash it.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: And the world over, scholars all over the place excited to try to get into it and find out if it's right. Find out if it's wrong. Take it for what it is. Because even if it's wrong, in their sense, religiously, it's still a historical document. Nobody disputes that.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Well, like you said. But you also have so many amazing minds from different religions finding meaning in it and connecting the pieces. To be fully honest, I love when I'm reading through Bible stuff, finding perspective outside of. You know what I mean? Let me see what this rabbi has to say. Let me see what even this minister in a different religion has.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: It's like early church fathers.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Sure. Different perspectives or even other religion. I'm just saying, it's like, oh, hey, that is actually an interesting nugget. But you're right. We've had thousands of years to have brilliant, brilliant minds dissecting this. We're looking at a couple hundred years with this, with mostly people who are antagonistic.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of it's been written off and it hasn't been carefully studied or looked at as a historical document or really torn it like when it comes to the Book of Mormon, a lot of it really is virgin territory. There is a lot of opportunity here for discovery. There's a lot of opportunity to find new things. It's just not as well digested. And we have that opportunity. It's one thing that gets me really excited about the Book of Mormon.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Great. Let's keep going.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: All right, we're talking about witnesses, and we kind of mentioned this first one as an example of that. But let's actually get into the personal witnesses. That's part of what's written here. We've got the three witnesses and the eight witnesses. And that seems like an odd number to me, doesn't it? Let's make sure we have three witnesses and then eight witnesses. Why three and eight? Any thoughts on this or where it all comes from? No, I like it because three and eight gives us eleven. And this is why I really like that they now include Joseph Smith's testimony in this, because then that puts it all together. You've got the witness of Joseph Smith himself, plus the eight, plus the three. And it's a whole sound. Twelve witnesses that are testifying to the Book of Mormon, just like you have your first twelve apostles that are testifying to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, testifying to his work.
I don't know. It's sound. It feels right.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: Better number than eleven.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: It's a better number than 1111. Felt like it was missing something. Joseph Smith comes in, and it is that piece that brings us to twelve. That feels right. And we have twelve apostles, and there's something there that just. It's the Lord's work, and it fits in with what the Lord does. And when we get to these witnesses, it is interesting, as they're translating the Book of Mormon, they read about how there's going to be three witnesses that testify to the book before it's sent out to the world.
And so you've got Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdry, and David Whitmer.
And as they find out that this is in the pages of the Book of Mormon and they're getting close to publishing it, they want desperately to be these witnesses. They were right there with the translation. They saw this process. They believed this book, but they were never able to see the plates.
And they want to. They want to hold it. They want to see it. They want to be these witnesses. And so Joseph Smith, they're the ones leading the charge and asking the prophet, can we be witnesses? Can we be witnesses? And so Joseph Smith goes to the Lord and asks him, and the Lord says, yes.
And in all cases he says yes, but he almost qualifies one of them. So with Oliver Cowry. Yes, you're going to be a witness. David Whitmer, you're going to be a witness. Martin Harris, you're going to be a witness. But I need you to change a few things. I need you to be a little bit more careful about how you're doing things.
He gets a tentative approval with conditions.
And so Joseph Smith tells them that they're excited and they find a day. Joseph Smith takes them into the woods to go and witness this.
They all kneel down and they pray because at this point, Joseph Smith doesn't have the plates. He doesn't bring the plates with them in the wilderness to go, here, let me show you so that you can all see this. They are entirely relying on God to bring the plates back, to show them what they've been translating, what they've been working on, and nothing happens.
So when you try to find three witnesses and you're trying to put together the ideal story of how this all works, I don't think the ideal story involves a bunch of you going into the woods and praying and nothing happening.
And they pray, nothing. Nothing. And this goes on for a while, and then finally it's Martin Harris stands up and he says, it's my fault.
I need to leave if you're going to have this experience.
And so he excuses himself. He leaves. And right after he leaves, the angel comes, gives them the plates. They're able to open it up. They're able to move the plates to see and have this experience. And Joseph Smith feels relieved that it's not all just on him anymore. This weight is shared. They have this wonderful experience. The angel leaves. And then Joseph goes to find Martin Harris alone, by himself, praying, trying to make things right, trying to figure out why he is.
It's like this Jonah experience, right? He gets thrown off the boat and he's trying to repent and the love of the prophet Joseph Smith to come and find him out and hear him out and help him work through this experience.
And then the angel comes back to Martin Harris and he becomes the third witness, has that kind of experience on his own. It's a beautiful story. It's touching. I wish that was more commonly known as we spoke about the three witnesses and how this happened and where it came.
And you'll also notice that there are differences between the account of the eight witnesses versus the account of the three.
In the three, an angel came and they saw an angel and they saw the plates, and they were able to handle them with the eight. There's no angel involved. Joseph Smith gives them the plates. They're able to see it, handle it, and they don't talk about a heavenly visitor. So it's almost like the same thing you see in the New Testament. When Christ is going to Gethsemane and he stops of his apostles, he stops nine of them, which is really not even nine because Judas left.
[00:36:18] Speaker B: There's your eleven.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: There's your eleven right there. You've got eight. And then he takes three and brings them to the heart of Gethsemane with him to experience something different that the others weren't able to experience.
It's a neat experience, and you even have them falling asleep and missing that to some extent similar to what you had here with this story.
It's also interesting that in finding these particular men, you don't just have a witness like Joseph Smith, who saw the plates and who stayed faithful to the church all the way up until he dies. But you end up getting hostile witnesses with this, because the whitmers all leave the church. And in fact, of the three witnesses, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdry and David Whitmer, all three were excommunicated.
And to have not just excommunicated, but opposed to the church, because in the fact, with Oliver Cowry, he leaves over questions of polygamy, he leaves over some of the things, the failure of the bank was really hard for a lot of people to deal with. With polygamy and things that were happening in Nauvoo. They look at it and say, you know what? I saw those plates. I know this is true. But what I don't know is if Joseph Smith is still handling things the right way or if he's kind of let things go to his head and he's gone off on a weird track, that I can no longer support him. And so they leave the church, are opposed to the church, but never deny their witness. Oliver Cowdry and Martin Harris come back to the church later on after Joseph Smith's death, and they reunite with the saints.
David Whitmer never does. But David Whitmer instructs his family on his tombstone to carve the Bible and the Book of Mormon and to put his testimony on his tombstone to take it to his grave.
And you had, when they were mixing with anti members, anti is even a soft way to say this. Enemies to the church that were seeking to destroy the church, seeking to destroy the prophet Joseph Smith, they had a hard time working with some of these witnesses. And saying, wait a second. You said you saw the plates. You said you saw this. Was this all just a bunch of.
And given every opportunity to deny it, they said, I said, I saw that. And I did.
Absolutely. I was there. I said it. I saw it. I will not change what I said.
What I have issues with is I feel like the prophet Joseph has fallen, and that's where things went. But they never denied what they knew about the golden place. And so I find it interesting that the Lord chose not just people that were going to stay true to the church, but people that would really have problems with what a lot of people, I feel today have problems with. Questions about polygamy, questions about Joseph Smith, questions about his prophets. Are these really inspired men? Because we have issues knowing that the church is not led by Jesus Christ. We're not perfect, and it's easy for us to point fingers and to have a witness of people that were antagonistic, I think even adds more validity to the history of this book.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: To be clear, we do believe the church is led by Jesus Christ, but maybe not him on earth. In person, getting up at conference, speaking.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for that. That's an important clarification.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: I want to make sure that you are not incorrectly quoted there.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: You mean in person, like Christ sitting on the stand during conference?
We believe Christ leads the church through very imperfect, fallible human beings. And again, not critiquing anybody in particular, but I believe that the prophets and apostles themselves would be very open and first in line to say, hey, we still have our things that we're trying to overcome, too.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: And I feel like a lot of these guys had some issues, maybe with some pride. I mean, they were right there at the top. They were given something that nobody else was given. To be able to see an angel, to be able to see plates, they felt like they needed to be revered a little bit, respected a little bit.
And when they realized that's not how it works. This is the Lord's work, not yours.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: This is bigger than you.
That was a hard thing for some of them to take, for those of.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Us that have been on missions. And you can see very much how sometimes the idea of a leadership role, even if it's not paying you any money, there's a very.
Dude. Humankind is drawn to leadership positions.
It talks about indoctrination of covenants, how there is very much a.
When you get a little bit of power, you unfortunately seek to abuse it or to want more.
But again, that's also just human nature. So I'm not even going to be too critical of that either.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think there's three types of witnesses. I think you have a friendly witness.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Which is hard to sometimes trust if.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: You'Re critical, and I think you have, let's call it a warm witness, where maybe at one point they were friendly, it's gray, because maybe they've left. They can be antagonistic still. At the same time, you can say, well, you were part of that, and then you have the complete outside antagonistic, neutral, or whatever you want to call that has nothing to do with it. Never has, never will. And I think that witness comes in the form of all of the people who said they didn't believe Joseph Smith, yet were willing to go to any means possible to get those plates.
How do you not believe someone, but are willing to search their wagon, go through their property, chase them, persecute them, to try to get your hands on what you said, they don't have actions. I feel speak louder than words. You can say you don't believe, but if you're sneaking into somebody's house, searching everywhere, trying to find something, you obviously.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Believe enough to do that.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: Enough, break the law.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: Yeah, you do bring up a good point, is that there was probably some inspiration in. Not probably, I will propose there is inspiration in who the three witnesses were, because I think that it's important to the strength of their testimonies that all three of them weren't just your friendly witness. Die hard till the end, ride or die, as the kids say. I think that it's actually incredibly important to the strength of their testimonies that they weren't just yes men. They weren't just along for the ride. They didn't get any big promotions because of it. And, in fact, some were incredibly hostile. I think it just adds strength to their testimony, at least of this part of what? Say what you will, but I think if the three witnesses were just Joseph Smith's brothers, who, you know what I mean, were all about it and supported him his whole life, I think that's a shockingly, ironically less powerful testimony than three non family members who very much didn't toe the know their whole lives.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: One who had every reason to hate the church because they kept going to the well for him to provide money for everything. Hey, we need money to publish this book, right? Let's go sell your farm so that we can do this right. We need money for.
I think a large reason why he left the church is he was sick of being the church's piggy bank. It cost him financially. It cost him.
He had every reason to really be mad at the church, and yet he was the witness, and he stood by it. Yep.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: I think it's important.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: All right, let's talk a little bit about Joseph Smith's family, his life and Mormon, and then wrap this up.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: So Joseph Smith, we talk about this guy being a farm boy and being raised in a farm. It's interesting. His family weren't really farmers when he was born.
It's kind of a weird story. Joseph Smith Sr. Was a merchant. He had a store. He was an investor. He was actually a pretty smart guy.
And he invested a lot of money in Ginseng because this was a new crop at the time. It was doing really well in China. And he had a partner, or at least someone who wanted to be his partner, that wanted to go in.
What it came down to is he was trying to sell his ginseng, and this guy wanted to buy it, but he didn't want to buy it at a fair price. Joseph Smith Sr. Turned him down. He was going to sell it over in China and try to sell it his own.
And the guy ended up robbing him, taking the crop, taking everything.
And it left Joseph Smith to where he lost his store. He lost everything and had to turn to farming to take care of his family. It's not that Joseph Smith and his family were a bunch of farmers forever. They had to turn to farming because of financial situations where they got taken advantage of by somebody else. And this was their way to try to figure things out, to try to survive. So, yeah, they did have a lot of financial hardship. And what makes it even worse is the first year they turned to farming, you had a volcano explode somewhere in the South Pacific. And this was the year without a summer where crops failed. And it wasn't a good enough year to try to even farm. So you look at, through no fault of his own, somebody else stealing all of his property and bankrupting him, and then you look at nature itself turning against them so that their attempts to farm and provide for themselves end up futile. And they lose it all, and they lose the farm. And then it takes them to where they're going to be moving to upstate New York to be renting and farming over very.
They're going to be coming from very humbling circumstances.
So when the angel talks to him about plates of gold and the temptation to try to cash out and try to save their family, I think it's worth understanding the financial hard terms, hard times that their family had gone through to get to that point and this forced move, this relocation.
I want to take this and I want to look at and compare Joseph Smith with Mormon.
Mormon is the one that puts the book of Mormon together. He's the one that takes the plates of Nephi. He's the one that abridges it. And you can read all about this in these first pages that we're talking about. He creates this book and buries it in the hill. Well, he gives it to Moroni. Moroni who's going to bury this? Moroni becomes this transitionary period to link Joseph Smith and Mormon. Mormon is the one who writes the book. Joseph Smith is the one that translates this book. These two are very closely linked. And I find it significant that both Mormon and Joseph Smith are named after their fathers. Mormon's dad's name is Mormon. Joseph Smith's dad's name is Joseph Smith. Both of these boys in their youth, 14 to 15 years old, and they see the Lord. Joseph Smith has his first vision. Mormon sees the Lord. And then a prophet comes to Mormon and says, I see that you're a sober youth because of this. I want you to take notes and to learn. And then it says, mormon was carried into the land north by his dad as a young man. Joseph Smith, who was forced to relocate north up into upstate New York as a young man at the same time that's bringing him in line. It's just fascinating when you start looking at the connections between these two men. Their lives mirror each other so much, and it reminds me so much of the hebrew chiasmus that they have all throughout the Old Testament, where they say, for example, the first shall be last and the last shall be first, where you start recounting events and then recounting them in reverse order to get you back to where you started. It's almost that Joseph Smith and Mormon are chiastic structures of each other, that they both live these very similar lives. And then you have Moroni, Mormon's son, this link that bonds these two characters to each other. And so I find it almost poetic in history itself, the story of the bearing of the plates, how the Book of Mormon comes.
Well, how the Book of Mormon comes to where it is today.
The whole history becomes poetic and interesting and artistic, even the fact that the Book of Mormon is buried in the ground like a seed. And then Joseph Smith is almost harvesting this as he's taking the seed out of the ground and all of the fruit that it grows and produces as it's being translated. I think that God, when we read his words.
He's an artist. As we read the words, they inspire us, they touch us. But one thing that God can do, that no other person can is to make history itself artistic.
And I say that even talking about the life of Jesus Christ, when you take the whole history of the world, how can one man orchestrate thousands of years of events? And you talk about the world beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And then you talk about at the very end, how Adam is going to come back in Adam and diamond and have this event where he gathers all of his children together just like he did in the beginning. You have this Noah and the flood, and then you talk about it towards the end, how the earth will again be baptized, but baptized by fire. And you have all of these events countering each other like a large chiasmus and Christ at the very heart of the meridian of times coming. And God has a way of taking history and making it artistic. And who is born when they're born and what they do and in their life, and they have no way of controlling their life. Joseph Smith has no way of controlling the cell of the ginseng and how that's going to go and being carried up into the land north. He has no way of controlling his name being named after his dad.
But yet it fits, and it fits with Mormon. And it's God saying, this is not man's work.
You can say maybe like you said earlier, Nate, and try to write off 1% of this or 2% of this and try to come up with an excuse for why this is here, why this is there. But how do you write away the history? Who could have orchestrated that? How could Joseph Smith have decided how he was going to be named and how that would fit with somebody else so long ago? And so I like to take a step back and even almost look at the history of these men and the artistic value of not just what's written in the Book of Mormon, but the story surrounding it itself.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: So. Well said.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: So I'm.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: I have. I.
I would be doing our listeners a disservice to even try to step in and on top of what you just said. Amen, brother.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: Well, I don't know that I have much more to say.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: I don't know if there needs to be much more said.
Anything else about the intro you at least want to touch on?
[00:52:27] Speaker A: I just want to say this is exciting.
So much of this is virgin land, and I'm sure you guys that are listening to this have had so many thoughts that nobody else has ever had before. It's exciting, and we're looking forward to digging into this with you and seeing things that haven't been seen and being able to really just take this to heart and learn and explore.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: And now more than ever, please share with us your insights, your perspective.
Now more than ever, we don't have 2000, 4000 years of history with these writings.
I'm going to assume that the majority of the people listening to this podcast are doing so as also scholars and studies of this book as well. And so, please, now more than ever, we would encourage you to share with us your insights and your thoughts as we're going through these chapters as well.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: Appreciate you as always, Jason, for spending the time, and we know that there's a sacrifice and a time that it takes to prepare for these episodes. So thank you for that.
And to our listeners, again, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for your feedback, your comments, questions.
We love doing this thing.
The last few weeks have been sketchy, but we're back on full time again as much as we can. I guess we are pretty good about being regularly on top of this thing, but we do this for free because we love it and we also still have families.
[00:54:11] Speaker A: But it's exciting. We've got changes to the website. We have a new podcast coming out.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: I was going to say this is one of the things that I'm also incredibly excited about.
We're working out our release schedule right now, wrapping up a couple of things with artwork and such, but we will be releasing our newest podcast, inevitable art, on the add on education network. You will be able to stream it on all of the popular streaming apps sites from the website itself, et cetera. It's going to be a good one.
All right, well, if there's nothing else, man, I'm excited to see you next week.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Let's do it. See you.
