Book of Mormon Witnesses

Historical accounts of @TheBookofMormon Witnesses—the Three, the Eight, and more!

Major sources: Church Archives, Anderson, FAIR, Vogel.

Admin: Jason Allred.

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

Addressing a common misconception:

Did the 3 witnesses of the #BookofMormon only see the golden plates with their "spiritual eyes"?

📒👀

a thread:

[James Divis @j_divis]

Read it if you love Jesus Christ!

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

If the Book of Mormon were a fraud, the witnesses would have cracked. Here's why they didn't.

"I am a dying man. What would it profit me to tell you a lie?"

That was Oliver Cowdery. On his deathbed. Reaffirming the testimony he had maintained for over twenty years.

Here is how courts think about it:
Courts have used the same basic truth test for centuries. Three questions:

Was the witness honest?
Was the witness in a position to observe what they claimed?
Was the witness free from disqualifying bias?

Apply all three to the Book of Mormon's Three Witnesses.

Start with honesty.
Martin Harris was described by his own skeptical community as a "square-toed upright man," meaning someone honest to the point of being old-fashioned about it. Newspapers hostile to Joseph Smith still exempted Martin from charges of dishonesty. His neighbors could not reconcile his reputation for fastidious honesty with his claims of seeing an angel. Their actual words: "How to reconcile the act of Harris in signing his name to such a statement, in view of the character of honesty which had always been conceded to him, could never be easily explained."

They thought he was wrong. They never thought he was lying.

Oliver Cowdery was a lawyer, editor, and political candidate. He could have ended the ridicule with one short op-ed. He had access to printing presses in multiple states and spent years watching the association with the Book of Mormon cost him professionally. He never recanted. He took the hit and moved forward.

David Whitmer was elected city councilman and mayor by his non-Latter-day Saint neighbors. The Richmond Democrat wrote that no man had "more friends and fewer enemies." He was ranked alongside national statesman Alexander Doniphan in regional histories.

These were men their communities trusted.

Then comes the hardest test.
In July 1833, a mob of several hundred descended on the Latter-day Saint settlement in Jackson County, Missouri. Oliver barely escaped. A public bounty was placed on him. His workplace was reduced to rubble.

A schoolteacher named William McLellin, hiding in the woods nearby, pulled Oliver and David aside. He told them: our lives are in danger. Tell me the truth. Is the Book of Mormon true?

Oliver: "God sent his holy angel to declare the truth of the translation of it to us, and therefore we know. And though the mob kill us, yet we must die declaring its truth."
David: "Oliver has told you the solemn truth, for we could not be deceived."

McLellin believed them. He could not see a conceivable reason for them to lie in that moment.

David Whitmer's test was worse.
Two weeks later, a mob dragged David from his home, stripped him, tarred and feathered him, and lined him up at bayonet point in front of five hundred men. The commander offered him a deal. Deny the Book of Mormon. Confess it was fraud. Walk away a free man.

David raised his tar-stained hands and bore witness that the Book of Mormon was the word of God.

At least one mobster became a believer on the spot.

Now consider what they had to gain.
David and Oliver received no financial benefit from the Book of Mormon. Ever. Martin Harris lost his farm, his savings, and his marriage supporting its publication. Publishers warned him upfront that the book would be a commercial disaster. They were right. Martin spent years walking the streets of Palmyra with armloads of copies, selling almost nothing.

If money were the motive, recanting was always available. Critics tried alcohol, ridicule, legal pressure, and financial offers. None of it worked.

What courts call "the final test."
English and American law has long given special weight to deathbed statements. The logic is straightforward: when death is imminent, the usual motives to lie are gone. What remains is more likely to be true.

All three witnesses gave deathbed testimonies. All three explicitly rejected the idea that they had been dreaming, hallucinating, or imagining things. All three reaffirmed that they had seen, heard, and in some cases handled real physical objects.

Martin Harris, too weak to raise his arm, asked a friend to lift it for him in the position of a courtroom oath. Then he testified that he had seen the angel, seen the plates, seen the sword of Laban and the Urim and Thummim, and heard the voice of God.

He died with a copy of the Book of Mormon on his chest. His neighbors buried him that way.

The question courts ask last:
Could they have been hallucinating?

Clinical psychology has a straightforward answer. Group hallucinations do not occur. Hallucinations are private, subjective, and unshared. The witnesses described multisensory experiences, specific physical details, shared observations, and separate confirmations that matched each other across decades.

As two leading clinical psychologists in the field put it, there is no documented case of even two people sharing the same hallucination at the same time.

The witnesses experienced these events in separate groupings, in open settings, in daylight, with no staging equipment available within miles.

What this leaves you with.
You may not believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be. That is a reasonable position. But the Three Witnesses were honest men, confirmed by skeptics and enemies alike. They were mentally competent, trusted with civic responsibility. They had no financial motive. They maintained their testimony through mob violence, poverty, excommunication, estrangement from Joseph Smith, and death.

The simple dismissals don't hold.

Whatever the Book of Mormon is, dismissing it by dismissing the witnesses requires ignoring most of the available evidence. Courts would not do that. You probably should not either.

Source: Authentic by Lundwall and Lundwall

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

David Whitmer:

"Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time."

(1888, to Metcalf; Cook's D. W. Interviews)

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

Happy Easter. He is risen!

Sunday Sessions of #GeneralConference:

https://t.co/HJvRcPWRIm

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

Join me today for #GeneralConference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

May the Holy Spirit touch your heart and reveal eternal truths to your soul as you listen.

https://t.co/vjStun2pjR

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

The first person besides Joseph to see the golden plates was Mary Whitmer.

The messenger told her, "The Lord has given me permission to show you this record," and then he turned the leaves one by one for her to see.

https://t.co/I12B3jRZVk

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

John Whitmer was asked this question in a formal, recorded interview:

"Did you see [the golden plates] covered with a cloth?"

John replied: "No. [Joseph] handed them uncovered into our hands, and we turned the leaves sufficient to satisfy us"

(Deseret Evening News, 6 Aug 1878)

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

@SillyBillicus @ybobbjr Here's the free ebook app of The Book of Mormon to get you started:

https://t.co/Ph4Xi6zpTL

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

#GreaterLove Easter message

https://t.co/eCjVayE1IT

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

David Whitmer:

"I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!"

(1884; in Saints' Herald, 28 January 1936)

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

@TeeplesCY Everyone should join the official "team" for the Church on the Red Cross Blood app.

https://t.co/PNoUF3dNUK

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

@bing_TX @PetGorilla @RobbHays127567 @JonahBa96958909 Yes. In addition to the phrase "the appearance of gold", we also have a witness statement describing them as "a mixture of gold and copper".

"Pure gold" is not a phrase used by the witnesses to describe the plates.

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

@StevenUllmer @JonahBa96958909 The plates were described by the witnesses as having "the appearance of gold" and being "a mixture of gold and copper."

"Pure gold" is not a description reported by the witnesses. "Golden" is best understood as describing the color.

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

Martin Harris, as a witness of Jesus Christ, and his connection to President Oaks:

https://t.co/LZ7HEi7hcA

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

@sola_chad

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

[A]s far as I have ever heard, from reliable witnesses, [David Whitmer] has always told the same story--'straight as a nail.'

- J. L. Traughber
(Saints' Herald, 1879; in EMDv5)

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

"each of the [golden] plates was thicker than the thickest tin"

- Martin Harris

(D. B. Dille, 1853; Millennial Star, 1859; EMDv2)

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

Skeptics may laugh and scoff if they will, but no man can listen to [David] Whitmer as he talks of his interview with the Angel of the Lord, without being most forcibly convinced that he has heard an honest man tell what he honestly believes to be true

- Richmond Democrat, 1888

[Book of Mormon Witnesses @BoM_Witnesses]

"He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear; It was no delusion."

- David Whitmer, 1881
(Church History Library, MS 3452)