Henry B. Eyring quote

Thy King Cometh unto Thee

artwork by Eva Koleva Timothy

Artwork by J. Kirk Richards

I love J. Kirk Richards' artwork !

“She Said that they Were fastened with Rings”

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Here are three passages that I marked in Ronald E. Romig, Eighth Witness: The Biography of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2014)

First, Edward Stevenson interviewed David Whitmer on 22 December 1877, taking rapid notes as the Witness spoke, and his notes included the following:

Oliver, & The Prophet, & I were riding in a wagon, & an aged man about 5 feet 10, heavy Set & on his back an old fashioned Armey [sic] knapsack Strapped over his Shoulders & Something Square in it, & he walked along side of the Wagon & Wiped the Sweat off of his face, Smileing [sic] very Pleasant  David asked him to ride and he replied I am going across to hill Comorah [sic].  Soon after they passed they felt strangely & Stopped, but could See nothing of him all arround [sic] was clear & they asked the Lord about it he Said that the Prophet Looked as White as a Sheet & Said that it was one of the Nephites & he had the Plates.  on arriveing [sic] at home they were impressed that the Same Person was under the bed [shed] & again they were informed that it was So.  they Saw where he had been & the next morning David’s Mother Saw the Person at the Shed and he took the plates from A Box & showed them to her She Said that they Were fastened with Rings thus D [Stevenson has drawn the shape of a capital D] he turned the leaves over this was a Sattisfaction [sic] to her.  (cited on page 31)

The detail of this account — the D-shaped rings — is striking.  Also, please note that man who showed Mary the plates is not identified as Moroni.

Stevenson’s report that Mary Whitmer’s experience with the “aged man” and the Book of Mormon plates occurred the next morning after the arrival of Joseph, Oliver, and David from Harmony may be incorrect.  Other accounts say that Mary had grown vexed at all of the work that she had to do around the house while Joseph and Oliver and the Whitmer men were busy with matters surrounding the dictation of the Nephite record.  Ron Romig himself alludes to the increased stress of the period:

“Before long, neighbors began to fill the Whitmer home. . . .  The visitors seemed to come in a never ending stream, trying to get a glimpse of the new prophet. . . .  They all had to be fed, and the subsequent dishes cleaned, the cow had to be milked and the butter churned, the bread baked, the beans soaked, and the floor swept.”  This heavy burden of hospitality naturally fell on Mary and fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Ann.  (26)

But having her experience occur the very morning after their arrival doesn’t appear to allow enough time for her to have become irritated.

 

For further information on Mary’s experience and the background to it, see Royal Skousen, “Another Account of Mary Whitmer’s Viewing of the Golden Plates,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 10 (2014): 35-44.

Edward Stevenson apparently also interviewed David Whitmer on 9 February 1886 and, among other things, recorded this in his journal:

While plowing in the field after Joseph Smith’s arrival, David heard a voice and saw a personage who told him, “Blessed is the name of the Lord & they who keep his commandments.”  Almost immediately, Joseph interrupted his work and invited him to become one of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon.  (32)

On 7 January 1878, presumably drawing on his still very recent 22 December 1877 interview with David Whitmer, Stevenson mentioned yet another interesting account in a letter to President John Taylor:

On another occasion, related without any details about time and place but probably during these weeks at Fayette, David, Oliver, and Joseph saw “one of the three Nephites.”  Reinforcing this marvelous tale was their observation that “Joseph’s countenance became almost transparent.”  (32)

Incidentally, claims that “the Prophet Looked as White as a Sheet” and that “Joseph’s countenance became almost transparent” are surprisingly common from a rather significant number of eyewitnesses, referring to times when he was receiving revelation.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/06/she-said-that-they-were-fastened-with-rings.html

A miraculous harrowing

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

Here are a couple of additional passages that I’ve extracted for my notes from Ronald E. Romig, Eighth Witness: The Biography of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2014).  Ron Romig is a historian and archivist who is affiliated with the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and who retired in 2017 as director of that church’s Kirtland Temple Historic Site:

[T]he . . . account of angels who helped David Whitmer harrow and fertile [sic] his spring crop, was a favorite in the Whitmer family.  Helen Van Cleave Blankmeyer, David Whitmer’s great-granddaughter, tells this somewhat romanticized but colorful version:

When Peter [Whitmer Sr.] heard David planning to go off to meet Oliver [and Joseph Smith in Harmony], and in mid-week too, he protest: “Na, na — not till the south field is harrowed and the plaster spread!  That is your job, as you know, and it will not take less than two full days, maybe more.  Duty first, duty first.”  David agreed, but he was sad, and the little Elizabeth . . . grieved for her brother’s disappointment.  She watched him through the next day as he drove the harrow hard, his long body and broad shoulders contesting with the earth as with a strong wrestler, but at evening the task was scarcely half done.  Rising early on the second day to prepare his breakfast, she stepped into the yard and glanced toward the field.  To her amazement it was all evenly harrowed, and the lime neatly spread, while two strange men, just visible through the morning mist, were leaving the place at the far side.  David came out of the house, and stood entranced beside her.  “Elizabeth? . . .  Elizabeth! . . .  It must be, it can only be . . . ”  “Yes” she breathed . . . “angels.”  (30)

The story is briefly portrayed (with some obvious differences from the great-granddaughter’s account) in the first five minutes or so of a really quite well-done 23-minute Church film entitled A Day for the Eternities.

Late in life, David recalled Joseph Smith as “a man of great magnetism, made friends easily, was liberal and noble in his impulses, tall, finely formed and full of animal life, but sprung from the most humble of circumstances.  The first good suite of clothes he had ever worn was presented to him by [my brother] Christian Whitmer.  (27)

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/06/a-miraculous-harrowing.html

“Ever ready to share his conviction”

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

From Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Studies, 2018):

Ever ready to share his conviction of the early stages of the Restoration, Martin called on the offices of the Rochester Daily American at Rochester, New York, on November 15, 1849.  The following day, that newspaper reported his reminiscences of taking dictation from Joseph Smith and enumerated the translation process of the Book of Mormon.  He again confirmed that he had mortgaged his farm to raise funds for the publication of the volume.  Martin also made it clear that “he no longer goes with the Mormons” and that “he abandoned them fifteen years ago, when they assumed the appellation of ‘Latter Day Saints.'”  The editor also informed the public that “Mr. H. is exceedingly familiar with the Scripture[s], and discourses theology in his peculiar way, with the fluency and zeal of a devotee.”  (363)

On to 1850:

One might imagine Martin a happy man, for he had a loving family, tangible assets, and continued association with his friends in the [offshoot] Church of Christ.  Nevertheless, he was disquieted and angry over the turn of events locally and over his perceptions of the treatment he had received at the hands of Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles.  Still, he remained a consistent sentinel of his core belief — that both the Book of Mormon and his experience with the angel were valid — and he was fully ready to vouchsafe that testimony to any person who inquired after him.  (364)


At this juncture, Elder James W. Bay, a Mormon missionary en route to England from Utah . . . called to see Martin at Kirtland on November 23, 1850.  He recorded Martin’s having testified to him that the Book of Mormon was true “for he saw the plates and knew for himself.”  Bay stated that he “staid at Martins all night had quite a talk with him he thought that the 12 was [w]rong but I told him that he was [w]rong and he had better come up to the valley and see for himself.”  (366)

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/06/ever-ready-to-share-his-conviction.html

“And you know that I know that it is true.”

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/06/and-you-know-that-i-know-that-it-is-true.html

CANCELLED: Leftists Seek To Remove "White" Jesus and Teddy Roosevelt; Sh...

Are we headed toward a federal version of the Utah Compromise on LGBTQ rights?

In the short term, supporters of the Equality Act have momentum. However, the Supreme Court justices’ comments in Monday’s landmark gay rights decision left some Fairness for All advocates feeling hopeful.

https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2020/6/17/21293361/supreme-court-gay-transgender-workers-lgbt-rights-religious-freedom-equality-act-fairness-for-all

Six Days of Miracles

The Miracle of the 6 Day War

Templar advice

artwork by Anton Solovianchyk

“Each day we must help our brethren for whom we are responsible, for one day God will say, ‘Where is thy Brother?’ Always be a pillar of the Temple, for all the Order holds for us is the opportunity to flee the sins of the world, to live charitably, to be penitent, and above all, to be the servant of Almighty God. As true Templars, we must always be prepared for battle in either the temporal or spiritual realms. Our oaths require moral courage and our way of life demands dedication to our knightly ideals. The true knight is, of course, humble before the Lord and his fellow man. If a true Templar would boast about anything, he boasts in our Lord!” ✠  The Knights Templar 

Biden the Despicable

(by Donald McClarey theamericancatholic.com 3-9-20)

Back when Biden had more of his marbles than he does now, he was a nasty piece of work.  Kevin Williamson at National Review Online gives us the details:

He is a vicious self-serving political hack, for one thing, one whose ambition leads him from time to time into shocking indecency. You may have heard that Biden lost his wife and daughter in a horrifying drunk-driving wreck, the fault of a monster of a man who irresponsibly “drank his lunch,” as Biden puts it.

Never happened.

Biden’s wife and daughter did, in fact, die in a car wreck. That is true. It is not true that the driver of the other car was drunk, that he had been drinking, or that there was any reason to believe he was drunk or had been drinking — or even that he was at fault. The late Mrs. Biden “drove into the path of [the] tractor-trailer,” the police report says. But Biden, like every other third-rate ward-heeler of his ilk, thinks and speaks only in terms of good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats — and if something bad happens to good people, then it must be because somebody in a black hat did something nefarious. The driver of that truck went to his grave haunted by Biden’s lies, to the point where his children were forced to beg the vice president to stop defaming their late father. The casual cruelty with which Biden is willing to subordinate the lives of ordinary people to his political ambitions — for the sake of a petty tear-jerker line in one of his occasionally plagiarized stump speeches — is remarkable.

But that’s Joe Biden. Just a regular guy from Scranton who takes the train to work (with a 20-man security detail swarming the platform at every stop and the aisles roped off to separate him from the riffraff, as I have seen firsthand) whose kids ended up growing vastly wealthy from unpredictable business opportunities to which they had no especial claim beyond their proximity to political power.

Biden was protected by the Democratic political machine and then by Senate seniority; later, he was protected by the Obama administration and by protectors of the Obama administration. And so he continues doing the same things he always has done. Some of you may remember that Biden — who got into trouble for plagiarism back in the 1980s, when I was in eighth grade (and who already was running for president way back then) — was pillaging Margaret Thatcher’s speeches (and Neil Kinnock’s, too, not that anybody remembers him) to flesh out one of his own orations. That was embarrassing. What is embarrassing is that he is still doing it, as the Washington Post reports, with his campaign stealing material for advocacy groups and presenting it as the work of his campaign.

That is a pattern. A man who can lightly misrepresent the circumstances surrounding the death of his wife and infant daughter is liable to be just as cavalier when it comes to, say, slavery, telling a largely black audience that Mitt Romney — Mitt Romney! — wants to “put y’all back in chains.” (Oh, that “y’all”!) Cynical doesn’t begin to cover it.

Go here to read the rest.  At his best Biden was a none too intelligent pol, who got into politics for power and money, and who lied continually in furtherance of those goals.  Now, the establishment wants to put a senile version of this man at the helm of this nation, because he has always been a convenient servant for the powerful in our society, he used to be known as the Senator from MBNA due to services he rendered to the powerful credit card industry in Delaware, while giving smarmy pretense to being a “scrappy kid from Scranton”, a tribune of the people.  Pols like Biden are why most normal people have a strong aversion to politics and politicians.

https://www.the-american-catholic.com/2020/03/09/biden-the-despicable/

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

I want to flesh out here an argument that I heard very briefly mentioned the other day in a recorded discussion.  It seems to me, while not a “slam dunk,” to be quite an interesting line of reasoning.  All biblical citations are from the English Standard Version or ESV.

According to John 6:53-58, Jesus said something very jarring while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ⁵⁷ As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

John 6 goes on to record that these words, which almost seem to speak of cannibalism, so shocked their hearers that they caused a crisis among them:

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”⁶¹ But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them,“Do you take offense at this? ⁶² Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? ⁶³ It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ⁶⁴ But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) ⁶⁵ And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

⁶⁶ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. ⁶⁷ So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” ⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, ⁶⁹ and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Afterwards, though, many came to see the fulfillment of Jesus’ words in what he said at the Last Supper, when he initiated what mainstream Christians typically call communion and Latter-day Saints call the sacrament:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” ²⁷ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, ²⁸ for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  (Matthew 26:26-28)

It seems that the followers of Jesus did indeed carry on the practice of eating and drinking in remembrance of his brutal death.  Acts 2:42 and 2:46 may refer to the practice already within a year or so of Jesus’ crucifixion:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. . . . ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.

Acts 20:7 probably refers to an early Christian practice of partaking of “the Lord’s supper,” and it clearly seems to indicate that Paul — and the narrator of the passage, very likely Luke the evangelist — participated in the practice:

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

Paul seems to have taught his converts to continue such ritual eating and drinking.  We have evidence for that in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, which is commonly dated to between AD 53 and AD 57:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said,“This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.  (1 Corinthians 11:23-29)
¹⁶ The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.  (1 Corinthians 10:16-17)

Note that, in 1 Corinthians 11:23, Paul says that he taught the idea of the commemorative partaking of bread and wine to the Corinthians when he was personally present among them.  His founding of the church there — in his day, Corinth was the capital of the Roman colony of Achaea, in Greece — is commonly dated around AD 50, which puts it within twenty years or less of Christ’s crucifixion.  And he says that he was passing on to them something that had previously been taught to him.

Thus, it seems undeniably clear that the brutal execution of Jesus was being memorialized among Christians by a ritual meal in the very earliest years of the Christian movement.

But why?

Isn’t this rather strange?

Wouldn’t the execution of Jesus as a criminal, hanging on a cross between two thieves, have been a matter of shame?  Would it have appealed to audiences of potential converts in the Roman-dominated Mediterranean Basin to know that Jesus had been put to death by Roman authority?  (One of the names commonly used by Romans for the Mediterranean — a name that plainly demonstrates their confident dominance of it — was Mare Nostrum, “Our Sea.”)

And what would potential Jewish converts make of it?

Paul knew very well how they would regard it, since he himself writes in Galatians 3:13 that

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

He is citing Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which is obviously relevant to the story of Christ and the cross:

"And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, ²³ his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God."

So why would the earliest Christians, far from seeking to hide the shameful, horrific, brutal death of the founder of their movement, have actually gloried in it?  Why would they commemorate it in regular communal eating and drinking?

Obviously, it seems clear to me, because something had transformed the meaning of that shameful death.  And Christ’s resurrection seems to me by far the best explanation of that change.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/05/the-sacrament-of-the-lords-supper-as-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus.html

Greedy LD$ Inc., Again

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

I discussed the allegedly obscene greed of the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at some length here back when the story about Ensign Peak Advisors first surfaced (toward mid-December, if I recall correctly).  To me, it was essentially a non-story, since it’s clear beyond reasonable dispute that the leadership of the Church are not personally growing wealthy from the Church’s funds.  On the contrary, it seemed reasonable to me that the Church should accumulate a rainy-day fund for a time of crisis.  And here are some principles that also seem reasonable to me in that connection:

The rainy-day fund should be larger than you might think needed, because one of the most obvious things that will happen in a time of crisis (say, a war, a massive recession or depression, a natural catastrophe, or a pandemic) is that the markets will fall and investments will lose value.  Which is to say that, if you think you’ll need x, you should save, perhaps, 130% of x — on the assumption that an economic downturn will reduce your fund to x.

And, specifically in the case of the Church, x should be large, because the Church itself is large, and its needs are large and complex.  (The pre-coronavirus figure of $100 billion for the Ensign Peak Advisors fund, never confirmed, works out to only about $6500 per Church member, which doesn’t seem absurdly large to me.)

Another obvious consequence of a major downturn for the Church and its finances is that its income, in the form of tithes and offerings, is almost certain to go down at the very same time that its expenditures, in the form of welfare and humanitarian aid, are likely to increase.  Meanwhile, other expenditures, for temple and chapel construction and so forth, are likely to continue or ideally will continue.

It’s not unlikely that at least some of these newly unemployed Utahns are Latter-day Saints.  And that they’re probably not paying tithing on money that they’re not earning.  And I’ll bet that their bishops have stepped forward to help them, where appropriate, with Church funds.  And I’ll wager that some Latter-day Saints outside of Utah have been affected by COVID-19 and rising unemployment, as well.

So, once again, I see nothing wrong with the fact that Ensign Peak Advisors, through prudent management, had accumulated a large “rainy-day” fund.  This seems to me merely prudent.  It seems, in fact, that the Church was doing precisely what it has long exhorted its members to do for themselves.

Years ago, my wife and I were trying to find our hotel in Salzburg, Austria.  The streets were narrow, our map was confusing and under-detailed, the traffic was heavy and sometimes impatient, and we couldn’t find it.  We kept passing through the area where we expected to see it, but we couldn’t see it.  And, at just that place, the streets were exceptionally complex.  Fortunately, we had a GPS device!  Unfortunately, it always lost its connection at exactly the point, amidst that complicated maze of oddly angled streets and tallish buildings, when we needed it most.

I’m so grateful that I belong to a church that not only does tremendous good but that is competently and prudently managed by people with foresight, so that it doesn’t shut down because of incapacity at precisely the times when it is most needed.

I actually thought that those who derided and attacked the Church for amassing a rainy-day reserve fund might have paused a bit when, within just a few weeks, COVID-19 so dramatically confirmed the wisdom of having just such a fund.  Silly me!  I was wrong.  Even after all these years of watching wholly unreasonable criticisms of the Church, I still foolishly imagine that there might be a limit to the perpetual rage of some of its critics.  Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/05/greedy-ld-inc-again.html

Gathering the scriptural passages about the experience of the Book of Mormon Witnesses

(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)

I’m working toward the writing of a kind of brief introduction to the Book of Mormon witnesses.  With that in mind, I’ve gathered the scriptural passages that pertain to them, and I thought that I would share them here.

Linking himself with Isaiah and with his own brother Jacob — all of whom, he says, have seen the Lord — Nephi proclaims himself a witness to the Redeemer.  “Wherefore,” he explains, “by the words of three, God hath said, I will establish my word. Nevertheless, God sendeth more witnesses, and he proveth all his words” (2 Nephi 11:3).

This seems to be the principle behind the prophecy that three witnesses would be chosen to establish the authenticity of the Book of Mormon at its re-appearance in modern times, centuries away.

Here, for example, is 2 Nephi 27:12-14, which specifically speaks of three witnesses to the Book of Mormon but allows for an indefinite number of others:

12 Wherefore, at that day when the book shall be delivered unto the man of whom I have spoken, the book shall be hid from the eyes of the world, that the eyes of none shall behold it save it be that three witnesses shall behold it, by the power of God, besides him to whom the book shall be delivered; and they shall testify to the truth of the book and the things therein.

 

13 And there is none other which shall view it, save it be a few according to the will of God, to bear testimony of his word unto the children of men; for the Lord God hath said that the words of the faithful should speak as if it were from the dead.

 

14 Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to bring forth the words of the book; and in the mouth of as many witnesses as seemeth him good will he establish his word; and wo be unto him that rejecteth the word of God!

Note that specifically three witnesses are mentioned, but that an indeterminate number of others are also mentioned, “according to the will of God,” “as many witnesses as seemeth him good.”

The three witnesses are expressly predicted to see the book “by the power of God.”

 

The prophecy at Ether 5:2-4 speaks only of the three witnesses, but adds some other important details:

 

2 And behold, ye may be privileged that ye may show the plates unto those who shall assist to bring forth this work;

 

3 And unto three shall they be shown by the power of God; wherefore they shall know of a surety that these things are true.

 

4 And in the mouth of three witnesses shall these things be established; and the testimony of three, and this work, in the which shall be shown forth the power of God and also his word, of which the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost bear record—and all this shall stand as a testimony against the world at the last day.

 

Those to whom the plates are to be shown will be “those who shall assist to bring forth this work.”

Again, it is said that the three will be shown the plates “by the power of God.”

 

Doctrine and Covenants 17:1-7, was given to Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris through Joseph Smith at Fayette, New York, during June 1829.  They have now been specified as the three witnesses who will see the plates “by the power of God”:

 

1 Behold, I say unto you, that you must rely upon my word, which if you do with full purpose of heart, you shall have a view of the plates, and also of the breastplate, the sword of Laban, the Urim and Thummim, which were given to the brother of Jared upon the mount, when he talked with the Lord face to face, and the miraculous directors which were given to Lehi while in the wilderness, on the borders of the Red Sea.

 

2 And it is by your faith that you shall obtain a view of them, even by that faith which was had by the prophets of old.

 

3 And after that you have obtained faith, and have seen them with your eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of God;

 

4 And this you shall do that my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., may not be destroyed, that I may bring about my righteous purposes unto the children of men in this work.

 

5 And ye shall testify that you have seen them, even as my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., has seen them; for it is by my power that he has seen them, and it is because he had faith.

 

6 And he has translated the book, even that part which I have commanded him, and as your Lord and your God liveth it is true.

 

7 Wherefore, you have received the same power, and the same faith, and the same gift like unto him.

 

Once again, the language is of power (“the power of God”), as well as faith, and of a “gift.”

The revelation testifies that the Book of Mormon is true.  During their experience as witnesses, they will hear the voice of God himself, directly, testifying that it is true.

They are given a checklist of items that they will see, including not only the plates but (1) the breastplate, (2) the sword of Laban, (3) the Urim and Thummim, and (4) the “miraculous directors” (aka the Liahona).

 

By the time that Doctrine and Covenants 20:8-11 was given during April 1830, the three witnesses, along with eight additional official witness and several unofficial ones, had seen the plates and, in some cases, other associated artifacts.  The English translation of the Book of Mormon had just been published, in March 1830.  So this revelation introduces it, speaking of

 

8 . . . the Book of Mormon;

 

9 Which contains a record of a fallen people, and the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews also;

 

10 Which was given by inspiration, and is confirmed to others by the ministering of angels, and is declared unto the world by them—

 

11 Proving to the world that the holy scriptures are true, and that God does inspire men and call them to his holy work in this age and generation, as well as in generations of old

 

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2020/05/gathering-the-scriptural-passages-about-the-experience-of-the-book-of-mormon-witnesses.html

“Joseph Smith Performing a Miraculous Healing According to a Non-LDS Source”

(from the scriptural Mormonism blog)

Writing about a miraculous healing performed by Joseph Smith, we read the following from a non-LDS witness and source:



. . . it can not be denied that Joseph Smith was a man of remarkable power--over others. Added to the stupendous claim of supernatural power, conferred by the direct gift of God, be exercised an almost magnetic power--an irresistible fascination--over those with whom he came in contact. Ezra Booth, of Mantua, a Methodist preacher of much more than ordinary culture, and with strong natural abilities, in company with his wife, Mr. and Mrs. John, and some other citizens of this place, visited Smith at his home in Kirtland, in 1831. Mrs. Johnson had been afflicted for some time with a lame arm, and was not at the time of the visit able to lift her hand to her head. The party visited Smith partly out of curiosity, and partly to see for themselves what there might be in the new doctrine. During the interview, the conversation turned on the subject of supernatural gifts, such as were conferred in the days of the apostles. Some one said, "Here is Mrs. Johnson with a lame arm; has God given any power to men now on the earth to cure her?" A few moments later, when the conversation had turned in another direction, Smith arose, and walking across the room, taking the Mrs. Johnson by the hand, said in the most solemn and impressive manner: "Woman, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command thee to be whole," and immediately left the room.

The company were awe-stricken of the infinite presumption of the man, and the calm assurance with which he spoke. The sudden mental and moral shock--I know not how better to explain the well-attested fact--electrified the rheumatic arm--Mrs. Johnson at once lifted it up with ease, and on her return home the next day she was able to do her washing without difficulty or pain. (Amos Sutton Hayden, Early History of The Disciples in the Western Reserve, Ohio; with Biographical Sketches of the Principal Agents in their Religious Movement [Cincinnati: Chase and Hall Publishers, 1875], 250)

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