Episode 8 Part I : Doctrine and Covenants 14-17 : Dr. Casey Griffiths

[Music] welcome to follow him a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their come follow me study i'm hank smith and i'm john by the way we love to learn we love to laugh we want to learn and laugh with you as together we follow him [Music] my friends welcome to another episode of follow him we are a podcast designed to help individuals and families with their come follow me studies today we have casey griffiths with us and uh i have an official bio from a religious education down at byu casey griffiths was born and raised in delta utah he served his mission in fort lauderdale florida returned home to complete bachelor's in history from byu and later earned a master's in religious education and a phd in educational leadership and foundations at byu and he's focused on the development of religious religious education programs among the latter-day saints before joining the faculty in religious education at byu he served in seminary and institutes for 11 years as a teacher and a curriculum writer and his research focuses on the history of religious education he's married to elizabeth otley griffiths they live in saratoga springs with three adorable children and casey we're so glad to have you today good to be here uh four children now oh that's great we got an update it's growing yeah oh casey we're so excited having you here and just on a personal note i've known casey for many years we've been in the same hallway at byu and um we were in the same phd program yeah i mean just so yes a long time in case he's he's everything you would hope um that casey is he is uh he is kind he's generous he's humble um he is just very down to earth one of my favorite stories of him is i saw this nice coat he had on and i said i like that coat where'd you get that coat and he looked at it and said oh at the d.i uh i and he's like that's where i get a lot of my clothes that's where all my books come from also [Laughter] you could probably pick up john and i's books uh there at the d.i right john we have our own shelf listen there are some amazing books at the di just we'll just we didn't know we were going to do a commercial for desert industries keep up the good work we are excited to have you uh with us dr griffiths and we want to tap into your um your historian brain today for our listeners so um this week our come follow me uh lesson takes us into the doctrine covenants of course section 14 15 16 and 17. these are shorter sections and if i'm a first time reader through the doctrine and covenants or you know kind of my first exposure to church history i run into a name a family name that i probably haven't heard before um in in you know it doesn't show up in joseph smith history and it doesn't uh show up yet uh in the doctrine covenants until i get to section 14 where it talks about the whitmer family so um what can you tell us about the whitmers and how they how they came in contact with joseph smith um well just as an organizing principle when you're studying the early history of the church you can simplify it down to three families basically i mean the church at this stage is really three families in three different locations there's the smiths in palmyra and uh the the knights in colesville and harmony pennsylvania and then there's the whitmers in fayette and in sequence joseph smith gets the plates um in palmyra uh spends three months trying to translate but there's just too much persecution in palmyra so he leaves and goes down to harmony where the knights are and where emma's family's from and about a year of book of mormon translation takes place in harmony then things in harmony get too intense and they contact this family called the whitmers that oliver has ties to and they move up to fayette new york and that's where they spend the last month of translation so for a lot of the uh translation um it's just joseph and oliver and emma in this little cabin in harmony pennsylvania the great thing about the whitmers is they're this big sprawling family a number of siblings in and out of the house and so a lot of our accounts of translation and what went on during the last month of the translation of the book of mormon come from the whitmer family and then a year later when the church is organized it's organized in the whitmer family home any idea how oliver got in touch with the whitmers is there do they did they leave any account of how they met oliver because he ends up marrying a whitmer right yeah he oliver is a whitmer i mean it's good to think of him that way he's a brother-in-law he marries elizabeth whitmer but we don't really know exactly how they come into contact except that they were friends with oliver before oliver moved to palmyra and boarded with the smiths as the local school teacher and then oliver goes down and volunteers as joseph scribe and that's when translation takes off but there is a revelatory element too lucy max smith who's one of the best sources for this early period uses the language that joseph was commanded to write to the whitmers we don't have a revelation that marks that but her phrases joseph was commanded to write a letter to one david whitmer a man joseph had never seen but he was instructed to say to him that he must come with this team immediately to convey joseph and oliver back to his house which was 135 miles away at that they might remain there until translation was completed so things are starting to get bad in harmony where joseph and oliver have been engaged in translation and lucy mack makes it sound like the lord intervened that oliver may have had a prior relationship with the whitmers but it's really the lord that's telling joseph this is where you're going to complete the translation and these people will provide shelter and protection while this work is going on yeah i wonder uh casey i wonder how much the whitmers knew of joseph smith before this i mean there had to be i mean fayette and palmyra in manchester there's what are they they're 30 miles apart i i wonder if they'd heard anything fayette's about 30 miles away from the hill kimora and so it's very likely because the whole area is kind of up in arms especially after joseph gets the plates that the whitmers knew a little bit about what was going on and had received i'd like to think their own spiritual witness there's a couple of unique experiences for instance that happen uh before uh the whitmers go to get joseph that kind of convince them that they need to engage in this process i gotta hear this yeah i'm in fact this was one of my questions i wanted to ask the the the story that sounds like it could possibly be a three nephites type story in involving plaster of paris which i used in elementary school to make stuff but apparently there's an agricultural use for plaster of paris yeah um so this story comes from lucy mack smith again again she's our source on most of this stuff and she says that david was david whitmer is the one that's supposed to go down and get joseph and oliver at the end of may 1829 and bring them back to fayette to complete the translation and she said that david was getting ready to go but he had to sew the soil with what the plaster of paris which is this action that's designed to reduce the acidity of the soil so that it works a little bit better the way she records it um she said uh the next morning david took a wooden measure under his arm and went out to sew the plaster which he had left two days previous and heaps near his sister's house but on coming to place he discovered it was gone he ran to his sister and inquired of her if she knew what had become of it being surprised she said why do you ask me wait was it not all sown yesterday not to my knowledge answered david i'm astonished at that continued his sister for the children came to me in the forum and begged me to go out and see the men slow the plaster in the field saying they never saw anybody sew plaster so fast in their lives i accordingly went and saw three men this is your three nephite connection here at work in the field this the children said but supposing that you had hired some help on account of your hurry i went immediately in the house and gave the subject no further attention lucy goes on to say david made considerable inquiry in regard to the matter both among his relatives and neighbors but was not able to learn who had done it however the family were convinced that there was an exertion of a supernatural power connected with the strange occurrence and david immediately set out for pennsylvania and arrived there two days without injuring his horses in the least though the distance was 135 miles so they've got this big work to do i mean we sometimes forget that in the background of all these miraculous spiritual events you still have to plant your crops and harvest them and do things like sow the field with plaster of paris they have these three men show up and do it and this is some people have made that connection because there's three and because nobody seems to have known where they came from david didn't hire them his sister doesn't know uh where they came from that these are somehow connected to the three nephi disciples in the book of mormon wow that's that's absolutely incredible i i can't imagine i i wish this would happen to me more often right uh where someone says uh all your all that paper was written by somebody yeah you turned it in i did some for me it would be three men appeared and graded all your papers and i'd yeah i must have something important to do elsewhere but so the the the interesting part though is it sounds like there was an urgency connected to it because david was gonna delay a little bit right so the plaster in the field and because somebody did this he was like oh okay i i better go to harmony is that is that kind of the the gist of it that's kind of it um things in harmony where joseph and oliver have done the first two months of translation we're starting to get bad really bad in fact the next summer after the translation is done joseph goes back to harmony that's where he lives that's where his farm is that's where his wife's family is from and the next summer he's arrested two times and brought before a court um eventually he and emma a year after this are going to have to leave harmony all together because persecution is so severe down there and so there's indications i mean lucy mack says that joseph really had the feeling that someone was going to attempt and make an attempt on his life and that's why they had to get out of the area and go up to fayette i would just say in a way uh the whitmers are this is a life-saving mission um not just a hey we gotta we're gonna help out with the work yeah it's not just a hey this is a nice thing i mean it's a the work might not go forward unless we intervene and they intervene it's a huge act of faith on their part but uh it it's it's a significant shift in the restoration from for the rest of the new york period the whitmer home is church headquarters and that's starting the day david whitmer picks them up and ends the day that the lord commands them to all move to ohio wow john what were you going to say i just keep thinking of how ironic these names are there's harmony where there wasn't a whole lot of harmony there's uh liberty where there wasn't a whole lot of liberty uh these interesting names in church history but you know the church what they've done there is just beautiful in harmony and moving some things around and having the highway moved i can think of three places where they've succeeded in having the highway moved in kirtland and palmyra and in harmony and then built these beautiful restorations of these cabins in harmony can't you go there and kind of be in almost the same space where a lot of the translation occurred yeah and at each place there's a unique uh special spirit i mean in each place the church has rebuilt the structures that joseph smith would have been in when he's performing translation and for instance if you go to the whitmer farm um the building is is reconstructed they reconstructed it for the sesquicentennial the church in 1980 uh but even sitting in a reconstruction you just get this sacred feeling of translation and then later events that happen for instance that same summer joseph smith said the voice of god was heard in the chamber of old father whitmer and authorized them to ordain each other to the melchizedek priesthood i mean it's it's a wonderful spirit and and you just get this sense that like this is one of those turning points in history and to stand in the spot where it occurred is really a a great honor that is and i believe there's um a uh to the east of there a cemetery with uh some is a one of the smith's infants that's there in the cemetery yeah in harmony um right next to where joseph and emma would have had their farm uh there's a cemetery and there there's a little headstone for alvin smith the first son of joseph and emma obviously named after joseph's brothers this is the little boy that uh died during the hun the episode with a lost manuscript and that's part of the reason why joseph smith wasn't able to get up to palmyra and find out what had happened to the manuscript was that joseph and emma had a baby die and then emma almost died afterwards so it's actually emma two weeks after the birth that tells joseph my family can take care of me uh get up there and find out what happened wow i think each of these individual spots they are like you've said casey they are uh special places um i will say this as a as on and i know both of you have guided church history tours i've guided my own church history tours down there and if i could if i could tell these early saints one thing i'd say could you do this a whole lot closer together because these bus rides are really long and second if you could do them around just better restaurants um that would be that would be helpful as well because sometimes i'm going man this is a two-hour bus ride they should have just done all this right here in palmyra right john like don't why you gotta spread this out so much well imagine a 135 mile uh trip by horse as well lucy mack lucy mack makes the comments specifically that it was miraculous that he was able to travel that far and not injure his horses uh which again to them a miracle is something different than what we talk about today we complain about a two and a half hour bus ride yeah imagine riding in a wagon and in fact there's an incident on the way back from harmony that david whitmer records too uh that maybe you've heard of that's where he sees the angel moroni on the side of the road tell us about that i want to hear about that david whitmer lives longer than any of the three witnesses the book of mormon a lot of people interview him in one of the interviews he says they're traveling from harmony back to fayette and this this is the way he recorded he said a very pleasant nice looking old man suddenly appeared by the side of our wagon and saluted us with good morning it is very warm at the same time wiping his face uh or forehead with his hand we returned the salutation and by a sign from joseph i invited him to write if he was going our way but he said very pleasantly no i am going to kimura this name was something new to me i did not know what kimura meant the book of mormon hasn't been published so nobody knows the name kimura we all gazed at him at each other and as i looked around enquirely of joseph the old man instantly disappeared joseph later on told me it was the messenger who had the plates and had taken them from joseph just prior to our starting from harmony so it's not just men traveling between harmony and fayette it's angels but it's funny to me that the whitmers david sees the angel and mary whitmer also sees the angel they both describe him as a pleasant looking old man which we tend to imagine him as like this wwe wrestler figure that's huge and muscular uh they describe him as a nice guy on the side of the road and you expect an a an angel to say something more profound than it is very warm uh but i guess he even angels talk about the weather you know it makes me kind of sad because i think wait you mean even when you're resurrected being you're doing stuff like man it's hot maybe he's trying really hard to pretend not to be a resurrected being so he's sitting in the room like gosh you guys boy it is it is warm for you mortals is it not and he winks at joseph smith was it was it joseph who told him who he was yeah yeah joseph apparently they get further down the road and joseph says you know who that was yeah you because you would imagine david turning to joseph and going where's kimora and joseph later on saying well that's the angel so that's him in his 1800s garb walking down the street oh well the next time you're on that two and a half hour drive between fayette and harmony you can at least tell that story and fill a few minutes of time right yeah that is i think too when i've been there i've just been impressed that the first time i drove by harmony you know 25 years ago there was hardly anything there and and now the church has a nice church building there and has rebuilt these cabins of course moved the highway and everything but it just made me think oh yeah so when jose's translating if he wanted to put something something that could be verifiably ancient in the book of mormon he could just go over the harmony public library and find something you know and it's like there's not there's nothing there uh and even now this is the church history side is like the only thing there i i guess maybe it was a bigger community at some point yeah uh you're right that it was always relatively small and rural all the places where the book of mormon was translated are relatively out of the way uh small and um and not well trafficked see that's what i said better restaurants we've got to do this by better restaurants um so i have i have a couple more questions about the whitmers before we move into the meat of section 14. how old is david and um and is it his farm or is it his parents um it is his dad's farm so it's the peter whitmer senior farm peter's married to mary whitmer and then their kids are john whitmer david whitmer peter christian whitmer there's also a couple whitmer sisters like elizabeth who marries oliver cowdery uh there's catherine whitmer who marries hiram page who's one of the eight witnesses the book of mormon then there's anna whitmer and david whitmer is the closest in age to joseph smith so uh it's it's likely that david and joseph would have formed the strongest connection because they're at similar ages there are similar points in their life uh it seems like david and joseph and oliver cowdery were kind of the three amigos during this time that they were they were very good friends and they were very close but other whitmer brothers like um john and christian and and peter jr are all involved in translation and that's one of the interesting things about the translation as it happens at the whitmer farm is like i said it's not just joseph and oliver and emma like it is down in harmony this is a whole bustling household with people moving in and out and that's why a lot of the historical accounts of translation are linked back to the whitmer family they're there during the last month and a lot of them live multiple decades after after they leave the church and share their histories they're interviewed by a lot of people wow uh what are um just one more question about the whitmers and then let's jump in uh but they're of german descent right are they spiritual people before they meet joseph you know because you look at joseph's family and they were some of them were devout presbyterian right um were the whitmers did they have a did they have a religious background they were very devout and very religious i'm trying to remember their religious affiliation one of the things you see in uh the recent video that was released that they show at fayette is they depict the whitmers with german accents and that probably is accurate uh peter and peter senior and mary are both german immigrants and so they would have spoken with a german accent and the kids probably would have grown up around there too i love that man i love that and i remember dr mckay in his interview he said listen these aren't these aren't crazies you know this isn't job down by the river these are upstanding people in the community these are comp what what did dr dirk mott say john these are competent farmers yeah that has always been kind of a a nice testimony boost for me they they weren't you know gullible fools they were smart people and then you get the orson pratts and the parley pratt's and later on these were smart people and it helps me uh to go yeah this wasn't just some guy that was very charismatic and found a bunch of gullible people to follow him yeah and even after later on in their life david whitmer for instance is elected mayor of richmond missouri he's a respectable member of the community and when people cast aspersions on his testimony in the book of mormon he takes it as a personal insult like he asks people in the community where he lives to sign an affidavit basically saying that he's a man of good character that he's upright that he's honest and that he doesn't lie to people especially about something as as big a deal as the book of mormon well and i've always thought he he knows he's answerable to a lot more than just joseph someday for what he's going to do with his testimony of the of of seeing the plates so i've always thought yeah he's really careful now wait i i need it to be known that no i saw those and i've never denied it so i i like what how old was he when he died casey uh david makes it into his 80s i believe he's like i said the longest lived of the book of mormon witnesses and especially as more and more of the witnesses pass away more and more people try to interview david there's a book about this thick just called david whitmer interviews where lyndon cook collected all of the people that sat down and spoke with david whitmer whether they were pro church anti-church and what david said to them it's a remarkable read first of all for consistency but also because david gives more details about those early days and about the appearance of the angel moroni than any other person does well and i i know that uh some uh the interpreter foundation somebody's making a movie called witnesses right yeah that comes out uh this summer i believe i'm i'm excited for that because i think it was so wise to have witnesses and and we'll get into this later perhaps but to have three in a very spiritual way to have eight in a very tactile way to see the plates and everything is is amazing and um maybe now as we're learning who the whitmers are can can we look at what the lord's message is to them in these uh in these three sections coming up i want to hear casey teaches the doctrine covenants at byu so i want to hear you know what his highlights are in these three sections and how the whitmers would have received them a couple of unique things in these sections um these all come during that month that joseph smith is at their home translating and every historical account says it was a busy time there's a lot going on a lot of comings and goings and joseph and oliver are rushing to complete the translation of the book of mormon but along the way it was very very common uh for a person to approach joseph smith and say what's the will of the lord concerning me and that's exactly what happens in section 14 15 and 16 is these three whitmer brothers david john and and christian who are asking what what does the lord want me to do and each of the revelations is is really short section 15 and section 16 for instance are almost identical except for one or two things about it and each one of them follows a pattern that's common at this time starting with section four which is first given to joseph smith's dad a marvelous work is about to come forth the lord will generally tell them you're called to the work and i want you to thrust in your sickle uh with your might and start to harvest souls and a lot of these early people whether it's section 4 joseph smith senior or section 11 is to hire us with section 12 is to joseph knight and then section 14 is the david whitmer they're among the earliest and most important missionaries for the church now there are a few differences though for instance um verse 7 david whitmer this is section 14 verse 7 is told if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of god and it shall come to pass if you shall ask the father my name and faith believing you shall receive the holy ghost which give utterance that you may stand as a witness of things of which you shall both hear and see that you may declare repentance unto this generation so right there the lord is hinting at bigger things for david that he's going to act in a role as a witness which he does he's one of the three witnesses almost every single one of the three witnesses and the eight witnesses is a member of the smith family or the whitmer family the only exception is martin harris he's the only one that's not linked to either one of those families but david's here is told specifically to endure to the end now um i mentioned that a lot of people had the opportunity to speak to david whitmer um one of them was b.h roberts who becomes this important historian in the church later on h roberts uh visits with david whitmer after he leaves the church and david whitmer talks about the experience he has with the angel when the three witnesses see the plates and bh roberts said that the angel during the experience the the theophany turned and looked directly at david and said david blessed is he that endureth to the end and then bh roberts comments and says it's a sad reflection of these three witnesses the david was the only one who died outside of membership in the church i wonder if moroni was not trying to sound a warning to the stubborn man that perhaps whatever his experiences and and trials may be that the last he too might have been brought into the fold and might have died within pale of the church so every single one of the witnesses has slight variances but according to bh roberts david told him that the angel and the lord in section 14 both specifically tell him that it's a marathon that that he's got to endure to the end uh and though david never denies his witness of the book of mormon he does uh become very bitter against the church later on in his life yeah especially joseph smith yeah yeah david writes a a pamphlet in 1887 where he very bitterly um screeds against joseph smith and is angry and upset of him and yet there's this unique contradiction where david never ever denies the book of mormon or that the book of mormon was true or that the revelations that happened during this time were genuine so i always tell my students it worked out the best possible way it could have for the restoration movement just not for the whitmers like you have this group of people that leave the church but never deny their testimony so they have no motive to uphold joseph smith if he's a fraud and yet they refuse to deny their testimony to the day all of them leave the earth one thing that i was hoping our listeners would uh that would happen as a result of our podcast is uh seeing the whitmers in a positive light how helpful they truly were to joseph smith and that we can we can hear them out and listen to them and not think of them as kind of apostates right yeah and and to be honest with you a lot of the early events in the history of the church the whitmers are a very important source uh john whitmer who's one of the recipients of these revelations as well becomes the church historian in section 47. um john writes an early history of the church that's invaluable to us today and the other thing is is john is probably responsible for recording most of the early revelations in the doctrine covenants there's a beautiful book called revelation book one revelation book two where john whitmer sat down and recorded uh all of the early revelations that are given to joseph smith i mean he's a major source for the doctrine and covenants and so really until 1838 or so there's no stronger witness in the church than the whitmers and they're real stalwarts um and even though we we sometimes talk about the entire whitmer family leaving even that's not correct peter whitmer and christian whitmer both die within the faith uh it's later on in 1838 when the entire family leaves together and that's one thing about the whitmers too is that they were united as a family like they came into the church all in uh when when trouble came up in 1838 they all left together too and they stick together for the rest of their life most of them except for anna whitmer live within a 50-mile radius of each other and they try to start their own church a couple times too like they they definitely as a family were united and on the same page and that's something that's really admirable yeah they're very close to each other i i really like that i wanted to mention two things in the section uh that i saw john and then maybe you can jump in um one uh it's i i'm a new testament teacher and so when the savior uh approaches his apostles he says we're going to from henceforth you're going to catch men right and i like in section 14 it's the field is white all ready to harvest so as a teacher he takes something that his students already understand and says okay i'm going to help you i'm going to help you understand my work you know what we're going to do here you know i'm going to use farming because that's what you understand so i'm going to use farming uh as as you know this idea this principle and then in section 15 and 16 which you said casey are very similar he says the greatest thing you can do for me is declare repentance unto people declare repentance on the people so as the lord is changing his methods for his students he's not changing the message the message is always the same repent repent repent and i've noticed in joseph smith's early life it seems his experiences with divinity always start with repentance right the first vision was about can i be forgiven of my sins moroni was i felt like i'd you know had just fallen i i wasn't doing what i should be doing so i'm going to repent all of these divine experiences start with repentance so for me personally i'm going i need to repent more if i want to have experiences with the divine i better i better start looking for ways to repent and you john you know very well it's hard for me to repent because it's just hard to find things uh right it's hard to find things to repent of you know but i i'm going to look harder and see if i can find some things to repent you know one one thing that's always touched me about joseph smith at this stage in his life is that idea that he needs to check in with god like if you're if you're reading about his experience with moroni he says i was anxious to know my standing before the lord that's why he goes and prays it's like he hasn't done anything super wrong but he's just wondering how come i'm not getting more uh what what up maybe i am doing something wrong and i didn't know it there was an elder on my mission who um he was a convert to the church he had a giant marijuana leaf tattooed to his shoulder we thought he was the coolest guy ever um and he was so sincere that like he read that passage in joseph smith history and he told me i prayed to know my standing before the lord and i was his own leader at the time so he saw me as like an ecclesiastical figure and i go well tell me what happened he goes i i don't know that night i had a dream and i was walking in a chapel and i went into this room and president hinckley was there president was the prophet at the time he said president hinckley looked at me and gestured and said i need you to come over here and help me ordain this young man to the priesthood elder because i know that you're worthy of the priesthood you hold and this missionary looked at me and said what do you think that dream means and i go it sounds like you're worthy of the priest did you and and it was funny because having grown up in the church i had never once thought about that like i took my priesthood and my calling as a missionary for granted um i went home and i did the same thing i i didn't feel like i had a need to repent but i hadn't asked my status before the lord and the next day after i had said that prayer we were out on a random media referral to drop off a bible and the lady that we were dropping the bible off to said i hear that you guys give blessings could you give me a blessing and i remember looking at my companion with a big grin on my face and saying well i guess we're worthy to do that so let's go ahead but in all these people it's it's wonderful to see with david whitmer with john whitmer with um with the rest of the whitmers this desire to know am i okay like what is my what is my status before the lord and what work would he have me do we we don't off ask those questions often enough maybe no the scary part is if you ask the lord he'll probably tell you yep probably tell you you're you're standing as a father uh if if i don't know what to do for family home evening it sounds like in section 15 and 16 the lord's like well the thing that's of most worth is declare repentance so let's you know let's default to repentance and the atonement of jesus christ let's make that a big part of our focus of of teaching our children or teaching our students it sounds to me like the lord is saying you can't talk about repentance enough yeah and i really we brought this up in previous podcasts but i i just love the bible dictionary definition of repentance a fresh view about god about oneself and about the world and it it doesn't have to sound like a scolding type thing as much as a i i love what uh you said casey i i how how am i doing it sounds like that i want to see what my standing is before the lord am i doing okay i could use some encouragement here you know how am i doing and the lord always seems to be so encouraging too thankfully and i think maybe we can glean from that too and i wanted to ask and this is something that uh in matthew 16 you know whom do men say that i am and when peter gives his awesome answer jesus says thou art peter well i noticed in section three there was a thou art joseph and uh i mean the lord they know that the lord knows their names is there more going on here here we are in section 14 verse 11 and behold thou art david right after saying i am jesus christ the son of the living god verse 9 verse and 10 kind of then thou art david any any comment on that similarity we see that pattern um i mean in all these revelations he identifies them by name for instance section 15 first verse my servant john uh section 16 first verse my servant peter um it was important that they were called by name and that they were recognized and known of god sometimes that was what a revelation did and and almost nothing else was to just say i i i know you i know who you are i know who you are i know what your struggles are and i i want to help you uh reach your potential which again a really short revelation like section 15 or section 16 even that could be a really powerful message to help somebody join in the work and get on the path they need to get into john i like what you said the lord is always very encouraging isn't he he's he's it's okay it's okay i'm gonna help you i like uh what casey said there i'm gonna help you reach your your potential um that seems to be the message of a lot of these opening sections of the doctrine covenants is i know you and i want to help you and and even their first names you know uh you know peter was just simon peter but uh well simon bar jonah whatever in in matthew 16 but here they're they're you're david you're peter um i i like that and i also i draw a lot of hope from jesus's parable of the pharisee and the publican that the pharisee is outlining all of these ways that he's so righteous kind of telling god how righteous he is and the publican just says god be merciful to me a sinner smote up i wouldn't even look up and for jesus to say that man went home justified and not the other gives me a lot of hope about just getting on your knees and how am i doing and i'm i'm sorry i mess up and and how encouraging the lord is it kind of is a i like moroni it's hot today yeah i i have noticed in the new testament in my studies that uh a lot of the parables a lot of the sermons are just different ways to repent different angles to view repentance it's just over and over the lord's messages repent i'm going to share a quick story um jon huntsman senior told this story about his friend howard w hunter where uh he his friend as president of the church how'd you like to be best friends with the president of the church right he invited him he said can you come over to my house and give me a blessing and when he he got there i'll i'll make the story quick when he got there he said are you sick and he said no i'm not sick i just feel like i need a blessing and jon huntsman senior said well you know are you okay like what what's the problem if you're not sick and he said um he said today i had an unkind thought and i just need a blessing and i was and when i read that story i thought you know how many blessings i'd need today so there's always something to repent for there's always something you could find oh my goodness wow well i i love this uh thou art david and um the the council that he gets um to do everything we've talked about and i i'm glad that you told that story about moroni because i found that in my own reading that moroni during the three witnesses type event turned to him and said endure to the end wow what maybe it might be helpful to define what does endure to the end mean i mean i i heard sherry do once say that those endure to the ends end talks press the dickens out of me right if we look at it as like this i just got hold on to the end uh what do you think endure to the end means well um i i'm glad that it doesn't mean just this life uh you know i used to when i was a young teacher go through and just pronounce verdicts on people in church history so it would be like here's section 14 and david whitmer was a good guy but he died outside the church so that's it uh for him um as i've gotten a little bit older my perspective on that has changed to where i'm giving everybody the benefit of the doubt you know david david did die outside the church so did most of the whitmer clan but they also stayed true to their witness and their testimony and that is really significant they had every reason to deny it and they didn't and so in that sense they endured to the end i mean if you go to richmond missouri today and you find david whitmer's headstone which isn't difficult chiseled into his headstone it says the record of the jews and the record of the nephites are one truth is eternal i mean this is a guy who's serious about his his witness of what he saw uh he did have conflicts with church leaders especially sidney rigdon and joseph smith but as a witness which was what he's called to do in section 14 he is 100 faithful and endures the end and i'd like to think that in the next life there was a reconciliation between the two and the whitmers are eventually going to receive all the blessings of the gospel so enduring to the end to me um isn't just this life it's it's eternal life which the lord promises to to david whitmer right here that's one of the earliest uses of that term i think of in the canon was when the lord says if you do this you'll have eternal life and like i said my my i've gone from saying this person apostatized so they're done to having more of an open mind to say well they stayed faithful to their testimony so i'll give them the benefit of the doubt and we'll see what happens with them that's beautiful i love that one one of the commentaries i've i'm reading i have i have a joseph fielding mcconkey and craig osler commentary i have a steve robinson and dean garrett commentary and he says in here this doesn't mean perfect or sinless but it means you stay loyal to christ and i kind of liked that and like you said casey that can be not just in this life but you're loyal to christ loyal to the the witness too so so uh casey we we know that a lot of the translation took place then in harmony and i love how you've helped us with that but what what do we know about the actual process there's been a lot of discussion lately about it what are what are some things to to hang our hat on this this much we know um well the whitmers like i said are invaluable when it comes to a source of how translation work the actual mechanics i think garrett dirk mod was with you guys a little while ago when he talked about sources a good historian would always say let's look at primary sources uh first and then secondary sources so when it comes to translation the two people that we most want to talk to were joseph smith and oliver cowdery and unfortunately there's frustratingly little material from the two of them they both die really young uh joseph in 1844 oliver dies a few years later in 1850 and they don't leave behind a whole bunch of sources about how it works but they're the two that are there the entire time emma is involved martin harris is involved and according to the manuscripts the book of mormon that we have john whitmer is also a scribe emma said that her brother was a scribe as well and so we go to them to kind of look at him now joseph and and oliver uh both leave behind narratives where they talk about the plates and also where they talk about uh the urim and thummim and nephite interpreters and the last couple years there's been a lot of attention given to the seer stone which the whitmers talk about and the church published pictures of in 2015 as part of the joseph smith papers project so i'll i'll just phrase it this way joseph and oliver tend to use the phrase urim and thummim to describe the instruments that they use and both of them also tend to say the nephite interpreters when they describe it like in 1842 joseph smith writes the wentworth letter this is what he writes he goes at great lengths to describe the plates and then he says with the records was found a curious instrument which the ancients called urim and thummim which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate then he says through the medium of the yerman thuma i translated the record by the gift and power of god and that's about as detailed as joseph smith gets about the translation process was that i used the yerman thummim this is what it is i translated it by the gift and power of god now oliver cowdery writes several letters on translation and when he comes back into the church in 1848 he does bear his testimony so apparently there at winter quarters and orson hyde the apostle who's presiding there sees oliver cowdery brings him up to the stand asked him to bear his testimony and a guy named reuben miller writes this down so it we're talking to a primary source participant but recorded through a secondary participant reuben miller is writing down what he hears oliver country saying oliver cowdery according to ruben miller on that occasion said i wrote with my own pen the entire book of mormon save a few pages as it fell from the lips of the prophet joseph smith as he translated by the gift and power of god by the means of the yerman thummer or as it is called by that book holy interpreters i beheld with my eyes and handled with my hands the gold plates from which it is translated i also beheld the interpreters that book is true so that's joseph and oliver holy interpreters they tend to describe them as the yerman thummim and the whitmers tend to describe the use of a seer stone so does emma so does martin harris so you got to reconcile those things and one of the major things that we've shifted towards saying is that joseph used multiple instruments when he translated the book of mormon he used the nephite interpreters but he also used the seer stone uh that the whitmers described using for instance david whitmer when he describes translation says it this way and he this is the popular image that's out there now uh joseph smith would put the seer stone into a hat he put his face in the hat drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine something resembling a parchment would appear and on that appeared the writing one character at a time would appear and under it was written the interpretation in english brother joseph would read off english oliver cowdery who was the principal scribe and when it was written down and repeated to brother joseph to see if it was correct then it would disappear and another character with the interpretation would appear that is a divine translation process and a lot of people like david whitmer's description because it's describing a very tight translation process that what you're seeing in the book of mormon is exactly what the lord wanted joseph and oliver to write down um people have varied back and forth between saying well maybe the impressions came to joseph and he chose the words david whitmer makes it sound like the words were exactly given to him and that's a big deal because when you think about all the meaning that comes from a word like infinite infinite appears in second ephi 9 and alma 34 if that's the exact word the lord wants joseph smith to use in the english language that means infinite is exactly what it's supposed to mean there and that's very very important for us that the wording in the book of mormon at least in english is a big deal and we ought to pay close attention to it and what it means so we have joseph oliver david did anybody else record martin harris martin harris describes it emma smith describes translation they described it similarly to david's yeah they did they did yeah so so basically what what happened was is the reason why the seer stone makes some people a little bit queasy is because when we put together our narration of translation our narrative we relied on joseph and oliver um we didn't rely on people like david whitmer or martin harris or even emma smith because they didn't end up in the church but a century later historians started to circle back and say look david and emma and and martin weren't trying to convince people that wasn't true they were trying to say it was miraculous so whether it's the nephite interpreters of the seer stone i would tell people don't miss the forest for the trees the main message that every single one of these people was trying to convey was that this was not a normal translation process that it was miraculous that it wasn't joseph learning an ancient language and using his intellect that it was a miracle that occurred in fact let me share something with you really fast uh i do interfaith work with community of christ and they hold a lot of the papers that belong to the smith family especially emma smith well one one day i was working in their archives and their archivist rachel killebrew pulled out this set of papers that were joseph smith iii last interview with emma smith uh they were the actual the actual the actual paper yeah i could send you guys this like she let me take photographs it's joseph the third's notes in pencil on this scratch paper as he's asking his mom questions she asked him who were the scribes she lists off the scribes uh joseph oliver alva hill she mentions the whitmers uh did sydney rigdon write the book she goes sidney rigdon never showed up to our house until a year after book of mormon the book of mormon was written i never saw him i never met him and then at the end he sits down with her and says just tell me do you think that dad could have made this up this is exactly what he writes on the page in his notes that emma said my belief is that the book of mormon is of divine authenticity i have not the slightest doubt of it i am satisfied that no man could have dictated the writings of the manuscript unless he was inspired for when acting as described your father would dictate to me hour after hour and when returning after meals or after interruptions he could once begin where he left off without either seeing the manuscript or having any portion of her read to him this was a usual thing for him to do it would have been improbable that a learned man could do this for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was it was simply impossible so i would say to people out there that are getting a little uncomfortable over the seer stone or the urim and thummim or the nephite interpreters the overarching message of the whitmers of emma smith of everybody involved in this process was it was a miracle there's no way as they saw the joseph smith could have faked this that emma who's the first scribe of the book of mormon who records a lot of the lost manuscript just saw it as something that was impossible for him to pull off and that is the consistent message they're trying to come across so worry less about what instrument joseph smith used and focus more on what they're actually trying to say which is this was a miracle i really like what you're saying here as a historian i'm i'm hearing as a historian it's impossible to know exactly what happened because they they describe it differently they and that's that's normal right for everyone to have an experience and describe it differently and so you're saying okay he described it this way he described it this way she described it this way we kind of triangulate all those we have a decent picture of what it looked like and it's a miracle yeah and that that is the one consistent message that comes through everything is people see different things but at the end everybody was urgently trying to say this was something i can't explain through natural means now on the one hand a testimony of the book of mormon comes through the spirit absolutely but it's also nice to know as an empiricist you know as a historian uh that there are people that saw the plates that witnessed translation and that even though like we mentioned earlier had no stake in the success of the church especially after they left it upheld it as a true experience that they had i mean the whitmers will always be incredibly valuable for that i've i've talked to anti-mormons that hate the church one guy said you know the thing that keeps me awake at night though is the witnesses like that's really hard to explain away what their motive was and why they were so consistent in what they said so it's it spiritual proof and spiritual witnesses are where we go to first but it always is nice to have empirical evidence as well and the whitmers really come through big time for us when it comes to empirical evidence that there were plates that there was a miraculous translation and that there was an angel involved in the process oh this just i love i absolutely love this discussion uh i just think of um of of the whitmers you know seeing this and the the i don't know the shock the the awesomeness of the whole thing just watching this happen and it's in your house these are biblical miracles type miracles and they're they're happening in your house i just would be it would be astounding you of course you'd never forget it i mean something as mundane as a road trip between harmony and fayette there's an angel the experience with the three witnesses which is described in section 17 of the doctrine covenants happens somewhere near the whitmer farm and then according to mary whitmer moroni appears on the back door of the whitmer home to speak to her specifically yeah and i i'm really grateful for this part of the discussion as we have begun these podcasts i've received i've received communications from people who are queasy about it and i just love the way that you characterized um okay so maybe the whitmers had a different uh different in the details and especially the serious known things like that but overarching was they were talking about this record is true um i think that's a that's a really good place to go because i i have people that i respect who are you know say well the whitmers were not reliable witnesses because they later left the church or whatever and so i really like what you've what you've done there that's a much better way to uh to say look at the look at the final fruit of it they were trying to defend no this book was miraculously given so thank you for that in fact let me let me show you something uh one story that's told about david whitmer is that during his lifetime an encyclopedia was published and in it in the entry on the book of mormon they recorded that the three witnesses had later denied their testimony now david whitmer writes this is the year before he dies a letter to the publishers and then a public letter this is the public letter he says it is recorded in the american encyclopedia and the encyclopedia britannica that i david whitmer have denied my testimony as one of the three witnesses to the divinity of the book of mormon and that the other two witnesses oliver cowdery and martin harris denied their testimony of that book i will say once more to all mankind that i have never at any time denied that testimony or any part thereof i also testified to the world that neither oliver cowdery or martin harris ever denied their testimony they both died reaffirming the truth of the divine authenticity of the book of mormon i was present at the dead of oliver counter he writes and his last words were brother david be true to your testimony of the book of mormon please join us for part two of this [Music] podcast

Channel: Follow Him Podcast

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Length: 55min 33sec (3333 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021