The Restoration and the Book of Mormon

someone has said that groves were gods first temples this is a sacred place precisely because it was a sanctuary or a place and repository of a treasure the plates of the Book of Mormon young Joseph comes to this hill having been instructed and even he is envisioning that the very place finds a stone box prized the top off the box and there are the plates and his instant reaction is to reach in and take them he tries and is somehow prevented tries again prevented the third time and then cries out oh hi why can I not get them and then the angel Moroni appears and rebukes him and says again these plates have been preserved for one purpose only for the glory of God and the witness of Christ and if you have any other object in procuring them you will fail and you will be destroyed he later said this was one of the most severe chastisement he had received in his life Moroni opens up to the mind and heart of the Prophet both the vision of what righteousness leads to and then in effect a vision of Sheol or hell and the conviction draws in the Prophet in the radical contrast and Moroni after showing him these things and apparently so vividly that his mother says he could never forget it he is taught that now he knows this distinction he will not be tempted to go the way of evil now time passes and has to grow in certain ways at or both spiritually in otherwise three years later after coming to the hill once a year for further instruction he finally has the hope that he can procure the place this home is a place that Joseph brings his new bride his father Joseph senior and mother Lucy are here waiting and here comes this remarkable EMA piercing eyes wonderful black hair clear complexion and clearly cultured and this is a woman who's a teacher and Joseph is well a sixth grader they embrace her they welcome her they admire her and this is the beginning Joseph's relationship with Emma as the wife of his youth Emma had to have a strong attachment to make the decision she did she loves with him over the voiced bitter objection of her father that's strong and what she says in her on account is that he meant to her there was no one in the world that she felt she could feel toward as she did toward him no man he was the man and so she committed herself well in like manner he committed himself to her and we have a late revelation to the Prophet which says specifically the Lord speaking of am Allah whom I have given unto you there's a sense in which we can say the Lord made that marriage this is the beginning of his deeply studying praying trying to understand how does marriage and family relate to the Living God and in due time he reverses what were the standard assumptions in the Protestant and to some degree also the Catholic world about marriage what were the assumptions you reversed the standard view was that the fall of man was probably somehow mixed up with Eve and that was bad and she therefore was to be condemned second that marriage was a compromise with the world and that somehow a religious man should not get into it or if he did shouldn't let himself love his wife too much and third that eventually this whole thing would be done away and we would go into the next life and there would be no such thing as marriage or family or be getting children that was the common mental weather in his time and he then eventually teaches the contrary Adam and Eve together understood what they were doing when they partook of the fruits and it was in order to continue procreation which was divinely approved that they entered this world second that it was not a compromise with the world marriage at its best would lead to heaven for it was the very work and glory of God to be a father third that far from it being all done away in the life to come the truly faithful who had sanctified their marriage and brought the Spirit of God into it would be rewarded by being taken back to the high most levels of immortality and eternal life now for teaching that he suffered greatly but it was true and has been the common heritage of the Latter day Saints ever since and that's why we're known worldwide as a family religion beginning with the divine while Joseph and Emma are here the time comes when by prearrangement Joseph is to go on a certain night to the hill and recover the plates they didn't have sufficient funds or even equipment for a wagon and so they took the wagon of brother Joseph night and went to the Hill Cumorah he goes to the familiar place and this time plates are delivered to him with the urim anthem from the Hill Cumorah that night they brought the plates to this house and already there had been efforts and rumours that led to various conspiracies of others to try to locate and even steal the plates the profit desperately at times had to hide them in various places he remained the strict custodian of the plates and had been warned over and over that a tense would be made to find them at the same time the Prophet told his family after his initial interviews with Moroni that he had been told that from the day they brought the plates their lives would be in jeopardy and that they must be careful and they were and there were attempts apparently not just to procure the place but to persecute and prosecute the Smiths the very walls of this home remind us of the unity the close unity of the Smith family and they're bearing the burdens of their lives together one example is that in this little bedroom hardly room for two girls that's where they slept was the hiding place of the plates burrow and I had warned Joseph that only if he were true the impressions he would receive would the plates be protected and even his life and one day here at home he has an impression someone is coming looking for the plates and they didn't have much time he took the plates place them in the center of the bed in that room and then asked his two sisters to climb in together and pretend that they were asleep and this is exactly what they did the mob comes they searched the house they even looked under the bed in that room but they did not discover the plates the two sisters who have did or sensed the weight of the place did not take that opportunity to look at them because they had been told they must not this is an example of how the family together supporting the sustain the project called the record what was the Urim and Thummim well it's a Hebrew phrase and it has biblical antecedents marine vet amine light pan truth the use anciently at least two uses boil down to determining the guilt or innocence of a person who had been charged and how that worked is not clear but another he braced in our time has said that sometimes apparently or eeeem however at words meant yes and Tamim no if you asked a given question seeking divine guidance but it's clear from what descriptions we have that more than that was involved that this instrument somehow enabled the prophet either to visualize or to imagine events or perhaps even words there was something visual about that instrument that didn't involve just words we know that toward the end of the translation process he no longer needed the Ehrman thumb he himself became a kind of Urim and Thummim a seer which is one of the terms the Lord uses for him when he says that the day of the organization search a record shall be kept and in it thou shalt be called a seer a translator and a prophet and that sequence is exactly chronological he began with seer ship in an open vision then in process of translation as a seer and then the Prophet we don't know the exact size or weight of it the closest description is Mother Smith's but it involved a breastplate of some kind and the question is was that a solid and even bejeweled breastplate like the ancient high priest wore or was it more like cloth was it something words that you could wear and wear comfortably yes the Book of Mormon itself introduces us to what could be called shining stones one case is the account of the brother Jared who takes molten stones up into a mound and prays that they may be somehow touched and illumined and they become literally the light that takes them across the ocean but in addition the Book of Mormon shells of the Liahona which is somehow a guiding mechanism a kind of compass and again it's clear as it is with the Urim and Thummim it only works when there is genuine faith in Christ and righteousness and otherwise it doesn't work it is opaque as it were ceases to function so when the family becomes rebellious the Liahona ceases to point the direction when they repent and become faithful it works it's often assumed that the Urim and Thummim did all the work and joseph did none and that's exactly wrong the oliver cowdery seemed to have believed that i had to do a sit down and use the Urim and Thummim in the translation would proceed and he's rebuked you suppose this says the Lord but you must study it out in your mind and then you must ask me if it be right and if it be right and so on the way oliver cowdery could have translated is likely the way Joseph Smith did translate and that means he had to do part of the work had to study and analyze had to pray and had to get some sort of guidance with a yes or no or got confirmation to keep going Emma because of her background in training was a superb scribe for the Prophet in the early stages of translation she is in a way a superb witness to the inspiration of this when she just says point-blank that for any other man to be able to do this she thinks would have been very unlikely but for him it would have been totally impossible and she just points out the fact that his schooling was very limited that he did not know how to spell well which by the way wasn't uncommon in his generation and that he couldn't have done it so he had to be inspired he was learning as he went along we don't always realize this one day he cites from the script the sentence the wall of Jerusalem there's a pause he's with Emma and she waits and Gunn saving he says Emma what's there a wall there were had Jerusalem yes Joseph I think so hmm I didn't know that he goes on as he translates of the Book of Mormon there are promises in it that pertain to him and they must have recognized himself as the choice seer who would come their promises that he would have a spokesman and that turned out to be Sidney Rigdon but they're also promises that he would have an aid that's the definition of Oliver Cowdery who came he thought to Palmyra to be a schoolteacher but soon found and believed that he came because the Lord wanted him here and he fills in where Emma now doesn't have the time or the energy to be described and he becomes the co-worker with Joseph Smith in the translation he demonstrated early great skills with words very gifted some would say he was more eloquent than the Prophet Joseph and others would say Sidney Rigdon was much more eloquent as eloquence was defined in those days but each had specific gifts and they harmonized with what Joseph needed and Oliver through that process and then down through the events leading to the organization the church the restoration of the priesthood and other events was absolutely faithful Oliver first of all writes about the experience of being on the other side of the table and writing under the prophets voice and what that meant to him he felt and experienced the glory of the Lord and was a witness who eventually signed a document that he was a witness if you will the primal witness of the three witnesses that the Book of Mormon not only was a record that was true but that it's translation was accurate and inspired so Oliver was one of the indispensable man and the restoration presses and the prophet Joseph left and honored him you some of the initial work of translation occurs here but eventually because of the pressure the Prophet decides to take his new bride and the plates and believe this environment entirely and that's when they moved in a little place in harmony close to the home of his father-in-law Isaac Hale in memory of an infant son of Joseph and Emma Smith this was their firstborn child died only after it an hour - this was a time also a terrible pressure on the Prophet and his wife Martin Harris had not returned with the 116 pages they were in the daily activity of translation they had hostility from the in-laws Isaac Hale and his wife who lived nearby and their poverty was extreme they were living on mackerel and some hand-ground wheat and this was a terribly difficult time after the burial of their infant son and Emma's slow recovery over a period of maybe two weeks Joseph has heard nothing from Martin Harris and is so anxious about this issue that he leaves Emma and makes an all-night journey over a hundred miles to come back here and find Martin Harris his initial motive in impressing the Prophet for these hundred and sixteen pages were that his wife was insisting that she wanted some proof of why he was mortgaging their farm in order to finance Joseph Smith and so he had persisted and the profit had persisted in prayer until finally the Prophet agreed but the initial answers the Prophet received were no and it was almost as if he kept saying to the Lord please please Martin Harris's wife needs to see these well the temptation no doubt once they were in his hands would have been to show them to others after Joseph reaches home and inquires after Martin he's sitting at table right here and Martin Harris comes to the house and then sits on the fence and covers his face with a hat they worry what isn't he come in he comes into the house and dinner is served and he doesn't eat he starts and then puts down his implements and then puts his head down and puts his hands on his forehead and says I've lost the manuscript Joseph Joseph stands out you have him yes it is lust and then the Prophet paces back and forth he doesn't attack Martin he doesn't blame him he blames himself and he starts to think about how he had prayed more than once first time no second time no he pleads with the Lord that Martin needs to take these sheaves in order to placate his wife and finally in his own eyes at least has permission but now he is saying from his debts I shouldn't have done that I shouldn't have done it and at some point one of them says all is lost well one can search the rest of his life and look for a time of despair over how many setbacks and how many dramatic drivings but in none of them does one sense the depth of his anguish has in this incident all is lost and the plates were returned as we know and he now is bereft of his gift and of his promises and even wonders if all of the things that have been said to him that her to happen can happen and mother Smith's account says that for two weeks the prophet Joseph could not be comforted he felt and said Paul is lost I was given Commandments I have broken the commandment and now it's it's too late the family did everything they knew to comfort him to say there must be another way Joseph surely the Lord will go with you when the revelation finally comes it has a strict and stern rebuke you have suffered the counsel of your director to be trampled upon from the beginning but goes on to say that if he will repent and not yield to the persuasions of men as he has an offense then he will again be given the record and can proceed then comes the glorious relief of another visit with Moroni who says in effect if now you will repent you will again I have your gift and Coco forward and he says in his on account of that revelation I received Commandments he could have said also rebukes which inspired me and out of this counts his statement later which he taught and tried to observe I have made this my rule well he had made it from this point when God commands do it Martin Harris in turn feels a terrible sense of loss and in due time his bereft both of the money that he has procured for mortgaging his farm and then he loses his wife who separates from him and his family - more or less and yet Martin Harris remains in many respects the indispensable man if it hadn't been for him the printing of the book which proceeds shortly after this incident could not have occurred the story of the lost manuscript has another message to us there was a back-up plan this is another case of her somehow the Lord can bring gain out of loss it was intended apparently from the days that they were keeping the place extra plates be made one can conclude that we needed to receive the small plates of Nephi in their translation further three different times the writers inquire why am I doing this and the only answer is for a wise purpose in me I think the wise purpose has more in it than we have often discussed one is it seems to me clear that Joseph himself was taught out of weakness you shall be made strong and his weakness according to one revelation was that he yielded too quickly to the persuasions of men you won't find much on record after this experience of where he did so he was a man of integrity and at the last part of his life that was one of the things that most amazed even his enemies he seemed to be principled and not to worry as most men do about how others would respond or what sort of political or other advantage would come so out of weakness he began strong in a lot of that strength came out of Palmyra the Susquehanna River the place of the first baptisms of this dispensation Joseph and Oliver had by now completed the translation maybe 12 pages a day of 3rd Nephi in the Book of Mormon and there they find in absolute clarity that coming to Christ involves faith in Christ involves repentance through Christ involves baptism by immersion taking the name of Christ and involves receiving thereafter the gift of the Holy Ghost and they are moved and they are asking themselves how can we fulfill that commandment and so they come to this very place kneel in prayer and ask for divine guidance as a result of that prayer John the Baptist John the immerser in Hebrew terms stands before them as a resurrected personage and counsels them instructs them and commissions then apparently by placing one hand on each of their heads he then transmits the authority and power of the Aaronic priesthood this john is the one who had received by direct ordination from the time of Moses and of Aaron the lesser priesthood or the Aaronic priesthood now that same John resurrected stands before these men and says upon you my fellow servants in the name of Messiah he could have said in the name of Jesus Christ but John the ancient John thought of Jesus in the messianic terms of his time Jesus would be known as Joshua HaMashiach meaning Jesus The Anointed One Messiah carries that connotation so in the name of Messiah I confer upon you the priesthood of Aaron which holds the keys of the ministering of angels and John was himself an angel and was perhaps preparing the way for other angels to minister the keys of the ministering of angels and the gospel of repentance and a baptism by immersion for the remission of sins exactly what Joseph and Oliver most wanted the first baptisms of the new dispensation were performed here Joseph to Oliver Oliver to Joseph we're talking about mid May in 1829 it would not have been a warm River that day and they nevertheless went into it and emerged and they describe the feeling a feeling of release a feeling of forgiveness and a new sense of enlightenment when later they receive the higher priesthood and the rights that go with the control of the Holy Ghost they say an interesting thing they say our minds being now enlightened now these are two men who have had open religious experiences this is Joseph Smith who has had a living theophany in the sacred grove and who has sat and translated under inspiration for how many three months 90 days and yet says that once they had this gift after baptism their minds were enlightened and they began to understand the scriptures as they never previously could attain Joseph Smith believed that this priesthood was a preparatory priesthood and the implication was that in due time they would receive a higher priesthood still that which Moses himself held anciently and which brought him into face to face communion with the Living God when Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were translating in harmony Pennsylvania a revelation was given which said be patient in afflictions for thou shalt have many Brigham Young estimated that Joseph Smith was subject to at least 40 trials frivolous some of them trumped-up charges some of them but we now know from recent research that there were a hundred and sixty and perhaps more one of the first occurred there because Joseph and Oliver were arrested summoned and taken the South Bainbridge where they were tried the charge in the records is blurry perhaps disorderly persons or whatever they were acquitted but that did not placate their mob or enemies it in fact enraged them the sheriff according to the story existed them away they went apparently to a vacant house he knew that if they continued to travel on the road they would be overcome so he went in the house locked the front door and said now what you do is up to you and they knew that man they could leave so when darkness came they climb out the back window or the back door and start going cross Lots in the situation like this what do you see but all kinds of trees some fallen you see brambles you see growth if we went a few more steps we could see marshes and that's the hardest way to travel at night one can assume they probably fell a few times eventually you don't know how many miles later Oliver is totally spent so joseph holds his armor and him and keeps walking but eventually even joseph with his great strength is exhausted they sit down on a log and one of the other says oh lord how long must we suffer like this maybe that was the prayer but at that moment according to the accounts Peter James and John descend place hands upon them and confer upon them the Melchizedek Priesthood the higher priesthood which included promises that they now had apostolic authority that they had the keys of the dispensation of the fullness of times one of our Doctrine and Covenants sections explains what the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood entail and among other things it is said that this priesthood holds the keys of all the spiritual blessings of the church it would enable them to confirm as a confirmation to confer the Holy Ghost upon those who had been baptized the authority of the Irani priesthood making that possible one who has the fullness of this priesthood has the promise that ultimately he may have communion face-to-face communion with the master and with eventually the Eternal Father many scholars suppose that the only prophet anciently who really has such direct communion with God was Moses and they further assume that when it speaks of his seeing God the word must be changed they point out for example that in some cases all he saw was the burning bush but twice the book in the Old Testament says in good hebrew that he communed with god Haim the planning in Hebrew face-to-face and as if that weren't clear enough it goes on to say as one man converses with another that privilege and the power to carry it into one's life is the ultimate blessing of the Nook is it a priesthood you in the midst of the Opposition in the process of translating the Book of Mormon someone was raised up to help forward the work his name was David Whitmer he had met Oliver Cowdery Oliver had spoken to him about what was happening and he became a genuine convert soon he offered his Hall this cabin which is a replica of their home on the Whitmer farm which is a hundred acre farm and the for the first time Joseph and Oliver had some serenity some peace in the process of translation they were invited here they lived here and they did the translation upstairs was about a thirty day period of translation June July of that year when he finally is able to find a printer after the completion of the manuscript there is some hostility and reservation this is a huge project the man they talk to Grandin had apparently never published more than 1,000 volumes of anything and the request was for 5,000 copies of a book which it turned out was 522 pages there was an immense agreement in terms of payment which Martin Harris turned out to be the backing for but the fact is that the delay in time and getting it done wasn't just the greatness of the project and the setting of type by hand it was getting the books bound now they were so anxious the Smiths were to protect both the plates and the copy of the manuscript that they only took it in parts every day someone in the family hyrum often carried it carefully delivered it to the press and sometimes stayed all day and then took it and brought back and that was partly because they discovered that man named Doug Barry was already in the business of plagiarizing having access to what they were doing and putting it in a newspaper they stopped his venture but that's only one of several different plots to impede the progress the first copies of bound books not a great many but a few were available and in hand for April 6th 1830 when the church is organized but in the mean time different folios different pages were closely guarded and then distributed and people actually were converted in this area by reading just one or two pages of these advance copies Egbert Grandin never again undertook a printing project of this magnitude he stayed in the business for another two years but they were minor projects compared to this it was the largest single publishing venture that had happened in this area one day the Prophet himself was carrying part of the manuscript to the press and began to think about the consequences of this and cried out what am i doing what am i doing what will the world say and an impression came I will bring forth evidence from the world and in the time since that has happened both internally and externally there has been a Fed occation that this is a genuine record and that what it teaches is just what it purports to teach I've often wondered if the Prophet himself could anticipate the extent of the translations and then the distribution of the Book of Mormon over a hundred million and Counting have been published and it's been translated into many languages and this is continuing and in the phrase of one of our leaders it is flooding the earth Joseph once said looking back that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on earth I think meaning that it's writing and it's translation were both inspired and no intermediaries then he said it is the keystone of our religion and the stone image is what he teaches over and over as Christ and this book is all about Christ and then he said a man will get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts that any other book and as it has gone throughout the world permeated the world hundreds of thousands of people have been brought back from skepticism about Christ or about the New Testament or about the ways we are to come to him have been brought back from skepticism or even indifference to a ringing conversion because the book confirms supplements and clarifies what we have in the Bible with a purity and clarity that means that the plain and precious things that have heretofore been lost have been brought back the Book of Mormon is far clearer on both the anticipation of Christ's coming and the fulfillment of his common one wonders what would it have been like for Christ to teach in a setting where every man woman and child was listening with the intent to understand and did so out of love and that's the portrait that we gained in the book of their Nephi which could be called a fifth gospel he comes to a righteous people as a resurrected personage and introduces an beautiful harmony with the New Testament but with greater clarity his message and his requirements and they all respond everyone and he teaches that there is a way including what we would call the Beatitudes that are the fruits of receiving him New Testament has eight Beatitudes in 3rd Nephi it's made clear that these are descriptions of what happens in the real world of inner life when you begin with receiving Christ through baptism and what he calls the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost he prays with them he introduces the sacrament in their midst he ministers to them and he even calls for their children to come forward after he has healed every one of those who came with infirmity and the children themselves become a link between Earth and heaven and again and again he says you really want to count to me him has become as little children the conversions that have occurred in every country in every land at a recline have come to people who have opened themselves to that kind of a tender and loving message of a Christ who has received instead of rejected early on in Joseph's careers that unfolds he is taught then in the last days Israel must be gathered and the Book of Mormon had clarified for him why what's the point of talking about geographical coming together you soon learns that is essential to the community that is a covenant community which then can build a temple and then really come fully to Christ we're asked constantly why do you put Maroni on the spires of your temples why don't you have some other symbol that is more characteristically Christian the answer is that Moroni is the messenger spoken at in the book of Revelation who has come to announce that the everlasting gospel is to be reestablished in the world and the symbolism of his being on our temples is that he is inviting beckoning us to enter into that holy place and in that holy place the promises that we will be able to see in both literal and symbolic sense the Christ himself and that he will then endow his people with power from on high even to this day the general impression is that this book the Book of Mormon is quote a golden Bible and the assumption is that it replaces the Bible or is a substitute Bible and that's exactly the reverse of the truth the book confirms and joins with the Bible in its testifying of Christ it is an addition Joseph couldn't have anticipated we don't want eat when he is in effect refuting the classical view of the closed canon Judaism closed the Torah is final Christianity the Canon is closed no more scripture Islam all ends with Muhammad and the Quran but after Joseph Smith there has been a burgeoning of discoveries so for example the Dead Sea Scrolls have come to light and here are documents which precede Christ by a century and a half which at least teach of a kind of church of the anticipation then along comes the nugg Hammadi library as it's called the discovery in Egypt of books which call themselves Gospels Gospel of Thomas Gospel of Philip probably written two or three centuries after Jesus and perhaps infused with misleading Dogma Gnostic kinds of ideas but there are echoes in those documents of the authentic teaching of Christ and in fact the Gospel of Thomas is soon to be bound in with the New Testament in some publications because it is a collection of sayings described to Jesus not any narrative but but sayings and these sayings many of them have parallels in the New Testament but quite a number do not they're original and those who are dealing with them in a scholarly way say there's just as much reason to trust these as sayings of Jesus as what we have in Matthew Mark Luke and John well if that's the case then why not look again at the Book of Mormon which is a record that goes back both before during and after the periods the Bible mentions and the same teachings are there plus greater in sense at the very end of his life the last thing he did in Carthage was to bear testimony of the Book of Mormon to a guard and he said in effect the Book of Mormon is just what it purports to be and for this testimony I expect to stand before the judgment of God April 6th 1830 was the day of culmination for Joseph that was the day that six people according to New York law gathered to in effect incorporate the church the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints the name was given later the six who signed were three Smith's Joseph Hyrum and Samuel his brother also Oliver Cowdery and then two winners David Whitmer and Peter witner junior in section 21 of the Doctrine and Covenants we have words from the Lord given that day or shortly which tell us something of the prophets feelings the Lord says him meaning Joseph him I have ordained him I have called to this mighty work and his diligence I know and his prayers I have heard yay his weeping for Zion I have seen and I will cause that he shall mourn for her no longer for his days of rejoicing have come how that rang true to his inner feelings and how rejoiced he must have been that at last the Book of Mormon is finished the church is organized his family whose divisions and frustrations in their religious quest have now been healed and they are united as latter-day saints no wonder he wept and gratitude people speak of organized religion and sometimes with hostility we are not in favor of organized religion well the opposite of real organized religion is religion that is living isn't vital there has to be a community who together fulfill the purposes and in our understanding build the kingdom of God and establish I instrumental to that vitality ordinances argue and the key ordinance that is repeated in the process of our worship and growth is the sacrament no living scholar and no book that is now available tells us or can tell us what Jesus actually said and what he required of his apostles at the Last Supper in terms of the wording and the meaning of the wording of sacrament prayers he himself it says blessed the wine and blessed the bread but then what What did he say we have through the Book of Mormon and through modern revelation those prayers and the meaning is clear and lucid and powerful on this day those prayers were offered and the Saints were took of bread and why on the day of April 6 1830 the three witnesses received their testimony the Book of Mormon itself anticipates this what it came to mean was that they together would be privileged to see the angel Moroni the custodian of the record also see the plates and heft them and also be told by the very voice of the Lord Jesus Christ that the translation of these plates was correct and inspired knowing that these three men Oliver Cowdery David Whitmer and Martin Harris walk out into the woods with Joseph kneel and pray for a witness and nothing happens they pray again with no result and then Martin Harris introspective says maybe I'm the one at fault here and he asks to leave them and go and pray as he did alone in the meantime they continue to pray verón I does appear and exactly what had been promised happens in addition to which they are told that they must bear witness of this throughout their lives I talked to a man who is an expert on the mystical experiences of modern as well as ancient writers including st. Teresa st. Teresa claims she had a subjective vision and wrote about it but I said to him would it strengthen what she says if there had been someone else and it was a joint vision oh yes he said it would and what if that joint witness was able to write what he saw alongside of what she saw would that strengthen it yes and so we have in a sense a public and shareable and even repeatable experience of these three witnesses for they had other experiences comparable and they had upon their shoulders the charge to be true to that on peril of their own salvation man said to me in Israel a great student of comparative religion do you realize how strong your witness of the origin events of the church is because of this and other witnesses he knew that the history of these three was turbulent and that they had their problems with the church but still remain faithful that is the kind of testimony that holds up in court there was in the set of incidents a culmination that he expressed to his mother he comes to his mother and says Oh mother at last I'm not alone anymore now they have to bear witness to and that must have been a glorious consummation because he up to that point was one of the loneliest men on the planet on that same day Joseph had the privilege which he had prayed for anticipated and yearned for of witnessing the baptisms of his dear father and his mother they were baptized by Oliver Cowdery we have a record from Joseph Knight who was present that day that Joseph spent the afternoon in the woods weeping he said I never saw a man so wrought upon his gratitude was overwhelming the record doesn't tell us where the Smiths were baptized on that historic day in 1830 it could have been in Seneca Lake right here which is only about two miles from the Whitmer farm or it could have been in an adjacent stream years later the Prophet Joseph wrote on the reveal understanding of what we really mean when we speak of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in Baptism some think the formula itself has sufficient efficacy no he taught that there must in fact be divine authority and this is what he said about those who do it in the way the Lord ordained these are they who receive the testimony of Jesus and were baptized after the manner of his burial being buried in the water and this according to the commandment which he is given and receive the holy spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto this power and who overcome by faith and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise which the father sheds forth upon all those who are just and true when Joseph sent the twelve abroad on their first mission he instructed them with this sentence being born again comes by the Spirit of God through ordinances and they understood that baptism is the initiative ordinance but once born we must then go on and grow into the likeness of Christ and this requires higher and higher ordinances at the end of his short life Joseph Smith prayed dreamed hoped for the completion of the Nauvoo temple and said to the Lord if only I can see it finished it will be enough and then I will say let thy servant depart in peace but he did not live to see the temple finished if he came back to Palmyra today and walked out the same path he walked leaving the sacred road he would see on a hill on the eastern horizon a temple crowned by a spire and the statue of the angel Moroni who had first come to him and announced the coming of the sacred record and the future of the kingdom of God on earth

Channel: Fhirinne

Views: 111,597

Keywords: Holy, Bible

Id: graZHQTxetA

Length: 62min 10sec (3730 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2011