Sep 12, 2018
How it went from Gold Plates to the Book of Mormon
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Hey everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you guys back to the Book of Mormon Challenge podcast. I am super excited for today’s episode. I apologize to those who have been waiting. It has taken a while. It’s interesting how when you try to move forward on important things like this how many things get in the way.
So today, I got my kids ready for school, I woke up early this morning to get all the outlines prepared, got up, got my kids out the door to school, and then now I’m back in here recording this before I’m allowing myself to go into the office and get started on my day, to make sure you guys have it. Because I keep wanting to dive into 1 Nephi Chapter 1, I’ve got the entire episode all prepared and ready, and there’s so much exciting stuff I want to share with you. But I felt like there was a preamble, something I needed to give and share with you before that. And it’s the story of how we actually got the Book of Mormon.
I’m sitting here in my office, and I have as you know, one of the original 5000 books that was printed here. And I’m not so much going to go into how the book was printed and published and things like that, that’s not the purpose of the podcast. But how did we actually get it?
Every time I share anything with my friends who aren’t members of the church, they are confused, “So what is this? A new Bible? A new translation?” And not matter how many times I explain it they always get confused. So I want to kind of go through the details of the story and it’s one of the most amazing, insane, cool stories in the history of the world, yet nobody seems to talk about it very much. So I wanted to share it because I think it’s important. And my goal, in fact, my entire goal of this podcast, I think I’ve told you. There’s a couple of reasons, one is to get me to really get back into studying and learning and trying to find out the most amazing things from the Book of Mormon. But number two is to get you excited about the Book of Mormon.
It’s not so much me telling you my commentary on the Book of Mormon, that’s not my goal. My goal is to talk about it in a way that gets you so excited after you hear the episode that you have to go and open it, you have to read the next chapter or the next verse. If I can do that, then I’ve done my job correctly. So I figure the best thing I can do today is get you so excited that if you haven’t got the Book of Mormon yet, you’re like, “Alright I’m going to go and just buy one, I’m going to go order it online.” Whatever you need to do, you’re going to get one and so you’ll actually open it and start reading it.
So that’s my goal today, just to get you pumped by….because the back story about how it came to be because it really is fascinating. And hopefully you’ve listened to some of the earlier episodes, I talk about the history and all those kind of things. If not, please go back to the very beginning. I’m trying to, all these episodes kind of build on each other. So make sure you’re listening to them as you go.
But this story is really, really cool. If you listened to a couple of episodes ago, I talked about Joseph Smith and his first vision. So if you remember that, I’ll kind of recap it really quickly. As a 14 year old kid he was confused and trying to figure out which church to join, and he went and he prayed and had a vision where Heavenly Father and Jesus came to him and said, “Don’t join any of the churches.” And he was like, “What? I never even considered that.” And they’re like, “Yeah, don’t join any church. None of them are here and you’re going to be an instrument to help bring back my true church here on the earth.”
So he has this vision and he goes and tells his family about it, tells other people and he thinks that everyone is going to be excited to hear that Heavenly Father and Jesus came to him, and what actually happened was the opposite. He was lucky to have his family and people close to him believe him, but most of the people in the community didn’t. And he was persecuted really heavily. He was, his family was, and it was a really, really difficult time for the next few years.
If you can imagine as a young boy having this vision and then not hearing from Heavenly Father again, you’re like, “What happened? Did I do something wrong?” You know, what’s the next step? So that’s kind of where this part of the story picks up. It’s Joseph Smith wondering that same thing, what’s the next step?
So most of this podcast is going to be coming from two different things. One is Joseph Smith History. I went through the history and found some really cool parts of the story to tell. And the second one is a talk given by President Russell M. Nelson, who is the living prophet of the church today. This is a talk he gave called A Treasured Testament. He gave it a long time ago, I don’t know, 1992. So a long time ago, but it kind of tells the back story and shares some of the amazing insights, some amazing quoting of stuff from that as well.
The goal of both of these things is to get you so excited to open up the book and start reading with me because the next episode we are going 1 Nephi Chapter 1, and we’re finally going to be diving in.
So what happened, in Joseph Smith History he was talking about how there had been a space of time between the first vision and he was trying to figure out what to do. And he said during that time, you know he was a young boy. He was a teenager, and as most teenagers, I’ve got two boys, twin boys who are going to become teenagers here in about two months or three months from now. And he started just doing what teenagers do and he said, “I frequently fell into many foolish errors and displayed the weaknesses of youth and foibles of human nature. I’m sorry to say it lead me to diverse temptations offensive in the sight of God. But in making this confession, no one needs to suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sins, a disposition to commit such was never in my nature, but I was guilty of levity and sometimes associating with jovial company, etc. Not consistent with the character of which ought to maintained by one who was called of God, as I had been.”
So can you imagine that? You’re a young kid and you see Heavenly Father, you see Jesus, but then you’re a teenager and you’re doing stupid stuff and whatever, but always having that guilt of, I should be better. I know better than this. But continually falling back on those ways. And I don’t know about you, but I have those things all the time, where I feel like our Heavenly Father has blessed me so, so greatly, yet I do stupid things. I’m like, “Why am I doing this? I should be better than that.”
And I think he felt the same way, obviously. He goes on and said, “I often felt condemned for my weaknesses and imperfections.” So that’s kind of how he felt going into this. So it’d been I think 3 or 4 years after the first vision and he was like, “Alright, I need to find out where I fit with God.” And hopefully all of us have this conversation. It’s a scary one, it’s one that sometimes I don’t think any of us really want to go ask because you might find out and that can be kind of scary.
But Joseph Smith thought, I’m going to find out what God thinks. Am I doing okay? Where am I at with him? So he goes on to say, “I betook myself to prayer and supplication to the Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and my follies. And also for a manifestation to me that I might know of my state and standing before him.”
Can you imagine going to Heavenly Father like, “Okay, so I need to know my state and my standing. How am I doing? Am I doing good, am I doing bad?” something that I’m sure we’re all super curious about, but man, that’s a scary thing. What if he told you? What if he was like, “Man, you’re doing a horrible job Russell.”? But he did that.
But first, he asked for forgiveness of his sins, “I know I’ve not been doing what you, I haven’t been living up to what I believe what you want me to be, so I’m asking for forgiveness. And then I want to know my standing. How am I doing? What should I be doing? You came to me, what now? Obviously you don’t come to everyone, what was the purpose, and what should I be doing?”
He goes on to say, “I want to know of my state and standing before him, for I had a full confidence in obtaining a divine manifestation as I’d previously had one.” Can you imagine, he’s like, “I’ve had a vision before, I’m probably going to have one again.” He just believed it that much. I think most of us, we forget of the miracles we’ve had in our life and we just kind of pass them off, whereas he was like, “You know I had a miracle last time, he came and visited me. I think he’s going to visit me again. Let’s go pray.”
And he did that, which is such a cool thing. So much faith, I wish I had that faith like that. So he went in there and asked for forgiveness of his sins, he prayed to know his state before God and what happened next is amazing. What happened next is an angel came and appeared to him in his room. And the angel’s name was Moroni.
So those of you guys who don’t know who Moroni is yet, you know obviously the word Mormon from the Book of Mormon. So Mormon was the last prophet, one of the last prophets in the Book of Mormon and he had a son named Moroni. Moroni was the last one who was kind of writing all the history and he was the last righteous person in the land at the time, so he had been entrusted with these Gold Plates. These are metal pages that they had been etching in their history for 600 years of what was happening with them and with God, it was their journals.
So he had all of these, they called them Gold Plates, where they were metal pages and they all had all these things etched in them. So Moroni had these and before he died he went and buried them in a hill so that nobody could find them. But they were a history of his people. So that’s kind of who Moroni was.
So he’s sitting there in bed praying to find out his standing before God and all the sudden this angel appears to him. And the angel’s name was Moroni and Moroni started talking to him. And the first thing Moroni tells him is, “Hey, just so you know Joseph Smith, my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindred’s and tongues, where there should be both good and evil spoken among all people.”
So you imagine that, an angel comes and just so you know, if you start on this mission, your name is going to be used for good and evil. So people who love you are going to think that you are the greatest thing in the world, and the rest of the world is going to hate you and think you’re an evil, horrible person.
Can you imagine stepping into your mission, you know at this time he was, I don’t know how old he was at the time, but still a teenager, maybe 18-19 years old or something like that. And say, just so you know if you decide to go on this mission, your mission should you choose to accept it is this thing and your name is going to be used for both good and evil.
So then he goes on and says, “Okay, there was a book deposited, written on gold plates, giving the account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang.” He also said, “That the fullness of the everlasting gospel is contained in it, as delivered by the savior to the ancient inhabitants.”
So he said, there’s these gold plates that I buried up in the mountain. He said that on these’s plates are record of the ancient Indians, the people who used to live here in America. And it talks about when the savior came to them. He said that, “I buried these in the mountain and I also, because I know that you don’t know how to speak the language that we wrote in, there are also two stones and silver bows, and these stones fastened to the breast plate constitute what are called the Urim and Thummim.” And he says, “The Urim and Thummin are what were called seer stones, these stones are what would constitute seers in ancient or former times, and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating this book.”
So he didn’t know what these were, but he said, “There’s these seer stones, if you look through them you’ll be able to translate the Book of Mormon, they’re also buried in the mountain.” And he kind of explained the whole thing. So I’m sure Joseph Smith is like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cool. There’s these buried gold plates in a mountain and there’s these seer stones. If I look through the stones I can translate this ancient language.” This is, I don’t know about you, but this is better than any movie in the history of the world.
So the angel’s telling him this stuff, then after that the angel starts quoting him scriptures. So he’s quoting him scriptures from Isaiah and Malachi and all these things. So he’s quoting these scriptures and he quotes the scripture and he says, ‘This is about to be fulfilled.” And he quotes another scripture and says, “This is about to be fulfilled.” And he quotes another one and says, “This is not yet fulfilled, but it’s soon going to be.”
So the angel is like telling him, all these things these ancient prophets wrote about, like Isaiah, all these people, they testified that in the coming days, in the future, these things are going to happen. He’s like, all those things are being fulfilled right now. You are the literal fulfillment of all these prophecies of all the prophets up until this point.
Can you imagine being this kid, sitting here thinking I’ve read Isaiah, I’ve read these people, I’ve read these words and what they were talking about was happening. I’m experiencing this right now. Can you imagine that? Imagine yourself as a kid going through this.
So he goes through the things, he shares all these things, and at the end of it, then the angel leaves. So Joseph is sitting here in bed going, “What in the world just happened? An angel visited me, told me about these gold plates, these really cool Urim and Thummim, seer stones, I’ll be able to translate this book. Then he started telling me all these, quoting these scriptures and telling me that all this stuff is actually happening right now and it’s coming true. And he’s telling all this stuff….”
And as he’s thinking about it, pondering and meditating about it, all the sudden the light comes back in the room and the angel appears again. So the angel appears a second time and then tells him the exact same thing. And he’s like, “What in the world?” So he tells him the exact same thing as the first time. So he’s like, okay I get it. He listened to the whole thing, and the second time the angel added something, he said he informed him, “There’s going to be great judgments which are coming upon the earth and great desolations by famine, sword and pestilence and these grievous judgments should come upon the earth in this generation.” So he said that and then he left again.
So the first time he comes and tells the story and leaves. The second time he comes again and tells the entire story again and then he’s like, “Oh by the way, in the very near future the whole world is going to be roght with desolations, famine, sword, pestilences and the grievous judgments are coming upon the earth because this is a wicked time and a wicked place we live in.” and then he leaves.
Can you imagine, Joseph Smith is probably like, “What? An angel came to me twice. You just told me again that all the fulfillment of all these prophecies are happening…” and he’s sitting there thinking about it, and guess what happened? The same messenger came a third time. He said he gave him the exact same message again, but this time he added a caution, and this is what he said, “The same messenger at my bedside and I heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same things as before, and this time he added a caution to me telling me that Satan would try to tempt me in consequences of my indignant circumstances in my father’s family.” Because Joseph Smith’s family was really poor at the time, “To get the plates for the purpose of being rich. This he forbade me saying I must have no other object in view of getting the plates but to glorify God, and must not be influenced by any other motive than that of building the kingdom. Otherwise, I would not get them.”
So he comes back and tells the whole thing and says, “Oh by the way, these gold plates are worth a ton of money and just so you know, you are going to be tempted like crazy from Satan to sell these things because you are poor and you are broke and if you try to use that for any purpose like that, if you even think about it, you’re not going to get them.” In fact, in another spot he actually says, “You’ll be destroyed if you try to use them for anything else.”
Can you imagine this angel telling you, just be good or you’re going to be destroyed. I don’t know about you, but that would scare me a lot. So he gets the warning, be careful what you do with these because it really, really matters.
So then the angel leaves again, and that’s when it ends. So now he’s sitting there, and he’s laying there in bed and all the sudden the sun starts coming up and he realizes, “I’ve been talking to this angel the entire night.” So he gets up and he’s like, “I gotta go to work in the farm.” So he runs out, starts working in the farm and he’s super tired, he hasn’t slept all night and his dad notices how tired he is and says, “Go back home, go take a nap, go get some sleep.”
So he’s walking back to the house and he’s jumping over this fence as he’s going back to the house and he passes out, literally falls on the floor and just goes unconscious. And a few minutes later he wakes up, and guess who he sees when he wakes up? The same angel again. And the angel tells him the same message again. The entire message. Then after he tells him the message, then he’s like, “Go tell your dad what I just told you.” I wonder if he was just like, “Dude, I spent the entire night with you. Why wouldn’t you have told your parents about this?”
So he tells him the whole message again and says, “Go tell your father.” So Joseph Smith gets back up, walks over to his dad and is like, “Alright dad, this is what happened, a messenger came…” and tells him the whole thing and his dad, and this is so telling of the relationship this father and son had, his father told him, “This is from God. You need to go do exactly what the angel told you to do.”
So the angel had told him in the vision exactly where the gold plates were at, and they were in a hill called Hill Cumorah, which happened to be right by his house. I wish I had time, I wish I had enough time to have researched this ahead of time, I wanted to but I just ran out of time and I wanted to get this episode out. But it’s interesting, all the things the lord had to do to get Joseph Smith to end up in Palmyra, New York next to the Hill Cumorah.
His family wasn’t born there, he wasn’t raised there, they were born somewhere else. And there were all sorts of insane things. There was a volcano that erupted that made their family crops die, which made them go bankrupt, which made them move their farm three or four times to eventually get to this spot hundreds of miles, I don’t know how far away, hundreds of miles away from where they were born and raised to this farm that happened to be next to the exact same spot where angel Moroni, where Moroni before he was an angel, where Moroni had buried these plates.
So the lord had moved their family and shoved them to this spot, boom, so they were in the right spot to be able to go and get those plates. So Joseph Smith knew where, he’d seen the vision of exactly where it was at, so he walked over to the Hill Cumorah and found the spot where those plates were at and let’s see if I can find where it says….its talking about the Hill Cumorah, he said, “On the west side of this hill, not far from the top under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates deposited in a stone box. The stone was thick and rounding in the middle and on the upper sides, and thinner towards the edges so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edges all around were covered with earth.”
So imagine this, Joseph finds this spot and he’s like, “This is it, this is the spot.” And then he started digging it out. So it says, “Having removed the earth, I obtained a lever which I got fixed under the edge of the stone, and with a little exertion I raised it up, I looked in and there indeed I beheld the plates and the Urim and Thummim, and the breast plate, as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box lay two stones cross ways over the box and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them.”
Can you imagine that? You have these visions and then you go and you find this rock, you move the rock and then boom, in there, just like the angel had said, there are these gold plates, and there’s the Urim and Thummim to translate, everything is there. I can’t even imagine, as a teenaged kid, can you imagine find that? That’s like the greatest treasure in the world.
So the first thing he does when he sees it, is start grabbing it to pull it out. That’s the first thing I would do, I need to touch it. And he started to grab it and he said, “I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived, and neither would it until four years from that time. But he told me I should come to that place in precisely one year from that time, and that he would there meet with me, and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates.”
So he’s like, “don’t touch these plates, you’re not allowed to.” And he’s like, “Ah, but I want the gold. This is so cool.” And the angel’s like, “Don’t touch it. You gotta come back next year.” So he goes on to say, “Accordingly, as I had been commanded, I went at the end of each year and at each time I found the same messenger there and received instructions and intelligences from him at each of our interviews, respecting what the lord was going to do and how in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days.”
So every year for four years he goes back, the angel talks to him again, sends him away. He comes back and keeps doing this for four more years. So for four years he gets to learn about him, see him. I’m sure, can you imagine how much curiosity he’d have, “What is on these things. I want to read them so bad.”
Okay, then fast forward a little bit later, after four years, he says, “The length of time had arrived for obtaining the plates and the Urim and Thummim and the breast plates on the 22nd day of September 1827, having gone as usual at the end of another year, to the place where they were deposited. The same heavenly messenger delivered them unto me with this charge, that I should be responsible for them, that if I should let them go carelessly or through any neglect of mine that I should be cut off. But if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them until he, the messenger, should call for them, that I should be protected.”
So I’m going to trust you with these gold plates, but if you lose or you neglect them you will be cut off. I don’t know exactly what cut off means, but it does not sound like very much fun. So he finally gets the gold plates and the chance to take them, and there’s rumors. Because he’s been talking about this, he’s told people an angel came to him, there’s gold plates, he told people about it and people didn’t believe him. But they thought, “Well, if he does have gold plates then we want them.” And the persecutions that came from that point forward were insane, people trying to steal them and trying to murder him.
There are so many stories that I just don’t have time to tell you guys today, but it’s crazy. But I do want to share a little bit about the translation process, because this is the coolest part. This is why this book, again I’m holding in my hand right now, one of the original 5000, why this book is so exciting.
Because imagine this, if somebody told you there was this book that was inscribed upon golden plates that the ancient American’s told their stories, their dealings with God, the talked about God, when Christ came to them, and the entire history of their life, and if you read this book you’ll understand Jesus, and Christ and salvation better than anything else on earth. And it’s all on these gold plates. And to be able to read it you have to translate, and there were these little seer stones that you look through and as you look through them you’ll see the character and it will tell you what the actual word needs to be and be able to find out and decode this book and find out what it is.
If someone told me that, I’d be like, “I have to read this book. This sounds like the most exciting, interesting, fascinating story in the history of world.” And it is, yet hardly anybody in the world knows about it. That’s what us, as Mormons are always talking about. “If you understood what’s in this book you would go crazy. If you knew what was here, if you realized what we had to go through to get this.” Imagine Joseph Smith going back for four years and seeing these gold plates and wondering what in the world is on there. These have been protected for thousands of years from the world and now today they are, the lord is telling me let’s bring these out. Aren’t you curious what’s on there?
Aren’t you curious, all the revelations, all the prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi, all these prophecies where the angel came back and said, “Look, this is the literal fulfillment of that prophecy. Isaiah was talking about this moment right here.” Aren’t you curious what he’s talking about? What’s actually inside the book? I don’t know how you couldn’t be curious. It drives me wild when people are like, “Oh, well I’m not going to read it.” It doesn’t make any logical sense to me whatsoever, even just out of raw curiosity. What in the world could possibly be in here?
Especially when you have people like me where it’s literally changed their life. If you look at, I can’t even tell you happiness…everything…if you know me and follow me and wonder, “Man, why is Russell so happy?” This is the foundation of why. So I don’t know how much more of an endorsement I can give than that. This will bring you more peace, security, happiness….I don’t even know how…it’s everything I’m saying and a whole much more. It’s insane.
So I’m hopefully getting you excited to like, “What was on those gold plates?” Aren’t you curious?
With that said, I’m going to jump over to this talk from President Russell M. Nelson that he gave back in 1992 because there are some quotes I’m going to share from this. So I’m going to read some parts because it’s going to explain how the translation part worked. Because if you think about this, Joseph Smith was a young boy, he had no formal education, he could barely read, and he had in a very, very short period of time, and I’ll explain that here in a second, had to take these gold plates that were written in some ancient language that most people didn’t even know at the time, and he had to translate them into English, and he did the whole thing in less than three months.
So how is that even possible? Now me, as an author I’ve written two books, those who know me, I’m writing book number three right now, just for me to write a book, it takes me four or five years of research, one year of actual writing, and my books aren’t even that good compared to this. This book is weaving out 600 years of history from multiple different civilizations, inside the book there’s all sorts of proof elements.
One of the things in here is an ancient type of Hebrew poetry called Chiasmus, I’m probably going to pronounce it wrong, chiasmus, which is this really cool ancient type of poetry that we didn’t even find out about until well after the Book of Mormon was published and then scholars found out about this thing. You go back to the Book of Mormon, the entire book is laced with this amazing poetry where sometimes it’s within four or five versus, sometimes its wrapped within 20 or 30 chapters to be able to see the whole hierarchy of this poetry that’s been built into the book. All these things that there’s no way that Joseph Smith or any human could have done that, unless they lived at that time, actually doing it.
Anyway, there’s so many proof elements, but none of those matter. My goal, again is not to get you to prove any of this, other than to read it and pray and ask God, because he’ll tell you. But just to get you excited and intrigued. Alright I’m going to jump into this talk.
So the first thing that Russell M. Nelson said, he said, “I’m intrigued that Joseph Smith, an unschooled young man in rural America could have translated this Semitic language mix into the English language. The unlikely scenario relates to Isaiah’s remarkable prophecy. In Isaiah Chapter 29, Verse 14 he said, ‘I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and wonder.’
This, the becoming forth of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the church, this is the marvelous work and wonder that Isaiah was prophesying about, that the angel Moroni came back and said, “Look…remember Isaiah was talking about a marvelous work and wonder that’s going to happen in the last days, this is it. It begins today.”
Can you imagine that? I’m going to go on and keep reading this. It says, “Truly this latter day work is precisely that. Think of the short time that Joseph Smith took to translate the Book of Mormon. Working from April to June of 1828, Joseph translated the first 116 pages that Martin Harris later lost.”
So kind of the back story, and I’m going to actually share this story when we get a little deeper in the Book of Mormon, there’s a huge miracle around it. But they translated the first 116 pages, it was called the Book of Lehi. And when you read the Book of Mormon you’ll notice there’s not Book of Lehi. Where’d the Book of Lehi go? And Lehi was the father of Nephi. So they translated the first 116 pages and Martin Harris got all excited and begged to be able to show his family so they could justify all the money, time and effort he’s spent on this. And Joseph Smith went and asked the Lord, said, ‘Hey can Martin Harris show his family these pages?” and the lord said no.
And then Joseph Smith told Martin Harris, Martin Harris was like, “Please.” And they went back and forth and kept fighting and praying and finally the Lord is like, “Fine, go do it.” So he did and he lost the pages. So they were going to start retranslating and the Lord’s like, “No, no, no. I told you not to give it to him, you did, you sinned, you are losing the power to translate for a season.”
So he took away his ability to even translate for a while, then they started retranslating it and said, “Look, we’re not going to re-translate that because if you do, Satan will use that as a tool to get people to not believe in this work. So instead you’re going to start on this other book,” that was kind of an afterthought, that was called the Book of Nephi, and again, I’ll tell you that story when we get to the Book of Nephi. It’s a similar story, but it’s written by Nephi, Lehi’s son.
So the first 116 pages are lost and we’ll never, we never have had a chance to see those unfortunately. So that was the first translation, then they started over and it said, “Joseph began translating again on Tuesday, April 7,1829 with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe. The manuscript was completed eighty-five days later, on June 30 of that year.”
So 85 days, they translated the entire Book of Mormon. I don’t know about you, but it’s taken me more than 85 days just to read it, let alone translating it from an ancient language.
“Of course, not all of that time was spent working on the translation. The prophet and his scribes all took time to eat, to sleep, to seek employment, to receive the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods, to make at least one and possibly two trips to Colesville, 30 miles away….” Which again, they didn’t have cars back then, so 30 miles is like 500 miles now days. “…to receive and record 13 other revelations that are now sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, to move from Harmony to Fayette, to acquire the Book of Mormon copyright, and to begin making arrangement for the publication of the Book of Mormon. Conservatively estimated that left 65 or fewer working days on which the prophet and his scribes translated this book, which contains 531 pages in its current edition.”
Alright that’s 8 pages per day. “Consider that when you translate a book from another language or as you try to read at your own schedule of the Book of Mormon.”
It said, “Oliver Cowdery testified a few days later, ‘these days were never to be forgotten. To sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened with the utmost gratitude of this bosom.”
Can you imagine that, sitting there as Joseph Smith is translating this book by the gift and power of God? He said, “Those were days never to be forgotten. To sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven.” So cool.
It said, “Day after day I continued, uninterrupted to write from his mouth as he translated the history of a record called the Book of Mormon.” He goes on to say, “The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known, yet we do have few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote: ‘Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and 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. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principle 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. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power man.’
Can you imagine that, he just got the gold plates, they’re in this hat or something, and then he pulls it up so there’s not light shining in there and he’s got this stone and he looks down and he looks at the character, which is like, imagine ancient reformed Egyptian, right, a little thing. And he puts the seer stone over it, and below the seer stone it’s like, “This is what that word or that phrase means.” He would say the word, he’d write it down, and it would disappear and he’d go to the next word.
I can’t even imagine how cool this is. This is better than if you guys watch those movies like National Treasure or something, where they’re trying to decipher the secret message from the founding fathers. This is secret messages from God. This is secret messages from his prophets on ancient America, aren’t you curious what he said? I hope you are.
Alright, let me come back in here. So Emma Smith, this is Joseph’s wife, it says, “Emma Smith, who acted as an earlier scribe for Joseph gave this account in 1856: ‘When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it, as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words he spelled them out, and while I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. Even the word Sarah he could not pronounce at first, but had to spell it out and Ij would pronounce it for him.
‘When he stopped for any purpose at any time he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off wiout any hesitation, and one time while he was translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, ‘Emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it?’ when I answered yes he replied, ‘Oh I didn’t know, I was afraid I had been deceived.’ He had such a limited knowledge of history at that time that he did not even know that Jerusalem was surrounded by walls.”
I got chills just sharing that. Can you imagine, he’s reading stuff and sharing it and he’s discovering it as we’re discovering it and we’re reading it. He’s asking Emma is that actually true? That is so cool. It says, “On another occasion Emma recorded: ‘The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen tablecloth which I had given him to fold them in. I once felt of the plates as they thus lay on the table, tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book.”
“Although the prophet would polish his skills over the years, Emma acknowledged that Joseph possessed only rudimentary literacy at the time he translated the gold plates.” This is coming from his wife, who loves him. I can imagine most husband’s spouses are willing to tell the true story about who the person actually is. So this is what Emma said about Joseph’s ability to actually do something like this.
She said, “Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon. And though I was an active participant in the scenes that transpired, it is marvelous to a me, a marvel and a wonder, as much so as to anyone else.”
So his wife is like, there’s no way he wrote this book. I love him but he’s not that smart. He couldn’t even dictate a coherent or well-worded letter. So it’s just, it’s fascinating. So as you go on here, that kind of gives you kind of a glimpse of what happened as they translated this book.
And then the story afterwards, again, I could spend 20 podcasts just pre-setting up the book, but I want to get into the book. But after that they had it translated right, so it was written out and then they had to go and there is a whole story about how they got EB Grandin to actually print this book that I’m holding in my hands right now. They went and had to get it typed so they had to get the money for it. If you look back in the day, they didn’t have type writers or printers, they had to get every letter, letter by letter, THE, print it out and stamp ink on it, and they’d stamp that onto a piece of paper and cut the bindings, sew it together.
So when I look at this book and I open it up and I look at the ink and how it’s so hard to read in some areas and I look at the bindings how they’re hand sewn together. I look at the sacrifice that went into this, but not just that. The translation that happened prior to it, and then to get this book and all the people trying to steal the gold plates from him and eventually, the angel took the gold plates back.
And then they get the book, get it printed, get it out there, and then they thought, “Man, everyone in the world is going to freak out when they see this. They’re going to be so excited. Can you imagine the miracles that happened for us to get this thing.” And they gave it out to the world initially, as you know, the world didn’t just runningly accept it. People did, but not everybody. And to this day it’s still, Satan fights against it so hard because he doesn’t want it to get into people’s hands.
But as you read the Book of Mormon, in this talk he shares like 30 different amazing things about the Book of Mormon, but there’s one that I want to stress because it’s the key. I think that the biggest tragedy to me is that Christians who are great Christian people who are scared to read it or don’t want to read it, or whatever it might be, and we’ll get more into those reasons as we dive into the book, but I want all my Christian brothers and sisters to feel comfortable with this.
So this is one thing that President Nelson talked about, he said, “The Book of Mormon reveals that Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary is literally the son of God. No book of scripture bares more solemnly the weighty burden of that testimony than does the Book of Mormon. It’s pages contain nearly 4000 references to Christ using more than 100 different titles for him. His holy name is mentioned on the average of once every 2.8 verses. No wonder this book has been designated another testament of Jesus Christ.”
So anyone who’s scared like, “This is going to take away from the Bible. Or this is going to take away from Christ.” Or whatever, no. This is another testament of Christ. The whole purpose, the whole focus of this book is to get people to believe in Christ, to get them to turn their heart to Christ. It is the most amazing proof we have that our savior came to this earth, that he died, and he was resurrected again.
I promise you that if you read it and you ponder about, and you pray about it, you don’t have to take my word for it, you don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. But if you pray, if you read and you pray about it, our Heavenly Father will tell you it’s true.
I had an interesting talk yesterday with one of my friends and he said that there was someone who lives by us, who as a young boy became a member of the church and got baptized and then left. He hasn’t been back to church for, I don’t know 50-60 years. And he was going and he was trying to get him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and find out what he once knew. So finally the guy said, “I commit, I will read the Book of Mormon and I’ll pray about it.” And he’s like, “Cool.”
So he came back a week later and said, “How’d it go?” and he’s like, “Well, I spent 3 hours online researching the Book of Mormon and I didn’t feel good.” And he said, “Well of course you didn’t. What were you reading about it.” And he kind of told him, and he’s like, “you’re reading people who hate the church, who hate the Book of Mormon. How do you think you’re going to feel.” And he’s like, “I didn’t feel good about it.” And he said, “How about this, I want you to take a different challenge. This time spend 3 hours actually reading the Book of Mormon and then tell me how you feel.”
That’s the test. When you read the book you will feel the Lord’s spirit, you will feel the Holy Ghost, you will feel the feelings of God because this book is from him. Don’t read about the book, that’s my one fear of this podcast , you’re going to listen to me talk about the book and then you’re going to base your judgments based on that. Please don’t.
My only goal of this podcast is to get you so excited that you go and you open the book and you read it. And if you read it you will feel that, I promise you that. You’ll read it and you’ll feel it and then pray about it and ask God if it’s true. Don’t take my word for it, don’t take anyone’s word for it because that’s not the goal. The goal is not to convince you of anything, the goal is for you to read it, to feel it and then to pray and ask God.
And then if you do, it’ll change your life. I promise you that. It’s changed my life, it’s changed millions of other people’s lives around the world and it’ll change yours as well.
Alright to end, I want to end actually reading part of, the ending part of this talk from President Nelson and then I want to share my testimony as well. But I thought he did such a good job kind of summing this up. He said, “It is a book that the Lord Jesus Christ has personally testified to be true. In the form of an oath, the Lord said, referring to the Prophet Joseph Smith’s work, ‘He has translated the book, even that part which I have commanded him, and as your Lord and your God liveth it is true.’
So that was in Doctrine and Covenants section 17 verse 6 where Jesus Christ himself testified that the Book of Mormon is true. He said, “you know well that this promise that the Lord offers to the readers of the Book of Mormon. If you do these last commandments of mine, which I have given you, the gates of hell shall not prevail against you, for my grace is sufficient for you, and you shall be lifted up at the last day.
“The Prophet Joseph Smith declared and his successor, President Ezra Taft Benson, has reaffirmed that at the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. It is a treasured testament of truth. It is the prophesied sign that the Lord has commenced to gather Israel and fulfill his covenants. “
So I just want to testify to you, just like the angel did when he told Joseph Smith when he came three times in the night and again the next day, and then every year for the next four years. He said that all of the prophecies from the old testament, all of the things that Isaiah and all these prophets wrote about, that were going to happen in the last days, they’re happening. It’s happening all around you.
And Satan’s going to deceive you and try to get you blind to it by keeping you busy and I feel this in my life every single day. There’s so many things that are happening. So many things fighting for our time, good things that are fighting for our time, it’s hard to keep our eyes open enough to look for the truth. But it’s there, it’s right in front of our eyes. It’s been restored.
There was a boy who was humble enough and worthy enough to pray and get Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to come to him. He then, through the gift and power of God was able to go and find these Gold plates, this old record of people who lived here on the ancient American Continent. People who actually had a chance to see Christ and feel the wounds in his hands and his feet and put all those things in their record.
He was able to translate them by the gift and the power of God. They weren’t translated 10, 50, 100 times by tons of different people. It was translated once. So this book in my hands that I’m holding today is the exact same thing that came, went from the prophets here in ancient America, right into the Gold plates, then from one translation being put here in this book. So when you read this, you know it hasn’t been changed, hasn’t been manipulated. It is literally the words of God.
And what’s interesting is that the ancient prophets who wrote this, this book was not for them. They didn’t have a chance to see it right. As you read through the book you’ll see, they were writing this book, the Lord commanded them and said, you’re writing this book. It’s not for you, it’s for a future people who need to have this book. This book will turn their hearts back to God.
So they’re like, I’m not writing this for my people, I’m writing it for you, whoever is reading this someday in the future. I’m writing this for you so you’ll know what happened to us, so you can protect yourself and you can protect your families.
So it was written by ancient American prophets for me and for you, specifically for today. Specifically for us to get through the challenges and the trials and tribulations and all the amazing things that Satan’s throwing at us today, this book was written to protect us and to save us and to bring us closer to Christ. He is our savior, he is our messiah, he is our God and he’s our king.
I testify to you that this book will draw you closer to him than anything else on this planet. And I want you, I pray that you read it and that you feel it. And if you do that, like I said, your life will be changed forever, just like mine has.
So I want to share that with you on the end of this episode, and get excited because on the next episode we’re going to be diving into 1 Nephi Chapter 1. So if you don’t have your Book of Mormon yet, go and get one. If you go to bookofmormonchallenge.com there’s a link where you can get a free one. Or you can go to Amazon, I’m sure you can get a free one on Amazon. Just get a copy of it because I want you to start reading this together with me, otherwise what’s the point of all this work I’m putting into it, right?
So we’re going to go to 1 Nephi chapter 1. This is the way that the game is going to be played. I’m going to tell you about 1 Nephi Chapter 1. I’m going to get you so excited, so fired up, and so pumped to read it and then I’m going stop and I’m going to leave you hanging and that’s going to drive you to go and actually read it. And that’s how this podcast is going to go moving forward.
I’m going to get you excited about what’s happening, what to look for, the magic, the secret messages, all the amazing things that the Lord has weaved into these verses that if you’re not careful you’re going to miss it. I’m going to set those things up so you can look for them and you can find them so when you read them you’ll have these amazing spiritual moments where you’ll be reading something and it’ll hit you.
And for everyone it’s going to be different. Everyone’s at different times and points in your lives. And some things you’ll read and it won’t make sense, and some things you’ll read and you won’t be ready for it. But some things you’ll read and you’ll sit there and be like, how in the world did this prophet, and it could be Alma or Nephi or Leman, not Leman, Helamin or Moroni, how did they know? How did they know that I would be struggling with that today? They literally, they must have put that chapter in for me. They must have put that verse. That phrase must have been for me. They saw our day and they must have known that was for me.
You’re going to have those experiences and it’ll be the most amazing, spiritual, coolest things, when those things happen. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I promise you that if you will read this book with me, and dive in there and study it, and you’ll be looking for those things, and you’re praying for answers to your prayers, as you read them, you’ll find that these prophets hid things in here specifically for you, things that you may have read in the past, or other people read and it didn’t touch them, but when you read it, it will hit you differently than it has hit anybody else in the history of time. And you’ll know that scripture was specifically written for you.
And that’s what’s so magical about this book. I hope that you take me up on the challenge and you dive in and you read it and you enjoy it. With that said, I will end this episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for listening and for participating. I will see you guys on the next episode when we jump into 1 Nephi Chapter 1.