Revelation Pt 1 - Joseph Smith's Backdated Prophecies
Original Air Date: 2023-02-18
This video features John Dehlin, Mike from LDS Discussions, Radio Free Mormon (RFM), and Nemo the Mormon examining the concept of "backdated prophecies" within Mormonism, specifically focusing on how Joseph Smith may have inserted historical events known to him into scripture to appear as ancient predictions
The Definition and Scholarship of Backdated ProphecyThe discussion begins by defining a backdated prophecy as a literary technique where an author writes about past events but places them in the mouth of an ancient figure, making them appear as miraculous predictions 4. RFM explains this using the biblical Book of Daniel: the text accurately predicts 400 years of history leading up to the 2nd Century BCE, but suddenly gets the history wrong regarding the death of Antiochus Epiphanes 5, 6. Scholars conclude the book was written during that specific window where accuracy ceases, as the author knew the past but could not predict the actual future 2. The panel notes that New Testament writers, particularly Matthew, similarly backdated prophecies to make Jesus fit Old Testament expectations, often misinterpreting the original texts in the process 7, 8.
The Martin Harris and Charles Anthon VisitA significant portion of the video analyzes how Joseph Smith backdated the encounter between Martin Harris and scholar Charles Anthon to fulfill Isaiah 29 9.
The Lost 116 Pages and the "Small Plates"The panel discusses how the loss of the 116 manuscript pages led Joseph Smith to backdate a solution into the text 16. Because Joseph dictated the end of the Book of Mormon (Mosiah through Moroni) before rewriting the beginning (1 Nephi), he was able to insert the concept of a "second set of plates" (the Small Plates) into 1 Nephi to cover the loss 17, 18.
Nephi’s Vision as 19th Century HistoryRFM argues that the "Vision of Nephi" (1 Nephi 11–14) is a prime example of backdating. The text provides incredibly specific details about the discovery of America, Columbus, the Revolutionary War, and the coming forth of the Bible and Book of Mormon—events that had already occurred by 1829 22, 23.
The Civil War and Modern ParallelsThe video addresses the famous "Civil War Prophecy" (D&C 87). While often cited as miraculous, Mike points out that it was received just four days after a newspaper article in the Painesville Telegraph discussed the exact same tensions involving South Carolina and the threat of disunion 27. Furthermore, the prophecy incorrectly predicted that this war would lead to the "end of all nations" 28, 29.
Modern ApplicationThe discussion concludes by noting that this culture of retrofitting prophecy continues today. The panel uses the example of President Russell M. Nelson’s 2019 comment about the next conference being "memorable," which members later reinterpreted as a prophetic warning about the COVID-19 pandemic 30. This occurred despite Nelson later admitting he had no foreknowledge of the pandemic 31.
Summary Insight:The panelists contend that the Book of Mormon functions as a theological time capsule. It addresses 19th-century issues (infant baptism, revivalism) and includes "prophecies" of history up to 1829, but lacks awareness of distinct Mormon doctrines developed later in Nauvoo (such as baptism for the dead or temple sealings) 32. This evidence leads them to conclude that Joseph Smith left his "fingerprints" all over the text, creating a record that reflects his own timeline rather than an ancient one 33.
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hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I one of your hosts for today John delin it's February 3rd 2023 and I'm super excited for a continuation of our series from LDS discussions on uh examining Mormon truth claims with as much objectivity as we can the topic for today is Joseph Smith and backdated prophecies so we're basically going to be talking about or examining whether or not Joseph Smith whether in the Book of Mormon or another scripture or just in his time as a prophet would backdate prophecies uh or in other words um you know make a prophecy uh that well we we'll explain what that means in just a second but I'm excited to have with us today a very illustrious panel a panel of podcasters that uh that uh are award-winning podcasters in 2023 we have uh Mike from LDS discussions hey Mike well welcome welcome back to Mar stories it's good to be back and this this will be a fun one because this one this this overview is our our next guest's uh fault because I was unaware of this kind of um thing until I listened to his podcast so we're going to hear a lot of what he had already done and so I'm I'm glad he's here because this is actually a really uh cool one as far as we've talked in the past about how you start to see these Fingerprints of Joseph Smith and this is a a cool one that kind of brings that together in a slightly different way and helps you to kind of understand um a lot of what we talked about with the Book of Mormon as far as kind of how it could have been put together and how you can understand the dating of the text and who could have written it I love it really quickly I'll remind everyone that Mike has a wonderful website award-winning website called LDS discussions. comom where he has written a number of essays trying to objectively look at morm matur truth claims as someone who joined the church as an adult convert and then after joining the Mormon church as an adult convert discovered all sorts of things about the church's truth claims that he wish he hadd been told uh before he joined the church uh you can um enjoy this series on Mormon stories podcast feed uh both you know on Apple podcast or Spotify or on YouTube there is a playlist on YouTube if you want to watch these episodes via video in succession and you can also enjoy the LDS discussion series on Spotify either audio or video um as its own series uh and apple podcast has its own LDS discussions feed as well so we're trying to make it as easy as possible for you and trusted or or beloved family and friends to enjoy this series however you want it's definitely one of the most uh important and popular things that Mormon stories has done in 2022 and again Mike congratulations to winning an award thanks it's a little weird but it's kind of nice and um you know I hope that the website as a whole has been helpful to people and um this particular project which I think is the best the most thorough part of the website um I hope helps people because of the fact that it was put together um with the idea of trying to just like I said at the beginning put it together like you're putting a puzzle back together and so um you know it's it's weird to to like win an award but it's it's very cool and um obviously I feel um just happy that that's helpful to other people absolutely all right joining us once again on Mormon stories podcast uh not a guest and also the winner of like the best Mormon themed podcast in the world for 2022 we have Radio free Mormon good morning how are you doing John what's it like to make the rest of us kind of irrelevant uh Radio free Mormon how does that feel great believe me and I feel kind of bad because I beat you out for best podcast I don't I'm I'm ecstatic it's well earned and I don't want any awards I want other targets rfm well you've got one in Me by the way it says wash oh sorry oh no go ahead yeah your says washed up has been barely relevant podcaster is that how you're identifying yourself today that's that's how that's my yeah that's my self identity these days oh wait there's someone else in the screen did you see that there's someone else it looks like Gus The Lovable Chimney Sweep and we have with us back onious discussions of Mormon stor Nemo the Mormon host of Nemo the Mormon YouTube which also was an award winner for best what video Mormon them video channel yeah best uh best LDS interest video channel yeah yeah well congratulations Nemo I may as well just shut shut down Mormon stories basically we're no longer relevant all right you're still good it's great to it's great to have you brother thank you okay and Mike why don't you share with us uh or rfm if you want we want to always give credit to the the work uh the this the shoulders of the Giants that we stand upon Mike this work as you mentioned was inspired by an episode rfm did rfm do you want us to tell us about the episode that you've already done so that we can make sure and plug that from the start I can barely remember it I would have forgotten it entirely except for Mike wanted to do a show about it and so uh apparently it's somewhere back there in the radio free Mormon archives it's about backdating prophecies and if you're going to talk about me I got to talk about bart man because he's the person that I learned about this whole thing from in relation to the Bible and then unfortunately started seeing immediately how it also was reflected in the Book of Mormon particularly in first Nephi and from there it just kind of continued on all right well thanks for joining us today to help Provide support to what Mike's put together so Mike where do you wanna where do you want to go from here yeah we could we could just start and you know I'll just I'll just note that with rm's podcast it was during the co time time and I remember I was working um in listening to podcasts as I was doing it and when I had first been asked to do this project for somebody in my family they said you know put together everything you've got that shows the claims aren't true I think I start with like eight to 10 topics and listening to this episode of rfms not only did it make me want to add this one to highlight how prophecies can be backdated um he also makes a note at the end of that podcast about the long ending of Mark which we did earlier so that really this one episode from rfm kind of led me to do two separate overview topics so um if for those of you who are listening to these and are like man these are a lot of episodes two of them are rfms fault so I just wanted to get that out at the start um but I think they're really interesting and you know I know he was doing I think rfm weren't you doing like one podcast a day almost during that early part of covid but um this one was a really good one yeah well thank you it's like you're Joseph Smith and I'm of the Hebrews yeah well you know I've said a lot on this this series that a lot of these episodes are working off of someone else's stuff and I try to always cite that like your work I've cited multiple times a lot actually Dan vogle um Brett manaf Brian hoglet um all of these people who have done all this work Bart ER also with the biblical scholarship stuff um David bavo so there's just all these people have done all this great work and so when I was putting together these overviews it was more or less like I did feel like um what I would kind of uh call Joseph Smith as Anthony Miller puts it an Eclectic aggregator I did feel like I was pulling from all these different sources because it it really helped to make sense on the overall picture when you're kind of looking at all these different areas that other people have already um really researched and and discussed so yeah like I said I I um yeah this episode in particular I just thought was so fascinating to me because some of it I had heard but then a lot of it I had not and so all of a sudden the way you did it kind of put like a really nice bow on the idea of how not just Joseph Smith but even in the New Testament how they're constantly looking to backdate these prophecies in order to fulfill them and it's just a really cool way that Scholars can date this material so obviously we'll get into all that but um you know it's just it was it was a great episode and that's why I'm glad you're here because I felt bad because this episode really is we're going to quote you at length a few times so um you know it's good that you're here so you can hopefully add some insight and um you know enjoy the fact that I'm I'm stealing all your work well thank you you know if you steal from one person it's plagiarism if you steal from a bunch of people that's scholarship yeah that's that's that's what I'm gonna call it for me anyway so all right Mike let's jump in let's start by having you explain to us what is a backdated prophecy yeah and so just to kind of keep it simple it's a technique where a writer can fulfill a revelation by writing about it after the time it occurred but putting it in the mouth of an ancient Prophet or a past time um and so we kind of covered this in our episode about dudo Isaiah but Scholars can tell that there are parts of Isaiah that were written by a second and a third author under the name of Isaiah because they leave fingerprints um on the text that tell us it was not all one author um for example they include the prophecy of Cyrus or Cyprus um they have a change in tone they use um certain words that are not used in the earlier chapters and so they can tell that because of this shift of tone the change of words um and the fact that they're able to make more specific prophecies that it was written at a later time but written in the original Isaiah name so that it would get more credibility and so um if you read the four gospels of the New Testament they are all written long after Jesus lived and so go uh Mark was written about 35 years after Jesus died um which again if you think about it in ancient times that's a really long time to have these Traditions passed along orally and to maintain their initial content without alterations and embellishments especially when you realize that these stories are being told to convert people to Christianity um and so because of this the authors are able to put into Jesus's mouth prophecies that would not come that would come true before Jesus was crucified because they already knew the ending of the story because they're they're they're talking about it and writing it decades later and so that's not to say that all of those are madeup stories like for example that Jesus knows that Judas is going to betray him um but it does say that we can look at that and that's how Scholars look at a lot of these texts and say the fact that they know all of these things are going to happen before they happen and then you know when they're writing it they get real vague it kind of gives you a good indication of when this information's being compiled so tell me Mike if this is and we're probably going to discuss this but if Joseph Smith let's just say Joseph Smith were the author of The Book of Mormon and he was going to have one of the Book of Mormon authors uh let's just say Alma or whatever prophesy that someday a great prophet named Joseph was going to come on the scene and restore the true church then Joseph it's almost like pseudepigrapha in the sense that he's putting into the mouth of an alleged ancient Prophet a prophecy that that predicts uh the the coming of of an event that Joseph knew about which was his own appearance in a way to give credibility to the book that's being written is is is that sort of uh a decent example yeah no it's all is and we're going to cover that because that that's a really key one because those are the things um there are we talked about this in our Book of Mormon episodes but there are a lot of um examples where there are not only elements about like say America American history that's in the Book of Mormon but there's also elements that are part of Joseph Smith's own life experience at that time and that's why we've talked in those episodes about how you can date The Book of Mormon to the 19th century and that no one else but Joseph could have written it because of the fact that they include um elements that are specific to Joseph Smith but yeah that that is basically the idea is in a lot of way back data prophecy is almost like piger where you're writing in someone else's name um in order to give the credibility to what you're writing so that the people reading it in your time um take it as authoritative even though it's clearly being kind of retrofitted back in um to the text um from a much later perspective and a good example of that in what we've just gone over recently with the Jud Smith translations is where David B talks about the uh the words that Joseph Smith claims are from the author of the book of John uh in DNC 93 and then David Boko points out that it's non Johan language so you can tell it doesn't belong there so that's Joseph Smith trying to use the voice of an ancient Prophet to give Credence to then his statements and then to do that with prophecy is what we're talking about today yep okay rfm anything you want to add about what is a backdated prophecy I think you've covered it very well it does occur to me though that uh one probable example of this that is not necessarily in the show notes has to do with Joseph Smith's for knowledge of his own death it does not appear from looking at everything that Joseph Smith was doing and the way he was acting that he knew he was going to die in Carthage but I think what happens is he ends up dying in Carthage he's a prophet and so certain statements probably though I haven't done a study on this but probably get backdated into Joseph Smith's mouth shortly before he dies to show he wasn't caught off guard and he knew this that this was going to happen yeah that's a good point too there was another one I was looking at last night I just it was hard to get like a solid foundation on it but there's a lot of controversy about this idea that Joseph Smith prophesied that the church was going to relocate in the Rockies um and so there's that same situation where you have these kind of statements that are made by other people either after the fact or they're kind of vague and now we kind of cling on to them as being like this decisive idea that Joseph Smith is like we're absolutely moving this church to the Utah area when there was no plans during Joseph's time to do so outside of some of the Council of 50 minutes where they're looking at a whole bunch of locations and and so in that way you're kind of looking backwards and saying oh well there's this one person who made this statement and kind of ignoring the rest in order to kind of solidify that as yeah Joseph knew they were going to move there and briam young made that happen um but again that that that's one of those areas like to m point where it seems like there's like these vague statements that we now just kind of repurpose to say oh he absolutely knew when the actions at the time don't seem to indicate that Joseph was planning to move the church to Utah especially given the fact that they were building the Temple in navoo and everything that was going on there so it's really interesting especially when you get into the messiness of all of this that you start to see more and more of that especially and we're going to do an episode um probably like six or seven from now and it's going to be one of my favorite ones we're going to do it's about the Transfiguration of Brigham Young and that's not necessarily backdating prophecy but it shows how you can backdate miraculous stories and that to me is one of the most important episodes because it's it just shows how easily these things can be created out of nothing um and and how we can now look back at other areas of of not just Mormonism but even the New Testament to show how quickly these these ideas can evolve from nothing and then just be accepted as as complete truth even 10 years later really quickly what we TR to do with every LDS discussions episode is remind new listeners that these episodes are in sequence are recorded and released in sequence hopefully they're recorded in sequence but they're hopefully definitely released in sequence and we want to remind people that they build on each other so when we reference dudo Isaiah if you haven't watched our previous dudo Isaiah you probably have no idea what we're talking about I also want to say that we've got um a really good interview on Mormon stories with Bart irman and you know like you said with David bavo and we'll include links to all those in the show notes so that you can get any background information you want to understand what we're talking about here all right Mike so let's jump to the next slide which is how Scholars can pinpoint a backdated prophecy yeah and so here I am going to quote from rfms episode so um this is a really yeah so I'm totally stealing this right here but this is a really good illustration of how Scholars can identify back data prophecy and this talks about the Book of Daniel and it says um chapter 11 which is the centerpiece of this Revelation the final Vision gives a broad sweep of history from the 6th Century bcee to the 2 Century so in other words this is prophesying at least according to the terms of the Book of Daniel of things from the 6th Century all the way down to the 2 Century BC that's 400 years after Daniel is supposed to have written this and it goes all the way down to the time of Alexander the Great who died when he was 35 years old but in chap 11: 40-45 which finish the chapter it continues with the prophet phy but now it starts getting things wrong in other words it starts prophesying of things that did not actually happen historically verses 40- 45 finished the chapter with the prophecy that Antiochus epiphanes would make war once again against Egypt and would die in Judea this did not actually happened there was no second war against Egypt and Antiochus ends up dying not in Judea but he died in Persia or in Babylon that's what the historical record tells us so what Scholars look at in Daniel is a backd of Prophecy it's put in the mouth of Daniel who lived about 5:30 bcee when he's supposed to be making this prophecy but it's actually written in the 2 Century BCE after the things that David prophesies actually um transpired in the prophecy is backdated and put into Daniel's mouth to show what a great prophet he was but not only that at the point where the Prophecies of Daniel sto being accurate and start being inaccurate in other words stop reflecting history as it really happened and start not reflecting history as it really happened that is the point at which scholars believe the author of these additional prophecies lived because he knew what had happened historically because he had already lived through it so then he the author of Daniel puts it back in Daniel's mouth he did not know what would happen in the future but he continues to make Prophecies of things that were really in the future for this Anonymous writer but that's where he starts getting things wrong and so Scholars generally agree that the anonymous author of this back data prophecy of Daniel lives right around 168 or 167 BCE so in other words because of the way this is written Scholars I think for the most part it's it's almost you you know 100% consensus is that this is written in a very very very tight window of like one or two years because of the way the details line up so perfectly until they don't and so then all of a sudden from a a logical perspective you go okay this is where he stopped talking about things that had happened it starts making predictions because obviously as we know from our own history people that make predictions at best you're talking you know 60% right I mean if you're a professional Gambler and you get 60% right you're you're a legend so um it just shows that scholarship can see these fingerprints and get really good dating on a text by what they're saying all by itself rfm do you agree with your past self or do you disagree with your past self I think I have to agree with my past self on this one anything you want to add no because I know that other things are going to come up later on in the slides but there's a direct analogy to what we find out the scholars believe about Daniel and Nephi's Prophecy of the Revolutionary War okay Nemo anything you want to add here uh I mean I could try and sum up very briefly it's it's essentially if I wrote something as though I was Joseph Smith and told everyone that I'd written something about Joseph Smith and I prophesied the 2008 financial crash that would be fine but then if I prophesied that in 2024 some Joseph Smith prophesied that 2024 uh something would happen and then it didn't you could tell that well I was alive during 2008 because I knew that happened but I wasn't alive or and writing this in 2024 because that's after my time and I got the prophecy wrong so that's essentially what's going on here love it thanks for that summary people a lot of our viewers and listeners really love summaries to help us distill the wisdom that Mike is bequeathing upon us that's what I'm here for all right so Mike let's go to the next slide uh which is the gospel writers backdated both prophecy and fulfillment of Prophecy yeah and so I mentioned this uh in the I think the first slide but you know the four gospels are not written until decades after Jesus would have died and that means they know the entire story before they actually write write down any accounts of his life um obviously these stories are being told for a long time before they're written down but the fact is what we have today is long after and so this allows the writers of the gospels to not only fulfill prophecy by citing and linking back to an Old Testament prophecy but they could also backd prophecy by allowing Jesus to know of the things that were to come because the writers already know the ending and so um a lot of people I think for the most part would agree that Matthew is the most egregious of the gospel writers when it comes to trying to backdate prophecy and to fulfill Old Testament prophecy um because oftentimes he's trying to draw um these connections to make sure that Jesus is the you know the one um but sometimes he cites them incorrectly and so two of the verses I thought were I think interesting is one and um rfm covers this a lot in his podcast but in Matthew 215 he says tell ye the daughter of of Sion Behold thy King cometh unto thee Meek and sitting upon an ass and a cult the fou of an ass and so Matthew doesn't understand that in the original um Old Testament prophecy that he's trying to draw from that when they say these two animals they actually just mean one animal and so he actually if you want to picture this it's almost like if you I mean the way Matthew writes it is that like Jesus is writing riding on two different animals like one leg on each one um because he's so interested in making this a direct fulfillment of Prophecy that he's trying to write it directly from the Old Testament without realizing um that their Old Testament writers are kind of writing this almost like as a literary technique to have the to draw the you know to make it sound like two but it's really not and so that gives you an indication that Matthew is working from the Old Testament to write the story as opposed to from a historical Viewpoint and the other one is um and this is one um there's an infant on Throne episode if for anyone who's interested about the Christmas story that's really fascinating especially when you look at um the uh the three synoptic gospels and so John hamr um kind of goes through with the infant Sun Thrones crew and it's absolutely fascinating because they talk a lot about how Matthew just keeps pulling these these These Old Testament prophecies and it doesn't even matter if they're really accurate he's just throwing everything at the at the wall to see to show that Jesus is absolutely the Savior um but unfortunately it's kind of like Joseph Smith he gets things wrong because it doesn't necessarily um understand what the Bible the old testament's saying um especially when you talk about like Isaiah um when you say Isaiah speaking of Jesus and then you read the surrounding texts and you're like no no he's not um but in one of the cases he's trying so hard to fit um Jesus um to being born in Nazareth which which which obviously is an issue because you know most people would consider him born in in Bethlehem so Matthew 2:23 says and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets he shall be called a Nazarene which obviously has a lot of issues um historically especially when you look at the gospels and how they all try to to get the story to work but then that's where the contradictions come because they're trying to make it fit this Old Testament parallel but they're doing it individually and and that's creating the contradictions because because they're all kind of getting to the same place in a different way for those who don't understand what's wrong with calling Jesus a Nazarene well I mean historically speaking right we all think Jesus was born in Bethlehem and so they're trying to get him to Nazareth um be because or they're trying to tie it to the Old Testament and and so in order to do that you have to and I I highly recommend that infants and thrown episode because I should have listened to it again because John Hammer explains it really well but effectively you know one of the gospels they have you know going through kind of like the Moses path through Egypt right and then one of the gospels I'm trying to think they've got like the census and all that stuff and so Matthew is pulling I'm man I wish probably draw a blanks I don't know if rfm or Nemo can help me on that one but it's okay Luke is the census and Matthew is the one who has him going into Egypt to parallel Moses's life yeah yeah and so it's just it's just Matthew trying to use the Old Testament prophecies to to basically fulfill them through Jesus and and as um if you your episode with David bavo he talks about how often times and the Mormon church does this today because of course the New Testament does it they'll cite these um writings of Isaiah as Jesus fulfilling them and he'll he'll point out like in certain areas like if you read the surrounding texts they're not talking about Jesus at all but for the New Testament writers they need to find that direct Connection in order to give Jesus's standing as Savior more credibility um and so they're they're tying trying to tie as many Old Testament prophecies as they can and this is going to parallel what Joseph Smith does in the Book of Mormon as well and this is for me this was a huge shift I had to make in my mind because number one we think more as Mormons and probably as Christians as an example we think of the four gospels as all being written to harmonize with each other and filling in you know be being we think of them just instinctively and automatically as being consistent with each other and that they were all kind of written at the same time you know by the hand of the person whose name is on the book that they're all perfect and infallible Etc but once you learn that they were passed down by oral tradition before they were ever written down and that they were written chronologically in succession and that if you if you order them in succession and then study the four books U is it synoptically is that the term you'll find that the story grows more and more Fantastical as the gospels progress chronologically but it but as a Mormon you just would never even think to question anything Matthew would write because he's a propheter and Revelator and that would be Blasphemous Nemo and rfm do both of you kind of remember having a mindset like that I do but then what what you end up in in a position as Mormon is then you end up in a position where you go well as far as it is translated correctly so you're then willing to throw Matthew or Mark or Luke or John under the bus if it doesn't work with the Book of Mormon or if it doesn't work with what a prophet or what Jose Smith said or anything like that so in the back of my mind was always don't trust the Bible don't trust it as much as you would trust a prophet and the Book of Mormon because of that article of faith yeah that was just me yeah yeah that's true all right so let's uh so Mike let's go to the Martin Harris visit to Charles anthon Okay so we've discussed this multiple times about how Joseph Smith um uses Martin Harris's visit to Charles anthon to back dat and retrofit a prophecy from Isaiah and so meeting occurs in 1828 which is the year before the Book of Mormon is composed and that's important because Joseph Smith is going to write this account that would happen over 2,000 years after Isaiah was written directly into the Book of Mormon almost exactly as it's going to be claimed to have happened in 1828 and we do not have any contemporary accounts of this event um the first documentation comes from Joseph Smith's own words in his 1832 history and keep in mind that this exchange is given exclusively through Joseph Smith there is no indication that he is dictating Martin Harris's words because if you read Joseph Smith's 1832 history it just seems like something he's kind of working out on his own in the journal that's where the first first Vision account comes um and what that means is that this event is already Being Framed in Joseph's mind four years after the fact and so he writes In 1832 um he Martin Harris immediately came to ssoh Hannah and said the Lord had shown him that he must go to New York City with some of the characters so he proceeded to copy some of them and he took his journey to the Eastern cities and to the Learned saying read this I pray thee and the Learned said I cannot but if you would but if he would bring the plates they would read it but the Lord had forbid it and he returned to me and gave them to me to translate and I said Martin Harris said I cannot for I not learned I'm so sorry I screwed that up and and so Joseph says and I said I cannot for I'm not learned but the Lord had prepared spectacles for to read the book to to read the book therefore I commence translating the characters and thus the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled which is written in the 29th chapter concerning the book and so here Joseph Smith is saying uh in his 1832 history that he gave the plates to Martin Harris Martin Harris took them to Charles anthon and um that fulfills the prophecy because it can't be read by the Learned but it can be read by the unlearned which is Joseph Smith and so in this initial account it's a much more um barebones kind of account of of what's going to happen and and so we're going to see now how this is going to work its way into the Book of Mormon as well as become even grander after 1832 so I don't know if anyone has anything to add otherwise we can go to the next slide and keep it going it's up to you guys you rfm I'd just say that it's really easy to say that something fulfills a prophecy when you say that it like when you have written an account in an attempt to fulfill a prophecy right it's really easy to look back at something old and say well if I do this that old thing seemed to speak of something vaguely like this so I can then say that equals this even though Isaiah may never have thought of Joseph Smith ever yeah right and what Joseph Smith ends up doing I think is really fascinating because he doesn't just say hey Isaiah 29 is kind of like this he actually goes into the Book of Mormon now when he's dictating this in 1829 and he gets to Second Nephi 27 where he's basically recapitulating a lot of Isaiah 29 but in the context of quoting Isaiah 29 he takes a lot of liberties with this prophecy and expands what's two verses in Isaiah into about four or five verses in the Book of Mormon because he's going to change the elements around and he's going to make it much more closely mirror what it is that happened with Martin Harris and it's fascinating to me that at this early time Joseph Smith is already having a very casual approach to scripture in the sense of he is the individual who is in charge of the scripture even in the Bible and he can manipulate it to suit his needs and he sees nothing wrong with that that's part of his prophetic calling I also see this as very much the beginning of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible we usually date that to 1830 when it starts officially after the organization of the church but I think we see hints of that going on in the book Book of Mormon that he's already working with a new translation of the Bible to help support his prophetic claims yeah that's and that's perfect love it thanks rfm all right let's go to the next slide Joseph Smith uses Isaiah to backdate the Charles Anton visit yeah and so if you're watching this you can see on the left side is the King James Bible um Isaiah 29 verses 10-2 and if you're um looking at the right side it's going to be the Book of Mormons version of Isaiah 29 um from second Nephi so it's verses 5-10 and what's interesting is is rfm said he is going to expand this in a way that just solidifies the Book of Mormon um and solidifies Joseph Smith as a prophet um and it is um pretty amazing because we know he's starting from the King James Bible and so this goes to the whole tight versus loose translation Theory because again if this was something that Isaiah meant to write but didn't write you would think it would be more of a completely different kind of writing but instead Joseph Smith is going to as R of him said almost retranslate Isaiah 29 to fit the Book of Mormon and so um I don't know if we want to read them both but basically he's going to add in um a lot of text and so Isaiah 29 says for the Lord had P hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep and hath closed your eyes the prophets and your rulers the seers hath he covered and the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed which men deliver to one that is learned saying read this I pray thee and he say sayth I cannot for it is sealed and the book is delivered to him that is not learned saying read this I pray thee and he saith I am not learned and Joseph Smith is going to take these three verses and he's going to write all of this stuff about the Book of Mormon so for example he he adds in um and it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall bring forth unto you words of a book and they shall be the words of them which have slumbered and behold the book shall be sealed and in the book shall be a revelation from God from the beginning of the world to the ending of and then wherefore because of things which are sealed up the things which are sealed shall not be delivered in the way of the wickedness and Abominations of the people wherefore the book shall be kept from them but the book shall be delivered unto a man and he shall deliver the words of the book which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust and he shall deliver these words unto another but The Words which are sealed he shall not deliver neither shall he deliver the book for the book shall be sealed by the power of God in the Revelation which was sealed shall be kept in the book until the on du time of the Lord that they may come forth for behold they reveal all things from the foundation of the world unto the end thereof so not only is he throwing in um The Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith but he's turning this vision of Isaiah into a literal um book which as we've talked about in previous episodes is anachronistic because they didn't have codexes at this time so it's already anachronistic to to to think that Isaiah's prophesying of a book given that they don't have books then um but it it's very self- serving to Joseph Smith to to write himself and the Book of Mormon directly into Isaiah in order to give it more credibility for people who are going to read the book of Mormon wow so basically Joseph Smith reads the Bible a lot spends a lot of time in Isaiah obviously he's familiar with this chapter in Isaiah 29 talking about a sealed book and delivering of words he thinks about what he's doing with Martin Harris as he's allegedly translating The Book of Mormon but potentially just authoring it he knows that Martin Harris at some point has already gone to sort of vet the characters the uh Book of Mormon alleged Book of Mormon characters he knows about that exchange and so when he's finishing the Book of Mormon and writing in second Nephi which we now know was written towards the end of his translation process because the 116 pages had been lost he writes into his Isaiah um plagiarism basically he he basic basically does some Isaiah fanfiction and backdates a prophecy um from Isaiah to Second Nephi that his Shenanigans with with Martin Harris and Professor Anton are going to happen Neo tell me if I if I summarize that decently or is that all right that's fine yeah yeah anything you want to add not really okay rfm want to get your comments here if there's anything you want to add yes on a separate issue but related there's always been a question as to what it is that Martin Harris really experienced when he went to New York cuz he's on his own he doesn't have Joseph Smith with him and we first find out we found a little snippet in that 1832 history that was already put up on the screen that Joseph Smith wrote but we get a much Fuller account in 1838 where the story gets much bigger and much more detailed and much more dramatic I think that this prophecy backdated though it is in second Epi 27 from Isaiah 9 and the way it's been rewarded that's happening in 1829 Martin Harris is still very much part of this uh nent church and will be as a as a witness to the Book of Mormon as well so he's still around he's still very much involved in what's going on he knows what's being put in second Nephi 27 so I think that based upon that it is reasonable to conclude that the description in second Nephi 27 of Martin Harris's trip to New York probably very closely matches or approximates what it is that Martin Harris said happened when he was there so it's sort of a a test for what happened and how early it was that Martin Harris had said these things and probably doesn't align with what Charles Anton said happened is that is that also true well yeah that's true yeah he got wind of it and wasn't happy about it and gave an alternate version that did not sound quite so Faith promoting but it's probably not coincidental that the Book of Mormon sides with Martin Harris's account not Charles Anton's account yeah right yeah okay well let's go to uh let's go to the next slide um yeah which is uh which is Joseph Smith misuses Isaiah to backdate the prophecy yeah and this is um something I hinted on earlier about how a lot of the ways that especially in in the New Testament that Isaiah has cited as if it's Jesus fulfilling his prophecies um doesn't really line up if you read Isaiah in context but for this particular issue um Joseph Smith is using an incorrect reading of Isaiah to fit the anthon visit Into the Book of Mormon and so uh BYU professor uh I mean he's no longer a professor he was a Bo professor and right yes Charles harell so he wrote the book this this is my Doctrine you know he talks about this and makes it clear and and this is not you know again Charles Herold was a BYU professor this is also something that other um biblical Scholars agree to it's just that this obviously gives it more of a spin on the Book of Mormon because he's writing um from that perspective and he says Isaiah isn't talking about a literal book much less one that would come forth in the future um non-lds Bible commentators make two observations that preclude uh the one that hath a familiar Spirit from having direct reference to Joseph Smith first they point out that Isaiah 29 is specifically addressing the current situation of wickedness in Jerusalem or the city where D David dwelt there is no mention of any other people or place second it doesn't say that this nation will speak through some actual person such as Joseph Smith rather the voice of the nation would be as a person who has a familiar spirit this is the voice of J this is the voice of Jerusalem's inhabitants will be no more than a peep and mutter and so what there what he's saying is that biblical Scholars are telling us that like Isaiah 29 is not speaking about a literal book it's not speaking about Joseph Smith coming forth it it just it the connection there is not there and so um I think David Bako would say that Joseph Smith would be actualizing the text to a modern audience reading the book of Mormon but from a historical standpoint it it's a really bad misreading of Isaiah that Joseph Smith is intentionally doing in order to boo bolster both his credibility and the Book of Mormon's credibility as being an ancient record it rfm yes hey this brings to mind the idea of multiple fulfillment of Prophecy and let me try and say that a little bit better multiple fulfillment of Prophecy we've all heard that haven't we somewhere in our past in the LDS church what happens is this you get something like Isaiah where it's prophesying prophesying of Jesus Christ or at least Matthew thinks so and his birth or whatever it is that he's prophesying and you go back and you actually start looking at it as the scholars have been doing for hundreds of years not in the LDS church but outside the LDS church and looking at say contextually no this is not a prophecy of Jesus Christ This is a prophecy of a kid being born in Isaiah's time it's actually Isaiah's kid and it's Mahal hashas one of my favorite names in the Bible then at that point you can either say okay this prophecy is not about Jesus it's about what's going on in the 8th Century BCE only or you can go with Matthew and say no it's about Jesus here comes the Great Compromise is saying no it's about both there is multiple fulfillment of Prophecy so it's a prophecy about Mah albas and it's also a prophecy about Jesus and I think that anytime you hear invoked the idea of multiple fulfillment of Prophecy you're encountering a place where the original prophecy doesn't work in context and so you want it to apply to something else like Matthew did and therefore now you've got this whole idea of multiple fulfillment of prophecy to come in and save the day all right well let's go to the next slide which is that Joseph Smith didn't stop there in rewriting Isaiah 29 yeah and so we we read the first part a few minutes ago and you know I wanted to give some more of the backstory to the Charles anthon and also the first part of of what Joseph is claiming um when rewriting Isaiah 29 but he doesn't stop there and so this is a complete addition to Isaiah there's no mention of this visit obviously in the Bible um which is another clue that shows us this is being uh a backd of Prophecy being written after the fact but this is more from from second Nephi it says but behold it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall say unto him to whom he shall deliver the book take these w words which are not sealed and deliver them to another that he may show them unto the Learned saying read this I pray thee and the Learned shall say bring hither the book and I will read them and now because of the glory of the world and to get gain they will say this and not for the of God and the man shall say I cannot bring the book for it is sealed then the Learned uh then shall the Learned say I cannot read it wherefor it shall come to pass that the Lord God will deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is not learned and the man that is not learned shall say I am not learned then shall the Lord God say unto him the Learned shall not read them for they have rejected them and I and I am able to do my own work wherefore Thou shalt read The Words which I shall give unto thee and so in these verses Joseph Smith is now circling back to Isaiah 29 adding the Martin Harris visit to Charles anthon to then fulfill Isaiah's prophecy in 29:12 that the book is delivered to him that is not learned saying read this I pray thee and he saith I am not learn it and so this is Joseph Smith just really I mean in a lot of ways just going for it and um just just putting it all in there and it's funny too because um you know it it it doesn't line up with the story the Charles anthon visit that we we kind of hear today in the church but it does show that Joseph Smith is very aware of how far he like kind of what rfm said it seems like he's aware of how far he can go at this point with this story uh to where Martin Harris might not say that's not what happened um so it's a little more vague than we're going to get to in a second and at the same time it's completely rewriting Isaiah 29 um in a way that in a lot of ways makes it indistinguishable from the initial context as Scholars will tell you I to say as I as I read through that the specificity of that particular section of the Book of Mormon It just strikes me as almost absurd that it's going to be like this really detailed recount of exactly what Joseph Smith and Martin Harris said happened when there's so much you know if the Book of Mormon text or or if if the number of words allotted to the Book of Mormon is so precious I could think of a thousand other things that might been a more important priority for God to reveal like you know I don't know pandemics or natural disasters or plagues or germ Theory or LGBT issues like there's so many things God could have used that precious real estate for instead of coincidentally recounting the exact version of the Joseph Smith Martin Harris account that is well is essential though for uh putting Joseph Smith's Authority as a prophet forward because he needs things throughout the text that also then match up to his own life it's like you know when he writes the end of Genesis and says oh yeah by the way a guy called Joseph whose dad's also called Joseph is GNA be pretty important so watch out for that fellow you know it's like he he has to write himself in because it then gains credibility to to what he's doing this is that is why it takes up that that real estate and I also dislike the use of the word rejected there where it says that the Learned have rejected it what they've actually done is gone can't read it they're not rejecting the book They're not saying oh this is a terrible awful book go away they're like well I can't read it yeah maybe like Charles Anton they're saying I can't read it because it's not a real language but nonetheless they're just saying I can't read it and then God in in this verse in Nephi is getting all high and mighty saying that well you know I can do this myself I'll just get someone who isn't so pretentious but it's it's it's a straw man God's making a straw man argument towards people like Charles andon because they're not rejecting the book they're just saying they can't read it yeah also will you guys correct me if I'm wrong in in verse 19 of second of second Nephi I don't know what chapter this is um it says we'll deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is learned well as I understand that Martin Harris didn't deliver the book he delivered just a few characters from the book so that even feels like a failed prophecy because Martin Harris didn't deliver to Anon the book just some scribbled characters that were allegedly from the book did I get that wrong Nemo or M well in verse 19 it's talking about the book being given to the unlearned which I and this is second Nephi 27 it's the same chapter so I think that would be referencing Joseph the UN learned is Joseph yeah okay okay yeah okay one other thing I'll say is that uh this reworking of Isaiah is fascinating to me because of a number of reasons but one of the things is that of course Scholars talk about Isaiah the original Isaiah who lives around 7:22 BCE and then there's a second Isaiah who comes up with some more chapters in the book and then there's even a third Isaiah there's Isaiah there's dudo Isaiah there's Truro Isaiah and I think that Joseph Smith qualifies as a fourth Isaiah for the work that he's doing on the book so we don't know who the second Isaiah is we don't know who the third Isaiah is but I think we've got a good idea that Quadro Isaiah is actually Joseph Smith MH Quadro Joseph Quadro Isaiah I love it put it on t-shirt um and I and I I I kind of misread verse 19 but I do want to make a point with with verse 20 where it says then shall the Lord God say unto them the Learned shall not read them for they have rejected them uh you know when you think about the fact that the book of Abraham papy were eventually made available you look at Dr Robert Ritner and and many of his predecessors who's to say that the Learned won't read an ancient text if it's provided to them I think not only do we have ample evidence that uh you know Scholars of ancient documents are not only willing to read ancient documents but are obsessed about the ancient documents what I think it's more saying is is that if the actual plates you know I I think the reality is is that if the actual plates had been provided to Scholars they would have read them and maybe that might have been even problematic as it was with the papyra with the papy in the book of Abraham I just don't think that verse 20 is is at all fair to the interest and the record of of actual Scholars of of ancient records does that make sense yeah well I mean that goes to what I was saying and and by reject them what Joseph who's writing this essentially is saying is they won't agree that they say what I say that they say yeah that's what he's doing and he's invoking God as being on his side so me and God we say they say this Allah the book of Abraham papyri and then these Scholars these learned ones are rejecting them not necessarily because they're refusing to read them but because they don't agree with what we say that those books are saying rfm yes and I would say that this is one of the several instances in which the Book of Mormon which represents itself as an ancient text is nevertheless very responsive to Joseph Smith's immediate environment yeah yeah well said rfm all right and and and I do want to refer our our new viewers and listeners to our very recent episode on Joseph Smith's translations because we walk through five or six of the translations Jo Joseph Smith claimed the translations of ancient records quote unquote that Joseph Smith claimed to translate and we show that if anyone has a problem with you know with with honestly confronting uh what are supposed to be ancient records it's not Scholars it's it's Joseph Smith who has the translation problem so all right let's go ahead and jump to the next slide which is Joseph Smith then rewrites the Anton visit in 1838 yeah and so we've already given you the 1832 account that Joseph Smith writes and what is effectively an autobiography and so now this is going to be um the account he's going to give a few years later and so I don't know do you want to read this uh Nemo just to give this a nice comparison to the earlier account and tell us who this is what you're reading and who it is so this is this is out of Joseph Smith's history and this is written by Jose of Smith but he's writing it as if he's writing uh an account from Martin Harris and that's what makes this really interesting because this is after Martin Harris is long gone and kicked out of the church and Joseph Smith now is going to write this account again without any input from Martin Harris there there's no Martin Harris account that he's working from this is you know 100% from Joseph's perspective and it's canonized LDS scripture yeah and this is the story that we're all familiar with Okay okay right I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated with the translation thereof to professor Charles Anton a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments Professor Anton stated that the translation was correct more so than any he had seen before translated from the Egyptian I then showed him those which were not yet translated and he said that they were Egyptian jalic ayric and Arabic and he said they were true characters he gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct I took the certificate and put it into my pocket and was just leaving the house when Mr Anon called me back and asked me how the young man found out that there were gold plates in the place where he found them I answered that an angel of the God had revealed it unto him he then said to me let me see that certificate I accordingly took it out of my pocket and gave it to him when he took it and tore it to Pieces saying that there was no such thing now as ministering of angels and that if I would bring the plates to him he would translate them I informed him that part of the plates were sealed and that I was forbidden to bring them he replied I cannot read a sealed book I left him and went to Dr Mitchell who sanctioned what Professor Anton had said respecting both the characters and the translation okay Mike well it's just you we've done episodes on the first Vision we've done episodes on the priesthood restoration and all these accounts they get grander and grander and grander and in this case Joseph Smith is going to rewrite this account of Martin Harris visiting Charles anthon and now he's doing it after Martin Harris is gone and so it's almost like Joseph Smith um to kind of quote Wendy Nelson of talking about Russell Nelson he was Unleashed he could do whatever he wanted to he was free to say whatever he wanted to and in that case he makes us a much grander story with a lot more detail and a lot more of it tends to bolster Joseph Smith's um Authority and credibility as a profit by basically putting into Charles um Anton's mouth that not only did Joseph Smith um correctly but that there's all these different languages all these different languages that they're seeing within the reformed Egyptian characters um which is just absolutely not uh either what Charles Anton said or is it what the earlier account said and so it really just shows how um when you talk about these these back data prophecies in this case it even grows um after being kind of solidified in the Book of Mormon which I find to be really um interesting and self- serving to Joseph Smith um as he's trying to bolster his credibility after quite a lot of challeng given that this is after like the Kirtland safety society and all that stuff rfm we'd love to hear anything you have to say about this slide thanks I feel like doing a Columbo here and saying uh you know I just got one other question for you which is what are Egyptian calic which is Babylonian by the way caldic ayric and Arabic doing on gold plates that are supposed to be written in reformed Egyptian yeah yep yep now chronologically I know this is from the 1838 account okay but let's suppose that that actually is accurate to 1828 when this incident happened okay with Charles Anton and going to New York with Martin Harris and everything if that's correct then there may be a reason why I mean chronologically if that actually happened about the designation of these four different languages that have nothing to do with reformed Egyptian on the Book of Mormon plates then it may be a chronology where that does happen and then the following year in 1829 because maybe because of this incident and what really happens there all of a sudden now the Book of Mormon is being written in such a way and translated in such a way that it states about itself that it's written in a language that no one knows there's something strange going on there and I think that they're connected and I think that they're written in a language no one knows may actually be intended to explain why it was that Martin Excuse me that um Charles Anton actually could not read them and said I don't recognize them now this is speculative right because I don't know that there's a an account at least in the Mormon versions of Charles Anton's experience that he says I don't read them because he knows that he can read them right he can identify them the transl is great but I'm not going to be uh signing the certificate for any kind of gold book that's given by an Angel all I'm saying is that is interesting to me I think there's a reason why the Book of Mormon says it's written in a language that nobody can read why does the Book of Mormon say that when it's dictated in 1829 when in 1828 we have this experience with Martin Harris going to Charles Anon that's my question yeah can can I see if I can can I restate or at least try and Reas what I think you're saying rfm like if yeah if I'm thinking about it Joseph Smith didn't translate Egyptian characters on The Book of Mormon he translated reformed Egyptian characters on The Book of Mormon that no one that that it's a language that no one on earth had ever read or heard about or known so if it's reformed Egyptian and no one knew it and it was a language not yet known how in the world world could Charles anthon validate that the translation was not just correct but was what the more correct than he had ever before seen from the Egyptian how could he have validated the translation at all am I getting that right rfm well right there's that issue about he couldn't transl uh validate the translation because the knowledge of Egyptian and his translation had not advaned to a point where that could be done by Charles Anton or probably pretty much anybody in the world because we're talking about 1828 now and egyptology is in its infancy at least as far as deciphering the language goes but what I'm suggesting is something additional which is that this is obviously written in 1838 in order to be Faith promoting right yep yeah we would all by the way there's a little bit of a time delay going on and when you have my face just totally in the screen I'm afraid it's too obvious but it's supposed to be Faith promoting which says to me that if that's supposed to be Faith promoting then in 1828 Joseph Smith was telling a story that the characters on the gold plates were actually written in these four languages yeah how is it Faith promoting otherwise yeah that's a good point and I don't think there's any account of Joseph Smith in 1828 or 29 saying that they're in these four languages so pretty clear that it's in an unknown unknown langu anguage so to me it shows um a little bit of Joseph Smith's um I don't know what the word is having the basically having the coone to try to um bolster this story to be Faith promoting in 1838 because of the fact he's being questioned um because there's no one there such as Martin Harris to say that's not what happened um because Martin Harris has been run out of town um and as we'll get into in the next few slides what's really interesting is how much this new account in 1838 mirrors Joseph Smith's experience with the book of Abraham and so you can kind of see Joseph Smith using his life experience to them backd into a story um that is obviously crucial to the Book of Mormon and to the church today really so it yeah it really makes no sense if you as rfm said when you look at the account in 1838 it's the first time that Joseph Smith mentions that Charles anthon translates anything because remember Martin Harris is just bringing a sample of the characters there's no translation on the characters document so how in the world is is Charles Anton even saying that the translation's correct because as far as we know from the earlier accounts Joseph Smith didn't translate anything that Martin Harris takes with and then to add in all these languages to add in more depth to the connections to the Isaiah prophecy all of that stuff uh it just tells you that this is being written from a later perspective and trying to do so in a way to bolster you know Joseph Smith's own credibility at a time when he was being heavily challenged by people within the church Mike you know what makes me think of Seinfeld because you've got the situation where of course Joseph Smith famously describes the Book of Mormon as the most correct book in the world and I think actually originally he said it's the correct book in the world but it's a superlative language that he uses and I see that getting transferred into this 1838 account because it's not just a translation yeah it's it's accurate this is the best translation it's the best Jerry the best the best I've ever seen and that makes me that makes me wonder yeah I think that someone might be gilding the lily with that a little yeah and think about this too like this is another area where I think sometimes when you talk about this story from an apologetic standpoint you don't think through the implications because if you want to say that Joseph Smith wrote down characters from the gold plates translated them gave Martin Harris the partial translation and then Charles Anton said the translation's correct you have 100% a tight translation and that leads to a lot of problems because of the fact that there's King James language that there's stuff from Joseph Smith's Lifetime and so it's another one of those areas where it's like okay from an apal J stamp play say Joseph Smith absolutely could translate these characters because Charles Anton said he did but then it also then says well then how is the Book of Mormon loaded with 19th century language and 19th century ideas and it's just it's the whole don't forget don't forget 19th century Protestant Christianity exactly it's just yeah like what in the world are you having all of these late writings and and as we're going to get to in a couple of slides the prophecy Joseph Smith is backdating is largely believed to be a late addition to Isaiah so you you have all of these problems now that you're you're now having to address if you really want to take this account it at face value and as rfm said it does seem like Joseph Smith here is basically just you know guilding the Lily is a good way to put it to try to reestablish his own story now that he's gotten rid of the early founding members of the church that can no longer challenge the accounts he's giving that's excellent let's get Nemo in here Nemo anything you want to say about this slide uh a couple of things just that like the first thing is the weird sort of accidental hit that Joseph Smith gets in this story in that if that characters sheet the one that we are able to look at the one that the Tanner kind of decied if we take that as the one that was shown to Charles Anton then there are indeed Arabic letters or or characters on there um the the numbers that we use in English 0 to 9 uh are known as Arabic numerals and they come from Arabic so uh there's a weird sort of accidental hit there but the the more important thing to me is that this pushes the idea of actual translation apologists love to get stuck in the weeds of you know the Book of Mormon was a revealed book not a translated book or they like to push the idea that with particularly with later translations like the book of Abraham that it's a catalyst method and that sort of stuff Joseph Smith himself here is trying to appeal to other people trying to appeal to the authority of Charles Anton um to show that you know other people that can translate stuff also translate this and confirm that what I'm doing is indeed a translation and I am correct so he's making a a sort of secular appeal to the correctness of his translation in a very secular sense isn't it true that Charles anthon rejected Joseph and Martin's account of what happened that he flat denied their account of what happened you would because what what they described is a bit nonsensical really the idea that he would say yeah yeah this is good this is good and then think oh but where did it come from as if that would make any difference to a sort of scholarly person uh if the characters that are put in front of him he can translate into something and that is correct and he's he's signed that off it it would make him look really bad from a scholarly perspective if he allowed his personal motives to get in the way and that doesn't really ring true to the sort of task that he was asked to do you know and I just think people PE you know if if Charles anthon was there and if he speaks for himself he gets he gets first word on what his experience was we don't trust Joseph you know Joseph and and um and Martin they have a bias they have they have a a motive to mischaracterize their interaction because they need his they need Anton's credibility and so I think Anton's word should be trusted over Joseph and Martin's account of what Anton's experience was and also it allows Joseph to to up the um to up the persec ution narrative and the idea that he is flying in the face of current Christian sensibilities which actually isn't true because a lot of current Christian sensibilities as we've just addressed found their way into the book of woman yeah but I'll just say when I learned this in high school in the 80s I'm like you know just to the whole point of backdating now to kind of get back to that like I remember when it was taught to me thinking wow Joseph Smith was such a prophet you know Isaiah prophesied about this exact event how cool to tie the Old Testament two or three Millennia ago to what happened in 18 you know 30 whatever 1820 whatever in Upstate New York it's like wow all the scriptures are now integrated into an inspiring seamless tale like it worked is is all I'm saying to a high school kid who wanted to believe the Mormon church was true this backdating worked and it made me feel like we were the Mormon church and Joseph Smith literally were a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and I can see why Joseph Smith would think this would be effective yeah yeah you know because it does work yeah because to someone who believes in the old New Testament you wanna you want to see that continuity okay uh all right should we go to the next slide Mike yeah all right let's go to the next slide which is the Charles anthon visit became much grander in 1838 yeah and so and one thing I'll note real quick before before we start the slide is just there are some discrepancies between the two accounts that Charles Anton gives and I was trying to look them up real quick and I don't have them handy but you know it is one of those things where it's I don't think that Charles Anton in his second account is 100% I think he's looking at it too from a a backwards looking lens as well um and so there is there is a little bit of that and you'll see that when you look at the apologetic responses and so Charles Anton's two accounts of what happened are not 100% you know similar either and so you that's why you have to kind of look and see kind of like where we are um looking at from the church's lens and from Joseph Smith's lens and that's what we're doing today but yeah I I did wanted to mention that because I think it's important to note that his you know one of the things I jotted down a while ago is that um you know in in Charles Anton's first account he does not claim to give Harris a written account of the meeting whatsoever um in his second account he does admit to giving Martin Harris a written account but he says at that point the letter was basically to warn him not to fund The Book of Mormon and so in that regard it doesn't line up with what what they're saying here so I just want to get that out of the way um Mike thank you I just uh noticed in passing that if because I remember doing this as an apologist in the two accounts of Charles Anon and he doesn't give the same account so you can't trust that guy he's not telling the truth but when it comes to Joseph Smith's four accounts of the first Vision yeah right all of a sudden we're g to use a different standard and the differences that Joseph Smith has prove that he's telling the truth yeah and and that's just it it's like you know um throughout all these episodes I've been saying like you got to be consistent you cannot approach one issue with one apologetic and then abandon it in another area and that's a great point which is to say Charles anthon has discrepancies in his two accounts and so you do have to account for those but at the same time we can evaluate the way Joseph Smith changes Martin Harris's account especially with Martin Harris being gone and I think we could take that at face value especially given the fact that we can show both the changes and how they kind of reflect the historicity of of what he's tying it to but yeah and and so I just wanted to point that out just to be fair um because I know a lot of people who are watching this might be like you're not giving both sides and I just want to say that yeah there are discrepancies in Charles anthon's account and I knowe that on the website um but obviously the focuses more on how Joseph Smith changes the story uh between the Book of Mormon to 1832 to 1838 it it follows that same kind of linear progression that you see with the first Vision the priesthood restoration where the story gets grander and grander and if if you look at it chronologically it actually makes sense as to how he's adding on um whereas if you just kind of look at it from a 2023 view backwards you don't necessarily see the way it's being you know enlarged and I think that's what we're trying to do here is to show just how much Joseph Smith Is embellishing Here Yeah if that makes sense but anyways here we go to the slide now I just that out yeah sorry about that so um that's good in in Martin you know again as I mentioned already this is being written in Martin Harris's voice but there's no account that comes directly from Harris regarding the visit I believe there's a secondhand uh newspaper account that that might be out there and so Joseph Smith is writing down his perspective of the visit 10 years after after it would happened and through the lens of fulfilling a prophecy in Isaiah as we talked about with the Book of Mormon so again look at the 1832 account above I meant earlier and you can see how much grander this visit has become in the six years since Joseph Smith first wrote the account in his autobiography which was already four years after it happened um in the 1832 visit there is no mention of I cannot read a sealed book nor is there any mention about Anon being told he can't see the book because it is sealed those were really important things because they're going to play so heavily into the story as we have it today and why would there be a mention of a sealed book because if anthon wanted to take a shot at translating the language Martin Harris could have showed him the unsealed portion the sealed portion of the book really makes no difference here and mentioning the sealed portion is Joseph Smith trying to fulfill Isaiah 29 even though as we've talked about already biblical Scholars are clear that Joseph Smith is completely misinterpreting Isaiah 29 in the first place but what makes it really interesting to me is the phrase I cannot read a sealed book was added after the initial 1838 draft of his history which shows that Joseph Smith was changing the historical account both to fulfill prophecy and bolster Authority and so if you're if you're watching this um the bottom clip is from the Joseph Smith paper project and if you look at it um you could see in really dark ink it'll say I informed him um it's small so I informed him that this uh that the were sealed um and then at the end it says I cannot read a sealed book and if you know it's in Darker ink and it's between the original draft so it's an addition to the history to fulfill that prophecy which I think is a really interesting um thing that Joseph Smith went back through and I need to add this because it's such an important element to basically as we've talked about already bolstering his own authority yeah that's to to use a modern word that's kind of sus it's it's in Darker ink and there's like an asterisk and like a little carrot kind of lookup kind of insert thing yeah and that's just really it's a really suspicious thing to be adding after the fact and and I think people don't fully maybe those who are newer to these issues don't understand the issue about his authority being challenged because this is actually a really important piece of the puzzle we've talked about it in previous episodes here on LDS discussions does anyone to give anyone want to give the 30 second summary of how Joseph Smith's Authority was being challenged at this point if anybody wants to jump in feel free there's I'm not sure I can to be honest RM what was there ever really a time when Joseph Smith's Authority wasn't being challenged is what I wonder but yeah there had been a debacle of course in Kirtland over the failure of the bank and Joseph Smith and Sydney rton had had to flee in early 1838 they headed for the other place where the Mormons were gathered in Missouri and they're down there now and things are bad as you know if you know your Missouri History if you paid attention to that in seminary so they're in a situation where they're gathered together there's a few different spots of them and there's a lot of people on the outside who are fighting with them this is the Missouri War period and they're fighting back the Mormons are fighting back and sometimes they're doing things to defend themselves that other highlevel members of the church are not agreeing with and there's all sorts of things that are going on and people are dissenting from the church high level leaders including witnesses to the Book of Mormon are descending from the church and once they announce a descenting Viewpoint then they become perceived as the enemies to the church and then they are sent packing out of the church and they are led to they are led to know in knowing certain terms that they are not wanted here whether that's orally or physically that that message is being communicated so yeah there's very much it's a lockdown it's a retrenchment kind of situation and Joseph Smith has to or at least it would be reasonable if Joseph Smith felt the need to reestablish his authority as the prophet Y and so the so the motive would be people are challenging my authority how do I make my authority more clear more strong more profound why don't I add add that I am a literal fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy why don't I add into you know this story sort of an even grander claim that I Joseph Smith am a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy is that kind of what what's going on I think about this so um who are the who are the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon right we got um Oliver cry David Whitmer and Martin Harris right Martin Harris is excommunicated in December of 1837 um David Whitner is excommunicated April 1838 and Oliver cry is excommunicated right around the same time in 1838 so all three of them are excommunicated within months of each other right before he writes his history and if you don't think that's going to cause waves in the church to have all three of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon or like the three Witnesses all being excommunicated and they were like run out of town this was not like a you know a friendly parting so that alone at that very time frame shows you why Joseph Smith now is saying okay I have all of that baggage of the people who were with me in the beginning gone I can rewrite the history however I want and that's why you're starting to see a lot of these changes being basically canonized because there's no one there to say that didn't happen and I want to read one thing really quick this is um from 1831 and this is in a the morning Courier in New York inquir this is an account um from Charles Butler who heard it from Martin Harris about the Anton visits so this is what he says uh Martin Harris with several manuscripts in his pocket went to the city of New New York and called upon one of the professors of Columbia College um this would you know be Anton for the purpose of showing them to him Harris says that the professor thought them very curious but admitted that he could not decipher them said he to Harris Mr Harris You' better go to the celebrated Dr Mitchell and show them to him show them to him he is very learned in these ancient languages and I have no doubt he will be G be able to give you some satisfaction um where does he live asked Harris he was told and off he posted with the Engravings from the Golden Plates to submit to Dr Mitchell Harris says that the doctor received him very politely looked at the Engravings made a learned dissertation of them compared them with the hieroglyphs discovered by cholon in Egypt in Egypt and set them down as the language of a people formerly in existence in the East but now no more and so that account is from Harris and of course Harris is going to spin this in a faith promoting way but even Harris in this account is saying that Anton could not decipher them so it just shows the when you start to get into these different accounts and and and when you look at just the polished 1838 after Martin Harris has run out of town it just it really rings off a lot of alarm Bells as to what Joseph Smith is doing with this story to basically bolster himself okay and the significance of Harris being run out of town is that he can't push back and say hang on that's not how it went yep yeah and we've already talked about David Whitmer publishing an entire pamphlet to all Witnesses or believer Bel in Christ where he's like hey all that stuff Joseph Smith claims about the mesic priesthood never happened you know what I mean like when you've got your core Witnesses all defecting and getting excommunicated for not agreeing with the way you're changing the story I mean in any other context that would be deeply problematic I think and I think it shows again Joseph Smith's uh determination just to get stuff sorted because he wasn't even bothering to try and get those who should have been his closest Inner Circle on board with these narrative changes and with these moving forward but if you're constantly aggrandizing your story MH you're going to alienate the people that were there when it was happening you know what I mean so those things are kind of incompatible yep all right Mike are we done with this slide yeah we can go to the next one okay so the next slide is a few final thoughts on the anthon visit yeah and this is just a couple of thoughts so there was a recently an episode by Carrie schz uh who goes by the backyard professor and he did an interview with Colby Townsen and if anyone um has been paying attention to kind of like Mormon scholarship kobby Townsen is doing some amazing work and he's done a lot of work recently on Isaiah and the Book of Mormon and so he just recently did an article with dialogue about um the third Isaiah Trio Isaiah or tro Isaiah um in the Book of Mormon and how he's actually found a lot of references which is really important to our earlier episodes but he did an episode specifically on Isaiah 29 and this is what's really interesting so Isaiah um 29 vers 11 and 12 is basically the whole core of this backdated prophecy and what kby talks about is how those are believed to be late additions to Isaiah which means that Joseph Smith is likely backdating a prophecy into verses of Isaiah that would not have been available on the brass plates because as we talked about um when Lehi left dudo and Trio Isaiah were not there so if this was a late addition it would have had to have been done before that which is I mean I would imagine unlikely and he had talked about how this is an area where even Scholars who don't necessarily like to split Isaiah up into multiple Isaias will tell you these verses are a late addition to the text um to the text because it changes from uh poetry to pros and then there's some other surrounding issues where they can kind of pinpoint that these verses are added and so that alone is a really big problem when you're trying to back date a prophecy into a late edition as we've talked about with other episodes and then second and this is why I had mentioned earlier um Joseph Smith first introduces the idea of Charles Anton writing a certificate in 1838 after Martin Harris was excommunicated uh which just happens to mirror the certificate given to Joseph by Michael Chandler uh with the book of Abraham in 1835 and I think this is really important and um the reason is that for those who watched our book of Abraham episodes um Michael Chandler is a traveling salesman and he's trying to sell the these mummies in this papy he's told there's this this church in in Ohio that might buy them and he goes and um of course Joseph Smith is like oh my goodness these are the the roles of Abraham and Joseph so Michael Chandler um basically watches Joseph Smith tell them what he thinks they are and he signs this document and the document says this is to make known to all who may be desirous concerning the knowledge of Mr Joseph Smith Jr in deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters in my possession which I have in many eminent cities shown to the most learned and from the information that I could ever learn or meet with I find that of Mr Joseph Smith junior to correspond in the most minute manners matters so basically Michael Chandler couldn't translate anything nobody could at that point and he's going to write the certificate because he's a Salesman he wants to sell these mummies and it helps Joseph Smith which helps him and now in 1838 in the new account with Charles Anon and Martin Harris it says he gave me a certificate certifying to the people of palmy that they were true characters and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct and it just shows I think that Joseph Smith and Kobe Townsen talks about this there um they translate the book of of Abraham Joseph Smith is using the certificate to bolster this idea that he was the only one who could really do it and they' charged people I think 25 cents to look at these mummies to look at the Scrolls and they use a certificate to show these people who are visiting that Joseph Smith is is the one who could translate it and now all of the sudden he sees the utility and the value in having a certificate from someone else who is considered to be an expert on the subject so when he's writing the story in 1838 I think it makes sense that he is mirroring that book Abraham time frame and saying if I could get that idea of a certificate into the Charles Anton account it will bolster my credibility but he doesn't have the certificate and so in this case I believe he's inventing the story of the certificate to mirror the book of Abraham but then obviously has to have it ripped up because they don't have it anymore and so I do think that he is using the the events and and his experiences with the book of Abraham to write rewrite the Charles Anon account years later with all of that kind of life experience to make sound both better and more credible and it also helps him uh deal with the fact that he no longer has the plates either so you know it least he had the originals for the book of Abraham but he doesn't have the plates either so if some expert has attested to the thing then is essentially an extra witness and he's as we've discussed bleeding Witnesses at this point yeah yeah Mike I think that that slide and what you said about it here has really made it clear to me Beyond disputation that there is no room in the LDS church for a catalyst Theory as it applies to either the book of Abraham or the Book of Mormon because that sucking sound you hear when you read these purported affidavit from Michael Chandler and also from Charles Anton is that this was a word forw translation that could be confirmed by non-mormon secular Scholars and therefore it must be a tight translation there is no room for those two purported certificates to be in the same room with the Catalyst Theory yeah and that's just it like it every time apologists want to say well it was a catalyst or it was a revelation because Joseph Smith couldn't translate you go back to all these early accounts and it's like no everybody was saying Joseph Smith was translating including Joseph including the early Witnesses and including these certificates there's no way around it unless you're just going to basically as I've said to people in the past you're basically ignoring all the evidence we have in the hope that there's evidence that we don't have that might pop up someday but yeah this there's no way around it it's it's like like you said it's beyond any doubt at this point when you have all these accounts lined up against each other um that this is supposed to be a tight word for word translation and the reason this is so striking to me right now as I'm listening to this Mike is because typically the Catalyst theory if you go far enough into it becomes ridiculous on its own terms but the idea is yeah Joseph Smith is not translating from the document instead he thinks he's translating from the document but actually God is beaming down this Revelation that has nothing to do with the document that Joseph Smith thinks he's translating and the apologists have to say he thinks he's translating because he's telling everybody in their dog that he's translating these documents in a customary translation normal use of the word meaning right but this goes beyond that we can't account for this by what I think is the strained theory that Joseph Smith is telling everybody he's translating he thinks he's translating but actually he's not translating because now we've got independent Scholars coming in and saying wait he's translating yep and yet it's even worse than that because we really don't have those Scholars validating we just have accounts written by bias sources that the scholar is validating that he's translating so it's like they have nowhere to run they have nowhere to hide this all whole account falls apart at every turn like I said Joseph Smith shows his intention that he thought he was translating by trying to then appeal to secular Scholars for Trans or that he wanted us to believe he wanted us to believe that he was translating right right well the problem is is that if you want to follow up with the Catalyst Theory your only go-to that I can think of is that Joseph Smith was not only mistaken he's also lying about what other secular Scholars said right and that becomes problematic on its own terms yeah yep yeah that's just it it's and it's like the Michael because from AP I could I could I've tried to channel my inner apologist here and I would say that they would say the Michael Chandler certificate is is meaningless because obviously Michael Chandler couldn't translate so he was just trying to give Joseph Smith something to sell him with so I'm assuming that's what they would say and then the Charles Anon one though is worse because as rfm just said to then say that uh Charles Anton never said that they were correct translation uh would mean that Joseph Smith made up the story so then they would have to say Charles Anton was lying and telling Martin Harris it was correct when it wasn't which it just it's one of those things where every time you do that you're just opening up more problems and so that's why we've done all these episodes where you're just like I constantly say it reminds me of those old cartoons where they're sweeping one part of bunch of crap under the rug and thinking they're cleaning their bedroom but then all of a sudden another part of the carpet just pops up with all the crap underneath it it's just like you cannot you cannot tackle all these at once and be consistent because if you try to do that you're going to see really quickly this all falls apart it's just it's it's demonstrably not what it claims to be and the only way around it is to basically just ignore everything that we know and and as I've heard a number of people say one of the biggest problems for Mormon history is the fact that they did Keep pretty good records and in this case we can see the evolution of this story because of the fact that they did we do have the records of of of the different accounts of the Charles Anton visit along with the Michael Chandler stuff so it's you can't get around it unless you just want to pretend it doesn't exist all right well let's go ahead now and we'll leave the anthon visit and we'll now enter into the last 116 Pages yeah and so this is one we did an entire episode on and I think it's one of our better episodes in the sense of a lot of people don't cover this in a lot of detail so I was really happy to get to tackle this but um as we talked about in that episode we have to remember that the Book of Mormon dictation um it it starts in mosiah it goes to the end and then Joseph Smith is going to go back to the beginning to backfill the Lost 116 pages and so because of that we showed in that episode that the end of The Book of Mormon um is known to the people at the beginning of the Book of Mormon but it's not known to the people in the middle of the book Mormon and it's because of the fact that the dictation order tells us that Joseph Smith went back to the beginning um and this is really important I think for this idea of kind of backdating Prophecy because in this case Joseph Smith is going to backdate a solution and so um as we talked about in that episode Joseph Smith is finishes the book of of Mormon and I think in the back of his head he's hoping they're going to get those pages back so he does not redo the pages at the beginning and so the Mormon Church's narrative today is that there's this small set of plates that was prepared uh for this exact exact problem and so um this is from their come following manual it said more than 2400 years in advance the Lord prepared to compensate for the Lost pages of the Book of Mormon um see first Nei chapter n and we covered this a lot so I don't want to go into it in too much detail I hope if you have not watched that episode you go back and watch it because I think it's a really important one um in showing how Joseph Smith could have composed The Book of Mormon um but there was a a website uh that I had referenced called lectures on doubt and they had done an article about the Lost plates of Nephi and it really talks about how Joseph Smith is gonna backdate this effectively Into the Book of Mormon after he starts it again because he up until the end of the Book of Mormon he doesn't know what he's going to do and so this is a really cool paragraph from that article and I don't know if anybody else would like to read it um if Nemo you want to read it I'll throw you under the bus again from a write up on lectures on doubt the the idea of a second smaller set of plates doesn't appear until first Nephi which comes after mosiah through Moroni in dictation order there Nephi describes his record as an abridgment of his father's record later Nephi describes this new record as not the plates upon which I make a full account of the history of my people he goes on to say that the larger more complete volume he has given the name of Nephi wherefore they are called the plates of Nephi this is also the first time he describes the large plates as being more secular in comparison to the small plates he does not give the small plates a name here reinforcing that the plates of Nephi are not the small plates the secular versus spiritual nature of the plates is repeated in first Nephi 19 there Nephi reiterates the expectation that those plates are to be passed down from generation to generation he also mentions that the smaller plates may have other wise purposes which purposes are known unto the Lord a koi hint that the plates were prepared specifically to account for the future lost 116 page manuscript and so this is kind of a long uh winded not a long winded but it's a a more complicated way of saying that Joseph Smith doesn't even invent this idea of a second set of plates until after he restarts The Book of Mormon to backfill the 116 Pages which tells you that Joseph Smith did not really think of the idea of small plates until after that and he's trying now to use The Book of Mormon to basically backfill and solve the problem that was created with the loss of the 116 pages and I think that's really important for this episode because it shows how Joseph Smith is using the Book of Mormon and and we'll talk about this in our our other three episodes on Revelation he uses the Book of Mormon and Revelation to try to solve these problems that he gets into because if he could put it into the word of of God or the words of a past Prophet it then all of a sudden would make a reader go oh my goodness I can't believe God thought of 2400 years ago when in reality it's Joseph Smith thinking about it as he's trying to figure out how to complete the Book of Mormon after losing those pages so I don't know if anyone has any thoughts on that but I just thought that was really interesting for just kind of the way he's using the Book of Mormon to deal with events that are happening at the exact same time it's being written don't add anything only that I have difficulty envisioning what large plates versus small plates look like I mean the common understanding is that they would be larger in dimension mhm than the small plates and yet both of them are apparently there in the top oneir that is not actually sealed and based upon the accounts I have read from the witnesses who said they saw the plates there's no indication of there being a differ size plate up there on the top and then some smaller plates which would be you know obviously recessed but then we're talking about plates pre uh Mormons abridgement right so we're talking about there's this idea as far as I understand it I could be completely wrong there's this idea that you know the brass plates came out and then there's the plates of Nei also um there's these multiple plates and records that got dragged all around America before then Mormon sat down and went right a better will put it into a volume yes so I think that's what he's referring to right so you'd have the large plates uh which are the the main plates which is going to end up being I guess the book of Lehi is what they trans mography into but then directly that presumably you have the small plates which have the part that now recounts it from a more spiritual perspective and is what we actually have in first and second Nephi Etc all contained within the gold plates that Joseph Smith actually had hold of as he says because they've been Rewritten down yeah so you got big plates then you got small plates and then I guess you go back to the regularized plates again but nobody mentions anything of that in any of the descriptions I've read yeah and and the um one of the r I think it's DNC 10 um it talks about how God is giving Joseph Smith the solution to the problem right and the Revelation makes it sound like Joseph Smith is actually going to translate from the non abrid plates so in other words Joseph Smith would actually be translating directly from the large plates and um that's a really interesting thing we covered in the episode because if he was going to do that then he would have actually had more material than one than the Lost 116 pages so it seems like when he actually gets back to actually doing what he's supposed to do in this Revelation which is to not retranslate he then invents the idea of the small plates I think because he's trying to figure out a way to kind of get this done um because the initial Revelation makes no mention of a small set of plates but it does talk about how he's going to translate from the unbridge plates to get the material back and so it just shows uh kind of like with the Anon visit when you actually look at the details it gets not just messy but contradictory uh contradictions Galore and it doesn't make sense from just a logical standpoint because why is God telling Joseph Smith in the revelation to go back to basically the underbridge plates then all of a sudden the book of Mor they like no no I prepared these small plates you know thousands of years earlier that I didn't mention in the earlier Revelation it just makes no sense it's not it's not all coming together very well for no for Joseph really um and and again it's it's weird because Joseph Smith controls all this and so you're kind of looking at his fingerprints throughout it where he's you can you can see very clearly where he's going okay right well now I need to add this element to make it work but the problem is as he adds elements they contradict each other and they don't line up with what he' previously stated which is the issue with a sort of narrated text as well this idea that he's just verbalizing his text and it's then getting written down is that he's got this s of Mind map but you you can't juggle all these things yeah and so this is that I mean we don't need to go into this too much detail but this is from DNC 10 so God says behold they have only got a part or an abridgement of the account of Nephi behold there are many things engraven upon the plates of Nephi which do throw greater views upon my gospel therefore it is wisdom in me that you should translate this first part of the Engravings of Nephi and send forth in this work and so it looks here like God is basically saying you're going to translate from a bigger um set of work as opposed to a smaller one and yet when he actually gets to writing the replacement part of the Book of Mormon he then invents this idea of the small set of plates which really doesn't mesh with DNC 10 and it just shows that Joseph Smith is kind of now trying to use the Book of Mormon to effectively give corroboration for what he's doing even though it contradicts the early Revelations which kind of mirrors what he's doing with some of these other areas such as the Anton visit as well because the justification I heard was that essentially the reason that there's that there was always quote unquote overlap between what was written on the 116 last pages and then what was written in the book of Nephi so don't worry um because you know Nephi's got it covered that's fine um but made it clear that that wasn't what was going to happen does that make sense you know it it wasn't it wasn't those plates that were going to be translated from there was it was never intended to be to be covered up that way because they were never mentioned it was a larger body of work until these small plates come out of nowhere yeah exactly and so all of a sudden it's like you know again it be like saying if you took an abridgment of a book let's just say Moby Dick and you you're working off cliff notes of omom dick and then all of a sudden someone stole those the notes you had and then God came to you and said you know what don't worry about the cliff notes just use Moby Dick you'll have more information there anyways and then as you're doing it you're like you know what I found a super um different Cliff's Notes version that's even more smaller micro notes you know that I'm going to work from and and it doesn't mesh with the earlier story and so it shows to me that he's using the Book of Mormon to basically create this idea that God created this this small set of plates which makes sense if you don't understand the translation um timeline of the Book of Mormon uh but once you start to to not the dictation order and time it up with the revelations he's getting about the L 116 Pages it makes absolutely no sense and it certainly looks like Joseph Smith is giving in like a backdated solution to a problem um that he's still working out in his head because he doesn't know how to finish the book after those pages go missing and it also um sorry it also makes sense to the view that he had of plates that they're just very easy to engrave and that this is just the way PE it's almost in in jph his mind this is the way people wrote things down whereas you know so you've got these multiple plates you got the brass plates you got the place in Nei you've got those that are all then going to make their way around and then they're going to get put into the gold plates what rfm has put forward is that you would think logically what the gold plates are made up of is those plates just get bound together stacked up that's what the abridgement process is or or what Mormon does by compiling This Record but what's actually posited as far as I understand is that these plates that already exist that were made of brass and other materials then get dumped on Mormon along with some other records and some other you know Scrolls and whatnot and he then goes through the whole process of inscribing it all on a set of gold plates that then get buried to be preserved for the future um so it's just why would you be doing that when you've already gone through the painstaking effort to engrave sets of plates previously to then create a whole new set because Mormon found them with all the plates he found the small plates of Nephi and he found that that it was just so wonderful and inspiring and spiritual that he decided he was going to include it there even though it was a redundant already there yeah yes yeah yeah and it you know not to get too basic but it Bears noting here that there's no evidence that Native Americans wrote you know any characters by engraving on plates during the time period of the Book of Mormon uh no evidence of the smelting you know or Metal Manufacturing or mining facilities that would have been required to do that um and uh and certainly not on gold inbound you know ringed kind of like book like uh things because the Gutenberg Press and books wouldn't be invented for another several hundred if not you know thousands of years after the time period so just this whole idea of of etching plates in n in in Latin America in book-like uh format with ringed sheets of of you know writing is completely anachronistic Am I Wrong nope no that's that's 100% correct yeah yeah so I mean we're arguing silliness upon silliness a little bit I think yeah I mean and I think that this episode really is a way to in a lot of ways kind of transition from all of the work we've done before to get into the actual Revelations from Joseph Smith Beyond The Book of Mormon but as I talked about at the beginning this episode from rfm when he did it was so impactful to me because it really helps you to see just how much even in 1828 1829 Joseph Smith was willing to use the voice of God or the voice of these past profits to get um his own credibility established and in this case to solve problems uh by backdating it you know that 2400 years in the past when it doesn't even correspond to the revelations he's claiming from God in the months leading up to it and it's just to see the messiness and to see the way he's kind of doing it on the Fly um it really shows you to me that this is not some ancient text that is being carefully Abridged by Mormon it is Joseph Smith um scrambling because he doesn't know how to replace these pages and so he's going to backdate it into the Book of Mormon so that if you're reading it you'll go oh my goodness I can't believe God had already sorted this out and actually knew that Martin Harris was going to fulfill yet another prophecy um in losing the pages rfm do is there anything you want to comment about this last 116 Pages Slide the way I would bumper sticker this is that in several respects the voice of the Book of Mormon contradicts the voice of church history in what way through ways that we've already been talking about so that was just trying to bumper sticker this in a conclusion that you can put on your car and then we can go on to the next thing if that's what you've a mind to yeah that's brilliant okay and the next slide actually has rfm we're quoting rfm that's very meta so the question is do we have Nemo read rfm or do we have rfm read rfm could I do a good impression of rfm is the question could I do a good impression of Nemo is the question oh read it but in my voice rfm that's what you should do all right I'll do that do you want to set the slide up the specific first Nephi yeah so at the beginning of the episode we talked about uh The Book of Daniel and the reasons that can date The Book of Daniel so specifically is because he provides a series of specific Revelations that span multiple centuries but then the author of the book starts getting the predictions wrong and that tells Scholars that the book was written after the specific prophecies um that were correct but right before the ones that start you know ending up to be failure prophecies and so in the Book of Mormon we could see the same pattern in first Nephi which as we just mentioned is part of the replacement text of the Lost 116 pages and the reason this is important to note is that this was was written after Joseph Smith had already finished the ending of The Book of Mormon meaning at this point the author of the text can write in prophecies that he knows are going to be fulfilled by the end of the book because he had already written the end of the book and so um this is where rfm can uh give his best Nemo impression from his own earlier podcast okay again from Radio free Mormon is this where I am yes third the reason I bring this up the Book of Daniel is because as I was learning about this 15 years ago I started getting uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach because I recognized that there was something very similar that was going on in the Book of Mormon itself and specifically in the vision of Nephi which is recorded in the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi chapters 11-14 now the text of the Book of Mormon puts this prophecy approximately 600 years before Christ and yet as we know the Book of Mormon did not appear in any kind of published form until 1829 when it was dictated by Joseph Smith and then published for the first time the following year in 1830 so we have a book The Book of Mormon that first appears in 1830 but it is quoting prophecies from Nephi who lived 600 years before Christ or before the Common Era all right what's it like to quote from such an intelligent person I just hope I'm right about all this I mean it's been a few years since I researched it no I think I made every e every effort to be correct and it's sounding good so it must be true Mike do we want him to continue or do you want to pause there Mike no he could he could read that second the the last paragraph of the slide okay go ahead our friend go and continue one thing I've learned from Joseph Smith is that if you say something with enough certainty it becomes true okay all right keep it going now for chapters 11 12 and 13 now that's going to be in first Nephi of course I'm just going to look at the headnotes of each chapter I'm not going to go into detail but we will see that all of these things that are seen by Nephi 600 years before Jesus Christ came are things that Nephi could not have known except by divine revelation and the gift of Prophecy but it would have been an easy matter for Joseph Smith or whoever wrote the Book of Mormon when it came off the press in 1830 all of these things would have been known by a person living at that time period Do you want to do you want to summarize what you're saying there rfm I think what I'm saying is that you've got first Nephi who from a purported position 600 years BCE is seeing all of these things that happen that are important in American history and also religious history but mainly the American history with Columbus discovering America with the colonists coming over here from England with there being war between England and the colonists and the colonist win yay and then all of a sudden the prophecies become very vague and generalized they're really spe they're really specific up until the time that Joseph Smith is alive and then anything beyond when he's alive in the Book of Mormon just become very very vague and you know anything could fit this so all I'm saying is that the only way that Nephi could have seen this would have been through prophecy and vision but on the other hand anybody alive in Joseph Smith they would have known the same thing and as far as a Smoking Gun goes with the Book of Mormon There's No Smoking Gun that's going to convince everybody but a textual critic who is proficient in textual criticism with the Bible or other text would look at this passage in the Book of Mormon the vision of Nephi and say okay I can tell from looking at that just like we did with Daniel I can tell from looking at that that this book or at least this portion of this book was written right after the point where the prophecies stop becoming specific and start becoming General in other words it is written shortly after the Revolutionary War and since it is so favorable to the colonists and they are put in the good light then it would further identify it as being written by someone in the United States or someone with United States sympathies I mean that's how how we know really that the Book of Mormon isn't true is that it doesn't side with the correct side well done what did you do with that by the way not to take this off on a totally different tangent what did you do with that as a believing English Latter Day St Nemo um you know we we being a being a Mormon growing up in England you get used to American exceptionalism um but the thing we always reassured ourselves with was it may be the promised land but where the promised people because at one point in the church's history there were more members from the United Kingdom than there were American members by quite a significant margin we came we we We rescued the church if you hadn't come come over and stolen us all away from our villages to America the Mormon Church would not have survived that's that's how we dealt with that okay I just I just came up with a term in my mind in my lgbtq research there's this idea of internalized homo negativity where where LGBT people are taught to loath themselves so I think I wonder if the Mormon church has nurtured within its British members internalized is it Anglo negativity is that what it would be called Nemo no you you absolutely can't do that to British people we I mean we do it to ourselves we hate ourselves and our own country but no no the Mormon Church didn't do that to us the we did you're too you're too proud you're too proud to be British there's no such thing as internalized Anglo negativity no not at all okay got it got it um Mike should we should the next slide is it is the next slide a good illustration of the points rfm was making yeah he kind of was hitting on a lot of them so we could go through real quick all right so this is a this is like making specific now a specific example of the Book of Mormon kind of like fulfilling its own prophecies is that right yeah so this is going to be basically rfm looking at the chapter 11 heading of about all of the things that Nephi is going to prophesy of and so it it kind of you know Taps into what he was just saying about how specific it is but obviously it's worth worth looking at all right you want to take it you want to take take it on rfm I'm here okay chapter 11 The Heading says Nephi sees the spirit of the Lord and has shown in Vision the tree of life so once again this is reading from the little italicized chapter headings in the Book of Mormon he sees the mother of the Son of God and learns of the condescension of God that's Jesus coming down to earth or actually in the original Book of Mormon that was God coming down to earth it was later modified to be the Son of God but going on with the heading he sees the baptism Ministry and crucifixion of the Lamb of God he sees also the call and Ministry of the twel Apostles of the Lamb so this is a detailed prophecy that Nephi is getting 600 years before Christ but it's first being published 1830 1800 30 years after Christ once again details not knowable by Nephi but definitely knowable and known to Joseph Smith and everybody in his community yeah well I just I just added the note which we you basically just said but this is these are Revelations and prophecies giving in such specificity that a scholar could look at it and say the absolute earliest this could be written uh would be after the gospels were written um and then what dates us to the 1820s is the inclusion of the Tree of Life vision which we talked about in earlier episodes um which is Joseph Smith incorporating the vision of his own father which tells you that this could not have been written basically before Joseph Smith's lifetime which is really important from a scholar scholarly perspective of trying to date the text so if I can if I can kind of reflect what I'm understanding here a Believer a believing Orthodox Mormon this is actually going to strengthen their faith because it's like wow the book of Mormon's so miraculous it prophesied of of later occurrences even early in in the book wow what a miraculous book but so so if somebody just is is bound and determined to be an orthodox Mormon believer they're going to see this as miraculous but if somebody's willing to set that down for a second step aside and say from a textual criticism standpoint it are there traces here of of the book of Mor you know of Joseph backdating prophecies even within the book of of Mormon um there of the Book of Mormon text itself there's ample evidence that that he was doing it especially once you understand that he wrote first Nephi after he wrote what is it mosiah on he came back to first Nephi because the L 116 pages had been lost and he had to rewrite the beginning of the book to make up for the the loss of the 116 pages is that did I summarize that decently Mike yeah I mean I think so and that really is just kind of the the Crux of it which is that this stuff is so specific that it really dates it to Joseph Smith's lifetime beyond the beyond the biblical prophecies the fact he's pulling um stuff from his own life and putting it into the voice of God or the voice of of a prophet it it could not have been written any earlier than Joseph Smith's life unless you want to take the approach of a Believer and say that the Book of Mormon was incredibly uh prophetic until Joseph Smith's Lifetime and then it just completely stops which which is an approach that we all took as Believers um but yeah from a scholar standpoint this is the easiest way to date The Book of Mormon Nemo did you want to add anything on the slide uh yeah just to add a little titbit to what um rfm said in the quote which is that you know it was originally the condescension of God um that was originally first Nei 3 in the 1830 edition of book of woman before the there was a lot more subdivisions when it read more like pros um and for example uh in first n53 it says and he said unto me behold the Virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God after the manner of the flesh and then in the 1837 Edition so the second edition of The Book of Mormon you get and he said unto me behold the Virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh so the mother of the Son of God so you're getting a change in theology there uh which blows out very quickly the idea that there was only ever grammatical changes between the first and second editions of the book on woman yep yeah that's good anything you want to add rfm on that slide no I'm fine thank you okay let's go on let's go ahead and go on maybe to the next uh slide which I guess is another example of backdating um do we want to have rfm continue Mike yeah I mean he can it's just uh this one I only still one a paragraph from him so chapter 12 now I'm reading the heading from the slide chapter 12 The Heading says that Nephi sees Invision the land of promise the righteousness iniquity and downfall of its inhabitants the coming of the Lamb of God among them how the TW disciples and the twel apostles shall judge Israel the loathsome and filthy state of those who dwindle in unbelief yeah and this is why the 116 Pages stuff that we talked about earlier is so important because at this part of the vision Nephi is being shown basically the unfolding of the events of the Book of Mormon which he knows because he has already written the ending and so um again because Martin Harris lost 116 pages Joseph continues for mosiah goes to the end and then fills it back at the beginning and so this means that in this part of the vision Nephi can effectively State The Book of Mormon narrative and then use the remainder of the of the Book of Mormon to fulfill the back data prophecies being given in this Vision because the author already has written the ending and so I just noted like it's like writing the star the Star Wars prequels uh foreshadowing what happened you know in in the already released you know episodes what four five and six and then you could call it prophecy that oh my goodness can you believe the prequels knew that you know Darth Vader was going to happen or something like that so um it just it shows that when you've already written the ending it's a lot easier to backdate uh this idea of like a prophecy or or some sort of foreshadowing in the beginning because you've already done it yeah Nemo I I just find that whole Vision very problematic I mean Nephi's locked a guy's head off to stop a nation dwindling unbelief and then Angel shows him that basically that was pointless because the nation's going to dwindle in unbelief anyway so it's yeah even though Joseph's doing all these really clever things to take the end of the book and then put it in Nephi's mouth so that you know Nei seems really prophetic even though he'd just written that bit he still can't get these basic things right because there's internal contradictions even within this like within chapters of each other yeah that's a good point rfm anything you want to add well I was just going to think about that part that somebody wrote a really important excellent essay about why that happened the way that Nemo said wait I think that was me anyway and I did it on a podcast a while back I don't know it's just a it's just a fun textual analysis but um I did have something else in my mind but then Nemo started talking and I began to be lulled by the charms of his his accent of his accent I'll just say um I'll you know I'll just say for me um you know at a at a meta level at a psych local level this this is kind of uh this whole dynamic of backdating Prophecy to reinforce Faith really REM it's reminiscent for me of this whole psych psychological phenomenon of you know a millennialism Jeffs prophesying that the world is going to end or that Jesus is going to come at a certain year and then the year comes and goes and Jesus doesn't come and the way that the high demand uh religious leaders or cult leaders spin that they can actually make it so even though their prophecy failed the their followers end up believing more strongly than they would have if the prophecy had come true that's how powerful and that's how much of command uh cult leaders can have on their followers they can turn an actual lemon into Faith lemonade for their followers and that that's what Nemo I'm glad you're laughing because it means I'm striking a court here that's kind of a little bit what I think Joseph is doing here he's like writing the Book of Mormon he bungle you know he's got 116 Pages written he's bungled it they're lost he's got to go on and and continue writing it out any way but then he's able to turn that lemon into a Lemonade by when he has to go back and replace the 116 Pages at the end of the process he's gonna just write in some prophecies and all of a sudden all his followers are GNA be like wow look how miraculous The Book of Mormon is it prophesies the ending of The Book of Mormon at the very beginning it's even more miraculous now Nei I mean Nemo why were you why were you laughing well because it just brought to mind the idea that you know people talk about how the Defenders the book of moment talk about how it has this consistent narrative this consistent story all the way through which would have been way more difficult for Joseph to keep as he orally dictated a book from his mind but the proximity of the end to then the way he writes the beginning like you said he's taken this problem and used it to actually make a solution so if members understood that that actually the beginning was written after the end it would make it less it would make the book of moment less miraculous but that point is never emphasized or refocused on particularly because like you said Joseph took this lemon of of losing these pages and turned it into lemonade of well I can now because I've just finished dictating this last part I'm very familiar with what happens so I can now make the person at the beginning of the book know exactly what's going on yeah yeah and Mike we we talk a lot about that about how specificity in the replacement to the 116 pages in increased a lot relative to the the names and dates and times and places and specificity for you know the remainder of the book post loss of 116 pages is that is that right Mike which episode was that well okay so we did the episode on the 116 Pages which I think is like maybe the sixth or seventh or fifth it's it's early and I honestly think it's one of the most important ones we did because a lot of other podcasts don't cover it as much and the the fact is when you look at how the text at the beginning um differs from from the text like starting back in mosiah you could show the dictation order which everybody agrees to now most people I think every Church scholar admit will agree to the fact that he starts in mosiah finishes and then goes back and and fills in the beginning and it just shows um kind of what you said imagine you dictate is your first ever production of like scripture and you you have to orally dictate you can't make a lot of changes because of the fact that the scribes need to believe this is coming as direct translation and then it gets lost as much as that sucks it allows you to fix any of the things you weren't happy with and at that point you've probably fleshed out the story a lot more than you did when you first started and so for Joseph I think it did give him a lot more freedom within the text um to to to fix the things he might have wanted to have done that he didn't do the first time around and to be able to tie it to the end in a way that is so seamless as Nemo said because he had just written it it really does bookend The Book of Mormon in this really um kind of Majestic Way if you read it as a Believer because it does feel like oh my goodness they know hundreds of years earlier exactly what's going to happen and then it actually happens because it's on these records when in reality you're writing you're writing the beginning after the ending so you already know what happened and so it it does give Joseph Smith a lot of freedom and a big chance to do a doover um on anything he might not have been thrilled with as well and that's specifically because of the way that he was doing it because if if you were like you know talking or whatever and you can sit and write your law you can write the history you can write all this stuff out and arrange it and get it all how you want it then this is not particularly skillful at all this is just good writing if you want to have a story where the character is prophetic then you would have everything laid out and you would know yourself as the author what's going on at the end so you'd very easily write it into the beginning but it's because of the oral dictation of this book and the way in which like you said Joseph couldn't make any changes or edits particularly and he had to keep just letting it come out as a stream of Consciousness that he planned in his head possibly using some notes whatever that's what makes this significant just want to make that super clear rfm any final any final points you want to make about uh your previously shared wisdom uh yeah just a personal story which is as a true believing member with a testimony of the Book of Mormon as authentic scripture it was meaningful to me when especially when Mormon comes in and the words of Mormon right and he says hey I'm Mormon from the end of this book and I'm writing this here and I'm letting you know I found these great plates and things have gone to things have gone really bad uh in the time that I'm living at the end of the civilization everybody gets destroyed but I'm including these here because I think they're they're great these small plates of Nephi that was always meaningful to me because I got the feeling from that that this is a real person who really existed at the end of the timeline of the Book of Mormon who is now coming in here in the words of Mormon much earlier than the end of The Book of Mormon and saying this is the way things happen so it's struck me as something that showed the Book of Mormon to be true and then to find out this mosiah priority this whole idea that Joseph Smith began translating The Book of Mormon as we have it today with mosiah and then to the end at Moroni then coming back around to the beginning with Nephi second Nephi as you've talked about the the vision that Nephi has about the end of his people as well and then right up to words of Mormon which is probably about the last thing that Joseph Smith translated all of a sudden what seemed a faith promoting aspect of the Book of Mormon became less so to me it was a cause of disappointment to me yeah yeah and and that's um uh Brett manaf had done has done a ton of work on the 116 pages and stuff and it when I read that I was floored because it just shows how the the middle prophets don't really know um the ending with anywhere near the specificity as as the beginning prophets do and we covered this in our episode but it's just this is a just a really quick thing I wanted to read from uh Brent mf's work on it he says um you know enveloping is particularly evident in the discussion of the Advent of Jesus for example early in the narrative Nephi relates that Lehi an Angel and the prophets had all predicted that Jesus would be born 600 years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem however subsequent Book of Mormon prophets seem unaware of these EXT extraordinary Oracles in a nephite Revival King Benjamin comments that the time cometh and is not far distant that the Lord shall come down from heaven and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay that's in mosiah 35 um and he says this common is surprising since the scriptures he possess presumably told him this would not occur for over 120 years um Alma speaks of Jesus's Advent in similar general terms the Kingdom of Heaven is soon at hand the time is not far distant not many days hence and the day of salvation draws n um Elma sincerely hopes that it might be in his day um his reticence or inability to disclose Jesus's birthday is explicable in his admission um as he says we know not how soon um yet all the early prophets of the Book of Mormon know exactly when it's going to happen and so these are the things that show you how Joseph Smith is backdating the ending of The Book of Mormon into the beginning because the middle has no idea about the end or the beginning that's really the best way to date when this is happening and also to pinpoint the fact that is likely you know written by Joseph Smith because of of all of these details that are just loaded in the Book of Mormon that are all pointing right at him can I like sum that up real quick because I feel like I've understood that it's essentially what you're saying is Alma was saying oh I'm not sure I'm not sure when Christ's going to come you know I'm hoping it's soon I'm hoping it's my lifetime but all the prophets before him from the beginning of the Book of Mormon knew when it was going to happen they were making distinct predictions about exactly when and what would happen so he would have had access to those scriptures so why didn't he know too yeah exactly okay yeah that just tells you that the it should once you understand that that the dictation order and then you start seeing those details it's like okay it totally makes sense that Joseph Smith now in the beginning is able to backfill all of this stuff to make it seem this Majestic prophetic calling but it doesn't work because the middle prophets have no idea what about these things so it tells you that there's a mass it's not an issue of these are on two sets of plates that are being kind of done with different um focuses it's telling you that the middle people have no idea not just that the small plates were done but all about what all of these earlier prophets are saying and and that is as big a red flag as you can get that there's something going on here these middle prophets weren't reading their scriptures yep well right and also there's that hugely dramatic event described in third Nephi chapter 1 where all the Believers that Jesus is going to come are set to get executed by the non-believers who have apparently taken power in the government and it's just like nobody knows when this is going to happen but they believe it's going to come and they believe it fervently and then on the day of execution lo and behold the star the new Star appears in the sky and they are Vindicated and set free so yeah nobody knows when he's coming apparently except for Nephi yep so there didn't need to be all that drama but then how else would Joseph have built that suspension that you know that suspensive device that he put literarally speaking you there's a device of suspense there he's creating some drama in the book he can't create that drama RI actually you know they they they do indeed know or should have known because of the previous prophets yeah I'll just I'll just say to kind of cap off this section that you know when you meet someone like a Brent metcafe or a a Colby Townsen or a David bavo um and you realize how incredibly intelligent and scholarly and meticulous and honest they are you ask yourself why would they dedicate decades if not you know entire careers and lives to like analyzing biblical or Book of Mormon or book of Abraham texts and you realize that that you know when you think about the hard Sciences like the biological sciences you know someone would dedicate a life to DNA study because DNA can prove whether or not a murderer is a murderer like there are real implications for hard Sciences in ter you know if you can figure out how cells work you can cure cancer and save lives like there's a hardness to the hard sciences that in some ways I believe attracts our sometimes our best and our brightest minds I think of texal criticism like that because this feels to me I'm thinking about some of our viewers and listeners that are like man we're really in the Weeds now like we're really digging into stuff that almost like are we are we going too much in the weeds but then but then you think about a bavo or a Townsen or a metcafe they go into the weeds because this really really does prove in almost like a a analogous to a biological science this really does show whether the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation or is not because once you get into the weeds like this you can really find the fingerprints that show that this isn't what it claims to be that's what it means to me I know you didn't you didn't like me bringing up the uniom last time um but I am going to bring it up again in that textual analysis is what helped catch him you know these things are important these studies of of of text they have legitimate real world applications and so to a believing member who would maybe say oh well if you have to look into it this much then you don't have enough faith and you just need to have more faith I would actually argue that looking into it at this level of depth is important to understanding what it is you are actually reading and whether you should put your faith in it or not because you should put your faith faith in things after you've exhausted your kind of analytical faculties so that's why going into the weeds like this is important at least from my perspective yeah I think so and I and I get that so much where people say the book Abraham is obviously the biggest sample say well you have to have Faith because if Joseph Smith had gotten the translation correct there'd be no need for Faith because You' know he's a prophet and it's like you kind of roll your eyes CU you're like well otherwise the outside of that is to say well then God set Joseph Smith up to look like a fraud in order to bring more people to his church which makes absolutely no sense and to your point Nemo and I've said this before on these on these episodes but you know to me um I was raised in a Protestant background that I converted but basically the idea of Faith was the same within both elements to me I was always taught faith is is a belief in what we cannot know for sure and what we cannot see for sure and it's not belief in spite of what we can see and so this idea that you should have faith in spite of the fact that you know the claims that the church has made are false that that's not Faith that's something entirely different and it would be like you know um you know if you if you're married and you say well um I have faith that my my husband is faithful and then you find a hotel receipt with another woman and then you're like I still have faith because if I if I trust this receipt that he was with another woman then then I won't have faith in it's like well yeah that that's what evidence does evidence makes you shift your belief based on what you can know so I mean I just I I I get what Nemo is saying because that is a very common response but I just think that that is not what faith was ever intended to be um it's only kind of taught that way by people who have a need or desire to keep you in that system um and that doesn't just apply to Mormonism so I I do think that's an area where I I push back heavily on the idea that that faith is supposed to um have us doubt the evidence that we can all see yeah yeah well let's let's go to the next slide now I think we've covered this well the next slide is a really really significant tell for those who were open-minded about you know backdating prophecies so Mike do you want to talk about the Book of Mormon predicting US History through Joseph's timeline yeah and so this is just like um one of those things where you get to chapter 13 and all of a sudden you know the Book of Mormon just gets so incredibly specific in its prophecies and then all of a sudden you're going to see it punt directly to the Book of Revelation so they talk about Columbus arriving in America that's first Nephi um chapter 13: 10-2 and it says white you know basically it's white settlers obtaining the land of their inheritance uh from the Native Americans and you know after 1492 BC as more settlers came to America leading to the creation of colonies um and then you've got the revolution War uh which is obviously something that happens between 1775 and 1783 that's where we took care of Nemo's friends um and uh you know and then all of a sudden it prophesies of the coming forth of the Bible and the Book of Mormon in America so that's now in in verses 20 to 42 and so obviously that's hard to date specifically but the Geneva Bible was the bi the first Bible brought to America around 1620 with the pilgrims um the King James Bible would be brought over shortly um after in the mid-1600s and of course the Book of Mormon is released in 1830 after being produced in 1829 um they prophesy of the great and abominable church and the Church of the Lamb of God um this again is hard to like date as it's kind of vague but um this prophecy has no anchor in historicity um and then following a specific uh history of America from 1492 to 1783 the author of the book of Book of Mormon falls back to the very vague prophecies that are no longer about historical events but about religious movements and so um it just shows that all of a sudden is is rfm said at the beginning once you get past the Revolutionary War which is you know we'll say 1783 it's over um The Book of Mormon really has nothing specific to say outside of um Joseph Smith's own kind of Lifetime with the Book of Mormon and obviously we'll get to he prophesies of himself um and and one note that I find interesting is that it talks about the Apostle John uh will write the Book of Revelation in the Book of Mormon um Scholars date The Book of Revelation to about 96 CE um and as I discussed be sorry earlier this prophecy confuses the John identified in the Book of Revelation with the Apostle John which is another mistake by Joseph Smith in not understanding biblical scholarship because the John who writes the book of Revelation is not the same who writes the Gospel of John um which again tells you that the writer of this part of the Book of Mormon does not understand the material that he's working with yeah that that error seems highly highly problematic in and of itself ins signific um Nemo did you have a quick reaction uh to to the slide no particular other than it follows a pattern of of it follows a pattern of Joseph Smith not understanding biblical scholarship you know that Johan language that David bavo talked about in the last episode we did yeah yeah um rfm you you may have missed a bit of this is there anything anything you wanted to say about this slide once again just registering another disappointment is that obvious viously Joseph Smith was not in a place or time where he had access to the kind of biblical scholarship that we know about today that's been mentioned about the John who writes the book of Revelation who is actually identified with the name John but not John the Apostle these niceties were not known to him and it would be more faith affirming if Joseph Smith said things that may have seemed out of place in his day that ended up being matched by scholarship as it continues unfold and increase instead time and again what we seem to see is his saying things and writing things that were quite well received and understood and accepted in his day but that AS Scholarship increases his teachings become outdated well because what you've just described there rfm is legitimate prophecy that's what he would have been engaged in if he had if he had made acknowledgments uh about the unknown author of The Book of John for example uh and spoken out about that against the prevailing Tradition at the time that they knew who it was then that would be legitimate prophecy and he would go on to be Vindicated um but it's like Joseph wasn't quite capable of of planting a tree that he would never sit in the shade of to look at the old proverb you know he always had to just work with what was around him with the existing trees right and like we all do right he was an Eclectic aggregator but not a prophet that I can tell no yeah oh go ahead no I was just going to say when you continually throughout the Book of Mor in the book of Abraham and his Revelations make these really I don't want to say they're basic errors because in his time they didn't know they were errors but when you make what we now know to be basic biblical scholarship errors it tells you that this is not coming from a Divine Source because otherwise at least some of them like Nemo said Joseph Smith would have pushed back against which at the time would have been revolutionary would have been controversial but today every General Conference that that would lead uh that would either be right before the opening prayer or be right after be like this is what Joseph got right bam check it you know but instead we're stuck sitting here going why is Joseph Smith constantly getting things wrong that were believed in the 1820s and 30s and and I think that at some point as rfm said he he's great at at taking information and compiling it but he's not great at actually seeing anything that wasn't available to him in his in his lifetime right even a small example of that is Joseph Smith making the common mistake of identifying the author of The epistle to the Hebrews as Paul now that's very commonly done in this church and outside of this church and as recently or as early as I think it was the third Century with uus the church historian he was already on record as saying we've got no idea who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews actually I think he said God only knows who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews but we get to Joseph Smith and in some kind of uh context where he's not talking about authorship of the book of Hebrews he just refers to a passage in the book of Hebrews and cites it to Paul right so he's making that common error that's okay it's not a big deal what ends up happening though is that Bruce armoni in his doal new testament commentary three volume series takes that identification by Joseph Smith of the author of Hebrews as Paul even though it's just in passing and says that's the final word all the scholars are wrong Hebrews was written by Paul Joseph Smith said it I believe it that settles it yep the one comment I just wanted to make I'll always be grateful to Michael Co for teaching me not just to look for what's there that shouldn't be there but to look for but but to but to notice things that should be there that aren't and if if God's got a chance to do a miracle here if God's got a chance to show you know prophecy within the Book of Mormon and even to show that on top of that Joseph Smith's a prophet and that's the whole point of having prophecies is they can be experienced as miraculous um by the people seeing a prediction of the future why didn't the Book of Mormon prophesy things that come after Joseph Smith Why didn't it prophesy the Industrial Revolution Why didn't it prophesy Tesla Why didn't it prophesy germ Theory Why didn't it prophesy the the first first world war the second world war or the Vietnam War or something that clearly happens after Joseph Smith lived and or after he wrote the Book of Mormon at that point well that's a true Miracle right that's a true prophecy and yet the things that the Book of Mormon prophesies either never happen or they're vague or they're things that Joseph Smith would have obviously known about is that fair that's fair and I think the whole purported purpose of the Book of Mormon is to and and certainly what I believed it to be um you know when I was when I was in that of that mind and many believing members of the Church believe the Book of Mormon's purported purpose is to put the Bible straight is to take the Bible you know that old example where the word of God is like a piece of wood the one nail in it is at the Bible it can get twisted this way and that way but with the Book of Mormon you put a second nail in and that's it that's the way it should be the Book of Mormon is meant to clarify all these things but it doesn't it doesn't actually clarify any of the contended issues of the Bible with people like for example who wrote this who actually said this when was this written is this a firsthand or a secondhand account all the things that are important beyond the the the the faith prating stories uh or or the faith prating Parts uh and also it doesn't mention things that the Bible also doesn't mention so for example Jesus's stance on homosexuality not mentioned in the bible not mentioned in the Book of Mormon either right so it had a chance there to bring these things up that were missing uh that would be pertinent to the struggles of our day you know the the question around homosexuality and Christianity and how they combine is is uh is a big one it's a big contentious issue and the Book of Mormon like you said if God had a chance to work a miracle that book could have been the solve but it's just not mentioned yep and that is one of the chestnuts that the Book of Mormon leaves us by the way it is the Book of Mormon that says of itself that it is going to make clear what's written by what in the book of out of the mouth of the Jew I think it is once again in second Nephi uh that uh The Book of Mormon is going to clarify that but it certainly says also in Nephi that the Book of Mormon is going to come forth with the purpose of making plain all those things that have been taken away from the Bible those plain and precious parts that have been taken away from the Bible by the Catholic Church oops I'm sorry by the great and abominable church as it goes through its hands right right and takes out all those plain and precious Parts but the Book of Mormon is here to add them back and you can read it from beginning to end and honestly what do you find in there that appears to be a re a restoring of something that's not in the Bible that was lost from the Bible I'm unable to find it the only thing I can see in the Book of Mormon that's different from the Bible is that it has a much more detailed knowledge of the ministry of Christ and of the well the revolution uary war and of Columbus way before Jesus was born or before any of those events happened even though they're in the past to Joseph Smith but really this pre-knowledge this detailed pre- knowledge of Jesus is the only thing I see different about the Book of Mormon that I don't see in the Bible I don't know do you Belo see anything else what yeah like infant baptism is the one that I see where he's that it's almost like he thought hang on I was meant to put some theology from the Bible right I guess I'm going to take on this one and just say well that's bad you should do it later um but you're right to expound on your point what you see in the Bible is a very clear Jewish tradition moves to Christian tradition post Christ coming and revealing the new and Everlasting Covenant right this is this is the New Testament Etc what you've got in the book of is Christianity throughout before Christ somehow they already know about Christianity and they know exactly what it is to be a Christian and to already Believe In Christ in that way not just a promised Messiah and then post Christ you see this Falling Away Etc that's what's that's what's significantly different about its theology to the Bible I'm not sure it's a better thing for the claims of its truthfulness no as a convert I remember reading the book of Mormon for the first time and and being like wow this feels super comfortable to read because it was I came from a Protestant background and wouldn't you know it the Book of Mormon really does kind of confirm that that kind of protestant mindset of of the 1820s um and it talks about Jesus a lot which of course as a Christian in the 1800s uh would feel very at home and as Nemo said the only thing that's in the Book of Mormon that's not in the Bible that's you know Mormon unique is um not U doing infant baptism but then that's another area where you find out that is a very hot topic of the day and so it's not like Joseph Smith is kind of pulling us out of nowhere he's it's again coming from something that's being discussed at the time which is why there's that Alexander Campbell quote we've read probably on three or four different episodes where he just talks about how the Book of Mormon addresses every Hot Topic issue of the day and does it in a way that's purportedly through an ancient record but just happens to match all of the talking points of you know the 1820s and so I just at some point you just go how many red flags do you need before you go yeah this is not in any possible way an ancient document but of course until you're ready to see it you're not going to see it right and this idea that the Book of Mormon reflects early 19 century American methodism really theology from beginning to end um it has very little to do with the church as it exists today with all the things that have been added to it with temple ordinances and everything else that that you know goes along with it in this way the The Book of Mormon itself seems to serve the role of the camel's nose Under the Tent and that once you can adopt that as being literal or have a testimony of it then the rest of the camel can come into the tent and the rest of the camel is everything else that the church has added to the Book of Mormon teaching since it came off the press yep 100% all right well let's uh let's let's take it to the next slide which uh Joseph one UPS it he doesn't just predict uh US history that he would have already known you know backdating that back into the book Mormon he he even goes as far as and this is a little bit man I don't know if the right word is narcissistic or maniacal I don't know what the right word is self arising self thank you neemi self arising he creates a prophecy about himself in the Book of Mormons so take it away Mike and you can have whoever you want read it yeah it's just you know this is one of those areas where looking back on it now I'm like oh my goodness how did I not see this but you know one of the you know small notes that comes here that we talked about in the surrounding influences is that Joseph Smith actually creates a prophecy about himself that he inserts in the Book of Mormon and so this is from the words of Joseph in second Nephi chapter 3 and I guess we could have NE uh Nemo read it since we had rfm read a bunch recently sure that's fine and thus prophesied Joseph saying behold that sear will the Lord bless and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded for This Promise which I have obtained of the lord of the fruit of my loins shall be fulfilled behold I am sure of the fulfilling of this promise and his name shall be called after me and it shall be after the name of his father and he shall be like unto me for the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation yeah and so the Book of Mormon is basically making a prophecy that Joseph son of Joseph will be a sear that will translate The Book of Mormon and this is a really great way to retrofit a prophecy um Into the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith is already fulfilled in the year 1829 because he's already known as a sear from his treasure digging days and now is basically as we talked about those early episodes he's kind of taking that treasure digging technique and moved it to this translation technique in the exact same way of looking um in a in a rock and a hat um and is known as a Seer and so all of a sudden Joseph Smith here is gonna you know very you know craftly write himself into the Book of Mormon as a way to have the reader go holy crap they knew that Joseph Smith was going to be the one to restore the Book of Mormon you know thousands of years later I'm just surprised that he would well there's a lot of hubris in this decision but I'm I'm also surprised that in his mind he's thinking wow this is really going to bolster people's faith I know I'm I know I'm going to be viewed as the quote translator the author I'm G to write myself into the book and people aren't going to be suspicious of that and people are people's faith is going to be enhanced to reinforced first because it it's a prophecy about my you know because it's a backdated prophecy in effect like it's a little bit weird that he would think this is number one a good idea and number two was going to be Faith enhancing but oddly he kind of understood human psychology because again that's how it worked for me when I'm a 15-year-old high school student learning about this for the first time in the book of Mor I'm like wow how miraculous The Book of Mormon even prophesies of Joseph Smith and and I bought it hook light Sinker back then anyone else have a comment about that well Joseph if he was good at anything he was good at getting people to believe him and to follow him but that's it's what he was good at so I think you're right he understood the psychology of it maybe not in those terms but he knew the effect it could have on people yeah to to me that was the big lesson he learned from his treasure digging days where he could lead people to a treasure site have them dig tell them all that the Treasure's been taken away and somehow they left with more faith in him as a treasure Digger even though no treasure was ever found that is the big lesson he probably learned is PE you can make people believe even stronger even after something uh weird or inconvenient happens that's exactly what you were saying about cult leaders they have this ability to get people to believe stronger even when their prophecy fails his prophecy about there will be treasure there his assertion that there will be treasure there fails and yet he was able to get people to believe him and actually believe stronger in his abilities in some cases so I think yeah he realized he has that gift he has that ability to make people uh to to to get people to believe him even if he's demonstrably wrong about something yeah yeah you want to jump in here at all if you like a person or if you like what a person says then you should never underestimate the strength of the human desire to believe they will believe what is said regardless of an overwhelming amount of evidence that contradicts it and zero evidence that supports it my life is living proof to that fact and I'll also tell you this is another example of a very specific prophecy in second Nephi 3 that goes right up to Joseph Missi day and no further yep the other thing I was going to say is that what I see here is that already Joseph Smith has this idea in his mind that he is contemplating or at least second Nephi 3 is a text written by ancient Joseph who went into Egypt that has a prophecy in it so he is accessing sort of like he did that little scrap from The Book of John I think it's in DNC 7 right which he remote viewed from the Holy Land yep uh he's accessing a prophecy written by Joseph of old and this also anticipates what he going to do when he buys the Scrolls in 1835 one of them is Abraham and the other one is the scroll of Joseph which we never got but I think that if we had gotten it it would have had at a minimum contained a prophecy very similar to the one in second Nephi 3 as well as a prophecy that was similar again to the one that Joseph Smith added in his Joseph Smith translation to I think it was Genesis 49 5050 50 where the patriarchal blessings are being given out y okay yeah yeah see I was going to say he he would do it like Genesis 50 we would get basically Genesis 50 but it would be called The Book of Joseph rather than just part of J I would think because the verbiage in that I know we're coming to it is very similar to the verbiage of the prophecy given here in the book of it's like the same author for sure yeah and that's actually a good transition the one the one little tiny note I would add that I always wonder now is would Joseph Smith have written himself into the Book of Mormon if Martin Harris doesn't lose the 116 Pages because um at the beginning of the Book of Mormon remember he records a revelation that says that God will grant him no other gift besides translating The Book of Mormon and then at the end of The Book of Mormon Joseph Smith changes a revelation to say I forgot what the wording is no other gift uh Beyond or until it's finished or something like that so he gives himself this extra at the beginning he's almost um tight you know putting ropes around what he can do and then by the end of the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith takes us off and he's like I am full out profit and I I just wonder if if he would have been in the mindset of adding himself into the Book of Mormon had those pages not been lost but I guess that's one of those things we can only speculate on so and we'll make sure and add to our show notes that episode on Joseph Smith changing his prophecies because this is a pattern it is this is a long pattern and it's a really important one yep all right Mike let's go to the next slide Joseph Smith's name will be had for good and evil oh actually hang on a second there should we cover uh we not finish yeah the we we we did the The Book of Mormon one but this the next slide Joseph Smith writes himself into the Bible should be before the good and evil one okay let's do that next yeah then this one will be quick because this is you know I would say this is kind of the mother of all back data prophecies Joseph Smith is going to write himself directly into the Bible when producing the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible in Genesis 50 and as Nemo said this going to sound awful familiar because it words pretty closely to the Book of Mormon it says and out of weakness shall he be made strong in that day when my work shall go forth among all my people which shall restore them who are the house of Israel in the last days and that Seer will I bless and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded for this promise I give unto you for I Will Remember You from generation to generation and his name Shall be Called Joseph and it shall be after the name of his father and he shall be like unto you for the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand shall bring my people unto salvation so that's yeah I'm going to just say it's sus again here here it it it seems like he can't just like he can't stop including the curse of Cain in every scripture that he produces here he is in multiple scriptural Toms or or cannons inserting himself and it's a little sus why isn't he inserting Oliver calry why isn't he inserting Martin Harris or Brigham Young or David oay like it's it's a little bit sus that when he has to insert a 19th century historical figure it's got to be himself you know it's a little sus right well I mean it's just like it's self- serving so I mean in this case he's writing in we talked in biblical scholarship about how Genesis was likely written late and all that and yet he's going to go back in and expand um this text to make it not just he's going to bring forth the book of M but that he's going to bring people to Salvation I mean it puts him in basically you know as you often hear as kind of a cliche Joseph Smith is like the second greatest person ever to live next to Jesus because he is going to be the one to restore the church and bring people to Salvation this is no longer just the Book of Mormon it's it's the whole package and he's declaring himself the second greatest person next to Jesus to have ever lived in fact rfm isn't there a point where he basically says he was able to do things Jesus himself wasn't able to do keep a church together right yeah so like he even one UPS Jesus yeah he said uh Jesus's followers left him but none of mine have left me yet yeah and he managed to get John Taylor to write about him in his sort of like obituary essentially in doctrine of covenants that he did more save Jesus only so you know like he he he managed to not just think that of himself but get others to think that of him too well John Taylor was just feeling bad for having killed Joseph Smith himself in that sell oh my goodness and we're off the air yeah oh 's your tinf foil hat rfm I want to see the tinf foil hat that's my hair thank you yeah yeah so so I guess Joseph Smith's behavior in his actual history of of megalomania or whatever we want to call it hubris um I is is reflected in his real life and behavior just like it appears to have been in how he backdates prophecy about himself into multiple you know Canon you know you know multiple pieces of the Canon I'll say and it shouldn't be surprising to any of us looking at it kind of from like a meta psychological perspective as you've talked about before that a man who can make claims of angelic visitations and restoring God's one true church on Earth he's making some pretty huge claims that's going to take a level of confidence self assuredness and and and sense of ego to achieve so it's not surprising at all yeah yeah it's not yeah okay should we should we go to uh Joseph Smith's name being had for good and evil Mike yeah that's a good point and so this is you know um Joseph Smith's history so again this is kind of from the same um writing of the the Charles Anton visit we've talked about but Joseph Smith is going to recount a prophecy that his name would be had for good and evil among all nations and so this is from the history of the church um chapter 1 um it's verse 33 it just says he called me by my name and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me and that his name was Moroni that God had a work for me to do and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations kinds kindreds and tongues or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people and you hear this all the time I get this in response all the time when you point out something that Joseph Smith didn't a Believer will say oh my goodness you're you're you're fulfilling prophecy right now because Joseph Smith said his name be you know God say his name would be said for good and evil but but this Revelation is written in 1838 after Joseph Smith's name was had for good and evil among the United States and word had spread to other countries people did not like what Joseph Smith was doing and so he's writing a revelation in 1838 that he dates back to say like 1823 um that of something that had already happened and so this is a really good example of where the church is taking um a prophecy written much later putting it back into a day when it had already happened which and then says hey it's already been fulfilled and so I think this is a really nice example of Joseph Smith doing that it's a really interesting prophecy because it's essentially the um sort of 1830s version of hater is going to hate and he's just like look people are going to be unhappy but you know that's the nature of it it's it's this is like John dein saying that in 2000 he he predicted that his name would be had for good and evil amongst the Mormon peoples of the world and he actually wrote it like 5 minutes ago after he knows from years of experience that some people like him some people don't yeah and then every time like me what are you what are you talking about Nemo who doesn't like me no one John don't me yeah um yeah and and it's all I aside from the fact that he's backdating prophecy this is a really smart move by a leader of a high demand religion or a cold because it basically inoculates members to any any trouble you get into any missteps you might make if you not not only warn people that people are going to hate me yep but but you you brand it as a prophecy that it's prophetic then you're just really stealing yourself against any future criticism it's a very effective tactic yeah it's a great one and and I get like I said I I get that response like on Twitter all the time I'll post like a link about say the happiness letter in Joseph Smith's polygamy and then you get these responses they say uh you know his name will had for good and evil and then they'll say basically I'm fulfilling that prophecy and I'm just it's one of those things where you're just like you've got to be kidding but at the same time to your point it's really effective at creating this US versus them mentality of like oh yeah of course you're going to hear horrible things about I mean I yeah i' I've heard from from people close to me that they'll go oh I'm so sorry that Mike is saying these things that are so bad about Brother Joseph and you're just like but they're they're evidence-based I'm not just saying like I think Joseph Smith was like a smelly idiot or something like that has no basis this is like here's evidence showing what he did but that prophecy is really effective at people falling back on that to avoid having to look at the evidence and and like you said I think it's it's it's a tactic that's used by any leader of a high demand religion because it is creating a mindset that tells their members you are going to hear bad things don't listen to it it's a thought terminating cliche wrapped up prophecy that's right exactly that's right I would say it's even better than that it's not just you're going to hear bad things don't listen to it you're going to hear bad things and that proves I'm a prophet yeah yep Y and and that's what's happening so I mean in that regard it is a it is a prophecy fulfilled but of course you know it already happened but yeah you know it it's very effective and The House Always Wins because if you're doing good things then people praise you if you're doing bad things and people are criticizing you well that's just a prophecy fulfilled so it kind of inoculates you and and the house The House Always Wins yep yeah yep okay it's like it's like saying he shall he shall sleep and he shall wake for the rest of his life yeah yeah right of course he's going to do both those things yeah it also reminds me of the of the you know if you think about the fact that um as as we've already mentioned so many of the three Witnesses and the eight Witnesses either left the church or apostatized at some point it was super smart to say even the very elect shall be deceived but but but that not only refers back to to so many of the early uh leaders in the church but then it can apply in perpetuity to anyone whoever leaves the church including Tom Phillips or Hans Matson or whatever of course of course an apostle or general authorities or people at their second anointing are going to leave Mormonism because it was prophesied that even the very elect shall be deceived right it's yeah it's brilliant it's a stroke of bril yeah I think Jesus gets credit for that because he came up with that before Joseph I think yeah that's that is true which does make you wonder why is Jesus talking about this in his public Ministry yeah yeah yeah that is a uh it's Fromm what are you saying rfm probably 24 yeah what am I saying I'm saying that that sounds like a very good reason to have that statement said by an authoritative figure to explain why people in high positions are leaving the church and have it be something that people can be okay with that they're Le because it's been prophesied so I'm wondering what High people were leaving in the church at the point that Matthew was written and the saying was put in Jesus's mouth retroactively because there would be no reason for him at least according to the text that we have of the Gospel of Matthew or any of the gospels for him to be saying it at the time yeah that's a good point yeah all right let's go to the next example which you know we can't just stop at the Book of Mormon and uh the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible let's see where he does it in the Doctrine and Covenants yeah you got to visit the gift shop on your way out you know you do this is and and it's important just because it shows that that that it's not just the Book of Mormon where this is happening and I think that's you know it's one of those ones you don't and this next slide is going to be important because it's one I never would have understood was a backdated prophecy because it's it's DNC to and so you just assume this is the second Revelation he ever claims to have and so um this is from DNC 2 and again this is um Joseph Smith um claiming this in 1838 um from moronai and it says I behold I will reveal unto you the priesthood by the hand of Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great Dreadful day of the Lord and this is again from 1838 and josea Smith um claims in 1836 I believe that he's visited by Elias and Elijah in the Kirtland Temple they're the same person he doesn't know that but the point is there's no real mention of Elijah restoring the priesthood until um that Kirtland Temple Vision where he gives Joseph Smith you know the kind of the generic set of keys and so this is another area where Joseph Smith is now going to backdate that 1836 Vision to 1823 so that it can be fulfilled in 1836 in Kirtland wow that's a good one Mike but if you read it if you read the DNC in order you don't realize that you're just like oh my goodness Joseph Smith knew in 1823 this was going to happen then holy crap it happens in in Kirtland but when you again look at it from a linear timeline you're like oh my goodness he claims this in in Kirtland then he writes this Revelation backdates it before that to fulfill it and that's when you look at you're like why does he need to do that you know if if that happened in 1823 and I know the apologetic response will be Joseph Smith didn't write anything of this sort down in 1823 but he did write a lot of stuff down or have a lot of it dictated down before 1836 and it's not there yeah good points I mean this happens as well with with polygamy you know and and the whole Joseph Smith probably was having relation Revelations from about you know the early 1830s about this to try and cover for the fact like so the church is doing now to try and cover for the fact that in 1835 he was caught with Fanny aler you know so they like oh yeah no because this was already being revealed to him before that after he's been caught that then gets backfilled yep yeah exactly rfm anything you want to add Matthew 24 verse 24 which is you are you just referring to the previous yeah that's my way of saying yeah I was right I got to get a big Lea after the whole Genesis 49: 50 uh debacle that happened earlier yeah that has the the reference that's the original one I was thinking of talking about false Christ signs and wonders false prophets so much that if it were possible they should deceive the very elect so 24:24 in Matthew should be an easy reference to remember for future discussions thanks rfm yep thank you all right well now we come to something that contradicts what I said earlier because I said earlier what would be miraculous is if Joseph Smith could predict something could prophesy about something that happened after he died and this is where we come to I think the the most often claimed miraculous prophecy of Joseph Smith which is his quote prophecy about the Civil War so Mike please don't please don't Dash our belief that Joseph Smith predicted a civil war or is that what you're about to do uh well I mean we'll we'll talk about it I don't know let we'll let the wa the viewers decide I guess but yeah this definitely will put a little bit of a different spin on on what I was taught as a convert for sure about the Civil War prophecy okay let's do it yeah and so this is a good example not just of how because this is not a back data Prophecy in the sense of Joseph Smith isn't going to give this after the Civil War but it's how we can back data prophecy ourselves by reframing something after the fact and this is one about about Joseph Smith's um Civil War prophecy and so I don't know if Nemo or rfn or John wants to read this uh Church entry from the Prophecies of Joseph Smith can do all right NE more one of Joseph Smith's most well-known Millennial prophecies related to the American Civil War on December the 25th 1832 Joseph Smith received a revelation prophesying that a war between the northern and southern US states would begin in South Carolina and that Wars and uprisings throughout the Earth would finally result in the end of all Nations at the time of the second coming of Jesus Christ at the time the Revelation was received South Carolina and the federal government of the United States were involved in a dispute but it was peacefully resolved the next march years later Joseph reiterated his prophecy that war would break out in South Carolina over slavery debates as it did nearly 20 years after Joseph Smith's death all right well um so what's uh I I guess we we have a next slide that's going to be talking about it but do either you Nemo or Radio free Mormon have anything to say in response to that slide I mean as a Brit I feel um uncomfortable uh getting involved in your uh your sort of Civil War so I'll let um I'll let rfm talk about that I believe it was you Brits who brought slavery here in the first place we wouldn't do such a thing never would not do such a thing how dare you sir oh my goodness well anyway anyway so what did you did you ask me a question there John I'm sorry comment on any comment on the slide before yeah I think the reason this gets a lot of play is number one because it was received I think Christmas Day 1832 early 1830s anyway and it is of record and it mentions a couple of specific things one of which is slavery which no one was even discussing at the time I mean the Missouri Compromise had not been passed by that point of course I'm speaking tongue and cheek the Missouri Compromise had been passed before that um this was a huge issue in the United States one of slavery and the Missouri Compromise I had this memorized at one point I can't remember I think it was 1820 I think that even as Joseph Smith was seeing God the father and his son Jesus Christ in the sacred grove Henry Clay was working on passing the Missouri Compromise and the Missouri Compromise uh by the way John uh do you remember that from high school I have no idea what you're talking about so maybe it might be good well the Missouri Compromise was the idea that they were think it was 22 States and there were 11 who were slavery States and the 11 who were anti-slavery States or free states and the problem was is that they all meet in the federal government and right there they've got a balance of power at least in so far as the Senators go right because there's two senators from each state I know this will all be new to Nemo so pay attention and take notes and um the idea then was well Missouri wants to become a state and well we can't let Missouri become a state because if we do I mean I mean obviously all the slave states were in favor of it because that gives them two extra senators and all the free states were against it because it gives the slave states to extra senators and now they're going to be able to start moving things and advancing their agenda for slavery so Henry Clay comes up with a compromise because right there they're deadlocked Missouri cannot become a state how are we going to do this how are we going to grow this nation at all if nobody can become a state because either they're going to be slave states or free states and he says okay here's the compromise is anytime a slave state comes into the Union a free state has to come into the Union at the same time in order to maintain the balance of power so when Missouri came in Maine came in as a free state to offset the power of Missouri coming in as a slave state and that was continued out uh from that point for a number of additional States coming into the Union this was a huge huge issue it was everywhere in Joseph Smith's day and indeed that that slot which I think quotes from a church publication talks about how there was um when Joseph Smith wrote this yes there were problems going on in South Carolina about the over the slavery issue and I think there were threatenings of succession I'm sorry I didn't study this independently to come up with all the details for this show but yeah that's okay because Mike's got the next slide is Mike back with us great I'm back yeah I've been tab dancing here did was was uh yeah rfm tab dancing while Mike went the bathroom on a long convoluted TI raade About Crimea and Russia and that sort of prediction if we if we weren't careful Le half Le half leag onward I was listening to Nemo getting a lesson on American history and I was just enjoying the rid so yeah we're good all right so Mike you we talked about Joseph Smith Civil War prophecy I guess now you're going to Dash You're Going to dash our beliefs in that prophecy well yeah and and this is by the next slide again this one of those things where as a convert as a member I was told a very clean Joseph Smith predicted this it's kind of like the the word of wisdom we talked about in our Word of Wisdom episode where I was like I remember I remember specifically I was told as a convert by people close to me they're like Joseph Smith was the first one that knew smoking was bad for you and I was like wow that's really cool you know and you find out that's not at all what the problem was but in this case um the church doesn't tell you that four days before this Revelation was recorded that a newspaper article appeared the Painesville Telegraph just outside of Kirtland Ohio entitled The Crisis and the article discussed the ongoing tensions that were leading to fears that the possibilities of dismemberment have increased and so from the article there's this little um blur that says um we have just terminated an election which it is feared may be the last that will ever be held ever held under the present form of government and many we might say most of the ablest men in our nation have uttered their misgivings in the brief interval since the election commenced the possibility of dismemberment have increased and are dangered uh thickened and and so this is you know Joseph Smith um writing a revelation four days after this article um he claimed that the war would break out shortly that it would Pour Out Among many nations and that it would include all sorts of natural disasters and so um Joseph Smith got the Revelation actually wrong in a lot of those specific claims but today the church has really repurpose this Revelation to say that Joseph Smith correctly predicted the Civil War and so this is an example of how we kind of baate the Prophecies of people in the church or in the Bible um to make them fulfill prophecy even though if you actually read it carefully it's not at all what they're saying got it okay all right well the next slide is really interesting because it talks about now we're kind of leaving Joseph Smith and talking about how Joseph Smith Legacy lives on because we we even do this in the modern day and its example with the current president and prophet of the church Russell M Nelson go go for it Mike yeah and this is one this I believe is why rfm had done his back data prophecy episode I'm pretty sure that's how he started his off and so um it's because the church during covid was constantly saying holy crap prophecy is being fulfilled before our very eyes because can you believe that God put a doctor at the head of the church and that Russell Nelson in his October 2019 General Conference said um thus the year 2020 will be designated as a bicentennial year General conf Conference next April will be different from any previous conference in the next six months I hope that every member and every family will prepare for a unique conference that will commemorate the very foundations of the restored gospel so as we all know Co hit in February in March of 2020 and this became uh redefined to mean that Nelson was predicting covid even though a statement was abundantly clear that his prediction about a unique conference was specifically about the first vision and the 200y year anniversary of the first vision that's brilliant did I really come up with that you sure did okay thank you I'm impressed with myself yeah no you should be because I like I said when I was listen to P I'm like man this is really good because you use that kind of to to springboard into all of this other stuff to kind of show how not just there are back data prophecies in the Bible or the book of Mor but how the church or members will also kind of do that in order to fulfill a prophecy that was never meant in the first place and so I you know I think and we all heard we all heard during Co about how God had given us a profit to prepare us for Co by going to two-hour Church home centered Church all of that stuff in ignoring all of the surrounding details about how it had been tested for years and how there were surveys about how people didn't want to go to three hours of church none of that mattered because now we had something we could pin it to and so you know it was really important to show how how when we're Believers we will mold the evidence or the statements to fit the conclusions that we needed to right and then just create in crazy ass stories out of whole cloth to support that narrative like Wendy Nelson did I'm sorry that I'm characterizing that story that way where she said that back in January of 2020 all of a sudden you know she turns around and all their speaking engagements and all of these big uh Arenas and Facilities around the country and around the world he's just sort of I don't know taking a an eraser and and wiped them off the the Whiteboard and she's going what happened to all these and he says oh I don't know I just figured we need to really do those and then she looks at the audience and says there's a prophet in the land I just want you to know that he's not rfm is not exaggerating either if you if you listen to Wy Wendy Nelson give that talk that's literally what she's doing is she's saying that Russell Nelson got a revelation that there'd be no traveling going on and instead of warning the church and preparing the church he just canceled some um event uh holds on venues and so yeah it's it's a it I would say it's it's a ridiculous story but it shows how to be fair though Wendy Nelson has a few of those stories where she tends to uh exaggerate what Russell Nelson is doing and we should cover that maybe in the future but but yeah it just shows how we can backdate these these stories to fit um perfectly with with events that happened recently in order to promote Faith among the church even though the actual details of the stories do not seem to line up or in that case you know there's absolutely no reason to think that they're true so you know another example example of that is when Wendy Nelson 2 or I should say uh Sher do said in a recent talk about profit seeing around corners that what was it it was like 1990 was it 1998 when was the the big problem that we had with e it was 2008 right that was the the economy and went down the crapper so in 2008 10 years see that's what she said 10 years before that she was listening in conference and heard the prophet at the time president hinley talk about putting our house in order and getting out of debt so she did that she paid off her mortgage uh she has no dependence because no kids right and no spouse so she doesn't have um uh the kind of UH responsibilities financial responsibilities uh that those incur but 10 years later when everything went down she was driving home thinking how bad things were but then she realized oh my gosh you know things are pretty good for me because I don't owe any debt because I followed that prophet's voice which was actually in the priesthood session that she couldn't even listen to at least not lawfully at the time you could probably read it when it came out in the in the enzy but yes this is what she does and and so that's prophecy that's a prophet in the land we are so starved in the LDS church for legitimate prophecy that we will grab these scraps that fall from the table and we'll look at them and pretend that there's something amazing that they're a five course meal and present that way good Financial advice it's all it was yes which has never been repeated which has never been said in conference other than in 2008 by President hinley I remember all growing up you know Council to stay out of debt from the 80s on that's been just and it's just who doesn't say that like Dr Phil Oprah like Dave Ramsey and these are American references Nemo I apologize for that but like I think the last series of about I don't know eight US presidents haven't said that yeah that's definitely true oh I was got to make it political all right so you've got the next slide Mike which says that even Nelson admits that he had no idea that covid was coming and so at the April 2020 G General Conference uh Russell Nelson said little did I know when I promised you at the October 2019 General Conference that this ail conference would be memorable and Unforgettable that speaking to a visible Congregation of fewer than 10 people would make this conference so memorable and Unforgettable for me and so it's just to be clear this is not a back data prophecy and that it wasn't recorded as such but one of the points that rfm made in his podcast which I thought was really interesting was if we did not have contemporary records of what Russell Nelson said in 2019 and 2020 if you went 10 years from now everybody in the church would be writing about how Russell Nelson correctly predicted Co because we wouldn't have be able to to look at video and see what he was saying and so this is kind of how us as I mean as believing members the believing members were able to reshape what he said into fulfilling uh or to creating a prophecy that came true through covid whereas when you look at the data obviously it doesn't support that but it does show when you look back into the early church where there aren't as many records or even into the Bible you could see how these these stories can be created kind of out of out of either nothing or out of very vague uh words that then all of a sudden are solidified as these Grand Pro prophecies or Revelations and and we like I said earlier in the episode when we get to the episode on the Transfiguration of Brigham Young it's going to mirror this a lot and I think that episode is going to be one of the most important to me that we do um because I think it is so important to understanding this whole concept of how these Miracles and how these Revelations and prophecies how they can solidify in a community uh when you can trace back the lineage of of those prophecies and you can see that there's really nothing there and yet accepted as absolute truth today by the church so I think that's a really important way to kind of dissect some of these these stories you know when I said that originally that was back in Spring of 2020 when I was doing that series for nine weeks of issuing a podcast every business day for nine weeks that was early on in the covid pandemic so it was uh April maybe May uh at the latest of 2020 I am struck by the fact that I was wrong in that prediction that I gave that you just quoted because actually it hasn't been 10 years later it's only three years later it's now 2023 that record still exists right and yet we do have people claiming that it was prophecy yeah of President Nelson that the covid pandemic would hit so I underestimated the facility of Latter-day Saints to create prophecy and insist on Prophecy even in contradiction to the record that still exists and it only took them a couple of years and not a decade but they should all know because you guys know the church news has a podcast right um the church news that outlet has its own podcast and Quintel cook went on that podcast and I'm just going to play this to you here uh right now okay we didn't have Revelation there was going to be a pandemic we didn't have Revelation there was going to be a pandemic you heard say it yeah so like it the nail is in the coffin any member of the church that listens to the church's Outlet knows Quintel cook has said it Russ Nelson alluded to it Quintel cook has said it they did not know this was coming and I'll just just to add just to end kind of this point uh and then we'll get to the summary um I you know it's such a powerful and effective claim it's basically part of the core value proposition of Mormonism it's like we'll help you be with your family forever and our leaders talk to God like our leaders are prophet and revelators holy moly if if our if our leaders were able to translate languages that Scholars can't translate if they're able to see the future and prophesy what's going to happen about the future that's awesome I want that I want to follow people that can do that because that's magical but but but but it begs the question and rfm I think you were alluding to this if there's one thing we can say about Mormon prophet and revelators between Joseph Smith and today is they don't prophesy they don't see and they don't reveal because where is the new scripture where are the prophecies and it would have been really handy if Russell Al Nelson had foreseen the covid pandemic and if he could have uh told everybody you know told the United States to prepare the vaccines or gotten all the the masks and the respirators where they needed to be and maybe he could have helped pre prevent hundreds of thousands if not a million deaths by actually producing a prophecy but but they don't prophesy they don't see they don't reveal and that's one of in my view their biggest weaknesses and it's a big problem because they claim to do it and then they don't do it but then we create backdated prophecies that say they did do it right yeah yeah all right only to make matters only worse they hadn't mentioned anything about food storage in at least a decade yeah yeah that's that's another that should been useful yeah yeah yep and that was another one while all sudden I think uh Bednar I think came out and gave a speech is like we've been telling you about food storage and and like I think rfm might have been the one who did it someone did it and they looked back and it was like like a over a I think it was over a decade since they mentioned it en conference in any meaningful way and all of a sudden the one time it went might have been helpful and you know there's no no warning leading up to it so that was General Conference October of 2020 so the year of the pandemic they they didn't mention it in April General Conference but Elder Bednar rushed into the breach in October to talk about food storage and how he does it and his wife does it and they do it together and they're just following what all the prophets have always said and and basically looking down his nose at everybody else who was sitting there without food storage because it hadn't been mentioned for over a decade yep yeah we've got some expired stuff in the basement so you know yes hey gentlemen I've got a run here I know you're get the end of the show thank so much for joining us rfm we love you thank you very very much taking all the time and you guys are so welcome I I appreciate being invited I'll take no more of the time as I make my exit off stage left but thank you again have a wonderful day and God bless you all thank you so much thanks for doing the podcast that this is based on that was actually you made me do two extra overviews because of that one podcast so thank you for that thank you I'm honored talk to you later guys all right bye rfm byebye okay okay and I'll just say I'll just say to kind of close out this point we should do an episode also on on failed prophecies just plain and simple failed prophecies whether that's you know that that Jesus will come when Joseph Smith said he was going to come that Independence Missouri will be the Gathering Place the New Jerusalem all of a sudden you know the church doesn't care about a gathering in the New Jerusalem anymore we could talk about the law of consecration that gets repealed we could talk about polygamy that gets repealed we could talk about the lonit now all of a sudden we don't know who the Layon ites are we could probably do a whole episode Mike on just failed prophecies in addition to back dated prophecies yeah I think our next episode is going to be on Joseph Smith's prophecies and we're going to cover some of them in there because we're going to talk about I figured this way we get the backdated stuff out of the way and then our next episode's going to have um some of Joseph's Miss prophecies where they might have come from and then obviously the ones some of the ones that have failed that we kind of stopped talking about or and we can go over the apologetic responses on those as well but yeah we're going to cover those so for sure we'll get to those all right well let's go ahead and end by by talking about why back data prophecies matter yeah and this is is just one you know we we've talked about in a lot of these episodes that Scholars can evaluate text in so many different ways now to see if authors are leaving their fingerprints on the text that can allow them to date them or to identify who the actual author is and so with the Book of Daniel it's almost universally accepted that the actual writing dates much later than when it was claimed because as we've talked about the prophecies go from incredibly specific to getting it wrong and the same technique really is there for the Book of Mormon which you know to put it a different way in the vision in the first Nephi there are specific events um covering from Columbus arriving in America in 1492 and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon in 1830 so that's a window of 338 years where we have specific events uh being revealed such as Columbus's arrival the white settlers taking the land from the Native Americans the Revolutionary War the Book of Mormon Joseph Smith himself and so that is a very concrete time frame with a lot of specificity it's the same thing we see in the Book of Daniel um yet after those specific prophecies um we get nothing after Joseph Smith's Lifetime and so as we talked about not even saying the book of Morman should speak about how in the future people will use the internet to fact check the book of Mor's claims or um you know that we're going to be you know flying airplanes across the skies but there's no mention of the Civil War there's no mention of the fight about slavery in the United States um there's nothing um about is we'll get to in our final slide there's nothing of the unique elements of Mormonism that we all know today um outside of infant baptism that are in the Book of Mormon all of that stuff comes after and so it allows us to basically date when the Book of Mormon is written because we could see what's in there we could see what's not in there and that puts it at a very specific time frame and I think that's why this is a very important tool for Scholars not just for the Bible and the Book of Mormon but for any text that purports to be uh ancient or um long before the kind of General consensus of of when we know it came to be excellent all right Mike well let's go ahead and go uh to the next slide which is the J Smith left left his fingerprints all over the Book of Mormon yeah and so just like you know in addition to working to back date prophecies in the Book of Mormon you know as we've mentioned in this episode his errors in biblical scholarship can let us know with absolute certainty that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient record but is going to be a 19th century text produced by Joseph Smith because a lot of the biblical scholarship errors are things that just were not known in the 19th century and obviously ly um you know you can make the argument that they're from hundreds of years ago but if they're from ancient uncorrupted texts obviously they're not going to have these kinds of Errors such as like dter Isaiah and not knowing um you know like kind of that the early stories in Genesis are more mythical and so as we mentioned in this episode even when Joseph does punt um the revelations in the Book of Mormon to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament he just doesn't understand that the author John of the Book of Revelation is not the same as the Gospel of John because at the the time everyone thought that Matthew Mark Luke and John were actually written by Matthew Mark Luke and John whereas today we know they're Anonymous authors and you know the really the simple truth is this if you gave the Book of Mormon to a scholar without any information about when it was written who it was produced by or the story of the gold plates a scholar could identify the Book of Mormon to the 19th century without using any outside sources um because of the fact it does include very specific prophecies that take you right to the 19th century and again the the exact same method that Scholars use to date you know different books of the Bible such as the Book of Daniel and there's just no way to get around it for the Book of Mormon unless you invoke special pleading to say that the Book of Mormon can't be viewed with the same literary tools that you would really apply to any other text religious or non-religious and so the fact that Joseph Smith leaves so many fingerprints on this text allows us to know with absolute certainty that it is not going to be uh an ancient authentic text all right Nemo any reaction to that slide well yeah I mean if you're if you're a member of the church who kind of subscribes to biblical scholarship and and you know you're one of these people that takes it very seriously and looks into the authorship of the Bible and all that sort of stuff then you have to accept that the same standards that have been applied to the Book of Daniel for example when applied to the Book of Mormon reveal it to be a 19th century text so yeah unless you're willing to let your ideology overtake kind of the presentation of the facts then that's the conclusion you end up coming to based on that all right well I think that gives us a good Capstone for the episode but we have one more slide oh sorry no it's good um which is that the Book of Mormon is unaware of any doctrines past 1829 you know all the Nauvoo Innovations as I like to call them do you want to finish out this slide Mike yeah and this is just kind of like in a lot of ways sometimes one of the EAS eest kind of methods to looking at a problem is almost to like reverse it and so this whole episode we've been looking at Revelations and prophecies that are backdated into the Book of Mormon or into the Bible or even into Joseph Smith's Revelations but if you look at it from the flip side we are told as members that the Book of Mormon brings us the F the fullness of the gospel and I think Nemo mentioned it earlier this is supposed to be the restoration of all the things that were lost by the early church right and yet the Book of Mormon is not aware of almost every one of the uniquely teachings that are going to come after 1829 such as a temple marriage being a requirement for exaltation baptism for the dead um Celestial marriage lasting for time and all eternity um that salvation in the highest Kingdom requires going through an endowment ceremony whereas in the Book of Mormon not only is there no mention of exaltation or an endowment ceremony but the idea of a secret combination requiring secret Oaths are condemned and that really stems back into the whole masonry and the temple episode we did um they don't mention they do mention that mzc was a priest but they don't mention the idea that you can hold uh two different priesthoods um and we talked about that in our priesthood restoration episode um they don't mention that the sacrament should include water uh there's no mention of the word of wisdom uh there's no mention that prophets are promoted to the office by church leaders instead of by God um they don't mention and this one seems like an important one that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri and that Adam and Eve the first people on on Earth lived in Missouri um and then you know the idea of the of the presidency is anachronistic because obviously there's no president in the ancient Church um and the Book of Mormon mentions uh nothing Beyond 12 disciples so the whole idea of like the 70s and all that none of that and so and and there's more than this and so it just tells you that the Book of Mormon is very much a production of its time frame and so Joseph Smith is able to backdate everything that happens up into his lifetime but all of these things that he's going to evolve to and and create in this theology just are absent and you have to ask yourself why a book that proclaims to be the fullness of the Gospel lacks all of these very uniquely important Mormon doctrines when you know Joseph Smith hadn't created them yet and so that to me is one of the easiest ways to kind of date The Book of Mormon and to kind of see how he's able to backdate everything he knows up until 1829 but can't backdate all of these later Innovations he's going to come up with after and for some reason to me that feels like the best way way to conclude this episode is almost take a look from the other side and say okay instead of looking at what's back data what isn't in there that should be um I think John alluded to that earlier and this is a lot of very important stuff that should be there if this is a restoration of ancient practices brilliant uh that almost seems like it could be its own episode Mike is what what isn't in the Book of Mormon that should be how the Book of Mormon is not the fullness of the Gospel that's a really important tell it basically reflect Joseph Smith's Theology and and doctrinal positions at the time he produced The Book yeah yeah I mean and that's just it like we we we've done we've touched on this in a lot of episodes but it just shows that this is supposed to be the fullness of the gospel and yet everything that at least to me that I consider to be like very uniquely Mormon is just not in the Book of Mormon which is why the Book of Mormon as a convert read in such a comfortable way to me because there just wasn't any of this kind of um I don't know if you want to say like unique strength however you want to phrase it um stuff in here you know there's no endowment ceremony there's no endowment text there's no um you know all of this stuff that to me as a member was kind of troubling and polygamy in the Book of Mormon is condemned and called an Abomination I mean you know I realize the Book of Mormon gives that little bit of a loophole but um it just shows that the Book of Mormon is very much tied to what Joseph Smith knew of in 1829 and nothing beyond that we're going to do an episode I think a three or four episodes from now where we're going to look at some of these unique ideas and morm ISM to show where they come from and what you're going to find is that most of these things are going to come from contemporary ideas that are post Book of Mormon which is why they don't show up in the Book of Mormon so again if you look at this from a linear time frame you could kind of see not just how Joseph Smith is pulling these ideas but you could see why they're not in the Book of Mormon but they are some of them might be in the book of Abraham um why some of them are in Revelations that you know I mean it just it makes a lot of sense from a time frame perspective um but it also again reveals the fact that the book of Mormon is completely limited to the knowledge of the world in 1829 all right Nemo do you want to give us any closing thoughts yeah like the the in order for Joseph Smith to continue to expand his sort of narrative or his theology or just you know the Gospel According to him and what he wanted to put out there it necessitates the book of uh the book of Doctrine and Covenants it necessitated things being written down as though they were still gospel like they were in the book of M because had the book of Mor to shoehorn this theology in like he had he had the book of moment to present these things up until 1830 as Mike has said but then in order for him to add additional things he has to come up with another mechanic so that's why this open Cannon of scripture idea starts to come about he can start to write these things down and it's also why we then see a massive stop in what is in the doctrine of governance once Joseph dies there there's very Li little added to it after that because essentially it was Joseph that wanted to add all these things and and wanted them all to be codified in the same way they were codified in The Book of Mormon he just couldn't rewrite the Book of Mormon again to add them the second time round y that makes sense all right does well Mike this is a super important episode and I'm really glad we took the time to cover it uh this was one of the on the longer side of our episodes and part of that's because we had both Nemo and rfm here but they're all brilliant how do we exclude either Nemo or rfm when we have the chance to include them yeah and I'm glad we got rfm here because I know it was a lot of time to ask him to do but this was based off his podcast I wanted to make sure if he wanted to uh to be on here because he gave a lot of insights in that episode that I think are really important not just to today but to a lot of our previous episodes it gives a lot more light to them and I think one of the things we're doing in our episodes right now is we're starting to be able to I think piece together a lot of the groundwork we did in those early episodes to make even more sense of them and that's why I think of that kind of puzzle analogy where you're putting the pieces back together and now all of a sudden the pieces are starting to to fit together because we've done so many of these episodes with a lot of the ground workor and I think having Nemo and rfm there to help us to kind of explain why these problems are not just relevant to this one episode but to earlier ones I think is really to me it was really helpful and and I hope it is to people watching so even though it was definitely one of our longer ones I think it'll be one that hopefully people are happy to to get through because I think it does give a lot of insight to so many areas of what we've done whether it's Book of Mormon authorship changes to Revelations um you know backdating um ideas that you have into ancient you know um pseudepigrapha all of that stuff really wraps together and so like I said I know it was a long one but I think it was a good one and huge thanks to rfm and Nemo for for sticking with us for as long as they had to on this one but hopefully it was was well worth it well thank you very much for having me I I always enjoyed these episodes I always enjoy getting to discuss these things and uh I think it's really important to dig into these things I know it's very easy to roll your eyes and call it nitpicking or to say that you know you don't need to look into this much detail just have faith but as we've already covered if there is an opportunity to learn something then Faith becomes unnecessary because you can discover the truth of it instead and not have to rely on faith because the facts are there so it's definitely worth digging into these things um 100% so thank you very much for that opportunity brilliant well please check out uh Nemo the Mormon YouTube Channel please subscribe to it please support Nemo click on his donate button become a monthly donor we want to help Nemo the Mormon podcast and all the Brit vengers reach 100,000 subscribers within the next calendar year but mostly we just Nemo Nemo just uh decided to be doing his his uh YouTube work full-time and so let's let's all support Nemo yeah yes please that'd be great yeah definitely and while you're at it please subscribe uh to the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel if you haven't you can also subscribe to us on Facebook it helps the algorithms it helps spread the word and uh it helps us grow and uh finally if you want to check out Mike's Mike from LDS discussions his wonderful essays the essay for this episode and for many others can be found at ldsd discussions. and of course this podcast is available as a series not only on the YouTu playlist for LDS discussions on the Mormon storage podcast Channel but you can find a dedicated podcast either on Spotify or on Apple podcasts and on Spotify you can view it in video or listen to it and Mike we just want to thank you for the wonderful gift you've given of your website and your time for this series well thanks to everyone that's been listening if you've made it all the way through this one you deserve uh some sort of special prize but thank you so much all the kind words that I've I've gotten through emails and messages stuff have been really cool so I'm just glad it's helpful to some people in the way that it was helpful for me and um we've got we got a lot of fun stuff to go our next three episodes on Revelation I think they're all really important because it's going to highlight kind of like it's almost going to take us in a way from everything we've been doing in the foundation of the church and kind of move us all the way up to the modern time for the last you know batch of episodes so it it's going to be I think the next three are going to be really cool um to kind of kind of show how Revelation is evolved in the church um from Joseph Smith to today and hopefully uh everyone that made it this far will will want to make it through those and uh we'll see you guys again hopefully next week all right thanks Mike thanks Nemo thanks rfm also support Mormonism live and radio for Mormon podcasts and again we thank Maven for helping us out today with the time code and show notes you guys all be good to each other be kind to each other uh informed consent uh truth is kind of what we're going for and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon storage podcast take care
Episode Info
Guests: Mike (LDS Discussions), Nemo the Mormon, Radio Free Mormon
Related Article: LDS Discussions