What are the Kinderhook Plates? w/ LDS Discussions – 33

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. I am one of your hosts for today, John Dehlin. It's December 20, 2022 and we have another episode in our amazing series with LDS discussions today. The episode is the Kinderhook Plates. Really quickly, I need to plug this every time. For those who don't know, the LDS Discussion Series is based on an amazing website at LDSDiscussions.com created by our friend Mike. And it's basically an ATT to explore and to evaluate Mormon Church truth claims dispassionately. Evidence based, neutrally, objectively, as much as that is possible based on the evidence. And so by my count, this will be the 33rd episode in the LDS discussion series. All these episodes build on each other. So we really recommend that you start at the beginning with episode one, and that will help you understand today's episode much, much better. And of course, I just want to make sure people understand that you can get the entire series in serial either at Spotify in both audio and video format or on Apple podcast app, or you can go to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel and there's a playlist there where you can either watch them all or listen to them all in succession, or refer them to a friend or a family member. And of course, LDS discussions.com is the website where you can see it all. And just so that I can give a little bit of context for today's episode and why it's so important, you know, one of the main claims that Joseph Smith made was that he was a translator. And if you look at, as I understand it, the original version of the Doctrine and Covenants, God or Jesus themselves declare Joseph Smith a prophet, seer, revelator and translator. And so if God and Jesus are introducing Joseph Smith as a translator, it's really important that Joseph Smith show himself to be an accurate translator. We have already covered the Book of Mormon translation in the LDS discussion series. We have also talked about the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham. And you know, not to in any way try and persuade people one way or the other, but I think we've already conclusively showed that by any stretch, along with the Joseph Smith translation of the King James Bible. Those are all problematic translations by any objective account. And the reason why today's episode is important is because the Kinderhook plates is sort of the final or one of the final major ways that we can evaluate Mormon God or Jesus and or Joseph Smith's claim to be a translator. And so that's what we're covering today. We're covering the Kinderhook plates. And this is definitely, in my estimation, one of the top five or ten most important topics to study if you really want to understand Joseph Smith's credibility and his truth claims. And so without any further ado, I welcome Mike back from LDS discussions. Hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:12 Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin 3:13 Thanks so much for joining us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:15 It's good to be back. And you know, this one for me is going to be one of the, you know, if I look at the project on the website, like all the overview topics, this is one that I was excited to talk about, more so than some others, kind of like the lost 116 pages. Because this episode, to me the Kinderhook plates by themselves are not, to me the biggest issue. It's everything around the Kinderhook plates that we learn about Joseph Smith and pro prophets and, and the church from, from his point all the way up until our, our, our time. And I think that it's like the plates are what we all focus on. We all focus on the partial translation that Joseph Smith gives and we're going to cover that in a lot of detail. But to me, the really important part is how that meshes with all of the other episodes we've done thus far. And when I talk about how when you look at apologetics, you have to take it in totality, this is, this episode is the perfect illustration of that. And so this episode is going to have a lot of tie ins into earlier episodes and kind of to show why these are not one off problems and that these are common threads. So I'm really excited about this one just because I think it's going to give a different spin or a different angle on the Kinderhook plates than you might get just from looking at the CES letter or a letter from my wife or something like that. So I'm excited about this one.

John Dehlin 4:29 I love it. All right, Mike, well, thanks again for all you do and for this amazing series. And if having Mike on weren't enough, we are thrilled to have back with us Nemo the Mormon from the Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo 4:45 Hi, everyone. How you been doing Christmas?

John Dehlin 4:47 Merry Christmas.

Nemo 4:48 I'm all right.

John Dehlin 4:49 Yeah?

Nemo 4:49 All right.

John Dehlin 4:50 You doing all right? Okay. Well.

Nemo 4:52 Excited.

John Dehlin 4:53 Yeah. Any, any initial thoughts on Kinderhook plates?

Nemo 4:57 Kinder Plates are a very strange tale and I feel like they really deserve a deep dive. So I'm really excited to kind of get stuck in and investigate the, the twists and turns of this story.

John Dehlin 5:09 All right. All right, well, without any further ado, Mike, let's jump in. Should we start with the slides?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:16 Yeah, let's just jump in because we're going to kind of give you a quick overview of the Kinderhook plates, and then we'll kind of pull back and then do more of a deep dive into the whole timeline, which we've done a lot on this series.

John Dehlin 5:26 All right, so, Mike, what are the Kinderhook plates?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:29 So this is kind of how the story was known at the time. So on April 16, 1843, a man named Robert Wiley began an excavation in Kinderhook, Illinois. And he claimed that he had the same dream three nights in a row to dig for artifacts. And if that sounds familiar, it's because that's a common treasure digging idea, that you'd have these visions to tell you where to dig. Right. And so right away, we've got treasure digging elements, power of three as well. Three nights, power of three. We've talked about how in magic, it's so common to have three times. We talked about how, like with the lost 116 pages, Joseph had to ask God three times before God would allow Martin Harris to take the pages. And those little details are important for the story. And so because the dig was so exhaustive, he asked for additional help. And then ultimately, as soon as he got that additional help and witnesses, he found what are now known as the Kinderhook plates, along with skeletal remains and other artifacts about 10ft deep into the ground. And so if you'll remember, I'm just kind of giving a little foreshadowing here. Joseph Smith, when he was doing the treasure digging for Josiah stole, had claimed that there was the treasure that he could see with the rock in the hat. And he actually said that the treasure was buried with a feather. And then all of a sudden, the next day, when he's got, you know, Josiah Stole near, he digs up the feather and says, oh, my goodness, the treasure sank into the ground, but we found the feather. So we know that there was treasure there. And Josiah Stowell, who is a witness for Joseph, who actually supports him, tell us a story as proof that you could find these ancient remains. And as we talked about in that episode, it's completely made up. It's planted evidence, because feathers can only last in the ground, I want to say, 60 days before they disintegrate. And so the idea that they could be buried with. With the treasure is. Is impossible. And so in the same story, we're already going to get this element of planting evidence into the ground to basically show that you've backed up your, your visionary experience in those three dreams. The Kinderhook plates were a group of six bell shaped brass plates. They were covered in unknown symbols. And then among the group that was digging with Wiley on that last day was a member of the LDS church. And so word spreads quickly of this discovery. It's very similar to the Book of Abraham papyrus where all of a sudden Michael Chandler is in the area. And once members of the church start hearing about like, oh my goodness, guys, this is amazing, we have a prophet who can decipher this. And so because Wiley was smart enough to put someone from the church near him, he knew that they would bring it to Joseph Smith. And ultimately these plates do reach Joseph Smith. And soon after, Joseph Smith is going to translate a portion of the plates according to his scribe, William Clayton. And this is what the history of the history of the church reads with regards to this. It says, I insert facsimiles of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook. I have translated a portion of them and the in fine they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.

Joseph Smith's Attempted Translation of the Plates

John Dehlin 8:34 All right, so immediately, man, this is explosive because Joseph's basically doing the same thing he did with the papyrus. He's seeing something that looks ancient to him. He thinks about his, you know, existing knowledge of the Bible and specifically the Old Testament, and then he's just like on the spot, not only declaring them as being ancient. Ancient, but declaring them as being associated with Egypt and with Abraham and then he's publishing it in a church publication. So, like, this is important because if the Kinderhead plates turn out to be authentic and Joseph Smith's translation of them turn out to be authentic, then thumbs up to Joseph and his claim to be a translator. But if it turns out to be fraudulent, then that's going to poison, you know, the Book of Abraham and with that, potentially the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses as well. I mean, that's, that's what my objective mind does, Mike. And Nemo, Nemo, you tell me if that makes sense to you. And then, Mike, you can, you can also.

Nemo 9:43 That makes sense. A couple of things that jump out to me from that PowerPoint slide are that whether there was a member of the church digging with them. So if anyone tries to tell you members of the church wouldn't go treasure digging. Echo. Joseph Smith wouldn't have possibly gone treasure digging. Just. Well, by the church Zone admission, members of their church would go treasure digging. And then the other thing is that he's done the same thing here that he did with the Book of Abraham, where he's confused Pharaoh as being like, a personal. Like, Like a name essentially, rather than a title. Because he talks about Pharaoh, King of Egypt.

John Dehlin 10:15 Yeah, yeah. And Robert Rittner made it really clear Pharaoh is not a historical figure, it's a title. Is that right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you know, right off the bat, you could see that this idea of the translation, even if you kind of ignore, like, if we pretended we didn't have the Kinder Plates to compare to, you would know right off the bat it doesn't work just because of that error. But, yeah, that's obviously a carryover from the book Abraham, because as we'll get into later, there's a lot of ties to the Book of Abraham within this episode of the Kinderhook Plates.

John Dehlin 10:45 But, Mike, am I. Am I overstating the stakes here? Just in my framing of what I've heard so far, in your view?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:53 It depends on how you like. For me, when I started doing the deep dive, the Kinderhook plates never stuck out to me. At the very first they did. The more I read into it, the less important the Kinderhook plates became. And then I started to do the deeper dive, and then I started seeing the ties to the other problems, and that's when it became more explosive and more important to me. So I think, to your point, this is an area. We actually will talk about this near the end of the presentation, but this is an area where Joseph Smith is given a very testable moment where he can prove himself a prophet or prove that he doesn't have that connection to God, to know, to discern truth from fiction. And so to me, it's a really important episode. Even though, as we'll talk about from an apologetic standpoint, they'll say, well, he's just copying from the gale from the Egyptian Alphabet. And we'll get into all of that later. But, yeah, a lot of times we try from an apologetic standpoint to water down what happened so that you can make it, you know, as. As little to nothing as you can. But. But the reality is, and as we go through the apologetics, this will be more understandable. Every time you try to fix one problem with apologetics, you're creating another. And the Kinderhook Plates, that's why to me they're so important and explosive in a way is because they have ties to different areas. As Nemo said right off the bat yout've got ties to treasure digging and the fact that we have members of the church who are going with this person believing that he's going to find this ancient record. And it also shows a little bit of how gullible people in this time frame were to see these plates come out of the earth and immediately think, this ties to the Book of Mormon, this ties to the Book of Abraham. And it just shows that Joseph Smith had a chance here to be able to discern truth from fiction, and he failed.

John Dehlin 12:34 Okay, well, you just gave the ending away, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:38 Yeah, I know, but trust me, the twist and like, I know this sounds weird to say, but the twists and turns of the story, I think are more important than the plates themselves. And so that's the area where, like, as I started kind of researching this more and you start to see all these connections to me as like a total, like a nerd. Like I had this dorky like, wow, this is really cool. Like we talked about in the early episodes about the puzzle and the puzzle pieces fitting together. The Kinderhook plates help you to put the pieces together of Mormonism in a really cool way because you start to see the connections. You start to see how Joseph Smith is doing things and how he's not doing things. And to me, it helps a lot of other areas which we'll get into. And that's why I think the Kinderhook plates in a lot of ways, by themselves, I don't think they're as big of a deal as a lot of other people do. But I think they bolster the problems of these other issues. And that's why no matter what you do here, if you want to water them down, you still are left with all of these other issues which we'll get into, which are really problematic once you get into that second layer of like truth claims of Mormonism.

Early Mormon Excitement Over the Discovery

John Dehlin 13:36 All right, well, let's jump to the next slide. The kindergarten plates generated excitement among early Mormons.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:42 Yeah. And so after, you know, these Kinderhook plates are found and word is spreading and of course everybody, especially after the Book of Abraham discovery is thinking, this is amazing. And so the Times and Season, which obviously is a church owned newspaper, I believe at this time it was being edited by John Taylor. I'm not positive, but I think it is. They wrote an article about it and it says, we learn there was a Mormon present when the plates were found, who, it is said, leapt for joy at the discovery and remarked that it would go to prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, which it undoubtedly will. And then this was followed up by a publication of a broadside in the Nauvoo Neighbor that included that Times and Seasons editorial along with the facsimiles of all 12 plates, because there's six plates with two sides, and then the note that the contents of the plates will be published in the Times and Seasons as soon as the translation is completed. And so, at least at this point, there's an expectation that Joseph Smith is going to be translating them. And there's also this belief among early members of the church that this is going to prove the Book of Mormon true, because, of course, finding plates with. With Egyptian characters would. Would obviously correlate to the Book of Mormon claiming to have reformed Egyptian characters on. On gold plates. So there's a lot of excitement and obviously everybody is thinking these are authentic right off the bat.

Nemo 14:58 Nemo, you know, what's mad about this is that Joseph Smith went through so much effort to hide the gold plates from people, and now he's just sticking whatever he's translating in the newspaper. It shows a real progression of his. In his confidence and in his. In his feeling that he has control over the situation, that, you know, he was a little farm boy trying to produce the Book of Mormon and he was having to hide these gold plates from everyone so they couldn't see. See them. But these six 12 plates, these. These 12, you know, plates come about and all of a sudden they can go in the newspaper and the papyri, you can charge people money to come and see them, you know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:36 Yeah, no, it's. It's an element of this, too, that's amazing, because this idea with the Book of Mormon is that these plates are being buried and Joseph Smith is the only one who can dig them out. And as we talked about in all of those episodes early on, nobody can really look at them.

Nemo 15:50 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:50 I know the witnesses claim to have seen them, but nobody sees them physically during the time of the translation. But as Nemo said, that's because at that point, that was the control Joseph Smith had with the Kinderhook plates he doesn't have control over. He cannot really stop members from seeing it. And so I don't think he can really tell them you can't publish it because the person that found them is already showing him to everybody. And it just shows how. And this is a theme throughout These slides, as we'll get into, when Joseph Smith is not in control of a situation, he acts much differently than when he is. Because the whole power that you hold as a treasure digger or as a prophet is that you need people to believe that you are in control of the situation if you want to be believed and have that charismatic leadership. And as Nemo pointed out right off the bat here, Joseph Smith has really no control over this. And that is going to put him in a situation that is just extremely difficult.

John Dehlin 16:39 And. And for those who are listening, we just want to let you know that we're showing on the screen visuals not only of the Times and Seasons article, but, you know, representations, visual representations of the plates themselves. And again, what's important to me about this, as I'm trying to, you know, assess this objectively, is that clearly Joseph Smith and the church felt like these were authentic and that this was an important discovery or they would have never publish them in the Times and Seasons. So that's. To me, that's a really significant endorsement. And I'm guessing later the church is going to try and dismiss and downplay the Kinderhook plates, but there's no way they can credibly do that if they're taking the time and effort and expense to be visually representing them in the church's official publication, the Times and Seasons. Does that sound right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:38 Yeah, I think the Times and Seasons did not put the facsimiles in. That was in the Nauvoo Neighbor, which I don't think the church owned.

John Dehlin 17:45 Wait, the thing we're looking at right now is not the Times and Seasons.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:48 So the Times and Seasons article is quoted, and then the Navu neighbor is going to take the Times and Seasons article, reproduce it into theirs and the fact similes. So they're combining the Navu Neighbor, combines the Times and Seasons article and then puts their own. Puts the facts in images.

John Dehlin 18:02 Sorry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:02 As well.

John Dehlin 18:02 But who's. Who is in control of the Navu Neighbor?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:05 I don't know for sure, actually. I'm not sure who. Who was in charge of.

John Dehlin 18:09 Who owned. Okay, okay, okay. I mean, but it's okay. Thank you for the historical accuracy and the clarification. To me, if I'm just trying to analyze it objectively, it's still having the ring of church sanction, sort of the advertising and discussion of this topic. Is that fair, Mike, you went.

Nemo 18:30 I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:31 Yeah, I think it's. I mean, it's fair. I mean, the article itself is telling you that this is going to prove the Book of Mormon truth. So obviously, okay, the people in charge of the Times and Season who are going to be. I don't know if Joseph Smith was still the editor at this point. I know at the very end he handed off that. That kind of control of the. The Times and Season. I think it might have been John Taylor. But regardless, top leaders of the church are publishing this and telling members this is going to prove the Book of Mormon truth. So there is no indication in any way that there is any skepticism or doubt towards the authenticity of these plates.

John Dehlin 19:01 Okay.

Nemo 19:02 And other important things that were published in the Times and Seasons include sections of Doctrine and Covenants like D&C.1 was published in Times of Seasons, and the Book of Abraham was published as a serial in the Times of Seasons. Before we have DNC together, as it is today. A lot of it was published in the Church's newspaper.

John Dehlin 19:18 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:19 Yeah. And just to clarify. All right, so I looked this up. The Navu Neighbor was published and edited by John Taylor so that eventually the third.

John Dehlin 19:27 He's the third prophet of the church, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:30 Yeah, so. So he. The third prophet of the church, is going to publish the facsimiles with the Times and Seasons article and basically tell members that there's an expectation within the church that there is going to be a full translation coming soon, which, again, that's really important. So this is not some outsider who's like trying to paraphrase or misquote a leader. This is John Taylor, the third prophet of the Church, who is very, very much involved in all of the kind of things with Joseph Smith at this point, telling us. Yes, this is.

John Dehlin 20:00 He was in. He was in Carthage jail. Wasn't he in Carthage Jail when Joseph was martyred?

Nemo 20:05 Saved by his pocket watch. Yep.

John Dehlin 20:07 And Nemo, you were laughing. Did you want to add anything? Just.

Nemo 20:10 I was just laughing at the fact that we were trying to work out who this was. And it turns out it is absolutely from the Church's playbook. Not only is it someone adjacent to Joseph, so they could possibly try and work plausible deniability in this because they didn't publish it in their main newspaper. They published it in, like, John Taylor's paper. The same way that they got members of the church to buy Mark Hoffman's forgeries rather than buying them directly themselves. This pattern's been there since the beginning of the Church using people that are very clearly associated with them, are very clearly acting for them. But there's just that one step removed.

John Dehlin 20:43 Yeah, got it. Okay, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is the problem for the Kinderhook plates.

The Church's Stance Before 1980

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:52 Yeah, and this is going to be kind of where the turn happens. And so until 1980, you know, 40 years ago, the Church claimed that the Kinderhook plates were authentic and proof of Joseph Smith's abilities and truthfulness as a prophet. And. But the problem is, in 1981, the church was forced to change their narrative on the kinder plates because testing proved that the plates were a hoax, as the creators had claimed. And we'll get into all that as we go through the timeline. And this is from the 1981 enzyme. A recent electronic and chemical analysis of a metal plate, One of the six original Kinderhook plates brought in 1843 to the Prophet Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois, appears to solve a previously unanswered question in church history, helping to further evidence that the plate is what its producers later said it was, a 19th century attempt to lure Joseph Smith into making a translation of ancient looking characters that had been etched into the plates.

Nemo 21:45 So slimy.

John Dehlin 21:46 Yeah. That they set a trap for Joseph or what? What slimy? Nemo.

Nemo 21:52 Keep that up on screen.

John Dehlin 21:53 Okay. Okay.

Nemo 21:54 What is really slimy about this is the way that they say it appears to solve a previously unanswered question in church history, as though they've been asking this question, which they weren't, because they were making an affirmative statement that they were true, helping to further evidence that the plate is what its producers later said it was, a 19th century attempt to Lord Joseph Smith into making translation, etc. Further evidence. Again, as though it's furthering their purpose, as though it's further furthering what they were trying to do in finding evidence that it was a hoax all along and that. Weren't these people trying to trick Joseph when actually they were maintaining that these things were real and they were trying to deny the testimony of those that said it was a hoax. So it's just. It's really slimy wordplay to try and act as though all along this is what the Church does. They'll change the narrative, they'll change something. They'll change for the strength of youth, they'll change whatever. And then rather than admit that they were wrong, they'll try and act as though that's the way things always were. And if you thought differently, that's your fault.

John Dehlin 22:46 So that's just textbook gaslighting, is that what you're saying?

Nemo 22:49 Absolute textbook gaslighting.

John Dehlin 22:51 Because the Church wanted everyone to think it was authentic and that it Bolstered Joseph's credibility up until 1980. And then all of a sudden they're saying, we knew. We knew it was a fraud all along. Right?

Nemo 23:01 Yeah. Getting ahead of the story because they know this is going to come out. They know that, like, the Tanners are going to pick this up, other people are going to pick this up. So they got to get ahead of it.

John Dehlin 23:08 Got it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:09 Yeah. They're very lucky this didn't happen in 2022, because they would not be able to stop the, you know, kind of Internet age of just like, completely destroying the fact that they had, as we'll get into, claim that these were authentic. So this statement that's made in 1981, it would never fly in 2022. I mean, I guess it would with members who don't look beyond what the Church is telling them. But yeah, it's. To Nemo's point, this is. They're trying to get out ahead of it, and they're still doing it in a time frame where they can control information a lot better than they can today.

Timeline of the Kinderhook Plates

John Dehlin 23:38 All right, let's go to the next slide. The timeline of the kindergarten plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:42 Yeah. And so this is just, you know, we've done timelines in our previous episodes because the timelines, to me, are so important to understanding how these stories change and evolve and how the Church's perspectives change and evolve. So we did this on the first Vision, the Book of Mormon translation, the priesthood, restoration, polygamy. And by doing it, it really helps you to understand not just what actually happened, but how the Church has completely redefined what happened. And so we're going to try to go through this in the best. You know, the Kinder Plates don't have a ton of documents to really pull from, but just to. This will give you a good picture of what happens. And so as we mentioned earlier, this starts in. On April 16, 1843, Robert Wiley begins his dig in Kinderhook, Illinois, which leads to the discovery of the kinderhook plates on May 1, 1843. So two weeks later, William Clayton is going to make a journal entry about the Kinderhook plates with Joseph's partial translation included in his notes. We read this earlier. I'm just going to read it real quick. It says, I have seen six brass plates which were found in Adams County. Adams County.

John Dehlin 24:44 Okay, wait, wait. Can I ask you a question, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:46 Yeah.

John Dehlin 24:47 So when. When William Clayton writes, aye, is he writing as if he's Joseph Smith? Is he writing Joseph Smith's dictation or is this William Clayton saying he's seen six breastplates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:00 So William Clayton typically writes like, Joseph did this, President Joseph did this. So I think this is him saying it. And if when we get about halfway through the quote, you're going to see him kind of turn to saying what Joseph Smith is doing.

John Dehlin 25:11 Got it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:11 And so I think that might be him. It's a little tricky just because he is recording the day to day events of Joseph Smith along with being his scribe. And so. Okay, you're going to get a little bit of that where it's a little confusing, but I think that could be him saying it and then saying what Joseph Smith, you know, said they were.

John Dehlin 25:26 Okay, got it. Please.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:28 So it says, I have seen six brass plates which were found in Adams pike county by some persons who were digging in a mound. They found a skeleton about six feet from the surface of the earth which was nine foot high. Which is of course, you know, that's a lot of people believe that ancient people were ridiculously tall and lived hundreds of years. And then it says at this point there is a tracing of a plate in the journal. The plates were on the breast of the skeleton. This diagram shows the size of the plates being drawn on the edge of one of them. They are covered with ancient characters of language containing from 30 to 40 on each side of the plates. President Joseph has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. And he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven on heaven and earth. And so that's just setting up that. And that's, that's from the original journal. That's not in the history of the church when they do change it to first person. And so that just shows because we'll get into it later. But a lot of people want to say William Clayton just made that up. And so we're reading it now. So you can kind of understand that he's not making it up because he's with Joseph and that is his original entry.

John Dehlin 26:35 I just have to say that I, I've made this point in previous episodes, but this curse of Cain thing, you know, Christians who love the Bible like to always remind us that there's no curse of Cain dark skin in, in, in the New Testament or in the Old Testament. And it took a prophet like Joseph Smith to insert dark skin as a curse into scripture. And we've already talked about how the Book of Mormon has not the curse of Cain, but The curse of the Lamanites with dark skin and that he injects the curse of Cain into the book of Abraham and the book of Moses. So he sort of codifies scriptural racism into those books. And now we have him codifying again the curse of Cain because of course, you know, the way I understand it, this Ham, you know, if you're basically talking about Ham and you're Joseph Smith, you're talking about the curse of Cain, you know, descending through the loins of Noah and his descendants through Egyptus or whatever, and you guys may or may not agree with me, but to me this sort of makes it sort of like a grand slam. Joseph can't help but codify curse of Cain racism into every scripture he touches. And Nemo and Mike, you guys can tell me if I've got that wrong.

Nemo 28:00 Yeah, it's like he's got these beats that he's got to hit when he's translating these things. He's got to make sure he shoehorns Ham him. He's got to get Pharaoh in there as a proper noun, as a person. That's what he's got to do every time. That's his idea of consistency, I think.

John Dehlin 28:18 Mike, are you gonna, are you gonna tell me I'm wrong on that one?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:21 Well, it's just, I think it's one of those things where I don't, I don't know if Joseph Smith is thinking in terms of like, I need to tie this into the curse of Ham. I think he's trying to find a way to tie it into the book of Abraham to give it credibility through what he's done. And I think as we'll go through it, it creates problems. But yeah, I think that he's trying to. In his head he's thinking, I've made the book of Abraham all about Egypt and I have these kinder plates and I need to tie them into Egyptian because the characters look like they might be Egyptian. And so I think it's just, he doesn't, you know, he's. I don't want to say he's a one trick pony on the stuff. I think he's got a, like Nemo said, he's got a playbook. Like these are the things I'm trying to emphasize about where my theology is with regard to ancient Egypt. And so I think he just goes to it. And as we'll get to, as we go through the apologetics, obviously that is because he's trying to tie the Kinderhook plates to the Egyptian Alphabet in order to, you know, kind of make it work with what he's done with the Book. Abraham.

Nemo 29:17 You also can't blame him because, you know, in his. In his cultural milieu, as people like to say, in the. In the waters in which he was swimming, language made up of symbols rather than traditional sort of Latinized characters or even Hebrew, that is Egyptian. To those people in their heads, it's a. So any. Anything they come across where there's a language written out in pictograms, they're going to think it's something to do with Egyptian. That's why Joseph Smith went for reformed Egyptian when he was talking about the characters on the Book of Mormon plates. That's why, you know, he. He looked at the Egyptian language and felt like he could get all these vast paragraphs out of each symbol because, you know, that's the way he made the Book of Mormon plates work. And so that's what he's doing again. So you can't blame him for. For pushing on the Egypt idea so heavily because that's the waters he was swimming in.

John Dehlin 30:07 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And. And I guess the other thing that's really crucial to me about this quote is that, you know, Joseph's main scribe, or one of his main scribes at the time, is writing in his journal that Joseph. He's just confirming that. That as a firsthand witness that Joseph Smith, you know, claimed the origins of these plates and. And commenced, you know, translating them. And that's really important eyewitness testimony as far as far as I'm concerned.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:41 Yeah, it is.

Nemo 30:42 He's. Yeah, sorry. He's also. If you pull that quote up, he's also essentially saying that Lehi and Nephi are descendants of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Because how else are. Like, how else is a. Is a skeleton buried with these plates being found in North America? If he didn't even come. If he didn't either come with Lehigh Co. Or with the Jaredites, that's weird.

John Dehlin 31:11 I didn't even think so.

Nemo 31:12 He's got to tie either of those groups directly to the royalty of Egypt and Ham.

John Dehlin 31:19 Yeah, it's just weird.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:20 Yeah, you're right, because it's weird. In two slides, we're going to have a quote from Parley Plat that Parley Pratt. That kind of actually does what you're doing, Nemo, which is. All of a sudden now you got to figure out, why are these people in the Americas when the Book of Mormon is saying that there was no one here? And that's actually a really good point that's going to be addressed. And I didn't think about it either, just because I just wasn't thinking that way. But yeah, that's a big problem when you're trying to tie the Book of Abraham to America.

John Dehlin 31:44 Really quickly, Mike, are you going to be covering kind of who Robert Wiley is and what his motives might have been later, or are you not covering that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:52 Yeah, so later in the timeline, we're going to talk about Robert Wiley and kind of what he says his motivations were. We don't go into a ton of detail just because, you know, the. We don't have. I don't even know if there is a ton of detail on his background, but yeah, we will definitely cover kind of why he did it.

John Dehlin 32:05 Okay. All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide.

Nemo 32:12 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:13 Yeah. And so the next slide, this is what we already talked about, so we don't have to spend much time on it. But the same day that Joseph Smith is going to write or have William Clayton write down his journal, the partial translation, the times and seasons prints, a letter to the editor discusses the Kinderhook plates, their history, and the hope it would go to prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, which it undoubtedly will. And so, you know, it just says, like this little paragraph here says, by whom these plates were deposited there must ever remain a secret, unless someone skilled in deciphering hieroglyphics may be found to unravel the mystery. Some pretend to say that Smith, the Mormon leader, has the ability to read them. If he has, he will confer a great favor on the public by removing the mystery which hangs over them. We learn there was a Mormon present when the plates were found, who, it is said, left for joy at the discovery and remarked that it would go to prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, which it undoubtedly will. And so it just shows that they're almost setting up Joseph Smith here to be the person that. That brings forth this mysterious translation. And obviously operating under the assumption that these plates are authentic.

John Dehlin 33:16 I mean, the logic there isn't outstanding because, you know, Joseph would have a motive to quote, translate the kindergarten plates in a way that would. Would validate the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Right? Well, yeah, like that wouldn't. So that wouldn't necessarily be an independent validation, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:37 No, no. But yeah, and that's where he's at right now. And you know, you have, like Nemo mentioned earlier, like you have to tie it to the Book of Mormon, but he already tied it to The Book of Abraham. So now you have to. That. Then you would have to kind of, you know, what's. I don't know what the phrase is. Square that circle or circle that square. You'd have to then try to triangulate these three things. And so I do feel like this is what happens. We talked about this in previous episodes. This is what happens when you're. I used to say, when you're orally dictating, like DNC132 or the book of Mormon, but when you're just kind of making it up as you go along, you create these problems, like Nemo said, all of a sudden, if you're tying it to the Book of Abraham, how did it get to America? And so had he done any more translation on this? Yeah, that would have been something he would have had to have done to find a way to bolster the Book of Mormon while also confirming the Book of Abraham and trying to avoid those contradictions. And so, yeah, they've already created a problem for Joseph Smith before he even began Nemo.

John Dehlin 34:29 Anything you want to add?

Nemo 34:29 Well, this throws the catalyst theory, like, under the bus when it comes to the Book of Abraham. So if you go back to the previous episodes we've done on the Book of Abraham, a lot of people say that the way the Book of Abraham actually works is that the papyri were just a thing to inspire Joseph. But this quote here shows that there were people around in Joseph Smith's time who believed he could translate hieroglyphics. They believed that's what he was doing. And along with all the other mountains of evidence that that's what Joseph Smith himself believed he was doing. This just adds another nail to that coffin that the. The culture around him, the people around him, also thought that he could literally translate hieroglyphics.

John Dehlin 35:08 All right, thanks, Nemo. That's great. All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is Apostle Parley Pratt compares the Kinderhook plates to the Book of Abraham.

Nemo 35:18 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:18 And this one's an important one. And actually, it's even more important now that Nemo mentioned the Book of Mormon connection to the Kinderhook plates. But so this is May 7th. So now we're six days after Joseph Smith's partial translation. Apostle Parley Pratt comments on the Kinderhook plates, comparing their look to the Book of Abraham papyrus. And he says six plates having the appearance of brass have lately been dug out of a mound by a gentleman in Pike County, Illinois. They are small and filled with engravings in Egyptian language and contain the genealogy of one of the ancient Jaredites back to Ham, the son of Noah. His bones were found in the same vase made of cement. Part of the bones were 15ft underground. A large number of citizens have seen them, compared the characters with those on the Egyptian papyrus, which is now in the city. So this is an important quote to show that everyone around Joseph Smith is under the assumption they're true, which is only going to happen if Joseph Smith is telling him about the fact that this has to do with the, you know, the genealogy of ancient Jaredites. And so to Nemo's point, it does seem like that's how he's going to tie this both to the Book of Abraham and also to the Book of Mormon by saying that this is actually one of the Jaredites that came out of. Out of the loins of Ham. And so it just seems like he's already kind of weaving a very complicated web here. But obviously this quote to me is important because Parley Press not going to just make this up. So he's getting this from Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 36:42 All right, so that's a second witness, so to speak, an apostolic witness that Joseph has declared these authentic and that he's. That he's pursuing to translate them. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:56 Yeah, even. And the thing is, like, you'll hear, we'll get into it later. People say it's a partial translation. And that's fine. It is a partial translation, but it's still a translation. You know, it's like if you do a partial test and you fail at. You can't then say, well, I only took, you know, a quarter of the test. You still failed what you took.

John Dehlin 37:10 And so, I mean, the Book of Abraham. The Book of Abraham was a partial translation until it was finished in Nauvoo. Right. Like, yeah, it was still Scripture.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:18 Yep.

John Dehlin 37:19 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:19 And that's just it, you know, it's partial until it's not. And the fact is he started it and he never. Yeah, and we'll get. He never says, I'm not doing this because it's fake, or I'm not doing this because I don't believe it's true. So all we have is what he did. And so, yeah, if you. If you want to, from an apologetic standpoint, say it's partial, that's fine. It is partial. But we could still assess what he did.

John Dehlin 37:37 Yeah. All right. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 37:39 No, I was just looking into the timeline of the Tower of Babel, which is what causes the Jaredites to kind of come over to the ancient Americas and how that lines up with. Because the church says that happened in 22 to 2300 BC. I just wanted. I was just looking into what the Egyptians were up to at that time, you know, seeing if the pharaoh was even a title in use then.

John Dehlin 38:02 But I'll.

Nemo 38:02 I'll get back to you all and let you know.

John Dehlin 38:04 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:04 All right, that's a good point. Yeah, and that's a good point, too, because that's, again, when you start creating this stuff and you're not thinking about all the things that you're going to affect by creating it, it creates a lot of problems. And that's how we can assess it. That's how scholars can look at the Book of Mormon and. And say those things are anachronistic or that biblical scholarship didn't happen yet. It's in the Book of Mormon, and we're going to see the same things here. Even with just that partial translation, he's creating problems that we can assess. And so, as I said, that's why I think this episode is really cool, because it does tie into all of these different episodes we've already done, I think, in a way that will help it make a lot more sense to someone who's trying to kind of put the pieces back together.

John Dehlin 38:42 All right, well, let's go to the next slide. The Nauvoo neighbor publishes the facsimiles.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:46 Yep. So three days after the Parley Pratt quote, the Navu Neighbor, which we just mentioned is run by John Taylor, is going to republish the Times and Seasons letter along with facsimiles of all 12 sides of the Kinderhook plates. Then they include the note at the end, which we mentioned, which says the contents of the plates will be published in the Times and Seasons as soon as the translation is completed. Which implies that members were given the impression, and John Taylor was given the impression that a full translation was going to come from Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 39:13 Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I can already predict that Joseph Smith's death is probably the only thing that predicts that, that prevents this sort of prediction or prophecy from coming true. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:25 I, I. You know, honestly, I don't know. I mean, I. We'll get into this as we go further along, but I do think on some level, Joseph Smith is, like, very skeptical of the plates because it's kind of like one of those things where he's doing this magic treasure digging with the rock and a hat. Right. And all of a sudden, someone comes up to you and they're like, hey, I just did that same thing and I actually found these plates. And Joseph Smith knows it doesn't work, but he's also in that position. We can't say that because that's his background. And so, you know, we'll get into his.

John Dehlin 39:51 You're saying he has second thoughts. Joseph eventually has second thoughts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:55 I, I think he's skeptical because I think it's one of those things we talk about the beginning of the episode. When you're not in control of a situation, you are very, very much on thin ice because you know that you don't know the provenance of these, these plates. And you also know that I believe Joseph Smith knew that he created the prop set of the Book of Mormon plates because there were no, there were no plates with, with reformed Egyptian. That, that's not a thing.

John Dehlin 40:17 Well, if he develops, if he develops skepticism, it's, it's problematic because he, he declares early on, you know, their authenticity and origin.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:26 So, you know, I think that also comes from the fact that I think on some level he can't help himself. You know, it's the same thing he sees obviously with the Egyptian scrolls. He knows those are Egyptian scrolls, they're with mummies, you know, they're, they're more established items. But brass plates with engravings that kind of parallel the Book of Mormon. I think he's like, I made up the Book of Mormon plates, but yet here this dude is. And I don't think they're real. But I also can't say that because if I say there's no such thing as brass plates with writing, you know, I mean, so, yeah, it puts him in a real tight spot. So I kind of wonder if he kind of didn't want to be. I kind of wonder. We'll get into it later. But I think he was in that position where he didn't want to say, I don't know what these are, because he had to have answers for everything in order to have that charismatic leadership. But he also knows that if he goes too far, he's going to be exposed. And so he was in a no win situation.

John Dehlin 41:16 It also reminds me of his Zelf, the Lamanite declaration of him coming up on the Bones and then the Zelf, the White Lamanite, we're going to add anything.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:23 Nemo.

Nemo 41:24 I was going to say that from my look at that list, we know a lot about what was going on in the world in the 23rd century B.C. so the fact that there's some remains that don't really add up to the archaeological evidence that exists within North America. Yeah, it's just problematic for Joseph Smith because it puts the time in it. If you start to say that they're descendants of the Jaredites, that puts a time on him. He's at least that old. He's maybe a little bit younger.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:51 Yeah.

John Dehlin 41:52 Okay. All right, let's go to the next slide. The Times and Seasons connects the Book of Mormon and Kinh plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:59 Okay, so now we're jumping to December 1, 1843, and the times and Season is going to make this reference to the Kinderhook plates. It says, why does the circumstance of the plates recently found in a mound in Pike County, Illinois by Mr. Wiley, together with the ethnology and a thousand other things, go to prove the Book of Mormon true? Answer? Because it is true.

Nemo 42:18 All right, I'm off back to church. Sorry, guys.

John Dehlin 42:20 I mean, that sounds a little bit circular to me.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:23 It's extremely circulating. It's just it. It's one of those ones that's hard to read without having some sarcasm because it's just like, why is it true? Because it is true. And it's just. It's the whole, like, Joseph Smith was a prophet because it's true. It's true because Joseph Smith is a prophet. And circle and circle and circle. And so it just. The fact that this is in the Times and Seasons in December of 1843 tells you that the Church is still having discussions about this. Members of the Church are very excited about it, and at this point, there's no skepticism that they're not true.

Wilbur Fugate Claims the Plates Are a Hoax

John Dehlin 42:53 All right, well, let's go to the next slide. Wilbur Fugate claims the Kinderg plates are a fraud.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:59 Yeah, so now we're jumping all the way to 1879, because obviously Joseph Smith is going to be killed in 1844, and that effectively just sends the entire Church into chaos. So In June of 1879, Wilbert Fugate writes to James Cobb in Salt Lake City. He tells them that the Kinderhook plates were a hoax that were intended to trick Joseph Smith into translating the plates. In the letter, it describes how the plates were faked, using acid to etch the the characters and the process of how they were uncovered and brought to Joseph Smith. And on the website, we have a citation to the full text of the affidavit. But effectively he's saying exactly how they did it and how they used the lore of treasure digging to get one of the people from the church to be there to bring it to Joseph Smith. Like they knew what they were doing. And so that happens in June of 1879. Now in December of 1890, in the overland Monthly, they report about the discovery of the Kinderhook plates. And it says Charlotte Haven said that when Joshua Moore showed them to Joseph, the latter said that the figures or writing on them was similar to that in which the Book of Mormon was written. And if Mr. Moore could leave them, he thought that by the help of Revelation he would be able to translate them. And I find this interesting because here is Charlotte Haven. And the reason I put her name in yellow is because that is a reference that John Gee uses all the time to claim that there was this long scroll for the book Abraham. They love the Charlotte Haven quote, yet they will never use the Charlotte Haven quote that says that Joseph Smith was going to translate the Kinderhook plate by Revelation because later, now they're going to want to tell us he wasn't interested. And so, so selective use, selective use

John Dehlin 44:39 of evidence when it's convenient for your

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:41 argument, you're saying, yeah, it's just inconsistent. Yeah, it's inconsistencies in how they approach evidence. And whereas I would go from the standpoint of, yeah, Charlotte Haven probably thought she saw a long scroll because as we talked about in that episode, you know, a two foot long piece of paper to anyone who isn't used to that is going to be like, that's a long scroll. It's not, doesn't be 30ft. But anyways, the point is we have this quote, and I think she means Book of Abraham and not Book of Mormon because they're comparing the, the characters on the papyrus. Obviously we don't have gold plates to compare to from the Book of Mormon. But the fact is, In December of 1890, we have this, this quote saying that Joseph Smith was saying, if you'll leave the plates with me, I will translate them. I think it's a questionable quote. It is very long after. But it also kind of puts a light on why using Charlotte Haven's quote in the Book of Abraham for John G. About the lost missing long scroll is problematic. Just the same, it's a leg quote,

John Dehlin 45:36 but at the same time it's, it's, it's a lot more credible than the idea that these were actually authentic plates stemming back from the time of Noah and Ham. I mean, it's better than anything else we have in terms of their authenticity, isn't that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:51 No, and it lines up too. I mean, as we'll go through this timeline and kind of the apologetics she is saying that she's there and Joseph Smith saw the. Saw the plates, asked to hold on to them so he could help by the power of revelation, which is what he would claim, obviously, for the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, because even though he's translating them, he's translating them through God's revelation of what the characters are. So it matches what we have. It's just one of those things where we don't have a lot to go with. And so I just find this quote to be interesting because it does show that they're comparing to the book Abraham Papyri and that Joseph Smith at least is showing interest in translating, which would make sense given the journal entry.

John Dehlin 46:32 Okay, really quickly, I just want to make sure I understand. So you've got Wilbur Fugate, who's saying that they were a fraud in 1879, but originally your story had Robert Wiley digging. And so who are these, who are these characters?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:51 So this is a group of people that are doing this. And so it's not just one person. So Robert Wiley is the one who's going to dig him up. Wilbur Fugate is part of that group that's trying to trick Joseph Smith, and he's the only one that's coming out to tell everybody what happened. And so.

John Dehlin 47:04 So Wilbur would have been a co. Conspirator.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:08 Yes, with.

John Dehlin 47:09 In the. In the conspiracy to show Joseph Smith the fraud along with Robert Wiley.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:14 Correct.

John Dehlin 47:15 Okay, Nemo, do you want to add anything to this slide? Particularly?

Nemo 47:19 Not particularly, other than I hate it when they cherry pick sources. Okay, let's point that out whenever they do it.

John Dehlin 47:24 Okay, well, the one thing I just want to say about, you know, this slide is I'm dying to know how the Mormon Church handles sort of, you know, this eruption of evidence that would otherwise disclaim, disprove, or add weight against Joseph Smith's claim to be a translator. Like this is. This should be a bombshell for. For the Mormon Church. So I'm just dying to know how they respond to the potential bombshell.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:55 Right, yeah. And the next slide is a great one for that.

John Dehlin 47:58 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:58 It just shows how we're spinning our wheels here to try to make this work.

B.H. Roberts and Early Apologetic Responses

John Dehlin 48:01 So let's jump to the next slide, which is B.H. roberts. Our good friend B.H. roberts reappears early Apologist B.H. roberts declares the hoaxers are the real hoax.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:14 Yeah. And so this is from his book New Witnesses for God. And it says of this presentation of the matter, it is only necessary to say that it is a little singular, that Mr. Fugate alone, out of the three said to be in collusion and perpetrating the fraud, should disclose it, and that he should wait from 1843 to 1879, a period of 36 years, before doing so, when he and those said to be associated with them had such an excellent opportunity to expose the vain pretensions of the Prophet. If Fugate's tale be true, and this is really the big part, it says, for while the statement in the text of the Prophet's journal to the effect that the find was genuine and, and that he had translated some of the characters and learned certain historical facts concerning the person with whose remains the plates were found, may not have been known at the time to the alleged conspirators to deceive him. Still, the editor of the Times and Seasons, John Taylor, the close personal friend of the Prophet, took the fine seriously and expressed at once explicit confidence in an editorial in the Times and season on May 1, 1843, that the Prophet could give a translation of the plates. And this attitude the Church continued to maintain. For in the Prophet, a Mormon weekly periodical published in New York on 15 February 1845, there was published a facsimile of the Kinderhook plates together with the Times and Seasons editorial. In all the above matter of the text, how easy to have covered Joseph Smith and his followers with ridicule by proclaiming the hoax as soon as they accepted the Kinderhook plates as genuine, why was it not done? The fact that Fugate's story was not told until 36 years after the event was, and that he alone, of all those who were connected with the event, gives that version of it, it is, is rather strong evidence that his story is the hoax, not the discovery of the plates nor the engravings upon them. And so BH Roberts is saying that because William Fugate waited so long to. To proclaim that they were trying to trick Joseph Smith, that clearly his lie is the real hoax and that Joseph Smith, his translations are completely legitimate. And so BH Roberts is admitting that Joseph Smith translated part of it and that the Church believed it to be true. And therefore the real hoax is the people claiming it was a hoax, which I think this is a really important one to illustrating how the Church is going to stick with preserving Joseph Smith as a prophet against this story from William Fugate, because there's no way really to know one way or the other at this moment if he's telling the truth.

John Dehlin 50:37 So to me, what's important about this quote, if I'm Just summarizing is we've got BH Roberts, you know, apologist for the church, not an apostle, but church historian. And, you know, I think he's a member of the presidency of the quorum of the 70. He's validating Joseph's authentication of the Kinderhook plates. You know, John Taylor's involvement, the Times and Seasons. He's just sort of like connecting the dots and doubling down and saying, man, if Joseph said it and John Taylor said it, and if it was published in the Times and Seasons, I'm sticking with the authenticity of Joseph's declaration of the Kinderhook Plates. That's what I'm reading there. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 51:23 Just that what we're seeing there is him saying, well, he wouldn't have tried to hurt the Church the way I would have if I were in his position. Therefore he's not telling the truth. But there's loads of reasons why he wouldn't have revealed the fact that it was a hoax. Part of it might have been shock and disbelief that Joseph felt fell for it in the first place.

John Dehlin 51:40 Yeah, yeah. Like B.H. roberts is. Is a defender of the faith. And so he is. He knows he needs. What this shows is BH Roberts knows that he needs to not go with evidence, but. But to bolster the prophet's credibility. Doesn't this show that the Kinderhook plates is a. Is a threat to Joseph Smith's credibility?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:02 That.

John Dehlin 52:03 Why else would BH Roberts spring to Joseph's defense?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:07 Yeah, I mean, if. If the Kinderhook plates are what we're going to be told today, that they are, then BH Roberts would have said, it really doesn't matter because he only made a partial translation using the Book of Abraham Papyri. So who cares? And yet what you're gonna see is that the Church is gonna go the other route and say, oh no, these are authentic. Joseph Smith is a prophet. Therefore whoever's saying that he made it, they made it up, is a liar because Joseph Smith already partially translated it. So they're going to stick with this, just as they stuck with. And we talked about this with the DNA in the Book of Mormon episode. He had all these initial DNA studies saying Native Americans did not come from Jerusalem. And the Church is like, yeah, screw that, they don't know. And then when it got too definitive, then they changed the introduction to the Book of Mormon to say, to change it from primarily are the primary ancestors to. Among them. I can't remember the exact wording so it just shows that the Church is going to privilege Joseph Smith over whatever they need to until they have no other choice.

Church Publications Affirm Authenticity of the Plates

John Dehlin 53:02 Okay. All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is the Improvement Era affirms the Church's stance on the Kinderhook plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:13 Yeah, so this is from 1904. And so this is an article in the Improvement Era which is like, you know, the Liahona or the ensign. And it's going to confirm that the Church believes the Kinderhook plates are authentic. So it says certain bell shaped plates are said to have been discovered in a mound in the vicinity of Kinderhook, Pike County, Illinois, by Robert Wiley in 1843 and taken to Joseph Smith. Now I wish to ask one, were those plates translated by Joseph Smith? Two, if so, what were their contents? Three, where are they? Four, are they considered of any value in confirming the Book of Mormon? And five, is there anything about them in the, in any of the Church works? And so Their answer to 1 and 2 is near Kinderhook in Pike County, Illinois, between 50 and 60 miles south and east of Nauvoo. On April 23, 1843, a Mr. Robert Wiley, while excavating a large mound, took from said mound six brass plates of bell shape fastened by a ring passing through the small end and fastened with two clasps and covered with ancient characters. Human bones together with charcoal and ashes were found in the mound in connection with the plates which evidently had been buried with the person whose bones were discovered. The plates were submitted to the prophet. And speaking of them in his journal under the date of May 1, 1843, he says, I have translated a portion of them and find they contain the history of the person with whom they were found. He was was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth. And if you want, we can just go to the next slide and do both those together. And so the next slide is going to have the answer to question three. It says the plates were later placed in a museum in St. Louis known as McDowell's, which was afterwards destroyed by fire and the plates were lost. Question four was about would this confirm the Book of Mormon? They said the event would go very far towards confirming the idea that in very ancient times there was intercourse between the eastern and western hemispheres. And the statement of the prophet would mean that the remains were Egyptian. The fair implication, also from the Prophet's words, is that the descendant of the pharaohs possessed A kingdom in the New World. And this civil is in this circumstance, may account for the evidence of a dash of Egyptian civilization in our American antiquities. And then fifth, it says the whole account of finding the plates, together with the testimony of eight witnesses besides Mr. Wiley, who were acquainted with the finding of the relics, as also the statement from the Prophet's history is found in The Millennial Star, Volume 21, Pages 40 through 44.

John Dehlin 55:36 All right, so Mike, what's significant, if you had to summarize just that in

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:40 a church published magazine, they're again affirming the Kinderhook plates are real. They're affirming that Joseph Smith translated a portion of them. They're putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that there's eight witnesses to the Kinderhook plates being real, which, as you know, there's eight witnesses, the eight and the three to the Book of Mormon. And just that this is proof of the Book of Mormon having people that came here and had a dash of Egyptian, which would give us the reformed Egyptians. So they are using the kinderhook plates in 1906 or 1904 to establish the Book of Mormon's authenticity and that Joseph Smith was a prophet who could translate them. And, and they're, they're not holding back. They're. They're going full out to say that this, this is what happened.

John Dehlin 56:20 Interesting. Nemo, anything you want to add as an observation?

Nemo 56:23 I had a thought and it has now escaped me, so we'll see.

John Dehlin 56:25 Oh, no, that's okay. Yeah, like, like already I'm. If. If they're using the Kinderhook plates to bolster the credibility of the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon, and then later it's all turned out to be bullocks, as Nemo might want to say. You know, is it fair to say then the Book of Mormon then is up for question as to its validity if things that they provided as evidence to the Book of Mormons or the Book of Abraham's validity ultimately fall? I mean, that to me, that's something that just immediately jumps out.

Nemo 56:58 Oh, I remember what I wanted to say.

John Dehlin 56:59 Oh, good, I stalled for you.

Nemo 57:03 A good litmus test for those who are still in the church or, you know, still attend the church would be. If you want to decide whether this was the church really pushing this narrative. The church often includes Ensign article quotes and Leohona quotes in Sunday school manuals. Imagine yourself in Sunday school, this being presented to you in a Sunday school manual. Now imagine yourself putting up your hand and disagreeing with it, what reaction would you get? And that reaction will tell you just how sincerely people held this belief. Because if it's been, if it's included in the church magazines, if it could be included in a church manual, then to go against that, that feeling you would get will tell you everything you need to know.

John Dehlin 57:45 Yeah. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:46 Yeah. And that article is not going to be written in the. In the improvement era unless there's people talking about it. And they're talking about it because William Fugate said he made it up. And so the church is doubling down, and they're putting in their own publications to their members to say, that guy's a liar. This is real. Joseph Smith is a prophet because he translated part of them. I mean, they're not mincing words here. And that's why I think that article is really important, because it shows that the church in 1904, after William Fugate said they were a hoax, was doubling down. Instead of maybe, you know, praying to God to ask if they were real or not, they're just gonna go straight up and say, nope, they're real. Cause Joseph Smith translated part of them. So I. You can't get around that. Like Nemo said, this isn't a church publication. This isn't just some random quote. This is something that was sent to every member so that they could know Joseph Smith was not fooled.

John Dehlin 58:34 All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is, B. H Roberts converts Joseph's account to the first person.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:41 Yeah, and so we talked about this earlier in the episode, and this is something that kind of happens with the apologetics for this. So I wanted to bring this up, which is in 1930, BH Roberts is putting together the history of the church. And what they do is they take these journals from Joseph scribes and they convert them from third person to first person. And so we mentioned earlier about how the initial entry from William Clayton said, you know, president Joseph translated a portion of them. And so now it says, I have translated a portion of them. And so this really isn't that important. It's just to say that the church itself is going to be the one that is going to change the journals from like a third person to a first person. And it's only important because we'll get into this with the apologetics. But I just want to note that 1930, the church is going to change this from third person to first person. And the fact that they're including it in the history of the church tells you that they believe that what Joseph Smith translates here is authentic and being done through Joseph Smith as part of his prophetic gift.

John Dehlin 59:38 All right, Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 59:41 I just love it when they change the history of these things. And then as we're going to get to later, they'll start trying to throw into question certain people that write things down of Joseph Smith while completely ignoring the fact that they will take the words of those scribes and just alter them to suit their purpose. Yep. Yeah, it's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:00 It's problematic.

John Dehlin 1:00:02 All right. Yeah. And that's. I don't know, is that shady or deceptive on BH Roberts's part? Like, I tend to want to honor him, especially because of the Shannon Caldwell Montesquie, you know, secret Mormon meetings in 1922, his conscientious objection to the potential invalidity of the Book of Mormon as a translation, along with pretty clear evidence that by the end of his life he lost his faith in the history of the Book of Mormon. I tend to want to view B H Roberts as more of a white hat than a black hat. Is this evidence of deception or not, Mike?

Nemo 1:00:39 I think it's clutching at straws.

John Dehlin 1:00:41 What.

Nemo 1:00:41 I mean, if you read this book, the man's a hero, right?

John Dehlin 1:00:43 Right.

Nemo 1:00:44 Studies of the Book of Mormon by BH Roberts and you start to see, okay, he. He got it, he understood. But at the same time, he's still trying to make these things work. And I. I can't blame him for it, but it is. It is deceptive. There's no getting around that. You can't mince words in the same way that they didn't mince words about just what they thought these translations were.

John Dehlin 1:01:03 Okay, Mike, anything you want to add?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:01:05 No, I. Well, like, changing Joseph's scribes journals from third person to first person doesn't bother me just because I think they're just trying to make it more readable. But we've talked about in previous episodes that they'll change. For example, there's one part where Joseph Smith talks about going to get a beer. It's like going for a pine at Mosers or something like that. And in the history of the church, they just scrub that out so that members don't realize Joseph Smith was drinking after the Word of Wisdom because they want members to obey the Word of Wisdom. That's shady. I don't think changing it from the third person to the first person is a huge deal just because I think you're trying to make it more readable for members. And the fact is These scribes are writing it down as Joseph Smith is telling it to him. So it's not like they're writing like from a, from a distance and then having it converted into Joseph's words. They're writing down what Joseph's telling them. And then BH Roberts is going to say, since they're writing down what Joseph's saying, we're just going to convert it as if Joseph said it himself because it's a lot more meaningful. But I don't find that shady as much as they change things.

Nemo 1:02:02 I think the reason I find it shady is because of the word games and the games that I know John doesn't like the word games, but the what apologists will do and defenders of the faith will do around when they will say, well this was Joseph Smith scribe, it wasn't actually him. So in, in, in that background to then change the words of Joseph Smith's scribe to the first person as though they are the words of Joseph Smith himself. Because we know that they muddy the waters in that area and they will cherry pick in that area anyway. That's why I tend to say that it's shady because it, it's all part of that same process.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:34 Yeah. Oh, I agree with that. Because it's shady the way that the church and apologetics try to use what they know was done commonly and changing it to first person to then say that what, what the problems with the church don't really matter because it was, it was changed. Like they know why it was changed, they know what was changed, but they try to make members think that it was something bigger than that in order to keep them from looking. That part is, is really dishonest and shady. And I agree with you 100. Because they do play games with the fact that they know full and well why BH Roberts made the changes he did. But they're gonna weaponize that to then try to neutralize the problems while still privileging all of the other things that the scribes wrote down that they want us to obey. Whether it's DNC132, any of the revelations. I mean, my goodness, that, you know, scribes wrote down the Book of Mormon, yet we're supposed to believe that's flawless. You know, it's just, you can't have it both ways. And so you either trust Joseph Smith scribes or you don't. And, and you cannot just kind of waver between the two. It's like the tight versus loose translation, except it's like good scribe, bad scribe. So it's like, well, Joseph Smith was wrong here, so that scribe went rogue. Joseph Smith hasn't been proven wrong on this. So that's from God. You can't do that. That is super shady.

John Dehlin 1:03:42 Okay. All right, let's jump to the next slide. Commentary on the Book of Mormon confirms the Kinderhook plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:48 Yeah, and so this is a book written in 1961, and it's, it's edited and arranged by George Phillips and Jane John. I can't pronounce that word. And I. I know, I know it's published. I think it's published to the church. I'm not sure exactly like, how this was, like, distributed, but this is from 1961, and it's written for people who are trying to get more depth to the Book of Mormon. And it says. But on the other hand, we have the fact before us that the skeleton of the pharaoh found in Kinderhook, Illinois, referred to previously, was dug out of a large mound. After penetrating about 11ft, the workers came to a bed of limestone that had been subjected to the action of fire. They removed the stones, which were small and easy to handle, to the depth of two feet more. When they found the skeleton, this was evidently a burial chamber. As with the bones which appeared to have been burned, was found plenty of charcoal and ashes. From the fact, from this fact, it is evident that some of the mounds were. Are of very ancient date, as it is not supposable that this man would be the only one of his race and nation to be buried in this manner. We also suggest that this colony of Egyptians may have originated the style of architecture in this country in which so many find resemblances to the Egyptian and which is especially characterized by the erection of vast truncated pyramids. And so some of that text earlier we read in one of the other quotes. So obviously this commentary is relying on some earlier quotes, but it's just showing that they are using the Kinderhook plates all the way up until this point to try to bolster the Book of Mormon and also cling to the fact that this is true and using it to basically tell us that's why the country is the way it is. And obviously, as we're going to get to, it's completely made up and it just shows how easily fooled people are when you're trying to defend Joseph Smith and make him a prophet.

John Dehlin 1:05:34 So one quick question I have that that's not necessarily, you know, George Reynolds and Jan Sojal. That's not necessarily an official church source, is it? Or is it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:45 I don't know if it's an official church source or if it's like a book that's published to be like kind of a, you know, you know, they have all those books that you're supposed to buy to, to get more depth into like the come following manuals or Book of Mormon or General Conference talks. So I'm assuming it's one of those. I don't think it's like being put out by the First Presidency, but it is a commentary that's being distributed for people to use to understand the Book of Mormon.

Nemo 1:06:06 Probably Deseret book, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:08 Okay, yeah, that, that would be, that would be my guess what it is. So I'm not saying that this is like a First Presidency thing as much as just saying the mainstream belief of the church in 1961 is that the Kendrick plates are real. Joseph Smith translated a portion of them and that is confirming the Book of Mormon as well as why, you know, there's certain things happening in America, such as the mounds, which we talked about in our Book of Mormon surrounding influences episode that he was using the mound builder myth to formulate kind of the themes of the Book of Mormon. And this is also showing that idea coming back.

John Dehlin 1:06:40 Okay, yeah, I just googled it and definitely commentary on the Book of Mormon was published by Deseret Book according to what I'm looking at. And so that's the Church imprimatur, if that's the right word.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:54 Yeah, so this is a, this is not like coming from the First Presidency, but this is something the Church isn't going to print. Something that is off the walls, basically.

John Dehlin 1:07:01 So, Nemo, anything else you want to add?

Nemo 1:07:03 Yeah, there's a slight of hand at play here. They call him Pharaoh. They call him a pharaoh rather than being a descendant of Pharaoh King of Egypt. And I wonder whether that's because they now know that Pharaoh is a title, not a name. And so they've, they've shifted that so that it gives more credibility to it. They also now are playing to the hemispheric or the kind of the broad spread Book of Mormon model. I forget the exact name for it, but they can no longer go for the upstate New York Book of Mormon geography model because in the early 1920s BH Roberts brought a lot of attention to the problems with that. So we're now in the 60s when this is being published. And so the archaeological digs and all that sort of stuff is also come forward. So they've realized they've got to go to a broad continental model. Which is why they can now start bringing in, you know, Central American pyramids as evidence of Egyptian presence in America.

John Dehlin 1:07:55 Fascinating.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:56 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:07:57 All right, thanks, Nemo. All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is the BYU Archaeological Society doubles down.

BYU and Apostolic Doubling Down on Authenticity

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:05 So now we're in September of 1962, so obviously we're getting, you know, further and further away from when William Fugate declared these a hoax. And so the president of the BYU Archeological Society, Welby W. Ricks, wrote the following in the Improvement Era magazine after one of the Kinderhook's plates was found. And so to give a little context, these plates were all believed to have been lost. It's very similar to the Book of Abraham papyrus. And then all of a sudden the Chicago Historical Society found one of the six plates. And this obviously, just like with the Book of Abraham, they thought, oh my goodness, this is so great. It's going to prove everything is true. And as you find out with, with church history, typically the more you find, the more that it goes to show that Joseph Smith was not a prophet. And so they find this plate and the leader, the president of the Archaeological Society writes in it, again, a church produce magazine, it says, a recent discovery of one of the Kinderhook plates was examined by Joe. Which was examined by Joseph Smith Jr. Reaffirms his prophetic calling and reveals the false statements made by one of the finders. The fine solved a 74 year old controversy and put the plates back into the category of genuine which Joseph Smith Jr. Had said they were in the first place. What scholars may learn from this ancient record in future years, or what may be translated by divine power is an exciting thought to contemplate. This much remains. Joseph Smith Jr. Stands as a true prophet and translator of ancient records by divine means. And all the world is invited to investigate the truth which has sprung out of the earth not only of the Kinderhook plates, but of the Book of Mormon as well.

John Dehlin 1:09:41 And I'll, you know. Nemo, any reaction to that? Nemo?

Nemo 1:09:45 No, not really. Other than.

John Dehlin 1:09:47 Yeah, the only thing I'm going to say is tell me if logic, if my logic makes sense here, if they're going to say that the authenticity of the Kinderhook plates sort of like bolsters the legitimacy or the credibility of Joseph's prophetic calling, is it consistent or logical that then if the Kinderhook plates are shown to be a fraud, that by pure logic alone that would challenge or question Joseph's prophetic calling?

Nemo 1:10:19 Come on, John, you know that's not how the game works. You know, that's not how they play that game. But you are right, the logic absolutely holds. If they're going to use this to bolster the credibility, then those same reasons by which it would bolster that credibility if it's proven false would also reduce the credibility of the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:39 Yep. And I love how much confidence there is in this article because you know, it's almost like they're spiking the football on people who are saying Joseph Smith made it up. And it just goes to show just again when we have those blinders on that the church is true and we're trying to find ways to defend it. You've got these, these claims that are being made even though they found the plate that doesn't authenticate anything. Joseph Smith dud. And yet they run to the improvement era to tell members, ha ha, we found a plate. Joseph Smith absolutely translated, he's absolutely a prophet. And this is why, I mean they literally say we the truth which is sprung out of the earth, not only of the Kinderhook plates. And they're literally telling you to study the Kinderhook plates because there's a lot of truth coming out of it. That's, those are their words. And so it's not only are they saying, yeah, we found one and it shows they're not a hoax, they're like, not only is it a hoax, but it's a frickin masterpiece. And I might sound like I'm coming off too strong. Read these quotes. They are spiking the football here. And I, I just find that overconfidence just to be so ridiculous because of the fact, as Nemo said. And if you said, John, when you, the, the more you bolster that claim that it's true, the more that when it's proven false that you're, you're screwed. And so I just, I'm surprised that they went so hard at this.

Nemo 1:11:50 John, you say that 50 of your audience have never been Mormon. Right. And so you take the time to explain some of the Mormon lingo.

John Dehlin 1:11:56 Absolutely.

Nemo 1:11:57 Well, one of you please explain to me one Earth spiking the football is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:04 Oh, Nemo, I forgot.

John Dehlin 1:12:05 Haven't you been watching the World Cup? Nemo, don't you know what happens? You know, you spike the football, deflate the ball.

Nemo 1:12:11 If you spiked it, surely.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:14 Yeah, yeah. So, so, so Nemo, in America we have football, which is awesome. I know you have football and when you score, when you score a touchdown, you celebrate and usually you spike the football on the ground is like a celebration. So, yeah, so the phrase is basically saying that they're celebrating a score here a little prematurely. So, yeah, in this case it's more like there's a really fun video of a football player and he's running and he celebrates two early and he lets go of the football like at the half yard line. That's kind of what the church is doing here more so than. Than spiking it. But yeah, sorry, that, that is an unfair reference for you.

Nemo 1:12:48 That's all right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:49 Thank you for something.

John Dehlin 1:12:50 Tell us me. Nemo was trying to make a joke more than he was trying to get.

Nemo 1:12:54 Who says this podcast isn't informative?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:12:56 Huh? Yeah, no, yeah, no, it's. It's still fun though. Yeah. And. But yeah, that I, I think that quote is really damning. I know it's from the BYU AR archaeological president and not from like, you know, the first presidency, but I think the fact is that they're pretty putting it in a church published magazine and they're going so hard at it that it really makes the bounce back when it's proven false just to be that much stronger than if they had just kind of maybe quietly said, we found a plate. We're, you know, conf. It's just they're, they're like going straight into it. And I think that's really. Obviously it proves to be a really bad idea, but I just think even at the time, I'm surprised someone wasn't like, maybe take a little bit of your foot off the gas here, because we don't really know what these are yet. But.

Nemo 1:13:33 But they don't at the same time, like, by the same token, Emerald Ballard will hold up the 1970 James B. Allen article from the Improvement Era and say, we were always talking about multiple accounts of the first vision. So if it's in the Improvement Era, it's like apostles will use it to defend themselves. They'll use it to. They will use it to say, we as a church were talking about this. So you can't get much more clear than if it's in there, regardless of who the author is. Because James B. Allen was a BYU professor, he wasn't an apostle. Regardless of who the author is, apostles, modern apostles now are saying, if it was written in that magazine, that was us, the church, talking about it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:12 Yep. Yeah. And that's another thing, like, to your point earlier about cherry picking, you can't have it both ways. If you're going to cite the Improvement Era as proof that we were Talking about it being straightforward, you can't then say, well, it's in the improvement era. But, you know, it didn't really matter because it was from someone else. I mean, that's, that's the whole problem with cherry picking and kind of selectively deciding in 2022 what we're allowed to talk about from 1970 and what or 1962 or whatever versus today. You have to have it both ways. Either the improvement era speaks for the church or it doesn't. You got to pick.

John Dehlin 1:14:43 Yeah, and I'm just going to. You know, I remember this famous quote from Hugh Nibley where they were talking about the glass liquor trial and Joseph's, you know, peepstone shenanigans back when church apologists and hu Nibley and everyone else were all claiming that Joseph Smith was never a treasure digger and that he was never, you know, you know, he never faced trial for his shenanigans. I remember that quote, something to the effect of, of Hugh Nibley saying, if this stuff were actually true, it would be the most damning and, you know, the most damning evidence that could ever be provided against Joseph Smith. And we're kind of being repetitive here, but it's just really important to note these techniques of church apologists because there's never, it's just pure motivated reasoning. There's never a point where they're even making an attempt to be fair and objective. Because just like with Hugh Nibley's claim that, you know, the glass liquor trial evidence would then be damning to Joseph Smith, there's never a point where he then circles back and says, hey, you know what? I said that before. Now it turns out that Joseph, in fact was, you know, was faced from an actual trial and a judge for scrying or peeping or doing this folk magic stuff, there's never a point where Hugh Nibley sort of like is called to account and acknowledges that this does, in fact, damage Joseph's credibility. The same with these apologists, these Mormon apologists that are spiking the football around the Kinderhook plates. I'm predicting we're never going to see an instance where they circle back and say, yeah, okay, it turns out the Kinderhook plate stuff was false. And so that does challenge Joseph's credibility. I just predict we're never going to see that, you know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:38 No, and I'll. I know we're beating a dead horse here, but like, you know, every time we do these topics, especially like polygamy in the Book of Mormon, like treasure digging, all that apologists will scream, presentism, presentism. You're, you're looking at that through the lens of 2022 and you're viewing 1830s or 40s through that lens. And in this case they are viewing the kinderhook plates through 2022 and ignoring what everybody said at the time the Kinderhook plates were, and what they were to Joseph Smith. And so again, it's like what Nemo said. You have, you know, it goes both ways. You can't say presentism to say that Joseph Smith marrying 14 year old girls was normal, which it wasn't, and then say, oh, but by the way, we're going to view the Kinderhook plates through the fact that we now know they're fake and then work backwards. And so, you know, it's just, it just to me, and I know, John, you don't like the word games. It just shows that when apologetics play these games where they're just jumping around and it doesn't, there's no logical consistency because it, the only objective is to neutralize these problems and it doesn't matter what problems you create elsewhere. And that's why, as I said earlier in the episode, that's why I think the Kinderhook plates are so amazing, because the plates by themselves is one thing, but it's what it impacts everywhere else. And that's what we're going to kind of get into soon in this episode because it really does solidify problems elsewhere that happen when the apologist claims they're gonna make. And we'll get into all that.

Nemo 1:17:58 Just a quick, a quick point, is that the reason they can do that, the reason that apologists can jump all around and it doesn't have to make any logical sense, is because the church, the, the key to the social experiment that is the church is that they have taught people to think emotionally, not logically. And so as long as emotionally it makes you feel good about Joseph Smith and it makes you feel good about your Testament testimony, then it doesn't matter if logically it works or not. So that's how they get away with it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:26 Oh, 100.

Nemo 1:18:27 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:27 And I mean, I can't tell you, and obviously both of you have probably had more experiences with it than I am, where you start, like someone will come up to me and they'll say, you're wrong about this. And I'll say, here's some sources where I'm explaining, you know what I'm saying, this backs it up. And they'll reply with some form of, like, this doesn't, this makes me feel like it's coming from Satan or this makes me feel uncomfortable and I don't want to read it. And to your point, that is how we're conditioned to think is if we get uncomfortable, we need to get out. And so apologetics is about, you know, it's almost like a drug. It's like you put that drug, you know, you put the needle in your arm of apologetics. You're like, oh, that feels so good. It doesn't solve anything, but it'll get you through to the next time you need, you need a fix. And it really has no need to be consistent or intellectually honest because that's not the goal. Yeah, and obviously we'll talk about more about that as we get. We have an episode all about apologetics later. But yeah, it just shows. The Kindergarten plates is a good example of how apologetics just completely slam the brakes, do a 180, and then just start ramming over all their old, old apologetics to make sure that it, it erases their history of, of defending these as authentic. All right, go to the next one. Okay, beat that dead horse.

John Dehlin 1:19:35 All right, so if, if, if the problems weren't enough for the church as, as you know, related to the Kinder Plates. And now we have Apostle Markey Peterson affirming the Kinderhook plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:19:48 Yeah. And so now we're in 1979. We have Mormon Apostle Marky Peterson. He publishes a book called those Gold Plates and he offers the following on the Kinderhook Plates. He says there are the Kinderhook plates too, found in America and now in the possession of the Chicago Historical Society. Controversy has surrounded these plates and their engravings, but most experts agree they are of ancient vintage. And so it just shows like 1979, that's not that long ago. An apostle for the church is writing in a book that they are authentic and that Joseph Smith prophet, you know, and so 1979. Just keep that in mind because we're about to see the turn here.

John Dehlin 1:20:27 And for our non Mormon listeners, we just have to re. Emphasize the point that Mormons are taught that they're all of their first presidency in quorum of the 12, those 15 men, they're sworn in. They're sustained as prophets, seers and revelators and as special witnesses of Christ. That's what we're all led to believe. That's how we sustain them. That's how they sell themselves to us. And so there's, it's not just some Guy. This is a guy that's supposedly talking to Jesus, that we. We give him that respect and power. And that's why it's especially problematic when apostles are publishing this stuff. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 1:21:13 That line about, like, most experts agree they are of ancient vintage is very much a. 90% of dentists agree. And you look at the figures, and it's like, we asked three dentists and like, yeah, you know, it's ridiculous that he's going to make such an outlandish claim. No one's going to pick him up on it. No one's going to say, okay, which experts? Can I see the papers they wrote? Can I define an expert? Because if he's talking about Hugh Nibley, which he probably is, then I would argue that he's not necessarily an expert in the true sort of unbiased sense of the word.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:48 Well, yeah, and that. And it'll also the. The very next slide is going to show you what the value of the church's experts are, because in the very next slide, we're going to see that those experts who agreed they were anciently vintage were wrong. So in a lot of ways, it's almost worse that he says that, because he's basically saying all of the experts I rely on have no idea what they're doing. You know, and so that just shows, you know, just as we talk about the Book of Abraham, we got John Gee and Kerry Molstein who are putting these theories out, and they're so easily falsified just by looking at the documents. And the same thing here. The church is like, no, no, the experts agree. Then you find out they're wrong, and it's like, oh, that's awkward. But, you know, again, it's. Most members are not going to know.

Science Confirms the Plates Are Forgeries

John Dehlin 1:22:23 All right, let's jump to the next slide. Science proves the kindergarten plates are indeed a hoax.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:22:28 Yep. So 1980. Now, the next year, after the Mark E. Peterson quote, the Chicago Historical Society, who possesses the one plate. They commenced on testing the plate in order to understand its origins, and thus proved once and for all it was a 19th century creation. And this leads to the August 1981 Ensign article, which finally concedes the Kinderhook plates are a hoax, after scientific testing determines that Fugate story of creating the hoax was actually correct. And so the enzyme says. As a result of these tests, we concluded that the plate owned by the Chicago Historical Society is not of ancient origin. We concluded that the plate was etched with acid. And as Paul Chessman and other scholars have Pointed out ancient inhabitants would have probably have engraved the plates rather than etched them with acid. Secondly, we concluded that the plate was made from a true brass alloy, copper and zinc typical of the mid 19th century, whereas the brass of ancient times was actually bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. Furthermore, one would expect an ancient alloy to contain larger amounts of impurities and inclusions than did the alloy tested. And so they're just straight up saying, like, yeah, science is telling us there's no way these are ancient.

John Dehlin 1:23:34 And I'm going to guess that, that the Tanners probably published, you know, first, that these Kinderhook plates were shown to be a fraud.

Nemo 1:23:47 I was going to ask if you knew that.

John Dehlin 1:23:49 I don't know it for sure, but that's what my memory. You know, I was just watching a short, you know, we've been releasing video shorts from all our Mormon Stories podcast interviews, and I was just watching one from Sandra Tanner that was released recently where she basically said that over the 30 plus years that her and Gerald were publishing stuff, there was always this pattern of Gerald and Sandra Tanner first publishing a super problematic event related to Mormon Church truth claims. And then miraculously, the Mormon Church, you know, six months or a year later, would, would publish the same thing, giving no credit to the Tanners, but then acting how, you know, none of this was a problem to begin with.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:30 Yeah, I can't, I can't tell from a quick Google search when the Tanner's published about it, but I mean, obviously they have. I just don't know if it was in between when the testing was done or not.

John Dehlin 1:24:38 Yeah. And I'm just wondering. Go ahead. Go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 1:24:41 I was gonna say, regardless, it's, it's a case of this is about as close as you'll get to the church saying, oh, yeah, we got it wrong. But they won't say they got it wrong. They're just stating the scientific fact because they can't be seen to not acknowledge it. Right.

John Dehlin 1:24:55 Yeah. Because I was raised Mormon, 45 years in the church. I know what the Mormon Church taught me and fellow members about what honesty is. We all know the steps of repentance are acknowledge the sin, confess the sin, make restitution for the sin, and then never commit the sin again. So if the Mormon, you know, if the Mormon Church from Joseph Smith and, you know, William Clayton and Parley Pratt and B.H. roberts and, you know, you know, all the way up to Apostle Markey Peterson, if they got it wrong, if they systematically misled the Mormon people for a century and A half or more. The honest thing to do, according to the Mormon Church's own standards of truth would be not just to say, hey, these plates were proven to be false. They would say, hey, these plates have been proven to be false. We've been misleading you for 150 years. And by the way, we attached, you know, our testimony of the Kinderhook plates to the authenticity or the veracity or to the credibility of Joseph Smith's translation. And now all this has been shown to be false. And so that calls into question Joseph Smith's veracity as a translator. I'm guessing that did not appear in the August 1981 Ensign article. Is that fair to say, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:26 It's fair. And actually, why don't you go to the next slide, because that's a perfect transition to what they actually do say in that article.

John Dehlin 1:26:31 All right, let's read it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:33 So in the same article, they say a recent electronic and chemical analysis of a metal plate, One of the six original plates brought in 1843 to the Prophet Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois, appears to solve a previously unanswered question in church history, helping to further evidence that the plate is what its producers later said it was, a 19th century attempt to lure Joseph Smith into making a translation of ancient looking characters that had been etched into the plates. Then they say Joseph Smith did not make the hoped for translation. In fact, no evidence exists that he manifested any further interest in the plates after early examination of them, although some members of the church hope that they would prove to be. They would prove to be significant. So they're basically immediately saying, you know what? They're fake. And it's kind of funny because Joseph never tried to do it anyways, which is completely at odds with what they used to say. And so I agree that there's no evidence that Joseph had interest in the plates beyond the partial translation, because we have no quotes of them one way or the other after that. But the apologetic is just so disingenuous and is completely rewriting the history of the Church, which we just spent the last, what, 30, 40 minutes doing. They thought this event was so valuable that they defended the partial translation for 140 years. They defended it for a good 100 years. After William Fugate said it was a hoax, they included it in the history of the Church. And so all you have to do is reread the timeline just to know how ridiculous this instantaneous flip on the Kinderhook plates is.

John Dehlin 1:27:58 Nemo, what do you want to add?

Nemo 1:27:59 It's Just if you, if you were doing a 180 this quickly in a car, you'd get whiplash. It's. It's crazy just how quickly they turned and just how quickly, like you said, they start to remove Joseph and try and protect. It's like they try and protect Joseph from the implications of this story by. By trying to give him some distance that just doesn't actually exist in the historical record. The trick the church missed, the thing that they should have worked out right near the beginning, that Joseph Smith should have given them an example of, is how to give a sure spiritual witness of something being true and then what to do when that thing is proven to not be true, that that is something the Church needs to survive and it doesn't have it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:40 No. No other answers. Oh, go ahead.

John Dehlin 1:28:44 Well, I'm just gonna say that, like, this is, for me, this is smoking gun material regarding fraud, like what I'm always looking for. You know, people are always going to believe strange things without evidence. It's just baked into the human experience. And you were never going to stamp out people wanting to exercise faith, to believe there's an afterlife, to believe that there's meaning and purpose in the world, to believe that there's a God. But what I am always on the lookout for are, like, these moments in Mormon Church history where, like, knowing fraud is committed and, you know, whether it's the revelation of the Book of Abraham in the New York Times as being problematic, the facsimiles in, you know, 1912, or whenever that was, the secret Mormon meetings of 1922, when B.H. roberts put the general authorities on notice that the Book of Mormon was deeply problematic from a historical perspective, whether it's the excommunication of Fawn Brody, whether it's Joseph Fielding Smith yanking, you know, the 1832 First Vision account out of, you know, Joseph Smith's own journal. There are these moments in Mormon Church history where the Church knew that it had his hand in the cookie jar, where it knew that the account that the Church was teaching its members in the world was not true. This seems to be now, 1981, yet another instance where the church, you know, morally had an obligation to say, we screwed up, we got it wrong, we miseducated everyone, we taught things that weren't true, and instead, like you said, whiplash. They completely fail to be honest. And they. And they gather and they instead gaslight the world and basically say, yeah, this proves what we were saying all along. Right? Do I have that wrong?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:30:43 No, I mean, that's Just it, it's like, you know, it's kind of reminds me like you're, you're a salesperson and you've been trying for six months to land this account and after six months, the, the place you're trying to get, they go with someone else and you walk out the door and you're like, I didn't want that. Anyways. That's what it feels like. They're. They spent a hundred plus years telling us that this was a proof of him being a prophet. And then the second science forces them to admit it's a hoax, like he didn't try anyways, it's just so bad. And it's one of those things where to your point, they should just be like, yeah, he made a partial translation. We don't know the means of it, but he did show an interest. But we don't know why he didn't do any further. But instead they just try to play this game where it's like, well, he didn't really do anything with it anyways.

John Dehlin 1:31:23 And that's incomplete, Mike, because they would also need to say. And multiple apostles and church historians for over a century and a half bolstered this claim, which, which in. In church publications, which now turns out to be false. And Joseph Smith himself bolstered it, which now, you know, turns out to be false. And so Joseph and a bunch of prophets and revelators all got it wrong, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:49 Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, it's okay. And it's one of those things. You don't need to say it, but.

John Dehlin 1:31:53 Yeah.

Nemo 1:31:54 How do you say to a group of people, everyone that we taught you to believe was being truthful, honest, and speaking for a deity was wrong?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:06 Yeah. How.

Nemo 1:32:07 How do you sell that to a group of people?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:32:10 You can't. That's what we talked about last. The episode about book Abraham where it's like, can you decanonize the Book Abraham? It's like, no, because the moment you do that, you're signaling to the membership of the church. Joseph Smith got it wrong. So the moment you realize even the church is willing to say, yeah, Joseph Smith could not translate the language he claimed to be able to translate, then to Nemo's point, it's gone, because everything else crumbles. And so then if you say our prophet seers and revelators through the church publications also can't tell discern between fact and fiction, why in the world am I going to believe Russell Nelson when he's already been wrong on A lot of stuff himself. So it just goes, you. You immediately will start seeing that Russell Nelson and D. Oaks, they've all been wrong on big issues in their lifetimes. And then if you realize they have no power of discernment, why are we following them? And so the church requires a lot out of us, and so they cannot be seen as infallible. They'll say past prophets were fallible, but they're not going to say, yeah, Russell Nelson is going to only get maybe 40% of what he says. Correct. They're just going to say, Russell Nelson's not a perfect person, but you better obey what he says. And so you have to maintain that it's the whole problem with a structure that's built on charismatic leadership is that the moment you don't trust that they know what they're doing, it's over.

John Dehlin 1:33:22 Yeah. So this next slide is entitled Questioning William Clayton's Journal. And I'm guessing this begins an analysis of Mormon Church apologetics, you know, regarding how they. They sort of backtrack. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:37 Yeah. So, yeah, so now we're going to kind of transition into the apologetics episode.

Questioning William Clayton's Journal Entry

John Dehlin 1:33:41 All right, so now we're going to Questioning William Clayton's Journal.

Nemo 1:33:46 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:46 And so now remember, as we've already talked about, they've defended this translation for 140 years, saying it's proof of him being a prophet. And so the same Ensign article in 1981 is now going to say the following. Although this account appears to be the writing of Joseph Smith, it is actually an excerpt from a journal of William Clayton. It has been well known that the serialized history of Joseph Smith consists largely of items from other persons, personal journals, and other sources collected during Joseph Smith's lifetime and continued after the Saints were in Utah, then edited and pieced together to form a history of the prophet's life in his own words. It was not uncommon in the 19th century for biographers to put the narrative in the first person when compiling a biographical work, even though the subject of the biography did not actually say or write all the words attributed to him. Thus, the narrative would represent a faithful report of what others felt would be helpful to print. The Clayton journal excerpt was one item used this way. For example, the words, I have translated a portion originally read, president J has translated a portion. And, you know, let's just go to the next slide because the two slides work together.

John Dehlin 1:34:51 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:34:53 And so. And then the article continues. Where the ideas written by William Clayton originated is unknown. I want to repeat that again. The Ensign article which is published by the Church is going to say. Where the ideas written by William Clayton originated is un unknown. However, as it will be pointed out later, speculation about the plates and their possible content was apparently quite unrestrained in Nauvoo when the plates first appeared. In any case, this altered version of the extract from William Clayton's journal was reprinted in the millennial star of 15th of January 1859, and unfortunately was finally carried over into the original Church history when the history of Joseph Smith was edited into book form as a history of of the church in 1909. William Clayton evidently had access to the plates at some point. For in his journal entry on Monday, May 1, he included a tracing of one of the plates. Whether or not he was present when Joseph Smith saw the plates is unknown. Two days later, on Wednesday, Brigham Young also drew an outline of one of the Kinderhook plates in a small notebook diary that he kept inside the drawing he wrote May 3rd. May 3rd, 1843. I had this at Joseph Smith's house, found near Quincy.

John Dehlin 1:36:00 So Nemo, what's your thoughts to the quote? Where the ideas written by William Clayton originated is unknown.

Nemo 1:36:08 They know exactly where that originated. It's good old Mr. Roberts.

John Dehlin 1:36:13 So, no, we demonstrated that Joseph Smith. It came from Joseph Smith. Right, We've demonstrated that, yeah.

Nemo 1:36:20 This is what I was talking about earlier is that when they start to muddy the waters about who wrote it and so was it justice, mis ideas, or was it just described going rogue? It creates these sorts of problems, but it does show the other thing the Church is willing to do is throw previous people doing secular things like compiling a history under the bus. They're willing to admit technical errors as long as they don't implicate the prophets, seers and revelators and their prophetic fallibility.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:46 Yeah, or infallibility.

John Dehlin 1:36:48 We're stealing the thunder from the next slide. But I just want to say, you know, Water, the problem with Watergate wasn't just the break in. This is a us, you know, reference, political reference to the Knicks.

Nemo 1:36:59 I know this one.

John Dehlin 1:36:59 Watergate scandal. Yeah. The problem with Watergate wasn't so much the break in, it was the COVID up. And this just feels like a cover up to me, a very significant one. So, Mike, why don't we just go to the next slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:14 Yeah. No, and like you said, the idea that it's unknown where Clayton got Joseph's parcel translation is just. It's ridiculous. William Clayton was Joseph's personal scribe and he was with Joseph Smith on the day that they were introduced. To the kinder plates. And we know that Clayton was with Joseph Smith because not only was he at Joseph's home, he officiated a marriage that Same day between 37 year old Joseph Smith and his 17 year old polygamous wife, Lucy Walker.

John Dehlin 1:37:40 Ouch.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:41 We covered her story in a previous episode that I highly recommend, if you have not listened to that, you do, because Lucy Walker's story is horrific. But the fact is William Clayton was there when Joseph Smith married Lucy Walker, so he was with him that day. This idea that he was not there or they don't know where it originated from is ridiculous. And so, you know, the bottom line is William Clayton was one of Joseph's most trusted men in the Nauvoo era. And that Clayton was with Joseph during the day and officiated one of his polygamous marriages is further proof of how trusted William Clayton was. And so everyone in the church lauded the Kinderhook plates until they were proven to be a fraud. And, and so blaming Clayton's journal as being incorrect just seems, it's, it's just beyond dishonest. And so when you want to talk about, you know, lying to your members or, you know, this wouldn't pass their own definition of honesty, this is just straight up making crap up to try to privilege the image of Joseph Smith. And that's, there's, there's no way if you're gonna. And I would also like if maybe in that Ensign article they had said, we don't know where William Clayton's ideas originated from, but he was there when Joseph married a 17 year old girl earlier in the day. I mean, they're completely leaving that out and there's a good reason, but it's just don't give a partial picture and then pretend you don't know because they know a lot more than they tell than they're telling the members.

Nemo 1:38:52 And the other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:52 Yeah, go ahead.

Nemo 1:38:53 So the other thing they won't tell you is that he was entrusted, for example, to, to write down as a scribe DNC124 and DNC125. He wrote both of those sections down. So if you're going to start questioning his ability to write things down accurately, the Joseph Smith tells him, we then have to start examining very closely just how TR sections of Doctrine and Covenants are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:14 Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. You cannot say that William Clayton is making crap up in his journal and then say, oh, but obey those revelations that he's transcribed for Joseph Smith. You can't do that. I Think he also wrote DNC132. Right. Clayton. So, I mean, it's like, you know,

Nemo 1:39:28 if the church would rather forget, they

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:39:30 would rather forget, obviously, just for the same reason, they're not going to mention that he married Lucy Walker in the morning after telling her she didn't marry him, that the gates would be closed forever against her after her. Well, you can watch the episode for that story, but yeah, it just shows that they are willing to throw anyone under the bus. But to Nemo's point, you can't do this with William Clayton unless you're also going to throw out everything else he produced for Joseph Smith. And they're not going to do that. And so if you're not willing to do that, then you cannot question his journal entry here because it goes against everything we know. And it's just. It's so badly dishonest that they would do this. And they're only doing it because science finally put them in a position where they can't defend it anymore.

John Dehlin 1:40:09 And tell me if I'm wrong, Mike and Nemo. But my understanding is of all the documents that the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the LDS Church archives had been willing to now release, William Clayton's journals are, you know, one example of documents that the Mormon Church has yet to release. It's one of those, like, final holdouts of potential scandalous documents that are so problematic. The Church is still not, as of 2022, been willing to release them publicly. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:45 Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of them have leaked out over the years, but. But obviously they've not published them in a formal setting, which, of course, I think a lot of people are excited to see what's in them, but yeah, they're. They're not out there yet.

John Dehlin 1:40:56 Okay.

Nemo 1:40:56 Yeah. And. And so what the Church has done with things like Wilford Woodruff's journal that are problematic is they've just censored it. So if you look at Wilford Woodruff's journal on the Church's website, you'll see big, thick black marks coming over any mentions of the second anointing. So they've tried that, but I don't think you could publish William Clayton's journal because it would all just be covered in black marks. It'd be like a redacted mission statement from like some spec op soldiers or something. Yeah, it just. You unreadable.

John Dehlin 1:41:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:29 I mean, there's, there's a reason. Like, you know, again, if they really wanted to be honest here, they would Publish the whole day of William Clayton's journal and then say this is what he said that day. We don't know where it came from. But again, they can't because they don't want to get into the fact that he was trusted enough to be marrying Joseph to Lucy Walker that same day and then pretend that he wasn't with him later. It's just. So it's bad.

The Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language

John Dehlin 1:41:46 All right, well, our loyal viewers will know that we talked about the gale or the grammar in Egyptian language. Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language. Set of documents or, you know, from the Book of Abraham episode. So let's talk about now the connections between the Kinderholt plates and the gale.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:08 Yeah, and this is one of the coolest kind of things that people don't typically talk about with the Kinderhook plates. And so this is directly from Fairmormon. They say Joseph Smith and they put in quotes, translated a portion of those plates, not by claiming inspiration, but by comparing characters on the plates to those on his grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language. The Gael. The gale was composed in Kirtland about the time of the translation of the Book of Abraham. We'll get into that in a second. Then they say Joseph found one of the most prominent characters on the plates to match a character on the second page of the characters in the gale. Both were boat shaped. The gale interpretation of this boat shaped character included everything that William Clayton said, Joseph said. And so if you're watching this, you could see it. If you're listening, there's a. The top figure is from the kindergarten plates. It's a boat with some extra lines. And then the bottom one is from the Egyptian papyrus. And it's just like almost looks like a mouth with no teeth. And so it's a boat shape with like nothing inside. So they're not really that similar, but they are the same outer shape.

John Dehlin 1:43:07 And so this, this slide is significant. Why?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:09 Mike, let's just go the next slide because that'll go over it because this is, to me, this is one of the, this is a huge one. And so John Gee, we talked about him a lot in the episodes on the apologetics. He is one of the most well known Egyptian scholars that's employed by the Mormon Church. And he follows Hugh Nibley's argument that the gale was effectively reverse engineered by the scribes. And so what they are trying to say is that the entirety of the book Abraham was written in 1835 on the manuscript pages. And then the scribes later went back and then attempted to match up the symbols from the Egyptian papyri to the Alphabet on their own and without Joseph Smith. Because the translations are completely wrong. And so John Gee needs the gael to be written after the Book of Abraham. Because the gael is complete gibberish. Because if it's written in the in between, it shows that Joseph Smith was part of the gale and could not translate Egyptian. And so guillenably make this argument because the only other approach and the one we talked about in the where the evidence points is that Joseph Smith couldn't translate Egyptian and that we do have the extant papyrus fragment that the Book of Abraham, at least the early part, was translated from. We covered this in our previous episodes. We're not going to go over to that into detail. But the reason this is important is that the apologetics about the Kinderhook plates are saying that Joseph Smith got the Kinderhook plates and compared them to the gale to match a corresponding symbol. And it does match up so far is correct that most of the points line up. But the problem is this means that John G's assertion that the scribes reverse engineered the symbols is completely contradicted by the evidence. And the Kinderhook plates actually kills off the missing scroll theory before it even begins. Because Joseph Smith believes that the gale is authentic and that he is the one that produced it. Meaning the scribes couldn't have reversed engineered it or else why would Joseph Smith be referring to it?

John Dehlin 1:44:55 Wow, that's kind of intense. But it's compelling. Nemo, what do you think?

Nemo 1:45:00 Well, I remember when I many, many moons ago when I tried to take on the this is the show videos that Kwaku put together. They did one about the Kinderhook plates and they had a woman dressed up in an outfit as though she was the kinder plates with a terrible accent. And they were, they were trying to, they were trying to imply that because Joseph Smith looked at the grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language and compared the, the symbols that meant that he wasn't attempting a divine translation. But they use that in the same breath to try and say that he wasn't trying to translate them at all, which you can't do. You can't say even if it wasn't a divine translation like the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham, as he claimed, he was still attempting a secular translation, so he still attempted to translate them. So when they try and tell you that he didn't try and translate them at all and he just had a brief glance at them, their Own apologetics proved that point, that he still tried to translate them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:52 Yeah, yeah. You can't get around it anymore. And that's. And that's the problem. You just. You cannot escape the fact that Joseph Smith believed in the gale enough to where he referenced to it. So even if he's not trying to divinely translate the Kinderhook plates, he is the person who produces the gale. And if the gale is wrong, that means Joseph Smith cannot translate. It also means the missing scroll theory for the book Abraham is gone. You cannot use it.

John Dehlin 1:46:14 Wow. All right, that's great.

Nemo 1:46:16 The brakes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:17 Yeah, that's. That's. That's. That's just how it goes.

John Dehlin 1:46:21 All right, well, let's go. Oh, go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:23 Yeah, sorry. I was gonna say, not me.

John Dehlin 1:46:26 Oh, okay. Okay. All right, so the. So the next slide is the kindergarten plates cement Joseph Smith's incorrect translations.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46:32 Yeah. And so again, if the scribes reverse engineered the gale, as apologists in the Mormon Church want you to believe, Joseph Smith would have looked at the gale, said, what the crap is this? Realize somebody was writing translations in his name, and then he would have either fixed the gale himself, not made the translation William Clayton at all, and they probably would had some really interesting conversations with the scribes who were screwing around with his Egyptian translations. Like the fact that he's referring to the gale and has no problem with it, tells you Joseph Smith is the one who authored and approves of the gale. And so it's a long way of saying that this sample of translation from Joseph Smith on the Kinderhook plates further shows that he's responsible for the symbols and translations on the gale, which tells us that Joseph Smith not only could not translate Egyptian, but that, as I mentioned earlier, we have the extant papyrus fragment from the book Abraham, as we discussed in the Book of Abraham episodes. And so this is one of those areas where when you try to use apologetics to cover one problem, and in this case, they're using the gale to try to cover up the Kinderhook plate, they're ultimately blowing up any chance of the missing scroll or catalyst theory for the Book of Abraham. And so you have to evaluate these problems in totality because of the fact that now we can look at the kindergarten plates and say maybe they're not on their own. The smoking gun. But it tells you without any question that the Book of Abraham translation was wrong and that we have the symbols and that Joseph Smith couldn't do it. And so that's why the kinder plates become so important, because they tie into the Book of Abraham in really big ways.

John Dehlin 1:47:59 And I'm going to ask you a question I don't think you probably know the answer to, but in this slide that says Fair Mormon, you know that Joseph Smith translated portion of the plates, but compared the characters on the plates to those on the gale. What's the source for that? I mean, I guess it's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:18 It's sufficient to say for that.

John Dehlin 1:48:20 What's that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:21 There is a quote and I don't know if I have it in here.

John Dehlin 1:48:23 Yeah, I didn't expect you to have it. You're basically saying that a fair Mormon. If fair Mormons makes that claim, then. Then the sources, you know, need. Need to be viewed as legitimate. Is that what you're saying?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:36 I think the source is legitimate. I think what the source says, and I don't know if it's in these final slides or not, but the source basically says that Joseph Smith got the plates and compared them to the Egyptian papyrus. And so there is a source saying that he did do that. And so that's a legitimate source. It's just the fact that he's doing that tells you that he believes the gale is his own production, not some, like, secret project done by the scribes. And so Fair Mormons.

Nemo 1:48:58 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:58 To use that source. They're not using a bad source. It's just that by using that source, they're creating problems elsewhere that they're probably not realizing at the time.

Nemo 1:49:05 Nemo, I'm shocked at this point if anyone's expecting church apologetics to be internally logically consistent. Yeah, yeah, that's all I can say.

Why Joseph Never Finished the Translation

John Dehlin 1:49:16 All right, well, let's go to the next slide. Why didn't Joseph Smith translate the rest of the kindergarten plates?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:20 It's a good question we talked about. Yeah, we talked about this earlier a little bit, but, you know, a lot of people will say, you know, why didn't Joseph translate more of the King Kinderhook plates? And I would argue the main reason is likely he suspected the plates were not real, but lacked the power of discernment to confirm it from God. And as we talked about, Joseph Smith's prophetic powers only work when he is in complete control of the situation. And in this case, he did not have any control over the situation of the Kinderhook plates. And so in a later a letter dated April 8, 1878, Wilbert Fugate recalled. We understood Joe Smith said the plates would make a book of 1200 pages and. But he would not agree to translate them until they were sent to antiquarian society at Philadelphia, France and England. And I don't think. I bet you that quote is real, because I think Joseph Smith there is realizing that by the time you sent it to all three of those antiquarian societies, it would take probably months, if not years. And that gets it off of his plate, and it also allows someone else to tell him these are real before Joseph Smith jumps full in. Joseph Smith was also very busy at this point point, so it's hard to imagine that he would have the time or need to create new scripture. And at the middle of 1843, he's tied up in dozens of marriages. He's on the run from the law. He's a. You know, he's parading around with his general. And. And the last point is, keep in mind that it took Joseph Smith 8 years to write the Book of Abraham, which had just been released around the time the Kinderhook plates were discovered. So if it takes him eight years to do the Book of Abraham, the idea that he would have been able to translate the entirety of the Kinderhook plates in those few months after is just absurd anyways. And so I think that Joseph Smith started to realize that he was up against something that he was very skeptical of and was trying to buy time by telling him to send it off to antiquarian societies.

John Dehlin 1:51:04 I'm just gonna. I'm gonna offer either competing or a supplemental theory to yours. In addition to Joseph being super busy by 1843, 1844, he was killed by 1844. And I mean, you could argue that he was super busy getting cast out of Missouri. You know, the. You know, why didn't he. Why did it take him another several years to finish his translation of the Book of Abraham? Between the mid-1830s and the, you know, the early 1840s, he was also very busy getting kicked out of Kirtland, getting kicked out of Missouri, and then reestablishing him and his people in Nauvoo. And so there's a decent argument to say that if he had lived. If Joseph had lived until 1850 or 1855, yeah, he would have gotten kicked out of Nauvoo. Maybe he would have re established in Texas, maybe he would have reestablished in Utah. But, you know, there might have been enough hubbub of people saying, hey, whatever happened to those Kinderic plates and why didn't you finish that translation? That if he had been able to resurface yet again, he might have finished the translation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:10 Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that's the thing we'll never know. I mean, I just, I think the fact that it took him eight years to do the Kinderhook, the Book of Abraham, tells you that between the time they were found and his death, there was no way it was going to get done. But to your point, he would have needed a period of basically like some peace where he had time to do it. And the Book of Abraham, especially that Nauvoo portion, is heavily used as a vehicle for the, the, his evolution on the priesthood. I don't know what he would have used the Kinderhook plates for. To, to have, you know, kind of push a new kind of idea into. Because he liked to use those scriptures, those Revelations, the Book of Abraham to push new theology, new ideas. He had. Yeah, you know, he probably would have at some point if, if he had lived long enough. But at the same time I also, I really do think that at some point he's like, you see someone doing the same tricks you've been doing and you're just like, I know what you're doing, but I can't say it because it also implicates myself. So I do feel like there had to have been some element of him going, I am stuck here with a lot of people who think I could do this. And then knowing himself that this is probably someone doing the same crap he was doing.

John Dehlin 1:53:14 Yeah. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 1:53:18 I've got a little replica, a 1830 Book of Mormon here. 500 odd pages, something like that. Yeah, yeah, 12, 1200 pages. Is that, is that what he said in that quote? 1200 pages from six bell shaped plates?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:35 Yeah, and that's hard too because that's from William Fugate. But yeah, I mean it, it does indicate that at least on some level he was telling people it was going to be a pretty long story off the just that small amount of plates, which is just.

Nemo 1:53:48 It shows again his deep misunderstanding of how engraving on plates work, on how pictographic languages work, which we went over that in, in earlier episodes and I would encourage people to go back and watch that in our. Was it composition of the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:03 Well, the gold plates, when we talked about the, the Peerage tablets and how that compares and I think that's a good way to look at it to show the symbols on the piercy tablets was 200 words on three plates. So this is six two sided plates. So you've got 12 plates. You're probably talking, you know, thousand, 2,000 words total, obviously. No, nowhere near 1200. You're not going to get, you know, a couple. You're not even 100 pages, let alone, you know, 1200. So. Yeah, it just shows he had no idea of how symbols translated to actual language, at least to our language.

John Dehlin 1:54:34 Right. All right, well, let's go to the next slide. We're, we're, we're coming to the important conclusion. But the next slide is the Kinderic plates exposed Joseph of Smith's lack of discernment.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:46 Yeah. And so, as I've been kind of talking about in this episode, his prophetic abilities were severely impacted if he did not control the situation. And that was the case of treasure digging. It's also the case of the lost 116 pages. And I highly recommend, if you haven't listened to our lost 116 pages episode, you do that, because this is a lot of those same elements. And so in this case, Joseph Smith can see these diggers using treasure digging techniques. They talk about a vision in a dream, three nights in a row, planting the plates overnight before the dig resumed. I do believe on some level he probably likely suspected the results, given that they mirrored some of the claims of the Book of Mormon plates that Joseph Smith would have never would have known, never existed in the way he portrayed it with reformed Egyptian and all that. But Joseph Smith would have encountered massive risks by declaring the plates fake. He was truly in the most delicate spot and appears, at least from the quote from Weber Fugate, in a very careful manner, which is to give a partial translation. But then to tell him, I need to have this verified by three different antiquarian societies. And this is similar to how Joseph Smith was so careful when he was replacing the text of the lost 116 pages. And the point here is that Joseph Smith could not get a revelation from God if these plates were real or fake. And yet he was able to describe a random set of bones as Zealth, the White Lamanite, via claimed revelation during the Zion's Camp expedition. And that was when he was in control of the situation because it was just bones, nobody could know. And that's a pattern that we've tried to point out in these episodes where Joseph Smith is able to produce revelation whenever he needs to. As long as he's in control of what's happening, the moment he loses control, those revelations, the discernment, it's just immediately gone.

John Dehlin 1:56:25 Yeah. I'm going to add, not only, you know, does this, does the kindergarten plates expose Joseph Smith's lack of discernment. As we've already talked about in this episode, it Also condemns, you know, William Clayton, John Taylor, Brigham Young, Joseph Fielding Smith, mark E. Peterson, B.H. roberts, and like, well over half dozen, if not a dozen of other prophet seers and revelators that the Mormon Church, you know, would have sustained. You know, it condemns a lot more than just Joseph Smith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:58 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Nemo.

Nemo 1:57:01 Yeah. Everyone that put their trust in him, he's kind of made a fool of. And it shows that they weren't able to tell when he was. If you're approaching from a believing perspective, you can't tell when Joseph Smith was speaking for God and when he was just making stuff up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:57:16 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:57:19 All right, so the next slide is Joseph Smith got yet another chance to prove himself a prophet.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:57:25 Yeah. And so we're going to look at this in some more detail, and we've got some future episodes coming up on, like, revelations and stuff. But Joseph Smith has already received a good number of chances to prove he was a prophet of God. In every situation, he's either punted when given the opportunity or been proven a failed prophet or, you know, a liar or however you want to frame it. When Joseph Smith had to replace the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, he refused to retranslate the original material and instead claimed a completely new set of plates to make sure that he couldn't be exposed for not being able to produce a retranslation in the same way. And I realize from a believing perspective, you're going to say no, God told him to do that, but I'm saying that the actions here were to completely skirt redoing the. The exact text because he knew he couldn't do it. The Word of wisdom lacked any knowledge beyond the 1830s, which could have saved a lot of lives if God had just told Joseph Smith to boil their water, including a bunch of early church members. Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham papyri, which was the perfect chance to prove himself a prophet, and yet he got the translation completely wrong. And then when the Kinderhook plates were presented to Joseph, how cool would it have been if he had exposed the hoaxers and told them what they had done, but instead, he lacked any power of discernment to know they were fake, so he gave a partial translation so that he didn't look like he couldn't translate them.

John Dehlin 1:58:39 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 1:58:40 Robert wants to talk about, like, what he would have done. You know, B H Roberts is like, oh, how come this hoax didn't admit to it earlier? How come he didn't do this? How come he didn't do that. A more salient question, how come Joseph Smith didn't expose the hoax at the time? Why did it take scientists years, like, years and years and years later to work it out?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:59:00 Yeah, that's just it. It's like, how many chances do you. Do you need for Joseph Smith to get it wrong before you just go, yeah, he didn't know what he was doing. And then if you really want to do it from a believing standpoint, it's like, why is God setting his prophet up to look like a fraud over and over again? And I know from a believing standpoint, you'll say, if Joseph Smith told the Kinder Plates people that they were hoaxers, there'd be no need for faith because we would know he's a prophet. And it's like, I don't. I don't know if they even understand how ridiculous that that concept is to say that God wants Joseph Smith to look like a failure to embolden faith in his members. It's just if that's really what the Mormon version of God is doing. The Mormon version of God is a really bad manager at trying to save people. He's actually trying to screw people over because of the fact that he's making Joseph Smith out to look like a fraud over and over. And at some point, you know, if you look at that logic the same you would look at any other person, other religion, other organization, he would never give them that much space because this is enough time to know they have no idea what they're doing. And yet in the Mormon Church, they're going to keep telling you that Joseph Smith actually did get it right. If you just look at it in a completely different way.

John Dehlin 2:00:06 And then I'm just going to reiterate kind of how I started. If you've now followed us kind of through 33 episodes into the LDS discussions series, we've given credible evidence and reasoning that the Book of Mormon is a failed translation, that the Book of Moses is a failed translation, that the Book of Abraham is a failed translation, that the Doctrine and Covenants are demonstrably, demonstrably problematic translations, and that Joseph Smith's translation of the, you know, the King James Bible is deeply problematic. So that's five out of five failed translations. And. And then if you had Kinder Plates, that's six out of six failed translations with zero successful translations. Did. Am I overreaching, Mike or Nemo?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01:09 No, no, no.

Nemo 2:01:11 If I was hiring a translator, wouldn't hire him based on his resume.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01:15 I mean, this is why? You know, when we talk about there's a line from the CS letter, I think it says something like, if someone sold you three clunkers, would you buy another one? And people get really offended by that. But the reality is, if somebody gets like four or five translations wrong, are you really going to believe not only Joseph Smith, but the leaders today that they speak to God, when everything we have that can evaluate the truth claims of the Mormon Church is telling us it is absolutely wrong? And, you know, one of the things being a convert, I guess maybe it was easier for me to kind of look at it a little differently because I didn't have a childhood that was told this is the only way. But I never needed anyone to prove Mormonism true. I never needed anyone to prove the Book of Mormon true. But what I needed was that you could not prove the Book of Mormon false, that you could not prove that the Book of Mormon is not history. And so when people say, you have to have faith, I say faith is the belief in what you can't see, what you can't know. It is not belief in spite of what you can see. And so this is an area where you can see with your own eyes, with your own ears. You can look at these things and understand Joseph Smith. And all of the people after until 1980 told us that this was a prophetic translation, partial as it may be, by Joseph Smith, it's wrong. And so not only did Joseph Smith got it wrong, but every leader after got it wrong as well.

Conclusions and Final Takeaways

John Dehlin 2:02:29 All right, well, that takes us to the final slide, which is the conclusion of today's presentation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:02:34 Yeah, and so kind of like I talked about at the beginning, the reason I like the Kinderhook plates is because it goes beyond just the headline that Joseph Smith claimed a partial translation of a fraudulent set of plates. That by itself is a bombshell. I do believe sometimes as a critic, we overstate it a little bit. But the fact is he did make a partial translation of a set of plates that were fraudulent. But for me, the takeaways beyond that are really important. One is that as we talk about, Joseph Smith lacked the power of discernment to know he's being conned. And that was a perfect opportunity for Joseph Smith to really unleash his prophetic calling. And yet he failed. The gale for the Egyptian Alphabet for the Book of Abraham was 100% done by Joseph Smith and was not reverse engineered, as apologists want to claim, in order to excuse the completely incorrect translations. So the Kinderhook plates make the Missing slash, long scroll theory of the Book of Abraham dead on arrival. It was quite possible in the 19th century to create a set of prop plates and metal that were intricate and bound, just like Joseph Smith could have done with the Book of Mormon. I realize an apologist might say that Fugate and them had a group and they had a blacksmith. The point is, Joseph Smith did not show anyone the engravings on the plate, so it'd be very easy for him just take sheets of tiny and bound them in the 1820s, Dan Vogel's talked about that in great length and shown how it would have been very easy for him to do. And the Kinderhook plates show the absurdity of treasure digging, which is something to me that shows Joseph Smith recognized when being asked about the plates, when he said he wanted to send it to multiple antiquarian societies to be verified instead of just asking God. Considering that Joseph Smith could get revelation on just about anything, and yet on the Kinderhook plates, he tells them, I want to send them off to a bunch of these antiquarian societies, wouldn't you think he would just pray to God? And so I think it just shows the weakness of Joseph Smith's ability to get revelation again when he's not controlling the situation.

John Dehlin 2:04:27 Yeah. Amen, Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 2:04:32 It's just. Yeah, it's an old trope, but Joseph Smith gets an angel with a drawn sword coming to make it very clear to him that he has to marry underage girls, but he has to send off to an antiquarian society to do his one main job, which is to translate ancient scripture and bring it forth. That was what he was called to do. He wasn't called to establish polygamy, at least not initially. That wasn't his mandate. His mandate was to translate ancient words and bring them forth and bring forth the fullness of the gospel that way. So, you know, God's priorities are askew. Joseph Smith's priorities in what he asks for and what he sends off to antiquarian societies are askew. And as a translator, I don't rate him.

John Dehlin 2:05:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:05:17 I mean, and your point about the angel with the drawn sword? I feel like we could do that in a lot of episodes. But yeah, it's perfect because again, you have to remember the Mormon version of God's priority to send an angel down with a drawn sword is to make Joseph Smith marry and have sex with followers that tend to be young and attractive, or I should just say young. We don't know if they were attractive. And yet when we have issues like the Kinderhook plates, the angel is just apparently not going to come down and tell Joseph, don't do that. Or when he's translating the book of Abraham wrong, no angel. And so over and over again we see this pattern where the things that God seems to want are the things Joseph Smith wants and is in control of. And when Joseph Smith loses control, God kind of the Mormon version of God disappears completely. And that should be a pretty good sign that Joseph Smith is the one that's in control of these revelations and of these claimed, you know, decrees from God.

John Dehlin 2:06:06 And I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna share a scripture that I've already referenced, but I'm just gonna share it one more time and make a final point. If we're looking at the modern Doctrine and Covenants, Section 21, Verse 1, it says, behold, there shall be a record kept among you, and in it thou shalt be called. This is Jesus Christ himself according to the Doctrine and Covenants, talking about Joseph Smith. And thou shalt be called a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of the church, through the will of God the Father and the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ. And so there we've got the Doctrine and Covenants and Jesus himself, Mormon Jesus himself, declaring Joseph Smith as a translator. And, and the reason why that's a problem, number one, is we have basically another example of the scriptures being wrong. Clearly Joseph wasn't a translator. But for me, why this is really crucial is that we all can remember how we started this whole LDS discussions episode, which is with Joseph Smith as a treasure digger. And what we know is, is that even though he was never able to find any treasure, he was still able to convince people that he had the power to find buried treasure and the power to use a seer stone in a hat to do magic. Basically, he was a magical person who had magical artifacts that he could either find treasure with or later with the Book of Mormon. The pivot was, with the Book of Mormon was to pivot from using a seer stone and a hat to find buried treasure. Pivoting to using the Book of Mormon seer stone. Sorry, using the seer stone in the hat to translate alleged golden plates by the gift and power of God into scripture. So this translator claim is a really important bridge from his fraudulent folk magic treasure digging days to, to his claim to be a man of God, a prophet, seer and revelator, a leader of a new religious movement. And so If. If that claim of being a translator fails, it fails on the back of his claims to be able to find buried treasure. Also failing, those two dominoes fall, then where is the credibility of him being a prophet of the Restoration? And it's an important bait and switch because you would not have Brigham Young and all of the people in Kirtland and Missouri and in Nauvoo. You probably wouldn't have them following and believing in Joseph Smith if they had known that not only was his treasure digging attempts proven to be fraudulent, but that his translation attempts were also proven to be fraudulent. You probably wouldn't have a bunch of people being. Being willing to testify that he was a prophet of Jesus and being willing to follow him. To me, it's. It's just a really important domino.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:25 No, it is. And that's why we talk about watching all these episodes in order to try to understand when we try to call back to earlier ones. Because, yeah, if church members knew the book Abraham is considered a fault, a bad translation by literally everyone that's not employed by the church. And the Kinderhook plates, what they claim they were, what all the leaders claim they were. I mean, you're not going to have members who are going to go, oh, that's. That's a prophet I can depend on. They're going to go, what. What the crap is going on here? Because now we're seeing that Joseph Smith is getting it wrong every time we can assess his. His claims. And that is why I think the Kinderhook plates are really important, because it's just another way to verify not just the Kinderhook plates, but the Book of Abraham and treasure digging. Those are all tied into this. And all of them are telling us that this is not something that's coming from God, but is coming from Joseph Smith.

Closing Remarks and Channel Updates

John Dehlin 2:10:10 All right, well, I think we made the case today, Mike. Normally you have to run or run at this point, I think, but I just want to say, you know, check out the LDS discussions essay on the Kinderhook plates. We'll provide a link to it in the show notes. And then, Mike, we still have at least another 10 or 12 episodes to go, including an overview of Joseph Smith's translations, where I think we're going to be summarizing kind of how we concluded today. But we've got spiritual witnesses and testimonies of the Book of Mormon, how the Church handles doubt, several episodes on Revelations, the transfiguration of Brigham Young, Mormonism and apologetics, some summaries about Joseph Smith but you know, we're down to the last 10 or 12 episodes of as we've currently envisioned, the LDS discussion series. That's kind of, well, it's kind of sad, but also exciting.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:06 Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of good stuff left. And then I think when we get near the end, we'll try to see what we can maybe add in because there's a lot of topics that I think people have asked where we haven't done. So we're not. We still got a while to go and, and, and looking forward to picking back up with you. And it. Like I said, there's a lot of fun stuff left and a lot of what's left is going to tie back to what we've already done. I think that's what makes this valuable because of the fact it can tie these things together in a way that I think undercuts this idea that they're all one off problems. But they're more patterns and they're more themes that help us to understand it better. But even if it kind of sucks to go through it in the first place.

John Dehlin 2:11:41 All right, I'm going to quickly ask anyone who is watching us on YouTube or who has a YouTube account, I'm going to just ask you explicitly. We just, we, we passed 90,000 YouTube subscribers while this interview was being recorded. That's a huge accomplishment because once you hit a hundred thousand, YouTube actually sends you a plaque. And why all that's important? Number one, if you subscribe to YouTube, it, it allows you to be notified when another important cool new episode releases. But it also really helps the algorithms in the sense that the more popular a YouTube channel is, the more YouTube is willing to advertise and promote your episodes. So please take the time right now to go subscribe to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. If you haven't, that's really important for us. But I also want to say, as we thank Nemo for coming on today, please also go to the Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel and subscribe there because Nemo does brilliant work and he deserves our support. So Nemo, any final words? Mike already had to bail. Any final words you have for us,

Nemo 2:12:49 just thank you for that. It's been a pleasure and an honor being here. I met almost at a much smaller milestone. I'm almost at 10,000.

John Dehlin 2:12:58 That's great.

Nemo 2:12:59 You know, I'm thrilled with. So I can't really be self deprecating like that as I normally am. And just thanks to everyone that supports what I do and supports what I do here as well. Yeah, I love being part of this, and I'm just grateful to be here.

John Dehlin 2:13:14 All right, Nemo. Well, we adore you and we're grateful for your friendship and for your participation and for your. Your work independently and Mormon Stories. So keep up the good work, Nemo.

Nemo 2:13:26 Thank you.

John Dehlin 2:13:26 All right, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today on Mormon Stories. I want to thank everyone who's helped us have such a wonderful year in 2022. That's Gerardo, that's Anthony. That's Brooklyn, that's Maven. That's, you know, so many people. Margi and Samantha and Kara and John Larson. And I'm sure I'm forgetting people. So many people who have been super helpful, Justin and others. Thanks to everyone who's helped make Mormon Stories successful. Thanks to all the donors that have donated to Mormon Stories podcast. We couldn't do this without your donations. And if you do value this LDS discussion series or Mormon Stories in general, we need your support to keep paying everybody and to keep this all financially sustainable. So if you haven't yet, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button at the top of the page. Become a monthly donor. It's tax deductible in the US we're transparent in our finances, and we do our best to make sure that every dollar you spend or donate to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation is used to further the mission. I also want to thank Clint Martin and Carrie Whitbeck as our board members for all that they do to make all this possible as well. So thanks everyone for joining us today. Please share this with anyone you want to Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast and of the LDS discussion series, which is available on Spotify in audio and video format in the Apple podcasting app and on YouTube in the playlist on the Mormon Stories Podcast page. Thanks, everybody. Take care and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Bye Bye.

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