Revelation Pt 1: Joseph Smith’s Backdated Prophecies w/ Radio Free Mormon

Welcome and Introduction to the Episode

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John Dehlin. It's February 3rd, 2023 and I'm super excited for a continuation of our series from LDS discussions on examining Mormon truth claims with as much objectivity as we can. The topic for today is Joseph Smith and backdated prophecies. So we're basically going to be talking about or examining whether or not Joseph Smith, whether in the Book of Mormon, whether or another scripture or just in his time as a prophet, would backdate prophecies. But I'm excited to have with us today a very illustrious panel, a panel of podcasters that are award winning podcasters. In 2023, we have Mike from LDS Discussions. Hey Mike, welcome, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:50 It's good to be back. And this, this will be a fun one because this one, this overview is our next guest fault because I was unaware of this kind of thing until I listened to his podcast. So we're going to hear a lot of what he had already done. And so I'm glad he's here because this is actually a really cool one as far as we've talked in the past about how you start to see these fingerprints of Joseph Smith and this is a cool one that kind of brings that together in a slightly different way and helps you to kind of understand a lot of what we talked about with the Book of Mormon as far as kind of how it could have been put together and how you can understand the dating of the text and who could have written it.

John Dehlin 1:25 I love it. Really quickly. I'll remind everyone that Mike has a wonderful website, award winning website called LDSDiscussions.com where he has written a number of essays trying to objectively look at Mormon Church truth claims. As someone who joined the church as an adult convert and then after joining the Mormon Church as an adult convert, discovered all sorts of things about the church's truth claims that he wished he'd been told before he joined the church. You can enjoy this series on Mormon Stories podcast feed both, you know, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or on YouTube. There is a playlist on YouTube if you want to watch these episodes via video in succession. And you can also enjoy the LDS discussion series on Spotify, either audio or video as its own series. And Apple Podcast has its own LDS discussions feed as well. So we're trying to make it as easy as possible for you and trusted or beloved family and friends to enjoy this series however you want. It's definitely one of the most important and popular things that Mormon Stories has done in 2022. And again, Mike, congratulations to winning an award.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:34 Thanks. It's a little weird, but it's kind of nice. And, you know, I hope that the website as a whole has been helpful to people. And this particular project, which I think is the best. The most thorough part of the website, I hope helps people because of the fact that it was put together with the idea of trying to just put it together like you're putting a puzzle back together. And so, you know, it's. It's weird to, like, win an award, but it's very cool. And obviously I feel just happy that's helpful to other people.

John Dehlin 3:03 Absolutely. All right, joining us once again on Mormon Stories podcast, Not a guest. And also the winner of, like, the best Mormon themed podcast in the world for 20, we have radio Free Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon 3:17 Good morning. How are you doing? John, what's it like to make the

John Dehlin 3:21 rest of us kind of irrelevant? Radio Free Mormon, how does that feel?

Radio Free Mormon 3:24 Great, believe me. And I feel kind of bad because I beat you out for best podcast.

John Dehlin 3:31 I don't. I'm ecstatic. It's well earned. And I don't want any awards. I want other targets. Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon 3:37 Well, you've got one in me. By the way, it says washed up has been barely relevant. Podcaster. Is that how you're identifying yourself today?

John Dehlin 3:44 That's my. Yeah, that's my self identity these days.

Radio Free Mormon 3:47 Oh, wait, there's someone else in the screen.

John Dehlin 3:49 That's right.

Radio Free Mormon 3:50 There's someone else that looks like Gus the lovable chimney sweep.

John Dehlin 3:53 And we have with us back on obvious discussions of Mormons, there's Nemo the Mormon, host of Nemo the Mormon. YouTube, which also was an award winner for best what video? Mormon themed video channel.

Nemo 4:08 Yeah, Best. Best LDS interest video channel.

John Dehlin 4:12 Yeah. Well, congratulations, Nemo. I may as well just shut down more stories. Basically, we're no longer relevant.

Nemo 4:20 You're still good.

John Dehlin 4:22 It's great to have you, brother.

Nemo 4:23 Thank you.

John Dehlin 4:24 Okay. And Mike, why don't you share with us or RFM if you want. We want to always give credit to the shoulders of the giants that we stand upon. Mike, this work, as you mentioned, was inspired by an episode RFM did. Rfm? Do you want us to tell us about the episode that you've already done so that we can make sure and plug that from the start.

Radio Free Mormon 4:43 I could barely remember it. I would have forgotten it entirely, except for Mike wanted to do a show about it. And so apparently it's somewhere back there in the Radio Free Mormon archives. It's about backdating prophecies. And if you're going to talk about me, I got to talk about Bart Ehrman, because he's the person that I learned about this whole thing from in relation to the Bible, and then, unfortunately, started seeing immediately how it also was reflected in the Book of Mormon, particularly in First Nephi. And from there, it just kind of continued on.

John Dehlin 5:15 All right, well, thanks for joining us today to help provide support to what Mike's put together. So, Mike, where do you want to go from here?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:22 Yeah, we could. We could just start and, you know, I'll just. I'll just Note that with RFM's podcast, it was during the COVID time, and I remember I was working and listening to podcasts as I was doing it, and when I had first been asked to do this project for somebody in my family, they said, you know, put together everything you've got that shows the claims aren't true. I think I started with, like, eight to 10 topics. And listening to this episode of RFMS, not only did it make me want to add this one to highlight how prophecies can be backdated, he also makes a note at the end of that podcast about the long ending of Mark, which we did earlier. So that, really, this one episode from RFM kind of led me to do two separate overview topics. So if for those of you who are listening to these and are like, man, these are a lot of episodes, two of them are RFM's fault. So I just want to get that out at the start. But I think they're really interesting. And, you know, I know he was doing, I think, rfm. Weren't you doing, like, one podcast a day almost during that early part of COVID But this one was a really good one.

Radio Free Mormon 6:25 Yeah. Well, thank you. It's like you're Joseph Smith and I'm View of the Hebrews.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:30 Yeah, well, you know, I've said a lot on this. This series, that a lot of these episodes are working off of someone else's stuff, and I try to always cite that, like, your work I've cited multiple times. A lot, actually. Dan Vogel, Brett Metcalf, Brian Hoglid, all of these people who have done all of this work. Bart Ehrman, also with the biblical scholarship stuff, David Bakavoy. And so there's just all these people have done all this great work. And so when I was putting together these overviews, it was more or less like I did feel like what I would kind of call Joseph Smith, as Anthony Miller puts it, an eclectic aggregator. I did feel like I was pulling from all these different sources because it really helped to make sense on the overall picture when you're kind of looking at all these different areas that other people have already really researched and discussed. So, yeah, like I said, I. This episode in particular, I just thought was so fascinating to me because some of it I had heard, but then a lot of it I had not. And so all of a sudden, the way you did it kind of put, like a really nice bow on the idea of how not just Joseph Smith, but even in the New Testament, how they're constantly looking to backdate these prophecies in order to fulfill them. And it's just a really cool way that scholars can date this material. So, obviously we'll get into all of that. But, you know, it's just. It was. It was a great episode, and that's why I'm glad you're here, because I felt bad, because this episode really is. We're going to quote you at length a few times. So, you know, it's good that you're here so you can hopefully add some insight and, you know, enjoy the fact that I'm stealing all your work.

Radio Free Mormon 8:00 Well, thank you. You know, if you steal from one person, it's plagiarism. If you steal from a bunch of people, that's scholarship.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:07 Yeah, that's what I'm going to call it. For me, anyway.

What Is a Backdated Prophecy?

John Dehlin 8:10 All right, Mike, let's jump in. Let's start by having you explain to us what is a backdated prophecy.

Radio Free Mormon 8:17 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:17 And so just to kind of keep it simple, it's a technique where a writer can fulfill a revelation by writing about it after the time it occurred, but putting it in the mouth of an ancient prophet or a past time. And so we kind of covered this in our episode about Deutero Isaiah. But scholars can tell that there are parts of Isaiah that were written by a second and a third author under the name of Isaiah, because they leave fingerprints on the text that tell us it was not all one author. For example, they include the prophecy of Cyrus or Cyprus. They have a change in tone. They use certain words that are not used in the earlier chapters. And so they can tell that because of this big shift of tone, the change of words, and the fact that they're able to make more specific prophecies, that it was written at a later time, but written in the original Isaiah name so that it would get more credibility. And so if you read the four gospels of the New Testament, they are all written long after Jesus lived. And so Mark was written about 35 years after Jesus died, which, again, if you think about it, in ancient times, that's a really long time to have these traditions passed along orally and to maintain their initial content without alterations and embellishments, especially when you realize that these stories are being told to convert people to Christianity. And so because of this, the authors are able to put into Jesus's mouth prophecies that would not come. That would come true before Jesus was crucified, because they already knew the ending of the story, because they're talking about it and writing it decades later. And so that's not to say that all of those are made up stories, like, for example, that Jesus knows that Judas is going to betray him. But it does say that we can look at that. And that's how scholars look at a lot of these texts and say the fact that they know all of these things are going to happen before they happen, and then, you know, when they're writing it, they get real vague. It kind of gives you a good indication of when this information is being compiled.

John Dehlin 10:09 So tell me, Mike, if this is. And we're probably going to discuss this, but if Joseph Smith. Let's just say Joseph Smith were the author of the Book of Mormon and he was going to have one of the Book of Mormon authors, authors, let's just say Alma or whatever, prophesy that someday a great prophet named Joseph was going to come on the scene and restore the true church. Then Joseph. It's almost like Pseudepigrapha in the sense that he's putting into the mouth of an alleged ancient prophet a prophecy that predicts the coming of an event that Joseph knew about, which was his own appearance in a way to give credibility to the book that's being written. Is, is, is that sort of a decent example?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:53 Yeah, no, it always is. And we're going to cover that because that, that's a really key one, because those are the things there are. We talked about this in our Book of Mormon episodes, but there are a lot of examples where there are not only elements about, like, say, America, his American history that's in the Book of Mormon, but there's also elements that are part of Joseph Smith's own life experience at that time. And that's why we've talked in those episodes about how you can date the Book of Mormon to the 19th century and that no one else but Joseph could have written it, because of the fact that they include elements that are specific to Joseph Smith. But, yeah, that that is basically the idea is in a lot of way backdated prophecy is almost like Pseudepigrapha, where you're writing in someone else's name in order to give the credibility to what you're writing so that the people reading it in your time take it as authoritative, even though it's clearly being kind of retrofitted back in to the text from a much later perspective.

Nemo 11:52 And a good example of that in what we've just gone over recently with the Joseph Smith translations is where David Bockavoy talks about the. The words that Joseph Smith claims are from the author of the Book of John in D&C93. And then David Bockavoy points out that it's non Johannine language, so you can tell it doesn't belong there. So that's Joseph Smith trying to use the voice of an ancient prophet to give credence to then his statements and then to do that with prophecy is what we're talking about today. Yep.

John Dehlin 12:18 Okay. Rfm, anything you want to add about what is a backdated prophecy?

Radio Free Mormon 12:24 I think you've covered it very well. It does occur to me though, that one probable example of this that is not necessarily in the show notes has to do with Joseph Smith's foreknowledge of his own death. It does not appear from looking at everything that Joseph Smith was doing and the way he was acting that he knew he was going to die in Carthage. But I think what happens is he ends up dying in Carthage. He's a prophet. And so certain statements probably, though I haven't done a study on this, but probably get backdated into Joseph Smith's mouth shortly before he dies to show he wasn't caught off guard and. And he knew this, that this was going to happen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:03 Yeah, that's a good point too. There was another one I was looking at last night. It was hard to get like a solid foundation on it. But there's a lot of controversy about this idea that Joseph Smith prophesied that the church was going to relocate in the Rockies. And so there's that same situation where you have these kind of statements that are made by other people either after the fact or they're kind of vague. And now we kind of cling onto them as being like this decisive idea that Joseph Smith is like, we're absolutely moving this church to the Utah area when there was no plans during Joseph's time to do so outside of some of the council of 50 minutes, where they're looking at a whole bunch of locations. And, and so in that way you're kind of looking backwards and saying, oh, well, there's this one person who made this statement and kind of ignoring the rest in order to kind of solidify that as, yeah, Joseph knew they were going to move there and Brigham Young made that happen. But again, that, that's one of those areas, like to RFM's point, where it seems like there's like these vague statements that we now just kind of repurpose to say, oh, he absolutely knew. When the actions at the time don't seem to indicate that Joseph was planning to move the church to Utah, especially given the fact that they were building the temple in Nauvoo and everything that was going on there. So it's really interesting, especially when you get into the messiness of all of this, that you start to see more and more of that. Especially. We're going to do an episode probably like six or seven from now, and it's going to be one of my favorite ones we're going to do. It's about the transfiguration of Brigham Young. And that's not necessarily backdating prophecy, but it shows how you can backdate miraculous stories. And that to me is one of the most important episodes because it's, it just shows how easily these things can be created out of nothing and, and how we can now look back at other areas of, of not just Mormonism, but even the New Testament to show how quickly these, these ideas can evolve from nothing and then just be accepted as, as complete truth, even 10 years later.

John Dehlin 14:56 Really quickly. What we try to do with every LDS discussions episode is remind new listeners that these episodes are in sequence, are recorded and released in sequence. Hopefully they're recorded in sequence, but they're hopefully definitely released in sequence. And we want to remind people that they build on each other. So when we reference Deutero Isaiah. If you haven't watched our previous Deutero Isaiah, you probably have no idea what we're talking about. I also want to say that we've got a really good interview on Mormon stories with Bart Ehrman and, you know, like you said, with David Bacavoy. And we'll include links to all those in the show notes so that you can get any background information you want to understand what we're talking about here. All right, Mike, so let's jump to the next slide, which is how scholars can pinpoint a backdated prophecy.

How Scholars Identify Backdated Prophecies

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:40 Yeah, and so here I am going to quote from RFM's episode. So this is a really. Yeah, so I'm totally stealing this right here, but this is a really good illustration of how scholars can identify back data prophecy. And this talks about the Book of Daniel and it says chapter 11, which is the centerpiece of this revelation. The final vision gives a broad sweep of history from the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century. So in other words, this is prophesying, at least according to the terms of the book of Daniel, of things from the 6th century all the way down to the 2nd century BCE. That's 400 years after Daniel is supposed to have written this. And it goes all the way down to the time of Alexander the Great, who died when he was 35 years old. But in chapter 11, verses 40 through 45, which finished the chapter, it continues with the prophecy, but now it starts getting things wrong. In other words, it starts prophesying of things that did not actually happen historically. Verses 40 through 45 finish the chapter with the prophecy that Antiochus Epiphanes would make war once again against Egypt and would die in Judea. This did not actually happen. There was no second war against Egypt. And Antiochus ends up dying, not in Judea, but he died in Persia or in Babylon. That's what the historical record tells us. So what scholars look at in Daniel is a backdated prophecy. It's put in the mouth of Daniel, who lived about 530 BCE when he's supposed to be making this prophecy. But it's actually written in the 2nd century BCE, after the things that David prophesies actually transpired in, the prophecy is backdated and put into Daniel's mouth to show what a great prophet he was. But not only that, at the point where the prophecies of Daniel stop being accurate and start being inaccurate. In other words, stop reflecting history as it really happened and start not reflecting history as it really happened. That is the point at which scholars believe the author of these additional prophecies lived because he knew what had happened historically, because he had already lived through it. So then he, the author of Daniel, puts it back in Daniel's mouth. He did not know what would happen in the future, but he continues to make prophecies of things that were really in the future for this anonymous writer. But that's where he starts getting things wrong. And so scholars generally agree that the anonymous author of this backdated prophecy of Daniel lives right around 168 or 167 BCE. So in other words, because of the way this is written, scholars, I think for the most part it's Almost, you know, 100 consensus is that this is written in a very, very, very tight window of like one or two years because of the way the details line up so perfectly until they don't. And so then all of a sudden, from a logical perspective, you go, okay, this is where he stopped talking about things that had happened. It starts making predictions. Because obviously, as we know from our own history, people that make predictions, at best, you're talking, you know, 60, right? I mean, if you're a professional gambler and you get 60, right, you're. You're a legend. So it just shows that scholarship can see these fingerprints and get really good dating on a text by what they're saying all by itself.

John Dehlin 18:41 Rfm, do you agree with your past self or do you disagree with your past self?

Radio Free Mormon 18:44 I think I have to agree with my past self on this one.

John Dehlin 18:47 Anything you want to add?

Radio Free Mormon 18:49 No, because I know that other things are going to come up later on in the slides. But there's a direct analogy to what we find out the scholars believe about Daniel and Nephi's prophecy of the Revolutionary War.

John Dehlin 19:03 Okay, Nemo, anything you want to add here?

Nemo 19:07 I mean, I could try and sum up very briefly. Essentially, if I wrote something as though I was Joseph Smith and told everyone that I'd written something about Joseph Smith and I prophesied the 2008 financial crash, that would be fine. But then if I prophesied that in 2024, Joseph Smith prophesied that in 2024 something would happen, and then it didn't, you could tell that, well, I was alive during 2008 because I knew that happened, but I wasn't alive. Or I'm writing this in 2024 because that's after my time and I got the prophecy wrong. So that's essentially what's going on here.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:43 Love it.

John Dehlin 19:44 Thanks for that summary, people. A lot of our viewers and listeners really love summaries to help us distill the wisdom that Mike is bequeathing upon us.

Nemo 19:52 That's what I'm here for.

Gospel Writers Backdating Prophecy and Fulfillment

John Dehlin 19:53 All right, so, Mike, let's go to the next slide, which is the gospel writers backdated both prophecy and fulfillment of prophecy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:01 And so I mentioned this in the. I think the first slide, but, you know, the four Gospels are not written until decades after Jesus would have died. And that means they know the entire story before they actually write write down any accounts of his life. Obviously, these stories are being told for a long time before they're written down. But the fact is, what we have today is long after. And so this allows the writers of the Gospels to not only fulfill prophecy by citing and linking back to an Old Testament prophecy, but they could also backdate prophecy by allowing Jesus to know of the things that were to come, because the writers already know the ending. And so a lot of people, I think, for the most part, would agree that Matthew is the most egregious of the Gospel writers when it comes to trying to backdate prophecy and to fulfill Old Testament prophecy, because oftentimes he's trying to draw these connections to make sure that Jesus is the, you know, the one. But sometimes he cites them incorrectly. And so two of the verses I thought were, I think interesting is one. And RFM covers this a lot in his podcast. But in Matthew 21:5, he says, Tell ye the daughter of Sion. Behold, thy king cometh unto thee meek and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foul of an ass. And so Matthew doesn't understand that in the original Old Testament prophecy that he's trying to draw from that. When they say these two animals, they actually just mean one animal. And so he actually, if you want to picture this, it's almost like, if you. I mean, the way Matthew writes it is that like Jesus is writing riding on two different animals, like one leg on each one, because he's so interested in making this a direct fulfillment of prophecy that he's trying to write it directly from the Old Testament without realizing that their Old Testament writers are kind of writing this almost like as a literary technique to have the, to draw the, you know, to make it sound like two, but it's really not. And so that gives you an indication that Matthew is working from the Old Testament to write this story as opposed to from a historical viewpoint. And the other one is, and this is one, there's an Infants on Throne episode for anyone who's interested about the Christmas story. That's really fascinating, especially when you look at the, the three Synoptic Gospels. And so John Hamer kind of goes through with the Infant Son Thrones crew. And it's absolutely fascinating because they talk a lot about how Matthew just keeps pulling these, these, these Old Testament prophecies, and it doesn't even matter if they're really accurate. He's just throwing everything at the, at the wall to see, to show that Jesus is absolutely the Savior. But unfortunately, it's kind of like Joseph Smith. He gets things wrong because it doesn't necessarily understand what the Bible's, the Old Testament's saying, especially when you talk about, like Isaiah, when you say Isaiah speaking of Jesus and Then you read the surrounding text and you're like, no, no, he's not. But in one of the cases, he's trying so hard to fit Jesus to being born in Nazareth, which. Which obviously is. Is an issue because, you know, most people would consider him born in Bethlehem. So Matthew 2. 23 says, and he came and dwell in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets. He shall be called a Nazarene. Which obviously has a lot of issues historically, especially when you look at the Gospels and how they all try to get the story to work, then that's where the contradictions come because they're trying to make it fit this Old Testament parallel, but they're doing it individually and that's creating the contradictions because they're all kind of getting to the same place in a different way.

John Dehlin 23:29 For those who don't understand what's wrong with calling Jesus a Nazarene?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:33 Well, I mean, historically speaking, right. We all think Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And so they're trying to get him to Nazareth because they're trying to tie it to the Old Testament. And, and so in order to do that, you have to. And I, I highly recommend that Infants on Throne episode because I should have listened to it again, because John Hamer explains it really well. But effectively, you know, in one of the Gospels, they have, you know, going through kind of like the Moses path through Egypt.

Radio Free Mormon 23:57 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:58 And then one of the Gospels, I'm trying to think they've got like the census and all that stuff. And so Matthew is pulling. I'm. Man, I'm totally drawing a blank. So I don't know if RFM or Nemo can help me on that one.

John Dehlin 24:08 But.

Radio Free Mormon 24:08 Okay, Luke is the cens. Matthew is the one who has him going into Egypt to parallel Moses's life.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:13 Y. Yeah. And so it's just, it's just Matthew trying to use the Old Testament prophecies to. To basically fulfill them through Jesus. And, and as if you. Your episode with David Bachoy, he talks about how oftentimes and the Mormon Church does this today because of course, the New Testament does it. They'll cite these writings of Isaiah as Jesus fulfilling them. And he'll. He'll point out, like, in certain areas, like if you read the surrounding text, they're not talking about Jesus at all. But for the New Testament writers, they need to find that direct connection in order to give Jesus's standing as savior more credibility. And so they're. They're trying to tie as many Old Testament prophecies as they can. And this is going to parallel what Joseph Smith does in the Book of Mormon as well.

John Dehlin 24:59 And this is. For me, this was a huge shift I had to make in my mind, because, number one, we think more as Mormons and probably as Christians. As an example, we think of the four Gospels as all being written to harmonize with each other and filling in, you know, being. We think of them just instinctively and automatically as being consistent with each other and that they were all kind of written at the same time, you know, by the hand of the person whose name is on the book, that they're all perfect and infallible, etc. But once you learn that they were passed down by oral tradition before they were ever written down, and that they were written chronologically in succession, and that if you. If you order them in succession and then study the four books, is it synoptically. Is that the term? You'll find that the story grows more and more fantastical as the Gospels progress chronologically. But it. But as a Mormon, you just would never even think to question anything Matthew would write because he's a prophet. Seared revelator. And that would be blasphemous. Nemo and rfm. Do both of you kind of remember having a mindset?

Nemo 26:10 I do. But then what. What you end up in, in a position of Mormon is then you end up in a position where you go, well, as far as it is translated correctly. So you're then willing to throw Matthew or Mark or Luke or John under the bus if it doesn't work with the Book of Mormon or if it doesn't work with what a prophet or what Joseph said or anything like that. So in the back of my mind was always, don't trust the Bible. Don't trust it as much as you would trust a prophet and the Book of Mormon because of that article of faith. Yeah, that's just me.

John Dehlin 26:39 Yeah. Yeah, that's true. All right, so let's. So, Mike, let's go to the Martin Harris visit to Charles Anthon.

Martin Harris's Visit to Charles Anthon

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:47 Okay, so we've discussed this multiple times about how Joseph Smith uses Martin Harris's visit to Charles Anthon to backdate and retrofit a prophecy from Isaiah. And so this meeting occurs in 1828, which is a year before the Book of Mormon is composed. And that's important because Joseph Smith is going to write this account that would happen over 2,000 years after Isaiah was written directly into the Book of Mormon, almost exactly as it's going to be claimed to have happened in 1828. And we do not have any contemporary accounts of this event. The first documentation comes from Joseph Smith's own words in his 1832 history. And keep in mind that this exchange is given exclusively through Joseph Smith. There is no indication that he is dictating Martin Harris's words. Because if you read Joseph Smith's 1832 history, it just seems like something he's kind of working out on his own in the journal. That's where the first, First Vision account comes. And what that means is that this event is already being framed in Joseph's mind four years after the fact. And so he writes, in 1832, he, Martin Harris immediately came to Susquehanna and said the Lord had shown him that he must go to New York City with some of the characters. So he proceeded to copy some of them. And he took his journey to the eastern cities and to the learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And the learned said, I cannot, but if you would. But if he would bring the plates, they would read it. But the Lord had forbid it. And he returned to me and gave them to me to translate. And I said, Martin Harris said, I cannot for I not learned. I'm so sorry I screwed that up. And so it just says, and I said, I cannot, for I'm not learned. But the Lord had prepared spectacles for to read the book. To read the book. Therefore I commence translating the characters. And thus the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled, which is written in the 29th chapter concerning the book. And so here Joseph Smith is saying in his 1832 history that he gave the plates of Martin Harris, Martin Harris took him to Charles Anthon. And that fulfills the prophecy because it can't be read by the learned, but it can be read by the unlearned, which is Joseph Smith. And so in this initial account, it's a much more bare bones kind of account of what's going to happen. And so we're going to see now how this is going to work its way into the Book of Mormon as well as become even grander after 1832. So I don't know if anyone has anything to add, otherwise we can go to the next slide and keep it going. It's up to you guys.

John Dehlin 29:09 You're on rfm.

Nemo 29:12 I'd just say that it's really easy to say that something fulfills a prophecy when you say that. It like when you have written an account in an attempt to fulfill a prophecy, right? It's really easy to look back at something old and say, well, if I do this, that old thing seemed to speak of something vaguely like this. So I can then say that equals this, even though Isaiah may never have thought of Joseph Smith ever.

Radio Free Mormon 29:35 Yeah, right. And what Joseph Smith ends up doing, I think is really fascinating because he doesn't just say, hey, Isaiah 29 is kind of like this. He actually goes into the Book of Mormon now when he's dictating this in 1829, and he gets to second Nephi 27, where he's basically recapitulating a lot of Isaiah 29, but in the context of quoting Isaiah 29, he takes a lot of liberties with this prophecy and expands what's two verses in Isaiah into about four or five verses in the Book of Mormon. Because he's going to change the elements around and he's going to make it much more closely mirror what it is that happened with Martin Harris. And it's fascinating to me that at this early time, Joseph Smith is already having a very casual approach to scripture in the sense of he is the individual who is in charge of the Scripture, even in the Bible, and he can manipulate it to suit his needs. And he sees nothing wrong with that. That's part of his prophetic calling. I also see this as very much the beginning of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. We usually date that to 1830, when it starts officially after the organization of the church. But I think we see hints of that going on in the Book of Mormon that he's already working with a new translation of the Bible to help support his prophetic claims.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:04 Yeah, that's. That's perfect.

John Dehlin 31:06 Love it. Thanks, rfm. All right, let's go to the next slide. Joseph Smith uses Isaiah to backdate the Charles Anton visit.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:14 Yeah, and so if you're watching this, you can see on the left side is the King James Bible, Isaiah 29, 10, 12. And if you're looking at the right side, it's going to be the Book of Mormon's version of Isaiah 29 from second Nephi. So it's verses 5 through 10. And what's interesting is RFM said he is going to expand this in a way that just solidifies the Book of Mormon and solidifies Joseph Smith as a prophet. And it is pretty amazing because we know he's starting from the King James Bible. And so this goes to the whole tight versus loose translation theory, because again, if this was something that Isaiah meant to write but didn't write, you would think it would be more of a completely different kind of writing. But instead, Joseph Smith is going to, as RFM said, almost retranslate Isaiah 29 to fit the Book of Mormon. And so I don't know if we want to read them both, but basically he's going to add in a lot of text. And so Isaiah 29 says, for the Lord had poor, hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And he saith, I cannot afford a sealed. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And he saith, I am not learned. And Joseph Smith is going to take these three verses and he's going to write all of this stuff about the Book of Mormon. So for example, he'll he adds in and it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall bring forth unto you words of a book, and they shall be the words of them which have slumbered. And behold, the book shall be sealed, and in the book shall be a revelation from God from the beginning of the world to the ending of and then wherefore, because of things which are sealed up, the things which are sealed shall not be delivered in the way of the wickedness and abominations of the people. Wherefore the book shall be kept from them. But the book shall be delivered unto a man, and he shall deliver the words of the book which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust. And he shall deliver these words unto another. But the words which are sealed he shall not deliver, neither shall he deliver the book. For the book shall be sealed by the power of God in the revelation which was sealed shall be kept in the book until the own due time of the Lord that they may come forth. For behold, they reveal all things from the foundation of the world unto the end thereof. So not only is he throwing in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, but he's turning this vision of Isaiah into a literal book which as we've talked about in previous episodes, is anachronistic because they didn't have codexes at this time. So it's already anachronistic to think that Isaiah is prophesying of a book, given that they don't have books then. But it's very self serving to Joseph Smith to write himself and the Book of Mormon directly into Isaiah in order to give it more credibility for people who are going to read the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 34:04 Wow. So basically Joseph Smith reads the Bible a lot, spends a lot of time in Isaiah. Obviously he's familiar with this chapter in Isaiah 29, talking about a sealed book and delivering of words. He thinks about, about what he's doing with Martin Harris as he's allegedly translating the Book of Mormon, but potentially just authoring it. He knows that Martin Harris at some point has already gone to sort of vet the characters, the Book of Mormon, alleged Book of Mormon characters. He knows about that exchange. And so when he's finishing the Book of Mormon and writing in Second Nephi, which we now know was written towards the end of his translation process because the 116 pages had been lost, he writes into his is Isaiah plagiarism? Basically, he. He basically does some Isaiah fan fiction and backdates a prophecy from Isaiah to Second Nephi that his shenanigans with, with Martin Harris and Professor Anton are going to happen. Nemo, Tell me if I, if I summarize that decently or is that all right?

Nemo 35:16 That's fine, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 35:17 Anything you want to add?

Nemo 35:19 Not really.

John Dehlin 35:19 Okay. Rfm, want to get your comments here if there's anything you want to add.

Radio Free Mormon 35:24 Yes, on a separate issue, but related. There's always been a question as to what it is that Martin Harris really experienced when he went to New York because he's on his own, he doesn't have Joseph Smith with him. And we first find out, we find a little snippet in that 1832 history that was already put up on the screen that Joseph Smith wrote. But we get a much Fuller account in 1838 where the story gets much bigger and much more detailed and much more dramatic. I think that this prophecy backdated, though it is in second Nephi 27 from Isaiah 29 and the way it's been reworded, that's happening in 1829. Martin Harris is still very much part of this nascent church and will be as a. As a witness to the Book of Mormon as well. So he's still around. He's still very much involved in what's going on. He knows what's being put in second Nephi 27. So I think that based upon that, it is reasonable to conclude that the description in second Nephi 27 of Martin Harris's trip to New York probably very closely matches or approximates what it is that Martin Harris said happened when he was there. So it's sort of a test for what happened and how early it was that Martin Harris had said these things.

John Dehlin 36:41 And probably doesn't align with what Charles Anton said happened. Is that also true?

Radio Free Mormon 36:46 Well, yeah, that's true. Yeah. He got wind of it and wasn't happy about it and gave an alternate version that did not sound quite so faith promoting.

John Dehlin 36:54 But it's probably not coincidental that the Book of Mormon sides with Martin Harris's account, not Charles Anton's account.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:00 Yeah, right.

John Dehlin 37:01 Yeah. Okay, well, let's go to, let's go to the next slide.

Joseph Smith's Rewriting of Isaiah 29

Nemo 37:08 Yeah.

John Dehlin 37:08 Which is, which is Joseph Smith misuses Isaiah to backdate the prophecy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:17 And this is something I hinted on earlier about how a lot of the ways that, especially in the New Testament, that Isaiah is cited almost as if it's Jesus fulfilling his prophecies doesn't really line up if you read Isaiah in context. But for this particular issue, Joseph Smith is using an incorrect reading of Isaiah to fit the Anthon visit into the Book of Mormon. And so BYU professor, I mean, he's no longer a professor, but he was a BYU professor. And Charles Harrell, right? Yes, Charles Harrell. So he wrote the book. This, this is my doctrine. You know, he talks about this and makes it clear. And, and this is not, you know, again, Charles Harrell was a BYU professor. This is also something that other biblical scholars agree to. It's just that this obviously gives it more of a spin on the Book of Mormon because he's writing from that perspective and he says Isaiah isn't talking about a literal book, much less one that would come forth in the future. Non LDS Bible commentators make two observations that preclude the one that hath a familiar spirit from having direct reference to Joseph Smith. First, they point out that Isaiah 29 is specifically addressing the current situation of wickedness in Jerusalem or the city where David dwelt. There is no mention of any other people or places. Second, it doesn't say that this nation will speak through some actual person such as Joseph Smith. Rather, the voice of the nation would be as a person who has a familiar spirit. This is the voice of Jerusalem's inhabitants will be no more than a peep and mutter. And so what he's saying is that biblical scholars are telling us that like Isaiah 29 is not speaking about a literal book. It's not speaking about Joseph Smith coming forth. The connection there is not there. And so I think David Bachavoy would say that Joseph Smith will be actualizing the text to a modern audience reading the Book of Mormon. But from a historical standpoint, it's a really bad misreading of Isaiah that Joseph Smith is Intentionally doing in order to bolster both his credibility and the Book of Mormon's credibility as being an ancient record.

Nemo 39:17 Got it.

John Dehlin 39:19 Rfm.

Radio Free Mormon 39:21 Yes. Hey, this brings to mind the idea of multiple fulfillment of prophecy. And let me try and say that a little bit better. Multiple fulfillment of prophecy. We've all heard that, haven't we, somewhere in our past in the LDS Church. What happens is this. You get something like Isaiah where it's prophesying of Jesus Christ, or at least Matthew thinks so, and his birth or whatever it is that he's prophesying, and you go back and you actually start looking at it as the scholars have been doing for hundreds of years, not in the LDS Church, but outside the LDS Church and looking and say contextually, no, this is not a prophecy of Jesus Christ. This is a prophecy of a kid being born in Isaiah's time. It's actually Isaiah's kid and it's Mahershalal Hashbaz, one of my favorite names in the Bible. Then at that point you can either say, okay, this prophecy is not about Jesus, it's about what's going on in the 8th century BCE only, or you can go with Matthew and say, no, it's about Jesus. Here comes the great compromise of saying, no, it's about both. There is multiple fulfillment of prophecy. So it's a prophecy about Mahershala Hashbaz, and it's also a prophecy about Jesus. And I think that anytime you hear invoked the idea of multiple fulfillment of prophecy, you're encountering a place where the original prophecy doesn't work in context. And so you wanted to apply to something else like Matthew did. And therefore now you've got this whole idea of multiple fulfillment of prophecy to come in and save the day.

John Dehlin 41:02 All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is that Joseph Smith didn't stop there in rewriting Isaiah 29.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:10 Yeah, and so we, we read the first part a few minutes ago and you know, I wanted to give some more of the backstory to the Charles anthem and also the first part of what Joseph is claiming when rewriting Isaiah 29. But he doesn't stop there. And so this is a complete addition to Isaiah. There's no mention of this visit, obviously in the Bible, which is another clue that shows us this as being a backdated prophecy being written after the fact. But this is more from, from second Nephi, it says, but behold, it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall say unto him to whom he shall deliver the book. Take these words which are not Sealed and deliver them to another, that he may show them unto the learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And the learned shall say, bring hither the book, and I will read them. And now, because of the glory of the world and to get gain, they will say this, and not for the glory of God. And the man shall say, I cannot bring the book, for it is sealed. Then the learned. Then shall the learned say, I cannot read it. Wherefore it shall come to pass that the Lord God will deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is not learned. And the man that is not learned shall say, I am not learned. Then shall the Lord God say unto him, the learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them. And I and I am able to do my own work. Wherefore thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee. And so in these verses, Joseph Smith is now circling back to Isaiah 29, adding the Martin Harris visit to Charles Anthon to then fulfill Isaiah's prophecy in 2912 that the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, read this, I pray thee. And he saith, I am not learned. And so this is Joseph Smith just really, I mean, in a lot of ways, just going for it and just, just putting it all in there. And it's funny too, because, you know, it. It doesn't line up with the story of the Charles anthem visit that we, we kind of hear today in the church, but it does show that Joseph Smith is very aware of how far he kind of what RFM said. It seems like he's aware of how far he can go at this point with the story to where Martin Harris might not say that's not what happened. So it's a little more vague than we're going to get to in a second. And at the same time, it's completely rewriting Isaiah 29 in a way that in a lot of ways makes it indistinguishable from the initial context, as scholars will tell you.

John Dehlin 43:27 I'm going to say, as I, as I read through that, the specificity of that particular section of the Book of Mormon, it just strikes me as almost absurd that it's going to be like this really detailed recountment of exactly what Joseph Smith and Martin Harris said happened when there's so much, you know, if the Book of Mormon text or if the number of words allotted to the Book of Mormon is so precious, I could think of a thousand other things that might have been a more important, important priority for God to reveal, like you know, I don't know, pandemics or natural disasters or plagues or germ theory or LGBT issues. Like, there's so many things God could have used that precious real estate for instead of coincidentally recounting the exact version of the Joseph Smith, Martin Harris camp.

Nemo 44:18 That is what is essential, though, for putting Joseph Smith's authority as a prophet forward, because he needs things throughout the text that also then match up to his own life. It's like, you know, when he writes the end of Genesis and says, oh, yeah, by the way, a guy called Joseph, whose dad's also called Joseph's gonna be pretty important, so watch out for that fella. You know, it's like he has to write himself in because it then gains credibility to. To what he's doing. This is. That is why it takes up that. That real estate. And I also dislike the use of the word rejected there, where it says that the learned have rejected it. What they've actually done is gone. Can't read it. They're not rejecting the book. They're not saying, oh, this is a terrible, awful book. Go away. They're like, well, I can't read it. Maybe like Charles Anton, they're saying, I can't read it because it's not a real language. But nonetheless, they're just saying I can't read it. And then God in this verse in Nephi is getting all high and mighty, saying that, well, you know, I can do this myself. I'll just get someone who isn't so pretentious. But it's a straw man. God's making a straw man argument towards people like Charles Antonio because they're not rejecting the book. They're just saying they can't read it.

John Dehlin 45:21 Yeah. Also, will you guys correct me if I'm wrong? In. In verse 19 of second of second Nephi, I don't know what chapter this is. It says, we'll deliver again the book and the words thereof to him that is learned. Well, as I understand it, Martin Harris didn't deliver the book. He delivered just a few characters from the book. So that even feels like a failed prophecy because Martin Harris didn't deliver to Anton the book. Just some scribbled characters that were allegedly from the book. Did I get that wrong? Nemo or RFM?

Radio Free Mormon 45:56 Well, in verse 19, it's talking about the book being given to the unlearned, which I. And this is second Nephi 27. It's the same chapter. So I think that would be referencing Joseph the Unlearned.

Nemo 46:06 It is Joseph.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:07 Yeah.

John Dehlin 46:07 Okay.

Radio Free Mormon 46:07 Okay, yeah.

John Dehlin 46:08 Okay.

Radio Free Mormon 46:10 One other thing I'll say is that this reworking of Isaiah is fascinating to me because of a number of reasons. But one of the things is that, of course, scholars talk about Isaiah, the original Isaiah who lives around 722 BCE, and then there's a second Isaiah who comes up with some more chapters in the book. And then there's even a third Isaiah. There's Isaiah, there's Deutero Isaiah, there's Tritero Isaiah. And I think that Joseph Smith qualifies as a fourth Isaiah for the work that he's doing on the book. So we don't know who the second Isaiah is. We don't know who the third Isaiah is, but I think we've got a good idea that Quadro Isaiah is actually Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 46:55 Quadra Isaiah. I love it.

Nemo 46:59 Put it on T shirt.

John Dehlin 47:02 And I kind of misread verse 19. But I do want to make a point with verse 20 where it says, then shall the Lord God say unto them, the learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them. When you think about the fact that the Book of Abraham papyri were eventually made available, you look at Dr. Robert Rittner and many of his predecessors. Who's to say that the learned won't read an ancient text if it's provided to them? I think not only do we have ample evidence that, you know, scholars of ancient documents are not only willing to read ancient documents, but are obsessed about the ancient documents. What I think it's more saying is, is that if the actual plates, you know, I think the reality is, is that if the actual plates had been provided to scholars, they would have read them. And maybe that might have been even problematic as it was with the papyri. With the papyri and the Book of Abraham. I just don't think that verse 20 is at all fair to the interest and the record of actual scholars of ancient records. Does that make sense?

Nemo 48:17 Yeah, I mean, that goes to what I was saying. And by reject them, what Joseph, who's writing this essentially is saying is they won't agree that they say what I say that they say, yeah, that's what he's doing. And he's invoking God as being on his side. So me and God, we say, they say this Allah, the Book of Abraham papyri. And then these scholars, these learned ones, are rejecting them, not necessarily because they're refusing to read them, but because they don't agree with what we say that those books are saying.

John Dehlin 48:47 Rfm yes.

Radio Free Mormon 48:49 And I would say that this is One of the several instances in which the Book of Mormon, which represents itself as an ancient text, is nevertheless very responsive to Joseph Smith's immediate environment.

John Dehlin 49:06 Yeah, yeah, well said, rfn. All right. And. And I do want to refer our. Our new viewers and listeners to our very recent episode on Joseph Smith's translations, because we walked through five or six of the translations. Joseph Smith claimed the translations of ancient records, quote, unquote, that Joseph Smith claimed to translate. And we show that if anyone has a problem with, you know, with. With honestly confronting what are supposed to be ancient records, it's not scholars. It's Joseph Smith who has the translation problem. So. All right, let's go ahead and jump to the next slide, which is Joseph Smith then rewrites the anton visit in 1838.

Comparing the 1832 and 1838 Anthon Visit Accounts

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:55 Yeah. And so we've already given you the 1832 account that Joseph Smith writes in what is effectively an autobiography. And so now this is going to be the account he's going to give a few years later. And so, I don't know, do you want to read this Nemo, just to give this a nice comparison to the earlier account and tell us who this

John Dehlin 50:12 is, what you're reading, and who it is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:15 So this is. This is out of Joseph Smith's history, and this is written by Joseph Smith, but he's writing it as if he's writing an account for Martin Harris. And that's what makes this really interesting, because this is after Martin Harris is long gone and kicked out of the church, and Joseph Smith now is going to write this account again without any input from Martin Harris. There's no Martin Harris account that he's working from. This is, you know, 100% from Joseph's

Nemo 50:39 perspective, and it's canonized LDS scripture.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:41 Yeah. And this is the story that we're all familiar with. Okay.

Nemo 50:44 Okay. I went to the city of New York and presented the characters which had been translated with the translation thereof to Professor Charles Anton, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anton stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had seen before, translated from the Egyptian. I then showed him those which were not yet translated, and he said that they were Egyptian, Chaldean, Assyriac, and Arabic. And he said they were true characters. He gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct. I took the certificate and put it into my pocket and was just leaving the house when Mr. Anton called me back and asked me how the young man found out that there were gold plates. And in the place where he found them, I answered that an angel of God had revealed it unto him. He then said to me, let me see that certificate. I accordingly took it out of my pocket and gave it to him. When he took it and tore it to pieces, saying that there was no such thing now as ministering of angels and that if I would bring the plates to him, he would translate them. I informed him that part of the plates were sealed and that I was forbidden to bring them. He replied, I cannot read a sealed book. I left him and went to Dr. Mitchell, who sanctioned what Professor Anton had said, respecting both the characters and the translation.

John Dehlin 52:12 Okay, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:14 Well, it's just, you know, we've done episodes on the first vision, we've done episodes on the priesthood restoration, and all these accounts, they get grander and grander and grander. And in this case, Joseph Smith is going to rewrite this account of Martin Harris visiting Charles Anthon. And now he's doing it after Martin Harris is gone. And so it's almost like Joseph Smith to kind of quote Wendy Nelson of talking about Russell Nelson. He was unleashed. He could do whatever he wanted to. He was free to say whatever he wanted to. And in that case, he makes this a much grander story with a lot more detail and a lot more of it tends to bolster Joseph Smith's authority and credibility as a prophet by basically putting into Charles Anton's mouth that not only did Joseph Smith translate correctly, but that there's all these different languages, all these different languages that they're seeing within the reformed Egyptian characters, which is just absolutely not either what Charles Anton said or is it what the earlier accounts said. And so it really just shows how when you talk about these, these backdated prophecies, in this case, it even grows after being kind of solidified in the Book of Mormon, which I find to be really interesting and self serving to Joseph Smith as he's trying to bolster his credibility after quite a lot of challenges. Given that this is after like the Kirtland Safety Society and all that stuff.

John Dehlin 53:29 Rfm, we'd love to hear anything you have to say about this slide.

Radio Free Mormon 53:33 Thanks. I feel like doing a Colombo here and saying, you know, I just got one other question for you, which is, what are Egyptian, Chaldean, which is Babylonian, by the way, Chaldean, Assyriac and Arabic doing on gold plates that are supposed to be written in reformed Egyptian.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:54 Yeah, yeah, yep.

Radio Free Mormon 53:57 Now, chronologically, I know this is from the 1838 account. Okay, but let's suppose that that actually is accurate to 1828, when this incident happened, okay. With Charles Anton and going to New York with Martin Harris and everything. If that's correct, then there may be a reason why, I mean, chronologically, if that actually happened about the designation of these four different languages that have nothing to do with reformed Egyptian on the Book of Mormon plates, then it may be a chronology where that does happen. And then the following year in 1829, because maybe because of this incident and what really happens there, all of a sudden now the Book of Mormon is being written in such a way and translated in such a way that it states about itself that it's written in a language that no one knows. There's something strange going on there. And I think that they're connected and I think that they're written in a language no one knows, may actually be intended to explain why it was that Martin, excuse me, that Charles Antone actually could not read them and said, I don't recognize them. Now, this is speculative, right? Because I don't know that there's an account, at least in the Mormon versions of Charles Antone's experience that he says, I don't read them because he knows that he can read them. Right. He can identify him. The translation's great, but I'm not going to be signing the certificate for any kind of gold book that's given by an angel. All I'm saying is that is interesting to me. I think there's a reason why the Book of Mormon says it's written in a language that nobody can read. Why does the Book of Mormon say that when it's dictated in 1829, when in 1828 we have this experience with Martin Harris going to Charles Hansen. That's my question.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:53 Yeah.

John Dehlin 55:54 Can I see if I can. Can I restate or at least try and re. Ask what I think you're saying? Rfm like if. Yeah, if I'm thinking about it, Joseph Smith didn't translate Egyptian characters on the Book of Mormon. He translated reformed Egyptian characters on the Book of Mormon that no one. That it's a language that no one on earth had ever read or heard about or known. So if it's reformed Egyptian and no one knew it and it was a language not yet known, how in the world could Charles Anthon validate that the translation was not just correct, but was what, the most correct he had ever before seen from the Egyptian? How could he have validated the translation at all? Am I getting that right?

Radio Free Mormon 56:40 RFM well, right, there's that issue about he couldn't translate, validate the translation because the knowledge of Egyptian and its translation had not advanced to a point where that could be done by Charles Anton or probably pretty much anybody in the world, because we're talking about 1828 now. And Egyptology is in its infancy, at least as far as deciphering the language goes. But what I'm suggesting is something additional, which is that this is obviously written in 1838 in order to be faith promoting. Right, Yep. Yeah, we would all. By the way, there's a little bit of a time delay going on and when you have my face just totally in the screen, I'm afraid it's too obvious. But it's supposed to be faith promoting, which says to me that if that's supposed to be faith promoting, then in 1828, Joseph Smith was telling a story that the characters on the gold plates were actually written in these four languages.

John Dehlin 57:41 Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 57:41 How is it faith promoting otherwise?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:44 Yeah, that's a good point. And I don't think there's any account of Joseph Smith in 1828 or 29 saying that they're in these four languages. They're pretty clear that it's in an unknown language. So to me, it shows a little bit of Joseph Smith's. I don't know what the word is. Having, basically having the cajones to try to bolster this story to be faith promoting in 1838 because of the fact he's being questioned, because there's no one there, such as Martin Harris, to say that's not what happened because Martin Harris has been run out of town. And as we'll get into in the next few slides, what's really interesting is how much this new account in 1838 mirrors Joseph Smith's experience with the Book of Abraham. And so you can kind of see Joseph Smith using his life experience to then backdate into a story that is obviously crucial to the Book of Mormon and to the church today, really. So it. Yeah, it really makes no sense. If you. As RFM said, when you look at the account in 1838, it's the first time that Joseph Smith mentions that Charles Anthon translates anything. Because remember, Martin Harris is just bringing a sample of the characters. There's no translation on the characters document. So how in the world is Charles Anton even saying that the translation is correct? Because as far as we know from the earlier accounts, Joseph Smith didn't translate anything that Martin Harris takes with. And then to add in all these languages, to add in More depth to the connections to the Isaiah prophecy, all of that stuff. It just tells you that this is being written from a later perspective and trying to do so in a way to bolster, you know, Joseph Smith's own credibility at a time when he was being heavily challenged by people within the church.

Radio Free Mormon 59:18 Mike, you know, it makes me think of Seinfeld because you've got the situation where, of course, Joseph Smith famously describes the Book of Mormon as the most correct book in the world. And I think actually originally he said it's the correctest book in the world, but it's a superlative language that he uses. And I see that getting transferred into this 1838 account, because it's not just a translation. Yeah, it's accurate. This is the best translation. It's the best, Jerry. The best. The best I've ever seen. And that makes me wonder. Yeah, I think that someone might be gilding the lily with that a little.

Nemo 59:55 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:56 And think about this, too. Like, this is another area where I think sometimes when you talk about this story from an apologetic standpoint, you don't think through the implications. Because if you want to say that Joseph Smith wrote down characters from the gold plates, translated them, gave Martin Harris the partial translation, and then Charles Anton said the translation is correct, you have 100, a tight translation. And that leads to a lot of problems because of the fact that there's King James language, that there's stuff from Joseph Smith's lifetime. And so it's another one of those areas where it's like, okay, from an apologetic standpoint, you're going to say Joseph Smith absolutely could translate these characters because Charles Anton said he did. But then it also then says, well, then how is the Book of Mormon loaded with 19th century language and 19th century ideas? And it's just.

John Dehlin 1:00:36 It's the whole, don't forget 19th century Protestant Christianity.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:40 Exactly. And it's just, yeah, like, what in the world are you having all of these late writings in it? And as we're going to get to in a couple of slides, the prophecy Joseph Smith is backdating is largely believed to be a late addition to Isaiah. So you have all of these problems now that you're. You're now having to address if you really want to take this account at face value. And as RFM said, it does seem like Joseph Smith here is basically just, you know, gilding the lilies. A good way to put it, to try to reestablish his own story now that he's gotten rid of the early founding members of the church. That can no longer challenge the accounts he's giving.

John Dehlin 1:01:16 That's excellent. Let's get Nemo in here. Nemo, anything you want to say about this slide?

Nemo 1:01:19 A couple of things, just that, like, the first thing is the weird sort of accidental hit that Joseph Smith gets in this story, that if that character's sheet, the one that we are able to look at, the one that the tanner's kind of deciphered, if we take that as the one that was shown to Charles Anton, then there are indeed Arabic letters or characters on there. The. The numbers that we use in English, 0 to 9 are known as Arabic numerals and they come from Arabic. So there's a weird sort of accidental hit there. But the more important thing to me is that this pushes the idea of actual translation. Apologists love to get stuck in the weeds of, you know, the Book of Mormon was a revealed book, not a translated book. Or they like to push the idea that with, particularly with later translations like the Book of Abraham, that it's a catalyst, method and that sort of stuff. Joseph Smith himself here is trying to appeal to other people, trying to appeal to the authority of Charles Anton to show that, you know, other people that can translate stuff also translate this and confirm that what I'm doing is indeed a translation and I am correct. So he's making a sort of secular appeal to the correctness of his translation in a very secular sense.

John Dehlin 1:02:33 Isn't it true that Charles Anthon rejected Joseph and Martin's account of what happened? That he flat denied their account of what happened?

Nemo 1:02:43 You would. Because what they described is a bit nonsensical, really, the idea that he would say, yeah, yeah, this is good, this is good, and then think, oh, but where did it come from? As if that would make any difference to a sort of scholarly person. If the characters that are put in front of him, he can translate into something. And that is correct. And he's. He's signed that off it. It would make him look really bad from a scholarly perspective if he allowed his personal motives to get in the way. And that doesn't really ring true to the sort of task that he was asked to do.

John Dehlin 1:03:14 You know, I just think people, you know, if, if Charles Anthon was there and if he speaks for himself, he gets, he gets first word on what his experience was. We don't trust Joseph, you know, Joseph and, and, and Martin. They have a bias. They have, they have a motive to mischaracterize their interaction because they need his. They need Anton's credibility. And so I think Anton's words should be trusted over Joseph and Martin's account of what Anton's experience was.

Nemo 1:03:49 And also it allows Joseph to up the persecution narrative and the idea that he is flying in the face of current Christian sensibilities, which actually isn't true because a lot of current Christian sensibilities as we've just addressed, found their way into the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:04:04 Yeah. But I'll just say when I learned this in high school in the 80s, I'm like, you know, just to the whole point of backdating now to kind of get back to that. Like, I remember when it was taught to me thinking, wow, Joseph Smith was such a prophet. You know, Isaiah prophesied about this exact event. How cool to tie The Old Testament two or three millennia ago to what happened in 18, you know, 30, whatever, 18, 20, whatever, in upstate New York. It's like, wow, all the scriptures are not integrated into an inspiring seamless tale. Like, it worked is, is all I'm saying. To a high school kid who wanted to believe the Mormon Church was true, this backdating worked. And it made me feel like we were the Mormon Church and Joseph Smith literally were a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And I can see why Joseph Smith would think this would be effective.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:02 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 1:05:03 You know, because it does work.

John Dehlin 1:05:06 Yeah. Because to someone who believes in the Old New Testament, you want to see that continuity. Okay. All right, should we go to the next slide, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:15 Yeah.

Why the Anthon Visit Grew Grander Over Time

John Dehlin 1:05:15 All right, let's go to the next slide, which is the Charles Anthon visit became much grander in 1838.

Nemo 1:05:22 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:22 And so, and one thing I'll note real quick before we start the slide is just there are some discrepancies between the two accounts that Charles Anton gives. And I was trying to look them up real quick and I don't have them handy. But. But you know, it is one of those things where it's. I don't think that Charles Anton in his second account is 100. I think he's looking at it too from a backwards looking lens as well. And so there is, there is a little bit of that. And you'll see that when you look at the apologetic responses. And so Charles Anton's two accounts of what happened are not 100%, you know, similar either. And so you, that's why you have to kind of look and see kind of like where we are looking at from the church's lens and from Joseph Smith's lens. And that's what we're doing today. But yeah, I did wanted to mention that because I Think it's important to note that his. You know, one of the things I jotted down a while ago is that, you know, in. In Charles Anton's first account, he does not claim to give Harris a written account of the meeting whatsoever. In his second account, he does admit to giving Martin Harris a written account, but he says at that point, the letter was basically to warn him not to fund the Book of Mormon. And so in that regard, it doesn't line up with what. What they're saying here. So I just wanted to get that out of the way.

Radio Free Mormon 1:06:30 Mike, thank you. I just noticed in passing that if. Because I remember doing this as an apologist in the two accounts of Charles Anson, and he doesn't give the same account, so you can't trust that guy. He's not telling the truth. But when it comes to Joseph Smith's four accounts of the first Vision. Yeah, right. All of a sudden, we're going to use a different standard. And the differences that Joseph Smith has prove that he's telling the truth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:54 Yeah, and that's just it. It's like, you know, throughout all these episodes, I've been saying, like, you got to be consistent. You cannot approach one issue with one apologetic and then abandon it in another area. And that's a great point, which is to say Charles Anthon has discrepancies in his two accounts. And so you do have to account for those. But at the same time, we can evaluate the way Joseph Smith changes Martin Harris's account, especially with Martin Harris being gone. And I think we could take that at face value, especially given the fact that we can show both the changes and how they kind of reflect the historicity of. Of what he's tying it to. But, yeah, and. And so I just wanted to point that out, just to be fair, because I know a lot of people who are watching this might be like you're not giving both sides. And I just want to say that, yeah, there are discrepancies in Charles Anthon's account, and I note that on the website, but obviously the focus is more on how Joseph Smith changes the story between the Book of Mormon to 1832 to 1838. It follows that same kind of linear progression that you see with the first Vision, the priesthood restoration, where the story gets grander and grander, and if you look at it chronologically, it actually makes sense as to how he's adding on. Whereas if you just kind of look at it from a 2023 view backwards, you don't necessarily see the way it's Being, you know, enlarged. And I think that's what we're trying to do here is to show just how much Joseph Smith is embellishing here, if that makes sense. But anyway, so we go to the slide. Yeah, sorry about that. So that's good in Martin. You know, again, as I mentioned already, this is being written in Martin Harris's voice, but there's no account that comes directly from Harris regarding the visit. I believe there's a secondhand newspaper account that might be out there. And so Joseph Smith is writing down his perspective of the visit 10 years after. After it would happen, and through the lens of fulfilling a prophecy in Isaiah, as we talked about with the Book of Mormon. So, again, look at the 1832 account above. I meant earlier. And you could see how much grander this visit has become in the six years since Joseph Smith first wrote the account. In his autobiography, which was already four years after it happened. In the 1832 visit, there is no mention of I cannot read a sealed book. Nor is there any mention about Anton being told he can't see the book because it is sealed. Those were really important things because they're going to play so heavily into the story as we have it today. And why would there be a mention of a sealed book? Because if Anthon wanted to take a shot at translating the language, Martin Harris could have showed him the unsealed portion. The sealed portion of the book really makes no difference here. And mentioning the sealed portion is Joseph Smith trying to fulfill Isaiah 29, even though, as we've talked about already, biblical scholars are clear that Joseph Smith is completely misinterpreting Isaiah 29 in the first place. But what makes it really interesting to me is the phrase I cannot read a sealed book was added after the initial 1838 draft of his history, which shows that Joseph Smith was changing the historical account both to fulfill prophecy and Bolster's authority. And so if you're, if you're watching this, the bottom clip is from the Joseph Smith Paper Project. And if you look at it, you could see in really dark ink, it'll say, I informed him. It's small. I informed him that this, that the were sealed. And then at the end it says, I cannot read a sealed book. And if you note it's in darker ink and it's between the original draft. So it's in addition to the history to fulfill that prophecy, which I think is a really interesting thing that Joseph Smith went back through and said, I need to add this because it's such an important element to basically, as we've talked about, already, bolstering his own authority.

John Dehlin 1:10:15 Yeah, that's, to use a modern word, that's kind of sus. It's, it's in darker ink and there's like an asterisk and like a little carrot kind of look up kind of insert thing. And that's just really, it's a really suspicious thing to be adding after the fact. And, and I think people don't fully, maybe those who are newer to these issues don't understand the issue about his authority being challenged because this is actually a really important piece of the puzzle. We've talked about it in previous episodes here on LDS discussions. Does anyone want to give the 30 second summary of how Joseph Smith's authority is being challenged at this point?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:57 If anybody wants to jump in, feel free.

Nemo 1:11:01 I'm not sure I can, to be honest.

Radio Free Mormon 1:11:05 Was there ever really a time when Joseph Smith's authority wasn't being challenged is what I wonder. But yeah, there had been a debacle, of course, in Kirtland over the failure of the bank and Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon had had to flee in early 1838. They headed for the other place where the Mormons were gathered in Missouri. And they're down there now. And things are bad, as you know, if you know your Missouri history, if you paid attention to that in seminary. So they're in a situation where they're gathered together, there's a few different spots of them and there's a lot of people on the outside who are fighting with them. This is the Missouri War period. And they're fighting back, the Mormons are fighting back. And sometimes they're doing things to defend themselves that other high level members of the church are not agreeing with. And there's all sorts of things that are going on and people are dissenting from the church. High level leaders, including witnesses to the Book of Mormon are descending from the church. And once they announce a dissenting viewpoint, then they become perceived as the enemies to the church and then they are sent packing out of the church and they are let to. They are led to know in, know in certain terms that they are not wanted here, whether that's orally or physically, that that message is being communicated. So yeah, there's very much. It's a lockdown, it's a retrenchment kind of situation. And Joseph Smith has to, or at least it would be reasonable if Joseph Smith felt the need to reestablish his authority as the prophet.

Nemo 1:12:40 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:12:41 And so the, so the motive would Be people are challenging my authority. How do I make my authority more clear, more strong, more profound? Why don't I add that I am a literal fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy? Why don't I add into, you know, this story sort of an even grander claim that I, Joseph Smith, am a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy? Is that kind of what's going on?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:13:09 Think about this. So who are the. Who are the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon? Right, we got Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris. Right? Martin Harris is excommunicated in December of 1837. David Whitner is excommunicated in April of 1838, and Oliver Cowdery is excommunicated right around the same time in 1838. So all three of them are excommunicated within months of each other, right before he writes his history. And if you don't think that's going to cause waves in the church to have all three of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon or like the three witnesses all being excommunicated and they were like, run out of town. This was not like a, you know, a friendly parting. So that alone at that very time frame shows you by Joseph Smith now is saying, okay, I have all of that baggage of the people who, who were with me in the beginning gone. I can rewrite the history however I want. And that's why you're starting to see a lot of these changes being basically canonized, because there's no one there to say that didn't happen. And I want to read one thing really quick. This is from 1831. And this is in the Morning Courier in New York Inquirer. This is an account from Charles Butler, who heard it from Martin Harris about the Anton visit. So this is what he says. Martin Harris, with several manuscripts in his pocket, went to the city of New York and called upon one of the professors of Columbia College. This would, you know, be Antonio, for the purpose of showing them to him. Harris says that the professor thought them very curious but admitted that he could not decipher them, said he to Harris. Mr. Harris, you'd better go to the celebrated Dr. Mitchell and show them to show them to him. He is very learned in these ancient languages, and I have no doubt he will be able to give you some satisfaction. Where does he live? Ask Harris. He was told and off he posted with the engravings from the golden plates to submit to Dr. Mitchell. Harris says that the doctor received him very politely, looked at the engravings, made a learned dissertation of them, compared them with the hieroglyphs discovered by Champollion in Egypt. In Egypt and set them down as the language of a people formerly in existence in the east, but now no more. And so that account is from Harris. And of course, Harris is going to spin this in a faith promoting way, but even Harris in this account is saying that Anton could not decipher them. So it just shows the messiness when you start to get into these different accounts. And. And when you look at just the polished 1838 after Martin Harris has run out of town, it just. It really rings off a lot of alarm bells as to what Joseph Smith is doing with the story to basically bolster himself.

John Dehlin 1:15:39 Okay.

Nemo 1:15:40 And the significance of Harris being run out of town is that he can't push back and say, hang on, that's not how it went.

Radio Free Mormon 1:15:45 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:15:46 Yeah. And we've already talked about David Whitmer publishing an entire pamphlet to all witnesses or believers in Christ, where he's like, hey, all that stuff Joseph Smith claims about the Melchizedek priesthood never happened. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, when you've got your core witnesses all defecting and getting excommunicated for not agreeing with the way you're changing the story, I mean, in any other context, that would be deeply problematic, I think.

Nemo 1:16:11 And I think it shows, again, Joseph Smith determination just to get stuff sorted because he wasn't even bothering to try and get those who should have been his closest inner circle on board with these narrative changes and with these things that were moving forward.

John Dehlin 1:16:24 But if you're constantly aggrandizing your story, you're going to alienate the people that were there when it was happening. You know what I mean? So those things are kind of incompatible.

Radio Free Mormon 1:16:35 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:16:36 All right, Mike, are we done with this slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:38 Yeah, we can go to the next one.

John Dehlin 1:16:39 Okay, so the next slide is a few final thoughts on the Anthon vision.

Radio Free Mormon 1:16:41 Is it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:42 Yeah, and this is just a couple of thoughts. So there was a Recently an episode by Carrie Shirts, who goes by the Backyard professor, and he did an interview with Colby Townsend. And if anyone has been paying attention to kind of like Mormon scholarship, Colby Townsend is doing some amazing work. And he's done a lot of work recently on Isaiah and the Book of Mormon. And so he just recently did an article with dialogue about the third Isaiah try to Isaiah or Trito Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and how he's actually found a lot of references, which is really important to our earlier episodes. But he did an episode specifically on Isaiah 29, and this is what's really interesting. So Isaiah 29, verses 11 and 12 is basically the whole core of this backdated prophecy. And what Colby talks about is how those are believed to be late additions to Isaiah, which means that Joseph Smith is likely backdating a prophecy into verses of Isaiah that would not have been available on the brass plates, because as we talked about when Lehi left Deutero and Trito, Isaiah were not there. So if this was a late addition, it would have had to have been done before that, which is, I mean, I would imagine, unlikely. And he had talked about how this is an area where even scholars who don't necessarily like to split Isaiah up into multiple Isaiahs will tell you these two verses are a late addition to the text, to the text, because it changes from poetry to prose. And then there's some other surrounding issues where they can kind of pinpoint that these verses are added. And so that alone is a really big problem when you're trying to backdate a prophecy into a late edition, as we've talked about with other episodes. And then second, and this is what I had mentioned earlier, Joseph Smith first introduces the idea of Charles Antin writing a certificate in 1838 after Martin Harris was excommunicated, which just happens to mirror the certificate given to Joseph by Michael Chandler with the Book of Abraham in 1835. And I think this is really important. And the reason is that for those who watch our Book of Abraham episodes, Michael Chandler is a traveling salesman and he's trying to sell these mummies in this papyri. He's told there's this church in Ohio that might buy them. And he goes, and of course, Joseph Smith is like, oh, my goodness, these are the roles of Abraham and Joseph. So Michael Chandler basically watches Joseph Smith tell him what he thinks they are, and he signs this document. And the document says, this is to make known to all who may be desirous concerning the knowledge of Mr. Joseph Smith Jr. In deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters in my possession, which I have in many eminent cities shown to the most learned. And from the information that I could ever learn or meet with, I find that of Mr. Joseph Smith Jr. To correspond in the most minute manners matters. So basically, Michael Chandler couldn't translate anything. Nobody could at that point. And he's going to write the certificate because he's a salesman. He wants to sell these mummies, and it helps Joseph Smith, which helps him. And now in 1838, in the New account with Charles Anson and Martin Harris, it says he gave me a certificate certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were true characters and that the translation of such of them as had been translated was also correct. And it just shows, I think, that Joseph Smith and Colby Townsend talks about this. There's. They translate the Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith is using the certificate to bolster this idea that he was the only one who could really do it. And they've charged people, I think, 25 cents to look at these mummies, to look at the scrolls. And they use a certificate to show these people who are visiting that Joseph Smith is, is the one who could translate it. And now all of a sudden he sees the utility and the value in having a certificate from someone else who is, was considered to be an expert on the subject. And so when he's writing the story in 1838, I think it makes sense that he is mirroring that Book Abraham time frame and saying, if I could get that idea of a certificate into the Charles Anton account, it will bolster my credibility. But he doesn't have the certificate. And so in this case, I believe he's inventing the story of the certificate to mirror the Book of Abraham, but then obviously has to have it ripped up because just they don't have it anymore. And so I do think that he is using the, the events and, and his experiences with the Book of Abraham to write rewrite the Charles Anton account years later with all of that kind of life experience to make it sound both better and more credible.

Nemo 1:20:55 And it also helps him deal with the fact that he no longer has the plates either. So, you know, at least he had the originals for the Book of Abraham, but he doesn't have the plates either. So if some expert has attested to the thing, then is essentially an extra witness and he's, as we've discussed, bleeding witnesses at this point.

Radio Free Mormon 1:21:12 Yeah, yeah, Mike, I think that that slide and what you said about it here has really made it clear to me beyond disputation, that there is no room in the LDS Church for a Catalyst theory as it applies to either the Book of Abraham or the Book of Mormon. Because that sucking sound you hear when you read these purported affidavits from Michael Chandler and also from Charles Antone is that this was a word for word translation that could be confirmed by non Mormon secular scholars and therefore it must be a tight translation. There is no room for those two purported certificates to be in the same room with the Catalyst theory.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:21:58 Yeah, and that's just it. Like every time apologists want to say, well, it was a catalyst or was a revelation because Joseph Smith couldn't translate. You go back to all these early accounts and it's like, no, everybody was saying Joseph Smith was translating, including Joseph, including the early witnesses, and including these certificates. There's no way around it. Unless you're just going to basically, as I've said to people in the past, you're basically ignoring all of the evidence we have in the hope that there's evidence that we don't have that might pop up someday. But yeah, this is. There's no way around it. Like you said, it's beyond any doubt at this point when you have all of these accounts lined up against each other that this is supposed to be a tight word for word translation.

The Catalyst Theory and the Anthon Visit

Radio Free Mormon 1:22:36 And the reason this is so striking to me right now as I'm listening to this Mike is because typically the catalyst theory, if you go far enough into it, becomes ridiculous on its own terms. But the idea is, yeah, Joseph Smith is not translating from the document. Instead he thinks he's translating from the document, but actually God is beaming down this revelation that has nothing to do with the document that Joseph Smith thinks he's translating. And the apologists have to say he thinks he's translating it because he's telling everybody and their dog that he's translating these documents in a customary translation. Normal use of the word meaning. Right. But this goes beyond that. We can't account for this by what I think is the strained theory that Joseph Smith is telling everybody he's translating, he thinks he's translating, but actually he's not translating. Because now we've got independence scholars coming in and saying, wait, he's translating.

Nemo 1:23:28 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:23:29 And yet it's even worse than that because we really don't have those scholars validating. We just have accounts written by biased sources that the scholar is validating that he's translating. So it's like they have nowhere to run, they have nowhere to hide this all whole account falls apart at every turn.

Nemo 1:23:48 Like Joseph Smith shows his intention that he thought he was translating by trying to then appeal to secular scholars.

John Dehlin 1:23:55 Or that he wanted us to believe.

Nemo 1:23:56 He wanted us to believe. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:23:58 That he was translating.

Radio Free Mormon 1:23:59 Right, Right. Well, the problem is, is that if you want to follow up with the catalyst theory, your only go to that I can think of is that Joseph Smith was not only mistaken, he's also lying about what other secular scholars said.

John Dehlin 1:24:10 Right.

Radio Free Mormon 1:24:10 And that becomes problematic on its own terms.

John Dehlin 1:24:13 Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 1:24:13 Yep. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:14 And that's just it. And it's like the Michael, because from a Paul I could. I could. I've tried to channel my inner apologists here, and I would say that they would say the Michael Chandler certificate is meaningless because obviously Michael Chandler couldn't translate, so he was just trying to give Joseph Smith something to sell him with. So I'm assuming that's what they would say. And then the Charles Anton one, though, is worse because as RFM just said, to then say that Charles Anton never said that they were correct. Translation would mean that Joseph Smith made up the story. So then they would have to say Charles Anton was lying and telling Martin Harris it was correct when it wasn't. Which it just. It's one of those things where every time you do that, you're just opening up more problems. And so that's why we've done all these episodes where you're just, like. I constantly say, it reminds me of those old cartoons where they're sweeping one part of bunch of crap under the rug and thinking they're cleaning their bedroom, but then all of a sudden, another part of the carpet just pops up with all the crap underneath it. It's just like, you cannot. You cannot tackle all these at once and be consistent, because if you try to do that, you're going to see really quickly this all falls apart. It's just. It's. It's demonstrably not what it claims to be. And the only way around it is to basically just ignore everything that we know. And. And as I've heard a number of people say, one of the biggest problems for Mormon history is the fact that they did keep pretty good records. And in this case, we can see the evolution of this story because of the fact that they did. We do have the records of. Of the different accounts of the Charles Anton visit, along with the Michael Chandler stuff.

Nemo 1:25:34 So it's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:34 You can't get around it unless you just want to pretend it doesn't exist.

The Lost 116 Pages and Large vs Small Plates

John Dehlin 1:25:40 All right, well, let's go ahead now, and we'll leave the Anthon visit, and we'll now enter into the last 116 pages.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:49 Yeah, and so this is one we did an entire episode on. And I think it's one of our better episodes in the sense of a lot of people don't cover this in a lot of detail. So I was really happy to get to tackle this. But as we talked about in that episode, we have to remember that the Book of Mormon dictation, it starts in Mosiah, it goes to the end, and then Joseph Smith is going to go back to the beginning to backfill the lost 116 pages. And so because of that, we showed in that episode that the end of the Book of Mormon is known to the people at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, but it's not known to the people in the middle of the Book of Mormon. And it's because of the fact that the dictation order tells us that Joseph Smith went back to the beginning. And this is really important, I think, for this idea of kind of backdating prophecy, because in this case Joseph Smith is going to back data solution. And so as we talk about in that episode, Joseph Smith is finishes the Book of Mormon and I think in the back of his head he's hoping they're going to get those pages back so he does not redo the pages at the beginning. And so the Mormon Church's narrative today is that there's this small set of plates that was prepared for this exact exact problem. And so this is from their Come follow me manual. It said more than 2400 years in advance the Lord prepared to compensate for the lost pages of the Book of Mormon. See First Nephi, Chapter 9. And we covered this a lot. So I don't want to go into it in too much detail. I hope if you have not watched that episode, you go back and watch it because I think it's a really important one in showing how Joseph Smith could have composed the Book of Mormon. But there was a website that I had referenced called Lectures on Doubt and they had done an article about the lost plates of Nephi and it really talks about how Joseph Smith is going to backdate this effectively into the Book of Mormon after he starts it again because he, up until the end of the Book of Mormon he doesn't know what he's going to do. And so this is a really cool paragraph from that article and I don't know if anybody else would like to read it. If Nemo you want to read it, I'll throw you under the bus.

Nemo 1:27:48 Again, from a write up on lectures on Doubt, the idea of a second smaller set of plates doesn't appear until first Nephi, which comes after Mosiah through Moroni in dictation order there Nephi describes his record as an abridgement of his father's record. Later Nephi describes this new record as not the plates upon which I make a full account of the history of my people. He goes on to say that the larger, more complete volume he has given the name of Nephi, wherefore they are called the Plates of Nephi. This is also the first Time. He describes the large plates as being more secular in comparison to the small plates plates. He does not give the small plates a name here, reinforcing that the plates of Nephi are not the small plates. The secular versus spiritual nature of the plates is repeated in 1 Nephi 19. There Nephi reiterates the expectation that those plates are to be passed down from generation to generation. He also mentions that the smaller plates may have other wise purposes, which purposes are known unto the Lord. A coy hint that the plates were prepared specifically to account for The Future lost 116 page manuscript.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29:03 And so this is kind of a long winded. Not a long winded, but it's a more complicated way of saying that Joseph Smith doesn't even invent this idea of a second set of plates until after he restarts the Book of Mormon to backfill the 116 pages. Which tells you that Joseph Smith did not really think of the idea of small plates until after that. And he's trying now to use the Book of Mormon to basically backfill and solve the problem that was created with the loss of the 116 pages. And I think that's really important for this episode because it shows how Joseph Smith is using the Book of Mormon. And we'll talk about this in our other three episodes on Revelation. He uses the Book of Mormon and Revelation to try to solve these problems that he gets into. Because if he could put it into the word of God or the words of a past prophet, it then all of a sudden would make a reader go, oh my goodness, I can't believe God thought of this 2400 years ago, when in reality it's Joseph Smith thinking about it as he's trying to figure out how to complete the Book of Mormon after losing those pages. So I don't know if anyone has any thoughts on that, but I just thought that was really interesting for just kind of the way he's using the Book of Mormon to deal with events that are happening at the exact same time it's being written.

John Dehlin 1:30:17 Anything?

Radio Free Mormon 1:30:19 Only that I have difficulty envisioning what large plates versus small plates look like. I mean, the common understanding is that they would be larger in dimension than the small plates. And yet both of them are apparently there in the top one third that is not actually sealed. And based upon the accounts I have read from the witnesses who said they saw the plate, there's no indication of there being a different sized plate up there on the top. And then some smaller plates which would be, you know, obviously recessed.

Nemo 1:30:50 But then we're talking about plates pre Mormon's abridgment. Right. So we're talking about. There's this idea, as far as I understand it, I could be completely wrong, is this idea that, you know, the brass plates came out and then there's the plates of Nephi also there's these multiple plates and records that got dragged flagged all around America before then Mormon sat down and went, right, I better will put it into a volume.

Radio Free Mormon 1:31:12 Yes.

Nemo 1:31:13 So I think that's what he's referring to.

Radio Free Mormon 1:31:15 Right. So you'd have the large plates, which are the, the main plates, which is going to end up being, I guess the book of Lehi is what they transmogrify into. But then directly underneath that presumably you have the small plates which have the part that now recounts it from a more spiritual perspective. And is what we actually have in first and second Nephi etc, or contained

Nemo 1:31:35 within the gold plate plates that Joseph Smith actually had hold of, as he says, because they've rewritten down. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 1:31:41 So you got big plates, they got small plates and then I guess you go back to the regular sized plates again. But nobody mentions anything of that in any of the descriptions I've read.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:49 Yeah. And the, one of the revelations, I think it's DNC 10, it talks about how God is giving Joseph Smith the solution to the problem. Right. And the revelation makes it sound like Joseph Smith is actually going to translate from the non abridged plates. So in other words, Joseph Smith would actually be translating directly from the large plates. And that's a really interesting thing we covered in the episode because if he was going to do that, then he would have actually had more material than what than the lost 116 pages. So it seems like when he actually gets back to actually doing what he's supposed to do in this revelation, which is to not retranslate, he then invents the idea of the small plates, I think because he's trying to figure out a way to kind of get this done. Because the initial revelation makes no mention of a small set of plates, but it does talk about how he's going to translate from the unabridged plates to get the material back. And so it just shows, kind of like with the anthem Visit, when you actually look at the details, it gets not just messy but contradictory. Contradictions galore and it doesn't make sense from just a logical standpoint because why is God telling Joseph Smith in the revelation to go back to basically the unabridged plates and then all of a sudden The Book of Mormon, they're like, no, no, I prepared these small plates 20, you know, thousands of years earlier that I didn't mention in the earlier Revelation. It just makes no sense.

Nemo 1:33:04 It's not, it's not all coming together very well for. No, for Joseph, really. And, and again, it's, it's weird because Joseph Smith controls all this. And so you're kind of looking at his fingerprints throughout it, where he's, you can, you can see very clearly where he's going. Okay, right. Well, now I need to add this element to make it work. But the problem is as he adds elements, they contradict each other and they don't line up with what he'd previously stated, which is the issue with a sort of narrated text as well. This idea that he's just verbalizing this text and it's then getting written down is that he's got this sort of mind map. But you, you can't juggle all these things.

Radio Free Mormon 1:33:43 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:44 And so this is not, I mean, we don't need to go into too much detail, but this is from DNC10. So God says, behold, they've only got a part or an abridgment of the account of Nephi. Behold, there are many things engraven upon the plates of Nephi which do throw greater views upon my gospel. Therefore, it is wisdom in me that you should translate this first part of the engravings of Nephi and send forth in this work. And so it looks here like God is basically saying you're going to translate from a bigger set of work as opposed to a smaller one. And yet when he actually gets to writing the replacement part of the Book of Mormon, he then invents this idea of the small set of plates, which really doesn't mesh with DNC 10. And it just shows that Joseph Smith is kind of now trying to use the Book of Mormon to effectively give corroboration for what he's doing, even though it contradicts the early revelations, which kind of mirrors what he's doing with some of these other areas, such as the Anton visit as well.

Nemo 1:34:35 Because the justification I heard was that essentially the reason that there was always quote, unquote, overlap between what was written on the 116 lost pages and then what was written in the Book of Nephi. So don't worry because, you know, Nephi's got it covered, that's fine. But it made it clear that that wasn't what was going to happen. Does that make sense? You know, it wasn't, it wasn't those plates that were going to be translated from there was. It was never intended to be. To be covered up that way, because they were never mentioned. It was a larger body of work. Until these small plates come out of nowhere.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:07 Yeah, exactly. And so all of a sudden, it's like, you know, again, it'd be like saying, if you took an abridgment of a book, let's just say Moby Dick, and you're working off Cliff Notes of Moby Dick. And then all of a sudden, someone stole the notes you had, and then God came to you and said, you know what? Don't worry about the Cliff Notes. Just use Moby Dick. You'll have more information there anyways. And then as you're doing it, you're like, you know what? I found a super different Cliffs Notes version that's even more smaller. Micro notes, you know, that I'm going to work from. And it doesn't mesh with the earlier story. And so it shows to me that he's using the Book of Mormon to basically create this idea that God created this. This small set of plates, which makes sense if you don't understand the translation timeline of the Book of Mormon. But once you start to. To notice the dictation order and time it up with the revelations he's getting about the lost 116 pages, it makes absolutely no sense. And it certainly looks like Joseph Smith is giving in, like a backdated solution to a problem that he's still working out in his head because he doesn't know how to finish the book after those pages go missing.

Nemo 1:36:10 And it also. Sorry, it also makes sense to the view that he had of plates that they're just very easy to engrave and that this is just the way. It's almost, in Joseph Smith's mind, this is the way people wrote things down. Whereas, you know, so you've got these multiple plates. You've got the brass plates, you've got the place in Nephi. You've got those that are all then gonna make their way around, and then they're gonna get put into the gold plates. What RFM has put forward is that you would think logically what the gold plates are made up of is those plates just get bound together, stacked up. That's what the abridgement process is, or what Mormon does by compiling this record. But what's actually posited, as far as I understand, is that these plates that already exist, that were made of brass and other materials, then get dumped on Mormon along with some other records and some other, you know, Scrolls and whatnot. And he then goes through the whole process of inscribing it all on a set of gold plates that then get buried to be preserved for future. So it's just. Why would you be doing that when you've already gone through the painstaking effort to engrave sets of plates previously to then create a whole new set?

Radio Free Mormon 1:37:16 Because Mormon found them with all the plates. He found the small plates of Nephi and he found that, that it was just so wonderful and inspiring and spiritual that he decided he was going to include it there, even though it was a redundancy already there.

Nemo 1:37:30 Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 1:37:31 Yes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:32 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:37:34 And it, you know, not to get too basic, but it bears noting here that there's no evidence that Native Americans wrote, you know, any characters by engraving on plates during the time period of the Book of Mormon. No evidence of the smelting, you know, or metal manufacturing or mining facilities that would have been required to do that. And, and certainly not on gold inbound, you know, ringed kind of like book like things. Because the Gutenberg press and books wouldn't be invented for another several hundred if not, you know, thousands of years after the time period. So just this whole idea of, of etching plates in, in, in Latin America in book like format with ring sheets of, of, you know, writing is completely anachronistic. Am I wrong?

Nemo 1:38:34 Nope.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:34 No, that's, that's 100 correct.

John Dehlin 1:38:36 Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 1:38:37 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:37 So, I mean, we're arguing silliness upon silliness a little bit, I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:42 Yeah. I mean, and I think that this episode really is a way to, in a lot of ways, kind of transition from all of the work we've done before to get into the actual revelations from Joseph Smith beyond the Book of Mormon. But as I talked about at the beginning, this episode from rfm when he did it was so impactful to me because it really helps you to see just how much, even in 1828, 1829, Joseph Smith was willing to use the voice of God or the voice of these past prophets to get his own credibility established and in this case to solve problems by backdating it. You know, that 2400 years in the past, when it doesn't even correspond to the revelations he's claiming from God in the months leading up to it. And it's just to see the messiness and to see the way he's kind of doing it on the fly. It really shows you to me that this is not some ancient text that is being carefully abridged by Mormon. It is Joseph Smith scrambling because he doesn't know how to replace these pages. And so he's going to backdate it into the Book of Mormon so that if you're reading it, you'll go, oh, my goodness, I can't believe God had already sorted this out and actually knew that Martin Harris was going to fulfill yet another prophecy in losing the pages.

John Dehlin 1:39:52 Rfm. Do. Is there anything you want to comment about this last 116 pages slide?

Radio Free Mormon 1:39:57 The way I would bumper sticker this is that in several respects, the voice of the Book of Mormon contradicts the voice of church history.

John Dehlin 1:40:08 In what way?

Radio Free Mormon 1:40:09 The ways that we've already been talking about. Okay, so that was just trying to bumper sticker this and a conclusion that you can put on your car and then we can go on to the next thing if that's what you've a mind to.

John Dehlin 1:40:19 Yeah, that's brilliant. Okay. And the next slide actually has rfm. We're quoting rfm. That's very meta. So the question is, do we have Nemo read rfm or do we have rfm? Read rfm.

Nemo 1:40:30 Could I do a good impression of rfm, is the question.

Radio Free Mormon 1:40:33 Could I do a good impression of Nemo, is the question.

Nemo 1:40:36 Oh, read it, but in my voice. Rfm. That's what you should do.

Radio Free Mormon 1:40:39 All right, I'll do that.

First Nephi Prophecies and the Book of Daniel

John Dehlin 1:40:44 Do you want to set this slide up the specific in First Nephi?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:47 Yeah. So at the beginning of the episode, we talked about the Book of Daniel, and the reasons that scholars can date the Book of Daniel so specifically is because he provides a series of specific revelations that span multiple centuries. But then the author of the book starts getting the predictions wrong. And that tells scholars that the book was written after the specific prophecies that were correct, but right before the ones that start, you know, ending up to be failed prophecies. And so in the Book of Mormon, we could see the same pattern in First Nephi, which, as we just mentioned, is part of the replacement text of the lost 116 pages. And the reason this is important to note is that this was written after Joseph Smith had already finished the ending of the Book of Mormon. Meaning at this point, the author of the text can write in prophecies that he knows are going to be fulfilled by the end of the book, because he had already written the end of the book. And so this is where RFM can give his best Nemo impression from his own earlier podcast.

Radio Free Mormon 1:41:41 Okay, again, from Radio Free Mormon. Is this where I am?

John Dehlin 1:41:43 Yes.

Radio Free Mormon 1:41:44 The reason I bring this up, the Book of Daniel is because, as I was Learning about this 15 years ago, I started getting an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach because I recognized that there was something very similar that was going on in the Book of Mormon itself, and specifically in the vision of Nephi, which is recorded in the book of Mormon, first Nephi, chapters 11 through 14. Now, the text of the Book of Mormon puts this prophecy approximately 600 years before Christ. And yet, as we know, the Book of Mormon did not appear in any kind of published form until 1829, when it was dictated by Joseph Smith and then published for the first time the following year in 1830. So we have a book, the Book of Mormon, that first appears in 1830, but it is quoting prophecies from Nephi, who lived 600 years before Christ or before the common era.

John Dehlin 1:42:42 Now, what's it like to quote from such an intelligent person?

Radio Free Mormon 1:42:46 I just hope I'm right about all this. I mean, it's been a few years since I researched it. No, I think I made every effort, every effort to be correct, and it's sounding good, so. So it must be true.

John Dehlin 1:42:56 Mike, do we want him to continue or do you want to pause there, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:59 No, he could. He could read that second. The. The last paragraph of the slide.

John Dehlin 1:43:02 Okay, go ahead, our friend. Go ahead and continue.

Radio Free Mormon 1:43:05 One thing I've learned from Joseph Smith is that if you say something with enough certainty, it becomes true.

John Dehlin 1:43:10 Okay. All right, keep it going now for

Radio Free Mormon 1:43:13 chapters 11, 12, and 13. Now that's going to be in First Nephi, of course. I'm just going to look at the head notes of each chapter. I'm not going to go into detail, but we will see that all of these things that are seen by Nephi 600 years before Jesus Christ came are things that Nephi could not have known except by divine revelation and the gift of prophecy. But it would have been an easy matter for Joseph Smith or whoever wrote the Book of Mormon when it came off the Press in 1830. All of these things would have been known by a person living at that time period.

John Dehlin 1:43:51 Do you want to. Do you want to summarize what you're saying there of him?

Radio Free Mormon 1:43:54 I think what I'm saying is that you've got first Nephi, who, from a purported position 600 years BCE is seeing all of these things that happen that are important in American history and also religious history, but mainly the American history, with Columbus discovering America, with the colonists coming over here from England, with there being war between England and the colonists, and the colonists win. Yay. And then all of a sudden, the prophecies become very vague and generalized. They're really spit. They're really specific up until the time that Joseph Smith is alive. And then anything beyond when he's alive in the Book of Mormon just become very, very vague. And it, you know, anything could fit this. So all I'm saying is that the only way that Nephi could have seen this would have been through prophecy and vision. But on the other hand, anybody alive in Joseph Smith's day would have known the same thing. And as far as a smoking gun goes with the Book of Mormon, there's no smoking gun that's going to convince everybody. But a textual critic who is proficient in textual criticism with the Bible or other texts would look at this passage in the Book of Mormon, the vision of Nephi, and say, okay, I can tell from looking at that, just like we did with Daniel, I can tell from looking at that that this book, or at least this portion of this book, was written right after the point where the prophecies stop becoming specific and start becoming general. In other words, it is written shortly after the Revolutionary War, and since it is so favorable to the colonists and they are put in the good light, then it would further identify it as being written by someone in the United States or someone with United States sympathies.

Nemo 1:45:50 I mean, that's how we know, really, that the Book of Mormon isn't true, is that it doesn't side with the correct side.

Radio Free Mormon 1:46:02 What did you do with that, by the way? Not to take this off on a totally different tangent. What did you do with that as a believing English Latter Day Saint Nemo?

Nemo 1:46:10 You know, being a Mormon growing up in England, you get used to American exceptionalism. But the thing we always reassured ourselves with was, it may be the Promised Land, but we're the Promised people. Because at one point in the church's history, there were more members from the United Kingdom than there were American members. Members by quite a significant margin. We came. We. We rescued the church. If you hadn't come and come over and stolen us all away from our villages to America, the Mormon Church would not have survived. That's. That's how we dealt with that.

Radio Free Mormon 1:46:41 Okay, I just.

John Dehlin 1:46:42 I just came up with a term in my mind in my LGBTQ research. There's this idea of internalized homo negativity where. Where LGBT people are taught to loathe themselves. So I think, I wonder if the Mormon Church has nurtured within its British members, internalized. Is it Anglo negativity? Is that what it would be called? Nemo?

Nemo 1:47:04 You absolutely can't do that to British people? I mean, we do it to ourselves. We hate ourselves and our own country, but no, no, the Mormon Church didn't do that to us. The weather did.

John Dehlin 1:47:16 You're too proud. You're too proud to be British. There's no such thing as internalized Anglo negativity.

Nemo 1:47:21 No, not at all.

John Dehlin 1:47:22 Okay, got it, Got it. Mike, should we. Should the next slide? Is it. Is the next slide a good illustration of the points RFM was making?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:30 Yeah, he kind of was hitting on a lot of them. So we could go through real quick.

John Dehlin 1:47:34 All right, so this is a. This is like making specific now a specific example of the Book of Mormon, kind of like fulfilling its own prophecies. Is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:45 Yeah. So this is going to be basically RFM, looking at the chapter 11 heading about all of the things that Nephi is going to prophesy of. And so it kind of, you know, taps into what he was just saying about how specific it is. But obviously it's worth. Worth looking at.

John Dehlin 1:48:00 All right, do you want to take it out? You want to take. Take it on RFM?

Radio Free Mormon 1:48:04 I'm here.

John Dehlin 1:48:04 Okay.

Radio Free Mormon 1:48:05 Chapter 11, the heading says, nephi sees the spirit of the Lord and has shown in vision the tree of life. So once again, this is reading from the little italicized chapter headings in the Book of Mormon. He sees the mother of the Son of God and learns of the condescension of God. That's Jesus coming down to earth. Or actually, in the original Book of Mormon, that was God coming down to earth. It was later modified to be the Son of God. But going on with the heading, he sees the baptism, ministry, and crucifixion of the Lamb of God. He sees also the call and ministry of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. So this is a detailed prophecy that Nephi is getting 600 years before Christ, but it's first being published 1830. 18, 30 years after Christ. Once again, details not knowable by Nephi, but definitely knowable and known to Joseph Smith and everybody in his community. Yeah,

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:04 I just. I just added the note which we. You basically just said, but this is. These are revelations and prophecies giving in such specificity that a scholar could look at it and say the absolute earliest this could be written would be after the Gospels were written. And then what dates us to the 1820s is the inclusion of the tree of life vision, which we talked about in earlier episodes, which is Joseph Smith incorporating the vision of his own father, which tells you that this could not have been written basically before Joseph Smith's lifetime, which is really important from a scholar, scholarly perspective of trying to date the text.

John Dehlin 1:49:38 So if I can. If I can kind of reflect what I'm understanding here, a believer, a believing orthodox Mormon, this is actually going to strengthen their faith because it's like, wow, the Book of Mormon is so miraculous. It prophesies of later occurrences even early in the book. Wow, what a miraculous book. So if somebody just is. Is bound and determined to be an orthodox Mormon believer, they're going to see this as miraculous. But if somebody's willing to set that down for a second, step aside and say, from a textual criticism standpoint, it could. Are there traces here of. Of the Book of Mor. You know, of Joseph backdating prophecies? Even within the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon text itself, there's ample evidence that. That he was doing it, especially once you understand that he wrote First Nephi after he wrote, what is it Mosiah on, he came back to first Nephi because the last 116 pages had been lost and he had to rewrite the beginning of the book to make up for the loss of the 116 pages. Is that. Did I summarize that decently, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:49 Yeah, I mean, I think so. And that really is just kind of the crux of it, which is that this stuff is so specific that it really dates it it to Joseph Smith's lifetime beyond the. Beyond the biblical prophecies. The fact he's pulling stuff from his own life and putting it into the voice of God or the voice of a prophet. It could not have been written any earlier than Joseph Smith's life. Unless you want to take the approach of a believer and say that the Book of Mormon was incredibly prophetic until Joseph Smith's lifetime. And then it just completely stops, which is an approach that we all took as believers. But, yeah, from a scholarly standpoint, this is the easiest way to date the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:51:23 Nemo, did you want to add anything on the slide?

Nemo 1:51:25 Yeah, just to add a little tidbit to what RFM said in the quote, which is that, you know, it was originally the condescension of God that was originally First Nephi 3 in the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon before there was a lot more subdivisions when it read more like prose. And for example, in 1 Nephi 3, it says, and he said unto me, behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God after the manner of the flesh. And then in the 1837 edition, so the second edition of the Book of Mormon, you Get. And he said unto me, behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God after the manner of the flesh. So the mother of the Son of God. So you're getting a change in theology there, which blows out very quickly. The idea that there was only ever grammatical changes between the first and second editions of the Book of Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon 1:52:14 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:52:15 Yeah, that's good. Anything you want to add RFM on that slide?

Radio Free Mormon 1:52:20 No, I'm. I'm fine, thank you.

Backdating in the Book of Mormon Replacement Pages

John Dehlin 1:52:22 Okay, let's go on. Let's go ahead and go on maybe to the next slide, which I guess is another example of backdating. Do we want to have RFM continue, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:34 Yeah, I mean, he can. It's just this one. I only stole one paragraph from him. So.

Radio Free Mormon 1:52:39 Chapter 12. Now I'm reading the heading from the slide. Chapter 12. The heading says that Nephi sees in vision the land of promise, the righteousness, iniquity, and downfall of its inhabitants, the coming of the Lamb of God among them, how the twelve disciples and the twelve apostles shall judge Israel, the loathsome and filthy state of those who dwindle in unbelief.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:04 Yeah, and this is why the 116 pages stuff that we talked about earlier is so important, because at this part of the vision, Nephi is being shown basically the unfolding of the events of the Book of Mormon, which he knows because he's already written the ending. And so again, because Martin Harris lost 116 pages, Joseph continues for Mosiah, goes to the end, and then fills it back at the beginning. And so this means that in this part of the vision, Nephi can effectively state the Book of Mormon narrative and then use the remainder of the. Of the Book of Mormon to fulfill the backdated prophecies being given in this vision, because the author already has written the ending. And so I just noted, like, it's like writing the stars. The Star wars prequels foreshadowing what happened, you know, in. In the already released, you know, episodes, what, 4, 5 and 6? And then you could call it prophecy that, oh, my goodness, can you believe the prequels knew that, you know, Darth Vader was going to happen or something like that? So it just, it shows that when you've already written the ending, it's a lot easier to back date this idea of like a prophecy or, or some sort of foreshadowing in the beginning because you've already done it.

John Dehlin 1:54:05 Yeah, Nemo.

Nemo 1:54:08 I just find that whole vision very problematic. I mean, Nephi's locked a guy's head off to stop a nation dwindling unbelief. And then angel shows him that basically that was pointless because the nation's going to dwindle in unbelief anyway. So it's. Yeah, even though Joseph's doing all these really clever things to take the end of the book and then put it in Nephi's mouth so that, you know, Nephi seems really prophetic, even though he'd just written that bit, he still can't get these basic things right because there's internal contradictions even within this, like within chapters of each other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:39 Yeah, that's a good point.

John Dehlin 1:54:42 Rfm, Anything you want to add?

Radio Free Mormon 1:54:45 Well, I was just going to think about that part that somebody wrote a really important, excellent essay about why that happened. The way that Nemo said, wait, I think that was me anyway, and I did it on a podcast a while back. I don't know know, it's just. It's just a fun textual analysis. But I did have something else in my mind. But then Nemo started talking and I began to be lulled by the charms of his. His accent.

John Dehlin 1:55:09 Of his accent. I'll just say. I'll. You know, I'll just say for me, you know, at a. At a meta level, at a psychological level, this. This is kind of this whole dynamic of backdating prophecy to reinforce faith, really. It's reminiscent for me of this whole psychological phenomenon of, you know, a millennialistic leader, like the head of the Jehovah's Witnesses or, you know, another group prophesying that the world is going to end. Warren Jeffs did this, or Rulon Jeffs prophesying that the world is going to end or that Jesus is going to come at a certain year and then the year comes and goes and Jesus doesn't come. And the way that the high demand religious leaders or cult leaders spin that they can actually make it so even though their prophecy failed, their followers end up believing more strongly than they would have if the prophecy had come true. That's how powerful and that's how much of command cult leaders can have on their followers. They can turn an actual lemon into faith lemonade for their followers. And that's what. Nima, I'm glad you're laughing because it means I'm striking a court here. That's kind of a little bit what I think Joseph is doing here. He's like writing the Book of Mormon. He bungled, you know, he's got 116 pages written. He's bungled it. They're lost. He's got to Go on and continue writing it out anyway. But then he's able to turn that lemon into a lemonade by when he has to go back and replace the 116 pages. At the end of the process, he's going to just write in some prophecies, and all of a sudden all his followers are going to be like, wow, look how miraculous the Book of Mormon is. It prophesies the ending of the Book of Mormon at the very beginning. It's even more miraculous now, Nephi. I mean, Nemo, why were you left?

Nemo 1:57:13 Well, because it just brought to mind the idea that, you know, people talk about how the defenders of the Book of Mormon talk about how it has this consistent narrative, this consistent story all the way through, which would have been way more difficult for Joseph to keep as he orally dictated a book from his mind. But the proximity of the end to then the way he writes the beginning, like you said, he's taken this problem and used it to actually make a solution. So if members understood that, that actually the beginning was written after the end, it would make it less. It would make the Book of Mormon less miraculous. But that point is never emphasized or refocused on, particularly because, like you said, Joseph took this lemon of losing these pages and turned it into lemonade of. Well, I can now, because I've just finished dictating this last part. I'm very familiar with what happens. So I can now make the person at the beginning of the book know exactly what's going on.

John Dehlin 1:58:03 Yeah, and Mike, we talk a lot about that, about how specificity in the Replacement to the 116 pages increased a lot relative to the. The names and dates and times and places and specificity for, you know, the remainder of the book post loss of 116 pages. Is that, Is that right, Mike? Which episode was that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:58:28 Well, okay, so we did the episode on the 116 pages, which I think is like maybe the sixth or seventh or fifth. It's. It's early. And I honestly think it's one of the most important ones we did because a lot of other podcasts don't cover it as much. And the fact is, when you look at how the text at the beginning differs from. From the text, like starting back in Mosiah, you could show the dictation order, which everybody agrees to. Now, most people, I think every church scholar admit, will agree to the fact that he starts in Mosiah, finishes, and then goes back and. And fills in the beginning. And it just shows kind of what you said. Imagine you dictate is your first ever production of like Scripture and you have to orally dictate. You can't make a lot of changes because of the fact that the scribes need to believe this is coming as direct translation and then it gets lost. As much as that sucks, it allows you to fix any of the things you weren't happy with. And at that point you've probably fleshed out the story a lot more than you did when you first started. And so for Joseph, I think it did give him a lot more freedom within the text to, to, to fix the things he might have wanted to have done they didn't do the first time around. And to be able to tie it to the end in a way that is so seamless, as Nemo said, because he had just written it. It really does bookend the Book of Mormon in this really kind of majestic way if you read it as a believer because it does feel like, oh my goodness, they know hundreds of years earlier exactly what's going to happen. And then it actually happens because it's on these records when in reality you're writing, you're writing the beginning after the ending, so you already know it happened. And so it, it does give Joseph Smith a lot of freedom and a big chance to do a do over on anything he might not have been thrilled with as well.

Nemo 2:00:07 And that's specifically because of the way that he was doing it. Because if you were like, you know, Tolkien or whatever and you can sit and write your law, you can write the history, you can write all this stuff out and arrange it and get it all how you want it, then this is not particularly skillful at all. This is just good writing. If you want to have a story where the character is prophetic, then you would have everything laid out and you would know yourself as the author, what's going on at the end. So you'd very easily write it into the beginning. But it's because of the oral dictation of this book and the way in which, like you said, Joseph couldn't make any changes or edits particularly and he had to keep just letting it come out as a stream of consciousness that he planned in his head, possibly using some notes, whatever. That's what makes this significant. Just want to make that super clear.

John Dehlin 2:00:52 Rfm, any final points you want to make about your previously shared wisdom?

Radio Free Mormon 2:00:59 Yeah, just a personal story which is as a true believing member with a testimony of the Book of Mormon as authentic scripture. It was meaningful to me when, especially when Mormon comes in and the words of Mormon, right. And he says, hey, I'm Mormon from the end of this book and I'm writing this here and I'm letting you know I found these great plates and things have gone to. Things have gone really bad in the time that I'm living at the end of the civilization, everybody gets destroyed. But I'm including these here because I think they're, they're great, these small plates of Nephi that was always meaningful to me because I got the feeling from that, that this is a real person who really existed at the end of the timeline of the Book of Mormon, who is now coming in here, in the Words of Mormon, much earlier than the end of the Book of Mormon and saying, this is the way things happen. So it struck me as something that showed the Book of Mormon to be true. And then to find out this Mosiah priority, this whole idea that Joseph Smith began translating the Book of Mormon as we have it today with Mosiah and then to the end at Moroni, then coming back around to the beginning with Nephi, Second Nephi, as you've talked about the, the vision that Nephi has about the end of his people as well, and then right up to Words of Mormon, which is probably about the last thing that Joseph Smith translated. All of a sudden, what seemed a faith promoting aspect of the Book of Mormon became less so to me. It was a cause of disappointment to me.

John Dehlin 2:02:36 Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:02:38 And that's. Brett Metcalf had done, has done a ton of work on the 116 pages and stuff. And when I read that, I was floored because it just shows how the middle prophets don't really know the ending with anywhere near the specificity as the beginning prophets do. And we covered this in our episode. But it's just, this is a, just a really quick thing I wanted to read from Brett Metcalf's work on it. He says, you know, enveloping is particularly evident in the discussion of the advent of Jesus. For example, early in the narrative, Nephi relates that Lehi, an angel, and the prophets had all predicted that Jesus would be born 600 years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem. However, subsequent Book of Mormon prophets seem unaware of these extraordinary oracles. In a Nephite revival, King Benjamin comments that the time cometh and is not far distant, that the Lord shall come down from heaven and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay. That's in Mosiah 3. 5. And he says this comment is surprising since the scriptures he possessed presumably told him this would not occur for over 120 years. Alma speaks of Jesus's Advent in similar general terms. The kingdom of heaven is soon at hand, the time is not far distant, not many days hence, and the day of salvation draweth nigh. Alma sincerely hopes that it might be in his day. His reticence or inability to disclose Jesus's birthday is explicable in his admission. As he says, we know not how soon, yet all of the early prophets of the Book of Mormon know exactly when it's going to happen. And so these are the things that show you how Joseph Smith is backdating the ending of the Book of Mormon into the beginning. Because the middle has no idea about the end or the beginning. That's really the best way to date when this is happening. And also to pinpoint the fact that this is likely, you know, written by Joseph Smith because of all of these details that are just loaded in the Book of Mormon that are all pointing right at him.

Nemo 2:04:28 Can I, like, sum that up real quick? Because I feel like I've understood that it's essentially what you're saying is Alma was saying, oh, I'm not sure. I'm not sure when Christ's gonna come. You know, I'm hoping it's soon. I'm hoping it's my lifetime. But all the prophets before him from the beginning of the Book of Mormon knew when it was going to happen. They were making distinct predictions about exactly when and what would happen. So he would have had access to those scriptures. So why didn't he know, too?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:50 Yeah, exactly.

Radio Free Mormon 2:04:51 Okay. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:04:53 So that just tells you that it should. Once you understand that the dictation order and then you start seeing those details, it's like, okay, it totally makes sense that Joseph Smith now in the beginning, is able to backfill all of this stuff to make it seem this majestic prophetic calling. But it doesn't work because the middle prophets have no idea what about these things. So it tells you that there's a mess. It's not an issue of these are on two sets of plates that are being kind of done with different focuses. It's telling you that the middle people have no idea, not just that the small plates were done, but all but what all of these earlier prophets are saying. And that is as big a red flag as you can get that there's something going on here because these Middlebrites

Nemo 2:05:32 weren't reading their scriptures.

Radio Free Mormon 2:05:34 Yep. Well, right. And also there's that hugely dramatic event described in Third Nephi Chapter one, where. Where all the believers that Jesus is going to come are set to get executed by the non believers who have apparently taken power in the government. And it's just like nobody knows when this is going to happen, but they believe it's going to come, and they believe it fervently. And then on the day of execution, lo and behold, the star, the new star appears in the sky and they are vindicated and set free. So, yeah, nobody knows when he's coming, apparently, except for Nephi.

Nemo 2:06:07 Yep. There didn't need to be all that drama. But then how else would Joseph have built that suspension that, you know, that suspensive device that he put. Literally speaking. Yeah, there's a device of suspense there. He's creating some drama in the book. He can't create that drama if actually, you know, they do indeed know or should have known because of the previous prophets.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:06:29 Yes.

John Dehlin 2:06:31 I'll just say to kind of cap off this section that. But you know, when you meet someone like a Brett Metcalf or a Colby Townsend or a David Bacavoy and you realize how incredibly intelligent and scholarly and meticulous and honest they are, you ask yourself, why would they dedicate decades, if not, you know, entire careers and lives to like, analyzing biblical or Book of Mormon or Book of Abraham texts? And you realize that, you know, when you think about the hard sciences, like the biological sciences, you know, someone who would dedicate a life to DNA study because DNA can prove whether or not a murderer is a murderer. Like, there are real implications for hard sciences. If you can figure out how cells work, you can cure cancer and save lives. There's a hardness to the hard sciences that in some ways, I believe attracts sometimes our best and our brightest minds. I think of textual criticism like that because this feels to me, I'm thinking about some of our viewers and listeners that are like, man, we're really in the weeds now. Like, we're really digging into stuff that almost like, are we, are we going too much in the weeds? But then, but then you think about a Bachevoy or a Townsend or a Metcalf, they go into the weeds. Because this really, really does prove in almost like a. Analogous to a biological science. This really does show whether the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation or is not. Because once you get into the weeds like this, you can really find the fingerprints that show that this isn't what it claims to be. That's what it means to me.

Nemo 2:08:29 I know you didn't, you didn't like me bringing up the Unabomber last time, but I am going to bring it up again in that textual analysis is what helped catch him. You know, these things are important, these studies of text. They have legitimate real world applications. And so to a believing member who would maybe say, oh, well, if you have to look into it this much, then you don't have enough faith and you just need to have more faith, I would actually argue that looking into it at this level of depth is important to understanding what it is you're actually reading and whether you should put your faith in it or not. Because you should put your faith in things after you've exhausted your kind of analytical faculties. So that's why going into weeds like this is important, at least from my perspective.

John Dehlin 2:09:12 Yeah, I think so.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:09:14 And I get that so much. Where people say the Book of Abraham is obviously the biggest sample, say, well, you have to have faith because if Joseph Smith had gotten the translation correct, there'd be no need for faith because, you know, he's a prophet. It's like you kind of roll your eyes because you're like, well, otherwise the outside of that is to say, well, then God set Joseph Smith up to look like a fraud in order to bring more people to his church, which makes absolutely no sense. And to your point, Nemo, and I've said this before on these, on these episodes, but, you know, to me, I was raised in a Protestant background that I converted, but basically the idea of faith was the same within both elements. To me, I was always taught faith is the belief in what we cannot know for sure and what we cannot see for sure. And it's not belief in spite of what we can see. And so this idea that you should have faith in spite of the fact that, you know, the claims that the church has made are false, that's not faith. That's something entirely different. And it would be like, you know, you know, if you, if you're married and you say, well, I have faith that my, my husband is faithful, and then you find a hotel receipt with another woman and then you're like, I still have faith because if I, if I trust this receipt that he was with another woman, then then I won't have faith. And it's like, well, yeah, that's what evidence does. Evidence makes you shift your belief based on what you can know. So I mean, I just, I, I get what Nemo's saying because that is a very common response, but I just think that that is not what faith was ever intended to be. It's only kind of taught that way by people who have a need or desire to keep you in that system. And that doesn't just apply to Mormonism. So I do think that's an area where I push back heavily on the idea that faith is supposed to have us doubt the evidence that we can all see.

Nemo 2:10:55 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 2:10:57 Well, let's, let's go to the next slide now. I think we've covered this. Well, the next slide is a really, really significant tell for those who were open minded about, you know, backdating prophecies. So Mike, do you want to talk about the Book of Mormon predicting US History through Joseph's timeline?

Book of Mormon Prophecies Predicting US History

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:11:16 Yeah. And so this is just like one of those things where you get to chapter 13 and all of a sudden, you know, the Book of Mormon just gets so incredibly specific in its prophecies. And then all of a sudden you're going to see a punishment directly to the Book of Revelation. And so they talk about Columbus arriving in America. That's first Nephi, chapter 13, verse 10 to 12. And it says basically it's white settlers obtaining the land of their inheritance from the Native Americans. And after 1492 BCE as more settlers came to America, leading to the creation of colonies. And then you've got the Revolutionary War, which is obviously something that happens between 1775 and 1783. That's where we took care of Nemo's friends. And you know, and then all of a sudden it prophesies of the coming forth of the Bible and the Book of Mormon in America. So that's now in verses 20 to 42. And so obviously that's hard to date specifically, but the Geneva Bible was the by the first Bible brought to America around 1620 with the Pilgrims. The King James Bible would be brought over shortly after in the mid-1600s. And of course the Book of Mormon is released in 1830 after being produced in 1829. They prophesy of the great and abominable Church and the Church of the Lamb of God. This again is hard to like date as it's kind of vague, but this prophecy has no anchor in historicity. And then following a specific history of America from 1492 to 1783, the author of the Book of Book of Mormon falls back to the very vague prophecies that are no longer about historical events, but about religious movements. And so it just shows that all of a sudden, as RFM said at the beginning, once you get past the Revolutionary War, which is, you know, we'll say 1783, it's over. The Book of Mormon really has nothing specific to say outside of Joseph Smith's own kind of lifetime with the Book of Mormon and obviously we'll get to he prophesies of himself. And one note that I find interesting is that it talks about the Apostle John will write the Book of Revelation in the Book of Mormon. Scholars date the Book of revelation to about 96 ceremonies. And as I discussed before, sorry earlier, this prophecy confuses the John identified in the Book of Revelation with the Apostle John, which is another mistake by Joseph Smith and not understanding biblical scholarship because the John who writes the Book of Revelation is not the same who writes the Gospel of John, which again tells you that the writer of this part of the Book of Mormon does not understand the material that he's working with.

John Dehlin 2:13:44 Yeah, that, that, that error seems highly, highly problematic in and of itself and significance. Nemo, did you have a quick reaction to the slide?

Nemo 2:13:56 No, particularly other than it follows a pattern of. It follows a pattern of Joseph Smith not understanding biblical scholarship. You know that Johannine language that David Blockavoy talked about in the last episode that we did, you know.

John Dehlin 2:14:07 Yeah. Rfm, you may have missed a bit of this. Is there anything, anything you want to say about this slide?

Radio Free Mormon 2:14:15 Once again, just registering another disappointment is that obviously Joseph Smith was not in a place or time where he had access to the kind of biblical scholarship that we know about today that's been mentioned about the John who writes the Book of Revelation, who is actually identified with the name John, but not John the Apostle. These niceties were not known to him. And it would be more faith affirming if Joseph Smith said things that may have seemed out of place in his day that ended up being matched by scholarship as it continues to unfold and increase. Instead, time and again, what we seem to see is his saying things and writing things that were quite well received and understood and accepted in his day, but that as scholarship increases, his teachings become outdated.

Nemo 2:15:09 Well, because what you've just described there, rfm, is legitimate prophecy. That's what he would have been engaged in if he had. If he had made acknowledgments about the unknown author of the Book of John, for example, and spoken out about that against the prevailing tradition at the time that they knew who it was, then that would be legitimate prophecy and he would go on to be vindicated. But it's like Joseph wasn't quite capable of planting a tree that he would never sit in the shade of. To look at the old proverb, you know, he always had to just work with what was around him, with the existing trees.

Radio Free Mormon 2:15:43 Right. And like we all do, right. He was an eclectic Aggregator, but not a prophet, that I can tell.

Nemo 2:15:50 No.

Radio Free Mormon 2:15:51 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:15:53 Oh, go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:15:54 No, I was just gonna say, when you continually, throughout the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham and his Revelations make these really. I don't want to say they're basic errors, because in his time, they didn't know they were errors. But when you make what we now know to be basic biblical scholarship errors, it tells you that this is not coming from a divine source. Because otherwise, at least some of them, like Nemo said, Joseph Smith would have pushed back, against which at the time would have been revolutionary, would have been controversial. But today, every general conference that would lead, that would either be right before the opening prayer, would be right after. It'd be like. Like, this is what Joseph got right. Bam. Check it, you know? But instead we're stuck sitting here going, why is Joseph Smith constantly getting things wrong that were believed in the 1820s and 30s?

Nemo 2:16:35 And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:16:36 And I think that at some point, as RFM said, he. He's great at taking information and compiling it, but he's not great at actually seeing anything that wasn't available to him in his. In his lifetime.

John Dehlin 2:16:48 Right.

Radio Free Mormon 2:16:48 Even a small example of that is Joseph Smith making the common mistake of identifying the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews as Paul. Now, that's very commonly done in this church and outside of this church. And as recently or as early as, I think it was the third century with Eusebius, the church historian, he was already on record as saying, we've got no idea who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Actually, I think he said, God only knows who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. But we get to Joseph Smith and in some kind of context where he's not talking about authorship of the Book of Hebrews, he just refers to a passage in the Book of Hebrews and cites it to Paul. Right. So he's making that common error. That's okay. It's not a big deal. What ends up happening, though, is that Bruce R. McConkie, in his doctrinal New Testament commentary three volume series, takes that identification by Joseph Smith of the author of Hebrews, as says Paul, even though it's just in passing and says that's the final word, all the scholars are wrong. Hebrews was written by Paul. Joseph Smith said it, I believe it. That settles it. Yep.

John Dehlin 2:17:58 The one comment I just wanted to make, I'll always be grateful to Michael Coe for teaching me not just to look for what's there that shouldn't be there, but to look for, but. But to, but to notice things that should be there that aren't. And if, if God's got a chance to do a miracle here, if God's got a chance to show, you know, prophecy within the Book of Mormon and even to show that on top of that Joseph Smith's a prophet. And that's the whole point of having prophecies is they can be experienced as miraculous by the people seeing a prediction of the future. Why didn't the Book of Mormon prophesy things that come after Joseph Smith? Why didn't it prophesy the Industrial Revolution? Why didn't it prophesy Tesla? Why didn't it prophesy germ theory? Why didn't it prophesy the First World War, the Second World War or the Vietnam War or something that clearly happens after Joseph Smith lived and or after he wrote the Book of Mormon at that point? Well, that's a true miracle, right? That's a true prophecy. And yet the things that the Book of Mormon prophesies either never happened or they're vague or they're things that Joseph Smith would have obviously known about. Is that fair?

Nemo 2:19:16 That's fair. And I think the whole purported purpose of the Book of Mormon is to, and, and certainly what I believed it to be, you know, when I was, when I was in that, of that mind and many believe, members of the church believe the Book of Mormon's purported purpose is to put the Bible straight, is to take the Bible, you know, that old example where the word of God is like a piece of wood, the one nail in it in the Bible it can get twisted this way, in that way, but with the Book of Mormon you put a second nail in and that's it, that's the way it should be. The Book of Mormon is meant to clarify all these things, but it doesn't, it doesn't actually clarify any of the contended issues of the Bible with people like for example, who wrote this, who actually said this, when was this written? Is this a first hand or a secondhand account? All the things that are important beyond the faith promoting stories or the faith morality parts. And also it doesn't mention things that the Bible also doesn't mention. So for example, Jesus's stance on homosexuality, not mentioned in the Bible, not mentioned in the Book of Mormon either. Right. So it had a chance there to bring these things up that were missing that would be pertinent to the struggles of our day. You know, the question around homosexuality and Christianity and how they combine is a big one. It's a big Contentious issue. And the Book of Mormon, like you said, if God had a chance to work a miracle, miracle, that book could have been the solve. But it's just not mentioned.

Radio Free Mormon 2:20:36 Yep, and that is one of the chestnuts that the Book of Mormon leaves us. By the way. It is the Book of Mormon that says of itself that it is going to make clear what's written by what in the Book of out of the mouth of the Jew. I think it is once again in second Nephi that the Book of Mormon is going to clarify that. But it certainly says also in Nephi that that the Book of Mormon is going to come forth with the purpose of making plain all those things that have been taken away from the Bible, those plain and precious parts that have been taken away from the Bible by the Catholic Church. Oops, I'm sorry. By the great and abominable Church as it goes through its hands, right, and takes out all this plain and precious parts. But the Book of Mormon's here to add them back and you can read it from beginning to end. And honestly, what do you find in there that appears to be a restoring of something that's not in the Bible that was lost from the Bible? I'm unable to find it. The only thing I can see in the Book of Mormon that's different from the Bible is that it has a much more detailed knowledge of the ministry of Christ and of the, well, the Revolutionary War and of Columbus way before Jesus was born or before any of those events happened, even though they're in the past to Joseph Smith. But really this pre knowledge, this detailed pre knowledge of Jesus is the only thing I see different about the Book of Mormon that I don't see in the Bible. I don't know. Do you bloke see anything else?

Nemo 2:22:08 Yeah, like infant baptism is the one that I see where he's. That it's almost like he thought, hang on, I was meant to put some theology from the Bible, right? I guess I'm going to take on this one and just say, well that's bad, you should do it later. But you're right to expound on your point. What you see in the Bible is a very clear Jewish tradition moves to Christian tradition post Christ coming and revealing the new and everlasting covenant, right? This, this is the New Testament, etc. What you've got in the Book of Mormon is Christianity throughout before Christ. Somehow they already know about Christianity and they know exactly what it is to be a Christian and to already believe in Christ in that way, not just a promised Messiah and then post Christ, you see this falling away, etc. That's what's, that's what's significantly different about its theology to the Bible. I'm not sure it's a better thing for the claims of its truthfulness.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:23:00 No. As a convert, I remember reading the Book of Mormon for the first time and being like, wow, this feels super comfortable to read because it was. I came from a Protestant background and wouldn't you know it, the Book of Mormon really does, does kind of confirm that, that kind of Protestant mindset of, of the 1820s. And it talks about Jesus a lot, which of course, as a Christian in the 1800s would feel very at home. And as Nemo said, the only thing that's in the Book of Mormon that's not in the Bible that's, you know, Mormon unique is not doing infant baptism. But then that's another area where you find out that is a very hot topic of the day. And so it's not like Joseph Smith is, was kind of pulling us out of nowhere. He's, it's again, coming from something that's being discussed at the time, which is why there's that Alexander Campbell quote we've read probably on three or four different episodes where he just talks about how the Book of Mormon addresses every hot topic issue of the day and does it in a way that's purportedly through an ancient record, but just happens to match all of the talking points of, you know, the 1820s. And so I just, at some point you just go, how many red flags do you need before you go, yeah, this is not in any, possibly an ancient document. But of course, until you're ready to see it, you're not going to see it.

Radio Free Mormon 2:24:14 Right. And this idea that the Book of Mormon reflects early 19th century American Methodism, really theology from beginning to end. It has very little to do with the Church as it exists today, with all the things that have been added to it with temple ordinances and everything else that, that, that, you know, goes along with it in this way. The, the Book of Mormon itself seems to serve the role of the camel's nose under the tent. And that once you can adopt that as being literal or have a testimony of it, then the rest of the camel can come into the tent. And the rest of the camel is everything else that the church has added to the Book of Mormon teaching since it came off the press?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:24:59 Yep, 100%.

Joseph Smith Writes Himself Into Scripture

John Dehlin 2:25:04 All right, well, let's, let's, let's take it to the next slide, which Joseph1 ups. It he doesn't just predict US history that he would have already known. You know, backdating that back into the Book of Mormon, he. He even goes as far as. And this is a little bit. I don't know if the right word is narcissistic or maniacal. I don't know what the right word is.

Nemo 2:25:29 Self aggrandizing.

John Dehlin 2:25:31 Thank you, Nehemiah. Self aggrandizing. He creates a prophecy about himself in the Book of Mormon. So take it away, Mike, and you can have whoever you want read it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:25:39 Yeah, it's just, you know, this is one of those areas where looking back on it now, I'm like, oh, my goodness, how did I not see this? But, you know, one of the, you know, small notes that comes here that we talked about in the surrounding influences is that Joseph Smith actually creates a prophecy about himself that he inserts in the Book of Mormon. And so this is from the words of Joseph in Second Nephi chapter three. And I guess we could have Nemo read it since we had RFM read a bunch recently.

Nemo 2:26:03 Sure, that's fine. And thus prophesied Joseph saying, behold, that seal will the Lord bless. And they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded. For this promise which I have obtained of the Lord of the fruit of my loins shall be fulfilled. Behold, I am sure of the fulfilling of this promise. And his name shall be called after me, and it shall be after the name of his Father, and he shall be like unto me. For the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand, by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:26:37 Yeah. And so the Book of Mormon is basically making a prophecy that Joseph, son of Joseph will be a seer that will translate the Book of Mormon. And this is a really great way to retrofit a prophecy into the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith has already fulfilled in the year 1829, because he's already known as a seer from his treasure digging days and now is basically as we talked about in those early episodes, he's kind of taking that treasure digging technique and moved it to this translation technique in the exact same way of looking in a rock and a hat and is known as a seer. And so all of a sudden, Joseph Smith here is going to very craftfully write himself into the Book of Mormon as a way to have the reader go, holy crap, they knew that Joseph Smith was going to be the one to restore the Book of Mormon, you know, thousands of years later.

John Dehlin 2:27:23 I'm just surprised that he. Well, there's a Lot of hubris in this decision. But I'm also surprised that in his mind he's thinking, wow, this is really going to bolster people's faith. I know I'm going to be viewed as the, quote, translator, the author. I'm going to write myself into the book and people aren't going to be suspicious of that. And people are good. People's faith is going to be enhanced or reinforced because it's a prophecy about my, you know, because it's a backdated prophecy in effect. Like it's a little bit weird that he would think this is, number one, a good idea and number two was going to be faith enhancing. But oddly he kind of understood human psychology because again, that's how it worked for me. When I'm a 15 year old high school student learning about this for the first time in the Book of Mormon, I'm like, wow, how miraculous. The Book of Mormon, even prophesies of Joseph Smith and, and I bought it hook, line and sinker back then. Anyone else have a comment about that?

Nemo 2:28:21 Well, Joseph, if he was good at anything, he was good at getting people to believe him and to follow him, but that's what he was good at. So I think you're right. He understood the psychology of it. Maybe not in those terms, but he knew the effect it could have on people.

John Dehlin 2:28:34 Yeah, to me, that was the big lesson he learned from his treasure digging days where he could lead people to a treasure site, have them dig, tell them all that the treasure's been taken away, and somehow they left with more faith in him as a treasure digger, even though no treasure was ever found. That is the big lesson he probably learned is you can make people believe even stronger even after something weird or inconvenient happens.

Nemo 2:29:06 That's exactly what you were saying about cult leaders. They have this ability to get people to believe stronger even when their prophecy fails. His prophecy about there will be treasure there, his assertion that there will be treasure there failed, and yet he was able to get people to believe him and actually believe stronger in his abilities in some cases. So I think, yeah, he realized he has that gift. He has that ability to make people to, to get people to believe him, even if he's demonstrably wrong about something.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:29:36 Yeah, yeah, you want to jump in here at all?

Radio Free Mormon 2:29:40 If you like a person or if you like what a person says, then you should never underestimate the strength of the human desire to believe. They will believe what is said regardless of an overwhelming amount of evidence that contradicts it and zero Evidence that supports it. My life is living proof to that fact. And I'll also tell you this is another example of a very specific prophecy in second Nephi 3 that goes right up to Joseph Smith's day and no further.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:30:11 Yep.

Radio Free Mormon 2:30:11 The other thing I was going to say is that what I see here is that already Joseph Smith has this idea in his mind that he is contemplating, or at least second Nephi 3 is a text written by ancient Joseph who went into Egypt that has a prophecy in it. So he is accessing sort of like he did that little scrap from the Book of John. I think it's in DNC 7. Right. Which he remote viewed from the Holy Land. He's accessing a prophecy written by Joseph of old. And this also anticipates what he's going to do when he buys the scrolls in 1835. One of them is Abraham and the other one is the scroll of Joseph, which we never got. But I think that if we had gotten it, it would have had at a minimum contained a prophecy very similar to the one in second Nephi 3, as well as a prophecy that was similar again to the one that Joseph Smith added in his Joseph Smith translation to. I think it was Genesis 49, 50, 50, where the patriarchal blessings are being given out.

Nemo 2:31:18 Yep.

Radio Free Mormon 2:31:19 Okay.

Nemo 2:31:20 Yeah, See, I was going to say he would do it like Genesis 50. We would get basically Genesis 50, but it would be called the Book of Joseph rather than just part of gst, I would think, because the verbiage in that I know we're coming to it is very similar to the verbiage of the prophecy given here in the Book of Mormon. It's like the same author for sure.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:31:39 Yeah. And that's actually a good transition. The one, the one little tiny note I would add that I always wonder now is would Joseph Smith have written himself into the of Mormon if Martin Harris doesn't lose the 116 pages? Because at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, remember, he records a revelation that says that God will grant him no other gift besides translating the Book of Mormon. And then at the end of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith changes the revelation to say, I forgot what the wording is. No other gift beyond or until it's finished or something like that. So he gives himself this extra at the beginning he's almost tight, you know, putting ropes around what he can do. And then by the end of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith takes us off and he's like, I am full out prophet. And I just wonder if he would have been in the mindset of adding himself into the Book of Mormon had those pages not been lost. But I guess that's one of those things we can only speculate on.

Nemo 2:32:26 So.

John Dehlin 2:32:27 And we'll make sure and add to our show notes that episode on Joseph Smith changing his prophecies. Because this is a pattern. It is a long pattern, and it's a really important one.

Nemo 2:32:38 Yep.

John Dehlin 2:32:39 All right, Mike, let's go to the next slide. Joseph Smith's name will be had for good and evil.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:32:43 Oh, actually, hang on a second.

John Dehlin 2:32:47 Did we not finish?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:32:48 Yeah, we did the Book of Mormon one, but this is the next slide. Joseph Smith writes himself into the Bible should be before the good and evil one.

John Dehlin 2:32:55 Okay, let's do that next.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:32:57 Yeah, then this one will be quick because this is, you know, I would say this is kind of the mother of all backdated prophecies. Joseph Smith is going to write himself directly into the Bible when producing the Joseph Smith translation of the bible in Genesis 50. And as Nemo said, this is going to sound awful familiar because it words pretty closely to the Book of Mormon. It says, and out of weakness shall he be made strong in that day when my work shall go forth among all my people, which shall restore them who are the house of Israel in the last days. And that seer will I bless. And they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded for this promise I give unto you, for I will remember you from generation to generation. And his name shall be called Joseph, and it shall be after the name of his Father, and he shall be like unto you. For the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand shall bring my people unto salvation. So that's.

John Dehlin 2:33:45 Yeah, I'm going to just say it's sus again here. It seems like he can't. Just like he can't stop including the curse of Cain in every scripture that he produces. Here he is in multiple scriptural tomes or. Or canons inserting himself, and it's a little sus. Why isn't he inserting Oliver Cowdery? Why isn't he inserting Martin Harris or Brigham Young or David O. McKay? Like it's a. It's a little bit sus that when he has to insert a 19th century historical figure, it's got to be himself. You know, it's a little sus. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:34:26 Well, I mean, it's just like it's self serving. So I mean, in this case, he's writing in. I mean, we talked in biblical scholarship about how Genesis was likely written late and all that. And yet he's going to go back in and expand this text to make it not just that he's going to bring forth the Book of Mormon, that he's going to bring people to salvation. I mean, it puts him in basically, you know, as you often hear, is kind of a cliche. Joseph Smith is like the second greatest person ever to live next to Jesus because he is going to be the one to restore the church and bring people to salvation. This is no longer just the Book of Mormon. It's, it's the whole package.

John Dehlin 2:34:59 And he's declaring himself the second greatest person next to Jesus to have ever lived. In fact, rfm, isn't there a point where he basically says he was able to do things Jesus himself wasn't able

Radio Free Mormon 2:35:10 to do, keep a church together?

Nemo 2:35:12 Right.

John Dehlin 2:35:12 Yeah. So like he even one ups Jesus.

Nemo 2:35:15 Yeah, he said Jesus's followers left him, but none of mine have left me yet.

John Dehlin 2:35:20 Yeah.

Nemo 2:35:20 And he managed to get John Taylor to write about him in his sort of like obituary essentially in Doctrine and Covenants that he did more save Jesus only. So, yeah, like he, he managed to not just think that of himself, but get others to think that of him too.

Radio Free Mormon 2:35:35 Well, John Taylor was just feeling bad for having killed Joseph Smith himself in that cell.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:35:39 Oh my goodness.

Nemo 2:35:41 And we're off the air.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:35:43 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:35:47 Oh, where's your tinfoil hat? Rfm. I want to see the tinfoil hat.

Radio Free Mormon 2:35:51 That's my hair. Thank you.

John Dehlin 2:35:55 Yeah, yeah. So, so I guess Joseph Smith's behavior in his actual history of megalomania, or whatever we want to call it, hubris is, is reflected in his real life and behavior, just like it appears to have been in how he backdates prophecy about himself into multiple, you know, canon, you know, you know, multiple pieces of the canon.

Nemo 2:36:23 And it shouldn't be surprising to any of us looking at it kind of from like a meta psychological perspective, as you've talked about before, that a man who can make claims of angelic visitations and restoring God's one true church on earth, he's making some pretty huge claims that's going to take a level of confidence, self assuredness and, and, and sense of ego to achieve. So it's not surprising at all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:36:47 Yeah, yeah, it's not.

John Dehlin 2:36:49 Yeah. Okay, should we, should we go to Joseph Smith's name being had for good and evil, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:36:57 Yeah, that's a good point. And so this is, you know, Joseph Smith's history. So again, this is kind of from the same writing of the, the Charles Anton visit. We've talked About. But Joseph Smith is going to recount a prophecy that his name would be had for good and evil among all nations. And so this is from the history of the church, chapter one. It's verse 33. It just says, he called me by name and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni, that God had a work for me to do, and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds of tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people. And you hear this all the time. I get this in response all the time. When you point out something that Joseph Smith in a believer will say, oh my goodness, you're fulfilling prophecy right now. Because, because Joseph Smith said his name, you know, God says would be said for good and evil. But this revelation is written in 1838 after Joseph Smith's name was had for good and evil among the United States and word had spread to other countries. People did not like what Joseph Smith was doing. And so he's writing a revelation in 1838 that he dates back to say like 1823 of something that had already happened. And so this is a really good example of where the church is taking a prophecy written much later, putting it back into a day when it had already happened, which. And then says, hey, it's already been fulfilled. And so I think this is a really nice example of Joseph Smith doing that.

Nemo 2:38:20 It's a really interesting prophecy because it's essentially the sort of 1830s version of haters gonna hate. And he's just like, look, people are gonna be unhappy. But, you know, that's the nature of it. This is like John de Lynn saying that in 2000 he predicted that his name would be had for good and evil amongst the Mormon peoples of the world. And he actually wrote it like five minutes ago after he knows from years of experience that some people like him, some people don't.

Radio Free Mormon 2:38:50 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:38:51 And then every time.

John Dehlin 2:38:53 What are you talking about?

Nemo 2:38:56 No one, John.

John Dehlin 2:38:59 Yeah, yeah. And. And it's all I. Aside from the fact that he's backdating prophecy. This is a really smart move by a leader of a high demand religion or a cult because it basically inoculates members to any, any trouble you get into, any missteps you might make. If you not not only warn people that people are going to hate me.

Nemo 2:39:25 Yep.

John Dehlin 2:39:26 But you, you brand it as a prophecy that it's prophetic, then you're just really steeling yourself against any future Criticism. It's a very effective tactic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:39:36 Yeah, it's a great one. And, and I get, like I said, I, I get that response like on Twitter all the time. I'll post like a link about say the happiness letter and Joseph Smith's polygamy. And then you get these responses say, you know, his name will be had for good and evil. And then they'll say, basically, I'm fulfilling that prophecy. And I'm just, it's one of those things where you're just like, you've got to be kidding. But at the same time, to your point, it's really effective at creating this us versus them mentality of like, oh yeah, of course you're going to hear horrible things about, I mean I, yeah, I've heard from, from people close to me that they'll go, oh, I'm so sorry that Mike is saying these things that are so bad about Brother Joseph. And you're just like, but they're, they're evidence based. I'm not just saying like, I think Joseph Smith was like a smelly idiot or something like that has no basis. This is like, here's evidence showing what he did. But that prophecy is really effective at people falling back on that to avoid having to look at the evidence. And like you said, I think it's, think it's, it's, it's a tactic that's used by any leader of a high demand religion because it is creating a mindset that tells their members, you are going to hear bad things, don't listen to it.

Nemo 2:40:37 It's a thought terminating, cliche, wrapped up prophecy.

John Dehlin 2:40:40 That's right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:40:40 Exactly.

John Dehlin 2:40:41 That's right.

Radio Free Mormon 2:40:41 I would say it's even better than that. It's not just you're going to hear bad things, don't listen to it. You're going to hear bad things. And that proves I'm a prophet.

Nemo 2:40:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:40:50 And that's what's happening. So I mean it's, it in that regard. It is a, it is a prophecy fulfilled. But of course, you know, it already happened. But yeah, you know, it's very effective.

John Dehlin 2:40:59 And the house always wins because if you're doing good things, then people praise you. If you're doing bad things and people are criticizing you, well, that's just a prophecy fulfilled. So it kind of inoculates you and the house always wins.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:41:12 Yep.

John Dehlin 2:41:13 Yeah. Yep. Okay.

Nemo 2:41:16 It's like saying he shall, he shall sleep and he shall wake up for the rest of his life.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:41:20 Yeah, right.

Nemo 2:41:23 Of course he's going to do both those things.

John Dehlin 2:41:25 Yeah. It also reminds me of the. You know, if you think about the fact that, as we've already mentioned, so many of the three witnesses and the eight witnesses either left the church or apostatized at some point. It was super smart to say, even the very elect shall be deceived. But that not only refers back to so many of the early leaders in the church, but then it can apply in perpetuity to anyone who ever leaves the church, including Tom Phillips or Hans Matson or whatever. Of course. Of course, an apostle or general authorities or people with their second anointing are going to leave Mormonism because it was prophesied that even the very elect shall be deceived. Right. It's brilliant. It's a stroke of pride. It is. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 2:42:14 Well, I think Jesus gets credit for that because he came up with that before Joseph, I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:42:18 Yeah, that is true. True.

Radio Free Mormon 2:42:19 Which does make you wonder, why is Jesus talking about this in his public ministry?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:42:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a. That's.

John Dehlin 2:42:28 What are you saying?

Radio Free Mormon 2:42:28 RFM probably 24.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:42:31 Yeah,

Radio Free Mormon 2:42:33 what am I saying? I'm saying that that sounds like a very good reason to have that statement said by an authoritative figure to explain why people in high positions are leaving the church and have it be something that people can be open. Okay with that. They're leaving because it's been prophesied. So I'm wondering what high people were leaving in the church at the point that Matthew was written and the saying was put in Jesus's mouth retroactively because there would be no reason for him, at least according to the text that we have of the Gospel of Matthew or any of the gospels, for him to be saying it at the time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:43:07 Yeah, that's a good point.

Radio Free Mormon 2:43:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Backdated Prophecy in the Doctrine and Covenants

John Dehlin 2:43:12 All right, let's go to the next example, which, you know, we can't just stop with the Book of Mormon and the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible. Let's see where he does it in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Nemo 2:43:23 Yeah, you got to visit the gift shop on your way out. You know, you do.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:43:26 This is. And it's important just because it shows that it's not just the Book of Mormon, that where this is happening. And I think that's, you know, it's one of those ones you don't. And this next slide is going to be important because it's one I never would have understood was a backdated prophecy, because it's. It's DNC2. And so you just assume this is the second revelation he ever claims to have. And so this is from DNC2. And again, this is Joseph Smith claiming this in 1838 from Moroni. And it says, I behold, I will reveal unto you the priesthood by the hand of Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great dreadful day of the Lord. And this is again from 1838. And Joseph Smith claims, in 1836, I believe, that he's visited by Elias and Elijah in the Kirtland temple. They're the same person. He doesn't know that. But the point is there's no real mention of Elijah restoring the priesthood until that Kirtland temple vision where he gives Joseph Smith, you know, the kind of the generic set of keys. And so this is another area where Joseph Smith is now going to backdate that 1836 vision to 1823 so that it could be fulfilled in 1836 in Kirtland.

John Dehlin 2:44:33 Wow, that's a good one, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:44:35 But if you read it, if you read the DNC in order, you don't realize that you're just like, oh my goodness, Joseph. Joseph Smith knew in 1823 this was going to happen. And holy crap, it happens in Kirtland. But when you again look at it from a linear timeline, you're like, oh, my goodness, he claims us in. In Kirtland. Then he writes this revelation, backdates it before that to fulfill it. And that's when you look at. And you're like, why does he need to do that? You know, if, if that happened in 1823. And I know the apologetic response will be, Joseph Smith didn't write anything of this sort down in 1823, but he did write a lot of stuff down or have a lot of it dictated down before 1836, and it's not there.

John Dehlin 2:45:08 Yeah, good points.

Nemo 2:45:10 I mean, this happens as well with, with polygamy, you know, and the whole Joseph Smith probably was having relation revelations from about, you know, the early 1830s about this to try and cover for the fact like so the church is doing now to try and cover for the fact that in 1835 he was caught with Fanny Alger. You know, so they're like, oh, yeah, no, because this was already being revealed him before that, after he's been caught, that then gets backfilled.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:45:34 Yep, yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin 2:45:36 RFM, anything you want to add?

Radio Free Mormon 2:45:39 Matthew 24, verse 24, which is you.

John Dehlin 2:45:43 Are you just referring to the previous.

Radio Free Mormon 2:45:45 That's my way of saying, yeah, I was right. I got a fig leaf after the whole Genesis 49 verses 50 debacle that happened earlier. Yeah, that has the reference. That's the original One that I was thinking of talking about up false Christ signs and wonders, false prophets so much that if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect. So 2424 in Matthew should be an easy reference to remember for future discussions.

John Dehlin 2:46:10 Thanks, rfm.

Radio Free Mormon 2:46:12 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:46:12 Thank you.

Joseph Smith's Civil War Prophecy Examined

John Dehlin 2:46:13 All right, well, now we come to something that contradicts what I said earlier. Because I said earlier, what would be miraculous is that Joseph Smith could predict something, could prophesy about something that happened after he died. And this is where we come to, I think, the, the most often claimed miraculous prophecy of Joseph Smith, which is his quote, prophecy about the Civil War. So Mike, please don't, please don't dash our belief that Joseph Smith predicted a civil war. Or is that what you're about to do?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:46:48 Well, I mean, we'll talk about it. I don't know. We'll let the wa. The viewers decide, I guess. But yeah, this definitely will put a little bit of a different spin on, on what I was taught as a convert for sure. About the Civil War prophecy.

John Dehlin 2:47:00 Okay, let's do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:47:02 Yeah. And so this is a good example not just of how, because this is not a backdated prophecy in the sense of Joseph Smith isn't going to give this after the Civil War, but it's how we can back data prophecy ourselves by reframing something after the fact. And this is one about Joseph Smith's Civil War prophecy. And so I don't know if Nemo or Arafan or John wants to read this church entry from the Prophecies of

Nemo 2:47:24 Joseph Smith can do. All right, Nemo, one of Joseph Smith's most well known millennial prophecies related to the American Civil War. On December 25, 1832, Joseph Smith received a revelation prophesying that a war between the northern and southern US States would begin in South Carolina and that wars and uprisings throughout the earth would finally result in the end of all nations at the time of the second coming of Jesus Christ. At the time the revelation was received, South Carolina and the federal government of the United States were involved in a dispute, but it was peacefully resolved the next March. Years later, Joseph reiterated his prophecy that war would break out in South Carolina over slavery debates, as it did nearly 20 years after Joseph Smith's death.

John Dehlin 2:48:11 All right, well, so what's, I guess we, we have a next slide that's going to be talking about it. But do either you, Nemo or Radio Free Mormon have anything to say in response to that slide?

Nemo 2:48:24 I mean, as a Brit, I feel uncomfortable getting involved in your Your sort of civil war. So I'll let, I'll let RFM talk about that.

Radio Free Mormon 2:48:34 I believe it was you Brits who brought slavery here in the first place.

Nemo 2:48:37 We wouldn't do such a thing. Not do such a thing. How dare you, sir?

Radio Free Mormon 2:48:45 Oh my goodness. Well, anyway, anyway. So what did you do? You asked me a question there, John. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin 2:48:50 So, any comment on the slide before?

Radio Free Mormon 2:48:54 Yeah, I think the reason this gets a lot of play is number one, because it was received, I think Christmas Day 1832, early 1830s anyway. And it is of record and it mentions a couple of specific things, one of which is slavery, which no one was even discussing at, at the time. I mean, the Missouri Compromise had not been passed by that point. Of course, I'm speaking tongue in cheek. The Missouri Compromise had been passed before that. This was a huge issue in the United States, one of slavery and the Missouri Compromise. I had this memorized at one point. I can't remember. I think it was 1820. I think that even as Joseph Smith was seeing God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ in the Sacred Grove, Henry Clay was working on passing the Missouri Compromise. And the Missouri Compromise, by the way, John, do you remember that from high school?

Nemo 2:49:41 I have no idea what you're talking about, so maybe it might be good.

Radio Free Mormon 2:49:44 Well, the Missouri Compromise was the idea that there were, I think it was 22 states and there were 11 who were slavery states and the 11 who were anti slavery states or free states. And the problem was is that they all meet in the federal government and right there they've got a balance of power, at least insofar as the senators go. Right, because there's two senators from other each. Each state. I know this will all be new to Nemo, so pay attention and take notes. And the idea then was, well, Missouri wants to become a state and well, we can't let Missouri become a state because if we do, I mean, obviously all the slave states were in favor of it because that gives them two extra senators. And all the free states were against it because it gives the slave states two extra senators. And now they're going to be able to start moving things and advancing their agenda for slavery. So Henry Clay comes up with a compromise because right there they're deadlocked. Missouri cannot become a state. How are we going to do this? How are we going to grow this nation at all if nobody can become a state? Because either they're going to be slave states or free states? And he says, okay, here's the compromise is anytime A slave state comes into the union, A free state has to come into the union at the same time in order to maintain the balance of power. So when Missouri came in, Maine came in as a free state to offset the power of Missouri coming in as a slave state. And that was continued out from that point for a number of additional states coming into the Union. This was a huge, huge issue. It was everywhere in Joseph Smith's day. And indeed that. That slide, which I think quotes from a church publication, talks about how there was when Joseph Smith wrote this. Yes, there were problems going on in South Carolina about the. Over the slavery issue. And I think there were threatenings of succession. I'm sorry I didn't study this independently to come up with all the details for this show, but yeah, that's okay

John Dehlin 2:51:41 because Mike's got the next slide.

Radio Free Mormon 2:51:43 Is Mike back with us?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:51:44 Yes, I'm back.

Radio Free Mormon 2:51:45 Yeah, I've been tap dancing here for

John Dehlin 2:51:47 about half an hour. Was. Was, yeah, RFM tap dancing. While Mike went to the bathroom on

Nemo 2:51:52 a long convoluted tirade about Crimea and Russia and that sort of prediction, if we.

Radio Free Mormon 2:51:57 If we weren't careful, half a league onward.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:52:01 I was listening to Nemo getting a lesson on American history, and I was just enjoying the ride. So, yeah, we're good.

John Dehlin 2:52:06 All right, so, Mike, we. You. We talked about Joseph Smith's Civil War prophecy. I guess now you're going to dash. You're going to dash our beliefs in that prophecy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:52:16 Well, yeah, and this is why the next slide, again, it's one of those things where as a convert, as a member, I was told a very clean. Joseph Smith predicted this. It's kind of like the. The Word of Wisdom we talked about in our Word of Wisdom episode, where I was like, I remember. I remember specifically, I was told as a convert by people close to me, they're like, Joseph Smith was the first one that knew smoking was bad for you. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. You know, and you find out that's not at all what the problem was. But in this case, the church doesn't tell you that. Four days before this revelation was recorded that a newspaper article appeared in the Painesville Telegraph just outside of Kirtland, Ohio, entitled the Crisis. And the article discussed the ongoing tensions that were leading to fears that the possibilities of dismemberment have increased. And so from the article, there's this little blurb that says, we have just terminated an election which it is feared may be the last that will ever be held. Ever held. Under the present form of government. And many, we might say most of the ablest men in our nation have uttered their misgivings in the brief interval since the election commenced. The possibilities of dismemberment have increased in our danger thickened. And so this is, you know, Joseph Smith writing a revelation four days after this article. He claimed that the war would break out shortly, that it would pour out among many nations, and that it would include all sorts of natural disasters. And so Joseph Smith got the revelation actually wrong in a lot of those specific claims. But today the church has really repurposed this revelation to say that Joseph Smith correctly predicted the Civil War. And so this is an example of how we kind of backtate the prophecies of people in the church or in the Bible to make them fulfill prophecy, even though if you actually read it carefully, it's not at all what they're saying.

John Dehlin 2:53:57 Got it. Okay. All right, well, the next slide is really interesting because it talks about now we're kind of leaving Joseph Smith Smith and talking about how Joseph Smith legacy lives on because we, we even do this in the modern day. And it's example with current president and prophet of the church, Russell M. Nelson. Go. Go for it, Mike.

Russell Nelson and Modern Prophetic Claims

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:54:19 Yeah, and this is one, this is, I believe, is why RFM had done his backdated prophecy episode. I'm pretty sure that's how he started his off. And so it's because the church during COVID was constantly saying holy crap, that prophecy is being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because can you believe that God put a doctor at the head of the church? And that Russell Nelson in his October 2019 general conference said thus, the year 2020 will be designated as a bicentennial year. General conference next April will be different from any previous conference. In the next six months, I hope that every member and every family will prepare for a unique conference that will commemorate the very foundations of the restored gospel. So as we all know, Covid hit in February, in March of 2020. And this became redefined to mean that Nelson was predicting Covid, even though his statement was abundantly clear that his prediction about a unique conference was specifically about the first vision and the 200 year anniversary of the first vision.

Radio Free Mormon 2:55:18 That's brilliant. Did I really come up with that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:55:20 You sure did.

Radio Free Mormon 2:55:22 Okay, thank you. I'm impressed with myself.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:55:25 Yeah, no, you should be. Because like I said when I was listening to this pocket, I'm like, man, this is really good because you use that kind of to springboard into all of this other stuff to kind of show how not just there are backdated prophecies in the Bible or the Book of Mormon, but how the church or members will also kind of do that in order to fulfill a prophecy that was never meant in the first place. And so I, you know, I think and we all heard, we all heard during COVID about how God had given us a prophet to prepare us for Covid by going to two hour church, home centered church, all of that stuff and ignoring all of the surrounding details about how it had been tested for years and how there were surveys about how people didn't want to go to three hours of church. None of that mattered because now we had something we could pin it to. And so, you know, it was really important to show how, how when we're believers, we will mold the evidence or the statements to fit the conclusions that we need it to.

Radio Free Mormon 2:56:15 Right? And then just creating crazy ass stories out of whole cloth to support that narrative. Like Wendy Nelson did. I'm sorry that I'm characterizing that story that way where she said that back In January of 2020, all of a sudden, you know, she turns around and all their speaking engagements at all of these big arenas and facilities around the country and around the world, he's just sort of, I don't know, taken a, an eraser and wiped him off the, the whiteboard. And she's going, what happened to all these? And he says, oh, I don't know, I just figured we didn't need to really do those. And then she looks at the audience and says there's a prophet in the land. I just want you to know that he's not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:56:57 RFM is not exaggerating either. If you, if you listen to Wendy Nelson give that talk, that's literally what she's doing is she's saying that Russell Nelson got a revelation that there'd be no traveling going on and instead of warning the church and preparing the church, he just canceled some event holds on venues. And so, so yeah, it's, it's a. It. I would say it's, it's a ridiculous story, but it shows how. To be fair though, Wendy Nelson has a few of those stories where she tends to exaggerate what Russell Nelson is doing. And we should cover that maybe in the future. But, but yeah, it just shows how we can backdate these, these stories to fit perfectly with, with events that happened recently in order to promote faith among the church. Even though the actual details of the stories do not seem to line up. Or in that case, you know, there's absolutely no reason to think that they're true.

Radio Free Mormon 2:57:44 So, you know, another example of that is when Wendy Nelson 2 or I should say Sherry Dew, said in a recent talk about profit seeing around corners that what was it? It was like 1990. Was it 1998? When was the, the big problem that we had with the. It was 2008, right? That was the, the economy and went down the crapper. So in 2008, 10 years. See, that's what she said 10 years before that. She was listening in conference and heard the prophet at the time, President Hinckley, talk about putting our houses in order and getting out of debt. So she did that. She paid off her mortgage. She has no dependence because no kids. Right. And no spouse. So she doesn't have the kind of responsibilities, financial responsibilities, that those incur. But 10 years later, when everything went down, she was driving home thinking how bad things were. But then she realized, oh my gosh, you know, things are pretty good for me because I don't owe any debt because I followed that prophet's voice, which was actually in the priesthood session that she couldn't even listen to, at least not lawfully at the time. She could probably read it when it came out in the, in the ensign. But yes, this is what she does. And, and so that's prophecy. That's a prophet in the land. We are so starved in the LDS Church for legitimate prophecy that we will grab these scraps that fall from the table and we'll look at them and pretend that there's something amazing, that they're a five course meal and present them that way.

Nemo 2:59:23 Good financial advice. That's all it was. Yes.

Radio Free Mormon 2:59:26 Which has never been repeated. Which has never been said in conference other than in 2008 by President Hinckley.

John Dehlin 2:59:33 I remember all growing up, you know, counsel to stay out of debt. From the 80s on, that's been just. And it's just. Who doesn't say that? Like Dr. Phil, Oprah, like Dave Ramsey. And these are American references. Nemo. I apologize for that.

Radio Free Mormon 2:59:48 But like, I think the last series of about, I don't know, eight US Presidents haven't said that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:59:53 Yeah, that's definitely true.

John Dehlin 2:59:57 Yeah, I always got to make it political. All right, so you've got the next slide, Mike, which says that even Nelson admits that he had no idea that Covid was coming.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:00:07 And so at the April 2020 General Conference, Russell Nelson said, little did I know when I promised you at the October 2019 general conference that this April conference would be memorable and unforgettable, that speaking to a visible congregation of fewer than 10 people would make this conference so memorable and unforgettable for me. And so it's just to be clear, this is not a backdated prophecy in that it wasn't recorded as such. But one of the points that RFM made in his podcast, which I thought was really interesting, was if we did not have contemporary records of what Russell Nelson said in 2019 and 2020, if you went 10 years from now, everybody in the church be writing about how Russell Nelson correctly predicted Covid, because we wouldn't have be able to look at video and see what he was saying. And so this is kind of how us as.

Radio Free Mormon 3:00:51 As.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:00:51 I mean, as believing members, the believing members, were able to reshape what he said into fulfilling or to creating a prophecy that came true through Covid. Whereas when you look at the data, obviously it doesn't support that, but it does show when you look back into the early church, where there aren't as many records or even into the Bible, you could see how these. These stories can be created kind of. Out of. Out of either nothing or out of very vague words that then all of a sudden are solidified as these grand prophecies or revelations. And. And we're, like I said earlier in the episode, when we get to the episode on the transfiguration of Brigham Young, it's going to mirror this a lot. And I think that episode is going to be one of the most important to me that we do, because I think it is so important to understanding this whole concept of how these miracles and how these revelations and prophecies, how they can solidify in a community when you can trace back the lineage of. Of those prophecies and you can see that there's really nothing there, and yet they're accepted as absolute truth today by the church. So I think that's a really important way to kind of dissect some of these stories.

Radio Free Mormon 3:01:53 You know, when I said that originally, that was back in spring of 2020, when I was doing that series for nine weeks of issuing a podcast every business day for nine weeks, that was early on in the COVID pandemic. So it was April, maybe May at the latest of 2020. I am struck by the fact that I was wrong in that prediction that I gave that you just quoted. Because actually, it hasn't been 10 years later. It's only three years later. It's now 2023. That record still exists. Right. And yet we do have people claiming that it was prophecy of President Nelson, that the COVID pandemic would hit. So I underestimated the facility of Latter Day Saints to create prophecy and insist on prophecy, even in contradiction to the record that still exists. And it only took them a couple of years and not a decade.

Nemo 3:02:57 But they should all know because you guys know the Church News has a podcast, right? The Church News, that outlet has its own podcast. And Quinton L. Cook went on that podcast. And I'm just going to play this to you here right now. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:03:13 We didn't have revelation.

John Dehlin 3:03:14 There was going to be a pandemic.

Nemo 3:03:17 We didn't have revelation. That was going to be a pandemic. You had to say it.

Radio Free Mormon 3:03:21 Yes.

Nemo 3:03:21 So, like, the nail is in the coffin. Any member of the church that listens to the church's outlet knows Quentin O. Cook has said it.

Radio Free Mormon 3:03:29 It.

Nemo 3:03:30 Russell M. Nelson alluded to it. Quinton O. Cook has said it. They did not know this was coming.

John Dehlin 3:03:36 And I'll just, just to add, just to end kind of this point and then we'll get to the summary. You know, it's such a powerful and effective claim. It's basically part of the core value proposition of Mormonism. It's like, we'll help you be with your family forever. And our leaders talk to God. Like, our leaders are prophets, seers and revelators. Holy moly. If our leaders are able to translate languages that scholars can't translate, if they're able to see the future and prophesy what's going to happen about the future, that's awesome. I want that. I want to follow people that can do that, because that's magical. But. But it begs the question, and rfm, I think you were alluding to this. If there's one thing we can say about Mormon prophetseers and revelators between Joseph Smith and today is they don't prophesy, they don't see, and they don't reveal. Because where is the new scripture? Where are the prophecies? And it would have been really handy if Russell Nelson had foreseen the COVID pandemic and if he could have told everybody, you know, told the United States to prepare the vaccines or gotten all the. The masks and the respirators where they needed to be. And maybe he could have helped prevent hundreds of thousands, if not a million deaths by actually producing a prophecy. But. But they don't prophesy, they don't see, they don't reveal. And that's one of, in my view, their biggest weaknesses. And it's a big problem because they claim to do it.

Radio Free Mormon 3:05:14 It.

John Dehlin 3:05:15 And Then they don't do it. But then we create backdated prophecies that say they did do it. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:05:21 Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 3:05:23 To make matters only worse, they hadn't mentioned anything about food storage in at least a decade.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:05:28 Yeah, yeah, that's. That's another.

Nemo 3:05:30 That should have been useful.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:05:31 Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 3:05:33 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:05:33 And that was another one. Well, son, I think Bednar, I think came out and gave a speech, is like, we've been telling you about food storage. And, like, I think RFM might have been the one who did it. Someone did it, and they look back and it was like.

Radio Free Mormon 3:05:42 Like.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:05:43 Like a. Over a. I think it was over a decade since they'd mentioned at general conference in any meaningful way. And all of a sudden, the one time it went. Might have been helpful. And, you know, there's no. No warning leading up to it.

Radio Free Mormon 3:05:52 So that was general conference, October of 2020. So the year of the pandemic. They. They didn't mention it in April, General conference, but Elder Bednar rushed into the breach in October to talk about food storage and how he does it and his wife and does it, and they do it together, and they're just following what all the prophets have always said and basically looking down his nose at everybody else who was sitting there without food storage because it hadn't been mentioned for over a decade.

Nemo 3:06:23 Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:06:24 Yeah, we've got some expired stuff in the basement. So, you know.

Radio Free Mormon 3:06:28 Yes.

John Dehlin 3:06:28 Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon 3:06:29 Hey, gentlemen, I've got to run here. I know you're getting towards the end of the show.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:06:31 Thank you so much for joining us.

John Dehlin 3:06:33 Rfm. We love you.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:06:34 Thank you very, very much. Taking all the time, and you guys are so welcome.

Radio Free Mormon 3:06:40 I. I appreciate being invited. I'll take no more of the time as I make my exit off stage left. But thank you again. Have a wonderful day, and God bless you all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:06:50 Thank you so much. Thanks for doing the podcast that this is based on. That was. Actually. You made me do two extra overviews because of that one podcast, so thank you for that.

Radio Free Mormon 3:06:58 Thank you. I'm honored. Talk to you later, guys.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:07:00 All right.

Radio Free Mormon 3:07:02 Bye. Bye.

John Dehlin 3:07:03 Okay. And I'll just say. I'll just say to kind of close out this point, we should do an episode also on. On failed prophecies. Just plain and simple. Failed prophecies. Whether that's, you know, that. That Jesus will come when Joseph Smith said he was going to come, that Independence, Missouri, will be the gathering place, the new Jerusalem, all of a sudden, you know, the church doesn't care about a gathering in the new Jerusalem anymore. We could talk about the law of consecration that gets repealed. We could talk about polygamy. That gets repealed. We could talk about the Lamanites. Now all of a sudden, we don't know who the Lamanites are. We could probably do a whole episode, Mike, on just failed prophecies in addition to backdated prophecies.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:07:46 And I think our next episode is going to be on Joseph Smith's prophecies, and we're going to cover some of them in there because we're going to talk about. So I figured this way we get the backdated stuff out of the way, and then our next episode is going to have some of Joseph Smith's prophecies where they might have come from. And then obviously the ones. Some of the ones that have failed that we kind of stopped talking about or. And we can go over the apologetics responses on those as well. But, yeah, we're going to cover those. So for sure we'll get to those.

Why Backdated Prophecies Matter

John Dehlin 3:08:10 All right, well, let's go ahead and end by. By talking about why backdated prophecies matter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:08:15 Yeah, and this is just one, you know, we've talked about in a lot of these episodes that scholars can evaluate texts in so many different ways now to see if authors are leaving their fingerprints on the text that can allow them to date them or to identify who the actual author is. And so with the Book of Daniel, it's almost universally accepted that the actual writing dates much later than when it was claimed, because, as we've talked about, the prophecies go from incredibly specific to getting it wrong. And the same technique really is there for the Book of Mormon, which, you know, to put it a different way, in the vision in First Nephi, there are specific events covering from Columbus arriving in America in 1492 and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon in 1830. So that's a window of 338 years where we have specific events being revealed, such as Columbus's arrival, the white settlers taking the land from the Native Americans, the Revolutionary War, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith himself. And so that is a very concrete timeframe with a lot of specificity. It's the same thing we see in the Book of Daniel. Yet after those specific prophecies, we get nothing after Joseph Smith's lifetime. And so, as we talked about, I'm not even saying the Book of Mormon should speak about how in the future people use the Internet to fact check the Book of Mormon's claims or, you know, that we're going to be, you know, flying airplanes across the skies. But there's no mention of the Civil War. There's no mention of the fight about slavery in the United States. There's nothing about, as we'll get to in our final slide, there's nothing of the unique elements of Mormonism that we all know today, outside of infant baptism, that are in the Book of Mormon. All of that stuff comes after. And so it allows us to basically date when the Book of Mormon is written, because we could see what's in there, we could see what's not in there. And that puts it at a very specific time frame. And I think that's why this is a very important tool for scholars, not just for the Bible and the Book of Mormon, but for any text that purports to be ancient or long before the kind of general consensus of when we know it came to be.

John Dehlin 3:10:17 Excellent. All right, Mike, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is the Joseph Smith left his fingerprints all over the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:10:26 Yeah. And so just like, you know, in addition to working to backdate prophecies in the Book of Mormon, you know, as we've mentioned in this episode, his errors in biblical scholarship can let us know with absolute certainty that the Book of Mormon is not an ancient record, but it's going to be a 19th century text produced by Joseph Smith. Because a lot of the biblical scholarship errors are things that just were not known in the 19th century. And obviously, you know, you can make the argument that they're from hundreds of years ago, but if they're from ancient, uncorrupted texts, obviously they're not going to have these kinds of errors such as, like deutero, Isaiah and not knowing, you know, like kind of that the early stories in Genesis are more mythical. And so as we mentioned in this episode, even when Joseph does pontoon the revelations in the Book of Mormon to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, he just doesn't understand that the author John of the Book of Revelation is not the same as the Gospel of John, because at the time, everyone thought that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, whereas today we know they're anonymous authors. And, you know, the really, the simple truth is this. If you gave the Book of Mormon to a scholar without any information about when it was written, who it was produced by, or the story of the gold plates, a scholar could identify the Book of Mormon to the 19th century without using any outside sources because of the fact it does include very specific prophecies that take you right to the 19th century. And again, this exact same method that scholars use to date, you know, different books of the Bible, such as the Book of Daniel, and there's just no way to get around it for the Book of Mormon, unless you invoke special pleading to say that the Book of Mormon can't be viewed with the same literary tools that you would really apply to any other text, religious or non religious. And so the fact that Joseph Smith leaves so many fingerprints on this text allows us to know with absolute certainty that it is not going to be an ancient, authentic text.

John Dehlin 3:12:15 All right, Nemo, any reaction to that slide?

Nemo 3:12:18 Yeah, I mean, if you're a member of the church who kind of subscribes to biblical scholarship, and you're one of these people that takes it very seriously and looks into to the authorship of the Bible and all that sort of stuff, then you have to accept that the same standards that have been applied to the Book of Daniel, for example, when applied to the Book of Mormon, reveal it to be a 19th century text. So, yeah, unless you're willing to let your ideology overtake kind of the presentation of the facts, then that's the conclusion you end up coming to based on that.

John Dehlin 3:12:51 All right, well, I think that gives us a good capstone for the episode, but we have one more slide.

Nemo 3:12:58 Oh, sorry.

John Dehlin 3:12:59 No, no, no, it's good. Which is that the Book of Mormon is unaware of any doctrines past 1829. You know, all the Nauvoo innovations, as I like to call them. Do you want to finish out the slide, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:13:11 Yeah, and this is just kind of like in a lot of ways, sometimes one of the easiest kind of methods to looking at a problem is almost to like reverse it. And so this whole episode we've been looking at revelations and prophecies that are backdated into the Book of Mormon or into the Bible or even into Joseph Smith's Revelations. But if you look at it from the flip side, we are told as members that the Book of Mormon brings us the fullness of the gospel. And I think Nemo mentioned it earlier, this is supposed to be the restoration of all the things that were lost by the early church, Right? And yet the Book of Mormon is not aware of almost every one of the uniquely Mormon teachings that are going to come after 1829, such as a temple marriage being a requirement for exaltation, baptism for the dead, celestial marriage lasting for a time in all eternity, that salvation in the highest kingdom requires going through an endowment ceremony. Whereas in the Book of Mormon, not only is There no mention of exaltation or an endowment ceremony. But the idea of a secret combination requiring secret oaths are condemned. And that really stems back into the whole masonry. And the temple episode we did. They don't mention. They do mention that Melchizedek was a priest, but they don't mention the idea that you can hold two different priesthoods. And we talked about that in our priesthood restoration episode. They don't mention that the sacrament should include water. There's no mention of the word of wisdom. There's no mention that prophets are promoted to the office by church leaders instead of by God. They don't mention, and this one seems like an important one, that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri and the Adam and Eve, the first people on. On earth lived in Missouri. And then, you know, the idea of the, of the presidency is anachronistic because obviously there's no president in the ancient church. And the Book of Mormon mentions nothing beyond 12 disciples. So the whole idea of like the 70s and all that, none of that. And so. And there's more than this. And so it just tells you that the Book of Mormon is very much a production of its time frame. And so Joseph Smith is able to backdate everything that happens up into his lifetime, but all of these things that he's going to evolve to and create in this theology just are absent. And you have to ask yourself why a book that proclaims to be the fullness of the gospel lacks all of these very uniquely important Mormon doctrines when, you know, Joseph Smith hadn't created them yet. And so that, to me, is one of the easiest ways to kind of date the Book of Mormon and to kind of see how he's able to backdate everything he knows up until 1829, but can't backdate all of these later innovations he's going to come up with after. And for some reason, to me, that feels like the best way to conclude this episode is almost take a look from the other side and say, okay, instead of looking at what's back data, what isn't in there, that should be. I think John alluded to that earlier, and this is a lot of very important stuff that should be there. If this is a restoration of ancient practices,

John Dehlin 3:16:01 brilliant. That almost seems like it could be its own episode. Mike, is what. What isn't in the Book of Mormon that should be how the Book of Mormon is not the fullness of the Gospel. That's a really important tell. It basically reflects Joseph Smith's theology and doctrinal positions at the Time he produced the book.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:16:21 Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's just it. Like, we've done. We've touched on this in a lot of episodes, but it just shows that this is supposed to be the fullness of the gospel. And yet everything that, at least to me, that I consider to be, like, very uniquely Mormon is just not in the Book of Mormon. Which is why the Book of Mormon, as a convert read in such a comfortable way to me, because there just wasn't any of this kind of. I don't know if you want to say, like, unique, strange, however you want to phrase it, stuff in here. You know, there's no endowment ceremony. There's no endowment text. There's no, you know, all of this stuff that, to me, as a member, was kind of troubling. And polygamy in the Book of Mormon is condemned and called an abomination. I mean, you know, I realize the Book of Mormon gives that little bit of a loophole, but it just shows that the Book of Mormon is very much tied to what Joseph Smith knew of in 1829 and nothing beyond that. We're going to do an episode, I think, at three or four episodes from now where we're going to look at some of these unique ideas of Mormonism to show where they come from. And what you're going to find is that most of these things are going to come from contemporary ideas that are post Book of Mormon, which is why they don't show up in the Book of Mormon. So, again, if you look at this from a linear time frame, you can kind of see not just how Joseph Smith is pulling these ideas, but you could see why they're not in the Book of Mormon, but they are. Some of them might be in the Book of Abraham, why some of them are in Revelations. That, you know, I mean, it just. It makes a lot of sense from a time frame perspective, but it also, again, reveals the fact that the Book of Mormon is completely limited to the knowledge of the world in 1829.

Closing Thoughts and Episode Wrap-Up

John Dehlin 3:17:51 All right, Nemo, do you want to give us any closing thoughts?

Nemo 3:17:54 Yeah, like the. The. In order for Joseph Smith to continue to expand his. His sort of narrative or his theology or just, you know, the gospel according to him and what he wanted to put out there. It necessitates the Book of. The Book of Doctrine and Covenants, it necessitated things being written down as though they were still gospel, like they were in the Book of Mormon. Because he had the Book of Mormon to shoehorn this theology in. Like he had. He had the Book of Mormon to present these things up until 1830, as Micah said. But then in order for him to act additional things, he has to come up with another mechanic. So that's why this open canon of scripture idea starts to come about. He can start to write these things down. And it's also why we then see a massive stop in what is in the Doctrine and Covenants once Joseph dies. There's very little added to it after that, because essentially it was Joseph that wanted to add all these things and wanted them all to be codified in the same way that were codified in the Book of Mormon. He just couldn't rewrite the Book of Mormon again to add them the second time around.

Radio Free Mormon 3:18:53 Yep.

John Dehlin 3:18:56 All right. Well, Mike, this is a super important episode, and I'm really glad we took the time to cover it. This was one of the. On the longer side of our episodes, and part of that's because we had both Nemo and RFM here, but they're also brilliant. How do we exclude either Nemo or RFM when we have the chance to include them?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:19:16 Yeah, and I'm glad we got RFM here, because I know it was a lot of time to ask him to do. But this was based off his podcast. I wanted to make sure if he wanted to to be on here because he gave a lot of insights in that episode that I think are really important not just to today, but to a lot of our previous episodes. It gives a lot more light to them. And I think one of the things we're doing in our episodes right now is we're starting to be able to, I think, piece together a lot of the groundwork we did in those early episodes to make even more sense of them. And that's why I think of that kind of puzzle analogy where you're putting the pieces back together, and now all of a sudden, the pieces are starting to fit together, because we've done so many of these episodes with a lot of the groundwork. And I think having Nemo and RFM there to help us to kind of explain why these problems are not just relevant to this one episode, but to earlier ones, I think is really, to me, it was really helpful, and I hope it is to people watching. So even though it was definitely one of our longer ones, I think it'll be one that hopefully people are happy to get through, because I think it does give a lot of insight to so many areas of what we've done, whether it's Book of Mormon authorship, changes to revelations, backdating ideas that you have into ancient Pseudepigrapha. All of that stuff really wraps together. And so, like I said, I know it was a long one, but I think it was a good one. And huge thanks to RFM and Nemo for sticking with us for as long as they had to on this one, but hopefully it was. Was well worth it.

Nemo 3:20:41 Well, thank you very much for having me. I always enjoyed these episodes. I always enjoy getting to discuss these things, and I think it's really important to dig into these things. I know it's very easy to roll your eyes and call it nitpicking or to say that, you know, you don't need to look into this much detail, just have faith. But as we've already covered, if there is an opportunity to learn something, then faith becomes unnecessary because you can discover the truth of it instead and not have to rely on faith because the facts are there. So it's definitely worth digging into these things 100%. So thank you very much for that opportunity.

John Dehlin 3:21:13 Brilliant. Well, please check out Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel. Please subscribe to it. Please support Nemo, click on his donate button. Become a monthly donor. We want to help Nemo the Mormon Podcast and all the Brit Vengers reach 100,000 subscribers within the next calendar year. But mostly we just Nemo. Nemo just decided to be doing his. His YouTube work full time. And so let's, let's all support Nemo.

Nemo 3:21:42 Yeah. Yes, please. That'd be great.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:21:44 Yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin 3:21:45 And while you're at it, please subscribe to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. If you haven't, you can also subscribe to us on Facebook. It helps the algorithms, it helps spread the word, and it helps us grow. And finally, if you want to check out Mike from LDS Discussions, his wonderful essays, the essay for this episode and for many others can be found@ LDSDiscussions.com and of course, this podcast is available as a series not only on the YouTube playlist for LDS discussions on the Mormon Stories Podcast channel, but you can find a dedicated podcast either on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts. And on Spotify, you can view it in video or listen to it. And Mike, we just want to thank you for the wonderful gift you've given of your website and your time for this series.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:22:34 Well, thanks to everyone that's been listening. If you've made it all the way through this one, you deserve some sort of special prize, but thank you so much. All the kind words that I've gotten through emails and messages and stuff have been really cool. So I'm just glad it's helpful to some people in the way that it was helpful for me. And we've got got, we got a lot of fun stuff to go. Our next three episodes around Revelation. I think they're all really important because it's going to highlight kind of like it's almost going to take us, in a way from everything we've been doing in the foundation of the church and kind of move us all the way up to the modern time for the last, you know, batch of episodes. So it's going to be, I think the next three are going to be really cool to kind of kind of show how Revelation has evolved in the church from Joseph Smith to today. And hopefully everyone that made it this far, we'll want to make it through those. And we'll see you guys again, hopefully next week.

John Dehlin 3:23:24 All right. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Nemo. Thanks, rfm. Also, support Mormonism Live and Radio for Mormon podcasts. And again, we thank Maven for helping us out today with the time code and show notes. You guys all be good to each other, be kind to each other. Informed consent Truth is kind of what we're going for. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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