Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is April 27, 2022 and we are super excited for today's episode. Today is part two in what we hope is like a 40 or 50 part series on Mormon truth claims. We are covering the Golden Plates and the Book of Mormon and we are so super excited to, to have in the studio with us Mike from LDS discussions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:00:31] Hey Mike, how's it going?

John Dehlin [00:00:33] So great to have you and we're super thrilled to have as co host the Nemo the Mormon. Hey Nemo.

Nemo [00:00:41] Hey everyone.

John Dehlin [00:00:42] Nemo, tell us really quickly what, what it is you do and where they can find you.

Nemo [00:00:47] I fact check the Mormon Church so if they say something and claim it to be true publicly, I will tell you if it is or not. That's essentially what I do. I do it on YouTube, I do it on Instagram and I Do it on TikTok. Nemo the Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] And you do it from Canada, right?

Nemo [00:00:59] No, no, no, no. I'm not polite enough. I do it from Britain. Land of sarcasm and passive aggression.

John Dehlin [00:01:10] Great to have you with us today, Nemo. We'll have Nemo, we'll have Jen, we'll have Gerardo. We swap out our co hosts just depending on availability and interest and that sort of thing. And Mike, any introduction you want to give before we launch in?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:01:24] No. You know what? I think the first one I think went over fairly well and the feedback was pretty good. So we're just going to try, like I was saying last week, to just do these with that mindset of like every episode is going to build off the last. And I think that when you look at it that way, you'll start to see that they fit together really well and that you don't have to force it. You know, they fit naturally. And, and so I'm hoping as we do it, it maybe helps people who are trying to figure this stuff out. Kind of think of it in a different way maybe than you were taught as a, as a believing member or in my case as a convert. And I hope that it's helping people. So anyways, that's the main goal, is just to help people who are at that point where they're trying to figure these things out.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] Yeah, and our goal is to have a constructive tone, a non sarcastic tone and just a thoughtful, inquisitive and honest tone.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] And Nemo, you're laughing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:21] Nemo's been nothing but trouble. I mean every, every interaction I've had with him has Been, you know, there's threats, there's just. He's, he's difficult, but that's all right.

John Dehlin [00:02:29] He's a troublemaker.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:30] He is.

John Dehlin [00:02:31] Okay, well, let's go ahead and let's jump in. For those of you who are just listening over the audio, we will have visual slides, but we will do our best to make it so. If you're listening audio only, you don't even notice that there are visuals. So we'll try and explain everything. Is that, is that fair?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:48] No, I think. Well, I think we'll be covering it to the point where you won't necessarily need them, but it'll be helpful if you, if you can watch it.

John Dehlin [00:02:55] And I'll just say explicitly that our goals are not to take people out of Mormonism. They're not to destroy faith, they're not to tear down the Mormon Church. Our goal can be summarized and informed consent. We believe that everybody should know the factual history of. About the Mormon Church, whether they're in the church or investigating the church or curious about the church, so that they can make informed decisions about their relationship with the church. And that's it. And if somebody knows the truth and they want to stay in the church, we give them our full support. Not that they want it or need it, but that's our intent. All right, so let's jump to the slides.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:03:31] Yeah, so I guess we could just kick off to the next one. So, you know, basically, as a. Just a super quick overview from last week or two weeks ago, we did the first episode, which was on treasure digging. And so the idea is that we're kind of taking the puzzle apart that, you know, we all had put together from the correlated accounts. And now we're putting the pieces back together as they fit from the evidence and not from the way we were taught that they fit. And one of the most important things I think from the last episode was the fact that you need treasure digging in order for these next few episodes to be plausible. And we have been able to show that there, that there were areas where Joseph Smith was willing to use deception in the treasure digging. And you can show that by the accounts given both from faithful people who believed in Joseph Smith and people who didn't. And just basically that Joseph Smith's ability to control the narrative here only works as long as he's in control of the situation. And that's going to be important in this section and the next few episodes as well. And all of that starts with treasure digging. The entire church. And we don't want I know from a faithful perspective, you don't want to think of it this way, but everything in the church begins and is born out of treasure digging. And that's why we started there. And now it's naturally going to go into the gold plates of the Book of Mormon. So just a really quick way to kind of overview that. Let me go to the next one. And we talked about this last episode, too. Just a really quick timeline before we go in. In 1820, the church history has the first vision taking place. And again, I just want to note that from a historical standpoint, it would not have happened then. If Joseph Smith did experience something, it would have been more like 1824, because all of the events he describes around that, that whole time frame is 1824. Historically, it also matches when all of the revival was happening, when all of the sermons were being given. But I think from a church standpoint, you're going to understand why they need it to be 1820. Because in 1823, that's when Joseph Smith claims to be visited by a treasure guardian who's later going to be Moroni. And so you kind of want the first vision to be before that, otherwise it gets kind of out of order. And then we're going to go through this. But in 1823 is when he's going to make his first attempt to get the plates. He's going to do it again in 1824, and then that kind of kind of falls to the wayside as Joseph Smith's more involved with other treasure digging. And then 1826, there's the trial, and again, that is where there's the court record showing that he was found guilty. There's a lot of controversy as to whether or not that was a binding decision or if that was, you know, we don't quite know because it's fragmentary. But then we have in 1827, when Joseph Smith will claim to retrieve the gold plates, which is going to happen after that trial. So just a quick overview there. So before we go. So you can kind of have that in the back of your head.

Joseph Smith's Need for Control in Treasure Digging

John Dehlin [00:06:27] Yeah. And just for me, I love. I love this idea that Joseph always has to be in control. Watch, everyone, watch for how important it is about Joseph controlling who's in the room when he's allegedly getting the plates, who's, you know, what he does to hide them. Like, you know, that's really important. And of course, the first vision, you know, you know, I always like to talk about the first vision after treasure digging and the Book of Mormon Creation. Because it really makes no sense to talk about it before, because it really.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:58] Yeah, it doesn't fit.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] Too suspect. And you don't believe me. Read the evidence to try and understand that yourselves.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:07] And so in 1823, this is going to be the first visitation, and this is something that we can actually show that Joseph claims. So, you know, in some of the instances with church history, there's, there's these instances, like the first vision is a good example, where he's going to claim that in 1820, but there's literally no indication that happened until 1832. This one.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] 23. 23, not. Oh, oh, I'm sorry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:30] Yeah. I'm saying, like. Yeah, his first account of the first vision is 1832. So in this case, we know it happened because he's involving his family, he's involving the people around him. And this comes out of the treasure digging folklore, which is to say that a treasure guardian is going to basically go to this person who claims to be a seer and give them information on where treasure is. And so this is going to be a visitation that will be later reference in a completely different way. And we're going to go into that soon. But I just want to point out real quick because there is a lot of back and forth about whether or not Joseph Smith first called this angel Nephi or Moroni. And I just want to point out, I don't think, for me personally, this was not a big deal. I have read a lot of the apologetics about how a lot of this stems from the 1838 history. They blame it on the scribes. You could also say Joseph Smith himself was confused with the story. To me, it doesn't really matter, just because I think in the grand scheme of things, I don't, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll go as we go through this. But again, if you don't believe treasure digging is a real thing, and I think from the last episode, I believe that's a pretty easy case to prove, then a lot of these little details are more just Joseph Smith creating this narrative that's going to fit the story, and it's not necessarily something I don't think it's worth getting too bogged down on. But I did want to note it because I know a lot of people reference it because it is weird that Nephi is referenced. But again, I think I just. I. I actually do have some sympathy to the apologetics that a lot of it is from that 1838 history, which goes in the times and seasons. And that's when all of a sudden there's confusion among, like, other family members when they're retelling it. And they're probably looking off that same history, because I don't think Joseph Smith is telling this history in 1823. And as we'll show the quotes, he's definitely not telling it as he's telling it then, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] But there definitely is a pattern to watch for that. All of these stories get more and more specific over time. They start out less specific, they get more specific, and details are changed to fit the evolution of beliefs and theology and claims of authority. As those get more intense, details in the story have to be rearranged to fit the evolving narrative. Is that Nemo, did you want to say?

Nemo [00:09:47] Yeah, I say that's totally understandable because as the story he's telling becomes more complex, all these parts have to fit that story more and more complex, have to fit in. So. So the jigsaw puzzle, the picture he's trying to paint, has become more defined. And as it does, he has to make sure everything fits.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:10:01] Yeah. And so he's got to go back and change that narrative.

John Dehlin [00:10:04] Yeah, that's huge. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:10:06] Yeah. And so just, you know, again, just to reiterate, this is in line, you know, when you. When you. When you hear the story of. And we're going to get to. In a couple of quotes, but it's very much in line with the last episode, which is that this. This completely lines up with treasure digging folklore. And we're going to see that when Joseph Smith tells the story in 1838, he's going to kind of remove a lot of those references to try to get away from that. And so if we go to the next slide, I think the next slide is actually going to be the 1838 narrative of it.

John Dehlin [00:10:35] I'm just going to share really quickly a really cool comment we have from one of our viewers. He writes, a magician has to control everything else. The audience figures out the trick so that we're not trying to tell everyone that they need to think that Joseph Smith was a charlatan. But we do want people to look for, again, Joseph's attempts at controlling every aspect of the environment and decide for themselves whether he's doing that in his behaviors. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:11:03] And to that point, I mean, when you look at the last episode of Treasure Digging and you could see where. When Joseph Smith doesn't have control over a situation, he can't produce, and this episode will have some of that and in a couple episodes, we're gonna do the 116 pages. And I think that is like the biggest window into what happens when he loses control of a situation. And. And that's why I want to make sure we're noting this now, because as we move forward, you're gonna see that more and more. And then once you start to see the pattern within these problems and how Joseph Smith becomes powerless once he loses control over it. You can't unsee it once you see it. But it's like one of the things I mentioned last episode is apologetics. Like to take every episode or every issue, they pluck it out, they say, here's why this could work. They put it back in, pluck out the next one. They can come up with a different apologetic scheme for every single issue. But the problem is, when you look at them all together, you can start to realize that when you pluck this one out and put it back in, you can't then take another one out and give a different reason that doesn't work with that first one. Because these things do flow together. If you're willing to look at the evidence to your point, we're not trying to tell you Joseph Smith is a charlatan. I'm just saying we can show you that when he loses control, the supernatural falls with it. And that's a problem if you want to maintain the faithful narrative of correlated Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] It's kind of the forest versus trees kind of analysis.

Nemo [00:12:24] The correlated Mormonism is a product and an example of that. Again, you lose people from the church when you lose control over the information they have access to. So it's. It's just a. It's a macro version of the. The other.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:39] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:40] Okay.

Joseph Smith's First Attempt to Retrieve the Plates

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:40] And so we'll go to the next slide. And this is going to be. So this is Joseph Smith's account of his first attempt to get the plates in 1823. And I want to read this just because this. Keep in mind, this is written in 1838. So he says, having removed the earth, I obtained a lever, which I got fixed under the edge of the stone and with a little exertion raised it up. I looked in, and there indeed I did, did I behold the plates, the Urim and Thummim and the breastplate, as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box were two. Were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them. I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived. Neither would it until four years from that time. But he told me that I should come to that place precisely in one year from that time and that he would meet me there and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates. And this is the, that's the correlated history that you're going to hear. And that's what, you know, I was taught as a convert. You know, I first started learning the history and obviously people who were born in the church heard this. And I just want you to note that that is just not in line with what we have from contemporary sources. And that's why it's so important to look at that. Then when we look at the next slide, it's going to be an account that gives you a contemporary account of what Joseph Smith was telling people happened. And you're going to have two different, completely different stories once you look at them and realize that the reality is that what Joseph Smith is saying really tries to pull out the treasure digging and the true story is just. It's completely born out of treasure digging. And so you can see that they're trying to change the story in this small amount of time and it just doesn't fit with what we have contemporaneously.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] I'm certain that you're going to mention this later, but I just want to call out really quickly two things about my reaction to what you just read. The first was the fact that it was the fallout autumnal equinox. Always doing it around the equinox is a sure sign that it has to do with folk magic. You're probably going to talk about that later. The only other thing about that, that thing you just read is it, it makes, he's saying that there's actual, like cement in a hole and that makes it locatable. Yeah, but the hill, Cumorah is not huge. And it's been, it's been perused by.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:12] By two centuries of, of Mormons and ex Mormons and no one's ever found any cement, whole box, anything, you know, if they could have been found. So, so I guess in theory God could have taken away the cement box that was under the ground. But, you know, it does for me beg the question, why haven't we found the empty box? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:34] Yeah. I mean, and again, that phrase, like, you know, they'll say with God, all things are Possible. And I get that. But when you say that, you have to understand that the moment you say that, you are then kind of separating your story from evidence and reality. And you can do that. But again, if you're going to do that, then you would have to accept, like, people who believe in Warren Jeffs or David Kresh or Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, because any of them could be true. And you could make really exaggerated claims to prove that. I don't want to come off like a jerk, but it'd be like me saying there's a unicorn next to me. And you could say, there's no way there's a unicorn. But you don't know that because right here could be a unicorn I domesticated and found. And I don't mean to be disrespectful. I'm just saying you're straining credulity to. To say that there. That they would even have the capability to pour cement into this hill. And then all of a sudden, the cement disappears. They've scanned the hill. It's a clean hill. So it just, you know, again, these are the. The fingerprints Joseph Smith leaves on these stories that you can't walk away from and just say, with God, all things are possible, because at that point, it becomes indistinguishable from fraud.

John Dehlin [00:16:38] Yeah. And it seems like they're trying to do two things. They want to make it a material claim by having golden plates. It makes it a material claim because Joseph could have just claimed God revealed to me the book, but then less people would have believed it. But if there are actually golden plates, or at least people believing that there was some sort of physical artifact, well, then that makes it more real. But then as soon as you're having the box that held the plates magically disappearing, and by the way, no one really could ever see the plates except with their spiritual eyes. Then all of a sudden, it does. It's trying to do two things. Be material, but still be superstitious or metaphysical. The only other thing I just want to mention that I'm sure you're going to mention later is that the angel forbidding the treasure just sounds a lot like treasure digging again to me.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:17:26] Yeah, I mean, it's straight treasure digging. And the one thing about this, I think that it makes it a little different is it's kind of when you look at our last episode and you read, like, Dan Vogel's work on treasure digging and Mark Elwood, and you can see that every one of these treasure digs, Joseph Smith will dig Dig, dig. But he never even claims to, they never claim to get anywhere near the actual physical treasure. It sinks into the earth. This one's a little self serving in the sense of Joseph Smith's. Like, I was by myself, I opened the thing and yeah, it was totally there and I saw it, but I just couldn't reach in and grab it. And it's a little self serving because in every other instance, Joseph Smith never got to the point where anyone saw it. But on this one, when he's alone, he's like, oh, I totally saw it. They just wouldn't let me take it. And I think that's a little suspect. But again, in that worldview, people believed it and we know that his family believed it. So, you know, it just goes to show how I think he was a good storyteller and he was, he knew, I think, how to kind of communicate to people that were in that mindset in a way that they believed him probably more than other people because he did build a name, you know, not necessarily in 1823, but he was on his way to doing that at that point.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] Yeah. And just the idea of the treasure's always like, it's there but you can't have it yet, you got to have it later. That's just every treasure dig he ever went on.

Nemo [00:18:38] Yeah. There's another parallel to modern Mormonism, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:18:41] Yeah.

Nemo [00:18:41] Like you're always just, just about to get the reward. You're always just about to get the blessing. And if you don't get it, it's your fault, Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:18:49] Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, yeah, it's just, and that's the thing.

Nemo [00:18:51] It's like constant moving goalposts.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:18:53] Yeah. That's just it. And so, you know, you're told, well, if you do this, you'll be blessed. And then when, when you're not blessed, then it's like, well, you just gotta be patient or, you know, it's not the right time.

John Dehlin [00:19:01] You're doing it right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:19:02] Yeah. Something was done wrong. And you know, we kind of talked about that last week about how, you know, that's, that's the difference between treasure digging. Needed that physical object and if he couldn't find that, he had to stop. And on this one, now he's moving into the supernatural where you never have to provide any actual evidence. But as long as you keep people believing, they'll keep, they'll keep doing, they're doing the digging for you because they're doing the heavy lifting. Whether it's, you know, giving them property or, you know, in some cases, you know, Joe Smith asked for people's daughters and wives, and you have that eternal promise that you're given by him. So as long as you believe he can provide it, even though you're never going to get it till you die, that. That's the beauty of what Joseph Smith transitioned from treasure digging into. And I say beauty just from the standpoint of being able to continue to perform treasure digging in a way that would suit Joseph Smith without having to produce any actual physical objects. So.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] Got it. Okay, let's go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:19:58] Go to the next slide. And the next slide is just. These are the points that I wanted to kind of make real quick about this account that we just read is one is it wasn't written until 1838.

Nemo [00:20:05] We already said that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:20:05] But this means that Joseph Smith knows the ending before writing the beginning. And so he's now writing this with the end game in mind, which is to take the treasure digging out to make himself seem more credible and more as the authority, you know, as the prophet in the church. And so that is going to change the way he writes this. And I don't want to get onto a tangent, but a lot of ways this is kind of like, you know, when you talk about the Gospels in the New Testament, they're written decades later, and so they're written with a specific need for a specific community. And in this case, Joseph Smith is writing this for the members of the church and for potential members of the church. And so he's writing this with a purpose, which is to convert people. And so he's going to take out a lot of the things that would be seen as negative. And the second part, and we'll mention this as we go, but the Urim and Thummim is a completely retrofitted term into the history. It was not used in any way in the translation process or in the early church until W.W. phelps would introduce it in 1832. And we'll get more into that with the translation episode. But I just want to note that because they're going to use that as if it's a settled idea and it's just completely retrofitted in. And the last one I want to mention, and this goes to what you were saying, John is, first of all, he's doing it on the fall equinox, which is a magical day. That is the day when they believe that the spirits were most likely to be out and have the best chance of getting treasure. And so the fact that he's doing it on this day is 100% treasure digging. And in the 1823 account, which we'll see in the next slide, but he is told to bring Alvin in the next year, Whereas in his 1838, when he leaves that. Because that gets into some really messy stuff. So I just wanted to bring those up until we go. The next slide is going to be a more contemporary account of what happened.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So be watching for the problems with Urim and Thummim and Alvin. And Alvin specifically.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:21:51] Yeah. And so we get to the next quote. It's going to have a little bit of a different. You're going to read. It's going to sound like two completely different stories. And. And I think that's going to be something to keep an eye on as we go.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Okay, let's dive in.

Oliver Cowdery's Account and the Alvin Smith Connection

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:22:04] So now, Oliver Cowdery. Now, he wasn't there at the 1823 attempt, obviously, but he wrote this down in a letter to W.W. phelps. And he said, on attempting to take possession of the records which are the gold plates, a shock was produced upon his system by an invisible power which deprived him in a measure of his natural strength. He desisted for an instant and then made another attempt, but was more sensibly shocked than before. What was the occasion of this? He knew not. There was the pure unsullied record as had been described. He had heard of the power of enchantment and a thousand like stories which held the hidden treasures of the earth. And suppose the physical exertion and personal strength was only necessary to enable him to yet obtain the object of his wish. He therefore made the third attempt with an increased exertion when his strength failed him more than at either of the former times, and without premeditation, he exclaimed, why can I not obtain this book? And then the angel would say, because you have not kept the commandments of the Lord, answered a voice within a seeming short distance. He looked into his astonishment. There stood the angel who had previously given him the directions concerning this matter. And so all of this is like perfect treasure digging, right? You've got the. The being overpowered by the treasure guardian. You've got the magical power of three. A lot of times you'll see there's always three attempts made before it works. In this case, the third attempt was the time where it finally failed. And, you know, this matches our last episode. You know, the whole idea that he's digging the enchantment, you know, all of the. He talks about a thousand like stories. And so this is how Oliver Cowdery would have understood it because Oliver Cowdery came from that same worldview. He had a divining rod. He believed in the same exact powers. And so for him, this probably wouldn't seem that weird because he was a believer in the magical worldview. But when you look at that quote compared to the 1838 account, they're two completely different things.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:23:50] And so I don't know if anyone has anything more on that, but I just want to lay that out because it gets weirder once we get to the 1824 one.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] Yeah, no, let's jump there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:01] So he is now told to bring his brother Alvin for the 1824 account. So what happens is. And this is according to Joseph Knight, who's a faithful member of the church,

John Dehlin [00:24:10] just to be clear for the listeners who are struggling with the history.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:14] So supposedly his first knowledge about the plates is in 1823. Right, right. And then in 1824 is the first time he allegedly goes to the site. Is that we went.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:25] He went in 1823, and that's when. That's the one we just read. So he just failed. And he's told. Now, in the 1823 account, according to Joseph Smith, he's told to go every year for four years. But in the after.

John Dehlin [00:24:35] After the 1823.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he'd get an 1827, which would be four more years.

Nemo [00:24:40] But.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:40] Yeah, so. So in. But he's told in the. In the more contemporary accounts to go and to bring the right person. And he says, well, who's the right person? And the guardian, you know, the angel says your eldest brother, who happens to be Alvin Smith. So that's what we're gonna get into now because this is where it gets a little weird. So Joseph's Knight, who is a faithful member. So this is not an antagonistic source, said that gave this account of Joseph Smith's first attempt, where he says. He exclaimed, why can't I stir this book? And he was answered, you have not done right. You should have took the book and have gone right away. You can't have it. Now Joseph says, when can I have it? The answer was the 22nd day of September next, if you bring the right person with you. Again, that's the fall equinox, which again is a magical date. Joseph says, who is the right person? The angel. The answer was your oldest brother. Now that's. That's Alvin Smith. So if we go to the next slide, what is crazy about this is that this is in September, right? Fall equinox so just a few months later, in November, Alvin passes away. And so as Alvin is passing, when Alvin's about to die, he says to Joseph, according to his mother, do everything that lies in your power to obtain the record. Be faithful in receiving instruction and in keeping every commandment that is given you. So this shows that the family was believing in Joseph Smith's story. It shows again that, you know, this is a strong treasure digging thing where you're working on the, the fall equinox every year. And again, this is something you're not going to hear if you just read the correlated history because of the fact that this is where Alvin Smith is supposed to go with him to get the place. And he dies two months later, which from a magical treasure digging standpoint makes some sense because treasure guardians are tricky and they're tricksters and they try to fool you, to overpower you and all that crap. Right. On the flip side, if you want to believe that this is not treasure digging now, but this is the power of God and an angel of God, it really makes you wonder why God would tell him to bring his oldest brother when he's going to die two months later. And again, I know you can do special pleading and say, you know, this is just God testing Joseph or whatever the case might be, but at some point, if you want to try to separate this from treasure digging, that, that's a problem. And, you know, I don't really know what more to say on that other than just to say that it gets weirder. So the question I would ask would

Nemo [00:26:55] be why, if we talk about, we have this inbuilt opposition narrative within the history of Mormonism. Right. Everything is against Joseph Smith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:03] Yeah.

Nemo [00:27:04] So if everything is against Joseph Smith, why is God against Joseph Smith? Why is God made it more difficult for him?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:09] Yeah.

Nemo [00:27:09] By asking him to bring someone who's going to die.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:12] Yeah. And it's just, it's one of those things where it's like, I guarantee you, if this story wasn't, wasn't told within the family, in the community, you wouldn't hear this today because it is, you know, it just doesn't add up. And to your point, like, if you're taking this away from treasure digging and now you're putting it, now you're saying treasure digging was preparation, but this is God. Why would an angel of God, you know, tell him to bring someone who's going to die two months later, especially someone as dear to him as his brother? It just, it seems cruel. And again, it just shows you that when he's out of. This is an instance where he doesn't have control because he had control when he said he needed to bring Alvin. But then he loses control when Alvin passes away. And what really is. Let's go to the next slide, because this is where it just gets crazy. And it shows you how much his family believes in this. So Joseph Smith makes the attempt in 1824, and of course, fails to get it because he doesn't have Alvin, Right? And five days after Joseph fails to get the plate, his father posts this announcement in the local paper, I believe, for five days in a row. And the notice talks about that there were rumors in circulation that Alvin Smith's body had been dug up and dissected. And Joseph Smith Sr. And some neighbors went and dug up the entire grave to prove the body was. This was still there. And this is, like, where it gets really crazy because we now have an account from 1823 that he's supposed to bring Alvin. Alvin dies, and his father is a true believer in Joseph's power. A true believer in the angels demand that he bring his brother. Why would anyone else dig up Alvin's grave? And you could see, I mean, if you walk to a grave, remember, Alvin smith died, what, 10 months before this happened. If you walk to a grave site 10 minutes later, you could tell if it's been completely dug up or not. With your just a visual inspection, this is a pretty good indication that Joseph Smith Sr. Is the one who dug up the grave. And then when the rumor started, he put this notice in the paper to say someone else did it. We were just inspecting it. But there's a pretty good indication here that they're planning to bring Alvin's body to try to fulfill the requirements of the angel, which is just. It blows my mind. But there's really no other logical way to go here because nobody else would like, you know, if Nemo was like a fellow treasure digger. And Nemo's like, I heard he was supposed to bring his brother. You're not going to dig up Alvin because it wouldn't work, because you're not the guy that's supposed to go with Alvin anyway. So there's no incentive for any other treasure digger or anyone else to do it. The only incentive is for Joseph Smith Senior to possibly bring either the dead body or maybe some clothing he wore or maybe cut off a finger, I don't know. But that's the only reason you would dig up this grave. I mean, this is. This is where it goes kind of nuts, because it shows how steeped they are in this belief of treasure digging. And you know, I just, I think it's an important story to show that the family really, truly believed when Joseph Smith told these stories. And the fact that he put this statement in the paper is a pretty good indication that something weird happened.

Nemo [00:30:11] It's really weird.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:30:13] Yeah, it's, it's weird.

John Dehlin [00:30:15] I mean, for me it was weird. This, it almost reminds me of like Twitter. Like it's weird that like the Smith family has all these negative rumors around them and the Joseph Smith senior is publishing in the article sort of like an explanation, like trying to defend the honor. It's that whole thing, it just feels like community drama. It's weird.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:30:39] Well, yeah, it just feels like you're back, you're, you're trying to backfill rumors because people all of a sudden notice that this grave is dug up. And all of a sudden you have to come up with a reason because, you know, you don't want people saying he did it for treasure digging. And so you've got this. I think he posted five days in a row. So I mean, he wants people to see this to know it wasn't me. But again, if you need to dig up the grave the whole way, you just walk up to it and you can tell if it's been dug up. Freshly dug dirt does not like magically regrow, whereas a 10 month grave would be, would be just as it was. I mean, that would be plenty of time for it, for the grass to, to regrow. So, so the idea that he couldn't tell if the grave was disturbed by just a visual inspection, it's a pretty good indication that he was likely the person that was, you know, the reason for it being dug up. So.

Nemo [00:31:22] And then we're missing testimony. Right, because he said he dug up the grave to prove that the body was still there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:27] Yeah.

Nemo [00:31:27] So then where is the testimony of those that he took with him to say, look, see, the body's still there? And they say, yes, I declare that I did see the body.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:33] Yeah, there's ground. Exactly.

Nemo [00:31:34] None of that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:35] No, just a mention they brought people.

Nemo [00:31:37] But the angel didn't say that he needed to be brought alive. So.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:40] Yeah, and that's just it. I mean, if you, you know, I guess if we go to the next slide, this is kind of the whole point. But yeah, it's like it's beyond crazy to think that a father would dig up his own son. But if you truly believe a spirit guardian or, or God himself required it, you would do it. Right? I mean, we're told in the Bible that Abraham's going to kill his son. I mean, if you really believe this is a treasure guardian that could give you these valuable records, would. Would you not do it? And, you know, Dan Vogel had mentioned, you know, that Joseph. Joseph Smith Sr's explanation for disinterring Alvin's body is questionable because one should have been able to determine if the grave had been disturbed without exhuming the body. Seems probable, therefore, that Joseph Sr. Himself may have been the source of the rumor that the story was a ruse to exhume Alvin's body for its use in attempting to get the gold plates, which I know we just talked about, but it just shows the lengths at this time. You know, if you saw a story like this today, you'd be like, this person needs to be, you know, put in an asylum. But back then, it wasn't common. We talked about this last, last episode. Treasure digging was not common to the point where it's accepted. But there were people that believed enough that they would do crazy things like this. And it just shows that the worldview that Joseph Smith is born out of and that these gold plate story is going to be born out of as well. It's, it's. There are some things happening here that you have to be willing to, I guess, acknowledge that this is the lengths they're going through in this early part of the story. And, you know, it just shows that they are on a plane where they are believing in things that are. We can look at it today and go, yeah, there's no way that happened when it comes to treasure digging. And so you have to be willing to accept that when you then apply that and say, but they were telling the truth in 1827 when he claims to get the place, you can't just push that aside and say, well, that was before he got the plates. And so that doesn't count. It still counts because the experiences that he claims that lead to the plate in 1827 are still happening there. And so these are. These. These are kind of crazy stories, but you have to be willing to. To take them in, in totality. When. When you look at the gold plates and we don't need to beat a dead horse here. I just, I wanted to point that out because it shows the lengths that they're willing to go through in order to make these treasure digs work.

Nemo [00:33:47] Mm.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] Yeah. Just the fact that an angel is telling him to bring Hiram and then Hiram dies is problematic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:33:53] Yeah. I mean, that's just it. I mean, if you're gonna say the brothers needs to be brought and then two months later he dies. It's an issue. And if you want to say again, it's God testing him.

John Dehlin [00:34:03] Trickster guy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:34:04] Trickster guy, yeah. Or trickster God. And again, once you do that, you're indistinguishable from fraud. And I think that's something that, you know, we have to keep pointing out because it's important for people to understand. You can take that stand if you want, but if you take it, you have to understand that anything else that any other. Any other claim from another religion or politician you can't disprove if you're willing to give special pleading to your case because you've had experiences, because those other people have had the same. May not the same experience, but they've had their own experiences that might tell them that fundamentalist polygamy is still good or Scientology is good. And that's where it gets messy. And so if you want to stick to the evidence and to what we know, what we can see with our own eyes, then I think you have to be willing to accept these accounts and deal with them however you're going to deal with them.

Joseph Smith in 1825 and the Lead-Up to 1827

John Dehlin [00:34:50] All right, well, let's go to 1825.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:34:52] Keep going. So this is a point that I know Dan Vogel makes, but in 1825 and 1826, there's no real record of Joseph even trying to get the plates. And at this point, he's very much involved in treasure digging. He's very much involved. He's building his name. Obviously, we know in 1826, Josiah Stowell hires him for the big treasure dig, which leads to the trial. And what's interesting is, so we don't have a record of him going in 25 or 26, but, you know, from the 1838 perspective, he needs to, because it kind of doesn't work as a story if Joseph Smith gives up for two years. But at the 1826 trial, we're told that his dad said both he and his son were mortified that this wonderful power which God had miraculously given him should be used only in the search of filthy lucre. And he trusted that the son of righteousness would someday illuminate the heart of the boy and enable him to see his will concerning him. And I just. That quote is perfect because that literally is the point where Joseph Smith is going to. I mean, it's not literally the point, but that is where Joseph Smith's transition from, like, full time treasure digging Turns from that to the gold plate story, you know, just the next year. And so I think the fact is that his dad is kind of almost telling him, this is what you need to do. And it gives Joseph Smith a chance after the 1826 trial. And he's, you know, obviously in a very down state of his life to try to figure out what to do next. And all of a sudden, you can then go back to this story that you had kind of created years earlier. And it just kind of fits perfectly with that quote, because it's almost like his dad is saying, use it for religious purposes. And then the next year, Joseph's like, you know what? I'm going to. And that's kind of how the story goes, whether or not it's fair to. For me to kind of put in that perspective or not. But again, you look at the quote, you look at the timeline, and that's how it goes.

John Dehlin [00:36:36] It's almost. This is just occurring to me. It's almost like he needed this, you know, whatever happened in 1823, he needed some explanation as to why it took him seven years to actually produce the book. And he's. He's trying to create a narrative to fill in the holes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:49] Yeah. Otherwise the 38 is so different.

John Dehlin [00:36:51] If this is so important, why'd you take seven years to do it? You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:57] And I mean, you know, the story is right that he isn't ready to take it. And that's why the treasure digging happens. And again, we can't. It's hard when you're talking about motivation and all that, because we can't say, well, here's why. Joseph Smith went into treasure digging after God told him he had a higher purpose to get these plates and that

John Dehlin [00:37:16] he was supposed to restore the one true church. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:37:18] Yeah. But at the same time, it's like if I'm visited by God and Jesus and then all of a sudden an angel comes a few years later and says, here's what they want you to do. I mean, and again, you know, we don't. It's hard to put that. Put my personal mindset into Joseph, but it's hard to believe that I'd be like, you know what? I'm gonna put that aside for a few years because I'm do this treasure digging that doesn't work. That's where I'm just like. It's really hard when you look at the story from an outsider perspective. Like, once you're, you know. You know, when I was a believing Member, you don't think about it. And then now I'm a member, but I'm not a believing member. And so I look at it and I go, this doesn't add up. And every time you go to the next step, it makes the earlier steps even worse. Because when you build off a bad foundation, everything else that you stack on top of it is just going to be wobbly because it doesn't have. It's not. The story keeps changing. And so there's nothing that we can look at and go, yeah, that would have happened. Everything so far is you have to believe in treasure digging for this to work. And there's no reason to believe in treasure digging because we have all sorts of evidence from this time frame that nobody found anything. And we can see with our own eyes that people today who claim to be psychics and all, that, they can't do it. And so, again, until they can show that there's any instance where Joseph Smith is able to locate lost objects in a way that is more meaningful than, you know, as we talked about last time, where he said he'd find a feather, and he found a feather even though it would have disintegrated. You've got a problem.

Nemo [00:38:45] What's interesting is I'm just looking at Joseph Smith's history at the moment, and what he does seek to do when he's writing this in 1838, is explain away those three years between being visited by God and this visitation from Moroni. Right. He's there trying to say, I frequently fell into many foolish errors and displayed weakness of youth and the foibles of human nature, which, I'm sorry to say, led me into diverse temptations offensive in the sight of God. But. But then, just to make it clear in making this confession, no one needs to pose me guilty of any great or malignant sins.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:17] Yeah.

Nemo [00:39:17] But I was guilty of levity, sometimes association with jovial company, I. E. Bands of treasure diggers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:23] Yeah, yeah. And the thing is not to pile onto this too much, but again, it's one of those things where people talk about treasure digging and they'll say, oh, it was just a few people that are bringing it up. But the truth is, Joseph Smith's treasure digging is going to follow him wherever he goes. So when he creates the church and, you know, they move, you know, to Ohio and Missouri and all in Illinois, those stories follow him. So as his name gets bigger, more and more people are coming out and saying, I know him as a church digger. So everything he's writing is Writing it in the mindset of I have got to address that in a way that I'm going to appease my. The people who are following me now and also to try to not poison my name for people who might join the church. So to your point, when he writes this history, long after in the back of his head, he's constantly thinking, how do I make this go away? Because it's not like, I guess, put another way is you'll hear people say, well, Joseph Smith was so humble to say that he was falling into these foibles. But he's not saying it because he's humble. He's saying it because he needs these rumors to go away. And I think that's like the whole thing with a politician. Like politicians don't admit to things they do until they're caught. Joseph Smith is not admitting to this for any other reason except for the fact that these rumors are following him everywhere he goes. And that's why, you see in the 1823 account, Joseph Smith writes later, he just removes all of those embarrassing details as if they didn't happen. But unfortunately, because he did tell other people at the time, now we can look at that and see that, no, the original story is way different.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] Yeah. So sincere investigators kind of have two options. One is that he was really just a folk magic treasure digger. And when that jig was up, he. He realized that there was something into writing a religious book that then turned into a religion. And then he had to go back and explain, you know, his treasure digging, explain it away. Or he was originally called of God, fell into all this shenanigans and then repented and then did what he needed to to make everything right. But then that begs the question, why did he ever get into the shenanigans in the first place?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:41:26] Right.

Nemo [00:41:27] And then why after that 1823 visitation up in 1826 on trial for Glass looking like he clearly didn't learn his lesson. If he did repent and get this

John Dehlin [00:41:35] visit and why did he ever deny. Why did he deny to his father in law, likely that he never saw anything in the stone.

Nemo [00:41:42] Yeah, yeah, he cried, didn't he? Cries.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:41:46] And yeah, we'll continue on. And yeah, we'll continue on. It's kind of. I don't want to keep beating that dead horse. So this is kind of looking at, you know, how this story kind of plays out after the trial. And so according to Joseph Knight senior, again, we're talking about faithful members. So these are not accounts that should be looked at as being you know, going after Joseph. Joseph claims after the failed 1826 attempt. Now, again, we have no record that he made this attempt, but I'm guessing that he would have told people that he made the attempt, because as you're building the story back up again, you're trying to. Trying to connect that earlier two years. So you're saying you're going every year. And so he told Joseph Knight Senior that he was told he needs to bring the right person, which, again, is an offshoot of that 1823 account where we were told it was Alvin. And they say Joseph looked into his glass and found it was Emma Hale, the daughter of old Mr. Hale of Pennsylvania, a girl that he had seen before, for he had been down there before with me. And so again, this is more treasure digging. Joseph Smith is using his Peep Seer stone to get an answer as to who he's supposed to bring, which is also weird because in 1823, we're told the angel gave it to him, gave him the answer, and now he's looking through the Peep Seer stone. So again, this is all treasure digging. And just to point out, again, we have no contemporary record that he actually went there in 1826. So this could be Joseph Smith in 1827, trying to prime the pump for this big visit. Or in this case, it could even be after the attempt is made. But from Joseph Knight Sr. It sounds. Because Joseph Smith, after the 1826 trial, lived with these guys for a while. So it would make sense if he's building the story back up, that he would tell him. I was told to bring the right person, 1823. And now I found out that it's actually Emma. So this is just to set up the 1827 attempt to let you guys know why Emma is the person to bring.

John Dehlin [00:43:30] Okay, makes sense. Yeah. Why didn't the angel say Emma to begin with? And then does Emma become an accomplice or someone who's easily manipulated? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:43:41] Yeah, I think. I think for sure be more. More the latter than an accomplice. And we'll see why in the next slide, at least in my opinion. But before we get to the 1827 one, actually, this is one I wanted to jump back to because this is another big one. So the Book of Mormon gold plates are said to come with a set of spectacles, which would be later retrofitted into the term Urim and Thummim. Early on, they would have been called the Spectacles or the Nephite interpreters. And the problem with this story is that this is a story where Joseph Smith kind of gets almost outmanned by another treasure digger named Samuel Lawrence. So Samuel Lawrence was another seer. And as the account goes, Joseph thought maybe he was the right person that could bring with to get the plates. And Joseph takes him with to the hill. And so when they go to the hill, he's trying to see if Samuel Lawrence can see it with his stone. If you go to the next slide, Samuel Lawrence is going to actually. Now this is from Willard Chase. Now, this isn't a person who is not a fan of Joseph Smith, but he says Lawrence asked if Joseph had ever discovered anything with the plates of gold. Joseph said no. Lawrence then asked him to look into stone to see if there was anything with them. Joseph looked again, said there was nothing, and then Lawrence told him to look again. And that's the power of three. See if there's not a large pair of specks with the plates. Joseph looked and soon saw a pair of spectacles, the same with which Joseph said he translates the Book of Mormon. So in other words, we've got more treasure digging here where there's the power of three. Three times elson Joseph sees. But more importantly, this also shows how you can lead someone else into seeing things. Now, I don't believe Joseph saw the spectacles, but at some point he has to agree with Lawrence because if he doesn't agree with Samuel Lawrence, Samuel Lawrence is then going to tell everyone, I saw the spectacles. I'm the better seer. So he forces Joseph Smith into accepting that the spectacles are with the plates. These would not have been part of the story had Joseph Smith not taken Sammy Lawrence to the hill. And I think that's an important thing to note because the spectacles are then told to have been this important part of the translation process that was prepared thousands of years earlier so that Joseph Smith could translate these plates. And really, at the end of the day, it is a late addition to the story because he brings Samuel Lawrence to the hill.

Samuel Lawrence, the Seer Stone, and the Spectacles

John Dehlin [00:45:50] For me, this raises the first question. Why is God letting Samuel Lawrence see this stuff? Who is Samuel Lawrence? He's not Oliver Cowdery. He's not Martin Harris. He's not even Emma. He's just some weird treasure digger guy and God's giving him the if. If Joseph was in training by like, Richard Bushman's theory is that Joseph Smith was in training using his peep stone as a way to learn how to communicate with God. Well, was God also training Samuel Lawrence? Like, if, is it the same Power. It would be the same power. So, yeah, to me, that doesn't make sense. But this spectacles thing for me is huge. Because, you know, if we. If we take this idea that God is not a God of confusion, then what would have happened is if there were spectacles, then that's what would have been used for the translation of the Book of Mormon period. Why would God introduce them? So the idea that, number one, it was Lawrence that comes up with the idea that there's a Urim and Thummim, and then, number two, Joseph would then be forced to acknowledge that, but then never really use them. Why is God putting them there, preserving them, and then Joseph isn't using them. Is it more likely that. That God just didn't think it through, or is it more likely that this stuff is just getting invented and inserted into the story in weird ways that doesn't make sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:11] Yeah. And this is another example where this is an instance where Joseph Smith loses control because he brings Samuel Lawrence with Samuel Lawrence then sees that opportunity to jump in and kind of throw a monkey wrench in. Joseph Smith then loses control of it, so he has to agree to the spectacles. And then the other part of it is, again, it shows. And again, I don't believe Joseph saw the spectacles. I think you could tell from the story that he realizes he has to add them in. But when people talk about how you can't guide someone through a vision, like, well, you know, we'll get down the road with the witnesses. There are a lot of instances in Mormon history where you can show that Joseph Smith does it with other people. And in this case, someone does it to Joseph where they're like, do you see this? And you have to say, yeah, because otherwise you lose that connection to the divine. And in this case, Joseph Smith finally has to say, oh, yeah, yeah, I do see him, because otherwise Sammy Lawrence then has that leg up on him.

John Dehlin [00:47:58] This reminded me, this explains for me, Martin Harris, that when, later, when the three witnesses thing happens, Martin Harris doesn't see it. He doesn't see it. And then finally he sees it. Well, what's going on there? It's second sight. Right. Otherwise you would see it the first time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] And so this literally explains how Martin Harris ended up seeing it. It would be the Oliver always saw with second sight, but that Martin needed multiple tries to be able to see it in his mind.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:26] Yeah. And, you know, again, you can't necessarily say what was in someone's head.

John Dehlin [00:48:30] Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:30] We can't do that. But what we can say is this is an instance where you can show that Joseph Smith agrees to seeing something that we know. And again, we can't say we know because we can't get in his head. But by all indications, he would not have actually seen. And that's why he keeps telling him no. And with Martin Harris as a witness, he can't see it. And so he leaves the group. Right? And so he leaves the three witnesses and he goes off on his own. And at that point, you can will yourself to see something or more. More. You know, this is kind of like something that kids will do too, where you just say you saw it because you don't want to be in the out group, you want to be in the in group. And so you're like, Martin Harris could have been like, yeah, you know what? I do see him tis. And I think he says something like tis enough or whatever it is. And, and in that case, he may not have even seen him in his head, but he convinces himself he does because otherwise he is going to be in the out group, you know, and so it just shows how this happens today. But back then you could, you could get people to, to claim to see something because otherwise they're going to be embarrassed, basically. And in this case, Samuel Lawrence was in a position to embarrass Joseph Smith. And Joseph Smith has this idea of the gold plates becoming the Book of Mormon in. He cannot allow something like this to be the thing that derails the train. And so of course he has to accept them as part of the story.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] But it's also useful to bring in because if Lawrence can corroborate seeing something that lends credibility in the community to somebody else also seeing what Joseph sees.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:49:52] And that's why, you know, and again, like, you could look at this like in modern day politics, sometimes you'll have these, these situations where a politician needs an endorsement from somebody. And you can probably point to some of these with like Trump over the last few years. And Trump won't give you the endorsement until you kiss the ring. So, you know, there's that picture of Mitt Romney with him where Mitt Romney is looking back. Of course, this is after Trump won. He just looks miserable. He's at the table. And I realize it's just a picture, but sometimes in politics you see that where you need the credibility of that endorsement. And so you have to do some things you don't want to do. And in this case, Joseph Smith is accepting the story of the spectacles because he needs Lawrence because Lawrence is a well known treasure digger that will give credibility that the plates are there, which he needs to build the story up as we're gonna see to take them. So, yeah, this is, this is like this kind of crazy web of deception that happens between two people who are trying to basically kind of stake their own claim on being the choice seer. And for Joseph Smith, it backfires.

John Dehlin [00:50:51] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:53] And so, and I just wanted to point out here, you know, the last account I told you about with the spectacles was from Willard Chase, who is. I'm not a fan of Joseph Smith, but we also have from Joseph Knight Sr. Who we've talked about as a faithful member, confirmed that Sammy Lawrence had been to the Hill and knew about the things in the Hill and he was trying to obtain them. And so this is telling us that it corroborates Willard Chase's account, which is to say that Willard Chase had been up at the Hill with Joseph, he knew exactly what was supposedly in the chest and that he was trying to get them. So this just, you know, the only point of saying this is just to say we now have a positive and a negative source that are confirming the same story. So you can't just throw out Chase's testimony because he wasn't a fan of Joseph Smith, because we have a faithful one who's basically confirming that Joseph and Samuel Lawrence had been to the Hill. So we can go to the next slide. I just wanted to point that out for anyone who might be thinking we were only using negative sources there. So Joseph Smith is going to elope with Emma in 1827 and he considers her the right person. And I want to read this part. It's actually from the Mormon stories truth claims essay. And it said he borrowed Joseph Knight's black horse and a carriage. He acquitted or acquired black clothes. And there exists a receipt for the purchase of lamp black paint from the Palmyra store four days prior. Several friends and neighbors corroborated the requirement for total blackness during this critical visit to the Hill, and his mother mentioned it in her biographical sketches. Joseph's sister stated that he was to appear at 2 o', clock, the powerful hour of Saturday morning over which his ruling planet Jupiter presided. Remember, if you, if you know anything about, like the equinoxes, I think it's always at 2am when that actually hits. Oliver Cowdery's first published history of Smith used the terms necromancy and enchantment to describe this event. So again, this just shows this is 100% treasure digging. You're using all of these blackness and all these things to appease the treasure guardian, which again, if you're going to separate this from treasure digging, then you have to wonder why God is demanding him to use treasure digging techniques. And it just shows he is going through all the stops here to make this like a treasure dig. And again, at this point, you know, we're supposed to believe after the 1826 trial, he's done with that, but he's still using it here to get the plates. It's the exact same technique, just with a different, you know, basically a different target to, to retrieve.

Nemo [00:53:09] I think what's really interesting here is if you look, if you look to later on when people are being given their second endowment, their second anointing, those are done at 2:00 in the afternoon. Yeah, sorry, 2:00'. Clock.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:20] Sorry, yeah, I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [00:53:22] I didn't know that.

Nemo [00:53:23] Two o'. Clock.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:24] Yeah, I've heard that before too. So, I mean, again, it shows that treasure digging and that that belief still carries over. And you know, we talked about in the last episode, you know, it's still, we still have elements of it within, within every Sunday's, you know, sacrament, meaning. And they, they do come from somewhere and sometimes you go, that's a weird thing that they do. Why would they do it at the same time? Well, it's because there's a belief it's the most powerful hour for something to work. And so anyways, we can.

John Dehlin [00:53:48] And I. And I. Again, why is God, why is God conforming to the rules of folk? Black magic. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:56] Especially when it didn't work. And that's the thing. Like, you know, if you want to. Again, if you want to separate this from treasure digging, which from the church's standpoint, you have to. Then you have to explain, if you're separating from treasure digging, why are we still doing treasure digging? This is. If it was really preparatory, then Joseph Smith wouldn't have to continue to do treasure digging to pull up something that has nothing to do with treasure digging. And yet he does. And so I think that tells you that this is not a separate. You can't separate this from treasure digging as much as apologetics want to. You can't do it without giving special pleading. Because if it was. If you, if you told this story to people on Sunday, to anyone, and you replace Joseph Smith's name with John de Lynn.

Nemo [00:54:38] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:54:38] They would say he's making it up. You know, if I said, this, dude, Nemo is trying to sell me on this new religion and you, you explain the details of how you're treated, they'd say, that guy's a liar. And then if you say, well, it's Joseph Smith, they'd say, well, that's different. And again, if you're going to do that, you need more.

John Dehlin [00:54:52] Well, acknowledge you're doing it. Just acknowledge.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:54:55] Just acknowledge. Just acknowledge. Like, yeah, I don't, I don't care. I don't care if it's not true. I don't care if it makes no sense. I'm going with it. But you can't try to apologetics your way out of it because we can see the accounts. We can, we can see that the outcomes of treasure digs, this is not something you can't tell. So, yeah, anyways, so after he does that, he. We're told from the Saints book that basically other treasure diggers knew Joseph Smith would be going, which actually makes some sense because this would be the fall equinox. And so it says local treasure diggers or local treasure seekers also knew it was a time for Joseph to get the record. Lately, one of the met one of them, a man named Samuel Lawrence, had been roaming the hill searching for the plates. Worried that Samuel would cause trouble, Joseph sent his father to Samuel's house on the evening of September 21st to keep an eye on him and confront him if it looked like he was going to the hill. So again, this helps corroborate again that Joseph and Lawrence had been, you know, working on these plates in some way visiting the hill and again to show how important the treasure digging day of the autumnal equinox was. And when you have it in the Saints book, I think the fact that they're admitting that is a pretty good indication that these are facts you can't really dispute with regards to Lawrence's involvement in Joseph Smith's involvement together in knowledge about the hill.

Nemo [00:56:09] I think it's so shady of them though, the way they phrase that to say local treasure diggers as though it wasn't one of them. Right? Yeah, they're like, oh, all those pesky local treasure diggers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:19] Yeah.

Nemo [00:56:19] Well, how did they all know about Joseph? Yes, he was one of them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:23] I mean, it's been a while. It's been a while since I did that Saints chapter by chapter review. But it is, it is interesting how they, when it's other treasure diggers, it's like, you know, kind of like a cartoonish caricature of them, like, you know, twisting their mustache and like hiding behind the trees. But when it's Joseph Smith, it's like, oh, it's just a boy who make it, who's making mistakes. And it's like, no, this is his community. The reason they know about it is because Joseph Smith is involved in this community to the point where he's bringing Samuel to the hill. And yet they. So that. And we don't have to get into the Saints book. But that's one of my issues with the Saints book is they very carefully word these things so you're giving members just enough. So if you say, you didn't tell me this, they could say, oh, no, no, we covered it. But they don't really give you the context. And because they don't give you the context, it makes it come off as if Joseph Smith is so much more pure and innocent then I think even most, like, mainstream Mormon scholars would admit. I think most mainstream Mormon scholars would admit that this is kind of messed up. You know, Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:57:17] It reminds me of John C. Bennett in Nauvoo. It's like, well, John C. Bennett was having sex with lots of women, but that was spiritual wifery. But when Joseph Smith was doing it, oh, well, that was the new and everlasting covenant.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:57:31] Yeah. And that's. And that's, you know, obviously, that's. That's the. When you get into the way they treat or even, like, William Law, so John C. Ben Simmons, like, in the Saints book, William Law, until he leaves the church, every mention of him is like, how great his testimony was and how powerful his witness was. And then the moment he leaves, every mention of him as if he's the devil, and it's like, you know, at some point you got to go, why is it Joseph Smith is the center and everyone moves around him? And so if you leave the church, you instantly go to, like, the outer edge. And it's like, from a historical standpoint, it doesn't always. It's not that black and white. But. And that's why I don't consider Saints a history book. I consider it like, you know, a narrative book. But, yeah, we don't. We don't need to go into that. But, yeah, it just shows how. How different they make. Joseph Smith's doing the exact same acts as other people, as if it normalizes it when it's the exact same thing that he's doing. And, you know, it's not really an honest way to do it. So.

John Dehlin [00:58:22] Yeah. And again, I just want to note from this quote that he uses Samuel Lawrence if it. If it helps lend credibility to his community that he has Special powers. But as soon as he feels like he's lost control of Samuel Lawrence and that Samuel Lawrence might be interjecting things that could conflict with Joseph's desires and power, then Samuel Lawrence is cut out and he's trying to exclude him. So it's this control the environment theme carried forward.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:57] Well, and it also, it's like, you know, the. It sounds dumb to say it'll be on the next slide too, but it's like the most important thing about this attempt is no witnesses. You know, Joseph Smith wants no witnesses to this attempt. So he's making sure Samuel Lawrence can't get to the hill. Because if he gets to the hill, he's gonna know Joseph isn't pulling anything out of it. And so I think that's the biggest reason is not only does he loses to the control of the fact that Lawrence knows where he's going, but he needs to keep him out because there can. You know, it's like, I feel like it's like a horror, like an action film. You're like, no witnesses, you know, but it's true. And so if we go to the next slide, that becomes really important because. So Joseph claims Emma Smith is the right person, right? And then when they get there, she has to stay back with the carriage, with her back to the digging. So he brings her as the right person, as if she needs to be with him to retrieve the plates. But she's not allowed anywhere near the plates. She can't even look at him when he's digging. And according to Michael D. Michael Quinn, he says Emma's cousins reported that she stood with her back toward him while he dug up the box. Martin Harris said that while he was obtaining the plates, she kneeled down and prayed. Harris added that Joseph took the plates and hid them in an old black oak treetop, which was hollow. This is another use of the color black, as was required by Moroni. And so just like Samuel Lawrence, he brings Emma Smith. But he's like, you can't, you know, stay, stay back, stay far away, don't look. And it just reeks of someone who knows they don't have plates to pull up. If you're going to tell people that you see through your Peep seer stone that you are the right person to retrieve the plates, shouldn't she be next to him to pull the plate? I mean, like, it makes no sense. It's one of those things where, again, if you want to say God's ways are not our ways, you have to explain why this is so inconsistent. I just don't. I don't know any other way around it.

Nemo [01:00:35] I think she serves to really fill in the narrative about him having to bring a right person because that person died off.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:00:40] That's all it is.

Nemo [01:00:41] That's the link.

Emma Smith and Questions About the Translation Process

John Dehlin [01:00:42] I'm also thinking of the. What Many would Claim to be is a very disrespectful episode of South Park. The Joseph Smith, you know, all about the Mormons episode or whatever. You know, the dum dum, dum, dum, dum. Just like with the lost 116 pages. And Joseph can't reproduce them. And Lucy Harris gets it, but Martin Harris doesn't like this. The fact that later the three and the eight witnesses can see the plates, but for some reason his own wife has to turn her back. It makes no sense. And it's something that we all should have seen. Just it's so obvious. Why will God let the three and the eight witnesses later see the plates but his own effing wife. And I don't mean to get too animated here, his own effing wife has to turn her back.

Nemo [01:01:35] There's a really simple answer there, John. She's a woman.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:01:38] Well, there's that.

Nemo [01:01:39] You know, it's a patriarchal thing, right? These men hold the priesthood, as it were, and they do, but except the witnesses.

John Dehlin [01:01:46] The witnesses didn't have the priesthood yet, did they?

Nemo [01:01:49] They're part of that structure that could go on, you know what I mean?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:01:52] But no. And the one point out, the one thing I'll say is Emma Smith was not just his wife, she was the person that he was told through the stone was the right person. So even, even ignoring that she's, you know, his wife. She was who God said you need to bring to get these plates. So if she's the person that is the one person, the only person on earth that he can bring to get the plates, why in the world is she then told, stay back with your back to back away from me unless you know that you're not able to pull plates out. It makes no sense. Like, why in the world would I bring my wife somewhere and then say, God told me to bring you? And then say, but stay in the car and look away because I'm going to get this. But, but don't, don't look. It defies any logic. And again, I'll keep saying, I know the apologetic can say with God all things are possible, but it just does. Is it really? Like, would God really send somebody and say, you're the right person and you're the only person that can come with to bring the plates and then say, but stay far enough away because are you really bringing the right person if they have to? You know, it's just, it gets really convoluted really quick.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] So the only other thing that comes to my mind with this quote is that, you know, there are people who want to know whether Emma was in on the con. And I'm not saying it's a con. I'm just saying if, if in the theory that Emma was in on deception, this kind of seems to go against that. Because why, why wouldn't Joseph and Emma just said, yep, we both saw the plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:13] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:03:13] But Emma's not able to see the plates. So that suggests that Joseph was deceiving or fooling Emma and that she wasn't in on a conspiracy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:22] That's that. And that's my takeaway too, because I meant to get back to that because we kind of, you know, danced around that earlier. But yeah, if Emma was in on the conspiracy, she would be extremely valuable here to say, yeah, I saw Joseph take him out, I saw him put him in the treetop, I saw the plates, I saw the spectacles. The fact that she doesn't is a pretty clear indicator that I think she unfortunately doesn't under, you know, that she doesn't know that Joseph Smith is making it up. Which again you would say, well, Emma seems like a smart person, why would she. But why would she buy into it? But again, when you trust people and you're part of that worldview, it's not that far fetched to understand why people believe it. Because, you know, we can show in modern times how people believe things that we know aren't true. And it just shows that. I think Joseph had a good way of convincing people that he was the real deal.

John Dehlin [01:04:09] Yeah.

Nemo [01:04:10] Emma was more useful to him as someone that believed the story he was telling rather than a co conspirator.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:15] Exactly.

Nemo [01:04:16] They've been married for nine months by this point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:17] Yep. And if he had brought Sam, say he brings Samuel Lawrence, then you have to have a conspiracy because Samuel Lawrence is going to know exactly what he's doing. So you need somebody that can fulfill what Nemo said, fulfill that requirement of bringing the right person, but not somebody who is going to want to be involved in it. So you need someone who is willing to kind of stay to the side but also fulfill that requirement. And I think that's a really important note that you just made Nemo because, yeah, I think that's really important. To note before when you try to look at that whole picture of why Emma was, was there. So anyways, I guess we can.

John Dehlin [01:04:47] It makes no sense that before the plates were buried, Moroni and Mormon and whoever could just see the plates. Then all of a sudden Joseph uninters or disinters the plates and all of a sudden God's really worried about who gets to see him. Like why wouldn't God just let someone please tell me why wasn't God cool with Emma seeing the plates? She could dust under them, she could help translate them. But for some reason it's really important to God all of a sudden that Emma and Martin and Oliver and no one else could see the plates. Why?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:05:23] Yeah, the only reason is, I mean, because if Joseph had showed him what he would later have, it wouldn't pass inspection. I mean literally that's the only reason you could see the book of Abraham's scrolls, right? I mean no one had a problem with that, right?

John Dehlin [01:05:36] They were so sacred. They weren't so sacred that they had to do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:05:39] There was nothing sacred about them.

Nemo [01:05:39] And so the Kinderhook plates were either.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:05:42] Yeah, I mean so it's just, yeah, it just shows Joseph didn't have confidence that what he could produce could pass a visual inspection. I mean that's really all it is. So, and so the saints book also confirms that Joseph did not bring the plates back with him on the carriage, but instead put them in a hollow log where they would be safe until he obtained a lockbox. And again, there's no reason why Joseph would leave the plates in a hollow log simply because there wasn't a lockbox at home. Because you could bring them at home and just keep them with you. There's just, it makes no sense. Joseph could bring the plates, keep them in his room with them until they had a lockbox ready. This, this part makes no sense. And Dan Vogel and John Hamer, I think both in their episodes with Mormon stories talked about how it makes total sense that Joseph Smith hadn't finished the prop set of plates that he needs. But the problem is he needed to go on that day. He had to go on the fall equinox to be believed within the treasure digging world. So he had to go on that day no matter what. And so because he didn't have the prop ready, he still had to go on that day for the story to be believed. But then he had to come up with the secondary story of leaving them behind so that he could then finish them and then bring them home later. And so you know, that's just. It just goes to show that these plates are so important that no one can see them. These plates are so important that he was shocked from trying to pull them early on in 1823. Because he. Because in 1823 there's a story where he takes them out, but doesn't just go right away and so they go back into the hole. Yet in 1827, he's allowed to just toss them into a hollow log. It makes no sense.

Nemo [01:07:06] Yeah, he's worried about Lawrence stoating around on the hill looking for his plates and he's like, well, where's a safe place to put them?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:12] Yep.

Nemo [01:07:13] Inside a hollow log, which is a very commonly known folk magic structure.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:19] Yep. And so I think the next slide, and this is what a hollow log looks like. So does it really make sense that a set of ancient gold plates that God would not let Joseph leave out of his sight in 1823 would be safer in this hole than to bring them back onto the property and, you know, maybe sleep with them or tuck them under a bed or something? I mean, if treasure diggers, we are to believe that the treasure diggers know where Joseph Smith is going this night and they know that they're kind of scouring the area and you're going to leave them in something like this. I mean, I realize that they would probably say Joseph covered it with some, you know, leaves and brush and stuff, but at the same time it makes. There's no reason you would leave a set of plates in something like this that could be easily inspected by anybody who is in the area. It just, it goes against. I mean, it's nonsensical. There's no way. I don't know what else to say.

Nemo [01:08:06] We're told the narrative that these plates were so valuable that Joseph's life is constantly under threat, trying to keep them safe.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:13] Yeah.

Nemo [01:08:14] But the first time he'd got them, the first time he retrieved them, after years of going back and back, the first thing he did was, frankly, reckless.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:21] Yeah.

Nemo [01:08:22] If you're going on that narrative, it's just reckless just to leave them unguarded and so secured.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:27] And again we're told that the, the treasure guardian, who is moroni, but the treasure guardian was there in the earlier attempts to tell him why he couldn't have them. Again, we have the one account, 1823, that he does try to pull them out and then they get pulled back into the box because he turns his back for a second and the angels, like, you can't do that. And yet in 1827, the angels are like, you would think the angel be like, Joseph, what are you doing? You can't leave them in a hollow log. You know, people are going to see these things. It just shows you that again, Joseph Smith at this point, this is his narrative and I think he feels like he can, can pull this off, but it makes like within the realms of reality, this, this just doesn't work at all. And I've never seen an apologetic that explains this in a way that, that is tethered to reality and tethered to the earlier accounts of the retrievals on

John Dehlin [01:09:14] a total kind of meta level. I just had a realization. There was a really simple way for Heavenly Father and Joseph Smith to really, really, really simplify this entire process. And that would be to have never told anyone about the angel Moroni or the plates and just to like tell Joseph, but tell him not to tell anyone, have him get the plates, never tell anyone, and then create the Book of Mormon and then get rid of the plates and no one ever knows about it. So if God is all wise and knowing, and if Joseph Smith really got the plates and did this, then why didn't they just keep a secret until the book was produced? The only other explanation I can think of is what was key to. Well, number one, this was growing out of the magic worldview treasure digging stuff. And number two is that Joseph's main, main value add his main source of popularity or fame was the perception that he had special powers to find treasure. And so it's important that he's telling everybody, ah, these plates, an angel, I can get them. Someday a book's gonna come. I have a special way. It's a way over time to maintain and to grow perception that he had special powers, which was. That's what seers are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:10:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:43] And he keeps the seer title from the beginning to end. Right?

Nemo [01:10:46] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:10:47] And I would argue too, if you're going to look at it that way, I would say the main reason that he couldn't do like you to your point.

Nemo [01:10:53] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:10:53] It would make so much more sense for the story to say that the angel visits him and said, you know, kind of like at the end of, end of the original ending of Mark in the gospel, where it just says, you know, go, go. And Jesus will reveal himself and tell no one. It's like Angel Moroni could be like, go get these plates, tell no one. We're going to help you. We'll help you translate them. And then once they're translated, you can show them you could show them to some witnesses, but because he started the story in 1823, before he had developed all of that, he stuck with it. And, you know, kind of we said the Alvin Smith thing because he told these things to his family and to people in the, in the community. As he's building his treasure digging career up, he stuck to it. And so he can't get away from it. And so to your point. Yeah, and it just shows that as the story goes, he kind of loses control of the narrative and then all of a sudden he's constantly backfilling the elements that he had created. So. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's a good way to look at it for sure.

John Dehlin [01:11:43] Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:44] And so this is a story that, you know, you may have heard of, but basically. So Joseph's got the plates in the log, and Joseph Smith Sr. Hears of a plot that the treasure diggers are going to find the plates. And he tells Emma, and then Emma rides a horse to Joseph Smith to tell him that they're looking. And so according to his mom, this is what happens. As Emma tells Joseph, Joseph kept the Urim and Thummim constantly about his person. And he could, could by this means ascertain at any moment whether the plates were in danger or having just looked into them. Before Emma got there, he perceived her coming and came up out of the well and met her. When she informed him of the situation, or I think the situation, what had occurred, he told her that the record was perfectly safe for the present. And so this is telling you one again, the Urim and Thummim is. It's the Peep Stone. Peep Seer stone. There is no Urim and Thummim at this point. This is a retrofitted term, but she's saying that Joseph Smith is looking into the stone and actually sees through the stone that Emma's coming. And then when Emma comes up, he looks through the stone and he's like, no, I can see the plates. They're totally fine. And this is again, Joseph right now is in control of the situation because there are no plates. So he doesn't have to worry about anybody finding him. Because I'm telling you right now, if you put those plates that are that valuable in a hollow log and someone says they're going to send a search party of treasure diggers over that hill, you better believe you are on a horse and you're getting there as fast as you can. The fact that he looks at the stone is just claims to look at the stone. Is like, oh, I can see them. They're fine. Like, and it's nonsensical too, because picture it this way. So Emma comes to you and says there's basically a party of treasure diggers that are going to go look for the plates. And Joseph looks at the stone, he sees the plates in the hot log and he's like, yeah, they're fine. Well, it doesn't mean they're fine in five minutes or an hour in that logic. They're fine at the moment, but if they're gone their way, they could grab them. And so it just shows again, it's just, it defies any logic that Joseph at this point can claim this. And I just want to point out as a foreshadowing, keep this in mind in two episodes when we get to the 116 pages because you're going to find out that that seer stone can't locate anything when Joseph Smith is not in control of the situation. And so you're going to see a completely different, different story. And I wrote that in here too. So, yeah, I just kind of went through all this. Anyways, the Urim and Thummim was not a developed term. So when they say that, they mean the seer peep stone. Again, this is treasure digging techniques as Joseph Smith is using that stone to claim to see the treasure with. And 116 pages will be very important in a couple episodes. And you know, it just again, it doesn't appear that there were plates in the area of the hill. If Joseph seems that unconcerned with something that is as valuable as we are told that these plates are. So we already kind of covered that,

John Dehlin [01:14:20] I guess for me. For me, it begs the, you know, I'm always looking for like probability, right? And I'm seeing two options. One option is, you know what you viewer listener. What's more likely? Number one, that Joseph Smith needs Emma and others to believe that he got plates. And so he makes up this story about sticking them somewhere. And that just makes it so, you know, they exist somewhere. But of course, you know, no one knows where they are. So he can never be found to be a fraud. There's either that or God did give him plates, but even Emma can't see them. He recklessly hides them in a log. And then he's got this super special magic device where he can almost like a portal. I mean, it's almost like Salman and Lord of the Rings. He's got this crystal ball where he could always magically know the location of these physical objects and at any time be worn. I mean, it reminds me of like Snow White and the crystal ball or the magic mirror. Is that the way the world and the universe works? Is there any other example ever in the history of mankind, you listener, viewer, where a special object gives you the ability to see other physical objects elsewhere? Is that the way the world works?

Nemo [01:15:40] It's like my iPhone, Johnson.

John Dehlin [01:15:43] Yeah.

Nemo [01:15:43] As, as Dieter Vuchdorf would say. I just want to make a real quick point about. And this, this points to Emma not being a co conspirator and more of a someone that believes Joseph's story because when she's told that there are people looking, she runs to Joseph straight away because she's like, oh no, his plates are in trouble. I need to go tell him. Yeah, right. Because otherwise why would she be concerned? If she knew there weren't really any plates there, she wouldn't be concerned. But no, she is. She has gone and done the dutiful thing and gone and told him and then he's been like, ah, no, don't worry.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:15] Yeah, no, that's a good point. That's actually a really good point.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:19] And so now this, this is the story of where Joseph Smith now is going to bring the plates home. And so again, I want to point out that we're told Emma's the right person and yet when Joseph brings the plates home, he's able to go by himself to retrieve the plates and he leaves her behind. And I'm going to read a quote from Andrew Hedges from an ensign from 2001. This is the description of Joseph Smith going home. And he says as he was jumping over a log, a man sprang up from behind him and gave him a heavy blow with a gun. Joseph turned around and knocked him to the ground and then ran at the top of his speed. About a half a mile further, he was attacked again in precisely the same way. He soon brought this one down also and ran on again. But before he got home, he was accosted the third time with a severe stroke with the gun. Joseph struck this third and final attacker with such force that that he dislocated his own thumb. He continued running, being closely pursued, until he came near his father's house, at which time his assailants, for fear of being detected, broke off the chase. And like, I don't want to sound dismissive or disrespectful, but this story is ridiculous. First of all, Joseph Smith has a bad leg, so he's not going to be running at top speed beyond a lot of other people. You can't, you, you can't do with a bad leg. And number two, these plates are supposed to be 40 to 60 pounds. You're not running for multiple miles. I run a small business and as part of my small business I work with boxes. I unload shipping containers. I do it all myself. I work with a lot of boxes that are in that 40 to 50 pound range. And I can tell you I stack them. I can stack them up and down all day. If you make me run with when I'm not going very far. It's hard to run with something heavy and very hard when you've got someone attacking you. And then you've also got the magical power of three. There's three attackers. I like to point that out because it always seems in these stories there's always three. Again, it's just. I don't know if you guys have ever seen John Wick the movies. There's some of the greatest movies of all time. For action movies are very gory but they're great. John Wick will go down a street and he'll get attacked by a small group. He'll take them all out. He'll get a little bit down the street, another group jumps out. But that's an action movie. This reads like. Like a teenager coming up with like a kind of a fanatic. A fantastical story about this adventure. In no possible way is Joseph Smith going to be able to run this long with plates that heavy with getting hit with a gun. People attacking with guns. It, it's, it's nonsense. I don't know what to say. It's just to believe this justifies all you're losing. You know you've lost the plot.

Nemo [01:18:40] I guess.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:18:41] I know it's a Gordon Ramsay quote. He always says that on his shows. You've lost the plot and it's just like at some point. This story just reads horribly once you look at it from the outside.

John Dehlin [01:18:51] Yeah. Because try number one. This sounds like Paul Bunyan or Babe in the Big Blue Ox. These are American folklore legends. It just sounds impossible. But even try it physically. Get a 40 to 60 pound barbell, hold it in one hand and then start running as three different individuals are without any. Totally unencumbered. Yeah. Without a leg deformity. Try running with a 40 to 60 pound object in one hand while you're beating off three separate full what we assume to be full able bodied individuals for long periods of time. I've held replicas of the plates that were actually lighter than what the actual plates likely were. And I could barely carry them around the room for, you know, 30 to 50 seconds before I was exhausted.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:19:48] It's just not gonna happen.

Nemo [01:19:49] I should say that, John, because you know what I have. Are you ready? Are you ready?

John Dehlin [01:19:53] I have it, too.

Nemo [01:19:54] You got some other stuff.

John Dehlin [01:19:55] I have it, too. I have replicas of the plates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, stand up and walk around. Like, it's. How do they feel?

Nemo [01:20:04] Heavy, man.

John Dehlin [01:20:05] Like, if you were. If you were running, could you run and beat someone off?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:11] Jump over a log and jump over

John Dehlin [01:20:13] logs and three different people?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:15] Yeah, I mean, it's just.

John Dehlin [01:20:17] Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:18] I mean, again, I. It's like I feel bad because I don't want to be, like, outright disrespectful, but this story reads more like John Wick than it does a realistic story. And, you know, imagine too. And again, we will move on. But you, if you believe the story, he's running at top speed. He gets by one guy, runs a top speed, gets by a second guy. By the time he gets that third guy, that dude's gonna be dead tired. I mean, that third person's gotta be just thrilled to see Joseph Smith two miles into a run with 40 to 60 pound plates. And yet Joseph Smith says he basically was able to just fight him right off and stiff arm him and just keep going into the end zone. I just. It's.

John Dehlin [01:20:51] On the other hand, it plays great into this narrative of Joseph being a glorious, you know, next to Jesus in power and goodness and righteousness. The whole Joseph, no one could ever beat him at the log pole or stick. It plays into this narrative of Joseph as archetype, super male superhero.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:21:12] It does. And the story, it reads that way. And again, we don't have to keep going. I have to point that story out because, again, you have to believe that. And so we've already kind of covered this, but These plates are 40 to 60 pounds. Joseph's got a bad leg. He's not going to be able to run that fast and jump over logs. And if the treasure diggers truly knew Joseph was heading back, why in the world would they space themselves out to give Joseph time in between attacks? You would think because they do it all at once. These treasure diggers are, according to these narratives, they're all talking, they're all angry at Joseph. You would think they would just wait for him at the end and just be like, we know. Because they know where he's got to go. They know the path from the hill. They know the hill. He's going to. They know where he's going home, you know, and so I just don't want to say. And then the last point is I don't know if it was on that slide or not. But again, you know, isn't it convenient that when he goes to bring the plates home, he leaves Emma at home and so there's no witness. Right. And so he leaves her at home. So now there's no witness of these attacks, but we can go to the next slide. It's fine. And so he gets home, he is out of breath. He put, there's. There's like an account where he puts the, the plates through the window and they put him in the lockbox right away. And I think there's another account where he walks in with them and he says he's being attacked and they run out. And. And of course, this, you know, the narrative is that the, the assailants peel off at the end because they don't get caught. Which, again, you know, I don't get. But. So Dan Vogel speculates that the reason his thumb was hurt was not because he was attacked by people. Because when you're putting these plates together, those rings, those D rings are going to be the hardest thing to bend. And so you're going to be using your fingers to try to bend it. And it would be really easy because of course you're going to put the most pressure on your thumb. You know, you could dislocate it pretty easily. You could pop it out. If you're having to put the kind of pressure you would need to put to bend metal, it would make a lot more sense. And the, the other takeaway here is he gets home and no one's allowed to look at the plates when he gets home. And there are some later recollections that people feared they would be struck dead if they did. I couldn't really find a lot of evidence to show that. That was like a firsthand account. So I don't really put a whole lot of weight into that. But I do think that Joseph Smith knew they couldn't pass visual inspection. So I think that's why he covered them up and put them in the lockbox as quick as he could. And then just to summarize, all of this fits. Treasure digging. No one else can see the treasure. You know, of course, Joseph Smith couldn't have anyone else witnessing it. You know, you've got all the power of three and all the way the story reads, it just all of it fits. Treasure digging from start to finish.

Why Joseph Needed Physical Plates as a Prop

John Dehlin [01:23:35] And so just to be clear, if it isn't, if it all didn't happen as Joseph claimed, then what's going on here is Joseph feels like he needs some plates to be able to advance the narrative with these people, that he's kind of fooling around him. But he probably doesn't have time to inscribe characters in all of them, nor does he have golden plates, which would be more valuable. So he needs to fashion plates, but he has to hide them both because they're probably not gold and probably because they don't meet visual inspection. There's no inscribed characters. And so he's trying to have this material object that is sufficient for the people around him. Yeah, you know, to, to advance the narrative. Is that what you're saying?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:24:24] Certainly would be for me, I mean, I think it, at this point this is, you know, and it's funny because I don't know if I, maybe I have in a slide, I can't remember. But you know, with treasure digging you're not allowed, if you're the, the financer of a treasure dig, you're not allowed to look at the rock that the seer is using. Right. So you can't see the vision, you can't see the treasure, the treasure guardian, but you can see the physical reward, assuming there would be one, which there, there never was. But as a financier of a treasure dig, the only thing you're allowed to see is the physical reward. And in this case that's like the one thing you can't see, you know, so in this case, not only can they not see the visions Joseph having, not only can Emma not even look at him digging, but they can't even see the finished product. And again, I think that's a huge red flag that there's a reason he doesn't want people seeing what he's doing. And so of course you say, well, I was commanded by God to not show it to anyone or else. I think the one story I found was not that Joseph said that he, that they would die if they looked, but if other people looked, Joseph would be the one that would be harmed. And so again, you'll see this later with polygamy, but Joseph is putting on them, hey, if you want to look, just know I'm going to be the one that takes the fall for it. And I think that's a powerful thing. If you believe in Joseph Smith, which these people clearly do, they're true believing people. These are not people that are in on a conspiracy. As far as I Can tell because as Nemo pointed out, there's a lot of opportunities where you would be able to see that and you see the opposite. So, yeah, definitely agree with there. And so that's basically how the plates get there. And then I think.

John Dehlin [01:25:53] And again, the finger injury.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:25:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:57] If it's not as he claimed, it makes perfect sense that he's having to do metallurgy and that he injures himself doing metallurgy.

Nemo [01:26:06] I'm imagining how you would strike someone in such a way that you would. Would injure your thumb.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:26:10] That's another thing too, because you punch like this, you don't. You don't like, stick your thumb. Yeah, it's like maybe he's poking their

John Dehlin [01:26:16] eye with his thumb. Like.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:26:18] Yeah, that's just it, you know? And so again, it's like while he's holding, he's gonna. Every. Every aspect of this makes no sense. And when you really think about it, the details get worse and worse. And again, that it just shouldn't be the case. If this, if this is a true story. You should not have this many. Like I said, this. It fits more with John Wick than it does with 19th century running through a woods fighting people. It just doesn't. It doesn't add up.

John Dehlin [01:26:41] Yeah. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:26:43] And so this is, you know, just a really quickly. I mean, you guys, anyone who has been through the church, and I'm assuming most of you had, if you're watching this, this is just showing the plates. So you've got one third of the plates are unsealed, the two thirds are sealed. Sidney Rigdon said that they translated 14 plates and that made up the Book of Mormon. And that's important for a couple slides from now. And again, the spectacles and the breastplate would not have been seen by anyone. I think there's different accounts of people describing them, but they wouldn't have seen them just because of the fact that they would follow that same pattern of the gold plates where Joseph was not allowed to show them to anyone. So the accounts of the spectacles, they vary. There's different. They're described in different ways, which again tells you that they're not seeing a physical object. And obviously Joseph Smith doesn't use them. So it's kind of an irrelevant point. But that is how the church portrays them looking. So the next one, this kind of was going. This Nemo set right there, it's just to show that these prop sets have been made in recent times. You actually did an episode on Mormon stories, I think, where someone comes in and they use only tools that are available in Joseph Smith's time, and they are able to create this prop set of plates. So Joseph Smith could have created this and then wrapped it in cloth without engraving the characters. But it gives them the sound of metal plates. It gives them the feel of metal plates. And so he could use that as a way to say, I've got them. And obviously you can't see him. And so it's just to point out what Nemo showed earlier, that people have made prop sets of plates only using tools from the 19th century. We're not talking about 20, 22 tools.

Nemo [01:28:06] Yeah. These were made authentically. And you can hear them. You can hear they kind of clutter.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:28:12] Yeah, because. Because they wouldn't be. You wouldn't have perfect pieces of tin, and so they wouldn't be perfectly flat and you get that nice crinkle sound. And it would be. It would look and feel authentic if you were wrapped them in cloth. And it shows that Joseph Smith could have made them because Dan Vogel points out how they actually would put ads in the paper when they had scrap tin for sale and you could get it, they would use them, like off the barrels and stuff. So he could easily get the tin, cut it up, put the holes in, and then that D ring would be the last thing you do. And that's where you could pop out your thumb. And, you know, obviously that would be the big. The big. Then Joseph Smith needs to explain how he hurt his thumb, and that's why he runs to the door out of breath, because it gives a great backstory. And again, that shows how Joseph Smith is really good trying to fill in those holes when he needs to fill, you know, backfill a story.

Nemo [01:28:56] Because these got sent to me from the US I've got.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] I've got a copy, too.

Nemo [01:29:00] Yeah, because they were. But they were from your. Your lovely guest. He sent them over here so that we could have a look at them. But one of the little hooks at the back popped out, and in trying to pop it back in, I was like, I can see how it would have done his thumb in, trying to bend this kind of stiff wire.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:29:16] Yeah, well, like I said, you know, part of my small business is I work with a lot of product that we get in for it. And there are times when I'm working with pallets and you got to push the pieces of the pallets to work, so it's like little piece of wood. Sometimes there's nails, straps, and even then sometimes you're pushing with your fingers and I'll use something like a piece of cardboard on front so it's not directly into my finger. But you could see how easily you could pop something out when you're putting that kind of pressure on straight metal rings. Those are metal bars you're twisting. And, you know, he probably doesn't have a set of Craftsman tools from, you know, Sears. I could just clamp them real quick. And so it makes sense you could do it. And it makes a lot more sense than three people attacking you separately a half mile apart.

Nemo [01:29:57] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:29:57] And punching like. Like that, you know, so.

John Dehlin [01:29:59] And I'll. We'll include in the show notes, hopefully, a link to the episode that we have with the guy who made these plates, because we did a Mormon Stories episode with the guy who made these plates, and he talked about using tools and materials that would have been available to Joseph Smith in 1829.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:30:19] It's definitely worth a watch for anyone who's curious about that.

Problems and Physical Implausibilities of the Gold Plates

John Dehlin [01:30:21] So you have a summary of some of the problems with the golden plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:30:24] So this is just a quick summary of the problems with the gold plates. And first of all, and we didn't really get into this yet, but the idea of lengthy records on gold plates in the Americas, sorry, Americans, typo. It's anachronistic at best. There are no records of lengthy records of really any writing on gold plates in the Americas. Well, our metal plates at all. And even in the old world, there's no lengthy records of gold, of records on metal, any kind of metal. And then, like I said, this entire story is built off treasure digging. So if you take out the treasure digging, you take out the fall equinox date that happens every year, using the Peep seer stone to locate the plates before and after retrieving them, the guardian spirit that's protecting the plates, all of those are treasure digging. And then the last point is, you know, you talk about the spectacles that was added in by Samuel Lawrence. Those are anachronistic as well. The first wearable spectacles were not invented until about the 13th century. And yet these plates were supposedly buried in the 5th century. So you've got, you know, 8th century gap here between when spectacles were invented and when they're supposedly buried in the hill. And so that's another problem. These are not. This is all anachronistic across the board. And the story itself is built off treasure digging. So not only do you have to believe that these things were around when it's completely anachronistic, but then you have to believe treasure digging Brought them through all of this, you know, and again you mentioned probability earlier. You know, my background is in, is in statistics, slightly marketing and research and statistics. You know, again, we don't need to get this long. But probability, when you have multiple events that have to happen, you don't just like add them together, you multiply them. So if you have a six sided die and you need to roll six twice, the odds of that aren't like, you know, 16 plus like 1 12th. It's 136. So it's 1 6.

John Dehlin [01:32:03] It's 16 times 1 6. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:32:05] So if you want to, if you want to get into this issue, like what is the probability that treasure digging works? Multiply that by what is the probability that there were gold plates with lengthy records in the Americas, even though there's absolutely no history then spectacles being invented 800 years earlier and buried with these plates, you know, I mean those all get multiplied so maybe it's one in a billion times one in a million times one. It gets astronomical. And you get to the point where you know, people from the church and actually we'll get to the next slide because you always hear that thing where they'll say, oh, Joseph was the world's greatest guesser because they'll find like a potential bullseye. And it's like, no, no, no, you still have all these other things you got to deal with before you can cherry pick a few hits. And a lot of those hits is, we'll see on this part are not hits at all.

John Dehlin [01:32:44] And I, and if it's okay, I made my own list. And some of this is going to be overlapping and this is not in any way a comprehensive list. I just wrote this down now like there's no evidence of gold mines. There's no evidence of Native Americans being able to work with metals at this level of sophistication anywhere. At best it's, it's, it's just super minor metalworks. There's no evidence of any written ability to even have a written language in North America amongst the Native Americans there? And as soon as you're trying to take this to Mesoamerica, then you've got the problem of how did the plates get from Central America all the way up to the hill, Cumorah. It makes no sense that there's two Cumorahs. Nor does it make sense that somehow the golden plates that couldn't have been created to begin with were then hauled all the way up to New York from a Mesoamerican Native American. There's no evidence of Hebrew, of a knowledge of Hebrew or of Egyptian anywhere North, Central, or South America. So there's no remnants or evidence of Hebrew or reformed Egyptian. Again, the DNA evidence runs counter to this. And then you look at, then you add to it the massive anachronistic content in the Book of Mormon itself, that it's all 19th century content, including Christianity, Christianity, including sermons, Protestant sermons, you know, the King James Version, Christianity before Christ even was born, you know, and then polygamy. And just you start, you look at all the different ways this becomes ridiculous. The Book of Abraham is obviously a mistranslation. Like, how many successive instances of ridiculousness multiplied together in terms of improbability? How many times does that happen before you're like, wow, this starts to stretch. This starts to stretch credibility. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:34:53] And that's the problem with the probability stuff. It's like it doesn't. It multiplies, and so it gets out of control quickly when you start looking at these issues and there's just no way around it. And again, if you want to just say, well, that's how God works, you can do that. But you then have to be willing to say, but this doesn't make sense. And I'm okay with that. You know, I mean, you can't have it both ways. You can't say, yeah, there's gold plates because of xyz, you know, and then when someone presents you with the evidence showing why this wouldn't work, and then say, well, I believe it anyways, and I'm still right. It's like, you know, that that's where I get frustrated with apologetics, because as we'll see, it just doesn't work.

John Dehlin [01:35:25] Let's. And this is. Before you talk about apologetics, I just want to offer if you are a believing Mormon or if you're a Mormon apologist and you think there's a plausible explanation for all of this, I want to hear it. We'll invite you on Mormon stories and you come explain to us all this stuff and tell us how it makes sense. Because if there is a reasonable, rational explanation for all of this, I'm dying to know it. I want to know it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:35:51] Yep, me too.

John Dehlin [01:35:52] I want to know it. Okay, next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:35:54] All right, so this is. So if you go to fairmormon and you look at. There's a page, I think it's right at the front, but it's. It's what they call their best evidences for the Book of Mormon. One of the first things I Think it's the second one on the list is that they have evidence of metal plates being used for engraving records. Now this is. I think I'm. I don't know if I'm saying it right, but I think it's called the Pierci Plates. And they cite these plates, they're from Italy, they call them the Pierci Tablets. And there's three of them. And they cite this as proof that people wrote on metal plates in the ancient world. And so you could see the three plates are all right there. You could see that, you know, especially that middle one. There's a ton of etched plates, symbols. Right. And so if you go to the next slide, this is also used. The church has been doing these. I don't know if they're still doing them, but for a couple years ago, they were releasing these videos on YouTube called Now youw Know, and they're very cartoony. They're very like, almost like talking to you as if you're in like, you know, middle school or something.

John Dehlin [01:36:42] But they're like three minutes long.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:36:44] Yeah, they're like three to five minutes long. And I did a write up of this one on LDSDiscussions.com for the gold plates, but they dropped this line and then they quickly transition out of it. But they say the plates were similar to other ancient metal records that have been discovered by archaeologists in recent years. Ears. And so they're giving a nod to these Peer G tablets. And then they kind of get away. They don't show you. They show you these pictures of clip art type stuff, but it's like, obviously there's nothing there to it. And so they don't want you to look further. Right. But they'll tell you that and then leave. And so if we go to the next slide. So these plates are dated to about 500 BCE and they were found in Italy. I just want to point out real quick, there are no plates like this in the Americas. This is an Old World thing, and that's why they're anachronistic, even if you want to grant this. But each of these plates are about seven and a half by three and a half inches big. The Book of Mormon is about six by eight, which is about 80% bigger, if you want to believe those accounts. Two of the Pierge tablets are inscribed in Etruscan. I don't know if I'm saying that right. And the third is Phoenician. But here's the thing. All three of these tablets together are just 200 words. Just 200 words. And three plates. And that creates a huge math problem for the Book of Mormon that I don't think. The apologists certainly aren't going to tell you this part because this is the part where all of a sudden it blows up right in your face. If you want to cite this as evidence, you're immediately going to have problems that once you dig in, once you understand the context of what these plates are and what they aren't, it's going to blow up in your face immediately.

John Dehlin [01:38:07] Because I just Googled there are 174,610 words in the Book of Mormon, I think.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:16] Well, I had 270,000, so I don't know if I'm off because let's take

John Dehlin [01:38:20] the more conservative number. Well, 174. Go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:24] Well, I'll say if you go to the next slide. I start, I start.

John Dehlin [01:38:26] Okay, okay, okay. Perfect, perfect.

Nemo [01:38:29] Just before we go there, just real quick points out in those now you know, videos because we mentioned this before, in those now you know, videos you look at all those little clip arts they do, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:37] Yeah.

Nemo [01:38:38] And they show you lots of ancient scroll.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:40] Yeah.

Nemo [01:38:40] Lots of ancient looking stuff. They never use the characters document that they have that they ought to be an example of the characters from the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:47] It's amazing, right?

Nemo [01:38:49] Why wouldn't you?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:38:50] Yep. Because they know, they know that it won't. They know the thing with the character that'll be in the next episode because I knew we wouldn't have enough time today. But the, the fact that the church creates a whole new set of characters for reformed Egyptian in those videos tells you how much they know that the actual reformed Egyptian characters Joseph copied are absolutely ridiculous if you look at them.

Nemo [01:39:10] English.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:39:10] Yeah, it's crudely modified English and so they don't want to show that. So they create a whole new set of Egyptian looking characters. And it just when I was doing those, those write ups of those videos, I'm like, wait a second, why these look so different? And then you look at the characters, verse seven, you're like, why would you create a fake set of characters if you have the real deal? And the reason is the same reason Joseph didn't show the plates. They know that they, they know better, they know better, they know better. And they, they still can't bring themselves to admit that this stuff doesn't add up. And yet they'll slowly kind of put these little, I would say deceptive characters into these videos as if they don't have the original. But it's a bit of a Tangent, I guess.

John Dehlin [01:39:46] But yeah, it's also worth stating. Why did he pick reformed Egyptian as the alleged language? Again, he's picking a language that no one could ever translate at that point in time, because otherwise he could have just replicate. If it was Hebrew, he could have just like produced the Hebrew, copied it, and then everyone could have been free to translate it. But that takes the control away. So of course he has to be the translator.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:40:11] But then.

John Dehlin [01:40:12] And so it's got to be a language that nobody knows.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:40:14] It has to be something that needs to be. Needs to be cracked by God. And it also has to be a language that people believed at the time could have, excuse me, a lot of material in a small amount of space, because they believed at the time there could be like 20 to 40. 20 to 40 words per character, which again is a huge problem.

Nemo [01:40:29] It's grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian language.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:40:31] Yeah, exactly.

Nemo [01:40:32] And that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:40:32] And that shows you exactly what they thought of Egyptian and they were wrong. But that was the belief at the time. It wasn't just him. So.

John Dehlin [01:40:38] And also just. And this is related to the plates, why would Jews sailing to America decide to write etch into golden plates Egyptian and not Hebrew?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:40:52] Yeah, exactly. I mean, it makes no sense. And that's the thing. We'll get into that when we get into the anachronisms. But yeah, so the three peerage tablets total 200 words here, 67 words per plate. And like I said, this is more evidence against the Book of Mormon plates than it is for. And the reason is, when I looked it up, I saw the Book of Mormon was a little over 270,000 words. If I'm wrong, we can fix that. Sidney Rigdon said they translated it off of 14 plates. That means that every single one of those plates would need 19,000 words. And that means that the three Peerci tablets would produce just 200 words, which means you're 56,800 words short on just those three tablets. Just those three tablets would be short by, I mean, you know, whatever times that is. And so even if you want to believe that reformed Egyptian could give you 20 to 30 words per character, which again, is nonsensical from a linguistic standpoint, you would still need 630 to 950 characters per plate to make it work. So even, even then, you're still like, you know, over 10 times what's actually on those, on the Peersy tablet. It.

Nemo [01:41:53] It's like for context, that many words, 56,000 words short is, you could say six university dissertations.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:42:02] Yeah. That is how many words that is on three plates. That's just. And that's just three of them. And that's just it. That's why the number math is. Math is really problematic for the Book of Mormon. Not just here in the translation. In the next episode, there's math issues. The Book of Mormon itself has a lot of math issues with the battles and with how very small amounts of people can build these, you know, could build and do metallurgy and all that stuff. So, I mean, this is an area where you could tell that Joseph Smith, as he's telling the story, is not thinking these things through. Because, you know, when you're telling a story, you're not thinking about being fact checked on the math. But yeah, and so the apologists are citing these Peerage tablets as this evidence for the Book of Mormon, and they call it one of the best evidences for the Book of Mormon. And you. I on Twitter, a lot of times on Twitter, I get replies if I, if I post about the plates. And they'll say, have you ever seen the Peerage tablets? It turns out Joseph was the world's best guesser. And I'm like, have you even looked like, do you even understand what you're doing? And that's the problem. Because apologetics are not about understanding context. It's not about proving. It's about giving someone enough plausibility that they can walk away believing.

John Dehlin [01:42:59] Pacifying. It's about pacifying.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:43:02] Yeah, it's pacifying. And so it's like, it's like telling someone, don't look under the hood of that car. It'll drive fine. And then you walk away going, yeah, it'll probably drive fine. You open the hood up and you're like, oh, crap, this car is never going to work again. And so with these tablets, it's like,

John Dehlin [01:43:14] these are not the droids you're looking for.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:43:16] That's all it is.

Nemo [01:43:16] And the thinking has been done. We've done the thinking for you, we've done the hard academia for you, Believe us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:43:22] Yeah, it's like, yeah, this gold plates,

John Dehlin [01:43:25] words thing is a huge smoking gun.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:43:29] When I was doing it, when I was doing this overview and I'm looking at the numbers, I'm like, this is like beyond impossible. Especially if you want to believe Sidney Rigdon's account, which, again, I mean, I know he wasn't there during the plates, but these stories were told. And I, you know, I've seen other ones that say like 12. And then some people say maybe 24, because it's, it'd be like double sided. But I don't know that you could etch on two sides. But anyways, if we go to the next slide it just, it keeps getting worse as you do this math here. So even if we grant the larger size of the, the plates for the Book of Mormon would give you about 120 words. If you go to the peerage plate kind of ratio, you would need 2,250 gold plates to fit the Book of Mormon at the same pace of the peerage tablets. Now remember the Book of Mormon sealed portion is one third and the un or the sealed is two thirds. The unsealed is one third. So that means you need another 4,500 plates to be sealed if that's 2/3. Which means if you want to cite the Peer G tablets as evidence for the Book of Mormon, you would need a set of gold plates that were 6,750 plates. And I mean basic math will tell you why that's not going to happen. And that will also tell you why nobody ever wrote long records on metal. This is a 200 word thing on three tablets, I believe thereit's like a prayer and something else. So it's not records, it's just like a prayer. And whenever you see a record of gold plates it's always very small, very short. And it's usually like a prayer or like some drawings that are etched in. It's not like you know, I Nephi did this or I, you know, you know, I caveman did this. It's, it's, it's usually a prayer or something that is very, you know, it's almost like if you go into someone's home and they've got like a slab of wood, it'll say home is where the heart is. Right? But that's not proof that in the ancient times people wrote on wood planks. You know what I mean? And that's what this kind of is implying.

Nemo [01:45:10] Tablets are like live, laugh, love for ancient times, exactly what they are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:45:13] That's what it is. It's like an inspirational quote painting on your wall. And yet the fair Mormon people are like, this is the best evidence for the Book of Mormon. How could Joseph have known? It's like, yeah, how could he have known? Because this is not what you're, this is not at all what you're implying. It is. And the thing is a fair Mormon was honest. They would tell you this is only 200 words over three plates and tell you how. Then go, go do the math and go in. So even if so, it's 4500 or 6700 plates you would need at that ratio. Just say that it's. You know, they could get 30. You're still talking, like, 200 plates, and that's still way more than they said. And that. There's no way that's true.

John Dehlin [01:45:51] So the golden plates become Thor's hammer at some point where no one can take them off.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:45:55] Nobody's carrying that and nobody's running with it. Nobody's jumping over logs.

John Dehlin [01:45:58] And so somebody, listeners or viewers, somebody needs to make a meme about Thor, Thor's hammer, Joseph Smith and the golden plates. Am I wrong?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:46:07] I mean, that's just it. Like, if that's the case, if someone comes at you with attacking with a knife, you could just slap him with that, because that thing would send. It would send you the next. And again, I'm not trying. I don't want to be facetious. I don't want to make fun of this or make light of it. I'm just saying, like, this is nonsensical. And the moment you want to apply those apologetics to it, then all of a sudden you just open up these other problems and they're not going to answer them because they'll tell you, well, reformed Egyptian was so condensed, but we all know it's not.

John Dehlin [01:46:32] Also, Robert Rittner has told us it doesn't exist.

Nemo [01:46:35] It doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [01:46:35] There's no such thing as there's reformed Egyptian period.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:46:39] Not only is there no reformed Egyptian, but there's no. There's no evidence at all that people in the ancient Americas did anything with Egyptian whatsoever. So to go this route, it defies logic. It's layer upon layer of just bad history. And I don't know what more to say.

Nemo [01:46:53] Well, I mean, if you want to do the maths, and maybe someone in the audience could do this, because I haven't done it. But what you would look at essentially, is for reformed Egyptian to work.

John Dehlin [01:47:02] You.

Nemo [01:47:02] You would essentially be looking at whole chapters, or maybe even multiple chapters of the Book of Mormon having to be contained within a single character.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:47:09] Exactly. And at that point, like, what's the

Nemo [01:47:12] point in writing it down at that point?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:47:13] And just think about it. Think about if you're Mormon abridging these plates, and you're like, okay, here's a year's worth of history, and I'm just going to write the symbol of the letter A turned upside down, and then you expect that on the other side. You know what I mean? It wouldn't even make. If I'm writing it down, even if God's like, I'm gonna help him translate your language, I wouldn't think I'm gonna write an upside down A. And he's gonna know that's a year's worth of history. And that's where it just gets. I mean, it gets ridiculous when you think about it. And again, don't make light of it. I'm just saying. But then it just doesn't work.

Nemo [01:47:43] They also go on, I believe someone, correct me if I'm wrong. They go on later in the Book of Mormon to say, and, oh, if we had a better language, we would have been able to do this more efficiently.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:47:50] I think they do.

Nemo [01:47:51] Massively efficient. If you're getting entire chapters worth in single characters. Yeah. So why are they complaining about inefficiency in their language? For it to work, it has to be super efficient.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:48:01] It's. Yeah, and that's the thing. And it's like the, the, the, the inconsistencies there just get blown up when you start, like, looking, like, just looking at the apologetics of Fair Mormon. When I did that and I did the math, that was one of those aha moments for me where I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is horrible. You know, like, this is so, like, nonsensical. And I know again, you're going to hear, well, with God, all things are possible. I'm just saying it doesn't add up. And it's just so far out there. I don't know what to say, but I've got about 10 minutes left. I don't think there's too many more. I think we're in good shape.

John Dehlin [01:48:35] I think we're in good shape. We're almost done.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:48:36] So this is just comparing. So on the left is what the church kind of puts out. There is evidence of reformed Egyptian, what it would look like on the right is the Pyrgy tablets. I just want to point out, if you look at the Book of Mormon plates there, they're not etched. It's almost like they're writing on ink. Because imagine trying to etch something that small. Again, this is where you get into problems. And that's why writing on metal plates is really bad idea. Because if you were to try to etch that small, and then you compress those plates down to bury them for, you know, all these years, they're going to get messed up. And you're also going to have, you know, imagine etching on delicate metal that close together, that small a carry, and that's why. That's why the piercing tablets on the right, even though they're crammed together, I mean, you could tell why they cannot get that many words on a plate. That's just kind of exemplify. There's no way to what Nemo is saying. You would then have to say that, like, every one of those symbols is like, you know, months worth of history in the Book of Mormon. It just doesn't work.

Nemo [01:49:31] And you can see how crinkled up the plugin plates are there. And this is how strong and straight the Book of Mormon plates shown to be. The reason those are that thin is because that's the only way you could etch them. Exactly. Theories about. I've heard theories about ancient Nephites having effectively invented alloys and putting copper in the middle of gold plates so they could etch it. Right. But it's you having to go through all these mental jumps and loops.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:49:58] Yep.

Nemo [01:49:58] It just won't work.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:50:00] It doesn't work. And that's the whole thing. You need soft metal to etch. But if you have soft metal, then over all those years, especially if you're trying to etch that, that tight together, you're going to screw up all the time. I mean, I mean, just take something that is, you know, go to the store and buy something that you can etch into and try to etch that small, especially if it's pliable and all that. It just, it wouldn't work. And that's why you don't see the old. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls aren't on metal plates for a reason, because scrolls preserve better and they're easier to write, they're easier to store. I mean, I just. It makes no sense in any possible way. And so to cite the Peersy Tablets as evidence, I think is just offensively dishonest. But again, I understand from an apologetic standpoint you need to give something, but it's just they don't give you the context for a reason. And that's, that's really the whole point of the math, is just to say, if you want to cite that, you got to then address the math because the math kills it right away.

John Dehlin [01:50:48] Got it? Yeah, that's. That's a smoking gun that I was not aware of the, the Pirge plates.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:50:54] Yeah, I think the math is just, it just kills it. And that's why when people reply and say, Joseph was the world's greatest guesser, wasn't he? I'm like, do you even know what you're, what you're addressing? And it's just. That's what you know. Yeah, it's frustrating.

Conclusion and Summary of the Golden Plates Evidence

John Dehlin [01:51:06] All right, here's the conclusion slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:51:07] Okay. Yeah, so we did make it. So, yeah, basically, as we've been saying, the gold plates are just a direct continuation of treasure digging, and they're using the exact same tactics he did in all the treasure digs we talked about in our last episode. Joseph seems to give up on the story in 1824, but then after that quote where his father says he wishes he would use it for religious purposes, all of a sudden he picks it back up. And I'm not saying that's the only reason why. I'm just saying the timeline, it fits. Well, I think it's important that Emma came with Joseph Smith, but wasn't even allowed to look at him as he dug. I think that's a really interesting thing to say. She's the right person, but that she can't be anywhere near it. Obviously, we just talked about the math and then just to say, you know, again, without treasure digging, we don't have the gold plates, and without the gold plates, we don't have the Book of Mormon. And so you cannot. The entire foundation of the Mormon Church comes directly out of treasure digging. And there is absolutely no way around that, because we can show you, as we've shown you in these first two episodes, everything comes directly out of it. And so. And again, I don't want to make this black and white. I know people hate when you make a black and white statement, but it's like either treasure digging is real and people could see something, or Joseph was making it up because otherwise the only other option would be to say that God was somehow teaching him something that didn't work, then to teach him something that would work. Even though the stuff that, you know, the later part still doesn't add up because as we've shown, it's just, you know, at some point it just. It's almost insulting to our intelligence. And I know we're looking at this in 2022, but it's almost insulting to our intelligence to go through this and try to even describe why this is plausible. I mean, I just. Sometimes I. Like I said, I wrote this about a year ago when I started this overview stuff, and I was reading it to prepare for today and I forgot some of it. And you're reading it and you're just like, this is just impossible. And, and, and the way the Church presents it is just sometimes it's almost laughable. Like, like I said earlier, it's like a John John Wick movie. And it just, It.

Nemo [01:53:01] It.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:53:02] You know, I don't know what more to say. You guys can obviously jump in on that one.

John Dehlin [01:53:07] Yeah, yeah. No, it is absurd. I mean, angels don't talk to people, or at least in my whole Mormon life, they never did. But they certainly don't deliver. Gold plates and stones don't provide you with magic powers. And the. The book itself is fraught. And then Joseph's behavior is fraught, and the book of Abraham and the Kinderhook plates and, you know, polyandry and underage girls, and it's like, how many. Again, I'm repeating myself. How many instances of completely improbable ridiculousness and. Or charlatan behaviors can you multiply together? It's fine if, if all of this evidence still leaves you with belief. That's totally. We want. We support that. We validate it. We're. We just think it's. We think it's important to provide a realistic context from. So that people can make a reasonable conclusion from the evidence. And certainly the essays and the Saints book, the Gospel topics essays in the Saints book, they don't provide a realistic, honest, sincere context. Neither do any of fair Mormon or Maxwell Institute or farm's apologetics. They're disingenuous. They're intentionally. They omit things. They use pseudoscience. And so what we would say is, don't beat us up for being negative. Just don't trust us because we're claiming to be experts or we're claiming to be the purveyors of all truth. Look at the evidence. Go review the evidence. Read LDS discussions essays. Read the gospel topics essays. Dig into the evidence. Read Dan Vogel. Read Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. Review all the evidence and then think about it and then just decide for yourself the probability and what's most likely.

Nemo [01:55:13] Y.

John Dehlin [01:55:13] You know that, right? And Nemo, I'm really grateful, or whoever it is that's highlighting these super chats. We got a super chat from LC. We got a super chat from LC. It's probably Jen. We got a super chat from lc, which is a donation through YouTube. You know, we're grateful for that. And we're grateful for the super chat from Rachel Heyman as well. Rachel writes, thank you for everything you all do. I've been out for about 12 years, but started listening when my sister's shelf broke last year. I've learned more about the church in the last year than my whole rest of my life. Like LDS discussions or Mike, that's something we're so grateful to you for. Jen commented earlier like she had never heard about the false Alvin prophecy. Like you're teaching us as a convert to the Mormon Church. You're teaching lifelong Mormons, somebody who has been Mormon or ex Mormon for 50 plus years. You are teaching us things that we never learned in three to five decades of constant learning about Mormonism. We owe that to you to Mike. LDS discussions.

Final Reflections and Closing Thoughts

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:56:24] I gotta go in a second. But the thing I would say is, and I mentioned this last video but last episode we did. But like everything I did is for the most part has been out there. I mean there are a few times where I'll come across something and I'll like the math thing. I don't think I saw a lot of people do that with the peers you plays but I mean for the most part. And Nemo, you're aware of this too. Like there's so many people that we're working off of. So you know, Michael Quinn and Dan, Sandra Tanner, Metcalf, Sandra Tanner, Sandra and Gerald Tanner. All this work. And so for me, this was more about putting it together in a way that made sense to me. And like, I always use that puzzle analogy because to me that's how it felt and that's how it works. And for me, in a practical sense, it's like, how do I put these pieces back together without looking at that picture of what the church told me it was? But how the pieces fit. And they fit great. But at the same time, it's not me, it's certainly not my research that led to that. And I think the fact that we have all these people who have been teaching this or have been doing this research for so many years and have been called anti Mormon or been saying that they're misrepresenting and all of a sudden you're like, now the church admits it in their essays even though they're not admitting it all the way. But it's just like, I think for me it was more just putting it together in a way that I hope helps people. And it helps because it made sense to me. Hopefully it makes sense to other people in the same way. But yeah, it's definitely not, definitely not my, you know, my work. I'm definitely just, you know, kind of working off the backs of everyone else that has done it before me. And hopefully I can pay it forward in the way that they've helped me in the process.

John Dehlin [01:57:44] Love it.

Nemo [01:57:44] Standing on the shoulders of giants.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:57:46] Exactly. I can't take credit for it. I'm Just putting it together in a way that made sense to me, and I'm hoping helps other people, but. But I think that was really the goal was just to try to find a way for me that I can make sense of, because it really. When you go down the deep dive, as everybody knows, it's really painful to kind of figure out that things you were taught weren't true. And then you're trying to make sense of it, and you're trying to figure it out, and you're getting apologetics in one ear, you're getting critics in the other ear, and you're trying to make sense of who's right. And that's a long process. And so for me, it was just taking notes, and then it just kind of worked that way. And I'm so sorry I have to bail, but I got to go pick up my kids, so. No worries. I wanted to hear Nemo's final words. I'll have to listen to it a little later, but thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure. Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [01:58:26] Thanks, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:58:26] See you guys. Yeah, we'll see you guys all soon.

John Dehlin [01:58:28] Okay, thanks, Mike. Nemo. Nemo. What are. What are your final words? And then I'll have. I'll share a couple, too.

Nemo [01:58:34] Oh, I feel like that was hyped up. I'm not sure I have much to say. Beyond LDS discussions is wonderful. His website is definitely worth checking out. And all this that we've been talking about tonight really is new in a sense that the church is finally admitting it. And I think it's excellent that now they are admitting it. We encourage conversation about these things. We encourage conversation about these things that were never talked about before or were talked about in dusty corners. Let's not let these things live in dusty corners. In Sunday school classes is where they need to be, rather than kind of whispered conversations in hallways. I think if the church is going to get this out there, good, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what it then means for the origins of Mormonism. That's what I would say, and that's what I'm really grateful that kind of we're able to do tonight and that we'll keep doing, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [01:59:24] Yeah. And what I'll add to you and Mike is, number one, huge thanks to Mike. Two, huge thanks to you, Nemo, for the wonderful work you do and for being here. People love your participation in this. Three, I love that Mike brought it down to what really matters. What really matters is people, you know, LGBT Mormons continue To die by suicide. Lgbt, you know, Mormon mixed faith marriages continue to face intensive distress and sometimes divorce and the destruction of entire family where children get alienated from their parents, families get torn apart as some lose their faith and then the believing family ostracizes or marginalizes them. People are disinherited, People's, you know, lose their. And then there's just. When people lose their faith, they lose their community, they lose their friends. And then of course there's, there's just Mormons who without all the information, are giving 10% of their income for life, a two year mission service and then making eternal, not just lifelong, but eternal commitments with massive implications. The stakes are so high in Mormonism. There's good, there's good in Mormonism, but there's also a lot of harm and a ton of sacrifice where whether or not this stuff is true really, really matters. So this isn't about us picking on the church. It's not about us being negative. It's not about us trying to tear things down or even destroy faith. I would say that this is one of the most honest, accurate discussions about the Golden Plates ever held within Mormonism on, you know, in a public forum, period. And that's, that's not lauding us, that's showing the anemic nature of, of historical Mormon discourse around Mormon history and the Golden Plates. And all we're trying to do is just inform people, tell us we're wrong, tell us what we got wrong, tell us where we're thinking about this wrong, challenge us. We'll bring you on. But all we want to do is present the evidence in a thoughtful, accurate, reasonably contextualized way so that people can make informed decisions. Because the stakes are so high.

Nemo [02:01:49] Informed consent matters when you're giving so much to the organization.

John Dehlin [02:01:52] Yeah. Yep. Thanks for that summary. Yeah. So other than that, we just want everyone to know, thank you for your support. If you support Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation, we thank you. If you don't. And if you value Nemo coming on, if you value Mike coming on, if you value this LDS discussion series, please become a monthly donor. Click go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly contributor and we'll be able to pay Gerardo, pay Jen for the show notes and the time codes, pay for this equipment, for the Internet services, for Nemo's time, for my time, and just for the organization, for the accountants, for the attorneys, for all the things that we need, please become a monthly donor. Your support matters. We can do this if you support us. And if you can't support us, we can't do this. So please support us if you can. And check out Nemo the Mormon on YouTube. It's a phenomenal site. Check out all the British invasion, which includes 21st century saints, which includes priesthood dispatches, which includes Mormon civil war. What am I forgetting? Nemo.

Support, Future Episodes, and Sign-Off

Nemo [02:03:00] Just Laura and Julian through Sunstone uk, but that's about it.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] And support freaking black menaces. Be a menace. Shout out to black menaces on TikTok and on Instagram. They're my personal heroes along with Nemo. They're my heroes. And. And support black menaces.

Nemo [02:03:23] Awesome.

John Dehlin [02:03:23] And check out these essays on, on ldsdiscussions.com there's like 60 of these amazing essays. Plus he does an entire review of the Saints series. Yeah. Line by line. All right, Nemo, anything else?

Nemo [02:03:39] No, I think, I mean, someone in the comments suggested that we go through Saints with Mike at some point.

John Dehlin [02:03:45] They said to do it in an episode. They said do it in an episode.

Nemo [02:03:48] I know we go long here, but like that's, that's ridiculous.

John Dehlin [02:03:52] That would be like a five week episode.

Nemo [02:03:54] But after this, who knows?

John Dehlin [02:03:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but, but hopefully

Nemo [02:04:00] if you want to see it, hit that subscribe button so that you know when it's happening.

John Dehlin [02:04:03] And we're also grateful for the super chats. Like right now we've got 376 people you can donate through YouTube. You can click on the little dollar sign in your YouTube app and you can donate to this program to keep it going. Or if you're in Facebook, there's a Stars feature that you can use which donates revenue to the Open Storage foundation as well. Cool. All right, Nemo, you're the best. We keep doing good work.

Nemo [02:04:29] I'll keep trying.

John Dehlin [02:04:30] And our goal is to have you interview if you are a progressive or post Mormon or a believing Mormon in the uk, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East. We want Nemo to be kind of the international correspondent for Mormon stories. Reach out to me, reach out to Nemo. Send an outline of your story. And we want Nemo to start doing Mormon stories episodes where I'm the co host or Gerardo or Jen or others are the co hosts and it's Nemo himself who is leading those interviews.

Nemo [02:05:09] Yeah, no pressure.

John Dehlin [02:05:11] And thanks to Doug. Doug Vincent just shot us a super chat, Doug. Thanks Doug. We appreciate it. And you guys can keep doing this even after we've stopped the episode. All right, Nemo, you're the best, Mike. Thank you. And we hope to do this series at least once a week for the next year or so. And so if you know, look for more episodes in the coming weeks and months. And also please email us with your support or questions@mormonstoriesgmail.com Nemo, how do people reach out to you?

Nemo [02:05:45] Nemo the Mormon gmail.com okay.

John Dehlin [02:05:48] And we'll include that in the show notes. And then finally, you can also support us by giving us a positive review on Apple Podcasts app. We have haters that give us one star reviews that have brought our average review score down from 4.9 to 4.8. I'd love to get it back to 4.9. The only way that's gonna happen is if you reach out and give us positive reviews on Apple Podcasts. You can also give us positive reviews on Spotify and on the Mor Stories podcast Facebook page. You can also just share these episodes with as many people as possible. You can also subscribe to us and follow us on on YouTube, Facebook page, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter and all that. Helps with the algorithms. And commenting. Commenting here. Also helps with the algorithms. All right, Nemo, you're the best.

Nemo [02:06:42] Yeah, catch you later.

John Dehlin [02:06:44] Thanks so much. Have a good night and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care everybody.

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