← Church History Matters
Church History Matters
105 The Intractable Witnesses of the Book of Mormon - Come Follow Me - E8 - Bonus Episode - Feb 17-23
01:19:06
Loading summary
Transcript181 lines
- [00:00]
Casey
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Scott
Come Follow Me edition where we are systematically diving into every section of the Doctrine and Covenants throughout the year 2025. We have a lot to talk about today, so let's get into it. Hello, Casey.
- [00:22]
Casey
Hello, Scott. How are you doing?
- [00:24]
Scott
Well, man, welcome to the, what are we calling these?
- [00:26]
Casey
Bonus editions, Special bonus material. And it was a genius idea, I think, to include these supplementary lessons where we get to dive a little deeper into the history surrounding the Revelations and the Doctrine and Covenants. And today we have a special guest with us, Dr. Daniel C. Peterson. Say hi, Dan.
- [00:44]
Daniel C. Peterson
Hello. Good to be here.
- [00:46]
Casey
Yeah, so good to have you with us.
- [00:48]
Scott
We came locked and loaded today with Daniel Peterson. So we're very excited to talk about Book of Mormon witnesses together.
- [00:54]
Casey
And Dan, I want to point out that you're special because I think you are our first repeat guest. No, we've had Brian Hales on twice. But you and Brian Hales, we interviewed you a couple months ago about succession in the presidency. We couldn't think of anybody more knowledgeable than you about the Book of Mormon witnesses. So here you are again. Sounds good to be here because you're so good at what you do. Here's a little bit about Daniel C. Peterson. He has a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a professor emeritus of Islamic Studies in Arabic at Brigham Young University, where he founded the university's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He has published and spoken extensively on both Islamic and Latter Day Saint subjects. He's formerly chairman of the board for the foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, or farms, and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. His professional work as an Arabist focuses on the Quran and on Islamic philosophical theology. He's the author, among other things, of a biography entitled Muhammad, Prophet of God. And with his wife, he served as an executive producer for the films Witnesses that came out in 2021, undaunted witnesses, the Book of Mormon that came out in 2022, and the newly released Six Days in August, which came out in 2024. Daniel Peterson, welcome back to our show. And we're so grateful you took some time out of your day to meet with us.
- [02:22]
Daniel C. Peterson
Thanks for having me. You're gluttons for punishment. Not at all.
- [02:27]
Scott
We know a great guest when we see one, so we're happy to have you here. Maybe we could start out with that little tidbit that Casey just mentioned in your bio. You actually have have not just studied the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, you have actually directed an entire movie about the Witnesses. Tell us a little bit about the making of your 2021 film called Witnesses. What led you to make that film?
- [02:50]
Daniel C. Peterson
My wife and I were the executive producers on that film and it evolved out of, as many of these things do, sort of coincidences or maybe not coincidences. One of our neighbors, a good friend, a member of our ward, was for years, until his very recent retirement, the head of arts production at byu. But he was also involved in a lot of filmmaking with Lee Groberg and people like that for PBS and BYU Television and so on. And we were talking at one point about filmmaking as a way of reaching audiences that maybe academic articles with footnotes and books even don't necessarily reach and getting stories out there. And we began thinking, well, maybe we ought to try to do this. And long story, I won't tell you, but. But eventually we settled on the Witnesses. I gave them some reading to do for a project that we were working on and they came back and said this would make a great movie. Well, I'd always been really interested in the Witnesses. I was influenced very much by reading shortly after it came out, I think Richard Lloyd Anderson's book, Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, which I still think is one of the great books ever written by a Latter Day Saints. Scholarly. And it influenced me a lot, made me think that the witnesses were really, really important. And I thought a lot of people don't recognize how strong their testimony is and how reputable they were. Well, part of my concern was that I talked to members of the church and realized that many of them didn't know the story of the witnesses, didn't realize how powerful the witness testimonies are. I would encounter people. I just began to ask. It just probably became sort of irritating to my wife. But we'd get to talking, oh, you're making a movie. And I'd say, well, yeah. Do you know much about the witnesses? Do you know who the witnesses were? And they' well, I think Sidney Rigdon was one of them and maybe Brigham Young and just any name they happen to recall from early church history. So clearly they didn't know the names of the witnesses. They can't have known much of their story. And then I began encountering even members of the church who would. They would run into critics and they would buy the criticism. Well, you know, but the witnesses never actually claimed to see the plates with their actual eyes. They never claimed to actually touch the. They more said that they imagined they envisioned the plates in their mind's eye or with the Eye of Faith or something like that. And I'd say, no, no, no, no, that is not true. This is one of the reasons we've got to make this film is to tell that story. And I'm really excited to say that. Witnesses was completed shown in 2021. It's been available in DVD and on Blu Ray and for streaming. But for the month of February, I think we can. Well, we can do this. We've checked the contracts and everything. We're under some limitations with streaming services that we've given rights to, but we're putting it up now in as many locations as we can for free. There'll be a link to the Witnesses film. People want to watch it. They don't have to pay a nickel because we really want it to be seen. The Interpretive foundation is a non profit foundation. And so we're not trying to make money off of this. So there'll be no charge. People can watch it and the documentary that goes along with it. Undaunted Witnesses of the Book of Mormon is going to be up for free in perpetuity.
- [05:56]
Scott
Right. So if anyone wants to watch Witnesses, they can do it for free. And you're going to give us a link. We'll just put it in the description of this video.
- [06:04]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [06:05]
Scott
So if you want to pause this interview right now and go watch the video, you can. And then make sure you come on back and we'll. We'll keep going. But that's so great. Well, thank you, Dan. It's super generous.
- [06:16]
Daniel C. Peterson
Thank you.
- [06:17]
Casey
And the movie turned out really well, if I don't say so myself. And I think a lot of the team returned to make Six Days in August, which just came out a couple months ago.
- [06:26]
Daniel C. Peterson
They did. It was the same core filmmaking team. We had the same person play Joseph Smith and some carryover, the same Sidney Rigdon, the same Emma and so on. So it's very much a successor to that film, as of course, Brigham Young is the successor in the film to Joseph. It was. It's fun. Fun is not always the word, but it's a challenge. But it's satisfying to create something like that. I never imagined myself as a movie maker, but here I am. And I do think it's a powerful way of telling the story so that people will come away knowing more than they ever had known before. And I won't say this for all, but probably some people who probably never would sit down and read a book about it or read an academic article or about the Witnesses, but we wanted them to Know the story well.
- [07:11]
Scott
And I just want to say two things about what you just said. So number one, if anyone wants some great supplemental material for this week, I mean, go get a copy of the Witnesses, that movie. Watch it with your family, watch it with your class show segment, show clips.
- [07:27]
Daniel C. Peterson
And I might mention, too, that we are probably going to begin very shortly, possibly even, well, by the time this comes out. Certainly we're going to put our docudrama that we did, which was commentary on Witnesses, up online for free, just freely accessible, or we do interviews with scholars. And I think that'll be good material. Want to think about the Witnesses more? We decided we wanted to get it out there. We're not looking to make money off it. We're a nonprofit, but we want people to see these things and hear the stories.
- [07:58]
Casey
Very good scholars. Garrett Dirkmont was one of the ones involved, and I love Garrett and have a ton of respect for him. And I'll also point out, too, that when you say you're a nonprofit, you're talking about the Interpreter foundation, which just has mountains of great material on the restoration, on restoration scripture, and it's all available for free. And one thing the Interpreter does really well is not only can you download a PDF, but you can usually listen to an article.
- [08:26]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [08:27]
Casey
It's just there in ways that make it really accessible. And we've used a lot of Interpreter research in our podcast on a number of different subjects.
- [08:36]
Daniel C. Peterson
Well, you know, we're trying to get the. Get the material into every medium that we can, want to reach people where they are. If they prefer to listen, then we want to be there. If they want to read, we want to be there. If they like videos, we want to be there. The idea is to get the word out. We're trying.
- [08:52]
Scott
It's wonderful. And that was the second thing I wanted to say was you mentioned investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses, that book by Richard Lloyd Anderson. And we were joking before we pushed record today that book reading has gone down in the world, and there's bookstores that have been closing. But if there are any of you out there that still like reading books, like full books, that is one of the best. I 100% agree with you.
- [09:13]
Daniel C. Peterson
I'll tell a story. I was sitting in the back of a. I hate to say this, but it was an exceptionally boring gospel doctrine lesson many years ago. And a member of our High Council came and sat back with me in the back. I had a briefcase with me, and I had it open, and I was rereading Richard Anderson's book Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses and this member of the High Council whose name many of you out there would recognize, retired now from religious education at byu, sat down next to me. He says, what are you reading? And I told him and he said, next to the Scriptures, I think that may be the most faith promoting book I've ever read. I thought that was quite an endorsement for Brother Anderson's Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses. I love the book and to me it's a basic introduction. He did other things and other people have written other things since, of course, about the witnesses. But that's a good starting place. That's a very persuasive book. Yeah.
- [10:10]
Casey
We mentioned in our last episode a book that came out a couple years ago by Larry Morris called the Documentary History of the Book of Mormon. And I can't recommend that highly enough. It's just the documents Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses is maybe a little more user friendly because Anderson puts it into a narrative. But Larry Morris's book on the Book of Mormon witnesses is amazing stuff too.
- [10:33]
Daniel C. Peterson
That's another really good book. And yeah, I was so taken with Brother Anderson. We interviewed him not long before he died. I wanted to catch him on videotape before he passed away. He was in his 90s and when he did pass away before our movie came out, I insisted at the end. The movie Witnesses is dedicated to Richard Lloyd Anderson, a witness for the witnesses.
- [10:55]
Scott
Love that.
- [10:55]
Daniel C. Peterson
I felt so strongly about his contribution, which really was life changing for me.
- [10:59]
Scott
Wow. Tremendous. Well, great, great introduction. And if you just pause the video there and you don't see anything else that we say, the rest of this video, you've got the resources you now need to just have a great experience with the witnesses. But we would like to continue here and then actually get into the story of the witnesses and a lot of what you have to say, Dan. And so I don't know, Casey, where should we go next? Throw them a good question here.
- [11:20]
Casey
Well, Dan, I wanted to start with maybe you retelling an anecdote I heard on an interview you did where you talked about, I think it was a non Latter Day Saint acquaintance and he said something close to I can dismiss everything about your church, but sometimes the witnesses still keep me up at night or something like that. Do you remember that story?
- [11:43]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, I do. I think he said he just didn't know how to get around them. I'm probably thinking of a couple of stories. I remember one friend who said, well, you know, the plates bother me, the witnesses bother me. The idea that there were literal plates there, he said, but I don't know what the function of them was because it's not clear that Joseph, he didn't translate them the way a modern scholar would, with a lexicon there and furrowed brow and going line by line through the plates. He said, so what's the point of the plates? And I said, well, I think for one thing, they're an indigestible lump in the throat of people like you who, you know, what are you going to do with them? The witnesses say there were plates, there was an angel, but there were these physical objects there. We hefted the plates. And so the eight witnesses say, you know, if it's just Joseph making something up, which is what I think he thought, then that just doesn't really fit your worldview, your model. So I think the witnesses are meant to be a problem for critics. I know a lot to just wave them aside. I think maybe we'll come to that later in the podcast, but I just don't think you can do that. They're difficult to get rid of.
- [12:48]
Scott
They are a lion in the path to just a purely secular worldview. It's like God dropped a bomb into secularism. In the three and eight witnesses to say, you got to deal with these, speaking to people in the latter days.
- [13:00]
Daniel C. Peterson
You can say that, you know, it's just Joseph Smith's subjective experience. Maybe he's hallucinating, maybe he's lying, whatever, it's just Joseph. You're just depending on Joseph. But it's not just Joseph. It's Joseph and 11 others. Put them together, that's 12. There may be significance in that number, but there are even the so called, well, what I call the unofficial or informal witnesses. I don't know how many, half dozen of them. And they're seeing and hefting and holding things and hearing things where you can't just say, well, it's just Joseph. He's either lying or he's just. He's an imaginative boy. Yeah, that doesn't cut it. You've got to deal with these other credible witnesses. I mean, the first vision you can brush aside, I suppose, if you want to, and say, well, nobody else saw it, nobody else heard it. Okay, but you can't do that with the experience of the witnesses. You just can't. It puts the story into the world of objective reality. There is not only the plates, but some other objects that people see and hold and touch and, and so on, and they shouldn't exist if it's just Joseph making it up.
- [14:06]
Scott
And it seems like Joseph was very aware of that.
- [14:08]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [14:09]
Scott
He doesn't seem to lead out in the first decade with the first vision experience. He seems to always lead out with the Book of Mormon. If you want evidence, you want tangible evidence that God is again revealing, then you need to read this text and you need to deal with these witnesses. It seems like that's where Joseph liked to start the conversation.
- [14:27]
Daniel C. Peterson
To some extent, he may have thought of the first vision. There's a reason to believe this as a personal revelation to him. He was worried about. He had a conviction of his sins. He'd heard enough in the sort of revivalist preaching around him and so on that he was concerned about how to be saved. He went into a grove and asked which church he should join. I sometimes wondered if he didn't afterwards think, all I wanted to know was, should I be a Methodist or a Presbyterian? I wasn't expecting this. But it was more for his personal guidance. It was not for leading a new church or something. But then things change with the Book of Mormon and all of that, and that becomes in some ways the beginning of the public ministry. Not so much the first vision, which then, as his understanding of it grows and ours does, looms more and more important. We now think it's extraordinarily important. Of course it was. But important in a different way maybe.
- [15:23]
Scott
Yeah. The evidence, if you want evidence that there is a restoration underway, you go to the Book of Mormon and you go to the Book of Mormon witness is you don't necessarily reach first for the first vision because there is no tangible, there is no external.
- [15:38]
Daniel C. Peterson
Right, Right.
- [15:39]
Scott
But we have all of that with the Book of Mormon text and these witnesses.
- [15:43]
Daniel C. Peterson
And people are saying, look, it wasn't just Joseph who saw that angel. I saw him too. Or it wasn't just Joseph who claimed to have plates. A whole bunch of us saw them and held them and turned pages in them. Then it takes it out of the realm of fantasy and into hard reality.
- [15:59]
Casey
Empirical results.
- [16:01]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [16:01]
Scott
And in our last episode we did, just a couple days ago, we went through the history of the three witnesses. And there's that beautiful moment where Joseph lays on his. On the bed next to his mom in the Whitmer home and it says, mother, you do not know how relieved I am.
- [16:15]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [16:16]
Scott
There's now at least three people.
- [16:17]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [16:18]
Scott
Who know. I do not go about trying to.
- [16:20]
Daniel C. Peterson
Deceive folks that to me, that anecdote seems so real to me. I can imagine exactly that reaction that everybody's thinking, I'm a loon. I'm a fraud. I'm a con artist. But now at least three people know I'm not. They've seen it as I have, and they will have to bear testimony to it. I think he actually adds that note. They will have to bear witness. David Whitmer later said that he was told Moroni told him that if you ever deny your testimony, you will be damned. So no matter how rough it got, they couldn't back up. They knew it was true and they knew what the consequences would be. They'd been given this trust. But there's a responsibility with it. You must bear testimony of what you've seen and heard.
- [17:13]
Casey
Like you mentioned, Dan, they're not as knowledgeable on the witnesses as maybe the witnesses. Warren, we've shifted our tactics so that we focus on the first vision when we're introducing the gospel. And maybe the witnesses are a stronger point to start. So if you don't mind, could we just go through each one of the three witnesses and then we'll maybe bounce around on the eight witnesses. So let's start with Oliver Cowdery. I guess we're just going in alphabetical order.
- [17:38]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [17:39]
Casey
Give us an overview of Oliver Cowdery and his experience as a witness and what happens in later life to him.
- [17:48]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah. Oliver was trying to remember what Richard Anderson told me once about him. He thought that the three witnesses represented three kinds of types of humanity in a way. And Oliver was sort of the intellectual. Martin Harris was not an intellectual. David Whitmer was not an intellectual, but Oliver was. He had a kind of florid prose style. He eventually became a practicing lawyer. He was a bright guy, probably as bright as anybody in the early church, I would think. And so he's interesting from that regard. Richard thought there actually there was a deliberate choice to get sort of three representative specimens, if you will, to be witnesses. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a curious thought. Oliver was certainly that. And of course, he comes on as a. As a scribe early on. His spelling was not great. Probably nobody's was in the early 19th century.
- [18:35]
Scott
I mean, they don't have spell check.
- [18:37]
Daniel C. Peterson
No, they don't. And things hadn't been standardized, so people would even spell their names in different ways, sometimes within the same document, just however the mood hit them and whatever it sounded like. But he was probably as good a scribe as Joseph could have found. He wasn't the first one. There were others, Emma for a while, and some of Emma's siblings and Martin Harris for a while. But Oliver then becomes the principal scribe, and he's well equipped for that and is very, very dedicated, becomes the second elder of the Church. Of course, he's there for priesthood restoration as well as the Book of Mormon experience. So he really is maybe the second witness in a way, to Joseph Smith himself, to the events, the major events of the early history of the Church. Really impressive guy. But he eventually falls away from the church and it's over. Issues like early plural marriage and things like that that Oliver just can't put up with. He blows up with Joseph Smith. There are a lot of stresses and strains during the period when all of the witnesses leave the church. The collapse of the Kirtland bank, the persecutions, a whole bunch of things happen. And Oliver leaves the church. And I will say what a lot of people often say, and I agree with them, that the departure of the witnesses from the church is not a weakness in their testimony. It's a strength in a way, it adds credibility to them.
- [19:51]
Scott
Flesh that out. How is that a good thing?
- [19:53]
Daniel C. Peterson
Well, because at a certain point, Oliver could have said, well, I always thought Joseph was kind of a con artist. You know, I think he fooled me on the Book of Mormon. There were props, and I was taken in. He's a liar. My testimony has been misrepresented, but he never does that. And even when he's up against the wall during his non LDS phase, if you will, he's out of the church for a while. Most of his last years. There are accounts that show him when he's pushed, he will say, no, I saw what I saw and I heard what I heard. And, you know, I know this is going to destroy my credibility, my reputation in this area, but I will not deny what I saw. And so that, to me, makes him more impressive, not less. He's not profiting from the church. It damages him. He had political aspirations. Well, that was hopeless. Once the fact came out that he was allied with the Golden Bible, you know, the Mormon fraud, then he couldn't be a political success. He really wanted that. I think he had real ambitions and might have been successful, but he was involved in newspaper publishing, but it always hurt him, and yet he never backed away. And then ultimately, he does return to the church at a time when returning to the church is not personally profitable. They're being cast out. They're headed westward. He joins the church. He doesn't make it westward because he dies before he can. It's not like he's joining a triumphal procession. He's if you will, swimming toward a sinking ship. At least it might have looked like that at the time. And so to me, he's very impressive. And he's impressive almost precisely because of his period of disaffection. You know, I've said before, I don't care what his opinions are on theological issues. I don't care what his opinions are on this or that. He disagreed with Joseph's. Joseph was trying to have a Latter Day Saint economic policy. The Kirtland bank and things like that offended Oliver. He wanted to be a. A frontier American businessman, an entrepreneur, you know, his own free market guy. And I'm sympathetic to that. But Joseph said, no, we don't have private economics in the Church. The Church needs money. What we have and are belongs to the Lord and we need to offer it. And that bothered Oliver. Some of his statements. He says, basically, I'm a free American citizen. You can't tell me what to do economically. Yeah, well, the Lord can tell you what to do in any sphere of your life.
- [22:19]
Casey
I reviewed a lot of the documents surrounding Oliver's excommunications, which are all on the Joseph Smith paper site, by the way. And he was kind of grandiose where. I mean, it was kind of a, you can't excommunicate me. I'm resigning. And his primary reason is, you're trampling on my rights as an American citizen by telling me what to do with my money.
- [22:39]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, yeah.
- [22:40]
Casey
That was surprising that he does hint at stuff like plural marriage or doctrinal disagreements. But his big issue seems to have been money. And they were telling him what to do with his land and his money.
- [22:52]
Daniel C. Peterson
And I understand that, and I understand how it looks sometimes people outside the church. I remember a friend when I was younger in grad school who used to ask me questions about the church. Like, if the Church asked you to give up your graduate school and go off and serve as a leader in Kazakhstan or something, would you do it? Yeah. Or a friend of mine who was called to be a general authority left a very promising Ivy League academic career to become a member of the 70. He said his friend. I asked him, how do your friends react to this? He said, well, it's like I'd suddenly announced I was leaving to join a Buddhist monaster. And some of them, he said, well, can't you just tell Mr. Hinckley, thank you, I'm very honored, but no? He says, I don't know how to answer that. I said, no, I really can't. But not because I couldn't because I won't. And he said, it makes us look servile, like we've given up our freedoms as Americans. But he says, yeah, you know, if the president of the church calls you to serve in a position. Yeah. My response will be, yes, that looks un American. It looked un American to Oliver. I think the demands that the church puts on us. It was hard in those early years for people who were used to being free American citizens to understand that there's a law of obedience in the kingdom. And you may be at the height of your career, but if you're called to go serve, preside over the mission in Mongolia, you go. Lots of members of the 12 have given up promising careers to do just that. I understand. I have a friend that's related very closely to the late Elder Perry of the quorum of the 12. And he said, elder Perry on occasion would think, well, boy, I was just on the edge of achieving economic success in business, and I was called to be a general authority. He says, I've always wondered, how far would I have gone? Well, that's water under the bridge. But, you know. But people like that willingly give it up and go where they're asked to go. Oliver had a problem with that. But then he comes back and bears strong testimony at the end of his life and on his deathbed, and so he's an impressive witness for that. The deathbed testimony often has a special place, even in the law, that people who are about to die if they say this happened or so, and so is guilty or I did it. That's taken very seriously.
- [25:02]
Casey
Yeah. And Oliver, I think it's 1848, he comes back into the church, he spends 10 years after he leaves outside, comes back, and then his deathbed testimony actually is linked to another one of the witnesses.
- [25:15]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yes.
- [25:15]
Casey
We don't appreciate this, but Oliver is a member of the Whitmer family, married to Elizabeth, and he goes to Richmond, where the Whitmers are based, after he rejoins the church. I've always assumed it was to try and get them to come back, too, but I don't know if there's documents that support that or not.
- [25:33]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, I don't know.
- [25:34]
Casey
And that's where he passes away.
- [25:36]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [25:37]
Casey
With David Whitmer in the room.
- [25:39]
Daniel C. Peterson
And David says, he died one of the happiest men I'd ever seen. Yeah, I know where I'm going. I've been faithful to my witness. And he said to them, be faithful to yours. You know what's true? Be faithful to it. That's Important on a deathbed, I think.
- [25:54]
Scott
And that's a very curious thing to say. If both of you are part of a conspiracy.
- [25:59]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yes.
- [26:00]
Scott
That you were in. You were in league with Joseph Smith, but now you're out of the church. I guess at that point Oliver had come back, but David's still out of the church. Has been out for 10 years.
- [26:09]
Daniel C. Peterson
And David's still out of the church. And he stays out of the church.
- [26:11]
Scott
He stays out of the church, yeah. Now let's talk about David.
- [26:25]
Daniel C. Peterson
He's the last surviving witness. He lives until 1888, the most interviewed witness. A lot of people came. Apparently there were periods where there'd be several a day who would come by to talk with him. He got to the point where he was kind of sick of it. I think that the actor who played the elderly David Whitmer in our movie Witnesses did a very good job because he comes across as a curmudgeonous.
- [26:46]
Casey
Yeah.
- [26:48]
Daniel C. Peterson
Kind of leave me alone. And that was apparently the attitude of the real David Whitmer.
- [26:53]
Scott
Google David Whitmer and you'll see the picture of him. He looks grumpy. He just looks.
- [26:58]
Daniel C. Peterson
He does, he does, he does. And he had reason.
- [27:02]
Casey
He has a very prominent frown in every picture I've ever seen of him. Like, just has a look like don't mess with me kind of on his face.
- [27:12]
Scott
Smile, David.
- [27:13]
Casey
And yet at the same time, Lyndon Cook put together a wonderful book that's just interviews with David Whitmer. I think it's over 250 pages.
- [27:21]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah. And that book I wish were more widely available. I think it's very hard to come by these days, but it's impressive. The sheer monotony of the book is impressive in a way, in a sense that he tells the same story to everybody, whether they're friendly or hostile or whatever. Over decades, he tells that story. He leaves the church around 1838. He dies in 1888. It's 50 years, half a century that he's out of the church and yet he still bears his testimony and actually has it engraved on his tombstone.
- [27:50]
Casey
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [27:51]
Daniel C. Peterson
Which is really fun. One of the explanations I've heard for his long term faithfulness was that he was scared of Brigham Young. That Brigham Young would have had him done in if he ever dared to spill the beans. But you know, he dies 11 years after Brigham. Brigham dies in 1877, he dies in 1888. And I would think by then, when you're dead, why would you put your lying testimony up on your tombstone? You're safe from Brigham now. But he has that on his tombstone. Yeah, he has two books carved on top of the tombstone, obviously the Bible and the Book of Mormon. It says the record of the Jews and the record of the Nephites are one. Truth is eternal. Yeah, that again, on his deathbed, beyond his death, he bears witness.
- [28:33]
Casey
And I want to point out his tombstone isn't hard to find. If you go to Richmond, Missouri and find the cemetery that's up on the hill, they've got signs out for it. And his tombstone was replaced during the pandemic because it had started to weather. And the Far west stake in Missouri actually put a more permanent granite replica.
- [28:53]
Daniel C. Peterson
Oh, really?
- [28:54]
Casey
Alex Baugh actually tells me that the one that was replaced actually replaced the first monument too, and that everybody went out of their way to make sure that they were replicas, that they preserved that carving on the side that says the record of the Jews and the record of the Nephites are one. Truth is eternal. Again, it feels like, boy, if a person's carving stuff into their tombstone, they're serious.
- [29:18]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, yeah. So he was not like minded. I mean, if anything he was. I say he was a curmudgeon. I think he was pig headed. You get a little bit of that in some of the stories. For example, when he's confronted in Missouri and they tell him, deny your testimony or we'll kill you. And he said he bears his testimony. I mean, he is stubborn. And so to me that makes him a good witness again because if it were a lie, he would have nothing to do with it. He was pig headed to the point of obnoxiousness. I think sometimes he would not back down, but he would never have knowingly lied. He comes to disagree with Joseph, it's one of the reasons he leaves the church. Yeah, he converted to a small church, kind of meeting in homes, family, you know, no hierarchy. And the church changed. He didn't like it. He liked the old days in 1828-1832 or thereabouts, where the church was small and everybody knew everybody else, it couldn't have lasted. But that's what he loved. And so he stays out. But it's interesting because he and his siblings, the Whitmer family, are absolutely devoted to the Book of Mormon. So much so that a tornado comes through and destroys much of their house. But the room where the original manuscript was kept, what they thought was the original manuscript is preserved and they actually thought it was because of the presence of the manuscript there. It almost borders on the superstitious but it. But it clearly, clearly testifies to their belief long after they were out of the church, long after he was kind of angrily opposed to some of Joseph Smith's and Brigham Young's practices and policies and doctrines. As I said before, I don't care what his opinions are on the high priesthood or whether there should be a first presidency or not. He has no special authority on that. But he has special authority on, were there plates, was there an angel? Did I hear the voice of God and that I care about? And he remains faithful to that? Absolutely, to his deathbed and beyond. If it's a person who's inclined always to tell the truth to the point of pain, then he makes a very good witness for that very reason. There's an interview with an unnamed Chicago man that I have read. I can't remember the name of the paper it was in. It was a Chicago paper of 1888. And they say, look, you used to live near David Whitmer in Missouri. Can you tell us about him? He just died. He says, yes, he was a man of absolute integrity. He said his testimony. This is an odd way of putting it. His testimony would have sent a man to the gallows faster than that of any other man I've ever known. By which he means, if he said, this guy did it, the jury would say, well, then he did it. If David Whitmer says, I know he did it. That's enough. And he says, he was always a loser and never a gainer by his testimony of the Book of Mormon. Again, an interesting way of putting it. So he says, everyone relied on him. He had good reputation. He was even the mayor of Richmond for a little while. Which is amazing for a person who had been connected with the Mormonites in Missouri to be entrusted with that position. Someone who's unrepentant will not back down from the Book of Mormon. So they respected him. And he says, we were always puzzled because you could believe everything he said. But this thing about the Book of Mormon that puzzled all of us, well, it's meant to puzzle them. They should draw the right conclusion from it.
- [32:33]
Casey
Pretty good guy. If it wasn't for his weird belief in the Book of Mormon, according to them. Right. I want to point out two things. One, David Whitmer, you don't have to go far to find his thoughts. He published a fairly lengthy document called An Address to All Believers in Christ. I think it was the year before he dies. And he goes through and has some unkind things to say about early figures in Church history like Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, but also an ironclad testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the translation of the Book of Mormon. It's caused a little controversy because he talks about a seer stone and some things that change the narrative a bit. The second thing is when you mentioned that manuscript, that's the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon.
- [33:17]
Daniel C. Peterson
The printer's. That's right. Yeah.
- [33:18]
Casey
The earliest complete text of the Book of Mormon that we have. We have about 28% of the original manuscript.
- [33:24]
Daniel C. Peterson
I think that the witmers thought it was the original manuscript.
- [33:27]
Casey
Yeah, I think they did. Yeah, I think that's right. They sell that to the RLDS church and then it's only been since, I think 2017 was when it came back into possession of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So we owe him a debt for preserving that manuscript too.
- [33:44]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yes, we do. And their dedication to it speaks eloquently of their faith and their commitment. They really believed this thing.
- [33:51]
Scott
Yeah, and it's just. It just strikes me how perfect of a witness David is because of how grumpy he was about Joseph Smith. Like in that. In that letter to all believers, I remember he lambasts polygamy. Of course he hates polygamy. But he says, I think the very first evidence that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet was in 1830 when he organizes a church. I mean, how presumptuous is that guy, you know? And he starts complaining from. From 1830 on, and he's no friend of Joseph Smith, which again, stop for a second and think about that. Like, if there were any people positioned to hurt Joseph Smith's testimony, it's Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris.
- [34:32]
Daniel C. Peterson
Like, right?
- [34:33]
Scott
If anyone could pull the rug out from underneath Joseph's whole enterprise here, this whole chicanery, right? This, this whole charade that he's doing, this, this fraudulent thing he's hoisting upon mankind. If anyone's in a position to do that, it's those three witnesses. And yeah, they don't. They have no problem. They have no problem saying things about Joseph that they didn't like. Again, they have no skin in the game when they're excommunicated out of the church. And yet they continue vigorously to testify to the truthfulness of their experience. And that's gotta mean something.
- [35:08]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, I think it does. Because what would have profited them? Spilling the beans, telling the sordid truth about Joe Smith and his gold Bible, they would have been on the lecture circuit, they would have been feeded and well received. But they don't, because they know it's true. And if David Whitmer's telling the truth about Moroni's warning to him, he knows what the consequences would be. If you ever deny your testimony, you will be damned. This would be something like a son of perdition experience, I would think, you know, that you had that experience with the angel and the voice of God. And for you to deny it, no forgiveness for you.
- [35:46]
Casey
I want to point out when I talk about the Whitmers in classes, a lot of people say, well, why did they leave? Again, it's more complex than maybe we have time to deal with here. But just a sign of how high Joseph Smith held David Whitmer in esteem. We mentioned this last time in 1835, he gives David Whitmer a blessing, that David Whitmer will be his successor as the leader of the church. And at the time, there's only two stakes in the church. One in Ohio, one in Missouri. Joseph Smith is the stake president in Ohio. David Whitmer's the president in Missouri. And so when people start to doubt Joseph Smith's leadership surrounding the Kirtland bank crisis, they turn to David Whitmer. Like, this is one of the main things, I think, that drives a wedge between the two of them is that there's this meeting apparently in the Kirtland Temple, where people say, David Whitmer's gonna lead the church. And that's where Brigham Young gets up and says, you can't remove the calling of a prophet of God. You can only cut the thread that binds yourself to the prophet and to God and sink yourselves to hell.
- [36:44]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [36:44]
Casey
And it feels like from that point on, it's not immediate after that meeting, but it's a matter of months after, where David is eventually excommunicated from the church again. Around the same time, Oliver Cowdery is the really close to each other and makes the decision. He never comes back. Neither do any of the Whitmers that I'm aware of.
- [37:04]
Daniel C. Peterson
No, they don't. But they are faithful on their own. I mean, David lasts until 1888. That's amazing. To me, it's 50 years separated from the church, but he's faithful to his testimony. And I personally hope, I believe that he's going to be okay. We'll have some things to account for. But faithful witness for a half century in isolation, that's impressive to me, which.
- [37:27]
Scott
In a way only strengthens his witness. I mean, I don't know the divine mind here, but it's like, what a great choice for a witness. Someone who'll be out of the church for 50 years and has no skin in the game and continues to doggedly testify about like, great move.
- [37:41]
Daniel C. Peterson
I mean, how's he profiting from this? He's not at all.
- [37:44]
Scott
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:45]
Casey
And someone who the documents really show to be kind of a contrarian.
- [37:49]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [37:49]
Casey
It seems like whenever anybody objected in a meeting, it was David Whitmer. Like the records where they decide to create the Doctrine and Covenants, David Whitmer is the one standing up and saying, no, we don't need to do that. Those are private revelations, we shouldn't publish them. And it seems like he didn't have any problem speaking his mind. And that speaks to his integrity, I guess, on a certain level.
- [38:09]
Daniel C. Peterson
That's why I think if he had decided that the thing was a scam, he would have said it. Yeah, he never does.
- [38:28]
Scott
So tell us about Martin Harris.
- [38:31]
Daniel C. Peterson
He's a little different. He's older than the other two. He was a pretty established farmer in the Palmyra area. One objection that I hear sometimes to Martin is that he was an unstable sort of loon type. But he had a good reputation in Palmyra before he was involved with the church. I don't think that he was cut out to be a great leader at a high level, but he was a very successful hard headed farmer. He was a judge at various county fairs and things like that. He was on the. On effectively the road commission to maintain the roads and so on, which is an important thing in a frontier society. He'd been entrusted with a lot of responsibilities locally. He'd been very, very successful. And he was not gullible. He's the one who goes and interviews. The Smith family wants to know, you know, what's this? What's the scoop here? Tell me. But he's the one who switches out the stone. People asked us about the movie witnesses where Martin switches the stone that Joseph's using for the translation, uses a similar looking one that he got in a riverbed to see if Joseph could translate with something else and Joseph couldn't. And then Joseph says, what on earth did you do that for? And he said, well, to stop the mouths of fools who said that you just memorized the text. Martin is not gullible. He's the one who does all these tests. He takes the transcript to Charles, Anthon and the others. He wants assurance and he's always asking Joseph, I would like a witness. I would like to see the plates, please. I want to see the plates. And so eventually he is given an opportunity. But even there he's worried because no angel comes, the plates don't materialize. And Martin decides it's his lack of faith, not his gullibility, it's his lack of faith interfering with the angelic appearance. He moves away. David and Oliver have the experience with Joseph. Then Joseph goes and joins Martin and they have the experience. And then Martin's exclamation, Tis enough. Mine eyes have beheld. Mine eyes have beheld. And he is a faithful witness thereafter. Now, though again he leaves the church. And with him, I think the issue is partly ego, damaged ego. Oliver Cowdery is made second elder of the church. David Whitmer is president of the church in Missouri. What is Martin Harris? He's not much, and there's a plaintive line in our film where they've been given high and holy callings. He says to Joseph, and I have been stuck with the church's bills, which it must have seemed that way to him. He put up a lot of the money for the publication of the Book of Mormon. Pride, that's one of the factors. And of course, the financial problems in the Kirtland Safety Society, the bank. Martin just decided he's had it. But he remains faithful, almost obsessively faithful. He ends up living in Kirtland, decrepit, run down. His marriage has fallen apart, he's got no money. He's a self appointed guide at the Kirtland Temple. And then in the end, there's a group from Utah that get money together to bring him out to Utah. And he's saying, I will not stay. I'm just going to come out and look. I want to see how things look out there. And then he's rebaptized. But he looks over the Salt Lake valley. This is 1870. I think that he comes back and he says, who would have thought that the Book of Mormon would have done all this? You know, settlements up and down the Wasatch front. Even in 1870 it was fairly impressive to him. And then he dies in full faith and fellowship, bearing his testimony to anybody who will listen. He'll even call aside young boys and say, do you know who I am? I am Martin Harris. Do you recognize that name? Well, you were one of the witnesses. Yes. Then he bears his testimony. I want you to know, can you see that tree over there as clearly as I see that tree? It's sort of a signature. It's always, can you see X? Well, as clearly as you see, X, whatever it is, the sun or a tree or something, I saw the angel, I saw the place. So there again, powerful, powerful witness over a lengthy time of angry disaffection from the church. He really felt he'd been betrayed by the church and abandoned.
- [42:30]
Scott
His funny line is, he says, I never left the church. The church left me. Right. I was, I was betrayed. Yeah, left.
- [42:38]
Daniel C. Peterson
There is kind of a washed up fossil there on the beach at Kirtland when the church is gone. But, but it's still a really impressive testimony.
- [42:47]
Scott
And I remember there's this, there's an article, Telegraph, June 30, 1841. I'm looking at it now. Yeah, they interviewed Martin Harris. Now he's out of the church. And here's their report. They said, quote, martin Harris believes that the work, Mormonism in its commencement was a genuine work of the Lord, but that Joseph Smith, having become worldly and proud, has been forsaken of the Lord. There again, Martin is not afraid to drag Joseph's name in the mud and say, I think, yeah, God is no longer with him. He's forsaken. What do you think about the Book of Mormon, Martin? That's true, right? That, you know, he will bear witness to his dying day. That was an absolute. Yeah, 100% confirmed fact.
- [43:29]
Daniel C. Peterson
It would have been easy for him to say, well, I think he was a con artist all along. I didn't recognize it until later.
- [43:35]
Scott
You know, why not say that?
- [43:36]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, why not say it? Because he knows it's false and so he stands by his testimony. These are impressive men. You know, I find the witnesses almost impossible. Well, no, I will say, impossible to get around. I've heard some just so stories, you know, it used to be that they would say, well, they were all hallucinating. Well, I don't think anybody seriously maintains that anymore. I mean, we know a lot about hallucinations. Now. If you introduce gas into a room, the people in it will the right kind of gas begin to hallucinate. But they don't hallucinate the same things. Based on their individual psychologies and backgrounds and histories, they'll hallucinate different things. They have them all hallucinating in the same thing. Well, there's an angel. He showed us the plates. A table appeared. The voice of God spoke to us. That's a little out of the ordinary for hallucinations. And it used to be common to say, well, they were all scoundrels, scam artists, they were in on the con. I don't think any serious Writer claims that anymore. So people have had to go to more sophisticated and subtle explanations to maneuver out of the way of the witnesses, But I don't think they ever work.
- [44:43]
Scott
So, Dan, what are like the biggest, more sophisticated, I guess, arguments against the three witnesses today, like, what's still out there and what do you want to say about those, Those arguments against them?
- [44:55]
Daniel C. Peterson
Well, I've seen one argument fairly recently that just seems to me not an argument at all. It's just a counter of faith testimony where someone says, well, you know, they're not really talking about real events. They're talking about. They're expressing their faith that they really believed in the Book of Mormon. No, no, no. They're talking about holding a metal object in their hands. They're not just saying, well, I feel really good about the Book of Mormon. I really believe that it's from God. No, I saw an angel. I heard the voice of God. I saw a table with the plates on it. I held the plates in my hand. I turned the leaves. The plates weighed about so much. They had strange writing on them, that sort of thing. This is very specific. It's no different, in a sense, from any other ordinary, mundane testimony that somebody would give. Did so and so have a gun? Yes, he had a gun. I held it. I can tell you what kind of a gun it was. It weighed about so many pounds. It had a wooden stock and a barrel of gleaming bluish metal, you know. Then you say, oh, so you feel really strongly that he must have had a weapon. No, I saw the weapon and I held it. That's this attempt to just brush the witnesses aside seems to me silly, fatuous, absurd, almost desperate in a way.
- [46:05]
Scott
On the other hand, you have to brush them away. Like, if you don't want to believe this, you have to somehow get rid of the witnesses, don't you?
- [46:12]
Daniel C. Peterson
You do, yeah. The witnesses are again, an indigestible lump in the throats of people who want to dismiss Joseph as a just. It's purely subjective, either deliberately lying or hallucinating. The witnesses don't permit that. But that's one thing I've encountered. Another fairly recent one that I first heard 20 years ago or so was a person who spent a lot of time in the documents, but he's absolutely not a believer who says, well, let's just posit that all visionary experiences are hallucinations. Well, that's a kind of a big posit right there. And then, let's posit that the eight witnesses were having a visionary experience, just like the three Therefore, it's all hallucination. Once again, I just don't see how you get there. I nearly fell off my chair hearing that. This is doing history by assertion. No evidence. Just let's posit that. Let's posit that the people who saw John Wilkes Booth assassinate Abraham Lincoln were simply hallucinating, okay? Now that we've taken care of all that evidence, let's speculate that it was space aliens or something. History is really easy if you throw the primary sources out.
- [47:21]
Scott
Now, let's take. Let's take my secular naturalistic worldview, okay? Let's just say that's true. Let's therefore eliminate anything the witnesses say that would challenge my secular naturalistic worldview. Out. Okay? And now what are we left with? It's like, come on, you can't. Yeah, you cannot do it that way. You can't start with your worldview. You got to start with the documents. And you have to deal with these witnesses directly. They will challenge your worldview, by the way.
- [47:47]
Daniel C. Peterson
Have to be open to things that might challenge your worldview. I mean, there's no progress in science if all scientists said, well, this phenomenon cannot have occurred because it doesn't fit my current theory, therefore I will ignore it. Now, if something comes along that's an anomaly and doesn't fit your theory, you need to examine it. If it holds up, then you may need to adjust your theory, not the facts. There's a line in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, I think the Hound of the Baskervilles, where maybe it's Watson who asks him, well, what's the secret of your detecting? What's your method? And he says, well, you just eliminate everything that's impossible. And then what you're left with, however improbable it may be, must be the truth. You know, you have to look at this and say, well, this explanation doesn't work. That explanation doesn't work. What are we left with? I think we're left with Joseph Smith's explanation and the explanation of the witnesses. And that may strike you as really improbable, but darn it, unless you come up with some better explanation, you're stuck with that. You can't go anywhere else.
- [48:45]
Casey
Agreed.
- [48:46]
Daniel C. Peterson
And I think that's the situation.
- [48:48]
Casey
Let me bring up one thing that sometimes antagonists do use, which is the three witnesses didn't touch anything.
- [48:55]
Daniel C. Peterson
Right?
- [48:56]
Casey
That their vision was spiritual. In fact, one of the more sophisticated attacks, and some good scholars, Steven Smoot and Neil Rapley, who work with scripture central, have addressed it, is that there's this letter from a disaffected member of the church who said that Martin Harris told them that he saw the plates the same way you'd see Jerusalem from a mountain or anything like that. How would you address concerns like that?
- [49:17]
Daniel C. Peterson
First of all, I don't even know what it means to see Jerusalem through a mountain. But anyway, that reference has always puzzled me. I mean, as if that's something obvious. We'd all say, oh, yeah, like that.
- [49:27]
Scott
Oh, yeah.
- [49:28]
Daniel C. Peterson
I don't know what that means. It's an account from somebody who heard it from somebody who says that he heard it from Martin Harris. And it's kind of an outlier. It's third hand at best.
- [49:38]
Scott
Maybe fourth hand, isn't it Stephen Burnett.
- [49:41]
Casey
Stephen Burnett's the name.
- [49:42]
Scott
Yeah.
- [49:42]
Casey
The document's on the Joseph Smith paper site.
- [49:44]
Scott
Yeah.
- [49:45]
Daniel C. Peterson
And, you know, you have others. Oh, I'm thinking the one that's third hand is another one that's meant to portray Martin as a loon, where it talks about him walking along with a deer and talking with a deer. And they say, see, Martin was crazy. Well, that story never shows up anywhere else. It comes from somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody, and it's decades later. And I don't believe it. I just don't think it happened. That doesn't sound like Martin Harris at all. You know, Martin goes out of his way to talk about the literal reality of it. But I would also say this. The eight witnesses are there precisely to refute that kind of misreading. You know, it's one in the afternoon somewhere around there. We don't know exactly when, but sometime around 1. They don't have any experience of the miraculous. They don't see an angel. They don't hear the voice of God. They simply are presented with this set of heavy metal plates. And they. They hold them, they pass them around, they turn the leaves a little bit and examine them. It's as matter of fact and mundane as it can possibly be. And to me, for a long time, I always thought, well, why do you have, you know, when I was growing up, three witnesses and then eight witnesses? What's the point? Why don't you just make 11 witnesses and, you know, have done with it? I think the differing experiences are really important. The three witnesses have this industrial light and magic sort of thing. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg. And it's magnificent. The voice of God, angels, miraculous tables, plates, everything. The eight witnesses have no experience anything remotely like that. They are so different that they reinforce each other. You can dismiss the three witnesses by saying, well, they're hallucinating at some sort of weird hallucinogenic mushroom or something. Although again, I don't think hallucination works for the reason I've already mentioned. Why did they all see the same thing? But let's say, okay, it's imaginary. It's so weird it can't be real. Well, then what could be more real than people going out into a grove of trees and holding an object and passing it around and. And you know, I've done that sort of thing with all sorts of objects when I've been out in the outdoors. People handed me something and I don't say, oh, well, this is a spiritual experience. This isn't really a butane tank or this isn't really a Coleman lantern or something like that. It's real, it's material. I know it is. The witnesses, the two sets of witnesses are mutually complementary. They reinforce each other because they're so different that if you try to dismiss it as just frontier yokels imagining something, that doesn't work for the eight witnesses. Now people have said, well, people in the early 19th century were, you know, they were estranged from reality. They had a weird magical worldview and so on. Well, I think, look, right now I'm sitting in an artificially air conditioned room and I'm speaking into a computer, a laptop. And you guys aren't really in front of me. You're on a screen. Who's separated from reality? 19th century farmers who spent their lives clearing tree stumps and moving rocks and so on, sowing seeds and harvesting them, who had to go to bed when the sun went down and got up when it arose. I mean, they're in sync with reality in a way that I'm not. I don't go by the motions of the sun. The seasons hardly matter to me. I don't slaughter my beef. I get it at the supermarket. It comes wrapped up in plastic. You know, I'm estranged from reality. To look back at the eight witness and say, well, they could hardly distinguish reality from fantasy. That's the way those early people were. It seems to me just the opposite. You could take me in with some sort of AI deception, but not them.
- [53:10]
Scott
Far too dismissive to just paint it like that. It's not honestly confronting the facts of the matter. And that's again what Richard Lloyd Anderson's book does so well, investigating the Book of Moral Witnesses. He makes you confront all the facts of the matter. And like you're doing with us today, Dan, this is this is really fun.
- [53:37]
Casey
We've tiptoed towards the eight witnesses a little bit here. Is there anything else, Major? Seems like they don't always get their due. But the eight witnesses. Talk a little bit about them and why they're important.
- [53:49]
Daniel C. Peterson
Well, they're important again because their experience is so very different. Because it's as matter of fact as it can be. You can't just say, well, they're imagining this sort of thing. I mean, I could try that with my wife. There are always piles of books by my bedside. Sometimes it gets on her nerves that my bed is surrounded with papers and piles of books that have collapsed and they're all over the floor and, oh, I'll pick it up. But I thought maybe I just ought to tell her, look, you're having a vision. You're having a spiritual experience. Those books aren't really there. It's not real. I mean, one of the criticisms I hear of the witnesses. I'll try to get back to the eight witnesses. But is some people who will say, well, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, so the witnesses don't count for anything. I always find that very, very self serving in a way, because we all believe in eyewitness testimony. I didn't do that. I didn't eat the last cinnamon roll on the plate issue did I saw you. Oh, well, now, what did you see? I mean, we all know that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. So people will say of the eight witnesses, for example, that they just imagined this, it wasn't real again, that they were 19th century fantasists and so on. It's just the way early people were. They couldn't tell reality from fantasy. I always take issue with that kind of thing. It seems to me very selective, very cherry picked. We use eyewitness testimony for just about everything in our lives unless it seems to contradict our ideology. And then eyewitness testimony is ridiculous. It's absurd. Who would depend on that? Who would give any credit at all to an eyewitness? But the minute it's in your interest to agree, then eyewitness testimony is the gold standard. But I saw it with my own eyes. One of the witnesses that most impresses me among the eight and the three, but certainly among the eight is John Whitmer, who was very bitter after he was excommunicated from the church. There'd been a real falling out. All the Whitmers sort of left en masse.
- [55:44]
Casey
And so he's angry.
- [55:46]
Daniel C. Peterson
And at a certain point, Theodore Turley is sent back into Missouri It's a dangerous mission. I mean, it's not the kind of mission call you want to get. Go back into Missouri, where the governor has issued an extermination order against Latter Day Saints and try to sell the property there that the Saints held for as much as you can get, even if it's, you know, pennies on the dollar to help the Saints, who are now refugees across Iowa and into Illinois. While he's there, Theodore Turley runs into John Whitmer and says, brother Whitmer, you were one of the eight witnesses. Book of Mormon. Do you no longer believe in the Book of Mormon? To which Whitmer responds, effectively, I don't know if the Book of Mormon's true or not. I couldn't read what was on those plates. Now, I enjoy that because that's the closest that I know of. Of any witness coming to denying his testimony. But even there, he doesn't, because he says, well, I don't know if it's true. Remember, the eight witnesses had not heard the voice of God certifying the truth of the book. They had not encountered an angel. They just saw some metal objects and hefted it, you know, turned the pages. And he says, I couldn't read the writing on the plates. I don't know what it said. So I don't know if it's true or not. Well, he's at a low point. He's really angry at Joseph. He's angry at the church. He's bitter over his excommunication. But he bounces back shortly thereafter and bears testimony to his dying day like the rest of the Whitmers. But at his lowest, he still says, well, I couldn't read the writing on the plates. He could have said there were no plates. I didn't get a real good look at them. I'm not even sure if they were gold. Not sure if they were real plates. They were across the room. It was dark. He doesn't say that. I turned the pages. They were heavy. The writing on them was really weird, and I couldn't read it, so I can't verify the translation. So at his worst, he says, I don't know if it's true or not. That impresses me. That's impressive in a very different way than the three witnesses are impressive. He's tempted to just spew the whole thing out of his mouth, but he doesn't. He says, well, there are plates, and that's what I need him to say. I don't need him to certify the translation. The three Witnesses have done that. The spirit does it. The content of the book does that for me. But I need him to testify that there were plates. And he does at his worst, at his lowest, at his most angry. He does, yeah.
- [58:01]
Scott
So if I understand what you're saying, Dan, the three witnesses have this visionary experience. And for people who don't believe in visionary experiences, they can just sort of explain that away, right? Yeah, but then you say, but there's the eight. And the eight have a very concrete, very tangible, very secular, if you very empirical, tangible experience which was not visionary. So what do you do with that? Yeah, and on the flip side, you say, well, they didn't even know what the character said. They don't even know if it's true. All they did was handle these plates. Joseph could have made them in his barn or whatever. And you say, ah, but then there's the three. There's the three who had the visionary experience and the angel and heard the voice of God. And so is that what you mean by they mutually complement each other, these two?
- [58:42]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yes. Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. They are very different and they testify in a way to different things, or they, they confirm different aspects of the overall experience with the plates and the restoration of the Book of Mormon. I would even add that I've come to appreciate the additional witnesses, what I call the informal or unofficial witnesses. In a way, somebody at one point objected to me that, well, the witnesses went out expecting to have an experience with the plates, as if that somehow would explain away hefting a heavy metal object or seeing an angel. It can't do that much work in my view. But okay, let's assume, okay, they went out with an expectation of having a miraculous experience. Therefore they did. I can go out with an expectation nothing will happen. Let's play that game for a little while. The unofficial witnesses in most cases weren't expecting anything.
- [59:33]
Scott
When you say unofficial witnesses, who comes to mind? What experiences are you thinking about?
- [59:38]
Daniel C. Peterson
I mean, Mary Whitmer, Emma Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, Josiah Stoll. There are some others that have these experiences where they just see the plates. Josiah Stoll testifies under oath at one point. For example, someone asks him during a trial where he is under oath to testify the truth and says, well, how do you know Joseph had the plates? He said, because I saw them. They were being handed out through a window. The COVID came off. I saw a gleam of metal. And I think he wasn't expecting that. He wasn't primed for a supernatural experience that just happened. Or Mary Whitmer. Who certainly is not primed. She's in a foul mood, if anything. If I understand what happened to her. Think of Mary Whitmer, the mother of David. And she's having to do all the work while Joseph and Oliver are there at the Whitmer farm. Translating, dictating, taking dictation. It's not only that she's having to feed them, but then all these gawkers come by to look. They want to know what's going on. So she's having to feed people and extra guests, and she's having to do the farm work, she's having to milk the cows because the men are doing the important stuff, right? She ends up doing all the cooking, probably all the dishes, all the housework in the barn and that sort of thing. And she's pretty angry about it. And then one day, according to one account, she sees Joseph and Oliver who've gone out, and they're skipping rocks on a pond or a little stream there. And I've had it. If they have time to go out and skip rocks on a stream or a pond, then they can darn well do the chores. And, you know, I think what they were doing is these were farm guys who were used to being outdoors, but they'd had to be indoors for hours and hours and hours in semi darkness, taking dictation, dictating. They're not used to that. They want physical activity, so they have to get out and stretch their legs. I don't blame them. But she was angry. And it's right about that time that according to the accounts, which come down from at least two lines of transmitters, David and one of grandchildren who say that she was very angry, she was going to probably invite them to leave, get lost, get off my property, I'm not doing this for you anymore. And a messenger appears to her with a knapsack who says, effectively, you're really under a lot of stress, aren't you? A lot of work you're having to do and so on. It's only fair that you should have a view of the plates. And he takes the plates out and allows her to look at them and apparently turn the pages on them. And she may actually be, it's not entirely clear to me, but she may actually be the first witness to the Book of Mormon outside of the Smith family, besides Joseph himself. She's really early and the record seems to show that she never complained thereafter. I mean, she was fine doing the dishes and doing the cooking, because there is something obviously going on here. The messenger addresses her by name, which shocks her. She's out doing farm work in the barn, I think. And the messenger says, mary, she's basically, who are you? And he doesn't explain who he is. She called him Brother Nephi afterwards, but he doesn't say who he was and shows her the plates. She wasn't primed for a supernatural experience. She was primed to kick Joseph and Oliver out on their rear ends. So you can't say that she'd worked herself into some state of religious ecstasy to have this experience. She had not.
- [62:51]
Casey
It's remarkable to me, too, that a lot of these secondary witnesses are women. Yeah, we had a conversation with Kyle Walker a couple weeks ago. It feels like we completely overlooked this. But Joseph Smith's sisters. It doesn't seem like, even though Joseph Smith had strict commands to not show the plates to people, that there was any problem with a person picking up the plates and moving them from place to place. Like Catherine Smith, Joseph's sister, talks about moving the plates, and Emma Smith moves the plates. And it does seem really remarkable that there was that kind of freedom, especially with the number of people that were trying to obtain the record or steal it or any of those things.
- [63:33]
Daniel C. Peterson
If I've got a fraudulent object that I don't want people to examine, I'm not gonna leave it in the room just covered with a thin cloth and go wandering off. But Joseph did.
- [63:42]
Casey
Yeah, he comes across as almost naive a little bit, with the freedom he had with some of the plates. Some of the time.
- [63:50]
Daniel C. Peterson
Emma describes spending. I describe it as spending quality time with the plates when no one's around, you know, she runs her fingers along the edges of the plates and says they felt like the thick pages of a book or something. You could feel the different plates. You could feel the three rings on the side. You could hear the top, top plate rustle over the one below it, making a metallic sound. She's clearly spending some time feeling around those. I've always wanted to ask her, and someday I hope to. So, Emma, come on, fess up. Did you look?
- [64:20]
Scott
Did you sneak a piece?
- [64:21]
Daniel C. Peterson
She said, look, I know my husband had the plates. And she described that experience. I know what I would have done. I would have lifted the cloth, you know, okay, might strike me dead, but I gotta see what's under here. She says she didn't, but she clearly came as close as she could to it by feeling along the edges. There's an object in there that meets all the description of the plates. There's something in there that's Real and solid and heavy. Catherine says she talked about how heavy the plates were. She had to pick them up and carry them and hide them so the mob didn't find them. They were very, very heavy. And I think it's significant that there are women involved in this. It's puzzled me for a while. Why are there no women among the official witnesses? Three men, eight men. Joseph Smith. Then it dawned on me, because the testimony of women wasn't taken seriously in US courts or anywhere in the early 19th century. In fact, it was only almost at the halfway point in the 20th century when the last US state allowed female testimony in courtrooms. It's amazing to me that went on as long as it did. It's Alabama, 1947, if I remember right. If you'd had women, the attitude among skeptics in the 19th century would have been, well, women are hysterical. They're flighty, they're not rational. You know, they're not permitted to testify in court. And for good reason. I actually at one point had accumulated a few cartoons on the idea of women being allowed the vote or being able to serve on juries. Ah, how ridiculous. I mean, women just aren't capable of that.
- [65:53]
Scott
Oh, my word.
- [65:54]
Daniel C. Peterson
So the witnesses are all male. But the Lord didn't neglect female witnesses. You look at the unofficial witnesses, there are a number of women among them. So they had experiences in some ways, much like the three and the eight, hearing voice, seeing the plates holding those miraculous objects. It's amazing. So you've got. Besides Joseph Smith, you have something like, I really need to sit down. Total them all up. I actually heard of one other witness who never joined the church. Had nothing to do with the church.
- [66:22]
Scott
I can think of one. Isaac Hale. Right. Isaac Hale certainly did. And he never joined the church.
- [66:27]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, he's one. Nope. And that's a different one, though. If you total them, there's something like 18 witnesses altogether. Besides Joseph himself, I think. 16, 18. Somewhere in that range. And that's a lot of people to explain away. I once had an experience. Several of us were involved in a debate years ago at the Evangelical Theological Society in connection with the annual American Academy of Religions Society of Biblical Literature meeting. And they put on a debate between a group of Latter Day Saints and a group of evangelicals. It was an experience on a whole lot of levels. One of the debating participants was a very prominent evangelical philosopher whom I actually respect a great deal, but he doesn't return the favor for Latter Day Saints. That's William Lane Craig. And William Lane Craig stood up and said, look, you know, the fact is, Joseph Smith's myth is a myth of Olympian proportions. There is no witness support for it. He says, wherefore Christianity and the resurrection of Christ. I have 11 credible witnesses. He's written a lot on the resurrection of Christ, and I agree with him. I think they're credible and I think there's a lot to be said for the witnesses of the resurrection. But I thought it was hilarious that he said they don't have any witnesses and we have 11 credible ancient witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus. And I thought, not only do we have witnesses, we have 11 official ones. What are you thinking of? And the moderator of the debate was Richard Mao, who's a very prominent evangelical theologian. And I remember him looking at me when Craig made that comment. He just looked at me and rolled his eyes. It was like Craig had just placed a big kick me sign on his rear end because I was responding to him. And I did point that out.
- [68:09]
Scott
Good. That needed to be said. That needed to be said.
- [68:13]
Casey
I would have said, hey, the 11 credible witnesses of the resurrection are on our team too.
- [68:18]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, that's true.
- [68:19]
Casey
We're not contradicting them them. We're saying there's more. That's an interesting experience.
- [68:25]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah.
- [68:26]
Scott
By the way, I think we only have two firsthand accounts of witnesses of Jesus in the New Testament, isn't it? Paul and John and the rest are narrative. I'm a believer in the resurrection. But two firsthand accounts versus what we have with the witnesses. I mean, yeah, we're awash in documents.
- [68:47]
Daniel C. Peterson
From the Book of Mormon witnesses and very powerful stuff.
- [68:50]
Scott
It ought to be taken seriously, even if it challenges people's worldviews. The humble invitation is, look, if you haven't investigated Latter Day Saints carefully, start with the Book of Mormon and the Book of Mormon witnesses and don't leave that very soon. Like, stay there and stay long and marinate in those original documents and. And think long and hard about that. I mean, that's, I think, the best place to start. I think that's how God intended it. I think that's how Joseph wanted it as well. That's where he would always go. Right. Let's go to the Book of Mormon first and then go out from there. I think that's the right way to do it.
- [69:28]
Daniel C. Peterson
I loved Elder Holland's conference talk of several years ago about the Book of Mormon being something that is impossible to get around or over. You have to go through it, and I don't think you can get through it if you're honest. It's a very difficult thing to set aside. And I would say the witnesses are right there. And so I just haven't been impressed with arguments against the witnesses. I have not seen a coherent counter explanation of the witnesses that I find even remotely persuasive.
- [69:53]
Scott
Yeah, that's funny. I was just about to ask you what's the best argument you've heard against them? And I'm hearing you say none.
- [70:01]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, I have to honestly say there's some where I think, okay, that's interesting, but I can respond to it. I haven't found any that I thought were really threatening to the Latter Day Saint position or endangered the credibility of the witnesses. They'll bring up sometimes David Whitmer's apostasy and his criticisms of Joseph, I don't care about those. As I've said, I don't care about his opinions about things where he's not a particular witness. Anybody can have opinions. If somebody sees an accident on a street corner between a Chevrolet and a Ford, I don't care what his opinions are on Chevys versus Fords. What I do care about is what did he see? That's where he has unique authority. But if he has opinions on makes of automobiles or Italian grand opera or anything else, I couldn't care less. He has no authority there, but he has authority as a witness on what he saw or did not see. And that's where these have weight with me. And if they later come to disagree with Joseph about this or that, well, that's unfortunate, but it doesn't matter to me. In fact, in some ways it strengthens their credibility.
- [71:03]
Casey
Well said. I wanted to add, we've been talking a lot about Richard Lloyd Anderson. He has a brother who's just as remarkable. Carl Ricks Anderson.
- [71:11]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yes.
- [71:12]
Casey
And Carl was kind of the world's expert on Kirtland. He's still with us. Fortunately, Carl took me to this little spot in the community formerly known as Orange, Ohio. And it was there that probably for the last time, all of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon were gathered together. And we have the minutes of this meeting. It's a document I wasn't aware of until the Joseph Smith papers published it, that all of the witnesses stood up and bore their testimony. And boy, it's not long after that that we lose Christian Whitmer and Peter Whitmer. And then the verities of life take place where Oliver Cowdery dies in 1850. And like you said, I think the last witness is David Whitmer in the 1880s, just. It's remarkable that there's no cracks in the armor, that there's no place where any of them say, it was a joke we were playing, it was a fantasy. They're all just dead set on saying, no, this is what I saw. And people like John Whitmer being honest and saying, I don't know what the characters meant, but I did see plates. Or people like Martin Harris saying, I don't know if I believe Joseph Smith stayed a prophet, but I knew that I saw an angel. That's just remarkable. I mean, I think any religion would be grateful to have the kind of documentary record that we do and the witnesses that we do.
- [72:36]
Daniel C. Peterson
Yeah, And I think it's amazing that we have such witnesses and such corroboration. I mean, it's been mentioned. It was mentioned at the beginning that I wrote a biography of Muhammad. Now I take Muhammad very seriously. I actually, when people ask me, do you think he was maybe inspired? I say, yeah, I'm definitely open to the possibility there was inspiration there. I don't know for sure, but I would have relatively few problems with that. But Muhammad and Joseph Smith make for an interesting contrast. Muhammad never has a shared experience with anybody else in terms of revelation. There are always private revelations to him. There's no tangible object involved. There's no corroborating outside external evidence for him. Joseph is very, very different in that regard. It's amazing what we have that accompanies him. And after the first vision, a lot of his most important revelatory experiences are shared with Oliver or Sidney Rigdon or the three witnesses or whatever.
- [73:28]
Scott
Well, this has just been fantastic, just to soak this in together. And you've given us a lot to think about today.
- [73:36]
Daniel C. Peterson
Daniel, we really thank you for having me.
- [73:38]
Scott
Really appreciate it. Would like to. To end with maybe one more question, if that's okay. Yeah, And I think you've answered it very well the last hour and a half. But we just want to give you one last chance just to say, like, how has your study of the Book of Mormon witnesses? And. And again, you've studied them as much as anybody has studied them. How has that strengthened your witness of the restoration itself, of this movement, of the gathering, of the whole thing that the Book of Mormon proclaims is actually happening? Like. Like, how do the witnesses sort of anchor you in that?
- [74:09]
Daniel C. Peterson
I find them immensely. Testimony building. Obviously, a testimony comes from spiritual means. If there's a secular evidence for the Book of Mormon, I'd say the witnesses rank right up there among the Most important secular evidences. And maybe the only secular evidence, I mean by that, that doesn't involve the Holy Ghost. You can analyze these things by reason, just looking at the evidence, thinking about it, making logical analysis of it. It's the only secular evidence besides, I suppose, the presence, the existence of the Book of Mormon itself that the Lord has given us. I like discoveries like chiasmus and all the other things that have been discovered about the Book of Mormon, ways that it fits the ancient world and so on. And maybe those have been given in some cases by inspiration to particular individuals. They've been led to find something. I could mention a couple of cases where thoughts came to me that I thought, oh, now that is really interesting. But the primary secular evidence, I think is the witness only in a way academic evidence that the Lord himself arranged for. He called the eight witnesses the three witnesses he arranged for their experiences. He obviously thinks they're very important. And I've wondered sometimes, as President Benson used to say, that we'd neglected the Book of Mormon. I've wondered if we've neglected the witnesses. The Lord went out of his way to establish these two sets of official testimonies, and they've been published in every edition of the book book since 1830, including every partial edition, every foreign translation, every partial foreign translation. They always include the testimonies of the witnesses. So we ought to be paying attention to them. Their testimony ought to be proclaimed far and wide. And I don't want to hear members of the church say, well, gosh, I think Sidney Rigdon was one of them. I think Brigham Young was one, maybe, I don't know, John Taylor or somebody, that's just sad that they have been amazingly powerful in my mind. And when I've tried, and I think I've honestly tried to come up with a secular counter explanation for the Book of Mormon, how can I explain it away? Well, I can sometimes come up with a little argument where I could explain this little part or that little part. Never come up with one that accounts for the whole thing. Sometimes if you buy into this one boy, it wipes out your explanation for the other part. It just doesn't fit together. But I can't come up with a good counter explanation for the witnesses. I just can't. Here are 11. Think of the official ones. 11 reputable, sane, sincere, consistent witnesses who stood by their testimony through thick and thin, through persecution, through periods when it had been so much easier, if not more profitable for them to contradict their testimony. And they didn't do it. It bear their testimonies to their dying days. That's powerful stuff and I can't see a way around it. So that's an anchor, one of the anchors of my testimony, if you will, in a secular, academic way.
- [77:01]
Casey
Well, you're certainly doing your part to make sure the witnesses are known and we just are really grateful for you, Dan, and all the good work that you do. So thanks for joining us. This has been wonderful.
- [77:12]
Daniel C. Peterson
Thank you for having me.
- [77:13]
Scott
Thank you so much. And again, we would encourage everyone out there to go go check out. If you haven't seen it yet, go check out the Witnesses movie. So good, so good. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Church History Matters. Our new episodes drop every Tuesday, so please join us next week as we continue to dig into the context, content, controversies and consequences of the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants. If you're enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it or by taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review and comment on the podcast that makes us easier to find. Today's episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Daniel Sorensen with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a non profit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter Day Saints Scripture and Church history accessible, comprehensible and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your Gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Let me say that again, all of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you're in a position where you're both willing and able to make a one time or ongoing donation donation, be assured that your contribution will help us here at Scripture Central to produce and disseminate more quality content to combat false and faith eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. And while Casey and I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or the Church of Japan, Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.