The Witnesses of the Book of Mormon

[VelvetShadow]

Hello all, I'm still reading the Book of Mormon for the first time to know for myself if it is true.

Anyway, I re-read the testimony of the 3 and 8 witnesses in the introduction the other day and it really started hitting home as to what that means.  So I started wondering about these people, so I started looking for references and information about them and would love any links to articles or church information about these people (please only mormon approved information, I'm not interested in non-mormon websites I don't trust them)

I found this article but anything else you can give me to read would be amazing and very much appreciated.

https://history.lds.org/article/doctrine-and-covenants-three-witnesses?lang=eng

[Sunday21]

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Book_of_Mormon/Witnesses

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/gospel-library/manual/32506/32506_000_057_03-witnesses.pdf

[Sunday21]

http://www.ldsliving.com/What-Happened-to-the-3-Witnesses/s/79341

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Book_of_Mormon_Witnesses

https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/evaluating-book-mormon-witnesses

 

Edited July 16, 2018 by Sunday21

[zil]

You might look them up here to see what you can find:

http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/reference/people

[VelvetShadow]

Awesome!  Thank you both so much 😎

[Guest MormonGator]

Cool fact-even though all three witnesses broke from the church, they never denied seeing the Golden Plates. 

[VelvetShadow]

4 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Cool fact-even though all three witnesses broke from the church, they never denied seeing the Golden Plates. 

Didn't know that, that is very cool!

[theplains]

On 7/16/2018 at 5:42 PM, MormonGator said:

Cool fact-even though all three witnesses broke from the church, they never denied seeing the Golden Plates. 

I saw this on Wikipedia but not sure how acturate it is.

"Whitmer moved to Richmond, Missouri, where he ran a livery stable and became a civic leader. After Smith's assassination,
Whitmer, like Martin Harris, briefly followed James Strang, who had his own set of supernatural metal plates. Later, Whitmer
organized his own splinter group based on his authority as one of the Three Witnesses and even later supported another
group headed by his brother John. In his pamphlet, "An Address to All Believers in Christ" (1887), Whitmer reaffirmed his
witness to the golden plates,[54] but he also criticized Smith, including the introduction of plural marriage. "If you believe my
testimony to the Book of Mormon, if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice," wrote Whitmer, "then
I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens, and told me to 'separate myself from
among the Latter Day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, should it be done unto them.'".[55] Nevertheless, Whitmer is
regarded by Mormons as an "enduring witness to the genuineness of the prophet Joseph Smith and his message."[53]

Jim
 

[Queolby]

Some distort the historical record to make it appear that David Whitmer left the Church because he was told to, when it fact he was excommunicated prior to claiming any revelation to do so. The command to leave, if it was a true revelation, involved David's physical safety and not his membership in the Church, which he had already renounced. Whitmer was not instructed to leave the Church or "repudiate Mormonism," he was instructed (by God) to leave Far West after he was already excommunicated. This was arguably a very prudent course, both for Whitmer's safety and the integrity of the Restoration witnesses. Whitmer's witness of the Book of Mormon and seeing the angel is much more powerful since he forcefully maintained it even after he left the Church and disagreed with Joseph Smith.

[Queolby]

Cowdery later said: “I beheld with my eyes. And handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was translated. I also beheld the Interpreters.”

Oliver Cowdery, the most constant and involved witness to the miraculous translation, always affirmed the divinity of the process. Though later disaffected for a time from the Church, he nevertheless came humbly back. He spoke forthrightly about how he "wrote with my own pen the intire book of Mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the Lips of the prophet." Oliver would not have humbly returned to the Church at all, especially seeking no station, had there been any kind of fraud!

After the appearance to Cowdery and Whitmer, Joseph went searching for Harris, who had gone further into the woods. Harris asked Joseph to pray with him, and at length, they later reported, their desires were fulfilled. Joseph said he saw the same vision as before, and Harris cried out “in an ecstasy of Joy”: “’Tis enough; ’tis enough; mine eyes have beheld.” At the close of the vision he jumped up, shouted “Hosanna,” and blessed God. Harris later signed a statement with Cowdery and Whitmer saying that they had seen an angel and heard a voice commanding that “we should bear record.”

Harris Switch out seer Stone for a fake.
"Once Martin found a rock closely resembling the seerstone Joseph sometimes used in place of the interpreters and substituted it without the Prophet’s knowledge. When the translation resumed, Joseph paused for a long time and then exclaimed, “Martin, what is the matter, all is as dark as Egypt.” Martin then confessed that he wished to “stop the mouths of fools” who told him that the Prophet memorized sentences and merely repeated them."

 

[NeuroTypical]

Hi Queolby, if you're going to cut and paste stuff, make sure you use quotes and cite your source please.  

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/David_Whitmer

[Queolby]

On 8/4/2018 at 9:06 PM, NeuroTypical said:

Hi Queolby, if you're going to cut and paste stuff, make sure you use quotes and cite your source please.  

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/David_Whitmer

I actually got it from my scriptures. I don't remember if I got them from that website or not.

[GaleG]

On 7/29/2018 at 5:06 PM, theplains said:

I saw this on Wikipedia but not sure how acturate it is.

 "Whitmer moved to Richmond, Missouri, where he ran a livery stable and became a civic leader. After Smith's assassination,
Whitmer, like Martin Harris, briefly followed James Strang, who had his own set of supernatural metal plates

I looked at the wiki link but don't see where these plates came from or where they went.

Gale

[mordorbund]

15 hours ago, GaleG said:

I looked at the wiki link but don't see where these plates came from or where they went.

Gale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voree_plates

While comparisons to Smith and the Book of Mormon witnesses is natural, one key difference is that Strang's witnesses were the equivalent of Smith's 8 witnesses. They testified that they saw plates, that they were written in an unknown language, etc, but Strang did not have witnesses who saw the same angel he did or who heard a divine voice testifying of the accuracy of the translation.

[The Folk Prophet]

12 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voree_plates

While comparisons to Smith and the Book of Mormon witnesses is natural, one key difference is that Strang's witnesses were the equivalent of Smith's 8 witnesses. They testified that they saw plates, that they were written in an unknown language, etc, but Strang did not have witnesses who saw the same angel he did or who heard a divine voice testifying of the accuracy of the translation.

I dare say there's a pretty big difference here, eh?

"I witness that [person] had some pieces of metal with some crazy crap scratched on them."

vs.

"I witness that an angel of God appeared before me and showed me the metal plates that [person] claimed to have"

Not exactly the same sort of testimony.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Mary Whitmer was also allowed to see the plates. She had a visitor that showed them to her because of her faithfulness. Mary, afterward referred to this visitor as "Brother Nephi" for the rest of her life. He may have been one of the Three Disciples that were given power over death. Some later versions say it was Moroni, but the original sources disagree with them.

https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/another-account-of-mary-whitmers-viewing-of-the-golden-plates/ 

Edited January 24, 2019 by Emmanuel Goldstein