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	|authorsources=Joseph Smith’s 1832 history and Joseph Smith-History in the Pearl of Great Price.		|authorsources=Joseph Smith’s 1832 history and Joseph Smith-History in the Pearl of Great Price.
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		+	|link=Joseph Smith's First Vision/Contradiction about knowing all churches were wrong
		+	|subject=Contradiction about knowing all churches were wrong
		+	|summary=In his 1832 account of the First Vision, Joseph Smith said, “I found [by searching the scriptures] that mankind did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatized from the true and living faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament.” But in the 1835 account he said, “I knew not who [of the denominations] was right or who was wrong.” It is claimed that thus counts as evidence that the First Vision story evolved over time.
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	{{IndexClaim		{{IndexClaim

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Revision as of 09:32, 1 January 2014

1. REDIRECTTemplate:Test3

Response to claims made in "Chapter 3: The Making of a Religion"

Chapter 2: The Marketing of an Image

A FAIR Analysis of: Mormonism Unmasked A work by author: R. Philip Roberts

Chapter 4: Polytheism Reborn

27

Claim
A quote from Joseph Smith is provided:

I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.

Author's source(s)
History of the Church

Response

Did Joseph Smith 'boast' of keeping the Church intact?

Summary: Joseph Smith is reported as saying: “I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam... Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.” (History of The Church, 6:408–409). This attitude strikes some as boastful, and unbecoming a prophet.

28

Claim
The author states, “During this time, Joseph and his father became increasingly engaged in folk magic, using magical seer stones and divining rods to look for buried treasure and lost items.”

Author's source(s)
Fawn M. Brodie, ‘’No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet’’ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 6-33. See also Jerald and Sandra Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow and Reality?’’ (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987) 32-49.

Response

Practitioner of occultism and magic?

Summary: It is claimed that Joseph Smith's spiritual experiences began as products of "magic," the "occult," or "treasure seeking," and that only later did Joseph describe his experiences in Christian, religious terms: speaking of God, angels, and prophethood.

28

Claim
The author states, “Due to a tremendous revival in his neighborhood in 1820, Joseph Smith became concerned about which church he should join…”

Author's source(s)
Not provided

Response

• Joseph said that there was an excitement on the subject of religion. He never mentioned the word “revival.” Nevertheless, there is ample evidence of such religious excitement in the Palmyra area in 1820.

Methodist camp meetings in the Palmyra area

Summary: It is claimed that any association Joseph had with Methodism did not occur until the 1824-25 revival in Palmyra, and that his claim that the "unusual excitement" started with the Methodists in 1820 is therefore incorrect. However, the Palmyra Register indicates that the Methodists were holding camp meetings in Palmyra in 1820.

29

Claim
The author claims that Joseph “did not publish his accont of his first vision until 1842…”

Author's source(s)
Not provided

Response

• Joseph wrote the first known account of his vision in his own hand in 1832.
• Joseph’s journal indicates that he was sharing details of his first vision with non-Mormon visitors by late 1835.

No mention in non-LDS literature before 1843?

Summary: There is no mention of the First Vision in non-Mormon literature before 1843. If the First Vision story had been known by the public before 1840 (when Orson Pratt published his pamphlet) the anti-Mormons “surely” would have seized upon it as an evidence of Joseph Smith’s imposture.

30

Claim
The author claims that “the revival that Smith described…did not happen until 1824-25, not in the year 1820…”

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response

• Joseph never claimed that the “excitement” on the subject of religion was a revival.
• There is evidence of substantial religious activity in the area during 1820.

Methodist camp meetings in the Palmyra area

Summary: It is claimed that any association Joseph had with Methodism did not occur until the 1824-25 revival in Palmyra, and that his claim that the "unusual excitement" started with the Methodists in 1820 is therefore incorrect. However, the Palmyra Register indicates that the Methodists were holding camp meetings in Palmyra in 1820.

Brigham Young University-Idaho Devotional, "The Prophet Joseph Smith"

Elder D. Todd Christofferson,  Brigham Young University-Idaho Devotional, (24 September 2013)

Critics have also claimed that there were no religious revivals in the Palmyra, New York, area in 1820, as Joseph Smith reported in his history. With today’s greater access to original sources, including the Palmyra Register newspaper, there is ample evidence of religious revivals in the area during 1820 and some years prior. It appears that the Methodists had a regularly used camp meeting ground, and that revivals were common enough that often they garnered no coverage in the newspapers unless something out of the ordinary occurred such as a death. (Footnote 12)

Click here to view the complete article

30

Claim
The author states that “as of 1820, Joseph Smith was teaching that the Father and the Son both had physical bodies...”

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response

• Joseph Smith wasn’t teaching anything in 1820. He wasn’t teaching anything until the Book of Mormon was translated and published in 1830, ten years later.

Joseph Smith's early conception of God

Summary: It is claimed that Joseph began his prophetic career with a "trinitarian" idea of God, and only later developed his theology of the Godhead. What do we know about Joseph and the early Saints' views on God?

30

Claim
The author states that the “early documents of Mormonism show that during the 1820s and early 1830s, Smith was teaching there was only one God.”

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response

Joseph Smith's early conception of God

Summary: It is claimed that Joseph began his prophetic career with a "trinitarian" idea of God, and only later developed his theology of the Godhead. What do we know about Joseph and the early Saints' views on God?

30

Claim
The author claims that Joseph Smith’s “plural god doctrine was not put forward until the 1840s in Nauvoo, Illinois.”

Author's source(s)
Doctrine and Covenants (Kirtland, Ohio: F.G. Williams & Co., 1835), 52-58. See also Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?’’ 143-62.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

30

Claim
In Joseph’s 1832 First Vision account, he said he was fifteen when “the Lord” appeared to him. Not only is his age different, but he described only one being, as opposed to the ‘two personages’ he had previously accounted for, in the vision.”

Author's source(s)
Joseph Smith’s 1832 history

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

Gospel Topics, located on lds.org., "First Vision Accounts"

Gospel Topics, located on lds.org.

The various accounts of the First Vision tell a consistent story, though naturally they differ in emphasis and detail. Historians expect that when an individual retells an experience in multiple settings to different audiences over many years, each account will emphasize various aspects of the experience and contain unique details. Indeed, differences similar to those in the First Vision accounts exist in the multiple scriptural accounts of Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus and the Apostles’ experience on the Mount of Transfiguration.3 Yet despite the differences, a basic consistency remains across all the accounts of the First Vision. Some have mistakenly argued that any variation in the retelling of the story is evidence of fabrication. To the contrary, the rich historical record enables us to learn more about this remarkable event than we could if it were less well documented.

Click here to view the complete article

30

Claim
In his 1835 First Vision account, Joseph stated the he saw “many angels.”

Author's source(s)
Assumed to be one of Joseph’s 1835 journal entries. This would correlate with the 9 November 1835 journal entry.

Response

30

Claim
The author states that in the 1832 account, Joseph “mentioned that he had already concluded that all churches were in apostasy before he went into the woods to pray, while the official account of 1842 states that he had not concluded this until God so informed him in the vision.”

Author's source(s)
Joseph Smith’s 1832 history and Joseph Smith-History in the Pearl of Great Price.

Response

Contradiction about knowing all churches were wrong

Summary: In his 1832 account of the First Vision, Joseph Smith said, “I found [by searching the scriptures] that mankind did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatized from the true and living faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament.” But in the 1835 account he said, “I knew not who [of the denominations] was right or who was wrong.” It is claimed that thus counts as evidence that the First Vision story evolved over time.

30

Claim
The author states that the “earliest publication to print a ‘full history’ of the rise of Mormonism, the ‘’Messenger and Advocate’’, failed to mention Smith’s vision in 1820, starting instead with the angel appearing in Smith’s bedroom in 1823.”

Author's source(s)
Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?’’ 151-52.

Response

• This refers to Oliver Cowdery’s history published in the ‘’Messenger and Advocate” in 1834 and 1835. Oliver begins describing the religious excitement leading up to the First Vision when Joseph was 14 years old. Eight weeks later in the next installment, Oliver states that he made a mistake, changes Joseph’s age to 17, then describes Moroni’s visit without mentioning the First Vision.

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "The Cowdery Conundrum: Oliver’s Aborted Attempt to Describe Joseph Smith’s First Vision in 1834 and 1835"

Roger Nicholson,  Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (December 6, 2013)

In 1834, Oliver Cowdery began publishing a history of the Church in installments in the pages of the Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate. The first installment talks of the religious excitement and events that ultimately led to Joseph Smith’s First Vision at age 14. However, in the subsequent installment published two months later, Oliver claims that he made a mistake, correcting Joseph’s age from 14 to 17 and failing to make any direct mention of the First Vision. Oliver instead tells the story of Moroni’s visit, thus making it appear that the religious excitement led to Moroni’s visit.

This curious account has been misunderstood by some to be evidence that the “first” vision that Joseph claimed was actually that of the angel Moroni and that Joseph invented the story of the First Vision of the Father and Son at a later time. However, Joseph wrote an account of his First Vision in 1832 in which he stated that he saw the Lord, and there is substantial evidence that Oliver had this document in his possession at the time that he wrote his history of the Church. This essay demonstrates the correlations between Joseph Smith’s 1832 First Vision account, Oliver’s 1834/1835 account, and Joseph’s 1835 journal entry on the same subject. It is clear that not only did Oliver have Joseph’s history in his possession but that he used Joseph’s 1832 account as a basis for his own account. This essay also shows that Oliver knew of the First Vision and attempted to obliquely refer to the event several times in his second installment before continuing with his narrative of Moroni’s visit.

Click here to view the complete article

31

Claim
The author states that Joseph Smith “engaged in folk magic and was occasionally hired to use his magical stone-found in a neighbor’s (Mr. Chase) well-to find buried treasures and lost objects. Since the Lord had so specifically instructed the nation of Israel not to engage in any magical practice, it is hard to believe that God would choose a magician to restore his church.

Author's source(s)
Leviticus 19:26; 20:6, 27; Deuteronomy 18:10; Isaiah 19:3.

Response

• Joseph Smith was not a “magician.”

31

Claim
The author notes that in 1826 Joseph was charged with being a “disorderly person” and “glass looker.” The author states that “glass looker” means “crystal ball user.”

Author's source(s)
Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?’’ 32-49.

Response

1826 trial for "glasslooking"

Summary: Joseph Smith was brought to trial in 1826 for "glasslooking." Didn't Hugh Nibley claim that if this trial record existed that it would be "the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith?"

31

Claim
Regarding the Book of Mormon translation, the author asks, “Did he use the Urim and Thummim, prepared by God and stored with the plates, to translate the record, or did he use the chocolate-colored stone found in Mr. Chase’s well?”

Response
Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, ‘’Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, Prophet’s Wife, “Elect Lady,” Polygamy’s Foe 1804-1879’’(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984); David Whitmer, ‘’An Address to All Belivers in Christ’’ (Richmond, Mo.: David Whitmer, 1887), 12.

• Joseph used both instruments during the translation.

Gospel Topics (lds.org), "Book of Mormon Translation"

Gospel Topics (lds.org), (2013)

These two instruments—the interpreters and the seer stone—were apparently interchangeable and worked in much the same way such that, in the course of time, Joseph Smith and his associates often used the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer to the single stone as well as the interpreters. In ancient times, Israelite priests used the Urim and Thummim to assist in receiving divine communications. Although commentators differ on the nature of the instrument, several ancient sources state that the instrument involved stones that lit up or were divinely illumin[at]ed. Latter-day Saints later understood the term “Urim and Thummim” to refer exclusively to the interpreters. Joseph Smith and others, however, seem to have understood the term more as a descriptive category of instruments for obtaining divine revelations and less as the name of a specific instrument.

Click here to view the complete article

32

Claim
The author claims that Joseph attempted to “join the Methodist Church in 1828, eight years after the Father and Son allegedly told him that all the churches were apostate….Why did he ignore God’s command to ‘join none of them’?”

Author's source(s)
Michael Marquardt and Wesley P. Walters, ‘’Inventing Mormonism: Tradition and the Historical Record’’ (Salt Lake City: Smith Research Associates, 1994), 55, 61, n. 49

Response

Did Joseph join other churches contrary to commandment in vision?

Summary: Critics charge that Joseph Smith joined the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches between 1820 and 1830—despite the claim made in his 1838 history that he was forbidden by Deity (during the 1820 First Vision experience) from joining any denomination.

32

Claim
The author states that “Mormons claim that the early Christian church contained all the same teachings the LDS embrace today.”

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

33

Claim
The author states that “the LDS concept of a total apostasy contradicts Christ’s promise that ‘I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

Author's source(s)
Matthew 16:18

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

33

Claim
The author states that the Book of Hebrews “explains that the Aaronic priesthood was brought to an end with the death of Christ and that Christ is our only eternal High Priest ‘after the order of Mechizedek.’”

Author's source(s)
Hebrews 3:1; 4:14-16; 5:1-9; 6:20; 7:11-28.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

33

Claim
The author notes that the Church was originally named “The Church of Christ,” followed by “The Church of the Latter Day Saints,” and then ultimately changed by revelation to “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Author's source(s)
Doctrine and Covenants 115:4.

Response

•   The author got one fact correct:  
  The original name of the Church, and the subsequent name “Church of the Latter Day Saints” were not received by revelation. The name of the Church was ultimately given by revelation to be “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

34

Claim
The author states that Joseph received the promise that a temple in Independence, Missouri would be “reared in this generation,” yet “the LDS Church has not built the temple in Independence.”

Author's source(s)
Doctrine and Covenants 84:3-5

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

35

Claim
The author states that Joseph Smith predicted that the Lord would come within “fifty-six years” and that this “prophecy never came true either.”

Author's source(s)
Joseph Smith, ‘’History of the Church’’, vol. 2 (Salt Lake Cithy: Deseret Book Co., 1978), 182.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

35

Claim
The 1835 edition of the Doctrines and Covenants contained “major revisions to already published revelations, [and] added revelations given since the last printing.”

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

Ensign, "Great and Marvelous Are the Revelations of God"

Gerrit Dirkmaat,  Ensign, (January 2013)

Many Revelations Were Later Revised by Joseph Smith through Inspiration. Over the course of the first five years of the Church, Joseph and others under his direction made changes and corrections to some of the early revelation texts in an attempt to more closely portray the intent of the revelation. Other times, especially as the revelations were being prepared for publication, Joseph was inspired to update the contents of the revelations to reflect a growing Church structure and new circumstances. At times this process resulted in substantial additions to the original text. As early as November 1831, a Church conference resolved that “Joseph Smith Jr. correct those errors or mistakes which he may discover by the Holy Spirit while reviewing the revelations and commandments and also the fullness of the scriptures.”

Click here to view the complete article

36

Claim
The 1835 Doctrine and Covenants included a declaration that “one man should have one wife” in response to accusations of “the crime of fornication, and polygamy.” This was after Joseph began practicing plural marriage in secret.

Author's source(s)
Doctrine and Covenants (Kirtland, Ohio: F.G. Williams & Co., 1835), 251.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

36

Claim
Fanny Alger was one of Joseph’s “earliest plural wives,” but Oliver Cowdery referred to this relationship as a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger’s.”

Author's source(s)
Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?’’ 203; see also Brodie, ‘’No Man Knows’’, 181-85; Newell and Avery, ‘’Mormon Enigma’’, 66.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

36-37

Claim
Joseph secretly practiced polygamy “through the rest of his life, always with denials.”

Author's source(s)
Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?’’ 245-48.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

37

Claim
Regarding the Book of Abraham, the author states that “Egyptologist have shown that the papyri Smith supposedly translated date to about the time of Chirst and are standard Egyptian funeral documents, depicting various Egyptian gods and goddesses. Obviously, these papyri do not relate to the Abraham of the Old Testament, as Joseph Smith claimed.”

Author's source(s)
’’Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Though,’’ summer 1968, 68, 98; and autumn 1968, 119-20, 133; Charles M. Larson, ‘’By His Own Hand Upon Papyrs: A New Look At The Joseph Smith Papyri (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Institute for Religious Studies, 1992), 61-111.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

37

Claim
The author states that in 1836, “Smith turned once again to treasure hunting to solve the church’s financial problems” by going to Salem, Massachusetts to look for treasure in the basement of a house there.

Author's source(s)
Doctrine and Covenants 132:19, 20, 52, 61, 62.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

38

Claim
The author claims that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon created the impression that the Kirtland Safety Society was “created by God, that it had a sacred mission, and thus was invincible.”

Author's source(s)
Van Wagoner, ‘’Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994)’’, 184.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

38

Claim
The author states that “Mormon leaders organized a sort of secret chrch police called the ‘Danites.’”

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

40

Claim
The author notes that Joseph incorporated many elements of Masonry into the temple endowment ceremony.

Author's source(s)
Not provided.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

41-42

Claim
The author discusses the Council of Fifty.

Author's source(s)
Fawn Brodie, ‘’Now Man Knows My History’’, 356.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

42

Claim
Joseph Smith talks of the “plurality of Gods.”

Author's source(s)
Smith, ‘’History of the Church’’, vol. 6: 303-5.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

43

Claim
The author notes that “two guns were smuggled” into Carthage Jail and that Joseph and Hyrum “using the guns that had been smuggled in to them….tried to defend themselves against the assailants.’’

Author's source(s)
Smith, ‘’History of the Church’’, vol. 6: 607-621; vol. 7: 102-105.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources

44

Claim
The author states that “nine of the LDS apostles were charged with counterfeiting, and to avoid arrest, the fled in the night.”

Author's source(s)
Tanner, ‘’Mormonism-Shadow or Reality?’’ 537-41.

Response
 FAIR WIKI EDITORS: Check sources