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David Whitmer claimed that Joseph Smith received a revelation and prophesied that Oliver Cowdery and Hiram Page should go to Canada where they would find a man willing to buy the copyright to the Book of Mormon. When they failed to sell the copyright, Whitmer states that Joseph admitted that the revelation had not come from God.
This criticism is in all likelihood the product of a false memory by David Whitmer.
Joseph Smith had been told there were people in Canada willing to buy the copyrights to useful books. Due to the dire financial position of the Church, he decided this could be an opportunity to relieve some of the financial pressure associated with publishing the Book of Mormon. Four men went to Canada. Before leaving, Joseph Smith received a revelation directing them to go to Kingston, Canada, with other conditions for success.
Hiram Page, who was one of the individuals sent to Canada, laid out the event in a letter in 1848.[1] Page wrote that the revelation Joseph Smith received conditioned success upon whether those individuals in Canada capable of buying the Book of Mormon copyright would have their hearts softened. When unable to sell the copyright, the four men returned to Palmyra. Hiram Page stated he for the first time understood how some revelations given to people were not necessarily for their direct benefit. Hiram Page believed the revelation was actually fulfilled.
Hiram Page’s 1848 account of the Canadian Mission trip was sent to William McLellin. Because it was private correspondence, its existence and details were unknown until the 1930’s, when the letter was donated to the RLDS Church’s archives as part of a larger collection of McLellin materials.[2] The content of the letter was not broadly known until after the document was stolen in 1985, but a copy of the original was donated by a private collector around the year 2000 who had made a copy prior to the theft of the original.
In 1872 William McLellin wrote about the journey to Canada.[3] He had no first hand knowledge of the event, as he did not join the Church until 1831. He apparently got the description of the event from Martin Harris, who was likewise not there and had no first hand knowledge. From the published account, McLellin ignores Hiram Page’s 1848 letter, and asserts that all involved in the Canadian Mission viewed it as a complete failure. Since all involved were dead, and the only known account by one of the participants, who obviously viewed it as a success, was in McLellin possession, he apparently did not worry about being corrected. In 1881 or shortly thereafter a man by the name of J.L. Traughber wrote a letter to a German correspondent, who published it in 1886, retelling McLellin’s second or third hand knowledge of the event.
Beginning in 1886, David Whitmer reports for the first time of the Canadian Mission. Initially he reports it in the third person, but by the time of his 1887 pamphlet An Address to All Believers in Christ, 57 years after the event occurred, he reports to having been a first hand witness, and Joseph Smith had given a false prophecy. His account is at variance in several ways with Hiram Page’s account. He gets the destination city in Canada wrong (he says Toronto, the other accounts say Kingston) and who did not correctly identified who all went (he identified Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery, while Page noted Joseph Knight and Josiah Stowell). Page also makes no mention or even a hint at disappointment in Joseph Smith, and accusing him of a false prophecy, so naturally no “revelation” is noted by Page of a revelation explaining the Mission’s failure.
One must remember that not only was Whitmer looking for evidence to support his theory that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet, but he also wrote with no fear of contradiction, as all the witnesses to the event were dead. In Whitmer’s 1887 account we learn for the first time of the supposed post-mission revelation where Joseph Smith is told that some revelations are from God, some from devils, some from men. This account is in all likelihood a fabrication. Unlike his consistent, life-long statements concerning the witness of the Gold Plates, this account, which is probably a second-hand retelling of events 57 years after their occurrence, suddenly appears and is wrong on several of the documentable facts, and inconsistent with the first-hand testimony of Hiram page, given 40 years earlier than Whitmer and by comparison much closer to the actual event.
<!- This criticism originated with David Whitmer in his 1887 pamphlet An Address to All Believers in Christ, which was written very near the end of his life. Although Whitmer is strongly critical of the direction taken by the Church both during the Prophet’s life and after his death, he strongly affirms his testimony as one of the Three Witnesses and his belief in the Book of Mormon—a detail that the critics prefer to ignore when relying upon his writings. Whitmer relates the following story:
This passage from Whitmer’s writings has been interpreted to mean that Joseph was attempting to acquire funds for his family, and some even go so far as to suggest that Joseph deliberately attempted to keep Martin Harris from sharing in any of the expected income.
B.H. Roberts, in A Comprehensive History of the Church, responds this claim by David Whitmer.
Roberts expresses doubt as to the accuracy of the story, and suggests that David Whitmer may not have recalled all of the details correctly, yet he goes on to address the claim anyway.
Roberts even suggests that this may have been an object lesson for the Prophet.
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The primary evidence supporting the story comes from David Whitmer, who had left the church many years before. The real question, assuming that the story is accurate, is whether or not it indicates that Joseph Smith was not a true prophet. The answer is best expressed in Elder Roberts’ own response, “Does that circumstance vitiate his claim as a prophet? No; the fact remains that despite this circumstance there exists a long list of events to be dealt with which will establish the fact of divine inspiration operating upon the mind of this man Joseph Smith. The wisdom frequently displayed, the knowledge revealed, the predicted events and the fulfilment thereof, are explicable upon no other theory than of divine inspiration giving guidance to him.” [8]
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