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Mormonism and Wikipedia/Golden plates/Returning the plates
Returning the plates
After translation was complete, Smith said he returned the plates to the angel, although he did not elaborate about this experience.[1] According to accounts by several early Mormons, a group of Mormon leaders including Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and possibly others[2] accompanied Smith and returned the plates to a cave inside the Hill Cumorah.[3] There, Smith is said to have placed the plates on a table near "many wagon loads" of other ancient records, and the Sword of Laban hanging on the cave wall.[4] According to Brigham Young's understanding, which he said he gained from Cowdery, on a later visit to the cave, the Sword of Laban was said to be unsheathed and placed over the plates, and inscribed with the words "This sword will never be sheathed again until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and his Christ."[5]
Smith taught that part of the golden plates were "sealed".[6] This "sealed" portion is said to contain "a revelation from God, from the beginning of the world to the ending thereof".[7] Many Latter Day Saints believe that the plates will be kept hidden until a future time when the sealed part will be translated[8] and, according to one early Mormon leader, transferred from the hill to one of the Mormon temples.[9]
David Whitmer is quoted as stating that he saw just the untranslated portion of the plates sitting on the table with the sword (and also a breastplate).[10] Apparently, Whitmer was aware of expeditions at Cumorah to locate the sealed portion of the plates through "science and mineral rods," which he said "testify that they are there".[11]- ↑ Van Horn (1881) ; Smith (1853) , p. 141.
- ↑ Young (1877) , p. 38 (mentioning only Smith and Cowdery); Packer (2004) , p. 52, 55 (including David Whitmer in the list and describing Whitmer's account of the event, and citing William Horne Dame Diary, 14 January 1855, stating that Hyrum Smith was also in the group).
- ↑ Packer (2004) , p. 52.
- ↑ Young (1877) , p. 38 (Young said he heard this from Oliver Cowdery).
- ↑ Young (1877) , p. 38.
- ↑ Smith (1842) , p. 707.
- ↑ Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 27:7.
- ↑ Packer (2004) , p. 55.
- ↑ Packer (2004) , p. 55 (quoting a statement by Orson Pratt).
- ↑ Packer (2004) , p. 55 (citing reporter Edward Stevenson's 1877 interview with Whitmer).
- ↑ Packer (2004) , p. 55. At least one Mormon scholar doubts the existence of a Cumorah cave and instead argues that early Mormons saw a vision of a cave in another location.Tvedtnes (1990)