User:InProgress/SWDN/Swedish questions/11

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A FairMormon Response to Questions Asked in Swedish Fireside with Elder's Jensen and Turley

1: BoM translation—2: Polygamy and Polyandry—3: Polygamy forced?—4: Book of Abraham—5: "Lying for Lord"—6: Mark Hofmann—7: Blood atonement—8: First Vision—9: Sanitized history—10: "Not all truth is useful"—11: Angelic affidavits—12: Blacks and priesthood—13: Temple concerns—14: Evidence of Vikings—15: Adam-God—16: Kinderhook

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Question:
One thing that really bothers me is the lack of contemporary sources for the angelic visitations.

• There are sources from 1820-1830— affidavits, letters, minutes— but none of them ever mentions any angelic visitations or a priesthood
• Why are there not any contemporary testimonies. Or are there?

Short Answer:
 ^{[needs work]}Need Turley answers?

• Question: Do contemporary accounts mention angelic visitors?
  Answer: Yes.
  Some of the earliest documents explicitly discuss angelic visitors to Joseph Smith:

• 1829:The Three Witnesses testified to an angelic vision of the Book of Mormon plates and other artifacts.
• 17 June 1829: A disbelieving member of Joseph Smith, Sr.'s family writes of Joseph:

He writes that the Angel of the Lord has revealed to him the hidden treasures of wisdom & knowledge, even divine revelation, which has lain in the bowels of the earth for thousands of years [and] is at last made known to him, he says he has eyes to see things that are not and then has the audacity to say they are; and the Angel of the Lord (Devil it should be) has put me in possession of great wealth, gold and silver and precious stones so that I shall have the dominion in all the land of Palmyra. [Jesse Smith, Stockholm, New York, to Hyrum Smith, Palmyra, New York, 17 June 1829; transcribed in Joseph Smith Letterbook, 1837-43, Joseph Smith Papers, Church Archives, 59.]

• 5 September 1829: Skeptical newspaper reports that Martin Harris was told by Joseph that he was "visited by the spirit of the Almighty in a dream, and informed that in a certain hill . . . was deposited a Golden Bible" ["Golden Bible," Rochester (NY) Gem, 5 September 1829, 70].
• 9 June 1830: "God visited him [Joseph Smith] by an holy angel, whose countenance was as lightning, and whose garments were pure and white above all whiteness, and gave unto him commandments which inspired him from on high." [Published "The Mormon Creed," Painesville Telegraph, 19 April 1831, 4.]

Question: Is priesthood ordination by angels mentioned prior to 1831?
Answer: Yes.
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Question: Is priesthood ordination by angels mentioned soon after 1830?
Answer: Yes.

• October 1832 a Protestant minister wrote that "[Mormons] profess to hold frequent converse with angels; some go, if we may believe what they say, as far as the third heaven, and converse with the Lord Jesus face to face.[Rev. B. Pixley, Christian Watchman, Independence Mo., October 12, 1832; in Among the Mormons. Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers, Edited by William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958): 74.]
• March 1833, the Reverend Richmond Taggart wrote a letter to a ministerial friend, regarding the activities of Joseph Smith himself in Ohio: "The following Curious occurrance occurred last week in Newburg [Ohio] about 6 miles from this Place [Cleveland]. Joe Smith the great Mormonosity was there and held forth, and among other things he told them he had seen Jesus Christ and the Apostles and conversed with them, and that he could perform Miracles." [Richmond Taggart to the Reverend Jonathan Goings, 2 March 1833, 2, Jonathon Goings Papers, American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, New York.]

Joseph’s ‘conversations’ with the Apostles could be a reference to having seen, spoken to, and been ordained to the Priesthood by the early Apostles Peter, James, and John. Having received that Priesthood Joseph Smith was now qualified to perform healings, and other ‘miracles’.

• July 1833 A Missouri newspaper contains an article on a mass meeting of Latter-day Saints, and refers to the Saints’ “pretended revelations from heaven… their personal intercourse with God and his angels… converse with God and his angels…” [Missouri Intelligencer (August 10, 1833)].

Question: Why are there not any contemporary testimonies. Or are there?
Answer: Yes, there are. See above.