Shawn McCraney critiques a quote from President Gordon B. Hinckley regarding the Book of Mormon, highlighting that Hinckley emphasizes faith-based verification over empirical evidence for its truth. McCraney argues that genuine divine revelations should have foundations in reality and supportive evidence, much like real events and figures found in the Bible, rather than relying solely on metaphysical claims that cannot be substantiated.
Shawn argues that the Book of Mormon's validity is suggested to lie in personal experience rather than historical or archaeological evidence, with Gordon B. Hinckley's statements emphasizing faith as a 'power beyond natural senses.' He suggests that ambiguous language and reduced emphasis on historical claims, like the golden plates, reflect a shift in Mormon leadership's approach toward understanding and promoting the book in face of increasing scholarly and public scrutiny.
The testimonies of the eleven witnesses to the golden plates associated with the Book of Mormon predominantly relied on visions and spiritual manifestations, rather than tangible, physical encounters, with some witnesses admitting to only "seeing" the plates through visionary experiences. Despite this spiritual nature of witnessing, the narratives of mysticism and supernatural experiences were leveraged by early Mormonism to endorse faith in the Book of Mormon, highlighting a blend of mystical belief and material evidence.
The teaching focuses on evaluating the origins of the Book of Mormon, encouraging critical thinking about whether its content originated from ancient golden plates or from contemporary sources available to Joseph Smith. This analysis concludes a seven-week study, urging individuals to consider the plausibility of the Book's historical claims through careful examination.
Heart of the Matter May 15th, 2007
LIVE! From the Mecca of Mormonism, it’s Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology.! May 15th 2007. And I’m your host, Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion..
Show Highlights
Streaming video announcement.
In-house guests and shout outs: Lorne G! Muchas gracias, mi amigo from Idaho! Dale and Gerry, Leon and Barbara, Perri W. and Paul and Diana – great to meet you all.
Event Announcements
Heart in the Park 2007! Sugarhouse Park, Sunday, July 8th 2007, from 3:00pm to sunset. Great music, worship, booths, food, open microphone. We’ll even have some new products available like the infamous Howdy Partner T-Shirt, bumper stickers, books, and new DVD’s. It’s our second annual event which really helps our ministry and we just invite every single one of you to attend and have a great time.
Pastor in the Pub! Tonight after the show from 9:30 to whenever you want to leave. Great conversation and it gives me a chance to speak with you face to face. Squatter’s pub is on 3rd South in downtown SLC.
Reflections on the Book of Mormon
Special thanks to Russell B for the following quote from President Gordon B. Hinckley (as found in Four Cornerstones of Faith, The First Presidency Message, Ensign Magazine February 2004 – page 6):
Listen very, very carefully to this statement. What it says and doesn’t say is amazing. Speaking of the Book of Mormon GBH wrote:
“The evidence for its truth, for its validity in a world that is prone to demand evidence, lies not in archeology or anthropology, though these may be helpful to some. It lies not in word research or historical analysis, though these may be confirmatory. The evidence for its truth and validity lies within the covers of the book itself. The test of its truth lies in reading it. It is a book of God. Reasonable people may sincerely question its origin; but those who have read it prayfully have come to know by a power beyond their natural senses that it is true, that it contains the word of God, that it outlines saving truths of the everlasting gospel, that it “came forth by the gift and power of God? to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ.”
Let’s examine this quote a minute because I believe the LDS prophet is greasing the tracks for the Book of Mormon to ultimately be accepted on different grounds than it is today. Rest assured, if Mormonism had ANY substantiated physical evidence for the Book of Mormon you would be reading very different quotes from the prophet. But they don’t. And so he promotes knowing the book is true by “a power that goes beyond our senses.” This is a very treacherous realm.
I predict – not prophesy – that Mormonism will, in time, and through statements like this, begin to sort of smirk at the idea that people once believed the book came from golden plates, sort of like they smirk today at the Adam-God doctrine, blacks and the priesthood, or that the only way to become a God is through polygamy.
Listen, again, to what he is saying here: “The evidence for its truth, for its validity in a world that is prone to demand evidence, lies not in archeology or anthropology, though these may be helpful to some.”
First of all, there is no archeology or anthropology for the Book of Mormon that “could be helpful to some” so this inference is misleading from the start.
He says . . . “It lies not in word research or historical analysis, though these may be confirmatory.”
Again, there is no word research or historical analysis that can confirm the Book of Mormon so this is just another empty attempt to infer that there is!
He continues . . . “The evidence for its truth and validity lies within the covers of the book itself. The test of its truth lies in reading it.” There is a very important premise being made here. Let me explain it by talking about how God works.
The Nature of God's Work
God did not provide us His word through some totally mystical or absolute metaphysical revelations. All of God’s revelations are couched in reality.
- Abraham did have progeny.
- There is a Jerusalem.
- Jesus was a man with a body.
- Paul did speak at Ephesus.
God provides humanity with supportive evidences to our faith because He knows the human brain needs reason. Additionally, if His word was not based in reality but only in strict metaphysics, than any charlatan in the world could step in and make similar claims to God!
Imagine, for a moment, that God gave us a Bible that was from another planet. And it suddenly plopped down out of
The Origins of Religious Texts
The sky in the desert where somebody finds it and prints it. Not only would it be difficult for sane people who are hard-wired for reason to believe in it, it would also allow for anyone and everyone to claim that the book they represent came from God too!
(Discuss)
Koran? By revelation in a cave to Mohammed. Philosophy? From the minds of men to paper. Mein Kampf? Hitler could even claim divine origin under these rules. Every one of the authors could say that you can know their book is true by how you feel when you read it, right?
This is one of the reasons God gave us His Word from the streams of reality. Actuality. Breathing people from actual places. GBH continues: “It is a book of God.” This may not seem like much to you but to me this statement, coming from a source where men gauge their comments very carefully, is a bombshell. GBH didn’t say “It is a book FROM God” he said, “It is a book OF God.” HUGE, HUGE DIFFERENCE. But the statement is just vague enough to make authentication of it impossible.
The Nature of Innuendo in Religious Texts
GBH ended the statement with: “Reasonable people may sincerely question its origin; but those who have read it prayerfully have come to know by a power beyond their natural senses that it is true, that it contains the word of God, that it outlines saving truths of the everlasting gospel, that it “came forth by the gift and power of God? to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ.”
In the end, I believe the following is occurring and is going to continue to occur within Mormonism: Slowly and carefully, you will begin to read more ambiguous statements from “the brethren” regarding the origins of the Book of Mormon. Pictures and stories about “golden plates” will begin to appear less and less publicly and LDS leaders will continue to make statements like “it contains the word of God,” it “outlines saving truths” and “came forth by the gift and power of God” as public resistance and scholarly evidence against the Hill Cumorah fantasy mounts.
Hidden Messages in Religious Claims
Also buried in this written statement from President Gordon B Hinckley is a little thing I like to call “Mormon Innuendo.” Recall that the prophet said: “The evidence for (the Book of Mormon’s) truth, for its validity . . . lies not in archeology or anthropology . . . lies not in word research or historical analysis . . . but “the test of its truth lies in reading it.” “those who have read it prayerfully have come to know by a power beyond their natural senses that it is true.”
“Mormon Innuendo” is sort of a romanticized “wink-wink” “you-know-its true, you KNOW its true” approach to Mormonism. Where Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” But Gordon B Hinckley, speaking in Mormon Innuendo, says that “things not seen is evidence!” He calls it “a power beyond natural senses.”
While this may be the way Joseph Smith established the LDS Church and Mormonism continues to operate in this way today, God does not operate in a vacuum, but is gracious and manifest in reality.
Why is this important? Tonight we finish our examination of the Book of Mormon. When Joseph Smith completed it, he says he allowed two gatherings of witnesses to “see” the gold plates.
There was a gathering of three witnesses:
Olivery Cowdery
David Whitmer
Martin HarrisAnd a gathering of eight Witnesses:
Christian Whitmer
Jacob Whitmer
Peter Whitmer, Jr.
John Whitmer
Joseph Smith Sr.
Hyrum Smith
Samuel Smith
And Hirum Page.
All of them men. All eleven witnesses either came from the Smith family and/or were related to each other by marriage, with the exception of Martin Harris. All believed in the mystical and magical practice of “second sight” which is a 19th century way of describing “a power beyond natural senses.”
Regarding the three special witnesses, Martin Harris was described as “a visionary fanatic,” and a man who “pretended to see things.” Laurenzo Saunders, a friend to Harris said “Martin was a good citizen, a man who would do just as he would agree with you, but he was a great man for seeing spooks.” One thing he saw with his second sight was the Golden Plates before Joseph “showed” them to him.
According to Dan Vogels Early Mormon Documents (another outstanding book of reference material) Martin Harris said (prior to the supposed “witness” experience) that “I saw them (the plates) just as distinctly as I see any thing around me, though at the time…
The Testimony of the Witnesses
Oliver Cowdery, a second of the three witnesses, was a visionary and learned the art of “divining” from his father in Vermont. Remember, Oliver was Joseph Smith’s cousin. According to Dean C Jessee, editor of the Papers of Joseph Smith, Oliver also claims to have “seen” the plates in vision before he ever even met Joseph Smith.
“A power beyond natural senses!” Even the third of the three witnesses – David Whitmer – claims to have seen the plates being carried by the angel Moroni across the plains in a gunny sack before the angel disappeared as quickly as he arrived.
So of the three witnesses, all three: Were mystical and magical in their worldview. Were personally invested in one way or another in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and all had “seen” the plates in some sort of vision PRIOR to viewing them as witnesses.
The very language of the three witnesses' testimony – which is neither dated nor gives a location of the event nor identifies the author of the statement, speaks in the language of Mormon Innuendo:
(READ TESTIMONY)
Martin Harris's Admission
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the three witnesses' signed testimony is what they said about their observances later. Martin Harris later admitted: “I never saw the golden plates, only in a visionary or entranced state . . . .” When asked by someone else if he really saw the plates he said: “I did not see them as I see that pencil case, yet I saw them with the eye of faith.”
David Whitmer spoke with a bit more “Innuendo” when describing his witness. In 1885, a young LDS attorney spoke with Whitmer at length about his testimony of the plates. He said Whitmer . . . “was somewhat spiritual in his explanations. He was not as materialistic in his description as I had wished.” Zenas Gurley, an RLDS apostle asked Whitmer if the witnesses actually touched the real metal and Whitmer said, “We did not.”
The testimony of the three witnesses says: . . . that we held and saw the plates . . . I suggest to you, ever so strongly, that this holding of the plates was “with spiritual hands.”
The Eight Witnesses' Account
The testimony of the Eight Witnesses seems to be more material in nature. It reads: (page 202-203)
We’ve talked about the Joseph Smith family and their extreme magic worldview. All of the “Whitmer witnesses” believed in seer stones, and dowsing sticks, as tools to “see” and discern things. Hiram Page, the only one of the eight witnesses without the surname Smith or Whitmer, was also “visionary.” But BYU Professor Dean Jessee, in his “Papers of Joseph Smith,” acknowledges that Page also used a seer stone for hunting buried treasure.
So here are the eight witnesses. All mystics, all related. Their collective testimony, again given without a date, author, or location (but in all probability, it was penned by Joseph) states that: “Joseph Smith showed them the plates.” That “they did handle them with their hands” and “saw the engravings thereon” that they had “seen and hefted” them.
Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? But Palmer reports in Insiders View that: (see quip from 204) William Parrish also heard Martin Harris say that none of the eleven men examined physical records. He stated: “Martin Harris, one of the subscribing witnesses, has come out at last, and says he never saw the plates, from which the book purports to have been translated, except in vision and he further says that any man who says he has seen them in any other way is a liar, Joseph not excepted.”
Material vs. Spiritual Testimony
Only three of the eight witnesses ever said that they touched and handled the plates – Hyrum Smith, Samuel Smith, and Hirum Page . . . but Hirum Page added “I handled those plates; there were fine engravings on both sides . . . they were shown to me by a supernatural power.”
As with almost everything else in historic Mormonism, the three and eight witnesses to the golden plates provide a flat-out questionable accounting, where most of them, in the end, admitted that they saw the plates with, as Gordon B Hinckley would promote, “a power beyond their natural senses.”
I find great irony in the fact that on the one hand, Mormonism has long used the so-called testimony of the eleven witnesses to promote and support material faith in the Book of Mormon, but on the other hand, is more and more having to rely upon the very same tactics and proofs Joseph used to convince others of his visions from the start – imagination.
Conclusion of Seven-Week Analysis
End our seven-week analysis of the Book of Mormon.
Before we began, I asked you to ask yourself, “Is it reasonable to believe that the information we will discuss came from ancient golden plates or was it borrowed from a contemporary source of Joseph Smith?”
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