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JOHN WHITMER HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 2019 ANNUAL CONFERENCE - ROCHESTER, NY PRESENTATION

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Shown is a letter found contained in a small manuscript journal where it was affixed by fish glue on page 39. This important 6 May 1877 dated testimony by Mormon John Whitmer reaffirms his original testimony as one of the Eight Witnesses found in the 1830 Book of Mormon bible. This letter testimony by Whitmer was sent to Joseph R. Lambert (1845 - 1932) of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS) in Missouri.

Aside from founder Joseph Smith, John Whitmer was the most prominent co-founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The charter establishing the Church was signed on April 6, 1830 at father Peter Whitmer, Sr.'s. Fayette, NY log cabin. Later, in the year 1831, John Whitmer became the very first Church historian; appointed to this position by Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith.

Conversely, in early 1838 John Whitmer became the very first Mormon to become excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Almost forty years past his excommunication, when Whitmer executed his 6 May 1877 reaffirmation testimony to the Book of Mormon, never to that day had he rejoined the LDS Church.

This original John Whitmer manuscript letter of testimony supports and validates that the fabled Gold Plates of Mormon, as delivered to Prophet Smith by Mormon's son Angel Moroni, were real and truly existed.

As it was, Martin Harris, one of the first devout Mormon disciples, was one of the scribes who had come to Harmony, PA. to help Mormon Prophet Smith translate the Gold Plates. At one point Harris had taken 116 transcribed pages to show his wife back in Palmyra, NY - but became lost or destroyed.

Upon learning of this loss, Angel Moroni retaliated and took back the Gold Plates from Prophet Smith. With no physical proof of the Gold Plates existing, this cast uncertainty on to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, which would follow the work into the future.

More substantial authentication and provenance to the John Whitmer 6 May 1877 Book of Mormon testimony subsequently came forward about nine years after its initial year 2001 discovery by historian Richard Warren Lipack.

A happenstance online internet search in 2010 brought forth a revealing article by Mormon historian Richard Lloyd Anderson.

The article was found in a January 30, 2005 BYU publication. It cited quotes from a letter dated January 29, 1884 to E. L. Kelley written by Joseph R. Lambert. This 1884 letter amazingly cited the 6 May 1877 Whitmer letter Lambert had received seven years prior. In the 1884 letter, Lambert quoted several lines written in the Book of Mormon testimony found in the Journal historian Richard Warren Lipack had discovered!

Serving as a finite means of authentication, today the 1884 Lambert letter resides in the archives of the Community of Christ church in Independence, MO. (the former RLDS). This gives the Lambert Journal and Whitmer testimony irrefutable provenance and also serves as irrefutable authentication.

John Whitmer served as a scribe during the translation of the sacred Gold Plates at Harmony, PA.

The Book of Mormon was published in March of 1830, in Palmyra, New York just the month before.

When Prophet Joseph Smith first heard of the growing number of converts in Kirtland, Ohio, John Whitmer was sent by Smith out to Kirtland to provide much needed leadership.

After Joseph Smith became settled in Kirtland himself and others began to gather there, in March 1831, John Whitmer, "commanded by God" by the hands of Prophet Smith was anointed to write and keep a regular history. (Documents & Covenants 47:1).

Problems arising at the church headquarters in Kirtland involving the Kirtland Safety Society bank compelled Joseph Smith and fellow Mormon Sidney Rigdon to relocate to Far West in early 1838. This excommunication was caused by John Whitmer's reporting on the truths of certain indiscretions made by Joseph Smith against fellow Church brethren when the Prophet Smith had come out to Far West.

It was at this time in 1838, the year after John Whitmer had first arrived in Far West to act as a missionary - that this great turmoil arose. Increasing loan debts that the Church had with the Kirtland Safety Society bank brought on by Smith wanting to keep a Mormon militia ready against anti-Mormon factions prompted Smith to come out to Far West to solicit from Church parishioners property to help pay the Kirtland bank loan. This property was in the form of cattle, chickens, livestock and such to resell - that Prophet Smith had sought.

But the Prophet just took these properties carte blanche in the form of a outright theft. And John Whitmer precisely reported this in a truthful manner without reserve.

Joseph Smith did not approve of this action, as it was an embarrassment to the Prophet. Thus, in 1838 John Whitmer became the first Mormon to be excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And John Whitmer never returned to the LDS Church, yet he would always keep and support his testimony found reproduced in the Book of Mormon; even to the day he would meet his maker the Lord Almighty.

John Whitmer would die on July 11, 1878, approximately 14 months after he executed this most significant testimony to the Book of Mormon for Joseph R. Lambert.

The question arises as to if a man so close to nearing his death at meeting his maker God would tell a lie in the face of his God when asserting his testimony involving his God and Lord Savior?

One would not think that this would be the case.

Thus, the statements provided in the 6 May 1877 John Whitmer testimony clearly support that the Gold Plates existed and are the true and faithful origins of the Book of Mormon. This is irrefutable.

In Dan Vogel's five volume masterwork: "Early Mormon Documents" published between the years 1996 and 2003, not a single mention of the May 6, 1877 John Whitmer testimony is made. Dan Vogel had access to the same RLDS Church archives just as LDS BYU historian Richard Lloyd Anderson would have a few years later.

It was however in the year 2005 that the BYU historian Richard Lloyd Anderson would publish notice of John Whitmer's 6 May 1877 Book of Mormon testimony just a few years following Dan Vogel's earlier effort that failed to do so. Richard Lloyd Anderson's identification, documentation and showing the existence of John Whitmer's 6 May 1877 hand written and signed Book of Mormon testimony is of immeasurable significance.

Looking through numerous histories, records and even author Dan Vogel's Early Mormon Documents masterwork, one will see, after much study, that just a couple of other first person actual handwritten letters by a bona fide respective Book of Mormon Witness exist in physical form as Book of Mormon testimony - between all of the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses.

Not long before Joseph Smith was murdered at the Carthage, Ill. jailhouse while awaiting trial in 1844, he had hid the original Harmony PA. executed original Gold Plates translation manuscript behind a cornerstone at the Illinois based Nauvoo House at Nauvoo. The thick hand executed manuscript document for the 1830 Book of Mormon contained the signature page attesting as true testimony. It asserted the authenticity of the statements made in the Book of Mormon as being truthful. Each of the Three and Eight Witnesses found in the Book of Mormon signed their respective signatures in their own separate hands. The Oliver Cowdery "printer's copy" was only executed in his own hand, making the document merely a non-legal facsimile.

Some years after the 1844 murder of Joseph, the Mississippi River crested its banks at Nauvoo, and the original Harmony, PA. executed Book of Mormon manuscript became severely water damaged and soaked. When the manuscript was removed in 1881 from behind the Nauvoo House cornerstone by Louis C. Bidamon, Joseph Smith's widow Emma Smith's second husband, the horrific damage was discovered. More damage occurred when Bidamon gave cut squares as souvenirs to visiting Mormons.

Only 28% of the document remained intact and 72% was destroyed. Most importantly, the original Book of Mormon manuscript signature page was completely destroyed. The only true viable link to the Gold Plates was severed forever.

The original Harmony manuscript translation remains as a distressed mostly incomplete remnant.

But the link to the Gold Plates still exists, having been preserved with the discovery of the 6 May 1877 John Whitmer testimony.

The premise behind the BYU lectures Richard Lloyd Anderson gave and also what is found in his 2005 BYU published work entitled: Attempts to Redefine the Experience of the Eight Witnesses, was that the Book of Mormon is wholly supported by the written and printed testimony of these Witnesses, in that these testimonies serve as legal affidavits.(2)

Thus, in the end, the 6 May 1877 hand executed and signed Whitmer Book of Mormon manuscript letter stands as the most important physical legal affidavit in the world that exists linked to the fabled Gold Plates of Angel Moroni. It supports that such plates physically existed and that the original Book of Mormon from 1830 stands as a wholly valid and truthful account.

The very hands that touched and "hefted" the Book of Mormon Gold Plates are the very hands that wrote what can be considered the most formidable letter of testimony to the Book of Mormon that exists or ever written.

(1) Dan Vogel (editor), Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City), Signature Books, 1996-2003), 5 vols., 5:247-249, original in Deseret Evening News, 6 August 1878; citing a letter from P. Wilhelm Poulson to Editors (31 July 1878) from Ovid City, Idaho.

(2) Richard Lloyd Anderson, Attempts to Redefine the Experience of the Eight Witnesses (Salt Lake City), Brigham Young University, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, January 31, 2005.

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