How it went from Gold Plates to the Book of Mormon
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Hey everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you guys back to the Book of Mormon Challenge podcast. I am super excited for today's episode. I apologize to those who have been waiting. It has taken a while. It's interesting how when you try to move forward on important things like this how many things get in the way.
So today, I got my kids ready for school, I woke up early this morning to get all the outlines prepared, got up, got my kids out the door to school, and then now I'm back in here recording this before I'm allowing myself to go into the office and get started on my day, to make sure you guys have it. Because I keep wanting to dive into 1 Nephi Chapter 1, I've got the entire episode all prepared and ready, and there's so much exciting stuff I want to share with you. But I felt like there was a preamble, something I needed to give and share with you before that. And it's the story of how we actually got the Book of Mormon.
I'm sitting here in my office, and I have as you know, one of the original 5000 books that was printed here. And I'm not so much going to go into how the book was printed and published and things like that, that's not the purpose of the podcast. But how did we actually get it?
Every time I share anything with my friends who aren't members of the church, they are confused, "So what is this? A new Bible? A new translation?" And not matter how many times I explain it they always get confused. So I want to kind of go through the details of the story and it's one of the most amazing, insane, cool stories in the history of the world, yet nobody seems to talk about it very much. So I wanted to share it because I think it's important. And my goal, in fact, my entire goal of this podcast, I think I've told you. There's a couple of reasons, one is to get me to really get back into studying and learning and trying to find out the most amazing things from the Book of Mormon. But number two is to get you excited about the Book of Mormon.
It's not so much me telling you my commentary on the Book of Mormon, that's not my goal. My goal is to talk about it in a way that gets you so excited after you hear the episode that you have to go and open it, you have to read the next chapter or the next verse. If I can do that, then I've done my job correctly. So I figure the best thing I can do today is get you so excited that if you haven't got the Book of Mormon yet, you're like, "Alright I'm going to go and just buy one, I'm going to go order it online." Whatever you need to do, you're going to get one and so you'll actually open it and start reading it.
So that's my goal today, just to get you pumped by….because the back story about how it came to be because it really is fascinating. And hopefully you've listened to some of the earlier episodes, I talk about the history and all those kind of things. If not, please go back to the very beginning. I'm trying to, all these episodes kind of build on each other. So make sure you're listening to them as you go.
But this story is really, really cool. If you listened to a couple of episodes ago, I talked about Joseph Smith and his first vision. So if you remember that, I'll kind of recap it really quickly. As a 14 year old kid he was confused and trying to figure out which church to join, and he went and he prayed and had a vision where Heavenly Father and Jesus came to him and said, "Don't join any of the churches." And he was like, "What? I never even considered that." And they're like, "Yeah, don't join any church. None of them are here and you're going to be an instrument to help bring back my true church here on the earth."
So he has this vision and he goes and tells his family about it, tells other people and he thinks that everyone is going to be excited to hear that Heavenly Father and Jesus came to him, and what actually happened was the opposite. He was lucky to have his family and people close to him believe him, but most of the people in the community didn't. And he was persecuted really heavily. He was, his family was, and it was a really, really difficult time for the next few years.
If you can imagine as a young boy having this vision and then not hearing from Heavenly Father again, you're like, "What happened? Did I do something wrong?" You know, what's the next step? So that's kind of where this part of the story picks up. It's Joseph Smith wondering that same thing, what's the next step?
So most of this podcast is going to be coming from two different things. One is Joseph Smith History. I went through the history and found some really cool parts of the story to tell. And the second one is a talk given by President Russell M. Nelson, who is the living prophet of the church today. This is a talk he gave called A Treasured Testament. He gave it a long time ago, I don't know, 1992. So a long time ago, but it kind of tells the back story and shares some of the amazing insights, some amazing quoting of stuff from that as well.
The goal of both of these things is to get you so excited to open up the book and start reading with me because the next episode we are going 1 Nephi Chapter 1, and we're finally going to be diving in.
So what happened, in Joseph Smith History he was talking about how there had been a space of time between the first vision and he was trying to figure out what to do. And he said during that time, you know he was a young boy. He was a teenager, and as most teenagers, I've got two boys, twin boys who are going to become teenagers here in about two months or three months from now. And he started just doing what teenagers do and he said, "I frequently fell into many foolish errors and displayed the weaknesses of youth and foibles of human nature. I'm sorry to say it lead me to diverse temptations offensive in the sight of God. But in making this confession, no one needs to suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sins, a disposition to commit such was never in my nature, but I was guilty of levity and sometimes associating with jovial company, etc. Not consistent with the character of which ought to maintained by one who was called of God, as I had been."
So can you imagine that? You're a young kid and you see Heavenly Father, you see Jesus, but then you're a teenager and you're doing stupid stuff and whatever, but always having that guilt of, I should be better. I know better than this. But continually falling back on those ways. And I don't know about you, but I have those things all the time, where I feel like our Heavenly Father has blessed me so, so greatly, yet I do stupid things. I'm like, "Why am I doing this? I should be better than that."
And I think he felt the same way, obviously. He goes on and said, "I often felt condemned for my weaknesses and imperfections." So that's kind of how he felt going into this. So it'd been I think 3 or 4 years after the first vision and he was like, "Alright, I need to find out where I fit with God." And hopefully all of us have this conversation. It's a scary one, it's one that sometimes I don't think any of us really want to go ask because you might find out and that can be kind of scary.
But Joseph Smith thought, I'm going to find out what God thinks. Am I doing okay? Where am I at with him? So he goes on to say, "I betook myself to prayer and supplication to the Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and my follies. And also for a manifestation to me that I might know of my state and standing before him."
Can you imagine going to Heavenly Father like, "Okay, so I need to know my state and my standing. How am I doing? Am I doing good, am I doing bad?" something that I'm sure we're all super curious about, but man, that's a scary thing. What if he told you? What if he was like, "Man, you're doing a horrible job Russell."? But he did that.
But first, he asked for forgiveness of his sins, "I know I've not been doing what you, I haven't been living up to what I believe what you want me to be, so I'm asking for forgiveness. And then I want to know my standing. How am I doing? What should I be doing? You came to me, what now? Obviously you don't come to everyone, what was the purpose, and what should I be doing?"
He goes on to say, "I want to know of my state and standing before him, for I had a full confidence in obtaining a divine manifestation as I'd previously had one." Can you imagine, he's like, "I've had a vision before, I'm probably going to have one again." He just believed it that much. I think most of us, we forget of the miracles we've had in our life and we just kind of pass them off, whereas he was like, "You know I had a miracle last time, he came and visited me. I think he's going to visit me again. Let's go pray."
And he did that, which is such a cool thing. So much faith, I wish I had that faith like that. So he went in there and asked for forgiveness of his sins, he prayed to know his state before God and what happened next is amazing. What happened next is an angel came and appeared to him in his room. And the angel's name was Moroni.
So those of you guys who don't know who Moroni is yet, you know obviously the word Mormon from the Book of Mormon. So Mormon was the last prophet, one of the last prophets in the Book of Mormon and he had a son named Moroni. Moroni was the last one who was kind of writing all the history and he was the last righteous person in the land at the time, so he had been entrusted with these Gold Plates. These are metal pages that they had been etching in their history for 600 years of what was happening with them and with God, it was their journals.
So he had all of these, they called them Gold Plates, where they were metal pages and they all had all these things etched in them. So Moroni had these and before he died he went and buried them in a hill so that nobody could find them. But they were a history of his people. So that's kind of who Moroni was.
So he's sitting there in bed praying to find out his standing before God and all the sudden this angel appears to him. And the angel's name was Moroni and Moroni started talking to him. And the first thing Moroni tells him is, "Hey, just so you know Joseph Smith, my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindred's and tongues, where there should be both good and evil spoken among all people."
So you imagine that, an angel comes and just so you know, if you start on this mission, your name is going to be used for good and evil. So people who love you are going to think that you are the greatest thing in the world, and the rest of the world is going to hate you and think you're an evil, horrible person.
Can you imagine stepping into your mission, you know at this time he was, I don't know how old he was at the time, but still a teenager, maybe 18-19 years old or something like that. And say, just so you know if you decide to go on this mission, your mission should you choose to accept it is this thing and your name is going to be used for both good and evil.
So then he goes on and says, "Okay, there was a book deposited, written on gold plates, giving the account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang." He also said, "That the fullness of the everlasting gospel is contained in it, as delivered by the savior to the ancient inhabitants."
So he said, there's these gold plates that I buried up in the mountain. He said that on these's plates are record of the ancient Indians, the people who used to live here in America. And it talks about when the savior came to them. He said that, "I buried these in the mountain and I also, because I know that you don't know how to speak the language that we wrote in, there are also two stones and silver bows, and these stones fastened to the breast plate constitute what are called the Urim and Thummim." And he says, "The Urim and Thummin are what were called seer stones, these stones are what would constitute seers in ancient or former times, and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating this book."
So he didn't know what these were, but he said, "There's these seer stones, if you look through them you'll be able to translate the Book of Mormon, they're also buried in the mountain." And he kind of explained the whole thing. So I'm sure Joseph Smith is like, "Oh my gosh, this is so cool. There's these buried gold plates in a mountain and there's these seer stones. If I look through the stones I can translate this ancient language." This is, I don't know about you, but this is better than any movie in the history of the world.
So the angel's telling him this stuff, then after that the angel starts quoting him scriptures. So he's quoting him scriptures from Isaiah and Malachi and all these things. So he's quoting these scriptures and he quotes the scripture and he says, 'This is about to be fulfilled." And he quotes another scripture and says, "This is about to be fulfilled." And he quotes another one and says, "This is not yet fulfilled, but it's soon going to be."
So the angel is like telling him, all these things these ancient prophets wrote about, like Isaiah, all these people, they testified that in the coming days, in the future, these things are going to happen. He's like, all those things are being fulfilled right now. You are the literal fulfillment of all these prophecies of all the prophets up until this point.
Can you imagine being this kid, sitting here thinking I've read Isaiah, I've read these people, I've read these words and what they were talking about was happening. I'm experiencing this right now. Can you imagine that? Imagine yourself as a kid going through this.
So he goes through the things, he shares all these things, and at the end of it, then the angel leaves. So Joseph is sitting here in bed going, "What in the world just happened? An angel visited me, told me about these gold plates, these really cool Urim and Thummim, seer stones, I'll be able to translate this book. Then he started telling me all these, quoting these scriptures and telling me that all this stuff is actually happening right now and it's coming true. And he's telling all this stuff…."
And as he's thinking about it, pondering and meditating about it, all the sudden the light comes back in the room and the angel appears again. So the angel appears a second time and then tells him the exact same thing. And he's like, "What in the world?" So he tells him the exact same thing as the first time. So he's like, okay I get it. He listened to the whole thing, and the second time the angel added something, he said he informed him, "There's going to be great judgments which are coming upon the earth and grea
