Where to find seer stones

 

SITH as the "best evidence"

I had forgotten about this gem: 

The hat is our strongest evidence of a divine translation through the gift and power of God.

It comes from this post:

Church historians of an earlier era were embarrassed at the image of Joseph Smith with his head buried in his hat. The hat is our strongest evidence of a divine translation through the gift and power of God. Joseph Smith was not consulting reference materials. He was not collaborating with a team of experts. He was reading words that appeared on a stone in the bottom of a hat. The whole thing is simply astonishing and supernatural.

Joseph put his face in a hat to shut out light so the words appearing on his seer stone were easier to read. This is a direct fulfillment of Alma 37:23 interpreted in light of pre-1981 editions of D&C Sections 78, 82 & 104 where Joseph Smith is called "Gazelam."

https://bookofmormonresources.blogspot.com/2015/03/english-in-book-of-mormon.html

Some of us think that what Joseph and Oliver explained is the strongest evidence of divine translation. 

https://www.mobom.org/church-history-issues

But people can believe whatever they want.

If people prefer the Mormonism Unvailed explanation instead of what Joseph and Oliver said... well, that's why we have this blog.

:)

The party

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - George Orwell, 1984

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With the specific assistance of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery wrote a detailed description of Moroni's visit in 1835.

He [Moroni] said this history was written and deposited not far from that place, and that it was our brother’s privilege, if obedient to the commandments of the Lord, to obtain and translate the same by the means of the Urim and Thummim, which were deposited for that purpose with the record.

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1834-1836/68

Responding to ongoing confusion about the translation, Joseph Smith answered the question  in the Elders Journal in 1838.

Question 4th. How, and where did you obtain the Book of Mormon?

Answer. Moroni, the person who deposited the plates, from whence the Book of Mormon   was translated, in a hill in Manchester, Ontario County, New York, being dead, and raised again therefrom, appeared unto me and told me where they were and gave me directions how to obtain them. I obtained them and the Urim and Thummim with them, by the means of which I translated the plates and thus came the Book of Mormon.

(Elders’ Journal I.3:42 ¶20–43 ¶1)

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/elders-journal-july-1838/11 

https://www.mobom.org/translation-references

Brad Wilcox explains SITH

Some people still haven't seen this, but it's a lot of fun. It explains why so many BYU students are so confused when they eventually learn what Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Martin Harris said.

Many LDS can't understand why these SITH sayers don't follow basic principles of historical analysis. Early statements by the principals are generally more reliable than late statements by people with agendas.

Translating with dinosaur gizzard stone (Gastrolith)

The SITH sayers, such as Royal Skousen and his followers at the Interpreter, prefer the SITH narrative from Mormonism Unvailed over what Joseph and Oliver said.

See https://archive.org/details/mormonismunvaile00howe/page/18/mode/2up

These SITH sayers insist that Joseph and Oliver deliberately misled us all when they taught (repeatedly, and in print) that Joseph translated the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.

E.g., In his latest book, Brother Skousen makes plain this reality: everyone who teaches SITH is also teaching that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery deliberately misled everyone about the origin of the Book of Mormon.

"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."

https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2024/11/thank-you-royal-skousen.html

Instead, the SITH sayers insist that Joseph read words off of a stone from a dinosaur's gizzard (technically, a gastrolith).

(See my conversation with Grok about this here:

https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/p/origin-of-seer-stone.html

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According to them, some dinosaur ate the stone in Wyoming and somehow crossed a couple of thousand miles to New York, where it died, leaving the gastrolith where Joseph Smith could find it while digging in a well.

Okay...

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Actual scientists explain the reality about dinosaurs in New York:

Can you find dinosaur bones in New York?

Finding actual dinosaur bones is quite rare in New York. Our state’s geology is primarily comprised of rock layers from the Paleozoic era, which predates the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

While we’re rich in fossils from the Devonian and Ordovician periods, these are mainly marine fossils like trilobites and brachiopods, not dinosaurs. New York has a significant record of Ice Age mammals and other ancient creatures, though.

https://rockchasing.com/fossils-in-new-york/

Some graphics help explain Royal Skousen's theory:

Graphic on the translation

There are awesome new websites about Church History locations. They have lots of valuable information about the sites and what transpired there, including some useful graphics.

This one focuses on Harmony and includes a graphic about the translation of the Book of Mormon.

https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/exhibit/historic-sites/pennsylvania/priesthood-restoration-site/priesthood-restoration-revelations?lang=eng#mv2

In this post we offer suggestions for improvement.

(click to enlarge)

Here's where "fun with SITH" comes in.

It is amazing how determined some people are to erase the Urim and Thummim from the narrative so they can replace it with SITH instead (the stone-in-the-hat narrative).

The bottom section of the graphic shows a quotation from Joseph Smith as a complete sentence.

But in reality, they edited out the first part of the sentence from the Wentworth letter, which anyone can read here:

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/times-and-seasons-1-march-1842/5

(click to enlarge)

The first part of the sentence reads, "Through the medium of the Urim and Thummim."

Obviously, this is a significant omission.

Even better, they didn't even show the omission with ellipses. Crazy stuff.

We suggest that the graphic would be improved by including the entire sentence.

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The graphic also show the "working days" as 65, completely ignoring what Lucy Mack Smith and David Whitmer said. David said it took 8 months. Lucy explained that when she visited Joseph in the fall of 1828, Joseph told her he had received back the U&T and was translating again. That's what led me to conclude that Joseph translated all or most of the Book of Mosiah before Oliver came in April 1829.

Lucy related her experience when she came to visit Joseph in Harmony in the fall of 1828. 

when I entered his house the first thing that attracted [p. 135] my attention was a red morocco trunk, that set on Emma’s bureau; which trunk Joseph shortly informed me, contained the Urim and Thummim and the plates. 

In the evening he gave us the following relation of what had transpired since our separation… [quoting Joseph, p. 138] “on the 22d of September, I had the joy and satisfaction of again receiving the Urim and Thummim; and have commenced translating again, and Emma writes for me; but the angel said that the Lord would send me a scribe, and <​I​> trust his promise will be verified. He also seemed pleased with me, when he gave me back the Urim and Thummim; and he told me that the Lord loved me, for my faithfulness and humility.

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/142

This graphic shows the whole problem.

(click to enlarge)

Dumb politicians, or dumb voters?

The idiocy shown in this video compares with the crazy SITH-promoting videos on YouTube. The question is are the politicians really this dumb, or do they just think the voters are?

https://x.com/BreitbartNews/status/1895102702377427276

Breitbart News

@BreitbartNews

JB Pritzker: "The prices at the grocery store are going up because democracy is being taken away." Impossible to parody this.