God has a history of using inanimate
objects to fulfill his objectives. For
example, the staff of Moses and/or Aaron
(I'm not sure who it belonged to)
initiated many of the plagues of Egypt.
Moses later hits a rock with the staff
and water comes out. Later the Israelites
are plagued by poisonous serpents. Moses
raises up a metal snake on a pole and
anyone who just looks at it is healed. In
the New Testament, Christ wipes mud on a
man's eyes to heal him. Paul uses a
handkerchief to heal people. Going back
to the Old Testament, the Israelites used
two stones called the Urim and Thummim
or in Hebrew or Urim v Tumin (I hope I said
that right)
meaning lights and perfections. According
to Bible.org which is not a Latter-day
Saint website, mind you, most scholars
believe the Urim and Thummim to be two
sticks or stones, perhaps precious stones
that God used in a miraculous way to
reveal his will. Obviously these objects
have no power in and of themselves. It
comes from God. But if you're a Christian,
God's use of everyday objects like rocks
and sticks should not be surprising. They
were used anciently. But let's also take
a look at how inanimate objects, in this
case seer stones like the Urim and
Thummim, have been used in more modern
times.
Joseph Smith took the ancient golden
plates of the Book of Mormon out of the
ground in September 1827 but the stone
box contained more than the plates. There
were two stones in silver boughs and
these stones fastened to a breastplate
constituted what is called the Urim and
Thummim, deposited with the plates and
the possession and use of these stones
were what constituted seers in ancient
or former times and that God had
prepared them for the purpose of
translating the book. Finding a Urim and
Thummim wouldn't have been too
surprising for Joseph because he
actually already owned at least two seer
stones. One he found in 1819. It was white.
The other he found in 1822 while helping
to dig a well for his neighbors. That one
was brown. We even have a picture of that
one but as you can see, it just looks
like a rock. Just as Moses, his walking
stick looked like a walking stick, except
when it was busy being a snake. Initially
Joseph used his seer stones to help
people like Josiah Stowell in 1826,
without much success, to find buried
treasure. A personal bucket list item for
me but that's beside the point.
Sometimes Joseph gets a bad rap for his
history of folk magicky stuff. I frankly
don't really care. I mean, Paul in the New
Testament was an accomplice to the
murder of Steven before he found the
truth, turned out to be a pretty solid
guy, though historian Richard Bushman
quoted one of Joseph's friends Alba Hale
saying that Joseph told him that the
gift of seeing with a stone was a gift
from God but that peeping-- seer stones in
relation to folk magic were also called
peep stones-- was all darned nonsense.
He'd been deceived in his treasure
seeking but he did not intend to deceive
anyone else. By this time Joseph
apparently felt that seeing with the
stone was the work of a seer religious
term while peeping or glass looking was
fraudulent. Joseph started translating
the Book of Mormon in 1828. Initially he
used the Urim and Thummim. Later he
switched to one of his other seer stones
and eventually as he became more
experienced with revelation, he wouldn't
need anything at all to help translate.
Joseph had multiple scribes including
his wife Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and
Oliver Cowdery. David Whitmer, who was a
witness of the existence of the golden
plates, explained how the seer stone
would work. A piece of something
resembling parchment would appear on the
stone and on that appeared the writing.
One character at a time would appear and
under it
was the interpretation in English.
Brother Joseph would read off the
English to Oliver Cowdery who was his
principal scribe and then it was written
down and repeated to brother Joseph to
see if it was correct. Then it would
disappear and another character with the
interpretation would appear. Now when I
work on my laptop, I like to work outside.
But I oftentimes can't because it gets so
bright outside that I can't see my
laptop screen as well. Apparently Joseph
had a similar problem with his seer
stone so to block out the light his
simple solution was to put the stone in
a hat. Kind of a funny image but what
works works. This is what he'd do for
hours at a time, an average of 8 pages
per day. His scribes say Joseph had no
reference material around him, no secret
pre-written manuscript pages stuffed in
his hat. If you want to believe the Book
of Mormon is a fraud, which you are
certainly free to do, you've either got
to believe that his scribes were in on
it, which in my opinion makes no sense if
you look at their history and
circumstances, or Joseph perfectly
memorized his secret manuscript and then
rattled it off seamlessly to the scribe.
But anyways, now you know a bit about
seer stones, how they were used anciently,
how they were used by Joseph Smith. If
you have questions, drop them in the
comments. Check out the links in the
description and have a great day. Joseph perfectly-- perfectfully. There is no such word as perfectfully.
Why am I trying to say perfectfully? Or
Joseph perfectfully-- I said perfect
fully again! Perfectly memorized his
secret manuscript and then rattle it off
seamlessly to the scribe! I can't do it any
more.
