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Last updated on: October 8, 2017 at 5:42 pm by Dan Peterson

Resources 2017-10-08T17:42:14-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Apparently — I saw this on an apostate site — the current issue of the New Era suggests that people who are curious about historical and scriptural issues consult Book of Mormon Central and FairMormon. At least a few critics are disgusted by this. I, of course, am not. I spoke recently at a BOMC event and fully support BOMC’s work, and I’m on the board of FairMormon. My only regret is that the article failed to mention the Interpreter Foundation.

From one of my manuscripts:

Indeed, so impressive a convert was Sidney Rigdon that many, who simply could not believe that the semi-literate Joseph Smith had authored the Book of Mormon and could not grant the divine alternative, began almost immediately to claim that he himself, a much more eloquent and highly educated man, was the book’s true author. In 1865, John Rigdon, Sidney’s son, who himself had serious doubts about Mormonism and the Book of Mormon, confronted his father about these persistent rumors. By this point, in the aftermath of the turmoil at Nauvoo and the crisis of succession that followed the assassination of Joseph Smith, Sidney had been separated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for twenty-one years and was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “You have been charged with writing that book,” John said to his father,

and giving it to Joseph Smith to introduce to the world. You have always told me one story; that you never saw the book until it was presented to you by Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery; and all you ever knew off the origin of that book was what they told you and what Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates had told you. Is this true? If so, all right; if it is not, you owe it to me and your family to tell it. You are an old man and will soon pass away.”

John reported that his elderly father raised his hand above his head and, with tears glistening in his eyes, testified as follows:

My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of that book is true. . . . And in all my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but the one story, and that was that he found it engraved upon gold plates in a hill near Palmyra, New York, and that an angel had appeared to him and directed him where to find it; and I have never, to you or to anyone else, told but the one story, and that I now repeat to you.

John Rigdon noted that his father added “that ‘Mormonism’ was true; that Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and this world would find it out some day. Years later, John asked his mother, by then a widow, what she remembered about Sidney’s involvement with the Book of Mormon. She confirmed all that his father had said. “This she said to me in her old age [she was eighty-six and ailing] and when the shadows of the grave were gathering about her and I believe her.”[1]

[1] From John W. Rigdon’s manuscript Life of Sidney Rigdon, as cited in History of the Church, 1:123 note.

After years of alienation (following his father), after his own investigation of the claims of Mormonism, and after his father’s death, John W. Rigdon joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

You can read his testimony here.

***

I taught Gospel Doctrine lesson 36 today, “The Desert Shall Rejoice, and Blossom as the Rose.”

I wonder how many of you are taking advantage of the excellent supporting materials that the Church has put up for this year’s Gospel Doctrine curriculum. For today, there was a very good two-minute video titled “Ministry of Brigham Young: The Master Builder,” along with a link to the superb Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel Database. I strongly recommend both.

Posted from Park City, Utah

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