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“The Book of Mormon as a Resurrected Book”

“The Book of Mormon as a Resurrected Book”

Last updated on: March 6, 2025 at 9:35 pm by Dan Peterson

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“The Book of Mormon as a Resurrected Book” 2025-03-06T21:35:48-07:00 Dan Peterson

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At the 2 June 2021 premiere of “Witnesses,” from the left: Paul Kandarian (older David Whitmer), Paul Wuthrich (Joseph Smith Jr.), Michael Zuccola (younger David Whitmer), Camrey Bagley Fox (Emma Smith), Lincoln Hoppe (Martin Harris), and Caleb J. Spivak (Olover Cowdery)

This can’t go on forever: The offer of free streaming for the Interpreter Foundation’s 2021 dramatic film Witnesses will need to come to a close at some point — we have contractual obligations, for one thing, and, for another, we have a need to raise money for future film-making — but, for the moment, it’s still available. Don’t presume that it will be available indefinitely, because it won’t be.

And the docudrama sequel to Witnesses, our 2022 production Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, is also available for free streaming — and will continue to be so into the indefinite future.

By the way, our Joseph Smith in Witnesses is Paul Wuthrich, who also plays that role in Six Days in August. Moreover, he is the host for Undaunted. But there’s still more: You may also have recognized him as the lead (Elder Norm Seibold) in T. C. Christensen’s 2024 film Escape from Germany, and you will be seeing him again as he plays the title role in Brother Christensen’s forthcoming film Raising the Bar: The Alma Richards Story.

Paul Wuthrich as Joseph Smith,” running through the woods and carrying the golden plates of the Book of Mormon under his arm while trying to evade local money diggers who want to wrestle the plates away from him. (Still photograph from the set of the Interpreter Foundation’s 2020-2022 Witnesses film project, courtesy of James Jordan)

In yesterday’s blog entry, I mused about the apparent hostility of Hollywood and the entertainment elite to my faith and my church. Here is an article by Jennifer Graham in the Deseret News that, I think, may be subtly relevant to an understanding of that apparent hostility: “Perspective: The ‘best picture’ that Americans didn’t want to see: Hollywood raves about a profanity-laden film about a sex worker and then wonders why Academy Awards viewership is down”

Perhaps, I suggested, we need to make our own movies? Instead of holding our collective breath hoping that Hulu or Netflix or some corporate entity of that sort will somebody make a film about Latter-day Saints and their Church that doesn’t make us look weird, foolish, creepy, dangerous, deranged, clownish, or criminal? Just a thought. In that context, though, I’m looking forward to seeing this one: Sharing Aloha: A Backstage Look at the People Behind Hawaii’s Most Popular Attraction.

“New film wins award for showing Polynesian Cultural Center and BYU-Hawaii as places of refuge: ‘Sharing Aloha’ won the 2025 Zions Indie Film Fest first-place prize”

“Joseph Smith Receives the Gold Plates”
(Kenneth Riley, LDS Media Library)

This article went up earlier today: *Joseph Smith and Our Preparation for the Lord’s Final Judgment: Essays by George L. Mitton: “*The Book of Mormon as a Resurrected Book and a Type of Christ,” written by George L. Mitton

Abstract: This essay emphasizes the remarkable participation of the Book of Mormon in the symbolism of death and resurrection. It explains how the Book of Mormon itself may be seen as a resurrected book, having followed the pattern of Christ’s life, including descent from heaven, teaching of doctrine, rejection, and resurrection from the ground with eleven official witnesses.

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Joseph Smith and Our Preparation for the Lord’s Final Judgment: Essays by George L. Mitton. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/joseph-smith-and-our-preparation-for-the-lords-final-judgment/.

John William Waterhouse, “The Crystal Ball” (1902); Wikimedia Commons public domain image

Most large economic, business, or financial decisions are made under conditions of at least some uncertainty. Will this business grow? Will this stock appreciate in value? Will it drop like a rock? Will the exchange rate between dollars and Euros work in favor of my import business, or will it change and ruin me? It’s risky enough without unpredictable political factors entering into the matter. Will there be a trade war? Will there be a literal war? Will our currency suddenly be devalued?

Predictability makes sound decisions in finance and business matters more feasible and more likely. A government of laws and not of men — remember that quaint old idea? — maximizes stable rules over the whims of a politician or a monarch. Tariffs almost invariably have negative effects on an economy as a whole, but arbitrary decisions to threaten tariffs, or to impose them and then not to impose them, and to set tariff rates more or less randomly (at, oh, say ten percent, or fifteen percent, or why not twenty five percent?) are very harmful, as well. Should a farmer plant more wheat? Probably not, if a trade war is suddenly going to cut significantly into wheat exports. Should an automaker lay workers off or expand a manufacturing plant? Who knows? How can one possibly know if its car sales will be significantly impacted, on a randomly chosen date, by a decision that might or might not be made — at some point and on an inscrutable basis — by some individual in government official?

And here’s a specific matter: “Trump’s Canadian tariffs include lumber. He is pushing to cut down American trees instead.” I believe really strongly that we need to plant more trees — I’ve posted here on this subject at least a couple of previous times — and I certainly don’t want to see American trees cut down that are currently protected. So, I say, let’s just invade Canada right now and get it over with. Then we can turn our military attention to Denmark and Greenland.

A simple public domain political map of Australia from Wikimedia Commons. I’m trying to decide what part of the continent I want when we take it over. I’ve never been to Tasmania. Is it nice? Maybe (I’m guessing) just a bit cold?

Only time will tell, of course, but it’s very possible that yet another wicked Latter-day Saint conspiracy is about to be unmasked — this one by a significant Australian newspaper: “How our personal records ended up in a Mormon mountain vault in Utah”.

And here’s a specimen of Latter-day Saint evil that I myself retrieved just now from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Mormon church donates 33K meals to West Michigan food banks”

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