{"id":3903,"date":"2016-05-16T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T14:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3903"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:40:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:40:30","slug":"ces-reply-the-three-witnesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-the-three-witnesses\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: The Three Witnesses &#8211; Martin Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Picking up where I left off with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CESReply.pdf\">my reply<\/a>\u00a0to Jeremy Runnell\u2019s \u201cLetter to a CES Director,\u201d with Jeremy\u2019s original words in green:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">3. Witnesses:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">We are told that the witnesses never disavowed their testimonies,<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Which is both true and not unimportant. At different points in their lives, all of the Three Witnesses were bitterly opposed to Joseph Smith and could have profited greatly from exposing him as a fraud. They never did, even at great personal cost to their own reputations. David Whitmer never came back and had plenty of nasty things to say about Joseph, yet he never once denied his testimony and reaffirmed it on his deathbed.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">but we have not come to know these men or investigated what else they said about their experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We haven\u2019t? Who\u2019s \u201cwe?\u201d People in and out of the Church have scrutinized the Three and Eight Witnesses for the better part of two centuries. Maybe <i>you<\/i> hadn\u2019t, but don\u2019t drag \u201cwe\u201d into this.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">They are 11 individuals: Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, Hiram Page, David Whitmer, John Whitmer, Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr., Hyrum Smith, Samuel Smith, and Joseph Smith Sr. \u2013 who all shared a common worldview of second sight, magic, and treasure digging \u2013 which is what drew them together in 1829.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>No, what drew most of them together was that they were related to each other. You keep citing people believing in harmless superstitions as some kind of indictment, but it certainly wouldn\u2019t have been seen as such in the early 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century, nor was it, as you falsely imply, the defining characteristic of these people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">The following are several facts and observations on several of the Book of Mormon Witnesses<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Martin Harris:<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Martin Harris was anything but a skeptical witness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Martin Harris was a remarkably skeptical witness. He swapped out Joseph\u2019s seer stone with another one to test its veracity. The reason we don\u2019t have the lost 116 pages is that he begged Joseph to have something tangible to satisfy his wife\u2019s skepticism. He undertook an expensive journey to New York to have an academic \u2013 Charles Anthon, to be precise \u2013 verify the particulars of the translated characters. The record shows that he was constantly looking for external validation of Joseph\u2019s claims, which is what skeptical witnesses do.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">He was known by many of his peers as an unstable, gullible, and superstitious man.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That reputation befell him largely as a result of his belief in Mormonism. Prior to his acceptance of a religion his neighbors despised, he was a well-respected and wealthy landowner with a stellar reputation. Even after the Mormons got him, a virulent anti-Mormon critic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sidneyrigdon.com\/dbroadhu\/NY\/miscNYS5.htm\">conceded<\/a> that \u201conly his [belief in Mormonism] was Martin deemed insane; on other subjects he exhibited all of his former clearness of brain; he could drive a good bargain, and manage his farming matters as well as ever.\u201d Another non-Mormon contemporary of Martin <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dialoguejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sbi\/articles\/Dialogue_V19N04_31.pdf\">reported<\/a> that \u201cThere can&#8217;t anybody say a word against Martin Harris. Martin was a good citizen . . . a man that would do just as he agreed with you.\u201d None of that jibes with a reputation for instability or gullibility.<\/p>\n<p>As for superstition, the 19<sup>th<\/sup> Century standard is quite different from today\u2019s standard, and anyone willing to hang out with the Mormons probably got tarred with that particular brush. Even after he cast his lot with the Mormons, he had a reputation for honesty. As one critic wrote, \u201cHow to reconcile the act of Harris in signing his name to such a statement [i.e. the Testimony of the Three Witnesses], in view of the character of honesty which had always been conceded to him, could never easily be explained.\u201d That comes from our old friend Pomeroy Tucker, who was certainly no fan of Harris or the Church.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, this is all ad hominem nonsense. If it was a fraud, Martin, no matter how unstable, gullible, or superstitious he was, he had plenty of opportunity and motive to come clean. In fact, if he truly was gullible and unstable, it\u2019s likely that he would have cracked under pressure, and there was plenty of pressure on him to expose Joseph as a fraud.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Reports assert that he and the other witnesses never literally saw the gold plates, but only an object said to be the plates, covered with a cloth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Which reports? Because I think there\u2019s a big issue of the report published at the beginning of every edition of the Book of Mormon \u2013 i.e. the Testimony of the Three Witnesses, of which Harris was one, and its firsthand account directly contradicts such reports in every respect.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Additionally, Martin Harris had a direct conflict of interest in being a witness.\u00a0 He was deeply financially invested in the Book of Mormon as he mortgaged his farm to finance the book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He lost that farm, too, as I recall. When he was excommunicated and disaffected with Joseph Smith, his financial losses would have given him extra incentive to deny his testimony. Why didn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">The following are some accounts that show the superstitious side of Martin Harris:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cOnce while reading scripture, he reportedly mistook a candle&#8217;s sputtering as a sign that the devil desired him to stop. Another time he excitedly awoke from his sleep believing that a creature as large as a dog had been upon his chest, though a nearby associate could find nothing to confirm his fears. Several hostile and <b>perhaps unreliable<\/b> accounts told of visionary experiences with Satan and Christ, Harris once reporting that Christ had been poised on a roof beam.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u2013 BYU professor Ronald W. Walker, &#8220;Martin Harris: Mormonism&#8217;s Early Convert,&#8221; p.34-35 [I added some emphasis there for you.]<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Please quote the next sentence of Professor Walker\u2019s paragraph. \u201cBut such talk came easy. His exaggerated sense of the supernatural naturally produced <b>caricature<\/b> and <b>tall and sometimes false tales.<\/b>\u201d [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n<p>So much of this information comes from people eager to discredit Martin that it\u2019s impossible to sort out what\u2019s true and what\u2019s nonsense. If the best indictment you can come up with is that he once got weirded out by a sputtering candle and he had a bad dream about a dog, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re making a compelling case that the guy was a loon. I do think he was probably more superstitious than most 21<sup>st<\/sup> Century folks, but as we\u2019ve observed with Joseph and Oliver, that kind of world view actually opened his mind to the possibilities of revelation, so it wasn\u2019t necessarily a negative.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cNo matter where he went, he saw visions and supernatural appearances all around him. He told a gentleman in Palmyra, after one of his excursions to Pennsylvania, while the translation of the Book of Mormon was going on, that on the way he met the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked along by the side of him in the shape of a deer for two or three miles, talking with him as familiarly as one man talks with another.\u201d<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #008000;\"> &#8211; John A. Clark letter, August 31, 1840 in Early Mormon Documents 2:271<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This can also be found in John A. Clark\u2019s book <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/gleaningsbyway00clarrich\/gleaningsbyway00clarrich_djvu.txt\">\u201cGleanings by the Way,\u201d<\/a> page 258, a book dedicated to exposing the \u201cMormon delusion\u201d by highlighting the thoroughly debunked and discredited theory that the Book of Mormon was copied from Solomon Spaulding\u2019s lost manuscript. (Everyone now knows it was copied from View of the Hebrews, the Late War Between the United States and Great Britain, and the First Book of Napolean, with sprinkles of Captain Kidd, obscure African maps, and names from a 2,000 square mile radius on local maps.)<\/p>\n<p>Clark never met Martin Harris, and there is every reason to believe this second-hand hearsay story is a complete fabrication.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cAccording to two Ohio newspapers, shortly after Harris arrived in Kirtland he began claiming to have \u2018seen Jesus Christ and that he is the handsomest man he ever did see. He has also seen the Devil, whom he described as a very sleek haired fellow with four feet, and a head like that of a Jack-ass.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u2013 Early Mormon Documents 2:271, note 32.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Another unreliable John Clark hearsay fable. Next.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Before Harris became a Mormon, he had already <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Martin_Harris_(Latter_Day_Saints)#Strangite.2C_Whitmerite.2C_Gladdenite.2C_Williamite.2C_Shaker\">changed his religion <\/a>at least five times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>False. Your link takes us to the Wikipedia article about Martin Harris, which sources this bogus assertion by referencing the Dialogue Article \u201cMartin Harris, Mormonism\u2019s Early Convert,\u201d pp. 30-33. You can read the actual article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dialoguejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sbi\/articles\/Dialogue_V19N04_31.pdf\">online<\/a>. Nowhere in pages 30-33 of this article \u2013 or anywhere else in the article, for that matter \u2013 does Ronald Walker make this claim. Richard L. Anderson, however, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cache.net\/~russ\/biblio.htm#anderson-1981\">this to say<\/a> about the subject.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cThe arithmetic of Martin&#8217;s five religious changes before Mormonism is also faulty. The claim comes from the hostile Palmyra affidavits published by E. D. Howe; G. W. Stoddard closed his in sarcasm against Martin Harris: &#8220;He as first an orthodox Quaker, then a Universalist, next a Restorationer, then a Baptist, next a Presbyterian, and then a Mormon.&#8221; Palmyra sources do not yet prove that Martin was a Quaker, though his wife probably was. And no evidence yet associates Martin with the Baptist or Presbyterian churches. Note that the other two names are religious positions, not necessarily churches&#8211;philosophical Universalists dissent from traditional churches in believing that God will save all, and Restorationists obviously take literally the many Bible prophecies of God&#8217;s reestablished work in modern times. An early Episcopal minister in Palmyra interviewed Martin and reduced his five positions to two: &#8220;He had been, if I mistake not, at one period a member of the Methodist Church, and subsequently had identified himself with the Universalists.&#8221; Of course Martin could have been a Universalist and Restorationer simultaneously.<\/i> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cache.net\/~russ\/biblio.htm#anderson-1981\">Anderson 1981, 168-169<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">After Joseph\u2019s death, Harris continued this earlier pattern by joining and leaving 5 more different sects, including James Strang (whom Harris went on a mission to England for), other Mormon offshoots, and the Shakers.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Strangs actually pulled Martin out of the Strangite mission field, because his only interest was in the Book of Mormon, not Strang. As soon as he was yanked off of Strangite missionary duty, Harris abandoned and repudiated the Strangites. His repeated affiliations with splinter groups demonstrates an eagerness to cling to the testimony of the Book of Mormon, which never wavered. Since he refused to accept plural marriage and the authority of the mainstream Church, he was clearly seeking some way to stay true to his testimony when he could not stay true to Joseph. His flirtation with the Shakers didn\u2019t last long, and he eventually found his way back to full fellowship with the Saints, where he remained for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n<p>Again, all of this is ad hominem hooey that doesn\u2019t erase Martin Harris\u2019s consistent and credible witness for the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Not only did Harris join other religions, he testified and witnessed for them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>No, he testified and witnessed for the Book of Mormon, using splinter groups as the vehicle to do so. The splinter groups grew impatient with the fact that this was the only thing Harris really wanted to discuss, which is why he fell out with them so quickly.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">It has been reported that Martin Harris \u201cdeclared repeatedly that he had as much evidence for a Shaker book he had as for the Book of Mormon\u201d (The Braden and Kelly Debate, p.173).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Braden and Kelley debate took place thirteen years after Martin Harris\u2019s death, and this is the first time anyone made such a charge. The person making the charge had never met Harris and had no way to substantiate this allegation, and, furthermore, neither do you.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">In addition to devotion to self-proclaimed prophet James Strang, Martin Harris was a follower to another self-proclaimed Mormon prophet by the name of <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gladden_Bishop\">Gladden<\/a> <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gladden_Bishop\">Bishop<\/a>.\u00a0 Like Strang, Bishop claimed to have plates, Urim and Thummim, and that he was receiving revelation from the Lord.\u00a0 Martin was one of <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gladden_Bishop#Final_apostasy_and_becoming_a_prophet\">Gladden Bishop\u2019s<\/a> <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gladden_Bishop#Final_apostasy_and_becoming_a_prophet\">witnesses <\/a>to his claims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A gross exaggeration. Martin never gave any witness that Gladden Bishop actually had any plates or a Urim and Thummim or anything else. His testimony in this splinter group, as in all the splinter groups he joined, was focused on the Book of Mormon and his original witness.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">If someone testified of some strange spiritual encounter he had, but he also told you that\u00a0 he&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">conversed with Jesus who took the form of a deer<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As noted above, it\u2019s highly unlikely Martin ever said this.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">saw the devil with his four feet and donkey head<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Martin almost certainly didn\u2019t say this, either.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">chipped off a chunk of a stone box that would mysteriously move beneath the ground to avoid capture<\/span><\/p>\n<p>First time you\u2019ve mentioned this one. Source, please?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">interpreted simple things like a flickering of a candle as a sign of the devil<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hearsay and dubious, but harmless even if it\u2019s accurate.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">had a creature appearing on his chest that no one else could see<\/span><\/p>\n<p>More like woke up from a bad dream. (Also dubious hearsay.)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u2026would you believe his claims?\u00a0 Or would you call the nearest mental hospital?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d do neither. Instead, I\u2019d verify my sources for these claims, as all of them are either grossly exaggerated or altogether bogus.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">With inconsistency, conflict of interest, magical thinking, and superstition like this, exactly what credibility does Martin Harris have and why should I believe him?<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\nWith all the faults and statements that you falsely attribute to him, all the while ignoring the voluminous evidence that Harris was a well-respected man known for his honesty and good character, no one would believe the testimony of such a caricature, because the straw man you\u2019ve created bears little or no resemblance to the actual Martin Harris.<\/p>\n<p><em>Tomorrow: David Whitmer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pickingup where I left off with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CESReply.pdf\">my reply<\/a>\u00a0to Jeremy Runnell\u2019s \u201cLetter to a CES Director,\u201d with Jeremy\u2019s original words in green:<span style=\"color: #008000;\">3. Witnesses:<\/span><span style=\"color: #008000;\">We are told that the witnesses never disavowed their testimonies,<\/span>Which is both true and not unimportant. At different points in their lives, all of the Three Witnesses were bitterly opposed  ... <a title=\"CES Reply: The Three Witnesses &#8211; Martin Harris\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-the-three-witnesses\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about CES Reply: The Three Witnesses &#8211; Martin Harris\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3903"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5165,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions\/5165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}