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Those Gold Plates! I i i > ' •- > : Those liold nates! MARK E. PETERSEN BOOKCRAFT Salt Lake City, Utah Copyright © 1979 by Bookcraft, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-63402 ISBN 0-88494-364-X First Printing, 1979 Lithographed in the United States of America PUBLISHERS PRESS Salt Lake City, Utah THE BOOK OF MORMON Is a sacred history of ancient America Written about A.D. 400-420 by Two divinely chosen prophets MORMON AND HIS SON MORONI Upon plates of gold bound together like a book. "'Wherefore, it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites — Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile — Written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation — Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed — To come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof — Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile — The interpretation thereof by the gift of God. "An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also, which is a record of the people of Jared, who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, when they were building a tower to get to heaven — Which is to show unto the remnant of the House of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers: and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever — And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifest- ing himself unto all nations — And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ." (Title page. Book of Mormon.) TRANSLATED THROUGH THE POWER OF GOD And Published by JOSEPH SMITH, JR. A modern American Prophet. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/thosegoldplatesOOpete Contents 1 They Were Real 1 2 The Brass Plates of Laban 7 3 Those Other Plates 10 4 The Alabama Plates 15 5 Early Uses of Metal 28 6 The Plates of Mormon 33 7 Lucy's Testimony 39 8 Translating the Plates 47 9 The Bible Passages 52 10 What Was the Method? 57 11 What Joseph Did Not Know 59 12 More Peculiarities 65 13 The Timing of Prophecy 71 14 Polynesians and Indians 73 15 The Great White God 78 16 The Yaqui Story 85 17 Evidence of Things Not Seen 89 18 The Last Words of Moroni 96 19 Joseph's Ministry 102 Epilogue 119 Index 121 t \ ,.4 » ! -- » j ■ » • <■; ■ • '4^ I'f • . « 4 ■• Jr’^ > ' ■ L' ’ * 1 ^ ^ - Vj ■ l43Wjp(^,.sl ^ > ,^v4 - — '•■ ... I 4 Tjt ‘ , f f #/<? Hii - y7-"i-wf>3 They Were Real The gold plates given to the Prophet Joseph Smith for the translation of the Book of Mormon were genuine, real and authentic. They were as real as the gold plates found recently in Korea. They were as real as the gold and silver plates found in the ruins of the palace of King Darius of ancient Persia. They were as real as the gold, silver and magnesium car- bonate plates of Sargon II of Assyria. They were as real as the gold plates found at Pyrgi in Italy, and as genuine as any of the other Etruscan artifacts dis- covered in the area. They were as real as the copper plates which were so carefully engraved and hidden away with the parchment manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and found among those scrolls in the caves of Qumran. They were as real as the silver plates from India, which are beautifully engraved in the oriental language known as Pali and incised in Sinhalese script. These plates are relatively modern, believed to have been written in the eighteenth century. Copper plates, also written in the Pali language and incised in the Sinhalese script, have been found. 2 Those Gold Plates! They were as real as the single sheet of gold engraved with modern Javanese manuscript, also believed to have been writ- ten in Central Java in the eighteenth century. The gold plates of the Book of Mormon were just as real as those of Sargon, Darius, the Etruscans, the Essenes, or any others left by the ancients. The engraved contents of these various metal plates were real, too. When Darius wrote about the boundaries of his kingdom as he engraved the plates later found in the ruins of his palace, he was speaking of established historical facts relating to his kingdom. When Sargon spoke of his wars and vast construction projects, he was dealing in the literal history of his times. And when Mormon and Moroni completed their abridg- ment of the ancient histories of America, covering a period from the time of the tower of Babel to within fifteen hundred years of the period in which we ourselves live, they, too, dealt with the realities of life — ancient life, vital, active, literal, physical life. It was a life of intellectuality, and spirituality, too. It moved with love, but sometimes with anger; with faith and devotion, but sometimes in rebellion. It dealt with the human nature of millions of people who lived in America before A.D. 400. Those ancients were not so different from people of today. They had their good times and their bad, periods of peace and of conflict, prosperity and poverty. It is all described there — engraved on the plates by Mormon and Moroni. Although it may not be known to many who live today, the use of metal plates for permanent records was a fairly common thing in ancient times. Known from Java to Egypt, and from Spain to Iran, they date from millennia before Christ to as late as A.D. 800, and, in the case of the plates from India and Java, even as late as the eighteenth century A.D. The manner in which they were deposited for safekeeping was similar also, even in these widely scattered sections of the earth. Nearly always they were found in heavy metal or stone boxes which in turn were hidden away, sometimes in the foundations of the palaces of the kings, in the ground, or, as in Korea, in an ancient pagoda. They Were Real 3 Some plates were gold, some were silver. There also were copper and bronze plates, and even a few made of lead and tin, although the tin when found was usually badly oxidized. Some plates had engravings upon them; others were plain. The translated engravings usually tell facts about their historical period. In the case of Sargon II, who governed Assyria in 720 B.C., a whole new vision of his reign and realm came into view as his records were read. The discovery of the Darius plates gives authenticity to that monarch as a Bible character, for it was he who put Daniel in the lion's den, and later highly honored that prophet when he saw that the God of the Israelites protected Daniel from death. The Etruscan plates found in Italy opened mysteries that have long prevailed concerning those ancient peoples, who lived, ruled and died in Italy from the eighth to the first century before Christ. They were the immediate predecessors of the Romans. But not all of the ancient plates were found in distant lands. Some, although small, have been discovered in south- ern Mexico, twelve in one place, to be specific. They were of various sizes, the largest of which is five and a half inches long, compared to smaller ones which hardly differ in size from a postage stamp. Some contained writings in ancient tongues. There are the Kinderhook plates, too, found in America, and now in possession of the Chicago Historical Society. Controversy has surrounded these plates and their engrav- ings, but most experts agree they are of ancient vintage. The discovery of many stone boxes has been a point of great interest. In Mexico and Central America as many as forty-nine such boxes have been found. Some were small and beautifully engraved, usually containing jewelry; others were large, probably used for food storage. But their existence establishes the fact that in ancient times stone boxes were commonly used, both in Mexico and in the Near East where the plates of both Sargon and Darius were found in such containers. The gold plate story is a fascinating one, and is in no way limited to Joseph Smith and his plates. The extensive use of c: •- m . s C ;;3 ro ^ z-s 0 ^ 03 QJ t-* C 01 03 T3 - c/3 Ui O (-1 C X 03 03 D ‘C ^ X 3 m [— o •£ c/3 QJ bC oi s O 03 C c - c/3 I-S X X 03 2 ,c C C *3 V-. fs< O c TJ O o o (/? ^ T3 C 03 •XI C 6 03 a ■5; O c/3 c 01 c O u n3 03 0) '5 t30 o 3 ■C KJ (/) tiC c ^ 03 03 u § J2 -C u 03 . 4^ C l-i •X C/) CT) O 2 ^ .V 02 (K (/) U .b T3 WD ;3 CH 03 ^ 03 2 03 a; ^ — > _C f" ^ « CL- O c/3 C/3 'X (/) <TS .
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