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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"A thousand things may be conjectured, but when a man declares openly, candidly, and seriously, of what he has seen, hefted and handled with his own hands, and taht in the presence of a God who sees and knows the secrets of the heart, no man possessed of common reason and common sense, can doubt, or will be so vain as to dispute."
- —Oliver Cowdery, describing a testimony given by John Whitmer, one of the Eight Witnesses, June 1835.[1]
Critics of the Church attempt to dismiss the experience of the Eight Witnesses by claiming that their view of the plates was not literal. The critics attempt to argue that the witnesses only 'saw' the plates in a spiritual state, and then were allowed to heft a covered box. This flatly contradicts their own reports, and those of others.[2] Richard Anderson has collected eight accounts of John Whitmer's that confirm the reality of his handling of the plates.[3] The critics ignore much documentary evidence in John Whitmer's case alone, simply because his witness is inconvenient for their speculations.
William Smith summarized the matter well when he said of all the Eight witnesses
that they not only Saw with their eyes but handled with their hands the said record . . . nor has either or any one of these witnesses ever to my knowledge Counteracted the testimony as given above Concerning the real existence of these Mormon tablets.[4]
The Eight witnesses consistently affirmed the accuracy of their published testimony, and the physical reality of their experience. The critics will have to seek elsewhere to support their speculations.
Notes
FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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