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Book of Mormon Witnesses |
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It is claimed that in his pamphlet An Address to All Believers in Christ, David Whitmer said that his encounter with the angel "was a vision and not an actual visitation by an angelic person" (Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, 204).
To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, click here
Those making this claim have here distorted Whitmer's witness and the document they are quoting.
The critics quote p. 32 of Whitmer's pamphlet for this claim. Their summary, however, greatly distorts the document. Whitmer actually wrote:
Whitmer here endorses his printed testimony, and insists that the Book of Mormon was true and that he saw the angel.
He says nothing about it not being "an actual visitation." In other accounts, Whitmer insisted that "I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes, and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!"[2]
When writing to someone who had tried to draw the same false conclusion as the critics, Whitmer explained:
Early hostile newspapers claimed that the witnesses' descriptions did not match, but were clear that both Harris and Whitmer had at some point physically handled and examined the plates:
Thus, David Whitmer also physically handled the plates according to this account, though not at the same time as the angelic vision.
Notes
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