Gospel Topics Chapter 5 Howlett Part 5

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Thanks for joining us for this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. Welcome to the subheading of Inclusions and Exclusions. In this section, he wants to address three of the, quote, First Vision accounts essay sections, which are memory, embellishments, and the essay's faith-promoting conclusions.

And he's correct. In the Gospel Topics essay, dealing with the First Vision, they do have two subheadings, memory and embellishment, and then there is a conclusion. So first of all, let's look at what he says under the subheading of memory on page 143 of this book. He writes in the section titled Memory, the essay authors note that some claim, quote, that historical evidence does not support Joseph Smith's description of religious revival in Palmyra, New York in its vicinity in 1820, end quote. Such critics argue, quote, that this undermines both Joseph's claim of unusual religious fervor and the account of the vision itself, end quote. The authors do not name the critics who hold this view, but they probably refer to the late Wesley P. Walters, who first made this claim in 1967 and whose argument entered into the realms of academic debate and religious polemic.

Against the argument of a revival's absence, the authors claim Methodist revival activity occurred in the vicinity of Palmyra between 1818 and 1820, and they cite the diary of a Methodist itinerant as evidence of this. Neither the late historian Milton Beckman, the first to seriously challenge Walters, nor the historian D. Michael Quinn, the author of 110 page treatment of the question, are cited by the essayist to address the question. Now, I actually heard D. Michael Quinn use this argument in a conference that I attended.

He was speaking. I was sitting behind Dan Vogel, who's written a number of books on Mormon history, and when D. Michael Quinn brought up this Methodist camp meeting argument, and I've said it before on this show, I'll never forget watching Dan Vogel's head drop and his head go from side to side as if you've got to be kidding me. Someone of the caliber of a D. Michael Quinn uses the Methodist camp meeting argument to try to support what Joseph Smith describes in his testimony? There's no comparison, and I would agree. D. Michael Quinn used a very bad argument, and unfortunately that same type of argument is used in this Gospel Topics essay dealing with the First Vision.

Somebody who might not have heard the earlier shows. Why is that a bad argument, Bill? It's a bad argument because Joseph Smith describes with a lot of details the revival that took place at the time he claims to have this alleged First Vision. He mentions how there were Baptists, there were Methodists, there were Presbyterians that were involved. He mentions some of the struggles towards the end of this revival and why it came to an end.

In other words, he gives us enough details that we can precisely pinpoint the revival that he is referring to. And unfortunately for the cause of the Latter-day Saints, the revival that Joseph Smith describes could not have taken place in 1820. He mentions how multitudes were added to the churches.

But that's not what the statistics show. The statistics of 1820 for the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians in that area were very dismal. Some lost members, one gained a few members, one had no change whatsoever in their numbers. How does that fit the description of multitudes being added to the churches? But in 1824, we do find multitudes being added to the various churches. Why? Because that's when the revival Joseph Smith describes happened.

That's why. And you can bring up this Methodist camp meetings or multiple Methodist camp meetings if you choose. The description of those camp meetings do not compare or are not similar, I should say, to what Joseph Smith describes in his testimony, Joseph Smith's history found in the Pearl of Great Price. Going back to Wesley Walter's booklet, which is now called the Palmyra Revival in Mormon Origins, I'm reading from the booklet. And this is on page 19, and Walter writes, the Methodist figures, though referring to the entire circuit, give the same results, referring to the Baptist church that had lost people. They show net losses of 23 for 1819, 6 for 1820, and 40 for 1821. So even if you have these Methodist camp meetings, there's nobody who's coming to the Methodists.

In fact, they don't gain until later on. Do you think, perhaps, Bill, that Joseph Smith gave too much information that is now unraveling because we're able to pinpoint as you're talking about? What Joseph Smith does in giving the details of this account found in Mormon Scripture, the Pearl of Great Price, is he proves he's not a very good liar, though a liar nonetheless. He's not very good at it.

A good liar doesn't give a lot of details that can be fact-checked later on. And this is what I'm saying, and this is why Wes Walters' research is so invaluable. Walters went and got all the details and put them together in this booklet, showing that it's impossible for Joseph Smith to have this first vision, as he claimed in the spring of 1820.

He gets it wrong. Now, is that a memory problem? That's the big question that the chapter is trying to address. Does he just have a memory problem?

I think it's far beyond just a memory problem. I think Joseph Smith is actually lying about this. And this leads us to the next section that the essay talks about, and that is embellishment. According to the essay, there are other, more consistent ways of seeing the evidence. A basic harmony in the narrative across time must be acknowledged at the outset.

My question would be, why? Why do I have to acknowledge that at the outset? It goes on to say three of the four accounts clearly state that two personages appeared to Joseph Smith in the first vision. But is one of them God the Father?

And why isn't that stated? The big deal about Joseph Smith's first vision is the fact that God the Father shows up. Visions of Jesus, even among a lot of religionists at the time, really was not all that big of a deal. Yet they make it sound like this is the first time the heavens opened was to speak to Joseph Smith.

Well, even in this chapter, David Howlett shows that that's not true. There were a lot of these type of religious experiences going on among professing religionists at the time. So I don't think that we have to acknowledge this at the outset, that there's some kind of harmony being portrayed here in this account. It's not a harmony. There are specific differences between the 1832 account where Joseph Smith claims he's only visited by Jesus.

He calls him the Lord, and the Lord forgives him of his sins. And the official account brought about in 1838, where God the Father shows up and tells Joseph Smith, along with Jesus, that all the churches are wrong, their creeds are an abomination, and their professors are all corrupt. There are a lot of details between those two that cannot be overlooked. So do I think Joseph Smith makes it up and then embellishes the story?

Yeah, I'm of that position. I don't believe there was an 1820 revival, and I challenge any Latter-day Saint to give good evidence to show that somehow, the revival that Joseph Smith describes in the Pearl of Great Price fits any of those Methodist camp meetings allegedly that took place around 1818, 1819, 1820, and so forth. I think we need to also look in this chapter where, underneath the subheading of the Way of Knowing, which I think is supposed to go along with the subheading called Conclusion in the Gospel Topics Essay, Hewlett says, after refuting various criticisms of the First Vision accounts, the authors conclude with a series of assertions that recall the conclusion of an LDS General Authorities conference talk, assertions that are devotional faith affirming and require orthodoxy and orthopraxy on the part of the hearer. First of all, let me address the first line at the top of page 152. After refuting various criticisms—see, this is where I disagree with David Hewlett. I don't think this essay refutes the criticisms. I think it gives a lot of lame excuses, but it certainly doesn't refute the criticisms, at least not according to my opinion.

And just because you bring up an argument doesn't mean that it's a good argument, that it's a valid response to what you're trying to disprove. Well, the problem that I have with that line, though, is that that's really the second time he does something like this. He talks about these statements in the Gospel Topics Essay as somehow effectively refuting the criticisms that were being raised at the time, and I don't think that they actually accomplished that. It would have been better in this line, for me at least, if he would have said after allegedly refuting various criticisms.

But he doesn't do that. I don't think that what these anonymous scholars do in this essay accomplish what he says at the top of page 152. When he talks about this mixing of orthodoxy and orthopraxy on the part of the hearer, and referring it to the LDS General Authorities conference talk, I'm assuming he's talking about Gordon B. Hinckley, who was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter.

He says, The truthfulness of Joseph Smith's vision will be manifest. My response to that is, why? Why, when we're discussing whether or not an actual historical event happened or did not happen, why do we have to resort to this kind of a conclusion? In other words, we're looking for a subjective feeling to tell us what, that even though the evidence shows there was no revival in 1820 that Joseph Smith describes, prayer is somehow going to override that historical fact. That is silliness.

That is outright silliness. And anybody who engages in that type of truth seeking, I think has some real problems to begin with. Could that possibly be an admission that there just isn't a lot of good evidence to take away this problem of the 1832 account?

When you have 40 different plus scholars who are going against one man who has shown that there is no revival, I think that's a problem, as we talked about in yesterday's show. And then to say you have to pray about it to know it's true. Well, when the evidence comes together and it doesn't look true, prayer is not going to be able to overtake the wrongness of the situation. And I think that's a great point. Prayer was never meant to override facts. And that's exactly what these essayists are trying to portray. If you have a problem with the actual history, just pray about it.

That'll make everything okay. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.