Timothy 2.15. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence. Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 602-274-1360. That's 602-274-1360. Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1-888-550-1360. That's 1-888-550-1360. And now, with today's topic, here's James White. And good afternoon Phoenix, my name is Rich Pierce once again sitting in for Dr. James White who is taking a well-deserved three-day weekend with his family over at Disneyland. They thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity with the kids on a two-week vacation for the Christmas season and so they took advantage of that and I'm going to be stepping in once again today And we're going to be discussing the First Vision of Joseph Smith. That's right, when it all comes down to it. With the Mormon Church, the First Vision is mission-critical stuff here. If you've had Mormon missionaries over at your home, if you've ever had them in for any period of time, one of the very first things that they want to do is show you a video. And guess what that video is called? The First Vision. And they want to show this video, it's about 20 minutes long, and it goes through the story of Joseph Smith, how as a young boy he was very enticed by all the religionists in his area where he was living. and uh... he in in following them are not following them necessarily be going to their meetings and and uh... participating in that listening he became very confused he just couldn't sort it out and uh... supposedly as the result of that he inquired of god and the first division is the result of that and there will be the show would not be uh... in context if i did not read for you from That's right, it's the Pearl of Great Price and we talked about the Pearl of Great Price once before going through the book of Abraham. But from the Pearl of Great Price is a document or a piece of it called Joseph Smith History. and beginning adverse fifteen of uh... joseph smith history i'm gonna begin reading for you now uh... we need to keep in mind here that joseph smith is already told the story about the the revivals that are going on religious excitement he calls it and uh... he's already gone through this uh... discussion of uh... the confusion that he's under and so he is uh... finds himself Well, going out into the woods, kind of getting alone with nature, with God, and getting down and praying about it. You see, he had read James 1.5, and in a total misunderstanding of what James 1.5 was saying, and certainly as he tells the account, he misunderstands what James 1.5 is about. He reads it to be, if anyone lacks wisdom, or as he would work it, knowledge is what he was really looking for, answers. If anyone lacks wisdom is what it says, let him ask of God and it shall be given to him. And the key here to understanding what Joseph Smith did was he read that and he, kinda all the lights go on in the video and he's like, wow, yeah, that's what I gotta do, I gotta ask God. I gotta get down and I gotta pray about this and I gotta ask God and he'll tell me what I need to know. And it picks up here as he has gone out into the grove of trees nearby where he lives and we pick up at verse 15. After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. thick darkness gathered around me and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed for sudden destruction but exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me and at that very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction not to an imaginary ruin but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being Just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me, I saw two personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said, pointing to the other, This is my beloved son, hear him. My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself as to be able to speak, than I asked the personages who stood above me in the light which of all the sects was right, for at this time it had never entered my heart that they were all wrong, which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight, that those professors were all corrupt, that they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. He again forbade me to join any of them, and many other things did he say unto me which I cannot write at this time. When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven. When the light had departed, I had no strength. But soon recovering in some degree, I went home, and as I leaned upon the fireplace, Mother inquired what the matter was. I replied, Never mind, all is well. I am well enough off. I then said to my mother, I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true. It seems as though the adversary was aware at a very early period of my life that I was destined to prove a disturber and an annoyer of his kingdom, else why should all the powers of darkness combine against me? Why the opposition and persecution that arose against me almost in my infancy? And he goes on to talk about a few days later, he mentioned the vision to a Methodist preacher, and things began to turn against him very quickly. And so as we discuss the first vision of Joseph Smith, one of the chief things that we need to understand is when Joseph Smith claims to have been this to have happened in his life. Now, as we get into understanding that Joseph Smith was born in late 1805, he and other portions of Joseph Smith's history claims that this took place in the spring of 1820 on a clear day. And we need to examine that as we go through it. Now, One thing that I have in my hand here is a tract that Alpha and Omega Ministries has put out years ago, and we will be probably republishing it this spring for the upcoming General Conference and Easter pageant, and it's called The Case Against the First Vision. That's right, the case against the first vision. And we're going to be working from this track today because it really does take a very complex and well, you know, extensive subject and encapsulizes it very well. And the thing we need to understand right off the bat is that the importance of this first vision cannot be overemphasized. The late Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie wrote, and I quote, "...this transcendent vision was the beginning of latter-day revelation. Through it, the creeds of Christendom were shattered to smithereens, and because of it, the truth about those beings whom it is life eternal to know began again to be taught among men." And that's found in his book Mormon Doctrine, page 285. And as Mormon prophet Joseph Fielding Smith wrote, Mormonism, as it is called, must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen There is no middle ground. That's from Doctrines of Salvation, Volume 1, page 188. I have to say, in that quote where he says that there is no middle ground, that has to be one of my favorite quotes that there are in dealing with Mormonism, because so many Mormon apologists today and so many Mormons that we talk to really try to obfuscate the issues. They try to belittle issues from the Bible. They try to bring the Bible down, feeling that it will prove their case for them. And all that does is simply belittle the Bible, and trying to bring it down to the level of problems that the Mormon Church has, it actually discredits both. if they were right about what they say about the Bible. But in point of fact, their arguments are often the same kind of arguments that atheists, agnostics, and absolute unbelievers and haters of God use against the Scriptures, and they have no merit there as well. uh... moving along uh... what i have in my hand is a photocopy uh... and we're gonna get into examining these and what they have to say the photocopy of joseph smith's eighteen thirty-two handwritten account Now, there was a big to-do when we first published this tract, because we called it a diary account. And those in the Mormon church, there were those who objected over us calling it a diary account, felt we were being disingenuous, that we were lying, etc., and we were accused of all kinds of things. But they felt that this was not his personal diary, and so we went ahead and just simply, okay, fine, we'll take the word diary out. We're not going to be stuck on the issue of whether or not this is a personal diary. It's uncontested that it's his own handwriting and that he wrote it himself. And on the front of this tract, a photocopy of the earliest account. Now this is the earliest account of the First Vision in writing anywhere, and it dates 1832. It's in Joseph Smith's own handwriting. And it says, It says this, and while in the attitude of calling upon the Lord in the sixteenth year of my age, a pillar of light above the brightness of the sun at noonday come down from above and rested upon me. And the Lord opened the heavens upon me, and I saw the Lord, and he spake unto me, saying, Joseph my son, thy sins are forgiven thee. Behold, I am the Lord of glory, I was crucified for the world. Now, one will search in vain for any reference to two personages anywhere in this account. And if you believed, I mean really, Harry, if you believed that God had commanded that a history of His church be written, that from Doctrine and Covenants section 21, verse 1, and 69, verse 3, would you not include in that history something as important as seeing God the Father and Jesus Christ as separate and distinct gods? Remember, this is the earliest account and the only one written in Joseph's own handwriting. If you'd like to see some evidence of this, see the Ensign magazine, Ensign, I believe it's the official publication of the Mormon Church, their magazine, on the December 84 issue. You can get further corroboration of that account on page 25. Now, we need to keep in mind here that the account that I first read, well, it's something different than what we read before, isn't it? What happened to the two personages in physical form as he describes them, and one pointing to the other, on and on and on. Well, you wonder, wait a minute, are these competing accounts? Did he write two of them? Did somebody else write this? Well, in point of fact, we need to keep in mind here that Joseph Smith, in Joseph Smith history, claims that this vision took place in the spring of 1820. However, this was not recorded, or this particular version wasn't recorded by him until 1838. So what we call the official, what is known as the official Mormon Church position on the First Vision today is, in point of fact, one that was 18 years after the fact, as Joseph Smith expressed it in The Vision. So there's problem number one, and that is that we look at his earliest account from 1832, and we examine that and compare that to the 1838 account, and it just says that he saw the Lord, and the Lord spake to him, and he didn't describe him in any way. He doesn't say that he saw a vision of a person standing above him or anything like that. He just said he saw the Lord. And that's a very critical understanding there, a thing to differentiate right up front. Now, in Joseph Smith's diary, where I believe at this point in time he's now employing scribes to do his diary and stuff like that, Joseph Smith's actual diary of November 9, 1835 it contains another account we're talking three years now after the first handwritten account of any kind is uh... is written down uh... and here joseph smith he does mention two personages only this time The two personages testify that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And in this account, angels are mentioned, but never God the Father or Jesus Christ as being present in there. And what makes it even more fascinating is the fact in the documentary history of the church under the date of November 14, 1835, now this is five days after the diary entry. Five days. We have another mention of this vision. When the account was originally printed in serial form in the Deseret News on May 29, 1852, it recounted Smith's telling Erasmus Holmes of his experiences. And he says to Erasmus Holmes, quote, from six years up to the time I received the first visitation of angels, which was when I was about 14 years old. However, since this contradicts the modern story, recent additions of the documentary history have changed the wording to say, quote, from six years old up to the time I received my first vision, unquote. I'm sorry, not unquote there, which was when I was about 14 years old, unquote. And that is Documentary History of the Church, volume two, page 312. Now, given the close proximity of time of the Above Diary account that mentions angels and the editing of the text of the documentary history in an attempt to cover up the fact, it seems to be clear that the First Vision story has, well, I like to call it, it's gone through a substantial point of evolution. It has evolved over time. and one has to ask the question is it possible that the lds church in eighteen fifty-two really believe that the only angels appeared to joseph smith well yes it's very possible and point of fact we yeah we've got another quote most certainly it is a brief perusal of the following references from the journal of discourses should suggest an answer to that question journal discourses volume two page one hundred and seventy one Volume 2, page 196. and volume 13, page 324. And President George A. Smith taught, and this is in 1852, that when Joseph went, this is a quote, went humbly before the Lord and inquired of him, the Lord answered his prayer and revealed to Joseph by the ministration of angels the true condition of the religious world. And when the holy angel appeared, Joseph inquired, How about this? Which of all these denominations was right? That's from Journal of Discourses, volume 12, page 334. So one has to ask the question, where is it that the president of the Mormon Church in 1852 has the idea that if you reference Joseph Smith's first vision, what is he going to think of? What does he say he's thinking of here? He believes that Joseph Smith had a vision of angels. Now, where's the rest of this story come up with? Where's it come from? Well, the question has to be asked, is it really possible that Joseph Smith made up the story as he went along, adding God the Father only in the late 1830s? Maybe he didn't realize that by doing so, he was violating his own revelation in Doctrine and Covenants, section 84, verses 21 and 22. What's that all about? It says that no man can see God the Father without the priesthood and live. Joseph Smith supposedly didn't receive the priesthood until 1829. That's a lot to think about there. According to Joseph Smith's modern day story, according to the modern story, he had a vision of not only God the Father but his son Jesus Christ as he identifies them and he sees them in physical form and he sees them in the spring of 1820. And yet later on he teaches, and this is absolute, that no man, it's not possible for a man to see God the Father, to see God without the priesthood and live. And Joseph Smith clearly didn't have it. So this is another question that needs to be asked right up front. The modern church in its missionary presentations claims that Joseph immediately came under persecution for telling people of his first vision story. Now the fact that there is no clear unambiguous reference to this vision for many years until after the alleged event, until the mid 1830s at best, For example, E.D. Howe. I'm holding in my hand right now a book by E.D. Howe that is referenced here. He published the very first anti-Mormon book ever published in 1834, and it never once mentions the First Vision. If it was so well known, why didn't he take Smith to task for it? The concept of a plurality of gods presented in the vision would certainly have attracted Howe's attention." This book is a fascinating book because Mr. Howe There's just no question that when it came to his curiosity about this new religion of Mormonism, he had a burr under his saddle. And he went around upstate New York and he tracked down Joseph Smith's neighbors, people that had lived next to Joseph Smith, people that knew the Smith family. And he took depositions. That's right, he took depositions from these people as to what they knew, what they saw, information that they knew about the Smiths. And this book is so, let's see here, 200 pages long and nowhere in here. Nowhere in here does he reference the first vision of Joseph Smith at all, not even of angels or anything. So you have to ask the question, as we looked at it the last time I was here, well when we looked at the book of Abraham, there was some doubt even among the saints about Joseph's ability to translate Egyptian, whether or not he really knew what he was doing. And along comes the Egyptian mummies. And suddenly Joseph's got a whole new angle here to come along with, well we'll translate this, and suddenly the book of Abraham comes out. And that's another piece of the Pearl of Great Price. But it's just interesting how this information isn't dealt with directly. This is really latent information. The first vision story that we use today is latent in regards to even what, 20 years? 15 years after Joseph Smith is, well 1842, 10 years after Joseph Smith's death. They don't know of the first vision except of angels. They don't know anything about the story of God the Father and Jesus Christ. So let's see here. The concept of why do we not find mention of this vision by other Mormons of the time? Why do we not find sermons based on the vision from leaders in Utah? Why such a deafening silence, such a lack of evidence? That's a point that needs to be made really well and that is that when it comes to After the saints got into Utah you find very few sermons about this. Now we have to come back to what Bruce R. McConkie said that the transcendent vision was the beginning of latter day revelation. Through it the creeds of Christendom were shattered to smithereens and because of it the truth about those beings whom it is life eternal to know began again to be taught among men. Now I think we can pretty much agree, if you're familiar with Bruce R. McConkie at all, that when it came to Mormon doctrine, when it comes to what Mormonism is, the late apostle knew what he was talking about. And you look at the fact that this is such a pressed issue when it comes to Mormon missionaries going around, going door to door. This is the first thing they want you to see. It's what they want to emphasize. They want you to know about Joseph Smith. And it's a very important thing to them. Why the difference between the early church in Utah and sermons at Saturn emphasis and the church as it functions today? Could it be, perhaps, that by the time 1880 rolls around and somebody in the hierarchy of the church is looking at the book of Abraham, they're looking at the first vision story, and they're looking at all this Joseph Smith history, that is, They're looking at all this, and they need some things to really kind of rev things up, and suddenly the idea of canonizing the Pearl of Great Price becomes a great idea. And that would have a direct effect on the doctrine and beliefs of the Church, I would think. So that, at this point, is my theory on the evolution process. It is clear that it did, in fact, evolve over time here. We're going to skip on, because these are questions that they really don't have answers to. The Mormon Church isn't coming back saying, no, no, no, no, no, these facts are untrue, this document isn't genuine evidence. In fact, I want to mention here, that the picture that we have on the front page of this tract was taken by James White. That's right, in the late 1980s, mid-1980s, he went up to the archives in the church in Utah, and he got a look at these documents himself. and uh... actually i'm not sure that this particular account this may have been uh... gotten through the tanners i don't know that they actually let him take a a photocopy he he has the call slip that he used a photocopied his call slip uh... that they allowed him to go in and take an examination to determine the authenticity of this and so it is up in the church archives in salt lake city if you want to go and look at joseph smith's eighteen thirty two account I don't know if they'd let you in there anymore. You'd have to perhaps have some pretty good credentials in the Mormon church to be able to get in there, but I think after they let a few folks in there to get a look and the word came out, yep, this is the real thing, and that's what it says, it's pretty clear, they decided it wasn't such a good idea to have such wide-open access to it. Moving along, there are other issues regarding the First Vision. We're going to have three parts to the issues of the First Vision in today's show, and we've already gone through the first part regarding the questions and the inconsistencies with the different versions of the story. But in 1967, a gentleman by the name of Reverend Wesley Walters published an article entitled, New Light on Mormon Origins. And after the break, I'm going to go into the details of that. But Reverend Walters took the idea that, you know what, there's a lot of There's a lot of contemporary things mentioned. For instance, the revivals. Well, if revivals were really going on in Palmyra, Manchester, where Joseph Smith lived, then we should be able to go to those old churches, I mean, up in New York, there's a lot of old buildings up there, and start digging through their archives and see if we can find out what evidence of revivals took place. And after we come back from the break, we're going to take a look at what Reverend Walters found out. We'll be right back. And we're back. My name is Rich Pearson. I'm sitting in for Dr. White today on The Dividing Line. And I want to remind you that we're opening up the phone lines now at 602-274-1360 in the Phoenix area. And we're also broadcasting around the world on the internet. And you can reach us, I guess, in the United States. I don't know if England can get in there anywhere. You can reach us at 1-888-550-1360, and one of those numbers is the number that Steven called from Ottawa, Canada? Yeah, that's right, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. How are you today, sir? Not too bad, and yourself? Great, you know, it's what, about 70-some-odd degrees outside, nice warm, sunny day. How is it up there? Oh, well, it's going down to minus 15 today. Oh, that's cold. But this is probably the warmest we've ever had in December in the longest time. There's only a couple inches of snow up here, so it's pretty warm. Oh, my gosh. You guys are having a heat wave at negative 15. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, what can I do for you today, Stephen? Well, I just had a question. You mentioned about when the Mormon missionaries come to your door, and the first thing they do is they assert the importance of Joseph Smith. What advice would you give to somebody who wants to share their faith with them? from the scriptures. What scriptures would you direct someone towards, a Mormon, to read with you if you're standing at the door or something like that? Well, I think there's two approaches you can take, and I've taken both of them. Ultimately, the question has to be asked whether or not you want these guys to come back to be able to discuss with you another time, or whether or not you want to put it to bed right now. And if you want to have them come back, you need to take it slow. Because, honestly, they're not going to be interested in coming back if they believe that you have an idea or a conviction that the Mormon Church is false and that you've already set on that. And, frankly, it is our position that when Mormons come, the Mormon missionaries specifically, when they come to your home, this is an ideal environment to share the Gospel with them. And you can do it in response to what they're saying as they put things out there. Simply by asking key questions and then when they answer, if those answers are inconsistent with Scripture, then pointing those Scriptures out. What I like to do is see if I can't steer the conversation in a direction where I can get on to who God is fairly quickly. That's not easily done. In fact, usually it's not going to be until the second or third meeting that you can do that. they will want to go through their presentation in the first meeting. If you appear argumentative at all, then they're going to, you know, make note of that. But what you need to do is see if you can't, as they unfold their lesson plan, and it's pretty set, they're going to start off in the first vision, is ask key questions that you probably already know the answer to. You know, they say a good lawyer never asks a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. And one of those things that you need to do is say, hey, what about this? I've heard some things along these lines. I don't know that there's a lot you can really get into the first vision right off the bat. I like to see if I can't tuck that away until later. Because I really want to get into what the central Christian doctrines are. That's where I want to spend my time. If Joseph Smith becomes a roadblock to that, then I'm going to deal with Joseph Smith. But I want to deal with who God is. I don't believe that God was once a man who lived on another planet, that he's an exalted man in heaven today. I believe that He is God, it's His nature, that He has always been God and He will never be anything but God, and that there are no other gods beside Him. And so Isaiah 43.10 describes that. Isaiah 44.6-8. talks about even God asking the question, are there any other gods beside Him? And it says, He knows not any. He says, I know not any. You can go into Deuteronomy 6.4 and show that the Lord, the capital L-O-R-D, that's Jehovah, the Lord God, is one. on and on and on. Remember, the term Yahweh Elohim appears over 535 times in that type of context throughout the Old Testament. There are a lot of places that you can go to to prove that God is one and that when we're talking about Jehovah Elohim, we're talking about the same being. Jehovah is his personal name. Elohim describes his nature. OK, because I've heard that assertion before that Elohim, that term you just used, That's plural. They assert that that's evidence that there's a plurality of God. Right, and if that stood on its face, just simply that one word alone, the term as it stands alone, is in fact plural. Hymn is a plural ending in Hebrew. But if you know anything about Hebrew, you know that the cases and tense of words are modified by the verbs around them. And that is always used with a singular verb. And so therefore it modifies it to a singular term. And it's a simple logic step to understand that if the term in Hebrew, who spoke Hebrew? the Israelites, the Hebrews, okay? And Moses and all those guys, they had a Hebrew tongue. And if it, in its context, meant plural, then why is Israel so devoutly monotheistic? Well, Rich, I find it very difficult for a Mormon. If they pick up the Old Testament, they know that the Jews were very repelling against the pagan culture, and they're very strong monotheists. And even Paul would dealt with the law of Torah And I find it very difficult how they would synthesize plurality and the Jewish notion of monotheism. I don't understand that. Well, I have to tell you that it comes down to excuses or just a decision that they don't want to deal with it. I've seen both. I've seen missionaries sit there and just look at these passages and it's like they want to deal with it. You can tell they want to deal with it. And they just sit there silent. And others sit back and start making excuses and saying, well, that's mistranslated. Well, how do you know that? I don't know. That is just mistranslated because it disagrees with Mormon doctrine. It can't be right. And they start attacking the Bible. The Bible was changed. We don't know what it originally said. And they just start going after that, trying to show that the Bible is just this undependable document. And now, guess what we've got? We've got the door to kick in here because we need Latter-day Revelation. We've just destroyed the Bible, and so now we have to have the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, and the Living Prophet, to be able to show us the way that the Bible obviously can't. And that's a standard argument, and it's sad that they can't defend their religion more effectively than trying to tear down God's Word. Yeah, it's a shame, and I think it's good, Rich, that you and Alpha You and Alpha Omega Ministries are educating people on this. I think that if you look at their stats, a quarter million people are joining their church every year. That's according to Attorney Magazine, 1978. So I think that, I mean, they come around my city, too, in Ottawa. We had, one time, we had about a dozen of them in my city, and we have just about a million people. And I saw them all in my driving range, and I challenged them, and they never really responded to me. I appreciate the advice you gave me, Rich, and I'll definitely think about that. I should pick up James White's book, too. Yeah, it's a good idea, because it would be very helpful. That, as well as Letters to a Mormon Elder, would be an excellent guide. The neat thing about Letters to a Mormon Elder would be that it's written in a substance form that is conversational. And so you can see through James' eyes as he would express these things, these ideas, to the Mormon. And that's a very effective witnessing tool, it really is. Okay, well thank you very much, Rich, and God bless, and you guys enjoy that weather down there, eh? Okay, thanks, Stephen, we appreciate your call. You're welcome. Bye-bye. And that opens up a line for you at 274-1360, that's area code 602 in the Valley, and 1-888-550-1360 if you're out of the Phoenix dialing area. Now, I promised as we'd move back into the topic here today, we went into Wesley Walters' information regarding the modern research that Mr. Reverend Walters has provided us. He entitled his booklet, New Light on Mormon Origins, from the Palmyra, New York Revival. In this article, Rev. Walters revealed the results of his study of a question that had not yet been addressed fully. Was there really a revival in Manchester in 1820? And by going to the original sources themselves, Reverend Walters was able to determine that there were definitely revivals in the area in 1816 and 1817, and in 1824 and 1825, but none in 1820. Now, in my limited time, I cannot recount the literal hundreds of facts brought forth by Rev. Walters in both this study as well as another I'm going to discuss in a minute. A few items should be significant for our purposes, though. Oliver Cowdery's story says that the Revival broke out in 1823 under Rev. Lane, a Methodist minister. William Smith's account as well dates the revival in 1824. Cowdery and Smith, by mentioning various ministers, help us to find the date for both of the ministers they mentioned were not assigned to that area until after 1822. Secondly, Reverend Walters discovered the story of the revival written by Reverend Lane himself, and all the details of the revival that broke out in September of 1824 match perfectly with Joseph's own story. Hundreds of people joined the churches, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterian, 401 to be exact, and it lasted through the spring of 1825. However, when we look at the records, to the records relevant in 1820, We find no evidence of revival at all. Rather than having hundreds joining the Methodist Church, the records for the entire circuit show that there were losses of 23 for 1819, 6 for 1820, and 40 for 1821. The Baptist Church in Palmyra gained only 6 by baptism in 1820, compared to 94 for 1825. And other local Baptist churches listed losses of 4, 5, and 9 for the year. Add this fact that though the denominational publications had devoted many pages to the glowing reports of revivals in both 1816 and 17, and 1824 and 25, nothing is mentioned about any revivals in 1820. So that pretty much kind of puts it in context. I think it's pretty clear that when you look at the Joseph Smith history where it specifically says spring of 1820, well, guess what? That doesn't quite match up to what we've got here to work with. And when it comes to researching the revivals, and I have to tell you what Reverend Walters did is he went into the basements of these churches and they had all these old revival records. They had these church attendance records, membership records, baptism records, all this stuff, and he dug through it all. He spent years researching this. and dug these things out, and it's become very valuable in being able to show what kind of extant records we'd be able to find to show whether or not these revivals actually took place when Joseph Smith said that they took place. Remember, the importance of where I'm going here is that Joseph Smith's spring 1820 comment is part of Mormon scripture. It must be true without question, okay? Now so stood the situation until 1988 when Reverend Walters released new information from his research. The new information put together records photocopied by BYU in 1970 and newly discovered land assessment records from the Manchester township and the records of warning out from Norwich, Vermont. What do these new historical sources tell us? Well, we're going to find out when we come back right after this break. Well, if you're used to hearing that other spot on What's With the Dudes at the Door, well, I'm going to do a live spot right now because the Ginkgo Barbarian has done it again. Kevin Johnson and James White have written another book and it's called What's With the Mutant in the Microscope. Again, this is a teen's book examining evolution. You've heard that the evolution theory is a fact, the hot debates and Gaping holes of Darwinian evolution rarely show up in science class. Instead, you learn that along with Aunt Mabel and Cousin Vern, your family tree includes a swinging set of primates, some lunkhead lizards, and even a single-celled, well, cell. Talk about a weird family reunion. Most people choose biology over the Bible, science over Sunday school, goo over God. Got a good response? What's with the mutant in the microscope romps through the solid scientific reasons to believe God made your world. You'll learn why natural selection plus micromutations can't produce huge change, where science gets its facts, why evolution becomes a religion, and how the real facts of life demonstrate intelligent design. That's What's with the Mutants and the Microscope. It's put out by Bethany House Publishers, and you can find it at www.aomin.org. Okay, going back into modern research of Wesley Walters. Reverend Walters passed away a few years ago, but I just mentioned something that he had dug into, and that was what's called warning out records. What does a warning out mean? What is that all about? uh... james did an interview about ten twelve years ago with reverend walters when this uh... well would have been eighty eight uh... this would have been brand new information and i want to play a cut from you before you from that uh... particular uh... interview that where wesley where wesley walters himself describes the importance of meaning of the warning out record the term warning out with the common term that we've used in new england uh... throughout the new england state up until about 18, 18, 18, 19 around then when it went out. It stems from an old English understanding that the local town was responsible for its poor. Now, in an area that is experiencing the migration of peoples into the territory, some of whom are not well funded, There was a danger of dozens of people coming in and being unable to make a living and becoming destitute, in which case the local towns were expected to care for these. Now, if the burden got too great, it could bankrupt the people of the town that already were living there and established. So, right in the late 1780s, the New England states began to pass laws that if you warned out a group of immigrants, any particular family that moved into the area, within three months of their arrival, that you, and they became destitute, you weren't responsible for them. You could just charge the town they came from with the cost of transporting them back there, and they would be their liability. Now they found that three months wasn't sufficient time, so most all of the states went to within a year. That didn't mean they would wait a whole year, but it meant they had given up to a year to find these people if they moved into the hills of Vermont someplace and settled down, squatted on land or whatever, that they would have up to a year to find them. If they hadn't worn them out within a year, they became a part of the settled community and they became citizens with voting rights in the town. Of course they could get voting rights earlier if the town elected them to some office or voted to have them have voting rights. But they became official settled citizens if a year had elapsed. Now what's interesting is that a number of these books where the records were kept, first they were kept at the town minutes but it was hard to find them that way. After somewhere around 188 or 9 or 10 in that period, most of the towns just kept a separate book of warning out. And practically everybody that came into the community, unless he was very well fixed financially and they knew the guy wasn't going to become destitute, but practically everybody that moved into the community was warned out of town. So it wasn't a disgrace. It was simply a precaution. It does not speak and he can't infer that they were undesirable characters from that. It simply was the regular procedure that all the communities in that area used. And when they were warned out, they had to be warned out therefore within a year. Most communities would have warned them out as soon as they found they were present. So consequently, as they looked by Benton, which is a classical book called Warning Out of New England, as he points out, these lists are excellent lists for determining when people arrived in a community because they would have warned them out just as soon as they found out they were there. Well, we need to recognize that our country at that time was still very young, and much of the laws that were in communities at the time were still very colonial in nature, still very much taken from the European example or model that we had gotten from England. And so these kinds of ideas of warning someone out, and the idea, quite frankly, that if a family came into our town today, here in Phoenix, and there are many who do so, and became destitute, the town would be responsible for taking care of them. That's an interesting concept. It would be interesting to see what would happen in our valley if the homeless in our valley, the town was forced to have to, by law, take care of them. Well, the problem, as Rev. Walters described it, is that the towns were responsible for taking care of the poor within their borders, and when a family moved there and appeared to be less than affluent, they were warned out immediately, so that if they did become destitute, the other town that they came from would have to take care of them, not us kind of thing. So that's the importance there, and the importance to warning out is that a warning out occurred in Norwich, Vermont of the Smith family on March 15, 1816, and that's pretty good evidence that that's when they moved there. And so you start going through this chronology of events, And we start saying, wait a minute, they didn't live where Joseph Smith said they lived in the Joseph Smith history. And so the chronology up to the events of 1820 is flawed because they needed to have been there at least by 1814, perhaps 1813. Well next, the road tax records from Palmyra indicate that the name of Joseph Smith Sr. appears from 1817 through 1822. Now as all men 21 years of age or older as of April were required to be listed, Alvin Smith's name appears as well in 1820. It is evident that Joseph Smith Sr. moved to Palmyra before the rest of his family who joined him there at a later date. It is important to note that Smith is listed as living in Palmyra until 1822, despite the LDS claim that he moved from there four years earlier in 1818. Further information has come to light that in the land assessment records for Manchester, which is where they were living when the first division supposedly took place, for the Manchester township, these records make it clear that the Smiths did not contract to buy the 100 acres of land for their farm in Manchester County until after 1820, June of 1820. For the tax rolls at that time show that all the land was taxed to the original owners, the heirs of Nicholas Evertson. And I can go on here a little bit, but I have another clip for you from Reverend Walters. It's about three minutes long, and then we're going to need to wrap up the show. But let's go ahead and go with that clip. Okay, we know they were in Loveland, New Hampshire in 1813 and 1814. We know that they were warned out of town in Norwich, Vermont in 1816, which means that they arrived there probably shortly before March of 1816 when they were warned out. They spent three years there before the family moved to Palmyra. It was late in 1818 or early 1819 that they moved to Palmyra. And they stay in Palmyra until 1822, as both of the road tax and the assessment records indicate. And in 22, they move on the farm for the first time and build their log cabin to move into. And then the following year, as Lucy's story points out, they start to build their frame house that Alvin was in the process of building when he died. And the second year after moving into the log house on the farm, then the revival takes place, which puts you in 1824. So that correlates with all the known factual data of the contemporary data that there was a revival in 1824. There wasn't one in 1820. at least not within at least a 15 or 20 mile radius of Pallmeyer, too far to just walk down the road and drop in occasionally as he could, the way Joseph puts it. He says in another newspaper interview that it was in his neighborhood and that's even more restrictive than in the part of the country where he lived because Mormons have said, well, he's in Illinois when he's writing his history, and he's talking about the part of country, and they just make it the whole of western New York. But Joseph specifically called it his neighborhood, and a neighborhood doesn't consist of territory 25, 15 miles away. It consists of people within a mile or so of you, which is where he was within about a mile of the meeting house in the village of Palmyra. Yes, and he even says in his history that he attended there several meetings as often as occasion would permit, so it wasn't just once or twice, and he didn't make 30-mile round trips extremely often in those days on a very frequent basis. Now, let me ask you something else. According to Mormon history, the second vision, or the visitation of Moroni, Nephi, whoever you want to call him, whatever his name might be, occurs in September 21st, 1823. So if what you have said concerning the dating and the first vision is correct, then the second vision is now left hanging in mid-air someplace. That's right. It's like a set of dominoes. Because Joseph hung them together, if you knock the first one down and date-wise, then the second one goes down as well, and it just throws the whole thing off all the way down the line, and you don't have him visiting the hill. over a four year period because you can't do that. You only visit really two times the most and everything gets out of kilter. Well, we're out of time for the show today But if you'd like a copy of our track the case for the first the case against the first vision you can write us email us at www.aomin.org there's an email link there and email me Rich Pierce, and I'll make sure you get that in the mail and Otherwise you can write us at P.O. Box 3 7 1 0 6 Phoenix, Arizona 8 5 0 6 9 dr. Why we'll be back next week on Christmas Day with a pre-recorded program for The Dividing Line about Christmas. We'll see you then. The Dividing Line is a presentation of Alpha and Omega Ministries. You can contact us at 602-973-0318 or you can write us at P.O. Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona 85069. We are easy to find on the World Wide Web at www.aomin.org. That's www.aomin.org. You can also find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks on our website. Join us again next Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. for The Dividing Line. Bye.