Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site watcgl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!mabgarstin
From: mabgarstin@watcgl.UUCP (MAB Garstin)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Jesus is the same as Joseph Smith (or, "Shooting yourself in the foot")
Message-ID: <699@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Aug-83 17:34:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.699
Posted: Fri Aug 19 17:34:19 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Aug-83 23:51:59 EDT
References: <1419@shark.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 40


To respond to Steven Den Beste's comment and a point that seems to have been
missed here about the three witnesses (well, about two of them actually), first
the comment by Steve about the witnesses.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was also a comment by Jensen about the "three witnesses" who
had seen the gold plates and attested to their reality, even though
they later left the church. Why, Jensen asks rhetorically, didn't
they 'fess up after they left the church if it was a fraud?

Fraud is a felony, and if they confessed they faced long prison terms.

Even after they ceased to benefit from the fraud, they had a vested
interest in maintaining it so as to maintain their freedom of movement.
Remember, this was the U.S. of the 1830's and 1840's, and they used
to HANG horse-thieves. What would they do to someone who had swindled
thousands of dollars from people?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Sure enough, if any of the three witnesses had denied their testimonies
and exposed the church as a hoax they would have been prosecuted for fraud.
The fact exists though that with both Oliver Cowdry and Martin Harris, two
of the three witnesses that saw the plates in the presence of an angle and
later excommunicated from the church and loosing alot of personal property
in the process, were asked to deny their testimonies on their death
beds, from which prosecution is not possible on the individual. They did not
deny their testimonies, in fact they reaffirmed their testimonies and
witness as to what they saw. Now what could an individual, after having gone
through the trials, hardships, putdowns, persecutions and humiliations ever
hope to gain by continuing a hoax of this nature from their death bed?
    O.K., I might believe that one slightly derranged individual might do
such a thing but two people did this and although I cannot speek with
assurity for the third, as regards any death bed statements, the third is not
recorded as having ever refuted his witness either.


                                                        MAB