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Podcast Transcript:
Hello, my name is David Snell, and you’re listening to Keystone, where our goal is to fortify Latter-day Saint faith and combat misinformation through good old-fashioned research. Let’s jump right in!
Did the Book of Mormon witnesses see the golden plates and the attending angel with their real, physical eyes? Or, only their “spiritual eyes”? Is there a difference? What are “spiritual eyes”? Was this a real experience, or was this imagination? Let’s talk about it.
An antagonistic source called the CES Letter compiles 4 quotes that talk about Book of Mormon witness Martin Harris only seeing the angel and the golden plates through spiritual eyes. The Letter lists some other quotes that don’t mention spiritual eyes that we’ll talk about in a future episode, but in this episode, I’m going to give you some background info on these 4 quotes, and I’ll tell you why I really have no problem with them even if they are accurate.
Source #1: In the book, “Joseph Smith Begins His Work, Vol. 1, we read that “He [Martin Harris] only saw the plates with a spiritual eye.” The citation in the CES Letter for this quote does not give a page number, perhaps because this exact quote actually does not appear in that book. The quote from Joseph Smith Begins His Work is actually, quote “No, I saw them with a spiritual eye” end quote. It’s a minor difference, but I bring it up because once corrected, spoiler alert, this is the exact same quote as #4 on our list from the CES Letter.
What is going on here? So, this might be hard to explain without visuals, but in the CES Letter, there is a bit of introductory text before the fourth quote from our list is presented. As far as I can tell, that introductory text, along with the quote it introduces, was just copied and pasted from an anti-Latter-day Saint website called MormonThink. Quote number 1 on our list from the CES Letter (the incorrect quote cited to the book “Joseph Smith Begins His Work”) looks like it was just copied from another anti-Latter-day Saint website called exmormon.org. My guess is that the author of the CES Letter just copied and pasted without stopping to double-check the accuracy of the quote, or the sources. So, really, we’re only looking at 3 quotes today, not 4.
Anyhow, the original source for both quotes 1 & 4 from our list is an 1892 memorandum by John Gilbert, who helped publish the first edition of the Book of Mormon. Gilbert was 90 years old and a critic of the Church, recalling events from 63 years earlier. His memory of Martin may or may not be accurate. Now, in the YouTube version of this episode, I try to make the point that sometimes we get so caught up in negative, antagonistic quotes that we forget about the wealth of positive quotes we have about the Book of Mormon witnesses. So, in the YouTube version, for every 1 antagonistic quote we review, I throw up 2 positive quotes for viewers to pause and read on the screen. We can’t do that here in the podcast, and some of the quotes are rather long, so for the sake of staying focused on today’s topic, I’m going to skip those, but there are some real doozies. In the context of the dozens of other statements from the witnesses, it seems very clear that at least they did not believe that their experience with the angel and the plates was imaginary.
But anyway, moving on to quote number 2 on our list: Pomeroy Tucker was a major critic of the Church. In his 1867 “expose” of Mormonism, he wrote that Martin “…used to practice a good deal of his characteristic jargon about ‘seeing with the spiritual eye,’ and the like.” You’ll notice that Tucker is not recounting a specific experience that he had with Martin. He’s generalizing, and it’s unclear if this is something that he heard Martin say first-hand or something he just heard through the grapevine. Also note that this quote in the CES Letter is also accompanied by some introductory text, which also seems to be simply copied and pasted from the blatantly critical MormonThink website.
#3: Another copied-and-pasted reference takes us to an 1833 letter from Jesse Townsend to Phineas Stiles. Townsend wrote that Martin “claimed to see the plates with ‘spiritual eyes.’” Jesse was a preacher in Palmyra for a while, and in 1833, he signed one of Philastus Hurlbut’s very questionable affidavits aimed at discrediting Joseph Smith.
So those are the quotes we’re dealing with here that talk about “spiritual eyes.” There are various reasons to question the reliability of the 3 critical statements we’ve been looking at. That said, let’s just assume that Martin Harris did say that he saw the plates with “spiritual eyes.” Is that a problem? Personally, I’m fine with it.
As Latter-day Saints, we believe that to see some holy things or beings, a kind of sanctifying or purifying change must occur to our bodies to enable us to be able to view those holy things. For example, in Moses chapter 1, Moses sees God face to face in a vision. Afterward, we read, “…Mine own eyes have beheld God; but not my natural, but my spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld; for I should have withered and died in his presence….”
Moses is not saying that the experience wasn’t real. He’s saying that some kind of spiritual change had to occur so that he could view real things from the spiritual realm.
And this was something that fellow witness David Whitmer understood well. Replying to a critic, David wrote in a letter, “Of course, we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time. Martin Harris, you say, called it ‘being in vision.’ We read in the Scriptures Cornelius saw, in a vision, an angel of God, and Daniel saw an angel in a vision, also, in other places, it states they saw an angel in the spirit. A bright light enveloped us where we were … and there in a vision, or in the spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon.”
We also read in the Bible about mortal eyes being opened in order to see real beings or objects from the spiritual realm. In Numbers 22, the Lord opens the eyes of Balaam to enable him to see the angel standing in the path of his donkey. I actually found an 1867 book by Jonathan Bayley called “From Egypt to Canaan,” which says that Balaam saw the angel with his “spiritual eyes.” Bayley goes on to say, quote, “Whenever an angel is seen, we may be assured that it is with spiritual eyes….” end quote. Is the angel only imaginary? No. The biblical account reports that it was physically blocking the path of Balaam’s donkey.
We find another example in 2 Kings 6, where the prophet Elijah prays that his servant’s eyes may be opened to see an army of angelic chariots protecting Elijah from a nearby Syrian army. One 1890 commentary rephrased Elijah’s prayer, quote “Enable him to see with his spiritual eyes the great realities around him. Nothing was created or changed for him. The heavenly host was really there, but unperceived, as the stars are in the heavens, and the flowers in the field, though the blind man sees them not” close quote.
If these biblical figures were described as seeing real heavenly beings and objects through “spiritual eyes,” why is it a problem if Martin Harris uses the same language to describe his experience seeing a heavenly being and the golden plates? In my opinion, it’s not. You guys, to these witnesses… this was real..
In words attributed to fellow witness Oliver Cowdery, as recorded in a later edition of the Improvement Era Magazine, “My eyes saw, my ears heard, and my understanding was touched, and I know that whereof I testified is true. It was no dream, no vain imagination of the mind—it was real.”
You’ve been listening to Keystone. If you’re interested in what some other people had to say about the Book of Mormon in the 1800s, I highly suggest you check out episode #2 on this podcast, where we talk about the surprising testimony of an excommunicated former apostle. Have a great day!