Thanks RFM, that never ocurred to me!

[consiglieri]

Thanks so much!

Even for the thread jack!

Part two going up in seven hours ...

[Angel]

A (completely non-comprehensive) list of useful things the seer stone could have shown Joseph Smith but didn't:

• How do you feel about being tarred and feathered? Stay away from the Johnson farm. And their daughter.

• One day you might be tempted to start a bank. Don't.

• No matter how good Fanny Alger looks, whatever you do, don't take her to the barn. Emma will catch you if you do.

• Umm...those Egyptian scrolls you bought weren't really written by Abraham. You might want to not claim they were.

• Hey, don't trust John C. Bennett.

• Here are some clear instructions on how to practice polygamy so the future Church won't have to say you weren't given clear instructions on how to practice polygamy.

• You might want to avoid Carthage Illinois. And if anyone ever prints a paper that criticizes you, probably best to just leave it alone.

Clearly, God wants us to grow through adversity, and how would we ever be able to do that without, you know, the tree of death, and free will, and opportunities to be pushed beyond our limits and go insane and stuff you know?

[annotatedbom]

Ditto to Hagoth's original post. The 116 plates lost is really one big cluster fetch!

[Just This Guy]

Just finished part 2 of this.

One interesting point I got was during the talk about Martin Harris's attempt to translate the BOM. Basically, D&C 8 is setting Martin up for failure. Section 8 promises Martin that he can do it if he asks. Section 9 says he didn't prepare himself properly.

My question is did JSjr set him up for this or was it just something that happened and JS needed some way to spin it?

[jfro18]

Just finished part 2 of this.

One interesting point I got was during the talk about Martin Harris's attempt to translate the BOM. Basically, D&C 8 is setting Martin up for failure. Section 8 promises Martin that he can do it if he asks. Section 9 says he didn't prepare himself properly.

My question is did JSjr set him up for this or was it just something that happened and JS needed some way to spin it?

I tend to think that Joseph didn't know how to handle the situation, and that OC wanted to translate like JS did, but Joseph couldn't just cut OC off by himself since that would seem odd, so instead he used revelation to set OC up to fail so that it wasn't Joseph cutting him out of translation, but God doing so.

Seems like a trick he used a lot early on to get people to do what he wanted them to do.