Category: Joseph Smith
The Con Man Who Never Ran the Con: What Joseph Smith Never Said
If Joseph made it all up, a con man would have pointed at every hit and said SEE, PROOF. He never pointed to Nahom, Bountiful, chiasmus, or the verse with his name in it. His witnesses broke with him and never denied it. He died in debt and went back to Carthage. So what exactly was the con?
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Deuteronomy 18:22 Cuts Both Ways: Elisha, Jonah, and the D&C 84 Temple
Critics use Deuteronomy 18:22 as a one-strike rule against Joseph Smith and the D&C 84 temple. Run the same test on Elisha, Jonah, Isaiah, and Micah, then read the conditions written into D&C 84, 105, and 124.
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The Kinderhook Plates: What the Record Actually Shows
The Kinderhook plates were brass, not gold — a confessed 1843 hoax. Joseph Smith never published a revealed translation. Here is what Clayton wrote, what Fugate confessed, what Northwestern found, and why the trap never sprang.
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Are Latter-day Saints Just Like Muslims? Apply the Bible’s Own Test
Critics say Latter-day Saints and Muslims are alike because both had a prophet visited by an angel. 1 John 4:2-3 shows why the messages about Jesus are opposites.
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Joseph Told It Four Times, Paul Told It Three: The First Vision Accounts and the Damascus Road
Critics say Joseph Smith’s First Vision accounts don’t match, so he made it up. Acts tells Paul’s Damascus road vision three times, and those accounts differ on who heard the voice, who fell, and who gave Paul his calling. Here’s the side-by-side, and why the standard has to cut both ways.
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The 1826 Hearing and the 1830 Acquittals: What the Records Say
In 1826 a New York justice examined Joseph Smith as “the Glass Looker.” In 1830 two more courts heard the same charge and let him go. Here is what the surviving records prove, what they don’t, and what critics usually leave out.
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How the Book of Mormon Was Translated: The Case for the Urim and Thummim
Joseph Smith, his scribe Oliver Cowdery, and the revelations of 1828–29 all name the same instrument: the Urim and Thummim found with the plates. Here is the Joseph Smith Foundation’s case, the sources behind it, and how to weigh the later stone-in-a-hat accounts.
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Joseph Smith the “Money Digger”? Treasure Seeking in 1820s New England
“Joseph Smith was a money digger.” He said so himself in 1838, for fourteen dollars a month. What critics leave out: treasure seeking was widespread among churchgoing Christians in 1820s New England and New York, the man who hired Joseph was a Presbyterian who later joined the Church, and the Bible has its own seer for lost property in 1 Samuel 9.
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Seer Stones in the Bible: Urim and Thummim, Joseph’s Cup, Gideon’s Fleece
Critics mock Joseph Smith’s seer stone as “a rock in a hat.” The Bible tells a different story: Urim and Thummim in the high priest’s breastplate, Joseph of Egypt’s silver cup, Gideon’s fleece, apostles casting lots, Aaron’s rod, the brass serpent, and Jesus healing with clay. Here is the context critics leave out, plus what the witnesses in the room actually described.
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What Non-LDS Scholars Really Think of Joseph Smith: From “Impostor” to “Religious Genius”
Critics say every historian knows Joseph Smith was a fraud. The historians say something else. From Josiah Quincy’s “phenomenon to be explained” to Jan Shipps’s “Prophet Puzzle,” Harold Bloom’s “religious genius,” and even Fawn Brodie’s “mythmaker of prodigious talent,” here is how non-LDS scholars moved from “impostor” to something much harder to dismiss, and why it matters.
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Emma Smith’s Last Testimony (1879): “Neither Manuscript nor Book”
In February 1879, a few months before she died, Emma Smith answered her son’s questions about the Book of Mormon. Joseph’s first scribe said he dictated “hour after hour” with his face in a hat, the plates wrapped in her linen tablecloth, and “neither manuscript nor book to read from.” She never went west, split with Brigham Young, and still never denied the book. Plus the polygamy objection, answered honestly.
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Carthage: Why Joseph Walked In “Like a Lamb to the Slaughter”
In June 1844 Joseph Smith was safe across the Mississippi in Iowa, with horses ordered for the trip west. He went back, told his brother “we shall be butchered,” and rode to Carthage saying “I am going like a lamb to the slaughter.” A con man runs. Joseph walked toward death with Hyrum, a witness of the plates, and never recanted the Book of Mormon.
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