Lucy Mack's Copy of the Book of Mormon

A rare 1841 copy of the Book of Mormon that likely belonged to Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the Prophet Joseph Smith, is now owned by the LDS Church, the gift of a church member who wishes to remain anonymous...

Her name imprinted on the base of the book's spine identifies it as Lucy's book, likely a "presentation copy" from the 1841 edition published in England. Because of superior and less-expensive printing and binding, the edition was made there, commissioned by LDS Church apostles on a mission in that land and acting at the behest of Joseph Smith.

It was the fourth edition of the Book of Mormon, the previous ones being the original, published in Palmyra, N.Y., in 1830, the 1837 edition published in Kirtland, Ohio, and the 1840 edition published in Nauvoo.

The book dealer from whom the donor acquired the copy wrote in documentation that the book was discovered in 2002 in Hamilton, Ill., 10 miles outside of Nauvoo, where Lucy died in 1855. It had been owned by descendants of Lucy Smith Milliken, daughter of Lucy Mack, who cared for her mother until Lucy Mack's death.

***Ah, so you must be a supporter of one of those centralized corrupt churches from the top, down.***

Why would you say that? My tagline quotes St. Augustine so it ought to be plain what I believe in. I do not support a centralized corrupt churches from the top down, from the bottom up or any kind of diagonal.

I do have the privilege of following the institution that Jesus Christ created and the Holy Spirit commissioned at Pentecost.

***You also probably believe the Bible isn’t all you need to know and that other edicts of man are as important.***

Wow, you know a lot about me. Perhaps you oughta know that the Bible is the creation of the Church which is the Creation of Jesus. If you could tell me where your particular church history starts, I could fill the rather large gaps between now and when Jesus Christ was God’s revelation to man 2000 years ago.

***Yup, you come from one of the corrupt ones.***

Sorry, you may be confusing me with one of your fellow heretics.

***Do you enjoy having your donations go to pay for the hundreds of perverts your church trained?***

Hundreds of perverts trained by the Church? You oughta look at the study by UCLA which showed a much higher occurrance of child molesting by mainline Protestant and especially ‘independent’ churches.

But enough of the polite chatter. May I enquire which flavours your particular beliefs encompass? Or would you say that you are of the Bible believing crowd, with the beliefs of the moment being coloured by the state of your stomach, the barometric pressure or the winning record of the New York Yankees?

***”Christianity Defined”....what a deceptive ploy to suck in those who are searching for Christian study guides.***

I was just given a little booklet innocuously entitled: What the Bible Really Says. Jehovah’s Witnesses. The LDS is not alone; even what might be considered more conventional Christianity is littered with con men, snake handlers, mallfront churches, and all of whom have their own particular little twist on theology.

That’s a powerful argument for my homies; the Church defines orthodoxy going back to Christ so it is arguably easier to recognize and therefore head off these strange beliefs, especially when they walk up to your door all nice and neat and polished and smiley. But I don’t want to move this thread off of where it is going. This is a deceptive ploy and one that we must all be on guard for.

Significant details & problems that most LDS are not aware of
http://www.mormonthink.com/lost116web.htm

The official story taught and recorded by the church is nonsensical for the following reasons:

The evil men that were conspiring to alter the original documents could not have done so without it being very obvious that the original document was altered. When Martin Harris was scribing for Joseph, he didn’t use a pencil and paper. Martin wrote with ink on foolscap. Any alteration would be very noticeable and not convincing to anyone.

In addition to the rubbing out of old words and rewriting of new words, the handwriting would have been different. Any rudimentary handwriting inspection would have determined that it had been altered, especially easy to determine given that the new handwriting would have occurred in the same spot as the rubbed-out and re-written words.

If the evil men, that were planning on changing the stolen 116 pages, thought their plan of changing some words from these pages would work to discredit Joseph, they would not have been completely foiled by Joseph translating from different plates to tell the first part of the Book of Mormon story. If they thought their alterations would have gone unnoticed then they would have still tried to alter the 116 pages to discredit his work.

For example, they could have changed some names of people or places or altered events that are central to the beginning of the Book of Mormon and thereby prove that Joseph’s new translation was in error. If they really thought their alterations would have gone unnoticed they could have changed the names of Nephi’s brothers or the cities they came from or many other items that would have been included in both sets of plates. But they never did this - why? If opponents of the Church really had the lost 116 pages as Joseph claimed, they would have resurfaced in some form to at least attempt to discredit Joseph, even if they would not have been successful.

The general belief at the time was that Martin Harris’s wife burned the 116 pages. If she destroyed them, then this entire story is simply made up by Joseph Smith. But the prophet Joseph evidently was afraid she had not, but had secretly hidden them, for the purpose of entrapping him, should he ever attempt to reproduce the pages. If the work was really of God, the manuscript could be reproduced word for word without a mistake. If, however, Joseph created it himself, his memory would hardly be adequate to such a task, without numberless changes or verbal differences-and thus “give himself away,” since he loudly professed to be all the time aided “by the gift and power of God.” Since the lost pages never surfaced in any form, it is likely that they were destroyed immediately by Martin Harris’s wife. Therefore, the entire story about someone altering pages is impossible and just made up by Joseph because he knew he could not reproduce those same pages as he was not really translating the Book of Mormon story.

It is convenient that the prophets of old just happened to make an extra set of plates 1500 years ago to cover this contingency, isn’t it? Not only are the 116 pages lost, we have an explanation of how it was fixed right in the document itself written thousands of years before the event happened.

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