President Nelson discusses two valuable artifacts of the Restoration

2020-05-0150-president-nelson-discusses-value-of-two-artifacts-of-the-restoration-360p-eng.mp4 – powered by Happy Scribe

In this location where much of the Mormon was written. The translation occurred. I thought it would be wonderful to get the help from the history department with an original copy of The Book of Mormon. And I didn’t want to trust myself with it. I don’t have one, but we have one in the archives and Brandon Metcalf, one of our church historians, was kind enough to come with artifacts Brandt and tell us about these treasures that you’ve blessed us with.

Sure. So we’ve brought two artifacts that relate to the Book of Mormon. One is the 1830 edition, which would have been one of the five thousand that was printed in Palmyra in the Brandon bookshop there. And we also brought what’s even more special is a page from the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon.

Oh, please tell us more. And so with with the Book of Mormon, I just am so touched by these documents is as I’m able to work around them, there’s a there’s a spirit, there’s a witness to these documents as you as you discuss the Book of Mormon in the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. You think about the sacrifice that the Saints made, you think about the importance that they placed upon publishing the Book of Mormon and publishing the revelation, early revelations of the church.

And one of the lessons that I love that we learn from from these artifacts is it wasn’t easy and it’s the same way in all of our lives. Is that the Book of Mormon? You think of all things that maybe the Lord would have paved the way and made it easy is to publish the Book of Mormon and trial after trial, Joseph Smith struggles along the way.

How does it how does this differ from the Book of Mormon?

I have very little. You’ll notice that there’s a very long paragraphs. There’s two pages without, without or the indentation. Chapters and verses are definitely organized differently today. You have a nice index and cross references today. But but the words very little changed over time. We’ve had changes where they went to subsequent editions and and Joseph, as Syrian translator, did make did make changes here and there. But as far as word changes go, very, very little interesting.

Tell us about the content of this precious page.

So this is one of the few surviving pages of the original manuscript, The Book of Mormon Moroni took the place back. So this is as close as we get to the place. But this is from Alima section from part of Chapter three in Chapter thirty four, which talks about the need of the infinite atonement in our lives. You can see it wasn’t stored in ideal conditions. Joseph himself kept the original manuscript in his possession and then when they later on in Nauvoo, he placed it in a cornerstone where it sat for just over four decades near the Mississippi River with high humidity and flooding.

So most of it is not in great shape, as you can see. But they wrote on both sides, wrote on both sides what I love about this as sort of a witnessing document of the Book of Mormon. As as you read all of the surviving portion of the original manuscript, it’s free flowing, there’s almost no strikeouts, there’s no punctuation, which tells you that the Oliver and others that are helping describe are just writing. And as I just write in the mouth of the prophet fast as they could.

And what’s amazing to me is this is the one and only draft. And I can’t compose an email to invite someone to lunch in one draft. And so that to me is just a remarkable testimony of the process in just over 60 working days. Thank you for bringing those artifacts along.