Time is short

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As I’ve been recently noting here, the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses film is nearing the end of its theatrical run.  (I can’t tell, and we can’t tell from week to week, how much longer it will be on movie house screens.)  It will eventually be available via streaming and on DVD, in some manner or other.  Probably around the first part of October.  But Witnesses is really beautiful on a big screen.  So, once again, I want to say that, if you still haven’t seen the movie but have been wanting to or have been thinking about it, you’re about to run out of opportunities.  At least in theaters.  If you’ve been wanting to see it again, or to take somebody to see it, if you’ve simply been wanting somebody else to see it, if you’ve been wanting to take family or friends or a youth group or a priesthood quorum, you need to realize that theater time is running low.  You need to act soon, or the remaining options will be gone.

In connection with the Witnesses project, back at the very beginning and at my request, Professors Thomas G. Alexander, James B. Allen, Richard Lloyd Anderson, and Richard L. Bushman provided the following endorsements of the importance of the Book of Mormon witnesses.  They are still important and worthy of reflection:

Imagine the publication and distribution of the Book of Mormon without the testimony of the witnesses.  If there were none, Joseph Smith would have had to reply on his own word that he translated the plates.  Many, perhaps most, people would probably have rejected the word of an uneducated farm boy.  Joseph had enough difficulty even with the witnesses convincing others of the truthfulness of his story.  Other people including the eight witnesses saw the plates, but only the three witnesses saw them in the possession of the heavenly messenger who delivered them to Joseph.   The Lord asked them to testify to the truthfulness of Joseph’s ministry, which they did.  Most important, during their lifetimes all three witnesses left the church.  Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris returned to the fold, but David Whitmer remained in Richmond, Missouri, estranged from Mormonism throughout the remainder of his life.  Nevertheless, in spite of rumors to the contrary, all three continued to insist on the truth of their witness.

Thomas G. Alexander (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley), Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Western History, Brigham Young University; former president of the Mormon History Association

The testimonies of the three witnesses is the closest we come to rational evidence for Mormon belief.  Three men attest to a sensory encounter with the gold plates and a divine being.  In an age of skepticism, when all religious belief is under attack, their statement becomes more relevant every day.

Richard L. Bushman (Ph.D., Harvard University), Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University; former Howard W. Hunter Visiting Professor in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University; former president of the Mormon History Association

The testimonies of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon make Joseph Smith’s account much harder to dismiss than it would otherwise be.  Plainly, since others announced that they, too, had seen and “hefted” and heard, this means that, whatever else it was, Joseph’s account must reflect more than merely private imagination or simple personal dishonesty.  If the witnesses are judged to be reliable men of good character, their declarations pose a serious challenge to anyone who considers the claims of the Restoration.

James B. Allen (Ph.D., University of Southern California), Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Professor Emeritus of Western History, Brigham Young University; former Assistant Church Historian, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; former president of the Mormon History Association

Thousands of authorized copies  of the Book of Mormon have reprinted the signed experience of the eleven Book of Mormon witnesses, Three who described that an angel held and turned the individual plates of an ancient New World Bible and Eight who narrated how they were given an ordinary experience of “hefting” the record and examining the carefully crafted characters on it. About 200 reported interviews with  these eleven are collected, which report the constant affirmation of these witnesses of seeing and lifting this historic, prophetic record, with its independent account of Christ visiting America.

Richard Lloyd Anderson [1926-2018] (J.D., Harvard University; Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley), Professor Emeritus of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University