Orson Pratt

“ We do not rest our evidence alone on the testimony of these twelve witnesses; our hopes are built upon a foundation surer than all these external testimonies. The Latter-day Saints are not that enthusiastic people who open their mouths and swallow down doctrines because they are popular, because their fathers believed them; but we believe a doctrine because we have evidence to substantiate it; and then, in addition to this, we seek for more truth and knowledge. ”

“ Did the Apostles in Judea practise the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost? So did the ancient Israelites of America. Did Jesus and his disciples organize the Church in Asia with revelators and inspired men in it—with prophets and prophetesses, with dreams, visions, and revelations? So did the ancient Israelites in America do the same thing. ”

“ If they desire to know the truth, may the God of heaven, who has sent forth his angel and confirmed the truth unto many, pour out his Holy Spirit upon them, and enlighten their minds, inasmuch as they go before God with an honest heart, that they may know, as the Latter-day Saints know, that this work is a message from the Almighty, to be proclaimed to every nation, kindred, and people upon the face of the whole earth. ”

“ We defy this whole generation to bring up any testimony to condemn the truth of this book. It will face this generation from this time until the second coming of Christ, and then through the Millennium. And when this generation come up from their graves at the great and last day, the books will be opened, and by the word of God declared on this continent and on the Eastern continent the inhabitants of the earth will be judged. ”

“ You may bring all the lies and newspaper stories you can hatch up, and all the misrepresentations you can conceive, and use them against the Divine truths of the Book of Mormon, to save your crumbling apostate systems from utter ruin; you may pile up your falsehoods like mountains ”

“ It is not the few individuals only who are within the walls of this Tabernacle that are interested in its truths; it is not the few individuals only who inhabit this Territory and the few Saints abroad in the world who are interested in it; but all the nations of the earth, without one exception,—their emperors, kings, and nobles,—their presidents, governors, and rulers,—their popes, archbishops, and bishops,—their learned and unlearned of every religious society, whether Jews, Mahomedans, Pagans, or Christians, are all equally interested in it, if it be what it professes to be. ”

“ No. We defy the world to produce a true copy of the original of any book of the Bible, and prove it to be such. They may search their libraries from beginning to end, and examine all the archives of the nations, and they cannot find an original copy, or even a copy written centuries after the original writer was known to exist.
The learned have conjectured that some of those five manuscripts I have mentioned were written in the sixth century ”

“ Though the whirlwinds of persecution may beat upon them—though they may be hated, derided, and suffer the loss of all things, time after time,—though they may be driven to-and-fro, and scattered from city to city, and from synagogue to synagogue, and their Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles be put to death, yet, with all this distress and poverty brought upon them by being robbed and plundered of their lawful possessions, and with all the injury they may sustain from year to year, they will have something in the midst of it all that will give them joy, peace, and happiness ”

“ For a long period previous to finding the book, the Jews had been ignorant of the Scriptures, and had fallen into the grossest idolatry. A new revelation through the prophetess Huldah seems to have been sufficient to convince the king and all Israel of the divinity of the book. They must have been inclined, in that age of the world, to believe the history of the servants of God more than in this age for now the people generally require a vast amount of evidence. The testimony of a dozen witnesses is scarcely regarded. ”

“ Moses believed and obeyed the words of the Most High God, and the magicians were fighting against him, and yet they did miracles—not in the name of God, but by their enchantments; and so it is with all wicked miracle-workers from their day down to the second coming of Christ: they perform their lying wonders by the power of Satan—by the means of somnambulism, spirit-rapping, spirit-writing, or whatever it may be. ”

“ The learned admit that in the manuscripts of the New Testament alone there are no less than one hundred and thirty thousand different readings. (See Encyclopaedia Brittanica, eighth edition.) It is true that many of those differences are of no particular consequence, as they do not materially alter the sense. But there are many thousands of differences wherein the sense is entirely altered. How are translators to know which of the manuscripts, if any, contain the true sense? They have no original copies with which to compare them—no standard of correction. ”

“ All, therefore, is uncertainty, not only in relation to the Hebrew manuscripts, but also the Greek. If, soon after the beginning of the Christian era, the Old Testament manuscripts were by the Jews partly destroyed, lost, burned, and torn in pieces, so that the learned of that early age could not obtain anything but the names of the lost books, it is not to be supposed that we, who live some seventeen hundred years later, are in possession of copies more pure and genuine than Jerome, Bellarmine, and other ancient writers. ”

“ If, then, the words which he spake, and which he inspired his Apostles and Prophets to declare to the people, are to be the laws by which mankind are to be judged at the last day, it is necessary that they should have some little evidence and testimony concerning his words. ”

“ But how is this generation to know that those ancient authors were inspired of God? Do they bear testimony of their own inspiration? Bishop Chillingworth, Hooker, and many other learned commentators have told us that the Bible cannot bear testimony of its own inspiration. If the Bible cannot prove its own inspiration, how are people in the present and past ages to know that these books are inspired? It is true, we are informed that some individuals wrote by commandment ”

“ But prove to us that we have had pleasure in anything contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ—that this people have not obeyed the Scriptures of of eternal truth. Those signs that were to come, and these living wonders, &c., were to be practised by individuals that had pleasure in unrighteousness and who rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ—they were to go forth like the magicians in the days of Moses to withstand the power of Moses. We see them on one hand turning the water to blood, and Moses doing the same ”

“ But how could they know that he came in the belly of a whale, or that he was not an impostor? Yet the Lord told them, through Jonah, that if they did not repent, they would all be destroyed in forty days. They concluded to repent, and the Lord spared them, which made Jonah angry. ”

“ And when they know from God that this work is true, they will not be tossed to-and-fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, but they will be built upon a foundation upon which they can rest secure. ”

“ If all these things are to be fulfilled Israel gathered, the fulness of the Gentiles brought in, and Zion built up,—if the great Latter-day Work mentioned by the ancient Prophets has to be fulfilled, then it would not be unreasonable that an angel should be sent from heaven to begin a work of this magnitude. ”

“ These Indian tribes are their descendants. When they first came here, they were a righteous people, and had with them the Scriptures, containing the law of Moses. When they came here, they made plates of gold, and on them they recorded their history, wars, contentions, &c. These plates were handed down among the ancient inhabitants of America for a thousand years after they came here. Their prophecies were recorded from generation to generation. ”

“ They. who were so near those first four hundred years, knew far better the more universal tradition of that age than we can, twelve hundred years after it. True it is, (nothing being defined till then,) private doctors were free to follow what they judged to be truest; and as you find them varying from our canon, some in some books, some in others, so you will find them varying from one another, and varying also from you" (meaning the Protestant Canon) . ”