David Whitmer

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David Whitmer

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• David Whitmer's rebuttal to John Murphy's June 1880 claims regarding his experience as a Book of Mormon witness

David Whitmer's rebuttal to John Murphy's June 1880 claims regarding his experience as a Book of Mormon witness

Summary: David Whitmer was interviewed by John Murphy in June 1880. Murphy reported that Whitmer claimed that the angel that showed him the plates "had no appearance or shape" and that Whitmer saw "nothing, in the way you understand it." Upon seeing the published interview, Whitmer strongly objected to the way Murphy had portrayed him, and published a proclamation refuting Murphy's characterization of his experience as a witness.

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• Question: Did David Whitmer tell John Murphy that the angel Moroni "had no appearance or shape" and that he saw "nothing"?
• David Whitmer (1878): "I saw them just as plain as I see this bed"
• David Whitmer (1884): "I saw with these eyes and I heard with these ears"
• David Whitmer (1887): "'He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear;' it was no delusion!"

Did God tell David Whitmer to leave the Church?

Summary: David Whitmer, one of the Book of Mormon's Three Witnesses, said "If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon; if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens, and told me to "separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, should it be done unto them." Critics argues that if members accept Whitmer's witness of the Book of Mormon, then they must also accept that God wanted David to repudiate the Church as false. Critics distort the historical record to make it appear that David Whitmer left the Church because he was told to, when it fact he was excommunicated prior to claiming any revelation to do so. The command to leave, if it was a true revelation, involved David's physical safety and not his membership in the Church, which he had already renounced.

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• Question: Did God tell David Whitmer to leave the Church and repudiate Mormonism?
• Question: How can we accept David Whitmer as a valid Book of Mormon witness if God told him to leave the Saints?
• Question: When did God tell David Whitmer to separate himself from the Latter-day Saints?