Many Voices

I looked back through early church history this morning and was again surprised at the number of people who left the church for various reasons...many of them became disenfranchised with Joseph Smith.

Of the Three Witnesses, they all left. Fortunately, both Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery later returned and were re-baptized.

As I looked at some of the wording of the dissenters, I found their use of language quite interesting, I'll share a couple of brief examples, but the language is similar in many of their cases:

David Whitmer (one of the three witnesses):
After the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, David Whitmer became an antagonist to the Prophet and the Church. In 1838, he resigned his membership and interestingly stated these words,

"If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon," wrote Whitmer, "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."

Something similar happened with Sydney Rigdon. After Joseph's death, he appeared in a public gathering and announced that he had received a revelation from the Lord stating that he was to be a "Guardian over the Church." Again, people were left to choose who to follow or who not to follow, when claims of revelation are being made on both sides.

There are many voices, both within the church and now outside of the church, teaching truth mingled with scripture. Truth is a wonderful thing, but the voices of men have consistently led men away from truth. We need to be very careful who's voice we listen to and more than anything else, we had better make sure that we HAVE THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD to carefully discern between truth and error.

If we look back through history, many of those men were confident in their actions when they made them, but later came to regret what they had done:

Oliver Cowdery
Martin Harris
Thomas Marsh

To name a few...

Amongst many voices teaching what they claim to be truth, let us make sure we have the spirit of the Lord as our guide.