Book of Mormon more peppered with early American folk magic than I ever imagined.

In two episodes of Mormon Stories John Dehlin has read a Ben Franklin quote that just nails it.

Ben Franklin wrote about treasure seeking and folk magic in early America;

“There are among us great numbers of honest artificers and laboring people who, fed with the vain hope of growing suddenly rich, neglect their business, almost to the ruining of themselves and families, and voluntarily endure abundance of fatigue, in a fruitless search for imaginary, hidden treasure. They wander through the woods and bushes by day, to discover the marks and signs. At midnight they repair to the hopeful spot with spades and pick axes, full of expectation they labor violently trembling at the same time in every joint, through fear of certain malicious demons who are said to haunt and guard such places. At length a mighty hole is dug and perhaps several cartloads of earth thrown out. But alas, no cag or iron pot is found. No seaman’s chest crammed with Spanish pistols, or weighty pieces of eight. Then they conclude that through some mistake in the procedure, some rash word spoke, or some rule of art neglected, the guardian spirit had power to sink it deeper into the earth and convey it out of their reach.”

The more I study the clearer it becomes that JS is the sole author of the Book of Mormon. Country dolts who participated in early folk magic like Joseph Smith, were called out many years before by a more respectable majority, as the practice of folk magic was still seen, even at that time, as a fringe and untoward superstitious practice by a certain type of citizen. Ben Franklin’s quote here even made it almost word for word into the BoM, I’m sure to the ignorance of JS.

See Helaman 13:35 “Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land.”

Mormon 1:18. “And these Gadianton robbers, who were among the Lamanites, did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became s slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again.”

Ben Franklin is more of a prophet than JS. I wonder if Corbridge and those that criticize the ones who have left actually read any of this stuff. It’s there simply for the taking. It’s there in all of it’s dispassionate truth, damning and dampening the so called rock cut without hands.

Submitted January 24, 2019 at 07:19PM by coinsforlaundry http://bit.ly/2HrMG6B