There is a group in South America that claims to have access to the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon. What proof do they have? Is this a recycled Hofmann forgery? Dr. Casey Griffiths, author of 50 Relics of the Restoration will tell us more.
Casey: If you go back and look through the Ensign in the early 1980s, I mean, there’s a lot of mentions of Hofmann forgeries that are in there. Those forgeries in and of themselves have become part of the tableau of the restoration, part of the history of it. In fact, that Anthon transcript, just in a weird twist, one of the restoration factions in Independence, had a guy contact them from South America, who said that he had the plates, and that the angel had given him the plates, and that he was going to translate the sealed portion. He was trying to raise funds from these people in Independence.
GT: This is recently?
Casey: This is recently. This is within the last two or three years. Everybody in Independence is like, “Well, take a picture of the plates and send it to us.” And he was like, “Well I can’t take a picture of the plates, but I can send you a transcript of what’s on the plates.”
GT: Oh, brother.
Casey: So, he sent the transcript, and somebody took a look at it and realized, “Well, this is Hofmann’s forgery.”
GT: Really? I hadn’t heard that.
Casey: The guy in South America wasn’t aware that Hofmann had made this forgery, and he must have found it on the internet somewhere or something like that. He said it was legitimate proof that he had the plates. Well, a well-informed person in Independence, produced a document basically comparing what Hofmann had produced with what this guy from South America had sent. That sort of really impinged the movement.
GT: I did not know that, I had not heard that.
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