Josh Gehly gives a non-LDS Defense of the Book of Mormon. He is an Evangelist (what LDS would call a Seventy) of the Church of Jesus Christ based in Monongahela, PA, and shares his book, “Witnessing Miracles” which deals with a defense of the Book of Mormon. He even takes on Dan Vogel! We’ll talk more about his church, and find out of this “non-Mormon” gets discriminated against just like Mormons. Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Josh: https://gospeltangents.com/people/josh-gehly
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GT 00:36 Well, let’s dive into your book, “Witnessing Miracles,” because this is, I would argue, any LDS person would have no problems with this book at all.
Josh 00:48 Thank you.
GT 00:48 Because it’s really very LDS Orthodox, I would say, except for the Hugh Hefner part.
Josh 00:57 (Chuckling) Well, there’s no there’s no turf within the Book of Mormon. Right? The Book of Mormon doesn’t belong to a church. So when we’re looking at them.
GT 01:04 Well, we think it belongs to us.
Josh 01:06 Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, maybe you need a few of our translations, then and vice versa. We’ll take Portuguese. We’ll give you a Chichewa.1 How does that sound?
GT 01:14 There you go.
Josh 01:17 But for us, the Book of Mormon doesn’t belong to one church. It’s a gift for the world. It’s a gift for all mankind. It’s a gift for Israel. So, for us, the reason why I think the book applies to any Book of Mormon believer is because–I’m not going to mince anything. I’m not going to hide anything that happened in the early history, even stuff that may make me uncomfortable, the excommunication, some of that different stuff that happened. But in regarding the relevance to the question of: what is the best explanation for the existence of the Book of Mormon? A critic and a scholar and a believer can all get in the room and say, “The Book of Mormon exists.” So, what are the core facts that we’re all going to agree on in the room? And then we can build our arguments of how this book came into existence. What was the method? What was the mode? What was the means? I use the historical method of inference to the best explanation to boil down all the background, all the data and all the Restoration history, down to a set of core facts that Dan Vogel and I would sit at a table and agree with. Okay?
GT 02:28 Have you spoken to Dan?
Josh 02:30 Well, I’ve read his books. Okay. I know he and I both agree on all of the core facts that are in my book. Then it’s a question on what’s the best explanation of the facts. That’s what Gary Habermas does with the resurrection. That’s what William Lane Craig does with the resurrection. They boil down the historical evidence to a set of core facts, and then they infer the best explanation of the facts. And those are core facts that maybe Bart Ehrman agrees with, maybe other critics might agree with. So, I’m taking the same approach and overlaying that together. And that’s why, whether you’re a Latter-day Saint, whether you’re a part of some of the independent branches, whether your Community of Christ, or whether you’re a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, when it comes to the historical grounds of were there really golden plates in a hill in New York? We can address that together. That’s something we all have in common.
GT 03:23 Now, one of the things that I thought was really interesting, that I learned from this book was, you are an archaeology major.
Josh 03:30 I was, yeah. It’s getting farther in my rearview mirror. But I did get a degree of archaeological science.
GT 03:37 So, you’re my third archaeologist. From Penn State, the Nittany Lions? Oh wow.
Josh 03:40 Yes, sir. We are baby.
GT 03:42 Happy Valley.
Josh 03:43 Yeah.
GT 03:46 I wont talk about Joe Paterno. But, anyway. (Chuckling)
Josh 03:48 Oh, no, I’m a big Joe Paterno fan.
GT 03:51 All right. So, you are my third. Mary Ann Clements is an archaeologist and Paul DeBarthe is an archaeologist.
Josh 03:59 I love Paul. Paul and I are good friends.
GT 04:00 Paul is awesome. So, it’s interesting to get your background, because there’s going to be a lot of people, although you do you did say even Dan Vogel, who doesn’t believe in the Book of Mormon, admits there were some sort of plates.
Josh 04:04 Correct. He does.
GT 04:15 But he has different explanation than maybe you do.
Josh 04:18 Yeah, so his explanation is ad hoc. And he would probably have to admit that, if I’d pin him on it. I’d love to actually…
GT 04:24 What do you mean by ad hoc?
Josh 04:25 Ad hoc would been contrived.2
GT 04:27 Okay.
Josh 04:28 There’s no historical sources that hint whatsoever that Joseph Smith was spending his time fabricating or forging plates. That’s all made up. It’s MSU. It’s making stuff up.
GT 04:42 Okay.
Josh 04:43 It’s something that, because he is going for a naturalistic explanation,3 one thing that Dan Vogel and I totally agree on, because there are six scribes in the room, because there are 21 different people that handle, or see the golden plates and talk about it and publish it, whether it is unbelievers like a father-in-law, Isaac Hale, or whether it is believers, or whether it is new converts, whether it is enemies that were money diggers that went to the hill and were convinced there is a hole in the ground and are persecuting the Smith’s household, all the swirling circumstances demonstrate that Joseph had an artifact of the size and weight that is proclaimed by the witnesses. Okay? I forget the exact counts. Jerry Grover does a great job in his Ziff book, Ziff, Magic Goggles, & Gold Plates book, of laying out the witnesses in a similar way, and showcasing how seven different ones get the color right. These ones demonstrate the weight. They are doing it over different decades, different times. Two different accounts of a random black patina stain, multiple independent attestations of the binding around a sealed portion section, it’s a real random fact to give over something of a 20-year gap between sources of different people living in states. So, with all of that, Dan Vogel looks at that data, I can look at that data, Richard Lloyd Andersen looks at that data and said there really was an artifact of the size and weight and description of the golden plates at the time Joseph Smith claimed to have them. So, that leaves a critical scholar like Dan in the bind to provide an explanation of that.
Josh 06:45 His explanation is, well, it must be a forged set. [There are] a couple of problems with that. One, what forged set? What single person, what single source said, “Oh, yeah, we saw it, but it wasn’t really gold.” Nobody says anything like that. No family member says, oh, yeah, Joseph would disappear for hours and hours and hours in that cooper shop across the road. Nobody says that.4 So, it’s a contrived conclusion, because it’s a forced naturalistic explanation.5
Josh 07:21 My assumptions are this. The assumptions that I make are very simple. God exists. If God does not exist, I am wrong, admittedly. And Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Those are my only two assumptions. With those two assumptions, there is nothing ad hoc or contrived with my explanation that the best explanation of the facts is that Joseph Smith really did have golden plates, and there really was an empty stone box in a hill in New York. Can I give just a little bit of the empty tomb and empty stone box comparison?
GT 08:05 Absolutely.
Josh 08:06 It’s really fun. Alright, so we all know there’s a hill. All right. We know that purportedly, Joseph goes in 1823 and he meets the Angel Moroni and excavates where he’s told to excavate, digs out the hill in 1823, pries up the stone box, and lo and behold, golden plates. But it’s not going to be another several years until he’s actually able to extract them. In the meantime, a lot’s going on. So, 1823 is the excavation of the hill date. [The year] 1827 is the procurement of the plates year. So you have a several year gap in between. I believe…
GT 08:59 Where Dan Vogel argues he was making plates?
Josh 09:01 Correct. Exactly, right. Now, what’s interesting is you have former treasure hunters, with Joseph, including Samuel Lawrence, Willard Chase, and others that talk about this time period. They’re written about in this time period. I believe it’s Lorenzo Saunders, who wrote a very, very interesting two interviews, a letter and some interviews that he gave, where he’s bashing the Smiths. “Oh, I know they didn’t have anything,” all this stuff, years later, years after the fact. And when he’s writing this, it’s either the letter or the interview, but the source that I have that he says, “Well, we knew where the plates were, supposed plates were, on the west side of the hill,” and he gives the description. He gives the exact [location.] Decades and decades and decades after the fact, he knew exactly where the hole in the ground was on the hill, on the west side, where it was sloping. And he gives the description exactly the same way as Joseph and Oliver described it.6 So, there’s corroboration from an enemy, from an unsympathetic source. But he goes further. In a different time when he’s bashing the situation and trying to dismiss everything. He actually says, “Oh, yeah, we found a hole in the ground, exactly where it was supposed to be. But there was no fresh dirt.” And I read that, and critics have used that and pulled that out. I read it and light bulbs in my head started to go off. I was like, well, that’s exactly right. He just proved, or independently, the nice way I would say it is, he just independently corroborated Joseph Smith. Because Joseph Smith claimed to excavate years before he procured the artifact. The excavation happened in 1823. The procurement happened years later in 1827. So, when Lorenzo Saunders goes to the hill in 1827, he would not have seen a freshly dug set of dirt. It would have looked like something that had been excavated years before and just brushed off. He was exactly right. That’s exactly what Joseph Smith claimed. He wasn’t trying to corroborate anything, but that’s an independent testimony from an unsympathetic source that verifies the fact that there was a hole in the ground that was excavated at the exact time Joseph Smith claimed. That’s pretty substantial.
GT 11:39 Interesting. Let’s continue on. Like I said, it’s been a while since I read this. So, you talked about some of the evidences. What else do you use to prove the Book of Mormon as a real history of the American people?
Josh 11:57 Well, one beautiful thing in the Book of Mormon is the gospel statement by Christ in 3rd Nephi 27. And I absolutely love that. It’s one of my favorite sets of verses in the whole text. And in 3rd Nephi 27, Christ says, “This is my gospel.” That’s one of those moments when my light bulbs go off. I’m reading, I’m like, okay. Because here’s the point of criticism. Right? How many times, Rick, have you heard the Book of Mormon teaches a different gospel than the Bible?
GT 11:02 (Chuckling) More than I can count.
Josh 12:34 Yeah. You’ve never responded to any of those. Right? Me neither, fingers crossed. Right? So, I read that and I thought, let’s look at this. So, I looked at those verses, 3rd Nephi 27:13 through 16. Christ says, “This is my gospel,” and he goes in and he gives six very simple points. Jesus came; the condescension of Christ. He obeyed the Father in all things; His perfect obedience, sinless life. Point two. Point three, his obedience was perfect, even unto his death. He submitted to death, the death on the cross to atone for our sins, the atonement, the atoning sacrifice that Abinadi talked about and others. But he’s not left in the tomb. We know that. He rises from the dead. So, you have the crucifixion. You have the resurrection. And ultimately, we rise in 3rd Nephi 2, to stand before Jesus Christ to be judged. He’s the just judge at the end, according to his own words in 3rd Nephi. So, I looked at those six points, I thought, “Okay.” I’m going to go to early gospel statements. What I mean by that is, I’m going to dig into the New Testament text. And I’m going to go into the New Testament Church. I’m going to find the earliest and most authentic early doctrinal statements or creedal statements or early songs that they would sing, that critical scholars of the New Testament would say, “Yep, the early church taught and believed and memorized this.” One of them is found in Philippians chapter two. And it’s a song and it’s a song, and Paul writes it into his letter to the Philippians. And scholars date that to just a few years after the resurrection. So, Paul’s writing something in his letter that predates him. Bart Ehrman would argue for this, a critical New Testament scholar that’s unbelieving would argue for this. They would say, oh, yeah. No. That chapter, this portion, like verses, I think it’s six through 11 of chapter two of Philippians is early New Testament song, with some of the earliest doctrines of the New Testament church. Because they’re trying to organize. But it’s hard. They’re getting persecuted. What do we really believe? What did we really see? My brother, all six points, all six points in the song’s own words, but also it’s the condescension, the obedience. Paul even says, “Obedient to death, the death on a cross.” He says it perfectly for the atoning sacrifice, the resurrection, it’s all there. It’s all there. And so the beauty is, and this is part of what’s in the book. It’s not the number one focus, but it is a chapter in the book, that according to New Testament critics, the Gospel statements from the early New Testament Church, precisely match in their own words, not plagiarized, precisely match 3rd Nephi and Christ’s words, which in our Book of Mormon is in red letters.
GT 16:05 I’m going to tell you guys, when I was speaking with David Hocking a year or two ago, he came up with a red letter Book of Mormon. Apparently, there’s a big deal in my church about, we don’t want to–because you can see red letter editions of the Bible where Jesus’s words are in red letters. Well, you can see the shrink wrap is still on it. Josh just gave me a red letter edition of The Book of Mormon.
Josh 16:42 Some of your apps now are starting to have the red letters. I know ours are.
GT 16:45 Your apps are. I don’t know about ours.
Josh 16:46 Oh, no? Our app does. Our app has red letters. I think there’s, Scripture Central has one that might have red letters, or at least it’s in development. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
GT 16:55 I didn’t know that. So, maybe we’re going to lay off on that. But I’m grateful and impressed that I have a red-letter Book of Mormon. Well, I’ve got two now, because I got David Hocking’s too.
Josh 17:06 Awesome.
GT 17:07 Yeah, so very cool. And it even says, the Church of Jesus Christ, Monongahela, Pennsylvania, there.
Josh 17:14 Awesome.
GT 17:16 But, another thing that I found really interesting from your book was how often you quoted LDS experts from BYU. (I put that upside down,) [You] even [include] LDS General Authorities. Because we do like the Book of Mormon. (Chuckling)
Josh 17:37 Well, because of our simple, humble background, and of course, we do have professors today in the church around the country, we do have educated [people.] That has changed. But because our ground roots were so far fundamental and basic and simple, we have not built an entire university dedicated for, how did Elder Maxwell put it? I believe he put it, “A trowel in one hand to build the kingdom…”
GT 18:10 It was Holland.
Josh 18:11 Elder Holland, “A trowel in one hand to build the kingdom and a musket in the other hand for defense.” I would say, yea, and amen to that. But we have not had the resources to do that. So, I appreciate good New Testament research, whether it’s done by Gerd Ludemann in Europe, and I appreciate good Book of Mormon research, whether it’s done at BYU or whether it’s done in my backyard. So, I’m happy to give credit by anybody that loves the Book of Mormon, publishes something great about it. If it’s relevant to the early eyewitness testimonies of Book of Mormon believing Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer–would my book exist without Richard Lloyd Anderson’s work? Probably not, probably not. I’m happy to cite him.
GT 19:03 So, we definitely have a lot in common. I will tell you something else that I thought was really interesting. I went to attend your church in Florida with Steve Pynakker.
Josh 19:13 Great.
GT 19:13 I guess that was a year ago. We went to lunch/breakfast, it was kind of a breakfast with one of the members of your church. It was so funny to me. I’m curious how often this comes to you. Because he was talking about he wanted to take one of his kids and have them attend a private school. It was a Protestant School of some sort. I don’t remember. He said things were going good. We were going to get admitted. And then they said to me, “Do you believe in any scripture other than the Bible?”
Josh 19:49 I got a cop out for this. Just close your eyes. Recognize that the word Bible in Latin just means books. Acknowledge that we’ve just got one more book than them and sign away.
GT 20:02 His son made the mistake of saying, “Well, yeah, I believe in the Book of Mormon.” And they were like, [buzzer sound.] You’re out of here. I remember the father was talking to me and he said, “Can you believe that?” I’m like, welcome to my world! Of course, I can believe that. And so, I mean, you would not call yourself Mormon.
Josh 20:28 Correct.
GT 20:29 When somebody [asks, you say] you’re just a Christian, I guess?
Josh 20:32 Well, we would, hopefully, if we’re doing our job right, it’s an opportunity to talk about the restored gospel. When we talk, I’m going to try and steer the conversation away from who we’re not, as quickly as possible, not because I don’t love who you are, my brother, but because I believe we have something special to offer somebody. So, when that question comes up, are you Mormon? We quickly say, “No, we’re not. But we do believe in the Book of Mormon.” Hopefully, we then start engaging who we are.
GT 21:02 Okay.
Josh 21:02 And that, I think, can be a great opportunity. Do we sometimes get sheepish? Sure, we all do. But I think we can take that as far as we want. My goal would be hey, let’s talk about the restoration a little bit.
GT 21:14 Well, my question is, do you have, I guess, discrimination? Do you feel discrimination when you’re talking with, say, an evangelical and they find out that you believe in the Book of Mormon, even though you say, “Well, I’m not a Mormon.” How often does that happen to you?
Josh 21:31 Guilty by association happens all the time. We are not shy about our belief in the Book of Mormon. We believe it to be a historical, real scriptural document that is canon to us. So with that, I’m not going to shy away from that. I was active in college in Campus Crusade for Christ.
GT 21:51 Oh?
Josh 21:52 I did not shy away from who I was as a Book of Mormon believer.
GT 21:56 And they let you in?
Josh 21:57 They let me in and then quickly handcuffed my ability to say anything. So, yeah, in the church, we certainly experience people that, because they’re such a staunch, whatever you want to call it, of people that have not read the glorious, incredible words that are inside the Book of Mormon for themselves, that they don’t understand its message, its relevance for our day and time and it’s hope for the future. And it’s a beautiful witness of Christ and His resurrection. Let me just say it this way. Because I said it this way in the book, as well. You do not need the Book of Mormon to believe in Christ. But the testimony, if true, at Temple Bountiful, of 2500 people seeing, touching and feeling the risen Savior, in a cross-continental, independent attestation of the Risen Lord, if that happened, the Book of Mormon offers the world the greatest historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ ever offered to mankind. So it should be worth looking into. It should be worth the pursuit. It should be worth you reading or asking the question. Because if it’s true, then with 100% certainty, the resurrection is true. If the Book of Mormon is false, that doesn’t necessarily mean the resurrection did or didn’t happen. But if it’s true, then the resurrection is certifiably true. And that should be worth every pursuit.
GT 23:49 No, arguments here, that’s for sure.
{End of Part 2}
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