Messenger and Advocate, Vol. 3, No. 3, December 1836, pg 423; “It is highly unreasonable, if not absurd, to suppose that the thinking principle in man will ever be annihilated. Insofar as our knowledge of the universe extends, there does not appear a single instance of annihilation throughout the material system…it appears highly probable, that the work of creation is going forward in the distant regions of the universe, and that the Creator is replenishing the voids of space with new worlds and new orders of intelligent beings…” – Oliver Cowdery
Job 38:4, 18; “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. 18 Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.”
It’s almost embarrassing whenever Smith and company think out loud.
Oliver Cowdery was quoting from a book written in 1830 by Thomas Dick. The book, The Philosophy of the Future State, was a treatise on the idea that matter is eternal and couldn’t have come about through the creation ex nihilo. And yes, Smith owned a copy of Mr. Dick’s work.
Once again Smith took a little from here and there to invent Mormonism. Oliver Cowdery just so happened to be a parishioner of Ethan Smith’s congregation from 1827-1828. Ethan Smith authored View of the Hebrews which was a story of American Indians being a lost tribe of Israelites. Coincidence?
To cast further doubt on the legitimacy of Smith’s calling as a prophet we also have LDS Scholar Klaus Hansen who publicly admitted that Smith’s “revelations” and the ideologies in Dick’s book was more than coincidental – see Mormonism and the American Experience, pgs 78-80.
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