The Kinderhook Plates thing has been totally disproven. You were duped. You dumped your covenants because of a lie that’s had more holes shot through it than Bonnie and Clyde’s car? See below for just how thoroughly this thing has been debunked.
And I’m a convert to the church who prayed to know whether it is true. My witness is of God. Yours is of your worldy studies, likely to justify not having to live the church’s strict standards. You rely on the arm of man if that’s your wish. I’ll rely on a witness from God.
Now back to the Kinderhook plates, from Wikipedia:
some authors differ on the validity of the statement in the History of the Church, Diane Wirth, writing in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon (4: 210), discredits the DHC account by writing: “Joseph Smith’s supposed statement that the Kinderhook plates were authentic and that they were the ‘records of the descendants of Ham,’ came from the journal of William Clayton, who wrote in the first person, as though from the mouth of Joseph Smith. A first-person narrative was apparently a common practice of this time period when a biographical work was being compiled. Since such words were never penned by the Prophet, they cannot be uncritically accepted as his words or his opinion.”
Latter-day Saint apologist Jeff Lindsay also notes that “The earliest known reference… to the Kinderhook plates as a fraud is in a private letter from W.P. Harris dated April 25, 1855, a letter which was not discovered and made known until 1912. … Another man who claimed to be in on the hoax, W. Fugate, wrote an affidavit in 1879 claiming it was a fraud. Both of these sources are puzzling. If Joseph fell for Fugate’s trap in 1843, why did he wait 36 years to announce it? Why did he wait until after the deaths of the other 8 men he claimed to work with on the Kinderhook hoax? Likewise, if Harris’s 1855 letter is authentic, why did he wait 12 years to write down that he had exposed Joseph Smith? If nine men had achieved their goal and successfully proven in 1843 that Joseph Smith could fall for a clumsy hoax, you can bet that nearly all of them would have been making it known far and wide right away - not years after Joseph had died. It would have been in publications, letters, newspapers, all over the place. But nothing is in the record until many years later. It really doesn’t make any sense” [3].
As a result opinions continue to differ on whether or not Joseph Smith examined and commented on the plates.
The Kinderhook Plates were presumed lost, but for decades The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published facsimiles of them in its official History of the Church — pointing to them as evidence that ancient Americans wrote on metal plates. The LDS Church acknowledged the plates as a hoax in 1981, and makes no attempt at defending their authenticity. They also make note that there is no proof that Joseph Smith made any attempt to translate the plates. “There is no evidence that the Prophet Joseph Smith ever took up the matter with the Lord, as he did when working with the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham.”[4]
John 6
66 ¶ From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.
67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
Your apologist line is laughable.
Totally disproven by whom? An LDS scholar?
William Clayton spent nearly all his time with JS. It’s funny how some of his writings are perfectly acceptable and fine to the church, but when they stray from the party line, heavens they must be in error.
Dude, if you bothered to dig and read and think, you’d understand. But, because of some ill-timed indigestion (burning on your bosum), you’ve been duped.
Are you from FARMS by any chance?