Worth Repeating again and again - at high volume:
THERE WERE NO WITNESSES TO THE BOOK OF MORMON!
There were men of low character who were convinced to
sign a statement Smith wrote.
Read on...
“I have reflected long and deliberately upon the history of this church & weighed the evidence for & against it loth (sic) to give it up - but when I came to hear Martin Harris state in public that he never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in vision or imagination, neither Oliver [Cowdery] nor David [Whitmer] & that the eight witnesses never saw them & hesitated to sign that instrument for that reason, but were persuaded to do it, the last pedestal gave way, in my view our foundation was sapped & the entire superstructure fell in heap of ruins.”
“I was followed by W Parrish, Luke Johnson & John Boynton [Boyington] all of who concurred with me, after we were done speaking M Harris arose & said he was sorry for any man who rejected the Book of Mormon for he knew it was true, he said he had hefted the plates repeatedly in a box with only a tablecloth or handkerchief over them, but he never saw them only as he saw a city through a mountain. And said that he never should have told that the testimony of the eight was false, if it had not been picked out of [him/me?] but should have let it passed as it was... “
(Stephen Burnett letter to Lyman E. Johnson dated April 15, 1838. Typed transcript from Joseph Smith Papers, Letter book, April 20, 1837 - February 9, 1843, microfilm reel 2, pp. 64-66, LDS archives.)
The “witnesses” did not witness anything. There has arisen a whole mormon myth or legend about the witnesses and how they “prove” the story and how they never “recanted” their story.
It is a pack of deceptions, like all of mormonism.
The “witnesses” did not witness anything.
Just as digruntled postal workers sometimes go postal, the disgruntled Stephen Burnett, who lost money in a church investment, went Stephen Burnett.
The witnesses DID witness what they formally testified of "unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come", and it HAS come to many nations, kindreds, tougues, and people! If these men were liars, why didn't God embarrass them by having the first edition of the Book of Mormon also be its last? Their printed testimonies have greater weight than disgruntled Stephen Burnett's angry letter. Though many of them became disgruntled themselves, instead of going Stephen Burnett, they never denied their written testimonies, which means that their testimonies are all the more reliable.