Mother Smith’s Testimony

The Mormon Church in Utah recently announced the discovery of an important historical document​—a letter apparently written by Lucy Mack Smith, the mother of Joseph Smith, Jr.

The letter, dated January 23, 1829, was written about a year before Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon. To her sister-in-law, Lucy Mack Smith wrote: “It is my pleasure to inform you of a great work which the Lord has wrought in our family, for he has made his paths known to Joseph in dreams and it pleased God to show him where he could dig to obtain an ancient record engraven upon plates made of pure gold and this he is able to translate.”

According to church historian Dean Jessee, the letter “shows that at the beginning, as the curtain goes up on the church in 1829, the Smiths are talking and saying the same things that they say in their histories later on.” And that “says something about the credibility of Joseph Smith’s history and his mother’s,” said Jessee.

While the letter may tend to discredit the theory of some critics that Smith wrote the book first as a novel and later claimed its inspiration, it actually does little to establish the book as of genuine divine origin. More importantly, mother Smith’s statement is not really convincing in view of the apostle Paul’s warning at Galatians 1:8: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”​—King James Version.