Jeff_Ricks
5th August 2006, 08:08 PM
Earlier in the week a never-mo friend was given tickets to the Martin Harris pageant so she asked if I'd go to it with her. She said she wasn't sure if I would take her asking as in insult or quite what I'd think. I figured, why not? I'd never seen it and it might be kind of fun. Last night was the blessed event. I enjoyed it but for different reasons than I was supposed to. It was interesting to me to see how far from the facts such a story can evolve when people need it to be true.
Before it started I asked the couple sitting next to us if they sat in on the lecture that preceded the pagaent. The woman, who was pretty silent up until then leaned over in front of her husband and enthusiastically told us how the lecture was given by a direct descendant of Martin Harris, and how he said that Martin once said when asked if he actually saw the plates, "Look at that ax over there. Do you see it? That is how real the plates were when I saw them." I didn't have the heart to tell her that Martin also once said
I never saw the golden plates, only in a visionary or entranced state.(Anthony Metcalf, Ten Years Before the Mast, n.d., microfilm copy, p. 70-71.)
She also said that in the lecture the guy said that on his death bed Martin swore that he saw the plates and the angel. I didn't have the heart to tell her that also on his death bed he swore the following:
Three of us took some tools to go to the hill and hunt for more boxes of gold or something, and indeed we found a stone box. We got quite excited about it and dug carefully around it, and by some unseen power it slipped back into the hill. We stood there and looked at it and one of us took a crow-bar and tried to drive it through the lid and hold it, but the bar glanced off and broke off one of the corners of the box. Sometime that box will be found and you will see the corner broken off, and then you will know I have told you the truth ("The Last Testimony of Martin Harris," by E. Cecil McGavin in The Instructor, October, 1930, Vol. 65, No. 10, pp. 587-589).
For more info on Harris that's not very flattering check this link out: http://www.irr.org/MIT/bomwit1.html
I've attached some photos from the pageant. Later when it got dark, when Joseph stepped on stage, it was too dark for the camera so not much to see in the photos. During the pageant the woman who was so enthusiastic about the lecture was sniffling through much of it. Her husband on the other hand sat and watched quietly. He was a school teacher and possibly one to study some of that taboo stuff about Mormonism, so I wonder if the thought ever crossed his mind during the pageant, "Bullshit. I know that part’s not true.” I could be wrong but I thought I could see the wheels turning thusly in his head as he watched.
Oh one more thing that to me is sad. The pageant is titled: Martin Harris. The Man Who Knew :rolleyes:
Jeff
P.S Couldn't help but think from time to time while watching the pageant, "dum-dum-dum-dum-dum" :D
Before it started I asked the couple sitting next to us if they sat in on the lecture that preceded the pagaent. The woman, who was pretty silent up until then leaned over in front of her husband and enthusiastically told us how the lecture was given by a direct descendant of Martin Harris, and how he said that Martin once said when asked if he actually saw the plates, "Look at that ax over there. Do you see it? That is how real the plates were when I saw them." I didn't have the heart to tell her that Martin also once said
I never saw the golden plates, only in a visionary or entranced state.(Anthony Metcalf, Ten Years Before the Mast, n.d., microfilm copy, p. 70-71.)
She also said that in the lecture the guy said that on his death bed Martin swore that he saw the plates and the angel. I didn't have the heart to tell her that also on his death bed he swore the following:
Three of us took some tools to go to the hill and hunt for more boxes of gold or something, and indeed we found a stone box. We got quite excited about it and dug carefully around it, and by some unseen power it slipped back into the hill. We stood there and looked at it and one of us took a crow-bar and tried to drive it through the lid and hold it, but the bar glanced off and broke off one of the corners of the box. Sometime that box will be found and you will see the corner broken off, and then you will know I have told you the truth ("The Last Testimony of Martin Harris," by E. Cecil McGavin in The Instructor, October, 1930, Vol. 65, No. 10, pp. 587-589).
For more info on Harris that's not very flattering check this link out: http://www.irr.org/MIT/bomwit1.html
I've attached some photos from the pageant. Later when it got dark, when Joseph stepped on stage, it was too dark for the camera so not much to see in the photos. During the pageant the woman who was so enthusiastic about the lecture was sniffling through much of it. Her husband on the other hand sat and watched quietly. He was a school teacher and possibly one to study some of that taboo stuff about Mormonism, so I wonder if the thought ever crossed his mind during the pageant, "Bullshit. I know that part’s not true.” I could be wrong but I thought I could see the wheels turning thusly in his head as he watched.
Oh one more thing that to me is sad. The pageant is titled: Martin Harris. The Man Who Knew :rolleyes:
Jeff
P.S Couldn't help but think from time to time while watching the pageant, "dum-dum-dum-dum-dum" :D