Background
David Whitmer was born on January 7, 1805 near Harrisburg, Pa. , the son of Peter and Mary (Musselman) Whitmer. His father, a hard-working farmer, removed a few years after David's birth to Seneca County, N. Y.
(An Address To Believers in the Book of Mormon David Whitm...)
An Address To Believers in the Book of Mormon David Whitmer, early adherent of the Latter Day Saint movement (1805-1888) This ebook presents «An Address To Believers in the Book of Mormon», from David Whitmer. A dynamic table of contents enables to jump directly to the chapter selected. Table of Contents -01- About this book -02- AN ADDRESS TO BELIEVERS IN THE BOOK OF MORMON
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(3 works of Works of David Whitmer Early adherent of the L...)
3 works of Works of David Whitmer Early adherent of the Latter Day Saint movement (1805-1888) This ebook presents a collection of 3 works of Works of David Whitmer. A dynamic table of contents allows you to jump directly to the work selected. Table of Contents: - A Proclamation - An Address to All Believers in Christ - An Address To Believers in the Book of Mormon
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David Whitmer was born on January 7, 1805 near Harrisburg, Pa. , the son of Peter and Mary (Musselman) Whitmer. His father, a hard-working farmer, removed a few years after David's birth to Seneca County, N. Y.
The boy received a rudimentary education and grew up to follow the occupation of his father.
His family was Presbyterian, but he was affected by the currents of religious unrest of the time and in 1828, while on a trip to Palmyra, N. Y. , heard from the village schoolmaster, Oliver Cowdery, about Joseph Smith and the "Golden Plates, " which the latter had been commissioned by divine messengers to translate. Whitmer's whole family was impressed by the story, and the next year, at the request of Cowdery, David left his spring plowing in order to fetch Smith and Cowdery to the Whitmer homestead. During the month of June the translation of the Book of Mormon was completed in his father's house; he was baptized into the newly revealed religion by Smith himself; and shortly thereafter he was one of the three who were privileged by divine oracle to examine the "Golden Plates" and to give witness to their supernatural source yet material character. During the next few months he interlarded proselytizing with farming and on April 6, 1830, he was at Fayette, N. Y. , at the formal organization of Smith's new sect. He followed his leader to Kirtland, Ohio, and when the Mormon Prophet decided to move his rapidly growing flock to the "Promised Land" of Jackson County, Mo. , he was among the first to go. He suffered with his fellow-members the intense persecutions of the Missourians and in the fall of 1833 was forced to remove to Clay County to escape the mobs roused against the Mormons. When Smith organized on July 3, 1834, the "High Council of Zion" to manage the Mormon interests in Missouri, Whitmer was made president of the council and for the next year or so was one of the leading men of his denomination there. However, as external pressure from enemies increased and as dissension arose within the ranks of the Mormons themselves, he found himself at odds with the Prophet. Following an attempt in 1836 of one faction to have him replace Smith, there was, at Kirtland, a temporary reconciliation with Smith; but the next year with Martin Harris, Cowdery, and others he was again in conflict with the Prophet. He gave up active participation early in 1838. One of the major charges brought against him was neglect of his moral and religious obligations to his church. He was excommunicated on April 13, 1838. Shortly thereafter he settled in Richmond, Ray County, Mo. , where he lived until his death. After the death of Joseph Smith and the rise of the two chief contending branches of the Mormon Church, he became the object of their special attention. Each faction tried to reconvert him to its own particular creed but failed. In 1847 William E. McClellin, who had been associated with the Whitmer faction in Missouri, tried to reëstablish another Mormon sect under the original name, "Church of Christ, " and Whitmer was chosen president; but the attempt was abortive. Nearly twenty years later Whitmer and his own family revived the "Church of Christ" with a simple organization of six officers, two priests, and four elders. A periodical was established and proselytizing, especially among the other Mormons, began. At the time of his death he had about 150 followers. He made no important contribution to Mormon practices or creed. He found early Mormonism to his liking, because it was marked, he imagined, by the simplicity of primitive Christianity. As the followers of Smith increased, as institutional forms and a priestly hierarchy grew up, he fell into controversy with Smith and with Rigdon - whom he never liked - and before Mormonism really developed many of its most distinctive features, he apostatized. His pamphlet, An Address to All Believers in Christ by a Witness to the Divine Authenticity to the Book of Mormon (1887), gives a rather mundane but apparently straightforward account of many events at the beginning of Mormonism. His account of the method of "translating" the "Golden Plates, " of the difficulties in getting the Book of Mormon printed, his contention that the revelations of Joseph Smith almost always grew out of immediate necessity to answer some practical problem and that they were not to be taken too seriously and certainly that they should never have been published and come to be considered "sacred" documents, his information that in April 1830 when the Mormon church was legally organized there were already seventy baptized followers in the movement and not just six as the official history implies, and his story of the great influence that Rigdon had on Joseph Smith are of great importance to the historian of early Mormonism. Nevertheless in spite of his disaffection he never denied his simple but clearly sincere belief that he saw the "Golden Plates" and that Smith was divinely appointed to reëstablish the true church of Christ.
(An Address To Believers in the Book of Mormon David Whitm...)
(3 works of Works of David Whitmer Early adherent of the L...)
Whitmer stated his religious views in three publications: "A Proclamation" published March 24, 1881, "An Address To Believers in the Book of Mormon" published April 1887, and "An Address to All Believers in Christ" also published April 1887.
Polygamy
I do not endorse polygamy or spiritual wifeism. It is a great evil, shocking to the moral sense, and the more so, because practiced in the name of religion. It is of man and not God, and is especially forbidden in the Book of Mormon itself.
High Priests
As to the High Priesthood, Jesus Christ himself is the last Great High Priest, this too after the order of Melchisedec, as I understand the Holy Scriptures.
Name change
I do not endorse the change of the name of the church, for as the wife takes the name of her husband so should the Church of the Lamb of God, take the name of its head, even Christ himself. It is the Church of Christ.
In 1830 he married Julia A. Jolly.