Three Testimonies Book Of Mormon

Did the Three Witnesses deny their testimonies about the Book of Mormon?

In the introduction to the Book of Mormon there is section entitled “The Testimony of the Three Witnesses”  This testimony was given by three men–David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris–each of whom saw the plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon.  According to their account, they gathered with Joseph Smith to pray in the woods and while praying an angel appeared to them and showed them the plates and other artifacts.

Over the next several years, these three witnesses faced many challenges and left the Mormon Church.  Two, Harris and Cowdery, later returned, humbly repenting of their mistakes and pride which had led them out of the Mormon Church.  Whitmer never rejoined the Mormon Church, but he never denied his testimony.  Instead, he claimed that everyone else in the Church had gone wrong, but that the Book of Mormon and his testimony were still true.

Anti-Mormon critics have tried to argue that one or all of these denied their testimony.  However, the circumstances that led these men out of the Church either by choice or by excommunication were unrelated to the Book of Mormon.  Harris was excommunicated because of problems in the Church during a financial crisis in Kirtland, Ohio.  Harris was firmly against the use of paper money, and thereby opposed the founding of the Kirtland Safety Society, which was printing it.  He became offended and left, but in 1870 he rejoined the Mormon Church and moved to Utah, where he died many years later.  In Utah, Harris was anxious to bear his solemn testimony repeatedly that he was a true witness that the gold plates existed and were translated by Joseph Smith through the power of God.  Cowdery was excommunicated (at his own request) in 1838.  He was charged by the Church High Council “for persecuting church leaders with vexatious lawsuits, seeking to destroy the character of Joseph Smith, not abiding ecclesiastical authority in temporal affairs, selling lands in Jackson County (contrary to received revelation), and leaving his calling” to follow worldly pursuits (Church History in the Fulness of Times, 186).  In 1847, he rejoined the Church and died while crossing the Great Plains with the Mormon pioneers.  Whitmer was excommunicated also in 1838.  He was charged with usurping too much authority, willfully breaking the Word of Wisdom, and writing letters of dissension to apostates (CHFOT, 187).  He opened a business in Missouri where he remained until his death.  Though he never rejoined the Mormon Church, he nevertheless maintained that his testimony of the Book of Mormon was true, but that the Mormon Church had strayed.  Shortly before his death, he even took out a newspaper ad testifying about the Book of Mormon.