The 3 BOM Witnesses' Final Affirmations (And Those of Two Murderers)

I do not know what my last words will be, but there’s a strong chance they’ll be sputtered out on a sticky fast food floor underneath the crescent moon-shaped remnants of a quadruple cheeseburger.  Should that be the case I ask only that my food card get stamped. Please get it stamped. It’s for my children and my children’s children. A minor step towards a free sandwich is my only real legacy.

In related but less-sandwichy news – have you ever heard of James Washington? He had some accidental last words. He thought the walls were closing in. The light he perceived at the end of the tunnel was orange and flickering.

He had a heart attack, you see. He was an inmate serving time for attempted second degree murder, but he’d been hiding something worse. As is probably common when someone has been hiding something enormously horrible for years and they think their time was up – he wanted to confess his horrible secret:

“Washington, who was already in prison serving a 15-year sentence for a 2006 attempted second-degree murder conviction, suffered an attack of seizures in 2009. While laid up in the hospital, he confessed his involvement in the murder of Goodener to one of the few people near him, prison guard James Tomlinson.
“Prison officials brought the confession to prosecutors, who moved to indict Washington for the crime.
“"He kind of got as best as he could, motioned, and said, 'I have something to tell you. I have to get something off my conscience and you need to hear this.' He said, 'I killed somebody. I beat her to death…’" (http://abcnews.go.com/US/inmate-james-washington-convicted-death-bed-murder-confession/story?id=17653264)
That’s a good old-fashioned deathbed confession right there. Here’s another:

“James Brewer, 58, could now face the death penalty over the unsolved killing in Tennessee in 1977.

“Police were summoned to Brewer’s hospital bedside earlier this month after he suffered a stroke. He is alleged to have then told them he shot dead 20-year-old Jimmy Carroll who he believed was trying to seduce his wife.

“'He wanted to cleanse his soul, because he thought he was going to the great beyond,' said police detective Tony Grasso, who interviewed Mr Brewer in an Oklahoma hospital…”” ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164208/Murderer-deathbed-confession-arrested-making-miraculous-recovery.html )

We can see the same pattern there. Brewer thought he was about to high five Saint Peter and he didn’t want his ankle chains restricting his upward movement. It would certainly seem that when someone thinks the end is imminent, they don’t want to keep their sins a secret.

Now think about the three Book of Mormon witnesses. Joseph Smith told those men that they’d see angels – and they did! They wrote up a document (lots of documents, actually) saying they’d seen that angel. The heavenly being was shrouded in glory and showed them the long-talked about golden plates, the Nephite interpreters, Laban’s sword…etc. The angel was accompanied by the voice of the Lord, which said that the record was translated by the gift and power of God and that the witnesses were required to “…bear record of it.”

The theme of the post is what people want to get off their chest just before their soul sets sail. So the following are actual deathbed statements by the three witnesses.

Here is the first:

Oliver Cowdery was the first to pass. He contracted tuberculosis about a year after rejoining the Church. He thought he’d be heading to Utah, but the sickness had other plans. According to his half-sister, this is what happened:
“Oliver Cowdery just before breathing his last, asked his attendants to raise him up in bed that he might talk to the family and his friends, who were present. He then told them to live according to the teachings contained in the Book of Mormon, and promised them, if they would do this, that they would meet him in heaven. He then said, ‘Lay me down and let me fall asleep.’ A few moments later he died without a struggle.” (https://ldsscriptureteachings.org/2017/01/23/oliver-cowderys-dying-testimony/)
Pretty plain and simple, actually. In his last moments he held up the BOM as a key to heaven’s gate. Martin Harris gets more specific. In the end – in the very end, he started to lose his faculties. His neighbor, George Godfrey, looked for a moment of weakness to find out the real truth. In his own words:
“A few hours before his death and when he was so weak and enfeebled that he was unable to recognize me or anyone, and knew not to whom he was speaking, I asked him if he did not feel that there was an element at least, of fraudulence and deception in the things that were written and told of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and he replied as he had always done so many, many times in my hearing the same spirit he always manifested when enjoying health and vigor and said: ‘The Book of Mormon is no fake. I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen and I have heard what I have heard. I have seen the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon is written. An angel appeared to me and others and testified to the truthfulness of the record, and had I been willing to have perjured myself and sworn falsely to the testimony I now bear I could have been a rich man, but I could not have testified other than I have done and am now doing for these things are true.”” (https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/Source:Martin_Harris:Investigating_the_Book_of_Mormon_Witnesses:117:1:I_know_what_I_know)
Keep in mind that Harris could have gone on about other things too – he was, after all, present at least one time when Joseph Smith went all glowing and translucent. But when his mind started to go it was his own experience that he clung to. Of course, Godfrey wasn’t trying to draw out any story but this one. David Whitmer’s last words, on the other hand, were not sought - but given. Per the Richmond Conservator:
“On Sunday evening before his death [Whitmer] called the family and his attending physician, Dr. George W. Buchanan, to his bedside and said, “Doctor do you consider that I am in my right mind?” to which the Doctor replied, “Yes, you are in your right mind, I have just had a conversation with you.” He then addressed himself to all present and said: “I want to give my dying testimony. You must be faithful in Christ. I want to say to you all that the Bible and the record of the Nephites, are true, so you can say that you have heard me bear my testimony on my death bed....
“On Monday morning he again called those present to his bedside, and told them that he had seen another vision which reconfirmed the divinity of the “Book of Mormon,” and said that he had seen Christ in the fullness of his glory and majesty, sitting upon his great white throne in heaven waiting to receive his children.” (https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Question:_Did_David_Whitmer_ever_deny_his_Book_of_Mormon_witness_because_he_thought_that_Joseph_Smith_was_a_fallen_prophet%3F)


In their last moments – the moments when most people want to get cleaner than clean – all three of these men stuck to the document they signed. Granted, they didn’t have sandwich-card punchings to worry about. If they had then those last conversations probably would have been more 50/50.

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