# DAVID WHITMER

Whitmer was one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon. He heard of Joseph Smith when he talked with his friend Oliver Cowdery who believed that there must be some truth to the matter. He eventually accepted the story and brought his father’s family to join the Smiths in Palmyra. He was baptized in June 1829 nearly a year prior to the formal organization of the Church of Christ. During that same month he along with Smith and Cowdery saw an angel present the golden plates in a vision. Martin Harris said he experienced a similar vision with Smith later in the day. Whitmer, Cowdery, and Harris then signed a joint statement declaring their testimony to the reality of the vision. This statement is included in all of the Book of Mormon editions. Whitmer said that Smith received a revelation that Hiram Page and Cowdery would sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon in Toronto. When this didn’t happen Smith received another revelation “through the stone” that “some revelations are of God, some are of men, and some are of the devil”. When Smith organized the Church of Christ in 1830 there were only six members. It was organized in Whitmer’s father’s house in Fayette, New York but in 1842 Smith said that the church was organized in Manchester, New York. Soon after the organization of the church, Smith set apart Jackson County, Missouri as a “gathering place” for Latter Day Saints. Whitmer was ordained by Smith to be the president of the church and his own successor. He was sustained as the president of the church in Zion. Although a revelation dated June 1829 referred to Whitmer and Cowdery as recieving the same calling as the apostle Paul, Smith had not yet started a church or created the office known today as apostle. They were called to search out twelve disciples, who later were called apostles but none of the three witnesses were ordained to that apostleship. John Whitmer presided over the church in Missouri until 1837 after the collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society bank because Smith and his counselor Sidney Rigdon were being battered by creditors and moved to Far West, Missouri to evade arrest. This led to a struggle in the leadership which led to the dissolution of the presidency of the church in Missouri and Whitmer, Phelps and Cowdery resigned and were excommunicated. They were known as the “dissenters” and since they owned land in Caldwell County, Missouri, they wanted to stay and retain it. Rigdon preached his Salt Sermon which called for their expulsion from the county. A number of LDS members formed a secret society known as the Danites whose stated goal was the removal of the dissenters. Whitmer and the other dissenters complained about their forcible expulsion and the loss of their property and they began to file lawsuits to recover it. Whitmer used his position as one of the Three Witnesses to condemn Smith’s church. “If you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, so it would be done unto them”. Whitmer started his own church after