# OLIVER COWDERY

He was the first baptized Latter Day Saint, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon’s golden plates, one of the first Latter Day Saint apostles, and the Second Elder of the church. In 1838 he left and was excommunicated from the church founded by Smith and later became a Methodist. Bye, Bye to the restored priesthood and of being a special witness of Jesus Christ and being a member of the only true church on the face of this earth. Wait a minute here. In 1848 he returned to the LDS church and was baptized. He told Smith that he had seen the golden plates in a vision before the two ever met. He acted as Smith’s primary scribe for the translation of the plates. He also unsuccessfully attempted to translate part of the Book of Mormon by himself. Did he have the plates in front of him? Then the angel didn’t have to come down and show him that they existed. Did he also use a seer stone and looked into the hat just like Joseph did? After the loss of the first 116 pages Cowdery and Smith changed gears and in about 2 months finished the rest of the translation, nothing like a shot of Red Bull. In 1829 Cowdery and Smith received the Aaronic priesthood from the resurrected John the Baptist and then received the other priesthood from 3 persons dressed in white and they were Peter, James and John. White seems to be a popular color in heaven because God, Jesus, Moroni and all of these people all seem to favor this color. Must be to show their purity or maybe to cover their naked bodies of flesh and bone. When the church created a bank known as the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837, Cowdery obtained the money-printing plates. He also became president of the Bank of Monroe in which the church had a controlling interest. Both banks failed that same year. By early 1838 Smith and Cowdery disagreed on 3 significant issues. Cowdery competed with Smith for leadership of the new church. Smith and Rigdon took charge of the Missouri church and initiated policies that Cowdery, Phelps, and the Whitmers believed violated the separation of church and state. Also the dirty, nasty, filthy affair of Smith with a teenage maid living with the Smiths was something that Cowdery opposed. A church court then excommunicated Cowdery after he failed to appear at a hearing on his membership and sent a letter resigning from the church instead. David Whitmer, John Whitmer and Phelps had been excommunicated for similar reasons a month earlier. Sidney Rigdon announced to a large congregation that the dissenters were “as salt that had lost its savor” and that it was the duty of the faithful to cast them out “to be trodden beneath the feet of men.” The Salt Sermon was seen as a threat against their lives. The Danite Manifesto which was signed by 84 Mormons warned: you shall have three days after you receive this communication to you, including 24 hours in each day, for you to depart with your families peaceably; which you may do undisturbed by any person; but in that time, if you do not depart, we will use the means in our power to cause you to depart. Cowdery and the dissenters fled the county. Reports about their treatment circulated in nearby non-Mormon communities and increased the tension that led to the 1838 Mormon War. Cowdery then joined the Methodist church. In 1848 Cowdery was re-baptized into the LDS church. Two years later he died in David Whitmer’s home in Missouri. For several years Cowdery attended a church in which Rev. Ethan Smith who was the author of View of the Hebrews in 1823 was preaching. In 2000 David Persuitte argued that Cowdery’s knowledge significantly contributed to the final version of the Book of Mormon, a connection first suggested as early as 1902.