The Mormon Apocrypha

Not all talks given at General Conference are huge sermons. Below is a short and simple talk, delivered in the April 1932 conference. Elder George S. Romney President of the Northern States Mission I have been thrilled, during this Conference, with the testimonies of my brethren. I am happy to report to you that the missionaries in the Northern States mission are carrying the message of the Gospel, and the testimony that the Lord has spoken again to his people in this day, and that they are doing it well. They are faithful young men and women. They grow very rapidly in the testimony of the Gospel when they come to the mission field. This last Sunday I listened to the testimony of a young lady who has been only a few months in the mission field. She was a very timid girl when she left home, and was extremely frightened when she arrived in the mission field. It seemed almost beyond her strength to go up to the doors of the people and announce that she was a member of the Church of Jesus ...

Elder Helvécio Martins was the first person of Black African descent to be called as a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Born to descendants of African slaves in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Martins joined the LDS Church in 1972, despite his knowledge that the LDS Church did not then allow members of Black African descent to hold the priesthood or to receive temple ordinances. On 9 June 1978, Martins and his family heard of the announcement that the LDS Church was lifting the priesthood ban. After Martins received the priesthood and his temple ordinances, he served in the church as a bishop, counselor to a stake president, and as president of the Brazil Fortaleza Mission. In April 1990, church president Ezra Taft Benson called Martins as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. Martins became the first black general authority in the LDS Church. After serving a standard five-year term as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, Martins was honora...

On February 4, 1879, Joseph Smith III, prophet of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, went to visit his mother, Emma Smith Bidamon at her house in Nauvoo Illinois. He asked her some questions about her life, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon. It is inspiring how even after all she had been through; she still had a testimony in her husband's work and the Book of Mormon. Below is a sampling of the questions asked to her. Question: What of the truth of Mormonism?  Answer: I know Mormonism to be the truth; and believe the Church to have been established by divine direction. I have complete faith in it. In writing for your father, I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the [seer] stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.1  Q. Had he not a book or manuscript from which he read, or dictated to you?  A. He had neither manuscript nor book to re...

The eleven witnesses of the book of Mormon are well-known to any member of any branch of the restoration. Their testimonies have been printed in the book of Mormon since the beginning. But they are not the only ones who had a testimony of the Book of Mormon.  William McLellan was an early leader in the church, being in the Qurom of the Twelve. Over time, he slowly distanced himself from the church, eventually getting excommunicated in 1838. He often worked with the mobs against the church. After the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, he went from church to church, from the Ridgonites to the Strangites. Eventually in 1869, McLellan gave up on organized religion. In 1880, James T. Cobb, a resident of Salt Lake City and critic of the church, sent some letters to McLellan to get him to criticize the Book of Mormon. But no matter what problems McLellan had with the church, he could not deny the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. What he said in a letter back to Cobb was powerful. While I d...