Joseph’s Inspired Translation Part 2 of Chapter 10.

Joseph’s Inspired Translation Part 2 of Chapter 10. 

The spirit and power of “the revelations which God” had given him were greater than most people can comprehend.

There is no doubt that the Prophet Joseph saw and understood much more in the Bible than he ever revealed. Use of the Urim and Thummim enabled him to absorb great amounts of information in a few moments. This he was able to do with the Bible. Lorenzo Brown gives this testimony of what Joseph told him:

After I got through translating the Book of Mormon, I took up the Bible to read with the Urim and Thummim. I read the first chapter of Genesis and I saw the things as they were done. I turned over the next and the next, and the whole passed before me like a grand panorama; and so on chapter after chapter until I read the whole of it. I saw it all! . . . (This was spoken at the house of Benj. Brown, N.Y., 1832, Sidney Rigdon being along.) <Related by Lorenzo Brown in 1880, “Sayings of Joseph, by Those Who Heard Him at Different Times,” Joseph Smith, Jr., Papers, Salt Lake City, Utah: Church Historical Library, Manuscript Section.>

[153] The Prophet was able to enlarge his understanding of many mysteries of the heavens and earth by means of this instrument. On one occasion Joseph obtained a copy of John Fox’s Book of Martyrs. It was a huge exhaustive record of all the Christians who fell in death or were persecuted for their faith. Joseph did not have the time to read this huge volume so he recorded:

I have, by the aid of the Urim and Thummim, seen those martyrs and they were honest, devoted followers of Christ according to the light they possessed; they will be saved. (Reminiscences of the Prophet Joseph, Stevenson, p. 5)