Hey everybody, welcome to Talking Scripture, a podcast where we illustrate relevance and application of the scriptures in Come Follow Me.

We also dive into the history and cultures of the text.

Thanks for taking the time to share and subscribe to this podcast.

For show notes, head over to our website, talking scripture.org.

Welcome to Talking Scripture. I'm Mike. And I'm Bryce. And today we jump into sections

three, four, and five, which are some early church history long before the church gets

organized. And one of the things we're going to do this year as we study these sections

is we're going to try and year is we study these sections is we're

going to try and provide enough background to provide some understanding of what's going on and why is it

significant. So we turn now to the loss of what we call the 116 pages, which was actually probably

more than that, and Mike will get into that. So let's set the stage, Mike,

for why does Martin Harris want this manuscript? What's he planning to do with it? What's the whole

setting of Section 3 where Joseph Smith is going to be rebuked for giving the pages to Martin

Harris? So that's a great question. One of the questions people ask all the time is like, why does

even have the manuscript? He pressured Joseph to give him for a short time so that he could reclaim his reputation. His issue was people back home in Palmyra thought that Martin had perhaps gone mad. We're going to put in the show notes a timeline of the 1828 time period, the Book of Mormon

Translation Timeline is what we call it.

Starting in December of 1827, Joseph and Emma, they leave Palmyra and they go to Harmony.

And so in January and February of 1828, Joseph is translating and Emma is scribing.

And during the high point of when farmers are supposed to really be productive in the spring,

and even before this spring as they're preparing for planting,

Martin spends several weeks away from home.

In February and March, he goes all the way to New York City,

...