Welcome back to my Book of Mormon podcast. I'm Marie Kent, and today it's April 1835.

Oliver Cowdery continues his open letters to his fellow believer, W.W. Phelps, and I'm going to read it to you.

Ostensibly, these letters were intended to give a history of the church, you know, an insider's look into the prophet to Joseph Smith.

I mean, but do they?

Really? Every once in a while. Today's letter, letter number six, gives a recounting of what the

angel told Joseph Smith in last week's letter, and it's basically recapping the Old Testament,

specifically the book of Isaiah. Makes sense. This religion is all about

the latter days, and Isaiah is wall-to-wall prophecies, mornings, promises. Now, if the Bible is true,

an angels exist, and an angel spoke to Joseph, and Joseph was told about what was in the Bible,

then obviously Joseph's religion is true, right?

And even more so, today's letter briefly references the Nephites from the Book of Mormon

right next to Isaiah's words from the Lord.

So actually, it's God to Bible, Bible to Angel, Angel to Joseph, Joseph's Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon to Bible.

This is the one true religion.

But you know what's not clear to the outside reader, by which I mean me, who the Nephites are?

This letter really solidifies that the target audience is an already existing believer who has read the

book of Mormon, or at least gone to a few meetings about its contents, to say nothing of the

assumption that the reader is full on familiar with the Israelites of the Old Testament.

Now, yes, I have been studying Mormon history for four years.

I mean, you want to talk about events of winter 1830

and how they influence the spring of 1830? Oh, I can throw down on that. And I did listen to someone

else read the book of Mormon to me once while marathon training. I definitely was hanging on

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