I Have Seen The Golden Plates.

by Daniel Young III

I, Daniel Young the Third hereby swear by God that the following statement be true:

It was on the eve of the twentieth of October in the year 2003, that I prayed to the Lord our God that I may be permitted to look upon the Golden Plates that the Book of Mormon was translated from so that I may know that such work is true.

As the night grew near I decided to read through the Book of Mormon and seek guidence from our Lord, my heart was filled with joy when I came upon these verses:

"Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." (Moroni 10:3-5)

I again inquired to the Lord to permit me to view these wonderful Golden Plates the Book of Mormon was translated from before I retired to bed.

It was around 11:30 PM that night when my room was illuminated with a brillant white light and floating beside my bed was an Angel of the Lord and it said to me "Arise, for your prayers have been answered. You may look and touch the Golden Plates."

Upon hearing his words I removed myself out of the bed and was guided over to my work desk where the Gold Plates descended from a conduit that manifested itself above my desk. The Golden Plates gently came to a rest and the conduit remained open, upon looking in it I saw the highest level Heaven which contained great things.

I returned my interest to the plates, this golden book's pages were six inches wide by eight inches long, the pages being about the thickness of a penny and the plates being stacked together formed a thickness about six inches altogether, they were all bound together at their edges with three elongated rings. Now the middle part was sealed for I was not permitted to look at it but the pages I could look upon had markings that were curved and straight and a mixture of those two features. The size of the marks were small about 1/4 of an inch in height and the words contained spaces between them. Such a word looked thus "))" (without the quotation marks though) and another variation of it with a line through it's center. Here is some other words contained in the writing (but without the quotation marks) "/.\" "__" "|_" "O" "+" and other such characters I cannot reproduce on the computer keyboard.

The pages (plates) did not have the appearance of being cast but of being forged by a hammer of some sort, never-the-less the pages were relativly smooth and light. The pages were sturdy and did not bend or flex upon turning them, writing was on both sides of the pages. The pages had a half inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of the pages.

I asked the Angel of the Lord if I could translate a part of the text, after I had inquired this to the Angel another figure appeared to me in the room, he was clothed in a white robe. I soon realized this other figure was none other than Joseph Smith, Jr. himself! He addressed me in a gentle manner and said "There is no need to make another translation, for the Lord had provided me with the means to make the perfect English Translation you were reading before retiring to bed."

I replied, "It is an honor to meet you Prophet Smith, I am sorry for any disrespect I may have caused towards you." Prophet Smith accepted my appology and told me that the Mormon Church is indeed the true church of Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ himself called down to me from Heaven to confirm this.

After this all the supernatural events disappeared and my room returned to normal, dark, still, and quiet. I looked at the clock and saw that two hours had passed, I dropped down to my knees and prayed, then retired to bed.