Trial of the Stick of Joseph

The TRIAL OF THE STICK OF JOSEPH was a lecture series by Jack H. West that was presented at Brigham Young University Leadership Week in 1954.

Prologue

Many years ago, when I was studying law in school, I had an old professor who had the peculiar notion that he should never give his students a written examination, but rather should let them demonstrate their knowledge of law under conditions approximating those of a courtroom. Since he had been a judge for many years, he could devise a courtroom condition very similar to an actual case. So he notified each of us, at the outset of that particular year’s work, that sometime during the year we would have, as he called it, the “privilege” of defending or prosecuting some case against the entire balance of the law class. If any of you have studied law, I’m sure you will agree that being able to do rapid research work is a great asset. Consequently, there being great numbers of budding attorneys on the one side being able to do very rapid and thorough research work was a great advantage to that side but a handicap to the individual standing alone who did not have the advantage of many minds working as one. It seemed that what one of these young fellows in the group could not think of, someone else did.

I had absolutely no confidence in my own ability to either defend or prosecute any case I could think of against the entire balance of that law class. And so I was shaking in my boots, as were others in the class, over this type of test. While we found that most of these law cases lasted for only a day or two or a week at the most, we got into one that ran for nearly three weeks. Here is the background of that one.

I had been studying and teaching the Book of Mormon simultaneously with my period of studying law. On the one hand I studied law, and on the other hand I studied the Book of Mormon. I became more and more convinced that God himself had briefed the case for the authenticity of that great Book of Mormon, that he had set up the evidence, prepared the witnesses, and indeed had made a complete case for the authenticity of that record. I found that he was doing exactly as the words of the book said, proving to all men that the words of that book were true. So I thought to myself, “Well Jack, if you are going to have to test and you do not feel able to stand up to that test, what better could you do than to get the Lord on your side?” So I took the case for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon or, as the Bible calls it, “The Stick of Joseph.”

Act I

At the outset I asked the prosecution to turn to Ezekiel in the Old Testament to read something on which we base the very necessity of a record called the Stick of Joseph. This scripture answers the idea of the Stick of Joseph.

The word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companion: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:

And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand. [Evidently the Lord wanted to be sure that nobody misunderstood, so he repeated somewhat, in the next verse.]

And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee saying, Wilt that not shew us what thou meanest by these?

Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, [Joseph of Israel] which is in the hands of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the Stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mind hand. (Ezekiel 37:15-19)

Here were to be two great records, not just one. How many tribes of Israel? Twelve. How many so called lost tribes? Ten. We have a stick for Joseph here – the Book of Mormon, and a stick for Judah here – the Bible.

The prosecution said to me, “What is this ‘stick’ business?”

We went back into ancient times to show that those people did not have the printed page, as we know it today. They wrote on long strips of material, then rolled the material on a stick, and it became known as a stick or a “roll of a book.” (See Jeremiah 36:2)

What was the office of Ezekiel, to whom the Lord was speaking? A prophet. And when God speaks to a prophet, the prophet writes those words, and they become what? Scripture! Then Ezekiel is telling us that these two sticks are to be scriptural records, one for the tribe of Joseph of Israel and one for the tribe of Judah of Israel.

The parties of the prosecution said to me, “But the title of this book says the Book of Mormon.”

I said to them, “But this says the Holy Bible.”

Why do we of the Church know that the Bible is the Stick of Judah, and why did the court readily admit it was the stick of Judah? Because the Bible tells about the tribe of Judah, and the only time it mentions any other tribe of Israel is as that tribe’s history relates to the tribe of Judah.

“Of what tribe was Jesus Christ?”

“Judah.”

“Then could the New Testament be the Stick of Joseph?”

“No.”

I said to them, “Do you have the stick of Joseph?” When I first mentioned it, they looked through their vest pockets, and they didn’t seem to have it. They said, “But we can get it.”

So they went to their rabbis and their ministers and their priests, and they came back empty-handed, and they said, “We don’t have it.”

I said, “Then would you object if I place the Stick of Joseph in testimony as exhibit ‘A’ in this case? I testify to you that the Book of Mormon is the stick of Joseph because if we read it, it tells about a segment of the tribe of Joseph and God’s dealings with that tribe of Joseph on this, the American continent as we know it today.”

The prosecution charged that not only was the Stick of Joseph, or the Book of Mormon, fraudulent in nature, but also that those who brought it forth – Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, Martin Harris, and others who had part in bringing this record forth and in testifying of its authenticity – were guilty of fraud.

At the conclusion of the case and upon the concluding arguments by both the prosecution and the defense, the judge rendered decision in favor of the defense. He said to the prosecution, “You have not even established a toe hold, much less a foothold, in breaking down the marvelous evidence for the authenticity of the Stick of Joseph [as we called it in the trial] much less have you given any evidence that would show it to be a fraudulent work.”

Or course I was very happy about this, being the only member of [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in the class. Then the judge called me into his office and said, “Jack, where in the world did you get the evidence you presented in this mock trial?” I grinned at him and said, “You remember at the outset of the trial, I told all of you that I did not take credit for one particle of this evidence. Most of it has been available to the world for over a hundred years. And I told you then, as I tell you now, that I believe with all of my heart that God himself set up that evidence and prepared the witnesses.”

The judge said, “I want to tell you something. In all of my years in law, I don’t think I have heard a law case nearly more perfect than this one. When you started out, I wouldn’t have given you a plugged nickel for your chances of proving that book to be true through legal procedure.”

Brothers and sisters, don’t sell the Book of Mormon short! I have had many people say to me, “Jack, I believe the Book of Mormon is true – I have a testimony of it, but I have always felt that I would be in a bad spot if somebody challenged many of the statements in it. I didn’t think we could prove it with evidence that would stand up in an unbiased mind.”

But you can! It doesn’t take as much faith today to believe the Book of Mormon as it did when it came off the press in the year of 1830. Certainly there are still statements in it which are prophecy even now. They are still in the future as to fulfillment, but enough of the statements have been fulfilled that it takes less faith today to accept it than it did in the year of 1830.

Gradually over the years, with no intention to develop the notes of this case into lecture form, the notes have grown into a group of three lectures. The first has to do with the examination of twelve personal witnesses who claimed to have seen and handled the ancient golden records from which Joseph Smith claimed to have translated the work. We will go into the lives of these men and see if they denied their testimonies and look at the peculiar circumstances surrounding their testimonies.

In the second lecture we go into internal evidence, to the book itself, letting it, so to speak, stand on its own two feet; we let it answer a whole group of charges made by the prosecution against the work. We find that it is its own best witness; that it will answer the charges in and of itself; that it is consistent with itself; that it does not contradict itself nor the other great book, the “Stick of Judah,” the Bible, which was to be its running mate.

In the third lecture we go to the very greatest men in the fields of science, having to do with the study of ancient races, particularly those men who have made a study of the ancient races of this continent – archaeologists, ethnologists, zoologists, anthropologists, and all kinds of “ologists,” and from their testimonies we set up the external evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

In the third session I will not quote one member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rather I will stay with the greatest men in the fields of science who are not members of the Church and yet who have made in many cases a lifetime study of the ancient ruins of this continent, its peoples, their customs, languages, religion, and so forth.

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