According to the Book of Mormon
prophet Lehi, the brass plates “should go forth unto all nations, kindreds, tongues,
and people who were of his seed.” (1 Nephi 5:18)
In 1846, Strangite Lewis Van Buren
expressed his hopes to see this record. He recalled that years before, he possessed
“an old-book printed in Germany some hundreds of years ago, containing many
curious historical facts, which I considered worthy of notice.” The book
described ancient records “engraved upon plates of copper or brass” that had
been passed down through the biblical patriarchs and dated to “[a]s early as in
the days of Enoch.” Van Buren believed these were the brass plates mentioned in
the Book of Mormon.
Doubtless these records must
contain many mysteries which have not been revealed to the world, and were kept
secret among those who were in possession of the holy priesthood. What has
become of these precious, original, patriarchal records, the book of Mormon
seems to reveal, and are they not the very plates of brass that Lehi brought
with him from Jerusalem, when he emigrated to the land of Joseph [i.e., the
Americas], which plates were preserved until that time by the Elders of the
tribe after Joseph’s death, and containing the revelation of God from the
beginning, to come forth in the latter days, in order to be united with the
record of Stik [sic] of Judah. (Lewis Van Buren, unnamed, Voree
Herald, June 1846)
Van Buren curiously believed this
record would come forth to fulfill a passage in Ezekiel 37 that Latter Day
Saints had often cited as a prophecy of the last days Scripture. . . . Van
Buren’s interpretation was unusual in that he identified the future translation
of the brass plates with the stick of Ephraim and the Bible with the stick of
Judah. . . .When Strang produced a translation of the plates, he also saw it as
a fulfillment of Ezekiel 37 but took a different interpretation of the prophecy
than either Smith or Van Buren. . . . Strangites initially followed the typical
Latter Day Saint interpretation of Ezekiel 37, identifying the stick of Judah
as the Bible. However, by July 1849 Strangites looked forward to “the day not
far distant when the stick of Judah shall come forth in its purity, and be
united with the stick of Ephraim.” (“The Lamanites, Gospel Herald, July
26, 1849) As the Book of the Law was published, Strang spoke of the translation
of the brass plates as the stick of Judah. He believed its name came from the
fact that he as a descendant of Judah had translated it. (Prophetic Controversy;
The Book of the Law, 2nd ed; 2 Nephi 3:12) (Christine Elyse Blythe and
Christopher James Blythe, “Strangite Scripture,” in Open Canon: Scriptures
of the Latter Day Tradition, ed. Christine Elyse Blythe, Christopher James
Blythe, and Jay Burton [Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2022], 178,
179, 180)
