President John Taylor, the third President of the Church, explained: "Moses, Elijah, Elias and many other leading characters mentioned in the Scriptures, who had operated in the various dispensations, came and conferred upon Joseph the various keys, powers, rights, privileges and [permissions] which they enjoyed in their times.... Whatever of knowledge, of intelligence, of Priesthood, of powers, of revelations were conferred upon those men in the different ages, were again restored to the earth by the ministration and through the medium of those who held the holy Priesthood of God in the different dispensations in which they lived."
President Taylor also declared: "If you were to ask Joseph what sort of a looking man Adam was, he would tell you at once; he would tell you his size and appearance and all about him. You might have asked him what sort of men Peter, James and John were, and he would have told you. Why? Because he had seen them."
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, pg.103
Problems:
First: Elijah and Elias are the same person; Elias is the N.T. Greek version of his name. Of course the LDS has a really stretched explanation claiming there was another Elias who visited Smith. Smith was probably thinking of Elisha.
Second: These people noted had no “keys, powers, rights, privileges and [permissions] which they enjoyed in their time” to confer upon Smith. I challenge Mormons to demonstrate any of this from the Bible. These men had no power of the priesthood (the priesthood wasn’t given until the time of Moses and it was given to Aaron and his sons). Elijah was just a prophet.
Third: Smith could not have seen Adam, Peter, James or John; these men were dead and God gave only certain men the ability to visit earth and that was to Jesus only. Smith just plain lied.
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