This is a significant find. However, I disagree with the author’s conclusion that it contradicts the uniqueness of Jesus. My reading of this article reenforces the belief that Jesus was the prophesied messiah.

I think the tablet is called a "prophecy." So where's the controversy?

I,too think that this validates Jesus Christ as the true Messiah. Funny how people can't see what is literally right in front of them!

The Jewish idea of "three days" is also found in the record of the prophet Jonah who was "in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." The message contained on this story's stone tablet, like the story of Jonah, seem to me to reinforce the idea that Jesus was in fact the true Messiah.

Prophecies are always easy to declare AFTER the fact.

Take Joseph Smith's supposed prophecy of the Civil War, apparently given 29 years before it happened (in 1861)!

Naïve believers are wrong to think this is a fulfilled prophecy.

Although this “prophecy” and “revelation” was supposedly recorded in people’s journals around 1832 or 1833, it was NOT included in the 1833 Book of Commandments, nor in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, despite these books being explicitly compiled for the purpose of recording Joseph Smith’s revelations and prophecies! Neither was the revelation/prophecy included in the 1844-1846 Nauvoo editions.

Section 87 was not included in the Doctrine and Covenants until the 1876 edition – a full 15 years AFTER the U.S. Civil War had begun!

You would think that a prophecy about “the time …that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place” and culminate in “a full end of all nations” would be important enough to include immediately! To publish to the world the warning of how all nations would be brought to an end!

Naïve believers are always wrong.

It's too bad that Jesus was only dead for a day and a half and therefore doesn't fit the Jewish expectation.

Nelson. Perhaps section 87 wasn't included until 1876. I'm not sure what your point is. It was mentioned by Joseph long before it was included. Because something wasn't included in a book doesn't mean it didn't exist independently of that book. And to you, Thomas: I'm not sure where you get the day and a half from. Jewish time concept is different from ours. If Jesus died before sunset on Friday, that was day one. Saturday was day two. Sunday was day three.

Those translating this stone do not imply the messiah story is a prophecy, but the story of an earlier messiah. Jewish tradition has held that the messiah would come in power to redeem their people and usually this has been a belief in a warrior/military messiah. It is casting a new light on their perspective on Jesus that perhaps the "suffering messiah" is a legitimate messiah version in their literature with this story that pre-dates Jesus.

To Christians this information may suggest that Jesus Christ was not the only person to fit the messianic prophecies of the ancient Jewish writings.

This doesn't prove anything. Tablets and plates can only be translated correctly by the president of the church. If they do not come through the correct channel, we can set it aside as false.

to:Gilly@5:48
Your narrow LDS view would certainly come as a surprise to Dr. Elaine Pagels, Karen King and all the other scholars from Princeton and other great institutions of learning all over the world. "Tablets and plates can only be translated correctly by the president of the church"...Really?

Gilly, what an ignorant, conceited, narrowminded, -- alright, I'm just going to say it: stupid-- comment to make! We LDS have to overcome so much already in order to be treated somewhat normal without that kind of nonsense being spread!

Readers, forget about Gilly, he or she does NOT represent the views of Latter-day Saints.

Not naive,

I don't see what is so hard to understand. If Joseph Smith really prophesied the Civil War, why wasn't that prophecy published immediately in the Book of Commandments (1833), or the revised and updated Doctrine and Covenants (1835), and was not published until 44 years AFTER it was supposed to have been received (as revelation), and 15 years AFTER the actual Civil War!

This tablet is no different. Any naive LDS person who believes (like Don, Dave, kathyn, and Chris) that this tablet contains a "prophecy" of Jesus is just engaging in wishful thinking and post hoc explanations. That may make them feel all warm and fuzzy, but it is NOT TRUE!

I didn't know the Civil War Prophecy wasn't put in the D&C until after the Civil War!

Is that really true? Where can I find a good source for that?

To Nelson: Naive sceptics can also be wrong.

Jerry W.

Yes, but naive skeptics are not so full of themselves as to try to dupe the ignorant masses by claiming revelations and making prophecies.