Smith did not retranslate the material that Harris had lost because he said that if he did, evil men would alter the manuscript in an effort to discredit him. Smith said that instead, he had been divinely ordered to replace the lost material with Nephi’s account of the same events.[29] When he got to the end of the book, Smith was told that God had foreseen the loss of the early manuscript and had prepared the same history in an abridged format that emphasized religious history, the “Small Plates of Nephi.”[30] Smith transcribed these records, and they appeared as the first part of the book. When published in 1830, the Book of Mormon contained a statement about the lost 116 pages, as well as the Testimony of Three Witnesses and the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, who claimed to have seen and handled the Golden Plates.
Smith was afraid that if he translated the “golden plates” again and the lost manuscript turned up then he would be proven a faker. Now if God really translated the plates using Smith and his “seer stone” the manuscripts would be identical. Of course such is not the case as it was a fraud all along. How convient that “God” would put in the book of Mormon a notice about the missing papers to save Joseph Smiths behind. The LDS actually believe this but to us of a sane and rational mind we can see right through the hoax.
