The schoolteacher who walked from Manchester to Harmony with a personal manifestation in his heart; the scribe whose hand wrote down almost every word of the Book of Mormon that has come down to us; the disciple who kneeled with Joseph at the Susquehanna and received the Aaronic Priesthood from John the Baptist and the Melchizedek Priesthood from Peter, James, and John; one of the Three Witnesses who beheld the angel and the plates; the Second Elder of the restored Church; the man who fell away for ten years and never once denied the witness; and the man who came back, was rebaptized, and died in the arms of the Whitmer household with the testimony of the gold plates still on his lips.
What He Gave Us
Begin with the simplest fact of his legacy. The Book of Mormon you hold in your hands was, in its actual physical production, written down by Oliver Cowdery's hand. From April 7, 1829, when he sat down across the table from Joseph Smith at Harmony, until the last lines of Moroni's farewell in late June 1829, Oliver was the principal scribe for the translation. Joseph spoke; Oliver wrote. The translation of every page from Mosiah 1 through Moroni 10 — the entirety of what we read in the published Book of Mormon, since the original 116-page abridgment of Lehi was lost to Martin Harris — flowed through Oliver's pen. The translation of the small plates of Nephi, which the Lord had Joseph re-translate in place of the lost 116 pages (1 Nephi through Words of Mormon), was also taken down by Oliver. When you read the words I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents or the natural man is an enemy to God or and now my beloved brethren, all those who are of the house of Israel, and all ye ends of the earth, I speak unto you as the voice of one crying from the dust, you are reading words that Oliver Cowdery's hand was the first to write down in the language we read.
He did this in roughly sixty-five working days. The translation of the present Book of Mormon took him from April 7 to late June 1829 — about twelve weeks, with travel and rest days subtracted, about sixty-five days of actual scribal work. The text that came through his pen runs to over 270,000 words. He wrote, on average, more than 4,000 words a day, almost all of it dictated, almost all of it in a single draft, almost none of it ever revised. The achievement is one of the most remarkable acts of sustained scribal labor in the history of religious literature. Mahatma Gandhi's first draft of an autobiography, Tolstoy's first draft of his late religious writing, the original manuscripts of John Wesley's journals — none of them approach Oliver's pace or his accuracy. He took down the Book of Mormon at four thousand words a day for sixty-five days from a man speaking aloud without notes, in a single draft, and that draft is what we read. The work itself is a witness for the translation: it could not have been done at that pace from a complex prepared manuscript; it could only have been done by dictation from a man receiving the words by revelation. Oliver's pen is one of the strongest external evidences the Book of Mormon possesses for its own miraculous origin.
That is what he gave us. The Book of Mormon's text in its physical written form.
But that is not all. He also gave us:
The Aaronic Priesthood, restored by John the Baptist on May 15, 1829 at the Susquehanna River, by laying his hands on Joseph and Oliver together (D&C 13). The priesthood that ordains every Latter-day Saint young man, that administers the sacrament every Sunday, that baptizes every convert. That priesthood was restored to both Joseph and Oliver in a single ministration. Oliver received it the same hour Joseph did. Without Oliver, the angel could not have ministered to the two equal-standing recipients the priesthood requires for ordination. The text of D&C 13 names them together. The Aaronic Priesthood of the restored Church has, in the form of its restoration, Oliver Cowdery's head as well as Joseph Smith's under the angel's hands.
The Melchizedek Priesthood, restored by Peter, James, and John between Harmony and Colesville (the exact date is uncertain, but it was after the Aaronic restoration in May 1829; D&C 27:12 and 128:20 are the confirming texts). Again, ordained to Joseph and Oliver together. The high priesthood of the restored Church — the priesthood by which apostles are sealed and prophets are anointed, the priesthood that holds the keys of the kingdom in every generation — was restored with Oliver's head under the apostolic hands alongside Joseph's. The two of them, kneeling together at the river, received the priesthood that would order the Church.
The witness of the gold plates, given by Moroni to Oliver, David Whitmer, and Joseph in late June 1829 in the grove near the Whitmer home at Fayette. The Testimony of the Three Witnesses, printed at the front of every Book of Mormon since 1830, bears Oliver's signature alongside Martin Harris's and David Whitmer's. The angel showed them the plates. They saw them with their own eyes. They heard the voice of God declare from heaven that the translation was true. They were commanded to bear witness of these things. Their testimony stands as the legal-eyewitness foundation of the entire Restoration — three independent men, each of them ordinary, each of them subsequently estranged from Joseph during different periods of their lives, each of them given multiple opportunities and motives to deny the witness, and each of them held to it until death. Oliver's witness, signed in 1829 and reaffirmed on his deathbed in 1850, is one of the load-bearing testimonies of the Restoration. Without his witness, the Three Witnesses' Testimony has only two voices.
The keys of the gathering, the Abrahamic covenant, and the sealing power, received in the Kirtland Temple on April 3, 1836 (D&C 110). Moses appeared and committed the keys of the gathering of Israel. Elias appeared and committed the keys of the Abrahamic dispensation. Elijah appeared and committed the keys of the sealing power that would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. All three keys were committed to Joseph and Oliver together. The temple work of the restored Church — every endowment, every sealing, every binding of family for eternity — runs on the keys Joseph and Oliver received in the Kirtland Temple. The keys are still in the hand of the President of the Church today. They were first delivered to Oliver and Joseph as a pair.
Read these four givings together. Oliver Cowdery's hand was on the production of the Book of Mormon, on the restoration of both priesthoods, on the witness of the gold plates, and on the committal of the temple keys. No one in the Restoration except Joseph Smith himself stands at all four of these foundational moments. No one. Sidney Rigdon was not present for any of them. Hyrum Smith was not present for any of them. The Whitmer brothers were present at the witness but not at the other three. Martin Harris was present at the witness but not at the other three. Oliver alone is at the four foundational acts of the Restoration alongside Joseph. This is why the revelations to him are so weighty. This is why he is named Assistant President and Second Elder of the Church. This is why D&C 6:25 calls him a seer. His position in the Restoration is structurally singular.
That is what he gave us. The four foundational acts of the Restoration, in each of which his head was alongside Joseph's under the heavens' opening hand.
The Name He Carried
Oliver is from the Latin Olivarius, derived ultimately from oliva, olive tree. The olive tree is one of the great symbols of the covenant in scripture. Jacob 5 — the allegory of the olive tree, the longest single chapter in the Book of Mormon — depicts the house of Israel as the Lord of the vineyard's olive tree, broken and grafted and re-grafted through the dispensations. In Hebrew, the olive is zayit (זַיִת), and the olive-anointing-oil is šemen zayiṯ (שֶׁמֶן זַיִת), the consecrating oil that anoints prophets, priests, and kings. The olive tree at Gethsemane (the gat-šemānîm, oil-press) is where Christ took the weight of the atonement. The dove returning to Noah's ark bore an olive branch in its beak as the sign of the covenant renewed (Genesis 8:11). The olive is the covenant tree.
To name a boy Oliver is to name him one of the olive tree. The naming did the work. Oliver was of the olive tree — grafted into the work of the Lord of the vineyard's covenant in his own dispensation. He was anointed — by the priesthood that was poured upon his head with Joseph's. He was of the gathering of Israel — he received the keys from Moses, the gathering-keys, in the Kirtland Temple. He was the disciple whose name was the name of the tree of the covenant. Even his estrangement and return is the olive-tree pattern — grafted, broken off, regrafted in the final season. Jacob 5's allegory could have been written for him personally. The olive-named disciple lived the olive-tree life.
Cowdery is the family name. The English Cowdery probably comes from a place-name (the cow-pasture or the cow-meadow), but the family identity carried weight in Vermont and upstate New York. Oliver's father William Cowdery had been a Mason and a man of moderate education; the family was respectable but not wealthy. Oliver inherited from his father an interest in religion and a willingness to seek. He had no formal college training. He was a schoolteacher and a clerk. He had the disciplined penmanship of a schoolteacher and the careful reading of a clerk. Both gifts would matter in his scribal calling.
The Burning In The Closet
The setting of Oliver's coming to Joseph is one of the most beautiful pre-translation scenes in the Restoration.
In the autumn of 1828, Oliver had taken a teaching position at the district school near Manchester, New York. As was custom, he boarded with families in the school's district. He boarded for a time with the family of Joseph Smith Sr. — Joseph's father and mother — and over the winter, in conversations at the family hearth, he heard the account of the gold plates, the angel Moroni, the translation that Joseph was attempting in Pennsylvania. Joseph Smith Sr. was the father of the prophet. Lucy Mack Smith was the mother. The Smith family hearth in 1828 was the kind of place where the angel's recent appearances were spoken of as ordinary fact. Oliver listened. Oliver pondered. Oliver did what the Restoration's gospel asks every honest seeker to do: he took the matter to the Lord in private prayer.
The Lord gave him a personal manifestation. Joseph would later describe it in his history (recounted in Joseph Smith—History 1:67 and in the editorial introduction to D&C 6): Oliver received a witness, by the Holy Ghost, that the matter was of God. The personal manifestation that the work was true is what put his feet on the road to Harmony. He did not go on Joseph Smith Sr.'s testimony alone; he went on his own witness from the Spirit. Same pattern as the Restoration's standard call to every soul — if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally (James 1:5). Oliver asked. He received. He walked.
He arrived at Harmony, Pennsylvania, on April 5, 1829. He had walked, or partly walked and partly traveled by farm wagon, the roughly 175 miles between Manchester and Harmony in early-spring weather over indifferent roads. He arrived a stranger. Joseph and Emma had been there since the prior winter. Martin Harris had been the scribe before Oliver, and had lost the 116 pages the previous summer. Joseph had received the plates back from Moroni only in September 1828 and had been waiting through the winter for the right scribe to come. Oliver knocked on the door. Joseph received him. They sat down together. By April 7, two days after his arrival, Oliver was at Joseph's side with paper and quill, and the translation that had stalled for nearly a year resumed.
Read this carefully. The translation of the Book of Mormon as we have it began two days after Oliver Cowdery's arrival at Harmony. He had walked from Vermont via New York to Pennsylvania carrying a private spiritual manifestation in his heart, and within forty-eight hours of his arrival he had taken his place as the scribe of the most consequential translation in the history of the Restoration. The Lord's timing in this is one of the providentially most beautiful facts of the Restoration. The right man arrived at the right door at the right hour with the right witness already burning in his heart. He did not have to be persuaded that Joseph was a prophet — the Lord had already persuaded him by the Spirit. He did not have to be talked into the work — he had walked 175 miles to do it. He sat down. The work began.
The Hand On The Translation
What was it actually like, those sixty-five days?
We have descriptions from both Joseph and Oliver. Joseph would describe the translation as having been done by the gift and power of God, using the Urim and Thummim or a seerstone. The exact mechanics — whether Joseph saw the English text appear in the instrument or whether the meaning came to his mind and he then phrased it in English — are debated in scholarship, but the basic process is clear. Joseph received the text and dictated it aloud. Oliver wrote it down. There were no notes. There was no prepared manuscript. The text came in continuous dictation. When Oliver had to make corrections — which he did, occasionally, in the original Manuscript — they were standard scribal corrections (a misheard word, an inverted letter pair), not theological revisions. The text Oliver wrote down is, to a very high degree, the text we read.
Oliver would later describe the experience in language that has become canonical for understanding what translation by the gift of God means. Writing in 1834 (Messenger and Advocate, October 1834), he said:
These were days never to be forgotten — to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, "Interpreters," the history, or record, called "The book of Mormon."
Days never to be forgotten. He was twenty-two years old. He was sitting across the table from a man receiving the Book of Mormon by direct revelation. He was the first hand to write down what the world has now received as the keystone of the new dispensation. He knew what was happening. He never lost the awareness of what was happening. Through all the later years of estrangement and reconciliation, the memory of those days — sitting under the voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven — never left him.
The Lord, recognizing what Oliver was doing, gave him in those same months one of the most beautiful descriptions of how revelation works that exists in any scripture. D&C 8:2–3, given to Oliver in April 1829 (the same month the translation began):
Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground.
This is the BoM-era's clearest articulation of what the gift of revelation feels like to a faithful disciple. Not a voice in the ear. Not a vision in the air. In your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost. The thought arrives. The heart confirms. The Spirit dwells. This is the spirit of revelation — and the Lord names it as the same spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea. The same Spirit. Across the dispensations. From Moses to Oliver Cowdery. The doctrine the Lord gives Oliver here is the doctrine that grounds every Latter-day Saint's personal revelation in every generation since.
The Lord went further. D&C 9 records Oliver's brief attempt to translate, and the failure of that attempt — you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me (D&C 9:7). The Lord teaches Oliver what the translation actually requires: you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong (D&C 9:8–9). This is the burning of the bosom and the stupor of thought — the diagnostic of the spirit of revelation as the Latter-day Saint tradition has named it for nearly two centuries. The doctrine is given to Oliver. The doctrine the Restoration has used to teach every missionary, every disciple, every soul-in-decision how to know the Lord's mind is the doctrine the Lord gave Oliver to teach him why he had not been able to translate.
Oliver, in his attempt and his failure, became the occasion for the Lord to teach the entire Church what spiritual decision-making is. The pattern in D&C 9 is the pattern every Latter-day Saint is taught from childhood. Study it out. Ask. Listen for the burning of the bosom or the stupor of thought. Decide accordingly. The pattern is Oliver's. The doctrine emerged because the Lord was teaching him.
The Riverbank
The Aaronic Priesthood restoration is one of the most quietly miraculous events in the Restoration.
The translation, by mid-May 1829, had reached the chapters in 3 Nephi where Christ teaches the Nephite multitude about baptism. Joseph and Oliver, reading what they were translating, realized they had no authority to baptize each other. The doctrine was on the page. The authority was not in their hands. They went into the woods near the Susquehanna River, on May 15, 1829, to pray. They wanted to know how baptism could be administered.
The answer came in the form of an angel descending in a cloud of light. The angel laid his hands on their heads — both of them, simultaneously — and ordained them to the Aaronic Priesthood, saying:
Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness. (D&C 13)
The angel was John the Baptist — the same prophet who had baptized Christ in the Jordan eighteen centuries earlier. He commanded them to baptize each other. They went into the Susquehanna. Joseph baptized Oliver. Oliver baptized Joseph. They came out of the water and received the Holy Ghost and did prophesy of many things which should shortly come to pass (Joseph Smith—History 1:73). They were the first two persons of the restored dispensation to receive baptism by authorized priesthood and the first two to receive the Holy Ghost in the new dispensation.
Read this carefully. Oliver was at the riverbank. The priesthood that holds the keys of the ministering of angels, of repentance, of baptism — the priesthood that orders every Aaronic Priesthood ordination of every twelve-year-old boy in the Church in our day — was committed in its restoration to Joseph and Oliver as a pair. The angel did not single out Joseph. The angel ordained both of them. The priesthood entered the earth in the new dispensation through two heads under the angel's hands. Oliver's head was one of them.
A few weeks later — the exact date is uncertain but probably late May or early June 1829 — Peter, James, and John appeared and ordained Joseph and Oliver to the Melchizedek Priesthood (D&C 27:12). The high priesthood, the apostolic priesthood, the priesthood that holds the keys of the kingdom of God in every generation — was also committed to both of them. The Melchizedek Priesthood by which a stake president presides, by which a bishop is set apart, by which an apostle is ordained, by which a prophet receives his calling — entered the earth in the new dispensation through two heads under the apostolic hands.
This is structurally important. The Lord did not give Joseph the priesthood alone. The Lord gave it to Joseph and Oliver together. Same pattern as the priesthood being conferred on Aaron and his sons together in Leviticus 8 — the original priesthood was conferred on a pair (Moses ordained Aaron, and then Aaron's sons together with Aaron, so that the office had successor-witnesses built in from the start). The Lord follows the same pattern in the Restoration. The new priesthood needs at least two head-witnesses so that the testimony of two or more shall establish every word (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1). Joseph and Oliver were the two. The priesthood that orders the modern Church entered through both of them.
This is why D&C 27:12 names Peter, James, and John as having ordained you and Oliver. This is why D&C 128:20, in Joseph's later reflection, names the voice of Peter, James, and John in the wilderness between Harmony, Susquehanna County, and Colesville, Broome County, on the Susquehanna river, declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fulness of times. This is why the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was, by D&C 18:37, to be chosen by the Three Witnesses — Oliver, David, and Martin. The Lord built the Restoration's structural authority on Oliver's head as much as on Joseph's. They were the two who carried the keys from the heavens to the earth.
The Three Witnesses
The witness scene in the grove near the Whitmer home in late June 1829 has been described many times. The exact date is not preserved; it was just before the translation finished. Joseph, Oliver, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris went into the grove to pray. Martin Harris, after a time, withdrew, feeling his presence was preventing the answer. The remaining three knelt and prayed. The angel Moroni appeared. He showed them the plates. He showed them the breastplate, the sword of Laban, the Liahona, and the Urim and Thummim — the very sacred objects the Book of Mormon had named. The voice of God spoke from the heavens, declaring the translation was true and commanding them to bear record of what they had seen and heard.
The Three Witnesses' Testimony has stood at the front of every Book of Mormon since 1830:
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon…
Oliver's signature is on this document. He signed it in 1829, when he was twenty-two years old. He had eight more years of full fellowship with Joseph and the Church. He had ten years of estrangement. He had two years of restored fellowship before his death. Across all of those years and circumstances, he never once denied the testimony. He was offered every conceivable inducement to deny it. He had every motive a man could have to recant it, during the years of his bitterness toward Joseph. He never did. To every visitor in his attorney's office in Tiffin, Ohio, in the early 1840s, who asked him about the gold plates, his answer was the same: I saw what the Testimony says I saw, and I declared what I declared, and the Testimony is true. When he addressed the Church conference at Kanesville in 1848 requesting rebaptism, he stood up and publicly reaffirmed the Testimony of the Three Witnesses. On his deathbed in 1850 at his brother-in-law David Whitmer's home in Richmond, Missouri, his last words on the subject (as recorded by Phineas Young and others who were present) were: Brother Phineas, I want you to know that I am dying, and I would not deny the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon if I could… I have beheld with my eyes and handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was transcribed.
This is one of the most consistent multi-decade testimonies in religious history. The Three Witnesses each lived out the rest of their lives with the testimony intact. Oliver was the most theologically educated of the three and held the most theologically significant positions in the early Church. He was best positioned of the three to know what he had seen. His persistence in the testimony, through years when he had every personal reason to walk away from it, is one of the strongest external evidences the Book of Mormon possesses. He was there. He saw the plates. He saw the angel. He heard the voice from heaven. He never went back on it.
The Kirtland Temple
April 3, 1836. A Sunday afternoon. The Kirtland Temple, which the saints had built with their hands and consecrated only a few days earlier. After the regular sacrament service, the congregation was dismissed. Joseph and Oliver remained behind. They drew the veils that separated the western pulpits. They knelt at the high pulpit. They prayed.
What followed is D&C 110.
First, Christ Himself appeared, standing on the breastwork of the pulpit. He spoke. He identified Himself as the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain. He accepted the temple. He promised that His name should be on the place, and that thousands and tens of thousands should rejoice in consequence of the blessings which should be poured out, and the endowment with which His servants had been endowed.
Then Moses appeared. He committed the keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the north. The gathering keys — the keys by which Israel in its scattered condition would be called home in the latter days, the keys that order every mission and every conversion to the Restoration — were committed.
Then Elias appeared. He committed the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham, saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed. The Abrahamic covenant keys — the keys by which the patriarchal covenant of Genesis 12 and 15 and 17 is renewed in the latter days, the keys by which the children of the covenant are sealed to Abraham as their father — were committed.
Then Elijah appeared. He committed the keys of the sealing power, that the hearts of the fathers should turn to the children, and the hearts of the children should turn to their fathers. The sealing keys — the keys by which families are bound for eternity in the temples of the Restoration, the keys by which Malachi 4:5–6 is fulfilled, the keys by which every temple sealing in our day is authorized — were committed.
All four of these manifestations were given to Joseph and Oliver together. Oliver saw Christ standing on the breastwork. Oliver saw Moses. Oliver saw Elias. Oliver saw Elijah. The keys were committed to the two of them. The temple work of the Restoration runs, in its priesthood-key authority, on what Joseph and Oliver received at the Kirtland Temple on April 3, 1836. Oliver was there. Oliver was the second witness without whom the Lord's pattern of by the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established (2 Corinthians 13:1) would have been incomplete in this most important committal of all.
The keys are still in the hand of the President of the Church today. The President's authority traces back, in unbroken succession, to Joseph Smith. Joseph received those keys with Oliver. Every temple sealing performed in our day, every gathering of Israel that proceeds through the missionary work of the Church, every patriarchal blessing pronouncing the covenant of Abraham on a soul, rests on the keys committed to Joseph and Oliver together at the Kirtland Temple. Oliver's hand is on the temple work of the Restoration in the same way his hand was on the translation of the Book of Mormon. The structural authority of the modern Church passes through him.
The Wandering
Two years later, in April 1838 at Far West, Missouri, Oliver was excommunicated.
The charges were serious. He had pursued personal lawsuits against fellow saints in civil court (against the Church's teaching that disputes between brethren should be settled in priesthood councils, not the gentile courts). He had violated the Word of Wisdom. He had encouraged opposition to Joseph's leadership during the Kirtland banking crisis of 1837. He had refused to retract or modify his criticisms when called to do so by the Church's councils. He had not appeared in person at his disciplinary hearing — he sent a written response, dignified but unrepentant. He was cut off from the Church.
For ten years thereafter, he lived outside the Church. He practiced law at Tiffin, Ohio, and later at Elkhorn, Wisconsin. He represented clients in courtroom matters; he was a respected attorney. He was elected to public office briefly. He raised what remained of his family (most of his children had died young; only his daughter Maria Louise survived to adulthood). He kept his head down. He did not publicly attack the Church. He did not write tracts against Joseph Smith. He did not lend his name to any of the various dissenter movements that emerged in those years.
And he kept the testimony intact. Throughout the ten years of estrangement, when any number of journalists and clergymen sought him out to record his denial of the Book of Mormon — denials that would have brought him substantial money, social standing, and vindication in the religious establishment — he never gave them what they wanted. To every inquirer, the answer was the same. I saw what the Testimony says I saw. The Testimony is true. The Book of Mormon is what we said it was. He had been cut off from the Church. He had not been cut off from the witness. The witness was on a different level. The witness was real, in his own eyes, regardless of his ecclesiastical standing.
This is one of the most spiritually instructive features of his life. A man can be at variance with the Church and still be honest about what he saw. Oliver's honesty about the witness, through his years of estrangement, is what makes the witness so durable as external evidence. He had every reason to walk away from it. He never did. If he had been making it up, those would have been the years to recant. He did not recant. The witness was real, and he knew it was real, and he held it through the years when nothing else of his earlier life held.
The Return
In late October 1848, ten years after his excommunication, Oliver Cowdery traveled from Wisconsin to Kanesville, Iowa (now Council Bluffs). He went to find Orson Hyde, the President of the Twelve Apostles, who was overseeing the Iowa saints in the camps before the trek west to the Salt Lake Valley.
On November 12, 1848, at a Church conference at Kanesville, Oliver stood up and addressed the assembled saints. The speech has been preserved in multiple accounts. He confessed his errors. He reaffirmed the Testimony of the Three Witnesses. He bore his witness of the Book of Mormon, of the angel Moroni, of the gold plates. He acknowledged Brigham Young and the Twelve as the legitimate priesthood succession. He asked to be rebaptized into the Church.
Brethren, for a number of years I have been separated from you. I now desire to come back. I wish to come humbly and to be one in your midst. I seek no station. I only wish to be identified with you. I am out of the Church. I am not a member of the Church, but I wish to become a member of it. I wish to come in at the door. I know the door. I have not come here to seek precedence. I come humbly and throw myself upon the decisions of this body, knowing, as I do, that its decisions are right, and should be obeyed.
He was rebaptized by Orson Hyde at Mosquito Creek, Iowa. He intended to gather with the saints to the Salt Lake Valley. He hoped to live out his last years in their company.
He never made it. His health, which had been weakening for some time, deteriorated rapidly through 1849. He traveled to Richmond, Missouri, to spend his last months at the home of his brother-in-law David Whitmer, where he could be cared for by family. He died on March 3, 1850, at the age of forty-three.
His deathbed words, recorded by multiple witnesses, were a final reaffirmation of the testimony of the Book of Mormon and of his witness of the gold plates. I have beheld with my eyes and handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was transcribed. The witness held to the last breath.
What He Was
He was the schoolteacher who arrived at Joseph Smith's door in Harmony, Pennsylvania, on April 5, 1829, with a private spiritual manifestation already burning in his heart, and within forty-eight hours sat down across the table from Joseph and began the work of writing down the Book of Mormon. He was the scribe whose pen produced, in roughly sixty-five working days, the entire present text of the Book of Mormon — Mosiah 1 through Moroni 10 plus the small plates of Nephi — at a sustained pace of more than four thousand words a day, taking dictation from a young man receiving the words by direct revelation, with almost no revisions. He was the disciple who, on May 15, 1829, kneeled with Joseph at the Susquehanna River and received the Aaronic Priesthood under the hands of John the Baptist. He was the disciple who, a few weeks later, kneeled again and received the Melchizedek Priesthood under the hands of Peter, James, and John. He was one of the Three Witnesses, who in late June 1829 saw the angel Moroni show the plates, heard the voice of God declare the translation true, and signed the Testimony that has stood at the front of every Book of Mormon since 1830.
He was the Second Elder of the restored Church, ordained alongside Joseph on April 6, 1830. He was the principal scribe for many of the early revelations. He was a member of the first mission to the Lamanites in 1830, which converted Sidney Rigdon's Campbellite congregation and opened the Ohio period of the Church. He was the Assistant President of the Church under Joseph Smith. He helped choose the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He saw Christ standing on the breastwork of the pulpit at the Kirtland Temple, and received the keys of the gathering of Israel from Moses, the keys of the Abrahamic covenant from Elias, and the keys of the sealing power from Elijah — all of which authorize the temple work of the modern Church.
He was the disciple who, in 1838, was cut off from the Church for serious offenses and lived ten years in estrangement. He was the man who, through all those years and despite every inducement to deny it, never went back on the witness. He was the man who in 1848 traveled to Iowa, stood before a conference of the saints, confessed his errors, reaffirmed the Testimony, and asked to be rebaptized. He was the man who in 1850 died at his brother-in-law's home in Missouri with the testimony of the gold plates still on his lips.
He is the witness for the doctrine that the Restoration was a two-headed work in its founding moments. The Lord did not commit His priesthood, His witness, or His keys to a single man. The Lord committed them to Joseph and Oliver together. The Restoration's structural authority required two witnesses, and Oliver was the second. He is also the witness for the doctrine that a man can fall from his standing in the Church and never lose his honest witness of what he saw. He kept the witness intact through all his estrangement. The witness was on a different level than his discipleship. The witness was real, and his honesty about it never wavered. And he is the witness for the doctrine that the door is open even to those who once stood at the very center and walked away. He came back. He was rebaptized. He died in fellowship with the saints. The Lord welcomed back the second-elder who had walked out and gave him the dignity of dying in His covenant.
He was the olive-named disciple who lived the olive-tree life — grafted, broken off, regrafted in the final season. His hand wrote down the Book of Mormon. His head received the priesthood. His eyes saw the angel. His witness was given and kept. The work in our hands is the work he laid down with Joseph; the keys in the President's hand are the keys he received with Joseph; the prayer of every soul who asks the Lord for confirmation of the burning of the bosom is the prayer the Lord first taught to him. He is at the foundation of the Restoration in a way only Joseph stands deeper.
The translation that came through his pen still feeds the saints every day. The priesthood that fell on his head still ordains every deacon and every apostle. The witness he gave still stands at the front of every printed Book of Mormon. The keys he received still seal every family in every temple. He gave us the work. The work has not stopped because of his estrangement, and it did not start because of his reconciliation. The work runs through what the Lord did through him with Joseph in those four foundational acts of 1829 and 1836. He is, in every meaningful structural sense, the second of the Restoration's founding witnesses. He gave us his hand on every one of the foundational acts. He kept the witness through every season of his life. He died with it intact.
That is what he was.
A twenty-two-year-old schoolteacher walked to Pennsylvania with a private witness from the Holy Ghost, sat down across the table from a young prophet, and wrote down the Book of Mormon in sixty-five days; kneeled with the same prophet at the Susquehanna and received the priesthood from John the Baptist and then from Peter, James, and John; stood in a grove and saw the angel show the gold plates; stood in the Kirtland Temple and saw Christ and received the keys of the gathering and the Abrahamic covenant and the sealing power; was excommunicated and walked away from the Church for ten years; never denied the witness through any of those years; came back, was rebaptized, and died with the testimony of the plates on his lips. He is the second-witness without whom the Restoration's foundational acts would have had only one head under the heavens' opening hand. He is the olive-named disciple who lived the olive-tree life.