Joseph Smith indicated that the golden plates would be translated by his firstborn son, who he claimed would fulfill this role as a child. At the time, Emma Smith was pregnant; however, the child, born on 15 June 1828, was stillborn and displayed significant birth defects. Tragically, Joseph and Emma’s second son also died shortly after birth in 1831, just over a year following the publication of the Book of Mormon. Their first surviving son, Joseph Smith III, was born in 1832 and later, with his mother, played a foundational role in creating the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now the Community of Christ), opposing Brigham Young’s leadership of the LDS Church.

Critics often interpret these events as undermining Joseph’s prophetic credibility, while skeptics may view them as evidence that religious claims are inherently unreliable.

“Smith probably said the plates would be shown to a few chosen individuals at some future time because Hale asked ‘who was to be the first who would be allowed to see [them]?’ Perhaps sensitive to Emma’s feelings, Isaac reported only that Smith said it was to be ‘a young child.’ Other residents of Harmony were less reserved. Sophia Lewis, the wife of Levi Lewis, who was a relative of Isaac Hale’s wife, remembered that Smith said ‘the book of plates could not be opened under penalty of death by any other person but his (Smith’s) first-born, which was to be a male’ (Sophia Lewis, Statement, 1834; in ‘Mormonism,’ Susquehanna Register and Northern Pennsylvanian 9; 1 May 1834). Joshua McKune, who married Esther Lewis, a niece of Isaac Hale’s wife, said Smith ‘told him that (Smith’s) first-born child was to translate the characters, and hieroglyphics, upon the plates into our language at the age of three years’ (Joshua McKune, Statement, 1834; in ‘Mormonism,’ Susquehanna Register and Northern Pennsylvanian 9; 1 May 1834). By this time, Emma was three to four months pregnant. While Smith correctly predicted the infant’s sex, he did not foresee that the child would die shortly after birth.”

^{Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 30 April 2004), 111-112.}