Bergerite Preachers

Ether 1:100 claims that there is a portion of the Book of Mormon that was “sealed” and wasn’t brought forth by Joseph Smith Jr. Many have speculated on what this means and if it would ever be translated. A couple of years ago a man in Brazil named Mauricio Arthur Berger claimed to have been given the golden plates and translated that sealed portion. He has had his followers, who are chiefly former RLDS, CoC, and LDS, go and proselytize in the spaces of their former faith and chiefly focus on this sealed portion. One former RLDS man has been going to every CoC facebook group and starting conversations about it. You can read one here.

The problem is that Berger’s claims can be completely disproven.

Berger created his own set of plates using the “Caractors” Document for many of the symbols on his prop. The Caractors Document is said to be Nephite symbols and is owned by Community of Christ and is in the Temple Archive. HOWEVER, Berger also used one of Mark Hoffman’s forgeries as a source document and copied it exactly onto his plates. This reasonably only leaves the possibility that Berger didn’t know that Hoffman’s document was a forgery and assumed it was real, and went on to include it on his prop plates because he thought it would validate his claims when it actually completely disproves them. Here is a video if you’d like to learn more about how we know Berger’s book is a fraud.

Be aware of this when people start talking about “The Sealed Portion”. Despite what their missionaries say, it has nothing to do with our tradition as they’ve started their own church called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: The Second Invitation”.