Response to Denver's blog calling Brazil Plates Bogus

1. He says the correct angel that gave the plates to Joseph Smith Jr. wasn't Moroni, but Nephi
2. Joseph Smith Jr. became the custodian of the plates.
3. If anyone gets the plates today, they will come from Joseph and he was never in Brazil (to deposit them there).
4. Angels will not do for man what man can do for themselves.
5. Moroni was not resurrected and so would not be delivering plates.
6. He hasn't bothered to ask God

1. Although Joseph might have named the angel that appeared to him as Nephi, Moroni could have met Joseph at the Hill Cumorah. The Joseph Smith Papers project has concluded that the name Nephi came from a clerical error by Mulholland.
2. From this excerpt in Joseph Smith - History, we could conclude that Moroni received the plates, so that he could later give them to another.
   
   59 At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. On the twenty-second day of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, having gone as usual at the end of another year to the place where they were deposited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up to me with this charge: that I should be responsible for them; that if I should let them go carelessly, or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off; but that if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them, until he, the messenger, should call for them, they should be protected.
   60 ... When, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I delivered them up to him; and he has them in his charge until this day, being the second day of May, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight.
   
   
3. After Joseph received the plates so that he could show them to the 8 witnesses, we have no information about what happened to them. If Joseph sealed them up and hid them, then he was the custodian of them now. And that would mean that Joseph should be the one that gives them to someone, the same logic would imply that Moroni would be the one that gave them to Joseph and not Nephi. As it says in the Title page of the Book of Mormon:
   
   Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile—The interpretation thereof by the gift of God.
4. Yes, angels will not do what man can do himself. So we have to decide if man could have retrieved the plates and who had custody of them.
5. Moroni wasn't resurrected. When Denver was discussing the name of the angel that appeared to Joseph. He made this comment:
   
   Nephi is the more likely to have been resurrected considering when he was born and when he died. Post-Christ era resurrection is normally confined to the Second Coming. (See, e.g., D&C 133: 56.) There are exceptions, but they are for highly specific reasons, based on individual covenants.
   It is possible that Moroni fits this condition and was resurrected.
6. I asked Denver if he had asked God about these Brazil plates. He replied that he had not asked god and explained,
   
   “One of the reasons I mentioned that I had reasoned this out and not asked God was to leave open the freedom to choose to accept and believe these claims. The best way to acquire the ability to distinguish between truth and error is to actually make the choice. If someone chooses wrongly, that is not bad. It is educational and gives experience. People who cannot tell the difference NEED to make mistakes so they gain the experience and wisdom to tell the difference.”
   I don’t know why Denver wants the opportunity to be wrong about the Sealed Book.