Presented 100 feet from the grave of Martin Harris, the musical drama and pageant about his life, "Martin Harris, the Man Who Knew," played to capacity audiences Aug. 19-20, 23-26. The final performance is Aug. 27.
An estimated 20,000 people will have seen the production this year, with about 2,500 attending nightly.Staged in the Martin Harris Memorial Amphitheater, the pageant has been presented annually since 1983. Its producers assert that it reflects the most accurate and comprehensive research on the life of Martin Harris, whose name appears in each edition of the Book of Mormon as one of the Three Witnesses to that volume of scripture.
"Patriarch Joseph Smith Sr., father of the Prophet Joseph Smith, gave a blessing to Martin Harris in Kirtland, Ohio," said Rhett S. James, author of the pageant-play. "The patriarch promised him that tens of thousands would hear his testimony and that it would not be confounded by the persecutors and opponents of the truth and restoration, that attempts to discredit his testimony and his work would fail, and that the Lord would bear him up as a light to all nations."
The pageant, first produced by Valdo Benson, a brother of President Ezra Taft Benson, helps fulfill that prophecy by Patriarch Smith, James said.
"Since 1983 nearly 100,000 people have heard through the pageantT the testimony of Martin Harris and his experience with Joseph Smith and the publication of the Book of Mormon and its message of Jesus Christ and of the principle of faithful loyalty to the prophets of the living God," James added.
The fourth generation since Martin Harris is now hearing the testimony, James noted, partly due to the pageant.
When Harris arrived in Utah in August 1870 to be reunited with his wife and children, he was warmly received by Brigham Young, the General Authorities and Church members.
Harris began a series of speaking assignments, organized by General Authorities, in which he shared his testimony with a second generation of Church members, who had not experienced the restoration of the Church in the New York period.
After his speaking tour in Salt Lake City, he joined his son, Martin Harris Jr., in Smithfield, Utah. Hundreds of Church members journeyed there to meet him and hear his testimony.
James said it apparently became somewhat fashionable for local Mormon boys to ask Harris if he believed the Book of Mormon were true. He would always respond, "No, I don't believe it to be true, I know it to be true."
Even in his later years, Harris always tried to stand when he bore witness, the pageant author noted.
After Harris' death in 1875, a second generation of men and women who personally heard his testimony were called upon to repeat what they had heard. James said Elder L. Tom Perry of the Council of the Twelve has recounted hearing William Pilkington tell of listening to Harris bear his testimony.
In his autobiography Pilkington wrote that Harris, then 92, bore testimony to him; that he "stood up before me on that memorable occasion and, putting his walking cane in his left hand, straightened up and striking his breast with his right hand, exclaimed: `I am Martin Harris.' Can anyone imagine my feelings. . . ?"
"Elder Perry's was a third generation to bear witness of the testimony of Martin Harris," James said. "It is this generation that has created the historical musical drama and pageant, `Martin Harris: the Man Who Knew.' "
