IN THE
BOOK OF MORMON
http://mormonscripturestudies.com/
http://www.realmormonhistory.com/
The Book of Mormon
does not claim to be fully inspired which is the main reason why it is best
ignored. Nevertheless it does contain
prophecies and revelation which it does say are inspired.
Smith lost the
first 116 handwritten pages of the Book of Mormon. They were never recovered and it is believed
that Martin Harris’ wife, Lucy, burned them.
The First and
Second Books of Nephi were the last to be written because Smith after he lost
the book of Lehi continued where he had left off and then
claimed to have translated the replacement meaning these two books of Nephi at
the end. The books contain a prophecy
written after the event. By then the
three witnesses had seen the golden plates and a copy of characters off the
plates had been shown to Charles Anthon both of which events were presented as
prophesied in the Book of Mormon. These
prophecies are false prophecies even though they came true because there is no
reason to think that they were made before the event when they were only “translated”
after. Deuteronomy 18 which Smith fully
accepted and even let it alone in his Inspired Translation of the Bible makes
it clear that the criteria for judging a man to be a true prophet of God has to
be rigid in the extreme meaning that God himself will work to perfect the
prophet’s work and watch over his failures to prevent them doing any harm to
God’s work. Thus the Bible demonstrates
that the Book of Mormon contains false prophecy. It also demonstrates that the Anthon
testimony and the testimony of the three witnesses which were of foundational apologetical importance in primitive Mormonism are of no
validity where God is concerned. I mean
that even if there were plates and real hieroglyphs the failures are sufficient
to show that if any being from another world was behind the work it had to be
Satan. It would mean that Smith only
imagined he was in touch with God and that he was insincere for only frauds
give out prophecies after the events and there was no way God would speak
through him. The Bible may say that Saul
and Solomon were prophets who fell away but it is one thing for a prophet to
fall away from the faith later in life but for a prophet to fall away too fast
and even during his mission shows that that prophet was a fraud. David Whitmer in
his book, The Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon, argued that
Smith was only employed as an inspired translator of the Book of Mormon and had
been rebelling and undermining the word of God from the start. Whitmer thinks he
can admit this and still believe in the Book of Mormon. You can’t have your cake and eat it. Smith was as much a prophet when he received
the words appearing miraculously on the stone or the Urim
and Thummim as he “translated” as Isaiah was when he
felt that God was speaking through him.
The Mormons want
to rely on Whitmer’s testimony of the Book of Mormon
and then they reject this one. They just
treat apologetics like items on a menu.
Paul said that the Lord God does not confuse anybody and when God is
perfect he will make the proofs available so that even the simple person can
see the work. It follows then that the
word of God should be very easy to identify.
The Book of Mormon is hard to prove to be the word of God when you
consider the complicated pros and cons.
This is why a book can only be the word of God if,
A) Its prophecies can be proven beyond dispute
to have been made before the event.
B) If none of the prophecies can be deliberately
fulfilled.
C) If the fulfilment can be proven. For instance, it would be easy to predict
that Anthon will authenticate the characters of the plates and to just send
somebody to him to do it and still say he did it if he did not so you need
proof. We have neither an affidavit from
Harris or anybody else that the meeting between them went as Smith said.
D) If its text could never have been
altered. The Book of Mormon could have
been altered before publication. The “translation”
could have been rewritten.
Cowdery and Smith proofread the book carefully
before sending it off at a few pages a time to the printer. All they had to do was rewrite the book and
burn the original. Inserting new pages
with alien material would have been easy enough. Both Smith and Cowdery
were found guilty of counterfeiting.
Smith wrote that
the three witnesses were the special witnesses for God had made them that (History
of the Church, Vol 1, pp
52-53). But they failed to be convincing
therefore the prophecy in the Book of Mormon that three would be chosen was
false. There is nothing stopping anybody
from counteracting Smith by getting three witnesses who have references to
their honesty from employers and the parish priest but who they know would lie
for them and producing an entirely different Book of Mormon from Smith’s –
perhaps one that denies that Jesus was the Son of God! The prophecy was a failure.
One wonders how
the existing Bible is supposed to show that the Book of Mormon is true like the
Book of Mormon says when Smith rewrote the Bible and added whole new sections
later. It is like using an affidavit
with half the paragraphs missing to convict a man of murder.
1 Nephi 10:4 says
that the Messiah will come six hundred years after Lehi
left
2 Nephi 10 says
that God said that when the Jews returned to their land they would all be
Christians and the scattered Jews would all return to it. The Jews are back in their land today and do
not believe in Jesus. The divine
portions of the Book of Mormon are full of error.
The prophecy that
the Catholic Church would remove covenants and portions from and rewrite the
Bible after the deaths of the apostles (1 Nephi
2 Nephi
Smith said that
the Kinderhook Plates were genuine and even translated them. In fact the plates were a hoax with which it
was planned to make him make a fool of himself.
The Church protests that he didn’t for the Plates were definitely fakes
and holds that the Mormon sources of the time were wrong. But there is not a shred of evidence that the
sources erred. The Church history and
official newspapers said Smith regarded the Plates as genuine by a prophetic
gift from God and stated that they were the religious writings of Ham the son
of Noah. The Church says that the entry
in its history volumes was taken out of the diary of William Clayton and was
not from Smith. The Church says that
recording keeping was far from professional at that time. The Church says it doesn’t have a translation
for the plates and that Smith made no attempt to buy them and holds that this
indicates that Smith knew they were fake.
He did not need to purchase for he published facsimiles of the images on
the plates. The translation was probably
just a few notes before the official version would be put together. The Mormons are so sure then that Smith never
thought God could translate the plates through him and they are the ones that
argue from the scanty documentation of the times that it was just gossip that
he did! This obstinacy is
disturbing. If the translation by Smith
was really hearsay then why did he never lay this rumour to rest for it was a
very serious matter? Top Mormons
believed in what the Church History said and they would know. There was a lot of interest in the plates and
Smith would have discussed them with them.
If people were going to make up stories about Smith finding a new scripture
then why such an unimportant person as Ham?
Why not Nephi or Alma from the Book of Mormon? Then you will ask why Smith chose Ham. But Smith made changes to the Bible to make
it seem that Mormonism was taught in the days of Adam so now his game was to
make it look as if it was taught in the days of Noah after the global flood.
Mormons cry
“Hearsay” when anything bad is brought up about Smith and then they resort to
outright speculation which is more unreliable than hearsay could ever be.
Nephi had a vision
of the future Virgin Mary as an exceptionally white and fair woman (1 Nephi
1 Nephi
Mormon had to
write as little as possible for his book was to be an abridgment of the Nephite scriptures called the Plates of Nephi. He was writing on the plates of Mormon. Yet he mentioned that the fullest account of
what Jesus said was on the Plates of Nephi. God told Mormon to write no more on these
plates to try the people (3 Nephi 26:11).
The people are ourselves. Mormon
was writing for us. This implies that
these Plates of Nephi would come forth and be translated. This never happened. Jesus said that if the people believed the
Book of Mormon they would come forth and if they did not they would not come
forth (3 Nephi 26:9). But we read
between the lines that the people would believe and the Plates of Nephi would
be found. The Mormons believe in the
Book of Mormon so where are these plates?
In Mormon 8, a
prophecy is given that says what conditions will exist when Jesus returns to
earth which is meant to warn that it could be anytime and we do not know the
hour. That is what you are getting at
when you deal with the question of when the Lord will return and refer to signs
that don’t tell you exactly when meaning you should be prepared at all
times. This indicates that there is a
conflict between the book trying to avoid saying when Jesus will come back and
it saying he can’t return until the Plates of Nephi are deciphered. His coming cannot unexpectedly happen as long
as the Plates of Nephi stay in the ground.
1 Nephi 14 and
especially verse 27 shows knowledge of what would be in the Book of Revelation
about the great whoring Roman Church sitting on the many waters and is about
the period in that book. If the Church
were going to rewrite the Bible like it was accused of doing in the Book of
Mormon then it would have rewritten that.
But we know that if the Book of Mormon is true then
Ether 5 has
The verses say the
record can stand up for itself as well.
That directly implies that rational and archaeological but not biblical
(for the Bible is polluted) evidence will support the book. But not one person in the Book including
Jesus himself has been proven to have existed.
The book makes serious archaeological blunders and the rational and
archaeological evidence does not exist.
The testimony from God that the book is true is just a feeling and the
rule is that you must study in your mind if the book is true first before you
can get it. Even if evidence starts
appearing from now on the Book of Mormon is still a hoax for the Book requires
that the evidence must be recognised FROM THE START!!!
Also when Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer saw the
Plates Harris was not present and he saw the plates some time later (The
Case Against Mormonism, Vol 2,
page 40). But this is not as good as
three persons seeing the same thing at the one time which the prophecy would
have intended. The prophecy promises
that the visions of the plates would make the three sure that the plates were
real and the Book of Mormon true. But
the fulfilment had them less sure. And
the visions would not have been enough to convince them that the Book of Mormon
was true because the Book said the Devil could deceive. Mormons would agree that Bernadette seeing
Mary at
Critics of Mormonism argue that the Book of Mormon contains many prophecies which are so detailed that they were clearly written after the event. They say we know the bible prophecies were prophecies for we can prove they were written before the event. (They ignore the fact that the gospels could have been written to fit the prophecies though the events probably did not.) They say the Mormon prophecies tell too much while the Bible ones tell only a few things and are guarded and tend to be obscure. For example, 1 Nephi 10 says has Lehi predicting the time when John the Baptist will come and that he will speak of Jesus and baptise him and that he will be a voice shouting in the wilderness and who says he is not worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals and who will baptise in Bethebara beyond Jordan and say that Jesus is the Lamb of God who will remove the world’s sins. Mormons point to Jesus saying that he will be hated by the people and killed on a cross and hit and spat on and will rise after three days which was a detailed prediction before the event. But for a sceptic the objection that too detailed a prophecy that was not provably written before the event was written after is valid. Lehi’s prophecies bear too large a resemblance to the King James Bible.
Conclusion
The Book of Mormon is not the Word of God and fails to show the signs of being God's word.
A GATHERING OF
SAINTS, Robert Lindsay, Corgi,
A MARVELLOUS WORK
AND A WONDER, LeGrand Richards,
AN ADDRESS TO ALL
BELIEVERS IN CHRIST, David Whitmer, Board of
Publications of The Church of Christ with the Elijah Message, Lacy Road,
Independence, Missouri
ARE THE MORMON
SCRIPTURES RELIABLE? Harry L Ropp, IVP,
ASK YOUR BISHOP,
Ira T Ransom, 317 W 7th South,
CHANGES IN JOSEPH
SMITH’S HISTORY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1965
CHANGING OF THE
REVELATIONS, Apostle Daniel McGregor,
GOD’S WORD FINAL
INFALLIBLE AND FOREVER, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel
Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
CONCISE GUIDE TO
TODAY’S RELIGIONS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks,
1983
HOW TO ANSWER A
MORMON, Robert A Morey, Bethany House Publishers,
JOSEPH SMITH AND
MONEY DIGGING, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1970
JOSEPH SMITH’S
BAINBRIDGE NY COURT TRIALS, Wesley P Walters, Utah Lighthouse Ministry,
LARSON’S BOOK OF
CULTS, Bob Larson, Tyndale,
LEAVING THE SAINTS, Martha Beck, Portrait, London, 2005
MORMONISM SHADOW
OR REALITY? Jerald and Sandra Tanner,
Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1972
MORMONISM, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press,
MORMONISM, MAGIC
AND MASONRY, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1988
MORMONISM, MAMA
AND ME, Thelma Geer,
MORMONISM, THE
PROPHET, THE BOOK AND THE CULT, Peter Bartley, Veritas,
NEW LIGHT ON
MORMON ORIGINS, Rev Wesley P Walters,
NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, Fawn M Brodie, Vintage, New York, 1995
SOME MODERN
FAITHS, Maurice C Burrell and J
THE BIBLE
UNEARTHED,
THE BOOK OF
COMMANDMENTS,
THE BOOK OF
MORMON, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Deseret
Enterprises Ltd, Manchester, UK, 1972
THE CASE AGAINST
MORMONISM, VOL 2, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1968
THE FACTS OF
MORMONISM ARE STRANGER THAN FICTION, Charles Crane and J Edward Decker,
Christian Information Outreach,
THE HUMAN ORIGIN
OF THE BOOK OF MORMON, Wesley P Walters, Ex-Mormons for
WHY THE
THE WEB
THE BOOK OF MORMON
WITNESSES
Excellent
refutation of the claims of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon
Barry R Bickmore
www.geocities.com/Athens/parthenon/2671/EC.html
MORMON
SCHOLARSHIP, APOLOGETICS AND EVANGELICAL NEGLECT, Carl Mosser
and Paul Owen,
www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/cpoint10-2.html#mosserowen
BOOK OF MORMON
QUESTIONS
www.lds-mormon.com/bookofmormonquestions.shtml
MORMONISM
UNVAILED: MORE EVIDENCE THAT IT IS TRUE.
Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry
www.carm.org/lds/unveiled_defended.htm
THE ABRIDGEMENT OF
D&C 137
www.saintsalive./com/mormonism/falseprophetjs/htm
THE BOOK OF
MORMON: ONE TOO MANY M’S Stephen Van Eck
www.infidels.org/library/modern/stephen_eck/toomany.html
EGYPTIAN
CHARACTERS
www.mormonstudies.com/seer2.htm
This shows that
when Smith translated the book of Abraham he invented hieroglyphics where there
was a piece missing from the papyri. The
characters Smith added make no sense to translators. Yet he translated these imaginary
hieroglyphics! His mother and close
associate David Whitmer spoke of Joseph copying
characters of the gold plates of the Book of Mormon before he translated and
that like the Book of Abraham Smith often produced two lines in the manuscript
with the translation of a single character which shows that the whole Book of
Mormon thing was a hoax.
MORMON FARMS
www.xmission.com~country/reason/farms_1.htm
by Jerald and
Sandra Tanner. Gathers evidence that
indicates that it was possible that Smith was insane and had manic
depression.
DR CHARLES ANTHON
RE AUTHENTICITY OF WRITING SAMPLES ALLEGEDLY COPIED FROM THE GOLDEN PLATES
www.mormonism-web.com/anthon.htm
INTERVIEW OF
MARTIN HARRIS
www.xmission.com/~research/about/docum4.htm
COMMENTS ON THE
BOOK OF MORMON WITNESSES: A RESPONSE TO JERALD AND SANDRA TANNER
www.mormons.org/response/bom/witnesses_Roper.htm
A ridiculous
rebuttal that has been taken into account for this book and refuted.
FACTS ON THE BOOK
OF MORMON WITNESSES, PART 1
Excellent
refutation of the reliability of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon
THE STOLEN MANUSCRIPT
www.utlm.org/onlineresources/bom_early_problems/goldenbible_stolenmanuscript.htm
Sunday, 17 February 2008