JOSEPH SMITH FALSE PROPHET
THE VISION
OF THE FATHER AND THE SON
MORMON ANSWERS TO THE FIRST VISION REFUTATION
EYE-OPENERS FROM THE BOOK OF COMMANDMENTS
THE
FRAUDULENT TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM
The Mormon Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was founded in 1830 by a man called Joseph Smith who claimed to be a prophet of God. Was this man really a prophet of God? We will soon see that he wasn’t.
THE VISION OF THE FATHER AND THE SON
Smith wrote in his
scripture, The Pearl of Great Price (PGP), that in 1820 when he was
praying about what Church to join the Father and the Son appeared to him to
tell him to join none and that he would become the prophet of a new Church, the
true Church of Jesus Christ. It was not
recorded until 1838. This event is known
in Mormonism as the First Vision. David
O McKay who was a Mormon apostle and leader said that the vision was the
foundation of the Church. Mormon apostle
John A Widtsoe said that the vision is the most important event in the history
of Smith and that everything Smith did after depends on it for validity. If it didn’t happen the other claims Smith
made are false. Smith didn’t get the priesthood until after
1830 and yet he gave a revelation from God in 1832 that can be read in Doctrine
and Covenants 84 that claimed that no
man could see God unless the man had the priesthood. Smith didn’t have the priesthood in 1820 so
he did not see God the Father.
This vision is the
foundation of Mormonism because it was the first time Smith was told there was
no true Church on earth and it was the start of him becoming a prophet. The Church says that it cannot be the true Church
if this vision never took place because Smith cannot be trusted in anything if
he lied in any way concerning this vision.
Smith gave
testimony about a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ. And he reported later visions of the Angel
Moroni who led him to the plates that he translated scripture from called the
Book of Mormon. Both these vision claims
have been disproved by careful research.
But back the Father and Son story.
There is no
evidence that Smith told the same story from the start and the earliest Mormons
never heard of it and there were no witnesses.
Mormons reply that they don’t care if there were no witnesses because
the origin of the Book of Mormon proves that Joseph was blessed by God and
trusted to tell the truth. But if the
vision was the foundation then it is more important to verify it than even to
verify the Book of Mormon and it should be more verifiable. Why was it not recorded in the Book of
Commandments?
Smith said that he
had this vision in 1820 when there was a great revival and this has been
disproved (page 3, New Light on Mormon Origins, Wesley P Walters page 19
of the booklet shows that Smith was agnostic about the existence of God in 1823
as recorded by his friend Oliver Cowdery which proves there was no vision in 1820). It would have to have happened in 1825 which
would involved denying the first vision Smith reported of
For example, in
the PGP he says he was inspired to pray for the guidance that led to the vision
by a quotation from James by a preacher called Lane. In an earlier account he said his Bible
reading inspired him. Both could
have. He said that he saw angels. In a different account he mentioned that he
saw Jesus and that he forgave his sins and did not mention that God was with
Jesus. These things could be explained
by Smith leaving out details in the PGP.
But then one realises that things like that would not have been omitted
especially when they were spoken of before.
He would have wanted the official account to preserve them if they
really happened for they would have been very precious to him. And why does the Father have a body in his
PGP vision when the Book of Mormon itself never said that the Father had a
body? It makes no sense.
The vision story
was written after many Mormon sects claimed he became a fallen prophet. Their claim that he fell away from what he
originally taught is certainly true and he started changing what he said was
the word of God. The angel told Joseph
that the Plates he would receive contained the whole gospel. Believers say that this must be true for
Smith could not have made that up for the Book of Mormon does not contain the
full gospel. It was so far short that he
had to pretend to further revelations in the book of Doctrine and
Covenants. In the original Book of
Commandments which was Smith’s precursor to Doctrine and Covenants God told
Smith to write no more scripture once the Book of Mormon was completed (Are
the Mormon Scriptures Reliable? page 65).
MORMON ANSWERS
TO THE FIRST VISION REFUTATION
The Mormon Church
admits that the varying accounts of the first vision are real and do refer to
the first vision. So what they do is try
to reconcile them with the full version which they consider to be sacred
scripture in the Pearl of Great Price.
They say that the
early accounts which say angels appeared fit Smith’s claim in PGP that he saw
the Father and the Son for even in the Bible God is sometimes called an
angel. Smith would not have deployed
that usage.
They say that
Smith only reporting one personage in one account appearing does not matter for
the Father and the Son did not appear at the one time. But when you read Smith’s account he said he
saw two personages one of whom pointed to the other and introduced him saying,
“Behold my Beloved Son, Hear Him”. Why
would the Father appear first when the Father and Son were working together? If Smith had cared about the other stories
and he was used to getting away with his lies so it comes as no surprise if he
didn’t care he would have made his PGP version fit the prior stories.
Some Mormons say
that the full version of the story was long in coming out for Smith regarded
the vision as just something for himself.
It was not about his appointment as a prophet or the translator of the
Book of Mormon but only about encouraging him and forgiving his sins and
directing him to the true Church. The
Mormons say that since he did not use this vision at all to blow his trumpet
makes it plausible. They say since he
chose an unknown angel to be the messenger of his Book of Mormon and not God
himself he must have been honest. They
say that it was because the vision was his business that he did not have it
included in the early histories of the Church.
That is deception because Smith said he was told to join none of the
existing Churches and when God and Jesus appeared to him it was clear that they
had a plan for him so he alone had the chance to form the right faith. There is no greater honour that being told
you alone have been chosen to restore the truth. No prophet ever claimed that honour before. Smith had already blown his trumpet by
forming what he called the only true Church in 1830 which was quite a
staggering claim because there had been Luther and Aquinas and tons of
intelligent theologians and experts and he was saying they were all wrong. What business have the Mormons telling us
what Smith’s motives were for he never said humility was the reason for his
silence?
Mormons say that
Smith misremembered the date of the revival or just chose 1820 for he thought
it was a good compromise when he could not remember exactly when. Another thing they say is that it could have
been that since Smith did not say how long after the revival that he decided to
pray for guidance and the vision happened that there could have been years
between the revival and the vision. The
Mormons say the revival that stirred Smith could have happened in 1817 to
1818. Smith would have remembered events
adjacent to his first vision and so he could have worked out the dates by
asking people when X, Y and Z happened.
He didn’t because it never happened and one year was as good as another.
The Mormons say
that since Smith could not invent a date for the vision but kept contradicting
himself on the dates that the vision must have really happened for he was
sincerely trying his best to remember when.
They say Smith did not keep the date in his mind because it was only
later in his life that he decided he would speak about the vision.
The Mormons admit
that changes were made by the Church including deletions and alterations in
Joseph’s account of his first vision but blames the unprofessional editors that
were used in the Church until recently for that. In fact it was to make the testimony suit the
Church doctrine. When the Mormon Church
belittles the vision itself then why should we believe in the vision?
The Mormons say
that discrepancies between the accounts means nothing for all reliable
testimonies conflict with one another in minor details. The reply to this is that it is not
applicable in Smith’s case for he wrote all the accounts himself and they do not
agree. Moreover, the accounts have been
declared to be scripture.
Smith claimed in
his history that he was sorely persecuted for his tale about the First
Vision. Then why is there such a huge
number of early Mormon documents and letters and diaries that never mention it
though the Church clutched at every little thing it could get its hands on and
used it in its effort to win the argument with the other Churches who all
opposed it? That vision would have been
the thing that upset the Churches most for it said they were all abominations
and false so their silence is telling.
EYE-OPENERS FROM
THE BOOK OF COMMANDMENTS
Smith published
the Book of Commandments which recorded the revelations he and others received while
the Book of Mormon was coming forth and after.
He was dictating the Book of Mormon to a secretary at this stage as he
translated. The Book of Commandments was
printed in 1833 and in 1835 it was expanded into Doctrine and Covenants with
many parts added to and many alterations made.
The excuse was that the 1833 book was incomplete which only the most
stupid among us would believe.
The Book of
Commandments says the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of
God (page 1:5). Chapter 2 is about God’s
reaction when the 116 pages, which Martin Harris wrote for Smith as he
dictated, of the Book of Mormon were stolen thanks to Martin’s
carelessness. In it God warned that
nobody could receive revelations from him if he disobeyed God and warned Smith
that he will become as an ordinary man and be no longer a prophet if he
continued to disobey like he had in not watching the pages carefully and giving
them out to Harris: “Thou shalt be delivered up and become as other men, and
have no more gift”. God took away the
gift to translate for a season. In
Chapter 4 we read that God said that Smith “has a gift to translate the book,
and I have commanded him that he shall pretend to no other gift, for I will
grant him no other gift”. This tells us
that Smith was not a prophet but only a dictator for what appeared on the magic
glasses and would never be anything else.
The Book of Commandments only gives guidance from God for Smith alone
and was not scripture or on the same level as it. It is the same guidance God would give
anybody. That is how you reconcile the
existence of the Book of Commandments with this statement.
God then
complained that if nobody would believe in what Joseph was doing they would not
believe if he showed them all the wonders of Heaven. But Joseph was only saying he was translating
from a book at that stage and there was no evidence that the golden book of the
other half of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, existed! There could be better miracles than
that.
God promised to
provide three witnesses so that they could testify that the Book of Mormon was
true by seeing the plates and knowing that the translation of them by Joseph
Smith was true and the result was the word of God. God said that “three shall know of a surety
that these things are true, for I will give them power, that they may behold
and view these things as they are, and to none else will I grant this power, to
receive this same testimony among this generation. And the testimony of three witnesses will I
send forth” (4:4; See also Doctrine and Covenants
Chapter 6 gives a
piece translated by Joseph and Oliver Cowdery from parchment written by
Chapter 5 says
that the schoolteacher Oliver Cowdery received the power to translate like
Joseph Smith and that he would translate ancient records. It does not, however, say that he would
translate the Book of Mormon. God says
that two or three witnesses are necessary to establish that the translations of
hidden scriptures are true. Cowdery or
somebody would have to translate with Smith to fulfil that. The prophecy says that Cowdery will translate
with Smith if he is obedient. Cowdery
was praised for obedience at that time and when he was able to get
revelations. So Cowdery must have
translated more than the parchment but portions of the Book of Mormon as
well. The power of Cowdery to translate
was confirmed (in 7:4). Chapter 8 has
God telling Cowdery “because you did not translate according to that which you
desired of me, and did commence again to write for my servant Joseph, even so I
would that you should continue until you have finished this record, which I
have entrusted unto you: and then behold, other records have I, that I will
give unto you power that you may assist to translate. It is not expedient that you translate at
this present time” (8:1,2). This informs
us that he did not translate as he wished yet but was still just a secretary for
Joseph and must remain doing this until the Book of Mormon is completed. This prophecy failed for Cowdery left the
Mormon Church and did not translate. The
Mormons may say that it is conditional.
But God said nothing about conditions.
Also Cowdery was faithful for years and had plenty of time to get the
records and translate them but didn’t.
His resistance to the temptation to do so must have been heroic!
Chapter 9
indicates that the Book of Mormon was finished for now the problem of what to
do about the missing portion, the manuscript with the Book of Lehi on it, which
was the start of the book came up. God
directed Smith to use the small plates of Nephi and not to use the plates he
used to translate the missing pages. God said that if he did re-translate the
missing pages a forged version would appear with alterations which would be
used to convince the world that Smith could not translate at all for the
wording would not be the same though it was the same plates supposedly being
translated. God said that this was
Satan’s idea. God boasted that he would
confound Satan in this thing. But it
occurred to nobody and not even God that if Smith used the small plates as
directed that a new manuscript of Lehi could still have been composed by a
forger copying the writing of Martin Harris or however – or even a few pages -
that gave an account that contradicted the plates of Nephi completely for it
was held that both books covered the same period except that Lehi was less
spiritual. The forgers could not issue
the same pages with erased bits and new insertions squeezed in for that would
be too obvious. If anybody was going to
create a new Lehi translating from other plates was not going to make much of a
difference. Smith was lying and the
episode proves beyond doubt that Smith was faking the miracle of the
translation and it stands as stronger evidence than any evidence for his
miracle being genuine for it is from his own mouth and undermines everything he
claimed.
The Mormon Church
admits that Smith added to the revelations after he gave them and that this was
not deception. They reason that the
revelations of God come across as vague and abstract and mysterious to man and
man has to struggle to express them. A
prophet can have a revelation and put it down as best he can and then later get
more inspired insights or remember things that were lost in the confusion and
clarify and add to the writings. This is
not right. Smith’s revelations were not
that difficult to grasp. He did not
grapple with incomprehensible problems like God being a spirit without parts or
the three persons of the Trinity being one God which would be harder to
understand than anything he wrote about and which did not stop the likes of St
Thomas Aquinas from writing about them clearly.
And the Mormon God used to be an ordinary man so he would have been
down-to-earth for Joseph’s sake. There
is just no law that says that Joseph had to understand what he was told but he
certainly had to write it down as he was told and God would have boosted his
memory for that purpose. If prophets
could write like Smith did then Deuteronomy 18 would have no effect against
false prophets. In Deuteronomy 18, God
says that even the most accurate of prophets must be rejected as a fraud if he
reports the least thing that God didn’t say or predicted something that didn’t
come true for God knows the future. The
way Smith worked would have made it too easy for false prophets to be taken for
true ones, for they could say they blame God for not been clear or themselves
for being unintelligent and so could alter and correct and change their
prophecies after making them when they fail.
FULFILLED
PROPHECY?
In recent years,
the Church added Section 137 to the Doctrine and Covenants with four false
prophecies from Smith, one of which concerned Elder McLellin preaching to a
multitude in the south and curing a lame man, excised. So here we have a case of the Church
correcting a revelation and then saying it was inspired by God!
Smith had to get
some prophecies right and these are the ones the Mormons are interested
in. But he made a lot fewer impressive
prophecies than the Church would have you believe. Here is a study of Jeff Lindsay’s collection
of Smithian prophecies which he thinks we should be impressed by.
The Mormons say
that Smith prophesied that the Saints would go to the
The Church says
that the Rocky Mountain Prophecy was written before the event. But the manuscripts in question have the
prophecy written in small handwriting which is obviously showing that it is an
interpolation inserted after the Mormons went to the
The Mormons
incredibly regard section 87 of Doctrine and Covenants which says there will be
a war that will start off a world war which will begin in
The Mormon Church
says that when Smith was in Liberty Jail it was extremely likely that he would be
put to death but he prophesied that this wouldn’t happen. God told him he would triumph over his
foes. The Church says this came
true. There is not enough in the
prophecy to demand a supernatural fulfilment.
Had Smith died then by execution the Church would have burnt the
prophecy or even started a resurrection report.
The Mormon Church
says a remarkable prophecy about Stephen A Douglas made by Smith has been
wonderfully fulfilled. But all Smith
said to the man was that the government of America will be destroyed if they do
not start respecting the Saints and that Douglas would try to become President
and if he ever turned against God he would strike him. But what government and when? One in forty years time? In those days a collapsed government had to
happen sometime soon. But the government
was certainly never destroyed despite its troubles. And Smith only said
The Word of
Wisdom, Section 89, of the Doctrine and Covenants, forbids tea and coffee,
tobacco and alcohol to Mormons. The
Mormon Church says this proves that God told Smith that tobacco was bad before
it was discovered to be unhealthy in the twentieth century. But he could have allowed tea within
reason. This shows that he was only guessing
that these things were immoral and harmful.
Smith knew that tobacco was harmful to the chest and that was known long
before its carcinogenic properties was known.
The prophecies
that there would be branches of the Church in New York and Boston are
unimpressive for Smith had more success with Mormonism than he thought possible
so he knew it had to expand into these places someday. Had he been a prophet he would have been able
to give the decade when the branches would be organised.
Smith allegedly
told Dan Jones the night before the assassination at Carthage Jail that he
would survive the impending unexpected attack and serve the Church in
Wales. This came true. But we have only Dan Jones’ word for
this. It is one of the lies that are
always told about people after they die.
Was Dan like a fortune tellers client who remembers the “hits” and
forgets the predictions that are wrong or ridiculous?
Smith said that
God made Sidney Rigdon a spokesman for him to the Mormon people (Doctrine and
Covenants 100:9-11). The Church says
Smith foreknew how Rigdon would lead the Church under him. But how a man like Smith who has the power to
fulfil the prophecy by giving Rigdon a high office could have the right to make
such a prophecy is not explained. It
would be a sure sign that he was claiming supernatural significance for what
was not supernatural. So what else was
he doing? However, the assertion does
not claim to be making a prediction. Had
Rigdon not become a leading Mormon the Church would be teaching just that.
The Mormon Church
says that Smith knew Newel K Whitney by name without having seeing him before
in 1831. This is supposed to show that
Smith really was a Prophet. But there
are other explanations.
How to Answer a
Mormon by Robert A Morey is
an excellent refutation of the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith was a true
prophet of God. It copies the prophecies
so you can read them for yourself and make your own choice.
Internet
Infidels has a good page
called Joseph Smith as a Prophet by Richard Packham. It shows that Smith was a false prophet and refutes
the Mormon boast that Smith made fulfilled prophecies.
THE FRAUDULENT TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK OF
ABRAHAM
Joseph Smith
bought some Egyptian papyri from the idolatrous Book of Breathings from an Egyptian
mummy and claimed that it was the Book of Abraham and even that it had
Abraham’s signature. He produced a
translation of it. This translation is
now regarded as infallible scripture by the Mormon Church and it is in a volume
called The Pearl of Great Price. The
scripture says that God told Abraham to lie about his wife meaning that we
should not trust God or Mormonism and certainly not the Book of Abraham. An almighty God has no need to tell anybody
to lie for he has the power to pull strings to get what he wants.
The papyri have
been found to have been ordinary Egyptian funerary papyri and to have nothing
to do with Abraham. They contain prayers
and spells offered to pagan Gods. The
Mormons are strictly told to avoid pagan emblems. God commanded this avoidance through Smith
and yet the Church thinks these writings are God’s word! When Smith first saw the papyri he said that
some of the characters were very familiar to him. He did not say why. The only answer is, is that he was saying that
they looked like the characters on the golden plates. Thus he denied that the Book of Mormon was
written in totally different Egyptian from that in Egypt which is an admission
that he never saw the plates!
Mormons say that the papyri used by Smith was lost – a piece of wishful thinking thoroughly refuted in chapter 5, Are the Mormon Scriptures Reliable? Not surprisingly they do not bring your attention to the fact that Smith put the characters from the papyri in the margin of his manuscript so we would know what he was translating. The characters match the existing papyri, which refutes the Mormon claim. Also when the papyri was found again in the 1960s it was discovered that items drawn by Smith were included in the find. The papyri was glued to pieces of paper to help prevent them disintegrating further than they had. The drawings had many missing bits and the missing parts were filled in by very unEgyptian pictures as if somebody had been guessing what the missing parts were. The patched up drawings looked the same as the drawings associated with the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. Some papyri was attached to a drawing of the Kirtland Temple built under Joseph Smith. There is general agreement today among Mormon and non-Mormon scholars that these are the papyri that Smith declared were the writings of Abraham. Mormons ignore the fact that the translation was a fake and pretend that there must be some other explanation. They imagine that they see parallels with ancient religious documents that Smith didn't have. They pretend that there is evidence that the Book of Abraham really dated from the time of Abraham. This is a clear case of ignoring the knife in the killers hand to argue that he was such a good person that he couldn't have committed the murder.
Smith
translated a paragraph of several words from a character resembling three waves
on the sea and did the same with all the other characters. You cannot get that many words from a single
character. This has led some Mormons to
lamely say that strictly speaking there was no strict translation but the
figure was a symbol for the paragraph just like (A) might represent a
paragraph. There were drawings with
missing parts with the papyri and Smith reconstructed them. This reconstruction was certainly wrong and
Smith’s translation of the writing on them is totally imaginary.
Smith thought he
could see religious history in the pictures and mistook a picture of the god
Osiris for Abraham in what he called Facsimile 3! Smith and his Book of Abraham (1:12) claim
that Abraham’s drawing of an attempt to kill him was included. Smith’s interpretations of the drawings are
wrong so the Book of Abraham was not inspired for the drawings were not done by
Abraham but by an Egyptian idol worshipper for the texts honour Egyptian
gods. His restoration of the missing
fragments of the drawings has been refuted definitively. Despite the many documents and publications
of the early Mormon Church in which Smith stated that the papyri were the
actual physical work of Abraham itself, modern Mormon scholars prefer to
pretend that he did not say that. Smith
even claimed that a worthless grammar and alphabet he created in 1835 from the
Book of Abraham was a correct guide to ancient Egyptian (History of the Church,
Vol 2, page 238). This grammar, Mormons
allege, was just Joseph trying to figure out how to translate the natural
way. They don’t want you to realise that
Smith claimed that God gave him the temporary supernatural knowledge to
translate the book and that the grammar was simply writing down what he was
told. If the grammar is full of error
and no scholar can fail to have a good laugh at it, then Smith was not inspired
by God. It is obvious that Smith could
not have produced a grammar for Egyptian unless he claimed divine inspiration
for nobody knew how to translate it in those days and Smith knew he was not,
humanly speaking, the best person to try unless God did the work for him.
Mormons like Jeff
Lindsay try to make out that the papyrus Smith used is missing and use
descriptions of it from Smith’s time to prove that. But since Smith copied the characters in the
margins of his manuscript to show what he was translating we can show that this
is wishful thinking (page 81, Are the Mormon Scriptures Reliable?). Even if the Mormons are right that the
original is missing it still does nothing to help them.
Some Mormons
pretend that the original handwritten manuscript by Smith (a picture of a page
of it appears on page 82, Are the Mormon Scriptures Reliable?) was just
Smith preparing for the proper translation by the gift and power of God. That way they can deny that the manuscript is
divinely inspired. But then how come the
text of the present Book of Abraham is in it?
They cannot present any incontestable proof that the manuscript is not
the final product and if you are going to tolerate speculation like that you
will never see the truth in anything. In
the manuscript, Smith had not the foggiest notion about how to translate
Egyptian
Early sources
insist that Smith used the Urim and Thummim which he used in the production of
the Book of Mormon to produce the Book of Abraham. When they failed him with the Book of Abraham
why should we trust the translation of the Book of Mormon?
The Mormons ignore
the evidence against the Book of Abraham and they say it is true because it has
the marks of chiasmus – a style of Hebrew poetry. This style is not hard to replicate and it
even appears in the writings of Solomon Spaulding who some believe was the
author of what became the Book of Mormon.
So weak evidence is preferred to what the stronger body of evidence
says.
Conclusion
Joseph Smith was a false prophet.
BOOKS CONSULTED
A GATHERING OF
SAINTS, Robert Lindsay, Corgi,
A MARVELLOUS WORK AND
A WONDER, LeGrand Richards, Deseret Books,
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,
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, Calvary Missionary Press,
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 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
FULFILLED
PROPHECIES OF JOSEPH SMITH
www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_prophecies.shtml
THE BOOK OF MORMON
WITNESSES
Excellent
refutation of the claims of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon
JOSEPH SMITH AS A
PROPHET by Richard Packham
Refutes the Mormon
claim that Smith was a real prophet of God.
The Mormons accept the validity of Ezekiel 12:21-28 which says that if a
prophecy is too long in being fulfilled then it is a false prophecy. A prophecy will come true by chance given
long enough. Smith made many prophecies
that have not come true yet so he was a false prophet. By the same criteria, the Old Testament
prophets failed and the Christian claim that they predicted Jesus and his life
by the power of God is false for even if the prophecies did come true it was
not God that was behind it. Doctrine and
Covenants 1:37 pledges that every word prophesised by Smith will come true for
God has spoken. On
JERALD AND SANDRA
TANNER’S DISTORTED VIEW OF MORMONISM: A RESPONSE TO MORMONISM, SHADOW OR
REALITY?
www.xmission.com/~country/reason/ldshist1.htm
This page shows plainly the harm that the Christian Church in general is doing
with its rotten Bible for the evil commanded by God in the Bible is defended on
the basis that it has a purpose known to God and this is used to justify the
terrible doctrines such as polygamy that the Mormons used to live out. The page does what all apologists for
religion does, ignore the major problems and nitpicks on rather minor errors in
the hope of showing the critics to be not worth listening to. For example, the Tanners believed that Joseph
Smith copied his father’s story of a dream he had in 1811 into the Book of
Mormon as the dream of Lehi because Joseph’s mother Lucy wrote about the dream
in 1845 and the two were identical in all serious points. The page says that Lucy Smith simply filled
in her memory of her husband’s dream subconsciously from the Book of
Mormon. But she had family and friends
to help her remember. The page says that
since the Book of Mormon was written first and she was writing 15 years later
it is wrong to say that the author of the Book of Mormon was the one doing the
copying. But how do you know? It is still most probable that the Tanners
are right. If it is not then we still
have no reason to take one side or the other.
Anyway, what about the more serious objections to the Book of Mormon
that the Tanners made? He’s
nitpicking. The page says that since the
BY HIS OWN HAND ON
PAPYRUS, Charles Larson
At Mormons in
Transition Website www.irr.org
MORE PROBLEMS WITH
THE FIRST VISION, ANSWERING DR CLANDESTINE, Jerald and Sandra Tanner
www.xmission.com/~country/reason/clndst10.htm
PHILOSOPHICAL
PROBLEMS WITH THE MORMON CONCEPT OF GOD, Francis J Beckwith,
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
Wednesday, 23
January 2008