Even setting aside its doctrinal richness and its vital importance as a second witness for the Savior Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon is a strikingly complex document — far more so, probably, than most of its readers realize.

It features hundreds of individual characters, many of them bearing quite uncommon names, who belong to a multitude of groups, subgroups and small factions. It describes three migrations from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere. It employs at least three distinct dating systems.

Yet, amazingly — and particularly so for a book that was dictated within a remarkably short time, at high speed (roughly nine to 11 pages of the English printed edition per day) — it’s internally consistent. It doesn’t contradict itself.

It both presupposes and reflects a complicated geographical backdrop to its stories, involving scores of place names and topographical indicators. Yet places maintain their proper relationships to each other even when they’re mentioned only a few times over hundreds of pages.

Furthermore, the book itself, as a work of literature, is structurally complex.

For instance, many important sections of the book are prefaced by statements that give readers a forecast of what’s coming — and are then followed by summaries of what has just been read.

It seems unlikely that a semiliterate young farmer could, while dictating at such speed, recall what he had promised in his prefaces and then remember to finish off such sections with appropriate summaries.

And this is to say nothing of the extended chiasms throughout the book. It’s to leave unmentioned the way in which the book’s purported ancient authors sometimes quote from each other (e.g. in 1 Nephi 1:8 and Alma 36:22, passages dictated orally many days apart). Nor does it take account of other subtle literary features that modern scholars have only recently begun to recognize and to study in the Book of Mormon.

Some critics, understandably challenged by the book’s consistency within complexity, have sought to dismiss it, pointing out that, for example, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, too, is both complicated and consistent.

This is, in its way, a very high, though entirely unintended, compliment. I’m a devoted admirer of Tolkien’s writing and have been one for many years; I regard it as perhaps the greatest sustained achievement in 20th-century English letters. But Professor Tolkien, an Oxford-trained linguist and medievalist who eventually occupied the chair of English literature at Merton College, Oxford, meticulously crafted Middle Earth over a period extending from 1914 to at least 1949, when the last volume of "The Lord of the Rings" appeared. (He actually kept tinkering with it until his death in late 1973; his "Silmarillion" was published posthumously.)

Joseph Smith, by contrast, a Yankee farm boy with only a few weeks of formal education, dictated the Book of Mormon in slightly more than two months, and published it without significant revision.

To those who don’t find this impressive, I say: Dictate an original manuscript of approximately a quarter of a million words between now and New Year’s Day, and then get back to me. (I’m being generous. According to one count, the English Book of Mormon actually contains 268,163 words.) And anybody who attempts this feat, don’t forget, will almost certainly be far better educated than Joseph Smith was.

The intricate structure and detailed complexity of the Book of Mormon seem far better explained as the work of several ancient writers using various written sources over the space of centuries than exploding suddenly from the mind of a barely educated manual laborer on the American frontier.

A good brief statement on this topic, from which I’ve drawn for this column, is Melvin J. Thorne’s 1997 article "Complexity, Consistency, Ignorance, and Probabilities," which is available online.

"It is too complex," says Dr. Thorne of the Book of Mormon, "to have been written by Joseph in the manner and in the amount of time described by witnesses. Indeed, it is too complex to have been written by Joseph in the manner hypothesized by his enemies or critics. Ultimately, it appears to be too complex to have been written by Joseph or any of his contemporaries in the early nineteenth century under any conceivable set of circumstances other than the one Joseph describes — the translation by miraculous means of an authentically ancient document."

Daniel C. Peterson is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at BYU, where he also serves as editor in chief of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative and as director of advancement for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He is the founder of MormonScholarsTestify.org.

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When the King James Bible was first published in 1611, it was based on the best Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that were available to the translators.  In the four centuries since then, thousands of biblical manuscripts and fragments have been discovered.  Perhaps the most exciting of these new finds were the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were nearly a thousand years older than anything that scholars had ever seen before.  Because these early manuscripts were copied by hand, they all differed slightly from each other, and in some cases they preserved readings that were superior to those that underlie the King James Version.  Most of the differences are rather minor, but there are gems among them (though one has to consult modern translations to gain access to them).

Here are four quick examples:

2 Samuel 13:21-22.  The story of Absalom killing his brother Amnon for raping his sister Tamar is grim in any version, but the KJV simply has, “when king David heard of all these things, he was very wroth.  And Absalom spake unto his brother Amnon neither good nor bad; for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had forced his sister Tamar.”  But notice the key narrative element added by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (an ancient Greek translation), and various manuscripts: “When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn. But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Absalom hated Amnon . . .” (New Revised Standard Version).  Sometimes, as David tragically learned, looking upon sin with leniency only leads to further, more serious problems.

Psalms 145:13.  The KJV, following 15th century Hebrew texts, reads “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”  The Dead Sea Scrolls has the same reading, but it adds another sentence, so that the complete verse is: “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations.  The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made” (New International Version).  There are no new doctrines taught in this recently recovered sentence, but to those who love the word of God, every line of scripture is precious.  (Similarly, the NSRV includes at the end of 1 Sam. 10 an entire paragraph from the Dead Sea Scrolls that was lost from the later texts on which the KJV was based.)

Matthew 5:22.  Modern translations delete the phrase “without a cause” from this verse (KJV: “I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”), because it does not occur in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts.  It is similarly absent in the Book of Mormon version of the Sermon on the Mount (3 Ne. 12:22), thus providing a remarkable witness of the authenticity of that text.

1 John 4:19.  In the KJV, John teaches that because Christ, in performing the atonement, took the first step toward reconciliation, we can respond to his freely offered love and love him in return: “We love him, because he first loved us.”  Modern translations all follow better Greek manuscripts which universalize the first phrase: “We love, because he first loved us.”  In other words, the power of the atonement allows us to love not just God, but everyone else too.

The reconstruction of more accurate base texts for the Bible is one of the great scholarly achievements of the past century.  In fact, scholars at BYU have been involved in analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls and one professor there, Donald Parry, has been invited to participate in creating the next edition of the Biblia Hebraica—the standard scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible that is used by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants alike.  For Latter-day Saints who, along with Joseph Smith, “believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers” (HC 6:57), this is thrilling stuff.

It is also exciting that the Book of Mormon has begun to receive the same sort of scholarly attention in the work of Royal Skousen, a professor of linguistics at BYU.  For the last two decades he has been working on the Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon (a critical text is one that is based on the analysis of manuscripts).  Unlike the Bible, for which there are thousands of manuscript fragments, the Book of Mormon is based on just two handwritten copies: the original manuscript, which was primarily written by Oliver Cowdery as Joseph Smith dictated the words of the Nephite record by revelation, and the printer’s manuscript, a copy that was made in order to keep the original safe during the typesetting process.  As is always the case, a few errors were introduced in the course of taking dictation, copying, and typesetting,

Recovering the earliest readings would be relatively easy if we still possessed the original manuscript intact, but Joseph put it in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House in 1841.  When it was taken out some forty years later, it had suffered considerable water damage and only 28% has survived.  By contrast, the entire printer’s manuscript has been preserved by the Community of Christ (formerly the RLDS Church), so it is often possible to reconstruct what was in the original manuscript even for those parts that are now missing.  Skousen’s analysis has also demonstrated that the last sixth of the 1830 edition (Helaman 13:17 through Moroni 10:34) was set from the original manuscript, which means that for that portion of the text, the printer’s manuscript and the 1830 edition are equal witnesses for what was written in the original manuscript.

In 2001, FARMS published Skousen’s meticulous transcription of the extant original manuscript and the printer’s manuscript, and then from 2004 to 2009 they released six large volumes of textual analysis in which he considered over 5000 variations in the manuscripts and twenty printed editions.  Just last year, Skousen published his scholarly reconstruction of the earliest text of the Book of Mormon with Yale University Press—which is an indication of how important this project is not just to Latter-day Saints, but to historians and scholars of religion.

The Yale edition of the Book of Mormon contains several hundred readings that have never appeared in any previous editions, including 216 that were found only in the original manuscript, 187 from the printer’s manuscript (where the original is not extant), and 88 that were in both the original and printer’s manuscripts.  Most of these are simple variations of word choice or grammar or spelling that do not make a difference in the meaning (for instance, it appears that the chief judge Pahoran’s name was originally spelled as Parhoran), and none of them affect basic doctrine, but there are nevertheless some gems among them that add to our understanding of this sacred text.

Let me give you a dozen examples:

1 Nephi 12:18.  The current text reads “yea even the word of the justice of the Eternal God” while the original manuscript had “yea even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God”—which not only makes a little more sense but also connects to the tree of life imagery in the chapter (see Gen.

3:24).

1 Nephi 15:16.  In similar fashion, the Book of Mormon today has “they shall be rememberedagain among the house of Israel, even though the original manuscript read “they shall benumbered again among the house of Israel.”  Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, it is taught that repentant Gentiles in the last days will be adopted into the house of Israel, and this verse, at least originally, had the same message.

2 Nephi 1:5.  Careful examination of the original manuscript shows that it read “the Lord hath consecrated this land unto me” rather than the current “the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me.”  The words have similar meanings, but they are not exactly the same, and in this case the earliest reading of verse 5 matches that of verse 7 – “this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring.”

2 Nephi 4:26.  Here the difference of just one letter shifts the focus from a general observation to a very personal experience of Nephi’s.  Today we read “if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow.”  But the printer’s manuscript (the earliest extant text) has “if the Lord . . . hath visited me in so much mercy . . .”  Clearly, Nephi is speaking in this passage from his own direct knowledge.

Jacob 7:26.  In the current text, Jacob laments that his people have been “born in tribulation in a wilderness,” but both the original and printer’s manuscripts have an additional word: “born in tribulation in a wild wilderness.”  The 1830 typesetter omitted “wild,” perhaps inadvertently, or because he felt it was redundant, but I quite like the emphatic repetition, and there may even be a subtle distinction in the words, so that the final phrase means something like “an untamed, desolate region.”

Mosiah 26:9.  In copying, it is easy to miss small but important words.  Thus the present edition, speaking of unbelievers who were encouraging church members to sin, has “Alma did not knowconcerning them, but there were many witnesses.”  The earliest reading, however (from the printer’s manuscript) has almost the opposite: “Alma did know concerning them, for there were many witnesses.”

Alma 2:30.  Currently, Alma prays to the Lord and asks him to “have mercy and spare my life that I may be an instrument in thy hands to save and preserve this people.”  In the earliest manuscripts, however, he asks for a chance to “save and protect this people.”  The wordspreserve and protect may look similar (hence the copying error), but their meanings are somewhat different, with the latter being a more active, assertive verb.

Alma 24:20.  Another subtle shift, which perhaps makes a difference in the story, occurs in this verse, which in its current form tells us that the Lamanites “came up to the land of Nephi for the purpose of destroying the king.”  The original manuscript, however, uses a more specific verb: “for the purpose of dethroning the king.”

Alma 33:21.  It is sometimes easy to see where copying errors may have been introduced.  Originally this verse read “that ye might behold,” but the scribe for the printer’s manuscript mistakenly copied this as “that ye might be healed,” which is the way it still reads today.

Alma 39:13.  This is one of my favorite recoveries of the original text.  As it reads today, Alma is urging his youngest son, Corianton, to “acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done.”  But in the original manuscript, another step of repentance is included when his advice is to “acknowledge your faults and repair that wrong which ye have done.”  The crucial word “repair” was lost because of an inkblot in the original manuscript.

3 Nephi 2:18.  Sometimes two similar words in quick succession will cause a mistake.  The earliest version has “they did come forth again against the people of Nephi” where the current edition shortens this to “they did come forth against the people of Nephi.”  The repetitive nature of the invasion apparently mattered to Mormon, the historian, though it has been lost in the transmission of the text.

3 Nephi 10:4.  Here an entire line has dropped out.  The present text has “how oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,” but originally Jesus’ statement began with “O ye people of the house of Israel, how oft have I gathered you . . .” (the scribe was thrown off by a similar phrase that preceded the omitted words).

As you can see, most of these differences are not tremendously consequential—the basic meaning still comes through—but there are nevertheless additional insights to be gained, and for those who view the Book of Mormon as a gift from God, every word matters.  It is exciting to get as close as we can to the original moment of revelation, when Joseph first dictated the words of the Book of Mormon to Oliver.

Will the Church eventually adopt these more accurate readings into future official editions of the Book of Mormon?  Probably someday.  After all, the current edition, from 1981, incorporated several changes based on the original and printer’s manuscripts.  Yet it is a weighty and sacred responsibility to determine the specific words of canonized scripture that will be authoritative for Latter-day Saints around the world, so any modifications will undoubtedly be made very deliberately and slowly.

In the meantime, interested readers can consult Royal Skousen’s The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, that is, the Yale edition, where he lists over 700 significant changes in the history of the text.  This type of reading, which focuses our attention on exact wording and nuances of meaning, can help us better understand the writings of ancient prophets and the message of this additional testament of Jesus Christ.

GRANT HARDY is an associate professor and chairman of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.  He is the author of several books includingUnderstanding the Book of Mormon.

The speeches of Demosthenes were so well crafted that his fellow orator Pytheas said they “smelled of the lamp,” meaning that the tight logic, the precise words, and the elegant phrasing could not have been dashed off in a day.  Demosthenes had to have worked into the night … by the lamp.

How did Pytheas know?  Did he look through a window and actually see old Demo burning midnight oil?  Doubtful; Demosthenes lived in a cave.  No, the evidence of his diligence and skill was internal and obvious in the final product itself.

Imagine … judging a written work by internal evidence.  How quaint.

It is well established that the complexity and intricacy of the Book of Mormon already give it the smell of the lamp, but does it have another smell – specifically, are there any internal indicators that suggest the Book of Mormon was engraved on plates, as Joseph Smith claims, before it was written on paper?

Does it have the smell of engraving?

A Test

We are presented with a clean comparison between two explanations of how the Book of Mormon came to be:

Both sides agree that Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon to scribes, but what was he looking at as he did?  Would there be anything unusual in the text if the source material had been engraved on plates rather than written on paper?   

The key is how the original author(s) in each explanation would have handled mistakes, and what comes through in the finished product.

If Joseph’s explanation is correct and one of the original authors made a mistake on metal centuries ago, he would not very likely throw away the plate and engrave the correction on a new one.  Rather, he would scratch it out or engrave a follow-on clarification.  Joseph would have dutifully translated the text exactly as written.

But if the alternate explanation is correct and the author made a mistake on paper in the 1820s, he could throw away that sheet and write the correct phrase on a new one.  Or he could erase it (Benjamin Franklin was selling pencils with erasers as early as 1729, an exact century before) or scratch it out knowing that Joseph as the supposed fraudster would smooth out the narration as he dictated.  Given the ease of these options, it makes no sense that a con man would keep in the mistake and write a follow-on clarification.

So the question:  Are there any phrases, words, sentence structures, etc. in the Book of Mormon that would be consistent with stylus on metal but not with pencil or pen on paper?

Here are the keys:

If dictated from an engraving, one is more likely to find both the mistake and the correction – the statement and the restatement.

If dictated from paper, one is likely to read only the correct version of what the author intended, but not the mistaken writing that immediately preceded it.

A Few Examples

With that in mind, consider these scriptures in which the author reverses or clarifies a mistake.  Bracketed notes in italics are my observations.

And there are many more.[i]

The “weapons of peace” mistake in the first example has been a source of mocking humor against Mormons for decades.  As one critic put it, “What is a weapon of peace?  Is it a material object so it can be buried?  Can a weapon of peace be like a weapon of war?”   Ha ha ha.  Yet the very verses critics laugh at are indicators that Joseph Smith did not dictate the Book of Mormon from text written on paper.

If Joseph Smith or some other 19th century person had written the Book of Mormon with intent to defraud, he would have eliminated (or not even allowed in the first place) any statement-restatement patterns in the text that he read to the scribes.  A con man would not admit in his writings that he had stated something not quite right and then had to correct it.

  No such phrasing would have been allowed into the final text.  After all, since he’s claiming it to be a work from God, it had to be perfect with no room for oops-let’s-begin-again errors.

The Smell of Engraving

Moroni writes on the title page of the Book of Mormon, “And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men…” which almost guarantees that one will find mistakes.  This coincides with Moroni’s lament in Ether 12 that the Lord made his generation mighty in speaking, but not in writing, in contrast to the skills of the brother of Jared some 2600 years prior.  He further notes that “when we write we behold our weakness, and stumble because of the placing of our words….”

The examples shown above may indeed be the “mistakes” Moroni was referring to, but at the very least are mistakes that lend the book the authenticity and smell of engraving.  Do these statement-restatements prove that the source material was engraved on metal plates?  Of course not; that testimony comes only from God through sincere study and prayer.  But their appearance in the Book of Mormon would surely make less sense if they had originally been written in English on paper.

The mistakes authenticate the mode of its creation.

“For we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates.” (From “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses.”)

Thud. If you dropped the golden plates, they would have made a pretty big dent in the floor — or worse, they probably would have crushed your foot. Joseph Smith carried them around, hid them in a log, a bean barrel, boxes and under hearthstones. They were picked up and fingers flipped through the metallic leaves, frrrrrrp! Emma Smith had to move them out of her way occasionally while doing housework.

The golden plates were just so — tangible, physical and, well, real. But just how big were they? How much did they weigh? How many plates were there? What were they made of?

Joseph Smith wrote in the Wentworth Letter that the plates were “six inches by eight inches long.” Martin Harris and David Whitmer remembered 7 by 8 inches. Joseph Smith wrote that the plates were “something near six inches in thickness.” Harris remembered it being about four inches.

Take Joseph Smith’s estimate (sorry, Martin) of 6 inches by 8 inches by 6 inches, and that gives us 288 cubic inches. Metallurgist Read H. Putnam, in an Improvement Era article in September 1966, wrote that a “solid block of gold totaling 288 cubic inches would weigh a little over 200 pounds.” But, of course, the plates were not a solid block.

The individual plates were not perfectly shaped. “The unevenness left by the hammering and air spaces between the separate plates would reduce the weight to probably less than 50 percent of the solid block,” Putnam wrote.

That gives us about 100 pounds. Not impossible to move around, but still pretty heavy.

But the plates were not likely made of pure gold. The Book of Mormon merely says they were made of “ore” 1 Nephi 19:1. (See also Mormon 8:5.)

The Eight Witnesses described them as having “the appearance of gold.”

Pure gold would be too soft to use anyway.

“The metal would need to be soft enough at the surface to accept the engraver’s tool, yet firm enough in the center to keep the plate from distortion under the pressure; it would also have to be smooth enough for the lines and figures to retain their proportions,” Putnam wrote. In other words, the plates, if they were to match their description, had to be an alloy.

As it turns out, ancient Americans used an alloy of gold and copper — the two colored metals. The Spaniards called this metal alloy “tumbaga.” Properly made, a plate of this alloy would have the right properties for engraving and would also look like ordinary gold. But it would also weigh less. Putnam estimated a solid block of the ideal engraving-friendly copper/gold alloy would weigh about 107 pounds. Take half of that away to account for air between the plates and “the weight of the stack of plates would be about 53 pounds.”

Putnam wrote that the weight would be higher as the ratio of gold to copper went up.

Just for contrast, a block of sand that size would be about 17 pounds, a solid block of granite about 29 pounds.

It shouldn’t be a surprise then to learn that witnesses put the weight of the plates at about 60 pounds. Harris said “from forty to sixty lbs.” William Smith said “about sixty pounds.”

William Smith also said the plates were “a mixture of gold and copper” — the precise alloy that Putnam found was used by ancient Americans.

Putnam calculated that each plate could have been .02 inches thick (average copier paper is five times thinner or about .004 inches thick). Emma Smith said, “They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book.”

By judging how much space a plate would take in a stack, Putnam deduced it would be about 20 plates to the inch. “The unsealed portion (one-third of the whole) would then consist of 40 plates or 80 sides.”

Only 80 sides for the whole Book of Mormon — plus the lost Book of Lehi? In an April 1923 issue of the “Improvement Era,” Janne M. Sjodahl proved that 14 pages of the Book of Mormon could be written in Hebrew in a space that was only 7 by 8 inches. “That is to say, the entire Book of Mormon … could be written on 40 3/7 pages — 21 plates in all.”

John Gee, senior research fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU, reexamined Sjodahl’s article in 2001 and concluded that the small characters used in Sjodahl’s experiment are similar in size to actual Hebrew characters engraved on ancient objects found in Israel.

When you take into consideration that the plates were engraved in space-saving reformed Egyptian, because, as Moroni wrote, “if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew,” there appears to be room to spare (See Mormon 9:33).

Just don’t drop them on your foot.

In addition to the articles mentioned in the text, this column was based on information found in “Journal of Book of Mormon Studies,” Volume 10, Number 1.

I invite all who hear me today to read the Book of Mormon and to apply the promise it contains. Those who do will know that the book is true.

Good morning, dear brothers and sisters. I feel a profound joy and honor in speaking to you today. I pray that God may guide my words and that His Spirit may be with us so that “he that preacheth and he that receiveth, [may] understand one another, and both [may be] edified and rejoice together” (D&C 50:22).

I consider June 2, 1940, to be a very important day in the history of my family. On this day my father was baptized into this Church.

Writing to his father, Elder Jack McDonald, one of the missionaries who baptized my father, described the day with these words:

“Last Sunday was an especially beautiful day. We missionaries went out to a secluded spot on the river’s edge, out in the country, and there Elder Jones and I [Elder McDonald] made our first baptism. Antony Aidukaitis entered into the icy waters and became a member of the Church. … Everything was perfect. The sky so blue, the countryside so still, so green, so lovely that none of us could help feeling the presence of some great influence.

“[As we walked] with our new member, he said that he just couldn’t explain how wonderful this day had been for him, how he actually felt like a new man. … That was our first baptism—no credit to me or anybody. He converted himself.”

This event changed the history of my life. I am not sure my father was able to foresee the wisdom of his act, but I love him for what he did that day. He passed away more than 30 years ago, but I will honor and bless his name forever.

My father was the son of Lithuanians, but he was born in Scotland. He moved to Brazil when he was still young. His ability to speak English facilitated his conversion since he could read the Book of Mormon in English, and there was not yet a reliable translation into Portuguese. This language barrier prevented my mother from joining the Church until a few years later, but when she did, she became a powerful example of dedication to others and love of God in our family. She is now 92 years old, and she is here today. It gives me great joy to say that I love her for her great faithfulness. I will also honor and bless her name forever.

I admire the courage my father had to be baptized into the Church in spite of the circumstances he faced at the time. It was not easy for him. His wife did not get baptized with him. The vices of drinking alcohol and smoking were strong temptations for him. He was poor. His mother was against his joining the Church, and she told him that if he were baptized, she would no longer consider him her son. With fewer than 300 members in Brazil, the Church did not have a single chapel there. I am truly astonished by my father’s determination and courage.

How could he make such a decision in the face of so many unfavorable circumstances? The answer is simple: it was because my father read the Book of Mormon. When he read it, he came to know of the truthfulness of the message of the Restoration. The Book of Mormon is a proof that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. Preach My Gospel teaches that “the Book of Mormon, combined with the Spirit, is [the] most powerful resource in conversion” ([2004], 104).

President Gordon B. Hinckley declared: “Those who have read [the Book of Mormon] prayerfully, be they rich or poor, learned or unlearned, have grown under its power. …

“… Without reservation I promise you that if you will prayerfully read the Book of Mormon, regardless of how many times you previously have read it, there will come into your hearts … the Spirit of the Lord. There will come a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to his commandments, and there will come a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God” (“The Power of the Book of Mormon,” Ensign, June 1988, 6; see also “The Book of Mormon,” Tambuli, Oct. 1988, 7).

These promises came true for my father and for my family. In accordance with what we have been taught, we read the scriptures as a family every day. We have done so for many years. We have read the Book of Mormon several times in our home, and we will continue to do so. As promised, the Spirit of the Lord has come into the heart of our family, and we have felt a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God.

When you know that the Book of Mormon is true, you know that Joseph Smith was called by God to restore the Church of Jesus Christ to the earth. You know that Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son. You know that there is only one faith and one valid baptism. You know that a prophet of God lives on the earth today and that he has all the keys of the priesthood and the right to exercise them, as Peter did anciently. You know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only name whereby you can receive salvation. You know that God the Father lives and that He loves us. You know that His plan of salvation is perfect, and you have the desire to perform ordinances, live the commandments, and endure to the end.

I feel sad when someone who has been given the Book of Mormon and had these things explained to him still refuses to read it. I feel sad that some people allow themselves to be influenced by others, refuse to investigate the book, and set it aside as something without worth, never participating in the spiritual banquet it offers. To me, this is incomprehensible. It is as if a son or a daughter, separated from a loving father, refused to read a letter from him without even opening the envelope. Those who make such a choice are like spoiled children who refuse to even taste the meal tenderly prepared for them by their loving mother.

God reveals His truth when people follow Moroni’s exhortation in Moroni 10:3–5. Preach My Gospel summarizes Moroni’s instructions as follows:

• • One, “read the Book of Mormon and ponder its message concerning Jesus Christ.”
• • Two, “pray to God with faith in Jesus Christ to receive a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is the prophet of the Restoration.”
• • Three, “pray sincerely and have real intent, which means that they intend to act on the answer they receive from God” (111).

To those who may argue that we cannot know these things, I testify that we can, when we are humble enough to do as God has instructed us through His prophets on this earth. To believe otherwise would be to accept the absurd notion that God also does not know where truth can be found or does not have the power to show it to us. Just because someone has not acted on the promise of this book does not mean that others have not done so.

Why do I love and honor the name of my father? Because my father read and acted on the promise of the Book of Mormon. Why do I love and honor the name of my father? Because he did not recoil from the answer he received, even while facing great challenges. Why do I love and honor the name of my father? Because he blessed my life, even before I was born, by having the courage to do what God expected him to do.

I invite all who hear me today to read the Book of Mormon and to apply the promise it contains. Those who do will know that the book is true.

I bear my testimony that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Because of this, I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. I know that he did not write the Book of Mormon but translated it by the power of God. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God on the earth today, the only man on the earth who holds all the keys of the priesthood and has the right to exercise them. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He lives. I know that God lives and loves us. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

We are laying the foundation for, and have already actually commenced, the greatest missionary undertaking ever destined to occur in any age of the earth’s history. We are going forth by command of Deity to carry the knowledge of God and of his saving truths to all nations, to preach the gospel to every creature, and to give in due course, in this life or in the next every living soul the opportunity to hear and obey these saving principles.

The ultimate end of this missionary work will be to see the knowledge of God and his saving truths cover the earth “. . . as the waters cover the sea.” (Isa. 11:9.) The ultimate end of this missionary work will be reached when the day arrives in which it will no longer be necessary for every man to say to his brother or neighbor, “Know the Lord,” for all shall know him from the greatest to the least. (See Jer. 31:31-34.)

Now, since we are engaged in the greatest missionary undertaking that has ever been planned as part of Deity’s program, he has also placed in our hands the most effective, compelling, and persuasive missionary tool ever given to any people in any age. The name of this tool is the Book of Mormon.

It goes without saying that conversion in all ages, for all peoples, is dependent upon their receipt of the Spirit. No one gets a testimony of the divinity of the Lord’s work unless he gains it from the Spirit–that is, unless it comes by the power of the Holy Ghost. But the Book of Mormon is the means, the tool, the way which has been ordained and given so that men can get their hearts and souls in a frame of mind, in a condition where they can hearken to the testimony of the Spirit.

It was of this book that the Prophet said: “I told the Brethren [meaning the Twelve, with whom he had that day met] that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding its precepts, than by any other book.” (History of the Church, vol. 4, p. 461.)

This is precisely what we want people to do. We want them to get so near to the Lord that they will come down in the depths of humility, repent of their sins, and accept Christ for what he is, the Son of God. We want them to come to the truth, join the kingdom of God on earth, and have performed for them the ordinances of salvation and exaltation under the hands of those legal administrators whom the Lord has appointed in this day and generation.

Shortly before the Church was organized, April 6, 1830, writing by the spirit of prophecy and revelation, Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon, which he had translated by the gift and power of God, was “. . . a record of a fallen people, . . .”; that it contained “. . . the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews . . .”; that it was “. . . given by inspiration, . . .”, that it had been “. . . confirmed to others by the ministering of angels, . . .”, that it had been “. . . declared unto the world by them–” all for this purpose–and note the purpose: To prove “. . . to the world that the holy scriptures are true, and that God does inspire men and call them to his holy work in this age and generation, as well as in generations of old;

“Thereby showing that he is the same God yesterday, today, and forever. . . .” (D&C 20:6-12.)

In other words, the Lord has given the Book of Mormon in this day as the absolute, sure, positive witness of the divinity of his work. We go out in the missionary cause, and we bear testimony in soberness and in truth, knowing the verity of what we say, that the heavens have been opened and that God has spoken again; that angels have ministered to men; that the gifts, powers, and graces had anciently have been restored anew; that the gospel and the plan of salvation are again on earth in all their ancient beauty and glory.

But this witness which we bear is not left to stand alone. The Lord sends with us a written record, a means, a missionary tool, which can be used by any person to gain a knowledge of the divinity of the work. The Prophet’s expression that “the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion” means precisely what it says. The keystone is the central stone in the top of the arch. If that stone is removed, then the arch crumbles, which, in effect, means that Mormonism so-called–which actually is the gospel of Christ, restored anew in this day–stands or falls with the truth or the falsity of the Book of Mormon. Thus our program and our purpose, as witnesses of the Lord in this day, ought to be to devise ways and means and to create inducements that will persuade those who are not of us to read the Book of Mormon and to read it according to the revealed pattern.

Moroni has left us in the Book of Mormon itself the recorded promise that if anyone will read it “. . . with real intent, having faith in Christ, . . .” and will ask “. . . God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, . . .” whether it is true, he shall get a knowledge of its truth and divinity by personal revelation. (See Moroni 10:3-4.) This promise is true. It has been tested by thousands and tens of thousands of people in the world, and they have received this personal revelation. Further, by his own voice, the Lord himself testifies of the truth of the Book of Mormon in these words: “. . . as your Lord and your God liveth it is true.” (D&C 17:6.)

Now, our message to the world centers around three great truths. The first the divine Sonship of Christ; the second, that in this day the knowledge of Christ and his saving truths have been restored through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith; and the third, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God on earth the organization through which salvation, hope, and peace are offered to all men.

Before any person is prepared to join the Church, he must believe that Jesus Christ is literally the Son of God; that as such he worked out the infinite and eternal atonement whereby all men are raised in immortality, and those who believe and obey his laws gain the additional reward of eternal life; and that he has ordained and revealed a plan of salvation which enables men so to live as to gain peace here and the fulness of salvation hereafter.

Before joining the Church a person must believe that Joseph Smith was called of God to open this gospel dispensation; that he was indeed a prophet who received keys, powers, authority and revelation from heaven; that he was the revealer of the gospel and the knowledge of God, of Christ, and of salvation for this age; and that he was commanded by Deity to set up his Church and kingdom again on earth.

Before baptism a person must believe that this Church is true; that it is in fact the Lord’s earthly kingdom; that the priesthood and keys are here; that those who now officer it are legal administrators sent of God to preach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.

The Book of Mormon–which has come forth to prove that God inspires men and calls them to his holy work in this age and generation–establishes the verity of these great truths which comprise the message of the restoration. If the Book of Mormon is true, our message to the world is truth; the truth of this message is established in and through this book.

The Book of Mormon is a new, living, modern witness of the divine Sonship of Christ. It testifies of him and of the doctrines of his gospel. It teaches of his atoning sacrifice; it proclaims that through him men are redeemed from the spiritual and temporal death brought into the world by the fall of Adam. It outlines the course men must follow to gain eternal life.

The Book of Mormon stands as a witness of the divine Sonship of Christ; it has come forth for “. . . the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations–. . .” (Preface to the Book of Mormon.)

This book also is a witness of the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith and of the divinity of the Church set up under his instrumentality. It establishes and proves to the world that Joseph Smith is a prophet, for he received the book from a resurrected personage and translated it by the gift and power of God. And since the Book of Mormon came by revelation, which included the ministering of angels, then obviously Joseph Smith also received other revelations and was ministered to by other heavenly beings. Among those revelations was the command to organize the Church. The Church is thus the one true Church because it was set up by a prophet acting under command of God. Thus the truth of the message of the restoration is established in and through and by means of the Book of Mormon.

No person can read this book, according to the prescribed pattern, and not know that it is true. No person can read this book, in the way Moroni directed, without getting in his heart the absolute, certain, sure knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. No person can read this book and learn of its divinity “. . . by the power of the Holy Ghost . . .” (Moroni 10:5), without knowing that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God and that this Church, as now constituted, organized, and set up is God’s kingdom on earth.

As one voice among thousands of others, I certify that I know by the promptings of the Spirit that the Book of Mormon is true. As a consequence I have in addition a personal knowledge, also born of the Spirit, of the divinity of Christ, of the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and of all things incident to this great latter-day work which are essential for the salvation and exaltation of men.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

There are in the world great hosts of upright and good people, men and women of goodwill, who desire in their hearts to know the truth about religion. They see conflicting claims everywhere, claims supporting both the philosophies of the world and the various religious systems.

These truth seekers feel in their hearts that there ought to be unity where religion is concerned, unity based on complete, ultimate truth. They see movements afoot to bring organizational unity into the Christian world, and yet they find those who give lip service to unity crying, “Lo here is Christ, or there. . . .” (Matt. 24:23.) They wonder why men do not come to a unity of the faith, why they do not find the ultimate truth about religion, just as men come to a perfect knowledge of truth in scientific fields.

Well, this condition has prevailed over the years. It existed in the days of Joseph Smith. He was in the midst of a religious revival on the frontier area of America. He heard the cry that here was salvation, or there. He reached the conclusion that “. . . the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.” (Joseph Smith 2:12.)

Then he read these glorious words in the book of James: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him,” followed by the counsel, “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” (James 1:5-6.) As the Spirit worked upon him, he, meditating upon these words, was led to offer that prayer which ushered in this great, final gospel dispensation.

Now, every person of goodwill, every honest truth seeker, every person with a devout desire to find the truth in the field of religion is faced with the same problem which confronted Joseph Smith, and every person can find the answer in the same way he found it; for God, who is no respecter of persons, in whose sight a soul is just as precious today as it ever was, will give wisdom, will give light and truth and revelation to those who ask in faith.

We are the children of God our Father; he loves us, has an intense interest in our well-being, and desires to see us progress and advance until we become like him. He is willing–provided we pay the investigator’s price–to give us wisdom and knowledge to reveal to us the truth about religion so that we can walk in that course and way in which he would have us go.

In view of this, may I mention a specific way and means which will enable men to get in tune with the Lord, to get themselves in the frame of mind to exercise the necessary faith the faith which will bring a personal manifestation from him as to the truth and divinity of this great latter-day work.

Remember, we proclaim to the world a message, the message of the restoration. This message is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that salvation is in him, that because of his atoning sacrifice all men are raised in immortality and those who believe and obey his laws are raised unto eternal life. This message is that in our day, primarily through the instrumentality of Joseph Smith, there has been a restoration of the knowledge of Christ and the knowledge of salvation. And this message is, further, that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as now constituted, is the Church and kingdom of God on earth, the one place where salvation is found, the place where men can come to learn the eternal verities in the fields of religion and salvation.

Now, the Lord has placed in our hands the way and the means to present this message to the world, to present it in such a way that every honest truth seeker can be guided and enabled to know where the truth is. By using this means every truth seeker can learn how to get in communion with Deity and how to get personal revelation from that God who does not upbraid and who desires to see his children come to the light and truth of heaven.

This way and means, given of God to establish the truth of his work, is the Book of Mormon. May I call your attention to the inspired words of Joseph Smith, words written by the spirit of prophecy and revelation on the day the Church was organized in this dispensation. In them the Prophet first announces that the Church has been organized. Then he says that “. . . through faith, God ministered unto him by an holy angel, whose countenance was as lightning, and whose garments were pure and white above all other whiteness”; (D&C 20:6.)

He then says he was given commandments, and also the power “. . . by the means which were before prepared, to translate the Book of Mormon.” (V. 8.) Then of that book he says: It “. . . contains a record of a fallen people, and the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews also;

“Which was given by inspiration [meaning that the original prophets who wrote it were inspired of God] and is confirmed to others by the ministering of angels [meaning that angelic ministers delivered it to men on earth in this day], and is declared unto the world by them–” (Vs. 9-10.)

And now these words that follow are the key: “Proving to the world that the holy scriptures are true, and that God does inspire men and call them to his holy work in this age and generation, as well as in generations of old;

“Thereby showing that he is the same God yesterday, today, and forever.” (Vs. 11-12.)

Now, in every age of the earth’s history, when the Lord has had a message for people, he has sent his servants to testify and bear witness of it. They have spoken by the power of the Holy Ghost and have certified of the truth of the revelation. We do this today, most solemnly and soberly, as it has been done in this conference; and I add my personal witness that I know by the revelations of the Holy Ghost to my soul that this work is true. But for our day and our generation, an era in which the Lord is cutting short his work in righteousness, in which he is hastening it in its time and in its season, he has given something additional. He has placed in our hands a volume of scripture which is both ancient and modern and has provided that it will be the sure proof, the conclusive evidence, the added witness of the divinity of the work.

As all who are acquainted with this matter know, if any person will read this book in accordance with Moroni’s promise, having faith in God, and ask the Father in the name of Christ if it is true, that person will learn by the power of the Holy Ghost that it is. (See Moroni 10:3-5.) The still small voice will whisper to the spirit that is within him, telling him in a way that he cannot deny or misunderstand that no man could have written that book, that it is the mind and word and will of God.

Now; if this book is what we say it is, Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God; Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the one by whom salvation comes; and this Church and kingdom was set up, ordained, and established by the opening of the heavens, by the principle of revelation. The Book of Mormon has been given to the world to prove the divinity of the work, and our challenge is that men of goodwill, upright and good people everywhere, will take this book and learn what is in it and then ask God whether it is true.

Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” (DHC, 4, 461.)

Well, as the keystone of our religion, it is the thing upon which we stand or fall. If it is true, this whole system of religion is true because God’s hand is in it; if it is not true, then our system of religion is false. But thanks be to God, this book is true! And thanks be to him also, he is willing, desirous, by the power of his Spirit, to bear record of that fact to all honest truth seekers in the world in which event they then know of the divinity of the work; and if they are willing to abide and walk in the light having the courage of their convictions they come and join with the Saints of God and get on the path leading to eternal life.

May I quote the words that God himself said in bearing record of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, and make them my testimony also? He said of Joseph Smith, “. . . he has translated the book, even that part which I have commanded him, and as your Lord and your God liveth it is true.” (D&C 17:6.)

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

We have a volume of sacred scripture known as the Book of Mormon, which contains the mind and will and voice of God to the world today. Like the Bible, with which it is in complete conformity, it contains a record of God’s dealings with a people who had the fullness of the everlasting gospel. Thus, both the Book of Mormon and the Bible present a summary of the doctrines of salvation, of the truths men must accept and live by to gain the celestial heaven, and both record the wondrous blessings poured out by Deity upon those in former days who walked in the light of the Lord and who kept his commandments.

The Book of Mormon is a record of God’s dealings with his ancient American saints; the Bible is a similar and parallel record of his dealings with the saints in the Old World. Both shed forth a flood of light and knowledge about those truths that must be believed and obeyed to gain salvation, to gain peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come. And none now living can gain that salvation, which is the greatest of all the gifts of God, without conforming to those truths of which both books testify.

But salvation is not found in a book, any book, neither the Book of Mormon nor the Bible. Salvation is in Christ; it comes because of his atoning sacrifice; his is the only name given under heaven whereby man can be saved. Salvation comes by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of his Son. As a Book of Mormon prophet said, “. . . salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.” (Mosiah 3:18.)

However, salvation is made available to men because the Lord calls prophets and apostles to testify of Christ and to teach the true doctrines of his gospel. Salvation is available only when there are legal administrators who can teach the truth and who have power to perform the ordinances of salvation so they will be binding and will have efficacy, virtue, and force on earth and in heaven.

Now this book, the Book of Mormon, was brought forth in our day by such a legal administrator, one Joseph Smith by name. This man was called of God by his own voice and by angelic ministration. To him was given the ancient record whereon were inscribed the words of prophets and seers who dwelt on the American continent in ages past, holy men who ministered among the land’s inhabitants in much the same way that biblical prophets represented the Lord in the lands of their labors.

Having received the ancient record from a heavenly messenger–from an angel named Moroni, who himself was one of the ancient American prophets–Joseph Smith then translated the book by the gift and power of God. The translated account is the Book of Mormon, a volume of holy writ of some 522 pages. Thereafter Joseph Smith, endowed with the spirit of prophecy and acting pursuant to revelation and at the direct command of God, organized The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes called the Mormon Church because of its acceptance of this Book of Mormon.

With the setting up on earth of the true Church, there came once again a restoration of the fullness of the everlasting gospel, a restoration of the fullness of those truths, keys, powers, and authorities which again enable men to gain a fullness of salvation in the heaven of God our Father.

Thus, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, the call of Joseph Smith to represent God as a prophet on earth, the restoration of the gospel of salvation, and the setting up anew of the earthly Church and kingdom of God–all these are tied together; they are all woven into one pattern; either all of them are realities or none of them are.

We testify that Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon record from a resurrected personage and that he translated it by the power of revelation.

Now if the Book of Mormon is a true account of God’s dealings with ancient inhabitants of the American continent, if it contains, as we solemnly affirm, the fullness of the everlasting gospel, then Joseph Smith was a prophet, a legal administrator, who did in fact restore the gospel and set up the true Church again on earth. In other words, if the Book of Mormon is true, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God’s kingdom on earth, the only true and living Church upon the face of the whole earth, the only place where salvation may be found.

It thus becomes a matter of transcendent import for every truth seeker to learn of the truth and divinity of this volume of sacred scripture–this volume which will open the door to the knowledge of God and his laws; this volume which will introduce the truth seeker to those legal administrators who can, for instance, perform baptisms that will admit penitent persons, not alone to any earthly organization, but to that celestial realm which is God’s eternal kingdom.

In all dispensations past the Lord has called prophets and commissioned them to teach and testify to the people, with the provision that all who believed and obeyed the heaven-sent message would be saved, while those who rejected it would be damned. He has done precisely the same thing in this final gospel dispensation. By his own voice he appointed Joseph Smith to be the first and foremost of his latter-day prophets. Those who have since built on the foundation revealed to Joseph Smith have worn the same prophetic mantle and have and do stand as witnesses to the world of the truth of God’s great plan of salvation in this day.

But in his manifold grace and goodness, God has given an added witness in this day of the eternal verity of his work. Men in this day are as much obligated as men have been in any age to hearken to the voice of the prophets, to lend a listening ear to their sayings, to open their hearts to the truths of heaven which fall from their lips. But today we also have the Book of Mormon to bear record of the truth of the message that has come from a loving Heavenly Father to us, his erring earthly children.

Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon was the keystone of our religion.” (Documentary History of the Church, Vol. 4, p. 451), meaning that the whole structure of restored truth stands or falls, depending on its truth or falsity.

Joseph Smith also wrote, “by the spirit of prophecy and revelation,” that the Book of Mormon carne forth to prove “to the world that the holy scriptures are true, and that God does inspire men and call them to his holy work in this age and generation, as well as in generations of old; Thereby showing that he is the same God yesterday, today, and forever. . . . (D&C 20:11-12.)

In the Book of Mormon is found the Lord’s promise to all men that if they will read the record and ponder it in their hearts and then ask the Father in the name of Christ if it is true–asking with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ–he will manifest the truth of it unto them by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moro. 10:4.)

Now I am one who knows by the power of the Spirit that this book is true, and as a consequence I also know, both by reason and by revelation from the Spirit, of the truth and divinity of all the great spiritual verities of this dispensation. For instance:

I know that the Father and the Son appeared to Joseph Smith–because the Book of Mormon is true.

I know that the gospel has been restored and that God has established his Church again on earth–because the Book of Mormon is true.

I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that he communed with God entertained angels, received revelations, saw visions, and has gone on to eternal glory–because the Book of Mormon is true.

I know that the Bible is the word of God as far as it is translated correctly–because the Book of Mormon is true.

I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the kingdom of God on earth, the one kingdom with legal administrators who can seal men up unto eternal life–because the Book of Mormon is true.

To my testimony of the Book of Mormon I add that of the Lord God himself, who said Joseph Smith “has translated the book, . . . and as your Lord and your God liveth it is true.” (D&C 17:6.)

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Two ministers of one of the largest and most powerful Protestant denominations came to a Latter-day Saint conference to hear me preach.

After the meeting I had a private conversation with them, in which I said they could each gain a testimony that Joseph Smith was the prophet through whom the Lord had restored the fulness of the gospel for our day and for our time.

I told them they should read the Book of Mormon, ponder its great and eternal truths, and pray to the Father in the name of Christ, in faith, and he would reveal the truth of the book to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.

As every gospel scholar knows, the Book of Mormon proves that Joseph Smith was called of God to minister in the prophetic office and to restore the truths of salvation in plainness and perfection.

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It contains a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. It is another testament of Jesus Christ.

It contains the fulness of the gospel, meaning that it is a record of the Lord’s dealings with a people who had the fulness of the gospel, and meaning also that in it is found a summary and a recitation of what all men must believe and do to gain an inheritance in the heavenly kingdom reserved for the Saints.

As the teachings and testimonies of Moses and Isaiah and Peter find place in the Bible, so the parallel preaching and the same Spirit-guided testimonies of Nephi and Alma and Moroni have come down to us in the Book of Mormon.

This American witness of Christ was written upon gold plates which were delivered to Joseph Smith by an angelic ministrant. This ancient record was then translated by the gift and power of God and is now published to the world as the Book of Mormon.

If this book is what it purports to be–if the original record was revealed by a holy angel; if the translation was made by the power of God and not of man; if Joseph Smith was entertaining angels, seeing visions, and receiving revelations–all of which is an established verity; if the Book of Mormon is true–then the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon proves the truth of this great latter-day work in which we are engaged.

All of this I explained to my two Protestant friends. One of them, a congenial and decent sort of fellow, said somewhat casually that he would read the Book of Mormon. The other minister, manifesting a bitter spirit, said: “I won’t read it. We have experts who have read the Book of Mormon, and I have read what our experts have to say about it.”

This account dramatizes one of our problems in presenting the message of the Book of Mormon to the world. There are sincere and devout people everywhere who have heard what other people say about this volume of holy writ, and so they do not read it themselves.

Instead of drinking from that fountain from whence clear streams of living water flow, they prefer to go downstream and drink from the soiled, muddy, poison-filled streams of the world.

The plain fact is that salvation itself is at stake in this matter. If the Book of Mormon is true–if it is a volume of holy scripture, if it contains the mind and will and voice of the Lord to all men, if it is a divine witness of the prophetic call of Joseph Smith–then to accept it and believe its doctrines is to be saved, and to reject it and walk contrary to its teachings is to be damned.

Let this message be sounded in every ear with an angelic trump; let it roll round the earth in resounding claps of never-ending thunder; let it be whispered in every heart by the still, small voice. Those who believe the Book of Mormon and accept Joseph Smith as a prophet thereby open the door to salvation; those who reject the book outright or who simply fail to learn its message and believe its teachings never so much as begin to travel that course along the strait and narrow path that leads to eternal life.

Shortly after my experience with these two ministers, two other ministers from the same denomination came to another of our conferences to hear me preach. And, once again, after the meeting I had a private discussion with them.

My message was the same. Taking the Book of Mormon as their guide, they must read, ponder, and pray in order to gain a witness from the Spirit as to the truth and divinity of this great latter-day work.

I told them of my prior experience with their two colleagues and how one of them had refused to read the Book of Mormon, saying that they had experts who had read the book and he had read what their experts had said.

I then said, “What is it going to take to get you gentlemen to read the Book of Mormon and find out for yourselves what is involved, rather than relying on the views of your experts?”

One of these ministers, holding my copy of the Book of Mormon in his hands, let the pages flip past his eyes in a matter of seconds. As he did so, he said, “Oh, I’ve read the Book of Mormon.”

I had a momentary flash of spiritual insight that let me know that his reading had been about as extensive as the way he had just flipped the pages. In his reading he had done no more than scan a few of the headings and read an isolated verse or two.

A lovely young lady, a convert to the Church whose father was a minister of the same denomination as my four Protestant friends, was listening to my conversation with the second two. At this point she spoke up and said, “But Reverend, you have to pray about it.”

He replied, “Oh, I prayed about it. I said, ‘O God, if the Book of Mormon is true, strike me dead’; and here I am.”

My unspoken impulse was to give this rejoinder: “But Reverend, you have to pray in faith!”

This account dramatizes another of our problems in teaching those who read the Book of Mormon how to read it in order to gain the promised witness by the power of the Holy Ghost.

The pattern for this was set in the experience of Oliver Cowdery. He desired not alone to act as a scribe to Joseph Smith but also to translate directly from the plates. After much importuning, the Lord permitted Brother Cowdery to try.

The divine authorization contained these provisos: “Remember that without faith you can do nothing; therefore ask in faith. Trifle not with these things; do not ask for that which you ought not. . . . And according to your faith shall it be done unto you.” (D&C 8:10-11.)

Oliver tried to translate and failed. Then came the divine word: “Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.” That is, he had not done all that in his power lay; he had expected the Lord to do it all merely because he asked.

“But, behold, I say unto you,” the divine word continued, “that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.” (D&C 9:7-8.)

Now, if the Book of Mormon is true, our acceptance of it will lead to salvation in the highest heaven. On the other hand, if we say it is true when in fact it is not, we are thereby leading men astray and surely deserve to drop down to the deepest hell.

The time is long past for quibbling about words and for hurling unsavory epithets against the Latter-day Saints. These are deep and solemn and ponderous matters. We need not think we can trifle with sacred things and escape the wrath of a just God.

Either the Book of Mormon is true, or it is false; either it came from God, or it was spawned in the infernal realms. It declares plainly that all men must accept it as pure scripture or they will lose their souls. It is not and cannot be simply another treatise on religion; it either came from heaven or from hell. And it is time for all those who seek salvation to find out for themselves whether it is of the Lord or of Lucifer.

May I be so bold as to propose a test and issue a challenge. It is hoped that all who take this test will have a knowledge of the Holy Bible, because the more people know about the Bible, the greater their appreciation will be of the Book of Mormon.

This test is for saint and sinner alike, it is for Jew and Gentile, for bond and free, for black and white, for all of our Father’s children. We have all been commanded to search the scriptures, to treasure up the Lord’s word, to live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God. (See D&C 84:44.) This, then, is the test:

Let every person make a list of from one hundred to two hundred doctrinal subjects, making a conscious effort to cover the whole field of gospel knowledge. The number of subjects chosen will depend on personal inclination and upon how broad the spectrum will be under each subject.

Then write each subject on a blank piece of paper. Divide the paper into two columns; at the top of one, write “Book of Mormon,” and at the top of the other, “Bible.”

Then start with the first verse and phrase of the Book of Mormon, and continuing verse by verse and thought by thought, put the substance of each verse under its proper heading. Find the same doctrine in the Old and New Testaments, and place it in the parallel columns.

Ponder the truths you learn, and it will not be long before you know that Lehi and Jacob excel Paul in teaching the Atonement; that Alma’ s sermons on faith and on being born again surpass anything in the Bible; that Nephi makes a better exposition of the scattering and gathering of Israel than do Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel combined; that Mormon’s words about faith, hope, and charity have a clarity, a breadth, and a power of expression that even Paul did not attain, and so on and so on.

There is another and simpler test that all who seek to know the truth might well take. It calls for us simply to read, ponder, and pray–all in the spirit of faith and with an open mind. To keep ourselves alert to the issues at hand–as we do read, ponder, and pray–we should ask ourselves a thousand times, “Could any man have written this book?”

And it is absolutely guaranteed that sometime between the first and thousandth time this question is asked, every sincere and genuine truth seeker will come to know by the power of the Spirit that the Book of Mormon is true, that it is the mind and will and voice of the Lord to the whole world in our day.

We ask, then: What think ye of the Book of Mormon? Who can tell its wonder and worth? How many martyrs have suffered death in the flesh to bring it forth and carry its saving message to a wicked world?

We answer: It is a book, a holy book, a book of sacred, saving scripture. It is a voice from the dust, a voice that whispers low out of the earth, telling of a fallen people who sank into an endless oblivion because they forsook their God.

It is truth springing out of the earth as righteousness looks down from heaven. It is the stick of Joseph in the hands of Ephraim, which will guide all Israel, the ten tribes included, to return to Him whom their fathers worshipped. It contains the word that will gather the whole house of Israel and make them once again one nation upon the mountains of Israel, as it was in the days of their fathers.

It is an account of the ministry of the Son of God to his other sheep in the day they saw his face and heard his voice and believed his word.

It is the divine evidence, the proof, that God has spoken in our day. Its chief purpose is to convince all men, Jew and Gentile alike, that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, who manifests himself, by faith, in all ages and among all peoples.

It came forth in our day proving to the world that the Bible is true; that Jesus, by whom the Atonement came, is Lord of all; that Joseph Smith was called of God, as were the prophets of old; that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one place on earth where salvation is found.

It is the book that will save the world and prepare the sons of men for joy and peace here and now and everlasting life in eternity.

As it happens, I am one of the many who have come to know, by the revelations of the Holy Ghost to my soul, that the Book of Mormon is true. And, knowing that I will be accountable for that witness before the bar of the great Jehovah when he judges all men, I testify that as he lives the Book of Mormon is true, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Michael R. Ash

As we continue our discussion about the Book of Mormon translation, some members may be troubled that the process doesn’t match their conceptions of how they thought the process worked. For members who were unaware of the seer stone in the hat, at least two questions or concerns may arise: 1) Is it strange that Joseph used a stone in a hat? 2) Why have we have always been told that Joseph used the Urim and Thummim?

To answer the first question we might also ask: Is it strange that a man could rise from the dead, walk on water, heal the lame, create the heavens, and answer the prayers of billions of people? There are basically two kinds of non-Mormons who reject LDS beliefs: A) those who believe that there is no God (or that if such a being exists he doesn’t interact with humans), and B) those who believe that a supreme being exists and has communicated with mankind.

For those who don’t believe in a God, all supernatural and miraculous events are automatically brushed aside as imaginary, impossible, etc. All spiritual experiences are seen as “strange,” superstitious, and possibly the result of the evolutionary process of the mind. Joseph’s translation process is just as strange as any other supernatural claim. 

For those who believe that God can and has communicated with mankind, it seems hypocritical to summarily dismiss Joseph’s method of translation because it doesn’t fit with pre-conceived views of how God communicates. As with all spiritual claims, the only way to know if they come from God is to ask God for a witness.

For Mormons who think the seer stone in the hat is strange compared to a translation through the Nephite Interpreters, one might ask: Why is a translation through a stone outside of a hat (the Nephite Interpreters) acceptable, while a translation through a stone inside of a hat (the seer stone) is unusual? It should be obvious that if someone finds the one normal and the other odd, that such a perspective is based on nothing more than pre-conceived assumptions.

Number 2: Why have we have always been told that Joseph translated the book with the Urim and Thummim? The answer is simple: The early Saints referred to both the Interpreters and the seer stone as the “Urim and Thummim.” The real problem is not that the seer stone is called the Urim and Thummim, but rather that when most modern members hear the phrase they typically envision the Interpreters. Why is this? The critics claim that most members don’t know about the stone and the hat because the church hides the information. This claim, however, is false.

That Joseph used a seer stone in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon has been mentioned in several official church publications such as the Improvement Era, the Ensign, and even the Friend by such people as B.H. Roberts, Richard Lloyd Anderson, Neal A. Maxwell and Russell M. Nelson. It stretches the imagination to believe that the church would hide this information if it has been included in official church magazines.

So why are some members unfamiliar with the translation process? The answer is a bit more complex. This topic and the frequent but false claim that the church “hides its history from members” will be discussed in greater depth in a future issue.

Number 3: Why isn’t the seer stone used today? In Joseph’s world, he and many of his contemporaries believed that God could reveal things through a seer stone. Joseph’s mind was already open and prepared for revelation and a translation process through the Urim and Thummin. The Lord utilized Joseph’s worldview to help restore the gospel. If Joseph had been skeptical of seer stones, he may not have been receptive to translating the Book of Mormon.

As Joseph continued to receive more revelations, he discovered that the seer stone was merely an elementary tool for teaching him how to focus his thoughts on the things of God. By the time he was working on the Inspired Version of the New Testament, he no longer needed the seer stone. Joseph apparently told Orson Pratt that the Lord gave him the Urim and Thummim “when he was inexperienced in the Spirit of inspiration. But now he had advanced so far that he understood the operations of that Spirit and did not need the assistance of that instrument,” (Richard L. Anderson, BYU Studies 24:4, 489-560).