(Last Updated 1/20/2017)
There are many “advanced history” topics in the CES Letter to investigate: BOM translation, BOM witnesses, First Vision, Polygamy, Priesthood Restoration, The Book of Abraham, etc. I wondered where to start to make the best use of my time. Was there an issue that I could study first that would show the LDS church is NOT true? Yes there was. It is the Book of Mormon.
There are many “advanced history” topics in the CES Letter to investigate: BOM translation, BOM witnesses, First Vision, Polygamy, Priesthood Restoration, The Book of Abraham, etc. I wondered where to start to make the best use of my time. Was there an issue that I could study first that would show the LDS church is NOT true? Yes there was. It is the Book of Mormon.
Joseph Smith told the Twelve Apostles
in 1841:
“The
Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of
our religion.”
Apostle Orson Pratt:
"This
book [the BOM] must be either true or false. If true, it is one of the most
important messages ever sent from God to man, affecting both the temporal and
eternal interests of every people under heaven to the same extent and in the
same degree that the message of Noah affected the inhabitants of the old world.
If false, it is one of the most cunning, wicked, bold, deep-laid impositions ever
palmed upon the world, calculated to deceive and ruin millions who will
sincerely receive it as the word of God, and will suppose themselves securely
built upon the rock of truth until they are plunged with their families into
hopeless despair.”
General Authority (Seventy) B. H. Roberts:
"The Book of Mormon of necessity must submit to every test, to literary criticism as well as to every other class of criticism…Indeed it [the Book of Mormon] must submit to every analysis and examination. It must submit to historical tests, to the tests of archaeological research and also to the higher criticism."
(B. H. Roberts, "Higher Criticism and the Book of Mormon", Improvement Era 14 (June 1911): No. 8, pg. 667)
President Ezra Taft Benson (bold added):
"Just
as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the Church stand or fall with the
truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. The enemies of the Church understand
this clearly. This is why they go to such great lengths to try to disprove the
Book of Mormon, for if it can be
discredited, the Prophet Joseph Smith goes with it. So does our claim to
priesthood keys, and revelation, and the restored Church. But in like
manner, if the Book of Mormon be true—and millions have now testified that they
have the witness of the Spirit that it is indeed true—then one must accept the
claims of the Restoration and all that accompanies it."
President Ezra Taft Benson spoke the
above words during General Conference as President of the LDS Church. President
Benson was quoted by Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland in 1995[1] and the
quote appeared in the Priesthood / Relief Society Manual for 2015.[2]
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