On September 22, 1827, on a hill near Palmyra, New York, the Angel Moroni gave Joseph Smith a book written on golden plates. The book was a record of the ancestors of the American Indians. These ancestors were actually the descendants of Jewish refugees from Jerusalem who had escaped just before the city fell to Nebuchadnezzar. Over the next two years, Joseph Smith worked laboriously to translate the golden plates—which were written in “reformed Egyptian,” a language unknown before or since—into English. The result was The Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith's career as a prophet was launched with its publication in 1830 and the organization of the Mormon church (later known officially as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

       At least, this is what the Mormon church would have people believe. It zealously carries the message of Joseph Smith’s “restoration” of the church to the far reaches of the globe. To anyone who will accept a copy of the Book of Mormon, the Latter-day Saint missionaries will give the challenge to read it, pray, and ask God to show him that it is true, and receive the “burning in the bosom” which is confirmation that the Book is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and the LDS church is the true church. This challenge comes from the Book of Mormon itself: “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost” (Ether 10:4).

       But is this method of discovering truth sufficient? Is a subjective emotional response all that is necessary?

       One thing is for sure: Mormons are not alone in using such a method to arrive at “truth.” Many professing Christians say that “God told them” to do many things contrary to the Scriptures, such as committing adultery through divorce and remarriage. Others claim they do not “feel convicted” to obey some of God’s specific commandments, as though God owed a person a particular emotional “confirmation” to do what He has clearly instructed.

       The Mormon church’s challenge to pray and wait for the confirmation of the “burning in the bosom” is, to at least some people, powerful and convincing. An Ohio Amish man who recently converted to the Mormon church testified that after reading the Book of Mormon, he felt it was true. None of its doctrines, he said, conflicted with what he had read in his German Bible. The resulting crisis of conscience drove him to accept the rest of the missionaries’ claims—that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the Utah Branch LDS church was the true church—and he and his family were rebaptized into the Mormon church. Two additional Amish families soon followed him.

       Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God, not only with our whole heart and strength, but also with our whole mind. God has given us the gift of mind, reason, and rational thinking to keep us from being duped by men with shallow, though to some convincing, claims. God has given us more tools than simple emotion to evaluate truth claims.

       When faced with claims such as those of the Mormons, we are obligated to search deeper. Simply reading one book and accepting it wholesale because of an emotional response is insufficient. Reading and weighing opposing points of view is also necessary, checking evidence against primary sources. In the case of the Book of Mormon, it is exceedingly easy to find that it contains telltale evidence of its fraudulent nature. Most of this evidence is in the form of anachronisms—statements made which are outside the correct timeframe; that is, they betray the fact that the book was not written when it claims to have been. The Book of Mormon claims to be a record stretching from about 600 B.C. to A.D. 425. Most of the narrative comes from the Old Testament period before Christ’s coming. Yet there is a description of an event very similar to a Methodist camp meeting (Mosiah 4, allegedly dating to 124 B.C.), of which there was no such thing until the 1700s in North America. First Nephi 22:17, supposedly recording events “between 588 and 570 B.C.,” says that “the prophet,” said that “they shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire”—a quote from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:15, which of course had not been written yet. There are several references by name to “crosses” and “crucify” (e.g., 2 Nephi 9:18; 10:3), which had not been invented yet in the Old World and were never known in the New World until the coming of the Europeans.¹ Second Nephi 10:3 confuses the Greek word “Christ” for the name of the Messiah and is apparently ignorant of the fact that the Hebrew-speaking Jews would neither have known nor needed this Greek word, which is the equivalent of the Hebrew word Meshiach (Messiah). Jacob 7:19 (544-421 B.C.) mentions the unpardonable sin, when Jesus had not yet come and taught about the unpardonable sin. Alma 16:13 mentions that the New World Jews had “synagogues, which were built after the manner of the Jews,” when synagogues had not been invented when their refugee ancestors had supposedly left Jerusalem and thus, would have been unknown to the Jewish Indians of North America.² Alma 46:14 claims that the godly believers in the New World were called Christians (in 73 B.C.), even though the New Testament clearly states that Antioch, in the 30s or 40s A.D., was the first place that believers were called Christians. Helaman 8:11 confuses Moses’ parting of the Red Sea with Elijah and Elisha’s parting of the Jordan River (cf. 2Ki 2:8, 14). Mormon 9:9 claims that one can read in the Scriptures that “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of turning,” even though the epistle of James and the epistle to the Hebrews could not have been known at that time in the New World (cf. Heb 13:8; James 1:17).

       These examples, and many, many more in the Book of Mormon itself, are easily spotted and show conclusively that the book is a product of the nineteenth century, not of antiquity. If a person needs additional assurance, further research outside the Book of Mormon itself is very easy, and there is an abundance of literature on Mormon history and origins for one to read and ponder. For a few examples, it is easy to discover—even from books written by Mormons—that the following are true:

       • Joseph Smith was involved in the occult, and his revelations came from a seer stone (an occult device for discovering hidden knowledge). 

       • Joseph Smith made false prophecies and was fooled by fake “brass plates” hidden by pranksters in an Indian mound. 

       • Joseph Smith wrongly (like many of his contemporaries) understood ceremonial Hopewell Indian earthworks to be military fortifications, where, according to the Book of Mormon, one faction of the “Jewish” Native Americans slaughtered the other. 

       • Smith pretended to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics from some ancient papyri that he purchased, presenting the world with The Book of Abraham (still considered Scripture by the LDS church). When the papyri were rediscovered in the twentieth century, they were found to have nothing to do with Abraham at all but were ordinary pagan Egyptian funerary texts like The Book of the Dead and The Book of Breathings. 

       • Smith’s false prophecies are also easy to find, and his “revelations” carry unmistakable evidence that they were the product of his own imagination rather than the word of Heaven.

       Yet the impartial investigator must also look at the rest of the picture. Our Amish friend said that he found nothing in the Book of Mormon that conflicted doctrinally with what he read in his German Bible. That may well be true. The Book of Mormon presents a view of Christianity, which is basically nineteenth-century Protestantism. There is actually little in it, which is doctrinally surprising. It exhorts men to repentance, to faith in Christ and His atonement, and says that the righteous will dwell in bliss and the wicked in everlasting torment. But there is a secret here—Joseph Smith, with his “prophetic” insights, carried Mormon theology far, far away from its Protestant and Book of Mormon roots. The theology of the current LDS church actually bears little resemblance to the theology of the Book of Mormon. If the actual theology of the Mormon church had been explained clearly and immediately to our Amish friend, he might not have felt any urge to read the Book of Mormon.

       Mormons believe that God (Whom they call Heavenly Father) was once a man on another planet and was “exalted” to godhood. There is not just one God, but rather an infinite number of Gods, all of whom were once men and who were “exalted.” Our God earned his exaltation through His faithful obedience to His God. Although exalted, God still has a physical body, as does His wife, Heavenly Mother.

       The universe is populated, they say, with “free intelligences,” which are eternal. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother together create spirits for these intelligences. Human reproduction on earth then provides physical bodies for these spirit children to inhabit. Because the Fall of Adam and Eve into sin allowed for the earth to be filled with physical people, providing a place for the spirit-children and allowing them to progress the road to exaltation to godhood, the Fall was actually a good thing, not a bad one.

       Jesus and Lucifer, according to Mormons, are both “spirit-children” of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. When Jesus was incarnated, He was both the spiritual and physical son of Heavenly Father because (according to them) Heavenly Father descended to earth and had a relationship with the Virgin Mary, resulting in the birth of Jesus. Jesus became a God through exaltation because of His exemplary life on earth, and all humans have the opportunity of being exalted to divine status. Each married human couple could potentially rule their own universes, populating them with their own spirit-children. Exaltation requires a couple to undergo the endowment and sealing ceremonies in an LDS Temple, in which husbands and wives are sealed to each other for eternity. Since most people across Earth’s history will never do this for themselves, Mormons are allowed to undergo baptism (and other ordinances) for the dead in LDS Temples. (This is why Mormons so avidly pursue genealogical studies, so they can perform “Temple work” for their ancestors.)

       The afterlife, in Mormon thinking, is divided into three degrees of glory, to which most people go, and Outer Darkness, where murderers and some people who leave the LDS church go. Only those who have been faithful Mormons and had their marriage sealed in a Temple (or had this done for them after their decease by faithful Mormons) are given the highest degree exaltation to godhood in the Celestial Kingdom.

       As anyone can see from this brief synopsis, Mormon theology—although certainly creative—bears little resemblance to Christianity. (It also draws little from the Book of Mormon.) Despite its bizarre nature, the LDS church has tried for years to be accepted by evangelicals as a Christian denomination. Their beliefs, however, mark them as people who have embraced something other than the faith once delivered to the saints.

       How can we prevent our people from being fooled, not just by Mormons, but by any deceiver or spirit of antichrist?

       1. Loving the truth, and loving God with our whole mind, requires us to know how to think clearly, evaluate evidence, and research claims. Ignorance is not bliss; what you do not know can hurt you and those you love. We must love learning and value education, which will arm our children with some of the critical thinking tools to avoid deception.

       2. We must know how to think critically and how to do the research necessary to evaluate claims. Knowing how to properly evaluate evidence and reach sound conclusions helps us avoid deception, whether spiritual deception, deception regarding health claims, or superstitions such as water witching, etc.

       3. We must maintain churches which are spiritually alive and satisfying. If people feel spiritually unfulfilled in their churches, they are extremely vulnerable to any group which promises spiritual satisfaction.

       Truth stands forever and is immortal. It is not afraid of scrutiny. It is not determined by a mere emotional response, but by objective reality and by comparison with the Word of God. When we love the truth, we can freely and trustingly know and follow the Good Shepherd’s voice.

-Manchester, MI
 

Footnotes: 

One could counter that the Old Testament also contains a description of crucifixion before its invention in Psalm 22. This is true, but

Psalm 22 does not use the word “cross” or “crucify” where the Book of Mormon does. Those words would have been meaningless to

someone who did not know what they meant, whereas a description, as given in Psalm 22, does convey meaning.

The synagogues began after the Babylonian Captivity.