OF
MORMON
The
Book of Mormon was published in 1830 and was allegedly translated from Golden
Plates by Joseph Smith the founder of Mormonism. The evidence for the Golden Plates consists
of a testimony by three witnesses and another by eight. But none of the coins or cities described in
the book as being in ancient
Mormons say that the ancient peoples did not use coins but used pieces of precious metal to make transactions. The way the Book of Mormon describes those pieces makes it reasonable to suppose they were coins. Alma 11 says of the reckoning of value that a senum of silver was equal to a senum of gold and either was used for a measure of barley. Silver cannot be equal to gold in itself. It is only if it is it stamped and shaped as a coin. And even if these items were not, why are we not finding loads of them considering the big population of users mentioned in the Book of Mormon?
The
Book says that the Nephites and the Lamanites met for one final battle that exterminated the Nephites at the Hill Cumorah
where Smith found the plates. But where
are the bones and the armour and the swords that should be abundant there? Martin Harris was one of the three witnesses
to the Golden Bible but God would not have chosen him though Smith said he
did. Harris was famous for having
ludicrous visions and revelations even before he became associated with
Smith. And the first 116 pages,
containing the Book of Lehi were lost and never
restored. Smith said he could not
retranslate for some would see differences between the new and old one if the
old turned up. This is an admission that
the whole thing was a hoax. Why couldn’t
God tell him if the old one still existed?
It was believed that Martin Harris’s wife burned them in her
fireplace. God would not let the
precious pages be lost after enabling Smith to miraculously translate the
Plates. The witnesses said they saw the Plates
inside their heads and after Smith manipulated and tormented them to think they
could see them (page 37, Are the Mormon Scriptures Reliable?). The Book of Mormon is the only evidence that
Smith was a prophet of God and we have found it wanting. He made many prophecies that never came to
pass. In one prophecy, God says that he
will reject the Church with its baptisms for the dead if a
The
Book of Mormon claims to be an abridgement made by Mormon a prophet. But is a very long book and it is impossible
to believe that it could have been written on a set of plates about the
thickness of tin and together made a pile six inches high and which were eight
by six inches in size. It gets worse
when one learns that Joseph said he did not translate all the plates but only
one third of them. Chapters 1 and 2 of The
Case Against Mormonism, Volume 2, do a thorough
job of exposing the lies Smith told about the plates. Joseph Smith and Money-digging ends
with a copy of affidavits that cast further doubt on his story and show that if
any miracles happened they were satanic miracles.
The
Book of Mormon contains huge verbatim chunks out of the Old Testament and
especially the Book of Isaiah. One would
expect Mormon to have abridged these chunks too when they appeared in the
longer version of the Golden Plates. And
what were they doing on these Plates when they bemoaned the lack of space on
them when they were already written on the brass plates of Laban?
Believers
in the Book of Mormon make the same mistake as believers in the resurrection of
Christ. They listen to twelve men who
testified of the Gold Bible whereas there were more witnesses who said that it
was a hoax and the prophet could not be trusted. The Christians listen to thirteen men nearly
all of whom were theologically uneducated despite the thousands of Jewish
scholars who believed that Jesus was untrustworthy and did not rise. The rule is that whatever the largest group
of witnesses says must be accepted as the most probable.
WORKS CONSULTED
A Piece Of Blue Sky, Jon Atack, Lyle
Stuart,
Are
the Mormon Scriptures Reliable? Harry L Ropp,
Intervarsity Press,
Christendom Astray,
Robert Roberts, The Dawn Book Supply, 1958
Christian Deviations,
Horton Davies, SCM,
“Christian Science,”
Dean Lefroy, SPCK,
Christianity in
Crisis, Hank Hanegraaff, Nelson Word Ltd,
Concise Guide to
Today’s Religions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks,
1983
Conjugal Love, Emmanuel
Swedenborg, Swedenborg
Foundation, 1979
Cosmos, Chaos and the
World to Come, Norman Cohn,
Crisis of Conscience,
Raymond Franz, Commentary Press,
Cults and Isms J.
Oswald Sanders, Zondervan Publishers,
Dianetics, The Modern Science Of Mental Health L Ron Hubbard New Era Publications,
Dictionary of Sects,
Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious Thought, by Blunt,
Gale Research Company, Book Tower, Detroit, undated
Health And Happiness,
EG White, Inspiration Books,
His
Eye, The Bookkeeping of God, Universelles
Leben,
Jehovah of the Watchtower,
Walter Martin and Norman Clann, Bethany House
Publishers,
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
John Wijngaards, Catholic Truth Society, London,
1998
Joseph Smith and
Money-Digging, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Salt Lake City, 1970
No Man Knows My History, Fawn M Brodie, Vintage, New York, 1995
Science and Health
with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, First Church of Christ
Scientist, Boston,
1971
Some Modern Faiths,
Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright,
Intervarsity Press, Leicestershire, 1988
Spying in Guru Land,
William Shaw, Fourth Estate, London,
1994
Studies on Islam, Jack
Budd, Red Sea Mission
Team, Northants, 1994
The Bible, Medical
Science and Alcohol, EG White, Inspiration Books, 1974 The Case Against Mormonism, Vol 2, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry,
Salt Lake City, Utah, 1968
The Challenge of the
Cults, Maurice C Burrell, IVP, Leicester,
1983
The Divine Principle,
Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, Washington DC,
1973
The Four Major Cults,
AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press, Carlisle,
1992
The Great Controversy,
EG White, Inspiration Books, Phoenix,
Arizona, 1986
The Healing
Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy, Martin Gardner, Prometheus, New York, 1993
The Life of Mary Baker
G Eddy and the History of Christian Science, Georgine Milmine, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1972
The Moon is not the
Son, James Bjornstad, Dimension Books, Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
1976
The New Cults, Walter
Martin, Vision House, Santa Ana,
California, 1980
The Pope’s Armada,
Gordon Urquhart, Bantam Press, London, 1995
The Religion of
Ancient Persia,
Professor A J Carnoy, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1959
The Secret World of
Cults, Jean Ritchie, Angus and Robertson, London,
1991
The Truth that Leads
to Eternal Life, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Watchtower, New York, 1968
The World’s Religions,
Lion, Herts, 1982
They Go About Two by
Two, William E Paul, Religion Analysis Service Inc, USA
Thirty Years a
Watchtower Slave William J Schnell, Marshall, Morgan and Scott Ltd, London, 1956
His Eye, The Bookkeeping of God, Universelles Leben, Wurzburg, Germany,
1991
What is a Jehovah’s
Witness? Rev John Wimbish, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
1956
William Branham – the
Man and His Message, Carl Dyke, Western Tract Mission Inc, Saskatoon, Canada,
1984
THE WEB
www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/Ght-3-0-Tpc.htm
Guidance for Heavenly
Tradition
www.kevinquick.com/kkministries/books/reasoning/nwt.html
Reveals the deceptive
translation of the Bible of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
http://alhafeez.org/rashid/beware.htm
Beware of the Evil of
the Ahmadiyya Movement Against
Islam, Syed Rashid Ali
12/06/08