The Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon has a very radical history.  Its origins are shrouded with divine intervention or audacious falsehood, depending on who you speak to.

The story according to Joseph Smith begins when he was 17 and living in Palmyra, New York.  He felt terrible for some of his youthful follies, and so, as he prayed to God he received a visit from an angel named Moroni.  Moroni gave Joseph several instructions during that visit and among those was to inform him that at a hill nearby his home, there was a record of the ancient American inhabitants that the Lord would command him to translate.  Moroni left and then returned a second time that night, repeating what he’d said before with some additional instruction.  He left and returned a third time, saying the same things as his last visit with even more additional instruction.

The next morning, Joseph was visited a fourth time with the same circumstances and was instructed to tell his father everything that Moroni had told him.  After hearing all these things, Joseph’s father told him that it came from God and that he needed to obey the angel.

When Joseph went to the hill, he found the record Moroni had told him about, and seeing that they were written on gold plates, he thought about how this gold could really help his family in their indigent circumstances.  God didn’t like that attitude very much.  Moroni appeared again, and in more words than I am giving, Joseph was forbidden from translating for four years.  During that time, he was told to grow up and set his heart only on the things of God and then he would be worthy to translate the golden plates.

Four years later, Joseph received the plates with special instructions to keep them hidden from the world because there were wicked men who sought to destroy the work of God.  But if Joseph did everything in his power to keep the plates safe, God would take care of the rest.  The plates stayed hidden and protected, and Joseph was able to complete the translation of the plates, and through same miracle, was able to publish the record as The Book of Mormon, named after a prophet-historian in the scripture.

The golden plates were taken up by Moroni once the translation was completed and nobody besides Joseph ever saw the plates except on two separate occasions.  The first time, three of Joseph’s friends (Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris) heard the voice of the Lord and were shown the golden plates in a divine manifestation.  The second occasion, the plates were shown by Joseph Smith by eight men—Joseph’s father, two of his brothers, four from the Whitmer family, and Hiram Page.  While none of them heard a voice or saw angels, they were allowed to touch and handle the plates.  The testimonies of both the Three and the Eight Witnesses are published as part of The Book of Mormon, as well as Joseph’s testimony as to how he received it.

The golden plates were taken by the angel Moroni and nobody has claimed to have seen them since.  The Book of Mormon was published in 1830, and shortly afterwards, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established.

This is only a summary of what took place over several years, but in essence, it’s what happened.

Of course, most of the world gets about ten seconds into that story and say, Yeah right.  You expect us to believe that something like that happened in our day and age?

To which I say, Many of us believe that the Red Sea was parted to let the Israelites cross on dry land.  Next to that, being commanded to write a book doesn’t quite stretch my credulity.

One of the best criticisms I ever heard on the Book of Mormon was when a gentleman asked me what happened to the gold plates Joseph Smith translated from.  “The angel Moroni took it up with him.”

“That’s rather convenient for you, isn’t it?”

I bit my tongue.  Frankly, it would have been more convenient to have the gold plates with us to verify that part of Joseph Smith’s story, but even then, I doubt it would make that great a difference in convincing anybody of our claim to hold the full and restored gospel of Christ.  That belief has only come by prayer and listening to the Spirit, as far as I’ve ever witnessed.

Of course, there’s the familiar charge of Joseph Smith being a liar and a fraud.  There’s no evidence that the Book of Mormon wasn’t just pulled out of a hat, and there’s even historical records stating that Joseph Smith used a hat during translation (one of the quirkier aspects to the story, I will gleefully admit.)  And, the truth is, Joseph Smith couldn’t prove anything to anybody.  We have to take his word on it that what he said was true.

But what about the Three and Eight Witnesses?  In my not-so-humble opinion, they are the best argument for the Book of Mormon’s veracity.  All 11 of these men claimed to have seen the golden plates, and in the case of the Eight, they physically handled them, while the Three claimed to have had a miraculous vision accompanying their witnessing of the plates.  All of the Three and three of the Eight (Hiram Page, Jacob Whitmer, and John Whitmer) were excommunicated or had their records removed from the Church, nearly all at the same time.

These were all men who had been close friends with Joseph at the beginning of the Book of Mormon translation.  They had all been prominent members of the Church and had suffered much the same things Joseph had in the early days of building Zion.  However, because of their own prideful ambitions, they were cut off entirely.

Oliver Cowdery had been one of Joseph’s closest friends and was instrumental in assisting Joseph during the bulk of translation.  After the excommunication, he went into law and became a very successful lawyer—and one of Joseph’s most bitter enemies until the end of Joseph’s life.  And yet… during a trial, one of Oliver’s opposing attorney’s made a snide remark about the Book of Mormon, and Oliver went on record defending his vision of the golden plates.

(On a sidenote, Oliver let go of his animosity after Joseph was murdered.  He became so incensed at the legal injustice taking place that he volunteered to go to Washington DC at his own expense to demand justice for the crime committed by the mob.  He lost, but was eventually rebaptized with the Saints and stayed faithful till his death.)

Martin Harris was often in trouble in the Church, despite his enormous influence and aid in the early days, especially financially backing the Book of Mormon publication.  He lived a long life and often bore testimony about his experience in seeing the golden plates.

David Whitmer was excommunicated and never returned, as is the case with his brothers and brother-in-law in the Eight.  He was hurt and never more a friend to Joseph Smith.  And yet, seven years before he died, he had 21 upstanding citizens in his community sign and witness an affidavit he made proclaiming his testimony of the golden plates and the truth of the Book of Mormon.  This was decades after his excommunication and he had no intention of returning.  He was bitter about Joseph, and yet he never stepped down from his testimony of the golden plates and was the most public about this.

John Whitmer was excommunicated and Jacob Whitmer and Hiram Page voluntarily had their records removed.  They never went back, and on their deathbeds, each proclaimed that they had seen the plates and that they knew it came from God.

I’m happy that the other five witnesses (Christian Whitmer, Peter Whitmer, Jun., Joseph Smith, Sen., Hyrum Smith, and Samuel H. Smith) all stayed in the Church until they died and stayed true to their testimonies of the golden plates and the Book of Mormon.  But it endlessly fascinates me that six others found cause to leave it all behind.  Their departures weren’t amicable.  It was horrendous, awful, deeply antagonistic.  They had so much animosity towards Joseph Smith, Jun., and if at any time, they could have said it had all been a lie.  If it was a lie, they had nothing to gain by affirming the Book of Mormon was a true book.  And yet they stuck to their story to the end.

I can’t understand why they would do that unless it had been real.

Regardless, this has led me to think much about how I feel about the Book of Mormon.  The title page of the Book of Mormon lays out that its purpose is “to the convincing of Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD” and the book is quite frankly the main reason I ever came to believe in God.

See, I was born and raised Latter-day Saint, but that has never been a guarantee that I was going to stay.  Freedom to choose is given such a high place of respectability in the Church that nobody interferes even when the choice is to go against the Church and what it stands for, and this has been the case since its foundation.  Many people joined and were baptized and no small number of them left soon after, and this trend goes on today.

When I was a teenager, I had gotten so angry about the personal traumas and injustices that had happened to me for so much of my life that I didn’t see any evidence that there was a God there.  I certainly couldn’t tell you what the Spirit felt like, what the purpose of prayer was, or why there was so much emphasis on things like Sabbath worship or Priesthood.  What was it all for when clearly none of that had affected my life in any way for the better?

On my mom’s advice, though, I decided not to call it crap until I actually read my scriptures.  It’s funny; I have been reading since I was two (no lie) and read anything that my hands could touch and yet I’d never read any books of scripture all the way through.  And it was a challenge.  It took me a year-and-a-half to get through the Book of Mormon once.  Since then, I’ve read it well over a dozen times and certain passages well over a hundred.

Some of my most valuable lessons came from the Book of Mormon.  The passage that changed my life most is found in Jacob 2, when Jacob’s people began going off the deep end.  In the few years they had lived in their promised land, they had been blessed with gold, silver, and all the treasures in the earth, and because some of them had more than the other, they let themselves become prideful, wearing fine clothes and beginning to persecute those that were poorer than they were, creating an awful inequality among themselves.  They had taken their eye off the Lord and this caused Jacob to cry:

“O that he would rid you from this iniquity and abomination.  And, O that ye would listen unto the word of his commands, and let not this pride of your hearts destroy your souls!  Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you.  But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.  And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.” (Jacob 2:16-19)

I had read these words many times before, but when I came across them at age 20, I cried because I knew that I had been focused so on my own gain and status all my life until that point.  In a lot of ways, I consider that moment to be the true beginning of my conversion to God, where it wasn’t just that I believed he was there but that I understood what was expected of me and the kind of man that He wanted me to become.

It goes back to Christ’s saying, “No man can serve two masters… Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matt. 6:24)  It hit me then and continues with me now that the “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim. 6:10) and I made a decision that if gaining wealth should ever cause me to lose the love of my fellow man, then I pray I’m never rich.  I would rather be a poor man all the days of my life and still have charity for my brothers and sisters on earth than to be wealthy and think myself better than another.  Anytime I catch myself with such pride and ambition, I shudder and ask if this is what I want to be, and I say, “No.”

Why stop there, though?  Jacob certainly didn’t.  In the same sermon, after all the chastisement of the inequality of wealth and the pride that came from that, he went on to an even more serious charge, breaking the law of chastity.  He was especially harsh on the men, and Jacob in his calling as prophet, repeated what the Lord said in this:

“For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.  And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts… Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren [a nation Jacob’s people were on bad terms with].  Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you.  And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.” (Jacob 2:31-32, 35)

I certainly find this passage applicable to many of the problems we see in our society today, especially in the home.  I could use this opportunity to comment on how this is a general warning to all, but I can only think of how it affected me.  A reason I take the law of chastity seriously is that not only do I know how it would break the heart of the woman I will someday marry if I ever chose not to live it, it’s clear that God will hold me accountable for how I treat my wife.

Those few verses alone taught me more about my responsibilities as a husband than any other single thing ever have.

And as a final lesson I learned, I’ll finish with my favorite story from the Book of Mormon, and involves the Lamanites that were mentioned earlier.  The Lamanites were an awful, awful people.  They were lazy but very warlike, unbothered by murders and their own selves.  At one point, some missionaries decide to go among the Lamanites and teach them the gospel of Christ, to see if they can bring at least one soul to repent.  The timing is sketchy, but I assume that over a period of months and probably years, the missionaries were so successful that they were baptizing by the thousands.

One missionary, Aaron, taught the king of all the Lamanites, and I am a huge fan of this king.  When the king is first introduced, he tries to kill Aaron’s younger brother but because of unfavorable circumstances, relents.  In fact, he was so impressed with Aaron’s brother that he was excited to hear about this gospel of Christ, and after Aaron shares what he knows, the king declares:

“…what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy, that I may not be cast off at the last day?  Behold, said he, I will give up all that I possess, yea, I will forsake my kingdom, that I may receive this great joy.” (Alma 22:15; emphasis added)

I added the italics because this highlights what God’s blessings are worth.  I don’t know whether the king ever heard about Jacob’s sermon, but he lived that counsel, “before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.”  In the world, you can’t gain more than your own kingdom, and this king wanted to trade that for a chance to be in God’s kingdom.  Is there any greater sacrifice than that?

Yes, there is, because this story isn’t done.  After the king is baptized, many people in his country listen to the preaching and are baptized.  The king dies and passes the kingdom onto his son, and it’s not long afterwards when the nonbelieving Lamanites become angry with the believers.  Through some pretty awful political machinations, the nonbelievers took up their swords and prepared to go to war with the believers.

Bear in mind, the believers had been warlike people and many of them were murderous fiends before they accepted the gospel.  They were no strangers to death.  So when the nonbelievers came to war, the believers knew what was at stake.  But because of the gospel they’d accepted, and knowing the sins they had committed before, they were loath to go to war.  They did not feel right killing their brethren, even though it would be self-defense.  They took their swords and buried them, saying, “…if our brethren destroy us, behold, we shall go to our God and shall be saved.” (Alma 24:16)

Then they really put themselves to the test.  When the nonbelievers came against them, the believers knelt down and prayed.  The unbelieving Lamanites came on them and killed 1,005 of the believers that day, and the whole while that this was going on, the believers “would lie down and perish, and praised God even in the very act of perishing under the sword—” (Alma 24:23)  I’ve never read anywhere else of anybody subjecting themselves so perfectly to the evils of this world with more confidence than these martyrs, save it be Christ himself.  This action alone makes them the most Christlike people you will find in any scripture that I know of.

Many of the killers were so touched by this sacrifice that they also gave up their swords and were baptized.  That the believers welcomed them into their society makes this one of the most understated and perfect acts of forgiveness I could ever imagine.

There are times I wonder whether I’m sacrificing enough or forgiving enough of another, and when I place myself against this standard, I know that I have a long way to go.  But I’m happy that there is this story to guide me and inspire me to become who I want to be.

It also makes me grateful to have the Book of Mormon in my life.  I would not believe in Christ without it, and because of it, I have known how to feel the Spirit work in my life and I have been witness to miracles because of the gospel that it brought to me.  Without it, I certainly would not have brought myself to write these monthly essays.

And most of all, I believe the Book of Mormon is a true book and that its purpose is to bring one closer to Christ.  That testimony is worth more to me than the whole world.