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VIEW PERSONAL BELIEFS
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POSTED BY:
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sixpacktr
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DATE:
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24.07.2008 |
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SUBJECT:
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The Book of Mormon IS true |
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LOCATION:
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New York, United States
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I thought I'd share a talk I gave in January regarding the BOM. We as a Branch Presidency challenged our branch members to read the BOM this year, and our Gospel Doctrine teacher then took that and ran with it, challenging his Sunday School class to hand out a BOM each month.
The Importance of the Book of Mormon in Our Life
I have had several months to ponder what I wanted to speak on. For a while I thought I’d just pull out one of my old talks, thinking I have a new audience and wouldn’t have to prepare anything for a couple of years at least! But I feel that the talk isn’t so much for the congregation as it is for the speaker, and I have felt that I should speak on that Book of books, the BOM.
As you all know, the BOM is referred to as ‘the keystone of our religion’. I thought about that, to understand why. Shouldn’t we call the first vision the keystone? If Joseph hadn’t seen the Father and the Son and been set on his life’s course, would we have the church? I would say we wouldn’t. We need to have a testimony of the very real occurrence of that singular event. However, we only have the word of a 14 year old boy, and not a very learned one at that, that he had seen the Father and the Son. There was no other way for him to ‘prove’ that he had actually had that vision.
But the BOM is something completely different. We have something tangible we can hold, we can read, we can study, we can scrutinize. We have the testimony of 3 other men that saw miraculous things, and of 8 other men that actually hefted the plates. IF the BOM is a lie, if Joseph Smith simply made this all up, then the church is false, because his lie in this instance would show him to not be trustworthy, and the first vision would also be the ‘imaginings of an innocent boy’.
As you may or may not know, I am a huge fan of Hugh Nibley. I have rec’d many a Christmas and Father’s Day gift of one of his books, and I love to read them. I am going to read an excerpt from his book ‘The Prophetic BOM’ about something he did to show the difficulty of ‘making up’ the BOM:
“But why would anybody be upset by what a Harvard pedant of our own day calls “the gibberish of a crazy boy”? Because the BOM is anything but gibberish to one who takes the trouble to read it. Here is an assignment which we like to give to classes of Oriental (mostly Muslim) students studying the BOM (it is required) at the Brigham Young University:
Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly as experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the BOM, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews and involved them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes, give them names—hundreds of them—pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 BC; be lavish with cultural and technical details—manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials. Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up—we have our little joke—but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the BOM); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on par with the Bible. If they seem overly-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from the original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim—they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on gold plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!
To date no student has carried out this assignment…”
(The Prophetic BOM, pp 221-222)
Quite an assignment! I have read hundreds, perhaps thousands of books. The capabilities of authors to make a world and tell a plausible story is mind boggling to me. I especially appreciate Tolkien and the world of Middle Earth that he created, with the creation story, complete lands and peoples. He made up names and an entire language. But not once did his print entire speeches on philosophical themes, or on religious ones either. And as far as I know, he never claimed that Middle Earth actually existed! But Joseph did. He translated the plates in several months and put them before the world, which mocked and ridiculed this book. He was hunted by his enemies because of this book. But we should thank our HF every night that we have it!
We also need to be aware of the sacrifices that others have made for us, sometimes in ways we cannot yet fully appreciate.
1 NOW behold, it came to pass that I, Jacob, having ministered much unto my people in word, (and I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates) and we know that the things which we write upon plates must remain;
2 But whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates must perish and vanish away; but we can write a few words upon plates, which will give our children, and also our beloved brethren, a small degree of knowledge concerning us, or concerning their fathers—
3 Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents.
(Jacob 4:1 - 3)
We should recognize the sacrifice and love others have shown for us. Jacob himself teaches us that he hopes his “beloved brethren” (that’s us) and his children will receive his words with thankful hearts. Think about the sacrifices these men made for us. They made the plates out of metal. How many of you have tried to make marks on metal? It isn’t very easy for even a short phrase, or even some numbers. And yet each of the men in the BOM that wrote a book spent time to engraven upon those plates their thoughts and the outstanding talks that were spoken during their lifetime. And then Mormon took every book he had access to and compiled a summary, if you will, of only the important things. He didn’t have a scanner to input what Nephi thru Helaman wrote down, a computer to cut and paste with, nothing like that. He had to scribe gold plates with a stylus made of metal so that we could read these talks and the lives of these great men in the BOM. We owe Mormon and Moroni far more than we know, and knowing what they did for us makes their sacrifice all the more worthy of note and of gratitude. They did this out of love for us, and out of love for their HF.
The purpose of the BOM is to testify of the divinity of Jesus Christ as the Savior and Redeemer of mankind.
32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.
33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.
(Moroni 10:32 - 33)
One of the beauties of the BOM is that it shows us in very intimate and personal terms what it is to be a follower of Christ. We don’t find this level of intimate detail in the Bible. It relates the personal struggles others have gone thru to gain a testimony of the mission of the Savior and his importance in their own lives, and thereby in ours. I’m going to take 3 different men from three different eras in the BOM as examples:
Nephi’s struggles with his own sins:
17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
18 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.
19 And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins;
(2 Nephi 4:17 - 19)
With Enos and his struggle for answers:
1 BEHOLD, it came to pass that I, Enos, knowing my father that he was a just man—for he taught me in his language, and also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord—and blessed be the name of my God for it—
2 And I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins.
3 Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart.
4 And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul;
(Enos 1:1 - 4)
With Alma and his miraculous conversion:
6 For I went about with the sons of Mosiah, seeking to destroy the church of God; but behold, God sent his holy angel to stop us by the way.
9 And he said unto me: If thou wilt of thyself be destroyed, seek no more to destroy the church of God.
11 —I was struck with such great fear and amazement lest perhaps I should be destroyed, that I fell to the earth and I did hear no more.
12 But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.
13 Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments.
14 …in fine so great had been my iniquities, that the very thought of coming into the presence of my God did rack my soul with inexpressible horror.
15 Oh, thought I, that I could be banished and become extinct both soul and body, that I might not be brought to stand in the presence of my God, to be judged of my deeds.
16 And now, for three days and for three nights was I racked, even with the pains of a damned soul.
17 And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.
(Alma 36:6 - 17)
In each of these examples, these men were struggling to know who they really were, what their standing was before God. They were tormented by their weaknesses and iniquities, in varying degrees. Nephi had always tried to do what was right, but realized how short he fell so often; Enos perhaps didn’t really care much about church and figured it really had nothing to do with him, until one day he realized he was missing something; Alma openly rebelled against the church and tried to destroy it, and was, in the words of the prophets, a very wicked man. To me, each of us can relate to one of these men in a very personal way, for their story is perhaps our story. And the good news, or gospel, of each of these tales, ends in much the same way:
Nephi:
19 nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.
20 My God hath been my support;
34 O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever.
(2 Nephi 4:19-20, 34)
Enos:
5 And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed.
6 And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away.
7 And I said: Lord, how is it done?
8 And he said unto me: Because of thy faith in Christ
(Enos 1:5 - 8)
Alma:
18 Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.
19 And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.
20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!
21 Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.
(Alma 36:18 - 21)
Each man gained a testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ and of his role as their own personal Savior and Redeemer, One that rescues them from the grasp of Satan. Nephi learned of the Savior’s goodness and steadfastness thru his many trials; Enos learned that the proper order of prayer is to first pray for yourself, then your kin, then your enemies; and Alma learned that no matter what a person has done in this life, short of premeditated murder or denying the HG, no matter what he has done, the atonement of the Savior covers all and allows one to be at peace.
The BOM teaches us of the consequences of trivializing God, or as Nephi says:
7 For the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to the body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet. Yea, even the very God of Israel do men trample under their feet; I say, trample under their feet but I would speak in other words—they set him at naught, and hearken not to the voice of his counsels.
(1 Nephi 19:7)
IOW, they set the supreme ruler of the universe aside as a thing of insignificance, as hardly worthy of consideration. And yet that Father loves them perfectly, just as his Son does. He who died for us and went thru inexplicable pain and suffering so that we might live eternally with him and our HF is mocked, blasphemed, and denigrated. Yet they will forgive those that do these things if they will turn around, and remember. This is shown time and time again in the BOM, again in much more personal terms:
1 AND now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had thus spoken to his people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken unto them.
2 And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.
3 And we, ourselves, also, through the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things.
7 And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.
8 And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh;
(Mosiah 5: 1-3, 7 - 8)
I also appreciate the example of Lehi and Sariah, as they taught and coached their sons, two whom were rebellious, and 4 that followed the commandments. I especially appreciate the intimate insight we are given into his heart as he pleads with his two sons to repent of their ways and become sons of God.
13 O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.
14 Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth.
16 And I desire that ye should remember to observe the statutes and the judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning.
17 My heart hath been weighed down with sorrow from time to time, for I have feared, lest for the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God should come out in the fulness of his wrath upon you, that ye be cut off and destroyed forever;
21 And now that my soul might have joy in you, and that my heart might leave this world with gladness because of you, that I might not be brought down with grief and sorrow to the grave, arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity;
23 Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.
(2 Nephi 1:13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 23)
Brothers and Sisters, I love the BOM. I love the stories that are in there. I love the larger than life men that fill its pages, people that were hand picked by Mormon and Moroni to be examples to me personally in my struggles here upon the earth, men who exemplified what it is to ‘be a man’. I love how each and every page testifies of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and gives us hope and peace in a world that has long since lost both, because a pretender to our Savior’s throne has free reign for this short time. I testify to you that this book is true, that the statement of The Prophet JS that living by the lessons taught in the BOM would draw us closer to our HF than any other book is also true. I love the spirit that pervades its pages, and again challenge you to read and ponder this book this year, that your testimony may be further strengthened, and I leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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