Same Reason, New Season
The Mormon Hope Podcast is pleased to announce a brand new season for 2024! Along with this season comes some new features as well. For starters, each weekly episode will fall in line with the LDS “Come Follow Me” curriculum. Each week Pastor Mallinak and I (Pastor Vaughan) will follow along with the weekly “Come Follow Me” study guide, videos and readings from the Book of Mormon.
We are doing this for several reasons. First, we want to learn more about the LDS faith, especially considering that we live and pastor in the heart of Mormon country Utah. We also never want to misrepresent the beliefs of others, and following along with their own curriculum will help towards this end. Second, this will give us plenty of weekly podcast material by which to respond from a historical, biblical Christian perspective. So be sure and tune in to the podcast each week! (shameless plug). Our ultimate goal is to bring Latter Day Saints to salvation in the true Christ, through the gospel of grace.
For any of our LDS readers/listeners, we want you to hear from us that we love you. Our goal isn’t to win an argument or “Mormon Bash”. We are simply on a quest for truth, because the truth is what sets people free. Vetting truth claims is a necessary skill for good thinkers. Our aim is to promote truth clearly and engage error gracefully. We encourage you to investigate our claims and see if we are telling the truth. We welcome friendly questions and dialogue and will be glad to deal with the feedback in the podcast. Just remember that the truth never fears a challenge. In fact, a faith that can’t be challenged is a faith that can’t be trusted.
Another new feature for this year will be this blog. We are adding “The Mormon Hope” Blog as a weekly compliment to each podcast episode. The blog will be a shorter synopsis of what we cover in the podcast. If you’re like Dave and I, sometimes you would just rather read about it. So help us spread the word, The Mormon Hope podcast/blog 2024, making the internet great again. Anyway, let’s get to the material for week one.
Introductory Pages of the Book of Mormon (Jan. 1-7) https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/come-follow-me-for-home-and-church-book-of-mormon-2024/01?lang=eng
“Come Follow Me” begins exactly the way that I would expect it to, and that is by attempting to establish the validity and authority of the Book of Mormon, or as Elder Holland said in the opening video, “The Book of Mormon is the word of God.” If you’re going to be teaching from a certain religious text for the next year, the text needs to be proven as trustworthy and true, right? Ironically, this is the same reason that season 1, episode 1 of the Mormon Hope podcast deals with, “can we really trust the Bible?” (the answer of course is, yes).
Right out of the gate, this first lesson highlights two glaring differences between LDS and Biblical Christians. The first one is textual authority. The second one is the method of determining truth. Let’s break down some key statements from this week’s lesson in order to better understand these two points of contrast.
What about the Bible?
The opening words of this introductory lesson read, “Before you even get to 1 Nephi chapter 1, you will notice that the Book of Mormon is no ordinary book. Its introductory pages describe a backstory unlike any other.” The implication is clear. The BOM is special, extra-ordinary, and unlike any other. Joseph Smith himself testified that “the Book of Mormon is the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion” (History of the Church 4:461). For the Christian, these types of statements give us great pause and cause us to do a double take. The instant question that wells up in our hearts is, “what about the Bible!”
The bible is more than a book, it’s a library of 66 books. These books were breathed out by God through over 40 authors over a period of about 1,500 years and yet its unity is unsurpassed. It reads as if there is one author, because the one author is God. The bible’s historical accuracy is unparalleled as an ancient source. It contains hundreds of fulfilled prophecies concerning Christ, Israel, the rise and fall of nations and leaders, world events, etc.1. The bible is overwhelmingly supported by the archaeological record 2. There are more ancient manuscripts for the Bible than any other work of antiquity and it’s not even close. We have over 5,700 ancient manuscripts in the original languages for the New Testament alone! Homer comes in second with around 643 manuscripts 3. Again we ask, what about the Bible? Unfortunately, the Bible was never mentioned in this lesson, as it’s all about the Book of Mormon.
The only time that the Bible was mentioned was in two specific statements in two of the videos. The first statement was that “the book of Mormon confirms the truth of the Bible” and that “the Book of Mormon completes the Bible.” I would just respectfully point out that the Bible confirms the truth of the Bible, and the Bible completes the Bible. This is why God closed the very last chapter of Revelation by giving a warning not to add to or take away from the word of that book of prophecy.
https://www.newtestamentchristians.com/bible-study-resources/351-old-testament-prophecies-fulfilled-in-jesus-christ/
https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/does-archaeology-support-the-bible/
https://www.icr.org/bible-manuscripts
One of These Things Is Not Like The Other
I have just made several truth claims about the Bible with a few quick resources to support these claims. Now I am going to make some truth claims about the Book of Mormon. I want to remind my LDS friends that I am not throwing stones, I am simply making truth claims. Remember that all good thinkers vet truth claims. If what I’m about to say isn’t true, disregard it. But if what I am about to say is true, then why ignore it? Ok, here it goes.
Let’s contrast the Book of Mormon using the same criteria that we just mentioned about the Bible and see how it stacks up. First, we don’t have a single manuscript for the BOM, not one. The plates that the BOM was supposedly translated from are conveniently MIA. This means that instead of having ancient copies of what the prophets actually wrote, we have the supposed translation of one teenaged boy concerning what the prophets wrote, with absolutely no way to vet his work. This lack of manuscript evidence makes it impossible to even prove the existence of the prophets of the BOM.
Concerning prophecy, the Book of Mormon doesn’t contain any fulfilled prophecy. I understand that the BOM contains prophecies that would have been true if the alleged prophets had actually written them at the time in which they supposedly lived. Here is the problem, when the Biblical prophets like Isaiah wrote a prophecy concerning Christ (the virgin birth for example, Isaiah 7:14), we have Isaiah’s actual words from around 750 years prior to the coming of Christ. However, with Joseph Smith writing on behalf of the alleged prophets of the BOM thousands of years after their death, every prophetic event that Smith wrote about was past tense from the 1830’s when he wrote it. This means that if Smith made the whole thing up, then he simply spoke of historical events as if they were future from the time of the prophet that he was supposedly translating for? Do you see the difference? Again, one of these things is not like the other.
When it comes to the historical and archaeological record for the BOM, just pay attention to this statement put out by the Smithsonian Institute in 1996;
The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.
The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern, central, and northeastern Asia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World — probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age — in a continuing series of small migrations beginning from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach this continent from the East were the Norsemen who briefly visited the northeastern part of North America around A.D. 1000 and then settled in Greenland. There is nothing to show that they reached Mexico or Central America.
One of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific finding that contacts with Old World civilizations, if indeed they occurred at all, were of very little significance for the development of American Indian civilizations, is the fact that none of the principal Old World domesticated food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in pre-Columbian times. American Indians had no wheat, barley, oats, millet, rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels before 1492. (Camels and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and mastodon, but all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the time the early big game (sic) hunters spread across the Americas.)
Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492 (except for occasional use of unsmelted meteoric iron). Native copper was used (sic) in various locations in pre-Columbian times, but true metallurgy was limited to southern Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their alloys, but not iron.
There is a possibility that the spread of cultural traits across the Pacific to Mesoamerica and the northwestern coast of South America began several hundred years before the Christian era. However, any such inter-hemispheric contacts appear to have been the results of accidental voyages originating in eastern and southern Asia. It is by means certain that even such contacts occurred; certainly there were no contacts with the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, or other peoples of Western Asia and the Near East.
No reputable Egyptologist or other specialist on Old World archaeology, and no expert on New World prehistory, has discovered or confirmed any relationship between archaeological remains in Mexico and archaeological remains in Egypt.
Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines, and sensational books. None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars. No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland.
There are copies of the Book of Mormon in the library of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
A while back I had the privilege of sitting in the lovely home of a very well respected Mormon business owner in town. He had graciously invited me over after one of our church members had left a gospel tract on his door. He is a sixth generation Mormon. His ancestors had come over with the pioneers. He had even served as a bishop for several years before retiring. We had a friendly conversation, but I asked him point blank if the lack of evidence for the ancient American civilizations mentioned in the BOM bothered him. By lack of evidence, I mean not a single arrowhead, piece of pottery, manuscript, drawing in a cave, NOTHING. His response to me was, “if God wants to keep those things hidden so that it requires me to have more faith than so be it.” But this is blind faith. Good thinking requires a person to ask why God didn’t do the same thing and hide the evidence for the ancient Israelites, Hittites, Canaanites, etc. We have ample archaeological evidence for all of those biblical peoples and many more.
Truth or Confirmation?
I wanted to look at one more thing before we wrap up this week’s blog (it’s already longer than I expected, which I should have expected). The lesson goes on to say; “The Holy Ghost can testify to you that the Book of Mormon is true, even though you haven’t seen the gold plates as the Three Witnesses and Eight Witnesses did. As you read their words, think about how their testimonies strengthen yours.” In this statement, the authors are encouraging people to forsake objective truth for the sake of subjective truth. This being translated, even though we don’t have any proof, God can give you a subjective feeling that the BOM is true. Moroni 10:4 says, “I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true.” But is this really the way to determine truth?
Think for a moment about being called to be a juror for an upcoming murder trial. As you sit in the jury box listening to the evidence, the prosecutor shows that DNA, video, and possession of the murder weapon all point to the defendant as the murderer. And all the defense has to say in response is that his client is innocent and all you have to do to know that he is innocent is to pray for confirmation in your heart. You would never be persuaded by this kind of “evidence”, nor would it ever hold up in a court of law. This also forces a good thinker to ask, what happens when people come to different conclusions when asking God’s confirmation about the same question or issue? There is no way to vet that. Truth is the confirmation. Confirmation isn’t the truth.
I find it interesting that lesson 1 doesn’t encourage anyone to pray and ask God to reveal to them if the Bible is true or not. I’m not asking anyone to do that either. I’m asking you to study it for yourself and see if it’s true and if it squares with what you are being taught in the LDS church. God gave us His Word as a document that we can vet and verify. We can trust the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God.
This lesson paints a perfect contrast going forward as we will constantly be vetting the truth claims made by the LDS church and contrasting it with the claims of Scripture (Genesis-Revelation). We look forward to you joining us weekly.
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