Could Just Anyone Write the Book of Mormon?
Return to Sego Lily
Intro Page
Return to Education
Page
The Challenge of the Book Of Mormon Can You Write Such A Record?
Many people challenge the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. For evidence
of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon their is the Testimony of Joseph
Smith and the three witnesses and eight others. If the Book of Mormon is not
true the question remains: Where did it come from? Some claim it is a work
of fiction. To dispel this idea we give you a list twenty-two items. Ponder
these items and consider if a person could have created such a work as the
Book of Mormon with these items in mind.
1. You are between 23 and 24 years of age.
2. You are not a college graduate. In fact, you have only had three years
of formal schooling.
3. Whatever you write much be on the basis of what you know.
4. You must write a book with 239 chapters; 54 of them about wars, 21 about
history, 55 about prophecy, 71 about doctrine, 17 about missionaries, and
21 about the mission of Jesus Christ.
5. You must write a history of an ancient country, covering a period from
2200 BC to 421 AD.
6. You must include in your writings the history of two distinct and separate
nations, along with the histories of different contemporary nations or groups
of people.
7. Your writing must describe the religious, economic, social and political
cultures and institutions of these two nations.
8. You must write this history, covering a period of over twenty-five hundred
years, in approximately eighty days.
9. After pauses for sleep and food, you must continue dictating to your
stenographer without ever asking to have the last sentence read back to you.
10. Your history or record must be long, approximately 522 printed pages,
with over 150 words per page.
11. You must add 180 proper nouns to the English language. (Shakespeare
added thirty.)
12. You must announce that your narrative is not fiction, but a true, sacred
record.
13. In fact, your narrative must fulfill the Bible prophecies that foretell
the coming forth of the book, even down to the exact manner in which it shall
come forth, to whom given, and its purposes and accomplishments.
14. You must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, declaring
it to be the word of God.
15. Tens of thousands must bear record to the world for the next 150 years
and more that they know the record to be true because the put the promise
to the test and the truth of it was manifested to them by the power of the
Holy Ghost.
16. Thousands of men, intellects and scholars among them, must subscribe
as disciples to the record, even to the point of laying down their lives for
it.
17. Prophecies that you have included in the book must be confirmed and
fulfilled in the next nearly 160 years.
18. Three honest, credible witnesses must testify to the whole world that
an angel from heaven appeared to them and showed them the ancient records
from which you claim your record was translated.
19. Eight other witnesses must testify to the world that they saw the ancient
records in broad daylight and that they handled them and felt the engravings
thereon.
20. These eleven witnesses must bear their testimony, not for profit or
gain, but under great personal sacrifice and severe persecution, even to
their deaths.
21. You must find someone to finance your book with the understanding that
neither he nor you will ever receive any remuneration from it. You must sell
the book at cost or less.
22. Finally, after suffering persecution and revilement for fourteen years
after you finish the book, you must willingly give your life to seal your
testimony with your blood. It is in fact that Joseph Smith willingly gave
His life and sealed his testimony with his blood.