First Presidency Statement - February 15, 1978

"Based upon ancient and modern revelation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gladly teaches and declares the Christian doctrine that all men and women are brothers and sisters, not only by blood relationship from mortal progenitors, but also as literal spirit children of an Eternal Father.

"The great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God's light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.

"The Hebrew prophets prepared the way for the coming of Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, who should provide salvation for all mankind who believe in the gospel.

"Consistent with these truths, we believe that God has given and will give to all people sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation, either in this life or in the life to come.

"We also declare that the gospel of Jesus Christ, restored to his Church in our day, provides the only way to a mortal life of happiness and a fullness of joy forever. For those who have not received this gospel, the opportunity will come to them in the life hereafter if not in this life.

"Our message therefore is one of special love and concern for the eternal welfare of all men and women, regardless of religious belief, race, or nationality, knowing that we are truly brothers and sisters because we are the sons and daughters of the same Eternal Father."

Spencer W. Kimball

N. Eldon Tanner

Marion G. Romney

 (“God’s Love for All Mankind,” First Presidency Statement, Feb. 15, 1978; emphasis added)

Interesting Items About the First Vision

The Book of Mormon Challenge - Hugh Nibley

LDS historian and apologist Hugh Nibley, in an effort to show how impossible it would be for someone to write the BOM, issued the following challenge:

If one scoffs at the missionary's explanation of the Book of Mormon, he is in so many words claiming it to be false: That it is a deceiving fraud formulated through the efforts and talents of a common man. What is produced by one man can always be duplicated by another. The challenge that the Book of Mormon makes to the world is that of duplication. Because the book complies with every one of the following conditions, in order to produce a similar record, one must comply with the same conditions.

Here is the challenge: Can you accept it?

1. Write a history of ancient Tibet covering a period from 600 B.C. to 450 A.D. Why ancient Tibet? Because you know no more about Tibet than Joseph Smith (or anyone else) knew about ancient America.
2. You are 23 years of age.
3. You have had no more than three years of formal school education, and have spent your life in backwoods farming communities.
4. Your history must be written on the basis of what you now know. There was no library that held information for Joseph Smith. You must use none. There is to be no research of any kind.
5. Your history must be 531 pages and over 300,000 words in length.
6. Other than a few grammatical corrections, you must have no changes in the text. The first edition as you dictate it to your secretary must stand forever.
7. This record is to contain the history of two distinct and separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations or groups of people.
8. You must describe their religious, economic, political, and social cultures and institutions. Cover every phase of their society, including the names of their coins.
9. Change your style of writing many times. Many ancient authors contributed to the Book of Mormon, each with his own style.
10. Weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern of Christian living.
11. You must claim that your smooth narrative is not fiction with moral value, but true and sacred history.
12. You must include in you book fifty-four chapters dealing with wars, twenty-one historical chapters, fifty-five chapters on visions and prophecies. Remember, when you begin to write visions and prophecies, you must have your record agree meticulously with the Bible. You must write seventy-one chapters on doctrine and exhortation, and you must check every statement with the scriptures or you will be proven a fraud. You must write twenty-one chapters on the ministry of Christ, and every thing you claim he said and every testimony you write in your book about Him must agree absolutely with the New Testament.
13. Many of the facts, claims, ideas, and statements given as absolute truth in your writing must be entirely inconsistent with the prevailing beliefs of the world. Some of these worldly beliefs must be the direct opposite of your claims.
14. Included in your narrations will be authentic modes of travel; whether or not those ancient people used fire; description of their clothing, crops, mourning customs, and types of government. You must invent about 280 new names that will stand up under scrutiny through the years as to their proper application and derivation.
15. You will have to properly use figures of speech, similes, metaphors, narrations, exposition, descriptions, oratory, epic lyric, and parables.
16. You must invite the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care, and you must strive diligently to see that your book gets into the hands of those eager to prove it a forgery, and who are most competent to expose every flaw in it.
17. Thorough investigation, scientific and historical evidence, and archeological discovery for the next 125 years must verify its claims and prove detail after detail to be true, for many of the details you put in your history are still buried beneath the soil of Tibet.
18. You must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people declaring it to be the word of God and another witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.
19. The book must not contain any absurd, impossible, or contradictory statements. Your history must not contain any statement that will contradict any other statement elsewhere in the volume.
20. Many theories and ideas as to its origin must arise, and after discovering and examining the facts, they must fail. You have claimed that your knowledge had come from divine origin, and this claim continues to stand as the only possible explanation. The strength of this explanation must not decrease as time passes, but actually increases to the point where it becomes the only logical explanation.
21. Your record is to fulfill many Bible prophecies, even in the exact manner in which it shall come forth, to whom delivered, its purposes, and its accomplishments.
22. Call down an angel from heaven in the middle of the day and have him bear testimony to four honest, dignified citizens of your community that the record is the word of God. These witnesses must bear the angel's testimony to the world, not for profit or gain, but under great sacrifice and severe persecution, even to their death beds. You must put that testimony to the test by becoming an enemy to these men.
23. Thousands of great men, intellectual giants, national and international personalities, and scholars for 165 years must accept your history and its teachings even to the point of laying down their life rather than deny their testimony of it.
24. You must include with within the record this promise: "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, He will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost."
25. Missionaries must bear record to the world for the next 165 years that they know the record to be true because they put the promise to the test and found it to be true. The truth of it was manifested to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.
26. Over 52,900 plus competent salesman must be so sold on your book that they gladly give up two or more years of their lives to take it to all parts of the world for distribution. They not only pay their own way during these years, but return bearing testimony that the time spent will remain as one of the highlights of their lives. They receive nothing in return for their efforts but the joy of having shared your book with others.
27. Your book must not only raise the standards of millions of people but do it in such a way that they become one of the great moral, ethical, and dynamic marvels of the day. They must become world renowned for this.
28. For the next 20 years you must watch those that follow and you, your family, and the dearest of your loved ones persecuted, driven time after time from their homes, beaten, tortured, starved, frozen and killed. Tens of thousands must undergo the most extreme hardships in your presence just because they believe your claims concerning the origin and content of what you have written on ancient Tibet.
29. You must gain no wealth from your work, but many times lose all that you have. Like those that believe you, you must submit yourself to the most vile persecution. And finally after 20 years of this, give your own life in a very savage and brutal manner, for your testimony concerning your history book. This must be done willingly on your part.
30. Start right now and produce this record which covers 1,000 years of history, doing it, not in the peaceful atmosphere of your community, but under the most trying of circumstances which include being driven from your home several times, and receiving constant threats upon your life. Please have your book completed, talk a friend into mortgaging his farm to raise money to have it printed - all in 60 days.

There is only one answer: The Book of Mormon is a divine record. If not, its origin must be stated and its claims must be explained by the critic. It isn't enough to merely discard it as false and forget about it!

The first thing to do in examining any ancient text is to consider it in the light of the origin and background; there is no need to look farther, since historical forgery is virtually impossible.

___________________________

Critics of the book have tried to refute this challenge, but none of them have ever reproduced anything like The Book of Mormon.  None of them have ever accepted the challenge.  So, to the critics, go ahead and criticize all you want, but until you actually reproduce something like the Book of Mormon, you haven't a leg to stand on.  

The Book of Mormon - Writings of Nephi and Isaiah

Many evidences supporting The Book of Mormon have emerged since it was first published  in 1830.  Although I have written of the importance and necessity of receiving a testimony by the power of the Holy Ghost, I have had my testimony strengthened by other means as well.  

One of my favorite pieces of evidence occur in the writings of the prophet Nephi.  In this particular grouping of writings Nephi is quoting the writings of the prophet Isaiah, which had been preserved for him and his posterity on the Brass Plates.  The verse I am referring to is in 2 Nephi 12:16 and it reads as follows -

 16 And upon all the ships of the ^asea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.

At first glance this really doesn't mean anything to the causal observer.  However, when compared to the verse from Isaiah in the KJV of the Bible we can see a difference.  

Isaiah 2:16 -

16 ^aAnd upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures. 

The Isaiah verse is missing something in the fact that it says nothing about the "ships of the sea."  It only mentions the "ships of Tarshish."  

Many critics would simply use this as a means to claim that Joseph Smith must have embellished the verse and/or added his own interpretation of it, either to make himself look like a prophet who is inspired or to give validity to the fact that he didn't just copy parts of the Bible.  However, neither is true.  There is a third option, and it is the correct option.  

In the Greek version of the Bible, called the Septuagint Bible, we find something rather interesting.  In the verse in Isaiah 2:16 it reads as follows - 

16 και επι παν πλοιον θαλασσης και επι πασαν θεαν πλοιων καλλους

(translation)

16, and upon every seagoing vessels and upon all Theano ships Kallis

The Greek version mentions seagoing vessels, and doesn't specifically mention the ships of Tarshish (although the ending of the verse isn't easily translated, so it could be the same thing).  

The overall point I am trying to make is that it seems highly unlikely that Joseph Smith, who knew neither Greek nor was practiced in theology at the time of translation, would have paid close enough attention to one single verse of scripture to worry about making sure it matched up with both the English version of the Bible and the Greek version of the Bible.  

My witness is that the Book of Mormon is a true book and that Joseph Smith was the translator of it, and that he did so by the gift and power of God.