"Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism" - Investigating Joseph Smith (part 1) recap

On Monday November 14^th, 2016 we met for our second time to study “Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism”. This time we started out by talking about the method that Mormons will use to convince that Mormonism is true. Then we started to build up a case examining the integrity of Joseph Smith – can he be trusted to have spoken the truth? We only got about half way through our case and will pick up with that next time. But if you want to check out the slides we reviewed and/or a video of the class you can check them out here. A written recap is provided here…

The Mormon Test

I remember asking to missionaries how they know Mormonism is true and if they can convince me. Their response was to quote a passage from the Book of here’s a link to the short video on what the Book of Mormon is about that we didn’t get a chance to watch.]

Mormon. [By the way,

“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.” (Moroni 10:4)

Their recommended method to find out if Mormonism is true is to ask God.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with asking God to reveal to us if something is true but we don’t typically do this in any other area of our life – and for good reason. God has given each of us a mind and intellect to use to examine evidence and make an informed decision. Paul commanded the church to “test everything” (1 Thess 5:21) and Luke praised the Bereans for examining the Scriptures to find out if Paul’s gospel message was true (Acts 17:11). Nowhere in Scriptures do we see that the norm for learning what is true is by shutting off our brain and asking God to miraculously inject it into us.

To illustrate the absurdity of using the Moroni 10:4 method I proposed an example of being in a jury for a murder case. I described a bunch of different evidences surrounding a suspect which cumulatively show very strongly that the suspect is in fact the murderer. I then asked how the jury should decide. Should they decline to hear about the evidence and opt to pray for God tell them the correct answer? Or should they make an informed judgment based on the evidence?

Clearly the latter is the preferred method. So why use a different method when deciding on Mormonism?

Joseph Smith: Prophet or Fraud?

The Mormon president, Joseph Fielding Smith, correctly said, “Mormonism, as it is called, must stand of fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen.”

So we put Joseph Smith in the courtroom to see how we, as a jury, might decide. We looked at 6 out of 9 categories of evidence surrounding Joseph Smith’s integrity.

Motive: Cold case detective, J. Warner Wallace, identified that any and every crime is committed for one or more of three reasons: Financial greed, sexual lust, and/or pursuit of power. Joseph Smith benefited in all three categories. This alone doesn’t incriminate Joseph Smith as a fraud but it sure shows that he had reasons for perpetrate a deception.

Historical Context: Joseph Smith acted in accord with mainstream cultural happenings appearing to be a product of his culture rather than God doing a new thing. He claimed to have discovered, by treasure-digging using a seer stone, an unorthodox form of Christianity centered on the origin of Native Americans.

Character: Joseph Smith did nefarious things during his time as “prophet” that reveal him to be untrustworthy. He was arrested for fraud, illegal banking, perjury, conspiracy, threats, treason, inciting a riot, and most notably polygamy. These crimes don’t paint the picture of an honorable mouthpiece of God.

Questionable Eyewitness Testimony: The Mormon missionaries main piece of evidence to the reliability of the Book of Mormon was the testimony of eyewitnesses contained inside the cover of every Book of Mormon. But, it turns out that none of them physically saw the supposed plates and also that all of them had a bias (e.g. relative, close friend, later excommunicated) that undermines their testimony.

Inability to Translate (as claimed): Remember that Joseph Smith claimed to have translated “Reformed Egyptian” on the plates that he found. He gave himself the title of a divinely appointed Translator. But, on multiple occasions Joseph Smith was proven to not correctly translate as claimed thus supporting his character trait of being a fraud. Examples of this include: 116 missing pages from Book of Mormon that he refused to duplicate, the Kinderhook plates being shown to be a fabricated artifact, and the Book of Abraham revealed to be a false translation.

Plagiarism: Style and content of the Book of Mormon appears to be largely informed by material that Joseph Smith had (KJV Bible and Views of the Hebrews). This supports the idea that the Book of Mormon material was not written thousands of years prior but really written based on modern sources.

We paused here and will pick up next time with the final 3 pieces of evidence to examine in our cumulative case on Joseph Smith. We will also then look at the reliability of the Bible to see how that contrasts to the reliability of the Book of Mormon. After that we will start to examine the concept of God in Mormonism and Christianity and see what the Bible has to say about the two opposing concepts.

We will meet next Monday, November 21^st, 2016 same time, same place (7-8:30pm at Mt. Zion UMC education building rooms 13-15). Hope to see you all there!