Sharing the Good News with Mormons: Practical Strategies for Getting the Conversation Started

1. Sharing the Good News with Mormons: Practical Strategies for Getting the Conversation Started • A pdf version of today’s PowerPoint presentations are available at www.sharingwithmormons.com

2. Joseph Smith’s First Vision and theBook of Mormon --The Historical Approach www.mrm.org

3. 15th President Gordon B. HinckleyConference Reports, October 1961, p.116 • “I would like to say that this cause is either true or false. Either this is the kingdom of God, or it is a sham and a delusion. Either Joseph talked with the Father and the Son, or he did not. If he did not, we are engaged in blasphemy.”

4. Smith’s mis-use of James 1:5 • “While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not [without reproach]; and it shall be given him.” Joseph Smith History 1:11 While James speaks specifically of wisdom, Joseph Smith uses this verse in connection with his search for knowledge. Wisdom is the proper application of knowledge.

5. Joseph Smith’s 1832 diary vision account • Smith claims to be “in his 16th year” of his age (or 15). • He knows from reading the scriptures that there is “no society or denomination built upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” • He is concerned about the welfare of his soul, and “cries to the Lord for mercy.” • He is visited only by “the Lord” who was “crucifyed.” • The Lord tells him he is forgiven. • No mention of any religious excitement of revival.

6. Joseph Smith’s Nov 9, 1835 vision account • Smith claims to be “about 14-years-old.” • He is startled by “a noise” behind him like some person was walking towards him. He “sprung up” on his feet but no one was there. • An unidentified “personage appeared in the midst” of a “pillar of flame.” • “Another personage. . .said unto me thy sins are forgiven thee, he testified unto me that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” • No mention of any religious excitement or revival.

7. Joseph Smith’s Nov 14, 1835 vision account • Smith gives Erastus Holmes a “brief relation of my experience while in my juvenile years, say from 6 years old up to the time I received my first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14 years old.” • No mention of a religious excitement or revival.

8. Joseph Smith’s 1838 vision account • Smith, for the first time, mentions a religious excitement in the spring of 1820. This involved the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. He is confused as to which church is true. • He is motivated by James 1:5 to pray about the matter. • He claims he is visited by two personages. One says to Smith, “This is My Beloved Son, Hear Him!” • Smith is told all the churches are wrong, their creeds are an abomination, and their professors are corrupt. He is warned not to join any of them. This claim surprises him, “for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong.” Joseph Smith History 1:9, 11, 17, 18

9. The “1820” Revival “Some time in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. . . Great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties. . . I was at this time in my fifteenth year. . . The Presbyterians were most decided against the Baptists and Methodists, and used all the powers of both reason and sophistry to prove their errors….” Joseph Smith History 1:5,6,7

10. Problems with the account • The “religious excitement” Smith describes did not take place in 1820. No multitudes were added to any of the churches he names in 1820. This revival Smith describes took place in 1824. • Changing the date disrupts Smith’s chronology. For example, he claims he was persecuted for telling this story as an “obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age” (vs.22). Instead, he would have been a young man of around 18. • Smith claimed that the angel Moroni appeared to him in 1823, or three years after he learned that all of the churches are wrong. If the revival really took place in 1824, Smith’s encounter with Moroni would have really been his “first vision.” • Mormon apologists often point to an 1820 Methodist camp meeting but the details of the two events are not the same.

11. Exodus 33:20 King James Version • “And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.” Joseph Smith Translation • And he said unto Moses, Thou canst not see my face at this time, lest mine anger be kindled against thee also, and I destroy thee, and thy people; for there shall no man among them see me at this time, and live, for they are exceeding sinful. And no sinful man hath at any time, neither shall there be any sinful man at any time, that shall see my face and live. • Why the apparent contradiction?

12. The First Vision – A later invention • “Apparently not until 1843, when the New York Spectator printed a reporter’s account of an interview with Joseph Smith, did a non-Mormon source publish any reference to the story of the first vision. . . As far as Mormon literature is concerned, there was apparently no reference to Joseph Smith’s first vision in any published material in the 1830’s. . . From all this it would appear that the general church membership did not receive information about the first vision until the 1840’s and that the story certainly did not hold the prominent place in Mormon thought that it does today.” Brigham Young University Professor James B. Allen “The significance of Joseph Smith’s ‘First Vision’ in Mormon Thought,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1966, Vol.1, No.3, p.30

13. The Book of Mormon • “To consider that everything of saving significance in the Church stands or falls on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and, by implication, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s account of how it came forth is as sobering as it is true. It is a ‘sudden death’ proposition. Either the Book of Mormon is what the Prophet Joseph said it is, or this Church and its founder are false, a deception from the first instance onward.” Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland Christ and the New Covenant, p. 345

14. Joseph Smith History 1:34 Visitation of Moroni September 21, 1823 “[Moroni] said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang.” Moroni was the son of “Mormon.” When he was a human he personally buried the plates centuries earlier.

15. Smith Retrieves the plates on Sept. 27th 1827 • "Hurrying to the hill, Joseph found the log where the plates were hidden and carefully wrapped them in a shirt. He then ducked into the woods and headed for home, his eyes alert to danger. The forest concealed him from people on the main road, but it gave thieves plenty of places to hide. Straining under the weight of the record, Joseph tramped through the woods as fast as he could. A fallen tree blocked the path ahead of him, and as he bounded over it, he felt something hard strike him from behind. . .

16. Smith Retrieves the plates on Sept. 27th 1827 • “Turning around, he saw a man coming at him, wielding a gun like a club. Clutching the plates tightly with one arm, Joseph knocked the man to the ground and scrambled deeper into the thicket. He ran for about half a mile when another man sprang from behind a tree and struck him with the butt of his gun. Joseph fought the man off and darted away, desperate to be out of the woods. But before he could get very far a third man attacked, landing a heavy blow that sent him reeling. Gathering his strength, Joseph hit the man hard and ran for home.”

17. History of the Church 4:537 The size of the plates “These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches wide and eight inches long, and not quite so thick as common tin…The volume was something near six inches in thickness, a part of which was sealed.”

18. How heavy would gold plates weigh? • Gold weighs 1204 pounds per cubic foot. • The plates were 1/6 of a cubic foot. • If made of gold, Smith’s plates would have weighed around 200 pounds! • No LDS apologist argues that Smith was given supernatural strength. Instead, they try hard to get the weight of the plates down to a manageable level.

19. The Fulness of the Gospel? • “The Book of Mormon. . . contains the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ (see D&C 20:9; 42:12; 135:3)” (Gospel Principles, 2009, p. 46). • “By fulness of the gospel is meant all the ordinances and principles that pertain to the exaltation in the celestial kingdom” (10th President Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 1:159).

20. “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” Joseph SmithHistory of the Church 4:461. Also cited in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.194

21. What the Book of Mormon Doesn’t Teach: • It doesn’t mention that God was once a man, who, in turn had a father, etc. • It doesn’t mention that God has a body of flesh and bones. • It doesn’t mention that God is married to a “heavenly mother.” • It doesn’t mention that we lived in a “pre-existence” with our “heavenly parents.” • It doesn’t mention that men can become Gods. • It doesn’t mention that Jesus is a literal “son of God.”

22. It doesn’t mention that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. • It doesn’t mention that we are “eternally progressing.” • It doesn’t mention the “word of wisdom.” • It doesn’t mention either the Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood. • It doesn’t mention temple endowment ceremonies or “celestial marriages” for “time and eternity.” • It doesn’t mention baptism for the dead. • It doesn’t mention a mandatory 10% tithe. Why are these teachings missing?

23. To date: • No evidence of Nephites exists. • No Book of Mormon city has been verified. • No Book of Mormon artifact has been found. • The LDS Church takes no official position as to where the alleged “Book of Mormon lands’ were located. Mormon “tours” to Book of Mormon locations are admittedly speculative.

24. www.mrm.org