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MORMON STUDIES PRESENTS:
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MORMON STUDIES PRESENTS:
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[ 001 ] Introduction In 1977 the Mormon Church (technically known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) claimed a worldwide membership of 3. 1 million. Millions of people are trusting this church for their eternal destiny. They have been convinced that it is the only way to follow God's will. Zealous Mormons have for almost 150 years declared the Mormon Church to be the one true restoration of the church on earth today. But the world must ask, can Mormonism back up its claims? Is it really the only way? Are its assertions true? Are blacks forever cursed, as this church teaches? Did Jesus really have many wives? Was He actually the spirit- brother of Lucifer, the offspring of Adam-God and Mary? Did Jesus really come to the Americas after His resurrection and preach the gospel to descendants of Jews who supposedly had peopled these continents? The sacred books of the Mormons assert these doctrines and many more. Not content with the Bible as the only guide for faith and truth, the Mormon founders added to it three other books that are held by the church to be on a level higher than that of the Bible (which the Mormon Church claims is God's Word "in so far as it is correctly translated"). The other three books, The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants, contain the basis for all the teachings of the LDS Church. Each is supposed to be an infallible record 2 / Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? of God's will for man, displayed in sacred history and utterances from on high both directly and through "prophets."The Founder of Mormonism The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Jr., claimed that in a grove near Palmyra, New York, in the spring of 1820, God the Father and God the Son appeared to him to answer his prayer about which religion was correct. The fifteen-year-old is said to have heard them tell him that Smith said that he went to this hill each year, waiting for instructions from God, until September 22, 1827, when he was finally commanded to dig up the plates. He used a lever to move a flat stone, and there in a stone box, according to Joseph Smith, his eyes beheld for the first time the golden plates, with a "breastplate" and two stones "set in silver bows," called the "Urim and Thummim." It was with the Urim and Thummim -- and, according to Mormon sources, "the gift and power of God" --- that Smith laboriously and meticulously Introduction / 3 translated the mysterious symbols (he called them "reformed Egyptian") a on the golden plates. His translation was said to be dictated to his friend, Oliver Cowdery, b and other scribes between 1828 and 1829. This 275,000 word document is known today throughout the world as the first of the Mormon sacred books, The Book of Mormon. Each volume today is prefaced by the testimony of eight men who each claimed that they had seen Smith's golden plates. Three other signatures offer testimony that the men saw the plates and viewed and heard an angel of God assuring them of the truth of the book.Contested Origins Serious scholars have long contested this story of the origin of The Book of Mormon. From the first public circulation of Smith's story, controversy has raged as to the true source of the stories of America's past. It is scarcely possible to find an informed non-Mormon who puts any credence in the "official" story, and yet these non-Mormon critics differ among themselves as to the true story. Basically, two theses are the most widely held. The first school of thought believes that Joseph Smith, Jr., was the author of The Book of Mormon, and that the entire production was one of his own imagination. Various ideas have circulated as to whether he took any other people into his confidence and enlisted their aid. (Some say only Oliver Cowdery, others say one or more of the scribes besides Cowdery, and still others say it was someone not otherwise associated with Mormonism.) __________ a Such a type of Egyptian is nonexistent, according to Egyptologists. b Oliver's last name was spelled Cowdery, while many of his descendants today spell their last name Cowdrey, as does one of the co-authors of this book. 4 / Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? The second major thesis teaches that Joseph Smith used a manuscript previously in existence. The assertion is that a retired Congregationalist minister, Solomon Spalding c (1761-1816), wrote a biblically styled novel called The Manuscript Found. A young man named Sidney Rigdon either took or copied this manuscript as it lay in a printing office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rigdon and Cowdery (a cousin of Smith) remodeled the Spalding manuscript and presented it to the world not as a novel but as a divinely inspired record called The Book of Mormon.If Joseph Smith actually used another man's novel and deceived millions of people into believing that God was speaking through this book, or if he deliberately invented a religion which is no religion at all, but instead a hoax of monstrous proportions, then millions of innocent people have been misled. Keep in mind that 10 percent of every obedient Mormon's income is given to his church unhesitatingly, because he is confident that he is giving to God. The Book of Abraham Careful scholarship has already proved that Joseph Smith was wrong about The Pearl of Great Price, the second of the Mormon sacred books. In 1967 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City gave a collection of papyrus manuscripts to the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. These were identified by the Mormons as the long-lost Book of Abraham, part of The Pearl of Great Price. Confident of the vindication which Joseph Smith and Mormonism would receive from the __________ c Solomon and his immediate family spelled their name Spalding, while other relatives, acquaintances, and descendants spelled it Spaulding. Introduction / 5 translation of these pieces, the task of translation was promptly assigned to Dee Jay Nelson, a recognized Egyptologist and at the time, a Mormon.Nelson found that the famous Book of Abraham was not a sacred history from God at all, but came from the Egyptian Book of Breathings, one of several religious prayers and writings traditionally placed in the tombs of the Egyptian dead centuries before Christ. Because of his discovery and the Mormon Church's refusal to acknowledge his facts; Nelson resigned from the Mormon Church with his wife and daughter and now publicly denounces Joseph Smith's Book of Abraham. (See Appendix 1 for Professor Nelson's verbatim statements of his findings.) The other sacred Mormon book, Doctrine and Covenants, has also lost its claim to divine infallibility which it once held, Although calling it Scripture, the LDS Church has through the years yielded to other influences and changed its position on some of the teachings contained in this book. For example, although polygamy was purportedly revealed by God to Joseph as an "everlasting covenant" (see Doctrine and Covenants 132:1-4), Mormon president Wilford Woodruff was apparently convinced by the government to state in 1890, "We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice. . ." (Doctrine and Covenants, pp. 256-57). With the demise of the authority of the Bible (the continuing Mormon contention being that it is at least partly incorrectly translated) along with the diminishing authority of The Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Covenants, The Book of Mormon is thereby the only unassailed bulwark of LDS infallibility that remains. If the authority of The Book of Mormon is disproved, the last vestige of Mormon extrabiblical authority is nullified. 6 / Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? After hundreds of hours of painstaking research, we have come to a firm and studied conviction: The Book of Mormon is not a genuine revelation from God at all, but was derived from a novel written by Solomon Spalding. In this book we shall present the overwhelming evidences that convinced us that Solomon Spalding is actually the source of the composition now known as The Book of Mormon, originally a novel titled The Manuscript Found. We ask only that you read this book carefully and come to your own reasoned conclusion as to the true source of The Book of Mormon.Wayne L. Cowdrey |
Mormonism today claims 3.1 million members and boasts that every day, somewhere in the world, a new chapel is being dedicated. Mormons have risen to powerful financial and political heights throughout most of America ... Permission has not yet been secured in order to allow the reproduction of Chapter 1 (pages 7-18) of the book Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon? on-line at this web-site. When and if such permission is granted, that text for will be posted here. |
