Book of Mormon Title Page; Introduction; Testimony of the Three Witnesses; Testimony of the Eight Witnesses

(January 1, 2015)

                It is always interesting to see the people who seem to think that finding any mistake in the Book of Mormon is sufficient to somehow ‘disprove’ the divinity of the book or its translation.  But there really is no justification of taking that inerrant approach.  By the terms of the book itself, there may very well be mistakes – they are mistakes of men, not of God.  We have to answer the problems with the book along with the things that admit no explanation other than divinity.  When we focus only on the mistakes, we place ourselves in the position of condemning the things of God because of the mistakes of men.

                The other thought I had was being once again struck by the reliability of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon.  There are places where the only explanation of the Restoration is either artifice or divinity – Joseph Smith either was who he said he was or he engaged in deliberate fraud to mislead (there isn’t a middle ground).  But, in other places, there is a different dichotomy – Joseph Smith either legitimately was who he said he was or he at least believed he was who he said he was.  It is, at times, difficult to choose definitively between the two, but when the two types of conflicts are combined, there is only one consistent possibility – that Joseph Smith really was who he said he was.