They're all familiar with the Book of Mormon. As you know, there is such a thing. And it has gone into, of course, many millions of copies. There's never been a book that has sold in stores. Nobody wants to buy. They force it on you or tweeted you into getting a copy of it. I have never yet bought a Book of Mormon, but I have had half a dozen of them given to me at this in time, various editions. I have some of the older editions, and one of the interesting points of it is that in time they change the text from time to time, and things become embarrassing to them, they change the text without making any footnotes or anything else. And sometimes if you quote something from some of their writings, they will say that it doesn't say that in my copy, and they will show you their copy, which, excuse me, doesn't show us. So I show them mine and say, all right, now, why did they change it from this one to this one without making any footnotes? This isn't a very good way of writing. This is dishonor. Anyway, they do have... They have written many, many books apart from their sacred books. But the sacred books of Mormonism, there's the set of them. That's what I want to talk about tonight. Why should we know about them and what should we know about them? Every young Mormon is trained to close off any conversation with you as he comes to the point where he doesn't want to talk to you anymore by putting his hand on his chest, which is part of making their witness, as they call it, to put his hand on his chest and he has a burning in his bosom. They're burning in the bosom and they say, I know. And they will roll their eyes heavenward. I know that the book is true. I know that the Book of Mormon was the Word of God, and it goes, this is the prophet of God. It's always the same. It doesn't never vary. It doesn't matter whether it's the presiding bishop or the youngest missionary. This is what they're taught to say. And on one occasion, I just thought that the old nature was rising in me, and I told the fellow about burning in his bosom of rollers to help them. He didn't appreciate it. He just didn't call it. And anyway, first of all, the reason you're doing this is this. They'll come to you with their sacred books and say, These are the Word of God. There also been the King James Version. So you might say, There is the set of their sacred writings. Why the King James Version? Why not the one of the later versions? Well, the reason is that the King James Version is the one that the writer of the Book of Mormon used when he was writing the Book of Mormon, and in it we find transcribed twenty-three chapters from the King James Version verbatim listed and put in the Book of Mormon. They have this slight note, as they quote, they say, for instance, I can find one of them here. They'll have the chapter quoted, the heading, all the rest of them. And in the quick note, they'll have key also Isaiah chapter so and so. In other words, it's a direct quotation from that chapter in Isaiah, and they have them continuously from the third chapter of Isaiah through the fourteenth, and then the fifty-third chapter in several others. They have a number of chapters in Isaiah. That seems to be very popular with them. And other versions, the Sermon on the Mount, they have that. So you see, they're stuck with the King James Version, because that's the version that Joseph Smith had in his hands when he was writing about the Mormon. There's much hold to that. So they will bring the King James Version with them. Now they will use quotations from the King James Version, constantly. Wherever they can find a verse or part of a verse that choose to uphold their particular doctrine, they will use it. And they will very carefully use only the words that they want to use as a precept. For instance, in the eighth chapter of first Corinthians, the one where it says, where there are Lord's many and God's many. This is in Barnabas in Corinthians. And it's a totally explanatory note that they use this as a solid test to prove that there are many God. And so on down through the line, they will use just the parts of the verse that they want to quote. Now, as you're dealing with them, the things you do when the moment they suggest that the first scripture makes them turn into it in the King James Version and read the entire portion out loud. That is just makes them do that. I say, you know, you're not going to get away until you read that entire portion and see what it says. Well, of course, after they've read it, they realize that it doesn't hold up their doctrine at all. And they didn't talk to me about that. Now, always insist. This is one thing you can always do. You have the perfect right to do it from there. It suggests something like this. To make them repeat you. Now, who is that talking to? Only probably we don't know. I say, oh, he's talking to the Corinthians first, you say. What is it talking about? For instance, say, in the fifteenth chapter, first Corinthians, there's... an explanatory note, Paul says, what shall we say then of them who baptize for the dead? And they say, this proves that baptism in the dead was something that Paul thought. He didn't do any such thing. She's not talking about baptism in the dead. He's talking about the resurrection. This is a subject matter of the death. So insist that they realize that they're borrowing something But the subject matter is the recollection, not the subject of baptism to the death. Now in the first chapter of Jeremiah, for instance, they used part of that verse to prove that we all existed before we came here. Because the Lord, if said to him, the first verse of the first chapter of Jeremiah, Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee, and before thou cameest out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee of prophet unto the nation. Now they say, How could he do that if we weren't in existence before we were born? Well, of course, hold him to it. What did he talk me about? He was talking about the foreknowledge of God, not the preexistence of man. And they can come to that point. This, of course, marks the cross on them. In the ninth chapter of John's Gospel, they will use the conversation there, the disciples, as they were talking about this man who was born blind. His disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin this man or his parents, that he was born blind. How could he sin before he was born if he didn't exist? So they persist into making it believe that she always existed before birth. Now, this, of course, on the surface is, has a little problem. But when we realize who it largely that was teaching, we realize that these were Jews who were speaking, and the Jews, the Orthodox Jews, many of them to this day, believe that the unborn child can sin while they tell the Jews. They teach that. The old rabbis were very firm about this. And of course, the recent arguments about when does the person start to exist? And they finally decided at confession. Well, the Jews went further and say this child is conscious and it's from him while it's in his mother's room. And that's what they were talking about here. These are the explanations, of course. Now these are the ways that, this is the way they use the scriptures. So whenever they come up with a verse of scripture, make them change the subject and discuss that. What's he talking about? What's the subject matter? Who's it ready to? At what time? For what purpose? And continue what goes before and what follows? According to Tyndall's little formula. Now this is something that we want to do. as they suggest, the use of the Bible. They use it for its picture purpose. They will, you will, of course, thank them for them, for instance, by grace that he saves through Satan. Not of yourselves, if he's a gift of God, not a verse left any land to boast. You say, what do you do with that? You say, oh, that'll be translated correctly. How do you know? Achilles in here. So how do you get around that? Okay. This is their evidence, the only evidence they have. I usually ask them, do you understand the grief? Well, no, I don't. Do you understand all the implications of this thing? They don't, of course, because they don't believe in the doctrine of salvation by grace, be faith. And they have a voice over in Second Nephi. We are saved by grace after all that you can do. I had a series a year ago at the University of Wyoming, Wyoming, we have a little bookstore there that's run by fifty students at the university. This is a fun to get people into the little bookstore and have a conversation with them over step across in Ciccum and something, you know, and they used it as a means of winning students on the campus. It was very successful. We have about, oh, we have, I think, eight of them now on different campuses, different towns. But anyway, the young folks there knew I was coming to you and said, would you come and hold a meeting with us for the benefit of the Mormon? I said, do you like it? So they set up an evening, higher the hall on the university campus, and announced it freely, particularly for the Mormon students. Well, when we got there, there were thirty-five Mormon students in the audience, and about thirty-five Christian students. That's about even the divide. And with these thirty-five Mormon students trained the director of their Institute of Religion, which is on the campus, and is there also the purpose of teaching Mormonism to young people. And the person in charge is usually a graduate student who's prolonging his days at the university by taking one subject a year until she... manages to get through. That's the whole question. But this was one of the professors on the campus. Ph.D., a man about, I suppose, forty-five years old. And he came to see that everything went their way. Well, I had prepared for that message, for that situation by a road little truck about the size of this and it was particularly geared to the Mormon. They believe, according to the Book of Mormon, that the American Indians are the descendants of the people who wrote the Book of Mormon. You can talk about that a little later. They call them the Lamanites. They're the Indians. And they have a Lamanite war, for instance, where they have enough of a church of Indians in an area to have a separate church. They had a Lamanite boy. We have a former Lamanite in our student body of Flagstaff. He was a Tewah Indian from New Mexico. He was an El Cisadec priest in the Mormon state in that village. He was also a priest of the native religion, which is pure demonism. He got saved, came to our school, and he's very vocal in this matter. And I said, didn't it bother you to be a priest of the native religion and also a priest of the Mormon church? He says, no, I couldn't be in the government. Well, anyway, I took four case histories of students at the school who had been rescued from the gutter, just absolutely from the gutter. unretainable, that type of people that the police were just wishing they would die, so they'd be rid of them. They were constantly throwing them up and throwing them in their junk tank and out of this, and they wished to go away. Well, I took four of these case histories, and I showed how that all four of these had been won by the Lord through the efforts of our Indian students who went down to the Jail, the Jail twice a week, regularly, and then how that they had, from their schools, had studied the Word, and after they were through with their schoolwork, they had been completely rehabilitated, and then went out in full-time Christian work. Well, I ask the question, what would you tell these people from the Book of Mormon, the Holy Ghost, Christ, the doctrine, covenant, that would reclaim those lives? Well, The students got the idea. They found out what I was trying to sell them, and none of them bothered me at the end. Of course, each one of our assistant students tackled one of them and working with them very vigorously while the bishop came up and talked to me. He said, you gave us something of a challenge tonight. I said, yeah, I'm doing it intentionally. He said, I just don't know how I could answer you at this point. I said, I guess not. I think this was a challenge if you had a deal of difficulty to answer. But he said, we do have a verse of Scripture that's similar to what you keep. And I said, what is that? He started swimming and I helped him find a place, an angle as well as he has it many times. Is this the verse you mean? You're saved by this after all that you can do. And yes, that's the verse. And I said, oh, let's look at that for a moment. Have you always done everything that you could do up to this point? I said, no, none of it's perfect, you know. I said, do you think that from now on, you're in middle age, you think from now on, from the end of your life, you would be able to do everything that you could do? Well, he was out there asking a lot. I said, well, then you don't have anything to stand on at all. But that it's only after you do all that you can do that that verse supplies the grace to salvation. Well, he was, and that's a little apologetic. The poor fellow really, he was suffering. And I said, besides that, I said, don't you think that the person who wrote that there in four eighty-two B.C. was looking at the second chapter of the season and paraphrasing it when he wrote that. Well, he says, we are having some problems with the Book of Mormon, as we assure all. And at that point, he tried to close off the discussion and get out of there. But I'm hoping that we will examine his life and see that there's many things that he could have done that he didn't do. Therefore, he's not saved, and there's no chance for salvation. But anyway, this shows me the importance of being alert to the use of scripture, when they use scripture, and be sure that they're not quoting it from Doctrine and Covenants, some of it sounds very familiar, be sure that you make them turn to the portion and read it thoroughly and examine it before you go on to the next point. This, of course, slows them down very much, and sometimes you can get a barb under their skin, and that's one of the ways we have reaching them. If we can somehow or other get a question in our mind, we can go on from there. It may take six months, it may take six years. But that question remains in their mind until it's settled one way or another. So bear this in mind. This is the use of the Bible in Mormonism. They say this is a sacred book. Insofar as it is translated correctly. They always leave that umbrella so that there is something that doesn't fit them. They say, oh, but That isn't translated correctly. How do you know? Well, I feel it in my bosom, but that is not correctly translated. So, so much for that. Now, back in eighteen countries, Joseph Smith tells that he had a vision. And in that vision, they won't go into that vision. I think we discussed it one other night. The vision cannot be true, to be true, because there's no evidence, there's no witnesses, and the dates are utterly confused. There are four different versions of the story, and there's at least three different dates. So they cannot pinpoint that and say, this we know happened on such and such a day because so-and-so thought happened. There's no such thing. But anyway, we got the vision that the church was completely corrupt, that all of the church's doctrines were corrupt and delusion, and that all of their pastors were impostors, and all of their followers were dukes that didn't know what they were doing. Words were out of sight. That paraphrase is lower. All right. This is what they, who was told in its first vision. Three years later, which was eighteen twenty-three, he tells that on a certain night he was in his bed and a demon came to him, the whole room became lighter than the daylight, the sun of the daylight of moon, and an angel appeared to him, the angel Moroni. The angel Moroni is seen blowing his trumpet on top of the, all of the temples. We watched them raise the statue of Moroni up on the Seattle Temple. It was quite an exciting moment. It was a great thrill. It was a cylindrical fire and goes way up. It was visible for miles. They got it at the point where two freeways meet and they can't help but see this thing. But they were raising Moroni with a janky train. and setting them on top, and it was a windy day, and the thing was playing around there, and some of us were just wishing that somehow the ferole Moroni would drop to the ground, but he didn't, so he got him up there, blowing his trumpet. He's the one that appeared to Joseph Smith and told him that there were certain golden plates hidden in a chest in the hill tomorrow that this name of faith applied to it. It didn't have any name before because it wasn't significant enough to have a name. This called it a mound and a cow pasture is off. And it's about, oh, four tenths of a mile long and maybe two hundred feet high. We wouldn't even consider it a mountain out in our country. If you don't call them mountains, well, they've got over five thousand feet. But anyway, this is where he would find the place, and he would show them where to go and look for them. And that they were the message from God which contained the fullness of the everlasting gospel. That's the terminology they used. This was the fullness of the everlasting gospel. And he would be permitted to get it and translate it so that this new church that he had in mind could have this literature. Well, the angel repeated this situation three times that same night, and Joseph Smith were quite exhausted the next day from listening to the message of the angel Moroni. If he had the vision, it must have been a demon possession, because it had all of the descriptions, the impressions that are given by those who had experienced demonetism. But at any rate, he went out and turned up, he found the chest. In the hill tomorrow, a cement chest with a lid that he fired up and soon up there was the Golden Plate and the Urim and Sermon and the Sword of Laban and the Parish Tactical that he was reused to translate the book. Well, he wasn't permitted to take them home at that time, but he was to visit that spot every year until the angel gave him permission to take them. In eighteen twenty-seven, the angel said, all right, now you can take the place. He tells about taking them home and hiding them. And first of all, he hid them under the hearth. He dug up some of the stones and hid them in there. And then later he moved them to a cooper shop across the road and hid them under great bales of flesh and so forth. And finally with that, he didn't say the same enough, but he just came out and hid them in a hollow log in the woods. And he had a great time keeping you secret. The reason for this was that he had been the head of a band of treasure-seekers. And they all thought if he had a treasure, they wanted to be cut in on him. So he had to hide it. And they tell about the mob chasing him and all the rest of the crowd, a hectic situation, shooting at him and whatnot. Well, he describes the plate as a book of golden plates that were seven inches wide, eight inches high, and six inches thick on Golden's ring. That's sort of a ring binder of care. Well, we figured out that much gold would weigh four hundred and twenty pounds. And yet he had ring it like this. It was a brick. In one case, she was running away from the crowd that was chasing him. See the woods, he'd gone out into the woods to get this, and he took it and put it under his arm and ran three miles with the golden plates under his arm. Four hundred and twenty pounds. He tried sometimes. Try to carry him across the threshold. See how far you get. He knocked down two adversaries on it, jumped over a log, and finally arrived at home out of breath. I think he would. But anyway, this is the sort of legend that grew up around these golden plates. And one of our brethren in San Diego, a man who was one time a Mormon from the Icelandic polygamist colony up in southern Utah, he became saved as we listened to the preaching of H.A. Ironside and others, and is a very special brother. We work together very closely, but he... made a complete book, not out of gold, but he made it out of the closest thing to it. He made it out of land. And it doesn't weigh quite as much as gold would weigh, but he has a challenge out. He'll pay a thousand dollars to anyone that will run two miles with that under his arm. Well, of course, he has no takers. And he delights in setting up a booth right next to the Mormon booth at the Cape Fair, perhaps since, with this challenge blazoned up there. She has no taste. But anyway, that's the golden plate that they talk about. Now, at a certain point, the angel told him to go ahead and translate. Incidentally, the angel, as we have deducted from, let's say, circumstantial evidence, that none other than a man by the name of Sidney Rigdon, who later on became Joseph Smith's theologian. The reason we think the fish is salt. Sidney Rigdon was an associate of Alexander Campbell, who was plotting the restoration movement, which has now developed into what we know as the Church of Christ, the disciples of Christ, and the Christian church in the north, these three that we call the Campbellite sect. Sidney Rigdon was one of his evangelists for a period of ten years, and he covered the area from Rutland County, Vermont, across to Albany and the route of the Erie Canal, which was being completed at that particular time, and on across along the north or the south shore of Lake Ontario as far as Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland, Ohio is now. And he repeatedly was on that surface. That was his surface, preaching. And all of these folks, Joseph Smith and the rest of them, you were an intimate friend. Everybody connected with the Book of Mormon. and the beginning of the church knew Sidney Rignan, but the Mormons today would say they didn't know a thing about Sidney Rignan until two years after the Book of Mormon sinning. Well, two men, Charlie Pratt and Oliver Cowder, as soon as the book was completed, they were sent on a mission that the Book of Mormon, to sell the Book of Mormon, preach the everlasting gospel, And the first person they went to was Sidney and Igman in Kirkland, Ohio. At first he possessed the Christ and Igman scriptures, a book that would be competing with the Bible. He said, no, we can't accept that. Two days later, they came back and he said, oh yes, this is the revelation from God. And within three weeks, he baptized his entire congregation into the Mormon church. And then it turns out later on, I've read this in one of the biographies of this man, Parley Craft, that both Parley Craft and Oliver Cowdery had been members of his congregation two years before. So they all knew the whole plot, they knew the whole thing from beginning to end. But yet today the Mormons have this all covered up with their story that is repeated endlessly by their missionaries and by their people that Sidney Rigdon knew nothing about it until... after the old thing is consummated. Paul Brody, who wrote a very splendid book on Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History, it has become a bestseller in its field. If you get a copy of it, even if it is nine dollars, well, you get it. It's one of the best coverages. He is the niece of Dr. McKay, who was tested for the Mormon church about two presidents back, an old man who died at age of ninety-four, completely senile, but he was still alive, and so they set him up in the president's chair as long as they could set him there. Finally, he did die. But anyway, Tom Doody was his niece. She was a Mormon, and she had access to all the archives, and she wrote the story and had it completed before they realized that she was doing what she was doing, and now they hid her like poison. But anyway, she has a calendar of the activities that this man should be reading. And every time there was a problem that came up with Joseph Smith and the writing of the Book of Mormon, he was absent from his parish for a period of about six to eight weeks, time enough to get up to Palmyra in New York and settle here and get back, always under trouble in a serious sort of affidavit. There's two, the first example of evidence, the two greats is this myth. This is how this man entered into the picture, and he was the engineer. That engineer, the Book of Mormon, can talk to the story of the Golden Place, had Joseph Smith dig for them and so forth, and here's the doctrine is what we find in the Book of Mormon. including quite a long article in the book of Mormon, a long story about Melchizedek. All of his boyhoods, dins, his mantras, dins, all the rest of it. Why? Showed that they could later on use the Melchizedek priesthood, you say, because here it is in the book of Mormon. Obviously in the language of this man, Sidney Rigby. the machinery in this case from the beginning and we assume that he was the one that visited Joseph Smith and told him where the place where the place contracted the story because as soon as it was announced that the Book of Mormon had been found in this chest that was hidden in the side of this hillside all of his buddies that had been treasure hunting with him before They got up a party and they went over every inch of that mountain to see if they could find a place where the earth had been disturbed, where this chest might have been buried and they found nothing. And nobody has ever found anything since. Where are the golden plates? Well, an angel came and took them away the day after he finished finding it and saw that he wouldn't exploit the gold of it in them. which is a handy little story. This is always a good thing they say, our Bible, we don't have the original document. How do you know? That's right. The story versus documents in the Book of Mormon. Oh, the angels came and got them, which is a very likely story. Anyway, here was this book of faith. Joseph Smith and his associates, first of all, a man by the name of Martin Harris, who was going to pay for the printing of the book, Martin Harris, and his own wife, Emma Smith, and a man by the name of Jacob Whitmer, all three helped to write the manuscript. the first hundred and twenty-seven pages of it. Then Martin Harris' wife was wondering where all the money was going out of the household, and she didn't like it. He said, I want to see those plates. I want to see the manuscript that you've got. And so Joseph finally allowed Martin Harris to take this part that was translated home with him to show to his wife. Well, he had it in the dresser drawer after she had looked at it, so forth, and thought nothing more odd for the moment when he went together, gone. And the prediction is that Mrs. Harris just threw it in the fire. Well, then they had a predicament, because now they'd have to translate it over again, and they wouldn't know that it would come out the same way as it did the first time. So Joseph Smith got a revelation. from the Lord that he wasn't to translate that part again for fear that enemies would take advantage of them and so forth. So this part would be supplemented by another document that would have the same material only in brief or form. So that's the way they got hold of it. Well, it's interesting that Sidney Rigdon was away from home when that event took place for a period of eight weeks. Chances are he was right there. They were figuring out what to do to cover up this blunder. And Mrs. Harris never did say what happened to them. She finally left him because he mortgaged the farm for thirty-five hundred dollars to pay for the printing of the Book of Mormon. And even that was a problem because he didn't dig it up as quick as he might have. Joseph Smith had to give a revelation from the Lord telling him to pay the printer. or else dire Christians would be heaped upon his head. That's one of the most violent doctrines in the Doctrine and Covenants. This order, it's from Martin Harris, to pay the printer, and thus redeem his soul from destruction. This was going on from eighteen twenty seven to eighteen thirty when the book was finally finished. That is the text of the Book of Mormon. the problems they had, the greatest problem that Joseph Smith had was to keep the plates hidden so that nobody would see them. And there's no evidence that any human being ever saw those golden plates. They just didn't see them. Well, I read last night the report of the two men later on they had witnessed in here that they had seen the place that an angel descended from heaven and showed them to them and they could see that it was a very ancient manuscript and they were fascinated correctly, which of course none of them could do because most of them were illiterate. They wouldn't have known whether it was bona fide characters or not. But anyway, the three men who are used as witnesses Their testimony would not stand up even in the kangaroo court. It's just absolute foolishness. But Joseph Smith wrote the testimony for them and had them sign it. Now they will say these men never went back on their work, although they all left the church. Well, they did go back on their work. They said we saw them by the eye of faith. We saw the faith by the eye of faith. I remember when I was in college studying philosophy or the philosopher Barclay had this proposition that if you could visualize a thing, you couldn't believe it was there unless you could visualize it. And if you could visualize it, then you could trace it down and probably it was real. Well, by this token you could visualize a unicorn. You could tell me what one looks like. It looks kind of like a horse and has a horn and it's... other's forehead. But are their uniforms? No. Even if you can visualize them and describe them. Well, that's as much evidence there is that the plates were actually seen by these men. It had to be an angel that came and showed them up with them. They couldn't. He couldn't. He'd been translating them according to his own words for two and a half years, with them there all the time. Yet when the day came to show up to these witnesses, he couldn't produce them. He had to produce the an angel from heaven in the woods where the light shines down. Very beautiful spot. I've seen it down there at Kalmyra. Beautiful hardwood trees and the light of the early morning sun comes piercing down and rays down through the woods and lights up the ground. You can easily pull off a seance there if you had the least bit of superstition. my grandson, Nigel, the day last year, and we had a great time asking questions around the headquarters there. And they finally disappeared and let us disappear as fast as we could. Well, I'm sorry, but there is just that much of the old nature in me that I like to heckle these people with some things that they can't explain. I guess I'll be forgiven for this. I don't know. I hope I won't be. But anyway, The golden plates. They have to believe that those golden plates are there. They have to believe that the Book of Mormon is the Word of God. That can't be good Mormon. This is the pledge. If a young fellow is in danger of defecting and they're reinstating him, they will ask the question, do you believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God? Yes. Do you believe Joseph Smith to be the Prophet of God? Yes. They don't say, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior? They never asked that question. So always about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon. So that's the importance of the book. All right. What is the situation with the golden plague? Question number one. Hey, look at the time go by. Shall we take a break now? All right. Let's take a break for five minutes and we'll come back to this. I'll stand in. five minutes. We'll have some questions after this. I'll wind this up pretty quick after we come back.