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Occasionally,
you hear someone say,
"I could believe your doctrine if I just didn't have to swallow the
story about Joseph Smith being a prophet of God and that he translated
the Book of Mormon from some golden plates which he claimed he found in
a hillside." Let us consider some facts or conditions that must be
complied with in order for you to produce a similar record under
comparable conditions.
1. You must not be older than 23 or
24
years of age.
2. You cannot be a college
graduate. In fact, you can have only three years of formal schooling
and you must
have spent your life in backwoods farming communities.
3. Whatever you write must be on
the
basis of what you know and not what you learn through research.
Remember, there were no libraries in the backwoods of New York state
that held the information needed to write the Book of Mormon.
4. You must write a history of two
separate ancient countries, such as Iran, covering a period of 600 B.C.
to 421 A.D. and Tibet covering a period of 2300 B.C. to 200 B.C. You
must know very little about the countries of which you choose to write.
5. Your history or record must be
long, containing more than 250,000 words.
6. You must add 180 proper nouns to
the English language. (William Shakespeare added only 30).
7. You must write a book with 102
chapters, 25 of them about wars, 10 about history, 21 about prophecy,
32 about doctrines, 5 about missionaries, and 9 about the mission of
Christ.
8. You must include in your
writings
the history of two distinct and separate nations, along with histories
of different contemporary nations or groups of people.
9. You must describe the religious,
economic, social and political cultures and institutions of these two
nations, including the names of their weights, measures and mediums of
exchange.
10. You must describe the physical
geography of the lands in your record with enough detail that decades
later when these lost cultures are discovered, the lands in which they
lived can be identified.
11. You must
weave into your history
the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern for Christian living.
12. You must write your record
using a number of ancient Hebrew
poetry and writing styles which will not be rediscovered and announced
to the English speaking world until years after you publish your
record.
13. You must alter your own style
of writing so as to convince even
computer analysts years later that many different authors wrote
portions of your record without any computer evidence that your own
personal writing style (or word print) is in the record.
14. When you start to produce this
record, covering a period of
over 2700 years, you must finish it in approximately 80 days.
15. When you have finished, you
must not make any changes in the
text. The first edition as you have dictated it to your secretary must
stand forever.
16. After pauses for sleep and
food, if you are dictating to a stenographer, you must never ask to
have the last paragraph or last
sentence read back to you.
17. You must announce that your
"smooth narrative" is not fiction,
but true. Yes a sacred history similar to that of the Bible.
18. In fact your narrative must
fulfill the Bible prophecies; even
in the exact manner in which it shall come forth, to whom given, and
its purposes and accomplishments.
19. You must use properly, figures
of speech, similes, metaphors,
narrations, exposition, description oratory, epic lyrics and parables.
20. You must publish it to every
nation, kindred, tongue, and
people, declaring it to be the Word of God.
21. You must include with the
record itself this marvelous
promise: "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you
that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if
these things are not true; 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."
22. Millions of people must bear
record to the world for the next
172 years that they know the record to be true. Because they put the
promise to the test, the truth was manifest to them by the power of the
Holy Ghost.
23. Thousands of great men,
intellectual giants and scholars, must
subscribe discipleship to the record of its movement, even to the point
of laying down their lives.
24. There can be no flaw, whatever,
in the entire book. (Except in
grammar, or other errors of man in transcribing, printing, etc.)
25. Only limited descriptions of
some of the cultures of these
civilizations of which you will write about can be known when you
publish your manuscript. And they only exist in another language and
are not in print in your country. Yet, you must not make any absurd,
impossible, or contradictory statements. Even so, many of the facts,
ideas and statements given us as true in your record must be entirely
inconsistent with, even the direct opposite of, the prevailing belief
of the world. Yet very little is even claimed to be known about these
civilizations and their 2,700 years of history at the time you write
your book.
26. You must invite the ablest
scholars and experts to examine the
text with care. You must strive diligently to see that your book gets
into the hands of all those most eager to prove it a forgery and who
are most competent to expose any flaws in it.
27. After 172 years of extensive
analysis, no claim or fact in your
book can be disproven, but all are vindicated. Other theories and
ideas as to its origin, rise and fall, leaving your claims as the only
possible explanation.
28. Thorough investigation,
scientific evidence, and archaeological
discoveries for the next 172 years must verify your claims and prove
even the minutest details of your history to be perfectly true.
29. Internal and external
prophecies
must be confirmed and fulfilled in the next 172 years.
30. Three honest, credible
witnesses
must testify to the whole world that an angel from heaven appeared to
them and showed them the ancient records from which you claim your
record was translated.
31. You must call out of heaven the
voice of the Lord to declare to the three witnesses that your record is
true and that it is their responsibility to bear testimony of the
divine nature of the book.
32. Eight other witnesses must
testify
to the world that they saw the ancient records in broad daylight and
that they handled them and felt the engraving thereon.
33. The first three witnesses and
the
second eight witnesses must bear their testimony, not for profit or
gain, but under great personal sacrifice and severe persecution, even
to their death.
34. You must find someone to
finance
your book with the understanding that neither he or you will ever
receive any monetary gain from it. You must sell the book at cost or
less.
35. Finally, after suffering
persecution and revilement for 20 years in the process of producing and
defending this book, you must give, willingly, your own life for your
testimony that the record is of God and that it contains another
testimony that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Messiah, even the
Savior of the world who was born of a virgin, died on a cross, raised
from the dead, ascended into heaven and promised to return.
36. Do you really believe that it
is
possible the the Book of Mormon was made up and written by a man?
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