Problems With The Book of Mormon: Helaman-Third Nephi
Book of Mormon
Printer’s Manuscript
E.B. Grandon Print shop, Palmyra, New York
This segment of the series on problems with the supposed most correct book on earth, The Book of Mormon, takes us through the book of Heleman. Early on in the book of Helaman (chapter 3) it is mentioned that the people migrated north and built buildings and cities out of cement because there was not much in the way of timber in that part of the land and it says they were “exceedingly expert in the working of cement.” The Book of Mormon is somewhat vague about geography and gives sparse details, intentionally I think, but even with the details the book does give us, it can be determined that the geography in the book does not match any actual place on earth. If we are to believe the account of The Book of Mormon to be true we would have to assume the writers were either not good with directions (a good argument could be made for that considering how many times they get lost in the book), or perhaps they were just bad at writing about geography and directions. A more likely explanation though is that Joseph Smith either did not know much about geography or wanted to make sure not to make it about anyplace specific so that it would not come back and bite him.
Anyhow, back to the cement. Since we don’t know where the people were to start from or where they went north to we can’t say for sure where they supposedly built their concrete cities, but the only place we have found any evidence of ancient cement in the American continents is around the Yucatán Peninsula, so the people could not have gone too far north, despite the fact that Heleman 3:4 says they traveled “an exceedingly great distance.” At best the people in the book were embellishing their accomplishments with cement and how far they spread upon the land because there is no real evidence to support any northern concrete cities or the vast civilizations.
Heleman 5:9 says, “yea, remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved, only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ,” which agrees with the Bible but disagrees that what Brigham Young said about Joseph Smith deciding whether or not we enter heaven (1).
I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but one of the reoccurring themes in The Book of Mormon is that God blesses the people, they become prideful, the pride leads to sin and then they are punished and loose their riches, which causes them to repent. Once the people repent they are blessed with riches again and the cycle starts all over again. What I have never understood is why, being all knowing, God would keep giving the people riches even though he knew it could cause them to sin and forget him.
Another thing that has always bothered me from the first time I read The Book of Mormon is that when Lehi first blessed and cursed his sons respectively he told Laman and Lamuel that their sin would cause a skin of darkness to come upon their seed but that if they would repent the curse would be removed and they would be like their brethren (2), the Nephites, but in the book of Heleman all of the Lamanites are righteous, even to exceed the righteousness of the Nephites, yet the curse was not removed.
You might notice that I am skipping huge sections of the book of Heleman, but that is not because it is free from error but rather because they are errors that I have already covered extensively in earlier installments of this series. I have also skipped sections of Heleman and, the rest of The Book of Mormon, where the errors could feasibly be explained by the people written about in the book just not being overly intelligent and the leaders on both sides being bad at war, such as not figuring out how to lay a proper siege to a defended city and leaving a defended city to fight the enemy to mention a few. If you have not already read or listened to the earlier sections of this project I would recommend you to check those out.
I know I have mentioned it before, probably in every part of this series, but The Book of Mormon is constantly having the Holy Ghost play a major role and baptizing with fire before Christ had even come, instead of fulfilling the role he had before Christ. The Bible is clear that the Holy Ghost did not come to be a helper and constant companion or to baptize with fire until after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the only way to justify people being filled with the Holy Spirit before the death and resurrection of Jesus is to portray the Bible as flawed and untrustworthy, which is also the only way to justify most of the doctrines in the LDS Church. Because of this, the LDS Church teaches that the Bible has been corrupted and that many of the important things have been taken out or changed, but there is no proof of this. For evidence that the Bible has not been corrupted or changed, read the book Can We Still Believe The Bible by Craig L. Blomberg.
Helaman 5:45 clearly has the people experiencing an experience like that of the day of Pentecost written about in the book of Acts, with the speaking in tongues and everything, “And behold, the Holy Spirit of God did come down from heaven, and did enter into their hearts, and they were filled as if with fire, and they could speak forth marvelous words.”
Helaman 12:7 seams to disagree with the LDS current doctrine when it says, “O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth,” because the LDS doctrine teaches that we are created and destined to become gods (if we follow all the rules). As Marion G. Romney said, “The truth is, my beloved brethren and sisters, man is a child of God—a God in embryo,” (3) and the teaching by Joseph Smith and other prophets clearly taught that man is to become like God someday, (4),(5).
Samuel, a righteous Lamanite and prophet, came to preach to the wicked Nephites. They would not let him in so he climbed up on the wall
(Hel. 13–16).
in the fourteenth chapter of Helaman we read about a Lamanite prophet named Samuel who is preaching to the unrighteous Nephites. At this point in the story the Lamanites are more righteous than most of the Nephites, yet there is no mention of the curse being removed from them on account of their righteousness. Samuel tried to preach to the Nephites before and they ran him out, so now he is on the top of the wall surrounding their city preaching to them, and one of the main things he wants them to know is that in five years the Messiah will be born in the holy land.
Samuel says that Jesus is, “The Son of God, the Father of Heaven, the Creator of all things” (Heleman 14L:12), which agrees more with the Bible than it does with Mormonism.
Samuel gives some signs of the coming of the Messiah (Verses 2-6) so that the people may know that he has been born, and the signs include great lights in the heavens, a day and a night and a day as if it were one long day, a new star in the sky, and a vague mention of “many signs and wonders in heaven”. The people in the America’s, according to The Book of Mormon, were given a lot more signs of the birth of the Messiah than those in the Holy land were but since the birth of Jesus took place on the other side of the world, and they would not have had the option to just ride over and check it out, so I don’t really have a problem with the signs Samuel talked about for the advent. What I have issues with is what was prophesied to happen when Jesus died (verses 20-28).
Samuel prophesied that when Jesus died the sun, moon and stars would be darkened and there would be no light for the space of three days, which in my mind is just The Book of Mormon trying to one up the Bible because it was only dark for three hours in Jerusalem where Jesus actually died, (Mark 15:33). Nowhere in the Bible does it say that it was complete darkness in that the stars or the moon were not visible, just that it was dark. The Bible gives us little information about the darkness other than it was dark for three hours.
Samuel also said that the Americas would be subjected to thunder and lightning for many hours, and there would be a great destruction among the people, and that when it was done the dead would rise. I am not going to go into the dead rising at this point, than to mention that, if taken in context, Helaman 14:25 would have the people rising from the dead in complete darkness and would have a difficult time showing themselves to anyone.
My major beef with this prophecy is that it doesn’t make any sense for it to be dark for three days on the other side of the world from where the Messiah was killed while there was only three hours of darkness where he actually died. Three hours of darkness in the middle of the day would be sufficient to convince people that Jesus had died, and there is absolutely no reason why there would be three days of darkness in the Americas, on the other side of the world from where the Messiah was killed, when there were only three hours of darkness where he actually suffered and died. This is, in my mind, yet one more attempt by Smith to make The Book of Mormon try to upstage the Bible, but when you add too much it is no longer believable.
When I was a kid my family was camping in the mountains of Colorado and one evening I saw a small black bear on the other side of the river so I ran and told my parents about it. My sisters were not with me when I saw the bear and missed out, but wanting to get in on the excitement, they told their own stories. One sister said she saw the cub and its mother and that they climbed a tree. My other sister said she saw a panther and the panther had scared the bears away, and oh, the panthe was pink. My parents might have believed my sister’s story about there being two bears, even though it was an obvious attempt at upstaging my story, but when my other sister told her story of the pink panther it was determined that we were all making up stories, even though my story of seeing a small bear on the other side of the river was not only plausible but true. If my sister had added slightly to my other sister’s embellishment of what I saw she might have been believed, but she took it so far that believing her story was out of the question.
The severe destruction in the Americas when Jesus died, in Jerusalem, is the biggest issue I have with this story. When Jesus died the Bible records in three of the four gospels the three hours of darkness, the temple veil being torn, the centurion acknowledging Jesus as God, and the dead rising, but only one, Mark, mentions anything about an earth quake, and none of them mention anything about lightning or thunder. From the Bible, and from external sources, we know there were no devastating earthquakes or natural disasters that laid waste to cities in the Holy Land around the time of the death of Jesus, so there is no reason for it in America.
One of my major issues with all of the destruction in The Book of Mormon when Jesus died is that in in 2 Nephi 10:3 it says, “Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ—for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name—should come among the Jews, among those who are the more wicked part of the world; and they shall crucify him—for thus it behooveth our God, and there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God.” So, if the nation of Israel is the only nation in the world evil enough to crucify their God and they were not visited with death and destruction in retaliation for their murder of the Messiah, than what on earth were the people in the America’s being punished so severely for?
By the way, the Romans, not the Jews, crucified Jesus. While it is true that the Romans only killed Jesus at the behest of the Jewish leaders, it was ultimately the Romans who killed him, despite the fact that they found him not to be guilty. If the Jews had killed Jesus he would have been stoned to death, and they probably would have done so if they had not been under Roman rule.
The book of Third Nephi starts with the wicked deciding that if the signs prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite don’t happen that they are going to put to death all those who believe in what he said, and they pick a day for that purpose, but the signs of the birth of Jesus are shown and the crisis is averted.
In 3rd Nephi 1:14 it clearly lays out the trinity when God says that he will come into the world “to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh. And behold, the time is at hand, and this night shall the sign be given.” This verse clearly says that Jesus is not just another god, but is God and does not support the view of the godhead taught by the LDS Church.
In 3rd Nephi 1:21 it talks about how the people of The Book of Mormon were given a new star and a night without darkness. This is another instance of The Book of Mormon trying to one up the Bible. There is no real reason to have a night with no darkness in order to prove to the people that the Messiah had come as a new star in the heavens and the “many signs and wonders” Samuel talked about should have been enough.
In 3rd Nephi 2:14-15 it tells us that the righteous Lamanites were blessed for their righteousness by their skin turning white.
And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;
And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;
I have never understood why the Lamanites who were converted by the efforts of Ammon and his crew many years earlier, as recorded in the book of Alma, did not turn white because, by practically any standard, they were arguably the most righteous people in the entire story from the front cover of The Book of Mormon to the back cover. It also makes no sense that when the Nephites sinned, even when their sins far exceeded those of the Lamanites, their skin stayed white, and instead of cursing them with dark skin, God decided to have them mark their own foreheads with paint. The 2nd article of faith says that all men will be judged on their own sins, but the Lamanites were clearly judged by the sins of their fathers for many, many generations, even when they became more righteous than the Nephites.
Another thing that The Book of Mormon makes a huge deal about, from Alma to Moroni, is the Gadianton robbers and their “secret works and combinations” and it makes it clear that the reason they kept so many secrets and did not allow anyone on the outside to know what they were doing was because their works were evil works or works of darkness, yet the LDS Church has secret works in their temples and says that they are not secret but sacred. In the entirety of the Bible and The Book of Mormon, the only things that are kept secret are the sinful and wicked things and everything God does is make known to all, which makes it a hard sell to convince people outside of the Church that the temple ordinances are kept secret because they are sacred.
The Book of Mormon is constantly upping the anti on the scale of death and destruction, and with all of the major battles that have taken place before this time (19-22 AD), including the multiple battles in the book of Alma where so many people died they could not even be counted, 3rd Nephi 4:11 ups it again. “And the battle commenced in this the sixth month; and great and terrible was the battle thereof, yea, great and terrible was the slaughter thereof, insomuch that there never was known so great a slaughter among all the people of Lehi since he left Jerusalem.” Even later in the story in 3rd Nephi 4:21 it says that they were being slain “by thousands and tens of thousands.”
After the major battles the leader of the Gadianton robbers was captured and hanged until he was dead. Keep in mind that The Book of Mormon has gone out of its way to tell the reader that the people were living the law of Moses, but a people living the law of Moses would not have hanged a person as the law mandated specific punishments for specific crimes, and depending on the crime, the allowed method of execution was stoning the convicted person, burning them, decapitation, or in the case of a capital offense, being impelled. Hanging was not listed among the options in the Law of Moses.
Have you ever known someone who always brags about having a great story that they can’t tell you because they are not allowed to tell, or that they won’t tell you because they claim you would not understand? Well that is The Book of Mormon, and in multiple places in the book it says that there were great things spoken that could not be written, they did not have the power to write, there was no room to write them, or they were commanded not to write them. 3rd Nephi 7:17 is one of those verses and says, “And he [Jesus] did minister many things unto them; and all of them cannot be written, and a part of them would not suffice, therefore they are not written in this book.”
Typically when a person talks about some great secret they have but can’t tell it is not as great as they make it out to be, and is usually not even worth hearing. Many LDS apologist defend passages that make the claim about things that can’t be written by citing John 20: 30-31 that says, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” The Bible makes it clear that, while it does not contain all that Jesus did, it contains all of the important things and all we need for salvation.
In chapter eight of 3rd Nephi it talks about all of the cities that were destroyed when Jesus was crucified, and this story is told for two reason, to fulfill the prophesy of Samuel, and to give a plausible explanation for not finding the vast cities written about in the book. Of course, having cities covered up by mountains, falling into the sea, etc. does not really explain the lack of evidence for the massive cities and civilizations as not only were not all of the cities destroyed but many were rebuilt and many new cities were built as well.
God doesn’t just destroy the cities and kill multitudes of people, in chapter nine he audibly tells the survivors the reason he destroyed all of those cities and the people was because of their wickedness, but obviously they were not as wicked as the inhabitants of the nation of Israel since we learned that they were the only people wicked enough to kill their God. If you recall, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” (Luke 23:34), and Laying waste to cities of a people who were not even responsible for his death and were not as wicked as the people who had him put to death does not seam in character for a man who asked for those who were beating and crucifying him to be forgiven.
Jesus visiting the Native Americans, as depicted in The Book of Mormon
It also makes no sense that the audible voice of God would he heard in the Americas and not in the Holy Land, nor does it make sense that the people clearly heard the voice of God when he was telling them why he had given most of the population a smack down and yet could not understand what he was saying when he was announcing the arrival of Jesus among them a short time later, (chapter 11). When God was announcing the arrival of Jesus he had to say it three times before the people understood what he was saying.
When Jesus comes among the people he gives Nephi the authority to baptize (3 Nephi 11:21), but Nephi was not only baptizing before this point, but it tells us in chapter seven that he ordained others to baptize as well. Either Nephi was baptizing without authority before, or else he already had authority and Jesus giving him the power to baptize was unnecessary and redundant.
In 3rd Nephi 11:24-25 Jesus himself gives the exact words to use when performing baptism. Jesus said to Nephi and the others he chose, “And now behold, these are the words which ye shall say, calling them by name, saying: Having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” Compare that to the official wording found in D&C 20:73, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” I know it is a small change, but if The Book of Mormon were truly the most correct book on earth and contained the fullness of the gospel than there would have been no reason nor justification for changing the wording of the baptismal prayer from that found in The Book of Mormon.
3rd Nephi 11:27 is another of the many verses that supports the trinity instead of the doctrine that is taught in the Church. “For behold, verily I say unto you, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one; and I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one.”
3rd Nephi 11:33-40 teaches that those who are baptized are saved and there is no mention of any of the other multitudes of things the LDS Church says that a person must do to be saved, and in fact, it even says that if anyone says more than this and establishes it for doctrine than it is evil. There is no better verse to show that The Book of Mormon does not agree with the doctrines of the LDS Church, and the Church declares a LOT more than this as doctrine. As I have said before, there is very little Mormonism in The Book of Mormon.
And whoso believeth in me, and is baptized, the same shall be saved; and they are they who shall inherit the kingdom of God.
And whoso believeth not in me, and is not baptized, shall be damned.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and I bear record of it from the Father; and whoso believeth in me believeth in the Father also; and unto him will the Father bear record of me, for he will visit him with fire and with the Holy Ghost.
And thus will the Father bear record of me, and the Holy Ghost will bear record unto him of the Father and me; for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one.
And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and become as a little child, and be baptized in my name, or ye can in nowise receive these things.
And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and be baptized in my name, and become as a little child, or ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and whoso buildeth upon this buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.
And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built upon my rock; but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them.
The next few chapters is mostly the sermon on the mount, with some variation. In 3rd Nephi 15:18-19 it says that Jesus tried to tell the Jews in Jerusalem about the Nephites but they were stiff necked, wicked and full of unbelief so he was commanded not to tell them anymore about it. The thing that makes no sense about it is the Jews during the time of Jesus were no more stiff necked or unbelieving than the people of The Book of Mormon, and it could be argued that the Nephites were even more unbelieving, wicked and stiff necked than the Jews, even to the point of being nearly destroyed over and over again, yet they were told all sorts of amazing things that even the writers of the Bible were not told. I simply can’t suspend my disbelief enough to buy this blatant contradiction.
After preaching to the people for a while and telling them about baptism and a few other things Jesus says in 3rd Nephi 18:13 that whoever does more or less than what he told them is not built upon the rock but a sandy foundation. According to this verse, the LDS Church is on an extremely sandy and unstable foundation because most if its key doctrines are found no where in The Book of Mormon, including but not limited to, temple marriage, endowment, marriage being essential for getting to the highest heaven, there being more than one heaven, more than one god, baptisms and other work for the dead, tithing and many, many more.
In 3rd Nephi 19:13 it says that when they came up out of the water after being baptized they were filled with the Holy Ghost, however, it says nothing about the laying on of hands to give them the Holy Ghost, it just came upon them. In the LDS Church having someone who has authority from the Church to lay their hands upon the person who has been baptized to give them the Holy Ghost is a big deal in the Church.
3rd Nephi 21:10 is a prophecy about Joseph Smith that failed spectacularly because it says he will not be hurt, but Joseph Smith was shot and fell from a window to the hard ground below, and since the encounter killed him I would have to say that he was hurt and was not healed.
For in that day, for my sake shall the Father work a work, which shall be a great and a marvelous work among them; and there shall be among them those who will not believe it, although a man shall declare it unto them.
But behold, the life of my servant shall be in my hand; therefore they shall not hurt him, although he shall be marred because of them. Yet I will heal him, for I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil.
In 3rd Nephi 26:11-12, 16, 18 it gives us a nonsensical explanation as to why so much of The Book of Mormon does not make sense. As you probably recall, the majority of the book is an abridgement of the original records by Mormon, and there were many times when he said that he only included a small part of what happened, and it sounds as if he intentionally left out the best stuff so that it would be more difficult to believe. There is no logical reason to believe that God would want to make it more difficult to believe in him, unless he took joy in seeing people confused and making the wrong choice, but I don’t believe that to be the case.
Behold, I was about to write them, all which were engraven upon the plates of Nephi, but the Lord forbade it, saying: I will try the faith of my people.
Therefore I, Mormon, do write the things which have been commanded me of the Lord. And now I, Mormon, make an end of my sayings, and proceed to write the things which have been commanded me.
Behold, it came to pass on the morrow that the multitude gathered themselves together, and they both saw and heard these children; yea, even babes did open their mouths and utter marvelous things; and the things which they did utter were forbidden that there should not any man write them.
And many of them saw and heard unspeakable things, which are not lawful to be written.
All through The Book of Mormon it says that there were great things of God that were forbidden to be written, and in the LDS Church they keep a lot of aspects of the Church secreted away from the outside world, to the best of their ability, but that is the exact opposite of what Jesus himself did, as we read in John 18:20 “"I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied. "I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret.”
In the first half of 3rd Nephi chapter 27 Jesus tells the people that in order for a church to be his church it has to be named after him, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
Day Saints likes to teach that they are the correct church because they have Jesus Christ in the name, however, there are a lot of churches with Jesus or Christ in the name and the Mormon church has not always had Jesus in the name and was once called "The Church of the Latter Day Saints" (6).
3rd Nephi 27:33 is one of the many verses in The Book of Mormon that make it clear that the book does not support the doctrine of work for the dead and instead teaches that once you have died it is over and you have no more chances, “And it came to pass that when Jesus had ended these sayings he said unto his disciples: Enter ye in at the strait gate; for strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it; but wide is the gate, and broad the way which leads to death, and many there be that travel therein, until the night cometh, wherein no man can work.”
In the book of Third Nephi Jesus calls twelve apostles in America like he did in Jerusalem, which never really made sense to because that would be basically having two independent churches and the LDS Church is clear in their doctrine that there is only one true church. Before Jesus leaves America he asks the apostles what they want him to do for them and nine of them ask to die at 72 and speedily go up into the kingdom of God. The other three are ashamed to ask for what they want, but Jesus knows what they are thinking and grants them their request, which is to remain on earth until the second coming, and these three apostles are knows as the three Nephites. There are all sorts of LDS legends and stories about people who supposedly encountered the three Nephies, which I don’t have time to go into now, but a quick Google search should bring up some amusing stories.
And he said unto them: Behold, I know your thoughts, and ye have desired the thing which John, my beloved, who was with me in my ministry, before that I was lifted up by the Jews, desired of me.
Therefore, more blessed are ye, for ye shall never taste of death; but ye shall live to behold all the doings of the Father unto the children of men, even until all things shall be fulfilled according to the will of the Father, when I shall come in my glory with the powers of heaven.
And ye shall never endure the pains of death; but when I shall come in my glory ye shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortality to immortality; and then shall ye be blessed in the kingdom of my Father.
-3rd Nephi 28:6-8
The problem with this is that John the Revelator, died in Ephesus after escaping his banishment from the island of Patmos , (7). Some people mistakenly think that Jesus told John that he would not die, but the Bible clears this matter up.
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?” (John 21:20-22).
Jesus was not saying that John would never die, he was telling Peter to worry about his assignment and to let John worry about his, like a parent who tells their son, Tom, to clean his room and he responds with, “What about Billy?” The parent would likely respond back with, “Don’t worry about Billy, just do what I told you. I’ll worry about Billy.
The book of Third Nephi ends with a self-prophecy about the coming of The Book of Mormon and warns that all those who reject the book and the church that is founded upon it will be cursed. It is difficult for anyone who looks at any evidence with an open mind to take The Book of Mormon seriously because of how poorly it is written and because of all of the holes, contradictions and other errors. The Book of Mormon says that things were left out so that God could try our faith, but God has never asked us to blindly believe things with a complete lack evidence. Believing things with no evidence is madness and leads to, among other things, people making themselves eunuchs or perform double mastectomies, wearing matching costumes and then drinking poison, fully expecting that an extra-terrestrial Jesus is going to beam them up into his space ship that is following the comet Hail Bop.
While Christianity is at heart a faith and parts have to be taken on faith, archeologist and other branches of science are constantly finding evidence to support aspects of the Bible, but in all of the excavations and other research done, no one has ever been able to find any evidence that would conclusively prove even a single aspect of The Book of Mormon. Even if the spiritual aspects of the Bible are made up, which I don’t believe them to be, there is evidence for the political and military conflicts contained in its pages. The same can not be said for the book that is claimed to be the most correct book on earth, the book upon which the entire structure of the LDS Church stands.
The next installment of this series will start with the book of 4th Nephi and attempt to reach the end of The Book of Mormon, which could be possible since the majority of the problems in the remaining books are recycled problems from earlier. The issues in the rest of the book that I will spend the most time on are the Jaradite barges and the Moroni promise that God will tell people the book is true.
Thanks for reading.
Sources Cited:
Brigham Young, "Intelligence, etc.," (9 October 1859) Journal of Discourses 7:289-289.
Lehi blesses his sons verse.
https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1973/07/man-a-child-of-god?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/topics/becoming-like-god?lang=eng
Doctrine and Covenants 132 Chapter heading https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132?lang=eng
Richard Lloyd Anderson, "I Have a Question: What changes have been made in the name of the Church?", Ensign, January 1979.
https://www.gotquestions.org/apostle-John-die.html