When you reading the opening title pages of the Book of Mormon, there are some facts that are hard to miss. This is a book that was written years and years before it was found by Joseph Smith, who found it only by revelation. He found it during a time when there were still parts left of nature in New York untouched by the world and unseen – a pivotal moment in history that passed quickly, to be sure. He was instructed not to open them when he first found them but to wait 4 years before opening them and beginning a work. According to the Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith, he was led to the golden plates (the Book of Mormon) on the 22nd day of September 1823, but he did not open them until Sept 22, 1827. That’s four years later folks. Joseph said he was instructed by a messenger of God not to open them immediately but to return every year on the same day until finally on that day in 1827 he could retrieve them from the earth and begin translating the work.
This is a striking movement of God in several respects. Why…would God reveal a work to some other people other than the New Testament Christians and Old Testament Jews and hide it up in the earth to be opened and read later as a later Scripture? Why…would God choose that exact day to open it and not four years prior? Why…would God choose Jospeh Smith to do this work?
Not all questions can be answered on this front. Why God chose to reveal Himself to one small family: Lehi, Sarai, Nephi, Sam, Laman, and Lemuel, and have their stories and those of their children saved up for future generations to know the Lord is confusing to us evangelicals who were raised to believe that the Scripture stopped at John’s book of Revelation. This book comes later (in 1827) and thus after the date God said, “You shall not add to or take away from anything in this book” (Revelation 22). But wait a minute. God said not to add to or take away from the BOOK OF REVELATION itself, not the whole Bible. Read the Chapter. God doesn’t say all of it. People just assume that because it is at the end. Also, the stories of these peoples from Lehi came BEFORE the New Testament! They left Jerusalem circa 580 BC when it fell to the Babylonians and escaped to the New World under the hand of God. God sealed up their stories and revelations to their prophets until the “last days” for us all to have and to read, and He revealed Jesus to this people separately in person since they could not see or hear of his crucifixion otherwise.
If you stop and think about it…it makes sense that God would speak to a people group too far to hear the gospel otherwise. And – this is most important – absolutely NOTHING written in the Book of Mormon contradicts the gospel or Jesus or OT and NT Scripture. Nothing. God says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!” Galatians 1:8-9. But WHAT IF the Book of Mormon DOESNT preach a different gospel but the SAME gospel (as I believe it does). What then?
Sceptics have told me that the Book of Mormon is unscriptural and directly contradicts tenets of Bible beliefs. Nowhere do I read this. The message is clear: sin has an eternal cost, a cost so great that God’s Only Begotten Son had to come and atone for it or we would all go to damnation. If we repent and believe in His name we are saved.
I challenge you to read the Book of Mormon for Yourself. It may not be exactly what you think when you begin, but keep reading. And let God tell you if it be truth or lies. God wants us to seek for truth. So seek and ye shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. Ask, and it will be given you. (Matthew 7:7-8).
Book of Mormon Musings 