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| Elder Tad R. Callister Sunday School General President The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
This excellent talk, "The Book of Mormon: Man-Made or God-Given?", by Elder Tad R. Callister of the Sunday School Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will shed more light on this question. In the talk, he explores the many explanations that try to account for how the Book of Mormon came to be. He also addresses the holes in those explanations.
He covers the following proposed explanations:
- Joseph Smith, alleged to be an ignorant man, wrote the Book of Mormon
- Someone else wrote it
- The Book of Mormon was plagiarized from other books
- Joseph suffered from a mental illness
- Joseph Smith was a creative genius who, shaped by his environment, wrote the Book of Mormon
He also covers the following:
- Where did Joseph get the doctrine?
- A parable that counters the arguments proposed by the critics
- Other evidences that the Book of Mormon is not man-made
Ultimately, though, the truth about scripture comes from the Spirit. As he notes in his conclusion:
If I were to ask my good Christian friends how they unquestionably know the Bible is the word of God, I do not believe they would cite archaeological discoveries or linguistic connections with ancient Hebrew or Greek as their prime evidence; rather, they would make reference to the Spirit. It always comes back to the Spirit. The Spirit that helps me know the Bible is true is the very same Spirit that helps me know the Book of Mormon is true.
The Spirit is the decisive, determining factor—not archaeology, not linguistics, not DNA, and certainly not the theories of man. The Spirit is the only witness that is sure and certain and infallible.We can read hundreds of theories and explanations without ever coming to a knowledge of the truth. What will bring us to truth is prayer and faith. Have you prayed to know whether the Book of Mormon is true?
