Summary
The Book of Mormon, while containing some Christian truths and having the potential to lead individuals to Jesus, is fundamentally a work of deception due to its fraudulent origins, as presented by Joseph Smith. Shawn McCraney argues that if the Book of Mormon were categorized as Christian fiction similar to works like "The Screwtape Letters" or "Pilgrim's Progress," it could be more widely accepted, rather than being associated with perpetuating misleading beliefs within Mormonism.
Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon is portrayed as a protest against early American fears of anarchy and tyranny, embodied by characters like the lawless Lamanites and tyrannical King Noah, who symbolize threats to freedom and virtue. The book criticizes organized religion, particularly Catholicism, suggesting it strayed from Christ's original teachings and contributed to spiritual corruption by removing essential truths from the Bible.
Joseph Smith is prophesied in the Book of Mormon as a "choice seer" who would restore lost biblical truths, but the text reveals little not already in the Bible, lacking core Mormon doctrines like temple endowments and eternal marriage. Shawn critiques the Book of Mormon as a 19th-century creation influenced by contemporary theological themes, serving as a literary bait that omits distinctive Mormon beliefs, and characterizes its figures simplistically, reflecting an immature narrative style.
The teaching by Shawn discusses how the Bible indicates that while the Church faced challenges after being established by Jesus, it was never completely lost or corrupted, as there always remained a remnant of true believers in every era. He critiques Mormonism's adaptation of restorationist themes by highlighting Joseph Smith's claim of a divine role in restoring lost truths through the Book of Mormon, which Shawn suggests was an embellishment of prevalent early American beliefs about religious freedom and divine destiny.
Exploring the Book of Mormon as a Christian Testament
LIVE! From the “Mecca of Mormonism,” this is Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology..
Show 15 Book of Mormon Part III
April 10th 2007
And I’m Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion. your host.
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Recent issues I find important: R and C of Orem Utah were at their grandparents over the weekend and came across this statement which was found in the March 2007 Ensign, an LDS church authorized magazine. I thought it should be read.
(READ IT)
And thanks, R and C for the submission! Hey, if you come across some interesting bit of information like this, please don’t hesitate to forward it to us. Just go to our website at www.bornagainmormon.com
The Book of Mormon and Christian Doctrine
Regarding sinMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace., it reads: “For serious sins, we will need the help of a Bishop or another appropriate priesthood leader to COMPLETE OUR REPENTANCE. We THEN must let the Savior judge whether WE OR HE must make final payment for the sin.” This hogwash makes me want to retch right here on television. Now come on, President Gordon B Hinckley, renounce this stuff. Jesus is the only way. He paid for it ALL. You are in a position to stop this garbage and I, along with millions of others, are asking you to do it. Remove the yoke from your people, Gordon. Remove the yoke and set them free.
We are in the midst of examining the contents of the Book of Mormon. You know, I want to make a statement here that might be considered radical by many of my Christian brothers and sisters. But taken in context and in light of the facts I am certain that my statement will stand up to scrutiny. In and of itself – (remember that statement, “in and of itself) the Book of Mormon is a fine Christian testament – similar to Pilgrim’s Progress or a well-written gospel tract. Can the Book of Mormon lead a person to Jesus? I would say it certainly can, just as a sound Bible tract can help people accept Him as their Lord and Savior. Does the Book of Mormon teach truth? Unquestionably. Listen, for the most part, it teaches Christian truths straight from a 19th century podium!
Last week we discussed some early American political themes that Joseph included in the Book of Mormon. These included a variety of frontier ideals that helped ward off enemies like anarchy and tyranny from the new republic. Such ideals included a personal dedication to industriousness, an agrarian approach to labor, avoiding luxury, which included wearing fine apparel, and a rejection of secret combinations or groups like the Masons, (which Smith so creatively renamed “the Gadianton” robbers in the text.)
Addressing Problems in the Book of Mormon
Whoa! You might say. Then why are you attacking it? From my perspective, the Book of Mormon has some VERY big – “yeah, even insurmountable problems” that must be addressed if they want to retain their membership and/or ever be accepted into the Body of Christ. First, though it mostly teaches basic Christian truths, the story of its origins is fraudulent and therefore a work of deception. Had Joseph Smith presented the book as a work of Christian fiction aimed at teaching Christian truths to a religious America, it might be accepted today, and used like the Screwtape Letters, Pilgrims Progress, or maybe even the Lord of the Rings writings . . . You know, as Christian-based fiction. But nooooooooo, he had to go and play the con. And Mormonism today continues to perpetuate the con.
Book of Mormon Critique
any and all who will listen. The fruit that springs from the soil of fraud is in the end deadly and the Book of Mormon is no exception. Why? When people buy into the fraudulent story of its origins, they almost always buy into the additional claims of the storyteller. And the storyteller has in the end led millions of people away with a host of unbiblical teachings that came later. Good counterfeit systems are not easily detected or seen. Great counterfeits are often close to being impenetrable. Let’s take a minute more and examine further the content and constructs of the Book of Mormon, all the while asking ourselves: Could this information have come from an ancient record written on gold plates, or did it come from somewhere else. As you see the abundance of evidence that the information came from somewhere else, you can see that its “origins story” is a lie. And if that it is a lie, then it’s time to rethink your allegiance to Mormonism as it currently stands.
Joseph Smith's Motivations
It’s important to realize that Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon was in many ways a book of protest. I can’t help but appreciate his efforts in this regard. Additionally, and like the parent of a teen headed for trouble, the Book of Mormon spoke to adolescent America. It was a warning, a call for action, and a promise for salvation if the nation would repent and stay true to its ideals. If luxury, indolence, fine apparel and living off the efforts of others was indicative of a nation pushing toward a state of anarchy, then few organized religions more perfectly represented all that was wrong in the nation than Catholicism.
Winn said: “If lusting after gain represented an occupational hazard for lawyers and merchants and threatened the harmony of the Nephite society, “priestcraft” menaced the Nephites with “their entire destruction” as the Book of Mormon states.” Joseph provided a perfect prototype for priestcraft in the presentation of a Book of Mormon character named King Noah. Where other Nephite leaders typically fit the hard-working, republican model of virtue, King Noah was the embodiment of Corruption. No other Book of Mormon character more readily represents ALL that early American patriots loathed: Smith says that King Noah “walked after the desires of his own heart” and “passed his time in riotous living with his wives and concubines” and surrounded himself with wicked priests who possessed similar penchants for luxurious hedonism. According to the Book of Mormon, King Noah and his priest were “supported in their laziness, and in their idolatry, and in their whoredom by the taxes which King Noah had put upon his people: thus did the people labor exceedingly to support iniquity.”
Symbolism and Fear
What would be the result of such indolent tyranny? If allowed to continue the savage and antinomian Lamanites would come in and overtake them. Maybe they would place the once righteous Nephites in bondage and strip them of their freedoms and burden them with taxes. Guess what? These were the very same fears the early settlers and frontiersmen had relative to the establishment of their New World. If things weren’t done right, the British could return and laden America with monarchy and taxes or the savage Indians Would enter the picture and wreak havoc upon their tranquility.
Joseph took two of the greatest fears of early American republicanism – anarchy and tyranny – and gave them a face in the form of the lawless Lamanites and the tyrannical King Noah – all as a means to “warn” that nation of its pending doom should it not repent. But he didn’t stop there. He also used the book to summarize a history of Christendom, its apparent collapse (which illustrates the condition of how Joseph saw organized religion in his day) and to point the finger of blame at those responsible for its collapse – the Catholics.
In a view popular among the protestants of Joseph’s time, the Book of Mormon teaches that the Devil took over the simple church Jesus established and founded the “great and abominable Church” (which Bruce R McConkie, LDS Apostle once said was the Catholic Church.) In the Book of Mormon, the Pope and his toadies represented the same anti-republican values as King Noah: they were whoremongers, were greedy-green for wealth, they lived off the labors of the poor, and they persecuted and killed true followers of the Jesus. According to Joseph, this corrupted religious institution also saw fit to remove the “plain and precious” things from the Bible which succeeded in enslaving all of Europe – if not the entire world – in spiritual darkness.
Examination of Joseph Smith and Book of Mormon Claims
In 2nd Nephi chapter three, Joseph Smith has a Book of Mormon character named Lehi give his youngest son a blessing and Lehi somehow quotes the biblical Joseph (the one sold into Egypt) as having said that a “choice seer” would rise up in the last daysThe final years of the old covenant age—fulfilled in the first century, not future end times. to help guide the people through dark times. Then he somehow has Joseph (who was sold into Egypt) say that the choice Seer’s name: “shall be called after me, and it shall be after the name of his father” speaking of Joseph Smith Junior, who shared the same name as his father Joseph Smith Sr!
Because the Catholic church removed many precious things from the Bible, causing “an exceeding great many to stumble” thereby “placing them in the power of Satan,” God would raise a choice seer up – Joseph Smith – who would restore the many plain and precious lost from the Bible by placing them into the Book of Mormon!
But here is one of the most revealing things about all of this: The Book of Mormon reveals very very little that is not included in the Bible! What “doctrinal clarifications” or “plain and precious truths” did the Catholic church remove from the Bible that the Book of Mormon clarifies and supplies to the eyes of searching people? NOTHING that was not part of the religious dialogue in America at that time.
Usage of Book of Mormon in LDS Church
The Book of Mormon does not teach anything that makes Mormonism what it is today. This is vital to understand because in my opinion, the LDS Church uses the Book of Mormon as bait. It’s like an introductory drug. It promotes and teaches good values, with a pure Americana voice. It’s presented as having come from an ancient text and the most correct book of the face of the earth. It is offered as a companion to the Bible, as a second witness to Jesus. To give it mystical qualities, the LDS claim it was “translated” by a young uneducated boy in a very short period of time – none of which is true.
But what is true – what we do KNOW – is the book borrows from a variety of well-known and popular sources of the time AND! AND! the Book does NOT – does NOT reflect those things that make Mormonism so repulsive (doctrinally) to Bible believing people! The BOM says NOTHING at all about: Temple endowments, eternal marriage, or baptisms for the dead. The garden as the place of atonement. Three degrees of glory, a Mother in Heaven, man becoming God or God having been a man. The Aaronic Priesthood, that God the father has a body (which is another indication that the first vision was retroactively made up), the Melchizedek priesthood, the conception of Jesus, a plurality of Gods, the Word of Wisdom, polygamy (except to denounce it), premortal life (though there is an allusion to it), blood atonement, the Nature of Satan or Angels, or polytheism.
Analysis of Book of Mormon Characters
As a side, in my opinion, one way to determine the voice and ability of an author is to look at the complexity of his or her characters. Real life is complex. Real characters are complex. King David – full of ability, full of failure – was complex. A man after God’s own heart, and adulterer and murderer. Real life people are as rich and varied as a grand tapestry. Immature writers – often in an effort to be didactic and incessantly prove their point, present very wooden characters in their writings. The more single dimensional, the less real AND the more the maturity level of the writer is revealed. The Book of Mormon is full of archetypical single dimensional characterizations. And King Noah is a perfect example of this. So is Captain Moroni, Nephi, Korihor, and the 2000 stripling warriors.
The differences, however, lie in what the Bible says about corruption in the Church and
The Church's Journey Through Difficulties
Like most start-up religions of the 19th century, Mormonism decided to write its own solutions to the story, all the while forgetting that God has been in charge from the start. The Bible is very clear in telling us that the Church, shortly after it was established by Jesus, would fall into difficulty. Revelation three summarizes this decay quite well. But the Bible never says that the Church would be “lost,” or “stopped,” or “corrupted to the point that Satan prevails.”
Why would there need to be a restoration of the Gospel Jesus purposefully established in the meridian of time? Did the gates of hell prevail against His Church when Jesus said it couldn’t? Was every single believer corrupted on earth to the point that the Gospel was lost in its entirety? The Church at Sardis is indicative that the answer is No! No! There has always been believers, a remnant of true believers, in every dispensation. The Day of Pentacost ensured each of us that Jesus was true to His promises and He did not ever leave us alone!
To Joseph, there was another answer. And it fit in perfectly with the “restorationist themes” that were popular in his time. To Joseph’s grandparents, parents, and community, God was one step ahead of the “great and abominable church’s” plan to destroy truth because He set aside a “land choice above all others” (another common belief of early and present Americans), inhabited it with the offspring of a family of wandering Jews (another borrowed theme we’ll discuss later) and inspired a nice Italian fellow named Columbus to find it. Then God led people out from other spiritually blighted countries to come to this land (another early American/Puritan thought) and told them (in the Book of Mormon) that if they served Him they would never be brought into captivity or serve under a Monarch (like King George) (another very typical protestant American thought).
Joseph Smith’s Unconventional Approach
All of these things were not only strongly believed by early Americans, but they may have even been true! Mormonism did not discover, neither does it own, the idea that God established America as a place of religious freedom. It merely adopted and amplified it. But then Joseph takes it all to another level. He does what all confidence men do – he adds something to an existing set of circumstances that is almost too unbelievable not to be believed! (His chutzpah that still amazes me to this day)
Adding to Existing Beliefs
What does he do? He includes his own name in the Book of Mormon as the person the Lord is going to use in the “last days” to restore the “plain and precious truths” to the world which the Catholic Church had so insidiously removed from the Bible! Think about this!
Next week . . . more intense and revealing themes taken from Joseph Smith’s life and placed in the Book of Mormon. All right, let’s open up the phone lines and answer some emails along the way.
CONCLUSION:
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