Joseph Smith the Prophet, or, Why the Book of Mormon is tangible evidence of Christ

Is the Book of Mormon true or is it made up?

"No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so." -George Cannon

And once again, I have to share something that was so well said

but not written by me.  Enjoy:

Have you ever heard people say: “Show me some real evidence that Joseph Smith was a prophet, then I’ll believe”?

“Through the Book of Mormon, God has provided for our day tangible evidence that Jesus is the Christ and that Joseph Smith is His prophet” (President Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign, November 1988, p. 86).

Here is what it would take to make up the Book of Mormon:

•  Write the religious, social, and political  history of some ancient people, like the Mongols or people from Greenland
• Write the book off the top of your  head, using no reference material (no Google in Joseph’s day! And no  library nearby either. 
• You must have only between 2-3 years of formal schooling (Joseph’s wife said that Joseph couldn’t compose a “well-worded   letter” at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon, let alone  make up a whole book (Emma Smith (Preston Nibley, The Witnesses of the      Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1968, p. 28.)
• You must complete the whole book in 65-75   working days.  Joseph sometimes  would produce 8 pages a day of finished text.  Eight pages!  Anyone who has written anything knows how difficult that would be.  In     comparison, modern translators who are working on translating the Book of Mormon    consider 1 completed page of translation per day to be productive, and      they are working from earlier translations with an entire team of help and  modern technology to assist!
• Your book must be full of evidence that science  will discover many years after you publish your book that verify your work  is authentic.  A great example of  this in the Book of Mormon was the last art of Hebrew poetry “chiasmus,”  unknown to Joseph Smith and learned America but later re-discovered in the  20th century in the Bible.  And lo and behold, the Book of Mormon is full of chiasmus.  Lucky guess Joseph!  Nothing like a backwoods farm boy who   knows lost Hebrew poetry.  Them type of boys are all over the place.  Read Alma 36 to see a really cool one (compare the main message of verse 1 to verse 30, verse 2 to verses 28-29, verse 3 to verse 27 and so on).
• You must invent over 280 new names the world  hasn’t heard, many of which properly derive from your ancient people’s  language (a language which you don’t know.  Have fun with that one.)
• Your book must include the fullness of the  gospel of Jesus Christ, including sermons that are so inspiring that people willingly read them again and again and again. However, your book      must also teach “new” truths unknown to common society that make unknown passages in the Bible clear.
• Your book must teach more about Jesus Christ than the New Testament does.  The Book of Mormon mentions Jesus on average of every 1.7 verses compared to  2.3 in the New Testament.  Another Testament  of Jesus Christ.  Um, yeah. (See  Susan Easton Black, Finding Christ through the Book of Mormon [1987],  6-18).
• Your book must be over 500 pages long and 300,000  words
• Your first draft must stand forever (other than very minor grammatical changes)
• You must have three honest members of your  community bear testimony to the truthfulness of the book throughout their whole lives, even when you are no longer friends.
• You must be willing to give your life, and the  life of a family member, for the book you write
• Last, the Holy Ghost must bear witness to  millions of people the world over that your book is indeed the very word of God.

We have the tangible evidence sitting in front of us. The book is either divine or it is a deception. Those who claim that the Book of Mormon is not true are claiming that the book was made up—fabricated by Joseph Smith, his friends, or someone else and pulled off as one of the great hoaxes of this world.
Note: Some of list is summarized from “Brother Joseph” by Kay Briggs.  Bookcraft, 1994, p. 13-15

 “No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.” (George Cannon, as cited by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Safety for the Soul, Ensign November 2009, p. 89).

Something Worth Doing: Translating "Life Everlasting" into Swedish

  

I'm translating a book called "Life Everlasting" into Swedish. This project is a lot more difficult than I had envisioned when I volunteered for the project.  To be specific, the book is well over 500 pages long, and it's taken me about forty days to translate forty pages.  I do an hour or more each day. But it's something worth doing.  Really worth doing.

The publishing company isn't paying me. They will pay royalties later, if and when anybody actually buys this book in its Swedish language form. But I am quite certain that the number of Swedish readers who have an interest in life after death from the LDS perspective is so small that it is highly unlikely I'll ever be paid even to break even, for my time.  But that's okay.  Money is not why I'm doing this.

The book is powerful. It blesses people's lives who read it at the right time. My husband read it because when his three year old daughter (who would have been 17 today) was killed in an inexplicable boulder-rolling-down-a-hill accident many years ago, he was so devastated and lost that he thought he'd lost all his faith.  It took him time to rebuild from the bottom up. This book was instrumental in that rebuild.

My friend read it this week. I gave her a copy of it because this year, her mother died, her father found out that he's dying of cancer, and she got divorced.  That is a lot to bear in one year. She told me that she stayed up until 3:00 a.m. the day she received the book. She couldn't stop reading it, and when she was too tired to go on, she got on her knees and prayed and cried, feeling so comforted and feeling the rock of anger that had settled in her heart since her mother's death, dissipate.  She understood many things she had not understood before.

I read it just a year or two ago. It enlightened me so much-- even though I'd been raised since age 9 in this faith, there were statements by our latter-day prophets that I'd never read, that thrilled me. They made the afterlife seem more real, more tangible, more wonderful, and more close than I'd ever imagined it.  It made me want to do more temple work for the dead. It made me want to live closer to God and to outwit the devil and his temptations better than I have before, to rely on God and to know that angels are real, are close, and are more powerful than the devils who try so hard to bring us down.

So, I think this translating process will take all of 2012.  But it will be worth it.

Update on me

Hello. I got laid off from my paid blogging job, sadly, because I needed the money.  I only worked for them for three months. But now I have another reason that I never write here anymore!  I am translating a 538 page book from English into Swedish, something I have never attempted to do. It's going to take me about a year, I think. I do about one page per day, and some days, two pages. But it's a beautiful book and even though I know that I can receive royalties for sales of the book someday, I know very few Swedes will actually buy this book, since it's mostly a Latter-day Saint public that would read it, and not many Swedes are LDS! But I've learned so much from this great book that I actually contacted the author and the publisher and asked them if I could do this. I got a contract and it's on its way. Slowly but surely!!!