Book of Mormon Evidence: Prophetic Perfect

[@ezraprice7066]

I love all of the literary evidences in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Alone they may not be as impressive but when you put all of them together, and there are many, it really does give credence to the claims of Joseph Smith and all of the witnesses about its origin.

[@AndrewKuttor]

There isn't any evidence.

[@Khig494]

@@AndrewKuttor😂😂😂😂delusional

[@brendenfullmer1052]

This is the most interesting one yet! Love it!

[@iannewton3820]

"Proving it isn't just a coincidence or unconscious imitation of the Bible." Right, because Joseph Smith or colleagues had it included.

[@Tainoking22]

Which indian tribe/family claims the BOM to be their history?

[@brendenfullmer1052]

As far as I know there isn't one that does officially, but they also wouldn't have had any written record of the people in the Book of Mormon seeing as the record of this civilization was moved to New York after the destruction of the BoM civilization. Also the events in the BoM roughly happened 2000 years before the BoM was translated, and that is plenty of time to lose knowledge of a conquered nation. Though, I have heard that lots of American Indians or Mexicans who believe in the Book of Mormon love to think that they are descendants of Nephi or other BoM characters!

[@Khig494]

Most of the tribes in north and South America talk of a great white God visiting many years prior

[@scottbennett5649]

@Hlord-be4xx two of my missionary comps were Catawba. I think they all are

[@marcusrhodes1318]

You've overlooked the most obvious and most telling examples. Look up the dozens of references to 'from the foundation of the world', especially "Behold, I come unto my own, to fulfill all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world, and 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." And what this all has to do with is the curious relationship between time and eternity. In eternity, all this has already happened, but is also still happening, and is also yet to happen. Eternity defies all attempts at before-during-after reasoning, at cause-and-effect comprehension. But Christ defines himself differently, as being finite, as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Remember the definition of truth? That which was, is, and will be. And the three-fold mission of the church: Redeem the dead. Perfect the saints. Proclaim the gospel. Redeeming the dead reaches into the past through the tomb. Perfecting the saints reaches across the present, across the pews, to our contemporaries. Proclaiming the gospel reaches through the womb into the future, preparing a soft landing for those yet to arrive. Past, present, future. Was, is, will be. Truth. God. Defined by both time and eternity, the son and the father. Because 'the' father is eternity itself personified. Notice that the chapels, 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' is where ordinances which are bound by time are performed. Welcome to the church of the only begotten. But the temple is where eternal ordinances are performed. Welcome to The Church of the Firstborn, the father of time, eternity itself. The prophets thus use this supposed 'prophetic' tense because what they learned was learned in an eternal setting. The past tense is the only workable way to word any of it in any of our languages, the future, for us, at least, having not yet arrived, while the past is eternally gone.

[@Ihayden]

Christ is a Greek word. Now why would the BoM, supposedly written hundreds or thousands of years before Jesus, use such a word? Even the Bible didn't use the word Christ in the old testament. Because it wasn't a word in those days

[@Red-gp9hn]

Great question! The Book of Mormon isn’t a direct translation. It was translated through the gift and glory of God, meaning that it is translated according to 1800’s English perfectly. This is even taught in scripture; 2 Nephi 31:3, “For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.” I hope that helps! 👍🏻

[@Ihayden]

@Bridger I thought it was translated directly from ancient Egyptian through the seer stones? It was indirectly translated?

[@Red-gp9hn]

@@Ihayden I see what you’re saying. A couple things to that end. 1st, it would be reformed Egyptian containing many Hebrew characteristics. 2nd, using the word translate may be a bit disingenuous. I’d agree with you on suggesting that the name “Jesus Christ” was probably never written, even in Greek, on the plates. However, as mentioned in the verse I quoted from in my first reply, it was translated according to Joseph Smiths understanding. To use an American-ised Egyptian word for Jesus wouldn’t make sense to Joseph Smith and so it was translated to Christ. (It was more a revelation pertaining to the material on the plates rather than a word for word Egyptian-Hebrew to English translation.) It took me a while to understand that too. Let me know if you have any more questions!

[@Ihayden]

@Bridger I see. Talking about translations, when compared to the dead sea scrolls written around 3rd century BC, the Bible translations we have today are 99% accurate in the old testament. When comparing the ancient Greek manuscripts our new testament is also 99% accurate. Is the book of Mormon as accurate as that today compared to when it was first translated in the 1800s? Or have some things, over time, been left out according to culture?

[@Red-gp9hn]

@@Ihayden That’s actually a very interesting point. A few people like to mention changes to the Book of Mormon as some sort of proof against it. Those changes, primarily, have just been adding chapter headings and verse numbers to make it easier to locate specific texts. So to answer your question, yes, the Book of Mormon is as accurate today as it was in the 1800’s. But since Joseph Smith dictated the translation and his scribes wrote, there have been a few additions of things such as commas, semi-colons and colons, and periods. However the content is the exact same (if you were to read a verse with or without those additions, 99% of the time the meaning wouldn’t change at all) and unlike the Bible having multiple translations like the copy on the Dead Sea scrolls, the KJV, NIV, ASV, etc, the Book of Mormon has one translation.

[@flintheadofTN]

The difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible is that for the most part the people in the Bible were real people, with a seal belonging to Isaiah having been found within the last couple of years. Not a single individual unique to the Book of Mormon has been proven to have existed, and rather on the contrary there is strong evidence from the text that Joseph Smith was using a 1769 KJV to quote from and that the Book of Mormon largely answers religious questions specific to Joseph Smith's time and culture in the early 19th century in upstate New York. It's pretty obvious why the Book of Mormon speaks about the coming of the Saviour in the past tense, and that's because it HAD already happened over 1800 years before the book was written.

[@braydencaldwell7310]

@Josh Davis The Treasure Trekker What's really cool is that evidence it starting to be found in relation to the people from the Book of Mormon! The Hopewell mound builder civilization has many many similarities to the Nephite people. Back in Joseph Smiths time people thought he was crazy because In the Book of Mormon it said things like the people having head plates, breast plates, and swords. But archeologist have uncovered those exact things in Hopewell mound builder excavation sights! Ancient Writings on metal plates was a crazy Idea back then but again proven to be true. With you translation question, the Book of Mormon is vastly different from the Bible I've never heard anyone use that as an argument to say the Book of Mormon is fake, but if he did I have no idea what he used from the Bible. Also there has been many historical accounts stating that he didn't use any writing to help translate the Book of Mormon. I have a hard time understanding how a young farm boy with a 3rd grade education was able to write a book with a complexity that surpasses works of authors such as Tolkien, unless maybe it was divinely inspired. When people told me to read it I thought they were crazy but now that I've read it I now know of assurity that it's real. I don't know why people are so against reading it, the worst that can happen is you learn about a different religion/ culture the best that can happen is if it's true it can completely change your life and give you a better life. Read it with an open heart and you will know

[@flintheadofTN]

@@braydencaldwell7310 I've read the Book of Mormon multiple times, and at least twice with the intention to sincerely see if it was true, and it simply isn't. Yes it has some truths in it, such as that God exists and that Christ is His divine Son and a few other theological points, but it is without a doubt not a real historical record and everything in it with the exception of the events it references that can also be found in the Bible, namely the siege and fall of Jerusalem, is fake. There are no American civilizations that match the 3 or 4 cultures discussed in the Book of Mormon and there is absolutely no credible evidence of Jews or any other Semitic people in the Western Hemisphere before the 16th century AD. Let's take a look at what you think is the most likely candidate for the Nephites. The Hopewell have no similarities to the Nephites at all. Wayne May largely doesn't know what he's talking about with his Heartland model of the Book of Mormon, to the point that it doesn't even fit with the geography of the Book of Mormon. The Hopewell had at best cold-hammered copper decorations and tools that were used by a small portion of the elite. They didn't have domesticated animals such as horses or cattle. They didn't have iron or steel technology. They didn't do any stone work. Their myths were most likely based on the Hero Twins, Thunderbird, and Water Serpent found throught the Americas. They had no system of writing, and their language was most likely Algonqian or Iriquoian. They and their modern descendants have no Jewish or Middle Eastern in their DNA. The Hopewell certainly had agriculture to some extent, but nothing like the scale of Mesoamerica or Europe. This is very different from the picture painted in the Book of Mormon of who the Nephites were. The only coincidence is that they happen to have existed vaguely around the same time period as the story of the Book of Mormon takes place. As for the 1769 KJV being heavily borrowed from, all of the Isaiah passages in 2 Nephi are taken directly from the 1769 KJV, and there are other passages throughout the Book of Mormon that are plagiarized from the 1769 KJV as well, but that is the most prominent example that comes to mind. Sure, metal plates were used in a handful of cases in antiquity to record small votive prayers or a few pages' worth of history, but they were never used for whole books of text. Metal, even bronze, was far too valuable and for too inefficient to use for such a purpose. As for how JS did it, the Book of Mormon really isn't that complex and to compare it to Tolkein's works is a massive insult to the genius of Tolkein. There have been plenty of people throughtout history who wrote far more imaginative and complex works who were just as poorly educated if not more poorly so than JS. Charles Dickens, HG Wells, and Mark Twain come to mind. It really doesn't matter how educated someone is, if they know how to read and write and they have a gift for storytelling, then they'll share their stories.

[@richardholmes5676]

Google Word Print Studies Of the Book of Mormon FAIR.

[@Red-gp9hn]

This exact video talks about why it’s written in past tense. Isaiah wrote the exact same way. He even wrote that the Lords hands had been pierced and that they offered him vinegar upon the cross. This was hundreds of years if not more before Christ was born.

[@AlbertJLouie]

I would like to point out that the Myans probably don't appreciate the Mormon church associating Mayan structures to Mormonism. Because there is no direct or indirect connection between the Mayan culture and Mormon civilizations.

[@jamesbaldwin7676]

Who said there was?

[@AlbertJLouie]

@James Baldwin The main question you should be asking: 1. Which Jesus do you believe in? 2. Why isn't there any archeological evidence to support anything in the Book of Mormon? 3. Did God sent the angel Moroni from heaven to Joseph Smith? 4. Is the Book of Mormon from God, or a lie made-up by Joseph Smith?

[@jamesbaldwin7676]

@@AlbertJLouie And of course I've never asked myself any of those questions. The real challenge is to ask those questions with an open mind while checking your presuppositions at the door.

[@AlbertJLouie]

@@jamesbaldwin7676 And that is the reason you have the wrong Jesus. I presume nothing. Everything is from the Bible, based on good Biblical contextual analysis.

[@jamesbaldwin7676]

@@AlbertJLouie This is where we disagree. Nearly everything in the Book of Mormon is rooted in the Bible. Find something that isn't and you'll find that we're only talking about your interpretations, as opposed to mine.

[@ScottHamon]

Your palm trees, buildings and Meso- America setting are way off.