The Book of Mormon isn’t about God the Father. It isn’t about God the Son. It isn’t about God’s Holy Spirit. It isn’t about God’s plan for our salvation. It really isn’t “another testament of Jesus Christ.” [1] The Book of Mormon is about the Book of Mormon. From start to finish, the purpose of ..read more

The Bible is God speaking to man, making His will known. The best demonstration of this fact comes in the introduction to the 10 commandments, where the Bible says, And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the ..read more

Prophecy is central to the LDS church. From the time of Joseph Smith to the present, the title for every president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been “prophet, seer, and revelator.” Most members of the church believe that the word of the current prophet takes precedence over the words of former prophets. As I am told repeatedly, “That’s why we have a living prophet.” The faith of most church members is rooted in a unique revelation that their church is the true church. These members believe their church’s departure from Biblical Christianity is justified, not because t ..read more

When we compare the Bible to the Book of Mormon, we’re essentially contrasting a literary masterpiece like Shakespeare with a Junior High creative writing class. Both have their unique narratives, but one stands out as a masterwork. While the Book of Mormon is often touted as another testament of Jesus Christ and a scripture volume on par with the Bible, I find it challenging to draw more than a surface-level comparison between the two. In the first part of this series, I pointed out two contrasts between the two books. First, the Book of Mormon translates golden plates from Reformed Egyptian ..read more

The Book of Mormon is subtitled “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints website, The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God’s dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel. [1] Most members of the church read both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Sunday School classes teach a three-year rotation with a year spent studying the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon. So, the three are familiar enough to you, and ..read more

One of the most attractive features of the LDS church is the encouragement members get to pursue revelations. In the early days of the church, this might have been its most popular custom. However, after a short time with this arrangement, Joseph Smith recognized its dangers. In September 1830 Joseph and Emma Smith moved from Harmony, Pennsylvania, to Fayette, New York. When they arrived, they found that some Saints were being deceived by claims of false revelations: “To our great grief, … we soon found that Satan had been lying in wait to deceive, and seeking whom he might devour. [1 ..read more

I listened with mixed feelings to the Dave Douglass interview on the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast. I attended Hyles-Anderson College in the 1989-90 school year, and Douglass was on staff then, though I didn’t interact with him. I loved my year at Hyles and mourned over leaving. So, when I saw the RFP advertisements for the Dave Douglass interview, I was intrigued. I had not heard that he resigned as President of Hyles-Anderson. I wondered what he might have to say about his reasons for leaving. Given that he was going public on the RFP, I assumed he would give an account of God’s work to ..read more

If you haven’t read the previous post, you might find it a helpful introduction to this one. Words work because they materialize in the visible world. Assuming we know the word, we can’t detach it from its meaning. The word represents something, either visible or invisible, and we know the meaning by the word that identifies it. God made the world this way. He made the world out of words so that the world is a visible word. And this is why metaphor works. A metaphor identifies something distinct from and yet fully identified with something else. Words themselves are metaphors because the word ..read more

Carpenters work with nails and screws and lumber. Plumbers work with pipe. Electricians work with wire. Preachers work with words. They aren’t the only ones to do this, of course. Carpenters work with words, too. So do electricians, lawyers, doctors, bureaucrats, and auto mechanics. Words are the currency of culture. But preachers particularly work with words. Words are the raw material for sermons. With words, the gospel is preached, and men repent and believe. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all fles ..read more

The great design and intention of the office of a Christian preacher (is) to restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men. (Cotton Mather) To preach is to prove, and to prove is to bind the conscience. Every sermon sets forth the certainty of the things of Scripture and calls the people to believe and do what the Bible says. Or maybe I should say that every sermon should do this. We don’t need to ask whether the preacher will bind the conscience, but how he will bind it and what truth he will preach as binding on the conscience. But that raises a myriad of questions: What is pr ..read more