The Mormon Dilemma

ACCUATION: Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were liars because some of their prophecies did not come true, and Deuteronomy 18:20-22 says that false prophets give prophecies that don't come true.

COMMON MORMON RESPONSE: A prophet is only a prophet when he is speaking as such. Just because the "man" Joseph Smith may have speculated about men on the moon doesn't mean that was a prophecy. Besides that, Jonah's prophecy about Ninevah being destroyed didn't come true because God spared the city; does that make Jonah a false prophet? No...nor does it make Smith or Young false just because some things they may have speculated on didn't turn out the way they may have thought. However, it if Jonah was a true prophet, and the Bible says the city wasn't destroyed, then the Bible contradicts itself by saying it wasn't, which proves the Bible is incorrect and inadequate.

MY THOUGHTS: Proving a Bible Prophet or the Bible itself wrong does not necessarily prove any of the Mormon standard works right. In the comments about the true test of a prophet, the Mormon asserts that the test that proves Joseph Smith false also proves Jonah false, which in turn proves the presence of errors in the Bible. Though I do not believe Jonah or any other prophet in the Bible to be false (except those that it plainly says are false), the assertion that there are things wrong in the Bible does not automatically mean either that we need a new, better revelation from God or that the Book of Mormon is that revelation. They only prove that there may be some errors in the Bible. But suppose then that the tests that prove the Book of Mormon wrong also prove the Bible wrong. What do you have then? You have no way to truly know God's will, or anything to base faith upon so as to know that there even is a God. My wife has stated that she has some problems with the Mormon church that can't seem to be explained or resolved, but that if she concedes the Mormon church to be wrong, then all churches are wrong because the Bible is also wrong...her only resort is to become an atheist or agnostic! What a terrible result!

So then...I suggest that the Christian investigator consider the Mormon argument that the Bible is wrong/altered/outdated/incomplete as proof that we need the Book of Mormon. It only destroys that which God has created. (I realize there are a great many Mormons who believe the Bible to be mostly correct, but one of the Articles of Faith claims that the Bible is only correct as far as it is correctly translated. Another statement by a Mormon leader indicates that there is no way to know how many errors have crept into the Bible, and that we must accept the whole thing as defiled. However, I would turn this argument by reciting the fact that grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and wording corrections have been made to the published editions of the Book of Mormon, and that we don't really know how many grammatical/spelling/punctuation/wording errors could have crept in. Furthermore, it was claimed from the beginning that the Book of Mormon, when first printed & published, was the most correct book on the planet. And a careful study of the many accounts of how the Book of Mormon was translated shows that one account indicates that Smith could not translate one word or line until the previous line had been perfectly and correctly written down by the scribe. I can provide evidence for all these statements from Mormon literature if you'd like. )

Finally, if you turn to the Old Testament book of Nahum, you will find that the city of Ninevah was in fact destroyed, just as Jonah predicted, for its sins later on, which proves that Jonah was a true prophet, and that the Bible does not contradict itself regarding that prophecy.



RELATED SITES:
Jerald & Sandra Tanner
Recovery From Mormonism
Books on Mormonism
The Mormonism Research Ministry

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