Mormonism Exposed Well, I have been doing some research on the Mormon faith for many years and with the help of the many ex-Mormons and Mormon sources, I was able to conclude the following. I know that the Mormons in this sub will not like what I am going to say, but I feel that it is my duty as a Christian to point out some very troublesome things within the Mormon faith. Since the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, the 1st edition has undergone extensive "correction" in order to present it in its present form. Some of these "corrections" should be pointed out. 1. In the book of Mosiah, Ch. 21, verse 28, it is declared that "King Mosiah had a gift from God."; but in the original edition of the book, the name of the king was Benjamin - an oversight which thoughtful Mormon scribes corrected. This is, of course, no typographical error as there is little resemblance between the names Benjamin and Mosiah; so it appears that either God made a mistake when He inspired the record or Joseph made a mistake when he translated it. Mormons will not admit to neither, thus they have an unexplained contradiction. 2. 1 Nephi 19:16-20:1, when compared with the 1830 edition, shows more than 50 changes in the "inspired Book of Mormon," words having been dropped, spelling corrected, and words and phraseology added and turned about. This is a mighty strange way to treat an inspired revelation from God don't you think? 3. In the book of Alma 28:14-29:1-11, more than 30 changes may be counted from the original edition, and on page 303 of the original edition the statement, "Yea, decree unto them that decrees which are unalterable," has been expurged. (See Alma 29:4.) 4. On page 25 of the 1830 edition, the Book of Mormon declares: "And the angel said unto me, Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the eternal Father." Yet in 1 Nephi 11:21, in later editions of the book read: "And the angel said unto me, Behold the Lamb of God, yea even the son of the eternal Father!" 5. On page 25 of the original edition of the Book of Mormon, it states Mary as the "Mother of God" (a RCC dogma) for it says: "Behold, the virgin which thou seest, is the mother of God." Now, if you look in 1 Nephi 11:18, it now reads: "Behold, the virgin whom thou seest, is the mother of the son of God." Weird ain't it? From the foregoing which are only a handful of examples of the nearly 4,000 word changes to be found in the Book of Mormon, some made as recently as 1981, it is obvious to any true seeking person that it is not to be accepted as the Word of God. The Scriptures says: "The word of the Lord endureth for ever" (I Peter 1:25); and Jesus declared: "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth" (John 17:17). The record of the Scripture rings true. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is patently false in far too many places to be considered coincidence. Added to the evidence of various revisions, the Book of Mormon also contains plagiarisms from the King James Version of the Bible, anachronisms, false prophecies and errors of fact which cannot be dismissed. According to a careful survey of the Book of Mormon, it contains at least 25,000 words from the King James Version of the Bible. In fact, verbatim quotations, some of considerable length. The comparison of Moroni Ch. 10 with 1 Cor. 12:1-11, 2 Nephi 14 with Isaiah 4, and 2 Nephi 12 with Isaiah 2 shows that Joseph Smith made free use of his Bible to supplement the alleged revelation of the golden plates. The book of Mosiah, Ch. 14 in the Book of Mormon, is a reproduction of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah the prophet; and 3 Nephi 13:1-18 copies Matthew 6:1-23. A common excuse Mormons naively use is that when Christ allegedly appeared on the American continent after His resurrection and preached to the Nephites he quite naturally used the same language as recorded in the Bible. They also maintain that when Nephi came to America he brought copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, which account for quotations from the Old Testament. The only difficulty with these excuses is that the miraculous plates upon which they were all inscribed, somehow or another, under translation, came out in King James English without variation approximately a 1000 years BEFORE this 1611 version was written. Amazing! There are other instances of plagiarisms from the King James Version of the Bible including paraphrases of certain verses. One of these verses (I John 5:7) is reproduced in 3 Nephi 11:27,36. The only difficulty with the paraphrase here is that the text in 1 John 5:7 is not found in older Greek manuscripts but present in the King James Version of the Bible from which Smith paraphrased it not knowing the difference. Another example of this type of error is found in 3 Nephi 11:33-34, and is almost a direct quotation from Mark 16:16, a passage also not contained in older Greek manuscripts as Mark 16:9-20 are not found in older manuscripts and therefore are regarded as not original. But Joseph Smith was not aware of this either, so he even copied in translational errors, another proof that neither he nor the alleged golden plates were inspired of God. Two further instances of plagiarisms from the King James Version of the Bible which have backfired on the Mormons are worth noting. In the 3rd chapter of Acts, Peter's classic sermon at Pentecost paraphrases Deuteronomy 18:15-19. While in the process of writing 3 Nephi, Joseph Smith puts Peter's paraphrase in the mouth of Christ when the Savior was allegedly preaching to the Nephites. The prophet overlooked the fact that at the time Christ was allegedly preaching His sermon, the sermon itself had not yet been preached by Peter. In addition to this, 3 Nephi makes Christ out to be a liar, when in verse 23 of chapter 20 Christ attributes Peter's words to Moses as a direct quotation when, as I have pointed out, Peter paraphrased the quotation from Moses; and the wording is quite different. But Joseph did not check far enough, hence this glaring error. Secondly, the Book of Mormon follows the error of the King James translation which renders Isaiah 4:5 "For upon all the glory shall be a defense" (See 2 Nephi 14:5). Modern translations of Isaiah point out that it should read "For over all the glory there will be a canopy," not a defense. The Hebrew word, "chuppah," does not mean defense but a protective curtain or canopy. Smith, of course, did not know this nor did the King James translators from whose work he copied. There are quite a number of other places where such errors appear, including Smith's insistence in Abraham 1:20 that "Pharaoh signifies king by royal blood," when in reality the dictionary defines the meaning of the term Pharaoh as "a great house or palace." The Revised Standard Version of the Bible renders Isaiah 5:25: "And their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets," correctly rendering the Hebrew suchah as refuse, not as "torn." The King James Version of the Bible renders the passage: "And their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets." The Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 15:25) repeats the King James' text WORD FOR WORD, including the error of mistranslating suchah, removing any claim that the Book of Mormon is to be taken seriously. Not only does the Book of Mormon plagiarise heavily from the King James Version of the Bible, but it betrays a great lack of information and background on the subject of world history and the history of the Jewish people. The Jaredites apparently enjoyed glass windows in the miraculous barges in which they crossed the ocean; and "steel" and a "compass" were known to Nephi despite the fact that neither had been invented, demonstrating once again that Joseph Smith was a poor student of history and of Hebrew customs. Luban, one of the characters of the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 4:9), makes use of a steel sword; and Nephi himself claims to have had a steel bow (the Mormons justify this by quoting Psalm 18:34 as a footnote in the Book of Mormon), but modern translations of the Scripture indicate that the word translated steel in the Old Testament (since steel was nonexistent) is more properly rendered bronze. Mormons sometimes attempt to defend Nephi's possession of a compass (not in existence in his time) by the fact that Acts 28:13 states: "And from thence we fetched a compass." Modern translations of the Scripture, however, refute this subterfuge by correctly rendering the passage: "And from there we made a circle." Added to the preceding anachronisms is the fact that the Book of Mormon not only contradicts the Bible, but contradicts other revelations purporting to come from the same God who inspired the Book of Mormon. The Bible declares that the Messiah of Israel was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and the gospel of Matthew (Ch. 2, verse 1) records the fulfillment of this prophecy. But the Book of Mormon (Alma 7:9, 10) states: "...the son of God cometh upon the face of the earth. And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem, which is the land of our forefathers..." The Book of Mormon describes Jerusalem as a city (1 Nephi 1:4) as was Bethlehem, so the contradiction is irreconcilable. There are also a number of instances where God did not agree with Himself, if indeed it is supposed that He had anything to do with the inspiration of the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Prince, the Doctrine and Covenants, or the other recorded utterances of Joseph Smith. In the Book of Mormon, for instance, (3 Nephi 12:2 and Moroni 8:11) the remission of sins is the result of baptism: "Yea, blessed are they who shall...be baptised, for they shall...receive the remission of their sin...Behold baptism is unto repentance to the fulfilling of the commandments unto the remission of sin." But in the Doctrine and Covenants (Section 20, verse 37), the direct opposite is stated: "All who humble themsleves...and truly manifest by their works that they have received of the spirit of Christ unto the remission of their sins, shall be received by baptism into his church." Joseph Smith did not limit his contradictions to baptism; indeed polygamy is a classic example of some of his maneuvers. "God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang many people...Go ye, therefore, and do the works of Abraham; enter ye into my law and ye shall be saved" (Doctrine and Covenants, 132:34,32). The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, categorically states: "Wherefore, I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of the old...for there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none; for I, the Lord God, delight in chastity of woman" (Jacob 2:26-28). It appears that Joseph could manufacture revelations at will, depending upon his desires. In his last instance, his reputation and subsequent actions indicate that sex was the motivating factor. A final example of the confusion generated between the Book of Mormon and other "inspired" revelations is found in this conflict between two works in the Pearl of Great Price: the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham. "I am the Beginning and the End, the Almighty God; by mine Only Begotten I created these things; yea, in the beginning I created the heaven, and the earth upon which thou standest" (Moses 2:1). The Book of Abraham, on the other hand, repudiates this monotheistic view and states: "And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth" (Abraham Just how is it possible to reconcile these two allegedly equal pronouncements from Mormon revelation escapes me! Smith declared in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 87: "...At the rebellion of South Carolina...the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britian...and then war shall be poured out upon all nations...And...slaves shall rise against their masters...andthat the remnats...shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexation." Though the Civil War did break out some years after Smith's death (1844), England did not become involved in war against the U.S. "All nations" were not involved in war as prophesied. The slaves did not rise up against "their masters," and the "remnants" who were the Indians were themselves vexed by the Gentiles, being defeated in war and confined to reservations. Prophet Smith was an extremely ineffective prophet here, as he was when in Doctrine and Covenants 124:22,23,59, he also prophesied that he would possess the house he built at Nauvoo "for ever and ever." The fact of the matter is that neither Joseph nor his seed "after him" lived from "generation to generation" in Nauvoo house, which was destroyed after Smith's death, and the Mormons moved to Utah. His prophecy concerning the restoration of Israel to Palestine clearly reveals that he anticipated the millennium in his own lifetime, whereas in reality the prophecy of Ezekiel 37 began to be fulfilled in 1948, more than a 100 years after Smith's death. It's clear that Joseph Smith is/was a false prophet and not of God. Just like it says in Deut. 18:21-22: "You may say to yourselves, `How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?' If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him." I know that the Mormons here will not like my message, but like I said at the beginning, I had to point out the major flaws in Mormonism and hopefully by the grace of God, some of you will heed my message. THE END II Tim. 3:16-17 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for Doctrine, Reproof, for Correction, for Instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." II Tim. 4:3-4 "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." Deut. 18:21-22 "You may say to yourselves, `How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?' If what a PROPHET proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord HAS NOT SPOKEN. That PROPHET has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him."