the opening lines at the introduction to the Book of Mormon declare that the Book of Mormon is a volume of Holy Scripture comparable to the Bible is the Book of Mormon comparable to the Bible a very important question and one that the Christians at Living Hope felt like we really needed to address Scott and I interviewed archaeologists and anthropologists geographers linguists on location and from a variety of different backgrounds in our interviews we ask the same questions about both the Bible and the Book of Mormon in all we conducted nearly 40 interviews throughout the United States and in six different countries around the world and we were investigating one simple question is the Book of Mormon comparable to the Bible and this is the story of what we found [Music] is my faith based upon something historical it’s a very important question to ask [Music] [Music] foreign is this something that I can believe in can I believe it physically can I believe that the text tells a true story of the past but also can I believe in it spiritually [Music] I grew up with the belief that the Book of Mormon was literally the word of God so there was a distinction the Bible was seen as corrupted The Book of Mormon was seen to be much more directly from God The Book of Mormon is the word of God and is the most correct book so you believe it’s more correct than the Bible I do [Music] [Music] [Music] most of the biblical account takes place in a small strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea to the South lies the Red Sea in Egypt this land originally known as Canaan is where God established his chosen people the Israelites one of the earliest and most famous of the Israelite Kings was David who established the Kingdom of Israel David’s son Solomon succeeded him as king and built a temple for the Lord on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem after Solomon died the kingdom was divided into the northern kingdom was called Israel and the southern kingdom was known as Judah the Bible says the Assyrian Empire conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel the southern Kingdom remained intact until 586 BC at which time it was conquered by the Babylonian Empire and its people were exiled after the Babylonians burned Jerusalem and after 70 years of Exile a remnant of the people from Judah known as Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple and the city walls the New Testament opens with the lands of Israel and Judah now called Palestine under Roman rule Herod was King and had added to the temple the New Testament records the Fulfillment of the Old Testament in the coming of the Messiah in the person of Jesus Christ according to the Book of Mormon a group of people known as the jaredites migrated to the new world in the distant past following the events surrounding the Tower of Babel centuries later the jaredites destroyed themselves in a massive Civil War it is said that two million people died in a single battle on a hill which The Book of Mormon later identifies as the hill Kimora as the jaredites died out a Jewish Family from Jerusalem migrated to the Americas around 600 BC the father of this family was named Lehi from his righteous son Nephi grew a nation of white-skinned people called Nephites while his rebellious Sons Layman and Lemuel fathered the lamanite nation who were cursed with the dark skin for their rebelliousness the two nations were in nearly constant conflict with one another the culminating event of the Book of Mormon took place around A.D 34 when Jesus Christ visited the Nephites and lamanites living in the Americas following his death and Resurrection this event brought centuries of peace between the Nephites and the lamanites however the peace did not last and the hill Kimora once again became the setting for a massive Slaughter the lamanites completely destroyed the Nephites down to one man named Moroni 1400 years later Moroni appeared as an angel to the young Joseph Smith Jr telling him that there was a book written upon gold plates and that it was an account of the former inhabitants of this continent after Smith received the plates on the hill Kimora he claimed to translate the ancient record into English The Book of Mormon was published in Palmyra New York in the year 1830 and from that time on Joseph Smith and every LDS prophet and Apostle after him has proclaimed it to be a true and accurate history of ancient America this painting is a familiar piece of artwork to most Mormons and represents the Mormon teaching that while the Bible is a historical account of the Old World The Book of Mormon is a historical account of the Americas we travel to Upstate New York because the hill Kimura is there which is Central to Mormonism uh it’s the traditional site where the great battles described in the Book of Mormon were fought it’s owned by the Mormon Church they have a statue of Moroni and a visitor center and they put on a pageant during the summer time that retells the Book of Mormon story in fact it’s the only place that the LDS church declares to be an official ancient historical site because a narrow neck of land is described in the Book of Mormon account it’s generally assumed that the setting for the Book of Mormon is mesoamerica in fact earlier versions of the Book of Mormon contained pictures of Mayan ruins implying that there was a connection between these ruins in the Book of Mormon civilizations and in the same way artwork that’s commonly used to depict these Book of Mormon scenes frequently portrays Mayan architecture and Mayan themes so we traveled to Guatemala and to Honduras and southern Mexico with LDS Anthropologist Dr Tom Murphy to address the question of whether or not the Book of Mormon account matches the geography and the archeology of the new world in Israel we started with the most obvious thing so one of our first questions was does the geography match the biblical account foreign [Music] names used in the Bible 3500 years ago till today like the Dead Sea like the moabian mountains the ammonite mountains and we preserve them till today these places were what the Bible says that they were the geography matches the valleys are next to the cities which are connected to the hills and all this can be traced in very detailed Geographic accounts in scripture so you find maps in the Bible why don’t you find maps in the Book of Mormon there’s no map showing The Book of Mormon lands because they can’t place it on Earth they don’t know where it is what about all these Illustrated Maps you see for the Book of Mormon lands I mean why don’t they agree with one another and I guess more important than that why don’t they correspond to any real land mass on Earth you can’t have a geography because there is no real world setting for the events described in the book Mormon We can’t agree upon it because anytime we attempt to try to put it in a real world setting we have to distort either that real world setting or the text itself the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints takes no official position on the geography of the Book of Mormon one of the reasons for this is obvious is that the events never took place anywhere [Music] the Jews still exist today both in the countries to which they were exiled and in the land of Israel all of the civilizations surrounding Palestine have also been well established through archeology and history Israel is a bridge of three continents so we had the Egyptian coming here the Assyrian coming here the Babylonian coming here the Hellenist Empire the Roman it’s very evident when you read the Bible that they’re really talking about historical places how do you know that the Roman Empire existed the Romans left monks everywhere they went they left large roads they left coins and they left written records the remains of the ancient Greek and Roman Empires which are written about in the Bible are clearly visible throughout the old world likewise The Book of Mormon also records the existence of Empires in the New World we get the jaredite civilization in the book of ether a promise that they will become the greatest nation in the world this greatest nation on Earth we find no traces of it the dates found in the footnotes of the Book of Mormon indicate that the jaredite empire was replaced by the nephite Empire shortly after 600 BC in the book Mormon you’ve got this large civilization of Nephites who were industrious people who built machines lived in large cities I I don’t know of any evidence that the Nephites ever existed in the Americas the civilizations we find throughout Central America tended to Peak find their great climax between 600 and 900 A.D well after the events described in the Book of Mormon the lamanites are said to have annihilated the nephite Empire around 400 A.D so of the three people groups mentioned in the Book of Mormon the lamanites are the only ones that survived becoming according to the Book of Mormon the principal ancestors of Native Americans now here at the hill Kimora we have this plaque that specifically lists us as lamanites it’s written to lamanites who are a remnant of the House of Israel that’s listing us as being specifically written to in the Book of Mormon evidence [Music] the Bible also contains accounts of people groups that no longer exist today such as the Canaanites and the Philistines but are these people groups missing from the archaeological record uh we know a lot about the Canaanite civilization through Egyptian sources as well as through many many archaeological sites excavated in this country where we have the Canaanite civilization uh reflected archaeologically have the Philistines been shown to have existed absolutely yes absolutely the Philistines have their own distinct material culture which we can tell apart from other cultures that lived here this begs the question could the three enormous Empires that are said to have flourished in the Americas for centuries leave no archaeological trace of themselves so would it be possible say in the Americas for an Empire to exist there and leave no archeology no it’s impossible no it’s impossible [Music] we say that archeology Never Lie if there were people at a certain place they left behind them many artifacts we do not have such a situation in which a uh a certain power would be destroyed without leaving any evidence they leave their tombs they leave the remnants of their houses they leave their temples they leave the foundations and they leave the destruction [Music] the permanent settlements all of them are well known and agreed upon by scholars in Israel today places like hatsor and megiddo and Jerusalem in Shiloh and Arad and Beersheba and Jericho many of these are still inhabited until today and they may be ruins Jesus condemned these sites of Capernaum and bethsaida and Corzine but there’s no doubt Scholars know that these were real places that existed in his time and the evidence for them is is certain all these places that are still called that by the same name how is that possible because for thousands of years there’s been a continuous settlement the local peoples have passed on the names from generation to generation Jerusalem Bethlehem those are Biblical name we keep them for more than 3000 years [Music] [Music] [Music] the Fortified cities written about in The Book of Mormon have names such as Nephi mantai Sarah himla sidon Gershon and bountiful to name just a few of the more than 30 major cities mentioned in the Book of Mormon because of the development of the epigraphy we now are able to read you know the ancient names of most of the of the sites have you ever heard of names and um like zarahemla no or Nephi [Music] a good friend once asked me what sort of evidence would it take to convince you that the Book of Mormon was an ancient document right and my response to him was it’d be nice if we could even find cities that are similar to the ones described in the Book of Mormon there there is no evidence as far as where Sarah Hemel is which is one of the big cities that’s mentioned in the in the Book of Mormon here we are standing in Palenque today the buildings that we see in front of us were in fact constructed several centuries after the events described in the Book of Mormon so this could not possibly have been a nephite city if a city existed like this a big city is it possible that there would be no archaeological evidence left at all no it’s impulse of it in a city like Tiberius there is plenty of evidence like architecture flows small fines objects coins you name it everything could a major city be conquered and not leave any any of that evidence no way by no means years ago I was engaged in a conversation with a Christian friend one of the things he told me is that if I wanted to go to Jerusalem it was easy to do still today I could visit Bethlehem and I I could see the places where the events described in the New Testament took place but have I ever been or heard of anyone going to Zarah Himmler or to Bountiful or to the city of Nephi I wasn’t even sure those places ever existed and what I found in my anthropology classes is that my Christian friend was right the Book of Mormon was wrong [Music] [Music] the biblical world as reflected in the scriptures is matched by the plants and the trees and that we know these figs almonds palm trees wheat barley when I read the New Testament I see the relationship between Jesus and his world as one that represents accurately the types of animals that we find in the ancient near East the animals that are mentioned in the bible still do exist today it’s true that some are no longer existing here such as lions but we have explorers centuries ago that speak of these there’s no doubts even if they don’t exist today that they did exist in antiquity The Book of Mormon describes how lehi’s Sons explore the land after their arrival in the Americas first Nephi 18 says there were beasts in the forest of every kind both the cow and the ox and the ass and the horse and the Goat second Nephi 12 7 says the land is also full of horses and the Book of Mormon describes the use of horse-drawn chariots during massive battles involving tens of thousands of warriors The Book of Mormon also records other aspects of the culture including its agriculture in mosiah chapter 9 it says they began to till the ground with seeds of Wheat and barley we would expect to find remnants of the types of plants and animals that they raised instead what we find are turkeys and llamas and dogs we find corn and beans and squash what we see in the Book of Mormon are all the wrong plants things like wheat and barley in ancient America we don’t see wheat here we don’t see uh cattle sheep Goats No horses during Book of Mormon times no elephants during Book of Mormon times completely absent the Mayas didn’t have a beast of burden they didn’t have horses for example the first time we saw a horse as far as We Know was when a white man rode a horse from Albany up here in 1677. so the stories of riding horses into battle could not have occurred in the Americas [Music] [Music] both the Nephites and jeradites are said to have processed oars and worked with many kinds of metal first Nephi 1825 says that lei’s family did find all manner of ore both gold and silver and of copper we don’t find the use of metals like gold copper in metallurgic terms like you see described in the Book of Mormon with references to Bellows and and other tools of Metallurgy The Book of Mormon specifically stated that there was steel in the new world it’s very easy to find the places where this deal is smelted even if you don’t find the steel objects not a single site has been found that can be said yes deal is smelted here and what is really surprising about the Maya is the fact that they didn’t use metal it is the lack of specific types of metal in the Americas that poses a serious problem for the Book of Mormon account which claims that both the jaredites and Nephites use metal armor and weapons in their Warfare metal coins for their currency and are even described as using metal plates to write on The Heading under chapter 19 in first Nephi states that Nephi makes plates of ore and Records the history of his people Helaman 315 describes the nephite writing saying there are many books and many records of every kind and they have been kept chiefly by the Nephites one of the things that is said about the Nephites is that they were a culture with writing and now a culture with writing leaves records and if that number of people did not leave a record well I don’t think they existed in other records and accounting say that there were just you know hundreds or thousands of plates and records of the people the idea that there could have been an Empire that lasted for a thousand years that claimed to be literate and for their net to be now historical Trace at all is extremely far-fetched any indication that the ancient Americans between 600 BC and 400 A.D would Road on metal plates no no ancient writings have been found from all of the empires that surrounded the Kingdom of Israel but none so abundant as the biblical manuscripts that have been found coming from the Israelites themselves the earliest known part of the Bible to have been preserved in archeology is a short passage from Numbers Chapter 6 verses 24 to 26 that was discovered by Gabriel barkai in an excavation which I directed here in Jerusalem we found two small tiny silver plaques they carry in the ancient Hebrew script the oldest Biblical verses that we own they come from this very period the 7th Century BC well here we’ve climbed up the mountain in qumran and this is a cave number one this is where the Desi Scrolls were discovered in 1947. every single book of the Old Testament apart from possibly the Book of Esther is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and so now we have copies of the Old Testament books from the Dead Sea Scrolls from 200 to 100 BC for the Greek New Testament we have around 5500 manuscripts that’s containing parts or all of the Greek New Testaments so we’ve got plenty of evidence for the Greek gospels for the Greek letters in the New Testament that go way way back to very early on to only a matter of a few decades after they were first written by contrast we have no ancient copy of the Book of Mormon we have manuscript evidence that’s almost 2 000 years old for the New Testament and over 2000 years old for the Old Testament for the Book of Mormon I am not aware of any manuscript evidence at all but with the Book of Mormon we have no documentary Trail we do not have texts that we can go to until 1830. between the events in the Book of Mormon which supposedly ended in 400 A.D and the first documentary Trace is 1400 years before we find any sort of documentary Trace what this suggests to me is that the book itself was constructed in the 19th century where where are the documents where’s the history that we find ample abundant when we’re dealing with the Bible why don’t we find it with the Book of Mormon 2. [Music] if you had the textual support of ancient documents for the Book of Mormon that say the Bible has would you have lost faith in the Book of Mormon I mean who knows uh it would certainly help the situation if the Book of Mormon had a documentary Trail and artifacts that would support its claims it would certainly we might be able to refer to it then as a historical document The Book of Mormon States in Mormon 9 32 that the language used in ancient America by the Nephites was called reformed Egyptian that’s what it says in the Book of Mormon that they wrote and reformed Egyptian what a Hebrew around about 600 BC know how to write in the ancient reformed Egyptian [Music] what’s ancient reformed Egyptian linguists and and others will state that they’ve never heard of reformed Egyptian and unless they’re Mormon and the reason why the mainstream linguists don’t have anything to say about it is because it’s a fictional language it does not exist any indication that the ancient inhabitants of the new world wrote in Hebrew or Egyptian categorically no evidence [Music] the claim that the Book of Mormon is Hebrew scripture from this community that migrated written on metal plates and saying lots of different things is just impossible at the end of the day why don’t we just put the gold plates out there for everybody to look at and observe and read for themselves uh we could put them in a monument over here we could have the visitor center where you put the gold plates there anybody who had any doubts could come and read the Egyptian hieroglyphics there for themselves uh and it if if the Book of Mormon were true that’s exactly what we’d be able to do we can take and find old texts from the ancient near East take the Dead Sea Scrolls and in fact you can go to museums and see the Dead Sea Scrolls laid out for everyone to see if the Book of Mormon was really what it claimed to be we could do the same [Applause] [Music] both the Bible and the Book of Mormon describe a coinage system the Bible for example mentions many Roman coins being used in the days of Jesus in the First Century A.D the pavement upon which we stand at this moment upon it there was a layer of about uh uh two to three inches of soil which included many coins dating back to the first century how many coins would you say have been found at the site during all of its excavation maybe 300 400 and the bucket there coins coins huh more than 10 coins oh really one day one day ten coins so those are just the ones that you found yesterday chapter 11 of the book of Alma in the Book of Mormon the chapter heading says nephite coinage set forth then it goes through and describes how the the money system of the Book of Mormon worked now if we take these images of coins we find in the Book of Mormon and contrast them to the systems of Exchange in place in ancient America we find that they’re not at all alike there were no metallic coins being used The Book of Mormon just flat has it wrong and all you’re Excavating you haven’t found any coins that would predate the coming of the Europeans nothing in fact metallic coins were not in use in any part of ancient America we didn’t use coins we didn’t have them we took coins when they first came which were not until Europeans came around and we usually kind of flattened them out and made them into jewelry yeah so the question that arises is where are all the nephite coins that were in use for almost a thousand years I don’t think that there might be a situation when all the coins of a certain civilization or a certain Authority would disappear without leaving a mark [Music] the Bible gives an account of numerous battles and Wars throughout the history of the Israelites like do they find things like spearheads and and things like that when this country for example passed the Assyrian Conquest we have the uh arrowheads which landed upon the roofs of the buildings before they got destroyed so we have first the layer of the arrowheads and then we have the layer of the floors for the biblical period we have evidence of arrowheads that were used by the Babylonians and we have arrowheads that were used by the locals and we have arrowheads that were used by the Assyrians the footnotes in the Book of Mormon suggest that the lamanite extermination of the Nephites took place around 400 A.D yet it left no archaeological evidence by contrast a much smaller battle that happened centuries earlier in the First Century A.D in Palestine demonstrates what one can expect to find if a battle like the one described in the Book of Mormon had really occurred we have uh flavius Josephus telling us about a rock an isolated Rock in the desert he mentions about 900 people being up there besieged by the Romans and committing suicide the place was identified it was excavated in 1960s and we have the skeletal remains we have the houses we have the coins so we have a very clear evidence for the uh very tragic events which took place at Masada through archeology no civilization can be wiped out in such a way that no remnant of it is left the book of ether and the Book of Mormon especially chapter 15 and describes a massive war in which it reports there had been slain two millions of Mighty Men also their wives and children where are these steel swords that led to the massacres of millions where are the the bodies that remains the skeletons of these millions of people where where’s the evidence of this ancient catastrophe we don’t find it we don’t find it in Central America we don’t find it near hokemora in New York [Music] it simply didn’t happen centuries later the lamanite nation is said to have destroyed the nephite nation in another massive battle at the same Hill Kimora a growing up Mormon I was always taught that the hill Camaro was the location of the culminating events of the Book of Mormon Mormon chapter 8 verse 2 and now it came to pass that after the great and tremendous battle at Kimora behold the Nephites who had escaped into the country Southward were hunted by the lamanites until they were all destroyed goes on to make an accounting of how many people approximately were were killed and I mentioned them in tens of thousands each time when you add it all up it’s at least 230 000 people we thought it was a bad thing when we would lose 12 people you know then it was like because you had 12 families in deep morning I grew up in Western New York and the study that I chose was anthropology and Archeology because my interest in trying to help prove that the book Book of Mormon was correct as we were told at that time that that science would prove the church was true I did do archaeological work in the Palmyra area if there were big battles in the in the masses that they talked about we would have expected to find things that would be indicative to those big battles Mass burial sites human remains a bone and Bone lasts very well there have been no steel swords found no Chariot parts when we talk about um Warfare weapons we are basically talking about stone tools [Music] whenever they find in Israel a Biblical site they always excavate it so why doesn’t the LDS church excavate the hill Kimora it would be a grand embarrassment to do that and not find a single thing and do you think that’s what they would find I’m confident that they would find nothing have you ever done any archaeological excavations on the hill Kimura yeah have they found anything no the LDS Church of course owning much of this property could do the investigations but they know from the little bit they have done and they know from what’s been done by others the evidence isn’t there so it’s obvious why they don’t excavate because if they did all it would do is disprove their faith claims [Music] we are here next to the uh Western Wall of the Temple Mount or the Wailing Wall as it is sometimes called the wall itself is approximately 2020 years old this war was built by Harold the great and it was destroyed by Titus in 70 of the Common Era when the second temple went on fire and got destroyed this was one of the greatest tragedies of Jerusalem which is I think embodied in this pile of stones that you can see here this is no doubt a very good representation of the words of the Gospel about Jesus saying that you see these magnificent stones of the temple man there will be none of them one on top of the other this pile is a uh an illustration which cannot be better for the words of Jesus in second Nephi 516 The Book of Mormon says that Nephi and his family built a temple just like Solomon’s Temple after they arrived in the Americas says an eye Nephi another son of Lehi did build a temple and I did construct it after the manner of the Temple of Solomon so let’s say that that’s true um that in ancient times they built this temple in America in America any person who studies the Bible understands the centrality of worship here in Jerusalem on the temple mounts the very idea of a temple anywhere other than Mount Moriah is a total impossibility Jews are literally not allowed to erect a temple from anywhere in the world except for right here The Book of Mormon clearly identifies Lehi as a descendant of Joseph later in second Nephi 5 5 Lehi appoints his two sons as priests to serve in the temple they had built the men who are serving in the Holy Temple are all descendants of Aaron lineal descendants of Aaron The Book of Mormon claim poses a problem because appointing priest who were not aaronic Levites was expressly forbidden in the Old Testament and yet the Book of Mormon claims to uphold the Old Testament laws [Music] [Music] what evidence is there of the existence of the people described in the Bible we have an inscription mentioning the House of David actually two different inscriptions one found in southern trans Jordan the second one comes from Tel Dan in the north and when we look at the Old Testament Canon when we look at people like Daniel and Isaiah especially the later prophets of Malachi and Ezra we have lots of extra biblical witnesses to talk about these people outside of strictly their Biblical context these are ancient historical figures the New Testament talks about various figures like high priests and we see records of these high priests which are from that period showing that they clearly existed ifas is mentioned in the New Testament as the high priest in the time of Jesus several years ago workmen Came Upon a burial cave inside the burial cave there were approximately 10 ashuries or bone boxes upon one of which appeared the words Joseph the son of Caiaphas the figures like Paul have to have existed if not who wrote the letters that bear his name that are written in the Greek of the time the introduction page in the Book of Mormon claims that like the Bible the book was written by many ancient Prophets so before we can ask if these prophets were true prophets we have to ask ask did they ever exist we have no evidence that they ever existed let alone that they wrote down these prophecies that these prophecies were maintained accurately we can’t even ask these questions we can’t go that far so what if the central figure of the Bible Jesus Christ what evidence is there that he existed there’s no doubt that Jesus was a historical figure he’s not only mentioned in Christian texts but he’s also mentioned in non-Christian texts the Jews talk about Jesus Christ in their writings even though they don’t talk about him favorably when we look at the testimonial Josephus we see first Jesus was Messiah Jesus lived as a teacher Jesus died under pilate and Jesus was resurrected both tacitus and setonius were Romans and did not see the Christian faith as something they wanted to promote in any way shape or form and yet they’re mentioned in Christ these are real people talking about the historical reality of Jesus the historicity of Jesus Christ is established by ancient documents and these are documents that could be proven to be ancient do you believe that the person of Jesus was a historical person absolutely yeah we do have I mean a lot of Records we we know that he existed I mean I don’t think that there’s any doubt about them Jesus was here on this this very same level on these very same Stones it was walking when he went into the Temple mount Jesus was historical person in the ancient in the ancient near East but to Proclaim that Jesus was a historical personage here in ancient America is a rather absurd proposal that’s certainly not backed by the evidence is it accurate to say that that Jesus visited the Americas there’s no evidence for that at all The Book of Mormon proposes that after Jesus arrived in the Americas in A.D 34 that there was a massive conversion to Christianity I find no evidence it tells me that Jesus Christ of the Bible is the Jesus Christ of the Book of Mormon I cannot understand how archaeological evidence and textual evidence would point to the historical reality of Christ in Palestine and yet be entirely lost in the new world the Jesus Christ we see presented in the Book of Mormon is the Jesus Christ of Joseph Smith’s imagination [Music] thank you [Music] the Bible is a very important Source it tells us about historical events you can easily show that the Bible is archaeologically sound if you ask the Smithsonian about the use of the Bible or the Book of Mormon for archaeological research you’ll get a response that is representative of what anthropologists would agree with today and that is that several books from the Bible have been used as guides in archaeological research on the other hand the Book of Mormon has never been used by the Smithsonian as a guide to historical and archaeological research problems with the Book of Mormon are so systemic that I don’t believe that no matter how much archaeological work is done here that will change the basic conclusion that the Book of Mormon couldn’t possibly be a history of ancient America it doesn’t make sense to me the Book of Mormon uh with old duon or I don’t think it has anything to do with the culture of 600 BC and I’m an expert on that period I I can only answer you unabashedly that the Book of Mormon has absolutely no Authority bearing or Integrity whatsoever Joseph Smith fabricated a history and present it to the world as the word of God that’s pretty arrogant that’s really arrogant as an anthropologist if I step back and and look at the whole big picture when you can’t find the places that it’s talking about and you can’t identify the people that it’s talking about and you can’t find the types of material Goods that it’s talking about there’s a major problem if it was just one thing then you could say well we’re just not finding it but if you don’t find the whole package then the chance of the Book of Mormon being true is zero The Book of Mormon is factually wrong it gets the wrong plants it gets the wrong animals gets the wrong technology it’s got the wrong languages and it’s got the wrong culture The Book of Mormon is 19th century religious fiction [Music] so Joseph Smith said I told the Brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on Earth and the Keystone of our religion and a man would get nearer to God by abiding in its precepts than by any other book The Book of Mormon is full of mistakes there are factual mistakes okay suggesting that Jesus for example was born in Jerusalem rather than Bethlehem and behold he shall be born of Mary at Jerusalem of course to me who lived in Bethlehem all my life this is strange Jesus was born in Bethlehem not in Jerusalem if the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on Earth then we’ve got an awful lot of books full of lies [Music] true story of a people who were prepared by the Lord to be ready for the coming of the Savior Jesus Christ he came to them in the Americas so if there was no there were no people there was no evidence then clearly there was no Jesus Christ visit to the Americas I The Book of Mormon then couldn’t possibly be another Testament of Jesus Christ if the claim that the Book of Mormon is a book of history of people of the American continent if that is not true then the Book of Mormon can’t be true and it cannot be considered uh Christian scripture I have much more faith in in the New Testament in the Old Testament as scripture [Applause] Thomas Stewart Ferguson played a key role in the creation of the new world archaeological foundation and the anthropology department at Brigham Young University millions of dollars have been spent looking for evidence of the Book of Mormon Ferguson was one of the Prime movers and shakers in the research area in in Central America and he couldn’t find anything in Ferguson’s efforts he was hopeful of something that didn’t happen he was hoping to have documentary physical corroborations of the claims of the Book of Mormon but what he found instead were contradictions unlike his colleagues at Brigham Young University Thomas Stewart Ferguson had the courage to tell the truth about the Book of Mormon and so what the apologists do is they they work at trying to help people to keep them from losing their faith and they’ll use whatever means are possible The Book of Mormon makes sense as plausible history the whole thing seems right it makes sense there’s very little in it apart from the explicitly religious events the Miracles and the visitations and so on that a secular historian would find that all troublesome Dan Peterson is lying the problem first and foremost with the Book of Mormon is its secular history it gets the history wrong a myth has been disproved again and again by archaeologists and historians on secular grounds not religious ones the only thing that they apologists want to do is prove it prove that the Book of Mormon is true so they come up with really outrageous ideas that any Bonafide Anthropologist or archaeologist would simply shake their head at for example horses they say well maybe maybe they weren’t horses maybe they were tapier or dear well how do you ride something that’s a little bit bigger than a dog into battle it’s an outrageous idea so they’re they’re using these these very arguments to say here’s how we prove that the Book of Mormon is true and you know time doesn’t permit to to go through every single one of their arguments but if you really look at those arguments carefully if this argument was brought up in a scientific Community I can tell you they’d be laughed out of the building [Applause] [Music] the Mormon concept of determining truth of scripture comes from Moroni chapter 10 which says I would exhort you that when you shall read these things that you would ask God if these things are not true and that if ye shall ask with a sincere heart he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost truth then is to be found by examining One’s Own Heart the picture throughout the Old Testament and New Testament is simply of hearts of men which are corrupt [Applause] truth according to Mormon teaching is obtained by gaining an emotional assurance that the book is true this sense of assurance is said to be evidence of the Holy Ghost and is often referred to as a burning in the bosom or spiritual witness or testimony how often have you read the book of Mark are you reading it today probably is yeah oh yeah do you and do you pray every day and read and get that testimony of what you’re reading is true to me this is misguided it’s even deceptive to continue to insist that the Book of Mormon is true when the facts are to the contrary simply because I had a feeling in my heart I had a burning in my bosom and this becomes the ultimate determination of reality where is the humility that the Book of Mormon speaks about that we can Proclaim just based upon our impressions in a prayer that we have the ultimate truth what arrogance what absurdity where’s the humility where’s the honesty [Music] so we must ask the question does the identity of God Jesus and the nature of the Gospel of Salvation differ between the Mormon scriptures and the Bible LDS prophet and president Gordon B Hinckley is quoted as saying as a church we have critics many of them they say we do not believe in the traditional Christ of Christianity there is some substance to what they say our faith our knowledge is not based on Ancient tradition our faith our knowledge comes of the witness of a prophet in this dispensation the prophet of the Mormon Church Gordon B Hinckley has stated that he does not believe in the Christian Christ he believes in the Christ that Joseph Smith taught boy they get mad at us when we suggest that that’s a different Jesus in the you quote you quote him you quote Hinckley and you say this is what your Prophet stated and there is and they’ll still get mad at you but but how can they argue with you if you’re if they’re prophet States that fact they can get mad at you all they want but they can’t argue with you so no Mormons do not believe in the same Christ you know Paul said that if anybody else brings you any other gospel that you reject them okay and what gospel is that well the gospel that we have in the New Testament and and so if you accept Paul’s writings as as truth then you’ve got to ask yourself how then can I accept a different gospel how then can I accept a different Christ that’s a very consistent picture throughout the New Testament but it’s trust in Jesus Christ that leads to Salvation and him alone to take on an extra book of scripture and a different picture of God from the one that’s been handed down in these scriptures is a very serious thing indeed The Book of Mormon is going to divert people away from the true gospel of Christ today there’s a big push in the church to to look more Christian I think the motivation behind that is converts if the Mormon church is shown to be a Christian organization and along with that they have very high morals and really promote family life and help each other and things like that then it’s more easy to convert somebody to the religion no matter how much the Mormon Church wants to make you believe that they’re this pristine organization the fact of the matter is that that they’re not um and people say that you know the people of the church aren’t perfect but the church is well if the church is based on lies the LIE of the Book of Mormon then I can’t condone it as a Mormon scholar I wonder why is it that we’re afraid of the truth why is it that we won’t be honest about how the Book of Mormon was created where it came from what it says tell the truth about ancient America why is it that we have to re-configure the images of ancient America to fit our own prejudices our own stereotypes instead of dealing honestly and forthrightly with the problems of archeology of genetics of linguistics and let the let the truth be told what do we fear is our faith in Joseph Smith or in Jesus Christ when I investigated the Mormon faith I did it originally because I wanted to see if it was true if this was God’s real Revelation to Justice Smith I wanted to know about it and I set time aside I read the book of Mormon I attended church I went to I went to classes at the local Institute I did everything one should do if they wanted to learn more about the Mormon faith and what I found was that I was growing farther and farther away from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is my faith based upon something historical it’s a very important question to ask and for me I found that the more that I’ve delved into delved into philology and delved into archeology and all the historical aspects of the faith and of the text my faith is only only grown stronger and stronger what we have in our Bible is sufficient for salvation and so it’s important not to be scared of trying to learn more because for me I know especially the more I’ve learned The more I’ve come closer to Jesus Christ when I understood that the Book of Mormon was not true that it was not a historical accounting and that it simply was religious fiction when I understood that I took it at face value that the when the prophet says that the Book of Mormon is the Cornerstone of the religion at that point I knew that the religion could not be true with my loss of faith in the Book of Mormon my understanding and my faith in the New Testament as a book of scripture has increased which Christ do you follow today the biblical Christ I follow the biblical Christ all the the guilt that had been piled upon me for years for not doing everything perfectly which is what Mormonism wants you’ve got to do everything perfectly since I didn’t since the church was not true guilt was able to wash off then as you came into a belief in Jesus Christ as a as a Christian did guilt and all those kinds of perfection needs come back on you or no no and the reason for that is I looked at the statement stated by Jesus in the New Testament the New Testament teaches us that the only thing that we need to make it to Heaven is the sacrifice of Jesus and belief faith no guilt what if you get excommunicated if I get excommunicated from the Mormon Church it will bring closure for me because then then I could say yes I’m now done and I could leave it all behind [Music] Jesus says in Matthew 7 13 that wide is the gate and Broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter through it in John 14 6 Jesus says of himself I am the way and the truth and the life no one comes to the father except through me Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt said of the Book of Mormon if false it is one of the most cunning Wicked bold deep laid impositions ever palmed upon the world calculated to deceive and ruin Millions who will sincerely receive it as the word of God and will suppose themselves securely built upon the rock of Truth until they are plunged with their families into hopeless despair we did this project as a labor of love love to the Mormon people we we invested a lot of time and effort and resources into this project because we want the Mormon people to come into a relationship with the real Jesus Christ the the Jesus of the Bible the Bible shows itself to be an authentic historical account so we can then move on and ask the next question is it scripture well this is a matter of Faith but it’s Faith that’s based upon Real History it’s not Blind Faith Jesus Christ is a historical person and he made radical claims he warns for there shall arise false Christ and false prophets in order to deceive we have presented evidence that shows clearly and overwhelmingly that the Christ and the prophets of the Book of Mormon uh are false and that the Jesus and the story told about him in the Bible is an accurate historical account consider how definitive his statement in John 3 16 is when he says for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life and our final question to you is simply do you believe him [Music] [Music]