I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the process
for growth and change.
IF one has a desire to learn something, or to be or
become something, and IF one also has hope, then s/he MAY make choices based
upon the desire and hope. IF those
choices are correct or likely to provide the likely result then a seed is planted. This is the beginning of FAITH in both the
process or path AND the beginning of the desired growth or change.
At this point, it is like a book my dear friends,
Mike and Karen used to have on their coffee table, Believing is Seeing. This is the point where windows of knowledge
are opened and as one applies what one is learning, one begins to become and to
really learn. Elder Maxwell taught, “To those
who have eyes to see and ears to hear, it is clear that the Father and the Son
are giving away the secrets of the universe.”
I have come to understand that two people can look
at the exact same information and one will see and the other will not. I recently read an almost humorous comment on
youtube pertaining to Book of Mormon evidences and a talk by Elder
Holland. The commentator said: “Evidence is very
strong that the Book of Mormon is neither ancient nor historical. Nobody,
outside the Mormon church, accepts it as a legitimate historical text.”
This is not completely true because there are members of a few churches which
broke off from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over 100 years
ago, who are not considered Mormon and who believe in the Book of Mormon. However, it is still basically true. Of course it’s true, because if someone comes
to understand the authenticity and develop a testimony, they become members of
the church.
I’ve also had some communication with some who are no longer active and
who no longer believe, and who have no real desire to know or believe. They, like the ancient Israelites who only
had to look to live (brazen serpent) refuse to really look. They have no desire to know or become.
When I was young in the 1960’s and 1970’s there were hundreds of things
in the Book of Mormon which seemed ludicrous and for which there was no good
answer except for faith and testimony.
Today that has all changed.
Almost every single one of the major objections people threw in my face
then, have been verified. Today there
are well over 1000 coincidences which, while they do not prove the veracity of
the Book of Mormon, they are coincidences that neither Joseph Smith NOR anyone
alive at that time could have possibly guessed.
These are archeological, language, literary, genetic, and even disease resistance,
which provide evidences that The Book of Mormon is an ancient text, that it has
much of it’s roots in the Middle East, and that there is a strong connection
between some of the peoples of the Americas and the Middle East. That alone was ludicrous to most when I was
young because everyone knew that all Native Americans descended from people who
migrated from what is now Russia to what is now Alaska.
Similar things can be said of the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses,
but not to the same extent.
Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say many times: ‘When you remove
all the other possibilities, whatever is left, no matter how unlikely, must be
the truth.’ Of course, Arthur Conan
Doyle greatly disliked Mormons, but his logic here is true.
These, over 1000 evidences today do not prove the Book of Mormon to be
the word of God. I have testimony and faith, a witness of the spirit for that; but, for anyone who has
eyes to see and ears to hear, they present so much evidence that no other
explanation is even plausible.
Anyone who will not look. Anyone
without genuine, even intellectual curiosity, will not see though it be right
before their eyes.
