Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon
    Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon
    Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon
    Ebook139 pages2 hours

    Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon

    By C. B. Brooks

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Even for the most ardent skeptic, it's hard not to be curious about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maybe you've seen the hit musical comedy The Book of Mormon. Maybe you've read about Holocaust victims and deceased celebrities like Elvis being posthumously baptized in Mormon churches. Or maybe you've come across some other belief or facet of the Mormon faith and can't help but wonder whether the religion is actually as wild as it seems. Sure, the young Mormon missionaries who knock on your door with promises of a book that will change your life are happy to speak with you about their religion and provide their own answers. But if you accept their offer, you'll likely be heavily recruited, repeatedly contacted, pressured to become a church member, and perhaps even told you're going to be tortured in hell if you don't accept their claims. Enter The Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon, which offers an easily accessible, entertaining introduction to Mormonism. For those with a curious but skeptical mind, it also provides a no-pressure, no-strings-attached way to learn about what's contained in Mormonism's sacred text, without the tedium of having to read the whole thing—or the risk of being pestered in this life (or the afterlife, for that matter).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPitchstone Publishing
    Release dateApr 1, 2017
    ISBN9781634311151
    Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon

    Related to Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon

    Related ebooks

    Atheism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Most American Religion

      Dec 16, 2020

      The Most American Religion
      31 min read

    • Article

      How the Mormons Conquered America: The success of the Mormon religion is a study in social adaptation.

      Jun 12, 2014

      At the end of the smash Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, the protagonist, Elder Price, a zealous young Mormon missionary in Uganda, triumphantly sings, “We are still Latter day Saints, all of us / Even if we change some things, or we break the r

      11 min read

    • Article

      Word Search

      Jun 16, 2023

      Word Search
      2 min read

    • Article

      Death Of a Prophet

      Sep 24, 2021

      Death Of a Prophet
      16 min read

    • Article

      Trapped Between Two Worlds: The Life of John Morris

      Apr 4, 2022

      There is a (now lost) picture of me as an infant in 1952 on my grandfather’s knee, when he was about to turn 90. Even as a teenager, I was thinking, wow, the life this guy lived. The things he lived through and witnessed, and the way his day-to-day l

      11 min read

    • Article

      REVIVAL AMONG THE HMONG 300 000 animists turn to Christ

      Dec 29, 2023

      The year is 1969. The country is Laos. Frank Gray, a young believer from Britain who will later become one of FEBA International’s directors, is serving as a volunteer at Lao National Radio. Though he is not yet involved with FEBA, he bears witness t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Film

      Nov 6, 2023

      Film
      4 min read

    • Article

      Necrolog

      Nov 4, 2021

      A long-standing advocate for the increasingly dated strand of secular humanism exemplified by publications like the Skeptical Enquirer and Free Inquiry magazine, of which he was editor, Tom Flynn has died suddenly aged 66, with the cause of death not

      4 min read

    • Article

      Inside Her Dark Web

      Jan 12, 2022

      Inside Her Dark Web
      11 min read

    • Article

      Charlatans, False Prophets, And Flimflammers

      Jun 27, 2023

      My late father-in-law, an Episcopal priest, had a cartoon taped to his kitchen wall in Sherman that skewers an obnoxious feature of American religion. In the cartoon, a grinning devil, sitting on a throne surrounded by flames, instructs a horned appr

      5 min read

    • Article

      Blood Ritual

      Jun 5, 2023

      Blood Ritual
      20 min read

    • Article

      Father Figures: On Armistead Maupin’s ‘Logical Family’

      Mar 8, 2018

      Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City  broke ground in perhaps the most satisfying way: sexually brazen and politically stealthy, with a healthy dose of humor.  His recent memoir, Logical Family, tells the tale of Maupin’s youth, and many of the perso

      7 min read

    • Article

      Angels In America

      Feb 27, 2018

      BIG ANGEL—PATRIARCH of the De La Cruz clan, “El Jefe” emblazoned on his coffee mug, a man who once “could make the walls crack with his voice”—is dying of cancer. Relegated to a wheelchair, he realizes that “somebody was going to have to put his shoe

      5 min read

    • Article

      Blackness in Bedlam: On Toni Morrison’s ‘The Origin of Others’

      Sep 14, 2017

      It can be incapacitating, seeing your suffering in the mirror. The post Blackness in Bedlam: On Toni Morrison’s ‘The Origin of Others’ appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      Preparation, Iowa

      Jan 28, 2020

      Preparation, Iowa
      3 min read

    • Article

      WRITING Lost Voices

      Nov 2, 2023

      WRITING Lost Voices
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Poetry No. 112

      Dec 6, 2022

      The Art of Poetry No. 112
      26 min read

    • Article

      Q&A Elaine Pagels

      May 23, 2019

      Q&A Elaine Pagels
      5 min read

    • Article

      Word Search

      Aug 26, 2022

      Word Search
      2 min read

    • Article

      Back Draft: Clint Smith

      May 3, 2021

      Back Draft: Clint Smith
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Nonbeliever's Guide to the Book of Mormon - C. B. Brooks

      Author

      Introduction

      Maybe you’re interested in finding out what Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, actually believe.

      Maybe you’ve heard that the Mormons believe Jesus Christ visited America.

      Maybe you’ve seen the musical comedy play, The Book of Mormon, and wonder if the kooky concepts are real.

      Maybe a Mormon missionary has knocked on your door and offered you a book purported to change your life.

      But, if you accept the missionary’s offer, or contact the church for information, you’ll likely be heavily recruited, repeatedly contacted, and pressured to become a member.

      Well, here’s a no-pressure way to see what’s contained in the Book of Mormon, without the hassle of Mormon stalking, and without the tedium and boredom of reading the whole thing. Plus, as an added bonus, this book is written by a nonbeliever, for nonbelievers. No preaching or attempts at conversion here.

      After the success of my book The Nonbeliever’s Guide to Bible Stories, I saw the need for a similar treatment of the Book of Mormon.

      Together, we’ll fly through each section of the Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi with a modern, secular, and often humorous perspective—because there is some wild stuff in there.

      Prepare Thyself and Gird Your Loins!

      Section I

      A BRIEF HISTORY OF MORMONISM

      Unlike many other well-established religions, Mormonism is unique in its recent origins. As a result, its beginnings, evolution, and personalities are well documented, whether through direct eyewitness accounts, government records, and even court cases. This is a good thing, because to truly understand the religion, you need to understand how it arose.

      1

      Joseph Smith Jr. and the Golden Plates

      Birth of a Prophet

      Let’s travel back in time to Sharon, Vermont, to the year 1805, where a newborn boy named Joseph Smith Jr. is born into a struggling, not-so-successful farming family. Hoping to improve their situation, they moved to upstate New York, where the Erie Canal project was being planned. The family was somewhat religious and read the Bible. Joseph’s grandfather had religious visions, and a maternal uncle started a small, nonconformist religious community.

      Joseph was not a fervently religious boy, but he did attend popular religious revival tent shows that toured the area. These traveling shows featured preachers, miraculous faith healings, speaking in tongues, fainting, convulsions, and, of course, financial collections.

      Joseph has been described as somewhat of a slacker, ne’erdo-well, and disorderly person. He took up the occupation of digging in the ground for buried treasure, which was all the rage back then. However, he was lazy and didn’t actually like digging. The business plan was to entice local farmers to pay him to look for treasure on their land. It wasn’t a blind search, oh no, Joseph would utilize a magic peep stone, which would allow him to see through the ground, identify where the treasure was buried, and have others do the actual digging. As you can imagine, this endeavor had a very poor success rate and led to Joseph being put on trial for fraud at age twenty-one.

      Young Adulthood

      Joseph bounced around and met a girl in nearby Pennsylvania and wanted to get married. But her family objected because of Joseph’s shady occupation as a money digger, so the couple eloped and had a child around 1827.

      Before long, Joseph met and charmed a rich, religiously suggestible neighbor named Martin Harris. Joseph borrowed money from him, and casually shared a fascinating story: Joseph had visions and divine revelations. Martin Harris was intrigued and wanted to know more.

      Here’s how Joseph told Martin the tale. Seven years earlier, when Joseph was fourteen, he went into the woods alone to pray. It was a nice spring morning, when suddenly a pillar of light brighter than the sun appeared over his head. The light descended slowly until it illuminated him. Two personages were seen hovering above him in midair. One of them spoke to Joseph while pointing at the other person. This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! (Which sounds suspiciously like a Bible verse.)

      Whoa. Joseph then asked the floating personages some questions, like, Which of these religions and traveling tent show preachers should I follow? And they responded with something like, None, they’re all hackers. We’ll let you know sometime in the future.

      Yowsa. Martin Harris was hooked by this story! You see, Martin had a past history of seeing religious visions himself and was very superstitious. Tell me more, Joseph. What happened next?

      A Prophetic Vision

      Okay, so Joseph reeled him in with another yarn. One night, about three years after his first divine vision, Joseph—still just a regular farmboy in upstate New York—prayed for another vision before going to bed. Well, sure enough, a heavenly being appeared and identified himself as the angel Moroni, son of another angel named Mormon. Moroni said that God had selected Joseph as the human who will receive some super important information. Moroni gave Joseph directions to go to a nearby hill, named Cumorah, and start digging to find some sacred golden plates that God had hidden there. This was perfect because Joseph was already an experienced treasure digger! These golden plates were engraved in an ancient language and contained updates and the everlasting gospel God wanted everyone to know. The plates had been written originally by Moroni’s father, Mormon.

      Woo-hoo! Joseph got busy digging and, sure enough, found the plates buried in a stone crate with a round stone lid. Martin Harris couldn’t get enough of this story! What did the plates say? I just gots to know!

      Joseph revealed that Moroni had told him that he couldn’t remove the plates without further training, which would take four years! (Sort of like high school, which farmboy Joseph wasn’t attending anyway.)

      Martin flipped out! Three years between visions, plus four years of training—and that was seven years ago—why that brings us right up to now! So where are the golden plates? Where? Where?

      Joseph told Martin that he did indeed have the plates in his possession, but Moroni told him to guard them zealously and show them to no one at all. But since Martin was a true believer, Joseph made him a fabulous offer: Martin could become Joseph’s partner and help him translate the ancient language engravings on the plates.

      Holy cow! Martin jumps all in, starts financially supporting Joseph and his family, and becomes Joseph’s personal scribe.

      Miraculous Translations

      The history of ensuing events has been revised many times. Believers call what happened next a brilliant miracle, while others describe the scenario as a fraud perpetrated on a rich, gullible pawn. Accounts vary. Some say Joseph dictated the contents of the plates to Martin while hiding behind a curtain so Martin couldn’t see the alleged plates. Others say that Joseph concealed the plates in an upside down hat and placed two magic seer stones, called the Urim and Thummin, over the opening of the hat. Joseph then reportedly used the stones like goggles to translate the ancient language of the plates hidden inside the hat. Other accounts say Joseph didn’t even have the plates while dictating from the hat.

      In any case, Joseph would speak the yarn, and Martin would furiously write it down. They collaborated and binge translated 116 pages, which was just the first installment. Martin was so excited that he begged permission to show the pages to others. Joseph had another vision and asked the Lord, but he said no. Martin freaked out again and badgered Joseph. So Joseph asked God again and this time the Lord said, Well, okay.

      Martin ran back to his wife, Lucy, and showed her the pages and told of his wild experience. She said something like, You’ve got to be kidding me. But Martin was enthralled and began showing other people! Somehow the pages disappeared. Many think Lucy shredded or burned them.

      Martin was devastated and Joseph had a wild hissy fit when he found out. He temporarily lost his prophet’s power to translate and banned Martin from scribing, but kept him on the hook for financing.

      Joseph prayed hard for guidance and miraculously regained his translation powers, but a different source would be used to rewrite the first 116 pages. So they may not be exactly like the missing ones, okay, just in case any discrepancies occur. Joseph recruited a new scribe, Oliver Cowdery, and they spent sixty-five days of uninterrupted feverish work to fully translate the golden plates into the 531-page Book of Mormon.

      Good ol’ Martin Harris sold off some of his land, mortgaged the rest of his farm, cashed in his savings, and single-handedly paid to have the Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi published in 1830 in Rochester, New York.

      Lucy filed for divorce.

      2

      The New Zion (Midwest Edition)

      A New Church

      Just so people didn’t think they were getting scammed, Martin and Oliver and some others swore that they too had a group vision in the woods featuring angel Moroni skimming through the manuscript to inspect the translation and showing them the golden plates. Later in life, Martin admitted he never actually, physically saw the plates, but maintained he saw them in a vision, which is just as good.

      Anyway, the lads started up the Church of Christ, based on the Book of Mormon. Later the church’s name was updated to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly called the Mormon Church. Joseph was all of twenty-six years old.

      Joseph’s idea was for the church to have its own capital city and to make its own laws. A New Jerusalem or Zion was planned. Since the United States of

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1