“Under Condemnation”

In my early days as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, I was constantly hearing people talk about the Prophet Ezra Taft Benson’s landmark discourse The Book of Mormon—Keystone of Our Religion (Ensign 26:11:4). This discourse, which was less than five years old at the time of my baptism, began President Benson’s recurring theme of calling the Church to repentance for its members’ treatment of the Book of Mormon.

In this discourse, President Benson spoke of “some early missionaries [whom] the Lord reproved… for treating the Book of Mormon lightly,” then quoted Doctrine and Covenants 84:57 as follows:

And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon.

He then went on to explain that:

If the early Saints were rebuked for treating the Book of Mormon lightly, are we under any less condemnation if we do the same? The Lord Himself bears testimony that it is of eternal significance. Can a small number of us bring the whole Church under condemnation because we trifle with sacred things? What will we say at the Judgment when we stand before Him and meet His probing gaze if we are among those described as forgetting the new covenant?

For years President Benson continued this theme, ostensibly culminating in the opening session of the 158th General Conference, wherein he commanded the Church to “flood the earth with the Book of Mormon—and get out from under God’s condemnation for having treated it lightly” (Ensign 28:11:5). He continued:

God… has revealed to me the absolute need for us to move the Book of Mormon forward now in a marvelous manner. You must help with this burden and with this blessing which He has placed on the whole Church (ibid. p.6).

The results were nothing short of amazing. 1989 saw almost 600,000 new members of the Church—the highest percent increase since 1853—finishing out a decade of already impressive growth. On 1 January 1990, over 65% of the Church had been members for less than a decade. Contrast that to 1 January 2010, when fewer than 29% could say the same. If President Benson saw the Church under condemnation in the 1980s, surely the Church is still under condemnation—and more so—right now.

So what do we need to do about this? I submit that the prophet’s counsel to “flood the earth with the Book of Mormon” has not been rescinded. If we need to talk to the local full-time missionaries, to get more copies, so be it; we need to get that book out there, and out there in a proper context. I don’t doubt we’re under condemnation for underemphasizing the Bible, too, but most people around here already have the Bible. It’s time to give them the proverbial “rest of the story.”