The Gospel According to Jeffrey

For the last few weeks, a man who goes by the name of “PastorWil” has been tweeting about the Church of Jesus Christ and so-called “Mormonism.” Today, he tweeted a link to a recent blog post entitled My Top Ten Questions For Mormons . As a so-called “Mormon” myself, I will endeavor to respond to each of his top ten questions. Here we go! :-) 1. Do you believe the Bible has been corrupted? Of course I do. I suspect you do, too. There are literally thousands of Bible translations. No two are exactly alike, and they often contradict each other. Do you believe that the Inspired Version of the Bible (used by the Community of Christ) and the New World Translation (used by Jehovah’s Witnesses) are both 100% accurate? If not, then you, too, believe that the Bible has been corrupted. 2. If the Bible is corrupted, then why does the LDS church still use the King James and not the Joseph Smith Translation? This is actually a trick question. The Church does use the Joseph Smith Translation...

“This is according to the account of Nephi; or in other words, I, Nephi, wrote this record.” Dr. Hugh Nibley, arguably the father of Latter-day Saint apologetics, points out that the First Book of Nephi “starts out with a colophon telling us whose hand wrote it, what his sources were, and what it is about” ( Since Cumorah , 170-171). This is far from unique in scripture ( e.g. the Jerusalem Colophon ), but the statement is important. Latter-day Saints understand that while the scriptures are indeed the word of God, they are the word of God filtered through the minds of His prophets. The level of perfection to which any scripture can attain is only to the extent that its author was willing and able to write His words in the way that He intended, and to the extent that the reader ( e.g. us) is willing and able to understand them in the way that He intended. By opening his record in this way, Nephi is stating, “This is scripture, but I’m totally responsible for the way it’s written. If...

As any knowledgeable Latter-day Saint knows, the title page of the Book of Mormon is a translation of the last page of the unsealed portion of the golden plates, written by the hand of Moroni, presumably right before hiding up said plates unto the Lord. I’ve read it many times, but as with any good scripture reading, I noticed something new, last night. In the first paragraph of Moroni’s inspired explanation, he states that the Book of Mormon is “To come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof,” which “interpretation thereof [comes] by the gift of God.” I’d like to focus, right now, on the word “interpretation” and what it means to us as Latter-day Saints. I suspect that this word was chosen very specifically, that this prophecy might have a dual fulfillment: not only in Joseph Smith Jr’s life, but also in the life of every person on this planet. When we speak of the Book of Mormon, we often speak of it being “translated.” Indeed, even the title page of ...