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closeOn Faith: Evidence refutes the fallacy of religion as a myth claim
Alfred Gunn
On Faith
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
— C.S. Lewis
A letter to the editor of USA Today arguing the church-state separation issue got my attention when the writer then asserted with a broad stroke, “Religion is a mythological premise that has absolutely no basis in reality.”
From the rest of the letter I gathered that this writer, who signed himself NB, wasn’t an expert in the study of religion.
I would like to suggest for him a basis in reality.
When God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to young Joseph Smith in 1820 in answer to the boy’s prayer and instructed him, they were glorious and real.
Their appearance itself and the Lord’s detailed instructions to Joseph Smith did away with centuries of misunderstanding about the reality and nature of God, including many myths and man-made doctrines.
If NB wants to argue religion he may do so, but the question of God’s existence and God’s caring and the ability of the Father and the Son to reveal themselves in modern times is answered.
Three years later, when Christ sent an angel to Joseph Smith to further instruct and eventually deliver gold plates containing an ancient scriptural record of God’s dealings with prophets in the pre-Columbian Americas, the angelic messenger was real and the record was real.
When Joseph Smith translated the record in less than 65 days and produced the 531-page Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ, it was real and miraculous, since he translated the record by the gift and power of God.
The book itself is proof of that reality to anyone who will read it with intellectual honesty and faith in the Living God.
In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for 11 other responsible men to see and heft the engraved gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon, before the gold plates were returned to the angel.
Their written testimonies appear in the preface to the book.
The prophet who had compiled the ancient American scriptures onto gold plates was a man named Mormon who lived 400 years after Christ and the book takes its name from him.
His son, Moroni, was the last writer and the prophet who buried the record.
It was the resurrected Moroni who was the very real messenger the Lord sent in 1827 to give instructions and direct Joseph Smith to the buried record and who appeared also to the three principle witnesses to show them the plates.
The Book of Mormon stands as the greatest witness for the truth of the Holy Bible that has ever been published.
What I am saying is that God is real and He has brought forth scripture in our time that provides overwhelming evidence of its own truthfulness and confirms the truthfulness of the Holy Bible.
The skeptic who would question it must deny the book itself, as well as the written testimonies of Joseph Smith and the 11 testators, and must come up with an explanation for a New York farm boy having in his possession a whole stack of gold plates.
Rather than do that, the critic might simply find out the truth for himself, as I have done, by reading it and putting it to the test — the Lord’s test.
In the last pages of the Book of Mormon, the prophet-writer Moroni promised the modern-day reader that he or she could know of its truth. “I would exhort you,” he wrote, “that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost” (Moroni 10:4).
I am one of the millions who have found out by this means that the Book of Mormon is true, that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth.
The evidence is real and available.