Comparable to the Bible: Premise

I am going to be starting a series of posts comparing the Bible to the Book of Mormon.  There are several different reasons I'm doing this.

First, I've noticed that many times I've grown in my appreciation and understanding of the truth by comparing it to falsehoods.  This is reflected in several of my posts, including The Codependent God (where I discovered the goodness of God's self-interest by comparing Him in the Bible to the humanity-obsessed god of a Jehovah's Witness tract), Where Does Our Guidance Come From? (where I discovered the limitations of human advice and the necessity of guidance from God by reading a booklet on leadership that made much of the former and neglected the latter), God's Best (where I discovered the wonderful truth that the will of God and God's best plan for one's life cannot be broken, after reading the first part of an article which implicitly assumed they could be), More Mirrors (where I discovered truths about Biblical leadership by comparing the Bible to the rest of that article, which said it was about Biblical leadership, but wasn't), and Measures of Pride (where the frustrations of dealing with proud KJV-only posters caused me to learn a lot about humility in my own life).  If I take time to compare the Bible to the Book of Mormon, I expect it will cause me to spend a lot more time studying and getting to know the Bible.  In the end, I expect I will appreciate the Bible a lot more for its truthfulness, after having seen how the impostor fails to measure up.

Second, whenever I've talked to Mormons, this is something that has come up repeatedly.  I believe Mormonism is a cult, that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a con artist and false prophet, and that the Book of Mormon (among his other works) is a lie--and besides a truly abysmal work of fiction.  I have a number of reasons for believing this.  I can point to the discrepancies in doctrine between the Bible and Mormonism.  I can point out the obvious lack of historical support and credence the Book of Mormon has.  I can point out the folly of placing subjective good feelings, alleged by Mormons as conclusive "testimony" of the truth of the Book of Mormon, over the objective facts God gave us the brains and eyes to see and understand.  If it comes to it, I have my own spiritual "testimony" I received when I prayed about the truth of the Book of Mormon, a vision of Joseph Smith as a wicked man who wrote it to deceive people and steal away their hearts...a vision backed by the historical evidence about the man and the book.  I can point out that it would not only have been possible for him to write the book himself but, under his circumstances, it would have been very easy to do.  I can point out the flaws, contradictions, untruths, and absurdly poor writing in the passages of the Book of Mormon I have read.  Yet in the end, the Mormon who's arguing with me will always ask: "Well, have you read the whole book?"  When I answer no, none of the above matters: I haven't read all of it, therefore I am presumed to know nothing whatsoever about it.  The presupposition is false, of course.  If it weren't, Mormons would themselves be obligated to read every word of the Quran, the Bagavad Gita, and every other holy book or religious publication of groups they reject as false before they could say they know these groups don't have the truth.  However, if I do read the whole book, this excuse is taken away from them and they must confront my reasons for rejecting it as false much more squarely.

Third, it is a challenge issued by the Book of Mormon itself.  Its introduction begins with the words: "The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible."  It goes on to say, "We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true."  I take the part about pondering to be inclusive of comparing the Book of Mormon to the Bible (it does say the comparison should be a valid one). The last part, I have done already with markedly different results than what the introduction says, but if it comes to it, I'm not adverse to doing it again: God does not lie, nor does He change.  About accepting the challenge of a cult to test the veracity of their book, the God of the Bible seems to have no objections.  He admonishes us to "test all things, and hold fast to what is true" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).  He even issued His own challenge once to pagan priests, calling for them, through Elijah, to a test: Elijah and the pagan priests would both offer sacrifices but not light them on fire.  They would both pray for their gods to provide fire, and the God who answered by fire was the true God.  This challenge is similar.  The Mormon Church and the Bible present very different gods (the god of Mormonism is a corporeal being who was is just an ascended human from another world, part of an nigh-endless chain of such ascended beings; the God the Bible is a spirit, eternally God, the beginning and the end of all things): the God who's word is true, He is God.

Finally, I would like to say a word to any Mormons who may be reading this.  I am not writing this because I hate Mormons.  I do not, in fact, hate Mormons.  I have met one very disagreeable and preachy Mormon who lived on my hall once, but I understand him not to be representative of Mormons at large (he didn't even have any Temple garments, and yes, I know about the significance of those).  On the whole, most of the Mormon's I've interacted with have been very agreeable people.  The same can be said, unfortunately for most of the cultists I've ever met.  Being nice, decent folk unfortunately does not provide any guarantee that one's beliefs about God are true.  Nor does it provide (if what I believe is true) any defense against the judgement of God on the Last Day.  God's standards of virtue are so much higher than ours that even our righteousness is disgusting to Him (Isaiah 64:6), and only Christ and Christ alone provides atonement for our sins and entry into Heaven, by His grace through faith alone.  If this is true and I have any sympathy for Mormons at all, I need to do whatever I can to bring the truth of the Bible, the truth of Christ, to them, if indeed it is (as I believe) different from what is presented in the Book of Mormon and in Mormon theology.

With all of this in mind, I'm going to start going through the Book of Mormon, comparing its content to that of the Bible.