1)According to a Book of Mormon prophecy (Helaman 14:27), at the time of Christ’s crucifixion “darkness should cover the face of the whole earth for the space of three days.” In contrast, the New Testament gospel accounts declare repeatedly that there was darkness for only three hours while Jesus was on the cross (Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44).
2)The Book of Mormon teaches that little children are not capable of sin because they do not have a sinful nature (Moroni 8:8). In contrast, the Bible in Psalm 51:5 clearly teaches that we have sinful nature from birth: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (NIV). (This does not mean that those who die in infancy are lost.)
3)The Book of Mormon teaches that the disobedience of Adam and Eve in eating the forbidden fruit was necessary so that they could have children and bring joy to mankind (2 Nephi 2:23-25). In contrast, the Bible specifically declares that Adam’s transgression was a sinful act of rebellion that unleashed the power of sin and death in the human heart and throughout God’s perfect world (Genesis 3:16-19; Romans 5:12; 8:20-21). There is no Biblical support for the view that Adam and Eve could only fulfill the command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) by disobeying God’s command regarding the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:17). The Book of Mormon teaching that these divine commands are contradictory, and that God expected Adam and Eve to figure out that in reality He wanted them to break the latter command (“of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it”) in order to keep the former (“be fruitful and multiply”), has no basis in logic or the Biblical text, and attributes equivocation to God.
4)The Book of Mormon teaches that black skin is a sign of God’s curse, so that white-skinned people are considered morally and spiritually superior to black skinned people (2 Nephi 5:21). In contrast, the Bible teaches that God “made of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17:26, KJV), that in Christ distinctions of ethnicity, gender and social class are erased (Galatians 3:28), and that God condemns favoritism (James 2:1).
5)The people described in the Book of Mormon operated multiple temples (Alma 16:13; 23:2; 26:29). This violates the dictates of the Old Testament Scriptures on two counts: First, God commanded Israel to build only one temple to reflect that fact that there is only one true God (Deuteronomy 12:5,13-14; 16:5-6). Second, the one legitimate temple was to be built in Jerusalem (Zion), the location designated by God (The Old Testament is filled with explicit references to God choosing Jerusalem [Zion] as the place where “His name would dwell” in the temple: for example, 1 Kings 8:44,48; 11:13,32,36; 14:21; 2 Kings 21:7; 23:27; 1 Chronicles 28:4; 2 Chronicles 6:6; 7:12,16; Psalm 78:68-69; Isaiah 18:7.
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The book of mormon is false and you should stay away from it.
The Bible is 100% true and the absolute word of God. =)
Jesus is God and the only way into heaven. Please pray a sincere prayer with all of your heart admitting to Jesus you are a sinner. Have full faith that His blood pays off all of your sins and accept His gift of everlasting life. I pray that God blesses you with peace. Amen.
1.Three days of Darkness
http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Anachronisms/Three_days_of_darkness
2. Romans 7
9 {For I was alive without the law once:} but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died
Paul states he was without the law when he was a child before he was accountable.
3. Man’s logic is not God’s logic. If God is omniscient and knows all things, then he would know Adam and Eve would sin. Why do you think the tree of knowledge of Good and evil was there?
And the tree of eternal life was taken away?
http://en.fairmormon.org/Plan_of_salvation/Original_sin
4. Daniel 12
10 Many shall be purified, and {made white,} and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
Daniel States many will be purified and made white…it has nothing to do with race.
The book of Mormon scriptures have nothing to do with black people since no black person was in the Americas until the 16th century and doesn’t say anything about one race morally or superior to another.
Lamanite curse
http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Lamanites/Curse
Is the Book of Mormon racist?
http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2003_Charge_of_Racism_in_the_Book_of_Mormon.html
5. The Jewish Temple and early Christianity
http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2008_The_Israelite_Temple_and_the_Early_Christians.html
I’ll star this so my fellow saints can answer.
But I would point out if you’ve read the bible at all from front to back, you know there are many many contradictions in it (no man has seen God at any time in John, and then Exodus is full of people seeing God, seeing his hindparts, people speaking with the Lord face to face, and the Lord laying his hand upon the elders of israel).
The gospels alone contain differing accounts that disagree with each other.
Yet they are considered infallible by many christians.
Why the double standard for another record that proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ?
first of all look at the bible itself, someone said that the NIV has 5000 errors in it alone.
i can find a couple hundred contadictions in the bible itself.
saved by grace alone or faith without works is dead
in my readings of the BoM, i see almost a thousand years of people who had different ideas about God. yes there seems to be contradictions, but if you look at every denominations of christian churches today, you will find thousands of contradictions between any two.
p.s. what makes the BoM true to me is not the fact that i was taught by revelation the doctrines in the LDS church, not alone, the BoM is true, in the sense that it is a written record of people that had faith in jesus. and they recorded their wars and contentions just like any religious history would. but the overall outcome was the glory of christ in his resurrection, the beginning of faith among prophets and people who worshipped God because of the prophecies of the saviour.
The book of Mormon and the Bible are not congruent and that is alright because the Book of Mormon is another Testament of Jesus Christ and does not claim to be the Bible.
The other testaments do not totally agree with one another either; the Christmas story in Matthew, for instance, is not exactly the same as the Christmas story in Luke. Some of the parables of Christ appear in Mark and not in John. But in those cases those testaments too are separated by time. Luke was not written until 100 or so years after Christ’s death.
There is not a purpose in responding to your “differences” because we as LDS accept that they are there. That is why the Holy Bible(KJV) is one of the four books in our canon.
1.) Others have already answered this one.
2.)You quoted Psalms 51, but you used the NIV…in the KJV, this scripture actually reads: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Being born into a world of sin (shapen in iniquity) and of an imperfect mother isn’t at all the same as being a sinner from birth. This is precisely why we don’t use the newer but altered versions of the Bible. Still, there are plenty of verses in the Bible (still the KJV) which do NOT support original sin: Mark 16: 15-16 and Matt 28:18-9 (Infants cannot believe), Mark 10:13-6, Matt 19:13-5, Acts 2:37-9 (Infants are incapable of repentance), Acts 8:12 (no children are baptized…and isn’t baptism to cleanse us of sin?), Acts 10:34-5 (infants can’t sin, because sin requires awareness, and infants just don’t have that). How are infants, who do not even understand the difference between good and evil, capable of choosing evil and thus capable of sinning?
3. “Bible specifically declares that Adam’s transgression was a sinful act of rebellion”
Actually, it doesn’t. The verses you mentioned only said that sin entered the world, not that Adam and Eve specifically sinned. They speak of the consequences, but at no point do those verses proclaim Adam and Eve’s guilt. Besides, there is a difference between sin and transgression. Sin is the act of choosing to go against God. Transgression occurs when we go against God without understanding what we do (such as when a very small child tells a lie, not really knowing why lying is evil). A transgression is a wrong, not a sin. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were still innocent. How, then, could they have sinned? They didn’t know what evil was, so how could they choose it? They disobeyed God, but they didn’t understand…and anyway, since when are we ever responsible for the choices of another? If you sin, am I held accountable? Of course not…so why would we be held responsible for the choices of someone who lived countless centuries before our births? That goes completely against the concept of repentance.
4. This is taken entirely out of context. Those few individuals were cursed, yes, but that only applies to them, not to anyone else, including their children. We are never responsible for the actions of another. Having non-white skin is about as spiritually significant as having non-blue eyes. It’s a physical attribute and nothing more.
5. Those scriptures only remind the people to offer sacrifices in the temple and not any random place. At no point does God say that there should be only ONE temple…which wouldn’t make sense, because plenty of people in the Bible built temples and were blessed for it. The children of Israel had several portable ones over the years. Solomon built a massive one. If your argument were correct, Solomon was in the wrong for building a temple…and yet years later, didn’t Christ cleanse the temple Himself? Why would He bother if the temple wasn’t a sacred place (which it wouldn’t have been if there could only be one temple, as others had existed before this was even built)?
No offense, but I’ve read these arguments before–and word for word. You’ve copied and pasted from other sites, and while that’s your right, you might want to do more research into the Bible yourself before blindly trusting what others have said. There are just too many holes in these arguments, too many scriptures taken out of context…more research on your part would probably be a good thing.
It could have been dark 3 hours in the Holy Land & 3 days in America. Why does it have to be the same?
Also, try to remember that the Bible was translated numerous times and different translations are slightly different. It’s not contradictions, it translation errors.
Sure.
“So many”? You call 5 that you think you’ve identified as “so many”? I believe in both and I don’t believe there are any more discrepancies between the Bible and the Book of Mormon than there are between individual books of the Bible.
1. I suspect that “earth” or “land” in this sense were referring to everything that they were familiar with. There wasn’t radio, tv, or Internet. They weren’t communicating with people on the other end of the globe. This is a history of their happenings, not a global one. I suspect this was volcanic in nature and that enough ash was kicked up to darken the sky but that’s only my speculation. The other possibility is that it was in fact a global event of some sort that blocked the sun for roughly a 12 hour period. If this were the case it might have blocked the sun during 12 hours of daylight in the Americas but only 3 hours of daylight in Israel and the event would have been happening for 9 hours or so while it was still nighttime in Israel. Have you looked into the time difference between Guatemala and Israel? It’s 8 hours. Neither of us knows enough about the event that caused the darkness to call this a contradiction. Why wouldn’t Joseph Smith have just written that there were 3 hours of darkness in the Americas too?
2. We do have a sinful nature from birth. We are born into a carnal world where we have carnal lusts and sinful desires. Babies are born into mortality where all of them will eventually commit sins if they live long enough. This is the nature of mortality. Would you care to explain to me what a newborn baby is doing to sin? Sin requires choice and understanding and an infant does not understand enough to commit sin.
3. This is a great example of an area where the two books of scripture help us to better understand what happened. There has been great controversy over this within Christianity for the past 1700 years or so. Non-LDS Christians have a hard time agreeing upon what the fall was and was not. Through additional scriptures we can better understand it. It was necessary for mankind to exist and it did put man into a fallen state where we were able to experiences joy and pain. It created an environment for us where we had the option to choose good over evil. This is one of the areas where many Christians can expand their understanding of the Bible by reading the Book of Mormon. There is no contradiction here.
4. Black skin was the mark of the curse on Cain. Fair skinned people are NOT morally superior. There were instances where the lighter skinned people were righteous because they were following the Lords prophets and their commandments. It had nothing to do with skin color. If you were to actually read the book instead of just reading anti-Mormon websites you’d find that there were times when the Lamanites were more righteous than the Nephites. You’d find examples of very righteous dark skinned individuals and very sinful lighter skinned individuals. If you want to know what our doctrine on this is, it’s in the Book of Mormon:
2 Ne. 26: 33
For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, BLACK AND WHITE, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.
That doesn’t really sound like the “racist book” that you’re trying to describe here now does it?
5. It’s true that the people were commanded to build a temple in Israel. No where in the Bible does it explain that this is the ONLY temple that should be built. How do you feel about the fact that archaeologists have found other smaller temples in the middle east? You’re assuming too much. You’re claiming that the Bible says things that it simply doesn’t say. There were smaller temples that operated in locations that were too far for Israelites to travel to. Inconvenient piece of archeology for you, I know.
Now let me ask you a few questions.
What would happen to you if you scrutinized verses in the Bible using the same standards that you require between the Book of Mormon and the Bible?
Would you admit that there were Unicorns in the Old Testament? What about Dragons? How do you feel about the command “Thou shalt not kill” and then in just one generation Joshua is commanding them to kill every Canaanite man, woman, child, and animal? You can’t honestly hold the Book of Mormon to a standard that the Bible would fail when compared to itself. Using only the Bible, non-LDS christians haven’t been able to agree upon the Nature of God for over 1700 years. This is because in one verse it will say “I and my father are one” and in another verse it will explain how they are different. You can make the Bible say just about anything you want by deciding which verses you want to take
1. Since the Bible takes place on one side of the world and the Book of Mormon on the other side, there is every possibility that it was three hours on one side and three days on the other.
2. It does not say that they do not have a sinful nature. It just says they are incapable of sin, because they do not understand the concept of sin. If they sin, it’s not on their heads, but on the heads of their parents.
Moroni 8:8 Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me.
3. Genesis does NOT say that it was an act of sinful rebellion. They did NOT rebel, they did what they were told not to, there’s a difference. They did it because they felt they had good reason to.
The Bible is silent on whether or not they could bear children in the Garden of Eden. We don’t know how long, in our terms of time, they were in the Garden before they ate the fruit.
4. The Book of Mormon does NOT state that white-skinned people are morally and spiritually superior to black skinned people.
2 Nephi 5:20 Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence.
21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
1 Nephi 17:35 Behold, the Lord esteemeth all flesh in one; he that is righteous is favored of God. But behold, this people had rejected every word of God, and they were ripe in iniquity; and the fulness of the wrath of God was upon them; and the Lord did curse the land against them, and bless it unto our fathers; yea, he did curse it against them unto their destruction, and he did bless it unto our fathers unto their obtaining power over it.
5. I saw nothing in Deuteronomy that says there should be one and only one temple in the entire world. Besides, if you live on one side of the world, back 600 years BEFORE the birth of Christ, getting to the temple in Jerusalem would be a bit of a problem. AND if you believe that GOD is telling you to build a temple, wouldn’t you do it?
And those other verses, they do not preclude that God would never command His people who lived on the other side of the world to build them a temple.
Obviously you’re not going to listen, so there is really no need to answer the question.
I’m sure you have an answer for the Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9 issue.
Did those with Saul/Paul at his conversion hear a voice?
ACT 9:7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
ACT 22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.
Your answer would likely not persuade an atheist who did not believe the Bible to begin with. Likewise there are answers to the questions you raise. However, a person who already “Knows” the Book of Mormon is not true would likely not be persuaded. A person who is honestly seeking with an open mind may be persuaded by your response regarding Acts and the answers found here about the purported Book of Mormon contradictions
There are many who have answered this question very well and given many examples to clarify their answers, so I will forbear answering your question in the way they have done.
Rather, I would like to share some other thoughts. I am uncertain as to whether you are legitimately asking so that you can more clearly understand what we believe or if you are only trying to further prove your own belief. Either way, pause for a moment and answer this question to yourself: Who is the only pure source of truth and light?
The one who I believe is the source of truth and light is God, and I believe He wants us to know Him. I also believe that if we learn of Him and His word and turn to Him in prayer that we can know Him.
You may or may not dislike the LDS church and what members of this church believe, but I hope and pray that you do follow Christ’s commandment and “love thy neighbor as thyself.”