#STRask - What Do You Make of the Book of Mormon, and Why Do You Consider It “Another Gospel”?

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Questions about what we make of the eyewitnesses to Joseph Smith’s golden plates, our thoughts on the Book of Mormon itself, and why we consider Latter-day Saint theology to be “another gospel.”   What do you make of the eyewitnesses to the golden plates, what do you make of the Book of Mormon itself, and why do you consider it “another gospel”?

This is the hashtag STRASC podcast from Stan to Reason. Hopefully you're in the right place. You didn't stumble across us accidentally. Actually, if you did, great. We're glad you're here. Absolutely. All right, we're starting today with a question from Jacob. Hi, I'm a Latter-day Saint.

What do you make of the 19-ish eyewitnesses to the golden plates, four or five of which corroborate the angel Maroni? What do you make of the Book of Mormon itself? Why do you consider it another gospel? Well, there's three questions here. I'm not qualified to answer the first. And frankly, in a certain sense, and I don't – this is not dismissive, but this is somewhat epistemological, okay? Even if there are 19 witnesses to exactly what Joseph Smith said he saw and did, that in itself is not –

probative, in a sense, evidence of any significant sense to the broad issue of the legitimacy or the accuracy of the truthfulness of the LDS doctrine. Okay. So I'm just saying, okay, what if I said, yeah, those guys are all witnessed exactly what they said they witnessed. Now, what follows from that regarding your religion? Now, the Book of Mormon, is that the second part of the... Yeah, what do you make of the Book of Mormon itself?

All right. Again, my response is going to be encouraging people not to major in minors. Okay? The Book of Mormon is allegedly a record of Jesus' visitation to the... Americas, and there were vast civilizations there that there's a record of in the Book of Mormon. And what people are asked to do is to read the Book of Mormon, then ask God whether this is inspired or not, and God will give them a subjective confirmation called the burning in the bosom, is that the right terminology, that helps them to be confident that book of

is actually from God. Now, that's the wrong test. I don't think anybody should look at the Gospels and say, you read the Gospel of Mark and then ask God to give you a burning in the bosom to see if this is actually God's word. Because nowhere in Scripture do we ever have any encouragement to seek out a subjective test to find out whether any book is written by God. Even Jesus didn't say this about himself in the face of his detractors. I know they cite James, Chapter 1. I'll get to that in a moment as a proof text for this approach. But even Jesus, you read John, was it John 5?

You find something like this in John A, too. Jesus said, you don't believe me. I'm only one witness. I'm making claims about myself. You're saying, oh, you're only one witness. He said, well, what about Moses? What about John the Baptist? What about Scripture? What about the miracles I do? Notice that Jesus goes to all of the evidential elements that are third person public to justify belief in him. He doesn't say, pray, and ask God to see if you get a burning in your bosom. Now, I know that in James, James says, if anybody lacks wisdom, he should ask of God, God will give that wisdom liberally and without reproach. Okay. Oh, there you go, and that's the verse that they cite. But we have a rule. Stand to Reason. It's called Never Read a Bible verse. And this particular passage is not James giving advice to find out what verses are actually inspired by God, what passages, what book, In fact, he didn't even say, no, I'm writing this thing for God.

It's called the Epistle of James, and I want you to pray and see if you get a burning in the bosom if I'm saying the right thing. I mean, this is silly. The presumption that they make is James is speaking accurately for God, so now we're going to lift this out of the context and apply it to this other book, the Book of Mormon. And James isn't teaching that. He's talking about how you deal with trials and difficulties. and hardships. You ask for wisdom to get through the difficulties and hardships, and God will give it to you.

Don't doubt that it'll give you wisdom to get through the hard times, and the hard times are brought by God, and God is using them to develop virtue in our lives. This is his point, and we are to ask for wisdom in those circumstances. He's not giving us a criteria for assessing which passages are inspired. I mean, it's not even there. It's nothing to do with anything. But nevertheless, they lift this out of context, then give it to people, and they think they're applying a biblical motif, and then they apply it to the Book of Mormon, and then some, many, I guess, get this burning in the bosom, and I talked to one LDS who's close to our family, actually, and She said, yeah, it took me a long time to get it.

Okay. Hmm. I thought that was telling. In any event, this is the right method. And by the way, when you use the right method, you check to see if there's any historical, any reason to believe that this book is historically accurate. You have people fighting battles with chariots pulled by horses. Chariots have wheels.

there were no horses in America until the Spaniards brought them. And there were no wheels. The Spaniards brought those too, or the Europeans. So here's a glaring historical inaccuracy about these accounts. And I have only heard one response from LDS apologists, and that is, well, they're not really chariots. They're more like sleds or sleighs. Like, you know, a sleigh doesn't have a wheel. it has a runner, and they weren't really horses.

They were deer. Well, there were deer, and they were slaves. But now you have a deer pulling a sleigh. Now, I'm not trying to make fun of it, but really. And the problem is with that, the way, what Joseph Smith claimed is that he, that the words would glow in the hat that he was looking into. until he got them right. So why would God translate chariot if it was actually a slay? Yeah.

It's not as if he's trying to translate into things that people understand from the original language. He's actually getting the translation from God. So why would he not say what it actually is? There's problems with swords, like the metals and things too. Yeah, and there's no archaeological evidence for all of these civilizations. So it just doesn't work. And this is exactly why they have to twist a verse out of James to apply it to someone to give them a subjective experience to believe that something is from God when there is no significant exterior evidence that it's the case. The internal evidence is problematic, and the external archaeology just isn't in place.

And one other thing, and you can attest to this better than I can because this is more of a forte for you, LDS. And that is the Book of Mormon is not theological. It isn't like the Mormon doctrine is displayed there. This is more than other books, Doctrine of Covenants and Pearl and Grey Price, et cetera, and some of the other revelations. That's where the doctrine comes from. So, you know, it's just so, it's troubling to me. I'm trying to find the most charitable way of putting it. They use a biblical verse out of context to support a subjective test

that is not a biblical test or even a sound test to trust historical material that isn't historically sound when examined by any other means to get people to buy into Mormonism, which is then a stepstone from the Book of Mormon, into the doctrinal things that are massively problematic. And that's the third point, another gospel, because it's totally a different gospel. Go ahead. So before we get to that part, let me say a few things about this first part.

There are 11 official witnesses that I believe their testimony is actually printed in the Book of Mormon. Now, if you're interested in hearing about the specific, about their testimony. I recommend going to Mormonism research ministry. That's mrm.org. And I looked up an article that has all the details on each of the testimonies and the people involved. And it's called Did the 11 Witnesses actually see the gold plates? You can find it at mrm.org slash 11 hyphen witnesses. And what's interesting here, and I can't go through this. It's a very long article, so I can't go through the whole thing.

But just to sum up, what it turns out is that the situation where people were seeing these things, and again, over time as they were interviewed, they gave more and more information. So all that information is in this article. It comes out that what they were actually saying is we saw it with our spiritual eyes. These are the first three witnesses. They had to go out into the woods and pray to be able to see it. And they had to do it for a long time that God would give them the faith. to see it. And it wasn't like Joseph Smith went back and picked them up and brought them out there.

They saw them as a vision out in the woods. And they had to pray for faith for quite a long period of time. In fact, one of them had to go away and the two had the vision and then he had to see it later. So which is based on their own testimony. This is their own testimony. Yeah. So what you'll find is that it wasn't that Joseph Smith said, here they are, handle them, et cetera, in the case of those three. Now, for the other ones, some of them did pick things up and touch them, but it was always underneath something. He had them enclosed either in a box or under a cloth or whatever it was. It wasn't as if people were looking straight at them with their physical eyes. Either they were saying it was a spiritual vision or they were saying they were touching it and was underneath

some other thing. By the way, they lifting the entire compliment, of these plates? I think I don't want to say exactly specifics. I don't remember the exact specifics. The reason I say this is because gold is really heavy. That is a problem. And I can't remember how heavy they said it would have been. I could probably look at it pretty.

But it is very heavy. In fact. Heavier than lead? Yes. I've tried to lift replicas of the weight that they would have been. In fact, they're less than the weight they would have been. and they're very, very difficult to pick up. So if you want the details of the eyewitnesses, this is a very, because sometimes atheists will accuse you, well, why don't you believe

these other testimonies if you believe these testimonies about Jesus? And the answer is, I mean, we talked about this, we talked about evidence for the eyewitness testimony in the Gospels in the last episode. So you can go back to that and hear more about that. But this is something different. this is one person receiving revelation much later on. So it's not as if we've had the Book of Mormon documents all this time. We don't have them now. They were taken away again. So we have one person's word on that.

And then we have the witnesses who either saw them with their spiritual eyes or underneath something else. And again, the language used in the official testimony. before their interview later can sound different. But when you actually read their explanation of the words they were using and their definitions of the words, you find out they didn't actually see them the way they would see something. And this is obvious because otherwise, Joseph Smith could have just brought them out and shown them. He wouldn't have had them go out to a place where they were not and say that they needed to see a vision. In other words, the vision they were seeing was not in the location of the plate itself? Oh, okay. I didn't catch that the first time around.

Yeah, they went out to the woods to pray. They didn't, he didn't take them into the place where he was actually translating them. That's the first three. Yeah. Two got it and one had to get it later. Yes, that's my understanding. Again, there's a lot of details here, so it's hard to keep them all straight. But the devil's in the details, you know, especially in these kinds of testimonies.

And what's, I think, what's interesting distinction here is that in the first, in the case of experiences can be, one of two kinds. They can be first person private or they can be third person public. First person private is your thoughts or you have a vision, for example, or that's only happening in a way that you're the only one who has access to it, even in principle, all right? Third person public is what we're doing here. And anybody can walk in and see us having this conversation. And it's open to anybody's verification, the events themselves. What you just described was taking place in these eyewitness accounts were first person private, largely, at least in the first three cases, first person private. These were things that was going on in their minds, not something that was

there for everybody to see, but the resurrection appearances of Jesus, those are third person public. That is, these are, anybody that was there would have seen Jesus. And in fact, that's what the text claims. These weren't some kind of, like, mystical thing that just happened. Now, there are mystical things that are first person private, you know, the angel Gabriel going to marry. But we're talking about the salient details of the historical record. This was open for everybody to see. And that's very different than what we're talking about here. And they were unexpected. Think about Thomas. Thomas wasn't expecting to see Jesus. He, he was. was not believing. He had to touch Jesus. They weren't expecting it when they saw him on the shore,

and Peter swims out to Jesus, and they eat fish with him. This is a different kind of thing. It wasn't just a vision. It's just a different kind of revelation that was happening there. Now, here's another thing about the book of Mormon. You have to believe the test is true, the test for finding out if it's true in order to use the test to find out if it's true. So you can't assume the conclusion that you're trying to prove. And in fact, it's very dangerous

to ignore the test given by the Bible and ask for a different test from a book that you don't know is true and use that test to determine if it's true. So here's a quote from Second Thessalonians that illustrates why this is dangerous. it talks about how it's talking about the end times and it says the one who is coming in accord with the activity of Satan with all powers and signs and false wonders and with all the deception of

wickedness for those who perished because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. Okay, so they don't love the truth. And then it says, for this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false in order that they all may be judged who did not believe. leave the truth but took pleasure and wickedness. Now, I'm not saying that this is specifically about Mormons. What I'm saying is that the principle here that if you reject what is true and go after other things and you don't love what is true and you're not looking at LDS doctrine against what the

Bible teaches and you go after another test, you cannot be surprised if you are diluted. God has already shown that those who don't love the truth, he will send a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false as a judgment against them. So what are the tests in the Bible? Well, there are two that come to mind that fit very well here, and one of them is in Deuteronomy 13. So, Deuteronomy 13 says, if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love

the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. So just because a prophet comes, you have to look at the God he's teaching. Yeah. And LDS doctrine fails in this because it has a completely different conception of who God is. Utterly and completely, yeah. You said there were two things coming to mind. Yes. So the second one, as I'm looking up that one, I'll just give a couple things about the differences with God. They say God is a physical being.

We are the same kind of being as God. We're just at an earlier level, earlier stage of development. But we can progress if we do all the right things to be, to be kind of. come like God and have our own world. If we do all of all of these certain ordinances and laws and things like that, we can progress as our God began as a man and progress. Now, they're split, I mean, there's, there, Mormons will tell you different things about whether or not they think God was once a sinner and then, and then was forgiven. But the fact that he is a physical man with a physical body is a completely different concept. And he has his own God. That's a completely different

conception of God. Completely different. The second test is in Galatians one. Let's see. Six. One, somewhere around that. Yeah. So he says, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another. Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be a cursed. So does it have a different God? Does it have a different gospel? And notice here that even if there are miracles, even if there's an angel. Angel of light. So I don't even have to say, let's say the, I don't even have to say, okay, the Book of Mormon, I know exactly how it came about.

Joseph Smith used some other thing or he made it up or whatever, even if it's supernatural, even if he did get it from a supernatural being, if it teaches, or if that whole system teaches a different God and a different gospel, then I know it's false. I don't have to pray about it, just like I don't have to pray about anything else the Bible teaches about because it already fails the test given in the Bible, which, by the way, LDS people accept as true. they should care about these tests, too. They say. That's another difficulty.

Well, the Bible is inspired as far as it's properly translated, which, who's going to object to that? I don't object to that. Right. Now, the thing here is that Joseph Smith claimed to have made another translation, so he did add things in there that have no basis. They have no basis in any manuscript evidence we have. But if you, you can see this online.

So you can go to his translation online and say, okay, if you won't look at the King James version or now they accept other versions, I think there's six versions that they will allow their people to use. But even if you don't accept any of those, well, let's look at what he said. Did he change this? Well, if he didn't, then you still have to go by what the Bible says if you think it's the word of God. So now we come to the question, is it a different gospel? So do you have anything to say about that before? Well, I'll let you say, handle most of this because you're so good at this. But in a general thing, because of what I understand about the gospel and Mormonism,

no one could say this or raise the question, who is familiar with the true gospel and who is familiar with the Mormon gospel. When you are familiar with both of those claims, those package, so to speak, if you want to know the biblical version, just read the book of Galatians for one. You would say read Romans, but Romans is much longer, and Paul gets the job done a little quicker in Galatians, but it's the same thing. then when it comes to comparing the biblical gospel with the Mormon gospel such as it is, because I don't think Mormonism, the package about salvation for Mormonism, is good news at all. In any event, anybody who at least understands these just factually could not be asking what's the difference, because they are worlds apart?

Well, you don't even have to know anything, really, because if it's the case, as they claim, that there was a great apostasy, and now they have the restored gospel, that's what they call it, the restored gospel. By its very nature, they're saying, and they have said from the beginning, that it is a different gospel.

So the claim by the Mormons is that we have a false gospel, that we lost all the important things. We lost our priesthood authority. We lost our ordinances. We lost all these things that would allow us to be exalted. And they have the restored gospel. So the whole purpose for sending out missionaries to tell people a restored gospel is that they think we have a different gospel. Which is what Joseph Smith said to.

Right. Now, the problem is the confusion can happen because we use the same language, but we mean different things. For example, a Mormon will likely say he believes that we are saved by grace. But when you start asking questions, what it turns out is that they're talking about the resurrection from the dead. We will all be resurrected from the dead and go to one of the future places because of what Christ did on the cross. So that's what they call saved by grace. The exaltation, which is getting to the highest level of heaven where you have all of the, the blessings God has to offer, that comes by following the ordinances and the laws and the

priesthood authority and all those things that are restored in their gospel. So there's a little bit of difficulty because of the language here. And I know we've gone over, but I really want to read, because I think this parable really illustrates the difference is so well. Great. And this comes from a – it comes from their actual teaching manual. It's called Gospel Principles. You can find this online. I haven't looked at it in the last couple years, but I assume it's still on their website.

But this is from an article you wrote. So it's bib sourced there in the article. Is that correct? Yes. I mean, I could click on it here and find it. Well, that's right. But I want people to know to go to your article to read the quotation, the citation, the citation from the original source.

Yeah. So if you look up that the title of my article is LDSV. view of atonement clarified, and you will find a link to this parable. So in this parable, there's a man who is in debt, and he cannot repay the debt. So he's about to be thrown into prison, and he cries out for mercy, and the creditor demands justice. So here, this is what the narrator says. Is there no way for justice to be fully served and mercy also?

there is a way. The law of justice can be fully satisfied and mercy can be fully extended, but it takes someone else. So far so good, right? And so it happened this time. The debtor had a friend. He came to help. He thought him foolish to have gotten himself into such a predicament. Nevertheless, he wanted to help because he loved him. He stepped between them, faced the creditor, and made this offer. I will pay the debt if you will free the debtor from his contract so that he may keep his possessions and not go to prison. You demanded justice. Though he cannot pay you, I will do so. You will have been justly dealt with and can ask no more. So far so good. So far so good. That's the end of our gospel. This is the end of the Christian gospel right here. If it ended there,

then I would say, okay, this is illustrating the gospel of the Bible. But it goes on. The mediator turned then to the debtor. If I pay your debt, will you accept me as your creditor? Oh, yes, yes, you saved me from prison and show mercy to me. Then, said the benefactor, you will pay the debt to me, and I will set the terms. It will not be easy, but it will be possible. I will provide a way you need not go to prison. Oh, my goodness.

So now they have this plan of salvation. It's their way of basically paying Jesus back. and earning their way to the highest level of heaven. This is a different gospel. And obviously, you've got to start with the idea that we have different gospels or you're not going to get anywhere in figuring out which one is true. But hopefully, this at least helps you understand the differences and also why we reject the LDS gospel, why we urge you to look at what the Bible says about the gospel, read Romans, read Galatians, read Romans, but also read Galatians. It's actually not that long. You can read it in about 45, 50 minutes. You can do it, I promise you. But it is all about salvation by grace and why it's salvation by grace. And in a nutshell, it's because that is the only way we can be saved. None of us can be good enough. The Mormon gospel is bad news. It's, It's not good news.

This is what you were saying at the beginning, Greg. And I highly recommend Mormonism Research Ministry, MRM.org. They have so many resources, and it's a great place to go. If you're looking for original sources and you're looking for quotes and things and you want to understand more about LDS theology, that's a great place to go. All right. Thank you. Jacob. I really appreciate the fact that you're even listening or sitting in a question. That's fantastic. And I'm really glad that you ask this question. If you have a question you haven't asked it yet,

go to our website at STR.org or go to X. Use the hashtag STR Ask. And we really do look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.