Is the Book of Mormon Historically Reliable?
Joseph Smith’s History 1:34; “He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants.”
Acts 17:11; “were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
Remember what the choice seer Joseph Smith said? To back his claims we have the official LDS website and it says yes it is an historical account;
“Latter-day Saints also consider the Book of Mormon to be a record of great ancient-American civilizations.”
However, we see that we have a problem when Mormon apostle Russell Nelson said that it’s not a history book;
Now while people can say as much about the Bible as well we suggest to you that archaeologists and historians alike have used the Bible. It’s been used as a reference to either search for places mentioned in accounts of Jerusalem, etc and used unknown times as verifiable proof of historical events in ancient history.
Unfortunately, we have no such luxury with the Book of Mormon and furthermore we have opposing announcements about its reliability for factual, historical events in time. Even the Smithsonian and National Geographic agree that it can’t be used as a reliable tool.
We can be as the Bereans in the early church and read history books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries as well as search the scriptures to see if what we’re being told is really true.
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