Praying for a Witness to the BoM
Whenever a Mormon asks you to pray for a witness that the Book of Mormon is true ask how praying about the BoM will tell you if the Church is true.
Teachings in the Book of Mormon cannot be found in Mormonism. Jesus is God is preached in the book of Mosiah and this clearly doesn’t reflect what’s going on in the Mormon Church.
Mosiah 15:1-4: “And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son— And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.”
You can read more about this in our article “Burning in the Bosom” here.
A passage in the Book of Mormon invites the reader to ponder its message and then, through prayer, ask God the Father, in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, if the book is true. Readers are promised that when they ask with faith, the Holy Ghost will testify to them of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
And what happens when someone prays and God tells them the Book of Mormon isn’t true Leticia? One problem with praying about the Book of Mormon is that the outcome is already presupposed. When the missionaries, or other church members ask someone to pray about this book they expect to hear them say they believe as they do. If that person says they feel the opposite way then they are told they just didn’t pray with a real intent to know the truth, or told they must have unrepentant sin in their life stopping the Holy Spirit from revealing the truth of the Book of Mormon to them.
Another problem with praying about a book is that God never asked us to do so.. He never told us to pray about the Bible, or to pray about each book of the Bible to see if they’re truly from Him. IF he asked people to do that with the Book of Mormon why didn’t he do the same with the Bible?
Reminds me of that popular 70’s song… “Feelings… nothing more than feelings”. Now I have dated myself…
“Ask God sincerely if what I’m telling you is true” or “Ask in prayer if the Book of Mormon is true”
You can never find such statement if the Bible. Jesus says in John 5:39,to search the scriptures, and that the scriptures testify about him, not through prayer, Paul in Acts 17:2,3 uses reason to explain and prove Christ from the Scriptures. In 2 Cor 11:4-6, Christians in Berea did not take Apostle’s words for granted but examined the Scripture to see if whether what he preached was truth. It’s not biblical to pray to whether something is true or not. Any religion can claim that. You cannot know Christ apart from the Word of God.
FAITH COMES BY HEARING, AND HEARING BY THE WORD OF GOD. Romans 10:17
The ability to believe is not determined by how i feel when i pray but by the knowledge of truth found in the word of Christ. Truth is objective, unbiased.
Feelings are subjective. Knowledge of truth is critical.
When something is at stake I want to put may faith in something concrete, objective and unbiased rather than how I feel about it.
Eternal life is at stake.
John 5:39
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in
them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me”
2 Cor 11:4-6
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.”
Acts 17:2,3
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”
Acts 17:10-12
The brothers[b] immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.