I love this experience that Elder David A. Bednar shared 20 years ago. It helps to strengthen my testimony of not only the Book of Mormon, but also of Joseph Smith and his prophetic calling:
I want to begin with my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I will end with my testimony as well, but I want to begin by declaring that I love the Book of Mormon. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and want to take just a minute or two to describe a personal experience that relates to my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I know by the witness of the Spirit and by personal experience that the Book of Mormon is true.Before coming to Ricks College, I was a business professor for almost 20 years. As a part of my work, I wrote books. I brought with me today one of the books I authored with a colleague when I was a faculty member at the University of Arkansas. This book is 650 pages long, it contains 17 chapters, and it took us two years to write. The colleague with whom I wrote this book also has a Ph.D., which means that we each went to college for eight years or more--a total of more than 16 years of formal higher education between the two of us. It is a remarkable experience to receive a box of these brand-new books from the publisher. I was seated in my office at Texas Tech University when my box of books arrived. I opened up the box and thumbed through one of the books. As I did so, I looked out the window of my office and asked myself the question, "Why did you write this book?" When you really think about it, investing so much time and effort in a project that so quickly becomes obsolete is rather foolish. As I posed that question to myself and as I was pondering, the thought came to me, "Because now you know by experience that Joseph Smith could not have written the Book of Mormon." That conclusion clearly was influenced by the fact that for all of my professional career we lived in Arkansas and Texas. We, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were the religious minority in the middle of the Bible Belt. We relentlessly were confronted by people of other faiths who said, "The Book of Mormon is not necessary; the Bible is all that you need. And Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon."With eight years of university training, with two years of very dedicated work, with an editorial staff, with personal computers, with spell checkers and thesauruses on-line, with the Internet and the other resources that are so readily available, when I picked up the book that I had written and opened it up, I still found mistakes. And within a matter of twelve months, this book upon which I had worked so hard and so long was obsolete and had to be revised.Brothers and sisters, you could take a team of the brightest people on the earth, as large a team as you might want, with all of the support staff, all of the computer technology, and all of the assistance that you can imagine, and such a team could not produce one page of a Book of Mormon. Consider the power of the following phrases: ". . . men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25); ". . . wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10); and ". . . press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope" (2 Nephi 31:20). We could go on for a long, long time quoting simple but powerful phrases that no one could have generated without divine assistance.The best summary I have ever found about the Book of Mormon is from George Cannon, the father of George Q. Cannon. This is what he said, "No wicked man could write such a book as this, and no good man would write it unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so" (LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, Andrew Jenson, Vol. 1, pg. 42).Well, brothers and sisters, intellectually I know the Book of Mormon is true; and I know it through personal experience as an author. And that type of knowledge is nice. But what is most important is the witness of the Spirit. And I know by the witness of the Spirit, I know intellectually, and I know as an author and by personal experience that Joseph Smith could not and did not write the Book of Mormon.
COME UNTO CHRIST
Religion Symposium
January 29, 2000
Elder David A. Bednar
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