The Book of Mormon: A piece of my Testimony

I recently went to Utah to attend the funeral of a long-time family friend.  (I will post his eulogy shortly.)  While waiting for Sacrament meeting to start, I was once again pondering on something a friend had said to me a year or two ago when she was learning about the Church.  It's my opinion that she was less concerned with seeking spiritual truth than learning "facts", wherever they came from, ones that she could use to tell me why I was wrong.  As I contemplated, this was the result.

If Joseph had been a treasure hunter, digging for gold and claiming to have found it, why then--instead of renouncing his vision, moving far away, and changing his name to live a life of luxury--would he instead go on to publish a single book--having to borrow money in order to do so--face persecution and prosecution, be driven from place to place, threatened, tortured, beaten, imprisoned, betrayed, and be subjected to all manner of hellish tribulation and hatred?  Why would anyone endure so much for so worldly little, if there was not a deep spiritual truth at their foundation.  How could that book have endured for nearly two hundred years with only increasing worldwide interest and devotion without truth in its very essence?

The Book of Mormon is equal to the Bible in significance and testimony of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.  The major differences between these two records are the cultures and locations that wrote them, and the methods by which we gained them.  One follows the House of Isreal--and in time, primarily the Tribe of Judah--and was compiled from many manuscripts and voted upon as an official consolidation of doctrine.  The second followed an offshoot of Israel, preserved in the New World from the destruction of Babylon as followers of Jehovah, handed down through generations of kings and judges, compiled and condensed by ancient prophets and hid up to later be translated by a modern prophet.

Both exhort us to be obedient, to repent, to endure to the end, to make and keep sacred covenents with God, to have faith, hope, and charity, to be about the work of spreading the Gospel, to defend and support the weak, to deal justly with all people and peoples, to be kind, to be virtuous, to be honest, to worship God as the Father of all creation, to have mercy, to do good works, and above all else, to believe in Jesus Christ as Redeemer of the world.

the Book of Mormon has over 500 pages of  cultural, literary, and spiritual complexity that is so complete, it is at the very least highly improbable that a farm boy with an eighth grade education could concoct them, much less compile them in sixty days.  At best, the Book of Mormon is miraculous in its existence, to say nothing of its power to inspire good and the impact it has had on millions of lives across the world over the past one hundred and eighty years.

Whether on accepts Joseph Smith as a prophet or the Book of Mormon as legitimate Christian scripture, these are the simple facts of that tome.

I do accept the Book of Mormon as scripture, as great and worthy scripture, and I testify that it has profoundly changed and shaped my life.  I  am a better person since I began a consistent study of it in my early 20s; I am kinder, more patient, closer to God, and spiritually more sure of myself.  I have gained great insight, knowledge, and wisdom from the Book of Mormon, and I know that it is true.  Because it exists, because I have felt the whisper of the Spirit confirming it, I know that Joseph Smith was and is a Prophet, that he opened this dispensation for the restoration of the fullness of the Gospel, and that his work is still in force today.  This I say in the name of Jesus Christ.