Myths Refuted #1: Revelation Ended with the Bible

In my last post I explained that I would begin a study of the Book of Mormon that focuses on five main points in an attempt to explain what makes the Book of Mormon so valuable to me and all of God's children. The first of these five points is: The Myths of Christianity that the Book of Mormon Refutes.

The first obvious myth of main stream Christian tradition that the Book of Mormon refutes is that revelation ended with the Bible. Not only is the Book of Mormon a tangible testament that the Bible is not the only book of revelation and scripture from God to His children on Earth, but the way in which the Book of Mormon was revealed to the Earth is a standing testament that God still reveals himself to men on earth and directs the affairs of His church in these last-days.

Joseph Smith called the Book of Mormon the "keystone of our religion." The keystone, because the truth of what the Book of Mormon is, establishes the truth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the restored Church of Christ in the last "dispensation of the fullness of times." (Ephesians 1:10)

In October 2011, Elder Tad R. Callister spoke at the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he explained why the Book of Mormon reveals the origins of the Church, he said:

"Years ago my great-great-grandfather picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon for the first time. He opened it to the center and read a few pages. He then declared, “That book was either written by God or the devil, and I am going to find out who wrote it.” He read it through twice in the next 10 days and then declared, “The devil could not have written it—it must be from God.”

"That is the genius of the Book of Mormon—there is no middle ground. It is either the word of God as professed, or it is a total fraud. This book does not merely claim to be a moral treatise or theological commentary or collection of insightful writings. It claims to be the word of God—every sentence, every verse, every page. Joseph Smith declared that an angel of God directed him to gold plates, which contained the writings of prophets in ancient America, and that he translated those plates by divine powers. If that story is true, then the Book of Mormon is holy scripture, just as it professes to be; if not, it is a sophisticated but, nonetheless, diabolical hoax."

"C. S. Lewis spoke of a similar dilemma faced by someone who must choose whether to accept or reject the Savior’s divinity—where there is likewise no middle ground: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. … You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. … But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

"Likewise, we must make a simple choice with the Book of Mormon: it is either of God or the devil. There is no other option."

Many Christians today, faced with this question, have simply decided that the Book of Mormon must be a fraud and Joseph Smith and the Church he founded must be of the devil. Unfortunately, they do so without making an earnest attempt to investigate the book with a sincere desire to know for themselves what is true. This is particularly sad because of how truly magnificent the implications are if the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be, and if Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet of God called by God to restore his church in preparation for His second coming.

When Christ came in the meridian of time he was rejected by God's people in apostasy and accused of being of the devil because of the extraordinary claims he made that he was the son of God with authority to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17) of Moses, establish a new church, and most incomprehensibly redeem all mankind from the effects of the fall. It was too astonishing, too supernatural, to fundamentally altering to the religious ideas of the day that some could not even entertain the idea that it might actually be true.

When Jesus Christ came to Joseph Smith in a sacred grove of trees in upstate New York, to restore His church to the earth for the last time in preparation for His coming in Glory, his work was again too astonishing and too fundamentally altering to the apostate religious teachings of the his people throughout the world, that though he revealed himself in majesty and power to a boy prophet, as in days of old, as in days of old, the people at large rejected these miracles and the prophet.

Elder Jeffery R. Holland said in the April 2008 General Conference of the church that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is "accused, erroneously, of not being Christian," on two primary points; 1) The church's teaching of the nature of the Godhead, which Elder Holland had spoke about at a previous conference, and 2) "The bold assertion that God continues to speak His word and reveal His truth, revelations which mandate an open canon of scripture." The Book of Mormon stands as the most powerful witness that God continues to reveal himself to man on earth.

Elder Holland bears this witness:

"Some Christians, in large measure because of their genuine love for the Bible, have declared that there can be no more authorized scripture beyond the Bible. In thus pronouncing the canon of revelation closed, our friends in some other faiths shut the door on divine expression that we in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold dear: the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the ongoing guidance received by God’s anointed prophets and apostles. Imputing no ill will to those who take such a position, nevertheless we respectfully but resolutely reject such an unscriptural characterization of true Christianity."

To address the scripture most often used to establish the idea of a closed canon of scripture Elder Holland said this:

"One of the arguments often used in any defense of a closed canon is the New Testament passage recorded in Revelation 22:18: “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of … this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.” However, there is now overwhelming consensus among virtually all biblical scholars that this verse applies only to the book of Revelation, not the whole Bible. Those scholars of our day acknowledge a number of New Testament “books” that were almost certainly written after John’s revelation on the Isle of Patmos was received. Included in this category are at least the books of Jude, the three Epistles of John, and probably the entire Gospel of John itself.1 Perhaps there are even more than these."

"But there is a simpler answer as to why that passage in the final book of the current New Testament cannot apply to the whole Bible. That is because the whole Bible as we know it—one collection of texts bound in a single volume—did not exist when that verse was written. For centuries after John produced his writing, the individual books of the New Testament were in circulation singly or perhaps in combinations with a few other texts but almost never as a complete collection. Of the entire corpus of 5,366 known Greek New Testament manuscripts, only 35 contain the whole New Testament as we now know it, and 34 of those were compiled after A.D. 1000."

The Book of Mormon, if it is true, (and a person can know if it's true or false by reading it with real intent and in prayer asking God with a sincere desire to receive a witness) stands as a sure witness that the notion that revelation ended with the Bible, or that the need for prophets and apostles is no more, is a myth that limits God and makes his children reliant upon the interpretations of man alone for their understanding of God and His gospel.

Elder Holland continues with these words to Christians who may misunderstand our love for the Book of Mormon and it's place as the keystone of our faith:

"Please do not misunderstand. We love and revere the Bible, as Elder M. Russell Ballard taught so clearly from this pulpit just one year ago. The Bible is the word of God. It is always identified first in our canon, our “standard works.” Indeed, it was a divinely ordained encounter with the fifth verse of the first chapter of the book of James that led Joseph Smith to his vision of the Father and the Son, which gave birth to the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our time. But even then, Joseph knew the Bible alone could not be the answer to all the religious questions he and others like him had. As he said in his own words, the ministers of his community were contending—sometimes angrily—over their doctrines. “Priest [was] contending against priest, and convert [was contending] against convert … in a strife of words and a contest about opinions,” he said. About the only thing these contending religions had in common was, ironically, a belief in the Bible, but, as Joseph wrote, “the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question [regarding which church was true] by an appeal to the Bible.” Clearly the Bible, so frequently described at that time as “common ground,” was nothing of the kind—unfortunately it was a battleground.

In the coming summaries of my study of the Book of Mormon and the the Myths of Christianity that the Book of Mormon Refutes, it will become more clear why the Book of Mormon was prepared by the Lord to be brought forth in our time through His prophet Joseph Smith. The loss of many plain and precious truths of Christ's gospel are the reason there was a need for a restoration in our times. For those who have received their own witness of the Book of Mormon, our hearts exclaim, "Oh how marvelous this work and a wonder is!"