Those who question the authenticity of the Book of Mormon should ask themselves the questions which follow. This piece was given to me by Richard Price in Independence, Missouri, many years ago. The author is anonymous.

  Occasionally you hear someone say, "I could believe your doctrine if I just did not have to believe the story about Joseph Smith being a prophet of God, and that he translated the Book of Mormon from some golden plates which he claimed he found in a hillside."

The answer is that the Book of Mormon had to have been written under divine direction because it could not have been written by any person under ordinary circumstances, for such is humanly impossible. Let us consider the facts or conditions listed on the following pages, which would have to be complied with, in order to produce a similar record under comparable conditions.

  Could You Write the Book of Mormon Under the Same
Conditions that Joseph Smith Wrote It?

1.    You must be between twenty-three and twenty-four years of age.

2. You cannot be a college graduate. In fact, you can have only three years of formal schooling.

3.    Whatever you write must be on the basis of what you know and not what you learn through research.

4.    You must write a history of an ancient country, such as Tibet , covering a period from 2200 BC to 421 AD.

5.    You must write a book with 102 chapters, twenty-five of them about wars, ten about history, twenty-one about prophecy, thirty-two about doctrines, five about missionaries, and nine about the mission of Christ.

6. You must include in your writings the history of two distinct and separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations or groups of people.

7. Your writings must describe the religious, economic, social, and political cultures and institutions of these two nations.

8. You must weave into your history the religion of Jesus Christ and the pattern for Christian living.

9. When you start to produce this record covering a period of over 2,600 years, you must finish it in approximately eighty days (less than three months).

10. When you have finished, you must not make any changes in the text. The first edition must stand forever (this does not include grammatical errors, etc.).

11. After pauses for sleep and food, if you are dictating to a steno­grapher, you must never ask to have the last paragraph or last sentence read back to you. You must start right where you stopped previously.

12. Your history or record must be long, approximately 777 pages with over 500 words per page.

13. You must add 180 proper nouns to the English language (William Shakespeare added thirty).

14. You must announce that your "smooth narrative" is not fiction, but true, yes, a sacred history.

15. In fact, your narrative must fulfill the Bible prophecies; even in the exact manner in which it shall come forth, to whom given, and its purpose and accomplishments.

16. You must publish it to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, declaring it to be the Word of God.

17. You must include with the record itself this marvelous promise:  "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will mani­fest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."

18. Tens of thousands must bear record to the world for the next 164 years that they know the record to be true. Because they put the promise to the test, the truth is manifested to them by the power of the Holy Ghost.

19. Thousands of great men, intellectual giants, and scholars, must subscribe discipleship to the record of its movement, even to the point of laying down their lives.

20. There can be no flaw, whatever, in the entire book (except in grammar, or other errors of man in transcribing, etc.).

21. Your descriptions of the cultures in these civilizations, of which you will write about, is not known when you publish your manuscript.

22. Yet, you must not make any absurd, impossible, or contradictory statements.

23. Even so, many of the facts, ideas, and statements given as true in your record must be entirely inconsistent with, even the direct opposite of, the prevailing belief of the world. Yet very little is even claimed to be known about these civilizations and their thousands of years of history.

24. You must invite the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care. You must strive diligently to see that your book gets into the hands of all those most eager to prove it a forgery and who are most competent to expose any flaws in it.

25. After 164 years of extensive analysis, no claim or fact in the book is disproved, but all are vindicated. Other theories and ideas as to its origin rise and fall, leaving your claims as the only possible ones.

26. Thorough investigation, scientific evidence, and archaeological discoveries for the next 164 years must verify your claims and prove even the minutest details of your history to be perfectly true.

27. Internal and external prophecies must be confirmed and fulfilled in the next 164 years.

28. Three honest, creditable witnesses must testify to the whole world that an angel from heaven appeared to them and showed them the ancient records from which you claim your record was translated.

29. You must hear out of heaven the voice of the Redeemer declaring to you and those three witnesses that your record is true, and that it is their responsibility to bear testimony of it and that they do.

30. Eight other witnesses must testify to the world that they saw the ancient records in broad daylight, and that they handled them and felt the engravings thereon.

31. The first three and the second eight witnesses must bear their testimony, not for profit or gain, but under great personal sacrifice and severe persecution, even to their deaths.

32. You must talk a friend into financing your book with the under­standing that he or you will never receive any monetary remuneration from it. This person must mortgage his farm to have it printed. You must sell the book at cost or less.

33. Finally, after suffering persecution and revilement for twenty-four years in the process of producing and defending this book, you must give, willingly, your own life for your testimony that the record is of God.

  The Book of Mormon has met the above requirements, which is evidence that it could not have been written by an uninspired man. It was translated by the gift and power of God from ancient records. It is worthy of being classed as Scripture, which it is.

  (The author of this article is unknown. The article was circulated in the Independence area in 1948. Dates and numbers relating to how many years have passed since the Book of Mormon was printed have been changed to correspond with the year 1994.)

  Price Publishing Company
915 E. 23rd Street
Independence , MO 64055