Matt Slick Bible Study - 7/12/2017 - Mormonism Pt. 1

We're live, good. All right, what's the date today? It's the 12th of July. We're gonna do Mormonism tonight, and it'll probably be two or three weeks we'll be doing Mormonism, so I'll be going through some stuff.

We have newbies there. How you doing? All right. And normally I would say, but they've been rubbing it in now. We don't have the radio show here. I'd go, hey, I don't even listen to you on the radio. Can't say it anymore.

Prayer and Overview of the Mormonism Study

So anyway, let me pray. We'll just jump right in. We've got the slides. I'm gonna go through the origins of Mormonism, and then next week we'll probably do some more of the doctrinal issues and some of the where it goes stuff in Mormonism, because it's not good.

All right, let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the time, and I ask, Lord, that you would bless it, bless all those who would hear live and taped, and that you would just bless the presentation, and that, Lord, people would be edified as they learn about what Mormonism is.

We know, Lord, that the cults are out there. Mormonism is a big one, and I would just ask that you would bind the spirit of Mormonism and just loose the Holy Spirit upon us that we might bring you glory through his ministry.

We ask this, Jesus, in your precious name, amen. All right, so we're doing Mormonism tonight, and then probably next week as well. There's a lot to cover in Mormonism, and what I've got is a manual, and I've taught on Mormonism before, and the slides are from the manual, and we're not gonna get through everything.

There's a lot of reading to do, and so what we're gonna do is just make sure that people understand the origins of Mormonism, and we'll just see how far we get tonight, and then we'll move on next night.

So this is a brief analysis and response by yours truly, Matt Slick. Mormonism, also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, worldwide religious organization, founded in, or its headquarters in Salt Lake City, and a lot of people don't know this, but it only had six members at one time, and that was back in 1830.

It reached its first million in 1947, and from 47 to now, it's got over 13 million followers. Now, I've heard higher numbers. I've heard 15 million, but depends on how they count, so I don't wanna give them too much credit.

Now, it does have like 50 ,000 missionaries, and I've heard 60, I've heard 40, so 50's right in the middle, and it kind of varies from year to year. Now, I will say this as I'm talking about this. If you guys have ever seen the movie with Brandon Fraser, Tarzan, the Brandon Fraser movie, and the bad guys get out of the Bujumbura Jail, and they're walking towards the camera talking how they're gonna get Tarzan, and if you look past the bad guys, you'll see two Mormon missionaries on bikes riding by, and I remember going, aw, my wife's like, what?

Because she's checking out the bad guys. I'm like, look, Mormons, and she's like, what? And so, I'm geared for that, and so click, click, and she's like, oh my goodness. It just, they're all over, okay, like flies.

They get in there. Anyway, so it claims to be the only true church. Now, it has 130 temples, but I know it's more than that, and we're gonna be having a temple opening up here pretty soon. Another one here, oh man, and Mormonism is just so false, and I know I'm saying that quickly and early, but it is, and it really just is disturbing to see so many millions of people believe this lie that will lead them to eternal damnation, but nevertheless, we'll continue on.

So, it was founded by Joseph Smith, and he was born in 1805, and he moved to Palmyra, New York in 1816. So, the reason Mormonism got started is really kind of interesting, and there's different theories about it.

Now, of course, Joseph Smith said that he had a vision of God. No, he didn't, and I'll go in, and we'll talk about that. He just lied, there's no possible way, but the historical context is that there were difficult times economically, and there was rumors also, a lot of people don't know this, I think it was Captain Kidd's buried treasure was in the area, and so there was rumors that you could find this treasure, but there are different ways to find the treasure.

So, the Smiths had a farm, and they dabbled in folk music and in money digging, and money digging was the idea of getting a divining rod or different ways of doing this, a goat slid its throat and wherever it died, that's where the spirit had buried the treasure, and then you're supposed to dig down there and find the treasure, and of course, if anybody had any doubts in the process, then the spirit that guarded the treasure would move the treasure, and of course, they never found any treasure because someone would have a doubt, and who gets to keep the goat, the Smith family, that's how they fed themselves.

Now, that still was wrong, but I can understand them just trying to survive. I mean, I don't blame them for trying to survive, but they could have done something better, but nevertheless. So, the magic stones were used, and you could see, you know, pulling a hat over the face, looking at the stone.

This is what he did later on when he was translating the Book of Mormon. Now, I have a book called Mormonism Unveiled, printed in 1834, and if I ever want to do a real deep study, you know, it would take a half hour going through some of the quotes, just in that little tangent of a book.

In 1834, it's the first anti-Mormon book written, and it's a collection of affidavits sworn under oath before judges and ministers where people who knew Joseph Smith swore before God, before judges, they took this seriously back then, swore under oath about their dealings with the Smith family.

Now, let me condense what they basically said. They wouldn't trust them as far as they could throw them. That's basically what it came down to, and the family was known for money digging, known for not being honest, known for being swindlers, and this is the way that they were.

Now, when you talk to Mormons about this, a lot of them are gonna say, well, yeah, but a lot of prophets of God were bad in the young days. That's true, you know, I could see that, but we can move on and stuff because there's other stuff.

So according to Joseph Smith, in 1820, he went into a wooded area to pray about which church was true. God the Father and Jesus appeared to him and told him that all the churches were false. Now, he continued to do his money digging ventures during his time.

Now, when I was in seminary, a gentleman came in and he taught on Mormonism, and I aced that class. I was the only one that was easy to ace in seminary. And he was the guy who had actually gone back to New York in that area and went through old files from the early 1800s, and he found documents where Joseph Smith was arrested and what he was arrested for, and given leg bail.

Leg bail is you could just take your walk, get out of the county, leg bail. That's your bail, get out of here. And so he also joined a church after the angels, or they were told, he was told all of them were false, and he actually joined one.

The way the chronology of everything works, that's how, you know, apparently he joined it. All right, whatever. Now, the first vision is very important in Mormonism. So you can look down here in this quote in this box.

Joseph Smith, he said, my object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which one to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself so as to be able to speak, then I asked the personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right?

I was answered that I must join none of them. Now, he did do that, though. For they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight. Now, that's typically what you'll do.

If I wanted to start a cult, I need to tell people why everybody else is bad. I need to give a reason why you need to come to me, or my revelation, or my prophet, or whatever it is, in order to believe something new.

Because if I'm gonna say, yeah, everybody else is all true, then why come to me? So you gotta disparage somebody else, and of course, all of them were false. And he, as a young 17-year-old, was revealed by the father, and he's gonna be the one who's gonna restore.

Of course, now a lot of people don't know this, this first vision account, there's at least four versions, and it did not surface for 20 years after the fact. And there's different versions of it, and they change.

So that really puts this into a very suspicious beginning, because if the first vision where he said he saw God the Father, which we're gonna get into why it's impossible, where he said he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, and that they communicated to him, well, you'd think that that'd be something he would talk about.

But there's no record of it for another 20 years. Why? Because retroactively, he's trying to make his case for the validity of this organization he started. Now, in that book I mentioned, Mormonism Unveiled, and I don't have it here, I don't think I do, there's an account where a man swore that Joseph Smith stated how Mormonism got started.

Now, you can take it or leave it, and I've got it on the CARM website. And to condense it, what he said was that Joseph Smith was drunk at a party, and Mormonism was already going, and he said that what had happened, well, he just broke down, I mean, he just forgot to start telling people stuff.

And so this eyewitness said, this is what he said, that he was coming home after a storm one night, and he went through a forest, and there was a certain area of a tree, on the ground where a tree was, where the trunk came down and the roots kind of came down into the ground, and the water from the rain had washed this area, kind of swirled between the roots, and swirled and purified this little area of dirt and sand, and it kind of just, all the sediment just kind of just floated away, and there was this nice little puddle of really nice-looking sand.

So what he did was he thought he could use this in his money-digging venture, so he took it and put it in his shirt like this, because he needed to keep it, he didn't have anything with him. And he walked home, and when he got home, his sister said, what's that?

And just to say it, he said, it's the golden tablets. Now the golden tablets were rumored to exist in that area and had been buried. So not only was there a Captain Kidd's treasure, but also just some legend of golden plates, and not that they were a Book of Mormon or anything, but that they were just golden plates and some stuff.

Different theories about what was on there. So he said, they're the golden plates, and he said he was shocked that his sister believed him. He couldn't believe that she, who knew him, would believe him.

So she said, really, where'd you get that? And so he just kept going and said, well, I found it here, or whatever. And she started telling people that he wanted to see the golden plates. This is how it got started, this is what they said.

Wanted to see the golden plates. Well, he doesn't have any stinking golden plates, what's he gonna do? So he's got a bag, and he puts some heavy things in there, and then people come over, and they say they saw, no one ever saw the plates, folks.

You can go check in the Book of Mormon, it says the eyewitnesses, no, they didn't see it. Just read what it says. They saw with the eye of faith, they didn't see it. But they did hold the bag, which is interesting, because if the plates were as big as they were, made of gold, it'd have been like over 200 or 240 pounds, or something like that.

You don't just go like that and lift it up. We've got Buff Boy over here, and he couldn't even do that, all right? So it's just not gonna happen. And so people wanted to come in and see this, so he had to kind of keep this ruse going, because his mental state was using ruse in order to get money, to get people to give to a cause.

So he just kept rolling with it. And, well, now he's gotta produce something. So what he did was, he started writing out these documents that supposedly were from the golden plates, and only he could do this.

It's called non-falsifiability. But non-falsifiability means you can't have it verified to be true or false. So he says, I'm the only one who can see them, and I'm the only one who can translate them.

And if you look at stuff, you don't see anything, okay? Oh, wow, I didn't know that, that's so cool. Wow. I mean, I'd be like, yeah, right. Swamp land in Florida, let's go. And so this is the early starting of it, and he got people to join in.

And then there's some apocalyptic literature, some rumors about people knowing, a couple of guys knew that it was a ruse, and they wanted to find a way to make some money, so they went in and said, yes, we've seen it.

And we don't know if those are verified or not, but there's more to this than simply, Joseph Smith said he saw the father and stuff. Now, why is he, he didn't see the father? Because Jesus says, not that any man has seen the father except the one who's from God, he has seen the father.

Now, he has seen, it's past tense. From God, that's the Old Testament, that's previous to Jesus, has, past tense. Not that any man has seen the father. Now, people say to me, well, they've seen God in the Old Testament.

Yes, they have. Genesis chapter two and three, a pre-incarnate Christ walking with Adam and Eve. We have Exodus six, two and three. We have Exodus 24, nine through 11, Genesis 17, one, 18, one, numbers 12, six through eight.

We have different places where God is seen, but it's never the father, because no man has seen the father except the one, the one who is from God. He has, it's past tense. Sometimes the Mormons will say, well, this means Joseph Smith is from God, so he can see the father.

No, past tense. Now, I don't have it listed here, but also Romans 1 .18 says, no man has seen God at any time, the only begotten God in the bosom of the father, he has explained him. And that means no man's seen God is in context of talking about the father, because in John 1 .1, we have in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God.

Verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Verse 18, no man has seen God. And I did a study on the word God in the gospel of John a few years ago. It's all I did was study that word, how does it appear?

I discovered that whenever it appears after John 1 .14, it's in reference to the father. So, no man has seen God the father, which is consistent. Then you go to 1 Timothy 6 .16, speaking of God the father, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, who no man has seen or can see.

It's not talking about Jesus, because they've seen Jesus, the Holy Spirit, not talking about the Holy Spirit here, read the context. The father dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see.

When I talked to Mormons about this, they'll say, unless you have the spirit of God. And I just, you know, I say, well, that, I missed that in there. Can you show me where that is in the text? Because you are doing something, you're making the text say the opposite of what it says.

This is what cults do. So what they'll say, whom no man has seen or can see. Now, clearly what it says is, no man has seen the father, no man can see the father. But what the Mormons do is they'll add something to change it, unless you're of God.

Then you can see the father. So now the text means the opposite of what it's actually saying. Instead of saying, no man has seen or can see the father, now it means it can. That's what they do. They interpret it in a manner that's completely opposite of what it is.

It's one of the exegetical fallacies accomplished by Mormonism. Now, so check this out from Gordon Hinckley. He was a 15th LDS president. Every claim that we make concerning divine authority, every truth that we offer concerning the validity of this work, all finds its roots in the first vision of the boy prophet.

That's a teachings of Gordon B Hinckley, page 226. So everything is about the first vision. I very routinely will talk about 1 Timothy 6 .16, Romans, I mean, it's gonna be John 1 .18 and John 6 .46 in relationship to the issue of seeing God the father.

And all these verses I get memorized about seeing God in the Old Testament. And I have this argument. In fact, I was on Sunday night discussing with a Mormon for an hour. And it wasn't until later that night that the light dawned on me, that I missed an incredible opportunity to nail him.

I don't know if you guys saw that. Oh man, because we got in such to this, he's very intelligent, very competent. And I got into this particular area. And he was saying, well, when you go to John 6 .46, it gives the exception for the, it gets some weird logic.

Some exception of that, that's the exception. But then the one who's from God and Joseph Smith could have seen the father, it's weird stuff. And we got one thing led to another and we ended up with Adam.

Adam was able to see God the father. But I said, no man. And he said, he said, Matt, what it means is no man can see the father unless you're unfallen. Because Adam was not fallen when he was seeing the father and after the fall, he couldn't see the father.

Okay, I said, well, where's that in the text? So I'm so focused on that little bit that it didn't occur to me till later that night to say, I just can't believe it, I'm so stupid, to say, okay, so you can't see God the father if you're fallen, right?

He goes, right. Was Joseph Smith fallen? I mean, it was just like, it was one of those, it's like, why didn't I think of that when I was in the middle of this? And I hate it when I do something like that, which is so stinking simple and you miss it because you're getting so detailed in some other areas you forget to look.

So I'm hoping that I'm gonna talk to this guy this Sunday night coming up and I'm gonna say, by the way, and then show it because it would have just buried him, okay? And the doofus boy here didn't come up with the right answer at the right time, it happens.

Why the Father Cannot Be Seen

All right, so since Mormonism is based on the first vision and since from the Bible, it's not possible to have seen the father, I've just proved Mormonism is not true. Just that simple. I have proven it.

And what the Mormons are gonna do is never give in. They're gonna say, no, no, no, that's not true. There's God's, the father is seen in the Old Testament in early verses, I quote. And there's ways to deal with them.

You know, you can, because in Mormon theology, Elohim is God the father and Jehovah is Jesus. So what I'll do is, you know, in Exodus two and three, it says, for example, it says, God spoke further to Moses, Elohim in the Hebrew.

Elohim spoke further to Moses and said to him, I am God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah, I did not make myself known to them. That doesn't make sense in Mormonism. In first Kings 860, Jehovah is Elohim.

The Lord is God, is what it's saying. And so, you know, there's ways of doing this and of course I'm practiced at it and I don't wanna get too detailed here. Maybe sometime I'll just do a series of, here's a verse and go through it for five minutes, different ways of doing it.

Here's another something, here's another way, you know, give a bunch of pointers for people and they're out there. All right, so like I said, there's no recording of the first vision for 20 years after it supposedly happened.

And so check out what Spencer W. Kimball said, Joseph Smith's first vision restored knowledge of God, geez, of all the great events of the century, none compared with the first vision of Joseph Smith.

Now, Joseph Smith was a liar. Joseph Smith was a false prophet. We've already shown he couldn't have seen the Father. I mean, at that point we're done. Mormonism is just not true. But what happens is, and it's happening in the Christian church as well, is that feelings are being used as a means of determining truth and not the word of God.

This is a really critical point. And the older I get, the more I do apologetics, the more I realize the necessity of studying the word of God. And when I study it, I learn things. And I'm really surprised that one of my favorite things to do in research is to take a single word or a single couplet or two words or whatever, and see how it occurs in, for example, the New Testament.

Every single instance of a word to see how it worked. It might take me all day, and I might not write an article on karma because of it, but I learn. One of the things I've learned about the word of God is that it is inspired.

And we can learn a great deal from it. There's all kinds of word patterns. There's all kinds of things that are there. And so as I'm studying presently annihilationism, or they call it conditional immortality, I've been doing a series of word studies.

I think I've got about 20 where I've got a single Greek word every instance in the entire New Testament, analyzed it in lexicons and dictionaries, analyzed it in context, and then grouped it according to usage.

And I'm learning things. And so it's important to really understand that the supremacy and the importance of the word of God, it is magnificent. But if you go to Genesis chapter three, and Genesis three, one through five, when Satan was talking to Eve, the first thing he did was cast out on God's word.

Did God really say? Now, the eighth article of the Mormon church says that the Bible is correct insofar as it is correctly translated. This is justification for doubting the word of God. And then what happens is the word of God has changed because Eve said, you know, God says don't eat or touch.

The tree and God didn't say or touch it. She added those words. Once the word of God is modified, Satan comes in and contradicts, you shall not die. And so notice what happened. The word of God is doubted.

The word of God has changed. Word of God is contradicted. So when I was talking earlier about first Timothy 6, 16, the father whom no man has seen or can see, and they modify it so that it could be contradicted.

It's exactly the exegesis that, or the eisegesis that Satan uses. And Mormons are guilty of this, and the Mormon church is guilty of this to no end. It happens constantly. And, you know, I got a good friend, Bill McKeever, he's a world-class expert on Mormonism.

It's all his studies. And we'll talk sometimes about some of the things. We'll take a trip together, go speak or whatever. And he'll get going on stuff that he's researched. And I'm like, man, I didn't know that.

And he gets way into it. And he will point out all kinds of things that they do wrong. And it's amazing how many examples there are of their horrible examination of scripture, the hypocrisy, their double standard, their illogic, their alteration of the facts, their misuse of the facts, their alteration of the Book of Mormon.

It's like it's a gigantic organization that, just picture a boat in an ocean, and a lot of people are on it, and it's slowly sinking. And they're doing everything they can to keep it afloat. And they're having the poor people on the boat help them.

And it's working, they're keeping it afloat. Because Mormonism's using lies. Well, anyway, let's get going. Joseph Smith claimed on September 21st, 1823, at the age of 17, that the angel Moroni appeared to him and told him that there were golden plates buried nearby and he'd be called to translate them.

In 1827, Smith finally obtained the golden plates and began his translation process. I remember what I said earlier, that he got the sand and that it started out that way. So what happens is, what happened when I understand, what I believe, and Bill McKeever and I have talked about this, and I've read some other stuff about this, this beginning of that.

Now, is it really how it started? Don't know, but this guy said, this is what Joseph Smith said. So it's an eyewitness account, firsthand account written and sworn to. All right, take it or leave it, whatever you want to do.

So he had to have a way to keep things going. And so he invented stuff along the way, which is why the first vision isn't recorded for 20 years. We had to modify it. Now, while he supposedly translated the Book of Mormon, there's a lot of stuff that's not in here, but while he's supposedly doing the translation, his wife, Emma, took some of the pages that he had translated, about a hundred pages, he'd translated, and they've never been found.

Now, maybe the Mormon church has them, and I have an anecdotal story about something I'll tell you here. I suspect they do have them. They actually do have them in their vault, but whatever. They're not gonna show them, and there's a reason for it.

So what happened was she hid these pages and said, if you're really a prophet from God, you can reproduce them. And so, of course, he couldn't. So he had to go on and produce something else. And those pages weren't found.

Now, whether or not they are extant right now, we don't know. Now, there was a minister named Solomon Spaulding in the area in the time. And Solomon Spaulding was a writer. He's trying to make ends meet as well.

And he's doing it in a godly way. And he wrote a book about people in the Americas before Christ. And he had this book at a publishing place, at a printing office that Joseph Smith had access to. Solomon Spaulding died, and the manuscript was lost.

And some people swore under oath who knew Spaulding and knew these documents and knew what he had written, when they read part of the Book of Mormon, said, this is from Solomon Spaulding's writings. They said, this is it.

And they know. So that's documented there as well. All right, now, take this story for what you will. When Bill and I were living in Southern California, we drove up to Utah years ago to do some stuff, ministry work.

And so we went to a friend of his house, Dave. Dave's house. And when I first got to Dave's house, he's a Christian, Dave said, welcome to Utah. This is not the United States. And he was telling me how vans would sit across the street for hours at a time, and he'd hear clicks on his phone.

His mail would be open, things like this. And so, okay. Now, he said that a guy told him this. Do what you want with it. That there was a secretary to the prophet, and this secretary guy told him. So he said, this is what the guy told me.

Okay. This is not admissible in court, because it's like a hearsay. But nevertheless, this secretary, it needed to go to the prophet's office for something. And the secretary was a devout Mormon whose hobby happened to be this issue of the Solomon Spaulding manuscript and the Book of Mormon.

And so he had had some writings of Solomon Spaulding, so he knew Solomon Spaulding's handwriting. And the prophet had gone into the restroom to go to the bathroom. And this guy walks in and looks on the prophet's desk and open is one of the books of Nephi in Solomon Spaulding's handwriting, because he can read upside down, he's reading it.

And he sat there staring, figuring it out. I think he turned the page or not, I would ever come back, and realized instantly that Mormonism was false. While he's standing there, there was just an astounding thing for him that he saw Solomon Spaulding's writing, and he was reading, and it was part of the Nephi.

It was a quote from the Book of Mormon, the same stuff. And he just said, oh my goodness, Smith copied it for the book. It was just that fast. The prophet comes out and sees him looking at it and closes it and says to him, and you will say nothing about this.

And so he says, and he said, instantly he was afraid for his life. And he said, this all happened in like two minutes, three minutes, just, he was afraid for his life. He was afraid. And he wanted to get out of the building quickly.

So he said, okay, no problem. He said, don't worry about it. And he turned around, went down the elevator, went straight down and got out of the building as soon as he possibly could, never went back.

True or not, don't know. I believe that the Mormon church has access to those manuscripts. I believe the higher echelon of the Mormon church knows that it's false. I do, I believe that. I can't prove it, this is my opinion.

And that they're in it for the money, their prestige, the power. They know how to pretend to be spiritual. I just got to say this little story because it's fun. When Robbie Zacharias, a few years ago, was speaking in Mormon Temple Square, I went there and Bill and I were there.

Bill had had surgery, had a neck brace on, neck surgery. So I was calling him Franken all the time. Hey, Franken, he goes, thanks a lot, man. And so I was sitting on the seventh row back on the aisle.

And so the aisle is like this wide, you know, you got the rows and where the tabernacle sings and the whole bit. And Robbie is only 30 feet from me and he's doing his thing and okay. And so Robbie was talking and the 12 apostles, it's hard for me to even say that, the 12 apostles, were sitting there.

And this happened, it wasn't a big deal. But so Robbie happened to be talking about a place of theology and he's trying to blend this through without being offensive because he's a guest. I can understand that.

But he was saying that basically you can't save yourself through your own efforts. He was saying it, that's what he was getting at. And the way he was saying it was cool and I got it. And I think the Mormons were getting it.

And he said to this one point, he comes up to something like, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was like, and it's not possible to do this for those who do that, you know, it's not true. Something like that.

And right when he said that, this apostle with his eyes were gazing and he happened to look right into my eyes, right? And I go like this and he's looking right at me. And right when Robbie goes, you know, you can't this, you can't that, I go, I did.

And I mean, it was obvious what I was saying, that's you. And he just kept looking and that's all. But you never know, you know, maybe he's had, I get to see him that night. Honey, I can't sleep. Why is that?

Well, I've got this nightmarish face that I just can't get out of my head, this doofus looking guy, and he won't go away. Well, you know, okay, well, you know, pray to Moroni, you know, whatever. That wouldn't do that, but, so who knows?

Maybe I ruined his whole day, his whole week because he had a vision of this mug staring at him. All right, so what's the Book of Mormon? The Book of Mormon is supposed to have been written by ancient members of the American continents, the Nephites and the Lamanites, who lived from approximately 2000 BC to 400 AD.

It is a story of their journey from Jerusalem around 600 BC to the Americas. They traveled in large boats, the Book of Mormon, and the boats were as big as trees. I always loved that. And the length of the boat shall be the length of a tree.

That helps. And there was a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom. Now, I could just see some guys going, hey, look, Matt, yeah, I'm going to be traveling like across the Pacific, no, the Atlantic, because Atlantic, I'll be traveling across the Atlantic.

Okay, in a boat, you want to come? What is it, a cruise ship? No, it's a boat that I made, and it's as big as a tree. Well, how big is a tree? It's as big as a tree. Okay, as big as a tree, okay. And, okay, and he says, it has a hole in the top and the bottom.

Are you going to go in the ocean in this? Yeah, so what's the hole in the bottom for? What? I mean, come on, there's a hole in the bottom of the boat. Now, I've had different Mormons explain different things.

You know, there's a tube that comes up and you can put your refutes in there, but that's just, they're just like. And then there's other things. You know, in the Book of Mormon, you give faith to a ball and it does stuff, at any rate, and silk when it's not there, and elephants when it's not there, and horses when it's not there.

Anyway, so within his pages, there's a history of the people, their development, battles, teachings, and eventual decline, as well as the appearances by Jesus, who was Quetzalcoatl. You ever heard of Quetzalcoatl?

Some of the Mexican guys have heard of Quetzalcoatl because he's like a Mexican hero, dude. You know, from the, I remember talking to a friend of mine once. He's like a Mexican heritage or whatever, Hispanic heritage, good guy.

And so I was just telling him about this, and I said, and some people think he's Quetzalcoatl. He goes, you don't know about Quetzalcoatl? He goes, you're a white guy, you don't know Quetzalcoatl? I go, of course I don't know about Quetzalcoatl because he's white.

So I made a racist thing out of it, and that was fun. But he said, Quetzalcoatl's supposed to be blonde haired, blue eyed, and all this kind of stuff, which is ridiculous. And supposed to do some great things.

So anyway, the last contributor to the Book of Mormon was called Moroni, and that's the guy at the right. He buried a place near where Joseph Smith was living and returned as an angel, and appeared to Smith and revealed the location to him.

And, oh man. You know, when you see the anti-Mormon miracle pageant, and you see this, I can see Joseph Smith doing this, and they don't have him putting his head in a hat, but that's what he did. And so what he would do to translate the Book of Mormon from this golden plate, he says he had a hat, and he had a seer stone.

He put the seer stone in the hat, put it around his face, and looked down, and then he would interpret, well, he would, one letter, actually, one character at a time would manifest on the stone as parchment, and he would say the letter, and all over Calvary, on the other side of a curtain, would then write it down, one letter at a time.

And that's how it's supposed to have been done. And that is an actual picture of the actual seer stone, that Joseph Smith's supposed to have used. And that's what they say, okay? So look what it says.