General Conference emphasis on Book of Mormon

It has been a while since the Book of Mormon has been featured in so many talks at General Conference. It's wonderful to hear so much about it.

Here's one example (summary from lds.org here):

Look to the Book, Look to the Lord

Elder Gary E. Stevenson
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Each of you can … receive a personal witness of this book! Do you realize that the Book of Mormon was written for you—and for your day? This book is one of the blessings of living in what we call the dispensation of the fulness of times. …

In order to help the Book of Mormon become the keystone of your testimony, I offer you a challenge. I recently learned that many young people spend an average of seven hours a day looking at TV, computer, and smartphone screens. With this in mind, would you make a small change? Will you replace some of that daily screen time—particularly that devoted to social media, the internet, gaming, or television—with reading the Book of Mormon? If the studies I referred to are accurate, you could easily find time for daily study of the Book of Mormon even if for only 10 minutes a day. And you can study in a way that allows you to enjoy it and understand it—either on your device or in book form. …

Within the book’s pages, you will discover the infinite love and incomprehensible grace of God. As you strive to follow the teachings you find there, your joy will expand, your understanding will increase, and the answers you seek to the many challenges mortality presents will be opened to you. As you look to the book, you look to the Lord. The Book of Mormon is the revealed word of God.

Welcome to France!

According to the web stats, France has now become the #2 audience for this blog after the United States.

Welcome to everyone from France!

(I'm partial to France because I served a mission there. I've lived in Europe for 8 years so far and hope to be able to live there again at some point.)

In fact, if any French readers want to comment in French, feel free. Some of you email me from time to time, but it would be fun to have you post here in French.

Here is the audience as of Oct 1, ranked by page views:

United States
France
Canada
Ireland
Portugal
Ukraine
China
Germany
United Kingdom
Russia

I've visited all these countries except Ukraine. Actually, I've done work projects in all of them except Ukraine and Ireland.

In August, Russia was #2. If I remember going forward, I'll update audience sources at the first of each month.

Upcoming projects

Almost daily people ask me what I'm working on now, so here's a rough timeline of upcoming projects.

1. October. We're releasing my book Whatever Happened to the Golden Plates probably around mid-October. It's been out for reviews and I'm getting a strong positive response.

2. November. We're releasing a book version of the best of this blog. As I've mentioned before, when converted to Word, this blog is over 1200 pages long, so there's a lot of editing involved. But people want access to the details, so we decided to go ahead and publish it.

3. November. We'll release my book The Editors: Joseph, William and Don Carlos Smith which I presented last week at the John Whitmer Historical Association annual meeting in Kirtland.

4. December. I have a project involving Christianity and the Book of Mormon that is pretty exciting. I've been testing it with great results. I hope we can release it in early December.

In the meantime, next week after General Conference, I'm announcing projects on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other venues. Next week is going to be awesome.

:)

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the most enjoyable movie we've seen this year. It's still playing in Salt Lake. Check it out in your local area.

Here's a link: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hunt_for_the_wilderpeople/

Mesomania book now available

The Mesomania book is now on Amazon. You can find it here. This is an Amazon exclusive version, titled Mormon Mesomania.

By way of explanation, I'm not criticizing any current LDS scholars. I fully respect their efforts and deeply appreciate the good work they've done in many fields. Plus, they're great people. I just think they're making a fundamental mistake about the geography question and I'm just trying to understand the psychology behind the Mesoamerican theory. It's a fascinating topic, and I have a much longer manuscript, but everyone wants short books, so I made the Mesomania as short as I could.

For those new to this blog, I don't care what anyone thinks about Book of Mormon geography and historicity so long as it works for them and gets them to read the text and incorporate the teachings.

However, it seems obvious that the vast majority of the people in the world reject the Book of Mormon as a legitimate, authentic history. This includes members of the Church, too many of whom are inactive. Even among active members, many don't think the Book of Mormon is an authentic history.

I do.

And I think the Mesoamerican theory is a distraction that deters people from accepting the Book of Mormon as an authentic history. Of course, there are some people who find great value in seeing Mesoamerican culture in the text. That's fine. As I said, whatever works. You can apply the scriptures to yourselves by reading into the text attributes of African culture, Chilean culture, etc.

But when the scholars present only the Mesoamerican theory to their students (or, just as bad, an abstract map theory), and seek to present only that theory to the world through missionary work, in my view it's a serious mistake because, as Joseph Fielding Smith warned, the theory causes members (and investigators) to become confused and disturbed in their faith in the Book of Mormon.

I think the Mesoamerican distraction originated with Benjamin Winchester, William Smith and others in the 1840s, but it died down until the 1920s when the limited geography setting in Mesoamerica was developed by RLDS scholars. They were the first to reject the New York Cumorah; so far as I can discover, not a single person who knew Joseph rejected the New York Cumorah.

LDS scholars at BYU gradually adopted the RLDS position over the objection of Joseph Fielding Smith, and that's where we are today.

I'm hoping we can change course, embrace Letter VII and the other early teachings, and become united as LDS who have full faith in the historicity of the Book of Mormon.
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In Mesomannia, I explain my views on the psychology that drives the effort by modern LDS scholars to promote the Mesoamerican theory. Among other things, they are seeking to accomplish these objectives:

1. Reject Letter VII by characterizing Oliver Cowdery as a speculative, unreliable man who lacks credibility.

2. Reject David Whitmer's accounts because he, too, was a speculative, unreliable man who lacks credibility.

3. Portray Joseph Smith as an uncertain man who 1) embraced a false tradition about the Hill Cumorah in New York and 2) changed his mind about the North American setting and embraced a Mesoamerican setting with the expectation that modern LDS scholars would answer the questions about Book of Mormon geography.
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For me, those objectives undermine faith and are the fulfillment of Joseph Fielding Smith's warning.

And it's all so unnecessary.

Which is why I want to understand the psychology, and why I wrote Mesomania.

More memes

Here are a few more you can share:

Summary for new readers

There are a lot of new readers coming here. Maybe it's because of the new semester at the BYU campuses or at the CES Institutes. Students are especially welcome because I know from experience you've been exposed to the Mesoamerican theory your entire lives. You may have never heard an alternative.

On this blog, I discuss issues related to Book of Mormon geography and historicity.

In my view, there is one fundamental choice that everyone interested in the Book of Mormon needs to make:

Is the Hill Cumorah (Mormon 6:6) in New York or elsewhere?

It's a simple choice.

What do you think?
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I take the position that the Book of Mormon events took place in North America (north of Central America) and that Cumorah is in New York. If these concepts seem obvious to you, great. You haven't been persuaded by the handful of LDS scholars who are now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote their insistence that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica.

I've made over 300 posts on this topic on this blog alone. I've looked at the issue from many perspectives. I've examined 1) what the scholars have published, 2) relevant archaeology, anthropology, geology, geography, and most importantly, 3) the text itself.

From every perspective--save one--the evidence supports the North American setting.

The sole exception is the Mesomania perspective. Mesomania is seeing Mesoamerica in the text and not being able to unsee it.

If you think Cumorah is not in New York, then you have been persuaded by the LDS scholars who don't even want you to know about alternative ideas--or what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said about the subject.
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Here's another way to look at it:

If you think Cumorah is in New York, then you agree with Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith, David Whitmer, and everyone who knew those men personally. You agree with Joseph F. Smith, George Albert Smith, and Joseph Fielding Smith.

If you think Cumorah is not in New York, then you agree with most LDS Book of Mormon scholars today.

It's that simple.

That's why I say if you don't think Cumorah is in New York, it really doesn't matter where you think it is.
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Feel free to look around and comment. Most readers email me instead of commenting, but comments are welcome.

I especially like to hear from people who disagree. My objective here is to focus on facts and logic, so I'm eager to correct any errors.