Can One go to Heaven Obeying the Book of Mormon?

“TRANSLATION” AND “REVELATION” OF THE BOOK OF MORMON

Joseph Smith supposedly translated the Book of Mormon from a heavy tome made of gold, commonly referred to in the LDS Church as the “gold plates.”  He claimed it was written in “Reformed Egyptian” hieroglyphics, a language that no credible historian has ever validated.  In order to translate he said he would need the help of the Urim and Thummim.

The official Mormon website indicates it was “an instrument prepared of God to assist man in obtaining revelation from the Lord and in translating languages.” (www.lds.org)  While the Urim and Thummim is found in the Old Testament, the Mormon description of them are completely different, as nowhere is mentioned that the Urim and Thummim were used as translating devices.   The New Illustrated Bible Dictionary defines them as “Gems or stones carried by the high priest and used by him to determine God’s will in certain matters.”  Additionally, there is no record of them being used after the reign of David.  Smith and his family were accused on many occasions of being involved in occultic practices.

David Whitmer, one of the Book of Mormon’s supposed three main witnesses, would later describe how Smith actually claimed to have received his translating ability, by looking at stones from a well in which letters would appear in English.  Whitmer wrote, “…Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into at hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine…” (Whitmer 12)  God’s methods of revelation never endorsed an occultic practice of translation. Moreover, why or how would an archaic form of an Egyptian language end up on American soil?  No Egyptian hieroglyphics have ever been connected to the American continent, the language was never used, and certainly not a fabricated version of it.