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Thanks again for joining us on our show: Ask the Expert.
We have with us again Nathan Franson,
a good friend of mine and a gospel preacher
in Kissimmee, Florida, and he is an expert on Mormonism.
Nathan grew up as a Mormon and has since left
the Mormon faith, but he is here helping us
to understand some things about Mormonism.
And we've discussed a great many things
and I won't necessarily go back
and talk about all of the things that we've discussed,
but the very last show, we ended,
and hopefully we can go back to it, but we ended,
we were talking about some things about
Doctrines and Covenants, was it?
Pearl of Great Price.
The Pearl of Great Price, and there was
an archaeological slide that you were showing us,
and so I want to ask you to go ahead and reshow us that,
because I had some questions that I wanted to ask you
about it.
So if we can get started on that,
and then we'll just let you take over
and tell us what it is about.
Ok. Well, what we were talking about before
involves the Book of Abraham, which is found
in the Pearl of Great Price.
Within the Book of Abraham, there are
three different facsimiles which are taken
from an Egyptian papyrus.
(Nathan) And these three facsimiles are used by the Mormon church.
They are supposedly found by Joseph Smith
and he used these to tell the story of the sacrifice,
the attempted sacrifice, of Abraham.
(Phillip) Right.
(Nathan) While he was there, and you see these three facsimiles
on the screen.
Now the problem he had, just really quick to recap it,
was that back at this time, he could have said
anything regarding the Egyptian language.
No one knew how to speak Egyptian,
no one understood the symbols of it,
and so anyone could say almost anything and get away with it.
Until years later, when an Egyptologist came in
and looked at the original work, which you see on the screen,
and was able to decipher all of these different symbols.
Joseph Smith was not all together honest
in what he was telling his followers
with what these different symbols meant.
In this first one, for instance, you'll see
also a list of explanations of what each item
is in these facsimiles within the Pearl of Great Price.
(Nathan) Joseph's explanation is that the first one, as you see,
with the bird hovering over the body is the angel of the Lord.
However, this Egyptologist that came in, years later,
said that it was actually the bah ,
the soul of the man who is dead.
The man would die, and the bird represented the soul of him
that would come out of the body.
The Egyptians believed a lot of myths and so forth,
and this is what the bird represented
with this dead individual.
All right, just so I'm clear on what we're looking at.
The top picture here is what's actually,
if I were to go and buy the Pearl of Great Price, right,
I would find the top picture in there,
and I noticed that it has little, tiny numbers.
Yes.
And those numbers, would there probably be something
on the side that says Number 1 is the Spirit,
or the Holy Spirit, or whatever they said that that was?
It would be the Angel of the Lord.
The Angel of the Lord would be that one.
And then, so Number 2 is probably the man laying down.
I don't know what Number 2 pointing at.
(Nathan) Number 2 is Abraham.
(Phillip) But there would be something written beside it.
So we have the drawing on the top
and the actual papyrus on the bottom.
(Nathan) This is a photo of the actual papyrus.
(Phillip) Ok, so years later, after Joseph Smith had
already written this first thing and drawn the facsimile of it,
someone else, an Egyptologist actually,
who studied it and knew about what these things meant,
decided it was not the angel of the Lord.
Right.
So this man probably didn't know who Joseph Smith was.
He wasn't trying to say, well, Joseph Smith's an idiot
because he said this and it's not the case.
He was just saying what it meant because of his study, right?
Well, they explained it to him,
of who he was and what he was trying to do and say with these
and that was one of the reasons for bringing him in.
He was to test the validity of what Joseph Smith
claimed that they were.
When he saw these, he exposed what the symbols really were
and how they were identified, which discredits, certainly,
the account of Joseph Smith.
Now we've got to remember, too,
that Joseph Smith's inspired even at this point,
is that correct?
At this point, Joseph Smith claimed to have been inspired.
Back then, who was going to challenge him?
No one knew the Egyptian language,
no one was going to test a prophet of God
who was being inspired when he was translating
all of these different Egyptian symbols,
and so they accepted it.
Ok, all right.
So, one of them said that it was the Angel of the Lord,
and actually Joseph Smith said that
it was the Angel of the Lord, and in actuality, it wasn't.
It was something called the bah.
It was called the bah.
The soul of the man.
The soul that came out of him.
Ok.
That's what the Egyptians wrote.
Following this very same illustration,
we see this man in black here.
(Nathan) According to the Pearl of Great Price and Joseph Smith,
he is the idolatrous priest of Elkenah, who is attempting
to offer Abraham as a sacrifice on this altar.
Now, what it looks like is a complete illustration
the way that we see it here.
Here's where his discrepancy lies with this.
You see a photo, you see the actual hieroglyphic
and you also see how
the head of this black individual is missing.
(Phillip) Right.
(Nathan) Well, he could have drawn anything, and he did.
He ended up drawing a human head.
(Phillip) So he just made up that top part?
He made up that head and looks like
part of the chest or something?
(Nathan) He had drawn a head on this body.
Now, here's the thing we need to remember,
even if it had a human head, which in just a moment
I'll explain how he doesn't and why,
but even if he had a human head,
this was never the idolatrous priest of Elkenah.
Every time that you see a figure in black in these,
the hieroglyphics back at this time frame,
it represented the Egyptian god Anubis.
(Nathan) Anubis, of course, had the head of a jackal
- he never even had a human head - but that was missing,
so he could have added anything that he wanted to.
This is Anubis in this drawing, who is presiding
over the separation of the body for embalming,
and he's always represented as this figure in black.
And so, whereas Joseph tried to persuade people
into thinking that it was the idolatrous priest of Elkenah,
in fact it was Anubis, this Egyptian god.
So it's almost as if Joseph Smith took advantage of his time
because no one knew about the Egyptian language, so he could,
like you said, make anything up he wanted to make up.
Exactly, and he understood that.
Ok, all right.
Well, this makes sense.
(Nathan) Well, moving on with this, we see how this figure here,
which is represented by Number 2 in the Pearl of Great Price,
he's identified as Abraham who is fastened upon an altar.
Well, two of the other figures are falsified to him,
why not make it even more?
This man is not Abraham, he is, in fact,
according to this Egyptologist who came in years later,
a man named Hor - or as the modern translations,
to you and me, you'll see this name identified as Horus
in a lot of accounts.
But it, in fact, is written in the language back then,
which is called idiogrammatic.
And the Egyptologist, in fact, twice in this photo,
this Egyptologist comes in and he's able to identify
three different lines throughout this photo,
or throughout this illustration,
the original one, as naming Horus.
And that is who this individual is,
who, in fact, is not Abraham.
So on this very piece of parchment, or papyrus,
the name Hor or Horus is found three times
- on this very piece, is that what you're saying?
Is that what I'm understanding?
Yes, well, Nelson, the Egyptologist, he states
that three lines of this hieroglyphic writing
describe this, the very scene
which we have been talking about.
Ok.
With Anubis and Horus, and how Horus had died at this point
and his soul has left his body.
It's almost like a game I used to play when I was younger,
and that is, you know, my brother would draw something
and I would write the story about what he drew.
And then he would tell me that's not what he drew at all,
and then he would tell me what he really drew.
Sometimes my story was better and sometimes his was,
but that's what this reminds me a little bit of,
is that someone actually wrote what was happening,
and Joseph Smith just said what he thought it was.
Right.
And in reality, it wasn't that at all.
It's not even what he thought it was.
It's him premeditating this whole concocted scheme,
to take these hieroglyphics - somehow he came into
the acquisition of them and was able to
just completely manipulate them the way that he wanted to fit
the doctrine of the Book of Abraham that he had.
So this is in the Book of Abraham,
which is found in the Pearl of Great Price.
The Pearl of Great Price.
Exactly.
Well, we have two other illustrations as well with this.
(Nathan) This second facsimile, it appears to be an amulet,
which is exactly what it is.
This is a device that is actually known
to the science of Egyptology as hypocephalus.
Ok, it is an amulet that is usually made
with pieces of papyrus, and back then what they would do
is place it under the head of a mummy.
Now its function was to bring some,
it had a magical power and it was used to retain body heat,
so that a soul could reenter or kind of reanimate the body,
but they needed this amulet,
this pagan amulet, to be placed, you know,
underneath so that it could retain all this body heat.
(Phillip) So now Joseph Smith found this amulet, or what?
Joseph Smith supposedly found this papyrus or this,
the same thing as what you see here.
He's claiming it's a papyrus, but it, in fact,
goes beyond just a piece of writing material with this.
(Nathan) But that is what the magical function was of that.
You go on, and what he was able, this Egyptologist,
was able to decipher is that it represents the eye of Ra.
Ok, remember the name of Horus, well,
that's found in this one as well.
(Phillip) Ah, ok.
(Nathan) What Joseph Smith had done is found all of these
with the same name in each of these papyrus writings.
Now one thing that is of interest is that he had Abraham
seen in these, in these papyrus writings.
Abraham was connected with this amulet as well.
Well, these were never found on mummies prior to 660 BC.
Well, we know that Abraham lived years before this time.
So it is impossible for these writings to have,
these papyruses to have been with him back then.
So Joseph Smith's claiming that this kind of thing
was with Abraham, is that what you're saying?
It was all connected to Abraham.
It was. This was with him, it was his book,
it told his whole story and so forth, but...
But in reality, these things didn't even happen until
hundreds and hundreds of years after Abraham had already died.
Right.
It's impossible to even have that, you know, that altar
or anything pertaining to it.
It was nothing more than just a pagan amulet
with some fabricated stories that he added to it behind it.
So Joseph Smith's timeline is quite a bit off,
even if it were true, any of this stuff was true,
that he found it or whatever, and these stories
could possibly be what it was, his timeline is very far off.
Yes, it is.
(Nathan) We look at this third one, and you see this writing
at the very bottom.
(Phillip) There's the word Hor again.
(Nathan) Osiris Hor justified.
The name Hor, or Horus, is again found in this papyrus writing.
(Phillip) So what is Joseph Smith's,
what is his idea about this, this piece?
Is it anything?
(Nathan) He just connected it to it, but what, you know,
we can get from this that is very significant,
is that it makes Joseph Smith's papyrus,
all three of these, written for the very,
in reality they were written all for the same deceased person,
this Horus.
He had gotten this and completely changed it
and manipulated it to make it fit
Ah, to make it look like it's Abraham.
Like it's Abraham, to fit his book.
Hor was a priest of Amon Ra at Thebes in Egypt, but this is,
it's amazing, you know, to see how many people
he was able to fool with all these different papyrus.
No one knew, though, and no one still -
how many people do you know today even
who read Egyptian and the symbols and so forth?
You know, people can believe just about,
really just about anything,
and I can't remember, I don't remember who said it.
I seem to think it may have been someone saying it about Hitler,
or maybe Hitler said it, that if you tell a lie long enough
and you put enough, I guess, emphasis
in your lie or something, people will believe it.
And no matter how far out it is,
and you know we talked a lot about some of the sects
even today that - what is it, the Hale-Bopp people,
the Hale-Bopp people that follow the guy,
I don't even know his name anymore,
but they had change and they had brought money,
which I thought was for the gas for the UFO that was coming,
and the Hale-Bopp people - but people will believe anything.
So we're basically saying this, if I'm understanding correctly,
we're saying this about Joseph Smith,
not only did he not write the Book of Mormon,
he stole a lot of things from the one fellow,
I can't remember his name.
Solomon Spaulding.
Solomon Spaulding, he stole stuff from him,
he used stuff out of the King James Bible,
he wrote a lot of inaccurate things in the Bible,
as we looked at in a previous show.
And now, the things that he's writing
even in one of his other books, the Pearl of Great Price,
which is the Book of Abraham, right?
Well, it contains the Book of Abraham.
It contains the Book of Abraham,
and so the stuff he's writing there is also a lie.
Yes.
Well, all right.
Well, I guess then we're just going to leave it to you.
What else do we have as far as, we're basically trying
to determine to believe or not to believe in the books,
in the writings that follow the Mormons, right?
Do we have any other evidences that we should
or, as it's appearing, should not follow these books?
Well hopefully, this should be enough,
but if people still need some further evidence,
one of the key elements that we can used when validating
the Bible versus the Book of Mormon are the prophecies.
The Bible as we know is full of prophecies
and every one of them has been fulfilled
as they have been stated and the way they have been identified
and described from the Old Testament to the New Testament,
and even the Old Testament to the Old Testament or so forth.
They are correct on the dates, they are correct on the places,
they were correct on the people, and so forth.
So now we have to hold the Book of Mormon
or these other books up.
I'm guessing they wrote about prophecy, too?
Oh, absolutely.
Any book that, especially with something like prophecy,
it needs to be validated with that.
Back in the book of Deuteronomy, we see how there's a description
of how to determine whether or not a prophecy was true or not,
and whether God was accepting of that prophecy.
(Nathan) Deuteronomy 18, beginning in verse 21, "It is written,
"As you say in your heart, how shall we know the word
"which the Lord has not spoken?
"Well, when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord,
"if the thing follow not nor come to pass,
"that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken,
"but the prophet hath spoken presumptuously.
Thou shall not be afraid of him."
Ok, so he's telling us if a guy says something
and it comes true, he's a prophet.
If a guy says something and it doesn't come true,
don't be afraid of him, he's not a prophet.
(Nathan) That's exactly it.
(Nathan) They say the Lord is going to accept it.
So let's hold it up and see what we got.
Let's see what we've got with the Book of Mormon
or the Mormon writings.
Ok.
Well, we see now in Alma 7 and verse 10,
"Behold, He shall be born of Mary in Jerusalem."
(Nathan) Who was he referring to here?
(Phillip) Well, I'm guessing this is going to be
a reference to Jesus.
(Nathan) This is a prophecy about the birth of Jesus Christ.
There's just one little flaw, or minor mistake in this,
and that is the place of his birth.
(Phillip) Right, Bethlehem.
(Nathan) John 7:42 "Hath not the Scripture said
"that Christ cometh of the seed of David,
"and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?"
Now the Mormon apologists will try to reason this
by trying to say that Bethlehem was a tiny suburb of Jerusalem,
when in actuality, Bethlehem and Jerusalem are
about five miles apart from each other.
It's not a suburb, by any means, and not only that,
but they claim that those in the new world knew little
about this old world geography.
Well, that's not true, you know, because we see in John 7:42
it mentions David, the city of David,
and it mentions Bethlehem back then.
Obviously they knew where it was.
They knew where it was, that's right.
Prophecy must be specific to be reliable.
We do not hold vague prophecies very closely
and do not take them very seriously.
And that is what separated false prophets and true prophets.
Prophecy in the Bible did refer to the geographic details.
They knew exactly, in John 7:42 and in other passages,
that he was in fact born in Bethlehem.
(Phillip) Bethlehem, right.
Well, we're going to go on to the next one.
We're running just a bit short, and I don't want to cut you off
or ask a lot more questions to make you go down roads you don't
need to go down, so what's our next prophecy?
(Nathan) Ok, next one comes from Joseph Fielding Smith,
who is one of the LDS presidents of the past.
He talked about Ezekiel chapter 37.
This is a popular one among the Mormons
and those who question Mormonism.
It is in verses 15 to 22, there is a prediction
of the Book of Mormon, according to him,
and with its reference to the two sticks and Joseph.
Ok, the Lord commanded the prophet to take the two sticks,
join them together in his hand, one stick for Judah
and the other one for Israel, as we know.
It is explained throughout this chapter,
in fact it identifies it itself, it describes it itself.
(Phillip) So what we're saying then is, these guys are using a passage
out of its context to try to make it fit to their belief.
Yes, and in addition to that, how it talks about
the two sticks coming together, Smith tried to say the sticks
in this were actually scrolls,
that sticks meant scrolls back then.
Which is not the case.
It is never translated that way.
But his analogy is flawed
in that Ezekiel 37 does give its own interpretation.
Israel was divided into the two groups,
as it was prophesied that they would.
(Nathan) And the northern and southern tribes were joined
into one nation, the way that he said that it would.
Ok, when people asked for an interpretation
of the joined stick, it was explained to them
how the Lord declared that they would be one,
that they would come together and no longer be divided.
Ok, and it's also interesting that he would say
that the sticks are actually scrolls,
because this is coming out of,
coming from the Book of Mormon and ties the two together.
The Book of Mormon was
supposedly to have been written on what?
Golden plates. Ah, I see.
It was never written on scrolls to begin with.
And yet here he's trying to say that here's a prophecy
of the Book of Mormon, written on scrolls and so forth,
has no mention of even the golden plates back then.
And so it contradicts it all together.
Now those are failures in the Book of Mormon,
there are also failures in the Doctrine and Covenants
that we can look at really quickly.
(Nathan) One is in Doctrine and Covenants 87,
beginning verse 1, where it talks about the Civil War,
how it would be so intense that it would affect all nations.
It said it would spill into England
and other nations and so forth.
Well, any history major or any one that has any...
(Phillip) Any kind of history at all.
Who know anything about the Civil War
knows that it had to do with our nation.
It was a civil war, it did not affect other nations.
And so that one was false, regarding their prophecies.
In Doctrine and Covenants 57,
it was prophesied that
a Mormon temple would be built
in Independence, Missouri.
(Nathan) Well, to this day,
there still has not been
a temple erected
in Independence, Missouri.
It doesn't stop there in the Books of Doctrine.
It goes beyond that into some of their other works.
When we look at the History of the Church,
which is a Mormon publication, from way back,
a very trusted one, back in 1835,
God's blessing was written in this to a man
named Lyman E. Johnson.
(Nathan) Now listen very carefully to what he says.
"He shall live until the gathering is accomplished,
"according to the holy prophets, and he shall be like unto Enoch
"and his face shall be like unto his.
He shall see the Savior come and stand upon the earth"
- so there's a premillenial thought right there.
Believing Christ was going to come back upon the earth.
"With power and great glory."
(Phillip) So this guy's going to live until Christ comes back.
(Nathan) Until Jesus Christ comes back.
Here's what they do not tell you,
is that Lyman E. Johnson was excommunicated
two years after this in 1837.
And he drowned and died, and met his fate in 1856.
So that's another false prophecy.
So as of 1856 Jesus Christ had not come back,
to my knowledge.
Ok, in that same publication, in a later passage,
we see God's blessing to a man named William M'lellin.
Now listen to this one.
"His life shall be spared
in the midst of pestilence and destruction"
- so he was able to live through all of this -
"and in the midst of his enemies"
- he was able to live through them.
"He shall be a prince and a savior to God's people"
- so he would be esteemed and lifted up -
"the tempter shall not overcome him, and his days
may be prolonged until the coming of the Son of Man"
- referring to Jesus Christ.
Ok, now hang on one second.
We're running out of time so we're going to have to
wrap it up, but what you're saying
is basically taken care of in Deuteronomy.
If a group says something that doesn't not happen,
then they're false prophets.
And we've seen over and over again in this that these men
are nothing more than false prophets.
Yes.
We want to thank you again for being with us.
We look forward to our next show.
We hope that you will join us next time