May I refer to a modern last days testimony. When Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum started for Carthage, to face what they knew to be an immenent martyrdom Hyrum read these words of comfort to the heart of his brother. "Thou hast been faithful, wherefore, thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down of the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father. And now I Moroni, bid farewell until we shall meet, before the judgment seat of Christ."
A few, short verses, from the 12 chapter of Ether in the Book of Mormon......
......Later, when actually incarcerated in the jail, Joseph the Prophet, turned to the guards who held him captive and bore a powerful testimony to the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Shortly thereafter, pistol and ball would take the lives of these two testators.
As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as one more evidence of it's truthfulness. In this their greatest and last hour of need, I ask you, would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book? And by implication a church and ministry they had fictiously created out of whole cloth? Never mind their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless, nevermind that their little band of followers are about to be homeless, houseless, and friendless and that their little children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor, nevermind that legions will die and other legions live declaring that they know that the Book of Mormon and the church that it espouses to be true. Disregard all of that and tell me, whether in this hour of death that these two men would enter the presence of their eternal judge quoting from, and finding solace in a book which if not the very Word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatains until the end of time.
THEY WOULD NOT DO THAT.They were willing to die, rather than deny the divine origin and the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. For 179 years this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart, like perhaps no other book in modern religious history, perhaps like no other book in any religious history and still it stands. Failed theories about it origins have been borne, parroted, and died. From Ethan Smith to Solomon Spaulding, to deranged paranoid to cunning geneous. None of these frankly pathetic answers has ever withstood examination because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as it's young, unlearned translator.
In this I stand with my own great-grandfather who said simply enough "no wicked man could write such a book as this, and no good man would write it, unless it were true, and he were commanded of God to do so."......
.....If anyone is foolish enough, or mislead enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and semetic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origins of those pages somehow especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that whitness has had on what is now 10s of millions of readers; if that's the case than such persons elect or otherwise have been deceived......
.....But my testimony of this record and the peace it brings to the human heart is as binding and unequivocal as was theirs. Like them I give my name to the world to witness unto the world that that which I have seen and like them, I lie not, God bearing witness of it. I ask that my testimony of the Book of Mormon and all that it implies, given today under my oath and my office, be recorded by men on earth and angels in heaven. I hope I have a few years left in my last days but whether I do or do not, I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world in the most straightforward language I could summon that the Book of Mormon is true. That it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the last days......
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