Transcription
If you want to become a member of the Mormon church, or even if you were born into the church, the chances are you will, at some point, have ended up engaging with something called Moroni's promise, if you haven't already. But what exactly is Moroni's promise? It's a passage of scripture found at the very end of the Book of Mormon, in Moroni 10:3-5. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that you would ask God the eternal father in the name of Christ if these things are not true. And if you shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost, you may know the truth of all things. I hope that you have all proved that promise for yourself, or that you will do it soon.
My friend Jared over at Heliocentric has just finished reading the Book of Mormon for the first time. If you want to see us discussing that experience, then be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it. But now that he has read the Book of Mormon, the missionaries would likely invite him to undertake the process outlined in Moroni's Promise. So, let's take a look at that process and, of course, lay it out in a lovely flowchart. First, one must pray in the name of Jesus Christ to ask if the things of the Book of Mormon are not true. So, that right there is interesting.
Before we get to any more steps in the flowchart, Moroni's promise involves praying to know if something is not true. You're asking for an affirmation of the negative. This is often subtly shifted by church leaders such as Richard G. Scott into a question that asks for an affirmation of the positive. Follow Moroni's council, we've heard of often in this conference. Sincerely ask God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ with real intent. If the teachings of the Book of Mormon are true, surely that's no big deal. After all, what's the difference between asking if it's true and asking if it's not true? Well, because if you're asking if it's not true, there is a presumption that it is true, and you're trying to overturn that presumption. It's similar to the reason in the legal system we don't go around asking if that person's not guilty. We ask if they are guilty because the presumption is they're innocent, and the inquiry is to overturn that presumption if the evidence supports it. Similarly, if one is praying to know if the Book of Mormon is not true, the implicit default in that phraseology is that it is true. And that presumptive language is likely to influence the individual asking the question.
There also appears to be an issue with asking if it's not true from a semantic point of view. Because if you're praying to know if the Book of Mormon is not true, then any answer yields the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is not true. Let me show you. Is the Book of Mormon not true? Yes, it is not true. Is the Book of Mormon not true? No, it is not true. This is probably more an issue of the use of King James style language and that then being read by a modern audience. Really, it's just an interesting observation.
But moving away from the strange phraseology that somehow survived divine translation into English, we come next to the necessary conditions under which one must ask the question in Moroni's promise in order to receive the promised answer. There are three necessary conditions under which a person must engage in Moroni's promise: having a sincere heart, real intent, and faith in Christ. All three of these conditions are necessary in order to receive an answer.
Starting with a sincere heart, I cannot find any definition of a sincere heart that is specific to Mormon theology. What we can do, however, is follow the footnotes. The footnote for sincere heart refers the reader to further study the topic of honesty. So, I would say for the purpose of this video, we could define someone with a sincere heart as being someone honest with their desire to know if the Book of Mormon is true or not. If anyone disagrees with that definition or knows the church's official definition of a sincere heart, let me know in the comments. But in and of itself, I think the only thing that's problematic with honesty being a necessary condition of receiving an answer within Moroni's promise is that it is personally subjective. Only the individual themselves know whether they're being sincere or honest in their desire to know.
Moving on to real intent. The book *Preach My Gospel*, which missionaries use to teach converts, provides the following definition of real intent: Praying with real intent means being willing to act on the answers we receive from God. This definition assumes that one will receive answers from God. But what if those answers don't come? I suppose you could say that one must be willing to act on the answers even if they don't come. But either way, real intent is a willingness to do something with the answers received when you engage with the promise. So someone without real intent may engage in Moroni's promise, but because they don't intend to do anything with the answers they're seeking, the answers will be withheld. This causes the individual engaging with the promise to, at the very least, imagine themselves joining the church or continuing in church activity should the answer be that the Book of Mormon is true. We can see how this might create motivated reasoning in the already active church member that they want to maintain the status quo of their lives. But in the potential convert, the effect is slightly different. If a potential convert is wanting to sincerely know if the Book of Mormon is true or not and wants to meet all the necessary conditions to get an answer to that question, then they must, in order to have real intent, be willing, in light of an answer that the Book of Mormon is true, to get baptized. This means that they must have already become comfortable with the idea of baptism and accept that it is a possible step in their future. In fact, I would go further and argue that in many cases, the convert is probably ready to be baptized and actively wants to join the church. They're just waiting for the nod from God that the Book of Mormon is true. After all, God does not answer the prayers of the curious, only the prayers of the committed. God does answer our prayers about the truthfulness of the gospel, but he answers them when we have a sincere heart with real intent. He does not answer just to respond to our curiosity.
And with that we come to our final necessary condition. Faith in Christ is a tricky one because anyone familiar with the vast number of Christian denominations will know that they don't all worship the same Christ. He varies in physical form, in theological purpose, and in some cases, in his political leanings. So the Christ that you have to have faith in must be the Mormon perception and theological understanding of Christ. That is, if one is to avoid the scenario in which, say, a Catholic convert is told, "Ah, well, you didn't have faith in all of what we as Mormons believe Christ to be, and that's why you didn't get the answer that the Book is true." The fact that one must have faith in Christ in order to receive a confirmation of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon means that really Moroni's promise is kind of just begging the question. Begging the question is when the premise of an argument assumes the truth of the conclusion. If you have to have faith in Christ, and particularly faith in a specific Christ who visited the Americas, then you must accept what is written in the Book of Mormon about Christ's visitation in order to properly engage with Moroni's promise. In this way, Moroni's promise is already asking you to believe the Book of Mormon is true before you then go ahead and ask if it isn't. It's not just the presumptive language that we discussed earlier. It seems it's actually a necessary condition of the promise that one must already believe the Book of Mormon to some extent in order to receive an answer about its truthfulness. And if you already believe it to some extent, what sort of answer do you think you're going to get?
Now, speaking of already being something, if you're already a monthly supporter of my channel through Patreon, then I thank you. It's your support that helps me keep making videos like this. If you aren't already a supporter and you'd like to be, the link is in the description, and whatever amount you can afford is greatly appreciated. It also gets you access to next week's exclusive donor box live stream. So that's pretty fun. Anyway, with that out of the way, we've covered the conditions under which one should undertake Moroni's promise.
And if all necessary conditions are met, then this is the outcome promised by Moroni: God will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost. Now, in this context, the truth of the Book of Mormon means something like the book is ancient scripture translated by Joseph Smith that contains a true record of, amongst other things, Christ's teachings and visitations in the Americas. And *Preach My Gospel* lays out how this one moment of spiritual confirmation by the Holy Ghost can be the underpinning of many other truths found in Mormonism. As we read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, we will learn truths about Jesus Christ that will bless our lives. We will also come to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that the gospel and church of Jesus Christ have been restored through him. The extent to which these things are true and are knowable was discussed in last week's video, which I'll link at the end. But the key thing to mention here is the manifestation by the Holy Ghost comes through feelings. Feelings which missionaries are taught to identify for the potential convert as the Holy Ghost. Our missionaries are trained to help investigators recognize when they are feeling the spirit. I remember on numerous occasions stopping in the middle of an intense spiritual discussion and saying, "Let's pause for a moment and talk about what you're feeling right now." You're feeling like we've reminded you of things you had forgotten. You're feeling that we're telling you the truth. You're feeling peace. You're feeling the Holy Ghost. The only way any convert or member of the church learns to identify their feelings as the Holy Ghost is because someone tells them that is the case.
Now, the outcome most members and missionaries will expect, and the outcome which actually forms the promise that Moroni is making, is that after praying in the prescribed way under the prescribed necessary personal conditions, one will receive a manifestation of the truth of the Book of Mormon. But what if that's not the outcome? What if, under all the right conditions, the outcome is an affirmation that the original premise of the question is correct? That being, you have prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is not true, and that has been confirmed to you: It is not true. This is not the outcome that members of the church would expect and is potentially incredibly challenging to the belief which these members hold that the Book of Mormon is true. So how do they quell this spiritual danger? They can't blame the premise of the experiment. After all, that's how they derive their own answer that the Book was true. The answer, "The Book of Mormon isn't true," can't be the correct outcome if their own conviction is that the book is true. So what this leaves is to blame the necessary conditions of the promise. These conditions are not traditionally quantifiable, after all. So how can a potential convert prove their intent, their faith, their sincerity of heart? And if everyone else in a church member's life has received an answer that the Book of Mormon is true, then surely one is likely to doubt their own sincerity or intent or faith than to doubt the experiment itself, which has proved fruitful for others. This is what so often leads to the flowchart creating a loop for itself. The positive feelings towards the Book of Mormon identified by missionaries and others as the Holy Ghost will always be interpreted as an answer that the Book of Mormon is true. However, due to the unquantifiable and potentially vague conditions under which this prayer must be made, any lack of answer or even a feeling that it isn't true doesn't make the book untrue, as there is always room to blame the conditions under which the promise was engaged with rather than accept an outcome which indicates the Book of Mormon isn't true. And in order for this to be a truly meaningful test of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, we need to identify what a negative outcome would actually look like. But more than that, we need to know under what conditions we can accept when a negative outcome has taken place.
So this is a question for any members of the church that are watching. Even if you are 100% convinced that proper enactment of the steps found in Moroni's promise will always lead to an affirmation that the Book of Mormon is true, if you always blame the heart for being insincere, you always question the realness of the intent, and you always doubt the faith of the person engaging with the promise; if you always blame these things should the promise not yield the results you expect, do you at least understand how this makes it an unfalsifiable claim? Because there is no outcome other than the Book of Mormon is true that you are willing to accept. If you're a member of the church who has blamed these things when you have not received an answer, why should you always blame yourself? Why would you not be willing to accept that it could be the process rather than your own sincerity or intent or faith that is the problem here? And to me, that is the problem with Moroni's promise. It's not that it can't engender spiritual experiences in individuals which leads them to believe that the Book of Mormon is true. Rather, the problem is that it is far from objective in doing so. From presumptive language to unfalsifiability, it is not an objective test to determine the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. It is simply a set of steps and conditions that will create a confirmation if the individual is already desirous for that confirmation. It will do nothing for the skeptic, arguably the person who needs an answer the most.