I found this talk given by Elder Spencer W. Kimball in October 1963 General Conference. It was given when he was a member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles about my favorite book.
"My Brothers and Sisters, and especially friends of the radio and television audience:
May I tell you of a great adventure? As I traveled to a weekend assignment, I took with me an unusual book which was my constant companion. I could lay it down only to sleep, eat, and change trains. It fascinated me, captivated me, and held me spellbound with its irresistible charm and engaging interest. I have read it many times.
As I finished it, I closed the book and sat back, absorbed as I relived its contents. Its pages held me, bound me, and my eyes were riveted to them. I knew the book was factual, but as has been said, "Truth is stranger than fiction."
I am constrained to speak to you of it today. It is a story of courage, faith, and fortitude, of perseverance, sacrifice, and super-human accomplishments, of intrigue, of revenge, of disaster, of war murder, and rapine, of idolatry, and of cannibalism, of miracles, visions, and manifestations, of prophecies and their fulfillment.
I found in it life at its best and at its worst, in ever-changing patterns. I hardly recovered from one great crisis until another engulfed me.
Across the stage of this drama of life through the ages, marched actors in exotic, colorful costumes from the blood-painted nudity of the warrior to the lavish, ornamented pageantry of royal courts-some actors loathsome and degraded others so near perfection that they conversed with angels and with God. There are the sowers and reapers, the artisans, the engineers, the traders, and the toilers, the rake in his debauchery, the alcoholic with his liquor, the pervert rotting in his sex, the warrior in his armor, the missionary on his knees.
This dramatic story is one of the greatest ever played by man. The noted tragedians fumble their lines. It is played "on location" with no false fronts for scenery. It is a fast-moving story of total life, of opposing ideologies of monarchies and judgeships and mobocracies. Its scenes carry the reader across oceans and continents. It promises to tell of the "last days of God," but instead records the "last days of populous peoples" and the triumph of God. Class distinction is there with its ugliness, race prejudice with its hatefulness, multiplicity of creeds with their bitter conflicts.
Since this book, a "best seller" left its first press, it is printed in more than two dozen languages, more than a half million copies a year, and millions of copies are in libraries, public and private, and in numerous hotels and motels along with the Gideon Bible. Even the blind may read it in three thick books of Braille. Can anyone be considered to be well-read who has not perused this pretentious volume which makes such bold claims?
Its story has a vital message to all people. The gentiles will find the history of their past and the potential of their destiny; and the Jewish people, the blueprint of their future. The covenants of God to them are unfolded, as are the promises regarding Jerusalem, their ancient city, and their lands. And it is revealed how the Jews, so long persecuted, scattered and tortured since their dispersion, may come into their own. And the gentiles are warned that they must ". . . no longer hiss, nor spurn nor make game of the Jews, nor any of the remnant of the House of Israel" for the Lord will remember his covenant to them when they respond. It is the life story of the ancestors of the Indians and accounts for their dark skins.
Archaeologists may be excited as they read of ruins of ancient cities, highways, and buildings; and there may yet be hidden buried gold and priceless records. Locations may be approximated, for instance the narrow neck of land which was fortified from the "East sea to the West sea" was but a "day's journey for a Nephite."
Journalists will find in this book crisis after crisis, presenting rich material for limitless climactic stories, articles, plays and operas. A struggling movie industry might here find material which could increase box office receipts.
This unparalleled book should intrigue navigators: unprecedented land treks near-unbelievable in length scope, and hazard are chronicled and ocean crossings, and the circling of the world centuries before the Vikings-crossings fraught with all the dangers imaginable, including storms, hidden reefs, hurricanes, and even mutiny. This first recorded ocean crossing was about forty centuries ago, of seaworthy, oceangoing vessels without known sails, engines, oars, or rudders-eight barges like and near contemporary with Noah's ark, long as a tree, tight as a dish, peaked at the end like a gravy boat, (see Ether 2:17.) corked at top and bottom, illuminated by molten stones (see Ibid., 2:20, 3:1 ff.), perhaps with radium or some other substance not yet rediscovered by our scientists. Light and like a foul upon the water, this fleet of barges was driven by winds and ocean currents, landing at a common point in North America probably on the west shores.
The reader may follow with wonder another crossing of the ocean which was made by a Jewish group led by a prince, the son of Jerusalem's king, and of a third migration and voyage, perhaps the greatest in all of history, dimming even that of the Saints from Illinois to the Salt Lake Valley, and even of Moses' Israel from Egypt to their promised land. These people abandoned Jerusalem on the eve of its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and probably landed on the west coast of South America where the ocean currents drove them later to meet and combine with remnants of the earlier migrants; this greatest movement was made in a ship constructed by a young builder who may never have seen an ocean-going vessel. If the party of the prince sailed west and the prophets east they would have circumnavigated the world from Jerusalem, their people finally meeting in this western world. The vessels were sufficiently large to carry food and seeds.
There was no welcoming committee to meet these adventurers as there was to meet Columbus and the pilgrims.
This remarkable book tells again of movements of great bodies of people-5,400 in one group, sailing northward on the Pacific side in very large ships, seeking for new worlds to conquer, some of whom likely drawn into the strong westward ocean currents to find the "isles of the sea" and to become the progenitors of the Polynesians.
The people in Jerusalem knew nothing of the whereabouts of these fellow Israelites in the western world, but those here knew of the happenings in Palestine such as the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar and when the Christ was born in Bethlehem, crucified on Calvary, and when he ascended from the Mount of Olives, yet no ships were carrying mail; no telephone wires were humming; no radio sets were operating; no cables yet snaked across ocean floors.
The student of economics will find in this unusual book the disintegration of nations through pride, soft living, and luxuries, terminating finally in hunger and fetters. He will see unified peoples fighting for liberty and then class wars destroying those freedoms. One will see the land waving with ripening grain, the silkworm spinning, flocks and herds grazing, vineyards and orchards bearing, and a richly adored and bejeweled people. He will see stone quarries and lumber mills and mines and craft shops, and then devastated landscapes, burned homes, parched earth, warring antagonists and deserted lands. He will see towers and temples and kingly courts and palaces of the rich and their luxury, and dissipation, immorality, and debauchery, comparable to that in Babylon, Jerusalem and Rome.
He will see people thriving in communal living, and taxed from fifty percent, and then to totalness, to slavery, and to bondage. He will see power-greed paternalistic, centralized governments move toward the inevitable revolution which finally impoverishes but frees the people to begin again from ashes.
The astronomer and geologist here may see signs in the heavens and new stars come into focus, three days without sun or any reflected light, and nights without darkness, bright "as the midday sun" (see 3 Ne. 1:19) and a vapor of darkness so impenetrable that no glimmer, nor candles, nor torches, nor fire could give any light. A great storm came "such an one as never had been known in all the land" (see ibid., 8:5), certainly since Noah's forty-day pouring, and perhaps drowning more people than since the deluge, and terrible tempests, thunder, and sharp lightnings, and whirlwinds of tornadic and hurricane proportions, swift enough to carry away people never to be heard of again-twistings, foldings, whirlings, slidings, faultings, and tremblings of hours of duration to cause landslides burning great cities perhaps more extensive than the Bali's, Iran's, Assam's, and Chile's, perhaps interring in a few hours more people than ever in the history of the world. Tidal waves swallowed entire communities, and fire consumed many cities and human bodies. The labors of centuries were embalmed in ashes to a greater degree than Pompeii and Herculaneum; and earth convulsions of such intensity and prolongation that "the face of the whole earth was deformed" (see ibid., 8:17), these earth spasms being a revolt by the created earth against the crucifixion of its Creator.
Engineers will learn from this great book that those centuries ago, men erected buildings, temples, and highways with cement, and paved roads connected city to city and land to land, and when forests had been denuded, a reforestation program was initiated for the future.
The psychologists may find studies in human behavior and the workings of the human mind and the rationalizing processes where men convince themselves that "good is bad, and that bad is good." Here they will watch history unfold for thousands of years and see not only episodes in the lives of individuals but causes and effects in a total history of races.
The educator will find treasures of literature and poetry. He will see how language used to log their day-to-day experiences can be corrupted when not properly written, from an expressive tongue of the educated to numerous corrupted dialects of degenerated peoples, proving that to survive, people must be educated on every front-physical, mental, spiritual, moral-and that anything short of that will bring ultimate disaster.
This comprehensive book should be studied by politicians, government leaders, kings, presidents, and premiers to see the rise and fall of empires, and the difference between statesmanship and demagoguery. They will see nations born in war, live in war, deteriorate in war, and die in war through the centuries. They may find answers to problems of capital and labor, of dishonesty, graft and fraud, of dissensions, internal rupture, and civil wars.
In this uncommon book is seen that chief judges, frustrated by growing corruption, resign from judgment seats to proselyte for righteousness; that princes prefer to teach men rather than to rule over them; that kings have tilled the earth providing their own living to serve the people rather than to become burdensome to them and levy upon them confiscatory taxes; that rulers are loved and not feared.
Scientists will read of unusual instruments never patented or remade or duplicated, of elements which, without recharging, illuminate dark spaces indefinitely, that at least fifteen hundred years before Columbus these Westerners knew that the earth is round and revolved about the sun, and of a special instrument, not yet equaled even in our own day with all of our laboratories and knowledge, like a round ball, made of brass curious in workmanship, with two spindles, so sensitive that it was not limited to the cardinal points of the compass but would actually give guidance regardless of direction, recording the feelings, emotions, and inner rebellions of men and would function properly only where there was not human, mental, and moral discord. This instrument would point the way to the prevalence of animals to be hunted for food and was operated by faith rather than by electricity or other natural elements-an instrument on which would be writing changed from time to time, plain to read, increasing the understanding of those who read it.
Military men may learn much in strategy, intrigue, in movements, in morale. They may learn that centuries before the discovery of America, the ancients had cement buildings, temples, and highways connecting cities and lands, and metal tools for tilling ground, and munitions factories for making weapons of war, and forges to beat "plow-shares into swords, and pruning-hooks into spears." (See 2 Ne. 12:4.) They may learn how cold war can be kept in deep freeze.
Guerrilla warfare, sieges, and the scorched-earth policy were not originated in Civil War days nor in Russia but were programs of survival, initiated long centuries before Columbus, Pizarro, and Cortez.
They may learn that wars of aggression with soldiers, idolatrous and adulterous, who leave God out of their lives, will in the end be futile and disastrous.
They will learn that great cultures stagnate in war shadows and cease to survive when continuous wars make people migrants, when fields are abandoned, livestock appropriated for nonproducing soldiers, forests destroyed without replanting, and when farmers and builders become warriors, and businessmen shoulder arms and teachers mobilize. Men cannot plant, cultivate, and harvest when in camps, nor build when on the run. Long and bloody wars mean sacked, burned, ruined cities, confiscatory taxes, degenerated peoples, and decayed cultures.
Victory and defeat alike leave countries devastated and the conqueror and the conquered reduced. Wickedness brings war, and war vomits destruction and suffering, hate and bloodshed upon the guilty and the innocent.
This impressive book should convince all living souls of the futility of war and the hazards of unrighteousness. A few prophets, swimming in a sea of barbarism, find it difficult to prevent the crumbling and final collapse of corrupt peoples.
To you of the Americas, who are terrified by the daily papers, who tremble at "The sound of a shaken leaf," who build shelters in fear of guided missiles, hydrogen bombs, and biological warfare-to you, there is this conditional promise coming from this book of truth:
". . . this land shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, and there shall be no kings upon the land....
"And I will fortify this land against all other nations.
". . . I, the Lord, the king of heaven will be their king, and I will be a light unto them forever, that hear my words." (Ibid., 10:11-12, 14. Italics added.)
This single volume records for historians about twenty-six centuries of stirring life, not generally known even to the most highly trained professors of history. It tells of the ancestries of those whose spectacular monuments are now observed in South and Central America and in the Mexican jungles.
In this wondrous book, ministers and priests can find texts for sermons, and men generally can find final and authoritative answers to difficult questions: Is there life after death? Will the body be literally resurrected? Where do the spirits of men go between death and the resurrection? Can one be saved in unchastity? What is the correct organization of Christ's Church? Can one be saved without baptism? Why is it wrong to baptize infants? Is specific authority essential to administer ordinances? Is continuous revelation necessary and a reality? Is Jesus the actual Son of God?
Here is recorded the glorious coming of the Savior to his temple in America. He blessed the little children and wept as angels descended out of heaven and encircled them. He organized his Church with twelve apostles called disciples to whom were given the same priesthood, authority, and keys which their contemporaries, Peter, James, and John held in the other land.
The coming of the Resurrected Redeemer to this land was spectacular-the small piercing voice from heaven heard at Jordan and Transfiguration's Mount awed them as it announced:
"Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name-hear ye him." (3 Nephi 11:7.)
And then they saw a man descending out of heaven in white robes, and he stood in their midst saying: "Behold, I am Jesus Christ, . . . I am the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth and have been slain for the sins of the world." (See ibid., 11:10, 14.) And the multitude thrust their hands into his side and felt the prints of the nails and knew of a surety that this was the very Christ so recently crucified across the sea, and so recently ascended into heaven, and now among them to teach them his saving gospel.
This historical book tells of three men, who, like John the Revelator, are still on earth though it is nearly two thousand years since their mortal birth-men who have not suffered the pains of death, but who have control over the elements and who make themselves known at will and go anywhere on the globe when needed and who cannot be imprisoned, burned in the furnace, nor buried in pits, nor held in prison, nor destroyed by beasts; for, like the three Hebrews, superhuman power and protection have been given them.
This narrative tells of people with such faith that they buried their weapons to die victims of enemies rather than take lives; of boys who had inherited great faith from their mothers who had trained them to trust in God and they would be protected. It tells of the fulfillment when 2,060 of them were saved though they fought in many battles in which men all around them died, but because of the faith of their mothers and the sons, not one of the 2,060 suffered death. In this battle of defense, not one boy lost his life.
But after all, it is not the book's dramatic crises, its history, its narrative that are so important, but its power to transform men into Christ-like beings worthy of exaltation.
It is the word of God. It is a powerful second witness of Christ. And certainly, all true believers who love the Redeemer will welcome additional evidence of his divinity.
This inspiring book was never tampered with by unauthorized translators or biased theologians but comes to the world pure and directly from the historians and abridgers. The book is not on trial – its readers are.
Here is a scripture as old as creation and as new and vibrant as tomorrow, bridging time and eternity; it is a book of revelations and is a companion to the Bible brought from Europe by immigrants and agrees in surprising harmony with that Bible in tradition, history, doctrine, and prophecy; and the two were written simultaneously on two hemispheres under diverse conditions. It records the very words people would say when this hidden record should be presented to them.
". . . A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.
"But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews . . .
"Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible....
". . . I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea even upon all the nations of the earth?
"Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God that I remember one nation like unto another? . . .
"And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; . . . And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; . . . "Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written.
"For I command all men, both in the east and the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written.
"For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; . . ." (2 Nephi 29:3-12. Italics added.)
Then he says he will gather the three folds into one fold, and he will be their shepherd. And the records of the ten tribes are still to be recovered. "And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews.
"And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions; and my word also shall be gathered into one." (Ibid., 29:13-14.)
We seem to hear the Almighty warn: "Fools mock, and they shall mourn," and, "Woe be unto him that rejecteth the word of God." One prophet wrote: ". . . And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, . . ." (Ibid., 33:10.)
In the final chapter of the book is the never-failing promise that every person who will read the book with a sincere, prayerful desire to know of its divinity shall have the assurance.
The book of which I speak is the keystone of true religion, the ladder by which one may get near to God by abiding its precepts. It has been named "The most correct of any book on earth."
My beloved friends, I give to you the Book of Mormon. May you read it prayerfully, study it carefully, and receive for yourselves the testimony of its divinity. This, I pray in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen."
