Question 1

The temple that was never built

Accepted Answer

No temple was ever built on that lot. The Saints were driven from Missouri by 1839, and that generation passed away with the consecrated spot empty — the test of Deuteronomy 18 applied to the words exactly as given.

Question 2

A mission for a man with six months to live

Accepted Answer

Patten was killed at the Battle of Crooked River in October 1838 — six months after the revelation, and before the spring mission it commanded. A revelation that schedules a dead man's mission did not come from the One who knows the end from the beginning.

Question 3

The treasure of Salem

Accepted Answer

No treasure was found and no Salem wealth ever came to the church. A prophecy given to recover a debt, failing on its own terms, answers the question Scripture tells us to ask of every prophet.

Question 4

Fifty-six years to wind up the scene

Accepted Answer

Fifty-six years from 1835 was 1891. The scene did not wind up — and Jesus had already said, 'no one knows of that day and hour,' a verse every date-setter has broken against.

Question 5

'God himself was once as we are now'

Accepted Answer

Scripture's God is not an exalted man: 'from everlasting to everlasting, you are God'; 'God is not a man'; 'I, Yahweh, don’t change.' A god with a beginning who progressed to godhood is precisely what Isaiah's God says cannot exist.

Question 6

'Then shall they be gods'

Accepted Answer

The first voice in Scripture to promise 'ye shall be as gods' (Genesis 3:5, KJV) was the serpent's. Yahweh's own word leaves no room: 'Before me there was no God formed, neither will there be after me.' Not one before; not one after; none beside.

Question 7

The plurality of Gods

Accepted Answer

Isaiah's courtroom scenes exist to demolish exactly this: 'I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. Besides me, there is no God.' Paul concedes there are many so-called gods — 'yet to us there is one God.'

Question 8

The Adam-God sermon

Accepted Answer

The church later repudiated the doctrine — President Kimball denounced 'the Adam-God theory' in 1976, warning against 'this and other kinds of false doctrine.' The honest conclusion cuts both ways: either a prophet taught false doctrine from the pulpit, or the church that disavowed it is wrong. Both options break the claim of prophetic reliability.

Question 9

'All wrong… an abomination'

Accepted Answer

Paul left the church one test for any new message, angelic or apostolic: 'But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed.' Jude says the faith was 'once for all delivered to the saints' — not lost for seventeen centuries.

Question 10

A gospel from an angel

Accepted Answer

Paul wrote the warning before Moroni was ever named: 'even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed,' adding elsewhere that 'even Satan masquerades as an angel of light.' The test is not the messenger's glory but the message's agreement with the gospel already delivered.

Question 11

The papyri speak for themselves

Accepted Answer

When the source text exists and says something else entirely, the translation claim is testable — and tested. The church's own essay: the characters 'do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham.' A seer whose one checkable translation fails gives no grounds to trust the uncheckable ones.

Question 12

DNA and the missing Israelites

Accepted Answer

The essay calls the evidence 'simply inconclusive' — but a record whose central migration left no genetic, linguistic, or archaeological trace asks for faith against evidence, not from it. 'Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good.'

Question 13

Four First Visions

Accepted Answer

Histories grow; testimonies harden. The earliest account names only 'the Lord'; the two Personages on which the later church built its theology appear only in the later accounts, and the essay can only argue that the 1832 wording might mean two beings. Scripture establishes a matter 'at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses' — here there is one man, whose accounts differ.

Question 14

The youngest was fourteen

Accepted Answer

Whatever is argued about the practice, it is not the marriage Jesus traced to 'the beginning' — 'the two shall become one flesh' — nor the standard Paul set for those who lead God's house: 'the husband of one wife.'

MORMONISM & THE BIBLE

TEST EVERYTHING