One question at a time 3 Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith the Prophet was not perfect although the Lord uses imperfect men to do his work on earth. In the Book of Amos in the Bible explains that God will reveal his secrets to his Prophets.

You can find fault with any man when you look hard enough. I admire God for using imperfect men to build up his kingdom and restore his Gospel. In 90 days Joseph Smith translated the entire book of Mormon and when you research ¨The Joseph Smith Papers¨you can see that many men were involved in analyzing everything he had written. Can you find errors in his writings, sure. Can you find errors in my writing, sure. Can you find errors in the Book of Mormon sure. Can you find errors in the Bible and the answer is yes because they were written by imperfect men.

Can you also find an incredible amount of material and after you read his journals and find out what his life was actually like you learn to love him, you learn that he was a man and yet he did much. I look at his life and his imperfections and I have decided to cut him a break and look at the results of his work. Among the writings you will find he was arrested over 30 times and almost all of these times the charges were just made up until he ordered the anti mormon printing press to be destroyed which was an actual charge that was not a lie. The Lord used him and knew that many would speak evil and good about him. The Lord used this boy for a reason and the Church would prosper even with imperfect men at the head of the Church. I look in the Bible and read of Judah and his life and think if the Lord could deal with men like this he could work with us as well. My testimony is not based on Joseph Smith it is based on God restoring his Gospel using imperfect men. Many times I write too much and include too many details and I have been told that doing this makes it less likely that anyone will make it through anything I write so I am trying to simplify what I write and write less.

What if we read the Book of Mormon with true intent really looking for wisdom and looking for words of God? What can we find then?

When you are in the service of your fellowmen you are only in the service of your God. Verses like this from the Book of Mormon not only jump out they go deep into our souls and help us change for the better. The analysis of the Joseph Smith papers and the Book of Mormon reveal many interesting facts. Interestingly enough the consensus is that the Book of Mormon was written by many different authors not just one because of the writing styles etc.... The way the books were written they found methods of writing and putting the sentence structures together that was used in that time which is also interesting since Joseph had no training any any of that. The people he associated with were more educated so you say they could have made those things up and created the Book of Mormon story. I suppose you can say that yet it is interesting that many of those close to him left the Church but never even claimed the Book of Mormon was made up. So what we really need to know is if this book is true or not. If it is true there are things in it that we need to know.