Episode Details

RFM and Bill take a deeper look at the “Book of Mormon” and compare what we know about it with what we know about other books to see if it is as un unique as believers claim it to be and we even get Mormon Scholar, Brian Hales opinion on the matter.

RESOURCES:

https://archive.org/details/sorrytaleastory01currgoog/page/78/mode/2up

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1542&context=jbms#:~:text=Some%20critics%20of%20the%20Book,claimed%20communi%2D%20cations%20with%20spirits

https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/read-urantia-book-online

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V52N02_1.pdf

https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/050-16-26.pdf

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/A_Course_in_Miracles_Text.pdf

https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/glastonbury-abbey.htm 

https://gospeltangents.com/2021/10/automatic-writing-bill-davis/ – This is the the source for the three minute clip with Brian Hales talking about automatic writing. This segment is from an interview by Rick Bennett on his video podcast “Gospel Tangents” on the episode titled “Automatic Writing/Bill Davis’s Visions of Seer Stone”

This past week on Mormonism LIVE we covered “Automatic Writing” in the episode, Mormonism LIVE: 108: Is The Book of Mormon Unique?

A Great Article to read that delves into this in regards to its connection to Mormonism is here – https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/050-16-26.pdf

Here are the connections between Smith’s “Translation” of the Book of Mormon and the data behind automatic writing.

1.) Some of the Authors within “Automatic Writing” seemed to have a serious lack of education

2.) Their writings contained details that indicated antiquity that the author couldn’t of known ( [O]ne time while he [Joseph] was translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, ‘Emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it?’ When I answered ‘Yes,’ he replied ‘Oh! I was afraid I had been deceived.’ He had such limited knowledge of history at that time that he did not even know that Jerusalem was surrounded by walls.”)

3.) Able to discern things about the foreign lands and times that had a degree of accuracy to them.

4.) many “Automatic Writing” examples contained significantly less anachronisms than the book of Mormon

5.) “Automatic Writing” authors used a peep stone or crystal

6.) “Automatic Writing” authors moved away from a peep stone which they needed at first to being able to translate without one.

7.) Many of the significant “Automatic Writing” productions were Christian themed

8.) Some contained the voice of Christ

9.) Many were done by dictation

10.) At Least one stated its purpose was to answer three big questions “Where did we come from”, “Why are we here”, and “Where are we going”?

11.) Many of these productions were significa