[MUSIC] Well, I'm here at Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre here in London. Well, actually this
isn't the original Globe. Sadly, that one burned
to the ground in the 1600s. But this 1997 version
is a pretty true-to-history reconstruction of
the original playhouse where Sir Willie's great
works like Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet,
etc., were performed. But why on earth are
we starting our episode here? What on
earth does Shakespeare have to do
with the Book of Mormon? Well, nothing
really, except one thing. In a previous
episode, we've explored internal evidences
for the Book of Mormon, specifically literary
elements that stand out in the text and provide clues as
to the Book's ancient origins. There's so many different
literary evidences, however, that we just couldn't fit
them all in that one episode. In fact, when
our editor Noah sat down and tried to
cut all of the footage, it was over three hours long. So, we chopped it
up to make two episodes. So that's why I'm here,
because Shakespeare is considered by many to be a
literary genius, obviously. He employed the
English language to a degree that was
unparalleled at that time. And here's the
cool part of all the rhetorical and
literary tools on his tool belt. One of them was chiasmus. Now, I know if you've been
watching, you know that chiasmus is a literary
structure that we also find in abundance
in the Book of Mormon. I'm Scott Christopher, and in this episode
of A Marvelous Work, we will
burrow even deeper into literary
evidences in the Book of Mormon and share
with you some of those nuggets we didn't
use in previous episodes. I'll be talking
to leading experts in the field of
chiasmus and stylometry. And, of
course, we hope to have a jolly good
time along the way. In fact, whilst we're in
these parts, I'll be chatting with a woman who has
a very special story to share with us, so
stick around for that. Well, are you ready
to dive in? Are you comfy? Ladies and gentlemen,
lords and ladies, I give you episode four, act one
of A Marvelous Work. [Music] So, yeah, we've talked
about chiasmus before, a literary device that's been used
for centuries by writers like Shakespeare to
emphasize key points of their message and to create a lyrical
structure that adds beauty and sophistication to their text. So certainly
Shakespeare's purpose in using it in the English language
to create drama and to fill his wonderful
playhouse with spectators. But even
before Shakespeare's time, chiasmus was
employed by authors of the Bible. It's found in the
writings of Matthew, James, Paul in the Old
Testament, too, in Genesis. Chiasmus is ancient. It
served multiple purposes for biblical prophets, and
they weren't concerned with filling playhouses, but with
focusing readers on a central message. [Music] So in the spirit of
talking a little bit more about chiasmus, I spent some
time recently in Provo, Utah, at the BYU Library, where I
was gathering more intel. [Music] Wow. We're in
the Special Collections Department at the
Harold B. Lee Library. I was just down there
looking at Jack Welch. He's the guy who discovered
chiasmus. You remember from Episode 1? I'm
here to talk to him now. [Music] How are you, sir? I'm great. Good
to see you again, Scott. Same here. Wow. Here we are in the
Special Collections area of the BYU Library, one
of my favorite places. I love it. Yeah, and it's a home to
a lot of books that have made a big
difference for me in my life and my study
of the Scriptures. There's a
lot of cool things I know we're
going to talk about today. Absolutely. We kind of scratched the
surface a little bit about the poetry of
chiasmus and things like that, and I know people
are excited to hear more. What are some of your
favorite examples of chiasmus, specifically
in the Book of Mormon? My favorite, I
think, would be Alma chapter 36. And what he tells there
is the story of his conversion, where he goes through a
series of steps, and he wants to change, but there's
one important step there. And it's when he
remembered the Son of God who would atone
for the sins of the world. And he said, "And
when I thought that, I cried out, "Oh
Jesus, thou Son of God." Perfect
duplication there. Have mercy on me who am in
the gall of bitterness. And then he retraces
his steps through the chapter. So that's
the central point of the
chapter-long chiasm in Alma 36. And there's no rhetorical
or literary device better suited for telling a conversion
story like that than chiasmus. I found Mosiah
chapter 3 verses 18 to 19. And if you count the
words in King Benjamin's speech, you'll find that
this is almost dead center. Like divisible by two. It's the middle of
the fourth of seven sections. It's pretty obvious that this is an
intentional center point. And let's just
look at it because it's not just the
center point of a chapter. It's the center point
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so as
you look here through Mosiah chapter
3 verses 18 and 19, he tells his people,
"Men drink damnation to their own souls except
they humble themselves, and become
as little children." And third, "Believe that
salvation was and is and is to come in and
through the atoning blood of Christ
the Lord omnipotent. For the
natural man is an enemy to God," and
here's the turning point, "and has been
from the fall of Adam, and will be
forever and ever unless," he yields to the
enticings of the Holy Spirit,
"putteth off the natural man, and becomeeth a saint
through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and
becomeeth as a child, submissive, meek,
humble, patient, full of love, and willing to
submit to all things." It's very hard to
translate a rhyme scheme. It's very hard
to translate the meter. But what device
can be translated into just about every
language in the world? Chiasmus and
parallelism, where you take the words and
you preserve the order. Yeah, and then reverse them. I'm quite confident that
the Lord knew that this was a book that would have
to go to every nation, kindred, tongue,
language, and people. And so it has to be
written in a way that that can happen. And Chiasmus fits that bill. Thank you so
much again, Jack. I'm so glad
that we were able to get back with you
and dig a little deeper. So much fun.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Talking with Jack
Welch is always a treat. He encouraged me,
however, to not let his be the only voice
to speak about Chiasmus. So we put our team in
touch with a Jewish professor who could
illuminate the topic further. Gary Rensberg is a
professor of biblical studies, Hebrew language, and
ancient Judaism here at Rutgers. He's also the
author of numerous books and publications
about Hebrew literature. We are on a trek, as you
know, to kind of discover what we would consider
evidences for the Book of Mormon. Now, I know that
you know Dr. Jack Welch. I do. I
know Jack very well. We were just talking to
him recently about Chiasmus. And I know you have a lot in common with
Jack about Chiasmus. What is Chiasmus,
particularly in ancient religious texts? The term actually comes
from the Greek letter "chi," so if you can
picture the "chi," which is the origins
of our English "X," which means you start a
story with what we call Unit A, and you build a story
to Unit B, C, D, E, etc. And then you come to a
focal point or a pivot point, and it unwinds to an E' D' C' B' A' units, and these
units match each other. So as you read a story
from beginning to end in a holistic way, even though it's
got various scenes and episodes, you're understanding
that the story has an intentional structure to it that has
been deliberately included in the experience
of reading the text, with your
attention going to, oh, that pivot
point or that focal point. When you talk about
researching the Bible and seeing Chiasmus structures, are you primarily in
the Hebrew language, or does it
carry over into other translated languages,
like English, for example? I work in the Hebrew
original text, and my work on Chiasmus has been
especially in the book of Genesis, where
it was first identified, and I built on the
work of other scholars. If the translator paid
attention to these terms, you could actually see this in an
English translation as well. So it depends on
the style of the translator. Actually, when I
translate, and other scholars do the same, we try to find the same
English word to render the same Hebrew word each time
and to translate it consistently. Other translations tend to
be a little looser. They're more paraphrasing or
functional equivalent. So if word A in the
Hebrew is used in this place, and it gets translated
with English word B, it may get translated
with English word C by a different translator down the road
somewhere, chapters later, in which case the
English reader wouldn't see it. But if it's really well
done, the same translation in English
should have reflect the same Hebrew
words at each time. Okay, so let's talk
about the Book of Mormon briefly. You're not a
Latter-day Saint, obviously. Have you had a chance to
read the Chiasms that Jack has discovered in
the Book of Mormon? What are your
thoughts on them, your opinion on that?
What does that mean to you? Jack's discovery, which
he presented when I was together with him at
a conference at BYU in Provo, it
was so self-evident. It's the same issue then. How come nobody
noticed it before, right? And I still remember
Jack Welch getting up there and talking about being a
young man and studying the Book of Mormon, and
he was actually in Germany, and he
highlighted the passages. Now, this is all part of the creation of
literature again, right? This is, and he began to
show these things, and I was, to use that
hackneyed expression, blown away
by Jack's discovery. And once he
showed it, I said, "Well, yes,
obviously, it's there." So it doesn't match up to
what you would have defined. Very similar to
what I discovered in the Book of Genesis,
the system of doing it. Based on the chiastic
structure alone, one can, and this was part of Jack
Welch's incredible discovery, it would go a long way to
establishing the LDS fundamental belief that this is a text from the
world of ancient Israel. Thank you so much
for your time. Really, really appreciate
it. It's been an honor. It's been such a pleasure. This was great. Thanks so much. [Music] You know, the thing I
loved about talking with Gary and people like
him is that he's not a BYU professor
of ancient Scripture. He's not a man of the cloth. You know, it's
someone else who can recognize and appreciate the existence
of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Pretty cool. Well, I've got myself
in a bit of a pickle here. I've got somewhere I need
to be, and as you can see, I've got myself
stuck in one of these notorious
British garden labyrinths. It's going to be
a minute. I don't know how I'm going to
find a way out of here. It's embarrassing, really. I wonder if there's an app. [Music] You know, the city is
chock-full of literary history. It is the
backdrop of some of the world's most
beloved characters and novels. Books like Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, H.
G. Wells' The Time Machine, Robert Louis
Stevenson's Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. They all took
place here in London. Perhaps one of
the most famous authors to use London in his
novels was Charles Dickens. What do you got? Your Great Expectations? You
got your Oliver Twist? Your Tale of
Two Cities? And of course,
Scrooge, A Christmas Carol. Dickens was known for
painting literary pictures of London that were
strikingly authentic. He exposed the poverty,
the child labor, and the cruelty of man, while still
offering hope that people can change. I'm in fact standing
across the street from one of Dickens' homes here at 49
Dowdy Street in King's Cross. You know, it's cool to be
here and see this real Dickens place, but
you know, this isn't the first
time I've come across Mr. Dickens in our
search for Book of Mormon evidence. On a recent flight home
from one of our adventures, I just happened to sit right
next to a man who's, of all things, a collector of
rare books and artifacts. And he has in his
possession some really cool things
related to Charles Dickens. His name is Reid Moon,
and he's an expert at determining the authenticity
of old and rare books. So this stuff's all
put out here in the front, I'm guessing.
Still is very valuable, but you must
have some other items. We do. We keep those in
the back. And if you want to go in back, I can
show you some of the treasures that are
too valuable to be out front. Nah, I think
we're good. Let's wrap it up. Of
course we want to go back. Yes, please! This is from a
castle over in the UK, so that's St.
George Slaying the Dragon. You have James I in Anne of Denmark, so
it's a lot of history. This is a 400-year-old
historical door, but as you open it up, it does
still have that creak. Oh, I love it. It does. Oh,
that's a happy creak. [Music] The first thing you notice
is there's a desk, but nobody's supposed to sit at it
just because it is an older desk. But the
original owner of this desk, that man's
name, Charles Dickens. So you have
Charles Dickens' desk that he wrote
A Tale of Two Cities. Yes. This is quite
the eclectic room. It's everything. The pop culture and
that. And now I'm obviously on the trail of
Book of Mormon things. We have a full vault full of older copies
of the Book of Mormon, and we have another vault
filled with every first edition of the Book of
Mormon in every language. When I travel
the world and people find out that I
have a bookshop in Utah, invariably the
subject of first edition copies of the
Book of Mormon comes up. And everybody
worldwide knows the value, and
everybody's looking for them, because from books printed in the
19th century, it's like top five. It holds its own with some of the most
important books printed. Do you have any Books of
Mormon here nearby that I can... Actually, right up front. I was just going to say it. Tell me about
something cool about one of these. Well... Now that's
not the actual book. No, that's a
protective clam shell. But as we open it up, you
can see here is the book itself. Originally,
5,000 copies were printed. Grandin, right? Grandin press. We can go to the title page right here,
and you can see 1830. Number one question, do we
know who this book belonged to? And the answer is yes. The person who owned
this book was very proud of it and boldly wrote
their name in ink. Not on the
title page, but on the... Is it going
to be somebody cool? Hopefully. Hyrum Smith. Yeah, Hyrum
Smith, he's pretty cool. I seem to recall that name. So this is
Hyrum Smith's copy. Just don't
open it more than a V. I won't do
more than a... yeah. Number one question,
how do we know that's Hyrum's? Well, first of all, the
ink, iron gall ink is eating through the
paper, so that bodes well. But actually, a lot
of research has been done. And this is
an entire cache of provenance,
giving the entire background. This book was Hyrum Smith's, but it
disappeared for 150 years. And you say,
well, how did it disappear? Well, first,
let me pull this out. In 1832, this copy was
acquired by Reynolds Cahoon. This is a copy of
Hyrum Smith's own journal. And if you go right here,
it says, "Reynolds Cahoon to owe me for the
Book of Mormon $1.25." So he sold his copy for
$1.25, so it changed hands from Hyrum Smith
to Reynolds Cahoon. After the Saints leave
Nauvoo, the book is gifted to Reynolds
Cahoon's son, Pulaski Cahoon. But Pulaski
is the older brother. He has this book. He doesn't stay with the
Church, and he goes to Missouri, takes this book with him,
and it disappears for 150 years. This book surfaced 20
years ago in 2004 in Chicago. And the woman who owned
it wrote a two-page notarized affidavit,
and she starts out, "This is to certify that my family is
possessed all of my life. A fine copy of the Book of
Mormon dated Palmyra, New York, 1830 and
inscribed, "Hyrum Smith's book." There it is, 1830,
inscribed Hyrum Smith's book. And it goes on to say,
"The Book of Mormon has been a part of my family for
over four generations. I inherited it through
my great-grandparents. They were originally
slaves in Missouri." This book
somehow ended up with slaves and slave
descendants for 150 years. And you say,
"How do you know that?" Well, here's the story. The Book of Mormon was
always a prized possession to the generations of
owners of my family. It was a sincere gift
given by the Cahoons to wish them safety,
prosperity, and freedom as they move
north under the new lives. I really wish I could meet
all of them, or at least know more family history, but I do not. Considering the end of
the lineage as the last survivor, I decided to return the
book closer to where it started and to someone who will love, appreciate, and
cherish it much as my family did. She also made
one request that her prized
possessions stay with the book. What do you think she
wanted to stay with the book? Something
about her family, maybe? Her family photographs. And so here are the
people who owned this book. Wow. And kept it
safe for 150 years. It isn't that cool. So this copy
of the Book of Mormon, we literally
know everywhere it's been. Hyrum Smith, Reynolds
Cahoon, Reynolds Cahoon's son, four generations of the Bradshaws, and then to my
friend and then myself. So I'm the seventh
owner of the Hyrum Smith copy. The Book of Mormon, for
some people initially at least, was so
precious that they took care of it as an
heirloom-level keepsake. And for it to be such a
joyous gift that they gave to these wonderful emancipated slaves, you know
that the intent behind it was,
"Give it a good home." Yes. But to be
able to authenticate a book that came
from a certain place in a certain
time that was owned by a certain
person is one thing. And it's one
amazing thing, and it's obviously
a very valuable thing. And our quest is to
somehow find ways to authenticate the content within
the Book of Mormon itself. And as we
found in our journeys, we come
across people of faith. We come across people
of scholastic backgrounds that understand
literary evidences. And all
arrows kind of point to the Book of
Mormon being authentic. But ultimately, at least I
believe, the authenticity of the book is really
found in the spiritual realm. Like you
mentioned, you know, you read it for yourself. You
felt that it was true. What more
evidence does a person need? In your opinion, do you
think Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon
himself? No. Why not? Well, first
of all, I've read it numerous
times, and I've seen— I have my own
reasons for believing just the number
of times I've read it, and I see what it
takes for a book to stick around. And there are so
many forgotten books. If Joseph Smith
would have written it, it would have
been long forgotten by now. That's beautiful. Anyway, thank
you so much for your time. It's been
fun. This is just fantastic. [Music] Ooh! Well, isn't this lovely? I'm at Whitby Abbey, up on
the northeast coast of England. And it is suitably creepy. In fact, supposedly it
was the place that inspired Bram Stoker to write his
chilling classic, Dracula. And of
course, you understand. The clear connection between the Book of
Mormon and Dracula. Let me tell you. Stop. [Music] Bram Stoker's novel
Dracula is unique, in that he chose to write it as though
it were a true account. So the chapters, in fact,
are a series of letters written in between
different characters in the book,
or journal entries, actually from
six different characters. Of course, a good
novelist has the ability to do this, to create these
character voices that are distinct or
different from one another. So that as we're reading
this letter from Van Helsing to Mrs. Harker, it does in
fact sound like Van Helsing, a different
character from Miss Harker. The ability to create
these distinct voices is actually a hallmark of
a literary master, such as Stoker
or Dickens or whoever. But the Book of Mormon
includes dozens of individual character
voices, and in fact was written by
many different authors. Though some people
believe it was written by a single author, whether it was
Joseph Smith or someone else who clearly must
have had once in a lifetime literary
genius-level intellect. But to shed more
light on this, which is called "Stylometry,"
I had a chance to meet with Dr.
Paul Fields recently. [Music] Dr. Paul Fields is an
expert in the field of stylometry, which as I understand it
is the statistical analysis of variations in literary style between one
writer or genre and another. Dr. Fields has been
doing some groundbreaking work in identifying through
stylometry the different writers of the Book of Mormon, the
difference between them. Dr. Fields, hello. It's good to see you, Scott. You too.
Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Stylometry, just tell
me, did I get it right? I kind of gave a little, you
know, condensed version of the definition. Is that
more or less what it is? Well, that's what
stylometry is. We're trying to identify the style that a
speaker or a writer is using. What does that have to
do with me being able to find internal evidences of the authenticity
of the Book of Mormon? Well, as the name says, stylometry means
the measurement of style. And so if we take a
look at the Book of Mormon, which claims to have various
speakers over a thousand year period of time, we
could look and see if they're the same
or if they're different. Because they should be
different if the Book of Mormon was written by 82
different speakers rather than just one
person such as Joseph Smith. I see. And
how do you do that? Well, what we look at are
the grammatical words. These are called function words.
These are the words that are prepositions,
conjunctions, pronouns. These type of words don't
convey any meaning, but they are the words that
speakers, writers use to scaffolding to
construct their message. Well, let me give you
this comparison between the Book of Mormon speakers and the speakers in the
19th century novels. Oh, very good. Okay. We're going to
step into the world of Book of Mormon
voices in virtual reality. Oh, good. Put on that headset, Scott. Oh, yes. It looks
just like Zarahemla. Here are the controllers. Okay. Wow.
So apparently you have to play video games to ascertain the
truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. That makes it easier for
certain generations, to be sure. What you see are spheres,
and each of those spheres are the words of a
speaker, either in the Book of Mormon or in
the 19th century novels. I'm seeing it. Okay. So the biggest
distinction is along that axis that separates the
green spheres, the Book of Mormon, from
the 19th century novels. Each of those
colored spheres is one of the
19th century novelists. This one's Jane
Austen, and we have her... Oh, it's blinking. Oh, okay. Pride and Prejudice
and Sense and Sensibility. Yes, I love that movie. And then we
have Charles Dickens. Which is? Great Expectations. Okay, very good. And Oliver Twist. James Fenimore
Cooper, Last of the Mohicans, and Dearslayer,
and then Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Okay. Now you'll see that each
of the authors' spheres group together, well they
were created by the same mind. So that makes sense. It does indeed. Yes. But you can also see
that the speakers, the characters within an author, are
distinctly different from each other. Let's take a look
at the Book of Mormon. Okay, which is up
here, the green stuff. Those are the green ones. Okay, I'll
bring it down a little. There's 28
authors, as we mentioned, and they range
from Abinadi to Zeniff. And you'll notice how far apart they
spread from each other. Okay, so who's,
who are we pointing out here? The size of the
sphere is the amount of words? The amount of
words that each one speaks. So Mormon
speaks 97,000 words. He's the biggest
speaker in the Book of Mormon. He has the biggest sphere. That's the
Book of Mormon after all. Followed by
Nephi, who has 28,000 words. Followed third by Alma the Younger, who
has about 21,000 words. He's awesome. But look how they
separate from each other. Because they are,
statistically speaking, on this plot, they are that
different of a voice. They are different. Okay. And so you'll notice now,
most strikingly, however, in the entire
display, is the variation, the spread of
those green spheres. Yes, compared to the
variation and spread of even the best literary
artists of their day. Exactly so. Am I getting that right? And so there's more
variation in one book, the Book of Mormon, than in
eight novels written by geniuses of the times. Wow. Highly unlikely, as you
said, for a farm boy, little education, living
on the American frontier. Really, three, four,
five, however many D's we're talking about here,
dimensions, is really the only way
to kind of capture how truly cool the
differences are from... Well, there's 250
different dimensions that we use to describe
their styles, and we've projected it
statistically down into three dimensions. So that we can see it. It's beautiful. If we listen to
their voices and we read their messages,
we can gain a testimony. Isn't that
really what it's all about? That's what it's all about. When all is said and done. And all, in
fact, is said and done. Great talking with you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm just
going to try to find my way out of here now
that I don't have, you know, Oculus Prime on my head. Paul Field's stylometric
findings are now available online, so dig a little
deeper for yourself. I'm grateful there are
people like Paul out there who love the Book of
Mormon enough that they apply science and
technology to help show others how marvelous of
a work it really is. Of course, more important
than anything, scientists or a historian can teach
us about the Book of Mormon is the
life-altering impact it can have on people every day. That's where we're headed
now, to talk to just an everyday person about the
impact of the Book of Mormon. Now we're headed there. Okey-doke. Well, I'm here with Wendy
Lynch, and if you could see out the window that
I'm looking at right now, you'd be blown away
at the spectacular view. We're here in a
little town called Whitby. This is the northeast coast? Northeast coast. Is this York or Yorkshire? I think it's North Yorkshire. North Yorkshire. Well, you heard it right
there with the proper accent. Now, Wendy, the reason
that I'm talking to you today is because you have a
pretty cool conversion story to the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was 15, and I was at my
grandma's house one day, reading a women's
magazine that she had, and I was
really interested in being healthy, keeping
fit, that kind of thing. And the article said
that Mormons were some of the healthiest people in the
world that had low cancer rates, high life expectancy,
because they had something called the Word of Wisdom
that they followed. And I thought,
"Oh, that's interesting." I'd heard about the Book of Mormon, and I
couldn't get one anywhere. I tried. I went to Durham. I went to
Sunderland, Newcastle. The book shops, the
libraries, nobody had heard of it. And they said,
"Who's the author?" And I said,
"Well, I'm not exactly sure. It's sort of similar to the Bible, but it's
set in the Americas. That's all I knew." Wow. And I think
it was sometime the next year I
found an address for, it must have been the
Hyde Park Visitor Centre in London. So I wrote a
letter to them explaining I was interested
in the Word of Wisdom, and could I
get more information? And did they
write back to you? Well, eventually, a few
months later, me and my sister were watching Batman on the telly. So anyway, the
missionaries came to the door. When I opened the door,
they said, "Did you write this?" And I had the
letter in the hand. I said to them, "Have
you got a Book of Mormon?" And they
said, "No, we haven't." And I'm like, "Oh, no,
I'm never going to get one." What kind of
missionaries did we have in the 70s? The next time they came,
they brought a Book of Mormon. So I was
really happy about that. You finally got your hands. Finally got, yeah. On a Book of Mormon. Yeah. And I just
read it and read it. I couldn't put it down. How long did it take
you to read it, do you think? I think just under two
weeks, something like that. What were you feeling? I mean, when you
finally got your hands on it and you started to
read it, I mean, do you remember kind of
how it made you feel? I hadn't finished it
before I knew it was true. Was it a new feeling? That sweetness, that joy? It was just a peaceful feeling, a
comforting kind of feeling. And at a certain point,
did the idea of baptism come up? Yes, yes. The baptism came up. My parents said, "No,
you're not getting baptized." And I knew I
would have to wait till I was 18
and that seemed forever. I think it was about
September 1977 when my parents felt I was getting too
involved in the church. And they said,
"Right, you have to stop going. You've got to
send all the books back. You're not allowed to phone anybody, write
to anybody or anything." Send the books back? Yes, so the Book of
Mormon, other church books, all the seminary material, and
all of that, I sent it all back. And I wasn't
allowed to talk about the church in the
house or anything like that. How long did that go on for? That went on, I think it
was about June the following year, something
like that, May or June. A good nine
months or whatever. When I did seminary for a
little while and was studying the Doctrine and
Covenants in church history, now it's only 25
scriptures you have to memorize. Then it was 40. And I'd
memorized some of them. I can't
remember which ones now. But at the time when I
wasn't allowed to go to church, I was so glad that I'd
memorized those scriptures. And also
stories from the Book of Mormon
and Moroni's promise. I remembered that and
I remembered lots of things. It sustained you
during the blackout, as it were. What ended it? Well, one day, my dad,
we were just sitting on a Sunday morning and he said,
"What are you doing today?" And I said, "Nothing really." And he said, "Well, if you want to, I'll
take you to church." And I'm
like, "Oh my goodness." I says, "Yes, I'll go." And that was
the beginning of me going back
to church regularly. I remember I really
wanted to be baptized, but I didn't know what my
parents would say or anything. And I'd been praying to know when would be
the right time to ask. And sometimes
prayers are answered in times or places
that are unexpected. And it was one
morning, I was actually helping my mum
strip wallpaper off the walls. And I felt a
little voice say, "Ask your mum now if
you can get baptized." And I'm like, "Okay then." So I said,
"Have you and my dad given any thought to
me getting baptized?" My mum said,
"Actually, me and your dad have
been talking about it." So then they
said, "Yes, you can." So I was
able to get baptized, being new to
the church and learning. I was a
college at Durham and it was quite a
long bus ride every day. So I'd take the
scriptures and read them on the bus. And one day, this man who
was sitting behind, he said, "Oh, what's that
book you're reading?" And I said, "Oh,
it's the book of Mormon." And he said, "Oh,
can I have a look at it?" So I gave it
to him and I didn't realize my name
and address was in it. So he gave it back to me. And then the next week, I
got a big, thick envelope through the post,
about 10 pages thick. And it was
all anti-Mormon stuff. You're still a young
girl. Did you read through it? I had a look at it. What did you think? And I thought,
"Oh, well, I'd never heard of any
of this stuff before." And I just ripped it up
eventually and I never got back in touch with the
man or anything like that. So what would you say to
someone who's facing opposition in terms of
either finding, receiving, being able to have
the gospel in their lives? I would just say,
keep praying about it. Because if you haven't got anything else,
you've always got prayer. Heavenly
Father's always there for you. The only way you can know
about the book of Mormon, if it's true, is to read
it yourself and study it and really find
out for yourself and not listen to what
other people have to say. And test
Moroni's promise at the end. Wendy, thank you so much. Thanks very much. It has been such a treat. Thank you for
coming down here and meeting with us
and sharing your testimony and your story
of your conversion and the role the
Book of Mormon has played. Once again, we
have been spiritually fed and we
just thank you for that. Okay, thank you. Being here in England, a
land where literature has shaped the consciousness
of society for generations and master authors have
penned some of the greatest books of our time, has
been a real treat for me. The power of
literary evidence for the Book of
Mormon is undeniable. But I know for myself and
for millions of others around the world, including Wendy Lynch, that the most
powerful evidence of the Book of Mormon is
its spiritual witness. The teachings of Jesus
Christ, the plain and precious truths of his
doctrine and plan of happiness. And how all of that
impacts people's everyday lives. Still, the literary
evidence that we've discussed in this episode, like
chiasmus and stylometry, are two more
logs on the fire of the Book of Mormon's
non-spiritual evidence. And there are
hundreds more that come from within the
pages of the book itself. But now it's
time I think we get back to checking out
more physical evidence, the where, the what,
and the if so, how variety. We live in an exciting
time where evidence is coming forth from the dust in
greater and greater abundance. So join me on
our next adventure as we continue to uncover
the evidence, build faith, and share the
miracle that is a marvelous work.
