By Jon Topping | December 4th, 2024

I live in Canada, so I haven’t had the opportunity to meet too many Mormons. In the world, there are roughly 17 million Mormons, or as they refer to themselves now, the “Latter Day Saints”. Roughly 6.5 million are in the U.S., and about 2 million are in Utah specifically. Canada only has just under 88 thousand Mormons, which is only about 0.2% of the population of Canada, so it’s not surprising I haven’t met many. I did, however, go to a Mormon service one time (it was for a World Religions course I was taking). I have also had a Mormon young adult come to one of my talks at a university, accompanied by an adult. He came up to me afterwards, quite excited, to ask me what I thought of Mormonism. I was polite and friendly, but I also knew I had to tell him the truth. As I started to give him more information about the origins of the Book of Mormon, the problems within it, and the life of Joseph Smith, I could see the excitement in his face change to a deep disappointment. Then more recently, I was asked by someone about the historical reliability of the Book of Mormon. Essentially, even if a person isn’t a Mormon, can they still learn about North American history from the Book of Mormon? Is it a historically accurate document that we can trust? When we look at the facts, it becomes quite obvious that the Book of Mormon has countless factual errors in it. Also, when we look at the life of Joseph Smith, we can see that his character was so horribly flawed, that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not just mistaken, but was actually an outright liar and charlatan.

Style of the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is essentially Christian fan fiction, meaning, he took the story of the Old and New Testaments, and then invented a new story, with many similarities to the Bible. Joseph Smith knew quite a bit about Christianity, even though he was obviously not very educated. Back in those days, memorization of Scripture was incredibly common, which we can see, considering a large percentage of the Book of Mormon is just quotes from the book of Isaiah in the Bible. Joseph Smith took the concepts from the Bible that he was aware of, and created a whole new history that coincided with biblical history, but he had his story take place where he was from; the Americas. He attempted to write it in Old English, even though the original languages of the people in the book wouldn’t have looked anything like Old English, and he didn’t speak Old English. Even just that one point shows the book is a fabrication. If the Book of Mormon was legitimate, and he really was supernaturally translating it, why translate it into an outdated version of English? It’s because he was familiar with the KJV, and wanted his new work to look like the KJV to add legitimacy. The problem was, Joseph Smith was simply too historically ignorant to realize this would make it obvious he was faking the whole thing. Today, Mormons try to give the excuse that Smith was using another specific form of English, but even if that’s true, it still wasn’t the vernacular Smith would have used, so the problem still remains. Why did Smith write his book like that? To make it look like the KJV, in order to attempt to add credibility to it.

Historical problems in the Book of Mormon

Smith also included many things in the Book of Mormon that are anachronistic, meaning, they don’t belong in that time and place. For example, he refers to elephants, cows, goats, wheat, barley, chariots, scimitars, and many other things, that simply didn’t exist in the Americas during the time certain parts of the Book of Mormon were supposedly written. Again, he wasn’t educated, so he wasn’t aware of this. He wrote the book, pretending it was from the ancient past, not realizing he was making such atrocious errors. It’s literally someone creating a work of fanfiction, without knowing the primary sources well enough to make it coherent.

There are no historical records of any of the events, or people, or locations, found in the Book of Mormon. The book speaks of massive people groups, large cities, huge battles, and all of it without a shred of archeological evidence. The Book of Mormon also describes the Israelites as having travelled to the Americas on three separate occasions. This idea is completely nonsensical, especially given that the Israelites were not a seafaring people group. The whole thing is very obviously made up by a con-artist, who then tried to use this new religion to gain power and money.

Joseph Smith as a person

Mormons treat Joseph Smith as though he’s a wonderful saint, even on par with Jesus Himself. They also see him as a “martyr”, but the reality of his life is so bad, that when we look at what Joseph Smith was like as a person, it becomes obvious that he was a conman trying to gain power, money, and women. I won’t go into great detail regarding his life, because there’s just too many interesting details, but I’ll briefly mention the highlights.

Mormons have become quite infamous for their history of polygamy. Joseph Smith not only allowed it, but he actually enforced it as well, and he himself was the most polygamous out of any of the Mormons. The Church of Latter Day Saints has actually come forward admitting these points, which can be found here https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng. Joseph Smith married many women, the youngest of which was Helen Mar Kimball, who was 14 at the time of their marriage. Not only that, but Smith was 37 at the time, and Helen was the daughter of two of Smith’s friends (just imagine for a moment being a middle-aged man, and marrying your friend’s daughter who is in grade 9). Smith also married many women who were already married, some of which were married to friends of his. This is essentially just wife swapping. Apparently, Smith had as many as 40 wives before he died. To make matters even worse, Smith said that all of these sexual elements were commanded to him by God. He even said that an angel visited him with a sword, threatening to kill him unless he married multiple women. Essentially, he blamed God for his sexual perversions, and used the idea of “God told me so” to manipulate people into fulfilling his perversions.

Joseph Smith was also literally a criminal. And not just any ordinary criminal, he was wanted by the authorities for disorderly conduct, assault, conspiracy to murder, for an illegal banking scheme he had used to swindle people, and even two accounts of treason. When the first warrant for his arrest came, instead of submitting, he ran away to Missouri. While there, he apparently threatened people, and ended up in what has now become known as the “Missouri Mormon War”. The reason we need to clarify it was the war in Missouri, is because there were multiple Mormon wars. This Missouri war ended up with Smith being charged with treason against Missouri. Once again, instead of submitting to the authorities, he fled, this time to Illinois. He was wanted by the authorities again, for all the previous charges as well as apparently conspiring to assassinate a politician.

By this time, Smith wanted to become the president of the United States, and had become the mayor of Nauvoo. He then used his political power to destroy a newspaper called the “Nauvoo Expositor”, because it published something against Mormonism. The authorities tried to arrest him, but instead of submitting to arrest, this time he decided to fight. He declared martial law, and called out his military he had gathered, which they called “the Nauvoo Legion”. Smith finally surrendered to the authorities, and was charged with treason against Illinois for calling out his military force. While he was in prison, a group of people were so angry at his new cult that they came to kill him (I agree, this is absolutely wrong of them). However, Smith and his brother managed to get a hold of officer’s weapons, and had a shootout with the lynch mob. Smith’s brother was shot dead, and Smith then jumped out the window to his death. While I understand the people were trying to kill him for his religion, it’s important to point out he was rightfully imprisoned for many criminal acts, including two counts of treason, he fought back with deadly force, and then committed suicide rather than be caught. This is not the righteous death of a martyr proclaiming a true religion. This is a coward and a con-artist that got caught in an illegal scheme to advance his new religion, all for the sake of power and money.

Conclusion

To summarize, Smith used religious manipulation to have sex with his friend’s wives, and even their daughters. He created an illegal banking scheme as a way to swindle people. He was charged with treason against two different states, and in each case the evidence is overwhelming against him that these were very legitimate charges laid against him, and he was absolutely guilty. He ran away from the authorities on multiple occasions trying to avoid being arrested. He also abused his political power for his own sake. And while all of this was happening, he claimed that he was being visited by an angel from God, who was helping him translate things that would become a religious text for Mormonism. This text is obviously a fabrication, with many historical problems. It becomes unavoidable to come to the conclusion that Smith was just using his new religion as a way gain power, money, and sex.

Jon Topping is a speaker with Engage International and is based out of Canada.