15. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence. Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 508-0960. That's 508-0960. And now, with today's topic, here's James White. And good afternoon, Phoenix. This is Rich Pierce sitting in for James White once again. I know what you're thinking. They've kidnapped him. They've stuck him in a dungeon somewhere and Dr. White is never to be seen again. Well, it may seem like that. We've actually had some discussions. It seems as though I've been on the air over the last six weeks more than he has. But Dr. White is once again down in Tucson today. teaching for Golden Gate Seminary and this scenario I think is going to be going on and off a little less often as it has been on as of late and so we will have him back with us next week And the following week after that, however, Dr. White is going to an apologetics conference in, I believe, Chicago. He speaks there every year, and he'll be one of the speakers there. And so I'll be sitting in again. And yes, we're going to continue with our series on the Mormon Church as we've been going on. I want to thank Sean Hahn for sitting in for me last week as I was up in Salt Lake City. I must say it was a very fruitful outreach up there. I think we're getting somewhat discouraged as to the possibilities of what might be happening with the construction up there and some kind of changes that they were making to the actual physical structure to the site up there and that we might actually be shut out. And in looking at the scenario right now, I frankly am very encouraged by what we're going to be looking at because I think, number one, because it is a bigger facility, it'll draw more Mormons up there to the general conference and I think that's why the church is doing that. They want more of the Mormons to come up. And that frankly gives us a more direct opportunity to communicate, pass out tracks, and be able to touch and impact more of the Mormon people. That's why we go up there in the first place. We want to share the truth of Jesus Christ, the truth of the grace of God, and expose the Mormon church for the false religion, the cult that it is. And we want to be able to share that. And just once again, as I've shared with you before, I can't tell you how many Mormon folks I've talked with that really never heard what the Christian gospel really is. They've heard the Mormon version of it. But they've never really heard the truth of it, and oftentimes they're rather struck by the truth of the gospel and how biblical it really is. Well, today we're going to be talking about the book of Abraham. I talked to you a couple weeks ago about the possibility of digging into this, and I believe on my next show in two weeks I'm going to wrap up this series in getting into Joseph Smith, the person uh... as an individual i want to reiterate i have said it before that we need to stay on target we need to stay with what the direct logical or pertinent uh... issues are and we don't want to get sidetracked and i want to re-emphasize joseph smith is a roadblock when you have someone that you're communicating with when you have someone that is locked down they are just absolutely convinced that joseph smith was a true prophet you cannot ignore that you have to deal with it you have to focus on it and you have to be able to demonstrate that joseph smith was in fact a false prophet and uh... it is absolutely necessary that uh... that you do so and so uh... that's what we're going to be focusing on today we're going to be digging into the subject of the pearl of great price specifically the book of abraham the program price is a rather little known uh... Most folks are familiar with the Doctrine and Covenants, and more so as a populace in America, we are more familiar with the Book of Mormon because of the many, many ads that the Mormon Church has placed on television and radio for the Book of Mormon and giving it away for free. Recent ads that I've noticed, they've switched to giving away free King James Version Bibles, and I frankly was surprised they didn't switch to that technique long ago. I wouldn't doubt that they're having more success getting people to get their own Bible to start off with and then try to transition into the Book of Mormon and then go from there into the Doctrine and Covenants. But the Pearl of Great Price, frankly, albeit that it is a little known document, it frankly is one of the more impactful documents when it comes to Mormon doctrine. We have talked in May when we did our series, we talked about the Mormon beliefs in eternal law of progression, that there was a pre-existent spirits, the priesthood, we got into all these different subjects, that God was once a man, lived on another planet, on and on and on. These things, as a whole, are really found in the book of Abraham, in the Pearl of Great Price. And just to kind of break down for you what the Pearl of Great Price is in a synopsis, it's a variety of different things. First of all, you have the book of Moses, which is basically a rewrite of Genesis, and kind of digging into Joseph Smith's early look at it. Then we have the book of Abraham, which Now keep in mind here, because this is what we're going to be focusing on today, is supposedly translated directly from Egyptian hieroglyphics. And that's a key thing, because we're not talking about Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics here like he claimed with the Book of Mormon, we're talking about Egyptian hieroglyphics, the real McCoy from Egyptian papyrus. Then you have Joseph Smith's version of Matthew 24, his rewrite of it, and then after that you have extracts from Joseph Smith's history found in Documentary History of the Church, Volume 1, Chapters 1 through 7, which includes the First Vision story, and I want to emphasize that that is the 1838 version, not the 1832 version or the 1834 version, which are quite different, but we'll do that in another program. Then you also have the 13 Articles of Faith, and basically the Pearl of Great Price was originally published in pamphlet form by Mormon church leaders in England in 1851. And it was later canonized at the October General Conference of 1880 in Salt Lake City, and that by a unanimous vote. So the saints, in the book I was reading, and I'm going to talk to you about this book here in a little bit, but in the book I was reading it really didn't specify whether it was a complete vote of everybody attending the conference or whether it was the Council of the Seventy or if it was the Twelve Apostles. I'm not sure, and I don't want to be absolute on that, but there was, as it was depicted, a unanimous vote in 1880 for this to become part of holy, sacred scripture. And so we need to keep in mind that as we examine Joseph Smith, and we examine the book of Abraham, the Pearl of Great Price, We need to understand that in the Mormon mindset, this is equivalent to, and in many cases supersedes, the Bible as a holy scriptural document. It is binding, if you will, on the conscience of the Mormon people. It is absolutely binding. I'm going to talk to you about a book here that I've been reading, and Alpha and Omega Ministries, we haven't offered this book in a while, but I think after the show today I would think that you would be rather interested, if you want to dig into this, if you are into researching the Mormon church, this is an extremely valuable book to have. It is by author Charles M. Larson and is called, entitled, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus, A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri. And we're going to get into this. This book is very well put together, in fact has a full color fold-out of the papyrus that was eventually, and I'll get into this, found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967 and then eventually turned over to the Mormon Church. And you can see the scrolls for yourself. You can see how they put together, how they fit together, and in this foldout is very impressive with how well they did this. Like I said, we used to offer this book. We haven't for some time. And, frankly, it's been more of an interest in it. Getting into the book of Abraham does require a specific interest and desire to get into the book of Abraham itself and dig into the background of Joseph Smith's ability to translate Egyptian. But this book thoroughly equips you to be able to examine Joseph Smith on that basis and to be able to deal with the arguments that the Mormon Church has put forward in trying to deal with and fend off the criticisms that have been put forward there. And I will be reading excerpts from the book today. It's going to be, I think, quite an interesting eye-opening experience. Now, the impact of the Pearl of Great Price on doctrine is key. First of all, in Moses 6-7, the gospel was known and in place with Adam. And from pages 18 and 19 of the book, by his own hand upon Papyrus, Now this is also reiterated in the book of Abraham, that's why I'm reading this section here. But the joy of Joseph and the faithful, they noted that Abraham made repeated references to his lineal priesthood authority. Actually, I think I got a little bit ahead of myself there on my quote. The Moses passage, this is about the gospel. What I'm reading now has to do with the eternal nature of spirits from Abraham 3.18 and also Abraham 4.1 describing the nature of God and his formation of this planet. Let me go on. But to the joy of Joseph and the faithful, they noted that Abraham made repeated references to his lineal priesthood authority, which he referred to simply as the priesthood. This was highly significant, for some within the church had begun to criticize Joseph for introducing back in mid-1831 the office of high priest within the church. These dissenters argued that the whole matter of the priesthood had always been a temporal affair developed in the days of Moses and strictly confined to the Levites until the time of Christ when it was abolished. These critics were the same people who had refused to accept as scripture some of the writings of Moses rewritten by Joseph in 1830 under the influence of direct revelation. In these, Joseph had argued that the priesthood was an eternal power. In his attempts to reason with these dissidents, Smith pointed out the revelation contained in Doctrine and Covenants 27, which referred very plainly to the bestowal of the priesthood upon himself and Oliver Cowdery in the spring of 1829. This, he argued, occurred long before there had been any question of authority. In response, his critics charged that the revelation had simply been altered more recently to include these teachings after they had already been put into practice. But the book of Abraham changed all this, for it stated clearly that Abraham had held the priesthood of God long before the Levites existed. And if any still cared to question the matter, the original manuscripts themselves were on display for all to see. The challenge had been met and answered. Both Joseph's status as a prophet and the doctrine of the priesthood authority within the church had been vindicated by the timely appearance of the book of Abraham. And then we read on here from pages 20 and 21 regarding the same subject. Following the episode concerning Abraham's wife and the Egyptians, the translation of the ancient record broke off from any semblance of paralleling the biblical sequence of events and instead recounted an entirely new episode in an elaborate vision. The Lord is described as instructing Abraham on the principles of astronomy. whereby the heavens are likened unto eternal progression, the pre-existence of spirits, and the governing of celestial realms of deity. It is here that Kolob, the great governing sphere near to the place of the residence of God, is first mentioned. In fact, the only place that Kolob is ever mentioned in LDS scripture is in the book of Abraham, where it is discussed in both the text and in the inspired explanation of one of the three facsimiles that are included in this part of the Mormon canon of scripture. In explaining the facsimile that depicts Kolob, the prophet also made a number of references to the secret phrases and passwords connected with the ordinances of the temple, subject he was just beginning to teach privately among the saints at that time. It provided insight into God's plan for organizing the earth and peopling it for a second estate by the spirits of mankind. gave further details of Lucifer's rebellion, and an account of the resulting war in heaven over the issue of man's free agency. And so you can see here as we break this down that there is some major things that are contained within the book of Abraham. And as Mr. Larson points out, they were very timely in 1835, 1836 as the translation of the book of Abraham started to come about. The other impactful thing had to do with the denial of the priesthood to the blacks. This is mentioned on page 22. Some of the significant differences, when the book of Genesis had been corrected by the prophet the first time in 1830, the text he produced retained the Bible's and Moses' emphasis that there is only one God. In Joseph's 1842 translation of portions of the book of Abraham, however, he distinctly taught the plurality of gods, a concept of deity Joseph had started teaching a few years earlier, but one which many saints neither understood nor appreciated. The book of Abraham also introduced the first and only scriptural basis for denying the priesthood to blacks, the church's official position until 1978. It described Pharaoh and the Egyptians as descendants of Ham and Canaan, the progenitors of the Negro race, and under the curse of Canaan, and disqualified from the priesthood." That found in Abraham 1, verse 21, 22, 26 through 27. Now, How did this book come to be? How did all this occur? Well, we're gonna get into that as we progress through the program. I do wanna mention that the phone lines are opening up now at 602-274-1360. That's 602-274-1360. If you're out of the Phoenix Metro dialing area, we have a toll free number for you at 1-888-550-1360. 1-888-550-1360. This is a live program. And we invite your phone calls. Well, let me tell you a little story here about a guy named Michael H. Chandler. Michael H. Chandler was a traveling showman. And when the Saints were still in Kirtland, Ohio, Mr. Chandler came to town on July 4, 1835. And he, well, I'll just kind of let you follow along with me as I kind of try to depict how it was that Mr. Chandler would present these mummies to folks as he traveled around the countryside. step right up ladies and gentlemen step right up direct from the pyramids of egypt for egyptian mummies see them with your own eyes direct from egypt you can see them as they are mummified and you go on and on and on just can't imagine the the van that he would come into town with as these four mummies were stored in the back of his his carriage or his wagon with his horses pulling him along and he would just set up in a town and he would just start showing off these mummies and everybody today is going what's the big deal with mummies you got to be kidding me well back then in the mid and early 1800s there was an absolute fascination in this country with Egyptology The pyramids were being discovered by the West for the first time and our archaeologists were over there and they were digging and they were discovering all kinds of things and it was absolutely fascinating. Well, sadly some of the other things that occurred were that the pyramids would be ransacked. And they would take things out of the pyramids, like the mummies themselves. And so this gentleman had four Egyptian mummies that were, I guess, perfectly mummified. And he was going around showing everybody. I mean, they didn't have TV, so this was a major element of entertainment for folks in that day and age. And so this was something that really intrigued people, though, and they would really want to have to look at. And so as he would go around and show these four mummies and do his step-right-up routine, Well, in Kirtland, Ohio, there's a group of people called Mormons. And they were absolutely fascinated by this. This was an amazing thing because, well, their prophet and president was having, well, he was under some criticism. And his critics were making all kinds of allegations in his direction because he claimed that he had translated the Book of Mormon using reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. Where did he get these reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics? Well, he got them on golden plates. Golden tablets that he had dug up as an angel Showed him where to find them and we can get into Joseph Smith history and all the the details of the different attempts that he made to recover them and then he wasn't holy enough etc etc and But the point is he had these, and then once he was finished translating the Book of Mormon, the golden tablets were taken back by the angel. They were taken up. And so some of the criticisms that he would receive is, hey, why should we believe Joseph? I mean, after all, it's his word against, well, we just have to take his word on it. Where are the golden plates so we can see them for ourselves? We want to be able to look at them. We want to be able to touch them and feel them and know that they're real. But we only have his word for it. How can we know for sure that he's really a seer and a prophet as he says he is? And so the saints decide they're going to buy the mummies from Michael Chandler. And Mr. Chandler, first of all, I guess their approach was they wanted to get the papyri. There were manuscripts that were underneath the arms of one of the mummies, and there was a manuscript underneath the head of this mummy. And they were really more interested in that than they were the mummies themselves. But Mr. Chandler would not part with them, just the manuscripts. If they wanted them, they had to buy all of the mummies. And so the saints decided to go ahead and buy the four mummies for, and imagine what this must have been like in 1835, for $2,400. That's right, $2,400. And that's a pretty good chunk of change in 1835, I would think. It really is. And so they gave the manuscripts, they took the mummies and presented them to Joseph Smith. And Mr. Smith, I think finding this an absolutely fascinating thing, started looking through the manuscripts and doing his seer thing. And well, he then began to teach that these were actually By his own hand, upon papyrus, the writings of Abraham when he was living in Egypt. Now you think about that a second. Suddenly Joseph Smith has discovered the writings of Abraham in Egypt. Not when he was old, mind you, this is when he first went to Egypt. You know, when he told the Egyptians that Sarai was his sister, not his wife, because she was beautiful. And by the way, the book of Abraham goes into the fact that apparently, well, let's just put it this way, the book of Abraham corrects the Genesis account and tells us that It was actually God in a vision that told him to do that. That's quite a correction, given the context of the book of Genesis, but we won't go there today. But think about it, and this is exactly the motivation that the saints had when they decided to buy these mummies. If Joseph Smith had Egyptian hieroglyphics right in front of him for everybody to see, and he could translate those hieroglyphics because you see he's a seer and they just have to be reformed egyptian hieroglyphics the point is he was a seer and a seer could translate anything and that's the big deal there he could translate anything and this would once and for all prove that joseph smith could in fact translate egyptian and it would silence his critics. He would silence his critics within the church and it would silence his critics outside the church, those persecuting Mormonism. And what's more, think of the significance that this would have to the outside world. The outside world would suddenly be absolutely fascinated with Mormonism because God has, see how God has brought once again to the prophet Joseph Smith these artifacts and now within his hand he holds direct writings from Abraham. And what's more is he also claimed that he, well wait a minute, was it Joseph? Jacob? I'll have to get back with you on that one after the break. Suddenly I'm drawing a blank as to which was the other name that he claimed the other writing was. He didn't actually translate that one as to the source of that. The impact of such a find, the document would be just about 4,000 years old. It would in fact be the most ancient writing manuscript known to mankind. Unquestionably, its impact upon the modern world and what it in fact had to say would be unfathomable. Absolutely unfathomable and yet Joseph Smith had this and claimed that he could translate. Now one of the things that roadblocked Joseph Smith or the outside world to be able to test Joseph Smith was we didn't know how to translate Egyptian yet. It was a dead language. It had been lost and they hadn't cracked the code just as of yet. And so when Joseph Smith comes along and he starts talking about the book of Abraham and that it says all these things and you've got the teachings, these extra teachings and the rewrite of Genesis and of course as he claimed portions of this manuscript is what Moses used to write the book of Genesis. Well this is a direct a direct link to Abraham himself to find out what he actually said. And once again we can compound the issue that Joseph Smith and so many others want to make in our day, and that is that the Bible is untrustworthy, it's not complete, you can't really believe it. And that it has not been transmitted to us intact. And so this would most definitely impact that issue. Let's see here, looking in my notes, we'll get on to the papyrus themselves after Joseph Smith made the translation in the book of Abraham. And if you have a Pearl of Great Price handy. It happens to be in what's known as the Triple, which contains the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. If you have one of those, I would suggest you turn to it, and we're going to focus on what's known as the facsimiles. These were hand-drawn redos, if you will, or copies of different images that Joseph Smith found on the papyrus. And they have actually been copied into and published in the book of Abraham themselves. And so the facsimiles themselves are actually considered part and parcel of the Mormon scripture known as the book of Abraham. And we can actually look at these and see how well Joseph Smith did. That's a key issue as we focus on that. The papyrus went along with Emma Smith. After Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, Emma Smith and Brigham Young kind of had a split amongst themselves there, and Emma insisted that Joseph Smith's son, Joseph, was to be the next prophet of the church, and she felt very strongly that this was something that was to be handed down amongst the Smith family line. Well, Brigham Young disagreed quite sharply with her, and he declared himself, or was elected, I can't remember how that process, but Brigham Young became the next prophet of the church. Well, Emma split with that if you will, that was one of the first split of the Mormon Church that ever occurred. There have been quite a number since then, and you don't really hear about that, but the first split that occurred, and Emma took her son Joseph, and she stayed behind in Illinois as Brigham Young moved the rest of the Saints, the majority of the Saints, out to Utah. And we're going to continue looking at the book of Abraham right after this. For their part, the saints trusted the word of the prophet and felt no particular need to vindicate his work to the rest of the world. And even if they had desired such vindication, Joseph's papyri collection was unavailable. It had passed into the hands of his widow, Emma, who refused to follow the leadership of Brigham Young and had remained in Nauvoo, Illinois. So as far as the Utah Saints were concerned, the world could simply go its own way with its knowledge, and the Saints would go on their way with theirs. That from page 25 of By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus. Now, I've mentioned before that if you'd like to get a copy of this book, I don't think I really finished my thought on that. You can do so. I will be in the offices of Alpha and Omega in the afternoons, Monday through Friday, and you can contact me if you're interested in getting a copy of the book. If you're listening on the Internet, email me. Go to www.aomin.org. And click on the email link there, that will email me, and I can then determine how many are desired to get, and we can get them for you. I believe they're going to sell through us around $10.99, $11, somewhere along that line. and uh... we can get a hold of them it is uh... a unique work in that regard and so we didn't move a whole lot of them and uh... so we can went to a uh... as uh... the need came up we would get more of them and uh... but as far as our research goes in the information that they have compiled here they have put a tremendous amount of information together in this book a very valuable tool to have going back to the issue of emma smith and the papyrus well joseph smith supposedly gave us the book of abraham through uh... the pop papyrus and he uh... insisted that uh... this was the last word on the subject but after he died in the state behind and she got to keep those uh... those documents and bring me on went on his way well somewhere along the line and i'm not exactly sure how they wind up in chicago as the stories told but it was believed that they were lost in the great chicago fire later on, and that this was the end of the discussion, that there would be no evidence for us, once we could translate Egyptian, to be able to go back and be able to talk to Joseph Smith. or talk to Joseph Smith, be able to look at Joseph Smith's work, and examine how well he was, how good he did as a seer. I invite your phone call, 602-274-1360, 602-274-1360, the phone lines are open now, or if you're out of our dialing area, 1-888-622-274. 5, 5, 0, 13, 60, 1, 8, 8, 5, 5, 0, 13, 60. Now let's move along and do a little examination of, well first of all I've got to finish the story and determine how exactly we can examine the book of Abraham and how well Joseph Smith did. And there were a few challenges over the years. There were three major challenges based on the facsimiles that Joseph Smith had or, and I don't know if Joseph Smith did the drawing, I don't think anybody really does know, that are found in the Pearl of Great Price, but they were basically traced or direct copies of it. Now the interesting thing is, is that we dig into this particular book, and I can't show you that because we're on radio. Sure would be nice though. But if you look at the depictions or the facsimiles that they have here in the book, you can see that there are particular areas of the documents that had worn away and that were missing for Joseph. And so he kind of guessed as to what they should be, and so he filled that in. And in Joseph Smith document No. 1, they numbered them 1 through 11. I believe it was Hugh Nibley that did that. You can see that, for instance, there is a facsimile number one, papyrus, called Joseph Smith 1. uh... there is a standing figure on the left that has no head that portion of the papyrus has uh... disappeared there uh... was the uh... another section of the the uh... person that is laying down that is missing as well and so you can actually see as i what i'm looking at the uh... intermediate step in producing correct restoration uh... he uh... he actually redrew in some of the documentation that has been since been released, the exact representation of the papyrus itself, and that's been apparently in church archives for some time. But when we look at the restoration of facsimile number one, papyrus based on the modern study of Egyptology, Joseph Smith put a human head on the person standing when it was in fact supposed to be the head of a jackal. Again, we're talking about the religion of the Egyptians here, and as I continue on discussing this matter, I want you to keep that in mind. The Egyptians, by Western standards, certainly by the standards of Christianity, had some very strange and bizarre beliefs, as we're going to get into the actual nature of these papyrus. Now, or papyri, I guess is the actual plural term for it. To someone's big surprise, in fact I'm going to turn to the page, page 30 here, page 31, and I'm going to read for you something happened in the spring of 1966 that amazed everyone. Now the manuscripts are supposedly destroyed in the Chicago fire, right? One day, in the early spring of 1966, a professor of Arabic studies from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City entered one of the vault rooms in New York's huge Metropolitan Museum of Art, seeking supplementary material for a book he was writing. I was in one of the dim rooms where everything was brought to me, Dr. Aziz S. Atiyah would later recollect. Something caught my eye and I asked one of the assistants to take me behind the bars into the storehouse of documents so that I could look some more. Dr. Atiyah soon located a file that contained an apparently forgotten collection of Egyptian papyri, 11 tattered pieces to be exact, which had been glued to stiff backing paper in the 19th century in an effort to preserve them. The crude preservation efforts had been remarkably successful. Nearly all the papyri contained beautifully clear and legible writing, mostly in black, with a small part in red, and many contained illustrations as well. But the vivid scene depicted on one fragment in particular was strikingly familiar to Professor Atiyah, who, though not a Mormon himself, was well acquainted with the collection of various writings his LDS friends and associates revered as scripture. When I saw this picture, Atiyah would later explain to them, I knew it had appeared in the Pearl of Great Price. Thus began an extraordinary series of events which led a year and a half later to what one prominent Mormon scholar has termed the most momentous transaction for the church since the angel Moroni retrieved from Joseph Smith the golden plates of the Book of Mormon. And, eventually, as the story goes on, the Metropolitan Museum of Art eventually presented the Mormon Church with the actual documents, the papyri, and turned it over to them. And it has, in 1967 and subsequently, been actually verified that it was the genuine article. we have within our possession the ability to be able to check joseph smith in the saints in sixteen late sixties got very excited they became very uh... excited over the issue of being able to uh... well Go look for themselves. Quickly the publication started moving into action. Pictures of the papyri themselves started getting prepared for the subsequent translation by Egyptologists that would then take place. And I'm going to hang you right there on the edge of that syllable as we go to Martin. We're not going to a break yet. We're going to go to Martin in England. And are you there, Martin? I am, Rich. I'm here. How are you today? I'm very well, thank you. How are you? I'm doing great. I don't know how much of the show you've had an opportunity to listen to. What is the city that you live in over there? Well, I live in Birmingham, which is the city. The suburb is called Barclay Green. And you and I actually chatted a little bit yesterday. We did. And you had some information that I don't think I'm familiar with about the book of Abraham, and you wanted to share that on the air today. Yeah, yeah. I got this information from a Christian. He's an astronomer, astrophysicist. It's basically talking about the planet Kolob. I don't know if I can read it out. It's sort of about half a page. Okay, sure. According to the Mormon scriptures, Doctrine and Covenants, Abraham 3, our galaxy, if not all galaxies, is positive to contain countless planets either already or soon to be inhabited by human-type life. The greatest of these planets is Kolob. Kolob is said to be the greatest of these planets because it is, quote, nearest to the throne of God, but also is, quote, the greatest of all, the kokai beam that has been seen, end quote, which, quote, signifies stars or all the great lights which were in the firmament of heaven, end quote. Moreover, at least two of the stars and possibly 15 or more of the stars and planets, the moon and the earth, and the sun receive their light from Kolob. Kolob is also said to be surrounded by a great many stars which are near to Abraham 3, 2. According to the same passage of Abraham 3, the greater the planet, the longer the rotational period, Colab is the greatest and has a date equal to a thousand years. Now, how do these statements square with the facts of astronomy? Observations convince astronomers that stars are very different from planets. Visible stars to Abraham are large, and it gives you the size of the stars. They produce huge amounts of light through nuclear fire. It talks about how stars are produced. It says planets, on the other hand, are small. It is now known by astronomers that the ability of a planet to support life depends on its size. Planets very close to the dimensions of the Earth can maintain stable water cycles. It talks about, you know, the fine-tuning of life. A life-support planet must have a rotational period close to 24 hours. If it is as brief as it is for the greater planets, Jupiter and Saturn, thousand-mile-per-hour winds result if it is as long as Kolob's thousand-year day. The night temperature would barely rise above absolute zero, minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit, while day temperatures would exceed the melting point of lead, 621 degrees Fahrenheit. A life support planet cannot exist too close to many great stars, as in quotes. Such star would disrupt the planet's orbit and would undergo explosions that would terminate the planet's life forms. However, there are more fundamental problems, life support conditions, it talks about how I mean, you need to have a fine-tuning of the universe, so that if you've read anything in it, it talks about basically only our planet is still fine-tuned enough, and the idea of millions of planets out there is just completely unfeasible. Go on to say, recently, scientists proved that the universe requires a transcendent creator. The creator in Mormonism is not transcendent. Rather, he dwells in his kingdom on one of the planets of our universe. Obviously, the Mormon Kolob is an impossibly inhospitable place for life, obviously, too, are violations of the principles of the astronomical structure. And I thought that was interesting. I mean, I don't know how you'd necessarily use it, but it seems interesting to me, like, you know when Christians talk about, you know, archaeology? And we can point to archaeology and say, well, look, we can prove this. And just like when Christians point to science and say, look, there's science at the back of the Bible. As this guy later says somewhere else, he said, If they can't be trusted on what can be physically observed or physically tested, then should they be trusted on the spiritual side of things? You know, the thing is that I listen to that, and it is interesting information. The challenge I have with it is that it is... See, I think that you can simply prove on the basis of the evidence that is direct, and that's more indirect and speculative. We get into the possibilities of all kinds of issues when it comes to Mormonism, and I like to stay away from that as much as I possibly can. But it is an interesting comment that this individual is making. Let me go ahead and have you hang on through the break here, Martin. We'll wrap up as we go to the break and we'll be right back. And we're back with The Dividing Line. My name is Rich Pierce, sitting in for Dr. James White today. We've got Martin on the line in England. You know, Martin, I was thinking about that quote that you gave there, and the interesting thing is I don't necessarily see it as a direct impact necessarily on the book of Abraham. It's indirect. But I do see it as direct on the overall doctrine of God when it comes to their doctrine of preexistence, etc. when it comes to basically the doctrine of pre-existence and that God lived on another planet, etc. I think it is relevant there. I will tell you, I've got basically coming up eight minutes to basically show that Joseph Smith mistranslated the book of Abraham horribly. And so I better get running on to doing that task before the show ends. The clock is unforgiving in that regard. And I want to thank you for calling in today. We always appreciate it when you call, Martin. Thanks, Rich. Okay, take care. Take care. Bye. Okay, moving along. Well, we've got to the point where it's 1967 and the papyrus is out there. It's in our hands. And how did we do? Well, you know, there is a huge story about how this all unfolded within the pages of By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus. It is a fascinating read. It really is. And if you want to get the book, like I said, contact me. But essentially, the translation of the papyrus directly is as follows. And mind you, this is what it actually says, not what the book of Abraham actually says. And remember, this is from an Egyptian funerary document. The interesting thing is that it was found on an Egyptian mummy. Osiris shall be conveyed into the great pool of Khans, and likewise Osiris-Hor, justified, born to Tichobit, justified after his arms have been placed on his heart, and the breathing permit which Isis made, and has writing on its inside and outside, has been wrapped in royal linen. and placed under his left arm near his heart. The rest of his mummy bandages should be wrapped over it. The man for whom this book has been copied will breathe forever as the spirits of the gods do." This translation was done by Dr. Klaus Baer, who was the professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago. It is part of what is known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is an Egyptian funerary text. Interesting. That would fit right in and be very appropriate with an Egyptian mummy. Hmm. Okay. Moving right along. Well, what was translated as what? Well, Abraham chapter 1, verse 1 and 2 was translated from the Egyptian word they shall. Abraham 1, 7 through 10 was translated from the Egyptian word in. Abraham won 11 from the word the, and Abraham won 11 and 12 from the first half of the Egyptian word for pool, and Abraham won 13 and 14 from the other half of the Egyptian word pool, including 76 English words. Abraham won 16 through 19, includes 177 English words from Khans, the Egyptian moon god. Abraham 2, 20-22 from the Egyptian god Osiris. I think you get the idea. The papyrus actually date from around 100 AD, thousands of years after Abraham. If Joseph Smith could not translate the short segment of Egyptian found on the papyrus, how could he possibly translate the 500 plus pages contained in the Book of Mormon? Well, where'd the book come from? Well, take a look at the twelfth chapter of Genesis and you can see for yourself where he got it. Now, as far as another image, and we've been focusing, that translation supposedly came from the facsimile number one located in the book of Abraham. Facsimile number two. And this is contained, I'm going to be reading from a tract that we have here. And I do want to say that given the limited time that we have on the program, we've asked for your phone calls prior in the program. We won't be taking any other calls today. But given the circumstance, facsimile number two, we have a tract called Men Is Not God. And I need to read from that very quickly here as we move along. But if you look at facsimile number two in the book of Abraham, this is what's known as an Egyptian hypocephalus. That's right, hypocephalus. And it, as I recall, was found underneath the head. of the mummy, and the recovery of the original facsimile that was drawn was in the Mormon Church vault for the longest time. But facsimile number two from the Pearl of Great Price represents God, according to Joseph Smith. in figure seven if you look on on uh... the figure seven it's actually as you look in the lower right hand corner and yes i have to turn it over to actually see a right side up represents god sitting on his throne revealing through the heavens the grand keywords of the priesthood has also the sign of the holy ghost and to abraham in the form of a dove Is this indeed the representation of the one true God sitting upon his throne revealing the grand key words of the priesthood? Would Joseph Smith, a man ahead of his time, able to decipher Egyptian writings in a time when scholarship was just starting to get a clue on the topic? The object that Joseph Smith included in the book of Abraham is in reality a hypocephalus, a common item of Egyptian funeral literature. All the facsimiles in the book of Abraham are drawn from common Egyptian funerary texts or documents. It was placed under the person's head and was to aid them in making the journey through the netherworld by bathing their bodies in light. Many examples of this kind of hypocephalus are to be found. One of the many pagan gods pictured in this hypocephalus is shown, and again I want to point out this is a family program and so I'm going to try to gently, as gently as possible, express what's written here. One of the many pagan gods pictured in this hypocephalus is shown on the tract, as it appears in the current edition of the LDS scriptures. Egyptologists tell us that this is the god Min. Min is an ethephalic god that is, well, aroused. An aroused male deity, as the picture clearly indicates. Min is the god of the procreative forces of nature. Joseph Smith told us that the Egyptian god Min was, in point of fact, the one true god. And what is men doing? Well, if you can see it for yourself, you can see for yourself. Joseph Smith tells us that he is revealing the grand key words of the priesthood and the sign of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove before him. In reality, he is holding up the divine flail in one hand and being approached by the figure. Joseph Smith identifies as the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. In point of fact, Joseph's hypocephalus was damaged at the border so that only the head of the dove is visible. So Joseph had to restore the picture and did he do so correctly? No, he did not. The figure to the right provides us with a proper scene from another hypocephalus, laden AMS 62. The being that is approaching men is not the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, it is yet another ethyphalic figure, specifically a serpent, probably the Egyptian god Nehebka, presenting to men the Ouijat Eye, the symbol of good gifts. The single LDS scholar who has written on the most of the book of Abraham, Dr. Hugh Nibley, has written of men, as the supreme sex symbol of gods and men, men behaves with shocking promiscuity, which is hardly relieved by its ritual nature. His sacred plants are aphrodisiacal, and he is everywhere presented as indulging his incestuous relationships with those of his immediate family. He had the most numerous and varied religious entourage of all the gods, consisting mostly of his huge harem. Talking about Egypt here, folks. The hymns, or rather chanting, of his worshippers are accompanied with lewd dancing and carousing and the exciting stimulus of a band of cistrum-shaking damsels. This from Hugh Nibley's book, Abraham in Egypt, page 210. It must be remembered that Joseph Smith said that this figure represented God sitting on his throne. Incredible as it may seem, intelligent, well-read LDS are fully aware of the true nature of the hypocephalus, including the presence of Min and Nehebka. The vast majority of LDS, however, are not. how do they explain this mormon egyptologist michael dennis road said joseph smith mentions here the holy ghost in the form of a dove and god revealing through the heavens the grand keywords of the priesthood the procreative forces receiving unusual etc accentuation throughout the representation may stand for many did