Should You Pray About the Book of Mormon?

The title of this post is a question which has been asked many times, and the answer is always the same — ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

No where in the Bible are we told to pray to see if some claimed prophetic book is true.  What we ARE told is to compare what is taught with what the Bible says.

Many moons ago, in the comment thread of the first part of the Shack Up, an LDS (or “Mormon”) commenter showed up and we had a little back-and-forth.  In the post, I claimed that no other world religion has writings that claim “to actually be written by God by means of people who were writing on behalf of, and empowered and guided by, the Spirit of God himself.”  The commenter suggested that the book of Mormon did indeed claim to be inspired, as according to the above definition.  I asked for citation, and he gave a series of references that I challenged as insufficient.  He also gave a smooth-sounding argument for additional scripture … Conversations with LDS people often close in an exhortation to simply read the book of Mormon and pray that God would convict you, one way or the other, regarding the truth of the book of Mormon. … If I prayed for the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit regarding the books of Joseph Smith, I’d be asking the Holy Spirit to contradict his own written revelation about false prophets and bless my disobedience.  That’s not a prayer he’d ever answer with a “yes” and definitely not a risk one should take.

Continue reading at the Cripplegate.