Let’s say that the historicity of the Book of Mormon could be demonstrated irrefutably. (Say that Nephi returned in a cloud of glory, held a press conference, and pointed us to incontrovertible archeological proof.) Would I tune in to watch? Yes. Would this convince me to join or stay in the church?<\/p>\n
No. Not even close.<\/p>\n
Let’s say that the existence of supernatural beings like angels or life after death could be demonstrated irrefutably. Would this convince me to join or stay in the church?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
Let’s say that an angel personally visited me and commanded me to be a Mormon. Would this get my attention? Yes. Would this convince me to join or stay in the church?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
There is only one thing that could convince me to join or stay in the church: the extension of grace, the reception of forgiveness, the discipline\u00a0of consecration, the reality of conversion\u00a0\u2014 and all of it here and now and in plain sight.<\/p>\n
That is the only thing that would convince me.<\/p>\n
Does existence or historicity prove anything about redeeming power?<\/p>\n
No. Nothing. Zero.<\/p>\n
Only redeeming power proves redeeming power.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s say that the historicity of the Book of Mormon could be demonstrated irrefutably. (Say that Nephi returned in a cloud of glory, held a press conference, and pointed us to incontrovertible archeological proof.) Would I tune in to watch? Yes. Would this convince me to join or stay in the church?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30568,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30566\/revisions\/30568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}