The Esteemed Alexander Campbell, founder of Campbellitism, apparently jealous and alarmed at losing his right hand man, Sidney Rigdon and others as converts to Mormonism, whose founders far more brilliantly signaled the bestowal of Heavenly Gifts, undertook to publish a refutation of its claims two years after the Book of Mormon made its appearance.
Having just come across his work entitled Delusions: An Analysis of the Book of Mormon with an Examination of its Internal and External Evidences and a Refutation of its Pretenses to Divine Authority, I could not help but muse upon answering his absurd quibbles. Thus far, he has yet to analyze anything with accuracy, offer much in the way of evidence or refute anything, and the pretenses are all his. I have to confess being surprised that such a man as he was not able to offer more robust arguments in his favor and a more sound understanding of doctrine. A pity he is not here to see his pride fall, but I can always read my responses to him before performing his baptism for the dead, the logical end to having his objections handed back to him!
Below is the first part of my Dismantling of Alexander Campbell's Delusions: My responses to his text appear in brackets.
Alexander Campbell:
2. This ignorant and impudent liar (Joseph Smith), in the next place, makes the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, violate his covenants with Israel and Judah, concerning the land of Canaan, by promising a new land to the pious Jew.
If a company of reprobate Jews had departed from Jerusalem and the temple, in the days of Zedekiah, and founded a new colony, it would not have been so incongruous. But to represent God as inspiring a devout Jew and a prophet, such as Levi and Nephi are represented by Smith, with a resolution to forsake Jerusalem and God's own house, and to depart from the land which God swore to their fathers so long as they were obedient; and to guide by a miracle and to bless by prodigies a good man in forsaking God's covenant and worship — is so monstrously an error, that language fails to afford a name for it. It is to make God violate his own covenants, and set at naught his own promises, and to convert his own curses into blessings. Excision from the commonwealth of Israel, and banishment from Jerusalem and the temple, were the greatest curses the law of Moses knew. But Smith makes a good and pious Jew the subject of this curse, and sends him off into the inhospitable wilderness, disinherits him in Canaan, and makes him more happy in forsaking the institutions of Moses, more intelligent in the wilderness, and more prosperous in adversity, than even the Jews in their best days, in the best of lands, and under the best of all governments!!! The impostor was too ignorant of the history of the Jews and the nature of the covenants of promise, to have even alluded to them in his book, if he had not supposed that he had the plates of Moses in his own keeping, as he had his 'molten plates' of Nephi. To separate a family from the nation of Israel, was to accumulate all the curses of the law upon that family. — Deut. 29:21.
[Note: Campbell’s argument here is too ignorant for words. It is beyond dispute that Israel was destroyed and the Jews carried off to Babylon, therefore relocation was a blessing in lieu of death. And an unchanging God who can promise a people a land of inheritance contingent upon keeping His laws at one time can most certainly revoke and do so again at another, the Jews having inherited expulsion from their promised land for disobedience. Having promised the Land to Abraham, what managed to place them in Egypt for under the prosperity of his grandson being the second under Pharoah, and then finding themselves in bondage after that prosperity led to disobedience?]
3. He has more of the Jews, living in the new world, than could have been numbered anywhere else, even in the days of John the Baptist; and has placed them under a new dynasty. The scepter, with him, has departed from Judah, and a lawgiver from among his descendants, hundreds of years before Shiloh came;
[Note: The conquest and removal to Babylon and the scattering of the lost ten tribes is a matter of biblical record, and that they started new colonies and served under their own kings or foreign ones is inevitable and cannot be viewed as interfering with the prophecies of Christ.]
…and King Benjamin is a wiser and more renowned king than king Solomon.
[Note: The book never makes this comparison, but if it had, the Bible never forbids there being one greater than Solomon, especially considering his debauchery with women and foreign Gods. In fact, most of the prophets stand head and shoulders above Solomon in righteousness.]
He seems to have gone upon an adage which saith, “the more marvellous, the more credible the tale,” and the less of fact, and the more of fiction, the more intelligible and reasonable the narrative.
[Note: Nothing in the Book of Mormon is more marvelous or harder to believe than a universal flood and the world repopulated from 8 people and such animals as could fit on a boat, the parting of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt. And if John can foreknow what shall befall the earth at the end of times, surely Nephi can know of the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who existed with the Father before the creation of the world. Alexander Campbell has merely refuted his personal claims to faith in the Bible.]
4. He represents the temple worship as continued in his new land of promise contrary to every precept of the law, and so happy are the people of Nephi as never to shed a tear on account of the excision, nor turn an eye toward Jerusalem or God's temple. The pious Jews in their captivity turned their faces to Jerusalem and the holy place, and remembered God's promises concerning the place where he recorded his name. They hung their harps upon the willow, and could not sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land; but the Nephites have not a single wish for Jerusalem, for they can, in their wigwam temple, in the wilderness of America, enjoy more of God's presence than the most righteous Jew could enjoy in that house of which David had rather be a doorkeeper, than to dwell in the tabernacles of men. And all this too, when God's only house of prayer, according to his covenant with Israel, stood in Jerusalem.
[Note: Nothing could be more certain than that Jesus came in the flesh to renounce Jewish pretensions to performing the Law and obeying the commandments correctly. Rather, they strain out a fly and swallow a gnat, or miss the forest for the trees. How do we now overthrow Christianity’s pretensions to any correction to Jewish thinking by upholding the purity and wisdom of ancient Judaism? Surely Campbell recalls prior to the construction of the Temple of Solomon that the Lord housed in a tent that was carried about the wilderness and that remained in place in Jerusalem for a generation as David was told not to build a more permanent structure. Surely the Jews can write songs pining for the temple they knew, destroyed by the Babylonians, while they are held in bondage, and this is not the same condition as those led away by God himself to a promised land to avoid said certain destruction, and living in relative freedom on the very continent Alexander Campbell himself called a blessing.]
5. Malachi, the last of the Jewish prophets, commanded Israel to regard the law of Moses till the Messiah came. And Moses commanded them to regard him till the Great Prophet came. But Nephi and Smith's prophets institute ordinances and observances for the Jews, subversive of Moses, 500 years before the Great Prophet came.
[Note: The Nephites were told to keep the Law of Moses as recorded on the Brass Plates, but we have no evidence that the very Jews in Jerusalem of whom it is said that they discovered a lost Law book in the temple of which they had failed to keep and of whom the prophets chided them for adopting pagan practices and worshipping idols, had practices consistent with the original Law. With Jeremiah 8:8 directly stating that "treacherous scribes hath made the Torah into a lie," the Nephites would undoubtedly be a better measuring stick for authentic practices that the Jews in Jerusalem.]
6. Passing over a hundred similar errors, we shall next notice his ignorance of the New Testament matters and things. The twelve Apostles of the Lamb, are said by Paul, to have developed certain secrets, which were hid for ages and generations, which Paul says were ordained before the world to their glory, that they should have the honor of announcing them. But Smith makes his pious hero Nephi, 600 years before the Messiah began to preach, to disclose these secrets concerning the calling of the Gentiles, and the blessings through the Messiah to Jews and Gentiles, which Paul says were hid for ages and generations, “which in these ages was not made known unto the sons” of men as it is now revealed unto us the holy Apostles and prophets, by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel. Smith makes Nephi express every truth found in the writings of the Apostles concerning the calling and blessing of the Gentiles, and even quotes the 11th chapter of Romans, and many other passages before he had a son grown in the wilderness able to aim an arrow at a deer. Paul says these things were secrets and unknown until his time; but Smith makes Nephi say the same things 600 years before Paul was converted! One of the two is a false prophet. Mormonites, take your choice!
[Note: My choice for false prophet is Alexander Campbell. Here he whines about the apostles of Paul’s day not having exclusive pronouncement rights over these very important secrets, calling to mind the ignorant disciples to whom Jesus often scolded, “What is it to you?” He quotes not God for these “promises” that he interprets with absolute literalism, but Paul, who by all evidence was in truth announcing these secrets for the first time in his part of the world and would be on record doing so for two thousand years to come, whereas Nephi's record was buried in the earth and couldn't possibly steal Paul's thunder, and any to whom he told could not have heard from Paul anyway. Clearly Paul’s intention was not to make absolute statements as though he were God, but to supply the people to whom he was speaking with the evidence that he was inspired of God, for no one to their knowledge had ascertained these secrets and they could not be had by any way other than a Gift of Knowledge, the very method that Nephi had them a continent away and in a prior age. And we believe that the message is consistent throughout all of scripture that the secrets available to the prophets through obedience are also available to us by the same method, along with every Gift of the Spirit. “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but that he reveals his secrets to his servants the Prophets.” Having no such access to these secret that would make Campbell aware of these facts and the apostles’ true intentions, it is clear then that Campbell is no prophet, and we beg him to leave the task of disproving false prophets to true ones.]
7. This prophet Smith, through his stone spectacles, wrote on the plates of Nephi, in his book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years. He decides all the great controversies— infant baptism, ordination, the trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the call to the ministry, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may baptize, and even the question of freemasonry, republican government, and the rights of man. All these topics are repeatedly alluded to. How much more benevolent and intelligent this American Apostle, than were the holy twelve, and Paul to assist them!!!
[Note: While attempting to point to a deficiency in the Book of Mormon, Campbell only here succeeds in identifying them in his bible. Indeed it would be careless of the Almighty to either fail to reveal these truths in that great tome of scripture, or else fail to safeguard it through long periods of apostasy and church corruption by which the earth was defiled by its people; they having “disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant” (Isaiah 24:5), without providing some means to preserve and restore them. Perhaps Alexander Campbell is confused on the point that the establishment of doctrine is precisely what inspired scripture is intended to do. But then we would expect that a renowned doctor of the law who makes a living by endlessly debating his interpretations of vague passages would take exception to the revelation of pure and precious truths unto the confounding of false doctrines, the laying down of contentions and the establishment of peace (2 Nephi 3:12).]
He prophesied of all these topics, and of the apostasy, and infallibly decides, by his authority, every question. How easy to prophesy of the past or of the present time*!
[Note: You must first establish whose authority we are speaking of, Joseph Smith’s or the Lord God’s, and you have yet to support a thesis, nor establish when these prophesies were written. See the article in this Strangite Herald titled ONE MIGHTY AMONG THEM for an example of a book of Mormon prophesy that predicted the future accurately.]
8. But he is better skilled in the controversies in New York than in the geography or history of Judea. He makes John baptize in the village of Bethabara, (page 22) and says Jesus was born in Jerusalem, p. 240. Great must be the faith of the Mormonites in this new bible!!!
[Note: Mr Campbell refers to various interpretations of John 1:28: “These things were in Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.” The texts indicate that it was Bethany, but Origen noted that there was no Bethany there, and pointed out that it was likely a mistake and should read Bethabara, which is there. Some scholars have found the alternate readings, but they still haven't found the place if it is different than Bethany, but a different Bethany that the town mentioned elsewhere. A larger area of Batanaea is also proposed, but until scholars can agree on what the correct rendering of the place should be, they will not be able to disagree with the Book of Mormon's identification.
The contention around Christ's birth in the Land of Jerusalem, are misguided for two reasons. A person speaking to a primitive tribe on the other side of the planet hundreds of years removed from the Great City of Jerusalem and who likely do not recall the names of every little hamlet round about may refer to a wider region of geography such as “the Land of Jerusalem" for Jesus’ birthplace. Recall that the Nephites knew that city, for they had one among them named after it. While Campbell can only scour the text in a hyper-focused search for minute inconsistencies, the Book of Mormon offers up unasked-for real-world practicalities. I routinely today for ease of communication round up my location to the nearest metropolis: San Francisco instead of San Mateo, Salt Lake City instead of Sandy, Utah, and Charleston, South Carolina instead of Summerville, in a time when I expect people to have a little geographical knowledge. Yet, the phrase “Land of Jerusalem” cited as the region of Christ’s birth is not the same as the City of Jerusalem, rather it includes the lands round about, including Bethlehem. Secondly, however, I think it far more likely that the Book of Mormon wisely seeks to overstep the controversy of labeling the birthplace of Christ accurately in Nazareth, the town his parents were living in and where he grew up, considering that no serious historian considers the journey to Bethlehem for the purposes of taxation to be a genuine account, being nonsensical, impractical and unheard of. Rather Christ was said to spring from Bethlehem because that was where his ancestors were from, not because it was literally the place of his birth, and well meaning, but overly literal scribes who sought to alleviate any vagueness in regards to his fulfillment of prophesy sought to alleviate it by some minute narrative tampering. Either way, this contention is moot for criticism.]
The mariners compass was only known in Europe about 300 years ago; but Nephi knew all about steam boats and the compass 2400 years ago.
[Note: Rather lacking is the faith of Mr. Campbell in the power of God to think that the being who raised the dead, multiplied loaves and fishes and turned water into wine could not produce a mysterious device that could operate as a compass would; after all, one can make a simple compass with a needle, a leaf on a pond and some static electricity. It is nothing so complicated as the alteration of the laws of physics! And as for steam powered boats, Mr. Campbell’s imagination has carried him away, for they are never mentioned in the text.]
9. He represents the Christian institution as practiced among his Israelites before Jesus was born. And his Jews are called Christians while keeping the law of Moses, the holy Sabbath, and worshipping in their temple at their altars and by their high priests.
[Note: Prophesy is a hallmark of the God of Israel, not proof against him! And we should expect any creature that is graced with the Divine Knowledge of Christ to also reverence his name. The word Christian is but an English equivalent for the Aramaic the apostles spoke and later the Greek that the later writers spoke and the “Nephite” that the Nephite came to speak. The same feeble complaint is levied by the ignorant against he Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ for its use of the word Harbinger to refer to the Forerunner (which are synonyms) and the word Christines to refer to the Christians, which is not a proper name. All forms of it simply mean “anointed ones,” whether they call them Christians, Christines, Anointeds or Messianics. Unfortunately we cannot educate the ignorant before they weaponize their ignorance, believing it to be evidence. And lastly, the Law of Moses, Jesus said he did not come to abolish even a jot nor tittle of, and the Sabbath is expressly stated to be everlasting. We expect the Christ-believing Nephites to keep these things before and after Christ, and if Campbell and his Christian contemporaries have not, it is a sign of the apostasy and evidence of the need for a Restoration.]
