The Book of Mormon is a Literary Masterpiece | A Marvelous Work Episode 4

Well, I'm here at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre here in London. Well, actually, this isn't the original Globe. Sadly, that one burned to the ground in the 1600s. But this 1997 version is a pretty true-to-history reconstruction of the original Playhouse, where Sir Willie's great works like Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc., were performed. But why on earth are we starting our episode here? What on earth does Shakespeare have to do with the Book of Mormon? Well, nothing really, except one thing. In a previous episode, we've explored internal evidences for the Book of Mormon, specifically literary elements that stand out in the texts and provide clues as to the book's ancient origins. There's so many different literary evidences, however, that we just couldn't fit them all in that one episode. In fact, when our editor Noah sat down and tried to cut all of the footage, it was over three hours long. So, we chopped it up to make two episodes. So that's why I'm here, because Shakespeare is considered by many to be a literary genius, obviously. He employed the English language to a degree that was unparalleled at that time. And here's the cool part. Of all the rhetorical and literary tools on his tool belt, one of them was chiasmus. Now, I know if you've been watching, you know that chiasmus is a literary structure that we also find in abundance in the Book of Mormon. I'm Scott Christopher, and in this episode of A Marvelous Work, we will burrow even deeper into literary evidences in the Book of Mormon and share with you some of those nuggets we didn't use in previous episodes. I'll be talking to leading experts in the field of chiasmus and stylometry. And, of course, we hope to have a jolly good time along the way. In fact, whilst we're in these parts, I'll be chatting with a woman who has a very special story to share with us. So stick around for that. Well, are you ready to dive in? Are you comfy? Ladies and gentlemen, lords and ladies, I give you episode four, act one of A Marvelous Work. So, yeah, we've talked about chiasmus before, a literary device that's been used for centuries by writers like Shakespeare to emphasize key points of their message and to create a lyrical structure that adds beauty and sophistication to their text. This was certainly Shakespeare's purpose in using it in the English language to create drama and to fill his wonderful playhouse with spectators. But even before Shakespeare's time, chiasmus was employed by authors of the Bible. It's found in the writings of Matthew, James, Paul, in the Old Testament, too, in Genesis. Chiasmus is ancient. It's served multiple purposes for biblical prophets, and they weren't concerned with filling playhouses, but with focusing readers on a central message. So in the spirit of talking a little bit more about chiasmus, I spent some time recently in Provo, Utah, the BYU library, where I was gathering more intel. Wow. You're in the special collections department at the Harold B. Lee library. I was just down there looking at Jack Welch. He's the guy who discovered chiasmus. You remember from episode one? I'm here to talk to him now. How are you, sir? I'm great. Good to see you again, Scott. Same here. Wow. Here we are in the special collections area of the BYU library, one of my favorite places. I love it. Yeah, and it's a home to a lot of books that have made a big difference for me in my life and my study of the scriptures. There's a lot of cool things I know we're going to talk about today. Absolutely. We kind of scratched the surface a little bit about the poetry of chiasmus and things like that, and I know people are excited to hear more. What are some of your favorite examples of chiasmus, specifically in the Book of Mormon? My favorite, I think, would be Alma chapter 36. And what he tells there is the story of his conversion, where he goes through a series of steps, and he wants to change, but there's one important step there, and it's when he remembered the Son of God who would atone for the sins of the world. And he said, and when I thought that, I cried out, O Jesus, thou Son of God. Have mercy on me. Perfect duplication there. Have mercy on me who am in the gall of bitterness. And then he retraces his steps through the chapter. So that's the central point of the chapter-long chiasm in Alma 36. And there's no rhetorical or literary device better suited for telling a conversion story like that than chiasmus. I found Mosiah chapter 3, verses 18 to 19. And if you count the words in King Benjamin's speech, you'll find that this is almost dead center. Like divisible by two, or whatever. It's the middle of the fourth of seven sections, so it's pretty obvious that this is an intentional center point. And let's just look at it because it's not just the center point of a chapter. It's the center point of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so as you look here through Mosiah chapter 3, verses 18 and 19, he tells his people, men drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children. And third, believe that salvation was and is and is to come in and through the atoning blood of Christ the Lord omnipotent. For the natural man is an enemy to God, and here's the turning point, and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever. Unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, putteth off the natural man, and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, and willing to submit to all things. It's very hard to translate a rhyme scheme. It's very hard to translate the meter. But what device can be translated into just about every language in the world? Chiasmus and parallelism. Where you take the words and you preserve the order. Yeah, and then reverse them. I'm quite confident that the Lord knew that this was a book that would have to go to every nation, kindred, tongue, language, and people. And so it has to be written in a way that that can happen. And Chiasmus fits that bill. Thank you so much again, Jack. I'm so glad that we were able to get back with you and dig a little deeper. So much fun. Thank you so much. Thank you. Talking with Jack Welch is always a treat. He encouraged me, however, to not let his be the only voice to speak about Chiasmus. So we put our team in touch with a Jewish professor who could illuminate the topic further. Gary Rendsburg is a professor of biblical studies, Hebrew language, and ancient Judaism here at Rutgers. He's also the author of numerous books and publications about Hebrew literature. We are on a trek, as you know, to kind of discover what we would consider evidences for the Book of Mormon. Now, I know that you know Dr. Jack Welch. I do. I know Jack Welch very well. We were just talking to him recently about Chiasmus. And I know you have a lot in common with Jack about Chiasmus. What is Chiasmus, particularly in ancient religious texts? The term actually comes from the Greek letter chi. So if you can picture the chi, which is the origins of our English X, which means you start a story with what we call unit A, and you build a story to unit B, C, D, E, etc. And then you come to a focal point or a pivot point, and it unwinds to an E-prime, D-prime, C-prime, B-prime, A-prime units, and these units match each other. So as you read a story from beginning to end in a holistic way, even though it's got various scenes and episodes, you're understanding that the story has an intentional structure to it that has been deliberately included in the experience of reading the text, with your attention going to, oh, that pivot point or that focal point. When you talk about researching the Bible and seeing chiastic structures, are you primarily in the Hebrew language, or does it carry over into other translated languages, like English, for example? I work in the Hebrew original text, and my work on Chiasmus has been especially in the book of Genesis, where it was first identified, and I built on the work of other scholars. If the translator paid attention to these terms, you could actually see this in an English translation as well. So it depends on the style of the translator. Actually, when I translate, and other scholars do the same, we try to find the same English word to render the same Hebrew word each time and to translate it consistently. Other translations tend to be a little looser. They're more paraphrasing or functional equivalent. So if word A in the Hebrew is used in this place, and it gets translated with English word B, it may get translated with English word C by a different translator down the road somewhere, chapters later, in which case the English reader wouldn't see it. But if it's really well done, the same translation in English should reflect the same Hebrew words at each time. Okay, so let's talk about the Book of Mormon briefly. You're not a Latter-day Saint. No. Obviously. Have you had a chance to read the chiasms that Jack has discovered in the Book of Mormon? What are your thoughts on them, your opinion on that? What does that mean to you? Jack's discovery, which he presented when I was together with him at a conference at BYU in Provo, it was so self-evident. It's the same issue, then. How come nobody noticed it before, right? And I still remember Jack Welch getting up there and talking about being a young man and studying the Book of Mormon, and he was actually in Germany, and he highlighted the passages. Now, this is all part of the creation of literature again, right? And he began to show these things, and I was, to use that hackneyed expression, blown away by Jack's discovery. And once he showed it, I said, well, yes, obviously it's there. So it does match up to what you would have defined. Very similar to what I discovered in the Book of Genesis, the system of doing it. Based on the chiastic structure alone, one can, and this was part of Jack Welch's incredible discovery, it would go a long way to establishing the LDS fundamental belief that this is a text from the world of ancient Israel. Thank you so much for your time. Really, really appreciate it. It's been an honor. It's been such a pleasure. This was great. Thank you so much. You know, the thing I loved about talking with Gary and people like him is that he's not a BYU professor of ancient scripture. He's not a man of the cloth. You know, it's someone else who can recognize and appreciate the existence of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Pretty cool. Well, I've got myself in a bit of a pickle here. I've got somewhere I need to be, and as you can see, I've got myself stuck in one of these notorious British garden labyrinths. It's going to be a minute. I don't know how I'm going to find a way out of here. It's embarrassing, really. I wonder if there's an app. You know, this city is chock full of literary history. It is the backdrop of some of the world's most beloved characters and novels. Books like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they all took place here in London. Perhaps one of the most famous authors to use London in his novels was Charles Dickens. Well, he got your Great Expectations, he got your Oliver Twist, your Tale of Two Cities, and, of course, Scrooge, A Christmas Carol. Dickens was known for painting literary pictures of London that were strikingly authentic. He exposed the poverty, the child labor, and the cruelty of man while still offering hope that people can change. I'm, in fact, standing across the street from one of Dickens' homes here at 49 Dowdy Street in King's Cross. You know, it's cool to be here and see this real Dickens place, but, you know, this isn't the first time I've come across Mr. Dickens in our search for Book of Mormon evidence. On a recent flight home from one of our adventures, I just happened to sit right next to a man who's, of all things, a collector of rare books and artifacts. And he has in his possession some really cool things related to Charles Dickens. His name is Reed Moon, and he's an expert at determining the authenticity of old and rare books. So this stuff's all put out here in the front, I'm guessing, still is very valuable, but you must have some other items. We do. We keep those in the back. If you want to go in the back, I can show you some of the treasures that are too valuable to be out front. Nah, I think we're good. Let's wrap it up. Of course we want to go back. Yes, please. This is from a castle over in the U.K., so that's St. George slaying the dragon. You have James I and Anne of Denmark. So it's a lot of history. This is a 400-year-old historical door, but as you open it up, it does still have that creek. Oh, I love it. It does. Oh, that's a happy creek. The first thing you notice is there's a desk, but nobody's supposed to sit at it, just because it is an older desk. But the original owner of this desk, that man's name? Charles Dickens. So you have Charles Dickens' desk that he wrote A Tale of Two Cities. Yes. This is quite the eclectic room. It's everything. With the pop culture, and now I'm obviously on the trail of Book of Mormon things. We have a full vault full of older copies of the Book of Mormon, and we have another vault filled with every first edition of the Book of Mormon in every language. When I travel the world and people find out that I have a bookshop in Utah, invariably the subject of first-edition copies of the Book of Mormon comes up. And everybody worldwide knows the value, and everybody's looking for them, because from books printed in the 19th century, it's like top five. It holds its own with some of the most important books printed. Do you have any books of Mormon here nearby that I can... Actually, right in front of us. I was going to say. Tell me about, tell me something cool about one of these. Well... Now that's not the actual book. No, that's a protective clamshell. But as we open it up, you can see here is the book itself. Originally 5,000 copies were printed. Granded, right? Grand and press. We can go to the title page right here, and you can see 1830. Number one question, do we know who this book belonged to? And the answer is yes. The person who owned this book was very proud of it and boldly wrote their name in ink. Not on the title page, but on... Is it going to be somebody cool? Hopefully. Hyrum Smith. Yeah, Hyrum Smith. He's pretty cool. I seem to recall that name. So this is Hyrum Smith's copy. Just don't open it more than a V. Okay, I won't do more than a, yeah. Number one question. How do we know that's Hyrum's? Well, first of all, the ink, iron gall ink is eating through the paper. So that's, that bodes well. But actually a lot of research has been done, and this is an entire cache of provenance giving the entire background. This book was Hyrum Smith's, but it disappeared for 150 years. And you say, well, how did it disappear? Well, first let me pull this out. In 1832, this copy was acquired by Reynolds Cahoon. This is a copy of Hyrum Smith's own journal. And if you go right here, it says Reynolds Cahoon to owe me for the Book of Mormon, $1.25. So he sold his copy for $1.25. So it changed hands from Hyrum Smith to Reynolds Cahoon. After the saints leave Nauvoo, the book is gifted to Reynolds Cahoon's son, Pulaski Cahoon. But Pulaski is the older brother. He has this book. He doesn't stay with the church, and he goes to Missouri, takes this book with him, and it disappears for 150 years. This book surfaced 20 years ago in 2004 in Chicago. And the woman who owned it wrote a two-page notarized affidavit, and she starts out, this is to certify that my family is possessed. All of my life, a fine copy of the Book of Mormon, dated Palmyra, New York, 1830, and inscribed, Hyrum Smith's book. There it is. 1830, inscribed Hyrum Smith's book. And it goes on to say, the Book of Mormon has been a part of my family for over four generations. I inherited it through my great grandparents. They were originally slaves in Missouri. This book somehow ended up with slaves and slave descendants for 150 years. And you say, how do you know that? Well, here's the story. The Book of Mormon was always a prized possession to the generations of owners of my family. It was a sincere gift given by the Cahoons to wish them safety, prosperity, and freedom as they moved north onto their new lives. I really wish I could meet all of them, or at least know more family history, but I do not. Considering the end of the lineage as the last survivor, I decided to return the book closer to where it started and to someone who will love, appreciate, and cherish it much as my family did. She also made one request that her prized possessions stay with the book. What do you think she wanted to stay with the book? Something about her family, maybe? Her family photographs. Oh. And so here are the people who owned this book. Wow. And kept it safe for 150 years. Isn't that cool? So this copy of the Book of Mormon, we literally know everywhere it's been. Hiram Smith, Reynolds Cahoon, Reynolds Cahoon's son, four generations of the Bradshaws, and then to my friend, and then myself. So I'm the seventh owner of the Hiram Smith copy. The Book of Mormon, for some people initially at least, was so precious that they took care of it as an heirloom-level heapsake. And for it to be such a joyous gift that they gave to these wonderful emancipated slaves, you know that the intent behind it was give it a good home. Yes. But to be able to authenticate a book that came from a certain place in a certain time that was owned by a certain person is one thing, and it's one amazing thing, and it's obviously a very valuable thing. And our quest is to somehow find ways to authenticate the content within the Book of Mormon itself. And as we found in our journeys, we come across people of faith, we come across people of scholastic backgrounds that understand literary evidences, and all arrows kind of point to the Book of Mormon being authentic. But ultimately, at least I believe, the authenticity of the book is really found in the spiritual realm. Like you mentioned, you know, you read it for yourself, you felt that it was true. What more evidence does a person need? In your opinion, do you think Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself? No. Why not? Well, first of all, I've read it numerous times, and I've seen, I have my own reasons for believing just the number of times I've read it, and I see what it takes for a book to stick around. And there are so many forgotten books. If Joseph Smith would have written it, it would have been long forgotten by now. That's beautiful. Anyway, thank you so much for your time. It's been fun. This is just fantastic. Ooh. Well, isn't this lovely? I'm at Whitby Abbey up on the northeast coast of England, and it is suitably creepy. In fact, supposedly, it was the place that inspired Bram Stoker to write his chilling classic, Dracula. And of course, you understand the clear connection between the Book of Mormon and Dracula. Well, let me tell you, Scott. Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is unique in that he chose to write it as though it were a true account. So the chapters, in fact, are a series of letters written in between different characters in the book or journal entries, actually from six different characters. Of course, a good novelist has the ability to do this, to create these character voices that are distinct or different from one another so that as we're reading this letter from Van Helsing to Mrs. Harker, it does, in fact, sound like Van Helsing, a different character from Miss Harker. The ability to create these distinct voices is actually a hallmark of a literary master such as Stoker or Dickens or whoever. But the Book of Mormon includes dozens of individual character voices and, in fact, was written by many different authors, though some people believe it was written by a single author, whether it was Joseph Smith or someone else who clearly must have had once-in-a-lifetime literary genius-level intellect. But to shed more light on this, which is called stylometry, I had a chance to meet with Dr. Paul Fields recently. Dr. Paul Fields is an expert in the field of stylometry, which, as I understand it, is the statistical analysis of variations in literary style between one writer or genre and another. And Dr. Fields has been doing some groundbreaking work in identifying, through stylometry, the different writers of the Book of Mormon, the difference between them. Dr. Fields, hello. It's good to see you, Scott. You too. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Stylometry, just tell me, did I get it right? I kind of gave a little, you know, a condensed version of the definition. Is that more or less what it is? Well, that's what stylometry is. We're trying to identify the style that a speaker or a writer is using. What does that have to do with me being able to find internal evidences of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon? Well, as the name says, stylometry means the measurement of style. And so if we take a look at the Book of Mormon, which claims to have various speakers over a thousand-year period of time, we could look and see if they're the same or if they're different, because they should be different if the Book of Mormon was written by 82 different speakers rather than just one person, such as Joseph Smith. I see. And how do you do that? Well, what we look at are the grammatical words. These are called function words. These are the words that are prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns. These type of words don't convey any meaning, but they are the words that speakers, writers use as scaffolding to construct their message. Well, let me give you this comparison between the Book of Mormon speakers and the speakers in the 19th century novels. Oh, very good. Okay. Okay. We're going to step into the world of Book of Mormon voices in virtual reality. Oh, good. Put on that headset, Scott. Here are the controllers. Okay, wow. So apparently you have to play video games to ascertain the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. That makes it easier for certain generations, to be sure. What you see are spheres, and each of those spheres are the words of a speaker, either in the Book of Mormon or in the 19th century novels. I'm seeing it. Okay. So the biggest distinction is along that axis that separates the green spheres, the Book of Mormon, from the 19th century novels. Each of those colored spheres is one of the 19th century novels, novelists. This one's Jane Austen, and we have her... Oh, it's blinking. Oh, okay. Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Yes, I love that movie. And then we have Charles Dickens. Which is? Great Expectation. Okay, very good. And Oliver Twist. James Fenimore Cooper. Last of the Mohicans. Right. And Deerslayer. And then Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Okay. Now you'll see that each of the author's spheres grouped together. Well, they were created by the same mind, so that makes sense. It does indeed, yes. But you can also see that the speakers, the characters within an author are distinctly different from each other. Let's take a look at the Book of Mormon. Okay, which is up here, the green stuff? Those are the green ones. Yeah, I'll bring it down a little. There's 28 authors, as we mentioned, and they range from Abinadi to Zineph. And you'll notice how far apart they spread from each other. Okay, so who are we pointing at here? The size of the sphere. Is the amount of words? The amount of words that each one speaks. So Mormon speaks 97,000 words. He's the biggest speaker in the Book of Mormon. He has the biggest sphere. That's the Book of Mormon, after all. Followed by Nephi, who has 28,000 words. Followed third by Alma the Younger, who has about 21,000 words. He's awesome. But look how they separate from each other. Because they are, statistically speaking, on this plot, they are that different of a voice. They are different. Okay. And so you'll notice now, most strikingly, however, in the entire display, is the variation, the spread of those green spheres. Yes, compared to the variation and spread of even the best literary artists of their day. Exactly so. Am I getting that right? And so there's more variation in one book, the Book of Mormon, than in eight novels written by geniuses of the times. Highly unlikely, as you said, for a farm boy, little education, living on the American frontier. Really, three, four, five, however many Ds we're talking about here, dimensions, is really the only way to kind of capture how truly cool the differences are. Well, there's 250 different dimensions that we use to describe their styles, and we've projected it statistically down into three dimensions. So that we can see it. That's beautiful. If we listen to their voices, and we read their messages, we can gain a testimony. Isn't that really what it's all about? That's what it's all about. When all is said and done. And all, in fact, is said and done. Great talking with you, Scott. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm just gonna try to find my way out of here now that I don't have, you know, Oculus Prime on my head. Paul Field's stylometric findings are now available online, so dig a little deeper for yourself. I'm grateful there are people like Paul out there who love the Book of Mormon enough that they apply science and technology to help show others how marvelous of a work it really is. Of course, more important than anything, scientists or an historian can teach us about the Book of Mormon, is the life-altering impact it can have on people every day. That's where we're headed now, to talk to just an everyday person about the impact of the Book of Mormon. Now we're headed there. Okie doke. Well, I'm here with Wendy Lynch, and if you could see out the window that I'm looking at right now, you'd be blown away by the spectacular view. We're here in a little town called Whitby. This is the northeast coast? Northeast coast. Is this York or Yorkshire? I think it's North Yorkshire. North Yorkshire. Well, you heard it right there with the proper accent. Now Wendy, the reason that I'm talking to you today is because you have a pretty cool conversion story to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was 15, and I was at my grandma's house one day reading a woman's magazine that she had, and I was really interested in being healthy, keeping fit, that kind of thing. And the article said that Mormons were some of the healthiest people in the world that had low cancer rates, high life expectancy, because they had something called the Word of Wisdom that they followed. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I'd heard about the Book of Mormon, and I couldn't get one anywhere. I tried. I went to Durham. I went to Sunderland, Newcastle, the bookshops, the libraries. Nobody had heard of it. And they said, who's the author? And I said, well, I'm not exactly sure. It's sort of similar to the Bible, but it's set in the Americas. That's all I knew. Wow. And I think it was sometime the next year I found an address for, it must have been the Hyde Park Visitor Center in London. So I wrote a letter to them explaining I was interested in the Word of Wisdom and could I get more information. And did they write back to you? Well, eventually, a few months later, me and my sister were watching Batman on the telly. So anyway, the missionaries came to the door. When I opened the door, they said, did you write this? And they had the letter in their hand. I said to them, have you got a book of Mormon? And they said, no, we haven't. And I'm like, oh, no, I'm never going to get one. What kind of missionaries did we have in the 70s? The next time they came, they brought a book of Mormon. So I was really happy about that. You finally got your hands on a book of Mormon. Yeah. And I just read it and read it. I couldn't put it down. How long did it take you to read it, do you think? I think just under two weeks, something like that. What were you feeling? I mean, when you finally got your hands on it and you started to read it, I mean, do you remember kind of how it made you feel? I hadn't finished it before I knew it was true. Was it a new feeling, that sweetness, that joy? It was just a peaceful feeling, a comforting kind of feeling. And at a certain point, did the idea of baptism come up? Yes, the baptism came up. My parents said, no, you're not getting baptized. And I knew I would have to wait till I was 18, and that seemed forever. I think it was about September 1977, when my parents felt I was getting too involved in the church. And they said, right, you have to stop going. You've got to send all the books back. You're not allowed to phone anybody, write to anybody or anything. Send the books back? Yes, so the Book of Mormon, other church books, all the seminary material and all of this, all of that, I send it all back. And I wasn't allowed to talk about the church in the house or anything like that. How long did that go on for? That went on, I think it was about June the following year, something like that, May or June. Oh, so a good nine months or whatever. Yeah, when I did seminary for a little while and was studying the Doctrine and Covenants in church history, now it's only 25 scriptures you have to memorize. Then it was 40. And I'd memorized some of them. I can't remember which ones now. But at the time when I wasn't allowed to go to church, I was so glad that I'd memorized those scriptures and also stories from the Book of Mormon and Moroni's promise. I remembered that and remembered lots of things. So that sustained you. It sustained me. During the blackout, as it were. Yeah. What ended it? Well, one day, me dad, we were just sitting on a Sunday morning, and he said, What are you doing today? And I said, Nothing really. And he said, Well, if you want to, I'll take you to church. And I'm like, Oh my goodness. I says, Yes, I'll go. And that was the beginning of me going back to church regularly. I remember I really wanted to be baptized, but I didn't know what my parents would say or anything. And I'd been praying to know when would be the right time to ask. And sometimes prayers are answered in times or places that are unexpected. And it was one morning, I was actually helping my mom strip wallpaper off the walls. And I felt a little voice say, Ask your mom now if you can get baptized. And I'm like, Okay then. So I said, Have you and me dad given any thought to me getting baptized? My mom said, Actually, me and your dad have been talking about it. So then they said, Yes, you can. So I was able to get baptized, being new to the church and learning. I was at college at Durham, and it was quite a long bus ride every day. So I'd take the scriptures and read them on the bus. And one day, this man who was sitting behind, he said, Oh, what's that book you're reading? And I said, Oh, it's the Book of Mormon. And he said, Oh, can I have a look at it? So I gave it to him, and I didn't realize my name and address was in it. So he gave it back to me. And then the next week, I got a big thick envelope through the post, about 10 pages thick. And it was all anti-Mormon stuff. I mean, you're still a young girl. Did you read through it? I had a look at it. What did you think? And I thought, Oh, well, I'd never heard of any of this stuff before. And I just ripped it up eventually. And I never got back in touch with the man or anything like that. So what would you say to someone who's facing opposition in terms of either finding, receiving, being able to have the gospel in their lives? I would just say, keep praying about it. Because if you haven't got anything else, you've always got prayer. Heavenly Father's always there for you. The only way you can know about the Book of Mormon, if it's true, is to read it yourself and study it. And really find out for yourself. And not listen to what other people have to say. And test Moroni's promise at the end. Wendy, thank you so much. Thanks very much. It has been such a treat. Thank you for coming down here and meeting with us and sharing your testimony and your story of your conversion and the role the Book of Mormon has played. Once again, we have been spiritually fed. And we just thank you for that. Okay, thank you. Being here in England, a land where literature has shaped the consciousness of society for generations, and master authors have penned some of the greatest books of our time, has been a real treat for me. The power of literary evidence for the Book of Mormon is undeniable. But, I know for myself and for millions of others around the world, including Wendy Lynch, that the most powerful evidence of the Book of Mormon is its spiritual witness. The teachings of Jesus Christ. The plain and precious truths of his doctrine and plan of happiness. And how all of that impacts people's everyday lives. Still, the literary evidence that we've discussed in this episode, like chiasmus and stylometry, are two more logs on the fire of the Book of Mormon's non-spiritual evidence. And there are hundreds more that come from within the pages of the book itself. But now it's time, I think, we get back to checking out more physical evidence. The where, the what, and the if, so, how variety. We live in an exciting time where evidence is coming forth from the dust in greater and greater abundance. So, join me on our next adventure as we continue to uncover the evidence, build faith, and share the miracle that is a marvelous work.