Skip to content
Feast

Reading paths

Where the evidence is genuinely contested

The hard questions

Every item here is a place where the honest answer is complicated. The Church's own Gospel Topics essays are cited throughout, because on these subjects the Church has published better material than most of its critics assume.

Who this is for

You have run into an objection — yours or someone else's — and want it addressed rather than deflected.

7 steps4 hr 22 min

0 of 7 started
  1. LessonFour Accounts of One MorningJoseph Smith—History 1:5–20; James 1:5–6; Acts 26:12–19Four accounts, written across ten years to four different audiences. What agrees, what does not, and why variation is what honest testimony looks like.50 min
  2. LessonThe Coming Forth of the Book of MormonTitle Page of the Book of Mormon; 2 Nephi 27; D&C 3; D&C 17; Ether 5:2–4The seer stone in the hat, the 116 pages, and eleven witnesses who had every reason to recant and did not.50 min
  3. LessonThe Intelligences and the CouncilAbraham 3; compare Moses 4:1–4; D&C 93:29The doctrine of premortal existence, and a translation problem the Church's own essay states plainly.50 min
  4. TopicPremortal LifeWhere the story startsIncluding the explanations of racial restriction that the Church has explicitly disavowed — named here because this is the doctrine that was misused.20 min
  5. LessonGrace, Works, and a PrepositionRomans 3–5; Ephesians 2; James 2; 2 Nephi 25; Moroni 10The argument the New Testament never settles, read in an order that lets both halves stand.50 min
  6. TopicReading IsaiahWhy it is hard, and what actually helpsThe Deutero-Isaiah question, and what it does to the brass plates. No position is taken, because the Church has not taken one.22 min
  7. TopicProphetsWhat the office is, and what it is notFallible men in an office that is not. The scriptural record of prophets erring is longer than most people expect.20 min

Paths do not contain anything the library does not already have — they are an order to read it in. Nothing is locked, and you can leave one at any point.