Well, good afternoon, it's nice to be here with you. I know you've been sitting a long time.

I'll try to be interesting so that you're not bored.

It's hard to sit for hours at a time.

I've done that a few times at conferences, so I understand that.

I'm really happy to be here.

I actually come from a military family.

My dad served as a captain in the Marine Corps, my brother in the Marine Corps, and my niece is just going to go to basic training in a month to the Marine Corps. So yeah!

(Chuckles) So I really appreciate the Armed Services and people who serve in them and we have a family history of that.

So it's nice to be here to try and help you do what you do.

Now I had to do a little research on what chaplains do, so I did that.

And I found out that you have lots of interfaith dialogue, that you have to be LDS ambassadors, and that you have an important pastoral role.

So I hope to help you with that today. I know with interfaith dialogue, that you'll be talking to lots of people from different faiths, that you will be working with different translations of Bibles and with your Book of Mormons and our Bible, and that may be an interesting experience sometimes, so I’m hoping to help you with that. I hope you can be good LDS ambassadors with our scriptures and help explain them, and also in your pastoral roles be able to help with the scriptures.

So, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what I do.

I study the language of English theology, and I go back to the earliest English translations of the Bible, and look at words that are used and what they mean, and start following them into our current world so we can understand them a little bit better.

And so I want to start today with...

In 1831 this man back here, Alexander Campbell, he was the founder of the Disciples of Christ Church, a leader in the early nineteenth-century religious reformation known as the Restoration Movement, which is quite fun for us.

He published a short pamphlet called "Delusions: An analysis of Book of Mormon," with an examination of its internal and external evidences, and a refutation of its pretenses to divine authority.

He said that Joseph Smith was an "(impuntant?) knave who had written a fantastical romance and was trying to pass it off as a Bible." Campbell detailed what he felt were the internal and external evidences that proved the Book of Mormon to be a fabrication.

So I want to show you what he said.

There's a comment up there.

"This book is a patched up and cemented thing with its 'I came to pass, I saith unto you, he saith unto him.' It's got the king James language but it is pretty

low in its imitation." He also said the theology in it is comprised of almost

"every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years." In other words, Joseph has no theological imagination, and he's just pulled stuff in and here we are.

So, in Campbell's opinion the Book of Mormon is "a hodgepodge of Smith-isms and must be considered the meanest book in the English language." And whatever you think of Campbell's assessment of the Book of Mormon, his language criticisms and his theological criticisms provide us a really nice platform

for looking at the language in the Book of Mormon and the theology that is expressed by that language.

So I want to help you with

KJV language.

Why is there KJV language in the Book of Mormon? You might actually get that question out there from people looking at our scriptures.

Let me show you what modern scholars have said so far.

First of all, they've argued that the KJV language established some validity - thank you. You've got to really appreciate people who are that helpful, I appreciate it.

So, it established some theological credibility in the 19th century because the book sounded like the Bible that they used.

Back in that time they used the KJV, and that was their Bible and they

liked that language, and so it supposedly sounds like the Bible, so that's okay.

Or, we have

scriptural language is necessary for the book to be established and accepted in the 19th century as God's word.

Or, if you look at that side of the screen, Joseph Smith was profoundly influenced by the KJV, his self personally.

And so two theories have been advanced about this by other scholars that the Lord dictated in KJV language to Joseph because he was familiar with that

and he dictated what came off the Urim and Thummim, and he had no influence

on the text.

So that's one interpretation.

Not everybody agrees with that.

The other one is up there as well, that Joseph was expected to participate in the translation process.

So as he was participating he actually reformulated the Nephite record into

English, that he liked.

And so that's another way why we have KJV language.

Now all four of these explanations are very plausible, but the problem that I have with them is that they make the KJV language in the Book of Mormon irrelevant to you because it only speaks to 19th century people.

And I don't really want to be left out of the language of the Book of Mormon.

And so I think that we can look a little closer at the book itself and look at

internal answers for why we might have the language that we have in the Book of Mormon, not just for 19th century people, but for 21st century people, why might there be an advantage.

So, I'd like to show you, if we jump into the Book of Mormon itself really

quick, we can find Nephi learning about our scriptures, okay? Nephi had the brass plates, and he wrote his own record.

But the brass plates are not the same thing as our Bible.

So Nephi had to be taught about our Bible which he is in First Nephi 13. He learns about the Bible that the pilgrims bring over.

He also learns about other books that will be revealed in the last

days, in the latter days.

And so I'm going to show you this verse here which says, "And the angel spake unto me," Nephi, "saying: These last records which thou hast seen among the Gentiles, shall establish the truth of the first." The first one he saw was the Bible, "which are the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb, and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them." So in other words, the Book of Mormon has a couple of very important functions.

It's going to establish the truth of the Bible.

And it's going to make known things from the Bible that were taken out of it.

So I just want you to notice "truth" is listed here.

Both truth that's already there, and truth that's missing.

But truth cannot be conveyed to you aside from language.

Truth has to be couched in some language in order for me to understand it.

So truth is inseparable from the words that you use to express it.

So we're talking here about language and theology, so our Book of Mormon tells you that the reason we have the language that we have is for language

and theological purposes.

So let me show you just a couple of people who are not Latter-day Saints, and who live in two totally different time periods. This is Brian Cummings, who works on vernacular theology, and he's done

a lot of nice work with the German Bible as well as the English Bibles.

And he says here, "Anytime you create a vernacular Bible in the language people speak, you create a vernacular theology." You have to figure out what words work

with what you're trying to mean.

Now, someone else knew this back in the day.

William Tyndale, I'll introduce you to him a little bit more in a minute. But he lived in the early 1500s, and this is what he said about God: "God is not man's imagination, but that only which he saith of himself...

God is but his word...

God is that only which he testifieth of himself." So, however God expresses who He is, He's going to use words, and we need to pay attention to those words.

So words are important, both someone in our modern age, and someone a few hundred years ago understand that.

So I'd like to help you understand why do we have KJV language in the Book of Mormon?

Because there’s a theological purpose for it.

So this will hopefully get you excited what theological purposes might there be.

Well, I hope you know that not all words are of equal value theologically.

Some words like "you and he and me and I" don't really have a tremendous amount of theological value.

However, some other words will.

These two words have a tremendous amount of theological value.

So do these.

So do these.

So do those.

And you can start thinking about different beliefs about those things.

Those.

And so on. So as you read the Book of Mormon and your Bible, you can start looking for theologically-important words and start focusing on those, and be thinking about why do we use those words?

So, what does the language in our KJV language in our Book of Mormon teach us about the origins of the Book of Mormon?

I'd like to help you a little bit with that today.

And I'm going to do so by picking some of these top words here that we can look at. What does the Book of Mormon do with them, how does that relate to the Bible, and why do we care?

So, let's have a look.

My argument is that lexical - that's words - and theological complexities in the Book of Mormon show that its origins are much older than the 19th century.

We're not just dealing with 19th century people and their words.

So let me show you some fun things about translation.

So let me introduce you to William Tyndale, he is the one on the top there.

And another guy you might have heard about a little bit more, Thomas More.

They had an argument back in the 16th century about Bible translation.

So who is William Tyndale? He is the first person who took our Greek New Testament source text and tried to put them into English.

Very first time. We had never done that before in the history of Bible translation.

He did two different editions, a 1526 one, and a 1534 one.

He was also the very first person to take the Hebrew Old Testament source text and put them into English.

Nobody had ever done that before.

Unfortunately he was killed before he could do the whole Old Testament.

So you'll see up there, he only did parts.

I really wish he had been able to do Isaiah

because he's really good with English.

But he was killed before he got to do that.

But we have a lot of his stuff in our Bible today.

And he got in a fight with Sir Thomas More and wrote a book answering Sir Thomas More's criticisms about his translations, which I’ll show you in just a minute.

So who is Thomas More? You might know a little bit about him, he is an experienced English lawyer.

He wrote “Utopia.” Maybe many of you had to read that in high school or in university.

He was a councilor to Henry VIII, and then became the Lord Chancellor

of England for a while. So he's a really powerful man in England, and he did not like William Tyndale's translation and he wrote some books about it, okay?

"Dialogue Concerning Heresies" has the first set of criticisms. And then he wrote two more volumes about it. He was so incensed, so he had a lot to say about this translation.

So, Thomas More knew what I've been teaching you, that language has

everything to do with the expression of truth, and if you don't get the language right, you get the theology wrong.

And he knew that if you messed up the words you could create some really serious theological issues.

So he felt that Tyndale's translation was full of dangerous linguistic problems that led to dangerous theological problems.

And More insisted that these errors were so subtle that the average layperson couldn't figure it out. So he had to write all these volumes to tell people where the problems were.

So he tried to warn people, tried to show the issues with the language.

He focused on a handful of Greek terms that he felt Tyndale had mishandled.

And here are the ones I want to show you.

"Presbuteros" which in Greek means "an older man." "Ekklesia" which in Greek means "people who are called out," of a group, to a different group.

And "Agape" which we would understand as being "love." So, Tyndale took those Greek words, let me just show you, and he translated them like that.

He started with "senior" but he didn't like it, so then he changed to "elder" so that's why they're both there.

He chose "congregation," and then "love".

But More thought this is what should've happened.

He should've chosen "priest," "church," and "charity." And he was really mad that Tyndale didn't make those choices.

Now, those of you that know things about the Catholic Church, you can understand why More would be mad.

Theologically, a lot of the Catholic beliefs with built on those three words.

The Holy Order of the Priesthood is built on "priest." The authority and organization of the Catholic Church is tied to "church." And the giving of alms, including their alms for the dead is built on that word, "charity." And he

felt Tyndale was trying to undermine the entire beliefs of the Catholic Church, while using those other words over there.

So how did Tyndale feel about it?

Well he said he was following the Greek, and that you should stick to the Greek language, and that he was choosing words that represented the Greek language, and they hadn't actually done anything wrong.

So what I hope to show you today really fast is our Bible has inherited these problems and our Book of Mormon talks about them.

And it does it in the same kind of language, so it's really cool for you to see this.

So let's start with "presbuteros" really fast, and how Tyndale handled it, what More said about it, and then what the Book of Mormon does with it, which is really cool.

So as I told you, Tyndale started with "senior" but he didn't like that word, and he switches over to "elder." And this is why he says so: The Greek term, in his understanding, has no ordination meaning attached to it.

So he felt that there shouldn't be an ordained priesthood, they're not consecrated, they're not set apart, they're just chosen to be priests.

And so he felt justified in doing that.

And then no divine authority or power.

They are chosen by the people to lead.

And what is their job?

They just teach the gospel, and they can administer sacraments, but that's all they do.

And they do not stand between people and God.

There's no mediator here.

Christ is the mediator.

And so, Tyndale felt like this was a really great way to translate this.

Now, More came back and said, no, the Greek word does signify that there's some kind of ordination.

They do have divine authority and power.

It is given by the laying on of hands, it's a sacred rite, it sets them apart from everybody else.

And they do serve as mediators between God and man.

So you have this kind of polarized position with priests.

So I just want to show you really quick what happened to this debate as Bible translation proceeded.

We have more translations of the Bible than maybe many of you are aware. Sometimes Latter-day Saints, all we think about is the KJV, and we think it's the first English Bible translation. It's not. So let me show you what happened in the 100 years between Tyndale and

the KJV.

There are plenty of Bible translations going on and all of them take Tyndale's side.

Nobody supports More. I'm sure he would've been very sad had he been alive, but he had been killed by now.

And so, what we see, "presbuteros" appears 67 times in our Greek New Testament and is translated by all these Bible translators as "elder" in almost every case.

Now, we do have a Catholic translation of the Bible, English translation, that comes along towards the later end of the century there, you'll see it 1582 is the New Testament, and then later they come up with an Old Testament.

But they do this funny thing, and they don't like "priest" or "elder." They pick

"ancient." And so that's what you'll see them doing. But they don't even pick "priest." And that's what More would've wanted.

So it's quite fascinating what happens there.

Over time, our evangelical believers, the ones who are protesting against the Catholic Church, come to define priest and elder the same way.

And so as they read the word "elder" they see these people as "servants of the word of God to administer sacraments," and that's all.

Now what does our 19th century Bible translators do with this? I just want to show you how the Book of Mormon kind of jumps in and helps with this.

So we've got More and Tyndale on our slides here.

I just picked a handful of Bibles out of the 19th century, there are more than these.

But you might be familiar with some of these people. Charles Thompson over here on this side of the screen.

He was the secretary to the continental congress, he signed The Declaration of Independence, and he did a translation of the English Bible in 1808.

What did he do with "presbuteros"?

He stuck with the KJV. The only time that he didn't, and I don't know if I put it up here, I didn't.

I'll just tell you. He chose in First Peter 5, he didn't put the word "elder" in there, he said "advanced in years." Okay (chuckles), a few more words there.

Alexander Campbell, you just heard about, he’s the one who was criticizing Joseph Smith. He was a Bible translator, and then he put forth a Bible translation in 1826, just right around the Book of Mormon and he kept with the KJV, made no changes.

You might have heard of Noah Webster with all those great Webster Dictionaries that have come out.

He published a translation of the Bible in 1833, said he wanted to preserve

the KJV as best he could, and he didn't change "presbuteros" either.

So in spite of all these Bible translations supporting this word, Campbell was right, people are arguing about the duties of priests and elders all the way along in the 19th century.

They argued about church government, how to baptize.

Everything has to do with how we understand the word "priest." So let me show you what does the Book of Mormon have to say?

After centuries of arguing about it, you'd think the Lord would have a comment or two about what we should do with this.

So let me show you the fun things about the Book of Mormon, okay?

It just swings the pendulum the other way.

We do have the word "elder" in the Book of Mormon, just not very often, mostly "priest." And then let me just show you, this statistic done here, I need to

update it, I didn't include the word "eldest" in my data, but you probably would want to.

There's 18 between "elder and eldest," other ones, that have to do with being an "older sibling" in the Book of Mormon.

So just realize that needs to be doubled, that number down there.

But, the Lord is really interested in priests and He lets you know it.

Under the Law of Moses, before Christ comes, they're serving under the Law of Moses, we see "priest" a lot of times, and "elder." And then when Christ comes and reestablishes the Higher Law, they're still using "priest and elders" all the way through there.

Now, you've seen the language.

What does this tell us about the theology?

Let's just show you, here are some samples.

Nephite prophet, Alma 6, under Law of Moses, we "ordained priests and elders, by the laying on of hands." Then we hit Moroni under the Higher Law, and we have elders and priests in the church, and the elders are ordaining

the priests.

So let's show you what the theological statement is. Now I'm not going to go through this whole chart, so you can sit there and look at it.

I will point out some things really fast.

What do we learn from the Book of Mormon to help us with "elder and priest"?

Well, they're separate offices, they both are responsible for presiding and watching over the church.

The office of elder, at least under the higher gospel, is superior to the office of priest because you have ordaining going on there.

Priests and elders, under the Mosaic Law were ordained, they were set apart, and there's real spiritual power in those ordinations.

So More would be very happy about that.

One of the reasons Tyndale was opposed to the ordained order of priest, is he felt they were trying to be mediators between believers in Christ.

But the Book of Mormon repeatedly teaches that salvation comes through the merits of Christ alone, and not through a mediator of any other kind.

Tyndale would be very happy about that. Tyndale believed the main duties of a priest was to teach the word of

God, not just administer sacraments.

And the Book of Mormon makes that very plain, that we preach and teach

and administer saving ordinances.

And Tyndale insisted that the clergy were motivated by money when they became priests, rather than trying to help people, and that they didn't live up to the high standards of a priestly office.

And the Book of Mormon, as you know, very clearly explains that no priest is consecrated except he had already proven himself faithful, just, righteous, and dedicated to the Lord.

And you even have instructions in the Book of Mormon about how to

excommunicate or what we would say now, have a membership council

for priests who aren't doing their job.

And Tyndale would've been very happy about that.

Tyndale argued that Catholic priests made themselves holier than lay people.

The Book of Mormon said "the teacher is no better than the learner; and the hearer no better than the teacher." And so we have that equality. The Book of Mormon also has several verses that explain that the priestly office was not a paid position which, you know, it's important

for motivations.

So the Book of Mormon, I just want to show you, jumps us right back into 16th century Bible translation issues and answers every single one of the problems, which is really nice.

Now, let's just jump quickly and look at "ekklesia." And this one about the church and congregation.

What did Tyndale want?

As you saw, he thought people understood church incorrectly as being just the clergy and he wanted it to just be a group of people who had a wide variety of degrees of faith, and that he wanted to reserve the word "church" for those who actually kept their baptismal covenants, and not just people who were involved in church out of tradition.

And he wanted church to be more than sacraments, he wanted it to be a place to be taught the word of God.

Moore, on the other hand,

said we should use “church,” it represents a group of Christians. We can trace the church all the way back to Peter.

And we need to have traceable authority, which you can understand. And the church is recognized by its faith and its good works.

And doesn't like the idea of this elect group of people because of the concept of freewill or agency is what we would say.

And that church should be a place to be changed, not necessarily a place to be taught.

And so we have this lovely debate between these two. Should we use "church," should we use "congregation"?

What do we do?

So over the 100 years after, let me just show you what happens, there's a really mixed bag here on Bible translations.

Up until 1540, all the Bible translations use the word "congregation." And then suddenly, with the Geneva Bible over here, we change and King James' 1611, and we start putting "church" back in.

And you won't find "congregation" in the New Testament anymore, but you used to.

So why is that, why did they change it? A little complicated story about some politics and things that we don't have time to talk about now.

But, what happened in the 19th century?

Same thing.

You have our Charles Thomson and Alexander Campbell, they're sticking with "congregation." The only time Charles uses "church" is in Matthew 16.

And the only time Alexander uses it is in First Corinthians 6, but he prefers "congregation" the rest of the time.

But no Webster and Joseph Smith don't do anything else.

They leave that. Now, if you're looking at that "church" number and wondering why it says "121," it's a typo.

It should be 112, okay?

There's no change in the number of (inaudible) in the New Testament, story about that. I just didn't edit it before I sent this in.

So, what does the Book of

Mormon do? Wow. The Lord sends a very clear message about what He wants His organization to be called.

We do have two "congregations" in the Book of Mormon, but they are in references from Isaiah chapters, and they just refer to "groups of people." Everything else is a church.

Under the Higher Law of Christ, we have a church.

And under the Law of Moses, eventually, by the time you hit Mount

Mosiah 18, you have a church organization.

So the Book of Mormon is very clear on what we need to be doing here.

But let's talk about this theology really quickly.

The Book of Mormon calls people who want to come unto Christ a church.

It's great, you make a covenant.

All those who belong to this church need to be baptized, and they need to have authority to do the baptizing.

And it's baptism by immersion, as you know, from the Book of Mormon under the Law of Moses as well as the Higher Law, you see it in both places.

Nobody's received a baptism save they come forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit and have repented.

We see it's a two-way covenant between God and the individual.

And we need to keep the commandments, repent of our sins, and then God gives us comfort, forgiveness, and the Spirit in return.

In the Book of Mormon, the true Christian church is recognized by its authority, we could trace it back to Christ, His teachings, and the way that the members lived.

There's a clear and repeated message of the authority to form a Christian church.

It comes from someone who has that power given to them.

And, the Book of Mormon does not use the word "elect." You should have some fun looking that up sometime. The only place you'll see it is in the Zoramite teachings. Do you remember when they thought they were better than everyone else.

And so it levels the playing field really nicely.

Along with the doctrine of equality, the twin doctrine of agency is plainly taught which negates the idea of pre-destination.

God created all things to act and to be acted upon, and the Lord gave unto man that he should act for himself, and not be compelled.

Membership in Christ's church is available freely to anyone who chooses to belong and keep their covenants.

The Book of Mormon also explains what happens at church.

You come, you fast, you pray, you speak, you teach, and you care about the welfare of everybody's souls, and you administer sacraments

and you could be led by the spirit there, and you know that there's great teachings in there.

And so again, our Book of Mormon language ties us tightly back to the 16th century, and it resolves all of our theological issues that they were arguing about in this really beautiful way.

Now very quickly let's look at "agape," this one is really fascinating what happens with the word "love and charity" in the Book of Mormon.

Why do we have an issue with love and charity? Well, there's a linguistic problem with the grammar, okay?

Hopefully you know that charity is a noun, it doesn't really have a verb form.

And so we can talk about charity as a noun, but we don't use it to say "I'm going to charity somebody." That doesn't really work.

We say, "I'm going to love somebody." So charity and love are really tied together

and you'll see it coming into the English language about the 13th century to represent the Latin Vulgate caritas, which is an important word.

So we've got this one-way grammatical relationship and this is a quote from Tyndale. And I think you'd like this. "One does not say charity god or charity your neighbor, but love God, and love your neighbor." So as we start looking at charity we have to remember the noun and the verb issue in what we're doing.

So, what did More once say about charity? He said "it represented a godly type of love, it's the best English equivalent

because it's not a common type of love, it's a good, virtuous, well-ordered

love." More felt that "love" was too general, and could mean something good or evil.

While "charity" was unquestionably Godly and so he really, really wanted "charity" to be in there.

Charity for them was also associated with chastity, and being a pure vessel.

And you demonstrate this charity by acts of service and sacrifice and

almsgiving, and those kind of things.

And so, Tyndale disagreed.

He said love is very wide, it matches the Greek and it's common.

And the textual circumstances will always tell you what type of love we're dealing with. So if I say "I love chocolate," I could understand that.

"I love my husband." Hopefully they're not the same okay?

It shouldn't be associated with charity and almsgiving.

And love should come from your heart and not just be a rote procedure that you do.

And it should come because you've been affected by the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, which I really love that he was teaching that.

It's also related to faith in Christ.

So, what happens with the rest of the Bibles in the hundred years after

Tyndale died?

You'll like that.

Nobody wants to use "charity," everybody uses "love" all the way through.

Two hundred fifty-two instances of "agape", 242 of them are translated

"love." The rest of them are translated into words like "dear or beloved," so just be aware of that. They're all expressions of love, just in a different way.

So what happens in KJV? That's really interesting.

We have a mixed bag of "charity" versus "love," and most of you will know that the large majority of the instances of "charity" come from here, First Corinthians 13, okay?

More than half of them are out of there, it's crazy.

Now I just want you to compare that is the only theological discourse on charity.

Look how many we have on love.

So really fascinating theologically was going on in our KJV Bible if you've never noticed that before.

So what happens in the 19th century?

Again, just a mixed bag.

Charles and Alexander stick with "love." I believe Charles does use some "charity"

but he replaces the word "alms" with it.

And then nobody else does anything special.

Joseph, JST leaves it the way it is in the KJV.

So, what does our Book of Mormon have to say?

Really interesting, okay?

Split with the Book of Mormon.

Of the two, obviously "love" is more commonly used, but I hope you can notice

this statistic, "charity" has a greater frequency in the Book of Mormon than in the Bible and in the other English translations that you've seen.

The problem with "charity" is it cannot be defined well without using the word "love." You try telling somebody what charity is and don't use the word love in

it, you're going to have a hard time with that conversation.

And the Book of Mormon really illustrates this by defining "charity" as "the pure love of Christ, the everlasting love, the perfect love, or just love."

The Prophet Moroni records that the Savior loved the world so much that He would lay down His life for it, and boldly declared, "I know that

this love, which thou hast had for the children of men, is charity." So it's really fun with the language.

Other verses in the Book of Mormon explain more fully what charity is like, how to develop it.

Charity is something you have to ask for in prayer, it's a gift bestowed upon all who are true followers of Christ, and charity is also something that all men must have or they are nothing.

And without it, you will not be able to inherit in a place in the mansions of God.

But since charity is defined as "the pure love of Christ," the Book of Mormon also maintains the chaste, unselfish aspect of charity, like More would've liked.

Thus, the Book of Mormon does exactly what More wanted, by teaching there's a special name for the kind of love that God has for His children, and which He expects His children to develop towards their fellowmen.

That love is called "charity" in English.

Charity is a very different kind of love from the love described in other verses, which it is.

People loved murder, they loved the vain things of the world, they had a love of

glory, of money, of substance, of fine apparel, and they loved to pray to be seen of men.

The Book of Mormon also indicates that love is an appropriate word to use to describe Godly feelings. So Tyndale would be really happy about this.

There's a lot of examples, but I'll just give you a couple.

Prophet Lehi declared, "But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell.

I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of

his love." Prophet Jacob encouraged his people to "lift up their heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love." And King Benjamin talks about it, and so forth.

Even in Zion society, in Fourth Nephi you'll see there, love of God is the reason that they succeeded.

So Tyndale would've been very pleased.

He said the circumstances declare what love and what hope and what faith is spoken of, and he really appreciated that word, even though Thomas More did not.

So I hope you can see the Book of Mormon works really well with these theological debates.

It engages with the important issues of good works and the role in salvation.

It discusses the spiritual processes that had to take place in a person's heart before the individual could perform good works for the right reasons.

It engages with Tyndale's issues on the selfish side of man. It talks about the natural man needing to be changed which Tyndale was really big about.

And that mighty change from the natural man to a saint is brought about through Christ's atonement.

And you know there's loads of examples of people in the Book of Mormon experiencing that kind of change.

Alma the Younger should come to mind. King Benjamin should come to mind, and his people having this mighty

change of heart.

So there's overwhelming support for Tyndale's inward spiritual transformation, but the Book of Mormon also teaches the vital importance of good works, and how obedience to God's commandments is important, and gives us

access to Christ's mercy.

There are many verses that teach that man does not merit anything of himself, and that individuals must rely alone on the merits of Christ.

Christ extends His saving mercy and merit to those who are willing to keep His commandments.

And so there are things that we need to do there, which Thomas More would've been

very happy about.

So I just want to finish by helping you just with these three terms see that the Book of Mormon speaks to Bible controversy all the way back to the beginning of the very first English Bibles.

And it deals with all of the issues that Thomas More and William Tyndale were arguing about.

So for me, why is there a KJV language?

So we can connect the history of Bible translation to our Book of Mormon, and have the Book of Mormon address issues from people who were very devout and very interested in God, all the way back to the 16th century

for the very first English speakers.

So I just want to close with my testimony.

I know that God knows that people have questions and that they have

issues, and His Book of Mormon answers questions and issues from people who have long since died.

And we can speak to people from the 16th century, the 19th century, and the 21st century with the beautiful language that we have.

I know that you'll probably get questions about those kinds of things with people out there, and I hope that today you can have some ideas on how to say, "Hey, we really love the language of our scriptures, they tie us to the whole history of English Bible translation and scriptures, and they do so in a really powerful linguistic and theological way." And I hope that you can feel the spirit of that. And I share that with you, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.