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Saturday, September 10, 2005

 

Book of Mormon Blog: Day 1

It's Saturday, September 10, 2005 6:45pm. The sun is setting in Sharjah, UAE and the Muslim call to prayer is gently drifting over the town and into my 7th floor apartment. The call has a mystical effect as mosque after mosque joins in, creating a ghostly echoic call and response. As it calls the Muslim faithful to evening prayer I sit on my sofa, with my Book of Mormon in my hand. I've been all day convincing myself that today was the day I would heed President Hinckley's challenge for all members to read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year.

This Friday at Sacrament Meeting, I gave a ten-minute talk about how we can use the Book of Mormon and Moroni's challenge to gain testimony of the Gospel, and of Joseph Smith's prophethood. Before I opened the Book of Mormon I pulled out my Relief Society Visiting Teaching Message and read President Hinckley's challenge. "If each of you will observe this simple program of reading the Book of Mormon by the end of the year, regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book of Mormon, there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God." (Liahona and Ensign, Aug. 2005)

Further down in the message is a quote from Ezra Taft Benson I wish I had included in my talk. He says, "We, the members of the Church, and particularly the missionaries, have to be theā€¦tellers and testifiers of the Book of Mormon unto the ends of the earth. The Book of Mormon is the great standard we are to use. It shows that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It contains the words of Christ, and its great mission is to bring men to Christ and all other things are secondary. The golden question of the Book of Mormon is 'Do you want to learn more of Christ?'" (The Book of Mormon is the Word of God," Ensign, May 1975, 65) Italics added

And so with the sounds of the evening azan softly calling the Muslim faithful to come unto Allah, I open the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Christ and invite myself and all who read this blog to come unto Christ.

Local law prohibiting the preaching of Christian doctrine to Muslims may silence my voice, but on the Internet, my mind and voice are free.

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