The Book of Mormon has rather timeless and as timely but it has timeless doctrines as well.
One of the things that President Ezra Taft Benson our President at one point said,
the Book of Mormon does is it not only reveals Christ,
but it reveals and exposes the enemies of Christ.
And I'm just thinking of a few of those enemies
for example, the Book of Mormon just exposes and denounces
For example,
ethical relativism,
the whole notion that all things are relative
sounds like we're living in the sixties you know when you say something like that but that's what you hear today.
The whole notion that there are no absolute truths, the Book of Mormon exposes that, how ridiculous it is.
The whole notion of naturalism, that the only world that exists is what we can see.
Our classic story is Alma himself as he confronts Korihor.
Korihor's worldview is a naturalistic worldview, all there is is what you can see, feel, touch, hear, taste.
Well Alma has this, Alma the prophet has that same worldview but his is larger.
He has the supernatural world view as well, superimposed over that
and he knows of things that exists in that other world
and so the book Mormon clearly over and over just exposes the notion
that by human reason alone
we can know God or know the things of God.
Materialism.
How many times the Book of Mormon makes constant reference to
a people begin to go astray when they specialize in
the finest of clothing, of course the best that money can buy if you will.
Costly apparel as its referred to about 14 times in the Book of Mormon.
That materialism is what destroys a nation.
They're being caught up with themselves with how they look, how they sound, and how they appear.
And the one that I think of that is
perhaps most significant about the Book of Mormon, that exposes the whole notion of humanism.
The notion that man is the center of all things.
The notion that if I'm to succeed in this life I'll succeed because I pulled myself up by my own boot straps,
or in the words of the Antichrist, I'll succeed because of my own genius.
The Book of Mormon exposes the shallowness of that whole line of thinking.
And in its place it inserts the concept of divine grace,
that without the divine grace of Christ we are nothing.
We will remain nothing forever.
And so we could we could list one after another.
Philosophies, points of view, false educational ideas throughout the world today, they're current.
You read The Book of Mormon and you see how it exposes them.
That magnificent passage "Oh the wisdom of man is foolishness,"
The whole thrust of the Book of Mormon to sort of attack two branches of the same thing,
those who are proud because of their learning, those who are proud because of their riches.
And this poignant denunciation on the part of Jacob, the brother of Nephi when he says,
and they will be lost, they'll be damned unless they consider themselves fools before God
and humble themselves.
Well the Book of Mormon teaches man is not the measure,
God is the measure.
When you think about it,
the effects of the Enlightenment would still have been very strong in the nineteenth century
and so there there have been immersed in humanism if you will.
And of course your best illustration that would be Unitarianism.
Most of Protestantism though and probably little branches of Catholicism
would have been fighting against some of the same
some of the same false ideas. Materialism, I think we've seen those being denounced.
Naturalism, I think they would have denounced those as well.
I don't think those teachings would have been new in the Book of Mormon
but they happen to be very timely for us.