People Ask me ...

I was almost 25 years old, employed as an Engineering Tech for a large company in southern Ohio.  My wife and I were active in a local Baptist Church teaching in the youth programs..

Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had visited our home a few times and taught us a few lessons.  I had only known two 'Mormons' before and was interested in their ideas and beliefs, just as I have been interested in hearing and reading about other philosophies and other religions before and since that autumn in 1962.  For me, it was just an academic interest.

They challenged me to read the Book of Mormon and pray.  But, I didn't have time to read and understand a new book, and absorb all the new names and places and events that it described.   However, I did know the Bible pretty well, and this thought came to me: "Christ was spoken of in riddles and metaphors hidden throughout the Old Testament and only fully reveled in the New Testament.  So if the Book of Mormon and the establishment and trials of that church was true, it would be in the Bible, but hidden.  If it was not true, then it would be revealed and condemned by the same text."

I really believed the Bible was true.  AND I also believed that the Lord was on my side.  But how could I find the right passages, the hidden chapters and verses in  the Bible?  I did not know where to look.  But He did.

I had a week of vacation starting, and I decided to spend 2-4 hours a day searching the Bible.  I would sit down on the end of our couch, lay the Bible on my lap, and pray for His guidance.  Then I would flip open the Bible, totally at random, and start reading. 

Each time I did this, I sensed that He was standing behind me with a hand on my shoulder.  I took notes, I marked scriptures.

When the Missionaries returned at the end of the week I had to confess that I had not read even one page of the Book of Mormon.  Then I started teaching them "our" Gospel, the Latter Day Saint Gospel, from passages in the Bible.

... so that is when and how I knew this,...

... the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ are all true.