My CMS The View from a New City

From time to time I read articles discussing how the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has slowed or stopped. I think when I read these things that the popularity of the Church bears no relation to its truthfulness. If it is God’s Church, he can make it succeed or fail, at his whim. But I have just realized that the amazing progress of the Church is proof of the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the truthfulness of the prophecies contained therein.

Here are a few lines from 3rd Nephi chapter 20:

“I say unto you that when the Lord shall see fit, in his wisdom, that these sayings shall come unto the Gentiles according to his word, then ye may know that the covenant which the Father hath made with the children of Israel, … is already beginning to be fulfilled…. And when ye shall see these sayings coming forth among you, then ye need not any longer spurn at the doings of the Lord, ….yea, wo unto him that shall deny the revelations of the Lord, and that shall say the Lord no longer worketh by revelation, or by prophecy, or by gifts, or by tongues, or by healings, or by the power of the Holy Ghost!”

When Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery penned these lines they had no earthly reason to believe that anyone, other than their close friends and family, would ever read them. They were totally isolated and cut off from the centers of influence in the world. They needed to have a friend bring them potatoes to keep them from starving to death. The fact that the Book of Mormon is now distributed by the millions and that people are gathering to the Church from the four corners of the world in the millions is fulfilment of the foregoing prophetic words contained in that Book, and that, against all odds and massive persecutions and opposition. If this unlikely prophecy has come to pass, then the other propositions, and promises contained in that marvelous book are also true.