The ancient church of Christ accepted the Old Testament as scripture, and recorded teachings of the apostles that became the New Testament. Additionally, the
Holy Bible contains various references to prophets and books of
scripture that are not included.
Man
is Not Allowed to Add or Detract From the Word of God
While
the Lord can speak or cause to be written anything He wants us to
have, we are not allowed to add or take away from the word of God,
especially not in a way that changes its intended meaning.
(Deuteronomy 4:2) Mormons believe men have removed much of the Old
Testament.
Not
All That is Scripture is Included in the Bible
The
Bible makes mention of prophets and books of scripture that were not
included in it. Now, if absolutely all the writings of every
prophet who ever lived had been included in the Bible, we'd have
several monthly installments to pay before getting all the volumes in
the mail. It wasn't practical to include all scripture, so the
fact that some was left out is not necessarily bad. This certainly
does not detract from the truthfulness of what we do have in the
Bible or its authenticity as the word of God.
Still,
the fact that some scripture has been lost bears scrutiny. What was
in those scriptures? What testimonies did the prophets bear? What did
they prophesy about? What were their teachings? We may never know.
Look
at some of these examples of missing scripture:
- A Book of Remembrance – kept a genealogy and record of Adam and immediate descendants (Moses 6:4,46)
- The Book of Nathan – contained the complete history of king Solomon (2 Chronicles 9:29)
- Ahijah the Shilonite (2 Chronicles 9:29)
- Iddo – contained genealogical writings (2 Chronicles 9:29, 12:15)
- The Book of the Covenant read by Moses – possibly some of it was preserved in Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy? (Exodus 24:7)
- The Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14)
- The Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18)
- “3 Samuel” (1 Samuel 10:25)
- Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41, see also Book of Nathan, 2 Chronicles 9:29)
- Gad (1 Chronicles 29:29)
- Shemaiah (2 Chronicles 12:15)
- Jehu (2 Chronicles 20:34)
- The Book of the Kings of Israel (2 Chronicles 20:34)
- Eliezer (2 Chronicles 20:37)
- Who prophesied that Jesus would be called a Nazarene? (Matt 2:23)
- “3 Corinthians” (1 Corinthians 5:9)
- “2 Ephesians” (Ephesians 3:3)
- Laodicians (Col 4:16)
- “2 Jude” (Jude 1:3)
- Book of Enoch (Jude 1:14), contains a geneaology from Adam to Methuselah and a history of revelations and prophecies had among them (see Doctrine and Covenants 107:57), also discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls
- Books of Zennock (also called "Zadok", see 1 Chronicles 24:3) and Zenos – mentioned in the Book of Mormon and in the Dead Sea Scrolls
- Accts of Uzziah, missing from the Book of Isaiah (2 Chronicles 26:22)
They
Are They Which Testify of Me
The
most important thing about the scriptures in general is that, from
their very conception, they were intended to teach us about Christ
and His Church. During his life, the Savior said, “Search the
scriptures diligently, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and
they are they which testify of me”. (John 5:39) The scriptures they
had at the time were the Torah, also called the Law (Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) and the Prophets (most of the
remaining books of the Old Testament). It was these scriptures which the Savior said testified of him, so we can be assured that the
Old Testament once testified of Christ as much as the New Testament
does.
This
makes the Bible the perfect place to begin to understand in detail
what the Church of Jesus Christ was exactly, and why He founded it.
It will be only by familiarizing ourselves with how the Bible
describes the Church of Jesus Christ that we can hope to define what
kind of church we should be looking for, what kind of church we want
to belong to. This is the purpose of my "Church of Christ defined" articles.
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