The previous post used an analogy to describe the feelings that many have when discovering that Mormonism's claims of divine origin are false.
I'll use a quote from my book, The Mormon Mirage, that describes the end of that process for me, when I was confronted with a make-it-or-break-it fact, which was the “point of no return” for me:
One final acid test remained at the end of the summer. Since I had a scholarship and a writing job waiting for me at BYU, I decided to return, promising Dan that we would marry—if I came back in December feeling about Mormonism as I did then in August. As I was packing, I felt as if the summer had been a dream. Or was it the real part, and the rest of my past life the illusion? I was unhappy about leaving Dan, but I knew I must make my decision alone. No matter how much I loved him, my eternal soul and my relationship with God were more important to me.
I was putting my books into boxes when, tired, I sat down with my Doctrine and Covenants. Always it had been my favorite book of scripture because of its practical commandments, like the Word of Wisdom, which had purified and uplifted the lives of millions of Latter-day Saints. Also commonly bound in the same volume with the Doctrine and Covenants is another book of scripture called the Pearl of Great Price, which includes two books that Mormons believe were written by Moses and Abraham. These scriptures are unique in that they have what purport to be illustrations by Abraham himself. These illustrations, reproduced by woodcuts, are in the ancient Egyptian style. I have always loved Egyptology, though I have no more than an avid layperson’s knowledge of the subject.
I was looking idly through these familiar woodcuts when I was struck by an incongruity that upset me. Two of the women in the woodcut known as “Facsimile 3” had been labeled by Joseph Smith as men! Egyptian women are easily recognized in ancient documents by their distinctive strapped, ankle-length dresses.
Why I had never noticed this before, I do not know. I had looked at these woodcuts for years. I knew from reading authoritative experts on Egyptology that Egyptian women in history had dressed as men and acted as Pharaoh (Queen Hatshepsut, for example), but no Egyptian man would have been caught dead in a woman’s clothing, especially to be preserved for posterity on a papyrus roll!
It was with this discovery that my most concrete doubts about Mormonism began to multiply. No “anti-Mormon” writer had pointed this out; no hater of the LDS Church could have falsified or altered these prints; they were in my own personal copy of scripture. I found myself crushed and exultant, all at the same time.
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today(Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
