Alexander Campbell once noted that the Book of Mormon managed to comment on a surprisingly large percentage of the religious issues of their time.[1] In addition to infant baptism, authority and ordination, the nature of the Trinity, free agency of man, the fall, and the resurrection, here is a more complete listing: freemasonry (Helaman 6:21-29; 3 Nephi 4:7), spiritual regeneration (Alma 5:14-21), rights and responsibilities of civil governments (Mosiah 29:11-17), church government (Moroni 4:6-9), the atonement (2 Nephi chapter 9), eternal reward and punishment (Alma 41:3-7), Catholicism (1 Nephi chapters 13 and 14), fasting (Alma 17:3), repentance (Alma 5:49), “religious experience” (Mosiah 27:24-29), and transubstantiation (3 Nephi 18:28-30).
Not surprisingly, when Joseph Smith first wrote the Book of Mormon, he condemned “secret combinations”– a reference to Masonic-type organizations then in existence in the America of the early 1800s. Later, when Smith himself became a Mason, the lines became blurred.
[1] Tanner, Mormonism—, Shadow or Reality?, 63-72.
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.
