Last April President Thomas S. Monson gave his last talk to the Church.  It was a plea to the members to prayerfully study and ponder the Book of Mormon each day.

One person who took heed to that plea was the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who has since become our new president.  Russell M. Nelson undertook a study of the book and, among other things, made lists of what the Book of Mormon is, what it affirms, what it refutes, what it fulfills, what it clarifies, and what it reveals.  He called it “an insightful and inspiring exercise,” and recommended it to each of us.  (Ensign, Nov. 2017, 61).

He also asked us to each answer a question:  “The Book of Mormon:  What would your life be without it?”

I must answer that the Book of Mormon has totally and completely changed mine.

Another person who was listening to President Monson’s plea to read the Book of Mormon daily was Henry B. Eyring.  He said, “Like many of you, I heard the prophet’s words as the voice of the Lord to me.  And, also like many of you, I decided to obey those words.”

He made the remarkable statement, “With that testimony (that the Book of Mormon is the word of God), I have read the Book of Mormon every day for more than 50 years.”   (Ensign, Nov. 2017, 100).

I wish I could say that.  The boys in my old Primary class will be able to say that.  So will many of our institute students that we currently teach.  I know a little family with multiple small children who are able to say that they have not missed a day of reading the Book of Mormon as a family for over four years!

Some years ago I went home teaching to Carolyn and Deryl Leggett.  Carolyn said something stunning that opened my eyes to a concept I’d never before thought of, and which radically altered the next decade of my life.  It was in January.  She shared with me that she had set a goal to read the Book of Mormon three times in the coming year.  This was a stunning statement because it had never occurred to me that you might do more than read a chapter or two a day.  Some quick calculations after that visit revealed that her goal was easily achievable by reading just two chapters per day, and that it could be accomplished by an average reader with an investment of time of just 15 minutes per day.

I adopted Carolyn’s goal as my own.  I don’t know how Carolyn came out with her goal, but I achieved mine.—And it did something to me.  The more I read, the more I wanted to read.  The book gets better and better.  Carolyn’s revelation about what I could do with the Book of Mormon has led me to read it an additional 43 times.

Do you realize that by reading 10 pages per day, which you can do in about 30 minutes, that you can read the entire Book of Mormon in just two months?  You could complete it six times in a year.

With that program you actually complete it in under two months.  If you maintain that same 10-page-per-day reading schedule during the down days between readings of the Book of Mormon, you can also read the entire New Testament, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

And what will it do for you?  Let me tell you.

As a 19-year-old non-member I knew absolutely nothing about Jesus Christ or religion.  I was severely depressed.  I was chronically depressed.  I was an honor student at Oregon State University, but my depression was so bad that I became unable to open a book.  I was one month into the beginning of my sophomore year, and I hadn’t once been able to make myself open a book!

That’s a fatal situation for a college education.  It meant that I would have to drop out of school, which I did.  My depression was only heightened by the knowledge that my dropping out of school might literally lead to my fatality because I’d lose my draft deferment, would be inducted into the U.S. Army, be sent to Vietnam, and would be shot and killed while on patrol in the jungles there.  The prospects were not pretty.

What I didn’t know was that the Lord was orchestrating my new life, and was steering me to where I needed to be.  I hadn’t been able to open a book because of my depression, but it was a book that brought me out of it.  About a week after quitting school a book was placed in my hands.  It was the first book that I’d opened in months.  It was the Book of Mormon.

As I read, something wonderful happened.  I felt light coming into my head.  I couldn’t have told you that my head was filled with darkness, but I could actually feel light pushing the darkness out.  It was such a wonderful feeling that reading the Book of Mormon was all that I wanted to do.  The light came in at the front and crowded the darkness to the back of my head until after some days it exited completely.

Members of the Church have a huge advantage over everyone else.  We have hidden treasures of knowledge that are available to everyone, but which can only be accessed through the Book of Mormon and a believing mind.  The Book of Mormon is a wonderful road map into both the past and the future.  A diligent student of the Book of Mormon knows things from history that archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians spend lifetimes trying to figure out.  A diligent student of the Book of Mormon has a road map to heaven that tells him who Jesus Christ is, and how to achieve immortality and eternal life with Him.

When the Book of Mormon was published in 1830 people made fun of it because it made ridiculous statements.  For instance, the book says that the people in the north, where trees were scarce, made houses of cement.  In 1830 cement was a new product, having been re-invented just 74 years earlier in England.  It was obvious to the detractors of the book that Joseph Smith had made the story up since cement was an anachronism—a thing out of place—that the Nephites couldn’t have had.  It wasn’t until many years later that ancient cement structures were found in the Americas.

And if the Book of Mormon was true, they argued, there should have been left-over evidences of the civilization that the book described.  The fact of the matter was that there was no such evidence anywhere.  Those who had testimonies through the Holy Ghost of the truth of the Book of Mormon could only shrug and say, “Nevertheless, we know that it’s true.”

In the early 1840s two explorers returned from Central America with stories and maps and drawings of ancient, lost cities and ruins in the jungle.  In the 1890s some fairly extensive studies were made of what they called Maya ruins.  The studies have continued to the present day.  Much has been learned in that time, but on February 1st of this year everything scientists thought they knew about the ancient Mayas got turned on its head.

A project was undertaken to make a topographic map of what is under the jungle canopy that covers lowland Guatemala.  A plane crisscrossed the area sending up to 150,000 laser pulses per second to the ground.  The system is called LIDAR.  The laser beams penetrate through the jungle canopy, and send back signals that enable the researchers to see the details of the topography under all the vegetation.  What they found was astounding.  The LIDAR images revealed over 60,000 structures previously unknown, including cities, elevated roads, canals, pyramids, and temples.  Everything that they thought they knew was turned upside down.

My reaction to this was that I wish they’d just go read their Books of Mormon.

I went to my World Book Encyclopedia to read about the Maya.  It says there that the “Maya civilization reached its period of greatest development about A.D. 250.”  The way I read the Book of Mormon, that assessment is right on.

The encyclopedia also says, “Scholars are still trying to learn why the Maya society collapsed.”  Any of you could tell them because that’s explained very dramatically in the Book of Mormon.

The encyclopedia says, “The Maya did not have the wheel or any beasts of burden, such as horses and oxen.”  If  the Maya civilization is the same as the Nephite/Lamanite civilization, that assumption will be proved false as they continue to dig into the record, because the Book of Mormon records things like this:  “And it came to pass that when Ammon had made ready the horses and the chariots for the king and his servants, he went in unto the king...”  (Alma 18:12).

The encyclopedia says, “Historians know little about the government of the Maya.”  My goodness, the things we could tell them there!  Americans are proud of the fact that the United States of America was essentially the first democratic government in the history of the world where its leaders were elected by the voice of the people.  How shocked historians would be to discover that democracy was invented by a prophet-king named Mosiah who set up the world’s first successful republican government almost 100 years B.C.

The LIDAR researchers are astounded to have found cities surrounded by fortifications and walls and moats.  They had no idea that warfare was a problem in that society.  The Book of Mormon says that general Moroni “caused that his armies ... should commence in digging up heaps of earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land ... and upon the top of these ridges of earth he caused that there should be timbers ... and he caused that upon those works of timbers there should be a frame of pickets built upon the timbers round about; and they were strong and high.  And he caused towers to be erected that overlooked those works of pickets, and he caused places of security to be built upon those towers, that the stones and the arrows of the Lamanites could not hurt them.”  (Alma 50:1-4).

“Now behold, the Lamanites could not get into their forts of security ... because of the highness of the bank which had been thrown up, and the depth of the ditch which had been dug round about.”  (Alma 49:18).

The area being surveyed by the LIDAR team is in a low-lying, swampy jungle in Guatemala.  It was not thought that people could live there, but these recent researches reveal that the ancient inhabitants drained the land, and were using every square inch.

The Book of Mormon says that “The whole face of the land had become covered with buildings, and the people were as numerous almost, as it were the sand of the sea.”  (Mormon 1:7).  Maya researchers used to think that perhaps the area had supported a population of 1-2 million, but these recent discoveries have caused them to dramatically raise that estimate to 15-20 million.

The LIDAR researchers were amazed to find raised roads that would have enabled the ancient inhabitants to carry on commerce and to move from place to place even during the wet seasons.

That’s not surprising to us because the Book of Mormon says, “And there were many highways cast up, and many roads made, which led from city to city, and from land to land, and from place to place.”  (3 Nephi 6:8).

This is all very exciting to me.  We don’t actually know if the Maya ruins are actually the remnants of the Nephite/Lamanite civilization, but I suspect that they are because of the things that the Book of Mormon doesn’t say.

For instance, not once in the Book of Mormon is any mention made of cold or snow.  The words “cold” and “snow” are each only used once in the entire book.  The word “cold” was used by Lehi saying that he must soon go down to the “cold and silent grave.”  (2 Nephi 1:14).  The word “snow” is used to describe the tree that Lehi saw in vision which “did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow.”  (1 Nephi 11:8).  If these people had lived where there were seasons of cold and snow, the book would surely have mentioned it.

Instead, the Book of Mormon speaks of “the heat of the day,” and of people “who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the land ... because of ... the nature of the climate.”  (Alma 46:40).

To me that sounds tropical.  That sounds like malaria.  That sounds like Guatemala.

The Book of Mormon recounts at least three instances of armies getting lost in the wilderness while trying to follow cattle drives, of all things.  How hard is it to track a herd of cattle, and how hard is it to get lost while doing it?

I can see where it might be really easy if it was during the rainy season in a jungle-like area.

I just quoted a verse that said that at some seasons of the year fevers were very frequent.  That is one the very few places where the Book of Mormon uses the word “very.”  We use the word a lot.  Joseph Smith used it like we do.  Yet in the Book of Mormon, it’s used very infrequently.  Instead, the writers of the Book of Mormon used the words “exceeding” and “exceedingly.”  “They were exceedingly afraid.”  (Alma 47:2).  Nephi was “exceedingly young.”  (1 Nephi 2:16).  They “began to be exceedingly sorrowful.”  (1 Nephi 3:14).  “He was exceedingly wroth.”  (Alma 51:14).

Joseph Smith did not write the book.  The Book of Mormon was written by a succession of ancient prophets who were writing because they were commanded to do so by the Lord Jesus Christ.  The Lord’s purpose was not to give another book of scripture to the Nephites, but to give another book of scripture to us.

The next time you read the Book of Mormon take note of the Savior’s own words as He taught the people in 3rd Nephi.  We don’t have the full account of everything He taught them, but fully one-third of what we have was all prophecy about our day.  It was directed to us, and was not directly applicable to the Nephites to whom He was speaking.

The Book of Mormon was written for us.  It’s a treasure beyond price.  President Nelson told the story of giving a Book of Mormon to an African king who responded, “You could have given me diamonds or rubies, but nothing is more precious to me than this additional knowledge about the Lord Jesus Christ.”  (Ensign, Nov. 2017, 60-61).

President Nelson then asked the question, “If you were offered diamonds or rubies or the Book of Mormon, which would you choose?

Are you using your treasure, or is it gathering dust?

I love this book!  It has changed my life.  It has changed yours.  Where would you be without it?  How distressing it is that many people are unaware of this treasure.

On the back row are two boxes full of Books of Mormon.  Would you please take the challenge to pick one up on your way out, and to give it to a friend?  You’ll experience a wonderful feeling as you share your testimony with that friend, and he or she is likely to end up being very eternally grateful for your kindness.