Product Description (Revised and expanded edition) This classic work on Mormonism has more than 135,000 copies in print.
Item Specifications...
ISBN 0825431921 EAN 9780825431920
Pages 224
Dimensions: Length: 7.8" Width: 5.2" Height: 0.5" Weight: 0.45 lbs.
Release Date Jan 9, 1997
Availability 4 units. Availability accurate as of Feb 09, 2010 01:25.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
Overall, Floyd McElveen has written one of the few anti-Mormon ("A-M") books that even occasionally entertains. However, the book is defective on a number of levels. Let's take a look at a few of them
CONSISTENT LOGIC. Poor. Any book should be internally consistent, and a polemical and ostensibly factual work *must* be consistent with outside documents as well. Here are just a few of dozens of the book's logical lapses:
1. Floyd can't claim he confessed to believe in Jesus at age twelve (p 14), then turn around and claim that he wasn't saved (p 19) while still preaching that all you need to do to be saved is "call upon the name of the Lord" (pp 87, 164). So which is it? Either calling upon Jesus works or it doesn't. Once you start attaching strings to it, you've basically made the Mormons' case for them, since they argue -- appropriately IMHO -- that the string attached to *true* faith is works.
2. Floyd falls for the classic A-M logic error regarding the priesthood, stating "When Jesus died...the need for priests was done away with" and then on the *same page* stating "every Christian is now declared to be a priest" (p 99). He couldn't even let a page go by before contradicting himself.
3. Floyd also falls for the logic error of asserting that the Melchizedek priesthood held by Jesus is "untransferable" and once again on the same page contradicting himself by saying that Melchizedek also held the priesthood (p 97). Folks, if the Melchizedek priesthood is untransferable, that means either Jesus held the priesthood, or Melchizedek, but not both. This isn't rocket science. Also, note that Jesus was a priest after the "order" of Melchizedek. Ps. 110:4. Who ever heard of a priesthood "order" with only one person? The Aaronic priesthood was also an "order" (Heb. 7:11) and had at least tens of thousands of priests.
4. As a dog returns to its vomit, so does Floyd to his folly, proclaiming that there can be only twelve apostles but once again on the same page saying that all believers are apostles (p 123). Besides, should Judas Iscariot, whom Jesus called "a devil" (John 6:70), really be the foundation to the Celestial City like Floyd claims (p 123)?
5. There's no substitute for knowing your bible if you're writing a book heavily referencing it. Floyd says the bible gives no qualifications for apostle (p 124). I suggest Floyd pick up his bible, blow the dust off it, and turn to Acts 1:21-22.
6. Floyd states "the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 gives God's beautiful picture of...our own resurrection" (p 111) but then twists 1 Cor. 15:46 ("not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual") around like a pretzel to claim that the verse is comparing our pre-mortal vs. mortal state (p 86), rather than the contextually obvious comparison of our mortal state to our resurrected state. Floyd needs more than a course in logic. He needs a heavy-duty course in biblical exegesis.
7. Floyd also engages in subtler manipulation and contradiction. He claims that praying for confirmation of the truthfulness of the BoM is a "satanic trap" (p 131), since sincere people will feel psychologically pressured to believe the BoM or else worry they are not asking with a "sincere heart" in accordance with Moroni 10:4. Fair enough. But then he states "[t]rue Christians do get a deep and abiding peace beyond anything else they have ever known" when they understand Jesus has saved them (p 141). Is Floyd not engaging in the same psychological pressure he just criticized the Mormons for? Isn't he implying that if you *don't* have a deep peace beyond anything you've ever known, you're not a Christian? Floyd, which are you: scribe, Pharisee or hypocrite?
EDITING. Better than the 1980 edition, but still poor. He gives a mea culpa for being fooled by Dee Jay Nelson in this edition (p 56), which is good. But other poor editing abounds. He tells us that Marvin Cowan is "a Baptist missionary to the Mormons he loves and for whom his heart aches" on page 104, then ten pages later tells us that Marvin Cowan "serves as a missionary to the Mormons." Telling us once would have been enough. The verse stating "for I am God, and not man" is Hosea 11:9, not Hosea 1:9 (p 92). Likewise, there is no Rev. 1:46 (p 211). These are not confidence builders in Floyd's book!
AS APOLOGY. Not good. The book has virtually no rebuttal for some of Mormonism's strongest scriptures, such as John 17:20-23, Luke 2:52 and Mat. 3:16-17 (re the Godhead), Mat. 27:9 and Zech 11:12 (re errancy of the bible), Acts 2:38 (re baptism), Rev. 3:14 (re Jesus as elder brother), Rev. 3:21 (re becoming gods). The books "Mormons Answered Verse By Verse" and "Reasoning from the Scriptures With Mormons" at least take a stab at responding to several Mormon-friendly scriptures. Floyd makes little such attempt.
AS HISTORICAL RECORD. Poor. To bolster his case, Floyd throws the kitchen sink at the Mormons, using scriptures, pamphlets, newspaper articles and even affidavits. A lot of these sources are of suspect quality and/or are rehashes of other A-M literature. In fact, there is not a single primary source referenced in this book, other than Floyd's febrile conversations with various Mormons, and occasional chats with other A-Ms.
AS A POLEMIC. Good. The book has its sneering and sarcasm down cold. When Floyd has a supposed LDS member saying he belongs to "the Latter-day Saints Church" (p 14), you know what you're in for. You can't say you weren't warned. His mock sympathy for Mormons ("We sympathize with their heartbreak over what the following facts will reveal") (p 28) is truly hilarious for someone with a twisted sense of humor like me.
IN SUMMARY. Overall, this book does a lot of the low-level dirty work of A-M literature, hurling everything it can at Mormons, like Alma 7:10 (p 37), angels of light (pp 32, 133), inhabitants on the moon (p 37), Adam-God (p 77), false prophets (p 187), "god of this world" (p 176), etc. But I suppose someone has to do the dirty work, and that's Floyd's shtick. For the interested reader however, I think in terms of consistency and intellectual heft, "Reasoning from the Scriptures With Mormons," although itself flawed, is a better value.
A Must Know!! Apr 4, 2002
Do you still not understand why this book receive so much attack? It's because it shakes the foundation of the Mormons. Read this book and you will know what they called they "refuted most of the content of this book" are really excuses, that's not "refuted" at all.
The Mormons "always" have excuses when they found out their prophets and church before made many serious mistakes. That's why they change their doctrine and teaching over and over again.
If a prophet's prophecies doesn't come true, we know he's a false prophet, and if the church's teaching and doctrine contradict with it's own teaching and doctrine years before, we know they have changed many things in order to hide those fatal teachings from by Brigham Young and the church before.
The Mormons is a church which looks ok, people are nice, but the corrupted teaching will lead people straight into hell.
In fact, many LDS people got out of the Mormonism after people discuss the content of this book with them.
Brothers and sisters, I beg you to find out why before it's too late!
A dime a dozen Jul 4, 2000
I have been through many, many "anti-Mormon" books since I started studying Mormonism. While this book gives a general synopsis of Mormonism, even I (an "anti-Mormon" protestant) could refute this book. While 20 years ago when this book was written, these arguments were solid, the crew at FARMS (huge Mormon apologist organization) has already refuted much (if not all) of the content in this book.
I am sure he knows and has studied much concerning Mormonism, but the world of Mormonism has changed over the past 20 years. While many Mormons will give this a 1 star and condemn it to hell, and many evangelists will praise God for this book, I give it 2 stars. After reading through so many of these types of books, I have become quite selective about which book is good and which is not. For a solid read on Mormonism, pick up Letters to a Mormon Elder by James White or any Bill McKeever literature.
Run of the Mill Religious ( ) Jun 13, 2000
Even by the low standards of anti-Mormon literature, this is a pretty pedestrian book. It makes no real effort to understand its subject, always seeking instead merely to score a point. It isn't original, and it doesn't deal with serious Mormon arguments. (And there ARE some, despite what certain smug anti-Mormons say.) Rather, it refutes straw men.
You'll only read relatively few books during your lifetime. There are thousands more worthwhile than this piece of dreary ( ).
This book has merit despite its shortcomings. Aug 14, 1999
This is an example of the very abundant badly written literature on religion that most of us seekers have to endure. The need to get the message across seems to justify any kind of crimes against order and scholarly rigour. Mixing sources like newspaper accounts and scriptures with no sense of hierarchy made this reading quite unpleasant. In any case, the doctrines here presented are clear enough to make sense despite the confusion in presenting them. I think the book fills a very necessary niche since mormons seem very reluctant to talk "theology" and seem to rely very heavily in pure feeling in all matters religious where -they say- the "thinking" has been already done. Mr. McElveen does some thinking here (some feelings get mixed in there too) and exposes many of the obvious conflicts between the Book of Mormon and the Bible some of which were apparent to me before and some of which weren't so clear. I've read other books actually published by the mormon church and -regardless of the lavish presentation and the good grammar- they have totally failed to bring any sense into the business of the golden tablets and the church's doctrine or they have avoided the hard questions alltogether. This book doesn't do that at least. In conclusion, this books merits spring from the merits of the doctrine presented, not from the author's ability to expose (preach?) it. But I guess that was the intention in the first place. As for the merits of the doctrine , this is not the subject of an unbiased (s that possible?) book review. You'll have to read it yourself if interested.
