bomgeography wrote:From my experience and the experience of millions of others the spirit testifying of the Book of Mormon is an external agent.
I will not say that people can not be deceived by other external agents or their own desire and emotions but when realized those mistakes can be corrected.
Given that there are more "Mormons" who do not practice their faith than are active, the spirit testifying about the Book of Mormon is a failure even for those who have been exposed to it. More are abandoning it after having had such an experience than remain. This claim of "millions of others who agree with me" is never followed by the other side of the coin which is; billions of others do not. It is sort of like the people who stuck with Maddoff even after it was revealed he was a fraud. "Hey look there are more people like me who still believe in him, so he must be legit, right?"
Given that the number of people who convert after having been contacted by members or missionaries is a very small percentage of the overall number, again the spirit testifying of the Book of Mormon is a failure.
And given that after over 180 years of being in existence only about 0.005% of the current world population would claim it to be the word of God, the method of depending on the spirit to testify of its truth is an abject failure. In fact "the spirit" is obviously working better for other religions like The Adventist and Muslim.
What kind of loving God designs a religion that only directly affects .005% of his children? And of those only a small percentage even get to his highest degree of glory. It's a man made system designed to fool people into believing that God thinks they are somehow more special than billions of others. So far it's success rate is only about .005%. Dismal.
Cue the "Many are called but few are chosen" or the "wheat being separated from the tares", "enduring to the end" and so on defenses.