Heber J. Grant recounts how a man who was courting his wife's cousin critiqued the Book of Mormon for its reference to "cement" in the New World; has noted that cement structures have since been discovered.

Date
Feb 14, 1922
Type
Periodical
Source
Heber J. Grant
LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

Heber J. Grant, "Analysis of Articles of Faith of the Church," Liahona: The Elders' Journal 19, no. 17 (February 14, 1922): 327-28

Scribe/Publisher
Liahona: The Elders' Journal
People
Heber J. Grant
Audience
Reading Public, Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
PDF
Transcription

When I was courting my wife who blessed me by the gift of tongues, her cousin was living with her. The young man who was courting the cousin was not in the Church. He did not believe in prayer, and was ridiculing me one night about praying. "What is the good of praying?" he said. "Why, your voice can't get outside of the house—you can't be heard." Of course, we did not have any "wireless" then, by which a little sound can travel in all four directions for thousands of miles, and be picked up by a million instruments if they are only "in tune." We did not have wireless telegraphy, or wireless telephones, or anything of that kind, so he felt quite safe in ridiculing me for believing in prayer by saying I could not be heard. But I told him God had answered my prayers, and I knew it, and I proposed to go on praying. He also ridiculed me for believing in the Book of Mormon because it taught that the forefathers of the American Indians were skillful in the use of cement, and erected cement buildings. "Why, they did not know anything about cement in those times," he said. "The whole thing is a fraud." I told him God had given me a testimony in my heart and soul that this book was true, I believed it absolutely and I expected to live to see the day when we would find that the forefathers of the American Indians did understand building with cement. Since that time there has been uncovered one little bit of a monument down here in Mexico which is only 200 feet high, and only as big as the whole block of ten acres. I guess they knew something about cement—with a ten-acre foundation, 200 feet high, built of cement; and from the top of this monument you overlook a valley where you see a mound here and a mound there, all around, and as they are uncovering the mounds, lo and behold, they are cement dwellings. The first time I was ever entertained at dinner in a large private home in the great city of London, my host had also invited some newspaper men and some friends.

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