“Behold the Scriptures Are Before You If Ye Will Wrest Them It Shall Be to Your Own Destruction”

Common practices among those who abuse and wrest scripture include:

1. Designating the literal as figurative and the figurative as literal;
2. Stretching a text beyond what it meant, this to justify actions that assuredly the text did not intend;
3. Squeezing a text so tightly that no appropriate applications can be made from it;
4. Granting some obscure passage the power and authority to overturn the plain meaning of a host of other texts; and
5. Picking and choosing from holy writ that which suits their fancy, while reading all else with a blind eye.

“Wrest Them…to Your Own Destruction”

From the time the first copy of the Book of Mormon was published, all who come into possession of its sacred truths must accept or reject them at the peril of their eternal lives. We cannot reject the mind, the will, the word of the Lord and at the same time make legitimate claim to accepting him. As it is with the Book of Mormon, so it is with all scripture, be it ancient or modern; we cannot with impunity close our hearts and minds to that which the Lord has said or to that which he will yet say. Some profess to accept the voice of heaven, but only after having distorted its purpose to suit their own. Peter, like Alma, warned that the spiritually untutored and unstable who wrest-that is, twist or distort-the scriptures do so to their own destruction (see 2 Peter 3:16).