I can’t think of anything I’d want to do less than write this book. The idea first came into my mind as a result of a conversation I had with a family member. I was making a poor attempt at summarizing dozens of hours of research on a gospel subject, trying to persuade him to arrive at the same conclusion I had come to. He said to me, in effect, “You can’t just refer me to books I will never read. I don’t have time to study these things just because you say I should.” In that conversation and in subsequent others, I realized that people’s beliefs are not some simply binary switch, but a complex, multi-layered web; a mixture of facts, faded recollections, and highly charged emotions. Injecting new evidence—particularly conflicting evidence—into this web is like knocking a perfectly balanced, fast rotating drum. It’s really going to mess things up. It is not a light thing to wrestle with well-established belief systems. My relative was right, I could not expect people to consider significant changes to their belief systems without an exceptionally well crafted and succinct argument. Such an argument is very difficult to achieve in normal conversation. A book would be required both for the length of the content and also the degree of organization needed. I knew from the onset that I would need to revisit years of notes from gospel study—originally written for myself—to add the missing detail necessary for others. I knew I would have to reread a shelf worth of books and spend countless days googling topics on which I hadn’t taken complete notes. I knew I would need to spend significant efforts developing my ability to phrase things in a way that would allow honest evaluation without outright dismissal, tactfully dodging emotive landmines to permit rational thought to occur in a sea of trained predisposition.
I was and am completely inadequate to the task of writing this book. I was and am as equipped to write this book as I would be to design and build a rocket capable of reaching the moon. When the dual realization that this book was both necessary and as yet unwritten occurred to me, I halfheartedly began the effort, hoping that someone else was working on a similar volume and would publish it before I accomplished any significant writing. As desperately as I wished someone else would do it, no one did.
I began writing without any idea what these pages would contain or how they would be structured. Signs followed that convinced me that this work was commissioned by heaven. That being said, I am very well aware of my own deficiencies, and am positive that these have translated into more than a few typos, grammatical mistakes, and perhaps even a few inadvertent inaccuracies. I claim full credit for these. Notwithstanding, there is no doubt in my mind that the Lord wanted me to write this book, and that those to whom it is directed will be held accountable for what it contains. As this book came together, I pled with the Lord to spare me from having to publish it. I was shown what the outcome would be, and at the time it was a bitter cup for me to drink. I questioned whether it was worth it, when I did not expect any sizeable number of people to come closer to him as a result of reading it. He told me plainly that the purpose of this book was not to convert, although great pains had to be taken to make it suitable for that purpose. Instead, it was to lay the case out so plainly as to leave those to whom it is directed without excuse when the judgments he has foretold occur.
My simple desire is that it may be pleasing to God.