Alma 30:12-16 -- On Evidence Beyond Sight

"And this Anti-Christ, whose name was Korihor, (and the law could have no hold upon him) began to preach unto the people that there should be no Christ. And after this manner did he preach, saying:
O ye that are bound down under a foolish and a vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things? Why do ye look for a Christ? For no man can know of anything which is to come.
Behold, these things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers.
How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ.
Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of your sins. But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so."
Alma 30:12-16


These are the words of an antichrist, so please don't be framing these verses and hanging them on your wall or anything. :)  I think it is instructive to read this (perhaps like the Screwtape Letters) though, to be able to see the lies, because we encounter similar mockery in the modern world.

Korihor tells us that our hope is foolish and vain, that we can't know anything that we don't see, and that we are frenzied and deranged, believing blindly in things that we've been taught that are clearly false.  Satan has many tactics, but this is a popular one, claiming that there is no evidence beyond sight, or at least one of the five senses.

God encourages us to trust in our spiritual senses, learning to love and to feel spiritual guidance.  Korihor was wrong then, and his modern-day advocates are wrong now.  Perhaps emotional and spiritual truth is harder to grasp, and takes more patience and practice to understand, but just like we can clearly feel love, we can clearly know that God exists, that he has prophets on earth, and every other part of the gospel... we don't even have to rely solely on the evidence of accounts in the scriptures, because God invites us to ask him, and tells us that through the Holy Ghost we "may know the truth of all things" (Moroni 10:4-5).

Science isn't bad or evil of course... it's a good, methodical way to think and learn about a lot of things, and God asks us to embrace truth wherever it is found (Philippians 4:8).  But we aren't taking everything into account if we deny the emotional/spiritual aspects of our lives.  Elisha's servant learned that when Elisha asked God to open his eyes (2 Kings 6:17), and as Moroni instructs us, "dispute not because ye see not" (Ether 12:6).

Today, let's not be discouraged by ignorant mockery that professes to challenge all that we believe, including God.  Let's pray and trust in what we know to be right and true.  Let's try the experiment laid out in Alma 32:27 and reach out to God with sincerity and faith.  He will manifest the truth to us if we seek him, and if we have had the truth manifested to us already, then let's build on that rather than listening to someone who hasn't had that witness claim that it is impossible.  If we want to know the truth of God, let's go directly to him in prayer, not listen to some rando who thinks Korihor is a good role model.