In my article, “Testing God,” Gideon, and Praying about the Book of Mormon, I noted that God does indeed give people a sign of the truth of something he has revealed, as seen in the narrative of the dry fleece as a sign to Gideon of the truthfulness of God’s promise:
And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water. And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground. (Judg 6:36-40)
Therefore, contrary to the protestations of many critics, there is nothing sinful and wrong about praying and asking God to know the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon (cf. The "Mormon" interpretation of James 1:5 from Scholars of the Epistle of James)
While reading a volume from the 19th century by Archibald Boyd, an Anglican priest, on the topic of baptism, I noted he tied this incident in the book of Judges to the theology of the sacraments and various “signs” God gives to His people as physical assurances of the truthfulness of His word:
There is, again, no question that a second great use which Sacraments subserve, is that of acting as seals and pledges of substantial benefits implied . . . We are incredulous and faithless enough to distrust God, until assurance becomes doubly assuring by the addition of a sign to the word. The sense in man’s nature oftentimes take hold of an expectation more strongly than the apprehension. We believe a thing more surely from a token than from a declaration. It pleased God to give to Abraham a promise of the chartered land, but it pleased Him also to give him a view of it. Nay, more, when the bare promise passed into a ratified covenant, the words of donation were altered. “To thee will give this land,” became “To thee I have given this land.” (Gen. xv.-xvii.) Yet the land was not his for four centuries afterwards. But at the moment when that covenant was made the land was made over to him as heir of the possession, and the “burning lamp that passed through the sacrifice” was the sign and ratification of the pledge. The sun was going down when “the horror of great darkness fell upon him.” It was at that moment of gloom, when no object could distinctly be seen calculated to cheer or encourage, that the revelation was made to him of the four hundred years’ affliction of his descendants, of their banishment from the land on which he had set his hopes, of their degradation beneath foreign oppression. But “when the sun had gone down,” and the last moment declining light had expired, then appeared the burning lamp that passed through the pieces of his offering. It was a whole history written in a symbolical act—as assurance visibly conveyed by a sensible token, that as “evening time it should be light” with his posterity. We know not how the patriarch read it, but taken along with prediction coincidently delivered, it would be strange if it did not engrave on his apprehension and belief that sure deliverance that was to be the closing act of long national trial, the expectation of supernatural light which was to come to his people with the three days’ darkness fell on the land of Egypt. And we cannot doubt, that firmly as the man of God would have credited all those assurances, his perception and grasp of them must have been intensified by the “outward and visible sign” that accompanied them. No doubt, there was here no material object which survived the communication, and which could afterwards be pointed to as the perpetual pledge of its fulfilment, but yet the principle for which we contend is recognised of calling in the assistance of the senses for the confirmation of abstract truth.
So, again, when God promised victory to Gideon, a sign accompanied the promise; a sign palpable to his senses, for the fleece was wet when the ground around was dry, and the ground dry when the fleece was wet,--a double testimony additional to the prediction, lest mere accident might account for that which appeared to be supernatural. So, when the landlord delivers to his tenant the key of the tenement, he gives over the tenement itself. (Archibald Boyd, Baptism and Baptismal Regeneration [2d ed.; Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1865; repr., The Anglican Expositor, 2012], 9-11)
