Thursday, March 26, 2020

LeGrand Richards vs. Anti-Mormon Eisegesis of D&C 42:12 and the Question of Biblical Sufficiency



And again, the elders, priests, teachers of this church shall teach the principles of my gospel, which are in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, in the which is the fullness of the gospel. (D&C 42:12)

Some critics of our Church have (through eisegesis) wrested D&C 42:12 out of context. For a discussion and a refutation, see:


An additional refutation of this can be seen in the following from the very popular book by LDS apostle LeGrand Richards (1886-1983) who, writing about the sufficiency of the Bible, stated:

. . . the everlasting gospel could not be discovered through reading the Bible alone—the old bottles full of old wine could not contain the new wine. So glorious was to be the day when the Lord would "proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder," that he had to select one free from all exposure to the unsound philosophies of men. That is why our original statement is consistent: that this is the only Christian church in the world that did not have to rely upon the Bible for its organization and government and that if all the Bibles in the world had been destroyed we would still be teaching the same principles and administering the same ordinances as introduced and taught by Jesus and the prophets. True, we take the Bible to prove that these principles and ordinances are in accord with divine truths of all ages, but if we had no Bible, we would still have all the needed direction and information through the revelations of the Lord to his servants the prophets in these latter days. (LeGrand Richards, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976], 40, emphasis in bold added)

While many Protestant readers will be shocked by this, Richards was correct in rejecting the formal sufficiency of the Bible for many reasons, including the fact that, even if Sola Scriptura were true, it would be impossible for any biblical text to teach such, as it was written during a time of special revelation, a time when proponents of the doctrine admit that there were non-inscripturated sources of revelation en par with the authority of inscripturated revelation(!) For a fuller discussion, including an exegesis of the relevant texts (e.g., 2 Tim 3:16-17), see: