Dr. Sperry's first and most powerful proof from Mormon scripture is
that "the Lord specifically refers to the Book of Mormon as the 'stick of
Ephraim.' " He cites Doctrine and Covenants 27:5 as his authority, and
adds convincingly, "We have the Lord's own word for it, not man's."
It would be pointless to object that such substantiation is lost on
Philistines (prospective converts included), for Dr. Sperry is a Mormon
scholar, writing for a Mormon public, and his reasoning must be appraised in
the context of those theological postulates accepted by himself and his
readers. Therefore, when I saw the above argument, I was convinced that his
point was proven, in those terms. But, idly curious to see what the reference
said, I checked it anyway, and made the fascinating discovery that the Doctrine
and Covenants does not speak of the Book of Mormon as "the stick of
Ephraim," but as "the record of the stick of Ephraim," which
makes the "stick" itself the Nephite tribe. Dr. Sperry has had to
snip away the significant noun in order to salvage part of its modifying
prepositional phrase. (Jon Gunn, “Ezekiel, Dr. Sperry, and the Stick of
Ephraim,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 2, no. 4 [Winter 1967]:
140; Gunn is non-LDS, but this was back when Dialogue was a serious
publication, unlike today)
Further Reading:
