Mathematical Miracle of the Book of Mormon
I’ve come across quite a few Muslims recently who champion the “mathematical miracle” of the Qur’an. It’s not impressive at all and this can be demonstrated by doing something very similar with the Book of Mormon:
The 19th word of the 19th chapter of the 19th book in the Book of Mormon is the word “I”. How many times does that word appear in the chapter? It appears thirty-eight times, which is 2 x 19! That chapter has 5,586 characters, which is 294 x 19!
Key phrases regarding Mormonism also appear in multiples of 19 throughout the text. For example, if you know the story of Mormonism, you’ll know about the importance of “engraved plates”. Well, would you like to guess how many times those words appear in that chapter? Nineteen! Other phrase counts include:
- “Record of the prophet” appears 209 times (11 x 19)
- “His prophet” appears nineteen times
- “By God” appears nineteen times
- “Written by our Lord” appears 76 times (4 x 19)
- “Nephi, prophet of the engraven plates” appear 228 (12 x 19)
- …
Okay, but what about structural miracles in the text?
- From the first mention of the plates to the second mention of the plates are 304 characters (16 x 19).
- From the first mention of the plates to the last mention of the plates, there are 1,102 words (58 x 19)
- …
Believe me, if we threw a computer at this and had more people diligently searching for numerological miracles, we could find plenty more. Weird Christian groups have done the same thing with the Bible and it’s not impressive when they do it either.