Four Cornerstones of Faith

      President Gordon B. Hinkley (in the LIAHONA  Magazine, February 2004, First Presidency Message) articulated the Four Cornerstones of our faith.  They are:

1. First and Chief Cornerstone is Jesus Christ.
2. Joseph Smith’s First Vision when the Father and the Son appeared.
3. The Book of Mormon.
4. The Priesthood Restored with all of its powers and authority.

      Of the Book of Mormon, he states: “The third cornerstone is the Book of Mormon.  It is real.  It has weight and substance which can be physically measured. I open its pages and read, and it has language both beautiful and uplifting.  The ancient record from which it was translated came out of the earth as a voice speaking from the dust.  It came as the testimony of generations of men and women who lived their lives upon the earth, who struggled with adversity, who quarreled and fought, who at various times lived the divine law and prospered and at other times forsook their God and went down to destruction.  It contains what has been described as the fifth Gospel, a moving testament of the New World concerning the visit of the resurrected Redeemer on the soil of this hemisphere.

      The evidence for its truth, for its validity in a world that is prone to demand evidence, lies not in archaeology or anthropology, though these may be helpful to some.  It lies not in word research or historical analysis, though these may be confirmatory.  The evidence for its truth and validity lies within the covers of the book itself.  The test of its truth lies in reading it.  It is a book of God. Reasonable people may sincerely question its origin; but those who have read it prayerfully have come to know by a power beyond their natural senses that it is true, that it contains the word of God, that it outlines saving truths of the everlasting gospel, that it “came forth by the gift and power of God … to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ” (Book of Mormon title page).

      It is here.  It must be explained.  It can be explained only as the translator himself explained its origin.  Hand in hand with the Bible, whose companion volume it is, it stands as another witness to a doubting generation that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  It is an unassailable cornerstone of our faith.”