The faith journey of Thomas Stuart Ferguson

[Spicy McHaggis]

This is a great article about how he started a church ran archeological site in southern Mexico, hoping to provide proof for the Book of Mormon.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01 ... -his-faith

It sounds like the church still operates the New World Archeological Foundation that he started.

I searched Deseret Book to see if they still sold his books but it doesn't look like they do.

The Book of Abraham papyrus was the final nail in his belief coffin but like a lot of us, he kept pretending to believe for his family.

[Corsair]

FairMormon has a page on Brother Ferguson. It primarily reiterates that Ferguson was not an archaeologist and that he assumed far too much of what archaeology could demonstrate for the Book of Mormon. The page does not discuss Ferguson's faith journey or experiences, of course.

Daniel Peterson has also commented on Ferguson noting that anti-Mormons keep bringing up Ferguson but never comment on people like John L. Sorenson:

Why does Mr. Van Gorden [like many other anti-Mormons] focus on him? Why does he avert his gaze from, say, Professor John L. Sorenson's work on the geography and archaeology of the Book of Mormon?

The reason is that non-archaeologists like Ferguson produced archaeological findings that agree with virtually every other Mesoamerican anthropologist in academia. No one outside of the LDS church agrees with the findings of John L. Sorenson.

[Hagoth]

That's a great article, Brother McHaggis.

Stan Larson's book Quest for the Gold Plates tells the story in more detail and is a great read.

Another great story is the first expedition to find Book of Mormon evidence in 1900. A party left from BYU on horseback headed for Columbia. It took them two years to get there (only a few of them made it) but they had to turn back because they weren't granted safe passage in Columbia. If I remember correctly, a couple of them actually got to the river valley where they were expecting to find Zarahemla. Spoiler alert: they didn't.