Most LDS church members (mormons or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) aren’t aware that the Book of Mormon contains no LDS exclusive doctrines, and also explicitly forbids the adding of new doctrines. We (the authors) were once LDS church members, and were blind to this fact, as we suspect most mormons are. If readers of the Book of Mormon held to only what the Book of Mormon says, they wouldn’t be mormon. The Book of Mormon presents no doctrines that are uniquely mormon, and explicitly says that there should be no more doctrines than given in the book (3 Nephi 11:40), yet the LDS prophets came out with a whole new set of doctrines contained in their books of “Doctrine and Covenants”, “Pearl of Great Price”, and multitude of scriptural sermons including Journal of Discourses.
The Book of Mormon has Jesus quoted as saying:
“And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built upon my rock; but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them.”
That doesn’t seem to leave much room for additional doctrine, does it?
The Book of Mormon doesn’t even talk about the LDS’s biggest unique doctrine, their temple work! There is no even any mention of baptism for the dead, another of their unique doctrines. If the Book of Mormon were written “for the latter day”, as why wouldn’t they have any of the most differentiating mormon doctrines?
If there is no mention of uniquely Mormon doctrines in the Book of Mormon, then why do the LDS missionaries have potential converts pray about the book to determine whether the book is true?
President Ezra Taft Benson declared in general conference, “The Book of Mormon … was written for our day. The Nephites never had the book; neither did the Lamanites of ancient times. It was meant for us.” (Ensign, Nov. 1986, p. 6.)
If the LDS temple ceremonies are supposedly old ceremonies that were restored, why is there no mention of temple work in the Book of Mormon? The simple explanation seems to be that when Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon he hadn’t gotten the idea of the new temple ceremonies. Joseph Smith didn’t come up with baptisms for the dead until later, and he didn’t come up with the masonic based temple ceremony until less than 2 months after he became a Freemason. This also explains why much of the LDS temple ceremony is an exact duplicate of what is done or said in Freemasonry.
For more information about the connection between Freemasonry and Mormonism (including the identical match of symbols), please see:
http://ldsfacts.org/joseph-smith/joseph-smith-copied-freemasonry/