The question is often raised if Joseph Smith
loved and was so devoted to the teachings to the Book of Mormon why didn't he
quote from it very much.
It doesn't take long to read many of his
sermons and realize  he is immersed in the Bible.
We can't divorce from Joseph's life the fact that he'd also spent from 1830 to 1833
His time
principally with Sidney Rigdon in the Bible in his Bible translation.
His inspired translation of the Bible.
And consequently learns the Bible better than ever
and thus preached the gospel from the Bible,
most all of his sermons are just filled with biblical quotations,
paraphrasing summaries,
reflections on biblical passages
particularly the writings of Paul.
And so he's a man of his time,
he's preaching like everyone else preaches from the Bible,
and so I think he's biblically sound and biblically based early on.
In fact, it's interesting how much of that he seems to have committed to memory.
There are very, very few occasions where the record of the account says Joseph picked up his Bible and read
the following, very few.
Which means, they were a part of him, they'd become a part of him,
and so he's very biblically based.
The fact that he only quotes
here and there from the Book of Mormon or makes reference to it is to me
as Elder Neal Maxwell said once,
"a strong indication that the book came through him, not from him,
that it wasn't his,"
that it wasn't his.
God had given the book through him as a translator.
And so in some ways he wasn't as drenched in its doctrinal teachings as he was in the Bible.
and with few exceptions the Saints weren't either.
I think we could probably say
with the exceptions of the Pratt brothers
and a few others, there were no serious studies of the Book of Mormon done
for a long time. BH Roberts begins to do some
Thus President Benson could
and beginning in 1985 stand up and say it's time.
In 86 through time of his
death to say it's time first to take the book seriously
and I think we could say
that the time that President Benson was alive
we took the Book of Mormon more
seriously than in a generation before.
