A Voice of Warning: Book Review

I have been excited to talk about this one for a while now. I finished reading it for the second time last night.

A voice of warning is written by Parley P. Pratt and was published in 1841. It is 84 pages and can easily be read in 1 or 2 days.

This book has had a huge impact in the church. In fact, if you have lineage tracing back to the early saints, it’s likely this book influenced them to join the church. Pratt wrote a voice of warning while on a mission trip. During this trip he was not finding much success, so instead of preaching, he took a few months to sit down and wrote A Voice of Warning. Once printed and distributed it became a main lds tract for years. It was often read by potential converts before they had even secured a copy of the Book of Mormon. Some people were baptized after reading this book alone, without ever receiving a Book of Mormon. It was huge, and for a while the church put it on the same level as the Pearl of Great Price up until the Pearl of Great Price was officially canonized.

Most of this book is an argument for joining the church. Some of the arguments are definitely dated and have been shown to not be true, such as finding Hebrew antiquities in ancient America (at least I assume these have been disproven as they would likely still be a big lds talking point today if they were found to be true). However I do not blame A Voice of Warning for including these as it was written in the 1800s and we have learned a lot more about science and history since then.

A Voice of Warning also gives a brief history of the church and compares the Latter Day Saints to the early Christian church.

I really enjoy this book. I think it is an essential LDS history read, and has had more impact on Mormonism than most other books. If you are interested in church history this is a must read.

10/10

As long as I finish reading it tonight, tomorrow’s review should be on History of the Prophet Joseph by his Mother Lucy Mack.

I wanted to take a moment at the end of this review to say that I totally recognize that many of you will probably not agree with my analysis of these books or my scores. I am not a professional literature critic, I just enjoy reading, and it’s fun to talk about what I read. My scores are completely arbitrary, and I am very interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions as well. My hope is that I can at least spark some discussion around these books with my reviews.