Beset by many visitors, our guy is more stuck than ever in this well. He has had priests come by, a rabbi, founders of 19th century religions and Eastern thinkers. He remains discouraged, dumfounded and literally beat up by his own hand. He has been told he must “do” many things to get himself out of the well …

No sooner had I reached this conclusion than, once again, a shadow fell across the well’s opening. I glanced up, fully expecting to see another of earth’s teachers with some other form of manmade “do” advice. And I did.

At least I saw in dim outline the form of a man. Yet, somehow, He seemed different from all the others. Silently He stood there gazing down at me, while I, now utterly exhausted, lay flat on my back gazing up, far too weak even to sit, let alone stand.

Most of the Eastern teachers told me to practice various forms of asceticism, and described how, in their countries, holy men, as they called them, sometimes spent days on beds of spikes, or in swinging between the five fires under a blazing hot sun. Others, they said, held an arm up until it withered and became stiff, so that they were unable to bring it down again. Many allowed themselves to be buried in the earth up to their necks and had to be fed by their friends.

Most of the Eastern teachers told me to practice various forms of asceticism, and described how, in their countries, holy men, as they called them, sometimes spent days on beds of spikes, or in swinging between the five fires under a blazing hot sun. Others, they said, held an arm up until it withered and became stiff, so that they were unable to bring it down again. Many allowed themselves to be buried in the earth up to their necks and had to be fed by their friends.

I pondered this and I recalled what I’d read from the Bible. I’d read that there is one God, and none would be formed after Him.  And I read that if I break the least of God’s laws, it’s the same as breaking all of them.  So I realized that this requirement was perhaps the most impossible of all.

When I explained this to him, he tossed down to me the Book of Mormon, entreated me to read it and pray about it and see whether I get the “burning in the bosom.” If I get this sensation, he explained, then that means that what he was telling me was true.

“But when can I get out?”  I cried.

“Not until some future time,” responded this instructor. “But do not worry, for even if you fail to get out now, you may still be delivered in the life hereafter. And if you should die in the well, you will remain in soul-sleep until the great awakening. Then if you are obedient, you will live forever.  But in any case, should you never get out, you will simple be annihilated.”

“Petitioning a personal Deity is a misapprehension of the source and means of all good and blessedness; therefore it cannot be beneficial.

“There is no human soul that sins and is spiritually lost.

“Mortal mind alone gives drugs their effects, and if a person swallows arsenic by mistake, the belief of the vast majority of human beings that arsenic is poison causes death, even though he was unaware that he had swallowed it.”

The more I thought of the mass, the more [troubled] I became.  Christ, I knew, had been offered once for all, and on the cross He cried, “It is finished.”  Why He should be offered again I could not understand. And yet in the sacrifice of the mass the priest claims to make a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the people.

My mind again reverted to God’s Word, and the following passages struck me most forcefully: “But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever sat down on the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12). “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Heb. 10:14).

“Well, then, my son,” began the Rabbi, “if you would be delivered from this well and inherit the world to come, you must, first of all, do as Rabbi Alazar, quoting from Rabbi Abina, says, namely, ‘Any one who repeats David’s Psalm of Praise (Psalm 145) three times daily is sure to inherit the world to come'” (Talmud, Tractate Berakhoth 4b).

“Three times a day!” I exclaimed in dismay. “Then I cannot get out at once.”

‘”Patience, my son, patience. There is plenty of time.”

“While walking across the fields one night, I suddenly fell headlong into a deep, but empty well. I was stunned by the force of the fall, but as I gradually recovered and realized the seriousness of my predicament, I began to wonder how I could get out!

Save for a single shaft of light that shone through the opening far above me, I was in pitch dark. I felt the walls of the well and found them wet and clammy. I shuddered at the apparent hopelessness of my plight …”