The Book of Mormon is the thing that is most attacked about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The reason for this is simple: it's the "key-stone" of the religion. This means that it has a direct effect on the truthfulness of the religion. If the book is true, then Joseph Smith automatically was called of God to be a prophet (because he translated by the power of God), and if he was a prophet of God then the church is true. If the Book of Mormon were to be incorrect then none of it would be true. This is the reason why I have chosen to speak about the Book of Mormon first.
There are 2 ways of going about "knowing things". You can know something to be true from a logical perspective. Or 2nd, you can also know something to be true by "the Holy Ghost." The Holy Ghost is the 3rd member of the Godhead (Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost; each distinct beings... we'll get to this another day) and one of the functions of the Holy Ghost is to testify to us, God's children, the truth of all things. It is through the Holy Ghost that we can know that Jesus is the Christ, that God exists, and even that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and that the Book of Mormon is true.
There are many people who try to discredit the spiritual way of knowing things, so I would first like to talk about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon at a logical standpoint. (NOTE: Spiritual is better, but we will get to that next)
Many people try to discredit the Book of Mormon by saying that Joseph Smith wrote the book. After studying out the situation carefully you will learn that it would be impossible for him to even have written such a book. To start off we are going to have to know some of this historical background of Joseph's point in time, as well as some facts about the Book of Mormon.
On the night of the 21st of September 1823, young Joseph Smith received a visitation from an angel named Moroni. There are many details that goes into this story, so in order to stay on topic and not lead us into a huge tangent, I will simply say that in this visitation that Joseph Smith was told the location of the "golden plates", which were the metal plates of which the ancient record, the Book of Mormon, were recorded upon by ancient prophets that lived long ago on the American continent. It is not until 1827 when Joseph is finally permitted by God to retrieve the plates from the Hill Cummorah.
The plates that Joseph received were written in Hebrew grammar, but using an old Egyptian script. Characters from the plates were copied by Joseph to paper that was taken to Egyptian specialists to verify that the characters were Egyptian, and the specialists said that the characters were in fact real Egyptian characters. The Egyptian characters were verified in 1828. (That is a very summed up version of the story).
It was only 4 years prior to this event that someone by the name of Champollion is able to decipher hieroglyphics and creates an introduction to the language. This did not at the time include the grammar rules. It was not until 1836 that Greek Grammar rules were published.
The reason that the Book of Mormon was written that was (with the Hebrew syntax and Egyptian script) because it did not take as much space on the plates to engrave Egyptian on it, as it would have to write out Hebrew. At the time that the Book of Mormon began to be written (600 B.C.) a shorthand version of original Egyptian (called Demotic Egyptian) was created and was becoming popular because it did not take as much writing, thus it's called shorthand. Less writing = less time to write as well as more space conserved.
The interesting thing about the Book or Mormon is it's grammar usage. Lets look at a few things. Often in the Book of Mormon it uses something called "cognate accusatives". This would be saying something like "I dreamed a dream". In our English there is no need to say dreamed a dream, however in Hebrew the use of cognate accusatives is a very common thing.
Another interesting thing to point out is the use of condition sentences in the book (originally published). A conditional sentence put into simple terms is an if then statement. In English we say:
If .... then...... or If I study then I will get good grades
In Hebrew they do it this way:
If.....and.... or If I study and I will get good grades
That statement as it is sounds terrible to our English ears, but is how it is done in Hebrew. If you can get a hold of an original Book of Mormon all of the conditional sentences in there were formed this way. Joseph after the original publication went through the Book of Mormon and changed all of the "and"s to "then"s and that is why they no longer exist in our version today. He did this to make it more understandable to the English reader.
Lets move on to another grammar rule- possessives. In English we have a few ways to put our possessive sentences. We can say:
The Lord's way.
or we can also say: The way of the Lord.

In Hebrew the only way that a possesive can be formed is by using the structure of the 2nd example: The way of the Lord. They can not simply put an 's at the end of the noun and make it possesive, they must write it out the long way.
In the Book of Mormon it says: "The Lord's ________" a total of TWO times in the entire book. However, it says "__________ of the Lord" over 300 times.
Let's look at how we form a list of items in English compared to Hebrew now. In English when we are making a list we normally form a list using this structure:
Item A, Item B, Item C, Item D, and Item E
In Hebrew it's like this:
Item A, and item B, and item C, and Item D, and item E (there is an excessive use of the word "and")
As you read the Book of Mormon pay close attention and you will notice that when forming lists that they use the Hebrew way of doing things with an excessive use of the word and.
This last things is the one that is the most interesting. You will notice in the Book of Mormon that there are some pretty interesting names. Nephi, Lehi, and Corihor just to name a few. Two things that we can say about names are that names generally last forever, and they cross cultures. Lets take some of our common names for example: David, Adam, and Joshua. I'm sure you have all met a few people that have these names. How long have these names been around? Well David is at least 3,000 years old, we know that Joshua is at least 3,300 years old, and Adam is at least 6,000 years old. I guarantee that the original name holders were not from our culture.
Recently, in the 1960's, some ancient Egyptian texts have been found. From it we learn a few things. One thing that we learn is that Hebrew makes contact with Egyptian names. Another thing that is learned from these documents is that the strange names in the Book of Mormon were in fact actual names used long long ago. Many names used in the Book of Mormon are found in these ancient texts. Some of them include: Abish, Amoniha, Jerum, Sam, Alma, Malaki, Josh, Isabell, Corihor, Paanchi, and Nephi.
Here are a few examples of the hieroglyphics found in some of these texts: (Note: Excuse the quality of this, it's not exact to the original drawings, I had to draw it myself in ms paint)


Alright, now lets think about this for a minute. Let's say that you wanted to write a complex historical document covering about a thousand years in time. Lets also say that you are going to use the grammar of another language that you do not know and not only that, but you are going to use actual names from that culture. Do you think that you are going to be able to do it? It was not until the 1960's that the names used in the Book of Mormon have been brought to life. It was not until years after the translation of the Book of Mormon that we even had grammar rules to Hebrew. It would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Joseph Smith to have written the book.
I know that he had power from God that allowed him to translate the golden plates. I know that the book was written by ancient prophets from the American continent. And if you can not believe me, or anyone else that can testify of these things, why not trust God and ask him. Logically it makes sense, maybe not to some, but to me it does. However, logical is not enough. I know because God himself has given me an answer. 13 Million + other people living on this Earth at this time also can testify of the same. If you do not have a spiritual testimony of this or if you have any doubts about it, ask of God, just put it to the test.