MSNBC host Martin Bashir on Thursday read from the Book of Mormon to make the point that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney might win the White House by lying but he would be condemned to “eternal damnation.”

“Mr. Romney seems to be having some trouble telling the truth,” Bashir explained. “In fact, yesterday Mitt the mendacious offered a hat trick of falsehoods.”

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The MSNBC host pointed to disputed claims that Romney’s campaign had not sought the endorsement of Ted Nugent, that there was a “vast left-wing conspiracy” by the media to defeat him and that President Barack Obama promised to keep unemployment “below 8 percent.”

“It is something that the president had never written or said,” Bashir pointed out. “Mitt Romney prefers to tell lies, which brings us the moral codes of Mormonism that Mr. Romney claims to live by.”

According to Section 63, in verse 17, of The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “[T]he fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

And the Book of Mormon’s 2 Nephi 9:34 says, “Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.”

Bashir concluded: “Given what the Book of Mormon is clearly saying, Mr. Romney has but two choices. He can’t either keep lying and potentially win the White House, but bring eternal damnation upon himself or he can start telling the truth. The question for him, I guess, is which is more important?”

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Watch this video from MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, broadcast April 19, 2012.

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(h/t: The Huffington Post)