Anderson served in the United States Naval Air Corps during World War II.
Anderson developed this plan while serving as a missionary in the church's Northwestern States Mission, from 1946 to 1949.
[2] By 1951, 11,000 copies of the plan were published and circulated to missions throughout the world, and helped to increase the overall number of converts per missionary.
He did so, where he studied Early Christian history and Greek under Nibley and Latin under J. Reuben Clark III and M. Carl Gibson.
However his financial situation was looking down so he took the opportunity to go to Cedar City, Utah and teach for the Church Educational System there.
He returned to Utah and became a professor at BYU in 1964,[9] teaching church history and doctrine, ancient scripture, and some courses in Greek.
Anderson has also written many articles on issues relating to early Latter-day Saint history.
[10] He also wrote studies on various spurious accounts of the life of Christ, including an essay that demonstrated how 3 Nephi in the Book of Mormon did not fit the general pattern common to such modern forgeries, lending support to it as an authentic historical record.