Destruction in the Land of Promise at the Time of the Crucifixion – Part IV

The actual destruction in the Land of Promise is recorded in 3 Nephi, when the disciple Nephi tells us of the great destruction that took place. On the fourth day of the first month in the thirty-fourth year, Nephi writes, “there arose a great storm, such an one as never had been known in all the land” (3 Nephi 8:5).

This storm (a rushing, violent wind) was accompanied by a great and terrible tempest (a storm of extreme velocity and violence) and terrible thunder (the sound which follows the explosion of electricity or lightening). There were whirlwinds (a violent upthrust of air moving in a spiral, upward form), and the entire earth shook as it if was about to divide (to part) asunder (into separate parts). During this storm of severe proportions, more severe than had ever been known in 600 years of occupation of the land of promise, floods occurred, ground liquefied and sunk into the earth, dropping cities from sight; seasides or shorelines were so eroded and demolished that cities fell into the sea. Great upheavals of earth occurred, burying cities beneath millions of tons of earth and rock.

Cordilleras rose from the depths of the earth, shoving level ground upward and forming great mountains and very tall peaks. At the same time, great earthquakes struck the land, shaking the earth, and tumbling buildings. Highways were destroyed, broken into pieces, heaved up and thrust down and diverted from their regular path. These earthquakes were not simply local quakes, but shook the entire land of promise, both in the land southward and in the land northward, covering thousands of square miles.

So great were the earthquakes Nephi described that the entire land, wherever one looked, was broken up, huge shafts of earth shoved upward while other pieces fell into the earth and disappeared. There was hardly a smooth place left on the face of the earth. Huge rocks, large granite slabs, and sheer cliff faces were split apart and strewn over the ground. Large, sheer mountains were split, jagged cracks ran their entire length, and not a place could be seen where pieces of rock had not fallen across the earth.

This extremely violent storm and numerous earthquakes lasted for three hours. By today’s measurement standards, it might be safe to assume that in magnitude, this quake would have at least topped 9.0 on the Richter scale, maybe even into the 10s. There seemed to be no single hypocenter of the quake, and the epicenter spread over great distances. It would appear that the intensity of the quake was extremely high, with survivors feeling certain that it had lasted much longer than it did, and on the Mercalli scale, it would have been at least its highest measurement of XII. Had there been seismographs in existence at the time, likely the needles would have gone off the scale.

The Geological Record paints a similar picture of destruction and change in the Andean area, from northern Chile to Ecuador. According to Lowell Thomas in his 1964 “Book of High Mountains,” these earthquakes and volcanic action that built the Andes was beyond anything else recounted by the “record of the rocks.” The floor of the Pacific shook so violently, that it jarred both the South America and Asian continents, and the Andes spouted fire from 100 craters, and deluged their slopes with floods of molten rock that geologists identify as “Andean lava.”

Also, the disciple Nephi tells us that after the great destruction of the earthquakes, that a thick darkness followed which covered all the face of the land, and that the inhabitants who survived could feel this vapor of darkness, and it was so thick. that there was no light, not even from fire, candles or torches, or from the sun, moon or stars. Nothing at all could penetrate this vapor that lasted another three days (3 Nephi 8:20-23).

Such a vaporous darkness is the result of volcanic ash which can be so thick it can extinguish not only all light, but even oxygen, suffocating those over which it falls. An example of this is found in the eruption of Mount Visuvius in the summertime of 79 A.D. when the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by an avalanche of boiling mud and lava about 40 and 75 feet underground respectively. In one of the most unbelievable catastrophes in the history of the world described by Pliny the Younger very similar to Nephi’s record.

Mesoamerican Theorists can claim there was only surface damage that did not alter the landscape, but Nephi tells us a completely different story.