A Crowded Land of Promise?

Someone sent me the following statement found on a website regarding the Land of Promise in the Book of Mormon. Writing about the landing of the Lehi Colony, this article states:

“It seems highly probable that when Lehi and his family arrived in the Promised Land they found a fairly significant but scattered people already inhabiting the land. A people without government, without religion, and perhaps with but minimum language skill. The core of their culture had been destroyed. While once a great and cultured people, they by the time of Lehi's arrival had been scattered and divided. Had they by that time degenerated to a level of mere subsistence? Our record gives us few clues.”

While it is true that four hundred years after Lehi landed, Mosiah I found Zarahemla, where the Mulekites had always been. They had no records, denied their God, and their Hebrew language had been altered until it could not be understood, But Lehi never found them and had no idea they even existed, nor were the Muleites in the Land of Promise prior to, or at the time of, Lehi’s arrival.

However, it seems the author of this website and article intended the information to be about another people who were “a fairly significant but scattered people already inhabiting the land.” Obviously, not the Mulekites. So who were these people to which this article draws our attention?

According to Lehi, there should have been no people in the land, for it was intended as an inheritance for his family and their descendants, “A land which the lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed, yea, the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever” (2 Nephi 1:5. See also 3:2; 10:10). It was also “covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever” (2 Nephi 1:8) and “that they may possess this land unto themselves” (2 Nephi 1:9).

It should also be noted, for those theorists who like to point out that others could be led to the Land of Promise, that the Lord covenanted with Lehi that the Land of Promise was for any “who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord” (2 Nephi 1:8).

Note the important phrase “should be led” is a future tense statement. That is, the Lord was promising Lehi that the land would be reserved for him and his posterity because “it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations” (2 Nephi 1:8)—again, a future tense statement.

Thus, there can be no question that shortly after Lehi landed, the Lord promised him that the land would be kept for his posterity free of others until such time as the Lord would lead others there. And the others the Lord was commenting about were the Gentiles coming to this land as Nephi saw in his vision—which was the coming of Columbus (1 Nephi 13:12), the Spanish conquistadores (1 Nephi 13:14), and the Gentiles coming out of England (1 Nephi 15-19) and the establishment of the Constitution of the United States and, in fine, not utterly destroy the descendants of Lehi (1 Nephi 13:30).

All these things both Lehi and Nephi saw in their visions before ever setting sail for the Land of Promise. At that time there were no other people in the Land of Promise and would not be, other than Lehi’s combined family, for some 2000 years when Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere and later the English and Spanish settled the land.

To claim that “It seems highly probable that when Lehi and his family arrived in the Promised Land they found a fairly significant but scattered people already inhabiting the land“ and to claim that the Land of Promise was covered or scattered with people when Lehi landed is neither “highly probable,” nor consistent with the Book of Mormon record of the Land of Promise, and certainly is in opposition to the several promises the Lord gave to Lehi for himself and his descendants.