One More Time—Malay is Not the Land of Promise Part III

Continuing from the last post regarding the clues Nephi and Mormon gave us having to match ALL the points in the scriptural record, any place on earth could be found to match a few points. As an example, just about any Old World location would satisfy the ancient finding of animals, such as the elephant, horse, cow, sheep, etc. But that is only a minor issue, though an important one, but a minor one nonetheless. For instance there are places where ruins of a vast civilization that built temples, forts, fortresses, palaces, towers, etc., are not found—Malay being one of them, as well as Baja Californi, Great Lakes, Eastern United States, etc. Yet, India, China, Japan, middle Europe, etc., are filled with such ancient structures, as are Central and South America.

Therefore, Ralph Olsen’s comment about his Malay Theory of “The Book of Mormon mentions many animals which are not native to the Americas, such as elephants, horses, and swine” is not a major factor in a location. However, it also might be mentioned that elephant remains and horses’ teeth have been found in South America. It also might be mentioned that finding such remains in a large area is pretty much impossible unless you have an enormous group of people digging in the ground who know what they are looking for and know how to determine its time frame if found. Almost all remains found in South America, as an example, are believed by archaeologists and researchers to fit a time when such animals were extinct, suggesting a Nephite time frame.

Now, how do we know they were extinct? Because “everyone knows” that Old World animals were introduced by the Europeans. And how do they know that? Because the Spaniards did not find such animals when they arrived in the 16th century. Of course the fact that the early Spanish only occupied a fraction of the land area of Central and South America, and none knew how to find and type ancient remains—nor were they looking for them and usually determining anything out of the ordinary the result of the Devil and indigenous devil-worship and was destroyed—and the conquistadores were only looking for gold and riches and intent on killing anyone who stood in their way. All of this just might have hampered the type of research of ancient finds and their validity that would have been possible in identifying what might have existed in recent times in the lands they conquered.

Yet, all of this is after the fact. The important issue about finding the actual Land of Promise is to start out with all the descriptions given us by Nephi about where he went. As an example, Nephi tells us that he built a ship in an area somewhere along the south Arabian coast (a result of his directional and descriptive travels). He also tells us that he built his ship unlike any ship built by man (1 Nephi 18:2).

Now, if you are going to build a ship unlike any other ship of the day then you are probably looking at sailing in an area that was not common for the day since men had been building satisfactory ships for centuries before Lehi. And since men had been plying coastal waters and trade routes for centuries before Lehi in the area leading toward Indonesia from Arabia, we might understand that wherever Lehi sailed, it was not where others had been, especially in light of keeping their destination and land hidden from other nations. So how do you figure where they went?

Well, Nephi tells us clearly and simply. He said that his ship “was driven forth before the wind to the promised land” (1 Nephi 18:8).

So what does that tell us? It obviously tells us we need to find out where the winds blew and the currents moved from the area of the southern Arabian coast in the sea they called Irreantum and would be the Arabian Sea.

We also need to understand that in 600 B.C. and for more than a thousand years afterward, sailing ships went where the currents and winds took them. For the centuries A.D., seamen studied the winds and currents over their lifetimes to find the way to get from one place to another. Even in the 15th century, the famed Portuguese sailors were just beginning to understand how to get around the tip of Africa against the winds and currents.

Therefore, understanding that Nephi, his brothers, the sons of Ishmael and those with them were not seamen or mariners, and that they launched their ship into the Arabian Sea, we only have to know where those currents would have taken his ship as it sailed out into deep water.

(See the next post, “One More Time—Malay is Not the Land of Promise Part IV,” for more on the clues Nephi and Mormon gave us to find their Land of Promise)