One of our readers
sent in several questions about our articles regarding the Land of Promise
being in South America.
Comment: “I have a few questions about your Book of
Mormon theory. I am not an archaeologist or historian, just a regular guy who
loves the Book of Mormon. I recently started my own study of what the setting
of the Book of Mormon may have looked like in order to understand it better.
While my initial goal was not to find a place on the map, the more I studied
the details the more it became clear that there were some significant clues”
Tyrus C. Response: It is
always interesting when someone discovers what seems obvious to us but evidently
hidden to most—the scriptural record contains all the “clues” necessary to find
the answers to where Nephi sailed from, where he sailed to, when Lehi died, and
where Nephi settled and built the City of Nephi. From this information, it is
amazing how everything else stated in the scriptural record falls into place.
It is so evident that it seems everyone could and would follow this information
were they not inundated with erroneous information from places like BYU and LDS
archaeologists who have convinced themselves that the Land of Promise is in
Mesoamerica, which doesn’t fit the descriptions in the Book of Mormon without
making changes to the scriptural record, beginning with the outlandish idea
that Mormon meant different directions than the ones he stated and neither the
Spirit nor Joseph Smith knew they were wrong by our compass headings.
Comment: “In learning about your theory…”
Response: It should
be pointed out that we never use the term “theory” to describe our belief in
this matter. We did not start out with a theory and then try to prove or
disprove it. We did not start out with a location, a map, or an idea where the
Land of Promise was located. We simply started with 1 Nephi 1:1 and followed
along where the scriptural information took us. Frankly, in the beginning I was
amazed at the results, for like most people, I thought the Land of Promise was
located elsewhere than where the record actually led us.
Comment: “I have some questions about how your theory
would fit with these scriptures: 1)
First, just to clarify, are you saying that the entire Andes mountain range
(and the country of Brazil) rose out of the water in three hours? (3 Nephi
8:19).”
Response: I’m not
saying that—geologists tell us that the Andes Mountains rose to their present
height after the waters receded off the submerged continent. What is now the
Amazon basin was pretty much submerged (part of a submerged continent);
however, not all of Brazil was just beneath the surface. There were two areas
to the east, called the Brazilian highlands or Brazilian Plateau, which rose on
either side of the area where now the Amazon River empties into the Atlantic
Ocean.
One, to the north,
was called the Guiana Shield, the other, to the south, was called the Brazilian
Shield, including the Beni Foredeep—an area tested in a model with
approximately 110 cores of pristine floodplains along approximately 1242 miles of
the Rios Beni and Mamore in northern Bolivia; over 95 per cent of the 210 Pb
profiles depict individual episodic deposition events, not steady-state
accumulation, requiring a revised geochronological methodology. Stated in
plainer English, this area did not develop from a steady accumulation of
material but through episodic events, such as floods or, in this case, sudden
rising of submerged ground to surface exposure.
In the southern area
of the Brazilian Shield or Craton, was the Chaco Foredeep, i.e., a basin
adjacent to a craton which is filled with a thick accumulation of sediment
derived from an orogenic belt during uplift—typically from non to shallow-marine.
These two cratons,
i.e., a large, stable block of the earth's crust forming the nucleus of a
continent, simply defined as an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere.
The term craton is used to distinguish the stable portion of the
continental crust from regions that are more geologically active and unstable
(movable). Cratons can be described as shields, in which the basement rock
crops out at the surface, and platforms, in which the basement is overlaid by
sediments and sedimentary rock.
These two eastern
cratons, or what would have appeared as ocean islands at the time are verified
by an obscure event recorded in the time of man by the Koine Greek historian,
biographer, essayist and philosopher Plutarch (later renamed upon becoming a
Roman citizen: Lucius Mastrius Plutarchus), having studied mathematics
and philosophy at Athens under the philosopher Ammonius in 66-67 A.D.
The event claims that sailors who landed in Spain about 60 B.C. after visiting,
so they said, two large Atlantic islands “10,00 stadia west of the African
coast” (Robert Larson “Was America the Wonderful Land of Fusang?” American Heritage, April 1966, p43).
Stadia is an ancient
roman or Greek measure of length, about 185 meters—10,000 stadia would be about
1,850,000 meters or 6,069,553 feet or 1,150 miles. The closest distance between
the African coast and the Brazilian coast is 1800 miles, a difference of about
650 miles or 5650 stadia. Of course, measurement of the open sea in 60 B.C.
would be near impossible to measure and be right—the point is that these
mariners claimed they had sailed west from the African coast and reached two
islands—a the narrowest point between the two continents, their vessel would
have reached the southern craton (or island) along the South American coast
south of where the separation for the Amazon Sea would have been, and would have
sailed northwest along the coast to have reached the northern craton (island)
of the Guana Shield.
An inscribed stone,
reportedly found on the banks of the Paraiba river (a river where the continent
reaches farthest east—where the mariners claimed to have landed) calls that
area Iron Island during B.C. times. The inscription has been translated to read
in part: ”We are Sidonian Canaanites from the city of the Merchant King. We
were cast upon this distant island, a land of mountains…[after] embarking from
Ezion-geber into the Red Sea…for two years around Africa. Then we were
separated by the hand of Baal and were no longer with our companions. So we
have come here, 12 men and three women, into
Island of Iron” (Dr. Cyrus Herzl Gordon, an American scholar of Near
Eastern cultures and ancient languages, and Professor of Mediterranean Studies,
Brandeis University, and author of the book Before
Columbus, 1971).
Between these two
eastern Cratons and the western uplift (Andean Uplift) was an inland
Sea—geologists have given this area four names, the Pebasian Sea in the North,
the Paranan Sea in the South, and the Panaense Sea in the middle. They have
also called the entrance area of what is now the Amazon River the Amazon Sea.
That many geologists have verified the sediments of the lowland continent as
having been submerged at one time, and recently discovered as having risen faster than previously thought
geologically.
Comment: “At most there was only three days of changes
to the land before the earth did cease to tremble, and the rocks did cease to
rend (3 Nephi 10:9)”
Response: We need to
keep in mind that in dealing with matters like this that the Lord has said took
place, we are dealing with a Supreme Being that created the Universe, including
stars such as VY Canis Majoris as big as 1420 times the size of our sun, taking
the world’s fastest race care 2600 years to circle it once; or NML Cygni which
is 1650 times larger than our sun; or UY Scuti at 1708 times our sun’s radius;
black holes larger than our solar system; super galaxies such as IC1101 which
is 6 million light years across, which is 11 times larger than the Milky Way
Galaxy; or The Shapley supercluster some 400+ million light years long, 4,000
times larger than our own galaxy; or the Huge-LQG Quasar Group that would take
4 billion years to traverse from end to end while traveling at the speed of
light; or TRES4, the largest planet so far discovered at 70% larger than
Jupiter.
The point is, God
formed the earth, and in a matter of moments could reform it, causing
earthquakes and destruction. The process of mountain building, as an example,
that geologists claim takes millions of years could happen overnight given
certain temperatures and movements within the earth. What man knows and can do
is nothing to what God knows and can do.
(See the next post,
”The Changes Found in 3 Nephi – Part II,” for the rest of the questions and
answer)
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Did Christ not say that if the Apostles had the faith of a mustard seed.. they could move mountains? I believe it was President Kimball that said to move a mountain takes no strength at all. For all one does is ask the mountain to move. Through the priesthood and the faith.. the mountain would obey.
ReplyDeleteWhen the earth was created.. all they did was take matter that was unorganized.. and directed it to organize itself. How did God make water? He asked for two molecules of Hydrogen and one molecule of Oxygen to join together. When they joined.. it made water. Asking the elements to obey is not a hard thing for God to do.
Well said. In fact, when the Earth was being organized this is how Abraham explained it: "And the Gods ordered, saying: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the earth come up dry; and it was so as they ordered; And the Gods pronounced the dry land, earth: and the gathering together of the waters, pronounced the, great waters: and the Gods saw that they were obeyed." (Abraham 4:9-10). The rest of the chapter (and Chapter 5) continues with this ordering and Gods watching "those things which they had ordered until they obeyed"
ReplyDeleteThe bit about the sailors is new, correct? I don't remember it in either your first or second book.
ReplyDeleteCorrect. I had heard about it but did not find the actual information for myself until long after the books were published.
ReplyDelete