The Determination of Limhi’s Rescue Mission

Sometime before 121 BC, king Limhi tells Ammon, who had been sent from Zarahemla to learn about the Nephites that went back to reclaim the city of Nephi, that he had earlier sent an expedition of forty three men to find Zarahemla. His purpose was that they “might find the land of Zarahemla, that we might appeal unto our brethren to deliver us out of bondage” (Mosiah 8:7).
    Since Mesoamericanists need to reduce the distance this expedition covered to equate to the limited distances of their land of promise, they have come up with scenarios that allow for a short trip by these Nephites searching for Zarahemla. As an example, John L. Sorenson in his book writes ““At such a distance from home they would have thought of turning back. Surely diligent men such as the king would have sent on this mission would not have pressed on much farther.”
    The problem is, that these theorists seem to forget the purpose of Limhi sending out the expedition in the first place. First of all, it was Limhi’s grandfather, Zeniff, who took a group Nephites in Zarahemla (Mosiah 7:9), to look for this group of Nephites who had gone back to reclaim their inherited land, which was “the land of their fathers” in the city of Nephi in the Land of Nephi.
    By the time Limhi came to power at the time of the death of his father, Noah, the Nephites in the City of Nephi were under bondage. As Limhi told Ammon, “We are in bondage to the Lamanites, and are taxed with a tax which is grievous to be borne” (Mosiah 7:15).
    These men lived under bondage to the Lamanites who mistreated them and made their days difficult—when they went looking for succor among their brethren at Zarahemla, they did not take thier task lightly—it was imperative they find the Zarahemla, the main city of the Nephites so they could gain freedom from the Lamanite yoke.

It was so bad, the Limhi stated: “Our brethren will deliver us out of our bondage, or out of the hands of the Lamanites, and we will be their slaves; for it is better that we be slaves to the Nephites than to pay tribute to the king of the Lamanites” (Mosiah 7:15).
    When these 43-men left the city of Nephi in search for Zarahemla, they sought the aid of their brethren who they hoped the Nephites would come up and save them. They knew that “God has brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem, and has kept and preserved his people even until now; and behold, it is because of our iniquities and abominations that he has brought us into bondage” (Mosiah 7:20).
    During their mission, this expedition became “lost in the wilderness for many days,” and wandered across the land, searching for Zarahemla. While Sorenson claims they would not have continued long before turning back,” we shoud realize that men charged with such an assignment are not likely to give up and return as failures in such an important mission.
    In fact, diligent men sent on a rescue mission would have persevered to find Zarahemla no matter the cost in time and effort—their entire people were under severe domination by the Lamanites, who  were a lazy and an idolatrous people, desirous to bring Limhi’s people into bondage, that they might glut themselves with the labors of the Nepihtes—that they might feast themselves upon the flocks and fields of crops (Mosiah 9:12).
    The Nephites in the city of Nephi were in bondage, and it was up to them to find Zarahemla and affect a rescue—to have not continued on until they found Zarahemla and succor their people in the city of Nephi, would have been unconscionable.
    In fact, despite being lost, they did not give up trying to find Zarahemla until they went far into the Land Northward, and found the deserted buildings and dead strewn across the land. They thought these were the Nephites and the city of Zarahemla they sought. Seeing the destruction, they assumed Zarahemla and the Nephites had been destroyed. Only then did they turn back, disheartened no doubt, to carry the sad news to Limhi that they found Zarahemla and the Nepihtes destroyed.
    Sorenson seems to think that this expedition was a simple sight-seeing tour through the land. However, we need to keep in mind, which modern man often forgets, is that these people had no map, no GPS, no radios, no way of contacting anyone, and certainly no way of knowing what lay ahead of them. How much they knew of Zarahemla from those who once lived there and came with Limhi’s grandfather to resettle the city of Nephi is not told, but we can assume most of that generation had died off and little would be known of the directions and topography after so many years,
   Obviously, these would have been men of principle who were given an extremely important task. Limhi would have charged his men to find Zarahemla at all costs and bring back a rescue party so they could escape from bondage under the Lamanites. It is unlikely they would have given up when the entire future of their people was at stake—they would have wandered in the pursuit of finding Zarahemla until they found it, or as in this case, its remains.
    In addition, the expedition’s return trip would have been some distance, though not as far and as long as in the going for they were wandering and obviously covered a great deal of territory unnecessarily. To men of that day, time was not such an issue as it is today, and travel by foot was all that was known. It would not have been such an issue to them to keep going as it would be to a people of today. Still, they had traveled so long and so far initially, that the return trip must not have seemed that far to them.

Sorenson then draws a conclusion from how own erroneously thinking by saying: “So it is unreasonable that the battleground of the Jaredites where Limhi's explorers ended up would have been more than 100 miles into the land northward from the "line" at the neck.”
Again, trying to limit the size of the Land Northward to match his Mesoamerican model, Sorenson claims that Limhi’s 43-man expedition would not have traveled more than 100 miles into the Land Northward. Even if they had known where they were and what land they had entered, and that they had passed through a narrow neck of land, it still would have been unconscionable for them to give up and return empty-handed when their king and their people counted on these men to save them.
    He goes on to add: “The hill Ramah, where the Jaredites destroyed themselves, was the same hill as Nephite Cumorah (Ether 15:11). This whole affair tells us, then, that the total distance from the city of Nephi to the last battlefield at Ramah or Cumorah is unlikely to have been more than 450, or perhaps 500, miles.”
    Before we accept such an arbitrary conclusion, let us consider, that for a rescue party tasked with finding Zarahemla and the Nephites there to enlist them in a rescue mission to the city of Nephi, they would have been traveling quickly, and not looking around at the land they passed through since they knew they could see a city from some distance away and did not fear unknowingly passing by it. This means they would have been covering about 24 miles a day. If the distance was 500 miles as Sorenson suggests, that means they would have been about 21 days—hardly a long time or distance to cover in such an emergency.
    Sorenson seems to be obsessed with short distances, no doubt because his model of Mesoamerica covers a small area; however, distances that were covered in the ancient past were often far greater than we might think. As an example, the Mormon Battalion walked 1,850 miles from the Little Pony River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to the Mission in San Diego, California, with part of this journey through the dreaded Imperial Desert in Mexico between the Colorado River and where Mexicali is today.
    The journey took 6 months. Later, most made preparations for joining the pioneers in the Great Basin. They pushed north and picked up the Old California Trail east of San Francisco. Some decided to winter at Sutter’s Fort and were present there when gold was discovered in January 1848. Those who had gone on arrived in Salt Lake Valley 16 October 1847, a trip of 505 miles to San Francisco, and another 647 miles to Salt Lake City. In a period of 18 months, these men walked a total of 3,000 miles.
    It took the Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young, 98 days to cover 938 miles from   Council Bluffs, Iowa, to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Lehi’s travel from Jerusalem to the area of Salalah, Oman, took him 8 years, but the distance about 90 days and covered 1534 miles and could have been reached in about 90 days.
    There simply is no reason to limit the size of the Land of Promise based on how far someone had to walk or travel from one point to another.