More Comments from Readers – Part IV

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog:
Comment #1: “If I have read your Book of Mormon correctly, it seems there were more than one prophet in the days of Lehi. Why more than one? You only have one today” Jesse B.
Response: There are almost always more than one prophet on the earth at one time. Currently, there are 15 men on the earth set apart as Prophets, Seers, and Revelators. What makes the President of the Church unique is that he is the only man on earth who has authority to exercise all the keys of the priesthood, even though those keys were given to him when he was first ordained an apostle. However, today's organization of prophets is much different than in Lehi's day. 

The High Priest, officiating in the Aaronic Priesthood, with this title appearing twenty times in the Old Testament and fifty-four times in the New Testament gospels
In the Old Testament period there was no "President of the Church." The presiding priesthood authority under the Mosaic Law was the high priest, or Kohen Gadol, כהן גדול, of the Aaronic Priesthood (2 Kings. 22:8; Nehemiah. 3:1). This titled chief religious official of Judaism led the Jewish faithful from the early post-Exilic times—or until the time when Lehi left Jerusalem.
    Since the ecclesiastical institution of the time was governed by the Aaronic Priesthood, these prophets (most of whom had obtained the Melchizedek priesthood through personal righteousness) were not ecclesiastical administrators in the same sense that they are today. Rather, they received mandates from the Lord to perform specific prophetic functions.  The prophet Jonah is a good example; he was commanded of the Lord to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. Lehi was commanded to prophecy to the Jews regarding their impending destruction and to call them to repentance. Other Old Testament prophets were given special callings to counsel the king in conjunction with their responsibility to cry repentance to the people, such as Jeremiah in Lehi’s day (as well as Samuel, Nathan, and Isaiah). They may have been the major prophets of their day but they were not the administrative leaders of the religious organization under Mosaic Law.

“Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” Amos 3:7 

It should always be noted that the justice of God requires that he warn the people before they are destroyed. Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, “Turn ye from your evil ways” (2 Kings 17:13).  In the case of the Babylonian captivity, the Lord sent several prophets to warn the people. Lehi, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Nahum, Urijah (Jer 26:20-23), Zephanaiah and Obadiah were probably all contemporaries, and all but Obadiah and Nahum are known to have prophesied specifically about the destruction of Jerusalem. 
Comment #2: “Where is your narrow neck of land?” 

Left: Where the Narrow Neck (or Gulf of Guayaquil) is in South America; Center: The Narrow Neck as it appeared before the crucifixion when the land changed and mountains rose; Right: The Gulf of Guayaquil today after the land rose and the seas retreated to the east 

Response: Because of the very makeup of the western Andean area, between the mountains and the sea being a narrow strip in the south and much wider in the north, with the Gulf of Guayaquil separating Ecuador and Peru, actually cutting off land movement and narrowing it to an area about 25-30 miles between the gulf waters and the steep Andes mountains, the nature of the land has always been considered divided in these two large areas. In the Book of Mormon Land of Promise, we find that they are referred to as the Land Northward and the Land Southward. The native civilizations were most developed in the Andean region, where they were roughly divided into Northern Andes civilizations of present- day Colombia and Ecuador, and the Southern Andes civilizations of present- day Peru, Bolivia and Chile. 

Even today, with the Andes up all along the eastern edge of the western shelf, the inhabitants consider south America divided in two halves, Ecuador and Colombia as one, and Peru, western Bolivia, and Chile as the other 

Comment #3: “I read a paper from one of the professors at BYU named Clark who said he was convinced that the reference to a north and a south sea was ‘devoid of any concrete geographical content’ (his words), and claims that all specific references to seas in the Book of Mormon are only to a west and east sea. He also feels any model, such as yours, that shows a north and south sea is doomed to fail” Pete A.
Response: John E. Clark is a professor of archaeology in the department of anthropology at the “Y,” where he received both is B.S. and M.A., though obtaining his PhD at Michigan. He wrote in his book: The Book of Mormon and Archaeology, New World Archaeological Foundation, BYU, May 25, 2004) in addition to your comment, that “…we cannot dismiss the reference to these seas out of hand.  If they are metaphorical, what was the metaphor? (p 65).
    As a Mesoamericanist, specializing in the Olmec culture, it is only reasonable for him to try and eliminate, downplay, or put in question a north and south sea, since his Land of Promise model in Mesoamerica only has a claimed east and west sea (actually it has a north and south sea, not east and west). He also wrote: “Conceptually, beyond each wilderness lay a sea, south, north, west, and east.  Thus the land was conceived as surrounded by seas, or floating on one large sea” (p 65),  
    We do not agree with his rationale or about a "conceptual" comment as though Jacob did not know what he was talking about or Nephi either who wrote it down, that the Land of Promise was an island (2 Nephi 10:20). Mormon also understood this when he talked about the Nephites expanding from sea to sea (Helaman 3:8). 
    This is not the first time we have disagreed with Clark regarding the scriptural record, and it is not likely to be the last. However, unlike many theorists, especially those of Mesoamerica, we stand behind and support totally the scriptural record without trying to alter, change, or relegate it to a meaningless question. Unlike Clark, we do not look at the scriptural descriptions as metaphors, i.e., not literally applicable. Nor is there any reason to the scriptural record is metaphorical in any way.  
Comment #4: “I believe this country, and the Smith family, was prepared to be in the right place to find where the plates were buried. I don't know all the answers, but I believe the plates were found right where Mormon buried them” Carson J.

Moroni burying the plates 

Response: Evidently, the plates Mormon hid up in the earth, i.e., those not handed over to his son, Moroni, have never been obtained. Mormon 6:6 tells us that Mormon made a complete abridgement of the Large Plates of Nephi (from Lehi through 4th Nephi) and gave them to his son, Moroni (see also Words of Mormon 1:1). He buried all the other plates (Brass Plates, Plates of Ether, and likely all the records kept by the Nephites (Helaman 3:13,15).
    He did not want these plates that had been passed down to him to be destroyed. No doubt Moroni was instructed the same thing by his father, Mormon.
    We know that Joseph Smith received the plates that Mormon abridged, as part of those that Moroni “hid up in the ground” and Joseph retrieved them from the hill Cumorah in New York state; however, we do not know where Moroni originally buried them, or even if he did, since that has never been revealed. The plates Mormon buried are, no doubt, part of all those records that now rest in the repository seen in a vision by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and referred to in LDS literature as the Cumorah Cave. As for the burial of Moroni’s plates, he never told us where he was going to bury them, only “in the earth” (Mormon 8:4), and that could have been anytime between about 385 A.D. when he said he was going to finish his record and when he last wrote about 421 A.D. In those 36 years of wandering, staying out of sight of the warring Lamanites, etc., he might have traveled far and wide away from the Land of Promise. We simply do not know.