More Comments from Readers – Part VI

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog:

Comment #1: “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 faith the mountain would obey. When 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” Mr. Nirom.
Response. Very 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 they, 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." Jacob added his testimony when he said, “Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea…” (Jacob 4:6-7), and the Lord made it clear “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove” (Matthew 17:20, emphasis added). However, we might add, if the brother of Jared’s mighty faith was only the size of a mustard seed, then ours must be mini-microscopic.

Comment #2: “I ran across an article on the internet about Dr. John L. Lund (left) a retired BYU lecturer, which states that while Mesoamerica, especially Guatemala, is an impoverished, drug-lord torn nation, as well as Mexico, which Mesoamericanists claim is the Land of Promise, that the Book of Mormon states “And it meaneth that the time cometh that after all the house of Israel have been scattered and confounded, that the Lord God will raise up a mighty nation among the Gentiles, yea, even upon the face of this land; and by them shall our seed be scattered,” (1 Nephi 22:7), to show, along with 3 Nephi 20:27) a “mighty nation, and a “prosperous” (1 Nephi 13:15, 20), and a “free” (3 Nephi 21:4) latter day “Gentile” nation “above all other nations” (1 Nephi 13:30).” It seems he has a point…after all, the U.S. is “might,” “prosperous,” and “free,” and seems to fit those prophecies, not any of Latin America” Shack W.
Response: The simple answer is as many prophets and latter-day General Authorities have proclaimed, that the entire Western Hemisphere is the Land of Promise, and while West Virginia is not as prosperous as California, or Detroit as prosperous as New York City, this entire land of North and South America, which was one continent (the American Continent) at the time Moroni told Joseph Smith that the plates contained a history of “the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang” (Joseph Smith 1:34), and Ether wrote “that after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof” (Ether 13:2), that this entire land, the Western Hemisphere is the Land of Promise, tough the actual land promised to Lehi would be at least South America, or perhaps that small area of Andean South America where the actual scriptural record took place.
Comment #3: “You keep harping on this idea that the eastern part of South America is even today nearly underwater, yet they have cities all along the eastern portion and no cities are sinking into the ocean” Betty B.

Top: In 1993 at its greatest depth, 33-feet below sea level—by 2009, the waters began to recede, and (Bottom) today the city can partially be seen again

Response: You might want to tell that to the residents and businessmen of Villa Epecuen in Argentina—a country on the eastern side of the Andes in South America. In the 1920s, this tourist village was established along the shore of Lago Epecuen, a salt lake some 375 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The resort town, named Villa Epucuen, soon had a railroad station, and it thrived for several decades, peaking in the 1970s with a population of more than 5,000. Suddenly, water came up out of the ground and the city sank to a depth of 33 feet in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 
    Recently the waters have receded, revealing a ghostly landscape that includes playgrounds, trees, utility poles, and dozens of houses. Today there's only one resident named Pablo Novak, a former resident who moved back after the water started to recede in 2009. The eastern side of the continent, as has been explained in science articles for quite some time is a basic flat plain, barely above sea level in many places—in this case, an excess of runoff water into a lake sank an entire city the size of Taylorsville, Utah, and larger than Midvale, Orem, Roy, Sandy, and Murray—and larger than 22 other cities in the State of Utah.
Water levels of the Amazon River have been recorded daily in Port of Manaus, Brazil since the beginning of the last century. Their findings show that in the first part of the 20th century, severe floods with water levels exceeding 95 feet occurred roughly every 20 years. Now, extreme floods occur on average every four years. This flooding has had severe consequences for people and livelihoods in Brazil, Peru, and other Amazonian nations (Jonathan Barichivich, et al., “Recent Intensification of Amazon flooding extremes driven by strengthened Walker circulation,” Science Advances, Department of Defense, Washington DC, 2018; vol.4 no.9, pp8785

One of the floating cities which rides on the rising and flooding waters

Most of the basin is covered by the Amazon Rainforest also known as Amazonia, with a 2.1 million square mile area of dense tropical forest. It is the largest rainforest in the world. There are large bodies of water on the forest floor and it is not an area where cities are found, though there are a limited amount of settlements of a few families each scattered throughout, living in beehive shaped apartment-like houses called “Maloca,”
with a steeply slanting thatched roof. When the waters rise in these areas, people move out and return when the waters have receded. During the six-month wet season, the rivers flood the adjacent, low-lying forests.
    The same is true in Brazil along the north and central eastern areas of South America where the Amazon Basin barely lifts above sea level and flooding is constant—some areas flood nearly every year and that is why few cities and villages are built in the north
Comment #4: “ “Do you think there is more than one heaven? Or is there just one that governs all of God’s creations?” Sandra G.
Response: The Hebrew Bible imagined a three-part world, with the heavens (shamayim) above, earth (eres) in the middle, and the underworld (sheol) below. According to Jonathan T. Pennington, In the Old Testament the word shamayim represented both the sky/atmosphere, and the dwelling place of God (Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, “Supplements to Novum Testamentum,” Netherlands, Brill, 2007, p41).
    The word word “ragia” meant firmament, the visible sky. Grammatically the word shamayim can be either dual (two) or plural (more than two), without ruling out the singular (one). As a result it is not clear whether there were one, two, or more heavens in the Old Testament. While Christendom would say that most likely there was only one, yet phrases such as "heaven of heavens" were meant to stress the vastness of God's realm, or the vastness of the heavens including more than God’s realm. It seems that in the long run we will know things that today not even suspected by most. 
    As the Lord stated that there will be a “time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest. All thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, shall be revealed and set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And also, if there be bounds set to the heavens or to the seas, or to the dry land, or to the sun, moon, or stars—All the times of their revolutions, all the appointed days, months, and years, and all the days of their days, months, and years, and all their glories, laws, and set times, shall be revealed in the days of the dispensation of the fullness of times” (D&C 121-28-31).
Commente #5: “You talk a lot about cratons as if everyone should know what those are. Even looking it up doesn’t answer the question. As an example, what on earth do you mean when you talk about the Gianna or Brazilian Cratons?” JoJo A.

Left: The North American craton (brown); Right: The South American cratons (dark orange). Note that while North America has only one craton (or solid foundation) which covers nearly the entire continent, South America’s craton is broken up in pieces, with two major areas, all of which do not cover even one-fourth of the continent, suggesting that much of the continent was very low, with the basins (light yellow) submerged at one time

Response: Sorry. Craton is a geological term meaning the hardened rock solid crust of the Earth. It is referred to as stable, meaning it is built upon, or does not move about like an unstable land mass, and is the formation or nucleus of a continent, meaning it is the rock-solid center of a huge land mass and considered to be the oldest part of a continent—sort of like the foundation of a building, referred to as the ancient core of a continent, and as a rule do not show positive gravity anomalies (sinking). It is claimed that cratons have been stable for some 2.5 billion years and considered to be the first continental crust. 
    Generally, our purpose in using the term is to show that parts of areas (continent) have been stable from the beginning of creation (organization). The Gianna and Brazilian cratons are mentioned merely to show that these two “high elevations” in the east and northeast of the South American continent have always been there above the sea, while the low-lying basins were submerged, creating Lehi’s island surrounded by four seas (or the ocean in general) as Jacob and Mormon described.