DNA, Geography, and the Book of Mormon

Book of Mormon narrative it speaks of a group of people known as the Jared i'ts according to the Book of Mormon they sailed to the Western Hemisphere around the time God confused the languages at the tower Babel eventually they were a knight they annihilated each other prior to the prophets Li the Prophet Lehigh's arrival now again boy these names who are these people let me explain Lehi was a prophet who lived in Jerusalem around the time of the captivity of Jerusalem prior to the fall of Jerusalem Lehi was warned by God to take his family and flee to the promised land that's what he's told so Lehi takes his family and they sail to the Western Hemisphere around 600 years before Christ they eventually broke into two primary groups Lehi had several sons but there's two primary sons in this narrative and the son is one of them is called Nephi and the other is called layman Nephi is the good son he's like the hero or the story layman is the bad son Lehman's got a root he's a problem child okay and because of his wickedness God wants to make sure that laymen's influence does not you know get around the rest of these family members so he actually well to use lack of a better word he curses them with a dark skin and this is how you can distinguish between layman and his followers and Nephi and his followers these were known as layman Lamanites Nephi Nephites these are the primary groups that you're going to read about in the Book of Mormon narrative now these two groups if you read the story are constantly warring against each other the Book of Mormon is a story of a lot of wars and battles and and it's a pretty violent story much like the Bible in the Old Testament is pretty violent at times but those are the two main groups that you're going to hear about and Nephi and lame and eventually die off and then their ancestors keep going on but what they're doing during all this time is they are keeping a record of what has actually happened among these people and that's really what you have in the Book of Mormon the raise this raises some problems because one of the underlying themes of The Book of Mormon is this idea that the Nephites and the Lamanites were actually Hebrew and this becomes very problematic though it's it's very difficult for the Mormons to escape this conclusion for instance the title-page in the Book of Mormon it actually says written to the Lamanites who are a remnant of the house of Israel the house of Israel of course would be a reference to the people who lived in Israel who were of Hebrew descent the house of Israel this is what it says on the title page the introduction page in the Book of Mormon says that talks about all the Nephites being destroyed all these people were destroyed except the Lamanites and they are the principle ancestors of the american indians let me explain what this means in all these stories of the wars between the light-skinned Nephites in the dark skinned Lamanites finally this rivalry culminates at a huge battle at a hill called Kimora and at this hill called Kimora the dark-skinned Lamanites overcome the light-skinned Nephites and wipe them out but before they wipe them out one of their warrior leaders a guy by the name of Mormon tells his son Moroni to bury the record of their people in the ground and that's what Moroni does that's why it's Moroni who appears centuries later to Joseph Smith to tell Joseph Smith where he buried those plates back in that ancient time when that when the Nephites were being killed off that's the connection even though Joseph Smith in 1838 said that the angel that appeared to him was not Moroni but another angels but named Nephi well this kind of got scurried away it was in the 1851 pearl of great price was also in the times and seasons which was a periodical that the Mormons had at that time but now it's the official name has become Moroni they had to change this in order to make it kind of more you know make it sink a little bit more anyway so that's what we have here all the Nephites are destroyed except the Lamanites now these Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the american indians well folks if you're going to believe this then you have to believe that the people the American Indians living among us here are actually Jewish I don't know of any anthropologists that would support that claim but if the Book of Mormon is true that's what we have to have here they have to be of Hebrew descent there's no escaping this in Alma 10-3 it reads in a minute I was a descendant of Nephi who was the son of Lehi who came out of the land of Jerusalem who was a descendant of Manasseh who was the son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt by the hands of his brethren here is the Hebrew connection made very clear in Alma 10 verse 3 in the Book of Mormon but what are scholars and scientists saying about this because this has just come up in recent years I first started getting interested in this subject back in 1997 when it wasn't even popular but I had come across some things it just didn't seem right and I started looking into this and then a few years later it kind of all broke loose with the research of a man by the name of Thomas Murphy Thomas Murphy is out of the state of Washington he is a Mormon of record and I word it that way purposely he would admit that he's not a good practicing Mormon but he is a Mormon of record he's still a member of the LDS Church they tried to excommunicate him and we're going to excommunicate him after he came out with some of these findings but I think reason prevailed in a prop the church probably realized what a public relations nightmare it would be to excommunicate a member for telling the truth odd isn't it but anyway Murphy was saying there is no Hebrew connection here and we've got a problem and what's interesting is when Murphy came out with these things in the early years it was interesting how the BYU professors just were on him like white on rice I mean they were just you know making fun of him and saying that his was bad science he didn't know what he was talking about well let me just tell you folks things have changed since then and now you would be hard-pressed to find really any BYU anthropologists or any BYU professor who would probably want to argue with the fact that there is any kind of connection between the American Indian and the Hebrew people for instance dr. Daniel Peterson Peterson is a BYU professor he's also very much involved with the foundation for ancient research and Mormon studies Daniel Peterson said this in a prolegomena to the DNA essays farms review 15 million 15 number - 2003 page 32 to the best of my knowledge no serious latter-day Saint scholar or scientist contends that to date research on Amerindian DNA provides significant affirmative support for the Book of Mormon he's admitting there's no connection there's no connection between the two dr. Trent Stevens in an article called now what that was printed in Sunstone magazine March 2004 page 26 no genetic evidence specifically supports the hypothesis that Native Americans descended from middle-eastern populations furthermore there is little reason to assume that additional data will reverse the current conclusions they're not even looking for anything to change this conclusion they know it's lost that idea is lost it's not going to happen they're not even looking forward to any reversal of this in the future genetic drift this is an argument that's being raised by a lot of these scholars basically what they're saying is when the followers of Lehi came over the Western Hemisphere they were met by other indigenous people and through intermarriage these indigenous people somehow affected the genetics of these other people - we're now over the years there's been so much intermarriage that the gene pool has been so diluted that we can never really trace what their background is or where they where they really came from that's kind of putting it very very simply but nonetheless Jeffrey Meldrum and Trent Stevens said there has been little if any evidence seriously considered by the mainstream scientific community that would indicate a Middle East origin or any other source of origin for the majority of contemporary Native Americans we proposed this is how they're trying to get out of it we propose that the Book of Mormon is the account of a small group of people who lived on the American continent interacting to some degree with the indigenous population but relatively isolated from the general historical events occurring elsewhere in the Americas Journal the Book of Mormon studies volume 12 number 1 2003 pages 38 and page 44 okay that sounds like a good escape hatch but doesn't work again the problem that the Mormons have for themselves is they tend to write everything down so all you have to do is go back and look where this information is to see what Mormon leaders were saying prior to this date did they agree with this kind of a conclusion did they say things that make this conclusion really untenable well first of all let's look at what the Book of Mormon says what does it say about the argument that the Lehi brought over a small group of people being small and well I should say stayed a small group of people The Book of Mormon doesn't support that idea first Nephi 12:20 says and it came to pass that I beheld and saw the people of the seed of my brethren that they had overcome my seed and they went forth in multitudes upon the face of the land so this does not sound like a very small group of people that was overwhelmed by another indigenous group making it necessary for their you know genetic traces going back to Israel to be lost Helaman chapter 11 verse 20 and thus it did come to pass that the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land and began to build up their waste places and began to multiply and spread even until they did cover the whole face of the land both on the northward and on the southward from the sea west to the sea east well that's quite an area of land there and they're just covering it though covering the whole face of the land does it sound like a small group of people not according to the Book of Mormon in Mormon 1 verse 7 the whole face of the land had become covered with buildings and the people were as numerous almost as it were the sand of the sea the footnote at the bottom of this page dates this passage at around AD 322 that's significant let's look now what does the Book of Mormon say about the people of Nephi interacting with other indigenous populations remember that's the argument that's being raised when Lehi got over here to the Western Hemisphere there were already people here and they interacted with them and they intermarried and that's what diluted the gene pool is that really what the Book of Mormon says no according to 2nd Nephi chapter 1 verses 8 and 9 and behold it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations for behold many nations would overrun the land that there would be no place for an inheritance and they shall be kept from all other nations that they may possess this land unto themselves there weren't any indigenous people according to the Book of Mormon they were not here to interact or to intermarry and to dilute their gene pool it shows that this book cannot be believed so now they've got - this is what they're doing the scholars now have to ignore what the text actually says and as you're going to see they have to ignore what their own leaders have said on this subject so what have LDS leaders said about this Spencer Kimball who became the 12th president of the Mormon Church in the book the teachings of Spencer W Kimball page 601 about 25 centuries ago a hearty group left the comforts of a great city speaking of Jerusalem cross the desert braved an ocean and came to the shores of this their promised land there were two large families those of Lehi and Ishmael who in not many centuries numbered hundreds of millions of people on these two American continents now he's talking about North and South America here hundreds of millions of people does that sound like a small group that's not what Kimball saying jor to Cannon who was a member of the First Presidency under Brigham Young said this in gospel truth page 528 America kept hidden by the Lord until the time that Columbus inspired of God went from court to court pleading with the governments of nations to give him the means to penetrate the ocean and find what he supposed was the Indies during all that time the knowledge of this land was kept from all the nations of the earth using the phraseology we read in the Book of Mormon in other words there weren't anybody else over here other than these laminate people until Columbus came over and the Europeans started coming in that's what George Q canons telling us and that is not what Mormon scholars are trying to tell us today the foundation for ancient research in Mormon studies now known as the Neal Maxwell something or other okay back in 1991 was offering a tour to Book of Mormon lands all right I listened so intrigued me I almost wish I could have gone but what's interesting is the the Mormons are very much involved in going to the Book of Mormon lands as we Bible believing Christians would like to go to what we call the Holy Land over in Israel and in fact on State Street I know of at least two travel agencies on State Street that often have a big sign saying you know to book your passage to go see the Book of Mormon lands and and so anyway I chuckle every time I Drive wise it's almost like false advertising there aren't any Book of Mormon lands that's the problem you know but they believe they're down there where are they well they're not going to the Book of Mormon lands in North America they believe that they are down in Central America somewhere so farms in 1991 was going to have one of these tours and this is the way they advertise it the way I know this is because I subscribe to farms newsletter and so I was invited to go on this tour myself and I got this little flyer that was telling me where they were going to go visit on this tour and here's where they were going to go first of all they were going to go visit Lake atitlán a good candidate for the waters of Mormon which you mentioned in the Book of Mormon they were going to go see well haka and the ruins of monte albán a probable site for the Jared ight land of that's not a typo that's what it really is in the Book of Mormon the Grijalva River possibly the river Sidon mentioned in the Book of Mormon they were going to see Tuxtla Gutierrez thought to be the land of Zarahemla and they were also going to see the tucks love mountains thought to be the Hill Cumorah region now do you notice anything in this description how do you know you're really going to be seeing these places that are really Book of Mormon lands when they're advertising them in this way a good candidate for the waters of Mormon a probable site for the Jared I Atlanta boron possibly the Riverside mentioned in the Book of Mormon thought to be the land of Zarahemla thought to be the Hill Cumorah region if you were to take a tour of the Holy Land and someone was to say well we're going to go see a place thought to be Jerusalem I wouldn't book it you don't have to think that's where Jerusalem you we know where Jerusalem there's there's no speculation on this but you see what they have to do they have to speculate they have to guess and the problem of course is they have no clue they don't know that it's good for the faithful and I'm not faulting Mormons for wanting to go down there to see places that they think might you know strengthen their testimony but the fact is you got to take it by faith you have to take it by faith the evidence really doesn't support this and besides the conclusions that farms comes up with are controversial not all Mormons agree with farms conclusions and I can tell you some about that a little bit later first of all we go to the Mormon leaders do they agree with farms conclusions well Joseph fielding Smith certainly wouldn't now he's been dead for a while now but in his book doctrines of salvation volume 3 page 239 and 240 he says in the face of this evidence coming from the Prophet Joseph Smith Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer we cannot say that the Nephites and Lamanites did not possess the territory of the United States and that the Hill Cumorah is in Central America because that's exactly what these scholars are trying to get across now you'll notice one of the places they were going to go visit on the farms tour at the bottom was the tucks low mountains thought to be the Hill Cumorah region well what in the world are the is the Hill Cumorah doing down in Central America when Joseph Smith said he dug up the plates in Hill Cumorah in New York I mean you're talking quite a distance there I mean it's not the same place so they've had to come up with this theory that well maybe there's too Kimora's well if Moroni buried the plates in this Hill Cumorah down near the tuxtla mountains how did they get up in New York where Joseph Smith dug them up Smith didn't go down to Central America he just went a few miles from his home what a coincidence and that's where he supposedly dug him up so you see we have a real consistency problem here but this is something that they've got to deal with and what Joseph fielding Smith is saying is you cannot say that the Lamanites and the Nephites did not possess a Terry of the United States and that the Hill Cumorah is in Central America you cannot say that he's saying it has to be up here has to be in North America neither can we say he goes on that the great struggle which resulted in the destruction of the Nephites took place in Central America so he's denying this theory which is known as the limited to want to Peck theory and he's saying that just can't be if you're going to accept the Central America theory or the limited Tehuantepec theory you've got get rid of what Joseph Smith taught Oliver Cowdery taught David Whitmer taught you have to get rid of that and but yet Mormons because they don't really understand the situation they have a tendency to kind of grab anything that might work even if it's getting consistent and when it comes to this story there's a lot of inconsistencies Ezra Taft Benson he was the 13th president of the Mormon Church and teachings of Ezra Taft Benson pages 587 and 588 this is what he writes consider how very fortunate we are to be living in this land of America he's not saying Central America he's not saying South America he's saying this land of America now as their tap Benson had strong liens with the John Birch Society I don't think he's talking about any other place but this America good old USA he goes on and says the destiny of this country this country was forged long before the earth was even created this was the place of three former civilizations that of Adam that might shock you that of the Jared i'ts and that of the Nephites these three former civilizations Adam lived in North America that is what he's telling us he's not unique in that teaching there are other leaders that taught the same thing now you're not going to hear this probably in a conference message that's broadcast to everybody but it certainly is in the writings of several LDS leaders the Garden of Eden and the City Zion is the same place according to Joseph fielding Smith doctrines of salvation volume 3 page 74 he writes in accord with the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith we teach that the Garden of Eden was on the american continent located were the city Zion or the New Jerusalem will be built I know that probably shocks a lot of you but America is where it's all going to happen folks this is where the Garden of Eden was located this is where the New Jerusalem is going to be built it's going to be built in North America and there you have it folks that's kind of hard to see with the light in this room but Mormon leaders have taught Joseph Smith taught that the Garden of Eden was located in a place called Adam on die almond which is a place north of Gallatin Missouri no kidding that's where Adam lived is in Adam on diamund north of Gallatin Missouri there's a even a plaque in Gallatin that talks about Adam on die almond and how the Mormons believe that this is where Adam lived and this is where Jesus is going to come back again for a second coming what's interesting about this story is I was standing next to this sign and the sign it's kind of hard to read that but it says by following the roads is marked this is a sign that was put there by the Mormon Church the Mormon Church owns this property now you know anything that has any historical value to their church they buy up the land and we're the buildings well they bought this big section of land and they have these signs all over it you can drive around this place and you can read these various signs telling you about this area one of the signs says by following the roads as Marc visitors may see the area of Spring Hill or Adam on daleman also there is an overlook of the western portion of the valley of a dimande almond from a prominence called Tower Hill Tower Hill is a name given by Joseph Smith because of the remains of an old knee fight altar gives a reference you can read about it in the history of the church volume 3 page 35 the exact location of the structure is not known today and there is no visual evidence remaining I was reading this sign when a car drove up and a gentleman got out of the car and he was standing there and he was reading the sign as I was standing there reading the sign and I thought I'd get into a conversation with him so I says can I ask you a question he says sure and I says well I'll be honest with you I'm not LDS I says I'm not LDS I says but I find this religion fascinating I says I assume are you a Mormon he says yes I am as well let me ask you about this sign I says I'm reading this sign and it says how Joseph Smith talks about a remains of an old Nephi altar and that's place called Tower Hill and this is a Demond I am and this is you know and I understand from other things I've read this is where Adam live and however when I read the writings of farms they seem to disagree with everything these church signs say and his answer was very interesting he looked at me says he rolled his eyes shook his head he goes farms his farms Wow gee I thought that was kind of like your semi official answer to everything it just shows that farms isn't taken seriously by even some members of the Mormon Church

Channel: Aaron Shafovaloff

Views: 82,999

Keywords: lds, mormonism, geography, book, of, mormon

Id: pa60T879hDQ

Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 01 2008