If I could ask them one question about
the Church’s Book of Mormon, Come Follow Me, Lesson 6
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For Feb. 3-9, 2020
2 Ne 1-5
If I wanted to encourage thought and try to understand devout believers better, I might ask:
“How could the Lehites be kept from all nations to have the land to themselves?”
Things to consider:
- 2 Nephi 1:8-9 explains that the Lehites would be kept from all other nations to possess the land unto themselves.
- This is congruent with 1 Ne 13:10 in which Nephi had a vision of the future and, “beheld many waters; and they divided the Gentiles from the seed of my brethren.”
- Gentile: it has a dual meaning, sometimes to designate peoples of non-Israelite lineage and other times to designate nations that are without the gospel, even though there may be some Israelite blood therein (LDS Bible Dictionary).
- If the many waters separated the gentiles from the Lehites so that the Lehites had the land to themselves, it would seem there were no other people in the land except the Lehites.
- Elder Holland agreed. In “A Promised Land,” Elder Jeffrey Holland taught that the global flood really happened, that shortly after the flood, the Americas were separated from the rest of the world, and that, “The promised place was set apart. Without habitation it waited for the fulfillment of God’s special purposes. With care and selectivity, the Lord began almost at once to repeople the promised land. The Jaredites came first” (A Promised Land).
- However, this flies in the face of the evidence that the Americas were first populated by immigration from Asia beginning about 13,000 or 15,000 years ago and that the ancient ancestors of indigenous Americans came at least predominantly (if not exclusively) from Asia. The evidence for this is overwhelming. The evidence for any pre-Columbian migration from the Middle East to the America’s is non-existent.
- DNA of current day Native Americans is predominantly of Asiatic descent. This shows there was no extinction of these peoples in spite of what the Book of Mormon teaches and in spite of the declarations of prophet, seer, and revelator, Elder Holland.
Because the Book of Mormon chapters for this Come Follow Me lesson are so full of controversial claims, I had a hard time choosing one question I would ask,
so what questions would you ask believers about these chapters?
Have fun studying!
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If I could ask them one question, Lesson 6
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