Episode 27: Not Another FLDS Podcast

For a great book on the FLDS check out Krakauer’s book “Under the Banner of Heaven”.

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/0385509510

My Uncle runs an offshoot of the Jeff’s group. He believes that he is the Prophet. Really odd guy, crazy but cool in an odd way. He claims to have received the calling from Christ himself on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Everyone has a crazy uncle but this guy takes the cake.

The accounts related to Zelph are used as evidence by some Book of Mormon scholars to suggest that the Lehites inhabited the entire North American continent as proposed by the Hemispheric Geographical Model, rather than merely portions of Central America as suggested by the Limited Geography Model. (See also Archaeology and the Book of Mormon)

Although Smith did not mention the Zelph event specifically in his journal, it is clear that during this period he considered the area in which the group was traveling to have been part of the land described in the Book of Mormon. In a letter that Smith wrote to his wife Emma the following day (4 June, 1834), he stated:

The whole of our journey, in the midst of so large a company of social honest and sincere men, wandering over the plains of the Nephites, recounting occasionally the history of the Book of Mormon, roving over the mounds of that once beloved people of the Lord, picking up their skulls & their bones, as a proof of its divine authenticity, and gazing upon a country the fertility, the splendour and the goodness so indescribable, all serves to pass away time unnoticed.[11]

Smith’s statements in later years suggests that his thinking regarding the location of Book of Mormon events evolved over time. Smith stated that he believed that the discovery of ancient Maya ruins on the Yucatán Peninsula in the late 1830s offered evidence to the Book of Mormon’s authenticity. After reading about the accounts, Smith proclaimed the ruins were likely Nephite.[12] Zelph is not an individual mentioned in the Book of Mormon narrative and would therefore not necessarily be associated with any of the events presumed to have occurred in Mesoamerica.[13] There is nothing in the Book of Mormon narrative that excludes the possibility of people moving northward into the North American continent either during the period of the events described, or during the period of time between the conclusion of the record and the recovery of the golden plates.[14]

The implication of belief in a hemispheric Book of Mormon geography by these men is supported by several references made by Wilford Woodruff. Woodruff writes that he “visited many of the mounds which were flung up by the ancient inhabitants of this continent probably by the Nephites & Lamanites.” Woodruff also states that Zelph “that was known from the hill Cumorah on East sea to the Rocky mountains,” thus implying that the hill Cumorah in New York is the same hill Cumorah referred to in the Book of Mormon.[15] Some LDS scholars believe that “hill Cumorah” was Woodruff’s term rather than Joseph Smith’s, since other accounts refer only to the sea and fail to mention either Nephites or the hill Cumorah.[16]

In 1842 Willard Richards compiled a number of records in order to produce a history of the church. Among the records examined were the various accounts related to Zelph. In the process of combining the accounts, Richards crossed out Woodruff’s references to “hill Cumorah,” and Heber C. Kimball’s reference to the “last” great struggle with the Lamanites.”[17]

I live in South Korea and have never had a problem listening to a podcast. Perhaps the problem is at your end, John.

Nona (and guys)
I live in East Texas too and also did not know we were so close to the search. I’m a little further away than you are (Athens), but in your stake.

I had the same problem JtheVHP had – downloaded via iTunes. Will try downloading it again so I can hear how it ends.