Voices from the Dust

Voices From The Dust

By Elder Cecil E. McGavin

Author of “Mormonism And Masonry” and “Cumorah’s Gold Bible”

THE Book of Mormon is a record of three colonies brought from the old world to the new, under the direction of our Heavenly Father. The first immigrants to be divinely guided to the American continent were known as the Jaredites. This vanguard of pioneers whose history was destined to be revealed in the Book of Mormon, lived in Babylonia at the time the great Tower of Babel was being built. The time was about 2,200 years before the birth of Christ.

There was a righteous man in that community to whom the Lord spoke as He had spoken to other faithful men before and as He continued to do to His chosen prophets and patriarchs for many centuries thereafter.

The leader of this small colony of faithful pioneers was directed to lead his followers from the city before the vengeance of God was to fall upon the builders of the Tower. These loyal people had enough confidence in God’s promises that they left the doomed city before their speech was confounded and the people scattered over the earth. In the book of Genesis (11: 8) it is said of the people who were engaged in building the tower: “So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city.”

CONFOUNDED LANGUAGE

The Jaredite historian speaks of “the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered.”—Ether 1:33.

The Jewish historian, Josephus, has written of the widespread scattering of the people at the time of the confusion of tongues: “They were dispersed abroad on account of their language, and went out by colonies everywhere, and each took possession of the land unto which God led them. There were some, also, who passed over the sea in ships.”—The Works of Josephus, p. 40.

In 1834 Josiah Priest’s “American Antiquities” was published, in which it was said that the Toltecs have a tradition asserting that their ancestors came from the tower of confusion after the flood, and that they understood each other’s speech. Such legends are now common.

Though perhaps unknown to Josephus, the Jaredites left the Tower of Babel and departed to America. Their leaders were inspired to construct vessels, gather supplies and capture many species of animal life which would be so necessary in this virgin land to which they would be guided.

ANOTHER COLONY

For about 1,600 years the Jaredite nation prospered in this chosen land. When wickedness abounded they broke up into warring factions whose internecine strife resulted in the extermination of this mighty nation in this land where God had covenanted to protect only the righteous. The history of the Jaredites was inscribed on twenty-four sheets of gold-and deposited near the place of their final battles. From this imperishable record it found its way into the Book of Mormon.

On the eve of the annihilation of this people, the Lord saw fit to bring another colony to this land of promise to supplant those who had fallen when the wicked made war upon the wicked.

This time the scene shifted to Jerusalem; the time about 586 B.C. It was a time of trouble and peril. A crisis threatened the great city of Jerusalem because its people had become wicked and God had ceased to fight their battles. In the East another world power had arisen and the Babylonian armies were marching toward Palestine.

Before Nebuchadnezzar’s battalions entered the region long known as “the promised land,” the Lord instructed a few families to leave the stricken city, promising them that He would lead them to a promised land which was choice above all other lands.

Under the leadership of Lehi this colony of Israelites left Jerusalem on the eve of its captivity, thus escaping the hardships of war and the humiliating rigours of the captivity. The Lord was so displeased with His people in the holy city, whose fathers He had miraculously delivered from Egyptian bondage, that He allowed the full force of the conquering cohorts to triumph over the beseiged city. The historians have written of this sad scene of captivity after thousands had fallen by the sword:

“And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, had made in the temple of the. Lord, as the Lord has said.

“And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths; none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.”—II Kings 24:13-14.

BUILD SHIP

It was fortunate for Lehi and his obedient followers who were far away at the time Jerusalem was captured. When they came to the ocean they built a ship and were brought to the American continent.

Back in Jerusalem the victorious Babylonians had placed the young Jewish king, Zedekiah, upon the throne, agreeing to maintain peaceful relations with their subjects in Palestine so long as they were loyal to the victors. After a decade the haughty Jews rebelled against their masters from the East and sought to gain their independence.

FAMISH FOR BREAD

Again the armies of Nebuchadnezzar were at the closed gates of Jerusalem. The inmates of the doomed city, unprepared for a long siege, were soon famishing for food. The royal family, under cover of darkness, fled from the city, escaping through a gate by the king’s garden. Their escape was soon discovered and the angry soldiers from Babylon were upon their trail.

On the plains of Jericho the king and his royal party were overtaken. His armed force was scattered, perhaps deserting him as he had deserted Jehovah. With but little resistance he was overpowered and taken before the king of Babylon, who gave judgment upon him: “And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him with fetters of brass and carried him to Babylon.”— II Kings 25:7.

Yet, unknown to the historians whose narrations are preserved in the Bible, there was one son of King Zedekiah who did not perish near the plains of Jericho, for the Lord had chosen him to lead a small group of His people away from the ill-fated city. This man’s name was Mulek, and he brought to the American continent the third colony from the old world whose history is recorded in the Book of Mormon.

These Mulekites were Jews, and long after they had founded a thriving commonwealth they united with the Nephites who had left Jerusalem just eleven years before their exodus from the holy city.

ESCAPE DESTRUCTION

These three favoured colonies, like the leaven hid in “three measures of meal ’til the whole was leavened” (Matt. 13:33), escaped from a place of destruction and panic just before the calamity fell. Soon after the Mulekites left Jerusalem the house of the Lord was burned, we read, “and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burnt he with fire … and broke down the walls of Jerusalem round about … And the pillars of brass that were in the house of the Lord, and the bases and the brazen sea that was in the house of the Lord, did the Chaldees break in pieces, and carried the brass of them to Babylon.”—II Kings 25:9-13.

These three groups of pioneers escaped a wretched desolation and destruction which was visited upon the people because of wickedness, yet their descendants suffered a similar destruction in this choice land of promise, because they, too, forgot the God who had led their fathers from Egypt and finally to the choice land now known as America.

As the Jaredites had been annihilated when the wicked made war upon the wicked, so did the Nephites fall before their dark and powerful foe, the Lamanites, who had been cursed with a sin or darkness because of their sins. About four centuries after the birth of Christ the Lamanites triumphed over the Nephites and exterminated them. The victors were the ancestors of the American Indians.

(To be continued)