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This is part two in a series on the Book of Mormon that I'm doing. If you haven't seen the first one, uh, it's titled Reject Mormonism, but check out the Book of Mormon. Uh, feel free to do that. I will link to it in the description below.
This series is intended not just for those who come from a Mormon background or those who have left or are considering leaving the institutional church, but it is intended for Christians who rightly reject Mormonism. I'll repeat this part at the start of each video in this series so that no one is confused if they step into the middle of this. I am not a Mormon and I do not want to convert you to Mormonism.
This series will reveal that the Book of Mormon teaches the Jesus of the Bible, not the Mormon Jesus, and it teaches his pure, undefiled gospel. Additionally, it stands as a valiant testimony against every false doctrine found in Mormonism. And if you can manage to overcome your fear and the programming that has caused you to avoid this book and instead dig into its pages, taking the Holy Spirit as your guide, your faith in Christ will increase and you will draw closer to him.
belief in the narrative found in the Book of Mormon. Just like the Bible and the story of Jesus, the miracles that he performed and his resurrection ultimately remain a matter of faith. That being said, in recent years, we have seen an increase in evidence supporting the biblical narrative. the flood and the ark, the Exodus from Egypt, King David, and even the resurrection of Jesus. For decades, the Bible was mocked by atheists, and now scholars, historians, and archaeologists are being confronted with new evidence for the biblical narrative.
Likewise, after years of mockery proclaiming the foolishness of believing in the Book of Mormon, we're seeing an exponential increase in evidence for the truth of the Book of Mormon narrative. And that evidence has increased exponentially, including some that have emerged with new technologies. Even better, the evidence isn't coming from the Mormon church, but from archaeologists, geneticists, and other experts not affiliated with Mormonism.
Whether it is the recent archaeological discovery of the house of Lehi just outside of Jerusalem, the discovery of ancient gold and other metal plates with writing on them. [Music] [Applause] [Music] the archaeological discoveries in the US in the last few decades that have reversed dozens of longstanding archaeological criticisms leveled against the Book of Mormon. Styometry and AI analysis of authorship revealing the different voices or authorship in the Book of Mormon text. The discovery of Hebrew kayastic poetry in the Book of Mormon text. The validation of prophecies found in the Book of Mormon that have come to pass since its publication. and many other discoveries have begun to not only vindicate the Book of Mormon, but build a case for it. Even as we see continuing discoveries validate the Bible, we'll touch on many of the discoveries on behalf of the Book of Mormon in this series.
As I say, I believe the evidence for the Book of Mormon is all around us. That is, if we are looking in the right place. But before we continue, I want to address a question that will naturally arise at some point. Does the actual location for the events in the Book of Mormon really matter? And the answer to that is only if you're looking for external evidence. Biblical archaeology has become rather important to many people. But if archaeologists were looking for biblical evidence of Bethlehem, let's say, and they were looking for it in Germany, they would likely search in vain.
The combined land mass of North and South America is around 8,000 times larger than all of the lands mentioned in the biblical narrative. So, if you want to look for evidence of the Nephites, you're going to want to narrow your search considerably. According to Joseph Smith, the angel revealed that the Book of Mormon is the record of a people from the tribe of Manasseh that once existed in the Midwest of the United States. In one of his personal letters to his wife Emma, he revealed that the Nephites were the mountain builders. So, as far as I'm concerned, it seems logical to begin our search there. And I have come to believe that the evidence for the Nephites does indeed exist in the Midwest, stretching from the Great Lakes and into the Ohio Valley all the way to Missouri. I've come to believe that we are literally swimming in evidence. We just haven't understood what we're looking for.
The churches started looking to Central America as the Book of Mormon lands in the early 20th century, and that was the result of the discovery of ancient ruins there. The Mayans became the favorite choice. One problem with this is that the golden age of the Maya civilization lasted from approximately 200 to 900 AD, which is long after the destruction of the Nephites. The Mayans built large stone pyramids with stairs leading up to an altar similar to ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats. It should be noted here that the law of Moses, which the Nephites kept, forbade the use of stairs leading up to an altar. That's how archaeologists can tell the difference between altars built by the ancient Hebrews versus those built by the surrounding pagan nations in the biblical lands.
Unlike the temples in Central America, the archaeological sites in North America believed to have been places of religious observance, temples, and altars have ramps, even as the ancient Israelites built. The stone pyramids of Central America, like the pyramids of Egypt, can survive largely intact for thousands of years. However, the Book of Mormon tells us that Nephites built their structures using primarily earthworks and timber, which are far less permanent. Even so, the Nephite record does also mention some use of stone. And get this, it even mentions the use of cement in one place.
Critics have attacked the Book of Mormon for decades because Joseph Smith stated that the Nephites were mound builders. And the general consensus was that the mound builders did not use or know how to make concrete. I heard this repeatedly when I was growing up. However, the general consensus and the actual evidence do not always match. I put the following question to Google's Gemini AI. How long does concrete last if it isn't maintained? And the answer was, the time it takes for a small unattended cement structure to crumble and become unrecognizable is highly variable and depends on a multitude of factors. But it could range from decades to a century or more, with deterioration beginning even earlier. Keep in mind that a thousand years has passed from the end of the Nephite civilization until the time that Christopher Columbus sailed.
I then put the following question to AI. Is there any evidence that the mound builders use concrete? And its answer was, while ancient civilizations like the Romans and the Mayans utilized forms of concrete and lime cement in building, there's no evidence that the mound builders, a group of Native American cultures in North America, used concrete to construct their mounds. After reading the accepted consensus, which would intentionally exclude anything that is contradictory to that consensus, I skipped down to the AI deep dive to go into more detail. And this is what it said. While it is not generally accepted that the ancient mound builders of North America commonly used concrete in the way the Romans or Egyptians did, there is some intriguing evidence suggesting the use of concrete-like material in certain mound structures. Specifically, some archaeological findings suggest concrete caps. Some mounds, particularly those associated with the Hopewell culture in Ohio, may have had concrete caps or crusts over the top. Archaeological excavations have revealed layers requiring pickaxes to break through. Concrete floors. Some burial chambers within mounds, described as channel houses prepared for burials, also appear to have had concrete floors. So, it's saying that the Hopewell did not use concrete except for all the times when they did. Fascinating.
This to me is the wonder of the modern scientific mindset, which has largely departed away from following the evidence wherever it leads and has instead become more like a religious institution that holds to its traditions regardless of evidence revealing it to be wrong. AI does not truly have a mind of its own, but is simply a language model and is simply regurgitating what it finds written by the experts. So it will give you the main scientific consensus. For this reason, you sometimes have to dig into the deeper dive. You have to click on the links or ask the question in a different way.
When I went back to recreate the response regarding the use of concrete a month later, I discovered something about AI-generated answers that I didn't know, which I then put to the test to prove out, and that is, you will never get the same answer twice. I asked this question half a dozen times and got a different answer every time. The closest I came to a secondary admission that the Hopewell may have occasionally used cement is shown in this screenshot. And it said, "In summary, while the mound builders did not use concrete in the classical sense, their sophisticated understanding of soil mechanics and careful selection and placement of natural materials allowed them to construct incredibly durable and lasting earthworks." Some modern researchers have even marveled at their ingenuity in achieving such strength and resilience without compaction, noting that quote, "Native Americans discovered sophisticated ways of mixing different types of materials to make them virtually indestructible despite not being compacted. There's some magic there that our modern engineers have not been able to figure out yet." >> Fascinating.
So, if ancient people mixed materials together to make an extremely hardened, almost indestructible material which was something like concrete, and then you had to translate the word for it from their native language into an English equivalent using the word that comes closest to describing what that material was like, might you not use the word concrete, even as Joseph Smith did?
Another big criticism against the Book of Mormon lands being in North America is, where are all the cities? Which is why, quite understandably, when ancient structures were found in the jungles of Central America, both the RLDS and then the LDS churches moved their focus away from North America, where Joseph Smith said the Nephites and Lamanites had lived, and began to theorize that the Book of Mormon took place down south. However, the Book of Mormon tells us that the Nephites built their walls and their homes using primarily earth and wood. Their buildings, defensive structures, and cities were made of much less permanent materials than those found in Central America.
In the biblical lands, there were significantly fewer trees than in North America. This is because the very cradle of civilization, the entirety of the Middle East, was crammed full of people and nations that used up many of these resources. Trees that were good for structures became more and more scarce. Solomon had to go to Lebanon to obtain lumber that would suffice. However, there was plenty of rock. So, what material do we find most? Biblical walls and temples and cities and structures built with mainly stone. But here in North America, with fewer people eating up resources and millions of acres of forest stretched endlessly across the eastern half of this continent, timber was the most abundant and easily accessible resource available to the Nephites. I mean, just look at what the European American pioneers used to build in the 1800s, even though they were technically more advanced than the Nephites by more than 1,600 years.
As I thought about the differences between stone pyramids and the structures that were built by the Nephites, mainly of earth and lumber, I decided to ask AI how long it would take a modern city, you know, with steel skyscrapers, bridges, and freeways, if it were completely abandoned before it would become completely unrecognizable as a city. After all, that has been a big critique of the Book of Mormon lands being in North America. Where are all the cities? And the results that I got uh for the progression of decay for an abandoned modern city would be within 3 to 5 years, water damage and lack of basic repairs would quickly lead to visible deterioration, especially in buildings with leaky roofs. Within decades, plant life, particularly vines and trees, would begin to colonize cracks in pavement and buildings, further accelerating decay. Buildings would start to crumble and become structurally unstable. Within a century or two, depending on the climate and construction, buildings could become heavily decayed or even collapse. With nature increasingly dominating the landscape, the city's structure might still be recognizable from the air, but less so from the ground due to vegetation and overgrowth. Before a few centuries, structures would likely have degraded into rubble mounds with nature having fully reclaimed the area. It would take a skilled geologist to discern the origins of the remaining debris.
According to these calculations, a modern civilization that builds structures with materials that should last longer than simple earth and timber would mostly disappear and be unrecognizable after just a few centuries. It has been 1,640 years since the demise of the Nephites. At this point, it seems plausible that we might not find any trace of the Nephites. Anything made of lumber would have completely disintegrated long ago. Only very substantial earthworks that had been compressed and hardened might survive.
So, what do we find throughout the Midwest in the very places that Joseph Smith said the Nephites dwelt? According to Google's AI, archaeologists estimate that there were over 1 million mounds that once existed, with approximately 100,000 still remaining today. We have no idea how many cities and population centers existed. But we do know that these sites varied greatly in size and complexity, ranging from small isolated sites to sprawling urban centers. The Natural Resources Conservation Service estimates that there are currently about 26,000 Adena and Hopewell archaeological sites here in the US. There are thousands of earth-walled structures stretching from Ohio to Missouri.
Recent discoveries have revealed that many of these earth-walled structures used to have post holes along the top of them, showing that wooden posts had once protruded up from the earth-walled structures, serving to heighten these defensive walls. Some of these posts appeared to serve as support for defensive towers. Of course, these wooden posts, walls, and towers would have rotted away and disintegrated into dust long before the first Europeans came here. The Hopewell also dug ditches in front of these walls, not behind them, for strategic purposes. The ditch not only provided earth for the wall, but it created a trench that made it more difficult for the enemy to climb up.
The cities, walls, and forts that the Hopewell built, which we didn't already bulldoze, and many of them unfortunately have been destroyed, have been steadily worn down by the elements over the last 1600 years. Weather has eroded the height of the walls, and the ditches have become shallow as they slowly filled up with blowing dust. Far too many Hopewell sites have been smoothed out and plowed over for farmland. Some of these ancient sites even have golf courses built on them. Earth-walled structures that currently measure 3 to 5 ft in height were once 10 to 15 ft tall. Some of these earthen embankments are known to have been upwards of 25 ft, not counting the additional height of the wooden wall protruding up from the top of them. There are even modern roads in our nation that pass right through the entrances and exits of some of these ancient forts. Many of these ancient walls are still visible, but overgrown with tall grass and trees. Most people would never stop to think about what they are, how they got there, or who created them.
When I was young, I lived in the hills of southern Ohio. I was surrounded by these archaeological wonders, but I didn't really think about them too much. I had no clue that they might be connected to the Book of Mormon. Well, as I said, I want to keep these videos relatively short. So, we'll stop here and pick up again next week. We'll continue to plow into the details, and I have a lot to share that I'm excited about. So, I hope you will join me next time. Until then, God bless. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat.