As a story (book of stories) The Book of Mormon evolved to be justification for repopulating this land with the inspired gentiles cum heirs to Nephite fame and glory.

It was simple. It still fuels the missionary aspect of Mormonism.

Campbellite preaching of manifest destiny and a more wholistic approach to worldwide Christianity in the form of "lost" tribes roaming the planet with Jesus in their pockets.

The gentiles got adopted into this worldwide Pre-Christian Christian's diaspora to spread Jesus universally as a prequel to Europeans landing here and spreading Jesus like a virus as they gobbled up land using individual land ownership - something indigenous peoples didn't have much of.

Joseph Smith validates this in his sending European missionaries to mate with natives and Spencer Kimball did the same in the current times with trying to acclimate First Peoples and put them on a patronizing pedestal through European descended people's adopting American Israelites.

The Book of Mormon is a story of a text of conquest. It was a license to steal. Converts came in droves thinking God had ordained their taking over. Current Mormonism is merely preserving the ideal of God-ordained take over of peoples and cultures including dead ones.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2019 12:54PM by Elder Berry.

Exactly, and it is a story (manifest destiny) that a segment of the population just totally eats up. I've flogged this idea here before, and I suppose I'll keep doing it until it comes to pass, or I come to pass, whichever occurs first.

I think the Q15 are planning a series of RV parks/campgrounds at church history sites scattered across the country that will be staffed by young "service missionaries" who will provide services at the camps and also put on historical lectures/pageants and otherwise tell the story of westward expansion with a heavy gloss of Mormon history.

The time period is perfect - 1830s to 1896. when Utah became a state, which coincided with the end of the Indian Wars, and the official closing of the frontier (there is a technical definition of frontier based on population density). LDS Inc already owns sites spread out across the US.

Sharon, VT
Palmyra, NY
Susquehanna, PA
Kirtland, OH
Independence, MO
Nauvoo, IL
Winter Quarters/Council Bluffs, NE
a gigantic ranch near Chimney Rock, NE
Martin's Cove, WY
SLC, UT

They are nicely spaced out for a Manifest Destiny history tour. I know that LDS Inc has hundreds of acres of so-far undeveloped land adjacent to their developed sites at Martins Cove, Susquehanna, and in western Nebraska. I assume the same is true at most or all of the other sites as well.

It'd be targeted marketing. A bunch of people, mostly white, with enough disposable income to buy an RV, are interested in Manifest Destiny, who will be thinking "what lovely young people staffed all these campgrounds we stayed at", and will have already voluntarily given over their contact information to register at the campground.

ka-ching!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2019 02:33PM by Brother Of Jerry.

WOW! That would be what smart leaders would do especially with an aging population and a history to gloss.

And here is the gas in their history show engine...

" It was the Mormons, however, who gave the fullest expression to the idea of America as the site of the millennium. The prophesies and Book of Mormon delivered to Joseph Smith and his subsequent organization of the Mormon Church marked the beginning of “the end times” as the formal name of the new religion, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” makes unmistakably clear. After violent persecution in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, Brigham Young led the Mormons into the wilderness of Utah and there established a new city upon a hill, a new Zion which as Conrad Cherry put it “was the Holy City in the wilderness [that] was for Young the gathering place for the Saints from which they would radiate influences that would turn the entire American continent, and eventually the world into God’s Zion.” "
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/mandestiny.htm

Ever been Brown or Black?

Very few among those being exploited for no other reason than that their color 'allowed' it cared about the justification in place in Whitey's mind.

The stories I could tell you...

Yes, it is.

The BoM has one or two throwaway verses about Hagoth which has been used to justify a whole Polynesian mythos most white Mormons aren't aware of.

I would think that Alma 63 is also great support for the notion that the 'narrow neck of land' was near Panama, supporting the Mesoamerican location of Book of Mormon land, as opposed to the Heartland theory. I have to admit that I'm still confused on this issue!

I shan't take this any further.

It goes hand-in-hand with the mound builder myth.
https://www.thoughtco.com/moundbuilder-myth-history-and-death-171536

Helps to show that the Book of Mormon was based on the ideas of Joseph Smith's time and really had nothing to do with ancient America.

So much of the BoM fits the context of 19th Century American culture. This is a good example. Brohugs, Elder!

BYU Boner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So much of the BoM fits the context of 19th
> Century American culture. This is a good example.
> Brohugs, Elder!

I wonder how many Americans genuinely believed they would reach the other coast. Some did, I've read the accounts, but some also thought they would eventually take Canada, the Yucatan etc. I wonder if it was a mainstream idea or whether we think it is with the benefit of hindsight.

The Louisiana Purchase was a big filip to the idea. If the French had held onto it, coast to shining coast may have only referred to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Atlantic.

Or sea to shining sea. The shining of the coast depends on how clean the sans is. :)

Sand even... No, I don't have an edit function here...

Thanks Boner! Sorry about your cat.