Posted by:
Jim Huston
(
)
Date: September 19, 2012 09:07PM
Humanity (Adam) Originated in Missouri
John F. Bowman, Conference Report, October 1946, p. 90
It was a thrilling experience for us to live and to labor in that particular mission, one of the most interesting places in all the world and one of the most important. There are many things concerning that part of the United States that many of us, especially the younger generations probably have forgotten all about, or never knew. We lived in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri, which was on the western borders of civilization, at the time our Saints first went there. It is east of the Missouri River, which was the borderland of the Lamanites who lived beyond that river to the west. In those parts we have learned, through the inspiration of God to his servant, the Prophet Joseph Smith, that the Lord God Almighty planted His Garden, the Garden of Eden. That always thrilled us while we lived there. That was a sacred, hallowed, holy spot to us because the great beginnings of the world were there, and not on the eastern hemisphere, where it is commonly thought that they were. Of course we undoubtedly have inmind that in that day the earth had not been divided, that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg and as I remember it, that probably was a hundred fifty or two hundred years, after the flood. But the Garden of Eden was planted in what is known now as Jackson County, and the Lord God Almighty placed his great servant, Adam, in that garden and later gave him his wife, Eve, with the commandment that they should multiply and replenish the earth, that of all of the trees of that garden they might freely partake, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they should not partake, but in the event that they did partake of it, in the day that they should eat thereof, they should surely die.
Harold B. Lee, The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 35
The Garden of Eden was located in the area of present-day Missouri It is not difficult for me, as we travel from Adam-ondi-Ahman down to Independence and back and forth to Liberty and up to Kingston and to Far West, to think of this as the Garden of Eden. It is in truth today a beautiful and verdant place. It may not be known to you people, but to us it is the center place because it is here where the commencement of the inhabitation of human beings upon the earth began.
Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p. 74
In accord with the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith, we teach that the Garden of Eden was on the American continent located where the City Zion, or the New Jerusalem, will be built. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, they eventually dwelt at a place called Adam-ondi¬Ahman, situated in what is now Daviess County, Missouri
John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, p. 127
Latter-day Saints know, through modern revelation, that the Garden of Eden was on the North American continent and that Adam and Eve began their conquest of the earth in the upper part of what is now the state of Missouri It seems very probable that the children of our first earthly parents moved down along the fertile, pleasant lands of the Mississippi valley. The great floods that have often occurred there make the description in Genesis seem very reasonable indeed. And if the historian saw the flood there, it is not unlikely that the waters covered the highest points or peaks, for there the mountains are but hills.
Wilford Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff, His Life and Labors, p. 545
During their lifelong experiences in the Church, President A. O. Smoot of Provo, and Elder Woodruff were devoted friends. Their associations had been intimate, and in the trying times of early Church history their relations were the most cordial and brotherly. The home of President Smoot in Provo always gave the fullest hospitality to Elder Woodruff on his visits to that town. On the 12th of May he records the circumstance that President Smoot's wife began immediately to regain her speech, after it had been lost through paralysis, by the special administration of Elder Woodruff and others. At that time his old friend related a peculiar circumstance of history that occurred at Adamondi-Ahman. President Smoot said that he and Alanson Ripley, while surveying at that town, which was about 22 miles from Jackson County, Missouri, came across a stone wall in the midst of a dense forest of underbush. The wall was 30 feet long, 3 feet thick, and 4 feet high. It was laid in mortar or cement. W"hen Joseph Smith visited the place and examined the wall he said it was the remains of an altar built by Father Adam and upon which he offered sacrifices after he was driven from the Garden of Eden. He said that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson County, Missouri. The whole town of Adam-ondi-Ahman was in the midst of a thick and heavy forest of timber and the place was named in honor of Adam's altar. The Prophet explained that it was upon this altar where Adam blessed his sons and his posterity, prior to his death.
Adam gathered his family at Adam-ondi-ahman
Harold B. Lee, Conference Report, April 1948, p. 53
I have thought it more than mere coincidence that one of the first martyrs in this dispensation, David W. Patten, a member of the Twelve Apostles, lost his life near the valley of Adam-ondi- ahman, that same valley in which Adam had gathered his posterity, which the Lord had revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith was near W"ight's Ferry, at a place called Spring Hill, Dayless County, Missouri. To me it has also been significant that this martyrdom resulted directly from the obedience of the Latter-day Saints to the commands that had been given to them to gather in certain places as members of the newly restored Church.
Garden of Eden in Jackson County, Missouri
Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 235
We have been taught that our Father and God, from whom we sprang, called and appointed his servants to go and organize an earth, and, among the rest, he said to Adam, "You go along also and help all you can; you are going to inhabit it when it is organized, therefore go and assist in the good work." It reads in the Scriptures that the Lord did it, but the true rendering is, that the Almighty sent Jehovah and Michael to do the work. They were also instructed to plant every kind of vegetable, likewise the forest and the fruit trees, and they actually brought from heaven every variety of fruit, of the seeds of vegetables, the seeds of flowers, and planted them in this earth on which we dwell. And I will say more, the spot chosen for the garden of Eden was Jackson County, in the State of Missouri, where Independence now stands; it was occupied in the morn of creation by Adam and his associates who came with him for the express purpose of peopling this earth.
Universal Flood
Noah built the arc in Missouri
John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, p. 396
Adam, after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, lived in the vicinity of the great Missouri and Mississippi rivers. As his descendants multiplied, they would naturally settle along the fertile and climatically acceptable river valleys. W"hen the flood came in the days of Noah, the Mississippi drainage must have increased to a tremendous volume, quite in harmony with the Biblical account. Noah's ark would be floated on the mighty, rushing waters, towards the Gulf of Mexico. With favorable winds, it would cross the Atlantic to the Eastern continents. There the human race, in its second start on earth, began to multiply and fill the earth.
Andrew Jenson, before the Students' Society, in the Social Hall, Salt Lake City, Friday evening, January 16, 1891. (Brian H. Stuy, ed. Collected Discourses, vol. 2)
Modern science has given us very accurately drawn charts of the course of the wind through the atmosphere surrounding us. We have no reason to believe these wind currents have changed since the creation. Now the prevailing current of wind over the central part of North America is from the west, and possibly this was the course followed by the tornado during the deluge. Now if the ark had been built in Armenia, where the mountain Ararat is situated, and it is found that the wind and currents have a general eastern direction, the ark would, during the one hundred and fifty days or five months of the deluge (that is from the commencement until the waters gained their greatest depth), have gone in an eastern course, say at the rate of about forty miles a day, some six thousand miles or beyond China; or if it floated faster, it would have left the ark somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. This would be an unreasonable theory to adopt, being entirely inconsistent. But the ark being built in America, somewhere, we may imagine in the latitude of Missouri, when taken up by the eastern borne current, and wafted by the hurricane following the same course, it is not out of the way to suppose it to have progressed as far as Ararat, some six or seven thousand miles from America, even had it traveled at a more rapid rate than forty or fifty miles a day. Over sixteen hundred years had passed from the creation until the ark was finished. In this time mankind had increased and multiplied and spread out far beyond the country around Eden (the Mississippi Valley), as signs of an antediluvian population indicate, and we may suppose the ark was built some distance east of the Garden, between the States of New York and Missouri. Couple this supposition with the circumstances connected with the flood, the current flowing from America, with the fact of the ark's resting in an easterly direction from this country, and we can form no other reasonable conclusion than that here the miraculous vessel was constructed and freighted with its treasure of animal life, and the progenitors designated and set apart to renew the human race.