Escape from Doom
[Summary from Early Lectures]
[Mostly Omitted by Editor]
106 Let’s review quickly the first book of Nephi. In the first verse we saw the family well loaded with cultural baggage at the time of a major cultural transplant. The key name to Lehi’s period for all Western civilization is Zarathustra. In the 1920s Professor Werner Jaeger was the first one to point out that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle are replete with the teachings of Zarathustra, who was another contemporary of Lehi. From the Avesta and Iranian centers, his teachings spread to the East, and already were completely at home in the schools of the West. Incidentally, we read in the Midrash (this is the typical legend, of course) that Zarathustra followed the teachings of Abraham. But you all know Nietzsche’s famous work Also Sprach Zarathustra [Thus Spake Zarathustra] and you all know the introductory phrases to 2001, when Straus does that miraculous thing with a simple C-major chord. Remember how it starts out? Well, that’s Also Sprach Zarathustra right out of the Book of Mormon.
106 1 Nephi 1:4 We saw that Nephi had good parents and a good representative education. His education included not only his own culture and religion (the learning of the Jews) but also the language of the Egyptians, which was the dominant world language in all that area at that time to a far greater degree than people have realized heretofore. Now refer to the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 1:4, “There came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.” Now that’s the alternative offered us throughout the Book of Mormon. Here is a computer printout of all the passages calling for repentance in the Book of Mormon. They go on and on and on; the word destruction appears 456 times. That’s the theme. As it opens, they will be destroyed, and it ends on that theme. You find it all the way through. Repent appears 360 times. They [repent and destruction] are almost always mentioned in the same breath, as they are here. You have your choice: You can repent, or you can be destroyed.
106,107 This is [the] way the Lord deals with his chosen people. Others are not bound by that rigid rule. They go on forever, and this is a surprising thing. We think about Zarathustra, etc. The Iranians (Persians) are just as crazy today as they were in his day. He talked about them, rebuked their stupidity, etc. That’s the main theme that Nietzsche took up when he wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra. But other nations are still there. The Greeks are still there and just as Greek as ever But anyway the Greeks are still going, and the Egyptians are still going. They are as Egyptian as they can be; that’s why they are such lovable people. They never resort to violence if they can help it, and they get along beautifully with each other. It’s the oldest, most stable civilization in the world—thousands of years and the same Egyptians. The Arabs are the same lovable, obnoxious Arabs—the same as they have always been (fighting each other). With the people of the North it’s the same thing (in the sagas). There were the same troubles up there, but they’ve gotten more civilized than the others. But the point is that those nations were old when Lehi left Jerusalem; they were ancient then.
107 But Lehi’s people and everything on this continent is gone. The promise here is when they are fully ripe in iniquity they will be completely swept from the land; they will be utterly destroyed—swept from off the face of the land. That’s the rule for the Promised Land. Of course, this continent and the Western hemisphere are covered with ruins. Nobody has the vaguest idea who was here or anything about them at all; they are gone without a trace. The Mayan people are still there among the Mayan ruins, but there are a lot of guesses about what was Olmec, etc., when you go along the coast there at Hermosa. Nobody knows to this day. When you summarize everything that’s known it’s ridiculous, and it’s all purely speculative. The thing is that the people here disappeared, and they disappeared without a trace, just gone.
108 “Does this apply to us?” we ask. Let me read a statement of Joseph Smith here. This is what he said in 1833: “I have been carefully viewing the state of things throughout the Christian land. I have looked with feelings of the most painful anxiety. Upon one hand, I behold the manifest withdrawal of God’s spirit and a veil of stupidity.” There’s the sentence of doom. It’s not wickedness, but you know you’re gone when you’re stupid. “It was worse than the cry that it was a mistake,” as Talleyrand said. It’s a veil of stupidity, and you see it everywhere.
108 Now, here’s our Book of Mormon story: “Christ proposed to make a covenant with the Jews, but they rejected him and his proposal. The Gentiles received the covenant, but the Gentiles have not continued, but have departed from the faith. They have become high minded and have not feared; therefore, but few of them will be gathered [few were, actually]. The nations of the Gentiles are hastily preparing, getting ready for the first stage of the part allotted to them when the Lord rebukes the nations. The Lord declared to his servants some eighteen months since that he was then withdrawing his spirit from the earth. The governments of the earth are thrown into confusion and division, and destruction to the eye of the spiritual beholder seems to be written by a finger of an invisible hand in large capitals upon almost everything we behold.” Destruction is the word again.