Yesterday, I talked a little bit about the ways in which the Mayans first knew, and then corrupted the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, I’ll talk about how this came about. It’s a story of sacred records that starts in Jerusalem.
Lehi was a prophet living in Jerusalem at about 600 B.C. It was a time of wickedness for these people; the prophets who urged them to repent and return to righteous living were cast out or killed.
After trying his best to call the people to repentance the Lord sent Him a warning in a dream. He was warned that he must take his family and leave Jerusalem before those who sought his life could carry out their plans. He obeyed and put his life in the Lord’s hands, not knowing what his path would be. He packed supplies, left behind all his non-essential worldly goods and journeyed into the wilderness.
It wasn’t long, however, before the Lord reminded Lehi that he had forgotten something crucial. He had forgotten to bring the genealogy of his family and their record of the gospel. His sons were sent back to obtain them. Though it was not easy, it was necessary because the Lord had plans for Lehi’s family. They would need a sacred record to guide them now and for generations to come. These records were carried across the ocean with Lehi and his family to a new and Promised Land. Nephi and the prophets after him continued to add to the record of the people. Other people came to the America’s carrying their own sacred records and recording the workings of God among their people.
These records are what would eventually become known as the Book of Mormon in the Latter-days. In the meantime they served as a guideline for each generation in keeping the commandments of God, just as the Jews did on the other side of the world. After Christ came among their people, their scriptures changed to fit a higher gospel as outlined by Jesus Christ. How then, if they had these records did their beliefs become so confused? Like all people, they had periods of righteousness and unrighteousness, but they did not completely fall until their scriptures were lost and the priesthood was no longer among them.
When the plates came to Moroni for safe keeping, he faced a difficult task. He was alone, the last man of his people and hunted by his enemies because of his beliefs. He wandered this way for many years until he came to the place the Lord had led him: a tiny hill called Cumorah in upper state New York where he would hide the plates and one day give them to Joseph Smith with the commandment to send Christ’s true gospel out among the people once again. Had he stayed, been found out, or killed by his enemies this record would have been lost or destroyed. Had he hidden it in places he knew, it likely would have been found by his enemies or the Spaniards who destroyed the Mayan’s own religious records in order to instill their own beliefs of the gospel without interference from their own beliefs.
A sacred record was preserved from 600 B.C. until it was revealed in 1827 to be translated by the power of God and sent out among His people again. Our lives had been dark, without a pure record of His gospel. A new age of righteousness was able to begin because of the addition of the Book of Mormon to the word of God found in the Bible. We now have the records we need to live as He would have us.
