Chapter 6
The Nephites gather to
the land of Cumorah for the final battles—Mormon hides the sacred records in
the hill Cumorah—The Lamanites are victorious, and the Nephite nation is
destroyed—Hundreds of thousands are slain with the sword. About A.D. 385.
Mormon states he is finishing his “record concerning the
destruction of my people” (Mormon 6:1). The Nephites had consistently been
warned about the consequences they would face if they turned away from the
Lord. For example, “And it came to pass that the prophets of the Lord did
threaten the people of Nephi, according to the word of God, that if they did
not keep the commandments, but should fall into transgression, they should be
destroyed from off the face of the land” (Jarom 1:10).
Nephi saw the ultimate destruction of his people.
“And while the angel spake these words, I beheld and saw
that the seed of my brethren did contend against my seed, according to the word
of the angel; and because of the pride of my seed, and the temptations of the
devil, I beheld that the seed of my brethren did overpower the people of my
seed.
“And it came to pass that I beheld, and saw the people of
the seed of my brethren that they had overcome my seed; and they went forth in
multitudes upon the face of the land” (1 Nephi 12:19-20)
One can imagine what went through Nephi’s mind, knowing
that, despite his greatest hopes and efforts, and the great hopes and efforts
of the descendants of the Nephites, this people would ultimately be destroyed.
This could be why Nephi came across so forcefully in his writing, hoping to
warn them of their ultimate fate. He gave them the way to avoid this fate –
follow the commandments of the Lord.
Mormon wrote an epistle, telling the Lamanite king he would
face the Lamanites in the land of Cumorah, near a hill which was also named
Cumorah. The king agreed to Mormon’s terms and the Nephite army marched to
Cumorah. They hope to gain an advantage over the Lamanites there.
“His people being left with few resources, Mormon had to
strike a final deal with the Lamanite enemy: to meet them, by appointment, at a
mutually acceptable battleground (see Mormon 6:2). Cumorah was the specified
site for the climactic struggle. The Lamanites surely must have wanted to get
the war over without extending their lines of supply still farther northward,
while the Nephites hoped not to lose what territory (including the land of
Cumorah) they still controlled. (Further, Cumorah must have been close to, if
not actually at, where Mormon had grown up. Perhaps by fighting on territory
with which he was intimately familiar, he “had hope to gain [tactical]
advantage over the Lamanites” [Mormon 6:4].) The Cumorah rendezvous spot
logically would have been on the boundary separating the two parties at that
moment.”[1]
In the 384th year since Christ’s birth, the two
armies gathered into the land of Cumorah. This included the remainder of the
Nephites.
“Many LDS scholars maintain that the hill we call Cumorah in
New York state is not the hill of that name known from the Book of Mormon,
which is possibly situated in southern Mexico. This conclusion is based
principally on the internal geography of the Nephite record, which suggests
that the hill in which Mormon buried the plates was near the narrow neck of
land. From the Book of Mormon description, the narrow neck could not have been
in the northeastern United States. Still, no one doubts that Moroni hid the
abridgment plates in a stone box in the New York hill, where he directed Joseph
Smith to find them. Moroni buried the plates sometime after AD 420, some
thirty-five years or more after the great battle at the hill Cumorah (compare
Mormon 6:5; Moroni 9:1), giving him plenty of time to travel a great distance
from his homeland. It is significant that inside that box Joseph found only the
abridgment plates and other sacred relics, but not the whole of the Nephite
library (see JS—H 1:52—53).”[2]
[1] Mormon’s
Map – Distances and Directions, John L. Sorenson, Maxwell Institute
website.
[2] Speech
from the Dust, Maxwell Institute website.
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