The Place Where Jesus Showed Himself

Here are a few more thoughts about Book of Mormon geography to continue from yesterday’s post.  First, while there are numerous mentions of the “land southward” and the “land northward” in the text, there are also a couple of mentions of the “land south” and the “land north,” and I believe these refer to different places.  Mormon told us that there were “all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north” and then he clarified saying, “Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south” (Helaman 6:9-10).  We know that Mosiah found the Mulekites after traveling from the land of Nephi north to “the land which is called the land of Zarahemla.”  The Mulekites “came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah,” and “journeyed in the wilderness, and were brought by the hand of the Lord across the great waters, into the land where Mosiah discovered them” (Omni 1:13, 16).  So the land of Zarahemla was where the Mulekites originally arrived, and it must have been part of the “land north” as described in Helaman 6.  As mentioned yesterday, Bountiful was north of Zarahemla, and the narrow neck of land followed by the “land northward” was north of that.  So the “land southward” had two parts: the “land south” which contained the land of Nephi and the “land north” which contained the land of Zarahemla. 

           With this understanding I think it helps clarify the geography around the famous story of the Gadianton robbers and Lachoneus.  We know that Lachoneus appointed a land for the people to gather to which was “between the land Zarahemla and the land Bountiful, yea, to the line which was between the land Bountiful and the land Desolation” (3 Nephi 3:23).  So they were in the “land north” and were north of Zarahemla and south of the narrow neck of land where they grouped together and prepared for the Gadianton robbers.  Those robbers must have been up in area of the land of Nephi (south of Zarahemla but up in elevation) because they “began to come down and to sally forth from the hills, and out of the mountains…  and began to take possession of the lands, both which were in the land south and which were in the land north, and began to take possession of all the lands which had been deserted by the Nephites, and the cities which had been left desolate” (3 Nephi 4:1).  These robbers then must have taken over what was in the land of Nephi (“land south) and then Zarahemla (“land north”) until they came north to the Nephites.  When the Gadianton robbers realized that they were losing against Nephites, they did “withdraw themselves from the siege, and march into the furthermost parts of the land northward” (3 Nephi 4:23).  So instead of retreating back south to the direction of land of Nephi which had “no wild beasts nor game in those lands”, they tried to go around the Nephites and get through the narrow neck of land into the land northward (3 Nephi 4:2).  They were stopped in that attempt, though, and the war was ended. 

The most important event in the Book of Mormon took place in the “land north” in the land of Bountiful, south of the “land northward.”  We read that the people of Nephi were gathered “round about the temple which was in the land Bountiful” (3 Nephi 11:1). The introduction to this chapter, which I believe was part of the original text, summarizes the whole visit of Savior to the people of Nephi as occurring “in the land Bountiful.”  I think it is fitting that this location where Christ came was the same general location that the Nephites had banded together in unity and faith in Jesus Christ to overcome the Gadianton robbers.  After His first day there in Bountiful, we read that “all the night it was noised abroad concerning Jesus; and insomuch did they send forth unto the people that there were many, yea, an exceedingly great number, did labor exceedingly all that night, that they might be on the morrow in the place where Jesus should show himself unto the multitude” (3 Nephi 19:3).  People were presumably coming south from the land northward and north from the lands of Nephi and Zarahemla to try to be where the Savior was.  I wish we had more of that story of how people labored and traveled to be where the Savior was.  But that verse alone perhaps contains a lesson of how important it is for us, symbolically speaking, to get to “the place where Jesus [will] show himself” and then try to get as many people as we can with us there as well.