Book of Mormon Cities Destroyed

Sixteen cites were named in the Book of Mormon:
how they were destroyed and why.

 

6 Cities Burned with Fire: because they had cast out the prophets and there were none righteous among them--they destroyed the government and the peace with their secret murders and combinations Jacobugath, Zarahemla, Laman, Josh, Gad, Kishkumen

Moroni Sank in the Sea:

City Found On Ocean Floor Off The Coast of Peru From the Sacramento California Union for March 27, 1966 "Sunken City Found In Peru "Dr. Robert J. Manzies, director of Duke University's oceanographic research and training program at the Duke Marine Laboratory, says there is some  justification for believing an ancient city may now rest on the ocean's floor . . .Manzies believes this could be one of the most ex citing discoveries of the century  insofar as ruins go.  He says the area is one marked by earthquakes and volcanoes, and he believes a similar disturbance might have dumped a city into the sea." The article states that a recent expedition headed by Manzies found a strange configuration off the ocean bottom while examining animal life in the Milne-Edward deep, a huge depression that drops 19,000 feet in some places just off the coast of Peru near Callao and further states: 'The scientists and crew aboard the vessel Anton Brunn were taking pictures of the marine life in the trench when their sonar picked up some irregular shapes along the otherwise smooth bottom.  Also, the cameras picked up shots of some strange looking columns, some of which appear to have some sort of writing on them. Scientists today say that there was a chance a city once existed on dry land where the Milne-Edward deep is today. Archaeologists have discovered signs of a civilization which  may have predated the Peru's Inca empire by several thousand years. Until recently, it was believed that Incas were the area's first permanent inhabitants, but the recent findings indicated an earlier civilization could have been built such as the one that Anton Brunn cameras and sonar may have found.' The article states that evidence for and against the theory of the existence of a sunken city is being studied at the Duke Marine Laboratory.  Very interesting if true."  (Copied from the RLDS Spokane Washington Official News Publication, Oct. 1979, vol. 5, No. 10)

 

Onihah, Mocum, Jerusalem, "and the inhabitants thereof, and waters have I caused to come up in the stead thereof"

City of Fifty Thousand Found in Mexico Milwaukee Free Press, Saturday, September 5, 1903

"Dr. Nicolas Leon, archaeologist and ethnologist of the Mexico Museum, has returned to the city of Mexico after a stay of two weeks in the State of Coahuila where he made several important investigations of the recent finds of cities and animals of antediluvian times. . . The excavations made so far show that a large amount of earth, which was evidently washed down from the mountain floods.  How long ago the catastrophe occurred can not be determined.  Portions of buildings so far unearth show that the city -- at least the largest of the cities that were covered by the debris of the flood, there being at least three cities destroyed -- was very extensive.  The indications are that there were many  massive structures in the city and that they were of a class of architecture not to be found elsewhere in Mexico. According to the estimates of the scientists under whose directions the excavations are being made, the city in question had a population of at least fifty thousand.  The destruction wrought by the flood was complete.  All the inhabitants of the cities were killed, as well as all the animals.  Skeletons of the human in habitants and of the animals are strewn all through the debris, from the depth of three feet, showing that all the debris was deposited almost at once.  Measurements show that the debris is on an average of sixty feet deep where the largest of the cities stood." (Refs. 3N 3:5-15;  4:1-17, 65-69; 4N 1:10;  1N 3:101)

III Nephi 4:13 says: "And there were some who were carried away in the whirlwind" An Aztec pictograph from Lord Kingsborough's work, shows men and monkeys being carried away in a storm or wind, and people sitting below in darkness.  The Book of Mormon says that after the three days of darkness, Jesus Christ appeared to the people.     The Aztec Great Dread of the Black Night "They feared this black night might occur again.  Josiah E. Hickman takes note: 'Just at the close of the Black Sun, the god Nahuas came to them, says Sahagun. Some natives tribes speak of a sun that was extinguished for three or four days; others say for many days. At the end of their fifty-two-year cycle the Aztec started the fires in their temples.  The fires had been allowed to die out.   They had an awesome fear that with the dawning of the new century they would not be able to start the fires.  When the fires were started, the event was celebrated with great rejoicing.  This ceremony is apparently dated back to the three days and nights of darkness when no fires could be kindled even with their fine and exceeding dry wood.'  " (The Romance of the Book of Mormon, p. 201; copied from Criticisms of the Book of Mormon Answered, p. 33)