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Choice Above All Other Lands CHOICE ABOVE ALL OTHER LANDS Book of Mormon Covenant Lands According to the Best Sources By W. Vincent Coon First Extended E-book Edition, 2011 2 First edition Copyright © 2008, E-book edition Copyright © 2011, By W. Vincent Coon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author. Cover images of lands and seas derived from veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov Brit Publishing LLC Salt Lake City, Utah United States of America ISBN-13: 978-0-615-48051-0 Library of Congress Registration Number: TX 7-152-233 http://www.bookofmormonpromisedland.com 3 Contents CHOICE ABOVE ALL OTHER LANDS About the Author and this Book ............................................................................ 6 Preface ...................................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ 12 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 13 Footnote ............................................................................................................... 15 Chapter One Comparing the Book of Mormon with Veytia’s History of Ancient Mesoamerica They Came from the North .................................................................................. 17 No Loss of Life! .................................................................................................... 20 Stars Were Seen at Day ....................................................................................... 22 He Arrived Years Later ........................................................................................ 27 Water on the West and on the East ...................................................................... 30 Chapter One Charts, Pictures and Maps ............................................................ 41 Chapter One Footnotes ........................................................................................ 51 Chapter Two Statements by the Prophet, Recorded by Others From the Mounds of Illinois ................................................................................ 52 Manti in Missouri ................................................................................................ 54 Hill of Cumorah ................................................................................................... 56 Chapter Two Pictures .......................................................................................... 58 Chapter Three Unsigned Articles and a Popular Book Brethren Speculate ............................................................................................... 62 The Prophet Becomes Editor ............................................................................... 68 The EXTRACT Article .......................................................................................... 70 “FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS” ................................................................. 72 The ZARAHEMLA Article ................................................................................... 75 Tactfully Correcting the Error ............................................................................ 80 More from the Source of the ZARAHEMLA Piece .............................................. 83 Chapter Three Chart and Pictures ...................................................................... 86 Chapter Three Footnotes ..................................................................................... 91 Chapter Four Joseph Smith’s American Israelite Setting Tropical Jungles or Temperate Forests? ............................................................ 93 Seasons in the Promised Land and the Festivals of Israel .................................. 98 The Law versus “the tradition of the elders” .................................................... 104 The Extent of Lehi’s Covenant Land of Liberty ................................................. 107 The Book of Mormon, a Record of Ancient Northern Americans ..................... 113 The Nephites Were Among the Mound Builders ................................................ 114 4 Aboriginal Inhabitants of This Country ............................................................ 115 Book of Mormon Implements, Fortifications and Wars in Northern America .. 124 Out of the Ground .............................................................................................. 130 Chapter Four Pictures ....................................................................................... 132 Chapter Four Footnote ...................................................................................... 140 Chapter Five Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Leif Ericsson, St. Brendon! Chapter Five Picture ......................................................................................... 145 Chapter Six Helmets or Head-plates? Chapter Six Chart and Pictures ......................................................................... 148 Chapter Seven “ARISE, shine” The Blessing of Genuine Maps .......................................................................... 157 Covenant Records and Promised Lands ............................................................ 163 In Ramah ............................................................................................................ 167 Search These Things Diligently ......................................................................... 175 Maps Pertaining to Doctrine and Covenants 128:19-20 .................................. 177 Chapter Seven Footnotes ................................................................................... 183 Appendix Book of Mormon Lands and the Times and Seasons Newspaper – Table and Articles An Instance of Mormon Apocrypha ................................................................... 212 Hagoth’s Lost Ships ........................................................................................... 217 Relative Directions in Scriptural Lands ............................................................ 220 Joseph Smith, Josiah Priest, and the Times and Seasons ................................. 225 References: ......................................................................................................... 261 Index ..................................................................................................................... 266 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 271 5 About the Author and this Book Ward Vincent Coon has served in numerous capacities as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He sees every calling as an opportunity to teach from the scriptures. Brother Coon graduated Cum Laude with Hebrew as a foreign language, having studied Modern Hebrew at the University of Utah and in Israel at the Ulpan Akiva, near Netanya. He has a Masters degree in Physics, and a Six Sigma Black Belt. He works in the field of medical x-ray devices as an R&D Engineer. Brother Coon’s research on the topic of Book of Mormon covenant lands shows that the scriptures, and statements of the Prophet Joseph Smith, are sufficient for locating the regions that the messenger referred to when telling young Joseph of a book “giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent…” Determining the general location of the American Promised Land, based on LDS scripture, and first hand, verifiable statements by the Prophet, is preferable to speculative geographies and archaeological endeavors inspired by anonymous newspaper articles of the 1840s. Objective LDS and non-LDS historians alike can agree on this approach. One doesn’t have to prove events that the Bible says took place long ago at “Carmel by the sea” (Jeremiah 46:18) in order to reach agreement on the location of Carmel. The same is true for the location of Cumorah established in LDS scripture. Whether or not its divine origin is accepted, the Book of Mormon has an Old and New World setting. Historians, who study the 19th century literary genre treating North America’s mysterious mound builders, recognize the original American setting for the Book of Mormon. Historians have arrived at the Book of Mormon’s mound builder setting by purely secular means. Brother Coon has come to agree with the mound builder setting by study and also by faith. 6 Preface As a teenager, I committed to read at least one chapter from the Scriptures every day without fail. This was a commitment that I determined to keep no matter what! When I went camping, I brought my scriptures along and read them. If I had to read by flashlight, I did! When I came home late from a drive-in movie and found that I had yet to read Jacob 5, I stayed up and read it. Even when I did not understand the chapter, I read it anyway. I read at least one chapter from scripture each day - even if I did not feel like reading. Keeping this commitment I read and reread all of the Standard Works of the Church: The Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price - over and over again. As the years passed, I lost count of the number of times that I had read the Book of Mormon cover to cover. Eventually, I undertook to daily study, from more than one book of scripture. Usually, I would study the Book of Mormon in addition to another scripture. If I listened to the scriptures
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