The Blood of the
Saints
The Nephite record predicts that many
of the Gentiles would carry their animosity toward the Book of Mormon and the
Restoration beyond epithets and ridicule.
Yea, and there shall be many which
shall teach after this manner, false, vain, and foolish doctrines, and they
shall be puffed up in their hearts, and shall seek deep to hide their counsels
from the Lord; and their works shall be in the dark; and the blood of the
Saints shall cry from the ground against them.—II Nephi 12.11 [LDS: 2 Nephi
28:9-10].
Speaking of this same day when the
record of their people should come forth to the Gentiles, another Nephite
prophet says: “And it shall come in a day when the blood of the saints shall
cry unto the Lord, because of secret combinations and the works of darkness”
(Mormon 4:35 [LDS: Mormon 8:41].
Here we have a strange prophecy
declaring that the book shall come forth in a day when the “blood of the saints”
shall cry unto the Lord because of secret combinations and works of darkness.
In 1830 when the Book of Mormon was
published, America was regarded as a haven of religious freedom. Our
constitution guaranteed to every man the privilege of worshiping God according
to the dictates of his own conscience. The land had been settled by a people
who came mostly in search of religious freedom. Who would ever have thought
that people’s blood could be shed here in the United States because of
religious principles and beliefs? Yet that is exactly the thing that happened
in Missouri and finally in Illinois, where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were mobbed
and murdered. If Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon and concocted it
himself, what strange idea led him to put a prophecy like that in a book? Yes,
and stranger yet, what unholy urges prompted the people in Missouri and
Illinois to go ahead and fulfill this prophecy by mobbing, murdering, and plundering
the Saints? (Roy E. Weldon and F. Edward Butterworth, Book of Mormon Deeps,
3 vols. [1979], 3:75; italics in original; comments in square brackets added
for clarification)
Further Reading:
