One of the big differences between the Heartland & Mesoamerican Theories of the Book of Mormon deals with volcanoes. Very few people have studied Book of Mormon geology. During the destruction found in 3rd Nephi, it mentions earthquakes and “mists of darkness.” Meso proponents believe this is a reference to volcanoes, and there are several candidates in Mesoamerica. These volcanoes are not found in the Heartland, and Heartlanders dismiss this possibility. Jerry Grover has a background in geology and has written a book called “Geology of the Book of Mormon.” He’s the first to make an in-depth look at the Book of Mormon from a geological point of view. Check out our conversation…
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Meet Jerry Grover
Interview
GT 00:35 Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to have (I think) my first geologist on the show. Could you go ahead and tell us who you are?
Jerry 00:43 Yeah. Jerry Grover. I’m a licensed professional geologist and engineer as well, Civil Engineer.
GT 00:50 Okay.
Jerry 00:50 I’ve written a few books, which I think caught your attention.
GT 00:53 Yes. So you live here in Utah County?
Jerry 00:55 Yeah. American Fork.
GT 00:57 And so tell us a bit a little bit about your academic background. Where did you go to school?
Jerry 01:02 My undergraduate was at BYU. I was a geological engineer. I didn’t have a second major, but also mechanical engineering, and then…
GT 01:11 Kind of a dual major?
Jerry 01:12 Yeah, they don’t really offer that at BYU. But, I had enough that I got accepted into grad school as a mechanical engineer at University of Utah.
GT 01:20 Oh, so you’re conflicted?
Jerry 01:21 Yeah. And then I shifted to civil engineering, so I was even more conflicted. So, I got my Master of Engineering at the University of Utah. I’m a licensed structural civil engineer, and also a licensed professional geologist.
GT 01:37 And so when they play each other, who do you root for?
Jerry 01:39 Well, my dad was a BYU professor, so I have to be careful.
GT 01:43 I’m sorry.
Jerry 01:43 My son’s a University of Utah fan.
GT 01:45 Oh, good. I’m glad to hear that. He must be cool.
Jerry 01:48 Yeah, so, I probably root for Utah State.
GT 01:53 Oh, there you go. That’s weird, just to just to be nonpartisan. Well, great. Well, you’ve got a book, a great book called Geology in the Book of Mormon. Why don’t you show the camera?
Jerry 02:07 Yeah, this has got some tabs on it and stuff.
GT 02:10 There you go. And it’s an expensive book. It’s out of print now. You’ve got to spend, like, 80 bucks to get that thing.
Jerry 02:16 Yeah, well, I only printed–it’s actually free as a PDF.
GT 02:20 Yeah, that’s true.
Jerry 02:21 All of my books, I only print a limited number. I’m not in the book selling business and mostly I donate to libraries, and then a few people that want hard copies. So, I could do a reprint, but I just haven’t got around to doing an update. I’m working on some other books.
GT 02:37 Okay, well, then we might talk about some other books, too. So, you’ve got a geology background, civil and mechanical engineering background. And so, tell us why you decided to write Geology in the Book of Mormon.
Jerry 02:53 Well, I just followed Book of Mormon geography models [like] John Sorensen’s models that he proposed. And even from the time–I served LDS mission. So, I actually got some of his early drafts to translate into Italian, because I spoke Italian. And it’s always interested me. But I really didn’t have any inklings to publish anything. I assumed, well, somebody else might, some BYU professor or something. But really, nobody had done anything. And so, I thought, well, [this is] something that’s really just been sitting out there with no research. There are a lot of those topics. And there’s very few scientific approaches to the Book of Mormon, as I found out, looking at it. A lot of people write books on doctrine, and the text and translation techniques and all that, but very few people have actually really looked, scientifically, at what’s said in the Book of Mormon or what’s indicated. And so that’s kind of my—and I have a website, it’s basically dedicated to scientific and linguistic research. So, that’s really what I engage in and support. And I’ve also funded some other people’s projects.
GT 04:12 Okay, and then before we dive into the book, I want to get a couple other things. I pointed out to you, a month ago, probably, that you have an entry in Divergent Paths of the Restoration. So, do you lead a Mormon group? Are you like a prophet or something?
Jerry 04:30 Well, I guess I– that’s a career I hadn’t really thought of. I guess it’s possible. I was surprised when you pointed that out. I’m like, “I didn’t really even know that they knew I existed.”
GT 04:43 So Steve Shields, if you’re watching, we’ve got a prophet here.
Jerry 04:48 I think he caught on because I did the Caracters document translation. Then he wrote an article in the JWHA Journal.
GT 04:56 John Whitmer Historical Association.
Jerry 04:58 There’s like three people that have attempted translations of that.
GT 05:01 The Caracters document.
Jerry 05:02 Yeah, so that’s why he– I was in that article. And so, I think, maybe that’s how he ran across me. Because I don’t know him from Adam. Right?
GT 05:11 He’s a really cool guy.
Jerry 05:12 No, I’m sure. I’ve seen him on some podcasts. He lives in Korea or something like that. He seems like a nice guy.
GT 05:16 He’s a former Seventy in the Community of Christ.
Jerry 05:18 Yeah. So I, for me, it was [strange.]
GT 05:21 In fact, he was at [John] Whitmer [Conference] in September, here in Independence.
Jerry 05:25 So, yeah, and I don’t really involve, like I say, most of my books are not Church history stuff. Right? So they don’t really crossover into a lot of that, other than when I–I did one on the metallurgy of the plates, looking at how they were made. And so I got into a little bit, just because I needed the initial descriptions of the plates. And so, I do engage a little bit in Church history, but not a lot. So, a lot of the–there’s not very many. If I’m leading a church, there’s like three people that really do scientific or even geographical research anymore.
Jerry 05:50 So you do go to LDS Church, I guess. Is that [right]?
Jerry 06:08 Yeah, yeah.
GT 06:10 So you’re not a you’re not a schismatic leader or anything?
Jerry 06:13 No. I mean, I’ve looked at other religions, studied other religions, I’m open minded about–I don’t think we have some license, some patent on the truth. Right? I mean, you can get from a lot of areas, science is just one. So I mean, I’m open minded to listening to all kinds of people.
GT 06:34 So, you’re also my second politician on the show. Can you talk a little– I had Darren Parry. He ran, unsuccessfully, as a Democrat in the first congressional district. I had him on right after he lost.
Jerry 06:46 Well, I have a lot of repressed memory there. So, I’m not sure how much I can tell you. So, back in, what, 1994 I went off my medication decided to run for office. So, I was elected as a Utah County Commissioner and served from 1995 to 2006 as a county commissioner. So, basically, I worked in the private sector before that, and then after that, I’ve been back in the private sector as an engineer. So that was really my only stint in government per se.
GT 07:21 So you were a good road builder. I guess, basically. Is that’s what the county commissioner does?
Jerry 07:24 Yeah, I knew how to build roads. I knew about the recorder’s office, because I actually worked doing some, when I was a geologist, I did some research in the recorder’s office. So, I actually ran I thought my skill set matched the job, as opposed to just being some ego boost or something like that. And, personally, I was happy if people didn’t know who I was. My neighbors thought I was on, maybe, city council or something. They had no clue what I really did. And that was fine with me. I did develop two important maxims in life, though, as a politician. One was, “Things are always darkest before they go completely black.” The second was, “There’s no problem so large that I can’t run away from it.”
GT 08:15 (Chuckling)
Jerry 08:15 Anyway, I thought it was important that people run that actually have skill sets. They’re not just attorneys or real estate people or people climbing. I had no interest in being governor or senator. I just felt like I could do a good job at that job. I did my best.
Earthquake & Volcano Science for Book of Mormon
GT 08:35 Very good. Well, so tell us how you–so you’re kind of a geologist, kind of an engineer. What are some of the passages in the Book of Mormon, I guess, that caught your attention and led you to writing the book?
Jerry 08:50 Well, there actually have been a few articles done by some BYU geologists. Bart Kowallis did one. Maybe he did a little small paper or pamphlet and Dr. Baer. Both of those I had [as instructors] when I went to school there. They were teachers. But they were just very generic. They just said, “Well 3rd Nephi looks like a volcanic eruption.” But no one had really said, “Okay, let’s apply this to, actually, the models.” The other thing I was seeing is the geographic models you had a variety of them. Some people have their own personal ones and they’re all over the place.
GT 09:30 Do you want to give us a brief rundown of the different geography theories really quickly?[1]
Jerry 09:34 Well, I don’t know all, because everybody’s got a website.
GT 09:37 I’ll help you. I’ll fill it in.
Jerry 09:38 I know. I mean, basically, in Mesoamerica you have probably two primary models, the river Sidon being the Grijalva river or the Usumacinta River being the Sidon River. There’s also another one by Richard Hauck, which basically has it further over to the East in the Motagua Valley.
GT 09:59 Guatemala area?
Jerry 10:00 Yeah, and pretty much most of the Mesoamerica models agree that the land northward corresponds to the Olmec/Jaredite civilization, which is the earlier civilization. And so, you do have commonality with the two primary models. The premise is the city, the Land of Nephi, is the valley of Guatemala, Guatemala City, so you actually have some commonality. But it diverged is on which was the river Sidon. And then you have a few people, you know, all of Yucatan and in there, but there are certain people that just have their own. They don’t have any following, but they just propose and write a website.
GT 10:40 There’s like, Baja, also.
Jerry 10:42 Yeah, the Baja, they’ve got a website there. And so, I actually commented a little bit in a later chapter. The book was basically saying, “Okay, what I’m going to do here is you have all these people.” The geography and the passages that relate to geography. I mean, there’s not that many that are very extensive. And so, I figured you’ve gotten as far as you’re going to get, in terms of establishing the models. Now, it’s just arguing about, which river, that kind of thing. But there’s not really much more in the text to ferret out. So, you have the archaeological parameters that you have to then apply, linguistic parameters, again, because the text of the geography is just one parameter. It has to lay in and match other parameters.
Jerry 11:33 So I thought well, geology is a parameter that has never been looked at. I don’t care whose model it is. They need to look at that and make sure that their model is consistent with what the Book of Mormon says geologically. And so that was the attempt of the book. Number one, it was to establish that all of the things described in the Book of Mormon, that have geological [parameters] can be explained geologically. So, that was a part of the attempt of the book to say, okay, everything in 3rd Nephi can be explained by some geological event, whether it’s the vapor, mist of darkness, tumultuous noises, groanings of the earth, renderings of the rock, quakings, all those things. So, I went through that to say, okay, yes, all of these things are consistent, and can be explained geologically.
Jerry 12:28 Then it was like, okay, now that you have that, how do you lay [out] your model? You have to have the potential for seismic activity in the right places. It says the land northward had the bulk of the destruction. So, again, some models don’t really subscribe to a volcano. They try to come up with some other explanations, but whatever it is, you have to show that you at least have laid down the cities [in the right locations. The cities] you’ve laid down, the ones that were destroyed, show how they were destroyed, right?
GT 13:05 During 3rd Nephi, when the great destruction [happened.]
Jerry 13:07 Yeah, and so like, if you have Ammonihah, and not all of them are 3rd Nephi, meaning you have a couple of prison events where the prison shook.
GT 13:13 Oh, yeah, like Alma.
Jerry 13:15 Right. And so there was a great sound, which I actually explain. There’s actually what’s called a super shear earthquake that occurs in strike-slip faults, that are typically granitic underlying rock. So, if you’ve got a location as Ammonihah, you’re going to have to show that Ammonihah is actually in a seismically active zone, probably strike-slip, and show that there’s probably some sort of granitic rock somewhere at depth or something that would generate this [sound.] Because a super shear earthquake creates a sonic boom. So that’s the great sound. Because it talks about a great sound that surprised them all. And so that’s one.
Jerry 13:53 Then you have the other prison event. This is in the land of Nephi, where it talks about shaking, and the cloud came down. There was shaking, clouds. So that’s looking at a volcanic eruption earthquake. So, you’re going have to show proximity to a volcano, in that location near your valley of your land of Nephi. So, those are a couple outside that 3rd Nephi event that are geologic events. And so, the point was to say, “Okay, any people working on a model will have to account for the geology.” Now, they can maybe interpret something a little differently than me. That’s fine. But you at least have to account for this parameter. You can’t just say, “Oh, there’s a fault somewhere in our model.” You’ve got to show that it’s a large enough fault.
GT 14:49 So you’re focused mostly on earthquake activities. Is that fair to say?
Jerry 14:55 Well, I looked at some different things. I also looked at storms. I looked at some meteorological events, because that’s one of the questions. Could it be a hurricane when it talks about the great storm? Is it talking about just a volcanic eruption that could be described as a great storm anciently? And so, I looked and said, okay. Some of these answered questions for other models, but I said the Sorenson model is the most developed. He has maps. He’s got cities laid out. Most of the models are [short on details.]
GT 15:30 Roughly here, roughly there.
Jerry 15:32 Right. Anytime they try to zoom in, it starts having problems. And that’s why anybody can propose a model. But actually, you have to actually lay it in on the ground, specifically, have archaeological sites match up, have cultures match up. This is just saying, “Listen, your geology is going to match up as well.” So I took the Sorenson model and laid it in. But there were some other questions I wanted to answer. First of all, some people said, “Well, it’s just a volcano. Then you have the volcanic earthquakes. And so I looked at it.
Jerry 16:05 One of the areas of geology is actually hazard analysis. So there are geologists, all they do is look at a city. There are city planners that are located next to a volcano like Mexico City, for example.
GT 16:19 Pompei?
Jerry 16:21 Yeah, probably most of the city planners were killed at the eruption. (Chuckling) But I’m saying modernly. So, you would say, “Hey, we’ve got this volcano near Mexico City. If it erupts, where are we going to get our ashfall? Where are we going to get what’s called Lahar mudflows coming out. And so, you have to incorporate that into your planning. In the Wasatch Front, we have earthquakes. So, we’re a seismic five. So, if you’re planning to build along the fault, what’s the distance away from the fault? Where are the debris flows that are going to come out? You look historically, where debris flows have come out. So, you actually create hazard maps, say, “Okay, we probably don’t want to build right here, because when an earthquake happens, you may wipe out the subdivision,” or something like that.
GT 17:14 So do they build them anyway?
Jerry 17:15 Some cities do approve them. When I was a county commissioner, that’s what we did, we developed a hazard map for Utah County. We said, “Okay, these are…”
GT 17:24 You shouldn’t build here.
Jerry 17:25 Or if you do, you need to mitigate, like avalanche. You can build in an avalanche zone. Your house has to be just built in such a way that it can shed an avalanche. It doesn’t just take it off down the mountain. [It needs a] concrete roof, whatever it is. So, I’m not saying that doesn’t mean you can’t build. But you have to…
GT 17:45 But you’re going to have to have more stringent building requirements.
Jerry 17:47 Yeah, you have to consider what the underlying geology is and the soils, too. Some soils–and I actually kind of go through that in the book. Some soils are very susceptible to destructive movement called liquefaction. Basically, because they’re saturated when the earthquake hits, the pressure wave goes and just turns it to jello.
GT 18:11 Turns the ground to jello.
Jerry 18:14 Yeah, so it can’t support. It doesn’t have any bearing strength.
GT 18:16 Is it kind of like quicksand where it just kind of sinks in?
Jerry 18:18 No, it’s just not able to sustain load. And so, the buildings will shift this way, or this way, or it’ll crack.
GT 18:28 Kind of like leaning tower of Pisa?
Jerry 18:29 Yeah. Well, actually, in my book, I talk about, in Japan, there’s one that has a series of apartment buildings. One goes this way. One flips this way.
GT 18:36 Yeah I remember that.
Jerry 18:37 Yeah. Because you also have these surface waves that undulate going through. You have a pressure wave. A pressure wave, you can kind of think of like a tube with ping pong balls in it. You hit one end and then it traveled. There’s a wave that goes through. A force goes through and a ping pong ball pops out the other end. So, the pressure wave, it’s just like a hit and then it gets pressure moving through as a wave. And that’s what destabilizes, if you will, the soil that’s susceptible to liquefaction. And then you also have the undulating waves that can move through that also cause damage. But what happens is, essentially, when you have the area that’s liquefaction, if you use the Richter scale, we don’t use that much anymore in geology, but…
GT 19:30 Oh, really?
Jerry 19:31 Well, there’s a different–it’s the moment scale. It correlates.
GT 19:35 You mentioned that in the book, but I most people are familiar with the Richter scale.
Jerry 19:39 Yeah and they still use that. It’s mostly because on the higher ends, the Richter scale doesn’t work very well. Meaning it’s okay in the middle. I mean, this is very summarizing it, not very academically. And so, you actually will get this destruction. It’ll basically move. Your area that is susceptible to liquefaction will be equivalent to maybe two or three on the Richter scale. Meaning, if you get hit with a five, the damage may be what would be an eight, just because the ground is unstable. Does that make sense?
GT 20:15 Okay.
Jerry 20:16 So you can kind of calculate and say, I mean, again, it’s rough. The areas like that will experience a certain higher level of seismic shaking or damage. And so, I actually considered that when I did the model. When I laid out the Sorenson model, for example, I had to actually do my own mapping, because I couldn’t find anywhere, where they had actually looked at liquefaction. So, I took what formations were and applied that. Because I had to know that because if you have a city that’s on an area that’s not liquefaction or is liquefaction, that’ll make a difference as to whether it’s going to be destroyed.
GT 20:56 Okay.
Jerry 20:57 And then the other thing, this is again, laying it on the ground. For example, the volcano. So I looked at all the volcanoes in Mesoamerica. And they have to erupt during the right time period. And so that wiped out a lot of them. They also had to be situated such, because it describes the lands northward and southward, the mists of darkness covered all the face the land. I mean, you have to take that with a grain of salt. I mean, they obviously didn’t have people on every mountaintop or whatever. So, it had to, at least, substantially cover that. So you couldn’t have one that’s–because the Sorenson model has Guatemala, basically Guatemala City, all the way up kind of to Veracruz, that’s your total extent. So, you had to have a volcano, the reasonable eruption would have that coverage. And so, I looked at it and I asked certain questions. So, like referring back to what I started with. That is, you have earthquakes associated with volcanoes, but volcanic earthquakes are not very powerful. They can get up to like seven, and they’re really only in close proximity to the volcano. And also what I…
GT 22:13 I think the big one that people, at least our age, remember, I remember there was the [man named] Harry Truman, at the base of Mount St. Helens, and he’s like, “I’m not going anywhere.” And the volcano just buried his house and he died there.
Jerry 22:29 Yeah.
GT 22:31 But, you’re saying that the destruction didn’t extend long distance. It was just local to the volcano. Is that what you’re saying?
Jerry 22:40 Well, that was the question. And so, there’s actually, as part of this hazard analysis, what geologists will do is because well, Mount St. Helens; when was the last time it erupted?
GT 22:51 [It last erupted in] 1980, I think it was.
Jerry 22:52 Yeah, 1982. But before that?
GT 22:55 Oh.
Jerry 22:55 Yeah. So you’re looking at say, okay, we know this volcano has erupted. We actually can measure radiometric dating. Okay, it was 1000 years ago or something. But how do you…
How to Date Volcanic Events
GT 23:06 Well, that brings up another question. How do you date? Especially from [a] geological [standpoint.] I mean, everybody’s familiar with carbon dating. But there’s no carbon in metals, generally speaking. How would you date when a volcano erupted?
Jerry 23:18 Well, the really old ones, they use different techniques. Because radiocarbon only goes back, I can’t remember, 20,000-30,000 years and then they use other [techniques.] There are other–Argon there’s other degradation of chemicals for the ancient stuff. I didn’t care about that, because the Book of Mormon is within radiometric dating.
GT 23:37 It’s 2,000 [years.]
Jerry 23:38 Yeah, right. And so the dating would be, you have a lava flow or you have some pyroclastic flow.
GT 23:44 But that doesn’t have carbon, or does it have carbon in it?
Jerry 23:46 No, but you would date what’s underneath it, meaning you’ll have you’ll find in the charred trees, underneath it.
GT 23:55 They wouldn’t just be completely incinerated and gone?
Jerry 23:58 Well, some, but I mean, at some point, you have something underneath it, where you say, okay, here’s–and then the ash. The best way is, actually, the ash, if it’s a pyroclastic, because you’ll have marshes where the ash gets laid down. Then, you’ll have more deposition on top of it, material that has organic stuff in it.
GT 24:19 Okay.
Jerry 24:19 So, you’ve got this superposition.
GT 24:22 Because I keep thinking…
Jerry 24:24 You can date, you can good zone it in.
GT 24:26 Hawaii is one of my favorite places to go. And I’ve been to the National Park there on the Big Island. Because they have, for the last 200 years…
GT 24:36 That’s where I was born in Hawaii, actually.
GT 24:37 Oh, were you? Really?
Jerry 24:38 Yeah, so my book I start if out, “I was born on the flanks of an extinct volcano.”
GT 24:42 I didn’t remember that.
Jerry 24:44ccIt was not on the Big Island. It was on Oahu.
GT 24:46 Okay. Oahu is awesome, too. But, in the last, say, 200 years, we’ve been able to be like, “Oh, well, we were here. We know when this lava flow happened and when this lava flow happened.” But, of course before 200 years, it’s a lot harder to date that kind of stuff.
Jerry 25:03 Right, and so you’re looking for things that you can date radiometrically. And then you also look at superposition, because you have lava flows sitting on top of other lava flows and lava flows. So, you can actually get, at least, the sequence, oldest on the bottom, youngest on the top. And so you can extrapolate. There’s also other [ways.] Sometimes you have a flow that has a fracture, because it’s in an earthquake. And then there’s another flow on top of it. So, you can tell that the earthquake happened between the two.
GT 25:33 Okay.
Jerry 25:34 Does that make sense, what I’m saying?
GT 25:35 Yeah.
Jerry 25:35 So, there’s actually geological events that are intervening that can also help you figure out.
GT 25:40 How accurate are those kinds of dating? Like 100 years, ten years, one year?
Jerry 25:45 It depends. Well, typically, I mean, there’ve actually been improvements in the radiometric technique. And so, they’re more accurate now than they were before. Sometimes, I mean, this is a whole ‘nother discussion, but you actually have, it’s based on the carbon 14 in the atmosphere. And so, there’s actually some fluctuation. So, sometimes you can’t [tell]. There’s maybe a few hundred year period you can’t tell, because it’s almost the same amount or it’s gone up, or because it’s kind of this curve. They call it the calibration curve. And so, sometimes, if it’s in a certain timeframe, it is a little more difficult to tie in. But it’s typically 100, 200, 300 year spread. And then, statistically, they do what’s called the sigma analysis. So, you could kind of say [that] it’s more probable in this section. So, you have this larger range. And then, statistically…
GT 26:13 Are we talking statistics now? That’s my language.
Jerry 26:37 Well, I won’t deviate from the mean here and talk about it and discuss statistics. (Chuckling) So, basically, yeah, I had to look at that, meaning some of them had large [date ranges.] Some of them, there’s dispute. because, are they getting the level–again, it was like you have one eruption up near Mexico City [which] went into, the Xitle volcano went into a city. And so they sampling the level immediately where it hit or are we sampling some lower level of organic material, corncobs, or whatever it is that they’re finding in archaeological sites. So it’s not like everything is [burned up.] Certain researchers will find different results.
GT 27:28 Okay.
Jerry 27:29 So, I tried to look at that. So I actually…
GT 27:32 But, usually with 200 or 300 years.
Jerry 27:35 Sometimes within 100 [years.] I mean, it just depends. And, again, I wasn’t down there sampling. So, I’m just relying on all of the reports or the publications of each of the volcanoes. And I actually list all the eruptions of each volcano. I took each, I screened the volcanoes to say [that] these ones didn’t erupt. And that’s the problem with the Baja model. We know there are volcanoes. Well, none of them have erupted in the last 10,000 years.
GT 27:59 Oh, really? They’re way too old.
Jerry 28:00 I mean, there’s one way up north. There’s one on an island clear out. I mean, [they’re] not in the area that you need it. And so yeah, that’s a problem. So, they actually say, “Well, okay, we have to take the volcano out of our model.” And so, they say [that] there’s this big fog bank came in. A hurricane came in, and then a big fog appeared.
Jerry 28:20 I’m like, “I don’t know where you’re going to get that type of meteorological conditions,” where a hurricane is followed by quiescent fog. And the fog had to kill people, too.
GT 28:04 Heartland has the same issue. I mean, I know they have the New Madrid fault, which would explain the earthquakes and the shaking.
Jerry 28:37 Well, it does, but it doesn’t. Because again, the other thing you have to look at…
GT 28:43 Well, one of their things is they say, “Well, it doesn’t say volcanoes in the Book of Mormon, so you can’t assume it was a volcano.”
Jerry 28:48 Yeah, well, it actually does, kind of. I can give an explanation there. It’s not in the book. But the other thing I looked at is you have what–so the first thing is I determined was, let me kind of backtrack here.
GT 29:02 Okay.
Jerry 29:03 So when you’re looking at ancient events, you can sometimes take a recounting of that. Pompeii, for example, or other recountings, or see what the destruction was. I mean, when I’m looking at earthquakes, anyway, certain buildings collapsed. And so, you can actually rate the shaking level. We know, they call it Mercalli scale, different numbers. They say, “Oh, that’s a–on the Mercalli scale, that’s an eight because buildings collapsed, I mean, completely collapsed. So, you can actually, go up the scale. So, you have dishes shaking or something like that to describe, “Oh, things shook, but nothing…” So, you can actually grade it and there’s a correlation to the Richter scale, more or less. You can throw that over. And so that was a thing as I’m looking at, okay, you’ve got all these cities completely collapsing, and high and low and it’s like that. Volcanic earthquakes aren’t to that level unless they’re right on the flank of the volcano or something.
GT 30:04 Like Harry Truman was.
Jerry 30:05 Yeah, and that’s the least of your worries is an earthquake if you’re on, the flank of a volcano when it erupts. A pyroclastic, you just get burned to a crisp.
GT 30:13 Right.
Jerry 30:15 So, I looked at that, and I said, “Okay, so a volcano, itself, cannot account for all the destruction. So, you do have to have…
GT 30:24 But, it does account for the mists of darkness. Right?
Jerry 30:26 Yeah, it accounts for certain elements of it, which earthquakes don’t. And so that was the conclusion I reached. You had to have a volcano and a regional fault system.
GT 30:36 Both together, not just one or the other.
Jerry 30:38 Right, both together. And then I looked at, can that happen? Has that occurred? And yes, it has. In fact, probably the theory is, is that the pressure is built up in the volcano, and the earthquake is the trigger. And so, the earthquake happens and then the volcano erupts, because it caught.
GT 30:57 So, the earthquake kind of causes the eruption?
Jerry 31:00 Yeah, I mean, eruptions are building up of pressure, steam, whatever, underneath, in the magma chamber, and it’s come up. At some point, it reaches a point where it blows. But if you move it, or you create a fissure or something, because of the earthquake, then it can precipitate. It won’t cause a volcanic eruption for a volcano that’s not prepared or close to erupting. So that’s one thing you have to look at.
GT 31:25 But it creates a space where it can erupt.
Jerry 31:27 Yeah, or overpressure, because, again, you’ve got a lot of stuff going on. And that’s one of the parameters you look at. Because they’ve studied it and said, “Okay, there are volcanoes that are at risk, because they’re on faults,” but you also look at what’s the period of time since the last eruption? If it just erupted 100 years ago, well, an earthquake is probably not going to trigger an eruption, because over-pressure hasn’t built up yet. Again, that’s typically how volcanoes erupt. And then over time, the pressure builds up again, and then they erupt again. And depending on what’s underneath them, it may be it every 500 years, 10,000–I mean, they’re not all the same.
GT 32:14 Mount St. Helens is probably the one volcano that Americans are familiar with. Do you know when the one before 1982 was?[2]
Jerry 32:21 I’d have to look it up. It’s in the book, I think. But I think it was like 1800s or something like that. But it wasn’t as catastrophic, I don’t think. That’s another thing you look at. There’s a VEI index, explosivity index of an eruption. So, you actually rate the eruption according to the amount of energy that it released. So, you have like Krakatoa is like a VEI of 10 or something. And I also looked at that. I said, “Okay, what level of eruption do we really need to get the 3rd Nephi event?” And I also looked at, because is it possible that you have two volcanoes erupting at the same time? It has occurred in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. So those are possibilities.
GT 33:08 Does it happen in Hawaii a lot with multiple volcanoes simultaneously?
Jerry 33:12 Not really, because Hawaii is a little different. Number one, it’s a different kind of volcano than what you find, for the most part, in Mesoamerica. There’s explosive volcanoes, like Mount St. Helens, that create these pyroclastic flows. And those are typically on what we call subduction zones, where you actually have a crustal plate going underneath another plate. And so it builds up and then you have the overpressure. The other kind is kind of a shield volcano, which is basically where you have fissures occurring, where it’s a spreading center. So, you have, like at the mid-Atlantic Ridge. There’s not a plate going underneath there. But there’s volcanoes underneath the water. And it’s because the plate is separating. I mean, there’s kind of a liquidy mantle that they ride on top of, that’s what’s pushing these plates around. So, they’re spreading. But, because one is spreading, another one is going underneath another plate. And so it’s a different kind of volcano. Hawaii is a little particular, because, basically, you have a hotspot that’s coming up. It doesn’t really follow, it’s not really a subduction zone. It’s not really a spreading center. And so that’s why you have–the Big Island is active, but the other islands, as you get progressively north, they’re older. So, they used to be over the hotspot.
GT 34:33 And the Big Island is now.
Jerry 34:35 The plate moved, another one came up. The plate kept moving. And a lot of them start below the ocean, as they form. And so that’s why the Big Island is active, and Oahu isn’t, because it’s moved off of the hotspot that’s coming up from the mantle. So that’s kind of…
GT 34:53 So, we have no worry about Diamond Head exploding.
Jerry 34:56 Well, not really. I mean, I guess there’s some theory that maybe there is still some seepage or something like that. But yeah, it’s pretty much inactive. So, that’s why Hawaii is a little different than most of the other countries. So, the explosive volcanoes are typically off of subduction zones like Mount St. Helens, the Juan de Fuca plate coming underneath the North American [plate.] Volcanoes don’t occur right where the subduction is, they recur some distance back. There’s what’s called a volcanic arc, typically. So, we have a series of volcanoes like Shasta and Rainier and that’s part of the volcanic arc, if you will, that’s from that plate going underneath. And so, you have to have the right kind of volcano, too. The one that’s described in the Book of Mormon is not–it’s like Hawaii. It’s dangerous, but only if you can’t outrun the lava, right? Because it doesn’t…
GT 35:59 It’s pretty slow.
Jerry 36:00 Yeah, because pyroclastic, like Mount St. Helens, it just produces this…
GT 36:03 It just exploded.
Jerry 36:04 [It produces] ash, a lot of ash, superheated and just comes out at such speed [that] nobody could escape and it just kills, and it wipes out anything in its way. And those are the worst kinds of volcanoes. Right?
GT 36:25 Is that what Pompeii was as well, probably?
Jerry 36:28 Well, Vesuvius–Italy is kind of complex, actually. So, it’s interesting. Because Vesuvius is that kind of volcano, but Etna is not, down in Sicily. So, they have this very complex geology of kind of spreading and then one is going underneath. So, again, it’s not like it’s also clean. The Book of Mormon is describing a pyroclastic type of volcano.
GT 36:51 Okay, that’s what I was going to ask.
Jerry 36:53 Yes.
GT 36:53 So, what’s the difference, so pyroclastic explodes.
Jerry 36:56 And you get ash everywhere and mist of darkness.
GT 36:59 Okay. Whereas the shield, is that more like Hawaii where it just kind of drip, drip, drip, out comes the lava.
Jerry 37:06 Yeah, or you get like cinder cones that are like sputtering, they’re forming over time. There’s not some big blast. And even Hawaii, typically they don’t have a lot of..
GT 37:17 A lot of ash.
Jerry 37:18 Yeah. And they have explosions, but it’s more local. And mostly just…
GT 37:22 I’m trying to remember there was a recent, was it an Iceland or Greenland, one of those where…
Jerry 37:30 Iceland is, actually, on the Mid Atlantic ridge. So, it’s actually a spreading–those volcanoes up there…
GT 37:36 Those are spreading ones.
Jerry 37:37 Yeah, that’s actually kind of what you’re going to see under the water if you could go down, if you’re at the bottom of the ocean, you see the kind of the Icelandic kind of volcano.
GT 37:45 I remember there were problems with some airplanes that had to go around, because they can see rain and the weather. But there was a problem where they flew into volcanic ash and the radar couldn’t see it for some reason. And they had some real problems keeping that keeping the flight up.
Jerry 38:03 It’s not that you can’t have some ash coming out of those kind, you don’t have the super explosive type of pyroclastic events. Basically, again, I’m simplifying, some geologists will probably comment. But I’m just generalizing a few of these things. So, that’s what I looked at. I said, okay, so anybody that’s proposing, let’s say, the Heartland, that’s the issues. The New Madrid fault, yeah it’s a very powerful fault. But what you have in earthquakes is you have what’s called attenuation zones. So, you have the fault, and you have some distance off the fault, where you’ll get damage. Obviously, it decreases farther away. Now, some of it depends on what kind of material. Again, if you have liquefaction or other unstable materials, maybe you get damage a lot further away. Like Mexico City, if they have earthquake under the ocean, in the Pacific, right on the edge, and the waves will travel and not really damage much in between. But then it hits Mexico City, which is built on lake sediments and unconsolidated fill, and actually is at such a depth that it actually is harmonic with some of the earthquake and so it just, basically, accentuates the damage. So, it’s not just as arithmetic, you know, this far away. You have to look at the rocks. And they develop what’s called attenuation formulas for each fault, like California, like the San Andreas.
Why New Madrid Fault Doesn’t Match BoM Events
Jerry 38:20 Basically because they’ve got seismic measurements all over the place, they have an earthquake and they put that into their model. So, they’re saying [that] we had shaking clear out over here. So, they actually have a complex attenuation model. Again, the theory is to try to predict, if you have a Richter 7, 8, whatever, how far is that damage going to extend away from the fault? So, that’s the theory. The problem is, like, the New Madrid–and I don’t have anything against Heartland people, whatever. They promote their own model. I haven’t really published it, but the reality is you have the New Madrid, which is a powerful fault. But then you have to look at the attenuation zones away from it. And yes, you can have damage adjacent. And then they say, “Well, hey, there’s some bells [that] rang up in Boston.”
GT 40:21 Yes, and like, Connecticut.
Jerry 40:22 Yeah. But it’s like, well, to ring a bell, a bell is just a pendulum, a free-sitting pendulum. It doesn’t take much movement to get something like that to swing. And again, that’s like a Mercalli 2. It’s not enough to collapse buildings. Yes, there is some effect, but it’s such a distance, it’s never going to be that powerful, like the Book of Mormon described. Again, it’s like, I don’t know what the Heartland people say or don’t say, but some say, “Well, Zarahemla is clear up here and the land northward is in Canada.” I’m like, well the Book of Mormon says that a huge amount of damage occurred in the land northward, more, a greater amount. So how are you going to explain that with a New Madrid fault that’s located so far away? The devil is in the details. You can’t just say, “Oh, I’ve got this model. It’s got a fault in it.” You actually have to put it, where is the fault? Where do you have things in your model?
GT 41:16 Is your damage going to be in the area where the Book of Mormon says it was?
Jerry 41:19 Exactly. So that’s what I was trying to do in this book is say, okay, guys. You can’t just say, “Oh, we’ve got this earthquake.” You actually have to lay it in, which has made a few people mad in Mesoamerica, too, because they had some that had Ammonihah. I was like, that’s not in a seismic area where you have it. And they had like, all the cities on the east of the Yucatan. I’m like, no, the Yucatan Peninsula, it’s like the most stable, until you get to the very southeast corner, then there’s a fault system. But it’s, like, the most stable seismically in all of Mesoamerica is the Yucatan. Yeah, so throwing some cities out there that require an earthquake, doesn’t really work. Again, it’s like, I’m just telling you. I mean, you guys are doing the models. I’m not here trying to bash you, but I’m saying that this is a parameter you have to consider. You can’t just have these general statements or arguments. And in the Heartland, they kind of say, “Well, the mists of darkness, there’s what’s called,” they call it earthquake fog. There’s kind of anecdotal evidence of some…
GT 42:25 Well, my thought is that…
Jerry 42:26 That was only local to the fault. And it was, basically, condensate coming up from saturated soil. So, it’s not [a match] where they have it. And the sand blows, it was like, yeah, they have sand blows. They go up 100 feet or so. But they don’t last three days, and there again, proximate to the fault. So, if you have a land northward in Canada, you have to have a mist of darkness that can cover the land northward, because that’s what the Book of Mormon says, or at least a significant amount of the land Northward.
GT 42:51 I know, it was the 1930s, there was the Dust Bowl problem. And it was basically because we really had bad land management with the farmers and everything. And it created [dust storms.] I mean, to me, that would be a huge mist of darkness. Do we have any record, or would there even be any geological record of a dust bowl type activity?
Jerry 43:15 Well, you might find it in–if there’s deposition of it over time. But, again, the other thing I looked at is the timeframe, you have to have it three hours. That’s what the Book of Mormon says,. and then three days. So, you have the main event for three hours, and then also talks about for three days, there was groaning, tumultuous noises, quaking and so that’s your timeframe. So you can’t just, okay, we have this storm. It’s got to be a three hour duration and the mists of darkness have to cover most areas, fairly shortly after that.
GT 43:48 Like a volcano like Mount St. Helens.
Jerry 43:50 Yeah, right.
GT 43:51 Because I do remember when that thing went off, it was, like, pitch black at noonday. It really, Mount St. Helens, if it was in the right spot, would really explain the mists of darkness.
Jerry 44:04 Exactly. And it says they couldn’t burn their wood. It snuffed it out, so they couldn’t do fire. It wasn’t just vapor, they talked about vapor too, but mist. So, it’s like almost a tangible, something. I mean, it does match, right? And so then, the question is, okay, so you have a regional earthquake and a volcano. Where do you where do you have that? So, you’ve got to have a volcano that sits on or adjacent to a regional fault system. If you’re looking at a volcano. I mean, if you just want to ignore it and say it’s whatever, but I’m just saying, you’ve got to explain all these things. You can’t just explain 80% of them.
GT 44:43 Right.
Jerry 44:44 You can’t just cherry pick when you’re trying to do Book of Mormon geography. You have to look at everything. And so, that was the point of the book was to say, okay, here are the parameters. Now, you can debate, get some tumultuous noise from something else. I don’t know what. And then the other interesting…
GT 45:02 But a volcano would explain it the best. Is that what you’re saying?
Jerry 45:04 Yeah, because volcanoes, it’s almost like a symphony. They can make all kinds of sounds. And specifically, the interesting thing is the prime volcano that looked like it was the volcano for the 3rd Nephi event, is the San Martin volcano. It’s in the very inland northward, right in the middle, Olmec land northward. It has high groundwater, so it’s phreatomagmatic, meaning it’s a very noisy volcano. It has all kinds of explosions related to the groundwater that then turns to steam. In fact, there were, in 1792…
GT 45:38 Turns to mist.
Jerry 45:38 It can, yeah. And so, actually, the 1792 eruption was recorded/written. A naturalist came over and documented, from Spain, all the things that happened and actually said where the ash was observed, which I mapped it out in my book and said, “Look, it actually can probably cover the land southward and northward, pretty well. In that eruption, it looked like ash went that far. But when it erupted, the interesting thing is they called it a great storm because the volcano was, at the time, it was hidden with clouds. So, all they saw, and again, these are people who’ve maybe never seen a volcanic eruption of that sort or at all. Because sometimes they live in an area that only has one volcano. And so, they described it as basically a great storm that came. And they ran down to the port of Veracruz, because they thought pirates were attacking. They thought it was cannon fire. Because the volcano was just boom, boom, boom, boom, making all of these all night. It was a very noisy volcano.
GT 46:18 Wow. That’s interesting.
Jerry 46:50 Yeah. So that’s why I say actually that volcano matches very well the description.
GT 46:54 And even, because volcanoes, especially Mount St. Helens affected the weather. Like, there were lightning storms. I’m trying to remember.
Jerry 47:03 If you look at the cover of the book, that’s a volcanic eruption like [Mt. St. Helens.] Yeah, so you have this is in Chile. And it’s a little bit time lapsed, but you have this sharp lightning, that’s what was described. And basically, it’s the dust cloud that’s generating the static electricity that then creates the lightning.
GT 47:23 Well, even in Saints, it talks about the volcano. Was it in the Philippines that caused basically global cooling?
Jerry 47:31 Yeah.
GT 47:31 Which caused the Smith farm to fail.
Jerry 47:33 Right, yeah. Because especially if they go high. They get into the stratosphere. They shield, and they go worldwide. Krakatoa did the same.
GT 47:42 And I don’t mean to get into global warming, global cooling, but I’ve heard that’s a possibility is if a volcano–I don’t remember was it Mt. Pinatubo.
Jerry 47:51 That’ll save us from global warming.
GT 47:53 Yeah, it’ll cool the earth.
Jerry 47:55 Yeah, well, for a period of time. So, that’s the book. I kind of go through all of the hazards described in the text of the Book of Mormon, and all the damage. It says, here are the things that could cause those things. Some are related to earthquakes. Some are related to the volcano, but all of them are covered by both. A volcanic eruption, together with a regional earthquake, will give you all of the effects that are identified in the Book of Mormon. So, I’m basically saying yes, the Book of Mormon, the description, of course, they don’t say, “Oh, we had a strike-slip fault.” They’re just explaining some horrendous event. They didn’t understand what was going on. It was God punishing them.
Jerry 48:04 [They didn’t say,] “It was a pyroclastic volcano.”
Jerry 48:43 Yeah. Right. And so, even the sinking of Moroni into the sea, well, you actually have that if you have liquefaction from an earthquake. That actually happens.
GT 48:53 We keep joking about San Andreas, that L.A. is going to fall into the ocean. Right? Is that going to happen sometime?
Jerry 49:00 No, because it’s a strike slip. It’s not a spreading center.
GT 49:04 Okay. the wrong kind of fault.
Jerry 49:06 Well, parts of it might. I mean, actually California, a lot of it is accreted, meaning it’s material that’s gotten accreted from the movement of the fault. It’s very geologically complex, a lot of it. But, again, that’s a good example. That’s another thing I figured out too. It’s the description in the Book of Mormon–so there’s different kinds of faults. There’s what’s called a normal fault that’s up and down. A thrust fault means it goes up over, the hanging wall goes up over. And then there’s a strike slip where it’s horizontal movement, like the San Andreas, for the most part. But strike slips actually create all kinds of weird fracture patterns and stuff and it sounds like that’s what the Book of Mormon is describing where it says, “The rocks rent and there were cracks everywhere and the roads were all broken up.” I mean, not for sure, but it actually…
GT 50:00 So, strike slip sounds like the best.
Jerry 50:04 Yeah. And actually, so I looked at Mesoamerica. And you have basically the subduction zone on the Pacific side. It’s complex, because there’s like a plate rotating against another plate in the Cocos plate going underneath the North American plate and the Caribbean plate. It’s pretty complex, at least for terms of subduction and tectonics, what they call the tectonic plates. But you do have a strike slip fault that goes right through the San Martin volcano. In fact, the structure of the volcano is dictated by the fault system, meaning where it erupts. It erupts along the fault planes. And so that actually matched very well up on the Veracruz fault system, where the one on the Pacific is a subduction and it’s mostly deep earthquakes. I mean, they’re powerful, to a point, but they don’t necessarily generate all the same level of cracking and fissuring that you would get.
GT 51:03 So does one type of quake last longer than another? The strike slip versus the…
Jerry 51:10 That’s dictated more by what pressure is needing to be released.
GT 51:13 Okay. So not necessarily.
Jerry 51:15 Yeah, but again, that’s what you’re looking at. You have quakings occurring over three days. So you have a major, and actually in the three hour period it said quakings. So, you actually would have multiple quakes.
GT 51:27 Aftershocks.
Jerry 51:27 So for three hours, you have hit, hit, hit, hit, and then it has quakings for three more days. Now, that could also be, maybe there are still some volcanic earthquakes locally from the volcano, because the tumultuous noises continuing indicates probably the volcano was continuing to erupt at some level. And it’s not atypical for a volcano to erupt, and then have smaller eruptions and things going on for some period of time. Often, they’re months apart or something. Even Mount St. Helens, you had the eruption and then you had the dome start to build within the crater. So, you still had some volcanic activity going on some time after the eruption. Now, there’s not much going on. So, essentially, you have the three days where you have tumultuous noises, groanings. It sounds like, I mean, that’s a pretty good description, and they couldn’t see anything. Right? They couldn’t describe lightning because they were covered with ash. So does that make sense?
GT 52:25 Because it sounds like, because you said there’s different types of volcanoes. Are there different types in Central America, as well? So, you started with pyroclastic and then you went to a shield type?
Jerry 52:36 Yeah, well, the interesting thing about the San Martin is it’s actually a little of both. It can be pyroclastic, because it’s actually in a situation where you have slipping and spreading a bit, but it’s also part of the subduction zone. There are complex volcanoes. I mean, I’m just describing the more simplistic kind. But like in Italy, you’ve got one volcano here and one there. They are different kinds, not very far from each other.
GT 52:36 Etna there was what kind, again?
Jerry 52:41 It’s a shield. Again, you project what’s below the surface, but we don’t know everything that’s going on in the mantle or something. So, sometimes, like Hawaii, there are certain exceptions to the…
GT 53:19 Is Hawaii shield as well, or no?
Jerry 53:21 Well, it’s called a shield, but it’s not from spreading center or subduction zone. It’s kind of this hotspot from the mantle that’s coming up and that just blebbing up in that place. I haven’t studied it a ton. Maybe they have better theories now than when I looked at it when I was in college. It’s not Book of Mormon areas so I never really looked at it. Also, one thing I did is I worked in precious metals exploration when I was younger and in Nevada. There are huge volcanoes that erupted anciently that spread. They’re ash fell all over Utah, all over Nevada. So, I was familiar with volcanic eruptions and things like that, also, not just from school, but from actually mapping in volcanic events.
GT 54:11 Because even Utah has some volcanoes, especially in Southern Utah, it seems like.
Jerry 54:15 Yeah and there you have some difference. Those are more like spreading type, because we’re based in range, we’re kind of spreading. That’s why our faults are like falling up and down because it’s kind of spreading and so you have those little cinder cones outside of Fillmore, the red pumice that you buy. That’s coming from not a pyroclastic, that’s more of a cinder cone.
GT 54:39 And even Yellowstone is a gigantic volcano.
Jerry 54:41 Yeah, it’s a super [volcano.] Again, those are the super volcanoes. That’s what I’m talking about. Anciently, volcanoes, we have a geologic record of some that are huge. Ash falls are covering half of the western United States, not just around Mount St. Helens. We’re not we’re not talking about that for Book of Mormon. That’s the other thing I looked at. I said, well, how powerful a volcano do you need? It’s like, well, you don’t need a huge Krakatoa-type destruction. All you need is just to get ash to the land north or the land southward, have some destruction.
GT 55:15 So, like a Mount St. Helens type would that be the type of volcano?
Jerry 55:19 Yeah, that type of eruption or something close to that. But that may even be higher. I mean, I think that’s like a V8 or something. And I’m saying it could even be of less. And still, depending on where your cities are–and it talks about–the unfortunate thing is, not unfortunate, it’s just what it is. But, the Book of Mormon talks about the cities that were destroyed. So, I go through each city and talk about where it might be located, where Sorenson had it in the model. He didn’t have all of them, because some are only mentioned at the time of destruction, like Josh or whatever. But Josh, actually, I think means fire in Hebrew. Some of them, I think they got their name because they were destroyed by fire. I mean, that’s why they called it that. But I did look at that. It said these were ones where it said [that] the fire rained down or came down from the sky, basically, and destroyed them. So, I said, okay, we don’t have really good studies. But I said, okay, let’s take Krakatoa. That was a big one. How far away from the volcano did you actually have stuff that could come down and light cities on fire and burn? The actual fallout from it.
GT 56:23 And Krakatoa is where?
Jerry 56:24 That’s in the Pacific. It’s over by the Philippines, I think, Indonesia. Yeah, but that was one where, actually, I had some information because some people’s clothes caught on fire that we’re 40 miles away from the volcano. So, I said, okay. I can use the geology to at least say, [that] these cities were within this proximity, the ones that were burned with fire. Zarahemla is a little different, because it took fire. But, some said the fire came down. So you’re saying, those cities are going to be somewhere within the proximity, this distance away from the volcano. So, I was able to say–and, also, applying the geology can help you locate, if you can identify the geology, then you can better locate where these cities might be. So, it was kind of an iterative thing. Once you apply the geologic parameters to the model, then, in fact, you can then improve your model. [You can] not only verify your model, you can improve the model by saying, [that] they cities are probably up in here. So, that was the gist of the book was to actually verify that, yes, all the events in the Book of Mormon that geologically appear to have a geological element, can be explained with geology, and specifically the Mesoamerican models. Then, second, can it help identify/further clarify your model once you’ve figured that out? And so that was kind of the crux of the premise of the book, was to get people thinking about it. It wasn’t, necessarily, proving the Book of Mormon. I don’t really care about that. And, “Did Joseph Smith know this?” I don’t care. Just the presumption is that the Book of Mormon is what it says it is, does the science support it?
GT 58:27 Right.
Jerry 58:28 Yeah. So I mean, you obviously have to look at, what does this term mean? It’s early modern English or things like [that.] I do have to look at the text and interpret a bit, the translation, maybe. And it’s clear that, obviously, the account that’s been laid down by, presumably, Nephi, the prophet at the time, or whoever did the large plates. It is clear, they’re trying to, I don’t say trying, but they are correlating with the prophecies. So, all of the items identified in the prophecies are also discussed or accentuated in the description. So, they wanted to make sure that all the things talked about are found in the destruction. I don’t know if that makes sense.
GT 59:20 No, it makes sense. Some historians would say, “Well, that must mean it took place after, so that the prophecy could be guaranteed to work.”
Jerry 59:28 Yeah, I guess, but I’m not a historian. I’m not getting into all that stuff. I just say, listen. Here’s what it is. Here’s what the description is. Does it match?
GT 59:37 Okay.
Old World Biblical Geology
Jerry 59:38 And then the other thing is, I did talk about, there were a couple of things I didn’t talk about in the book that I have since published. There’s actually a geological event in the Old World. Lehi goes out and sees a pillar of fire coming out of a rock. So, the interesting thing is, actually, I looked at the lands where the tribe of Manasseh has inherited, lands of his inheritance, where he would have gone. There is a volcanic field there. So, that actually…
GT 1:00:13 In Israel? Is that what you’re talking about?
Jerry 1:00:14 Yeah, and that’s one reason you’re saying , “Why isn’t there a volcano?” It’s like, well, Israel didn’t really have a volcano. There’s no word for a volcano. You don’t find it in Hebrew. So, great storm is actually a pretty good explanation. In fact, there are other people who have looked at the whole Sinai event. It’s a volcano. Right? Shaking, fire, cloud.
GT 1:00:37 I’ve heard that that might have turned the Nile to blood.
Jerry 1:00:41 Well, I think that was upstream. These ones are saying, “Well, where they went after they left and went to Mount Sinai.” So, it’s Mount Sinai. It’s not at the headwaters of the Nile. They’re just saying there was some mud or something from some event. They’re actually saying in southern, kind of Mt. Bedr, I think, in Saudi Arabia is a good candidate for Mount Sinai, because it was a volcano. Well, it had a pillar fire by night, smoke by day. It does sound like a volcano. But they called that, again, some of the translations have that as a storm event. Even the Ezekiel vision where he talks about these balls of fire and things. Well, ball lightning comes out of some volcanoes, and where he was at, there was an active volcano north of him about 50 miles. I’m not saying all elements of the vision, but it kind of could match. Maybe there was something going on so.
Jerry 1:01:38 And then I also looked at the cloud, where it talks about the Jaredites, where they were led by the cloud. They went to the Land of Nimrod in the cloud. So, I actually said, actually, there is an active volcano right there in the area of Nimrod. So, that actually matches. And then I actually said, if they took this route, you have volcanoes that erupted during that timeframe, 2500 BC, periodically, that if they were erupting at some distance, in the open sea, that would be a guide them to them. So, I mean, it’s a little bit more speculative. So, I did say that might also be some geological explanation for that. But I did that in a different book. So those aren’t in there.
Jerry 1:02:22 But I also did take like, there are some events in Ether, that talk about, “Destruction, like we’ve never seen,” using the same language that was used in 3rd Nephi. And there were times when the three volcanoes adjacent, were erupting, at the same time, two times, the Heth event where the snakes came out. That’d be typical of an eruption. They have to migrate, because their habitat has been disturbed. So, that can help tie in the Jaredite chronology, too. Those are points where I know the eruptions took place during certain 100-year period. So, that helps you lay out your Jaredite chronology. It gives you some anchor points, because that’s kind of the difficult thing. In the Jaredite [records] you don’t have a lot of [detail.] You have king reigns and stuff you can figure out. But you have to have some fixed points to anchor it to. And then you have a gap in the middle where you don’t know how long it went from Riplikish, where it just said, “The descendant.” It didn’t say, “Son.”
Jerry 1:03:25 So, I did look at other geological events in later books. Actually, the book I’m working on now has Lehi event. So, that was the crux of the book and it’s laying in all of those things that are found in the Book of Mormon to help better identify your geographic model. It’s just one parameter, but there are others. Some just fail. That’s the problem with the Heartland. You can say there’s a fault, but you say, well the mists of darkness were just earthquake condensatives, but you just don’t get that distance away from it. Those are all proximate to the fault. It’s very rare, but even then, let’s consider that. Maybe somebody can make a model that’s smaller. I don’t know. They can actually can redo their model so that the geological parameter fits. I’m not doing that.
Why Meso is Better Geology Fit than Heartland
GT 1:04:30 So, from your point of view, geologically Meso is probably the best fit for the Book of Mormon?
Jerry 1:04:39 Well, I’d say the Sorenson model actually worked very well. The city of Bountiful, where he had it, it was an area that was stable. It didn’t have liquefaction where he had it and right across the river, there was a horrible liquefaction zone. So, you’re like, okay. Because they went to Bountiful, because it wasn’t destroyed, but they can look around and see the destruction. That makes total sense from the temple Bountiful. They can just look across a river and where there was a high area of liquefaction, everything got wiped out. So, those kinds of things you look and say, yeah, what he’s laid out fits pretty well. Is that the correct one? It’s not the only parameter. But yeah, it works.
GT 1:05:28 So it would be better than Baja. It would be better than Heartland.
Jerry 1:05:32 Yeah, again the Baja issue is, where’s your vapor? You have to vapors killing people, too. Right. And those come off of volcanoes. Carbon dioxide or hydrogen sulfide can just kill people immediately. And so, again, you have certain elements work, but you have to look at all of the things talked about in the Book of Mormon. And that’s the problem with Baja. Everyone, if they’re relying on a volcano, they don’t have volcanic eruptions. I mean, there are other problems. They don’t have, really, people. There’s not really a history of civilization there. So there’s not really people to be killed by a volcano. I don’t look at that, but I’m just saying. I mean, there are other [issues.] And so you’d say, yeah, it doesn’t really work. Now they’d say, “Well, there’s this fog, and then it came.”
Jerry 1:06:24 And that was the meteorological [event.] They’re saying, “Oh, there was this great storm, like the hurricane.” I looked at that. I looked at all the hurricane tracks timing from 1823, when they when they occurred. Because we know Christ, basically, when he died, late March, early April. Hurricanes, almost none go that early, like one. So, if you’re claiming a great storm is a hurricane, it doesn’t work because they just typically don’t have those. And also, it had to be three hours. Hurricanes don’t usually last that short of time. And if they do, they’re not very powerful. They’re dry. So, I’m just saying, I even looked at that. So if you’re looking at the great storm, or some meteorological event you can’t just say it’s a hurricane. Okay, then what? Where are you going to get that kind of storm that’s going to cause that kind of destruction?
GT 1:07:13 So, are there tornadoes that spin off from volcanoes, as well?
Jerry 1:07:17 Yeah, that’s after, they’re not necessarily…
GT 1:07:20 Or, does the Book of Mormon say whirlwinds?
Jerry 1:07:21 Yeah. I mean, the event itself could be actually described as–there’s all kinds of wind when the explosion happens. Then after a pyroclastic flow comes through, there are small whirlwinds, I’m not saying those were necessarily that powerful. But yeah. And so, I do think they’re talking about, maybe the eruption itself, or periodic eruptions, creating these pyroclastic flows or just kind of blowing everything around.
Jerry 1:07:56 Yes, so again, is it evidence that the Book of Mormon is true/historical? Yeah, I would say that. It’s curious, because like, there was one that talked about where hills and valleys were left in the stead thereof. Well, that was actually a morphological feature that really wasn’t identified by a lot of geologists, or most geologists until the Mount St. Helens. And actually, after the pyroclastic flow is done, you have these hills and valleys where the ash deposits in that form. So, it actually matches what you would expect after a pyroclastic flow has gone through. So, some things are kind of, “Hey, well, would Joseph Smith know that?” I don’t think so. But again, I don’t get into what Joseph Smith knew or didn’t know. I’ll leave that to all the other guys publishing stuff, which there are so many I can’t keep up.
GT 1:08:53 What about Malay? Have you checked Malay?
Jerry 1:08:55 I didn’t really, mostly because, and again, a lot of people have called and said, “Hey, check this model.” It takes a lot of time to do the research on all the volcanoes. I mean, especially in Central America, there’s like a couple hundred. I’m trying to find papers on every one. And part of the issue there is simply it’s just, I mean, I think Moroni said it was in the Americas. Right? So, I’m basing that premise. And, they can look at that if they think it works. There are volcanoes. But I don’t know whether they have the land northward. And I think it’s only one or two people proposing that model. So, I’ve moved on to other research. This was 7-8 years ago. I’m not out there just as the model–I just ran–if you want to do it, here’s the book. Go look at Malay and see if all the parameters can be found. More power to you.
Jerry 1:09:47 Yeah, the other models, I didn’t really go and say, “Hey, here’s a big analysis of the Heartland, as well. There are some things that would obviously have some problems without a lot of research. I mean, it just you have the land northward, north of the Great Lakes? How are you getting the major part of the destruction up there? Forget about whether there are kings there or not. I mean, that’s the big thing. There are no kings. I’m like, “Well, I think they’ve got kings in Canada for a while. But that’s more of a Brant Gardner analysis that he would do.
{End of Part 1}
[1] Rick did a presentation and a summary is found at https://gospeltangents.com/2022/01/bom-from-middle-east-to-africa/ and https://gospeltangents.com/2022/01/malay-baja-new-york/ and https://gospeltangents.com/2022/01/south-america-heartland-meso/
[2] The previous eruption was in the 1840s and 1850s.
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