THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE APOSTASY--IT GROWS IN INTENSITY--THE
PERSECUTION OF THE DISCIPLES--LAMANITES AGAIN--REAPPEARANCE OF THE
GADIANTON BANDS--WAR--AMMARON HIDES THE RECORDS.
(IV. NEPHI.)
By the year A. C. 201, all the second generation had passed away save
a few; the people had greatly multiplied and spread over the face of
the land, north and south, and had become exceedingly rich; they wore
costly apparel which they adorned with ornaments of gold and silver,
pearls and precious stones. From this date they no more had their
property in common, but, like the rest of the world, every man sought
gain, wealth, power and influence for himself and his. All the old
evils arising from selfishness were revived. Soon they began to build
churches after their own fashion, and hire preachers who pandered to
their lusts; some even began to deny the Savior.
From A. C. 210 to A. C. 230, the people waxed greatly in iniquity and
impurity of life. Different dissenting sects multiplied, infidels
abounded. The three remaining disciples were sorely persecuted,
notwithstanding that they performed many mighty miracles. They were
shut up in prison, but the prisons were rent in twain by the power
of God; they were cast into fiery furnaces, but the flames harmed
them not; they were thrown into dens of wild beasts, but they played
with the savage inmates as a child does with a lamb, and received
no harm; they were not subject to many of the laws that govern our
mortal bodies, they had passed through a glorious change, by which
they were freed from earthly pain, suffering and death. Not only did
the wicked persecute these three immortal ones; others also of God's
people suffered from their unhallowed anger and bitter hatred; but the
faithful neither reviled at the reviler nor smote the smiter; they bore
these things with patience and fortitude, remembering the pains of
their Redeemer.
In the year A. C. 231 there was a great division among the people. The
old party lines were again definitely marked. Again the old animosity
assumed shape, and Nephite and Lamanite once more became implacable
foes. Those who rejected and renounced the gospel assumed the latter
name, and with their eyes open, and a full knowledge of their
inexcusable infamy, they taught their children the same base falsehoods
that in ages past had caused the unceasing hatred that reigned in the
hearts of the children of Laman and Lemuel toward the seed of their
younger brothers.
By A. C. 244 the more wicked portion of the people had become
exceedingly strong, as well as far more numerous than the righteous.
They deluded themselves by building all sorts of churches, with creeds
to suit the increasing depravity of the masses.
When 260 years had passed away, the Gadianton bands, with all their
secret signs and abominations, through the cunning of Satan, again
appeared and increased until, in A. C. 300, they had spread over all
the land. By this time, also, the Nephites, having gradually forsaken
their first love, had so far sunk in the abyss of iniquity that they
had grown as wicked, as proud, as corrupt and as vile as the Lamanites.
All were submerged in one overwhelming flood of infamy, and there were
none that were righteous, save it were the disciples of Jesus.
Still, active hostilities did not break out for some time; but when war
commenced, it scarcely ceased until that great battle near Cumorah,
which brought extinction to the Nephite race. This war, or series of
wars, was one of peculiar horrors. All the old savagery, ten times
intensified, was rekindled, transforming the combatants into fiends.
Each race seems to have striven to out-rival the other in its bloody
and infernal inhumanity. Mormon, the Nephite prophet-general, in an
epistle to his son Moroni, sorrowingly relates the fate of the Nephite
prisoners--men, women and children--taken at Sherrizah. He adds: And the
husbands and fathers of those women and children they [the Lamanites]
have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands,
and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water save
a little do they give them. And notwithstanding the abomination of
the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum.
For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken
prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and
precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue; and after
they had done this thing they did murder them in a most cruel manner,
torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this,
they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness
of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery. Such was the
horrible condition into which open, wilful, determined rejection of the
gospel had brought both races.
Amos entrusted the records to his son Ammaron in the year 306 A. C.
Owing to the increasing depravity and vileness of the Nephites, Ammaron
was constrained by the Holy Ghost to hide up all the sacred things
which had been handed down from generation to generation (A. C. 320).
The place where he hid them is said to have been in the land Antum, in
a hill which was called Shim. After he had hid them up, he informed
Mormon, then a child ten years old, of what he had done, and placed
the buried treasures in his charge. He instructed Mormon to go, when
he was about twenty-four years old, to the hill where they were hid,
and take the plates of Nephi and record thereon, what he had observed
concerning the people. The remainder of the records, etc., he was to
leave where they were.