ATTENTION BOOK OF MORMON BELIEVERS:
DO YOU REALIZE THAT THE BOOK OF MORMON PUTS JEREMIAH IN PRISON IN 600 B.C. — BEFORE LEHI LEAVES JERUSALEM — WHICH IS CONTRARY TO BIBLICAL FACTS?
The book informs us that Lehi left Jerusalem “six hundred years” before Christ was born (1 Nephi 3:4; 1 Nephi 5:236 and 2 Nephi 11:35). 3 Nephi 1:1-13 confirms that Christ’s birth happened just as it was foretold, six hundred years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem to the very year. In Nephi’s writings we are told that it was “in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah” when the prophets were foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem that Lehi also began to prophesy which caused the Jews to “seek to take away” his life which resulted in God commanding him to take his family and leave Jerusalem — God finally leading him to America. According to the Book of Mormon, Jeremiah was already in prison at the time — “and Jeremiah have they cast into prison” (1 Nephi 2:22). The dates of these three events — commencement of Zedekiah’s reign, Jeremiah’s imprisonment and the birth of Christ — which are historical facts of Jewish history PRODUCE AN IMPOSSIBLE DILEMMA.
Zedekiah’s eleven-year reign in Jerusalem commenced in 597 B.C. and ended in 586 B.C. (The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, 1944, page 653).
The birth of Jesus Christ took place before the death of Herod the Great who became King of Judea in 37 B.C. and reigned until 4 B.C. when he died in the seventieth year of his age. The death of all the “children that were in Bethlehem…from two years old and under” (Matt. 2:16), which followed the birth of Jesus Christ, was one of the last acts of Herod’s life (The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, 1944, page 239).
So from the commencement of Zedekiah’s reign until the birth of Christ could at the most, BE ONLY 593 YEARS — NOT 600 YEARS. Also if Lehi left Jerusalem in the first year of Zedekiah’s reign — Jeremiah was not in prison yet. In the book of Jeremiah, as Zedekiah begins to reign, “Jeremiah came in and went out among the people: FOR THEY HAD NOT PUT HIM INTO PRISON.” (Jer. 37:4). But “…in the tenth year of Zedekiah…the king of Babylon’s army besieged Jerusalem: and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the prison.” (Jer. 32:1-3 and Jer. 33:1). It appears that Jeremiah was taken captive when he was leaving Jerusalem to go to the land of Benjamin (Jer. 37:11-15) and put in prison in the house of Jonathan. A statement by Zedekiah to Jeremiah reveals that he was not returned to Jonathan’s house but allowed to abide in the court of the prison as he requested until the day Jerusalem was taken (Jer. 37:20 and Jer. 38:26-28). These facts reveal that JEREMIAH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN PRISON AT THE TIME LEHI SUPPOSEDLY LEFT JERUSALEM.
An historian who has his major in Old Testament history explains that “Smith was unaware that Zedekiah must he dated at 597 B.C. instead of the 600 B. C. date the Book of Mormon assigns him. He was unaware that the birth of Christ must now be placed some time prior to 4 B.C.…so he wove into the fabric of the book a modern chronological error. The error was Dionysius Exiguus’, who set up the present system of dating time from the birth of Christ in the sixth century A.D. He mistakenly equated A.D. 1 with the Roman year 754 (AUC), whereas Herod the Great had died four years earlier in the Roman year 750 (AUC); or, in 4 B.C. by our present dating system. The only way scholars can correct this error is to date the actual birth of Christ prior to 4 B.C., yielding less than 593 years between Zedekiah and the birth of Jesus.”
So the fingerprints on the Book of Mormon are those of on unschooled youth who called himself “author” seven times in the original work. It could not be the work of someone living in Jerusalem until 597 B.C. and then leaving the city, for they would not have known of Jeremiah’s imprisonment nine or ten years later.
As the people had trouble discerning the true prophets from the false prophets in Jeremiah’s day, so today many have the same problem. They reject the truth and rely upon the false. May God open our understanding to the fact that He “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things. . .” (Heb. 1:2), and that we “ARE COMPLETE IN HIM, WHICH IS THE HEAD OF ALL PRINCIPALITY AND POWER.” (Col. 2:10).