What’s up with  Columbus in Philadelphia? Smallpox in the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ?

Because Smallpox was unknown in the New World until after 1500 or so, it is consistent evidence that any migrations to the New World  in the previous millennia were minimal.

This week, April 7, 2021,  the CBS NEWS.com reported the following

Italian-American groups sue Philadelphia and its mayor

According to the CBS report, Philadelphia’s Mayor issued orders to pull down the  brass statue of a previous mayor Frank Rizzo,   boxing in plywood, as it appeared in a picture, a statue of Christopher Columbus, and changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The CBS NEWS report continued with a quote from Quaternary Science Review as follows.

‘’Columbus is accused of sparking the genocide of indigenous peoples. A 2019 study published in the journal Quaternary Science Review  estimated that between 1492 and 1600, about 55 million people in the Americas died. The Taine people were virtually wiped out in the decades after Columbus first arrived on the island of Hispaniola, where Haiti and the Dominican Republic sit today.’’

Columbus died in Spain in 1506, so he could not have been personally involved in the 55 million deaths for the next 94 years.

None of the ‘indigenous peoples,’ or Lamanites, had a written language for the next 300 years, or for the previous thousand years, so any reports of life expectancy and mortality have come from the Spanish, Portuguese, or French Priests or conquerors.  In either case, it is known that disease also killed millions in Europe.

Estimates for the 18^th century claim smallpox killed 400,000 Europeans each year, so that would be 40 million in Europe. The estimate is from ‘The smallpox story, life and death of an old disease’ in Microbiology Review,  1983, Behbehani. So an estimate of 55 million dead in the Americas  the century earlier might be a sustainable guess.  

The point is that the Book of Mormon, another Testament of Jesus Christ reports the migration of three groups to the Promised Land, which groups did not travel with nor  have the smallpox disease, as verified by the absence of the disease when Europeans finally found the new world. 

            We may not know what diseases were in the Promised Land, but we know Smallpox was not one of them. This discussion of death and disease in the New World supports the Book of Mormon narrative that only minimal transoceanic migrations successfully came and established cultures which survived.

            If you have read far enough into the Book of Mormon,  Another Testament of Jesus Christ, you will note a prophecy of an explorer, a Gentile,  moved upon by the spirit, who crosses the ocean to discover the Promised Land.  Modern revelation affirms that was Columbus.

            The postage stamps in this column are all from 1893, the Chicago World’s fair which was also named the Columbian Exposition, celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the discovery of the New World.  These are in the National Postal Museum.

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