Cumorah and the Bicentennial Proclamation to the World

This weekend’s 190th Annual General Conference of the Church was deeply moving and inspirational. My family and I watched all five sessions, and we rejoiced in the knowledge that we have a living prophet whom the Lord has sustained well into his ninth decade so that He might carry out His divine purposes. The announcement of temples to be constructed in Dubai and Shanghai was especially amazing; the restored gospel is truly going forth across the world!

That makes writing this blog post more difficult, because I don’t want to detract from the spiritual “high” that I—and I’m sure many of you—are still riding. But there’s an important point to be made, and I must make it. The point is this:

At the Sunday morning session of the conference, the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a proclamation to the world. The Church’s website explains:

Titled “The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World,” this document outlines core Latter-day Saint beliefs. These include the supremacy of Jesus Christ in salvation, the divinity of Joseph Smith’s revelations and the Book of Mormon, the unique mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the ongoing nature of the Restoration that began with Joseph Smith’s First Vision of Deity in 1820. The proclamation invites people everywhere to know for themselves that God speaks and that this Restoration of truth is occurring to help them prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

For years now, Jonathan Neville has been publishing in print and online his argument that the hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon is the same hill in western New York where Moroni buried the gold plates and Joseph Smith unearthed them. This is a core doctrine for him—the only one, he asserts, that aligns with “the teachings of the prophets.”

On the day before this April’s General Conference began, Neville even published a blog post with his thoughts on how the Church should “retool the missionary program” in a way that “happens to corroborate the prophets” instead of “repudiat[ing] the prophets.” (The latter is, by implication, what he believes the current missionary program does.) He believes that his approach will “generate more interest and bring more people to Christ” by affirming as “a definite fact that Cumorah, the scene of the final battles, was in New York.”

This doctrine is of vital importance to Jonathan Neville and to his fellow travelers in the Heartland movement, including Rod Meldrum, Wayne May, Rian Nelson, and David Hocking. It is the basis behind everything they publish, everything they offer for sale, and every conference they hold. One of Rod Meldrum’s series of video lectures is titled “Joseph Knew,” meaning that Joseph Smith knew, by revelation, that the Book of Mormon took place within the boundaries of the modern United States.

In their proclamation to the world, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had a singular opportunity to affirm that what Jonathan Neville and his associates teach is true. So how did they describe the role of the Book of Mormon in the restoration of the gospel?

We further witness that Joseph Smith was given the gift and power of God to translate an ancient record: the Book of Mormon—Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Pages of this sacred text include an account of the personal ministry of Jesus Christ among people in the Western Hemisphere soon after His Resurrection. It teaches of life’s purpose and explains the doctrine of Christ, which is central to that purpose. As a companion scripture to the Bible, the Book of Mormon testifies that all human beings are sons and daughters of a loving Father in Heaven, that He has a divine plan for our lives, and that His Son, Jesus Christ, speaks today as well as in days of old.

Jonathan Neville and other Heartlanders had an opportunity to have living prophets and apostles back up their assertions. And yet they got nothing—the word Cumorah isn’t even mentioned in the proclamation, and, instead of affirming that the people of the Book of Mormon lived in the area of the United States, the First Presidency and the Twelve simply stated that they lived “in the Western Hemisphere.”

Neville may be asking himself, “Why don’t the living prophets and apostles declare the teachings of the prophets and the apostles?”

Perhaps he has his own way of resolving his cognitive dissonance on this matter. Perhaps his resolution even explains how the living prophet, Russell M. Nelson, can publicly teach the saints that the peoples of the Book of Mormon lived in Central and South America, and how Jesus ministered to the people of South America. Perhaps his resolution also explains how living apostles, including President M. Russell Ballard, Elder Quentin L. Cook, and Elder D. Todd Christofferson can publicly teach that Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon (something Neville emphatically rejects).

This historic conference is a unique opportunity for Jonathan Neville, Rod Meldrum, and their compatriots to reassess their beliefs in the light of the bicentennial proclamation and the public teachings of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve. It’s not too late for them to align themselves with the teachings of the prophets and the apostles.

—Peter Pan