Christopher Columbus in Review

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the great ocean to find a trade route to the Orient based on the assumption that the world was not flat, but that it was round and connected. The journey, fraught with hardship and intrigue, failed in its attempt to find a route to the Orient. The voyagers did find new land for the world to explore and exploit. For king and country, Christopher began what became a prophetic fulfillment of the destruction of vast cultures, the death of millions by disease, and the invention of life-long chattel-like slavery of human beings in the "New World." A harbinger of death is what Columbus was to the native populations of the Americas.

There is a belief, however, that the ancestors of these unfortunate souls introduced this burden on their descendants. Columbus was the tool to recompense the descendants for generations of wickedness. "What in the name of White supremacy..." some may say. Others may see how the appearance of Columbus opens the fulfillment of prophecy. Is it racism? Is it the truth? Truth is truth regardless if we decide to believe it. This article shares a perspective about Columbus, the harbinger of death, the inspired of God.

Columbus was a man of intimate religious leanings and strong faith. From the time of his youth, he had a mind to wonder and a desire to explore. Said he,

During this time, I have searched out and studied all kinds of texts: geographies, histories, chronologies, philosophies and other subjects. With a hand that could be felt, the Lord opened my mind to the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies, and he opened my will to desire to accomplish the project. . . .^[2]

Columbus referred to the Americas as the Indies, though it is not. The natives on the island he landed upon his first voyage were not Indians. Centuries after his journey, some historians talk about his ineptness and others, his arrogance. Few mention that he felt that God's hand moved upon him to go west.

The result of what happened to the native populations was not the responsibility or choice of Columbus personally. He believed himself to be a man of God, a tool of change to open another chapter in human history, which he did.

Upon meeting the islanders he described them,

...these people came to the beach, all youths, as I have said, and all of good stature, a very handsome people. Their hair is not curly, but loose and coarse, like horse hair. In all the forehead is broad, more so than in any other people I have hitherto seen.

Their eyes are very beautiful and not small, and themselves far from black, but the color of the Canarians. Nor should anything; else be expected, as this island is in a line east and west from the island of Hierro in the Canaries. Their legs are very straight, all in one line, and no belly, but very well formed. ^[3]

Columbus thought the people he met were beautiful. He thought they were simple people as to technology, which they were, and would be open to the Christian faith as converts to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Because they wore no clothing on that island, at least the youths, as he called them, who went to greet them, they thought them to be primitives. As politically incorrect as so saying today of a people, much of the modern world still think and behave as did Columbus, outside of academic circles.

Columbus, as the man he was, did not try to conquer a new world, but he did claim it in the name of his financiers, thinking that European culture would elevate the status of the native people to a higher quality of life.

Was it arrogance? Maybe. Were his intentions good? Yes, for Europe!

Modern cultural opinion has turn caustic toward the founding icons of European history and American heritage because of the debauched state natives were left in the wake of progress. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America are villainized and taught to the rising generation not to be pioneering heroes but invading occupationists by some! Of this invading force, Columbus was the scout, so to speak.

Is it the truth? Yes. The land was taken by the Europeans and their colonies. Such things have happened before all over the world, and most importantly, in ancient times under the direction of God!

The ancient Israelites under the direction of God were to take possession of the Land of Canaan as an eternal inheritance under divine decree. One stipulation was that the Israelites had to conquer the land before possessing Canaan.

Because the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, in general, contain many incidents that repulse modern thinking, it is hard for conscientious people to reconcile their support of all Scripture and their political and philosophical leanings. What made the people in the land of Canaan so unworthy that God commanded His prophets to go there with another group of people to have them killed and utterly destroy for another group of people? What was wrong with their culture? Why was it allowed if God is just?

The celebrated Moses Hogan's arrangement of the song Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho describes such an event. The arrangement sounds like a battle!

As moving as the celebrated songs of the events in the Bible can be, the outcome would horrify the most stoic men and women of God to experience the scene of the wardogs under the command of Joshua as the walls fell and they savaged the people of their lives.

Using a divine weapon of God, the trumpets sounded and with a mighty shout from the people surrounding Jericho, "the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." [Joshua 6:20-21]

The Jews and the 10 tribes of Israel fought a holy war against the original inhabitants of Canaan where they eradicated those who stood in their path to possess the land. No one decries the atrocities they committed in the genocide of entire cities to meet out the purposes of the Lord.

Yet, they claimed that God decreed it. God is no respecter of persons, however. Why were the people in the land of Canaan destroyed? Was it because the Israelites were better than them? No!

Just like the ancient Israelites obtained their land by defeating the people who already lived there, the colonist of America and their descendants would possess their land by defeating the native populations who lived their first.

Nephi, an ancient American prophet received an open vision of what would befall his descendants and those of his brothers due to rejecting the Word of the Lord. Nephi and his family were one of the groups that God led out of Jerusalem before Babylon came to scatter the tribes to the winds.

God protected Nephi's family offering them a land of promise, the Americas. God showed Nephi that eventually his future people would reject God. An angel showed Nephi a vision recording,

And it came to pass that the angel said unto me: Behold the wrath of God is upon the seed of thy brethren. And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.^[4a]

Columbus was the man wrought upon or worked upon. Columbus himself wrote that he was driven by the hand of God to go west to eventually open the hidden potential in the land, not only for the Europeans, but for "Europe, Islam, India, China, and Japan [to] learn of the existence of a New World." ^[1]

Nephi further said that other Gentiles, Europeans, were touched by the Spirit of God with desires to migrate to the West. Because of the falling away of the tribes of Israel who journeyed to the Americas from God, "I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren;" Nephi records. "And they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten." ^[4b]

The Gentiles, the European colonist, White people, scattered and smote the people in the Americas almost to extinction because of Manifest Destiny seasoned by the Monroe Doctrine. The Europeans, killed in the name of God as the House of Israel did with the natives of Canaan because they felt the land belonged to them by divine decree!

Columbus opened the path for the world to the "New World." For that, he is now the villain. He, however, changed the world for the better for the billions living today. The truth is, none of world history could have progressed for anyone without the colonization of the Americas, not just the United States, but the entire two hemispheres.

Nephi wrote that more was to come of this colonization of the Americas. Just like for the House of Israel, there was, and is, a catch to possessing the lands of Canaan and America.

The angel told Nephi,

Thou beholdest that the Gentiles who have gone forth out of captivity, and have been lifted up by the power of God above all other nations, upon the face of the land which is choice above all other lands, which is the land that the Lord God hath covenanted with thy father that his seed should have for the land of their inheritance; wherefore, thou seest that the Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the mixture of thy seed, which are among thy brethren. Neither will he suffer that the Gentiles shall destroy the seed of thy brethren. Neither will the Lord God suffer that the Gentiles shall forever remain in that awful state of blindness...^[4c]

God would not allow all the American natives to be destroyed by the Gentiles. He also would not allow the Gentiles to remain blind and ignorant to their wicked treatment of the natives.

Columbus opened the way for destruction for the natives of the Americas because God prepared the land for the Gentiles, the Europeans. The natives of America, however, are the chosen people of God, scattered Israel! Their DNA has been filtered through a host of other groups who migrated to the Americas, but their claim on the land called North and South America has been decreed in Scripture. In the next article will be explored how history repeats itself. Just as God gives, He takes away. He also gives again.

Clark B. Hinckley - excerpted from Christopher Columbus: A Man Among the Gentiles ^[1]

Arnold K. Garr - Christopher Columbus: A Latter-day Saint Perspective ^[2]

The American Yawp Reader - Journal of Christopher Columbus, 1492 ^[3]

Nephi, the Son of Lehi - 1 Nephi 13 ^[4]

• Verses 11-12 ^[a]
• Verse 14 ^[b]
• verses 30-32 ^[c]