Another Testament of Nephi (epilogue)

4 Nephi 1

Year 35 sailed off with a burgeoning church in its wake. Jesus’ twelve disciples baptized the penitent and gifted them God’s spirit.

By Year 36 no one had skipped conversion. It was the blessed destiny of one-church rule, no nations, no bickering, no cheating, no envy.

Because everyone shared possessions, of which no one thing belonged to one person alone, you couldn’t say, “Oh, he’s rich, he’s poor,” and such. And of course servant class was a relic of a failed past.

Year 37: Continued peaceful, with boatloads of miracles spilling from the disciples’ hands. The healthcare systems and doctoring in general were obsolete. All curative powers had been reduced to the authority of Jesus and the will to invoke it.

Years 38-59: Same new, same new. It was the golden age people had always looked back for but couldn’t find. It was a time of miracles and metropolises, huge new and rebuilt cites brimming with supernatural events. (The only lingering casualties were the sunken cities, which could only be written off.)

Nephites, if it’s fair to keep making the distinction in this scenario, got more and more fertile and leaner in their dramatically scenic physiques. Marriage rates went off the charts.

The Law of Moses was now a bit of a crock. It was Law of Jesus now, with lots of prayer, fasting, and meetings, always more meetings.

Arguments? It was debatable that there were any. Miracles? There was no debate: they happened every day.

Skip ahead to Years 71-100. By the end of this era, of course, all the twelve were dead, except the three who had gotten special leave from Jesus, as described in the previous book. But there had been replacements called and ordained along the way.

Not only had contention ended, so had the baser habits: murder, obviously, was a thing of the past. The market for prostitution dried up. Larceny was a non-starter.

Who could be happier than these people? And post-death bliss to boot. This went on though Year 110.

And the Nephi that kept this last record also died, his son Amos continuing it on the same plates for eighty-four years more. Peace covered the continent the way floods used to cover the cornfields. With one exception, a renegade group who had resuscitated the name “Lamanites” for themselves.

When Amos died (Year 194), his son Amos continued the historiography on these same plates.

Year 200: Almost all of the second generation was gone now too.

I (Mormon) wish to note at this point that the population was enormous, bursting at the seams—in number, I mean, not girth. And yet wealth kept pace with inhabitants. Still no poor people as such.

But in Year 201, human nature showed its enduring force once again. Some people—mostly women (sorry)—got obsessed with glamour and the self-absorption that goes with it. And the all-things-common policy began to flake away. Class structure resumed and the pursuit of individual wealth dominated their thinking, instead of the community-based doctrine of the Anointed One.

By Year 210, many congregations had splintered off the main body of Jesus’ original church. They kept some of the teachings but catapulted away the core. Especially prevalent was the casual handling of sacred things and letting the patently unworthy eat and drink the Lord’s bread and wine.

These splinter groups grew into whole trees, because their methods seemed easier and quicker. Satan had a field day.

One new “church” not only denied the Anointed One’s doctrines but publicly scorned the real church, whom they disliked because of their calmness and their free-flowing miracles. When members of the real church divulged their affiliation, this new church was able to indict them for dangerous beliefs and get them prison time.

Well, as you know, God hates prison walls for disciples. So he knocks them down from time to time. The escapees did miracles at the drop of a hat but that didn’t soften any hearts toward them. They were like Jesus in Jerusalem: sitting ducks for ravenous dogs.

Jail time for real Christians was almost too lenient in some people’s eyes. So they tried extraordinary measures, like throwing Christians into furnaces, an idea they had gotten from the brass plates. But you can’t burn a true Christian. Maybe singe them a little.

Some jurisdictions also allowed punishment by wild beasts in a ring like a circus with walls. What happened? The Christians just took some time off and had fun with the animals, cradling foxes on their laps, playing fetch with lions, and so forth.

But the social tide had slid back out into the ocean of religious mischief. The nasty churches now outweighed the pure one. True Christians were punching bags for zealous malcontents.

By Year 231, the cultural fault line ran deep. People who believed in Jesus’ truth had the nickname Nephites (or sometimes Jacobites, Josephites, and Zoramites). (The vagabond three semi-immortal disciples stayed only among these folks.)

The non-believers (or pseudo believers) went by Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites. They actively railed against the true believers and real Christianity. The younger generation had been raised on nothing but this antichrist tradition and style. So they had little chance to even consider an alternative outloook. It was as if compassion and social justice had been mowed down and left in the sun to dry out and blow away.

By Year 244, the large majority were in this latter camp. They kept building churches, of course, mostly as fashion runways with carpeted lobbies.

By Year 260 the Gadianton Group Secret Society Gang was back in full swing. And even the Nephites had backslid, particularly when it came to rich-folk display. Whatever true “Nephites,” i.e., Christians, remained, they had gone into a melancholy funk.

By Year 300, you couldn’t tell the groups apart. They were now a demonic parody of the old days—unified only in their devotion to individual self-actualization and accumulation of personal property.

I guess if there was any group that operated in one another’s best interests, it would have to be the Gadiantons, since they were a sort of collective, loading up vaults and bank accounts with money to manipulate public sentiment about themselves and shape politics. The source of these funds? Anything you can imagine, and then some.

In Year 305, Amos Ii died and his brother Ammaron continued the historiography of this people.

Year 320, Ammaron had a divine suspicion he needed to hide these plates along with all others with sacred Christian teachings and ancient history on them. And that’s what he did, fully believing they would come to light again when they’d have relevance and worth to a new generation of believers.