| 746 God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.
And the Lord said, I will blot out man that I created from the face of the earth, yea, from man to the birds of the air, together with cattle and beasts that are in the field, for I repent that I made them.
And all men who walked in the ways of the Lord died in those days, before the Lord brought the evil upon man which he had declared, for this was from the Lord, that they should not see the evil which the Lord spoke of concerning the sons of men.
And Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord chose him and his children to raise up seed from them upon the face of the whole earth."
This is simply a corroboration of the Bible: The wickedness of man became so great that God had to destroy the whole world, wherein was life, by the flood to subdue it, agreeably to a part of the command given to Adam.
But leaving matters before the flood, to be explained when Enoch's pillar is found, and the record it encloses made public, there is plenty of proof to warrant the belief that ruins may be expected all over the earth. When the tower was building we find this record in the Bible, which the Lord must have spoken:
"Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth: and they left off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."
From this definite account of driving the "nations apart, when the ancient hills did bow," all reflecting minds may judge that man was scattered over the whole face of the earth: And with the superior knowledge of men like Noah, Shem, (who was Melchisedec [Melchizedek]) and Abram, the father of the faithful, three contemporaries, holding the keys of the highest order of the priesthood: connecting the creation, and fall; memorising [memorizing] the righteousness of Enoch; and glorying in the construction of the ark for the salvation of a world; still retaining the model and pattern of that ark, than which a great, ah, we may say, half so great a vessel has never been built since; for another ark, be it remembered, with such a ponderous living freight will never be prepared as a vessel of mercy by command of Jehovah: That was so perfectly built as to brave the fury of the elements a year: and with the image of the tower whose peering top reached the sky in daring magnificence; and with that mighty combination of intellect, when the whole earth was of one language, and the plains of Shinar the capitol,-with all these and thousands of others,-where is the man so self biased for his own age, as to wonder who peopled the ruinous cities of the south, or reared the time defying mounds of the north?
If the first and second thousand years produced the Zion of Enoch and its translation to heaven; the ark and the flood: the tower and the dispersion; who is so narrow minded, so destitute of the matter of man, as not to suppose, that greater things, larger schemes and mightier monuments of both wisdom and wickedness, would characterize the third and fourth thousand years than had the preceding two? One God fashioned the spirits of all men; and, in all ages the same superior intellects, talents and ambition, in all the various grades and trades among men, bring out about the same current of excellence, improvement, vanity, virtue, public good, and national evil. Splendor, renown and ruins, since the flood, ought not to astonish any one: for there must have been much, both from the wisdom and folly of men who had the scope of a thousand years life, to exercise their powers upon. Josephus says many lived to be one thousand years before the flood.
Of matters since then, the scriptures are not silent. Jeremiah says: "arise, get you up unto the wealthy nation, that dwell without care, saith the Lord, which have neither gates nor bars, that dwell alone." This was spoken in the days of Nebuchadnezzar; and it is well known that he did not allow any nation to dwell alone without gates and bars; so the wealthy nation, must have dwelt alone on this continent.
As to the original inhabitants of the continent of America, the Book of Mormon, backs up the description of immense "ruins" in Central America, dispels all doubt. And while that book opens the sleeping history of two or three thousand years past, we can see the two families that came out from the tower, spreading from sea to sea, waxing more and more, greater and greater, until they had occupied the entire country fifteen hundred years. In honor of one of the two first families, they were called 'Jaredites.'
After they had almost covered the land with cities, and probably made the present prairies
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