Podcast: Download (7.1MB)
Subscribe: RSS
From the book: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith
by Michael R. Ash
In the early part of the Book of Mormon, Nephi saw in a vision a “man among the Gentiles” who left his people and crossed “many waters” (1 Nephi 12:22). Nephi saw that “the Spirit of God” was with this man who eventually came to the Americans and the descendants of the Lehites. Latter-day Saints have interpreted this verse as referring to Christopher Columbus.
In the last few decades there has been a growth in scholarship regarding Columbus –much of it starting in 1991 with the translation of Libro de las profecias. This new look at Columbus reveals a spiritual man who was driven, in part, with a desire to spread Christianity. Columbus believed that he was guided to the New World by the Holy Spirit.
Michael R. Ash is the author of: Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting The Prophet Joseph Smith. He is the owner and operator of MormonFortress.com and is on the management team for FairMormon. He has been published in Sunstone, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the Maxwell Institute’s FARMS Review, and is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt. He and his wife live in Ogden, Utah, and have three daughters.
Julianne Dehlin Hatton is a broadcast journalist living in Louisville, Kentucky. She has worked as a News Director at an NPR affiliate, Radio and Television Host, and Airborne Traffic Reporter. She graduated with an MSSc from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2008. Julianne and her husband Thomas are the parents of four children.
Music for Faith and Reason is provided by Arthur Hatton.
