Page:A dictionary of the Book of Mormon.pdf/189

Rh Salvation had entered its most glorious phase; but the wicked quaked with awful dread, they realized the extent of their iniquity, they knew that they were murderers at heart, for they had plotted to take the lives of the righteous, and in the terror that this overwhelming sense of their piteous condition wrought, they sank to the earth as though they were dead.

Many now believed who, previously, had scorned the divine messages that the prophets bore; but others, inspired of Satan, as soon as they recovered from the fright which the appearance of the promised signs had produced, began to explain them away, and, by various lying rumors, endeavored to nullify the good that had been done in the hearts of many. Others again commenced to teach that it was no longer expedient to observe the law of Moses, or to offer sacrifices, not comprehending that the infinite sacrifice had not yet been made.

. On the fourth day of the thirty-fourth Nephite year after Christ's birth, the promised signs of the Savior's crucifixion began. A terrible and devastating tempest burst upon the land. The earth quivered and groaned and opened in wide, unfathomable chasms. Mountains were riven and swallowed up in yawning gulfs, or were scattered into fragments and dispersed like hail before the tearing wind. Towers, temples, houses, were torn up, scattered in fragments or crushed by falling rocks, and, together with their inmates, were ground to dust in the convulsion. Blue and yellow flames burst from the edges of sinking rocks, blazed for a moment and then all was the deepest darkness. Rain poured down in torrents; cloud-bursts, like floods, washed away all with which they came in contact, and pillars of steaming vapor seemed to unite the earth and sky. This unparalleled storm raged throughout the land for