hich his people were the victims; "and
behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying, Lift up your head
and be of good cheer, for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night
shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to
shew unto the world that I will fulfil all that which I have caused to
be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets. Behold, I come unto my own,
to fulfil all things which I have made known unto the children of men,
from the foundation of the world, and do the will, both of the Father,
and of the Son; of the Father, because of me, and of the Son, because of
my flesh. And behold, the time is at hand, and this night shall the sign
be given."[245]

The words of the prophet were fulfilled that night; for though the sun
set in its usual course there was no darkness; and on the morrow the sun
rose on a land already illumined; a day and a night and another day had
been as one day; and this was but one of the signs. A new star appeared
in the firmament of the west, even as was seen by the magi in the east;
and there were many other marvelous manifestations as the prophets had
predicted. All these things occurred on what is now known as the
American continent, six hundred years after Lehi and his little company
had left Jerusalem to come hither.

THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF JESUS.

The time of Messiah's birth is a subject upon which specialists in
theology and history, and those who are designated in literature "the
learned," fail to agree. Numerous lines of investigation have been
followed, only to reach divergent conclusions, both as to the year and
as to the month and day within the year at which the "Christian era" in
reality began. The establishment of the birth of Christ as an event
marking a time from which chronological data should be calculated, was
first effected about 532 A.D. by Dionysius Exiguus; and as a basis for
the reckoning of time this method has come to be known as the Dionysian
system, and takes for its fundamental datum A.U.C. 753, that is to say
753 years after the founding of Rome, as the year of our Lord's birth.
So far as there exists any consensus of opinion among later scholars who
have investigated the subject, it is to the effect that the Dionysian
calculation is wrong, in that it places the birth of Christ between
three and four years too late; and that therefore our Lord was born in
the third or fourth year before the beginning of what is designated b