5 min.

When the World Began to Awaken

For centuries, Europe drifted through a long night of stagnation. Political and ecclesiastical authorities enforced orthodoxy more fiercely than they nurtured truth. The abuses of the Inquisition nearly disgraced the very church it claimed to defend. Yet as this darkness began to lose momentum, something remarkable stirred. Minds opened, creativity reawakened, and the dignity of the individual soul resurfaced. This rebirth—known as the Renaissance—marked a decisive turning point in humanity’s journey toward liberty, learning, and spiritual restoration.

A New Confidence in Human Reason

The Renaissance was not rebellion; it was rediscovery. After generations of restricted access to knowledge, Europeans reclaimed the God‑given ability to think, learn, and discern truth. Scholars immersed themselves in ancient Greek and Roman texts. Artists explored the beauty of God’s creation through realism and perspective. Scientists questioned long‑held assumptions about the natural world. This awakening restored confidence in the individual mind and laid the foundation for later movements that would champion conscience, liberty, and personal faith.

Scripture and the Rise of Personal Conscience

As learning expanded, so did the desire for scripture in one’s own language. Gutenberg’s printing press multiplied the Bible, but the Renaissance multiplied the hunger to understand it. This environment produced figures like William Tyndale—classically trained, fluent in ancient languages, and driven by the conviction that every soul deserved direct access to God’s word. His English translation of the Bible reshaped the English‑speaking world.

The World Opens Westward

The Renaissance expanded not only the mind but the map. Advances in mathematics, navigation, and shipbuilding made oceanic exploration possible. Into this world stepped Christopher Columbus, who believed he was part of a providential plan—opening a hemisphere where liberty could take root and where God’s future work could unfold.

The Fall of Constantinople and the Spread of Learning

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 accelerated the awakening. Eastern scholars fled to Italy with precious manuscripts and a tradition of Greek scholarship. Humanism emphasized truth, virtue, and the dignity of man, inspiring confidence in the capacity of human thought to understand the natural world and to seek God through reason as well as revelation.

Art as a Window into God’s Creation

Renaissance art responded to unfolding mathematical principles of balance, harmony, and perspective. It became a branch of knowledge in its own right—revealing divine truths through depictions of God, his creations, and mankind’s place in the universe. Works such as Leonardo’s Last Supper and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes expressed human dignity with unprecedented power.

Political Transformations and the End of Old Orders

The failure of the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire to provide a stable, unifying framework spurred political change. City‑states, national monarchies, and emerging national languages rose to counter the influence of Rome. Feudal structures weakened. New political identities took shape. The Renaissance paved the way for the Reformation, which would challenge ecclesiastical authority even more directly and expand the sphere of individual conscience.

The Descendants of Joseph: A Parallel Story on the American Continent

The beginning of colonization in America is a bittersweet story that contains powerful lessons for mankind. Many of these lessons are taught in the Book of Mormon, which explains the origin and destiny of some of America’s early inhabitants, predicts the clash of two civilizations, and outlines the pattern Americans must follow to avoid a similar fate.

For millions who accept the Book of Mormon as sacred history, the story of the American continent forms a crucial parallel to the Renaissance unfolding in Europe. According to that record, many early inhabitants of the Americas descended from Lehi, a descendant of Manasseh, son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt. As such, they are a part of the lost Ten Tribes. Their story began in 600 BC when they left Jerusalem and soon thereafter sailed to the Promised Land (the American continent).

Within a few years of their arrival, two great people were established, whose key role, as foretold by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, was to write a record that would join with the record of Judah unto the confounding of false doctrines. Written by a succession of prophets, this record conveys knowledge of their ancestors, reveals the Lord’s covenants to their descendants, and restores plain and previous things that have been lost form the Bible. It is called the Book of Mormon.

In 34 AD as recorded in Jerusalem, Christ said, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one- fold and one shepherd.” In fulfillment of these words, the resurrected Christ visited America, taught his gospel, and established his church. So powerful was this experience that the people were all converted unto the Lord. They lived for two hundred years with “no contentions and disputations among them.”

Eventually, there was a great division among the people. However, they did not dwindle in unbelief, but they willfully rebelled against the teachings they had received, a condition which led to the gradual destruction of one group by the other.

The surviving group, lacking the coherency of the previous order, broke into tribes and carved out territories. As prophesied, these groups warred among themselves and were scattered, driven, and nearly destroyed through disease and conquest.

Far from the myth of ruthless savages, the native peoples encountered by the French and English in the early seventeenth century were fairly advanced tribes whose members enjoyed many rights and freedoms, whose rulers depended upon the acquiescence of their people in order to continue their rule. In direct contrast to the divine right of kings’ stranglehold on Europe, many native Americans were practicing common consent.

As the early settlers passed along their observations of these democratic organizations to their former homelands, the minds of European philosophers were influenced and enlarged. In turn, these philosophers furnished much of the intellectual base for the American and French revolutions, profoundly affecting world history.

After the resurrected Christ visited them, these people lived in unity, peace, and righteousness, an enlightened society blessed by the gospel. But eventually, as the record states, they willfully rebelled against the truth they once embraced. Their decline was not due to ignorance but to rejection, and their scattering, warfare, and suffering were consequences long foretold.

Together, the Bible and the Book of Mormon stand as three witnesses of Jesus Christ. These records are given because God loves his children and wants them to remain on the straight and narrow path, avoiding the destruction that follows rebellion and disobedience.

We are fortunate to have this account—not only for what it teaches about the early inhabitants of America, but because it stands as a warning voice. It shows, in sobering clarity, how a once‑enlightened people fell when they turned away from Jesus Christ and his teachings, and why their scattered condition invites modern readers to consider the consequences of rejecting divine truth.

Yet the Book of Mormon also promises that a remnant would be preserved. Many Native American peoples, though battered by disease, conquest, and displacement, retained a deep love of freedom.

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce captured their feelings in these words, “You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be contented to be penned up and denied liberty. Let me be a free man–free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose. Free to think and act and talk for myself.” According to prophecy, many descendants of the biblical Joseph will yet assist in preparing the world for Christ’s Second Coming and in building a culture rooted in the inspired founding documents of the United States.

A Divine Preparation for What Came Next

Seen through the lens of faith, the Renaissance was not merely a cultural flowering but a deliberate stage in God’s long preparation of the world. Gutenberg broke the chains on knowledge. The Renaissance awakened the human mind. Tyndale gave the English‑speaking world the Bible. Columbus opened a hemisphere where freedom could grow. The descendants of Joseph preserved a record and a legacy that would influence the birth of a nation. Each step expanded human agency and moved the world closer to freedom of expression, belief, and the Restoration.

Conclusion

From the Bible came the idea of the inherent worth of every soul. From its teachings came moral law and moral conduct, the English legal tradition, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution. From the Renaissance came the courage to question, to learn, and to seek truth. From the descendants of Joseph came a sacred record and a legacy of governing. And from the Reformation and Enlightenment would come the spirit of personal responsibility and free examination.

The Renaissance was the moment when humanity began to look outward, upward, and inward all at once, preparing the world for further enlightenment, for the spread of freedom, for the restitution of all things, and for the unfolding of God’s purposes in the latter days.

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