How prevalent is the "Hollow Earth Theory" among Mormons?

  • Thread starter Thread starter St_Nephi
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

St_Nephi

Guest
I was a practicing Latter-day Saint for 30+ years of my life and I had never before heard of this, yet I’ve encountered a (rather annoying) Mormon on another forum who believes in it. forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=251662

I’m confident that if anyone besides this one person (and the author of the site she links to) actually believe in this “theory” that they must constitute a very small fringe of Mormons, but how exactly prevalent is it? Have you heard any Mormons tell you before that the Earth is hollow and that the 10 lost Tribes of Israel are living down there in grand civilizations?
 
Love the Pellucidar books by Burroughs. But it is obvious that there is NO evidence for a hollow Earth. Oh well. 🤷
 
I have heard of this before, but I am unsure of who was trying to explain it to me. I seem to remember it being Mormon missionaries, but I could be wrong. It might have been the JWs or SDA or even some other group. The biggest thing that I kept thinking at the time was, well, lots of people are under ground right now, but no, they aren’t living in a hole. They are BURIED in a hole. And the outer part of heaven sounds like purgatory. And coming out of ground to proclaim the second coming sounds like the resurrection of the body. And the sun in the middle of the world sounds like the inner core. At least this belief shows that the world is round. Another group told me that it is flat!
 
Never heard of it myself. I asked some mormon friends (one a bishop) and they had not heard of it before either.
 
St_Nephi said:
I was a practicing Latter-day Saint for 30+ years of my life and I had never before heard of this, yet I’ve encountered a (rather annoying) Mormon on another forum who believes in it. forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=251662

I’m confident that if anyone besides this one person (and the author of the site she links to) actually believe in this “theory” that they must constitute a very small fringe of Mormons, but how exactly prevalent is it? Have you heard any Mormons tell you before that the Earth is hollow and that the 10 lost Tribes of Israel are living down there in grand civilizations?
Click to expand...
That’s a new one I haven’t heard.

The prevalent idea in my Mormon days re: the lost tribes, and the infamous additional scripture that will be found was that it was under the Arctic icecap. Perhaps in ice caves. When the ice melts, the lost tribes civilization will be found and so will additional scripture.

The Arctic ice is melting, so I’m looking forward to additional Mormon scripture. 😛

This hollow earth idea seems to move the civilization from ice caves, to caves, or one giant cave. I wonder if the lost tribes have evolved into blind albinos?
 
Verne, H.G. Wells… this is science fiction stuff. I don’t think many Mormons believe this.
 
RebeccaJ said:
That’s a new one I haven’t heard.

The prevalent idea in my Mormon days re: the lost tribes, and the infamous additional scripture that will be found was that it was under the Arctic icecap. Perhaps in ice caves. When the ice melts, the lost tribes civilization will be found and so will additional scripture.
Click to expand...
Interesting you should say this. According to the LDS guy whose site the original woman I’m speaking of posted, the entrance to this hollow Earth is at the poles



A preliminary google search for “Hollow Earth” and “Mormon” brings up a number of LDS-related forums with incredibly scientifically illiterate Mormons speculating whether it could be possible. Also note that according to this hypothesis there is a sun inside the Earth to give light to the inhabitants thereof!

This is just oh so weird! Normally I wouldn’t even waste my time being curious about the prevalence of such a patently absurd belief, but then again my devoutly Mormon grandfather to this very day believes that the Moon is inhabited. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Hollow Earth was another obscure teaching of some early LDS prophet no longer spoken of.
 
St_Nephi said:
Interesting you should say this. According to the LDS guy whose site the original woman I’m speaking of posted, the entrance to this hollow Earth is at the poles

http://www.ourhollowearth.com/HollowEarth.jpg

A preliminary google search for “Hollow Earth” and “Mormon” brings up a number of LDS-related forums with incredibly scientifically illiterate Mormons speculating whether it could be possible. Also note that according to this hypothesis there is a sun inside the Earth to give light to the inhabitants thereof!
Click to expand...
Wow!
This is just oh so weird! Normally I wouldn’t even waste my time being curious about the prevalence of such a patently absurd belief, but then again my devoutly Mormon grandfather to this very day believes that the Moon is inhabited. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Hollow Earth was another obscure teaching of some early LDS prophet no longer spoken of.
Click to expand...
It originates with the diary of Benjamin Johnson:

Sometimes when at my house I asked him [Joseph Smith] questions relating to past, present and future; some of his answers were taken by Brother William Clayton, who was then present with him, and are now recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants; the one as to what the Lord told him in relation to seeing his face at 85 years of age; also the one as to the earth becoming as a sea of glass, molten with fire. [D&C 130: 9, 14-17] Other questions were asked when Brother Clayton was not present, one of which I will relate: I asked where the nine and a half tribes of Israel were. “Well,” said he, “you remember the old caldron or potash kettle you used to boil maple sap in for sugar, don’t you?” I said yes. “Well,” said he, “they are in the north pole in a concave just the shape of that kettle. And John the Revelator is with them, preparing them for their return.”

And there is this, from Joseph Fielding Smith (1952)

“You know, a lot of people have an idea that these tribes that are lost are not lost at all, they are just coming in among us all the time. They are not coming in among us all the time. We are gathering scattered Israel, but those tribes have not come yet. They will come when the Lord gets ready. You know, they are building a highway up here through Canada to Alaska. I do not know just what they are doing it for–presumably to fight the Japanese. This is only a thought; don’t go away and say I state it as a fact–I have just wondered if they are not building that road to fulfill the promise the Lord made, as a highway for those lost people to eventually use when they come to the children of Ephraim? The Lord does a lot of wonderful things in a mysterious way” (The Signs of the Times, Deseret News Press, 44-45).
 
This is so funny. Just yesterday we started a chapter in science about the layers of the Earth (crust, mantle, core), and today this thread. As I said before I had heard of this before but wasn’t completely sure where. I did bring this up to my kids yesterday that a long time ago some people thought the Earth was flat and others thought it was hollow. I shared some of this thread and the diagram of the hollow Earth with my older kids (don’t want to confuse the younger ones!), and they immediately started coming up with theories of their own. The Hobbits live in middle Earth, one said. Santa’s workshop is probably down there another said. And they thought it was ironic that some say the Lost Tribes are inside the Earth while others say that’s where the Nazis went! Now I have a 12 year old who is encouraging his 5, 6 and 8 year old siblings to try to dig to the middle of the Earth, but warning them it might pop like a balloon if those people are all correct!
 
I’ve heard of it, and the one time it came up my parents indicated that they believe it’s a legitimate claim. However, it definitely isn’t part of mainstream Mormonism. I only heard of it once in all my years of being raised LDS.
 
Because of Cleon Skousen, the lost ten tribes, their whereabouts and their appearance in the last days, were all popular subjects when I was a teenager. It was popular for LDS members to own Skousen’s books and reference them for lessons and talks.

He’s still popular today, just in the form and delivery of Glenn Beck. :D:p
 
RebeccaJ said:
Because of Cleon Skousen, the lost ten tribes, their whereabouts and their appearance in the last days, were all popular subjects when I was a teenager. It was popular for LDS members to own Skousen’s books and reference them for lessons and talks.

He’s still popular today, just in the form and delivery of Glenn Beck. :D:p
Click to expand...
I must’ve been a generation behind you. Skousen was embarrassing by the time I came of age to write my own talks.

I find it funny the number of Evangelicals, who are otherwise quite anti-Mormon, eating up Skousen at nothing more than the recommendation of Beck.
 
St_Nephi said:
I must’ve been a generation behind you. Skousen was embarrassing by the time I came of age to write my own talks.

I find it funny the number of Evangelicals, who are otherwise quite anti-Mormon, eating up Skousen at nothing more than the recommendation of Beck.
Click to expand...
Which Skousen book has info on the hollow-earth theory?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top