About four hundred years after the visitation of Christ, the Church in America ceased to exist, for an overwhelming tide of apostasy had swept the New as well as the Old World, and by Divine allowance the Nephite nation fell a prey to its hereditary foes. -- 40 -- EAST AND WEST IN ONE ACCLAIM That Jesus is the Christ TWO national histories, separate and distinct, written on opposite hemispheres, unite in circumstantial testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ as the World's Redeemer; and these are embodied in independent volumes of Scripture--The Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon. The evidence of witnesses, whether individuals, coteries or nations, refutes itself if it fail in consistency, mutual support, and agreement in all substantials. The most critical examination of these two compilations of Scripture as to this vital feature is invited. Among the outstanding facts of profoundest import recorded in the Bible concerning Jesus Christ and His mission are these: 1. His preexistence and antemortal Godship. 2. His foreordination as the Redeemer and Savior of mankind. 3. Predictions of His embodiment in the flesh, as the Son of the Eternal Father and of mortal woman. 4. The fulfilment of these predictions in His birth as Mary's Child. 5. The sending of a forerunner, John the Baptist, to prepare the way for the Lord's public ministry. 6. Christ's earthly life, covering about a third of a century, characterized by beneficent service, by authoritative administration, and by unexceptionable example. 7. The establishment of His Church with duly ordained Apostles, who, with other ministers invested with the Holy Priesthood, carried forward the work of salvation after the Lord's departure. 8. The specific and authentic enunciation of the fundamental principles and ordinances of the Gospel, by which the way of salvation has been opened to all, and without which none can abide in the Kingdom of God, these comprising: (1) Faith in Him as the Son of God and the Redeemer of the world; (2) Repentance of sin; (3) Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and (4) Bestowal of the Holy Ghost by the authoritative laying on of hands. 9. The Lord's sacrificial and atoning death. 10. His actual resurrection, whereby His spirit was reunited with the crucified body and He became a glorified and immortalized Soul. 11. His ministry as a Resurrected Being among men. 12. His exaltation to the place He had won at the right hand of God the Eternal Father. 13. The general apostasy of mankind from the Gospel of Christ, bringing about an era of spiritual darkness. 14. The restoration of the Holy Priesthood in the latter days, by which the Gospel would be again preached in power and its ordinances administered for the salvation of men. 15. The assurance of our Lord's yet future return to earth, in glory and judgment, to inaugurate the predicted Millennium of peace and righteousness.