The Book of Mormon teaches that the two American continents are a promised land, consecrated to righteousness and to liberty, and especially dedicated to the seed of the Patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob, of Bible fame, and to the Gentile races, who shall in the last days be gathered to the land as well as the descendants of Joseph. When the Jaredite colony was directed to take its departure from the valley of the Euphrates, the Lord promised to go before them and direct them to “a land which is choice above all the land of the earth.” After beginning the journey the Lord would not permit them to stop short of that land of promise; “but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people; and he {the Lord] had sworn unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time hence forth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. . . . . Behold this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it, shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ.”