Another anti-Mormon simpleton who was incapable of understanding what the Book of Mormon obviously says was Marion G. Romney of the First Presidency. Unfortunately, this talk was published by the Church, making it official doctrine.
Marion G. Romney, October 1975 General Conference
In the western part of the state of New York near Palmyra is a prominent hill known as the “hill Cumorah.” (Morm. 6:6.) On July twenty-fifth of this year, as I stood on the crest of that hill admiring with awe the breathtaking panorama which stretched out before me on every hand, my mind reverted to the events which occurred in that vicinity some twenty-five centuries ago—events which brought to an end the great Jaredite nation.He goes on to say:
As I contemplated this tragic scene from the crest of Cumorah and viewed the beautiful land of the Restoration as it appears today, I cried in my soul, “How could it have happened?”
The answer came immediately as I remembered that some fifteen to twenty centuries before their destruction, as the small group of their ancestors was being divinely led from the tower of Babel, the Lord “would that they should come forth even unto [this] land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people.
“And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared [their prophet-leader], that whoso should possess this land … from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.
“And now, we can behold the decrees of God concerning this land,” wrote the ancient prophet-historian, “that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity.
“For behold, this is a land which is choice above all other lands; wherefore he that doth possess it shall serve God or shall be swept off; for it is the everlasting decree of God.” (Ether 2:7–10.)Being the anti-Mormon cherry-picker that he was, President Romney had this ridiculous idea that the prophecies about "this land" had some kind of relationship to the place where the Book of Mormon narrative happened.
In his anti-Mormon, childish, fundamentalist approach to the Book of Mormon, the semi-literate President Romney mistakenly (perhaps deliberately so) reads the Book of Mormon to mean that the final Nephite battle was also at the Hill Cumorah in New York.
This second civilization to which I refer, the Nephites, flourished in America between 600 B.C. and A.D. 400. Their civilization came to an end for the same reason, at the same place, and in the same manner as did the Jaredites’. If you want to read more anti-Mormon lunacy and hysterically immature interpretations of the Book of Mormon by a member of the First Presidency, you can look through his talk where he explicitly says that the Book of Mormon references to "this land" mean the United States---as opposed to, say, Guatemala or the Yucatan or somewhere else down in Mesoamerica.