Alma 17: 6 Having refused the kingdom which their father was desirous to confer upon them, and also this was the minds of the people...This has always been something I have found to be an interesting conundrum: what is our obligation to be/do large things when we are capable of being/doing large things? In this specific example, any one of these four sons could have been an amazing king. And while it's true that they brought many people to the knowledge of the truth, I don't see anything in the stories that would imply that those people couldn't have been brought to the truth by three of Mosiah's four sons, while the other stayed and became King. Alma only lasted as chief judge for all of nine years before the "freedom" they had granted the people blew up in his face and he had to quit to focus on preaching the word. What if they had had a strong king, who could have imposed a state religion on the people and a High Priest who could dedicate all of his time to preaching the word of God, and three sons of Mosiah who could have made an amazing 14 year missionary journey to the Lamanites? Wouldn't that have been a better use of at least one of the sons' time? They could conceivably had that king all the way through the book of Alma, and then had a great chance that his son, raised as he would have been, in the company of people like his father, Alma, the great missionary uncles he would have had, Moroni, and Heleman, would have been likely to be a solid, upright man, who could have taken them nearly to Christ's time.
So was the decision to decline the throne in favor of personal desires, however noble, the right decision?
Alma 17:11 Show forth good examples unto them in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls. I have a note in my scriptures that Anatoliy Frolov didn't want to learn about the gospel but when we helped him by translating his paper, he saw our example and wanted to know more. Anatoliy was the first person who got baptized in consequence of my teaching while I was on my mission. He was an amazing man, and was wonderful to teach. I was with Elder Staples in Novo-Darnitsya at the time.
Alma 26:27 and when our hearts were depressed, and we wer about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions and I will give unto you success. In Voskresenskiy, when I was teaching a family that I thought was perfect, and they told me that they liked everything we were saying, but they also liked their own church, and their friends were there, and they didn't see why they ought to change, I left their house so low that I was questioning why I had even come on my mission, and why we bothered to teach people the gospel at all, if the Lord, in his mercy, could just baptize them after they died anyway. We were walking to a bus stop, and I was praying, crying out inside, for God to help me understand, and I felt an amazing bolt of lightning and felt, "the Gospel is true because we have living prophets" and I was filled with such a joy that I could not contain it. I started running around, shouting for joy, throwing my bag into the air, and when my companion looked at me like I was a crazy person, I told him, "the gospel is true because we have living prophets." He said something like, "Duh." but also became enthusiastic and threw my bag a time or two. It's not new doctrine, and it's not intensely personal, but it was revelatory, and it was a message sent by God to me at a time when I needed to feel an outpouring of the spirit and it buoyed me up.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Sunday School Lesson 43: A Chosen Generation
First Peter is believed to have been written while Peter was the bishop of either Rome or Antioch. He was bishop of Antioch for 7 years and Bishop of Rome for 25 years, and died in 64-67 AD. I'm not sure I go for that timeline, because it doesn't leave much time for him to live in Jerusalem, and interact with Paul throughout Acts and some of Paul's epistles. Plus, that's a 32 year window for this epistle, which is almost as long as he lived after Christ was resurrected, so it's about as specific as saying we have no idea when he wrote it, except it probably wasn't while he was in Jerusalem. Lame.
1 Peter 1: 1 To the strangers scattered throughout ... Strangers is from the greek (διασπορᾶς diasporas), and meant scattered. It's interesting to me because a community of Ukrainians living outside of Ukraine (who try to maintain Ukrainian culture) is called a diaspora, and that's the only place I had heard it, but the dictionary has it only as a collection of Jews living outside Israel. The content in the rest of the epistle doesn't sound like it's written to Jews, though, diaspora in the opening or not.
1:6 Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. Couple of things to note here: Paul spoke of Moses's choice to leave Pharaoh's court using the same season reference, By faith Moses...refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.(Heb. 11:24-25) A season obviously means your mortal life, which gives a bit of an indication about the scale of time you must start to think on as a prophet. I'm still young enough to remember a time when a month seemed interminable, the summer seemed like a lifetime, and the school year seemed like an eternity. Recently, however, it has started to feel like the seasons are come and gone before you have time to realize they are fully arrived. Paul and Peter here, both speak of life that same way. Moses was in the wilderness with the Israelites for forty years and Paul here casually dismisses it as, oh, that was just a season.
The second thing I noticed is the grammatically excludable if need be statement. This statement is actually omitted from some translations of the Bible. Albert Barnes says that Peter was just being tactful by saying, if need be, and that he more accurately meant, because you need it. I often agree with Barnes, and certainly think that most or all of us have something to be gained through trials and humility.
1:8 Whom having not seen, ye love. This was a completely different statement back then, coming from Peter. He not only had seen Christ, but had worked with him daily during his ministry. At a family reunion once, I was up on a deck that came off the second floor of the house, sitting with my grandfather and grandmother, looking down at the majority of their eight living children, all with spouses, their 50-some-odd grandchildren, most with spouses, and the hundred or so great grandchildren. My grandfather and grandmother were looking at those people with different eyes than I was, and as we talked about what it meant for them to see all those people, returning that year to honor them, I had a hint of something eternal that I can't really describe. I wonder if Peter had a similar thought as he wrote this letter to the uncounted saints who, through his and others' efforts were honoring Christ daily.
1:15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. This statement was originally given in Leviticus 11, again in 19, and again in 20. It is probably one of my favorite injunctions in scripture. At the time it was given, the alternatives to Jehovah were bloodthirsty, lustful, immoral creations of stone and wood that embodied most of the worst behaviors of man, think of Molech or Baal. By the time of the Christians and in this part of the world, people were worshiping the greek and roman pantheons. Zeus was the father of the gods and was constantly coming down to earth to exaltedly lie with normal women. His wife, rather than punish him, would, in deified jealous rage, punish the woman who had succumbed to her husband's immortal seduction. And so on. It was (and is) commonly accepted that people do and act like the gods they worship, choosing them, perhaps in part, because they can identify with that deity. For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever. (Micah 4:5) Heavenly Father was different from the gods of the day because he said, I am holy, so you should be holy. This is a really important thing to recognize in ourselves--we will practice and aspire to the behaviors and virtues of the being we worship and pray to. Our God is a God of holiness, cleanliness, obedience, truth, love, grace, and so on. If we really believe in him, we will seek to live in the pattern he has set for us.
1:20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world. Just had to note the explicit reference to an existence in God's presence before the physical creation of the world. And, lest any think this applies to Christ only, He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4) Both Christ and we existed in a place where God could foreordain and choose us prior to the creation of the world.
1 Peter 1: 1 To the strangers scattered throughout ... Strangers is from the greek (διασπορᾶς diasporas), and meant scattered. It's interesting to me because a community of Ukrainians living outside of Ukraine (who try to maintain Ukrainian culture) is called a diaspora, and that's the only place I had heard it, but the dictionary has it only as a collection of Jews living outside Israel. The content in the rest of the epistle doesn't sound like it's written to Jews, though, diaspora in the opening or not.
1:6 Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. Couple of things to note here: Paul spoke of Moses's choice to leave Pharaoh's court using the same season reference, By faith Moses...refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.(Heb. 11:24-25) A season obviously means your mortal life, which gives a bit of an indication about the scale of time you must start to think on as a prophet. I'm still young enough to remember a time when a month seemed interminable, the summer seemed like a lifetime, and the school year seemed like an eternity. Recently, however, it has started to feel like the seasons are come and gone before you have time to realize they are fully arrived. Paul and Peter here, both speak of life that same way. Moses was in the wilderness with the Israelites for forty years and Paul here casually dismisses it as, oh, that was just a season.
The second thing I noticed is the grammatically excludable if need be statement. This statement is actually omitted from some translations of the Bible. Albert Barnes says that Peter was just being tactful by saying, if need be, and that he more accurately meant, because you need it. I often agree with Barnes, and certainly think that most or all of us have something to be gained through trials and humility.
1:8 Whom having not seen, ye love. This was a completely different statement back then, coming from Peter. He not only had seen Christ, but had worked with him daily during his ministry. At a family reunion once, I was up on a deck that came off the second floor of the house, sitting with my grandfather and grandmother, looking down at the majority of their eight living children, all with spouses, their 50-some-odd grandchildren, most with spouses, and the hundred or so great grandchildren. My grandfather and grandmother were looking at those people with different eyes than I was, and as we talked about what it meant for them to see all those people, returning that year to honor them, I had a hint of something eternal that I can't really describe. I wonder if Peter had a similar thought as he wrote this letter to the uncounted saints who, through his and others' efforts were honoring Christ daily.
1:15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. This statement was originally given in Leviticus 11, again in 19, and again in 20. It is probably one of my favorite injunctions in scripture. At the time it was given, the alternatives to Jehovah were bloodthirsty, lustful, immoral creations of stone and wood that embodied most of the worst behaviors of man, think of Molech or Baal. By the time of the Christians and in this part of the world, people were worshiping the greek and roman pantheons. Zeus was the father of the gods and was constantly coming down to earth to exaltedly lie with normal women. His wife, rather than punish him, would, in deified jealous rage, punish the woman who had succumbed to her husband's immortal seduction. And so on. It was (and is) commonly accepted that people do and act like the gods they worship, choosing them, perhaps in part, because they can identify with that deity. For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever. (Micah 4:5) Heavenly Father was different from the gods of the day because he said, I am holy, so you should be holy. This is a really important thing to recognize in ourselves--we will practice and aspire to the behaviors and virtues of the being we worship and pray to. Our God is a God of holiness, cleanliness, obedience, truth, love, grace, and so on. If we really believe in him, we will seek to live in the pattern he has set for us.
1:20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world. Just had to note the explicit reference to an existence in God's presence before the physical creation of the world. And, lest any think this applies to Christ only, He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4) Both Christ and we existed in a place where God could foreordain and choose us prior to the creation of the world.
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