2 Nephi 27 (II)

2 Nephi 27:11 And the day cometh that the words of the book which were sealed shall be read upon the house tops; and they shall be reads by the power of Christ; and all things shall be revealed unto the children of men which ever have been among the children of men, and which ever will be even unto the end of the earth. There are two other references that I know of where something is proclaimed from the housetop-Luke 12:3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops and Matthew 10:27 What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Each is describing something that had been private becoming public. This is in reference to a custom common in Israel at the time of Christ for rulers to have public proclamations made after the majority of the townspeople had returned from their labors to their homes, and the crier would ascend to the highest roof and yell for people to listen up. In Luke, Christ is saying that men's secrets are not in fact secret, and in Matthew, he is instructing his apostles to be bold in preaching, and not to assume at anything he taught needed to be a secret. In Nephi, though, he is indicating that not only secret deeds, but every action will be published before the eager ears of the world. I am much less interested in the Matthew reference, because I think the doctrine of missionary work is sufficiently clear. What interests me is this idea of shouting to the public all the wrongs you have committed. What value does that create? I can't imagine that God is doing it just for the shame we should feel, or to force us to watch as our loved ones realize that we are not as holy as they might have thought, so what's the point? At that point in time, there seems to be little for others to learn from our mistakes, and we're clearly not going to be doing a great deal of repenting, post judgement, so who benefits? Does it really come down to justice requires transparency? God needs to be clear that he is not unjustly consigning anyone to hell?

27:22 Then shalt thou seal up the book again, and hide it up unto me... This reminds me of that story of the group of people who thought that they knew where the cave that Mormon had used to stash the various plates from which he had compiled the book of Mormon and had all moved to that mountain and spent their time looking for the cave. I don't believe anyone ever found it, but it's entirely possible that they did and the church hushed it up and somewhere beneath temple square, there's a room full of stuff the is being held for Moroni to say, go ahead and pull it out.

2 Nephi 27

2 Nephi 27:3 And all the nations that fight against Zion, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision; yea, it shall be unto them, even as unto a hungry man which dreameth, and behold he eateth but he awaketh and his souls is empty; or like unto a thirsty man which dreameth, and behold he drinketh but he awaketh and behold he is faint, and his soul hath appetite; yea even so shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against mount Zion. So, if you fight against Zion, you think you are accomplishing something but it's all in your mind? The fulfillment you think you have in your life through whatever it is you have focused on will feel pointless and your soul will be empty. I'm pretty sure I have read commentary that indicates this has reference to the apostasy but I am not sure, because, while there are scriptures that speak of the word of the lord as bread and filling your soul, this pretty specifically aims at people who are fighting against Zion. And what does it mean for a nation to fight against mount Zion? Are there nations that specifically try to erode the principles of the gospel? I don't think this reads like an attack on other religions, but on political bodies.

2 Nephi 26 (II)

Nephi defines priest craft as men setting themselves up as a light unto the world, that they may get gain. In revelation, John sees an angel with seven candlesticks in his hand, which represent the seven churches in Asia, and it is made clear that the churches are not the source of the light-merely the bearers of it. However, in Matthew, Christ says to let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. Does not being the source of light apply to individuals or just to organizations? If to us, are we reflecting the light of Christ when we let our light shine? How do you let your light shine appropriately?

2 Nephi 26

2 Neohi 26:11 For the spirit of the lord will not always strive with man. And when the spirit ceaseth to strive with man then comets speedy destruction and this grieveth my soul. This passage fits in with what I have been thinking about lately: is it possible to be a good person who does bad things? At what point do you become a bad person? And can a bad person do good things? Christ said in Matthew, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. But in real life, it is possible for a generally healthy tree to have some bad fruit on a branch or two, I.e. a good tree can bring forth some bad fruit. Once it crosses the line of mostly bad fruit it becomes a bad tree, but you get a bad piece of fruit off most trees. (To be fair, some of that is definitely related to things like worms or birds.) maybe he's speaking in terms of general quality of the fruit, and a tree known for bringing forth good fruit is a good tree, even if it has a few bad apples, but a tree that is known for bad fruit is a bad tree, even if it produces an edible apricot once in a while. This verse in Nephi makes me think that there are good people who just do bad things sometimes and that the spirit will continue trying to tell them to repent until they cross the line that God alone recognizes where there is not a chance they will turn from their choices and be wholly good.

26:16 And their voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit. Nephi assumes here that we know what the voice of a person with a familiar spirit sounds like, and the casual assumption implies that he believes that people sometimes have them in truth. Clarke's commentary on the Bible says that necromancers would ventriloquize their voices as though coming from within their chest cavity, giving the impression that the ghost's voice was weak. Now, Clark clearly has an agenda limited to the version of reality defined by his christianity, and is surmising that those people did not in actual fact have a ghost or spirit speaking through them, but to me, this scripture is one that supports the idea that "there are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Woman Taken in Adultery

John 8:3-5 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

This is one of my favorite stories in the New Testament. At this point in time, while the law of Moses hasn't changed, the Romans had pronounced laws prohibiting the Jews from imposing capital punishment for spiritual crimes. i.e. if an individual had committed a crime under Roman law, they should be tried in Roman courts, but if they did something that the Romans thought was just fine, e.g. adultery, the Jews were not allowed to impose a capital punishment for that.

So, when the scribes and pharisees show up with this woman, they're not actually looking to stone her. They're looking to tell the Romans that Christ advocates murder or to tell the Jews that Christ hates the Mosaic Law. Lose, lose for him. So what does he say? He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. He says, I support unbiased judgement, which none of you are.

But here's the thing that earns this story a spot on this forum: He is unbiased judgement. He gave the law to Moses. It's not Moses's law, it's Jehovah's law, and Christ clearly tells the Jews that he is Jehovah. He, personally said, "stone adulteresses." Then, here, with this group, he says, I support unbiased judgement, which none of you are. He didn't tell them at this point in time, he was that unbiased judge, but we, luckily, know that. So why didn't he then pick up a stone and righteously impose the consequences of the law on her?

Was it, perhaps, an insight into the importance of obeying the law of the land? He supported obedience to legal systems, with his, Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's commentary on taxation. If that was part of his intent, it should give us guidance on how we should treat those who do things we consider to be morally wrong that are not prohibited by the law. It clearly does not justify the unethical/immoral action, but it may indicate that we should support the legal system under which we live.

The most interesting thing to me is that the situation (broken law, accusation, imposition of penalty) did not end here. The consequence for adultery was imposed, the penalty paid. Christ paid it. On the cross, and in the garden. It is his right, as the willing surrogate for her punishment to decide whether she needs to also suffer. And of course he tells her to stop. I think this is a pretty important lesson: Christ does believe in consequences. He does support the law, but he has the right to decide when the full consequences of a broken law need to fall on his back alone, and when, through lack of contrition, those penalties need to be paid twice, once by him and once by the transgressor. It really is such a sad waste when we force Christ to allow us to suffer for our own sins when he has already done so for us.

Aaronic Priesthood Manual 3, Lesson 40: Doing Missionary Work

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.

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.