1 Nephi 13:20-30
13:20-22 - In the previous post we discussed the angel showing Nephi a book that was carried from the gentiles across the sea to the promised land. This assumably is the Bible. The angel asks Nephi is he knew what the book is, and Nephi says no. I wonder why the angel asked him if he knew what the book was. The angel must have known that Nephi didn't know. Interesting.
13:23-25 - When this book, let's just call it the Bible, first is written, it contains the "fulness of the gospel." This has always been a confusing statement for me for several reasons. First reason, who exactly wrote the Bible? In know that there are many different authors, but who kept the records. For instance, the Nephites handed ALL their records from one person to the next, and that person kept all the records together, safe, and was the lone recorder of that time, until the plates passed to the next person. Was the Bible like that? I don't think so, but then again, maybe they were. Take the brass plates for example. There was one set of records that was complete from the creation to the time of Jeremiah, so I guess it's possible to have a congruent record. So I guess we could imagine the Old Testament to be something like that, a set record bound together. The New Testament has the "4 gospels," and they seem to be written all around the same time. Then there are the epistles, and John's revelations, etc. all within the span of apparently 100 years or so, and in various remote locations. So back then was it realistic to think that several different people in several different places throughout basically the entire Roman empire could write various things and then send them, somehow to one set location to be collaborated and then copied and sent out again for the leaders of the church to preach to the people. It seems unlikely, but then again I don't know a whole lot the really early history of Christianity. What would make more sense to me is that all the writings that could be found from the early apostles of Jesus were taken and put together over several years and as more and more writings emerged over the next few centuries, they were added to then taken away from the Bible. But probably many were lost or forged, and the process of putting the initial book together was probably almost impossible.In the Institute manual Robert J. Matthews says in the article "A Bible! A Bible!" "The world never has had a complete Bible, for it was massively - even cataclysmically- corrupted before it was distributed." And Joseph Smith says that the Bible was correct as "it came from the pen of the original writer," but that many things have been lost. So when the writers originally penned the content for the Bible, it was true, correct, and contained the fulness of the gospel. But somehow those writings and teachings didn't make it into the Bible that we have today. I've always imagined in the beginning there being a Bible that was complete, 100% like the Book of Mormon, start to finish, being hand held, and then wicked people marking out the stuff they didn't like, and that probably happened, but that's not the only way that the truths were lost. The truths were also lost by the manuscripts being lost, stolen, destroyed before they even made it into the Bible. Then there is always the political powers who wanted the Bible changed. I've always understood that King Henry the 8th had lots of scripture taken out of the Bible about divorce so that he could justify his divorce to the people of England when he created the Church of England. Then there are the expected translating errors. Imagine you have a long, dramatic story and you tell a friend, then that friend tells a friend, and so on until the story has been told over a thousand times. I would be interested to see if the end story even resembled the real story from the beginning. That's how I've always imagined the Bible. From a bazillion different languages, through different cultural filters, I always think that what we have now is the "purple monkey dishwasher" version of the original intended version.
13:26-30 - It is emphasized here that much of what was "lost" was actually maliciously stolen or destroyed for the sole purpose of destroying the church of God. And it worked. In verse 29 it says that "an exceedingly great many do stumble" and I think that this is evident in many ways in today's world. I think I've talked about the idea that people have a deep seeded desire to believe in God, and that most people will be fairly obedient to the laws that they believe their God has for them. But if the standards for obedience aren't very high I don't think people will live a higher law just because they think it's what they should do, especially if their evangelical leaders teach them to the contrary. For instance, there are very few "Christian" churches out there that teach sex only within marriage, nothing before, and nothing outside of that bond. Even though the Bible states that fornication is wrong, there are really a lot of examples of "righteous" people living adulterous lives, and being celebrated and loved of God. For instance, King David not only commits adultery, he commits murder as well, but for the rest of the Bible he is considered the epitome of righteousness, and it's written that way explicitly. In fact, I always wondered why, even though he had clearly fallen into deep sin, he was still praised as being the Lord's chosen one. It wasn't until reading the Book of Mormon one time that I realized that the Lord didn't approve of what he did. Jesus was clearly baptized by immersion, but still so many churches out there can justify doing it by sprinkling, baptizing newborn babies, and telling mothers that because their baby died before it could be baptized, that baby was going to hell. How in anything logical does that make even a tiny bit of sense? If anyone knows even the smallest thing about Jesus, even if it's from the Bible, they would be able to see that that is crazy talk, and makes about as much sense as saying something like "if you think really hard about a monkey, you will get toast out of this rock" it just is insane. Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, but why him and not anyone else, there is no explanation of the priesthood or John's authority. Oh very interesting, there are many many things that are missing out of the Bible, and I've never really realized that this was a surgical excision of information. I was thinking more along the lines of Satan saying "well let's just grab out what we can and then they will be left with whatever." But no, I can see that this was done a lot more deliberately than that. There was specific information that he wanted out, and it's really turned the Christian world into a mad house.
13:23-25 - When this book, let's just call it the Bible, first is written, it contains the "fulness of the gospel." This has always been a confusing statement for me for several reasons. First reason, who exactly wrote the Bible? In know that there are many different authors, but who kept the records. For instance, the Nephites handed ALL their records from one person to the next, and that person kept all the records together, safe, and was the lone recorder of that time, until the plates passed to the next person. Was the Bible like that? I don't think so, but then again, maybe they were. Take the brass plates for example. There was one set of records that was complete from the creation to the time of Jeremiah, so I guess it's possible to have a congruent record. So I guess we could imagine the Old Testament to be something like that, a set record bound together. The New Testament has the "4 gospels," and they seem to be written all around the same time. Then there are the epistles, and John's revelations, etc. all within the span of apparently 100 years or so, and in various remote locations. So back then was it realistic to think that several different people in several different places throughout basically the entire Roman empire could write various things and then send them, somehow to one set location to be collaborated and then copied and sent out again for the leaders of the church to preach to the people. It seems unlikely, but then again I don't know a whole lot the really early history of Christianity. What would make more sense to me is that all the writings that could be found from the early apostles of Jesus were taken and put together over several years and as more and more writings emerged over the next few centuries, they were added to then taken away from the Bible. But probably many were lost or forged, and the process of putting the initial book together was probably almost impossible.In the Institute manual Robert J. Matthews says in the article "A Bible! A Bible!" "The world never has had a complete Bible, for it was massively - even cataclysmically- corrupted before it was distributed." And Joseph Smith says that the Bible was correct as "it came from the pen of the original writer," but that many things have been lost. So when the writers originally penned the content for the Bible, it was true, correct, and contained the fulness of the gospel. But somehow those writings and teachings didn't make it into the Bible that we have today. I've always imagined in the beginning there being a Bible that was complete, 100% like the Book of Mormon, start to finish, being hand held, and then wicked people marking out the stuff they didn't like, and that probably happened, but that's not the only way that the truths were lost. The truths were also lost by the manuscripts being lost, stolen, destroyed before they even made it into the Bible. Then there is always the political powers who wanted the Bible changed. I've always understood that King Henry the 8th had lots of scripture taken out of the Bible about divorce so that he could justify his divorce to the people of England when he created the Church of England. Then there are the expected translating errors. Imagine you have a long, dramatic story and you tell a friend, then that friend tells a friend, and so on until the story has been told over a thousand times. I would be interested to see if the end story even resembled the real story from the beginning. That's how I've always imagined the Bible. From a bazillion different languages, through different cultural filters, I always think that what we have now is the "purple monkey dishwasher" version of the original intended version.
13:26-30 - It is emphasized here that much of what was "lost" was actually maliciously stolen or destroyed for the sole purpose of destroying the church of God. And it worked. In verse 29 it says that "an exceedingly great many do stumble" and I think that this is evident in many ways in today's world. I think I've talked about the idea that people have a deep seeded desire to believe in God, and that most people will be fairly obedient to the laws that they believe their God has for them. But if the standards for obedience aren't very high I don't think people will live a higher law just because they think it's what they should do, especially if their evangelical leaders teach them to the contrary. For instance, there are very few "Christian" churches out there that teach sex only within marriage, nothing before, and nothing outside of that bond. Even though the Bible states that fornication is wrong, there are really a lot of examples of "righteous" people living adulterous lives, and being celebrated and loved of God. For instance, King David not only commits adultery, he commits murder as well, but for the rest of the Bible he is considered the epitome of righteousness, and it's written that way explicitly. In fact, I always wondered why, even though he had clearly fallen into deep sin, he was still praised as being the Lord's chosen one. It wasn't until reading the Book of Mormon one time that I realized that the Lord didn't approve of what he did. Jesus was clearly baptized by immersion, but still so many churches out there can justify doing it by sprinkling, baptizing newborn babies, and telling mothers that because their baby died before it could be baptized, that baby was going to hell. How in anything logical does that make even a tiny bit of sense? If anyone knows even the smallest thing about Jesus, even if it's from the Bible, they would be able to see that that is crazy talk, and makes about as much sense as saying something like "if you think really hard about a monkey, you will get toast out of this rock" it just is insane. Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, but why him and not anyone else, there is no explanation of the priesthood or John's authority. Oh very interesting, there are many many things that are missing out of the Bible, and I've never really realized that this was a surgical excision of information. I was thinking more along the lines of Satan saying "well let's just grab out what we can and then they will be left with whatever." But no, I can see that this was done a lot more deliberately than that. There was specific information that he wanted out, and it's really turned the Christian world into a mad house.
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