Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

16:1-5 - Abinadi kind of leaves off on the resurrection and judgment of the righteous, but now he's ready to deal in depth with those who are wicked. When the time comes that all "people shall see eye to eye and shall confess before God that his judgements are just," then "shall the wicked be cast out." As with most talk of hell, there are vivid descriptions of physical pain, and maybe we've talked about this before, but I noticed while reading verse 2, all the descriptions are pain that if inflicted to one's self, people howl and weep and wail and gnash their teeth themselves, there is no inflictor, no punisher, there is no talk of a tormentor. These are all things that are done to themselves. If there is no one making them feel this way other than themselves, then that begs the questions, why would they do that to themselves? What would be so awful that people would experience that pain and suffering at them hands of only themselves? I listened to a re...

I'm going to skip chapter 14 because it is Abinadi quoting Isaiah, and when I get to Isaiah in the Old Testament, I will do a really in depth study of it, but at this point, I'm going to skip it for now. 15:1-9 - Abinadi continues by teaching that "God himeslf shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people." This is important as he continues to teach that the Law of Moses is preparatory to the Atonement, because if looking at the perspective of the priests, even though most of them don't care about the message, if they truly believed that salvation came through obedience to the law of Moses, then the Mortal Messiah and the Atonement would be completely foreign to them.  He continues "and because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son." I know we've discussed it before but the IM gives further insight on how exactly Jesus C...

13:1-10 – This is where the story of Abinadi gets really interesting. After telling them that they did not in fact keep the commandments, like they said they did, basically calling them liars, Noah commanded his priests “away with this fellow, and slay him for what have we to do with him, for he is mad.” First, if he truly was “mad” i.e. crazy, then putting him to death simply for being mentally ill is akin to the acts of Hitler, and I’m guessing that there were some people in his city that were mentally ill, and caused some ruckus, and I’m confident that he didn’t have THEM killed, so my guess is that he’s using the “mad” excuse as a reason to say “I don’t know what he’s talking about so let’s just kill him to be safe.” But then the miracle, “and they stood forth and attempted to lay their hands on him; but he withstood them, and said unto them: touch me not, for God shall smite you if ye lay your hands upon me… God will not suffer that I shall be destroyed at this time… after Abinadi...

12:1-8 – We see Abinadi comes back 2 years later and there are just a couple of interesting anomalies that I want to point out. First the record specifies that Abinadi “came amoung them in disguise, that they knew him not,” but then when he speaks, he says that “thus has the Lord commanded me, saying – Abinadi…” So he came back in secret, but stated his name, which makes me wonder if that was a really common name or that no one remembered his name before. Maybe this was a situation like when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that if they lost the fight, the would be executed, maybe this is Abinadi’s point of no return, maybe he knows going into it, that he will not come back, and that’s common for many great prophets, and that would make sense. So when he preached then left 2 years ago, God’s warning was “repent or you will be brought into bondage” and since the Lord’s message now is “they have repented not of their evil doings…because of their iniq...

11:20-25 - Here we are introduced to a man named Abinadi. We know almost nothing about him, his age, his heritage, all we basically know is that, "Abinadi was a man who came from among the people, not from outside their society. He was obviously a righteous man called to warn his own people that if they did not repent, bondage and destruction would follow, as taught by Elder Cree-L Kofford as quoted in the IM. Interesting here though is Abinadi's speech patterns are new to us in the Book of Mormon. He uses phrases like "thus saith the Lord" and explains what the Lord has told him, instead of just giving the message like "God said repent," he tells us "God commanded me to go forth and tell you to repent." In the end, the message is the same, but the delivery is different, and that's what makes up the diversification of the writers of the Book of Mormon. So this is the first time that the people are given the warning to repent, and if they don...

In nursery today I was reading a book to a little boy called "If the Savior Stood Beside Me," and we came to these two pictures and it took me a minute but I had a huge insight about the Atonement and what it truly means to have our sins taken away. I'm not going to lie, I totally relate to his painting, in fact I want to get one for my house, because I've been that woman many many times, and the most recent time was so very painful and stupid and I still to this day don't know why he took me back. But here we notice that the woman is wearing a red dress, and we can assume that that is made to represent her sins, as red as blood. They are in a dark room, she's mournful, and we can assume that because Jesus is wearing white in contrast to her red dress, it indicates that he is without sin, spotless. But when we get to the next picture, they are outside, in the light, they are happy and laughing, and Jesus is now holding the red dress. And when I fi...

Here is our introduction to one of Zeniff’s sons, the one that apparently he believed would be the best to reign in his stead after he passed. There are only a few excerpts from some of the Sunday School manuals about this chapter and only like 2 general conference talks that address it at all, so there’s going to be a lot of speculation on my part here. 11:1-19 – As the story goes, Noah, the new king “did not walk in the ways of his father.” The Book of Mormon GDM suggests making a list of ways that King Noah differed from his father and ways that he changed the affairs of the kingdom. So let’s do that. 1. He personally did not keep the commandments of God. The IM teaches why this is an important aspect, and the pivotal reason for the beginning of the fall, “Mormon vividly described the wickedness of King Noah. Later, Mosiah used the example of King Noah as the primary reason to eliminate government by kings: ‘How much iniquity doth one wicked king cause to be committed, yea, and ...

Oh my goodness, am I really going to have more time tonight? It’s a Christmas miracle! I was going to just breeze over the rest of this chapter last night, but there are a couple of different points that I thought were important to cover in verses 8-22. 10:8-10 – Zeniff again shows his military prowess, listing the weaponry of the Lamanites and us knowing that Zeniff had himself prepared his people for war with similar weapons. He says that the Lamanites were “naked; and they were girded with a leathern girdle about their loins.” I wonder if his mentioning this indicated that he had his people wear some type of body armor, and with his obvious military experience, I would say that that’s possible. But then we come how he arranges his people. He says that he “caused that the women and children of my people should be hid in the wilderness,” this was obviously an advantage that he had because of his guards and spies being able to warn him and the people beforehand. So when the Lamanites...

I'm even shorter on time tonight than I was before, so I'm really hoping to be able to do this justice because I've been thinking about it all day. This is a mostly historical account without much input from outside sources, but I really like it. 10:1-7 - After Zeniff and his little group had miraculously fended off the Lamanite invasion  they settled back into daily living, and lived peaceably for another 9 years. Zeniff reinforces the idea that he had extensive military training because afterward he "caused that there should be weapons of war made of every kind... and I set guards round about the land... I had sent my spies out round about the land of Shemlon, that I might discover their preparations, that I might guard against them, that they might not come upon my people and destroy them." So if anyone was going to be the leader and ensure their safety, it sounds like Zeniff was an excellent choice. But I think that we've seen many many times that being ...

9:1-2 - When I first read this chapter many years ago, I assumed when Zeniff said that he was "sent as a spy among the Lamanites," that it was in the context of the Nephite army, and that he was looking for combatant forces to be encountered. In that context, Zeniff request for a "treaty" to be made with them, it didn't really make sense in the midst of a war. But when reading it this time and also reading the Book of Mormon GD teaching manual (GDM) I see it from a different origin, not military in nature but more colonial. The GDM says "Zeniff was a member of a group of Nephites who wanted to regain from the Lamanites some of the land of Nephi." This tells me that this was a peace time venture, so whatever group that Zeniff was spying for wasn't the military, this wasn't a military strike, and this is more in line with what we learn in Omni 1:27 who teach that the group of people "went up into the wilderness to return to the land of Nephi...

I'm super short on time tonight, but I have been thinking about the difference between prophet, seer and revelator all afternoon. 8:13 - The "Interpreters" talked about in verse 13 is referenced my the IM and there are some interesting points here that I had never considered. The first point is that the "two stones" that Mosiah used to translate the large stone and then the Jaredite plates where in fact the same two stones that were given to the Brother of Jared. The IM quotes President Joseph F. Smith as teaching "how Mosiah came into possession of these 'two stones' our Urim and Thummim, the record does not tell us, more than to say that it was a 'gift from God.'" But he also goes on to say that "the Urim and Thummim, or two stones, given to the brother of Jared were those in the possession of Mosiah," and goes on to quote Ether 3:21-28, which I don't really understand as relating, but I am unlearned and tired. So the ...