Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

29:1-25 – Now that all his sons had left for missions to the land of Nephi, and Mosiah being old, knew that he would have to make some sort of leadership decision. I’m not sure where exactly he got the idea for a basic democracy, but we have seen many times the lamentation of righteous leaders about the negatives of having a king, one with total authoritarian rule. There are a couple of interesting points in the beginning of this letter from Mosiah. First is that Mosiah starts “behold, O ye my people, or my brethren, for I esteem you as such.” As a leader, he has the authority to call them his “people,” but he doesn’t, he corrects himself making sure that they knew that he considers them as “brethren” or equals. This is such a fantastic commentary on Mosiah’s concept of leadership, he isn’t better than them, he doesn’t wield his power like a sword, there’s not even an inkling of him desiring to stroke his ego in any way. The second point is the way that he uses Aaron’s declination to “...

28:1-9 – Now that Alma (we’re going to go back to Alma since he’s pretty much the only Alma referenced from here on out, as his father dies in the next chapter,) and the sons of Mosiah have been converted and have exerted much energy trying to right the wrongs of the people that they’ve caused, it’s time to move forward. Assumedly, Alma Jr. is being groomed to take over as the prophet for his father, but the sons of Mosiah refuse to be the next kings so they go and ask their father “the he would grant unto them that they might… go up to the land of Nephi that they might preach the things which they had heard, and that they might impart the word of God to their brethren, the Lamanites.” I hadn’t before realized how closely the Nephites and the Lamanites had been dealing with each other at this point. I mean, I always assumed that they were only around each other when there was war and there had been peace for quite some time. But in fact, Alma and Alma Jr. both had lived as slaves to th...

There are a few things of a religious nature that I've found interesting but haven't had a place to fit it into the scripture study, so I'm just going to do a quick "Odds and Ends" post where I talk about random stuff that I want to mention but can't find a place for it. 1. First vision distractions - a couple of weeks ago in church the speaker said something about the important nature of the first vision and how powerful it is to new converts. He said that as a missionary, every time they began Joseph Smith's account of the first vision dogs would bark, door bells would ring, people would drop by, babies would cry, there was always some thing that made noise so that the story would be interrupted and go unheard. This was such a shocking story to me because that's what happened when my then husband was taking the missionary lessons. At the time we had two big dogs, and we put them in the back room while the missionaries were there. Everything was goi...

This section has a lot of content and there is a lot that I could go off on tangent and say but I think I'm going to keep it simple and stick to the scriptures and the IM mostly because I'm really short on time tonight. 27:11-17 - First things first, I want to comment on the differences in writing style between Mormon and Nephi. One of my difficulties in reading Nephi is that he will discuss a topic, then in the middle of that topic, discuss another topic, then transition right back, and it can be very hard to follow. But here as Mormon narrates the story he begins the account of the angel in verse 10, "And now it came to pass that while he was going about to destroy the church of God," now this comma stops that line of thinking and goes into the next line "for he did go about secretly with the sons of Mosiah seeking to destroy the church, and to lead astray the people of the Lord, contrary to the commandments of God, or even the king." So there is a line ...

27:1 – This first verse here is an interesting way to open up and it concerns “the persecutions which were inflicted on the church by the unbelievers became so great that the church began to murmur, and complain to their leaders concerning the matter.” At first this made sense, people treat you bad, you speak up, sure that’s logical, but then I looked at the references for this verse and there is an October 1989 general conference talk by Elder Neal A. Maxwell called “ Murmur Not .” I assumed because Alma and Mosiah reacted to the complaints of the people by condemning the actions of those who were persecuting, that the complaints were valid and conformed to the proper protocol for expressing discontentment. But Elder Maxwell teaches “Murmuring seems to come so naturally to the natural man. It crosses the scriptural spectrum of recorded complaints. We need bread. We need water. The needed military reinforcements did not arrive. ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’ ‘Why did we ever leave Jeru...

26:14- 24 – We left off with Alma being “troubled” in his spirit about the iniquity that had been brought into the church, and since Mosiah declined to deal with it legally, Alma was saddled with the responsibility of taking care of this problem, so he turn to the only place he knew to turn for help, he “poured out his whole soul to God.” Interesting to me that he didn’t just bring the pressing issues to the Lord, but he brought “his whole soul,” for review and assessment, and as we can see, the Lord doesn’t council him only on the matter at hand, but about his conduct in general, his overall achievement with running the church, and basically how God thinks that Alma is doing in general, and it’s a very positive message. I try to put myself in Alma’s position and imagine the feelings and emotions that I have as I go into this meeting with God, and I could imagine that there would be feelings of inadequacy, overwhelmed, and maybe just a chance of feelings that the Lord might be displeas...

26:1-7 - After Limhi's people had endured death and destruction at every turn while learning to trust the Lord to deliver them, and after Alma's people had been subjected to the cruel bondage of Amulon and after all the people finally united together under king Mosiah, the "rising generation... did not believe the tradition of their fathers. They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ." I think it's kind of interesting here that they not only were like "oh yeah I don't feel like going to church today," and took it to a whole new level by actively denying Christ, his coming and his resurrection. It's kind of like James E. Talmage says in Jesus the Christ while speaking of the war in heaven he said there were those who fought with Jesus, those who fought with Satan and those who at least didn't actively rebel. The IM quotes President Henry B. Eyring a...

25:1-11 - There's not a lot in this chapter as far as discussions and references go, so let's see what we can come up with. So now that Alma and his people and Limhi and his people are all safely in Zarahemla, it's time to debrief and settle in. Limhi, Alma, and Mosiah all were believers in God so assimilating all the people together should have been easier than if they had all been hostile toward each other. It's interesting to me that the first thing that Mosiah does is read the records of Zeniff to his people, "from the time they left the land of Zarahemla until they returned again. And he also read the account of Alma and his brethren." I wonder what exactly his intention was in doing this. Did he mean to have a continuity in what his own people knew about the others who had joined them? I mean, I could imagine all the people getting together and talking about who did what and how, and crazy stories coming out of it. I wonder if he put it out there to teac...

24:13-15 – I don’t feel like I gave verses 13-15 enough attention last night, there are some really good points that I love that I want to go into more depth about. So we have the people of Alma being forbidden to pray by Amulon under the threat of death, so they don’t pray vocally, but in their hearts and that is just as good because God hears them. So the Lord says to them “lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage.” Interesting to me that the Lord says that he will deliver them out of bondage because they have made covenants with him, and honored those. I guess if we look at Limhi, they weren’t delivered until after they had softened their hearts and desired to make covenants with God as well. Obviously, making and keeping covenants is not the scale on which adversity is weighed, but it is very important, and this is going to sound stupid, but I never realized h...