Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

11:16-28 - All the people went individually to feel the nail marks in Jesus's hands and feet and the spear wound in his side "and when they had all gone forth and had witnessed for themselves, they did cry out with one according, saying: Hosanna! Blessed be the name of the Most High God! And they did fall down at the feet of Jesus, and did worship him." The IM teaches "The word Hosanna is a transliteration of a Hebrew word of supplication which means in essence 'Oh, grant salvation.' Evidently the people were asking the Savior to teach them the way to salvation; thus it is not surprising that he immediately teaches them the basic principles and ordinances of the gospel." That's an interesting insight that is new to me, and it's true, Jesus goes right into giving Nephi "power that ye shall baptize this people when I am again ascended into heaven." This is also interesting because as HN reminds us "we learn in Helaman 14-15 that thes...

11:4-7 - I might have a little bit more time tonight, let's cross our fingers. The Nephites have just heard the voice for the first time, and didn't understand it, and then "they heard the voice, and they understood it not." I wonder why they couldn't understand it? But the third time the voice spoke the "did open their ears to hear it; and their eyes were towards the sound thereof; and they did look steadfastly towards heaven, from whence the sound came." I would think that there would be some kind of explanation as to why they had to "open their ears" in order to understand the voice but I haven't seen on so far, so maybe that means that we are supposed to use our own brains, Heavenly Father was trying to talk to them but they couldn't understand Him because they weren't listening? Well, they were listening, but maybe they weren't listening with open ears, like open hearts and open minds. In order to hear the message we ha...

11:1-3 - I'm really short on time tonight which is unfortunate because today is the day that the Lord comes!!! So I'm going to do my best and see what we can do here. There is a "great multitude gathered together, of the people of Nephi, round about the temple which was in the land of Bountiful... and they were also conversing about this Jesus Christ, of whom the sign had been given concerning his death." While they were talking with each other "they heard a voice as if it came out of heaven; and they cast their eyes round about, for the understood not the voice which they heard; and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn." There's a few things that I find interesting about this, fi...

10:1-6 - The Lord has called all those who are still alive to repent and come to him and be healed, even after all that craziness, and “after these saying there was silence in the land for the space of many hours; For so great was the astonishment of the people that they did cease lamenting and howling for the loss of their kindred which had been slain.” Now that’s an interesting reaction from the people who have just lost much of their society, they are called to repent and they are so surprised that they let their mourning pause for a little bit. I guess if it was me and I had survived this horrific natural disaster and then there was a voice from heaven I could see being really surprised. Jesus gave the people plenty of time to reflect on what he said, in their current state of physical darkness “therefore there was silence in all the land for the space of many hours.” He wanted them to see what their wickedness had caused all that destruction and to sit in the consequences of it fo...

9:15 - This is the big event, the Lord introduces Himself saying “Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” HN noted that he revealed himself with minimal fanfare, there weren’t chariots of fire or anything like that, he wanted the people to know that until his work was finished, he’s just like the rest of us. He reveals himself as the creator of “the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are.” I heard someone ask once how it must have been for the Savior to walk down the road of Jerusalem, knowing that he was the one who created the dust that clung to his feet, I thought that that was pretty profound. Jesus as the creator of all things gives him a sense of ownership, an investment in the world and what’s happening in it. It also gives us an eternal perspective, Jesus created the world indicating that there was an existence before this one, and that the plan was created before construction on the earth even began, for instance, God didn’t make the earth and then say “oh ...

9:1-12 - There has been a great destruction throughout the land and many people have been killed and many cities destroyed, and the people have realized that this is a consequence of their wickedness. They are reeling from what has happened “and it came to pass that there was a voice heard among all the inhabitants of the earth.” HN says that “President Grant used to tell a story about having a debate with somebody who made great mockery of this passage here. How could you have a voice that wasn’t loud and yet could be heard by everybody? Then President Grant would give the example of radio, which had been introduced long after that.” Interesting analogy. HN also points out that the voice has split up his topics evenly, giving exactly the first 10 verses to the explanation of the destruction and then the following 10 verses to his real purpose. The Lord continues “Wo, wo, wo u nto this people; wo unto the inhabitants of the whole earth except they shall repent; for the devil laugheth, ...

8:1-2 - We’re going to get into some heavy duty geology today, because this is a big deal. Mormon takes his time pointing out that “we know our record to be true, for behold, it was a just man who did keep the record- for he truly did many miracles in the name of Jesus; and there was not any man who could do a miracle in the name of Jesus save he were cleansed every whit from his iniquity.” HN asks why Mormon would go to so much effort to make sure that we knew that Nephi was a just man and that he wasn’t just making stuff up, and his answer was because this was a big event and he wanted us to have confidence that this account was as accurate as possible. I like that Mormon uses a “if A=B and B=C then A=C” formula here, “If Nephi kept the record and he was a just man, then the record can be taken as truth.” It’s interesting though that the Mormon concludes that because Nephi performed miracles in the name of Jesus that he was incapable of falsifying the record. Because Nephi was righte...

7:1-7 - We left off with secret combinations being reintroduced back into the Nephite society by people who wanted to destroy the government and have a king. In chapter 7, "they did destroy upon the judgment-seat, yea, did murder the chief judge of the land." We've seen this before, the chief judge being murdered, but this time it's different, I'm assuming that it's because the vast majority of the people are wicked so there is no one to hold up the standard of liberty and say "come fight with me for freedom." It's interesting because when I was thinking about why this time was different whereas the other times the chief judge was simply replaced, it occurred to me that what it would have taken for the government to remain intact is someone to rally the people together to get rid of those who were corrupting the government, or the king-men as it was in CM's day, and I guess really, it's king-men this time too. But there was no one like th...

6:10-13 - We are now a few years out from the great war and “there began to be some disputings among the people; and some were lifted up unto pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches, yea, even unto great persecutions.” With the reconstruction and the repentance of the people, there was prospering and rebuilding, and lots of money to go around, but it occurs to me that HN mentioned many times about the law of consecration being the standard at that time, so it would make sense that making “ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning” would cause the church to be broken up. It was kind of hard for me to understand at first because the only way I’m familiar with is the way that we have now, some people at church dress nicely, drive fancy cars, wear lots of make up or jewelry, some judge or talk down to others, this is standard for where we are today, so I couldn’t understand how that would cause the church to be broken up, since ours is ok. But if...

6:1-9 - I'm really short on time here, but I'll do my best. The GRs have been destroyed from among the Nephites, and now that the war is finally over "the people of the Nephites did all return to their own lands... every man, with his family, his flocks ad his herds, his horses and his cattle, and all things whatsoever did belong unto them." I can't find it but HN's lecture on this chapter talked about horses and that this is the only true contention that people can bring against the Book of Mormon is to say here that there weren't any horses until the Spanish arrived and HN's response was something along the lines of "There are no ancient bones of camels to be found anywhere in Egypt, but we know that they had them here, and how do we know? Because Rachel hid an idol under her as she sat on one as she left her father's house to go into the desert. We learn that from the written record which on all other aspects appears to be true. We can appl...

5:1-6 - All the people are now either believing Nephites or imprisoned GRs, and this epic battle between the two groups had brought on major spiritual change "and now behold, there was not a living soul among all the people of the Nephites who did doubt in the least the words of all the holy prophets who had spoken; for they knew that it must needs be that they must be fulfilled. And they knew that it must be expedient that Christ had come, because of the many signs which had been given, according to the words of the prophets." I wonder if the people were so convinced of the truthfulness of the gospel and therefore obeyed the commandments because they had been delivered and because they had seen the signs. It seems possible by verses 1 and 2 which would indicate to me yet another superficial conversion, easy to fall, but at the moment "they did forsake all their sins, and their abominations, and their whoredoms, and did serve God with all diligence day and night." T...