Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

On my last trip to the temple I had an insight that really helped me understand more about the fall of Adam. We know that Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden and Moses 3:16-17 tells us they were given the commandment, "of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." My question has always been, "why did God command Adam and Even not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?" It seemed like an arbitrary commandment, like "well, if they are going to fall, they have to break some commandment, I I better given them one that they can break, oh look a tree..." I never understood what the significance of the tree being forbidden was until this most recent temple trip. Adam and Eve were comm...

The 3rd recorded temptation takes place on "an exceeding high mountain." The King James version of the Bible says that it is "the devil" who "taketh him up" but we know from the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible that "Jesus was in the Spirit, and it taketh him" up to an exceeding high mountain. We know that the mountains, or high places, or even just somewhere quiet and secluded can be great teaching places for God and that his prophets go there to learn and commune with him. Moses went up into Mount Sinai, Nephi went into the mountains when they made camp by the seashore, Jesus took Peter, James, and John to the mountain and was transfigured. We know that the temple is called the Mountain of the Lord, so it makes sense that Jesus would go to the mountain to further his spiritual preparation for his mission. While on the mountain JTC tells us that "Jesus looked over the land with its wealth of city and field, of vineyard and orchard, ...

After the first temptation, "the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple." I had always assumed that this meant that Satan had shown Jesus the perspective from the pinnacle of the temple in some sort of satanic "vision." The JST of Matthew 4:5 changes the meaning from Satan taking Jesus up there to "Then Jesus was taken up into the holy city, and the Spirit setteth him on the pinnacle of the temple." An article entitled " " points out that "This important distinction clarifies that Jesus traveled with the Spirit and not at the whim and will of the adversary." I always wondered why Jesus had seemingly dropped everything that he was doing to follow Satan into whatever place he wanted to take him. The biblical verse makes it sound like Satan kidnapped Jesus, which has many implications such as Satan being able to over power us to tempt us, and we know that those beings with bodies have power over...

Satan had tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread, which apparently was a very loaded statement, but Jesus replied, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Satan had tempted Jesus to prove to Himself that he was truly the Son of God, capable of employing powers to perform impossible tasks, such as turning stones into bread. As far as I know, at this point Jesus was still operating on faith, so that might have strengthened his confidence a little bit more. I sometimes think, and this might make me seem crazy, "I wish I could see an angel." But then I think that, no, I don't need to see an angel, and I say that with a peace and assurance in my heart that I would believe the gospel just as much after seeing an angel as I do right now, that it wouldn't change anything, that I don't need some supernatural vision to make me believe even more, what I have now is good enough. Laman and Lemuel...

I'm finally back, I've been on vacation for the last 2 weeks and it was a great experience but I'm glad that I'm back home and back to work. The first recorded temptation that we have is when Satan comes to Jesus and says "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." This is the only one of the temptations that I understood because he was hungry, so of course it made sense that he would be tempted to eat. But I always thought that Jesus was tempted to break his fast, but apparently that was not the case. Is the temptation to break a fast real? I'll tell you that for me it is, but maybe for the Savior it wasn't, especially at this time. In "The Temptations of Christ" Elder Howard W. Hunter tells us "Satan was not simply tempting Jesus to eat. Had he suggested, 'Go down out of this wilderness and obtain food from the bread maker,' there would have been no temptation because undoubtedly Jesus inteded to ea...

We know that Christ was able to be tempted, we know that he needed to be tempted in order to be our Savior, and we know that he withstood temptation, not by using his God powers but just by using his agency just like the rest of us. Another point that needs to be made is that he wasn’t just tempted this one time. I’ve always struggled with this because I never thought that it was fair that Jesus was only tempted once, but the rest of us live with it every moment of our lives. The IM points out, and I can’t find it right now as I’m currently in an airplane in the middle of the night and I’m tired, that Christ was not just tempted once, because the rest of us are not only tempted once. It is also pointed out that Luke tells us that when Satan departed, “he departed from him for a season.” He didn’t leave him for good, just for a short period of time; he came back, just like he comes back to the rest of us. Matthew 22 records Jesus asking the Pharisees “why tempt ye me?” And Jesus states...