Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

I’ve had a pretty stressful day today and while moping about at work my friend said, “Are you working on your Mormon blog? Because that always makes you happy.” That really made me feel like what I’m doing makes a difference, even if it’s just with myself and my mood. I was doing a little bit of research about the Samaritan woman at the well to see if anyone else had the same thoughts that I did about her background during their study of the scriptures, and I came across a really interesting website where a group of people were discussing this topic and had some thought provoking insight. The first insight that they had that I thought was interesting was “marriage happens when men meet women by wells.” The first guy suggested that Jesus was genuinely looking for a woman to marry, and while I don’t agree with that line of thinking, Christ being married to the Church is a pretty constant theme throughout the scriptures, and while I was thinking about this, I thought that maybe Chr...

I was thinking about the concept of “living water” last night and I had some thoughts about not only that but also about the Samaritan woman. The Church put out a really awesome video that we watched for family home evening last night that is basically encouraging everyone to be more Christ-like during the Christmas season this year. It’s actually more in depth than that but that’s the short explanation that I’m going with for right now. There’s the physical aspect of life, and really that’s anything from our bodies to the people around us, a very temporal or “natural man” existence, it’s feeding the physical appetites. Then there’s the other aspect of life, the non-physical, and that’s our personality, our happiness, our friends, our family, the foods we love, the music that we like, the people we love, the animals we love, the weather we enjoy, any feeling, to include sadness, despair, anything that separates us from purely instinctual living. It’s not so much that we have to accep...

Now that John is in prison, Jesus leaves “Judaea, and departed again into Galilee.” JTC comments, “The direct route from Judea to Galilee lay through Samaria; but many Jews, particularly Galileans, chose to follow an indirect though longer way rather than traverse the country of a people so despised by them as were the Samaritans.” It is significant that the Savior chose to take the direct route through Samaria instead of going around, as was the custom at the time. Another example of Jesus doing what is right and not what is popular. Why was there animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans?   The conflict between Samaritans and Jews came down to blood line, with the Jews considering themselves to be pure-bloods from Abraham, because although the Samaritans also had heritage back to Abraham, they had inter-married with pagans throughout the years and had changed the Jewish religion. I just want to mention that the Jews had changed a lot of their religion as well, but it was ...

John the Baptist has shown remarkable humility and reverence toward Jesus and their respective roles in the kingdom, but true to his words that he must decrease while the Lord increases, John is arrested and imprisoned by Herod the tetrarch. Matthew and Mark both only comment that Jesus left for Galilee after John was put into prison but Luke gives a more detailed account of what happened, saying, “But Herod the Tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.” JTC gives us some insight on the timeline and purpose behind John’s imprisonment saying, “Even before Jesus had returned to Galilee after His baptism and the forty days of solitude in the wilderness, John the Baptist was imprisoned by order of Herod Antipus, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea… The tetrarch had some regard for John, having found him to be a holy man; and many things had Herod done on the dir...

Jesus and His disciples leave Jerusalem and go into Judea “and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.” I thought that it was interesting to note that when John needed to baptize he went where the water was, not where the people were. It seems not to matter that the people who wanted to be baptized were catered to, but the ordinance required a sufficient amount of water and so that trumped the desires of the people. God first, the people will travel. It’s also interesting to note that it sounds here like Jesus and John did all the baptizing, but in John 4:1-2, which we will cover next says, “When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples)” makes it sound like he didn’t baptize anyone at all. The IM clarifies, “The wording of John 3:22 suggests ...

Jesus has just stated “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Again, this verse is different than the statement Jesus made previously, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” We discussed the difference between seeing the kingdom of God and entering into the kingdom of God, but there is more to this verse because Jesus goes on to elaborate, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goest: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” This was pretty confusing for me, I honestly could not follow this conversation and was just completely lost, and that’s exactly what the Savior was talking about. The IM is most helpful in this matter saying, “As recorded in John 3:6, the Savior taught ...

While still in Jerusalem for the Passover a man “names Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night.” As a Jewish leader, he would have been made aware of the scene that Jesus made by driving out the animals and money changers from the temple. It appears that there were at least two different kinds of reactions by the Jewish leadership, the first kind of reaction was complete anger and hostility towards the Savior and what he was doing. We saw this reaction when the leaders questioned Jesus about his authority and purposes. A second reaction was intrigue and genuine interest in who this man was and what he was doing, this reaction is demonstrated by Nicodemus when he seeks out the Savior. The IM asks “Who was Nicodemus?” and answers saying, “As a member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus occupied a position of political, social, and religious influence and power. From other scriptures we learn that Nicodemus appears to have been sincere in the questions he asked Jesus. ...

    I was thinking about why the account of the miracle in Cana and the cleansing in the temple are only recorded in John, then it occurred to me that when those events happened, John was the only disciple of the gospels who had been called at that point. He was probably there at the wedding feast, he was probably there at the temple cleansing, so we get his firsthand account, and I can only imagine how that would have been. It’s so abstract, and listening to the recorded scripture, it’s so difficult to understand because the context is so off, so I’m grateful that we have more modern instruction and insight to help us understand because I couldn’t imagine only having the regular Christian Bible and basing all of my faith and understanding of the gospel on what I could glean from that. From the marriage feast in Cana, Jesus went “down to Capernum” with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, though they did not stay there for very long, and then continued on ...