Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Jesus commanded the man to “take up thy bed, and walk” and so the man did. Unfortunately, the man didn’t get very far before the Pharisees found this guy walking around carrying his bed and reprimanded him, “It is the Sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.” The man answers them saying, “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.” It seems like this guy threw Jesus under the bus here, but JTC assumes that this man excitedly told the Pharisees of his miraculous healing out of joy. Looking at the conversation again, maybe we can see it a different way. The Pharisees stop this man and tell him what he’s doing is wrong, and he says that the guy who performed a miracle said that he could do it. It almost has a school hall monitor feel to it, “you can’t be out here,” “the principal said that it’s ok.” Pharisees say, “you can’t be here,” he answe...

After Jesus calls Matthew to the ministry, He goes to Jerusalem for Passover. It doesn’t specifically say that his disciples went with him, but I would imagine that they do. Jesus comes to the pool of Bethesda where “in these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as giving more insight into this ancient Hebrew practice, saying, “Any notion that an angel came down and troubled the waters, so that the first person thereafter entering them would be healed, was pure superstition. Healing miracles are not wrought in any such manner.” We know that this practice couldn’t have been real, and I wonder about the reaction of people when they saw the first person get out of the ...

The last several weeks have been very complicated. I moved from my job, home, and friends in California to Utah earlier this month. It was a very sudden decision and I really feel like the Lord’s hand was definitely in it, He coached me along the way, helped me realize what He wanted me to do and honestly, everything has just fallen into place and it’s obvious that He prepared this for me and my children, there have been many tender mercies along the way. While eating with “publicans and sinners” at Matthew’s house the topic comes up about fasting. Matthew says that the disciples of John the Baptist came to ask Jesus why His disciples did not fast. Luke suggests that it was the Pharisees who asked Jesus “Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Phariseees; but thine eat and drink?” Jesus the Christ reminds us that John the Baptist “had been a scrupulous observer of the law; his strict...