Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Jesus takes some time while traveling toward Jerusalem to teach his apostles in private. He tells them that when they are in Jerusalem “the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.” I had to stop and ask myself, “why did Jesus tell them this, knowing that they weren’t going to understand or accept it?” It reminded me of when Elijah and Elisha were traveling and people kept telling Elisha “knowest thou that they Lord will take away thy master from thy head today?” Elisha didn’t want to hear it anymore than Jesus’ apostles answering, “Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.” (2ndKings 2:3) Knowing that Elijah was leaving meant that Elisha had to accept the responsibility of the prophetship, He was going to be alone, and he didn’t wan...

The way that the scriptures are organized is great in that references are easy to make, and study is much easier. One downfall to having a large text divided into chapters and verses, however, is that the topics can seem disconnected. Going from one chapter to another, even though the content might flow smoothly if read continuously, can create a mental disconnect between the subject matter of the two separate chapters. I often wonder what it would be like to read the scriptures for the first time in one go, just like how I read a really good book that I’m into. Anyway, let’s review the background to make it flow better. A rich young man comes up to Jesus and asks what he personally can do in order to get eternal life, Jesus says for him to sell all he has and follow Him. The young man leaves, declining Jesus invitation at this point. Peter says, “Hey, wait, we gave up everything we have to follow you, what about us?” Jesus tells them, “hey don’t worr...

Even though it appears that Jesus’ response to Peter might be a rebuke, he still recognizes the need for reassurance and in kindness gives it. But what he says might seem counter to what the gospel teaches, saying, “and every one that hath forsaken house, or brethren, or sisters, of father, or mother, or wife, or children, of lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” Surely Jesus can’t be shaming the idea of family responsibilities. Reading this would make it easy to justify never marrying or having children or working to take care of your parents or even just taking care of yourself. Erroneous interpretations of this verse surely have contributed to a paid, single clergy, I wonder if that was on purpose. But what could Jesus have meant? Again, let’s look at it from a physical standpoint to a spiritual one. Surely he does mean abandoning all your responsibilities, but what if your family and comforts...

Having witnessed the interaction between Jesus and the rich, young ruler, Peter might have been a little confused, or at least looking for the reassurance that his call to the apostleship was necessary. Peter says to Jesus, “Lo, we have left all and have followed thee.” Kind of like he was saying, “hey forget that guy who is walking away, we’re standing right here and we did what you asked.” There is nothing in the King James version of the Bible that indicates anything negative about Peter’s statement, and gives Jesus’ answer as reassurance. But the JST has Mark 10:30-31 saying that Jesus answer was rebuking Peter.” I thought about why that mattered. Why does it matter that Jesus’ answer wasn’t necessarily encouragement to the apostles about their choices, but instead might have been a rebuke? Let’s start at the beginning, why would Peter make that statement in the first place? There is the obvious comparison, “hey...

Presumably during the same time that the children were leaving after being blessed, “there came one running, and kneeled to him.” Luke states that this person is “a certain ruler” and this is known as Jesus’ interaction with the Rich, Young Ruler. The ‘rich’ part might go hand in hand with the ‘ruler’ part, so maybe something will come up later that will give us the ‘young’ part. The ruler asks Jesus “Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds, “why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is God.” I really struggled with this statement because it seems like Jesus is being antagonistic. I always looked at His answer and thought “why did he have to through that in there, why couldn’t he have just answered the question?” An article entitled “If Jesus was God, why did He say ‘No one is good but God alone?” from gotquestions....

Three of the gospels all record groups of people bringing their children to Jesus “that he should put his hands on them and pray.” All three gospels also record that “the disciples rebuked them,” but only the JST of Mathew 19:13 has the disciples rebuking the parents “saying, There is no need, for Jesus hath said, such shall be saved.” Kind of like “hey save Jesus’ time for the rest of us who are actually accountable for our sins.” There isn’t a whole lot about these verses in the IM other than the JST, but we know how the story goes because it’s the same thing every time, the kids want to see Jesus, the grown ups say no, then Jesus answers, “suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” We know that Jesus loves children, but why? Maybe because they aren’t jaded or cynical or angry all the time. Interestingly, yesterday in church we had a teachers tr...

Disclaimer: I don’t like the way that I sound in a lot of this, but these were the best words I could use to explain my feelings and beliefs. Please know that everything I say is said out of love, and that there is no judgment because I have definitely spent my time in the dirt. There is a lot more about marriage and divorce and adultery that can be gone through but I’m going to skip over it because I feel like it’s already been discussed throughout other parts of the blog, and thinking about it really upset me yesterday. Apparently the disciples see Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce as complicated and say, “if the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.” Interestingly, I believe that they all would have been married, and honestly their statement doesn’t make any sense, how to go form one conclusion to the other. It might be that this was a question to Jesus about whether or not marriage was to be sought after or if it should be avoided, that would mak...

I’m not really sure about the time line of everything and where Jesus goes, in fact I should probably find a map of some sort that details his travels so that I can follow the time line. Jesus and his disciples, presumably, leave Galilee and “came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan; And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.” This large crowd attracts the attention of none other than the Pharisees, which I would assume were those Pharisees who were local to that part of the country; I can’t imagine that a group of Pharisees would follow Jesus around just so they could heckle him. The Pharisees bring up the topic of marriage, which other Pharisees have brought up before, whether these two groups knew about the previous conversations or not, I’m not sure. Matthew explains the question put forth to Christ saying, “The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for ev...

The parable of the widow and the unjust judge goes hand in hand with the parable that is coming up next, that of the Pharisee and the Publican. The IM says, “These chapters of Luke… contribute to an important theme introduces in Luke 15- that Jesus Christ came ‘to seek and to save that which was lost.’ Accordingly, they show His compassion for individuals estranged form society and form god. For instance, a widow, one of the most vulnerable members of society, and a publican, one of the despised, serve as positive examples in two of the Savior’s parables recorded only by Luke.” First, let’s recall the difference between a Pharisee and a Publican. Pharisees were the self-professed masters of the Hebraic Law. The IM notes that “Pharisees were generally admired and regarded as very obedient to the law, though Jesus had rebuked them for hypocrisy.” The Publican was a tax collector for the Romans. In the ancient Roman empire taxes were c...

Jesus continues with parables and gives the moral of the next one before getting into the story, which is, “that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” We’ve talked about what it means to “pray always,” which sounds exhausting to me, and besides, we can’t spend all day on our knees praying because we have things to do, that would be irresponsible. For me, to pray always means to have thoughts and intentions that invite the Holy Ghost to enter at any time to teach or to prompt or to warn. We don’t have to constantly be thinking prayers in order to be receptive to the Holy Ghost. Jesus has said that a song of the heart is a prayer unto me, singing hymns or just uplifting music, being happy and grateful is enough to keep a prayer in our hearts. It’s where our intentions are, are they positive toward God or negative toward the natural man? The IM says, “The Greek word translated as ‘to faint’ means to become discouraged...

It’s really interesting that yesterday I wrote about how I didn’t doubt God’s ability to bless me, just that I don’t believe that he will choose to bless me. Then today I was in the car waiting for my daughter so we could go to school/work and I was looking through the December 2017 Ensign because I thought I had finished it, but apparently I didn’t. I just happened to come across an article by Matthew O. Richardson entitled “You Gotta Believe” and the summarization said, “I was stuck in a rut of believing that God would work His mighty miracles for everyone but me.” My reaction was immediate, I knew that this was Jesus reaching out to me, telling me that it’s ok that I feel this way and that he wants to help me out of it. Driving to work I listened to the article and I realized that my perspective is all wrong. I live a very linear life, I see the world as very “cause & effect,” if A=B and B=C then A=C. This is...

T he Pharisees are back causing trouble again. They “demanded” that Jesus tell them, “when the kingdom of God should come.” This is another instance where I have a really difficult time understanding what is going on here and it seems that any time that Jesus speaks outside of a parable for a sustained period of time; the words just seem so abstract. Jesus answers, “the kingdom of God is within you.” This is one of those statements that makes you stop and think, but really there is no definitive answer, and yes, we can have a conversation all day long about how the kingdom of God is within us, but when establishing basic gospel truths, this isn’t necessarily something that you start with. The IM clarifies saying, “Many translations of the New Testament render the phrase ‘the kingdom of God is within you’ as ‘the kingdom of God is among you’ because the pronoun you is plural in Greek. The Joseph Smith Translation cha...