Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

It is the week before the Passover and Jesus and company arrive in Bethany “in the house of Simon the Leper.” Usually when Jesus goes to Bethany, he stays with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and indeed, they are all at the house of Simon the Leper preparing and serving a feast. Preparing and serving food is usually the responsibility of the host family and JTC speculates that “if (Simon) was living at the time our Lord was entertained in the house known by his name, and if he was present, he must have been previously healed of his leprosy, as otherwise he could not have been allowed within the town, far less to be one of the festal company.” If he previously had leprosy and now he didn’t, we can probably guess that Jesus had healed him and given him his life back. Because Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were at Simon’s house preparing for, serving, and entertaining the guests, “many have assumed that the house of Simon the Leper was the family home of the...

L eaving Jericho, Jesus and his group go up to Jerusalem for the last time. Jesus knows what pain and agony is coming, and yet he goes anyway. On the way to Jerusalem the people were under the impression that “the kingdom of God should immediately appear.” This just illustrates the point that the Jews at the time had no real concept of what was going to happen. It’s easy for us to look back and analyze what Jesus did knowing that he wasn’t going to set up his political kingdom at that time, but we have 2,000 yeas of hindsight. It appears that Jesus wasn’t in too big of a hurry to explicitly teach them what was going to happen either, and I wonder why. It might have thrown a wrench in the understanding on his disciples because it would have been completely contrary to what they had come to believe their whole lives. It might have gotten in the way of the process of the atonement and how it had to happen, getting people worked up about the timing of things as...

Coming through Jericho, “there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans and he was rich.” We have talked about publicans before and how it’s such a difficult position to be in. The Romans had to tax their people, otherwise how could they afford their extensive operations, so this brought up the dilemma, who should do the taxing? I remember talking about who the Jewish people would prefer to collect their taxes, and I speculated that they would prefer to give the money to one of their own, instead of having Roman soldiers kick down their door and take as much as they could. At least with their own people collecting the taxes, there would be some sort of social control that the Romans didn’t have to live with. So if they would prefer their own people to collect the taxes instead of Roman soldiers, then it would make sense that they would work together and be able to live together socially. But that is incorrect, there was very much a ...

Circling back around to where we were before we talked about Lazarus, we find Jesus at Jericho. There are three accounts given in the gospels of the events here, and they vary slightly. I was going to go into how and why the accounts are a little different, but JTC does such a better job than I can so I’ll just go with what he said, saying, “Matthew states that two sightless men were made to see, and that the miracle was enacted as Jesus was leaving Jericho; Mark mentions but one blind man, whom he names Bartimeus or the son of Timeus, and agrees with Matthew in saying that the healing was effected when Jesus was departing from the city; Luke specifies but one subject of the Lord’s healing mercy, ‘a certain blind man,’ and chronicles the miracle as an incident of Christ’s approach to Jericho. These slight variations attest the independent authorship of each of the records, and the apparent discrepancies have no direct bearing upon the main facts, nor ...

A pparently there is some debate among the chief priests as to what should be done because Caiaphas, “being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all.” Let’s get a little background on Caiaphas. That the time of Christ there were two main sects of Judaism, Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees we’ve heard about a lot, and they were the strictly observant, ritualistic pious sect. The Sadducees, however, luxuriated in wealth and abundance because, from what I understand, they believed that the here and now is all that mattered because there was no resurrection. Caiaphas was a Sadducee, so he had a “take all you can get, when you can get it” type of attitude. While doing some research about the man, I came across an article entitled “Joseph Caiaphas” from the newadvent.org. We are given the background of his appointment to the position of “High Priest” saying, “According to Josephus, Caiaph...

L azarus is raised from the dead, and “many of the Jews which came to mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.” In the book series “The Kingdom and the Crown” there is a character who is a Pharisee and incredibly critical of Christ during his whole ministry, but when he sees Lazarus come out of the tomb, he says that he can’t deny any long that Jesus is the Messiah. I felt like that “conversion” was a little forced because he had given no indication at all beforehand that he was open to the idea of Jesus being the Messiah. We know that miracles don’t convert and it felt like this character’s conversion was based on the miracle. But apparently there were many on the fence about what to believe, and this miracle was the catalyst for them to commit. For all those who believed on Jesus because they saw Him raise Lazarus from the dead, there were also many who “went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them ...

J esus is overwhelmed by the emotions and sadness expressed by those around him and falls in with them, weeping. Some of those in the group speculated “behold how he loved him!” And it’s important to point out that Jesus knows that he’s going to restore Lazarus to life in just a few minutes, but his reaction to the pain felt by others is “hey, let me miraculously fix is!” it’s “I’m so sorry that this happened” with his own deep personal sorrow. And isn’t that what happens to us in our lives. We suffer from the losses we endure because of this fallen world that we live in, and instead of rushing to perform miracles all over the place to give us back what we lost, Jesus suffers with us, comforts us, and allows that suffering to motivate us to draw closer to him, because who are you closest to? Those who are there for you when you are suffering. I think one of the most pivotal lessons in learning about God is when I realized...

Martha thinks that Jesus is comforting her in the way that probably everyone else has, saying the equivalent of “you’ll see him again.” She knows that because as a Jew, she believes in the resurrection, but this can be a difficult way to live and little comfort at the time of a loss. I look at my own situation with people that have died that were important to me and I think, “yeah that’s nice, that doesn’t help me at all right now.” But then again, I’ve grown up with that knowledge, so there might be a disconnect there for me, because I know that the knowledge that we will be with our friends and loved ones again brings hope. I think about the story I heard about a woman in South America who sobbed out of joy when the missionaries told her that she would be with her baby again, who died. The local priest told this woman that because her baby died before he could be baptized that the baby went to hell, and this information had tormented th...

Arriving in Bethany, Jesus “found that (Lazarus) had lain in the grave four days already.” Thinking about the math here, if it took the messenger 2 days to get to Jesus, then Jesus waited for 2 days to leave, and then it took Jesus and company 2 days to get to Bethany, we can deduce that Lazarus probably died around the time that the messenger arrived meaning that even if Jesus had left immediately, He still wouldn’t have made it in time to heal Lazarus while he was still alive. Jesus still would have maintained the ability to raise Lazarus from the dead if he had only been dead for 2 days, but the fact that it was four days since Lazarus had died is significant. The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as saying, “decomposition was well under way; death had long since been established as an absolute certainty… To the Jews the term of four days had special significance; it was the popular belief among them that by the fourth day the spirit had finally and irre...

D espite what I’m sure was overwhelming pressure to leave immediate and go to heal Lazarus, Jesus stays in Perea another two days. In the book “The Kingdom and the Crown”, which I recognize is not scripture, many in Jesus’ group started to doubt his love of Lazarus and his family because He apparently lacked a sense of urgency in the matter. We talked yesterday about what this pattern of thinking could indicate as a gauge of the people’s understanding of Jesus’ power and purpose on earth. But I also think that there are a couple of other points that we can take out of Jesus waiting two days in Perea before going to Lazarus. The first point is that God loves everyone equally. Jesus personally loved Lazarus and they were good friends, but what about the people in Perea who hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know and befriend Jesus personally? Must they have their visit with the Savior cut short because another person is esteemed more important ...

I think that I was wrong when I skipped over the death and raising of Lazarus because I thought it was out of order on the time line. I don’t necessarily know where it was supposed to go, and I’m not convinced that it was supposed to happen when the chart says, but for sure I have passed it, so I’m going to circle back around. I realized this error last Thursday but waited to start on it until today because I wanted to be able to dedicate this entire week to it uninterrupted. Again, I didn’t understand the significance or really the importance of this event until recently, but I’ll share the insights that I’ve had. Jesus and his disciples are apparently still in Perea when Lazarus becomes ill and the IM says, “his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent work to Jesus. Lazarus and his sisters lived in Bethany, which was very close to Jerusalem, and the Savior and His disciples were in Perea, which was at least 2 miles from Bethany.” While in Perea,...

The tension in Jesus’ group is high, which is the exact opposite of what He wants, and it’s because James and John asked to be on His right hand and on His left hand when they all get to heaven and the other 10 apostles didn’t appreciate that. Jesus reminds the group of men saying, “Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them.” We know that any Jew at the time would consider it a great insult to be compared to the gentiles because the Jews have the true and living God, so naturally the Jews would consider themselves held to a different standard. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, the way that Jesus said it, maybe he’s pointing out that the irritation the other apostles have with James and John was a natural but ungodly response. But it could also seem like he’s saying, “ok you want to be my equal, you want to be in charge, then your ...

Probably being prompted by Jesus’ foretelling of his death, either James and John or their mother asks Him, “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.” I, of course, hadn’t made the connection between what Jesus was talking about and this request until I read up on it from a Christian Bible commentary article. When Jesus says that he will die and be resurrected, a natural progression of that conversation might be “ok, then I want to stand right next to you in the next life.” Reading the request from our perspective it might appear that James and John and simply asking to be reunified with Jesus in the next life, which is what we all want, like a “can I be with you in the next life?” That’s a reasonable and almost child-like way to view Christ’s death. But we have to look at the significance of the comment “on your right hand and the other on your left....