The True Vine - John 15:1-8

Jesus has concluded the upper room portion of the evening and begins walking to the Mount of Olives with his remaining disciples. On the way there, he continues teaching them, and begins with an analogy saying, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman… I am the vine, ye are the  branches: He that adibeth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” The seven verses that talked about the vines and branches were pretty repetitive I feel, but the vineyard analogy is very prominent throughout all scripture and probably made a lot of sense, especially to the people of ancient time. But the idea is pretty straight forward and can be easily understood even my city folk in our day.

The IM says, “Elder James E Talmage of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained how the Savior’s analogy of the vine and branches teaches that the disciples were completely dependent upon Jesus Christ, just as every person who lives on earth if dependent upon Him: ‘A grander analogy is not to be found in the world’s literature. Those ordained servants of the Lord were as helpless and useless without Him as is a bough severed from the tree. As the branch is made fruitful only by virtue of the nourishing sap it receives from the rooted trunk, and if cut away or broken off withers, dries, and becomes utterly worthless except as fuel for the burning, so those men, though ordained to the Holy Apostleship, would find themselves strong and fruitful in good works, only as they remained in steadfast communion with the Lord. Without Christ what were they, but unschooled Galileans, some of them fishermen, one a publican, the rest of undistinguished attainments, and all of them weak mortals?’”
The phrase “without me ye can do nothing” bothered me at first because I know a lot of really great and educated people who do great things and they don’t believe in Jesus. But then there are a couple of schools of thought on this. First, Jesus created the earth and planned out our existence, it was because of his offer to be our Savior that we even got a chance to live on earth, so in that sense, we couldn’t do anything without Christ because there would be no existence without Him. Second, just because someone isn’t a believer in Jesus, whether it was because of rejection or just lack of opportunity, doesn’t mean that the Savior isn’t working in their lives. I know that when I was rebellious, the Lord still kept his hand in my life, even though I didn’t deserve it, he still protected me and opened up opportunities for me. I would have been a lot better if I had been righteous, but we learned that everything good comes from God and that includes everything good that  we don’t attribute directly to God, such as compassion and intelligence.
The part where James E. Talmage asks “without Christ what were they, but unschooled Galileans?” did make me reflect on some of the teaching that I’ve received directly as a result of the Holy Ghost. I have an understanding about many things that I could not have learned in any other way from any other person. Take Mormon for example, as far as I know the Nephites didn’t have ancient telescopes or our level of understanding for physics and astronomy but he still knew “for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun.” How could he have possible known that any other way? I think it was Galileo that theorized that the earth rotated around the sun, so it is possible for people to understand that concept without advanced tools of discovery, but it’s pretty unusual.
Or how about Alma the Younger who testified, “the scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.” Alma did not have satellite images of other planets in the solar system, he didn’t have a telescope or even a pendulum. Where did his knowledge of planets and astronomy come from if not God? Then there is Joseph Smith, a more recent example. He had a third grade education, his wife Emma described his abilities at the time of the translating of the Book of Mormon as, “Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon.” But by the end of his life, he was able to write books such as “Lecture on Faith” and in the Times and Seasons newspaper
I knew what Emma Smith quote I was looking for and clicked on a web page that had it but I had to scroll through a lot of other stuff looking for what I wanted. So the purpose of this web page was to go through reasons why people purport the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and tell the reader why this is wrong. Basically, the whole purpose was to convince people that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon with the help of Sidney Rigdon and published it under the guise of God’s revealed word. I’d like to think that I am pretty rock solid in my testimony of the Book of Mormon, but when I was reading these statements from this web page, I have to be honest, I wondered if what they were saying is true. I had to ask myself if I still believed that the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God. Did I still believe, even after all this other opinion? It took a minute, longer than I would like to admit, but I can still stand here and say with my whole heart, I believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that it was translated by the gift and power of God through Joseph Smith. Was he a perfect guy? Of course not, but I still believe in the gospel that he helped restore. I just had to reevaluate it briefly for myself again.
In this analogy the Savior uses the word “abide” several times. The IM quotes Elder Jeffrey R. Holland as teaching, “In Spanish that familiar phrase is rendered ‘permaneced en mi.’ Like the English verb ‘abide,’ permanecer means ‘to remain, to stay,’ but even (English speakers) like me can hear the root cognate there of ‘permanence.’ The sense of this then is ‘stay- but stay forever.’ That is the call of the gospel message to (everyone) in the world. Come, but come to remain. Come with conviction and endurance. Come permanently, for your sake and the sake of all the generations who must follow you.”
One of my favorite songs is “Abide with me tis eventide,” where it says “O Savior stay this night with me.” I have sung this part to myself so many times, and I love the idea of “O Savior stay with me forever.” I love the concept of “stay, but stay forever.”