Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Paul experiences some success in Athens and presumably establishes a branch of believers there, and then he leaves and travels to Corinth. This is a relatively famous place in Christendom because of the later letters that Paul writes to the believers there making 1 st and 2 nd  Corinthians. But Paul’s actions in Rome are interesting and give us some perspective on early missionary work. After arriving in Corinth, Paul “found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come fro Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome) and came unto them.” Right now I am listening to a very in depth podcast called “The History of Rome” by Mike Duncan, it is excellent. While listening to the part where he discusses Claudius, I remember thinking “this is around the time that I’m studying in the Bible.” I have found that it gives me a lot of perspective into New Testament times because this...

The message of Paul to the citizens of Athens is much different than what he preaches to fellow Jews when he addresses them. When he arrives in a new city, Paul goes to the local synagogue and teaches those already familiar with Judaism about Jesus Christ as the Messiah. With them he uses mainly scriptures to demonstrate how the coming of Christ had been prophesied of for thousands of years and how his life, ministry, and atonement have been the core element of human purpose from the beginning. But with other Gentile audiences, they don’t share that same background or the same culture, so teaching the same information would be completely confusing and wouldn’t give the feelings of eternal significance that is needed. So Paul, being the great orator that he is, found some common beliefs on which he could build his case for Jesus. This begs the question, if Paul said different words to different groups of people, which group is he lying to? To say it like this makes it sound...

I’ve been kind of struggling recently and there are a myriad of factors that go into it but the more I think about it, the more I realize that the way to fix my problems are all the same. Well, I don’t mean “fix” like everything will be fine all of a sudden, but let me explain. For the last 6 years I had done daily scripture study, twice daily family prayers, and weekly Family Home Evening with my kids, all done very consistently. I can honestly say that I can count on one hand the number of times that we have missed one of those things. But since the first of the year I have really dropped off in making these things a priority in our lives. Why is that, after all these years? There are a couple of reasons that stand out clearly in my mind. First, with the new Come, Follow Me curriculum really just ended up with me lecturing my kids every night about scriptures that they don’t care about. What we have done almost exclusively with our previous scripture st...

Once on Mars’ hill, the monument to the pagan God of War, Paul begins to teach those gathered about Jesus Christ, the true God of Peace. We can see a huge difference between how Paul would preach to the native Jews in their synagogues, but here he is speaking to the gentiles who not only didn’t have a Jewish background but who were also adherents to paganism. One point that the IM makes is that Paul changed the content of his message for his audience, but not the meaning of it. He could not use scripture to illustrate Jesus as the Messiah to this group because they didn’t have the scriptures and they didn’t know who the Messiah was or why he was even important, so Paul didn’t even bring it up. There is an excellent book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and Paul’s speech here is a perfect example of why these concepts are important. The Jews viewed pagan gentiles as the lowest on earth, and even though Chr...

Paul arrived in Athens much earlier than Silas and Timothy did and while there “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” The IM gives background on Athens, saying, “Athens, the capital of Greece, was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Although in a state of decline by the time of Paul’s visit, Athens had formerly possessed more intellectual genius, philosophical wisdom, and architectural splendor than ay other ancient city. Its inhabitants, even during the period of decline, prided themselves on their brilliant heritage.” Right now I’m listening to a podcast called “The History of Rome” by Mike Duncan, and we’ve just gotten to the part where Rome takes control of Greece and one of the pertinent parts that is brought up is how much the Greeks were admired for their intellectualism, progressive thinking and culture. Rome was pleased to incorporate that aspect of Greek society into not only ...

While some of the Jews and gentiles in Thessalonica believed in Paul’s teaching of the gospel, many others did not which caused a problem for not only the missionaries, but also for the man who they apparently were staying with, a man named Jason. Those who rejected the gospel, “set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.” This is reminiscent of when the citizenry called outside of Lot’s house for the angels staying with him to be send down to be raped by the people. When this group was unable to get the missionaries, they took Jason himself “and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.” I feel like this is the card that people can play and immediately get the attention of the city...

There seems to be a pattern that missionaries leave when they are asked to, or when it’s indicated that they are not welcome in that particular town. This is true now just as it was true anciently, and is in keeping with the gospel principle of free agency. And while this practice is only broken when commanded of God to do so, such as Alma in Ammonihah or Jonah in Ninevah, it is a relatively uncommon occurrence. So when  Paul, Silas, Timothy and company leave Philippi, it’s not out of character for them because the city leaders asked them to leave. But it seems that they left the city in good hands with Lydia and the jailer to take care of the new members. They leave Philippi and “passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures.” Again, we see that Paul’s method was to go to the Jews of...

Silas, Paul and the jailer have all had quite an unexpected and emotional night, so it’s probably at least a little bit surprising when “the magistrates sent the serjeants, saying, Let those men go.” Let’s just remember that Paul and Silas were placed in the inner most, darkest part of the prison where men are put to die, they probably didn’t expect the sudden turn around of attitudes. Additionally, this abrupt change of heart by the magistrates begs the question, why did God shake the prison open if he knew that they were going to be released the next morning anyway? I think that the obvious answer to this question is that the conversion of the jailer was important and couldn’t have gone down any other way. With the news of dismissing the charges against Silas and Paul, the serjeant tells them, “the magistrates have sent to let you go: now therefore depart, and go in peace.” Apparently this is Rome’s way of saying, “please l...