Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Now that “man” is created and given life, all three accounts note that God says “it was not good that the man should be alone.” I think about this sometimes and especially now that I’m older and have been single for so much of my adult life. I know that we are not meant to be solitary creatures, humans are meant to be together in groups, but here in this fallen world there is so much loneliness and it’s such an interesting and tragic concept. It’s not good for man to be alone, so God decides “I will make an help meet for him.” One interesting thing is that Moses is the only account where God “formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air,” and took them all to Adam to be named. Both Genesis and Abraham say that God had Adam name the animals AFTER creating Eve, which seems fairly benign but what a way to say that someone isn’t important, have two people there and only ask the man’s opinion on what to name the animals. With the “help meet” and disinterest in Eve’s opinion,...

The creation of “man” is explained in various steps throughout the beginning of Genesis, Moses, and Abraham, which means that this is a story told in pieces and I’m kind of frustrated because I wanted to do the whole thing in order and now that we are 6 days into the creation, there is all this added stuff about spiritual creation and Satan being cast out, so I’ll try to circle back the best I can. Yesterday when we learned that the Gods created “man,” there was a very simple reference to who he was and his companion, saying, “male and female, created I them.” We don’t find out here their identity or their significance. In fact, it’s not until later in Genesis 2, Moses 3, and Abraham 5 that we find out that they weren’t even created at the same time, together. When the Gods formed the man, they took the elements from the earth or as they called it, “the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man because a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth...

The Creation – Day 6 The waters have been prepared for sea life and there are apparently birds and insects, etc. and now “the Gods prepared the earth to bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping tings, and beasts of the earth after their kind.” Again, everything has to be “prepared” before it can actually be put there. I think that this probably means large animals, and probably the day before were more focused on small animals. Now the main event, the Gods “took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness; and we will give them dominion.” This means dominion over all plants and animals. So they go down to the earth “to organize man” in their own image and I wonder if this means that they used the materials from the earth to create the human body. If so then that means that our bodies are made from the same stuff that used to reside in disorder out in space. There is another phrase used here that has been u...

The Creation – Day 4 There isn’t a lot said about the fourth day of creation, so let’s recap to see if I get it right. The first day, the Gods organized material to form a ball. The second day, water was put onto the earth. The third day, the atmosphere was set up with water on land but also in the sky as precipitation. Another interesting thing I just noticed about this day is that when creating the atmosphere, it would have included various chemical elements like nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc. But what else needs those chemicals to function? Soil. Separating the waters on earth from heaven, installing the atmosphere, and creating the weather cycle was all to “prepare the earth to bring forth grass” and all other plant life. There’s an interesting sentence in an article about the moon from the “Scientific American,” which notes that in its early development “Earth cooled to an object with a molten surface and a steam atmosphere.” It’s easier to see the way that the land water and the ...

Day 2 - Day 2 is pretty straight forward, basically, the Gods commanded that there be “an expanse in the midst of the waters, and it shall divide the waters from the waters.” There was a division of water on the earth where the firmament emerged and there was also a division of water FROM the earth. The IM explains, “The waters under the firmament are the waters upon the globe itself; those above are not ethereal waters beyond the limited of the terrestrial atmosphere, but the waters which float in the atmosphere, and are separated by it from those upon the earth, the waters which accumulate in clouds, and then bursting their bottles, pour down as rain upon the earth.” This makes me want to know more about the chemical composition of the atmosphere. This dividing of water was called the second day. Day 3 – There is a little bit more to digest when it comes to day 3. Day 3 also deals a lot with water, but mostly on land, as it appears that the earth emerges from the waters. I imagine t...

One thing that I think is interesting is that whenever God is giving a major revelation to someone in scripture, it seems that it always beginning with the creation. Not that I don’t think that the creation is important, but the amount of time that I spend thinking about it is very small, but it seems that the creation is a major part of understanding the gospel and the plan of salvation. There are accounts of the creation in Genesis, then also accounts given to Moses and Abraham, and again in our own temple learning. If I remember correctly, the sealed portion of the plates of Mormon had the revelations given to the brother of Jared which includes an account of the creation. So I guess what I’m saying is that the creation is key when it comes to spiritual growth, but I don’t exactly know why. The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com gives a long, but very interesting quote, saying, “The fourth and fifth chapters of the book of Abraham record a vision of the Creation that p...

Interestingly enough, our first foray into the OT starts in the NT, in John 1:1-5. I know that I did this section in my NT study but I think for some reason, I missed that there was an extensive JST that clarifies a lot of John’s words here. 1:1 - One thing that is important to note, and honestly I don’t know how I’ve missed this before but apparently the first part of the gospel of John is taken from the writings of John the Baptist. There is a reference to D&C 93:6-18 where Jesus says “John saw and bore record of the fullness of my glory.” When I hear the name “John” in the context of scripture, I think of John the Beloved not John the Baptist, but if the IM says that it was John the Baptist, then I’m going to take that as truth because they’ve looked into it much more than I have. Going back to the very beginning with a clear mind, the first part is very reminiscent of the start of Genesis, as both start with “In the beginning…” while Genesis goes right into the creation, Jo...

I have to be honest, when I finished the New Testament last week, I felt accomplished and excited to move on to the Old Testament, and I still am excited, but I am SO intimidated. I think one of the reasons for that is because, looking back there is so much that I missed doing study of the other scriptures that I regret, and I’m afraid that I’m going to do that again here. And there is just so much material, I want to do a super deep dive into it, I want to know everything, but I know that I’m going to miss something and I’m just not looking forward to that part. That is probably quite a bit of “cart before the horse,” and I accept that there’s going to be stuff I miss, so I guess I’ll just have to have faith that the Lord will teach me what I need to know, when I need to know it. Another decision I’ve made about the study of this scripture is that I’m going to try to go chronologically, like I did in the first four books of the New Testament. I found a list that includes not only th...