Original Sin - Moses 6:40-54

When a man comes around to your neighborhood exuding God’s power, it makes sense that someone stops to ask him some questions. In the case of Enoch, that guy is named Mahijah, who asks basically “who are you and where did you come from?” Enoch explains that he comes from his ancestral homeland called Cainan, which is a righteous place. Enoch explains the vision that he had where God commanded him to teach the people the gospel. I always imagined that these prophets just basically tell the people to repent, but in the case of Enoch, God has told him to tell the people who God is and the creation. Enoch also references the “book of remembrance” that they have which takes them all the way back to Adam. Maybe it’s because Adam is so far removed from us and that we have very little material to know who he is, but it just seems so weird to me to be able to point to a common figure that’s relatively recent in time who everyone can identify and say “oh yeah that’s where it all started.” Enoch’s teachings were so powerful, or I should say that the Spirit was so powerful when Enoch taught that “the people trembled, and could not stand in his presence.” Enoch begins teaching the gospel, starting with the fall, explaining that people are a result because “Adam fell” and we are all “made partakers of misery and woe” and death because of Adam’s fall. It would be interesting to know just how much more significant this would be to someone who knew Adam and was alive at the same time, not that it’s not significant to us because it is, but it’s more abstract 6000+ years removed. He associates being “carnal, sensual, and devilish,” with Satan’s influence, but explains that repentance comes from God. The IM says, “Because of Adam’s fall, all mankind suffer physical death (the separation of the immortal spirit from the mortal body) and spiritual death (separation from the presence of God). Furthermore, because people yield to the temptations of Satan, they become… ‘shut out from the presence of God’ until they repent. The good news of the plan of salvation is that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ all mankind will overcome physical death and can overcome spiritual death.” Enoch explains the plan of salvation to the people, telling of a conversation between God and Adam where God explains faith, belief, repentance, baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. That’s pretty standard to what we teach today, it’s interesting and faith confirming to see that the fundamentals of the gospel have been the same since the dawn of human existence. Again, maybe it’s because we are just so far removed from Adam, but a lot of these teachings focus heavily on the Fall and the gospel of redemption that came as a result. In the question and answer format that is so effective, Enoch has God and Adam having a back and forth conversation explaining: Q: why must man repent and be baptized in water? A: “I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden.” This doesn’t seem like a straight answer to me, but it seems to be Enoch’s way to teach that yes, mankind suffers because of the fall, but we are not held responsible for Adam’s poor decision, only our own. If God has forgiven Adam for his transgression in the Garden, then God won’t be holding any guilt over to any of us, there’s no way for that to be justified by anyone looking for a “we’re doomed already” excuse to sin. God’s forgiveness of A&E caused “the saying abroad among the people, that the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt, wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children, for they are whole from the foundation of the world.” The IM quotes Neal A. Maxwell as teaching, “We are not haunted with an overhanging sense of ‘original sin’ about which we can do nothing… we are accountable for our ‘own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.”