Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

3:1-13 - I’ve been not super interested in the next chronological step, which is Abraham 3, because it talks so much about astronomy and lots of concepts that I can’t really follow. I find it fascinating though, that all these prophets like Alma, Joseph Smith, Moses, and Abraham get lessons in science at some point. I wonder if pondering creation is a natural progression of spiritual learning, like if eventually everyone who grows spiritually will get to a point where learning about the science behind everything is the next logical step. Because I’ve been so reluctant to do a deep dive into this chapter, I’m just going to briefly skim over the parts that stood out to me. First is that the Lord told Abraham that he’s teaching him all this stuff before he goes to Egypt because God wants Abraham to teach them this stuff. If I recall correctly, a lot of our current scientific knowledge has grown over the thousands of years and a lot of it stemmed from what the Egyptians knew, which is int...

With the Egyptians believing that Sarah is Abraham’s sister, she’s put in the Pharaoh’s harem and “he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.” It’s a difficult pill for me to swallow that Sarah gets put into a brothel and Abraham gets rich and somehow that’s ok with everyone, but I’m going to look at it from the perspective that Jesus is the ultimately champion of women and accept that I don’t know or understand everything. But there is an interesting result of Sarah being in Pharaoh’s harem and I’ve always wondered how Pharaoh put all of this together because “the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife.” If I remember correctly the plague is widespread infertility, Pharaoh figures out that this is a curse from God on him because Sarah isn’t actually just Abram’s sister but also his wife. Pharaoh is not pleased and makes it sound like, if only ...

As the Lord’s visit to Abraham continues, He promises that not only shall Abraham “bear this ministry and Priesthood,” but so shall his “seed,” meaning his literal children. We know that Abraham is getting up there in age and more importantly so is his wife Sarah, We know how Sarah felt about the whole having children in her old age thing, but we never really hear how Abraham feels about it. Not only will Abraham’s lineage be blessed with the priesthood, but “as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name and shall be accounted thy seed.” I don’t really understand the appeal of having other people called by me “name,” I feel like if I was talking to God and He promised me that all people who believed in the gospel would be called after my name, that wouldn’t have any appeal to me, so I wonder if I’m missing something or if it’s just important to some people and not important to me at all. After the end of the Lord’s visit, Abraham realizes a couple of things, first that ...

I’m not exactly sure how long this famine lasts for, but it seems to be ongoing long enough that Abraham and his whole entourage move around quite a bit. I can’t quite keep track of where he starts and all of his travels but first I think it’s important to get some genealogy stuff out of the way first. Noah’s son Shem had seven generations of children until he got to Terah. Terah had at least three children, Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. Haran had at least 4 children, Milcah (female), Lot (male), Iscah (not sure), and Sarai (female). Haran died in the famine, leaving his four children. Haran’s brother Nahor marries Milcah, Haran’s daughter and Nahor’s niece, and Abraham marries Sarah, Haran’s other daughter and Abraham’s niece. Different times and all that I guess, I just feel sorry for those girls because I’m sure they had absolutely no say in who they ended up marrying. Maybe the family thought that the girls would be treated better by staying in the family, and maybe that’s true, who k...

1:21-28 - The Pharaoh’s court is the one that is devastated by the death of the idolatrous priest who was killed by God when he tried to sacrifice Abraham. The rest of the chapter is Abraham giving the heritage and I honestly had no idea why, but the IM comments “the Pharaohs would fain claim (the priesthood) from Noah, through Ham.” Abraham was giving this background on Egyptian royal structure because he was demonstrating the way that Pharaoh justified his religious practice. Again, being so close chronologically from the flood, it makes sense why he would feel the need to add in some legitimacy there. The king of Egypt “was a descendant from the loins of Ham,” and apparently had mixed “blood of the Canaanites by birth.” Maybe Abraham’s not talking about all Pharaohs because it would be pretty hard to mix blood with a people who weren’t even around initially with Noah, but apparently at some point this Pharaoh had Canaanite ancestry. From Noah was Ham and Ham had a daughter named Egy...

1:13-15 - Abraham has been snatched up by the priest of Pharaoh and is in the process of being sacrificed on this altar that so many other believers have been sacrificed on before. I read a note that seemed to be important that Terah, Abraham’s dad, was behind this sacrificial plan, which I think makes it interesting because, if I understand the timeline, Abraham later takes his father with him when he leaves the land. I personally might not do that, but then again I’m the only one of my parent’s siblings willing to take care of my dad if my mom dies first, despite him being an absolute monster, so maybe I should take courage that Abraham did the same thing, that’s actually pretty comforting. It seems like all the events here took place just as Abraham was *about* to be killed, just like later when he was just *about* to sacrifice Isaac, the intervention came. Just “as they lifted their hands upon me, that they might offer me up and take away my life, behold, I lifted up my voice unto...

I have been MIA for a while but it’s for a good reason, I promise. For the last 3-4 weeks work has been an absolute disaster, so busy, I have had no time whatsoever. The other part of that is that I’ve been wanting to take a specific certification test for work for like 8 years and I finally had to actually take it, so I’ve spent every single spare minute of my time for the last 2 months studying for that. I finally took it and it was horrible, but I passed and am so glad to be done with it. There is another one I’m going to take in October, but hopefully there won’t be as much cramming last minute as there was with this one. Forgoing my in depth scripture study in order to study for my test actually motivated me to buckle down because every time I thought “I don’t feel like studying right now,” and was tempted to just watch TV or something I remembered, “you are sacrificing your scripture time right now, so focus,” and I did and it worked apparently. Before I get back into the actua...