Egypt - Abraham 2:9-25; Genesis: 12:8-20

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 this visit was a direct result of his honest efforts, saying, “Thy servant has sought thee earnestly; now I have found thee.” This is a good reminder to the rest of us that with diligent effort comes blessings, but also that the Lord doesn’t push us in giving us experiences that we aren’t ready for or that we don’t want. The second realization that he has is that his miraculous escape from the priest of Elkenah and sacrifice was the hand of God. Being obedient to God, Abraham “departed as the Lord had said unto me… out of Haran.” He took Lot with him as well as Sarai his wife, “all our substance that we had gathered,” but also “the souls that we had won in Haran.” This single statement demonstrates that Abraham had been preaching the gospel in the city of Haran where he was living and that he had some success there. They make several stops along their journey, all of which Abraham builds an altar to God, and has another visitation from the Lord where He promises Abraham “unto thy seed will I give this land.” Again, I don’t understand the appeal of that promise, but it must be important to some people. The famine in the land is “very grievous” so Abraham decides to go to Egypt. Now I’m not sure if it’s just him and Sarah or if he takes Lot and all the other believers with him. But interestingly, when Abraham gets close to Egypt, the Lord comes to him again and says “hey your wife is beautiful, so tell the Egyptians that she is your sister so they won’t kill you in order to marry her.” This is a really interesting event. And the IM explains the difficulty best, saying, “The idea that Abraham, the great man of righteousness, deceived Pharaoh in order to protect his own life has troubled many students of the Old Testament. That his life was in danger because of Sarah’s beauty seems quite clear. It seems peculiar, but whereas the Egyptian pharaohs had a strong aversion to committing adultery with another man’s wife, they had no qualms about murdering the man to free his spouse for remarriage.” This is the perfect summation of how I’ve felt about this. If Abraham was supposed to be this really righteous guy, then why did he lie, and why did the Egyptian’s feel ok with murder but not adultery, it’s a really interesting concept. The IM also points out that Abraham was in fact the brother of Sarah because even though technically she was his niece, ancient peoples considered any blood relation to be brother and sister. And finally the IM says that regardless of the actuality of Abraham’s claim, because the Lord commanded Abraham to say that Sarah was his sister, therefore it was not wrong, quoting the prophet Joseph Smith as teaching, “That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, ‘Thou shalt not kill;’ at another time He said, ‘Thou shalt utterly destroy.’… Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.” I think it’s important to note here that we need to be very careful with taking upon ourselves “God’s commands” that are contrary to prophetic revelation, because communication from God to us encouraging action contrary to “the norm” is a very serious matter and we must be sure that it is actually coming from God and not just our own wishful thinking. Finally, my personal opinion on why God commanded Abraham to say that Sarah was his sister was the same reason Jesus refused Satan’s temptation to become famous by jumping off the wall of the temple to be saved by angels, because even though God could save Abraham from murderous Egyptians, He probably wanted to reserve his displays of power for other times. For instance, if Abraham said, “yeah this is my wife,” and Egyptians came to kill him, he would have to be saved by miraculous means because his work wasn’t finished on the earth. God would have to perform a miracle to save him and then say the Egyptians that saw that decided that Abraham was a God and started worshipping him, or God might have had to kill the murderous Egyptians even though it wasn’t their time to move on. All of these factors goes into the decision of whether to provide divine intervention and so at this point, and like he does so very often, God decided to forgo the outward demonstration of his power and instead just had Abraham say that she was his sister to avoid the whole mess altogether.