Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Section 45 is a lot longer than section 44, and new in the way that the Lord discusses specific verses or events that are recorded in the Bible. I feel that this is significant in the same that way it’s significant when the Lord references Book of Mormon peoples and events. It’s a unifying force, it shows how the Bible and the Book of Mormon both support the doctrine of His gospel. The IM gives background information as follows: “The arrival of the Prophet Joseph Smith in Kirtland, ohio, marked the beginning of a period of rapid growth in the membership in the Church. By early June 1831, the Church had grown to about two thousand members. Among those who joined the Church at this time were Sidney Rigdon’s mother and oldest brother; Luke S. Johnson, one of the first missionaries in the Church; and Ezra Booth, who joined the Church after witnessing a miracle. Civic leaders, ministers, newspaper editors, and parishioners joined together in an effort to stop the conversion of their neighb...

2:1- - The rising generation of both Nephites and Lamanites had many who had fallen away and joined the GR, and this negatively impacted the families of these dissenters. Despite all the signs and wonders shown them, the people “began to be less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven, insomuch that they began to be hard in their hearts, and blind in their minds, and began to disbelieve all which they had heard and seen.” HN commented “In the second chapter the signs and wonders began to be less and less astonishing because they got to see more and more- they became commonplace. People have short memories. The moon landing is a good example, isn’t it. All my life I heard that if man could land on the moon, it would be the greatest thing that ever happened. In fact, when it happened Nixon said, ‘This is the greatest event since the creation of the world.’ Yes the next day people were already complaining that their favorite soap operas had been cut off and they couldn’t see...

42:1-10 - Corianton’s next misunderstanding stems from his misunderstanding of God’s punishment and judgment, he believes “that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery.” There is an imagined scenario in which we, as trembling, well intentioned, deserving but imperfect mortals stand before the judgment bar of God and, as Brad Wilcox describes in his talk entitled “ His Grace is Sufficient ” “Jesus standing there with a clipboard and Brad standing on the other side of the room nervously looking at Jesus. Jesus checks His clipboard and says, ‘Oh, shoot, Brad. You missed it by two points.’ Brad begs Jesus, ‘Please, check the essay question one more time! There have to be two points you can squeeze out of that essay.’” This is what Corianton and most of us think of when we think of being “consigned to a state of misery,” desperately wanting to enter into the pearly gates but being denied, it puts God in the position of unfairness, of blame. But the fact of ...

Before we get into today’s study, I had an insight into the concept of “time” that we talked about yesterday, time in relation to all knowledge, knowing the beginning and the end, and having it all present in front of God’s face at all times. In the book “ The Infinite Atonement ” while discussing the Savior’s ability to exercise faith, Tad R. Callister asks “Was there ever a time (Jesus) did not know the end form the beginning? Like all other mortals, did he ever have to choose faith in God over his own powers of reason?... Luke tells us that as a youth he ‘increased in wisdom,’ implying that omniscience was not conferred at a singular moment of time. Evidently his knowledge and reasoning power progressed step by step during his mortal sojourn. Such a progression suggests times when he was not all-knowing.” While hearing this, it occurred to me that omniscience is the opposite of faith, like Alma taught us that faith is not having a perfect knowledge of all things, and we are to walk ...

12:16-26- In order to start here in verse 16 we have to do a quick review of the previous concept, which was that “if our hearts have been hardened, yea, if we have hardened our hearts against the word… in this awful state we shall not dare to look up to our God; and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence. But this cannot be; we must come forth and stand before him in his glory, and in his power… and acknowledge to our everlasting shame that all his judgments are just.” He then goes into teaching that after this “then cometh a death, even a second death, which is a spiritual death.” I’m having a little bit of trouble piecing the thoughts together, but what I’m taking away from this transition is that when we come to stand in front of God to be judged, and when we are taken in our sins and filthiness, then is the time of our permanent spiritual death, which is our permanent separation from God. We will be sent a...

12:1-7 – Amulek had just finished teaching the people and Zeezrom (Z) about the resurrection and the Atonement. With Amulek finished speaking and Z clearly “began to tremble under a consciousness of his guilt” by these teachings, Alma, being the fantastic public speaker that he is, seized the opportunity “to establish the words of Amulek, and to explain things beyond, or to unfold the scriptures beyond that which Amulek had done.” The first issue that Alma addresses is Z being “taken in thy lying and craftiness, for thou hast not lied unto men only but thou hast lied unto God.” This is the whole point of honest, you can convince anyone of anything, and you can even convince yourself of something, but there is only one truth and God knows it because “he knows all thy thoughts.” If we are to accept that God can know of the truth when we are wronged, then we must also accept the fact that God knows the truth when we are in the wrong. We learned from the last chapter that Amulek knew that ...

11:1-20 – We make a weird transition here from the people being furious with Amulek, and vowing in their hearts to hold his words against him, to setting forth the Nephite currency. There really is no good transition into the topic. We learn that “it was in the law of Mosiah that every man who was a judge of the law… should receive wages according to the time which they labored to judge those who were brought before them to be judged.” I know that the standard for church leaders is for them to administer the church but labor with their own hands for their support, but there’s an interesting separation of church and state here because, Mosiah recognized that in order to administer in the government, those civil servants had to be compensated for their time. This indicates that the Nephite society was evolved enough to move from the basic hunter gatherer, everyone fends for themselves society into a more advanced system of barter and trade, and professionals, including the administration...

I’ve given a little bit more thought to the concept of the “bread of life” and “living water,” meaning that I’m working to fully understand and incorporate the idea that living spiritually is more important than any physical consequences, be it humiliation, hunger, fatigue, or death. It just so happened that the Ensign that I’ve been listening to in the car is the July 2010 issue and since it’s July there’s a lot of focus on pioneers, and in the Latter-day Saint Voices section a man talked about his experience deciding whether or not to attend the service project to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the pioneers entering the Salt Lake valley. On the same day as the service project, he had a college class to attend and didn’t think that he would be able to make the service project. He says “I felt that everybody would understand, but then I came across a pamphlet titled Faith in Every Footstep. When I read excerpts about the travails of the Saints on their trek to the western United...

5:10-14 - Alma continues by his sermon by launching into a series of questions, I was going to go into some elaborate explanation about Alma's use of questions and answers as an effective teaching method but I honestly can't come up with right now. It's interesting to me that he goes into so many questions, such a stark contrast to Nephi who was really big into lecture and imagery. Looking at it, the questions posed by Alma made an excellent point but were not confrontational at all. I didn't really understand going from "on what conditions are they saved?" to "did not my father Alma believe in the words which were delivered by the mouth of Abinadi?" He goes on to teach that his father had "a mighty change wrought in his heart," as well as all of their fathers who believed when he taught. I can see it in that light, Alma asks "on what condition are we saved?" And the answer is "on condition that we receive the mighty change o...