Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

With the Church’s new curriculum into the scriptures, I was really excited to share the New Testament with my kids. I was really happy that more of the teaching emphasis was going to be put on the home, and I think that part of that is because we already do so much of it already that I feel like with what we do at home, plus the three hours of church, it’s pretty overwhelming for all of us, especially the kids. I really like that the “Come, Follow Me” manual is split up into weeks because then it keeps all of us on the same track with our study. I want to do a part of the lesson everyday for our family scripture study which essentially breaks up the week long chapter into 6 or 7 individual, daily parts. I’m going to take the extra hour that I would be at church and make a lesson outline for the upcoming week, broken down by day so that I will have something to follow everyday instead of just looking through the lesson briefly and pontificating about various...

Word of Cornelius’s baptism got back to Christ’s disciples in Jerusalem, who were all Jews at this point. The Hebrew Christians are referred to here as “they that were of the circumcision,” because they had been circumcised. This brings up an interesting point, circumcision was required for Jews, even those who converted to the religion, and because it’s such an important part of the Jewish religion and culture, they were probably wondering what was going to be done about that. Peter rehearsed to the other believers what had happened to him, the vision from God, the visitors from Cornelius, and his experience teaching gentiles the gospel. When Peter recounted that the gentiles had received the Holy Ghost, just like the rest of the believers, he adds, “Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God?” The Jewish believers accepted the new principle an...

Listening to Cornelius tell his story and seeing that he was devoted to God as well, Peter is putting the pieces of his vision together. He observes, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter or persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” The IM comments, “The scriptures teach that ‘God is no respecter of persons,’ meaning that every person from Adam to the last person on earth will receive an opportunity to accept the gospel. The principles of salvation are the same for all of God’s children.” This means that the requirements for salvation are the same for everyone, faith, repentance, baptism, and confirmation. Black, white, bond, free, male and female, they are all the same, this is why genealogy is so important. But one caveat here is just because the requirements are the same doesn’t mean that everyone has the same opportunities at the same time. I’m extremely fortun...

One question that I kept thinking about yesterday was why didn’t the Lord just send Peter a vision saying, “take the gospel to the gentiles” instead of sending this relatively cryptic message of “eat these unclean animals.” The more I think about it, the more I can see two possible reasons why the metaphor was more profitable than a direct message. First, Peter is primarily a Jew, he was raised a Jew, he lived in a Jewish society, and had only been acquainted with Christianity for a couple of years. Jesus spent his mortal life worshipping as a Jew, but teaching that the Jewish way of salvation was going to be built upon to create Christianity. So really, it’s just been since Jesus’ resurrection that the concept of a separate religious movement had been emphasized. At this point, the gospel had only gone to those who were already Jews, so the practice of circumcision and kosher food was already known and engrained into the members. But if the g...

After raising Tabitha from the dead in Joppa, Peter stays there for a while in the house of Simon the tanner. In the nearby city “there was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always.” I had a lot of questions about this guy, namely, if he was a Roman soldier, then which God was he devoted to? In the article “Who was Cornelius in the Bible?” on  gotquestions.org , we learn just how that works, “despite being a Roman, Cornelius was a worshipper of God, a Jewish proselyte known and respected by the Jewish community. Cornelius was a devout man who regularly prayed and gave to charity.” As a higher ranking Roman soldier, Cornelius probably had some stability in his station which meant that he probably spent a lot of time in the Jewish community, he would have learned about the God o...

I think I jumped the gun a little bit with Paul going back to Jerusalem, I wrote that one before I realized that he had gone to Arabia for 3 years first. When we come back to Paul in a few chapters, I’m going to pick the account back up in Acts 9:23-32 and start from there. I’m assuming that the rest of the account of Peter in the next few chapters occurs while Paul is out of the country. I’ve been so focused on Paul and what he’s been doing that I don’t even know where Peter and the other apostles are. Let’s backtrack for a second here, after Stephen was martyred, Saul had pursued the rest of the Christians so the point where they all fled out of Jerusalem for safety. We also know that Paul returns to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles three years later, so clearly they make it back to the city eventually. I don’t remember where Peter went right after everyone fled Jerusalem, but he ends up in “Lydda.” While there he healed...

The fact that Paul went to Arabia for three years was not made apparent in Acts, but instead was discussed by Paul himself in Galatians. We don’t know exactly what he did there, but there have been some interesting insights about the culture and times that might give us some speculations into his experience. The first question I have about Paul’s three year journey into Arabia has to do with his family, or lack thereof. It appears that Paul lived in Jerusalem before going into Damascus, but then he just didn’t return to his life. If he had a wife and family, that would have been incredibly difficult them, he disappears and probably their livelihood as well. This begs the question if he was married or not, and it’s kind of like the question of “was Jesus married?” And there are answers to both yes and no, like Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin and all the men had to be married in order to hold a place on the council, but then again, he basically just ...