The Goodness and the Mysteries: 4 Nephi

Showing posts with label 4 Nephi. Show all posts

Sunday, June 17, 2012

From This Time the Disciples Began to Sorrow

When it comes, the Nephite apostasy resembles the one from which Lehi fled. Church leaders go bad (wearing "fine things"), seeking wealth and inappropriately sharing sacred things. As in Lehi's day, the visionary men are persecuted (the children of God). A corrupt hierarchy leaves no one to fight the Gadianton robbers, who return with all their oaths. This combination is the one-two punch that kills the Nephites.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

They Were in One

The peaceful Nephites have the blessing of unity and are children and heirs to the kingdom of God. The children are those who worship in private, and the place they enter is the kingdom.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Which Did Dwell in the Hearts of the People

When the zealous and effective anti-temple missionary Sherem is defeated, the two things that return to the Nephites are peace and the love of God.

The great Pax Nefita is marked by the same two blessings: peace and the love of God.

These are temple blessings. Peace is the worship of the Shalems, the peaceable followers of Christ. The love of God is the tree in the temple.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

If His Son Ask Bread

Everyone is converted, there are no more lawsuits (sounds good), and all Nephites and Lamanites alike become "partakers of the heavenly gift."

What is the heavenly gift? Presumably, the gift that you ask the father for as you ask, seek and knock, in answer to which you are admitted into the strait and narrow gate.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

A Church of Christ

The disciples form "a church of Christ in all the lands round about." Previously, the word "church" has seemed to mean a "congregation," rather than a doctrinally-distinct denomination. Should we read this as meaning that the disciples formed a church in each of the lands round about?

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By Way of Explanation

This blog started as an email list, to which I sent daily updates of my Book of Mormon reading, as I promised my Elders Quorum I would do. Then it came to this URL as a private blog, and then to a Drupal-powered site. I wanted to invite people to join a private community that talked about the Book of Mormon.

The Drupal site, tragically, has crashed (probably nothing to do with Drupal), so I brought the blog back here. In the meantime, I've also published a couple of books -- Plain and Precious Things: The Temple Religion of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men and The Goodness and the Mysteries: On the Path of the Book of Mormon's Visionary Men.

As of year end 2013, I've been called to teach Gospel Doctrine in my ward. So I'm leaving up all the old posts and comments, and I'm now going to use this blog to post class outlines, book recommendations, and so forth. Please feel free to share and comment!

Here I Stand

Here are some things I think about the Book of Mormon, the Bible and the origin of the Nephite community. This is not systematic, but intended to explain what might seem like idiosyncratic perspectives.

A) I believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.

B) I believe the Bible is a collection of books recording the experiences and thoughts of Israel and the early Christians.

C) I think both halves of the Bible have been doctored by people who didn't like the true ancient religion of Israel and the true doctrines of Christ, and wished to conceal them beneath their own teachings.

D) I think Lehi left Jerusalem during one of the great moments of conflict in Israelite religion, when reformers (often called "Deuteronomists" by Bible scholars) were changing the way religion was practiced in Israel and rewriting the holy documents to prove themselves right.

E) We read these reformers as heroes in the Bible, because they won, and got to tell the story the way they wanted it. Lehi belonged to the other party, the "prophets" or "visionary men", who lost. This "loser's view" of the sixth century B.C. makes the Book of Mormon an invaluable resource that secular Bible scholars would kill to have. Ironically.

F) This is gross simplification, but: the visionary men went underground, but didn't cease to exist. 1 Enoch is one of their books, along with much of what we call Second Temple or Intertestamental literature or the Apocalyptic Books or the Pseudepigrapha or the Apocrypha. The Dead Sea Scrolls people inherited many of their ideas. The first Christians were Israelites of the traditional religion, more heirs of the visionary men, who recognized Christ as the Messiah who had been promised by the ancient faith.

G) Lehi and his people carried the practices of the visionary men into the promised land. They loved the temple, and its rites were the sources of their prophesies. Crucially, they had visions, the imagery of which was derived from temple furniture, architecture and ritual (1 Nephi 8 and 1 Nephi 11-14 are showcase examples of this). I think it is demonstrable that the Nephites knew an endowment rite, which is expressed both in 1 Nephi 8 and in the Sermon at the Temple (and elsewhere, as I discuss in Plain and Precious Things). That and the Day of Atonement rite were the "rock" and the "salvation," the two ordinances central to the doctrines and prophecies of the visionary men.

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