Here is the image that haunts me from Lehi’s vision. Many people press forward “continually holding fast to the rod of iron,” only to collapse, exhausted at the end of the journey and partake “of the fruit of the tree.” (vs. 30). And yet, moments after completing the journey... ... they are “ashamed, because of those…scoffing at them” and “[fall] away into forbidden paths and were lost.” (vs 28)

How could this happen? How could these courageous souls be so easily divided from the love of their God?

It's so important to approach the Book of Mormon with fresh eyes so that things that were new and revelatory to Lehi and Nephi (and others) will be new and revelatory to us. When you approach it this way, treasures are waiting for you everywhere. Let's look at 1 Ne 6:4. Nephi says "the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved."

Which men? All men. Right, as a modern reader that's what you expect. But for 600 BC, that's *revolutionary*.

Little gems from reading 1 Nephi 3 today. It makes sense that Lehi rejoiced after Nephi's "I will go and do" monologue, but why did it mean that "he knew that I had been blessed of the Lord."? I think it's a callback to 1 Nephi 2:16. This is actually a really touching moment between Lehi and Nephi, because so far Lehi has been pretty thoroughly rejected by Laman and Lemuel and up to this point *nobody* has his back. But he knows that something has changed for Nephi. Lehi won't be alone anymore.

I'm preparing to teach this week's Come, Follow Me lesson to my family, and I thought I'd share one part of it.

What can we do, as believers, when the world seems to be going mad?

Chapters 24-25 of Alma in the Book of Mormon have powerful answers. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies are famous for being pacifists. They buried their weapons of war and covenanted never to fight.

And yet the Amalekites and Amulonites (Nephite dissenters with a lot of influence among the Lamanites) saw them as an existential threat.

And they were right.

2 Nephi 5 is one of the most important chapters for understanding the timeline of the stories of 1 Nephi. It has two really important dates. First, in vs 28, we know that 30 years total had gone by since Nephi and his family left Jerusalem before Nephi started work on the 2nd set of plates. This means everything in 1 Nephi is recounted *at least* 30 years after it happened.

One of the ways to understand what the impact of the Restoration should be on us is to look at what the intent and consequences of the Great Apostasy. A good description of that comes from 1 Nephi 13. So we have this really critical discussion of the Bible in this chapter, and the angel tells Nephi "when it [the Bible] proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew it contained the fulness of the gospel of the Lord" (vs 24)...

1 Nephi 11 is one of the most important chapters in the BoM. It embodies the Restoration mindset that you should find the truth for yourself. Instead of reprimanding Nephi for wanting to see what his father Lehi saw (although Nephi trusted his dad!) the angel celebrated him. I noticed two other things as I started the chapter today. First, in order for Nephi to "know the things that [his] father had seen" he had to go on a whole journey. He had multiple guides and visited multiple places.

Moroni 7 is a great chapter, but one of my favorite verses in it is one that I don't see cited often. It's verse 36, which implies something truly beautiful about Jesus' love for us. "[H]ave angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has [Christ] withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved?"

Way back in 2009 a really good friend told me, "I wish it were Faith, Hope, and Zealous Anger. That'd be much easier." He was right. That'd be easier. So a question weighing on my mind is: how do we resist evil without giving in to evil in our time? I found an answer in Ether 9. This section (Ether 7-9) is the turning point of Moroni's history. In Ether 7, the people are wicked and the Lord sends prophets and the people revile against them, but Shule (the king at the time) protects and supports the prophets so the people eventually repent (vs. 23-27).

A little detail of the story of the brother of Jared's 16 small stones that I haven't noticed before today: he asks the Lord about how they can light their vessels not once but twice. The first is in vs 19:

>>O Lord, in them there is no light; whither shall we steer? And also we shall perish, for in them we cannot breathe, save it is the air which is in them; therefore we shall perish.<<

In preparing a talk for Easter Sunday, I realized the living Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ have been sharing a coordinated testimony of Him in reverse order of seniority* since March 18.

* They followed seniority except the First Presidency, who seem to be going last. I expect the last two messages from Presidents Oaks and Nelson tomorrow and then on Easter Sunday (probably around 10:00 AM Eastern).

I'll update this thread (and the linked Google doc) as they are published.

docs.google.com/presentation/d…

So I spent like 20-30 minutes studying my scriptures this morning, but only got through 11 verses (Alma 45:1-11) cause I found a rabbit hole. And what do we do when we find rabbit holes in our scripture study? That's right, boys and girls, we jump right in! Here was my initial confusion: Alma conveys the records to Helaman in Alma 37:2 ("I command you that ye take the records which have been entrusted with me"), but then it's several chapters later when Alma's record concludes in Alma 44:24 ("thus ended the record of Alma").

I’d like to share the way I understand a teaching of the Restored Gospel that can seem hard to some folks. This is the “now or never” message taught in the Book of Mormon, especially by Alma and Amulek. Here's what I believe is *really* being taught. Let's start with Alma 34:34. Amulek says “Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God.” If you imagine God telling someone "you had your chance" when they're begging for mercy at the end, this is horrifying.

I find the Book of Mormon a rich source of teachings for how to live in uncertain and tribalistic times, and today I got an answer to another question I'd had. In Alma 4 the church itself became a hotbed of contention (9) and a negative influence on the larger society (10-11). So I wanted to know: what did the righteous members of the church do? How did they respond to the contention and bad examples arising from within their own congregations? And the Book of Mormon has the answer, just a couple verses later (13-14).

Something stood out to me in the final confrontation between the Gadianton Robbers and the Nephites in 3 Nephi 4, and it was how poorly the Gadiantons understood the Nephites even though they themselves were mostly recent dissidents from that society. Let's start with vs. 8-10. In vs. 8, the Nephites see the fearsome army about to attack them and "[fall] to the earth". This excites the Gadiantons, who "supposed that the Nephites had fallen with fear" (vs 9). But that ain't it. The Nephites didn't fall out of fear, they fell to pray to God (vs. 10).

Giddianhi's letter to Lachoneus in 3 Nephi 3 accuses him (Lachoneus) of "retaining from them [Giddianhi's people] their rights of government." What's he talking about? The two main enemies of the Nephites until now have been Lamanites and Nephite dissenters / "king men" who were probably mostly Mulekites. They both had grievances, especially the Mulekites.

A small detail in Mosiah 28 really helped fill in my picture of Alma the Younger, who I consider the most relatable person in the Book of Mormon.

And not for the reason you're thinking. Lots of folks relate to Alma's conversion, but what resonates with me is his life *after* that, especially the glimpse we get in Alma 29. That's the famous "O that I were an angel" chapter. I always loved it growing up, but I didn't get it until I was a grown up.

As I read Mosiah 27 this morning, I thought about what exactly Alma had been preaching against the church. It's not clear. He's called "idolatrous," which makes you think maybe he was buying into some local pagan traditions, but the "marvel not" passage (starting in vs 25) implicitly reveals some different concerns.

Couple of thoughts from Mosiah 26 this morning. First, when it comes to the rising generation failing to accept the traditions of their fathers, I have a whole blog post about that inspired directly by Mosiah 26:1 and that was a big part of my work on LDS Radical Orthodoxy.

nauvooneighbor.org/2021/02/16/upd…