Transcript for 2 Nephi 26-30 Part 2 • Dr. Joseph Spencer • Mar 11- Mar 17 • Come Follow Me

One way I've taught this to students on occasion, especially like one on one settings where a student will come in saying, but what about what about what about, I'll say like stop, stop, stop. Let's just talk about an analogy for a minute. There are other things that work like Nephi's describing here. Think about love. Imagine a marriage in which you are constantly demanding science that the other loves you before you will believe that they do. Imagine a relationship in which you are constantly trying to measure it in scientific terms. You will kill love so fast. Love is the kind of thing that you have to open a space and it's vulnerable and it's complicated and it's messy, but you can do the kind of thing that happens in Alma 32 and measure your feelings as they develop. Faith works like love, not like science. You have to be carefully attuned, open, listening, not the kind of thing that you just pull out the microscope and the particle collider and see what you can detect. It's not how it works.

Exactly. Science is incredible, but it's got its place. This is the threat of Gentile culture. I think as Nephi sees it is, science becomes the common measure of all things. That's killing us.

Yeah, my experience is very similar. I've loved the things I've read that sift through evidence for the Book of Mormon. I've been instructed and sometimes it illuminates the text in really remarkable ways, but man, a serious, close reading of the text and what it reveals about God's nature, the life of faith. I'll take that any day, overall the evidence in the world.

He did. Since from the mid-40s until the mid-60s, over about 20 years, he felt like the book of Mormon was under very serious attack and an answer was needed. And so he went looking for evidence. I think the way he used evidence was more nuanced than he's often read as being. But what he was, he was looking for evidence. Can we make a case on something like scientific grounds that the Book of Mormon can't be excluded from the possibility of truth? But yeah, by the mid-60s, I think he felt like he'd kind of done what needed to be done in that regard to kind of quiet down the critics. And he was very explicit about this. He's now it's time to do the real work and he spent the rest of his career reading it And especially for him, what really drove his interest is the way it talked about questions of poverty, questions of consecration, questions of how cultures grow and develop and mature and then fall apart. These are things how it talks about war and peace. He was absorbed with those themes for the rest of his life. He said, the evidence is fine, fine, fine. We did all that. Now he says, we've got to find out what this book is telling us to do and how to repent.

Let's just say one final word, maybe, by way of wrapping it up. And that's, notice that we haven't had to say a whole lot about Isaiah along the way. We've mentioned places where Nephi is picking upwards and phrases from Isaiah, but this feels very different from the Isaiah chapters coming before this. And that's maybe worth reflecting on just a little bit. Obviously Isaiah is still here, but notice that he's not front and center. This is the first time in Nephi's record where he's quoted substantially from Isaiah and not told you that's what he's doing. Every other time he says, okay, now I'm going to quote the words of Isaiah and then boom chapters. But this is the first time that he suddenly starts picking up Isaiah's language and weaving it in. And it feels to me almost like what we've got in 1st Nephi and in 2nd Nephi up through chapter 24 or so. We've got Nephi doing scales, but now he can just play. He's been walking you through Isaiah, making sure it's possible to liken him and so on. He's quoting lots and lots of it getting you familiar with it, but now it's smooth as butter. Weaving back and forth between Isaiah's words and his own prophecy. He's doing the likening in real time rather than giving you Isaiah and then likening it. This is Nephi sort of it is virtuosic best. That's really something. We don't have to pause and say, okay, what was going on with the Syria at the time to read this chapter? We can. But here Nephi, it's become so integral with what he's doing. We don't have to dig into those details in the history and the Hebrew. We can just watch Nephi work. That's a really beautiful thing. And shows us maybe what our own goal might look like with Isaiah some day, right? Can we get to the point where the words are just there and available and natural? And we can weave them into the gospel as we have known it and felt it. That's where Nephi's trying to get.

I think that's absolutely right. This is what it means by likening. Sometimes when we read, second, if I 25, we'll say, oh, here the key is to understanding Isaiah and one of them is, you got to know some geography, you know some history. That is a, it's immensely helpful. It's a little time doing that. So it's helpful. But Nephi also goes on to say, I didn't teach that to my people. And here he is copying chapters of Isaiah for them. He's very explicit. If we're going to do likening work,

Yeah, I love the fact that Nephi, we tend to think of ourselves as very sophisticated 21st century individuals who see these problems of faith and science. Nephi saw this 2600. He's like, he's laying us out. He sees the challenge that missionaries are facing. Way, way in advance. And here we are padding ourselves on the back for being very sophisticated modern individuals.

I like that. Getting to the point where we can actually confess I am not learned. I like that way of putting it. I mean, talking about slow reading and how carefully one has to read to see this kind of thing. It's easy when we read the book of Mormon especially. When we're reading the New Testament, we're like, scholars give me information. We're reading the perligate price. Yeah, someone's got to help me with this Egyptian stuff. Old Testament, whole other story. But the book of Mormon, even the doctrine of comments, we need that Joseph Smith paper's team to tell us what's going on here. But the book of Mormon, we tend to be like, I know this. I know this. But the result is that we don't read slowly. We don't read carefully. We tend to move too fast. And there's a certain sense in which we're saying to the book of Mormon over and over. I'm learning. I already know this. I already know what's going on here. But boy, if we can get to the point where we say, I am not learning. I don't know what this is saying. Then man, we might actually slow down and it'll teach us.

So as we said earlier, these next three chapters, which constitute our second original chapter and this block of text, the rest of this is Nephi reflecting on the stakes of the story he's already just told us. In some ways, all of this feels very natural after what we've done right in chapter 28. We have Nephi saying a bit about what that day looks like and the temptations of the kind of culture we've been discussing. different directions it'll go and God's countering of it over and over and over again. Maybe the most beautiful of these comes in chapter 2829. We'll be on to him that shall say we have received the Word of God and we need no more of the Word of God for we have enough. You need more words. So that you can dwell with them. And then God's beautiful response to this in verse 30, thus say, if the Lord God, I will give unto the children of men, line upon line, precept upon precept, hear a little, their little, and bless it are those who harken unto my precepts and lendonier unto my counsel, they shall earn wisdom. And unto him that receiveeth what I will give more. And then all of chapter 29 reflects on that question. The response to the Book of Mormon being, a Bible, a Bible, we've got a Bible. We don't need any more of that. And God's saying, are you kidding me? I'm gonna give you every word I can. Do I want this too? Stick with that also. Make every space you can for this. You can see he's just sitting with what we've been talking about. And then chapter 30 is his final word. This will all turn out all right in the end. There will be a final redemption. Gentiles and Israel and everyone together. He uses some of Isaiah's most beautiful words to talk about the day and sends us off.

Yeah, the key line for me is verse 5, they deny the power of God the Holy One of Israel, and they say unto the people, Harkin unto us, and hear ye our precept. And here's the precept. There is no God today. The Lord and the Redeemer have done his work, and he have given us power unto men. That's the kind of culture that's going to say, eat drink and be married tomorrow. We die. God did his work once upon a time. God is dead today. God doesn't have much to do with our everyday lives. We'll come back to the real world. We tell return missionaries so perversely. Come back to the real world as if the work of building the kingdom weren't the real world. But that's the kind of picture when like, nah, chill out. God's going to be fine with all this. There's nothing much to worry about here. We don't need to take religious things so seriously.

Yeah, so you see this as well, the on chapter 30, in verse five, for instance, the gospel of Jesus Christ, I'll be declared among them, the remnant of our seed, where for they shall be restored unto the knowledge of their fathers and also to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, which was had among their fathers. It's almost a direct quotation from the earlier vision. This goes on in this name. You can see it right at the very end, in verses 17 and 18 of chapter 30. There's nothing which is secret, save it shall be revealed. There's no work of darkness, save it shall be made manifest in the light. There's nothing which is sealed upon the earth, save it shall be loosed. where for all things which have been revealed under the children and men shall at that day be revealed, and Satan shall have power over the hearts of the children of men no more for a long time, and then I end my sangs. That is the same movie made with his vision. Everything is leading up to that last moment, and I can't tell you anything else. That's going to be for John to do. But he does it here again. Yeah, he's walking us right back through his vision.

Yeah, I think that's right. And Nephi's got that tendency. I'm thinking of that passage. It's in the reading for this week as well. It's in chapter 26, right? Where he talks about having seen his own people destroyed. This is chapter 26 verse 7. Oh, the pain and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people. For I Nephi have seen it, and at well night, consume it to me before the presence of the Lord. But I must cry and to my God, the ways are just. Yeah, and if I seems exhausted overwhelmed at the wickedness, he sees and yeah, I think this in chapter 28 15 is a perfect example of it.

This is honestly one of the reasons that ancient Scripture matters. We love modern Scripture for all the right reasons, and we love modern prophets for all the right reasons. There's something about a culture that is completely foreign. and me wrestling with trying to understand how they're talking and how they're thinking that can help break my world open. I can be trapped in, this is just the way things are, isn't it? But then I have, I'm trying to read Genesis and I gotta go, so they think there's water above the firm. What is going on here? It's enough to make me go, okay, I can't think about this in modern scientific terms, so what am I doing? Or I'm reading Isaiah talking about God in ways that make you wonder if human beings have agency. And then you have to kind of go, whoa, okay, so agency is really important, that's clear. But how much of I let my picture of agency be shaped by a modern culture, reading ancient scripture matters, sometimes to get us out of our modern, gentile context. When you read Alma responding to Korohor and he just, look around you, everything testifies of the God, no modern person would talk that way, but you read Alma and you go, whoa, there's a totally different way of living in the world than I experience. Could I actually inhabit the space where even looking around I see God. And that gets me out of Gentile mindset.

Yeah, Mormon puts us on display in the book of Healman. In a lot of ways, I feel like this is what the whole point of the book of Healman is, at least his regards to Nephites, because we get the lame and I conversion and we get Samuel preaching. The scene we get, every vignette we get of the Nephites there is them not even aware. I love that scene where you got Nephite praying on his tower and the people are walking by right and they run into the city and say, you gotta come see this. Why? You're like, okay, there's something is praying on its tower. But it's explicit in the text. They are astonished that someone could be so upset. And that's why they go gather a crowd. That's a scary moment where they have no idea how bad their situation is. And that's what Nephize described it perfectly. They're thinking Zion is prospering that all as well. This is the best we've ever seen in Nephite culture and Nephize going, you are lost.

I think that's the only way to read the Book of Mormon as it's trying to teach us right from the title page. The book is about the remnants of Israel and what great things the Lord has done for their fathers. Their fathers are the Laminites. This is supposed to be a story about the redemption of the Laminites. Nephi small plates are telling us the story very clearly of how Lamin and Lemula have we've been talking about this gets separated from the presence of God and now we get these prophecies about them being brought back. You get into Mormons historical books and it's the story of the rise of a church. and then it's first waves of laminite converts then the total conversion of the laminite nation in preparation for Christ showing up. The story Mormon is telling at the macro scale is the story of the redemption of the laminite's ancient. And then Moroni writes and tells the Gentiles you'd better repent because the laminites are going to be redeemed. You may not be if you don't repent. The whole book of Mormon is about Lamanite Redemption. You're exactly right. We tend to read it as like Lamanite's bad. But if we were to read the book of Alma carefully, there is literally not a single military conflict in the book of Alma that started by a Lamanite. They are all Nephite dissenters, every one of them, every one of them. This is not a story about bad Laminites versus Good Nephites. It's bad Nephites versus Good Nephites. That's the story. Laminites are basically just being forced into military conflicts through it. But over and over again, this is a story about Nephite problems and Laminite redemption. 100%.

Yeah. The Zormide's the Amelseites, the Unayment.

It's a different answer whether you're reading the small plates or Mormon's original large plates. When you're reading the small plates, if we take the focus to beyond prophecy, which is what Nephi is doing, then this all comes right out. When we take the focus of Nephi's record to be a series of illustrations of how to be good, or how to be bad, then Nephi looks good and laymen and let me all look bad. But if we take him to be telling a story about how we ended up with a division between these two nations, and then a bunch of prophecy about how that would be overcome already with his vision and then further into second-efighting. They even let me or going off the tracks, but the point is they're going off the tracks and that's the beginning of scattering. And then we've got to watch for their redemption. We have to read it prophetically rather than just narratively or because a series of vignettes. When we're reading Mormon's record, I think we have to keep the really big picture, and then we see what's happening. And the book of Mosiah, for instance, King Benjamin amazing, King Noah disaster, and those are clearly being set side by side. But King Noah's disaster situation also forces into existence this new church on the borders that is gonna outlast Benjamin's people's covenant, that only lasts a generation. And this church is gonna persist, and it's gonna be the church that opens the door to Lamanite conversion. 500 years without any laminate converts until suddenly there's a church and now they're converting. That's not accidental. What's happening with that church? Why is it that a church divorced from the Nephite national identity? Open the door to laminate for the first time. to become a Christian is to become a Christian not to become a Nephite. So even like the rise of the church and the way that's all being told in Mozaya is opening that space for the Laminites and then Alma, the Nephites are barely hanging on, but the Laminites are converting in droves and then Helim and the Nephites falling apart and Laminite conversion all through that story. We've got to keep an eye on the Laminites and then the story gets clear all the way through it. Moron is a little different, because Moron, he adds a couple chapters at the end of Mormon, and his book of Moronite, though it's important, I think, to note that the book of Moronite, he explicitly says he wrote four of the laminites. But then the book of ethers, his book about N2 Gentiles, so the book of ethers, kind of a unique book. It's about the Jared eyes, but the Jared eyes, and not Israelites, they come from before Abraham. Moronite seems to be trying to write about Gentiles, and then warn Gentiles, look, you've got no promise. You can go down like Shiz and Cory Antimer. if you don't repent. So you got to be like the brother of Jared, right? That book is the one part of the Book of Mormon that's not obviously going to tell us much about the Lamanites, the rest of it, all of it.

Yeah, I think this is crucial. I think verses one and two together give us a really important context. Verse one opens, and now behold my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you. So there's a transition suddenly. He's been talking even though worth within the same original chapter here. He's been talking about one thing and here he makes a kind of turn. So when Nephi says, my beloved brethren, who's he talking to? And if you go through his whole record, Lamanites. I'll speak of his children and his brethren. Here he seems to be turning suddenly to Lamanite readers. And says, I would speak unto you, for I need, if I would not suffer, that you should suppose that you are more righteous than the Gentile shall be. So he seems to be looking to the last day, isn't saying, all right, Lamanite readers of the Book of Mormon, just because I've been railing on the Gentiles for chapters. Don't you suddenly start patting yourself on the back? For behold, except you shall keep the commandments of God, you shall all likewise perish. And because the words which have been spoken, Union not supposed to the Gentiles are utterly destroyed. They can repent. And then he gives us first two. And it's worded very carefully. For behold, I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord. And as many of the Jews as will not repent, shall be cast off for the Lord covenanteth with none, save it be with them that repent and believe in his son who is the holy one of Israel. But at a broad level, clear what he's saying, you gotta keep the commandments. You're not just in it automatically because of a covenant. But it's also, I think, importance, the way he words it is still warpsided. As many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord. So he doesn't say the covenant doesn't matter. What you've got to do is become the covenant people, which is actually what you were saying, John, right? How does one become the covenant people? And as many of the Jews as will not repent, shall be cast off. Salvation, redemption is still always in the Abrahamic covenant. It's always in Israel. It's just a question of who ends up in Israel. Gentiles repenting can be Nephi's usual way of saying it is numbered among the house of Israel. And of course, Israelites can boot themselves right out of that. They can eject themselves from the community as the whole law of Moses tells us constantly. But it's still in the covenant. So whether Gentiles find their way in and Israel finds its way out, it's always still in the covenant. But there's nothing automatic about that. There is a question of who will believe in a son, repent and be a part of this.

Yeah, that's beautifully put. This is a question a lot of students raise as they'll be like, wait, so the Book of Mormon keeps talking as if I'm a Gentile. But I got to pay charcoal blessing. I think the way you put it is really quite beautiful, even if in terms of lineage, I'm Israel. There's a question of where my heart is. I find it very interesting that in the Book of Mormon, it's clear that Joseph Smith is portrayed as both a Gentile and an Israelite. On the title page, he's called a Gentile. The Book of Mormon is going to come forth by way of the Gentile. But in 2nd if I three, he's a direct descendant of Joseph of Egypt. Beautiful. Joseph is by lineage and Israelite. But by culture, by nationality, by what he's inherited, he's a Gentile. That's my situation. I've got a patriarchal blessing that ties me to you from. But in terms of culture, I've inherited Gentile culture. I have to get my heart right.

Yeah, that's what it looks like.

It is a hard question. My bread and butter. This is the book of Mormon. I'm literally a book of Mormon scholar. This is my day job. And as a result, it's so woven into everything I do and everything I think about. But I think I would save this. The way the Muron I words his promise in Muron I. 10. I absolutely love. He doesn't promise to us that we'll know whether the book of Mormon is true. That's not how he words it. He says that the truth of it will be manifest. I like that because one, I think the truth of something is way bigger than whether it's true or false. The truth of it sounds like I've got a lot more information than that and a lot more depth. But two, I just really love the word manifest. The work I've done on the Book of Mormon for 20 years now is crazy and pushed harder and harder and harder against this book in every way I can. Whether it's historical or theological or practical, it pushes back And the result is that for me, the truth of the Book of Mormon is manifest. It's plain, it's apparent, it's obvious. But it's also been really crucial to me that that is something that becomes manifest after so much work. We were talking earlier about not beginning from a kind of scientific position on the book beginning instead from faith, and that's very much how it began for me. I felt things about the book, and so I read the book earnestly and seriously. I began from a position of faith, and then the more I have worked on it in an attitude of faith, the more it's truth is manifest. For all the reasons we've been talking about, like, oh, is this Gentile culture clouding my understanding of the book of Mormon? I have an intellectual testimony as well as a spiritual testimony of the Book of Mormon. But I don't think it's a Gentile culture driven one because it inverts the attitude that Nephi attributes to the Gentiles. What you have there is, give me the book, then I will read the words. I feel like it's gone the other way around for me. I began with the words. And somewhere along the way, the truth of it, the evidence is just right there in it. Korahor is wrong to ask for a sign and then say he will go on to believe. But Jesus Christ Himself says, signs follow those who do believe. That's what it's felt like with me for the Book of Mormon. Reading it, studying it, pushing harder and harder, reading closer and closer, asking the hardest questions of it, and then seeing what I can find when I read it in earnest. And it turns out over and over again, I feel like it's signed after sign after sign after sign. But all as sort of byproducts what I was looking for was just understanding, but man, the conviction just deepens and deepens and deepens. I feel like I've come to the point where the Book of Mormon is the shortest thing. I know it's certainly the window on to Christ, the window through which I first saw Christ and the window through which I still view him. So that Christ's solidity in my life is dependent entirely on the Book of Mormon's solidity and amazed at just how solid it is.