The Nephites' Book of Mormon

We're lucky to live in a day and age when Heavenly Father has bestowed on us The Book of Mormon. There are so many unbelievable stories in there! One of the most incredible parts is that in this book about the colonization of the Americas by Jews contains within it a book about a previous colonization of the Americas by possible descendents of Ham (Noah's son) following the Tower of Babel. It's basically a Book of Mormon-like record for the people who then wrote the record that became The Book of Mormon. A Book of Mormon within a Book of Mormon, and it's called the Book of Ether! So cool.

Here's Dan Vogel on just how unbelievable the Book of Ether is:

"Moroni tells readers that he has abridged 'the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of Ether' (Ether 1:2; cf. Mosiah 8:9; 28:17-19). The book is named after the last prophet of the Jaredites, Ether, who like Moroni witnesses his people's war of total annihilation. In fact, the parallels between the two stories are so striking, down to the last battle occurring at the same hill, that Mormon writer B. H. Roberts wondered: 'is all this sober history? ... Or is it a wonder-tale of an immature mind, unconscious of what a test he is laying on human credulity?' It is puzzling why Smith would add a repetitive story to the the Book of Mormon, but it does emphasize the overall theme of his work, which is that Americans must repent or be destroyed." Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, pg. 340.

Totally far out prophetic shit! Love it!

That time of month

Dear brothers and sisters, I just want to remind you that it's the last day of the month, so if you haven't done your home teaching (brethren!) or visiting teaching (sisters!!) you'd better be sure to whip up a batch of cookies and take them over to your assigned families tonight!!!

We all know how much kids love cookies and how those cookies are the only thing keeping the neighbor kids from hating our guts totally and completely for interrupting their evening with an hour of boring parent talk, five minutes of awkward "tell us about school" talk, and the even more awkward ten minute "here's this month's lesson" talk. We all know how awful that is, right? These poor kids. What do we think we're doing for them by making them sit quietly while we adults blabber on and on about whatever the hell isn't interesting at all to anyone anywhere?

We might say it's not really for the kids, it's for us. We might, but I think we'd be lying to ourselves. Do we really need to have neighbors come over and read a few paragraphs from an article in a magazine we're already subscribed to? Oh yeah, and didn't we already read and study and pray about that very article in preparation to share our thoughts on it with about three other families already? And aren't these articles little more than a rehashing of yet another primary lesson? How is this supposed to be beneficial again? I'm not seeing the purpose of rehearsing this monthly farce we call "teaching".

Is it about our pride? Is it about making higher ups happy?

Surely it's not for us. Oops! There goes the timer on the oven! I'd better go pull the cookies out.

False witnesses

For those wondering how to gain a witness of the Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon and the LDS Church, consider the teachings of Boyd Packer:

It is not unusual to have a missionary say, “How can I bear testimony until I get one? How can I testify that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the gospel is true? If I do not have such a testimony, would that not be dishonest?”

Oh, if I could teach you this one principle. A testimony is to be found in the bearing of it!

This is the fake it till you make it strategy recently endorsed by Neil Andersen. It's supposedly that easy. All you have to do is want a spiritual witness really badly to the point that you start telling people you've had one even when you haven't and eventually you'll grow so comfortable repeating it that you might actually think you had one. Sound convincing?

I think it sounds like bullshit. Is this how apostles gain their "special witness"?

I also think it sounds a bit like bearing false witness, which happens to be one of the ten "thou shalt not"s. What does that commandment say again?

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Damn. It's "against they neighbor" not "to thine self and thine neighbors". I guess bearing a false testimony about Joseph is OK then.

Book of Mormon - loss of steam

Is it just me or does The Book of Mormon have a hard time staying interesting? After a while I couldn't help but feel that as the book goes on the authors get increasingly bored with it all. It's as though whoever wrote The Book of Mormon lost interest in the material and took less and less time to develop the characters, flesh out events, or even write down what Jesus was saying.

It's true that The Book of Mormon takes a few downhill turns early on. Getting through the Isaiah chapters in 2 Nephi is notoriously difficult, and the tedium of Alma's war chapters is also known to force readers to a grinding halt, but for me the book really dives with Jesus' visit to the Nephites. I know, I know, it's supposed to be the best part - certainly the most important part - but honestly it sucks.

The Jesus chapters basically just rip off Matthew, Isaiah, and Malachi, and adds some crazy story about babies and children hanging out with JC and angels in a ring of fire. It's a pretty lame miracle by modern Mormon standards (Mormon's like practical miracles like healings, escapes, and mass feedings, not this overblown pyrotechnic shit). And really the whole visit sucks. Apart from telling the Nephites the same stuff that's in the Bible and stating that he wants his church to use his name, we just get Jesus praying in a language that can't be written and some a cryptic hints at totally mind-blowing stuff that was too sacred to write down. Thanks a lot. It feels like a total cop-out. I would have thought they could have spared us some of the war stratagems and given us a few more Jesus teachings.

Fourth Nephi should be one of the longest books, in my opinion, because that's the one that talks about how everyone lived in peace for an insanely long time and wouldn't we all love to know how exactly they did it? Some details on the how-tos would really come in handy these days. Instead we blow through 200 years of happiness to get back to more fighting. Then we move on to Mormon which is all about the final battle to the death, then you have Ether which is basically a Book of Mormon reprise concluding with another battle to the death, and then you have Moroni!

Moroni comes as a welcome change. It's not great but you have a fun chapter vilifying anyone or anything that doesn't persuade you to believe in Jesus, that great chapter about how infant baptism is evil, and the classic verses about how The Book of Mormon is true so pray to know that it's true and you'll know that it's true because it really is true! And for anyone missing the violence and gore of previous chapters, don't worry, Moroni includes some stuff about rape and cannibalism (I love how rape and cannibalism are worthy to be written about but not the things that Jesus said, the amazing things uttered by babes, or anything the translated apostles saw! Sheesh!).

After I got over the excitement and pride of having finished the entire Book of Mormon the first couple times I read it, I started picking up more and more on how lifeless the end of the book was. I think "lifeless" is the best way to describe it, but does that lifelessness also indicate soullessness?

The temple - True Order of Prayer

I couldn't believe that after a lifetime in the Church as an active and fully believing member I hadn't been taught the "true order of prayer", or rather the True Order of Prayer.

Towards the end of the temple endowment the officiator calls up couples from the audience to stand in a circle to pray. That's not all that strange, really (Mormons pray in circles fairly regularly as family and Sunday School classes, etc.), but this was not your typical prayer. The prayer circles in the temple gather around the alter (anyone feeling any animosity towards someone in the group is invited to leave the circle), review all of the Freemasonry they've just performed, raise their hands in the air and chant in unison "Oh, God, hear the words from my mouth!" three times, and repeat a prayer sentence by sentence as someone says it. It's weird and you can watch it on YouTube.

If the word cult hadn't come to my mind before this, it certainly hit me hard now. Like many first timers through the temple I found myself wondering if I had just joined a cult. I had no idea how this was supposed to be holy or spiritual. It just felt silly. And slightly spooky too, I guess. 

No, no, it can't be a cult. It's not that weird. This is where God wants me. It'll make sense the more I come to the temple... Oh, what's that? They used to speak Adamic as part of the True Order of Prayer? ... Um... Awesome? ...