Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Jacob 5 - the Apocalypse of Zenos

Jacob 5 is one of the longest single chapters in the Book of Mormon. It’s also a verbatim quote of a prophet not found in the King James Bible, Zenos. What I find most interesting about it is it contains a concise history of the world. One that covers time from the scattering of Israel through it’s final gathering and salvation at the end of the world.

In this context, it encompasses our day, and hence my interest. What does it say about our day? God is preparing the world for the eventual harvest… the Second Coming. It outlines a Divine iterative cyclic approach to improving the world. God weeds out the worst, letting the righteous fill in the space occupied by the recently removed wicked. Then He goes to the next place and removes the most wicked there as soon as there is enough righteous growth to take its place. There's a lot of pruning to do.

The other take away from that is the answer I got to what all the pruning actually is. It’s war. God prunes the vineyard, the Earth, with war. It’s not that He “chooses” to do that, but He allows it to happen amongst the wicked. It’s a tough way to do it, but one thing I’ve learned lately is sometimes that’s the only way people can be reached.

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