A True Sense of the Miraculous

Third Nephi starts with a literal bang and in my opinion, the most impressive sign God has ever given to man. For one night, after the sun goes down, the sky remains as bright as at mid-day. It’s followed by a new “star” which was visible in the night sky. The record doesn’t say how long it remained visible. My guess is it faded from sight over a period of days or maybe weeks.

From our perspective and knowledge of astrophysics, the event they saw is easily explained. In the distant past, a star exploded and in the act, emitted a powerful, focused, stream of energetic particles. They crossed the vastness of space and struck the Earth's upper atmosphere causing it to fluoresce in a massive aurora so brilliant it lit the ground like day and lasted through the night.

For me, the miracle isn’t in what happened, but in the timing of the event and the precision needed to aim the stream of particles to hit the Earth from astronomic distances. There are a couple of aspects to this which could simplify the complexity, but not enough to diminish its miraculous nature. Some might say, the wavefront could’ve been spherical in which case no aiming is needed, just timing.

The complication to this is we’ve not seen an explosion powerful enough to do that over the distances involved. To my knowledge there aren’t any known nova or supernova remnants close enough to us to account for this phenomena if it had emitted just a spherical wave. But, we have observed stellar explosions which emit two focused beams of particles which shoot off in opposite directions from the star's center.

The other miraculous aspect is the timing. I cant begin to imagine how many decimal places are needed to compute the travel time to the day to pull this off. Not only that, you need its "flight path" through space and you have to account for the effect of gravity fields of stars it passes.

Then there's the aiming. My guess is the explosion was somewhere not close but still inside our galaxy. Heavenly Father wasn't aiming from near-Earth, or interstellar but interstellar distances. That He scored a bulls-eye from so far away boggles my mind.

The Nephites and Lamanite knew none of this. For them the sky lit up without the sun for a night. The real miracle is how soon they forgot or discounted the event. But I can’t be too critical — I’ve experienced many smaller but much more personal miracles in my life. Yet I need a constant diet of them because I so quickly forget myself.

Helaman 11-12 - Do I Have Your Attention Yet?

Mormon’s  frustration at the wickedness and foolishness of the Nephite people shines in Helaman 11 and 12. The two chapters go together like Siamese twins. Chapter 11 sets the stage for Chapter 12 where Mormon steps completely out of the narrative which is otherwise remarkably transparent. By “transparent,” I mean the author, in this case Mormon, tells the story without any editorializing comments.

With chapter 12, Mormon writes a withering excoriation of human short-sited and selfish behavior. He starts off with, “And thus we can behold how false and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men…” The chapter is a study in contrasts. On the one hand you have God who’s faithfulness and love is never ending and unchanging. That is contrasted with man who is quick to forget God and be self-absorbed when blessed with great prosperity. For the Nephites, it didn’t take more than a few years before even the righteous were caught up in pride.

This rapid turn from humility to pride drives much of what happens in the Book of Mormon. From God telling Nephi what the Lamanites would be (a scourge to stir them up to repentance) to Mormon’s day where we see this fulfilled. It’s either wars with the Lamanites, famine or natural catastrophes which compel the people to turn to God for help.

It’s such a clear warning to us… for that’s the only reason he included it. He “saw” our day and knew how we’d behave. He’s trying to warn us in the clearest language he can use to not fall into the same trap. For good reason, I fall into it myself and I suspect I’m not alone in that trait. At this point, I consider it a mercy from God when he allows misfortune into our lives as He tries to get our attention so we’ll hear Him ask, “Do I have your attention yet? You’re headed in the wrong direction.” I’d like to get it right… sooner than later.

3 Nephi 8 - The Destruction

I feel impressed to take a slower pace through this next section, so all I'm writing about today is chapter eight in which we have the earthquake and the storm at the time of the Savior's death.

The interesting thing about the chapter is in the beginning the people were actually looking forward and anticipating the three days of darkness. By the end, they are howling in agony for the loss and the destruction that has occurred.

My immediate reaction was to ponder the mindset of all the "last-day" people, of which I am one. All of us look forward to the Savior's return and preparing for times prior to His coming. We "know" things will be difficult, but we're eager to get our year supply and whatever else we feel we will need. All that is really a good thing to do.

I wonder though, if like the Nephites and Lamanites who were looking for the fulfillment of the prophecies but not really aware of what it was going to be like, if we aren't doing the same thing? I look forward to the Second Coming and imagine what it will be like to be on the Earth with the Savior in charge in a political as well as religious role. I can't wait for that day. Yet, while I intellectually "know" the time leading up to that will be difficult, I'm clueless as to how emotionally difficult and physically arduous those times before His advent really will be.

This chapter gives us a hint as to what it could be like. It's not pretty and it makes me think there are more things than just food storage I need to be preparing.

3 Nephi 6 - Our Day

In the keynote address of the April 1987 General Conference, President Benson said, "The record of the Nephite history just prior to the Savior's visit reveals many parallels to our own day." This chapter is the meat of that statement. As such it contains material that is cause for great concern with just a dash of hope.

The hope comes from showing what we must to do to remain faithful in such a wicked environment. In verse 13, he observes only charity: not returning railing for railing, being kind in the face of persecution is the only way the righteous remained so.

The rest of the chapter tells of wickedness being so prevalent and Satan's power over the people so great, the church is broken up. Eventually, it exists only among a few of the Lamanites. Later, when God wants to warn the people, He must choose righteous men since the church no longer has an effective voice.

We live in such days: we have many businesses, lawyers and a level of material wealth the world has not seen. Wickedness abounds and as Isaiah wrote, today that which God says is good is now considered evil. Debauchery and lasciviousness is considered acceptable entertainment. (50 Shades of Gray, anyone?)

Our government is disconnected from reality... many of us are. In my previous post, I commented on Giddianhi's letter. It's an outrageous declaration of beliefs not grounded in reality or sound thinking. But how different is it from what comes out of Washington DC?

The only safe path forward, is courageous, yet humble and committed adherence to Jesus Christ and His teachings.

Charity Never Faileth - Meaning of...

This is slightly off topic, but the idea came with such force, I wanted to share it with you all. While preparing for my lesson in High Priests, I came across the expression "charity never faileth." Normally, I would have blown right past that and not given it any more thought, but the question came to me... "what does it mean?"

For me, I'd always thought it meant that charity is an eternal virtue, as in, it's what motivates all who are citizens of the Celestial Kingdom. Because that's how they live and act, then charity is a concept, a behavior or attitude that is eternal.. it never faileth. And then the question came to mind... but what does the word "fail" mean?

So, to the dictionary I went, wondering if there was some obscure meaning which may provide a new nuance to the expression. Instead I was drawn to the very first definition: to be unsuccessful in achieving a goal. And then the ah-hah moment. Charity will always work! If you want to touch or raise or improve someone else, use charity: it always works!

Helaman 7-9 - The Futility of Hiding From God

These three chapters comprise the account of Nephi warning the people of God's judgements that are coming to them because of their rejection of Christ. As proof of the truthfulness of his words, he tells them of the murder of Seezoram the Chief Judge by his brother Seantum. The remainder of the chapters describe the account of the five who are sent to prove what Nephi said, their capture and the eventual exhoneration of both them and Nephi when Seantum is caught and confesses his guilt.

The main story is evidence of God knowing all that happens. My sense from the account is God knows things in real-time, as they happen. Additionally, there are some nuggets on human nature and a peek into things the Nephites knew in their scripture, which we don't have in ours. That's what I want to delve into today...

Human nature: the wicked, in this case, the Gadiantons are cowards. Rather than confront Nephi directly and go head to head against him, they try to incite the people against him so they can use the power of their office to silence him. Their resolve is foiled because Nephi convinces enough that they dare not act out of fear of the political cost such actions would exact. We see this today in our politicians who are on the whole cowards who hide their true selves by the trappings of their office and their "leadership" just rides safely within the swells of public opinion.

Human nature: the wicked seek to control people through anger and fear, while they are controlled by fear of the loss of power. It's true for them and us: what do you see in the news today? Stories that incite fear or anger or both. By doing that, they shape and influence our thoughts and subsequently our actions. Faith in God however, gives us the power to go against this to do what is right.

Human nature: don't underestimate people's ability to forget and ignore the obivous when it doesn't server their selfish ambitions. The Nephites, who less than ten years earlier had lost half their country to the Lamanites were boasting of the might of their cities and how they coulnt' be captured.

The nugget: In the middle of the story, as Nephi testifies of how many witnesses in the scriptures there are of the coming of Christ (a lot more than what we have in our Bible, by the way) there's a comment in Helaman 9:18 where he says, "a great many thousand years before his coming," prophets testified of it. How many years do you think that means? I'd dare say, that in reality, prophets have been testifying of Christ's coming from the beginning of recorded history. While modern Bible scholars say the earliest written text of the Bible probably occurred some 1800 years BCE, about the time of the establishment of the Davidic Kingdom, the scriptures tell us these prophecies were written from the time of Adam.