Transcript 0:00 Welcome to Scripture Insights. I'm Taylor Halverson. And I'm Mike Harris. Today, we explore First Nephi chapter 11 through 15. This is known as Nephi's panoptic vision. Pan means all and optic is to see. 0:17 So panoptic means he sees everything. He has this grand vision where God helps him understand his larger plan and how Nephi fits in it, and actually we get this now. We get to see how we also fit into God's plan. 0:32 And as we explore these chapters today, there's several key themes that we want to be looking for. And we were talking right before we turned the camera on, one of the most critical themes is right here in chapter 0:46 11 verse 4. Yeah. It begins with the Spirit asking Nephi a life-changing question. It says here, "The Spirit said unto me: 0:59 Believest thou that thy father saw the tree?" Then Nephi responds, "Thou knowest that I believe all the words of my father." 1:14 Notice how the Spirit erupts with excitement at Nephi's response. "The Spirit cried with a loud voice saying: Hosanna to the Lord and blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest." 1:30 And then, like Taylor said, Nephi's given this vision of Jesus Christ and the future of the world because he answered the question with a yes. Similarly, 1:42 we are asked in our temple recommend interview question, "Do you sustain the president of the Church of Jesus Christ?" And our answer matters. 1:50 Maybe we won't be given the, the same panoramic future vision that Nephi was given, but if we sustain and believe the prophet, then our future will also be blessed. 2:03 Now, there's also something subtle and yet I think very significant here that happens. Notice after Nephi says that he believes all the words of his father, 2:13 you expect the Spirit to say, "Oh, blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest the words of thy father, the prophet." But that's not what the Spirit says. 2:22 Instead, the Spirit says, "Blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest in the Son of the Most High God." 2:32 The point is the Spirit connects believing in Lehi the prophet with believing in Jesus Christ, meaning this allows Jesus Christ to bless our future with joy. Believing the prophet links us with Christ's blessings. 2:50 It's hard to separate the two. Yeah, it's a really powerful connection. So in the church, as you were talking about, we receive temple recommend interview questions, and 3:00 they're often questions about our testimony or the, our state of belief as well as a state of worthiness, but do you support or do you believe? And notice that 3:11 the Spirit doesn't say, "Nephi, do you know that your father saw the tree?" It says, "Do you believe it?" And in our own faith journey, we all want to get to perfect knowledge of all things. We should aspire to that. 3:29 But how many of us sometimes struggle with feeling like we are less than because I, we don't know everything? 3:37 A- and if you look carefully at this panoptic vision, the, what Nephi shares, of the times that he uses the word believe and know or to know not. 3:48 And where we're going with this is that the stepping stone, the starting point, is to start with belief. 3:55 We have in the New Testament that phrase where this man says to Jesus, "Help thou my unbelief," which means to get onto the path of God, you just have to first believe. And as you press forward, 4:08 holding the rod of iron, you will come to know as you have fully partaken. So- That's, that's so good... I, I love this word believe. You'll find it, 4:17 uh, here early on in these verses, and we're gonna connect this to covenants. Remember, the title page of the Book of Mormon 4:27 tells us that we should be looking in the Book of Mormon for Jesus Christ and for God's covenants. So let's give you a little key for one word to look for, a covenantal word. 4:38 There's actually many, but this particular covenantal word is the word amen, or in Hebrew it's amon, which means to believe or to be faithful or to trust. 4:50 And so when you see this word in verse 4, "Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken?" Believest could also be words like do you trust 5:00 or are you loyal to the words of truth that have been revealed? So we actually use the word amon or amen at the end of every prayer, every talk. We say, "Amen. 5:10 In the name of Jesus Christ, amen," which is a covenantal word meaning I am trustworthy or loyal or I believe in the truth of things that lead me to Jesus Christ. 5:22 And that's what kind of w- what was going on here with these words believe. And I just love how it says in verse 5, "I believe all the words of my father." 5:32 It's not like he's gone to the buffet line and says, "Yeah, no, actually just like, uh, just a few items here, and everything else I'll leave aside." And that's an invitation for us and in some cases a challenge. 5:43 Are we willing to believe all the words of our Father? That's so good. And then next, Nephi is given this future vision of Christ's mortal ministry, and it's interesting. He is shown the mother of the Son of God. Right? 6:01 And she is described as being fair, and white, and beautiful, which are the same adjectives which describe the tree that Lehi had seen in his vision, right? The tree was beautiful and white. 6:18 These adjectives probably th- don't describe Mary's skin pigmentation. She, her skin pigmentation probably would've been like, uh, honey or olive brown skin, right? 6:32 Uh, so what we're seeing here is a description of Mary's inner beauty, her spiritual status. Now, note that you do not see Mary's name here in the text, but we all know who's being spoken of, specifically in verse 15. 6:49 And what I think is fascinating is this text is about God's love, and the word Mary in Egyptian means love. 7:01 So her name is a witness, even though it doesn't show up here, uh, explicitly, the word Mary, but the theme of love is critical, particularly here in verse, or chapter 11. 7:13 And notice again, just, and we'll come back here to this fair and beautiful in just a moment, but look at verse 16, knowest. 7:21 Again, as you are reading these chapters, you can look for words like believe, and know, or know not. And again, believe and know are on the trajectory of overall action and knowledge. Belief, though, precedes knowledge. 7:39 But let's talk more about this word fair, and this word beautiful and desirable. So, in, ancient writers, ancient biblical writers often would use word plays or repeated word themes to get a message across. 7:57 Now, Nephi knows how to write, and he would've been trained in this particular literary approach. And it turns out his name, Nephi, in Egyptian likely means something like fair, beautiful, desirable, good. 8:15 So as he is describing things of God, it appears that he's actually using his own name to describe that. 8:25 And so perhaps Nephi's own name is a theme for his writings about the goodness, the desirability of God's love. 8:34 And again, you can go through this chapter, and any time you see the word fair, desirable, beautiful, you can then circle that and say, "This may be, in the underlying Egyptian, 8:46 be a representation of Nephi's name, which thematically connects to God himself." That's fascinating. Well, 8:56 should we talk about, a little bit about the vision where he sees the Savior going forth healing the sick, and then- Yeah... and then of course, uh, he sees John the Baptist baptizing Jesus, and then it ends sadly with 9:13 the, the multitudes lifting Jesus upon the cross, verse 33, and seeing that Jesus is slain for the sins of the world. I find it interesting that right after that, 9:27 Nephi states, "I saw the multitudes of the earth, that they were gathered together to fight against the apostles of the Lamb, and thus were the 12 called by the angel of Lord." 9:39 The word 12 oc- occurs 17 times in 1 Nephi, and of those 17 occurrences, 16 of them occur right here in chapters 11 through 15. 9:55 Um, c- I won't go over all 16 occurrences, but let's just look at some of these really quick, because that seems to be what Nephi wants to emphasize. 10:04 Uh, let's jump now to verse 35, "Behold, the house of Israel hath gathered together to fight against the 12 apostles of the Lamb." 10:13 And then he sees that the great and spacious building symbolized the pride, the wickedness of the world, and that it fell. 10:20 And look at the end of verse 36, "Thus shall be the destruction of all nations that shall fight against the 12 apostles of the Lamb." The vision continues in chapter 12. 10:31 He sees the, his seed fighting against the seed of the Lamanites. 10:36 He sees Jesus come and appear resurrected to the Nephites, and then he says in verse 7, "I saw and bear record, the Holy Ghost fell upon 12 others, and they were ordained of God and chosen." 10:51 Verse 8, "And the angel spake unto me, saying, Behold the 12 disciples of the Lamb who are chosen to minister." Verse 9 continues that there also be 12 apostles in the holy land that had been chosen by Jesus. 11:05 Verse 10, the, "And these 12 ministers that are in the Book of Mormon land, whom thou beholdest, Nephi, shall judge thy seed, and they are righteous forever." Well, it goes on. 11:16 I, we won't go, we'll let you just, I would encourage you to go through these chapters, highlight and consider 11:25 what Nephi is trying to teach about the importance and the priesthood authority that the 12 have to help us connect and be linked to Jesus Christ. It's critically important. God establishes ministers, angels. 11:43 More specifically, the word here is servants who represent him to us. And I see a contrast with the wisdom of the world. So we've been talking about knowledge and belief. If you look back in chapter 11, verse 12:01 35, he's looking at the great and spacious building. And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying, Behold the world and the wisdom thereof. And in verse 36, 12:15 the building represents pride and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great. Now this is sandwiched in between all these references to the 12. 12:24 These humble servants who did not petition to get the job, who did not campaign, who did not seek election, God chose them. God chose them. 12:36 He called them out to represent him, and there's a connection here with the word angel. In Hebrew, the word angel, malach, means a messenger. And notice how Nephi is receiving a messenger. 12:50 First it was a spirit, then it's an angel of God, and the purpose of an angel of God or a messenger is to deliver the truth. And God has established these 12 angels. Now we don't call them 12 angels. Messengers. 13:05 Uh, just for the sake of the conversation, I'm gonna use the word angel, but messengers of the covenant, messengers of his truth so that we do not get stuck in the wisdom of the world. Now let's be clear. 13:18 There's phenomenal knowledge in the world. Anything that's true or lovely comes from God. 13:25 Science and other great things, there's great knowledge out there, but sometimes when we c- say the wisdom of the world, the challenge we face is that people think that they can trust in the arm of flesh alone. 13:36 And what I see here is packed in that we will fall by this kind of pride versus the humility of being willing to listen to the wisdom that comes through God's angels or messengers or ministers. 13:49 And as you're talking about, it's these 16 times, these 12 ministers, these 12 apostles, these 12 messengers are talked about, that we should be listening to them. 14:02 And if we look throughout the Book of Mormon, we can see what happens when people listen to God's messengers, what are the consequences, versus what happens when they don't listen to God's messengers, what are the consequences. 14:15 You remind me of an experience I had when I was a missionary in Mexico. It was the, the Christmas, uh, Christmas season of 1991, and it was so hard to get into anybody's home. We would track all day. 14:31 Everybody was so busy. They kept on saying, "Come back in January when we're not so busy." And I was just made the senior companion, 14:39 and I felt the burden of like we gotta g- we gotta do something so we get in the homes and have some success. And so I told my companion, "I know what we're gonna do." And so we had a new door approach. 14:49 We would knock on the door and we would say, "Hey, can we just have a few minutes to share with you this Christmas message about the birth of Jesus Christ to Su Madre la Virgen Maria, to his mother, the Virgin M- Mary." 15:05 Right? That's gonna connect with m- our good Catholic friends in Mexico, right? Yeah. And there were a couple of people that let us in. 15:13 But I'll tell you what I'll never forget, is after a week or so of doing this door approach, I felt a lot of darkness 15:22 because, and I didn't realize until months later what had happened, I had zero intention of going into the homes to teach about the importance of the Lord's messengers, his prophets. 15:36 We weren't gonna talk about Joseph Smith and the Restoration, and the Spirit of the Lord was offended. 15:41 Nephi is also emphasizing, if we want to connect with Jesus Christ, well, thank heavens He's sent us messengers and we can more clearly see Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father through the words of these messengers. 15:55 And we should point out that as you are taking time to engage in scripture study every week, that is you welcoming these 12 into your heart and your home, God's message. 16:08 So again, Nephi is given this opportunity to see the plan of salvation unfold, in particular for his own people. 16:17 And I think it w- must have been really both thrilling for him to see Jesus show up among his people, but then also the deep distress to watch as you go on in chapter 12 and Nephi narrates and h- uh, of what he has seen of his people choosing to turn away from Jesus Christ, especially after generations of peace and righteousness. 16:41 And I think about my own life. I think where have I felt God's love in my life? Where have I had long moments of peace? 16:50 And then have I ever lost that for a time, and what contributed to me s- uh, being in a situation where perhaps I'm not feeling the Spirit as much as I should? 17:01 And what I notice is what we see here, things where I get prideful. I get distracted with the cares of the world. 17:09 I find the allures of a great and spacious building to be quite compelling versus just the humble discipleship of enduring to the end. 17:18 And I sometimes laugh with people, and I probably shouldn't be laughing about this, but, uh, that process of enduring to the end, in my personal opinion, might be the most difficult principle in the gospel. 17:30 I think I get faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost. It's that every day pressing forward, even in the face of uncertainty and challenge. Staying consistent. Yes. In fact, I wanted to jump ahead to... 17:50 In fact, I wanna jump ahead just to chapter 13, where the angel is asking Nephi, "Knowest thou the meaning of the book?" 'Cause at this point, he has seen his people fall. 18:04 He has seen the rise of the Gentiles, that a book is going forth, and this is an interesting response in 1 Nephi 13:22. Nephi says unto him, uh, to the angel... I know not. 18:17 And why I wanted to share this briefly is that my experience in life is that sometimes my lack of knowledge can feel crippling and sometimes can make me feel like I'm not being as faithful or loyal or disciplined as I should be. 18:34 And what I love is Nephi's total humility about declaring what he believes, what he knows- Mm... and what he knows not. 18:43 And so when we are asked to endure to the end, to the difficulties and trials of life, sometimes it is, it's a challenge to press forward when we know not how everything's gonna turn out in a specific situation. 18:58 But what we can hold onto is what we do know. And I love how this continues here in verse 23. 19:05 "The book that thou beholdest is a record of the Jews, which contains the covenants of the Lord, which he hath made unto the house of Israel." Hmm, that sounds also like the Book of Mormon. 19:17 Now, the Bible, the Old Testament, the word testament is a Latin word that really means covenant. 19:22 You have old cov- covenant, and then the new covenant, and really it's not a new covenant, it's just an upgrade or an update to the covenant. 19:29 And that is the point of these scriptures, is to invite us to know about God's covenantal nature, his enduring loyalty to us, and our invitation, his invitation to us to be loyal to him. 19:44 And it's fascinating that the Book of Mormon, so covenantally, uh, saturated that Nephi sees that the book that will first go out among his people in the, in the days of, um, after, after the fall of his people, is also a covenantal book. 20:00 Then Nephi continues to see, he sees the great apostasy. He sees the falling away of Jesus Christ, New Testament church, and then he sees the restoration of the church, right? 20:15 And let's look at here in chapter 14, verse 12. "And it came to pass, I, Nephi, beheld the church of the Lamb of God that its numbers were few." 20:29 That word few reminds me of what Jesus taught in the New Testament when he said, "Straight is the gate and few be that find it." Now, the gate refers to repentance and baptism. 20:46 Sadly, in this mortal life, few will bind themselves to Christ through the covenant made at baptism. However, Jesus Christ's love is expansive. Um, 21:02 Israel is being gathered on both sides of the veil. W- talking about covenants, Abraham and Sarah were promised how many s- how much seed? A few? 21:15 Yeah, didn't God say, "Go count the number of stars, or count the grains of sand on the seashore?" That's more than a few. Yeah, that's [laughs] It's a bunch. 21:25 So when we read about the few, we shouldn't get dishearte- I mean, yes, it's discouraging sometimes that we wish more people were being baptized and people weren't leaving the covenant path. But 21:36 ultimately, when it's all said and done, there's gonna be a lot more than just a few. The Lord is gathering, uh, Israel on both sides of the veil, and 21:45 I don't think the counting the number of the stars or the sands of the sea is just mere hyperbole. Mm-hmm. I think the Lord has great things in store. Yeah. Amen to that. 21:56 So we also have these verses, uh, where it says, verse 10, "Behold, there only save two churches only." Th- this is chapter 14. "The one is the church of the Lamb of God, the other is the church of the devil." 22:09 Now, a superficial reading, we might think, "Wait a second, there are more than two churches out there. I can drive down the road and see maybe four churches all on one road." 22:18 And this is not simply to indicate, um, some specifically named organizations only. 22:26 One way of understanding this is that there are those who choose to trust and believe and follow God and to hear his call, and those who reject his call. 22:36 In fact, if you think back to the origination of this vision, was the Tree of Life dream, and there are again, two types of people. Those who make their way to the tree and stay there, and those who fall away. 22:50 So those are the two churches. And in Greek, the word for church, ecclesia, means those who are called out. Now remember, Lehi is at the tree in the original dream, calling out to people. 23:01 He's calling out to his family, "Come join." Now, in, in some ways, he's a, he's a savior figure who, Jesus himself is a tree calling out to us, inviting us in 23:13 to be at the tree, and those who receive that call and stay in God's embrace, they're part of the church. 23:24 Those who purposely, intentionally, and long-term reject the call, ignore the call, and purposely and permanently stay away from God's call, that's the other church. 23:37 And to be clear here, there are good people all around the world that actually would fit into this category even if they have yet not had all the saving ordinances. 23:48 Now, they will need all the saving ordinances to be saved in the Kingdom of God. But there are good people out there who are heeding God's call, who are still waiting to get further light and knowledge. 24:02 So we wanna be careful that we are not simply walking around in the grocery store or out in our day looking at people and saying, "Well, you are not a member of the church, so clearly you are completely outside of God's love and presence." 24:14 So remember, that path along the rod is a journey And we want, everybody wants, we wanna get everybody to the tree, but just because they're not yet at the tree doesn't mean they are not heeding the call. 24:28 They may not be 100% heeding the call, but they are, I, I know there are a lot of people out there seeking to live good lives, lives centered on God, even if they do not have everything that we know. 24:37 I imagine that there are many, tell me what you think, Taylor. I imagine there might be a lot of people that belong to the Church of Jesus Christ, but they're not heeding the call. Mm. Right? 24:51 I mean, maybe in some sense they are belonging to the church of the devil. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. 24:57 So basically what you're saying is just because I may have entered the waters of baptism, that's back to am I continuing to cling to the iron rod, or am I saying, "Oh, well, I entered the path and that's good enough, and now I can go wander off in the darkness, but I have the name of the church on my official records, and that, that we, is called all good." 25:18 Mm. What I hear you saying is that we have to be persistent to hold onto that rod and to welcome others a- along the path, and be encouraging that people are at different stages in their faith journey. 25:30 And as long as we are seeking to live lives centered on God and pressing forward, 25:37 I, in my personal opinion, that is more likely to lead us into God's presence if we are centered on Jesus versus if we are just purposely and long-term ignoring his call out to us to join at the tree. 25:52 And I imagine that Laman and Lemuel, they probably were baptized. I know the scriptures don't say that, but they're growing up in the home of a prophet of God, so they were part of the church. Mm-hmm. 26:05 And we see evidence that they actually had some good in them. They were absolutely faithful to their wives, right? They kept the law of chastity. They knew a lot about the law of sacrifice. Mm-hmm. 26:17 Leaving their home and their pos- possessions. I think maybe their downfall was right here in chapter 15. After Lehi and Nephi have these, these visions, 26:29 Laman and Lemuel have quest- they're, they're confused and they have questions and, and that's great that they're asking Nephi sincere and good questions, but then Nephi says to them, and this is so important, "Have you inquired 26:42 of the Lord?" Yeah, right here, verse eight. Verse eight. And they of course say in verse nine, "No, we have not." It's- And why not? He, they say- He's not gonna make anything known to us... 26:53 for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us. 26:58 And so it's interesting that our beliefs often become self-fulfilling prophecies, that Nephi believed, notice how it started in 1 Nephi 11, Nephi believed the words and believed that he could learn more, and therefore he sought. 27:13 Laman and Lemuel did not believe, and therefore they stopped their progress, or their progress was damned. Mm-hmm. In fact, I'm gonna share one more thing about this. 27:25 The word Laman is interesting because it may come from two ancient Semitic words, the word aman, which means belief, and in Semitic, the word la means no. 27:41 So if I'm in the Middle East today and somebody asks, uh, "Do you want a taxi ride somewhere?" I can just say, "La," which means no. If you put those two words together, la aman, or Laman, it means not believing. 27:55 And right here where it says, "Have you inquired of the Lord? We have not. For the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us," meaning we do not believe Laman, La Aman. You're seeing another word play. 28:08 There's a word play going here. We do not believe that God can do those things for us. In fact, the word La Aman would also then mean not covenantally faithful. Mm. 28:19 And therefore Laman becomes this representative of those who are not covenantally faithful to God, and it is founded on not believing, 28:30 not choosing to trust God's servants, because he didn't trust that Lehi had anything of worth to say. He did not believe, and therefore the name La Aman or Laman may mean not believing. I love that. 28:44 I think I would just say in conclusion that it's, it's good that when we have questions, l- like Joseph Smith, 28:53 he went to friends and family and different church leaders with his questions, but when he read that in James 1:5, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." Mm-hmm. And that just like forcefully hit him. 29:09 Uh, that's what changed the world. That's what allowed Jesus Christ to restore his New Testament Church, and I think that was Laman and Lemuel, th- for all the good that they had, that was their downfall. 29:21 They're asking questions, and they're good, sincere questions, but they didn't ask of God. They did not inquire of the Lord. 29:30 We can go to our friends, our families, our bishops, even to the conference reports, listen to our prophets, and all that is necess- we can even go to Google, and none of th- that is wise and that is helpful, but the most important, sort of we've gotta ask of God. 29:47 We've gotta inquire of the Lord. That will change our life. Laman and Lemuel didn't do that. 29:51 So we encourage you this week to spend time looking at the example of Nephi, who believed God, and that led him to trust that he could ask of God and to receive. 30:05 And may you find God's joy and love filling your life as you show belief in him and ask of him in faith. 30:13 [gentle music]
