Latest / Scripture Central / Mosiah 7 - 10 | May 6 - 12 | John W. Welch and Lynne Hilton Wilson | Come Follow Me Book of Mormon

Transcript

Mosiah 7 - 10 | May 6 - 12 | John W. Welch and Lynne Hilton Wilson | Come Follow Me Book of Mormon · Scripture Central

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Scripture Central.
• 0:02
  I'm Lynn Hilton Wilson. This is Jack Welch.
• 0:05
  We're so excited to talk about Mosiah chapter seven through 10
• 0:09
  today and King Mosiah the 2nd is on the throne.
• 0:13
  We hear a little bit about him and then we have an expedition
• 0:16
  of a group that leaves Zarahemla and goes down to find the land
• 0:21
  of their first inheritance. There's been a small little
• 0:23
  group. Actually it's not too small by
• 0:25
  now because it's been a generation or two that they've
• 0:28
  been living there and we hear their account.
• 0:30
  It's it's very exciting as as if a book goes a little flashbacks
• 0:35
  back and forth and we go down to the small colony or but this
• 0:39
  area of first inheritance, I I think this is much more
• 0:42
  historical but there's some real gems in this area of chapter
• 0:47
  seven through 10. Yeah, and a lot of kind of
• 0:50
  things that they're trying out, entering into contracts and
• 0:55
  alliances with people and things not coming out the way they were
• 0:59
  supposed to. I think the theme is
• 1:01
  Deliverance. Deliverance by God's hand works
• 1:04
  better than your own way. This is a a difficult little
• 1:09
  section. These chapters that we're
• 1:11
  talking about this week are a bridge between King Benjamin,
• 1:17
  which is all pretty clear and straightforward, and lots of
• 1:20
  wonderful material, as we spoke about last week.
• 1:24
  But then through these next couple chapters, it gets a
• 1:29
  little bit murky and unclear exactly who is where and when.
• 1:34
  My point is that the bridge between King Benjamin and
• 1:38
  Abinadai is a little hard to follow.
• 1:42
  And so as you read and as you study this be patient with it.
• 1:48
  It will reward some very interesting lessons.
• 1:53
  And and also I think we have to realize that part of the problem
• 1:59
  here is that many of the details about King Mosiah the first
• 2:05
  Benjamin's father and remember that Zenith and his group that
• 2:13
  leaves under the reign of Mosiah the first so.
• 2:17
  This is 50 years before Benjamin or something.
• 2:20
  But if we had what we probably would have had on the 116 pages,
• 2:26
  if we had more information about Mosiah the 1st and this period
• 2:31
  that we're now getting in this flashback episode or formatting,
• 2:39
  it would have been a lot clearer.
• 2:40
  So don't blame the book for a lack of clear evidence here.
• 2:45
  We're missing the first part about Mosiah the first, which
• 2:49
  was in those lost 116 pages. So, and we should mention Don
• 2:55
  Bradley, who has written a book on the lost 116 pages and these
• 2:59
  implications. And this is one of the good
• 3:01
  places where if we are reading alertly, we can tell yes,
• 3:06
  there's something missing here, but that's probably why.
• 3:16
  Well, let's jump into the text. Chapter seven starts out with
• 3:20
  King Mosiah reigning in verse one.
• 3:22
  It says after King Mosiah had continued peace for the space of
• 3:25
  three years, he was desirous to know concerning the people who
• 3:30
  had went up to dwell in the land of Lehi Nephi.
• 3:34
  And the first thing I noticed they went up to dwell.
• 3:38
  So we know that the land of the first inheritance, at least the
• 3:41
  land of Lehigh Nephi was in a higher elevation.
• 3:46
  Is that what you think here? That's correct.
• 3:48
  And John Sorensen made a a very good point and a lot of study of
• 3:52
  this that it's very consistent throughout the Book of Mormon.
• 3:55
  You always go up to the land of Nephi and then down to the land
• 3:58
  of Zarahemla. So I guess these people that
• 4:00
  wanted to go explore kept really pestering the king.
• 4:03
  It says they weary them with their teasings, which I think is
• 4:07
  interesting. I don't think we find that word
• 4:09
  too many times, but how many times do we weary God with our
• 4:12
  teasings, you know? Well, they're probably related
• 4:14
  to these people, yeah, maybe family connections.
• 4:17
  And they're wondering how are things going?
• 4:20
  And we will learn that Ammon, he's a mulekite.
• 4:25
  Yeah, there's sixteen of them and he's the leader.
• 4:26
  He's the largest and he is the people of Zary Hamlet.
• 4:29
  He's not even part of this, people that were in the land of
• 4:33
  the first inheritance. Other people going with him
• 4:36
  might have been the one other detail that we know is that
• 4:40
  Ammon will carry with him his copy of King Benjamin's speech.
• 4:45
  And remember that when King Benjamin gives his talk, he
• 4:49
  hands out a copy to all of the people who are there so they can
• 4:53
  read it and follow along. And they probably kept those as
• 4:56
  treasures, as scriptures, and as the.
• 5:01
  Modern revelation? Maybe.
• 5:03
  And so I think they may have been also eager to say let's
• 5:06
  share this with. With these people.
• 5:09
  Our relatives or friends. And when they do get down there,
• 5:13
  they read. Ammon reads the whole text of
• 5:16
  King Benjamin's speech, which I think is wonderful.
• 5:19
  Now this Ammon is not the son of Mosiah Ammon.
• 5:23
  This is a different Ammon. So we've got two with the same
• 5:25
  name, but in verse three is where we learned that he's a
• 5:28
  descendant of Zara Hemla, so he is a mulekite.
• 5:33
  He'd never been there. He did not know the course that
• 5:35
  they should travel, and it says that they wander a while and
• 5:39
  they probably were going in more circuitous routes.
• 5:42
  Because they didn't. They hadn't.
• 5:44
  The leader had not been there. And then they get to Shiloh.
• 5:47
  They pitch their tents. This is when they get put in
• 5:50
  prison. We all know the storyline.
• 5:52
  I think that's pretty clear. But Ammon and his 16, or the 16
• 5:57
  men that went down arrive at a time when Lim High and his
• 6:00
  people are under bondage to the king of the Lamanites.
• 6:03
  Yeah. And when we read about Zenith's
• 6:06
  record, we'll learn kind of how that happened.
• 6:08
  But right now he's pretty upset. He says they have to pay their
• 6:11
  taxed 50% and they can hardly survive.
• 6:14
  And they describe some of the things that are being taxed
• 6:19
  their corn. And I'm fascinated when we look
• 6:23
  through the Book of Mormon and see the things that it claims
• 6:27
  about the ancient Americas, because in the 19th century,
• 6:32
  this was one of the attacks against the Book of Mormon was
• 6:36
  it describes these things that weren't even there.
• 6:38
  How did we know where there there's no way that that there
• 6:41
  was these metals and these seeds and these things in the
• 6:45
  America's we have to gain our testimonies by faith.
• 6:48
  But these have become evidences of the book of Warmer that we
• 6:52
  can build our faith on. And I got a few charts here to
• 6:56
  share. We have all these things in the
• 6:59
  book that it says we have steel swords, brass plates, gold
• 7:04
  plates, gold smelting, wild goats, donkeys, horses, cows.
• 7:09
  Right here in Chapter 7 they describe some of these things
• 7:12
  that were there, like the corn. And in 1840s we didn't know very
• 7:19
  much about the ancient Americas. You can see the green.
• 7:22
  There were wild beasts. There were stone monuments,
• 7:26
  palaces, large cities, fortifications, bows and arrows.
• 7:31
  And what this, what these Greens are telling us is what was the
• 7:35
  perception that people had in 1842?
• 7:39
  Of the ancient Americans. Of what?
• 7:40
  What was available? Like you've mentioned, they
• 7:42
  thought that these things were there.
• 7:44
  And so the idea is that if Joseph Smith is just borrowing
• 7:47
  from local knowledge, how much would he have been able to have
• 7:51
  drawn on whether it's correct or not?
• 7:53
  And obviously not very much. Yeah, and.
• 7:58
  And I've read the reports by some of the attackers of Joseph
• 8:01
  in the Book of Mormon, and they specifically say these things
• 8:05
  could not have been there, they were attacking during this time.
• 8:08
  But as the science develops, what happens next?
• 8:11
  OK, we go to 2005 and we found steel swords and brass plates.
• 8:15
  We've found precious oars. And we go to the next column.
• 8:19
  We found a lot of warfare, items, Thrones, palaces, slings,
• 8:26
  armies, you know, whole. So, so the point is, as the
• 8:31
  Smithsonian and other expeditions are being sent out
• 8:35
  and local archaeology is being collected and museums are being
• 8:38
  formed, these things come along and they pop up and and so by
• 8:43
  two. 1005 we had a lot and there were many of these red ones that
• 8:47
  were actually, I'm unconfirmed, but I went ahead and did my own
• 8:52
  in 21. As of now, good.
• 8:54
  And there were so many more than we had just a few years ago.
• 8:59
  I feel like if you are basing your testimony on whether there
• 9:04
  are horses in the Book of Mormon, you're basing it on the
• 9:06
  wrong thing. The overall impression that I
• 9:09
  hope those charts will give people is that we have learned
• 9:14
  if you go back, you know, 150 years, 100 years, it's been a
• 9:19
  gradual process and it's important for people to keep up
• 9:22
  with when they're wondering, well, do we have evidence of all
• 9:26
  these metals and crops that happened to show up in this
• 9:31
  particular chapter? And in Chapter 7, verse 21, limb
• 9:36
  high is speaking and he says year I'll witness this day that
• 9:39
  zenith. So that's his grandfather 2
• 9:42
  generations back who has made king over this people.
• 9:45
  He being overzealous to inherit the land of his father's,
• 9:49
  therefore being deceived by the cunning crackness of King
• 9:52
  Lehman. So we won't get Zenith's like
• 9:55
  Zenith's record until the next chapter, but his grandson is
• 9:59
  saying there was a problem. He was overzealous.
• 10:03
  And as we look at that word, and it's even repeated by Zenith
• 10:06
  himself, I think it's as I look at it in my own life, it's when
• 10:10
  I want my will rather than God's will.
• 10:13
  I want to do it on my time schedule, my way, rather than
• 10:16
  allowing God's will to come and take place.
• 10:20
  So they unfortunately got themselves into a bad situation.
• 10:24
  So as Lim High is describing what's happened in verse 26, he
• 10:27
  he says a generation ago we killed the Prophet and that's
• 10:31
  why we're in bondage now. And he describes that in verse
• 10:34
  26 A prophet the Lord hath they slain.
• 10:38
  Yeah, a chosen man of God, who told them of their wickedness
• 10:41
  and abominations, and prophesied of many things which are to
• 10:44
  come, Yeah, even the coming of Christ.
• 10:47
  And he remembers so well of Benedize words.
• 10:50
  I'm just thrilled that limb high is able to describe this verse
• 10:54
  27 He lists at least seven things that have been that I
• 10:57
  taught. And because he said unto them
• 10:59
  that Christ was the God of heaven of all things, and he
• 11:03
  said that they should take upon him then image of man and that
• 11:07
  it should be the image after which you know all of these
• 11:10
  things that he's going to talk about.
• 11:11
  We don't get until next week when we hear a Benedi sermon.
• 11:16
  It's in Zenith's record. But we get a little preview here
• 11:20
  that he is going to talk about God.
• 11:22
  He was the creator. We were creating his image.
• 11:25
  Verse 27 is just a preview for next week's chapters.
• 11:30
  We will also now learn that when Ammon comes, he, as we've said,
• 11:37
  has King Benjamin's speech. And so when they get a chance to
• 11:42
  hear King Benjamin's speech, they can connect it with a
• 11:45
  Benedi and they can see yes, this is truly 2 witnesses.
• 11:50
  Let's go to chapter 8. That's exactly where that is.
• 11:53
  In chapter 8, verse three, he also rehearsed unto them the
• 11:57
  last words which King Benjamin had taught them, and explained
• 12:01
  them unto the people. We don't get any great details
• 12:04
  about it, but we can surmise that they would have received it
• 12:08
  and understood it because they already know what Abinadai had
• 12:11
  said. Has taught, yeah, yeah.
• 12:14
  And we already know from Chapter 7 that they had knew that they
• 12:19
  had to turn to the Lord. It says in verse 33 If you will
• 12:23
  turn to the Lord with a full purpose of heart and put your
• 12:25
  trust in him and serve him with all diligence of mind.
• 12:29
  And if you do this, he will, according to his own will and
• 12:33
  pleasure, deliver you out of bondage.
• 12:36
  So I think they are ready to hear King Benjamin's sermon
• 12:39
  because they are already humble and meek and receptive according
• 12:42
  to Limhi's sermon or Libhi's speech that he's giving to the
• 12:46
  people. And as they welcome ammonium,
• 12:53
  King Limhi also tells about another record.
• 12:56
  So we've got King Benjamin in chapter 38, verse 3.
• 12:59
  And now in chapter 8, verse five we learn about the fact that he
• 13:04
  sends people out from his land in Nephi Lehi or Lehi Nephi back
• 13:11
  up to Zara Hemla and they get lost.
• 13:13
  So something about the geography is so difficult that they can't
• 13:16
  even make a 20 day journey without getting lost.
• 13:19
  And so they go clear up and they find a land where houses are
• 13:23
  built out of cement and they find 24 gold plates.
• 13:27
  And everything else is rusted, but these plates have been
• 13:30
  preserved. And it says that the there were
• 13:32
  so many people, it was as numerous as the tribes of
• 13:36
  Israel. So you're a million people and
• 13:38
  more is what they're comparing it to.
• 13:40
  But a civilization that had been destroyed, they of course were
• 13:44
  looking for Zarahemla and somehow went down the wrong
• 13:47
  valley or down the wrong river. And they thought it was
• 13:50
  Zarahemla that was destroyed. All the ruins there, they
• 13:53
  figured, well, we haven't come to Zarahemmler yet, so it must
• 13:56
  be Zarahemmler. Interesting, because this then
• 13:59
  leads to discussion. Can you translate these 24
• 14:02
  plates? We're very interested in
• 14:04
  learning about these people. That's when it we learn about
• 14:08
  the need to have a seer, Ammon said unto him.
• 14:12
  I can assuredly tell the O king of a man that can translate the
• 14:16
  records for he has wherewith that he can look and translate
• 14:21
  all records that are the ancient date and it is a gift from God
• 14:25
  and the things are called interpreters.
• 14:29
  Now is this a Urim and Thummim? Something like that.
• 14:32
  Something like a seer stone or something.
• 14:35
  And no man can look in them except he be commanded, lest he
• 14:39
  should look for that which he ought not, and he should perish.
• 14:44
  For whosoever is commanded to look to them, the same is called
• 14:48
  a seer. Because he sees.
• 14:51
  And he goes on and on and talks about how great a seer is.
• 14:54
  And he says a seer is greater than a prophet.
• 14:55
  Why does he say that? Well, a prophet can forecast the
• 15:00
  future, but a seer can not only forecast the future but can
• 15:07
  explain where the future is coming from by knowing the past.
• 15:12
  And a seer can read these past records of a prophet sees
• 15:17
  visions, but a seer can also translate words.
• 15:22
  And so when we think of the Book of Mormon prophets, I think
• 15:25
  they're thinking of Isaiah and Elijah.
• 15:28
  Right. But all of them were largely
• 15:30
  focused on consequences of of things that are going on now and
• 15:34
  what will happen, whether soon or in the distant.
• 15:37
  And a seer has a broader scope. And that definition of a prophet
• 15:41
  and the spirit of prophecy is in the Book of Revelation, which is
• 15:45
  looking forward to the last days and the second coming.
• 15:50
  But a seer has a much broader scope than just focusing on the
• 15:55
  future and telling us where we're going and where we're
• 15:59
  maybe going wrong. But a seer can help us
• 16:02
  understand origins, where we came from, how did we get into
• 16:06
  this problem, and how did different generations react?
• 16:13
  Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, and we can then learn
• 16:16
  from the past to not make the same mistakes.
• 16:20
  The seer, particularly in this case, would be working with
• 16:24
  writings, glyphs, plates, or things that normal people can't
• 16:31
  read. I I just imagined Joseph Smith
• 16:33
  and all our Calgary translating this and just jumping out of
• 16:37
  their shoes when they hear this. Well, and this would have been
• 16:40
  something that for Oliver Cowdery would have been brand
• 16:42
  new. Oh yeah, it's Mosiah chapter 8.
• 16:44
  He's just started. I appreciate the fact that the
• 16:48
  people of Limb High and Ammon are people of faith at this time
• 16:52
  as they're describing this. Verse 18 of chapter 8 says thus
• 16:56
  God has provided a means that a man through faith might work
• 17:00
  mighty miracles, and therefore he becometh a great benefit to
• 17:05
  his fellow beings. And we believe today that the
• 17:09
  Lord is again sent prophet Sears and revelators.
• 17:13
  And oh, how grateful I am that we can depend on the Lord's
• 17:17
  anointed to lead and guide us. That's a great point Lynn, that
• 17:22
  we can rely on people who see the big picture and however it
• 17:30
  is given to them to know by instruments or vision or
• 17:36
  inspiration. I think it's important that our
• 17:39
  prophets, seers and revelators are grounded in the past as well
• 17:45
  as the future. And they want us to read the
• 17:48
  scriptures and learn from them. And they have learned from the
• 17:53
  lessons and see the big picture, from the pre existence and the
• 17:57
  establishment of the plan of salvation to every step of the
• 18:02
  way between here and where we need to go.
• 18:06
  And that's the kind of guide you want to have, someone who knows
• 18:13
  the big picture and can really see all things and get us out of
• 18:20
  a kind of a mode of just dealing with responding to this impulse
• 18:24
  or this trend or this particular problem.
• 18:28
  You you solve problems in life by seeing the whole where we
• 18:35
  came from, why we're here and where we're going.
• 18:39
  Thus we are blessed by being able to follow people who do see
• 18:44
  the eternal picture from start to finish, from where we came
• 18:47
  from, why we're here and where we're going.
• 18:50
  And that big picture gets us out of the the minutiae of being
• 18:57
  bogged down by trivia and smaller issues.
• 19:01
  Don't get hung up with the little things.
• 19:06
  Keep in mind the big picture. And that's what King Benjamin's
• 19:08
  speech really is. Also trying to do here is to get
• 19:13
  us to step back and see the the, the big picture of the whole
• 19:18
  plan that our Heavenly Father has for us and how we can then
• 19:21
  move forward. And he says God has provided
• 19:24
  these means for miracles. That's verse 18.
• 19:29
  Therefore they cometh great benefit to us.
• 19:32
  And it's a marvelous work. Again in verse 20, The marvelous
• 19:36
  works of the Lord. How long doth he suffer his
• 19:38
  people? And of course, Lim High knew
• 19:41
  this because he lived through his Father's wicked reign.
• 19:50
  And then in Chapter 9, we finally get to the records of
• 19:53
  Zenith. And that's where we start now,
• 19:56
  looking back at his grandfather's records.
• 19:59
  And I'm fascinated the fact that they all kept records and that
• 20:01
  there was enough, or that they're keeping them on metal
• 20:04
  plates. An interesting point here is
• 20:07
  that Zenith begins his record I Zenith having been taught the
• 20:12
  same way that Nephi begins his small plates.
• 20:15
  These beginnings when authors tell you who is now speaking and
• 20:19
  why it's called a colophon. Colophon.
• 20:23
  And sometimes colophons can come at the end of a record too,
• 20:26
  where a person will say I have written this.
• 20:29
  But Zenith is giving us one right here.
• 20:31
  Oh, that's great. The reason why this mulekite
• 20:34
  Zenith even had an interest in this area is he had been a spy
• 20:38
  either under King Benjamin or King Mosiah, and he went out to
• 20:42
  look for the Lamanites and he saw the land of their first
• 20:45
  inheritance and he became very interested in it.
• 20:48
  And it says here in verse two that this group that went out to
• 20:52
  try to inherit it, they had some contention and they actually had
• 20:56
  a fight against the people that were going down.
• 20:59
  They wanted to kill the Lamanites that were living there
• 21:01
  and Zenith did not. He wanted to make a peace
• 21:04
  treaty. So he goes back up to Zara.
• 21:06
  Hamlin says I'm sorry we got in a fight and some of your family
• 21:10
  members that were killed. And over the time Zenith takes
• 21:14
  another group down and that's when he's able to make the
• 21:17
  treaty with King Lehmann and they were able to start
• 21:22
  rebuilding. It says in verse eight they
• 21:24
  began to build buildings and repair the walls of the city of
• 21:28
  Lehigh, Nephi and another city the city of Shiloh and.
• 21:33
  Then look at verse 10 after he's describing all of this industry
• 21:38
  and success in agriculture and other things, says now it was
• 21:42
  the cunning and the craftiness of King Lehmann.
• 21:46
  I mean, Lehmann is letting them do this and he's kind of
• 21:49
  watching and saying, oh, they're working hard.
• 21:51
  Patient enough for 12 years, it says in verse 11.
• 21:54
  He's watching him for 12 years. And he wants them to create all
• 21:59
  these assets. And but this is in order to
• 22:02
  bring my people, he says into bondage that he might yield up
• 22:07
  the land that we might possess it.
• 22:09
  OK, so he left us that. And but I think there's
• 22:13
  something important to learn here.
• 22:15
  I mean, Lehmann the the king of the the land probably had some
• 22:22
  good reasons for doing what he was doing, but they only see it
• 22:26
  negatively. So Zenith and his people
• 22:29
  describe this landlord. As a negative.
• 22:33
  One to whom they probably should have been having a better
• 22:37
  relationship with. They describe him as cunning and
• 22:40
  crafty. And then in verse 12, lazy and
• 22:43
  idolatrous. They have some stereotypes here.
• 22:46
  They glut themselves on the labor of our hands.
• 22:49
  So there's a lot of animosity. And the stereotyping will
• 22:53
  intensify even further in verse 12 of the next chapter, where
• 23:00
  they now describe the Lamanites in general as wild and ferocious
• 23:05
  and bloodthirsty, believing in the traditions of their fathers
• 23:09
  and holding grudges that they were wronged in the wilderness.
• 23:13
  So what do What do we learn here about stereotyping?
• 23:17
  The Nephites had them of the Lamanites, and the Lamanites had
• 23:20
  them of the Nephites. And and it may be true that
• 23:22
  there were these problems, but harboring these negative
• 23:27
  feelings about other people didn't help the situation.
• 23:30
  Oh, it made it worse, I think, yeah.
• 23:32
  Can we learn anything from? That can we?
• 23:35
  I feel I live in a time when there's more and more tribalism
• 23:39
  in my community. You know, we have separation of
• 23:42
  thought politically and emotionally and religiously, and
• 23:45
  people are becoming more and more unable to communicate.
• 23:50
  You think there was ever much discussion between the settlers
• 23:55
  and? You know, I have no idea, but I
• 23:58
  know that they're getting mad at each other.
• 24:00
  I doubt that they ever talked that they could have sat down
• 24:04
  and given a report and talked to each other and how can we help
• 24:08
  you and can you help us. And it really seems like in a
• 24:12
  way they they were part of their own enemy.
• 24:15
  You know that and. And we do know, though, that
• 24:18
  they started preparing for war. Well, and that's where it leads
• 24:21
  when you have these conflicts that aren't discussed, aren't
• 24:24
  negotiated. No mediation.
• 24:26
  Then the only result is you get afraid, so you become defensive.
• 24:33
  But when you become defensive, you're arming yourself and your
• 24:37
  defensive weapons can become turned to offensive weapons very
• 24:41
  easily. So after all these lists of
• 24:43
  these swords and things it does say in the strength of the Lord,
• 24:47
  we did go out. But I want to talk a little bit
• 24:49
  about these swords and arrows, because this is one of those
• 24:51
  things that we were told you have no evidence except for
• 24:55
  arrowheads all over the American continent.
• 24:58
  But let's look at some of the research on this.
• 25:04
  Yes, it talks about bows, arrows, swords, cimeters, clubs,
• 25:09
  slings and all manner of weapons.
• 25:11
  And then in Chapter 10, it continues on weapons of war made
• 25:14
  of every kind. And in 1830 we knew none of
• 25:19
  this. You know, 100% was unknown of
• 25:21
  these things that they're mentioning at least.
• 25:25
  But as we look now, up to last year, 1823's archaeological
• 25:29
  evidence of these ancient weapons in America, 82.9% have
• 25:38
  been confirmed. This is just amazing.
• 25:40
  And the things that are unconfirmed are the steel
• 25:44
  swords, a bow of fine steel we have in the Old World, but not
• 25:49
  in the New World necessarily. And then partially confirmed
• 25:54
  bows and arrows and copper breastplates.
• 25:58
  We find other breastplates, but made out of copper.
• 26:01
  This is this is fabulous evidence of the Book of Mormon.
• 26:05
  The Book of Mormon is interestingly giving us
• 26:08
  information that was important to them, the record keepers.
• 26:14
  They want to say we did what we could to arm ourselves.
• 26:20
  And so when this war happened, we weren't irresponsible.
• 26:26
  But the most responsible thing I think is that statement in verse
• 26:28
  17 we went out in the strength of the Lord, and that is a
• 26:32
  phrase we read in in Psalms. We read it in Micah as well as
• 26:37
  the words of Mormon. And in Alma it's it's it's found
• 26:40
  many times in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible.
• 26:44
  But as we hear about the end of the war, it sounds like over
• 26:47
  3000 were killed in verse 18 of the Lamanites and only 279 in
• 26:56
  the people of Zenith. That's verse 19 in chapter 10.
• 27:05
  We learned that Zenith reigned for 22 years there, and he's
• 27:09
  having them not only prepare for warfare, but they're also
• 27:12
  spinning and making cloth and they're prospering and they have
• 27:15
  peace until King Laman died. So we get again this deliverance
• 27:20
  and from God as a theme that we saw over and over again.
• 27:25
  So what we see here is that the Lamanites, who had lost a lot of
• 27:28
  men in that previous battle. At the end of Chapter 9, they
• 27:34
  respond first of all by regrouping.
• 27:38
  And you can imagine that the new king isn't going to want to jump
• 27:41
  into the fray here very quickly. But what he does in verse 17
• 27:47
  tells us that they begin working with the rising generation.
• 27:52
  Now, these are young children. Their fathers and their
• 27:55
  grandfathers probably died in that battle.
• 27:58
  And so it was probably easy to teach the children that they
• 28:02
  should hate them, the Nephites that they should murder the
• 28:06
  Nephites, that they should rob plunder and do all that they
• 28:10
  could to destroy them. Therefore they have an eternal
• 28:14
  hatred towards the children of Nephi.
• 28:17
  But you've pointed out this is interestingly written as a
• 28:20
  chiasm. Well, especially in light of the
• 28:23
  fact that Zenith just said I was trained in the writings and the
• 28:27
  languages of the Nephites. And that's not just the
• 28:29
  vocabulary of Hebrew and Egyptian, it's also the writings
• 28:34
  and the forms. And I'm fascinated that even
• 28:37
  Zenith writes this beautiful little chiasmus in verse 17 with
• 28:40
  this repeated words of the children and the hating and
• 28:45
  murdering or destroying, and then the robbing and the
• 28:48
  plundering is the middle. Yeah, and I think using that
• 28:51
  kind of formality shows the seriousness of this problem.
• 28:56
  OK, generationally being taught. And that they are taught to hate
• 29:02
  and then murder, rob, plunder and destroy.
• 29:05
  Remember King Benjamin's speech, one of the first sets of laws
• 29:11
  that he gives them as you shall not murder, plunder, rob, commit
• 29:15
  adultery. Remember that list.
• 29:16
  It's the same list, so here we have.
• 29:19
  The antithesis of that? Yeah.
• 29:21
  Oh, tragic. Tragic.
• 29:24
  I think we can learn a lesson from this as well, that even
• 29:28
  though you fought a serious war and there have been problems,
• 29:33
  you have to love your enemy. You have to try to rebuild them.
• 29:37
  I think we did a lot of this at the end of World War 2.
• 29:40
  And we can do a lot now as well. We.
• 29:42
  Can do a lot more. Absolutely.
• 29:45
  The war is not over when the fire the gunfire stops.
• 29:51
  When there's still animosity. There there are still lessons
• 29:57
  that need to be learned. There are, there's injury has
• 30:00
  happened in more ways than just physical and without curing the
• 30:06
  problems, the multi generational problems of death and battle and
• 30:11
  things like that, of course they're going to retaliate.
• 30:14
  And we'll read about that next week.
• 30:16
  We end this week with Zenith saying I'm going to die.
• 30:19
  Now I'm old verse 22. And I will confer the Kingdom
• 30:23
  upon one of my sons. Therefore I will say no more.
• 30:26
  May the Lord bless my people. Amen.
• 30:29
  And so we start next week with the wicked King Noah.
• 30:32
  But all these going back and forths are so well drawn out in
• 30:38
  your book of charting, if you want to talk about some of the
• 30:43
  things that are available to help us understand this.
• 30:45
  There are a lot of tools that can help us understand the these
• 30:48
  chapters. Here we do have in charting the
• 30:52
  Book of Mormon a a handy chart that shows the flashbacks.
• 30:59
  It's chart #29, and on it you can see the record from Omni
• 31:05
  down to Benjamin. Then we have that.
• 31:09
  But then Hosiah 1 to 8 continues Benjamin's experiences, and that
• 31:16
  chapter seven and eight then talks about Limhi and Ammon and
• 31:20
  how they go back. And then they find what has
• 31:23
  happened with Zenith and Noah and Abenadi and so on.
• 31:26
  And so we then have another chronological sequence in
• 31:31
  chapters 9 through 22, and finally Lim High.
• 31:36
  We will finally get him, come back to him at the end of that
• 31:40
  sequence and he will then take people up to the land of
• 31:45
  Zarahemla. But in each of these stories,
• 31:47
  the book of Mosiah still has this theme of We are delivering
• 31:52
  through God's hand, and God's mighty work will allow us to be
• 31:56
  delivered and hopefully be unified again like we were under
• 31:59
  King Benjamin. But unfortunately it just keeps
• 32:01
  splintering. That is a wonderful point
• 32:04
  because the book of Mosiah, it says very little about Mosiah
• 32:09
  himself. As a king, Mosiah the second or
• 32:12
  Messiah the first, OK. Now, what I want to emphasize, I
• 32:15
  hope this will help all of our readers.
• 32:19
  As you read through the book of Mosiah, you try to figure out
• 32:24
  why. Why is the book of Mosiah
• 32:28
  focusing on these tangents and going and telling us what's
• 32:32
  happening in a completely different part of the the they
• 32:35
  leave? Zara, Hemla all the time.
• 32:36
  Yeah, yeah, all these little colonies.
• 32:38
  We do learn a little bit that Mosiah actually is pretty
• 32:42
  successful in unifying the Nephites and the Mulekites there
• 32:46
  in Zara Hemla. And Benjamin was, too.
• 32:48
  And based on, and they are able to do it based on Benjamin's
• 32:52
  covenant. So King Benjamin's speech offers
• 32:57
  us and them an alternative way of dealing with social
• 33:03
  diversity. You have nephites.
• 33:06
  Mulekites. How are you going to unify them?
• 33:09
  You're going to have a king like Benjamin who is willing to call
• 33:14
  himself just a man. The first thing Benjamin and
• 33:19
  Mosiah will do as they get rid of the idea that the king is
• 33:23
  somehow a superior being, maybe even a divine being, certainly
• 33:28
  one who can do whatever he wants.
• 33:30
  And we learn that King Lehman doesn't follow that pattern.
• 33:34
  King Noah doesn't follow that pattern.
• 33:38
  But step number one in helping to unify the people is to avoid
• 33:43
  the the vertical separation of king and people.
• 33:50
  Secondly, what King Benjamin wants to do is replace that
• 33:54
  king. He's not a mortal king.
• 33:57
  We are under covenant then to obey our heavenly king and that
• 34:03
  means we're all sons and daughters of that king.
• 34:06
  And that gives, as we were talking about last time, the
• 34:10
  kind of united Zion community where you can begin to have
• 34:16
  peace and people giving to each other and keeping the
• 34:20
  commandments and peace and prosperity.
• 34:24
  Now what the book of Mosiah and later on the book of Alma will
• 34:29
  show us is that when groups separate themselves into
• 34:35
  different heights where you have Zoramites, that the tribal
• 34:41
  tendency to revert to genealogical, family, political,
• 34:46
  whatever you have Zoramites, you, you have Amalekites.
• 34:52
  Josophites. Jacobites, yeah.
• 34:53
  You have the priests of Noah. You have all these different
• 34:57
  groups that are trying to separate and fragment the
• 35:00
  society for power and gain and money or whatever it is.
• 35:06
  But King Benjamin's speech is given to us at the beginning of
• 35:11
  the Book of Mosiah as the model of how to do it right.
• 35:15
  You can become a unified people if we keep God as our king and
• 35:20
  covenant with him. And and for the next 100 or more
• 35:24
  pages we will see how different pressures are brought to bear
• 35:29
  against that that King Benjamin model.
• 35:34
  So I just wanted to make this this point generally as as we
• 35:38
  are going forward in the next weeks reading kind of the
• 35:41
  aftermath of King Benjamin's speech, I think we can identify
• 35:46
  over and over again places where pressures are working against
• 35:52
  the covenant and the ideal that Benjamin had created.
• 35:58
  Eventually, of course, there will be some efforts where
• 36:03
  people will be brought together and the the sons of Mosiah will
• 36:07
  go and convert Lamanites and there will be efforts to try to
• 36:12
  have no more heights and eventually they do accomplish
• 36:16
  that. Under the Lord, though.
• 36:19
  Under the Lord, through their covenant with Jesus Christ, and
• 36:23
  knowing that he will come and all of that unites them.
• 36:27
  The pressures and the outside pressures then will come through
• 36:29
  the gadiant and robbers and outsiders that will then
• 36:34
  undermine even the faithful. Zoom out, take a bird's eye view
• 36:38
  and say what are the themes here.
• 36:41
  What is the what's going to be the solution and how are
• 36:45
  pressures being brought against it?
• 36:48
  So I Ioffer that overview as something to help us through
• 36:53
  well, all the rest of the book of Mosiah and the book of Alma.
• 36:59
  But keep reading and pray about it.
• 37:03
  It is a book of great strength, and in areas of our lives where
• 37:07
  you may be overzealous, like Zenith was to have things our
• 37:12
  way. I hope we can, as Mosiah King
• 37:15
  Benjamin taught humbly and meekly, go before God and be
• 37:20
  strengthened by his arm. And we believe that these
• 37:25
  records are of God and hope that you can feel that witness in
• 37:28
  your scripture study this day. In the name of Jesus Christ,
• 37:32
  Amen.