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Enos–Words of Mormon | Scripture Study Insights with Tyler Griffin | A Come Follow Me Resource · Scripture Central

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Hello there. My name is Tyler Griffin and
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this is Scripture Study Insights by Scripture Central.
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Today we're going to be covering the books of Enos, Jerem, Omni,
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and the Words of Mormon, so we get these small one chapter
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books all put together. And sometimes when you get into
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sections like this in our study of the Book Mormon, it becomes
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easy to gloss over or skip or ignore some of these passages
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because we see them as the lesser important books or the
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lesser important scripture writers.
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So one of the overarching scripture study perspectives or
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principles that I wanted to mention for today's set of
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chapters is this concept. It's a it's an educational
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concept called know, feel and do.
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It's it. It's kind of a a holistic
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approach to a study that a person does to say when I when
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I'm finished with this, these few moments that I have in the
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scriptures or a course in in an educational program or after
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going to church or going to the temple or having a a ministering
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visit with somebody. The idea being I don't want to
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just walk away knowing more. I want to to 1° or another, feel
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something, feel more connected with the Lord, feel this, this
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inner motivation to move forward, and that moving forward
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causes me to act. So another way to look at this
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would be focus on what can we learn in our head, in our mind,
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what can we feel in our heart and what can we then translate
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all of that into action with our hands and and even with our
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feet, the path that we walk. So with that overlay as we jump
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into Enos first pay attention as you study on your own, what do
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you feel like the Lord would have, you know and reading the
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story, Venus, what would he have you or what does he help you
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feel? What kind of motivation, what
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kinds of impressions come by way of of your heart?
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And then how can you now translate that into action?
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That's our that's our goal, So let's dive in.
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Enos is this incredible character that if you stop and
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think about him for a minute, picture being Enos and you are
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given the plates. This is a large replica of the
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plates that Joseph Smith was given.
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In the case that we would be talking about from the small
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plates, it would be a very small portion.
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We'll talk about that when we get to the Book of Omni and
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Words of Mormon. But you're given these plates
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from Nephi down to Jacob and now to you, Enos.
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So you look up the line of those who have written before you.
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And I think I'm not too far off in saying that Enos could feel a
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little bit overwhelmed with this assignment if he falls into the
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trap of comparing because he could look at his uncle Nephi,
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who was bigger than life, and at his father Jacob, and say I am
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not as good as them. Nephi and Jacob both saw the
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Lord as did Isaiah as it describes there in second Nephi
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11. And he's probably saying who am
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I to to take this assignment. I'm a nobody might be the the
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temptation for him. So check out what he says.
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Behold it came to pass that I Enos knowing my father that he
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was a just man, for he taught me in his language and let's pause
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there and we'll come back. He taught me in his language.
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We learn in the book of Mosiah chapter one, that the plates of
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brass were written in Egyptian. And we learn from Nephi that
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he's writing the plates of gold, the the plates of Nephi in
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Egyptian. Later on, Moroni, the last
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author of the book, is going to tell us that it's reformed
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Egyptian. So here's the people who speak
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Hebrew coming from the Old World among the Jews, and they're
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having to translate their thoughts and their words from
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Hebrew into Egyptian, or at least into some form of an
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Egyptian script to record on the plates.
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And that's where Moroni is going to tell you later on.
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If only we could write in Hebrew, there would be no error
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in the record because we could just write it all out in this
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long form. But because we're writing on
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metal plates, there's no room for that.
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So they're doing it in this pictographic language and
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script, and it's it's hard for them and it's clumsy.
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So when Enos said my father was a just man and he taught me in
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his language, he's not just saying Dad taught me how to
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speak Hebrew. He didn't just teach me that the
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mother tongue of my people. He grew up learning that he also
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taught him in the language of scripture.
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This Egyptian, which would have taken great effort.
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Now stop and think about this for a moment.
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Today you can raise children and in the environment in which they
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live, they're going to learn the the spoken language.
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In Enos's case, that would have been Hebrew.
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But when you open up the scriptures, it's going to take a
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little more effort to teach those children these words.
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This is very Old English. When you come to the Bible and
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the Book of Mormon written in King James form of English, it's
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it's a it's a slightly different form of language.
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And so I love the the principle here to consider that you have a
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parent who taught the language of scripture, the language of
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revelation and it's it's a language of the the learned of
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his day. It it would have been a skill
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that would have been very difficult.
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Now keep in mind, Nephi would have learned that Egyptian from
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his father and Jacob also. Now it begins passing down
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through multiple generations of scripture writers for them to be
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able to fulfill the command and to maintain the plates.
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They can't just do that growing up naturally in their culture.
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They're going to have to go to great effort.
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So then it says. And also in the nurture and
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admonition of the Lord. I love these two words because
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there's this, this nice little relationship, this interplay
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between nurture and admonition. A nurturing parent is one who is
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constantly teaching, encouraging, supporting, lifting
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up. And an admonishing parent is 1
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who is correcting, disciplining appropriately, warning, setting,
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straight, pointing in the right direction.
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It's fascinating that Enos would have put those two together.
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He taught me also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord
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because we don't worship a God who is 100% in isolation, mercy
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just or mercy and love, or 100% of the time extending justice
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and judgement in isolation because he is 100% of the time
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doing those. But they're together.
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He He he is the embodiment of perfect mercy and love and
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perfect justice and judgement. So you get the the more shall we
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say, pleasant attributes, the ones that we like, the mercy and
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the the love and the grace of of kindness and the nurturing
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aspects combined with the justice and judgment aspects
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that help us to become more like Him.
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And those are balanced in this, in this home here.
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And he says, and blessed be the name of my God for it.
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And then he starts his story and I will tell you of the wrestle
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which I had before God. It's interesting because he
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doesn't use the word with He uses the word before I'll tell
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you of the wrestle which I had before.
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So he's wrestling with something before God in front of God,
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before he received a remission of his sins.
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What we know is he doesn't feel completely worthy or ready to
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take on that mantle or to move forward in the no feel due idea.
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He's he's probably feeling inadequate.
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He he doesn't feel like he knows enough and he's not capable of
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doing what he needs to do. And part of the reason is he's
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feeling held back by his sins, and so he's seeking for a
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remission of his sins. Behold, I went to hunt beasts in
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the forest, and the words which I had often heard my Father
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speak concerning eternal life and the joy of the Saints sunk
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deep into my heart. Notice that he says the words
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that I had heard my father speak often.
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We didn't have just a a a flash flood of gospel topic discussion
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in the home with E Nos. Growing up, he was saying he
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often spoke of eternal life and the joy of the Saints, and it
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sink. Or he says, and it sunk deep
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into my heart. Can you see this?
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He remembered something, and and it was Elder Neil A Maxwell who
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said some of history's greatest sermons are preached from the
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pulpit of memory to an audience of one.
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One of the the beauties of this, this story of Venus, is that God
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brings to his memory all of these experiences they had in
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the past. And they're they're tucked away
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in memory, ready for the Holy Ghost to bring up at the right
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time to 'cause somebody to feel some things that will bring them
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to then act or to do something about it.
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And that's what we see playing out here.
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So all these memories come back. It sinks deep into his heart.
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Brothers and sisters, that is a powerful thing.
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When the Holy Ghost helps open that Channel between the mind
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and the memory and the thoughts and the intellect, that then
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that Channel opens up, down into the deep recesses of the soul,
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down into the heart. That's where lives start to
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really change is when it sinks deep and it said, he then says,
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and my soul hungered. So now it's no longer just a
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mental desire to learn or a casual effort to pray.
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To seek remission is a deep soul level hungering as he kneeled
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down before his maker. And he's He's out hunting beasts
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in the forest as he kneels down before his maker.
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And he cried. Notice the words he uses here in
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mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul.
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All the day long did I cry unto him.
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Yeah. And when the night came, I did
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still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens.
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Here's Enos. He's out in the forest.
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He has deep desires in his heart.
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He's remembering things that his dad had taught.
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They now have turned into a deeper desire for him to know
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for himself and to feel more deeply about them and to do more
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about them. And so he had poured out his
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whole soul before the Lord in prayer and supplication.
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Here's the question for you. We we don't know for sure the
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timeline of when he started. He he goes out to hunt beasts in
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the forest. And let's just assume he he left
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in the morning and he's pouring out his heart.
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Let's just just so we can work with some numbers, let's say
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9:00 AM. He kneels down.
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We don't know what exact time it was.
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This is just to teach your principal here.
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He pours out his soul. My question for us to consider
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here is why didn't Heavenly Father instantly bless Enus with
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the response? His heart was clearly in the
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right place. His desires were clearly deeply
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rooted in his soul. He's he he.
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He's not asking for a selfish thing.
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He wants to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord and he
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wants to be clean, to be able to move forward.
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So why didn't the Lord just give him the answer at 9:00 AM?
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Or why not at noon? He he's hunting.
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So he's out in the forest and all of a sudden hunting for the
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beasts of the forest becomes less important to him than
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hunting for the beast of the natural man, so to speak, inside
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of him. So you can picture him probably
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kneeled, leaning down in a spot and pouring out his heart, then
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getting up and sitting there and wandering around the forest and
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kneeling down some more and praying some more and getting up
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and wandering around and praying some more and all day.
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Why? Why isn't the Lord giving him
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this answer? He goes clear into the night.
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So we don't. Again, we don't know what time.
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We're just we're we're throwing some numbers on the board here.
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But let's say it's 9:00 or 10:00 PM.
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It's now night time when finally the Lord gives him an answer.
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Here's the question to consider. How much does Enos value the
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answer he got here wherever that time frame was in the night time
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compared to if God had just given him the answer here or
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sometime far earlier? How much do you value something
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that you had to work more extensively to attain compared
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to those things which are just freely and quickly given to you?
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I love the Bible dictionary entry in in our Scriptures
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regarding prayer. And as we turn to this, I think
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that there's some powerful principles here to help us
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better unlock meaning, to help us know, feel and do things
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better. From our study of the Book of
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Venus, when we understand these principles, listen to this.
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It says prayer is the act by which the will of the father and
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the will of the child are brought into correspondence with
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each other. Now when you hear that phrase of
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two different wills being brought into correspondence with
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each other, most people would would visualize this horizontal
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coming together of of these two wills until they meet at the
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middle ground. The problem with that analogy is
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that puts us on an equal footing, an equal level, almost
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a transactional relationship with God rather than a
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covenantal relationship with God.
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So this next phrase is beautiful.
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It says the object of prayer is not to change the will of God,
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but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is
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already willing to grant. So we're not doing this
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horizontal coming together on a sliding scale, kind of a
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relationship in our prayers. It's a vertical relationship and
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we're not bringing God down to our level and saying, hey, if I
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do this, you do this, can we agree to that?
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This isn't a transaction. It's a transformation.
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And the person who's being transformed isn't God.
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It's me. It's you.
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When we kneel down, we're not teaching God anything he doesn't
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already know about our thoughts, about our feelings, about our
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motivations, our weaknesses, our strengths, anything that we've
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done. God already knows perfectly
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everything about us, infinitely more than we know about us.
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So He commands us to pray. Not so that we can change His
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will and bend His will to ours, but so that we can learn His
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will and learn about Him and learn more about ourselves and
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elevate our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions to
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align with Him and what blessings He's already willing
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to grant us. But I love the this next part.
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It also says blessings require some work or effort on our part
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before you can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is
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an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.
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I love that if we see prayer as this spiritual work, this joy
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filled work where we get to labor through this process of
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seeking. To become the children of the
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covenant that we were born. To become these disciples of
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Christ, rather than sitting back like children who cry for
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something and instantly get what we want or reach for something
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and instantly it's given to us, we have to reach, stretch,
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prolong it, think more deeply. Do I really need this?
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Is this really in my best interest?
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And we keep working at it. And I can't tell you how many
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times in my life I prayed for things pled for things over a
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long period, wanting them to happen, and they never happened.
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But then over the course of time I discover God's will for me,
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and I look back with gratitude that I didn't get what I prayed
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for when I so desperately thought I needed it.
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In this case, Enos prays all day, gets what he had been
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praying for. But the point is, it didn't
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change God's will. It changed Enos heart.
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It deepened that experience and that revelation when it actually
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came. So it says, verse 5.
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And there came a voice unto me, saying, Enos, thy sins are
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forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed.
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I love that. Now some of you are probably
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sitting here thinking to yourself, Yep, here we go again.
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Nephi saw the Lord. Jacob saw the Lord and his
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youth. Now E Nos hears the voice of the
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Lord speaking to him. And if you're not careful, you
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start to see the scripture writers, these prophets as as
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distant as, too much unlike the normal situation that you and I
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face, the reality is more beautiful that there is a wide
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range of of people, instruments in the hands of the Lord if you
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will, to do His work. And they're not all exactly like
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Nephi or Jacob Enos here says that he heard the voice of the
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Lord giving him that promise. But if you circle the word voice
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in verse 5 and look over at verse 10, it says, While I was
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thus struggling in the Spirit, behold, the voice of the Lord
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came into my mind again. I'm pretty confident that
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everybody listening to this has heard the voice of the Lord
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many, many, many times. We may not have recognized it
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every time, but the voice of the Lord doesn't usually come into
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our eardrums. Occasionally it will for certain
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people in certain settings. But he says, I will tell you in
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your mind and in your heart, remember that beautiful word
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heart. It opens with the word hear, and
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there is an ear right in the middle of the heart and it is He
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to whom we listen. And it is somewhat of an art
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form, which means it's going to get more natural and and more
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fluent over time as we listen and learn that language.
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It's a new language, but it's our thoughts and our feelings
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that he uses to communicate and hears Enos who's finally
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recognizing more clearly when God is speaking to him.
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And what God communicated to him was your sins are forgiven thee
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and thou shalt be blessed. What a beautiful miracle.
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The power. The miracle of this forgiveness
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that he's given to him, and it's important to note, what did he
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pray for? His own soul?
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That was his, his first prayer and it got answered.
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Then what does he pray next? Verse nine He prays for his
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brethren, his family, the people of the Nephites.
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So the the circle broadens out. Once somebody finds that they're
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in a safe space. Then they want others to find
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that safety, that that covenantal protection that is
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offered by God and His. The the voice of the Lord came
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into His mind again, saying, I will visit thy brethren
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according to their diligence in keeping my commandments.
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And then after that, in verse 11, he prays for the Lamanites,
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the people who are trying to destroy his people.
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You could say they're enemies. He's praying for his enemies,
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and the Lord gives him promises that they shouldn't be destroyed
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and that the Lord would preserve the record of the people of the
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Nephites, which then causes him to pray about the records in
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verse 16. And he coveted with me that he
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would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in his own due time.
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So you have these records of everything that's been going on,
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and he's praying to the Lord for their safety and their
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protection and God covenants that they'll be brought forth in
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the due time of the Lord. I love this because by default
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he was praying for us when he was praying for the records he
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he now clearly the the main point of his his prayer there
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was for the Lamanites to be able to receive them in the the
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latter days. But it's also for all of us who
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benefit because of these prayers over those plates by that
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prophet at that time. And if you look at verse 17, it
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says, and Ienas knew it would be according to the covenant which
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he had made. Where for my soul did rest.
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Enos didn't have all of the answers of how the Lord would
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preserve these records and all the miracles that would take
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place through the Nephite and Lamanite history and into the
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time of Joseph Smith getting the plates and through the
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translation process. He didn't need any of those
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details. His soul hungered at the
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beginning in verse four for all of these things, and now his
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soul did rest. There comes a time when you come
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to know certain things, and you come to feel certain levels of
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assurance that you can then do certain things with with that
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level of assurance, and you can do it in a less panicked way.
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You don't have to be so anxious in your discipleship.
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Once you receive certain promises from the Lord regarding
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you, regarding your posterity, regarding the future of the
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world and and your part in it, we can move forward with this
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quiet dignity that seems to just come off of the page with Enos.
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And if you look at the way he he finishes his his book, he says,
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I soon go to the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer.
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This is another place in the Book of Mormon where you get the
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personal pronouns attached to the Savior or Redeemer.
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Jesus Christ. Enos has a different
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relationship with the Lord at this point than he did at the
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beginning. He has grown to realize Jesus
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Christ is not just the Redeemer of all mankind.
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Jesus Christ is my Redeemer. I love that word, my Redeemer,
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this personal connection with him.
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For I know that in him I shall rest, and I rejoice in the day
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when my mortal shall put on immortality and shall stand
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before him. Then shall I see his face with
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pleasure, and he will say unto me, Come unto me, ye blessed,
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There is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my
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father. You're noticing all these
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pronouns? Jesus Christ, speaking to Enos.
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There's a place prepared for you and reserved for you.
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It's got your name on it. I've prepared it in the mansions
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of my father, brothers and sisters in your discipleship.
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I think if Enos were standing here.
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I I can't speak for Enos, but I can.
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I can guess what he he might say.
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He might say you're not building your mansion in heaven.
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You're not working your way to heaven.
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Jesus Christ is preparing a place for you.
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Your job isn't to find the road to heaven and to walk it all by
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yourself and to get there. Your your duty is to come to
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know Jesus Christ, to fill of his personal love for and
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efforts to save you, and to then embrace him, and to accept his
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offerings, so that he can say the same thing to us.
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Come unto me, ye blessed, for there's a place prepared for you
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in the mansions of my Father. And then he finishes.
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Amen. Now we shift gears.
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He hands the plates off to his son Jerem, and Jerem tells us
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I'm not going to add much because everybody who's written
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before me has already revealed the plan of Salvation.
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That's in verse two, and the plates are small.
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Now, as we we transition into this discussion about the plates
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very quickly most descriptions of the the golden plates found
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in the hill Kimora delivered to the hands of Joseph Smith by the
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Prophet and Angel Moroni. We don't have an exact
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measurement, but most observers said they were roughly 6 inches
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by 6 inches by 8 inches and anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 of them
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were sealed in some way that you couldn't get to them.
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So if there's a six inch stack of plates, you've got anywhere
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from three to to 4 inches of those that are sealed.
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So you've only got about two inches of plates that are
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translatable by Joseph Smith at that time.
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And we know that we we lose 116 pages.
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So part of the plates get lost. So if you start doing the math
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of what we have, it's it's fairly simple to come to the
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realization that the small plates of Nephi were somewhere
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between 3/8 of an inch to 1/2 inch in thickness total.
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So instead of picturing Nephi passing down a large collection
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of of thick plates called the small plates to Jacob and Enos
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and Jeremy and Omni, it's it's more like a pamphlet.
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They're really small, but they're writing in such a way
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that they can fit a lot of information on to both sides of
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these plates. So here's this small collection
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of plates compared to the annals of the kings.
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So huge collections. So here's Jerem who tells us
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that the plates are small in verse two and and I don't have
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much room, but I'm going to keep the command of my father to add
32:47
to it a little bit and to preserve them.
32:50
And gratefully he He does that. And then over in verse 11 he
32:55
says, Wherefore the prophets and the priests and the teachers did
32:58
labor diligently, exhorting with all long-suffering the people to
33:03
diligence, teaching the law of Moses, and the intent for which
33:07
it was given, persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah
33:12
and believe in him to come as though he already was.
33:17
So he's he's reaffirming what we've been taught before, that
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all the prophets are encouraging people to keep the commandments,
33:27
not because those commandments are going to save them, but
33:30
because those commandments point them to and teach them about and
33:34
help them discover the Messiah who's full of grace and truth.
33:38
And these attributes become not just mental exercises for them,
33:45
but they feel them to the degree where they start to grow into
33:49
becoming more like the savior. And then he, in verse 15, says
33:55
he delivers these plates into the hands of his son Amni.
33:58
That they may be kept according to the commandments of my
34:01
father's. So now they're being passed
34:04
down. But it's not just the plates.
34:05
It's not just an artifact. You also have to pass down the
34:09
knowledge of the language. You you have to Jerem had to
34:13
teach Amni how to read and understand Egyptian.
34:17
So Amni does the same thing. He's a little unusual in the set
34:24
of Bookmormon prophets because he says I am nigh being
34:27
commanded by my father Jerem that I should write somewhat
34:30
upon these plates to preserve our genealogy.
34:32
And then in verse two he tells you, yeah, I'm I'm doing this.
34:36
I've I've used the sword to defend my people, and I am also
34:41
a wicked man. I haven't kept the statutes and
34:44
commandments of the Lord as I ought to have done.
34:46
The only self-proclaimed wicked author of the book now, is he
34:50
just being overly hard on himself?
34:53
We don't know. What we do know is he kept this
34:57
command of the Lord that came to him from his father passed down.
35:02
And if Omni lets us down and uses those plates for a
35:06
different purpose and destroys them, we don't get these these
35:11
incredible books of Nephi, Jacob and Enos and Jerem before him.
35:15
It's that idea that we owe a debt of gratitude to every
35:20
single one of these people and their families for helping to
35:25
preserve these records so that we get the miracle of the Book
35:28
of Mormon in our hands today. A book that has been watched
35:32
over and and guarded and protected through generations of
35:37
very difficult history. Lots of wars, lots of efforts to
35:41
destroy them. And even in on nice case where
35:45
he's like, yeah, I'm a wicked man, he passes them on to
35:48
Amayron or Amaron. However you want to pronounce
35:51
that who takes a few verses and then we get Chemish in verse
35:56
nine, who gives us one verse. But again, each of these men had
36:02
to learn the the language and keep the commandment, and they
36:06
did to preserve this. And then it's handed to a
36:09
Benidorm, the son of Chemish. He gives us 2 verses and then on
36:15
to a Malachi who gives us the the majority of the book of
36:20
Omni. And he is telling us all about
36:23
this transition of the people under the the reign of King
36:29
Mosiah the 1st when they're going to leave the land of Nephi
36:34
and go down to the north to the land of Zarahemla.
36:39
And in this part he tells us that he is is concerned about
36:46
the records, because he doesn't have any children, and he
36:50
doesn't have anybody to hand the records off to.
36:54
And so he says, verse 25I began to be old, and having no seed,
36:59
And knowing King Benjamin to be a just man before the Lord,
37:02
Wherefore I shall deliver up these plates unto him, exhorting
37:06
all men to come unto God, the Holy One of Israel, and believe
37:10
in prophesying, and in revelations, and in the ministry
37:13
of angels, and in the gift of speaking with tongues.
37:18
Now if you jump down to verse 26, it says, And now, my beloved
37:21
brethren, I would, that you should come unto Christ, who is
37:25
the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation.
37:30
Are you catching these verbs? No.
37:32
Feel due in all of our study, in all of our expressions of a
37:39
feeling and emotion, it should lead us to come unto Christ,
37:44
partake of His salvation and the power of His redemption.
37:47
Come unto Him and offer our whole souls as an offering unto
37:51
Him, and continuing fasting, praying, and endure to the end.
37:56
And as the Lord liveth, ye will be saved.
38:00
So now as we jump into the words of Mormon, it's this beautiful
38:05
little insertion that Mormon provides as he He takes the
38:11
small plates and adds them to his record.
38:15
So watch the the wording here, verse 3.
38:19
Now I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written.
38:22
For after I had made an abridgement from the plates of
38:25
Nephi down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amalachi
38:30
spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered
38:33
into my hands, and I found these plates which contain this small
38:36
account of the prophets from Jacob down to the reign of this
38:40
King Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi.
38:43
So if you look at the the collection of plates, he's
38:48
saying, look, we started with the plates, the record of Lehi,
38:54
Nephi, Nephi two, so the second king, because the records of the
39:02
kings, and then Nephi three and however many kings come along.
39:07
And then he has abridged the records of Mosiah the 1st.
39:14
And then he got into the reign of King Benjamin.
39:20
And he says, after I had made an abridgement from the plates of
39:23
Nephi down to the reign of this King Benjamin.
39:26
So he's made it this far. And now he's searching among the
39:30
records, and he found this small collection of plates in and
39:34
among the plates from King Benjamin's time period, which is
39:40
exactly where a Malachi tells you he was living, is in the
39:46
time of King Benjamin, when he had given the plates to Benjamin
39:51
for safekeeping. Because of Malachi didn't have
39:53
any children to pass them on to. And you can picture King
39:56
Benjamin taking that small collection of the prophets and
39:59
sticking it into the collection of plates right in his own time
40:03
period. And that's where Mormon finds
40:06
them. And it kind of surprises him
40:08
that he. Whoa.
40:10
This is, this is the record of the prophets, including the
40:14
words of Jacob, because Jacob wouldn't have written on any of
40:17
these these big records of the King's plates that he's already
40:21
been through and abridged by the way down to this point.
40:26
And so as he reads them, it says they pleased him because of the
40:30
prophecies of the coming of Christ.
40:32
I love that it pleases him because of what it teaches him
40:36
more or verifies more of the coming of Christ.
40:40
And he says verse seven, that he was going to include these small
40:47
plates with his abridgement. And I do this for a wise
40:50
purpose, for thus it whispereth me according to the workings of
40:54
the Spirit of the Lord which is in me.
40:56
Now I do not know all things, but the Lord knoweth all things
40:59
which are to come. Wherefore he worketh in me to do
41:02
according to his will. So here he is, including the
41:06
small plates covering the same time period that he's already
41:12
abridged, from Lehigh down through Nephi, and all the way
41:16
down through Mosiah and the beginning parts of King
41:19
Benjamin's reign. And here's this small collection
41:24
of plates that he's going to include with his plates.
41:30
And he doesn't know why because he's already a bridge.
41:33
That same time period, God didn't tell him about the 116
41:38
lost pages that would would occur with Joseph Smith and
41:42
Martin Harris, and that we would lose his abridgement of this
41:46
time period. And so God had prepared this.
41:51
That, quite frankly, is in, in my opinion, probably
41:56
significantly better than any abridgement of the records of
42:00
the Kings could have been from Mormon.
42:03
So Mormon now bridges the gap force in verse 10.
42:06
Wherefore it came to pass that after a Malachi had delivered up
42:09
these plates into the hands of King Benjamin, he took them and
42:14
put them with the other plates which contained records which
42:16
had been handed down by the kings from generation to
42:19
generation until the days of King Benjamin.
42:22
And they were handed down from King Benjamin from generation to
42:24
generation until they have fallen into my hands.
42:27
And I, Mormon, pray to God that they may be preserved from this
42:30
time henceforth, and I know that they will be preserved.
42:34
For there are great things written upon them, out of which
42:36
my people and their brethren shall be judged to the great and
42:39
last day according to the word of God, which is written.
42:42
And then he shifts from verse 11 to verse 12.
42:46
He shifts away from this discussion of the plates and and
42:51
his abridgment of the large collection of the records of the
42:54
kings and the inclusion of this small collection of the plates
42:59
of the prophets. And then he starts into the
43:02
story of King Benjamin, again describing verse 12.
43:06
And now concerning this King Benjamin, he had somewhat of
43:09
contentions among his own people.
43:11
So now we're back into a narrative flow.
43:15
If you look at a printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon
43:19
and you turn to page 117 in the printer's manuscript, volume
43:24
One, at the very top it says the Book of Mosiah chapter three.
43:30
There's three Roman numerals with two of them crossed out.
43:34
So Oliver Cowdery has changed the Book of Mosiah chapter 3
43:40
into our what becomes our Book of Mosiah Chapter One.
43:45
So what we have in our book was originally the third chapter,
43:51
and those chapters are longer in the in the original manuscript
43:55
than our broken up chapters that were done in in 1879.
44:01
We are picking up the story at the end of King Benjamin's life
44:05
and what was the original Mosiah chapter 3, but it now becomes
44:09
Mosiah chapter one because we've lost those first two chapters as
44:12
well as the book heading for the book of Mosiah.
44:15
This is the only major book in the Book of Mormon that doesn't
44:17
have an introductory paragraph describing what the book is
44:21
about, because that was probably part of the 116 lost pages in
44:26
that manuscript. And so Joseph picks up the
44:30
translation where he had left off, and and part of that that
44:34
had been translated might have been those final verses of the
44:38
words of Mormon. We don't know for sure.
44:40
But here we go off and running into the Book of Mosiah with the
44:43
last few years of King Benjamin's reign.
44:47
Now some of you are thinking to yourself, that's fascinating
44:50
information to know, but what in the world could I possibly feel
44:55
or do about any of that? What what difference is that
44:59
going to make in my discipleship?
45:00
I don't have a great answer for you other than it's fascinating
45:07
to see the hand of God in the history of time where he knows
45:13
the future, He knows our needs, He knows everything that's going
45:19
to happen, and he prepares a way for his work to move forward.
45:25
If you read Doctor and Covenant, Section 3 and Section 10, we
45:29
learned that it's not the works of God that are frustrated, it's
45:32
the works of man that are frustrated.
45:35
He's prepared a way for us to get everything that we need.
45:38
So even though we lost all of the the the abridgement of the
45:44
Book of Lehigh and Nephi and and the record of the kings all the
45:47
way down to this beginning part of King Benjamin, it's OK
45:51
because God prepared a way for us to get the important
45:55
teachings and doctrines that we need without Mormon having to
46:00
abridge them. So you'll notice in the small
46:02
plates from first Nephi, second Nephi, Jacob Enos, Jeremy Omni,
46:07
everything in those books is written in first person.
46:12
There's no abridgement. Mormon's not telling you their
46:15
story. He just took those plates and he
46:18
stuck them with his own. Somewhere on that record with a
46:22
cover plate, the the words of Mormon to kind of describe what
46:25
was going on there. There's no abridgement.
46:29
And it's not until you get to the Book of Mosiah that now you
46:32
get the third person voice of Mormon telling you this story.
46:37
So as you move forward in life, when it seems that disasters
46:42
happen or something gets lost and you think, Oh no, now we're
46:47
stuck, I think every single one of these prophets would be
46:52
standing on the other side of the veil smiling very meekly,
46:56
saying be still and know that he is God and that he knows how to
47:02
prepare for your future. If he'll do all of this for a
47:06
book, for a set of plates, and and for a book to come forth in
47:10
the latter days, he'll do this for his children.
47:15
Because that book was intended to bless his children.
47:18
And so it becomes this object lesson where maybe we can feel
47:21
more deeply that sense of calm reassurance that God is in His
47:27
heavens. He knows what He's doing, and he
47:30
knows how to prepare all things in wisdom and in order for your
47:35
salvation and the salvation of your family and your loved ones
47:38
moving forward. In closing, I love the Lord's
47:44
attention to detail in history and in in these prophets lives
47:50
and in the scriptures. And I love seeing that and
47:54
learning about it and knowing about that, and then feeling
47:57
deeply the reality that God changes not and that he's not a
48:01
respecter of persons. He loves you as much as he loved
48:05
Nephi or Jacob or Enos or Jerem, and he is willing to do whatever
48:11
it is required for us to be saved by his only begotten Son,
48:18
Jesus Christ, and to enter into the rest that the Savior has
48:23
prepared for us in the mansions of our Father.
48:26
He lives. I know he lives and he loves us,
48:31
and I leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ.
48:35
Amen. Know that you're loved.