Hello, and welcome back! Today, I'm going to begin with some thoughts in 1st Nephi chapter 8,
the great dream of Lehi. The whole Book of Mormon got a subtitle in the 1980s:
Another Testament of Jesus Christ. The central focus of the book is to bring us to Christ,
to give us this path that leads to him, so that we can become perfected in him. This
incredible vision, at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, forms a nice foundation for that, because
everything in this dream is intended to help us to come unto Christ and partake of his goodness.
You'll notice, if you take a second to review, what's in the dream. Since it's a dream,
it's going to have a whole bunch of objects: people, places, things. So, if you look at all
of those objects and try to separate them out, and I know this is very generalized,
but look for the bad, and look for, especially, the good. What objects are bad? What objects are
good? Take a minute and make that list from all of the things in the dream. I'll begin for you,
to start your list. You could say the central feature of the dream is the Tree of Life.
That's clearly good, and the central bad thing in the dream is the large and spacious building,
and that is clearly a bad thing. Now, see if you can figure out what's good and what's bad.
Now, this is a basic overview of the dream, and you're noticing that there are a lot of
things missing that are mentioned. There are forbidden paths; strange roads; there's the field,
the great and spacious field. Is the field good or bad? Which side does it go on? I think the
argument could be made that, is the earth good or bad? I don't think it's either, so I think
the field is whatever you decide to make it. How you interact with it makes it become either good
or a bad element, but instinctively itself, or inherently itself, it's not either good or bad.
Now, there's one character that often gets overlooked in this story, and it's the man
in a white robe. If you stop and analyze that, is that person good or bad? Most people would say,
well, he's good because he's dressed in a white robe. But, if you stop and reflect for a minute,
even the devil can appear as an angel of light, so what he's wearing doesn't
classify him as good. If you look carefully at the wording here, he's introduced right at the
beginning in verse 5: “it came to pass that I saw a man, and he was dressed in a white robe;
and he came and stood before me. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, and bade me follow
him.” So, is he good or bad? “And it came to pass that as I followed him I beheld myself
that I was in a dark and dreary waste.” Now, you're starting to wonder: wait, if he's good,
why is he leading Lehi through a dark and dreary waste? Why wouldn't he take him straight to the
light? Verse 8: “after I had traveled for the space of many hours in darkness, I began to
pray into the Lord that he would have mercy on me, according to the multitude of his tender mercies.”
This is fascinating because the older I get, the more I see that man in a white
robe as a beautiful symbol for the Savior himself. That sometimes you're at point a,
and you need to get to point z, and there's a really long path a maybe a long phase of
life that you have to go through it. You can't skip it, you can't go around it,
or under it. You have to go through it. And in my mind, I see a loving Father in Heaven saying,
I'm going to make sure you don't have to traverse that dark and dreary wilderness all alone. So,
he sends his Son to be a comforting traveling companion with us. Because sometimes he can
take away the problems, but other times, he has to just walk with us through those problems,
which is fascinating because this character that, in my mind, is a beautiful symbol for Christ,
brings us to these three elements: the path, with the rod, that leads us to the tree. And
in my mind, all three of those things also symbolize Jesus Christ. “All things denote
that there is a Christ.” Take a second and look up John chapter 14 verse 6, and see what Jesus says
about himself. See if you can make a connection between that verse and these three elements.
Isn't that fascinating that Jesus informs us that, I am the way, I am the truth,
and I am the life. “...no man cometh unto the father, but by me.” It's much more than a path;
it's a life that we're following, it's a person, it's Christ. It's much more than scripture,
or the Word of God, that we're holding on to, symbolized by that iron rod. It's the almighty
hand of Jesus Christ that we hold on to. He is the embodiment of truth. It's to him that we hold,
and it's the tree that we come to, that we partake of the fruit of that tree, which leads to eternal
life. Now, life isn't just all good; there's lots of opposition. This river of filthy water,
Lehi doesn't notice that it's filthy. It’s Nephi who has to tell us that later on,
when he has his vision. But, brothers and sisters, there is one dividing line between
a river of filthy water, that represents the bitterness and the depths of hell,
and the path that leads to eternal life. You'll notice, in verse 19, it says, “And I beheld a rod
of iron, and it extended along the bank of the river, and led to the tree by which I stood.”
When I was younger, it used to bug me that the path leads to the tree, and I've got a rod of iron
here, and it bothered me that the Lord would have put that right next to a river that leads to hell,
that represents the bitterness and the depths of hell. I thought, why didn't he create some
space for those of us who are trying really hard to be good? In asking that question,
the assumption is, I'm always good, and I don't want to be tempted by this stuff that's splashing
up onto the path occasionally because the rod is on the bank of the river. The older I've gotten,
the more I've realized it was a very loving Father who knew that we would all spend time
in that river, and would need help getting out. So, he puts the rod, a nice symbol for his Son,
right on the bank of that river so that we wouldn't have to pull ourselves out,
and army crawl across a wilderness, and find the path again. We would just have to reach out for
the almighty hand of the Lord to help pull us out of that river of filthy water, put us back
on the covenant path, to follow his example and face us towards our goal of coming to heaven.
Now, the last thing I wanted to point out is there are a lot of people, multitudes,
who work through the second half of this dream. There's one group I want you to
focus on, in verse 30. Pause the video, and look closely at the order of operations, the verbs,
the action words. What is the order of what these people did in order to come to the tree?
And see if you notice anything really peculiar about that order. Now, many of you noticed,
as you read chapter 8 verse 30, that towards the end, the order of the verbs is, “they did press
their way forward, continually holding fast to the rod of iron until they...”, notice this,
“came forth ... fell down and partook of the fruit...”. I don't know about you, but if we
go into an orchard, with fruit trees, and we're going to pick fruit, we're not going to go forth
and fall down and partake of the fruit. That's the fruit you don't want to pick, that's the
fruit you don't want to eat. You would go forth; you would climb up, and then partake of the fruit.
So, if you're reading this just straight up with English as our frame of reference,
here we would say wow, maybe Lehi told the story wrong. Or, maybe Nephi wrote it down wrong. Or
maybe Joseph translated it wrong, unless it's not a fruit tree, unless it's a symbol of the
outstretched arms of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, people have come on a long, hard journey of life,
and they've hit multiple faults, summits, thinking, okay that's it. And then, they get to
the top of it. No, there's more to learn, more to grow, and then they finally come to the very top,
where the tree is, so to speak, and they find themselves in the presence of God's
only begotten Son. Only then do these orders of verbs make sense, because it's in that setting
that a person would come forth, fall down at his feet, and then partake of the fruit.
So, as you continue your journey of discovery and exploration through this incredible Book of Mormon
this year, pay close attention to all the symbols. All good things denote that there is a Christ.
You're going to find him in all of these beautiful symbols, and stories, and elements. And likewise,
you're going to find symbols, and shadows, and types of the adversary, and of the opposition,
the natural man and natural woman opposition that we all face in life. So, as you move forward,
pay attention to these, because this really becomes our journey up the covenant path.
Christ brings us to the path, helps us hold on to the rod, and he is all of those things,
and ultimately, he brings us to that eternal life which is given through the gift of his Atonement.
The Come Follow Me curriculum has us focused on 1st Nephi 8 through 10. It’s this beautiful dream
and vision that Lehi has of the Tree of Life, plus many other things. And I want to spend time
just on one verse, and really kind of one word only, that we often just don't pay attention to.
It shows up in 1st Nephi chapter 10. And this is after two or two and a half chapters of Lehi just
giving out incredible revelatory insight around the Plan of Salvation. And here's what Nephi says,
after recording all these great words from his father. 1st Nephi chapter 10 verse 17:
“and it came to pass after I, Nephi, having heard all the words of my father,
concerning the things which he saw in a vision, ...” and that's the word I
want to focus on: the word vision. But, let me read just a little bit more here:
“... and also the things which he spake by the power of the Holy Ghost, which power he
received by faith on the Son of God -- and the Son of God was the Messiah who should come – I,
Nephi, was desirous also that I might see, and hear, and know of these things by the
power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him,
as well as in times of old as in the time that he should manifest himself unto the children of men.”
This word, vision, I think is very powerful. Words are powerful, and God himself, Jesus Christ,
is the word. But, this word, vision, I love. I've studied a bunch of languages,
although I still struggle with English, just ask my English teaching wife. The
word vision is such an interesting word, because it connects to many other words in our language
that we don't often think about when we hear the word vision. So, the English language,
it’s a descendent of another language. In fact, scientists, linguists, have talked
about something called Proto-Indo-European. You don't remember what that is, but many
of the languages from India, all the way up and through Europe, this ancient language. And that
language has one key word for vision that ends up showing up in many other words. The ancient word,
and you don't really need to remember this, I'm just going to write it down just so you can see
it, this word here ends up showing up in many other words that show up all over our language.
And I want you to think about this, and see this, because when Nephi talks about vision,
and when you hear the word vision, you can see connections to many other concepts that maybe
you'd never connect it to. So, this word here ends up being the source word, or the foundation word,
for these other words: wisdom: when you see things, you gain wisdom; the word wit,
like that person is wittier, they have a great wit, they have a great mind. Another really
powerful word that shows up from this base word is evidence. And this word, you can actually even
see it right here, we also have the word video, from where our word vision comes from, so video
is something you see. So, evidences are things that are visually apparent. And of course, God
provides the scriptures as evidence for us to see things that are true, that we might gain wisdom.
Now, this one's really awesome, thank goodness for really amazing linguistic scholars to figure this
stuff out, because I would have never seen this on my own. This word also comes from the same
word of vision: history. Like, what? How does that happen? The word history comes from the
Greek word that means ‘to inquire’. My writing is probably illegible here, but history really
meant ‘to inquire’, and you inquire about trying to understand how something came to
be. In order to understand how something came to be, you had to have a vision, and evidence,
to see the pathway of how something happened the way it did, and that is history. And so,
the scriptures are full of God's acts of salvation on our behalf, and it creates a history. Or,
more importantly, we can inquire about what God has done on our behalf, and he will show
us evidence of his love, that gives us wisdom, and he can again show that to us in visions.
Now, look at this: what Lehi experienced, this vision, has given tremendous insight,
tremendous views, tremendous evidence of God's love for us, this path of salvation, that we can
follow it and gain wisdom by partaking of the Tree of Life. So, the action for you is to look at what
evidences have you seen of God's love in your life, and how has that brought you to wisdom?
What other evidences do you see in the scriptures that lead you to greater wisdom about God? What
history, or what inquiries, have you engaged in to gain evidence for God's love in your life you?