Spiritual or Temporal — Part 2

Wow, that was long! Well, I know who in the family inherited Dad’s ability to go on and on in a talk. Anyway, Sukkot is in full swing, and this morning, Nephi addressed the family as Dad requested for our Hakhel observance. I’ll save you time by hitting the highlights.

• 600 years from when we left Jerusalem is when God will come down to the world. (Odd that it’s such a nice, round number. Also, at first it seems like Nephi’s putting himself out there to make such a specific prediction, but he won’t be around in 600 years, so not really.)
• When God comes down here, the wicked people at Jerusalem will kill Him. (Yeah, we all know how you feel about the people at Jerusalem, Nephi.)
• When He dies, bad stuff will happen.
• The people at Jerusalem will be scourged, scattered, hated etc. because of what they did. (This doesn’t make sense to me. I thought Dad and Nephi were saying the Jews at Jerusalem were about to be destroyed by Babylon when we left. But now it’s actually not for another 600 years? Why did we leave then?!)
• God will eventually gather all of Israel
• Many of the scriptural prophesies about Israel are talking about our family. (Seems kind of arrogant and/or self-centered in my view.)
• Then he read some of Isaiah’s prophecies about Israel. (I didn’t really understand what he was getting at here. Were these prophecies about Israel and our family meant to be understood as a spiritual scattering and gathering or a literal scattering and gathering?)

So an even more brief summary is that

• Jerusalem is wicked (so wicked they’ll kill God (not sure how it’s possible to kill God))
• Good thing we got out of there because it’s going to be destroyed, and
• We’re special because the prophets were talking about us.

That’s basic Nephi 101; nothing really new here.

Afterward, I was asking Nephi if the stuff he’s talking about symbolizes spiritual occurrences or physical occurrences. See what I’m thinking is how can people physically kill God? It’s not possible, right? So this has to be referring to the spiritual events that occur when someone rejects God. From the point of view of their spirit, God is dead and can no longer aid them because they have cut themselves off from Him. Right?

But Nephi said that what he’s talking about is both spiritual and physical. The prophecies come through the spirit but refer to real physical things that will occur. So yeah, I still don’t get how that works. Again, man can’t actually kill God. It’s got to be symbolic. That’s the only way it makes any sense.

Nephi then said he didn’t dare speak anymore, and we need to believe the prophecies on the plates. But I do believe them, it’s just that Nephi and I understand them differently. Oh well.

The Interpreter

Sorry it’s been awhile since the last update. Our promised land (assuming we don’t have to move again) is fertile, but also takes a lot of work. We just finished our first harvest and we’re going to be having a big feast in a couple days to celebrate.

The locals I mentioned in the last post gave us some pointers on prepping our fields, and then nearly all of our seeds took to this soil really well, and so the harvest was much better than we expected. God has definitely blessed us here.

Yesterday I finished building an altar. Given our harvest is a gift from God, it’s important that we offer sacrifices of thanksgiving as part of our feast. I’ve never built an altar before, but given the materials and tools I had on hand, I gotta say, I did quite well.

Dad asked Nephi to teach the family as part of the celebration, and Nephi seems ecstatic. Dad’s been pretty sick, and so Nephi has been taking over a lot of Dad’s duties which rubs some people (read: Laban) the wrong way. I’ll be honest, it kinda bugs me too. Partially because he’s my little brother, but mostly because of the way he goes about it. He’s so confident in his interpretation of the scriptures. In my experience there are kind of 6 levels of support the scriptures can give to a person's interpretation.

1. The scriptures explicitly support an interpretation. At this point, it’s not really even an interpretation. For example, the scriptures plainly state that Abraham received a covenant from God regarding his posterity (us).
2. The scriptures implicitly support an interpretation. The scriptures don’t come right out and say it, but the stories told, or the statements made make a lot more sense if the interpretation is true. For example, it’s my own personal view that the practice of taking multiple wives is just a horrible idea. Now the scriptures don’t come right out and say that, in fact we have stories of Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon all having more than one wife. However, not one of those stories goes well. Abraham and Jacob both experience tons of drama because of it. David and Solomon pretty much lose their souls because of it. So my interpretation of the scriptures is that multiple wives is a horrible idea. None of the prophets say it, but I think the scriptures implicitly support my interpretation.
3. The scriptures neither support nor refute an interpretation. Sometimes the prophets say things that are just kind of open or it’s not explained what they’re talking about. For example, when Zenos talks about an olive tree and the grafting back and forth of branches from tame and wild olive trees, he doesn’t come right out and explain exactly what he means. Dad and Nephi have both offered their interpretations of what Zenos’ story means. And as I’ve looked at what he’s saying, it appears to me that their interpretation is consistent with his story, but is by no means the only possible interpretation. Other interpretations that the prophets taught back in Jerusalem are also consistent with the story. So who’s right? I’m still in the process of trying to figure out some principles/rules that can help me answer that question. My operating rule before was to listen to the priests and prophets God had appointed to lead His people. But the last decade of experiences has destroyed that operating rule for me.
4. A roughly equal number of passages support an interpretation as refute it. This one is tricky, and it’s the source of another conflict I’ve had with Dad and Nephi. There are so many passages where the Lord promises He will protect and flourish our people. Yet Dad and Nephi have a roughly equal number of passages they often cite to indicate Jerusalem was ripe for destruction. So again, how do you determine who’s right? Well I have no idea. As I stated above, my operating rule on stuff like this has been pretty well smashed.
5. The scriptures only support an interpretation if you pull some serious mental gymnastics. This generally involves taking a passage and reinterpreting certain words to mean something different than those words are commonly understood to mean. Then using those reinterpreted words to make the passage support an interpretation.
6. One passage on its own supports an interpretation, but you have to ignore lots of other scriptures that refute that interpretation. Back to the multiple wives example, the law does allow for taking more than one wife, and so people think it’s okay. But to do that, you have to ignore all the stories of heartache and salvation lost among those who have taken more than one wife. It’s just a bad idea.

Anyway, numbers 3 and 4 have been a constant source of disagreement between me and Nephi. And it doesn’t bother me necessarily that we have different interpretations. Instead what’s annoying is his complete confidence in his interpretation and an unwillingness to entertain the possibility that my interpretation might also be valid.

So yeah, that’s what I have to look forward to when Nephi takes center stage in a couple days. I think instead I’ll try to focus on the cool altar that I built.