The Inquisitive Christian

I would highly recommend reading my previous post, “The Devil is in the Details” before proceeding with this one. The concepts of hell and the devil are also used anachronistically in this chapter, and I delved into those issues at length previously. I see no need to repeat myself (unlike the Book of Mormon), especially when there are new issues that will take us on quite a theological roller coaster. I texted my mother with a screenshot of the heading of this chapter and informed her my blog was about to get even more interesting. We will see Lehi addressing his son, Jacob, and will catch a glimpse of Joseph Smith’s completely warped views of the Fall. As the title clearly states, I hate it. Keep reading to see why.

2 Nephi, Chapter 2

Redemption comes through the Holy Messiah. Freedom of choice (agency) is essential to existence and progression. Adam fell that men might be. Men are free to choose liberty and eternal life. About 588-570 B.C.

1: “And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my firstborn in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood thou hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow, because of the rudeness of they brethren.”

2: “Nevertheless, Jacob, my firstborn in the wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.”

That strikes me as a strange phrase. To consecrate means to set something apart as holy. We know that God can use things for His greater purposes, as Romans 8:28 states: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” While we can see that God can word through afflictions and trials of various kinds, it’s quite different to call the afflictions and trials themselves as set apart for holiness. While there are numerous examples of God bringing good out of evil circumstances throughout the Old Testament, this concept is not plainly stated until the New Testament.

3: “Wherefore, thy soul shall be blessed, and thou shalt dwell safely with thy brother, Nephi; and thy days shall be spent in the service of God. Wherefore, I know that thou art redeemed, because of the righteousness of thy Redeemer; for thou hast beheld that in the fulness of time he cometh to bring salvation unto men.”

4: “And thou has beheld in thy youth his glory; wherefore, thou art blessed even as they unto whom he shall minister in the flesh; for the Spirit is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. And they way is prepared from the fall of man, and salvation is free.”

We know salvation in the Old Testament was possible through faith (Gen 15:6, Isaiah 12:2, Hab. 2:4), but the description of salvation as a free gift was not developed until the New Testament. Romans 6:23 states, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 2:8-9 also reinforces this idea: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.”

5: “And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.”

6: “Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.”

The phrase “Holy Messiah” is never used in the Bible. We can conclude after the fact that the Messiah is holy because he is referred to as “the Messiah” in the Old Testament (Daniel 9:25-26) and “the Holy One of God,” or just “Holy One” in the New Testament (Mark 1:24, Acts 3:14). However, the combination of those two words is specific to the Book of Mormon.

7: “Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered.”

Jesus being our sacrifice to fulfill the law (or, as it is put here, to answer the ends of the law) was another concept not realized until the New Testament. Matthew 5:17-20 states, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets, I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.” In Romans 10:4, we see that “Christ is the end of the law…” See Galations 3:19-26, 1 Peter 2:22, and Hebrews 10:1-10 for more information.

8: “Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise.”

It is true the Christ was “made alive in the Spirit,” per 1 Peter 3:18. Romans 8:11 ties this concept neatly into our salvation, stating, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who indwells in you.” The concept of the resurrection of the dead is also mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:52 and 1 Thess. 4:16. Interestingly enough, this concept is also prophesied about in Daniel 12:2: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.” See also Isaiah 26:19. This is one of the EXCEPTIONALLY rare times when the Book of Mormon doesn’t contradict the Bible or discuss New Testament concepts in an inappropriate era.

9: “Wherefore, he is the firstfruits unto God, inasmuch as he shall make intercession for all the children of men; and they that believe in him shall be saved.”

Jesus is called the “first fruits of those who are asleep” in 1 Corinthians 15:20. Verses 21-22 go on to say, “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.” The idea of Jesus being the first fruit has its roots in the Old Testament (Leviticus 23:10-12). When the Israelites entered the promised land, they were to bring the first sheaves of the harvest to the priest to wave before God, symbolizing the dedication of the rest of the harvest to God. Along with this, a 1-year-old male lamb with no imperfections or flaws of any kind had to be sacrificed. This was a foreshadowing of Jesus, a perfect and sinless man who was both fully human and fully God, serving as the ultimate sacrifice for sin and being the first to be raised from the dead in order to pave the way for eternal life for everyone who believes in him.

However, this concept of Jesus as the first fruits wasn’t developed until the New Testament. Jesus as our intercessor is also never mentioned in the Old Testament. See Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25, 1 Timothy 2:5, and 1 John 2:1 for more information.

10: “And because of the intercession for all, all men come unto God; wherefore, they stand in the presence of him, to be judged of him according to the truth and holiness which is in him. Wherefore, the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the atonement –“

Final judgment by God was mentioned once in the Old Testament in Ecclesiastes 12:14: “For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” All other references of this event are in the New Testament. See Matt 25:46, John 12:48, 2 Cor. 5:10, Heb. 9:27, and Rev. 20:11-15. The rest of verse 10 is a jumbled mess and I’m unable to fully understand what Smith was trying to convey besides punishment of some sort. I’m not even sure he understood what he was trying to convey. I don’t know what he was smoking, but I definitely don’t want any.

11: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn of the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.”

I’m just going to go on ahead and say it: this is stupid. Jaw-droppingly, vacuously, drooling-out-of-both-sides-of-the-mouth stupid. All we have to do is look to the creation narrative in the beginning of Genesis to see there was absolutely goodness and righteousness without the presence of evil in the Garden of Eden. After creating various things, God called them “good.” He did not in turn create things he deemed bad because there needed to be opposition. While it’s true that God created Lucifer, he did NOT create him to be Satan. He did not create His own enemy because He needed opposition or balance. Lucifer chose to become Satan. You can read more about this in Isaiah 14:12-14, Ezekiel 28:12-18, Luke 10:18, and Rev. 12:7-9.

While the capacity for evil was always present, that doesn’t mean evil itself was. And it doesn’t mean God created evil, because he didn’t. People who believe He did often cite Isaiah 45:7, which, in the KJV says, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” The Hebrew word here, however, is “ra’,”which has various meanings and is translated as “calamity” in modern translations. In contrast, Hab. 1:13, tells us, “Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor…” James 1:13 states, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.” While I don’t want to get too far off into the woods here, I will say that God is “ruled,” if you will, by His own nature. He cannot act in ways that are outside the realm of logical and natural possibility. Take, for instance, the question, “Can God create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it?” That is not a valid question, because it is logically absurd. I can say, “God can purple dinosaur triangular silliness.” That sentence, which isn’t actually a sentence at all, does not magically become anything other than illogical gobbledygook just because I affixed the words “God can” in front of it. Thus, a righteous God cannot act against Himself by creating something that He cannot look upon.

12: “Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.”

13: “And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment or misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.”

The only true thing in the midst of that pure, unadulterated, steaming pile of balderdash above is that we wouldn’t be here without a God to create us. The rest of it was addressed in my commentary above.

14: “And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that are in them, both things to act and things to be acted upon.”

While I’m in an already sour mood because of this nonsense, I’d also like to point out something else irritating: not capitalizing “Him” or “He” when speaking about God. Give Him the respect He deserves, you blasphemous creep.

15: “And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.”

He didn’t create the forbidden fruit because there needed to be an opposite of the tree of life. He simply gave Adam and Eve free will to choose to either obey or disobey Him. Love and obedience are neither of those things unless they are freely chosen. He created humans to have a relationship with Him, as evidenced by Genesis 3:8, when Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” If they knew what God sounded like in the Garden of Eden, then that means God visiting them was a regular occurrence, giving a glimpse of the deeply close, personal relationship He had with them.

The phrase “And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man” hints at where this is going, and I don’t like it one bit.

16: “Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.”

17: “And I, Lehi, according to the things which I have read, must needs suppose that an angel of God, according to that which is written, had fallen from heaven; wherefore, he became a devil, having sought that which was evil before God.”

Lehi would not have had access to the Old Testament writings concerning Lucifer’s fall. Chapters 13 and 14 in Isaiah were likely written after Babylon had become the main threat to Isreal, near the end of the 7th century B.C. If Lehi and his family left Jerusalem for the wilderness around 600 B.C. as 1 Nephi 2 purports then arrived in the Americas between 591-589 B.C, then it’s incredibly unlikely, even impossible, that Lehi would have read that passage. See here for more details: First Isaiah → Historical Context – Study Guide – Yale Bible Study He definitely wouldn’t have had access to the Book of Ezekiel, which was written around 590-570 B.C. Biblical literature – Prophecy, Poetry, & Parables | Britannica. This is simply another instance of Joseph Smith trying desperately to convince readers that the Book of Mormon was an ancient text.

18: “And because he had fallen from heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all mankind. Wherefore, he said unto Eve, yea, even that old serpent, who is the devil, who is the father of all lies, wherefore he said: Partake of the forbidden fruit, and ye shall not die, but ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

See my previous post “The Devil is in the Details” for an in-depth discussion of why these concepts are not appropriate for this time period. He is also not called the “father of all lies” until the New Testament in John 8:44.

19: “And after Adam and Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit they were driven out of the garden of Eden, to till the earth.”

20: “And they have brought forth children; yea, even the family of all the earth.”

21: “And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men. For he gave commandment that all men must repent; for he showed unto all men that they were lost, because of the transgression of their parents.”

There is no hint in the Bible that the reason people lived so long in Genesis because God wanted them to repent. It’s more likely they lived so long because it was so soon after the fall. Sickness, disease, genetic weaknesses, and other physical frailties that lead to death in old age hadn’t taken hold yet. It is also possible that God allowed such long lives so the earth could become more populated. Their long lives also would have solidified the knowledge of the fall and its consequences through oral tradition. There are a lot of different theories discussing these lifespans, none of which make any mention at all of the need for repentance as being a reason. You can read about some of these ideas here: Why Did People in Genesis Live for So Long? | Tabletalk.

22: “And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.”

Yes. And that would have been a good thing.

23: “And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.”

And there you have it, folks: Joseph Smith is glorifying disobedience to God because of his idiotic belief that it was necessary in order for humans to live a fulfilling life. It’s quite interesting that he assumed Adam and Eve didn’t experience joy at getting to walk with God in the garden. While I’ve already addressed why evil wouldn’t have been necessary at all for the world, I’d like to now turn my attention to Smith’s bizarre ideas regarding sex and procreation.

Let’s start with the basic premise that God created Eve for Adam. We see this in Genesis 2:18, where God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” We then see in verse 21 and 22 where God caused Adam to fall asleep and fashioned a woman out of his rib. After this, God “brought her to the man.” We see Adam’s delight when he says, in verse 23: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” It is then clarified in verse 24-25: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” As we see, a beautiful, perfect, loving union between a man and a woman was God’s original design for us. There was no sexual shame between Adam and Eve in regards to their nakedness. They were made to enjoy one another on a spiritual and physical level.

We also see how ridiculous Smith’s idea is that they could not have had children without sinning in Genesis 1:28, when God commands Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it…” If the fall was necessary for sex and procreation, God would not have told him to do this until after the fall. Another clear indication of this is in Genesis 3:16 when God lays a curse on Eve, saying, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children…” God’s declaration that he would “greatly multiply” the pain of childbirth after she had sinned means that having children was expected before the fall. Insisting otherwise means viewing sex as inherently sinful when it isn’t. God created it. God does not create inherently bad or wicked things, as I demonstrated earlier in this post.

24: “But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.”

So, God created Adam and Eve so they would disobey Him and sin? That’s unhinged. And completely blasphemous.

25: Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”

So Adam took one for the team and rebelled against God so we could all be happy? How noble. This outrageous chapter hinges on the completely false premise that evil is necessary for good to exist. The God in the Book of Mormon is absolutely not the God of the Bible. Did God know Adam and Eve would sin? Yes. But foreknowledge does not equal causation. Him knowing they would does not mean He caused them to sin or created them for the express purpose of sinning so he could curse them and all of mankind. That would make God quite the diabolical monster, and not one that I would be remotely interested in serving. I am grateful that that isn’t who He is.

26: “And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.”

Per Genesis 3:22, the knowledge of good an evil was not a positive thing for mankind: “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…” God then banishes them from the Garden of Eden, and therefore the tree of life, and places an angel with a flaming sword to guard the entrance, never to allow man to eat of that fruit again. God is the arbiter of what is good and what is bad. If God does not view the fall positively, then neither should we, no matter how much that beady-eyed little charlatan Joseph Smith thought we should.

27: “Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient to man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.”

Well, I’m certainly miserable after having read this flaming dumpster fire of a chapter.

28: “And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words, and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit;”

God is never called a mediator in the Old Testament. This is a New Testament concept that conveys Jesus as our mediator. See 1 Timothy 2:5, Galatians 3:19-20, Hebrews 8:6, 9:15, and 12:24 for more information on this.

29: “And choose not eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over you in his own kingdom.”

Hell is not Satan’s kingdom. He rules absolutely nothing there, nor will he. See my post “Satan Isn’t in Charge of Hell. Obviously” for a more in-depth discussion.

30: “I have spoken these few words unto you all, my sons, in the last days of my probation; and I have chosen the good part, according to the words of the prophet. And I have none other object save it be the everlasting welfare of your souls. Amen.”

Theologically speaking, this was probably the worst chapter in the Book of Mormon thus far. I recall a quote by Joseph Smith on the introduction page of this wretched book: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” I have repeatedly demonstrated thus far the massive historical, chronological, and theological issues, rendering it a far cry from “the most correct of any book on earth.” Even worse, the Book of Mormon will absolutely not get you “nearer to God by abiding by its precepts.” It will do the opposite. A well-meaning Mormon friend of mine once stated that the Bible and the Book of Mormon were like study guides for a test. The more study guides you have, the better you’ll do on the test, he reasoned. The Book of Mormon is a faulty study guide. If you rely on it in any way, you will fail the test, and that has eternal consequences. This chapter specifically has told horrible lies about the character of God; ones that you cannot believe in order to be a Christian. Joshua 24:15 states, “Choose this day whom you will serve.” I implore you all to choose wisely.