Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Ether 1-6

LINK FOR RECORDING OF APRIL 7 


READING FOR NEXT WEEK

Ether 6-15

Following are the quotes from our class discussion. Thanks for being here today and adding to the discussion.

BROTHER OF JARED

“One of the greatest . . . prophets in the Book of Mormon—indeed, a very strong case could be made for calling him the greatest of the prophets in the Book of Mormon—goes unnamed in the record that documents Christ’s remarkable life.That prophet is identified to the modern reader only as “the brother of Jared.” Yet even in such near anonymity, the revelation that unfolded before this man’s eyes was so extraordinary that his life and legacy to us have become synonymous with bold, consummate, perfect faith.”

“In the dispersion required of them at the time of the Tower of Babel, the people of Jared arrived at “the great sea which divideth the lands” (Ether 2:13), where they pitched their tents, awaiting further revelation regarding the crossing of a mighty ocean. For four years they awaited divine direction, but apparently they waited too casually—without supplication and exertion.
. . . It is difficult to imagine what a three-hour rebuke from the Lord might be like, but the brother of Jared endured it.With immediate repentance and immediate prayer, this prophet once again sought guidance for the journey they had been assigned and for those who were to pursue it. God accepted his repentance and lovingly gave further direction for this crucial mission.”


 BARGES

“For such an oceanic crossing, these families and their flocks needed seaworthy crafts similar to the barges they had constructed for earlier water travel—small, light, dish-shaped vessels identical in design above and beneath so that they were capable of staying afloat even when facing overwhelming waves or, worse yet, when they might be overturned by them. These “exceedingly tight” crafts (Ether 2:17) were obviously boats of unprecedented design and undiminished capability, made under the direction of Him who ruled the seas and the winds that rend them, to the end that the vessels might travel with the “lightness of a fowl upon the water” (Ether 2:16).”


 BROTHER OF JARED

“Surely God, as well as the reader, feels something very striking in the childlike innocence and fervor of this man’s faith.‘Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this.’ Perhaps there is no more powerful single line of faith spoken by man in scripture. It is almost as if he is encouraging God, emboldening Him, reassuring Him. Not “Behold, O Lord, I am sure that thou canst do this.” Not “Behold, O Lord, thou hast done many greater things than this.” However uncertain the prophet is about his own ability, he has no uncertainty about God’s power.There is nothing here but a single, clear, bold, and assertive declaration with no hint or element of vacillation. It is encouragement to Him who needs no encouragement but who surely must have been touched by it.‘Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this.’”

“A final—and in terms of the faith of the brother of Jared (which is the issue at hand) surely the most
persuasive—explanation for me is that Christ is saying to the brother of Jared,‘Never have I showed myself unto man in this manner, without my volition, driven solely by the faith of the beholder.’ As a rule, prophets are invited into the presence of the Lord, are bidden to enter His presence by Him and only with His sanction.The brother of Jared, on the other hand, stands alone then (and we assume now) in having thrust himself through the veil, not as an unwelcome guest but perhaps technically an uninvited one. Says Jehovah,‘Never has man come before me with such exceeding faith as thou hast; for were it not so ye could not have seen my finger. . . . Never has man believed in me as thou hast.’. Obviously the Lord Himself is linking unprecedented faith with this unprecedented vision. If the vision is not unique, then it has to be the faith— and how the vision is obtained—that is so remarkable.The only way this faith could be so remarkable would be in its ability to take this prophet, uninvited, where others had only been able to go by invitation.
Indeed it would appear that this is Moroni’s own understanding of the circumstance, for he later writes, ‘Because of the knowledge [which has come as a result of faith] of this man he could not be kept from beholding within the veil.     . . .‘Wherefore, having this perfect knowledge of God, he could not be kept from within the veil; therefore he saw Jesus’”

“No, this may be an absolutely unprecedented case of a prophet’s will and faith and purity so closely approaching that of heaven’s that the man moves from understanding God to being actually like Him, with His same thrust of will and faith, at least in this one instance.What a remarkable doctrinal statement about the power of a mortal man’s faith! And not an ethereal, unreachable, select category of a man, either.This is one who once forgot to call upon the Lord, one whose best ideas focused on rocks, and one who doesn’t even have a traditional name in the book that has immortalized his remarkable feat of faith. Given such a man with such faith, it should not be surprising that the Lord would show this prophet much, show him visions that would be relevant to the mission of all the Book of Mormon prophets and to the events of the latter-day dispensation in which the book would be received.
After the prophet stepped through the veil to behold the Savior of the world, he was not limited in seeing the rest of what the eternal world revealed. Indeed, the Lord showed him ‘all the inhabitants of the earth which had been, and also all that would be; and he withheld them not from his sight, even unto the ends of the earth’ (Ether 3:25).The staying power for such an experience was once again the faith of the brother of Jared, for ‘the Lord could not withhold anything from him, for he knew that the Lord could show him all things’ (Ether 3:26).”


BROTHER OF JARED

“This interpretation helps reveal the stark contrast between the brother of Jared, the father of the noncovenant people to which Moroni would draw the attention of his gentile readers, and Abraham, the father of the covenant people on which the rest of the Book of Mormon focuses.Where Abraham is definitively the called one, the one who—unlike Adam before him— responded to God’s call with ‘Here am I!’ (see especially Genesis 22:1, 7, 11), the brother of Jared is the uncalled or unbidden but nonetheless faithful one. As a model for the similarly uncalled Gentiles, the brother of Jared displays a sort of non-Abrahamic faith that, if imitated by Gentiles generally, can result in ‘the unfolding [of] all [of God’s] revelations’ (Ether 4:7).”


BROTHER OF JARED

“The Book of Mormon is predicated on the willingness of men and women to ‘rend that veil of unbelief ’ in order to behold the revelations—and the Revelation—of God (Ether 4:15). It would seem that the humbling experience of the brother of Jared in his failure to pray and his consternation over the sixteen stones were included in this account to show just how mortal and just how normal he was—so very much like the men and women we know and at least in some ways so much like ourselves. His belief in himself and his view of himself may have been limited—much like our view of ourselves. But his belief in God was unprecedented. It was without doubt or limit: ‘I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man; therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger' (Ether 3:4). And from that command given to the Lord, for it does seem to be something of a command, the brother of Jared and the reader of the Book of Mormon would never be the same again. Ordinary individuals with ordinary challenges could rend the veil of unbelief and enter the realms of eternity. And Christ, who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem His people, would be standing at the edge of that veil to usher the believer through.”


at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)