Enos through Words of Mormon

All quotes come from: “Enos, Jarom, Omni: A Brief Theological Introduction” by
Sharon J. Harris

Purpose of these books: The Book of Mormon’s title page says the covenant is the purpose

of the book. And it lists Israel’s remnant as its first intended recipients: “Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel,” and, farther down, “to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers, and that they may know the covenants of the lord, that they are not cast off forever”. To fulfill this covenant, then, two things must happen. First, a Lamanite remnant of Lehi and Sariah’s family must survive on this land. Second, the record of the Nephite prophets must also survive until it reaches its intended audience in the latter days. Once we recognize this covenant, we see it everywhere in these small books.

One way that the burden and awareness of the covenant come up in these books is through

inheritance. The plates are an inheritance that travels through time from author to author, usually from one generation to the next. In this inheritance, they feel obligated to the covenant, and this obligation is weighty enough to sustain the plates’ transfer, even to or through some unlikely contributors. Some of them don’t say much, but honoring their receipt of the plates, they perpetuate the record’s progress through time.

ENOS

Enos feels like a friend. He chats directly with the reader, writing as though he is

looking right at you: “I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God”. We might say

that Enos is someone you could have a root beer with. He is also of course, a prophet

and a Book of Mormon author. About two-thirds of his short book describes a prayer or

a series of prayers, and the balance tells what he did in consequence of the answers

he received. His words don’t sound like a one-time, one-day-only event. Rather, Enos

presents a process that unfolded over time – maybe days, weeks, or even years. I

propose that Enos’s wrestle and its consequences filled his whole life and whole book.

Enos 1-8

This is possibly the end of the first prayer.

Enos 11-15

Does this feel like it could be another or several prayers?

Let’s think about the present. Who feels like your enemy? The person who

makes fun of your child? The unreasonable neighbor? An ex? A co-worker out to get

you? The one who lies and still gets prominent church callings? Or, who as a group

seems to be against everything you stand for? Socialists? Democrats? Republicans?

Libertarians? Pro-choice advocates? Pro-lifers? Environmentalists? Feminists?

Preppers? Neo-Nazis? Globalists? Pornographers? Suburban racists? To put it in

Mormons’ terms, which manner of –ites? Whoever they are and in whatever ways they

are dangerous or destructive, would you engage in a spiritual wrestle over a long

period of time to secure blessings for them and their descendants? Enos’s

experience suggests that the same people we view as antithetical to our ideals could

ultimately play a key role in our salvation, to say nothing of the commandments to love

our neighbor, judge not, and pray for our enemies.

Kenosis - a concept in theology that means emptying out one’s self. The word is derived

from the Greek text of Philippians 2:5-11

The Greek verb kenoo is “to empty,” and this verb is translated in verse 7 as “to make of no

reputation.” Other translations of the Bible present the phrase as “made himself nothing,” “emptied himself," and “humbled himself.” The key detail this passage shows, however, is that the outcome of this self-emptying is power. Although it may be counterintuitive, the radical self-emptying described in the first half of the passage causes what is found in the second half. Christ emptied himself, or made himself of no reputation, and, “as a result” or “wherefore” “God also hath highly exalted him.” Self-emptying leads to power in God’s economy. Theologians, therefore, use the word kenosis to describe this emptying of power that increases power.

What does all this self-emptying have to do with Enos? Once we are familiar with kenosis,

we can see that his prayer takes a similar shape. Enos pours out his whole soul unto God on behalf of others. And as a result, God covenants with him, securing blessings for many people in the future. The realization that giving up power increases power prompts us to ask, like Enos, “Lord, how is it done?”

Enos is made whole, and in the next verse he pours out his “whole soul unto God for the

Nephites”. Enos had to be made whole before he could self-empty because self-emptying succeeds from wholeness. This happens in two ways, both because only those who are whole can fully see beyond themselves and their own needs, and because only those who are whole can go through the process of completely emptying. In what sounds like a tongue-twister, Enos could not pour out his whole soul until his soul was whole. This is the revelation and power of self-emptying or kenosis. Loving people, even those unseen or far away – even our enemies – becomes real and essential.

Enos pours out his whole soul, struggles in the spirit, prays with many long strugglings,

labors with all diligence, and cries unto God continually. Self-emptying is beautiful and redemptive. It reveals others to us as whole people and fellow members of the body of Christ. And self-emptying is also an enormous amount of work. It’s more like mining than like knocking over a pitcher of water. Self-emptying reveals others to us as real and worthy people – their wonderfulness, their warts, their wisdom, their what-on-earth-were-they-thinking, and everything else.

It’s worth reflecting further on what our work of loving looks like. Much of Enos’s struggle may have been the internal work of shifting his view of the Lamanites, no longer seeing them as metaphoric swine, because he could see them as heirs and heralds of salvation.

We have to assume that Enos really had come to see his own dependence on the

Lamanites for the survival of their entire family and that his dogged praying and struggling grew out of having come to truly want those blessings for the Lamanites. We find ourselves in a similar position today. We need others, including those who, considering the regular orbits of our daily lives, seem unrelated to us. And so we, too, have work to do. Are we ready to pour out our whole souls? Are we ready for kenosis? Are we ready for the revelation of God’s children to us and the work that will undoubtedly accompany it?

Self-emptying isn’t usually a team sport, but what would a whole community of

such individuals look like? Perhaps the Anti-Nephi-Lehies who buried their weapons,

the early saints who lived the United Order, the Ghanian disciples in the early 1960s

and 1970s who organized themselves into branches without priesthood or baptism,

awaiting the arrival of authorized missionaries. A self-emptying people looks like Zion,

where the people are of one heart and one mind, with no poor among them.

ENOS

Why bring up Enos’s weaknesses? What does it help? At a minimum, it shows

at least two things: first, people are complicated, and second, God can handle it. Yet

his example – the good and the not-so-good – means that we, too, can do tremendous

good in spite of our blind spots. We can receive binding, saving covenants. Our sins

can be remitted, even while we are weak in ways that aren’t completely apparent to us.

We can still do a lot of good and exercise a lot of love. Enos wrestled, struggled,

labored, emptied himself, and ultimately blessed the Lamanites over the course of his

life, but he wasn’t perfect.

Jacob said he inherited the plates from Nephi 55 years after Lehi left Jerusalem. Enos

said he finished his record 179 years after that journey. That is 124 years!

We get a sense from these scriptures that Enos could pivot from heartfelt prayers on behalf

of the Lamanites to impassioned contempt for them when he can’t save them. But if these textual subtleties are real, I want to give Enos credit for putting them there. He is the one who juxtaposes his prayers for a covenant to bless the Lamanites with his tirade about their depravity. He is the one who, in his final verses, puts away his obsession with Lamanite wickedness and finishes his record and life doing what he can serving the Nephites. Maybe this is why Enos’s account is so compelling: in a soup of his own noble and selfish consequences of others’ agency, he models the lifelong wrestle to understand and keep covenants.

JAROM

Jarom can be easy to overlook. He kept the plates for 59 years, so it wasn’t for

lack of time or experience that he didn’t write much. He excuses his brevity at both the

beginning and the end of his account, saying that the “plates were small.” Perhaps

Jarom’s inconspicuousness is part of his total commitment to the larger purpose of the

covenant. I invite us to rethink our perceptions of Jarom and understand the

significance of what is NOT in his book.

And yet a robust community of faithful Nephites is not how we often think of Jarom and

his contemporaries. Growing up in the church, I remember fellow Latter-day saints

inferring that these small books, especially the books of Jarom and Omni, indicate how

the Nephites had slipped spiritually. A closer look at what the book of Jarom (and of

Omni) relates, however, shows that on the whole, they maintained covenants,

prophecies, revelation, keeping the commandments, and communion with the Holy

Ghost as high priorities, both individually and in communities. The authors and

societies behind these small books may seem to be not as spiritual, dominant, or

inspiring as other authors of the small plates, but we could look at them another way.

The description of Jesus’s self-emptying as found in the King James Version of the

New Testament could be applied to these writers and their contemporaries: they “made

themselves of no reputation.” We should probably give the authors of the Jarom and

Omni books more credit. The writers of these small books kept their focus on the

greater need for the plates rather than on themselves, and they managed to do so for a

long time.

Jarom 1-3

Reading between the lines, Jarom reveals himself as deeply devoted to the

covenant that his father secured, and his deference to the needs of the covenant

means that he deflects attention away from his own position, revelations, and interests.

Consequently, we can find Jarom’s commitment in his omissions. Jarom informs the

reader, “I shall not write the things of my prophesying nor of my revelations…For have

not my fathers revealed the plan of salvation?...Yea; and this sufficeth me”. Keeping

his eye on what is needed for the record, Jarom is content to leave his spiritual

accomplishments unrecorded.

Although Jarom worries over the stiffneckedness and hard-heartedness of his people,

he also confirms that “there are many among us who have many revelations, for they

are not all stiffnecked. And as many as are not stiffnecked and have faith, have

communion with the Holy Spirit.

Jarom has prophecies and revelations, and if we read between the lines, prophecies and

revelations that are similar to those of his fathers. We have already seen the magnitude and import of Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, and Enos’s prophecies. If Jarom is metaphorically batting with them, he, too, is in the spiritual big leagues. Jarom, however, does not feel that his ministry requires that he disclose the scope or impressiveness of his revelations. In the face of limited space on the plates, Jarom deemphasizes his own spiritual experiences. To prioritize keeping a record that will benefit the Lamanites, Jarom minimizes our view of his spirituality. In other words, he empties himself in the service of the Lamanite descendants. This is kenosis again. And as we have already seen, Jarom is not the only one in his time who empties himself this way. Many others also keep an eye toward prophesied events instead of a limited and myopic view of their current situation only. Jarom refers to multiple prophets, priests, teachers, kings and leaders who were “mighty men of faith,” and to the many who had “many revelations” and “communion with the Holy Spirit”. They were part of a community of spiritually-minded, covenant Nephites.

Jarom is the first writer on the small plates to NOT use the word filthiness. Nephi, Jacob,

and Enos each apply “filthiness” to the Lamanites, but not Jarom. He leaves it out. His descriptions are more dispassionate, showing simply that the Lamanites do not observe the Nephites’ religion. The two reports Jarom makes – that the Lamanites “loved murder and would drink the blood of beasts” – may simply refer to local religious rituals and explicitly signal that the Lamanites did not follow the Law of Moses, which forbids drinking the blood of animals killed for their meat. Even though by this point the Nephites and Lamanites are established enemies, Jarom stops at this description and avoids adding judgmental commentary.

The bulk of Jarom’s account, as it turns out, details efforts to keep the Nephites from being

destroyed because of wickedness. These priorities came from the top because, according to Jarom, “our kings and leaders were mighty men in the faith of the Lord; and they taught the people the ways of the Lord.” Jarom maintains that this ministry of pricking their hearts with the word, continually stirring them up to repentance, is what kept the Nephites from being destroyed upon the face of the land. During this period, Jarom portrays Nephite leadership as concentrated on prolonging the Nephites’ survival partially because of the prophecies of their fathers and partially despite the prophecies that said they would not survive. The prophecies said that if (or, really, when) the Nephites failed to live in righteousness, they would be wiped off the land. Jarom writes in earnest, and it seems that he and his associates sincerely believe that their lives depend on how well they heed these visions and warnings from their founding fathers.

Some take a kind of satisfaction or even pleasure in observing what they deem to be

worldliness or wickedness in others since, to them, it confirms their religious views. They see troubles– fatherless families, teen pregnancies, convicted criminals, drug addicts, and so on – and their hearts fail them: they see signs of the times rather than children of God in need. Like the Nephites, all too often we judge others and look forward more to the prophesied apocalypse than to helping. It is so easy to respond this way while feeling confident in our status as chosen.

It’s important to remember that both kinds of signs are, in fact, prophetic. Whether we

embrace the comforting images while denying the negative ones or obsess over the scary parts while downplaying the affirming events, we are wresting or distorting scripture by “cherry-picking” either way. With such an approach, we find only what we have already decided to see instead of being sincerely open to what the scriptures can teach us. So, acknowledging that both kinds of prophecies are there, we must judge wisely. If the question is simply whether we recognize the signs, we can turn on the news and wring our hands until we inevitably throw them up in despair. Just look at this world, going to the telestial kingdom in a handbasket?

Adam Miller

Speaking about this, Adam Miller stated: “The Nephite prophets were

teaching the people to live and walk with Christ in the present. Believe Him, follow Him,

walk with Him, live with Him, ‘as though He already was.’ The Nephite prophets

challenge was to teach people not to think of Jesus as something in the future that

applied to them at some later point in time. He was something for them in the here and

now. We think of Christ as living a long time ago. Or that we will live with Him

sometime in the distant future. But the present is all we have. The present is where He

wants to come to us and be with us. The present is where He wants us to be.”

Jarom

The plates have been passed to successive generations, and these custodians

of the record find themselves squarely in the middle of the dispensation, not during any

particularly exciting time, at least from a religious history perspective. What does it look

like to live and keep faith in the middle of a dispensation? The book of Jarom is

particularly instructive in this regard. These Nephites really had nothing to worry about

because all the prophecies indicated that they would not be destroyed until after the

Savior had visited their land. Before that critical ingredient in the timeline, the Nephites

could sit pretty.

But Jarom tells us that the prophets, priests, and teachers of his generation didn’t see

it that way. Instead, they taught the people to “look forward unto the Messiah, and

believe in him to come as though he already was”. This changes everything. What

does it mean to look forward and believe in something to come as though it already

was? This statement shows us a God who operates outside of human time. He and his

atonement can stretch back to those who preceded him on earth and also reach

forward into our future destiny. If we anticipate Christ in this way, we’re free from the

temporal confines in which everything that came before must influence what comes

next, and where we can only act in one direction reaching toward the future. We can

have Christ in our lives now even though, on a calendar, we are between his comings

to earth. We can find Christ not just at the beginning and the end but also in the

middle.

From our vantage point now we can see that Jarom and his people weren’t at the end of

their dispensation. It turns out that they were deep in the middle. They looked forward and lived as though the Messiah to come already was, and yet it was centuries before he arrived. Are we in a similar position? Are we smack in the middle of the latter days? We know that our current dispensation will usher in the second coming of the Lord, but a dispensation can last a very long time and no one knows the hour or the year, or the decade, or the century that he will come. But what about the middle? How do we live out the covenant between such defining moments?

Jarom’s account shows people who see in a messianic way and those who do not. Weary

in the middle, some of the people of Jarom’s time need constant coaxing into righteousness “because of the hardness of their hearts, and the deafness of their ears, and the blindness of their minds, and the stiffness of their necks.” Jarom writes that many others, however, “have many revelations, for they are not all stiffnecked.” Some need threats from the prophets, and others manage to endure well, “laboring diligently exhorting with all longsuffering…., persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah."

Strength in the middle comes from the Messiah. In our relationship with the Messiah, like

Jarom, we let go of that which simply isn’t needed. We find the peace to leave out some things. What Jarom elects to maintain, namely, the purpose of the plates and their role in the covenant, shapes what he chooses to let go – his own reputation and others’ attention to his spirituality. Jarom suggests that living in the messy middle means holding fast to covenants and holding lightly to judgments, prejudices, and conclusions that are not guaranteed to stand the test of time. Jarom teaches us how to refrain and let go, how to maintain and remain in the covenant. He shows us how to live in the messy middle.

OMNI

The book of Omni has more authors than any other book in the Book of Mormon. The text

moves through them quickly, but without each of their contributions to the record, we may not have ended up with the small plates. Keeping genealogy doesn’t just preserve scripture; it also creates it. In the small plates, the descendants of Jacob understand that each generation has a responsibility to write, no matter how minor the engraved contribution and that no one can be a missing link. The caretakers of the plates verify, by their lifelong stewardship over the records, that the accounts are still what they claim to be and that they have remained with those who have an interest in their survival and integrity. The genealogy of this family becomes a genealogy of the plates themselves. It covers about 150 years.

By the time of Omni, the designation “Nephite” seems to be a political and cultural

descriptor rather than a spiritual one. We can perhaps see a hint of Omni’s dedication in that he engraves on the plates at two different times, six years apart, giving the date both times. As one commentator has conjectured, perhaps this battle-wise warrior thought he was about to die and made his first entry to ensure that he did his duty, but then he survived long enough to make another entry before transferring the plates to his son Amaron.

Amaron tells us he is among those Nephites who survived when “the more wicked part of

the Nephites were destroyed.” Curiously, he does not specify that the Lamanites killed them, only that “the Lord did visit them in great judgment” and that the righteous were spared from “their enemies,” leaving open the possibility that there was a civil war of some sort.

Despite this simplicity and even in his terseness, Chemish acknowledges his duty

“according to the commandments of our fathers,” using the same idea of a “command” or

“commandment” that Jacob, Jarom, Omni, and, later, Alma, use. Like his brother, Chemish was among the righteous who were spared when the “more wicked part of the Nephites was destroyed.” Moreover, Chemish fathered a son who was open enough to revelation to flee with Mosiah to the land of Zarahemla.

Abinadom is aware of other Nephite plates, identifying the record “had by the kings” as “the

record of this people.” He knows the sacred purpose of the small plates and so refrains from writing at length because, like Jarom, he “knows of no revelation save that which has been written, neither prophecy." This care on Abinadom’s part suggests that he may have been more attuned to the records and their purposes than the preceding authors, and this perhaps because he was a steward of the small plates during an exodus. He also seems to have known the records well enough to state that all the revelations that needed to be written had been.

WORDS OF MORMON

Joseph Spencer said that he theorizes that Mormon had begun his editing process

when he, most likely came upon a mention of Amaleki in the large plates and was

curious about the small plates mentioned, so he went looking for them. When he

found them, he realized that this was the way he should abridge the record, with a

focus on preserving a record for the Lamanite posterity and a focus on Christ.

Mormon was at a place in history where he could see that the Nephites were

basically destroyed. Joseph Spencer said that, perhaps, the lost 116 pages weren’t

a great loss because the small plates were a better record, and he followed that

pattern going forward.