Nephi’s Vision
[Passion in the Book of Mormon]
[Book of Mormon a Sad Story]
[Wide Gulf Between Two Ways of Living]
[Survey of History]
[Only Two Churches]
[Documents Buried at the Hand of the Lord]
190 We were noting that chapter ten of 1 Nephi deals with the Jews. Chapter eleven does something else. Chapter twelve deals with the New World version—Israel in the New World, the Book of Mormon people. Chapter thirteen deals with the Gentiles and the whole world; it takes the world view. But that eleventh chapter, as we noticed, is a sort of other dimension. It removes the veil and gives us a brief glimpse of another universe of discourse, some place where everything is very different.
190 It occurred to me this morning that every speech in the Book of Mormon, and there are many, is passionate. It’s passionate speech; there’s nothing that isn’t. The Book of Mormon is trying all out to get through to us, you see. After all, it was hand-delivered by an angel. “Well,” you say, “that’s a hard one to take.” All right, look into the book and then decide something or other. What does this reflect? This isn’t just a faded negative or something like that. This is a series of brilliant little vignettes in which we can look right through, like into an Easter peep show. We can look through and see a world of long ago, but it’s a very well-documented world. It’s unmatched for contemporary literature now, so we can check on this when Joseph gives us these pictures of things that were going on. There is something extra here when the Book of Mormon passion wants to get through to us. It keeps saying, “This is for you, and you had better pay attention. You haven’t got much time.”
191 1 Nephi 12:1-3 So we come to 1 Nephi 12, the New World version. Verse 1: “And I looked and beheld the land of promise.” Of course, now you expect the happy land; it’s the land of promise. Remember, Lehi said, “I have obtained a land of promise,” just after he left Jerusalem. But what picture do we see? The next verse immediately throws cold water on all our hopes for the rosy land of promise. “And it came to pass that I beheld multitudes gathered together to battle, one against the other; and I beheld wars, and rumors of wars, and great slaughters with the sword among my people.” Is this the promised land? Is this the place of security? It goes right on: “I beheld many generations pass away [do they settle down to a blissful existence alawato? Oh, no] after the manner of wars and contentions in the land; and I beheld many cities, yea, even that I did not number them.”
191 1 Nephi 12:4,5 Then it goes on, and we get a mist of darkness. Could this be pollution or nuclear winter or something like that? This is a depressing picture; notice the next verse. It’s a mist of darkness. Of course, this is the great destruction that took place at the time of the Crucifixion. There were earthquakes and mountains tumbling and cities sunk and burned with fire, and many that tumbled to earth. That’s described in another part of the Book of Mormon, if we ever get to that. But it is a very accurate description of an earthquake that registers eight on the Richter scale, all the details and things that happened. We won’t go into that now, but this is what he saw. This was the picture at that time. Then he saw a “vapor of darkness, that it passed from off the face of the earth.”
191,192 1 Nephi 12:5-10; Exodus 17:12 Then he saw multitudes. After the mist of darkness, we get this vapor of darkness. What’s a vapor? It’s a mixture of dust, maybe nuclear particles, cloud mist, rain, etc., if it is nuclear winter. Whatever it is, it’s a vapor of darkness that passed from the face of the earth. Then he saw multitudes. When the cloud cleared, everybody was just lying there fallen because of the terrible judgments of the Lord. That may be a later episode than verse 4 which describes the great earthquakes at the time of Christ. “And it came to pass after I saw these things [then he sees another such occasion] I saw the vapor of darkness.” When that passed away, he saw everybody pretty sick. Then the heavens opened and the Lamb of God descended. “The Holy Ghost fell upon twelve others,” and then the disciples of the Lamb. Then he talks about the Twelve Apostles, so this is the time of the Nephites that he is discussing here. The Jews had the Twelve Apostles. They are never called apostles in the Book of Mormon. He explains that here. Notice in verse 10 he calls them “twelve ministers” because the apostles, we are told, shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel. Do they duplicate them over here? No, they are never called apostles here; they are called disciples. You saw in the Dead Sea Scrolls that they had to have a council of twelve and a presidency of three. The Jews already had that. This was part of the ancient order of things because they had twelve tribes and each tribe was represented in the temple. Now the new Temple Scroll makes it very clear that everything is done in terms of twelve tribes and the presidency. Moses had Aaron and Hur supporting his hands on either side [Exodus 17:12], and so it happens.
192 1 Nephi 12:9 There’s a very interesting, many-volume work [Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period] by Erwin Goodenough on ancient Jewish symbols. It has come out that a very common feature of the earliest Jewish symbols is that whenever the Lord comes, he is always accompanied by two others. In Genesis 18 when the Lord appears, Abraham sees three men waiting in front of his tent. He knew that one was the Lord, and he said, “My Lord, I’m not worthy to have you here as my guest.” The Lord comes as three. But here are the Twelve Apostles; in other words, we have a pattern here that is being followed, not just once. Verse 9: “And he said unto me: Thou rememberest the twelve apostles of the Lamb? Behold they are they who shall judge the twelve tribes of Israel; wherefore, the twelve ministers of thy seed shall be judged of them; for ye are of the house of Israel. [See, the Twelve Apostles shall judge the twelve ministers or disciples of the Nephites; they are down on the list there too.] And these twelve ministers whom thou beholdest shall judge thy seed.... And I looked, and beheld three generations pass away in righteousness; ... these are made white in the blood of the Lamb, because of their faith in him.”
192,193 1 Nephi 12:16,18 But the fourth generation went bad, as we know. In four or five thousand years of history here—including the Jaredites, which are much older, I believe, than that—there were only three or four generations of righteousness when the people were living as they should. This is an amazing thing. How can it possibly be that out of all the inhabitants of the earth only one little handful are righteous? In all that period of time only a few generations were fit. This is the oddest thing. I’m supposed to be getting [preparing] something now on the Atonement, and nobody knows anything about the Atonement. It’s very interesting. How is it possible? Well, you ask a simple question: How is it possible for everybody in the world to go around in complete ignorance of the fact that the earth is a sphere? How can everybody in the world not know that we are in a galaxy which is part of a system of innumerable galaxies? Nobody knew that when I was a kid. I mean there are vitally important things that nobody in the world knows. Apparently, nobody misses them. The Lord doesn’t seem to make them known. But don’t be surprised if the Gospel has very few takers, if it is “only one of city and two of a tribe,” as the Lord told his apostles. That’s all you’ll get. All the Lord does here is establish a cadre. That’s what we have in the temple— people that do the work for all the rest of them. After all, the work of baptism that was revealed to John the Baptist was primarily for the dead because the unbaptized dead outnumber the living a thousand to one. The work has to be done for them. That’s why the angel said to Zacharias when he was to become the father of John the Baptist, “He shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.’* The fathers were already dead, and the work of John the Baptist was to baptize them. Then he said, “Those who sit in darkness shall see a great light.” That’s the work that is going to deliver them—the preaching to the spirits in prison.
193 1 Nephi 12:15; Moses 7:36; D & C 21:39 So we have here the Twelve and the three generations that pass in righteousness. But it’s a weary and sad story. Nobody seems to catch on here. The Book of Mormon is sad. It begins on a sad note and ends on a sad note, and we are in the middle. And yet it is the most joyful of documents. All the verses balance each other. As we noticed before, the “apocalypse of bliss” balances the “apocalypse of woe” throughout. If it’s bad, it’s also good. We’ll get more of the good part; we should one of these times. I guess it’s the rainy weather that makes one feel gloomy, isn’t it? Note in verse 15 that they are equally wicked: “I looked and beheld the people of my seed gathered together in multitudes against the seed of my brethren; and they were gathered together in battle.” If you read something like the ninth chapter of Moroni, you will see they are absolutely equal. He says that one is just as bad as the other, unless perhaps the Nephites are a little worse because they should be better. Mormon says the same thing, “Behold, among all the wickedness of the Lamanites it is not so great as among thy brethren.” But remember what the Lord told Enoch. He said, “Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I have made. .. .[this is a real shocker], and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren” (Moses 7:36). So in worlds without number this is number one, the worst. Well, this means we are in a real test. If we can pass this one, we shoot right ahead to the top. That’s really the impression that’s given. We have been building up to this final test so that so much depends on it. It’s win all or lose all on this one thing: Will you be able to behave yourself if you are given great authority and not start acting like Genghis Khan because you are the head of a committee or something like that? Can you be trusted? We will all be saved, but who will be safe? Who can be trusted? That’s what the Lord is going to find out here, and very few can be. In Doctrine and Covenants 121:39 we are told, “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” It is in the nature of almost all men that as soon as they get a little authority, as they think, they begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. That’s in our nature.
194 1 Nephi 12:16-18 So they were gathered together to battle. Then [in verse 16] there’s the fountain of filthy water. He said it represented “the depths of hell. And the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil.” And the broad roads on which they are lost. Of course, there is the fear of everyone in the desert of getting lost because it’s a terrible place to get lost, and there’s no way to find yourself. It’s a horrible place. That’s the one thing that everybody feared because it was utterly waterless. Remember, it tells us where they turned east, and Joseph Smith said it was the nineteenth parallel—almost south-southeast there, taking them to the Empty Quarter. The whole trip took eight years because of the long stops. For example, they must have spent about a year at the Waters of Laman in the Valley of Lemuel. Notice verse 18: “And the large and spacious building [that’s a Ghumdan, you see] ... is vain imaginations and the pride of the children of men”—with their partying and their importance, etc. It’s interesting that this is allegory, but it has a physical embodiment. It isn’t all just allegory, just a symbol of something to be taken as an abstract and to be understood spiritually.
194,195 Incidentally, which is more specific—what is scientific or what is spiritual? You think of spirits as not being more actual, more real. We say science is, but that’s not so. A scientific test is physical and tangible, but it’s second hand. You can only interpret it second hand. It depends on your interpretation. With an atom chamber or a cyclotron, when the particle is cracked, little trails go off in all directions. But they don’t mean anything until somebody interprets them. The first-hand information means nothing. It’s second hand. You interpret it, and then you argue about what it means. But it’s so in all the effects of gravity, whatever it is. But a spiritual experience is something that you feel in yourself. You experience it in yourself, so it is direct. You can’t deny that. That’s why you can’t get away with denying the Holy Ghost. When we say “spiritual,” it’s a thing we never define at all. We never bother to define it. We use it a lot and kick it around a lot. We get away with murder because we say, “Well, this is a spiritual thing; we just observe it spiritually.” You know what is spiritual: the spiritual is a direct experience. These things that the Book of Mormon talks about are the direct experience. As I said, all the speeches are passionate. They are trying to get in contact with you. That’s why the Book of Mormon feels so intimate, and it converts people. They don’t know why they are being reached because every man who talks in there is not only speaking from the heart but he is trying to reach somebody. He knows this is being directed to people in another time and another place, and he is going all out trying to reach them. So it reaches out, and there is this feeling of warm intimacy in every passage in the Book of Mormon. It’s not cold and abstract. It not like history, even of the Old Testament. You feel the urgency and the personal concern. Everybody who writes in the Book of Mormon is passionate because he has a personal concern for the person he is writing to—and that’s you. If it comes into your hands, you have been blessed with that.
195 1 Nephi 12:18 He talks about the large and spacious building and “the pride of the children of men. And a great and terrible gulf divideth them.” There it is again. It is a figure of speech, an image. Nothing could better describe it; there is a great and terrible gulf between two different ways of living. There is nothing in common between them at all. You can’t breach it; there’s this great gulf between them. If you are on the one side, there are very few people. The whole world is on one side now. I wonder if we can see anybody over on the other side calling to us? Clement of Rome was the first writer after the New Testament. He wrote about A.D. 85-95, in the first century. In the epistle called 1 Clement, he compares himself to a man who is standing on a headland all alone. He sees a swimmer swimming out to sea and says, “You fool, come back before it’s too late [he’s talking about the Church]. The time will come when it will be too late to repent, when you can’t do it. Come back now.” Of course, all seven Apostolic Fathers have no hope at all. They all ring down the curtain on the ancient Church, but at a very early time. That’s a very important point that we are going to come to very soon here—that the curtain was rung down on the early Church already in the second century. The second century, instead of being the “age of faith” is known as the “age of heresy” because there were a hundred heresies. Everybody had his own church. Immediately it broke up when the Apostles went away. Well, we may get to that in a minute, but let’s go on and see what is happening here.
195,196 1 Nephi 12:19-21; 1 Nephi 2:23 So there’s this great and terrible gulf. Verse 19: “And while the angel spake these words, I beheld and saw that the seed of my brethren did contend against my seed ... and because of the pride of my seed.” That’s the promise. In 1 Nephi 2:23 he says, Remember, you have nothing to fear from the Lamanites at all as long as you behave yourself. They are there to stir you up unto remembrance. I want them breathing down your neck. You will never solve your questions by fighting them [paraphrased]. “Because of the pride of my seed”—they were the ones that brought it on themselves every time. Verse 20: “And it came to pass that I beheld, and saw the people of the seed of my brethren that they had overcome my seed.” Our side loses here. They are proud of their pride, incidentally. Then they [the Lamanites] gathered in multitudes and there were “wars and rumors of wars among them; and ... I saw many generations pass away.” See, the Lamanites and the mixture of people that were left went right on fighting, as we are told in the Book of Mormon. In Moroni’s last words he said, They are still fighting; I have no idea when the war will end. It is going on indefinitely. They are fighting each other now [paraphrased]. Verse 22: “Behold these shall dwindle in unbelief.” And, of course, they did. Would God allow this in the promised land? I ask myself. “They became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.” Notice, they became that way. It wasn’t a miraculous change overnight. It is never referred to in that sense. It’s a cultural thing. We will get much more on that, incidentally.
196 1 Nephi 13:3-5 Now in 1 Nephi 13 of the Book of Mormon the panorama unfolds here. This is the worldwide view of it, the modern world. He beheld many nations and kingdoms. Verse 3: “These are the nations and kingdoms of the Gentiles.... I saw among the nations of the Gentiles the formation of a great church.” Now, what is this church? I just said that the great apostasy came in the second century; the scriptures were completely corrupted by then. This is long before the Roman [Catholic] church became the leading church. The Roman church was “small potatoes” at that time. It wasn’t until the fourth century that they took over. You must not identify this just with the Roman Catholic Church. People do because that’s a simplistic answer. But there [was] a lot going on in the world that we don’t know anything about. That’s what this chapter tells us, all the way through. Don’t oversimplify. Don’t try to figure it out, as far as that goes.
196 1 Nephi 13:6 Here’s what goes on; it tells us here. Verse 6: “I beheld this great and abominable church.” Revelation 8 [18] says that the abominable church is Babylon. He describes in chapter 18 the people who set their hearts on these things. Verse 8: “Behold the gold, and the silver, and silks, and scarlets, and fine-twined linen.” In the Book of Revelation John describes this [see Revelation 18:12]. Remember, he [Lehi] says the book he saw was John. John is the only New Testament character [writer] mentioned in the Book of Mormon. But he describes these things in terms of a great department store. He goes down the departments—the linens, the fine things, and the slaves. Everything is for sale. It’s quite a brilliant display, and these are the things that make Babylon. This is the “great and abominable.” Of course, there was no Roman church in the time of John when he wrote those things. But all the high church people want these things, whether it’s Greek, Armenian, Russian Orthodox—or the Bakkers, or people like Bob Schuller who build their crystal palaces and things like that. Then it mentions the many harlots. Well, they are all up to that, it would seem. He is talking about this sort of thing—the vanity of the world. What we have here, you see, is a complex. It’s an ecumenical thing, and it certainly is here.
196,197 1 Nephi 13:11,12 We have Columbus here. This is Columbus Day, so we can’t pass him by, can we? Verse 11: “Behold the wrath of God is upon the seed of thy brethren.” And what was that? Columbus. When the Europeans discovered America, that was the wrath of God. That was catching up with them. From then on the Indians go down and down and down until they reach absolute nadir. Then something happens to the Gentiles, he says. “And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles.” He doesn’t say a Gentile; he says “a man among the Gentiles.” Years ago I happened to be back East. The old Improvement Era wanted an article on Columbus and Columbus Day. Through a friend of mine, Lucien Goldscnmidt, I got to meet Madariaga, the great Spanish authority on Columbus. Then at Harvard there was Samuel Eliot Morison who wrote the great book, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. He is a yachtsman, and he gives a very careful nautical study of every aspect, everything that is available, on Columbus. So on October 12, Columbus Day, at 2:00 in the morning of a very bright, clear night with a brilliant moon, and the sea high with a good following wind (a glorious picture), a sailor in the mast sighted either St. Kitt or San Salvador, the outmost island (they call it various names) in the Caribbean. America was discovered, and this was the stroke of doom, “the wrath of God upon the seed of thy brethren.”
197 I had lunch with him [Madariaga], and he has always believed that Columbus was a Jew for various reasons. He kept a journal, and he knew all the mysteries of the Cabbala. He always dated things by “the second house.” Only Jews speak of the temple as the bayit, “the house of God.” The second house would be the temple that stood at the time of Christ. Only a Jew would call it “the second house” or date things by the fall of the temple. His passion was to rebuild Jerusalem. The reason he wanted the money from the Indies was to rebuild the temple. That was his project; that’s why he wanted the gold. What’s more, he postponed the date of his sailing down the Tigris there until his three ships headed the armada of Jews fleeing from Spain. See, in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella banished the Jews from Spain. No Jews were to be left there. The biggest thing was one big armada. They fled to various places in Europe, mostly the Netherlands, Russia, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, etc. Columbus postponed his going so that his ships could lead the parade of Jews back to the Holy Land. He wanted to lead them back to the temple. It’s a very interesting thing we have here.
198 1 Nephi 13:13 “I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.” Now here’s another argument. He’s talking, apparently, about the Pilgrim fathers that went out of captivity. The captivity was religious; they wanted religious freedom. But they weren’t escaping from the Roman Catholic Church. They were escaping from other groups, from the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England and Calvinist stringency.
198 1 Nephi 13:15,18 But let’s go on. Verse 15: “And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance.... They were white, and exceedingly fair.” And they humbled themselves. “And I beheld that their mother Gentiles were gathered together upon the waters, and upon the land also, to battle against them.” Why would the righteous mother Gentiles want to battle against them? We are not talking about righteousness here. We are not talking about just the English settlers either. Remember, there were the French and the Spanish—the French and Indian War and the Spanish wars. All the wars of succession in Europe had their reflections on this continent. Remember, George Washington had to fight both the French and the British. “The wrath of God was upon all those that were gathered together against them to battle.” They were delivered by the power of God, and they did prosper in the land.
198,199 1 Nephi 13:23 A book was carried forth among them. This was the Bible. They had already had that. Notice verse 23: “Behold it proceedeth out of the mouth of a Jew. And I, Nephi, beheld it.” It had the covenants of the Lord. This is the New Testament, but they had the Old Testament too. This is the new one from the mouth of a Jew. How do you best describe the New Testament? Well, as the words of the Savior, of course. But there’s more than that. We have the epistles and the acts of the Apostles, and we have the revelations. They were all Jews. It comes forth from a Jewish source, the whole thing. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written by those men, and they say that they are the authors. They claim to be. “This is the writing of Mark.” “I, John,” etc. Verse 23: “The book that thou beholdest is a record of the Jews, which contains the covenants of the Lord, ... and it also containeth many of the prophecies of the holy prophets; and it is a record like unto the engravings which are upon the plates of brass.” In other words, it’s the Bible. Their Old Testament isn’t the same as Lehi’s Old Testament because of the many changes. But it says that it’s much like it.
199 1 Nephi: 13:24,26 “When it proceeded forth from the mouth of a Jew it contained the fulness of the gospel of the Lord, of whom the twelve apostles bear record.” It was plain then, but as soon as it went forth it didn’t take very long for it to be changed. Verse 26: “And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church.... They have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away.” Those were taken away long before the Roman Catholic Church took over in the fourth century. When were they taken away? In the terrible squabbles of the second and third century. They just fought it out; there was blood and everything else. It culminated in the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 when the emperor had to call a council because everybody was killing everybody else. Well, we’ve written a lot about that. We don’t need to follow up on that here, but that is what was happening. It started in Alexandria with Philo; the professors started fighting. They preempted the gospels in the Bible. They took it to themselves. Remember, in Lehi’s day nobody had the book, but now everybody has it. They are all fighting about it, and they corrupt it. Of course, they do. Everybody interprets it his own way, but especially beginning with Philo at the time of Christ, they interpreted everything allegorically. None of this is to be taken literally; it is all spiritual, [according to them]. It’s all in an allegorical and philosophical sense. They fought about that, and this is the corruption we are talking about. They lost the main treasures of the book here.
199 So we have an ecumenical composite; all have the same teachings and practices. This is interesting. When you say, “There are but two churches,” you are right. There are just two doctrines; two organizations, organized accordingly; two sets of ordinances and the like. All the other churches have the same practices. They all preach that God is a mystery and unknowable—the mystery of the Trinity. They all do not accept the literal Resurrection. They believe that the Jews are out, that the temple will never be built. They have devised their own ordinances and their own ceremonies because they can’t get them out of the Bible anywhere. They have been borrowed from various sources—mostly from the old Imperial Cult of the Romans, but there are other sources.
200 1 Nephi 13:29-34 “An exceedingly great many do stumble, yea, insomuch that Satan hath great power over them [because of the changes]. Nevertheless, thou beholdest that the Gentiles ... have been lifted by the power of God above all other nations.” Here’s the promise in verse 30 here. (Remember, in 1830 the Indians were still the most numerous people on the continent; they were still a big handful.) “The Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the mixture of thy seed which are among thy brethren [so Nephi’s seed are mixed with the seed of his brethren, and the Gentiles cannot destroy them; there is no such thing as a pure Lamanite; we see that all through the Book of Mormon]. Neither will he suffer that the Gentiles shall destroy the seed of thy brethren” (the Lamanites, or his seed mixed with them—the Nephites and others). In verse 32 we see that the Gentiles are in an “awful state of blindness.” They don’t get the point; they do not have it made in the promised land. How far does their blindness go here? They have been “kept back by that abominable church, whose formation thou hast seen. Wherefore, saith the Lamb of God: I will be merciful unto the Gentiles, unto the visiting of the remnant of the house of Israel in great judgment.” One is the scourge of the other here. In verse 34 Lehi’s people are smitten by the hand of the Gentiles. Then after the Gentiles have taken over the land, they “stumble exceedingly, because of the most plain and precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb which have been kept back by that abominable church, which is the mother of harlots, saith the Lamb—I will be merciful unto the Gentiles in that day, insomuch that I will bring forth unto them, in mine own power, much of my gospel, which shall be plain and precious, saith the Lamb.”
200,201 2 Nephi 10:16; 1 Nephi 13:35,37 Incidentally, here is a very important verse I’ll refer you to: 2 Nephi 10:16 should clear something up: “Wherefore, he that fighteth against Zion, both Jew and Gentile, both bond and free, both male and female, shall perish; for they are they who are the whore of all the earth; for they who are not for me are against me [there’s your principle of two churches; you’re either for or against], saith our God.” It’s not just one church, but whoever fights against Zion, whether they are Jew, Gentile, bond, free, male or female. It makes no difference. They are they who shall perish, and they are the whore of all the earth. The Gentiles will not remain in that awful state of blindness. They have been kept back, but “I will bring forth unto them ... much of my gospel, which shall be plain and precious.” Not the fullness but much which is plain and precious is coming out. Verse 35: “After thy seed shall be destroyed, and dwindle in unbelief ...” How can you dwindle after you have been destroyed? DESTREW means “to break the structure down, to strew around, to scatter in all directions.” Remember, he says, “Jerusalem has been destroyed from time to time.” Then it has been reorganized from time to time. That doesn’t mean wiped out forever with every la