Scripture and Canon
[Remember the Strengths of the Jews]
[The Lord Speaks to Many Nations]
[We Will Be Judged From What is Written in Books]
[Record Keeping Required]
[Become White and Delightsome When They Believe]
[All Earthly Seals Shall Be Broken]
[Satan Shall Have No More Power]
[John The Baptist Baptizes Christ]
345 2 Nephi 29:2,3; 1 Nephi 17:35 We are on 2 Nephi 29. He [the Lord] is talking about when he sets his hand again in these last days the second time to recover his people. “I would remember your seed [too],” he says. There are no “God’s privileged people,” as we read in 1 Nephi 17:35. He loves one as much as the other. He starts bringing his words again in verse 3: “And because my words shall hiss forth” (a very interesting word). “HAS MIPPENAYWKOL HA-ARETZ. Let all the earth be silent in his presence.” There’s hiss and hush. Of course, it means “go forth in a quiet, unassuming way.” It won’t be like a trumpet on a mountaintop. Notice how the Book of Mormon was introduced. It wasn’t highly publicized. It wasn’t in all the papers; they didn’t announce a great book coming forth, etc. All the advertising was done by the enemy for quite a long time. As soon as Joseph got the plates, it started a scandal. The Painesville Telegraph and some other newspapers started talking about it and started publicizing it all over the place long before he had ever produced it. How you would panic if you had promised to produce a book. It [the newspaper] said “gold plates” and told that story, and people were waiting for it to come out: “All right, wise guy, where’s the book?” He had to produce it. He produced it on the line, and it was all there. Then they said, “Oh, well, it’s nothing.” They wouldn’t even read the book. It got publicity all right, but it hissed forth out of the dust. It’s a good word, isn’t it? The word is whispered around; it just gets around that way. The Lord doesn’t trumpet it forth, and the angel doesn’t come to the whole human race. Because of that, when they start finding out about it, “many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible. [Notice in verse 6] Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?”
351 2 Nephi 29:4 It’s the same thing with the Jews [having previously recounted the strengths of Jews in general]; they go all the way. That’s why it’s talking about them here. He describes their weaknesses beautifully here. Remember, when they are too smart for their britches and always looking beyond the mark. They want to make an intellectual problem of everything. No, that’s Jacob who tells about that. We’re soon going to get to it because he was Nephi’s brother. Verse 4: “... the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?” You might say, “Well, they didn’t do it willingly; that wasn’t their objective.” Yes, it was. There were great and righteous men among them. There have always been holy men among the Jews, as there always have been in the world. All churches have had very good, holy, righteous people, but not very many. But the Jews have made special effort because they had to. Remember, George Albert Smith, Sr., used to say, “We came out here of our own free will because they made us.” It’s the same thing with the Jews. They did all these wonderful things because they were forced to do them.
351, 2 Nephi 29:5 “O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people. Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?” It’s interesting that not only the New Testament was all written by Jews, but the Old Testament too was what gave them the Bible. Remember Jerome? The Latin Bible is Jerome’s Bible. Reuchlin with the Reformation was the first one to really get into the Hebrew Bible. It was the Hebrew and Jerome’s and Luther’s Bible [that influenced the King James], Jerome lived fifteen years in Bethlehem. He worked among the Jews all that time. He gave us the Latin Vulgate, the standard Roman Catholic Bible. He lived right among the Jews when he wrote it, all those many years in Bethlehem. Reuchlin and Luther were busily studying Hebrew. It’s from them we get our King James Bible more than anyone else. The King James Bible translators relied quite heavily on Luther’s Bible. They depended a lot on Luther. In order to do this, of course, Reuchlin and the others became ardent Hebraists. They worked with the Jews, etc.
351,352 2 Nephi 29: 7,8 “Know ye not that there are more nations than one? [That’s an important thing.] Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men [now it’s going to get universal; there’s no reason for being snooty about it and because you’re Jews start pushing people off the sidewalk], and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea.” You’ve never seen such arrogance in the world. The way they are behaving toward the Palestinians now isn’t very nice. After all, there are complaints. The Lord told them, “Remember that you were a stranger in Egypt.” You were roughed up and you didn’t like it, so remember other people the same way. This is another important thing in verse 8: “Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word?” Some of these apocryphal writings, these writings that were discovered later, belong to the Bible. There are works in the Bible that shouldn’t be there, and some writings that are not in there should be there. That’s a big problem today. It was at the Council of Dordrecht in 1670 in which the Protestants all got together and ruled that they would not have anything to do with these apocryphal writings. There was just the Bible, just that particular text, and nothing else. Well, who determined the canon of the Bible and set the limits to it? This was all done by committees that claimed no revelation whatever, no inspiration whatever. There are many books and many writings they left out. Who gave them authority to leave them out? Who gave them authority to say what should be left in and what shouldn’t? They didn’t claim it. As wise men they would argue about it on literary and philosophical grounds, etc. But the Synod of Dordrecht in the Netherlands decided that they would reject entirely what they called “the miserable Apocrypha.” Of course, the miserable Apocrypha has some very important writings in it. The Book of Enoch is there. These things are very highly respected now. The two most respected of all are the book of Abraham and the Book of Enoch. Of course, these are the very two that Joseph Smith gave us. He gave us the book of Abraham, and in chapters 6-8 of the book of Moses he gave us the Book of Enoch. They are of great importance now. With the Dead Sea Scrolls you have the Genesis Apocryphon, Abraham’s activity in Egypt, etc. These things line up very well, not only with Jewish tradition but with the Bible itself. And they are older versions.
352 2 Nephi 29:8 “Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? [He does.] Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another [now, this is interesting—the gospel will be given as far as they will take it; we are going to see how it goes]. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also.” Of course, this is the test, as the Indians say. This is the same one that the Arabs use, too. I can remember telling John Wilson, the Egyptologist, about this. He was quite surprised because the Egyptians have the same idea of running side by side. It means the same thing, and there’s a hieroglyph for it. I’ll think of it in a second. When two run side by side, they go this way, so they say, “Mormons and Hopis like this.”
353 2 Nephi 29:9 “And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another [the expanding gospel]; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever.” Can’t God go on doing his own work and adding if he wants to, saying what he wants? The Gospel of John ends that way. Remember, he says, “I think if all the deeds of Christ were written the whole world wouldn’t contain the books.” Well, he must have done an awful lot of things, but all the words of Jesus Christ can be read in half an hour now, as we have them in the New Testament. I’m sure he spoke marvelous things more than that. Of course, now when you find a very early document, it will almost always have the title “The Words of Jesus Christ Spoken to the Apostles in Secret after the Resurrection.” These are the really important teachings of the forty-day ministry.
353 2 Nephi 29:11 Now we have a really interesting picture of what is going forth here. Verse 11: “For I command all men, both in the east, and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them.” In other words God has not neglected the world just because we have these little people, the Jews. They didn’t accept it; they were a stiff-necked people, always looking beyond the mark, etc. As I said, there are always righteous people here and there. It’s interesting. We are going to have real trouble now, aren’t we, if this really happens? “For out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written.” There is yet a great deal more to discover. Well, we have a library here. It wouldn’t take you so long as you might think to read through the nearly four million books in our library. They are there but nobody reads them, as you know. A few of them we read, but you don’t need to read [all of] them. A few books comprise everything all the others have to say.
354 2 Nephi 29:12,13 “For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.” Well, that’s every nation, not just civilized nations. We have records taken by visitors to all the tribes of the Indians. There’s a lot that gets lost there, but they all write their record. They all leave their record in various forms, whether it’s in account books, or in law books, or in journals, or whatever it is. You know President Kimball was so great on this idea of journals, etc. It turns out that they really are important; it’s a funny thing. I mean even though your journal doesn’t say anything and it’s terribly boring, there’s a purpose for keeping it, if only to keep you on your toes. We have the Greek contribution here, the Septuagint. The oldest and best version of the Old Testament that we have is by the Greeks; they handed it down to us. And there are the Hermetic writings, although we never search them anymore. Well, anyway they have each other’s words. Verse 13: “The Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews [this mesh is interwoven here]. And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions.”
355,356 2 Nephi 29:14 You notice this is working toward one particular objective, this getting together. Well, there is nothing exotic [to travel and see] anymore. It’s all being brought together into one—into one tight community as a matter of fact. It’s altogether too snug for comfort when we get all the overpopulation. He [Nephi] is talking about this gathering process. First they connect with each other. Then they “shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions [notice it’s plural]; and my word also shall be gathered in one.”
355 I think Plato is right; there is such a thing as an ideal culture. He said he had it in his mind. You know what it is, and when it is right you recognize it. When something is wrong you recognize it. He used the KALOS K’AGATHOS, “the good, true, and beautiful.” You recognize what should be, but we don’t have it. How do you know that? And we all agree on it too. That’s ANAMNESIS; remember it in the back of our minds from another life. We know what is right. When we see a properly constructed object, it pleases us immediately. We don’t have to analyze it because we have a dim memory of it. It’s an act of recognition. When you see anything good, true, or beautiful, you embrace it eagerly because that’s what you have been looking for. It’s an act of recognition when you see it. Here we are suffering from nostalgia; we are far from home here.
357 2 Nephi 30:1,2 He [Nephi] has been talking about the wonderful things [promised] to the Jews, Israel etc. But don’t let Israel get the big head, he tells us in the first verse of the next chapter. “For I, Nephi, would not suffer that ye should suppose that ye are more righteous than the Gentiles shall be. For behold, except ye shall keep the commandments of God ye shall all likewise perish [what is more]; and because of the words which have been spoken ye need not suppose that the Gentiles are utterly destroyed. For behold, I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord.” All they have to do is repent, and that’s it. Ezekiel makes that perfectly clear. Chapter 18 of Ezekiel is a wonderful treatment on this. You’re righteous if you repent. No matter how bad you have been, you are righteous. You are the chosen people. And if you don’t repent, no matter how good you may have been until now, then you are the lost. So if the Gentiles repent, they are the covenant people. “And as many of the Jews as will not repent shall be cast off [the opposite of atonement is to be cast off]; for the Lord covenanteth with none save it be with them that repent [that is the basic principle of covenant] and believe in his Son, who is the Holy One of Israel.”
357,358 2 Nephi 30:3-7 Now here is the work of the Gentiles. Verse 3: “For after the book of which I have spoken shall come forth, and be written unto the Gentiles, and sealed up again unto the Lord, there shall be many which shall believe the words which are written; and they shall carry them forth unto the remnant of our seed [he is talking about the Bible here].... And the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be declared among them; wherefore, they shall be restored unto the knowledge of their fathers, and also to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.. .. And then shall they rejoice [he is talking about his people]; ... and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes [Is he talking about real scales? No, of course he isn’t. I say this because of the rest of the sentence]; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white [white has been changed to pure in recent editions] and a delightsome people.” Does that mean literally [white] any more than the scales fall? White means delightsome if you consider the various meanings of white. Next he says that the Jews “shall also become a delightsome people.” Were the Jews black? This is using white and delightsome in the broadest sense, as against the dark and uncivilized.
358 2 Nephi 30:8,9 “And ... the Lord God shall commence his work among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, to bring about the restoration of his people upon the earth.” His people everywhere. He will work among them all to bring his people back. Who are they? Those who will repent. Those are his people. “And with righteousness shall the Lord God judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.” What does it mean by that? Well, the poor are the ones that don’t get the breaks; all the judgments pass against them. He shall judge the poor correctly and righteously with equity and fairness. He will be the advocate of the meek “and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth [He pleads in their behalf and reproves their oppressors]. And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth; and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” This fierce rebuke is a deadly sentence. It’s very interesting that the word for sentence, a sentence of condemnation in a court, in Hebrew and in English is the very same thing as a sentence of utterance or speech.
358 2 Nephi 30:9 “And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth; and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.” The rod of his mouth will pronounce the sentence. The mouth and the lips are the speech; that’s the sentence. And he will cause a great division among the people so he can destroy the wicked by fire. Then this is the famous passage of paradise. This from verse 12 on is certainly another culture, isn’t it?
359 D&C 49:19, 21 It’s interesting that all the presidents of the Church, some of them very fervidly, have condemned hunting. They [some people] pay absolutely no attention when it comes to things like that. President Joseph F. Smith and both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young never hunted. Here they were living in the wild west with all this game around, and they never hunted. Well, that’s not human, but it wasn’t right for a man of the priesthood to go out and slay the creatures unless it was for necessity. Then nature gladly contributes. There have been plenty of young couples I’ve known here at BYU that couldn’t get through the winter without their deer. That’s all right. Section 49 of the Doctrine and Covenants makes that perfectly clear: “The beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth, is ordained for the use of man for food and for raiment, and that he might have in abundance.... And wo be unto man that sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need” (D&C 49:19, 21). If you need it, fine—that’s what the Lord has put it there for.
359,360 2 Nephi 30: 15-17 “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.... All things shall be made known unto the children of men.” What things? Well, all things, including these. He goes on: “There is nothing secret save it shall be revealed [it’s revealing the secrets he’s talking about here]; there is no work of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light; and there is nothing which is sealed upon the earth save it shall be loosed.” In other words we are talking in this verse about the [fact that] through centuries and centuries people have been bound up by custom and usage—the “dead hand” laws and things like that which keep people locked into a system very close and tight. Whether it’s feudal or the legal system, the whole thing will be loosed. As he says, it will be let go. Everything that is sealed upon earth shall be loosed; all earthly seals shall be broken. All contracts don’t apply anymore after death, and they don’t apply after the Millennium anymore either because they are worldly. They are works of expedience, mostly of greed. These works of darkness and these secret things of the establishment shall be exploded and blown sky high. Why does it exist? It exists to accommodate men’s vices actually, so that won’t happen [anymore]. “Wherefore, all things which have been revealed unto the children of men shall at that day be revealed; and Satan [notice that’s who he’s talking about] shall have power over the hearts of the children of men no more, for a long time.” So this is the end of Nephi’s prophesy. Nephi has been prophesying all along here. Now he is going to talk concerning the doctrine of Christ, and this becomes very important.
360 2 Nephi 31:3-8 “For my soul delighteth in plainness.” He doesn’t want to get us confused. We are told that he speaks to all men everywhere. Well, what about the islands of the sea? Does he speak to them the same way he speaks to us? “For he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding. He gives them as much as they can take and in their own idiom. Nephi saw the mission of John the Baptist here. Then the question immediately arises, Why the need for baptizing? Verse 5: “If the Lamb of God, he being holy, should have need to be baptized by water, to fulfil all righteousness, O then, how much more need have we, being unholy, to be baptized, yea, even by water! And now, I would ask of you, my beloved brethren, wherein the Lamb of God did fulfil all righteousness in being baptized by water? Know ye not that he was holy?” Notice that this is a very interesting thing. In every lexicon, the word QADDSH meaning holy in Hebrew is translated in this sense. What does QADDSH mean? It means “set apart,” “not of this race.” It means “essentially alien or different.” Of course, HOLY means that. But, of course, it’s the Greek HAGIOS, the same as our word HEDGE. Holy is to be on the other side of a fence or HEDGE. QADOSH means “cut off or separated”—the road is cut. And a SANCTUM is a fence around a holy place. Sanctum means “to set apart” and “divide by a fence.” All our words ? for holy have that meaning. It always means “set apart and not belonging to the ordinary world.” That’s what it is; it belongs to another world. If it’s SANCTUM, if it’s QADDSH, if it’s HOLY, if it’s HAGIOS, it means that it is “set apart.” That’s what we have here, see.
360,361 2 Nephi 31:6-10 The story of John the Baptist is a classic example here. Robert Eisler has written massively on that particular subject. Josephus, who writes about John the Baptist, never found out his name. He didn’t know his name because when he came and taught the people, they asked him, “Who are you?” They thought he was Enoch come again. He told them, “I am Enos, I am the man.” That was the only answer he would give them, so they said, “A wild man has come among us.” Remember, John the Baptist let his hair grow long, walked about in a camel skin robe, and lived on wild locust (grasshoppers) and honey. He was a wild man, and he scared people. Remember in the book of Moses what people say about Enoch? “There is a strange thing in the land; a wild man has come among us.” When John the Baptist came among the people, they said, “It is Enoch come again.” We learn from Josephus that this spread throughout the whole area because he was a wild man, a strange man—not belonging to their nature at all. He was a different sort of person. As I said, he was a rather frightening person. “A wild man has come among us.” You notice that means he was holy. Here he is talking about Christ being holy. Verse 7: “Know ye not that he was holy? But notwithstanding he being holy, he showeth unto the children of men that, according to the flesh he humbleth himself before the Father, and witnesseth unto the Father that he would be obedient unto him in keeping his commandments [he did the things he did as a demonstration, especially in the baptism here].... It showeth unto the children of men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he having set the example before them.” He said, “Follow me.” He is the leader, the director, the PARALEMPTOR that we read lots about. These things come out now in these early documents, especially the Coptic documents that weren’t there before. The PARALEMPTOR is the one who accompanies you through the temple and makes sure that you perform all the ordinances correctly, that you know what you are doing, that you don’t blunder and use the wrong words, etc. And Jesus is the PARALEMPTOR for all of us (cf. John 14:3).
361 2 Nephi 31:10-12 “And he said unto the children of men: Follow thou me. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, can we follow Jesus save we shall be willing to keep the commandments of the Father? [so he leads us to the Father]. And the Father said: Repent ye, repent ye, and be baptized in the name of my Beloved Son. And also, the voice of the Son came unto me, saying: He that is baptized in my name, to him will the Father give the Holy Ghost, like unto me; wherefore, follow me, and do the things which ye have seen me do.” He is the great example who says, “Follow me and do what I do.” The Son does only what he has seen the Father do, so he says, You do whatever you see me do; I do whatever I see the Father do [paraphrased].
361,362 2 Nephi 31: 13,14 There’s your atonement again. When the time comes, we will all be together and you can live in his presence. That’s what we are coming back for. Verse 13: “If ye shall follow the Son ... witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ by baptism [that’s what you do to show that you are following the Son; that’s the example, a simple enough and easy example he set, the least we can do]—yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, ... yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel.” Then you will be transformed if you want to be. You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it, but first you must do this and be baptized this way, witnessing to the Father when you go down into the water—this tangible connection we have here. “After ye have repented of your sins, and witnessed unto the Father that ye are willing to keep my commandments, by the baptism of water, and have received the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost,” you can speak with a new tongue. You are an alien yourself now. I said that the language was a model of the culture, a perfect mirror. So after you have gone through all this, then you will find yourself in this alien culture. Then you “can speak with a new tongue, yea, even with the tongue of angels, and after this [you can’t deny me; you’ve seen it now] should deny me, it would have been better for you that ye had not known me [at all].” So this takes us to a different culture, and then we must endure to the end.
362 2 Nephi 31:18-21 Let’s go on here to the end of this chapter. Verse 18: “And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life [there’s always this image of the path; this is the way we are to follow]; yea, ye have entered in by the gate.... After ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? ... Nay.” You’ve just begun to do things. You have to be born again, and then “ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.” Of course, that is the goal; that’s what we are after. That is the [answer] to the terrible question, Is this all there is? If you go through these things, you will find out. But if you don’t, don’t come complaining to me that there’s nothing but darkness ahead. Notice the final statement in this chapter where he says, “And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end.” That’s at-one-ment, that’s atonement. When you are at one, then you are one. This is the thing that John brings out so beautifully.
362 Now we come to a very interesting question in the next chapter.