Lecture 58A Review of Book of Mormon Themes
[Summary of History from Adam]
[Decline of Civilization]
[General Theory of Human Behavior]
[Theme of Survival & Migration]
[Summary of Book of Mormon Personalities]
[Recurrent Themes: 1: Destruction; 2.Getting out (migrations)
3. Keeping Records; 4. Gospel Plan gives meaning to history]
11 The great Joseph Justus Scaliger, the greatest scholar who ever lived, said, Arabic is like the devil. You reach with your finger and it will grab your arm. Then farewell to peace of mind forever after. It won’t ever let you go. The Book of Mormon is that way too. You reach with your finger and it will grab your arm. But we’ve been able to avoid it rather well until now. As I said, we pick our way through gingerly as if we were going through a mine field avoiding all the unpleasant passages. Well, we’re not going to do that now. But this review brought out certain things which I just noticed this morning. Every time you read the Book of Mormon you find all sorts of things. We were talking about the recurrent themes in the Book of Mormon. I discovered that in the first forty-five chapters there are eight recurrent themes. All the time these keep going over and over again. They are extremely important. In the second half of the Book of Mormon they become intensified. It builds them up, and they become very exciting then. Let’s see what these themes are now. We’ll call them recurrent themes. There are various names for them, such as leitmotifs. We are calling them “recurrent themes” because they keep coming over and over again.
11 Well, we will skip through now and consider these things. They are very important and extremely relevant. We start out right at the beginning seeing [Lehi with] many afflictions, highly favored, etc. He starts right out telling us in verse 4 that the great city of Jerusalem must repent or be destroyed. That is the theme of destruction. We mentioned that last time. All of a sudden they’ve discovered [the evidence of these destructions]. They had reason to know it all along. Here we walk around on the fossil remains of previous ages of the earth. They are all deposited under us, but they are there. And we are going to make a deposit too in our own time. We mentioned the article in the June 1989 National Geographic and that extermination is now a basic theme in the history of geology. There have been periods of extermination. That was introduced by Schindewolf, the German archeologist, in the 60s and was called neocatastrophism. It was the idea that there had been a series of catastrophes. It was sort of put down when he came out with it, but now it is fully accepted. The history of the world has been a series of regular catastrophes. Cyclical catastrophes can’t be avoided because their cause is from outer space. He says it was either the Oort Cloud or the Star Nemesis.
11,12 We notice this in human history the same way. We go through a series of destructions; this is what the Book of Mormon is about. For example, this theme of destruction in 1 Nephi 1:4 comes out again in the Words of Mormon. They’re almost completely wiped out. He starts out by saying there is almost nobody left. The whole thing is gone now. The big destructions come later on with the time of Christ, [earlier with] the Jaredites, and the rest. So we have in the history of the world all these destructions. It begins with why was Jerusalem destroyed. Did it necessarily have to be so? Jeremiah was a friend of Lehi. He was a contemporary and knew him very well. That’s very plain from the Book of Mormon; he belonged to that group. We don’t go into that this semester. The fifth chapter of Jeremiah explains why. Very briefly it will tell you why—because the people were proud and corrupt. The rich were proud and the poor were oppressed. There was no justice. Everybody was out for money. Everybody had their hearts set on wealth—that fatal theme in the Book of Mormon. They set their hearts on riches, so we have this rottenness, etc
12 We have the whole Lamentation Literature. The earliest records we have start back in the old kingdom of Egypt. We have what they call “The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage” back in the early times. He describes the complete collapse of the Old Kingdom. It all fell for the very same reasons. The great Babylonian lamentation literature has been collected by Lambert in one large Oxford volume. The lamentations lament that these things must come. And what was Enoch doing? He was prophesying and warning against the destruction of the world. It came and it was complete. In the time of Noah there was one of those great upheavals that do take place. In the time of Lamech and the time of Cain we are told how the evil spread abroad. We are always sinning and we can’t keep out of it for some reason or other. This has always been recognized. Human history always seems to be running downhill.
12 We begin the Old Testament and the Pearl of Great Price with Adam in the garden, in the world as it should be, in a heavenly place. Then he is kicked out and starts cultivating the earth. The books of Abraham and Moses are marvelous for this. We see the stages. Adam and Eve accepted the gospel and rejoiced in it, but their children [almost] all turned away from it. They mourned before the Lord. They did the best they could to save their children, but they could do nothing about it. They had Cain and Abel and lots of children. Cain and his people loved Satan more than God and would not listen to Adam. Cain made his covenant with Satan and things got worse and worse. Then with Lamech the evil spread among the whole human family and everything was going downhill. Well, this is the basic philosophy of history too, of the ancients themselves, the most famous being Hesiod’s Theogony. I suppose you all know who Hesiod was. I’m going to stop asking questions because that’s a fatal mistake when you ask questions anymore. It used to be you could get some answers, but no more. We can attest to that. Hesiod was writing at the time of Homer, about 770 B.C. He was writing on a much older basis, about the golden age. In the beginning there was the golden age, followed by a silver age, followed by a bronze age, followed by an iron age, followed by an age of clay. You’ll recognize those as the figure that Daniel saw. Remember the head of gold, the shoulders of silver, etc. In other words we decline. Each generation is a little worse, or a lot worse, than that which went before. Must that necessarily be so? Well, that’s so because of our nature; we have to be that way. “The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity and shall not fail.” We run down, as Job says, “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7).
13 Is there a general theory of human behavior? Yes, you will find that 2 Nephi and 3 Nephi break out and express themselves very warmly on this particular subject, on the unregenerate nature of man. You put him where he doesn’t have a chance. What are we doing here? Well, it’s the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Statistically, we always go downhill that way, but that’s no excuse for the individual doing it. Heisenberg showed that that applied throughout all science. You can predict with absolute certainty how a mass of atoms is going to behave, but you cannot predict at any time what any one of those atoms is going to do. It can go off anytime it feels like it; there’s no way of controlling it. That’s the uncertainty principle, and it’s so with us. The world may “go to hell in a basket,” but that’s no excuse for you. That is what Lehi is told, and that’s what we are all told. He has given us the plan, and he has given us the help. He says, I’m going to give you all the help you want. I’ll give you everything you need. All you have to do is accept it. If you don’t accept it, you can’t complain that it’s your nature. You recognize your weak nature and ask for help and you will get it; But we refuse it when it is offered this way, so we have all these downhill things
13 Well that’s 1 Nephi 4 already, the way things go, this recurrent theme of destruction. And, of course, the Book of Mormon ends with destruction. It ends with the most bleak and terrible and the saddest of destructions. It’s very sad. Remember, your great epics all begin with the destruction of a civilization, the destruction of Troy being the classical example. When the city is destroyed what do you do? Then there is the second theme, the theme of survival. It’s the very next theme that comes out here, which is “get out.” Lehi was told to get out and leave Jerusalem. In a dream he was told he would have to get out. So he is the one who makes an escape. Then this again is the theme.
13 The idea of an archaic civilization that was much higher than has ever lived since has been revived by an eminent scientist, by Giorgio de Santillana at MIT. The idea that there was an archaic civilization that had vast knowledge we always thought was a rather romantic, rather mysterious sort of thing, like the Atlantis business. But there is evidence that that is actually the case, that Jamshyd and his seven-ring cup have disappeared. The idea is that at the very beginning things were better—in other words that evolution has been downhill and not uphill. It’s the very opposite of what the Victorians taught. The strange thing is now that someone like Santillana says there may be more than something to that.
14 So they choose to get out. They are told to migrate here. Of course, they all migrate. Adam migrates. He leaves the garden and has to take out into the lone and dreary world and establish himself. Then his sons and daughters scatter everywhere throughout the world. After the flood the three sons of Noah [Genesis 9] scatter in three different directions. They are always scattering to repeople the earth, etc. When you go out, you choose the wilderness. Of great importance is the person who makes the escape. Odysseus is a good example. Like Lehi, he is driven out and he wanders. He was not rescued from Troy; he destroyed Troy. He had more to do with it than anybody else. “He was a man who was forced to wander many places and suffer very many evils. He saw the ways of many men and saw the customs of many nations, seeking to get home to save his own life and those of his companions.” But he failed to save them because they were foolish. They couldn’t control their lusts and their appetites, and they were destroyed. They never got to see their homes again. Only he came through. See, it’s the righteous man, the lone survivor in the desert. The Book of Mormon is full of those lone survivors; you’ll notice that.
14 On this theme of getting out: In 2 Nephi 5 after they have settled in the New World Nephi must depart He must leave the people because his people have become corrupt then. He goes out with the people who will follow him. They go out by themselves and settle. He builds a temple and they live “after the manner of happiness.” It’s not necessary to suffer the way people suffer. They don’t have to if they would only do that “after the manner of happiness.” It tells us what the secret is of living “after the manner of happiness.” It puts that in a very nice way. It says to like the things that God likes. That’s the thing that will make you happy, and you will get along fine because then you will have what you want.
14 In Omni 12 it tells us how Mosiah leaves from Nephi’s new ideal community. Lehi leaves Jerusalem and settles in the New World with his ideal society. They have saved themselves in the wilderness, but they go bad. So Nephi leaves them. Then Nephi’s community goes bad and Mosiah breaks off. He is told in a dream to leave them. So in Omni 12 Mosiah goes out and is made king in Zarahemla. Then in Mosiah 7 Ammon goes to the land of Lehi-Nephi and finds a Mulekite enclave there. Then we have Zeniff s story. He went out, and they [his group] went bad. In Mosiah 17 Alma is under pressure. He was a priest of King Noah, and he had to get out to save himself. He went out with a community, and they organized themselves in the wilderness at the Waters of Mormon. They had an ideal setting there, but it didn’t last again. They caught up with them. Then under Lamanite pressure Noah and his priests took off to save themselves—”to save his own life and those of his companions.” Alma got out by the Waters of Mormon, and Noah left. Then the Lamanites took them in and formed another community. Then in Mosiah 21 [Ammon] meets Limhi and they join together. They make a break because they are living under Lamanite pressure here by King Laman. They make a break and escape to Zarahemla. Everybody is always breaking out and escaping throughout the Book of Mormon, you notice.
14 In Mosiah 23 Alma is forced to move again. He makes a city of his own, but he won’t be king. Then his rival Amulon comes along and becomes so oppressive. He is an old priest of Noah too, and he hates the sight of Alma. He oppresses him as much as he can because the [Lamanite] overlord has made him the local king over Alma’s people. That’s the worst thing that could happen to Alma. So by night they make a break and leave too. He gets out and ends up safe in Zarahemla in Mosiah 24.
15 Does anybody else get out here that we notice? We are going to see other escapes like that. They are going to be destroyed, so you get out. That’s the next thing to do; that’s logical enough. And you choose a wilderness. Remember, it tells us in the book of Ether (a marvelous book, absolutely indispensable; we have to have that, the Jaredite story) that they go to that place where there never had man been. They go to a land which has never been occupied by human beings. It has to be a real wilderness; they are always going to wildernesses. This is an interesting thing here. The Saints went to the wilderness. As you know, Moses left the Egyptians and went into the wilderness, where he wandered forty years. The prophets always go out into the wilderness. Elijah went out and hid in the valley. The Qumran people had to imitate that. This is the Rechabite doctrine. When Israel or Jerusalem becomes wicked, the pious go off and live by themselves in the desert and wait for God to give them more revelation. That’s the theme of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those people went out to Qumran to do that very thing, so we have the Rechabites.
15 We are told in Jeremiah 35 that Jonadab ben Rechab and his son were righteous, and they were so blessed. They were the only people that were not corrupt in Jerusalem. They were blessed by having special offices in the temple forever after that. They went out to live in the desert by themselves. They would not live in houses of stone, and they would not even cultivate the ground. They would live as John the Baptist lived. John the Baptist was another one who went out into the wilderness. “Why have you come out into the wilderness?” He was contemporary with Qumran of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We are told that he was a wild man and that he lived on wild locusts and honey. He dressed in camel’s hair and he scared people. When Enoch appeared the people said, “There’s a strange thing in the land; a wild man has come among us.” We know from the Jewish sources that when John the Baptist appeared people said, “Who is he?” They said, “He is Enoch.” They asked him, “Who are you?” and he said, “I am the man.”
15 Josephus never gives the name of John the Baptist. He tells his story but never gives his name because when they asked him who he was he said, “I am Enos,” which just means “the man.” They took him for Enoch. It’s this idea of the one who goes out and lives in the Wilderness. As a witness against the sins and follies of the human race, you go out by yourself. People try that all the time. The Saints were driven whether they wanted to or not. The Mormons didn’t stage it. As George Albert Smith, Sr., said, “We came out here of our own free will because they made us.”
15 There’s a recent, rather thorough, aerial survey of England that shows where there was a great civilization in England at least as early as 4300 B.C. Most of north England was under dense cultivation—farms, fish ponds, orchards, villages, towns, everything. It completely disappeared and then was completely covered by something else. Then it happened again. It happens again and again. Strange things happen here. Again and again the world has been depopulated to a greater degree than we realize. You think of the plague in the time of Marcus Aurelius that wiped out most of the population of Europe and the Near East. It started in the Near East. Then you think of the 1340s when the plague depopulated four-fifths of some countries, and some communities completely. In England a totally new village culture—a way of doing things and type of farming—emerges suddenly after the Black Death because it just depopulated the land. Yes, you have your artificial wildernesses The weather was behind it too. They had bad years and had to move. In the great heartland of Asia the crops failed. The central hosts of Asia are living on a marginal economy, and when the grass doesn’t grow they have to move and wander with their flocks. They infringe on the outlying civilizations. The civilizations are all on the edge—the Chinese, the Indian, the Egyptian, the Babylonian. They are all on the edge of what is called the heartland.
17 Then we have these swarming times when everybody is disorganized and disoriented. The book of Ether is a classic treatment of that. I wrote a book on that, The World of the Jaredites. That’s called the heroic period, the epic period. It produced epic literature and was called “the swarming time.” [This happened] in 1700 B.C. Then in 1200 B.C. Troy fell—not just Troy but the Egyptian empire and everything fell in 1200. Then 600 B.C. was another pivotal date, in Lehi’s day. The old governments, the old sacral kingships disappeared everywhere. In 1200, 1700, 2400, and 3000—about every 600 years.
17 Our third motif here is the importance of keeping the record. Why this importance of the record? It’s constantly going to be repeated here. For example, in 2 Nephi 29 he explains why the scriptures are to gather all things in one, the great unification. They are absolutely necessary to the project to orchestrate the whole thing, to bring it together. If this was just one disconnected series of tragic events, the thing would be a horrible mess. People think it is, but it isn’t. It all fits into the same plan, and the record is going to tell us that. God wants us to keep the record which shows us that the thing is orchestrated here, just as you bring an empire together. You couldn’t have an empire until you had the written word, until you had writing. An emperor has no control out of sight of the next country or people unless he has the written record. He sends a scribe out to bring in the reports. He has the main office or bureau, and that’s the center of empire
18 Then we get the next point which is the gospel plan. The Book of Mormon is not only a history, but as the history goes along it explains what’s happening. It takes us by the hand and gives a meaning to the whole thing. It tells us where we fit in and why this is not just a lot of nonsense, why we are being told this. It’s very carefully selected and very carefully edited. We are conducted through here, and we find such marvelous gospel sermons. The Book of Mormon has more gospel sermons than anything you will find anywhere. They go further in explaining what is going on in this world than anything else. You will find such sermons in 1 Nephi 10, the plan with Christ as the center, a single unified plan. That’s what scientists are talking about today, a unified plan that will explain everything. That’s what we want because they are all connected somehow. How can we explain them? This is the theme in the Book of Mormon. It says, “Bringing things all together in one.” That’s what the written word has the effect of doing. But the plan itself is explained here. In 1 Nephi 12-14 he shows the whole story; it would be pointless without it. When we are suffering these things we have a right to know, but we refuse to believe. If the Lord tries to explain it to us, we do like Cain. We turn on our heel and march out of the room. “I’m not going to listen to anymore of this,” Cain told the Lord in [the book of] Moses. That’s what we do. But it is explained and nowhere better than in the Book of Mormon. As 1 Nephi 16 tells us, this is hard to take. It’s a bleak story, etc.
19,20 When studying Shakespeare you’ve got to apply your mind to that, and to the degree to which you do you can find out that it will convey a great message to you. But you must apply your mind to a much higher state than you do with just your own intellectual powers. You must concentrate intensely, the most intense kind of concentration, which is prayer. You’ve got to pray about it. That’s not just joking; that’s an intellectual operation he [Shakespeare] is talking about. Nobody realized that better than Newton. Nobody was able to make the great discoveries that Newton was able to make for that very reason.
19,20 “ I said last time that read is the same as riddle. When you see a document in front of you, it doesn’t speak to you itself. You have to apply your mind to it. We talked last time about the importance of doing this very thing, of bringing these things to mind. All the book does is give you various hints, but it’s not the real thing. Shakespeare says again: “Sit and see, minding true things by what their mockeries be.” He says, this is just a play. We went through this with Henry V. This is just a play; this is just a book; this is just a mockup; this is just paper and ink. You’ve got to apply your mind to that, and to the degree to which you do you can find out that it will convey a great message to you. But you must apply your mind to a much higher state than you do with just your own intellectual powers. You must concentrate intensely, the most intense kind of concentration, which is prayer. You’ve got to pray about it. That’s not just joking; that’s an intellectual operation he is talking about. Nobody realized that better than Newton. Nobody was able to make the great discoveries that Newton was able to make for that very reason.
20 Back to a riddle, “as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence.” This was the folly of the Renaissance and Reformation too and the Hermetic movement and all that go with them, namely that they thought they could all rely on the power of the human mind alone. They thought they were clever enough to do it with the liberation that came. I won’t say “at the end of the Middle Ages” because scholasticism was just as vain and just as intellectual. This was St. Augustine’s thing, that by thought alone you could prove the gospel, by thought alone you could prove anything you wanted to. You were equal to anything. When they discovered new devices and new documents like the great Hermetic literature, then they became confident that there was nothing they couldn’t do, that the human mind was capable of anything. They were fooling themselves because the human mind isn’t. But aided it is, with a Liahona, if God aids you with this sort of thing and you want to join him. The Book of Mormon has a great deal to say about this, about the powers of the mind and what we can do by faith. He goes on here, “as a secret... by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood.”
21 Of course, that was the mistake of the Renaissance and Reformation. They broke down because they believed that by pure thought they could do it all, that they could pull themselves up by their bootstraps. As Job 11 says, man cannot by searching find out God. You can search all you want and find out a lot of things, but you need God to help you if you are going to find out how it all belongs together. “He did read the riddle of the heavens, and he believed that by the same powers of his introspective imagination he would read the riddle of the Godhead.” [Job 11:7] That’s going too far. Man cannot by searching find out God
22 This is what the Book of Mormon gives us, this kind of enlightenment. The mystery of the Liahona is what we are talking about here. It’s a type of thing. God will give it to us to aid our thinking, but you have to bring your mind to it. If you didn’t think, the Liahona wouldn’t work. It worked only according to their faith and according to their behavior because again you have to keep the line pure. If you introduce corrupt elements, it’s like introducing impurities in a conveyor. Impure copper is going to heat up. The more impure it is the less good a conveyor it is. If it is perfectly pure then you have a marvelous conveyor. That’s what we have to be. This purity of life is an absolute necessity to go with these other things, and the Liahona wouldn’t work without it. As soon as they started misbehaving, it refused to work. This applies to everything we do in our lives.