[A Happy People Have Nothing to Record]
[“They Had All Things Common”]
[Blessed with Health, Family Life etc.]
[Some Let Pride and Worldly Things Increase]
[Disciples of Jesus Have Exceptional Powers]
[Zarahemla Rebuilt—An Urban Culture]
[The Word FASTING Defined]
164 Every book [in the Book of Mormon] is the most marvelous in the world, but this is really something. If we get stalled in it for the rest of the semester it would be worth it. They’re all like this, but this is a particularly important book. Of course, I’m referring to that miraculous work, 4 Nephi. It’s an epitome; it’s a digest. The whole Book of Mormon is there. You don’t have to read anything but this one book. How many chapters does it have? One. Does it get it all in there? Yes, it does. It contains the best case and the worst case. It describes them, and it explains them all in one chapter, in one book. It’s a marvelous thing.
164 It’s very, very short, for the reason that Voltaire explains: “Happy are the people whose annals are a blank.” If people live happy lives, what are you going to write about them? We’ve mentioned this before. Without your crime, murder, rape, etc., you’re not going to have any prime TV. We just have to leave that out. Is their life empty and boring? This is the question we have to [consider],
164 We were out digging among Egyptian villages [recently]. Life in an Egyptian village and life in a Hopi village are very much alike—very stable, no change at all in thousands of years. When people go away, they come back. They get bored with life anywhere else, and they come back because it’s much more exciting—all sorts of pleasant things going on, a very interesting situation. There’s is another side to it, too. But it’s stable and unchanging, and it’s unchanging because they’re the happiest societies. They don’t want to change. But there’s a big problem here, you see. Why wouldn’t you live in a Hopi village or an Egyptian village, which are exactly like the villages in the models for 5,000, 6,000, and 7,000 years ago? Same village, same people, same donkeys, same crops, same palm trees, same geese, same mud houses built on exactly the same pattern— thousands of years, in and out, go on and on with perfectly happy people. They’re very happy people, and yet they go to the city still—and the city is hell. There is no more hideous and marvelous city in the world than Cairo, but they go. Why would you go there? What’s lacking in that life? Well, of course, the problem is one of boredom. There’s more than boredom—it’s guilt, you see. What about your capacities? You can go out to the field and work in the day and make a living. You can have enough. The soil is extremely rich, and they can go on living. The problem now is population; they’re getting so overpopulated. There’s not enough to go around. It’s getting rather desperate everywhere in the world. But, aside from that which has only happened very recently, you’d feel guilty staying in the village. Why would you feel guilty staying in the village.
169 As they become more civilized, they become more simple and more austere. As we mentioned before, in the great civilizations you have one standard dress—as you do in heaven or the Pythagorean society. The brotherhoods, remember, live that kind of life, and it’s a very austere and simple life. Fourth Nephi actually is a Utopia. I’ve written a bit on Utopias, but this is the perfect state, how it would be. Is it possible? These Utopias were speculative writings. You know the great ones, the four great Utopias.
170 4 Nephi 1:2 Let’s get to the second verse now. “And every man did deal justly one with another.” Well, this covers a lot of ground, you see. The people were all converted, both Nephites and Lamanites, no contentions or disputations, “every man did deal justly one with another.” Isn’t that being a bit idealistic? Is that Utopian yet? Of the four Platonic virtues, the first is justice, which is time. That is to give everything that is due from you and to take what is due to you. If you give less than you should, then you’re MIKROPSYCHOS, you’re small-minded. Aristotle in the fourth book of the NICHOMACHAEAN ETHICS talks about this. Then you’re small-minded and petty. You’re confining yourself if you give less than you should. If you take less than you should, you’re also being small, petty, and cautious. You think you’re being virtuous, like Scrooge, in being abstemious— the billionaire who goes to work taking his lunch in a brown paper bag, things like that. We admire that man’s abstemiousness. Well, what is all his money [for]? He’s a very mean-spirited person. That’s what Scrooge does. But it says there “every man did deal justly one with another.” Is this more satisfying to deal justly? That means they had relationships, they had deals, they had bargains, etc., but you didn’t try to take the advantage if you dealt justly.
170 Is this more emotionally satisfying, though, than charity? If everything is just charity, you give the charity and that’s all. Charity is the higher law. As the Arabs say, “The brave man never asks the odds, the generous man never asks the price, the good man never asks questions.” You just go along with that. But what about this bargaining business? Well, that’s all right in its realm.
170 4 Nephi 1:3 Well, let’s take the third verse here. “And they had all things in common among them [this is the stinger, you see]; therefore, there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.”
170,171 4 Nephi 1:4,5 Everyone is healthy and happy. What do they have to do now? “There still continued to be peace in the land.” See, they’re neither rich nor poor. Today we are compounding both poverty and wealth. Today they’re moving farther apart, as you know, and each is becoming greater. Poverty is increasing as wealth is increasing, so we’re going to have some very helpful hints here. “The thirty and seventh year passed away also, and there still continued to be peace in the land.” And this is what happened. Now this is an interesting thing here, because it’s referred to a number of times. “And there were great and marvelous works wrought by the disciples of Jesus.” Now always throughout this whole book, one whole chapter, there are the disciples of Jesus as special people. The whole society accepts the gospel, but there are certain ones who have very special powers, marvelous powers of doing miracles, etc. They are the ones who are progressing. They are the ones who have got beyond this. It just gives us a hint and tells us they were there and doing certain things. They remind us of the ancient brotherhoods. Notice what it says here: “... wrought by the disciples of Jesus, insomuch that they did heal the sick, and raise the dead, and cause the lame to walk, and the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear; and all manner of miracles did they work among the children of men; and in nothing did they work miracles save it were in the name of Jesus.”
171 These gifts are all for solving problems, you know. And all for solving problems beyond our skill. These brethren went beyond that, because later on in the whole society they stand apart as a different group. We’ve always had them, this particular group of saints.
171 4 Nephi 1:6,7 And so the years pass away in verse 6, and the Lord prospers them, and (verse 7) “they did build cities again.” Now, here we have another interesting question. Well, prosper is a good word here. Prosper is a favorite word of the rich. John D. Rockefeller always used to use that word. When one of his crooked deals was successful, he said “we were prospered.” The Lord prospered us. He gave the Lord credit for it, but [said] we were prospered. But here the word prosper is used for a society in which there are no rich. Apparently you can prosper as a society, as a group. Brigham Young used to say that, you know. I could make this people the richest people on earth, but we have to be rich as a people. As soon as we start being rich as individuals that way, then that will spoil everything.
171 4 Nephi 1:8,9 Then in the next verse we read that it was an urban civilization. Now, wait a minute. What about the Garden of Eden? They caused Zarahemla to be built again, and many cities had been sunk, etc. They rebuilt their cities, and it was an urban civilization. So the question arises, which do you prefer. The Garden of Eden, you see, is the way things should be. That’s paradise. That’s the paradisiacal order to which the earth is to return. The tenth article of faith says we’re going back to that. “The earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.” We’ll live in an Eden. But what about the city? It’s the city of Zion. Zion is very much a city, very much a community; they’re all of one heart and one mind. They have no poor among them. He called his people Zion. They were a city, a walled city, a city for protection, a city of light, etc. How do you have the two? Well, of course, you combine them both. This way the Lord came and talked with Adam in the Garden, but he also visits [in the city]. He’s in the center. You can always call on him in his office in Zion. But here we have the urban civilization, which is a heavenly city. We talk about the heavenly city, the heavenly Jerusalem, etc., and yet we have the other one. Well, you know we can combine the two very nicely.
172 4 Nephi 1:10 Well, now we come to this very interesting verse, the tenth verse. They “became an exceedingly fair and delightsome people.” That’s important, too. Does it mean that they had to have perfect bodies, and we’re always aware of that fact? Not a bit of it. When a thing is FAIR, it is as it should be. You talk about fair play, a fair game, a fair proposition, a fairly good way of doing it, a properly good way of doing it, a fairly good job, etc. A damsel is fair if her features are in the right place and she has the right measurements, we say. That’s not necessarily the same measurements we accept today. But to be fair is the way we imagine it should be. It’s the function and the rightness of it. When you look at a thing, you know that’s right. Of course, this is the platonic doctrine of ANAMNESIS, which we will not pursue here.
172 4 Nephi 1:10 To be “fair and delightsome.” Delight is enjoyment without lust. That’s the difference, a great thing here. Again, it’s a platonic idea, isn’t it. In your feeling toward nature, you are drawn toward what is lovable, what is endearing, what is rightly proportioned, what is pleasing, what is beautiful, what you’ve been looking for, what delights you. And with no desire to ravage and exploit with lust, vandalism, power, gain. Notice the four things [emphasized] in the Book of Mormon— power, gain, praise or recognition, and lusts of the flesh. They have nothing to do with delightsome and nothing to do with fair. Fair means things are as they should be, and delightsome means causing and giving enjoyment without lust of any kind. In our society you must control and possess and master a thing; that’s what Satan wants. This is what Satan does. Why do we do it? It’s very interesting.
172 4 Nephi 1:11 What about the next verse? Verse 11 says, “And they were married, and given in marriage, and were blessed according to the multitude of the promises which the Lord had made unto them.” These things had been promised. God knows what will really make us happy. He would promise us that.
173 Now the Nephites trusted God to know what was good for them. Ill-gotten gain is not gain at all. It [the important thing] is what we should have, not what we want.
173 4 Nephi 1:12 Well, then what do we have here? Verse 12: “And they did not walk any more after the performances and ordinances of the law of Moses.” Now here’s what they were doing. They were actually engaged in this. They had to work at it, but their life wasn’t dull here. They [were] “continuing in fasting and prayer, and in meeting together oft both to pray and to hear the word of the Lord.” Again, we must get an idea of what this word fasting means. It’s a very old English word. I wrote down the dictionary meaning on the back of one of these. I can tell you easily enough what it is. Fast is the same word as FEAST and FEST and FESTIVAL, and FASTI in Latin. It means to hold fast to something, to observe something carefully. But it means to exercise self-control. Fasting means to hold yourself back. That’s what it really is. Fasting is to correct excesses. It’s to hold firm. It’s self-control. That’s the dictionary definition of it, and then it branches off into other things. Fasting is self-restraint. They forewent the pleasures of eating when they weren’t hungry. They gave up the pleasure of drinking when they weren’t thirsty. That’s fasting, you see. We don’t do that. America is all overweight. You know the great curse of our time is overweight. The main thing we’re suffering from [is that] everybody’s overweight. We’ve been eating when we weren’t really hungry, or we may have been still hungry, but we didn’t stop when we should. When you fast, it’s self-control. It isn’t to starve yourself to death and become so weak you topple over. That’s not fasting. That’s excess, too, as far as that goes. Then you are losing control just as well.
173 4 Nephi 1:12 What are the advantages of fasting? Well, it’s more pleasurable. Our number one problem, I say, is being overweight. Brigham Young had something to say on that. He said we all eat too much, we wear too much, we work too much. And that was in those times when they did. If we all ate less, wore less, and worked less, we’d be a better, happier, and wiser people.
173,174 4 Nephi 1:12 The child cannot resist all the candy. If you give him more, he wants to go on eating it. But at a certain point we have to tell the child he’s got to start fasting. Well, the ninth candy bar is going to make him sick, but he’ll eat it just as sure as anything. Wouldn’t fasting be better for him? Wouldn’t restraint be better for him? See, fasting is to keep yourself within bounds. Remember what the Lord tells us—appetites, desires, and passions must be kept within the bounds the Lord has set. It means any kind of appetites like that. In other words, the only way you’ll keep them in bounds is by fasting. The Book of Mormon tells us later on, you must withhold yourself from certain activities which you might find pleasurable for the time being, and perfectly natural as far as that goes. But you must deny yourselves. It’s perfectly natural to want to eat until you bust, but you must deny yourself. We must fast. So this was necessary to preserving this order of society and to bringing it about.
174 4 Nephi 1:12; Matthew 6:10-14 “Continuing in fasting and prayer.” Prayer of both kinds. There are the two kinds. The one is when you put what you really want and what you really feel into words. That’s your very personal prayer. To be sincere it must avoid mechanical repetition like a prayer wheel. Yet if your wants are few, you’ll naturally have to do a lot of repeating there. You just want a few things, so we have the Lord’s Prayer. “Give us this day our daily bread,” and this is in the Book of Mormon, too. And then the very next thing is “thy kingdom come.” People have commented on the absurdity of that, such as the famous author, Joseph Conrad. This is what he says. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Great things. Great thoughts, and then suddenly it starts coming down to the economy. “Give us this day our daily bread.” Well, that’s the big obstacle to this, you see. The big obstacle is as soon as you have to depend on somebody else for your daily bread, that’s not the kingdom of God. That’s not the way things are done equitably. That’s where the stumbling block is. And forgive our debts—and the Book of Mormon says debts using the business term, as we forgive those who owe us—as we forgive our debtors. Now that’s the obstacle to the kingdom of heaven, so that comes next. The Lord’s going to take that out, and it’s the same thing here. Our wants are few. What are we going to ask for? It requires intense introspection, you see. “Where do I go from here” is what you ask every time you pray to the Lord personally. Where do I go from here? Is there anything I need or that I haven’t done? You find out there’s plenty to do. You can’t stand still.
174 4 Nephi 1:12 And the other is the continuing prayer. He says they prayed continuously. That’s the mutual awareness. Well, they prayed together, both meeting together to pray and hear the word of the Lord. Fasting and prayer, personal prayer, and you meet together, and that’s the continuing prayer. Well, we haven’t got that here. Of course, we can’t get stuck on the shortest book in the Book of Mormon, but it covers so much ground and has so much of the other in it.