[Nibley on Prayer]
[Early Egyptian Society Similar to 4 Nephi]
[The Disciples Perform Miracles Among Themselves]
[There Was No Contention Among Them]
[The Whole Community Prospered]
[No Individual Records—Only General History]
[A Few Revolt and Call Themselves Lamanites]
[Become “Spread upon all the face of the land”
[They Kept Their “substance no more common”]
175 4 Nephi 1:12 We’re in 4 Nephi now [discussing] why that was a marvelous book, etc. Now we’re down to the twelfth [verse]. Notice we’re taking time on this, but we don’t want to take too much time. You can’t take too much time. The whole book is here. This is an epitome of the Book of Mormon, 4 Nephi. What were they going to do? How did they spend their time? This is the point. As we saw the last time, the great issue is going to be boredom. You’ve got to do something. What are you going to do to make life interesting? Well, it says they spent their days in continual fasting. We talked about fasting; it’s far more than you think, when we say fasting here. And [they spent time] in prayer and in meeting together. Why did they meet together? To pray and hear the word of the Lord. Prayer is the main activity, apparently. They spent their days in fasting and prayer. Of course, fasting is not a conscious operation, but in prayer you have something in mind. You’re doing something when you pray. You’re doing the thing that we do most in this world. The very essence of our existence here is to pray. We pray all the time. That’s an individual thing. They gathered together to pray, and they had individual prayer.
175 4 Nephi 1:12 What is a prayer, anyway? Should we ask some people things here? Prayer is a broadcast, announcing that you are here. It’s a personal signal, and nobody’s going to escape it at all. It’s an announcement of your presence. Sometimes when you’re under great pressure or in great danger, you are willing to sound off and say, here I am—do something about it. But nobody can escape that. It’s spontaneous and it’s irrepressible that you will pray. It’s an appeal for help in desperate situations, but not always that—you’re announcing your presence all the time. To whom are you announcing your presence?
175,176 4 Nephi 1:12 They say the monks of old would go out into the desert to pray. Well, Jesus went up into the mountain to pray, and Jesus went out into the desert to pray. Why do you go out to the desert to pray? Because you’re praying to a particular person, a certain one. Do you pray when you’re in a crowd? Well, you do, yes. They pray to be seen. Remember, Jesus talks about the Pharisees that spread their phylacteries and pray to be heard. They pray in public places. They pray in the marketplaces and on the street corners. They pray on the towers, and they have a trumpet sound when they go to make their alms and give their prayers. So we’re always praying. We’re praying to each other, we’re praying to the Lord, we’re announcing our presence to everybody all around. It’s the ultimate expression of our ego, that we’re here. It’s a very interesting thing. It’s an announcement of our dependence also, and hence RELIGIO. There’s always a time when a person will say, “O God,” no matter whether they’re atheists or not. That’s RELIGIO, which means religion and a connection with somebody else. It reestablishes the tie that has been denied and broken. In a great crisis, people will pray.
176 4 Nephi 1:12 You put into words what you want and how you feel. Prayer is as natural as breathing. It expands your awareness. It puts you into the big picture. You’re not satisfied with being just in a hole, being nothing and being unnoticed. You must be noticed, and you must notice. We mentioned that before. You are always aware of God, and God is always aware of you. You can’t break that. That’s what the Arabs call the FATRA. Every time you breathe you say, “Allah, Allah.” Incidentally, in a very good branch in Cairo, when they talk about God, they talk about ALLAH. “God be with you till we meet again,” they sing. God is Allah. That’s the only word you can use [in their language], so don’t worry about that. But you announce your presence. The FATRA is a prayer you do unconsciously and in your hearts. Remember, when they couldn’t pray aloud, the Nephites prayed in their hearts. They were suppressed and held as prisoners, etc. Then you’re particularly aware of it. But you’re particularly aware of another person who is aware of you. This is this mutual awareness. You’re not alone, and it preserves your individuality. It heightens your individuality. “Here I am” is what you say.
176 4 Nephi 1:12 The word AMEN [is used] when a group is together. AMEN means “it’s my intention. I approve that.” Part of the ordinance of prayer is saying AMEN. We don’t say amen when we should, not even with the sacrament, but you should say it. That’s part of the ordinance. It’s very important— “and all the people shall say amen.” That’s in the Dead Sea Scrolls, right on the first page where things are said about the prayer. That shows that it’s your prayer, too—that you want to participate in it along with the others.
176 4 Nephi 1:12; John 1:1 Another thing about it is that it’s a real activity—and we engage ourselves up to the eyebrows in it. We’re just in it all the way, but we have no instrumentality. We don’t use instruments at all. That’s a very interesting thing about prayer. We don’t have prayer wheels, and we don’t have rosaries. See, the rosary wasn’t adapted until the seventeenth century by the Roman church, and it was adapted from the Buddhists through Jesuit missionaries. The rosary is considered something quite sacred now. [They] have prayer beads and worry beads, but we don’t use instruments. No instrumentality. So where do we stand? Where’s the reality? Is there real content there? Well, I think there is, now that we know how certain things are projected. First, prayer is individual. It puts into words what you want and how you feel. That’s very important to do. That puts you into the picture. Remember, Joseph Smith when he was a child—the first time when he went to the Grove he said never before, neither he nor his family, had ever prayed out loud before. Why would the Lord need your words? He knows what’s in your heart, but the words are for you to formulate. The word is very important. “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). It’s through the word that we communicate. We saw that before. The only way that we exchange our own ideas and match our own universes is by the word. We have the seven preceptors, but there’s only one projector. What I say is what you learn about my existence and my universe and we can share it that way. If I falsify through the word, the easiest thing in the world to do, it throws everything into confusion. It’s a real horror. The worst of crimes is the lie.
176,177 So the individual puts into words what he wants and how he feels. That helps you and formulates you. That puts you into the picture and places you at the door ready for the interview. You brush yourself up and get ready for the interview because [you wonder] is the Lord really going to hear you? We’ve talked about that, too. Can that possibly happen? We’ve talked about the speed of gravity and the speed of light. There are some things that are instantaneous in their effect, and gravity is one of them. It’s absolutely a complete mystery—nothing can be made of it at all. In a famous letter to Richard Bentley, Isaac Newton said, no sane person could possibly accept the reality of that, and yet it’s so. That’s the way it is—bodies can influence each other through empty space instantaneously at any distance. If that can happen, he says, it can only be through the operation of God’s mind force.
177 4 Nephi 1:12 To be sincere, you can see it must avoid mechanical repetition. We say we do not wish to multiply words before him. What do you do when you multiply? You repeat. You don’t add when you multiply. You don’t increase when you multiply, you just repeat. You repeat over and over again: Five times five is twenty-five—five repeated five times. When you multiply words, you just repeat words, and you do it automatically. This becomes a very common thing, as if repetition added to it. The scriptures say we do not multiply words, and yet so many Ave Marias are supposed to have much more value than half that many Ave Marias, or so many turns of the prayer wheel or so many Pater Nosters are supposed to have more value. No, multiplying words isn’t going to do it at all in what you do here. We must avoid this mechanical repetition and prayer wheels.
177 What I’m talking about is how these people [in 4 Nephi] fill their time. Remember, they are not having any wars. There is nobody sick or anything like that. They have everything they want. Nobody is hungry. They didn’t have to work any more than just to cover the minimum necessities. What are these people going to do, you see? This is the whole thing that puzzles us, too. But prayer is the main activity to get things going. It puts things on a special footing here.
177 Our wants are few, so how can you avoid repetition in prayer? I tell the Lord what I want, and every time I tell him, I tell him the same thing, because that’s what I want. I don’t want everything else. What about it? You can add, as I say, this multiplying that goes on. I’ve stood in churches and heard people say things hundreds of times over and over again. In a litany when there was a drought in Bavaria, they said, “Hear us, hear us, hear us.” Or in Greece, they SAIDKYRIE ELEISON all morning. Or, as Paul tells us, they shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians; great is Diana of the Ephesians” for three hours without stopping. They thought that would be an acceptable prayer. Well, that’s just automatic. You’re not getting anywhere with that. It doesn’t delight you; it doesn’t delight the Lord or anyone else. That’s not what we’re supposed to be doing.
177 4 Nephi 1:12 How do you avoid this repetition, multiplying words this way? Well, this means that when you pray and you have asked for everything you want for now, intense introspection is required. Either you’ve already arrived and you have everything you want, and that covers everything you can imagine, and you’re not going to progress or anything else anymore—or something is missing and you’ve got to pray for more. The question you keep asking when you get to the end of your prayer is, “where do I go from here”? The Lord says, I’ve heard all that before; now you’re capable of more than that. What do we do next, you see? Notice in verse 12, they engaged in continuing prayer. Again, this is what I say is as a FATRA. You’re aware of God all the time, and he’s aware of you. This is what Schleiermacher called ABHDNGIGKEIT—the feeling of absolute and total dependence at all times. There is dependence but also a feeling of companionship—a feeling that you’re not just some creature moving along like an ant crawling along the ground or something like that. Somebody is aware of you and you are aware of him, whatever else the human race [might be doing]. The one that you are in contact with is the greatest of them all; it’s your Heavenly Father. He’s able to be aware of you, and you’re able to be aware of him.
177 We saw this in the case of Jesus introducing himself to the people one by one, blessing the children one by one. He knows your name, and you know him. It’s an intimate personal relationship shared by nobody else, and that’s not selfish because you know he has it with everybody else. That makes you friends with everybody else, too, because you know that you have a common friend and who it is. I told you about Brother John Hayes, the registrar, didn’t I?. He had been registrar at BYU for forty years. It was a small school, but all the students passed through his hands, so to speak, and he knew all the students who ever went to BYU. He not only knew them, but he was interested in them. For that reason he knew their family histories and their troubles. He would meet a student twenty-five years after [graduation] and ask, “Did your mother ever get over her arthritis?” or “Did you ever move from Nephi?” “Is your father still in the cattle business?” He’d know all about them. Every student he knew all about, and he was no superman or anything like that. He was just good old Brother Hayes. He was interested; that’s why. If he could know everybody individually, don’t you think the Lord could know you? It’s no problem at all for him. He knows you as an individual; you’ll never be anything else but yourself to him. You’ll have a friendship with him as intimate as with anybody else.
178 How can it be that intimate? Well, look. I used to think when we had one child that he was our life. He was marvelous. Little Paul thrilled the daylights out of me, but when we had eight it was just the same. Grandchildren are just as thrilling, just as wonderful, just as individual. No difference at all, and it could go on forever and ever. So don’t worry. We’re in a community here in which everything is going to be very jolly. There’s going to be no boredom in this kingdom it’s talking about here, not for the 240 years, anyway.
178 4 Nephi 1:12 Let’s go on with this prayer business that was continuing then and meeting oft together. Well, you see that. You’ll be drawn to people who’ve had the same experiences you have. This would be nice. You say, isn’t it enough to pray and study alone? Those are important, of course. We read that wonderful account in the Mandaean community text from the third or fourth century—maybe even earlier than that. They are all different, where it talks about the various worlds, etc. All the worlds are different. Each has something to contribute to the others. Each can take something from all the others. The combinations are different in each one. So as the worlds get more and more numerous, they are more and more different. They’re more and more distinct, yet more and more dependent on each other. They more and more enjoy each other’s company, that wonderful thing about going and visiting each other and that sort of thing. This is a conceivable situation. We don’t run out [of interesting things to do]. See, the whole thing is it abolishes all selfishness. The interest goes out to everything else. It’s an outflowing feeling. “Three cheers for the universe,” as the famous New England philosopher used to say.
178 Each there had something to give and needs more from the others. Everybody gains. The exchange increases the rich variety of our society, and especially the multifaceted genius of every individual. It’s a remarkable thing to see [for example] the Egyptians, those amazing people. They did things we couldn’t think of doing; they were a most marvelous people. They were the most stable society on earth because they were the most friendly. The great productive periods [were] the first six dynasties—it’s a very interesting thing. That’s when all the great stuff was produced, and there are no signs of war. We find no weapons. We find everything else in the tombs. You won’t find weapons, you won’t find any signs of conquest, you won’t find the victor model—the victorious conqueror or anything like that. It’s only in the later dynasties, the Middle Kingdom, when the Asiatics moved in and mingled, that you get the usual trouble. But these things aren’t necessary. It’s an amazing thing what’s going on in this Book of Mormon here. The exchange increases the variety of society and the multifaceted genius of every individual in it. You’re surrounded by beings as highly aware of your presence as you are of theirs. How much would you keep back from them? Your SACER EGOISMUS is inviolable. You always have that. That’s the wonderful thing about the Egyptian—he always leaves you his name and address and his genealogy. He’s not going to be absorbed into an ocean of being. It’s himself. He’s going to be preserved and he’s going to rise in the resurrection. And it’s the same thing here.
178,179 Moses 1:39 Well, how much would you keep back from such people? You’re not going to turn yourself inside out like some fantastic sea monster or make an exhibition of yourself. It’s funny that these things are what’s done in society in which people are suspicious of each other—in which they’re jealous and competitive. There is where they try to show off. There’s where they try to be exotic and excessive, etc., and it ends only in the saddest dissolution, a pitiful state of things. This is my work and my glory, to share with everybody else (Moses 1:39). They can have eternal life and immortality, too, just like I do. We get all of this in the book of Moses.
179 4 Nephi 1:12 So we are literally a family then. We’re praying separately and we’re praying together. The worlds, we are told, maintain a lively exchange with each other. We know that by the comet shuttle now. This is actually no longer a myth. It’s a fantastic thing. I gathered together [some examples of this] in that work called [“Treasures in the Heavens”] where the worlds exchange knowledge, etc.
179 4 Nephi 1:13 Then we’re told there was no contention among them [in 4 Nephi]. Is there any wonder about that? There’s no contention. What, no plot in the play? We’re not going to have any fun without contention. With us, after the buildup, after the climax, after the denouement, they ride into the sunset or they live happily every after. The play must end there, because the author or the playwright has nowhere to go. After all the problems, after all the dirty work, after all the dangers have been passed, then we say, “The cloudless skies are all serene. Oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen.” They have no place to go, so the author has nothing to do but end the play. But that’s where the play should begin. What kind of fun are they going to have after that if they’ve lost all the excitement, if it’s all passed away?
179,180 4 Nephi 1:14,2 What do the Nephites do after they reach this condition? The only scene open to them after that, he talks about. He talks about mighty miracles. Now we have a very interesting thing that’s going on repeatedly to a small nucleus of brethren, the brotherhood, that have this superior knowledge. They perform these miracles among themselves. The rest of them don’t. They’re just a normal society of people behaving themselves at last. But you see they get mentioned quite often here in significant situations. The only scene was the realm of mighty miracles. That’s a world we know not of, you see. They were not ordinary people but something beyond our reach. Again, they’re called the disciples of Jesus, and they appear as a very special group in this book. We are told in verse 13, “There were mighty miracles wrought among the disciples of Jesus,” not just by the disciples but they were wrought among them. Apparently not among the rest, though the rest were all members of the church. It tells us in the second verse that they’d all been converted, yet the mighty miracles were limited to this group among the disciples of Christ. They had knowledge, powers, and understandings beyond the rest. This has always been an ongoing tradition in human history—that there are human groups, isolated people, both men and women, who possess knowledge above the others which is kept secret. The idea is that it couldn’t be shared without becoming corrupted, misunderstood, or lost, in other words. That’s what the Lord tells the disciples when he meets with them behind closed doors. He says, don’t tell these things to the others. It’s like giving pearls to the swine and throwing your food to the dogs. They wouldn’t appreciate it at all. It would just make them sick, and it would be lost on them. There’s nothing wrong with them, but this is something special.
180 This idea of special groups guarding their secrets, this esoteric [information], naturally led to the idea of all sorts of fake societies, all sorts of cultists. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, it just became a rash. Everybody and his dog was joining these secret societies, with freemasonry taking the lead. They were trying to invest themselves in an air of mystery, of superior knowledge that others didn’t possess, etc. But Joseph Smith actually did possess such knowledge, and if you don’t believe it, look at the Book of Mormon. He gave us that. But it’s very common for people to fake this for escapism—to escape the dullness of life and to make a big show to enhance one’s importance. You’re going to get this all the time. We have secrecy in business, government, and all sorts of things to give us this air of superior knowledge. All governments today are becoming secret government. It’s nonsense and it’s dangerous.
180 4 Nephi 1:13-15 But here they are without the contention. Now where do the Nephites come? I say the only scenes open to them were these mighty miracles. Again, the disciples of Jesus appear in this special world. We’re told that mighty miracles were wrought among them, rather than by them among the general public. This is confirmed later on in this book here. In a nation where all are members [of the church], this denotes a special brotherhood experienced beyond our kin. In other words, they’re the people in the laboratory. They’re doing the big stuff that we don’t know anything about. This becomes apparent in the next verse, you’ll notice. Look in verse 14. It tells us when these ordained disciples died, there were other disciples ordained in their stead, replacing them individually just as if it was a special group. “There were other disciples ordained in their stead; and also many of that generation had passed away. And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land.”
180 4 Nephi 1:15 “There was no contention in the land because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.” Well, again you can see that. There was no problem if it did dwell in the hearts of the people. That would condition every thought and action, you see, if it dwelt in the hearts of the people. In any crisis we’d wait to get our directives from him, if the love of God dwelt there. The solution would be forthcoming. We’re not going to have contention if we’re waiting upon the judgment and the instruction of God, and if the love of God dwells in our hearts. It’s impossible; it’s out of the question. As soon as we start contending, you see what happens to that. It would be most retrograde to that. It would be completely opposed to it in every way.
180 4 Nephi 1:16 Verse 16 reads like the famous negative confession, 125th section of the Book of the Dead, in which a person lists all the sins he did not commit. As Benjamin tells the people, there’s no end to the list of sins I might make that you might commit. I can’t go on telling you all the things you mustn’t do. I’d better tell you the things you must do, because there’s no end to the ways in which people can offend God.
181 4 Nephi 1:16 This reads like a negative confession here. Is this what you call a good society, just because “there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.” Well, must we be so negative? What was there? Why do you tell us what there was not? Well, these aren’t negative at all. These things are all unnecessary, and by denying the negative, of course, it makes it positive. There’s no problem here. All the vices listed represent the absence of some vital quality, not a positive contribution of any sort. For example, envy is what? Well, it’s the absence of full self-achievement. That’s your own lack again. Or strife is grabbing for something you lack, something in which you’re defective. Or someone who’s blocking you is your strife. Or, tumult is raising hell for lack of getting enough attention yourself, getting into things. Whoredoms is a very defective family life. Lying is an inadequacy of knowledge or recognition or underachievement—they always take to lying. Lasciviousness—lack of sensitivity, lack of taste, lack of self-control. To lack all those lackings is to miss all that emptiness and frustration. It’s simple algebra—two minuses add to a plus here. You should be at peace with yourself and all the world. How could there be a happier people if you lacked all these things? They’re all frustrations, you see. If you hadn’t done any of them, you would be at peace with yourself and the world and feel good about everything. You couldn’t feel happier.
182 4 Nephi 1:18 So they have this happy condition. Verse 18 tells us, “And how blessed were they! For the Lord did bless them in all their doings.” When all your wants are supplied, do you sit around prospering in this case? “. . . and prospered until an hundred and ten years had passed away; and the first generation from Christ had passed away, and there was no contention in all the land.” What were they doing just prospering? It uses the word PROSPERING, which has always been limited to a person of great personal wealth. They consider themselves as prospering. Here prosperity always refers to the community; you prosper as a community. Then here is where it tells us [about the generation]. “The first generation from Christ had passed away.” A hundred and ten years, as I said, is the Egyptian generation. That’s the fixed Egyptian maximum life span.
182 4 Nephi 1:19 Verse 19 shows us what was really going on, which is not recorded here. “And it came to pass that Nephi, he that kept this last record (and he kept it upon the plates of Nephi) died, and his son Amos kept it in his stead.” They had been keeping records here—well, what were they recording? As we said the last time, “happy are the people whose annals are a blank.” In happy times, there’s nothing to record.
182 But notice it shows that what was really going on is not recorded here. Notice in all the preceding verses also in this book when they’re telling us what went on, it’s always only in the most general terms. They’re not giving places, dates, names, individuals. Not a single concrete episode is given here. That’s the remarkable thing about this document. You feel that you’ve had a survey of the society and the people, but you haven’t been told one single specific thing. And yet in general you know very much what it would be like to live there, that it would be most delightful. But speaking in general terms, this is how it was. No names, no dates, no places—only what the whole people did as time went by.
182 4 Nephi 1:20 It tells us Nephi and Amos were recording here. What did they have to record? Delightful reading [probably], but not to the grim purpose of the Book of Mormon. It’s left out. We could write you wonderful stories about it—comedies of manners and all sorts of things. It would be quite delightful, I imagine, but that’s not what the Book of Mormon is for. Remember, this is the grim record. This is a warning to us, and it gets down to business because immediately there is trouble. There’s trouble in Eden now. Verse 20: “A small part of the people who had revolted from the church and taken upon them the name of Lamanites; therefore there began to be Lamanites again in the land.” The name of Lamanites. They gave themselves that name because that was the traditional name.
182,183 4 Nephi 1:20 Why did some people revolt from the church and call themselves Lamanites when everything was going so well? The same reasons then as now for the most part. This being a system that embraces all aspects of life, they felt too many demands were being made on them. It was just too hard, too much effort to keep it up. See, keeping up a virtuous society [requires], as it tells us in verse 12, fasting and prayer and meeting together often. That’s just too strenuous, because they had to dedicate themselves to intense thought, we’re told here. Later on it tells them that this is it. As we saw in the case of the Mandaean people, it is all in the realm of intense mental effort that our time has to be spent. That’s where the work lies. Even athletes tell us nine-tenths of the game is the mental effort, and numerous experiments show that. So they could go on and on and have no end of activity to keep them busy, but it required increasing mental effort and they just weren’t up to it. You get bored and weary with that sort of thing. You don’t rest enough. There’s a tendency to overdo. I’m sure that would have something to do with it. I get into that all the time. I overdo, and then, blah—forget it all. But I know we all do that when we push ourselves.
183 For the most part they felt too much is being demanded. They were asked to give up too much. They walked in too strict a path. But this wasn’t the church that was demanding that—it’s nature that demands it. Nature demands our sobriety and refraining. The Word of Wisdom is a perfectly natural sort of thing. It’s nature that demands the Word of Wisdom. It’s not an arbitrary rule or anything like that. The people are finding that out now—that’s the thing. Imagine that the time should come when nobody can smoke in planes anymore—you should live to see the day. You just forced that on us, that’s all [people might say]. Before, people would say, I would leave a church that won’t let me smoke in an airplane. Now you can’t smoke because it’s wrong.
183 4 Nephi 1:23 We learn that population was booming—that’s a problem in verse 23—and there was great prosperity. There it is again. Does that mean there were a lot of rich people? Hardly, for we are told that they had all things