{"id":34637,"date":"2016-01-04T16:30:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T21:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34637"},"modified":"2016-01-04T16:30:25","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T21:30:25","slug":"reading-nephi-111-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2016\/01\/reading-nephi-111-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi &#8211; 11:1-7"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/09\/reading-nephi-headnote\/068-068-the-liahona-full-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-34019\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-34019\" src=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/068-068-the-liahona-full1-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"068-068-the-liahona-full\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/068-068-the-liahona-full1-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/068-068-the-liahona-full1-1024x669.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>I\u2019ll confess, I feel a mixture of serious disappointment and jealousy as I\u2019m struck by the utterly exotic nature of this event.<\/p>\n<p>Note not only the coming of the angel, but that the angel does not come to Nephi for specific reasons of instruction or witness\u2014not like the shepherds abiding in their fields or Joseph Smith praying for forgiveness. Here the angel comes to simply ask: \u201cWhat do you desire?\u201d Now admittedly, this appears to be a sort of test\u2014all right Nephi, let\u2019s see what you ask for, and then we\u2019ll see what you get. And Nephi apparently chooses wisely, which leads to his vision. But God knows I\u2019ll settle even for the test! Perhaps I choose wrongly and all I get is admonishment to repent and search the scriptures (the typical angelic injunction\u2014maybe most folks choose poorly and Nephi really is prodigious). How could I not be infinitely content to be graced even with a mere test such as this? Is it that I fail all the preliminary tests, which block my path to the angelic one?<\/p>\n<p>As noted last time, Nephi\u2019s whole point here is to help recreate for his reader what he takes to be the essential context of having a divine vision like his own. Brother Joseph was driven by similar motivations to try and teach his people how to experience what he had experienced.<\/p>\n<p>So far, here\u2019s what we have:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Desire to know<\/li>\n<li>Believe that God is able to make it known (and perhaps that he <em>will<\/em> make it known)<\/li>\n<li>Ponder\u2014which seems to be an essential, intellectual element of both seeking and desiring<\/li>\n<li>Seek more expansively<\/li>\n<li>And finally (as noted last time), there\u2019s the critical element of repentance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There it is. Nephi\u2019s recipe.<\/p>\n<p>But despite Nephi\u2019s emphasis on what the petitioner needs to do, there\u2019s no question that ultimately, theophanic revelation is a matter of pure grace. Like his father Lehi, Nephi is merely pondering. It is God that intervenes, ruptures Nephi\u2019s whole world, breaking in out of the heavens. God transports Nephi to a divine mountaintop. And it is the Spirit or the Angel or whatever divinity it is that is there to meet Nephi <em>that first engages him <\/em>in conversation. Nephi doesn\u2019t even exert the effort to start the conversation. Rather, he is himself plied with questions.<\/p>\n<p>There must be some sort of terrible loneliness involved in being called in this manner. And it\u2019s certainly a calling. Looking at the end of this passage, the Angel (that\u2019s what I\u2019ll call him) is quite clear that this is all meant to function as a sign for Nephi, but not gratuitously. Rather, he\u2019s being commissioned like Isaiah of old to bear witness\u2014which he clearly takes quite seriously.<\/p>\n<p>So there you are, the recipient of revelation in an utterly undeniable and epistemologically exotic fashion, thrown well outside the bounds of normal human experience, and explicitly commissioned to bear witness of the experience\u2014as opposed to say, bury it, which would surely be a tempting thing to do. And if you\u2019re not an absolute narcissist\u2014and I don\u2019t think you can be and have this sort of experience\u2014than you\u2019re going to feel a serious humility, perhaps even embarrassment\u2014the embarrassment of riches. Why you? What makes you so special as to have such an incredible experience? Because unlike many faithful readers of his book today, Nephi was well aware of his fallible mortality.<\/p>\n<p>I think all of this gives prophets\u2014at least prophets like Nephi and Joseph\u2014a deep motivation to bring others into their circle of revelatory experience. And so they default to trying to explain or instruct or lay out steps for how one can mimic their actions and bring about such experiences.<\/p>\n<p>But of course it\u2019s all hogwash. We can\u2019t repeat their actions because we\u2019re not them in their context. And even if we credibly imitate them adjusting for our own context, there still aren\u2019t the external variables of need. Most of all, we can\u2019t constrain God. Or at least, I haven\u2019t been able to. And there\u2019s nothing that Nephi mentions that I haven\u2019t done and redone. There\u2019s been no end to my repenting and pondering and pleading (although I can always doubt the quality of my efforts). What\u2019s more, I\u2019ve had deeply poignant needs of my own. But they aren\u2019t God\u2019s needs. And if angels have been sent to comfort me in my own Gethsemanes, I\u2019ve not been notified.<\/p>\n<p>The heavens remain silent and only my own heart speaks. Though I continue to trust that it speaks with heavens voice. I certainly hear it as such, at least when I feel myself aligned with the divine, and I do my best to listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ll confess, I feel a mixture of serious disappointment and jealousy as I\u2019m struck by the utterly exotic nature of this event. Note not only the coming of the angel, but that the angel does not come to Nephi for specific reasons of instruction or witness\u2014not like the shepherds abiding in their fields or Joseph Smith praying for forgiveness. Here the angel comes to simply ask: \u201cWhat do you desire?\u201d Now admittedly, this appears to be a sort of test\u2014all right Nephi, let\u2019s see what you ask for, and then we\u2019ll see what you get. And Nephi apparently chooses wisely, which leads to his vision. But God knows I\u2019ll settle even for the test! Perhaps I choose wrongly and all I get is admonishment to repent and search the scriptures (the typical angelic injunction\u2014maybe most folks choose poorly and Nephi really is prodigious). How could I not be infinitely content to be graced even with a mere test such as this? Is it that I fail all the preliminary tests, which block my path to the angelic one? As noted last time, Nephi\u2019s whole point here is to help recreate for his reader what he takes to be the essential [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34638,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34637\/revisions\/34638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}