{"id":35255,"date":"2016-05-19T04:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T09:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=35255"},"modified":"2016-05-15T19:27:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T00:27:48","slug":"reading-nephi-1213-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2016\/05\/reading-nephi-1213-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – 12:13-23"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a>The pattern goes from \u201cnormal\u201d chaotic, difficult, mortal life, to intense trial and darkness, to the burst of light when God comes and establishes an order that results in Zion, to apostasy from Zion leading to apocalyptical violence. Interestingly, however, the apocalypse isn\u2019t the end here; rather it\u2019s followed by more everyday, mortal struggle before the next chapter\u2014which expands the scope of this drama from tribal to global. But this is the same pattern that Joseph Smith prophesies for our own dispensation: a prophet sets up a people who go through chaotic, difficult, mortal struggles, often assailed by our enemies (for which we are always or often at fault), leading toward an intense trial and darkness (the pre-millennial wickedness that we\u2019re always so convinced is right now, where even our very elect are deceived), which is to be followed by the parousia par excellence<\/em> when Christ reigns personally upon the earth together with everything else we prophesy in our 10th<\/sup> Article of Faith. But of course, the end is not the light. After this light our own wickedness will once again lead us to apocalyptical violence. Is that the end, however? That\u2019s the way our narrative often goes. And maybe Nephi\u2019s vision gives us something like the ongoing pattern of each micro-history, but when the macro-global-historical apocalypse takes place, that\u2019s indeed supposed to be the end, right? Or maybe we\u2019re to learn that this prophesied historical pattern is actually the cosmological pattern, the one that has always taken place (\u201con earth as it is in heaven\u201d). Maybe the lesson is that we\u2019re meant to see ourselves in this pattern rather than be convinced of the ultimate nature of any given iteration. Or rather, realize that whatever iteration we\u2019re caught up in just is<\/em> the ultimate iteration. Following our own apocalypse, however, the scope can always be expanded, and we will see that it is not the <\/em>end, but rather, an <\/em>end, and that life and the struggle for salvation continues.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that Nephi first sees his own people gathered for battle rather than seeing the Lamanites gathered against them. But later it indeed appears that the Lamanites are the aggressors, though Nephi blames the destruction on the wickedness of his people. It seems that militarization as a response to the difficulties of politics and community is a poor and faithless response. Or at the least, that it can be done poor and faithlessly. This is an area where I don\u2019t know that I trust Nephi (and the BofM editors generally, all of whom were militarized themselves). The greater pattern and message seems to spotlight the inevitable tragedy of violence and war.<\/p>\n

The angel\u2019s words here are striking and confusing. Seeing the gathering armies, the angel speaks of the fountain of filthy waters and the great and spacious building\u2014which armies and military might are indeed the pride of our lands, in both senses of that word (adjective and noun). What\u2019s confusing is the part about the great gulf that divides them<\/em>; the only sense of \u201cthem\u201d I can see here is \u201cthe people.\u201d The punctuation suggests that it\u2019s God\u2019s justice and word that is the gulf dividing the people, but even without the punctuation I\u2019m struggling to see a different meaning. How does the justice of God divide us when in our pride and filthiness we gather together to assault one another with violence? My mind keeps circling round unsatisfactory answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pattern goes from \u201cnormal\u201d chaotic, difficult, mortal life, to intense trial and darkness, to the burst of light when God comes and establishes an order that results in Zion, to apostasy from Zion leading to apocalyptical violence. Interestingly, however, the apocalypse isn\u2019t the end here; rather it\u2019s followed by more everyday, mortal struggle before the next chapter\u2014which expands the scope of this drama from tribal to global. But this is the same pattern that Joseph Smith prophesies for our own dispensation: a prophet sets up a people who go through chaotic, difficult, mortal struggles, often assailed by our enemies (for which we are always or often at fault), leading toward an intense trial and darkness (the pre-millennial wickedness that we\u2019re always so convinced is right now, where even our very elect are deceived), which is to be followed by the parousia par excellence when Christ reigns personally upon the earth together with everything else we prophesy in our 10th Article of Faith. But of course, the end is not the light. After this light our own wickedness will once again lead us to apocalyptical violence. Is that the end, however? That\u2019s the way our narrative often goes. And maybe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":34019,"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-35255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/068-068-the-liahona-full1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255","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=35255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35256,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255\/revisions\/35256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}