{"id":37114,"date":"2017-10-02T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T10:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37114"},"modified":"2017-09-05T04:48:21","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T09:48:21","slug":"reading-nephi-1521-36-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2017\/10\/reading-nephi-1521-36-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"The Filthy Waters of Life &#8211; Reading Nephi &#8211; 15:21-36 part II"},"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=\"\" 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>This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you&#8217;re interested, the introduction to the series is <a href=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/09\/reading-nephi-series-introduction\/\">here.<\/a>\u00a0To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below.<\/p>\n<p>* * * *<\/p>\n<p>Three more quick points: first, the tree is no longer merely metaphorically or symbolically, but now explicitly made to be the <em>Tree of Life<\/em>. The world has grown up around Eden, but the tree of life is still there, only now it is a journey, a following the word of the Lord, that allows us to pass by the angels and sentinels and gain access to the fruit. Herein is cosmic significance.<\/p>\n<p>Second, we focus on the river being a river of filthy water. As happens elsewhere, here the various elements dropped about confusedly earlier in the narrative are made clear or revealed. And we get a hint of an earlier conversation that is now lost. In our own tellings and re-creations, however, or perhaps in the translation itself, things remain muddled. There are three bodies of water mentioned: the waters of life that flow from the tree, the fountain\/river of filthy water, and the fountain\/river of water that flows near the tree.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>8:13: a river flowing near the tree, whose head is a little way off;<\/li>\n<li>8:19 same river, flows beside the rod of iron;<\/li>\n<li>8:20 the rod &amp; path lead from the tree to over by the \u201chead of the fountain,\u201d which I assume is the head of the river mentioned in the verse before;<\/li>\n<li>8:26 the river divides the rod\/path from the great and spacious building;<\/li>\n<li>8:32 some of those pressing forward to reach the building are drowned in the depths of the fountain (the river? or some separate fountain of filthiness?);<\/li>\n<li>11:25 Nephi sees the rod &amp; path leading to \u201cthe fountain of living waters, or the tree of life;\u201d here it is almost as if Nephi doesn\u2019t see the tree but instead sees a fountain, but knows that the two are one and the same, both representing the love of God; also, living waters have two meanings\u2014the \u201cnectar of the Gods\u201d that we normally take it as (i.e., the water Christ gives us), and a natural, free flowing body of water;<\/li>\n<li>12:16 the angel shows Nephi the \u201cfountain of filthy water which thy father saw; yea, even the river of which he spake; and the depths thereof are the depths of hell;\u201d incontrovertibly links the head of the river and the head of the fountain; so now the rod of iron or word of God leads us from the source of hell, parallels its banks, but eventually brings us to the tree of life (which remains near the filthy river).<\/li>\n<li>12:17 the mists of darkness; mists arise from water sources (like the Potomac that often issues forth mists); here, perhaps the mists that are the temptations are arising from the filthy waters.<\/li>\n<li>12:18 now it\u2019s the word of God (instead of the river\/fountain) that is the awful gulf dividing the righteous and the wicked; this is opposed to Nephi\u2019s interpretation, that the gulf is the river; visually, they both do<\/li>\n<li>13:10-16 \u201cmany waters\u201d divide Lehi\u2019s (dwindled\/wicked) posterity from the Gentiles; then the Spirit of the Lord descends upon them and leads them across that Gulf to the land of Lehi\u2019s descendants; this directly parallels the word of God leading from the filthy fountain to the tree of life.<\/li>\n<li>13:17-19 the mother Gentiles follow the divinely inspired Gentiles across the water and wage war; but God delivers the inspired Gentiles.<\/li>\n<li>13:29 the Gentiles take the book containing the word of God across the many waters<\/li>\n<li>14:11 the whore of all the earth \u201csat upon many waters\u201d and so exercises dominion and power over the greater part of the earth, holding back the church of the Lamb of God.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Looking back over these verses from Nephi\u2019s grand vision mentioning water, I don\u2019t think we have enough information to visually portray the different bodies of water in Lehi\u2019s &amp; Nephi\u2019s visions. Nor am I convinced that what is described are separate bodies of water\u2014they often appear to be one and the same. The love of God (waters of life) indeed get perverted and become filthy, a torrent that drowns us or that separates us from God. The devil quotes scripture too, and the mists of temptation indeed arise out of perverse interpretations of scripture. Perhaps it is the soul that comes in contact with those waters that makes them into either the waters of life or the waters of death (Mormon 9:1-6).<\/p>\n<p>Finally, in this passage Laman asks a key question on behalf of us all: does \u201cthis thing\u201d concern this life and body, does it concern the soul in the next life, or does it concern temporal things? \u201cThis thing\u201d seems to refer to \u201cthat awful hell.\u201d I find it useful, however, to think of \u201cthis thing\u201d in terms of the whole conversation\u2014just as Nephi seems to do at the conclusion of the conversation\u2014including the Tree of Life. <em>This life<\/em>, this body, this temporality\u2014as well as whatever comes in eternity\u2014is where we suffer hell, where we are divided from God, where we journey along various paths and un-paths, and where we can partake of the fruit of eternal life and enter into God\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three more quick points: first, the tree is no longer merely metaphorically or symbolically, but now explicitly made to be the Tree of Life.<\/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-37114","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\/37114","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=37114"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37176,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37114\/revisions\/37176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}