Book of Mormon Feast
God in 2 Nephi 2
God • Great Mediator • He Who Knoweth All Things
Holy Messiah • Holy One • Holy Spirit • Lord God
Messiah • Redeemer • Spirit
2 Nephi 2:12
The Book of Mormon teaches that
individual choice is essential to God’s plan of mercy and justice
Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught;
wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation.
Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.
Thus Lehi emphasizes the foundational concept and reality of agency, the freedom to choose. We may say that lack of choice opposes God’s plan of choice, but Lehi says it much stronger: it actually destroys God’s wisdom, eternal purposes, power, mercy, and justice. Wow!
Therefore, by God’s power He assures that every soul has choice. This is a major part of the atonement of Christ. Without the atonement, we would not be able to choose to return to God, after having committed our first sin.
His eternal purpose, as expressed in Moses 1:39, is to help His children attain eternal life with Him. Just as He is free in all that He does, we, too must be free to choose or reject this life that He offers.
Fortunately, it is His wisdom that establishes and maintains this opportunity of
choice for all of His children. Where we humans may look at a person’s childhood
and conclude that they were set on a course, either of righteousness or destruction,
and really had no choice in the matter, it is only by faith that we can believe otherwise.
Each person whose parents brought him up in light and truth will encounter in his
life powerful temptations and persuasions that will point him away from the strait
and narrow way. He may choose. Each person with a deprived or depraved childhood
will also encounter good and caring people, people who will be willing to teach him
of his divine potential and the love of God. He may choose. As Latter-
If God did not provide every opportunity of healing – things we cannot even conceive of in this life – for the wounded, abandoned, and sinful souls, he would not be merciful. If He did not allow adequate opportunities for His faithful and privileged saints to be lured into wandering side paths, he would not be just.
2 Nephi 2:13
If ye say there is no law, ye also say there is no sin
The Book of Mormon shows the necessity of law and punishment, that righteousness and happiness may exist
And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin.
If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness.
And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.
And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery.
And if these things are not there is no God.
And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth;
for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.
Law is first. Law defines reactions. If you combine A and B you will get the compound C. If you want the product C, then you must combine the reagents A and B in a certain way. If you do D, then the consequence F will ensue. If your objective is E, then you must follow process G.
To say there is no law is to step backward in human historical understanding of science. If there is no law, yet there is existence and process and results, then it all happens by magic.
Sin is breaking the law. We operate under the assumption that the product everyone wants is eternal life. Sin is not combining A and B. It is disregarding instructions. Sin is any deviation from the process that leads to the desired product. The result will not be eternal life.
To say there is no sin likewise is belief in magic. It is belief that there is no correlation between cause and effect. Magic again. Or it is denial that there is any particularly desirable end result, and life is meaningless.
Righteousness is following the directives of the law. A righteous person respects that the law exists, and that his life will be governed by the law. He avoids sin, and tries continually to do what is required by the law.
To say there is no righteousness is to deny that any acts are good or bad in and of themselves. They are only relative and situational, independent of any eternal truth or goal. “Man is the measure of man.”
I do not presume to define happiness. Just as one cannot describe the salty taste
to one who has not experienced it, and that only involves one biological function,
happiness, being much more multi-
Here the narrative changes. The law-
As truth is “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (Doctrine & Covenants 93:24), so true happiness will extend eternally. It can be found all over the path that leads to God, in doing any of the myriad things both commanded explicitly in the scriptures, and every other act or thought that increases one’s abilities and understanding of anything, as one develops to become a whole and complete person, a unique child of God.
No one denies happiness. But they misidentify their fleeting pleasures for happiness.
Punishment is suffering the consequences of one’s actions. It’s the ultimate realization that there is no magic. All roads do not lead to God, but each road does lead somewhere. Punishment is what people experience at the end of their chosen road, if they have not chosen to follow God’s laws and seek for the kingdom of heaven.
Of course the deniers vehemently deny punishment, and are rabidly hateful toward the God of the Old Testament, where punishment is so often discussed.
Misery is the absence of happiness. When a person has “sought for happiness in
doing iniquity” (Helaman 13:38) he finds himself the hapless victim, and yet the
compliant participant, in an eternal bait-
The deniers ultimately prefer to come to the conclusion that there is no God. Or
if there is a God, He set the physical universe in motion then stepped back to do
whatever an all-
Lehi almost waxes sarcastic as he describes that “we are not,” all things have “vanished away.” It has been evident throughout all cultures that God is, because we can all see the wonderful creations of the earth that He placed us on. In Lehi’s society, where common sense decreed that where there is a complex creation there must be a thoughtful Creator, he had proven his point. Curiously, in this generation where we know so much more of the earth, the deep complexity of every aspect of life, the genetic code of DNA, the atomic world, the subatomic world, the forces of nature and their perfect balance on our planet, the many planets throughout the universe – we can see and understand so much more of His creation, and yet with all this information our culture manages to deny a Creator.
In speaking of the creation, Lehi lists only two types of things: thing to act and things to be acted upon. Certainly people are to act. Too many people relegate aspects of their lives to being “acted upon” as they take a victim stance, blaming others for their circumstances and lack of progress: parents, society, school, race, “lack of opportunity.” Other people treat their fellowman as something to be “acted upon” as they steal and abuse and subjugate at all levels of society.
I hesitate to define anything to be “acted upon.” I would have thought that all
the non-
As with so much of Lehi’s dissertation to Jacob, this whole verse is a study in contrasts all originating in law: sin and righteousness, happiness and misery, God and no God, creation and vanishing away, acting and being acted upon. The contrasts all point to choice, and the eternal importance of making the right choices.
2 Nephi 2:14
There is a God, and He hath created all things
The Book of Mormon teaches that
it is to our profit to acknowledge that there is a God
And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning;
for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth,
and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.
Lehi has proven that there is no absence of a God. He now testifies in the affirmative that God is, and that God is the creator of all things. This witness is meant to appeal to the individual bents of his sons, both those who appreciate learning, and those who are more focused on “profit” – what’s in it for me. He created all things in the heavens and earth – those extremes encompass everything. He created all things that act or are acted upon – a binary whole. By contrasts Lehi describes universality.
2 Nephi 2:15
To bring about His eternal purposes
The Book of Mormon teaches that
God gave meaning to His vast creations when He assured our ability to choose
And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man,
after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life;
the one being sweet and the other bitter.
His eternal purposes are related to the end of man, to man’s final exalted destiny with God. Everything He does furthers that goal. All things on the earth not only point to the existence of the Creator, but they are to facilitate and enhance man’s mortality in the hopes that he will look upward to the Creator, that he will learn to think and plan as the Creator does. This was not enough. We needed genuine choices of good and evil, and that’s what the forbidden fruit provided. We often think that “opposition” means the opposing team, against which we are fighting. But we do not go to a sporting event considering the possibility of switching loyalties. A better definition would be “alternative.” A better comparison would be shopping. We go to the store and make choices among competing brands and products. God’s plan requires that we have full choices.
Lehi says that the fruit of one of the trees is sweet, and the other bitter, but he does not specify which.
Of course, he has earlier, when expounding on his vision, testified to the sweetness of the fruit of the tree of life (“It was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted.” 1 Nephi 8:11) Alma will later say it is “sweet above all that is sweet” (Alma 32:42) Those who have experienced the love and grace of Christ know this for themselves.
This would leave the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to be bitter. In this mortal milieu who has not learned or realized something one really didn’t want to know, what one did not expect, what one wishes were not reality? That fruit gave individual choice to all mankind. Who has not experienced bitter pangs as a result of one’s own choices, or those of others?
On the other hand, the delineation may not be so simple. If every bad choice came with immediate consequences, that would hamper our agency to choose. We are allowed to make bad choices and pretend that they are good, individually and as a society, so that we may choose to develop a liking, a taste for the good. We can get accustomed to anything. We can “put darkness for light and light for darkness, put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (2 Nephi 15:20).
John the Revelator’s mission experience was that it would be sweet as honey in his
mouth, but bitter in his stomach (Revelation 10:9-
Harold B. Lee said, “The forbidden fruit was sweet, but the tree of life was bitter, and how like life that is. Sometimes the things that are best for us and the things that bring eternal rewards seem at the moment to be the most bitter, and the things forbidden are ofttimes the things which seem to be the more desirable.”
2 Nephi 2:16
The Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself
The Book of Mormon teaches that
one cannot choose unless there actually are choices
Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.
Wherefore, man could not act for himself
save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.
Lehi says man must be enticed by the one or the other, but I suggest that he must be enticed by both one and the other.
As I discussed in verse 12, God’s justice and mercy assure that everyone truly will
be able to act for themselves and to judge for themselves and to choose for themselves,
whatever their genetic make-
2 Nephi 2:17
The Book of Mormon teaches that the devil was an angel of God who chose evil
And I, Lehi, according to the things which I have read,
must needs suppose that an angel of God, according to that which is written,
had fallen from heaven; wherefore, he became a devil,
having sought that which was evil before God.
In his great vision (1 Nephi 11-
A popular complaint against God today, in fact, against believing in the good, all-
In this whole chapter, a concerned and possibly grieving father Lehi is teaching his sons about agency and accountability. He recognizes that agency is a gift from God, but he also recognizes that on the other side of the coin, the devil had used his own agency, in the midst of the best of circumstances and teaching, to reject God’s goodness and make and follow a different way.