The Mountain of the Lord's House, Zion and Jerusalem - Second Book of Nephi, Chapter Twelve (2 Nephi 12 and Isaiah 2)

Nephi begins his transcription of 14 consecutive Isaiah chapters from the brass plates to his small plates with Isaiah 2. Not all prophets are seers, but Isaiah was. Much of his prophecy is shared in the form of descriptive visions. The first image he shares is of something called the “mountain of the Lord’s house” (verse 2). Now, just as with the Apostle John’s Book of Revelation, it’s an interesting exercise to think about what Isaiah might be describing in his day when he is seeing ours, without the modern vocabulary available to describe what’s before his eyes.

Most Latter-day Saint leaders and scholars have concluded that the phrase “mountain of the Lord’s house” refers to temples. Isaiah’s prophecy says that these temples will be established in the last days in the top of the mountains, and “all nations shall flow unto it.” In these last days, we have witnessed the construction of many temples around the world that have attracted people who want to know more about them and the people who worship there. Some of these people ultimately become baptized and are able to make sacred covenants within the temple. Many observers remark that this passage seems especially applicable to the Salt Lake City temple, viewed by many as the flagship temple of the Church. Of course, it was built in an area of high elevation (“in the tops of the mountains”). Many members of the Church from around the world come to visit the temple and worship there, and more still outside of the Church come to admire the temple’s exterior and the visitors center and surrounding complex (“all nations shall flow unto it”).

Verse 3 expands upon the idea of the temple as “mountain of the Lord” and “house of the God of Jacob” by describing some of its functions. It is a place where the Lord can teach us of His ways and we can walk in His paths. Then a very significant passage says that “out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” We can read this symbolically. Many of us know in the Bible that Zion and Jerusalem are names for each other, so once again we can conclude that instruction and commandments for our daily lives can come from holy places (such as the temple) that remind us of the Holy Land.

But there’s a literal interpretation as well. According to Joseph Smith and other latter-day prophets, Zion is actually the name of a place separate from Jerusalem, sometimes known as the New Jerusalem. It actually represents the American continent. If we think of Zion as America, it seems appropriate that the reference to it is made at this point in the Book of Mormon, because Nephi has showed us in his story how the American continent is a promised land for some of the Lord’s covenant people in a similar way that the land of Israel and Jerusalem are for others.

The Church teaches that verse 3 prophesies directly about the state of ultimate order that will exist on the earth after the time of Christ’s Second Coming, during the thousand-year period known as the Millennium where the influence of evil will be banished. During that time, Jesus will personally reign upon the earth and will send forth his word from Jerusalem, the same place he lived, taught, died and was resurrected. He will have another “capital” in Zion (America) from which the law will go forth. What is the law? Perhaps it is synonymous with the word of the Lord, since we know that whatever the Lord says is true and generally can be seen as a type of law. But there is another meaning as well. America has a special significance that will apparently persist to some extent even after Jesus comes to reign as the place where the best, most inspired system of law was established under the Constitution of the United States.

Isaiah goes on in verse 4 to very succinctly refer to the judgment Jesus will exercise over the people when He comes. One thing he will do is help the people understand the undesirability and futility of violence. In this beautifully poetic passage, they beat their swords into plow-shares, with nations learning how to grow and cultivate things instead of destroying them.

As the chapter continues, a familiar theme emerges from Isaiah’s words that is in line with Jacob’s sermon to the people that Nephi recorded in 2 Nephi 9-10. This theme is that all people go astray from God and His commandments in one way or another, and thus need saving. As Isaiah continues, he tells his audience to avoid false saviors (soothsayers and idols) and warns against pride, or those that “boweth not down.”

Isaiah uses repetition to drive home that the day of the Lord will affect everyone everywhere. It’s not something to be avoided, but to be prepared for, as the Lord is good and wants us to be able to prepare. That’s precisely why Isaiah and Nephi are making sure we know to be ready.

As Nephi transcribes Isaiah’s words, we observe something truly amazing. Verse 16 contains three clauses linked by commas: “And upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.” The verse is saying that the great day of the Lord will extend everywhere, even to the ships carrying goods around the known world and those docked in far distant lands such as Tarshish (thought to be Spain or perhaps somewhere in India). Keep in mind that Joseph Smith translated Nephi’s transcription into English as we now have it. If you look at the corresponding verse in the Book of Isaiah in the King James version of the Old Testament, you will find the second and third clauses, but not the first. And if you refer to the old Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the corresponding verse has the first and third clauses but not the second. So what? So Joseph Smith’s translation somehow managed to incorporate a clause that had somehow been lost between the time the Septuagint was copied and the King James version of the Bible was published. It’s been said that there was no way that the young Joseph Smith had access to a Septuagint. If that is true, his ability to translate a clause he had no reason to know had been missing from English-language Bibles reinforces the genuine nature of his visions, translations, and prophetic calling. It reinforces everything he did and claimed to be.

The chapter ends with a very provocative question: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?” Isaiah is saying, “Don’t look to man as your point of reference. He’s nothing special. He’s not God, and you don’t answer to him.” This thought carries over into the next chapter.

You can read the entire chapter, and the corresponding chapter from Isaiah, at the following links: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/12?lang=eng and https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/isa/2?lang=eng.

Proving the Coming of Christ - Second Book of Nephi, Chapter Eleven (2 Nephi 11)

After having recorded some of his younger brother Jacob’s teachings over the previous five chapters (2 Nephi 6-10), Nephi tells us that even though Jacob shared many other things with his people (the Nephites), what Nephi has recorded is enough for now.

Nephi then lets us know that he is going back to the words of Isaiah. Why? Because Nephi’s soul delights in Isaiah’s words (verse 2). One very important reason for this is that Isaiah saw the Redeemer (Jesus Christ), just as both Nephi and Jacob have seen Jesus in visions. This brings us back to the law of witnesses (verse 3). By sharing the words of two men who have had these experiences in addition to himself, Nephi magnifies the power and credibility of what he shares. And Nephi assures us that many more than three have been or will be able to testify of the reality and power of Jesus Christ. Based on this explanation, we understand better why Nephi features some of Jacob’s preachings referencing Isaiah in the record Nephi keeps, intermingled with some of Nephi’s own words, extracts from other prophecies of Isaiah, and his father Lehi’s final testimony and blessings to his posterity.

To this point, Nephi has included material from Isaiah—again, presumably taken from the brass plates Nephi took from Laban in Jerusalem and brought with his family to the Promised Land—comprising about four full chapters (according to how Isaiah’s words were organized into chapters and verses in the King James Bible). Now, Nephi will copy 13 consecutive chapters of Isaiah’s teachings onto the limited space Nephi has on the smaller plates, as a statement to us of (1) the sacredness and importance of Isaiah’s teachings in understanding the mission of Jesus Christ at the core of the Lord’s plan of salvation for us, and (2) Nephi’s conviction that what Isaiah wrote accurately represents Nephi’s own understanding both of specific events that will take place regarding Christ and of these events’ greater meaning.

Nephi clearly wants us to liken the words of Isaiah unto ourselves and our own circumstances (verses 2 and 8). These words were relevant in the centuries before Christ’s mortal birth when they were first revealed, and are perhaps even more relevant in our day as we look forward to Christ’s Second Coming and are both witnesses of and participants in the great work of the gathering of the Lord’s covenant people—the house of Israel.

In the final verses of the chapter (4-7), Nephi seems to adopt a directness in addressing his audience that we haven’t seen from him to this point. It’s in the spirit of the words of Jacob he just shared with us. Previously, Nephi has written much about the things he has seen and how they were explained to him by Lehi or by angels or the Spirit of the Lord. But now he is finding his own voice in relaying to us the significance of what he has seen, heard, and felt first-hand. As he sees it, his ultimate responsibility, and joy, is “proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ” (verse 4), and “that save Christ should come all men must perish” (verse 6).

Nephi goes on to testify, much like Paul in his letter to the Galatians about 600 years later (in Galatians 3:21-29), that the law of Moses instituted hundreds of years earlier among the Israelites, along with all other things God has revealed from the time of creation, points to the coming of Christ, for the purpose that we might be able to recognize Him when He comes for our own salvation.

The centerpiece of this newly direct approach to telling us the bottom line of what Christ’s reality means for us is Nephi’s statement in verse 7:

“For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time.”

According to this statement, the existence of Christ is absolutely essential for there to be a God. To my understanding, Nephi is saying that God’s whole purpose is to give his people a pathway to salvation and to progress in knowledge, virtue, and righteous power. In other words, to provide a Savior. To be a Savior. Otherwise what’s the point? Someone who simply is there to provide an ecosystem and then presides and observes at a distance without an active concern and plan for the individuals inhabiting his creation is more like a zookeeper or a kid with an aquarium than a serious Supreme Being. As the Lord states in another fundamentally important scripture from our Church, which comes from an inspired translation of the books of Moses in the Old Testament, “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

Thankfully, through the accounts of Nephi and the other witnesses, we know that God is not detached, arbitrary, or imaginary. Heavenly Father in fact is real, and has a son, Jesus Christ, who resembles and represents Him perfectly—in fact is God Himself—and intervenes in the right places and right times to unlock the door to us to eternal life, salvation, and happiness, which can be fully realized in God’s presence.

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/11?lang=eng

Our Next Choice Matters, However Far Away We Seem from the Lord - Second Book of Nephi, Chapter Ten (2 Nephi 10)

After a day of pretty intense preaching, Jacob pauses, and then comes back the following day. He informs the Nephites that on the evening in between, an angel provided him additional information, including that the Savior would be known by the name of Christ. Christ, a Greek word, means “the anointed one,” and has the same meaning as the Hebrew word Messiah.

He then explains how facts surrounding the Atonement of Christ have very specific real-world consequences for the Lord’s covenant people, also known as the people of Israel. The Atonement not only has a direct effect on each individual’s spiritual destiny—his or her ability to access immortality and return to God’s presence—but it also is rooted in historical events that influence various branches of Israel and the people (often known as Gentiles) with whom the Israelites interact.

The sacrifice required to atone for human sin is the voluntary death of a sinless being. The crucifixion of Christ brings this to pass. In a way that we may have trouble fully understanding, it is necessary for Jesus to suffer and die on the cross, but it is still an ugly act that makes us mourn for those who were prideful and envious enough to bring it to pass. Probably as a result of Jacob’s study of the brass plates and the prophecies of his father and brother, combined with his own revelatory experiences and angelic visitations, Jacob reveals to the Nephites that some Israelites will be scattered as a result of the wickedness that played a part in leading the Romans to crucify Christ.

However, it is important to note that whatever consequence is to befall any particular branch of Israel, that consequence does not justify any blanket condemnation on our part. For Jacob says in verse 7 that the Lord anticipates the restoration of favor and blessings upon His covenant people, which is the same restoration Jacob referred to in the earlier chapters when he was quoting Isaiah’s poetic language.

According to Jacob’s prophecy, Isaiah’s words will be majestically fulfilled. Once again, Jacob is reminding the Nephites, who have spent a generation establishing a new civilization half a world away from Jerusalem, that their story remains intertwined with the larger story of Israel. It may take centuries, but God’s plan is still very much alive and well. Through a long process, the people of Israel will be gathered from all kinds of places around the world (the “isles of the sea” in verse 8), and the Gentiles will play a leading part in helping to restore the Israelites to a place of earthly and spiritual glory.

As part of this process, Jacob makes specific reference to this land (the Americas) as a land of liberty unto the Gentiles without any kings (verse 11). This seems to anticipate the United States and the establishment of republican—as opposed to monarchical—rule on the American continent. The Lord says that He will fortify this land against all other nations. In doing so, Jacob raises a voice of warning to those who would try to obstruct either the restoration of Israel or the system of American republicanism. It is not out of vengeful wrath, but out of a need to protect the righteous Jews and Gentiles who will form His community of Zion in the latter days. As a result, we learn that the following will perish:

• Those who fight against Zion (verse 13) 
• Those who would establish despotic rule in America (verse 14)
• Those who work “secret works of darkness” (verse 15)

What is the Lord teaching the Nephites (and us) through Jacob? Mainly that trial and affliction is not meant to be a curse for the Lord’s covenant people, but a way of strengthening them to help bring forth something glorious. He reassures this group of people, whose fathers journeyed to this far-off place, and then fled from their first settlement because of their angry brothers and cousins, that they are in fact not abandoned, but being prepared to carry out the Lord’s plan. And those who try to obstruct that plan will ultimately fail, even if they seem to temporarily gain the upper hand. Thus, doing good is not in vain, and doing evil is.

And the most important time is now. The most important choice in their (and our) lives is the next one. Jacob tells them in verse 23: “Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.” And what makes it possible for us to choose between these paths? The Atonement of Jesus Christ, which is powerful to save, and is, above all, a sign of God’s grace, his free gift of love to us (verse 24). Giving us that something extra that we just couldn’t muster by ourselves.

You can read the entire chapter at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/10?lang=eng