Jacob Thwarts the Deceiver Sherem - Book of Jacob, Chapter Seven (Jacob 7)

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/jacob/7?lang=eng

The final chapter of Jacob is a curious thing. In some ways, it seems out of place. It seems like Jacob had already provided us his message of repentance, his testimony of the prophets and the the direct application to us of the parable of the vineyard, as we contemplate how to use Christ’s atoning sacrifice to obtain eternal life. He had even bid his audience farewell in chapter 6, promising to meet us in the next life.

But in another way, this chapter is the perfect end to Jacob’s record and the perfect transition for us to the records of the other Book of Mormon prophets. It provides us a picture of Jacob in action, and helps us understand why he is such an important leader to the Nephites. Indeed, it appears that the episode is pivotal to helping accomplish a return of a great part of the people to “peace and the love of God” (verse 23). We know Nephi first from his part in the larger story of his family’s journey to the promised land. Only after that does he focus on teaching principles and doctrine. But until this point, we had really only known Jacob from his famous sermons and writings.

The story of how Jacob vanquishes the deceiver Sherem by trusting in the Lord is also a perfect cautionary tale to reinforce what Jacob teaches in the previous chapters. In essence, he gets to put the exclamation point on his prophecy. “Guys, if you don’t heed me, if you don’t heed the other prophets from the scriptures, and if you don’t heed the Holy Ghost when we all point to Christ and His way of faith, repentance, and obedience, you’re going to make things needlessly difficult for yourself. And how tragic, when happiness is within your grasp!”

Sherem himself provides us with a very important example of the type of people we encounter in our day. He is a smooth talker, and knows how to appeal to people’s pride and egos through flattery. He is clever in that he takes something of sacred value to the people—the scriptures (plates of brass)—and instead of trying to completely undermine them, he looks to obscure their true meaning by planting seeds of doubt regarding the Savior’s coming. He actually wants them to overemphasize the law of Moses for its own sake, because anything that distracts from Christ distracts from salvation.

It makes me pause to think about how important it is that I am continually connecting my gospel study and my efforts to follow truth to the Savior Himself, because if I get casual in doing that, and if I neglect to pray with regularity and sincerity to Heavenly Father in Jesus’ name, I am slowly becoming a philosopher of the ways of men rather than a disciple of the living God.

Jacob’s composed and unassuming response to Sherem’s provocations also provides guidance and comfort. We don’t have to be the smartest person in the room to successfully fend off attacks on our faith. Don’t get caught in a tangle of words. Use the strength you have available to you, which is the testimony of the prophets from the scriptures and your own living testimony from the Holy Ghost. That will be enough. As Jacob says about his own experience, the Lord will “pour his Spirit into your soul” (verse 8).

Ultimately, we see from Sherem that a steady testimony based on true principles will outlast the self-destructiveness of flashy falsehood. Sherem leads himself into his own demise by thinking he could confound Jacob and the Lord by demanding a sign, only to learn that the Lord’s plan cannot be frustrated. In fact, His plan anticipates Sherem’s treachery, and it is used to great effect in proving God’s greatness to the Nephites. Poignantly, after the Lord smites Sherem in response to Jacob’s humble and straightforward entreaty, Sherem’s own testimony of the truth as he lies dying is what astonishes the Nephites and enables the power of God to transform their hearts back to righteousness (verses 17-21).

And not only did Jacob’s efforts help recover many of his people from the effects of Sherem’s false teachings, but it may have reclaimed Sherem himself for the Lord. Jacob doesn’t talk of being motivated by love for Sherem, but Jacob seems to have been such an effective instrument in God’s hands that what took place may have been a spiritual blessing to Sherem even though it killed him physically. By making some form of restitution for his wickedness, Sherem gives us cause for hope that his case might not be not beyond the grasp of Christ’s Atonement, even if Sherem fears that his sin is unpardonable (verse 19).

But the chapter doesn’t end there. Importantly, we learn that one result of the Nephites’ reconversion under Jacob is that they now seek to reclaim the Lamanites. Not since Nephi was able to continually help Laman and Lemuel to repent following their hard-hearted actions toward him had the record documented such Christlike overtures by the Nephites in response to Lamanite treachery, aggression and resentment. In the wilds of America, the previous Nephite impulse appears to have been to survive the Lamanites’ depredations and, when necessary, to vanquish them in battle with the Lord’s help. In 2 Nephi 30:3-6, Nephi points to a longer view (shown to Nephi in vision several years before, and explained to him by an angel in 1 Nephi 13:38) in which many of the Lamanites’ descendants (some of those descended from native American peoples, including those from Latin America) will receive the record of the Nephites (the Book of Mormon) and thus turn to the Lord after centuries in the “spiritual wilderness.”

We don’t know what means Jacob and the Nephites devised to reach out to the Lamanites (verse 24), but these efforts are an interesting precursor to the prayer of Jacob’s son Enos in the next book and to the miraculously successful efforts of the sons of Mosiah (in the book of Alma) in turning significant portions of the Lamanites back to Christ and His gospel. For now, however, we learn that the Nephites’ efforts were in vain, and Jacob reminds us of how strange and lonely it can be when you are only a generation or two removed from your ancestral homeland (verse 26):

…our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days.

Jacob's Prophecy: Repentance and the "Pleasing Bar of God" - Book of Jacob, Chapter Six (Jacob 6)

Before moving on to Jacob 6, I have a brief postscript for Jacob 5. It is quite interesting to note that Paul’s epistle to the Romans in the New Testament (Romans 11:13-25) has reference to a parable essentially identical to Zenos’ parable of the olive tree in Jacob 5. When reading one after the other, it’s hard for me not to come away with the impression that Paul probably was well-versed in the account from Zenos. If that’s the case, then the record of Zenos had been preserved to at least 600 years after Jacob’s time before subsequently being lost to history (until Joseph Smith’s translation of the Nephite plates in 1829).

It’s a shining example of how the stick of Joseph (the Book of Mormon coming from Joseph’s descendants) and the stick of Judah (the Bible coming from the descendants of Judah) complement and reinforce one another—as referenced in 2 Nephi 3 and 2 Nephi 29, as well as in Ezekiel 37. Clearly, the account from Jacob 5 is the fuller one, and a common-sense reading of it alongside Romans 11 indicates that Paul’s New Testament reference is derived from what we find in the Book of Mormon, not the other way around.

Paul, as he does with most of his sources, expertly weaves the narrative of the olive tree into his teaching to the Gentile Christians (the adopted children of Israel), focusing on the part of the parable that talks about the wild branches (the Gentiles) being grafted into the original tree. Paul’s overriding point is to say that even if many Gentiles of his time were taking over the covenant promise that some of the children of Israel had rejected, they needed to realize that this was not due to some inherent superiority on their part, but only insofar as they were willing to acknowledge their dependence on the roots (the truth that flows from humility and obedience to the divine sources of righteousness we know as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). Indeed, Paul uses the example of the Israelites who had lost their way as a reminder that no one can skate by to salvation on some false notion of inherited righteousness.

And finally, a helpful graphic providing a summation of the entire parable can be found at this link: https://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/gospel-library/manual/32506/32506_000_016_02-olivetree.pdf

Now on to Jacob 6.

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/jacob/6?lang=eng

First, let’s assess whom Jacob is addressing in the brief account he left us on the small plates of Nephi. In Jacob 1, he introduces himself to the audience (which includes us) as the inheritor of Nephi’s role and legacy as prophet. In Jacob 2-3, he shares a powerful sermon to his people in which he issues a very plain and plaintive call for repentance. In Jacob 4, he shifts focus back to the audience at large, and begins to share his own prophecy (starting at verse 15) after establishing that all prophets testify of Christ and that those who search the prophets can receive the spirit of prophecy themselves (verse 6).

In Jacob 5, Jacob shares Zenos’ parable of the olive tree, and in Jacob 6, he tells us that his prophecy is that this parable “must surely come to pass” (verse 1). He focuses on the final passages of the parable, in which the Lord recovers the scattered branches of Israel, or grafts them back into the original tree.

As he does so, he gives us a hint about who will be counted among the virtuous (or the strong branches) as the world prepares for the Savior’s Second Coming. Verse 3 shows that the surest way to be with the Lord and to avoid being cast out and burned with branches that produce evil fruit is to be actively engaged as a fellow laborer in the Lord’s cause:

And how blessed are they who have labored diligently in his vineyard; and how cursed are they who shall be cast out into their own place! And the world shall be burned with fire.

As I read this passage, Jacob gives us great hope by showing us that through our desires, actions, and faith in Christ, we can qualify ourselves to become fellow laborers with Him. Even though Jacob 5:70 tells us that the servants the Lord brings with Him to tend His vineyard in the last days are “few,” we can be comforted that the Lord will not arbitrarily exclude us from the opportunity to serve with him according to some sort of elite worldly criteria. Rather, the selection process is based on whether we choose to be actively faithful.

With this promise comes also a warning. Repentance is not simply ideal, it is absolutely required if we are to stand before the “pleasing bar of God” without “awful dread and fear” (verse 13).

Jacob is applying to his broader general audience (us) the same teaching he gave to his specific Nephite audience in chapters 2-3 (see, for example, Jacob 3:11, where he pleads in his sermon to the Nephites for them to avoid the “pains of hell”). And, in doing so, he makes it unmistakable that the parable of the olive tree is not just a story for us to analyze from a distance, but actually very much our own story.

He does this by using the imagery we commonly associate with hell—namely, fire and brimstone. But he describes this much more as a state of being than as some kind of ultimate geographical consignment. Without repentance and humility before Christ, justice finds us consumed with “shame and awful guilt” and “endless torment.”

Allusions to the bar of God and the pains of sin come again and again throughout the Book of Mormon, often as a departing testimony (Nephi in 2 Nephi 33, Jacob here, Abinadi in Mosiah 16, Alma the Younger in Alma 5, Alma and Amulek together in Alma 11-12, Moroni in Mormon 9 and at the book’s very end in Moroni 10). Clearly, the Lord finds value in deploying several witnesses and using repetition to emphasize the importance of the principles involved.

And though we might recoil from the harshness of the teaching, that harshness is necessary to drive home the urgency of this subject. We simply cannot put this off to a later date. Getting right before the Lord is the number one priority of our lives. That is why members of Christ’s church meet every week to partake of the sacramental bread and water to remind us of the constant and immediate need of repenting and renewing our earlier covenants by reference to the life, suffering, death, Resurrection, and godly attributes of the Savior.

The Lost Prophet and the Parable of the Vineyard - Book of Jacob, Chapter 5 (Jacob 5)

You can read the entire chapter at this link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/jacob/5?lang=eng

In this chapter, Jacob shares what has become known as the “parable of the vineyard” from a “lost” prophet of Israel known as Zenos. We have little precise information about Zenos other than he likely ministered in the land of Israel sometime between the time of the kings and the Babylonian captivity (1000-600 B.C.), and some his writings were preserved on the brass plates that Nephi and his brothers obtained from Laban.

The parable has a panoramic scope that symbolizes the destiny of the people of Israel and their many branches over all generations of time, right up to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the destruction of the wicked that will come with it, and perhaps even to the final battle between good and evil. It is a testimony of how precious the Book of Mormon is to us that this important lost prophecy from Old Testament times has been restored to us for our benefit and that of our children.

Rather than me dryly cataloguing the different phases of how the master and chief servant in the parable care for the tame and wild branches of the olive trees found in the vineyard, it may be better for me to run through some key takeaways from the parable, and leave it to you to experience the full sequence of events by your own reading of the account.

Key takeaways:

Takeaway #1: The master and the servant are very hands-on in their efforts to give the branches of Israel every opportunity to prove themselves worthy. I like to believe that the master represents our Heavenly Father and the servant represents Jesus. The passages that make me think of the servant as Jesus come in verses 26-27 and verses 49-50, where the master is ready to destroy the branches that have brought forth bad fruit, but the servant successfully urges him to spare the branches a little longer. After all, we know Christ to be our advocate with the Father. It is possible, though, that the master actually represents Jesus, and the servant is a composite of the prophets the Lord works with at different times to warn his people and enlist them in efforts to warn others.

In any event, we learn that different children of Israel have different experiences based on their circumstances, but that the Lord knows all of them and all will be given the chance to avail themselves of the saving blessings He offers. We detect the tirelessness of the Lord by his repeated cry (in verses 41, 47 and 49), “What could I have done more for my vineyard?”

Takeaway #2: Our origins matter less than our willingness to learn and live by true and saving principles. Especially the first few times we read it, the parable can dizzily confuse us, with its description of grafting wild branches into the tame mother tree, transplanting tame branches into far corners of the vineyard (representing the scattering of Israel throughout the world), and then ultimately grafting those tame branches back into the mother tree.

But at some level it doesn’t matter if we’re able to keep exact track of who went where and when they did so. What matters most is that we see a consistent pattern emerge through cycles of history. This pattern shows us that the true source of our power to (paraphrasing the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians) withstand the power of evil, that we may, having done all, stand by spreading goodness (gospel means “good news”), lies in understanding and continually going back to the source. The source here is the roots of the tree, which clearly represent the foundation that the Lord and his power and qualities provide for us. The whole drama of the parable is based on whether the people of Israel can look to the roots for their strength, or whether they will try to go it alone. In verse 48:

And it came to pass that the servant said unto his master: Is it not the loftiness of thy vineyard—have not the branches thereof overcome the roots which are good? And because the branches have overcome the roots thereof, behold they grew faster than the strength of the roots, taking strength unto themselves. Behold, I say, is not this the cause that the trees of thy vineyard have become corrupted?

Verses 53-60 show us that the process of bringing scattered Israel back to its roots through the servants of God is the only way to ensure that there will be good fruit on the earth to overcome the bad in preparation for Christ’s coming. The roots provide the ever-present promise of nourishment and healing that comes from the Atonement that Christ wrought for us. It is always there for the taking. Verse 74 makes this explicit by saying that after the grafting back of the natural branches into the natural tree, they “became like unto one body.”

Takeaway #3: The servants will be few. This is sobering and inspiring at the same time. For a number of reasons having to do with how evil can distract and flatter and enrage (see 2 Nephi 28:19-23), thus keeping people away from the truth right in front of them, Zenos tells us that God’s work will depend on the labors of a mighty few (verses 69-72). It is up to us to decide if we are willing to be a part of this most important work—the only infinitely fulfilling work there is. The great comfort we have is that even though we may be few, our efforts will be enough. Whatever we lack personally, the Lord will supply the difference needed to accomplish His purposes.

Takeaway #4: There will be a final reckoning. Every person’s time in their mortal state is limited. With a finite amount of time, every moment becomes more meaningful. The same holds true for the human race more broadly. There is a time appointed when Jesus will come to establish a higher order, and much of the legacy we leave through our descendants and our own actions is about doing our part to share the knowledge and truths our civilization needs to properly prepare for Christ’s coming.

There are two processes through which the parable describes the purification of the Lord’s vineyard. The first is described in verse 66, and seems to show that we have an important role in helping banish evil. As we overcome it ourselves and spread the influence of our goodness (hopefully!), those who cling to evil and falsehood look increasingly small and impotent. Zenos tells us that such shall be “hewn down and cast into the fire.” I can’t help but wonder if this means that our own efforts at building the kingdom of God—through love, not confrontation—have a bearing on the timing of the Second Coming.  

The second process, related in verse 77 as the final stand of evil in the Lord’s vineyard, seems to resemble the account in Revelation 20:8-15 where, once Satan returns after Christ’s 1000-year reign, fire devours Satan and “whosoever was not found in the book of life.”