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.