Benjamin Gives Up Earthly Power - Book of Mosiah, Chapter Six (Mosiah 6)

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

This is a fairly brief chapter. Yet, there are still important points to note.

The first point has to do with recording the names of those who entered into the covenant with the Lord in the previous chapter. As in Mosiah 1 when King Benjamin explains the importance of the various records on the brass and gold plates that keep sacred matters firmly in their minds, and in other places throughout the Book of Mormon, we see that the Lord works according to order. Keeping complete and accurate records of revelations and of individual covenants and ordinances is crucial to ensuring that those things are also recorded in heaven (verse 1). We learn the remarkable fact that every person of age among the Nephites within earshot of King Benjamin had entered into the covenant and taken upon themselves the name of Christ (verse 2). The power of the moment and the strength found in the people’s unity cannot be overstated.

Benjamin does two things before dismissing the gathering of his people (verse 3). The first is that he consecrates his son Mosiah to be king, and gives him immediate temporal charge over the kingdom. Appointing his successor before his death endows the appointment with legitimacy, and it also gives Mosiah the ability to use his father as a resource as he learns to become a king.

The second thing Benjamin does is appoint priests to teach the people, and in particular to follow up with them regarding the importance of remembering and keeping the covenant they made in chapter 5 to keep all of the Lord’s commandments. At its essence, aside from actually administering the ordinances with their accompanying covenants, this is what the priesthood and Church in our day are intended to do. Provide the structure that we need to remember our covenants. The recurring ordinance of the sacrament is at the center of this process in our day. At this time (124 B.C.), the law of Moses remained in effect, so it is likely that recurring sacrifices continued under priesthood authority to remind people of and point them toward the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

I find it interesting that even after giving over the kingdom to Mosiah, Benjamin retains ecclesiastical and spiritual authority to appoint priests. This foreshadows the choice made later in the Book of Mormon by Alma to give up his role as temporal leader and to focus on spiritual leadership. Evidently, Benjamin also believes in the primacy of things spiritual. It is a reminder to us that the priesthood is eternal, and does not end when our responsibilities over worldly things are transferred elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, Mormon (our narrator) informs us that Mosiah walks in the way of the Lord as his father had taught, and as an example to the people who had all just taken the name of Christ upon them. He also labors for his own sustenance among his people, rather than succumb to a prideful expectation that he is entitled to the fruits of their labors. This heightens the contrast between Mosiah and some who follow him—most notably the wicked King Noah (in Mosiah 11-19).

The Children of Christ - Book of Mosiah, Chapter Five (Mosiah 5)

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

In these opening chapters of Mosiah, we glimpse something extremely hopeful. That it is possible for sinful men and women to transform themselves. The choice, ultimately, to submit to temptation is ours. And we can fortify ourselves to the point where we are much less inclined to it.

As King Benjamin asks his people whether they believe his words to them, and they respond with a convincing yes, they go beyond an audience that merely accepts a teaching in principle. They are fully committed to the spiritual power of the moment, shown by their proclamation that the Spirit of the Lord “has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (verse 2). The power is such that the people tell Benjamin that because of their faith in what he taught them, God has shown them visions of the future (verses 3-4).

Something marvelous takes place next. The people tell Benjamin that they are willing to enter into a covenant with God. Is the covenant associated with a particular ordinance? Baptism? Something else? The record doesn’t say explicitly. My own feeling is that if the covenant is associated with any ordinance, it is probably beyond baptism, because these people seem like they would have already been baptized given their established patterns of worship. Perhaps it is an ordinance associated with the temple, given that Benjamin in speaking right next to the temple.

Even if we don’t know if an ordinance is part of this covenant, the covenant itself is straightforward. The people agree to do God’s will, and “to be obedient to his commandments in all things…all the remainder of our days” (verse 5). It is pure and total obedience to the Father, of the kind that Jesus showed in carrying out his atoning sacrifice for them and all of us. No equivocation.

In praising his people, Benjamin tells them that through their obedience they will be made free (verse 8). It seems like such a paradox, this idea that following someone else is freedom rather than captivity. Unless we accept the teaching that there is a battle between good and evil going on for our souls, Under this teaching, which has the added benefit of being true(!), the good path is where obedience comes through persuasion from someone who wants us to be happy and to receive everything he has. The evil path is one where we think we are acting perfectly free by “escaping” the obedient, good path, but little do we know we are actually being compelled to act by a miserable being who wants us to dispossess us of all we have so we can be miserable with him. And once we follow that path, we realize that we have weakened ourselves and are prisoners to pain and prone to further weakening unless we make a redoubled effort to get on the good path.

And the rub is this. Every man and woman who comes to earth is a child of a Heavenly Father. We have divinity within us. However, the defining question for each of us once we have come to earth is whether we choose to be a son or daughter of Jesus Christ as well as of Heavenly Father. Becoming the children of Christ, which is what is happening here with the Nephites gathered to hear King Benjamin, means that “your hearts are changed through faith on his name” and “ye are born of him” (verse 7). By covenanting to become like him and being willing to give for others, we actually remove from ourselves the burden of full suffering for our own sins because of what he voluntarily bore. That is part of what being free means, beyond simply being able to choose between two different things. We can be free of sin, free of sorrow, and yes, free of fear. And as we become Christ’s children, we also inherit His name (verse 9). If we don’t take His name, we “must be called by some other name” (verse 10). There is no neutral ground.

As Benjamin finishes speaking to his people, he implores them to retain Christ’s name “written always in your hearts,” to hear and know his voice (verse 12) and be “steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works,” that they may come to know Jesus intimately and that he may “seal you his…that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life” (verse 15). Sounds like a pretty good path to take compared with that other one. To be a Christian, and to embody the characteristics of the best person who ever lived.

Humility and True Commitment Lead to Deep Knowledge - Book of Mosiah, Chapter Four (Mosiah 4)

You can read the entire chapter at the following link: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/4?lang=eng

I’m not sure that there’s a more powerful or speedy response by a people to its spiritual leader in recorded scripture than that of the Nephites under King Benjamin in this chapter. We had seen earlier that the people instinctively responded to Benjamin, but it’s one thing to come to hear the leader speak for a day or two, quite another to make a deep commitment to follow his teachings for the rest of your life.

We get this great show of humility by the Nephites as they fall to the earth after hearing Benjamin share the words from an angel about the absolute necessity of following the gospel of Jesus Christ (verse 1). It seems the people are truly struck by the reality that their choices have consequences, and they want to make the right choices.

Usually, we conceive of repentance as something very personal and private between a single person and the Lord, but here we see that it can also happen in a more communal setting. Presumably many of those gathered had already entered into covenants through baptism, but we in our day can appreciate that recommitment to earlier covenants is critical in dealing with the challenges we constantly face in mortality.

As they recommit, the people are filled with joy and feel peace of conscience. Of course, this assurance in our beliefs is so important in helping us take those next steps along the pathway of faith and righteousness.

At this point, King Benjamin senses that the people are in such a humble and receptive place that he can teach them boldly about things that are critical for them to embrace if they would follow in the footsteps of the Father and the as-yet unborn Jesus. These things include:

• Key qualities that God has (goodness, matchless power, wisdom, patience, long-suffering) and that we need to have for salvation (trust in the Lord, diligence in keeping His commandments, and continuing in faith throughout mortal life) (verse 6).

• Reiterating what the angel told him to relate (in chapter 3) about Christ’s atonement for our sins being the only way to salvation, and our need to repent and sincerely seek God’s forgiveness (verses 7-10).

• Retaining a remission of sins through daily, steadfast prayer and action (verses 11-12). This echoes the “doctrine of Christ” Nephi previously shared more than 400 years before (in 2 Nephi 31:20-21) and that is found in the record Benjamin has kept throughout his life.

• Caring for our children temporally and spiritually, which involves helping direct them away from the devil’s ways of contention and disobedience, and toward the Lord’s ways of love, service and “truth and soberness” (verses 14-15).

• Finding ways to help the needy in our world, rather than finding ways not to help them or to condemn them, under the rationale that we all are ultimately beggars at the feet of God for what we need in life and to reunite ourselves with him despite our tendencies to sin.

Lest Benjamin’s people find themselves overwhelmed by the number of responsibilities he lays at their feet, he leaves them with two guiding principles. They can be summed up as (1) pace yourself and (2) watch yourself. None of us can do everything. One of our Apostles, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, wrote one time (citing author Anne Morrow Lindbergh) that he simply did not have the time or capacity to reach out to everyone to whom his heart responded.

We too must determine those things that are centrally important to accomplish, and recognize that we can only help a little at a time. We can hopefully learn how our actions can inspire others to help a broader circle of people, so that through the ripple effect of our influence we might be able to help more people than we can simply from a time- and energy-limited standpoint. Verse 27 says, “And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength.”