Helamã 1-6 | 26 de Agosto a 1 de Setembro | Percepções do Livro de Mórmon com Taylor e Tyler

this chapter or this set of chapters is quite frankly very difficult because you're going to see high and then low and then high and then low it feels like you're on a roller coaster or a ferris wheel just going around and around and around what we see in the Book of Mormon that President Benson emphasized a lot in his teaching is the famous Pride cycle now you've seen it you've probably diagrammed it multiple times yourself um let's let's just get it on the board because that way it gives us a point of contact with this

lesson so at the top we have prosperity and when individuals and cultures Prosper it has the tendency if we're not careful to lead to Pride being lifted up in the pride that makes us feel like we're we're somehow better than other people or that we don't need God anymore because we're so prosperous pride is the Gateway sin according to president Benson so it always leads to Greater Sin Sin always leads to some kind of Destruction destruction will bring us down into sorrow and despair if we let it that sorrow will lead us to Greater humility

if we let that humility work in us then it will lead us to repent of our sins whenever we repent the Lord forgives us and He blesses us those blessings Mount and grow and multiply and it leads us to prosperity and there we have it the pride cycle and you'll notice everything on the pride cycle is the opposite of that which is directly across from it pride and humility sin and repentance blessings and destruction prosperity and sorrow this is basically the entire lesson today and next week actually uh the the book of helan is over

and over it's going to literally feel like you've been on a ferris wheel this whole book long president Benson took this one step further to say that the book was written for our day and that as you watch the patterns unfold Among the Nephites and the lamanites he said you will see events in our day unfolding leading up to the second coming just as these people are leading up to his first coming you'll notice some general patterns in the book of Elma there are some pretty clearly defined borders between the Nephites and lamanites it's pretty

obvious to tell who your enemy is you open up the book of helan and two things happen it shifts from these well-defined borders welldefined enemy to you're not sure who you who your enemy is anymore he could be standing right next to you and you didn't know it in in the book of heilman so the two adjustments that the Devil Makes is number one he becomes more sneaky and more subtle than ever before in the Book of Mormon but this is done internally Among the Nephites through what we're going to be talking about today with

the secret combinations this enemy that is among you that they're not wearing a uniform they're not on their side of a border it's you just you don't know who they are more sneaky and subtle internally and he becomes more bold and Brazen externally so the lamanites come in here in chapter 1 my good friend Rex reev pointed this out to me and this is amazing for the first time ever the lamanites they don't come to the outer cities they come in quickly while the Nephites are distracted internally with some problems with secret combinations and they

bring their army right into the capital city first time in the history of the book Mormon where the first attack is they sneak their way in and boom hit the capital city and take over the that City kill the chief judge and then then keep driving further to try to get to the land Bountiful where they're finally defeated this is the point as we get farther or further and further into time towards the second coming we're going to see our world mirroring and following this same pattern and the farther into time we get the the

less we're looking beyond our borders to worry about fighting against evil and the more we're trying to figure out where all of the struggles are not just externally but internally let's pick it up now in the actual text go to chapter 1 verse 1 Now Behold it came to pass in the commencement of the 40th year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi there began to be a serious difficulty among the people of the Nephites there have been a lot of periods of serious difficulty but look what makes this different verse

two behold pin had died and gone the way of all the Earth therefore there began to be a serious contention concerning who should have the Judgment seat among the Brethren who were the sons of pooran that's interesting can you imagine what it might be like to live in a society where there's actually serious contention and fighting and negativity regarding who's going to be your next government leader I wonder if Mormon saw our day and by the way chapter two is going to open up with the exact same thing serious contention Oho who's who going to

be our next leader and it leads to this this negativity and this real uh deep divide among the people rather than a unifying thing so in this first chapter you get the three sons pahoran panai and pumai and they're all vying for this judgment seat and the vote goes to pahoran which is fine pumai says I lost the vote and he gets in line not panai panai gets angry and he stir up the people in verse 7 gets exceedingly wroth and because of that he's condemned unto death in verse 8 so those who would follow

him they get one named Kish kumin who goes and murders pin while he's on the Judgment seat and it was done in secret he was in Disguise and for the first time we introduce officially in the book of morm secret combinations let me share a thought here back here in verse three these people who wanted power and authority in the nephite civilization they were the ones who did cause the people to contend it invites us to ask ourselves are we actually seeking peace love understanding or are we driving contention are we driving misunderstanding and I

think it's significant that these three guys were causing the people to contend and if you go back to King Benjamin's speech he says the parents don't let your children contend with one another well what if actually the parents actually caused the children to contend with one another I mean that's even worse and in some ways that's what the government leaders were doing this is why it's so important in societies everywhere that people look first at the inner vessel and say am I seeking to understand others am I seeking to be Christlike and am I seeking

to avoid contention now look we don't just sit around passively and get walked all over you know if somebody's going to try to you know ruin our world but the idea here is that it is possible to prosperously find ways to get people in power who will Who will live righteously and Rule righteously but when the leaders are driving the contention it creates enormous problems in society because then people start choosing sides and the last time we checked the scriptures I don't think God ever had any sides except his side I don't think he takes

political sides something also interesting about Kish kumin the first person to introduce secret combinations in the Book of Mormon is in the jedite record a guy Nam a Kish I think it's interesting that the first person to bring it into nephite society was this guy named Kish kumin now this is just my speculation I just wonder you know if somehow Kish kumin may have been part of one of The jedite Descendants because even we have this guy named Cory animer later and it's it may be possible that there were descendants of the jaredites floating around

who had access to these SE combinations that provided it of course at the same same time Satan has a way of working with people and getting secret combinations into their hearts and minds and let's also provide this idea secret combinations is in contrast to Sacred covenants we've talked about this recently secret combinations is all about being focused on yourself or secret covenants is about being focused outward on others seet combinations is all about serving yourself and to seek power at the expense of others whereas Sor covenants is about using your power to empower others that

they can have lives of prosperity so just a couple things to consider as you look at what we are offered in the gospel we are taught to bind ourselves into sacred covenants to serve one another to love God love your neighbor your combinations is is hate God hate your neighbor so chapter one concludes with this entry of the lonite army that we had talked about before where they take over the capital city they kill the chief judge and then they go north and then they finally get surrounded and that war ends leaving us with a

lot of problems chapter 2 verse one it came to pass in the 40 and2nd year of the reign of the judges after Iha had established again peace between the Nephites and the lamanites behold there was no one to fill the Judgment seat therefore there began to be a contention again among the people concerning who should fill the Judgment seat and it came to pass that helan who was the son of helan was appointed to fill the Judgment seat by the voice of the people now this group of kishkumen this group that we've been referring to

as Secret combinations gets described in much greater detail in Chapter 2 look at verse 4 there was one Gad antin who is exceedingly expert in many words and also in his craft to carry on the secret work of murder and of robbery therefore he became the leader of the band of kishkumen that's why we called him the gadian and Robbers for the rest of the Book of Mormon and what are they robbing it's not thievery robbery is all about Insurrection and overthrowing political order but yeah they're robbing people of their lives and livelihoods so check

this out verse 5 therefore he did flatter them and also Kish Kuman that if they would Place him in the Judgment seat he would Grant unto those who belong to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people therefore Kish Kuman sought to destroy heilan we're told multiple times that no righteous person has ever taken from this life before their mission completer before their time so it is with Helman his mission is not complete so Kish Kuman comes to to do the same thing he had done to pin before but

the servant of helan saw him recognized him somehow had had enough knowledge of what was going on gave him a secret sign he shared his desire and at that point Mormon pauses here to give you a nutshell definition of what it means when we say secret com combinations look at verse eight this is the simplest nutshell definition I can find for secret combinations notice what's involved when the servant of Helman had known all the heart of kishkumen and how that it was his object to murder and it was also the object of all those who

belong to this band to murder and to Rob and to gain power and this was all done in secret not out in the open so Taylor's talking about sacred covenants versus secret combinations this is how Satan does his work in the dark in the corners under the cloak and the guise of Disguise secretly going about to murder to kill other people to rob in order for him to get gain to gain power and to gain things notice and this was their secret plan and their combination that's exactly what Satan did in heaven in the premortal

war and he hasn't changed his strategy in all these years in all the interim he's still still trying to secretly destroy each of us to steal from to rob from us Rob life Rob agency Rob everything from us in order for him to gain power over us secret combinations are alive and well in in many levels and in many layers today and uh you then watch he the servant kills kishkumen and then gadianton finds out is scared that he hasn't come back in time so they flee before we can destroy that band and look at

verse 13 behold In the End of This Book you shall see that this gadianton did prove the overthrow y almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi this one thing is going to be really really critical in causing problems Among the Nephites now we come into chapter 3 we're in the 40 and3rd year there was no contention among the people of Nephi so we've made our way through the pride cycle there's no contention there's there's a bit of prospering going on here uhoh save it were a little pride which was in the church which

did cause some little dissensions among the people which Affairs were settled in the ending of the 40 and3rd year so we quickly made it through that one then verse two there was no contention among the people in the 40 and4th and the 40 and5th verse three 40 and 6th there was much contention and many dissensions in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of zerla and went forth under the land northward to inherit the land you'll notice there's so much contention that this large group of people leaves he

doesn't even numbered them in this case they just leave and they go northward where did they go verse four they traveled to an exceedingly great distance in so much that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers so they just leave they're up in the northward they're doing their own thing but our story stays down south in the land of zarahemla and the land of Nephi in the land Southward verse 14 there are 18 ANS in this verse all I'll just say it verse 14 is a terrible English sentence it's one sentence this

whole verse it's long terrible English if you were to turn this kind of writing in in college in a in a writing class you would flunk that English writing class but if you look closely at it it's beautiful in its ancient language aspects especially a language like Egyptian reformed Egyptian where they don't use any punct uation where they use words instead of things like commas and and periods and exclamation marks look at verse 14 but Behold a 100th part of the proceedings of this people yay the account of the lamanites and of the Nephites and

their Wars and contentions and dissensions and their preaching and their prophecies and their shipping and their building of ships and their building of temples and of synagogues and their sanctuaries and their righteousness and their wickedness and their murders and their robbings and their plunderings and all manner of Abominations and whoredoms cannot be contained in this work breathe terrible English beautiful Egyptian and hebraisms in here in that this is not a record that was created by a farm boy in the 1820s this is an ancient record that was translated by the gift and power of God

into English and all of the punctuation marks in this book that you can see some people have made fun of them some people have made fun of the grammar in the Book of Mormon who would seek to tear down people's belief or faith in the book it's interesting When anybody makes any kind of a judgment call regarding the punctuation keep in mind there was no punctuation on the plates there was no punctuation on the original manuscript it's John Gilbert the printer's types Setter who is the one who goes through the printers manuscript and adds all

the punctuation and by the way he really liked the semicolon uh so don't make any judgment calls or any doctrinal decisions based on the placement of a punctuation mark in the Book of Mormon because it's not prophetic and I can just share a personal testimony about this I've spent many years studying ancient Hebrew and many other ancient languages from the ancient Middle East and elsewhere and the more I study those ancient languages the more the English translation of the Book of Mormon makes sense in an anci context and exactly what Tyler's pointing out this reads

super well to me from a ancient Hebrew ancient Egyptian perspective and I just think it's phenomenal Joseph Smith as this uneducated farm boy this is not his words these are the words of God that he delivered to Joseph Smith to deliver to us the Book of Mormon is indeed an authentic ancient witness of Jesus Christ we know it is and these are just a little icing on the cake to kind of demonstrate yep you can take this seriously some of you may be thinking oh so I need to look for more of these hebraisms and

and these elements of of the reformed Egyptian in the text in order to really have a testimony that's not our point a testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ of his Gospel of His prophets of his scriptures is born to our soul by the gift and power of God the gift of the Holy Ghost who helps through the power of the Holy Ghost helps us know in our heart to feel truth to sense it once you have your testimony in place in your heart then an only then when you get these kinds of head testimony things

that we've been talking about here then it becomes validation verification it becomes using our our study and also our faith to combine to help us recognize truth and to come under Christ so now we get into the the rest of this chapter watching this Pride cycle continue to roll it just continues to Circle so in chapter 3: 23 you get the beginning of the 49th year there was continual peace all save it were the secret combinations which gon and the robber had established in the more settled parts of the land so you've got this little

kinker that's just growing in the society look at verse 24 came to pass that in the same year there was exceedingly great prosperity in the church so thousands joined the church so now we're up here and now we're having incredible success and the prosperity was so big that everybody was just amazed verse 26 tens of thousands of souls were baptized and United themselves to the Church of God and now more pauses and throws in three thus we see kinds of statements in Rapid succession thus we see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will

in the sincerity of their hearts call upon His holy name when we're humble and we repent we call upon God we turn to God call upon his name he's merciful and we see it verse 28 ye thus we see that the Gate of Heaven is open unto all even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ who is the Son of God you know there there are a lot of ways to depict the Gates of Heaven some would depict them as you know swinging Gates some as Gates of Heaven uh in my

mind do you know what the Gates of Heaven look like they look like the outstretched and Open Arms of the almighty Son of God named Jesus Christ that to me is the Gates of Heaven they're open his arms are opened wide they're outstretched they're inviting you he is our gate he is the door he is the path the way into heaven it all comes through him and only him look at verse 29 yay we see that whosoever will may they hold upon the word of God which is quick and Powerful which shall divide us under

all the cunning and the snares and the Ws of the devil and lead the man of Christ in a straight and narrow course across that Everlasting Gulf of which are prepared to engulf the wicked now you think wonderful it's great well you just keep reading and I just keep cycling look at verse 33 it came to pass in the 50 and1st year of the reign of the judges there was peace also save it were the pride which began to enter into the church then Mormon pauses he says wait a minute Pride didn't really enter into

the church because Pride can't enter into the church notice the correction that he makes not into the Church of God but into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the Church of God so Pride doesn't enter into the Church of God itself it enters into the people who profess to belong to the church it's a problem with people nevertheless verse 35 they did Fast and pray often did whack stronger and stronger in their humility and firmer and firmer in their faith unto the filling of their souls with joy and consolation so while

some are headed in a bad Direction others are noticing that and it's causing them this doesn't have to be Collective you don't have to be a victim of the society or your culture or your environment individuals can choose to do uh their own version of this Pride cycle what you're noticing right here in a roundabout sort of a way no pun intended this is what you might call a terrestrial lifestyle a terrestrial person is going to go they're they're never really good and they're never really bad they're they're good honorable people who get blinded by

the craftiness of men and maybe learn from that and fix things and this is a terrestrial cycle where you've got good and bad all mixed in together and it keeps keeps rotating through later on in the Book of Mormon in the last part of fourth Nephi and then into that smaller book called The Book of Mormon you're going to see something shift because the people are going to experience destruction and sorrow and instead of that sorrow leading them to humility it's actually going to lead them to Greater Pride which leads them to deeper sin further

destruction and worse sorrow which leads them to more Pride what you see in Mormon chapters 1-6 is a spiral downward they never come over into here there was one time where he's like oh good they're they're getting humble and they're going to repent oh never mind they're not humble they're not Sorrowing and turning to God they're Sorrowing because they can't be happy in their wickedness and they got worse and worse and worse and worse until they come down this is the testial cycle or slide brothers and sisters we're not a victim to any of this

you you don't have to wait for this to happen to you what's the trick the trick is right here instead of getting into prosperous times and having that somehow puff us up and make us feel like oh well I'm smarter than her and I'm richer than him and I have more of whatever it is instead of getting puffed up in Pride what happens if a person or a family or a culture says Dear God on high I didn't deserve this level of prosperity thanks I'm very grateful what do I need to do to use this

prosperity to keep sacred covenants and to turn outward and lift and bless and help other people around me how can I become more like Jesus how can I become an instrument in thy hands if a people if a family if a ward a stake if we as a collective church if we as as a nation as as human beings on the planet all did that it would lead us to repent at a more refined level God would bless us with an outpouring of more things than we would have room to receive and our prospering would

get astronomically high and it would become this spiral staircase this is the celestial cycle we don't have to be a victim of the pride cycle and we definitely don't have to fall into the testal slide we can choose to walk the high road and the trick is what do you do when you're prospering what do you do when your things are going well as well as what do you do when you're struggling now the rest of this this concept from chapter 3 leading into four and culminating with five watch this so you're in chapter 3

vers vers 37 it came to pass in the 30 and third year of the reign of the judges Heil and died and then his eldest son Nephi began to Reign instead and it came to pass that he did fill the Judgment seat with Justice and equity and he did keep the Commandments of God and did walk in the ways of his father you'll notice he gets the Judgment seat he's going to be prospering now he's got power he's got Authority it would be very easy for him to Pat himself on the back and say I'm

better than everybody else and fall into pride and sin and destruction but he doesn't he walks in the Commandments of God he's showing us a pattern of what it means or what it looks like to uh follow the celestial cycle rather than the pride cycle and let's just remind everybody these two phrases here keeping the Commandments of God is also a covenantal phrase the Commandments are how we show our love and loyalty to God in a covenantal relationship and a way of expressing that also is walking the ways of his father who is righteous and

when you walk you're like walking on the Covenant path so when we see these phrases we see them all over scriptures you can also see them as covenantal phrases to remind us when we are in sacred covenantal bonds and relationship with God we could express it as keeping the Commandments and walking the ways of God or walking the ways of righteous parents so here you are in chapter 4 came to pass that in the 50 and fourth year there were many dissensions in the church and there was also a contention among the people people in

so much that there was much Bloodshed so the society the culture there's this unrest and this this difficulty and this contention that gets to the point where now there's Bloodshed going on verse two and the rebellious part were slain and driven out of the land and they did go unto the king of the lamanites so they stir up the lamanites and it's it's interesting to me that Mormons spend so little uh column space on this but for the first time in the Book of Mormon you get widescale defeat like widescale defeat Among the Nephites and

Mormon doesn't give you much much uh detail here all he tells you is that in verse 5 in the 50 and 7th year they did come down against the Nephites to battle they did commed the work of death and in that 158th year they succeeded in obtaining possession of the land of zarahemla yay all of the lands even unto the land which was near the land Bountiful so they have taken over all of these cities in the land of zarahemla all the way up to Bountiful That's pretty drastic things are terrible now we talked just

a moment ago about the critical point being what do you do when you're prospering that's a turning point that's a decision point that helps us stay on the Covenant path on a Celestial path by becoming more humble well the Other Extreme is also an incredibly important discip in factor in the kind of people we're going to be it's what do you do when everything's going terribly wrong I love CS Lewis's writings and one of my favorites of his books is the screw tape letters really quickly overview screw tape is a a powerful Devil he's pretty

high up in the hierarchy of of devils actually in hell I guess it would be he was pretty low down in the lower Arcy of devils I he has a nephew named wormwood who has a patient a fellow in England during World War II who he's trying to tempt trying to destroy his soul wormwood is being trained by screw tape hence the name of the book the screw tape letters so Uncle screw tape is writing these letters to his nephew to teach him about human beings CS Lewis said it was the hardest book he ever

wrote Because he said he had to think that diabolically and it was hard work at one point in the screw tape letters uh screw tape writes one particular epistle to warmwood because warmwood is excited he thinks I've got my guy he's in the depths of Despair and he's crying out and God's not answering him and in this particular letter screw tape introduces us to this idea of undulation he teaches warmwood and us about our own Human Condition he said human beings are dual natured spirit and flesh and he said everything humans experience goes through Cycles

they have ups and they have Downs it's the law of undulation in all aspects of our life we experience highs and lows brothers and sisters anyone anyone can be good on a mountain peak of of energy and spirituality and light and truth and prosperity this is a critical point to not choose to become prideful that we talked about before but to choose to become humble the other point is what happens here and here what are the decisions we make it's here where screw tape tells wormwood oh be careful because our cause is never more in

Peril or never more in danger than when a human being finds thems in a trough of Life they cry out to the wide universe around them to God for help he doesn't respond they look everywhere and they can't find any trace of him he's he's not talking to them he's not filling them with light and comfort and truth and relationships at that time and he says and still they choose to obey him that's when the greatest damage is done to the work of the Devils I think that's extremely insightful because you see this over and

over in the scriptures and he goes on in that letter to say God uses this technique over and over with his favorites people who he's trying to shape the most he lets them go through deep dark troughs that last way longer than they think they should but they continue to obey and that's where the greatest character development and growth comes in life that's what we see in the Book of Mormon with Nephi and Lehi in these chapters coming up you've got everything going wrong you've got it it seems like the whole world is falling apart

on us look at verse chapter 4: 11 now this great loss of the Nephites and the great Slaughter which was among them would not have happened had it not been for their wickedness and their abomination which was among them yay and it was among those who also professed to belong to the Church of God and it was because of the pride of their hearts because of their exceeding riches because of their oppression to the poor withholding their food from the Hungry with withholding their clothing from the naked and smiting their humble Brethren upon the cheek

making a mock of that which was sacred denying the spirit of Prophecy and of Revelation murdering plundering lying stealing committing adultery rising up in great contentions and deserting way into the land of Nephi among the lamanites all these things are happening so what do you do well instead of giving up and turning away from God and saying well I'm not even going to try anymore Nephi and Lehi in chapter 5 they say let's be obedient let's be diligent let's be faithful and we're going to move forward chapter 5 is this beautiful uh uh example for

us today of what to do when you find yourself in a trough of Life they remembered since they can't see the light and the truth so to speak in in the world around them they cast their mind back to some things and what does their mind go back to things that they learned at home with beautiful teachings from parents look at chapter 5 and you'll notice a word that gets repeated 15 times s in 10 verses starting in verse five remember remember yeah we've talked about this in past lessons that remember means to put members

back together it's putting Memories Back Together and in a covenantal context it's remembering all the great Deeds that God has done for you all his Mercy his acts of Grace if we connect it to moroni's Grand promise in Moroni chapter 10 he tells us remember all the Mercies that God has provided to humanity throughout all of human history and after you have done that then ask him if this is not true so when we remember all that God has done for us and all of us have experienced tremendous moments of God's outpouring you may not

feel it right now but if you remember you will be able to find times in your memory when God blessed your life when you knew he was real and when you remember those things it brings it back to the present and is encourag encourging to us to be faithful to God and it motivates our actions to stay true and faithful on the Covenant path and so what it does is like we had these incredible moments we might be down here in the trough we got to remember that this was real and we can have it

again through the power of God and let me just take one more minute to talk about the names of these men actually Focus primarily just on Nephi so two uh LS Scholars uh John Gee and Matt Bowen have done some research in Egyptian and discovered that the word Nephi seems to be an ancient Egyptian name for a man that comes from the word that means good lovely beautiful or desirable and what I want you to look at is if you think back into first Nephi when he beginning The Book of Mormon he says I Nephi

having been born of Nephi parents goodly parents when Nephi talks about the tree of life he talks about how beautiful the tree was and how desirable the fruit was in an Egyptian context he would have been using his own name to talk about the love of God and if you look here in the if we could put this back into the original Egyption and what we'd be hearing is that Helman is saying to his sons I want you to be good and when you remember your name you'll remember the good they did and that you

will desire to also do good now I'm going to put that in contrast to the counter example to Nephi and that name is Layman and this proposal recently was suggested by again Matt Bowen an incredible uh Book of Mormon scholar in the religion department at B haai he proposed this word Layman may come from two words in Hebrew La amen now we say this word all the time after every prayer and talk amen is a Hebrew word that means belief or truth law in Semitic languages means no or not so if this proposal is correct

Layman's name actually is a symbol of his life not believing and we will see that Nephi and Lehi sons of helan go among those who do not believe and teach them and this chapter is beautiful because it tells us we need to remember the good remember the love of God and his Beauty and that we should desire these things and not fall into that Pride cycle of not believing when we're down here we might choose to not believe the Beautiful Moments of Salvation we've experienced in our lives we shouldn't be a Layman we shouldn't be

a non-believer we should choose even in the moments of difficulty to choose to remember the good the lovely the Beautiful the desirable these low points of life they don't just happen to random people they happen to everyone everyone goes through undulations of life when upon life life's Billows you are Tempest tossed when you are discouraged thinking All Is Lost count your many blessings name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done that's the uh one of the the principles that we can apply from this to remember God's goodness remember

his mercy so rather than spending tons of time on all of these remember passages starting in verse 5 let's just pick up two of the verses go to verse 9 oh remember remember my sons The Words which king Benjamin spake unto his people ye remember that there is no other way nor means whereby man can be saved only through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ who shall come y remember that he cometh to redeem the world and I might just throw in here if you want to talk law of undulation undulation Finds Its infinite fulfillment

in the life and especially in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ you want to talk about a trough of life with infinite proportions then you talk about death and Hell being descended into by Jesus himself and being faithful throughout that process even though he cried out in Gethsemane for the cup to pass from him it didn't pass from him him he tread The Wine Press alone I love the fact by the way that Elder Holland said that he gave it as his opinion that never was the father closer to the son than at those moments

through that atoning sacrifice especially culminating on the cross now go to verse 12 now my sons remember remember now notice three names or titles of Jesus here that it is upon the rock of Our Redeemer who is Christ the Son of God the one who's going to redeem is the Christ the anointed one is also the Son of God it's upon him that you must build your foundation it's not a foundation built upon scriptures it's not a foundation built upon a church or a government or a club or an organization or a cause in this

world or the prophet himself the foundation is rooted in Christ Christ the Lord that's it the Son of God that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds notice you could circle the word when he didn't say that if the devil shall send forth his mighty winds it's when it's going to happen we're going to face opposition and notice it's not when you're going to face the devil's gentle breezes it's when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds yay his shafts in the Whirlwind yay when all his hail and mighty storm shall beat

upon you it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the Gulf of misery and endless woe why because of the rock upon which you are built which is a sure Foundation a foundation whereon if there's your if if men build they cannot fall it's not they're less likely to fall or they're probably going to survive it's they cannot fall I build my life on the rock of Our Redeemer and then however many of these troughs come along I can't fall I won't be dragged down to the Gulf of misery and endless

woe because of that rock upon which I'm built and there's an interesting thing about storms especially violent storms like the ones that Helman is describing to his two boys here violent storms don't last forever they come they hit with a Vengeance and a fury but then they pass and it came to pass they don't keep blowing forever when's the best time to build your foundation upon the rock of the Redeemer I think if Elder uorf were here he would say when's the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago second best time today best

time to build a foundation 20 years ago second best time today I love verse 12 because it Roots Us in the most important element that we keep coming back to over and over and we're never going to Tire of coming back to him over and over again the Lord Jesus Christ is our only solution he's our only answer he's our only hope and all of these struggles and the undulations whether we're on a mountain peak in a trough or somewhere in between Jesus is the only solution that we have now at this point Nephi and

Lehi in the midst of a very very Wicked Society they say we're not going to try to push the the lamanites out because the lamanites have taken over the land of zarahemla so instead they go and start teaching the gospel and in the process you'll notice verse 19 8,000 of the lamanites were convinced of the error of their ways and of their wickedness and they get baptized then they go on a mission down to serve in the land of Nephi among the lamanites and they get thrown in prison chapter 5 is sweet because these men

come into the prison to kill them and you get this beautiful voice in verse 28 they were overshadowed with a cloud of darkness and an awful solemn fear Came Upon them and it came to pass that there came a voice as if it were above the cloud of Darkness saying repent ye repent ye and seek no more to destroy my servants whom I have sent unto you to declare Good Tidings so these men have this incredible experience they hear the voice three times you turn the page over you get the wonderful story with a minute

AB in 39 and the lamanites there turning to him in verse 40 saying what shall we do what do we do and his response verse 41 I hope you can hear a in adb's voice echoing through the corridor of time into your own home in verse 41 you must repent and cry unto the voice ye until ye shall have faith in Christ who was taught unto you by Elma and AMAC and Z zzam so they did that the cloud passes they're circled by fire and then they hear a voice again look at the difference in

verse 47 peace peace be unto you because of your faith in my well beloved who was from the foundation of the world this is the turning point that Taylor was talking about the the crossover point where all of a sudden the lamanites actually become more righteous more goodly way more believing than the Nephites as a whole this is the shift this is the turning point where Nephi and lehi's Mission and experience and this group of lamanites who were preserved they go around and start teaching and it becomes incredible you go to chapter six and now

you have lamanites preaching to Wicked Nephites you're going to watch just for fun you could take our pride cycle and you could go through chapter 6 and just identify as you go through the verses how many times they go through the pride cycle in one chapter you'll notice in 3435 and 36 Mormon as he's worked through elements of this Pride cycle and secret combinations he throws in three more thus we seiz verse 34 thus we see that the Nephites did begin to dwindle in in belief and grow in wickedness and Abominations while the lamanites began

to grow exceedingly in the knowledge of their God ye they did begin to keep his statutes and Commandments and to walk in truth and uprightness before him point being you don't have to wait for people around you to choose the celestial cycle you today this moment and choose to become more humble turn to God and say not my will but thine be done what do you need me to do and some of you watching today are on a mountain peak of Revelation and prosperity and peace some of you watching today have been in a trough

of Life way longer than you thought you were capable of of enduring in FA in faith and others of you are somewhere in between going in on on this uh path of Life the point being wherever you are humility repentance faith in Christ turning to God that's always the answer that's going to lead to Greater blessings and it's not a matter of pushing buttons it's a matter of pushing yourself and causing yourself to turn to God and swap follow up your will in his will look at verse 35 thus we see that the spirit of

the Lord began to withdraw from the Nephites because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts and thus we see that the Lord began to pour out his Spirit upon the lamanites because of their easiness and willingness to believe in his words this isn't Rock of science I can do this better today than I've ever done it before and you can do this better today we can turn to God in humility president Ezra tap Benson said God will have a humble people either we can choose to be humble or we can wait for God

to Humble Us in closing we know that life is hard we know that uh The Book of Mormon was written for our day Mormon saw some things that were happening in our society in our culture in our time today and he included things in the Book of Mormon as we get closer and closer to that day when the Lord will return we're getting closer and closer in the Book of Mormon to the day when Christ will manifest himself Among the Nephites and it shouldn't surprise us to live in a world with weat and te wheat

and tears that those wheat and tears are growing together simultaneously that it's not just a dispensation of the fullness of times for righteousness it's a dispensation of the fullness of times for wickedness and it's growing side by side and we shouldn't be shocked when we see wickedness and righteousness both increasing let's choose the celestial staircase that leads us constantly closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we know he lives and we know he loves us even though you don't always hear his voice or see his hand he's there and you're never Forsaken and we

leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ amen [Music]