How often did Nephi see angels? 2 Nephi 32:3

How often did Nephi see angels? 2 Nephi 32:3

1 Nephi 3 - an angel came when Nephi's brothers were smiting him and Sam with a rod.
1 Nephi 11-14 - during his vision of the tree of life

It seems like a lot of the other references to angels through 1 and 2 Nephi are to these two instances. There are 44 references to angels in 1 Nephi and 7 in 2 Nephi, and some of them are about Lehi's experiences with angels.

Answer:

At least twice, and the second time might have been in a dream/vision.

What is interesting to me is that I never really connected before how important his angelic experiences were to Nephi.

If I had experienced seeing an angel, I imagine (and certainly hope!) it would be really important to me, too! It seems that faith in God doesn't depend on physical senses, though. There are plenty of examples of people in the scriptures who saw angels but failed to have faith.

I personally believe that angels can and sometimes do visit people today. Why wouldn't they? They did in the past. I also believe it's really rare and will almost definitely never happen to me, which is kind of sad.

However, I take a lot of comfort in the promise that those who believe the word of God without seeing signs (or angels) are blessed. (Alma 32:16)

I know that my belief in Jesus Christ's healing and strengthening power consistently brings me joy.

What things do you "perform unto the Lord"? 2 Nephi 32:9

What things do you "perform unto the Lord"? 2 Nephi 32:9

Nephi is talking to his children. He exhorts them to pray always, and tells them that they "must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul."

I'm guessing he's not referring to "things" like, say, "breathing." :-P

So what is he referring to?

We can find out by looking for other instances of the word "perform unto the Lord" in the scriptures. I used the WordCruncher tool found here.

OT : 16
NT : 1
BoM : 5
D&C : 2

I think that a more thorough study will include looking for just "perform".

See, this is a clear example of why a corpus of religious texts is needed, with subcorpora for the Bible etc. It would be a few clicks to discover all objects of "perform unto the Lord" or even just "perform" in the scriptures. Without the tags, you have to do it manually. Grumble grumble grumble. I am really close to deciding to find a way to create such a corpus. Even better if it included all kinds of religious texts (and their various translations) from across a wide spectrum of faiths. That would be...

...a subject for another post. Sigh. Also, massive, massive scope creep in my life. Double sigh.

So back to the tedious manual way of solving this problem.

an offering
2 - burnt offering
2 - sacrifice
5 - vow
a freewill offering
solemn feasts
peace offering
burn incense to the queen of heaven
pour out drink offerings unto [the queen of heaven] <-- huh?!
2 - (the) word
that which is gone out of your lips
the part of a kinsman [marriage, or at least sex. Ah the Old Testament. You're so weird.]
2 - my commandments
the request of his handmaid
his [the Lord's] saying
4 - oath(s)
that good thing which I have promised
any thing
performance
the work
mission
promises

This is not at all what I expected to find, by the way.

Here is how I would categorize these collocates:

physical worship rituals/rites:
offering, burnt offering, sacrifice, freewill offering, solemn feasts, peace offering, incense, drink offering <-- more often in OT

words/speech:
vow, word, "that which has gone out of your lips" - i.e. words, commandments, request, oath(s), that good thing which I have promised - i.e. a promise(s) <-- more often in OT and BoM

other:
any thing, performance, work, mission <-- more often in latter-day scriptures

When I read it this way, it reminds me distinctly of temple worship. I guess that means that before I go to perform temple work for my ancestors, I should first ask God to make it worth my while, that it will be beneficial to me - and them, too.

In this verse the "Lord" is explicitly "Heavenly Father." Where else? 2 Nephi 30:2

In this verse the "Lord" is explicitly "Heavenly Father." Where else? 2 Nephi 30:2

I think that the big, over-arching theme that I picked up on from reading the Book of Mormon in 2018 and studying it now with these questions is that the words for God are purposefully a little bit overlapping and ambiguous as to which member of the godhead is being referenced. See this post, and probably a good seven or eight others (but that one is the one in which I finally started to feel a little bit of resolution about this topic).

Nephi is talking to his people. He promises them that the Gentiles who repent are the covenant people of the Lord, and that Jews who do not repent will be removed from the covenant. He is explicitly telling his people that the covenant is with people who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel. (2 Nephi 30:2)

The covenant is made between Heavenly Father and us, his children. Jesus Christ is part of the covenant because he is the mechanism, the bridge - the thing that makes the covenant possible.

Answer:
All over the place.

The scriptures are often ambiguous about general words for deity, like "God" and "the Lord" and that probably has more to do with the idea that their purpose, plan, and actions are completely united. Together they work as one God.

I know that Heavenly Father is real. I know that the scriptures witness of him and his son, and that they are true. My knowledge comes through a witness from the holy ghost in both my mind and my heart. It is a feeling, but it is nothing like the other kinds of fleeting feelings and emotions that often seem to plague me. It is steady, sure, deeply hopeful, and real.

When will the sealed portion be read? 2 Nephi 27:11

When will the sealed portion be read? 2 Nephi 27:11

See "What is the 'sealed portion' of the Book of Mormon?"

Answer:
Not in the day of the wickedness and abominations of the people (2 Nephi 27:8)
When God wants it to happen (Ether 3:27)
In the day that [the Gentiles] shall repent of their iniquity and become clean before the Lord (Ether 4:6)

I interpret this to mean that I will probably not get to see the sealed portion read during my lifetime. I personally don't think the second coming of Jesus Christ is that close. A lot of things prophesied in the scriptures still have to happen. But that's a topic for another post.

Whose voices cry from the dust? 2 Nephi 26:16

Whose voices cry from the dust? 2 Nephi 26:16

Nephi is talking to his children before he dies. He prophecies about what will happen in the last days, meaning the time before the second coming of Jesus Christ when the Book of Mormon will be translated and shared around the world ("when the Lord God shall bring these things forth unto the children of men" - there "these things" are Nephi's words).

Nephi talks about two different groups of people:

Nephi's descendants (the Nephites)
Nephi's brother's descendants (the Lamanites)

He also differentiates between the righteous/faithful and "those who have dwindled in unbelief." Note that he does not label these on the basis of which "-ites" they are.

He promised that the words of the righteous/faithful will be written and come forth eventually, and goes on to prophecy more specifically how that will happen. He is prophesying about the translation of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the gospel.

Something that I remember noticing this last read-through of the Book of Mormon was how Nephi's words were not only for us in these latter days, but also for his own descendants. The words which Nephi wrote down were read by his descendants before they were destroyed by the Lamanites.

I like that Nephi is ambiguous about who are the "righteous/faithful" because it leaves plenty of room for Lamanites to be faithful. We know that many of them were some of the most faithful people in the entire Book of Mormon, actually (the Anti-Nephi-Lehites, King Lamoni, King Lamoni's father, and Samuel the Lamanite come to mind).

Being righteous/faithful is not something you inherit. You choose it. Inheriting a heritage of faithful parents, grandparents, etc. certainly helps influence your choices, but in the end, faith is a personal thing and it comes from within.

Answer: the righteous descendants of Nephi and his brothers.

Is charity usually translated as "pravá láska" in Czech? 2 Nephi 26:30

Is charity usually translated as "pravá láska" in Czech? 2 Nephi 26:30

Nephi is talking to his children before he dies. He warns them of priestcraft, which is basically preaching for money. He says that it is forbidden. He tells his children,"the Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love. And except they should have charity they were nothing." He says that the way to know if you have charity is by your willingness to support others around you who are trying to build up the kingdom of God.

In the Czech translation of the Book of Mormon, the word "charity" here is translated as "pravá láska" and love is "láska."

Sketch Engine is a tool that can perhaps give some really deep insight to how these words are used and what they mean.

I used the Czech Web 2012 (csTenTen12 v9) corpus to look up the word láska and collocates of láska that are one word to the left.

Top 10 collocates of the word láska in Czech are:

God's

your/his

great/big

live/life <--hmm. Why?

with

true

confession, declaration

yours/his

true

I guess I would categorize these collocates this way:

Having to do with God/faith

Having to do with belonging to someone

Having to do with philosophical ideas, qualities

I guess the real question which I have is whether or not "pravá láska" ("true love") can exist in non-religious contexts. I don't know.

I think I could probably play around with these concordancer tools for a while to try to find an answer, but it would be much easier to simply ask a Czech person. I will try to gather some answers from several different people and report back my answer next week.

The reason this is interesting to me is because the word "charity" in English does not collocate strongly with "love" yet they are supposed to be the same idea. When I think of charity, I do not think of "true love." It is meaningful to me that this idea is captured so saliently in Czech.

Because that's what charity is. It is the true - or pure - love of Christ.

"But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him." (Moroni 7:47)

TO BE CONTINUED...

What is in the "sealed portion" of the Book of Mormon?

What is in the "sealed portion" of the Book of Mormon? (no reference - just a question that came while reading 2 Nephi)

Here is a clear answer.

To save you a click, here's a summary:

About 1/2-2/3 of the gold plates which Joseph Smith translated were sealed, as in, they were, "so securely bound together that it was impossible to separate them," (according to one of the witnesses of the plates, David Whitmer).

Apparently a huge section of the gold plates was encapsulated to preserve them for the future. This was not done with metal bands, unlike how artists sometimes portray it. We don't really know exactly how it was done, but Moroni sealed them with materials that were available to him after he was separated from the rest of his people.

In the gold plates is a record of the vision of the brother of Jared. He was led to the American continent with his family by God at the time of the tower of Babel. He and his descendants were destroyed because of wickedness. They left a record which Nephi's descendants eventually found and translated by the power of God.

One of Danny's college professors calls this vision, "the movie." Basically, as I understand it, it is the entire history of mankind from a divine perspective. It includes, "all things from the foundation of the world unto the end thereof" (2 Nephi 27:10–11, Ether 3:25).

In my opinion the history of mankind will contain more details and information about historical events that we don't often revere or even know about because they are "small" and "insignificant." They often occur in bedrooms with mothers singing their children lullabies or with a kind word or two from a patient father.

I also think it will contain detailed descriptions of where the lost ten tribes were led, what their unique roles and responsibilities in God's Kingdom are, and how Asia fits into any of this. I have often wondered about that - how the Middle East and Far East and their religious philosophies/practices feel totally far removed from the West and Christian philosophies/practices. I hypothesize that religious leaders/prophets like Mohammed and Buddha were inspired by God. It would be so satisfying to learn how these other beliefs, teachings, and world histories are circumscribed into a much larger, more complete history.