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Episode: 4.50- Moroni 7-9 - Part 1, Moroni Shares His Father's Words

Author: Lili Anderson
Duration: 00:33:41

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Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_00
Hi, this is Lily de Hoyos Anderson, and you're listening to Choosing Glory. Thanks for joining me today. We're discussing some of the final chapters of the Book of Mormon today. Moroni chapters 7 through 9. And next week will be Moroni's final chapter.

00:00:27 Speaker_00
I wanted to share another picture that is in the background of this scene with you. Sorry for the grammatical clumsiness of that sentence.

00:00:38 Speaker_00
But this is by the artist Brian Kirshesnik, who's a Latter-day Saint artist that I have really appreciated over the years and have some of his pieces. This was given to me by my dear friend Grace Clayton.

00:01:00 Speaker_00
This is, and maybe you've seen it, but it's difficult to discern in the background, it's called Witness, and it shows someone holding the hand of the Savior with the marks in the Savior's hand and wrist.

00:01:17 Speaker_00
It's a really beautiful picture to me, and I wanted to particularly share it today.

00:01:28 Speaker_00
I think I changed that enough that it's a little bit visible, but I know that you may not have known what it was from the video on YouTube, but I just wanted to share it today because earlier this week, Grace passed away after having been hospitalized for a couple of weeks.

00:01:48 Speaker_00
I have known Grace since my senior year in high school, and she has been such a dear friend through my entire adult life, beginning back when I was probably still 16. And I'll miss her, and I have another reason to look forward to the resurrection.

00:02:15 Speaker_00
When dear friends depart, the loss is keen, I believe she is in the paradise of our Lord and I am grateful to know what we know, grateful to look forward to that joyous reunion that we will have with all our loved ones.

00:02:40 Speaker_00
Anyway, let me start again as I did last time or had a moment last time where I shared a quote about men and a quote about women. So this one is about men, and I like this. It's by a woman named Ellen G. White. I don't know much about her.

00:03:03 Speaker_00
I didn't look it up, but here's what she said. It is labor that keeps the strong man strong. And spiritual labor, toil and burden-bearing, is what will give strength to the Church of Christ. Let me repeat that.

00:03:21 Speaker_00
It is labor that keeps the strong man strong. And spiritual labor, toil and burden-bearing, is what will give strength to the Church of Christ. It reminds me of the words of a beautiful hymn called, Rise Up, O Men of God.

00:03:40 Speaker_00
And I'm not going to share those words today, but I probably will in some future podcast, because

00:03:49 Speaker_00
It's very much along these lines and it's beautiful homage to strong men and the need that we have for strong men in the world and our families and of course in the church.

00:04:03 Speaker_00
This is a statement about mothers, about a particular mother by George Washington. The first president of the United States, and as you remember, a man who was offered a monarchy and refused it. These are wonderful men who have done this.

00:04:24 Speaker_00
We've talked about that a little bit this year. There have been men in the Book of Mormon who also have been offered the position of king and have not accepted it because they believed in a higher way and a higher power.

00:04:40 Speaker_00
This is what Washington said, my mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her. It's a beautiful tribute.

00:04:58 Speaker_00
I hope that mothers and women in general recognize their power to strengthen and provide moral and intellectual and physical education to those around us. Grateful for good men and good women.

00:05:18 Speaker_00
Don't give up just because Satan is really raging to attack all of us and really has leveled some of his terrible and most vicious attacks against men and women specifically. Okay, these are the longest chapters of Moroni.

00:05:42 Speaker_00
And I can't say that they're the most doctrinally powerful, because chapter 10 of Moroni, written by his own hand, is also a very beautiful doctrinal chapter. These chapters are full of rich doctrine as taught by his father Mormon.

00:06:01 Speaker_00
So all of these chapters are actually teachings of Moroni's father that he shares in his book. Remember the first six chapters were basically handbook of instruction kinds of materials. And then he shares with us this section, these three chapters that

00:06:23 Speaker_00
our powerful doctrine taught by his father, and then he concludes the Book of Mormon in chapter 10, his own witness and invitation to us. I'm gonna go backwards on these chapters. Sorry, I'm feeling kind of tender about my losses this year.

00:06:45 Speaker_00
So give me just a minute. Let's start with chapter nine. And as I said, kind of go backwards. So I'm not going to touch all the beautiful teachings. These teachings are very straightforward.

00:07:06 Speaker_00
So I hope that you will pray for the Spirit to attend you as you study these words and feel their strength and understand how they can apply to your life. I'm just going to hit some highlights. And so with

00:07:23 Speaker_00
Chapter 9, I'm going to just look at the heading for a moment, where in this epistle from Mormon to Moroni, he says that both the Nephites and the Lamanites are depraved and degenerate. They torture and murder each other.

00:07:42 Speaker_00
Mormon prays that grace and goodness may rest upon Moroni forever. Which is beautiful, but painful, and this is

00:07:54 Speaker_00
a difficult chapter to read because it does talk about incredible depravity that is happening on both sides, the Nephites and the Lamanites.

00:08:02 Speaker_00
Although Mormon does tell us in these chapters that the Nephites were even worse than the Lamanites in many respects. And of course, they were sinning against the greater light because the spirit stayed with them longer.

00:08:16 Speaker_00
And yet, we know that the Lamanites at this point were defectors from the Nephites. They were not a different lineage.

00:08:26 Speaker_00
So all of them had had the light of Christ's ministry in their generations previously, but had fallen away, and the Nephites end up being more depraved even than the Lamanites.

00:08:40 Speaker_00
And I do want to say how tragic it always is when people get to this horrible stage where they show such inhumanity to other people.

00:08:55 Speaker_00
And as you would expect, Mormon mentions specifically how terrible this is for women and children, because they are vulnerable. And without good men to stand up and defend and protect, women and children are cannon fodder.

00:09:14 Speaker_00
So it's a tragic tale that he tells here. I'm not going to go into the details. It's hard to read. But he does tell us in verse 12 that only a few years have passed away, that they were a civil and delightsome people.

00:09:30 Speaker_00
And how can a people, this is verse 13, like this, whose delight is in so much abomination, how can we expect that God will stay his hand in judgment against us? So he's grieving again how far his people have fallen into evil and darkness.

00:09:50 Speaker_00
Verse 18, oh, the depravity of my people. They are without order and without mercy. And he even mentions that I cannot any longer enforce my commands. That's interesting because he was their commander in so many ways, but he can't even get them to do

00:10:07 Speaker_00
his bidding anymore, and certainly not to heed his calls to repentance." So they're strong in their perversion and brutal, sparing none, either old or young.

00:10:17 Speaker_00
Anyway, it's pretty tragic, their past feeling in verse 20, their wickedness to exceed that of the Lamanites. Verse 21, "'Behold, my son, I cannot recommend them unto God, lest he should smite me.'"

00:10:31 Speaker_00
And I think that's really important, brothers and sisters, because do we Do we recommend people to God that are not in a place where they can receive His mercy?

00:10:47 Speaker_00
Now, I'm not talking about being a final judge on people, but I am saying that sometimes, again, in our society that has put niceness above truth, above

00:11:00 Speaker_00
obeying God, then sometimes we may be trying to advocate for people whose behaviors are not acceptable to God. And that puts us on the wrong side of truth.

00:11:15 Speaker_00
And I think this is a great example from the prophet Mormon, that if we try to recommend to God people whose behaviors have put them beyond the reach of mercy in their current state.

00:11:33 Speaker_00
Again, Christ continues to reach out to his people, and if they repent, they can be forgiven.

00:11:40 Speaker_00
We heard this again from this prophet earlier in his own book, that he knew that even as bad as the Nephites had become, if they would return to Christ and repent, he would forgive them. So, it's not that we are saying

00:11:57 Speaker_00
that people cannot be saved if they repent, but it is about recognizing that to act like everybody is going to be saved in the kingdom of God. Everyone will be saved from hell, but not everyone will be exalted.

00:12:12 Speaker_00
And exaltation is what we are invited to participate in. Exaltation is the fullness of God's love and blessing that is found in the celestial kingdom, and even at a higher level, in the highest level of the celestial kingdom.

00:12:28 Speaker_00
So, I think this is really important that Mormon is saying, I can't recommend them to God. Or he would smite me because I would be denying his word and denying the truth of good and evil.

00:12:45 Speaker_00
So, he prays for Moroni and says in verse 25, be faithful in Christ and may Christ lift you up.

00:12:56 Speaker_00
May Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and longsuffering, and the hope of his glory and eternal life rest in your mind forever."

00:13:07 Speaker_00
So he does want each of us, this is a message that Moroni shares with us, that his father shared with him, that even in the midst of difficult times, in the midst of evil times, we can be lifted up by the Savior Jesus Christ

00:13:27 Speaker_00
remembering His sufferings and death, and His resurrected body, and His mercy and longsuffering, and the hope of His glory and eternal life. May that rest in our minds forever.

00:13:40 Speaker_00
And we're going to talk a little bit more about hope in these chapters, but for now, we're going to leave it there. Just that Mormon ends verse 26 with, May the grace of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be and abide with you forever. Amen.

00:13:58 Speaker_00
We're going to come back to that in a moment. But let's talk a little bit about the statement that Mormon makes here, that they are without order and without mercy. That made me think about

00:14:17 Speaker_00
Section one in the DNC, which will be next year's course of study. This is verse 16 from DNC section one.

00:14:25 Speaker_00
They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own God, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.

00:14:43 Speaker_00
Now, why does that connect to me? It's because When we are without order as a society or as a people, it's because there's no acknowledgment of a higher power.

00:14:54 Speaker_00
There's not an acknowledgment that God is on His throne and that He tells us what is right and wrong, and that we must acknowledge that power and that truth and try to comply with it in order to have order in our lives.

00:15:09 Speaker_00
So I heard a discussion on this the other day. in an interview that somebody did, and it was kind of in passing, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. I didn't even reference it.

00:15:19 Speaker_00
But I liked that they were talking about the fact that you can't really have complete liberty, complete freedom as a people in a government if we don't have order. And I thought that was an excellent point. It made good sense to me, because without

00:15:41 Speaker_00
God, we end up descending into madness. Everybody does their own thing. And this is certainly what Western society has come to, where it's follow whatever whim at the cost of whomever or whatever. It'll be fine if we all just leave each other alone.

00:15:56 Speaker_00
Well, that doesn't work. It doesn't work, because This person's whim may prey upon women. This person's whim may prey upon children or on their fellow men. Brothers and sisters, it's such a silly argument. It's such a silly argument.

00:16:10 Speaker_00
It's just another packaging or repackaging that Satan does of the rule of the natural man. Do your own thing. Live your own truth.

00:16:20 Speaker_00
That idea has this sound to it that is supposed to be elevated, supposed to be more civilized, and it's just the opposite. It's the end of civilization, when people have no moral order that comes from a higher power.

00:16:37 Speaker_00
So, I really feel like this is what we see at the end of the Book of Mormon, we see it at the end of the Jaredite nations, and we see it today to some extent, when people just walk in the image of their own God.

00:16:50 Speaker_00
who is in the substance of the world, because that's what it is, the natural man, the appetites, passions, and desires. So what a warning to us, again.

00:16:59 Speaker_00
And don't be deceived by the sophistry, again, of Satan or his mouthpieces and spokespeople who say that this is a higher way to do your own thing, to live your own truth. It's a lower way. It's the way of Satan. And every time it destroys society.

00:17:17 Speaker_00
There can be no order and ultimately no mercy when people are serving the natural man and worship their own gods, which is always a way of saying they worship themselves and their appetites. So, okay, we're going to go back to chapter eight.

00:17:37 Speaker_00
Again, sort of going backwards today. Hope that you can stay with me. So this is a treatise that The prophet Mormon sends to his son Moroni on infant baptism and the evil of that idea. And it's very powerful.

00:17:54 Speaker_00
So again, the words are pretty straightforward. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. I am going to say that Mormon expresses at the beginning of Chapter 8 his rejoicing that the Lord has called Moroni to the ministry.

00:18:07 Speaker_00
Now, I did want to say that, and I've talked with some of my kids about this, wondering What exactly was the position of the Church at the time of the Nephites? Now, again, we know that the whole society becomes corrupt.

00:18:24 Speaker_00
But we don't know exactly what that looks like, because Moroni is ministering to somebody, and they have disputations among them. In verse 4,

00:18:36 Speaker_00
Mormon expresses that, you know, grieve with me, that there should be disputations among you, among you, the people that Moroni is ministering to and that Mormon seems to know.

00:18:47 Speaker_00
And he's grieved that there are disputations about the issue of infant baptism.

00:18:52 Speaker_00
But that sounds like there was still sort of the remnant of believers, perhaps, or people who may have lost some of the light, but they were still willing to meet together or be identified as a group that Moroni could minister to.

00:19:07 Speaker_00
Anyway, it's interesting to think about, you know, what happened to them? Did they just become completely corrupted? Or was it that the society itself was so corrupt that the few innocent were swept up in the disaster. I don't know.

00:19:24 Speaker_00
I don't know, and I'm not suggesting that it could be one way or the other, but it is interesting that there did seem to be a group that Moroni was ministering to, and is called to minister to, to the point where he can even instruct them or try to correct them in this false doctrine.

00:19:46 Speaker_00
And Mormon tells him in verse six, I desire that you should labor diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you." Again, there's a group he's talking about here, and that's why he writes this epistle.

00:19:58 Speaker_00
So he teaches in verse eight, listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. I came into the world not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance. The whole need no physician.

00:20:15 Speaker_00
But they that are sick, wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin." And he talks about how they are redeemed from the fall of Adam because of Jesus Christ.

00:20:26 Speaker_00
And after this manner, the Holy Ghost manifests, this is verse nine, the word of God, unto me, wherefore, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn mockery before God that you should baptize little children.

00:20:40 Speaker_00
And that repentance and baptism in verse 10 are unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin. So he repeats this several times. Little children need no repentance, verse 11. Verse 12, little children are alive in Christ.

00:20:57 Speaker_00
And this is such a powerful warning about how evil this doctrine is. If little children could not be saved without baptism, verse 13, they must have gone to an endless hell.

00:21:08 Speaker_00
And so the next verse, 14, he that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity, and he hath neither faith, hope, nor charity, which is what Mormon's going to talk about in chapter 7.

00:21:25 Speaker_00
So he's already sent that epistle to Moroni, and he's repeating that. These people don't have faith, hope, or charity if they are thinking that little children need baptism.

00:21:36 Speaker_00
Verse 15, he explains further, "'For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must perish because he has no baptism.'" Now,

00:21:50 Speaker_00
Just a few words on this, and I've mentioned this before, so forgive me if you've heard this before, but it's worth repeating. This is a big difference between our church and most other Christian churches who baptize infants. Not all of them.

00:22:08 Speaker_00
There are some that don't baptize in infancy, but the Catholic Church still baptizes infants, and other Protestant religions, some of them do as well.

00:22:20 Speaker_00
I read years ago something about the problem with limbo that was on a Catholic website, and they recognize, a lot of them recognize that this is an issue, and it doesn't work well to think that little children can't be saved.

00:22:38 Speaker_00
People have an inherent light of Christ that tells them differently, and yet if they have heard these painful doctrines,

00:22:49 Speaker_00
especially if they've lost a child that was not baptized prior to its death, then they can suffer for years feeling responsible and feeling guilt and feeling this huge tragedy in their lives that these little ones will not be

00:23:05 Speaker_00
able to view the face of God. That's kind of how it was put in some of the Catholic teachings. So, as I said, they have recognized that there is a problem with this.

00:23:15 Speaker_00
And particularly, they add to that, and limbo is not purgatory, which is a place of suffering, but limbo is kind of in between, where they can't see the face of God.

00:23:26 Speaker_00
So, there is a kind of banishment from the presence of God, even though it's not hell.

00:23:32 Speaker_00
Now, in this article, it mentioned another one of the problems with limbo was that, or with this doctrine that baptism was required to enter the presence of God, is that they see baptism not as being instituted

00:23:48 Speaker_00
by the Lord with Adam and Eve, which is what Latter-day Doctrine tells us.

00:23:51 Speaker_00
That's what the restored gospel of Jesus Christ teaches, that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and the ordinances of salvation are the same, so that Adam and Eve were taught the doctrine and that ordinance of baptism.

00:24:06 Speaker_00
The first four—faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost—those things have been a part of the gospel forever. And in every dispensation of time, those things were taught.

00:24:18 Speaker_00
authority was given to apply those ordinances and allow people to receive them. So, at any rate, the Catholic Church doesn't believe that.

00:24:28 Speaker_00
The Catholic Church, doctrinally speaking, believes that baptism was instituted by John the Baptist with Jesus Christ.

00:24:38 Speaker_00
all the ancient patriarchs, Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, all of those ancient patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all those good guys from the past, were not able to enter into the presence of God or see the face of God because they didn't have baptism back then, because it only started with Jesus Christ going to John the Baptist.

00:25:00 Speaker_00
So, that is another problem with this idea that the Catholics have taught forever.

00:25:06 Speaker_00
And of course, the pain that it has inflicted on people who have lost children and were not able to get that child to a priest to be baptized prior to the child's death have carried a terrible burden. I remember my mother talking about this.

00:25:20 Speaker_00
She was French, but she and her family had moved to Argentina before the war when they couldn't get visas to the United States. And then she was called to be the first sister missionary in Uruguay.

00:25:34 Speaker_00
She had to work in the office for two weeks while they found a companion for her, and she had the same companion for the entire 18 months of her mission.

00:25:41 Speaker_00
But she told us when we were growing up that she taught the gospel to people who were mostly Catholic. It's, in Latin America, largely Catholic. And still, although that is waning, but at that time particularly.

00:25:59 Speaker_00
Most people in Latin America were Catholic, so the people she was trying to share the gospel with believed in this teaching.

00:26:07 Speaker_00
And she said that teaching them from this chapter in the Book of Mormon, whether or not they completely joined the church, she could see that the thought that their children could be saved in Christ was so freeing to them.

00:26:22 Speaker_00
she could see this weight of guilt come off their shoulders and this burden of pain and sorrow be released. And she said it was so vivid to her that this was an evil doctrine and had borne down the hearts of so many.

00:26:41 Speaker_00
Now, it's been quite a while now since I taught seminary in Las Vegas. So probably it's been not quite 30 years since I stopped teaching.

00:26:53 Speaker_00
But one of those years, I had a girl who came partway through the year and joined our class who had come from New York. And she had, and her family had joined the church. And the reason was that her neighbors

00:27:16 Speaker_00
that she kind of grew up with these neighbors next door and they were close friends to her parents. So the families together were very close friends over the years. And the neighbors had had a baby that they didn't have baptized before it died.

00:27:31 Speaker_00
And they went to the priest, they were Catholic, and they went to the priest and he wouldn't even let the baby be buried in the church cemetery. I mean, things have lightened up a little bit now.

00:27:46 Speaker_00
It's taken a long time, but that was, like I said, probably 27, 28 years ago. And it was still happening then, in this country even. And because of that heartbreak and sorrow, they started looking for another church.

00:28:02 Speaker_00
The two families together, and they found our church, and both families joined our church. And this doctrine was what really tipped the scales for them to come into the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, because it resonated with their souls.

00:28:18 Speaker_00
And I hope it resonates with ours. Brothers and sisters, this is so powerfully taught by the prophet Mormon.

00:28:24 Speaker_00
Let us in confidence teach this doctrine and let our children know how unique the gospel of Jesus Christ is, how it sets the captive free in so many ways. It releases us from the burden of untruth, of deception, of distortion of true principles.

00:28:46 Speaker_00
And what an evil that is, to deny the goodness of God, to deny the grace of Christ, that he would let one infant suffer forever because of not receiving baptism while the other one is saved because they do, when they are not even at the age of accountability.

00:29:02 Speaker_00
So, it's really a beautiful teaching, and I hope that we never fail to celebrate that the restored gospel has the answers to life's problems. And if we haven't found our answers, let us search more diligently in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

00:29:22 Speaker_00
I've said this many times. As a counselor, I can testify that the answers to all of life's problems are in the gospel of Jesus Christ. all of them. There is nothing that the gospel will not answer.

00:29:37 Speaker_00
And yes, there will be things to be fully revealed later when Christ comes, and other things will come and be complete, but that doesn't mean we can't find the answers. We can find the answers.

00:29:50 Speaker_00
And while there may be some things that we are told will be more fully explained later, the answers to our needs in this life, the answers to how to relate in healthier ways, how to be healthier ourselves.

00:30:06 Speaker_00
All of those things are found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So as we come to the conclusion of part one, I want to go back to Mormon's sign-off to his son Moroni at the end of chapter 9. Let's go back to that for a minute. It's verse 26 of chapter 9.

00:30:30 Speaker_00
May the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power, until all things shall become subject unto him, be and abide with you forever. Be and abide with you forever.

00:30:47 Speaker_00
And the reason I wanna just take a moment and emphasize that verse is the word abide. My daughter, Caitlin, makes beautiful signs and things. She does things in wood and paper anyway. She's got a lot of gifts.

00:31:03 Speaker_00
And she sent me a picture of a sign that she was making for a friend. And the sign said, abide to the end. And I liked that. I like abide to the end. Now, obviously, we talk a lot about enduring to the end, and that is a correct

00:31:25 Speaker_00
admonition that is often repeated in scripture for us to endure to the end. But this is a nice take on that as well, isn't it? Abide to the end. So I just looked up quickly, abide to the end, to see if anybody had said that online or something.

00:31:44 Speaker_00
And I got this nice little statement that came up saying that the biblical meaning of abide is to dwell. to remain, to be present, to be held and kept. So let's think about that.

00:32:07 Speaker_00
To dwell to the end with God, to remain with God to the end, to be present with God to the end. And this is so tender to me, to be held and kept by God to the end.

00:32:27 Speaker_00
So let us live this admonition as well to abide to the end with the grace of God and Christ that are available to us. We can do that, brothers and sisters. We're in, as our prophet has said, the last of the last days. We need to hang in there.

00:32:48 Speaker_00
We need to abide with God to the end, abide in His grace, believing and trusting that we can choose glory, that we can build Zion, we can become fit for the kingdom, even here on this planet, through the grace of Christ.

00:33:09 Speaker_00
Not because of our own clenching of our fists or struggling to be perfect, but by increasing our faith, our hope, and our charity, which we'll talk about in part two, as ever. Thanks to my husband, Chris Anderson, and Doug Larson of Point Digital.

00:33:27 Speaker_00
Take care.