bom 7 purity in the book of mormon and old …edgemontscripturestudy.com/000 bom 7 unlocking...

Transcript of John Welch’s Classes on Book of Mormon (Seventh Series.). Jan 2018 to Apr 2018

BoM 7 Purity in the Book of Mormon and Old Testament 180321 (Jonathan Riley)

(Class welcome and announcements)

(Jonathan Riley) I wanted to update you, So a little while back, we talked about the love of God in the Old Testament, and I thought well this would be a fairly short thing. I got you the verses about the Law of Moses. Well, it was not a short thing; I finished it yesterday. There were 5,871 verses about God’s love in the Old Testament. That means that roughly one quarter of the Old Testament is about God’s love. If you were to compile it into a book it would be three quarters the length of the New Testament. So it is a huge, huge number. That will be uploaded on my blog; it will be in the Book of Mormon Central archives, hopefully tomorrow, but yah, it was staggering, so kind of amazing.

We are going to talk today about purity in the Old Testament and let us just start with the first question.

Question 1. How important is purity in the Book of Mormon? In which passages is the principle most fully taught?

I hope you guys were able to look at the readings. It was quite a few verses that I sent out in the email, but how important is purity in the Book of Mormon, and in which passages is the principle most fully taught? Anybody have any passages that really stuck out to them this week about purity in the Book of Mormon?

(Staci) Lots of it in Alma.

(Rita) Yes, it was Alma.

Alma, there was a lot in Alma, there is a lot in Alma and there was some in Jacob, Yes.

(comment) This is not Book of Mormon but my favorite story is about Joseph F. Smith and I guess in a dream going to see his father and his uncle and they said to him, “but you are late.” He says, “But I am clean.”

Well, and a lot of this stuff I think stems from ideas that we get in both the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon so it is good to be able to go through this today. Can somebody read me Moroni 7: 47 through 48? Who wants to read that for me? Moroni, 7:47-48. Rita, can you get that for us?

(Rita) Sure,

Moroni, 7:47-48.

But charity is the pure love of Christ and it endureth forever and whoso is found possessed of it in the last days it shall be well with him. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart that ye may be filled with his love which he hath bestowed on all who are true followers of his Son Jesus Christ, that ye may become the sons of God, that when he shall appear, ye shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is that we may have this hope that we may be purified, even as he is pure. Amen.

BoM 7 Purity in the Book of Mormon and Old Testament File # 1803211


Great, thank you. In the Book of Mormon we sometimes get verses that are similar to things in the New Testament. This is one of those verses, because you have the verse about charity, which you get in Corinthians, and then you have references to being purified even as he is pure that you get in the letters of John. In many cases, when we actually go back and look at the Greek here, the Greek is different from the Standard, New Testament Greek. It is more like the Greek that you get in what we call the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This is one of those cases, almost certainly, where the Book of Mormon has the text that is in the Brass Plates. The New Testament has something that was also in the Brass Plates, but that has been preserved for them, and so it ends up both in the New Testament and in the Book of Mormon. The reason you can tell that this is not in the New Testament Greek is that when you actually look at the words, pure, here, he is referring to the same concept of charity that you get in the Law of Moses, what we are going to be talking about today.

00:04:25 So why do you think he seems to be connecting charity—he talks about charity and then talks about this kind of purity. Why do you think he is making this connection? Are there any thoughts about these verses we just read?

(Staci) I think for me, charity personifies Christ, that is to me most—that is what differentiates God from anything else. All other things go away except charity, that is the thing, so if that is who Christ is, then of course, as pure as he is, that would be—I do not think you could be as pure as he is without having a huge gift of charity.

(comment) I think that charity is the process by which we become pure. It is a purity of heart, and then that extends outward in the way that we interact with others as well as the way that we change our own personal being.

Yeah, I like how you said “that extends outward.” It reminds me of a story about a guy who was a medieval Christian named Meister Eckhart in Germany, and he was trying to love everybody because he knew the scriptures said that you need to love everybody. He was trying to love everybody and it was exhausting. He just could not do it, and one day he was really thinking about this and he got a very strong impression in which God basically says, love me. And when he realized that when he loved God and got—you know, dedicated his whole love to God and got all of God’s love in return, that love sort of radiated out from him, and he was able to love everybody because it was not his love coming his own energies, it was him reflecting God’s love to everyone else. I think when we talk about purity, charity has to be tied into that because it is sort of—we get filled with God’s love and then purified by that and sort of radiate that out to everyone else.

(comment) Going along with that, I think purity is connected to the idea that Christ teaches of having being single-minded. Only having one master, that Lord being Jesus Christ, so along with what you were saying. When you look to him when your heart it is pure of other things that you might be worshipping, this verse talks about the pure love of Christ being bestowed upon us, which means it comes from God when our mind is fixed upon God, our heart is fixed upon God, then we can receive this pure love.

Yes, absolutely. Yes. Thank you very much.

(Rita) A personal experience on this that very much supports the view of it going the other way too. When I first joined the Church and I learned that Heavenly Father loves everybody, I did not believe it. I found it impossible. I would get on the bus and smell all the people on there and



think, he surely cannot. I asked, I prayed, and I fasted, and one day I woke up and I not only loved, but I understood how Heavenly Father could love everybody I encountered that day, including a woman on the bus who had a head full of curlers and a bra over it to disguise the curlers. I have not been able to retain that kind of love in my heart, but it helped me love Heavenly Father because I know he can and does love us.

00:08:32 So when you are that person, you know that God still loves me.

Let us talk a little bit about purity. I think we sent this out wrong in the email but can somebody read— we are going to read a little bit from Leviticus here, Leviticus 11:31 through 33, if I can have somebody read that for me.

(reader)

Leviticus 11:31-33

31. These are unclean to you among all that creep, whosoever doth touch them when they be dead shall be unclean until the even.

32. And upon whatsoever any of them, when they are dead doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin, or sack, whatsoever vessel it be, wherein any work is done, it must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed.

33. And every earthen vessel, wherein to any of them falleth, whatsoever is in it shall be unclean; and ye shall break it.

(Jonathan) I will have a second for a funny story here. When they started doing excavations of the area outside what used to be the temple in Jerusalem, kind of down the hill from the temple, they started finding all these cups that were probably used by priests, but they were made out of stone. Why are all the priests drinking out of stone cups? And then they realized if they made them out of clay and they became unclean, they would have to break them, and the priests could not fudge on the purity laws. They would be breaking cups and pots all the time, and so they would make it out of stone because technically, that was the way they could get around all the prohibitions here. They could clean it and not have to break all their pots all the time, right?

00:10:42 But with this, there is an interesting connection here, in Alma 60:23.

I think it said Alma 60:2 in the email! If you have any interest in allegorical interpretations of Alma 60:2 relating to purity, I want to hear them.

Can somebody give me Alma 60:23? I think this is on the sheet. No, it is not.

(Staci)

Alma 60:23.

Do ye suppose that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also.

It is interesting that he talks about, okay, you have to cleanse the inward vessel first and then the outer vessel will be clean. There is actually a huge argument in ancient Judaism about this exact



thing. There are letters in the Dead Sea Scrolls where people were writing back and forth fighting about pot purity actually, and all these things about if I pour something clean into an unclean pot does the impurity go upstream and infect the thing I was pouring from—all these arguments, right?

What is interesting is that here that Moroni is talking, and he seems to be depicting this as something everybody knows. Well everybody knows that if the inside of a vessel is clean and they could count this clean, right? He actually says that God said this, so it is interesting to see various sort of levels of interpretation here.

I could not teach Jack’s class today without quoting Jack on this. It is going to bring up his analysis of this.

Captain Moroni’s writings to Pahoran in Alma 60:23 that we just read, reflect some awareness of laws regarding vessel purity, as we just read in Leviticus. He was apparently aware of some law which he attributed to God that says that the correct way to purify a pot was to first cleanse the inside, the inward vessel, as long as he was using it as an analogy, and then cleanse the outside, the outer vessel.

He said for a pot to be pure, both the inside and outside must be cleansed. I think this reading is the correct understanding of (unclear). This cleansing order makes practical sense because one must hold the outside to cleanse the inside and if you cleanse the outside first, you touch or risk transferring the inner impurity to the cleansed outside, when you then cleanse the inside. But where did this idea come from? And actually, even today there are places in Jerusalem where you—when you wash your hands ritually, you have to have a cup where you hold one handle of the cup to wash one hand and then you take your other hand and hold the other handle to wash the other hand so then your hands will actually be clean.

(comment) I think that too many people are thinking about pots and cups and dishes. We, and I am not talking about us here, but we are the vessels of the Lord. The Mikvah—and I do not know how many people know what that is, but the ritual of the Mikvah can only be done when a person has cleansed the inside and then they go through the ritual of the Mikvah to cleanse the outside. And interesting enough, I had the opportunity to work in the Salt Lake Temple on construction and some old-timer—and I did not see this, they just told me about it—some old-timer had come in after – well sometime shortly before we tore the baptistery apart, and he said, where are the tubs? And everybody kind of looked at him strange. And apparently, when the Salt Lake Temple was first built, they had these large, I assume, wooden tubs with a plank across them, and those who had been interviewed by their bishop and stake president and considered clean inside, then went to the temple where a priesthood bearer would clean them outside by anointing them with water and scrubbing them down, and that is where, I think, the early people with a desire to obey the commandments started talking about you have to clean the inside of a pot before you clean the outside, what it was really talking about was clean your heart and mind and then worry about cleaning your body, get baptized.

00:15:49 Yes, in the place called Ein Gedi outside Jerusalem, kind of near the Dead Sea, they found this library of a lady, I think her name was Rebecca, and she had all these books and things but there was this fragment that they found written on papyrus that basically said that exact thing, that if people think that they are going to do these ritual washings and that is all they



need to do, that is a problem. They need to repent and then the ritual washing is worth something, right? And I think that, you know, that is really how it is for us.

(comment) Who was Christ talking to when he said, in the New Testament, it is not what goes into the body, it is what comes out.

Yes. In Christ’s quotation in the New Testament, it is not that which goes into them at the mouth that defines them, but what comes out of the mouth, right? And he was talking there to Jews who were really, really concerned about that because they said, Well, you and your disciples eat without washed hands, what is the deal with that? And that is where that comment comes from.

Well Jack has a more interesting thing sort of related here, I am going to keep reading it as he kind of makes this point here. Interesting, Jewish law was concerned about pot purity as far back as Leviticus 11 that we just read; there were laws explaining what had to happen if a dead mouse or a lizard or snail or whatever fell into the pot. If a dead animal fell into a container that was made of wood, skin or cloth, it could be immersed completely in water and become pure at sundown, but if it was made out of clay it had to be broken. That is why we get stone cups for the priests. The rabbis understood the word into in this law as giving rise to the difference in the purity regulations between the impurity of the outside and the inside of the vessel.

It is unclear why clay pots were treated differently from the other containers and why the inside of any container was treated different from their outside but it seems unclear how far back in time the Rabbinic understanding of Leviticus 11 was in operation, but Alma 60:23 may be reflecting this regulation concerning the law of container purity. In particular, Moroni seems to understand that if dead mice or lizards fall on the outside of the vessel, allegorically saying that problems falling on his domain out in the field, that does not present a purity problem. But if the vessel is contaminated inside, then it must be totally cleansed both inside and out by a full immersion which would include the purging of even the great head of our government.

00:18:17 Of course the Israelites understood that if the army were not totally pure, God cannot march at the head of its soldiers, but here Moroni is saying that in order for God to give the victory, the entire people must be pure, and if they are not, then it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we first cleanse our inward vessels. Perhaps Moroni was also thinking of the inward vessel as a temple vessel inside the temple, and the outer vessel is vessels used as ordinary, household outside the temple. Isaiah 52:11 which the Nephites knew and used states: touch no unclean thing – go ye out of the midst of her, be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.

Here again we have the idea of leaving the outer world and coming into the inner courts of the temple where the priests handled the sacred vessels of the Lord. This prophetic instruction would have justified Moroni even further in demanding that the inward vessel, as a whole, not just the inner surface of a vessel, should be cleansed and purified, thus symbolizing even more completely the need for reform on the part of the government, and priestly authorities in the central temple city of Zarahemla. So, like we were talking about, he is using this as an analogy that the idea is that for us. We need to be clean on the inside before anything we do on the outside really is going to count.

Then let us talk about this here. Somebody read Leviticus 10:10.

(Staci) It is on your sheet.



It is on the back of the sheet.

Leviticus 10:10 under the head of holiness and purity.

(reader) And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy and unholy, and between unclean and clean.

So here they seem to be equating holiness with being clean. Somebody read Alma 5:57. We get the same thing. It is on the back of the sheet right underneath.

Alma 5:57

(reader) And now I say unto you, all you that are desirous to follow the voice of the good shepherd, come ye out from the wicked and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things; and behold their names shall be blotted out, that the names of the wicked shall not be numbered among the names of the righteous, that the word of God may be fulfilled, which saith, the names of the wicked shall not be mingled with the names of my people.

00:21:07 Thank you. So, you might say, what does that have to do with being holy; it says separate there? But in Ezekiel the word for the holy place, the word we expect to be used for the holy place—we are talking about the temple is actually called the separate place. And when you go back and look at the way the concept of holiness appears in the Old Testament and indeed in parts of the Book of Mormon—I think this is one of those times—holiness and separateness are sort of equated, and so here, be ye holy does often appear in the Law of Moses, so go ye out from the wicked and be ye holy, or be ye separate – separate from the wicked and touch not their unclean things.

So we see this concept of holiness being separation from that which is unclean, that which is wicked and consecration to that which is clean. So the old sign on the temple Holiness to the Lord—the house of the Lord—you see it on the temple—that was what Aaron wore on his head. Actually, he wore a little metal plate on his head that said, Holiness to the Lord, which is to say consecrated to the Lord, given over completely to the Lord. So separate from that which is unholy here, that which is unclean, and consecrated to the Lord.

(comment) Alma obviously, when he is put in the head of the church did not know what to do with the people who had fallen away within the church, so is this part of that where he is separating to maintain the righteousness of the church – take the bad out and separate it from them?

This is Alma 5 so this is his sermon to some of these people, but I think that that is definitely still on his mind, right? I think that…

(comment) He is thinking about Alma’s father…

Yes, it was Alma’s father that you are referring to.

(comment) I got it that this is the first time this process ever came about, where they disfellowshipped, excommunicated members of the church.



Yes, that is back earlier with—earlier on, that is the first time it is happening and that is why he has to pray about it and that is why it has such an impact on the church and why it is still being talked about here in chapter 5.

(comment) And then it occurs later too.

Yes, it happens later as well, so this is something that runs through and I think that they are using some of the ideas from Leviticus to help contextualize it.

(comment) I struggle with this concept at times, because separating myself from the unholy, that puts me in a judgmental position. I know that Christ was among the sinners and those that—the humble and the meek were some of those that he taught and I have opportunities—there are times when people say, we as LDS people are separating ourselves and not being inclusive of those people that disagree with us and that is—I struggle with that at times and I think there is part of that scripture right there that says, ye that are desirous to follow the Lord, and I think that becomes for me the key; listening to the Spirit, what would the Savior do? He was with the sinners, he did teach to the sinners and yet when it was time, we have to step away. So it becomes very important—most important for me to listen to the Spirit as I consider separation.

00:24:54 And I think to a great extent it is separating ourselves from that which is unholy within ourselves.

(comment) I have felt—the Spirit has borne to me that excommunication is a type of chastening from the Lord, and during that time that they are not held accountable for the covenants that they took on before, then they are able to repent and start again. It is a true love that he gives to those that are being chastened in that way, and that is the way we should look at it.

Oh yes, absolutely, absolutely. Well, let us go there, actually, Moroni 10: 32 to 33. Could somebody read this for us? It’s on the back here, Moroni 10:32 to 33, somebody read that for me?

Moroni 10: 32-33

(reader) 32. Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

33. And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.

Thank you. Yes, this, I think, speaking about separation, I think this may be the most important element of separation for holiness: Deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love God with all your might, mind, and strength. This way, you are separating yourself from that which is unholy and that which is impure, denying yourself of all ungodliness and love God with all your might, mind, and strength. So, I think that—we have to live in the world and that is a good thing, Jesus was in the world, and that was a good thing. He was surrounded by people that lived all kinds of



different lifestyles, and that is not a bad thing. It is within ourselves, I think, that we need to separate ourselves from all ungodliness and love God with all our might, mind, and strength.

00:27:39 It keeps saying perfected and perfect in Christ. In the Law of Moses there were animals that had to be perfect. How can an animal be perfect? It is clearly not talking about perfect in the way that we are thinking of it. When you look at the word though, the word means sort of complete. In the case of animals, it is often a completely developed animal. It has to be fully grown, but the idea that the animals that have to be sacrificed need to be this, they need to be perfect, I think, is very interesting. When you look, they take the animals that are perfect and then they make them holy. They make them holy by consecrating them to the Lord through sacrifice, and so I think this connection between being perfect and being holy comes together very well.

When we talk about being perfect in Christ and talking about being perfect, this can be very, very daunting. In the New Testament and in 3rd Nephi, there are a few meanings of this. One of them is that you go on to perfection, going on actually to the new knowledge that you have. Jesus kind of gives you this review, and then he says, be perfect and then the rest of his speech is how to be perfect at this new knowledge. That is actually what this term implies in the Greek, but, another implication is to be completely committed to Christ, and that is not in the sense of never doing anything wrong; it is embracing Christ and being committed to Christ. When we are committed, it does not mean we do not make mistakes, but we commit ourselves to Christ and we are loyal to him. In that way we are perfect in that, but not in the sense that we never make a mistake, but in that we are loyal to Christ. Then Christ is able to take us and mold us into who he wants us to be.

(comment) Well, because that has been a question. In scriptures somewhere, it says that Noah was perfect in his day, and there have been other people about which it says that they were perfect. And people keep hammering me over the head and saying, you cannot be perfect. At least in this life.

00:30:15 Yes, so let us start in at that. This is the Hebrew word to tamim. It appears in the Hebrew Bible more than a hundred times and it can be rendered as without spot, without blemish or perfect, and so Noah is tamim, perfect in his generation. Abraham is commanded to be perfect, tamim. Joseph is tamim, is perfect. Now the Abraham example maybe one of the best examples because he is—Abraham is being taken out from serving all these other gods, and then says Abraham you need to be perfect, in other words, forget these other gods and be completely loyal to me.

In ancient Middle Eastern treaties that is actually how the word is used, as be completely loyal to me, your new king and your overlord.

(comment) I am thinking in the scriptures it says walk with me.

Yes, walk with me, yah. Yes, walk with me and be perfect, yes right, and so walking with the Lord and not with these other deities, right? I think that is one of the keys—key parts of this is that element of complete dedication. Once again, it just means to be loyal.

So let us talk about the relationship here between some of these concepts.

(comment) I think Moroni here, there is an implication here that we have not really mentioned. We can only become perfect in Christ. Without Christ, we cannot become perfect. And his



perfection is enough for us, his grace is enough for us, but without his grace, we are nothing and so trying to become perfect on our own, trying to forgive people on our own, trying to overcome passions or pornography or whatever we might have to overcome without turning to Christ, that is an impossible situation. It is certainly implied in Moroni’s statement perfect in Christ.

Oh absolutely. There is no way for us to do this by ourselves, and that is a big part of King Benjamin’s speech, right? That there is no way for us to do this by ourselves, and that can seem almost depressing at times unless you go, well wait a second, I cannot do this by myself and that is okay. It is really okay. Because God does not expect me to do it by myself. He is going to help me. That is what grace is about. I think sometimes we think, well it is by grace we are saved after all we can do. That means that we have to do everything by ourselves and then we are saved by grace. Well, no, God helps us to do all that we can do and then when that inevitably is not quite good enough, as it talks about in King Benjamin’s speech, well, that is alright.

(comment) I am sorry, I have a somewhat mundane similarity. We were driving down from Salt Lake, I am using a navigation system and it keeps on trying to get me to get off of I-15 and get on different roads. It is the first time it has done that to me and I had no idea why. And I figured I knew better, so I stayed on I-15. Big traffic jam; we looked into the controls for the navigation and I had set it for the fastest way possible, so my navigation knew something that did not. I finally turned myself over to my navigation system and when it said turn right I blindly obeyed it. I turned right. It said turn left; I turned left. My travel companion kept on saying, it is just putting you back on I-15. We could not see what was happening up above but my navigation system could. And I started thinking, this is a lot like becoming pure with the Lord, when you depend upon him blindly and when we do that, we become pure in Christ and when we do that, then Christ can direct our lives and we are called pure. He is not asking us to abandon all of the people around us who are sinners, he is asking us to be obedient to him and let our light shine that we might help them, not partake of what they are doing. Thanks.

Did we have somebody else over here?

(comment) I am sorry, mine is on a completely different note. I love that GPS story but in today’s class at 10:00 at the Stake Center that the Relief Society does, we got this quote around perfection from Sister Sheri Dew in her book Worth the Wrestle.

Ultimately, perfection will be a gift from our Father. So fixating on perfection during mortality can become an immobilizing distraction. Progress, however, is another thing entirely. We can make progress in countless ways, large and small every day of our lives if we choose to.

00:36:01 (comment) In Moroni 10:32-33. There is the phrase right at the end of verse 32 that I have always kind of wondered why it is stuck in here. It is the one: If by the grace of God you are perfect in Christ, and here is the phrase, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. Why would one want to even think of that, or do it. Do you have any insight as to why that is there.

Yes, the key there is grace. It is by the grace of God you are perfect in Christ. Grace here in the Book of Mormon probably comes from the Hebrew word hesed. We have talked about this, I think, before, but the word connotes God’s love but also his kind of cosmic power. It is through hesed that God’s made the world in parts of the Old Testament, and so if by the grace of God you are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God because it is God’s power that has made you perfect in Christ, right? That has really reconciled you to God and when that



happens, and you feel it happening, it is such a potent experience to feel God’s power in that way that you just cannot, could not, deny anymore, even if you wanted to, right? Because it is such a palpable experience. Thank you.

(Rita) I just want to talk about the microphone a little bit. There is a T-shirt that says I am not yelling, I am a British woman, I talk that way. It does not matter how loud we can talk in the class for us all to hear, what kind of matters is that we can be heard by this little tiny box here so that we can be transcribed. So I would appreciate it if you would get the microphone and hold it up so that you can be heard. And we know most of us can be loud enough for the whole class.

Yes, it is not really about volume, it is about the quality of –

(Rita) The quality of the recording.

00:38:24 Let us talk a little bit about being clean. The Nephites talk a lot about this. So the idea is that well, you are clean unless you do something that makes you unclean, that should be pretty easy, then you stay clean, right? Well no. This great quote from Maimonides, the Jewish apologist whom I have already mentioned.

There are so many kinds of uncleanness that at any time only a few people are clean. But even if a person does not touch a beast that dies of its own accord, he can scarcely avoid touching one of the eight kinds of creeping animals, the dead bodies of which we find at all times in houses, food, and drink and upon which we frequently tread wherever we walk, and if he avoids touching these, he make touch a woman in her separation or a male or a female who have a running issue, or a leper, or their bed. Escaping these, he may become unclean by cohabitation with his wife or by pollution, and even when he has cleansed himself from any of these kinds of uncleanness, he cannot enter the sanctuary until the next day, but he is again during the night subject to becoming unclean and may rise in the morning in the same condition as the day before.

So with this, I think we have to remember that it is a little bit more difficult than you might think. Even if a person avoids all that, he has to immerse himself in water in a font called a Mikvah and we were talking about this before, something like a baptismal font to be considered clean enough to enter the temple. We actually have archaeological evidence of these – they look just like our baptismal fonts actually—outside the temple in Jerusalem—where people have to immerse themselves in them before they went to the temple.

(comment) How do we take care of our loved ones when they die without touching them?

Oh, we are going to get to that. It is great, it is great! The Book of Mormon has great stuff on this.

(comment) With my brother-in-law, my wife knew that he had died and she sent me in to check, and I discovered him and she said, is he dead? So I touched him and became unclean.

Well, this is one of the best and most interesting things here. In the Law of Moses there is a Jewish ceremony to offer sacrifice of a red heifer. It is in Numbers 19. You take a completely red heifer—it is completely red without blemish—it is sacrificed without the camp, but the entire animal was burned along with cedar, scarlet cloth, and hyssop, which is a little plant that grows in the Middle East. You mix the ash with water and then that ashy water is used for purification for people that had become unclean through touching a dead human body. The people that were



unclean were supposed to purify themselves with this water on the third day and then they are clean on seventh day.

00:41:42 What does this have to do with anything, right? In the Book of Mormon in Alma 30, it says the people need to bury their dead after a big war, so they are touching the dead. And then they go through a period of mourning, fasting and prayer. Then the text makes a seemingly unconnected comment that the people were keeping the Law of Moses until it was fulfilled, so what is going on? Well, they are saying yes, we were keeping the Law of Moses which means we were doing the sacrifice of the red heifer and when you think about the sacrifice of the red heifer for a second, it is probably one of the most Christ-centered things in the Law of Moses. You have a completely red animal, think about that for a second, Jesus is bleeding from every pore it says in both the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon, and when Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane he’s completely red, right? Like this animal. When the animal is sacrificed, he is burned with scarlet cloth; they put a scarlet robe on Jesus when they were mocking him. It is supposed to be burned with cedar wood; it is very, very likely that Jesus was crucified on a cedar cross. Then they put hyssop in it, well, and when Jesus was on the cross they lifted up something for him to drink with on a rod of hyssop, and so there’s all these connections to Christ here. Just get this animal, red heifer, is supposed to be killed outside the camp, and Christ it mentions when he was killed it was sort of outside the camp, he was killed outside the city walls—it is inside the city now but at that time it was outside the city walls. And so this— all these connections here to keep the Law of Moses and to the sacrificing of the red heifer will be so very, very Christian. Then right after this, Korihor is like, oh, Jesus is not a thing, that is never going to happen and so there is this contrast between probably one of the most Christian thing in the entire Law of Moses compared to —and then Korihor’s statement just seems kind of ridiculous, but oh yes, there is never going to be a Christ, right?

00:44:12 But here is one of the great ironies of this whole thing. It is the ashes of a burned cow that cleanses you. It is itself a dead animal, and yet it is what cleanses you, and that is the grand irony that the Book of Mormon authors pick up on. In Leviticus it says that it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. And while there are lots of times in the Law of Moses in which it is blood that seems to be the thing that makes you unclean, and yet it is the blood that makes the atonement for the soul. For us, obviously, it is the blood of Christ that makes us clean. Blood! One of these things that would definitely be seen as unclean, especially blood from human sacrifice, and Christ is the ultimate human sacrifice. That is about as unclean as it gets but it is brought across consecrating. Interesting that one—possibly one of the earliest meanings for the word atonement is to cover with pitch, the black, kind of a dark, black substance. Like I said before, when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, if he is bleeding from every pore, he is going to be wearing red when he comes out of the Garden no matter what he was wearing when he went in. He does not get a chance to change his clothes; they sweep him away and they take him from place to place during the night, and after a couple of hours his clothes look like pitch and so there is this very visceral reminder of what Jesus is doing and what he is just about to do. I think there is something beautiful in this irony of this sort of utterly unclean thing—blood—being the thing that ultimately makes us clean.

In Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, there are two goats, and one of the goats is sacrificed normally, but the other goat, the sins and the uncleanness of everybody is transferred onto the goat and then the goat is sent off into the wilderness. The goat is called the scapegoat. I think



that idea is really beautiful in relation to Christ, that all the sins, everything bad in the world, is put on Christ and then Christ had to go off and then be alone. Elder Holland was talking about that on the cross, there was a period where Christ was completely alone, so he would even know what it was like to be alone. The foreshadowing of that in the Day of Atonement is, I think, a truly beautiful thing. There is some suggestion in some other ancient Near Eastern texts that do something like the Day of Atonement, I think it is Hurrian, and also maybe some Hittite texts where the goat is sent off into the wilderness, but in the wilderness there is a confrontation that the goat has with these evil things that dwell in the wilderness and the idea of Christ doing battle for us, bearing our sins and doing battle for us I think is a beautiful thing.

00:47:57 So let us talk now a little bit about having blood on one’s garments. Can somebody read Jacob 1:19 for me? Anybody have that?

Jacob 1:19

(Staci) And we did magnify our office unto the Lord, taking upon us the responsibility, answering the sins of the people upon our own heads if we did not teach them the word of God with all diligence; wherefore, by laboring with our might their blood might not come upon our garments; otherwise their blood would come upon our garments, and we would not be found spotless at the last day.

And you get that it is actually similar to—Alma 13:12 too goes with this.

Alma 13:12

(Rita) Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many, who were made pure and entered into the rest of the Lord their God.

Notice that were made pure then entered into the rest of the Lord, the idea of garments being made white. How often do we get this in the Book of Mormon—garments being washed white through the blood of the lamb? It actually never literally happens in real life. They kill a lamb their garments are red, but the blood of the Lamb, capital L, is what makes our garments bright. There is all this stuff in the Book of Mormon about—we get this idea of shaking—I shake my garments before you, to know that my garments are not spotted with your blood. Well how does that happen? That happens through the atonement. Throughout the Book of Mormon we get this idea of purity and ritual cleanliness, but Christ is the one, and the only one, that makes that happen.

00:50:05 So let us read a little bit now of King Benjamin’s speech. Somebody start me on Mosiah 3 verse 1 there. No, let us start on 5.

Mosiah 3:5

(reader) For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, and the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases.



Thank you, and can we get 6 through 7 now.

Mosiah 3:6-7

(reader) And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men. And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.

Thank you. Think about this for a second through the lines of ritual purity. We have heard this story so much that we do not think about it in a visceral way, but think about these moments when Jesus showed up somewhere and is thronged by all kinds of people, many of these people are possessed, you have all of them near, and it says that here, you have people with all kinds of diseases, and they are all just thronging him, wherever he goes, right? Jesus is probably never ritually clean according to the Law of Moses. He is being thronged by these people all the time. And, of course, there is the famous scene when he is walking down the street and the lady who has a running issue, so she is perpetually unclean, reaches out and touches Jesus and becomes clean and makes him unclean in the process.

(comment) She touched his garment.

She touched his garment, right? And so in the context of that, this is a very interesting thing, but it is Christ that makes everyone actually clean, and so despite his constantly experiencing this, it does not really end up mattering for him but the idea of him always taking on the uncleanness of everyone else like the Day of Atonement—the goat on the Day of Atonement—I think there is a lot to be said for that.

00:53:23 As we move along here it talks a little bit about…I can’t find it, I had it pulled up before…he talks about how Christ’s death atones for those who have ignorantly sinned. Mosiah 3:11 yes, can somebody read that verse for me.

Mosiah 3:11

(reader) For behold, and also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned.

Yes, thank you. This idea of ignorantly sinning is interesting. Can somebody read me Numbers 15: 27 through 29?

Numbers 15: 27-31

(reader) 27. And if any soul sin through ignorance, then he shall bring a she goat of the first year for a sin offering.

28. And the priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the Lord, to make an atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him.

29. Ye shall have one law for him that sinneth through ignorance, both for him that is born among the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth among them.



30. But the soul that doeth ought presumptuously, whether he be born in the land, or a stranger, the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from among the people,

31. Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him.

I like that King Benjamin made the connection here between Numbers and what Christ would eventually do. The idea of ignorantly sinning and how often is that us. How often do we make mistakes that maybe we do not even really think about, but Christ is the one that can make that all right for us. Yes?

(comment) There is also found in Hebrews is a discussion of the person who sins knowingly.

Yes.

(comment) In fact it uses the word or the phrase that they are crucifying Christ unto themselves.

Right, and so that is why in the second half of this Numbers, you get some pretty strong language, and I think we all kind of know when we do that, but how often do we kind of feel the weight of the small mistakes that we make, and we know we are making, and we do not necessarily do anything. Yes, Br. Dansie.

(comment) Under the Mosaic Law, it was totally possible for somebody to sin in ignorance. But the Mosaic Law has been done away with; we do not sin in ignorance. There is no such thing as by accidently sinning. I have sinned enough that I know my sins are deliberate, and I dare to challenge anybody, if they are going to say well, I sinned accidentally when I watched that X-rated film when I…You know, those are all deliberate sins. We cannot get away with that anymore. The Lord said he came to do away with the Law of Moses and now we are responsible if we accidentally do something, then we go to the Lord and we ask him to forgive us.

00:57:41 Yes, I think that you have raised a—and this is sort of a nomenclature issue. Very often I think, we do things wrong and we do not even really notice it, and these are often sort of sins of omission, right? And but those are a real problem. But God can take care of those. Yes?

(comment) I totally disagree. The higher law is to love everybody, and there are times we offend people and have no idea that we offended them.

Right. And that is exactly what I am talking about, this idea that we are going to do things wrong. We are definitely going to do things wrong and sometimes we, like you said, we do not always identify those things; we do not always even know and…

(Rita) We can ask to identify those sins. We can get that help.

We can, yes. We can and we should, and that is big part of what the sacrament is about, is us being able to go every week and take the sacrament, and say, I know that I do things I should not have done. Things I did not even really notice this week, I have definitely committed sins of omission as it were, help me to identify sins and I am going to do better and not get so weighed down by that. Yes..

(comment) And we are not to take offense, and the scriptures that say if we have a contention with our brother, we are to go take care of that before God will forgive us of our—whatever we might have done. It is a joint thing, you know, we might have offended them but—and not



realized because we do not know their upbringing, we do not want the same thing, or whatever it might have been. If they were offended by us, then it is just as much their responsibility to come back to us and say, I was offended and I want to forgive you. You know and hopefully they will not do it again because then obviously, you know what offends them.

Right, right.

(comment) And because if we judge and do not forgive, at that point we cannot be either for those things that we do to others that we are not realizing that we are doing.

Yes. As we wrap up here, I think—was that you Staci sending me an email about the relationship between the Day of Atonement and the sacrament?

(Staci) Yes.

Would you actually just comment on that briefly.

(Staci) Sure. I—usually when I read the Old Testament, temple things come to mind that reminds me of the temple, but when I was studying this, the sacrament kept coming up in my mind and there are a lot of reasons for that, the fact that a priest is officiating the sacrament; it happens at an altar; instead of white garments, there’s a white cloth on the sacrament table; and there are many, many things that are like that. The idea of the emblems being there, the goats and the ram, and all these things represent the Savior. I had not really thought of the sacrament in terms of the sacrifice element of that, and almost the literal bringing our sins to that altar and letting the Lord take those from us. If we meet there with a contrite spirit and a broken heart, then there is an absolution that happens there that I had not really thought of before. One of those scriptures that you assigned us talks about being cleansed, that the sacrament is a cleansing thing, and I sort of understand that now in a way I did not before, and the fact that the sacrament itself kind of makes the space that it happens in holy. That is another whole aspect of that. It talks about making atonement for the holy place, making atonement for the altar, making atonement for the tabernacle congregation. I feel that way about the temple, I do not know if you do, and I know in a lot of places, the chapel is also the cultural hall, in many of our wards, but when the sacrament is happening in the area it is a different space; it is a holy place again. There are lots of things about this that will improve the way I think about the sacramental experience.

The ultimate—part of the ultimate essence of the sacrament is that it is the symbolic version of the old sacred meal. In the Old Testament, you would sit down and have a sacred meal with the deity. Everybody would do this. The priests would eat some of it but in the earliest iterations of this, the people have some of this too. Everybody sits down and has a meal with the god. In the Epic of Gilgamesh and other ancient Near Eastern texts, it is at this time when you are sitting down and having the meal with the god that the seemingly unbridgeable gap between you and the deity disappears, when you sit down to the table and have a meal with the god. For us I think about the sacrament and it is through the blood of Christ as your thinking about the sacrament, that we are able to become pure and to be able to sit down at the table with the deity and share a meal.

So when you partake of the sacrament, think about the Day of Atonement. Think about ritual purity. Think about sitting down and sharing a meal with God. Think about the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Think about Christ as a scapegoat, taking upon…taking our sins upon him and making us clean. In one tradition the scapegoat would have a red thread tied to his horns when he



is sent out into the desert, so you could tell which animal was the scapegoat. Sometimes when people would see the animal again, the thread will be white, and in Isaiah—Though your sins be as scarlet, they can be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they can be as wool, like that wool string on the head of the goat on the Day of Atonement.

And I would just like to testify that as distant as we might feel from God sometimes, Christ is the one that makes us pure. It is, indeed, the blood that makes atonement for the soul, and I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Transcriptionist Carol H. JonesEdited by Rita L.Spencer


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