Come Follow Me with Sam Book of Mormon Mosiah 18-24 - deliverance

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We get to see the crazy fallout that comes after Abinadai (spoiler alert: DO NOT kill a prophet of God), and the miracles that come about as various people are delivered. Go power of deliverance!

What is Zion!?

We get a little glimpse of Zion with Alma and his people. We can use this to learn more.

Mosiah 18 is a great place to understand what it really means to be baptized, what it really means to be a member of the church, and what it really means to follow the law of consecration. check this out.

Baptism

v7 - before baptism, he preached repentance, redemption, and faith on the Lord

v8 - come into the fold and be called his people. bear one another's burden. This is a community and a people set apart, not just a one time thing, not purely a singular experience.

v9 - mourn with those that morn, comfort those in need of comfort, stand as witnesses of God.

v10 - be baptized in the name of the lord as a witness before him

    that you may

        serve him

        keep his commandments

    That he may

        pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you

That's the ticket right there. You need the spirit to do what you need to do. Baptism is the way to get that.

Member of the Church of Christ

v16/17 be baptized

v17 be called the Church of Christ

v18 have authority from God and learn teachings from people with authority from God

v20 preach repentance and faith on the lord through prophets

v21 have no contention and hearts knit

v23/25 keep the sabbath, give thanks every day

v24/26 priests to labor with own hands (no doubt to avoid the pitfalls of the court of King Noah)

Consecration

v21 no contention with one another, look forward with one eye, have one faith, one baptism, hearts knit together in unity and love one towards another

v27 impart of their substance, according to that which they had

v28 impart of their substance of their own free will and good desires toward God toward every needy and naked soul

v29 impart both temporally and spiritually

A word on the Law of Consecration

Scripture gurus will not miss the similarities between Mosiah 18:21 and Moses 7:18 (have fun with that one, numerologists ;)

18 And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.

Breaking this down, see how these mentioned qualities lead one to the other. The Lord called his people Zion because they were of one heart and one mind and dwelt in righteousness. Because of this, there was no poor among them.

Today, we struggle to understand what this oneness could possibly be about. I believe first that this is something you can only understand if you are following Christ. Its one of those 'do my will, know the doctrine' (John 7:17) type things. Second, I believe this is much closer to a buddhist 'oneness with the tao/enlightenment/being/etc.' than everyone agreeing with each other.

v21 says no contention which makes many people thing that there were simply no fights. Unfortunately, societies that don't have any 'conflict' are really just burying their faults and feelings buried alive never die. If you look at the Noah Webster 1828 dictionary entry (1828 was the first american dictionary and can tell us better what God meant with the word He was giving to Joseph) we can see that it is most associated with strife, angry words, and violent effort. Most times in the Book of Mormon violent effort is part of contention. Today the word contention is used more often to represent an argument. The big take-away here is don't stir to anger or to vain winnings with words or blows. you will need to argue through things but do it with helping the other person in mind.

I will be visiting the law of consecration more when we get to 4th Nephi 1, after Christ's visitation to the Americas.

Deliverance compared between Limhi and Alma

    Both Alma and Limhi were held captive, worked through affliction, and were delivered. We can compare them to see better.

Limhi's people were the ones who did not follow Alma. They were first driven and killed by the Lamanites, then the Lamanites had 'compassion' enough to enslave them. They won one battle but were smitten and afflicted bad enough that they tried to go to war again. 

They were crushed. 

They went to war a second time. 

They were crushed. 

They went to war a third time. 

They were crushed.

It got to the point where Limhi had command his people to take care of all the widows in the land. It is hard to overstate what happened to these people. By the time Ammon found them, they thought there was no way out. Luckily, they were able to make the guards drunk and get out, once they knew they could come back to Zarahemla.

Alma and his people had just set up their new city of Helam and were helping each other when the lamanite armies came and took over the land. Worse, Amulon, who hated Alma, was the leader. He enslaved them and ordered anyone who prayed should be put to death and the people cried because of their afflictions.

It seems completely unfair at this point that they should have to go through this. They are the good guys, right? They didn't put the prophet to death and they were forced to flee king Noah right?

I don't have the explanation for this but this is what God said.

and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.

Their burdens became light, and some time thereafter, God led them out.

I'm going to revisit this topic next post with Alma the younger. In the mean time, ponder to yourself, who would you rather be with? Limhi or Alma?