Come Follow Me with Sam

  Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We made it to Samuel, one of my favorite prophets! Bet you can't guess why. Samuel is a fascinating character because he is the only Lamanite prophet whose words we have. I wonder if he was influenced or related to the Ammonites. He had a tremendous influence on the Nephites. They watched for the next 5 years for the birth of the Savior thanks to Samuel. The Savior, when he came, asked specifically to make sure the records   and prophecies of Samuel were well kept. He also is a microcosm for all the teachings of the Book of Mormon and in some ways, a preparatory prophet like John the Baptist, preparing the people for the coming and ministry of the Savior.   A microcosm of all the teaching down to the present   Samuel   in many ways summarizes all the admonitions of the Nephite prophets down to the present. This includes Stop chasing riches (Jacob) Build up Zion (Jacob) The Lamanites have better prepare...

      Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! Things were looking so good last time before they all went up in smoke again. In the next few chapters, we get Nephi's (yes, the Knight Radiant) view on things. Yes, he also becomes a Bond Smith. Before it was cool. Give up your war I see chapter 7-12 as a terrifying follow-up to chapters 1-6. In the last blog post I mentioned some interesting factors that will help understand these chapters 1. Nephi and Lehi accomplished what 500 years of prophets and generals could only dream of. They ended the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites. 2. This does not solve their problems though because the war was never about Nephite vs Lamanite in the first place. It was about fighting the darkness in their own hearts. Now that the face of the enemy was gone, the Nephites and Lamanites are left to deal with themselves (and it turns out the Lamanites overall do it better, although they are more split than the homogenous Nephite nation.) 3. T...

Welcome! As a quick check in from my first pos t, we are still in the struggle after rebirth stage. over 40 years ago, the reign of judges was established, the church in its current form was established by Alma, and they are working hard to guard the liberty of the land and the faith of the people. here we can see that the tremors, both good and bad, are getting bigger and badder. I want to say that they are mostly bad, but at the same time, peace is established between the Nephites and the Lamanites during this time!!! Who could have predicted that ?!? TL;dr is that there are tectonic movements happening for good and bad at the same time, which have massive consequences now and later. The curse of kings The Nephite civilization seemed to really struggle with kings. Mosiah was smart enough to get rid of the of position, but the Nephites really struggled with both avoiding kings, and for the judges, avoiding treating them like kings.  Thus we come to the tragic story of Pahoran's so...

 Welcome! The story continues over the next 10 chapters. We are going to talk more about the themes we discussed in the last blog post 1. We need to know how much the Nephites were willing to sacrifice for their freedom. 2. We need to learn how to hold fast in hard times. 3. We can see how the spirit of righteousness of the people is more powerful to determining the outcome of wars than weapons or men.     4. We can get a glimpse of how bad evil can get. In addition, we get to learn about an army that was invincible Intrigue and Dissensions As a precursor to Helaman's epistle, Mormon mentions that the Nephites are also having trouble on the southwest border, forcing the Nephites into essentially a two-front war. At this point the Nephite cause is extremely precarious. The Lamanites have fought all the way to the cities bordering bountiful on one hand and are fighting up the sea shore on the other side as well. Moroni had fortified his western flank earlier to avoid t...

Welcome to come follow me with Sam! Mormon changes from talking mostly of the ministry and teaching to talking politics and war. In some ways that means we miss a some of the back story (although I'm not convinced Mormon himself sees it that way) and that means that we get rapid-fed background information on the largest Nephite/Lamanite conflict recorded up to that date. I'm going to bring out some of big lessons learned, hopefully with an eye to how they manifest themselves. If you want to see like the Savior, be a missionary. Before I go on, I realize that the Temple of Missionary Work has many mansions and some are filled with missionaries that could use the good word a good deal more than the people they are supposed to be serving. I get it. I mean here that if you want to see like the Savior, be a real missionary. May take 10 years+ (or a lifetime) I think, with the wrapping up of the missionary chapters, it is important to recount this fascinating manner of being that the...