Come Follow Me with Sam

 As many of you know, the Provo Temple closed for renovations yesterday. When I learned when it would be closed, I realized I was more connected to this temple than any other. I'm going to share 3 reasons why at a high level of why. I'm going to keep most of the details out of this but if you want to know more, reach out to me. Reason 1: The Provo Temple was where I had time to really immerse myself in the endowment. Every week, able to go to the Temple during my time at the MTC, and meditate on its meaning. This was within a month of receiving my endowment, and in the Provo Temple I had time and place to form my understanding of the meaning of this ceremony. Reason 2: I had the opportunity to clean the Provo Temple the most out of any other temple. Cleaning the temple has a lot of symbolism to me, but the overall feeling was that I was part of the temple, not just as a guest but as a part of it. Reason 3: The Provo Temple was where I have have spent some of the most difficult...

 Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! This week is the teachings of Jacob. he re-emphasizes Nephi's prior notes on Isaiah, and then continues to teach and expound. We learn about going into darkness, scattering, and gathering, the anchor of the temple, redemption and Resurrection, and many more interesting gold boulders of the gospel rock slide! Chapter 6 breakdown Jacob repeats the main theme of Nephi's teachings in 1 Nephi 20 and 21. the next chapters launch into Isaiah after this. Likely, Nephi is including this to set the stage for the next two chapters that Jacob will go over. Jacob must have been exceptionally spiritually gifted. he saw the Lord, the destruction of Jerusalem, and Jesus ministry. In verse 13, it says 'for the people of the Lord are the people who wait for him; for they still wit for the coming of the messiah". I believe wait here is like a lady or gentleman in waiting - someone who is waiting to respond to the call when it comes, not someone simply...

 Am I writing a Gnostic text? I definitely titled this blog post like one. Maybe we should turn it over to the scholars and ask how close I got. Or maybe I'll be able to ask the gnostics one day. I'd like to share something I am calling the Simple Gospel of the Way. I'm sure many of you have been taught the gospels, the plan of salvation, or something similar to map your vector relation with God. Here is an approach that I hope helps. 1. We are separated from God. (Hopefully no surprises here.) Everything we do is to get back to Him. We are trying to close the separation. We are trying to become One with Him. This is the most important singular concept I can think of. When we understand this, everything else falls into place.  1.1 This is not simply a separation of physical distance. This is a separation of spiritual distance. We are not like our Father, but every part of our being aches to be One with our Father and our Mother, our heavenly parents.  1.2 because the sepa...

 Welcome!  2 Nephi 3 - Lehi looked forward to our day with eager expectation!!! Lehi knew about the happenings of the dispensation of the fullness of times, which is happening now! He knew the words would go out to everyone. He knew that his words, and the words of the bible would come together as a testimony to the world of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He knew about Joseph Smith. So cool. 2 Nephi 4 - Nephi's soul cry. Whitaker Chambers, in Witness, said that there was once a dedicated communist who would do anything for the communist U.S.S.R. Then 'one night he heard screams.' In a simple moment described by 5 words, his entire universe unraveled and changed. This is soul cry. It wasn't the screams. It was a soul speaking to a soul that made this happen. Well, in chapter 4, we have Nephi's soul cry. The words of his soul speaking directly to ours. He is really hurting. He writes this to let us know how he overcame that hurt. My favorite verse is v32: Ma...

 Welcome to another fantastic week of Come Follow Me Book of Mormon with Sam. We finished 1 Nephi and are now onto 2 Nephi which I like to call 'The Teachings' because they are almost exclusively teachings that Lehi, Nephi, or Jacob, a young brother of Nephi, give to a variety of audiences. This week, I will divide my comments chapter by chapter since the content is so unique. An Introduction into The Teachings In my first post, I broke down the Book of Mormon into my own set of parts that helps me make sense of it. 1 Nephi is all about Nephi, the follower, his family of believers, and his dad, the prophet Lehi. It walks us through how to be converted. This next part, 2 Nephi, is what I call The Teachings, because it is made up of Lehi's last teachings and Nephi's psalm (2 Nephi 1-4), Jacob's teachings to the people of Nephi (2 Nephi 6-10) Nephi's copying of Isaiah (2 Nephi 12-24), and Nephi's commentary on it (2 Nephi 25-33) The gospel is laid plainer here ...

 Welcome to another great week of Come Follow Me Book of Mormon with Sam! This week was 1 Nephi 16-22, finishing out the first book of Nephi. We can divide this week into 2 main parts - first the journey to the promised land, second, Nephi's teachings on Isaiah. The Journey to the Promised Land Valley of Lemuel a Base Camp for Greater Things Up until this point, the family has operated out of the base camp of the valley of Lemuel. That means that all the visions, journeys, and arguments have happened here. In many ways this was a place of preparation for the family, but it was up to the individual participants how enriched they were by the lessons there. For Nephi, he was able to gain a testimony, try himself in following the commandments, and learn to receive revelation like his father had. For Sam, Sariah, Zoram, and Ishmael's family, it was a time to learn trust in Lehi, and that God was guiding him. For Laman and Lemuel, it was a chance to see that God would take care of th...

Welcome! Things happen to Nephi really quickly this week. What is interesting is that he sees a piece of the vision, then he sees a piece of the history of the world, then he goes back to the vision, then back to the world over and over again. It is like a hyper-converged vision with the symbols and the realities manifesting themselves almost synchronously with each other. And he leaves a lot out. Here are some of the highlights from my studies. The Condescension of God The angel focuses on something called the condescension of God. We'll talk about this more when we get to Abinadai. For now it may be good to hone in on why Nephi was taught about specifically that. There is (a little) more discussion of this on my sound recordings. Nephi's vision of present day America Nephi has a whole chapter on what happens after the gentiles come to America. He probably wasn't writing this for his people. He was probably writing about it specifically for us. he talks about God inspiring...

Welcome! Chapter 6  Nephi takes a break in chapter 6 to make some commentary of the record. Particularly, he says that he wishes to persuade everyone to come unto Christ, who is the same God as the God of the old Testament (his fathers) This is the first time he expressly states the purpose of the plates. The Tree of Life Vision and the 2nd Missionary Lesson I mentioned in my previous post that it almost seems as though 1 Nephi 1-7 is handcrafted to help us understand the first missionary lesson. We can draw many comparisons between 1 Nephi 8-15 and the second missionary lesson, but with a key difference. The second missionary lesson teaching points are: 1.  Premortal Life: God's Purpose and Plan for Us 2.  The Creation 3.  Agency and the Fall of Adam and Eve 4.  Our Life on Earth 5.  The Atonement of Jesus Christ 6.  The Spirit World 7.  The Resurrection, Salvation, and Exaltation 8.  Judgement and Kingdoms of Glory This gives a wide, somewh...