Come Follow Me with Sam

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We get a really unique experience where Nephi walks through Isaiah and teaches us the most important lessons! Check out some of those below. Nephi 'lived' Isaiah's prophecies I have commented before that Nephi and Isaiah saw many of the same things. Nephi saw them happen to his own generations and his own children, all the way to their redemption in the last days. in verse 7 he gives a small glimpse into his anguish. it is no small surprise that Nephi would want to talk about Isaiah so much. He knows continually that what Isaiah is talking about is going to happen to his own people, and so he does his best to warn them and us. He also has a deep understanding of justice. He speaks of the gulf in lehi's dream, of the flame that ascendant forever and ever, and at the end of vs 7, he comments 'Thy (God's) ways are just'. He also says that 'the Son of Righteousness shall appear unto htem; and he shall heal them....

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam, the Isaiah chapters! We are going to tackle them ALL! Or at least we'll talk about each one in this reading. Remember Isaiah is telling a story but not necessarily a chronological one. It is more a story about fall and redemption of the soul. Consider this your cheat sheet for the Isaiah chapters. Let's do this! The Isaiah chapters 2 Nephi 12 - Isaiah 2 What we have seen before is a pattern of a fall or loss, then redemption. Here, we have the opposite. God talks about the redeemed of zion and then says that the people have turned away from walking in the light of the lord, in the house of Jacob. Isaiah says that the wicked will wish to hide in the clefts of the rocks. In French, the last verse is - Cease from confidence in man, in the nostrils of which, there is only breathe, for of what value is it? 2 Nephi 13 - Isaiah 3 continuing the falling away narrative, Isaiah explains why they fell away. They gave up the staff (likely of...

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 ...

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. Also, for those listening to the audio files , I have not uploaded this week's yet, but should have it published late Monday. Currently you need to download an listen to the files, but my plan is to have an rss feed and podcast subscriber ability by end of week. 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, b...

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 c...

WOW! 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 Go...

Greetings everyone! I am working on setting up a podcast to go with this blog. This is both to dive a little deeper into the topics, and also to make the content accessible to those who have a harder time reading. This is me raw in my car as I drive to work every day. Very lightly edited. I'm just thinking out loud about what the Come Follow Me topic is for the week. For those who find it valuable, its an invitation to join me as I think through the scriptures each morning.  I'm still working on setting up the podcast in a bazillion ways. You don't have to wait for me though - you can catch the first recordings at the link below while I get the files hosted and syndicated. The audio is a bit rough, but I think you will enjoy it, especially if you like the blog content! Get MP3s of Come Follow Me Book of Mormon with Sam here

It's a great new week for Come Follow Me! Below I compare the tree of life vision with the second missionary lesson, talk about the forgotten importance of the beginning of the vision walk through some of the finer ideas in the vision, and finish up with the point that most people skip, but it seems that Come Follow Me was made to focus us on. 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.  Judgemen...

An introduction to The Family, The Follower, and The Prophet Comprising most of 1 Nephi, we have a situation somewhat unparalleled in other scripture. We can observe, through Nephi's words, how a Prophet is called, how he teaches, how a family can follow a prophet, how some people reject a prophet, how you can know a prophet is called of God... There are a lot of lessons. The point is that we can examine this in a more close-up manner than in any other set of scripture. This portion is also unique in the surprising way in which it teaches the first and second missionary discussions, albeit in a non traditional manner. Check this out 1st missionary lesson example scripture God is our Loving Heavenly Father 1:1, 1:14-15, 1:20 The Gospel Blesses Individuals and Families throughout Heavenly Father Reveals his Gospel in Every Dispensation 1, 6 The Savior's earthly ministry and atonement 1:9-12 ...