Come Follow Me with Sam

Welcome to Come Follow me with Sam! We are embarking on the chapters that cover some pivotal changes for Lamanites and Nephites, and a lot of pieces moving around. There are so many lessons to learn from this! These next chapters don't tell a single narrative. They tell things as they happened when they happened. I will give some background, then jump into some different lessons. Where is everybody going!? Call out to sister Wright and her blog for talking about this. Please check out her page for this simple (hah!) diagram. Here is the breakdown: Journey-ings before the diagram (good to know) 1. Lehi and family go to promised land 2. Mulek and people go to promised land in Zarahemla 3. Nephi and friends leave first place for their safety and journey to a place they call the Land of Nephi. 4. centuries later, Mosiah I is told to leave the Land of Nephi. He and those who are faithful follow him. The rest presumably perish. Mosiah and the remnant of the Nephites travel...

Hello everyone, welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! First, I sincerely apologize to my readers. I have missed a couple weeks and was late with my last post. I think Conference and Easter threw me off track and it is time to get back on again. Second, we are talking about King Benjamin and this AMAZING experience he helped walk the people through! Because this experience does not nicely fit itself into our habitual church structures, it is easy to miss the importance of what happens here. Although I didn't write about it , I have been studying and twitch-streaming with my brother about it and I sincerely believe this was a preparatory pivot point that changed the course of the Nephite nation. I believe this was in preparation for Alma's great work of establishing the churches among the people. It is really exciting. I hope this takes you beyond anything you have even thought about his amazing discourse before!! P.S. I'm already really tired of typing out King Benjamin....

Update - forgot to post this last week, so I will pot this and another this week. Hope you had a great General Conference! We did some special streaming which you can find at Twitch.tv/comefollowmejosephandsam for the next 2 weeks. Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! For those paying close attention, you probably noticed I'm changing the order of the weekly topics a bit. Here is the schedule: week of 3/29 (today)             Special topic! A deep dive into this part of the civilization week of 4/05 (conference)    Easter and conference commentary week of 4/12 (Easter)            Mosiah 1-3, resume normal schedule Great! A lot of stuff is happening during the pivotal time of King Benjamin in the book of Mormon so lets talk about the cultural and the spiritual changes. A note for all readers that I am not an expert in culture and we don't have a lot of information on what was really going on, so much of this...

Welcome to Come Follow Me With Sam! We are going to talk about Enos, Jarom, Omni and friends, exodus's, new civilizations, and old ones, all in one short blog post.  Just like there are crazy ripples happening in the world today, there are crazy ripples in Nephite civilization. This is a really great reading considering the current events that happened this week. What happened in that forest? Enos's prayer in the forest starts out with a simple enough explanation - he was thinking hard about life and wanted to talk to God about it. What happens in the forest is very complex. Here are some elements that I can pull out. 1. Enos was really praying. All the day long and when the night came, he 'did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens'. He REALLY had some things to say. What things of eternal life and the joy of the saints sunk deep into his heart? for that Enos matter, what was the joy of the saints? in our twitch stream today , my brother suggested...

Welcome to come follow me with Sam! We are finishing jacob's record this week! We will cover the allegory of the olive tree, Jacobs teachings about it, and his smack down with Sherem, the first anti-christ in the Book of Mormon. The allegory of the olive tree The allegory of the olive tree is more chronological in its nature than many other teachings we have so far covered in the Book of Mormon, but the central nature is still a spiritual one. It is a mistake to merely dismiss the allegory as a simplified way of demonstrating future events. Jacob shows by his introduction in chapter 4 and in his commentary in Chapter 6 that he is primarily concerned with the redemptive theme, not simply chronological fortune-telling. That being said, it will help to understand the message if we cover the more chronological part first. The allegory can be split into 3 phases: Phase 1: The master of the vineyard and his servant observe the tame olive tree that it is producing decayed branches...

Hello everyone, welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam. Since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cancelled church meetings world-wide due to the corona virus, I have a special announcement. Me and my brother will be Twitch-streaming a come follow me discussion today at 2:00PM MST. We plan to continue to Twitch-Stream every Sunday at 2:00PM until church resumes. You can participate live at twitch.tv/comefollowmejosephandsam For those new to Twitch, it is an online streaming platform that is completely free to watch and encourages participation via live comments/chat. We will be covering Come Follow Me and other various topics in the coming weeks. See you there at 2:00PM MST Sundays :)

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We are now entering a period of scripture that I call the Lull - things slow down a little and its not clear either what is happening among the Nephites or how righteous they, or even the authors themselves, are. The words of Jacob are, like Nephi, pure and sincere. Here we have a prophet and leader who knows Christ, exhorts his people to follow Him, and corrects their path in fear of God. Enter into his Rest Jacob is careful to talk about his efforts to spiritually help his people. At a head is verse 7:  Wherefore we labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of he goodness of God that they might enter into his rest, lest by any means he should swear in his wrath they should not enter in, as in the provocation in the days of temptation while the children of Israel were in the wilderness. I created a mini-series on revelation last year and I talk about this curious phrase, the rest ...

Welcome to Come Follow me with Sam! 2 Nephi 31-33 is where the gospel is taught in its plainest form as far as I know. These are also chapters that speak so purely that I am extra careful that my commentary is meaningful and not detract-ful from the core message. It is not a mistake that we focus an entire week on these chapters. This is the way Nephi is continually explaining the condescension of God in different forms, probably because it is so key to the plan. In Chapter 31, he says he makes an end to prophesying on Isaiah and instead will teach according to 'the plainness of my prophesying'. He talks about baptism. He really wants us to understand what baptism is. While on my mission, I realized in the first few weeks that I had no idea about the big picture of baptism. by the end of my mission, I realized that even my new understanding of the first few weeks was just the beginning. Nephi's approach to help us understand this is unique in possibly all the scrip...

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 ...