Come Follow Me with Sam

Welcome to Come Follow me with Sam! Its MISSIONARY TIME! Technically it was already missionary time, since Alma 1. but this is where the great story of the missionary work among the Lamanites starts. I'm going to hit on a few highlights we don't think about much, instead of talking about the main points of the story. If you don't know this story yet, I highly encourage you to read it before continuing :) Preparation for this work happened long before the sons of Mosiah came Amulon, as bad a dude as he was, and as bad as his posterity persecuted the work, was actually a secret ingredient to this missionary secret ingredient soup. In Mosiah 24, it says that he appointed teachers to teach the Lamanites the Nephite language, writing, record-keeping, and trade. In essence, he began the re-melding of the culture so that the Nephites and the Lamanites could understand one another. I'm pretty sure this was a major contributor to the success of the missionary work here. The Sons...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We are doing a combo of two weeks so that we get the Ammonihah experience end to end. (also because I am still catching up :D) Things get a little crazy here! Ammonihah is doing really bad things. Alma sees an angel. Amulek changes his entire life around (!!!) Wow. Here's the stuff. Ammonihah round 1 Alma goes from Gideon to Melek and from Melek from Ammonihah. The preaching in both Gideon and Melek went fantastic. Ammonihah is a complete dead-end. No one listens and he gets cast out.If I were him, I would pat myself on the back and say 'good effort, let's go to some place that has a greater spiritual return on my life investment'. Alma doesn't respond exactly that way, but he does decide his work is done. The difference is that it gives him 'weighed down with sorrow, wading through much tribulation and anguish of soul. Remember that Alma himself rebelled pretty hardcore against the church. When he sees someone turn away, I th...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! These chapters are the great preaching of Alma! We get to compare and contrast what he does with Zarahemla and Gideon. A Little Background Zarahemla is the capital city of the Nephite nation. Large cities naturally are places of trade, administration, and society, and as such it is easy to get distracted with everything happening there and less on the spiritual side of life. Alma 5 is the famous chapter filled with soul-searching questions. It looks like Alma is reminding them that amid the bustle of the city, to search their souls. Gideon, and the valley of Gideon, was certainly named after the Gideon who resisted Noah, counseled Limhi, and was killed in cold blood by Nehor. He was obviously highly respected. The city of Gideon was again almost certainly composed of people who not only knew these events, but lived through them. Alma takes a different tack. It seems as though he is teaching them the greater things. Zarahemla: the take-aways - Remembe...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! Judgement day has come.  I have really gotten behind on these things and today is the day that I catch up! and get current on the AMAZING things that are happening at this time in the Book of Mormon. Honestly, it would be fun to do this more. The tricky thing is that it does take significant time, and some schedule changes that came from Corona, along with investment in effort into a come follow me discussion during Corona virus lock-down, has really cut out my normal routine of posting. Well, No More! We are going for the Gold. Thanks all, and hope you are coming out of the experience of the last 3 months better attuned to helping each other. Okay Enough of that. Judgment day has come another way! It is the beginning of the Reign of Judges (YES YES YES!) and the beginning of Alma the younger as high priest in the church. Mosiah showed himself to be very wise, because dissension stresses come almost immediately into the reign of judges. We will e...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We get a great peek into the struggles of a church made by a perfect person but put into an imperfect world and filled with imperfect people? How do you handle that? This is what we will talk about. Hardness of Heart Alma established the church everywhere and things seemed really good for a bit after being freed from the Lamanites/Amulonites. Unfortunately, things went south in a generation, just as they had back in the land of Nephi under King Noah. Mormon says that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of King Benjamin as children. There are some interesting dynamics that happen here. Check out the chain of logic/spirit/thought. -did not believe tradition of fathers. did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of dead, coming of Christ - >could not understand the word of God.  -> Hearts were hardened (technically in the same breathe as the last issue) ->would not be baptize...

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 ...

Welcome again to Come Follow Me with Sam! Abinadai! I love Abinadai! I did my best with my brother to open up Abinadai to understanding on our twitch channel. Abinadai came among the people in disguise and I think we too need to search him out to understand him better. I hope it is beneficial.  Abinadai takes us and the priests on a journey from the static law to the savior's life, and then back to ours. I believe that he knew the basics of what he was going to say but that the spirit spelled out as he went the emergent truths he expressed. The priests accuse Abinadai of being a doomsday-er and a downer The priests were calculated in their question toward Abinadai they asked him about this passage of scripture from Isaiah 21 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings; that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good; that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth; 22 Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with...

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...