Friday, March 26, 2021
Monday, March 22, 2021
Friday, March 19, 2021
Have we lost our awareness of what it means to be a chosen people? Scholar Robert Millet weighs in
(by Robert L. Millet ldsliving.com 3-10-21)
In recent years, our beloved prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, has emphasized repeatedly the importance of the gathering of Israel and the role the Latter-day Saints are to play in this divinely-orchestrated effort. In President Nelson’s words, the gathering is “the greatest challenge, the greatest cause, and the greatest work on earth today.”1
A “Covenant Consciousness”
During my first few years as a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, I was asked to teach many courses in the Book of Mormon. In one of my large freshman Book of Mormon classes, I was startled by a question from a bright young woman who had grown up in the Church and had been well-educated about the gospel. We were about two-thirds of the way through the second semester of the Book of Mormon when she said, “Brother Millet, you continue to use a phrase that I don’t understand, and perhaps there are others in the class who have the same problem. You keep referring to ‘the house of Israel.’ What do you mean? What is the house of Israel?”
For a full 10 seconds I stood in amazement. It had never occurred to me at this point in the second half of a two-semester course that I needed to define something so fundamental.
Sometimes I sense among members of the Church a lack of what might be called “covenant consciousness.” I’m not referring here to the covenants and ordinances required for salvation, but rather a lack of feeling appropriate kinship and identity with ancient Israel and particularly with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I fear that we may be losing an inner awareness of what it means to be a chosen people, a covenant people.
The Abrahamic Covenant
The Abrahamic covenant is an important aspect of the new and everlasting covenant—meaning, the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Doctrine and Covenants 133:57).2
God entered into a covenant with Abraham, promising him that if he and his posterity would keep the commandments and remain aloof from the ways of the world, that posterity would receive the gospel (compare Galatians 3:8), the priesthood, eternal life, and a land of inheritance. Abraham was promised that his posterity would be as numerous as the dust of the earth, the sand upon the seashore, or the stars in the heavens (Genesis 13:14–16; Genesis 15:1–6; Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 17:8–10; Abraham 2:8–11, 19, 3:14). These are often called “the promises made to the fathers” (Doctrine and Covenants 2:2; 27:10; 98:32), inasmuch as they were perpetuated through Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and their descendants. In order to ensure that descendants of Abraham would receive these supernal blessings, Abraham’s posterity has been scattered throughout the earth in order that the covenant people may serve as a leavening influence among all of God’s children.
The Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ entailed the restoration of the Abrahamic covenant. In September 1823, the angel Moroni appeared to the boy prophet, Joseph Smith. Of that visit Joseph wrote, “This messenger proclaimed himself to be an angel of God, sent to bring the joyful tidings that the covenant which God made with ancient Israel was at hand to be fulfilled, that the preparatory work of the Second Coming of the Messiah was speedily to commence; that . . . I was chosen to be an instrument in the hands of God to bring about some of His purposes in this glorious dispensation.”3
Joseph of old prophesied of his latter-day namesake that he would be a “choice seer,” one who would be raised up by God to bring the people of the last days to the knowledge of the covenants that God had made with the ancient fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (2 Nephi 3:7). In an important sense, Joseph Smith was called to be a modern Abraham. On April 3, 1836, the Savior appeared and accepted the Kirtland Temple. In addition, Moses, Elias, and Elijah appeared. Of the keys that Elias restored, the scriptural account explains that “After this [Moses’s restoration of the keys of the gathering of Israel], Elias appeared, and committed the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham,4 saying that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed” (Doctrine and Covenants 110:12; emphasis added). And, as we will see shortly, what is true in regard to the Prophet Joseph’s lineage and the blessings to which Joseph is entitled is equally true for members of the Lord’s restored Church. Indeed, the Lord spoke of His Latter-day Saints as “a remnant of Jacob, and those who are heirs according to the covenant” (Doctrine and Covenants 52:2).
The Scattering of Israel
Members of the house of Israel—ancient or modern—are scattered when they reject the Savior and His gospel and forsake the everlasting covenant. They are scattered, either as individuals or whole nations, when they forsake the Lord Jehovah, violate their covenants, stray from the ordinances, and thereby forfeit the right to receive the blessings promised to the descendants of Abraham. Anciently, the Israelites were scattered when they were conquered by other nations and removed from their homelands. In a more subtle way, people are as scattered today in regard to their identity—who they are and what they have been called upon to do—as they are due to their geography.
Speaking on behalf of Jehovah, Moses warned ancient Israel: “If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day . . . [you will be] removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. . . . And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known” (Deuteronomy 28:15, 25, 64; emphasis added; see also Jeremiah 16:11–13). The people of God became scattered—alienated from Jehovah and the ways of righteousness, lost as to their identity as covenant representatives, and displaced from the lands set aside for their inheritance—because they forsook the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and partook of the worship and ways of unholy men and nations.
In writing of the ten northern tribes of Israel, those who became known as the “lost ten tribes,” Nephi stated that “it appears that the house of Israel, sooner or later, will be scattered upon all the face of the earth, and also among all nations. And behold, there are many [of the ten tribes] who are already lost from the knowledge of those who are at Jerusalem. Yea, the more part of all the tribes have been led away; and they are scattered to and fro upon the isles of the sea; and whither they are, none of us knoweth, save that we know they have been led away” (1 Nephi 22:3–4). Jacob, the younger brother of Nephi, prophesied that the mortal Messiah would come to the Jews: “But because of priestcrafts and iniquities, they at Jerusalem will stiffen their necks against him, that he be crucified. Wherefore, because of their iniquities, . . . they who shall not be destroyed shall be scattered among all nations” (2 Nephi 10:3, 5–6).
In addition, there are times when the Lord scatters or leads away certain branches of His chosen people to the “nethermost parts of the earth” in order to accomplish His purposes—to spread the influence and blessings of Abraham throughout the globe. This was the case with Lehi’s family—a branch of the tribe of Joseph who were led away from their homeland to another hemisphere (the New World), because of wickedness in the Old World. Jacob, son of Lehi, explained: “And now, my beloved brethren, . . . we have been driven out of the land of our inheritance [the land of Israel]; but we have been led to a better land. . . . For behold, the Lord God has led away [groups of people] from time to time from the house of Israel, according to his will and pleasure. And now behold, the Lord remembereth all them who have been broken off, wherefore he remembereth us also” (2 Nephi 10:20–22; see also 1 Nephi 17:36–38).
The Gathering of Israel
When people are gathered, they are called out of Babylon into Zion, are enabled to congregate with the faithful, and are prepared and made worthy to receive the highest of all earthly blessings. Individuals were gathered in ancient days when they aligned themselves with the people of God, with those who worshipped Jehovah and received the counsel and direction of the prophets. They were gathered when they gained a sense of tribal identity, when they came to know who they were and Whose they were. They were gathered when they settled on those lands designated as promised lands—lands set apart as sacred sites for people of promise.
The call to the dispersed of Israel has been and ever will be the same: “Turn, O backsliding children, . . . and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion” (Jeremiah 3:14). That is, gathering is accomplished through individual conversion—through faith, repentance, baptism, and confirmation. People are gathered first spiritually and second temporally—first to the Lord, His doctrine, and His Church and then to the lands of their inheritance or to the congregations of the Saints (see 1 Nephi 10:14; 15:13–14; 2 Nephi 10:6–7; 30:5). As a modern Apostle put it, “It is not the place of gathering that will save the scattered remnants, but the message of salvation that comes to them in their RedeJacob reminded his people that the Lord God “has spoken unto the Jews, by the mouth of his holy prophets, even from the beginning down, from generation to generation, until the time comes that they [the Jews, or the house of Israel] shall be restored to the true church and fold of God; when they shall be gathered home to the lands of their inheritance, and shall be established in all their lands of promise” (2 Nephi 9:2; emphasis added). Of the eventual gathering of the Jews to the Holy Land, the risen Lord explained to the Nephites: “And it shall come to pass that the time cometh, when the fulness of my gospel shall be preached unto them; and they shall believe in me, that I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and shall pray unto the Father in my name” (3 Nephi 20:30–31; emphasis added).
As a kind of summary statement, President Spencer W. Kimball taught: “Now, the gathering of Israel consists of joining the true Church and . . . coming to a knowledge of the true God. . . . Any person, therefore, who has accepted the restored gospel, and who now seeks to worship the Lord in his own tongue and with the Saints in the nations where he lives, has complied with the law of the gathering of Israel and is heir to all of the blessings promised the Saints in these last days.”6
Our leaders have emphasized that the gathering of Israel is taking place on both sides of the veil—in both our mortal world and the postmortal spirit world. Any time an individual is being led to receive the fulness of the gospel, he or she is being gathered. As we invite friends or loved ones to investigate the message and blessings of the restored gospel, we are involved in gathering Israel. As we do family history research, prepare names for vicarious work to be performed in holy temples, and ensure that the appropriate ordinances are performed in behalf of those who have died, we are helping to gather Israel.
President Nelson has taught that “missionary work is only the beginning” to obtaining the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He explained: “The fulfillment, the consummation, of those blessings comes as those who have entered the waters of baptism perfect their lives to the point that they may enter the holy temple. Receiving an endowment there seals members of the Church to the Abrahamic covenant.”7 While men and women begin to gather into the fold of modern Israel through conversion, the final phase of gathering occurs in holy temples. Elder Bruce R. McConkie pointed out that when a person is “married in the temple for time and for all eternity, each worthy member of the Church enters personally into the same covenant the Lord made with Abraham. This is the occasion when the promises of eternal increase are made, and it is then specified that those who keep the covenant made there shall be inheritors of all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”8
Coming to Know Who We Are
I was 14 years old when my father and I traveled about 50 miles to the home of our stake patriarch, Brother Clarence Murphy, to receive my patriarchal blessing. I was nervous, not quite sure of what was about to take place. I had heard Mom and Dad speak occasionally about their blessings, and more than one of my friends had shared with me what a spiritual experience it was for them. The patriarch chatted briefly with us. Then this elderly man stood, walked over to me, and placed his hands on my head. I closed my eyes and listened intently as a total stranger told me a whole host of things about myself—matters I needed to attend to right away; what I would be called upon to do in coming years; how crucial it was for me to read and search the pages of the Book of Mormon; and so forth. Brother Murphy seemed to be reading what President Harold B. Lee referred to as “paragraphs from the book of [my] possibilities.”9
At one point in the blessing, the patriarch spoke words that have burned in my bosom for decades. He stated soberly that “within your veins flows the blood of a royal lineage. You are heir to the blessings of Father Abraham through Ephraim, the second born of Joseph.” It is so very important for each of us to know who we are. First and foremost, we are the sons and daughters of God, our Heavenly Father. He is the Father of our spirits (Numbers 16:22; 27:16; Hebrews 12:9). Second, as we receive the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and its ordinances and are born again, we become the sons and daughters of Jesus Christ by adoption (Mosiah 5:7–8; 27:23–26). Finally, we are the sons and daughters of Father Abraham and thus heirs to the supernal privileges and blessings promised to his descendants. “Once we know who we are and the royal lineage of which we are a part,” President Nelson observed, “our actions and our directions in life will be more appropriate to our inheritance.”10
In his final address to students at Brigham Young University, only months before his death, President Harold B. Lee told a simple story that has stayed with me from the time I first heard it in 1973. “I am reminded of the old court jester who was supposed to entertain his king with interesting stories and antics,” President Lee said. “He looked at the king who was lolling on his throne, a drunken, filthy rascal, [he] doffed his cap and bells, and said with a mock gesture of obeisance, ‘O king, be loyal to the royal within you.’”11 Such is our charge, our commission, our challenge, our opportunity, and our supernal privilege. That we may receive that sacred charge eagerly and earnestly, is my hope for each of us.
Notes
1. “Hope of Israel,” Worldwide Youth Devotional, 3 June 2018.
2. See also Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 3 vols., comp. Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954–56), 1:156–58.
3. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2007), 439.
4. “Elias restored the great commission, given of God to Abraham our father, whereby the seed of Abraham has power to gain eternal blessings forever through eternal marriage; that is, Elias restored the marriage discipline that had eternal efficacy, virtue, and force in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Bruce R. McConkie, A New Witness for the Articles of Faith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985], 508.)
5. Bruce R. McConkie, The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982), 200.
6. Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989), 439.
7. “Thanks for the Covenant,” 1988–89 BYU Devotional and Fireside Speeches (Provo, UT: BYU Publications, 1989), 59; see also Perfection Pending and Other Favorite Discourses by Russell M. Nelson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1998), 207.
8. A New Witness for the Articles of Faith, 508.
9. Stand Ye in Holy Places (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974), 117.
10. Perfection Pending, 208.
11. Harold B. Lee, “Be Loyal to the Royal Within You,” 1973 BYU Speeches of the Year (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), 100.
Countdown to Conference: Follow President Nelson’s invitation to study covenant Israel with this free, daily study guide
(by Lindsey Williams ldsliving.com 2-16-21)
In the Sunday morning session of the October 2020 general conference, President Russell M. Nelson issued a challenge:
As you study your scriptures during the next six months, I encourage you to make a list of all that the Lord has promised He will do for covenant Israel. I think you will be astounded! Ponder these promises. Talk about them with your family and friends. Then live and watch for these promises to be fulfilled in your own life.
Studying everything that the Lord has promised He will do for covenant Israel is no small feat. In a footnote of his talk, President Nelson noted that the word Israel appears more than 1,000 times in the scriptures. He also pointed out that he has spoken of Israel in at least 378 of the more than 800 messages he has delivered since becoming an Apostle.
In the face of numbers like that, perhaps you have struggled to know where to start studying. As you prepare for April general conference, we invite you to join us in a six-week study as we learn more about what the Lord has promised He will do for covenant Israel. Each week we will focus on a theme tied to a letter of I-S-R-A-E-L. Each day of the week will then correspond to a study prompt (Sunday Scripture, Monday Music, Tuesday Talk, and so on). Whether you have an hour to study each day or only a few minutes, there is something in every day for you.
Find a printable PDF of the schedule, links to the specific weekly prompts, and a guide on how to use it all below.
You can also find past LDS Living countdowns to conference here.
Covenant Israel
Download a printable PDF calendar here.
Use the links to find videos, talks, and articles for each promise listed below.
- • Immanuel (February 21–27): God will be with us.
- • Saved (February 28–March 6): The Lord will save us.
- • Rewarded (March 7–13): God will reward us.
- • Atoned (March 14–20): The Atonement can help and heal us.
- • Eternal (March 21–27): We can receive eternal life.
- • Loved (March 28–April 3): God loves us forever.
The study guide includes a daily study prompt related to the theme of I-S-R-A-E-L and the specific promise for that week. Here’s a look at the categories of those prompts:
- • Sunday Scripture: Read a passage of scripture related to the weekly theme.
- • Monday Music: Listen to a hymn or song related to the theme.
- • Tuesday Talk: Study one of President Nelson’s talks about Israel.
- • Wednesday Wonder: Reflect on a different question found in President Nelson’s October 2020 general conference talk “Let God Prevail.”
- • Thursday Thought: Deepen your understanding with an LDS Living article or video.
- • Friday Family: Do an activity with your family or an activity related to family history.
- • Saturday Share: Share with someone else something you’ve learned or a blessing you’ve received.
Happy studying!
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Netflix's 'Murder Among the Mormons' uses the same stereotypes about our faith as the villain
(by Daryl Austin nbcnews.com 3-10-21)
One of the most audacious and devious forgers in U.S. history, Mark Hofmann spent the early 1980s deceiving (and ripping off) individuals and organizations with never-before-seen documents and letters. His victims included the Library of Congress, other parts of the U.S. government, scores of private collectors, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his own business partners — who lost everything because of him.
And yet, the title of Netflix's new documentary about his crimes doesn't reference his prolific time as a forger; it's not called "Lying to the Library of Congress" or "Forging the Founding Fathers." It doesn't even, as such true crime documentaries often do, reference Hofmann's own name.
Instead, the documentary, created by Jared Hess ("Napoleon Dynamite") and Tyler Measom ("Jesus Town, USA"), is called "Murder Among the Mormons." It's currently on Netflix's "Top 10" list all over the United States.
While both filmmakers swore to Esquire that they "didn't have an axe to grind" with the church, it's clear that even if they didn't intend to lean in to stereotypes about those of the Mormon faith, they certainly didn't shy away from them — even though Hofmann, born to a longtime Mormon family, was an avowed atheist who allegedly took pleasure in deceiving members of his former faith.
For instance, the filmmakers present Mormon beliefs to their viewers by showing clips from a 1970s kooky educational film. They intersperse footage the Salt Lake Temple or Church Office Building headquarters — as well as video clips of Mormons speaking from a pulpit, playing a board game, walking into a church meeting house, teaching lessons in the home, doing missionary work or singing hymns — against dark moments in the story full of ominous music.
They also allow numerous digs against the church by critics of the faith or former members: "The church would try to hide documents that proved embarrassing to them," or, "The [leaders of the church] propagated false narratives," or that a member of the church supposedly "became visibly upset" when he saw a children's book about dinosaurs because it "promoted evolution."
Dark aspersions, innuendos and accusations against the church and its leaders are allowed to pile up as interviewees accuse the church of having nefarious motivations for wanting to purchase any of Hofmann's allegedly authenticated historical documents about its own history in the first place.
Worse, the first two parts of the three-part series leave viewers believing that church leaders may even be behind a plot to commit the very murders of which Hoffman was convicted. One interviewee says, "We started realizing the Mormon church is in play and that there was something really wrong here," and adds later that the church "impeded [the murder] investigation." Another says that "it appears that dealing in Mormon documents can be a dangerous business" — a sentiment repeated multiple times in the first episode, even though all the danger actually came from Hofmann's forging said documents and not wanting to be found out.
The voiceovers and interview commentary add to the aura of suspicion that gets cast over the church, its members and its leaders.
Whether suggesting that a plane "landing in Salt Lake City" meant passengers needed to "set their watch back 10 years" or that "the bombing's impact has drawn the church into an uncomfortable spotlight," rather than the church being horrified that people were killed, the filmmakers presented Salt Lake City and its Mormon residents as uniquely backward, uniquely weird and uniquely insular in a way the city, the people and the church simply were not at the time. And that's before they use an old news segment calling the affair "a Watergate-style cover-up and one of the wealthiest if not the most wealthy church in America involved, the Mormon church" — which is a pretty broad mischaracterization.
Meanwhile, Hofmann gets a somewhat glossier treatment for a man who killed two people and maimed himself in a series of bombings designed to draw attention away from his crimes. He later admitted to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole that planting the bomb that killed one of his victims was "a game" to him and that it "didn't matter" if the bomb would have been discovered instead by "a child, a dog ... whoever."
But the filmmakers spend the majority of the series interviewing his former wife, his close friends and former neighbors, one-time co-workers, a former classmate, business partners and even one individual who speaks about Hofmann with such respect and reverence that a Vox writer wondered if he may have been an accomplice. The film shows home movies of Hofmann doting on his wife and children and ends with uplifting music and a former Hofmann associate saying, "He was fantastic. No one has come close to doing what he has done."
The latter, at least, is true, albeit not in the way the speaker intended nor in a way the filmmakers bothered to explore in any real way. Hofmann's forgeries were seemingly designed to undermine the faith of other Mormons as well as make him money. As one interviewee says, "He could come up with plausible things that changed the history in ways that reflected badly on Mormon belief and that encouraged Mormons to leave their faith."
One of Hofmann's forgeries, for instance, involved creating a letter that said Joseph Smith — the religion's founder — was led to the gold plates known as the Book of Mormon by a white salamander and not by an angel. In another forgery, Smith's wife, Emma, allegedly claimed to a third party that her husband had committed adultery.
Because these forgeries were originally authenticated by scholars, some members of the Mormon church spent the early 1980s going through a genuine crisis of faith. And as one of the church's leaders, Dallin H. Oaks, acknowledged at the time, Hofmann's forgeries had led to "some of the most intense LDS church-bashing since the turn of the century."
Though the filmmakers knew how much damage these forgeries caused to Mormons in the 1980s, they not only chose to amplify each one of them but they also failed to truly account for that damage or present the faith in a different light than Hofmann himself wanted.
For all his depredations, Hofmann is certainly worthy of the same kind of true crime documentary we've seen in recent years. His work included forged signatures and documents from the likes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Mark Twain, Betsy Ross, Francis Scott Key and Paul Revere. He once even wrote an entire poem that scholars authenticated as being written by Emily Dickinson. And he did, in fact, bomb himself, either in a suicide attempt or to keep himself from becoming a suspect.
But this documentary is almost less about Hofmann than it is about Mormonism and not in an even-handed or even educational way. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is a minority religion in the United States, has been targeted and misrepresented too many times already. As church member McKay Coppins wrote recently for The Atlantic, Mormonism lacks the "cultural cachet" of other minority religions in America. People hardly notice when we're being mocked, misrepresented or stereotyped — or, worse, they think we earned or deserve that.
If its increasing cultural cachet is any indication, "Murder Among the Mormons" will be able to misrepresent the LDS church yet again to a mainstream audience with little to no consequence, even as the murderer they're documenting would likely appreciate the assistance.