(Adverb) Engaged

As a missionary, I encountered interesting individuals. One was a professional athlete who had turned recruiter for the BSA. He had been a football player, as well as an Olympic athlete. He earned a gold medal in track, which he showed to me and my companion. It was fairly easy to believe he was a athlete, even without photos and medals. Even the muscles on his temples were enormous.

He told us he believed our account of Joseph's first vision, or at least that it could have happened, because he awoke one night, surrounded by "glory." He asked us if we were worried about the impending Y2K crisis. We said no, and then he made this profound statement: "I'm not worried, because the Being I worship is not worried."

Elder Maxwell noted that while the Lord expects us to be "anxiously engaged" (D&C 57:28), we are to avoid being "hectically engaged," or "frantically engaged." (Insights From My Life, BYU talk given 12 Jan. 1999). C. S. Lewis said, "[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you" (Mere Christianity).

Lehi's dream is so rich and complex, it often yields new insight, always refreshing my determination to do right when I read it. Lehi meets a Man, whom I assume is Christ. The Man bids Lehi to follow Him, and Lehi finds himself "in a dark and dreary waste." "And after I had traveled for the space of many hours in darkness, I began to pray unto the Lord that he would have mercy on me, according to the multitude of his tender mercies" (1Ne. 8:7-8). The trust here is implicit. Lehi follows the Lord into unfamiliar territory, and when he finds himself alone, he begins to pray. He describes the Lord's abundant mercy in a way that evokes a warehouse in my mind, as though Lehi knows that there is an infinite supply, a "multitude" of mercies at God's disposal, and he begs to have a drop to sooth the extremity of his circumstances. He knows the mercies are available; the only questions are "if" and "when" the Lord is willing to extend them.

I remember being totally drained of energy one day while mowing the lawn. I laid down on the grass, thinking that I should get some sugar and cold liquid into my blood. But I felt prompted, strangely, to relax and just lie there. A minute later, my uncle appeared with a tall glass of cold lemon juice. This refreshed me, and I was back to mowing the lawn again. While this circumstance was trivial, the prompting was priceless to me, a "tender mercy," evidence that 1. My needs are known to God, 2. I am important to God, and 3. God makes provisions for my needs. A fourth point, and probably the least appealing, yet also comforting, is the evidence that God approves of my circumstances. Being enervated on the lawn is a legitimate part of God's menu of events for me; He has no problem with me being in what seems an undesirable circumstance.

Father in heaven knows the circumference of my biceps and the meagerness of my bank account, and while I could imagine improvements, the Lord knows and accepts these dimensions of my life. I am in the telestial world to have telestial-quality experiences. The scent of lemons and the odor of diapers are all legitimate shades on the potential palette of what we encounter here.

I have learned from personal experience that the Lord is aware, not only of my present, but knows all the miles that lie ahead on my odometer, so to speak. He knows the future. This can be intimidating, even frustrating and faith-shaking for people I have encountered. "How can such determinism be reconciled with agency?" and the hand wringing and stomach-ulcer forming fretting begins. The combination of my faith in God's benevolence, along with my understanding that He is omniscient and knows my future, is somewhat comforting to me. I imagine counsels between Christ and various angelic messengers who have stewardship over me, conspiring on my behalf to see that all the right things come my way, fall into place, and turn out properly. Provisions for my physical needs, as well as developmental experiences, are constantly being made. Necessary problems and blessings are being planned for me. It is easy to forget in all our anxious engagement and agency exercising and goal setting that God also has agency.

Where, then, is the happy medium? We are not to be "acted upon," yet we also do not have ultimate control of anything but our internal attitudes and feelings. It seems we are to thrash about in the most productive way we can manage, and wait for the Lord to make something constructive out of the debris and waves we generate. We also are privileged to follow the promptings of the Spirit, actually getting directions from time to time that correct our course (see 1Ne. 16:29). I think of this as following the wind where it blows us (John 3:8). So we cooperate with the Lord, sculpting our lives, and being sculpted by the Lord at the same time.

It is easy to imagine how hurt the Lord must feel when we do not trust Him, and also how flattered He must feel when we do trust Him. Being frantic, hurried, worried, fearful, depressed—these things are evidence that we doubt the Lord's providence or ability to control what is going on. When someone trusts me, believes what I say, or even values my opinion, I feel flattered, even humbled. I cannot imagine the Lord feeling any different when I show through my actions and attitudes that I trust Him.

Success: Two Views

The words "success" and "successful" once had broad application to numerous circumstances. Attempting to retrieve a kite from a tree, or a baseball from a roof could be achieved, and the outcome would be called "successful." Now the words almost exclusively apply to gathering the things of this world—power, wealth, prestige, and the pleasures of the flesh—in a large quota, and in a somewhat lasting way—right up to the moment of death.

The scriptures speak of a man who had obtained all these things, everything the world had to offer, and yet he was unsatisfied. We do not even know his name; he was King Lamoni's father, also a king. If I read the record correctly, he was healthy enough to try to kill Lamoni in armed combat. He had a large family, with at least one granddaughter of marriageable age. He was the wealthiest land owner of his day, with thousands of citizens who revered him as their king. People had to come to him to ask permission to build synagogues. He held feasts with his family (I recall the 4th of July picnics of my youth, and cannot imagine the food he served was any better, though the setting and dishes were probably far more expensive and opulent). This man had every physical thing this world has to offer, and yet he was dissatisfied, a grouch by all outward evidence. He came close to murdering his own son. What was missing in his life?

As I have pointed out elsewhere, Lamoni was missing what we all long for, whether we know it or not—to bask in the glory and presence of our Heavenly Father. The absence of that glory is, I believe, the source of much emptiness and undefinable longing we experience here in this life, and people shovel into their systems vast amounts of stimuli (like drugs or sex or noisy music) and vain groping for glory and praise, along with seeking for power, all in the attempt to fill that emptiness. The attempt itself kills the sensitivity necessary to even enjoy the stimulus; "habituation" is the clinical term for such numbness. Elder Neal A. Maxwell captures the idea with his characteristically clear and eloquent turn of phrase: "Brothers and sisters, the cast of players on this planet for whom the revelations and translations are so pertinent includes those who, in that familiar phrase, are living “lives of quiet desperation” (see Henry David Thoreau, Walden [1965], 7). They have now been joined by those living lives of noisy, slurping indulgence, wrongly celebrating their capacity to feel so that they finally lose their capacity to feel and become “past feeling” (see Moro. 9:20; Eph. 4:19; 1 Ne. 17:45). Hence they lick their particular platters in a desperate search for more sensations" (How Choice a Seer!, Oct. 2003 General Conference).

So keen was that feeling in Lamoni's father that he was willing to part with everything he had accumulated just to experience fullness instead of emptiness. It seems clear to me that the desire, hope for, and anticipation of the things of this world is more enjoyable than actually receiving them. (Recall childhood—Christmas morning is something of a letdown after the weeks of buildup.)

Are the things of this world a complete loss, then? Far from it: "And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it" (Mosiah 4:21). The Book of Mormon also contains numerous reiterations of the promise that those who keep the commandments will be prospered in the land. "Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul" (D&C 59:18-19). The Doctrine and Covenants takes us millions of miles away from the apostate creeds of Christianity: "For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy" (93:33-34). Jesus returned from the grave, not as an intangible ghost, but having "flesh and bone" (Luke 24:39). He was not only handled by His followers, he also ate fish and honeycomb to prove His physical resurrection.

So the physical aspect of life plays a vital role in realizing our complete happiness. Success, in the ultimate sense, is not to husk the inconvenient flesh, but to tame it to the will of the spirit (see Mosiah 15:1-5).

It would be nice if we could always have both, spiritual joy and physical comfort, but there are times when one is at odds with the other. These are the times when we show whether the spirit or the flesh rules our hearts. I am convinced that to be "like God" (a phrase we often use too casually) means to completely subject the will of the flesh to the will of God, to the Spirit. Jesus is our exemplar in this venture. Throughout His life, but especially in the last hours of His life, He was surrounded by enemies, forsaken by friends, and the Father even temporarily withdrew His sustaining influence. Jesus submitted to all manner of torture, starved and thirsty, drained even of blood. He was stripped of all clothing and material possessions, mocked instead of revered, "despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquities of us all." (It is easy to dissociate Jesus' suffering from our sins, but our sins were precisely the reason He went through all that pain.) Jesus was bereft of anything that could be construed as worldly success.

Yet Jesus declared the venture a success: JST Matt. 27:54: "Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, saying, Father, it is finished, thy will is done, yielded up the ghost." Death is the feared and strictly avoided aspect of life, though it is also the only inevitable part. Yet Jesus topped off everything He had suffered up to that point by voluntarily dying for others, for us. Death is easy to contemplate in the abstract, but the few moments of terror in my life when death seemed imminent to me highlight the difficulty entailed by such an act. I remember a specific occasion when I turned left before an oncoming bus; we both wanted to jump through the brief window offered by a passing yellow light. I assumed (wrongly) that the bus was going to stop. I saw a diagram of an underground bunker, a sort of doomsday haven, built for billionaires in distress. "O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm" (2Ne. 4:34).

I want to compare two people whom I admire, at least their views and values with regard to life and death.

Steve Jobs, successful enterpreneur, describes his personal encounter with mortality: "About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan...it clearly showed a tumor...The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening...when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."

He was not "fine:" Steve Jobs died of cancer in his fifties, and undoubtedly had access to the finest medical care available. I am duly impressed by his fortitude and forthrightness in the face of this great threat, to say nothing of his ability to change the world in other ways. He was a success in every worldly sense of the world.

But what about the things that last forever? I am convinced that WE are the products, the gold being refined, while all the good projects we work on, like Temples or computers or anything else, are merely process materials, secondary bits and pieces that will fall away like a mold or scaffolding when the process of becoming is completed. The point of this life is our immortality and eternal life, not to build good, yet impermanent, things.

JST, Luke 9:25: "For what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and yet he receive him not whom God hath ordained, and he lose his own soul, and he himself be a castaway?" There is something about clinging to one of these things (the world, or the Savior and our souls) that makes holding onto the other difficult.

Hugh Nibley was a poor college professor; he risked his life on the dirty battlefields of Europe during WWII, and survived numerous close calls. He had no bunker to hide in, no fortress of wealth shielding him from death. Yet he lived to be ninety five years old. Rather than seeking the gross material things of this world, he seemed to tread the path of Abraham: "And, finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same; having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers" (Abr. 1:2). Hugh Nibley found what he was looking for, it seems. Rather than look for a way to outsmart death, he looked to Christ for a remedy. He tells an imaginary, yet all too real, parable of a successful businessman who confronts his own mortality:

"Imagine, then, a successful businessman who, responding to some slight but persistent physical discomfort and the urging of an importunate wife, pays a visit to a...doctor. ...it is with an unquiet mind that he descends the steps of the clinic with the assurance, gained after long hours of searching examination, that he has about three weeks to live.

"In the days that follow, this man’s thinking undergoes a change, not a slow and subtle change—there is no time for that—but a quick and brutal reorientation. By the time he has reached home on that fateful afternoon, the first shock of the news has worn off, and he is already beginning to see things with strange eyes. As he locks the garage door, his long ambition to own a Cadillac suddenly seems unspeakably puerile to him, utterly unworthy of a rational, let alone an immortal, being. This leads him to the shocking realization, in the hours that follow, that one can be rich and successful in this world with a perfectly barren mind. With shame and alarm he discovers that he has been making a religion of his career. In a flash of insight he recognizes the truth of the old Greek doctrine that seeming and being are two wholly different things, and on his knees discovers that only his Heavenly Father knows him as he is. Abruptly he ceases to care particularly whether anybody thinks he is a good, able, smart, likable fellow or not; after all, he is not trying to sell anyone anything any more.

"Things that once filled him with awe seem strangely trivial, and things, which a few days before did not even exist for him, now fill his consciousness. For the first time he discovers the almost celestial beauty of the world of nature, not viewed through the glass of cameras and car windows, but as the very element in which he lives. Shapes and colors spring before his senses with a vividness and drama of which he never dreamed.

"The perfection of children comes to him like sudden revelation, and he is appalled by the monstrous perversion that would debauch their minds, over stimulate their appetites, and destroy their sensibilities in unscrupulous plans of sales promotion. Everywhere he looks he gets the feeling that all is passing away—not just relatively because he is saying goodbye to a world he has never seen before, but really and truly. He sees all life and stuff about him involved in a huge ceaseless combustion, a literal and apparent process of oxidation which is turning some things slowly, some rapidly, but all things surely to ashes. He wishes he had studied more and pays a farewell visit to some friends at the university where he is quick to discover, with his new powers of discernment, that their professional posturing and intellectual busywork is no road to discovery but only an alley of escape from responsibility and criticism.

"As the days pass...he is visited ever more frequently by memories, memories of astonishing clarity and vividness—mostly from his childhood, and he finds himself at the same time slipping ever more easily into speculations, equally vivid, on the world to come and the future of this world. The limits of time begin to melt and fuse until everything seems present but the present. In a word, his thinking has become eschatological.

"'What has happened to our solid citizen?' his friends ask perplexed. ...he cannot conceal his change of heart. As far as his old associates can see, the poor man has left the world of reality. Parties and gold no longer amuse him. TV and movies disgust him. He takes to reading books, of all things—even the Bible! When they engage him in conversation, he makes very disturbing remarks... He even becomes careless of his appearance, as if he didn’t know that the key to success is to make a good impression on people. As time passes, these alarming symptoms become ever more pronounced. His sales record drops off sharply. Those who know what is good for their future begin to avoid being seen with him... What is wrong with the man?

"...As he...walks the streets, he sees, in the words of Joseph Smith, 'destruction writ large on everything we behold.'

"Now the question arises, has this man been jerked out of reality or into it? Has he cut himself off from the real world or has cruel necessity forced him to look in the face what he was running away from before? Is he in a dream now or has he just awakened from one? Has he become an irresponsible child or has he taken the measure of Vanity Fair? Some will answer one way, some another. But if you want to arouse him to wrathful sermons, just try telling the man that it makes no difference which of these worlds one lives in—that they are equally real to the people who live in them.

"...Our businessman, for example, begins to wonder...What about the hereafter? ...Is there going to be a judgment? He almost panics at the thought, which has never bothered him before because he has been successful...

"To anyone who does not experience it, the view of things is pure myth—an invention of an overwrought mind desperately determined to support its own premises. Only what they fail to consider is that those who have had both views of the world interpret things just the other way around:...only strong and disciplined minds are willing to see things as they are, and even they must be forced to it!...To conclude our parable, what happens to our man of affairs? A second series of tests at the hospital shows that his case was not quite what they thought it was—he may live for many years. Yet he takes the news strangely, for instead of celebrating at a night club or a prize fight as any normal healthy person should, this creature will continue his difficult ways. “This,” he says, “is no pardon. It is but a stay of execution. Soon enough it is going to happen. This situation is not really changed at all.” So he becomes religious, a hopeless case, an eschatological zealot, a Puritan, a monk, a John Bunyan, a primitive Christian, an Essene, a Latter-day Saint. In every age such people...have...paid dearly for their folly" ("Way of the Church," pp. 829-30, 833. Taken from “Of All Things! A Nibley Quote Book” p.60-64).

I am certain that Steve Jobs, as well as numerous other telestial innovators, have played a divinely decreed role in establishing technology on the earth. I wish I had more of that vitality and drive. But who FEELS successful when they cross the finish line of death? Who looks back at their dead body without remorse, and looks upward, hopeful about their future? Who can look Jesus in the face, unashamed and happy? That, to me at least, would constitute ultimate success.

Feeding the 5000: Foreshadowing the The Book of Mormon

Prophecy is usually delivered via verbal or written means; Joseph Smith predicted the Civil War with such accuracy that no one talks about it (see D&C 87:1-4). He explained in literal, straightforward language the events that were about to transpire. This post is dedicated to my pure speculation of a different kind of prophecy—an event that prefigures another so closely that the first could be called a prediction of the second.

In John, we read the familiar story of the miracle in which Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fishes to feed the gathered multitudes. John 6:5-14: "When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world."

How does this miracle prefigure the coming forth of the Book of Mormon? We can compare the two events:

Just as the multitude were without food, the world was in a famine of doctrine, the apostasy. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord..." (Amos 8:11).

Jesus looked on the doctrinally starved world as he looked on the 5000. Jesus already had a plan to rectify each situation. A lad in the crowd had five loaves and two fish, hardly enough to feed a multitude. Joseph Smith was a young man at the time of his first vision, and was still "unlearned" at the time he received the plates from Moroni. He was given the power to translate part of the plates, and the resulting manuscript was a stack of paper with handwriting on it. How could the two fish and five loaves feed thousands? How could this stack of scribbled paper (the paper itself was referred to as "fools cap" paper because of the water mark on it) end the famine of hearing the word of the Lord?

Jesus blessed the loaves and fishes, and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the 5000 gathered there. Jesus blessed the endeavors of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and others in the publishing of the Book of Mormon. Thanks to the contributions of time and money from supporters (Phillip mentions the cost of feeding the multitude), W. B. Grandin was able to produce 5000 copies in the first printing of the Book of Mormon. (I recently learned that Porter Rockwell picked and sold berries to help fund the printing.)

Jesus gave the bread and fish to His disciples first, and they then distributed it to the rest of the multitude. Copies of first editions of the Book of Mormon found their way into the hands of Brigham Young, Parley Pratt, and others who became members of the original Quorum of the Twelve. These men went as missionaries throughout England and America, converting thousands. "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." Just as the original Twelve gathered twelve baskets, so the first modern Quorum of Twelve gathered the Saints from the ends of the earth to Zion. There were excess fragments of bread after the 5000 were filled; hundreds of millions of copies of the Book of Mormon have been printed in hundreds of languages.

After witnessing this miracle, many hailed Jesus as "that prophet that should come into the world." The miracles of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, as well as the rapid growth of the Church of Christ he founded, all stand as testimony to the divine authenticity of Joseph's calling as a prophet of God.

Luke 13:21 gives a parable about the kingdom: "It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." Joseph interpreted the parable as a reference to the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon. Their names and witnesses are attached to the preface of every copy. None of them denied their witness, yet each of them apostatized. This is strong evidence for the authenticity of their witness. Leaven is mold, yeast, a corrupting agent, yet it also supports the structure of a loaf of bread, causing it to rise in the oven. The corruption in the hearts of the three witnesses ultimately supported the authenticity of their witness, as well as the whole kingdom of God.

The Book of Mormon says that Joseph Smith would resemble Joseph in Egypt, his prophetic ancestor. Joseph in Egypt allowed a nation and his family to survive physical famine; Joseph Smith was God's instrument in ending spiritual famine and apostasy.

As I said, the connection between John 6 and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon may be in my imagination, but the number of parallels makes me think otherwise.

Answer to a Question About the Book of Mormon

On my mission, my companion and I had a grand idea—set up a table in the major courtyard of the college campus where we served. Many people, adversarial or curious, would stop by and check out our booth.

One girl asked me why we needed the Book of Mormon when we have the Bible already. My answer at the time was woefully inadequate, and we both knew it. Today I saw well-meaning people wandering around a park, trying to spark up religious discussion while offering free water. I did not speak with them (contention is of the devil, and I became mildly aggravated just thinking about talking to them). But the encounter reminded me of my earlier experience on my mission. Below is my current answer to the question, "Why do we need the Book of Mormon?"

Living Messengers

The Bible was written thousands of years ago by prophets, apostles, and saints who are currently dead (or resurrected; unavailable either way). While their words are true, they did not live long enough to pass on their authority to a new generation of prophets. The Book of Mormon comes to the world with ordained ministers attached. Not only did God provide new information, new scripture; He also provides living, ordained prophets, apostles, and missionaries with the authority to baptize and lay hands on for the receipt of the Holy Ghost. This has not been true of the Bible since the time of the Apostles. To accept the Book of Mormon as true is to accept the principle of modern revelation.

Indivisible

Another useful function of the Book of Mormon is its indivisibility. By that I mean that it cannot be accepted in slices. The Bible can be approached as the word of God, a history of true miracles and divine theophanies, or it can be accepted as a partially true narrative with fantastical lies mingled with verifiable historical facts. You can learn about culture and custom, say the critics, but there are no visible footprints on the Sea of Galilee. So the Bible becomes a buffet, where people take what they want, and leave what they don't. Not so with the Book of Mormon. It is either completely true, or completely false, with no convenient middle ground. Also, it cannot be misinterpreted or used to start new religions, since it comes with living apostles. Many splinter groups have left the Church since Joseph Smith died; none of them I know of use the Book of Mormon in any significant way. The Bible is viewed by many as a do-it-yourself build-a-religion kit; the Book of Mormon lacks that option.

Geographical Gathering

Because the Book of Mormon comes with living messengers, authorized to baptize and build the Church of Christ again on the earth, it becomes something else the Bible alone cannot be: an invitation to literally, physically gather. The Bible may stir longing to gather, but where? The Old Testament gives us the law, and demonstrates obedience, and consequences of choices. The New Testament spreads the message that Jesus sacrificed for us, and fulfilled that old law. But the tens of thousands of divergent denominations, fragments of Christianity scattered the world over, are clear evidence that the "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" Paul described are not widespread. The Bible has been on the earth for nearly two millennia now, and the problem of division and disagreement among sects is still rampant. Isaiah spoke of "a remnant" of Israel returning. When will that happen? And how? The Bible is apparently not the answer to the problem of gathering Israel; the Book of Mormon is.

The Book of Mormon is like a dinner bell rung at the end of a long, hard day, inviting weary children home to sit at the table of the Lord. Not only does the Book of Mormon come equipped with genuine messengers from God—it also comes with geographical promised lands, wards, stakes, and Temples where saints can gather literally and physically. It not only brings home the Lord's "sheep," who are familiar with His voice; it also feeds them til the Savior comes.

The Bible sends out the call, but it lacks a specific address for gathering, and the confused response to its message manifests itself as fractious sects, all Christian, yet all separate.

Personal Revelation

Finally, the Book of Mormon comes with the promise of personal communication from God, even an invitation to obtain a witness through the Holy Ghost. A religion that does not involve personal communication with God is a farce (early Church presidents expressed this idea). Why should anyone join this Church rather than others? Ask God. If you cannot get any response, you probably should not be going to any church at all.

The Bible describes people interacting with God; only the lost invest themselves in arguing over what God said anciently. The Pharisees knew the scriptures; Jesus knew God. The ancients set the example for us, but how few have actually followed it! Scripture study is important, but it is useful only as it leads to revelation, personal interaction with our Heavenly Father.

Those who approach the Lord with an I-will-do-anything-you-ask attitude are the ones who get revelation more readily, I believe. No pope, no saints, no middlemen of any kind—secure knowledge for yourself, on your knees. That is the invitation of Joseph Smith and his successors; it is the invitation of the Book of Mormon. Anciently, religion and politics and culture were the same thing; you were born into a civilization, and adopted the customs of your ancestors and community. Religious adherence was compulsory. Not anymore. Now we have a buffet of philosophies, religions, sects, gurus, charlatans, snake oil peddlers, etc., to choose from. We have the luxury and the time to get distracted. That is the world we see today. Rich people trying on religions and philosophies like sweaters, all window shopping.

The Book of Mormon presents the obvious, yet daunting solution: Ask God. My witness is that God answers our prayers, if we pray in faith and humility. Willingness to comply with revelation is the main key, in my opinion, to qualify to receive it. It is also my witness that the Lord has confirmed to me, through personal revelation, that the Bible, Book of Mormon, and other restored scriptures, are true. Joseph Smith was called of God. There is a living prophet on the earth today, and the authority to administer the ancient ordinances is restored again. I feel it a privilege to sit quietly in the morning and pore over the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. I hear my Savior's voice in the words, and I am grateful for all the scriptures He has given us.

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15 November 2015, Update: There is an excellent new site about the Book of Mormon called bookofmormoncentral.org. The general concept is to create a comprehensive website about all Book of Mormon scholorship, everything ever written (or sung, painted, sculpted, etc.) about it. There are scores of excellent articles about linguistics, archaeology, and principles.