The Fall of the Great and Abominable Church

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13 And the blood of that great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall turn upon their own heads; for they shall war among themselves, and the sword of their own hands shall fall upon their own heads, and they shall be drunken with their own blood.

14 And every nation which shall war against thee, O house of Israel, shall be turned one against another, and they shall fall into the pit which they digged to ensnare the people of the Lord. And all that fight against Zion shall be destroyed, and that great whore, who hath perverted the right ways of the Lord, yea, that great and abominable church, shall tumble to the dust and great shall be the fall of it. (1 Nephi 22:13-14)

These aren’t the only verses that speak of the consequences of fighting against Zion. Verses 15-16, 18, 22-23 say more, so they are worth examining as well. But I’m going to look at the above verses today.

First, I notice the entities that are referred to by the different names who will be punished—the great and abominable church, the whore of all the earth, every nation which shall war against thee O house of Israel, all that fight against Zion, that great whore, that great and abominable church. There’s a chiasmus there in the order they are mentioned.

the great and abominable church,

the whore of all the earth,

every nation which shall war against thee O house of Israel,

all that fight against Zion,

that great whore,

that great and abominable church

The entities that are victimized in these verses are the house of Israel, the people of the Lord, and Zion. 

How are these good entities attacked? What is done to them that must be stopped, according to Nephi?

--The house of Israel is warred against.

--The people of the Lord are being ensnared with pits dug for them.

--Zion is being fought against.

--As a bonus, “the right ways of the Lord” are also being perverted, so apparently the gospel path suffers too from being disrupted, obscured, diverted, neglected, avoided, slandered, etc.

These verses also describe how judgments catch up with the great and abominable church, the whore, and nations that fight against Zion. It comes in different forms:

--They fight among themselves (unity among the wicked can’t continue. They will offend each other and turn against each other)

--They are drunken with their own blood (apparently they will get so obsessed with the fight against each other that it clouds their judgment)

--They shall fall into the pit they digged to ensnare others in (they are found guilty of the very accusations they bring against the people of the Lord. Hypocrisy is exposed, since they project their own sins onto others.)

--They will be destroyed (their own violent and destructive tendencies will be turned against them)

--They will “tumble to the dust” with a great fall (Evidently all their previous ascendency and status will be lost)

I think we are told this so that we know the consequences and judgment for fighting against Zion and the Lord are real, and so we will recognize it when it happens. (Apparently it comes in at least five forms.) We will pass through narrow times because of the great and abominable church, the whore, and nations and all who fight against Zion. We’ll wonder if there will be an end to it. Here we are told there will be.

Why is it so hard to do good things and so easy to do bad things?

This question ^ was asked recently in a book club I belong to with other members of the church.  It’s a fascinating one. It made me think.  

Mormon takes a chapter to observe on these facts in the Book of Helaman when he observes how people are quick to do evil and how slow to do good.  But asking why things are that way is a good question that I think worth examining.

I think it has something to do with energy input and entropy.

Doing good takes energy.  Our spirit has to impose a certain level of order on our mortal, corruptible bodies. It also takes energy to sustain that order over time, just like it takes energy to keep the clutter of life from choking our houses.  (Example: I come home from church with a bag of stuff that I have to take some time to put away. I’m imposing order things.)

Maybe I’m out of line relating this to the laws of thermodynamics and creeping entropy, but I find it a helpful metaphor.

The more order you impose on something, the more energy it takes.  For things to fall back into chaos, it takes practically no energy at all. You simply do nothing and wait.  It’s all downhill.

Doing good, you’re pushing uphill.  Imposing order.  Putting in energy.

And where that energy comes from that allows a fallen mortal to do that? That’s Christ and His grace.

Lessons from the Lord’s curse upon Satan in the Garden of Eden

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: (Genesis 3:14)

I was thinking about this recently and I started to wonder, “If Satan was already cursed because of being cast out of heaven, why curse him again?” and “How does it help us to know this curse?”

If we think this is just about a serpent, it seems like the curse is obvious. It’s implied that the serpent used to have legs and here has them taken away. It’s also implied that it used to eat something better, but is now relegated to only eating dust.  Our view of snakes today is perfectly in line with the seemingly physical conditions God describes.  Serpents have to slither everywhere. And they’re always sticking their tongues out, so it looks like they are licking the ground. (Of course, today we know that the tongue action is the way snakes sense things.)

As I thought about it, I wondered if maybe the Lord was making a statement about the curses that come to those who tempt like Satan does.  Satan is already cursed, but it is us who must be warned from becoming his servants and tempting others.  Eve briefly became Satan’s servant when tempting Adam to eat the fruit, so the warning is appropriate.

“upon thy belly shalt thou go” – This curse is about how faster travel has been somehow taken away. I think the larger theme is about progression.  It teaches that those who tempt others will have their own spiritual progress substantially slowed to the point that everyone goes much faster.  Not a pleasant prospect.  Not only that, but any movement would happen on the belly instead of on legs.  That may refer to how a tempter’s core motivation for acting would become satisfying their appetites.  One might even say that a tempter would be enslaved by their appetites.

“dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” –  This curse seems to be about what a tempter finds nourishing.  A tempter feeds not on something sweet, but on gross stuff. If they want to eat dirt all their life instead of something that tastes better, their taste has become corrupted.  They call evil good, and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). Who wants to eat dirt?  Not me.  I’d rather eat tasty fruit from the tree of life than dirt.

So, I think this bit of knowledge can help us when we are being tempted. It helps us discern the consequences.  We don’t want our progression slowed, we don’t want our appetites to be our motivation, and we don’t want to be have our moral and aesthetic tastes corrupted.  

It can also help us think about what we have to offer others when we are trying to persuade them to try something.  Will it stop their progression, enslave them to an appetite or corrupt them in some way?  If so, then we shouldn’t try to pull them in, and we shouldn’t be in it either!

Why a Serpent in the Garden of Eden?

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (Genesis 3:1)

I have wondered for a while why the writer of Genesis used a serpent to represent Satan in the story of the Fall.

Lately, because of some experiences I’ve had, I’ve realized why. As Genesis says, the serpent was more subtle than any beast, and Satan is also subtle.  Satan will slither into our thoughts just like a snake when we don’t notice and he will try to plant some lie there. If we’re not aware, we will believe it, and then we’ll make choices based on the lie, which will get us into trouble.

So what do we do? We have to do our best to club him to death when we are presented with his lies or notice them sneaking in.

When God confronts Satan for tempting Adam and Eve, He says this:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

That bruising the serpent’s head expresses beating down the lies and not listening to them. Satan keeps trying to tempt us though, so we have to kill the lies over and over again.

In the temple narrative, however, God says something slightly different. Instead of saying that the seed of the woman would bruise Satan’s head, God says the woman’s seed will crush the serpent’s head.  To me that prophesies of several things: 1) how Christ would resist every temptation presented to Him, 2) that Christ would defeat spiritual death with the atonement, 3) that Christ would overcome physical death so we would not be endlessly dead and subject to the devil, and 4) that with Christ’s help we will be able to resist temptation.

I take great comfort in that bit about crushing the serpent’s head. If I can keep beating down the lies as they are presented, by the grace of God, someday they will be crushed, never more to rise again.

God shows men that they were lost so they need repentance

And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men. For he gave commandment that all men must repent; for he showed unto all men that they were lost, because of the transgression of their parents. (2 Nephi 2:21)

Here Lehi is explaining the probationary period of life to his son Jacob. I was reading that last bit and it kind of rubbed me wrong: “for he showed unto all men that they were lost, because of the transgression of their parents.” 

It sounds like what he says is all parents’ transgressions cause their children to be lost spiritually. But I don’t think that’s what he means.

Actually, what I think Lehi was trying to say is that all men are lost, and the account of our first parents’ Fall (Adam and Eve) is the tool God uses to show us this. 

The account of the Fall shows a commandment being given, the commandment being broken through the enticing of Satan, the shame of guilt, the confrontation over the commandment, and the consequences of spiritual death.  (Of course, in the temple we also get the providence of a Savior, additional commandments to keep, and the promise of being reclaimed from the Fall.)

Without an account of God directly confronting people over their sin and giving consequences, how would we know sin is offensive to God and that He punishes? The thing that gives the story such power is that it makes a direct confrontation by God over sin a real possibility. It is a type and shadow of judgment and also a type of the experience we have when we yield to Satan’s temptations. We know what yielding feels like. We see the guilt is real, whether one yields by one’s self or yields because of other people’s enticing.

When we read Adam and Eve are confronted over eating the fruit, we know God would also confront us over our sins and there is no hiding them. When we read of Adam and Eve cast out of the Garden of Eden as consequence of their sin, we know we face real consequences for our sins that have a real impact on us and make things hard.

And the rest of the Bible gives us plenty of types of God’s efforts to reclaim people from their sin, types to teach us to believe in Christ as the Savior of the world who would intercede for us.

So, because of the story of the Fall we know to expect to be confronted by God over our sins, whether in this life or in the afterlife. And in the time we have before then, we can repent through faith in Christ to save us.

David delivers Saul’s sons to the Gibeonites

1 Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.

2 And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.)

3 Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?

4 And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you.

5 And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel,

6 Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose. And the king said, I will give them. (2 Sam. 21:1-6)

This is a rather odd story. 

If you remember, the Gibeonites were people who tricked Joshua into making a league with them when the Israelites were entering the land.  They were allowed to stay and became servants to the Israelites.

Evidently one of the perfidious things Saul had done was he had broken that league and killed Gibeonites and the Lord wasn’t happy about it and wanted to use the famine to bring that to remembrance so that David would make it right.

At David’s question of how to make it right, the Gibeonites asked that seven of Saul’s sons be given them to be hung up unto the Lord in Gibeah.  And David consented to this.

Just who was executed is a little in doubt because in v7 it says Mephibosheth was not delivered to them, but in the very next verse it says he was.  Also, v8 says five sons of Michal were delivered over, but earlier in 2 Samuel it is said that Michal never had children.  (It could have just referred to children by her other husband that Saul gave her to, and before David got her back again.)

Now, in principle, this story is weird because the whole of Israel is plagued for the sins of one man and then Saul’s sons (who we presume are innocent) are put to death as restitution for those sins.

However, if we see this story as yet another type of Christ’s sacrifice in the scriptures, we can gain instruction from it.  The whole nation of Israel is plagued by the sin of Saul, corresponding to how the whole world is plagued by the sin of Adam and the fall, and we all partake in it.  To make it right, the king’s sons are executed, even though they are innocent, thereby prefiguring how Christ, an innocent man, gave Himself to atone so that we could escape the punishment.

Patterns of Eden in Exodus

As I was reading my way through Exodus, I noticed there was mention of the tabernacle and doing things with it before the chapters wherein is described the making of it.  I thought that was odd.  It meant that the chapters had not been arranged in chronological order as I preciously thought.  That meant that there was some other order that was being used for an instructive purpose. 

After some more thought, it seemed to me that the stories of the children of Israel’s sins had been lumped together and set before the stories of their faithful obedience to Moses’ (and God’s) instructions.  This made me think that perhaps the stories had been arranged in a manner to create a type of the Fall of Adam.

Consider:

Children of Israel	Garden of Eden/Adam and Eve
Stories of the people leaving Egypt, Creation of the Israelite people	Creation of man
The giving of commandments for the temple’s construction	The creation of a paradisiacal earth and the first commandments to Adam
The making of the golden calf while Moses was absent (The Fall of Israel)	the Fall of Man
The excuses of Aaron	Adam accounting to God
Moses’ plea for the people (Reminder of Christ’s atonement to prevent immediate destruction )	Providing a Savior for man
Moses and Levites punishing the wicked people with death	Physical death
The tabernacle is moved outside the camp of Israel (Even though it wasn’t supposed to have been built yet) (God’s presence is removed )	Spiritual death (rough correspondence to Adam leaving the Garden of Eden)
God to only show his back parts to Moses	Spiritual death (though attenuated for the prophets)
Moses puts a veil over his face when with Israel	Spiritual death and rejection of the higher law
Repetition of giving the commandments, giving the lower law	Giving the law of sacrifice
Command to gather offerings for making the tabernacle	Giving the law of sacrifice
People give offerings for tabernacle construction	Obedience to the law of sacrifice

It seems the Book of Exodus, taken in a broad view, is meant to show how Israel was following the same pattern as Adam and Even had in the Garden of Eden.   We also recognize that it has many elements of the temple narrative. 

Cool, huh?

Lehi’s insights into Adam’s Fall

18 …he [Satan] said unto Eve, yea, even that old serpent, who is the devil, who is the father of all lies, wherefore he said: Partake of the forbidden fruit, and ye shall not die, but ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

19 And after Adam and Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit they were driven out of the garden of Eden, to till the earth.

20 And they have brought forth children; yea, even the family of all the earth.

21 And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God….

22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.

23 And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.

24 But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. (2 Nephi 2:18-25)

One of the great things about Lehi’s discourse on the Fall is that he gives us something that no other place in scripture gives us—Adam’s reasons for partaking the fruit. All other places say that “[Eve] took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” making it sound like Adam ate mindlessly what Eve gave him.

But here we get the first inkling (though it is not explained fully) that Adam fell (ate the fruit) so that he could have children. This suggests something we are familiar with—that Adam and Eve knew they would have to separate if one ate the fruit and the other did not, that Eve would have to leave the Garden of Eden and Adam would not need to.

Think of what would have happened if Adam had decided not to partake of the fruit too. He and Eve would have been separated and would not have been able to have children. Not only that, Eve would have been endlessly lost, having fallen forever, and being separated from Adam, so she would have been unable to have children, especially the distant descendant Jesus Christ who would atone for her sins as well as all others.

The apostle Paul realized this too, since he wrote to Timothy:

14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety. (1 Timothy 2:14-15)

Paul’s words about Adam not being deceived seem totally incomprehensible unless we take it as a hint that Adam was tempted to eat the fruit once before and resisted the temptation, and it was only the prospect of losing Eve and the means to have children that persuaded him to eat the fruit.

Paul’s words also highlight that Eve’s salvation (and everyone else’s too) depended on her having children. She had to have children, her children had to have children, and so on, to ultimately bring Christ into the world so He could atone for us.

LDS scholar Hugh Nibley pointed out that Eve, though fallen, still exhibited great love of the truth by working to keep her marriage together so that she could keep the commandment to have children. (Having broken one commandment, she didn’t want to break any others.)

After Eve had eaten the fruit and Satan had won his round, the two [Adam and Eve] were now drastically separated, for they were of different natures. But Eve, who in ancient lore is the one who outwits the serpent and trips him up with his own smartness, defeated this trick by a clever argument. First she asked Adam if he intended to keep all of God's commandments. Of course he did! All of them? Naturally! And what, pray, was the first and foremost of those commandments? Was it not to multiply and replenish the earth, the universal commandment given to all God's creatures? And how could they keep that commandment if they were separated? It had undeniable priority over the commandment not to eat the fruit. So Adam could only admit that she was right and go along: “I see that it must be so,” he said, but it was she who made him see it. This is much more than a smart way of winning her point, however. It is the clear declaration that man and woman were put on the earth to stay together and have a family—that is their first obligation and must supersede everything else.(Hugh Nibly, “Patriarchy and Matriarchy”, http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=151)

So it seems that both Adam and Eve must be remembered for their strong commitment to marriage and family and having children.

Garbled verse on the condescension of God

In John 3, Jesus talks to Nicodemus and tells him about His mission, of which I will give you a few verses.

12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
14 ¶And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (John 3:12-14)

I want to focus on verse 13, which seems to me like a bunch of bizarre gobblety-gook as it is written. How can Jesus say “no man hath ascended up to heaven” if Enoch and Zion were translated? And how can Jesus say “the Son of man which is in heaven” when Jesus is clearly right there in mortality on earth? Obviously there are some major misunderstandings and translation issues with this verse!

So, it may be better if we just look at the keywords and ignore all the connecting language.

no man
ascended up
heaven
came down
heaven
Son of man
heaven

First off, I notice there’s this odd order—ascending up then coming down. If understood in this order, it seems like transfiguration rather than the condescension of God, so maybe the order is not meant to be read linearly here.

I also notice “heaven” occurs three times. Also, “man” occurs twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. So maybe this was actually a chiasmus with the middle point of emphasis on “came down from heaven.”

It would make sense for the condescension of God to be emphasized here because the rest of Jesus’s words in the chapter progress through the elements (of which condescension would belong at front):

1. (the Son of man came down from heaven)
2. Moses lifted up the serpent as a type of Christ’s sacrifice
3. God gave His Son to save the world
4. The world must believe in the Son or perish

Also, looking at the rest of Jesus’s words in this story, it is plain verse 13 is needed, even in its garbled (to us) state. We already know that God sent His Son, but it adds the information that the Son came. To me it implies the Son’s willingness to come, not just obedience, and that is worth knowing. We also see how helpful Nephi’s vision was because he was shown specifically and he wrote clearly about the condescension of God.

Takeaway: If you mark anything in that verse, do yourself a favor and mark “he that came down from heaven.”

Update: Okay. I’m beginning to see more in this verse than I thought.

“no man hath ascended up to heaven” Think about this in terms of the Fall of man. The entire doctrine of the Fall is compacted into this little phrase. (It’s probably compacted so much because Jesus knew Nicodemus was already familiar with it.)

“he that came down from heaven” We’ve already noted this refers to the condescension of God. It might even be an incredibly abbreviated mention of the need for a Savior.

“the Son of man which is in heaven” Here I suspect Christ anticipates His ascension back up to heaven to the right hand of God with power to give spiritual gifts to men and open the way for them to return to God too.

So maybe the verse seemed garbled because the doctrine was massively abbreviated.

Adam’s temporary fall

And this is the genealogy of the sons of Adam, who was the son of God, with whom God himself, conversed.” (Moses 6:22)

I previously took it for granted that when it says God conversed with Adam it meant in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. But now I’m not so sure it just means that. Plus, if the bit about Adam as “the son of God” just means Adam was created by God or that Adam’s spirit was begotten by God, we wouldn’t be learning anything new.

BUT!! If it means that Adam was born again of God and that he eventually attained such righteousness that he was brought back into the presence of God and conversed with God face to face, then we would really learn something truly precious, something worthy of the Pearl of Great Price. That would mean that Adam had obeyed the gospel, depended upon Christ’s atonement, and put off the natural man and became a saint. It would mean that through his faith in Christ, he had overcome his own fall. It would mean that Adam didn’t remain in his fallen state and that neither should we.

Falling River, Fall of Adam

10 And I, the Lord God, caused a river to go out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11 And I, the Lord God, called the name of the first Pison, and it compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where I, the Lord God, created much gold;…
13 And the name of the second river was called Gihon; the same that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
14 And the name of the third river was Hiddekel; that which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river was the Euphrates. (Moses 3:10-11, 13-14)

For the river to go out of Eden, Eden had to be on a higher elevation than everything else. This geographic state is clearly communicating to us a spiritual truth. Eden was a mountain of the Lord.

The river’s course also foreshadows the Fall of man, the exile from Eden, and the loss of unity, and being scattered in all directions to different lands.

But all of this downward and outward flow of humanity is eventually reversed, as Isaiah prophesies of the flow of people who will both come together and go up to the mountain of the Lord.

2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:2-3, emphasis added)

Image from “Hiking in Southern Japan” blog, http://demo.inktails.com/2007/11/kamiyama-the-spirit-mountain-of-tokushima/