Tag: King Benjamin

Mosiah 3: 14-15

When the Lord’s people wanted religion, but were unwilling to accept the fullness, He accommodated their desire and gave to them the “law of Moses” to keep them busy. (Mosiah 3: 14.) It is the nature of “stiffnecked” people that they prefer religious ceremonies, and endless repetition of rituals to coming into the Lord’s presence. (Id.)

King Benjamin is reminded by the angel that the purpose of the “law of Moses” was not to redeem anyone. It was merely a way to keep the people busy.

In addition to the law of Moses, the Lord gave “signs and wonders” and also many “types and shadows” to acquaint the people with the fact of “his coming.” (Mosiah 3: 15.) These were not ends. They were all means.

Why give the law of Moses?

Why give “signs” and “wonders?”

The people confused the symbols with the real thing. They thought through the symbols they were chosen, elect, and holy. They thought they were a kingdom of priests, a royal priesthood. Instead, what they should have thought was that they were poor because the Lord was not dwelling among them, they considered themselves rich because they had “types and shadows.” They preferred the symbol to the reality. The true religion was only symbolized by the rites. By worshiping the symbols and not recognizing the truths which were their foundation, they became mere idolaters. It is one of the constant risks faced by God’s people, because the devil is always looking to convert the holy church of God into something perverted and evil. (See Mormon 8: 33-38.)

They could rejoice in their laws, rites, ordinances and rituals. They could consider themselves better than the nations around them because they had God’s program for salvation. All the program did was “harden their hearts” because they were proud rather than humble.

These religious and proud people did not understand that all their endless rites “availeth nothing” because it was the Lord alone who could redeem them. (Mosiah 3: 15.) They took their eyes off the Lord, and put them on the religion. They did not understand the religion was nothing, if it failed to point them to the Lord.

How oft might the Lord have gathered them, indeed! It is astonishing that men would prefer religion to God; prefer pride which alienates them from God to humility which could bring them into His presence.

Signs, wonders, types, shadows are nothing if they fail to get you to look at the underlying reasons for them. They are not the real thing. They merely point to the real thing; for that, it is left between you and the Lord.

Some few will see it as it really is. They will not be limited by the failures of the generation they live in. They can be saved in any generation because they see beyond the Lord in His types, shadows, signs and wonders. (Alma 12: 10.)

Salvation is and always has been individual. This is why there are prophets. Some will lay hold on the promises which others refuse to see.

Mosiah 3: 11-13

The angel informed King Benjamin that Christ’s blood is intended to atone for the sins of those who sinned ignorantly, or those who died without knowing God’s will. (Mosiah 3: 11) However, there is a two-fold wo pronounced on those who know they rebel against God. They are cast down, and for them there will be no hope, no salvation, “except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Mosiah 3: 12.) That of course, must happen before they die.

The angel explained the Lord has sent “his holy prophets among all the children of men.” (Mosiah 2: 13.) When the Lord sends someone with a message, they are by definition “holy” because they bear the message of God. Having been entrusted with His word, they are derivatively holy. (See Acts 9: 15) It does not mean they are better than other men because everyone sins. The content of what God has given them makes them “holy” before God. Since King Benjamin has just been entrusted with God’s message for his people, King Benjamin has become “holy” also. 

The messages have been sent, at one time or another, “among all the children of men.” All nations have had some portion of the word of God given to them. This does not mean they have been given a fullness, for that is rarely given. It does mean the Lord has concern over all of us and will call and send prophets to everyone.

How people react to what they are offered determines how much a prophet is able to teach them. If they will not give heed, then the audience receives only a portion of what they might have received. (Alma 12: 9.) Sometimes people can be offered a “fullness” and reject it, and then have it taken from them. (D&C 124: 28.)

The purpose of the message is for all to have “exceedingly great joy.” (Mosiah 3: 13.)

This joy comes from knowing the Lord. Knowing Him comes from obeying the words given to them through the “holy prophets.”

One of the greatest laments of the Lord arises from how the world reacts to His holy prophets. He makes the same offer every time, whenever He calls someone as His spokesman. The offer is by His word, to gather His people into one and be their shelter. (D&C 43: 24; see also 3 Ne. 10: 4-6.) Despite the many times when this might have happened, there have been fewer than four occasions we have a record of the Lord actually gathering His people.

The purpose of giving His word to His people is to lead them to Him. If they will actually come to Him, He will come and dwell with them. We were once given that opportunity. (D&C 104: 59.)

We are promised the Lord will return again (10th Article of Faith), and there will be people prepared to meet Him. It will happen, and will be on this land. (Ether 13: 5-6.) Any gentiles who are going to survive the coming calamities will need to flee there. (D&C 133: 12; 42: 9.)

Mosiah 3: 7

This verse is the greatest summary of what the Lord would suffer in atoning for man’s sins given before His mortality. King Benjamin is given this instruction because God wants all mankind to understand the great sacrifice made by the Lord Omnipotent.

Christ suffered “even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death” as part of the burden He bore. (Mosiah 3: 7.) What was the burden?

First on the angel’s list is “temptations.” Isaiah would call it “our griefs” and “our sorrows” and “our transgressions” and “our iniquities.” (Isa. 53: 4-5.)  Alma would call it “afflictions and temptations of every kind.” (Alma 7: 11.) Paul explained how He “who knew no sin” was made “to be sin” for our sake. (2 Cor. 5: 21.) In other words, though Christ was not personally responsible for any transgression, He was made accountable for every one of all our transgressions. He was made “to be sin” and to feel the loathsome filthiness of our unworthiness before God.

Mormon had been in the Lord’s presence. He knew how painful it was to be before God in our fallen and guilty state. Mormon explained how terrible it is to bring the weight of your own sins into God’s holy presence. He describes it as “under a consciousness of your guilt” and “a consciousness of guilt that ye have ever abused his laws” and “more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your filthiness before him, than ye would be to dwell with the damned souls in hell.” (Mormon 9: 3-4.) He explains that in God’s presence “ye shall be brought to see your nakedness before God” and it “will kindle a flame of unquenchable fire upon you.” (Mormon 9: 5.) Since Mormon had been there, and knew what it was like to behold God’s holy presence, he understood the great challenge we all face if we do not repent.

When the prophet Isaiah was brought into God’s presence he collapsed in guilt and anguish, proclaiming, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” (Isa. 6: 5.)

Beholding God brings with it the keenest appreciation of your own unworthiness before Him so it is possible to understand He is a “just and holy Being” in whom there is no darkness.

Christ succumbed to no temptations. Yet He was made to feel the guilt and misery of all mankind’s great surrender to sin. Christ explained what that involved when He declared: “repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore–how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not. For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I.” (D&C 19: 15-17.) Christ, looking back on His atonement, called the pain of it “exquisite” and “hard to bear” from a distance of two millennia.

The scriptures tell us how His suffering was accomplished. As He knelt in prayer, He was visited by a “just and holy being” to borrow Mormon’s words. (Luke 22: 43.) There, in the presence of the Father, Christ struggled through all the guilt, sorrow, nakedness, consciousness of guilt, and torment of being sinful, unworthy, unclean, and having ever transgressed the law of God. It was an unquenchable fire of emotion and pain, torment of mind, and recognition of failure before God. He, like all the wicked, “trembled because of pain” and “shrank” away from God in horror at His condition. (D&C 19: 18.)

Abraham was on the mount with the knife in his hand at the sacrifice of Isaac, and God the Father was present at the sacrifice of His Son. Indeed, Christ’s sufferings required the Father to be present in order to reconcile man to the Father. It was the presence of the Father that made the suffering possible. Therefore, we know the identity of the unnamed angel in Luke. (Luke 22: 43.) Christ could not have suffered the guilt of all mankind in the presence of a just and holy God, unless during this moment of torment His suffering was before that very Being.

Mosiah 3: 2-4

The third chapter of Mosiah is one of the most important accounts in the Book of Mormon. Like Section 76, the content is delivered by a visionary encounter through the veil with a messge sent by God to King Benjamin. This was between Benjamin and the angel. This is the same pattern as Moroni’s nighttime visit with Joseph Smith. In both of these encounters the message was for all mankind.

There is no mistake about the source of the message: The angel told King Benjamin to “Awake” in the same manner the Lord called to Samuel in the night, calling him by name. (1 Sam. 3: 3-4.) The “angel of the Lord” after awakening King Benjamin then “stood before him” to speak the message. (Mosiah 3: 2.)

The angel reiterates a second time for King Benjamin to “Awake”– and it is not redundant. (Mosiah 3: 3.) It is one thing to awaken from sleep, it is another to awaken to the news given by the angel. King Benjamin needed to awaken to both.

In order to “awaken” to the second, Benjamin needed to “hear the words which I shall tell.” Or, in other words, to allow the message from God to enter into his heart. (Id.)

Benjamin merited the audience, and it was given. The angel was to “declare” this message, and it was the king’s duty to listen, then hearken, and then declare to others. It was not a negotiation, or a discussion. It was a declaration. Through that process Benjamin will finally awaken to his own salvation. It is in doing the will of heaven that we all draw near to God.

Before delivering the content of the message, the angel characterizes the message in words similar to what Gabriel would declare to the shepherds keeping watch over the flock at night; “I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy.” (Id., see also Luke 2: 10.) When angels or the Lord explain His ministry to a prophet, the universal reaction is “joy” at the great redemption provided through the suffering of the Lord. (See, e.g., Moses 7: 47; Isa. 53: 10.) There is always a juxtaposition of the Lord’s suffering and universal “joy” at the result obtained from His sacrifice.

King Benjamin is told, like Zacharis would later be told, “the Lord hath heard thy prayers.” (Mosiah 3: 4; see also Luke 1: 13.) Both men were seeking the welfare of others. In the case of Zacharias the prayer was for the return of the light of God’s countenance to Israel. In the case of Benjamin, it was for his people. They were intercessors in similitude of the Lord who would be the Great Intercessor. Therefore, their prayer was aligned with heaven itself.

In response to Benjamin’s prayer, the angel declared the Lord “hath judged of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice.” (Mosiah 3: 4) When the Lord determines a man’s “righteousness” is acceptable before Him, then He redeems that man by parting the veil and bringing him into the company of the redeemed. (See D&C 76: 67.)

Benjamin is not to keep the news of redemption to himself, but he is to “declare unto thy people.” We are all required to bear testimony of the truth to one another. (Mosiah 3: 4.) The purpose of King Benjamin bearing testimony is so that others, who receive his testimony “may also be filled with joy.” (Id.) Of course, if they refuse to receive and accept the testimony, then they do not share in that joy.

This pattern of the angel appearing in quiet solitude, to the lone witness, is the same as the Lord’s dealing with Zacharias, Joseph Smith, Nephi, Enos, Samuel, Joseph F. Smith, Paul, and Elijah; all of whom were then required to tell others of their testimony. The Lord is the same. He acts the same. We tend to impose on Him rules which have never governed His conduct.

This chapter is one of the most doctrinally rich chapters in the Book of Mormon. It is worth careful study.