Eve forbidden fruit

VIDEO: Come, Follow Me Insights | Old Testament Lesson 2: January 3–9 “In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth” Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5 | Book of Mormon Central

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Come, Follow Me Week 2, Part 1/7 (Jan 3 – Jan 9, Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5)

Come, Follow Me Week 2, Part 1/7 (Jan 3 – Jan 9, Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–5) – powered by Happy Scribe

Welcome to Book of Mormon Central’s. Come follow me. I’m Lynn Wilson, and I’ll be talking about the Old Testament through the lens of the Book of Mormon and in the creation accounts through the lens of the Pearl great Price. When I’ve gone through and looked at each of these different creation accounts, I try to Mark in my Scriptures what each one says and what is added to the Genesis version, and it’s absolutely powerful. And today I want to talk about the nature of God.

Chapter One of Genesis and two, and Moses and Abraham had such a rich connection, but I want to just focus on two words God creates. We all know Genesis chapter One one very well. In the beginning, God created the heaven and Earth, but the name God is Elohim. In this situation, it’s a beautiful name. And if you look at all the names of Scripture, we see that Elohim and Jehovah are the two most frequently mentioned.

In fact, Jehovah has 6218 references in the Old Testament, whereas Elohim is only 2570, but it’s different than how we use them. Now we define one as God the Father, and one is God, the Son. But in the Old Testament often these names are interchangeable, and it’s difficult in the King James Version to know this because both of them are written out sometimes as God and sometimes as Lord all capitalized. There are beautiful other names that are in the Old Testament for our God, such as the Holy One of Israel, the Redeemer, the Lord God Almighty.

But more often than not, the names of Elohim and Jehovah are taken and put with a characteristic such as the Lord of Hosts or the Lord my shepherd or the Lord my healer.

And so we have the Yahweh or Jehovah connected to other words. We see the same pattern in the Book of Mormon. And if you count every time the name of our God is mentioned, you’ll find 101 different references to Christ. And as we are saturated with this beautiful context, of these 101 names repeated over and over in the Book of Mormon, statisticians have gone through and found every 1.7 verses. Statistically speaking, you’ll come across the name of our Lord.

It’s absolutely beautiful. And there’s one other thing that is powering to me about noticing the names in the Book of Mormon. In the Old Testament, the vast majority of the two great names are the same in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon. This is very interesting because the Book of Mormon claims to be an Old Testament text. If it were a 19th century creation, we would have Jesus or Christ as the number one, not Lord and God.

But that is what we find. And in fact, in my chart here you can see that in addition to the 1350 times the word Lord is used alone, we also have ten other names that are attached to Lord. And if I had connected all those together. We would probably come up with a difference like it is in the Old Testament, where Jehovah Yahweh or Lord as it is in the King James is used far more often than the word God. But this is beautiful, and studying the names of Lord always helps me appreciate his role, the way I can approach him and apply him to him in my life and helps me worship and helps me grow my faith in him as well.

When Joseph Smith started learning Hebrew and added to his translations, he became fascinated and intrigued that Elohim ends in I am the plural form in Hebrew and in two different sermons in Navou, he chose to discuss Genesis one and one, and he translated in the beginning. God created in a different way, and I would like to read to you his translation, the head one of the gods brought forth the gods. And then it goes on in these sermons to talk about how the word create can also be used as the word organize.

He denounces creation ex millio. He says it didn’t happen.

There was no creation out of nothing. God organized the elements. He says God had materials to organize. The world element has no beginning and no end. And he goes on and on.

This was absolutely radical doctrine in his day, but he receives this information, of course, from his Joseph Smith translation and from the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon. The more we learn about God, the nature of God, we can see it in his creations, and I love looking at his creations to learn more about our Savior. I went through the Old Testament just looking at how often they talk about God as our Creator or the creation or creating or creative. I used every word I could find that meant this, and there are only 62 references I was thrilled to find 62, though they’re in nine of the books.

And not surprisingly, Genesis and Isaiah are the most often as I look just for Adam and Eve, they’re mainly just in Genesis.

There’s 18 references total. When we look at Isaiah, I was thrilled to see that there is so many references to the creation there because Isaiah is the book that speaks most about God as our Savior, about the suffering servant, about our great Jehovah. And of course, then we would see this nature of God brought in there as well as our Creator. But when we look at the Book of Mormon text, I was not surprised to find 40% more references to create, creating creator, all of them combined.

There’s 102 in a book that’s less than half the size.

And the most surprising thing to me was it’s. In almost every single book. There’s only three books that are not there, and they’re both very short. Every other book refers to our God in the creating sense or the creation of his work. I was very surprised, though, to see how often Adam and Eve are mentioned, because in the Book of Mormon, we don’t have a creation text.

And yet 50% more often we see a reference to Adam and Eve in the Book of Mormon. This really blew my mind. And over half of the books of the Book of Mormon refer to our first parents. If you want to learn more about our first parents, I would encourage you to look at the Book of Mormon because there are seven times more references to the creation and the creating than there are in the Old Testament. Just amazing information.

These were things that were removed from that text that were brought back. And so when you go to the Book of Mormon and you want to read more about our God as our Creator, I’d encourage you to look specifically at two nephew’s Mosaica, chapter two and Alma, chapter 18 and 22. One of my favorites is in King Benjamin, and this wasn’t just my favorite. It was passed on for hundreds of years. Samuel, the Laminate is up on the wall and he even quotes King Benjamin sermon.

So it was well known throughout the history of the Nephi people from the time of King Benjamin on. But King Benjamin connects these people so that we understand who God is. And this is difficult as Christianity and other traditions who use the Bible are trying to grapple on what is the nature and role of God. But we read in Mosaic chapter three, verse eight, that he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning.

Now remember, Christ is the Greek word for Hebrew, Messiah, an English, anointed one.

And so as he’s identifying Joshua as Jehovah, the Son of God and the Father of Heaven. We then understand how Christ is both our Father and the Son. He is the Father because he is the Creator of all things from the beginning that we know of the Creator of our Earth. This is a beautiful combination of the role of the God of the Old Testament, which is Jesus Christ, and this is the man that we worship. This is the being that we honor been addict also speaks of Him beautifully, and there are seven attributes of our Savior.

In Mosaic chapter seven, verse 27, I’ll just read a small portion of them. Christ was the God the Father of all things and said that he should take upon himself the image of man, which image was created in the beginning after the image of God. This doctrine clarifies the Trinity. If we had understood it, we would not have had so many challenges. And the Nice and Creed and the Creeds of Orange and the creeds that lasted for hundreds of years afterward, trying to battle with who is the Spirit and what’s his relationship to the Father and the Son.

This is powerful clarification that came in the Book of Mormon that Joseph received right at the beginning of the Restoration. But my favorite verses about who our Savior is in the Book of Mormon that help us understand the God of the Old Testament come as the voice from heaven is declared after the three days of horrific destruction in the New World with Christ’s death. While this voice is spoken at the times of this destruction out of the midst of darkness, he says, If Ye will come unto me, Ye shall have eternal life.

Behold, my arm of mercy is extended toward you, and whosoever will come him will I receive. And blessed are those who come unto me.

This piece of information would have solved all the confusion of the first Great Awakening and the second Great Awakening. All the confusions of the Reformationists of the Calvinist. Who said, there are just a few select that are chosen and everyone else is damned. The idea that we can all choose to come under God, that we can use our agency to fall on our knees and worship Him is the blessing of the message that is given here on the nature of our Creator Jesus Christ, and I worship Him and leave these things thoughts with you in his name.

Amen.

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