Presidet Boyd K. Packer told BYU students in a devotional
that, "Lehi’s dream or vision of the iron rod has in it everything a
Latter-day Saint needs to understand the test of life."[1]
Since I stumbled across that talk, I've often wondered how much is really in
Lehi's vision that will help us understand the test of life. Sure, we have the
iron rod, or the word of God, and that may really be all that we need to
understand the test of life. If we hold to the word of God, we will make it
through this life.
While this is
most definitely true, I believe that Lehi's/Nephi's vision hold a great deal
more than what we normally discuss in gospel doctrine classes, or that we hear
in General Conference. This blog (though it will not focus exclusively on the
topic) was created to help me put some of my ideas onto stone (if you will). We
will explore the Eden symbols that Nephi uses to illustrate the vision. We will
look at what Nephi wrote about building up to this vision. We will explore
other texts that may create a more complete picutre of the vision
(specifically, we will look at the closing chapters of 2 Nephi in detail). We
will discuss the elements that Lehi missed, the elements Nephi missed but later
included, as well as some elements that they both might have missed altogether.
We may even explore the relation of the Vision as a temple text (though that
probably won't happen for a while).
It is my goal,
and hope, that through this study we can gain a greater appreciation for this
wonderful vision, and it's ability to teach us everything we need to understand
the test of life. As an added bonus, I hope that by mining these texts, we will
gain a greater ability to read the scriptures in many different forms, and
discover new meaning in old text. Comments and criticism are greatly
appreciated (though, I doubt anyone will ever stumble across this page because
I do not plan on sharing it with people that I know). Cheers!
P.s. I'm a crap writer! Plan for many punctuation and
grammatical errors!
P.p.s. For the ease of the reader, I will use the standard
works, but I will more often than not, cite to different editions. If there is
no citation, assume that it came from the standard works.
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