Saturday, September 10, 2016

He Knoweth All Things- 1 Nephi 19:2

1 Nephi 19:2
He Knoweth All Things

What
 2 And I knew not at the time when I made them that I should be commanded of the Lord to make these plates; wherefore, the record of my father, and the genealogy of his fathers, and the more part of all our proceedings in the wilderness are engraven upon those first plates of which I have spoken; wherefore, the things which transpired before I made these plates are, of a truth, more particularly made mention upon the first plates.

1- Nephi has been commanded to make a second set of plates
2-He didn't know prior to this time that he would be making a second set
3-On the first set he recorded the record of Lehi, his genealogy and the journey in the wilderness.
4-Nephi testifies that these records are true.

Why
One record was for secular things (the first one)
One record was for sacred things (the second one)
both records were sacred though because he didn't write anything except he thought it would be sacred and important enough to be recorded in this difficult manner.

In the latter days part of the translation was stolen. Because Nephi had made a second record, Joseph Smith could use it and the evil men who had stolen it could not dispute the record.

D&C Section 10 
 10 And, behold, Satan hath put it into their hearts to alter the words which you have caused to be written, or which you have translated, which have gone out of your hands.
 11 And behold, I say unto you, that because they have altered the words, they read contrary from that which you translated and caused to be written;
 12 And, on this wise, the devil has sought to lay a cunning plan, that he may destroy this work;
 13 For he hath put into their hearts to do this, that by lying they may say they have caught you in the words which you have pretended to translate.
 14 Verily, I say unto you, that I will not suffer that Satan shall accomplish his evil design in this thing.
 15 For behold, he has put it into their hearts to get thee to tempt the Lord thy God, in asking to translate it over again.
 16 And then, behold, they say and think in their hearts—We will see if God has given him power to translate; if so, he will also give him power again;
 17 And if God giveth him power again, or if he translates again, or, in other words, if he bringeth forth the same words, behold, we have the same with us, and we have altered them;
 18 Therefore they will not agree, and we will say that he has lied in his words, and that he has no gift, and that he has no power;
 19 Therefore we will destroy him, and also the work; and we will do this that we may not be ashamed in the end, and that we may get glory of the world.




Pattern
From D& C. Instructor's Guide-the Lost Manuscript Lesson 3-

Having Faith in God and His Purposes (Scripture Analysis, Discussion)

The experience of the loss of the 116 manuscript pages offers an excellent opportunity to teach what the prophet Mormon knew so emphatically: “I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come” (Words of Mormon 1:7).
President Harold B. Lee said that a testimony that God knows all things is a beginning point to faith in God: “ ‛O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it.’ (2 Nephi 9:20) Now, if you will just keep that in mind you have a beginning point, you have a relationship with Him. We are His son, His daughter. He knows us. He knows the very things and the times before appointed, and the place where we would live, and the times in which we would live.” (“To Be on Speaking Terms with God,” University of Utah devotional address, 12 Oct. 1973, p. 4.)

Ephesians 2:10

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Jeremiah 1:5

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Doctrine and Covenants 76:13

13 Even those things which were from the beginning before the world was, which were ordained of the Father, through his Only Begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, even from the beginning;

Christ
Jesus was ordained to come to earth and to save all who would accept him from their sins.

Doctrine and Covenants 132:28

28 I am the Lord thy God, and will give unto thee the law of my Holy Priesthood, as was ordained by me and my Father before the world was.

Conference-10/1985- Neal A Maxwell
Premortality, A Glorious Reality
Everything in our life happens as though we entered upon it with a load of obligations contracted in a previous existence … obligations whose sanction is not of this present life, [which] seem to belong to a different world, founded on kindness, scruples, sacrifice, a world entirely different from this one, a world whence we emerge to be born on this earth, before returning thither.” (Marcel Proust, in Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, New York: Harper and Row, 1963, p. 8.)
And finally, there are these more familiar lines:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: …
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
...
This declaration to Jeremiah: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jer. 1:5) was paralleled in the 1842 Book of Abraham:
Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;
And God … said: These I will make my rulers; … and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.” (Abr. 3:22–23.)
The Book of Abraham, in corroborating section 93, used words whose full measure you and I have scarcely begun to take: “if there be two spirits, … notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, [they] have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end … for they are … eternal.” (Abr. 3:18.)
From long experience, His sheep know His voice and His doctrine. Meanwhile, the soul weaving in process for such a long time goes on as described in these anonymous lines:

My life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.
Ofttimes He weaveth sorrow
And I in foolish pride,
Forget that He seeth the upper,
And I the under side.
Not till the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver’s skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.
May we so believe, so trust, so submit, and so behave, I pray in the name of Him who is the “Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye” (C. S. Lewis, At the Breakfast Table, p. xxv), even Jesus Christ, amen.
Apply
The beautiful words of the poem above say it all. Sometimes we forget that we only see the underside. The best thing we can do is to trust in Him and try to be as Christlike as we can. We are all placed under difficult circumstances and asked to do things that we do not understand but we are eternal beings and “our lives have meaning, purpose and direction” (RS theme).
May we remember to trust the Lord in all things. Especially in the hard times. He knows every detail of our whole eternal existence.
As Joseph Smith said “when the Lord gives a commandment, do it.”

Hymns
189- O Thou, Before The World Began
284-If You Could Hie To Kolob
301-I Am A Child Of God

Children
4-I Lived In Heaven

D&C 138 56 Even before they were born, they, with many others, received their first lessons in the world of spirits and were prepared to come forth in the due time of the Lord to labor in his vineyard for the salvation of the souls of men.

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