2 Nephi 9–10 Lesson Transcript
(Cleaned and lightly edited for readability from the provided recording)

Good morning, everyone.

My problem is I always have too much to say and not too little. So I had this dream last night that I forgot my lesson, I forgot my shoes, I forgot my phone, and I was late. Our brains are fragile, aren’t they? We’re so lucky to be able to think about this beautiful, profound, serious, and important chapter nine of 2 Nephi, and also chapter ten, which is what we’ll be studying today.

So 2 Nephi 9 and 10. Jacob, Nephi’s younger brother, has three main sermons in the Book of Mormon, and this one, the first one, is the longest in the whole Book of Mormon—even three pages longer than King Benjamin’s. And it starts in chapter 6 and goes through 10, so we just have 9 and 10.

With chapter 9, Jacob launches into his own words, because the others—he’s just read at length from Isaiah, as Nephi had asked him to—and so now he begins his own ideas and words and subject.

Chapter 9 does require concentration and focus, but his presentation is really organized and has a logical sequence of thought, occasionally doubling back on topics. And the reading that you get—this little chill of foreboding, yet it’s not without hope or joy.

He basically sums it up in the last verse of chapter 10, if you want to open your books and go there, and I’ll read it: “May God raise you up. Raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from everlasting death by the power of the atonement.”

So from physical death and from spiritual death, and that’s where we are in chapter 9. Resurrection, atonement, power—these are not just words. These are the engineering pieces of our existence.

J. Reuben Clark gave a talk in 1938 where he said, and this is repeated often: “The youth of the Church are hungry for the things of the Spirit, and they want it straight and unadulterated.” And that’s chapter 9.

So Jacob’s words and his topics fall into another dimension. It’s comparable to what Ezekiel said in Ezekiel 13:5, when he said, raging against the false prophets of Israel, both male and female. And he said, “You have not gone up into the gaps.”

So what are the gaps that they had not entered into? Well, one would be the place where we know that life is holy. Every minute that we breathe, that other dimension beyond earth life.

So my husband is an attorney, and he has a colleague, and they had lunch once years ago at Lamb’s Grill. Remember Lamb’s Grill downtown? Anyway, so out of the blue, this man—and I’ll call him Eric, his name’s not Eric, but I’ll just call him Eric—starts telling my husband at this business lunch this story.

His dad had come home one day when he was a little boy—this is not my husband, right? This is his friend—and said they were not going to church anymore, to our church anymore. To any church.

And so now here’s Eric, who’s an adult, and he’s a mountain climber, and he was at a base camp. He woke up in the night in his tent, and he’s alone and he’s cold. And he was filled with this gratitude for his wife and his children, his life, his work that he loved. And he said aloud into the darkness, “Why have you been so good to me?”

So you have to know this is a brilliant man who is a tough attorney who does not believe in God anymore and begins to pray. Going back to maybe his primary days long ago, his tent is filled with light, and he heard a voice say, “Because I love you.” That’s why I’ve been so good to you, because I love you.

Well, then he had to go home and tell his wife that he was going back to church.

Sometimes we have to go into the gaps to see what eternity is really about. Sometimes God has to step in and push us into the gaps. But if we never go there, we are wasting the days of our probation, as Jacob says in 9:27: “Woe unto him that wasteth the days of his probation.” These are the days, right, of our probation.

If we never go there, we’re not being careful about what receives our life. What do we give our life to?

But I know that you know that, and that is what Jacob actually says when he begins in verse 4. He says, “I know you’ve been searching and wondering because you know that our flesh must waste away and die. But he says, nevertheless, in our bodies, we shall see God.”

What? How? If our bodies will die, how will we see God? People are probably asking.

And then he begins by talking about Christ’s mortal life in Jerusalem. And he says, verse 5: “Yea, I know that you know that in the body he will show himself unto those at Jerusalem from whence we came. For it must be expedient that it should be among them, for it is imperative, it behooveth the great Creator that he allows himself to become subject unto man in the flesh, and die for all men, that all men might become subject unto him.”

Now there’s an interesting thing. Jacob says that Christ let himself become subject unto all men in the flesh, and die for them, so that all men would then be subject to him. Why did he need them? Why did he need us to be subject unto him?

Because then he could save us if they would let—if we let him. Because it’s either he or Lucifer, it’s one or the other, it’s light or darkness.

So here’s a question. I know this is all doctrinally heavy, but like J. Reuben Clark said, I think it’s what people really long for at base. So here we are. Here’s the question.

Why did Lucifer have success with one third of the spirits in the premortal world? Why did they go with him and not Christ?

Was it fear at the prospect of earth life that we would be vulnerable because we would sin and our strength weakened by having a mortal body? Were they afraid? Or was it laziness? Or even worse, sloth?

Now there’s a word. Laziness is a physical or mental choice to avoid work or exertion. But sloth is a deeper spiritual or emotional apathy called acedia (A-C-E-D-I-A), that involves indifference towards purpose, goodness, or God. Now that is a deep thing when you have sloth.

So Jesus Christ stands out there, as Joseph Smith tells us, in his intelligence, his love, his majesty and power, and two-thirds of all of us chose him. But did Satan, sensing his opportunity, as Catherine Thomas once said, capitalize on the spirits’ fear or their sloth and propose changes to the plan so that no one would have to develop faith, rely on grace, or—and here’s the sloth—go through diminishment and sacrifice.

John Taylor said that Satan wanted to deprive man of his agency so that he, the supposed redeemer, would not have to be subject to man. He wanted to be the glorious Lord without having to suffer what the Anointed One would have to suffer, without having to subject himself to humiliation and infamy.

On the other hand, the Lord’s plan gave man his agency, provides a redeemer; he would offer himself as a substitute and at the same time make it possible for man to be exalted, which thing he never would have had without his agency.

So you can see these engineering pieces working. We know why Lucifer did it. Arrogance, ambition, a grab for power, as we learn in Moses, sloth. John Milton, the great poet, said, “Better to reign in hell than to be ruled in heaven.” That’s from Paradise Lost.

Have you ever heard of Nabil Ravachant? He’s a businessman, and he said this most profound thing, which I have had in my head for months. Here it is: “Thinking only of yourself is a prison.”

Thinking only of yourself is a prison. And I suppose that’s why Satan was doomed from the beginning.

So we can surmise why Lucifer did what he did, but why did Christ do what he did?

Well, here’s one reason. This is from Hebrews 1:9, this amazing verse, speaking of him: “Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” He loved righteousness and hated iniquity.

But you know why else he did it? This is from John 14:31: “But that the world may know that I love the Father, I will do it, I will go through all of it. The prince of this world has nothing in me.”

He did it because he loved his Father.

Well, if that’s the case, why did he do it? Why did the Father do it? John 3:16: “For God so loved the world.” You are the world, right? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that the world through him might be saved.

So he, the Father, gave up his Son for the love of his children to save his children, exactly what you would do for your children and any child.

Some years ago when my sister, Susan Maughan, who’s right there, worked full time as a math teacher at the Salt Lake detention center. She invited me to come down and do poetry workshops with those kids who were in jail—really it’s jail.

And you have to understand that these kids had done some really wrong things like drive-by shootings, larceny, murder, drugs. I mean, the whole gambit. And you wouldn’t think they would be up for writing poetry.

So I started out having them write about their fathers, but none of them had fathers that they knew. So I quickly moved to having them write about their mothers—now that was something they knew about, sadly. And the poems were mostly love, but a lot of hate.

But here’s my point and why I’m bringing it up. So I had prepared a lot of stuff to go down there with, but as I got there, I realized I had to just move on instinct and how to proceed.

So I told them they could not use rhyme, they had to be brutally honest and brave, only tell the truth, and they could be angry, and then I read them a few great poems that were brutally honest. I could—you’d be shocked if I read them. They had tragedy in them and love, so they had an example, right?

And after they wrote them—the poems, which I still have right here—I asked their permission if I could read them aloud to everybody in the group. Every one of them said yes, except one really tough girl who said no. And even she, I think, regretted not having her poem read.

And so they read them, and I realized in that moment, as I started to read them, that I could critique them in a different way to the best of my ability. This really isn’t about me. I mean, what can you do in one hour to offset such pain and disaster in a life?

“You are a real poet. You must keep writing. This is so beautiful. You have a fine gift. Keep going. You use such beautiful descriptions. This is powerful. I might cut out that last line in your poem. It would be even more powerful. You have been so honest. This is a strong poem. I love this poem. Can I keep a copy of your poem?”

We do anything possible we can to save the children, don’t we?

And as Terry Warner once said—he was a professor of philosophy at BYU; I had philosophy from him—“The telling blows against evil are struck one act of love at a time.”

I’ll read you one of these. This is one that was written in Spanish, and I translated it into English:

“Here I am locked up like an animal waiting for the day of my freedom, missing you and feeling bad. I ask you to forgive me for your tears. Today I feel sorry for not having listened to you. Forgive me, Mama, again. The tears from my eyes leave all day and all night. I think of you always and wait for you always. I love you, Omer.”

And there’s another one that says, “Mother, I hate you.”

So go to 2 Nephi 9:6 through 9, and I’m going to read these four verses together and then go back, and these verses are really quite shocking.

“For death has passed upon all men to fulfill the merciful plan of the great Creator. There must needs be a power of resurrection, and the resurrection must needs come into man by reason of the fall, and the fall came by reason of transgression, and because man became fallen, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord. Wherefore there must be an infinite atonement. Without an infinite atonement, this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained in an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth to rise no more. And if the flesh should rise no more, our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God and became the devil to rise no more. And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies in misery like him. Yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transforms himself into an angel of light, and stirs up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder, and all manner of secret works of darkness.”

So back to verse 6. What do we learn immediately in verse 6?

Well, we learn that death is part of God’s plan. We will all die. Death is as important as life, and because the fall brought death, death needed a resurrection. Why? Because all men are fallen and thus cut off from the presence of the Lord.

So without the resurrection, death becomes final.

Verse 7: a man must needs have remained to an endless duration. If so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth to rise no more.

So what scientific process is he talking about, rotting and crumbling in the earth? Entropy, right? Also called the heat death, also called the second law of thermodynamics, where everything runs down, because heat can only move from a hotter to a cooler body, and when it has distributed itself evenly, there’s nothing. It’s vanished away into something else, although we know not destroyed, because complex materials always break down to the more simple.

So I’ve been running through a tropical jungle recently, and it’s one place you can literally see and smell the rot, the heat death happening, especially rotting mangoes and guavas. I mean, you can smell it happening in the dirt.

So what can stop this permanent breakdown happening to human bodies? What could possibly interfere?

Well, verse 9, Jacob understands, there must needs be a power, a power of resurrection. So isn’t that an interesting way to say it, a power of resurrection? It’s very descriptive of what’s happening. For the Father gave the Son the power to do it. It says in Matthew 28:18, Jesus said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.”

It’s quite an amazing thing to think about, isn’t it, that our bodies will be restored? And I want to know at which age they will be restored. This age or this age? I’m sure you want to be in that age too.

But Jacob doesn’t let us be happy very long. He’s kind of a dour soul, our Jacob. He says in verse 14 that when it happens, when the resurrection happens, we will have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, 15 and 16, and when all men shall have passed from death unto life, become immortal, they must appear before the judgment seat of the Holy One of Israel, and be judged, and they who are righteous shall be righteous still, and they who are filthy shall be filthy still.

Verse 24—this is, we’re all in 9 mostly. And if they don’t repent and believe and be baptized and endure, they must be damned.

Now, what do you think it means to be damned? I’ve thought about this a lot, and this is what I think. Just what it means now, only it’s spelled differently. When a river is dammed, it’s stopped up, right? If we are damned, we are stopped. We make no progress, and our lives are stopped.

Joseph Ortlund years ago said in conference, and this I liked—it stuck with me—the most important stewardship you have is the glorious responsibility your Father in Heaven has given you to watch over your own soul.

So in other words, what happens to us a lot of it is what we are doing to our own self in here and in here.

So the next thing he talks about is spiritual death, when we become like him. And then he moves into it quickly.

God provided the resurrection as the first step to a physical at-one-ment, atonement, but there had to be a spiritual at-one-ment as well to save our spirits, and that required an atonement.

So remembering 8 and 9, it said if we are cut off from God, from his mercy and grace, and rise no more, then the opposite of at-one-ment is happening, right? We’re being split from God.

And then verse 9, our spirits will become like him, like Satan, to remain with the father of lies and misery like he is.

So a question: why do we become subject to the devil and become like him, to remain with him in misery like he is? Why do we become subject without the resurrection to him? Why can’t God reach us there? That’s what I wanted to know. Why—he can do anything—why can’t he reach down and pull us out?

Well, here’s the best answer that I’ve come up with. Because we have no way to become clean and whole, thankfully, to enter God’s presence, because we always sin, right? And without his help, we can’t return, and we are dammed up or stopped.

So even though our spirits may live subject to Satan, the atonement makes available to us the only kind of lasting life worth having. We could keep on living, but who wants to like that?

He undeniably said this, because the body could go on living and soak the spirit, it will be a horrible thing if you are going to be living in a sewer forever and ever. And the Father could not let that happen, not to his children.

So Christ volunteered and stepped in. And gave us the atonement, his atonement.

So is this reality all this that we’ve been talking about? Was there a plan for us to escape from the grasp of this awful monster, death and hell, the death of the body and the death of the spirit?

Do you believe in the powers of darkness?

So I’ve told this story before. I think you’ve heard it, sorry. So one morning early in Puerto Rico where we were on our mission, I was out running in this little park—it’s called an herb. We lived in like a gated neighborhood, and as I ran, I heard through an open window up a story above the park in a house, a man screaming, raging at a child. It was a terrible sound.

The screaming and the child crying. And here’s what happened. The park became still and silent, which is something on an island where there’s always sound, right? Birds and wind and palms moving. There was no sound. Beside the screaming and the crying of the child, the birds stopped singing, the wind dropped, the palms were still. It was as though the whole world stopped and was listening, and I’m not making this up.

In D&C 38:11 and 12, it says, the powers of darkness prevail upon the earth among the children of men in the presence of the hosts of heaven, which causes silence to reign, and all eternity is pained.

And that is exactly what happened in the park. Silence reigned in the face of the powers of darkness. Eternity was pained and it was frightening.

Is Satan’s power real? Yes.

Is there hope for joy in a world of such darkness? Yes.

J.R.R. Tolkien, you all know who that is, Lord of the Rings, right? He wrote his books after his terrible experience in World War I in the trenches. This is his statement:

“Among the tales of sorrow and ruin that come down to us from the darkness of those days, there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy, and under the shadow of death, light that endures.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

9:21: “And he cometh into the world that he may save all men, if they will hearken unto his voice. For behold, he suffereth the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam.”

Isn’t that beautiful? We all belong to the family of Adam.

And Jacob just rises up in gratitude and joyousness a couple of places, one is in 9:13: “O how great the plan of our God! For the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous and the grave deliver up the body of the righteous. And the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible and immortal, and they are living souls.”

I’ve got two grandchildren in the graves, and I want to see them again, and here they are. One is Karis, this one, and the other one is Alexandras, Isaac and Larry. So I just brought them for you. You don’t have to come look at them, but.

So how important—oh wait, first I want to say this. You probably didn’t notice in that verse I just read, which was 13, that it says the spirit and the body is restored to itself. Those words are singular, aren’t they? Is and itself, you know, a verb and a pronoun. So the spirit and the body are one.

It’s quite beautiful, D&C 88, you know, you all know this: the spirit and the body are the soul of man.

So how important is the body in God’s whole plan? Why is it so important, and can we ignore it? Can we eat Oreos and chocolate cake?

These are mine. I know, it’s dumb, but there’s nothing left of that chocolate cake, let me tell you. There’s a little strip. We all have our things, right? Oreos, nah, but chocolate cake, okay.

So how important is the body? Can we still eat Oreos and chocolate cake?

Well, the body is the vehicle and the conduit of light, both in and out. And my favorite answer as to why the body answers or matters is this, that it can be a revelatory instrument. Through our bodies, we take in light, we grow, we learn to love, we touch, and we comfort, we work in the earth, and we forgive and repent. All with the body, right?

Jesus said the light of the body is the eye, and if your eye is single, your whole body shall be full of light. The body is so important.

Does a body have to be perfect to be a revelatory instrument? Can the body be an instrument of life if it’s imperfect, if it has a few extra pounds, if it has an extra chromosome, if it is broken, if it always remains a child?

D&C 93:33 says, “The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated, cannot receive a fulness of joy.” The elements are the tabernacle of God as well. I added that.

So can we knowing this hate and destroy our bodies? Well, yes, it happens, doesn’t it? It happened to me.

I had shoulder surgery a year in April. It was the most painful thing you can ever experience, let me tell you. And I was so angry that it hurt so much after a week that I went on a walk by myself, stepped into a pothole and broke my leg.

I never talked about it to you, I bet. And I’m lying on the asphalt thinking, I can’t believe this just happened. I just—I know I broke it. I broke my leg.

So I have this horrible, you know, I have this thing on my shoulder and a broken leg. Was that stupid or what? I mean, we do things to ourselves, you know. I was afraid to, you know, tell anybody. It was so embarrassing.

Elder Richard Scott said—he’s talking about the word of God—that it can actually accelerate healing of the body. So he says that the scriptures are like packets of light that illuminate our minds. But then he applies the scriptures to how they influence the body. I thought this was so interesting.

They, the words of God, have potent power to heal emotional challenges. They can accelerate physical healing. They can accelerate atonement. What an amazing thought.

So there’s this really startling verse in chapter 9, verse 42, where Jacob tells us whom God despises.

Now this is startling, ’cause you think God loves all, everyone equally, right? But maybe even he has emotions about some things.

So let—you know, Jacob really gets going, and he shows us the things we do that waste the days of our probation.

So this is 9:28. At the top of the list is intellectual pride. “When they are learned, they think they are wise, that they know everything of themselves. But they are so foolish.” You see, these are the people who think they know everything. And they set aside the counsel of God.

Verse 29. He does give a caveat: “To be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.”

And then 30, and right behind the learned are the rich who despise the poor and persecute the meek.

And 42: “And they that are rich who are puffed up because of their learning and their wisdom and their riches”—and that, I think, is the point. They are puffed up. “They are they whom he despiseth, and unless they cast these things away and consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he won’t open the gate to them.”

Those are pretty terrifying words. What a statement, “fools before God.” And also appears in Paul’s words, works.

And what gate is he talking about? Well, verse 41: “Come unto the Holy One, remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel, and he employeth no servant there. He will be there. He will know every one of us.”

Is there a more beautiful verse in all scripture than that?

Neal A. Maxwell said this beautiful thing about Christ being the keeper of the gate. Not only is judgment not delegated, but divine mercy can best be applied by he who knows everything about us. I’m paraphrasing. He knows things that only he can know, like the moments of courage in your lives, the unknown, unnoticed acts of Christian service. The unspoken thoughts that you have—the only way he could know them is how he knows them, except—and he is the one that can give perfect judgment. That person is the keeper of the gate, the one who uses the vast resources of his power to get us home safely.

So in 39—verse 39, Jacob talks about the carnally minded. “Can’t you see,” he says, “to be carnally minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life eternal.”

So here’s the question. Why is being carnally minded death?

You can ask yourself, well, there’s the obvious reasons we’ve all—we’ve just been, you know, talking about, but here’s the one I like the best, because we are beings of light. 1 Thessalonians 5:5: “Ye are all the children of light and children of the day. We are not of the night, nor of darkness.”

We’re beings of light, and if we turn away from light, we’re going against our very natures, and that can destroy a soul. I think it does. I see it everywhere.

Jacob says something happens to people who are not fools before God. This is in 43. It’s so sad. He says, “Happiness is hid from them forever, that happiness which is prepared for the saints.” They will never have that joy to be alive in themselves. Even though they struggle through earth life.

I have—here’s a few words about the great Isaiah, because right now, Jacob goes into some words of Isaiah, even though he doesn’t give him credit. So let’s read those first.

He says, “Everyone that thirsts”—this is verse 50 and 51—“Everyone that thirsts, come to the waters. You don’t need money, there’s no price. Do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy. Come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not.” Aren’t those beautiful?

So let me just say a bit about Isaiah. He isn’t even quoting him like he did in previous chapters. Isaiah is just in his head, I think, and comes out of his mouth, and that happens so much. Isaiah’s thought permeates the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon are always quoting him and expressing their own thoughts in his words often without like this ever even mentioning the source. He’s speaking from the dust, Isaiah is. He saw Christ, Nephi saw Christ, and Jacob saw Christ, the three great witnesses.

And I’ll just add that Isaiah is a literary genius and Israel’s most profound thinker. He might be the greatest poet of the English language, I always thought, except maybe for Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom I think is a great poet. So don’t ever back off from Isaiah.

So chapter 10, Jacob wraps up his sermon. Most people think that Nephi only added segments of this second day.

We learn in 10:3 that the Holy One’s name is Christ, and this is where people, prophets, start calling him Christ in the Book of Mormon, because an angel told Jacob what his name was. This, and so it begins to be used.

In 18, we learn that the Gentiles will be numbered among the house of Israel. I just brought my little teapot, ’cause it’s so pretty, as a representative of the Gentiles, because they will be in the house of Israel as well.

They will be numbered, verse 18, among the house of Israel. It’s just a little thing.

We learn about the land. Jacob talks about a choice land, verse 10: “This land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land.” What land’s he talking about? Our land, our Americas, right?

“It shall be a land of liberty unto the Gentiles. There shall be no kings upon the land who shall raise up unto the Gentiles. I will fortify this land against all nations, and he that fighteth against Zion will perish. I will be a light unto them forever that hear my words.”

It’s verse 11 and verse 19. “It is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands,” and we live in that land.

So Jacob says, verse 20, don’t hang our heads down. We shouldn’t be hanging our heads down, because, verse 20, this gorgeous verse, we are not cast off. We’ve been driven out of the land of our inheritance, but we’ve been led to a better land, for the Lord has made the sea our path.

Could there be anything more inspiring or beautiful than that? The Lord is giving us something better than what we have lost.

So you may have had great trouble on this earth. So many troubles. But who’s to say you have not been and may be led to a better land, with the sea, or path, the sea, that great, but eternal, endless unknown, shimmering in its blue and white, and turquoise and green, shining beauty, and its great storms, and its great beasts that rise out of the sea, crash.

I’m just gonna end with the wonderful Wendell Berry. Do you know Wendell Berry, the author? So wonderful. With his statement, who just died, what a loss to the world.

“Laugh. Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. Practice resurrection.”

I’ll read it again.

“Laugh. Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. Practice resurrection.”

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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