Of Reading and Home Teaching

Though I’ve only written about it once or twice here, I really love the book of Jacob in the Book of Mormon. It seems to me that Elder Maxwell really did too, and would use one-liners from Jacob frequently.

Here’s one from Jacob 4:14:

But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, that they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.

The indictment the Jews usually get from those of us who call ourselves Christians and are looking back on their history with our modern Christian lenses, is that they made too much of the Law of Moses. Pharisees, we say, were way too concerned about keeping the fringe-parts of the law that they missed the purpose of the Law: to teach them about Christ.

The Book of Mormon seems to support this view, but it also presents an alternative way of living the Law of Moses, or an attitude toward the Law. One of the places where this attitude is described is in Alma. Speaking of the converted Lamanites who called themselves the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, Alma 25:15-16:

Yea, and they did keep the law of Moses; for it was expedient that they should keep the law of Moses as yet, for it was not all fulfilled. But notwithstanding the law of Moses, they did look forward to the coming of Christ, considering that the law of Moses was a type of his coming, and believing that they must keep those outward performances until the time that he should be revealed unto them.

Now they did not suppose that salvation came by the law of Moses; but the law of Moses did serve to strengthen their faith in Christ; and thus they did retain a hope through faith, unto eternal salvation, relying upon the spirit of prophecy, which spake of those things to come.

This is apparently the spiritual healthy attitude toward the Law of Moses: keep it diligently, but don’t let it get in the way of what is really important: Faith in Jesus Christ.

I read this today and asked myself how this might be applicable to Latter-day Saints. At first I couldn’t think of any way, since the Law of Moses has been fulfilled and we don’t keep it any more.

But then it struck me. We do keep some laws that are unique to this dispensation. The collection of these laws might be termed the Law of Joseph (and successors, which works since a whole lot of what is called the Law of Moses came from people who lived after Moses), and they include such things as (most obviously) the word of wisdom.

In my limited understanding, I would separate the laws Mormons obey into two broad categories: Eternal and Dispensational. Eternal laws are those that seem not to change regardless of the history of the world or the people involved (such things as obedience, sacrifice, chastity, and consecration), whereas dispensational laws are those are are unique to a particular time period or group of people.

How might Mormons benefit from understanding how the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi kept and approached the Law of Moses? What other laws might be termed dispensational?