Saturday

Ether 11

Today I was reading in the book of Ether and it struck me as odd that the record of the Jaredite people follows so many people who are wicked. It makes sense that it would follow the genealogy of Ether because he is the one that wrote it. But the book of Mormon is a record of the Nephite people and it was passed along by righteous men and contains their teachings and prophecies. The Book of Ether, however follows the one family line and does not contain any teachings of prophets other than the brother of Jared and Ether. It does mention prophets but won't say more than that they prophesied destruction.

Ether 11:20

And in the days of Coriantor there also came many prophets, and prophesied of great and marvelous things, and cried repentance unto the people, and except they should repent the Lord God would execute judgment against them to their utter destruction.

I wonder what those great and marvelous things were and why we don't have a record of them. And was it Ether that chose not to include them in his record or was it Moroni? And why is it that we have the example of wicked kings instead of righteous prophets. Are we supposed to learn more from the example of what happened to the wicked than we would learn from the teachings of the prophets?

The book of Ether fulfills the law of witnesses in that it provides another example besides the Nephite nation of a people who were prospered when they kept the commandments and were destroyed completely when they allowed wickedness and secret combinations to go unchecked. The Book of Ether also provides us with countless examples of how a wicked king leads the people to be wicked, or perhaps it's a wicked people that support a wicked government. Perhaps Moroni felt it was more important that we see another civilization that was destroyed by wickedness and secret combinations than that we have additional
prophecies of the savior.

1 comment:

Playa!!! said...

I highly doubt that last sentence.