Click to Listen: Episode 8: 2 Nephi 9-10
This episode is dedicated to the great community at http://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon. You guys rock! Ok, in this episode we’ve got Jacob telling us about heaven (which isn’t as cool as you might think) and hell (which is worse than we were previously led to believe), and a zombie apocalypse. Oh, and then he gives mormon god a strip show. Fun times!
Drinking Game count (this will make sense after Episode 9, basically, drink after ever “Yea” and “It came to pass”)
“Drink” Count – 11
Almost 2 Beers
![1f37a[1]](https://mybookofmormonpodcast.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/1f37a11-e1405273035787.png)
My Book of Mormon 
May 13, 2014 at 2:02 am
Thank you so much for doing this! I have listened to every episode the past couple of days.
I lost count of the number of times I have read the Book of Mormon, but it’s been many times. (To be honest though, I usually skipped all of the Isaiah chapters because they are so boring!) I was a believing member of the LDS church until January of this year. I am 40 years old and I was born into it. I am trying to recover from the indoctrination and it’s amazing to hear your take on the craziness of the Book of Mormon. It has been good therapy for me to laugh at it.
As a member, I was really good at blocking out the parts of the doctrine that didn’t make sense or that I didn’t believe in. I figured that God would just explain it all to me in the next life. I never even realized how racist the Book of Mormon was! Thank you for all of honest insights. Keep it coming!
May 13, 2014 at 4:27 am
Hey, Keri, I am 40 and recently woke up to the truth myself. It is amazing how the insights are still hitting me how blind I used to be. The world is so much more rich and beautiful to me now. So many things I was taught were wrong or dangerous or scary are full of beauty and goodness and enlightenment….
May 16, 2014 at 6:24 pm
Thanks for the feedback, and I’m so glad you’re enjoying the show. I’ve just started the “Isaiah chapters” (listen to Episode 9), and I’m actually having fun with it! Let me know if you think I did a good job, because soooo many people have warned me that the Isaiah parts were brutal to read.
May 15, 2014 at 8:48 pm
Are you going to skip the Isaiah chapters? I don’t think any of your listeners will mind, there isn’t any interpretation from Nephi hidden in the middle of the chapters, it’s just straight copying from Isaiah for several chapters. If it says “compare Isaiah” in the italic headings it is an almost exact copy of that chapter. Just a suggestion so you don’t have to suffer through trying to make Old Testament plagiarism interesting.
May 15, 2014 at 9:12 pm
I committed “cover to cover” so that’s what I plan to do! I actually just finished recording Episode 9, which was 100% “Isaiah chapters” (2 Nephi 11-15). I took it on as a challenge that I couldn’t make them entertaining… I’ll let the listening audience be the judge, but I think I nailed it! There’s actually quite a bit of hilarious stuff in there if you read if from the right angle. To be honest, the last time I laughed as hard was when Lehi found his brass ball (man, that was classic). Just promise me this, after you’ve listened to Episode 9, you’ll come back here and tell me how I did. I should be finished editing/finalizing/uploading/etc in a few days. Deal?
May 16, 2014 at 8:33 pm
There actually is some angst among those born in the faith about the burden of knowledge. Myself, as an introvert, hated that it was my responsibility as one of those in the know, that god demanded I be a teacher. Thankfully, my crisis of faith came before it was my turn to go on the standard 2 year proselytizing mission.
As for some of the other stuff, this actually establishes a fair amount of Mormon cosmology. Mormons are non-trinitarian, meaning that Jesus and God the father are two distinct entities. It also hints at the concept of post-mortem proselytizing. Mormons believe that people who didn’t learn about Christ in their lifetime will have the opportunity to accept the gospel after death, but before the final judgement… though I honestly have no idea how much of that comes from book of mormon and how much comes from Joseph Smith after the publication of the book.
Perhaps one of the great ironies of Mormonism is that modern Mormons completely reject the idea of hell, but their founding document talks about hell all the time!
Another thing you were asking about… what with Jesus feeling the pains of the whole world.
According to the theology I was taught, the primary purpose of the attonement was served during the garden scene. As Jesus partook of the cup that he asked his father to not give him, he experienced all the sufferings and weaknesses of all mankind. This was necessary because in order or Christ to atone for all people, he needed to understand the foibles of people that lead them to sin. This was so horrible that it caused Jesus to sweat blood. After the Garden, it was necessary that Jesus die and ressurect, but the specific conditions of his death were fairly irrelevant, and is part of a number of contributing factors for why Mormons have a complete apathy for cross symbology (but that may be a discussion for another place.)
But then again, I have no idea how much of this is scriptural doctrine, how much is informal household theology.
May 16, 2014 at 8:39 pm
Dude… that’s some deep s**t. Like most religions I’m aware of, Christianity especially, what’s in their “book” isn’t necessarily how the religion is practiced. But, I figure the book is as good a place as any to try and start to understand any of it. Thanks for the post!
May 22, 2014 at 12:45 am
Roger, very little of Mormon doctrine comes from the Book of Mormon.
June 3, 2014 at 1:18 pm
Keep in mind when Nephi starts talking about Jesus Christ, this is 600 years before he comes. It shouldn’t be odd that he is talking about a Savior since that is the whole basis for Christianity. It doesn’t matter when Jesus comes, just that he comes. If you live before he comes then you’re prophesying about what he is going to do. If you live after it, you’re studying what he did. The BoM comes of odd since we live after Jesus has come reading about a person who lived before Jesus lived. So yeah, it can come off a bit self serving and disingenuous since we benefit from hindsight. Probably not so much if you lived in Nephi’s time.