Is the Jerusalem Temple the Great & Spacious Building mentioned in the Book of Mormon? Is Divine Mother, theosis/exaltation in the Book of Mormon? Dr Val Larsen says “Yes!” He also thinks Laman & Lemuel tried to kill Nephi for religious reasons! Check out our conversation!
transcript to follow
Copyright © 2023
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission
Book of Mormon Theosis
Val 00:42 Let me then, having that setup for now, let’s read the opening of the Book of Mormon. And this is where we’re going to see Theosis. This is where my argument for Theosis comes from. That’s the foundation for it. Lehi’s story begins in the desert outside of Jerusalem. A prototypical location for Theophany and the commissioning of a prophet, when a pillar of fire descends, and sits before him upon an unhewn stone altar, evoking, as it does, the burning bush and the pillar of fire that nightly lead Israel during the Exodus. This pillar signifies Lehi’s calling to be a new prophet, who will lead Israel out of the new Egypt, that Jerusalem has become, and then on to the promised land. But, evoking as it likewise does, the Holocaust offering on the temple, the temple’s unhewn stone altar. And the Aban chutiya, the unhewn rock altar of the Holy of Holies, where the mercy seat, the throne of God sat, which today is under the Dome of the Rock in Israel. That’s where the Aban chutiya is located. That’s the floor of the Holy of Holies. This fire on an unhewn stone, likewise, signifies Lehi’s calling to be a high priest of his people, one who builds altars and offer sacrifices and leads people through the veil, back to the throne of God. In the First Visions and Last Sermons I actually talked about this a little bit more. This is actually very much a temple vision. You’ve got the passage from the outer part, where you’ve got the fire coming down and resting on the rock, which is the outer part of the temple, where they’re making the Holocaust offerings. But then Lehi is going to end up seeing into the Holy of Holies. That’s what we’ll go on to now.
GT 02:30 You mentioned the pillar of fire and I want to ask you about this, because Moloch was always associated with fire. Right?
Val 02:38 Yeah.
GT 02:38 They were burning…
Val 02:39 Yeah. But everything was, so that’s not different from everything else.
GT 02:44 What do you mean?
Val 02:45 Well, they burnt offerings. The idea of burning offerings to the gods…
GT 02:50 Oh, they would burn them.
Val 02:52 They were all doing it. Moloch was one of them.
GT 02:55 Okay.
Val 02:55 Look, the only way I can see to connect Moloch in–what I think Moloch, probably is. It’s just my guess. I am not an expert in these matters. But if I were connecting it, I would say he connects to Abraham sacrificing Isaac. I think it’s a replication of that, in some sense. Right? Because that was Abraham putting his child on the altar to burn him up, as a sacrifice to God. Moloch seems to me to be a perversion of that idea. But Moloch is a bad guy, bad God. Whenever they’re worshipping Moloch, they’re doing something wrong. So, I have no brief for Moloch. The Book of Mormon gives us no reason for liking Moloch in any way. It gives us good reason for liking Asherah.
GT 03:50 Okay.
Val 03:52 Anyway.
GT 03:52 So, Moloch was a false god. Is that what you’re trying to say?
Val 03:55 Yeah, look, they had multiple gods.
GT 03:57 And Ba’al was a false god?
Val 03:59 Well, again, yes. But my personal belief on this is that he was Christ or Yahweh in a different form, the Son of God in a different form. Remember, Son of El. He’s Ba’al, the Son of El and Yahweh the Son of El. Well, the Hebrews believe in Yahweh, the Son of El. The Canaanites call him Ba’al. And you get the tribalism where, wait a minute. We’ve got the right name for God and understanding of him and…
GT 04:32 Well, because there’s a story of Balaam, which his name sounds like Ba’al, and he worshipped Ba’al, right?
Val 04:37 Yeah, Balaam would be the plural for Ba’al. Yeah.
GT 04:39 Because, that’s just a weird story altogether.
Val 04:46 Yeah. And you have all the priests of Ba’al. You have the confrontation with the prophets.
Val 04:52 And actually, they have a tacked on priests of Asherah there, too. They’re not a big role. And a lot of the Old Testament scholars say, “Yeah, the Deuteronomists just came in and tacked Asherah on because they didn’t like her either.” They tacked her on to that story, even though she wasn’t a big part of it. But, yeah, there clearly was a rivalry between, at least in terms of the names of these two Son Gods, Sons of El. Is it Yahweh, or is it Ba’al? This is changing now, because all the Christian religions, and basically all the religions in the United States. Who’s their enemy? It’s the hostile secularism. Right? That’s who’s going after–back when I when I was growing up, maybe a little bit when you were growing up. You’re younger. We had all our arguments with the Protestant sects. That’s what we focused on. They’re our best buddies now. I mean, we need them. We need them. They need us to stop secularism. Yeah.
GT 04:52 Right.
Val 05:56 And you know, so Steve Pynakker. [He’s] a great friend to us, and we’re friends to him. Because we’ve got to preserve religious liberty. I mean, Salt Lake is focused so intently on, religious liberty, at this point. So is Rome. I mean everybody that takes their religion seriously and wants to be able to practice it, not just go into the chapel and shut the doors and worship there. That’s always going to be protected, but be to be able to come out of the chapel and live their religion. The enemy of that now is the most dynamic religion in the world today, which is woke-ism, in a sense, right? There’s variations on it. But it’s an extremely dynamic religion. It’s having more converts than any other. And there’s tensions between that and [religion.] So we’re good friends, now. I mean you see them all…
GT 06:50 Sort of.
Val 06:50 We’ve always been friends at some level, because you can’t be a follower of Christ and have strong enemies, if you’re really doing it. I’m not saying there aren’t people that don’t properly follow Christ. But, if we’re all trying to follow Christ, we cannot have too much enmity. But there was a lot more theological contention when I was growing up than there is now. We’re really focused on…
GT 06:51 Among the Protestants than among the seculars.
Val 06:59 Among the Protestants and us and the Catholics and us. We’d argue against them in Sunday school class more than we do now. We don’t really focus on that now because, look, we’re all in a boat bailing as fast as we can to keep it from sinking and we don’t want to throw them out of the boat. Because we know we’re going to go down if we do. They need us. We need them. We all need each other.
GT 07:41 I mean, with the political wars, yeah.
Val 07:43 Yeah, so that’s a tangent. I better get back to the Book of Mormon. Okay, you folks that are woke, fine. I’m not. I’m not trying to throw anybody out of the church. I want everybody in. Anyway, after he’s credentialed in the desert as a prophet and priest, that’s going on with Lehi’s story there at the very opening Book of Mormon.
GT 08:06 After who?
Val 08:07 Lehi.
GT 08:08 Lehi, okay.
Val 08:09 Lehi returns home, which is a symbolic act, because he’ll next pass through the veil into heaven, our true home. He casts himself on his bed, then overcome with the spirit is carried away in vision. So, this is passage into the Holy of Holies. I focus on that more in one of my articles. The Spirit carries Lehi into the presence of God, whom he sees sitting upon his throne surrounded by numberless concourses of angels. This is the corporeal God of Abraham and of the current Latter-day Saints, not the being outside of space and time that Josiah was then bringing forth, creating, bringing forth. As he looks into heaven, Lehi becomes in effect, one of the heavenly hosts, God’s companions. Lehi next sees One, it says, a Divine Being descending out of the midst of heaven, whose luster is above that of the sun of noonday. The One is followed by 12 other seemingly divine beings, whose brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament.
Val 09:07 The One comes to Lehi gives him a book and bids him read. He reads that Jerusalem is about to be destroyed, because it’s rejected the One, the Messiah, the god with God, who has been tasked in heaven to redeem the Earth. So, in situ, the One and the 12, who descend from Heaven are divine members of the council of Gods, a Son of God and some of the heavenly host. Lehi certainly would have seen them that way. If you look at the context of the Old Testament, everything that was going on there, that’s how he would have seen them. Nephi marks their membership in the council by associating them with the symbols of the divine beings and the old theology, the sun and the stars, the very symbols of these divine beings and Abraham’s religion that Josiah had taken care to remove from the temple and destroy in the Kidron Valley. The obvious divinity of the One who descends in this episode, will later be underlined in Lehi’s dream, continuing as a mission there, that he begins here. Yahweh will lead Lehi back to his proper home, the divine Council. That’s going to happen in Lehi ‘s dream. The divinity of the 12 descending Beings of Light, who their divinity will later be underlined when an angel tells Nephi that they will sit as Last Judgment judges, a quintessentially defined role. Last Judgment is the prerogative of the Father, who signifies the Son’s divinity by conferring it on him. And the Son, in turn, signifies the divinity of the 12, by conferring the judgment role on them. When we appear, the Scriptures tell us, both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon tell us, when we appear to be judged we would appear before the 12 apostles. That’s a divine role. That’s beings turned into divinities, functioning as gods as they make those judgments.
Val 11:02 And we see them here in Lehi’s first vision. There they are, and they’re going to continue as we get into the dream. We recognize the 12 as Christ’s human apostles, but they’re not merely human. And it’s very important for us to combine the highest recognition of their divinity with our recognition of their humanity. Lehi’s first vision is a temple vision. And in the temple contexts, a member of the Divine Council, for instance, the Archangel Michael, may create worlds as a divine being, then inhabit them as a human being. In temple contexts, the descending heavenly hosts that Lehi sees: Peter, James and John, may blur the boundary between heaven and earth, between the divine and the human, working to redeem humanity side-by-side with the One they follow.
Val 11:50 So I mean, for people that have been to the temple, this should have some resonance, right? Right there in that very first vision, we have Peter, James, John, the rest of the 12 apostles, descending out of heaven from the throne of God. It’s right there at the beginning of the Book of Mormon. I’m not going to get that much into the temple today. I’m going to direct you. I want you to talk to B. John Butler about that. I’ll mention it again in a minute. The descent of the 12 from Heaven affirms two vital truths. First, the 12, and all of us, are divine beings, passing through mortality, whose proper telos, proper end is to rejoin the divine council with our divinity fully expressed. And second, the gods develop our inherent divinity by involving us in their divine work, rather than reserving the soul-saving for themselves.
Val 12:52 They involve all of us who are willing, in soul-saving apprenticeships, where we have the capacity to play a redeeming role, they assign us that role. So, they’re not doing all this. They’re having us participate. Why? Because they’re trying to turn us into beings like them, we need to be doing their work, and the kinds of things they do when we have that capacity, so that we can become what they are. All right. So, when the Son hands Lehi the heavenly book, he enrolls him in the divine counsel. Speaking with the tongue of an angel, Lehi exclaims, “Great and marvelous are thy works, oh, Yahweh, El Shaddai,” praising the governing heads of the heavenly Council, Son Yahweh, Father El, Mother Shaddai.
Val 13:38 Of course, the Book of Mormon actually says, “Great and marvelous are thy works, oh, Lord God Almighty.” But if we back translate those words from English into the underlying Hebrew, Shaddai, I mean Almighty is every single time in the Old Testament it’s Shaddai. And Lord is typically Yahweh. And God is El or Elohim. So, what Lehi says here, as he exclaims, having seen this vision, again, it’s “Great and marvelous are thy works. Oh, Yahweh, El Shaddai.” Okay, that’s what he said. Now, filled with the spirit, Lehi receives the honor of being the mouth of God. He’s going to speak God’s words, he gets to be the voice, that God’s words come out of, or the mouth that God’s words come out of. He says, speaking God’s words, “Whoa, whoa unto Jerusalem, for I have seen thine abominations, Jerusalem will be destroyed and the inhabitants thereof. Many will perish by the sword and many will be carried away into Babylon. Newell Wright pointed out to me on this. I hadn’t noticed this. We were working on this project together. And he pointed out, Lehi gets carried away to heaven. And these folks are getting carried away to Babylon. It’s a part of that contrast between Lehi, who’s sticking with the old theology, and all these people that are embracing the new theology, they’re both going to get carried away, but essentially to heaven, the Promised Land, or to hell, right? Babylon was–not a lot of them made it there.
GT 13:38 Because that’s what happened to Jerusalem, it was destroyed, basically, right when…
Val 15:23 Yeah, it’s going to be destroyed shortly thereafter. Right. So, Lehi’s first vision ends with a new prophet/priest cast as God’s companion and surrogate. Lehi has a model for us. It’s a model for us of incorporation in the divine Council, and a degree of divinization. In First Visions and Last Sermons, I talk a little bit more about this carried away to Babylon thing. It’s an interesting– this is a mystery. It would be a mystery, it seems to me for the people who are Orthodox, who believe in the Deuteronomous revolution. So, supposedly, Israel, from the time of Solomon, mostly all the time down until the time of Josiah, they were getting it wrong, right? It talks about, they’re always worshipping these other divine Council gods, and it’s a problem, over and over portrayed as a problem. And then, finally, Josiah gets it right. He finally gets them to worship the one true God. And then, a few years after, the whole thing is destroyed. So why did God suddenly completely destroy Israel, in the moment when they finally started to worship Him, as they should have done, keeping the Law of Moses and worshipping the One God rather than this council of gods? And so this is a problem to explain, for the Deuteronomists and the people that come back and put the Bible together. They have to explain this. And it’s a problem. That’s sort of the core theological problem, I’d say, of the Bible story is, why did they all get destroyed, right, if they got it right. And when they’d been getting it wrong, and they seem to be prospering more or less, all this time when they were worshipping the gods of the So’od, and there was a separate set of Jews with a temple over in Egypt. And they said, “Well, you were destroyed, because you cast the Divine Mother out of the temple. You cast the gods of the So’od out of the temple, that’s why he got destroyed.” And I think that’s the thrust of the Book of Mormon, too. They didn’t get destroyed because they were worshipping the gods of the So’od, they got destroyed because they cast them all out. And their temple ceased to be the temple of the gods.
GT 17:47 So anyway, in the Book of Mormon, they cast sed them out.
Val 17:51 No, the Book of Mormon account that we’re reading right here is describing the casting out of the gods as a problem.
GT 18:00 Oh, in Jerusalem.
Val 18:01 Yes, right. Lehi is on board with Asherah and Yahweh, the Son, with the Son, the Father and the Son and the Mother, and the host of heaven and God sitting on his throne. He’s on board with all of that. That’s what they’re rejecting. See that God’s not going to be sitting on his throne surrounded by numberless concourses of angels anymore. I don’t believe in that God. They don’t believe in the God who has a Son descend from him, and come down, followed by 12 others. That’s what they’re getting rid of, at that time.
GT 18:34 Were there 12 Canaanite deities?
Val 18:39 I’m not expert on that. So I don’t want to–go get an expert on the religion of Canaan.
GT 18:45 Dan McClellan, we’re coming your way
Val 18:46 My focus is the Book of Mormon. I have to get into the Old Testament at that time to understand the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is opening at that period. So, our best way to read it is in situ, in the context of what was happening at that time.
Val 19:06 Anyway, the vision is not finished. When the Son descends from the throne of father El, and comes to Lehi in that first vision, he has a two part charge. He’ll give Lehi the book that will lead him out of Jerusalem. He’ll then fulfill the temple task of leading Lehi through life in a lone and dreary world and bringing him again home to the Divine Council. There, Lehi will be incorporated through the ministrations of the two most salient objects of the Father’s love, the Divine Mother, and Son, Shaddai and Yahweh, who will henceforth be consistently coupled, as they jointly work to save souls. Now a couple things I’m emphasizing here, they’re important in the argument I’m making. To understand, Lehi’s first vision needs to be connected to his dream. These things are part of a single narrative, and we don’t have the full narrative. We have the Son descending to Lehi. But he’s also going to take him back to heaven. So, he’s taking him out of Jerusalem on to the Promised Land. We’re going to see the Promised Land is symbolic of heaven. And we’re going to see him take him back to heaven. So, that’s part of it. But the other big thing is, the Mother and Son are really linked. You don’t get– the Son is not without the Mother, the Mother without the Son, in this narrative that we’re reading here.
Asherah – Divine Mother
Val 20:31 So, our Heavenly Mother, she’s honored. [That] is the point I’m making in this opening of the Book of Mormon, deeply honored, and deeply important to our salvation. For me, this is a really meaningful thing, and it’s why I love this opening that we’re seeing here. So anyway, the vision isn’t finished. Having given Lehi this book that leads him out of Jerusalem in the First Vision, the Son fulfills the second part of his charge and in Lehi’s dream. I’m reiterating here, the dream should be read as a continuation of the First Vision. I don’t know. I haven’t heard anybody say that before. But I think you really understand what’s going on. You need to read them, the two things together.
GT 21:22 Lehi’s dream is a continuation of Joseph Smith’s First Vision?
Val 21:25 No, of Lehi’s First Vision. The stuff that we just talked about with him sitting on God’s throne, descending out of heaven. The one coming to him, sending him out of Jerusalem. His dream is going to…
GT 21:41 Oh, the dream is a continuation.
Val 21:42 Yes. Christ descends to Lehi, at that point. Right? Well, how does the dream open? The first vision has Christ ascend and coming to Lehi and talking with him? How is the vision going to open? So my point here, it’s very important to recognize that the dream continues the First Vision. Like the vision the dream will begin in the wilderness, end at the So’od Elohim, the divine council. It begins with the One, the Son, still dressed in white as when he descended from heaven, approaching Lehi. And he says, “Come follow me.” He actually uses the word ‘follow me’? Who says follow me? Come follow me. We’ve known that from primary, right?
Val 22:27 Now this is why I think the two things need to be seen as one story. The Son descends dressed in all white. He comes to Lehi and then the dream, how does it start? This being comes to Lehi on the earth now. He descended to the earth. He comes to Lehi. Now he’s going to lead him. See, they’re one story. I don’t know if anybody that’s read them that way. But they need to be read that way, because it’s the same being coming to him. Lehi faithfully follows his god for some time through a dark and dreary waste, wilderness symbol of a challenging mortal life. See, here, the temple resonance of this, too. After many hours in the darkness Lehi prays to the Lord, in Hebrew, Yahweh.
Val 23:17 So we translate. It says he prays to the Lord, but that means he prays to Yahweh, the Son, who had descended, El’s son, who had descended to him, for mercy. His prayer was immediately answered. He sees a sacred tree set in a spacious field, whose fruit is desirable to make one happy, in Hebrew, Asherah. Dan Peterson first pointed this out, right? Asherah is the word for happy. So in Nephi and his Asherah, this is where I first got this idea.
GT 23:51 Right.
Val 23:52 Symbol and sound link this tree with Asherah, the Divine Mother, whose symbol is a tree trained to grow in the shape of a menorah, and whose name differs in spelling and pronunciation from Asherah only in its final consonant. There’s only one letter that differ differentiates happy and Asherah, the mother. In the Old Testament, it’s typically translated as The Grove, but the name there’s actually Asherah and it’s linked a lot to this happy, Asherah thing. Or you get Asher, the son of Jacob, who was named after Asherah, too. Because Leah, that’s another one of those examples of where you had fertility problems. Leah has fertility problems.
GT 24:37 Right.
Val 24:38 And then she’s got her handmaid and she’s going to get a son through the handmaid. The person you look to is Shaddai or Asherah if you’re infertile. Who are the women going to look to? To the Divine Mother, and so, when the Divine Mother blesses you with another son, you honor her by the giving the name of that son, Asher, to recognize her.
Val 25:04 Anyway, the tree Lehi sees bears a fruit that like Yahweh’s Son lustrous robe is white to exceed all whiteness that I’d ever seen, and sweet above all that I’d before tasted. So that, again, when he descends in the First Vision, he’s clothed in the light of the Son, which is pure white, right? And now he’s dressed in this white that goes beyond any kind of earthly white. That’s what this being that’s leading Lehi to the tree is dressed in. He’s dressed in white it says. And then he sees this fruit that so lustrous and white. The Son is the fruit born by the Mother tree that we have in the dream, the pairing of the Mother and the Son, a pairing that will become a powerful motif that underscores the critical role the Mother is playing in saving us. So, if we recognize the tree as the Divine Mother, you can’t have the fruit without the tree. Right? Or, you can have a tree without fruit, but you can’t have any fruit without a tree. So, the tree is right there. The tree is there with the Son. And Lehi is being led back to both the Mother and the Son, coupled together. And we’re going to see that this is going to be an important motif running through the rest of the opening here of the Book of Mormon.
Val 26:21 So, now having partaken of the sacramental fruit and being, himself, enrolled in the divine Council, because he’s come back to the Divine Council. This is the Divine Council, the tree and the fruit there. The Mother is there, the Son is there. This is the Divine Council. Lehi takes up the heavenly host role of apprentice soul-saver. As I said, the gods don’t insist on doing it all themselves, because they’re trying to save us. So, they’ve got to get us involved in their work, so that we can become like them. He looks around and he sees Sariah, Sam and Nephi, who have not yet been saved. He beckons them in a loud voice to join him at the tree and partake of the fruit, which they do. He beckons to Laman and Lemuel, as well, but they refuse to join him at the tree. And if we understand the setting of this scene, their refusal is unsurprising because everything Lehi sees is linked with Josiah and his reforms, reforms that Laman and Lemuel embraced, but that Lehi rejects. Any follower of Josiah would refuse Lehi’s invitation. And the evidence is clear that Laman and Lemuel are followers of Josiah. Now, I’m not going to go fully into the argument here. I do talk about this more in one of my papers in the Interpreter: Josiah to Zoram to Sherem to Jarom in the Big Little Book of Omni. I dig more into Laman and Lemuel and where they’re coming from and all the texts that refer to them. The [texts] show that they’re following Josiah. I can’t get into it too much here, but I’ll talk about it a little bit more.
Temple is Great & Spacious Building?
Val 27:53 So again, we need a little context to understand what’s going on here. The significance of Lehi’s dream is more apparent, if we recognize that it is set in Jerusalem that Lehi knew so well. His dream features a sacred tree that is separated by a chasm of filthy water, from a great and spacious building full of well-dressed and mocking people. The two greatest buildings in Jerusalem were the temple and the king’s palace. The temple was located on the Temple Mount, Mount Moriah, the highest point in Jerusalem. On the east, the Temple Mount steeply descended into the Kidron Valley. On the other side of the narrow valley, was the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is the place where Gethsemane will be located. This is a really important place. It’s a place where Gethsemane will be located, the place where Christ will ascend into heaven following His earthly ministry, and where, at the second coming, he will descend from heaven and enter the temple through the Eastern Gate. In one Jewish tradition, [Messiah is] accompanied by the Shekinah, the Divine Mother.
Val 27:53 I give a lot more background on this. The idea is, at the Second Coming, he’s going to go in that Eastern Gate, the gate out of which ZeAstra was drug down into the ravine. I’ll talk about that in a second. But I talked about the Shekinah, the Divine Mother in the Jewish tradition. I can’t really get into it here. But it actually echoes this moment when the Zoaster was thrown out. They’ve got in their tradition, a whole bunch of stuff about the female side of God, and a lot of devotion to it in some of their later writings. Anyway, I won’t talk about it here, but for those interested, go check out Hidden in Plain View: Mother in Heaven in Scripture, because I do talk about there. And I’m not the only one. Other people have talked about this, too.
Val 29:49 Given the centrality of the Mount of Olives in Christ’s ministry, this is the perfect place for Christ to be revealed in the dream and for Lehi and others to know him. Now, water flowed into the Kidron Valley from two very different sources that are also going to be in the dream. There were sudden and dangerous, dirty, flash floods. And there was a source of pure Living Water, the Gihon Spring that was associated with Asherah and also called the Virgin Spring. So, we’ve got Asherah, the Virgin Spring tied in with Gihon Spring water, a fountain of pure water that flows into the valley. Each of these features of Jerusalem topography plays an important role in Lehi’s dream. Do you get the picture of what I’ve drawn here?
GT 30:37 Yeah.
Val 30:38 The temple is here on Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, really high in the air. [There’s a] steep decline into the Kidron Valley, [on the] other side of the Kidron Valley, we have the Mount of Olives where Gethsemane is located, where Christ ascended into heaven, where he will come, where he will enter the temple at the Second Coming. So, that’s all standard stuff. But the other thing that I will mention in just a second, the other thing that was on and had been since Solomon’s day, was an Asherah tree on the Mount of Olives. That was there, too. So, on that side, we’ve got Gethsemane. We’ve got Christ ascending and descending, but we also have a sacred tree that had been there from Solomon’s time.
Val 31:28 So, let’s begin with the great and spacious building. In his book Plain and Precious Things, David Butler now this is D. John Butler, not the seminary teacher, Dave Butler, that a lot of people follow. I had never heard of David Butler before sacrament meeting this past week. Somebody mentioned, “I’m sure a lot of you are following Dave Butler,” and I thought “Oh, I didn’t know D. John had all these followers.” But it turned out it was a different guy. Dave Butler offers several reasons for thinking that this great building is the temple. The fact that the building is high in the air…
GT 31:59 Wait, wait, wait. The great and spacious building?
Val 32:00 Yes. It’s the temple.
GT 32:02 Is the temple?
Val 32:02 Yes. Remember.
GT 32:04 They are mocking?
Val 32:04 I’m telling you Lehi’s dream is set in Jerusalem. Right? The great and spacious building is high in the air on Mount Moriah. Down into the valley, there’s a valley in the dream in which a pure fountain of water flows and dirty, dangerous water flows. And on the opposite side, there is the Mount of Olives, that’s totally associated with Christ and has a sacred tree on it.
GT 32:31 Okay.
Val 32:32 So what I’m doing here is I’m saying Lehi’s dream is–this is typical of dreams. You were telling me about a dream that had your truck in it, before we started here. Right? Lehi had a dream that had Jerusalem in it. Is this surprising?
Val 32:50 So, I got off track here. Temples are archetypically in a high place. Butler notes that HaKol was the most obvious word for Lehi to use when he’s describing the great and spacious building. The Hebrew word HaKol refers specifically to the large middle room of the temple. The temple would have these three main sections. In the middle one, the biggest one, was the HaKol. But it was also used for the temple as a whole and for any large building. So, it’s a capacious word. If you’re referring to a great building, you could say HaKol, but you could also use it to refer to that main room in the temple or to the temple as a whole. And it can be used, again, for a building, like the palace. If Lehi said HaKol, as seems likely, great building and temple or palace were alternative translations of what he said. Lehi indicated that the people in the building wore clothes that were exceedingly fine, the kind of clothing that the temple priests and princes typically wear. Butler notes that Exodus, actually, repeatedly prescribes fine clothing, the word that’s actually used there in the Book of Mormon, as the appropriate dress for the priests in the temple. So, these people were all dressed in fine clothing. They’re pointing and mocking the people that are over on the other side of the Kedron Valley, out worshipping at the sacred tree that had been there at that time.
Val 34:22 The mocking people in the great and spacious building are at clearly connected with the Jews who mocked Lehi when he was prophesying. And that’s said in the Book of Mormon right there. He was mocked. And Lehi says the mockers were of the house of Israel. And among the mockers, the Bible tells us, were the chief priests who would be found in the temple. This is in Second Chronicles chapter…
GT 34:46 These are the Josiahn Jews.
Val 34:48 Yeah, it says that prophets came in to Israel at that time, and that the chief priests mocked them. So, Lehi is one of the prophets that came in at that time, and the chief priests were among the people that were mocking him. Since they have the power to kill him, in spite of his status and personal wealth–Lehi is, obviously, a rich guy and prosperous guy from what we know of him. It’s apparent that the people who oppose and mock Lehi include the civil and religious authorities, the people in Jerusalem that have power; that is, the people who control and administer the palace and the temple. And, of course, their temple and palace, like the great and spacious building in the dream, are on the verge of an exceedingly great fall. I mean, a few years after this, everything’s going to be razed to the ground. So, this great building that’s about to fall, great and spacious, HaKol, you can call it the great and spacious building. You can call it the great and spacious temple, too. But it is going to fall.
Val 35:48 So the Kidron chasm can help us understand how the house of El Shaddai and Yahweh came to be transformed into a great and spacious building without foundations. One of the names of the Divine Mother in the Old Testament is wisdom. And we’re told that the temple was destroyed because those who administered it rejected wisdom and embraced the world and the wisdom thereof. So, you have wisdom with a capital W, another name for the Divine Mother, and that’s being rejected. And they’re choosing the world’s wisdom. That’s a contrast there. That’s in First Nephi 11:35. In the dream, that Kidron chasm with its filthy water, signifies the depths of hell. Nephi tells us that the dark mists associated with the chasm are the deceptions of the devil, which blind the eyes and harden the heart of God’s children. In the Bible we’re told that Josiah and Hilkiah descended into Nephi’s allegorical hell when they destroyed the Asherah statue that had been located in the temple for most of its history. They destroyed it by dragging it down into the Kidron. And they’re creating their own mists of darkness by burning it and all the other tokens of the Son of God and the host of heaven.
Val 37:04 So, my interpretation, I talk about this in more detail in First Visions and Last Sermons. But those mists of darkness that are arising, it’s right down there in the Kidron Valley. What was happening there? Josiah and Hilkiah were destroying all the tokens from the temple of the gods of the So’od, mists of darkness rising up right out of that…
GT 37:28 Ash, basically.
Val 37:29 Yes, it’s rising up out of that place where the physical rejection of the gods of the council is taking place. And, so that fits in, too, the fact that there’s mists of darkness there. In Jewish tradition, the desecration of the Asherah is remembered as the rejection of the Shekinah, which I was talking about earlier. And again, First Visions and Last Sermons is the place–well, no, the best place for that, I talk about that most, I think I only talk about that in Hidden in Plain View: Mother in Heaven and Scripture. Anyway, this feminine part of Elohim, the wife of God, who the tradition says was taken out of the Holy of Holies and departed the temple through the mercy gate that leads into the Kidron Valley. This is the gate Josiah and Hilkiah undoubtedly used to drag the ASHA into the valley because it’s the gate closest to the temple and when your exit exiting the temple compound on the Kedron side, so passing through this gate, the tradition says the rejected goddess went into exile just prior to the destruction of Solomon’s temple right when Hilkiah and Josiah were doing this. When the Deuteronomist princess and priests also rejected and mocked Lee highest message that Yahweh is the corporeal Messiah, Son of a Corporeal Father who sits on the mercy seat, they cast the entire heavenly family out of their temple home. They left it high in the air without foundation, right for the fall that would soon follow. So, this is my account of why the temple is destroyed. It’s not my account, really. I’m reading the Book of Mormon. I shouldn’t say it’s my account. This is my interpretation of the Book of Mormon account of why that temple was destroyed. They threw the Heavenly Father and heavenly mother and Yahweh, our gods out of the temple. A temple without the gods in it is ripe for destruction, and it was destroyed. Though in the Bible account, the Son of God is rejected along with the rest of the host of heaven, and like Asherah is cast into the Kidron Valley and Lehi’s dream. Both the son and the mother still exist in full glory, opposite the great and spacious temple on the Mount of Olives, side of the Kidron Valley.
Why Laman & Lemuel tried to Kill Nephi (Mother in Heaven)
Interview
Val 39:53 So Lehi’s dream and this dream of Lehi is supported by Ezekiel and in the Jewish tradition. By the Jewish tradition, which also says that the Shekinah dwelled on the Mount of Olives after it was rejected by the Jews in exile through the Mercy Gate, probably accompanied by the Divine Mother. That is the idea here. So anyway, so getting back to the dream. In it, the priests and princes mock those who worship the Mother Tree on the Mount of Olives on the Kidron side, in response to the mocking some who have joined Lehi at the tree, become ashamed and fall away. The response of Laman and Lemeul and the these unvaliant worshipers of the tree have important implications for the location of the boundary of the Divine Council, the So’od Elohim and for the ontology, the nature of the moral obligation for ontology and the moral obligations of the heavenly hosts. So in Lehi’s s first vision, Father El and the concourses of angels were located in heaven. In Lehi’s dream, the Divine Mother and son, the sacred tree and its fruit are located on the earth mound of Olives. The important point is that the divine counsel exists in both places, its boundaries circumscribe all of heaven, but also sacred places on earth. When we go into the temple, heaven circumscribes the temple, our temples. They’re part of heaven. They’re not really. I mean, they’re part of Earth, but just like the tree is on the Mount of Olives, it’s on the earth, but that’s also heaven. The Divine Mother is there. The Divine Son is there. Lehi is returning into the council. And we do the same thing when we go into the temple.
Val 41:34 Moral agency exists in both places, both in heaven and on earth. There’s moral agency. The heavenly host that’s described in the Old Testament, are moral agents. And they sometimes do things contrary to God’s will. And they got expelled from the council. We’re all familiar with the war in heaven. That’s a bunch of people in heaven, that got expelled because they used their agency and contrary to God. The same is true for the manifestations of the Divine Council on Earth. In Lehi’s theology and ours, moral agency creates real drama, real joy and pain for Divine Council members. And Lehi, now is in the Divine Council. He’s eaten of the fruit. He’s part of it. For Lehi, this drama and pain is most manifest in his dealings with Laman and Lemuel. Any parent knows that had to be just the worst trauma of Lehi’s life is his interactions with Laman and Lemuel. Lehi and his eldest sons are at odds and much evidence suggests this is because Laman and Lemuel are devout followers of Josiah, the great reforming king of their youth. Laman and Lemuel, Sam and Nephi all would have been born during Josiah’s reign. And Laman and Lemuel would have fully come of age during that reign, which lasted from 640 to 609 BC, so just nine years before Lehi and his family are leaving, that’s when Josiah’s reign ended. So, Laman and Lemuel, the first four sons, all grew up or all were born during the time of Josiah and would have known about him and about everything that he had done. Laman and Lemuel clearly agree with the people in in the dream’s great and spacious building. They testify, “We know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people. For they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord and His commandments according to the law of Moses. Wherefore, we know they’re a righteous people.”
Val 43:27 And Nephi confirms what they, themselves, say. Nephi says, “They were like unto to the Jews who were in Jerusalem who sought to take away the life my father.” So, they’re saying [that] we’re like them and Nephi is saying [that] they’re like them. They’re all in agreement on that point. So, Laman and Lemuel are fully on board with Josiah. They behave as the book Josiah received mandates that they behave. If you want to understand Laman and Lemuel. read Deuteronomy Chapter 13. I mean, everybody should go take a look at Deuteronomy, Chapter 13. You’re going to know why Laman and Lemuel do what they do. That chapter in Deuteronomy requires people to kill, “a prophet or dreamer of dreams,” even one who, like Nephi, and Lehi, “giveth thee a sign or a wonder. That prophet or dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, if he causes you to go after other gods,” for example, Son and Mother gods. And this is a direct quote, “If thy brother, the mother of thy son says, ‘Let us go serve other gods,’ thou shalt surely kill him.” They’re told to kill their brother, if he leads them to some god, other than Josiah’s one God.
GT 44:36 They’re just following Josiah’s rules.
Val 44:37 Yeah. So, Laman and Lemuel are motivated by fierce piety when they oppose Lehi and Nephi. I mean it makes a lot more sense. They’re not just a couple of cussin’ kids that are so obtuse they can’t figure anything out. They have their own religion, which was the prestige religion, and everybody celebrated as the true religion and that a lot of people continued to celebrate, the One God. They don’t want to believe in this Son of God thing that Lehi is putting out and that Nephi is putting out. They were told that was really bad, and they believe it.
Val 45:13 So, everything they do, it’s easy to explain it in terms of they’re trying to do what Deuteronomy 13 tells them to do. They’re faithful followers of Josiah. I think that’s the way we should see them. I’m not alone in having seen that. I never saw anybody else direct people to chapter 13, which is the place where it just leaps out at you. I mean, they’re doing just what they’re told to do there. They, predictably, refuse to join Lehi at the Sacred Mother tree on the Mount of Olives because it’s the tree there Josiah had cut down. This tree had been on the Mount of Olives since the time of Solomon. But Josiah went and chopped it down when he was doing his reform. So, Josiah was totally against that tree on the Mount of Olives, opposite from the temple and the palace that we see in the dream. And they first rebel against Lehi, when imitating Moses, he richly separates himself from Josiah’s Jerusalem Jews with a three-day journey, then violating Deuteronomous mandates that sacrifices be made only in Jerusalem, and only by a Levite. He builds an altar and offer sacrifices that signify the Son of God he worships. All that violates Deuteronomy. So, his doing that is a really bad thing under Josiah’s rules. You can’t make sacrifices any place but Jerusalem. He just went and did it outside Jerusalem, and he’s making the sacrifices to the Son of God that he understands. And that’s the first time that Laman and Lemuel rebel, is when he does that. [Lehi] violates that strict Josiahan proscription on any sacrifices any place but there. And actually, all the places they rebel is when they’re being separated in some way from Jerusalem, which is what they see as where the true religion is. Each time = they get a big rebellion, they’re heading out of Jerusalem, or there’s something that’s going to separate them further from Jerusalem where the true faith is. So, to reiterate, we find that = the people and places in Lehi’s dream correspond closely, as it’s often true in dreams, back to your track again, to the people and…
GT 47:22 People are going to [wonder,] what is this dream Rick had about his truck?
Val 47:25 Yeah, sorry about that. To the people in places and events that are salient in the dreamer’s waking life. That’s pretty normal. Lehi’s dream has obvious local significance. The politicians and priests who persecuted him are there, still pointing and mocking. Total destruction impends for their palace and temple high on Mount Moriah. Mists of darkness arise from the Kidron Valley where Josiah burned the symbols of the Divine Mother and the host of heaven. Dangerous flash floods flow through the valley, as does the Gihon spring, a fountain of pure water that I’ll discuss more in a moment. The sacred tree is on the Mount of Olives, where the Asherah tree had stood for 350 years, while the Asherah statue had been in the temple. Josiah’s disciples, Laman and Lemuel, being true to their solitary sovereign God, refused to worship the Divine Mother and Son. And the elites persuade many others to give up their worship of the Mother and Son on the Mount of Olives and make their way back across the Kidron Valley to the palace and temple high in the air that are controlled by the king and priests.
Val 48:33 So let me pause here for a moment to throw King Josiah a bone. While he was probably wrong to make war on Mother in Heaven, as he did, one has to admire the effectiveness of his campaign. The worship of Asherah in Lehi’s day was really widespread. Asherah figurines are one of the most common archaeological finds from the 600 strata of Jerusalem. So clearly, Mother in Heaven was worshipped in widespread way. But, through violence and mockery, Josiah persuaded most to turn away from the Divine Mother and her sacred tree, as Lehi indicates in the dream. So, all those people that are gathered with Lehi at the tree, he says [that] many of them over on the other side of the Kidron Valley, the people in the palace, the temples, the temple in the palace, that are dressed in all that fine clothing, mocking and pointing, well, they did that. They did the mockery. He did a lot more, too. He was violent, but he turned many people away from the worship of Asherah, at that point, and of the Divine Mother, in other words. They got rid of her, and it was not an easy thing to do. She was clearly a really important part of their religion.
GT 48:33 So, was Josiah the first monotheist in the Bible, not Abraham?
Val 49:14 I think that’s what a lot of scholars would tell you, yes. And that’s my thesis here. I’m making a pretty, let’s put it this way. I think the scholars might just say in some cases, he gets rid of all the other gods for Israel. There are still places where you might say, well, he thinks other nations can have a different God. But for Israel, no more Divine Council, just this one. And the question of how far he took us, again, we have very thin evidence. Right? So, my argument is, this is that brilliant Jewish mind at work, not my mind, their mind . I mean, you look at the best philosophers in the world a lot of them are Jewish. And they saw this possibility in the name Yahweh or in A’a Asher A’a. I Am that I Am, pure being. It’s a really abstract concept. Whether they fully grasp it at that moment, it’s hard to know. But I think the fact that Lehi argues against that monism makes me think that yes, it was fully in place at that point. So, as his account of the dream ends, Lehi focuses on the most local, personal meaning of all, then, on the well-being of his own family. The dream ends with a family group: Father, Lehi, Mother Sariah, older brother, Sam, younger brother Nephi, standing together at the Divine Mother Tree, partaking of the sacramental fruit. But Laman and Lemuel partook not of the fruit. Lehi is preoccupied with their refusal to do so, knowing that the tree and its fruit are essential for salvation. He exhorts Laman and Lemuel with all the feeling of a tender parent that they would hearken to his word, that perhaps the Lord would be merciful to them. But true to their Deuteronomist faith, they don’t heed his exhortation. So, that takes care of Lehi.
Nephi’s Dream
Val 52:01 Now let’s talk a little bit about Nephi and his experience. Fortunately, Nephi was not satisfied to see only the immediate local familial meanings of Lehi’s dream. He had a burning question. What does the dream mean? He’s full of desire to know any mysteries God has encoded in the dream, so he seeks further enlightenment. In response to his earnest seeking for understanding, Nephi has his own visionary experience of the dream that reveals what its implications are for his immediate family, his future posterity, and all the world. Nephi learns that when Yahweh descended from heaven in Lehi’s first vision, he was charged to lead, not just Lehi, but Lehi’s family and all others who will follow him back to the sacred tree. The tree is the axis mundi, the point at which Heaven and Earth intersect. Nephi’s vision begins precisely where Lehi’s dream left off, with the family group, father, mother, older brother and Nephi. But the group of related beings gathered at the tree on Earth is now gathered in heaven. And the divine destiny of Nephi and each family member is revealed. The destiny of Father Lehi is revealed when he’s replaced in the Nephi’s vision by El Elyon, the most high God model of the Divine Father that Lehi may become. The destiny of Mother Sariah is revealed when she is replaced by the Divine Mother Shaddai, a model of the Divine Mother [that] Sariah may become. The destiny of Sam is revealed when he’s replaced by the Divine older brother Yahweh, Redeemer, and exemplar for Sam and all other human beings, who are charged to become like Christ.
Val 53:51 Nephi is the one constant between the two family groups. His kinship to his earthly father, mother and older brother is obvious, as he now stands in the presence of the corresponding divine beings, he’s transformed as each member of his family was symbolically transformed. His own divine destiny begins to be revealed. He is Abiel, the Son of the Father, Ammishaddai, the kin of the mother, Abijah, the brother of Yahweh. He now has the experience, not of the man he has been, but of the god he’ll eventually become. Like Lehi, Nephi is led to the tree by the premortal Yahweh, the Spirit of the Lord, the one who descended in Lehi’s first vision. Nephi then encounters those whose names his father had exclaimed in praise: Yahweh, El and Shaddai. He meets them, not on Earth, but in heaven, their and our true home.
Val 54:50 His experience begins when he’s caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, “Yea, unto an exceedingly high mountain.” Now, now he’s at the threshold of heaven and Yahweh asks him what he wants. David Bacavoy has compared this to a temple recommend interview. In response to the interview question, Nephi replies, “I desired to behold the things which my father saw. Yahweh then asked whether he believes his father saw the tree. When Nephi replies that he believes all the words of his father, he gets his recommend. The gates of heaven open and he is ushered into the presence of God. Yahweh exclaims, “Hosanna to Adonai El Elyon. Hosanna, to the Lord, the Most High God,” signifying that Nephi now stands before the Father, El Elyon, the Most High God. Like Michael, in the temple, the man Nephi, now stands in heaven with the Father and the Son. In the temple manner, Yahweh now gives Nephi a two-step introduction to the Mother, emphasizing as he does, her close connection with himself. Nephi is first told what will happen. It then happens Yahweh says, “Behold, this thing shall be given unto thee for a sign, that after thou hast beheld the tree which bore the fruit which thy father tasted, thou shalt behold a man descending out of heaven. And ye shall bear record that it is the Son of God. These words couple Mother and Son, marking how their actions are intertwined. You will see the Mother tree, then see the Son descending from her, and they confound man and God. The words man and God, or the concepts man and God are confounded here. Christ, who we know to be a god, is called a man, an important motif that marks man and God as being of one kind. What Yahweh had described as plan, now happens, the sort of thing that you see in that temple, plan, then the thing.
Val 56:51 “And I looked and beheld a tree, and it was like under the tree which my father had seen, and the beauty there I was far beyond yea, exceeding of all beauty and the whiteness there often exceed the whiteness of the driven snow. This tree is a thing of being of heaven on earth. And it came to pass that after I had seen the tree I said unto the Spirit, I behold that thou has showed me the tree which is precious above all.” So still in heaven. Nephi has encountered the Divine Mother in person or symbol, whose glory and beauty exceeds anything possible on the earth. Given Lehi and Nephi’s Jerusalem roots where the tree is a well-known symbol. The mother meaning of this tree would be blindingly obvious to both Lehi and Nephi. Those Asherah figurines the archaeologists so commonly dig up in Jerusalem, combined a woman and a tree with the trunk of a tree at the bottom, and a woman at the top. So, it’s the tree and women are bound together here. They knew this. This was obvious to them.
Val 58:02 As he had stood with his father, mother and older brother in Lehi’s dream Nephi, now stands in the presence of Father El, mother Shaddai, and son Yahweh. The divine transformation of each family member who stood with him, partaking of the tree in Lehi’s dream, signifies this own transformation, a transformation that’s underscored in the text that, again, blurs the distinction between man and God. Nephi now says what’s going to happen here. Nephi and Christ are going to be referred to repeatedly here, and there’s a kind of equation between the two of them as you read through this. He said, “For I spake unto him, as a man speaketh, for I beheld that he was in the form of a man. Yet nevertheless I knew it was the spirit of the Lord. And he spake unto me as a man speaketh with another.” So, this God is speaking together with this man, but they’re being mixed together. Is Yahweh a man or a god? Is Nephi a man or a God? Both are both, man and God, or, eventually, will be both. The conflating of I and he and man in this verse marks the fact that they’re the same kind of beings.
Val 59:17 By being associated with these three gods, Nephi’s own divinity is highlighted. And Nephi’s symbolic transformation is powerfully emblematic of the proper telos of all human souls. Each of us, like Nephi, are personally known by the Father, Mother and Son, and each needs to return to them and having been deified, individually stand, as Nephi here does, in intimate relationship with them. A way to think about this is to think about Adam standing in heaven with the Father and the Son and participating in the creation of the world. In that context, Adam is more than just a man, as he stands with the gods. His divine potential in nature is clear. And the same is true of the man Nephi as he here stands in heaven with the Father, the Mother and the Son. Nephi now asks for a deeper understanding of the Divine Mother, or the tree, who stands before him. To more fully reveal who she is, Yahweh commands Nephi to look at him. But when Nephi does, the Savior disappears.
Val 1:00:24 The scene suddenly shifts. Nephi is now on the earth, in Nazareth, where he sees a virgin who has the same two attributes that characterize the Divine Mother in heaven, exceptional beauty and whiteness. But now, exceptional only in comparison to all other earthly women. It actually compares Mary to all other virgins on the earth. The tree in heaven, was compared to all possible things in terms of its beauty. Mary doesn’t yet have all the glory of the Divine Mother that Nephi saw in heaven. Nephi’s new companion, an angel, who has descended from heaven to replace Yahweh, who disappeared, asked Nephi if he knows the condescension of God. This phrase refers, in the first instance, to Yahweh’s sudden disappearance and descent from heaven to earth. But it’s probably a double entendre. Moments before, Nephi personally experienced the condescension of God, as he, having the experience of a God, moved instantaneously from heaven to earth. The angel now tells Nephi that the virgin whom thou seest is the Mother of the Son God, after the manner of the flesh. Disqualifier: after the manner of the flesh, implies that the Son of God has another mother, after the manner of the Spirit, the Divine Mother Nephi saw in heaven from whom, as promised, Nephi or Yahweh, has descended to the earth. Nephi now witnesses the Virgin Mary have the same experience he had. Like him, she was carried away in the Spirit. He uses this word ‘carried away.’ She was with Lehi. Here, it’s used with Mary. Time passes during which she, too, presumably encounters the Father, the Mother and Son in heaven, as Nephi just had. This encounter reveals that the woman Mary, like the man Nephi, is intrinsically divine. And after she had been carried away in the Spirit for a space of time, the angel spake unto me saying, “Look, the descent of the Son, which began in the presence of the Mother tree in Heaven,” when Yahweh commanded Nephi to Look, now ends. The angel repeats Yahweh’s earlier command, that Nephi look, “And I looked and beheld the Virgin again, bearing a child in her arms.”
Val 1:02:44 So, in heaven, Christ commands Nephi to Look at him. But when Nephi does, the Savior disappears. The next time Nephi here’s the command to look, he looks and sees Christ as a baby in the arms of Mary, the mother of the Son of God after the man or the flesh. The angel now says, Behold, the Lamb of God, yay, even the Son of the Eternal Father, as he was promised in heaven Nephi now beholds the man descending out of heaven, and can bear record that it is the Son of God. He saw Christ with the Divine Mother, the tree in heaven, and he is then seeing Mary holding the Lamb of God in her arms on Earth. So, we have the Mother in Heaven, beauty and whiteness that exceeds all possible earthly beauty and whiteness. Nephi sees Christ descending from that place, that tree in heaven, to another being who’s compared to her, the Mother of the Son of God, after the man or the flesh is emphasized there. She has beauty and whiteness, but only in comparison to other earthly women.
Val 1:03:50 So we’ve got the Divine Mother. We’ve got the Earthly Mother of Christ. They’re linked together here, and they’re going to be connected at other points, too, in the scriptures. As an aside, let me comment on the tree and lamb symbols, because he just said, “Behold the Lamb of God.” It’s obvious to us that an unblemished lamb that is burned on the altar is the symbol of Christ. No Latter-day Saint can fail to–you start talking about the Lamb of God, we know what that’s talking about. It’s a symbol of God. It’s the powerful symbol of the Son, Christ. When we talk about the lamb, we perfectly understand it’s talking about Christ. In Lehi and Nephi’s time, it would have been equally obvious that the tree represented Asherah/Shaddai, the Divine Mother. It was totally around them everywhere in their culture. And there could be no question about what the meaning of that symbol was. So, if we read this in situ, we need to understand who did they see? Who did they understand this tree to be, this tree in heaven? Then, it turns out to be as connected to a Mother of the Son of God on earth.
Val 1:05:04 Anyway, the title here given the Son, Lamb of God is significant. It provides a hermeneutical. Hermeneutical, I’m going to say here. That’s a fancy word for interpretation or an interpretation key to what follows. The angel now asks Nephi, “Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?” Nephi answers, “Yea, it’s the love of God, which shedeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men.” In all but two of its 39 Old Testament and 46 Book of Mormon appearances, the word shed is connected with blood, often the blood of the sacrificial lamb. So, this love of God, which is shed in the hearts of man, what is that? The love of God is the Son, the fruit of the tree, the being who voluntarily sheds his sacramental blood each week, throughout the world, to redeem the hearts of the children of men.
Val 1:05:40 So, the love of God might be a feeling, in part, but it is a person. Christ is the love of God. He’s the one that God loves. He’s the beloved of God, the love of God in that sense. So, when we talk about the love of God here, we’re talking about the object of God’s love. But the preeminent object, and sign of God’s love is also the Mother who’s inseparably connected with the Son. So, Nephi adds that the Tree of Life, from which the sacramental fruit hangs in Lehi’s dream, is also the object and sign or the object of God’s love, or is the love of God, as is the fountain of pure water, the Gihon spring associated with Asherah and called the Virgin spring, that flows from the tree. Let me add here that the Gihon spring actually flowed just down below the temple into the Kidron Valley. And what happens in the dream is that spring that was associated with the temple gets shifted, because the temple has become a fallen thing. And it’s shifted over onto the Mount of Olives. And now it flows from the Asherah tree on the Mount of Olives. And when people go to the temple, they may notice, if they watch the iconography of the temple, you see the Tree of Life. They recognize the spring of water flowing as a spring of pure water flowing. So, this is part of our temple iconography today, the folks making those the temple images, they’re aware of this connection between the spring and the tree.
GT 1:07:34 I’ve never noticed that before.
Val 1:07:38 It’s definitely there. You have the spring and the tree being connected. It’s more obvious in some than in others, but it’s there in all of them. In the narrative that follows, Nephi uses these two symbols for the Divine Mother. First, the fountain of pure water, then the tree to reveal the symbiotic relationship the Mother and Son have as they work together to redeem humanity. Immediately following his declaration that the tree and the fountain are also the object and sign of God’s love, Nephi recounts the baptism of Christ. So, it immediately shifts to this baptism. Baptism is an inherently female symbol, a kind of birth, and Nephi links Christ’s baptism with his physical birth, characterizing both with this distinctive epithet, the condescension of God. So, he uses the word condescension of God first in connection with God coming down into the world from where he was in heaven with the Father and Mother. But now he’s going to use it again here in connection with Christ’s baptism, which is another kind of birth, too, right? Both of those are births.
{End of Part 2}
Copyright © 2023
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:12 — 64.3MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Email | | More
