Tag Archives: The Book of Mormon

Lesson 4 and Lesson 5: The Atonement and Mortality

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(Note: I put a link to the LDS scriptures in the sidebar. It takes too long to link each reference!)

While teaching my lesson about the Atonement four weeks ago, I ran out of time to talk about the most important aspects, namely the things we must do to receive all the blessings of the Atonement and what will happen if we do not accept the Atonement in our lives.

Since then, I’ve missed three weeks of lessons and I don’t know who, if anyone, was the substitute. (I did talk to the Sunday school president and he said he’d find substitutes, but my husband thinks the Sunday school president was probably confused and I should have found substitutes myself. Oops.)

Because I don’t know what to expect, here’s my plan for gospel discussion, which merges the concepts of lesson 4 (The Atonement of Jesus Christ) and lesson 5 (Mortality: A Time to Learn through Experience). I feel like lesson 4 is the most important lesson in the manual, so I want to make sure we discuss some of the concepts again.

  • First, to find out: What did you talk about the last few weeks? Who were your teachers?
  • Then, to remind them: We’ve been talking about the plan of salvation. In Moses 1:39, we learn that Heavenly Father’s work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. What does immortality mean? What does eternal life mean?
  • Then, to follow up: Last time I was with you, we watched a movie. In it, a man wanted to buy a property. He signed a contract with a creditor in order to purchase the property. But when it came time to pay off the contract, he couldn’t. The creditor was going to put him in jail (as justice required), but instead his friend came. His friend offered to pay the fine (out of mercy) so the man didn’t have to go to jail. What was the man required to do for his friend? Who did these people in the movie represent: the creditor, the man, the friend?

Today we’re going to talk about two things: What we must do to make the Atonement of Jesus Christ real in our lives and what we must learn in this life to prepare to meet Heavenly Father.

To discuss the two key points of this lesson, we’re going to read parts of 2 Nephi 9, which I believe is one of the best chapters in the Book of Mormon (is it fair to choose favorites?). I think it discusses the vital aspects of the Atonement.

2 Nephi 9:4-7, 21-24

  • In verse 4, what does it mean that our “flesh must waste away” but “in our bodies we shall see God”? (see footnote b, Alma 11:41)
  • In verse 5, what does “subject unto him” mean? Remember that in the movie, the man must pay the debt back to his friend. We likewise must to subject ourselves to Christ to receive the blessing of the Atonement in our lives. What are some things we must do?
  • Believe (John 3:16)
  • Repent (Doctrine and Covenants 19:16, 2 Nephi 9:23)
  • Hearken unto his voice (2 Nephi 9:21)
  • Be baptized and exercise faith in Christ (2 Nephi 9:23)
  • Endure to the end (2 Nephi 9:24)
  • In verse 6, it mentions the “merciful plan of the great Creator.” What does that mean? What do we know about this plan? (Moses 1:39) How does the Atonement fulfill part of this plan?
  • In verse 7, we learn that the “first judgment” would never have ended for us without the Atonement. The “first judgment” is like the creditor in the movie: there is justice, but no mercy. How did the Savior make it possible to overcome that judgment? How we would be “damned” (verse 22) if we don’t receive the Atonement? What does “damn” actually mean? How can not living with God mean that we are damned?

2 Nephi 9:10-12

  • In verse 10, we read about death and hell. What do these mean (hint: they are different)?
  • Without a Savior, which death would be worse: physical death or spiritual death? (hint: this is a trick question!)
  • If you disobeyed the Savior your entire life, which death would be worse: physical death or spiritual death? (hint: this is also a trick question.)

2 Nephi 9:13-16, 27

  • Before reading these verses: When you think of “hell,” what stereotypes do you think of?
  • In verse 13, we read that everyone will be resurrected, but some people will not be happy. Why would a perfect knowledge be a challenge? How could being separated from Heavenly Father be “hell”?
  • In verse 15, we read that everyone must appear before the judgment seat. What difference will it make to have the Savior on your side? (Think of the movie “The Mediator.”)
  • In verse 16, we read that people will be “filthy’ after resurrection. Why do you think people will be “filthy” even after being resurrected? What can you do in this life to avoid being “filthy” even after the resurrection? Why is important to follow the Savior in this life? What qualities can we develop and what do we need to learn in this life so we can appear before Heavenly Father and the Savior “clean”?
  • Charity is the pure love of Christ (Moroni 7:45-47)
  • Qualities to emulate (2 Peter 1:5-7)
  • What people, experiences, and organizations has the Savior blessed us with so we can learn these things?
  • Family: Doctrine and Covenants 88:123 (we learn love and unselfishness)
  • Church callings: Doctrine and Covenants 4:2 (we learn service)
  • Friends: Doctrine and Covenants 121:9 (we learn loyalty)
  • School, church, and seminary classes: Doctrine and Covenants 130:18-19 (we learn knowledge and understanding)

I realize that I probably won’t get through all of this material. I don’t know what they’ve learned in the past few weeks and so we’ll have to play it by ear.

I also realize that some of these questions might be challenging for 12-year-olds. Overall, though, I feel the manual doesn’t give them enough credit. They are very smart and able to understand the scriptures. We should spend more time reading directly from the scriptures and less time reading stories. I feel that stories might be good, but they are not as powerful as the word of God. A class of bright 12-year-olds can benefit from a Sunday school class immersed in the scriptures.

Lesson 1: A Loving Father, An Eternal Plan

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The Plan of Salvation is summarized in a chart in my Sunday school lesson manual:

plan-of-salvation.jpg

But in reviewing the Plan of Salvation chart and the scriptures on it, I began wondering “What is a basic definition of the plan of salvation? Does it really consist of circles and lines? That can’t be it. Is it really defined by Moses 1:39?”

I felt foolish asking that. I’ve been a member of this church my entire life. I’ve read the Book of Mormon a dozen times in my life. How can I not know what the plan of salvation is? Why can’t I simply state what it is?

My first thought was to consult the Gospel Principles manual. To my surprise, it had no chapter dedicated to the subject. Isn’t that something that is taught to new members? My next idea was to consult LDS.org in a basic search. “Plan of Salvation” led to more than 1,500 hits, and I hadn’t even included “plan of happiness” or any of the other names for it. Where do I begin?

I found that LDS.org has a gospel topic library that provided the best explanation for me:

The plan of salvation is the fulness of the gospel.

Well, that encompasses everything! That would explain why there isn’t a chapter dedicated to it in the Gospel Principles manual: the entire manual is the plan of salvation. That’s the whole point of the gospel and of course new members need to learn it. But it isn’t a one-week lesson.

My next question was this: Why does the manual focus on the chart in the first place, then?

The explanation continues:

As we come to understand the plan, we find answers to questions asked by so many: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go after this life?

I see now that the chart is simply a device to illustrate it. I understand now why this is only the first lesson of an entire year of Sunday school lessons. We get to discuss the answers to those three questions over the course of the year. We get to discuss our purpose over the course of the entire year.

Moses 1:39 is the focusing scripture in this lesson. I decided to put it in context. As I read the rest of Moses 1, I see other things that hint of the miraculous plan of our Father in Heaven.

From the beginning of the chapter, we learn that God has a body. Moses speaks to Him “face to face” (v2). We learn that Moses is the son of God (v4) and that God has a special plan for Moses (v6). I believe we can extend that to all of us — we all are children of God and God has a plan for each of us. I know that is true. God does have a plan for us, as we’ll see in verse 39.

Moses learns that “man is nothing” compared to the glory of God (v10). Because he has had this incredible vision of God’s power, when the adversary comes to tempt him, he recognizes the difference between the adversary and God. He notices that the adversary does not have the same glory that God had had: “Where is thy glory?” (v14). True, Moses is very scared during his encounter with the devil (v20), but ultimately, he knows to call upon God, and he receives strength to command the adversary to depart (v20-21).

Because he has demonstrated his faith in God during such a tremendously difficult encounter, he is filled with the Holy Ghost and again beholds the glory of God (v24-25). It is in this subsequent vision, again when he is “face to face,” that he learns so much more about the plan of salvation. It is in this context that God provides an explanation of his purpose:

For behold, this I my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Immortality, of course, is the ability to live forever, to be resurrected. Everyone will enjoy that blessing. Eternal life is living with Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father again. Achieving eternal life is up to us. Our decisions in this life determine whether or not we will live with God again. It is through the atonement of Christ that we are able to be clean in order to return to God again. This is why an understanding of the plan is so important. If we know what we have to do to gain eternal life, it will be easier to do it.

Moses was the chosen one to write of the plan of the Father at that time. I believe that would be the biblical record we have. But the Father promises that when the “children of men shall esteem my words as naught” and take the truths out of Moses writings, then He would send another. That promise was fulfilled in our dispensation with the Book of Mormon and with modern prophets. In the Book of Mormon, then, we can find the fullness of the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness. We can find answers to the burning questions we have in our life: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

I think that knowledge of the plan does make the difference. Just as recognizing the difference between the power of God and the non-power of adversary made a difference for Moses when he was confronted, knowing the purpose of God in our lives can help us when we are confronted by the adversary.

This is lesson 1 of 45 in how we can prepare for exaltation. I have a feeling that even after 45 lessons there will be so much more to learn!