Ezra Taft Benson said
“The Book of Mormon is the instrument that God designed to ‘sweep the earth as with a flood, to gather out his elect’.”
When I read this I asked myself, why? Why the Book of Mormon?
In the Title Page of The Book of Mormon Moroni says that one purpose of the book is that the remnant of the House of Israel may know the covenants of the Lord.
Nephi teaches that among plain and precious truths that were lost “many of the covenants of the Lord have they [the great and abominable church] taken away.” (1 Nephi 13:26)
Why would Satan be so determined to pervert the right way of the Lord and His covenants. Well the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lie in the covenant relationship with Him as well as power to overcome Satan and his army. Satan knew that if he could remove some of the plain and precious truths that a “great many [would] stumble...insomuch that Satan [would have] great power over them.” (1 Nephi 13:29)
I have been noticing lately that covenants are a key focus of the Book of Mormon. When anyone has a change of heart the first thing they desire to do is to covenant with the Lord that they will be obedient to Him for the rest of their life.
Now, how is this related to the gathering of Israel.
President Nelson said that
“the gathering of Israel ultimately means offering the gospel of Jesus Christ to God’s children on both sides of the veil who have neither made crucial covenants with God nor received their essential ordinances.”
He later continues:
Every child of our Heavenly Father deserves the opportunity to choose to follow Jesus Christ, to accept and receive His gospel with all of its blessings—yes, all the blessings that God promised to the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, as you know, is also known as Israel.
So the Book of Mormon teaches us about the covenant relationship we can have with the Lord beginning with baptism by someone with the proper authority. Then, that naturally leads along the covenant path to making and keeping sacred covenants in the temple. As a part of the sealing ordinance we are promised the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and are sealed to the family of God.
So what did we do to make this come alive in our little home?
We talked about covenants. It’s a special promise you make with God that you’ll be obedient to Him the rest of your life. God can give His covenant children extra blessings.
Stories
We recently read in the Book of Mormon about King Benjamin’s people who made covenants. Alma invites the people by the waters of Mormon to make covenants and we already spoke about the Abrahamic Covenant when we talked about the story of the House of Israel. I usually point it out whenever we read about covenants in the Book of Mormon.
Music: 🎶
We learned the song “We’ll Bring the World His Truth”.
Lesson with Sisters
We also had a lesson from the sister missionaries via Zoom. They talked about the Gathering of Israel and had the kids do a puzzle that represented the Lord Gathering his people using the Book of Mormon and Bible.
They invited us to gather Israel now by sharing our favorite story of Jesus with someone. So we are each going to draw a picture and tell a story in a future post.