Ether 4-5

Ether 4-5

Read Ether 4:1

Why didn’t anyone record the words found in the book of Ether sooner? The people of King Limhi found the record hundreds of years before Moroni put them into the record. Why don’t we get to learn about them until this point?

Ether 4:1 tells us that...

“The Lord commanded the brother of Jared to go down out of the mount from the presence of the Lord, and write the things which he had seen; and they were forbidden to come unto the children of men until after that he should be lifted up upon the cross; and for this cause did king Mosiah keep them, that they should not come unto the world until after Christ should show himself unto his people.”

Open Ended

Why do you think the Lord commanded that they should NOT have the words until after Christ should come show himself? (hint: what is required to believe in a Savior nobody has ever seen?)

An answer:

Because the people needed to exercise faith in what the scriptures prophesied (as in Genesis and Isaiah) about the Messiah before he came. Once he came, faith was no longer needed to see that he was a man and that we were created in his image. Remember the interaction between Christ and the Brother of Jared and the shock that he experienced when he realized that his God had the form of a man, and that he had the form of a god.

Verse 5...

Moroni seals up the plates and the interpreters (the two stones the Brother of Jared made)...how cool is it to be reading about how they were made! How amazing for Joseph Smith to literally be translating with them and be reading about them.

Open Ended

What were these two stones called?

Multiple Select

In verse 18, what are some commands that are given? CHECK ALL THAT apply:

• come unto me and believe in my gospel

• pay tithing

• repent

• go to seminary

• be baptized

Ether Chapter 5: THREE WITNESSES

• Moroni has written the words that he was commanded to write. He sealed them up and warns “therefore touch them not in order that ye may translate for that thing is forbidden you, except by and by it shall be wisdom in God.”

• Warning: don’t mess with these plates unless and until God commands it

  
  

Verses 2-4

• When it’s time, you might be allowed to show them to a few chosen individuals to bear witness of the work

• “And unto three shall they be shown by the power of God; wherefore they shall know of a surety that these things are true”

• “And in the mouth of three witnesses shall these things be established; and the testimony of three and this work, in the which shall be shown forth the power of God and also his word, of which the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost bear record--and all this shall stand as a testimony against the world at the last day.”

Open Ended

WHO were the THREE WITNESSES of the Book of Mormon that Moroni is prophesying about in Ether 5:4? (hint: look in the front of your copy of the Book of Mormon)

Open Ended

Final question: what's something interesting you have learned while studying the last five chapters?