The Book of Mosiah Parallels God's Plan of Salvation

-

On Mother's Day, I was asked to substitute in Primary. I always have a default lesson prepared for whenever I am asked to sub in Primary, which is the basic plan of salvation (using my basic five piece visual aid and sometimes the other two pieces) and then I prepare to bring the lesson of the week into the plan of salvation. This time, I did not use my visual aid because, as I was preparing the lesson, I found a diagram in a seminary manual related to the scriptures of the week that stuck out to me as being very similar to the plan of salvation. The more I thought about it, I realized that the diagram of the journeys in Mosiah was a much better visual aid for this setting because it was a near perfect match to the plan of salvation and mapped it out very well, better than I expected when I started thinking about all the parallels. Although I think this could be redrawn better to look like a better parallel, I'm going to use the one I found online and explain how similar it is to the plan of salvation because its already there and I'm not a great artist.

I'm going to use the diagram below which is a modified diagram from the seminary manual.

I believe that adding Abinadi to the diagram is critical because he is THE central figure in the book of Mosiah and by adding him to the visual, discussing him won't be skipped over.


I'm going to go through each of the seven journeys to describe key points that will tie in to the plan of salvation.
  1. After King Benjamin gathered all his people together in the Land of Zarahemla and appointed King Mosiah to be King, we learn about groups of people who traveled to and from the Land of Zarahemla. In the first chronological journey, there was a war in which the bodies of those that died were left near the Land of Nephi, and Zeniff, who led the war and won, went back to the Land of Zarahemla.
  2. This same Zeniff led a group of people back to the Land of Nephi. After the people had fallen into wickedness, a prophet of God was sent to call the people to repentance. He was rejected and put to death.
  3. A group of baptized believers left the Land of Nephi, before Abinadi's prophecies were fulfilled of the impending destruction, and went to the Land of Helam.
  4. After much death and destruction, and in an attempt to prevent more destruction, a group was sent to get help from their brethren in the Land of Zarahemla. In their attempt they were lost, and found more death and destruction. Before coming back, they found gold plates that contained mysteries that ultimately revealed what caused the destruction of those found dead.
  5. Messengers were sent from the Land of Zarahemla to search out their brethren.
  6. These messengers helped plan the way of deliverance from more death and destruction and showed the path back to the Land of Zarahemla.
  7. After more captivity in the Land of Helam, with power and great mercy and grace, God revealed the way of deliverance and led them back to the Land of Zarahemla to meet back up with their brothers who had already made it back.

In the diagram below, I changed the words and labels and added a figure of Christ.
Christ on the cross is from this website: MinisteringSimply.com - Easter Come Follow Me Lesson Ideas


Here are each of the parallels of the seven journeys to the plan of salvation.
  1. The gathering of the kingdom by King Benjamin in the Land of Zarahemla is paralleled by the great family council in heaven before the world was created in which God called Jehovah, Jesus Christ, to be a king and a ruler over all of God's children. The first chronological journey and its war parallels the great "war in heaven: [in which] Michael and his angels fought against [Lucifer]; and [Lucifer] fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And [Lucifer] … called the Devil, and Satan, … was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." (Rev 12:7-9).
  2. Michael, who came to earth as Adam, led the human race, bringing people to earth. After the people had fallen into wickedness, Jesus Christ was sent to call the people to repentance. He was rejected and put to death.
  3. Death is a separation of the spirit from the body. This third journey seems to parallel the spirit leaving the physical earth and going to the spirit world. The body is left behind to decay and turn to dust.
  4. The phrase 'outer darkness' only occurs in scripture 6 times and in most cases can be interpreted to either be referring to the state of the soul before the resurrection or after. However in the Book of Mormon, the one reference it has is clearly about the state of the soul before the resurrection. The journey to the Jaredite lands can parallel the decaying of the body in the grave, or of hell, outer darkness, or spirit prison in the spirit world. The gold plates can refer to the scriptures generally or the Book of Mormon specifically, which is a main tool used by messengers of God to bring His children back from this pre-resurrection hell and outer darkness to Him, because it contains the gospel of Jesus Christ, the revealed mystery of how to be saved.
  5. Angels, messengers, and prophets are sent from heaven to search out their brethren.
  6. These messengers help plan the way of deliverance from death and destruction and show the path back to heaven.
  7. The spirit world is seen as a captivity, even by the righteous, because of the separation from the body. Jesus offers deliverance from this captivity through the miraculous resurrection, which reunites us with our bodies and brings us back into the presence of God in heaven.



I have not yet seen a parallel of the degrees of glory in heaven with anything in the book of Mosiah, but I'll post it here later if I do see it. If any of you have suggestions on how to improve this, or come up with your own diagram that can be used to better parallel the journeys with the plan of salvation, please comment and let me know. Also, it would be nice if I had either a generic image that could be interpreted as Abinadi and Christ (although they did die in very different ways) or at least a better image of Christ that fits the style of the diagram.

Comments

Post a Comment