Answers to Reader Comments - Part IX

Following are some of the comments or questions we have received from readers:

Comment #1: “In your 3 Nephi, after the ascension of Christ, the Apostles taught the true doctrines of Christ and administered the sacred ordinances. After the death of the apostles, their successors continued the work, but with rapidly declining success. Within a few generations, the great apostasy foretold in the Bible had destroyed Christ’s Church; Consequently, the keys of authority of the holy priesthood were withdrawn from the earth, and no man any longer had authorization to act in God’s name. How do you justify your restoration and Joseph Smith given the responsibility to restore Christ’s true Church when He promised in Matthew 16:18: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” Bernard S.

Response: First of all, the word rock has several uses, but two stand out. 1) It is “the rock of faith,” and 2) It is the strength of unmoving power. When Christ spoke to Peter, it followed a question to, and an answer from, Peter in which Christ told his lead Apostle that it was not man, but because of his faith it was God that revealed to him that He was the Christ, son of the living God.” Christ then commended Peter on his staunch, unmoving faith, and likening him with the rock of faith, changed his name to Cephas—from his original name of "Simon" (Σίμων Simōn in Greek or only in Acts 15:14 and 2 Peter 1:1).

Christ talking to his lead Apostle, in which he changes his name from Simeon to Peter

 

The Simon/Simeon variation was a well-known custom among Jews at the time of giving the name of a famous patriarch or personage of the Old Testament to a male child along with a similar sounding Greek/Roman name (Robert McLachlan Wilson, “Text and Interpretation: Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black, “ Cambridge University Press, UK, 5 April 1979).

The name the lead Apostle was given was Kepha כֵּיפָא, in Aramaic, which was rendered in Greek (by transliteration and the addition of a final sigma to make it a masculine word) as Κηφᾶς, from Latin and English Cephas; or (by translation with masculine termination) as Πέτρος, from Latin Petrus and English Peter (Raymond, et al., Peter in the New Testament, Augsburg Publishing, Minneapolis, 1973, pp90,120).

The precise meaning of the Aramaic word is disputed, some saying that its usual meaning is "rock" or "crag", others saying rather that it means "stone" and, particularly in its application by Christ to Simon, "precious stone" or "jewel," but most scholars agree that as a proper name it denotes a rough or tough character (A. Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate, Oxford University Press, London, UK, 2017).

Christ then told Peter, “Upon this rock, I will build my Church.” That is, upon the rock of faith. The issue in this message to each of us is the importance of faith, not of Peter—that is, faith in the living God and his Son, who He sent. Peter is the rock who stands with power and support of the cornerstone (rock of Christ). At this point, the Lord gave Peter his new name, no doubt speaking to his Apostle in their native Aramaic language, which in case of the name, would have been kepha.

When Christ said, that you are now Kepha (Chepas) Peter, and on this rock (faith) I will build my Church. Obviously, Christ was talking about faith, or the rock of faith that had allowed the Apostle to know that the man he followed was Christ: “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

Living rocks are the building material of Jesus' church, that is, faith is the building block of his church. Peter himself calls Christians "living stones," who serve as building material for a spiritual house and priesthood. All the living stones are fitted into place around a living cornerstone, which is Jesus Christ (I Peter 2:3-8). If that faith of Peter and this whole incident is what they call a "type" or a "model," then Jesus is asking every one of us to make the same proclamation, to say, "Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of the living God." It may seem easy enough to say those words, but if we think about the implications, we begin to see the challenge. If Jesus is the Son of God, then all of his teachings, even the hard sayings that some of the disciples described his teachings as being — hard sayings, all of those teachings come to us from God.

Comment #2: “The Book of Mormon describes a vast pre-Columbian culture that supposedly existed for centuries in North and South America. It goes into amazingly specific detail describing the civilizations erected by the “Nephites” and “Lamanites,” who were Jews that fled Palestine in three installments, built massive cities in the New World, farmed the land, produced works of art, and fought large-scale wars that culminated in the utter destruction of the Nephites in A.D. 421. The Latter-day Saints revere the Book of Mormon as the divinely inspired record of those people and of Christ’s appearance to them shortly after his crucifixion in Jerusalem.

“The awkward part for the Mormon church is the total lack of historical and archaeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon. For example, after the cataclysmic last battle fought between the Nephites and Lamanites, hundreds of thousands of men and beasts had allegedly perished, and the ground would have been strewn with weapons and armor. It should be easy to locate and retrieve copious evidence of such a battle. After all, the Bible tells of similar battles that took place long before A.D. 421 but that have been documented by archaeology.

“Yet no scientist, Mormon or otherwise, has been able to find anything to substantiate that such a great battle took place.”

Response: First of all, almost no artifacts of war (arrowheads, swords, etc.) have been found around Jericho to support the story found in the Old Testament (Joshua 20:21), despite there being a huge battle wherein the Israelites killed every man, woman and child in the city.

On the other hand, Edward Whymper, an English mountaineer, explorer, illustrator, and author—best known for his ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865—and along with his Italian mountain climber guide Jean-Antoine Carrel reached the summit of Mount Cotacachi searching for artifacts of Ecuador’s older Indian civilizations. Mt. Cotacachi will be remembered from previous posts as the Hill Shim which was passed by the Jaredite king Omer before he turned east and “came over by the place where the Nephites were destroyed” (Ether 9:3).

Then, “from thence eastward, and came to a place which was called Ablom, by the seashore.” Thus, the hill Cumorah was west of Ablom and east of the hill Shim. In northern Ecuador, the hill Cotacachi is just west of the hill Imbabura, which would be Cumorah.

It was in this northern Province of Imbabura that Whymper and his team, along with a single arriero (muleteer) began an archaeological exploration among the old villages and the hills over a six-day period,“ in which they collected artifacts, arrowheads and weapons of bronze or stone just along the surface (Emil Henry, Triumph and Tragedy: the Life of Edward Whymper, Troubador Publishing, Leicester UK, 2011, p334).

On the other hand, in the area of Jericho, all that were found were ceramic remnants and royal amulets. There has also been carbon-14 dating, seismic activity in the region and even some ruins of tumbled walls produced what is being called impressive evidence that the fortified city was destroyed in the Late Bronze Age, about 1400 B.C.