Flooding My Life with the Book of Mormon 2.0

2 Nephi 9:15 And it shall come to pass that when all men shall have passed from this first death unto life, insomuch as they have become immortal, they must appear before the judgment-seat of the Holy One of Israel; and then cometh the judgment, and then must they be judged according to the holy judgment of God. Jesus told His Old World disciples that the Father had delivered all judgment into the Son's hands (see John 5:22 ). The Holy One of Israel is Christ. Thus, the Bible and the Book of Mormon agree. Why is Christ to be my judge? Who better to determine my worthiness than the One who paid for my sins to free me from them? The Father could certainly deliver a true and righteous judgment on me, for He knows all things, but He invites me to stand face to face before my Savior and Redeemer, the very One who has pleaded for me and interceded for me with the Father all along. Jesus has already met the demands of justice for me. He knows firsthand the very worst of my sins and has al...

2 Nephi 9:17 O the greatness and the justice of our God! For he executeth all his words, and they have gone forth out of his mouth, and his law must be fulfilled. To fulfill is to do what is required by agreement or contract. The law is God's contract with me. For ancient Israel, the contract was the law of Moses. In my day, the contract is the law of the gospel. When I perform the terms of the contract, God will fulfill His part of the agreement. When I exercise faith, repent, receive baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end in loving the Father and the Son and my neighbor, Christ will justify and sanctify me and grant me eternal life. The contract is certain, and the promise is sure.

2 Nephi 9:14 Wherefore, we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, and our uncleanness, and our nakedness; and the righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment, and their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even with the robe of righteousness. Knowledge of my sins is essential to repentance. In the final judgment, my guilt will be completely and fully revealed to me. I will understand not just the details but the implications of my sins. This revealed knowledge is critical to my full repentance, for the Lord cannot forget my sins until I repent of them, and I cannot repent if I do not remember them and feel the appropriate godly sorrow for them.  Nakedness is guilt. The same feeling of exposure, vulnerability, and embarrassment that I would feel if caught naked is the feeling I will have when I face God and know that He can peer directly into my unclean soul. To be clothed is to have my guilt covered. Christ offers to cover me with the purity of H...

2 Nephi 9:13 O how great the plan of our God! For on the other hand, the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous, and the grave deliver up the body of the righteous; and the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible, and immortal, and they are living souls, having a perfect knowledge like unto us in the flesh, save it be that our knowledge shall be perfect. God has a plan. Indeed, He is the Master Planner. He knows how He wants things to go on both cosmic and microcosmic scales. He planned the creation of the universe, and He planned the placement of every blade of grass. Nothing is too large or too small to be excluded from God’s plan. A plan, however, is not predestination. Man's agency is also part of God's plan. Therefore, His plan is full of contingencies. As a project manager, I created many plans in my career. No project ever proceeded exactly according to the "happy path" of my plan. So, I always had...

2 Nephi 9:12 And this death of which I have spoken, which is the spiritual death, shall deliver up its dead; which spiritual death is hell; wherefore, death and hell must deliver up their dead, and hell must deliver up its captive spirits, and the grave must deliver up its captive bodies, and the bodies and the spirits of men will be restored one to the other; and it is by the power of the resurrection of the Holy One of Israel. Everyone who is not in the presence of the Father is in hell. That is the definition of hell most common in the Book of Mormon. In other words, any place that is not the celestial kingdom is hell. In modern vernacular, we tend to speak of the three degrees of glory and limit our idea of hell to outer darkness to which Satan and the sons of perdition are consigned. But in Nephi's mind, any glory that is not celestial is not worth talking about.  No matter how many levels hell may have, it's all hell to Nephi. He has only one goal, and that is exaltation,...

2 Nephi 9:11 And because of the way of deliverance of our God, the Holy One of Israel, this death, of which I have spoken, which is the temporal, shall deliver up its dead; which death is the grave. The plan of salvation is the way of deliverance. Only Christ's atonement provides the means by which I can escape the otherwise inescapable consequences of justice.  All laws entail a punishment, and when I break a law, justice demands that the punishment be inflicted. God cannot deny justice without denying Himself. If He were to change an eternal law, I could not trust Him; He would prove Himself fallible and changeable, and He would cease to be God. So, He must stand unequivocally by His laws and the requisite punishment.  The penalty for a broken law is the same in every case. The lawbreaker becomes unclean and therefore cannot reside in God's presence. He is cast out of God's presence forever, for he can never undo the breaking of the law. There are no do-overs. A person is...