Honor thy father and thy mother: promises

Honor thy Father and Mother

In the Book of Mormon, Jesus repeats all the ten commandments in the Sermon at the Temple in Bountiful except for the one about honoring one’s father and mother. He does mention it to the rich young ruler in the New Testament and Abinadi mentions it to the wicked priests of King Noah. One might wonder why he deletes this important commandment, but when all the scriptures are combined in one it makes sense. He even tells the parents to behold their little ones after they were blessed by Him and surrounded by angels and began speaking unspeakable things. The parents had been raised in a corrupt society and were about to raise their children in the same way. Therefore the parents were told to look to the glorification of their children by the power of God as a model for their own lives rather than the other way around. This breaking of tradition and healing the rising generation produced 200 years and 4 generations of righteousness.

Usually in the Bible, the Proverb’s wisdom was that:

What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?[i]

This refers to the wickedness of the previous generation inspiring more wickedness in the children. But Moses and the Lord helped the children learn the covenants in the Sinai desert for 40 years while the Egypt loving parents died of old age. Then they entered the Land of Promise with children who had grown up keeping the commandments and covenants, hopefully inspiring the next generation to do the same.

One would think that the commandment to honor your father and mother begins with the 10 commandments. However, we find it in the Babylonian Code of Hamurabi from 1754 BC, law number 195.

If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.[ii]

The code of Hamurabi in general has greater punishments for each law that the equivalent law in the 10 commandments.[iii] Moses put a positive twist on the law here, much as Jesus Christ would later emphasize the positive in his commandments. The Torah says:

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.[iv]

Jesus said to the rich young man a short recitation of the 10 commandments, citing this one:

Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.[v]

Here Jesus joins two laws together, perhaps to hint that loving is another way of honoring one’ parents.

Moses gives another interpretation for the phrase honoring your father and mother that your days may long in the land. He says:

That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.[vi]

This is a prophetic parallel structure with the same blessing for each preceding commandment. So in the Lord’s language, the true way to honor one’s father and mother is to keep the commandments and covenants that they swore to before God and in His mountain/temple.

All these themes are brought together in a new version of Malachi 4:5-6, as seen in the words of Moroni, the angel’s, visit to young Joseph Smith when he was just 17:

And again, he quoted the fifth verse thus: Behold, I will reveal unto you the Priesthood, by the hand of Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

He also quoted the next verse differently: And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.[vii]

Here, the promises made to the fathers would be planted in the hearts of the children, and this shall not only turn their hearts to their fathers, but also to the Abrahamic covenants their fathers made which contain the special “promises” of long life, prosperity and a numerous posterity in the land of their inheritance.

The people of King Benjamin made a similar new and everlasting covenant to take upon themselves the name of Jesus Christ, and to become His children and become like Him. However, the rising generation in the Book of Mormon after that broke this parental covenant and turned away from it, rejecting it, and their lives were shortened by war and pestilence and famine. This happened over and over again in the Book of Mormon.

Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers.[viii]

We also see it later in the Book of Mormon after everyone was converted following the day night and day as one day sign of the Savior’s birth:

And there was also a cause of much sorrow among the Lamanites; for behold, they had many children who did grow up and began to wax strong in years, that they became for themselves, and were led away by some who were Zoramites, by their lyings and their flattering words, to join those Gadianton robbers.

And thus were the Lamanites afflicted also, and began to decrease as to their faith and righteousness, because of the wickedness of the rising generation.[ix]

This generation likewise would be destroyed by the terrible destructions in the New World at the time of the Savior’s death. So their days were shortened and not prolonged. The Nephite generational commandment was similar but different than the Mosaic law and came down from Lehi:

For the Lord God hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence.[x]

There are some disturbing trends, among the rising generation, the younger millennials, that shed light on and remind us that these ancient prophecies and covenants are still in force among those whose parents committed themselves to live as Christ in the world of Babylon.

The Pew Reseach Center has done a Religious Lanscape Study on Younger Millennials. The overall percentage of Christians participating in the survey has dropped to 56%. Religiously affiliated young people used to be 97% in 1900 and now it is 74%.[xi] Belief in God that is certain or fairly certain has dropped to 71%.[xii] Even among those who believe in God, religiosity has declined dramatically. Young millennials attending church regularly is only 28%, daily prayer is 39%, regular participation in scripture study and other forms of group religious study is 29% with 62% reporting seldom or never, and most disturbing is 78% report that “right or wrong depends on the situation” versus 21% saying that “there are clear standards for what is right and wrong”.[xiii]

A National Review article says that nearly every morals shaping institution outside the family have been taken over by liberal left-wing progressive values, values originally only in the heads of Karl Marx and other socialists of the late 19^th century. Quoting university presidents past and present they portray the startling disconnect between the values of the previous generations and their university educated children:

As one of the founders of progressivism in America, Woodrow Wilson, who was president of Princeton University before he became president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.” Eighty-eight years later, the president of Dartmouth College, James O. Freedman, echoed Wilson: “The purpose of a college education is to question your father’s values,” he told the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College.[xiv]

This modern way of destroying faith in the covenants of our fathers and in Jesus Christ is nothing new. In the Book of Mormon Korihor preaches the same false doctrine:

Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of your sins. But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so.

And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.[xv]

This progressive brainwashing of the children of conservative parents would be easier to swallow if it didn’t involve rewiring all the brain circuitry. Functional MRI studies show that liberals are more willing to take risks, seek novelty, and love uncertainty. Further, peer group pressure changing one’s core values shows up differently in children’s brains than their parents brains:

Previous research has shown that during MRI scans, areas linked to broad social connectedness, which involves friends and the world at large, light up in Democrats’ brains. Republicans, on the other hand, show more neural activity in parts of the brain associated with tight social connectedness, which focuses on family and country.[xvi]

If the Bible were just another book, and Jesus just another philosopher, one would expect this demographic change in America to be of no consequence in terms of health, disease and mortality. However, as we shall see, the ancient covenants of our forefathers who declared that Jesus Christ was the God of this land of America are still associated with the typical Biblical blessings and cursing’s. The curse for rejecting the commandment to honor our fathers and mothers and the covenants they made with God is a shortened life and less prosperity. Numerous epidemiologists and pediatric obesity doctors are warning us that this rising generation will live less long than their parents. A parent should never have to bury a child. Robert Lustig MD, a pediatric endocrinologist, is world famous for his research into the rising epidemic of pediatric obesity. He says he went into pediatrics because he didn’t want to have to treat all the adult metabolic diseases caused by obesity. Now that children are more obese than their parents, they are developing all the diseases in their preteens and teens that adults didn’t get till they were older than 60: obesity, adult onset diabetes, hypertension, hypogonadism, inflammatory conditions, hypothyroidism, kidney failure, cancer, etc. He said:

Obesity is such that this generation of children could be the first basically in the history of the United States to live less healthful and shorter lives than their parents[xvii]

In an article in New England Journal of Medicine in 2005, 10 researchers using epidemiology stated that the obesity epidemic in children would cause, “A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century,” which is the title of the paper.[xviii]The New York Times ran a story on the report and quoted the lead researcher in the report, Dr. Olansky as saying that the children’s shorter lives numbers were:

very conservative, and I think the negative effect is probably greater than we have shown[xix]

The Surgeon General’s report, titled “The Growing Epidemic of Childhood Obesity” from 2004 said the same:

Because of the increasing rates of obesity, unhealthy eating habits, and physical inactivity, we may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.[xx]

Keeping the covenants of our fathers, honoring our father and mother, prospering in the land, and having our days prolonged is the foreshadowing in earth life of eternal life, eternal prolongation of blessings and inheritance of all that the Father has in His eternal kingdom.

[i] Ezekial 18:2 King James Version

[ii] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp

[iii] https://ancienthistory2016.wordpress.com/ancient-history/

[iv] Exodus 20:12 King James Version

[v] Matthew 19:19 King James Version

[vi] Deuteronomy 6:2 King James Version

[vii] Joseph Smith History 1:38-39

[viii] Mosiah 26:1

[ix] 3 Nephi 1:29-30

[x] 1 Nephi 2:20 and 2 Nephi 4:4

[xi] http://www.pewforum.org/2010/02/17/religion-among-the-millennials/

[xii] http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/generational-cohort/younger-millennial/