Today I read Abraham 1, which tells the story of how Abraham left the land of his fathers after his father tried to have him sacrificed to idols in the land of the Chaldeans. From what Abraham states the land was peopled by those who were the descendants of the Egyptians. It is also in this chapter that we learn that the first king of Egypt was named Pharaoh who greatly desired the Priesthood of his fathers. But he was a descendant of Ham, who was cursed for taking a wife not of the covenant so Pharaoh was denied the priesthood, but established his government in righteousness and future generations claimed they did have the Priesthood and thus perpetuated their government.
Over time, like most things, it deteriorated to the point that it was unrecognizable from what it began as. Eventually they came to a point that they started worshiping idols that required human sacrifice. I have always wondered how people can be tricked into believing in human sacrifice. I know it is a corruption of the Atonement, but how does it start? How does one go form believing in God and understanding the doctrine of the Atonement to worshiping dumb idols and believing they represent God on the earth and that they require the blood of innocents? One is so far from the other and the only thing they even have in common is that when done the right way, the blood of an innocent can atone for the sins of another. But they do not understand how it works and that it must be a voluntary sacrifice and must be completely sin free, which no person has ever accomplished and took a God to perform.
However, this chapter, knowing that Abraham was almost sacrificed himself, it lends a whole new light on the story of him being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Not only was he being asked to kill his only son, which I shudder at the thought of having to do that with my daughter, but he was being asked to perform a human sacrifice, something I'm sure he abhorred because of his experiences in the past. And yet despite it all, Abraham did as the Lord asked and was seconds away from sacrificing his own son. Abraham was truly a unique individual.
Part of what made him so unique though is he looked around him and all that was going on around him and knew it was wrong and that there was more out there. He desired the Priesthood that he had been taught and knew it was right. That is a challenge to do. It is a rare thing to know that what you are being taught by your parents and by all those around you is not right and to resist the popular culture. Not many people are strong enough to do that. And you can never know if you are strong enough to do it too unless you are put in the same position. It would kind of be the same thing as if you were brought up during the era of segregation when America was treating those with white skin and those with black skin so radically different. If you were a child born into that, with either color skin, would you know it was wrong to do that when everyone around you believes it and follows it? Would you be the one to stand up to everyone and declare it to be wrong? That's the type of thinking that Abraham was up against. He was fighting something that everyone believed and understood to be right and good, and he with very few others stood up for what was right against everyone else, and almost lost his life for it.
Abraham was a remarkable individual. It's really too bad we do not know more about his actual childhood because a person is the sum of who they were when they came here and their early experiences. We all have our personality more or less in place when we come here, if you need proof of that just look at two babies born to the same family. They already have a personality when they come here. But it is true that here in this life our experiences shape us and mold that personality and we can end up being very, very different from who we started out as. We can forget who we are and where we come from. That's why I like to read about the modern day prophets and read about their lives, because no one is born a prophet. A prophet is made.
The Pearl of Great Price has always been my second favorite book of scripture because I like history and knowing about people and that's all it is. It is a book of history about the first people on this planet and then about Joseph Smith. It is always a joy to read and I hope you have enjoyed it thus far as I have and look forward to continuing the read. Until tomorrow.
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