Today I read Abraham 2, where Abraham is commanded to leave his homeland and is taken to a new land that presumably is not quite as ravaged by the famine in the land. His father and his nephew also come with him and we are told about Abraham's wife for the first time. Abraham names the new land after his brother who passed away due to the famine, Haran.
This is also the chapter where Abraham is promised he will be a father to many nations and that all who have the Priesthood will be called his sons. This was probably very wonderful for Abraham to hear since he had desired the Priesthood so insistently before they left the land of Ur. And in truth this came to pass. When the Savior walked the earth, the Pharisees were prone to say they were the sons of Abraham and Abraham was their father. They put more stock in Abraham than they did in God Himself.
I've often wondered why this promise would be so appealing to Abraham, but then as I thought about it today during church I realized this must have come as a breath of fresh air to Abraham, someone who had grown up surrounded by idolatry and the worship of false gods. I imagine it would have been as sweet as if the Nephites had repented in the days of Mormon and not been destroyed. That is all he wanted in life was to see his people prosper and be righteous. For Abraham to have grown up with human sacrifice as the norm and have his own father engage in the practice of idolatry must have been the ultimate low. So to learn that his seed would not be afflicted with such wickedness and that all righteous bearers of the Priesthood throughout the history of the world must have been very, very satisfying to hear indeed.
It is sad to note in this chapter that despite being spared from the famine, Terah, Abraham's father, turned again to his idolatry while in the land of Canaan. And yet, is it really so surprising? I'll be each of you can name at least two people of your own acquaintance that when times are rough turn to God, but as soon as things clear up, they go right back to their old sinful ways. We have talked about this in the past and how that is just the nature of mankind, the natural man indeed. When a disaster happens, mankind is quick to thank or supplicate the Lord, but as soon as the danger has past, they return to their sins as a dog to his own vomit as the scriptures say.
That chapter ends by the Lord directing Abraham and his family to Egypt and the Lord telling Abraham to tell those in Egypt that Sarai, his wife, was his sister so that they would not kill him and take her from him. So instead they posed as brother and sister. This used to shock and amaze me as a teenager that the Lord would do this instead of just protecting Abraham by divine protection. I used to wonder how the Lord would authorize Sarai being with another man, perhaps even sexually. But as I have gotten older and pondered on this more, I have come to the conclusion that first and foremost, I don't think the Lord would have allowed Sarai to have sexual relations and they found out she was his wife before such a thing would have happened. I know the Lord has commanded his servants to commit murder in the past, but I just cannot imagine under any circumstances that he would command his servants to commit adultery.
I also think that this was the method which the Lord used to get Abraham in the good graces of the Pharaoh so that he could teach the Egyptian court what he had been brought there to teach. I think if the Lord had just protected Abraham or perhaps made Sarai undesirable somehow, it would not have had the same effect as when Pharaoh learned he was about to take another man's wife to bed. Suffice to say, the Lord had a reason for doing it that way and we will one day learn it I am sure.
This was probably a very sweet and also bitter time in the life of Abraham. How wonderful it must have been for him to be away from all that idolatry and to be promised the Gospel and that his posterity would always have the Priesthood. But life back then was challenging and Abraham's life was no exception. But the pouring out of spiritual knowledge must have tempered the bitterness as we will soon see. For the Lord was about to reveal great knowledge to Abraham and show him things that Abraham would then pass onto the Egyptians that would eventually give them the reputation as one of the greatest cultures in the world and the most knowledgeable about stars and the planets. Until tomorrow.
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