Signs

So I moved to Enos today, then ended up backing up a bit into Jacob. That man is quite the unsung hero. He doesn't get noticed like his brother Nephi, but what a man.

In Chapter 7 he describes being confronted by an unbeliever who sought Jacob out. The dude was relying on his own intelligence - a very dangerous thing always. By contrast Jacob relied on the guidance he had received from the Lord throughout his life. This dude thought he could reason through "logic" and argument that Jacob was wrong.

I've been in this situation before - a friend of mine about 30 years ago - a good dude, set about once to lay out why mormonism was wrong. He was well meaning. He expressed some frustration that laying out a set of what he considered to be well organized facts did nothing to persuade me to deny my beliefs. I had trouble explaining to him that my beliefs were not handed to me by a teacher, it was much deeper than that. It wasn't man that gave me my beliefs, and no man's argument could take them away.

It was like Joseph Smith seeing an angel and feeling God's power, then having some dude walk up to him and try to dissuade him of that based on an argument about the laws of physics. While one of the arguers might have stated it's impossible to have a person stand in the air unaided by a jet pack, the other has a deeper understanding. He saw the angel, he felt the power, and he has a suspicion that angels don't require jet packs. It's a level of knowledge that surpasses man's reason and the power of crafted words.

I also thought it beautiful in verse 12. Jacob did one of those things you see only if you're looking carefully: he laid a huge nugget among the straw pile. He mentioned only very briefly that he had "heard and seen". What did he hear and see? Jacob's not going to tell you if you don't already know. Some of us who have heard or seen might pick it up - the rest won't. That's the way he intended. Gotta love these layers. I do at least.