There are many examples in the scriptures of the righteous obeying on faith, meaning they obey God without understanding the reason for the commandment. They understand that God's omniscience trumps their own understanding and that He will only ask us to do what is in our best interest, even when we can't see it.
A well known example is that God commanded our first father, Adam, to build an altar and make sacrifices. When asked by an angel why he made sacrifices (in Moses 5:6), he replied in honesty, "I know not, save the Lord commanded me."
A perhaps lesser known example of obeying on faith was Nephi creating the two sets of plates. The Lord commanded him to make two histories of his people, one focusing on the reign of the kings, wars, and other temporal affairs, and the other focusing on the gospel and the ministry. Making a set of metal plates and engraving upon them is no small task, requiring many hours of careful and tedious work. Nephi admits that he does not know why he has been asked to do this (in 1 Nephi 9:5): "Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not."
It would be more than 2,400 years before Martin Harris would lose the 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript containing the Book of Lehi. The Lord knew those pages would be lost, so Nephi's second record, which contains much of the ministry and teachings of Lehi, preserved these teachings. If Nephi had not obeyed, it would have been a tragedy to lose the precious teachings found in the first and second books of Nephi.
When we receive commandments that we don't understand, we must remember that all things are present to God who sees the end from the beginning. Have faith and obey.
Monday, January 11, 2016
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