It's a Sunday School Week. It's Ether 12-15. It's the First Day of Advent. So yeah, my lesson went pretty well today
I'm began with an Overview of the Book of Ether. Not only is it helpful to help make sure they get the main themes of the Book & are caught up on the Lore, it'll also give me a chance to cover some stuff we missed (stop dancing to get people killed guys...)
After that, I'm going to discuss the Book of Ether as a Historical Epic. Epics were an Oral Tradition, which used specific conventions to tell stories, Historical or Mythical. The point of this is to get them to look deeper at the connections with other stories in the scriptures
Then, we dove into the story in these chapters. The story here is the Reign of Coriantumr, which was so disastrous the Jaredites didn't exist after it (which is saying something, as cultures are usually resilient). We discussed how Ether's Message was a message that would've saved the Jaredites if they'd listened
Then, we're discussing the Doctrines preached. Ether teaches about the New Jerusalem (which I believe is discussing a Zion Society we have an obligation to help build up, that is being coloured through Nephite/American Lenses, given the fact the Jaredites didn't even know about Old Jerusalem). And finally, Moroni's Commentaries on Faith & Hope in the darkest period of the Jaredite Story tie directly into Advent. The First Two weeks are Faith & Hope, and while Christ wasn't born in Winter, he is the Light of the World, and represents the Growing of Light. We are asked to let our lights shine forth, so while Sunday School doesn't usually have homework, I'm going to print out the "Light the World" checklist, and have them report when we meet again
So yeah, when I have time to plan, I can actually come up with a Decent Lesson. Ironically, it's been doing Education Homework that has hindered me...
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tbh i’m tired of ppl highlighting “not drinking coffee” as the craziest thing mormons do when “espousing the most asinine white supremacist fairy tale imaginable as actual history + god’s word” is right there.
Within the Book of Mormon, there's a little something called "The Book of Ether."
It's actually really crazy and really picture-esque. (Kind of ugly pictures mostly) It's 15 short chapters and basically maps out the entire birth and fall of an entire civilization.
And by fall I mean "complete destruction," but not that typical Old Testament destruction, oh no. Much more eye-boggling and grotesquely epic than that.
It's starts out with your pretty typical kind of thing. The Tower of Babylon falls down, people are all suddenly speaking different languages than the ones they've spoke their whole life, Jared and his brother Moriancumer, and their friends and families are super good people so they can all understand each other, and they gather and go on a journey with god guiding them in the shape of a cloud. And then they sail to the Americas in ships that are "tight like unto a dish" that have god-fingered light-up stones and stuff. And they make it to the Americas totally fine and stuff.
And then when Jared and Moriancumer are close to death, they ask the other people in their little community what they would like them to do before they die, and they say they should name one of their sons king. And it ends up being Orihah.
And like there's a whole ton of kings throughout generations and some of them are good and some of them are bad.
One of the significant good ones is named Omer. And he had a particular son who's name was Jared. And Jared wanted to be king, and so he tried and successfully took over the kingdom from his dad and then imprisoned him. But then Omer's other kids freed Omer and then Omer got on the throne again. And this made Jared very sad. And his daughter noticed he was sad and gave him some advice. She devised a plan with him to seduce one of Omer's friends, whose name was Akish, to the point where Akish would want to marry her. And that worked, and he asked Jared's permission to marry her, and this is the plan see, Jared goes "You may marry my daughter if you bring me the head of my father."
And so Akish agrees and goes and gets a lot of his buddies. And Jared and his daughter and Akish and his buddies all take some ancient Oaths and form a secret society together, a secret society that would eventually spread across the land and divide/split into even more secret societies. But anyway, god totally warns Omer that they're about to cut his head off, so he gets the fuck out of town to somewhere safe and secluded, along with some of his family and stuff. And they take the throne. But then Akish eventually ends up having Jared killed too and becomes King himself! But then over the course of his long, long reign he eventually leads his people into too many wars to the point where they can no longer sustain themselves, especially after they get a drought as well. And then he dies and his Kingdom is all withered up, and Omer and his peeps are safe and wandering all nomadic-like and hunting and gathering. And they last for generations until one of his descendants, Heth, settles them into one spot and they build up civilization again.
And then the whole thing with generations of good kings and bad kings happens all over again of course, for a long, long, long, long time. And changes in the guard happen, and one of the overthrown kings lives in captivity all his life and has kids in captivity, until eventually Ether is born. And he goes out of captivity and he gets to be a prophet and stuff but nobody listens to him.
And the guy who's king while Ether is doing his thing, and hiding in a cave a lot because people want to kill him, is a man named Coriantumr. Coriantumr doesn't like Ether because Ether told him that if he doesn't stop being a naughty warlike king that it will bring all his people to destruction. And Coriantumr is very good at war. And there are people who want to overthrow him, but he tends to smack that down pretty efficiently. The first person who tries to take him down is named Shared and it doesn't turn out well for him.
And then Coriantumr ends up in a war with a man named Lib. And they have a long hard war, which drives the people of this civilization to be in a very post-apocolyptic living style. They all wear swords on their person and keep their hand on the butt of their sword, crime is at an all time high, people sleep with their posessions, because if they leave it on a shelf or something it will be gone the next day.
Coriantumr eventually corners and kills Lib. Which pisses off Lib's brother, Shiz. And Shiz is much more ruthless and powerful when it comes to this whole "War" thing. And he and his armies slaughter and burn entire cities of people, men woman and children alike, and people live in fear of Shiz. And Coriantumr keeps pressing to war against him. And they just keep warring and warring and warring. And eventually Coriantumr ends up passing out due to blood loss. And he starts to realize, "Hey, maybe that Ether guy was on to something. There sure are a lot of people dying." And by a lot of people, I mean people are dying at such a fast rate that there aren't enough people left to bury the dead any more.
And he feels sorrowful because of the death of "Two million of his people," and he sends a letter to Shiz saying "Could we maybe end the war, and spare the lives of the people that remain? I will surrender" And Shiz replied saying, "I will spare the lives of the people if you come to me and let me kill you with my sword." And then Coriantumr's people get really pissed off about that, and Shiz's people get pissed of at Corantumr's people, and they get back to killing each other.
And they end up gathering as many people as possible, and everyone is a warrior now. Even the kids. And they all pitch tents near each other. And they battle each other tirelessly, and when they need to sleep, they sleep on top of their swords. And pick off where they left off when they wake up. And they do this three days in a row until there's only 50-60 people left on both sides. And they take a night off to eat. And then they do it again the next day, and sleep on their swords again.
And then in the final battle everyone of their entire Civilaztion of people (except for Ether who is far off and hiding) is dead, except for Shiz and Coriantumr. And then Shiz ends up passing out due to blood loss. Coriantumr takes a short rest leaning on his sword, and then cuts his head off. Then shortly afterward, Shiz's headless body struggles to lift itself off the ground with his hands, before falling down and dying. And then a little bit after that Coriantumr passes out and eventually dies himself. Making Ether the only one of this people left alive, for as long as he's alive.