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| Nephi Writing by Minerva Teichert |
In I Ne. 9, the Lord instructs Nephi to make the small plates for a
purpose he knows not, but he acts in faith and is obedient. Two thousand years later those small plates
will be needed when the first 116 pages of the translation are “lost.” I have always wondered why this was
necessary. Why didn’t God intervene with
Martin Harris? Why didn’t he just
protect the manuscript? There may be
many reasons but it seems to me that one answer is that God offered that protection as long as the
agency of man did not make that protection impossible. In other words, Joseph Smith could have
accepted his first answer and told Martin Harris, “No.” Martin Harris could have not succumbed to the
temptation to break his promise to not show the manuscript to unauthorized
individuals. God’s omniscience foresaw these
circumstances and so He prepared another way several millennium earlier.
God is constrained by the acts of men, meaning that He works
within men's agency. We often say that
if God wanted to He could override this or that but I think according to
eternal laws though He is omnipotent he does not act outside of those
constraints. He inspires a prophet to prepare a record that will be needed many
years later. That prophet chose to
respond to the inspiration and “act.” If
he had not done that then I am sure God would have worked in another way within
the “acts of men.”
This underscores how inviolate the principle of individual
agency is and painfully so. We, as
spiritual infants so much want God to intervene. We want him to wave a magic wand and change
things. Yes miracles are performed but
they are performed in the presence of men's faith (the acts of men) not just because
God decides to exercise his power. If
miracles have ceased to exist it is because faith among men has ceased to
exist. (Mormon 9:18-20, Moroni Chapter7) God’s purpose is to make us like Him
and He can’t do that without allowing us our agency and the painful process of
growth through experience. Ouch!
