Category: Book of Mormon

President Hinckley has challenged members of the church to read the Book of Mormon completely by the end of the year. I’ve created this spreadsheet to track my progress.

Basically, I’ve listed each chapter in the Book of Mormon and how many verses are in it. To the left I’ve listed how many of those verses I have read. Below each chapter is a summary of how many chapters I have left to read, the date I want to read them all, how many days I have left to do so, How many chapters I have to read each day, and finally, how far behind (or ahead) of my goal I am to read two chapters per day.

If you want to use this spreadsheet for yourself, feel free to download it here.

Today, I was reading in Mosiah 12, where Abinadi is condemning King Noah’s wicked priests. He mentions a doctrine from the law of Moses:

35 Thou shalt have no other God before me.
36 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing in heaven above, or things which are in the earth beneath.

I wondered, “No likeness of any thing in heaven?” Does that mean we can’t draw pictures of angels or God? If that’s the case, then we can’t draw pictures of anything because it also condemns likenesses of things in the earth beneath. Of course, it’s okay to create the likenesses, statues, artwork, etc. What is being condemned here is the worship of those images. In Exodus 20:4-5 it makes the same point.
In fact, for the Temple, the ancient saints were commanded to make likenesses of things in heaven:
Exodus 37:7-8:

7 And he made two cherubims of gold, beaten out of one piece made he them, on the two ends of the mercy seat.
8 One cherub on the end on this side, and another cherub on the other end on that side: out of the mercy seat made he the cherubims on the two ends thereof.