Jacob, the prodigious younger brother of Nephi, had a knack for saying things in a cutting, concise manner. In just a few chapters his relativity runty disquisition dissects the history, fore and aft of his corporeal career, and of the whole family of Israel, with surprising sagacity. He gives us this promise about his work;
Behold, my beloved brethren, I will unfold this mystery unto you; if I do not, by any means, get shaken from my firmness in the Spirit, and stumble because of my over anxiety for you.
That’s quite a courageous promise, considering his remarkable understanding of Isaiah and the poetic shoes he had to fill of his elder brother, not to mention how few chapters were prepared for and by him. Then again, the most intricate Olive Tree allegory we have was covered by this young man in just a few well spoken pages. Within the confines of his book he “unfolds the mystery” of our lives. Here we find the penetrating promises that keeps a glimmer of hope in the watchful eye of those resolutely waiting for the day dawn to break, as well as the cancerous curses which doom an entire blind race of the Children of God to the darkness of endless night. He lived a unique life, having been born in the depths of the desert to an itinerant family. He had no choice but to be literally dropped into exodus out of a fallen people. As such, his existence was representative of an individual who is starkly separated from the world. We see this in the fact that he saw his Lord as a yearling still wet. He witnessed great conflict between his siblings and their parents. As he here describes, he felt the sting of wandering an unknown wilderness and living a disconsolate life,
“the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days.”
Perhaps not the words you would expect of a man who knows his Lord to a degree which few of the billions of men on earth ever have. To contrast that decrepit description of an entire people, Jacob gave us one of the most inspiring promises written, anywhere, to the seeking individual;
“But behold, I, Jacob, would speak unto you that are pure in heart. Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions, and he will plead your cause, and send down justice upon those who seek your destruction. O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever.”
The dichotomy I mean to delve into is tiny, written in classic prophetic form, telling us bluntly what we need to know.
But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.
These two ideas are interestingly austere antonyms in my minds eye.
Here we have the lives of two men. Their courses are described by their targets. Both are looking, living, to ‘make a living’ of some sort. Both are building a kingdom, one of the riches of the world, the other the riches of God. This isn’t unique to Jacob, other similar warnings have been given. Twice in the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord tells us;
Seek not for riches but for wisdom; and, behold, the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto you, and then shall you be made rich. Behold, he that hath eternal life is rich.
Again, the dichotomy is poignantly portrayed, Riches versus Wisdom. Does no-one else find it at least slightly intriguing that an economic pursuit, that of making money, is paired with a spiritual pursuit, obtaining wisdom for God. I guess there really is no such thing as immaterial matter, since making money and learning of God seem to be conniving cousins. Essentially, taking this depiction directly and literally, if we are trying to “labor for money” we can’t be simultaneously laboring for wisdom. The two pursuits are different prongs of a one fork, terminating in opposing places. A fruit is here described, telling us that those we see searching for money and giving advice on how to obtain that economic self-sufficiency are really teaching us the doctrine against Gods kingdom. But the Lord wants us to succeed, right? He wants us to be men who are that they might have joy, right? Intent is nine tenths of the Law as they say. Only a person who has sought to build the Lords kingdom knows that his intent, while laboring in these babylonian fields, is to build a better kingdom separate of the world. If he seeks and earns a ‘living’ in the Lords name, he will know the Lords name. If he is blind to the Lords economy and seeks for his own gain, to save up for himself some kind of self sustaining storehouse, his labor will manifest a diluted desert so common in our copycat culture.
“For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?”
So then, that must be our aim, our employ, in this life. To know the thoughts and intent of the heart of our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. In that there is wisdom and riches. Now, back to Jacob, we see that he throws in a MONSTER loophole. This loophole has been used as the hangman’s noose for many a justifying job-seeker raised in our present economically aspiring ‘Zion’. He throws in the word BEFORE. You know, like ‘before you get rich, get an education son’.
Funny, whenever I seek to find something I would generally believe that it can be found. And if it can, which is true in the case of the kingdom of God, I would look for it ’til i found it. Being pervasively forgetful myself, I often find myself literally tearing apart unsuspecting couches and cleaning out restful closets anxiously looking for a truck key to help me get somewhere. Since we live so spread out but still plan our lives in minute-increments I have to find that key before I can get there. If I don’t find that key, I’m not going to arrive at said destination. Yet, I hear often that in our pursuit its to find riches while building the kingdom. That getting those riches actually helps build the kingdom.
Ahem. Technically, considering the fact that the two masters which we bow to are not in agreement, according to the scriptures above, IF we are seeking riches while not IN the kingdom of God, we are building Babylon. We just can’t serve both at one time! So, that caveat Jacob gave us, ‘before’, needs some explainin’.
The next thing he says is,
And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good–to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.
So, the qualifier given to his ‘before’ loophole is that ‘after’ ye have obtained a hope in Christ, ye shall obtain riches. And THEN if ye seek them ye will obtain them, to feed the poor and the afflicted, etc… He didn’t leave much for you did he? Even when you are allowed to search for the riches and obtain them, they aren’t for you. They aren’t for your barns, your accounts, your college funds and pensions. They are for those around you who haven’t found the riches of the world. They are for the Lord to use you as a tool in his belt in blessing his children. You are already blessed. Thankfully, in his concise treatise, Jacob gave us a definition of who has ‘obtained a hope in Christ’.
“Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith became unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea.”
Basically, if you have that faith, you know it. And the Lord can trust you with the riches of the earth, knowing that you will bless his children and not yourself with them.
So now I ask you, have you done so? What kingdom are we seeking? Are we searching for the kingdom of God, with all the tiring intent that Lehi sought the promised land with, until you find it? Or are we finding a sidetrack, a brighter road into the mists of the worlds promises, to distract you from the cause of Christ, the economy of Zion? The promise we have is that if we seek we will find. If so, are we seeking until we find? Or are we justifying our preposterous path of careerism in the name of ‘building the kingdom’, simultaneously thinking to walk with Enoch while Sodom’s salty strivings tug at our oblivious overalls? For a man who saw very little of what we would term the classic enterprising mercantile economy Jacob left no doubt what a mans life looked like who sought treasure in heaven versus the riches of the world. Perhaps it should seem likely that we, being immersed in that society, should be able, with a wee bit of practice, to be as discerning as he who could reduce the whole fight, the whole struggle, to one syrupy thirteen word stanza.
