3 Nephi 11

So back to the story.

A huge crowd of Nephites stood shell-shocked at the temple in Bountiful. It still stood as temples should do. (Can a building, an inanimate object built by men of mixed temperaments, gain a soul that shapes its destiny? Oh, sorry, I’m digressing again.) The crowd talked about the massive reconstruction effort they’d need just to survive, wondering if things would ever get back to the high-end architecture and technology they’d devised. And, of course, the topic of Jesus kept coming up, since the voice claiming credit for the recent genocide claimed to be Jesus. If he showed up, what would he say next? It was a big puzzle, more convoluted than the puzzle of stone and wood piles that surrounded them.

And then the voice started up again. But now it wasn’t booming, just cooing, though with a tingling jolt of neurological pep that made them shudder, though in a good way. They felt a fever but a nice fever—no chills, just warmth that radiated inward instead of outward.

They couldn’t make out the voice’s words, though. Which didn’t matter so much, given how it made them feel. They look around at first—nothing. It stopped. Then it started again. They looked up, because it seemed to have a vertical dimension to it. Still unintelligible, it stopped again.

It started again and this time the words came clear: “Here is my son. He pleases me. He makes me look good, as any good son should do. Please pay attention when he speaks this time—last time you got distracted.”

The sound settled from the sky like autumn leaves tilting back and forth as they fell. As people looked for the source, a white-robed man floated down, graceful as ballet, landing perfectly on his feet near the temple doors. “Probably an angel,” a few people said. “Shhh,” was the unison reply.

The man stretched his arms out, showing off the palms of his hands. “I am Jesus. You’ve all heard about me since you were born. Your parents the same. Your grandparents the same. And on and on. But I finally made it to your hometown.

“I am the world’s light. I am the world’s life. That’s not just alliteration and slant rhyme. Both claims are true, though would need massive explication that I’ll leave to others who have more time and need a hobby.

“You think you’ve been drinking vomit. And you have. Let me just say, I’ve been drinking out of the same cup. My Father handed it to me and I handed it to you. It tasted the same, but different. For you it tasted like nightmares of falling. For me it tasted like the juice of every rancorous or petty or awkward or disturbed act ever imagined or carried out in the world.

“God’s been brewing this sickening cup every year a man or woman has lived on this planet. To gulp it down was all he wanted of me. I just gave you a taste.”

And when Jesus said that, everyone had to sit down. Or lie down. Weak knees are the chronic symptom of illumination. Platitudes kicked out like crutches.

Jesus said, “You see these hands. Touch them, anyone who has the stomach for it. Or the heart for it. I’ve kept my scars—even this one in my gut, where a sword slid through my skin, down into the muscle, just for the spite of some centurion. Those Romans: worse than the Greeks.

“I want you all to read these inscriptions of pain. Because God has so much to show you and so little, sometimes, to show you with.”

The crowd walked up to him and formed a line, single file, and did what he’d asked. That convinced them, though some were already convinced by the cataclysms, darkness, supernatural voice, and man floating from the clouds.

As each finished the physical inspection, he or she said something to the effect of, “Hosanna! Bless God! Wow!” And they started to clump around his feet, since they couldn’t help but worship him and wouldn’t leave and make room. Obviously he needed to teach them more about sharing.

He called Nephi, giving him cuts in line. Nephi bowed down at Jesus’ feet and kissed them. The Lord said, “Get up!” and Nephi obeyed. Jesus continued: “I give you power to baptize people after I leave.” He called a few more people over and told them the same thing. Then he gave these instructions, a kind of oral handbook that a few scribes managed to scribble down, transcribed here:

Because I don’t want people fighting about it, here’s how you baptize:

If someone has changed their behavior and is ready for this ritual, take him or her down into a pool of water—clean, preferably, since you need to get the symbolism right— and say this before you dunk them: “Having been given authority by Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Then you dip them completely. It’s really quite simple. I don’t know why anyone should want to foul it up with add-ons. But I know how people are.

Maybe some of the fighting would come about the theological implications of that wording, since you’re supposed to be baptizing in my name but you’re saying three divine titles. Let me just say that all the titles overlap, we’re all in each other more or less, and leave it at that. Threes are divine, too, as you’ve probably noticed. (Think about the three times I spoke to you just before I appeared. And three days of darkness. And so on. I’m sure you know basic numerology by now.)

Let me add: I prefer you not fight about anything to do with religion, frankly. Or, let me expand that: anything about anything. Arguing comes from hell. The devil is the Arguer-in-Chief.

You want my teachings to live by? Stop getting angry.

Maybe I’m jumping ahead. Here is my doctrine. The basics, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as it were: stop sinning and believe in me. And if you do those things, then get baptized. Those are your tokens for the tollbooth to heaven.

If you don’t believe in me and aren’t baptized, you’re damned. If you don’t do only one in either category, the rules get a little more complicated. But I’ll leave that for another time.

If you believe in me, by the way, you automatically believe in God (my Father), who will send you that inner warmth you already felt, only more of it. This is part of that overlap principle I mentioned. We’re all one, Father-Son-HolyGhost, intersecting, interacting, braiding our behavior in ways that make it impossible to slice us into separate entities, insofar as one would need to posit criteria for fundamental differences from one to the other.

Now see, I’m falling into my own rhetorical trap: I’m speaking like a professor. But this isn’t about academic flourishes. It’s about childlike acceptance. That’s faith: take it not like a man. Take it like a boy. If you don’t, you’ll never get what I’m all about.

So start with that premise. Then you’ll be building from a solid foundation. Hell will recede all around it.

Start from any other premise and you might as well be starting a different religion, one built on sand by comparison. And when the floods of life seep into the crawlspace the whole building will float off to sea and drift into hell’s harbor.

So as you preach, stick with that message.

Jesus said all that only to the twelve—more numerology!—he had called, then he turned to the whole throng and shouted this: