First impressions: revere, want to be like someone. When in their presence, you listen, you pay attention. You take pleasure in their notice and approval.
C.S. Lewis’ sermon The Weight of Glory discussed an apparent paradox:
I turn next to the idea of glory. There is no getting away from the fact that this idea is very prominent in the New Testament and in early Christian writings. Salvation is constantly associated with palms, crowns, white robes, thrones, and splendour like the sun and stars. All this makes no immediate appeal to me at all, and in that respect I fancy I am a typical modern. Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to be better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb? (ibid., p. 5)
He concludes,
It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.
Contrast the fate of those who choose not to follow the path:
In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside—repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. (ibid., p. 7)
So that’s the sort of thing I thought of at first. But when I turned to the scriptures, I was shocked to find that the words translated as reverence were nothing like that.
The same words translated as “reverence” are translated elsewhere as fear, and shame; one literally means inversion, to turn inside out. These were forced, unpleasant feelings.
Then I remembered hebrew wordplay: In hebrew, you only write the consonants–any word with the same consonants is the same word! Vowels add connotation, not denotation. Very different from english.
3372 yare’ fear, as in “sore afraid” “fear the LORD”
but also
3384 yara’ flow, as rain or arrows falling; to point out, to teach
Reverence, then, is receiving teaching from heaven, like rain to parched earth. In Hebrew thought, there was a great bowl over the earth, the “dome of heaven.” In the dome, there were windows through which God would pour down blessings, typically in the form of rain. Speaking of those who keep the law of tithing, God says, Prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open unto you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Arrows also bring to mind the prophecy in Isaiah 49
And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me; And he said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified… I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles that
thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
D&C 86:11
Therefore, blessed are ye if ye continue in my goodness, a light unto the Gentiles, and through this priesthood, a savior unto my people Israel. The Lord hath said it. Amen.
Another word that gets translated as “reverence” is
7812 sachah prostrate, bow down, fall on your face, make low
but also, without even changing the vowels, you get
7811 sachah inundate, flood, fill a low place; swim;
Moses 7:62– flood the earth w/ the book of mormon (ETB talk)
“Wade in the water” baptism
The word derives from
7807 shach sunken, humble
Most of Galilee is mountainous, 2-3000 feet. But Jordan at sea of Galilee is 700 feet below sea level. Christ descended below all things when he was baptized in similitude of his death and resurrection.
Sermon at the temple, 3 ne 12:1-6, first principles & ordinances; baptism is “depths of humility”
7808 shach also means communion, meditation, thought
Amos 4:13
For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, is his name.
The word contemplate means
contemplate: con=with, beside tem=cut, as in atom, temple a place cut out or a place for cutting
Isaiah portrayed Christ’s “mouth like a sharp sword.” Paul explained that the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Lev 1: the temple
shach is the root of the words
7818 sachat tread out, squeeze grapes or olives
7819 sachat to slaughter in sacrifice, to offer
mashach: that which is squeezed out or sacrificed :oil, annointed,
messiah, christ
Kings and priests were the only roles in Hebrew society to be anointed.
Shach, reverence, is to have communion (“to become one with”) with Christ, to meditate and think on his sacrifice.
John 17:22 Last supper
In the New Testament, the greek presents the same problem:
entrope en=inward trope=turn: to be ashamed, invert (vert=turn in latin)
But the word entropy can also be an inward transformation. In physics, entropy is a measure of how orderly something is.
Order is a rich word. Order can mean a brotherhood, like the Franciscan Order among the Catholics, or the Order of the Arrow in Boy Scouts, or the Freemasons. Order can mean a pattern. Pattern comes from the Latin patron, or father. Another word for pattern is template, evoking temple. Order can mean command: orders are given to keep things in order, to prevent chaos, to organize. Organic matter is living matter. Also related to order are the words ordain and ordinance. In military terms, ordinance is ammunition, the power by which one enforces one’s orders. In the gospel, an ordinance is words and actions that, when performed by the proper authority, bring about a new spiritual (and oftentimes physical) reality.
The association of “order” with the military is not accidental. Christ is the the Lord of Hosts, or literally, the Lord of Armies. The Hebrew word for armies is sabaoth, and Christ is called the Lord of Sabaoth several times in the D&C. Sabaoth is the plural form of the word saba, to dip, or dye. In Greek, to dip or dye is baptizo. The armies of the Lord of Hosts have dipped their garments in the blood of Christ and thus purified them through baptism.
The garment is that which covers our nakedness and will help us abide the day of the Lord’s coming. Speaking of the wicked and the righteous at the bar of God, Nephi says, “Wherefore, we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt and our uncleanliness, and our nakedness; and the righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even the robe of righteousness… Wherefore, they who are filthy are the devil and his angels, and they shall go away into everlasting fire prepared for them; and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone.” But the righteous also inherit fire. Joseph F. Smith saw heaven in a vision recorded in D&C 137. He says, “I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire; also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son.” The difference is that the righteous have been clothed and are clean, whereas the wicked are filthy or naked.
Armies also need armor. In Ephesians 6 we find the armor of God, including feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Peace is Christ’s doctrine. Peace will come by way of the word of God, like a two-edged sword. In 2 Ne 3:12, we see that the Book of Mormon and the Bible “shall grow together, unto the confounding of false doctrines and laying down of contentions, and establishing peace among the fruit of thy loins, unto the bringing them to the knowledge of their fathers in the latter days, and also to the knowledge of my covenants, saith the Lord.” God himself also wears armor: “For he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke.” (Isa 59:17)
Order in physics turns up as symmetries. A symmetry is a way of transforming a system such that it looks the same after the transformation as it did before.
The five-pointed stars on the U.S. flag have the symmetry group D_5, which has ten elements. One of the elements is the identity transformation, which does nothing; every system has that trivial symmetry. Another element is a rotation by 72 degrees clockwise; we say the star has five-fold rotational symmetry. Since a rotation by 360 degrees is the same as the identity, there are five possible rotations, the multiples of 72 degrees (including a rotation of zero degrees), that leave the star looking the same. Another element is a reflection through a vertical line. Since any two reflections in a row behave the same as one rotation, that means the ten elements of the group are the five rotations times the two reflection possibilities (reflect or not).
Symmetries in physics include time symmetry (physics now is the same as physics yesterday), translation symmetry (physics here is the same as physics there), and rotational symmetry (physics facing north is the same as physics facing south). The mathematician Emmy Noether proved that every symmetry in a physical system gives rise to a conserved quantity. Translational symmetry gives rise to conservation of momentum, the tendency for things to move in a straight line unless pushed. Rotational symmetry gives rise to angular momentum, the tendency for a bike wheel not to tip over when it’s spinning. Time symmetry gives rise to conservation of energy. “Conservation of energy” in this sense doesn’t mean “trying not to be wasteful,” but rather a perfect accounting for the energy. “[Energy] is neither created nor made,” and it can’t be destroyed, either.
Keeping Gospel laws, conserving truth and light, brings symmetry and order into the chaos of our lives. This universe obeys the laws of physics perfectly, and thus will be exalted to be the home of those who are perfected in Christ.
Reverence then, is trying to be like Christ: it is humility, being baptized, using the priesthood to be a savior unto God’s people, making covenants of communion, the sacrament, unity with one another and Christ. It is renewing the baptismal covenant and making covenants at the temple, annointed to become kings and priests, queens and priestesses. It is an inward transformation:
And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?
It is flooding the earth with the book of mormon, the two-edged word of God. It is order and symmetry in our lives, the rest of God.
Moroni finished his record by quoting from a sermon of his father to those remaining few faithful before the nephites’ utter destruction
I would speak unto you that are of the church, that are the peaceable followers of Christ, and that have obtained a sufficient hope by which ye can enter into the rest of the Lord, from this time henceforth until ye shall rest with him in heaven. And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.
