Recommendations

Hello! Shalom! Aloha! Mabuhay!

If this is your first visit to Modern Apocrypha, I have only two recommendations for continuing on with minimal confusion:


1) Please begin with the first introductory post (found HERE) and work your way forward. Almost all the posts on this blog flow chronologically and will make more sense with the background and context of previous ones. Jumping in anywhere might be disorienting.

2) Please read along in the texts posted off to the right. I try not to summarize too much in the commentary and discussion, and being at least somewhat familiar with what we're discussing or I'm commenting on will be most beneficial and edifying for all involved. Plus, going along with the theme of this blog, any hidden truths to be brought to light will be found within the text itself and not necessarily within my ramblings.

Okay, fine, three recommendations:

3) Please read with an open heart, mind, and spirit. See what truths you can find in these works--ones which speak to you. Namaste : )

Monday, July 11, 2016

ANG AKLATAN - AHKMAN 8 - RETURN TO GOD'S PRESENCE


Ahkman and his brethren send their children throughout the northern land to teach the tribes the words of the Great Scroll, and many are converted to the Law of God and believe. After many years, Shurak (the king or political leader of Suran's people) sends a message to all the people requesting they gather to Katagan (Kabigan Falls), the "hidden sacred place" in the northern mountains where Ngameke taught Suran and Suran's family was baptized. Everyone gathers to the place and assembles themselves according to families around the pool there (as did King Benjamin's people in Mosiah 2:5).

Ahkman, the high priest over the temple, addresses them, explaining the importance of that place, its symbolism, and its connection to past people of God -- Adam, Moses, and Machir. (Adam and Moses we know, but Machir is a relatively unfamiliar character. The books of Numbers and Joshua say he was the firstborn of Manasseh who settled his people in Gilead after the Exodus. He's not mentioned anywhere else in the currently published Aklatan.)

Ahkman teaches that Katagan is a similitude of Mt Horeb (Sinai) and the garden of Eden. Just as Adam was cast out of God's presence, walked past the tree of life, the angel (and his flaming sword) who guarded the entrance to the garden, and the river that split in four directions, so too, to enter God's presence, Moses climbed the mountain of God past a spring of water and the burning bush, and conversed with God face to face.

Also, God had commanded Moses to construct a tabernacle after this pattern in front of which were placed an altar and basin of water, which the high priest would need to pass and be washed in to enter the Holy Place. Again, after entering the Holy Place, he would pass the candlestick to enter the Most Holy Place. In the same fashion, Ahkman teaches, Katagan has a pool of water, and the people must pass it and many trees that lead to the top of the mountain there--it's in the same pattern as other sacred places where God has spoken to His prophets.

Ahkman explains that all of this is a similitude of the journey of man, namely, that as we have all left the presence of God, to return we must pass through water and fire to converse with Him in His presence. The LDS endowment ceremony follows this same pattern -- a symbolic journey of man out of and back into the presence of God via baptism by water and fire, washings and anointings, covenant making and keeping, until one is found faithful, cleansed, purified, and sanctified to converse with the Lord and ultimately enter God's presence.

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