"If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you" (Exo. 15:26).
At the end of the previous post the above scripture was cited and it was proposed that to abate a plague, a people must 'do what is right in [God's] eyes.' But before that can be done, a people must learn to see what is right from his eternal viewpoint. God has declared how that the people most apt to misperceive what is right are those who lean on worldly human reasoning:
"Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD" (Jer. 17:5).
During Jesus' mortal ministry, he reinforced this principle, comparing how God's view is to man's view as vision is to blindness:
"'I entered this world to render judgment—to give sight to the blind and to show those who think they see that they are blind.'
Some Pharisees who were standing nearby heard him and asked, 'Are you saying we’re blind?'
"'If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty,' Jesus replied. 'But you remain guilty because you claim you can see'" (John 9:39 – 41, NLT).
Those who are proud not only miss the mark, but they are deceived by the precepts taught by evil, seducing spirits who captivate them and then advocate for any conduct unbecoming of discipleship:
"For behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good. And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell. And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance" (2 Ne. 28:20 – 22, emphasis added).
The most outwardly pious and educated of Christ's day did not hesitate to call him a sinner (see John 9:16), yet in reality Christ was the only mortal who ever did "no sin" (1 Jn. 3:5). Why is the truth so easily missed by the professors of virtue in the world? Why do powerful men in Hollywood send multimedia preachers into the homes of many millions of viewers to teach them sin and wickedness? Why are those who are blinded by devils seemingly kept from the knowledge of 'what is right in [God's] eyes'? The answer is simple: because that knowledge only comes by revelation, and revelation only comes when one is sufficiently humble.
The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that the key to perceiving 'what is right in [God's] eyes' so that we may do those things and be blessed by him is personal revelation:
"God said, 'Thou shalt not kill;' at another time He said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire. If we seek first the kingdom of God, all good things will be added. So with Solomon: first he asked wisdom, and God gave it him, and with it every desire of his heart, even things which might be considered abominable to all who understand the order of heaven only in part, but which in reality were right because God gave and sanctioned by special revelation" (TPJS, p. 256).
Without personal revelation, Abraham would not have escaped Egypt with Sariah, Nephi would not have slain Laban, Saul would not have become Paul, and the Israelites—ancient and modern—would not have survived the diseases God 'inflicted on the Egyptians.'
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