Redemption and Penalty

The word Penalty wouldn't leave me after writing that second post earlier today.  It was the way it was so obviously said and referenced in the soccer dialogue with the girl in my dream.  It seemed important, that word, and I felt I hadn't really looked into it in my last post.

I had an idea to look the word up in the Book of Mormon.  For some reason, I thought there were be quite a few mentions that came up in my search.

You want to know how often penalty is found in that Book?

Exactly one time.

Now, if you do a search, you will actually come up with three unique instances.  But upon closer inspection, you would find that two of those three instances are just in the chapter headings, which aren't part of the Book of Mormon text at all.  Those chapter headings were added in later editions of the Book of Mormon by the LDS Church in an effort to summarize and highlight various things in the chapter.

So, just focusing on the actual text of the Book of Mormon, we get one time.  And that is accounting for variations of the word as well (e.g., penalties, penalize, etc.).

That surprised me, actually.

And when I read the verse that this one and only instance of penalty was found in, I figured this was the right train of thinking.

It actually comes from Alma (the Younger... Elrond) and Amulek teaching the people of Ammonihah.  In this particular part (Alma 12),  Here is the verse, and I will bold where penalty falls, and also another word that is said by Alma said in the same breath before penalty, which caused me to really take notice:

Therefore God gave unto them [the first men who fell] commandments, after having made known unto them the plan of redemption, that they should not do evil, the penalty thereof being a second death, which was an everlasting death as to things pertaining unto righteousness; for on such the plan of redemption could have no power, for the works of justice could not be destroyed, according to the supreme goodness of God

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Yeah, redemption. Remember this came up recently with Red and the tie to Red-emption, even showing up on, what else, my son's hockey magazine cover.


I am only including the one verse here, but the whole discourse to those at Ammonihah seems relevant. I just wanted to do a quick update and haven't really thought about how to pull and tie all of that together.  I have some other thoughts, but am going to cut this off here, just noting the reference to penalty in the Book of Mormon.