The Great and Abominable Church


1 Nephi 13:5-6,

5 And the angel said unto me: Behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity.
6 And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it.

As a young missionary reading this I often mistakenly came to the conclusion that the “great and abominable church” was the apostate church that eventually became the Catholic Church. This was the same church that removed the “plain and precious things” from the Bible. It was a simplistic and naive interpretation. It is easy to imagine how a corrupt clergy in an era when literacy was so low could manipulate the populace by altering scripture and changing ordinances. The Catholic Church claims to be the same church that was organized by Christ during his mortal ministry and coopted by the Roman Empire. To my perspective it was the “great and abominable church” that Nephi saw. What I failed to recognize was that later in the vision Nephi is told that there are only two churches, the great and abominable and the Church of the Lamb. Obviously there are more than two churches, in the traditional sense, in the world. The Catholic Church cannot be named as the only great and abominable church when even at the time of its forming there were several other churches.

Then what is the great and abominable church? Elder B. H. Roberts said,

“‘The Church of the devil’ here alluded to, I understand to mean not any particular church among men, or any one sect of religion, but something larger than that—something that includes within its boundaries all evil wherever it may be found; be as well as in schools of philosophy as in Christian sects as well in systems of ethics as in systems of religion—something that includes the whole empire of Satan—what I shall call ‘the Kingdom of Evil.’” (New Witness for God, 3:264. 1951)

I interpret this to mean that the great and abominable church not any single church as we understand the word but anything and everything that detracts people from the gospel. That makes things much more difficult and complex. The potential for apostasy is within everyone. No single church is its source. As humans we like to blame religions and other organizations for the troubles in the world. In reality it is more personal. The great apostasy did not start with the Catholic Church but when individual saints got lazy or greedy in their own righteousness, when they allowed the natural man to take over. We have to examine everything that we do or in which we are involved to ensure that it does not distract us from the gospel.

Rod of Iron and mass defect
Awhile ago while I was preparing a Sunday School lesson I had this thought but it is too out there for Sunday School.Throughout the Book of Mormon the scriptures are talked about as being written on precious metals, gold and brass. This I think shows how treasured the scriptures should be. But several prophets, Lehi, Nephi, John and even the Psalmist described the Word of the Lord as a rod of iron, hardly an attractive metal. Why the difference?First a little physics. Matter in the universe is made up of atoms. Atoms are primarily made up of protons and neutrons (there are also electrons but their mass is almost negligible.) For simplicity, let's say that the mass of a proton in 1 atomic mass unit (u) and the mass of a neutron is also 1 u (actually the neutron is slightly more massive than the proton.) One would think that because there are eight protons and eight neutrons in an oxygen atom that it would have a total mass of 16 u. That is not true. It is actually smaller (15.99). On the other end, the most common form of uranium has 92 protons and 146 neutrons but its total mass is actually larger than the sum of protons and neutrons! This difference is what is called the mass defect. Where does that mass go or come from? Einstein said it becomes energy. His E=mc2 equation defines the relationship. In atoms like uranium there is extra mass that wants to become energy. A uranium atom will spontaneously split apart releasing a large amount of energy. If enough uranium or similar atoms are in a small space an atomic explosion occurs.On the other end atoms that are missing mass like oxygen, hydrogen and helium can be slammed together to form atoms that are heavier but are missing even more mass. It seems that atoms prefer to be lighter than the sum of their parts, the lighter the better. In the cores of stars light atoms are being slammed together to from heavier atoms that are missing more mass.To summarize (and maybe clear up) there is a trend in the universe for atoms to move toward the middle where the atoms are missing the most mass. Heavy atoms like uranium, plutonium and gold want to be lighter and light atoms like hydrogen, aluminum and sulphur want to be heavier atoms. This brings us to the middle of the spectrum, iron. Iron has the greatest mass defect of all atoms. There is more mass missing from iron atoms than from any other. This makes iron the most stable element in the universe.The Word of God is the most stable thing in the universe it is fitting that is should be represented by the most stable atom in the universe, iron.