Shon Hopkin – Isaiah Provides Hope

Ken Krogue:  So, we’ve been following that pathway of why did Nephi put Isaiah in the Book of Mormon.  And, so we’re able to do this fun info graphic of the journey of Nephi, in 1st Nephi.  It’s like he goes through these several things, but he gets to that part where he sees the vision that John saw.  He saw…the last days, he saw our day, but then he says, but I was forbidden to write more.  I’m like…ah, and then, so he stops, he builds the ship, he comes with the new world and then next thing he does, is he puts in Isaiah 48 and 49.  That’s remarkable.  Why?  I mean why did he just…and it’s like out of nowhere.  Do you have a thought on that?

Shon Hopkin: So, I don’t know that I will have anything overwhelmingly powerful here.  So, the second half of Isaiah is increasingly focused on the branches that have been scattered, right?

Ken Krogue: Yes.

Shon Hopkin: And God’s redemptive plan to bring them back, and here is Nephi, although of course he’s writing thirty years later where he has already been separated from his brother and things have gotten…they’ve gone through the promised land, but things have not been perfect in the promised land.  And I think he is really reading Isaiah and seeing their wilderness journeys in Isaiah that…that’s his first time that we see him actually saying, wow, this is our story, and God will redeem us, and I think he takes great consolation, great comfort for that fact.  And I think he wants us to know that and more particularly his brother the Lamanites, to know that in the last days, he wants us to know that, in the last days, but I think it matters to him.  It’s what moves him, it’s what gives him hope in the midst of being a people cut off.

Ken Krogue: Yes.

Shon Hopkin: God will redeem us.  God loves us.  God has not forgotten us, and I think that’s the first time you get to see him taking straight from Isaiah.

Ken Krogue: It’s a message of hope that.

Shon Hopkin: Absolutely.

Ken Krogue: I mean, Isaiah was his prophet, was Nephi’s, pretty much, his dispensational.  He nicknames him the prophet, as if we all should know the prophet.

Shon Hopkin:  Yes, so for us that would be similar to Joseph Smith, is sort of what you’re saying there, right and I agree, right.  This is who…who do I quote?  Well I quote the current prophet and I quote Joseph Smith, right and what does Nephi do?  Well, it’s that, it’s Lehi and then of course him, and it’s Isaiah, right, those various people.

Ken Krogue: Wow, beautiful.