The Foundations of the Great and Spacious Building
The people of the Church of Jesus Christ usually interpret the Great and Spacious Building as having no foundation. Me too. The scripture we rely on implies that but doesn’t state it out right.
And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.
-thus Lehi’s dream, 1 Ne. 8:26. later verses saying that the building falls and that it represents “vain imagination” help complete the picture of a building without foundation.
The alternate explanation is that it has a foundation, it just looks like its in the air because of how tall it is. This interpretation implies that the building is toplofty, i.e., that it has an inadequate foundation. For interpretive purposes, having no foundation and having an inadequate foundation are not much different.
Let me suggest a 3rd explanation.
Both the dream and the interpretation of the dream mention swirling mists that make things hard to seem. Let us imagine a tall building that seems to stand in the air because its base is concealed in mist. This building has a hidden foundation.
Now think about all the movements in the Book of Mormon that had a hidden basis. Korihor and his angel. Amaleki and his desire to restore the old ways–but what was really driving everything was his personal lust to dominate. All the political eruptions of the late Book of Mormon period that were actually caused by oath-bound secret combinations.
There was definitely a solid foundation behind these movements. Only it was not the basis that people think.
How much of our own world is built on something different than we are led to believe?
Ugly Mahana
January 15, 2024
Thank you.
One way or another, covenants form the base of eternal blessings. Covenants with God are obvious, are out in the open, and lead joyfully to joy. I agree (but had not thought of it so clearly) that one of the messages of the Book of Mormon is that another set of covenants also exist which lead sorrowfully to sorrow.
This idea has sparked several others. One is that it comports very well with the messages written by Paul.
Pirate Captain
January 15, 2024
I know JCW is a Catholic and did not have the G&S in mind, but I found this passage from a tale of Metachronopolis to be pretty close to how I envision the “foundations” of the G&S:
““Mist. Mist and uncertainty. There is no bottom. It just gets more and more misty the further down you go…” I shivered at the memory. The lower bridge had been invisible beneath my feet, swaying, soft and marshy, mutating in shape even as I walked. The gargoyle looming on the railing beside me had worn one face, then, after the mists blurred past, another. It had been dark, with muddled images of tower-roots fading and swaying around me. The thick tower walls were nothing but streams of smoke. From the abyss underfoot, a screaming voice begged me not to pick up the white cards. I shouted back, but there had been no answer… “The towers don’t have any foundations,” I said.”
Robert S.
January 25, 2024
The Great and Spacious building is like a Jenga tower: it has a finite amount of building material to work with, yet it must continually become greater and spaciouser*, so it has to cannibalize its foundation. The outcome is predictable, just like the end of the game of Jenga.
* deliberately defective comparative, emulate at own risk