The Sealed Book from the Mormon Plates
Acts of the Three Nephites
CHAPTER 14
1-10
1 And taking the book of Jacob into his hands, Jesus proceeded to say: This is why the scriptures of the ancient prophets speak by means of illustrations, so that, seeing no one notices and does not pay attention to his message. For it is necessary that this simple truth related to your feelings remain as a sacred secret, from generation to generation, so that only in the final part of the fullness of times this may come in its purity and perfection, without ever having been distorted under the precepts of men.
2 Happy, therefore, are your eyes, for they watch, and your ears, for they hear the reading of these words of mine and unravel this great mystery that was hidden by all the times predetermined by Me and my Father, since before the foundation of the the world, to be revealed to my humble followers, only when the workers of my vineyard are ready to do the work in the field abandoned by the earliest workers, for the purpose of restoring the gifts of God proceeding from His Name among those who take upon themselves the name of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and receives the 'Gift of the Holy Spirit'.
3 And thus you may recognize the true sentiments of my priesthood and my grace among the children of men as to the gifts of the evil that were created by Satan to deceive and overcome the heavenly gifts in the world of mankind.
4 Listen, therefore, to him who has the desire to understand even more this great mystery, which is revealed to you in this moment in which my words come to you in the last days. For verily I, Jesus Christ, make known to you the meaning of the parable of the good olive tree prophesied to the house of Israel, now that you can understand in its simplicity this analogy uttered by my servant Zenos with regard to good feelings from God to his children on earth.
5 Behold, the olive tree symbolically represents the people of God from the beginning of times, for it grows and produces fruit even on soils with little water, and even though if cut at the foot of its trunk, it has the vitality to regenerate itself again from of its roots. And although an olive tree is immersed for many days under the waters of a flood, it tends to survive and after lowering the waters, continues to produce fruits in abundance as if nothing had suffocated its branches. Remember that it was a leaf of an olive tree that the dove brought to Noah at the end of the flood.
6 And if it were not enough all their resistance to survive in critical and adverse situations, when grafted branches of a grafted olive tree into a good olive tree, it is able to make them into good olive trees again, so that they are replanted, as branches of good olives again.
7 For this reason, I and my Father compared the house of Israel to all those who make up the Church of the Lamb to a good and leafy olive tree, which the Lord of the vineyard planted next to water currents, for the purpose of producing fruits according to its season; and whose leaves would never wither1.
(1) Psalms 1:3
8 And now, to what shall I compare these water currents? To the good feelings derived from the Gift of God, which flows along with the other sentiments derived from the love of God among the covenant people that persists in observing my commandments.
9 But as it is written in the dream of my servant Lehi, these waters came from a spring near the tree of life1, where the people of God must arrive and delight with their fruits, provided they remain firmly grasped to the rod of iron which will lead them, according to the words of Nephi, unto the fountains of living waters; that is, to the tree of life from which it proceeds its water source, which are symbols of the love of God2; yea, from this Greater Gift of which I have spoken to you, whence proceed all the good sentiments of my gospel.
(1) RLDS 1Nephi 2:54-56 / LDS 1Nephi 8:13-14 | (2) RLDS 1Nephi3:68-69 / LDS 1Nephi 11:25
10 Nevertheless, the roots of the good olive tree, which is the house of Israel, stretched under the slopes of the river, where its waters were already mingled with impurity, symbolically representing the sentiments created by Satan, by whose priestly wiles he cast his gifts just below the source of God's gifts, and he came to defile his leafy olive tree, so that his roots, strewn on the slope of this river of filthy waters seen by Lehi1, began to absorb the impurities from the evil one, and its fruits, which are the feelings of the people who make up the house of Israel, because they were so distracted by other things, did not perceive the filth of the water that absorbed the seed in their hearts, as being the depths of hell2, to involve them in the senses, and thus the good olive tree grew and grew in its field, that is, among the nations of the world.
(1) RLDS 1Nephi 4:43-45 / LDS 1Nephi 15:26-27 | (2) RLDS 1Nephi 3:124 / LDS 1Nephi 12:16