I like books with zip. Plot twists are my Shakespeare. I have to anesthetize my lower tastes to read the Book of Mormon. That book does not have a lot of surface dazzle but it rewards deeper reading.  It rewards reading carefully and thinking.  It has depths.

I just started again, right spang in Ch. 1, me and good ol’ Nephi, and I just found out one of the hidden depths. Lehi’s dream has a beautiful and thought-provoking parallel between the great and spacious building and the tree of life.

It’s not an obvious parallel, either.  (At least not to me. Dollars to donuts there are a half-dozen Mormon Interpreter articles on the parallel already.)

The great and spacious building has no base. It is not grounded. It rests on air. That is why ” it will fall, and the fall thereof will be exceedingly great.” 1 Ne. 11:36. In contrast, the tree of life is rooted in the ground.

Lehi does not point out that the tree is rooted. It’s still good sense to see the tree’s contract with the earth as can important parallel.  It comes out in the angel’s explanation to Nephi, when Nephi prays to know the meaning of his father’s dream. The angel says Nephi will see the tree and then the Son of Man “descending out of heaven.” 1 Ne. 11:7. And that is what happens. Nephi sees the tree, asks what it means, and is immediately shown the birth and mortal life of Jesus Christ. 1 Ne 11:8-22. And the angel says,’ Behold the condescension of God.” 1 Ne. 11:26. The tree and its fruit represents God coming down to earth.  So the tree’s contact with the earth is a subtle but real par tof the vision.

The great and spacious building has no base. The tree is rooted. The building–Babylon, Satan–falls. Christ descends.

And that descent is the subject of Lehi’s vision that opens the Boot of Mormon. He sees Christ and the Apostles descending to earth.

That is the climax of the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 11.

The Book of Mormon does not use aerial metaphors. It calls Christ the stone, the rock, the foundation.