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Gospel Wiki Connections 4ne-churches-for-gain

4 Nephi 1:26 · 2 Nephi 26:29

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Book of Mormon 4 Nephi 1:26
"they began to build up churches unto themselves to get gain, and began to deny the true church of Christ"
Book of Mormon 2 Nephi 26:29
"priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion"

The apostasy of the golden-age church -- dividing into classes and building 'churches unto themselves to get gain' (4 Nephi 1:26) -- reads as an instance of the priestcraft Nephi defined and forbade centuries earlier: 'priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain' (2 Nephi 26:29). The identification is offered to WEIGH, not asserted: 4 Nephi 1:26 never uses the word 'priestcraft', and the link is doctrinal, not verbal. It does NOT rest on the phrase 'get gain', which is common -- 'get gain' appears at 17 verses in the record (1 Nephi 22:23; 2 Nephi 26:20, 26:29, 27:16; 3 Nephi 29:7; 4 Nephi 1:26; Alma 10:32, 11:20, 30:35; Helaman 6:8, 6:17, 7:5, 7:21; Mormon 8:14, 8:33, 8:40; Ether 10:22), and corpus-wide at James 4:13 and Moses 5:31 (nineteen in all). The CLOSER verbal parallel to 4 Nephi 1:26's institutional wording is actually 2 Nephi 26:20 ('they have built up many churches … that they may get gain'); 26:29 was chosen as the far end because it is the general priestcraft DEFINITION-and-prohibition that the 4 Nephi act instantiates (self-exalting religion for gain, 'set themselves up' / 'build up churches unto themselves'). The far-end textual flagship of this cluster is the near-verbatim pair Mormon 8:33 ('why have ye built up churches unto yourselves to get gain?') <-> 4 Nephi 1:26, hosted on two-churches.md -- cross-referenced here, NOT duplicated (that pair is [textual]; this record is the separate [interpretive] priestcraft-doctrine leg).

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