“Ye Were Past Feeling That Ye Could Not Feel His Words”

"True religion is a feeling. It is common in anti-Mormon literature for attacks to be made on prayer and on trusting one's feelings as sources for obtaining truth. In the realm of spiritual understanding both are fundamental. Truth is felt. Falsehood is often clothed in erudite and sophisticated arguments. One does not have to be able to refute the argument to know that it is false. Truth feels good; falsehood does not.

"Christ spoke of the inability of the wicked to 'understand with their heart' (Matthew 13:15), while the righteous 'understood in their hearts' things too marvelous to utter (3 Nephi 19:33-34). Describing the spirit of revelation for Joseph Smith, the Lord said, 'I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart' (D&C 8:2). Because of their wickedness, such understanding was lost to Nephi's rebellious brothers." (McConkie and Millet, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 1, p. 137)

"President Harold B. Lee has called our attention to the phrase 'past feeling' which is used several places in the scriptures. In Ephesians, Paul links it to lasciviousness that apparently so sated its victims that they sought 'uncleanness with greediness.' Moroni used the same two words to describe a decaying society which was 'without civilization,' 'without order and without mercy,' and in which people had 'lost their love, one towards another.' Insensate, this society saw violence, gross immorality, brutality and all kinds of 'kamikaze' behavior. Nephi used the same concept in his earlier lamentation bout his brothers' inability to heed the urgings of the Spirit because they were 'past feeling.' The common thread is obvious: the inevitable dulling of our capacity to feel renders us impervious to conscience, to the needs of others, and to insights both intellectual and spiritual. Such imperceptivity, like alcoholism, apparently reaches a stage where the will can no longer enforce itself upon our impulses." ("For the Power is in them…", p. 22)

"Some young people belong to peer groups in which there is an almost constant celebration of the senses: tactile, visual, and aural. It is significant that three prophets (Nephi, Paul, and Mormon) in three different cultures and at three different times, each used the same two words to describe a people who had celebrated the senses so much that they had lost their capacity to feel. The words 'past feeling' appear in the scriptures to depict people who had become sufficiently encrusted in their excesses that they killed their capacity to feel. The very capacity to feel which they celebrated was lost in the process of celebration. They were in a situation in which increasingly stronger stimulants were needed to feel anything, and finally no dose was large enough to appease their appetites." (A Time to Choose [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1972], 15 - 16.)

"Ironic though it is, ultimately those so warped by pleasing the carnal mind and by wrongfully celebrating their capacity to feel soon lose their capacity to feel, finally becoming 'past feeling' (1 Ne. 17:451 Ne. 17:45; Moro. 9:20Moro. 9:20)." (One More Strain of Praise [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1999], 66.)