[00:00:30] Speaker B: What is up?

[00:00:31] Speaker A: Hey.

In this episode, we are going to be talking about how the works of God and his designs cannot be frustrated. There is also a lot to learn from the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon. We are going to look at some of the context to what was going on in Joseph Smith’s life at this time. Then we will take a quick peek at Doctrine and Covenants section four before we move on to the council that God gave to Joseph Smith and Martin Harris in Doctrine and Covenants section five. So sit back, enjoy. And here we go.

To begin, let me just open up the scriptures real quick so I can read it.

You can probably just edit that little snippet out.

[00:01:12] Speaker B: Or maybe I won’t. Maybe we’ll all wait uncomfortably for you to do this.

[00:01:16] Speaker A: Probably.

Okay. Doctrine and Covenant is section 3, verse 1. The works and designs and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated. Neither can they come to naught. And I think that’s a very comforting statement, but it’s a very cool statement. And what it reminds me of is JRR Tolkien when he wrote the Silmarillion. It’s a story. I don’t know if you’re into Tolkien or not, or followed much of his works, but this one is the creation account of how Middle Earth came to be. And so you’ve got your gods sitting here. You, your Aener is what they’re called. And the lead God here cues him up on a song like a choir director. And they’re all singing, and as they’re singing, it’s the creation taking place. And the most powerful of them, his name is Melkor and he’s a little bit discontent here. So every now and again he weaves in this. And you should appreciate this, Nate, coming from your music background.

[00:02:14] Speaker B: I’m ready.

[00:02:16] Speaker A: He brings in this discord is what they call it, where he tries to start singing a different song to just be a little bit rebellious encounter. And he starts singing it loud to the point where the other ones singing next to him start tuning into his song. And then the lead God’s kind of got to get him back on track and he changes the tune up a little bit and brings them all back together. And you’ve got this back and forth play almost kind of this Good and evil. And when the song is all finished, the head God pulls them all together and says, okay, I want to show you what you created in music. And he shows them the creation of the world. And he says, even when you try to frustrate me, when Melkor, the most powerful of all of you, tries to frustrate me by singing in the discord or adding in these bad notes or these bad tunes, trying to ruin the song, all he did was glorify my work even more. And he shows him the discord that Melkor was singing in there brought about the cold and the frigid temperatures, and yet God changed the tune and brought about the snowflake and the beauty that comes with the snow.

This kind of back and forth play goes out. I won’t tell you the whole story, but just showing you that even when Satan or evil or whatever the case may be is trying to frustrate the work of God, really all it does is play out to magnify or glorify it.

Go ahead.

[00:03:45] Speaker B: I never read any of that stuff.

[00:03:49] Speaker A: It’s an interesting read. I’m kind of excited to see the. You saw Amazon dropped a billion dollars on a new Lord of the Rings series. TV series.

[00:03:58] Speaker B: I just actually finished watching the Hobbit movies. Not the cool cartoon ones from when we were kids, but like the really terrible ones from when we were adults.

[00:04:12] Speaker A: I don’t think they were.

[00:04:12] Speaker B: It’s one of those things where it’s just like you’re so far into it that you can’t turn it off because you’ve already invested so much time that it almost feels like wasting you wasted time. I don’t know why we do that. As humans, we should be way more comfortable with saying, those are sunk costs. It’s time to move on. And there’s no reason I need to finish this terrible movie.

[00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, that could open a can of worms. I’ve got plenty of bad movies I could talk about, but I’m gonna try to stop myself.

[00:04:39] Speaker B: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just took you. I just took you out of the vibe. Continue, Continue.

[00:04:44] Speaker A: You’re good. I was about to take myself even worse out of the vibe. I’m just gonna stop before I start. We have seen some doozies, but going back into this, God is saying that his plans and his designs cannot be frustrated. Then he is going to show that even long before the plates were pulled out of the earth and Joseph Smith started translating it, he had a contingency plan where Nephi made A record kind of going over the same information that Lehi had gone over so that nothing was really important was lost. There was continuity that kept going. Have to retranslate those pages.

Perhaps the greatest example of God’s plans not being frustrated, even though bad things are kind of getting weaved into the mix, is probably the atonement itself. When we look at Christ’s life, I mean, how many of us, if we could imagine ourselves in that setting right towards the end, as he is about to be crucified? What if we were in that crowd and not knowing what we know? Today we see this man that we loved, our Lord the Savior, and Pontius Pilate stands up and says, who should I release? How many of us would be praying and hoping that Christ would be released? Not Barabbas, right? Barabbas was a murderer. And when Christ is still going to be crucified, how many of us would not be hoping? We have got Passover coming.

What if they were to wait until after the holiday and then give Christ a chance to kind of escape and live and continue to teach us and to continue to grow? All of these bad things that happened, ultimately his crucifixion and the atonement itself, as bad as it seemed, and as much as we would have prayed for him as a loved one or him as somebody that we care about, wanting the best thing in that situation, would have frustrated the most important, greatest blessing that has ever been offered to mankind across the earth.

And that’s what happens in our life. As much as sometimes we wish we could avoid the thorns or pull away from the tribulation or the problems, some of those things end up being the greatest blessings to us. And those trials are really what make us who we are and make us great.

[00:07:04] Speaker B: I think that actually, like you said earlier, is comforting, because one of the questions that I still grapple with the hardest is, why do bad things happen to good people? And as simple as it is, and it’s sometimes easy to kind of dismiss it a little bit, or sometimes the dismissive answer is like, well, you know, because everybody has their agency. But it’s like, man, that doesn’t make me feel any better about that.

[00:07:33] Speaker A: And you know who got it was. Was Nephi. If you imagine that guy with his family, and he’s building a boat to cross the seas, to come over to a promised land. And before they board that boat, he has a vision where he sees his descendants and he sees them kind of fall away from the truth. And he sees that the scourge of Their existence are going to be the Lamanites, his brother’s children are going to be warring with them, fighting with them, and ultimately in the end destroying them. And yet when he comes away and walks away from that vision here he’s got brothers that just complaining and want to go back to Jerusalem. How easy would it be with him knowing the future to just say, you know what? Yeah, head back to Jerusalem, that’s fine, go and not take them on the boat with him, knowing what kind of opposition they are going to be putting to his kids. But yet those struggles, those bad things, as you said, that sometimes we wonder why they happen or why they happen to good people, are yet so important sometimes to bringing about God’s plan or his purposes.

[00:08:39] Speaker B: And it also just helps to remember sometimes too that like, we don’t have all the answers in the short term ever actually. And, or maybe, I mean, I shouldn’t say ever a lot of times we don’t really have the answers in the short term. And so many things are revealed later, even in our lives that give us an add perspective to the trials that we went through earlier. And there’s no way that we should ever dismiss people’s hurt and tribulation and the horrible, terrible things that do happen to people. We just have to understand, or at least try to understand that our perspective is so finite, our understanding of infinite things is still so finite. And like you said, there’s comfort in knowing that the Lord has told us that he will not be frustrated and that he’s going to make sure that his plan is still executed.

[00:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah. When poor Joseph Smith’s in Liberty jail and he says all these things will be for your benefit. Right.

No, it’s wild.

As I was thinking about this and I was putting together these bad things that are happening or seemingly bad things that happen, or the opportunities for us to learn or to change just kind of chip away at us. I couldn’t help but think of an example example that you told me about instruments and guitar in particular, how it’s framed or put together or how that fits into this idea. Would you mind elaborating a little bit on that?

[00:10:17] Speaker B: Sure. I think what you’re referring to is I had to give a lesson one time or talk in sacrament meeting or something about the idea of us being instruments, you know, or God calling prophets to be instruments. And, and because of my, you know, day to day, you know, music stuff, that’s of course the type of instrument I think of. And as I was reading how the process of building a Guitar, you know, raw wood is basically cut and, you know, kind of roughly, you know, cut into slabs that will eventually become, you know, the body of the guitar. But to get them, to get that hard piece of wood to be able to form into the shape of a guitar, you know, you have to soak it until it’s pliable and bendable. And then you take that and put it inside of a frame so that when it hardens back again, it’s. It’s hardening back in the right shape. I think that’s what we’re talking about, right?

[00:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

And some of those steps, you know, as you’re talking about, you know, soaking the wood, cutting it, clamping it and forcing it kind of go a different direction than what it would naturally want to. And yet it turns it into such a. I mean, you turn it into a work of art, whereas in before it might not have been much. Right. You’re adding utilization through the trials that you’re putting it through and to kind of give us a little bit of insight on some of the trials that Joseph Smith’s going through at this time. Right after he gives the 116 pages to Martin Harris, Moroni comes and takes the Urim and Thummim from him even before the pages are lost. And he’s got to be questioning right in the back of his mind. I have to think that he was worried because God had told him three times that he shouldn’t do this. But he was more worried about Martin Harris and making sure that his financial means, because Martin Harris was financially supporting this work that he was taken care of. I think this is a problem that a lot of people get into. We want to be people pleasers. We want to make people happy. And we get caught between rock and a hard spot trying to please everyone, where you say yes to too many people or, you know, you’re trying to do this. But Joseph Smith, so concerned for his friend, for making sure the work puts forward, and he’s got so much focus on this, he’s got to be beating himself up a little bit that he kept going to God rather than telling Martin Harris no, trying to convince God into making this happen. And if it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t stop there. Joseph Smith, Emma had just had a child right after this happened, right after they gave the pages, but before Martin Harris came back and told him that the pages were lost, Emma was expecting a child, delivered the child, and the child died. And not only did the child die, but Emma was on death’s bed. She wasn’t doing well.

And in fact, she was sitting gravely ill in her bed. And as Joseph was taking care of her and she was clinging on to life, she told him that one of her big concerns was those pages and asked him if he had called on Martin Harrison to find out what the state of those were. When Joseph Smith found out those pages were lost, he was so devastated. He thought that Emma, that the news would put her over into the grave.

And maybe he was beating himself up and thought that the loss of his child, potentially the loss of his wife, the loss of the trans. All of this was because, I mean, think of the lessons, of what he went through to get these plates out of the ground. And when he took his hand, you know, his eyes off of it for a second, the plates disappeared. Moroni said, you’re not trustworthy enough. I need you to do this. I need you to do this. And now all of a sudden, he felt like he betrayed that trust. He let God down. I mean, this, this was like the guitar going through the ring or getting clamped, whatever that process was to turn into who he ended up being at the end.

Just some interesting context there and some interesting look into what he was going through, not just the 116 pages.

[00:14:24] Speaker B: I think it’s pretty relatable, though. Again, I think that that’s a very relatable thing to us, even if it’s not specific, you know, those, those specific types of things or whatever. But I mean, if you think about it, what, what good or great thing in your life has come without pain? You know, what great thing that, what great thing can you look back on and say, oh, yeah, that didn’t take. That didn’t take a lot of either physical or emotional or, or, you know, mental pain and, and sometimes agony to then, to then either be taught something or to learn something or to be given something.

[00:15:04] Speaker A: A lot of times they become turning points for us, or at least big moments that we look back on for inspiration to help us get us through it. We know it’s not going to be pleasant getting through it, but when we’re on the other side, we’ve got that experience and we feel a little bit better because of it.

[00:15:20] Speaker B: Look at every single one of God’s prophets or chosen prophets throughout the Scriptures. I mean, very rarely, very rarely, if any, I can’t think of off the top of my head that it was just like, you know, they were born and everything just went so smooth and they taught all this great stuff and they got translated or whatever. You know, they didn’t even have to die. It’s like, tell me, tell me any of those stories like the of the greatest prophets that didn’t have some sort of, you know, deep agony or trial, you know, the Lord, The Lord truly does shape his, his instruments.

[00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Like the phrase, you know, the rough stone rolling, you’re just smoothing out the edges and turning it into a work of art by the time it hits the bottom.

Well, so that being said, I’d like to ask the question, why? Why was Martin Harris so persistent to get those pages? I mean, what was the big deal? Why, why couldn’t he just take no for an answer?

[00:16:17] Speaker B: I mean, I think I know the answer.

[00:16:19] Speaker A: You know, I think a lot of it. This poor guy was in a very similar situation to Joseph Smith as far as in the straits here. He is convinced that he is doing the Lord’s work. He is spending his money, he is spending his time. When he takes the trip up to New York to show the professor the writings and see if it is verified to get proof that what he is doing is right. This isn’t just an overnight journey. This is taking several weeks getting there. It is taking several weeks getting back. And the time that he is spending with Joseph Smith, it is an unusually warm year. They’re supposed to be getting the crops in. He’s a farmer and his wife’s worried because instead of getting the crops put in, instead of taking care of his family, he’s out going and visiting New Yorker, he’s hanging out at the Smith farm. He’s spending all this time not taking care of them. And she thinks that Joseph Smith is a fraud to the point where she is pressing charges.

She’s taking Joseph Smith to court and accusing of him of fraud.

And Martin Harris, caught between his wife and between Joseph Smith is trying to appease things, trying to get her to calm down. And how does he do that?

He doesn’t want to ruin his relationship with his wife, but he also wants to keep the Lord happy. So none of this is as clear cut or clean as it looks. Everyone here, it’s not like they were maliciously trying to do anything as much as just trying to please too many people and not trying to please God first.

[00:17:56] Speaker B: Which is totally understandable. Yeah, I mean if we’re just being totally honest, there is a lot of faith that it would require to not, you know what I mean, not care about the at hand problems like your spouse, you know, the person that you’re living with and also commanded to, you know, take care of And. And do your best to uplift and make happy. So, yeah, I mean, that’s. I’m not. I’m not. I would. I definitely am not going to be throwing any stones is all I’m saying.

[00:18:27] Speaker A: Right, right. And, you know, even though sometimes it might make sense or we might justify what we do, you know, at the end of the day, God still chasing them, right? At the end of the day, even though they were trying to make things work or they were trying to please people, the end of the day, they were wrong because they weren’t listening to number one, they weren’t listening to God.

President Monson used to say this all the time.

He said it a couple different ways, but he would say the wisdom of God oftentimes appears as foolishness to man. But the single greatest lesson we can learn is that when God speaks and a man listens, that man will always be right. And so sometimes it might be foolish that why wouldn’t you just show them the work? Or why wouldn’t you just. But God has a reason, or God has a purpose, and that’s what he’s trying to teach them here, that sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes you can’t just rationalize it. Sometimes, even though it sounds just a simple thing in your mind that you’re going to do it, really the simplest thing is to just listen to God. It might appear like foolishness, or it might not make the most sense, but if you follow what you feel and if you follow what God’s telling you, you’re always going to be right. And they also give a little tip here because they say that the designs and purposes of God cannot be frustrated, but they also give a reason why it can’t be frustrated. Almost kind of like a guideline for how we can make it so that our plans aren’t frustrated as well. I mean, that would be nice, right?

Verse 2, it says, for God doth not walk in crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand, nor to the left. Neither doth he vary from the path which he has said. So as I think about that, his plans can’t be frustrated because he’s not winding around, right? And I think that’s where we get caught in our trap.

When we start deviating or we start wandering away, it creates an opportunity for us to intersect or run into our own plans where really we’re the ones that are frustrating our own plans. Our deviances that we’re throwing into the mix is frustrating. What we do. If we are able to walk straight Like God, that is how we can do it without frustrating ourselves.

[00:20:39] Speaker B: Love it.

[00:20:41] Speaker A: Okay, next up in Doctrine Covenants, Section four, this is something that all missionaries memorize over and over and over again.

And a lot of people are familiar with this. It is a very short section, and it’s a very short section. And I don’t feel like we should really spend too much time talking about it. But it is something that’s going to be repeated over and over and over again in the Doctrine and Covenants. And that message is that the field is white and now ready to harvest. And this is a message of revelation that Joseph Smith gives to his father, Joseph Smith Sr. One year before the church is restored. So even before the church is restored, the Lord is saying, the field is white and all ready to harvest. And we’ll talk about this a little bit more in some other lessons because, like I said, it does show up a lot of times in the Book of Mormon. But what I did want to take away from this is the idea that in the New Testament, you have a couple parables that are referring to the end of times. You’ve got this idea of the virgins that are waiting for the Lord, the groom, to come to the church. Well, here with the restoration of the Gospel, you have the groom that’s returning to the church, which is the bride, and restoring that. Where the church is now married or unified, joined to the Lord, the Lord stands at the head of his church. There’s now the church of Jesus Christ in the fulfillment of that prophecy. He also talks about another prophecy that in the last days, well, before we get to the last days, you’ve got the parable of the wheat and the tares where the sowers are out sowing the wheat all throughout the field. And then the enemy comes in at night and sows the tares among the wheat. And they say, well, what should we do? Should we try to separate it? And they say, no, don’t separate it, because you might damage some of the wheat in the process. Wait until the end, and when the field is white and ready to harvest, that is when you can separate the wheat and the tares. So that prophecy dealing with the end of times, the that when the wheat is matured, this is the Lord telling us we are at that time, the wheat is ready, the field is white and all ready to harvest. Just giving you kind of an idea of where we sit in our timeline according to New Testament prophecies. It is exciting. We are sitting right here towards the end in the next section, Doctrine and Covenant, Section 5.

I loved how the Lord is focusing Joseph Smith. He says, you have a gift to translate the plates, and this is the first gift that I bestowed upon you. And I have commanded that you should pretend to no other gift until my purpose is fulfilled in this. For I will grant unto you no other gift until it is finished. And I find it interesting that he says, pretend to no other gift. He’s saying, not only. He’s saying, I’m not giving you any other gifts until the translation is done. And seeing that you don’t have any other gifts, you’re not going to be practicing any other gifts. But I don’t even want you pretending like you have any other gifts until this is done. This is your work. I want the nostrils.

[00:23:52] Speaker B: You have one job to do.

[00:23:54] Speaker A: You have one job. This is it. Get it done. I love it. I love how he keeps him focused.

And really, the Lord is prioritizing here. Before the Church is restored, I need that Book of Mormon, I need it translated, and I need this to go forth with the restoration of the Gospel. Let’s put one foot in front of the other and keep ourselves focused.

A lot of times when you are at the beginning of a new project, you get really excited and sometimes you want to run in like 100 different directions to get this thing up off the ground. And I can imagine that he is very similar. He is excited. He is a young prophet. He has got this opportunity, this information that the Lord’s fed him. It’d be fun to just go around and, you know, get everything moving. But. But the Lord says, hold on, one thing at a time.

We also have in here talking about witnesses. He says that there’s going to be witnesses to the plates that they’re going to use when the Book of Mormon is translated. And we have that at the beginning. We have the testimony of the three witnesses. We have the testimony of the 12 witnesses. I just wanted to make one comment on that, that I find it fascinating that, you know, you look at the three witnesses, all of them were members of the Church, all of them witnessed to the plates, and yet all of them fell away. And even though all of them fell away, none of them denied their testimony or their witnesses to what they saw.

What more powerful witness can you get for something than somebody who turned enemy to it? Because it is not just somebody that was neutral, that was standing outside that maybe you could buy off or whatever. I mean, these are people that turned hostile to the Church that kind of went away and were kind of negative and had Bad feelings and hard feelings for the church. Yet as bad as it went and as much as they didn’t like it, they held true to the one thing that they believed that they saw. And they said, this happened. I know this happened. And I just find it fascinating that these are the people the Lord chose because I don’t think you could find any better witnesses than that.

[00:25:54] Speaker B: Well, like we talked about too, again, like, the idea that sometimes conflict is, is the thing that, you know what I mean, like, can bring about some of the greatest purposes. It’s like, you’re absolutely right. And it’s something that I’ve always like, seen as obviously a divine decision. Right. Like, I, I don’t think that there’s any, I don’t think that there’s, that there’s anything but a deliberate choice in the people that were chose to be the witnesses. Because it makes sense.

[00:26:24] Speaker A: It does. And you know, going back to what President Monson said, sometimes the wisdom of God appears like foolishness to man. But in the end, not only it makes sense, but you know, and maybe this is why this is such a powerful verse. This is kind of what I want to finish on is where it says in Doctrine and Covenants, stop and stand still.

And I love those directions because we worry about a lot. Joseph Smith was worried about Martin Harris. Martin Harris was worried about his wife. We are worried about getting all of this work done. When the Lord says, no, I only want you to focus on this right now. We worry about so much in our lives and part of that worry is almost a distrust in God. But going back to last episode when we were talking about the patience that God had to wait for Joseph Smith to call on him rather than try to speed things up.

That idea of just be patient and stand still, know that God is there.

His wisdom, as much as it might seem like foolishness to us, is wisdom. His ways are not our ways. And if we trust and stand still and put it in him, his ways, like it says at the very beginning, his designs, his purposes cannot be frustrated. His purpose, his paths are straight. It will all work out in the end.

Well, that is all I have got for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Tune in next week we are going to be talking about the word of God being compared to a two edged sword and how it divides. So some reference there. We do talk a little bit more about harvesting wheat in the end.

And we will talk about Revelation, how God answers prayers. It’s Doctrine and Covenants, section six through nine. So thank you for joining until next time. We’ll see you later.

[00:00:27] Speaker B: What’s up?

[00:00:28] Speaker A: In this episode, we will be talking about the connection between Mormon and Joseph Smith. Then we will explore the takeaways from the time between Joseph’s first and second visions. And we will wrap up talking about the significance of Elijah coming before the great and terrible day of the Lord.

So let’s get rolling.

Joseph Smith. It is interesting that the author of the Book of Mormon, I mean, it is named after him. Mormon and Joseph Smith’s life have so much in common. And as I look at these two prophets, I can’t help but think of like a book. When you’re reading a book and you kind of leave off and set it down for a while and you go back to read the book and you go to where you think you left off and you start reading and you might forget, like, what was it talking about? Or where were we going with this? And you have to almost kind of go back and read the last page again and then you get your flow and you start moving back into the new content. It’s almost like that’s what Joseph Smith is for the Book of Mormon, because when you look at his life, it’s like a repeat of Mormon’s life. Does that make sense?

[00:01:31] Speaker B: A little bit.

[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah.

Let’s see if we can dive into some of the scriptures a little bit and draw that comparison out.

So in Mormon 1. 5, Mormon tells us, kind of on a side note, by the way, my dad’s name was Mormon too. And it doesn’t seem like it’s important or critical to the setting or anything that’s going on. We don’t know anything about his dad, any of the stories there. And we got to remember that he’s engraving these things on plates, yet he makes important note saying, hey, I was also named after my dad. Something that Joseph Smith has in common, obviously, his dad being named Joseph Smith as well afterwards Mormon when he was young, about 11 years old, he’s carried to the land southward. He’s carried to Zarahembla, which is described as the land southward. Joseph Smith is also, at the age of 11 years old, relocated to Palmyra after his farm didn’t do so well. And this was a few years after he had the crippling leg surgery where he wasn’t well enough to Walk on his own power. He had to kind of ride in the wagon or be carried or limp around. Just as Mormon references, that he was carried into a land southward as well, and Palmyra was south from where the Smiths were located.

Both men have been described as being large of stature. Joseph Smith was described as being large, standing a little over 6ft high, about 200, 210 pounds.

Mormon was described as a large man. He commanded armies at an early age. Joseph Smith was head of the Mormon Battalion and commanded armies as well. And Mormon describes a war that takes place on the waters between the Nephites and the Lamanites that takes place on the seashore next to the waters. And a little bit of history at the same time. Joseph Smith, growing up, we had a little war of the War of 1812.

And what a lot of people might not realize, you know the story of the national Anthem with Francis Scott Key.

Yeah.

[00:03:28] Speaker B: Where they. That was at a fort, not Sumner. What fort was it at Fort Shoot.

[00:03:35] Speaker A: I’m not sure.

[00:03:35] Speaker B: All right, well, is it a fort? It was definitely a fort in Baltimore, though, right?

[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:40] Speaker B: Okay. I at least knew the city it was in.

[00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And he’s out of the. You know, he’s out in the waters watching the fort and watching the flag that’s up there at the fort. Right. And a lot of people place this action in the Revolutionary War, but this was going on right here. This is a war that’s happening by the seashore at the time of Joseph Smith. So you’ve got kind of these parallel stories, these parallel circumstances for these two guys.

Mormon, when he was 15 years old, was visited by the Lord. And Joseph Smith tells us in his 15th year, he was also visited of the Lord. And some accounts we have when he was 14 and some accounts of the first vision we have when he’s 16. So, I mean, if you average it out around the same time, he’s being visited of the Lord in person at the same time. That Mormon was Fort McHenry. Thank you.

[00:04:24] Speaker B: I’m sorry. I know I just totally ignored everything you just said, and I know it was so good, but I couldn’t let that go. War of 1812, you’re right. It was not the Revolutionary War.

[00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:33] Speaker B: And it was Battle of Baltimore. So points for me on that.

[00:04:36] Speaker A: Definitely points for you. I’m glad you found that. That would have driven me nuts, too.

Internet. The Internet does wonders.

So you’ve got this. You had the wars. You’ve got both of them seeing the Lord at the age of 15 or right around the age of 15. Now, when Mormon’s commanded to go and get the records, you’ll notice that he’s actually commanded to leave some of the records alone, that he can’t have them, he can’t translate them, he can’t read them. And it’s very similar to Joseph Smith who gets the plates. And there’s a third of the plates that he can access, but two thirds of it is sealed. Right. So he can’t open them up. So there’s similarities in that. Also, even though he’s told about the plates at a very young age, guess how old Mormon was when he goes and gets the plates. I don’t know, 24. 24 years old. Which is the same year. Yeah. Same age as Joseph Smith. Can’t say the same year, obviously, we’re thousands of years apart, but the same age Joseph Smith was when Joseph Smith finally got the records as well.

[00:05:36] Speaker B: And people think that Mormons pray to Mormon, that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints either pray to Mormon or Joseph Smith. So they have that in common, too.

[00:05:44] Speaker A: Absolutely.

[00:05:46] Speaker B: Am I stepping outside the box or do we?

[00:05:48] Speaker A: No, you are right on track. You are right on track. In fact, they used to have, at the Salt Lake Temple, used to have a statue of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith, and they took them down off the temple because they were worried about people thinking that we were worshiping Joseph Smith. And just like you have the church called Mormons, and ultimately at the end, both of them were killed by their enemies. So I think that’s a really cool link or a bridge. You’ve got Mormon leaving off the records, giving it to his son Moroni, and Moroni bringing it to Joseph Smith. And you’ve got Joseph Smith life, almost a recap of Mormon’s life or a redo. Just kind of bridging this ancient world into this modern world, translating the records and bringing it to the Latter Day Saints, which I think is kind of a cool connection.

[00:06:32] Speaker B: It’s very cool.

[00:06:35] Speaker A: Next, as we were reading through the Joseph Smith history, something I found fascinating is when Joseph Smith starts talking about his follies. You know, he says when he had first prayed, he had prayed to figure out his standing before the Lord. And the Lord says, you know, your sins are forgiven, you’re good. And he says here that his lack of church attendance, he’s almost kind of blaming that for his slippery path to his follies. It’s kind of an interesting statement because he’s saying, I was forbidden to join any Church. So, you know, not going to church, I naturally just started doing things that I probably shouldn’t have. And by admitting these things, no one needs to accuse me of anything too grievous here. But it’s kind of funny that association that he makes with his follies and the things that he’s doing, he’s almost attributing to, hey, I’ve been inactive for a while and you can’t blame me for being inactive. There’s no church that I can actually go to. But because I’ve been inactive a little bit, I’m a little bit nervous about how I’m sitting here. And that’s what drives his second vision.

[00:07:40] Speaker B: Was Mormon inactive though for a thousand.

[00:07:44] Speaker A: Years at least on the earth, right. Who knows what he’s doing on the other side?

So, and this is, you know, when he goes to pray, wanting to know how his standing is before God, he is fully expecting a vision. And it’s very different from the first vision. The first vision we’re talking about like three or four years of preparation and studying and searching and now all of a sudden he says, you know what, I’ve done this before, I knelt down and prayed fully expecting to have a vision that night. And he did. And that’s when Moroni sees him. But what I find super fascinating about this is that Joseph Smith is going to be martyred at a young age, right? He’s got a huge work to do. He’s got the church to restore the priesthood, to bring back all of the revelations, the organization, everything that he needs to do and he’s not going to have a full lifetime to do it. And you can almost see like stress or worry on the Lord’s part if someone’s like, hey, aren’t you going to like that 14 year old boy you plan on calling? Like he hasn’t really been leaning on you too much here or looking for direction. At what point are you going to step in and try to set this boy on the right path and get the ball moving? Like you’re going to run out of time if you just let him waste his time, right? But that’s not how God’s playing it. God trusts Joseph Smith to ultimately come to God.

You don’t see God looking at the situation and stressing out and saying, hey, this guy better shape up, I better reach out to him, I better slap him upside the head, I better do something because we’re going to run out of time. No, there’s no worry, there’s no stress, there’s Patience, there’s kindness. I’m going to let this boy learn. I’m going to let him figure life out and get to a point in his life where he’s ready to do it, and he comes to me ready to do it.

And that’s one of the coolest things I get out of this story, this experience is that God trusts us.

And it reminds me of the story of Abraham, if I can digress just for a minute. When Abraham goes to make a sacrifice, normally what they do is they cut the animals in half, separate them, one on each side, and then you walk between the pieces of the animal, saying, may I be destroyed and cut apart like these animals. If I don’t live up to this covenant, it’s always the weaker party that’s forced to walk between the animals, covenanting to the greater party. You’d see this in wars and all sorts of things, saying, I’m willing to subject myself to these terms if I don’t live up to it. But the cool thing in Abraham’s case is when he separates these animal parts and he is just sitting there all day, keeping the flies away, just whatever, waiting on the Lord. And then the Lord himself walks through this like he’s subjecting himself to these terms, not Abraham. He’s saying, I’m trusting you, Abraham. The faith that God places in us is interesting.

And that’s kind of my takeaway when I read this story is God knows that.

I guess he knows who he’s calling. And he’s willing to help us make, you know, help us learn, but allow us to make mistakes and teach us when we do make those mistakes. And he’s not just going to sit there and force us to do things or shove things down our throat. I guess the whole purpose of the plan in the beginning was agency. But he’s allowing Joseph Smith to mature to the point where Joseph Smith comes to God saying, okay, Lord, I’m ready. What’s next?

The last really point of emphasis as I look at this lesson was Elijah. Because this is a scripture I think is extremely significant because we don’t just see it in Malachi chapter three, or chapter four, excuse me, when he says that the Lord will send Elijah before the great and terrible day to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children, right? But when Christ comes here into America, he says, you know, there’s a prophet that lived on the other side of the continent, and he spoke these words that I gave him that you don’t have in your records. I Want you guys to write this down. So we don’t just have it in the Bible, but we have it in the Book of Mormon. And then with the opening of this dispensation, that’s the message that Moroni brings to Joseph Smith in his room is this message about Elijah turning the hearts of the fathers to the children to the fathers, and the fathers to the children. And not only does he give it to him, and it’s recorded in Joseph Smith history, but now we also have it. Doctrine Covenants, Section 2. And it’s repeated again in Doctrine Covenants, Section 128. And it’s repeated throughout the New Testament, or, excuse me, the. The Restored Scripture, the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s a message that.

And the words change here and there, little subtle differences, but something that’s just. It’s just kind of shouting out like this is important.

It’s not just said once or twice or three times, but it’s said multiple times throughout all the different volumes of Scripture. And anytime I see something like that, that is the same message consistently, that’s something I want to kind of stop and pay attention to.

And as I think about this, I can’t help but think of the Passover, because this is the oldest tradition in the world today, the oldest religious festival, the oldest celebration. Passover, it’s 4,000 years old. And every year in Passover, they set a place for Elijah, waiting for him to come back, right? So they have this empty place setting, and they hold the spot because they believe that Elijah will come at the end as the precursor to the coming of the Messiah. And the most fascinating thing we’ll see this later on through the year in Doctrine and Covenants is that on Passover, Elijah came to the Kirtland Temple and returned that sealing power to Joseph Smith to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers to the children. And you think it was that same Passover night that he came.

And here you have all these people, millions of people throughout the world, waiting for him. And he came, but he didn’t come to them. And that’s where I find it interesting, because in the New Testament, they make a point of it. Christ says, how many starving widows were there in Israel? But Elijah came to none of them. Instead, he went to the Tishbite. He went to the. To the outsider.

And so I look at that as starving widows, starving in the terms of apostasy. They’re waiting for the Messiah. They’re waiting for that word. They’re waiting for The Gospel. And they’re widows. And the reason why they’re widows is because their husband has left them. Their husband’s died. Right, this sense, the Lord is the husband, he’s the groom, this church is a widow and that he has died. They killed him. And here they are, starving, waiting for the Messiah. Yet to none of them did Elijah come in the last days. But he came to this Gentile, he came to Joseph Smith, this no one. And he brought back the sealing power and restored here on earth all of these things, precursor to the coming of Jesus Christ when he comes again.

Powerful message, but that’s.

[00:14:57] Speaker B: Do you wait before you wrap this up, though, other than the obvious kind of the surface level idea of the hearts of the children turn to their fathers and the fathers of the children, I guess. And maybe you. I mean, I don’t mean to put you on the spot or anything. I kind of understand the idea of the hearts of the children to their fathers. I’ve always kind of. I understand the symbolism of, you know, and we’ve always taught, like, oh, yeah, it’s like genealogy work or, you know, like trying to, you know, add, you know, respect to the names of your forefathers, the people that kind of came before you, whether they be, you know, pioneers or not or. You know what I mean?

I guess I’ve always kind of wondered what the symbolism is. Like, why is it the fathers to the children too? You know what I mean? Like, why isn’t it just the hearts of the children to their fathers?

[00:15:46] Speaker A: Oh, that’s an excellent question, and I’m glad you asked it to go there. I’d like to go to Second Nephi, and this is kind of my interpretation on this. This is second Nephi, chapter 32, and he says, and now behold, my beloved brethren, I suppose that you ponder somewhat in your hearts concerning what you should do after you have entered in. By the way, but behold, why do you ponder these things in your hearts? Do you not remember that I said unto you that you have received the Holy Ghost, that you could speak with the tongue of angels? And now how could you speak with the tongue of angels, save it were by the Holy Ghost? Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost, wherefore they speak the words of Christ?

I think as we’re talking about angels speaking by the power of the Holy Ghost. I think oftentimes when we receive promptings from the Holy Ghost or feelings from the Holy Ghost, whether it’s the power of the Holy Ghost or a specific Holy Ghost that’s speaking to Us or whether it’s angels, those who are sent to watch after us, to help us, to care for us. Who are our fathers on the other side that are operating through the direction of the Holy Ghost to guide and inspire us.

That is something that I have wondered about because not only are our hearts turning to them as we try to remember them and as we try to do ordinances for them, but I think oftentimes a lot of our passed away ones, our forefathers on the other side of the veil are focused on our success and how they can help us and give us inspiration and guidance through the power of the Holy Ghost as they try to lead and direct us.

[00:17:27] Speaker B: That’s good. It’s kind of. While you were saying that, it kind of made me think too, maybe even, even in this life too. You know what I mean? Like, maybe, you know, a lot of times when, when, you know, missionaries are speaking to adults, a lot of their, you know, when people do have children or grandchildren, you know, so much it is interesting like the, the way that it can change just a person’s way of thinking or their, their priorities and their focus. And so much of that becomes like, well, what’s the, what is the best. What, what can I do to better the lives of my kids? And the, the message of the gospel that like, oh, yeah, well, you know, you can be with them forever even after this life is, is something, you know, that’s kind of a pretty strong even in this life. To your point that where like a father or a parent to their child can go, like, oh, this speaks to me because I want the best for you too, you know, I want you to have direction, you know, and if having the gospel in your life will help with that, then awesome.

[00:18:31] Speaker A: I love what you said there. Because as we shift the focus not even just from our fathers looking down to us, but our perspective, not just looking back to our ancestors, but looking down to the generations that have come from us. How are the decisions that I make today going to affect my children? How are they going to remember me? And what kind of positive impact can I have on them to try to keep?

[00:18:50] Speaker B: What name am I leaving for them to either have pride in or to have shame in? I guess too.

[00:18:57] Speaker A: Right, right.

And there’s no greater legacy that you can leave behind than to turn them to Christ or bring them to Christ. Right. I mean, the greatest gift you can give them is, is to highlight the way where they can follow the Savior. And being able to have that truth restored gives fathers a powerful tool. Not, not just to teach their children, guide their children and teach them how to, you know, that there is hope that they can repent, but also to to look to save their their past ones, do ordinance works for them and just try to seal and bring everyone together.

[00:19:35] Speaker B: Love it.

[00:19:36] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in. In next week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about the works of God and how his plans can’t be frustrated. And specifically, we’re dealing with the 116 pages that time of Joseph Smith’s life and kind of the revelations that were received then. And moving past that point until next week. We’ll see you then.

See yah.

In this episode, we will be talking about the connection between Mormon and Joseph Smith, we explore the takeaways from the time between Joseph’s first and second visions and we finish by talking about the significance of Elijah coming before the great and terrible day of the Lord.

Transcript:
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.

Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we explore the weekly Come Follow Me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here with my friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pifer.

[00:00:30] Speaker B: What is up?

[00:00:31] Speaker A: All right, so last week we talked Doctrine and Covenants Section 1. But this week in our Come Follow Me, we are actually taking a little diversion away from Doctrine and Covenants to look at the first vision and Joseph Smith history, but just the first 26 verses.

So in this podcast, at least this episode, we are going to look at the context of the Restoration, first from a biblical parable, then from setting the stage, kind of the world getting ready for the restoration. We’re going to talk about the Smith family, give some context that way, and then some context to what was going on in America. Talk about sacred groves and what we learned from Joseph Smith’s preparation and the process itself of the first vision.

So to kick us off, Nate, I really wanted to. I really wanted to look at a parable I think we’re all very familiar with, but with a different perspective on it. And the parable I’m talking about is the parable of the ten virgins. And a lot of times we think of the parable of the 10 virgins as some future date when Christ comes to his church and the wedding feast and who’s going to be invited there. And we look at these virgins of members of the church where half of the people are prepared and ready with the oil in their lamps. But this time I want to look at it in a little different light, as in context to before Joseph Smith’s first vision.

So we understand the groom to be Christ, and we talk about Christ coming as the groom, but I don’t think we talk a lot about the bride.

And we look at the Old Testament and you have your favorite book, Song of Solomon.

[00:02:12] Speaker B: My favorite book. That and the cubits, baby.

[00:02:15] Speaker A: There we go.

This whole idea of this intimate relationship between Christ as his church, it plays out in several different places. We don’t just see it there. We see it in the book of Hosea, this idea of the Lord and the church being a wife and when she goes to apostasy, an unfaithful wife versus when the Lord is going to redeem and the restoration bring her back and marry her again. We have Ephesians 5, when Paul is talking about a marriage and how a man should love his wife and be willing to give his life to her, just as Christ loved the church and gave his life to the church to protect her. And it describes that intimate relationship between man and wife. And 2nd Corinthians 11, we also see a little bit about this. But, you know, to sum it up, the point of it is the church is Christ’s wife and he is the groom, and they’re going to get married. And at this point of time in the restoration, they’ve been estranged. The church has fallen away from Christ. They haven’t been worshiping Christ. You read about this in the Book of Hosea. It’s been prophesied. We talk about the time when the church has strayed from the ordinances. They haven’t kept his commandments, they’ve changed the doctrine. And now when the church is ready to be married to Christ, it’s the restoration of the gospel, when Christ is going to reunify this church.

So we talk about the virgins now, and I think the virgins, all of Christianity, this idea of a virgin is someone who’s only faithful to one person. They’re not cheating on them, they’re not adulterating themselves with other people. And I think Christianity at this time, they’re worshiping one God, they’re worshiping Christ, they’re worshiping Jesus as their Savior. They’re virgins. But not all virgins are prepared for a restoration, are looking for a restoration, or have this oil in the lamp, the spirit that’s guiding them.

So this is a little bit of the context I want to provide as we dive into this discussion. And as one of those people who had oil in his lamp, to give you an example, I wanted to talk about Isaac Newton a little bit.

What people might not have realized about Isaac Newton is he wrote twice as much on religious and scriptural topics as he did math and science.

And if you’re not aware, I mean, we’re talking about Isaac Newton, the guy that invented calculus, the guy that defined the laws of motion. He defined gravity. He was possibly the. The father of modern physics. This guy was brilliant, right? And he lived shortly before Joseph Smith. But the guy, what focused him, what helped him, when he was a young boy, he went to. They had like these fairs, these big events, and all sorts of things were on sale. All sorts of people got together and there was always this tent, right, this peep show. And he happened to got a peep at a peep show as a young boy. And he realized that this would be a temptation for him and that he had to be very careful about that this was something that he might end up wasting his life on. And to get his mind off it and to try to focus himself and dedicate himself to other pursuits to stay morally straight. He bought a math book at the fair. I know that’s your favorite thing, mate.

[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah, Songs of Solomon and math.

[00:05:45] Speaker A: Math. Right up your alley, right? So he bought this math book and he thought if he kept his mind occupied on trying to understand God, understand God’s creation, understand what governs the universe and the world, and math would be a way for him to appreciate the Creator. It would keep his mind out of the gutter, so to speak, and keep him focused on a good path.

So he bought this math book. He read it. He didn’t understand any of it. So he had to go buy a second math book to teach himself enough math to be able to understand the first math book he bought. And he really kind of dedicated himself and trying to learn and understand as much as he can.

And he kind of. As he learned and discovered more and he wrote more and more and more, he realized that the church had really kind of strayed from what he thought it should be.

And he described it as.

The Lord has always had times where he’s called prophets. He’s taught the people through the prophets or dispensed truth for them, these dispensations.

And the people come to a point where they reject the prophets and they fall away to this time of apostasy. And the Lord once again calls a new prophet in a restoration and brings the truth back to the earth and dispenses it again through revelation and guides the people that are willing to listen through a prophet. He said, it’s the oldest religion in the earth. This is the pattern. The Lord and he walked through the whole history. The Lord’s called Adam and Noah and Abraham, all the way down to Christ. And he says, and now we’ve reached the time of the Gentiles. And the Gentiles have strayed from the covenant. They’ve broken the path. They’ve all gone astray. And so it is a wonder to me why the rest of the Christian world isn’t looking for a prophet today to restore the church. And when he restores the church, it won’t be a new religion. It’ll be the oldest religion on earth, the same religion that’s existed from all time. And that’s what Isaac Newton was looking for in my book. This is a guy who had oil in his lamp. He had focused his life in trying to learn as much as he can, understand as much as he can not Just about a religious topic, but really broad. Understand all of God’s creation, how math worked, how science worked, how the religion played into it, the Bible. Just understand as much as he could and give credit to God as the source of all light. That is, the more he learned, the more he understood, the more prepared he would be to come closer to God and understand and appreciate his creation and how he works.

And that understanding brought him to expect and wait for a prophet to be called.

So I go to that parable of these virgins.

I think there’s a lot of people that were ready for the restoration of the gospel. I think there was a lot of people that were really looking for truth. And when it came, it sounded right and they were ready to join and their eyes were open for when the groom came back and restored the church here on earth.

So with that context there kind of out of the way, I want to bring it in a little bit more closely, focus in a little bit more narrowly.

[00:08:52] Speaker B: Narrowly.

[00:08:54] Speaker A: Narrowly.

[00:08:55] Speaker B: I mean, narrowly is cool, too.

[00:08:57] Speaker A: Whatever. Yeah. I just want to take the focus and, I don’t know, maybe a different word would be zoom in on the Smith family itself and give us some context to the setting before Joseph Smith received his revelation.

[00:09:09] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:09:10] Speaker A: All right.

So Joseph Smith Sr. Was actually a fairly prosperous guy. He did pretty well for himself. Lucy came from actually a pretty depressing setting. She was in a bad place.

Her sister’s caught.

Tubular. Help me out, Nate.

[00:09:31] Speaker B: It’s working well.

[00:09:33] Speaker A: Tuberculosis.

[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yup.

[00:09:38] Speaker A: Save me, Nate.

[00:09:39] Speaker B: I don’t know. Tuberculosis.

[00:09:41] Speaker A: Tuberculosis. Thank you. Thank you. I was waiting for that life preserver. I was drowning in that sea. Anyways, she had two sisters, and both of them died from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis.

And the crazy thing is, one of them actually got. She was on her deathbed, and all of a sudden she woke up. She was feeling great. She said, I’m better. I’m cured. And then she died, like, right after that.

[00:10:08] Speaker B: Oh, no.

[00:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it was crazy. And it left her, well, with no sisters, but also with a lot of melancholy. She kind of slumped into a depression and was just kind of lost in herself and was wondering, really wondering if there was any purpose to living still.

And her brother cared a lot about her, tried to bring her out, and ended up bringing her to a party where she met Joseph Smith and fell in love. And that really kind of changed things for her. But this is going to play another role because she catches tuberculosis.

[00:10:46] Speaker B: I got you. Just say the T word and I’ll get you.

[00:10:49] Speaker A: You know, they actually called it consumption back in the Time, just call it that. We just call it consumption from here.

[00:10:55] Speaker B: I mean, honestly, there’s some symbolism in that even now with our consumerism. Anyways, right.

[00:11:03] Speaker A: So she found this tall, handsome guy. He was very successful. And she didn’t have much because, you know, kind of humble circumstances. Their family had been some hardships, but her brother did very well. And her brother had a business partner over, and they were just chatting, having a conversation at their wedding. And the conversation turned to where the business partner said, you know what, whatever you give her as a present for a wedding, I’ll match it. And he said, well, that sounds great. I’ give her $500. And he said, I’ll match it. I’ll give her another 500. So they gave her $1,000 as a wedding gift, which was a lot at that time, quite a bit.

She actually held onto it because she didn’t need it. With Joseph Smith being as prosperous as he was the first six years of their marriage, he did very well on the farm.

But things take a turn for the worse as we’re getting ready for Joseph Smith to come onto the stage. In 1802, at this time period here in the US where they lived, ginseng was all over the place. It grew very easily. It was a readily available crop. And over in China, there was a lot of fear with the plague. And ginseng was used as a pharmaceutical to help with the plague. And there was a high demand for the ginseng. So Joseph Smith, being a prosperous guy, being an intelligent guy, decided to start a mercantile to collect a bunch of ginseng and sell it to the Chinese. And he gathered this huge crop, invested a lot of his money into this deal. And his partner, he went to sell it to his partner, said he’d give him $3,000 for the crop.

And Joseph Smith said that this was. And we’re talking about Joseph Smith Sr. He said this was about 2/3 the value of what it was, or less than 2/3 the value. He said he could do a lot better for himself if he were to sell the crop directly to the Chinese and not work through the middleman in this case. So Joseph Smith made a trip to New York, talked to a captain of the boat to go sell the crop for him, act as his agent and bring back the money for him, and he’d divide some of the profits with him. Well, this previous partner that he had talked to that wanted to buy it on the cheap, spent some time and energy to find out who the captain of the boat was and what boat Was selling with Joseph Smith’s crop. And as he got on the boat and talked to the captain, he had his own ginseng crop that he wanted to sell. And he told him that he would be in charge of selling Joseph Smith’s crop as well. So he. He boarded the boat, went over to China and sold all the ginseng. Came back, he made a large profit. He was kind of bragging about the profit to Lucy’s brother, not knowing that who. Who he was, about how much money he had made. He had a chest full of silver and gold. It made a pretty good profit. But he came back to Joseph Smith Sr. And told him that the cell was a bust, that all he got was a chest full of tea. So he gave Joseph Smith Sr. Just a couple bags of tea for his efforts, and that ruined Joseph Smith Sr. He had to sell his farm.

He had accrued about $1,800 of debt going into this venture and starting the mercantile. And he needed to bail himself out with the $1,000 dowry that his wife had raised. So this was the start of their troubles. From being successful, from being prosperous, from always having what he needed to. Now all of a sudden, he’s scraping to get by. He sold everything that he had. Now he’s going to start being a farmer again, but working on other people’s property to try to pay the rent for the lease on the farm that he’s living on.

To make matters worse, it really just goes downhill from here.

1816 was the year without a summer. A volcano in Southeast Asia erupted, put so much ash and dust and volcanic debris into the air that it blocked out the sun, dropped the temperatures, Crops froze. They had snow all the way through June. Just terrible conditions to where it was a bust. He couldn’t grow anything.

And again, he was at a loss and had to sell what he had and try to make a move up to upstate New York. And that’s where things kind of take a change for, you know, for the Smiths. Now you’re going to have Joseph Smith. He’s coming from a family of very humble circumstances. They were once proud, prosperous, doing really well, but they’ve been scraping to get by and selling everything they had and just trying to make things work In a world that really everything’s kind of turned against them. The deck is stacked against them to make things, you know, maybe one little more piece of information about Lucy Smith.

The same year that they had the Ginseng Problems, 1802. Around that same time, she contracts consumption. And remember, her sisters both of them had died from this tuberculosis. I’m not even going to try to say it. Tuberculosis.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

She catches this and she’s deathly ill.

But now she’s got something to live for, right?

And she’s praying to God and she makes a covenant with him that if he allows her to live, that she’ll seek his religion, she’ll seek him out and do her best she can to raise her children according to God’s way. So she has this really spiritual experience. And then later on, as she’s seeking this religion, and she’s part of this time period, the second Great Awakening, where she’s trying to find the true church. The story really doesn’t begin with Joseph Smith, but even before him, when she had this experience and God spoke to her when she was on her deathbed and said, you trust in God, now trust in me. And also said, ask and you shall receive. Seek and it shall be given to you. And some of the same experience is really going to play into Joseph Smith as he’s searching and discovering, trying to find the truth. And even later on, she was a little bit worried about her husband, Joseph Smith Sr. Because he wasn’t interested in organized religion.

He didn’t want to attend church. He was a religious man, but didn’t feel any tendency to. To attach himself to any sort of church. And she was worried about his soul, his sake. And so she prayed. She actually went to a grove of trees and prayed for her husband, in which the Lord assured her that he would one day join the true gospel of Jesus Christ and gave her some peace on that. So Joseph Smith Jr. Later on, he’s not the first Smith to go to a grove of trees to pray, which is kind of interesting.

And a lot of that influence and his family kind of sets the stage for the experience that he’s about to have.

Now, to set the stage for the time period from 1790 to 1830, we have a second Great Awakening. And I just wanted to read to you guys a quote from somebody who lived through that time period. They said the noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated, as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others on wagons. Some of the people were singing, others praying, some crying for mercy.

A peculiarly strange sensation came over me. My heart beat tumultuously, my knees trembled, my lips quivered, and I felt as though I must fall to the ground.

I mean, can you imagine that? Seven preachers preaching at the same time, standing up on soapboxes or stumps and yelling. I mean, you had people that running around on all fours, barking like a dog, just doing all sorts of weird things. This is a revival period, a lot of excitement. People are trying to drive people to these events. It was the thing to do to try to find Jesus. It was kind of a crazy time.

So just to share one scripture and we’ll dive into this first vision.

Doctrine and covenants 1, 13.

Joseph Smith says, therefore, my dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power. And then may we stand still with the utmost assurance to see the salvation of God for his arm to be revealed. And that’s one thing we’re going to see about this revelation, this first vision, this great experience is there was a lot that happened where Joseph Smith was doing everything he could in his power to get to where he could before God would step in and unveil himself to him in that grove.

And a lot of times I think we focus on, you know, Joseph Smith said a prayer and God all of a sudden appeared and answered him. So if I pray about the Book of Mormon, why wouldn’t God just come and tell me? Or why won’t I hear a voice instantly telling me that the Book of Mormon is true? What we don’t realize is the amount of effort and time that actually passed in this process.

[00:20:17] Speaker B: I think to that point it was kind of always, it was always kind of weird for me, you know, while serving a mission that we would kind of talk about the first vision. It was that was always that, that always kind of ended up being the theme of it, which is just like, hey, like, you know, this 14 year old boy prayed and, and in answer to his prayer, God spoke to him. It’s funny because I feel like it’s kind of the wrong message, you know what I mean? Especially when talking with people that are, that are learning how to pray for the first time. It’s like a funny thing to be like, it’s kind of a weird setup, right?

[00:20:55] Speaker A: You set the bar pretty high.

[00:20:56] Speaker B: I’m just like, yeah, just like, just for the record, I’ve God’s never come down and told me anything, you know what I mean? Like, at least in person, you know, when I’ve prayed. But it’s funny because like the, the whole point of that message should be, oh, hey, by the way, like God has restored the church on the earth, right? It’s like, it’s the highlight of the story. Should definitely not be, hey, a 14 year old kid prayed and God spoke, you know, or God came down to him. Right, because that’s like you said, it’s like all of the factors that had to take place beforehand to make that happen, you know what I mean, are probably not going to happen to anybody, you know, but the biggest thing that we need to learn from it is, hey, luckily this kid put in the preparation and the work and was worthy and was called. And because of that, the highlight is, oh, and by the way, the church has been restored. God’s church has been restored.

[00:21:50] Speaker A: It’s been restored and he does answer prayers.

[00:21:53] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:21:53] Speaker A: We’ve got to put in our work though. It’s not something that you can expect that all of a sudden the heavens are going to open, a beam of light’s not going to come, all the angels aren’t going to be singing praise to you. Are you the one restoring the church? This is a pretty glorious event and I don’t know, it does set the bar pretty high like you say. I don’t know if the message is you should expect all of heaven to move out of their way and all of a sudden accommodate you because you said a prayer once.

There’s more going on here than just that.

But to be fair, I will say, you know, when I first prayed to find out if the Book of Mormon was true, my experience wasn’t like Joseph Smith’s, kind of your point, right. For me it was more of a, in my mind, just, you know, you’ve always known it to be true. It’s just kind of a very subtle confirmation, almost kind of disappointing in my mind of what I was expecting versus what I got. But I did see, I did see a prayer answered, which was a really cool experience in kind of a big way. Joseph Smith told this account, I think there are four different written records that we have on the church website that you can look at and all the records. He talks about this process starting when he is 11, 12 years old and going all the way up until he is in his 15th year or even maybe his 16th year. You are talking about three or four years of him doing everything he can to figure out which church it is. And what’s driving this desire is he feels like he himself has sinned or is not worthy or he wants to know where he stands before God. It’s kind of his personal worthiness issue that he’s dying to know. Am I saved? Am I good enough?

What’s the fate of my soul? What do I need to do?

And this question drives him to attend as many meetings as possible, as it says in Joseph Smith history. Can you imagine that a 12 year old boy saying, mom, can you take me to this church now? Can you take me to this church?

A lot of our 1112 year old boys can’t wait to get home from Sagam meeting or throw off the tie and change the clothes and be done for the day.

[00:24:07] Speaker B: 11 or 12 year old boys are pretty much all of us.

We’re going to be honest here.

[00:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that dedication to him to attend not just a meeting, but as many different meetings as occasion would permit, as he says it, to try to sort this out in his mind and find the truth. It wasn’t just a single prayer. It was this journey.

And the word that he uses in Joseph Smith history. He says after he had labored, right. This word that we associate with childbirth or hard labor or he had labored under these circumstances for several years. He’s turning to the scriptures. He’s attending as many different religions. He’s thinking it out. He’s asking questions. He’s really just diving into this. How many of you guys are. Nate, you know, do you have experience where you’ve asked a question where it’s just driven you to the point where you ask that same question for four.

[00:25:01] Speaker B: Years and no, I’m just saying I’m too impatient. I am just going to be, you.

[00:25:06] Speaker A: Know, well, especially in this day and age when we have got cell phones and if we have a question, we pull it out and we search it up and you know, within a matter of minutes we have the answer to our question.

[00:25:15] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:25:16] Speaker A: I think we’re so far removed from that time when, I mean, we talked about this in our last episode. But communication taking weeks at a time to find out what happened or what’s going over on the other side of the sea. You waited for things. And this was a process that he was willing to devote himself to and really just test out over years.

And the cool thing is when he decides to pray, it’s not just, okay, I’m going to go pray right now.

Right. He didn’t just kneel down all of a sudden, wherever he was standing next to his bed and kneel down and pray and ask God, is this true? But he says he retired to the place where he had previously designated.

Right. He planned this prayer out. He didn’t just say, oh, this is a lovely spot, I’m going to kneel down and pray right here. No, he said, this is a lovely spot. I’m going to come back and pray. Here, when I’m ready, I’m going to prepare myself for this prayer and I’m going to really ask God what’s been on my mind for these last several years.

What are your thoughts over there, Nate?

[00:26:20] Speaker B: I mean, my mind kind of just goes back to what you’ve already said, which is, and, and again, like, I always, I always look to this stuff to kind of relate to, you know, to me personally or to, to us. You know, like, I try to, I try to do that with all this stuff. And, and again, it is it, it always kind of comes back to what are we willing to do to receive an answer to something or even, you know, when I’ve, when I try to prepare lessons for, you know, whatever meeting I’m, I’ve, I’m in charge of teaching or something like that, you know, I always strive to have kind of a, you know, a profound personal experience in connection with whatever that lesson is. And, and do I, you know, obviously do I, do I try to find time to set aside you know, other distractions and kind of get to it. And then when you look at, you know, the maturity of, of a 14 year old who had, you know, who had literally planned, hey, for years, it says, and then has designated a place to pray and to put that work in.

I’m just saying, like, there’s a reason that Joseph Smith in my, you know, in my belief was, was called because it takes kind of a special person to be able to be that disciplined at that, at that age when I have a hard time doing it at my age.

[00:27:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I go back to the parable of the virgins with the lamps, right. The oil that we put into it.

I look at the focus, the dedication that Newton put into getting to the point where he saw and understood everything that was going to happen. Not that he was a prophet, not that he was Isaiah, but yet he still had a firm grasp on those situations.

And the time and the dedication, the focus, the energy that Joseph Smith put into getting this answer.

And a lot of times we oversimplify this restoration process. Joseph Smith prayed and God came and told him not to join the church. And then an angel came and showed him where the plates were. This whole thing just kind of rolls out, but we skip over the, the years and the stress, centuries really preparing.

[00:28:42] Speaker B: The earth for it. I’m just saying, it’s like if you want to, I mean, if you want to talk about oversimplification, I’m just saying it took so many inspired people along the way to even, to even start the process of, you know, I mean, even reorganizing the writings of the church to be at least some. Some sort of guide, you know, to get started, to have a belief in. In Christ. And then at that point, to, you know, to make it so that anybody could read the scriptures and not just, you know, clergy and even. That’s just oversimplifying, again, the idea of centuries that it took to even. To even prepare the earth, not just for a young man to prepare himself.

[00:29:26] Speaker A: Oh, I mean. I mean, we could really.

We could have a whole podcast just on that. I mean, you talk about the Mayflower where it landed. They were off course. They were hundreds of miles away from where they should have been. But where they showed up was cleared land ready for them to go with springs of fresh water, because the Native American inhabitants that lived there before all got sick, died of infirmity. And everybody else. All the other.

All the other inhabitants here of the continent didn’t even want to touch that area because they were so afraid that they would get sick and die, too. So you’ve got this area with the ground is ready, you’ve got freshwater springs. It’s been cleared, it’s ready for farming. Someone had already gone in and done the work for them. Yeah, just all sorts of things happening to make this thing come about. Right.

Well, going back to Joseph Smith, you know, not only does he have the couple years of preparation that he puts into this, he finally has this prayer. He has this really awesome experience. He sees. Well, first, he’s almost overcome by. By the adversary.

[00:30:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I’ve seen the church movie. There was. There was a clock sound that went like.

[00:30:37] Speaker A: Right, that’s the one. That’s pretty intense, too.

[00:30:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that church movie. We had to stop showing that to everybody.

Everybody’s too freaked out about that whole thing. And again, I mean, I don’t. I mean, it is kind of freaky, but usually when you’re trying to. When you’re trying to convince people that we’re not just the weirdest people in the world, maybe not the best video to show them.

I’m sorry, Church. I’m sorry, Church. For that video.

For hating that video. I mean, I kind of like it, but.

[00:31:05] Speaker A: But it wasn’t. It was an intense experience. Right before he. Before the light comes down. He has.

He has this struggle with an unseen power, but a very real power. And really, so many times we talk about Satan in the abstract or the devil or the adversary or this abstract concept, but really, this first vision makes it very tangible, very real. There is something there, not just something in our imagination, but there isn’t a force that as much as God has been working to try to bring this about, to try to prepare the world for the coming of his Son, there’s something there that’s been trying to stop it as well, that we fight with, that we need to be willing to push past or to reach out to God to deliver us from that, to find that energy to persevere, to make it through at the end.

And the heavens open. And he sees God the Father, he sees his son, Jesus Christ. And he learns some things for himself. He learns that he does have a good standing before God, that his sins have been forgiven and that was the one thing that was just driving him crazy to find out. But also that God’s church wasn’t there. And so you might ask, okay, well where is it? What do I need to do? And God, it’s not like he answered the question right. And sometimes that’s the question we ask. We ask and we expect a straight answer from God, like, what church should I join? And God says, well, don’t join any of them yet. You’re like, oh, well, what do you mean?

Is there not some more questions there? Like, are you saying, is there another church that’s going to happen?

God is not telling Joseph Smith at this point, hey, I need you to bring this church back to the earth. It’s kind of open ended, just, I don’t want you to join any of them yet. And that’s not really what you’re expecting God to answer. Have you ever had a prayer and you’re expecting something like God is going to tell you, here is my church, or you can join any of them, or it doesn’t really matter. But God says, you know what, I don’t want you joining any church. That just doesn’t seem like an answer God would be giving.

But he answers him, he’s drained. He comes back home to his mom and he tells her, you know, I’ve learned for myself that the Methodist church isn’t correct because that was the way she was leaning and they were thinking and whatever else. But he’s really tested his hypothesis that he thought maybe this church would get him there. He asks God and he learns for himself there’s something else going on.

[00:33:37] Speaker B: And his family had been being prepared to accept this by the way too.

[00:33:41] Speaker A: Absolutely.

[00:33:41] Speaker B: His, his, his mom’s desire for God and, and her, her commitment to trying to become closer to God. A lot of this again, like I think kind of keeps coming Back to people being prepared, even if they didn’t realize they were being prepared for something. Yeah, I mean, his family were the only people that believed him at first. You know, I mean, that’s to not.

[00:34:06] Speaker A: Just reject them outright like all the other people, you know, you’re crazy.

You know, you saw God. What? Why did God talk to you and not to the reverend down the street?

Yeah. There’s a lot of faith and a lot of trust and a lot of preparation that went into this. And it’s pretty neat that here, this experience is happening in a sacred grove. The grove has played a prominent role throughout history in the church.

And to show you what I mean, you go back to Abraham.

And when the Lord appears to him in the name of the place Mamre the M A M R E as he’s sitting here, it’s a grove.

He’s gone to this grove, he’s built an altar, he’s worshiping the Lord in this grove, and he’s dwelling in this grove. And God appears to Abraham in a grove and establishes his covenant with him.

Not only does he establish a grove with Abraham, and this happens several times in Genesis. You see the story of, of Abraham. He plants a grove and then builds an altar and worships God somewhere else. Then he seeks a grove among the land of the Canaanites. This idea that the grove was associated with God, it’s kind of an interesting idea. And it gets a bad rap because after the temple is established, the people are told not to be building their groves anymore. And they tear down the groves and they tear down the high places. So the groves is oftentimes associated with apostasy. And these people that are worshiping false idols or false gods in all of these groves. But before it was a symbol of apostasy, it was a place where people could find God when there was no temple here on earth.

And, you know, to show you that point a little bit more, think about Moses before he delivered Israel out of Egypt.

Joseph Smith being somewhat of a modern day Moses that is restoring Israel. Where did God appear to Moses before he called him to redeem his people?

You know, you got the burning bush and you’ve got, you know, the palm branches that are laid before Christ when he enters triumphantly into Jerusalem, when he goes to start the atonement that the night before he dies, he’s in a grove of trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Ultimately, when he’s hung on a cross, it’s almost like a grove of trees, as the New Testament says. He was hung on a tree. He was almost as if the center of a grove or a body hanging on a cross, and all of his harks back to the Garden of Eden. When God walked on the face of the earth with man, it was in a grove of trees in the Garden of Eden, in the center of which he had the Tree of Life.

So this imagery, this powerful idea or notion of these trees and finding God in the trees existed as a place of worship before a temple was built on the earth. And then as you see the temple show up in Israel and the religion centralized now, you didn’t have all of these offshoots and individual people going and worshiping in trees because that was pulling away from your church, your centralized worship. That started people down the path of apostasy. But in Joseph Smith’s day, when you’re in an age of apostasy and there is no temple for the Son of Man to come to, there is no place to worship. Here you have him going back to a grove just. Just like the ancient patriarchs did, and having an experience very similar there, showing really that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

[00:37:48] Speaker B: I think there’s a lot of symbolism there, too, like the idea of the tree and like, of the, you know, obviously of, like the process and life cycle of a tree. And, you know, it is interesting because, like, when Joseph Smith goes into the grove, he’s just. He’s just like a young, small branch, you know what I mean? That luckily is taking strong roots. But at the same time, it’s like he’s not at that point ready for the weight of what eventually he’s going to need to be ready for, right? And when he has his, you know, his first vision, he doesn’t get. He doesn’t get burdened with the weight that could have broken the small. You know what I mean? Like the small sapling or whatever. And as. As he. As the tree begins to be nourished and. And fed, eventually line upon line, he’s kind of. He. It’s revealed to him the weight that he is going to have to be able to bear, you know, and what the full extent of that calling is actually going to be.

[00:39:04] Speaker A: I love that, and I love the imagery, really. It’s a dual.

In one instance, you have the tree representing the Tree of life or Christ, right? An image of the Savior.

But then at the other side, you know, you’ve got the allegory of the olive tree, where you’re cutting these branches and relocating them all over the place. And this imagery, this tree is, is no longer the Savior, it’s us, it’s Israel, it’s scattered. Or this represents us.

Isaiah 53. You’ve got this. He grew up as a tender root, as this plant, as this sprout that’s growing up out of the ground and is referring to Christ, but at the same time it’s referring to us. And this thing is, Christ is the sheep, or Christ is the shepherd, but we’re the sheep, but we’re also expected to be the shepherd. This idea that really God, Christ is becoming us so that we might become him in this dual symbolism where these images are used to describe him or to worship him, but he’s not afraid to turn that back around and say, really, this is you.

You’re the same stock, we’re the same together, and I am going to bring you to be just like me. And what better place to illustrate that than this grove of trees?

As you’ve expressed this imagery of Joseph Smith as the sapling. Powerful.

[00:40:21] Speaker B: Very powerful imagery. I love it.

[00:40:25] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in this week as we discussed the start of Joseph Smith history.

The next episode, we’re going to talk a little bit more about. After the first vision, we start talking about Moroni and the plates and how that comes into play, and we’ll dive a little bit more into the restoration.

[00:40:44] Speaker B: Until next time.

[00:40:45] Speaker A: See you Sa.

This episode dives into the first Come Follow Me Lesson for Doctrine and Covenants and explores how the Lord signed the book using a rare form of Hebrew Poetry discovered in 1978 called the Janus Parallel.

Trnascript:
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we explore the weekly Come follow me discussion and try and add a little insight and unique perspective. I’m your host, Jason Lloyd, here with my friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:24] Speaker B: What’s up?

[00:00:26] Speaker A: This year we’re going to be focusing on the Doctrine and Covenants and just give a little bit context to the Doctrine and Covenants. In the early days of the Church, Joseph Smith had been receiving all sorts of revelations, and he had a collection of the Revelations, and there was discussion on whether or not these revelations should be revealed to the members of the church.

They wanted to publish them so the church members could have them, so they could review them, so they could see what was going on and see that the Lord really is speaking to a prophet in modern times. But they were also worried that their enemies would use it for bad, that they would be using it kind of digging in and accusing them or seeing what the Lord is doing here. A little bit of discussion and debate as to what they should do. And ultimately they decided to publish it. And originally they decided to publish it as the Book of Commandments. And as this thing evolves and the revelations get built up into it, they turn it into what we see today as our Doctrine and Covenants. And at the start, when they’re writing this book and they’re compiling all these Revelations, they wanted a preface for it. So they got this committee of elders together to write a preface for the Book of Commandments, which would become, as we know it today, the Doctrine and Covenants. They got together, they hammered this thing out, and they had a special conference. So here you have this conference of elders in the Church. They present their preface to the Doctrine and Covenants.

Everybody hated it. They thought it was terrible.

No love, no joy. They didn’t like it. They said, throw it out. And as they were discussing this and trying to figure out what to do, they said, well, we’ve got a prophet right here. Maybe he could ask God and have God write the preface, give him a revelation to introduce the Book of Commandments. And really that’s what section one turns into, is the revelation that the Lord gave Joseph Smith and the special counsel as an answer to what should we preface this book with that we’re going to be publishing out to the saints.

So this episode, we get to dive right into that. Just see how the Lord is introducing Doctrine and Covenants to the world. It does a pretty neat and unique way in how he signs this Book of Commandments. And puts his voice right into it. And what I’m talking about is, in verse one, the Lord starts using a form of poetry that we don’t really use in English today. And the first one to notice this poetry was Cyrus Gordon. He published a paper in 1978. And trying to explain it, identify it, name it, he called it a Janus parallel. Janus. The reason why he used Janus for the name of the parallel is because Janus was the Roman God who had two faces, right? One face looked to the future, one face looked to the past. And in a Janus parallel, you have three lines, and the first line states something. The second line agrees with the first line, and then you have the third line, but the second line also matches and goes with the third line to where it just ties the three lines together in a real unique way. And I think the best way to illustrate this is to just probably show you an example of this in the scriptures.

So Song of Solomon’s my favorite book. I was going to say this. This is right up your alley right now.

[00:03:47] Speaker B: Anybody. Don’t tell anybody.

[00:03:49] Speaker A: So Song of Solomon, chapter two.

We’ve got.

We’ve got. We’ve got this example. Just a second. I gotta open it up on my. Here we go.

So if you’re. If you’re there. If you’re not there, that’s great, because I. I almost want you to listen to this and not follow along just so you can kind of fill in the blanks for me. So I’m looking at verse 12.

They’re describing spring coming here.

Springtime here in the earth. He says the flowers appear on the earth. So that’s line one. Got it. Flowers on the earth. I’m going to skip line two for a second. And then line three says, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

And I know that sounds a little bit weird, like. Right. Turtles singing.

[00:04:36] Speaker B: Come on, what was the name of that tune by the Turtles?

Yeah, wasn’t it?

No, no, that’s Crosby still snatching. Right. I’m looking it up real quick. Continue.

[00:04:47] Speaker A: All right, well, you’re looking that up, the Hebrew here. It’s not. It’s not turtle. Really?

[00:04:52] Speaker B: It’s so happy together.

Continue.

[00:05:00] Speaker A: This is supposed to be turtle doves, right? Okay, a little different.

[00:05:03] Speaker B: This not the turtles or the ninjas.

[00:05:05] Speaker A: No, no, none of the above. And not in the twelve days of Christmas spirit either. Right. Well, I guess it is the more twelve days of Christmas. Right. Two turtle doves. Okay. So the voice of the turtle doves. So Here we are describing spring. First line, flowers appear on the earth. Third line, the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. So the middle line says the time of. And then right here, I’m just going to leave a blank. The time of blank is come. Because in Hebrew, the verb that they use right here, and in ancient Hebrew, they wrote with consonants, but they didn’t supply any of the vowels. And so if you’re a translator, you’re looking at this word. If you supply one vowel, the word means blooming. And if you supply a different vowel, then the word means singing. So you’ve got to choose. How are you going to translate this? Is it blooming or singing? So now if I just read the first and the second line together, the flowers appear on the earth. The time of blank is come. I mean, what’s your choice?

[00:06:06] Speaker B: I’m going to say blooming, right?

[00:06:07] Speaker A: It fits. It’s blooming. The time of blooming has come. But if you were to take this line in isolation and just put it into the third, then the time of singing makes sense because you can hear the voice of the turtle dove. And that’s the genius of the Janus parallel is this single word. Untranslated actually meant both at the same time. It meant singing, and it meant blooming, and it linked the two lines together beautifully.

And Joseph Smith, right here, he is getting this Revelation and the Janus parallel. This is 1831. Nobody notices or discovers the Janus parallel until 1978, when Gordon Cyrus writes and publishes this first article of this discovery and shows us all these examples in the Old Testament. So how is this a Janus parallel? If you go to Doctrine and Covenants, Section 1, and you read what the Lord says, he says, hearken, O ye people of my church. Okay, that’s line one. Hearken, O ye people of my church. Who’s he talking to in line one?

[00:07:08] Speaker B: Are you asking me, Nate?

[00:07:10] Speaker A: I’m asking you, man.

[00:07:11] Speaker B: Whatever, man.

[00:07:11] Speaker A: Don’t leave me hanging.

[00:07:12] Speaker B: Okay, I’m leaving you hanging.

[00:07:14] Speaker A: Members of the church. Okay, so he’s talking about members of the church. And then he. In the second line, he says, yea, verily. So he’s. He’s confirming. He’s adding to it. Yea, verily of truth, I say, hearken, ye people from afar, and ye that are upon the islands of the sea. Listen together. Now, that might seem strange. Here he is, he’s saying, hearken, O ye people of my church. Yea, verily, you that are far off and upon the islands of the sea. Listen together. This is 1831. We have a conference of elders in this room. And the church is not that spread out. It’s only been around for one year.

You don’t have more than a couple hundred members of the church. And so when he’s talking about it, he’s looking down the road. This is not just the book of Commandments anymore. He can see this is going to be a book that’s going to last hundreds of years. And I need to address not just this small group of people are here, but all of my church that are afar off on all the islands of the sea. This is the role of the gospel. It’s going to go forth, it’s going to fill the world. It’s very prophetic.

And you can think, who has that kind of confidence at the beginning, if they’re establishing a church to say, yeah, this church right here is just going to take off and fill the whole world.

This is the Lord speaking.

But it doesn’t just match that line, because you look at the next line. So line three. Verily the voice of the Lord is unto all men, and there is none to escape. There is no eye that shall not see, neither ear that shall not hear, neither heart that shall not be penetrated. So if you look at that line, the third line, you look at it again and say, oh, he’s not talking about you people of the church. Church. He’s talking about you people everywhere.

So maybe he was just addressing a small group of people, right? Where does this line fit? But if you look at this line, it’s phrased in a way that it fits the first line and it fits the third line. It’s this Janus parallel. It looks back and it looks forward, and it has two different meanings, but unifies the whole thing into one beautiful passage. And it’s the way of the Lord saying, look, this isn’t Joseph Smith speaking anymore, but this is me. This is something I’ve used in the past. This is how I speak. And this is my voice to everyone.

[00:09:28] Speaker B: And what I like about that and what you’re describing is that to anybody else, like to a simpleton like myself, that just looks like it’s redundant, right? Like, the first line is to the small people of the church, to the islands of the seas, which the church hadn’t been to at that point, and then pretty much to everybody, it’s like, if you or and I were to write that, or really kind of anybody that doesn’t know of the Janice parallel, we would just write, well, this is for Everybody, if we were making it up, there would be no need to kind of go through all of the different redundancies in that line.

[00:10:08] Speaker A: Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

And if you want to see something real cool right before we skip out of this, have you ever seen that round seal picture in the Pearl of Great Price?

[00:10:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I used to look at that during sacrament meeting all the time instead of listening to lessons like last week, I mean, when I was a kid.

[00:10:26] Speaker A: Okay. Facts.

[00:10:29] Speaker B: I mean, like every week still. I just look at it.

[00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I don’t look at it as much as I used to, but.

[00:10:37] Speaker B: But you know, you did as a kid.

[00:10:38] Speaker A: Absolutely. I don’t know who didn’t. If you didn’t, you’re not being honest with us. All right, so if you go, you go to the cell. This was something I always thought was weird. Like right in the center is this picture of this weird beetle looking dude. Right? It’s got antenna coming out of either, either part of his head.

[00:10:56] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[00:10:57] Speaker A: And these two little eyes is like this, this weird triangular face and it looks like a beetle to me. And I could never understand what that was. And. And if you look at the top of the seal, it has a guy that’s got that same kind of face.

I didn’t realize this actually until a few years ago. If you put your finger on half the face, all of a sudden it doesn’t look like a beagle anymore. It’s a face that’s facing one direction and then you block it off with your finger on the other side. So now this will give you a reason to pull your Pearl of Great Price out in sacrament meeting again.

[00:11:28] Speaker B: Again. Yeah, like I do every week.

[00:11:31] Speaker A: You’ll see the face facing two different directions. This whole Janus God, I mean, it’s made its way not even just into the Doctrine and Covenants, but you see it in the Pearl of Great price, which is kind of cool.

[00:11:41] Speaker B: Very cool. Very cool.

[00:11:42] Speaker A: All right, moving on to the next part. And there’s a lot to unpack here in this section, but this next part I, I find kind of interesting that catches my attention is when it says that.

No, I. Right. Everybody’s going to be. Everyone’s going to hear this. But also it says in verse three, the rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow, for their iniquity shall be spoken upon the housetops, and their secret acts shall be revealed. You’re talking about a time, 1830, when you didn’t even have the pony expressed yet. Like, communication was terrible and it takes a long time to be able to hear what’s going on by the time. Like, if you’re waiting a couple weeks to find out how someone’s doing, you’re hoping to get the highlights. It’s not worth it to wait a few weeks just to find out, like, hey, I bumped my head on the corner of the door or something, right?

But as communication sped up, the cost of information got cheaper and cheaper until more information started to spill out. And just to kind of give you an illustration of how this played out in America, think about this. Congress from 1830 to 1860 had 80 acts of violence.

These guys were brutal. And when I say acts of violence, we’re not talking like slapping him with a glove. One guy nearly got caned to death. And they would bring guns to Congress for it. They would shoot guns. They would get in duels. People died.

[00:13:13] Speaker B: This sounds awesome.

[00:13:14] Speaker A: It was brutal.

And these are like your representatives, right, that are supposed to be all dressed up nice, and you’re put on a nice outward show. And they would whitewash the media like, you didn’t know what happened behind closed doors. The reason why we know all of this happened was because of the journals of the congressmen that were in there, and they would write about some of these incidents, and it would come to light years later down the road.

[00:13:39] Speaker B: Because you’re saying that the media had the audacity to not correctly report what was going on in Congress. Is that what you’re trying to suggest?

[00:13:49] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think it was easy. Hold on, though.

[00:13:51] Speaker B: Are you trying to suggest that the media would dare incorrectly cover and report on what’s going on in the world as if they might have an agenda? Are you suggesting that that could possibly.

[00:14:04] Speaker A: Be real and, you know, say what you want about the media today. Oh, I will.

But I think in a long ways it’s gone. The scrutiny, the exposure, the transparency has in some ways tamed not just Congress, but a lot of things. Not to say that bad things don’t happen anymore, but when you’re talking about a process of taking the press that’s involved, you’ve got plenty of opportunities to shut that down or to censor it or to do whatever. And what really reformed everything and changed the world, or at least changed Congress, but it really did change the whole world. Was communication spreading a lot faster than what people could even control or put a lid on things that the Pony Express was was invented during this time and it only lasted 18 months before it was antiquated by the Telegraph and Samuel Morse when he sends the very first Telegraph. He writes, what hath God wrought? Right.

[00:15:06] Speaker B: He’s oh God, what have we done?

[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah, well, he doesn’t say what we have done. He says, what has God done? Like he gives credit to God on this and says God is doing something that is going to revolutionize the world. And it did. All of a sudden. I mean, it didn’t take long from 1860 when the first telegraph is sent. 1866. Six years later, you already have a transatlantic cable dropped in the ocean and people in Europe are hearing instantaneously what’s going on in the United States.

It’s crazy.

And this communication, this speed to communication, it makes it to where like I think you even see this. When you were a kid, you remember like stories in the news were significant and today you read about articles in the news and you’re like, who cares? Like even the mundane things are being reported, like what somebody had for breakfast or what some celebrity did over the holiday. Like all of a sudden that’s worldwide news, right?

[00:16:09] Speaker B: Unfortunately, yes.

[00:16:10] Speaker A: Because all of this information now, all of a sudden it travels a lot faster. It’s a lot more out there. I mean even we’ve got our own podcast that’s hitting the world.

[00:16:18] Speaker B: Everything’s awesome though. That’s awesome.

[00:16:21] Speaker A: It is pretty awesome.

[00:16:22] Speaker B: You had kind of mentioned earlier when we were talking about this, how even like where like you said, like all these acts of violence were happening in Congress and people didn’t know about it for weeks where now if somebody commits a crime, you, you can, you know, you’re reading about it basically as it’s, as we’re, get, as anybody’s getting information on it. You’re reading the text messages that they sent earlier that day. You’re getting all of their search history from their computers. I mean, it’s like it’s no longer, you know, taking weeks to get this information, but you’re basically, you’re basically getting all of the information about every single corner of their life as it’s happening.

[00:17:03] Speaker A: Yes. And as you know, the things that make the news the most are the ones that are scandalous. Right. When we talk about the iniquities being spoken on the housetops, it’s when somebody screws up that everybody hears about it. It’s when somebody, you know, it’s, it’s scandalous, it’s wrong, it’s, you know, I was just reading about a babysitter who had killed a two year old kid. They were babysitting. And not only do you hear about this all over the world, but you hear about what they were thinking. When you find out that her Internet search was, if I want to hurt a child, does that make me a bad person? You’re like, wait a second, you’re seeing not just the wrong that’s happening, but some of the thought process and looking behind some of the hidden things that are now being published along the housetops the world over.

[00:17:50] Speaker B: So let me ask you this question because again, I’m kind of just taking a look at this again, and I guess my question is, is the iniquities being spoken from the housetops, considering we all blow it all the time and we all basically now on a daily basis just give away our personal information and our current thoughts and whatnot, Is this, I mean, is this, other than being embarrassing for everybody, is it like in the big picture, is this a bad thing? I don’t know, like morally, like at some point, like, is this. Is the iniquities being spoken of? I mean, I don’t know, is it better that they stay in the shadows or is it kind of evening the playing field that everybody has their. You know what I mean? Everybody has their dirty laundry, basically, that they’re putting out into the world, you know?

[00:18:40] Speaker A: Well, I think the transparency is really pushed to. To tame the world. I think you look at, you look at the world we live in today, in our society, as much disruption as much is going on, we live in a much more peaceful place than what people have lived in historically in the past. And you look at the wars that people have fought in the past, and all of a sudden the wars that we fight today, you’ve got these small bands of terrorists. You’re not fighting nation against nation, because anything a nation does is going to be published the world over and the rest of the world is going to condemn that nation. Now all of a sudden it’s one person versus the whole world. You don’t want to find yourself on that.

All of a sudden you have countries that are playing more nice with each other, at least pretending to get along and trying to keep things on the up and up so that they can claim the high ground if things do escalate.

[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think about this. I had a conversation with one of my buddies, Spencer, and he said that he had this idea for a movie one time where at one moment every single person on earth had everything they’ve ever searched for, every text conversation they’ve ever had about anybody, good or bad, behind their backs or whatever, any movie they’ve ever watched, anything they’ve ever looked at, basically any Digital. Any digital track record was immediately available, and you could just search that person and you could find every single person in the world’s, like, track record. And it’s funny because, like, as you talk about it, what’s your. What’s your, like, initial. You know what I mean? Physical reaction to that? It’s just like, you know, like, oh, no. You know, it’s like the thought of that seizes your stomach, but then there’s something that’s. That’s very. In a weird sort of way, like, equalizing.

[00:20:27] Speaker A: It’s true. It’s true.

[00:20:28] Speaker B: In a weird sort of a way.

I don’t know. It’s. It’s an interesting moral question because, again, I don’t. You know, I bet you if you ask any single human being that has any sort of digital, you know, footprint, they probably wouldn’t want every single thing that’s ever been, you know, said or done digitally put out in the world because of, you know, how embarrassing it would be. But I don’t know. I mean, there is. That is an interesting kind of, like, idea of everybody’s iniquity shall be spoken upon the housetops. It’s like. But what if. What if it was, like, the great equalizer?

[00:21:02] Speaker A: Well, it’s all the stuff that you’re keeping on the inside, right? You’re. You’re. Your thoughts, the things that you’re trying to hide.

It’s almost like wearing clothes to cover yourself up. And then all of a sudden you find that you’re naked, like, the whole world can stare at you. That’s extremely awkward or embarrassing or at least I would think that would be for most people. I don’t know, some people might be a little bit more comfortable than others.

[00:21:22] Speaker B: Weird.

[00:21:22] Speaker A: But. Yeah, but if all of a sudden, like, you’re saying, if all of a sudden you’re not the only naked person in the room anymore. If all of a sudden everybody’s naked, like in the locker room after gym when you’re showering, but everyone else is showering, all of a sudden, it’s not quite so shameful and not quite as embarrassing as if you were showering in public and everyone was staring at you, right? I mean, like you say, there’s. There’s almost something comforting knowing that you’re not the only one out there.

[00:21:46] Speaker B: You’re not the only terrible person, I guess. Right? The thing is, it’s funny, too, because then what it basically does come back to is the. In my opinion, maybe the. The root principle of it, which is. Oh, so basically everybody would see you as God sees you. You know, I mean, like, that’s. That’s kind of what it comes down to is that God does see. God does see all of the things that we might be able to be hiding from, you know, because of embarrassment, you know, kind of the Adam and Eve situation, that it’s just like, yeah, we can hide those for a time, but, you know, what. What would the world. How would we treat each other if. If everybody’s like, ugliness was kind of on full display? I don’t know. I think that there’s. Whatever. And that might. That’s probably not for this, for this podcast, but that there’s. I don’t know, it gives me something to think about. Like, what if truly we did see everybody as God sees them and everybody saw us as God sees us? I think it’d be a very humbling. I think. I think we would be a lot nicer to each other. In a weird sort of way. It’s like, I think we would be a lot more compassionate and patient and, you know, forgiving if we, you know, truly did see each other as Gaza.

[00:22:54] Speaker A: Well, absolutely. I think that takes us actually to our next part of this podcast when we start talking about measuring. Yeah. Because you might not be so willing to dig into somebody’s intimate details if you don’t want anyone else seeing yours.

And that’s where measuring comes in. Because if you look at doctrine covenants and you’ve got here section one in verse nine and ten, so two verses. We’re talking about, you know, a couple lines here. Yea, verily to seal them up to the day when the wrath of God shall be poured out upon the wicked, without measure unto the day when the Lord shall recompense unto every man according to his work, and measure to every man according to the measure which he has measured to his fellow man. That’s a lot of measuring.

Mentioning it four times in two verses. And this is kind of a point that God has driven throughout his scriptures, this idea or concept of measuring and the first kind of exposure. Well, unless you count the creation, right in the creation, there’s a lot of measuring that’s going on in creating the planet and dividing the water from the darkness and how it’s organized. But really the first kind of exposure where you get to this measuring, in my mind anyways, is if you’re reading the Old Testament. I don’t know how many of you guys have done this. You go through Genesis, and it’s actually pretty exciting. You’re talking about giants in the land and all sorts of weird things.

[00:24:18] Speaker B: I love that.

[00:24:19] Speaker A: Floods and, you know, whatever else. But then you get to Exodus, and it’s still kind of interesting because you’ve got this face off between Pharaoh and Moses. Like, here we go. The whole Exodus is happening. Pretty exciting. They get into the wilderness, they start complaining about all sorts of things. You got birds and meat and manna and whatever else. But then you get to the point where they’re building this tabernacle. And that, to me, is where all of a sudden reading turns from this asphalt path where you can just kind of run along and be interested into, like, this sand, like quicksand. Like, all of a sudden you get stuck and you’re trying to make it through it because God.

[00:24:53] Speaker B: Wait a minute. You telling me that I’m the only one that loves reading about cubits?

[00:24:58] Speaker A: Well, that’s it.

[00:25:00] Speaker B: Like, I can’t possibly be the only one that loves reading about cubits.

[00:25:04] Speaker A: It’s. It’s four chapters long of all the details of how this temple is going to look, this tabernacle. And maybe if you’re into building models, this is great, because you want to have that idea of the curtain being how many cubits by how many cubits or the ark of the covenant and what materials you’re using and the tatchets and how many and all the little details just four chapters long, right?

[00:25:30] Speaker B: My favorite. Dude, my second favorite song, Solomon, is first cubits and whoever begat. Whoever begat. Whoever begat. That’s.

It’s all up there. It’s my top three.

[00:25:41] Speaker A: Yeah, those lists, the. The. The generations, the beginning of who and the cubits, man, it just. It just slows the reading down for me. And it gets kind of exciting in between. You get this old golden calf and, you know, some of the stories in there, but. But then you get back to cubits again, because first four chapters was God giving Moses the instructions. And then the next four chapters is Moses following the instructions. And it’s right down to the detail again, four chapters worth of this stuff. And it happens again in Ezekiel. And I can’t help but think of this poor prophet. Like, I look at Nephi in his vision and the cool things that he sees. And he sees Columbus sailing across the ocean. And I think of Isaiah and his cool vision, and he sees all sorts of things. He sees Christ coming. He sees his atonement. He sees the end of the world. He sees everything, right? And John the Revelator and all his cool visions. So here’s Ezekiel, an angel of the Lord’s coming to appear to him. He’s going to have a vision. I could just imagine him rubbing his hands together. Yeah, here it goes. What does. The Lord got prepared for me. It’s almost like, you know, patriarchal blessing. Exciting. Let’s hear this man.

[00:26:48] Speaker B: No, not this time. The Lord’s like, hey, Ezekiel, check this out.

[00:26:51] Speaker A: I’m giving you.

[00:26:52] Speaker B: Here’s some cubits.

[00:26:53] Speaker A: Here’s a yardstick. Here’s a yardstick. I want you to measure this temple yard by yard, like. Like cubits here.

Just like Exodus. It’s four chapters long of him measuring this temple.

[00:27:07] Speaker B: I’m sorry, Ezekiel, how deep is the water?

[00:27:10] Speaker A: How big is the gate? How tall is the wall?

The whole thing, Right? And so it’s not just that the Lord, this is here in the Scriptures.

It’s that it was transmitted to the point where we have it today because we don’t have the original Bible written by Moses, all preserved for thousands of years, that we look at and we reference in order to get our scriptures today. Instead, what we had was scribes that would rewrite this thing word for word over and over again. And I don’t know about you, but if I was a scribe and I got to these four chapters about all of the qubits and the details, I’d.

[00:27:51] Speaker B: Make somebody else do it.

Don’t they have an intern?

[00:27:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s the new monks. They jump in there.

But if it was me, it would be kind of tempting to, like, maybe write it down once, the first four chapters, and then next I’ll say, and then Moses built it exactly how God.

[00:28:08] Speaker B: Commanded him, and then he did it exactly like we just got done.

[00:28:12] Speaker A: And I might even be shorter than that, and just say, you know what? God gave Moses instructions. Moses filled them out, temple done.

But they didn’t. And they wrote it all out by hand. And I think there’s a message here.

[00:28:23] Speaker B: What is it? Because we need to know, I think.

[00:28:27] Speaker A: That God has given us very specific measurements, and we are comparable to the temple. Not only just building a temple here, but this book of commandments that he wrote. These scriptures that we have are giving us the measurements that we need to use to build our lives. And ultimately, it’s come, follow Christ, follow his example. He is the ultimate measurement that we need to measure up to, which we.

[00:28:54] Speaker B: Can’T do in this life perfectly at least.

[00:28:58] Speaker A: But as we seek to build ourselves and pattern our life after him, we are finding measurement in what we do, and we’re applying that measurement to us. And just like, if you’re building a house and, you know, you take a board and you measure out, you know, 45 inches or whatever the case may be. You cut the board at the inches, you keep the part you measured. That’s what you. That’s what has. Use the part that’s not measured. You can either use it to measure something else with or you throw it away. You’re done with it.

[00:29:25] Speaker B: I think. I think it’s something that, again, like, that stands out to me in this section that I feel like it’s kind of important to highlight is that you just said it is that we naturally, I feel like, find ourselves measuring up to other people or we try to measure up to other people, you know, and not only that, but we try to measure up to what we perceive of other people. And it’s a flawed system to begin with, right? Because again, one, we’re measuring up, you know, to an imperfect person.

And not only that, but we usually don’t know to the extent of, like, the imperfections of other people because again, we do such a good job of curating our brand, you know, whether it’s on social media or whatever it is. And the idea is, is that we don’t. We need to be. If we are trying to measure up, like you just said, like, again, I just. I kind of just want to throw that in there because again, like, I. I know that that’s a. It’s an easy thing to do as another human being is to, you know, we’re trying to measure up to something that’s not real, which is the expectations of. Of what we, you know, of. Of our neighbor or of. Or of somebody that we see on TV that. That has used 17 filters to make themselves look as good as they do, you know.

[00:30:40] Speaker A: Yeah.

And, you know, not only are we trying to measure up to the right thing, right? We’re. If. If you’ve, like, kind of an example of what you’re saying, right? If. If God’s building a mansion and, say, his walls, the stud height needs to be 96 inches, but somebody else’s little Hubble that they’re building down the street, they’re using something that the height needs to be 86 inches. If we cut all our boards to 86 inches, that’s of no use to God, right. If we’re measuring ourselves up to somebody else, if we’re chasing this ideal, that’s not the measurements that God has given us. We’re building the wrong house. We’re not the right sized instruments for what the Lord needs.

The book of Revelation, I think it’s master in kind of building this all together, because when he’s talking about the promised blessings, he says, you’ll be a pillar in the house of the Lord. You will meet that measurement. You will be in here, established in his house forever. And John had received one of these visions, too. He’s talked about Ezekiel, where he’s got.

[00:31:47] Speaker B: To see a good one, though, right? John got to see beasts and, like, dudes with swords in the Apocalypse.

[00:31:52] Speaker A: He got to see all sorts of fun things.

[00:31:54] Speaker B: Ezekiel got a measuring tape. He got to walk around looking, trying to use his thumb to kind of eye the height of cubits.

[00:32:04] Speaker A: But John also had to do some measuring.

[00:32:06] Speaker B: Okay, all right.

[00:32:07] Speaker A: And when he measured the temple, God said, leave this part out because it’s going to be trampled. And that’s the thing. If you don’t measure up, he says, don’t measure. It’s not worth measuring if it’s not going to be saved. And maybe the last thing that really we should highlight from this is every man according to the measure which he has measured his fellow man. So not only are we trying to. I mean, verse nine, God poured out his wrath upon the wicked without measure. We have this whole idea it wasn’t measured. And so his wrath is also poured out without measure. This whole God’s measurement, right? And if it meets up, you’re blessed with every blessing is tied to a commandment that you. But if you’re not measuring without measure, this wickedness is poured out on you. But not only do we have God’s measurement, but right here at the end, every man according to the measure which he has measured to his fellow man.

[00:32:55] Speaker B: I love it.

[00:32:56] Speaker A: Because if we’re. If we’re critical, going back to what you were saying earlier with. With all of our stuff being on display, if we’re super critical about everybody.

[00:33:06] Speaker B: Else’S not meeting a, Like, a righteousness, like, standard. Right?

[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. If we’re. If we’re super critical and saying, hey, that. That doesn’t measure up right there, that’s not right. And we’re going to hold them again, hold that against them and say, your measurement isn’t good enough. Well, that same measurement that we’re applying to them, we sure be better ready to fit that bill. Or we don’t measure up as well. We. We become our own judge on how we judge others.

[00:33:34] Speaker B: I like that.

All right, let’s keep moving.

[00:33:38] Speaker A: All right, next little section here. Next little point.

The wrath of the Lord is being poured out, and he talks specifically about Calamities. And I think it’s kind of.

I think it’s kind of neat that here you have a prophet being called the lord in Amos 3. 7, says, Surely the Lord God will do nothing save it. He revealeth his secret to his servants, the prophets, right? So he’s called a prophet, and he’s going to preface this address here to the world, saying, there are things coming. I need to get the ball rolling. The world needs to be prepared for Christ to come in order for that to happen. There’s a lot of things that are going to happen here, and that’s where we pick up in verse 13. Well, verse 12. Prepare ye, prepare you for that which is to come. For the Lord is nigh in order for that to happen. Verse 14. The arm of the Lord, or, excuse me, 13. And the anger of the Lord is kindled. His sword is bathed in heaven, it shall fall upon the inhabitants of the earth, and the arm of the Lord shall be revealed. And the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people. And here we’ve got this idea. Verse 17. Wherefore I, the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith Jr. And spake unto him from heaven and gave him commandments. If the Lord is going to be pouring out destructions like go back to Noah, before he could put a flood on the earth, he had to have Noah go out and give people commandments so that they knew what they needed to measure up to before all of his judgments poured down without measure on them.

What calamities? I mean, as we talk about this, has there been any calamities since Joseph Smith has been called? No, none whatsoever.

[00:35:30] Speaker B: Of course not. Wait, are you asking me?

[00:35:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.

[00:35:34] Speaker B: The answer is no.

Not that I can think of.

[00:35:38] Speaker A: It’s fascinating. You know, we’ll dive into this a little bit more detail in some later sections. But the Lord, you know, he talks about these calamities and he says it’s going to start in his house. And we look at how these saints suffered, and they had to really go through the fire to find out, you know, how committed they were and build that faith and that foundation that was going to last. These poor guys were walking through the snow with bloody feet and they had their property stolen. People were raped, murdered. Just a horrible thing. But as soon as the saints were pulled up out of the country. Then all of a sudden, the wrath for the country that didn’t protect them was turned on. Then we see the civil war being spilled out, and then that war spilled out to the nations. You look at Europe and World War I, World War II, you have never seen destruction like this in the whole history of the earth.

And things changed because you talk about Joseph Smith’s time and you talk about the United States. This was the very first country in the world that had a constitution where the people gave their government the authorization and limits to what they could do. This was a government for the people, by the people. Something that has never happened. We’ve never seen a written constitution as far as I know. As far as scholars have said, we’ve never seen a written constitution in the history of the world.

And now all of a sudden, in order for the Lord to bring agency to man, this is the whole design and plan from the beginning. To get that agency. You’ve got to free them from the yoke of bondage. You’ve got to break the oppressors the world over. And this is the calamity the Lord’s talking about is you’ve got pharaohs all over the world, and the Lord is trying to gather Israel, let my people go. So you’ve got this comparison between Moses and Joseph Smith. Now you have a new prophet that’s being brought up to try to bring the people out of bondage and spread this agency across the world in 1986. So in this time, we’ve got one country with a constitution. 1986, all but six countries in the world now had a constitution patterned after the United States. It was the United States single greatest export to the world.

And all of this violence and this war and these calamities had a part to play in reforming the world to be able to accept the gospel and gather Israel to prepare for the coming of Christ.

[00:38:00] Speaker B: It is incredible.

Like, as you were saying that it’s interesting because again, I think that sometimes we think, oh, yeah, Joseph Smith came to help usher in the new dispensation to free people from spiritual ignorance or for. You know what I mean, for a lack of, like, not. Not having the fullness of truth and more of like a. A spiritual freedom. But in. In all reality, I mean, this was also ushering in the greatest push for like, actual physical freedom of the world. You know what I mean? And again, it’s like, it’s obviously, it’s still. There are still things that linger even now today, where, you know, you still have Oppressive governments and stuff like that. But, I mean, all things considered, you know what I mean? You had a ruling class up till this point in every nation, and the ruling class ruled, and then the lower classes played their role, and that was it. But it’s an incredible even to look at that not just as a spiritual freedom, but as a physical emancipation, too.

[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, I love that. And Joseph Smith said it. We’ll see this in Doctrine and Covenants throughout this year as we start talking the question of this New Jerusalem to Zion, where is it? And Joseph Smith said, this is Zion, the American continent. This is the New Jerusalem. And it’s cool because Isaiah said, out of Jerusalem shall go the word of the Lord. And we see that Christianity, Judaism, the Bible, all of this is a product of the Old Jerusalem. But he says, out of Zion shall proceed my law. And here you have this constitution, this divinely given gift here in the American continent. And all of this setting the stage for this reformation, the Gospel, and this changing of the world and all of these calamities, everything. We needed a prophet to kind of start this off, kick this off, warn the world and get that ball moving so that we could change the world and bring the Lord’s law from Zion out of Zion to the world to prepare it.

[00:39:57] Speaker B: I love it. Let’s keep going.

[00:39:59] Speaker A: Okay. And this really fits into the next part, because the Lord is talking about the weak things. You know, you’ve got Joseph Smith, this uneducated farm boy who’s going to be changing the world. But not just that. Remember, this message is God’s message to all the people from across the time, not just Joseph Smith going out and changing the world. But the Lord is going to be using weakness to push his message. Even today in verse 19, the weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones. That man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh. And when I read that last part, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh. I think about our missionaries today. Like, if I had a chance to be a missionary right now, I think I would be a much better missionary. But when I go out there, I’d be talking about things as we’re sitting here talking in our podcast, and my experiences, my educational background, and the counseling of men as we sit down and discuss these things and try to convince people logically of this, you think, why can’t we make better missionaries that have cooked a little bit longer, have that experience or that background? But I Had a missionary report his mission last week and he was called to serve a Spanish speaking mission and he did not know Spanish at all. You have your MTC Spanish, of course, but he is lost. People are having conversations. His companion is Hispanic, he’s down in Mexico, he’s got a Mexican companion and he can’t speak and communicate with his companion, his roommate, the only person he’s round aside from the city that he’s in. And nobody can understand him. He has no one to lean to. He can’t trust in the arm of flesh. He can’t counsel with his fellow man. He’s lost. And where does he turn? He’s about ready to go home and he turns to God in his desperation, in his hour of need, this humble young man turns to God and is strengthened and is edified. And the Lord uses the weak, not the strong, not the, the ones that trust in themselves or have confidence or arrogance if you will, but the ones that are humble enough to turn to God. There’s something pure about that that reaches and touches people’s hearts.

[00:42:10] Speaker B: And I think too, especially when it comes to kind of like the idea of, you know, would we be better missionaries now than we would have been? And I agree with you where I’m just like, well, I feel like I maybe just know a lot more just like information. But it’s interesting because those things I feel like literally get in the way and become, become too much importance is leaned on those things or put on those things instead of the most important thing, which again like, you know, you would hope that it, that an 8 year old could have, which is like. Yeah, well, when, when I pray I feel the spirit and I feel like I’m, you know what I mean, I’m actually communicating with God, which is the message that 100% of the people that we’re teaching, you know, and that are, that are, you know, potentially becoming converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the message that they need. You know what I mean? Like, that’s the simplicity of what we actually should even now be trying to better communicate. You know, obviously as we’re sitting here on a podcast talking about all the, you know what I mean, like the periphery information. But I guess I’m just saying is like, it makes so much sense to me and it’s funny that you use the word weak when it, when we’re talking about this because like, I mean if we’re going to be completely honest with it, it’s like there’s strength in not letting so many of so many of the, the surrounding details kind of get in the way of the message, which is, Jesus Christ lived and died on a cross and because of the, and was resurrected. And because of that, we can be forgiven for our sins and we will be resurrected. Right, right. And, and, and, and when you look at, when you look specifically when you look at this verse about the idea of the weak things, I think, I think it’s the weak things in the eyes of the world or in the eyes of man. And, and, and the ruling, you know, it talks about kings and, and you know, the, the rulers being broken down by the weak things. It’s like, well, the rulers see this as, as, you know, as weakness. That I only know this limited, you know, amount of, of maybe information.

But, you know, I think that we can look at it objectively and go, man, like, if, if a young man at 17, 18, whatever, 19 years old can go to somebody else who’s just trying to, to believe in God and can say, hey, I don’t know a lot about all this other stuff, but the one thing that I can tell you is that when I pray, I feel like somebody’s listening. I mean, it’s like that’s what else. You know what I mean? Especially at least early on, what else needs to be said.

[00:44:54] Speaker A: Right? And you see that even in the New Testament play out a little bit when they say, well, I’m a convert of John’s or I’m a convert of Moses or I’m a convert of Paul. Right? We’re not supposed to be converts of people as converts of Christ. Right. I’m not after people trying to be converted to my gospel or my teachings. It’s about people turning to God, not trusting in fellow man, not trusting in your ideas or what you say. But because you trusted God and you showed me how to trust God, I’ve learned to follow him.

[00:45:22] Speaker B: And there’s something that’s just, I feel like truly powerful about vulnerability. And again, like, we, I feel like, you know, maybe as kids, whether we perceived it that way or not, it’s like there’s this idea that it’s like you go to church to, to not pretend, but to definitely play the role of like, oh, I’ve. We are like the perfect Mormon family. And we don’t, you know, play with friends on Sunday and we always use our right hand to take the sacrament or whatever it is. You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s like, it’s like you go, you. There’s a, there’s a, there’s an idea that you go to church to. To be righteous and not go to church to uplift each other that are also. Lift the other people there that are also struggling with things. Right?

[00:46:08] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:46:08] Speaker B: And. And it’s again, it’s funny because again, we use the word our weaknesses. But the times that I’ve been the most edified going to any sort of a church meeting is for the person to go, actually, I don’t know. And I actually have a lot of doubt. And I’m trying to figure this out because I’m like, whoa, wait, me too. I’m just saying, it’s like the. The idea is like, there’s. There’s again, it’s. It’s funny that we use the word weakness, but there’s strength in vulnerability. I hate using the word weaknesses. You know what I mean? It’s like, yeah, maybe I do have a weak testimony of, you know, tithing or whatever it is. And there’s such strength in being able to be like, hey, I actually don’t know about this. And to have a few other people go, hey, actually, I don’t know about this either, but we’re kind of all in it together to figure it out, right? There’s strength in that.

[00:46:53] Speaker A: One of the most empowering things is when you realize that you’re the weak one. Right? Christ didn’t come.

He says he’s the healer. He didn’t come to the healthy, he came to the sick.

He ditches the 99 that don’t need any help and goes for the one that does.

It’s when you realize that you’re not as smart as you thought you were.

You don’t have all the answers. Like you say, there’s strength and weakness. And when we realize that we ourselves are weak, that’s where we become our.

[00:47:28] Speaker B: Strongest and we lean on God. I mean, that’s kind of the underlying message, right? Is when we’re humble and when we can accept our weakness, we stop leaning on the arm of flesh and start leaning on the arm of God.

[00:47:44] Speaker A: And then it becomes our strength.

[00:47:45] Speaker B: Yep. I love it. All right, what else we got?

[00:47:48] Speaker A: And there’s a lot to unpack here, but, you know, it’s the voice of God speaking. It’s hard not to see all sorts of things that we just want to highlight. But to really end this, I think we’re just going to talk on one more talking point.

And that’s where it says that every man shall speak in the name of the Lord. And this is a revolutionary idea. When you talk about Joseph Smith’s time, not too long before him, they wouldn’t even let the Bible be published in English.

[00:48:19] Speaker B: The clergy, not long before that I was going to say, yeah, like only the clergy could even read it, right.

[00:48:24] Speaker A: And even now in this period, I mean Joseph Smith, he’s growing up in a period called the Second Great Awakening. And you’ve got all these pastors and all these religious people, but even here it’s the pastors that control the conversation, it’s the ministers, it’s the clergy that’s driving that conversation. And Harvard University, one of the first universities established here in America, was a university established for the ecclesiastia, for the church, for the pastors to, to be educated, to be able to guide the sheep, to be able to, to teach the people. That’s what education was for when they first got here. And it was the educated people that would be speaking. And now the Lord is saying that it’s not just the pastors, it’s not the blind leaving the blind, but he’s going to say sorry, just second. Let me track that verse down, it’s in verse 20.

But that every man might speak in the name of God, the Lord, even the Savior of the world, not just the pastors. Here you’ve got a 14 year old boy who’s educating the world on the nature of who he is and the Godhead and all of these revelations. But it doesn’t just stop there. It doesn’t say every member of the church, it says every man might speak in the name of God. All sorts of people all over the world. We don’t have a monopoly on truth. We’re not the only ones that receive inspiration. But inspiration has been coming through your scientists, your doctors, your physicians, poor people that you didn’t think would amount to much in historically speaking being suppressed. But now all of a sudden you have these new opportunities and these people rising up from anywhere that God is pouring his revelation that all man might speak in the name of God.

And the reason for this, that faith might also increase in the earth.

[00:50:13] Speaker B: And a quick little bump in there too is like the atonement quite literally made it so that we can communicate and speak in the name of Jesus Christ to God.

[00:50:24] Speaker A: Yes, that intercessory, that, that’s a great thought because we’re not. Because now we have, with the atonement and with the restoration of that idea, now we know how to pray. Now we can pray to God in the name of His Son. And the purpose of it is that faith might increase in the Earth, that his everlasting covenant might be established, that the fullness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple ends of the simple unto the ends of the world before kings and rulers.

[00:50:53] Speaker B: See, it’s funny that they use the word weak there before simple, which I feel like is a better way to describe it because of the power of in simplicity. You know what I mean? It’s interesting. It’s interesting that again, the word weak is used, but then simple is after that. And again, like, it’s just funny that we’ve taken the word weak to mean such a negative thing when again, it’s just. I just wanted to point that out.

[00:51:17] Speaker A: Oh, I’m glad you did. It’s kind of like Isaiah when they’re talking about Christ in Isaiah 53. He has no beauty or form that we should desire him.

[00:51:25] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:51:26] Speaker A: And what they’re actually referring to is this majesty. He’s not coming with the crown. This title, this position, this power in a sense of political power or political clout.

You don’t have the Pope over the largest denomination of the world going through and convincing everybody that this is now the path. It’s this almost grassroots, these people without political power, without, you know, weak in a sense that you don’t have that power, that status, that claim that position to be able to doing it.

[00:52:01] Speaker B: But clearly not weak as in feeble.

[00:52:05] Speaker A: Right, right. Different kind of week. But you see that in social media as people the world over flooding social media with thoughts or giving thanks or things that they think about or ponder, or even us having this discussion here today. I mean, really, as the world increases in faith and we start to share our thoughts and share this communication and have this dialogue and we’re spreading this word that faith might increase in the earth.

[00:52:31] Speaker B: I love it. I love it.

[00:52:33] Speaker A: All right, well, thanks for joining in today. It’s been a pleasure talking with you guys about Doctrine and Covenants, Section One. I’m looking forward to next week’s dive. We’re going to be diving into the context of Joseph Smith’s first vision, looking a little bit about what was going on in the world to prepare for that moment, what was happening in the Smith family, and some of the cool things with the sacred Grove. So tune in until next time. Thanks, Sa.

In this episode of the Deep Dive podcast, we explore the profound themes of restoration, focusing on the significance of the gospel’s return in the latter days. Beginning with reflections on the Day of Kings and the symbolism of Christ’s gifts, the discussion transitions into a deep dive into the restoration’s scriptural foundations, its connection to ancient patterns of worship, and the role of temples in returning to God’s presence. Drawing insights from scripture, history, and personal experiences, the episode emphasizes Christ as the central figure in God’s eternal plan, highlighting how the restoration aligns with the overarching purpose of leading all of humanity back to Him.

Transcript:
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.

[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly Come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pier.

[00:00:33] Speaker C: Hello.

[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello. Happy New Year, Nate.

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Dude.

[00:00:36] Speaker C: Happy New Year to you too, buddy.

I am. It is a happy new year. It is a new year. It is joyous.

It is everything I’ve could have possibly ever dreamed of being so far. How about you?

[00:00:51] Speaker B: Fantastic.

[00:00:52] Speaker C: Everything you could have possibly dreamed of so far.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: Even. Even more. Even more. Right? It’s. It’s good times. And 2024, one for the record books, man. It was a good year.

[00:01:04] Speaker C: 2024 was wild, man. Was wild. It was wild. I’m in. I’m in. Though. 2024 was. Was a fun year.

I.

I’ve been looking forward to 2025. I’ve been. I’ve been trying to study a bunch of, like, Greek philosophy. I’m just. I’m interested in how it intersects with Christianity and with, like, other philosophies. Interesting. And so I’m like.

I’ve been. I’ve been going deep on, like, stoicism, and I like it. It’s. It’s. It’s like it’s got its blind spots for sure. But one of the things I’m trying to take away from it that we’ve talked about is try to not look at situations as inherently good or bad, but instead look at them as an opportunity to learn something and grow and be tested. And I’m like, I’m into that. I’m down with that. And so 2024, from us, from a very stoic perspective, had a lot of things to learn and grow from, and I’m. And I’m excited that I got those opportunities.

That’s how I feel about 2024.

[00:02:15] Speaker B: And it’s been a little bit since we connected. How did the tours finish out? I mean, you had some wild stuff going on.

[00:02:21] Speaker C: It was so fun. It was so fun. And it was just.

I don’t think I knew what day of the week it was for about a month and a half straight.

Because it’s sometimes, like, when you get on the road and you start having, like, multiple shows in different cities, you just totally lose track of time. And flying at night or flying super early in the mornings, and you just kind of. You’re never really awake and you’re never really asleep. Like, it was so fun. And I actually do miss it. Not. I don’t miss it enough to, like, get back into it full time, but it was a reminder of, like, oh, yeah, this is fun for a season. This is fun for a little while. But anyways, it was awesome. It was. One of the things I liked about it the most was I kind of had to, because we were playing Christmas music.

And there was a moment almost in every show in different spots, because, you know, it’s like we were playing kind of, you know, more upbeat versions of the Christmas songs. But there was definitely, like, some nights that it was just funny. You look out into the crowd and it’s such a diverse crowd. Especially, you know, when we were, like, in New York and Los Angeles and you look out and, you know, there’s. There’s people out there living their lives, man. Maybe it’s not the exact way that I live my life. Let’s just put it that way, necessarily. Right. But then we’re just testifying of Jesus and for two hours or whatever it is. And, like, it kind of hit me on multiple occasions throughout some of these shows that it’s like, this is.

[00:03:51] Speaker B: We’re.

[00:03:51] Speaker C: We’re doing our part, right? We’re even. Even in a place where you might not expect it. We’re still trying to bear. Bear our testimony in some way or another. And it was meaningful. I guess that’s. That’s probably. I’ll leave it at that.

[00:04:06] Speaker B: That’s awesome.

[00:04:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it’s good.

[00:04:10] Speaker B: That’s awesome.

[00:04:11] Speaker C: How was your season? How was your Christmas?

[00:04:15] Speaker B: It was. It was good. It was good last night. So as we’re recording this, January 6th, for me here was.

So they celebrate in Spain the Day of the Kings, even more so maybe than Christmas, which was interesting to me.

And so we went down to the city center. They had this massive parade every city. So, you know, back in Utah, you’ve got your town festivals, right? And every city has their parade that they do. And it’s the same floats that each city sends over to the other city. This. This is similar. You have this massive parade that the entire city goes out to, and every city does their own, but each one’s unique. It’s not the same floats crossing over, but it’s the. The Day of Kings parade. And it starts with the star. So you’re lining up around the streets, and it happens at night, and you look down the street and you see this massive floating star, like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, except for a star, like, kind of just floating, coming down the street. You’re like, oh, here it comes.

[00:05:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I like that.

[00:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And the star shows up and you have all these little dancers holding their little stars and they’re all celebrating. Right. And then following the star is the wise men. But before you get to the wise men, they interject the male. Right. So this is like this, this, this kings slash Santa Claus. Like weird the holidays combined, right? Because you have to write the three kings and let them know what you want for, for the Day of Kings. So they have the post office and the mail and everyone’s dressed up like letters and celebrating on this mail float. And then you have the three kings coming through and every one of the three kings looks like Santa Claus sitting on, on their float.

[00:06:01] Speaker C: I like that.

[00:06:02] Speaker B: It was, it was pretty cool. And, and then you have the presents that the three kings are bringing. So like the three. The. The day of kings is today.

January 6th is, is kind of a bigger holiday in Spain in, in this is the day that you open your presents and whatever. And, and they adopted Christmas later on. Papa Noel and different traditions. So it’s kind of interesting seeing how people celebrate things over the side of the world. It just gets kind of cool to you know, equate the, the gift giving part of Christmas with when the magi or the, the kings or the wise men actually came and presented gifts to the Savior.

Which is, you know, I, you know, thinking back, we’ve, we’ve kind of been dark for a few weeks, getting through the end of the year, the end of the season. And just quick summary to get up to where we’re at today because I think today is as we talked, we want to hit on the restoration. This was the first lesson 2025 to come. Follow me. Talking about the restoration of the gospel. And I think the restoration of the Gospel is important enough to you and me, Nate, that we, we really wanted to get together and record this episode.

But to kind of give us a quick what we missed, skip. Right.

Talking about the holidays, talking about the end of the year and talking about the wise Men.

We try to present like a Christmas message. And I know it’s a little bit late for that, but where today is our Day of Kings, I thought maybe I could just give a quick 2 minute Christmas message to our listeners to, to. To kind of hit what we missed.

And the, the wise men brought three unique gifts to Christ. And we’ve talked about those gifts before, Nate, and you’ve pointed out, you know, that the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh are gifts fitting for a deity. These are oblations that people would bring into a temple and bring to a God.

Together, they make kind of a unique impact individually. You look at these gifts and I think they speak to the role of the Savior in different ways. Gold fitting for a king. The frankincense is what you would be using in association with temple worship and what you would be offering the incense and whatnot, and then the myrrh for burial, which is speaking to the role for why he was born. So you’ve got the priest, the king, and the death, the atonement all wrapped up into these unique gifts.

Thinking about those three gifts to me this past season, I was thinking about the three unique gifts that Christ offers us and those gifts, one being the ability to resurrect, to overcome death, which is a phenomenal gift. But if I were to resurrect, as it were, and not receive forgiveness of my sins and have to live with remorse or guilt for things that I’ve done or falling short or whatever, whatever, it would be an eternity in hell, an eternity having to see and come to consequence with my actions. That that gift in and of itself loses value if it doesn’t combine with the gift of forgiveness, and what a wonderful gift that is. But even the gift of forgiveness would also be a hell. If I was forgiven of everything today and God said, you’re done, go your way and sin no more. And I wasn’t able to sin no more, what good was it being forgiven today if within a year, two years, three years, or even within a day I’ve done things that I regret again, and I would have to try to go back and say, was that a one time deal? Can I have some more forgiveness? How does that work?

And so the gift of forgiveness, even as wonderful as it is, it can be somewhat limited without the third gift that Christ offers us through the atonement. And I believe this one. The ability to change who we are, the gift of progressing and becoming like God. Because that coupled with forgiveness, if I have learned from my mistakes and don’t commit that, and I’m better this year than I was last year, better today than I was yesterday, then all of these gifts work in concert to bring us to God and bring us closer to him. And that was kind of the gift I wanted to share with our listeners as we’re going through this Christmas season and the end of the year is these are the gifts that Christ offers us that we should be taking and enjoying and understanding and finding comfort and peace in that message.

[00:10:46] Speaker C: That’s really beautiful. Well said.

[00:10:49] Speaker B: Thank you.

[00:10:52] Speaker A: Cool?

[00:10:53] Speaker C: What do we, where do you want to start with restoration? Do we. I, I’ve.

Is there, is there a need to really get too much into the apostasy or is that kind of, are we going to just assume that that’s kind of a given?

Restoration?

[00:11:09] Speaker B: What are you thinking? What do you want to hit? What do you.

[00:11:11] Speaker C: It was the lesson I had actually prepared for, for the, for the youth today though I didn’t get, I didn’t get a chance to teach because they did kind of the beginning of the year, kind of, you know, new year, all the youth get together and we kind of discussed like a theme for the new year. But I, I kind of just wanted to just briefly just touch upon, even if it’s just quickly kind of giving a shout out to like the early church.

There’s a lot of argument online, a lot of time with different denominations about like whether Christ’s church there was an apostasy or whether Christ Church was able to withstand all of the persecution that it obviously was receiving in like the early years and such like that. I just wanted to just quickly point out Christ set. When he set his church up, he clearly set up ways that it needed to function and go in the future. Which is why when apostles would die, new apostles would be called. The structure stayed the same.

But at a certain point the early church leaders, apostles and prophets were being killed off at a speed that they were not able to get together and continue to call new apostles in their place.

A lot of people from different religions will say, well, there were still like bishops in some of these areas and things like that too.

But clearly that was not the way that Jesus had set it up because as apostles would be killed off, they would call new ones to replace them and not just say, well, there’s some bishops in some of the adjoining cities.

Obviously some of the biggest evidence towards the church being thrust into apostasy is that the majority of the New Testament, the books of the New Testament are what, letters from the apostles and prophets telling various people in various cities that they’re needing to fix bad information, that they are practicing and trying to kind of help course correct different people in different cities.

I was recommended a book just recently and I forgot the title. Talking actually specifically about how Greek philosophy at the time was a huge influence on early Christian sects in different places.

That different, different Greek philosophies were actually heavily influencing the doctrine of churches being pulled away from, from the Christian doctrine that had been set up when, when Christ and his apostles were doing their Thing, which is why you see a lot of the apostles obviously in the region having to go around and trying to not only preach and do missionary work, but also course correct a lot of these different places.

I feel like objectively it’s not hard to see when you look at all of the evidence presented that with how hard it was to communicate at the time, with how hard it was to continue to call new leadership into positions as they were being killed off and persecuted as doctrine was continually being affected by tradition and other philosophies.

And I mean, and it all kind of comes to a head even when you start having all of these creeds from these different places and bishops basically from all of these different areas hundreds of years later coming together and trying to by consensus, more or less kind of agree generally upon what the official doctrine of the Catholic or universal Church is.

No, Peter did not pass down the authority, the priesthood authority from God to Clement as a bishop in that area to pass it down to the Catholic Church. I’m sorry that that’s not the structure that Christ had set up. That’s not the structure that his early church leaders had continued on. When Christ set up his church, apostles needed to be replaced with other apostles. They needed to get together and continue to ordain other people. That is the way that Christ set it up and that is the way that it needed to continue. It did not.

This is not even to try to bag on any of the other religions, but even obviously like early leaders in the Catholic Church and writers around that time noticed all of the corruption that was happening within the ranks at the various different religions. You and I have talked at length about some of the reasons why certain doctrines were changed. And that was to, for very political reasons, separate people from God and make it so that you had to go through a church or a power structure to get to God. The Protestants in their best of efforts tried to reform something that was already broken. But the fact of the matter is, is that it was already broken. There have been extensive writings and discussions on all of the various reasons why and all of the changes from the Church that Christ set up. And the church needed to be restored and not reformed.

And that is why, and that is what sets the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints apart from these churches that claim that we are not Christian or that we worship a different Christ.

I worship one that died on a cross and was resurrected three days later. I worship a Christ that went through the atonement, suffered and died for my sins so that I could be forgiven like you just got done talking about. If people decide that they want to worship a different Christ than that, that’s fine. That’s. I don’t feel that that’s my responsibility to defend the Christ that I do worship. And the Christ that I worship told us and warned us that there was going to be an apostasy because that’s the pattern from the beginning of time. And also promised a restoration. And that is exactly what happened in 1820.

[00:17:31] Speaker B: Fantastic.

[00:17:32] Speaker C: Did I blow by that too fast?

I know that there’s just so much.

[00:17:37] Speaker A: More detail, but I at least just.

[00:17:39] Speaker C: Wanted to set the stage with, with the reason of why we needed a restoration and, and not a reformation.

[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you’re good, man. I, I’m looking at this.

I, I’ve been studying a little bit on the apostasy. Not a lot, but a little bit preparing for, talking about the restoration and, and some things that stand out to.

[00:18:08] Speaker C: Me.

[00:18:10] Speaker B: Like you said, when they’re talking about it being prophesied, I think what has really impressed me, and I know I’ve said this before, so bear with me. Isaac Newton and the reason why the guy lived 1600s, he’s before the restoration of the gospel, and he lives in a time when there is a church, he’s part of a church, the religion’s very strong right.

And yet he turns to the Scriptures to try to understand God. He turns to science to appreciate what God has done, to try to what he deemed as an acceptable form of worshiping God, to try to understand his creation, understand how it worked.

And he talks about the importance of trying to understand the Scriptures for yourself and not relying on anyone else to interpret them for you, and says, if you rely on someone else to explain these things, then you’re going to, you’re going to not quite reach it. He felt like it was important.

This is what he said. Let me therefore beg of thee not to trust to the opinion of any man concerning these things. For so it is great odds. But thou shalt be deceived. Much less oughtest thou to rely upon the judgment of the multitude, for so thou shalt surely be deceived. But search the Scriptures thyself, and that by frequent reading and constant meditation upon which thou readest, and earnest prayer to God to enlighten thine understanding, if thou desires to find the truth, which if thou shalt at length attain, thou wilt value above all other treasures in the world by reason of the assurance and vigor it will add to thy faith and steady satisfaction to thy mind, which he only can know how to estimate, who shall experience it, which are profound words.

And that’s what he did. And I don’t think a lot of people realize this when we’re talking about Isaac Newton.

He’s known for the laws of motion, he’s known for gravity. He’s known for his math, discovering calculus, and science. But a lot of people don’t realize he wrote more on religious topics and Scripture interpretation than math and science combined.

And even though he lived before Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith didn’t have access to his studies, to his notes. Nobody did. His family was ashamed because right before he died, he refused the last rites because he felt like the church had lost its way and there was value in that.

[00:20:54] Speaker C: He was right.

[00:20:56] Speaker B: Yeah, but he still, like, looking at what we just read, he still very much believed in God. So when you’re going through your review of the apostasy, what I find interesting is Newton’s study of Scripture and how that brought him to a conclusion that there had been an apostasy.

[00:21:19] Speaker C: It wasn’t just him, too. I mean, that was like the whole. Whatever the thesis, Martin Luther and the whole thing.

[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:21:26] Speaker C: I was going to say the whole Protestant movement was essentially having access to the Scriptures and realizing, whoa, wait a minute. None of this stuff is actually in the book. You know what I mean?

[00:21:37] Speaker B: Yeah.

So he wrote a treatise on the Book of Revelation, and in his treatise, he states, if you will now compare all with the apocalyptic vision. And so back then, right, they called it Apocalypse instead of Revelation, but in either case, the Book of Revelation. If you will now compare with the apocalyptic visions, and particularly with the flight of the woman into the wilderness and the reign of the whore of Babylon, they will very much illustrate one another. For these visions are as plain as if it was expressly said that the true church shall disappear, and in her stead, an idolatrous church shall reign in the world.

That’s him reading the Book of Revelation and the impression that he gets. Compare that with Doctrine Covenants 86. Behold, verily I say unto you, the field was the world, and the apostles were the sowers of the seed. And after they had fallen asleep, the great persecutor of the church, the apostate, the whore, even Babylon, that maketh all nations to drink of her cup, in whose hearts the enemy even Satan sitteth to reign. Behold, he soweth the tares, wherefore the chairs choke out the wheat and drive the church into the wilderness.

And looking at that modern revelation and Newton’s interpretation of what was written in The Book of Revelation, he talks about this apostasy. He leaned on the Scriptures in Timothy, in Thessalonians, second Thessalonians, Thessalonians, that say, surely you know the day of the Lord shall not come except the apostasy come first and the man of sin be revealed.

Another cool thing that he stated. Now, though the unity of the Church depended upon the unity of the faith, and therefore the rule of faith was unalterable, yet before the end of the second century, some of the Latin churches, in opposition to heretics, began to add new articles to it. And this is kind of going right with what you were saying, Nate, as you’re talking about the history of the Church. And after they had, by adding some articles in the language of the Scriptures, made precedent for creating to themselves a creed making authority, they began to add articles in other language than that of the Scripture till they lost the primitive apostolic rule of faith and by the loss of it brought all into confusion.

And this is just focusing on apostasy before the restoration of the Church in this last dispensation.

But he didn’t just see the apostasy he saw.

Okay, so we can find verses in the New Testament that talk about, surely there won’t until the apostasy, until the coming of the Lord. This is going to happen. This is going to happen.

He quoted the Savior and seeing Christ himself talk about an apostasy. I loved his connection here. And this is in Matthew 17:11, when Jesus says, yes, Elias will come. And it’s not. He didn’t say. Jesus didn’t say, Elias has come to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. So we look at John the Baptist as Elias, the messenger that came and prepared the way before Christ comes. But Christ takes that prophecy and doubles down on it and says, surely Elias still will come to prepare the way before the Lord returns. And so the Savior’s talking about the second coming and Elias coming to prepare the way before he comes again. And so even quoting the words of the Savior, Newton is able to pick up on an apostasy. You don’t prepare the way for things to return if they weren’t lost in the first place.

And so he’s picking up on this. And after making all of these connections, this is the last statement. I think I want to read from him the worship which is due to this God we are to give to no other, nor to ascribe any absurd or contradictious to his nature or actions, lest we be found to blaspheme him, or to deny him or to make a step towards atheism or irreligion. For as often as mankind has swerved from them, God has made a reformation. When the sons of Adam erred and the thoughts of the hearts became evil continually, God selected Noah to become a new people. Excuse me, to become a new world. And when the posterity of Noah transgressed and began to invoke dead men, God selected Abraham and his posterity. And when they transgressed in Egypt, God reformed them by Moses. And when they relapsed to idolatry and immorality, God sent the prophets to reform them and punish them by the Babylonian captivity. And when they had returned from captivity, mixed human inventions with the law of Moses under the name of traditions and laid stress of the religion upon.

Upon the acts of the mind, not upon the acts of mind, but upon the outward acts and ceremonies, God sent Christ to reform them. And when the nation received him not, God called the Gentiles. And now the Gentiles have corrupted themselves. We may expect that God in due time will make a new reformation. And in all the reformations of the religion hitherto made the religion and respect of God and our neighbor is one and the same religion. So that this is the oldest religion in the world.

[00:26:50] Speaker A: I missed it. Where’s that quote from?

[00:26:53] Speaker B: This quote is from iranicum. Awesome. Page 35. Isaac Newton.

[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s awesome. What a quote.

Isaac Newton. Got it, dude, dude, he got it.

[00:27:08] Speaker B: He got it. So, which begs the question, where. Where does the restoration begin?

For talking about the restoration, where do we. Where do. What is the restoration? Where does the restoration start?

You know?

[00:27:26] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:27:28] Speaker B: And I mean, okay, go for it.

[00:27:31] Speaker A: No, I’m interested in how far back you want to take it, you know what I mean? Because, like, the restoration, I feel like so many things kind of had to happen for it to happen again. One of the conversations that I was following online was hilarious because, you know, somebody, you know, Catholic was basically arguing.

Their argument was, well, if.

[00:27:52] Speaker C: Why would Jesus take the church off.

[00:27:54] Speaker A: The earth again if he didn’t love us? And the person said, well, because the doctrine that we believe right now, you in your own words, keep calling basically, like, heretical. It’s like we would have been killed for our belief, you know what I mean? For what we’re saying happened, happened, we would have been killed by your church not too long ago. Like, really not that long ago, relatively.

And I was like, okay, cool. So I guess to answer your question, I’m interested in seeing how far back you want to go to where the restoration began.

[00:28:27] Speaker B: You see? And it’s an interesting question, and it’s a poorly asked question, okay, because it needs more context than does.

[00:28:35] Speaker C: You’re right.

[00:28:36] Speaker B: And what restoration are we talking about? And let’s be clear, right? Restoration.

And this is why I want to dig in deep, right, the restoration. In order to have a restoration, you have to understand what things looked like in the first place, right? Because what are you restoring to? If you don’t know what it was, you’ll never be able to get back to it. You can’t restore something without understanding what it originally was supposed to be and how to get back to that state. So we talk about a restoration, sure, some people can say, you know, 1820, Joseph Smith had his first vision and this kicks off the restoration. But then some others might say, well, you can’t have a restoration until you have a falling away. There’s got to be an error first. So really, the restoration has to happen from the point of. Of exit from where you were to begin with.

But then we look at Isaac Newton’s statement and realize that this process of falling away and returning is a much longer process.

And I like to define the restoration from an even earlier point than all of that.

And for me, the restoration begins. Let me read from a couple scriptures. This is first Peter. Excuse me, chapter one, verse 19.

And we talked about this when we went through the New Testament. And it says, but with the precious blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot, verse 20, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world.

And that line right there, before the foundation of the world. And so when we talk about the foundation of the world, foundation is used in building terms, right? We’re laying the foundation, we’re creating. And so when the Scriptures reference the foundation of the world, I look at that and interpret that phrase as the creation before the world was created, Christ was the Lamb precious. He was called, he was chosen, he was foreordained to do what he was going to do before the world could be created. And this thought, so that we’re not just taking it from one source, is sprinkled all throughout, all throughout the New Testament. So if I go to Revelation 13:8, and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life, of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So again, we get that phraseology, and they keep referring to Christ as the Lamb and this idea that he was going to be sacrificed in order to atone for our sins before the foundation of the world. And I think this language is important. And for anyone interested, I mean, you can go back and read Ephesians 1:4, 5, John 17:24, Titus 1:2, 2 Timothy 1:9. I’m not just picking obscure verses that make this reference. This is a major theme in the New Testament. It’s important to understand that God, before He created this world, had to have a Savior.

And the reason why I think this is important because I think a lot of people have this idea that Jesus was plan B.

And I was asked to teach Gospel doctrine yesterday. And as we were talking about the restoration and the role of, of Christ in salvation, the atonement, I asked him about this and the feedback I got was that, yes, Jesus was plan B to save us. And so I stopped and said, okay, that’s an interesting point.

Let me ask you then, what’s plan A?

And somebody else said, well, plan A was we just didn’t make a mistake, right? We just came here and we live perfect and we didn’t need a Savior. So if we make a mistake, then there’s plan B and Christ comes in. And I want to challenge that.

I don’t think that Jesus was plan B and that God ever expected us to just do this alone and to be perfect at it. Because before he created the world, he had to pick a savior. He wasn’t going to just send his kids off and then watch them fail and say, shoot, now what do I do? How do I save this? How do I fix this?

This is a God who knew how this was going to go. And before he could even start the work on the creation, before he could even prepare a place for his kids to go, he needed to make sure the most important component was taken care of. And we keep looking at this as mistakes and that we really screwed up and we’re really hard on ourselves for this. But we have to understand this is actually plan A. This was the plan from the beginning, that Christ was chosen before the creation could happen.

And so when we talk about restoration, I want to redefine the word restoration because I think so many times we narrowly apply it to just the bringing back of the church in today’s time. But I believe that restoration, let’s take this all the way to the very beginning. We were with God in the beginning, and before God could send us here, he said, who shall I send? Christ said, here am I, send me. And we left the presence of God knowing there was a plan where we could return back to the presence of God with his Son. And so for me, restoration is being returned to the presence of God.

That’s where I want to define restoration. What was lost? What was the first state? That’s something I wanted to try to make a point of. In order to understand restoration, we have to understand what was it like originally. We need to know we were with God in the beginning. And that’s what the Scriptures teach us.

And that’s what we’re trying to be restored to, is to the presence of God.

And so we go to this is the first restoration and in it, how do we get restored to God? And the plan, the footwork there, everything is laid out in the very first story of the Bible and that’s the story of Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day. They were in the presence of God, they make the mistake, they’re sent out of the presence of God. There we have a need for restoration. What is restoration? Being returned to the presence of God.

So what does he do? First off, when they stand, they try to describe this fall as we were referring to apostasy. Nate, I’m going to take the imagery of discovering their nakedness as apostasy.

They beheld that they’re wrong, they’re shamed, or whatever. Their mistake is being symbolically referred to as their nakedness. So what do they do?

They try to fix it themselves. They make fig leaves and try to cover their nakedness and try to make up for it.

[00:35:43] Speaker A: At the suggestion of somebody else though.

[00:35:46] Speaker C: Right?

[00:35:47] Speaker B: That’s a great point.

At the suggestion of somebody else.

[00:35:51] Speaker C: That’s right.

[00:35:53] Speaker A: I’m just saying, like, I think that that’s a, that’s a really important part. Even when we. The only reason I bring that up is because I. It’s hard for me not to see that there as things fell away even with the church after Christ again. And you see how like there has been so many of the, of the doctrines of Christ perverted over the years. I’m just like, Satan’s trick always was take a little bit of truth, mingle it with, with the doctrine of men. And so that’s, that’s the reason I’m saying Satan was right, that they did need to cover themselves, but then he gave them the false cheap way of doing it. As we can see even as churches and reformation projects began, that Satan’s best trick is always to say here’s a little bit of the right thing. And then here’s, here’s the incorrect version mingled in with it. Okay, continue. Sorry to Sorry to derail you.

[00:36:48] Speaker B: Great interjection. And the covering with leaves, woefully inadequate. Right? Can you imagine.

[00:36:57] Speaker A: Can you imagine going out into the lone and dreary world with fake leaves? Instead of any sort of warmth and.

[00:37:04] Speaker B: Gust of wind picks up, you’re like, oh, man, where’d that go?

Back to square one.

We need better clothes. That’s hilarious. So Christ makes clothes for them.

And it’s important, this story, because it’s not just that he makes clothes for them. What does he make the clothes out of?

[00:37:28] Speaker A: Something had to die.

[00:37:30] Speaker B: It’s coats of skin. And get the skin. Something had to die. And so God teaches them from the beginning.

Plan A.

Christ was the lamb who would be sacrificed so that you can be covered and restored.

And this restoration, that’s where it starts. And Christ is this lamb, and he will give his life to cover you. And he teaches them to understand this plan, a plan from the beginning.

And fast forward to Moses. So we’re talking about apostasies and restorations. I think we can see a lot from the story of Moses pulling the Israelites out of Egypt back into creating the land for them, Israel.

When they’re set free and they’re able to be liberated, it’s only because of the death of the firstborn.

And it’s this angel of death that comes through and slays the firstborn, that only through this death or the sacrifice are they able to be liberated. And to fully understand this, they’re required to take a firstborn lamb, right? A male lamb without blemish, and sacrifice this lamb symbolically to pay the price so that they would not have to be killed and to share this meal with each other, the Passover lamb. And the lamb is to be eaten with bitter herbs.

And the blood of the lamb is to be painted on the door post, the horizontal and the vertical post of the door.

And you’re supposed to take great care to not break a single bone of this lamb. This is 2000 years before Christ comes, right? This is another big reminder that Christ is the Lamb of God.

And it’s fascinating to me that on the very day of Passover, at the very hour that the Israelites all over Jerusalem are killing their Passover lambs, Christ was killed.

And not only is he killed, but his blood is marking the post, the vertical, the horizontal post of the cross that he’s on.

And before he dies, he thirsts. And what do they do? They take the sponge with bitterness, the gall, the vinegar, and they serve the lamb with bitterness.

And here’s this Image of Christ, who was told from the beginning he was, before the world was created, the Lamb of God.

And yet it’s the actions of the people that manifest him as the Lamb. It’s the people that don’t believe in him that have fulfilled the word of the Lord, every jot and tittle that have made this come about. He was plan A from the beginning. It’s us, whether or not we choose to accept the plan or we understand the plan as we drift from God. But he’s always trying to call, to remind, to pull us closer to him and understand that he is the plan. And so he was the restoration, the math, the means by which we could return to. To God.

In. In these thoughts, Joseph Smith said something fascinating about the reason why God gathers people together. And he said, let me, let me make sure I get the full quote here. Joseph Smith said the main object of gathering the people of God in any age to certain places is to build unto the Lord a house whereby he could reveal unto his people the ordinances of his house and the glories of his kingdom, and to teach the people the way of salvation. That’s in teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, pages 307 to 308.

And what he’s saying is the reason for any gathering was to build a temple.

And I think we lose, without understanding the context of Adam and Eve and the garden Moses, we lose the connection with the temple. And I want to restore that connection. Interesting choice of words with what we’re talking about here. But what is the temple?

And if we look, Moses, before they even get to Israel, before they even have their land, before anything, what’s the first thing God orders them to do is build this tabernacle.

And the tabernacle embodies paradise, Eden. And in his tabernacle, there’s two rooms. There’s the holy of Holies and there’s the holy place. And in the holy of Holies is the Ark of the Covenant, which is the throne that God sits on and rules among his people. And he comes to the tabernacle in this pillar of fire, this cloud of smoke, and he dwells among them. And the high priest can go into the presence of God once a year. But from here, the voice of God is to out his people, to guide them that he reigns personally upon the earth through the tabernacle.

And in order to get to the holy of holies, you have to pass first through the holy place, which has the Menorah, which is set up like a tree with the knops and the branches and the almonds and all, everything to look like this tree. And the fruit of the tree, in this case, the fruit of the menorah is light, the burning of the candles. This is the tree of life, which is an image, as we’ve talked about, a symbol of Jesus Christ.

Across from that, you actually eat the fruit of the tree, which is the showbread table, and you have bread and wine that the priest would partake of the body and the blood of Christ, the Lamb, who was slain for the sacrifice.

And this is all happening in the holy place. And before you can get into the holy place, lambs literally had to be sacrificed outside at the altar of the temple. Sacrifice was required before you could come in. And you see here this progression. And before you can pass into the holy place, before you can get into here, you have curtains, a veil set up. And in the curtains in this veil are cherubim sewn. So you start to lay this pattern. On top of the story of Eden, God walked with Adam in the cool of the day. In the tabernacle, God is there, his presence. So what are they doing? They’re recreating Eden. They’re recreating paradise. You have the tree of Life at the center, just like you had the tree of life at the. The center of the Garden of Eden. You have cherubim guarding the way, just as it was when they were cast out. So the story of restoration is also the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. As they left the presence of God and restoration is being restored back to the presence of God. As they were cast out eastward, the temple faced the east, and they made this trek back from the east to the west to return to ultimately the presence of God. What is restoration like? I say to understand restoration, you have to understand original state, because that’s what we’re being returned to. What was the original state of mankind on earth? The presence of God? What was our original state before we came to this earth? The presence of God. So what is the restoration of the gospel? The restoration is the ability for mankind to return to the presence of God. And like Joseph Smith said, it is critical to build a house of the Lord whereby this can happen. That’s what the temple is today. And the restoration of the gospel is a restoration for the means by which we can literally return to the presence of God, go to his house and be with him where he was. It is returning us back to Eden, returning us back to paradise. This is a story as old as Adam and Eve and even older from before the Foundations of the world. How do we get back to God? That is the story of the restoration. Love it.

[00:45:35] Speaker A: You want to talk a little bit about the restoration?

The most recent of restorations of the church or not as much?

[00:45:47] Speaker B: Yes, yes, I do. Yes, I do. I think this is. This is the most amazing thing to happen on the earth right now. This is.

It should be exciting to all of us.

To fully understand this, I’m going to go to doctrine and covenants 124 and maybe hopefully build a little bit of excitement for what we’re in and what we’re doing. And this is the year of Doctrine and covenants and 124 verses one through three.

Oh, man. My scriptures. Just second, just second. Like I grabbed the wrong tab and now I’m reading in Spanish and that does not help.

That does not help English.

Okay. 124. Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant, Joseph Smith. I am very. Excuse me. I am well pleased with your offering and acknowledgments which you have made. For unto this end I have raised you up that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth. Your prayers are acceptable before me, and in answer to them, I say unto you that you are now called immediately to make a solemn proclamation of my Gospel and of this stake which I have planted to be a cornerstone of Zion, which shall be polished with the refinement which is after the similitude of a palace. This proclamation shall be made to all the kings of the world and to the four corners thereof, to the honorable president elect and the high minded governors of the nation in which you live, and to all the nations of the earth scattered abroad. Let it be written in the spirit of meekness and by the power of the Holy Ghost which shall be in you at the time of writing of the same.

For it shall be given of you by the Holy Ghost to know my will concerning those kings and authorities, even what shall befall them in the time to come.

And so this commandment was given. This was 1841. Joseph Smith immediately started writing this proclamation to send it out to the world. Unfortunately, his work was interrupted with all of the things that were happening at this time. And in 1845, in the beginning of 1845, as we know, Joseph Smith was martyred, was killed in the end of 1845, October towards the end of the year, the quorum of the twelve apostles got together and they finished writing this proclamation and they sent it out. And I don’t think we really give enough Credit to this. It’s an incredible document. I’m just going to read the first page of it.

Proclamation and so if anyone wants to find this, this is 1845. It is the proclamation to the world of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This is really the first proclamation to the world that the Church put out. So this is what it reads. Proclamation of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. To all the kings of the world, to the President of the United States of America, to the governors of the several states, and to the rulers and people of all nations. Greeting.

Know ye that the kingdom of God has come as has been predicted by ancient prophets and prayed for in all ages. Even that kingdom which shall fill the whole earth and shall stand forever. The great Elohim Jehovah has been pleased once more to speak from the heavens and also to commune with man upon the earth by means of open visions and by the ministration of holy messengers.

By this means the great and eternal high priesthood. After the order of His Son, even the apostleship has been restored or returned to the earth. This high priesthood or apostleship holds the keys of the kingdom of God and the power to bind on earth that which was bound in heaven and to loose on earth that which shall be loosed in heaven. And in fine to do and to administer in all things pertaining to the. The ordinances, organization, government and direction of the Kingdom of God being established in these last days for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began and in order to prepare the way for the coming of the Son of Man.

What a powerful introduction.

[00:50:11] Speaker C: I love it.

[00:50:14] Speaker A: I love that there is no fear in basically being like this is to everyone, most importantly kings, rulers, presidents, governors.

[00:50:23] Speaker C: I just, I like it.

[00:50:24] Speaker B: I like.

[00:50:25] Speaker A: There’s a. There’s a boldness about that that speaks to me.

[00:50:28] Speaker B: You, you, dude, you. You mentioned boldness. In here it says, we command the Jews to prepare to go back to your land, to create a nation and to build a temple.

[00:50:40] Speaker A: Jeez. And you remember this is a hundred years before.

[00:50:43] Speaker B: A hundred years before they go back, right?

And not only that, they say there are people living in this generation that will see the fulfillment of these things happen.

And the boldness. They say, you can’t sit idly by. We command you to make ready your transportation to help in this. This is not our work alone. We need your help. And this is how we need your help. And they outline all of these ways in which they need the Kings to fulfill the Scriptures. Really. It’s the Gentiles carrying the Jews upon their shoulders and being their nursing fathers and the nursing mothers and what they need to do to help this go around the world. It’s incredibly prophetic.

[00:51:28] Speaker C: I love it.

[00:51:30] Speaker A: I love it.

Great stuff. Let’s keep going.

[00:51:35] Speaker B: And, you know, we’re talking about proclamations.

We have to. And this is the meat of the message this week in the. Come, follow me.

How. How prophetic was it, President Nielsen, in preparation for 2020.

[00:51:51] Speaker A: That’s right.

[00:51:52] Speaker B: Which is. Which is the bicentennial. Right. 200 years since the original proclamation. Not proclamation. Since Joseph Smith had the first vision. The heavens were open and he saw God writes this wonderful proclamation about the restoration again, announcing to the world, this happened 200 years ago. Here we are. Here’s where it’s going on. Like this is.

This has never been for a few select people hiding in a corner, doing their own secret thing. This is a work that God has been saying, taking it out of darkness into the light.

What more can you do when you open the heavens and personally visit the earth and talk to somebody?

When you promise to send your spirit upon anyone that asks about the work, when you send out an official proclamation to the entire world. That, by the way, is translated into German, run through the New York newspaper, sent across the world, and tried to be published in every newspaper that it can.

[00:52:53] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:52:54] Speaker B: To send missionaries into the entire world to try to reach people individually and let them know what’s happening. I mean, what else can the Lord do?

Maybe. Maybe send a broadcast on TV that the entire world can hear twice a year that you kind of understand. I mean, what.

[00:53:11] Speaker A: I mean, the only thing left is just to come back and be like, here I am.

I don’t know, maybe there’s a step between those two that I’m missing, but it’s hard to imagine.

[00:53:23] Speaker B: It’s impressive. I mean, any creative way you think of to say, I mean, in this, it says that the world. We get to the idea that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Right. And we talk about the Lord coming in the presence of everybody. In fact, as I was reading this proclamation, it was talking about those exact prophecies and those exact ideas.

And I had some interesting thoughts on that.

This is what it said. The nations and their kings shall see him coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And I think we’re all waiting for this time. Right. That Christ comes to the earth, that every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that we all see him for who he is.

And, Nate, you’ve opened my eyes when you talk about art and how it influences our beliefs, right? Yep.

[00:54:23] Speaker A: Now we’re talking.

[00:54:25] Speaker B: So when we’re talking about art with that in mind. Let me. Let me read that statement again. The nations and their kings shall see him coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. What does that look like?

[00:54:37] Speaker A: I mean, from, like, the artistic standpoint, it feels very much kind of like the painting of, like, Jesus actually descending from the clouds and all of the angels kind of singing, like, the choirs and stuff. I mean, at least just how it reads.

[00:54:51] Speaker C: That’s how it reads.

[00:54:52] Speaker A: So I don’t know if that’s what it’s describing, but that’s what it feels like would probably be drawn or painted.

[00:55:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And we have that Second Coming painting, right, With Jesus is coming in the clouds. And you’ve got.

[00:55:06] Speaker A: Everybody’s got the trumpets and that whole thing. Yeah.

[00:55:08] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And that’s what I was thinking of. And I read this, and I’m like, well, you know, that hasn’t happened yet. When is this going to happen? What are we waiting on? Like, what needs to happen for this to happen first? And a lot of this is talking about preparing for that and the role of the church in the world to prepare the world for the coming. And that’s a lot of the conference talks. Right. And so maybe we’re still waiting for this event to happen. But as I started thinking about this and Christ coming in the clouds, that phrase to me took new meaning. Because as I’m thinking of Christ coming in the clouds, I’m thinking of third Nephi, chapter 11, Christ descending, a voice, right? And everyone seeing him, and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. That’s what I’m thinking of.

But I’m like, wait a second. Coming in the clouds. Where else do I read about him coming in the clouds?

And Moses, tabernacle, and as he guided Israel, how did he come? What was the clouds? In that case, the clouds was the veil so that nobody could see him.

And so when you talk about him coming in the clouds, what are the clouds?

It’s a covering. It’s a veil.

And so I stopped and I thought about that for a second. They shall see him coming in the clouds. It doesn’t mean that he’s going to be riding a cloud like a chariot, coming down on top of it, that everyone sees him. But what if it literally is in the clouds? Is it a covering in a veil that you don’t see him physically, but he’s coming veiled. And why wouldn’t he be veiled? He was veiled every time he came and appeared to the children of Israel. When he ruled personally on the earth way back when with Israel, how many Israelites actually saw him? Wasn’t it just Moses?

Because Moses tried to get them to.

[00:57:03] Speaker C: See God, but they had to go.

[00:57:04] Speaker A: To the temple to do it. And they weren’t ready to do that.

[00:57:07] Speaker B: And they weren’t ready to do that. And they said, no, we want you to. We don’t want to be burned up in his coming. We would rather you talk to him and then let us know. And so Moses would converse with the Lord on the other side of the veil through the clouds, and that people weren’t allowed to see it. And so coming in as clouds took on different meaning to me, as instead of seeing Christ, maybe the clouds is the veil that covers Christ, that you don’t see him coming. Maybe you don’t see him except for the veil.

And that is the temple protects him. There is a veil, a cloud around that you don’t see him. But also it reminded me of when the Kirtland temple was finished and dedicated. What happened? Christ appeared to Joseph Smith at the Kirtland temple in Oliver Cowdery. And what did the people see? And the people saw a light descend on it, a cloud that covered it. They saw these amazing manifestations. And it’s not even just members of the church that the community was writing about what they saw on this temple when it was dedicated. And did the world not see Christ coming? But he was always veiled when he came. And why would we expect him to be anything but veiled and coming to the world? It’s just an interesting idea. And I thought, oh, go ahead.

[00:58:28] Speaker A: No, I was going to say, like, I mean, what do you think then of the prophecy though, that Christ is going to reveal himself to the Jews and be like, it’s me, and it was me this whole time?

[00:58:37] Speaker B: It’s a good question.

I think there’s more to come. Okay, 100%. I think there’s more to come.

[00:58:44] Speaker A: And that at some point, and that at some point every knee actually will be able to be like, no, he was the one.

[00:58:51] Speaker B: And so let me come right back onto that because I think you’re onto something and I think there’s something there.

When I looked at this Kirtland temple dedication, I wondered, is this a one time event? Because that’s certainly not something that every king and all these people in all the world is seeing. Right? This isn’t this doesn’t quite exactly fulfill everything that I’m looking for.

But I started to do some research and a cloud showed up and manifested on the temple at the Calgary Temple dedication, at the Mexico City temple dedication. This wasn’t a one time thing. This actually happened at several temple dedications that people noticed this impressive cloud descend on the temple and light and just amazing experience which is fascinating. But when we talk about every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, how do we get there? (THIS RESEARCH WAS INACCURATE MY APOLOGIES)

And I think in my mind I’ve always had this moment when Christ shows up from the heavens and everybody sees him. And then they’re like, oh, we were wrong or we were right or we. Whatever this was, this is the one moment that reveals to the world who he is. And at that point every knee bows and every tongue confesses. Lately I’ve started to think about that and does that going to Moroni’s. You shall receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

What if the Lord has established his kingdom here on the earth and it is our responsibility to take that message and to help every knee to bow and every tongue confess to where the world is prepared to where he can show himself to the world. A world that believes.

Which I mean, they’re thoughts, right? They’re thoughts and they’re not all right. And I can say that because there’s more prophecies about the world turning against Israel in Jerusalem and the Lord appearing upon the mount and the mount being cleaved in two. And you talk about the Jews seeing the Savior and recognizing the marks in his hand and saying who? You know, how did that happen? And this is what I received in the house of my friends.

There’s interesting dynamics in this and I feel like a lot of Jews, there’s a lot of messianic Jews that have started to come and look at the Savior as the Messiah that was prophesied and accept him for who he was.

And there’s a lot of Jews that are not. But there is a movement of that. There is some changing in there.

It’ll be interesting to see how things play out. Hindsight is always 2020. And what I’m doing is, I’m talking about some of these things, is applying the hindsight to our moment in time, our snapshot in this restoration process. And I’ll call it that, I’ll call it a process because I don’t think there’s a point where the restoration ended.

[01:01:56] Speaker A: I’m with you.

Right, like, yeah, I agree with that.

[01:02:00] Speaker B: And there’s a point I Mean, what is restoration? Again, we have to go back and define the word in the context. Is it not returning to the presence of God? And there’s a personal restoration, there’s a restoration of the church, there’s a restoration of nations. There’s all sorts of different levels and layers of this.

And how do we as a people turn to God to the point where we can be in his presence? I guess, ultimately is the point that I want to make with all of these impressive Scriptures, because isn’t that what it’s all about, Christ coming and manifesting himself to the earth? Is that not the whole point of the restoration is to get back to where he is, to see him, to be with him, and to be in the presence of God.

That’s the restoration.

[01:02:47] Speaker A: I like it. I like it.

[01:02:49] Speaker C: Good stuff.

[01:02:50] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Let’s keep going. Anything else you want to hit?

[01:02:55] Speaker B: I. I just think when we. When we look at it like this, to me, it makes the words of Isaiah come alive when he says, a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of man. It’s a great and a marvelous work. It’s a powerful thing. It’s not.

It’s not just my ward every Sunday and what we’re doing and talking about the same things and hashing our. Our culture and our traditions and, you know, sitting in Sunday school or having elders quorum. We’re just. Sometimes we get tunnel vision. Sometimes we just feel like it’s such a small thing in our ward. But we got to realize that God meant salvation for all of his children. If we believe we came from Adam and Eve, we believe we were all once in the presence of God. How do we get all of his children back to the presence of God? How do we participate in this work and. And let that excitement run through our veins, fill us, energize us, and find ways to be involved. And. And there are ways for everyone to be involved and think about the importance we have with ministering and. And how does nurturing people help them stay strong and understand and grasp the work that they’re part of and get them into the temple, return them to the presence of God? And how do we reach out to those that we minister to who have fallen a little bit away from the church? What kind of restoration do they need in their lives to get them back to a point where they’re ready to make those covenants or to live up to the covenants that they’re making?

That’s the work that we’re in. And doctrine and covenants talks about let us be anxiously engaged in a good work.

And I think understanding restoration not just from a point of the church falling away from Christ and killing his apostles and changing the covenants and changing the laws and just getting confusion over time, but from a broader perspective of how do we get back to the presence of God and realizing what temples are here on the earth helps us to take advantage of those temples and restore as many people as we can. There’s not only just the restoration of the church to the people living on earth, but there’s a massive restoration underway to save the dead and to provide ordinances for them and bring them into the house of the Lord and have them make covenants and restore them as well to the presence of God. It’s just an incredible work.

[01:05:26] Speaker C: Love it.

[01:05:27] Speaker A: Great, great stuff.

All right, what is, what’s our, what’s our recycle plan for the Doctrine and Covenants from last year?

We going to start getting some of those up, started next week?

[01:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I’m going to do, I believe this week is Doctrine and Covenants Section one. So with our restoration episode that we’re recording right now, I’m going to find Doctrine Covenant Section One, and I’m going to post that up to you. If you do both at the same time or do one midweek, or maybe.

[01:06:02] Speaker A: Do one midweek also, you should just, you should just listen down to it again, too, and just make sure. I mean, this was, this was like, this was day. This was day one. Like, this was four years ago. That’s what I’m saying. It’s like, I just, I’m, I’m, I’m nervous only because I just, I know that the quality of the show went up so much from where we were that it’s like, I’m scared it’s going to be a jarring experience to go back and I’m sure hear what it sounded like when we were first trying to figure out how on earth to even do this. You’re right. It’ll probably be a jarring experience either way.

[01:06:36] Speaker B: So whatever, I guess, you know, think about it every time you watch a series and you get used to the actors on the show changing over time. And then when you go back and watch the very first pilot episode, you’re like, wait, wait a second.

[01:06:49] Speaker A: What the heck?

[01:06:50] Speaker B: These are not the same.

[01:06:51] Speaker A: Let’s just say, look, show us. Show us some grace. If you do want to go back, listen, these. We had some, we had some fun content in these for sure, but we were definitely trying to figure it Out. So be kind.

[01:07:08] Speaker B: Be kind and pay attention because, I mean, posting some of these episodes that you haven’t heard, it’s going to be good. But we’re still going to be popping in live from moment to moment. Like, keep your head on a swivel.

[01:07:22] Speaker C: Yeah, that’s right.

[01:07:23] Speaker B: We’ll make some appearance.

[01:07:26] Speaker A: The thing is, is I think that there’s going to be enough. I, I do think that there’s going to be enough things that we’re going to want to, we’re going to want to talk specifically on, even if they’re kind of just supplementary. I know that this one, we’re almost going 70 minutes on it, but I mean, that’s of plan. We planned on doing that. Some of these bonus ones that we’ll probably be doing might just be like, hey, there’s a couple little things that we want to talk about. They’ll probably be somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. You know, I mean, they might be little quick, quick hits on stuff which, which will be easier on, on our schedules as well. So you might end up getting more content from us because we’ll be reposting some of the old stuff and posting supp. Supplemental stuff kind of in between as well.

[01:08:13] Speaker B: And anytime you want to step in, Nate, you, you look at a section in Doctrine Covenants, I’m like, you know what? Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s make this one live. Anytime you want to step in, there.

[01:08:21] Speaker A: Will, there will probably be, there will probably be instances where we’re going to want to be doing that.

And again, like, I’m, you and I are both lucky that we both get to teach quite a bit in our wards.

And as we’re preparing for a lot of these things, you and I, I feel like always are kind of going back and forth with like, oh, hey, here’s some, here’s kind of a interesting take on X, Y and Z. And when we’re kind of talking about those, I have a feeling that we’re gonna, that more, more often than not we’re gonna say, hey, we should just jump on and do a quick, you know, a quick 20 minute, 30 minute, you know, hit on one of these things. So, so we will, we will be trying to still make sure that we’re adding new content as well as some of the old stuff is what I’m saying.

[01:09:11] Speaker B: Sounds good.

[01:09:12] Speaker A: Appreciate everybody listening. You can get a hold of us@higheeklydeepdive.com if there is anything that you specifically listening would like to actually hear. Us talk about or discuss that is either part of the come follow me or maybe not even part of the come follow me.

If it’s something that we can kind of figure out or, or make, make.

[01:09:34] Speaker C: A worthy podcast out of, episode out.

[01:09:37] Speaker A: Of, hit us up when we’ll read through it and see if it’s something that that makes sense for us to try to do a recording of. But we really do appreciate everybody listening and hoping that, hoping that you find value in this, in this time, listening down to these things. Jason, appreciate you and always the time that you put into this stuff. And I know that our listeners feel the same way.

[01:10:03] Speaker C: So that’s all we have for this week.

[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello.

[00:00:36] Speaker A: Hello.

[00:00:37] Speaker B: How are you, buddy?

[00:00:38] Speaker A: Dude, it’s good to be back. It’s good to be recording again. It’s good to be talking about the scriptures.

I’m excited.

[00:00:46] Speaker B: Okay, Okay.

[00:00:49] Speaker A: I like it.

I like the book of Moroni. I have a new appreciation for Moroni after this week, and I’m actually excited to get into that.

[00:00:58] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I’m excited to hear.

[00:01:00] Speaker C: I’m excited to hear what you got.

[00:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And I’m. And I’m sorry.

I thought. I thought things would be, like, a little bit quieter here at the house, a little calmer.

[00:01:11] Speaker B: Dude, listen, man, if. If we’ve learned nothing from this podcast. This podcast is about family, dude.

Nobody. Nobody listening. Nobody listening is going to be upset that you have happy kids running around in the background doing their thing.

[00:01:26] Speaker A: Hopefully they’re happy.

[00:01:28] Speaker B: They sound happy. They don’t sound like they’re fighting. Let’s just put it like that.

[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I do have kids, so for. For you at home listening that.

Welcome to the show.

Hello from my kids.

[00:01:43] Speaker B: It’s part of our lives, dude. It is what it is, man.

[00:01:46] Speaker A: Hopefully they don’t make a loud appearance tonight.

[00:01:48] Speaker B: All right, well, let’s do it. Let’s get into this.

[00:01:51] Speaker A: All right, so this is. This is going to be another merge episode where we’re taking. When blending the Moroni. So there’s two lessons, right? We. Last week, we. We didn’t quite get together to. To record. This week we. We’re pulling it in and we’re going to blend. So it’s Moroni. It’s going to be one through nine. And it’s interesting. They did this. They left Moroni chapter 10 as a single lesson to be handled in its single week by its own, and they combined the other nine chapters together. No, that’s not true. I’m combining the other nine chapters together. They. They broke it down a little bit different. I believe it was 1 through 6 and then 7 through 9, and we’re. We’re gonna just blend them together. And it’s not bad that they blended one through six, because you look at chapter one and super short four verses, Moroni saying, you know, I thought I’d be dead, but I’m not, so I guess I better write some More not dead yet.

Man, that’s a. That’s a great reference.

[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And I have already put my marker in.

[00:02:57] Speaker C: Okay.

[00:02:59] Speaker A: I’m getting better.

[00:03:00] Speaker B: I’m getting better.

[00:03:02] Speaker C: I’m getting better.

[00:03:03] Speaker A: No, you’re not.

[00:03:03] Speaker C: You’ll be stone dead in a moment.

[00:03:04] Speaker A: Me too.

For me, is where it starts getting interesting. In chapter two, you talk about the conferral of the priesthood.

And I feel like it’s important to note.

I’m just going to read chapter two because it’s so short. The words of Christ which he spake unto his disciples, the twelve whom he had chosen as he laid his hands upon them.

And so I want to focus on this for a second. A lot of the Book of Mormon is addressed to us, is addressed to a wider audience, as addressed to the public, addressed to everyone needs to repent.

These words here, and it’s important to notice this, are the words that Christ spake unto his disciples.

And it’s not the disciples like everyone that followed Christ. It clarifies this which he spake unto his disciples, comma, the twelve whom he had chosen. So they’re using disciples to talk about the 12 apostles. And so this is a select, small group of people. It’s not the large group.

And so I’m going to explain why this is important here in a minute, but just first, let’s take a note of that. Verse 2. And he called them by name, saying, you shall call on the Father in my name in mighty prayer. And after you have done this, you shall have power that to him upon whom you shall lay your hands, you shall give the Holy Ghost. And in my name ye shall give it. For thus do mine apostles.

And so we’re talking about priesthood to be able to confer the gift, the power of the Holy Ghost.

And when we say give the Holy Ghost, I’m going to refer to that as the gift of the Holy Ghost. It’s not just any priesthood. It’s important to notice that this is Melchizedek priesthood.

And there’s a reason I’m going to hit on that too, because chapter two, it’s small. That’s it. It’s right at the end of the chapter three is going to talk about the man in which the disciples who were called the elders of the Church ordained priests and teachers. And they prayed to the Father, they laid their hands on them, and they talk about how they ordained them. And you’re talking about the authority, the ordination and priesthood. And then we get into the sacrament. The sacrament prayers are outlined in chapters four. And chapter five.

And so the beginning of the book of Moroni.

Is not this section of book necessarily intended for the whole general audience of everyone, but that this was the words which Jesus spoke to the twelve, conferring upon them authority, giving them the priesthood, and then it’s also the administration of the priesthood.

Now. 6.

This is where I find it interesting. This is where. This is where I start to see the genius that is moroni. Verse 1. And now I speak concerning baptism. Behold, elders, priests and teachers were baptized, and they were not baptized, save they brought forth fruit that they meet, that they were worthy of it. And as I read that this week, this made me pause.

Why does Moroni say elders, priests and teachers were baptized?

Wasn’t everybody baptized? Why does he specifically call out these offices? And it makes it even more strange when you realize that the guy is writing on plates.

Doesn’t it take a lot less room to just say everybody needed to be baptized and nobody came unto Christ unless they were baptized, and no one was baptized unless they brought forth. So why not only is he saying that the priesthood, but specifically calling out each office, the elders, the priest and the teachers were all baptized.

So that made me think a little bit this week, and I kind of stewed and stumped on that for a bit. Why is it so important that he’s mentioning baptism for them?

And I’ve heard people posit different theories, like maybe even there’s a double baptism. You know, they got baptized in the church, but then they had to get baptized again in order to be elders, priests and teachers. I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t. I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about.

As I was.

And Nate, feel free to jump in at any point if you have something.

[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I am. I know you can’t see me today just because my Internet’s being a little bit funky, but I will for sure jump in. But I am anxiously awaiting where you’re going with this. It’s very interesting so far.

[00:07:50] Speaker A: If there’s anything you need to just jump in, just jump in. But talking about thinking about this, the elders, the priests, and they’re baptized, what I thought of was the path of leadership in the church is the same path as discipleship.

When Jesus came here on earth and began his ministry, he began it with baptism. That was the first thing he did. Before you get to his teachings in the Gospels.

And you’ve also pointed out, Nate, when Christ came to the Americas in third Nephi, chapter 11, what’s the first thing he did to begin his ministry here was baptism.

And if he is being the teacher, the Savior, the great, the God that we all follow, there was no, there was no alternative route. He had to go through the same things that we had to go through. There is no exceptions.

And having leadership, all have to follow the same path of discipleship to be leaders.

I think that’s part of the message. And this is something that I’ve been stewing on a little bit, and this is something that I think has come up in our conversations and in this podcast several times in the past. Nate, when we talk about Christ using the same terms that we use to define Christ, to define us.

And what I mean by that is when we call him the Lamb of God and we refer to him as the Lamb of God because he was the Passover lamb that was sacrificed on Passover, that we would be spared from death, that we would be saved.

And then when he pulls Peter aside and says, feed my sheep and feed my lambs, and he gives the parable of the shepherd that would leave the 90 and 9 to go find the One and lay that lamb on his shoulders and bring him back.

And what’s he doing? In the Gospels we read this, he keeps referring to us as the lamb. We’re the ones that have all, like, sheep gone astray. We’re the ones that are lost. We’re the ones that need to be fed. We’re the ones that need to be taken care of. And in fact, it refers to Christ in those terms as the good shepherd who takes care of the lambs.

So we’re becoming what we referred to him as. But then he says, I need you to be the shepherd. Go feed my sheep. Go take care of your sheep. And he’s taking on all of these names, but he’s applying those same names to us. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve had.

And I say we referring to the history the.

Of, of mankind is that we keep trying to put barriers between us and God. We can’t be like him or, you know, he’s. It’s. It’s sacrilegious to even think about that. We, we try to put these limits, these barriers and separate us from Him. But that was the whole thing that Christ came to do was, was, was passed through those limits and erase them. That the veil was rent at his death to bring us back into the presence of God. That’s the purpose. We can be restored to the presence of God. And he is coming and saying, I Am like you and you are like me. And we are all in this together. We are the same. There’s something unifying about that. So when I look at Moroni’s message here in verse one of chapter six, and he’s talking about the elders, the priests, and the teachers being baptized, and he’s transitioning. This first one is a transition. So the first chapters, chapter two, chapter three, four, five, were all chapters that focused on priesthood, starting with Melchizedek working to ironic. They are priesthood chapters. Chapter six starts off with priesthood, talking about elders, priests and teachers, but transitions from priesthood to the general membership when they talk about baptism and they’re going to start going through. If you read the rest of this chapter in chapter six, it starts talking not so much about the priesthood’s responsibility, but the church’s responsibility. Go to verse 5. The church did meet together oft to fast and to pray, to speak with one another concerning the welfare of their souls. Verse 6. And they did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. And you go through this chapter and there’s a transition. So chapter six, verse one is the bridge that links the priesthood talked about in chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 to the general membership of the church. That’s now going to be the focus in chapter six, seven and eight.

Does that make sense?

[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yes. Can I add maybe a little bit more to this, too?

[00:12:57] Speaker A: Please do.

[00:12:57] Speaker B: Because a lot of what we were talking about this week in our elders quorum lesson was about different stages of holiness. And you and I kind of talked a little bit about this just privately over text, about holy places versus things sanctified and made holy by God. But a lot of the talk in that, it talked about that exact transition, but where it was the opposite direction, where Moses comes down off of Mount Sinai with the commandment from God to do what?

Come up and see him, or he’s coming down. He’s going to be in your midst.

[00:13:36] Speaker C: Hey, everybody here.

[00:13:37] Speaker A: Find my people, wash them, make them clean.

[00:13:39] Speaker B: Wash them, make them clean. Because I’m coming.

[00:13:41] Speaker A: My presence.

[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yep, that’s exactly right. So Moses came down having been sanctified, right? Both from the holy place that he was, but also being in the presence of God. He comes down and says God’s plan is quite literally to have you be holy because he is holy. I mean, his word’s not mine, right?

We talk a lot about the things that we do to separate ourselves from God. Well, we are the only people that continue to find ways to put limitations on what he actually means by that.

God’s whole purpose of having Moses come down was said, prepare everybody, because now all of you are going to do that. And they said no, because they were afraid, which I think is an important detail. But they then had to rely on specifically the priesthood to do what? And that is to be actually the separation between them and God, right? So you actually had to then have degrees of separation of holiness. The priesthood was called the priests. The high priest was the one that could enter the holy of holies. You had to have sacrifices done outside of the temple to prepare even for that. But basically the children of Israel had to rely on somebody between them and God to do the sacrifices for them, et cetera, Right? So this is when Christ came just to highlight the point, as I think it talks about in Hebrews, he then was the high priest, right? Christ himself was the one that then made it so that we could, through his sacrifice, through his name, be directly connected back into the presence of God again. And I think that the, you know, the big picture point that I’m trying to highlight to, or emphasize that you. You already said, but I’m really just trying to put a fine point on is, is what happened after Christ died is that men themselves again begin to put separation between us and God. I mean, it’s funny because it’s. It’s man and fear that continue to not want to buy in fully to what God has on multiple occasions throughout the scripture said, which is, I want my people to be holy because I am holy. Be like me, become perfect like me.

Come unto me and I will, you know, I will bring you back to the presence of God. Everything that God continues to say is, be perfect like me and like my father.

And all that men continue to say is, that’s scary, or we can’t do that, or let’s have another human being be kind of the go between for us instead of us just directly connecting to God ourselves. And when you read, even now, like at times, when you see people argue about this in social media forums or on, you know, I mean, debates and things like that, is that there’s always a limitation that we want to put onto God of what he really means by that.

When he says I command, when he says, I am the shepherd and the lamb, and then he says to us, be good shepherds. Feed my sheep, feed my lambs.

We go, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, hold on. Or when he says, I want you to inherit everything that my father has, we go, oh, that sounds nice. But we know that that doesn’t mean actually everything because, you know, because we can’t possibly. There’s only one person that can. You see what I mean? Like, we. We are the ones that. I just.

[00:17:29] Speaker A: I just.

[00:17:29] Speaker B: I don’t know.

I don’t know how much more clear and direct God has to be about this. When he directly says, I want you to be one with me.

Like. Like God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are one. I want you to be one. If you are not one, you are not mine. Come be one with me. It’s like, at a certain point, I just don’t know how much more direct this commandment can be before we actually just believe him or we just have to flat out say, well, we don’t actually believe what Jesus says. When he says that we can be perfect like him and that we can inherit everything that his Father has. And he.

I mean, it’s like, fine, just say that. You don’t. Just say that. You don’t believe Jesus when he says that he can make you perfect like he is, that he can give you everything that he has.

[00:18:19] Speaker C: You know what I mean?

[00:18:20] Speaker A: I don’t know.

[00:18:20] Speaker B: Do you see what I’m saying?

[00:18:21] Speaker A: I see what you’re saying 100%.

When Jesus says, come, follow me, and it’s something that he said a lot in the New Testament, I believe it shows up over 15 times. There’s seven unique instances in which he said it.

And most of the instances he said it in a very personal way. He’s talking to Peter or he’s calling.

[00:18:50] Speaker B: Somebody the rich young man or whatever it is.

[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yes, the rich young man. And a lot of times the person is actually anonymous, where we don’t know who they are.

They don’t play a significant role. So he’s talking to the apostles who are going to lead the church. He’s talking to general members, if you will. I don’t know if we can call them members at the time, because at the time Christ is practicing Judaism.

But followers, we’ll say general followers who are not necessarily leaders. He’s talking and inviting them to come follow me. In fact, in a group setting, he invited the entire group to come follow him. And he’s talking to potential converts, people that aren’t members or following. And he’s making this invitation that really he’s. He’s doing it to all.

And. And I think the question is, where are we supposed to follow him to? Where is he headed? Where is he going?

And. And Christ was the great high priest. It refers to him as the Great High Priest. Several times in the New Testament, the high priest was a type and an image of Christ.

And I don’t think it’s coincidence that he dies on Passover. We’ve talked about the ramifications of that as a prop prophecy of when he was going to die, how he was going to die. But there are, there are three Jewish holidays in which the, the men were required to show up at the temple and Christ shows up and he is crucified.

Leading up to Passover is one of those events.

But then he shows up at the end of the year around either on the Sukkot festival, which is another one of these events in the Jewish holiday is when he’s showing up to the Americas and we start tying his events to this sacred calendar. What was he supposed to do at this time of year? Well, this time of year is when the High priest goes into the holy of holies, into the presence of God. And what did Christ do when he first shows up after he dies? And he tells Mary, touch me not, for I have not ascended to my Father.

He is the high priest and he is going to transverse that veil and he’s going to enter into his Father’s presence. So when Christ says, come, follow me, and I ask the question, where, where are we supposed to follow Him? I. I say that it is to the presence of God. Because where did Christ go? He is seated. Seated on the right hand of the Father. That’s where Stephen saw him. He was headed to his Father’s presence as the great High Priest. He was entering into the holy of holies. When Christ says, come, follow me, he meant all the way into the presence of God, to be with God. That, that’s, that is our destination.

[00:21:41] Speaker C: Completely agree.

[00:21:43] Speaker B: Completely agree. And he, by the way, it was the same thing. It was the same thing that Jehovah invited them to do in the children of Israel to do in the Old Testament too. I’m just saying it’s like, this isn’t a new, this isn’t a new concept.

[00:21:57] Speaker A: This is a new.

[00:21:58] Speaker B: By the way, it was to the same place, really.

[00:22:00] Speaker A: And it says it so clearly in Doctrine Covenants 84.

If anyone at home wants to go and read that, the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood, and it talks about the Aaronic Priesthood being preparatory. Preparatory for what? It’s preparatory for the Melchizedek priesthood, the Greater Priesthood and the preparatory for what? That’s it. That’s it. The Aaronic Priesthood holds the keys to the administering of angels.

And the Bishop is the one who presides over the Aaronic priesthood. He holds the keys to the ministering of an angels. The Hebrew words, the Greek word, the same means those who are commissioned, those who are sent. He extends callings, he asks people to speak in the ward. He, you know, he is in charge of who gets called. The primary, the ministering, the ministration, the ministering in the ward. The ministering of angels is under the direction of the bishop at the ward level. And all of that is preparatory to prepare its members for the ordinances of the Melchizedek priesthood which are administered in the temple. And the ordinances of the Melchizedek priesthood contain the keys to the mystery of God or the knowledge of God, which is further described as the presence of God, to be in God’s presence, to know him, to return to his presence. And so the gospel, the church is all meant to prepare us, just like Moses, just like you stated so well, Nate. And it says it in Doctrine Covenants 84. Now this Moses plainly understood and taught the people, prepare yourselves, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, and tried to get them to enter into the presence of God. So I’m so glad you went down this road, Nate, because when I read the Book of Moroni and I start to see, and this is why it mattered, that he starts with the Melchizedek priesthood and then he leads into the Aaronic priesthood, and then he transitions into baptism and the general membership of the church. And then what you’re going to find is he’s actually going to transition out of the general membership into the world, the outside world, and he’s taking this journey. What he’s done is in the final chapters of the Book of Mormon, Moroni has crafted a subtle yet profound testament that mirrors one of the most fundamental patterns in sacred literature. And it’s the motif of the fall and return centered in temple worship.

This is, this is the temple in Moroni. And this is what I mean by this. Or don’t let me run over anything. If you had anything to say, Nate.

[00:24:41] Speaker B: No, I’m, I’m. I’m all in. I have some. I have some thoughts after you’re done with this, but it’s just to continue on what you’re already saying.

[00:24:49] Speaker A: Okay, now, to go back to the ancient temple, we have our holy of holies and then we have our holy place and we have our courtyard.

Everyone can come into the courtyard.

And in the courtyard you have to offer sacrifice. That’s where the altar is, the basins that you have, the water to wash. And sacrifice is required before they can go into the temple. Now, not everyone can go in the temple.

Well, all of Israel can come into the courtyard. In fact, Gentiles can even come. They have the court of the Gentiles can come into the courtyard.

But for those that are priests now can step into the holy place, and only one person, the holy of Holies, can enter into there. And so the space gets more and more restrictive as you go in. And what Moroni is doing as he presents his book is he’s starting with a more restricted space when he’s talking about Christ only speaking to his apostles. It’s a very small, narrow audience, and it’s actually in the presence of God, who’s talking in chapter one, Christ.

And now as you start to step out from that, after you get out of the words of Christ, and how do you step out, away from the ordinances of the priesthood which are meant to return us into the presence of Christ? Now you get to the Holy Ghost is going to be speaking and preparing the people. You get into baptism, you’re getting into the membership of the church, ministering to each other, showing love to each other. And I’d like to look at this as comparative to the holy place of the temple, which is outside of the Holy of Holies. And then once you get outside of the holy place, now you’re into the courtyard, right? I look at this as the outside world. So I see this as chapters two through the start of six, priesthood, holy of Holies, comparative six through nine, the holy place, general membership of the church. And then you take it through 9 through 10. The audience has changed. It’s not the 12 apostles, it’s not the members of the church. Now he’s talking about the outside world, and now he’s talking about everyone else. Now he starts to level with them and say, this is what you need to do. When you’ve received these words, we get Moroni’s promise, pray about these. This is. This is how you start to come into this. And there’s such a powerful separation between Chapter 8, when Mormon is talking to his son Moroni in the letter, and they’re talking about the members and what’s going on in the church, who Mormon, by the way, calls the peaceable followers of Christ who have hope in obtaining the rest of the Lord. They’ve obtained that.

And now contrast that with chapter nine, which just details the atrocities, the atrocities committed in war. And he refers to these people. In fact, I’m just going to pull it up real quick and read it. It’s Just so dark compared to the, the, the. The faithful people, the joy and the light and the bright and the. Whatever else. Right? This is what he says.

And now behold my son. I fear lest the Lamanites shall destroy this people, for they do not repent. And Satan stirreth them up continually to anger one with another. I’m laboring with them continually. I speak the word of Lord with sharpness and they tremble in anger against me. And when I use no sharpness, they harden their hearts against it. I fear that the Spirit Lord has ceased driving with them. For so exceedingly do they anger that it seemeth to me that they have no fear of death. They have lost their love one towards another. They thirst after blood, revenge continually. And now my son, notwithstanding the hardness of their hearts. And he talks about having to labor, but he talks about husbands and fathers, these women who are the slain, they feed upon the flesh of their husbands. And just these abominations and these horrific things that are happening.

What a stark contrast with the messages that Mormon was, was sharing with Moroni just previous.

So I, I look at this path from the presence of God, priesthood ordinances, general membership of the church to the outside world, and it reminds me of the Fall.

This is the Fall.

And it’s, it’s super vivid because Moroni is living it. He is describing the fall of the Nephites, just like the fall of Adam and Eve, the descent into sin, the descent into darkness. But not only is he describing the Fall, and he’s describing it as an outward journey out of Eden. So if you go back to the story of Adam and Eve cast outside of the Garden of Eden, in fact, let me pull up because it would probably do some justice to describe this in terms of even how Donald Perry has described this.

Donald Perry has noted that Eden was not merely a primeval garden, but a prototype sanctuary, a sacred setting that prefigured all future temples. By establishing patterns of divine presence, sacred boundaries and ordinances, Eden laid the groundwork for how humanity could understand and approach God. The temple patterns reappear through scriptural tradition. And as we go through the Moroni, we start to see this. But we got to understand Eden as a type of prototype temple. Eden’s role as the original temple provides crucial context for, for understanding this fall and this return.

Donald Perry says the garden was not a sanctuary built of cedar or marble. For it is not necessary for a temple to possess an edifice or structure, but rather it was an area of sacred space made holy because God’s presence was found There this divine presence was manifest in a remarkably direct way. God walked about in Eden using the same Hebrew verbal form, the heath Piel of Halek, that would later describe divine movement within the tabernacle and temple.

This was a. This was a sacred place. And when they were kicked out, they had to go out eastward, so that going back to the temple was a trip back into Eden, back into Paradise. And the temple faced the east, and it would be a westward journey to go right back into, at the very rear of the temple, the holy of holies. It’s a return to the presence of God.

Do you want me to. Want me to go down a little bit more details on how that works, or do you want me to.

[00:31:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you feel like I. This stuff’s super interesting. So if you feel like.

[00:31:57] Speaker C: If you feel like that’s where we’re.

[00:31:58] Speaker A: Going, I’ll just highlight maybe a few key temple features, if that helps. If not, let me know and we’ll just kind of go back to Moroni on this. The physical features of Eden established patterns that would be reflected in all subsequent temples. The Tree of Life stood at the center of the garden, just as the Menorah stood at the center of the temple.

You also have, coming outside of the Garden of Eden, the river that split into the four streams that watered the whole earth. Because it was a river that flowed out of Eden. Eden was called in the book of Ezekiel, the Mountain of God. It was elevated. Water doesn’t run uphill, so it was set on a mountain setting, Eden. The temple was supposed to be built on the Temple Mount, and it was supposed to be an elevated place outside of the temple. You had your basins of water, your lavers where you could wash, and the water was associated with it. The Garden of Eden had cherubims that guarded the way to keep people from entering. To partake of the Tree of Life. The temple had cherubim either engraved in the walls or the curtains separating the rooms in the holy space, so that only people that were allowed to pass through the cherubims would be allowed to re. Enter into Paradise. And so Eden, paradise lost, was encapsulated in the temples. And temple worship always has been and is today in our religion.

The path that one stands as a hill that we look out at the temple and we see it as a reminder of what we lost. We see paradise when we look at that temple. We should see the holy mountain, the mountain of God, and it reminds us of where we came from. That’s where God dwells. That light source, that light on a hill, house of the Lord, holiness to the Lord. And I know you’ve got thoughts on that, Nate, but that is the house of God. That’s where he was and we used to be with him back in the time of Adam, when God walked in the cool of the day with man here on earth. It reminds us of what we lost. It reminds us of that paradise, that goal and what we’re striving for. But it’s got a dual function. In one sense, it’s reminding us of what we lost, but in another sense, it’s restoring us back to the presence of God. And as we prepare to enter into the temple by first making sacrifices and second making covenants and promises. And that covenant path directs us to the temple where we can be returned into the presence of God. The temple is the place in which we can be restored to his presence. So returning back to the story of Moroni, he is walking out of the temple, starting with the presence of God, Melchizedek priesthood, shifting to Aaronic priesthood, shifting to members, and then shifting to the outside world. And this should remind us a little bit of the temple ceremonies as we’re walking out of the presence of God, being cast out of the Garden of Eden and the responsibility. It’s not only is he showing us the fall of his people in the pattern, but he is setting the path whereby we can return to the presence of God. Because he’s laid out the roadmap of how we go back to it. Follow Moroni, starting at the end, chapter 10. Now, when you have received these things, consider them, ponder them. Ask God if they’re not true. Trust the Spirit. The Spirit will guide you. Sacrifice. A broken heart and a contrite spirit. Where does sacrifice happen? Happening in the courtyard of the temple. You’re laying those on the altar, you’re sacrificing it to prepare yourself for the covenants, the Aaronic priesthood, baptism, to be a member of the church, nurturing each other, to be able to prepare yourself to go into the temple to have these Melchizedek priesthood ordinances that will restore you again into the presence of God. This is what it’s all about. And it amazes me that Moroni captures this in his book, the way he set it out.

[00:35:50] Speaker C: Good stuff.

[00:35:54] Speaker A: Reading too much into that. Nope.

[00:35:58] Speaker B: The pattern also stays true too, with what we just got done reading and ether and really throughout the whole book, which is.

He starts with the innermost of the inner vessels first. He starts really with.

He describes what a cleansed Inner vessel, actually, in theory, would do. Not in theory, but in practice would do. Which is make it so that we can qualify then to be in the presence of God again. And so still the pattern of cleansing the inner vessel and then working your way out, the pattern holds true here too, as well. I just wanted to hit that.

[00:36:38] Speaker A: That’s a great point.

And you talk about an ether.

It’s a phenomenal point, because how does ether begin? Is it not Jared, the brother of Jared, coming up the mountain and the Lord piercing the veil with his hand? And is it not starting with the presence of God as they start to. It’s interesting.

[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And then they work their way in the boats into the storm.

[00:37:04] Speaker A: Yeah. He starts with the spirit of. Or not the spirit of God, but the Lord coming and dwelling upon a rock before him. Right. And he’s carried away in a vision. And he sees God sitting on his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels. And he sees the Son of God descending and giving him a book. And it starts in the presence of God. It starts like Adam and Eve in the beginning with the presence of God.

I. It’s. It’s something that we’re always. I don’t know, we talk about the promised land, we talk about where we’re headed, and. And I think something a lot of people miss, and I don’t think we miss it in our church. Grateful for the restoration of the Gospel. I’m grateful for Joseph Smith’s insight, is that our destination is not somewhere we haven’t been. It’s where we started.

This is a restoration.

It’s all about a restoration. Christ came to restore us to the presence of God, to bring us back to paradise, not to visit someplace we’ve never been before. We are strangers in a foreign land, hoping to return from where we came. Whether you start with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and start counting from there, wanting to get back to paradise, or you take it a step back further to leaving the presence of God to come here on earth to receive our body and wanting to return to live with him in the end. It’s a circle.

[00:38:28] Speaker B: Love it. The point you kind of just brought up, that made me think of that, too, which is where I kind of thought you were going with it, is that we talk a lot also about a promised land, kind of in a physical sense. But Lehi, in theory, left the promised land. Right. To come to America, by the way, which we believe is also a promised land. You know what I mean? I think that this comes back to the Idea of holiness, again, which is what God sanctifies is holy, and what God sets apart is holy. What he separates is holy.

And so when you talk about, well, where’s our journey going? Well, it’s to go to the places that God has set apart. I mean, ultimately into his presence. Right. Is to reunite and become one with Him. But I like the idea of not getting too caught up sometimes in, you know, that we need to end up in a specific physical place.

No, we need to end up in the physical places that God has set apart, which are temples, which are our homes, which are the other things that we dedicate to him ourselves. Right.

Something that I know that we had talked about in the past, but it really came home as I was kind of preparing for this lesson about holiness, is that in the courtyard where the priests or those who were set apart were doing sacrifices, apparently they wore the saying holiness to the Lord on a gold plate, on a headband.

And the same saying that we have on the outsides of our temple was worn physically by those set apart or made holy by God while they were performing the sacrifices. And I think that, you know, the obvious connections there. I’m sure I’m not, you know, you don’t need me to connect all of those dots for you. But something that just came really profound to me as I was going through this is understanding the different things that are holy and the different ways that that term was used in the Old Testament. Yes, we talk about the temple being a sacred place. We talk about Mount Sinai being a sacred place. But we need to do what we need to, to sanctify ourselves so that we are also a temple that the Spirit of God can dwell in and continually do what we need to do, I guess, to cleanse and sanctify ourselves as well. And so back to the point that you’re making is like, well, where are we following him to? Well, we can be in the presence of God now, maybe, maybe not. Maybe not in exactly the same way every time. But when you have God dwelling within you, aren’t you in the presence of God? Aren’t you one with him in those moments? Like, we should be striving every day to be cleansed and feel the spirit so that we can be one with God, not just at some arrival point, but continuously.

[00:41:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And you’ve.

You’ve talked about, you know, having a member of Godhead with us, and you’ve talked about it in powerful terms. Right. Like, we sometimes dismiss the Holy Ghost as not being a God or not being as great like, oh, the Holy Ghost is great, but if only I could be in the presence of Christ or the presence of. When he’s just as much a God as God the Father or Jesus Christ the Son.

According to Jesus.

[00:42:18] Speaker B: I mean, according to Jesus, he is.

[00:42:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And to take that one step further, right. When we talk about our body being a temple, and I don’t think it’s a temple just because it can house the Holy Ghost, but kind of along the lines of what you’re saying right now, Nate, is because it houses our spirit and we are God’s, we keep trying to draw that line. I’m not as good as. But do we really understand the Spirit housed within us and our divine nature and where we’ve come from and where we’re heading? Because we are God’s children of a God.

And Christ keeps trying to say, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to bring you to that. I’m trying to make you one of us. This is where you came from. This is your destination. This is where you’re supposed to be. This is what you’re.

I mean, it’s the whole point of the gospel.

[00:43:10] Speaker C: Yep.

[00:43:11] Speaker B: Which I think to the point of why there’s so much emphasis on cleansing the inner vessel is because really, when you take that all of the way and you go, if our bodies are this temple are this house where God can reside, you saw how upset it made Jesus when that temple was defiled. You saw how. You know what I mean? It’s like it’s the one time, at least in the scriptures, for the most part, that you really see Christ upset enough that he starts flipping tables. You know, it’s like. Because at the end of the day, what is it doing other than blaspheming.

[00:43:53] Speaker C: A temple of God? Right. What is it?

[00:43:55] Speaker B: If we’re taking upon ourselves the name of God and we’re defiling these temples, aren’t we quite literally disobeying the first commandment and. And putting other gods before ours or the second commandment? And I might be getting them mixed up.

[00:44:12] Speaker C: I guess.

[00:44:12] Speaker B: You see, the point I’m making is that. Is that you can understand why cleansing the inner vessel is such an important thing to God. Because it’s like, yeah, God didn’t want his temple defiled. He didn’t want the house of the Lord treated in that sort of a way. And then when we just take, you know, when we take this all the way through its logical end, it’s like.

[00:44:35] Speaker C: Yes, you should treat Your body as.

[00:44:41] Speaker B: A temple, as a house that God can dwell in.

Do you feel like I’m taking that too far?

[00:44:48] Speaker A: No, I don’t. I don’t think you’re taking it too far. I think I’m right there with you.

It’s.

It’s interesting when you try to take away that. What does it do.

What does it do when you don’t think you can be like God? When, when it’s not about that is all of a sudden the expectations are drastically lowered, which, by the way, is.

[00:45:19] Speaker B: A safe feeling for a lot of people.

[00:45:22] Speaker A: It’s a safe feeling. But what, what does it change if I don’t feel like I have to stretch for something? If I don’t feel to change, then. Then what’s happened?

Then I’ve blown repentance clean out. Because what. What’s the point of repentance if I don’t have to improve? If I don’t have to be better?

[00:45:42] Speaker C: Yes.

[00:45:42] Speaker A: Why. Why even have repentance? What’s faith and repentance even for?

[00:45:46] Speaker C: This is, this is the exact point.

[00:45:48] Speaker B: I’m saying is, is that. Is that when you have.

[00:45:51] Speaker C: When you have the higher expectations like.

[00:45:54] Speaker B: You, you then can fail, basically. Do you know what I mean? It’s like you now run the risk of not being able to make it. And for a lot of people, that’s. For everybody that I know of. That’s kind of a scary thought is that. Is that you might not be enough.

[00:46:10] Speaker C: Or do enough, you know, and therefore.

[00:46:13] Speaker B: It’S a lot safer and convenient and easier and less scary to basically be.

[00:46:19] Speaker C: Like, well, no, I can be good.

[00:46:22] Speaker B: But I can’t ever be that great.

[00:46:25] Speaker C: You’re just like, like, well, that’s, that’s you saying that.

[00:46:29] Speaker B: That’s not God saying that.

[00:46:31] Speaker C: So anyways, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to derail your point there.

[00:46:33] Speaker A: You didn’t derail anything. And it just, you know, it reminds me of something we’ve even talked about earlier. Not tonight, but in the show, a different episode, right? We talked about the different gifts of the atonement or the power of the atonement. And, And I can say, what good is the gift of resurrection if I have to resurrect as a damned being, I can’t repent, right? If there’s no repentance, then why would I want to resurrect and live forever in hell? That sounds like a terrible gift. Just let me stay dead, right? But what good is the gift of repentance if I can’t change because if I repent and repent and repent, and God says, okay, look, I’m going to free you from all of your sins. You’re perfect, you’re spotless. You’re done. Fantastic. What a wonderful gift. Thank you, God. And then a week later, a day later, a month later, whatever the case may be, I’m back just as desperate as I was before because I haven’t been able to change all the way like I would like to.

And it’s not. What good is repentance today if I’m not perfect?

The gift of repentance is just as senseless to me as the gift of resurrection. Without the enabling power of the atonement to change me when I can change and become better and improve, and there’s going to be a lot of patience with that because it’s not all happening in one day, but as I improve, then repentance means something. Because there’s hope that I can be better enough, that one day I’m not going to have to repent of that anymore, because I don’t do it anymore. I am someone different today than I used to be. When you couple the enabling power of the atonement to change with the gift of repentance with the gift of resurrection, then you have an atonement. Anything short of those three, I don’t see how that would work. I don’t see the beauty or the divinity or the God in something that robs us of any of those three gifts.

[00:48:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I’m with you.

I’m with you. Cool. Let’s keep moving on.

[00:48:47] Speaker A: Moroni to me, has been incredibly valuable in seeing that pattern, walking us through the fall of his people. And literally he’s talking about the fall of the people. But to actually see them crumble and fall is one thing. To have him describe the loss of it from Melchizedek to Aaronic to members too.

It’s a pattern that I never picked up on before. And I love being able to include the temple in this discussion. I think a lot of us, we would love to see the temple talked a lot about in the scriptures to see the ordinances to validate what we’re doing in our temple today.

But those are sacred ordinances that aren’t discussed openly with the world. What does come across and what is preserved is like what we’re seeing here with Moroni today is like what we’re seeing in doctrine and covenants with Moses. This Moses plainly understood and sought to bring people back to the presence of God. And that is what the Gospel is all about. And he tried to prepare them and bring them back to the presence of God. And this is how you do it. So I value that from Ronai, and that was kind of my takeaway there. Something I want to bounce to that I feel like is intriguing is I’m going to step back in time, back in time. Back a few chapters now to Moroni, chapter seven.

And. And this is a letter that Mormon writes to Moroni, that Moroni includes here and verse three, Mormon addresses the people like this. Wherefore I would speak unto you that are of the Church, that are the peaceable followers of Christ, and that have obtained a sufficient hope. Now notice those words.

It’s not you have hope, it’s you have obtained, done, accomplished, you have obtained, check it. A sufficient hope by which you can enter into the rest of the Lord from this time henceforth, even till you shall rest with him in heaven. Which sounds to me very much like the.

What. Where.

What am I trying to say with this?

The calling and election made sure is what it sounds like to me.

You’ve obtained a subscient hope. You can enter into his rest. From this time henceforth, you shall rest with him in heaven. That’s what it sounds like.

Who in the world is Mormon talking to?

That’s what I want to know.

[00:51:37] Speaker C: Tell me.

[00:51:37] Speaker A: It’s an interesting question and to. To kind of dive down this road. I’m even going back to Mormon’s book because Mormon, Mormon to me is going to. Is going to make this question even harder to answer.

But I think it’s worth answering. I think it’s worth asking anyways. And I’ve got thoughts on it, but here we go. So Mormon.

And I’m going to go to chapter now. Let’s start right towards the beginning, chapter two.

And it talks about Mormon wanting to teach the people.

Okay, we got to go back to the Book of Mormon, Mormon’s book and chapter one to try to get the context of what I’m trying to lay out here. Verse 15.

Because I mean, Nate, Mormon, I’m guessing, is writing this later on his life because Moroni, I mean, he’s older and he’s got a letter from his dad. I have to assume that Moroni is old enough to be reading this letter.

And so if Moroni’s a little bit older or Mormon’s a little older and he’s sending this to his son and his son’s reading it, when would it be? Because everything I see from Moroni’s writing is talking about how everybody is in darkness. Everybody has turned to bloodshed. There’s no reasoning with them, they’re angry, they’re killing each other. And so I try to look at this and say, when was it possible that Mormon could have written these words? And so I think maybe earlier on in his life, maybe there was a time. And so Mormon chapter one, verse 15 and I being 15 years of age and being somewhat of a sober mind, therefore I was visited of the Lord and tasted new the goodness of Jesus. And we, we talked about the parallels and similarities with Joseph Smith on this.

But verse 16 and I did endeavor to preach unto this people, but my mouth was shut. Not only was his mouth was shut, and I was forbidden that I should preach unto them.

So from the age of 15, he was forbidden to preach to the people.

And verse 17 but I did remain among them, but I was forbidden to preach unto them because of the hardness of their hearts. And because of the hardness of their hearts, the land was cursed for their sake. So again I asked the question, who in the world is he talking to that he found peaceable followers of Christ when he was forbidden to even preach to the people because of how bad they were? And I’m telling you, I don’t think they got better and then a lot worse.

I don’t think that they, they were so bad at 15 he couldn’t talk to them that maybe at the age of 20 or 30, they were all of a sudden really good. And the Lord said, okay, teach them all you want. And so good that they were going to be not only good Mormon call them peaceable followers of Christ. Can you really characterize the Nephites of this period of time as peaceable followers of Christ that had obtained a hope, the calling of election, made sure that they would enter into the rest of God? Do you really think that could have applied to them for a short period of time of one or two years?

So again I asked the question, who in the world is Mormon talking to? It seems so inconsistent with what we’re reading that it causes me to wonder, to think, to pause.

And, and again I’ve asked this question, who was he talking to? And I’ve had some people suggest maybe he’s just talking to his family. And again, where in the world did he even get family from? If you’re 15 years old and you’re forbidden to preach to a people that willfully rebels and you can’t even, you can’t even talk to the gospel, are you going to build? Are you going to be comfortable enough to marry someone from there and try to teach them. And this is a weird one for me. This is a weird one for me.

[00:55:46] Speaker C: I’m interested in seeing where you landed.

[00:55:49] Speaker A: Are you ready? Because this is going to be something that’s a little bit far out there even for me.

[00:55:55] Speaker C: Oh man, I need my ufo. I need my X file sound again.

[00:56:00] Speaker B: I’ll have to find it.

[00:56:01] Speaker C: All right, I’m ready.

[00:56:04] Speaker A: I wonder. And I can’t even take credit for this. Somebody else had actually landed on this night. And if I find who it was, I’ll credit it in here. They mentioned the possibility and the more I think about it, the more logical and reasonable it appears to me.

What if Mormon was teaching the Anti Nephi Lehis?

Now think about this for a second because you would think that they’re all just blended together and they’re all about to be destroyed and those people don’t even exist.

But, but go back to Alma when they’re talking about the Anti Nephi Lehi’s. I believe it’s in chapter seven. I could be wrong.

Mormon, you remember, is putting this book together and he talks about the decision that they made to bury their weapons, to follow Christ. And he says, and they were righteous even until the end.

Who else can say that except for somebody who was alive at the end?

And he says, even until this day.

So according to Mormon in Alma, the Anti Nephi Lehis were still righteous even up to the end times.

So what happened to the Anti Nephi Lehis? If we, if we remember right, the Anti Nephi Lehis were first went from the land of the Lamanites to the land of Jershan where they got the land of their inheritance.

But then the Nephites needed the land of Jershan to place their armies there to try to protect them. So they relocated the Anti Nephi Lehis into the land of Zarahemla.

After a time of being there in the land of the Zarahemla, the Anti Nephi Lehis departed into the land of the north and they were never heard from again.

They physically, geographically separated themselves from the Nephites were a separate distinct people that don’t show up in the records anymore.

And, and to make this even more interesting, go back to the Book of Mormon, the small Book of Mormon inside the Book of Mormon.

When we read about Mormon’s life before he saw the Lord at the age of 15, it says that his father carried him, verse six. And it came to pass that I, being 11 years old, was carried by my father into the land southward Even to the land of Zarahemla. So where did Mormon come from?

Mormon was living somewhere up in the north and he was carried by his father down into the land of Zarahemla to the Nephites where he became a Nephite commander.

So he’s a Nephite commander. He’s fighting in the wars very young age. He becomes a commander of the armies. And then it gets to the point where they want to take the war because they’re successful, down into the Lamanites and fight them.

And he separates himself. He says, I’m not going to take a part of this. I don’t want to go. I’ve told you not to. You’re going to do it anyways. They lead out their excursion and they lose. And not only lose, but they get slaughtered. And Mormon steps down from guiding them and disappears. Where does he go? I think at this time and just trying to piece this together, I can’t say this is conclusively yet, but to me it makes sense if he goes back to the land northward to be with the people that he was with who are peaceable followers of Christ where he can get married, where he can raise a family, where he can have Moroni and where he can teach. And now you start to get where the content for Mormon chapter seven, Mormon chapter eight are coming from as he’s speaking to followers of Christ.

And in Moroni it’s even making these interesting distinctions that the Lamanites will put to death any. And it says Nephite who will not deny the Christ. But they don’t say anything about Anti Nephi Lehis or Lamanites. They are specifically targeting the extermination of the Nephites. The Anti Nephi Lehis are not part of this war and they don’t have that obligation to go down and protect a violent, bloody, a bloodthirsty, warmongering, wicked people like they did before, where the people were willing to lay down their life and die and defend them.

It’s interesting now if you go back and you read again. So Mormon 7, Mormon 8 are, excuse me, Moroni 7, Moroni 8 are Mormon’s letters to Moroni as he’s writing about teaching the people. But Moroni 9 Mormon has changed locations again and he’s back heading up the troops. And the letter he writes to Moroni, he says, I hope to see you again soon. I think Moroni is still young. I think he’s still being raised in the land northward and his father is down back commanding the troops until. Until Moroni is old enough to be able to come down and join him in the fight for his people. I think it kind of jives and makes sense.

[01:01:32] Speaker C: That doesn’t seem that crazy to me.

[01:01:35] Speaker A: Okay.

[01:01:36] Speaker C: I don’t know. I wouldn’t have needed my X Files music for that.

[01:01:40] Speaker A: Okay.

[01:01:40] Speaker C: I like it, but.

[01:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:01:42] Speaker C: I mean, I’m just saying, like.

[01:01:45] Speaker B: That.

[01:01:46] Speaker C: Doesn’T feel like it’s some huge stretch.

[01:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah. It seemed a little out there when I first started.

[01:01:54] Speaker B: Why? But the more I’m missing, maybe I’m.

[01:01:56] Speaker C: Missing why that should sound crazy to me.

[01:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I don’t know. I always just kind of grew up with the assumption that I almost just saw them as Nephites. Right. And they just must have died.

[01:02:08] Speaker C: Yeah, they kind of just assimilate and.

[01:02:11] Speaker A: They’Re not mentioned anymore. And so you think, well, if they’re not mentioned anymore, they obviously don’t exist. But here’s the thing about the Book of Mormon. Where does it talk about the Mulekites? It only talks about them where they interacted with the Nephites. You don’t hear about their history before they get there. You don’t hear about their history even afterwards. You know nothing about the Mulekites unless it was their interactions with the Nephites. This is the Nephite record. And the same is true about the Lamanites. I can’t tell you any of the things about the Lamanites, their cities, where they were, how they lived, anything, unless it directly interacted with the Nephites. That’s the only extent I get.

[01:02:53] Speaker C: That’s a really great point that I think that is kind of obvious when you say it, but you don’t really ever think about it like that. Which is why I think, by the way, too, to. The reason that I think that that’s such a great point is that a lot of people, I think, sometimes try to poke holes in the Book of Mormon. Being like, well, this makes that whole. This whole area of land feel like such like a small.

You know what I mean? Like, it tells the story of, like.

[01:03:22] Speaker B: A really closed loop.

[01:03:24] Speaker C: And you’re like, well, sure, if you assume that these are the only people that are living over here for the entirety of the Book of Mormon, you’re just like. When you consider this is such an actual small record over such a large period of time, then you’re like, oh, yeah, what you just said helps even make that make just a lot more sense as well.

[01:03:46] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s a very big focus on this. When we tend to apply this to everyone. When Mormon says that he was forbidden to preach, it wasn’t that he was forbidden to preach. It says he was forbidden to preach to them, referring specifically to the Nephites. He wasn’t forbidden to preach, period.

[01:04:07] Speaker B: Sure.

[01:04:09] Speaker A: When it talks about. And their land was filled from east to north to south to west, just full of buildings. That’s not to say the Lamanite land or the Antonio. That’s their nation.

This was the land of the Nephites, and that’s how they talked. The land of this, the land of that. The land was always very specific to a group of people not talking about the entire world.

It’s very similar to what you get in ancient Near Eastern cultures when we conquered from sea to sea. And what they’re saying makes it sound like they’re talking about the entire world and say, I’ve conquered the entire world and the entire world of this people. The entire world of. It’s qualified. It’s qualified. And this matches a pattern of what we see on a larger scale.

[01:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that.

[01:05:09] Speaker C: I mean, yeah. Like, to me, it’s.

[01:05:11] Speaker B: I.

[01:05:11] Speaker C: Everything you just described actually makes a ton of sense.

[01:05:16] Speaker A: Oh, good.

[01:05:18] Speaker C: Anything else you want to hit before.

[01:05:19] Speaker B: We wrap it up this week?

[01:05:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, the sacrament prayers are here. I’m sure we could have a lot of fun talking about the sacrament, but I feel like we’ve already been down that road. I’m not going to go there tonight.

What I did want to talk about, and it’s funny because I. I read this and I almost just read the opposite.

It’s. It’s like. It’s like, you know those exercises where you. Where you stare at certain colors for. For a long period of time or whatever. And then you look at a white piece.

[01:05:52] Speaker C: Yeah. The American flag. I love that thing, dude.

[01:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I look at this and it’s in Moroni, chapter seven. And. And even though I’m reading one thing, I’m actually almost kind of visualizing another.

And what I’m talking about is, can a man being evil do that? Which is good at the face value? You sure hope so, right? Because if not, then what’s repentance for? You think of if an evil man can’t repent, then there’s no salvation. There’s no great point, whatever that.

[01:06:24] Speaker C: Yeah, right.

[01:06:25] Speaker A: I don’t think that’s. Here’s.

[01:06:28] Speaker C: Okay.

[01:06:29] Speaker A: I’m just going to read a few verses and I. And I think I can actually break this down in just two small, simple examples and hopefully kind of explain where I’m seeing these contrary. These complementary colors.

[01:06:41] Speaker C: Okay.

[01:06:43] Speaker A: Verse 5. I remember the word of the Lord, but saith, by their works, you shall know them. If their works be good, then they’re good also. And for behold, hath God, or God has said, if a man, being evil, cannot do that which is good. For if he offereth a gift or prayeth unto God, except he do it with real intent and profiteth him nothing, for it is not counted for him as righteousness. For behold, if he, being evil, giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly. So to try to find an example. And I’m talking about an evil man not being able to do something. Right? But like I said, I’m seeing complimentary here.

If. If I have a child or somebody who has the pure intentions or the best intentions to try to do something nice for me.

And. And you know what? We don’t even have to go through a child, because that’s almost like punting and making it too easy.

Say, Nate.

[01:07:39] Speaker C: Oh, do you.

Oh, okay, I’m ready.

[01:07:45] Speaker A: Do you have any allergies, Nate? Do you have any. Do you have anything that is just something you hate?

[01:07:50] Speaker C: I mean, there’s plenty of things that I hate, but let’s see. Allergies, I don’t do well with anesthetic.

[01:08:00] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.

[01:08:02] Speaker C: But not peanuts or anything. I love peanuts, man. I eat those things all day.

I might not be the best example here.

[01:08:10] Speaker A: This might not be the best example. All right, I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I’m gonna see complimentary on this one again. And. And you said you love peanuts and you can eat them all day, and I’m gonna pretend like you said that you can’t eat peanuts and you hate those.

[01:08:21] Speaker C: Yes.

[01:08:23] Speaker A: And even that. I’ve probably just blown this all out of the water.

[01:08:26] Speaker C: I’m ready, though. Now you gotta see it through.

[01:08:30] Speaker A: If I. If. I’m thinking pretty highly of you, mate. And I’m so happy with everything that you’ve done, and I just wanted, like, make this Christmas season special for you. And I prepare this whole big thing of, like, peanut butter bars. I know your wife makes, like, the best peanut butter bars.

[01:08:49] Speaker C: She does pumpkin bars, but. Yeah, keep going.

[01:08:52] Speaker A: Oh, dang it.

[01:08:53] Speaker C: You’re good. Keep going, though. So you made me these. You make me these things, dude. You make me these because. Yeah, peanut butter bars.

[01:08:59] Speaker B: I like it.

[01:08:59] Speaker C: Okay.

[01:09:00] Speaker A: And I bring them over, and you’re like, dude, I can’t eat these. I’m allergic.

Do you hate me for it, though? Right? Like, could you. Could you really be mad at me, or do you look at that, man? Like, man, I really appreciate the thought that he tried to do that, even though totally freaking dropped the bomb.

[01:09:20] Speaker C: One, I could never hate you, and two, I totally know what you mean. You’re just like, man, that’s so cool that. That, dude, I’m not going to be able to eat these.

[01:09:26] Speaker B: But that’s so.

[01:09:28] Speaker C: Rather this dude thought of me to do this. Yes. That’s how I would approach that.

[01:09:33] Speaker A: And I think that’s how we would approach a lot of these things. If it’s a good person with good intentions and they’re honestly trying to help us, it’s hard to get mad at them, even if what they did ends up hurting us.

[01:09:46] Speaker C: Okay, let me ask you one. Let me ask you one, because you said it was punting. What if your kid, who is a fantastic artist at six years old, says, dude, my dad tells me how great of an artist I am all the time. I am going to go paint his.

[01:10:03] Speaker B: Car with this key.

[01:10:06] Speaker C: I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I know he. His favorite design is this smiley face that I draw at kindergarten. I’m gonna go put that on the side of his Bronco. Now what do you do?

[01:10:17] Speaker A: Nate, that actually did happen.

[01:10:18] Speaker B: What?

[01:10:20] Speaker A: It was. It was Hannah.

[01:10:21] Speaker C: No.

[01:10:22] Speaker A: And her friend.

[01:10:23] Speaker C: No.

[01:10:23] Speaker A: They drew what on the side of the Suburban with rocks?

[01:10:27] Speaker C: Oh. I mean, but did the picture look good?

I mean.

[01:10:31] Speaker B: Here you go.

[01:10:31] Speaker C: Okay.

[01:10:35] Speaker B: Okay, now that we got that.

[01:10:37] Speaker C: Okay, great. Now, see, now we’re using real examples now. Now tell me where you’re going with this.

[01:10:42] Speaker A: But. But at the same time, whether or not I’m happy with the results, I don’t think my child’s a hellion, and I don’t think she’s going to hell. She. If. If. If. If. If she knew better and. And she did it to, like, make me mad.

[01:11:00] Speaker C: Yes.

[01:11:01] Speaker A: Then that would be one thing, right? Yeah, but. But. But the. But the fact, like, you understand where people are coming from, and I know the saying that hell is paved with good intentions.

[01:11:11] Speaker C: Yeah.

[01:11:11] Speaker A: And. And that goes against with what I’m trying to prove here. But. But what I’m. People who are honestly just happy trying to do the right thing. Can you be mad at them if it’s an honest mistake, if they didn’t mean to and they’re going out of their way to try to fix it, or they’re very. Because they never meant to hurt you from it? Can you really be mad if there was not one ounce of evil in them? They’re just trying to do the right thing or something that they thought was helpful.

[01:11:45] Speaker C: I see what you mean. I’m with you.

[01:11:48] Speaker A: And here’s what I want to land on.

For me, it’s easy for me to have that kind of mercy on a neighbor, a daughter, a friend, a family member, whoever. Just like. You know what? I get it. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. It didn’t turn out super well. But I see where you’re coming from, and I just. I’m super grateful for that. I can look past that, but for whatever reason, it’s hard for me to imagine that God can look past that with me when I do something wrong. And I’m like, oh, man. And we start to think of we as evil. But can we really be that evil if we just didn’t understand, we didn’t get it. We were trying to do the right thing. So a lot of the things that we count as sins because we’re. We’re trying to teach ourselves that we have to repent. We’re trying to teach ourselves to be accountable. We’re trying to become like God.

But. But sometimes to take a step back and see ourselves as I imagine God sees us, because that’s how I see someone else.

Then can an evil. Just like an evil person?

And, you know, I’m trying to mount the. I’m trying to stick the dismount here. And I almost think you have to have a second example when you talk about an evil person.

Like, if an evil person is trying to do something good, say someone that hates you, that’s actively trying to ruin you, that’s. That’s doing everything and going out of their way to try to make everyone hate you, to sway public opinion against you, to get you fired, to do whatever to whatever. Whatever. If that person shows up, rings your doorbell. Nate. And gives you a $20 bill and smiles at you, where’s your mind?

[01:13:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I would think that they probably used it as toilet paper.

[01:13:49] Speaker B: Before they brought it over.

[01:13:51] Speaker A: You can’t trust them. You don’t even want to accept it because you don’t know where that’s going to lead you. And you’re suspicious of it, and you just can’t give them any. There’s no leeway.

And. And so that’s the. That’s the. That’s the complimentary image I see with this is sometimes I think we’re overly hard on ourselves.

But remember that God sees us the same way we see each other. And if we’re genuinely just trying to do good.

It’s not. It’s not a pass. It’s not saying you don’t have to do anything at all.

But it’s saying, look at someone who’s really out there and getting out of bed each day and trying. Don’t you want to give that person a little bit more leeway and chance to get it right and a little bit more information and context so they can do better the next time and a little bit more patience and development to try to help them come along? I just think these verses give me perspective to see myself as God sees me and to be patient with myself as I try to be who I can become. If that makes any sense.

[01:14:59] Speaker C: It totally does. I like that. I want to throw.

Because I have two examples from the scriptures that I would like to see. And dude, I may totally just edit this out.

I’m even going to leave me. I’m leaving me saying that I might edit it out. Even if I do edit it out, I will literally, if we edit it out, come back and be like, nope, I edited it out.

Because let me throw you two examples that I think that sometimes we use.

[01:15:26] Speaker B: As.

[01:15:30] Speaker C: A good person, in one case, purposefully making a bad decision supposedly for the greater good. And that’s. There’s a lot of people that think that Eve in the garden basically was like, didn’t just make a mistake, but like, very deliberately showed like a superior wisdom in taking the fruit, knowing that she was disobeying, but because she also knew at the same time it was for the greater good one. I’m going to tell you, I don’t necessarily buy that line of thinking, but I’m interested in seeing if this works into your example at all.

[01:16:15] Speaker A: So you want me to apply this logic to Eve.

[01:16:17] Speaker C: I’m wondering if this is if. Because some people, some people, to me, it’s like this. Your example makes more sense the way that you just described it in the case of, she’s going, no, she made a mistake and God had patience with that. And even though there was natural consequences, still found ways to make everything possible for them to come back from the mistake. To me, it’s like, that makes a lot more sense in the way you describe it. And that’s the reason I thought of it. Because some people try to. To say, no, Eve was fully aware of what she was doing, but made the bigger picture decision that I should disobey. Because me seeing the big picture, I know that that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. And I’m like, oh, man, that would almost doubt to me, would almost go.

[01:17:05] Speaker B: To the opposite of.

[01:17:06] Speaker C: You know what I mean? To me, it’s like that almost would be the inverse of that. And that would be like, oh, then you actually had bad intentions and made a mistake, or not even a mistake, but almost deliberately disobeyed. And therefore that almost takes away. That almost takes away from the mercy of God and the patience of God and the humanness of Eve, going like, yeah, I just, I made a mistake and luckily God loves me enough to help me fix it. You know what I mean? It’s like it almost changes that relationship in a way that I don’t.

[01:17:38] Speaker A: Like, I hear what you’re saying, and, and I think, I think it’s an apt example of. If we look at this as. I knew that we had to do this and that God’s plan wasn’t going to work, therefore I did this, does that not put her in the same light as somebody before we came here that said, I have a better plan. Yes, I know, better than God, and I’m going to make sure nobody gets lost.

Who, by the way, was the one that was trying to get her to follow in the first place?

[01:18:10] Speaker C: Yes, that’s, that’s, that is where I come out on that.

[01:18:12] Speaker B: I was just, I, I just thought.

[01:18:14] Speaker C: Of that as we were going through. And, and here, let me throw you my second example.

Judas.

You know, Christ needs to be crucified and he needs to go through that process to fulfill the plan, right? To fulfill the atonement. There. I’ve seen arguments made that part of the reason that we should, I don’t know, maybe show more, I don’t know, patience and sympathy to Judas is.

Could Judas have used the excuse? Well, you can’t be mad at me because I’m just part of fulfilling the plan. I’m doing what had to be done for the plan to be fulfilled. You know, why condemn me? Why condemn me for basically just playing my part in the plan?

And it is interesting because what was Judas excuse of why he was upset at Christ in the first place or what? You know, it was like, oh, well, we’re not using the, we’re not distributing, you know, the funds, you know, or whatever it is. And so in a similar thing, it’s like, I look at that and I’m like, well, that language also is very similar to another person also present before this life and in a garden, which is. I’m just doing what has always been done. You know what I mean? Like, hey, look, you need me to fulfill Part of this plan too. Why condemn me for it? I’m like, I wonder if there’s kind of a little bit of a crossover into that parallel as well. Of like, well, yeah, this might not be the right thing that I’m doing, but in the bigger picture it has to be done. So don’t condemn me for just helping the plan move along. I don’t know if that one’s as close to the Eve one as I was thinking, but those are at least the two things that kind of popped up in my brain when we were talking about what the flip side of that would be of a destructive motive supposedly doing. I mean in both of these cases, destructive things. But they could argue, well, it’s for.

[01:20:24] Speaker B: The greater good or well, it’s for.

[01:20:26] Speaker C: The, it’s for the bigger picture part of the plan being fulfilled. I don’t know.

[01:20:31] Speaker A: Or even take it a step further back. Right. I mean, you’re circling the bush with Satan himself.

[01:20:40] Speaker C: There you go. Yeah, you’re right.

[01:20:42] Speaker A: And saying that I am going to save all of mankind, isn’t that a good thing? If you’re saying that I can save everyone, isn’t that a good gift? Did he have the best intentions to begin with?

And could you?

[01:21:01] Speaker C: No. I mean that’s the way to really nail the flip side of somebody making a mistake with good intentions. And it’s hard to be mad at them. You can see why God would hate evil and the embodiment of it. And that is as the embodiment of evil going, I’m going to, under the guise of a good gift, do the most damn damning, destructive possible thing to your children.

[01:21:33] Speaker B: Like that’s.

[01:21:34] Speaker C: You just nailed it.

Yeah, you nailed it, not me. That is the ultimate example of, well, what’s the opposite?

I would venture to say that most people in our life don’t have the most evil intentions. I think humanity is a general like, dude, there’s some really terrible people. But it’s hard to imagine that in our day to day lives we’re ever really going to encounter truly like an evil person giving us a good gift.

Because that doesn’t usually happen.

[01:22:07] Speaker B: Right?

[01:22:07] Speaker C: Like that’s just not reality.

Instead though, you kind of nailed what you do see more often than not. And we’ve talked about this before, but I think that it’s always worth bringing up. Especially even in that example of like.

[01:22:19] Speaker B: The pre earth life.

[01:22:20] Speaker C: It’s hard for me to think that Satan is able to convince such a massive amount of people to be led astray under the guise of hey, everybody, let’s just rebel against Father. Let’s. I know he wants us to do this, but let’s. Trust me, my plan’s better. Don’t worry about the details.

[01:22:39] Speaker B: I’ll figure it out.

[01:22:40] Speaker C: Come on, let’s just rebel. Like, I have a hard time believing that that was the pitch.

The pitch to me makes so much more sense, is, hey, we love all of our family. Why wouldn’t we want anybody from our family not being back with us if.

[01:22:56] Speaker B: We really loved everybody? Love, love, love, love.

[01:23:01] Speaker C: If you truly loved your brothers and sisters up here, why wouldn’t you make sure that they make it back under any circumstances?

[01:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.

[01:23:09] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. We do have to kind of go against this plan that we’re being presented, but it’s worth it if it means that we all get back. You see what I mean? Like, that’s supposedly a good gift, right?

It’s being presented as a good gift, at least under the guise of love and niceness and kindness and all of these other words that we strive for as a culture. But I don’t think actually understand what they mean.

And I think that maybe that’s the. You’re kind of helping me. Kind of answer the question, which is, yeah, maybe. Maybe it’s not necessarily like an evil person come over to your house and giving you a hundred bucks. Dude, if an evil person came to my house and was like, hey, man, here’s a million dollars, I’d be like, that’s actually a pretty dang good gift. Like, I don’t know. You know what I mean? Like, no strings attached.

[01:23:55] Speaker A: I’ll take it. But wouldn’t you wonder what the script is? You would wonder, but do the thing is, fine.

[01:24:00] Speaker C: But the scriptures, okay, the scripture is, though, not about wondering what the gift is about. The thing is, I think you’ve really helped me kind of sort out where the point of this actually is, which is if somebody is from an evil place, they’re probably presenting you a gift as if it’s good. And therefore, you need the spirit to help you go, hey, man, well, what’s the catch?

And in every time that Satan’s presenting all of these supposedly good things, there’s always a catch, man. There’s always another side of that equation.

[01:24:36] Speaker A: Dude.

I’ve come across.

I think I come across this and the world that we live in with social media, with influencers, and what is our motive? What are we trying to do? I mean, you and I, Nate, we’ve got a podcast, and it’s not like we have the greatest following in the world, but we’re not.

[01:25:05] Speaker C: I beg to differ. Our following is the most awesome in the entire world. Our numbers.

[01:25:09] Speaker A: I’m sorry, I’m not talking about quality. I’m talking about quality.

[01:25:11] Speaker C: I know you are, but I’m just making sure to still give a shout out to all the people that do. Listen, dude, the thing is, for two dudes that are just doing this, our numbers are fine. Like, that’s, that’s definitely like.

[01:25:21] Speaker A: But, but at the same time, like, we, we don’t have any ulterior motives. We’re. We’re not sitting here trying to promote products and, and get our name out there and, and make a bunch of.

[01:25:30] Speaker C: Money or any money. Yes.

[01:25:32] Speaker A: And, and, and I’m not trying to slam anyone, that is by saying this. And, and if I, if I stick my foot too far in my mouth, feel free to bail me out or just edit this out completely.

But I feel like. And, and what I have seen is there are some people that do prey on the faith of others in, in ways that I don’t believe that the church is true. I stopped believing the church is true a long time ago. But I’m going to stay in the church because the church gives me an audience.

[01:26:04] Speaker C: There are people.

[01:26:05] Speaker A: What I’m going to do is I’m going to talk to the, to the church and I’m going to use that audience and I’m going to sell them products to help them leave the church.

[01:26:15] Speaker B: Yep.

[01:26:16] Speaker A: Because I want to provide them with a service that really is. It’s my gift is what I’m doing.

And what is their gift and what are they selling and what are they getting out of this is. That’s my income. Even though I don’t believe the church, even though I don’t follow the church, I’ve got to stay in the church because that’s where my bottom dollar is. That’s where.

Go back to the New Testament when they’re teaching the gospel and they’ve got their statues. And he says you can’t pray to statues anymore and you’re talking about the bottom dollar. And so now all of a sudden, you’ve got to shut that down or fight it. There are people whose bottom dollar is based off of profiting from the members of the church and not in a constructive let me build your faith sort of way. But how do I help you find the door? And I’m going to keep praying on the church to try to get as many people out as possible because that’s where I can make my Quick buck.

[01:27:12] Speaker C: There are some very high profile things even going on kind of very publicly right now with people that do specifically that. I mean, there’s.

And not, I mean, one that actually, you know, obviously made the news and stuff like that is you had, you know, what’s her bucket, the psychologist that’s going to prison, you know, and the whole thing. But, but very much literally kind of marketing her whole pitch to church members as like, hey, couples therapy and this stuff like that. But having had some friends, very close friends of mine, have their lives basically completely upended by this person. You just go like, oh, okay, cool. Like, but you said it, right?

[01:27:52] Speaker B: It’s like.

[01:27:53] Speaker C: But it’s under the guise of like, well, I’m pitching my product to the church members and using that to kind of like build trust in what it is that I’m selling. But I mean, you have a lot of people right now that aren’t even necessarily doing anything illegal like she was, but that very much use their high profile to yes, do things that are very, very, very against the doctrine of the church and very destructive to the church that are.

But like you said, Stan, I think that that’s a really great example. I mean, and the thing is, like, I, I would still even personally be like, yeah, cool. I don’t even then don’t think that they’re probably necessarily doing it to be evil. But at the same time, like, this.

[01:28:37] Speaker B: Is why you have to have the.

[01:28:38] Speaker C: Spirit of discernment is so that you can. You personally, so that me and you can look through those things and just go like, oh no, it’s not right.

[01:28:46] Speaker A: And this is where we need to land on this, Nate. And I’m going to read verse 15:16. Because you said it, man, you said it. For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge. Wait, what?

[01:28:58] Speaker C: Say it again, baby.

[01:28:59] Speaker A: Say it loud and clear. Given unto you to judge.

[01:29:03] Speaker B: Correct.

[01:29:04] Speaker A: That you may know good from evil.

[01:29:06] Speaker C: Yep.

[01:29:07] Speaker A: And the way to judge is plain. That you may know with perfect knowledge as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the spirit of Christ is given to every man that he may know good from evil. Wherefore I show unto you the way to judge for everything thing which inviteth to do good and to persuade to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ. Wherefore you may know with the perfect knowledge it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then you may know what the perfect knowledge it is. Of the devil. Now. Now, as I was reading this, Nate, there’s one word that stood out to me even. Even bigger than judge.

And. And that is thing.

When I go back and read this, that you may know with the perk that he may.

Where am I at the way to judge for every thing which inviteth to do good? And the reason why thing stands out in my mind is it’s not person.

And I have to wonder. I mean, you gave the example of Eve, you gave the example of Judas.

And I can easily judge the actions and say if this was what God said not to do, or if this is in rebellion or look at the consequences, did this persuade people to believe in Christ? Or this. The actions themselves, I think are a lot easier to judge than the people themselves.

And so going back, and maybe there’s the kicker that when we’re talking about judging everything, because you know what? We are all going to be at one point in time riding on the car, so to speak. Right. In thinking we’re doing the right thing and pursuing it with all of the energy we have.

We’re actively destroying something when we think we’re creating a work of art and that’s a wrong thing. And most of us, like you said earlier, have all the best intention in the world and don’t realize what we’re doing is so destructive. And when we come to that realization, boy, we sure hope that repentance is there for us and that there’s a way that we can escape that. And it takes us back to the atonement. So why write off the person and judge them as evil when what Moroni is saying here is to judge the thing? We can look at it and we can censor the action. We can say that that is wrong and we can say this needs to stop and this behavior needs to end. But. But maybe that’s as far as we should go. Because before we write people off, even Judas himself, how do we know his intention?

Was he trying to prove to the world that Christ was the Savior by. By setting him up in a position. I don’t know. I don’t know his thoughts, I don’t know his intent. And it’s hard for me to judge him knowing if he’s right or wrong. Because I don’t know why he did what he did, but I can tell you what he did wasn’t right. Sure.

[01:32:10] Speaker C: And the thing is, I think that to your point, it’s the same thing with the example of Eve as well, which is from all information we had.

Yeah. Like the Pitch to her was, hey, you want to become like, God, right? I’m like, oh, that is a good thing. You know, it’s like. I’m just saying, it’s like, I think that. I think that her intentions are actually a lot more innocent than some huge, elaborate plot to be like, well, I know that I have to disobey because this and this and this and this and this.

[01:32:39] Speaker B: It’s like.

[01:32:41] Speaker C: I think it’s a totally. I think it’s so much more human and innocent than that, personally. So to your point, like, that’s kind of where I just wanted to close that loop a little bit on that.

[01:32:52] Speaker A: I. I agree with you on that, too. I mean, if she’s. If she’s saying, my eyes have been open, I see things, I understand. It sounds like she’s coming to a realization of how that’s going to work out. Not that there was a lot of preconceptual.

[01:33:07] Speaker C: Yes.

[01:33:07] Speaker A: Plotting is how it appears to me.

[01:33:10] Speaker C: I’m with you completely on that. Yeah. And that’s why. That’s why, to your example, I just. I wanted to put a couple actual examples to the point that you were trying to make. So I’m glad that we had that discussion. And I don’t think. And I don’t think. And I don’t think I’m going to edit it out.

[01:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, good. I. Glad it landed better than the first time.

[01:33:30] Speaker C: I. Dude, they wouldn’t have even known that there was a first time had you not just said it. All right, everybody, there’s your studio magic trick. We tried this. We tried this section once before. Yeah, exactly. Right? We tried this section before, and we. We. We wanted to nail it a little bit better. So you wouldn’t have even known had Jason not blown my cover.

All right, we need. We need. We need to wrap it up. What do you got?

[01:33:54] Speaker A: We’re done.

[01:33:55] Speaker C: Okay, everybody, we appreciate you listening. What. What were you going to say?

[01:34:00] Speaker A: Ron? I. Man, I love the way he’s done it, dude. He’s powerful, man.

Quiet guy in the background, but, man, he nailed it.

[01:34:08] Speaker C: Did nail it. I’m with you. Appreciate everybody listening. We’ve only got a couple more episodes left before the end of the year. I’m going to be doing so much traveling that please be patient with us. We’re doing what we can to make sure to get them done, but we will for sure be doing at least two more before the end of the year, I believe is kind of the schedule. So if you have any questions, comments, you can get a hold of us at. Hi weeklydeepdive.com thank you for listening. We love you. Have a great week. Happy holidays in advance. And until next week.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: Hello.

[00:00:33] Speaker A: Hello. Hello, Nate.

[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello, friends.

[00:00:37] Speaker A: How you doing?

[00:00:38] Speaker B: Round two, round two of this week’s podcast.

Should we show him, like, the man behind the curtain a little bit?

[00:00:45] Speaker A: The man behind the curtain? Yeah.

[00:00:47] Speaker B: You know wizard of Oz?

We tried recording this podcast a couple days ago.

About halfway through the podcast, our different time zone issues actually affected us, and Jason had to go help with his family, and then I had to get to work immediately after. So thank you for everybody that’s been patient with us as we’ve been trying to stay on top of this every week.

But we are back. But this is actually round two of us trying to do this episode this week.

[00:01:20] Speaker A: Round two, and. And we’re excited to cover this one. We’re. We’re gonna do a little bit of a merge again. We’re. We’re gonna go ether one through all of olive. Yeah.

[00:01:33] Speaker B: I mean, isn’t it pretty much most of ether that we’re going through tonight?

[00:01:36] Speaker A: No, we get to stop before, like, ether12 is going to be fantastic.

[00:01:42] Speaker B: So that gets to be its own thing.

[00:01:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Let’s see, let’s. Let’s see, let’s see. Let’s see. Because now. Now I’m. Now I’m all hesitant about this.

Give me. Give me one second. Give me one second.

[00:01:55] Speaker B: Don’t worry about it. Let’s get going.

We’re good. The people will find out when they find out.

The good. The good citizens of this podcast listenership.

[00:02:06] Speaker A: All right, boy. Can you fill it, Nate? Oh, yeah.

[00:02:13] Speaker B: We’re back.

[00:02:15] Speaker A: Even more than just us being back, there’s something in the air.

The restoration is coming. Restoration has been coming for a long time, but it feels like the Lord is pouring out his spirit.

He is hastening the work, as President Nelson says so often.

It’s just. I don’t know, it feels like there’s something in the air. There’s a lot of exciting things happening.

[00:02:43] Speaker B: I’m with you.

[00:02:46] Speaker A: Last week in Spain, we had two more baptisms. We’ve got another baptism. That’s awesome.

[00:02:51] Speaker B: Hey, congrats.

[00:02:54] Speaker A: The Stake presidency is coming to meet with us on Sunday to discuss the splitting of the ward. We’re going to be splitting it, creating another stake out here. Just the work is rolling forth.

[00:03:05] Speaker B: It’s awesome. It’s getting done.

[00:03:07] Speaker A: It’s getting done. And I don’t know, it just feels. It feels like I keep seeing more and more stories about people coming back, or maybe not even just people coming back, but also people genuinely interested in finding out more about Christ. It feels like we’re almost going through another revival. I don’t know if you’re seeing the same thing or feeling the same thing.

It just feels like there’s a general shift towards coming to Christ the world over.

[00:03:36] Speaker B: Admittedly, I’m kind of locked in a bubble all day, every day, so I don’t know if I get to see that boots to the ground nearly as much as you do, but I am happy to hear the report.

[00:03:50] Speaker A: Well, it feels that way. You know how 9, 11, there was definitely a shift towards people going back to church. Coming to church.

It felt like there was a lot. I mean, even my wife Janessa, she served her mission in Costa Rica and her father’s not a member of the church, wasn’t a member of the church. And even him after that time wrote her a letter, which was a touching letter about how much she valued what she was doing and the importance of God. And it was just interesting seeing that come from him. But it feels a little bit like that now. But let’s dive in. In the Book of Ether, chapter one.

I’ve got a few things to get over. I think the meat of our message today is going to circle more around this incredible journey that the Jaredites take. But before we get there, we’re going.

[00:04:41] Speaker B: To talk about the boats.

[00:04:44] Speaker A: Let’s talk about the boats before we get there.

Verse 2. I take mine account from the 20 and 4 plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of ether.

And these 24 plates have shown up earlier in Mosiah when they discover this.

And it’s caused me a little bit of curiosity.

I always thought of them as like 24 separate sets of records.

And I think it was my son actually, and come follow me that suggested that maybe they were actually just 24 pages in a single book. Which got me thinking, you know, I’ve never thought of it that way, but as I read 24 plates, it could just as easily be 24 plates in a single book.

I don’t think that’s the case, but I appreciate thinking about something in a way that I hadn’t considered it before.

It led to an interesting discussion. And in the journal of discourse, volume 19, they’ve got some interesting discussions and quotes about Cumorah and the records that it contains. And I think this is kind of lived on in the legends of our church. Right. The idea that in a vision they saw the hill open up. And inside the hill was not just a plate, but as it was described. In fact, maybe I should just quote this real quick.

When Joseph got the plates, the angel instructed him to carry them back to the hill Cumorah, which he did. Oliver says that when Joseph and Oliver went there, the hill opened and they walked into a cave in which there was a large and spacious room. He says he did not think at the time whether they had light of the sun or artificial light, but there was as it was just as light as day. They laid the plates on a table. It was a large table that stood in the room. Under this table there was a pile of plates as much as 2ft high. And they were all together in this room, more plates than probably many wagon loads. And they were piled up in the corners and along the walls. The first time they went in there, the sword of Laban hung on the wall. But when they went in again, it had been taken down and laid upon the table. Across the gold plates, it was unsheathed. And on it was written these words. This sword will never be sheathed again until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and his Christ.

I tell you, this is coming not only from all over Cowrie, but others who were familiar with it and who understood it just as well as we understand coming to this meeting, enjoying the day. And by and by we separate and we go away forgetting most of what was said.

Kind of got a little interesting story if there’s 24 plates, you know, and. And the reason I go down this. And I’m going to promise I’m going to not go down this super long.

It gets me excited for things to come. And I think this is a teaser that the Book of Mormon does ever since the very first chapter. And we’ve been down this road in the first chapter when the Lord saw, or excuse me, Lehi saw and heard much. And we get this one word description for this marvelous vision.

And yet things were kept out.

And what was kept out? He saw the coming of the Savior. He saw the redemption of the world and all of these beautiful things. 3rd Nephi we just came out of there and we saw all of these things that Christ taught when he pulled all the kids together. And he taught them glorious things. The eye hasn’t seen and ear hasn’t heard. They can’t be written and described, and they keep telling us these teasers. And it would be unfair if you’re telling us all these things and saying. And you’ll never get to see what it is. But what I appreciate is in all of these instances, it’s always that little follow up, like asking, you shall receive knock and it shall be opened. And the Lord saying this because he genuinely wants our buy in. He wants us to feel that excitement, that attachment, to be curious about what he’s up to, to ask him the questions when we’re curious enough to want to know more. And that’s what it keeps saying. These great things are going to be withheld until the people want to know.

And what does it mean to want to know in ether? It’s going to talk about these things not coming forth until they have the faith and to repent. The Gentiles will leave behind their wickedness and choose the right and be a righteous people. Then they will come forth when they say faith to see the greater things. My last point on this is faith is the action word. It’s the principle of action. When we believe that we can, or we believe that the Lord will reveal things to us, we behave differently. We pray, we cry out to Him. We try to change our lives to be in line with what he would have us do. And he inspires us.

And I think in a large part we start receiving some of the greater things.

Something that I’ve kind of been slow to adopt but have appreciated recently, okay, is the digital scriptures. I am an analog kind of guy. You’ve seen me.

[00:10:08] Speaker B: Oh yeah, you carry them around. You’ve left them at my studio many a night.

[00:10:14] Speaker A: I like having the physical scriptures. I like reading. And I do too.

And my scripture is kind of old. I like writing in the margins.

I used to, as a younger, I used to highlight the heck out of things. I don’t highlight so much anymore, but I write notes and it starts to look like the Talmud. Lee we got all these little writings on the side and the top.

But what I’ve started doing is adapting, like pulling up the digital because when you sign in, you can have that on your phone, on your computer, whatever. And it’s nice because you don’t have just a short amount of space and you start to write down some of the things that matter to you. And it’s good because you can capture more your thoughts, but also perhaps these thoughts can be easier shared with other people. And as you start collecting these thoughts and these inspirations and these, it’s almost like you start the book of more Scripture, in a sense, you’re adding greater things that were not there in the first place.

[00:11:14] Speaker B: I like that.

I have an app that does that. Luckily it reminds me each night. I’m not good about remembering it each night, but each night it just says, take a second to reflect on the day and write down some things. And I’m like, you know what? That’s a great idea.

[00:11:32] Speaker A: It is a great idea. It is a great idea, dude.

[00:11:35] Speaker B: I think that, you know, I’ve probably said it a million times and so I don’t need to, but I’m a big fan of the ponder part of search, ponder and pray, preparing lessons and things like that. I just, I think that so much of the big picture revelations and breakthroughs we have is by us, kind of like you just said, showing the faith of keeping that as the thing that’s on our mind. And so I just, I such a big believer in pondering. But I also believe, I wish reflect. But I guess it is because remember is a big word right in the scriptures. But man, the things when you, when you just sit down to deliberately spend a second to go, what did I learn today? And it could be something dumb like, oh, yeah, that if you try to go through the, drive through it in and out at the wrong time, you’re hosed or whatever it is. You know what I mean? But dude, there’s times where I look back through some of these things that I read where I’m just like, man, my son today helped teach me to have grace in losing and whatever in this thing, and I need to be more patient with myself. And you know, I mean, it’s like if you actually spend the time to try to go, hey, I actually want to not just think about this, but actually reflect upon it. I, I, you, you almost said it, and I was wondering if you were going to say it, but it’s like you almost start like your own scripture. But I, I know what you mean. I know what you mean by that. And I actually think that there you’re, it’s, it’s close, you know, Like, I would you never want to be like, oh yeah, these reflections that I have are scripture. But I will just say, like, yeah, man, there are, there are definitely times where I look through that stuff and I’m like, man, this feels inspired like this, this doesn’t, this feels absolutely like profound kind of revelation being given to me. So then, and then in that case, then what is it? You know, is it scripture at that point?

[00:13:30] Speaker A: I don’t 100%, you know, what?

[00:13:32] Speaker B: I mean, it’s like, we always want to walk that fine line of not being sacrilegious, But I don’t know.

[00:13:38] Speaker A: I’ll take that line and I’ll stomp on it. Please do go back to the Book of Mormon. Lehi was what?

He’s not some guy that was part of the priesthood, operating in the temple, or someone that was set apart to be the prophet, to lead the people. He was a merchant. He was going about his business, doing his thing, and he’s keeping records for his family. And Nephi was, what if Lehi was less than that? What was the Son of the less than that? Right. Everything that we’re reading and appreciating today started because a guy and his son felt it important to write down the thoughts and the impressions that they had.

I think that’s exactly what scripture is. We look at something that’s sanctioned today, but what we forget is back then, it was not a sanctioned. I am clearly writing scripture for this. In the Book of Mormon, we get a little bit of that for this intent. I’m writing this, and the Lord instructed me to write it. And maybe that’s. Maybe it’s unfair to just dismiss that part of it, but in my patriarchal blessing, it tells me to make a record of the things that I experience, and it will be as scripture for my kids. So I don’t think it’s sacrilegious.

[00:14:52] Speaker B: You know, it’s like I always just want to be. I always just want to be very careful about how, you know, like you said. I’m glad that you’re willing to stomp all over that line, because I do think that you’re right. I just think that sometimes we get. You know, personally, even me, I can sometimes get a little carried away, and I’m always just. I’m trying to be a little bit better about that. But you would, I guess, fundamentally, anything that testifies of Christ is. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t know, isn’t a testimony, Scripture something that. Something that testifies of truth? Is that not scripture? Now, I’m not saying scripture is in adopted church canon, but even if it’s just for you, like, yeah, I don’t think that you and I are being called to deliver scripture for the entire church. But, yeah, man, like, it’s just hard for me to think that if you’re. If you’re writing down revelation or inspiration or, you know, these very spiritual breakthroughs that you’ve had from studying or, you know what I mean? It’s like, isn’t that, I guess by definition, scripture?

It’s an interesting thought. I’m glad you stomped all over that line so that I don’t have to feel bad about it.

[00:16:09] Speaker A: Don’t feel bad about it. And as you were saying that the thought that came to my mind was the Liahona.

It contained writings, it contained direction to help them get through the wilderness. And I would say that was definitely scripture for that people. But I will also say that that scripture meant nothing to the rest of the people in Jerusalem and means nothing to us now. Right. I mean, just because it’s scripture, we’ve got to take that in context. Right? Like you said, what I’m writing and recording is not scripture for the church. And what’s spoken policy or whatever.

[00:16:49] Speaker B: Right? Like policy or.

Yeah, something that the church needs to adopt as. Yeah, like functioning policy, I guess, is really the word that I am looking for. So cool. Interesting. I do. There is something beautiful about getting the chance to read through old journals and things like that of even grandparents and stuff. I remember. Not that, I mean, maybe kisses, like, I don’t know, eight to 10 years ago, my grandma or grandpa maybe published. Not published, but made available for us, my great grandpa’s journals. And it talks all about him going to like Samoa on his mission and just like the boat right over there. And we’ve talked about this before, but there are so many times where like the hearts of the children to the fathers really starts meaning something when you really discover who you come from. So in your patriarchal blessing, like you said that it will be. Ask scripture towards the kid is like, what’s scripture supposed to do?

Testify of godly things? You would think, right? Give, give, give examples of God’s goodness. I mean, maybe I hate to belabor the point, but what is scripture other than that? And therefore it’s like, oh, okay, cool. If.

I mean, the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. And so it’s like, if that’s what you’re. If that’s what your journals are doing is testifying of that, then it’s like, yeah, I can see how incredible that would be for your future generations as well.

[00:18:27] Speaker A: And it’s a great point to touch on because the next thing I wanted to hit is, I mean, going to ether, chapter one, verses six, all the way down to 32. Is this line right? This is the beginning that we got so excited about. Doctrine covenant, Doctrine covenants, old doctrine covenants. We were ramping up for it.

[00:18:46] Speaker B: We were ramping up. Yeah.

[00:18:49] Speaker A: And you have this long line of Ether, who is the son of Coriander, the son of Moron, the son of Etham. So, you know, it just goes all the way down the list until you get to Jared.

And in a short.

In a. In a short takeaway, it starts with Jared, not the brother of Jared. And you think, well, isn’t the brother of Jared the one who’s kind of the hero of the tale? The one who’s. Who’s doing the praying, the one who’s saving everyone? Why not have him come through? Because Ether is also this. This prophet at the end of times, right? Why not have him come through? But there’s parallels with this, and there’s parallels with Nephi, who. Who has Jacob be the spiritual line, be the high priest. And so in the ancient world, you always had this dual leadership. It was the priest and the king, and the king was the political governor, the one that ruled over. And then you had the high priest or the spiritual leader over the people, kind of like the prophet that guides the church, if you will. And this dual leadership, I mean, it’s a thing. Go back. And Jared is the one who tells the brother of Jared what to pray for. Jared’s the one who’s making the decisions and taking them to his brother to have him take them to the Lord. Right. And the story, it’s super interesting how it centers around Jared, but it also centers around the brother of Jared.

And I say it centers around Jared because the brother of Jared doesn’t even have a name. Right.

[00:20:18] Speaker B: I beg to differ.

[00:20:20] Speaker A: Okay, he has a name, but it’s not mentioned in the record.

[00:20:23] Speaker B: Isn’t it Mahan Rai Mori Ankumar?

[00:20:25] Speaker A: It is.

[00:20:26] Speaker B: All right, then he’s got a name that we know, bro.

[00:20:29] Speaker A: But where do you read that in the Book of Ether?

[00:20:31] Speaker B: I don’t think you read it anywhere in the Book of Ether, but you definitely read it on the roster of a BYU football team at least once every three or four years.

[00:20:44] Speaker A: You know I’m right.

[00:20:48] Speaker B: Dude, you’re not making me edit this, by the way.

[00:20:50] Speaker A: That’s hilarious.

[00:20:51] Speaker B: Because it is hilarious. But you know I’m right.

[00:20:54] Speaker A: No, you are right.

[00:20:55] Speaker B: All right.

[00:20:58] Speaker A: I think the quick win on this is this is the king’s line and Ether to make that connection. I think this is. It’s important when we get to the end of the record and Ether is watching two different people battle for the kingdom down to where the entire kingdom is destroyed. I think it changes the narrative when you realize the guy in the cave who’s writing everything down is actually the rightful heir to the throne. The guy that. I mean politically, shouldn’t he be in charge? And the people turning away and rejecting that leadership and what happens.

It’s interesting.

[00:21:35] Speaker B: I like it.

[00:21:37] Speaker A: But to kind of marry this to what we were talking about before. Look at how long that list is.

I mean, going all the way down to 32, just looking at the page. That’s an impressive list. How far back in your family tree does your line go? If you’re to jump into Ancestry.com and start looking up the family history? Do you have that many generations in your tree? I don’t think I do.

And the crazy thing is, if you were to ask me the question of, do you think they kept records better today in a digital world where everything is on the computer versus thousands of years ago? Instinctually, I think that today in the digital world, we have a much better job of keeping all of these records because it doesn’t take near as much space. I don’t have to have a cave full of plates that you would load into a wagon to keep track of things. It sits on my computer or it sits somewhere in the. In the cloud, in this. You know, it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of work that goes into, or at least physical space that goes into storing this. It’s a lot easier to just capture these things digitally.

But my family record does not go near as deep as Ethers does. And I don’t think most of us do. We kind of came. I mean, if there is anything that points to apostasy, could it not be how disconnected we are? And we refer to this time? And there’s been a lot of pushback from scholars and people saying that we shouldn’t call it the Dark ages because it’s really just dark because of our understanding. It’s not that they were savages, or even using the word savages has a bunch of connotations there, but there is something dark about it. And I like the comparison, using the words dark in contrast to light. And our records, we didn’t keep track of it like they did.

And I don’t think everybody is able to go. I mean, part of this is it’s the king’s line. If we go back to a king’s line today, that line goes forever and forever. Sure.

So I think there’s one more significant takeaway from this, Nate. And the takeaway I’m going to take from this is God says that he wants a nation of kings and priests, not one King and one priest. And go back to Moses when somebody complains to him about somebody prophesying who wasn’t there when they were called because he was outside of the camp. And Moses said, what are you complaining about? I wish that everybody was a prophet. How much easier would my life be if everyone was a prophet and knew what they were supposed to do and I didn’t have to sit there and tell them over and over again, Right?

God wants all of us. And see Moses. God said, take the congregation, prepare them, wash them, make them clean, and prepare them to bring them into my presence. And this is temple talk. We’ve read about this in the oath and covenant of the priesthood. Bring them into the presence of God. This is a trip into the holy of holies. Not just by one priest who does it in representation of the people. It is bring all of the people into the holy of holies, the presence of God. Bring them to him. I don’t want one priest. I want a nation of priests. A nation of kings and priests.

And so I look at this line that’s so well and carefully preserved as a kingship line throughout the book of Ether that was valuable to them. And in history, it’s the king’s line that is always preserved. Today, there’s been a shift, and through technology and the push that the church has with ancestry and turning the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children, is it not all of our lines that the church is researching and digging and connecting and making it so that our line appears like royalty. What a gift that is, right? That we have deep roots.

And even if our physical family ancestry line doesn’t go all the way back to Adam yet, you know what’s cool is the priesthood line. When a young man or an older man or whatever is ordained to the priesthood, to be able to say, I received the priesthood from the hands of my father, who received it from the hands of who he got it from, to take that back to Peter, James and John, who received it under the hands of Christ. These chains, these connections, they’re powerful. And seeing this here in the Book of Ether reminds me of that, makes those connections for me.

[00:26:30] Speaker B: Love it. Let’s keep going.

[00:26:32] Speaker A: Okay, Last thing here, and then we’ll turn and get to some of the. More.

[00:26:37] Speaker B: I want to talk about these boats, bro.

[00:26:39] Speaker A: Boats are coming. Verse 34. And the brother of Jacob.

Jacob. You’re killing brother of Jared. The Jacob.

[00:26:48] Speaker B: I loved that. Sorry.

[00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I’m gonna.

[00:26:55] Speaker B: It’s early morning for you, dude. Look, it’s early morning for you. I’ve had a long day. I’m sorry. It’s like me tormenting my best friend who’s just waking up. I’m sorry, Jacob.

[00:27:06] Speaker A: It’s great.

[00:27:06] Speaker B: Jacob’s doing great. Dude, let’s get back to Jacob.

[00:27:09] Speaker A: Let’s put Jake at the side and get to Jared.

We talked about stepping on some lines. Yeah. I get ready. I’m putting my boots on now.

[00:27:19] Speaker B: Let’s go. I better put a marker. I’m putting a marker in the. In the pro tool session. I’m ready.

[00:27:26] Speaker A: The brother of Jared being a large and mighty man.

[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:27:30] Speaker A: And being large and mighty sounds familiar.

[00:27:35] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:27:35] Speaker A: And intriguing. And here’s why I say familiar, because this is how they describe Mormon.

[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:27:41] Speaker A: This is how they describe Nephi.

[00:27:42] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:27:43] Speaker A: And there’s some Old Testament parallels in this too. Right. Samson, Saul was head and shoulders above everyone else.

[00:27:50] Speaker B: Okay. David, I was gonna say was smaller than Goliath, but yes.

[00:27:54] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. So, dude, I’m glad you said that. I’m glad you said that because you were the one who talks about the miracle of the Helaman’s warriors going against the. And you know, the art doesn’t make it look like much of a miracle because those guys are all.

[00:28:13] Speaker B: It makes it look like. It makes it look like a miracle that those dudes didn’t win the war in, like, two weeks.

[00:28:19] Speaker A: But, yes, I think the opposite is true with David and Goliath. I think that the art tries to portray him as a small, scraggly little guy.

[00:28:28] Speaker B: Interesting.

[00:28:29] Speaker A: When he shows up to fight Goliath, you have all of the armor that you can put on. Why is Saul offering him his armor? Especially when Saul is a foot taller than anyone else.

[00:28:40] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay, let me throw this at you. Is that one of the reasons, though, that David took it off was because it was way too big for him and cumbersome.

[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah. He wasn’t used to wearing armor. He didn’t like the way he didn’t feel like he gave him the flexibility to move. Could be that it was oversized. That was. That was.

[00:28:58] Speaker B: That would be my only thing that would maybe push back against that is if it’s just like. It’s a little.

[00:29:03] Speaker A: If, you know, you’re a foot taller than everyone else.

[00:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you’re right.

[00:29:06] Speaker A: I’m going to throw my arm around here.

[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah, you’re right. You’re right.

[00:29:09] Speaker A: I don’t know. Also, also, I’ll say this. David was Saul’s armor bearer, which is the guy that carries the armor around wherever he Goes when he’s out of battle.

You don’t pick some small, little scraggly kid to try to like to be your. Your. I’m going to call it golf caddy, for one.

[00:29:25] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Golf caddy. Your armor caddy.

That’s. What. What kind of advice was his. His armor caddy giving him when he sees Goliath, he’s like, I think I’m going to take a. Let’s go with a small, smooth stone.

Let’s go bow about 100 yards.

[00:29:45] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:29:45] Speaker B: And then I think I’m gonna follow it up with a sword. It’s a tradition like no other. What’s that? What’s the golf slogan?

[00:29:54] Speaker A: From this distance, sir, I would recommend the spear.

[00:29:56] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. From this distance, sir, I think we should go. A spear.

Yep. The caddy.

[00:30:01] Speaker A: I think if you’re close enough to be recommending the small sword, you’re probably not getting that recommendation out.

[00:30:06] Speaker B: That’s exactly right. Okay, so he was big enough. All right, so David’s big.

[00:30:11] Speaker A: When you said stones, you’re getting me on another tangent, but I think this tangent is one that I need to go on real quick.

[00:30:15] Speaker B: Okay, I’m ready.

[00:30:16] Speaker A: Okay. So last week’s lesson, and I’m kicking myself for not even saying this, he pushes reading Isaiah again, and he tells the people, read Isaiah. And it’s not the first time that this has shown up in the Book of Mormon. And I promise this relates to David in the stones.

I was curious, how many times are we commanded? It’s not even just like, oh, maybe you should know. Like, we’re outright told to study the words of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, and it’s five times. And I thought, huh, that’s interesting.

Five.

What would be the significance of five? And I started thinking about that, and I said, what other things are repeated five times? And as I started going down this exercise, what first stood out to me is the five fingers on your hand, right? And if you have five fingers on your hand and a hand, it’s an action like, take it into your hand. Do something about it. And so that was the first connection I made. But when I said, is that connection just frivolous? Like, where else are we seeing that David picks five stones to take to battle with him, Right? Not that he uses all five, but it’s this five. The significance of taking it into your hands, right? And as I’m going down this list of fives, the Ten Commandments are broken into two fives. We talked about the first five referring to spiritual, the Lord, and the next five referring to your neighbor. Love God, Love your neighbor. And it breaks into two hands, two.

[00:31:57] Speaker B: Things parallel between the spiritual and physical.

[00:32:00] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

The 10 virgins, you have five that acted one way and five that acted another. And so you’re looking again, these five signif. Signaling. Signaling, taking these actions or what you’re acting in. But if you go down this list, and I’m not going to go through the whole list and enumerate everything, now we got more things to talk about. It’s just interesting. Boats. We got to get to the boats.

The taking things into your hand and doing something about it. Look at what else comes in fives. And I think it’ll be eye opening.

Even the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the five books of Moses. Right.

The law. This is how you should act. This is how you should behave. We’re going to line it out. Sacrifices. There’s five types of sacrifices that you can offer. It’s just, you know, like the five.

[00:32:53] Speaker B: Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

[00:32:55] Speaker A: Just kidding.

[00:32:56] Speaker B: I’m just kidding. There’s only four.

[00:33:00] Speaker A: Okay, keep going.

All right, I’m going to get back to Brother Jared here being a large and mighty man.

[00:33:05] Speaker B: No, tell me about the other five. Come on, man. I’m ready, I’m ready.

[00:33:09] Speaker A: Let’s go into this large and mighty man. Wait, that’s really the end.

That’s it. No, this large and mighty man. Because this is the tangent that’s pulled me off. Right?

[00:33:18] Speaker B: Okay.

The five deadly sins.

I’m just going to start putting five on everything.

So I’m going to blame you for it too, by the way. I’m going to give a talk in church the next time I’m just going to start misquoting all scripture, I’ll be like, Jason told me I could do it. All right. He’s a large and mighty man.

[00:33:39] Speaker A: Okay, so just a quick reminder. This is Moroni, who’s summing up these plates.

And by the way, these 24 records of the Jaredites is taking up two thirds portion of the Book of Mormon, which is sealed, which we didn’t even get.

[00:33:53] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[00:33:55] Speaker A: And that should be a summary of the 24. And then this is a summary of the summary. Like this is summary, summary, summary style. Right. We’re down to like the Cliff Notes of the Cliff Notes in the Book of Ether.

But if you’re trying to summarize things and remember that you’re writing in gold plates and everything has a Cost. As far as space goes, what is the value of sticking being a large and mighty man in the records? Why. Why say that?

If we’re describing Jared, wouldn’t you think the name of the guy would be worth mentioning before you mention the fact that he’s large and mighty?

[00:34:40] Speaker B: Yes. If his name wasn’t Mahan Rai. Maury Ankumer. Because it honestly takes up about the same amount of letters as the brother of Jared. No.

[00:34:48] Speaker A: Wow.

[00:34:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Dang it. Yeah, yeah, it’s about the same. It’s about the same. I thought you were gonna say large and mighty man, but I was. I was doing the math. I was doing the quick math in my head, but I. Then I gave up.

So, yes, you’re taking up space. But, dude, Mahon Rai. Maury Ankumer. I’m just saying, like, I can imagine him not wanting to spell that out every time.

[00:35:09] Speaker A: Corianthemer is also described in these terms, isn’t he? He was just this massive guy. Like, it almost gives you the impression that Mormon and Moroni are like gym rats. Like, dude, he was swole.

[00:35:22] Speaker B: He was like, there’s the sacrilege I was waiting for.

[00:35:26] Speaker A: Oh, it’s going to get worse.

[00:35:29] Speaker B: Dude. I need to. I still need to find a warning drop at some point, by the way.

I just have it on a buzzer. All right, we’re ready, dude. Our listeners at this point, they’re either with us or they’re not. All right, here we go.

[00:35:43] Speaker A: Okay, so they’re swole.

[00:35:45] Speaker B: The thing is, by the way, like, that. I would be proud of that. I don’t think that’s sacrilegious at all.

[00:35:50] Speaker A: No, that’s okay. So this got me thinking.

I started thinking about the undescribed characters of the scriptures that don’t have physical descriptions. Isaiah.

Even though he’s not described physically, you have a description of Isaiah in your mind, do you not?

[00:36:13] Speaker B: For sure, I do.

[00:36:14] Speaker A: And Abinadi.

[00:36:16] Speaker B: Totally. I do. But it’s also because of Friedberg.

[00:36:20] Speaker A: But yes, yes, yes. When we start talking about these undescribed prophets, let me ask you this question.

Which of the prophets in your mind in the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, do you imagine as, like, a short, squat guy sitting in the corner, like, not. Not great hygiene or scraggly, not healthy, tall, narrow, you know, how do we picture them? And in my mind’s eye, every one of these guys is like a freebird version of whoever they were, for better or for worse.

[00:36:55] Speaker B: Totally.

[00:36:55] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:36:55] Speaker B: 100. That’s such a great Point.

[00:37:00] Speaker A: Okay, I’m going to say this, and I’m not going to try to be sacrilegious, but the sacrilege is part of my point. I don’t know anyone out there in the world today who’s worshiping fat Jesus.

[00:37:12] Speaker B: It’s true. No, that’s true. But the thing is, do you think that, though there’s historical precedent for that? I mean, were there a lot of fat people previous to 1965?

[00:37:28] Speaker A: A lot fewer.

[00:37:30] Speaker B: That’s what I mean. I guess.

[00:37:31] Speaker A: I think there’s a lot fewer.

[00:37:32] Speaker B: I do under.

[00:37:32] Speaker A: You lived in a world where scarcity.

[00:37:36] Speaker B: Okay, hold on.

[00:37:36] Speaker A: Walking around.

[00:37:38] Speaker B: I’m with you. I know I’m with you, but I’m with you. And I understand the point. Because you remember they tried to do some recreation, like, AI. Recreation of like, well, this is what Jesus might have looked like. And you know what I mean? It was just some scraggly kind of whatever. And a lot of people, I mean, maybe justifiably were very upset by this. Like, oh, hey, you’re doing this to try to.

You’re doing this to try to. Yeah. But then you go, well, the scriptures say that it’s not like he was, you know, the only physical prescription is.

[00:38:17] Speaker A: Isaiah, which telling us that he’s not beautiful.

[00:38:20] Speaker B: That’s exactly right. And so then you just go, like, would that change anything if he looked like that?

[00:38:26] Speaker A: So, I mean, that’s where I’m trying to hit.

[00:38:28] Speaker B: Okay, well, good.

[00:38:28] Speaker A: That’s where I’m trying to hit. Sorry.

[00:38:29] Speaker B: Then keep going. But I don’t think that that’s sacrilegious because I think I’m with you so far on the point you’re making.

[00:38:37] Speaker A: But why is it sacrilegious? If I say, you’re right, why is that sacrilegious? And why would that change if he was. Would that change the atonement?

[00:38:46] Speaker B: That’s a great point.

[00:38:47] Speaker A: And if he was, does it shatter my. My following of him? And then. And then here’s the other thing. Why do we associate fat, which is a physical description, which inherently doesn’t say good, bad or other, but yet we have so much negative connotation to. It becomes sacrilegious to even say. If I say fat Jesus, all of a sudden I’m making fun of him, or I’m saying something that’s sacrilegious when it’s a. It’s a neutral physical description applied to a person that it’s. It’s shocking. Why do we have.

[00:39:17] Speaker B: Well, not only that too, but in. In Certain cultures in the past, like, being large meant. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying is by being large was a sign of, like, actual, like, abundance or wealth or like, you know what I mean? Like, it was, it was kind of the opposite of how our culture may or may not look on it right now. So, yeah, I, I, I, I’m happy that you’re having this discussion. I’m interested in how this has to do with the brother of Jared being a beefcake.

[00:39:47] Speaker A: I think, I think we look for heroes.

[00:39:50] Speaker B: I agree.

[00:39:52] Speaker A: And when we’re looking for heroes, what it comes down to in my mind is ideals. We try to ascribe our ideals to the people that we want to follow. We’re looking, I think it’s human nature. We are wired and set to try to follow.

[00:40:09] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:40:10] Speaker A: And is that not the whole reason we’re here?

And Christ coming to set the example in the pattern? It’s all wired in us to be able to come follow Him. And I think it creates ideals. We have ideals. And I’m not just going to say this. Physical ideals, we have spiritual ideals. We have physical ideals. We have ideals on what a family should look like. We have social, economic, socioeconomic ideals. If I’m not making this much money or if I don’t have this house or if I don’t have this car, then, then, then I’m not righteous. And we start to, we start to equate and correlate these ideals with righteousness to where if I say fat Jesus now, it sounds like he’s an unrighteous person. Or if we say, do we look at people and if they’re fired or if they’re not doing well economically, do we equate that with spiritual lack of spirituality? And that’s how they were viewing the people clearly in Alma 32 when they go to the Hill. And it was the, the people that were not doing so well financially, the people that weren’t in certain fields of work that were looked down on because they were equating those ideals, financial ideals, with spiritual ideals as well, conflating the two and mixing that message.

[00:41:44] Speaker B: And so let me ask you this, then. Why do you think, why do you think he wrote that he was a beefcake?

[00:41:53] Speaker A: I don’t know what his intentions were or why he included it, because you’re.

[00:41:58] Speaker B: Right, it takes up space.

[00:42:01] Speaker A: But I mean, I can only comment on what it’s done for me. Right. My reaction is I’ve started to think about why it’s in there and what does it mean and why are these details. And for me, it almost looks like Moroni is valuing these traits, right?

It looks like he’s pointing it out wherever it is.

I think. Here’s what I think.

We tear down ideals because as much as they can be good for us and something that we set to follow, they can be painful when we fall short of those ideals. When Christ comes and says, I need you to be perfect like God the Father is, he’s exposed all of us for our not measuring up to those spiritual ideals. Right, we all fall short.

Ideals can be painful, but that pain, and I’m going to take this back to weightlifting as we were talking about the brother’s swole, the pain that you get when you’re working out and the soreness that causes it, isn’t that what drives the change and the progress and the making it work? And so when we say ideals can be painful because there’s a lot of people that can’t live up to that ideal for no fault of their own. Whether it’s a physical ideal, a financial ideal. They’re working their tail end off trying to make things work and they can’t quite land the job or they keep getting shooken out or the economy’s not been kind to them.

But does that mean we erase the ideal? And I don’t think so. I think the pain that we feel with those sometimes seemingly impossible goals that we set in front of us and that we’re chasing, maybe the point isn’t so much getting there, but how it shapes us as we’re pursuing it.

[00:43:53] Speaker B: I’m with you on that.

[00:43:55] Speaker A: And just because not everyone can have the wife and the kids and the white picket fence and the whatever, you know, whatever we ascribe to the ideal doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of our trying to emulate and the impact it has on us as we try to. I don’t know, Joseph Smith probably said it best in the Articles of Faith. If there’s anything lovely or praiseworthy or of good report, we seek after these things.

Just because that ideal doesn’t seem to be manifesting itself in the way that we imagine it to in our life doesn’t mean it’s not the ideal that we don’t still hold it up and try to follow that example. And Christ says, come follow me.

And in what way was he physically perfect? Was he spiritually perfect? And I think in Christ there was a balance that he tried to balance all things. To take care of himself physically, to take care of himself spiritually, to even take care of his needs here in the world to have sufficient for his needs. I.

Ideals can be painful, and it’s hard and it’s weird, and we have these stigmas and art flavors what we think about things. But at the same time, I think there’s still a deeper layer of why these ideals are important and why we do that, and the importance of it bringing us the best version of us out of ourselves.

[00:45:22] Speaker B: Do you think that.

Yeah, and I don’t think that. I think that it’s awesome that we are told that he, you know, was a mighty person.

Even if. That even if maybe we aren’t physically mighty, I think that it can still be inspiring to go like, okay, but how else then can I stand tall? How else can I be a mighty person, even if it’s not just, like, physically overpowering? And I also think that, like, wanting and having the desire and trying to achieve better physical health and being able to be strong in case, you know, we might need to endure hard things physically is also good advice. So I’m with you.

I think that. I think that it is still.

I think that it is still something to try to achieve, to live up to even the descriptions, even if, you know, I’m not saying that, like, if you’re short, there’s really, you know, you can’t be like, well, I’m not just going to be able to be tall, but I’m just like, dude, I don’t think that that’s what it means to be mighty and. And big, you know, I guess so. I’m with you. I’m with you.

[00:46:32] Speaker A: I’m with you, too.

[00:46:33] Speaker B: Okay, let’s keep going.

[00:46:35] Speaker A: All right.

[00:46:36] Speaker B: But it is nice being. But it is nice being 6:2 if we’re told to be big. So I’m just like, well, I’m at least slightly above average height.

And I didn’t even have to try.

[00:46:51] Speaker A: One. One last thing I wanted to hit in this chapter, and I know there’s so many good things to talk about. I’m running to get there.

[00:46:57] Speaker B: To the boats.

[00:46:58] Speaker A: To the boats. I’m ready to get to the boats.

[00:47:00] Speaker B: I’m ready for the boats.

[00:47:02] Speaker A: As Ether 43,143.

So much of these exchanges, when Jared tells his brother, go and pray for this. Go and pray for that. And it’s like he goes to the Lord, and the Lord says, okay, I’ll do it, and then just move on. And it seems like it’s just such a quick man. I wish all my prayers were answered like that. God, can I have. Okay, Done. All right. Next thing. And we’re just checking items off the list, and it seems so easy.

43. The Lord, in his response, says, and thus I will do unto thee, because this long time you have cried unto me.

And I think that brings reality back into the conversation that he was having with the Lord, as much as it sounds like a one and done. And sometimes we’re oversimplifying things. We look back in time, and we’re trying to summarize what happened. Well, what happened? I asked the Lord if he would bless me with this, and he did. Okay. If we want to take the magnifying glass and go back to that experience, what was it really like? Well, you know, I was thinking about it. I was worried, is this the will of God? First, I need to make sure it’s the will of God, because I don’t want to ask for anything amiss. And I’m aligning myself in there and asking him and trying to find out and feeling like it is, and then just pleading with the Lord. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re using the word here. That’s translated into cried. Right? Unto me. You’ve cried unto me.

We had the regional authority and state conference out here at Barcelona last year that sparked this whole thing for me. Talked about how in the beginning of the Book of Mormon, wetting their pillows with tears and what it means to cry unto the Lord. And this is a process. And so for anyone who looks at them and think that they had it easy or worry that you’re not getting answers to your prayers, it’s not just that they cried unto the Lord, but I mean, highlight the phrase, this long time, have you cried unto the Lord? And it is. It’s a process, coming to know the Lord, getting the answer to your prayers. It’s a process. And how many people, I think all of us at some point in our life have come across a thought or an idea that’s made us wonder, is this true? Do I still believe in the Book of Mormon? Do I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet? Do I believe that God is there? Do I believe in the resurrection? Do I believe in fill in the blank?

And maybe we cry to the Lord a little bit, or maybe we go through that jarring experience, and for that time, it takes us turning to the Lord, and we have that experience at that end, that resolution. We’ve talked about this in the New Testament, where we’re talking about dissonance and resolution, but isn’t that a part of the building of the faith. Isn’t that part of coming to know God? And anyone who wants to know God, anyone who wants to follow him, be prepared for what that means to really follow God and what it takes to really build that testimony. And if you’re going to value and appreciate that testimony, it’s through this process of praying, not just once, but really thoroughly. Crying and seeking and trying to find the Lord. That’s how you find him.

[00:50:26] Speaker B: Let’s talk about these boats.

[00:50:28] Speaker A: Let’s get to the boats. Yes. Should we talk about the boats?

[00:50:31] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:50:33] Speaker A: Tight, tight, like unto a dish.

[00:50:36] Speaker B: Tight, tight, tight, tight.

[00:50:38] Speaker A: Okay, to talk about the boats.

For anyone who believes that the Bible is true and anyone who believes that the flood was global and wiped out life the whole world over.

[00:51:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would, I would think.

[00:51:04] Speaker A: The book of Ether would be very important to you in answering some important questions, such as all the animal life died on this continent in the Americas.

Then, then, then how do the animals come back to the Americas?

And now you have a story about shortly after the flood where somebody takes seeds of every kind.

And by the way, when we start going through this list of things, have you ever thought about what it would be like to transport Noah’s ark, if you will, across, all over.

Not just, I’m going to load all up in an ark. I’m going to take these guys on a journey several years all over, and then we’re going to build barges, seven barges. Have you looked at the list of things they’re taking? Swarms of bees. Oh, how are you doing? A 340 journey in the sea. 340 day journey in the sea with swarms of bees.

[00:52:02] Speaker B: Sounds dangerous.

[00:52:04] Speaker A: But if you bring all of these seeds and plants and you don’t have anything to pollinate it on the other side of the world, how’s that going to go for you?

[00:52:11] Speaker B: It’s true. Not well, no.

[00:52:14] Speaker A: It’s interesting that. So here’s a couple funny things when we start talking about contrast and opposites.

What was the purpose of building the Tower of Babel?

[00:52:27] Speaker B: To take a shortcut to heaven.

[00:52:29] Speaker A: To take a shortcut to heaven. And it says an interesting phrase in the Bible when we read it, that we might take a name upon ourselves and they’re doing this. That they can get a new name, right? That they can get a name and come into heaven. Just some interesting things that it says about that in the Old Testament and trying to get a new name. It’s funny on that one extreme, in the Old Testament they’re doing it to Get a name. And yet on the other extreme here, with the brother of Jared, he’s not even mentioned his name. It’s almost like he’s given his name up. Opposite extremes.

[00:53:04] Speaker B: I like that.

[00:53:10] Speaker A: And all of a sudden, I’ve lost the other extreme that I was going to talk about.

What were we talking about before I hit that?

[00:53:17] Speaker B: The boats. If you believe that there was a global flood, you would want to have some holes fixed is where you were going. Seeds, bees. You had that whole thing.

[00:53:30] Speaker A: Yeah, Sorry. Nate, here’s a question.

[00:53:32] Speaker B: How far after the ark do you think this was?

Does it say not long? It’s got to be close, right?

[00:53:39] Speaker A: Because Babel, the Tower of Babel was not long after that. Yeah. However you want to call it, not long after the flood.

And isn’t that the idea when we talked about the Tower of Babel and them building, it wasn’t the idea.

If God sends another flood here on the earth, we’re not going to die. We’re going to build something tall enough that if those waters rise, we’re going to be safe. The idea that we can one up God, whatever he’s going to send us, we can do better. We don’t need God. We need ourselves to be able to survive.

And this is. We’re not going to rely on. See, that’s another extreme. And I’m glad you said that. When we talk about these opposites, the idea that lean on man and not so that we can overcome God, we don’t need God to get us into heaven. We’re going to enter it on our own. We’re not worried about God sending us floods because we have a way to save ourselves. A lot of the story about the Tower of Babel is a story about taking salvation out of the hands of Christ and putting it on themselves that they were going to save themselves.

And the opposite here is we’re not going to rely on society to save us. In fact, we are withdrawing from society. We’re not going to rely on the markets and the stores and that we’re taking our own supplies and our seeds and our. And our bees to be able to provide for ourselves. It’s interesting, the opposites here that these two stories are setting up.

Love it.

[00:55:07] Speaker B: Let’s talk about these boats.

[00:55:10] Speaker A: Okay, One other thing I’ve got to pull in this verse two, chapter two. They did prepare. They lay snares to catch fowls of the air. They’re bringing birds. They’re bringing everything, man. And they also to prepare a vessel in which they did Carry with them the fish of the waters. Dude, they brought an aquarium with them.

Did you. Did that thought ever?

[00:55:32] Speaker B: No.

[00:55:33] Speaker A: When you picture the Jaredites traveling around, did you picture them with this massive aquarium of fish?

[00:55:38] Speaker B: How big are these boats?

[00:55:40] Speaker A: That’s the size of a tree is what it says.

[00:55:42] Speaker B: I mean, like, a redwood.

[00:55:45] Speaker A: That’s a great question. What tree are we talking about? Because if this was a.

[00:55:48] Speaker B: Or like, this terrible peach tree that I have in my backyard that I seriously just need to, like, stop being so stubborn. Dude, I gotta tell you about this sometime, but. All right, maybe we’ll do it on the air one of these times.

[00:55:58] Speaker A: Dude, I thought you were gonna cut that thing down. I thought you finally made up your.

[00:56:01] Speaker B: Mind, dude, when you just. Dude, I’ve had so many, actually, other profound breakthroughs with the three trees that I have in my backyard that you. Whenever you’re ready for that. Whenever you’re ready for that lesson on the podcast. I’ve actually. Dude, I learned a lot from these three freaking trees in my backyard. But. All right, keep going.

[00:56:19] Speaker A: So.

[00:56:19] Speaker B: No, so it’s so this. We’re talking a redwood tree and not this. Not this feeble tree that I need to cut down in my backyard.

Oh, I hate that peach tree. Just psychs me out every year.

[00:56:31] Speaker A: Dude, they. So they’re. They’re carrying. They’re carrying in their boat. Bees. Birds.

[00:56:37] Speaker B: Birds.

[00:56:38] Speaker A: Bees and fish.

[00:56:39] Speaker B: Yep. Okay.

[00:56:40] Speaker A: Fish in a boat.

[00:56:42] Speaker B: All right.

I mean, that makes sense if they’re not freshwater fish or. I mean, if they’re freshwater fish and they need to not be getting salt watered.

[00:56:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, a lot of these things make sense from an agricultural point of view, too, especially going over to an area that might not be prime for you to just live off the land. The land has been wasted, and no one’s been cultivating it. Yeah, they came prepared, these boats.

[00:57:13] Speaker B: Okay, here we go.

Been waiting my whole life for this discussion.

Let me ask you one question before I give you a thought.

[00:57:22] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:57:23] Speaker B: So we know more or less, kind of what the Ark looked like, right?

Like, how accurate. How accurate do you think the depictions are in, you know, like, movies and such?

I mean, did it have a sale?

[00:57:42] Speaker A: That’s a good question.

[00:57:44] Speaker B: Did boats. Did boats this long ago have sails?

[00:57:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And so when we’re talking specifically about Jared and his family, it says that the wind drove them forth, and so it makes you think that maybe they have a cell. And even though they have these tight vessels, I wonder if this hole that they put on the top.

I wonder if they also didn’t have a hatch, and maybe they spent a lot of time above.

[00:58:14] Speaker B: I do think that, by the way, when we were talking about this, I do think that, I do think that it was, I think that they were, they’ve had to have been at least big enough that you could still go out and get some sunlight.

[00:58:24] Speaker A: And so here’s, here’s my thought process with this too. I agree with you. I think they’ve been outside for some sunlight. And you talk about sales.

[00:58:32] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:58:32] Speaker A: If they’re up on top, maybe they do have a sale to push them and drive them. An argument against them having cells is the fact that this journey took 340 days to get to the new World. I don’t, I don’t know that travel normally took that long. Even then, I don’t think Lehi’s family takes that long to get there.

[00:58:52] Speaker B: I don’t, I don’t think, I don’t think they have sales.

[00:58:54] Speaker A: But okay, they, they, if they did have cells, what did that look like when you have to bop back up?

[00:59:02] Speaker B: That’s my question, is, is that the idea would be, is that the shape of the boat functionally served, that in case you were, in case you were flipped over, you were okay because you had a hole on the top and on the bottom so that. You know what I mean? Even if you were getting tossed around in the sea, you weren’t stuck. If you, if the boat got flipped upside down, you know, kind of like capsized and, and you, it’s like, okay, you could still function, top or bottom.

[00:59:31] Speaker A: Yeah. But I wonder, I might be wrong about that if. No, I think you’re right. I, Well, I wonder how much rolling it did. I think clearly there’s cases when, when a wave hits you and it rolls you around, you’re going to be tossed and rolled. Yeah.

Yes.

But I don’t, I don’t think of it as maybe it was permanently upside down or right side up. I don’t know if it was ambidextrous or if it was built in the way that one, one side’s always up and one side’s down, where temporarily it can be shifting, but it’s going to right itself. I, I don’t know. It’s a good question.

[01:00:07] Speaker B: I’m, I’m also just curious as to the actual, like, technique, technology of the times too, because, like, this is, this is like thousands and thousands of years ago, right?

[01:00:19] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:00:20] Speaker B: You, you, you’re the one that has the degree in this. Like, dude, just tell me if you’re like, hey, man. No. They found boats with sails dating back 15,000 years.

[01:00:30] Speaker A: Then it’s just like, no, no, no, we don’t have. So we don’t have a ton going back to the time of the brother of Jared. We don’t, we don’t have a lot of information, a lot of this. We’re going to extrapolate based off of what we, what we have in maybe periods where we have more records or. I, I don’t know. I don’t know that we have a lot. When we start looking at ocean travel fast forward thousands of years from when the Jaredites left, you don’t have people even in the time of Lehi, typically making transatlantic voyages. There is some evidence that this might be happening, but most of the time they’re, they’re within sight of shore. And all you’re doing is hopping along the shoreline to the next town where you resupply and then hopping along the shoreline. It’s just a method to travel across the water from land to land to land. You’re not making these. Okay, I’m setting off out into the unknown and hoping I land somewhere on the other side. You’re, you’re just following shorelines and popping in from town to town to repopulate. You didn’t have the kind of vessels that, that would withstand open water, deep sea, going out anywhere.

[01:01:43] Speaker B: Sure.

[01:01:44] Speaker A: And so when they talk about these not being built after the MANNER OF Man, 100%, these, these actually sound a lot that the barges that they’re making sound a lot more modern to what we have today than they do boats from even time periods thousands of years.

[01:02:05] Speaker B: After these guys, they either sound like alien spacecraft or submarines, but yes, they do.

[01:02:13] Speaker A: They do.

And I also think it’s an interesting point when we talk about 340 day journey and maybe their crossing is a lot longer than the crossing of Lehigh. Geographically speaking, maybe they’re crossing the Pacific instead of the Atlantic or the Atlantic instead of. Maybe the path that they’re taking is different than other paths. And also something else to consider.

The brother of Jared and his family here. And why do I keep calling it brother of Jared? Isn’t it just faster to say Jared when he’s the one leading the people? Anyways, anyhow, Jared and his family made several versions of these on the way to where they are to build this last bark that’s going to take them or across the ocean.

They crossed many waters to get to where they were. And the idea that they’re crossing so many waters and all these rivers and streams that they need to build barges for. And the idea that this ocean journey takes so long for them to complete, I think also signals that this was not long after the flood and we still have the waters receding from off the face of the earth. This was not an over the night the earth dries out experience.

I think having these large bodies of water that they’re having to overcome sounds like it fits, scientifically speaking, in a time when the world was a lot more wet and you had high river levels, high ocean levels, high water levels everywhere. Yeah, but let’s get into the science of these boats. You talked about cells. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe just like they could be above the boat, they could set up a cell if they needed to and take it down. But where space is a premium, maybe not the length of the journey sure makes it sound like it could have been a journey without much cell assisting on the trip.

Should.

[01:04:15] Speaker B: Let’s get into the, let’s get into these.

Let’s get into the fish. Yeah, and, and kind of the, the way that there’s like a function scientifically, I think, I think the, the reason that I enjoy this discussion because like a lot of things.

How, what would, if you were, if you were Joseph Smith making this up, would you consider a lot of the scientific details of why these boats work and why functionally it makes sense to have the hole on the top and the bottom and how you could not have fires inside and the reason why you couldn’t because the oxygen getting depleted and all these things and about how you needed somewhere for the waste to be going when you needed to go to the bathroom and things like that. It’s like all of these things and that if you have air pressure trapped inside the boat, you could actually, you know, pull a cork out of the bottom of the boat. Yeah, but, yeah, but exactly. And, and, and so, so let’s, let’s kind of talk a little bit about the, the. I think that it’s important to at least acknowledge how scientifically sound this is.

[01:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I agree. When, when you start looking at the problems that they’re going to have and the phrase keeps going back to is tight like unto a dish. And I think it’s easy for us to imagine in a world of Tupperware we just stick the lid on and it’s, it’s sealed and it’s tight and water doesn’t come in or out or air doesn’t come in or out.

[01:05:47] Speaker B: I want that.

[01:05:47] Speaker A: And.

Yeah, but, but they don’t have Tupperware back For at least to the best of our knowledge. I. I am a big fan. I’m going to. I’m going to go off on a. I’m ready.

[01:05:58] Speaker B: Don’t hit me.

[01:06:00] Speaker A: I’m a big fan of.

I feel like we apply too much bias on what they had or didn’t have based on a simple thought that we are advanced because we can look at our recent history and see all of the advancements we’ve made and all the progress and all of the developments. And I think that we apply that to history too much. We go back and say there has always been progress. And so therefore, the further back you go, the less technology, the less what? Less sophistication. The less whatever that they had. And I think that we.

What’s the right word for this? But not correctly.

We inappropriately or we wrongfully attribute to them limitations are based on our lack of understanding. We don’t know all of how things worked, what they had, what they didn’t have.

Sorry, that’s just my.

[01:07:02] Speaker B: No, I appreciate that.

Let them have it.

[01:07:06] Speaker A: But. But if you have a dish and you’re putting water in it or a liquid in it and it’s not dripping all over the place, that’s why you have the dish, to be able to keep it and retain it. I think that’s what they’re referring to, right, Is you have this dish that water’s not coming in or out. And I imagine that they’re building these out of wood. It seems like a logical assumption to be making Noah’s ark is made out of wood. And in order to make it watertight so that the water didn’t permeate into the wood, they had to seal it with a tar or a pitch. And they pitched it on the outside, and they pitched it on the inside. And the word for the pitch that they used is the same word in Hebrew that they use for covering or, as you know, atonement. They had to atone from the boat on the outside, and they had to atone for the boat on the inside so that water couldn’t get through. And I think there’s obvious symbolism with that. Even with these arcs or these barges that the brother of Jared and his family are making is they have to. They have to seal it on the outside and on the inside. And I think you make this connection, Nate, when you talk about cleansing the inner vessel, the need to think about the inside as well as the outside and keeping that sealed in a sealed.

[01:08:24] Speaker B: Environment, and to have a hole so that you actually can literally cleanse the inner vessel.

[01:08:29] Speaker A: And that’s the problem. Right. If I seal this boat, we’re in trouble.

[01:08:35] Speaker B: Yes, we are in trouble. That’s going to be a short trip.

[01:08:39] Speaker A: It’s going to be a short trip.

If it’s sealed, the air can’t go through or come in and it’s still there. You’re going to get carbon dioxide. I wanted to say. Yeah, I was starting to lead with monoxide, but it’s not monoxide that comes from combustion. Carbon dioxide. Right. It’s what we’re exhaling is going to build up of carbon dioxide and your oxygen is going to be depleted. And you brought up the point when. When they say, what do we do for light? And the Lord’s like, you can’t light a fire in that.

[01:09:12] Speaker B: Think about.

[01:09:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we think about it from a supplies issue. You’ve got tar or a flammable, sticky substance attached to wood, and you want to light a fire in that tinder box. That’s a bad idea. But. But you mentioned the oxygen. If you have a boat and you only have so much air and you light a fire, what’s going to happen? It’s going to burn all of the oxygen and you’re going to. You’re going to suffocate.

[01:09:37] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:09:38] Speaker A: So there’s got to be some scientific considerations of how do we make this work? And you talk about the holes.

[01:09:45] Speaker B: Can we. Before we do that, I want to just. I want to emphasize something that you said, though, because the covering, and the symbolism of the covering, too, is so that what? So that they can be protected as they basically are swallowed up into the depths of the ocean. And it helps them survive. It protects them. So this covering that they’re receiving is a protection from the elements. It’s a protection whatever, because these boats are literally going to be baptized.

And the covering is the thing that basically is their salvation or their safety or their saving. And one last thing that I wanted to say on this too, though, is that I feel like a lot of the times, the, the biggest. The biggest kind of thoughts and pro or not profound, maybe they were profound to me. You. You’re probably already like, no, bro, I already thought of this stuff. But do we also receive a covering on the outside and the inside symbolic of these boats? I would argue yes. Right. At least, you know, those of us that have, you know, been through the temple and things like that, too. And a lot of the.

A lot of the blessings and the covenants associated with that I think are at least worth thinking about. And it’s not necessarily something that we need to go into detail and talk about, but there is. I do. I do really like the idea of, you know, as we partake of the sacrament.

It’s.

This is sanctified emblems that represent a cleansing force from within, within side of our bodies and the Spirit as being a thing that cleanses us from within. Right? Baptism. Baptism is kind of like these boats, right? Like we. We die and reborn kind of in the physical sense. And then the cleansing power of the Holy Ghost is the thing that cleanses us from within. So I think there’s a. As I’ve really started thinking about that, I really just like the.

Very much the cleansing from within. Cleansing from. We talked a little bit about Pehoran when Captain Moreau and I sent him the letter, when he’s basically saying, hey, the more important thing to do is to cleanse from the inside first. We’re coming back to kill all y’all. If you don’t support us before we can fight any of our external battles. Think of again, what did Christ first do in Third Nephi when he came to the people in America? Did he go around healing everybody’s knees and backs and healing the sick and the afflicted? What did he do first? He baptized everybody, right? He set up his church. He made it possible for the cleanse from within before he started blessing and healing and all these things. So I only wanted to. Just to really highlight and drive that point home. I. You know, those of us that have made certain covenants and wear a protective, you know, garment, you know, physically, spiritually, whatever, I just. We also continue to represent both a covering from within and a covering from without as well.

[01:13:10] Speaker A: I. I love. I love that. And the Lord has always had laws governing what goes on the inside as well as the protection on the outside. If we look at the first commandment that’s given to Adam and Eve, the. The first commandments that they’re dictate what they can and what they can’t eat, and then soon after, they’re out of the Garden of Eden. I mean, you look at the Jews and the laws they have regarding what’s kosher, The Lord has always provided direction for the inner vessel, covering as well as the outer vessel that he provides us with. And I think there’s a lot of imagery in the temple with this as well. And I’m glad that you keep taking this back to that. And the temple, we do put on ourselves a covering, an atonement that we wear to keep us shielded from the storms from the waves, from the water, that we might be safe and whole on the inside. And then we talk about what it means to have clean thoughts, to have a clean mind, and symbolically what we’re taking in our body to represent that inner vessel. I love those connections.

And something I feel like we should talk about in connection with this is where are they headed?

And this idea of the Promised Land, because the Promised Land comes up in a lot of different discussions with Israel, who has to cross the Red Sea in order to get to the Promised Land, with Lehi and his family, who have to cross the ocean to get to the Promised Land to now Jared and his brother, who are going to be doing the same thing, crossing the sea to get to the Promised Land.

And the idea is, what is the Promised Land supposed to symbolize or represent?

And I think we can all say that is this not our journey back to God?

And we talk about getting to heaven and going to God as the Promised Land. But something that I think is worth bringing up in context of this discussion is where was God here on Earth? Was he not already here in the beginning with Adam and Eve? In a land called paradise in the Garden of Eden? And so if we want to return, if you will, to the presence of God, where do we find God? Isn’t it back in paradise is the Promised Land?

So here’s what I’m trying to say. We look at this linearly as we started in point A and we’re going to travel to point Be, and here we are on Earth and we’re going to get to. Our roadmap is to God and where we’re headed. But I’m trying to take it and reflect on this in a circular. We started in the presence of God, and what we’re talking about isn’t a destination as much as a restoration. How do I get back to the presence of God? And so the Promised Land not as somewhere we’ve never been before, but how do we get back to where we were and take that back to the temple and what it is. And the temple is the journey out of Eden, the journey away from the presence of God, but it’s a restoration in bringing us back to the presence of God. And you don’t have the presence of God without that historical context of leaving the presence of God in order to come back to the presence of God. This is a temple trip. This is a temple journey. And the journey of the Promised Land, the story that we keep reading about in the scriptures, it is the endowment. It is the process in which we have been separated from God, we’re returning to God. We talked about the Hebrew word for heavens being shamayim. There is water. And so if we believe that we left the presence of God from heaven to come here on earth, it’s a journey through the waters, a separation. We left him, and so therefore the journey back to him is also passing through the waters to get back to where he was.

Eden was created because water covered the earth and it receded, and it came from these waters to the beginning. If we go back to the creation story, it was water covered the face of the earth, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and he had to cause that water to recede.

A lot of these connections are also associated with birth. We talk about these arcs in terms of it being like a womb where the baby is safe in a sack of water, if you will. And that’s where the journey begins. And we left that.

And then a man must be born again. You go through this process and coming back out of this. There’s a lot of symbolism and layers with these stories. And this idea of returning to the presence of God is returning to paradise.

I think some people struggle with where is the modern temple in the ancient world?

And I feel like when you read these stories, you see, you can’t help but see the modern temple in every story of the ancient world. Yes, it’s always been about, how do I get these people back to me?

And the story of our life isn’t one linear line. And we’re headed out to God. It’s a boomerang. We started with God. How do we return and be restored to him? And that’s the story of the temple.

[01:18:49] Speaker B: It’s awesome.

[01:18:51] Speaker A: Which I think fits super well. I mean, we are focusing on the boats. And let’s get back to the boats. We’ll talk about them. But before I do, let’s talk a little bit about the mountain to getting the directions to the stones. This is temple. What’s happening? He’s going up into the mountain. And what’s the temple called? The Mountain of the Lord.

He’s withdrawing. He’s going up in there. And there is a veil that covers the presence of the Lord. And he is being presented at the veil. And the hand of the Lord extends itself out through the veil. And he sees this. This is.

This is very much a temple experience for the brother of Jared. And he’s coming to the Lord. Doing what? Asking for further light and knowledge and seeking to bring the people that he represents into the presence of the Lord, into the promised land. So there’s.

There’s interesting connections and something that the scriptures say over and over, he that has eyes to see or ears to hear or hearts that will listen, understand, it’s there. The symbolism’s there, the power’s there.

But oftentimes, those that have not been initiated in doubt or who have not been through that process don’t understand it. They don’t see it. But when you start making those connections and they start falling in, it becomes a powerful experience.

[01:20:25] Speaker B: Even the process in which he eventually, you know, got to enter into the presence of God was very much started out just by hearing his voice only. Right. And even the.

Isn’t that the process? I think that all of us kind of have to learn to go through if we do want to see the face of God is like, we’re told that that’s a process, line upon line, and that if we can’t even have faith when we can’t see right. We need to be able to have faith by hearing the word of God. We need to be able to, you know, reading the word of God and listening to that still small voice. And that as we do that and as we begin to show and exercise faith on that. I mean, in the story, it’s interesting, kind of the wording of it where Christ is basically like, because of your faith, I can’t hide from you. Like, I. You.

There’s nothing I can do to be kept from you being able to see me because of your faith. My. That’s a really interesting way to phrase that. And I’m sure that there. I’m sure that that means something, you know, deeper.

[01:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to drop a line here from President Nielsen from his last conference talk in October 2024. And it’s easy to find because it’s all italicized. Like, it’s even emphasized in the talk. When you go read it, it’s just isolated from the rest of the message.

And he says, here is my promise to you.

And it’s a promise.

Here’s a promise from a prophet. Today, every sincere seeker of Jesus Christ will find him in the temple.

[01:22:16] Speaker B: Powerful.

[01:22:17] Speaker A: It’s powerful.

And my wife and I are preparing to go to the temple again here in December. And it feels weird to say that. Right. It’s kind of cool.

When we lived in Utah, it was easy to go to the temple every week. I mean, you can drive there 10 minutes, no problem.

But when you’re out here and you have to buy train tickets and Plan ahead and schedule where you’re going to stay and schedule with the appointment or with the temple, what sessions or what work you’re going to do. There’s some preparation that goes into it, but it’s kind of fun. I kind of like there’s trade offs, right. One, it’s nice. Obviously it’s nice to be next to a temple and be able to go whenever you want. But there’s something nice about the excitement that comes from planning a trip and thinking about it and having it on your mind and making that effort and preparing for it. It’s different than oh, should we just go to the temple? Just going like it almost becomes a little bit casual when you’re living next to it. And so something I’ve appreciated about being about here, as much as we’ve missed the temple, we’ve also found the temple in a new sort of way that the, the excitement that comes for preparing for the next trip and, and building up for that and thinking about it and what do I want to get out of it when I come there. And the cool thing is when you’re, when you’re visiting the temple and you’re out of town, it’s not like you got a bunch of other things to do. You’re, you’re out of your home, you don’t have all the things that you normally do. You don’t have your work, you don’t have whatever right you, you end up spending. It’s kind of cool because you, you get to know the people that are there. You go through the session or whatever and at the end of the night you like, you know, good night. And they’re like, yeah, we’ll see you tomorrow. Because, because everybody, it’s like the same group of people that you’re with and when you’re there, you knock out a bunch of work that day, you go to bed and you wake up the next morning and you do it again. Like it’s not like you just go and do one quick session and you’re done. It becomes like this marathon of sessions. You’re trying to make up for the temple work you haven’t been able to do in a period of time. So it’s not super convenient to not have a temple. But there are trade offs and blessings in this preparing for the temple, that these words from President Nelson come back to my mind and really weigh heavy on me every time I prepare for the temple and what can I do to find him there this next time I go and will I see him?

Will finding him Be like the brother of Jared? Do I get to see the hand of the Lord? And to me, to kind of take this full circle to where we began with and talking about those ideals, to me, that’s an ideal.

Seeing the hand of the Lord, seeing the face of the Lord, seeing the Lord in person, to me is an ideal.

And is it something that we’ve all done or experienced or we’re all going to.

Does it hurt? Because I haven’t been able to, or we haven’t, or we don’t, or it doesn’t matter. To me, that’s still the ideal. Whether. Whether it’s happened or whether it hasn’t happened. It’s something that I am actively chasing and I want. And I’m not going to be discouraged because I don’t have it or if I haven’t had it or whatever. It’s something that still drives me forward, that I actively seek because I. It’s an ideal. It’s. It’s. It’s something I hold up as a target. And if I. If I miss the target, that’s all right. I’m still shooting for it. I’m still holding it up and aiming for it because that’s something I want to hit.

[01:25:49] Speaker B: That’s awesome.

That thought terrifies me.

[01:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:25:54] Speaker B: Because.

[01:25:54] Speaker A: Terrifying thought.

[01:25:55] Speaker B: Because there is. There is a.

Yeah, there’s a level of commitment, man, that would have to come with that. And that’s why I’m like, it’s one of the few things where I kind of sympathize with the children of Israel a little bit, where when Moses, like, hey, God wants to see all of you, they were like, you go. You go ahead and go do that for us.

You go ahead and. You go ahead and take care of that for us. I’m like, I like the idea that President Nelson can be the one taking care of that for the rest of us.

But I know that that’s not a righteous way of thinking, so I will repent.

I’m just being real, dog. I’m just keeping it real, dude.

[01:26:36] Speaker A: You could be real. That’s good that the real is right.

[01:26:42] Speaker B: So there’s wisdom in having two of these stones in these boats, because you can put them on the two outsides, and then you don’t have shadows cast on the different parts of the boat, because if you basically had the one fire in the middle, you would still get. Get dark spaces in the corners. Most likely. You had talked a little bit about. Somebody had done a little bit of a science project where they filled a boat like this kind of general shape with smoke. And had talked about how you could actually have the hole on the top and the bottom open at the same time. Do you want to. Do you want to describe that better than I’m doing?

[01:27:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. And I’m trying to look for this video because it’s not the best done video, but it kind of is at the same time. And I can’t remember the guy’s name, and I wanted to give him the. Give him the credit. Here, Here it is. The guy. It’s a YouTube video he posted in 2008. And he goes by the name of brother of Steve. So I don’t know, maybe he’s got a brother named Steve. But the guy, he does a fantastic job explaining this. He takes a Tupperware container and he takes his sink and he fills it full of water.

And he says, okay, let’s start with just having this door or not this door, this hole at the top that they’re going to open for air. And he drills a hole in the roof of this thing.

And then what he does to try to represent that, because you can’t see air moving very easily, but if you fill the air with particles, then you can see the air, right? So he fills this boat, this Tupperware container full of smoke, and you’ve got this massive hole that he’s drilled into the top of that, and he puts it out on the water, and then he shows the camera the smoke’s not. I mean, it trickles out of the top, but it’s not moving out of the top. And the problem with just having a single hole at the top of this boat is there’s no airflow. There’s no air movement. You’ve got to have a second hole. If air is going to be going out, it’s got to have somewhere where it’s coming in. If it’s trying to do both in the same hole, it just kind of gets trapped and it stops. So then he drills a second hole in the bottom of the boat. And what he does, because you’ve got your buoyancy, right? And if the boat sits deeper in the water, the water is going to fill up in that hole, however far it goes, until it reaches that point. So what he does is he builds like a little, like a well, a wall that goes around the hole so that the water can come up that column and not flood into the boat, but you still have this space. And then. And then he puts this Tupperware container back in the water. And what’s Naturally happening is that the buoyancy of this thing, it’s bobbing up and down. And as it bobs, the water pushes up into that column. And what that does is it pushes the air out of the top of the hole, and it pushes the air out of the top of the hole. And then the boat kind of rises back up. The water in the column sucks back down, and now it creates a vacuum and it sucks air in. And so what you’re doing is you’re essentially pumping the air out and forcing fresh air in. By having two holes in the boat, you’ve created a very simple pump, but a mechanical feature that would keep the air fresh so that the people don’t have stale air or die from too much carbon dioxide.

[01:30:04] Speaker B: Joseph Smith didn’t make this up.

[01:30:07] Speaker A: No, no. And what you were saying, Nate, to have somewhere for the waste to go. The fact that you can shovel out the. You know, in ancient times, even. Even in Christ’s time, when I talk about ancient, I’m thinking here, 4,000, but even 2,000 years ago, you have two level houses. A lot of the houses in Jerusalem are two level houses. And the rooms upstairs are where the people sleep. And they have holes in the floor that come down to the main floor. The main floor is where you kept the animals in your garage, if you will.

And you filled the garage with straw because the animals go to the bathroom. But then the people who use the bathroom on the upstairs floor, it drops down into the straw. And then what you’re doing is you’re shoveling all the straw up that collects all this waste and you’re taking it out to the dung heap. Well, if you’ve got straw for the animals and for you, that you’re using as a bathroom, and if you’re just collecting that for a year, that’s not. That’s a problem. But if you have. If you have an area where you’ve got this hole as well that you can just drop it in or dump it down into the ocean and you’re not having to deal with it. You can click your. You can keep your inner vessel clean.

You’re keeping it clean from bad air, you’re keeping it clean from waste buildup, there’s more ways than one that you’re keeping that inner vessel clean. And the functionality of having these two.

[01:31:29] Speaker B: Holes is impressive and just like the scientific accuracy. And know how I just. Again, I have a hard time believing that a young man was making all of this up on the spot and having it be scientifically sound as it Is I think that again, just. You would expect if somebody was making it up, they would be putting sails on the boats and they would be putting rudders on the boats. And, you know, you would. You would definitely be doing. You would. You would be referencing things that you knew or understood. You wouldn’t be coming up with kind of these way outside of the box things that, again, happen to be very scientifically sound, in my opinion.

[01:32:12] Speaker A: Well, especially, let’s look at the timeline Joseph Smith’s writing. This isn’t. Isn’t the steam engine kind of making its way into early American history? And they’re doing all these things with these canals, and if you’re looking at these boats and these big wheels that are powering them or the steam and, and thinking, man, maybe they could have taken advantage of steam back then and used this process to kind of motor. Like, if you’re just trying to, like, create this voyage off of what’s around you and what’s familiar and make this up, I don’t know that you get to. Yeah, I’m going to make this watertight vessel that can go down into the ocean 60ft and Bob back up.

[01:32:48] Speaker B: And that. That’s an air pump that basically. But the thing is that you could also fill it up with air, with the air pressure, pull the bottom thing out to clean out the bottom without the boat singing. It’s just, it’s. It’s shockingly more sophisticated than simply, here’s a little seed pod out in the middle of the ocean floating around.

[01:33:08] Speaker A: And. And what was the dang video. The girl from Australia set a record like the. One of the youngest people to circumnavigate the globe on her own.

She’s doing this in the sailboat. And right towards the end, like, the whole video, I think, gives me a new appreciation for the story of the brother and Jared, because as she’s out there sailing, she gets to a point where there is no wind and, and she’s stuck and, and she’s just sitting there, you know, desperate for days, like the boat’s not going anywhere and, and you might think, well, the wind’s going to pick up eventually you’re going to get there. But here’s the thing. She has food supplies that are going to last a certain amount of time. And, and if, if the wind doesn’t pick up and get her back to where she needs to be before her food supplies run out, then. Then she’s dead. Even if the boat does get her to where she needs to be. Right. There’s some concerns there. She. She. She has to deal with her sanity, being all alone and not having society that she’s interacting with or dealing with. There’s a lot of things I don’t think we consider when we talk about the brother of Jared and these boats doing this journey with. With freshwater fish tanks and. And how are you cycling that? And. And the bees and the swarms and the animals and the. Just an interesting and interesting journey. But right towards the end of her journey, she gets hit with a massive wave that drives the sailboat down like 60ft underwater.

And. And because the sailboat is sealed tight like a dish that it’s built for things like this, it can pop back up to the surface. And it does. Right. It eventually come and float right back up to the top. But they had to build it so that it could be underwater and that it is going to be able to ride itself, but it can still be rolling around. And so when they’re. Yeah, it’s terrifying. It was a good movie worth watching, but it adds perspective to these stories. I don’t think Joseph Smith could have envisioned these watertight sailboats that we have today and how they make these journeys and how they can survive the storms.

When he’s creating the story of the Jaredites and putting it into your point of what you’re hitting on.

[01:35:31] Speaker B: The book’s true. There it is.

We are at 95 minutes.

Anything else we need to squeeze in, I guess, this week?

[01:35:42] Speaker A: I’m sorry, I’m. I’m gonna.

I’m gonna close my mouth. I mean, we go this. This week is 1 through 11, but. But really, these are the highlights. We had fun with it, and I feel like we got a lot of good content in there. I’m okay. I’m at peace.

[01:35:59] Speaker B: I’m at peace.

We appreciate everybody listening.

We really do. We appreciate you sharing with your friends and family. Appreciate the comments, questions that you send us, the insights that you send us. We love hearing what you guys think about this.

We love you. Jason loves you, me, your friend, and the show’s producer, Nate. I love you.

Send any questions or comments to us at hi@weeklydeepdive.com we’ve only got a few episodes left, maybe ever, maybe just till the end of the year, but I guess we’ll see. Until then, I guess we will wrap it up for this week. Until next week.

Transcript:

Transcript:

[00:00:31] Speaker B: What’s up?

[00:00:33] Speaker A: Hey, Nate.

[00:00:34] Speaker B: How are you doing, buddy?

[00:00:34] Speaker A: Dude, fantastic. Happy Labor Day weekend as we’re recovering from a three day break.

[00:00:40] Speaker B: Recovering from. That’s right. Those of us with kids are. Yes, but they’re back in school today.

[00:00:46] Speaker A: When you have to have a vacation from the vacation.

[00:00:48] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, my favorite part of vacation is the chance to get to hang out with my kids and force myself not to work. So, yeah, my vacation was good at that, so it was good. I’m glad you’re still here in the country.

Back actually in the studio. We got this week and one more week with you, right?

[00:01:09] Speaker A: One more week.

[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:01:10] Speaker A: Two weeks from here.

[00:01:11] Speaker B: All right. And then we’re back on the international call.

[00:01:14] Speaker A: Back, back. Doing it from the distance.

[00:01:16] Speaker B: All right, what do we got this week?

[00:01:18] Speaker A: This week we’re talking really focusing on Nephi. And this is one of the stories I think most of us are very familiar with when we would talk about Nephi’s discouragement at the wickedness of the people praying on the tower. And then you have the murder of the chief judge and some of the chaos that ensues there, and the sealing power of the priesthood really is what this week’s. Okay.

[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, let’s do it. I don’t know if this one’s going to be a super long episode, but let’s just go. Let’s go meet in potatoes and let our listeners move on with their lives.

[00:01:49] Speaker A: Let’s do it.

You know, it’s interesting rolling into this week, you know, of course.

Of course Nephi is going to be calling out the murder of a chief judge because we didn’t have enough of that happening in the last ten years. I mean, you had Pahoran, right? And then you can’t really say his next son was. He was murdered, but it wasn’t for the same reasons. But then you have Helaman. He’s okay. He. But there’s a plot to kill him. And you have all of these assassination attempts.

Who is it? Caesar takes the seat because Nephi actually steps down. And maybe Nephi is saving his life from this. Right? He’s pulling an Alma and stepping away from the chief judge position, gives it to Caesar. And what happens to Caesar? He gets murdered. And then Alma’s going to call out another person getting murmured, murdered.

And what is the state of the country where you’re continually killing your chief judge?

What’s the right way to put it? Your figurehead, the person that stands at the head of your country, if you’re constantly trying to kill that guy, shows a lot of decay, erosion. But I think you see a lot of dissatisfaction with the people, the general, the masses. And I think even with the Gadianton robbers, you see a grassroots movement of, and maybe even going through a lot of the Book of Mormon with the king men versus the free men. Ever since you have this judgment seat, taking over the monarchy, you continually have this grassroots movement grasping, trying to take power, trying to take matters into their own hand. And if they can’t, at the very least trying to undermine the power that is. So there’s a little bit of that going on, and I don’t know if there’s a commentary for that today.

It’s just interesting to see the decay of this nation.

[00:04:04] Speaker B: My thought on that is, who would want that job if everybody just keeps getting, like, killed? It’s like, who wants to continue to step up to that plate? And maybe that’s where there’s kind of an interesting parallel to not even just like our country, but the world at large, right? Is that who’s willing to risk their life to go do that job? Unless.

I think it’s one of two things. One, they’re the most moral, amazing, truly inspired to try to save the world, or they’re a person that likes and enjoys power and is willing to risk their life to try to attain some sort of authority or power.

And I don’t know. I don’t know if the former can even be possible anymore in the world. And maybe that’s just a pessimistic way of looking at it. This is an interesting illustration in this story where it’s like, if you’re knowingly going, yeah, the last few dudes have all been killed, why would you want to go do that job?

And maybe I need to not be as pessimistic, but at a certain point I’m like, man, maybe that’s why I just don’t trust politicians. Cause on a certain level, we’ve had politicians in this country that seem fairly milquetoast and don’t have a lot of controversy surrounding them. And in political seasons, those people are basically demonized by the other side. And we’re told that they’re actually terrible humans and their families are attacked. And we, you know, we watch those politicians try to get character assassinated, and you’re going like, this is the most boring, normal person in the entire world. Like, why are we trying to make this person out to be, like, a terrible person? And then you go, like, why would any just normal, good person ever want to go through this and ever want to actually put their family through this? So I don’t know. It’s kind of a sad, scary thing to think about. But if I’m drawing any modern parallels, it is that which is just like, I don’t. It’s hard to know.

It’s hard to know how to actually change the world for the better on a big picture. Sometimes it feels like other than just try to be a really good influence in your home and in your communities, and I guess where you can, but it’s like, dude, would you want to go be the chief judge after this? If all of your predecessors are knocked off, do you want to go do that job?

[00:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah. No, not so much, right? No.

[00:06:49] Speaker B: Unless what? Unless you’re like, well, it’s worth the risk because it’s such an appealing position of power. It’s a. I don’t know. Or, hey, man, maybe I’ll be the lucky one. And I really do think I can make a change. Like, I’m just saying, it’s like, what are the. What are the primary. What are the primary motivations at that point?

[00:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah. The risk and reward, right? You either feel compelled because you have a sense of duty, a sense of honor. Like, you feel like this is what you have to do, and that can make you do some pretty gnarly things. Or the reward, like you say. Right? Risk versus reward. And there’s an incredible amount of risk associated with this. That reward has to be pretty significant. Yeah.

[00:07:31] Speaker B: For me. For me, I’m just saying I don’t know the answer.

[00:07:33] Speaker A: And you bring up a really good point. I remember growing up as kids, Nate, when we thought about the president of the United States, it was always, I don’t know, in terms of respect. I think. I think we had a respect for the position regardless of what political party it was. Like, this was the president of the United States, and that position had a lot of power, and it commanded a lot of respect. But do we fall victim today to maybe being a little bit of Gaddianton’s ourselves when we try to character assassinate whoever it is leading the country? And it’s hard because we look at the characters of sometimes the people that are leading the country, and it doesn’t command respect like it used to.

And where’s the line? Right?

Are we becoming Gaddianton’s in trying to put down the person in attacking? Or does that person really just deserve it?

[00:08:30] Speaker B: It’s an interesting, if nothing else, it’s always a good question to keep yourself in check. Probably I have to do that. I obviously have very, I feel like well researched, well lived reasons for why I do and don’t like certain people in the political spectrum. But it’s always a really healthy thing to continue to check your own, like, biases and at a certain point go like, hey, am I, am I trying to attack or destroy something for the wrong reasons? And so I don’t have an answer to your question other than everything. I mean, everything that we talk about always in the scriptures is there’s always that fine line between righteous and wickedness in some of these things. And we’ve talked about it on a spiritual nature and how Satan always tries to just get us as close to that line as possible to where we just kind of step over to the other side.

You’ve got to, you know, it’s, it’s a good thing to always keep in check, I guess, is why I’m bringing this up. And by the way, too, even though what I’m talking about, it’s like, you never know. What if that line between, hey, I really do want to try to make a difference in a positive way is also baked into also a strong desire for power. And, and, you know, I mean, it’s like, I don’t, I’m not even suggesting that it’s one or the other. I’m just saying there has to be a lot of strong, there has to be a strong motivation to do something knowingly dangerous because, because on the flip side of this, after 911, you had a bunch of amazing, heroic people say, hey, I’m stepping up knowing that I’m probably going to go into harm’s way and did that with also knowing the risk to their life and health that it would take. Right? So I guess I’m just saying there is, there is, human beings are so complex that when I, when you read stories like this in the scriptures, they just feel so much more real to me when you realize there’s still so much of that humanity all around us.

[00:10:33] Speaker A: And I think I, at the heart of it is pride, right? Even, even if you’re going in for the right reasons to serve people, does it not invoke a sense of pride that you could be a one in a position to make that difference? How does that make you feel to be, you know, to think that you could make a positive difference, that you have that kind of influence, that kind of capability, that kind of power, does that not involve a sense of pride? And maybe a lot of people go in feeling like they’re going to be doing the right thing and serving the people and doing it with that sense of pride. But that same sense of pride does not, does that not also so easily turn into, I am this great person I do deserve because I am making these sacrifices. I am the only one, and you know what? Because I am the only one that can do this, I need to go to extremes to protect and make sure that I am the one that takes this. I mean, it’s almost that you can see that humble beginning or that still has that seed of pride that can turn so quick.

[00:11:36] Speaker B: And you just kind of highlighted, I think, the point that should be made here, in my opinion, which is, and if we can so easily see all of this in somebody else, are we seeing this in ourselves? Because, by the way, you don’t have to be running for Congress to fall into this trap. I mean, this is, and we’re told and talked about this and warned against this even within the church, in church callings and in ways, I mean, you have an entire section of the doctrine and covenants that warns priesthood holders, be very careful, be very careful with where you’re at with God and the priesthood, because it is the nature of mankind to, once they get a little bit of power, once they get a taste of that, to start exercising unrighteous dominion like this. All, this all comes full circle. Not about looking at the world around us and pointing fingers. This should hopefully, and for me, as we’re kind of having this discussion, this definitely comes way more back around to what is the reason that is motivating us to do even what it is that we’re doing in our service. What is it?

Do we need? Do we need people giving us shoutouts over the pulpit because of service projects we’re doing for him, or do we need, you know, I don’t know. There’s a fine line between, you know, I, when especially, like, when I’m teaching, I always try to do the best job I can to prepare a lesson that hopefully means something. And you would hope, though, that it’s like, that never becomes something where you’re like, hey, I want to teach a good lesson so that people will think that I teach a good lesson. You know what I mean? It’s like there’s, there’s even those types of fine lines where you just have to be.

I just think that there is, it’s so easy to slip into the, what am I gonna get out of this?

And that’s, I feel like just the easiest first steps to start taking towards pride, which eventually turns into all of the other destructive, disastrous things.

[00:13:46] Speaker A: Well, even, I mean, as you’re saying that I’m thinking on a deeply personal level, when having a conversation or engaging with somebody, do I get so caught up in thinking about what I am going to say and how important it is that I am not even giving the other person the space or room or opportunity to think that I’m not actually taking in what they’re saying or listening to them? Because in my mind, what I have is so much more important that I’ve got to, like, formulate how. And I’m just speaking over or saying this because that’s, and I’m guilty of.

[00:14:19] Speaker B: That so much, but it’s a lot of it is because, and I’m learning this about myself is that I’m just anxious all the time. Like, my brain is so preoccupied with kind of all of, it’s just lists and lists. I feel like in my head of things that I’m, like, worried about trying to get done that sometimes when I’m, you know, when I’m locked into a conversation with somebody, I feel like it’s a lot easier. But there are times where it’s just, like, my brain is just going through the list and people are, like, talking to me and I realize, like, oh, my goodness, I, especially with my children or something, I’m just like, oh, no. Like, hopefully they can’t just totally tell that my brain is in a different place. And I have to almost consciously, like, so anyways, I fall victim to that all the time, too.

[00:15:03] Speaker A: And the one I fall victim to really bad as I’m thinking about this and as I’m trying to internalize this in my home and as a family, because you bring up the family and that hits with a chord for me.

We’ve always.

Getting a degree, starting off life in ancient near eastern studies doesn’t necessarily set you up for financial success as a father.

And so we’ve always somewhat struggled trying to make sure to provide for a family. And in my particular house, we felt it really important for my wife to stay at home and be with the kids.

In today’s day and age, having a one income family, it’s hard to keep up.

[00:15:48] Speaker B: Correct.

[00:15:49] Speaker A: It’s hard to afford life and then making the decision to have six kids on a single income with ancient near eastern studies as your plan to take you into battle. Right.

My desire to provide for my family, to provide for their needs, has. Has led me to where I’m so focused on that, that maybe I am trying so hard to make ends meet that I am missing connecting with my kids. And what haunts me is that message. No amount of success will ever compensate for failure in the home. And it scares me. Do I prioritize that so much and struggle and wrestle with that so much that I’m not spending the time to do the simple things, playing games with the kids or connecting with them or having conversations. Do they feel like they can even come and approach me? I. I hear you, Nate, talking about your kids.

[00:16:48] Speaker B: I know. I feel personally attacked by this. Jason. I’m just kidding.

It’s myself. It’s myself. Because what you’re saying is every single time is every word. I’m just like, yep. Oh, yeah. No, like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. I. Yep, that’s exactly right.

[00:17:03] Speaker A: No, I’m flipping the tables. I hear you talk about the kids coming to you and expressing their fears and their thoughts, and I look at this and like, man, Nate’s nailing it. What am I doing?

[00:17:14] Speaker B: I’m nailing it, bro. My whole point is. My whole point is that, dude. But this is the fine balance, though. Cause you and I are in the exact same situation there. I have four children, right. And my wife, again, stays at home and tends to. I decided to be self employed in the music industry, so good luck.

But, um.

But that’s the. But the. But we can’t stop doing that either.

You know what I mean? It’s like we can’t stop providing. And this is where it’s. That’s. It’s tricky.

So, anyways, it’s tricky, man.

[00:17:49] Speaker A: It’s so easy for us to follow. We look at these gaddiantons, we look at what’s happening here, and so many people trying to.

I don’t know. I think the motivations start off in a good place, and it’s just so easy to go off on there. And one last thought along this. We’ve been applying this personally and family and looking at it, even politically, I feel like I can’t move past this without taking at least one swipe or applying this better said religiously to our church as a whole, because I feel like we have an awesome responsibility, a terrible responsibility, an incredible responsibility as the Church of Jesus Christ, where Jesus Christ has commissioned us and given us priesthood and authority to make covenants with the children of men and bring them into his presence again to make that known to the whole world. And so go back to where we started with this conversation and that responsibility that we feel like we uniquely have in this world. We are the only ones with that responsibility. We are the ones that have to save the world.

And I think it starts off from a very altruistic position.

But how easy does that altruistic position start to twist or change to? Because we’re the right ones. We are the only ones that we start to attack or stab or put down or. Your church is not like our church is the point of pride. Again, is there not a sense of pride that comes with, this is the Church of Jesus Christ, and it’s a humble responsibility to be a servant to the world. But does that not also instill a sense of pride that we are the only ones and we have this, and how much can we start to churn and change?

[00:19:47] Speaker B: It’s that fine line, man. It’s that fine line, and it leads.

[00:19:52] Speaker A: To fights and arguments and. And not a spirit of peace, not a spirit of, you know, character assassinations and.

[00:20:02] Speaker B: Well, everybody’s getting killed in the Book of Mormon. So let’s keep going.

[00:20:06] Speaker A: Let’s keep going.

Let’s. Let’s take in last week. I think there’s some important context when we see Nephi stepping down and doing his missionary work. He goes to the north. He doesn’t have a ton of success, and he runs into the Lamanites. And this is kind of the second real time that we hear the details of a missionary effort to try to go in and reclaim the Lamanites. And I don’t know why we don’t see this one as. I don’t know. It’s definitely bigger and more impactful, I think, than when Ammon goes and does it. But when I think of converting the Lamanites, I still go back to Ammon, and I don’t know why, because this I do.

[00:20:44] Speaker B: How many arms did Nephi chop off?

[00:20:49] Speaker A: Touche. That’s a good point.

[00:20:50] Speaker B: All right.

[00:20:52] Speaker A: But what he does eclipses it absolutely, because not only does he convert, it’s not a small group of Lamanites. He converts a large amount of Lamanites. And not only that, maybe, perhaps for the first time, what we’re seeing is actual success in converting a lot of the centers as well.

I don’t think they get enough credit for how good they were as missionaries to be able to be converting to centers. Converting the Lamanites to the degree that the Lamanites gave back the land of Zarahemlet, gave back the land of Nephi, all of the possession of the Nephites, they turned back over to the Nephites. That’s never happened before. In fact, when Ammon goes years back, it stokes a massive war that leads to all of these war chapters in Alma. In this case, when they goes, it leads to a massive amount of peace.

That’s kind of an interesting thought.

[00:21:50] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:21:52] Speaker A: If you’ve got two comings down into the people of the Lamanites, when the first one leads into destruction, and then the second one leads into peace, just. Just interesting.

[00:22:04] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:22:05] Speaker A: Just interesting.

[00:22:06] Speaker B: Okay. Just interesting.

[00:22:07] Speaker A: Just interesting.

Just. Just something to think about.

[00:22:12] Speaker B: All right, I’ll think about it.

[00:22:14] Speaker A: I’m gonna keep rolling, though.

[00:22:15] Speaker B: All right.

[00:22:16] Speaker A: Sorry, sorry. Just. Just dots connecting in my head that I hadn’t connected before. That just kind of seemed interesting to me. Anyhow, going back to the lamanite, seeding the lands, what happens is a free market, right, starts to take over where the Lamanites are free to go anywhere within the land of the Nephites, because they showed an incredible amount of goodwill. Here’s your land back. Oh, well, you had it fair and square. So a lot opens up, and not only does a lot open up, but because they’re able to go wherever they want and trade however they want, and there’s a lot of commerce happening between them. Inevitably, what follows is an enormous amount of wealth.

This is the most prosperous the Lamanites have been. This is potentially one of the most prosperous times for the Nephites.

And I find it kind of interesting because early on in the Book of Mormon, you’ve got these massive hundred year patterns where not a lot is happening, and it takes a hundred years for something to develop or to roll out. And now, all of a sudden, you’re seeing things happen in a short amount of time. And I looked at this critically, like, really, four years of prosperity was enough to cause them to, like, trip and fall. Is four years enough for a policy to really take root and make that big of a difference to where you see that much of a change. But I look at our society today, and sometimes four years actually has an enormous impact. And looking at the Book of Mormon and seeing these small gaps of time and the difference that it can make, it doesn’t seem nearly as unrealistic to me as it once did.

And so you see this shift, and you would think the Lamanites have converted, the dissenters have converted, and the Nephites at one time believed, like, wouldn’t this be the golden age, the happy time?

How did this nothing last forever, right?

[00:24:14] Speaker B: How did it not last forever?

[00:24:17] Speaker A: And it. And it comes down to the Gaddianton robbers, the secret combinations.

And that’s what it says, right? It starts small, the secret combinations. And. And the more wicked part. Where was the more wicked part of the Gadianton robbers?

It was the Lamanites. But the Lamanites were embarrassed by it. They were ashamed of it. And they went to extremes to try to stamp it out among them. The Nephites embraced it. They looked at it, and they tried to be a part of it. They tried to grow it. They tried to. To where it starts to penetrate into all levels of government.

You’re not just assassinating the kings. You are the kings. You’re making all sorts of deals and trades. And it’s interesting because it starts to go into the signs that they show each other and the reason why. These combinations were part of the early records, but they were kept hidden and not revealed. And now, all of a sudden, they’re being revealed again and shown.

And we talked about this a little bit last week, Nate, the similarities between these secret combinations and the temple. And it almost seems like one grows out of the other. They understood something, and yet they used it for evil. They’re taking divine knowledge and trying to see not how they can serve their brothers or how they can become more like God, but how they can become self serving and how they become their own gods.

And when they look at that and say, how can I get gain? Or how can I do this in this system? So this is actually going to play into Nephi. I think we all know the story. It’s not worth doing much more than just a recap here. He goes on to the tower and prays the people see him, and he gathers a crowd, and then he prophesies about their chief judge being murdered, and they think that he’s conspiring and all of this crazy story, right?

And when he’s finally vindicated through the spirit of prophecy, and prophecy is typically like, oh, we’re going to see this down the road, or, oh, we’re going to see this. But to actually play out in the details of the blood on his garments and the guy murdered on the judgment seat, like instantaneous prophecy, I don’t think we see it that often at this level. How does he not convert everybody at that point?

In fact, when we get to the scripture, after all of this happens and he’s finally vindicated, this is chapter ten. Verse one. And it came to pass that there alone there arose a division among the people insomuch that they divided hither and thither and went their ways, leaving Nephi alone. And as he was standing in the midst of them, and it came to pass that Nephi went his way towards his own house, pondering upon these things which the Lord had shown unto him.

And it came to pass that he was pondering, being much cast down because of the wickedness of the people, their secret words and the darkness and the murderings and their plunderings and all manner of iniquities. And it came to pass that as he was pondering, behold, a voice came to him. Blessed art thou. And it’s going to get into this power. It’s going to get into the sealing power that’s revealed. But going back into verse one in so much that they divided hither and thither, leaving Nephi alone. It’s a powerful imagery, like, they were all there. He vindicated himself through the spirit. No one could deny that he’s a prophet of God, and they all kind of go their ways, and yet they don’t change.

So what if he’s a prophet and he goes out, and after the Lord speaks to him and he receives this, he goes out with even more vigor to try to teach the word, and the people are rejecting him.

And this is the guy that could convert lamanites. This is the guy that could convert dissenters. This is the guy that could have all the success as a missionary, and yet people didn’t listen to him.

And it doesn’t. Sometimes if you go into a mission where you don’t have a lot of baptism or you feel like nobody’s listening to you, you might judge yourself as a poor, a poor missionary or not having the spirit or not having the power. But even the most powerful of missionaries can run into a time when nobody listens to them. It’s not so much just the missionary as much as the audience as well.

And how does an audience reject him when they see this? And then you’re going to have the war. And he prophesied, he prays to God to replace the war with famine, and then the famine comes to the earth, and everything this guy is prophesying is saying is coming true. Why do they have such a hard time listening to him? And I think that’s where I want to land on this episode. Nate, why do we have such a hard time listening to the prophets when it becomes so clear that they’re a prophet, when they can prove to us when we can feel the power of what they’re saying, when, when we know yet why do we have such a hard time listening? Or at least in this case, why did they have such a hard time listening? Because I think a lot of us do follow the prophets.

Why are they so blinded to what he’s saying?

[00:29:34] Speaker B: I mean, I think it’s worth asking the question in the bigger picture, with which is Jesus Christ walked and talked with people, blessed them, healed them, and raised people from the dead, and was resurrected on the third day. So I think it’s, I think it’s, that’s, to me, it’s like, that’s the ultimate example of that question.

But even in, even in the New Testament, it talks about how a prophet is never accepted in their hometown. Right. There’s you, you know, too much of the human being of that person that it makes it really hard to see past that. I think you said something earlier that I kind of want to gently push back on. We have the prophets prophesying things happening in real time still to this day, all of the time, in my opinion, at least, I see that play out. And you saw right before the pandemic, there was a huge shift in the way we were preparing to do church meetings, the way that we were preparing to do teaching at home.

There was a renewed push on. Be prepared with your water and food. Be prepared with supplies. Things are going to get gnarlier before they get better. All of these things. I mean, how much more real time, I guess, are we expecting? I understand that the story of Nephi, he’s up on, and he said, this is happening literally right now. And I. Okay, fine.

Maybe it’s a little bit of apples to oranges, but I don’t feel. I don’t feel that in the big picture of life that it’s really that much different. When you have prophets now going, if you’re not shoring up your testimony right now in Jesus Christ, you will fall. You will not be able to withstand what’s ahead if you are not fortifying your testimonies right now. It’s like, how much more, how much more clear and articulate can the profits at this point possibly be, other than saying, you will see a lot of people falling away from this, you will be one of them if you’re not prepared. You see what I’m saying? I guess I’m saying, what else can we possibly want more than then those types of warnings? When, if you look at the, you know, couple hundred years that this church has been on earth. And when these warnings are given, the prophecies are paid off. It’s like, what else do you need to hear at this point? So to answer your question, I don’t know. I don’t know. Is it, again, it just says, does it go back to human nature? Are we, because we’re living in such a time of relative peace, insecurity relative to world history, that were comfortable? Was everybody comfortable at the time? I guess maybe that’s the answer to the question.

[00:32:27] Speaker A: Yeah, you bring up an excellent point with the prophecies.

And immediately my mind went to the first proclamation that the twelve apostles and the first presidency issued to the world, that we testify that the kingdom of God has been restored here on the earth and that this is what you needed to all the kings and the nations and the whatever. The gospel has returned.

And yet how well received is that in the world and more recently.

[00:32:58] Speaker B: But it doesn’t mean that that prophecy wasn’t played out. You look at the spread of the church across the entire world, you look at how even with all odds stacked against it, from early financial.

That’s exactly right. From physical harm, from financial poverty, from all of these things, and it’s still baited. So it’s like, okay, cool. That prophecy I would look at and say was still fulfilled and is in the process of being fulfilled. But you can judge the fruits of that prophecy.

[00:33:30] Speaker A: And more recently, and this is the first presidency, again, the family proclamation to the world. And I’m just going to read one line out of this.

We warn. So first off, if we’re warning to me, that’s prophecy, right? We’re warning about something that’s going to happen. That’s prophecy. We warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

[00:34:08] Speaker B: Whoa.

[00:34:11] Speaker A: Is that not as clear as it gets?

[00:34:15] Speaker B: Crystal.

[00:34:16] Speaker A: And so we’re looking at this apocalypse around us and all of these calamities that are happening to individuals, to families. We see the failing of the family all over the place, nations.

And we have all of these government leaders looking at, how do we fix this? How do we fix this? And I know the solution. I have the solution.

And yet, very rarely do you hear.

[00:34:45] Speaker B: Any of them say that it’s to fix the family.

[00:34:47] Speaker A: Right?

[00:34:48] Speaker B: Which, by the way, if you do hear them saying fix the family, I would suggest that those are probably people at least worth giving a shot, because you and I could probably agree fundamentally, organizations, organizations are either built from the foundation up correctly, or they’re, or they are going to be flimsy and they’re going to be knocked down. And foundationally, if the people of a country don’t have a good anchor or a foundation in their own homes, it’s hard to imagine that, that the, a body that is supposedly of the people, for the people will be able to succeed if those people are all broken and have no foundation themselves.

[00:35:35] Speaker A: And I think this goes back even what we were talking about earlier. And it was a small, subtle thing when we were talking about how sometimes when we’re having a conversation, we’re so busy thinking about what we want to say that we don’t always connect or listen to what others. I think that’s the root of the problem even now, right? We’re so busy caught up trying to figure out how we can solve the problem ourselves. And what are we doing when God has already given us the answer and his prophets are talking to us and they’re hearing the voice? I look at these people and I think I see parallels. I think the reason why they missed the mark and they didn’t listen to the prophet is because they were so busy thinking about how they themselves were going to fix the problem, or they were so busy thinking about how they themselves were going to prosper. Go back to what we were talking about. When I am so busy in this world trying to figure out how to survive, do I lose focus and put so much care and attention on that, that my family is what lays at the altar, the sacrificial altar. What are we willing to sacrifice to please ourselves?

And it’s so subtle and it’s so easy. I think that’s Satan’s trick. I mean, it’s in the book of Mormon. It’s in the family, the proclamation of the world. It’s playing out today. And what are we lying on the altar to make ourselves happy, to get that dream, to realize what it is that we are so focused on surviving, which is a good thing.

Go back to the garden of Eden, knowledge to good and evil. Is that to be like God? Is that not a good thing? Here I am going to help you to be like God. That’s what I want. And so we’re so focused on doing the right thing and what we think is the right thing. It’s a perversion of the right thing. We think we have the answers that we’re not willing to actually connect and be humble. And we break the first commandment because we’ve created another God ourselves and put that above goddess. What he’s really saying you said it.

[00:37:39] Speaker B: Best when you said, we’re in these desperate searches to find all of the answers when we’ve been told what they were in the first place.

And like any prophecy, it should be able to be put to the test and judge the fruits thereof.

I would say you can really see, you know, historically, especially kind of around the sixties, and it different times in our country’s history, where you start seeing fundamental breakdowns in the family structure. And we now have 50 years, 60 years of evidence to go. What happens when you have a breakdown of the fabric of what a country should be built on? And it always starts in the home. And again, you just look at the evidence in a certain point. And so therefore, it’s funny when you say we’re trying to find all these solutions.

I’m just saying you nailed it when you just said we don’t need to look nearly as externally as we are instead of looking internally. And I’m so glad you reread that line again from the proclamation of the family. But I mean, talk about a prophetic document. I mean, you go back and reread through that, too, again. When it was released, I feel like probably when it was released, at least for me, I was kind of like, oh, yeah, I guess I can kind of see some of this stuff around us right now.

You look at that document, what, 20 years later, and you go, oh, my goodness.

It truly is so much more important, I guess, and articulate now than it was 20 years ago. Like, it actually, it actually says something so much more pointed and intense now than it does when it was originally released. And we all kind of went, yeah. Like, oh, yeah, this is good stuff to think about. Yeah, we should really, you know, we should strengthen the home, I think was kind of the takeaway right when it was first released.

You read that now in context of 2024, that’s a different document. You go, my goodness, this absolutely was prophetic.

[00:40:04] Speaker A: And take what we’re talking about today and let’s ground it in what we talked about last week.

[00:40:10] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:40:11] Speaker A: And last week we talked so much about the need to be anchored in Christ.

Your favorite scripture, Nate Helaman 512.

[00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, I don’t need to do it again. But it’s my favorite one. I recited it to my kids yesterday. We were talking about it again. I’m like, it’s my favorite one in the book. Found out it’s my mother in law’s favorite one in the book, too. Give us a build upon the rock, baby. Because the devil will send forth all of the gnarliness.

[00:40:37] Speaker A: And I want to take that and go back again to the story we mentioned last week in the old Testament, when Moses had created Aaron’s line to be the high priest. And remember, they’re all Levites, and the Levites have the right to the priesthood. Here.

They were the tribe that was sacrificed, if you will, to spare the firstborn of all of the tribes. They were the one tribe that was given that responsibility. But Aaron’s line in particular was given the high priest responsibility. And as a high priest, he could go into the holy of holies, into the presence of God. And you have the other one that said, we’re just as good as Aaron. Why don’t we have that responsibility?

And Moses says, see, this is the difference. This is the crux. This is what this lies on.

If Moses listens to his argument and says, no, you’ve got a good point, or if he lets him make that decision, then who’s guiding the church at that point?

Right? Is this a church of good ideas? Is this the church of man? Or is this listening to what God said? Moses did not choose his brother because he thought, you know what? My brother is probably better than everybody else. I’m going to do it. The reason why Moses chose Aaron is because God said, take Aaron and put upon, clothe him in the robes of the priesthood, anoint him and sanctify him.

It’s because it’s God versus us instead of us versus God. We put God first. And so Moses says, all right, God’s the one that made the decision.

And if you want to be that, then God’s going to be, have to have to be the one that makes this decision. Again, I’m going to take it out of my hands so that I’m not the one making this choice. Lest you think that it’s a church led by me, let’s do something that shows you that this was God’s decision, not mine. Take a rod for yourself. And Aaron’s going to take a rod, and we’re going to lay them out, and we’ll see which one actually is able to produce buds and blossom and flower and grow. Why would it? Because it’s connected to Christ.

And their rod withered and died, and then their whole family kind of got destroyed. Not great, but take that to what we’re talking about today.

We do need to struggle.

That was pronounced on us in the beginning with Adam, when he says, by the sweat of thy brow, well, he.

[00:43:12] Speaker B: Said he was going to curse the ground for their good, for their sakes.

[00:43:17] Speaker A: It’s not because we’ve done something wrong that we’re struggling.

And in that struggle, do we make time to listen to God and be connected and do what he wants us to do?

Do we. Do we lay at the altar our will and sacrifice that? Or are we sacrificing our family or our opportunity to connect with God or our connection with God? Because if we sacrifice God, then we’re going to wither and die, just like that line did.

And if we’re connected to God, when the prophet speaks, we listen, we hear, and we sacrifice the right things. If we don’t have, we sacrifice everything. And it really comes down to what Christ said. If you lose your life, you will find it. But if you try to keep your life, you’re going to lose it all.

So I think. I think last week’s lesson serves as a great place to anchor when we’re talking about listening to the prophet today and why we missed the mark. Because sometimes we are struggling. We are trying to survive, and. And what do we end up sacrificing? Because like you’ve said before, Nate, that the equation has to balance. You’re always sacrificing something. There’s always a price that needs to be paid.

[00:44:41] Speaker B: Amen, brother. Okay. Anything else you want to hit this week?

[00:44:44] Speaker A: That’s all I got.

[00:44:45] Speaker B: Okay. Appreciate you. Glad that you’ve been able to come down and do this in the studio. Appreciate you listening. Please send us questions, comments, feedback. Last question.

What’s the difference between Nephi going up and praying on top of a tower and ramyamtum?

[00:45:02] Speaker A: Oh, man. Such a great question.

Such a great question.

[00:45:08] Speaker B: You thought this was over?

It’s been gnawing at me.

[00:45:12] Speaker A: No, Nate, like, this is something that we have been hitting for years now.

The fine line between the two, right?

[00:45:24] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:45:26] Speaker A: The waters of destruction, yet the waters of life, right? The tree of life, yet the tree of death and the imitation and the similarities.

And here you have.

It’s such a great connection.

[00:45:46] Speaker B: It’s funny that they’re this close to each other in the scriptures, too, because I don’t think. I don’t think it highlights. I don’t think it highlights the point as well if it’s too far away from each other. So there’s clearly some value in going closer to God and praying right in our temples. Where is the celestial room? Where’s the holy of holies? Where’s the sealing room?

[00:46:06] Speaker A: Well, the temple itself is called the mountain of the Lord. You’re supposed to go up into the mountain. Nephi, he went up into the mountain often and prayed. And so, again, talking about elevating yourself to pray versus elevating yourself to pray, it’s interesting. Well, it’s the heart of what we were starting this with. You know, going and doing what the Lord asked you, because you are the one that can do it. Is that not elevating yourself? Sure. To serve. But how easy.

[00:46:34] Speaker B: That’s what I mean, bro.

[00:46:35] Speaker A: How easy does that change?

[00:46:38] Speaker B: My only thought on it again is I think that when we see.

I think that there’s. There’s a. There’s two ways, usually to look at these things. And you see it a lot in people that, unfortunately are attacking the church from within or as recently removing themselves from the church, is that you see a lot of people say, look at the secret combinations. Well, then why does the church do things in secret? And you go, okay, hey, you look at these stories, Ramy emptom. Aren’t you not supposed to be on top of towers praying? You go, okay, you know what I mean? It’s like you see these things and you go, hold on. If you actually take the perspective switch on that and go, well, what if you are supposed to be doing those things and these other things are the perverted versions of these things? You’re taking a look at it and saying, hey, look, the temple stuff is like secret combinations. And I go, no, no, no, no. Secret combinations are perverting the things of a temple. That’s a very different thing. Thing. And if you say, hey, is there something wrong with going up on a tower and praying to God? I say, no, no, no, no, that’s a good thing to do if your intentions and if you’re doing it the way that the Lord would have you do it, this other thing is the perverted version of that. It’s the imitation of that. Don’t misunderstand the two. And I understand that that’s an easy line of attack for somebody that’s trying to find and poke holes into things that the church does or believes or we teach or read about in the scriptures. But.

But this is. It’s cheap, and it’s. And it’s an actual. It’s actually a very simple discussion when you go, the thing that you’re trying to say is the original is the. Is the imitation. It’s the perversion. And don’t. Don’t confuse the two.

Sacred things have been there since day one. And those are things that, yes, all are invited to come and be a part of and are not used to separate, but are actually used to seal and to bring people together and reunite them with God. That’s the original.

[00:48:46] Speaker A: But we’ve even talked about cleaving, sealing and bringing together. Is the same power that separating and dividing.

[00:48:53] Speaker B: And that’s right. But my point is that, again, when you do inevitably see these discussions or these things come up, it’s just important to. To acknowledge and recognize. This isn’t actually that confusing of a discussion. Is like you, the person arguing it is unfortunately elevating the imitation as if it was the real thing. And it’s just like, no, that’s the perverted version of it. And I’m sorry.

It’s not that much of a. This isn’t that hard of an argument.

[00:49:24] Speaker A: And it’s so weird how something so similar can be so opposite. It’s as clear as black and white, and yet it’s almost the same thing.

And some people don’t see it right. They caught focusing on the wrong thing. I was thinking about a different similarity between the tower.

Noah, for example, built a watchtower so that he could see the Lamanites. And he would be able to see if they were staging so that he could prepare for war to defend his people.

But his towers were unmanned and unstaffed. And had it not been for Gideon trying to take his life away, they would have been completely caught by surprise and destroyed and ruined as it was. They were mostly destroyed.

And in the scriptures, the Lord talks about having a vineyard and building a watchtower to protect it. And having somebody on the watchtower that could signal and prepare the people to be prepared. And yet they didn’t man the tower. And so the enemy came and threw down the tower and threw down the walls and destroyed the vineyard. And so when we look at this story and we see the Nephites just not getting the picture. And as sad as it is, it can look as a very depressing story.

But at the same time, do we not see Nephi standing in the tower?

This is a guy that the tower is built overlooking his garden, overlooking his vineyard. And he is in the tower seeing a what’s going to happen before it happens? And taking steps to try to prepare the people.

This is actually an excellent story.

And what’s his reward because of it? Right. He receives the trust of God. And the sealing power that what he seals on earth will be sealed in heaven. Because he wouldn’t ask anything that God wasn’t prepared to do.

And it’s fascinating when he goes and says, prepare or to replace the war with famine.

Isn’t famine a natural consequence of war? Anyways? If all of your men are out there constantly fighting and no one’s there to tend to the crops and the flocks, what’s going to happen? Who’s taking care of providing food for the people? Moroni saw this. When Moroni is engaged in war, what does he do? He stops for a time, sends everybody home so that they can prepare food, and so that they don’t end up sinking into a famine after the war is over. And they were blessed in time by the Lord, because they sent the people of anti Nephi Lehi, who weren’t going to engage. And what was their job in Zarahemla? To raise flocks and food, to send out supplies. And we keep reading about those supply chains that they’re sending out to the fronts. These people are making sure that a famine didn’t follow.

And so when Nephi says, replace it with a famine, is he really coming up with anything novel or new? Or is he just in tune with the natural consequences of the disobedience of the people? So that when he says, this is the will of the Lord, he’s not saying God’s going to smite them with this, that or the other. He understands what’s going to happen when people don’t follow the Lord. And he’s just pronouncing the natural consequences of their own disobedience, because he is in tune with what the Lord’s saying. And I think our prophets have done that when they said, if you don’t see the disintegration of the family is going to lead to this, and we could go into a whole discussion breaking down the impact that the family’s disintegration has had on violence, on crime, on prison rates, totally, on gangs, on secret.

[00:53:08] Speaker B: Combinations as a whole, but also just the mental health of human beings and drug use and all kinds of things, too. I mean, it’s the most destructive thing that’s ever happened to this country.

[00:53:21] Speaker A: And you and I both coming from a single income home, having to compete with all of these other households that are in a double income home.

How easy is it when we go back to economy and your willingness to pay versus that? You start looking at the supply and the demand chain and what people are willing to pay? Well, everybody else is willing to pay more because they have more to pay with. Then how do the single family homes, the single working income homes, keep up? And what’s a natural consequence of all of a sudden having all of this money, all this wealth and putting all of this into you start to drown out and choke the others that can’t keep up.

[00:54:03] Speaker B: Yep.

We’ve been blessed.

Killer. Well, I’m glad we threw that in there at the end. It’s something that was kind of gnawing at me. I’m like, I know we at least need to acknowledge this, so I’m glad you were. I’m glad you were able to add some insight into that.

[00:54:20] Speaker A: I’m glad you brought it up.

[00:54:21] Speaker B: Yeah, no sweat. Appreciate everybody listening.

A couple dudes just talking about the scriptures. Doing our best to add a little bit of unique insight and insight and unique perspective.

Hopefully, as you’re listening, you are inspired and find a lot of your own connections. And hopefully, if nothing else, we can kind of give you something to think about to make your scripture study even more fulfilling. If not, we’re doing our best, so we’ll keep trying.

Appreciate you sharing with your friends. You can get a hold of us at high at weekly.

The conversation also delves into the complex topic of secret combinations, both righteous and wicked, and how they manifest in scripture and in life. The hosts emphasize the importance of discernment and the fruits of our actions as key indicators of what is truly righteous. By staying connected to Christ as our foundation, we can better understand and withstand the trials that come our way. This episode offers listeners a blend of scriptural insights and thoughtful reflections on spiritual growth and personal responsibility.

Transcript:
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend Anna, this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: Hello.

[00:00:33] Speaker A: Hey, Nate, how you doing?

[00:00:36] Speaker B: We try to add a little insight and unique perspective. We do our best. We made a very conscious decision.

We made a very conscious decision early on to not just recite the stories, man, but to try to, like, actually give. Give something to hopefully inspire you or to think of it different.

We always try to make sure we don’t just get caught storytelling, because we more or less always know the story.

[00:01:01] Speaker A: So it’s just fun, right? When you can dig into the scriptures and see something different or understand something new, it just. It’s exciting, right?

Hopefully, that’s the journey we get to take you guys on, is we’re sharing our experiences with the text and the things that we’ve kind of discovered and learned, and hopefully that is enough to encourage you to find new things for yourself, too.

[00:01:23] Speaker B: There you go.

[00:01:25] Speaker A: We get to talk about some fun things today. Can’t wait, because this is really the introduction of the Gadianton robbers secret combinations.

And interesting enough, I think, begading comes back into play on this.

[00:01:49] Speaker B: You said the magic words.

[00:01:51] Speaker A: Let the begatting begin.

[00:01:53] Speaker B: Let the begatting begin to.

[00:02:06] Speaker A: Are you ready?

[00:02:19] Speaker C: You’ve been waiting for it.

We’ve been building for it.

The began.

And Adam lived a 130 years and began a son in his own likeness. And after his image and called his name set in the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth were eight, and he begat sons and daughters.

And all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died and Seth lived, and 105 years of Begati knows.

[00:03:17] Speaker A: So seeing as we’ve gone down this road, what does Bugatti have to do with Helaman at all?

And I think it actually has quite a bit to do with it. And here’s where I’m. Well, let’s start with where we’re ending. Right. The last chapter, I believe, is Helaman five. Is it Helaman five? Helaman six. Helaman five is a powerhouse. Yes, it is. Yeah.

[00:03:41] Speaker B: This is my favorite scripture in the Book of Mormons in this.

[00:03:43] Speaker A: Is this the look to the rock from whence you’re hewn?

[00:03:46] Speaker B: Helaman 512.

[00:03:47] Speaker A: That’s it.

[00:03:48] Speaker B: It’s my favorite scripture in the book.

[00:03:50] Speaker A: And see, that’s where we’re going with this. So let’s start there, I guess, the crowning moment. Let’s spoil it and start there with the beginning. Helaman 512. And now, my sons, remember. Remember that it is upon the rock of our redeemer, who is Christ, the son of God, that you must build your foundation and that the devil shall send forth his mighty winds. Yea. And his shafts and his whirlwinds.

[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yea.

[00:04:11] Speaker A: Yea.

When all this hell, all his hail. Sorry. Thank you. When all his hell and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to draw you down to the Gulf of misery.

[00:04:24] Speaker B: You’re reading the book, and I’ve got this thing memorized. Drag you down to the Gulf of misery and endless woe because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation. A foundation whereon if men build, they cannot fall.

[00:04:36] Speaker A: Thank you.

[00:04:37] Speaker B: Dude, you thought I was going to tell you it was my favorite scripture in the book and not have this memorized by heart.

[00:04:42] Speaker A: I love you, Nate. Fantastic. And in here, not only are we talking about a reminder to look to the rock, to look at the savior, to look at that, but also helaman counsels his sons to remember the source of their names, because he names them Nephi and Lehi, and he wants them to go back and remember that right where they’re coming from.

[00:05:04] Speaker B: It’s a big deal to me.

[00:05:06] Speaker A: It’s a big deal.

[00:05:07] Speaker B: It’s a big deal to me even now in my life. But continue.

[00:05:09] Speaker A: Do you want to? Do you want to.

[00:05:12] Speaker B: I know. I feel like I’m just interrupting you. I felt bad about this, man. No, I’m just saying, like, I’m glad we’re starting here.

[00:05:18] Speaker A: What I want to say here is going to be a lot more important than what I do.

[00:05:21] Speaker B: I don’t think so, because I think.

[00:05:23] Speaker A: You need to lay the found work on this. The founder, the foundation, the groundwork.

[00:05:28] Speaker B: I know we kind of joke about the begetting. I know we do. I do. And it’s. To me, it’s like, it’s a joke that kind of just works a lot because there’s an absurdity about when you’re a child and you first start the begatting scriptures, and it’s just so and so, begat so and so. Begat so and so. And if you can’t come from a good family like mine and you’re doing scripture study at 06:00 in the morning before your father’s going to work to make sure that we you know, that we all have a chance to do it. And you’re a pre teen, so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open, and you’re reading, begatting, begatting, and begat and begat and begat. And you really go, what am I doing right now? I could be asleep. Right. So there’s just. There’s some funny kind of just big pictureness about it, but the seriousness of it is like.

And this is one of the reasons I love doing this podcast with you, is because names mean something, and where you’re from means something. And whether you know it or not, in your youth, I do feel like as you begin to really try to understand who you are, which I think is part of the human experience. Right? And a lot of us do that in our youth and then redo that again when we become a young adulthood and you have a child and you go through that process again. Like life is constantly a cycle of trying to understand who you are and learn who you are and figure out your voice, where you fit in the universe. And this is why I love the anchors that names can be or take on. It’s why in our family, we take naming our children so seriously.

It’s why you have the.

What’s the genealogy company, the family tree company, 40 ancestry.com and 43 andme, or whatever it is. I don’t know what the name of it is, because there’s something even outside of a religious community that is so.

It’s its own unique emotion. When you see pictures of three generations back and you realize, I am part of this person, literally, this person is a part of who I am, there’s something that’s so emotionally anchoring about that I don’t know how else to describe it. But even outside of a genealogy context, there’s something as humans that we feel a connection to where we come from.

And this is why, within a religious context, there’s something so powerful about the message of where did you come from first?

Like, who are you?

Much bigger than who’s your parents? Who’s your grandparents in the family tree, right? Who are you fundamentally?

It’s funny because we were just texting about this, right? The idea that even back in greek philosophy, not philosophy, during the time of kind of the great philosophical movements of Greece and Rome, you have people creating gods that more or less look like them, right? There’s just trying to be, like an understanding. So even though they had all these superpowers, there’s still a quest to be like, who am I? And how do I relate to some higher power you have then the influence of Christianity, early Christianity come. I mean, we read in the acts about where we have, I think it’s Peter or Paul that’s going to Athens and actually describing and flipping the understanding of, no, God made us in his image, not the other way around, but even from, like, there’s a fundamental human need to know what is my actual place in this universe. And so when you look at so many of the things that we do as a church, like, what is the first thing that we promise to do each week when we take the sacrament? Always remember him and take his name upon us.

And by the way, those two things go hand in hand.

Those two things go hand in hand. When you’re. When you’re called a name over and over, you’re hearing a name. If you. Nobody in Utah wants to name their kids layman and lemuel, it would be hilarious. But nobody’s doing it, because what is the message that that child is going to receive every time they hear that name? Because when you hear your name, you are always remembering. Right. The whole. All of this comes down to, for me, fundamentally, and why it means something to me is. Is it feels perfectly aligned with that scripture. Is that. Is that if our testimony is built on the rock, if we are always remembering him, if we are taking his name upon us, it will inspire us, I feel like, to become him, to do everything that we can to live a life that he modeled for us. And this is why the begatting, as much of a joke as it might be at times, means a lot to me.

[00:11:04] Speaker A: It connects to me deep, but you’ve nailed it, man. This is beautiful. And I’m going to mix in here an article that I read that’s outside of the scriptures, outside of what we typically talk about. But they did an interesting study where they took pictures of infants, and they had people try to guess the names just based off of the pictures.

And the accuracy was terrible, of course. Right?

You couldn’t pedal.

[00:11:33] Speaker B: I thought you were gonna say it was off the charts good. I was gonna be like, this is some magic show stuff, but okay.

[00:11:39] Speaker A: But then they took pictures of adults or older people, and then they did the same thing, and they found that the accuracy, that they were able to match names with people with a much higher, significantly different amount of accuracy than they were kids. And so the conclusion that they drew from this study is we grow into the names that we have.

[00:11:59] Speaker B: That’s fascinating.

[00:12:02] Speaker A: How is it that we’re better able to assume people’s names based off of later in life when they’ve kind of grown into. And so taking that into the context and the concept of taking the name of Christ upon us, and have you received his image in our countenance? And as we are every week reminded of that and trying to be like him and become him, we literally do become more like the savior. Does that name not apply to us? And do we not see the savior in some of the examples that we’ve had in our life? We look back at some of our mentors and some of our leaders, our heroes, our parents, and do we not see Christ in those people?

So there’s some profoundness to that.

There’s also something less important, but not, I say, less important, and I undermine it already. It’s not that it’s less important. In fact, I think it ties this all together quite beautifully when we go into the book of Mormon, it’s interesting that we’ve come across this line. Nephi and Lehi’s dad is Helaman, whose dad was Helaman, whose dad was Alma. Whose dad was Alma. And you get these generations that are just spanning.

And the only other place I see this is when you go back to the beginning with Jacob. You have Jacob, and then you have Enos and Jerem and Omni. And you go through that line all the way down, but you don’t see it in other places.

Why don’t I know who Nephi’s son was?

Why don’t I know who? Captain Moroni. He’s got Moroni. Ha. And then what? What happens to his line?

He’s great, isn’t he? And we got Pahoran’s line here. And we have his three sons, Pahoran, Bakumnai, and Panchi. And what happens to them?

He had many sons. Those three die. But where does that line go? And so you keep seeing all of these lines that just kind of wither and die in the Book of Mormon. But then you have these two lines that are a little bit longer, and I honestly think that they’re one in the same line.

And the reason why I make that argument when you go back to Nephi makes Jacob the high priest. And so why is that line important? It’s the priesthood. It’s the authority, and it’s representative of the savior. So I’m going to draw a parallel to this and the Old Testament, because in the Old Testament, you come to notice that the Old Testament really is just a family story.

And it starts with Adam, and it goes down Noah, Abraham, it goes through, and there is one line, and you go even to the kings David and Solomon, and you follow the king list. And what is it? It is a story of Christ’s family line. And you have this line that goes out. And every now and again, you get these little branches, right? That wither and die. That wither and die. But why does this one line get preserved? Because it ties into Christ, and it’s this one family line. So I go back to the book of Mormon, and I draw this parallel. The high priest was the symbol of Christ.

And through here, correct me if I’m wrong, doesn’t Christ call on NepHi to lead the people and the apostles, like, this is his rock, or this is. But he represented. This is this priesthood line that rolls through. The Book of Mormon is symbolic, I think, of being tied to Christ. And I also see a parallel in this with Moses and Aaron, because Moses, he’s the leader, right? He’s the king.

He is the one that pulled them out of Egypt, that established him in the land of Canaan. Let me ask you this question. Who’s Moses son?

Who follows Moses?

It dies just like Nephi. And you’re like, wait a second. Nephi is this Moses character. He’s this strong person that leads them, that guides them, that builds the boat, that crosses the sea, that does all of these miracles. But then he anoints his brother.

And through his brother’s line, I can name all of Aaron’s descendants because that’s the high priest, and it kind of rolls through there, right? And you’ve got this symbolism there. And then even take this example to Joseph and Judah and Joseph. You got Ephraim and you got Manasseh. And there’s some importance with Joseph’s line, but Judah is what it follows all the way down until you get to Christ. And so I think the core of it, why some lines tend to be preserved while other ones wither, is because those lines represent or encase Christ.

And I think this is going to go back to tie this in.

When you go to Moses anointing Aaron and the high priest coming through there and other Levites saying, wait a second, we’re just as important as Aaron. Why don’t we get to be the high priest? And they challenge Moses and say, we want the authority. And Moses says, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You put out a rod for you and your family, and Aaron will put out a rod for him and his family, and we’ll see what happens. Aaron’s line, his rod buds and blossoms and grows. And then I take that and tie it to the New Testament. When Christ says that any vine to produce fruit has to be tied to me, Christ. That’s where a line blossoms and grows as if it’s tied to Christ, whereas in the line of the detractors withers and dies on the stem. And I’m not trying to say that Nephi is an apostate and his line is going to wither and die. I think the reason why Jacob’s line is preserved is because of the high priest role that he fills and the importance of representing Christ, and that tying it to Christ and kind of showing that. I don’t think Nephi ever stopped tracking his line and his genealogy. But for the point of the story is this line in this book is our symbol of Christ. And therefore it is important that this line continues. And now, going back to why, I think Jacob’s line in the beginning is the same as Alma. Alma, Helaman. Helama and Nephi. Nephi going out to the end of the Book of Mormon is because when you follow this down into those little micro books, at the end, what happens? The end of Jacob’s line says, I went to go give this to the next person. And where was he? He went to the land of Nephi, and so he wasn’t here. And so I had to give the records to Mosiah, to the king. And you look at that, and that’s the end of the line. But then go back to the land of Nephi, and what happens? Alma is a priest in the land of Nephi. And what is the priest? The priest is the continuation of Jacob’s line. I think Alma is still a successor in that line of Jacob. And then when you bring him back into the Nephites and this line continues on, I think that’s why it’s so important. I think that’s why it’s significant. So we get back to Helaman talking about the importance of the rock from whence they’re hewn, and really tying it to Christ. I think that’s what this line is doing. And I think this is why we have such a longstanding line in the Book of Mormon. And just as you had the rod of Aaron that blossomed and was able to produce fruit, whereas in the rod of the others kind of withered and died in the Book of Mormon, you contrast this longstanding line with the line of Bakumni, who withers and dies right after with the line of Moroni, that kind of withers and dies right after. These are great Mendez. These are leaders. These are inspirational. But it doesn’t matter how great you are. What matters is being anchored in Christ. And because this line is anchored in Christ, there’s a continuity, and it will always continue to. That’s. That’s kind of the message I get out of. Out of here.

Not to take away from, but to kind of pull it in and tie it.

All right. Should we go into our gadiantons?

So with Pahoran’s death, we get kind of something interesting here.

Boy, talk about bringing old themes into one lesson where we’re just kind of regurgitating some things.

Pahoran has many sons. It says it right there in the text. But of the many sons, there were only three that were interested in the throne. Pahoran, Bakumani, and Panchi. And I think Panchi was actually named second. Who knows? I don’t know the order either way. Three sons.

Who else has three sons, even though they had many children, but only three sons are mentioned. I go back to Adam. Adam has three sons that are mentioned, Cain, Abel, and Seth.

And Noah’s the same way. But what ties Adam, I think, even closer than Noah per se is it explicitly states that he had many other children besides these three. And we go back to Adam. There is no way you’re populating a world with just three boys. Not going to happen.

But there’s a reason that there’s the three mentioned. And I’ve made an argument that I look at the story and every time you have this re beginning in this genesis. So I’m glad you bring up Noah into this mix, because it’s going to fit this pattern. It almost feels like God is telling his story through the scriptures, God being a father. And he has his children. One third of his children rebel and are cast out from rebellion. Two thirds come down to the earth to receive their next inheritance. And so you kind of get this perspective that way. I feel like that story is being told with Adam. Adam is here. One third of his children that are mentioned rebel, cast out, and then the other two thirds are counted for righteous. You have this reset. You mentioned Noah. Now all of a sudden, the flood destroys the earth, and you have a new creation, a new beginning, this ark and the animals coming out of this Eden like situation into the world. And he has three sons, and two are accounted for righteous, because they cover their father’s nakedness, which there’s also significance, I think, in even mentioning the word cover, right? And nakedness. And then you have one whose line is cursed to the priesthood that they can’t inherit it. So you have this one third, two thirds replicate. With this new beginning, Abraham becomes the father of many nations, and he has three families, first with Hagar, then with Sariah, and then with another wife afterwards. But unfortunately for Hagar and her son, they’re cast out, they’re sent away, and yet he keeps the other two families and maintains them. And you get this one third, two third imagery again to where this theme in the Bible kind of shows up every now and again. And it kind of runs through the text.

When we get to the Book of Mormon, and we’ve talked about this at the start of the Book of Mormon, you see this with Nephi and Jacob and Joseph and Sam, four of Lehi’s children being righteous. Four out of six is two thirds. And then you have Laman and Lemuel. Two out of six is one third. And you have one third who feel like they’re being cast out of Jerusalem. They wish they could go back to Jerusalem, but they’re being pushed out. Whereas in the other four, look at the land of promise as a land of promise, coming to America to receive another inheritance. So you have this reestablishing of that pattern. But this pattern is also just like it ran through. The Bible is going to run through in different places, through the Book of Mormon.

I look at Alma when he’s counseling his sons. You’ve got Helaman and Shiblon, which were righteous, that did the right thing, and then you have Corianton, that went kind of doing the wrong thing. And you almost have the same one third, two thirds pattern set up with alma with this new deal. And now we get to Pahoran and his three sons, Pahoran and Pekum and I. You know, they don’t see eye to eye at the beginning, but Pekum and I unites with his brother and says, okay. And then you have Panchi, who’s just absolutely rejecting this and coming. And so I don’t know. I don’t want to make a big deal and say, every time you see one third, two thirds, this is establishing something. But I do see a thread that runs in the Book of Mormon parallel to what you see as a thread running through the Bible.

For me, for what it’s worth, it’s just something that might be there. Anyhow, Bakum and I does not live long. This is where you have Gadianton. And the Gadianton robbers start to make their. Their play in the Book of Mormon. Kishkumen who, I wonder, is this guy, like parkour? Because he’s super fast. He’s running away. They can’t catch him.

And then you have Pekum and I is up next, and the Lamanites come in and just trash the place. And that’s kind of where I want it. Before we dive too much into the secret combinations and gaddian robbers, let’s talk about this lamanite incursion.

And the guy that’s leading the lamanite armies is Zarahemla. He’s not an ephite. He’s not a Lamanite. He’s from one of the new groups that you have in Zarahemla. But something that’s interesting is he has the name Coriantumr, which is a jaredite name.

And you start to see jaredite names come into the Book of Mormon after the discovery of the plates, after Mosiah translates them, and after these stories are getting made known to the people. So they do have familiarity with them, he takes this name, but this guy is a large and mighty man. And talk about growing into your name. I mean, that’s the reputation that Coriantumr had among the Jaredites, this large, mighty, impressive man as far as fighting goes. And the Lamanites see him in his skill and say, hey, you lead our armies. And the guy is bold, the guy hits hard.

But as far as intelligence, strategy, and tactics go, he’s just not there.

And he comes in and strikes the heart of the knee fights. And I’m sorry, this is getting a little bit narrative in how I’m doing this, but I’m going to pull out real quick.

When he comes in, he doesn’t strike on the fringes like the Lamanites have in times past.

And Moroni and his son Moronihah have been fortifying these cities because they were traditionally known as the weakest. And because they’re so focused on the outside, they. They don’t even put any attention into zarahemla. They think they’re never gonna strike us here. This is the heart, the core, and it’s where we’re strongest. But that’s where he comes and he takes it away. And so where I want to back out of this is, I think, in life, we focus so much on the outside areas that we tend to think is weak, that maybe some of the things that should be core, that should be our foundation, get left neglected to where that’s where we can crumble.

And that’s what the Nephites did.

And I think there are many things that kind of catch our focus or catch our attention.

I think Christ, when he says the parable of the mote and the beam kind of comes back down to this because we see that in someone else’s eye and we’re so focused on trying to fix them that we miss that our own core, our own heart has strayed from it. Even in scriptures, right? Sometimes in the church or in the doctrine, we get so caught up focusing on what we’ve called missing the mark, the mysteries, or trying to describe something new.

And we get caught up in this fringe because it’s something that we don’t know a lot about or something that we’re weak in, that we feel like we need to fortify, we need those answers, we need to build it, that we’ve left off understanding the sacrament and what it’s about that we’ve left off understanding the covenants that we’re making in baptism. That we’ve left off being anchored in studying the scriptures and feeling the spirit and being nurtured, because we’re trading a lot of that in for trying to make these weak things on the outside become strong. So I look at what the Nephites have done, and I’m trying to take that and apply that to us today and what we do.

[00:28:41] Speaker B: I think you see that even outside of a lot of religious contexts, you see something that I’ve been trying to study a lot more about, and reading a lot about, is finding ways to keep people healthy just by the foods that they eat. What we do as a society is we spend all kinds of money on treating the symptoms of a disease instead of figuring out how to actually, like, cure the disease in the first place. And so I guess there is very much a direct kind of parallel is that we.

You can see the outside, and it’s sometimes hard because you can’t see the inside. Right. As a person who, you know, I’m trying to be a healthier dude in my life in general. You know, my weight has maybe fluctuated up and down over the years, but it’s. It’s. It’s the. The outside appearance is always so much more just telling of what’s happening inside. And not even just from health, but mentally and emotionally and spiritually in a lot of cases, too, right.

That so much of the time I’m going, hey, I need to go to the gym so that I can fit into my clothes better. Instead of, hey, I should really maybe do some self exploration and figure out some of the root causes of why I feel compelled to live an unhealthy lifestyle. You see what I mean? It’s like this. I think all of these things as a society, we could benefit from that idea, which is, I mean, it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like Captain Moroni wrote in his letter. It’s like you do got to kind of cleanse the inner vessel. I mean, that’s a real principle that I do believe in, man. And I am learning how to be better at identifying causes for issues in society, in our personal lives and family, in relationships, in my job, in politics, in the world around us. So much of it, I think, could benefit a lot from what you’re saying right now.

[00:30:48] Speaker A: And as you were talking about health, I mean, something that came to my mind, and you went far better than I did. But something that came to my mind is when we start buying all these pills, supplements or vitamins or whatever else to try to be healthier, but then we neglect exercising or whatever, right. We’re trying to take care of these little fringe things that we think are going to make the big difference and leave out the heart of it. But you took it. Even, I think where you went was even more beautiful. The idea that what are my motivations? Or why am I not like what’s happening that I am, you know, that self reflection? And what is it that’s leading me to make these decisions? Or how can I prioritize or change more, not even addressing things from the outside, but like you say, the inner vessel. Like, what do I need to do within myself?

[00:31:40] Speaker B: We started with my favorite scripture in the book, and that’s build upon the rock of Christ. And you, nobody. There’s nobody in this church that hasn’t been affected by somebody losing their faith, or I mean, having questions of faith themselves.

This is, by the way, I do think part of it. I think part of the journey is having your faith pushed against it. I’m a big, big believer in ideas being purified in the fires of debate. I’m a big believer in faith. And ideas should be pushed against because it makes them stronger or it clears them out for other better ideas to come in. When our faith is anchored internally on the most important and the only sure foundation, and that is a testimony of Christ and his atonement, then the external things that could easily trip somebody up or get hung up on some of the things that maybe we might not get complete answers to or fully understand in this life. Those things don’t destroy our faith. Those things don’t wreck us because of what we are built upon, which is the most important thing, which is why I think you and I sometimes, I don’t want to say critical for me. I would use that word critical, but I’m not going to drag you down with me. At times I’m critical of a fast and testimony meeting, because so much of what I feel like a fast and testimony meeting should be is a chance for us to testify first and foremost of the rock upon which we are built. And at times I feel like it’s kind of a group therapy session. And so it’s no wonder you see a lot of, a lot of people having their faith destroyed or shook by things that are the periphery, the things that aren’t, the things that shouldn’t affect or be affected whatsoever by the one thing that we have to anchor our testimonies in, and that is the atonement.

Yes, the outskirts are going to be attacked too. Fine. You can fortify those later. The point of this story should be just because you feel like you’re secure, just because you feel like that the internal core of what you are and believe in is fortified.

To put the final point on this, you see a lot of people argue all the time, even within the church, about the periphery. You see a lot of people spend so much time trying to do research to find out where specifically the Book of Mormon takes place and exactly which states of the current United States. If you’re like the homeland theory or if it’s the south american theory, it’s like you see people within the church who are very.

Would come across as very anchored and religious and all in. And you just see so much time spent on some of these details around the outside. Right? You see the. I want to prove to, in some sort of a physical way that there is evidence of x, y and z here, here, here.

And in a lot of cases, you see a lot of those people lose their faith too, just as much as a lot of people that don’t spend any of the time with that too, for the exact same reason, which is if I can find a way to prove this to myself from something that I can see and reason through and logic through and make sense, then that’s my way of proving maybe to myself that all of this is real and all of this is true. And you see people like that fall away all of the time too, because it still comes down to you have to one cleanse the inner vessel. And then I believe I’m totally with you. That’s where all effort should be, is to make sure that you’re constantly making sure that you’re fortified inside before you’re worried about the outside. I don’t know. Does that make sense?

[00:36:04] Speaker A: 100%. 100%. And it’s cool that the lesson we learn from the Lamanites on the flip side is like, the yang to the ying or the ying and the yang, right? Because what happens, Corey anthem takes Zarahemla. He has the capital of the Nephite area. He has their biggest city.

And rather than sit there and strengthen this or take advantage of what he has, what does he immediately do? Abandon it to reach further in. Right. And he stretches his forces thin to where, when Moroniha is able to come back with his armies, now he’s, he’s cut them off and they have no way of retreat. They’re stuck in the middle of nephite land with no way out, surrounded on all sides. Because he’s overextending, he’s overreaching, he’s, he’s doing the exact same thing on focusing on the outside rather than focusing on the core. And you see somebody, I mean, the parallel is crazy. You see somebody doing that and you reach out to point out and correct them and what are you doing? At the same time, you’re overextending yourself. So worried about how they’re doing that you’ve also left yourself vulnerable at the core. So it’s kind of cool to see how these two actually complement each other and play off of it. My dad had a dream about me a long time ago.

He said he saw me as a tree, and, and in this tree, he said it grew up really tall, but it was thin and the wind could blow it and it could sway and it could move.

And he came to me and he said, look, what I see and what I saw in this dream is you like to explore. You like to search, you like to reach. You’re like this tree that just grows up and trying to search and understand all you can. You’ve grown into this very long, slender, tall tree that can be easily blown. What you need or what you lack is the base, is the girth of the tree, the strength. Right. He says you need to be grounded in the testimony, in the gospel, in the faith, in the spirit and experience.

And I think a lot of that.

It’s what happens in life and as youth, we are eager, we stretch, we reach. We want to know, we want to learn. We have that excitement. And it’s good, it’s natural, it’s what plants do. But at some point, you have to focus on the roots. You have to grow the roots and you have to build a wide enough base to sustain the growth of that tree that you can withstand the storms when they come.

And if we don’t ever get our root system in place and those storms come and those winds blow, we’ll be uprooted, we’ll be upended, we’ll be tornado tossed and torn and destroyed. And I guess that’s the.

We’ve probably just hit this from five different angles, but no, it’s good.

[00:38:53] Speaker B: I think it’s worth it. My youngest son, he’s not my youngest child, my youngest son, his middle name is Oak. Oh, there you go. And even now, even when he’s only six, he talks about it all the time. I try to always make the opportunity to explain to him why we named him after a mighty tree.

So I appreciate that story you told and I appreciate your dad for being willing to have that conversation with you too. So it’s good stuff telling you this all comes back, man. Names are important, dude.

[00:39:24] Speaker A: Names are important.

[00:39:27] Speaker B: Weakly, sickly I know.

[00:39:29] Speaker A: Machlone, Chilean.

What’s going on over there?

[00:39:33] Speaker B: Seriously, if somehow I ever have twins, it would just be funny to throw layman and Lemuel out there just to see what the community does.

[00:39:40] Speaker A: Those poor kids you brought in, Ruth with Machlone and Chile. Weakly and sickly.

[00:39:46] Speaker B: That’s right. Do you, my youngest daughter’s middle name, Ruth.

[00:39:50] Speaker A: Do you want a tangent on names or do you want.

[00:39:52] Speaker B: Come on, just quick, give us a quick tangent.

[00:39:55] Speaker A: Naomi, when she loses her sons, changes her own name and she says, call me Marah, which is in Hebrew bitter because she was pretty upset and bitter about the whole deal, right?

And then at the end of the story, when her daughter in law gets married to boaz and restitution is all made and it’s blessed and happy, right?

In Hebrew, there’s something strange in the law of Moses and it’s called the bitter waters test.

And if you suspect that your wife had committed adultery, then you take her to the priest and they give her this bitter water, the mara, the bitter water test. And it’s bitterness. And if she’s guilty, supposedly the waters ends up killing her. And then you’re like, there’s the judgment of God. But if she’s innocent, then the water turns from bitterness to sweetness and she’s preserved. And then not only that, but the vindication, like this was this bitterness actually becomes the source of your truth, the source of you being saved, redeemed, knowing that you didn’t do it, right.

And so going back to the story, and I’m sorry, I even went down this tangent you threw. Oh, I’m ready. Machlon and Chilean, right? This even becomes the name that Mary is named after, Hebrew Mara, right? This bitterness.

And how bitter is it that she’s with child outside of wedlock?

And the questions that are abound and like, is she guilty of something that she didn’t do or go back to Naomi, I call me bitterness, but yet that same bitterness ends up being the source of her redemption or the source of her rejoicing, the source of her pleasantness later on, the salvation. And so you go to names.

When you went to Maghalon and Chilean, that was just one other name in there that I thought was kind of interesting, that conversion from the bitterness to the sweetness and that test in there.

[00:42:03] Speaker B: Sorry. That’s what this podcast is all about, dog. That’s what the listeners want, man. Just, they want those nuggets. They want those nuggets. If they don’t, I don’t care. I do.

[00:42:12] Speaker A: Good, good.

All right, last thing on. The last thing on being anchored and just going to, before we go branching out, I think of our quest for understanding the things that we don’t understand in the gospel, in life, and in searching. I look at it as a spacewalk, and you leave the shuttle and you headed out there, and there’s all sorts of anything and everywhere.

And if you go out on a spacewalk without being tethered to something first, you can easily be knocked off course and drift away to where you have no means of pulling yourself back.

And so my only advice to anyone who’s looking and studying the scriptures and who wants, like Moroni, to strengthen those cities on the outside that are easily attacked, to find first the way to tether yourself to the ship.

And that to me, is the testimony of Christ. When you have a solid testimony of Christ and you start going out to strengthen those other areas and you come across things that are going to batter you or push you, you can always turn back and rely on that anchor to keep you grounded and to know where you stand. That helps you as you push out and kind of explore and understand that.

All right, sweet.

[00:43:39] Speaker B: Anything else you want to hit this week?

[00:43:41] Speaker A: The only other thing is just our secret combinations. You know, you got Huntington robbers and, and, you know, there’s some interesting stuff in here when you consider Helaman becomes the king. Okay, I said king.

And this is something I also wanted to mention. I know we’ve got to kind of wrap this up.

We look at the book of mormon governance when they go from a system of monarchs to chief judges. And we see similar parallels with our government, but something that we should recall.

The people that are taking that next chief judge role are typically the childs. We have dynasties even within this chief judge system. Its not a direct comparison with what we have today.

[00:44:27] Speaker B: I beg to differ.

Oh, man.

I feel like there is absolutely not only nepotism, but absolutely royal families in our, in our political system, too. But continue.

[00:44:42] Speaker A: No, you’re 100% right. And even though we call them presidents, do they not fill the same role as a king? Yeah, and you look at the chief judge, and I just made the mistake and referred to them as a king. But are there not serious parallels to kings?

[00:44:59] Speaker B: Because. Yes, because human beings are human beings, and any system gets corrupted when people.

[00:45:04] Speaker A: Want power, which is dropping back into that.

[00:45:06] Speaker B: I know, because it’s a theme that will continue on until Jesus take the wheel. I’m just saying I am excited for when we actually have an official king again, when that king is Jesus.

That’s it. But you’re right. I didn’t mean to derail you.

[00:45:21] Speaker A: You didn’t derail me. This is it.

This is what needed to be said. And you have secret combinations, and you have secret combinations.

And I’m saying it two different ways, because some secret combinations are wicked, and some secret combinations are righteous, or are they not?

How did Helaman save his life? Was it not because he had a double agent, somebody, his servant that was pretending to be someone he wasn’t, who was, who was involved in a secret combination to get the information and the intel that Helaman needed? How were they so successful in war? Was it not because they had scouts and spies? Is it not some of these secret things that happen? And I think there’s even parallels when we talk about what we do and the covenants that we make in the temple, which are kept shielded or in a sense, secret from the rest of the world? And so where do you draw the line? And we’ve drawn this line so many times in the imitation of God. It feels like Satan and his host are evil or wrong or whatever you want to call the opposite of what God is doing, imitates it in a lot of different respects. And we like to refer to them as sacred when it’s under God’s roof, and then secret when it’s under Satan’s. And light when God, because he’s inviting all to come in and participate, and it’s darkness and Satan. But how do you judge between the two. And I think it’s something that we’ve even discussed and you’ve pointed out, Nate, I think it all boils down to the fruits and life, and that’s even where this went with the start of this podcast. Between the two rods of Aaron and the rod that doesn’t, the line that’s preserved versus the line that doesn’t. One produces life and one produces death.

The secret combinations are scheming to try to overthrow, to try to kill, to try to whatever. Why? To empower themselves.

Whereas in on Helaman’s side, you’ve got scheming to try to go to preserve life, to save life. And that’s what Christ came to do.

But that line sometimes seems so vague because how did Christ save life? By killing his own? And how does he ask us to save our lives? By sacrificing it. And so we do kill to save, and so do they. But their killing to save, I don’t know, leads to death and destruction. Nate, I’m just winding us in some weird.

[00:47:51] Speaker B: No, I don’t think you. I think you’re. I think you’re making the point.

Say it.

[00:47:55] Speaker A: More beautiful than me, please.

[00:47:56] Speaker B: By their fruits, you shall know them. There you go.

I mean, you have to, you have to be able to judge, you have to be able to have discernment. I think that there is a reason that you have such sometimes fine, and maybe even blurry lines between Nephi going and lopping the head off of somebody that’s drunk and passed out on the street, dressing up in his clothes, tricking his servant to go into his house to steal the scriptures.

You could very easily, from a worldly perspective, make the case that that is a secret combination in a immoral way. In an immoral way. And you could also take a look at the plan of Satan from the very beginning and say, hey, he actually just wanted everybody to be saved because he actually believed in love and hope and wanted everybody to be able to come back to heavenly father and live as one big happy family.

Do you see what I’m saying?

This is why I think I, even though I’m really hard, I feel like, on people that I feel like just make really terrible decisions when it comes to decisions that they make that are maybe different than mine or maybe who they vote for versus who I don’t for, you know, it’s. The easy way out is to be like, how can people be that stupid? Well, that’s. That’s not fair. That’s not fair because life is more nuanced than that. And when you have very compete, strong voices competing for your attention and for your allegiance and for whatever that is, you can make sometimes very, very compelling cases for why bad is good and good is bad. And at the end of the day, this is why I feel like the prophet and his apostles and the scriptures continually tell us, if you do not have a relationship with Christ, if you are not anchored on the rock that is Christ, you will fall.

You will. Because there’s just, there’s too many convincing arguments.

[00:50:19] Speaker A: It’s too easy.

[00:50:20] Speaker B: It’s too easy. And if you don’t have your own personal line of communication and understanding, I’m not even just to Christ, but to truth, because it’s one and the same man. I just don’t know how you can, I don’t know how you would be able to survive religiously. I don’t know how you would be able to survive as a country, as a citizen, as whatever you want to extrapolate that out to be. I think that having and cultivating a relationship with Christ, when times are still calm enough and peaceful enough where you still have a very safe environment to really be cultivating that relationship, it’s just going to get gnarlier and you.

So it’s funny. Full circle.

The whole story, God’s story from the beginning of time until now, like you just said, is two thirds of his people staying and a third of them leaving. I don’t think that that story stops. I think that that story continues. And we’re told that mighty men will fall. We’re told that there will be a sifting of the wheats and the tares cake said it best, man. Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell. Dude, this is not a new.

This is not something that just stopped after the war in heaven. This is not something that stopped after Adam and Noah and Abraham and Nephi and whoever this is.

Man, I’m so glad we started with my favorite scripture, because it just keeps explaining why it’s my favorite scripture to me, which is the devil will send forth his mighty winds. They’re already being sent forth.

We need to be that mighty tree. We need to drill our anchors down deep into an immovable rock. And if we don’t, I don’t know how you can survive.

And I, you know, I have felt this. I very recently have felt it more and more, just really telling me, not only do I need to do a better job with myself, but I need to do a better job of this as a parent. And so much of our conversations with my children in our family meetings and our councils lately have been so much less about the stories that we’re reading about in the scriptures and so much more about in your youth while you are in the safe environment of our home. You have to spend this time wisely. You have to use this time wisely to learn how you communicate with heavenly father and how he can communicate back with you more than any other thing that we’ve been talking about. And this is what I have felt strongly and prompted to encourage my family to do. And in the process, remind myself that I need to be doing it better. Because at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that really, my kids can know every story in the book. But if they don’t know how the spirit speaks to them, what do they know?

And, yeah, so to answer the question, the long way about answering that question is I don’t think that it’s going to be easy to tell the difference between a secret combination versus a sacred combination in the future. It’s easy for us maybe because one we do in a temple, right, and one you do, I don’t know, in some secret room, whatever. At the end of the day, by their fruits, you shall know them. And hopefully we’ve been cultivating and learning how to judge righteously. Not judge, but learning how to actually judge correctly so that we’ll be able to reject evil when we see it and know, you know, good when we see it as well.

[00:54:18] Speaker A: You nailed it. You nailed it.

[00:54:23] Speaker B: Just doing my best, Jason.

[00:54:24] Speaker A: I mean, there’s a lot of thoughts.

[00:54:26] Speaker B: On my brain these days. Dude. Sorry if I’ve just totally steamrolled you this whole episode.

[00:54:31] Speaker A: No, this was beautiful. I mean, and I’ll wrap up on my end.

You can argue and say that the temple ordinances are to exalt us, but can you not all also argue that secret combinations, like, hey, if you come with me, I will give you this position.

Is that not what Satan offered? Christ in the wilderness? All of this, I’ll give you all of the kingdoms if you bow down and worship me. Is that not to exalt Christ in the sense that I will give you everything, I will put you in charge.

[00:55:04] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:55:05] Speaker A: And that’s what happens in politics. It’s what happened in government. Like, hey, you give me your vote and I’ll give you a position here. Let’s make this deal. Let’s make a. It’s to exalt, right? And so if we tried to say, well, the governing measure that I’m going to use is, does it exalt. Or does it show that I love. Go back to the very beginning when Christ says, not my will, but thy will, and I will serve you. And then. And then Satan’s like, I will rule over you and say, okay, now I get it. The difference is service versus ruling over. That’s how I’m going to make my decisions. But then look at Satan saying, and not one soul will be lost, and I will love them, and I will serve to all of. And you’re like, oh, well, maybe that’s not the metric.

[00:55:45] Speaker B: Well, there’s two sides to every equation.

[00:55:48] Speaker A: There’s two sides, and it all comes down to, thou shalt have no other God before me. Do I trust God? Is my anchor in him in Christ? Because if it’s not, then who am I trusting? Myself. And I am putting myself above goddess. And if I am the anchor from which I am building, then that’s like going out onto the spacewalk with no tether, because I am the tether.

[00:56:14] Speaker B: You might get lucky and wander into the right decisions, but I’m just saying, look at Jason. You’re what, 40? Almost. Are you 40 yet?

[00:56:22] Speaker A: 41.

[00:56:22] Speaker B: Oh, you really. You’re almost as old as I am.

[00:56:24] Speaker A: I’m catching you.

[00:56:25] Speaker B: Come on, baby. You’ll never catch me. I’ll never catch you.

Look, over the past 30 years, of all of the times that you’ve had to go, oh, I was not really totally spot on about that one.

I mean. I mean, and you and I feel like a relatively good dudes. We’re not bad people.

I look back at my life and sometimes go, oh, wait, I was even arguing that point. You know what I mean? It’s like I was like I was defending that idea with, you know, a sword and a shield for a time.

You nailed it, man.

If we anchor our trust in ourselves and our own ideas and our own intuition, oh, you’re lost. You’re toast.

In 30 years, the positions that I’ve had a realignment on and understood better in just day to day things, my goodness, I’m terrified to think that I would be the same person I was when I was 20 and to feel exactly the same way with all of the new life experience and information that I’ve given. Hopefully, I’m a much more compassionate person than I was when I was 20. I think I am. But at 20, I would have. At 20, I would be arguing with myself right now probably more than anybody else is. The point is that I’m backing you up on completely on this.

This spacewalk without the tether. I hate space. I hate the idea of space. I don’t like openness.

[00:57:57] Speaker A: But Christ did it first when he said, your will, not mine.

[00:58:02] Speaker B: Well, but that’s the two sides of the equations. I will do this. And what’s the other part of that equation? And the glory be to God, I willing to sacrifice, I am willing to give of myself. I am willing to sack of myself so that you can have the opportunity to whatever. Now look at the two sides of Satan’s equation. By the way, Satan’s plan can sound good. If you don’t have the other half of that equation, everybody makes it back. Is a really great sounding pitch. What is the other side of the equation?

You lose your agency, I get the glory. You don’t. You get, you have no other option than to do what I tell you to do.

That’s the other side of the equation again.

It’s the time of the year. But you look at the political system around us. Promises by every candidate you’ll ever have are always given to you. I’m going to do blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. Be wary of the ones that can’t tell you what the other side of that equation is. That’s all I’m saying, man.

Because that’s how you win elections, is I can give you blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

The wise people among us, I would hope, can go well. What’s the other side of that equation?

If you can’t tell me what the other side of that equation is, I can’t make a fair judgment on your position. If you can’t get up and explain to me what the other side of the equation is, that explains to me enough. That tells me enough.

My goodness, there is always the other half of the equation.

That’s my point again, I don’t mean to derail you, dog. I’m sorry.

[00:59:40] Speaker A: Didn’t derail me.

[00:59:41] Speaker B: I’m on one today, dude. I need to chill out.

[00:59:44] Speaker A: I like it.

[00:59:45] Speaker B: I need to chill out, man.

[00:59:46] Speaker A: No, this is been good.

[00:59:48] Speaker B: I don’t know what side of the bed I woke up on this morning.

[00:59:52] Speaker A: Sorry.

[00:59:52] Speaker B: Finish us off with a good, positive, awesome message, jason.

[00:59:55] Speaker A: No, I’m just going to say if space scares you, it does.

[00:59:58] Speaker B: Terrifies me. And the ocean.

[01:00:03] Speaker A: Let’s ground this where it should be.

With what Christ said in the New Testament, any vine that’s not connected to him, right.

I think that’s what it all boils down to. Are we firmly connected to Christ? Are we firmly anchored to goddesse? Is our branch tied into the roots that is our savior that is more important than anything else and that will help us to navigate these waters, to see the deceptions, to understand and make sure that we have the testimony we need to get us through our growth, our exploration, our discovery, our learning that there might be a continuation, that we might produce good fruit.

[01:00:45] Speaker B: Amen to that brother.

We appreciate you listening. We appreciate those of you that are willing to share your insights, questions, comments with us. You can get a hold of us at the email address. Hi deepdive.com, we always do love hearing from you and we always appreciate any chance that we have to hear of the stories of you sharing this with your friends or yeah, anything that you got for us. We are here to learn as well but we really do thank you for listening and sharing with your friends and I think that’s all that we have for this week. So until next week, see ya.

The episode also delves into the human nature of these heroes, emphasizing that even though the text may present them as larger-than-life figures, they were still real people with struggles and vulnerabilities. The hosts draw parallels between the Nephite heroes and historical figures like the Founding Fathers, noting how their dedication to righteousness and selflessness makes them worthy of admiration, despite their human imperfections. The conversation weaves together themes of leadership, the fine line between strength and weakness, and the divine purpose that drives the actions of these characters.

Finally, Jason and Nate explore the broader implications of the Book of Mormon’s stories, discussing the contrast between the kingmen and freemen, the importance of personal responsibility, and the danger of giving up freedoms for the sake of security. They highlight how these themes remain relevant in today’s world, encouraging listeners to be vigilant in their own lives and to strive for the same kind of righteous leadership and heroism demonstrated by the Nephite warriors.

Transcript:
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me. Discussion, discussion, discussions. I don’t know. We go either way.

[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:00:28] Speaker A: Try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:36] Speaker B: What’s up, baby? You know, in the studio.

[00:00:39] Speaker A: In the studio. It’s always fun to be here with you, Nate.

[00:00:42] Speaker B: Thanks, buddy.

[00:00:44] Speaker A: I’m just excited. I’m just beaming with joy. It’s another day, it’s another opportunity to talk about the scriptures. The book of Mormon just fills me with happiness. Happiness. Happiness is the word.

I like it. I like it.

[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, then let’s do it.

[00:01:01] Speaker A: Let’s do it.

You know, we’re back into the adventures of Moroni, and can we just take a second to acknowledge how awesome Moroni lehi Tiankum Helaman.

[00:01:14] Speaker B: The Dream team.

[00:01:15] Speaker A: They are the dream team. Right?

And there’s a part of this when you’re reading the Old Testament. David has his warriors, and David’s. He’s out on the lamb trying to not get killed by Saul, and he has his followers, and then later he becomes king. And it’s almost like, you know what? I wonder if that’s not where Arthur and the roundtable even comes from. You’ve kind of get this legend of this kingdom and his guys that are just unstoppable, and they go through the heroes, David’s heroes, and they talk about how many men they slain with the spear and how awesome and incredible they were.

And yet, for all their amazing powers, prowess, and skill, they seem to fall. David falls.

And it’s just. It gets kind of messy towards the end. And it’s sad to see your heroes fall. But when you look at the book of Mormon and here you have your. Your heroes, and these guys are heroes to the end, or at least that’s how they’re portrayed. And you don’t see them. You don’t see them fall.

You see Tiankum die, but he dies in a flame of glory, right? I mean, going out, making a difference, and ending the war. It’s just kind of cool to see these guys and to see heroes that are heroes not just for a brief spark, but consistent through the end of their life heroes. It’s kind of fun to see.

[00:02:54] Speaker B: Is there something fundamentally, I don’t know, wrong with that from a narrative standpoint? Does it make the Old Testament dudes more relatable to human beings? I’m just saying, from a narrative standpoint or, like, a literary standpoint, is there something wrong with Moroni’s dream team? Or should we just accept it and love it and just be all in, all in man? Me too. It’s not that I’m not going to, but you know what I mean. Sometimes we say, when we were reading the Old and New Testament, there was a lot of discussion on how it was nice to read, or at least not nice, but comforting to read, that there are other human beings that are just fallible human beings as well. Or is this a story where we can go? Because, by the way, too, I look at the reason I bring this up. We talked a little bit about. And we talk about it a lot, you know, of my profound love and respect for the founding fathers of this country.

And they weren’t perfect people either. They weren’t. And they, as just human beings.

And the reverence that I still have for them, for them stepping up to their callings that I believe are divinely inspired makes it so. Their imperfections as human beings is something that I couldn’t. I don’t think about ever. It doesn’t make it right or it doesn’t make it wrong. For me, it’s like, sure, it’s wrong. Let’s even just say that, fine, the human parts of these men were human, not right or wrong. They were human.

And I still just love reading. Like, when I read, I think, 1776 for the first time and just cried the whole time, you know? Cause I was just like, what an incredible group of human beings. And I guess I’m just saying, I know that we have a. From just a literary perspective.

We don’t. I mean, we got to see a little bit of Moroni’s hot headedness, but other than that, we kind of don’t. We’ve kind of. They’ve moved beyond human beings almost. They’re almost just. They’re just superheroes. I mean, it’s the avengers.

[00:05:18] Speaker A: It kind of is.

[00:05:19] Speaker B: But I guess I’m just suggesting maybe it’s still an awesome thing and also something worth remembering that even though we only got to see a little bit of a glimpse of it with Moroni, that they probably were still human beings, too. And that would hopefully provide hope that we can be awesome as well. Knowing that, yeah, we only get to see, you know, history is.

You say this all the time. History is written by the victors, right? History is written by the winners.

And that’s something important to consider when you learn of history, is that the winners wrote it.

[00:06:03] Speaker A: And you see, and maybe that’s why Morones stands out so much, is, you see, some of his human nature.

[00:06:09] Speaker B: But it makes me like him more, for whatever’s worth.

[00:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah. You see that he’s one of us, and we can imagine ourselves in there. And for what it’s worth, when you talk about comparing the Old Testament heroes and the book of Mormon heroes, I’ll say this.

Who remembers Jaso Beam? Right? Yasho beam. Who’s talking about him?

[00:06:30] Speaker B: Did we ever.

[00:06:32] Speaker A: I mean, it’s. Did we talk.

[00:06:34] Speaker B: I don’t know who that is.

[00:06:35] Speaker A: A lot of these guys get, like, one verse and that’s it, and they move on.

And yet every, you know, I don’t think there is a member of the church or anyone who’s read the book of Mormon who doesn’t remember the name Tiankum or Lehi or Moroni. I mean, these guys, I mean, we.

[00:06:50] Speaker B: All have friends named Moroni. I’m sure it’s probably true. I’m just saying I only bring that up because as much as. And I’m all in, by the way, too. I’m just saying there was something very human about reading about David that was heartbreaking.

But there was a profound warning almost in his story, which is as great as they are, they’re susceptible to for just as gnarly of a fall. And that still didn’t mean that Christ didn’t come through his lineage. I’m just saying there’s so much more I feel like, as a human being, to kind of get from that story where as great of a read as this is, and like I’m reiterating, I am all in, it’s at least maybe important to remember that there was, even though we only caught a glimpse of it a little bit with Moroni, that these men probably had struggles, too, and probably had to learn, and their rise to greatness could have been born from earlier. I mean, at least Alma’s a perfect example.

We got to kind of see Alma as a knucklehead, Alma the younger, we got to see him as a knucklehead.

[00:08:09] Speaker A: And senior.

[00:08:10] Speaker B: And senior. That’s right. We got to see them in their worst and in their best with some of these. With some of these war stories. And maybe it’s just because there’s just too much to tell that it’s not necessarily worth.

Maybe there was editorial decisions along the way to go, hey, it’s not really worth trying to go into all of the human nature part of this.

[00:08:37] Speaker A: I’ve got two thoughts on this.

[00:08:39] Speaker B: I don’t want to beat this to death. I’m just saying, it’s like, when we talk about these dudes, you brought it up, and it’s like, these dudes are like the shiny dudes that you put on the movie poster.

[00:08:46] Speaker A: You’re right.

[00:08:48] Speaker B: And sometimes I’m just like, hopefully that doesn’t make them out of touch.

[00:08:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I don’t feel like they are. But I’ve kind of got two thoughts on this.

In Hebrew, they have a literary device where they build, and they have the ability to build a. And to climax. And. And the build is, for example, the seven deadly sins. Six things that the Lord hate. Yea, seven are abominable. And so you look at that. Six in the first line is. Is met in parallel with seven in the next. And what. What’s it doing? It’s stepping it up. It’s building. And hate means one thing, but an abomination, that’s. That’s even worse than hate. Right? That’s.

It’s stepping it up. So what you have is a build, a build up to that. When they list the seven sins, now, this is the climax. And so it’s a literary device that they use. And they don’t just use it in poetics and poems, like what we see here, but in stories and in themes. And so when you talk about these guys falling, look at how many times you have a man who was great because of a weakness. A vulnerability, we’ll call it.

And, you know, vulnerability is an interesting word. And let’s take this back to the root, to the beginning, to where it all starts, when Adam and Eve find themselves naked. And the word naked doesn’t just mean without clothes, but it means vulnerable.

Exposed.

He finds himself vulnerable. He finds himself exposed because, how do I say this? What’s the pattern? Adam falls because of Eve.

And then you’re going to build with this. What happens later on. Samson, Delilah. What happens later on. David, Bathsheba, what happened? And it’s encapsulated in the book of proverbs when it talks so much about the value of what they call the perfect lady or the wise woman. Right? And how important it is to make a choice of who you’re going to spend your life with and not be sleeping with the woman who’s with another man or not be sleeping with the woman who’s going to lead you down dark paths. And they just keep kind of building this. Even throughout the book of proverbs, it hits this climax that the whole purpose of this. And they just keep hitting you over the head with temptation and fall. Temptation and fall. And you keep seeing these people fall after fall after fall. And why are they falling? Because they’re giving in to a weakness, a vulnerability or something that they have. And so, yeah, when you talk about this and we see these guys fall, I think that’s part of a larger pattern. I think that’s part of a larger message, and I think it’s part of an overall, be careful of your weaknesses. Be careful of those things that can cause you to fall, because you can see how that builds. You can see how even in the story of David, you see the building with a very small step, not being where he’s supposed to and looking for what he is and just see it build to the climax becomes now his fall.

And so I think in the Old Testament, you see a lot of falling. And I think it’s part of a message, part of a warning, part of a whatever. And so going back to the literary structure in the book Mormon, I think it’s almost refreshing to not see the fall. I think it’s refreshing to see a building in an opposite way, a building in a sense of I’m building in my ability to listen to the Lord, I’m building in my ability to follow the promptings of the spirit, and he is strengthening me to where the climax becomes rest.

[00:12:47] Speaker B: Redemption.

[00:12:48] Speaker A: Redemption, salvation. And so it’s a different kind of build and climax than what we get. It’s not this harrowing. I need to be careful that I don’t fall. It’s more of this peaceful I’m building to.

And it’s all about the land of promise. It is all about the land of promise. And lest we say that the whole Bible is just about falling, Abraham and his whole promise was about the land of promise, about his seed being able to inherit the land, there’s a lot of parallels even with that building and climax with salvation. But to kind of take this back, you see these heroes in a very different build and climax, but this building climaxes to the entering into the rest of the Lord.

[00:13:33] Speaker B: Love that.

[00:13:34] Speaker A: And then the last thought, and I just have to throw this in there because you make the connection with the founding fathers.

Does not Moroni bring interesting parallels to Washington?

[00:13:46] Speaker B: Totally, yes.

[00:13:48] Speaker A: And here you have him justified by pahoran to take martial law, execute anyone who’s not on board, bring the army into the land and put himself as the supreme ruler in the land.

Who wouldn’t want Moroni to lead your country and to consolidate all of that power underneath himself and to have control over the entire country, governments, and yet to set it all aside when he’s.

[00:14:20] Speaker B: Done well, because they didn’t want it.

[00:14:22] Speaker A: He didn’t want it.

[00:14:23] Speaker B: Neither of them wanted to be a dictator or ruler. And that’s, I think, maybe why they were so qualified. Because they were righteous and they didn’t, that was their superhuman power, is that they didn’t want the. They didn’t want to be a ruler. They didn’t want to be the dictator, which is actually a superhuman power because power corrupts. And the desire to rule over other people, as we learn about, is just part of human nature. And so when you can find actual superhumans that want to do the right thing without needing that, it’s why having a king is probably still the best form of government. If you can find a righteous king, right, only person left. I trust Jesus.

[00:15:15] Speaker A: But you have here in this section the king men versus the free men.

[00:15:20] Speaker B: Right.

[00:15:22] Speaker A: And your king men are not the righteous dudes.

[00:15:26] Speaker B: Of course not.

I know I’m not. Dude. You can call people whatever you want. Antifa calls themselves anti fascist. It’s the most fascist group I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Other than maybe the Nazis.

It’s a pretty close call. Needless to say. You can call yourself whatever you want. I’m saying a king is still the best form of government. If you have Jesus as your king or King Benjamin.

[00:15:50] Speaker A: King Benjamin did a pretty fantastic job.

[00:15:51] Speaker B: I’m just saying, like, there’s people. But even then, it’s because they kind of had the superhuman power of not wanting to just rule over people and instead go out and grow their own food and enable people. Yeah, enable people to have freedom and choice and all of those other things. Anyways, I don’t want to go off on that tangent. Yeah, no, no, it’s the kingman and the free men. Yeah, whatever. It’s like names are names.

[00:16:16] Speaker A: Let’s get into the kingman and the Freeman. Before we do, though, I just want to make sure, when I’m painting broad strokes in the Bible and talking about Adam and his fall and comparing it with Samson and comparing it with David, I just want to make sure I’m nothing. I’m not out there saying, you’re not.

[00:16:33] Speaker B: Saying that’s an apple to apple.

[00:16:35] Speaker A: The women are the devil.

[00:16:36] Speaker B: No, no, no.

[00:16:37] Speaker A: And I don’t want to sit there and blame the fall of great men on women.

I don’t feel like that’s the point of the Bible. And I just want to make sure I’m clear I’m saying that you can’t.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just sticking my foot in my mouth at this point.

[00:16:52] Speaker B: I didn’t get that impression. But let me, as the observer of this, put the bow on it, which is.

[00:16:58] Speaker A: Thank you.

[00:16:59] Speaker B: This is more of like, the symbolism in this is of a somebody giving into a desire. It’s not necessarily even like a man and a woman necessarily. The theme is, is if a. Any person continually over and over, gives into a desire over fulfilling their calling or doing the will of God that leads to fall. That’s. This is the fact that, to be honest, I think the reason it’s used so much in the Bible is because it’s the most obvious.

It’s the most obvious situation that everybody can go like, oh, yeah, dudes. We all know kind of what dudes fundamentally want.

It’s just base humanity. Therefore it just makes it an easy. I feel like it’s an easy symbolism to follow along. No matter who you are. You can go like, yeah, I guess that makes sense why David would be out doing that or why Samson’s out doing that. And I. Yeah, this. We’re not, we’re not saying that even the comparison is.

[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to be blaming the victim. What I want to be saying is you’ve said it. Well, it’s giving in to our own selfish desires that’s encapsulated behind these stories. But what is it? What does it all boil down to? And this is what we’ve seen, and this is what we’ve said, thou shalt have no other God before me, there it is. And when I am that God, or my will or my desire is not in line with God’s. But I’m going to put all of the attention into what I want instead of what God wants. And that becomes, first, I’ve put another God before God, and that’s myself. When you make yourself a God, when you give in to your own desires, your own pleasures, your own passions, and you don’t have the self control, I think that’s the overwhelming message that the Bible is trying to get through our heads, is how do we put God’s will first? And that’s what Christ is the culmination of. Not my will, but thy will, the self control, the temperance, and the ability to align ourselves with God. And you mentioned it as Benjamin put off the natural man, what a great king. And he gets that message and he shares that message. And I think the Book of Mormon offers us a different perspective in some sense, as we see some of these people fulfill it, and it makes us love them, to see them hang in all the way to the end and that we don’t see our heroes fall. It’s important.

[00:19:18] Speaker B: And I don’t think that this is breaking news, but we historically kind of know what lead to a lot of the downfall of men, and that that’s our carnal desires. And this is why I’m just saying, like, I also don’t think that we need to sugarcoat the fact that this is why these stories, we all can kind of go, yeah, yeah, I kind of get that. Because we all are, like, we’re all not too dumb to understand. Like, this is. I’m not breaking news on this. No, we kind of know what dudes want. Okay, I’m sorry.

[00:19:52] Speaker A: I’m sorry.

[00:19:53] Speaker B: But it’s like, at the same time, we’re not blaming anybody other than we’re also just acknowledging the reality. Okay.

[00:19:58] Speaker A: We can’t sugarcoat this so much that we avoid the whole.

[00:20:01] Speaker B: And by the way, too, for whatever it’s worth, it’s why, if any of you that are new listening to this show, we did an entire special episode on the book songs of Solomon from a very symbolic, like, there’s a reason why this book is actually important is because it’s. It fundamentally is used as a descriptor of how much God loves us and what joy is and what hopefully ultimate paradise would be written in terms that human beings can kind of understand and go, yeah, actually, I kind of get that. Right.

We also don’t. Yeah, I also want to make sure that you realize we’re also not running away from, like, the simple fact that, yes, God uses a lot of intimate imagery, language and imagery in talking about his relationship with us. And so whatever, all of this, we believe that these are written in terms that we can understand in relationships that we can understand. So there’s that point of it, too. All right. I just want to make sure that we also aren’t just trying to totally escape that side of it either.

[00:21:06] Speaker A: Okay? So I’ll give you a choice at this point.

[00:21:08] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:21:09] Speaker A: We can dive into Freeman Kingmandeh, or we can dive into Gila, men’s warriors. I feel we’re going to talk about either or. Right. Which one do we talk about first?

[00:21:19] Speaker B: Do we want to talk about the Freiburg painting first, or do we want to talk about.

[00:21:25] Speaker A: Let’s go, Freeberg. Freeberg always wins.

[00:21:30] Speaker B: There is no way the Heman that Freeberg painted in the greatest of all Freiburg paintings in the old blue book of Mormons that we all used to read back in the eighties and nineties, there’s no way that 2000 of those dudes wouldn’t win every battle that they were ever thrown into.

Thus, it removes the miracle a little bit. I’m sorry, Freiberg. You know, my love for you is so true and deep, but there is, we have to remember that, that these dudes are the priests that are blessing your sacrament each week and the deacons walking up and down the aisle. And this was, I had heard this analogy at a little retreat I had been to, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking of it ever since, that sometimes the art removes the miracle a little bit and go look at that Freeberg picture and go like, yeah, of course none of these dudes were hurt. And then Sunday, when the, when the deacons are passing the sacrament up and down the aisle and the teachers are sitting by the door wanting to play on their phones and the priests are up at the table doing an awesome job of blessing the sacrament and fulfilling their priestly responsibilities, consider that it was 2000 of those dudes, and then appreciate how great this story actually is. All right.

[00:22:55] Speaker A: As I was listening to you describe that, the thoughts that came into my mind was like, coming across an army of 2000 Samoans doing like, the haka dance.

[00:23:04] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. I’d be like, I would be like, of course.

[00:23:07] Speaker A: That’s exactly right.

[00:23:07] Speaker B: Well, that’s what the picture is. All these, all these dudes where I’m just like, yeah. It’s like, it’s like those dudes. I’m like, yeah, I’m not, I’m not fighting those dudes. No army’s going like, yeah, we’ll beat those guys up. Those dudes. 2000 of those dudes.

[00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It’s important we look at, you know, how far down the reign of the judges we are, and it’s not that much far down from when Ammon’s going out there and teaching them. I I mean, we could look at it, I don’t know if it’s much more than 1516 years from, from when they’re there. So you look at these, these guys that didn’t take the covenant of burying their weapons, maybe there were some boys that didn’t do it at the time that were left home that maybe you can get some that were in their twenties. But it seems like a lot of these boys are teenagers.

[00:23:52] Speaker B: Fine, let’s say 20 and younger. Let’s say 25 and younger.

Let’s even say 25 and younger.

For those that have ever been in a young single adults ward or a student ward at BYU.

I’m sorry, like this doesn’t make the story that much better. You know what I mean? Like it doesn’t make it that.

Let me put it this way. It doesn’t make it any less miraculous like it is. It’s a miracle that 2000 of these dudes didn’t get killed.

[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah.

And it goes back to what we were talking about even last week when we were talking about Joseph Smith at a young age. We were talking about Nephi at a young age.

Moroni is commanding troops at 25. He’s obviously maturing throughout this process and getting older. But the guys that are coming in are younger than him and they’re commenting. So if you’ve got a commander at 25 who’s leading the armies and that’s okay or that’s what’s happening, you don’t look at these guys and say, oh, they were super young. If they were also 25, they’re not young for their age. If they’re the same age as the commander of the army.

[00:24:58] Speaker B: No, that’s a great point.

[00:24:59] Speaker A: You’re looking, you’re looking at mostly guys. I’m saying there might be a few that peaked into their twenties. But to your credit, Nate, you’re looking at the people that are preparing the sacrament, that are blessing the sacrament.

[00:25:12] Speaker B: Not even to my credit. Again, it was brought up at a retreat that I went to, but it has stuck with me ever since.

[00:25:18] Speaker A: But it does change the way you read the text and the way you envision it because like you say and like what you’ve learned, we are so much influenced by art and we get this idea and we have these visions of these guys marching out there.

And it changes quickly in your mind when you imagine a bunch of, a bunch of 14, 1516 year olds, anybody.

[00:25:42] Speaker B: That’S ever served in a youth program or been around a youth program just.

[00:25:46] Speaker A: With the collar of their shirts hanging.

[00:25:47] Speaker B: Up, hanging up the tie, and you’re just like, oh my goodness. But even just think of how hard it is to wrangle young people at a combined young men, young women activity. Like that’s the other thing too, is that you’re also, you’re also, you know what? There’s more miracles than we’re even like giving these dudes credit for. First of all, the fact that you were able to wrangle 2000 anybodies, let alone teenagers at oldest early twenties, the fact that you were able to get 2000 of them to listen to orders and march and do all of the stuff and even go out to fight in the first place.

Again, when you reconsider all of this, you look at the Freiburg picture and it’s like they’re marching in perfect lines and they’re holding the flags and they’re doing the whole thing.

It’s like, can you imagine a combined young mistake, young men, young women’s activity? And you’re gonna get 2000 of those kids marching in a straight line. Like all of this is miracle, man. All of this is miracle from start to finish. And by the way, like, kudos to the dudes that are the kids that are out even doing this in the first place. I’m just saying like, it’s when you realign the visual of this, the story gets so much better.

[00:27:12] Speaker A: And I also kind of like Helaman’s arc in this because Helaman, as you recall, he didn’t even go on the mission to the others. Alma had him kind of taking the administrative role in the church and he takes over the plates and he is the spiritual leader, the spiritual guider, not necessarily out there going and fighting. In fact, when the people of anti Nephi Lehi, who become the people of Ammon, want to go and fight, he’s the one that’s standing up and talking them down. Don’t do it. You’re not going to break that covenant. I don’t want you to break that covenant. He is their spiritual leader and he is there trying to stand them down.

There’s also something subtly going on here as well with names, as you take on a different name. And the people of anti Nephi Lehi taking on different names to show that they have become a new people.

But even if you notice these 2000 stripling warriors, as we call them, stripling, meaning young, what name do they take upon themselves? And Helaman calls them his sons, but they call themselves Nephites, which is interesting, right? They’re taking upon themselves the name of the Nephites and becoming this people to go and fight with them.

But Helaman, feeling this love for this people that he has shepherded as a spiritual guiding father, wants to assure the protection of this small group of boys. And I don’t think he’s going out there expecting what’s going to happen. Because when he gets there, Antipas, who’s in charge of the affairs of the nephite armies and that portion of the land dies in that first battle. When the anti Nephi Lehi, the 2000 stripling warriors, are being chased and they have to turn around and fight. And antipas falls. And now everybody looks to Helaman for leadership. And here the spiritual administrator leader who’s been shepherding the flock is having to develop stratagem, work with the military commanders, organize them underneath themselves. And you kind of see this arc, and you’re reading this letter from his perspective, and I don’t see him as this natural moroni. I almost see him.

I don’t know the right way to put this. I mean, he does a great job because he leans on the Lord, but it almost doesn’t even feel like it’s a natural role for him. He’s reluctant. Yeah. And he’s trying to piece it together and what an incredible job he does to actually, in the end of his story, take the land of Manti and push all of the Lamanites out of that entire sector of land and hold through. And it almost feels like a game of risk, you know? You know, in risk, and you start rolling those dice and you’re spreading your troops out, and you just win this massive victory. But when you’re done, there’s only, like, one guy in every single territory. And, like, maybe one manti’s got, like, two guys in it. And you’re like, oh, dear. I. You come to that realization that you spread yourselves a little bit thin, and it won’t take much for the entire Lamanites to just stamp through your. He’s got that moment right. He’s captured it, but he swallowed up. He punched up, he hit higher than he ever should have. And now he is stretched thin, and he is a little bit terrified of what this means for that part of the land. And now all of a sudden, you’re not having Zarahemla send reinforcements, and you’re not even getting food.

The job for the people who are not on the front lines is to be making sure you have supplies, making sure you have food, equipment, clothes.

You’re refreshing these people and sending out reinforcements, and that stops coming. So not only are you spread thin, but there are no little troops working their way out to your front. And he finds himself kind of in that terrifying moment where he sends that letter to Moroni.

I like Helaman’s arc. And when it’s all done and said, what does he do? He steps right back into the role that he was, and he steps back into the role that his father vacated. And he’s out there teaching the gospel and going right back to, you know, that was never what he wanted to be, and he did it. And the Lord magnified him and what an impressive job he did.

And sometimes the Lord uses us outside of our comfort zones. And it’s okay.

[00:31:42] Speaker B: It’s great. Love it.

[00:31:47] Speaker A: All right.

[00:31:47] Speaker B: Trying to think also, it’s just awesome that those young kids were just like, nah, we’re gonna do this. I mean, that’s also impressive.

I mean, that’s. Again, I hate having to just belabor this, but any of that have ever tried to get young men or young women? I’m just saying to really just step up. But, you know, you will find that the more you challenge young people, I do think the more they’re willing to step up to that thing. But also, having taught at a high school and as you have, it is sometimes hard to get people to be fired up to do their homework, let alone grab a sword and go fight adult men who are twice as big as they are, just wanting to cut them down.

[00:32:38] Speaker A: So if they could respawn, they would be all over that, right? Yeah, exactly. Put me in, coach. Put me in, coach. There’s no, there’s no.

[00:32:44] Speaker B: It’s not a video game.

[00:32:45] Speaker A: This is not. Yeah, there’s no respawning at this point. And the miracle of them being delivered surely is a miracle. Right. You’ve got thousands of people dead and not one single one of them who has fallen. But it’s also interesting that it says yet there was not one of them that wasn’t hurt.

They received wounds. Some of them had even passed out on the. On the battlefield because of their wounds. They were. Some of them were pretty gravely injured.

[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:33:14] Speaker A: You don’t come out of it unscathed.

And sometimes maybe we look at this story, and as miraculous as it is, maybe we get. Maybe we get unreasonable expectations that I am going to come out of the. Of the other side unscathed, just. And think, well, they didn’t die, so I’m not going to be hurt. And there’s a little bit of difference between dying and hurting. Right. Because I’m sure those guys were terrified.

Well, they acted valiantly, but at the same time, think of the emotions and what they went through, and think of the emotions of having to kill people who potentially they even share relationships with being lamanites. Maybe they knew them previously. Maybe there’s extended family that didn’t come with them when their fathers left the land of anti Nephi Lehis.

And having to shed blood, having to take lives. You’re asking a lot for people to do, to emotionally process and go through what they did.

It’s a lot. They take on. And I don’t know that just because they didn’t die doesn’t mean they weren’t changed. It doesn’t mean they didn’t experience a lot. Doesn’t mean that they did.

Yeah. It was a very transformative period for them, and I don’t think they came out unharmed, unscathed.

[00:34:31] Speaker B: That’s right. I mean, but that’s. That’s real. That’s. That’s human. And, like, you are making the point that we go through our things, and even when we do get an assist from God, it. We usually don’t come out of it unchanged. So I think that’s very human as well. All right, let’s keep going.

[00:34:51] Speaker A: All right.

[00:34:51] Speaker B: Did you want to talk more about those dudes? I’m sorry, unless I didn’t. I don’t want to move you on. Unless that’s. Unless you had more that you had.

[00:34:57] Speaker A: Wanted to know we can move on. I don’t. I don’t.

I don’t know. I. I feel like. I feel like a lot at this point. We could dive in and really, it’s just going to be narrative. We’re just going to be retelling the story that you guys are already reading at home.

[00:35:10] Speaker B: All right, let’s get into the king, men.

[00:35:11] Speaker A: Let’s get. Let’s get into the king. Menta.

[00:35:24] Speaker B: Hang on 1 second.

[00:35:25] Speaker A: Check.

[00:35:26] Speaker B: Check. All right, I’m back. Sorry, my mic died for a minute. All right.

[00:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s. There’s some interesting.

I don’t know the way to call it politics, right, or what’s going on here. We’ve seen that ever since King Mosiah steps down and changes it to a reign of the judges.

And I don’t even think the reign of the judges. Correct me if I’m wrong, we’re only, like, 30 years into this.

[00:35:56] Speaker B: That’s not a lot.

I mean, there’s really not a lot of space between now and from that moment and Jesus coming. I mean, there’s the same timeline wise. You know, we talk about how, like, the first of. What is it like from Nephi until Mosiah is hundreds years. Yeah, hundreds of years. And from here till basically third Nephi, 100 years. 100 years. Yeah. So, so much of this is just getting really pushed in here.

[00:36:26] Speaker A: Condensed 30 years of history. And in that 30 years, we’ve already seen, I would say, three major groups trying to reinstitute kings.

They want their king. They want their king. In the Old Testament, how many times they. We want a king. We want a king.

[00:36:45] Speaker B: That’s right.

[00:36:46] Speaker A: And you would think, why would you surrender power to one man? How does a king man get so much support?

If you’re saying I want to be king, well, what about him? Doesn’t he want to be king? Or he, how do you consolidate all of the king man under one banner? Is kind of a fascinating thing for me to think about.

And I think one thing that we maybe miss when we talk about kings is we think of a king as there’s one king and it rules over everybody. But honestly, I mean, think about all the cities that are mentioned here. A king requires sub kings.

And that’s the promise, right? Like, if you support me, and this is a lot of the lower judges, people that are in power that are supporting this, but they can see how things are administered and they think, you know what? I should be ruling over this. Or, you know, they have a little bit of a taste of that authority, that power, and they want, they want more. And maybe it bothers them that they, that I think they even say that a lot of them were the lower judges, that they have higher judges that can step over them or that doesn’t go their way. And how do they get more, consolidate more of that power? Well, if I support this guy and he’s promised me that I can be ruler over this, and now all of a sudden you have all of these promises, and if I am in king, guess what? You’re going to be my this and you’re going to be. And there’s a lot of promises of power that are being shared around and sent to where we’re going to change the government, but we’re going to change it in our image. And there’s a place for you here where you can do this in your image. And it’s just, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting take. And I think a lot of times this is where it gets scary. Today, I think the king men are honestly promising a better reality and that they’re going to fix and address a lot of the issues that the people are dealing with under a false pretense. And there’s a lot of that in this chapter.

Let’s look at the letter exchange between Ammoron and Moroni, and maybe we can get back into the king men. But even in this sense, when Amoron writes Moroni and says, hey, I’d like to exchange prisoners, Moroni’s happy as can be about that. He’s like, I want to exchange prisoners, but it changes. It’s funny, Moroni just throws all of his fury into this calling him a child of hell and all of this unholy war. And I’m going to arm my women. I’m going to arm my children. How do you think Amoran’s going to react?

And it’s interesting because it becomes a very emotional letter, but letting his emotions fly gets Amoran to respond and spew out a bunch of very interesting things about how he says the right to reign is with the Lamanites, and that Moroni’s father and the Nephite’s father stole that from them.

And so they’re going to just take what’s rightfully theirs. But the whole fascinating thing about this is what comes out. Amaron says that he is a descendant of who?

Zoram, who your fathers unrighteously pressed me, you know, I’m not even supposed to be here in the first place. And so wait a second. Here you have someone who’s Zoram, who’s supposedly neutral in this, and he’s accusing the Nephites of stealing the right to reign from the Lamanites, his older brother.

But. But what? But what did Amaleki, his brother, do? Did he not steal the right to reign? To reign. He went into the land of the Lamanites, and he stole the right to reign from the Lamanites. It’s not a lamanite that they have on the throne. It’s a zoramite who’s neither a nephite or a lamanite. And to have him trying to conquer the Nephites so that he can sit on the throne, and he’s trying to take the right to rule from Nephi and take the right to rule from Laman and consolidate under him, who has neither. And yet his claims to the Nephites is, you guys stole the right to rule.

You guys are the ones that took it. And we’re just trying to set it right. We’re just trying to give it back to the Lamanites. The Lamanites are the ones that should be ruling all the while while he’s. He’s stolen it. And. I’m sorry. I’ve just kind of wrapped myself into this. No, I mean, it’s interesting, this rant.

[00:41:19] Speaker B: I don’t think it’s a rant of. Keep going.

[00:41:22] Speaker A: It’s. It’s. It’s. It’s weird. How?

[00:41:26] Speaker B: Let me. Let me throw this out there. Okay, so let’s. Let’s not even go back this far. Let’s just go back kind of like medieval ish times.

What. What purpose or what reason would any citizen ever want to have a king? Like, why? Why would you have a group of people like, let’s not. Let’s not even look for the power hungry people. Let’s just look at your everyday common citizen. What good does it do them to have a king?

[00:41:57] Speaker A: Stability.

[00:41:57] Speaker B: Okay? Safety. Stability.

We can have confidence that we’re not just living in anarchy.

What does that then usually require of those people?

[00:42:17] Speaker A: They’re surrendering everything.

[00:42:20] Speaker B: I’m sorry. Let’s just say it.

[00:42:21] Speaker A: Agency in exchange for security, right?

[00:42:24] Speaker B: Not even agency. Money, food, all kinds of things, really. Their lives.

[00:42:30] Speaker A: You’re giving up some freedoms.

[00:42:32] Speaker B: You’re giving up a lot of freedoms for something else. Okay? So innately, we also want a king. We believe we have a king. Jesus, right? Christ is king. You see it everywhere when you’re driving down the streets of oakland and it’s written on the neon signs, Christ is king. Right? Like, we also have a desire to have a king, too, for probably the same reasons. Right? Stability, safety. What are we willing to give for that?

[00:43:05] Speaker A: And everything.

[00:43:06] Speaker B: Everything. Money. We pay tithes. Money, hopefully our lives. All of those things, right?

I think that this is where, again, it’s just worth highlighting the, just that razor thin line of one way of doing things versus another way of doing things. And this is a pattern that we’ve harped on for years at this point. And so I don’t necessarily want to, again, like, go all the way down that, but human nature is, we want a king.

What that requires, though, should help us determine which king we’re going to be putting our trust and faith into. Right. And for us, we as christians feel like we have that answer.

Not having a king is a harder way. Like, it is. It requires a lot more because you look at our form of government like, yeah, man, you need to be involved.

Unless you ultimately do just want to turn over your freedom to a system that you’re just like, oh, okay, I guess I’m a subject now to this system.

But for those citizens, even in a democracy, let’s just say, or a republic or a representative sort of government, it requires us even the simple act of voting, of actually spending some time to try to read up on the policies of others, right? All these things. So I’m just saying, like, I’m almost trying to approach this from the.

From not the power hungry people’s part of this. Like, you did a great job. I do feel, of illustrating, like, yes, there is, there is also a desire in people that when they see a chance to rule over other people, you see this in professionals. You see this in all kinds of things. That’s human nature. I’m talking about the large swaths of us that are going what you have to, what you, what you are required to sacrifice for having an unrighteous king, dictator, whatever that is, is not worth the.

Is not worth it. When you compare it to. Yes, it does take a little bit more work to show up to a freaking city council meeting every once in a while and to, and to be involved in your local politics and to be involved in your national politics as best you can, you know?

And by the way, that in a lot of circumstances means that you also need to be willing to donate your time and to.

I’m just saying, it’s like it takes a lot more work to self govern than it does just to be like, well, here’s a king.

But when you look at what it is, look at every. Look at what the easy way always turns out to be, and that’s a loss of freedom. That is subjugation. And that ends up being usually a lot more hellish and a lot harder of work than taking the right way, which might feel like the hard way up front, but allows you to maintain freedom and maintain your.

I mean, look at the title of liberty, your right to free speech, your right to practice a religion and safety for your family. And so I think that my, the only angle I just wanted to at least point out was, let me just add in, because this is kind of the chapters of the book of Mormon, do this. My pitch, to be involved in your community, be an aware citizen, do what you can. And for anybody listening around the world, yes, we all live in very different political climates, but, like, I would just, it’s once again an encouragement to be like, do the hard things, or the things that may feel like that. They’re the hard things now, because as you just see as patterns throughout the scriptures, as patterns throughout human history, is like, once you give away that right or that power to somebody else to make those decisions for you, it compounds itself and nine times out of ten becomes hell.

[00:47:18] Speaker A: You know, Brigham Young said, if we’re going to be king of kings, it’s because we’re going to be father of fathers.

[00:47:24] Speaker B: I love that.

[00:47:25] Speaker A: And as you were talking and I started thinking about this as kids in our homes, isn’t it very similar to what we would imagine a monarchy to be, as our parents are the ones that kind of rule over us, in a sense, and we don’t feel like we have a lot of freedoms, but what are we getting in return, we’re getting our meals, we’re having a roof over our head. Our needs are protected, and we’re given an environment in which we can explore and learn and not feel worried about being encroached on. Right? That safety, that sense of security, those.

[00:48:02] Speaker B: Boundaries actually are very safe and securing for young people, whether they realize it or not.

[00:48:07] Speaker A: But yes, and as we grow up, we want someone who’s going to solve all of the problems for us because as kids, that’s mom and that’s dad. Or maybe it’s even a lot more mom than it is dad because he’s always mom, mom, mom, right? And you hear that name called out almost like a curse word at some point because you hear it so often, right? And it’s hard to get away from it. But you’re always looking for them to solve the problem for you. But at some point, a parent’s job is to help a child learn how to solve the problems for themselves and enable them to take on that personal, that personal accountability, that personal responsibility to become the next generation of kings and queens.

Because what are they going to have to do now? They’re going to have to solve those problems for somebody else. And at some point we make a transition from where we’re always looking for someone else to solve those problems for us to where now all of a sudden we’re looking on how to solve those problems for somebody else.

And it’s an interesting transition in that accountability. And, and I guess when we start talking about that, aren’t we all KInG Men? Don’t we all want to be kings? Don’t we want that for our kids is to stop relying on somebody else to solve everything for you? Stop looking to the government to have all of the answers or stop looking to your parents to be able to. At some point you have to move out of the basement. At some point you have to start providing for yourself. At some point you’ve got to have a family and take on that responsibility. And so it is interesting that line that you bring up. We talk about the king men and the difference between Christ enabling us to become like him versus I will save everyone.

[00:50:09] Speaker B: That’s right.

[00:50:11] Speaker A: I want you to be, I will be responsible and I will save everyone and I will save everyone’s problems and nothing, one person will be lost. And that’s more. The kingman that we’re coming across in the book of Mormon is I will take care of this. I will make peace with the Lamanites. In fact, I’ve broken the deal with them here in Zarahemla, we will give them the city, they’ll win the war and we will save it. So none of your kids have to go fight anymore and you don’t have to keep sending food out. And I will solve all of your problems and so that you don’t have to worry about a dang thing because I am the king and not one will be lost.

[00:50:45] Speaker B: I’m so happy that you brought up this parallel because what was, look at the plan from the very beginning.

Heavenly Father’s way was the hard way in theory, right?

You’re going to have to do this and you’re going to have to take this and you’re going to have to take personal responsibility and you’re going to die. And not all of you are going to make it back the hard way in theory, right. Satan’s way was visually the easy way. Like you said, I can make it, so whatever. But what did he require?

The only thing that we truly have of our own, and that’s our agency.

[00:51:20] Speaker A: Everything.

[00:51:22] Speaker B: I agree.

[00:51:23] Speaker A: Aren’t both requiring everything?

[00:51:25] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. And it’s a great point.

[00:51:27] Speaker A: Yes, it’s a razor thin line.

[00:51:29] Speaker B: This is the point. Right. And it’s once you start, once you start observing the world around you and seeing in so many instances where everyday people really do want somebody else to solve all their problems for it, it really starts to make it a lot more real when you go, yeah, of course, a third of the hosts of heaven could have possibly bought into this, especially when you use the terms like love and safety and all of these things. It’s like, sure, Satan’s plan.

I can absolutely see that debate in the pre earth life of like, well, don’t you love everybody? Wouldn’t the loving thing to be to do to make sure that everybody makes it back? Sure, like, yeah, like, yeah, maybe the sacrifice you’re giving up of like your agency and all of these things. Sure, I understand the thing, but you’re doing it out of love, out of safety. We’re making sure that everybody’s safe. We’re making sure that everybody, you know, of course, that’s the pitch.

The pitch isn’t like, worship me and I will take everything from you and here is your little breadcrumb that I’ll give you because that’s really what it is. But the idea is it has to be sold differently.

I’ve been sending you all those little things. I’ve been really diving into Milton Friedman a lot lately, and I am sad that he’s always just been in the periphery.

And I’m really digging into it. And so many of his lectures and his debates and his interviews that I’ve been really listening to is so much of the pushback because he’s truly a very capitalistic minded economist. And so much of the pushback and the questions are always framed in such a way of, well, what do you do about the child that’s hungry? Well, what do you do about the.

[00:53:28] Speaker A: You know what I mean?

[00:53:29] Speaker B: It’s like, it always is an argument to immediately attack the most, by the way, pure fundamental goodness in people. Well, what do you do about this? Well, what do you do about this? What do you do about this? And you could look at somebody who was a realist, I feel like, like Milton in these cases, and simply brings up the. There is two sides to every equation, the receiver and what is required from the giver or what is taken from somebody else. It’s like there’s a natural law in heaven that there is two sides to an equation. There is no such thing as free lunch is basically how he says it, right? And, man, it’s like just the simplicity and just the profoundness of that is just really has been weighing on me quite a bit as I’ve been really digging into this. But you push that all the way back to the beginning is that there’s not free lunch, man. And it’s just not. It’s a universal principle.

Somebody has to pay for it.

In the two plans before this life even. It’s like Christ was saying, I’m willing to pay for that. I’m willing to do those things. But here’s what I require of you. That’s a fair exchange. Well, not fair, but it’s an exchange. It’s more than fair to us.

It’s grace, it’s miraculous. It’s something we could never pay back. But at least there is the two sides to that equation explained in detail so that we understand the terms of the deal that we’re making. If you look at Satan’s plan and how so many similar plans like that are sold to us in this life, we’re only told one half of the equation.

The other half of the equation’s still there is my point, and it is razor thin even now. And it’s why you see a lot of, in theory, intelligent, sensible people giving into the emotional draw of, by the way, from a good place and a lot of occasion of I want to help other people, I want to love other people, you know, all those things. Then you go, okay, cool. At least just at least then acknowledge the other side of what that means for me. I am willing to live a harder life, quote unquote, maybe a financially less secure life, whatever that is. If it means that I get to maintain my freedom, I’m willing to. I am willing to live within a system that goes, I am going to provide a public good, and here’s what I’m going to require as payment back for that good, with the risk of maybe people might not want the surface that I’m willing to offer, and then that means that I’m going to have to then find another way to benefit society to make that money in return. See, that’s the equation that I am willing to live in.

[00:56:36] Speaker A: I love that you went here. I love that you went here. And I got hung up on when you talked about the equation of Christ and saying that perhaps it isn’t balanced, but it’s got to be a balanced equation. And I think about what Christ gave for us and what is it? Is it not a life? Is it not life eternal? Is what we get out of that is our life. So what does he ask in exchange if that’s going to be a balanced equation? Don’t we have to give our life? And does that not is. That’s what he says. If you lose your life, you find it on both sides of the equation. It’s life. I am willing to sacrifice my life for the life that you are going to give me. And therefore both sides of the equation are balanced with the life I give up and the life that you give me that keeps that. That’s what makes it fair. And so many times we try to cheat that. We try to hold it back. And I am going to try to get the life that you’re offering me, but I am going to retain the life that I have and not give up what I have. And then you find that you lose it because it’s not a balanced equation.

Anyone who seeks to keep their life, we’ll lose it. There is nothing that we can keep.

Anything that we gain in this life, when we die in the grave and where does it go? And we lost it all. We gave it all up. And what did we get in return? We lost it because we tried to keep what we had. The price we have to pay has to be equal to the price that Christ had to pay. I have to be willing to give up my life just as he was willing to give up his life in order for this to be a fair exchange.

[00:58:21] Speaker B: Love it.

Not sure how we ended up here, but I’m glad we did. Oh, it’s the kingman Freeman, the fine line between the two.

But again, I know we’ve probably already covered this enough, but something that it did remind me earlier of when you were bringing up the idea of Kingman being in a lot of us, is that there is such a funny allure to ruling over your neighbor, even.

It’s a shockingly human base instinct, and I don’t know why that is. I don’t know what, I don’t know, other than that’s just something for us to have to overcome. But it’s just shocking to when you go even some of these old school, you know, not even that old school, but some forms of government that very much are terrible and that you have a dictator and basically subjects to that dictator.

So many of those people got into power, they needed to get into power by still winning over the minds of a large amount of people. Like, there is still power in numbers physically.

And even regimes like Mao and Stalin and a lot of these people, they still had propaganda arms for them as well, because they still needed to rule over the minds of a massive amount of citizens to stay in power or to even get into power in first place. And so much of that was so much of the way that those dictators were installed were kind of appealing to the sides of a large group of people to be like, you will be the powerful ones in this new system. Like, yeah, I’m your leader, I’m your reluctant leader, I guess I’ll be the face of this. But together we can overthrow the whatever it is, right? We can overthrow the powers that be or we can overthrow whatever. And if you don’t think that that still exists now, even in a country like ours, it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying when you see still the appeal to that side of human nature, of, well, we want to maintain our freedoms, but if to do that, we might have to maybe take away other people’s or other citizens. Like, that’s a worthy excuse for doing it. And you’re just like, I’m just saying, as humans, keep your head on a swivel. That’s all I’m saying. Just keep your eye out when you see these things crop up, take warning, that’s all.

[01:01:22] Speaker A: When you talk about it being a kind of a base instinct or drive that humans have as trying to examine it in myself, and I ask myself the question, like, do I want to rule over my neighbor? And I’m like, heck no. That seems weird. Like walking in there, knocking on the door and telling them what? That, like, that seems absurd. But as I start thinking about how this comes about and how we see it and how it is, I think it comes from, honestly, the divinity in us, the divine nature, because what do we try to do is we try to control everything around us, right? It doesn’t matter how hot it is, because I’ve got air conditioning and I’ve controlled my environment, I try to control the weather, I try to control.

And so it’s our desire to organize, to create order, to trick structures, to control the variables around us. And it’s not that we want to necessarily rule over our neighbor, but it would be nice if we knew how they were going to, or if we could take that variability out of our lives and start to create structure and organize, organize chaos and organize chaos, which is very divine. It’s the creation, it’s the divinity in us that seeks to control, but in an unrighteous way.

[01:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah, but it’s also the devil in us, too. I’m just saying, like, that’s the fine line between the two, because it’s also the demon in each of us that’s saying, I will save you all, and here’s what I require. I’m goddesse.

That’s the fine line between the two.

[01:02:53] Speaker A: And to me, it’s kind of interesting, and maybe I’ll just wrap up with this. I know we’ve probably gone over, it’s been a good discussion, it’s been fun.

I think, of the difference between cells and viruses.

And a cell is just doing it, still living its life, collecting its resources, and it has to divide and create new cells, and it takes in the proteins and it pulls it in, and it builds the protein, it builds the structures. The DNA is a very complex structure, very complex system, but it’s organized, it’s order, and it’s living in a very precise, exact way. And then you have a virus which also has a little strand of DNA, a code, but it has no ability to create. It can’t reproduce itself, it can’t create more of itself.

All it can do is try to leach onto a cell, inject that code in there, and get it to where it gets to the core system, that brain, and replace it, or inject that DNA in there to where the cell now buys in on that idea, and the cell starts recreating and producing the virus for the virus, because the virus has no ability to produce itself, right? And that cell starts to produce the viruses and mass produce it until the cell gives up its life, loses it and dies. And what happens when it dies? It ejects thousands if not millions of these little viruses that go on, again trying to capture the cells around it. And this is kind of a weird tangent to even go down. If you want to cut it out, you kind of keep going. But I think that’s what’s happening with this mindset.

This approach is, it’s not sustainable on its own. There is no life. You look at that equation and it’s I am keeping my life without giving anything. I can’t reproduce, I can’t create, and yet I want it all. I want to keep it all, the.

[01:04:45] Speaker B: Willy Wonka, I want it now.

[01:04:49] Speaker A: And so the only way I can reproduce is by capturing or corrupting or trying to get others to follow by this. And they’re theirs.

I don’t know. I went down it.

[01:05:02] Speaker B: No, I’m with you. I’m with you. But again, this is back to the discussion of like the Kingman versus the Freemandez.

It’s like, as there is also a very, I remember when I asked you the question, this is like, what do King men, what is a population that want a king usually want? And like you said, it’s the idea of safety, which by the way, they were getting attacked all the time. But in theory, right, safety, stability, all of these things. And what did that usually end up requiring is a loss of freedom or whatever. In theory, it’s like you can’t tax something that’s not being made or not being created. And the Freeman in this case, somebody that I would consider myself of, the mindset is that we’re willing to go, hey, we’re willing to give up of some of that stability. We’re willing to give up some of those things in order to create and feel like we have the freedom to create what we want to, too. I actually think, I think that your point was well made, even if we don’t have to necessarily pinpoint specific examples of how you, again, unfortunately see this in the world around us. But I mean, look, the theory is, this is not a political podcast, but we are very much into chapters of this book of Mormon where you see very direct parallels and symbolisms to the world that we live in. And we’re told that this is a book meant to describe our time. So it’s the only reason we’re kind of getting a little bit more into the weeds with it during these chapters.

[01:06:38] Speaker A: So it’s fascinating, these chapters, because in these chapters, you’re taking on immigration.

When you have the anti Nephi Lehighs, they’re coming in.

And yet you’re also taking on these checks and these controls. What happens when they take the wine into the prison to get their prisoners out and they all get drunk? And so what, the Lamanites try to replicate that and what are they doing? They’re not just accepting everything. They’re not just taking in everything, but how are they controlling it? How are they. How are they being wise in how they’re administrating and how they’re administering? You have issues of government.

You have issues of people seeking control, people wanting to give of themselves freely to serve and help in exchange for this freedom, this God, this liberty, versus people that want to take everything from everyone to be that source of liberty, that freedom. It’s just a very complex set of chapters and just kind of interesting to read in light of today, right? How do we apply the scriptures to today?

[01:07:41] Speaker B: Keep your head on a swivel. That’s how. Just keep on the lookout.

If you see these things popping up around you, be like, hey, I’ve seen how this plays out. I’ve seen this before. That’s what it is. That’s the point we’re trying to make. All right, dude, good discussion. Good discussion.

We got some good stuff coming up in the next few chapters. Good news is that any of you that have read the book before know where we’re going and know that, yeah, we. This is. This is all part of. But you know what? This is a good point, too. I’m gonna make this point.

[01:08:12] Speaker A: Let’s make it.

[01:08:14] Speaker B: What is you have the turmoil and you have the wars and you have governments and you have politics, and you have all of this, and you have cunning and you have the secret combinations. You have all of this. And then what comes after that?

[01:08:29] Speaker A: Christ.

[01:08:30] Speaker B: That’s right.

Let’s just. Let’s just. Let’s just know that we’re told that this book is for us in our time and that there’s a parallel there, too. So if nothing else, can we all. Can we all look forward to the future with hope going, hey, we at least do know how this ends.

[01:08:53] Speaker A: Can you do something for me?

[01:08:54] Speaker B: Sure.

[01:08:57] Speaker A: Can you look up Broseph’s?

[01:08:58] Speaker B: Oh, you know, I can.

[01:08:59] Speaker A: I just. I’m just curious. When Moroni is just tearing into Pahoran and, like, you guys are on your thrones in the stupest, this.

[01:09:08] Speaker B: Wait, what chapter is that? 30.

[01:09:10] Speaker A: I want to say it’s 60.

[01:09:11] Speaker B: 60, not 30. Sorry.

Because that was from last week, right?

[01:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s this. We. We jumped ahead when we went into the Pahorn Moroni letters.

[01:09:21] Speaker B: No, we did it.

[01:09:22] Speaker A: Yes, we did. It’s right here in chapter 60. 59. Moroni and Pahorn were introduced last week, but they’re their exchanges this week.

[01:09:29] Speaker B: All right, whatever.

[01:09:30] Speaker A: But it’s okay because we needed to talk about it last week.

[01:09:32] Speaker B: All right, what is it, 61?

[01:09:35] Speaker A: I want to say 23 or 20. Oh, man, 20.

[01:09:39] Speaker B: One’s good.

[01:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah, let’s. That’s 21 is where.

[01:09:43] Speaker B: Do you really think the Lord is just going to magically save us if we don’t even save ourselves? How can we just sit on our butts and do nothing?

There are so many people around us that are doing nothing. Even our comrades are dying left and right. Are you really going to sit around and do nothing, too? Yo, do you really think God’s gonna give you a pass for just sitting around and watching all this crazy stuff happen? Nah, man.

God already got. God already said you gotta clean up your act on the inside before you clean up the outside. You feel me? Unless. Unless you start repenting for all of the messed up stuff you did and actually start doing something productive, like sending food, people to people to help us and heal them out so we can reclaim our land. Well, we might as well just give up the fighting, the Lamanites, until we get our own house in order. Especially our messed up government. Amen, Broseph Smith. Especially our messed up government. There you go.

[01:10:39] Speaker A: Thank you.

[01:10:41] Speaker B: I’m gonna leave some of my boys here to keep things in check.

[01:10:44] Speaker A: Whoa.

[01:10:48] Speaker B: And I’m book of Mormon for Gen Z. Unofficial chat. GPT translation for Gen Z. Brose of Smith.

[01:10:56] Speaker A: One last little thing. This isn’t even a big thing. It’s just a stupid little thing. When I looked at the timeline of events, and Helaman, when Amaron asks for a request of exchanging prisoners, is actually before he requests the exchange of prisoners from Moroni. And I’m thinking, man, what a failure Amoran must feel like when he requests the prisoner exchange from Helamana. And, you know, he’s desperate. He’s got his supply lines, and he’s trying to keep people alive. And even in Helaman’s case, it says that he’s not even keeping women and children like he was a Moronius. They’re only keeping the chief captains of the soldiers, and still their resources are strained, and he loses it. Like, helaman’s like, nah, we’re good. We’re just going to go take this on our own.

And then to run into the same thing with Moroni, like, hey, let’s exchange prisoners. And Moroni is all excited. And then Moroni’s like, you know what? Screw you. We’re going to do this on our own. And he goes in and, I mean, how deflating is that? You just got it handed to you on both sides. He was not amalekiah. He was not as effective as his brother was. You could see that the Lamanites were struggling.

I don’t know why I had to throw that in. I just felt like it was.

[01:12:12] Speaker B: We appreciate everybody that listens to this podcast, appreciate you sharing with your friends.

Always appreciate the comments, the feedback, questions, critiques, reviews, all of the things. We appreciate it.

Insights.

[01:12:30] Speaker A: We appreciate you, Nate. We appreciate making your studio available. I just heard allowing us to come in now. Dude, I just hear recording this thing.

[01:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe people don’t appreciate that.

[01:12:41] Speaker A: Thank you.

[01:12:42] Speaker B: Maybe they shouldn’t, is what I’m saying. Maybe they shouldn’t appreciate that. But we do it anyways. So thanks for listening.

I think that’s all we’ve got. So until next week.

[01:12:50] Speaker A: See ya.

In this episode of the Weekly Deep Dive podcast, hosts Jason Lloyd and Nate Pyfer delve into Alma 42-55, exploring the intense narrative surrounding Captain Moroni, the Nephite wars, and the profound spiritual and political lessons found within these chapters. They discuss the youthful fervor of Captain Moroni, his proactive military strategies, and the importance of maintaining spiritual and moral high ground in both ancient and modern contexts. The episode also highlights the diplomatic exchange between Moroni and Pahoran, showcasing the balance between righteous indignation and patient leadership. Additionally, Jason and Nate reflect on how these ancient stories resonate with the challenges faced by individuals today, emphasizing the need for personal accountability, resilience, and the value of enduring life’s struggles.

Transcript:

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network, a podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate the tired Pyfer.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: Hello.

[00:00:33] Speaker A: You had quite the drive home last night, dude.

[00:00:36] Speaker B: We were driving safely home. We get up in the Sierra Nevadas, get right past truckee on I 80, and the craziest thing happens. We see cars, maybe only, like, ten cars ahead of us just stop, and both lanes of traffic just stop, and we’re like, oh, that’s weird. I wonder if, like, something fell off somebody’s car or whatever. But then we’re, like, waiting, and then the next thing we see is just, like, dark, black smoke coming up. We’re like, uh oh. A car is on fire.

[00:01:05] Speaker A: Not a good sign.

[00:01:05] Speaker B: Next thing we see is trees and everything, like, on the side of the road right next to us on fire. And then fire is just spreading up the side of a mountain, like, around this house. Police cars are trying to get in. Whatever. A car got in a wreck, started on fire, lit the entire side of a mountain on fire. And I don’t know. I hope they saved the house. But we sat there for about 2 hours, hour and a half, 2 hours, just waiting for them to get it far enough away from the road that cars could at least pass.

So that was my day yesterday. So we got home at 530 this morning. So, anyways, if I sound a little tired today, we had an adventure yesterday, and happy anniversary. Thanks, buddy. 19 years.

[00:01:46] Speaker A: 19 years.

[00:01:48] Speaker B: 19 blissful years. 19 blissful years. Man. Marriage is the easiest thing in the entire world, dude. Not a day of it is ever hard.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: It’s like walking on clouds every day, basically.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: 19 years of only walking on clouds and never having any disagreements on anything ever. In sunshine. That’s it.

[00:02:05] Speaker A: How can there not be sun sign? You’re walking on the clouds.

[00:02:07] Speaker B: I know. All day, every day. Turn your mic up just a little bit.

There you go. There you go. Yeah, now. There we go. What are we talking about today, man?

[00:02:18] Speaker A: So we. We’ve got Alma 42, I think, through 55.

[00:02:24] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:02:24] Speaker A: It’s hard when. When they. When they look at it and you’re. You’re breaking this down. Like, you got three chapters this week and four chapters this week, and. And then you all suddenly have, like, the rest of the book of Alma. It just feels like a lot got thrown at us, and it’s not a lot.

It’s not just that it’s a lot, it’s that it’s Captain Moroni a lot.

[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:02:45] Speaker A: And you can’t help but feel it, you know, when you start reading and man, where is it? Alma 42.

It’s when Moroni first makes the introduction into the book. It’s like you almost feel it. It’s almost palpable to like, here is. It’s like watching a movie and all of a sudden the guy that you’ve been waiting for walks on the screen and everyone just like, oh, this is, this is what we came to the movie for. That’s almost what it feels like when you read. And his name was Moroni. That’s great though.

[00:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I’m very like, woo hoo.

[00:03:19] Speaker A: You’re like ready to start applausing and like cheering in your scriptures. You’re like, there he is. The man, the myth, the legend.

[00:03:25] Speaker B: The legend. I love it.

[00:03:27] Speaker A: So this is Moroni making his entrance at, what is it, 25 years old, pretty young guy to be heading up the armies. I’m sure there’s a backstory there that unfortunately we don’t have.

And I don’t even know enough to speculate on how he’s running the place, running the show at 25.

But maybe that, maybe that gives us a little bit of insight into his.

[00:03:52] Speaker B: I’m gonna throw this out there.

[00:03:53] Speaker A: Let’s hear it.

[00:03:55] Speaker B: You know, I’m a patriotic guy.

[00:03:57] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:04:00] Speaker B: We do our best to not talk like, specific politics on this show, because you and I don’t even see eye to eye, I’m pretty sure, on everything politically.

[00:04:09] Speaker A: Thank goodness.

[00:04:10] Speaker B: Thank goodness, by the way. Yes, I’m a radical individualist. That’s my politics is that a human being is. Every human being is so unique and nuanced and has so many different life experiences that don’t put me in umbrellas, don’t put me into camps. I want to feel like I can be radically individual. But what I will say is, I do think we agree on this.

The founding fathers were incredible and inspired by God.

[00:04:35] Speaker A: Amen.

[00:04:36] Speaker B: How old were those dudes when they were leading a revolution, writing a constitution, fighting for their lives, and basically like securing the freedom of a country. Those dudes were like 18 to 25 years old.

Like there was a couple ogs, but the oldest one was like my age, 40.

[00:04:56] Speaker A: Frank, 42 years older. Wasn’t hedgest.

[00:04:58] Speaker B: Benjamin Franklin was older. But I’m saying is like of a do. Yes. And by the way, I’m not to understate, like, his importance.

He’s over in France. He’s negotiating. I mean, look, he doesn’t do his. He doesn’t do his diplomacy work, who knows what happens, right?

[00:05:13] Speaker A: Right.

[00:05:15] Speaker B: But the dudes on the ground signing that Declaration of Independence were, like, 1819.

[00:05:19] Speaker A: They got a lot of Spitfire left energy.

[00:05:22] Speaker B: So, it’s funny because we refer to them as our founding fathers. I think we forget sometimes how wildly competent those dudes were as late teenagers, early 20 year olds, for the most part. I think George Washington was, like, early forties. He’s my age, man.

Like, I’m not leading a revolution. You know what I mean?

I’m just saying.

So to just add a little bit of perspective. We do read this, and we go. We read the stories of the stripling warriors. We read a lot of these things.

[00:05:57] Speaker A: Nephi.

[00:05:58] Speaker B: Nephi.

I hate to say this, but we’ve gone soft, man.

When you look at times when it was required that you had some hardened men and women, you had hardened men and women, that rose to the occasion. We read these stories now, and it is hard for us to comprehend a 25 year old, right, going out there and, like, leading armies.

And that’s, I think, more of a critique on us than it is an understanding on them, to be fair.

[00:06:29] Speaker A: I’ll say that there are some.

You know, there’s some, you. You know.

You know that there are some young men, young women.

[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yes. But I do. I feel bad that we don’t. We don’t get to put them into positions to actually go and rise to the occasion in things like this, just, by the way, for good reason, too, because we live in peace. Like, I know we’re on the brink of world war three right now, but, like, you and I have talked about this all the time, if you look at this point in history relative to the. To the thousands of years of recorded history that we have, it’s like, we have it so good and peaceful, by the way, thank God, because war is hell. I’m glad that my children live in a world that I. That we’re not worried about them and us having to fight for the safety of our farm and our village every single year. So I’m not. You’re totally right. And I don’t mean to cut you off. You’re totally right. We do have amazing, amazing young people. They’re just not being required to do that exact same thing.

[00:07:35] Speaker A: And I will say, thank goodness for the church requiring hard things from young people to go out, leave their family, and serve missions, because I think that’s as close as you’re going to get. And it’s something that the church has been doing for a long time is requiring these people to make sacrifices, significant sacrifices and bravery to approach people they’ve never met before that have views that are at times hostile to what they’re trying to convey.

[00:08:02] Speaker B: Now all we need to do is take their phones away from them and get them off of social media and not let them FaceTime home every week because they’re so soft too. I said it.

That’s right. I said it.

Missionaries used to have to go like out not knowing where they would end up. Like survive on like trying to find people to feed them and house them. And, you know, I’m just saying, like, you and I had it easy and we were just in the early two thousands, but even then, we weren’t calling home every week. We would have gotten in trouble for calling home every week.

[00:08:38] Speaker A: We would have gotten in trouble for calling home every day.

[00:08:40] Speaker B: All right, all I’m saying is, moroni is it doesn’t, in a historical context, you have the sons of Helaman, you have the Mormons, you have the Moronis, the nephis, the ammons, a lot of these young men, the Joseph Smiths. Yes, absolutely.

[00:09:00] Speaker A: And the scripture says, let no man despise you for your youth. And I, I mean, I think the scriptures are full of examples like that.

I mean, even consider Christ. He died ten years before he reached our age.

[00:09:13] Speaker B: That’s right.

[00:09:14] Speaker A: And what did he do?

[00:09:16] Speaker B: I mean, he changed the world, changed the universe. So, yes, I’m with you. It is funny though, in our context of our modern lens, we see 25 and we go, what the, but you think of it historically and you’re like, oh, yeah, nobody lived beyond 50.

[00:09:32] Speaker A: We’ve got some long, we got some long livers every here in the, in the Book of Mormon.

[00:09:37] Speaker B: But I guess.

[00:09:39] Speaker A: But no, you’re right. It’s a different world. It’s a very different world. And, and I, I don’t know. I hesitate even going down this too much, but at the same time, you just wonder, like, like you’re saying, where?

I don’t know.

Here it is. Here it is.

[00:10:01] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:10:04] Speaker A: These young people with all of the energy, all of the vigor and all of the best wishes to go out and change the world. And they’ll go and they’ll get their education, and then what are they confronted with when they try to make a living with their family, by the way? You have to try to buy a home that there’s no way you’re going to be able to afford it, not right now. And you’re going to have to try to support a family that there’s no way you’re gonna be able to do it on a single income. You’re gonna have to now force both.

[00:10:29] Speaker B: Both couples to work, which is not how it used to be even 30 years ago, 40 years ago.

[00:10:35] Speaker A: And by the way, we’re not gonna pay you until you have x years of experience to try to do it with. And how are we setting these up to succeed? I mean, these young people today are facing some extreme challenges that I don’t think Moroni was even familiar with. And how do you succeed in a world? And do we have it backwards? Right? I mean, you get to people that have all of the experience and that are ready to retire in the world, that are making all the income in the world to what, they’re not raising a family anymore. They don’t need it anymore. I mean, what are you going to do to spend your income? Go see the world and go travel when you’re tired? And maybe that’s not even on your list of priorities anymore. And what would you have given to have had that income when you were first starting out and you had the energy to go see the world, to take care of your family, to raise the kids? It’s an interesting world that we live in, and I don’t want to make this a big comment on our social conditions today, but, and I don’t want to even go down political lines on this, but it is just a, it’s just an interesting world that we live in. And our youth do have some interesting challenges that they struggle with.

[00:11:41] Speaker B: I think that if we.

My bow that I would want to put on, that is instead of, instead of finding ways to make it more convenient for them, instead of looking at those challenges and saying like, hey, how can we, how can we soften the blow of some of these challenges?

I’m just such a big believer in, let’s find ways to challenge them, to rise to the occasion, like, let’s inspire them, to overcome them and do hard things again. Years of teaching, years of being coached for, through various things, I just, I saw so much more response and I saw greatness come out of, especially young people, when you inspire them with the idea that it’s like, yes, this is hard and it’s going to be hard, but I believe in you, and I will remove some stumbling blocks if I can, but I’m not going to, I’m not gonna do this for you. And I, you know, well, and maybe.

[00:12:46] Speaker A: That’S the point of it right. Maybe I’m looking at this, and what if we were setting them up with a six figure salary? What if we were to set them all up with. With everything that they need to succeed at an early age? And what do you do? You take away the struggle. You take away the how do I make this work and the desperate prayers and how do I feed my family tonight, and how am I paying my mortgage this month? And the decision, do I pay my tithing or do I buy. Buy groceries? And how do I build faith in the crucible that is those early founding years if everything is set up easily?

[00:13:24] Speaker B: You know, you bring up a good point, is that maybe. Maybe our perspective on this needs to change.

You say, well, yeah, maybe at the age of retirement is when you really do finally have all of your ducks in a row, but that’s the age you want to be doing other things. It’s like, are we saying that that is the pinnacle that we should be trying to achieve? Maybe our perspective needs to be what you just said, which is the crucible in which we’re earning our stripes, is the thing. That is what we should be trying to achieve. Like that actually is the pinnacle of life is learning how to fight through, build character through a struggle, survive, overcome. And if you want to call it a reward at the end of that to get to go, hey, I made it, sweet. But maybe I’m just saying maybe our perspective on it needs to be a little bit more open to the idea that I’ve been self employed since 2012.

Many a night of that has been staring at a wall, nervous, or at times really actually terrified of how I’m going to pay bills. And I look at what that has built in me more than outside of me. I look at what that’s built inside of me, and I wouldn’t sacrifice any of that for more safety or comfort. Like, it’s. It’s shaped me as who I am and hopefully what I can pass along to my kids. So I guess maybe, to answer the question, I don’t think we need to be making it easier. I don’t think that. And, yes, I do. There is something to be said for it sucks that you used to be able to have a single income earner that could afford to support and raise a family and buy a home and really achieve that part of the american dream. Yeah, it is a sad thing to me that. That feels almost out of reach to this point. But I can only speak for myself and say, I found a hardened survivor inside of me, learning how to just battle, whether that was when I was a teenager, you know, whether that be on my mission, whether it be as a young married person trying to figure out marriage and how to improve as a person, to become a better person because I wanted to be, whether that be a father, whatever that is. Like, looking back, I’m like, I don’t want to give up any of those struggles. They shaped me. So I don’t know.

[00:16:07] Speaker A: I mean, even put it in video game jargon for those that out there play. When you’re out there playing a game and you come against some boss or some hard thing, whatever, that you have to hit reset and try again or you just keep losing or it’s just a fight for your life, right?

That’s what, that’s what you come back for. That’s what you’re excited about. That’s where you keep trying to strategize and find a different way to try to approach that and beat it and get past it. But then when you’re 50 levels further past the game and you go back to do that same boss again and it’s just a one shot kill, move over it like game, it’s no fun. The game’s not fun anymore. It’s when you stop playing it. Right. The game loses any kind of sense of enjoyment at that point.

[00:16:47] Speaker B: Yes.

Back to our awesome captain. But I mean, it is to set the stage for this idea.

[00:16:55] Speaker A: And it’s actually a pretty smooth transition because in Alma 42, what I find and what I appreciate about this people at this time period is it talks about their fasting and praying and really diving in to give thanks to God.

And I don’t think that’s usual that we see here. We talk about what we’ve just been talking about this whole intro for the show, our fasting and our praying and our struggling and our fight is just for survival.

How do I make this work? How do I make one income work for a family of eight? Or how do I figure out self employment and make sure that I can get through the bills next month? It’s a fight. It’s a struggle. And these people are praying and fasting so that they don’t die because the Lamanites all of a sudden get an itch and decide to just go raid their village. Right?

[00:17:49] Speaker B: See, and that’s the thing I’m glad I don’t have to deal with.

[00:17:53] Speaker A: But how do you maintain that intensity in prayer, that intensity in fasting, that intensity when you’re not asking for a favor but actually giving thanks to God and that’s what the Nephites do here that just really impresses the heck out of me is they’re praying and fasting to show appreciation for what God has done.

And I think a lot of times we pray and we fast, and then as soon as the problem’s done, it’s almost like, never mind, God, I guess I don’t need you anymore. And you’re like, wait a second. What? Thanks. Do you, I mean, do we sometimes end up being the eight out of the ten leopards that lepers, that don’t turn and give thanks for being healed?

[00:18:34] Speaker B: One, I want to be a leopard, and two, I do understand what you’re saying, but this is to this back to the overall point.

Look at the pattern throughout this entire book.

When there wasn’t war, what happens?

People get casual. What happens when they get casual? They get soft. What happens when they get soft?

They start forgetting the God that gave them the opportunity to live in peace and safety and comfort. And then what happens? They have to get hardened up pretty quick.

Like, dude, there’s so many parallels with this world that we live in, man.

[00:19:16] Speaker A: There are. But this part of the pride cycle, to me, it doesn’t show the Nephites being prideful and needing to be humbled. In this case, you’re actually seeing the Nephites coming out of that with gratitude, with praising and teaching the gospel and trying to, Helaman’s out there trying really hard, and you have people trying to do the right thing, not getting carried away in the pride. And so this pride cycle, it’s almost broken in here. It’s not the pride that leads to their destruction. It’s dissenters.

And maybe there’s a comment on that. You can be doing everything right. You can be trying to figure this out, turning to God, getting inspiration, getting revelation, and moving on your course, doing just fine, trying to sail your ship, when all of a sudden, out of left field, somebody comes and sinks your boat because they’re pissed off. And it’s not even, it’s not even about you. It’s not even that you messed up or that you, what did I do? And how come I need to repent? And what is it? Sometimes it’s not about us falling in that pride cycle. Sometimes somebody just comes in and has to rain on your parade. And I think I see that here with these nephites when they’re fasting and praying. It’s almost like job. What did job do to deserve what came and hit him his way? He was offering sacrifices to God just on the off chance that maybe one of his kids is going to do something wrong. And so he’s showing the same type of dedication that I see from the nephites, not praying desperately to be saved, but praying desperately to give thanks and to maintain the peace that they have. And yet still it gets taken away. So sometimes maybe we don’t beat ourselves up so hard about what happens, because sometimes it’s not our fault, sometimes it’s not God’s fault. Sometimes it’s just the world that we live in and having the wrong kind of neighbors that just mess us up. No fault of our own. It’s just going to happen.

Amalachiah.

[00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah, let’s do it.

[00:21:15] Speaker A: Should we go down to Malachia or is it even. I guess we have to go Zerahemla first, right?

He’s the one that, I mean, it’s just full of dissenters, right? And he spurns off and gets the Lamanites all stoked. And Moroni does, to his credit, young, without experience, he just textbook, right? He has prepared his people with shields, with armor, with plates. He’s gone to Alma and he’s asked him, where should I go? And he sought the Lord’s inspiration and he’s gotten ahead of it and he’s secreted armies along the way and he’s laid a trap and he’s not reactive, he’s actually proactive. He knows what’s coming and he’s prepared a way for them to kind of come out of this successful.

And there might be some lessons that we can learn from this.

In his proactive approach to this, at the end of the day, when he starts to have this discussion with Zerahemna, he orders the ceasefire and he’s saying, I will let you all go with the covenant of peace. And Zerahemnah is refusing this covenant and Moroni is making it a point to say God is the one that has delivered us. And Zerahemnah says, we don’t know that it was God. You can’t say that it was God. It was your shields, it was your armor, it was your preparation.

And he’s giving all the credit to the symptoms, not to the root cause.

And that was something maybe I wanted to hit and talk about from Moroni’s perspective. Why did they have the shields? Why did they have the protection? Well, because Moroni was concerned enough about what was going on and thinking about it that he would pray and ask and think and come up with these ideas and come up with these inspiration that he’s able to easily attribute it to God and say, God is the cause for our. And so it’s interesting how some people look at it and they point at the symptoms, but they refuse to go back down the line and follow that and say, okay, but where did those symptoms come from? What are the symptoms of? And that when God’s with us, this is the product that we expect. And why do we refuse to give God credit where credit is due?

[00:23:41] Speaker B: Great, that’s good. Let’s keep going.

[00:23:45] Speaker A: All right. I was just trying to think of maybe something parallel on that.

[00:23:51] Speaker B: I mean, wait, of the idea of us trying to diagnose the symptom instead of figuring out the root cause of the problem. I know. I mean, we can’t.

If we hit pause on the recording, I have no doubt that we could probably talk about plenty of these things.

[00:24:12] Speaker A: But again, my mind goes back to creation.

[00:24:18] Speaker B: I’m glad that you’re in. I’m glad that you’re in a better place than I am mentally. Man, the world’s been getting me down lately. Like, my place immediately just goes to, like, doom scrolling on Twitter. But, okay, I think creation of, like.

[00:24:32] Speaker A: Well, it’s just, it’s because we have life on here is because the atmosphere is the way it is because we have 20% oxygen or because the nitrogen’s the level it is. It’s because we have the right amount of water here on the planet, because it’s the right distance from the sun, because gravity is the right amount of force that it needs to be. It’s because all of these things. And so we look at it and say, it’s not because of God, it’s because of. And we list off all of the symptoms and say, that’s why we have life. And like, okay, I get it, but what’s the root cause? Why are those symptoms? Why do they exist? And maybe we just need to ask ourselves and maybe we should understand what is the point of science? Is it to identify the symptoms? Is it to identify the cause?

[00:25:20] Speaker B: And I don’t know, you went down a way better place than I was gonna go down. So let’s just keep moving on.

[00:25:28] Speaker A: Oh, dear. Do we wanna go down?

[00:25:30] Speaker B: No.

No. Because I like the idea that this discussion that we have each week can be an oasis from the just the constant battery and abuse and gaslighting that humanity is under at this point, basically at all times.

So anyways, no, I don’t want to go down. I want to stay happy, dude, I want to stay positive.

[00:25:55] Speaker A: Let’s make you positive.

[00:25:59] Speaker B: Let’s just get into some, let’s just get into some hardened dudes, some awesome manly men here.

[00:26:09] Speaker A: Getting in through here, scrolling through these, these pages, my analogous scriptures.

Maybe, maybe here’s a good point to like a good time to introduce covenant because you see it with the people of Zerahamna and you see how important that covenant was for them to where even where it meant their death, they still wouldn’t break a covenant. I mean, he says he would. Why enter into a covenant that we know we’re going to break anyways?

But there’s even a sense of honor in that, right? Like I’m not going to keep, like I’m not covenanting. Even saying that he is, he’s saying that he’s not going to.

There’s power with that.

And so they make their covenant and they go their way. But we’re going to see another covenant pop up here when Amalekiah wants to be king and he tries to get all of his people to be king. And again, Moroni goes to head this off and find out what’s going on and stop him from dissenting down into the Lamanites and stirring up all of these problems.

Moroni, we get to the title of liberty and he rends his coat. And I don’t know if we fully appreciate the significance of rending your coat. Like I get if you’re gonna tie your coat to a pole and make a flag.

[00:27:31] Speaker B: He’s got a Hulk Hogan, this thing.

[00:27:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

[00:27:37] Speaker B: He’S gotta make a point.

You had that mental image as soon as I said that, didn’t you?

[00:27:45] Speaker A: Absolutely.

Unfortunately.

[00:27:48] Speaker B: Let’s do this, brother.

Wait, unfortunately?

[00:27:58] Speaker A: I mean, can you do the whole compression one more time?

[00:28:02] Speaker B: No, I mean literally, I just a brother, that’s all I got.

[00:28:07] Speaker A: So Moroni is hulking out.

[00:28:09] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:10] Speaker A: But aside, aside from just the, the aesthetics of rending your coat, because I don’t, I don’t know that anyone was actually there watching him rend his coat. I think this was more of a opportunity.

[00:28:25] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:28:26] Speaker A: There’s, there is significance in him rending it. And you hear about people rending their coats and as a sign of severe anguish or sorrow or whatever in the Old Testament. But this does get us into covenant language when he’s tearing this. It’s similar to what you had with the tearing of animals that I know we’ve talked about ad nauseam with Abraham and the covenant and the sacrifice that he made. And the other interesting thing, it doesn’t have to be just the animals that you’re tearing in this case he’s rending his coat.

And when he shows up with this rent coat and the title of liberty written on it, what’s the reaction of the people? They rend their garments as well.

And so you’ve got this. The idea of tearing the animals in this agreement was we will be torn and destroyed and killed just as these animals are. And you’re gonna see that same language here in Moroni when they cry out, will God rend us and destroy us even as we’re rending our coats? So the rending of the garment isn’t just to look awesome as the hulk. It’s not just because I want this to be a smooth square when I hang it on the flagpole. There’s deeper significance in the cutting of a covenant. And that’s the other thing. In Hebrew, you don’t make a covenant. You don’t write a covenant. The verb that they use in Hebrew to describe a covenant relationship is you cut a covenant. And this is Moroni cutting a covenant, literally, but cutting his coat and writing out the agreement. Here you also see it outside of just killing animals. When Israel comes into the land, they put half of the blessings on one side of the mountain. So they’re going through a valley. So one mountain has the blessings, the other mountain has the curses, and they’re going through between the two mountains. And you look at that as God has rent the land by pushing the mountain up on either side. And just as the mountains are pushed on either side, they will be pulled out of land and scattered to the northe north or scattered to the south if they don’t obey this idea. So covenant doesn’t have to be just an animal. Here Moroni gives us an opportunity to view this with the rending of his coat. And in Israel, we see that with the rending of the land. And an important part of these covenants is not just the blessings but the cursings. When you rend something, inevitably you have two parts. And so on the title of liberty, he’s written, what you have is the blessings for our liberty, our peace, our freedom to establish our religion so that we can worship. Those are the blessings that we will be established in the land. Then what’s on the other side that gets rent. Those are the cursings. That we’re going to be trampled under the feet, that we’re going to be destroyed, that we’re not going to be established. And this becomes the prosperity promise again that Moroni is going to refer to. And as we go back to what Alma refers to, if you keep my commandments. You prosper in the land. If you keep not, then what’s the flip side? The coin of that is you will be cast out of the presence of God. And so this is, we will be preserved and maintained the presence of God, or we will be cast out of the presence of God and stamped on our feet and annihilated as a people.

[00:31:45] Speaker B: A lot of.

[00:31:47] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead.

[00:31:48] Speaker B: No, I was going to say, I do think, though, that we also just need to discuss the actual cloth or clothing part of this.

In the garden of Eden, an animal is killed and coats are made for Adam and Eve to wear as part of their garment, as part of their promise, as part of their commitment. I don’t think that we should overlook the idea of covenants being made on a piece of cloth that we wear as well. And that, and that have symbols on them as well that represent the very specific language of the covenants that we make, too. And I don’t, and correct me if I’m mistaken, don’t the people wear. Don’t the people wear the title of liberty? I know they rent their coats. And again, I may have misread that, and if so, I’ll delete this and edit it out. But don’t, but don’t they wear, don’t they wear the words of the title of Liberty as well? Am I totally misremembering this?

[00:32:53] Speaker A: You know, let’s, let’s read and check real quick.

[00:32:57] Speaker B: And I listened. I listened to this again in the car on the way home yesterday. And so I’m, I am, I’m totally. I’m admitting that I may have, I may be misremembering this.

[00:33:08] Speaker A: So, so they do. Okay. I think this is where you’re hearing it. And I think this is where it’s coming from. And this is verse I, 13 is particular. Verse twelve is where it starts. Verse twelve. And it came to pass that he rent his coat, and he took a piece thereof and wrote upon it in memory of our God, our religion, our freedom, our peace, our wives, our children. He put it on a pole. Verse 13, I think, is where you’re getting this from. And he fastened on his head plate. That’s what it is. And his breastplate and his shield and girded on his armor. That’s about his loins. So there was, there was a component of dressing themselves, right?

[00:33:43] Speaker B: That’s what it is.

[00:33:44] Speaker A: Even if his coat is fastened on a pole, it still had this idea of arming themselves and clothing themselves. So I love the connection that you’re making.

[00:33:52] Speaker B: And I also just love where he’s wearing it though, too. His mind, his arm. That represents strength, you know, I mean, it’s like you, you even look at the different of the different pieces of armor that he is fastening it onto as well, I think is beautiful, profound, something worth thinking about.

[00:34:08] Speaker A: I like it. I like it. And where I was going to head is verse 20. Just because we’re talking about all of this as very covenant symbols that we look at, we recognize, we read that, we’re trying to point out and help you understand, unless you think that we’re taking this a stretch too far, verse 20, I think, just nails it. Behold, whosoever will maintain this title upon the land, let them come forth in the strength of the Lord and enter into a covenant. This was a covenant. That’s exactly what this was. And it fits the pattern of ancient covenant making. It’s not just something that we look at and say, oh, we’re trying to assume that because it looks like this, it’s what it is. It is what it is. And I like your connections, particularly to the Garden of Eden and the clothing and the idea that, I mean, in Hebrew Kaphar is cover. Kippur atone literally means to cover. And in order to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, an animal had to be cut to bleed out to die and the clothing cut off of them to clothe Adam and Eve. And you have, you have this very first covenant with your cutting it. You’re separating it, you’re dividing it. You’ve got the cursing, the death of the animal and even take this to doctrine. Covenants 19 I the Lord suffered these things so that you wouldn’t have to, but if you don’t, you must suffer even as I. And so what do you have with that covenant?

It’s not just the blessings, but the covenant is also associated with the cursings. There’s two parts of that. One piece was put on the pole, but let’s not forget that another piece was cast down to their feet and they all trampled it and rent it and destroyed it and said, this will be us if we don’t. We lift up the blessings, but we also abide knowing that there are cursings associated with this.

[00:36:08] Speaker B: Love it.

[00:36:09] Speaker A: And I think where you’ve grounded this in the atonement and talking about Adam and Eve and so much of this is the ancient world. I feel like the Book of Mormon offers us a bridge to take this ancient covenant symbols and meaning and stories and transpose it into our modern world. We may see this all throughout the Book of Mormon, but you might look at it today and say, well, what? We don’t cut animals. We don’t cut atonement and covenants the same way that they did, then if you don’t see it that way. And I think this is something that we’ve been talking a lot, talking about a lot, Nate, is the sacrament as a covenant or even the waters of baptism as a covenant or passing through the temple veil as a covenant? And what’s happening when you’re parting the waters and dividing the waters and going through it might not seem like it, but compare that to when the Dead Sea.

I said the Dead Sea. When the Red Sea is split and divided in half and the people go through. And that’s called a baptism in the New Testament. But what is it? It’s a dividing. It’s a separating and passing through the two pieces, and it’s tying that ordinance to baptism. When we perform baptisms today, it’s that same covenant pattern. We’re dividing the waters and going through there, and there is blessings associated with that. There’s cursings associated with that.

When we do the sacrament and we take the bread and we tear it in half, and then we rip it and tear it and divide it into small pieces, and then we send it out. And even you’ve pointed out, Nate, the way that it’s administered to the congregation, with deacons going on either side of the aisles, what’s happening is we’re being placed in between those pieces that are cut and divided.

And as much as these blessings that are associated with it, that you can have his spirit to be with you and the promises that come with being part of his people. At the same time, we read the scriptures, let no man participate of the sacrament unworthily, and talks about some of.

[00:38:22] Speaker B: The damnation to their soul, the cursings.

[00:38:25] Speaker A: That are associated with that curse.

[00:38:26] Speaker B: Well, and even with the sacrament, it’s a very visual representation of the cursings of that too, which is the idea of a body on an altar being torn to pieces. I mean, it’s dark and it’s morbid, but it’s represented during the ordinance of the sacrament, even visually. So, yeah, I’m with you.

[00:38:50] Speaker A: And even in the temple, when we part the veil and are allowed to pass through the parted veil, you see that symbolism. And so this covenant pattern in the Book of Mormon isn’t just for ancient scripture, isn’t just for yesterday. It is very much a part of our patterns, our lives, our covenant making today.

And I think it helps inform us and understand what we’re doing. The one thing that I like about this, and we start breaking down the symbolism of it. What’s the commonality? We go to the covenant we’re making in the temple, and what’s rent is the veil that we’re passing through, or baptism, and what’s rent is the waters that we’re passing through, or the sacrament. And again, it’s the bread that’s being divided. And you might look at it and say, well, it’s different. And in this case, it’s the clothing.

Or in the case of Adam and Eve, it was an animal. In the case of Abraham, it was an animal. And you say, well, all of these have different things. But wait a second. What do they all symbolize?

Wasn’t that animal that was first sacrificed a symbol of Christ who was the lamb of God, who was going to be a sacrifice?

Isn’t the bread a symbol of Christ in his body that’s being divided for us? Isn’t the temple veil called Christ? And is it not him that was on the cross that was killed when the veil was first parted?

As much as it might seem different, all of these symbols of covenants are all possible because they tie back down to one single source. And even, as you pointed out now with Moroni in the title, is that clothing? What does that clothing symbolize? Do we not wear the veil? Do we not take upon ourselves Christ, and does that clothing that covers us, that atonement not symbolize Christ and his ability to cover us as we take his image upon us and as we become like him?

[00:40:44] Speaker B: Amen, brother.

Let’s keep going.

[00:40:47] Speaker A: Should we hit up Amalachiah’s?

This is one of the craziest coups.

And these chapters, I mean, I guess I get why they grouped them all together, because they read so fast. It’s just some parts of the Book of Mormon.

You run kind of slow through because it feels heavy and you’re trying to understand. Isaiah chapters can sometimes be difficult, right? And you get to hear, and it’s almost like. It’s almost like the Isaiah chapters are the uphill climb and a roller coaster, and you’re just trying to get there, right? You get to the Moroni, and it’s just all downhill. You just fly through them so good. But you get to this coup, and you’re like, how in the world is this guy able to pull this off? And I think it’s worth noting, if Amalekiah goes to the Lamanite king and says, hey, we need to go wage war with the Nephites. By the way, my plan is to have you killed and take your wife and take your kingdom and go raise hell and destroy the Nephites so that I can be, like, king of the universe.

[00:41:50] Speaker B: I don’t know if that would go over so well.

[00:41:52] Speaker A: Not gonna get a lot of support on that. Right.

And so the game. The game with Satan, I think oftentimes it’s not checkers, it’s chess.

And you even look at the people that are afraid to go back to war, and maybe this has back to the covenant they made, and they don’t want to go back because they knew that the Nephites let them go in the first place. Right. I don’t know what’s going on and all the details behind this, but they do not want to go back to war with the Nephites. They take off king, gives Amalekiah the command of his troops that are still loyal to him. He goes out and meets with him.

And what a bunch of trickery to meet him at the base of the hill and be like, hey, come down. I will surrender, and you can have the entire army.

And all that guy is seeing in front of him is the next move.

And that’s why I say it’s like chess, right? When all of a sudden, you sit your bishop right out in front of their pawn, and all they can see is, I get to take your pawn, and you’re really just giving this to me. And what they don’t see is two or three moves behind it when, oh, guess what? Second in command gets to take over the whole army when the first one dies. So what’s the next move gonna look like in this playbook?

It’s a game of chess.

[00:43:08] Speaker B: Also just functional strategy, too.

The idea of giving up physical high ground is, you know, is a pretty prominent theme in this section, as well as spiritual high ground.

[00:43:21] Speaker A: I like that.

Cause he asked him, like, what, four times to come down?

[00:43:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it’s. It’s. But again, it’s like it’s.

You just said it.

It’s the things that you see.

It’s the things that you see still around us always. Which is the promise of the easy way, the promise of the shortcut, the.

It’s too good to be true. It is. And what it usually requires is you giving up the high ground.

And so, anyways, just. Just a tiny little nugget.

[00:43:54] Speaker A: Well, if we look at any of the temptations, right. What is he tempting Eve? The knowledge to be like God to know between good and evil. I’m going to give you something that’s right.

And what does he.

[00:44:05] Speaker B: What is the easy way of doing it? Not, not the hard way where you actually have to learn and be patient and wait and all of this stuff like that. But what was required for Eve, she had to be disobedient, which is the way that we give up moral high ground is when we’re not exact with keeping the commandments. And then eventually what had to happen, too, is that they literally got kicked off of the high ground and had to go down to the bottom of the mountain to try to start that climb back up again.

So, yeah, I agree with you.

[00:44:33] Speaker A: And when he takes Christ up to the top of the pinnacle or up in the mountain, worship me and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world. I’ll give you everything that that’s right.

[00:44:45] Speaker B: Again. I think that it’s become so clear reading through the Book of Mormon this time around, just in a world that we live in, how relatable so many of these stories are to what it is that we are doing. And you look at, you look at this argument of the high ground from the very moral standpoint of the wars that we are waging. And we kind of said it earlier, and I want to be more complimentary of the youth because, yeah, they might not be going out to war every year to fight marauding bandits and villages.

[00:45:34] Speaker A: And things, knights to get their honor and slay the dragon.

[00:45:38] Speaker B: They might not be doing that, but they’re so much more of a dangerous and subtle and sneaky war that they are having to fight that you and I didn’t. And the requirement for the easy way, or the supposed easy way is always to give up your moral high ground. And you look at a lot of the corrosive debates, even within the church, of ideas and behaviors that as a church, we have very strong worded literature that says what we believe.

But we live in a society, in a social climate that’s trying to pressure even really good standing, believing members to, to bow to the social norms and social requirements of society and to at times reject or put off the very clear language given to us by God through our prophets on certain societal issues.

And I would just say, even though it’s not very much fun to have to argue with people on social medias and your neighbors and even sometimes people within your family, and sometimes it’s not the most comfortable thing to defend the church’s policies and stances on certain hot topics, social hot Topics Satan is doing his best for us to take the convenient way out of that and say, well, it’s not worth arguing or it’s not worth whatever. And what he’s trying to do is get us to come off the top of the mountain, where we do have God on our side and we do have the moral high ground. And there is very much a push to have us come down to fight that battle. And I would just say that I believe the scriptures are giving us the answers if we are open enough to see the answers that they’re trying to teach us.

[00:47:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I love what you’re saying. And I see modern day Moroni Amalekiah playing out in the youth today, and even greater than the youth, myself included, all of us, when we look at what we trade up, when we lose to high ground. And I look at, for example, the youth program that the church put out there.

And initially when that came out, I was involved in young men’s. And it felt like it was a gutting, like you hit a trifecta of COVID So we can’t do as much, right, and then we’re going to get rid of the young men’s presidency and put it under the bishop brick. So now you lose a little bit of that support. And by the way, we’re separating from scouts, so you lose the leadership, you lose Covid the ability to meet, and then you lose the scouting organization, and there go. And it feels like a lot of young men’s programs have deflated and that you don’t have that structure. You don’t have as many activities or organized events than what you used to have. But then I take a look at that, at what they replaced it with. And this idea of goal setting that you need to be talking to your kids and not even waiting for the young men’s organization or the bishop to do it. But maybe as parents, we can sit down with our kids and say, what is it that you’re wanting to accomplish in life and the value behind that of what are your spiritual goals? What are your mental goals? What are your physical goals? How are you developing yourself physically and socially? What are your social goals? And how do you interact with your friends? And how do you develop that? And to sit down. The reason why Moroni was successful is because that was on his mind.

He was worried about how do I protect my people?

And as that was on his mind, and he started to establish goals of creating a way to protect my people. Then you get the armor, then you get the protection, and then it’s funny, because amalekiah, they copycat that, right? They learned the lesson. Oh, well, they had shields. We can do shields too. And when they pop up the next time to go fight them, it’s not shields, they’re not stagnant. Because now Moroni’s developed these. These earthworks and these fortresses and these single entrances that. Why? Because that’s where he is focusing all of his time. And I look at our youth today, and me and what we fight with.

We give up the high ground when we don’t think about our mental goals or our spiritual goals, and we don’t exercise because we don’t have a goal physically to develop ourselves. And what do we lose? And we’re trading years of our life by not maintaining some level of activity or some healthy standard of living because we’re losing that high ground and we’re not thinking about it. And we’re subtly trading that off for the self gratification and pleasures of today.

And we look at how many people get stuck with the mindless scroll that is social media.

[00:50:50] Speaker B: Oh, guilty.

[00:50:53] Speaker A: And you look back and you say, what could I have done with those hours of time? How could I have developed this, that or the other?

[00:51:00] Speaker B: Like, no good either, by the way. It’s not like, it’s not like it’s fixing any problems, but continue.

[00:51:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s. I think that is the fight today where we lose the high ground. If we come down off that high ground, when we trade our time and our energy and everything we possess, instead of giving it to God, instead of giving it. Who’s giving it back to ourselves to develop ourselves and telling us, here, you, I. You matter. Let’s get you to be like me. Instead. We give it to Satan, who replaces it with something that makes us happy in the moment.

[00:51:32] Speaker B: Or that’s easier.

[00:51:33] Speaker A: That’s easier. At the end of the day, we feel like we haven’t gotten anything.

[00:51:36] Speaker B: I want to say. I want to say, though, that sometimes it is even a matter of being willing to stand alone on the high ground, knowing that you’re still in the long run, in the advantageous position in a battle.

[00:51:51] Speaker A: You’re still not being willing to compromise.

[00:51:53] Speaker B: You’re still not being willing to compromise or even just come down a little bit or even meet me halfway up. That it’s just like if you. If you are right and square with God, it’s sometimes lonely, but. But it’s still where we need to have the courage to stand.

Something. I wanted to just really quick because pae horns this week too, right?

[00:52:17] Speaker A: I don’t think he’s yet. Is he?

[00:52:18] Speaker B: I thought he was.

[00:52:19] Speaker A: I don’t.

[00:52:20] Speaker B: Isn’t he in 50?

[00:52:21] Speaker A: Dude, if he’s 50.

[00:52:22] Speaker B: Remember. Remember when I was listening to this? I’m just. I’m saying right now, for some reason, I thought this week was Alma, 43 through 52. And so I was pretty sure that Pae horn was this week.

[00:52:31] Speaker A: You’re 100% right.

[00:52:32] Speaker B: I’m just saying, we’re not. We’re not closing this without talking about my favorite dude in the scriptures.

[00:52:36] Speaker A: You’re right.

[00:52:38] Speaker B: As a child. As a child, my dad would tell me that Pae Horn was his favorite character. And I was just like, oh, whatever.

[00:52:44] Speaker A: Let me. Let me. Let me slide something in, okay, because. Because I want you to end with Pajoran and.

[00:52:50] Speaker B: Okay, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Because I got a lot to say about this.

[00:52:53] Speaker A: Perfect. Then let me. Let me just wrap something real quick with Moroni.

One little thing that I want to add.

You’ll notice that it wasn’t Alma or Helaman telling Moroni to make the plates or to build the fortifications.

And what I mean by that is, we don’t sit here and wait for the prophet to tell us everything that we need to do. We should all be engaged.

And yes, the prophet has the keys of revelation to guiding the church on earth, but he does not have the keys of revelation of guiding your individual choices or what you do as a family. And we can’t put that on somebody else because that’s what Satan wants us to do. And look at how the church apostasizes in the. Let’s shift the accountability to.

Satan says, I will save you. You don’t have to worry about it. Let me take care of it. And takes all of that off of him. We can’t put our salvation on the prophet and wait for him to tell us everything that we need to do. There needs to be personal accountability and an understanding that, yes, the prophet does have the keys to revelation for the church, but the Lord is pouring his spirit out upon all men everywhere. And we get answers and inspiration from sources outside of just the profit. That’s all I wanted to add.

[00:54:13] Speaker B: Fantastic.

[00:54:14] Speaker A: Now I’m excited for Pahorn.

[00:54:16] Speaker B: So let’s just briefly talk about. Cause it’s important that the sequence of events, in my opinion, Moroni doesn’t feel like he’s getting the support that he needs from the government. Right? He’s going, hey, like, we need troops. We need whatever perspective is so important in the discussion of this story and why I think both Moroni and Pejoran come out looking so awesome in this story is that Moroni sends a letter that basically says, it’s been said from the beginning of time, you clean the. Cleanse the inner vessel before you. Before you cleanse the outer vessel. If you’re not going to send me the support that I need, I’m coming for you first.

As you read, it was a fairly strongly worded letter, which is basically like, if you’re corrupt, I’m coming to kill you.

[00:55:09] Speaker A: How much of that do you think is because Moroni’s young?

[00:55:13] Speaker B: That’s a great question, but I don’t want to. But. But also, I’m kind of like. Hell yeah. On that letter, too, though. I’m sorry. I’m kind of like, good job, young Mandy.

I don’t. I don’t. I know that sometimes this story can be read in a little bit of a knock on Moroni. Right? Like, he’s young. He’s not impetuous. He’s. He. There’s a little bit. That’s what I’m saying. He’s jumping to conclusions a little bit and is a little hot headed.

[00:55:48] Speaker A: Mm hmm.

[00:55:49] Speaker B: Good.

Fine. Because sometimes this. This is war, bro.

And sometimes you need people that are willing to write some tough letters and.

[00:55:59] Speaker A: Say, hey, sometimes you have to light a fire.

[00:56:01] Speaker B: That’s exactly right. I don’t read this at all as a negative thing from Moroni. I’m going like, good job, young man. Way to take the bull by the horns and do what you need. Now, you were wrong, but Horan sees.

[00:56:15] Speaker A: It the same way, though.

[00:56:16] Speaker B: And this is why I love him. And this is why I love him, is because Pejoran had every right to write that dude back and say, who do you think you are, you little beep?

He had every right. He had the moral authority. He was in a moral position to go, don’t ever write me your little snotty threats again, or I’m not going to. I mean, he had every right to do this. And what was his calm, understanding, demeaning responses? I am so glad to hear things are that you’re okay. I’m so glad to hear that you’re still alive, my friend. We’ve got a lot going on here, too, by the way. Please come and help us. Yeah, please come and help us clean house here, too. We want to give you the support that we need to. It was a masterclass in the Lord using two very different tools. It’s like, again, to a hammer. Everything looks like a nail, right? And consider Moroni is fighting tooth and nail for survival.

Yeah, I can understand how he would be frustrated. Yeah. I can understand how things probably didn’t look so great. The optics of that didn’t look so great. I can understand that. In desperation, he’s going, we need the support of our leadership if it was going to happen. And again, speaking of, say, like a revolution, right?

Is like, you couldn’t have all Benjamin Franklin’s.

[00:57:52] Speaker A: No. And think of this, too.

Just as the prophets were worried about the blood of the people they were teaching coming on them, if they didn’t teach them. Think about Moroni and the blood of the people that died in battle, if he is a commander, did not make the right command decision. This is why I’m how that weighed on him.

[00:58:10] Speaker B: Neither person in this. I think that both people, both Moroni and Pejoran, come out to me looking better than they did even going into this exchange, because it shows you that Moroni was a dude that’s out there getting it done good. And, and again, sometimes, yes, sometimes we may jump to conclusions, that’s fine. But he wasn’t doing it out of anything other than love and a defense. And for his people, he was coming. His indignation was as righteous as it got. And Pahoran, being just the incredible show of actual, like, patience and diplomacy and very much godlike understanding, was able to flawlessly and graciously and generously and in a very godlike way, respond and go, hey, man, I’m not chewing you out. I’m just so happy that you’re still alive. I’m happy to hear that, you know what I mean? That you haven’t been destroyed.

Here’s what’s going on here, my friend.

Let us figure out a way to actually get together and work this out.

I think it’s one of the subtle but pinnacle like, just beautifully illustrated story of God using two very different approaches to accomplish his purposes. And again, you don’t win the war if they’re all Benjamin Franklin’s, but you don’t win the war without the Benjamin Franklins.

You needed George Washington and you needed John Adams, and you need some of these, you know what I mean? Some of these rough kind of blunt, whatever. And then you need your Benjamin Franklin’s who are out there negotiating for treaties, negotiating for peace, finding finances, to even pay for this endeavor, securing ships, you know what I mean? It’s like all these things, it’s like you needed all of these different, unique people to win the war. I love those chapters. I love the letters back and forth between Moroni and Pajorn. It’s been one of the things I’ve been most excited about rereading.

[01:00:34] Speaker A: Again, it’s interesting, you say you need the John Adams and the Washington and the Franklins. You look at how many awesome heroes they were, because it’s not even just Pahoran and Moroni, but lehidhead and Tiankum heading up these armies. You know, he can’t, Moroni can’t just go in to take care of Pahorn if he doesn’t have people that he can delegate the affairs. And you’ve got Helaman on one side, and you’ve got just these awesome guys that you can lean on. And as much as this is about team effort and all of these different people, still within these chapters, you get the influence that one person has.

Look at what amalachiah, as a single person was able to accomplish, and the death and the destruction that one person becomes responsible for. And then on the flip side, look at how much life Moroni was able to save by thinking ahead, by being prepared by, you know, just the impact that one person has. But still, at the same time, which.

[01:01:37] Speaker B: Is why it highlights the idea that it’s better that one person die than an entire nation, you know, suffer. This just goes to show you why.

[01:01:46] Speaker A: And Moroni was so determined to try to cut amalekiah off before that even. I mean, if he could just. That was his goal, right?

[01:01:54] Speaker B: I know, but.

[01:01:55] Speaker A: But you want to look at it. I mean, what about the efforts of tiancum, who later does correct that blip?

[01:02:02] Speaker B: Yep, the blip.

I saw an awesome poll that’s like, who are your favorites out of all of these? And it was like, moroni, Pahoran, helaman, tiancum. And whoever you chose, it was kind of this fun breakdown on like, oh, you want the leader? Oh, you want the muscle man? Oh, you want the diplomat? Oh, you know what I mean? It’s like, like, who would you rather have of these four? Like the president or whatever, or not even that. It was just like, what? It’s like some people, a lot of people like, oh, we want a leader. Some people, like, I want to be the leader. Some people, you know, but, but I do. Like, I love all of the very unique characters that are part of this, you know, narrative.

[01:02:44] Speaker A: It’s a fascinating section in the book of Mormon. It’s sad that we only get one lesson to cover. I know the complexity.

[01:02:51] Speaker B: I feel like it could have been. I feel like it could have been its own week of come follow me again. Because it’s so applicable to the world that we’re living in now. And you, it’s.

And we talk about the founding fathers. It’s like they didn’t even really like each other in a lot of these cases.

I mean, especially kind of, even during the actual, like, setup of this country, there were a lot of times that the peaceful, even organization of this country was hanging by a thread.

And there are times that we have to, I think, I mean, part of diplomacy is getting letters from people telling us how terrible we are and that they’re gonna, you know, how much they hate us and that they’re gonna come and kill us. And having enough calm and patience to go, what’s the bigger picture? Do I wanna win this argument? Do I want in this war? Because Pei Horn could have, he could have immediately written back and just been like, slam, you know, you suck. Here’s why. Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, whatever. And then be able to, in theory, pat himself on the back. But instead he built a bridge.

[01:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah, he built a bridge.

[01:04:08] Speaker B: He wanted to win that war. And again, I’m trying to not be too obvious politically here, but what would this world look like if the people, our political enemies, quote unquote, instead of going, hey, let’s fight about every point of detail that I know that I’m right on and that I can prove that you’re wrong on. What if instead we took those opportunities to build bridges with people?

That’s my only really big takeaway lesson from that, that I feel like now more than ever, it’s, what do you care more about scoring some points on Facebook or actually building coalitions of, of people that may have at one time been your enemy to go, hey, let’s work for the actual greater good and.

[01:04:59] Speaker A: Understand exactly what you’re saying. Nate, man, you’ve got all sorts of wisdom today.

[01:05:04] Speaker B: It’s that late drive, it’s a late night.

It’s not me. It’s the lack of sleep and caffeine.

[01:05:12] Speaker A: But understanding. Understanding where somebody’s coming from. And sometimes you know exactly what they’re trying to say, but you choose to ignore it anyways just to make them more mad or to try to make your point.

And if you know what they’re trying to say and you can agree to at least part of that, why not take that? And like you say, build on that. Just build something and say, you know, I get it. And I see where you’re coming from, and that’s very valuable to me. But this is how. It’s just that much different in how I see it a little. And then they’re going to give you that. You would hope that they would give you that same flexibility, but even if.

[01:05:46] Speaker B: They don’t, you didn’t give up the moral high ground. Because the thing is, I’m not saying that we need to sacrifice who we are and what we believe, but what I am saying is, even if you can find a way to at least bridge lines of communication to where we can go, hey, instead of me judging you as a human by this narrow set of parameters of who you are voting for or what issues you do and don’t stand for, instead of tearing you down as an actual human being, let’s let our ideas push against each other’s ideas as much as they need to. To. By the way, in a lot of cases, just strengthen your ideas. Like, in a lot of cases, having your ideas pushed against helps you kind of anchor in what it is that you really kind of believed in the first place. Because it’s withstood a little bit of pushback. Right. And in the cases that it folds under the pushback, maybe it’s a good chance for a little bit of self reflection one way or the other. You didn’t create an enemy in the process.

With that said, at times there are people that we just simply have to reject their ideas. It doesn’t mean that, you know me, I’m a free speech absolutist, but I. There are times that it’s like, hey, no, I’m sorry. These are things that I can’t stand for and I won’t, and I’m. And I’m unwilling to budge on. But I have a feeling that for the most part, there is so much more room for bridge building than there is, you know, outright flat rejection.

[01:07:21] Speaker A: What if. What if. What if Pahorn wasn’t Pahorn? What if he was?

What if it was a wicked chief judge that was trying to selfishly gain control of the inside of the kingdom?

[01:07:34] Speaker B: Well, he. It’s funny because he could have. He could have very much taken advantage of. Of the gung ho ness of Moroni, been like, oh, yeah, like, sure, come in and whatever. And he, in theory, could have sabotaged the whole thing. It could have been a, you know, it could have been a trap. You’re right. It could have gone. It could have gone down a lot of dark paths.

[01:07:55] Speaker A: What if he was hot headed and just relieved Moroni of duty? Like, I am the chief judge and you are no longer the head of the army.

[01:08:01] Speaker B: You’re going to talk to me like that?

[01:08:02] Speaker A: Done.

[01:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:08:03] Speaker A: Sideline.

[01:08:04] Speaker B: That’s right.

[01:08:05] Speaker A: And the funny thing is, I don’t think Moroni’s response changes in either case. What does he do?

[01:08:10] Speaker B: See you. See you tomorrow, buddy.

[01:08:14] Speaker A: His ability to raise his own army.

[01:08:16] Speaker B: Outside of the, which is rad.

There’s, there’s so many, man, there’s so many just awesome examples in this. Hopefully everybody’s been able to enjoy getting their own, you know, lessons learned from it. I, again, as always, just want to put in my pitch for be involved in your communities, be involved in your local politics as much as you can because we really can make a difference in all of those things. Please be socially as aware of the world around you as possible.

It sucks that sometimes it feels like we are kind of given choices to make that we might not like. But the more that we’re at least informed and aware, I feel like it gives us the chance to make our communities a better place.

[01:09:10] Speaker A: You know, I read the church’s letter that they sent out earlier this year to encourage people to be involved in the election process.

And they invite people to look for candidates that have integrity and that are going to uphold the constitution. And what happens when you look at your candidates on both sides of the aisle and you’re like, you feel a.

[01:09:35] Speaker B: Little nervous about those things?

[01:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And you’re like, I don’t know, that either side has a lot of integrity or either side’s willing to really go to bat for the constitution. Like, what happens?

And, you know, maybe, maybe there are Moronis out there sitting on the sidelines.

[01:09:52] Speaker B: Just, that’s probably the lesson to be taken from. That is what you’re saying right now is that there are probably people that are not throwing their, their name in the hat because they see what happens to people that for the best of intentions, enter the political spectrum and then have people just try to destroy them as actual human beings. Yeah, it is hard to get a lot of really good, honest, you know, non controversial people to go out. And this is why I think I’m constantly beating the drum for be involved in your local politics because I do think you see that a lot in your local, in your neighborhoods, and in your city councils. And even on a state level, you do see a little bit more hands on people that are willing to go and be involved in that type of stuff. Or if it’s the you and me sitting on the sidelines, not doing enough to go and show up to a city council meeting, we need to be better about that as well or we need to stop complaining about it. You know, on a national level, it’s just a different game. So I try to, that’s why I sometimes just get caught. I just get caught doom scrolling. But I need to be better about that as well and actually just go and put that energy and effort into basically trying to create good citizens out of myself and my family and my neighbors.

[01:11:17] Speaker A: The crazy thing is Joseph Smith went to the candidates and he went to the president of the United States and he tried to, to get support and to put his support behind somebody that was going to support him. And he felt like he had no good options. And so what did that guy do? He ran. He Moroni. He, that’s right. He put his name, he raised an army.

He raced an army. But his name was, that didn’t quite go so well for him. But you know what?

[01:11:44] Speaker B: Because again, like, it’s, I think he.

[01:11:46] Speaker A: Actually had a legitimate chance of winning that thing.

[01:11:49] Speaker B: I mean, that’s, I try not to get too beaten down just by the constant bad news.

And again, I do know who I’m supporting and it’s not because I think that they’re a great person, but it’s for bigger reasons than that. To me, elections have become a lot more than just the two people that are actually representing parties. And I try to do my best to go, this is a platform that I feel like best represents me and it’s against a platform that I feel like doesn’t represent me and my family as I would want it to. And so I take those letters. The funny thing with those letters is sometimes you have a lot of people that read the letters and say, oh, this is clearly about, this is clearly against the person that I don’t like. It’s like, oh, it’s weird how that works.

[01:12:41] Speaker A: I’ve heard of, I’ve heard convincing arguments about how that applies to both everybody.

[01:12:46] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. And so, and so I think that the church is wise in doing its best to say, try to find people that are good, you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, I think so much of it is try to find, try to find a platform that best represents a world that you want to live in, raise a family in, whatever, and, and, and not feel like you have to. But this is where my radical individualism comes in, where I’m just like, just because I vote for a person, I don’t feel like I have to be, represent or apologize for every stupid thing that that person ever does. Because it’s not me. That’s not me. I have really two, sometimes three choices. Like, yeah, those are pretty. Those are pretty, like, wide swaths. You know what I mean? Like, those paintbrushes are pretty wide. It’s like, yeah, I’m one of those little hairs of a brush in there kind of going like, yeah, I kind of. Here’s where I’m at on that, and here’s where I’m at on that. And I don’t feel like I should have to apologize for that, ever. So, as we’re reading about wars and leaders, it just does kind of stir up a little bit of the, you know, that side of my. Of my.

My attempt at patriotism as much as it can be.

[01:14:05] Speaker A: So it’s government of the people, for the people, and the more people retract.

[01:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:14:10] Speaker A: Just kind of leaves it open, right?

[01:14:12] Speaker B: Yep. All right. Anything else you want to talk about this week?

[01:14:15] Speaker A: No, man. I mean, yes, no.

[01:14:19] Speaker B: Yes and no. Always, right?

[01:14:20] Speaker A: Always. It’d be fun to dive into Tian can be fun to get into these scriptures. There’s too much to talk about in a week long episode. I think we’re good.

[01:14:28] Speaker B: Okay, cool. Well, let’s. Let’s wrap it up then. You can get ahold of us at the email address high deepdive.com. we always appreciate your questions, comments, feedback, thoughts, hopes and dreams, music, recommendations, etcetera, etcetera. That’s all we got for this week. Until next week.

[01:14:48] Speaker A: See ya.

Transcript:
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio. That’s right. This studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:35] Speaker B: The studio.

[00:00:36] Speaker A: The studio. The.

[00:00:38] Speaker B: The actual studio.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: On location. In location.

[00:00:44] Speaker B: At location.

[00:00:46] Speaker A: At location.

[00:00:47] Speaker B: Let’s do this, dog.

[00:00:48] Speaker A: Dude. It’s good to be. It’s good to be home for a little bit. Home. Where is home? It’s good to be here with you in Utah.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: All my thoughts are shaking. Wait, what is the lyric of that song where my music’s playing?

[00:01:01] Speaker A: Home.

[00:01:03] Speaker B: Isn’t that Simon Garfunkel? Or is it just Paul Simon by himself?

[00:01:07] Speaker A: You’re the expert on that.

[00:01:09] Speaker B: Escaping home.

Something. We’re just waiting there for me, dude. I don’t even know if that’s the right key, but we’ll know by the time this airs, because, you know, I’m finding that audio.

[00:01:23] Speaker A: Thank you.

[00:01:26] Speaker B: Just go in and re pitch it. You know, I can do that. I have studio tricks. Jason.

Do it. I’ll sound like Alvin and the chipmunks, but at least it’ll be in the right key.

What are we talking about tonight, dude?

[00:01:39] Speaker A: You know what we’re talking about tonight. We’ve been waiting for this. I don’t know why, but we’ve been waiting for this. This is Alma talking to his son, Corey Anton.

And these are some tender chapters. He devotes some time here to try to help and counsel his son. And I. I don’t know.

There’s power in there. I think that’s why we’ve been waiting for these. There’s some good things to talk about.

Before I get too far down into the Alma Corianton discussion, though, I had some thoughts on the prosperity promise that we brought up last week. And I know it was last week, and last week is over, and today.

[00:02:18] Speaker B: The world is on fire. Yes.

[00:02:21] Speaker A: I guess. I guess the only thing you can do is bring marshmallows to the party.

[00:02:25] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.

That’s one way of looking at it, I guess. Or vote.

[00:02:32] Speaker A: So if it’s not too bad, I’m just going to take a minute to go back a week before the world was on fire. If that’s even true.

[00:02:43] Speaker B: What do you mean, if that’s even true?

[00:02:45] Speaker A: What I mean by that is, was the world not on fire a week ago? I mean, that’s probably still on fire.

[00:02:51] Speaker B: It was definitely getting ready to burn down. Yes.

[00:02:55] Speaker A: Hey, speaking of, isn’t there a song, watch the world burn? That’s the.

Who is it?

[00:02:59] Speaker B: You listen to a different. You’d listen to a different group of dudes.

[00:03:02] Speaker A: Live? Is it live, the band? Live.

[00:03:05] Speaker B: I love the band live.

[00:03:07] Speaker A: Cause that’s the world. I know. What is that?

[00:03:10] Speaker B: Oh, you’re talking about. You’re talking about collective soul. Collective soul.

[00:03:33] Speaker A: I haven’t heard collective soul.

[00:03:35] Speaker B: That’s gonna be the right key to. I’m calling it right now. I’m gonna look really bad for calling this.

[00:03:41] Speaker A: I haven’t even heard that name for a while.

[00:03:44] Speaker B: I did. You gotta remember, not only do I do this for a living, but I didn’t have a lot going on in my outside school life, in high school. And music was, like, one of the only things. So I have a ridiculous catalog just uselessly stored in my brain.

[00:03:59] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that.

[00:04:00] Speaker B: I got you, boo.

[00:04:03] Speaker A: All right. So going into the prosperity promise.

Sorry for the tangent on this.

I was thinking about that. I was thinking about it a little bit this morning. It is something that’s repeated so often, and as I was going back and reading Helaman’s not Helaman, Alma’s words to Shivlon, I thought, what does it mean to be prosperous? What is the prosperity? What is the root of this? And knowing that they spoke Hebrew and even down into Moroni saying, had we Mormon and Moroni saying, if we had kept the records in Hebrew, there would have been no imperfections, shows that even throughout time, Hebrew was significant to them. I figured that was a good place to start. And I looked up prosper in the Old Testament, and then I looked at the word in Hebrew that they used to translate it there. And it means to push forward, to make rapid, to speed it along its way, and to make it come out, to make it be successful, to make it mighty, to prosper, in a sense, is, I don’t know. As I read it that way, things coming together in a good way, that makes it happen a lot faster than maybe it otherwise would have. And I like that definition. But also knowing that it was translated in English and the translation process, not necessarily going back and looking at the original words and trying to pick the original one, but actually using an english word, I figured maybe there would be some value in understanding the. The english word itself. Right. And so I went to prosper and I looked at its etymology to find out what it means, where it came from. And in that sense, it actually has.

I’m going to read this. So I don’t misquote it, because I like the way that it said it.

Give me here. It is agreeable to one’s wishes.

And I think that’s what we think of most when we think of prospering, because we tend to define in our own imagination, our own wishes, our own mind, what it means to be successful. And we tend to be jaded if it doesn’t work out how we thought it was going to work out. And we look at it and blame God or blame ourselves or whatever, we tend to define our own prosperity. So I kind of like that definition. But then there’s one other way to look at it, and that’s how Alma himself is describing it in the text. So I’m going to take a peek into Alma 38, verse one, and he says, inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments. And I said it was Shiblon. Right?

[00:06:42] Speaker B: You did.

[00:06:43] Speaker A: It is Shiblon. I just threw it off when I saw Helaman in verse one. I say unto you, even as I said unto Helaman, so he said it also to Helaman, but he’s saying it to Shiblon. All right. Sorry. That just threw me for a loop. Inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God, you shall prosper in the land. And inasmuch as ye shall not keep the commandments of God. Now, you would expect opposite if you keep it this. If you don’t keep it the opposite. And he says, ye shall be cut off from his presence. And it’s not you shall not prosper, but you shall be cut off from his presence. So as I’m looking at Alma, it’s almost like he’s defining prospering as being in the presence of God. And so, as I try to find a way to take these three different definitions and merge them into one, what I came up with is this idea that being in the presence of God or prospering is the sense when your will, your imagination, your wishes, are in line with God’s wishes. And it takes me back to the prayer. When Christ says, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, when your will is God’s will, then your will is going to roll forward, and you will prosper inevitably, because God will be done.

And so I see that as the prospering, it happens, because you keep the commandments. As you keep the commandments, you find yourself in line with God, and you find your wishes coming true, because your wishes are in line with his wishes. And the path is pushed forward, and it moves you along, and it’s just all three of those kind of came together and culminated in kind of this beautiful thought.

[00:08:16] Speaker B: It’s awesome. I love that. I’m glad you brought that back up.

[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Sorry for the tangent. I’m ready to go into Alma 39 now.

Okay, I’m going to try to introduce this the right way.

First off, when I think of what Alma has against Corianton, because he starts right off with a bone to pick with him. And if I were to ask myself the question, what does Alma have against Corianton? I think the obvious answer is he slept with the woman while he was supposed to be doing missionary work and not slept with a woman, as in, he did something appropriate, and it was his wife was with him, he had an affair as a missionary, and that made it really hard to teach the gospel when people were pointing at him and saying, this isn’t good.

And I think that’s the obvious big thing that Alma has against his son. And it’s such a big thing that overshadows what Alma actually lights into him for at the very beginning. So if I go to the very first, it says verse two. Now, this is what I have against thee. Thou didst go on unto boasting in thy strength and thy wisdom. I’m like, oh, wait. So the first thing that Alma actually kind of accuses him of or brings up against him isn’t the sexual promiscuity. It’s his boasting and his arrogance. And it seems like he’s.

It’s almost like Alma’s actually trying to get to the root cause of it and not necessarily address the symptom.

And sleeping around and committing sexual sin, obviously, is very grave. It’s very problematic. And if you just say, stop sleeping around to stop, you’re trying to stop the symptoms without even getting back down to the root cause. And what is the root cause? And I’m looking at this, and I think it boils down to pride.

[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:10:10] Speaker A: And I think it also boils down to something that we’ve talked a lot about, putting other gods before God.

[00:10:17] Speaker B: That’s exactly right.

[00:10:18] Speaker A: Pride and selfishness. Pride and selfishness. And so I think Alma’s really seeing this for how it should be seen, and I think that’s going to really kind of color our discussion today.

[00:10:28] Speaker B: Okay, great.

[00:10:29] Speaker A: Setting the stage.

I think maybe we should hear what Brosa Smith has to say.

[00:10:38] Speaker B: I haven’t opened this one yet. All right, where are we at?

[00:10:41] Speaker A: Alma 39.

Okay, verses one through three.

[00:10:46] Speaker B: Alma 39, verses one through three. Yo, my son, listen up, exclamation.

I gotta tell you something different than what I told your other bro. Don’t you see how your other bro is always steady, faithful, and follows God’s rules? He’s a good role model for you, man.

You didn’t pay attention to what I said like your bro did when we were with the Zoramites. I’m calling you out, dude. You were boasting about how strong and smart you are. That’s not all, man. You did something that really pissed me off.

You left your ministry and went to the land of Saren near the Lamanites borders to be with to be with some labeled Isabel bros. Of Smith. You did it again.

You did it again.

You did it again. Bros. Of Smith.

[00:11:42] Speaker A: Chat.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: GPT.

You reminded us all of how intelligent you think Gen Z is. All right, thank you. Chat. GPT.

Book of Mormon for Gen Z.

[00:11:53] Speaker A: Thank you, Nate. Sorry, I.

Wow.

[00:11:59] Speaker B: Maybe that’s that’s probably on the Mount Rushmore of chat GPT for Gen Z moments so far.

I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ve had I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know who the other three faces would be on on the Mount Rushmore yet because that one is that’s the George Washington, I think, third Nephi.

[00:12:19] Speaker A: Comes in there when when when Christ is like, I am legit.

[00:12:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that’s pretty good. Yeah, that was pretty good, too. But we’ll get there. When we get there.

[00:12:27] Speaker A: We’ll get there. We’ll cross that bridge.

[00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so it basically sums it up. All right, until next week.

[00:12:36] Speaker A: Setting the stage.

Oh, boy. So from here, I mean, there’s a couple different directions we can go on this, Nate, okay? We can talk about pride. We can talk about arrogance and boasting. In fact, it’s kind of interesting, I think.

I guess let’s just go into that and then we’ll take another little tangent afterwards, I think even in here, correct me if I’m wrong, I think Alma even points out seeking riches in context of the sexual sin, which I found kind of interesting because what it really reminded me of was Jacob’s conversation early on in the Book of Mormon when he’s chastising the Nephites for taking on extra wives.

And he says, look at you, Lamanite brothers, who their wickedness is because of their fathers, but they take only one wife and they love their family and they treat their wives well.

But with that, he talked about them seeking after riches and he kind of comes back on it and says, if you want riches, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then you will find riches. And you won’t find riches because you’re looking for them. You’re looking to establish the kingdom and the Lord will bless you. And I think even this kind of comes back to where we started this with the thoughts from last week of aligning our will with God’s will and not having other gods before God, because it seems like that’s really the heart of the issue for Cory Anton is he’s putting himself as God before God. He’s putting his desires, his self satisfaction.

[00:14:09] Speaker B: Well, also, I don’t think that it should be overlooked that what is the closest act that human beings can do that compares to God? It’s the creation of life. Right.

This makes me think so much of some of the Old Testament parallels to this. You have Solomon and David. You have a lot of people that have Samson delight Samson. That’s exactly right. You have, you almost have things that kind of pre set up, I guess, precursor. A lot of these things. Right. And what is it in kind of all of these cases? In a lot of these cases, the people start out on a very righteous path and then see some sort of level of success or blessing or let’s just say prosper in the land, right. There’s some sort of success. And that’s usually when the eyes kind of get taken off the target and it’s almost always kind of aligned with success, riches or whatever. And after that. And so I guess I wonder if that’s worth at least kind of the discussion because you see this in our day so much in, like Hollywood and in, for me, like the music industry, right. It’s like you see kind of a, on any sort of a level, somebody reaches a level of success or fame or power, financially or whatever, and it’s. There is very much a. I got this. I wonder if there is.

It’s almost like its own little mini pride cycle.

It’s, there was a lot of work to achieve a certain level of something. And as soon as you achieve that certain level of something, you think that it’s something that you did. And usually.

Yeah, like, usually infidelity or promiscuity just kind of tags along with that.

I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to see if there’s like a bigger picture because, you know, we’ve seen it through the scriptures. You see it in real life.

Like, what is the, I’m with you that I do think that pride and a certain level of arrogance very much is tied directly in with that. But I guess I’m trying to kind of see the bigger picture of the things that kind of lead up to that, because I, for one, I don’t think that righteous people from day one just go, oh, yeah, and by the way, I’m also just gonna be a dirt bag, you know? Or, oh, hey, by the way. And again, like, I’m not judging anybody.

I have the.

My family line has come into this world through relationships outside of marriage. And thank goodness I’m here, right? You know what I mean? My family, too. I’m not saying that, but I am saying that there is also sometimes a level of I can do whatever I want, and there’s a non repentant. I mean, it’s clearly the reason that we’re reading about Alma chastising Corianton specifically is because it seems like in his arrogance, he’s like, yeah, there’s no problem with me doing this. There’s very much an unrepentant.

Or else I have a hard time thinking that we would even be hearing about this story, right, if our young man had gone and made some mistakes, recognized his mistakes, and was like, oh, hey, you know, like, no.

It reads as if it’s somebody that very much is just like, I’m gonna go do whatever I want. And you’re like, oh, yeah. Like, that’s why. That’s why we’re having this discussion. So, yeah, I mean, is the bigger question, is this more of a pride question than it is even a, you know, a sexual deviancy or not deviancy, but a sexual mistake or something? You see what I’m saying?

[00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:18:10] Speaker B: And I think I’m with you, that the.

That the heart of this is arrogance and pride.

[00:18:16] Speaker A: And I really appreciate how Alma’s treating this as a father. And who knows, right outside of the text, how he actually had it? What we have is a record here, and maybe there’s a conversation there that we don’t have privy to. Maybe there was a lot more that went into it. But what we have is all I have to go off of. And as I look at this, it’s not like Alma’s sitting here dwelling on it. It’s not like he’s saying, tell me all of the details and what did you do and what didn’t you do? And trying to make this. This sin a big focus of what he’s talking about, but he’s also not sweeping it under the rug. He’s not saying, look, you messed up. Let’s talk about repentance. Let’s talk about how great it is. And let’s talk about how he’s making sure before he can focus on repentance and the atonement, he’s got to establish first that this was wrong, and he’s got to establish what was wrong about it. Let’s start at the beginning and talk about pride. You were walking a scary path before it even began, and that manifested itself in these actions.

And then he goes talking about root cause.

You’ll notice that Alma is not gonna spend a lot of time talking about why you shouldn’t have sexual relations outside of marriage. He calls it out, but he’s not focusing on all of the negative ramifications and what that leads to and why it was bad. I think Corianton knows it’s bad. I think he knows it’s bad. But he sees that Corianton has questions about the resurrection, about Christ, about salvation. And if he is not built on that rock, on that foundation, and if he doesn’t have God as his goddess, then he’s not anchored in there. And he starts to float off of that and think of himself as God, or think he knows better because he’s boasting about his strength and his might and his intelligence, his wisdom, and he’s starting to rely on himself. And so Alma looks at that and says, the problem is he’s anchored in himself. And I need to fix that and re anchor him into God. I need to help him understand the resurrection. I need to help him understand the atonement. I need to help him understand what it means, like to, and what to me, it takes it back to Joseph Smith. I teach my people correct principles. And when they have a correct understanding, they govern themselves. And Alma’s looking at this saying, he’s made some poor choices, rather than addressing per se, the choices. And it’s not about stopping this sin. It’s let’s fix the foundation and where we went off track and try to cut that pride back and get him to rely on the savior, and then we’ll see a change in the behavior. And subsequently we do. I think it’s important to mention later on when Helaman passes the plates on to his brother Shiblon. Shiblon is going to pass his plates to his brother Corianthan. But Corianthan went up to the land northward to resupply the people, and he wasn’t available. And that little detail in there, I think, to me, validates that what happened with Corianthan and Alma was successful because Corianton was considered worthy to be the next one to carry on that responsibility, to take those plates and to bear it on.

This had a positive impact on Coriandan. He changed his life.

And at the end of the story, he comes out looking not this bragging boastful, but a very humbled person because of what he does. And I think Alma handles that really well. He mentions it at the beginning to kind of chop at the pride a little bit to get him to try to listen, and then he tries to, when he’s listening and understands what he did, tie it back into the foundation, the gospel, and get him to understand what it was.

But then there is also, and I don’t want to glance over this, that the education behind sexual sin. And I think you mentioned this, too, Nate, when you’re talking about what we share with divinity is our ability to create.

And God talks about.

Well, Alma talks about different degrees of sin, and I don’t know that we have a lot of talking about different degrees of sin. Sin, in our mind, sin is sin. If you do it wrong, you do it wrong. But here he says it’s most grievous, and he’s talking it in comparison to murder.

And so when we talk about the ability to create life or the ability to destroy life, and in those cases, sexual sin is right up there with it, because you really can do both with that.

Think about the lives that are ruined.

What happens to a kid that, you know, you might think that it was between you and somebody else or just between you that you messed up, but what happens to a child that’s forced to raise in a home where there is no father? What happens to that person’s life, what happens to the lives of other people around it is a consequence of that. And sometimes there’s some real damaging effects that get swept under the rug.

So it’s.

[00:23:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s intense. I, again, just to make sure, to be very clear, like I come from. I come from a family, not my parents directly, but I come from a family of children being born out of wedlock. And I do believe that God helps sustain people that follow him. And in a lot of cases, again, you turn to God, and I think that he can help us recover from that. But what I will say is some of that hurt and that trauma rings throughout generations and unnecessarily. Right. And I see that.

And again, like, what I would want to say, though, is I also feel blessed, though, that I come from people who also saw that and were the children of that, but were also able to go but Im going to fix this. You know, Im going to do my part to, to minimize the trauma, I guess, as the generations go, and did a very good job of that. And even then, as they would tell you, its like, yeah, but you do still see, you know, you do still see the effects of that and if you can avoid that hurt and that pain, you should.

And people make mistakes and very much can use, like you just said, this whole story of Corianton hopefully does end with him. I read the same way that you do and that there is a positive at the end of this and so the redemption is also baked into this story, too.

So I just, I want to, you know, I know that it’s such a delicate thing to try to like talk about because, yes, like there are sins that do affect a lot more than just one person.

And so we can’t pretend like, oh, it’s no problem, you can just fix it. It’s like, yeah, but also don’t shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t have to. Like yeah, you can go to the hospital and they can make sure you don’t die. But I, you see, I guess I’m just saying that’s where there’s kind of the delicateness of trying to understand this.

But to also be fair, there’s also a bunch of knuckleheads out in the world that just go around thinking that they should be able to do whatever they want and they just leave a wake of sadness and hurt behind them outside of themselves, too. So I also don’t want to glaze over that either.

[00:26:19] Speaker A: And I think it’s significant that you look at Christ’s family tree and you’re also going to find this.

[00:26:24] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:26:25] Speaker A: And to think that it’s going to frustrate things forever. I mean, it’s not, that’s what the atonement’s for. It’s important that we realize the mistake. It’s important that we realize that there was something there, which I think Alma does immediately and calls him to his attention to it. But it’s also counterbalanced with, it’s not the end.

There is redemption to this. And for this reason, was there a God chosen before the world was created?

[00:26:52] Speaker B: And the answer, but the answer is, though, is re anchor yourself.

[00:26:56] Speaker A: I love this. I love the parallels here with David, too, and let me try to break down David’s example and then I’m going to use that to try to break down what we see with Corianthan because I find some really fascinating parallels that I think fit with our day especially. And when talking about David and Bathsheba, you’ve got a guy, the king, who at the time the kings went to war, decided not to go to war. And so you look at the first mistake he makes, and it’s not that he’s out immediately going out and sleeping with Bathsheba.

It’s going to be a series of events that takes him to that position that maybe his initial intent wasn’t where he ended up in the end. Right? And so all of the men in the city are gone. And if all the men in the city are gone, then it’s just him with all of the women of the city.

And now when it’s bedtime and he should be going to bed, he’s up late. He’s up late on his roof, looking across the rooftops. Now, why would he be doing that?

And you have to understand in ancient Israel that once a month women were deemed ritually unclean because of the issue of blood.

And part of the cleansing process of this was that they had to bathe themselves and they had to present themselves and they had to be made clean. So if they’re out bathing on the roof at the end of this process, now, what’s David seeing? He is seeing women that have just finished that time of the month that supposedly aren’t able to have children because they’re not fertile at this stage, that maybe he can sneak something in and nobody’s going to be the wiser. And so he’s out there looking at his options and maybe thinking, maybe I could. But, you know, at what point does he start looking at and say, okay, now I’m going to.

It’s a series of decisions that if he would have just gone to bed, that would have been the end of it. If he would have gone to war, that would have been the end of it. But he keeps entertaining this idea, he keeps nurturing this idea, and it grows up to full blown where now he’s really committed. And now, because he’s committed, he’s got to try to hide this. And this is Adam and Eve seeking to clothe themselves when you’ve got Christ, who’s going to provide a much better covering for us if we rely on him right to the point where he’s killing an innocent man to cover himself up to where he gets there. Now, to take this back to parallels with Corianton, I find it fascinating that Alma and Coriande both had problems and questions with the same thing when they’re talking about the resurrection of the dead and what it means. Alma also didn’t understand it, and he struggled with it, and he didn’t feel like enough was said on the subject.

And so here’s our kernel, right? Here’s our start, our seed. And you have two very different people react in two very different ways. What’s Alma response to? Not understanding and thinking that maybe there’s not enough information that the church hasn’t taught it or the church, maybe he hasn’t given us, or maybe it’s wrong. Right. And his response is, he spent many days fasting and praying and waiting on the Lord to try to fill in that blank for him. And in the meantime, waiting on the Lord does not mean he just checks out and goes and does whatever, because it’s in the Lord’s house now, in the Lord’s court. He’s waiting for the Lord to respond. He is anxiously engaged in serving and going on missions and trying to do the Lord’s will and showing the Lord that he can be trusted with that information to where the Lord’s ready to reveal it to him in his time. And now he gets that information, and he’s blessed, and he’s happy because of it. And he can use that now to keep doing what he’s doing, to keep teaching, to keep pushing, to keep inspiring and to ask even more questions because he has more information.

Now, you look at that, contrast it with Corianthan, who comes across the same difficulties, and he doesn’t know what the answer to it is. And rather than turn to the Lord and say, help me with this, and rather than patiently wait for the Lord, that to him is just proof that it’s wrong.

I know better.

They didn’t even answer this question. I know better than this. And he starts to brag in his own strength. And this is the divergence, I think, that you’ve been highlighting, emphasizing when we anchor in ourselves and put us before God, and we think we know and we’re tired on waiting in the Lord. Cause he doesn’t tell us, he doesn’t make those things known to us. And so we start leaning on our own trust.

[00:31:39] Speaker B: What you’re saying makes so much sense, too. When if our anchor is within ourselves and our own desires first, what is a more immediate response? Wait till you’re married before you have a relationship with somebody else or, hey, this feels good.

[00:32:00] Speaker A: I want it now.

[00:32:00] Speaker B: I want it now.

[00:32:01] Speaker A: The Veronica Veruca salt.

[00:32:03] Speaker B: Dude, I want it now. Dude, you’re gonna give me three today. I want the world.

I want the whole world.

[00:32:12] Speaker A: You could even go. You could even go, hallelujah, because they’re singing the same David and Samson.

[00:32:20] Speaker B: That song’s overplayed. Faruka salt doesn’t get nearly enough love from Willy Wonka. The original, the great one, Gene Wilder, rest in peace.

I mean, okay, but now let’s, let’s. Let’s broaden that out, because you, you started this whole thing, I feel, like, on totally the right direction, which is, if we’re anchored in ourselves, what are the things that drive and motivate us? And that’s the quick fix, man. That’s the I want it now ness. And it’s why study after study is proving how cell phones are just corroding our brains, and especially young people that are still just trying to figure out who they are and have very little self awareness and discipline in a lot of cases. And you stick something in front of their face that just flashes more confusing messages in front of their eyeballs all of the time and gives them anything that they want at any given time.

I know we’ve talked about it before, but like Jason, our generation, we knew how to wait in lines. We knew how to stand in line and wait for something.

[00:33:32] Speaker A: Call the movie theater and listen to every movie being listed that’s playing.

[00:33:35] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. We used to wait, and I can’t imagine that at the time we realized how healthy that was for our brains, but very much. There was an idea of, don’t do this until you get married.

And I think that the messaging is still the same, but what the world will tell you is, even within christian communities, is like, that’s outdated, and you can just repent. It’s almost like, it’s almost like we’re trying to justify the fact that we have just made young adult brains into applesauce through social medias, through screens, through just this idea that you deserve to have everything you want now. And all of this still stems from the most root of root causes, which is me over thee, right? Me, my desires above what God wants me to do. And the craziest part of this, and you sadly see it infecting, I will use that word. A lot of people within our religion, is that it’s not only is it not being rejected, it’s almost being celebrated. It’s almost being celebrated of the idea of, like, the personal empowerment, which, again, at its surface, you go, okay, cool, that makes sense. Like, yeah, we should. We should all be. We should all be doing things to empower ourselves to make good decisions. Yes, I’m with you. But it’s like it always just starts taking a step, a step further and further. Which is? Which is you should be empowering yourself enough to know you shouldn’t have a religious structure tell you what to do. You shouldn’t. You don’t need blank telling you how to live your life, whatever that is. Fill in the blank. Right. It’s like all of these things. We were talking about it, we’ve been talking about it when we were talking about bridging the two great commandments. It’s like there’s always, I feel like it’s so much of the core of a lot of the ways that Satan attacks us within a christian framework is. I want to start with the safest, most obvious. Yeah, we can all agree upon this point and then just start walking it as far as you possibly can towards the edge.

This one, to me, again, you’ve just seen it infect and permeate. Sadly, again, with a lot of young people, you do see so much of this idea of don’t let anybody else tell you what your identity is. That’s all up to you. You get to decide every single aspect of your identity, both psychologically, physiologically, whatever that is, because it’s you making that decision. You should be empowered to have all of those decisions. Instead of, by the way, what we used to read in young men and young women’s, I am a daughter of God. I am a son of God. That’s your identity.

And when that identity defines you, then what naturally follows after all of those things?

Sure.

My whole point is there’s more empowerment in that than anything else that the world can convince you that self empowerment can give you. If your identity is you are a God.

That’s the ultimate self empowerment.

[00:37:11] Speaker A: That’s the thing. That’s the.

God became man so that man could become God. Is there not anything more empowering than that?

[00:37:18] Speaker B: That’s the most empowering thing. But. But what does that require of us? Get outside yourself.

Except that you are being. You aren’t in charge of your identity. Somebody else is. Luckily, that person is God.

[00:37:32] Speaker A: He who loses his life will find it.

[00:37:36] Speaker B: Thank you.

[00:37:37] Speaker A: And it goes back to get Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. It really does. Because was not Satan offering the exact same thing. This is how God got his knowledge.

[00:37:47] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:37:49] Speaker A: You want to be like God. I am going to personally empower you.

[00:37:54] Speaker B: To be like God to make that decision yourself, though. That’s what, that’s the pitch to Eve.

[00:37:59] Speaker A: That’s it. And it comes all the way back to replacing goddess with yourself here, let me empower you to be God and God’s offering you to become God. And so it seems like the same thing, but it’s just that one degree of difference that makes all the difference.

[00:38:20] Speaker B: Because he is right on some level. Satan, Satan is right on the level that it’s like cool, you are a God, you know what I mean? It’s like this is how God got it. Don’t you want to be like him? Well I mean the fact of the matter is yes. The answer is yes. And we are born to be gods regardless of what we decide our identity is. That doesnt change the fact that we are sons and daughters of God.

And in this case hes literally going put another God before our heavenly father.

And sadly, im lumping both you and I into this too. This is not us lecturing sadly that God wins a lot of the time.

[00:39:03] Speaker A: 100%, which I think is why we.

[00:39:07] Speaker B: Have the law of sacrifice and obedience. Sacrifice and obedience, the first two things. But yes, continue.

[00:39:13] Speaker A: And maybe because that’s a sacrifice too.

[00:39:16] Speaker B: Obeying is a sacrifice and maybe what.

[00:39:18] Speaker A: We’Re sacrificing is ourselves.

[00:39:20] Speaker B: That’s it. That’s what it is.

[00:39:22] Speaker A: And it’s so ironic because he isn’t the sacrifice, the image of Christ, he was the sacrifice, he was the lamb. But really we sacrifice ourselves too. And isn’t that that come, follow me and be like Christ. And there’s some interesting imagery in that.

[00:39:35] Speaker B: The first ordinance that we perform is dying and being reborn as a disciple of Christ on the journey to become him on the journey, to mirror his life in the journey, to have him eventually see his image in us, that when he sees our face he sees himself.

Yes, you’re right.

That is why obedience and sacrifice, because they’re one in the same, are the first foundational things that we have to understand, which is your will has to die and you have to be willing to sacrifice it. I mean it’s what it comes down to.

[00:40:18] Speaker A: And what if now let’s take a look at Corianton’s journey. How would if his journey been different if when he first starts running into these questions he would have sacrificed time to try to figure it out, to try to search the scriptures? What if he would have just asked his dad, who had been spending all of this time trying to figure it out, what if he would have sacrificed food and fasting and time and on his knees praying and sacrificed all of this to God as a price to pay for admission and relied on God for that answer rather than putting himself first. But at the end of the day, and here’s.

[00:40:57] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. Because I’m psych. It’s hard to say.

We don’t know. But.

[00:41:01] Speaker A: But at the end of the day, this is the cool thing to me. At the end of the day, does Coriander not get saved?

At the end of the day, does he not find his way back? And that’s the atonement. That’s the thing of the atonement is it can. But Alma cautions us at the very beginning when he says that it’s an unpardonable sin to deny the Holy Ghost. And then he’s going to repeat it three times. It is not easy to get forgiveness. It is not easy. It is not easy. And what is not easy when you willingly turn away from the Lord. And why is it not easy? Because you yourself have made the decision to find something somewhere else. And how does the Lord save somebody who’s not willing to come back? If you know better and you still decide to go find something else, then who’s going to convince you to come back? Why does that sin become so unpardonable? Because the person themselves is not willing to change course, correct or come back. And that comes back to humility, pride.

[00:42:01] Speaker B: I’m going to throw out another reason that it’s.

And this, again, is, I feel like part of the cautionary tale of this is that we believe that part of repenting is to make right the things that have been made wrong.

Again, I brought up that again on one side of my family, that I am here through relationships that were outside of the bonds of marriage. Again, not my parents, but right before them, let’s just say.

But there’s also lives that have been destroyed because of that, too. Within my families, like there is as much as you, there are certain things. It’s why murder is.

We’re gonna have to leave that between God and the person, because how do you make that right?

I can’t help. But also, again, we look at this story of Corianton and it’s high fives all around, right?

[00:42:57] Speaker A: High fives all around.

[00:42:58] Speaker B: The dude got saved.

We also don’t sadly have, or we don’t know the sad potential stories of the lives that were also destroyed and left in his wake, too. Alma the younger himself, part of the whole reason that he was wracked, I’m going to propose, is that he also saw the damage that he had done up to that point, too, in his life. And by the way, you do see this, I think with the sons of Mosiah and him where so much of after their conversion was what? Going out and trying to really atone for the damage that they have done of all of the people. Because we don’t have their stories. We don’t have the stories of the person. You and I, and again, like, I would never name names, but you and I have plenty of people in our lives that we can look back at. I feel the weight of this so many times of friends of mine that I now look back and can see we’re in a really tough part of a stretch of life with their faith, whatever. And very much we’re desperately kind of reaching out to have somebody help give them a crutch for a time. And me, because of my own blinders on and me dealing with my own freaking crap that I stress out about every day.

I didn’t. I missed an opportunity.

I did. I missed. I vividly remember sadly, right, very specific moments when I’m like, I was being given the chance to potentially help save somebody, and I blew it.

Now I feel the guilt and the weight of that, and it’s helped me hopefully realign my priorities in life to where I hopefully don’t miss those chances in the future. I can’t help but think how much worse I would feel if I knew I was actively the one out there destroying people and destroying people’s chance at salvation.

Even after I may have been able to come around and go, okay, now I’ve got it worked out. But again, like, life isn’t that easy. Life isn’t that clean. And there’s a lot of decisions. And I know that even in very legal terms, you see men who have just destroyed the lives of people around them, they find God and then are celebrated as, like, hey, they found God. It’s all great to go. Everything’s honky dory now. Yeah.

Luckily, we now get the stories of some of these people, of lives they destroyed, and they’re like, well, I guess I’m glad that everything’s going great for this person. My life is still destroyed.

It’s like, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, yes, yes, we do need to celebrate redemption. We do need to find redemption in as many places as we possibly can.

We need to plead for forgiveness and redemption. I am constantly reminded of it every time I see how awesome my kids are, and I just go like, oh, my goodness. I need to be the one setting the better example for them. And I blow it all the time. Yes, all of that. The. All of that is true. But my goodness, like, it’s just not that simple.

And, you know, hopefully these stories, if nothing else, are an honest warning of, like, yes, there are degrees in sin. Yes, there are. Some sins are worse than others. I’m sorry. Like, that’s. That’s the fact of the matter. And just because we can be forgiven doesn’t mean that sometimes our actions aren’t. That aren’t out destroying the lives of other people. So even. Even just the concept of, hey, it’s all good, like, no problem. Hey, you know, like, whatever. It’s like, no, you don’t know the other lives that you’re leaving damaged in the wake of your decisions. It’s like, we need to be better.

And we read about it a lot. When we’re talking about the armies of healing, what’s the first thing that. What’s the first thing that we saw before? Even with the armies of healing, we’re always talking like, ah, they’re the mothers. They learn the thing from their eyes. What’s the first thing that talks about? They obeyed the commandments with exactness.

It wasn’t self empowerment. I’m sorry, it wasn’t. You know, it wasn’t. Find your path in discovering who you are. No, it wasn’t. It was. Here’s who you are now. Live up to that.

It’s like, I don’t know, man, I hate to rant on this thing, but I just. I have small and young children that are entering these times of their lives, and I just see so much of the messaging, sadly, within our church at times, and I just reject it completely.

We need to be doing less things to confuse our children.

[00:47:59] Speaker A: They look to us for answers.

[00:48:02] Speaker B: That’s right.

[00:48:03] Speaker A: And if we don’t have the answers or we say, you’ve got to go figure, then what are we doing as parents, why do kids come in to receive guidance?

It’s a world where we need to learn to lean on and trust, but we need to learn and lean and trust in the right sources.

[00:48:23] Speaker B: Yes. And all of this full circle, it’s like, as parents, we need to be anchored in the right place, man. I mean, it’s really what it comes down to.

[00:48:36] Speaker A: And thank goodness Alma was.

[00:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you’re right.

[00:48:41] Speaker A: How could that have gone different for him? And as much as it’s. I mean, something that you point out, as much as it’s easy for us to celebrate Alma, Ammon, Paul, for their mighty missionary work and the things that they were able to do, how did they themselves live with the loss and the damage that they had caused. And how did that eat them away through the rest of their lives?

[00:49:04] Speaker B: You know, what it probably did is it probably was the reason they stayed humble for the rest of their lives. I mean, at the end of the day, it probably was one of the anchors in where they were able to actually stay because I’m with you. I bet you. I bet you that it was something that kept them up at night for the rest of their lives.

[00:49:22] Speaker A: And you look at. It’s hard to see the implications of what Corey Anton did. And it’s easy to say that obviously it had an impact on his life because he committed sin. And one might dismiss the impact that it had on Jezebel’s life because as Roosevelt Smith said, she was anyways, right? I mean, this was already happening, so maybe it wasn’t such a negative impact.

Maybe. But maybe Alma said their missionary work was seriously hindered.

[00:49:55] Speaker B: Yes, that’s right.

[00:49:56] Speaker A: Because people looked at it and said, hey, you’re missionary. You come in here telling us that this is what’s going. You’re a bunch of hypocrites. Look what he’s doing. And how many people did not find the truth? How many people used that as an excuse to persecute the church and how. What are the actual ramifications that we’ll never know what kind of impact this had. In my mission, we came into an area where the bishop, with seminary students, was doing inappropriate things in the church and it became public knowledge and he was excommunicated.

And I can tell you, we came face to face with those decisions when we went and knocked on doors and they said, oh, yeah, we know your church, we know your bishop, and we’re having all of these people tell us about what happened and why they weren’t going to listen to our discussion. It had a big impact in the area and in our ability to teach the gospel that you just don’t see right away in the pages as you’re reading the story.

[00:50:53] Speaker B: What’s the. I feel like I’ve left a dark cloud on this discussion.

What’s the light at the end of the tunnel? Dude, put a. I didn’t mean to sidetrack this. I just.

I get passionate about it only because of how I feel so confronted with this on a daily basis at this point. And I try to remember that’s the positive, is that I try to remember that if we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, we’re told by God that we need to not fear. And as we see the world on fire. We’re told that we will prosper in the land if we’re anchored in the right place. You know what I mean? It’s like, I know all of these things. My goodness, my six year old is terrified of the second coming right now. I don’t know why. I don’t know whatever got him even talking about the second coming. But honestly, like, every night for, like, the last few months before we go to bed, he’s like, tell me now. Remind me again. You know, I told you already. He’s like, are we gonna have to fight the Nazis? I’m like, no, I think we’ve already fought the Nazis. I don’t think we’re fighting them again. But it’s like there’s. It’s like I’m doing everything I can to not instill more fear into that child when the fact of the matter is, is I’m terrified.

[00:52:07] Speaker A: I think Alma answers that question best, and I think there’s a difference. And I don’t know if self promoting is the right way of even calling this versus bragging, because bragging is what Corey Anthony gets caught in. Bragging is this sin. And bragging is what takes him down here. And Alma’s going in here and telling his own story. And you might look at it and say, well, is he bragging because of his experience and how he got saved? No. No. He’s kind of setting a pattern, and he’s telling us what happened when he was in the gall of bitterness, when he couldn’t see past those own mistakes. And that was putting a dark page on his life. How did he find comfort? And it’s the same thing. The story of Enos will always be one of my favorite stories, as read in the Book of Moses, when he was celebrating the defeat of his enemies and watching the residue of the earth being wiped off with the flood.

And for him, this is like Super Bowl Sunday celebrating, you know, victory. He’s. He’s arrived, and he sees the heaven weep, and he doesn’t get it. And when God changes that perception and he sees them for who they are, it puts things in perspective to where he can’t be comforted either. And he’s in the same story of Alma. This bitterness, this sadness. What about this loss? What about the impact? What about the effect that it has? And all of these people that are hurt because of me or all these people that are hurt because of what happened. And he refused to be comforted.

And the only thing that comforted him was seeing the coming of the Messiah. And the redemption of the world and being able to replace that perception with the perception of Christ, that somehow, as far reaching as those mistakes are, God has a plan to try to reach out even to them. And that the residue is not the residue to God. Never has been, never will be. And he cares down to the sparrow, down to the hair on the head, and is seeking to try to pull it together. And because he is so invested in this, this becomes a very powerful lesson for me when I read how the end of the story goes with Corianton.

When we read about missionaries that make mistakes and what happens when they go and talk to the mission president, they get sent home and that’s the end of the deal.

At the end of this story, what does Alma tell Corianthan to do? He doesn’t tell him, look, buddy, you’ve disqualified yourself. You don’t get to teach anymore. You don’t ever. He tells him to go out and to keep teaching.

And I think that’s interesting when you realize what’s happened and you realize what’s going on and the only consolation you find is in Christ and his work to try to save and redeem. You want to be a part of that work and you want to be an active participant and you want to be like Alma, be like Paul. And Alma knows that he’s been through this. And so what’s the best medicine that he can offer? Corianton? Go out and save the people. Go out and feed my sheep. Because only through that do you find salvation yourself. Only through that does your perception change from darkness to hope.

And so I think that’s one of Satan’s great lies in our own lives. When we falter and we sin and we get consumed with that darkness, we feel like we’re disqualified from anything. And we commit the second sin in refusing to lift up our hand and help and serve because we don’t feel we’re worthy to.

And you know what? We withdraw from that and we pull away from the church and we pull away from helping others because we don’t feel like we can offer help. We don’t feel like we can. That’s for somebody better than me. That’s for somebody who’s righteous, when really that’s Gilead’s balm. That’s the way to help us is being able to dust ourselves up and find a way to get back in the fight, find a way to help people see things and to turn people to christ and not commit the second sin by retiring ourselves from the medicine that we so badly need. To be healed.

[00:56:23] Speaker B: Well said.

I do think that this still also always continues to point back to, and that is, I guess, the way that we can try to atone for the mistakes that we make. You know, not. Not the atonement, but that’s the way that we can try to make right the things that we do wrong. I guess right is to go and try to, you know, save as much as we can other people. And I do think that there is something to be said for the idea that we do still have to live with the memories of the things that we do wrong. But hopefully it’s there to inspire us to, one, not make the same mistake twice, but two, hopefully give us perspective so that when we see opportunities to help somebody around us, we don’t miss those opportunities in the future.

I do hope, though, that in the next life I can put that trust in the Lord when he says that he will remember our sins no more.

I don’t understand that. I can’t conceptualize that.

I don’t know what that means in this life because sadly, we do live with the memories of the things that we’ve blown it doing.

So I don’t know what that exactly means, but I am hoping that in the next life we are spared from just having to remember all of the dumb stuff we’ve done for eternity.

I’m putting my hope in Christ that he can do that, even if I have no idea of how.

[00:58:09] Speaker A: Well, Alma says in verse 29, and now, my son, I desire that you should let these things trouble you no more.

[00:58:16] Speaker B: I know. Good luck.

[00:58:18] Speaker A: And only let your sins trouble you with that trouble which shall bring you down to repentance. Only let it trouble you as far as it takes you to repentance.

But that’s it. You’ve got to learn to let it go.

[00:58:30] Speaker B: Good luck.

[00:58:34] Speaker A: And that you should deny the justice of God. No more.

And it’s interesting when we talk about this verse, for example, 23 23, and thus they are restored into his presence to be judged according to their works.

And how do you get judged by your works if you’re not doing good things right? I think Alma’s saying that like, it’s not just about repenting and stopping, it’s. There’s this engagement process. You’ve got to put out good works. It’s not enough to stop, but you’ve got to. Doctrine covenant says that every man should be anxiously engaged in the good work, and he’s going to call out these works in several places. But verse 31, perhaps. And now, my son, you’re called of God to preach the word unto this people. And now, my son, go thy way. Declare the word with truth and soberness, that thou mayest bring souls unto repentance, that the great plan of mercy may have claim upon them.

I don’t know. The whole thing is beautiful.

It serves to bring him into humility. And when he’s in a humble place now, he’s in the right place to actually take that message out. And that was where it all began.

You were braggadocious. You were bragging. Let’s tear you down a bit to the point where you’re humble.

And now go back and do it again.

[01:00:07] Speaker B: It’s like planting a garden, man. Sometimes you got to till that dirt.

Awesome. Is there anything else you wanted to hit this week?

[01:00:15] Speaker A: One last jewel, man, and I’ll make it quick.

We’ve talked about the power of names in the Old Testament. We’ve talked about the power of names in the Book of Mormon. Correct. We’ve talked about Boaz and Machlon and Chilion. We’ve talked about Moses. We’ve talked about reaching into the Book of Mormon world. Abinadi was a fun discussion. Gideon. We talked about Oneidae.

This one is perhaps one of the funnest here in the Book of Mormon. And I don’t know if you captured this or not, because this one.

Where.

Where does Corianton commit his sexual sin?

In the land of siren. Right now, think like the greek sirens. Yes.

[01:01:02] Speaker B: I thought you were going to say San Francisco, rest in peace.

[01:01:10] Speaker A: No, but Homer’s odyssey was written in 700 bc, so it was before Lehi even leaves Jerusalem.

And we don’t see a lot of greek influence in the old Testament. But in the Book of Mormon, ever since they run into the Mulokites, we do Laconius. Laconia is Sparta. Laconius means somebody from Laconia. It’s a spartan.

And you see these greek names start to pop up in the Book of Mormon. And to me, this is one of the funner ones to hear a story. And really, it comes from the land of Siren, where these beautiful women were singing to try to lure off the men from their quest, their journey, destroy their ships, to go into a side. Yeah. That leads to death and destruction. It’s just kind of interesting, that match. And. And of course, the harlot’s name is Jezebel. Had to be Jezebel. And it’s not Jezebel.

[01:02:06] Speaker B: Right.

[01:02:06] Speaker A: It’s Isabel. Right.

How’s it spelled?

[01:02:10] Speaker B: I think it’s. I think it’s Isabel.

[01:02:12] Speaker A: I think it’s Isabel, right? Yeah, that’s the cool thing. Because if you go back to the hebrew name for Jezebel, Jezebel is the anglic anglicization.

It’s. It’s the more. It’s the english version of Isabel. The original Hebrew was actually Isabel, not Jezebel.

[01:02:32] Speaker B: Right.

[01:02:32] Speaker A: It’s that it was an I vow. And. And Isabel was the queen that gets Ahab to falter. She’s pushing the Baal worship. She’s the one. She is the antagonist in the story of Elijah. Right? And so her name gets known for this whole sexual promiscuity and the power of women to cause the downfall of men. And being connected to the land of siren, where you have this story with the greek, it’s just kind of interesting, all these little connections and pull togethers. And the name Isabel, in Hebrew, in the Canaanites, Semitic, it is Bel is Baalje is Marduk, is Adonai is the Lord, is God.

That’s where that part of the name comes from.

It’s referenced to when Baal went to the underworld. And it’s kind of interesting that in ancient ugaritic beliefs and ancient semitic beliefs, their God that they worship, the sky God, the thunder God, they believed would go down to the spirit world and then come back to the earth. And you see all sorts of references there. But in this sense, because they relied so heavily on the rainfall and God, the windows of heaven opening it and sending rain and how important and powerful that was. It’s not like Egypt where you have the Nile and you have irrigation and you rely on that. It’s not like Babylon, where you have the euphrates. And again, irrigation in the ugaritic, in the Canaanites, in the Israelites mythology, it was all about rainfall and sending rain in their time. And in the summer months when it got hot, they felt that God went down into the underworld and that they were praying that he would come back and rise from the death and whatnot. But Isabel’s name meant God was dead. And so it’s his time in the underworld. But it’s kind of this idea that God is dead. And you have this journey from faith to leaving the church and denying your faith and replacing God with your own God and becoming whatever and falling to the sound of the sirens and God is dead to where you’re destroying your own self and all of these different words.

It just adds.

[01:04:52] Speaker B: It’s awesome.

[01:04:53] Speaker A: Adds complexity to the story.

[01:04:54] Speaker B: No, dude, I’m really glad you brought that stuff up. We love that. We love that. Stuff.

You don’t, we don’t. It’s kind of part of I feel like why we do this thing is for exactly that stuff. Thanks for educating us.

Anything else we can call it?

[01:05:12] Speaker A: Let’s call it stick a fork in it.

[01:05:15] Speaker B: I don’t know if I want to say that.

We appreciate all of you listening. We appreciate you sharing with your friends. We appreciate any questions, comments, feedback, insights that you might have.

We’re just a couple dudes trying to make sense of it all.

At the end of the day, we always want to make sure to be very clear that the opinions expressed on this podcast are of the two dudes that are just trying to figure this out.

Please don’t ever misunderstand us opining for us saying that this is for sure exactly how it is and how it should be interpreted. Because that is the beauty of the scriptures, is that different people can extract so many amazing, beautiful, incredible lessons from these things.

So please continue to do your own study and hopefully, if nothing else, we could just add a little unique perspective and maybe some insight into some of these things and inspire you to really think through a lot of these things on your own. But we appreciate it.

And that is. Oh, you can get ahold of us at the email address hiaweeklydeepdive.com until next week.

As the conversation deepens, Jason and Nate explore the intimate and heartfelt counsel Alma gives to his sons. They highlight Alma’s refreshing honesty about his limitations and his unique ability to speculate openly about spiritual matters without claiming to have all the answers. This leads to a broader discussion on the preservation of sacred records, where Jason speculates on the practicalities of maintaining these records through techniques like charcoal rubbings to ensure accuracy and prevent forgery.

The hosts also delve into Alma’s personal conversion story, focusing on the profound mechanics of the atonement and the transformative power it holds. They discuss the importance of remembering past spiritual experiences to sustain faith and perseverance, emphasizing the role of enduring to the end.

A light-hearted analysis of child order dynamics adds a personal touch to the episode, with Nate sharing his theory on the distinct roles of oldest, middle, and youngest children. This segues into a touching anecdote about Nate’s young son’s anxiety over the second coming, providing a poignant reminder of the importance of keeping commandments and trusting in God’s promises.

Throughout the episode, Jason and Nate’s engaging and thoughtful commentary invites listeners to reflect on their own spiritual journeys. They encourage listeners to share their thoughts and spread the word about the podcast.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: Alma chapter 36, verse one, according to the book of Mormon for Gen Z. Unofficial chat. GPT translation for Gen Z says it best. What I would want to say, which is. Yo, listen up, my dude.

That’s how it starts.

Yo, listen up, my dude.

I swear to you, if you just follow God’s rules, you’ll succeed in life.

Words to live by.

[00:00:58] Speaker A: That’s it. Done. That’s. I mean, what else can I say?

[00:01:02] Speaker B: Yo, listen up, my dude. I swear to you, if you follow God’s rules, you’ll be successful in life.

Thank you, bros. Of Smith.

Thank you, Broseph Smith of the book of Mormon for Gen Z, on a fascial check. Unofficial chat, GBD translation for Gen Z.

I swear, AI just thinks Gen Z. Stupid AI. Give him some slack, dude. Give him a little bit more credit than that.

[00:01:33] Speaker A: Come on, come on, come on.

[00:01:34] Speaker B: AI.

Dude, there’s some good. There’s some good stuff to chat about this week, though. Speaking of Gen Z, I’m just glad.

[00:01:41] Speaker A: That the millennials finally get a break. Man, those millennials were getting hammered for a long time, and then Gen Z came along.

[00:01:46] Speaker B: I know.

[00:01:47] Speaker A: Don’t worry, Gen Z. What’s the next one? Is it double a? What do they do? Restart the cycle?

[00:01:52] Speaker B: That’s a really great question. I’ve wondered about that myself, actually. I think they might just start making up symbols. It’s kind of like prince. Remember when Prince just became the symbol, the artist formerly known as Prince, then I think he went back to prince once he was able to get out of his record contracts. So, I mean, I really don’t know what’s going to happen to the next round.

You’re. You’re technically a millennial, aren’t you?

[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that’s. I always grew up being told that.

[00:02:21] Speaker B: I was Gen X. I know, me too.

[00:02:24] Speaker A: And all of a sudden, I became a millennial. I’m like, wait, what? How?

[00:02:27] Speaker B: Well, people are trying to get a little. A little fishy, in my opinion, because they tried to do that to me, too. And I was born in 81, and you can still find some, like. Now they basically say that it’s kind of a. There’s a blurry line between 1980 is the cutoff and 1981 is the cutoff. But I’ve even seen some things saying, like, 1979 is the cutoff for Gen X. I’m like, give me a break, dude. And at the end of the day, it’s like, I relate. I’m Gen X, man. I’m not a millennial. Nothing against millennials, but I’m not one of you. I’m sorry. I am Gen X through and through, baby.

[00:03:06] Speaker A: You grew up watching the X Men animated series and we’re Gen X. And we’re like, oh, yeah, we got this.

[00:03:14] Speaker B: Twitter became X. And I’m just like, yeah, Elon. Way to go, baby boy.

Gen X, baby.

I wonder how old Elon is. I wonder if he’s Gen X.

[00:03:24] Speaker A: And millennial was kind of a positive thing at the beginning. Like, we were in the new millennium, and then all of a sudden, our generation was associated with that and it became not so positive all of a sudden.

Who knows? Anyways, I diverse.

My apologies.

[00:03:40] Speaker B: It is what it is. No, but I mean, we’re kind of getting into it. I mean, the whole talk tonight is a parent talking to their children. I think that. I don’t think it’s. I actually don’t think it’s that far off topic. I actually have some funny kind of anecdotal stuff from talking to my six year old this week that’ll kind of make its way into the discussion tonight.

[00:04:00] Speaker A: I like it. I like it. I like.

There’s not a lot of examples of, I don’t think, I don’t see where prophets sitting down with their kids and counseling with them. We know it happens. We know Adam grabbed all of his kids together and talks to them and describes what’s the meaning of life, if you will, and what happened, what to expect and explaining death and all that good stuff.

We just don’t have the content of his speech. We don’t have the content. And here we have it. Here we have the words of a dad to his kids.

And I like Alma. I appreciate Alma a lot. He’s given us a good amount of content here in the book of Mormon. But what I think I like most about Alma is he’s not afraid to talk about his limitations. Right. And he doesn’t, he doesn’t speak further than what he knows or if he makes sure that you understand what he does know and what he doesn’t know. You know what I mean? You run. Run across that.

[00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it’s a good, I think it’s a good point. Keep going.

[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I. We’ll see it a couple times here, but we’ve already even seen it in some previous chapters, and I’ve just kind of impressed with that because some people, not to throw out any names, but we’ve had some people get up and say, this is exactly how it is when they’re talking about things that they don’t even quite know about and just make some assumptions. And here, Alma’s not afraid to speculate a little bit and say, this is what my thoughts are, this is what my feelings are. And I’ve thought about this, and maybe it’s just because it’s the nature of who he’s talking to. He’s getting real with his sons, and he’s, you know, just showing them he’s not perfect. He’s trying to figure it out. And in here, we get his story, his, you know, more details about the conversion story that you don’t hear from another perspective. So it makes it nice to me. It makes it more real. Maybe it makes us feel, maybe like we’re Alma’s kids listening in on this, too.

[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:06:04] Speaker A: It also gets a little embarrassing, don’t you think? I mean, this is a family business. What’s it doing out there in the plates? Poor Coriant. And doesn’t exactly.

[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say, I know that that’s next week, but, uh.

Yeah, this poor dude. This poor. I mean, it’s what, in. In my sphere, it’s why we always say, you know, never date a songwriter or, like, never date a mom blogger. Never, never marry. Never marry a mommy blogger.

Because if you date a songwriter or a blogger, you just have to know that your life is going to sadly be read or listened to by a lot of people.

You know, don’t be the prophet’s kid. Don’t be the prophet’s kid.

[00:06:55] Speaker A: On the flip side of that, though, what Corian did wasn’t necessarily non public. I think everybody kind of knew what he did because he did it in a very public way.

[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess you can kind of try to bail him out that way. But it’s still. It’s still.

[00:07:13] Speaker A: People after him didn’t know.

[00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that’s.

[00:07:15] Speaker A: Millions of people after him didn’t know.

[00:07:17] Speaker B: The fact. The fact that we’re here talking about him still.

Couple thousand, couple, a couple thousand years later, just like, sorry, bro, because, you know, you know, there’s plenty of other people at that time, I’m sure that we’re doing stuff way worse than him. In fact, we read about it this week, but because he was related to the author. Sorry, buddy.

[00:07:37] Speaker A: Do you think this name was changed to protect his identity?

[00:07:40] Speaker B: Nope, I don’t.

[00:07:44] Speaker A: Do you think he changed his name later to protect his identity?

[00:07:47] Speaker B: Yep, I do.

[00:07:49] Speaker A: That. That corian kid? Yeah.

[00:07:52] Speaker B: I mean, you know, the joke within us, it’s always the bishop’s kid, right? Bishop’s kid’s always the worst one. But, I mean, my dad was a bishop, but luckily he was on my mission, so I couldn’t be any much more of a knucklehead than I was before I left, so.

[00:08:08] Speaker A: Well, for what it’s worth, we talked about this a little bit ago, and it was kind of an interesting pattern that I noticed, starting with the Book of Mormon, but it took me back into Adam and Eve, and it took me to Noah. We’ve talked about it here in the show, but it’s kind of interesting to bring it up again because it fits here as well. And that pattern is that God oftentimes tells his story behind the scriptures, and we think, oh, they all. The author’s Mormon, or the author is Nephi, or the author’s whoever, Moses, in the case of the Old Testament, even though we notice that a lot of that is maintained and recorded by scribes over time, and who knows exactly who wrote it. But we can get into that a little bit later. Anyhow, besides the person that’s physically writing the story, it feels like you get God telling his story behind the scenes. And by that, I mean start with Adam and Eve. They’re the first parents, and they have children. And we know they had to have had several children because you can’t populate the earth with just three sons. Doesn’t work, but only three are mentioned. And you got Cain, Abel, and Seth and I. In that ratio, we’ve got the one that’s cast out and sent away from everybody else and cursed, and the other two that are considered righteous. And you get this one third, two third pattern and almost feels like God’s telling the story about us coming here on earth and one third of the host of heaven being cast out and kind of afflicting the others. And we see that repeat with Noah and Ham, Shem and Shapheth, with Hamline, being cursed to the priesthood. And then we saw that again with Nephi, with six kids, two, Laman and Lemuel, that were complaining, that felt like they were being cast out of Jerusalem and they were losing their inheritance, where the other four were looking at it as receiving a new inheritance, coming to the promised land and being blessed for their righteousness. And again, you get that one third, two thirds ratio, and here you’ve got Alma, and he’s talking to his sons. And you have almost kind of this repeat pattern with Corian, who kind of made these wrong choices, and then you’ve got Helaman and Shiblan, who are praised and counseled and received kind of brighter news. It’s just kind of interesting to see that every time it pops up, for what it’s worth.

All right, let’s dive into a little bit more of this content, and the one exciting one to me. Maybe I’ll jump a little bit out of order on this, as I’m. As I’m going here, and feel free to jump in or stop me or wherever.

Chapter 37. And this is Alma talking to his son, Helaman. And as you recall, Helaman is the one that has left home, does not get to go on the mission with everybody else.

And I think it’s because he had responsibilities in the church. It sounds like he’s the older son, and it sounds like the. And Alma trusted him to take care of the records. And there’s something to be said about this already from the start, what’s happening with the records while they’re going on a mission? And if Alma’s entrusted with them, is he taking the records down to show the Zoramites? And. I don’t think so. I think the records are staying back with Helaman, and he’s got this responsibility of keeping the plates. And so, as I was reading this this week, and verse two, and I also command you that you keep a record of this people, according as I have done upon the plates of Nephi, and keep all these things sacred, which I have kept, even as I have kept them, for it is for a wise purpose that they are kept. And you’ll notice how much that word keep and kept shows up.

Keep these. Not just keep a record of what’s going on, but also keep the plates as I have kept them, and there’s a wide purpose for them being kept. And it got me thinking, what does it actually mean to keep the plates?

In one instance, he’s talking about writing, but that’s not what he’s referring to as far as keeping them.

And he goes on. And these plates of brass, which contain these engravings, which have the work of the records of the holy scriptures upon them, which have genealogy of our forefathers, even from the beginning. Behold, it has been prophesied by our fathers that they should be kept and handed down from one generation to another, and be kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord. And so, again, you keep seeing this idea. This word kept showing up, verse five. And now, behold, if they are kept, they must retain their brightness. And they will retain their brightness. Yea, and also the place which do contain that which is holy writ.

And so that got me thinking, what is the responsibility? Because in the beginning, he’s talking about keeping the records as writing, but then he makes this transition of what it means to maintain them. And when he starts speaking specifically of the plates of brass, I don’t think they’re adding to the plates of brass, do you, Nate?

[00:13:03] Speaker B: I don’t know. What do you think?

I’m just listening for a minute. So you just. You do your thing.

[00:13:10] Speaker A: You’re good. I think the gold plates are what they’re using to write new records. Well, no, let’s stop that. It’s not. It’s not even there at that point, right? Mormon’s going to put these together.

There are plates of gold. I think you get the large book of Nephi. You got the small book of Nephi. And so I think they’re writing in these new Nephite records that are made from metal, and I don’t think they’re combining or mixing these metal plates with the brass plates. I look at the brass plates almost as a record that’s been complete and finished. Maybe they were adding to them.

[00:13:41] Speaker B: It wouldn’t make sense that they would have to, like, I mean. Cause weren’t they kind of taking the bits and pieces from the brass and bringing them over to some of the gold records?

[00:13:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I think they’re.

[00:13:53] Speaker B: So, in theory, you don’t need.

[00:13:54] Speaker A: Who would have seen this in scenic. Right. Yeah.

[00:13:56] Speaker B: So you don’t need to be adding to the brass plates.

[00:13:59] Speaker A: No, I look at the brass plates almost as a completed record and that they brought with them and they referred to it. But I don’t think you mix plates. When Joseph Smith finds the plates, it’s not that. It’s the brass plates attached to the gold plates and one massive ring binder. Right. I think. I think the brass plates are a completed record. And the reason I make that emphasis is because he’s talking about keeping, particularly the brass plates. And if it’s not about writing in them, what does it mean to keep them? That they. That they’re not getting ruined over time.

And so that got me thinking about this responsibility.

This was a sacred record that they did not want destroyed. And if you don’t want something destroyed, one of the best things you can do is not let people access it, not let people use it, not let people touch it. And so it seems like these records are being guarded. Kept has the sense of guarded. They’re being protected.

They don’t take the records with them onto a mission of people that hate them or want to destroy them or want to destroy the church, because what are they going to do? This is their one proof that this is true. You don’t want the original record being destroyed.

And as I got thinking about this, go to verse nine. This is in chapter 37 again. Yeah. And I say unto you, were it not for these things that these records do contain which are on these plates, Ammon and his brethren could not have convinced so many thousands of the language lamanites to the incorrect traditions of their fathers. Yea, these records and their words brought them unto repentance. That is, they brought them to the knowledge of the Lord their God, and to rejoice in Jesus Christ their redeemer. And that’s an interesting connection that Alma makes for me.

I thought it was the lopping off of arms personally that did it. I thought it was the miracles and Alma’s crediting the plates, not Ammon’s swordsmanship or divine power.

[00:15:59] Speaker B: Yes. To be fair, we saw this with Laman and Lemuel as well, though a big part of the reason that Lehi wanted to make sure they had the plates, because he knew that even, and it talks a little bit about this week when it talks about the Lijona, too. But Lehidhead knew that even though his sons were going to see angels, that his sons were going to see balls of curious workmanship guide them across, even he knew that that wasn’t going to be enough for them. And this is a pattern that we’ve seen even from Lehi’s insistence on the recovery of the brass plates in the first place.

And I believe, I wish I should have gone back and looked, but I mean, I remember there being scriptures of even when they brought the brass plates back, the first thing they do is open them and start reading them and start preaching out of them and start teaching them. I mean, it was, this is the pattern that we’ve seen from the beginning, which I, again, whether or not this is the time to add this, as I was listening and reading this week, these things are true, man. This was not made up like every week. I know we continue to say it every week. This was not made up by some kid on a farm dictating this to one of his buddies just off the cuff like as you read, just the intense, beautiful doctrine pact language.

And this week, especially, talking about when Alma’s going through kind of his repentance process and the atonement and just the language of like having his sins harrowed up and having these things brought back to his remembrance is you, just as you read through these things, you go, this is why the scriptures are used to be.

Tool of convincing is because if you spend the time with a heart that is soft or that is ready to have seeds of faith planted in it, and you just read the words, the spirit testifies of their truthfulness and we can’t say it enough.

This was not a story made up by some kid.

And it’s the pattern. This is why the pattern holds even now.

[00:18:46] Speaker A: I appreciate that.

I like that. And I agree. We keep getting into this and the layers, the complexity sometimes, yet in contrast, the simplicity, the beauty and the power and what you feel as you read it, it’s just in fact, and this is going to fit with where I’m trying to go as I’m walking us down this road of what it means to keep these plates. Joseph Smith calls the book of Mormon the most correct book. And that’s a bold statement to make. I want to revisit that.

And when we talk about Ammon going on his mission to the Lamanites, is Mosiah, who’s in charge of the records at this time, going to give the only copy, the original, the plates, to his son to take to the Lamanites when he doesn’t know how that’s going to go, what’s going to happen? Is the record going to get lost? Are you going to put the fate of your entire people and potentially future generations in the trust that everything’s going to go all right when Ammon goes into the Lamanites?

I don’t think so. There’s no way these plates are considered the most sacred, valuable thing. They’re guarding them. They’re protecting them. Precious.

It’s like the Old Testament was in the Bible. Where did they keep the Old Testament?

And they kept it in the ark of the covenant. They kept it in the temple. They kept it holy. They kept it sacred. So you’ve got this interesting paradox.

We have to keep it confidential. We have to protect it. We have to keep it sacred. We can’t show it to people unless it gets destroyed, unless it gets changed, unless. Unless something happens to that record. But we also have to make it available to everyone.

And you look at it, and throughout the Book of Mormon, they keep saying, we know that you can’t be ignorant of these things. These things are taught all over the place. And do we not read in this? And we do not read in that. And it seems like the information from the plates is being disseminated among the people.

And so you have to have a means through which they can read the records without actually putting the records at risk.

And we know that Mosiah does not give Ammon the records because it says that he gives the records to Alma to take care of, since his sons all disappear into the lands of Lamanite. So. So even Mosiah having the promise that his kids would be okay, still doesn’t roll the dice with the plates. He needs to keep them protected. So going back to this question, Alma crediting the plates for the conversion of thousands and saying Ammon could never have done it without the plates, when Ammon didn’t even have the plates with him.

So how does that work?

And if we look at it, Ammon is going down into the land.

And if he says to the king, and he says to all of the Lamanites, and perhaps the king believes him because of the lopping off of the arms and everything else, and he’s got him, but how does he convert thousands? And that’s Alma’s and critical point here is it’s not that he converted the king. It’s that how was he able to convince many thousands of Lamanites? And what is he convincing him of? And I think this is critical here, too, the incorrect tradition of their fathers. So what is the tradition of the Lamanites, and how is it being maintained? They’re maintaining their traditions, I suspect, in an oral tradition, this is what they pass it down from father to son to father to son. They robbed us. They stole our stuff. They stole the plates. They took the birthright, the first, the firstborn’s right to rule and take care of the family. They took all of that and left. And they’re blaming the Nephites for what went wrong, because that’s the oral tradition. That’s what’s been passed down. If Ammon comes back with them, with his version of the oral tradition. No, your guys, your parents rebelled and they tried to kill at my father, and they wouldn’t listen. They rejected the prophets, and so they had to take the plates and go with them. It’s going to be his word versus their word. And how are you going to convince them? Who’s right?

You have to have something more than that to convince thousands of people that their history, the way they know it, is wrong.

And so how is ammon able to do this? And as I started thinking about the plates, their importance of converting them even though he couldn’t bring the plates with them. And I’m thinking, how could he use the plates then? And it can’t just be that he is telling them what it was because it’s a he said, she said type situation. And it’s true that ammon could. Like the Old Testament, you have scribes that are writing everything down by hand and then you take that and then the next generations of scribes are duplicating it and writing it all down by hand. And so it could be the ammons coming to them with a paper copy of the plates that is all handwritten that he presents to them. But at the same time, how do you know and trust that ammon is not just making this up? How do you prove the veracity of what’s being there? And, and it got me thinking about the plates and the, the energy they put into engraving them. And I always thought that the blast, brass plates, gold plates, metal plates were being written in metal so that they could be preserved for a long period of time. And I think that’s part of it. But then I started thinking, wait a second, when you’re stamping something in metal, when you’re engraving something in metal, you’re making an original that you can copy from. If you take a piece of paper and lay it over that metal plate with the engravings in it and then rub charcoal across the top of it, you can create an identical image of what’s engraven on the plate. And all of a sudden the plates don’t just become a record that you can’t share with everybody, they become an original and a proof that can be used like an early printing press and you can easily replicate the pages, create copies, disseminate that information out and it becomes something that you can’t easily change.

If I want to prove that this is the, this is what the plates say, I have a picture of the plate that I can take back to the plate and I can compare with the original and verify that that is the actual record. And all of a sudden it’s, it’s, it’s validation. How easy is it to forge a plate? If you wanted to create a false rubbing, you would have to recreate the entire plate and you would have to rewrite it and you’d have to do. And then when you create the rubbing, it’s going to be looking different than what’s in the original record. And so you take that plate and if there that paper and if you compare it with another version of the paper. You can see that there’s a difference. You go back to the original plates and you find that plate and you compare it, and you say, oh, this one is accurate. You have a foolproof, 100% way of validating that the scriptures is always the same and which version is right and that you can go back and look to. And it’s not history that’s been invented, it’s not history that’s been changed. It’s something that can’t easily be forged. It’s non repudiation. Does that make sense?

Yes, and it’s going, in the space of speculating on my part, on how these records are kept. But I think when he’s saying that you’ve got to keep it, you’ve got to maintain this record so that it can be used for reference. You’ve got to create these copies. And you look at scribes and their responsibility to create copies.

Here’s something I don’t think a lot of people are aware of, and it’s the process of transmission of the Old Testament through time.

When people say the Bible, what do they mean by the Bible?

In fact, this is something I come across every now and again. When people find out that I can read Hebrew and look at the Bible, they’re like, oh, so you can read the actual Bible or the real Bible.

What people don’t realize is there are hundreds, if not thousands of different versions of the Bible in Hebrew in the original language.

If you. If you go to the Hebrew Bible and, and you open it up, you’ll see similar to what we have. So, so I’ve got. I’ve got the Biblio Ibrecus du Cartenzia, and. And it’s the.

The Hebrew Bible. You open it up, and at the very bottom, you have a bunch of footnotes, just like you do in our King James Version. But the footnotes aren’t notes that reference cross references of different scriptures that mention where that word is. These footnotes are references to other manuscripts in the hebrew text that has a hebrew word that’s different or different version of that verse.

We know from comparing these different versions that the scribes did not always maintain 100% integrity in the text. From version to version to version, there’s improvements that have been made or that have been changed. In Deuteronomy, it says that the Lord divided the land according to the number of the children of Israel. We found older hebrew manuscripts that instead of saying according to the number of the children of Israel, it said according to the number of the children of Elohim.

But then the scribes looking at that, Elohim, the children of God, why would he do it? And it started to sound like polytheism. It starts to sound like greek. You’ve got Zeus and then all of these gods and the children of God, and each God has this land or this area that they’re going to. We can’t have polytheism. Judaism has to be monotheism. We’re going to change that word from God to the number of children of God to the number of children of Israel, because that’s going to make more sense to us. So in one hebrew manuscript, you have according to the children of Elohim, in one hebrew manuscript, you have according to the number of the children of Israel. And then in the greek manuscript, you have according to the number of the children of angels. And so each translator is taking this and has the freedom and flexibility to write whatever word they want to, and that gets transmitted to the next version. And so there is no one copy of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, that we can reference and say, this was the Bible.

Theres many different versions, and theyre all close and they all agree very similarly. But then come back to the Book of Mormon. If what they were doing to replicate and send these records out, and again, stamping a medal and being able to just rub a copy and send that out, there is no room for interpretation. There is no room for changing it, because if you did, it doesnt match the original record, that could be identified as a fraud.

You have one true record that maintains itself over and over and over again. And then the role of the person keeping this record, to be able to use it to reference and verify and validate and send out to people a copy that they can say, okay, this came from the plates, it establishes a truth far more than what you can just say. So when Joseph Smith says, this is the most correct book on earth, even think about that in context of it. This book didn’t go through translations and translations. It didn’t go through copyings and copyings and people being able to change the words at will, how it goes, it has always maintained itself through whatever process it went to, to today, where Joseph Smith translated it from the original plate records. So it’s an interesting history, and that’s where my mind’s gone when, when I start reading about Helaman’s responsibility to take care of this record and the responsibility that it must maintain its brightness, it must retain its quality. If maybe a character starts to get not so deep engraving in there. Maybe you need to go back through it and deepen it a little bit and just make sure that it’s clear so that it can always be read, it can always be maintained. This responsibility became vitally important, and they could lean on it. And almond even says that the plates were used to enlarge their memories. And I love that phrase, that term, because our memory is not perfect, and we start to remember things differently as time goes on. Or maybe we forget some of the details, or maybe it starts to get lost a little bit. Or maybe we take a perspective on that. And when we see it differently, it’s different. But the plates don’t have that bias. It doesn’t have that loss. It’s. It’s what it was. And we can go back and look at the plates, and it can correct whatever we thought and help us retain a more perfect memory. Enlarge what we were not able to remember, what we weren’t able to be there for, and give us that. That non repudiation. Love it.

[00:31:46] Speaker B: Let’s keep going. Love it. All right.

[00:31:52] Speaker A: All right. In chapter 37 as well.

And. And also, feel free to jump in anything you want. If.

[00:32:00] Speaker B: No, we’re moving in the right direction.

[00:32:03] Speaker A: Okay. I wanted to read verse eleven, verse.

Let’s go. Let’s go. 1011. Just kind of transitioning out of this record of the plates.

In chapter nine, Ammon Alma credits the plates for having been able to convert thousands of lamanites to the incorrect traditions of their fathers. In verse ten. This is where I’m talking about Alma’s ability to speculate. Speculate. And explain where he’s speculating from, but stop himself short and explain what he knows and what he doesn’t. And then verse ten, it says, and who knoweth but what they will be the means of bringing many thousands of them. Yea, and also many thousands of our stiff necked brethren, the Nephites, who are. Who are now hardening their hearts in sin and iniquities to the knowledge of their redeemer. Now, these mysteries are not yet fully made known unto me. Therefore, I shall forbear. And it may, uh. And it may suffice if I only say they’re preserved for a wise purpose. Which purpose. Purpose is known unto God. For he that counsel and wisdom over all of his works and his path is straight, and his course is one eternal round. And so right here, he kind of takes this. They’ve convinced thousands. And who knows? They might be used to convince thousands of more lamanites down the road or thousands of more of our knee fights, that there’s a reason why. And so he’s starting to speculate about their role, that you might have another ammon like event. You might be able to pull thousands of people out of their errors and convince them.

But he says he’s not sure. I’m going to have to forbear. These mysteries are not yet fully made known unto me. Therefore I’m going to stop.

He knows, and you can almost see his thought process. Why is he making this speculation? Why is he making this jump? Because we’re maintaining this. That means that the plates are not yet done. They have a wise purpose for helping people later on, and they have helped people before. So I know they’re going to help people. I just don’t know the extent. And I’m going to kind of branch out and make some assumptions here. And it sounds like he’s not fully aware of the role the plates are going to have in the restoration of the gospel later on, which is an insight that I think Nephi is very much aware of. I think it’s an insight that Mormon and Moroni are very much aware of the role that the plates will have when they’re pulled out of the ground and translated and become this record that are going to convince not just thousands of people. And so even Alma and his assumptions and trying to piece this together of why they need to maintain the records, I don’t think he even has the right scope and vision of this. He’s thinking thousands.

And the Lord’s saying today, when we look back, the Book of Mormon has helped convinced millions of people of the truth. So it’s kind of cool to see Alma connecting those dots, making inferences, but not quite getting the full picture, and then us having that hindsight and looking back and seeing where he was and the wisdom that he has to kind of stop himself short and make some assumptions.

[00:35:00] Speaker B: I also like that that was proceeded with him reminding Helaman and all of us of how God continues to find ways to confound the wise and truly. That’s what the plates and the Book of Mormon have done and continue to do.

The authenticity of the Book of Mormon has been under attack in question for 200 years.

And you know, about, sorry, I should be careful. Not exactly 200 years, but you know what I’m saying.

And it just continues to defy explanation in so many ways and continues to confound all men that are willing to read it. And as much as it is, just as much as it is continually bombarded with people trying to poke holes in it. It continues to confound the wise.

So I think that Alma set it up perfectly and then perfectly describes what it will do and how it will be able to convince so many of not only the witness of Jesus Christ and his divinity, but also of the truth of the restoration.

[00:36:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.

And he drops an interesting nugget in verse twelve.

And it may suffice if I only say this, that they are preserved for a wise purpose, which purpose is known unto God. For he doth counsel in wisdom over all his works.

And in here, I have that crossed reference to Amos three seven. Right. Because surely the Lord God doth nothing and save it. He revealeth his. And it’s interesting.

What is Amos three seven?

[00:36:59] Speaker B: Surely he revealed his secret to his service, the prophets. Yeah.

[00:37:03] Speaker A: That word in Hebrew that’s translated the secret is actually counsel, or his hidden counsel. And here in twelve, you have it stated as counsel. He doth counsel and wisdom over all of his works. And I like this idea. If we have a goddess that’s perfect in knowledge, that knows exactly what needs to be done, and we can see how smart he is and what he’s done to save his children and to give us this, why is he wasting his time counseling and making decisions in counsel? And who is this counsel? Who does God counsel with?

And I like that reference, even in particular with these chapters, because it’s Alma, counseling with his sons. And it kind of gives us that same perspective. What does it mean to counsel? And even if you know all the answers, what’s the wisdom of counseling still with other people? Is somebody actually going to, going to prove something to God that he didn’t know? Why is God counseling?

And I like that he is.

I think there’s wisdom even if you have all the answers to counsel, because you’re also giving other people a chance to reach the same conclusions that you are, or you’re giving people chance to show you different perspectives, or, I mean, God’s not too wise that he doesn’t see.

I think you know what I’m saying, even though I’m struggling in saying, I.

[00:38:34] Speaker B: Mean, I look at it like we, if nothing else, I think it’s a pattern that we see within the church where. And I’m glad we even changed the language of it. Jason, you remember when we were serving together in the elders Quorum years ago? I guess it was at this point they really even kind of put in. It’s right when they combine the high priests and the elders Quorum together to form just really the elders Quorum and not have those separate. And there was an emphasis on counseling together and having. Instead of just having a teacher go up and give a lesson that at least once a month we were having elders quorum council. I just think that there’s.

I think that we do it with the ward council, with the auxiliaries. We do it family council. Like, there’s. It’s. It’s a. It’s a.

It’s a pattern. It’s a process that we see. I mean, we talk about even before this life was what the great council in heaven, where we all got together. So I think that it. I can see. I see where you’re going with this. For me, I think it maybe is just a little bit more simple, which is when you ask the question, well, why do we do that? Because if we. If we already kind of know all the answers or if we know all these things, I think that it’s a chance. Look at what. Look at what Alma’s doing right now with his sons, like you said, right. He’s counseling with them. Alma knows the answers, but he’s not. It doesn’t sound like he’s really asking them to give him much feedback in return. But what is he doing? He’s teaching them. He’s instructing them.

He’s saying, hey, here’s my lived experience. Hey, look to the scriptures. Hey, this, you know, it’s like. It’s the pattern, hopefully, of what we should be doing in our ward councils, in our family councils. I imagine that the council before this life was similar. And again, like, I. That’s how I at least kind of read that.

[00:40:37] Speaker A: Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

[00:40:40] Speaker B: Did I. Is that. Is that not the point you’re trying to make?

[00:40:44] Speaker A: That’s 100% the point I’m trying to make. And it’s an opportunity to learn, and it’s opportunity to talk about things.

[00:40:51] Speaker B: And I think that sometimes we think of the word counsel, as in the everybody.

This is going to sound terrible, but I think if you think through it with me all the way, it doesn’t sound as bad as it might come out, is. I think sometimes when we think of an idea of a counsel, there’s kind of the assumption that everybody has as important of a voice or as an important of it as an opinion. I don’t see it like that.

I think that one of the beautiful things about a council would hopefully be somebody with knowledge having the opportunity for other people to seek wisdom from that person or to seek counsel from that person or advice from that person. And that’s not to say that obviously in our ward councils or in our family councils, that one person knows everything. But what I will say is in certain councils, not all opinions are created equal. And I guess that shouldn’t be that shocking of a thought. But the thought of counseling with God, I don’t think, is us going to God and giving him advice by any means. I think it’s a chance for him to be willing to, like Alma, with his sons here, give us the opportunity to have him instruct us on the things that we’re doing well, the things that we need to improve on the. And that. That’s maybe where I see counsel more than the knights of the roundtable deciding whether they’re going to war or not. You see what I mean? I guess both, even the knights of.

[00:42:29] Speaker A: The roundtable have, I guess, a little bit of as much as that table’s round. I think Arthur still has a lot of say in this.

[00:42:38] Speaker B: You’re right.

There is still a power structure somewhere. Yeah, that’s a better way to say it. A presiding voice still. But I mean, even in a war council, like. Yeah, it’s like we believe that. I mean, we’ve learned that the twelve apostles and the Prophet Council, they get together once a week and meet in, you know, in the temple and, and they counsel. But there is still structure within that council. There is still a presiding voice. I guess that’s, that’s the best way to put it, you said is presiding.

[00:43:16] Speaker A: And I love that. As much as he’s doing this on a large scale in the church, I’m sure he’s counseling with his prophet. I’m sure he’s counseling with the apostles. I’m sure he’s counseling.

And what we see is the heavenly counsel. With whom shall I send? And you see this on a large scale, but then go back to Isaiah. Come, let us reason together. Come, let us counsel together. And how many times did the Lord offer us to counsel with him on a personal level, with the decisions that we’re making in our life? And how many times do we counsel with the Lord when we’re facing something challenging and we’re breaking down and we’re crying and telling the Lord, this is what I’m dealing with, and this is what I’m trying to do, help me figure this out. And that invitation is there. Not just he’s. There’s nobody that’s not important enough for the Lord to sit down and counsel with and help on an individual and a personal level as well. And we have access to that you.

[00:44:11] Speaker B: Did bring up a good point, though, in the pre earth life council, when he said, whom shall I send? He wasn’t asking for our suggestions. I don’t feel like I think he knew the answer to that question before he posted it. And so I think that’s all I’m saying, I guess, is it still comes back down to, I love the idea, by the way, too, with our children when they come to us and say, how do I solve this problem? So much of the time, we want them to learn the process of figuring it out, that we don’t just give them the answer. And so I guess in a theory, that’s counseling with them, right. It’s asking them, well, what, what do you think? Well, what do you think you should do?

And give them the opportunity to maybe really work it out?

But. But to your point, when he said, whom shall I send?

We all weren’t like, send Billy, you know? Okay. I guess that’s what we’re doing, right? Like, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a democracy. I feel like in that sort of a way, we weren’t voting on who to send. I think that there was a plan in place, and it was our opportunity to reason and work through and see what his plan was to, you know.

[00:45:29] Speaker A: And maybe there’s an interesting blend here. I mean, as you’ve pointed out, counseling in a lot of cases, is instructing, is teaching, is Alma’s counseling his sons. He is providing them with the framework. He’s providing them with the instruction, the backstory, and he’s teaching them so that they’re enabled to be empowered to make the decision that’s going to best suit them. Right? And I. Maybe at the heart of counseling lies agency, which God values so much. And in order for us to make that choice, let me just counsel with you. In other words, let me explain to you the importance of the decision and what goes into making that decision and what we need to do, and then turn that back to you with the agency that I’m giving you and ask you, whom shall I send? Now that you’re aware of the situation, now that you’re aware of what needs to happen, now you’re aware of the responsibilities, and now you’re aware of who the first person is. Who shall I send?

And maybe that’s him teaching and guiding and showing us the way it has to be, and yet allowing us the freedom, the flexibility to decide if we’re on board with his will still or if we want something else.

And so you’re right, Nate. I don’t think a council can ever just be open it up and just free falling chaos about what’s going on. There’s got to be somebody that presides. There’s got to be somebody that has some direction, some vision, some focus that can at least provide, at the very minimum, context for it, for the people that they’re counseling with and direction and where we’re going so that we can make the best choice with. With everything laid out on the table.

[00:47:16] Speaker B: Yep. Let’s keep going.

[00:47:19] Speaker A: All right. And there’s some diligence there that he repeats. And let’s see, maybe I’ll finish up at the end of 37, but take an opportunity to go back to 36 before I pass it. And I think 36.

Alma’s retelling his story to Helaman about what he went through and the experience and his fall and salvation and just kind of open this up.

Nate, is there anything you wanted to jump in on verse 30 or chapter 36?

[00:47:56] Speaker B: No. The one thing that I did really like in that early chapter was the language that Alma used when he was recalling his repentance experience and how I feel like it kind of gives us. You’ve brought this up. And again, I don’t know how deep we want to go on some of this because so much of our chatting about this in the past has been very speculative. And so I always just want to make sure that we always preface these discussions with that. But the way that Alma kind of talks about his having to atone for his own sins, and a lot of what came to him was that his sins were brought to his remembrance and the shift of God remembering those sins no more. And the. And it’s trying to understand almost the mechanics of how the atonement works. And you touched on it briefly last week, which is, did Jesus atone for himself? And our way to receive salvation is through him. Right. Becoming him. He is the door. He is the gate. And if we don’t take advantage of that, are we then responsible for our own sins? Right. And this, I feel like this is something that has been talked about in the past, too, by prophets and things. It’s not pure speculation on our part, but maybe just encourage everybody to go back and reread that, because there are some really incredible insights into maybe what the mechanics of the atonement and paying for our own sins if we don’t have. If we don’t take advantage of the gift that Christ has given us and go through him. But a lot of it was he didn’t want to be in the presence of God. It terrified him to think that he would be in the presence of God because all he could think about or remember were his sins, the things that he had done wrong. And so much of the time we think, oh, maybe we’re getting kept out of heaven because we get to a judgment bar and God, as the judge says, sorry, you didn’t make it to the celestial kingdom, you’re getting sentenced to the terrestrial kingdom, whatever it is. And we’re like, oh, okay, cool. We didn’t check off enough boxes or whatever it is, right? But the way this very much reads is this is a person that is so aware and. And in their mind can only think about the terrible things that they’ve done, that they don’t want to enter into the presence of God because of knowing the guilt and the pain and the hurt associated with that. It just kind of gives you a little perspective. It’s like, oh, maybe it is us that make that decision in going, hey, it to me sounds like it would be more of a hell to have to go into the presence of goddess, knowing how unworthy we are to be doing that.

Maybe it’s a lot more of us keeping ourselves out of the celestial kingdom because we wouldn’t feel right there, we wouldn’t feel comfortable there. And then obviously, just the association with the three days that he was in hell and Christ was there to pull him out, it just makes me, a lot of the language just kind of made me think, like, oh, is this a little bit of insight onto actually the functioning of the atonement, of us feeling what it’s just like to pay for our own sins to be dead, and then to see Christ being willing to come and help us remember those sins no more as well.

That was the only thing I just wanted to kind of briefly throw out there.

[00:52:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think there’s some significance in being told what it’s like versus living it. Right. I mean, you can have a council all day long where say, hey, you’re, this is terrible, and the sins, and this is what it’s going to feel like, and this is how I’m going to provide a salvation for you.

But Alma is experiencing it firsthand, just to live that there’s something to that. There’s something about the experience and experiencing it and coming through that. Right.

And I think the only other thing I wanted to kind of bring up on this is perspective.

When he’s focusing on the responsibility and the weight of living up to his consequences for what he has done, that’s all he can think of. That’s all he can see. And that perception has just swallowed him up in this agony and this pain. And he describes it as excruciating.

And yet, when his mind. I love it, how he says in verse 18, as my mind caught upon. Caught, hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart, o Jesus, thou son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness and encircled about with the everlasting chains. Right? And behold. And now, behold. When I thought this, I could remember my pains. No more. Yeah, I was harrowed up. I was hard up by the memory of my sins. No more. And, oh, what joy and what marvelous light I did. Behold. Yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceedingly as was my pain. And it’s a matter of perspective that all of a sudden shifts and changes. And Christ, this transformation we see in a couple times. We saw an enoch as we talked in the book of Moses, when he’s this warrior captain that’s been fighting these enemies and these giants and these wicked people forever, and he sees the Lord raining destruction on them and the flood and that they’re going to be all wiped out. And all he can see is the victory. Like, yeah, this was the. This was the residue of the earth. Not worth anything. And they’re finally done. And he turns and he sees heaven crying and God crying, and he says, how can you cry? This is the residue of the earth. This is, like, the greatest day ever. We won. And God’s like, don’t you get it? These were your brothers. These are my children.

And all of a sudden, all it takes to go from this moment of triumph and happiness is just a simple change in perspective. Instead of focusing on all these people as these wicked. Whatever, he sees them for who they are. And now he can’t be consoled, and he refuses to be consoled. And yet I, God, shows him that his son is going to come, that he’s going to die, that he’s going to be saving the world. And now all of a sudden, he can shift out of that. That bitterness, that sadness for the fate of others, not even his own fate, but the fate of others. He’s able to switch out of this bitter sadness into rejoicing in Christ and the atonement and what it means. And part of the power of the atonement is that ability to transition out of depression and sadness and guilt. And just by being able to change perspective, it’s incredible, the power that has.

And you see it with Lehi.

He was the other example that he’s crying on behalf of his people with all of his heart, God, save these people. And God’s answer to his prayer is, I’m going to kill them. They’re going to perish by the sword and be carried away captive into Babylon. And it makes zero sense that Lehis saying, oh, well, how great and marvelous are you, God, you’re so powerful and you save everyone, and you’re so merciful and your goodness that are over all the inhabitants of the earth, and you won’t suffer anyone that perished to come to you. He’s not saying it sarcastically, but then Nephi gives us that inside perception that he saw the coming of the messiah and the redemption of the world. And so maybe this is just that key component of counseling, too. Like, like you were hitting on Nate, is the idea that you do have someone that can change the perspective, that can provide you with the context you need. Because maybe that’s all you need is just the right context and the right person to focus on. That can make everything else kind of melt away and disappear. And even the harshest of things, the atonement, has the power to bring us salvation. I guess.

[00:56:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I just. I like it. Glad it got brought up. The word remember, we use so much for all of the good things. It’s why we have the scriptures. It’s why we each week covenant to remember Christ. It’s why we’re told to remember who we are and what we represent by our parents when we’re 16, going out on dates. Remembering is always.

Is mostly used in such a positive way.

You know, remember the good things, remember who you’re named after. You know, the list can go on and on. I did like noticing that that’s where the pain of Alma atoning for his, you know, making right his wrongs, all of it had to do with he was that the remembrance of his iniquity was brought. Brought to the forefront of his mind. And you’re just like, oh, yeah, I mean, that’s. That has to be the other side of this, is that.

Yeah, man, it would suck to only have to remember all of the terrible things that you’ve done or said. It did kind of make me think maybe we’ve talked about this before, because functionally, too, does God truly forget the sins that we’ve done in a literal way? Because if God knows everything, can God forget something?

That’s a tough question.

I hope the answer is yes.

[00:58:05] Speaker A: I mean, it says it is.

[00:58:07] Speaker B: I know.

[00:58:08] Speaker A: I mean, you bring up the paradox.

[00:58:10] Speaker B: There’s a paradox there. But what I guess the reason I think of that is because, you know how, you know how you kind of get that pit in the stomach when you realize you might have accidentally sent the wrong text message to somebody.

I’ve been. I have had some friends that have accidentally sent a text message to a person that they were talking about to other people in a very non flattering way. And yes. You know what I mean? It’s like you kind of get that pit in your stomach even thinking about it, or you think you may have actually hit reply all on an email that you shouldn’t have hit reply all on. You see what I’m saying?

I take that and I pump that full of steroids and I think, man, in the next life, is every lie I’ve ever told gonna be known by everybody? Is every time I bad mouthed somebody behind their back, but tried to still stay civil and be a friend to their face, am I gonna be exposed? Is a phony.

You know, when you start kind of thinking about that, I really do hope that some things can be forgotten before I get to the next life because that’s going to be a pretty awkward time for a lot of people, me at the top of that list. But do you see what I’m saying?

I always hope. I hope that there’s a way that those things won’t be at the forefront of people’s remembrance. But I know the pit in my stomach even now thinking, oh, man, I hope I don’t have to remember that. I hope I don’t have to.

I hope I don’t have to approach basically, you know, every person you’ve ever met in your life and say, oh, yeah, about that. I was having a rough day, you know?

[01:00:07] Speaker A: Yeah. But at the same time, like, sometimes it just gets swallowed up, right? I mean, yeah, somebody does something and the memory of them doing it is swallowed up by the memory, or the active memory, if you will, of who they are now, which is completely different of who they were. And it’s hard to even believe that they were that way before or that they even did it. And you can’t even associate with that. It’s almost like it gets associated with somebody who no longer exists anymore. And I think we’ve been there, right? You can look at it and say, that person that did that no longer exists is dead. It’s not even me. I don’t even care if you remember that person because that’s not me. I’m not that person. I don’t do that. I don’t live that way. It’s almost as if the memory gets associated with somebody who no longer exists.

And instead, when people think about you, they think about you differently because they think about who you are today. And. And maybe. Maybe you can remember with. Without forgetting, but at the same time, you don’t think about that with that person anymore because it’s not who they are, and you can appreciate. So almost the same similar way that the atonement swallows up that pain and that guilt. Just. Bye. But it’s not just that you stop. It’s that it’s been replaced by something better.

If the atonement was just, you don’t have to pay for your sins anymore, and it was just not pain. That’s one thing. But to replace it with something else to focus on that causes us such great rejoicing, causes such great joy.

Maybe it’s that substitutional value that you have to replace something in there that replaces that memory, that takes that center focus, that shifts everything. I don’t know. There’s no additional value.

[01:01:49] Speaker B: No, it’s like, if you have one of those 50 gallon jugs of water, even if there’s a little bit of bleach in it, you can hopefully dilute it down with 100 gallons of good, pure, clean water.

It won’t kill you. Maybe that’s what it is, dude. We just need to fill. We need to fill our lives with a bunch of other really great, kind things about everybody else so that we can, uh, we can delude the. The poisonous stuff out. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s the lesson.

[01:02:21] Speaker A: Maybe that’s what it is.

[01:02:21] Speaker B: All right, let’s keep going.

[01:02:23] Speaker A: All right, I got. Flipping back into Alma 37 right towards the end, and. And you’re hitting on this, Nate. Oh, remember my son. In fact, uh, he. He says this a lot. Verse 32. And now, my son, remember the words which I have spoken unto you. And then 35. Oh, remember, my son, and learn wisdom in that youth. And as you flip through the pages, it’s all over the place. 38, verse five. And now, my son Shiblan, I would that you should remember and that. That power of remembering and going back into 37, remember to cry unto the Lord for their support, to seek him out and to be diligent. And he kind of goes into this talk about the liahona and what it was for and all these miracles, and he says in verse 40, and it did work for them according to their faith in God. Therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause those spindles that should point the way that they should go. Behold, it was done. Therefore they had this miracle and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God day by day. Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means, it did show unto them marvelous works. They were slothful and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence. And then those marvelous works ceased and they did not progress in their journey.

And that idea that there’s a diligence and a perseverance and that we’re going to have to remember some of these things, we’ve talked about it before. It’s almost like these events, these miracles, these experiences, is storing water to help get us through the desert. Because we’re going to go through times that maybe we become a little bit slothful and we start to fear and we start to not have these experiences as often or maybe a time we’re going to go through a little bit of darkness. And we need to remember those experiences to help us rekindle that flame or have more miracles and have the spirit and just keep us the role of diligence and being able to persevere once you’ve entered in, by the way, there is something to this enduring to the end. There is something we need to have consistency. We need to remember, we need to turn back and we need to keep refueling those stores to get us to where we need to be.

[01:04:56] Speaker B: Love it.

[01:04:59] Speaker A: Shiblon is the end of this in chapter 38. And, and I mean, wait, Shib.

[01:05:04] Speaker B: Oh yeah, Shiblon’s great. I was gonna say we’re not, we’re not into homeboy next week.

[01:05:09] Speaker A: Cory Anton. Yeah.

[01:05:10] Speaker B: Corianton. Sorry, buddy.

[01:05:12] Speaker A: I mean, everything about this, doesn’t it just validate any, any, what’s the word I’m looking for?

The, the prejudices or the assumptions about the middle child.

I mean, Corey Anthon is about to get several chapters of content. And not just several chapters, several valuable, incredibly powerful chapters of counsel from his dad trying to help him course correct. And Helaman gets some amazing content and helping him along his way. And then you have the middle child, he’s got 15 verses dedicated to him, right. I mean, you can’t even, I’m almost laughing just looking at this page because on the left side of the page you’re finishing the council to Helaman and on the right side of the page you’re diving into the council to Cory Anton. And Shivlan’s just got this little 15 verses. He also gets the recounting of Alma’s story and he gets some interesting perspective on it, but it’s such an abbreviated version compared to what he gets to Helamana. I mean, the middle child, he’s not super great. He’s not super bad.

[01:06:27] Speaker B: I have a, I actually have a theory on child order.

First of all, where do you fit? Where do you fit? You’re in the middle, right towards the top, but towards the top. Okay.

[01:06:40] Speaker A: Of seven.

[01:06:40] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, I don’t know. It’s. This works better when there’s fewer kids, but I have a, I have a theory, and it’s only because I see it professionally. The oldest loves the management side, which, by the way, checks out if Helaman’s oldest. Right. He’s the one in charge of the records. He is given. You know what I mean? He’s kind of given the administrative responsibilities because as the oldest children, we are babysitting our younger siblings first.

We kind of live up to the idea that, like, yeah, our parents had to kind of figure it out on us. I’m the oldest. Right. Our parents kind of had to figure it out on us a little bit. We’re the ones, hey, make sure that your sister gets to class on time when we’re the ones driving. There’s a very administrative, you know, we like to manage a situation which is, in my profession, very much the studio producer, the, you know, the overs. What I do for a living. Right. I oversee the projects. The youngest is always the front man or front woman. They’re the ones that wear the wild outfits. They’re the ones that are just the entertainers kind of from start to finish, because what have they been doing their whole life? They want to hang out with their older siblings. That’s exactly right. They want. But the thing is, they also usually have a lot of safety in and a lot of really kind of room to be expressive and whatever, because the parents have usually kind of figured out what they’re doing. And so they really are kind of allowed space to be wild. Right. In really great ways and things like that, too. But you see a lot of very, very expressive, very artistic, very creative youngest children. And in the middle, I love the middle children. Anytime I get the chance to work with them, because they’re the peacemakers. They’re truly like the ambassadors. They’re like, very much. You know, there is such. I know that as society, we kind of give middle children kind of the neglected. You know, they’re the ones that kind of get forgotten about because they’re usually, parents are usually having to deal with the problems of the old child.

They’re just loving and pampering and spoiling the young child, and so the middle children kind of get forgotten. All I know is that in the few instances of the people that I work with, I don’t work with a lot of middle children.

I work a lot with oldest and youngest. But anytime I get the chance to work with the middle children, they make the best bandmates. They make the best, like, collaborators in a studio because they’re just so patient and actually really beautiful, and they’re amazing peacemakers.

They’re good at bringing the temperature down in rooms in creative environments or whatever. So for whatever it’s worth, when I read this, I actually read this in a very tender way. I think of my middle children. I used to really only have one middle child, and I have regretted at times in life, like, nothing, showing that child enough love. But when I think about a big picture, it’s like I have such a deep love and soft spot in my heart for my middle child and now middle children, that when I read stuff like this, I don’t read it with kind of the common wisdom, you know, I don’t read it with what we kind of associate with the middle children. I actually read this as a very much like, you’re a good dude, and I love you. Keep going, buddy. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t, I don’t read this. I don’t read this as he’s being neglected. I read it as Helaman really does have some more responsibilities. He’s in charge of the records. He’s, you know, he’s been a really great older brother. It sounds like. And it sounds like this middle dude has just been resilient, you know, he’s just been a good, solid dude. And it makes me actually really, really love, again, just the few verses that he gets.

[01:10:50] Speaker A: Well, he doesn’t need as much attention, right? He doesn’t need as much correcting, and he doesn’t need as much direction. He’s just kind of, he’s solid. He’s just going along.

[01:11:00] Speaker B: Yeah, but, and that’s enough, dude. Like, I guess I’m just saying, like, that’s enough. I read it, and I go like, that’s awesome. That’s probably enough for him to.

[01:11:09] Speaker A: I love your perspective on that, because.

[01:11:11] Speaker B: Then we get to the youngest, who’s the wild child. I’m just telling you, it plays out so much.

I try to tell dude all the time. I’m telling you, when people come in to be like, hey, the kids that graduate from BYU, they come down all the time and say, hey, can I ask you how to make this work? And I’m always like, yeah, you can come over. And the first question I always ask them is, what order of child are you? And when they tell me, it really does give me, like, perspective to go, oh, yeah, you would probably be really good for a studio setting, or, yeah, you know, like, you’re supposed to be on a stage running around doing high kicks with just crazy fashion, you know, like. Or, oh, hey, you’re one of the few peacemakers. You should probably just go be an accountant.

Like, go make some money, be able to support a family.

Don’t compromise every relationship you’ve ever had in your entire life. Like, I have had to to make this work. So that’s what the middle. The piece, the peacemakers. I’m always just like, oh, dude, you have the temperament to go and just be really rich and not nearly as stressed out as I am all the time. There you go. There’s my. There’s my final.

[01:12:20] Speaker A: But at the same time, I mean, it’s kind of funny. I mean, you’re.

You’re the studio, you’re the producer. You’re. You’re your. Your management, if you will.

You’re. You said you’re the oldest, but at the same time, you’re out there on the stage pulling out canned snakes. Yeah.

[01:12:38] Speaker B: Okay. The thing is, is we all still share a lot of things, but that’s not my love, though. That’s what I should say.

[01:12:45] Speaker A: That’s all I have to say. Oh, yeah.

[01:12:46] Speaker B: No, I mean, dude, that. That video will still always slay, but I’m just saying, that’s not where we. That’s not where we shine. That’s not where we thrive. So I do still have fun. I do still have fun dressing up in Star Trek uniforms for May the fourth shows just to, you know, upset everybody involved. But I still enjoy that. But that’s not where I thrive.

But you see what I’m saying? I just. I’m just saying, it’s like, I read this, and I. And I read the middle child, who we kind of a society think are the forgotten ones. And I think that if you actually ask any parent about it, every parent will tell you, yeah, yeah. We do visually have to give more attention to the oldest, and we do seemingly spoil the youngest. But the middle children are just anchors, man. I just love them. So shout out to all the middle children out there. You’re the anchors. I love you, the peacemakers. I love you. I love you, middle children.

[01:13:44] Speaker A: Well, and I guess maybe some of the best counsel that we could probably end on. Chapter 38, verse twelve. I love what he’s saying here. Use boldness but not overbearance. And also see that you bridle all your passions, that you may be filled with love. See that you refrain from idleness.

It’s good. It’s good counsel from a dad.

[01:14:07] Speaker B: It’s good stuff. All right, we’re out of time. Is there anything else you want to hit on real quick before we wrap this up?

[01:14:13] Speaker A: No, I’m happy.

[01:14:15] Speaker B: I’m happy, too, buddy. All right. Appreciate all of you listening. You can get a hold of us at the email address high deep dive.com dot. It actually talked about fruit this week again, too. Remember how we kind of talked about that last week? A little bit about by their fruits, you shall know them, but how do you know if a fruit’s good or not? It’s like, well, sometimes you got to take a bite of that fruit and see if it’s good or not. But anyways, it touched on that a little bit this week. And also, I did want to mention, I need to pay off the teas that I gave earlier about talking with my six year old son. For some reason, for some reason, he has just been obsessed, but, like, in a very anxious way about the second coming. I don’t know where he even, like, heard about. Like, we. We don’t talk in our church a ton about the second coming. It gets brought up, but we don’t, we don’t. It’s not like, it’s not like a. The main staple of all of our focus, but for some reason, it got brought up in one of his classes and. And it’s. It’s been. It stresses him out, like, every night, and even tonight, he’s like, dad, can we just go through it again just to make sure? I don’t have anything that I need to be, like, nervous about, for sure. But there was something said this week over and over and over, and I love it, which is, if you keep the commandments, you’re going to prosper in the land. And I will say this, even though we are in separate countries, you might not feel the same anxiety that a lot of us are feeling over here in America right now, but for a lot of people, myself included, it does feel like a very touchy time in politics, in the world, in culture. You know, if you’ve been paying attention, there’s a lot that people like me who have anxiety for the future, not for me, but for the world that my children are going to live and grow up in. I took a lot of comfort this week, which is keep the commandments and you’ll prosper in the land. And again, we have to.

I’m speaking to myself.

We have to remember the promise, and that is God’s plans. Don’t get frustrated.

And it talks a little bit about even, like, the last days in the chapters this week.

And my conversation tonight, as I was getting my little dude to bed very much was like, stay close to God. Remember that if you keep the commandments, that there’s nothing you ever have to be worried about. And he’s like, well, it says that there’s going to be war. He asked specifically if we’re going to have to fight the Nazis. I’m like, well, we’ve beat the Nazis before. We can beat him again if we need to, buddy. I don’t know if that’s who we’re going to be at war with, but, you know, he’s very much like, well, what does war mean? And I’m like, man, war’s hella buddy. Like this is there. There would be a lot to be afraid of if God hadn’t made us the promise that we don’t need to be afraid as long as we keep the commandments. So I did want to at least just briefly touch upon that and remind myself and hopefully maybe bring comfort to anybody else that, like me, maybe share some of those same anxieties that I do believe in. The promise that God says, keep the commandments and you’ll prosper in the land.

[01:17:40] Speaker A: I call that the prosperity promise. In fact, I kept running into it all the time. This is an old copy of my scriptures. But you notice right here at the beginning, I just started writing down every time I saw it.

[01:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that, dude.

[01:17:51] Speaker A: 22 times is how many times I came across it. And maybe I’ve missed a few, or maybe I’m off, but 22 times. And usually when repeat something, there’s some value there in that, right? To say. To say something like that 22 times. And I think. And I think that goes along with what we’re saying on the change of perspective, right? Because if all we can see is.

It’s like Alma, is. If all you can see is the bitterness, the sadness, the destruction, it’s good to be aware of that. But if that’s the only thing you can focus on, it sure makes life miserable and hard to deal with, right? And I think what Christ does, the atonement does, is gives us something else to focus on, that replaces that with hope, that transition, that switch, and maybe easier said than done, but that’s the value of Christ.

[01:18:39] Speaker B: I also do think that we need to still fight like hell for salvation. Like, I’m just saying, like, I’m not suggesting that we should say, well, it’s in God’s hands. I think that part of keeping the commandments is doing everything we can to still fight for good and to still do everything that we possibly can to live in a righteous place and to bring goodness to our communities and to our country and to the world.

I don’t say that in any sort of a way to say that we need to ease up on the gas pedal. But what I do say is we need to do everything we can and know that we have evidence through the scriptures, through the history of the world, God takes care of his people, and. And I believe that we are his people, and we need to just take comfort in that as well.

[01:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s. That’s always pulling in with the Lijona, right? They got to give diligence, and we become idle, and we’ve become slothful, and it just stops working. You’ve got to find a way to stay engaged. Like you say, you got to find a way to.

If you give up, that becomes even almost more.

[01:19:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. But I also don’t think that I need my six year old staying up at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking that we’re gonna have to be fighting with the Nazis again.

[01:20:04] Speaker A: It’s just so funny, because I’m just like, where did I know? But it is funny. Just like.

[01:20:08] Speaker B: But let me just say, there is a bigger point there, too, which is, like, I laugh because I think of my little dude going. He. He has no frame of reference, so he knows that it says in the scriptures there’s going to be a war. He knows that at a certain point, we’ve been to war with the Nazis, and so in his innocence, that’s what’s keeping him up at night. But then again, like, let me take two steps further out. Do you think that at any point, God’s going, well, I look at my son, Nate Pfeiffer, staring at his wall. You know what I mean? Nervous about x, y, and Z.

That’s so adorable that he thinks that that’s the thing that he needs to be worried about. Right?

I’m just saying, like, there is maybe a lesson that I need to learn from this as well, which is, like, take a few steps back, you know, and put it back in God’s hands. Anyways, I just want to make sure I paid off the earlier anecdotal tease. You can get a hold of us at the email address. Hi deepdive.com, we really do enjoy hearing from you. We appreciate you so much sharing with your friends, helping us grow the audience of the podcast.

We would hope that you can find anything of value, maybe out of this from some of the perspective, but if not, we appreciate you listening to it anyways and letting us know. So that’s all we got for you this week. So until next week.

The episode then transitions into an in-depth analysis of the tree of life as depicted in Alma 32. Jason and Nate discuss the symbolic significance of the tree of life and its connection to Christ. They elaborate on how the process of growing faith is akin to nurturing a tree, requiring diligence, patience, and consistent effort. They touch on the idea that the tree of life, representing Christ, should be at the center of one’s life, contrasting this with the self-centered worship practices exemplified by the Rameumptom. The hosts also tackle complex questions about the atonement, pondering the justice and mercy intertwined in Christ’s sacrifice. This episode is a rich exploration of faith, humility, and the transformative power of Christ’s teachings.

Transcript:
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: What’s up, buddy?

[00:00:33] Speaker A: Oh, dude. Just out here enjoying life. How you doing?

[00:00:37] Speaker B: Just out here enjoying life, dude.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: I like it. So. So you know how not all scriptures are created equal?

Sure, yeah. Yeah. Not. Not all scriptures carry the same value, I don’t think, as, you know. So some verses, power back, pack more of a punch.

[00:00:57] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:00:58] Speaker A: Some books pack more of a punch.

[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:01] Speaker A: And in like manner, I don’t think all podcast episodes are created equal either.

[00:01:08] Speaker B: I definitely agree with that.

[00:01:11] Speaker A: I can definitely look back at the podcast we’ve done and highlight some of my favorites and ones that I’ve looked at and kind of packed a punch that I say, you know what? Those are the ones.

It’s almost like, you know, you buy an album from a band that you really like.

[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:01:26] Speaker A: And they’ve got like two or three really good songs, and the rest you’re like. And then there’s one that you’re like, ugh.

[00:01:31] Speaker B: You must have listened to music in the nineties, dude.

[00:01:36] Speaker A: That’s what I did.

[00:01:37] Speaker B: You bought cds. You bought cds in the nineties. You just gave an accurate description of what it was like to be a teenager.

[00:01:43] Speaker A: You try to force feed. Try to force feed the songs that no one wants to pay for.

[00:01:47] Speaker B: $20 for a piece of plastic, by the way, that has only a handful of actual good tunes on it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:54] Speaker A: All of that to say, I don’t know if last week’s was as good as maybe I could have made it, but this week is going to pack a punch. At least I think. I think this is going to be, you know, one of those tracks that’s just going to hit. Well. I’m excited.

[00:02:09] Speaker B: I’m excited, too. I think you did fine last week. I think there was also just a lot going on in the world, too. That was, it was. It had been a fairly distracting week for me, so I definitely don’t feel like I did you any favors.

I didn’t bring anything to really help you last week, so sorry about that.

[00:02:26] Speaker A: Well, either way, like Alma, 32 through 35, I think, is one of the media sections, even in the Book of Mormon, which is one of the media scriptures in all. And I’ll say it again, scripturedom.

[00:02:40] Speaker B: I agree. Scripture dumb isn’t a word, but I also, though, feel like we, we should at least touch on a couple things from, from 30 and 31 that we talked about last week, just, even if we just touch on them while we’re talking through 32 because we did miss a couple opportunities.

[00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And I’m okay with however you want to approach this, if you want to hit it right here at the front in the intro or if you want to work it naturally into the conversation, because I feel like it lends its way either way, if we want to. However you want to tackle that.

[00:03:15] Speaker B: Let me just take a dive off the diving board really quick into just one really important thing that we missed. We missed an opportunity last week.

[00:03:28] Speaker A: Let’s hear it.

[00:03:31] Speaker B: I got to teach the 1617 year old Sunday school yesterday, and it was great. It was a bummer that we were missing so many of the people in that class that people are gone. Probably trying to enjoy the end of summer before school gets back. But it was kind of a small class. But we really got into basically a lot of the connections between Korahor and the garden of Eden and specifically talked about how when it talks about in the garden of Eden, who is it or what is it that tempts Satan to partake of the tree of knowledge. Right. We talk as a serpent.

And something that we got to highlight was what else throughout the majority of the Old Testament does the serpent actually symbolize? And that’s Christ.

You have Moses lifting the serpent upon the staff and the whole thing. Right.

[00:04:26] Speaker A: Quoxicoatl in the.

[00:04:28] Speaker B: That’s right. In south american tradition and whatnot. Right.

[00:04:32] Speaker A: I. Mexico.

[00:04:34] Speaker B: Mexico. Yeah, there you go. Mexico. Yeah. South American Mexico.

[00:04:37] Speaker A: Keep going.

[00:04:38] Speaker B: I should have said Latin. Latin America.

[00:04:41] Speaker A: There you go.

[00:04:43] Speaker B: But why would then a serpent be the thing that represents Satan in this story? And we talked about very specifically how in Korahor, who was it? What did he say was the thing that the devil presented himself as to tell Korahor to not do these things? And he appeared as an angel of light in theory. We believe if an angel of light is coming down to us, it would probably be what? A heavenly messenger of goodness and correctness and kindness. And there’s just something really important to understand, that Satan wanted to appear to Eve as something familiar to her or as something that would comfort her as a source of good information.

He wouldn’t come as some red demon, Panpipe playing, horned animal saying, hey, do this bad thing. Right.

[00:05:40] Speaker A: With a name tag that says I’m Satan.

[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yes. With a name tag that says Lucifer, your friend.

But instead, and we even kind of talk about this at the temple is. And as we go through the endowment in such the temple, what does Satan always try to present himself as? Someone of power, someone with priesthood, someone with authority, to say in a very persuasive, in a, hey, I’m just looking out for you. Hey, I’m trying to help you become like God. And it was just a really nice connection for, you know, us and the class to make is that that’s how Satan tries to attack all of us, is he tries to be in a very non threatening way. But we did recognize that in both stories. At the end of the day, he almost still kind of gave Eve permission to do what she wanted to do. Like, he didn’t put the fruit in her mouth and say, hey, I know you didn’t want to do this, but I’m forcing you to do this. It’s like, no, he presented it in a very persuasive, kind of gentle way, but still allowed room for the person that he’s tempting to have a little bit of more internal, moral permission to do something that they already wanted to do. And now more than ever, I would just say this impacted me because as members of the church, we’re told over and over and over, and we should be seeing it around us, that the plan of attack for us is not going to be as cut and dry as a little demon popping up in our bedroom with horns and a name tag that says Lucifer and says, I want you to go kill your neighbor. Right. That’s not going to do anything to us. It’s like it would be. Be gone Satan, and that’s the end of it. Instead, just always be on the lookout for, is there a cause? Is there a movement? Is there a political or social issue that maybe we recognize already within ourselves? We kind of are drawn towards maybe politically, socially, whatever it is that might go against what our standards are, what we believe the commandments are.

That’s the plan of attack. That’s where. That’s where all the adversary needs is just enough safe room to get in and go, hey, we are supposed to serve everybody and love everybody. Great. Well, now let’s just twist that 10%, right. Let’s just whatever. And those are the things that we just see over and over, erode people’s testimonies and faith.

[00:08:25] Speaker A: That’s a very important point.

I like what you landed on, and what you’re saying to me reminds me of the scripture that says, where your heart is, that’s where your treasure will be off. Also, right if Satan’s coming in and he knows that maybe our heart is maybe in something else and really justifying or giving us permission to do what we already wanted to do as an angel of light, like giving us a good reason for why it’s okay that we’re doing something that we know we shouldn’t do, and it gives us all the context we need to justify that action.

Maybe it’s better that I don’t stop and help this person, because, I mean, just, I don’t want to make this too personal or pull too many examples, but looking at maybe the story that Christ laid in front of us with the parable of the good samaritan, when somebody’s on their way and it’s a priest heading to the temple and they see this guy beaten in the path and from him, maybe his heart is not in it to help somebody else.

And all the justification he needs is if I stop and bloody myself with this man, or if he dies on me in the path and I am disqualified from my work, then how am I ever going to carry out the role that I have in the temple? How am I able to perform? I’m going to be unclean. I’m going to be disqualified. And that works more important, isn’t it? And is that not kind of that angel of light mentality that you’re laying out, Nate, is maybe just giving us the context we need to just deviate us that 1% degree away from maybe what, what we should have done, not, not the 180 degree.

[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yep, nailed it. I think that that is such a perfect point, too, because you, you nailed it. The priest could, in theory, justify what was already in his heart, which is the Samaritan is a known enemy of mine and my people, or at least like a non friendly entity of mine and my people. Really within the priest’s heart. That’s probably more of the truth of it, is probably he knows I should probably stop and help this person, but he’s able to justify his not stopping with, well, I have to go and perform my other priestly duties. And there’s my justification for not doing what I know in my heart. And even church teachings is the correct thing to do, which is to stop and help somebody that is dying and in need of.

It’s fair to argue that probably that the priest’s initial inclination would be, yeah, I don’t really want to stop and help this person that I don’t very much like and that I’m using religion, I’m using the various things to justify that initial feeling he probably already had.

[00:11:22] Speaker A: Lest anyone think we’re being overly critical of the priestley, let me remind you that the priest didn’t exist. Right. This is a story where we are supposed to learn about who is the neighbor. And it’s interesting how Christ uses this story. And I know this is kind of taking us a little bit away from element 32, but we’ll jump back in. I think it’s important enough.

Christ is saying, I mean, to me it almost comes back. And we had a conversation about this at our come follow me with the family this week. When we’re talking, maybe it wasn’t even a come follow me, just a family council. But in either case, we were talking about, why doesn’t God just give us a list of everything that we can do or can’t do on the Sabbath day or everything that works out or doesn’t work out. So we just look at it and check it off on the list, and we know exactly what to do. And just as much as you have the context of maybe this theoretical priest, and we don’t know what was in his heart, because, one, he didn’t even exist. So we can take this example and say, what if? Because he didn’t, and that it’s going to fit. Right. Right. But just as much as you have somebody trying to justify away from that, sometimes we look in the New Testament and we find almost the opposite extreme of all of these people trying to keep the Sabbath day holy where they’re willing to. And I say opposite extreme, really, it’s the same kind of lane that the priest is in, isn’t it, when he’s saying, what are you doing rubbing the grain between your hands? It’s the Sabbath day, and that’s causing work. And, and they’re using the law as justification of what you can or can’t do on the SAbbath. And when Christ comes to this example of the good SaMaritan, we remember that the question that was posed to him was, who is my neighbor?

And who is your neighbor? If Christ provides a checklist of, well, the person to your east and the person to the left, the right, the north, the south, or whatever, right. And that classifies as your neighbor? Well, in this case, he’s saying the neighbor was not even somebody of the same country, was not anyone of the same religion or the same backing or the same. They were enemies, what we wouldn’t even deem. But in this story, they were neighbors. And so the spirit really does help us. And I think something that Joseph Smith said, I teach my people correct principles and they govern themselves. Christ says, love God. Christ says, love your neighbor. And then how that goes. And to try to take this wild tangent back to what you’re saying, Nate, and what you’ve kind of opened my eyes with where our heart is, right. If I’m looking for every excuse in the spirit to help me understand what that means, then when an angel of light comes and inspires me and it’s in line with where I am, it’s inspiration, it’s revelation that helps me fulfill with that. But if I’m looking and my heart is somewhere else, anywhere else, off skelter, not aligned with what Christ has said, then when somebody pretending to be an angel of light comes, that backs what I wanted to do anyways. It just pulls me right off course that one degree. And it’s not that we have this perfect guide. And there is inspiration, I think, on either side. It’s kind of that classical cartoon of the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.

I don’t know, that’s kind of a.

[00:14:34] Speaker B: Ramble, but I’m with you.

I think we summed it up pretty well. And then the rest of what we can chat about from last week, I think we’ll mix really nice into 32. So maybe we should just get into 32.

[00:14:45] Speaker A: Perfect. I think. I think I know where you’re heading. And I think. I think we can.

[00:14:51] Speaker B: Let’s do it.

[00:14:52] Speaker A: I think we can hit on that point.

[00:14:53] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:14:55] Speaker A: First thing I wanted to bring up with 32 is, you know, maybe, maybe even just the place setting before. Before I get too far into this. And it’s on this hill and on hillside. I think this honest, this, this is obviously going to create connections to us with maybe the sermon on the mount where Christ is teaching people on a hillside. And I think there’s something significant about this. Nate, you and I have talked about hills being representative of mountains and, well, hills are mountains in a sense. Right? Especially if you live in an area that doesn’t have super high mountains. Hills can definitely be considered mountains.

[00:15:36] Speaker B: I mean, in certain states, hills are considered mountains. It’s all relative.

It’s all relative.

[00:15:43] Speaker A: But what I meant to say is that the mountain or the hill can represent the hill or the mountain of the Lord. This is a paradise. The garden of Eden was located on a mountain or a hill. The mountain of the Lord. The temple embodied the mountain of the lord. To have teaching taking place on a hillside is significant, which I think it’s also significant that Joseph Smith, when he’s going to get the plates has to return each year to the hillside, the mountain, to be instructed by angels. Angels. And so you have this commonality, this interesting setting, but where it gets even more interesting is the name of this mountain or hill is Oneida. And Oneida is a very interesting word in Hebrew, on is a homophone, which means that there are two very different words that have different definitions, but they sound the same, and they’re spelled almost identical. Thus, own. And the one definition means affliction, and it shows up a lot. In Alma 32, he’s actually going to use the word affliction, and so it can mean affliction or sorrow.

When you put the I suffix to own, oni. So oni becomes my affliction, and then the da ending. Because it’s a suffix, it’s a shortened form of the hebrew word yada, which means to know and yada. In this particular case, it’s third masculine singular, or he knows. So the word itself means he knows my affliction, he knows my struggles, my sorrow. And, of course, it’s appropriate that a hill is named that, because, I mean, God knows your sorrow. Just having to climb this thing, right? I mean, even going up a hill embodies this idea of affliction or sorrow or having to overcome something.

And so he’s got this people that he’s sitting here teaching, and a group of people show up that have been afflicted, spiritually, physically, financially, they’ve been kicked out of their places of worship, and they’re coming to Alma and saying, what can we do?

And so this is an appropriate setting for them.

But what’s interesting is that Alma is going to capitalize on that and say, you know, blessed are you because of your humility, because you have been afflicted, you’ve been made humble. And because you’ve been made humble, you’re going to be receptive, you’re going to be saved. And blessed are you for your humility. Even goes so far to say you would have been more blessed had you been humbled on your own. But because you were humbled by your circumstances, you’re still blessed. And so he turns this hill, this affliction, this sore point, and he turns it into a blessing for the people and, in fact, the strength, because you notice, as he’s teaching, this is not the first group of people that shows up to be taught. He is already teaching another multitude at this hillside. When this other multitude shows up and he stops teaching them, gives an about face, and addresses this other people and specifically mentions that this weakness, this affliction is going to become their strength. So it’s fitting that at this heel side, the other definition of the word own is strength or fortune. And so he knows my strength. He knows my fortune. And all of a sudden, it’s almost like going into the scripture where God takes weak things and makes them strong.

Or even Paul, who talks about the thorn that he wants pulled out of his side three times and it’s not removed. But really what happens is it becomes a source of strength for the people. And so this hillside really does encapsulate their source of affliction, becomes their strength and their source of salvation, really a blessing to them. And I think it even encapsulates Christ, because what is Christ? He is the stumbling block.

[00:19:34] Speaker B: The rock.

[00:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah, the rock that people rejected or that stumble on the trip on, yet also the rock that is the founding stone. And you see that idea, that imagery that’s really centered on Christ.

And there’s. I mean, we’ve talked about this in the Old Testament, so I’ll mention this briefly, but I won’t give it a lot of time here. In 1978, a biblical professor, Cyrus Gordon, a brilliant man, noticed for the first time in Hebrew something called the Janus parallel. Janus was the roman goddess who had two faces, one that looked back and the other looked forward. Because of that, he’s also often called the gatekeeper God. And because of that, that’s where we get the name of the month, January, from. Because January sits at the front of the year that it can look back at the previous year and look forward into the year that we’re going into. It’s that. That connecting month. And so, using this God’s name, Janus, he calls a parallel in Hebrew, a Janus parallel, where you have three lines and the middle line has one word that can actually look back to the past and forward to the future at the same time. So this was a genius move by poets in the Old Testament, writing in Hebrew to convey this meaning, the symbolism, this rich power. And it’s a method that wasn’t known about until 1978, was the first time we’ve ever discovered this instance or it’s been written about or that we even knew about it. So suffice it to say, or fair to say, Joseph Smith would not have been familiar of this technique in the Old Testament. Nobody in America or any part of the world that we know of would have been familiar with this writing technique.

And so for him to include this imagery, this power, in the name of the hillside, and we’ve talked about the hebrew use of names and how they convey power. We won’t go into all of that here, but it’s just one more thing that fits with this being written by a hebrew people familiar with Hebrew and familiar with the writings of the Jews and how they wrote in their style.

And to use that, and also to use a word that wasn’t even in the Bible. How did Joseph Smith know that Oneida would have encapsulated everything, when at this point in his life, he had never studied Hebrew, he didn’t know anything about Hebrew, and this word did not exist in any written hebrew sources. And to come up with this word that encapsulates all of this meaning into one, to me, is just a further witness that this book comes from God, does not. I mean, it is what it says it is. It’s written by an ancient hebrew people, not the inventions of a young american boyenne working his farm in the early 18 hundreds, who actually happens to pull all this together.

[00:22:27] Speaker B: He didn’t make it up. There you go. I’ll say it for you. You don’t.

[00:22:31] Speaker A: Thank you.

[00:22:31] Speaker B: You don’t need to. You don’t need to mince words. I’ll say it. He didn’t make it up. Knock it off. Knock it off, everybody. He didn’t make it up.

[00:22:41] Speaker A: Well, when this other multitude shows up, and I think this is going to kind of touch on something that you want to talk about, Nate.

[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah, let’s get into it, baby.

[00:22:52] Speaker A: It’s interesting to me, it’s fascinating to me that Alma absolutely shuts down the previous people that he was talking to.

How would you feel now? Mind you, it’s not just the multitude of poor people that showed up to talk to Alma, but it says Alma was talking to a multitude. If he’s talking to a multitude already, it’s not just one or two. A fair crowd of people had shown up to hear him speak, and so they’ve put effort into coming out, into listening to him. Is it fair that Alma stops talking to them? And not only does he stop talking to him, but it says in Alma 32 that he turns himself about so that now his back is to them, and he addresses the poor people, and it says that, and he says, no more words to the other multitude. Wow. Is. I mean, what’s the significance of Alma shutting out the other crowd, turning his back to them and rejecting them?

And I think the people that he’s turning his back to, it’s implied anyways, are the wealthier ones, the ones that are attending their synagogues. And their churches that have come out to see what’s going on and the ones that have been turning their backs on the poor and intentionally kicking them out of their synagogues.

And so I look at this and say, is it fair that God turns his back on us? I mean, if Alma is supposed to be representing the savior and he’s coming here to speak to the people in the Lord’s name as an emissary of the Lord, you would imagine that he’s acting in the Lord’s behalf, that he’s doing what the Lord would do. Would the Lord turn his back on a people and stop teaching them?

[00:24:34] Speaker B: I mean, yes, the Lord has taken his word off of the earth before, but the irony is, because I would argue that that’s not the lord necessarily turning his back, but that’s the people turning their back to God. In my opinion, that’s more people rejecting God. I don’t think that. But to your point, though. Yeah, there absolutely. I mean, Jesus himself said that there was going to be a time of apostasy.

[00:25:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think Christ, when he’s twelve years old, he’s found in the temple and he’s teaching in the temple and he’s teaching to a religious people, right. He’s confounding them, answering and some point to where he’s a young boy teaching in the temple, to now, when he’s later in his ministry, he has turned his back on the priests, he has turned his back on the Pharisees. He does no longer sit down and engage with them in this loving, patient kind of way that you see him teaching these individuals or these outsiders, or these poor, or these broken down. In fact, he calls them whited walls and he’s frustrated with them. And I think explicitly is not just turning his back, but he’s actually rebuking them in a more audible, clear way than even what Alma’s doing, when Alma, in a sense, is rebuking them. And so if I look at this and say, okay, the reason that the poor people here are going to be saved is because of their humility. It’s not that Alma has stopped teaching them.

It’s that the lesson he is teaching them is a lesson on humility that they need to first go through before they can get to the next step.

[00:26:15] Speaker B: I also just think that the visuals of it is a really good lesson to the people that he was initially talking to, which is, if I have to completely turn my back on you to speak to these other people, that alone is a rebuke, because these people should be mingled in with you. I shouldn’t have to turn my back on you to speak to the other sheep.

They should be in the main flock.

So I just think even the visual part of that, such a fantastic lesson and a rebuke.

[00:26:48] Speaker A: And speaking of the visual aspect, and this is something I’m glad you touched on, what visual aspect is it if one group of people, multitude, is on one side, and he turns his back and another group is on the other side? Now, what does that put Alma in? What position is he in in relation to the multitudes?

[00:27:08] Speaker B: He’s at the center.

[00:27:10] Speaker A: He’s at the center. And how is that different from what we were seeing in Alma, chapter 30, 31? Who was at the center before, and how was the center? And maybe this is a good springboard. Nate, did you want to.

[00:27:23] Speaker B: I think once we get into. I think once we get into the tree, we can get there.

[00:27:28] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough.

I’ll just say. I’ll just say this. If Alma is this emissary of Christ, it does put him at the center. And this idea of having Christ at the center, Alma at the center. I think going to what you’re saying, the visual here, it’s not just powerful in the sense that they should have been among them, they should have had their arms around them, they should have been with the crowd. But also because of this imbalance, you actually have a realignment or the shifting of Alma, or this Christ like figure of Christ being centered in these teachings.

And, boy, what powerful teachings are they? Right? When we get to this tree and faith, and how faith works, and what an apt example. And I think we’re very familiar with, you know, you take this word of God and you plant it and you see if it’s going to grow and if it’s growing and what kind of fruit it produces, and if you taste the fruit and you look at it and say, this is a good fruit, this is a good tree, then you know it’s good. And it’s just kind of this idea that faith is what brings us to a knowledge. And so many times we want to know up front first, we want that security before we take that first step.

But faith is the first step that leads us to the security. We get those steps backwards.

And Alma says something really interesting.

What about those who say that they have tried the gospel or they’ve taken that seed and they’ve planted it and it never turned out anything for them, or they didn’t get anything from it, or it just wasn’t worth it, the tree never produced any fruit. And how does that work in the example? And that’s a kind of a detail that alma points out that I had never really focused on.

And if I can just read this verse 38, but if you neglect the tree and take no thought for its nourishment, behold, it will not get any root. And when the heat and the sun cometh and scorcheth it away, because it hath no root, it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out. Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable, but it is because your ground is barren, and you will not nourish the tree. Therefore, you cannot have the fruit thereof.

And so it’s not. It’s not a fair chance or trying things out if we’re expecting the fruit to take over and do everything for us.

And, yes, a tree eventually will take root, will produce fruit, and will provide us with food, and it will take care of us in the time of its season, but only if we take care of it first.

And there’s a lot of diligence that goes in that. Watering the plant, weeding the plant, tending it, providing it with. With fertilizer, making sure that the freeze doesn’t destroy it, you know, trimming out the branches. There’s just work that goes to taking care of it before it can take care of you. And that’s a process. And I like that Alma calls that out.

[00:30:44] Speaker B: Love it.

I love it.

[00:30:49] Speaker A: Any. Any. Anything you want to go with on this?

[00:30:51] Speaker B: Uh, a man? I just. I think we just got to get into the tree.

[00:30:55] Speaker A: Let’s get into the tree.

[00:30:57] Speaker B: Couple details that I loved that I picked up on this week that. That definitely sent me into some fun places of, you know, looking at different symbolisms and things. But I love that in 41, it tells us the type of tree that we are growing. I think as a kid, you know, we learn the song. Even as a missionary, I think we focus really on what you just spoke to, which I think is fantastic, by the way. I’m not saying this in any sort of a negative way. I think so much of the focus is on the process of growing the tree and not the type of tree that we are supposed to be growing. And I understand why, by the way, because as a missionary, as children, as adults, I’m sure, too, so much of the beauty in this lesson is, how can you have faith if you’re not finding a place that faith can root? And you look at the symbolism of a tree, more or less interchangeably, I think, probably with any other plant.

And again, I’m not saying this in a negative way, but for me, at least when we taught this, it was so much more of like, hey, a seed that grows into something strong. Right? That’s what I’ll say.

But in 41, it tells us the type of tree that we’re growing. Very specifically in 41, I believe it’s 41, it says that we’re growing the tree of life.

And that detail, man, unlocked a lot, dude. It unlocked a lot for me.

[00:32:36] Speaker A: And behold, it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.

[00:32:41] Speaker B: And that’s awesome, dude.

And, I mean, obviously, where that sent me then is, okay, well, where do we first. Where do we first learn about a tree of life?

The Garden of Eden. Right.

So back to kind of where we were at. I found this article. I kind of stumbled upon it.

I have it somewhere on my phone or whatever. I’ll kind of summarize some of it because it’s a really intense article, but it’s awesome. But so much of it talks about the location of where the tree of life was and the idea that maybe the tree of knowledge in the tree of life, it says that they were both in the midst of the garden or in the middle, in the center. Right. And so much of this then just really begin to kind of take shape for me. Even what you just talked about, right, of Alma standing in the center of people, at our hearts, where our hearts are. That’s where, you know, our intentions or our treasures are at the center of our body, at least symbolically, these things. But talks about the tree of life being at the center of the garden and next to it being the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And in this article, it talks about how there has been some different scholars that have suggested that maybe the tree of knowledge was grown in a way that it almost shielded or kind of hid the tree of life. So you almost would have not been maybe able to see it. Or a veil. Right. There’s a veil standing between Adam and Eve and the tree of life. The suggestion, at least in this article, or not, maybe even the suggestion, but the idea is maybe Satan’s plan was a lot more intense than we’re kind of giving it credit for. Because, again, we’ve talked about Satan doesn’t tell Eve necessarily to do something wrong. Big picture, which is you want to become like God. That’s the big picture proposition. Right. Well, what does God also want us to do? Become like God. Oh, okay, cool. We’re starting in theory. These two are then starting out on the same premise to become like God, let’s just say.

And then you go, okay, well, then why on earth would Satan have Eve do something that God also wanted her to do? And we’ve always kind of boiled it down to, and I still think that we’re probably right, but you and I have at least boiled down to, well, he told her to do it as a disobeying of God’s commandment. And that’s basically the depth of where Eve went wrong in this. And this article at least poses a possibility that, no, that’s not even where Satan’s plan was trying to go. The idea was that maybe Satan’s plan was, I want you to partake of this fruit knowing, yes, this is part of God’s plan. That’s fine. But what that does is when you break through that veil, when you can see on the other side, the tree of life, that your natural inclination will be to then want to partake of the fruit of the tree of life, knowing now that you understand good from evil and know, here’s how amazing eternal life could be. The idea is Satan was more just trying to create the.

I guess, the paradox, right? Or the. Or the situation where disobeying of a sin, then partaking of the tree and then frustrating the entire plan of God’s plan, which is, again, a much more diabolical and nefarious, bigger term plan than, hey, I want you to do this just so that you’ll disobey goddess, because that doesn’t really serve a purpose.

Big picture, even for Satan. Whereas Satan foresaw a much more terrifying situation. Therefore, God had to step in and say, no, I’m putting cherubim in the flaming sword in front of this so that if you reach forth your hand, you know, right. It’s better that you get your arm cut off than the universe explodes or whatever. Whatever would have been the fabric of the universe falls apart.

And that, again, the idea of the tree of life or what it is that then we’re growing within us also is, okay, cool, back to the tree of life. What is our center then? Where is the tree growing with us is the idea that the tree of knowledge, being a veil is something, by the way, that we all have to kind of pass through as the other veils that we talk about. Right? We came into this life also becoming innocent like a child. Right? We came into this life needing to learn good from evil. Luckily, we have a savior that is willing to do, you know, to.

Was willing to pay the price for our sins. We can then. We can then return back to the fold.

Basically, where I wanted to get to with this is the beauty of all of the symbolism in the tree of life lands in third Nephi, where it also talks about the Christ coming and visiting the people in the Americas after his resurrection. And then you look at the symbolism of that, right? Christ in the center, or the tree of life, because that’s what we believe. We’ve talked about this, too, even, right, the menorah, so many things, even a tree itself being a representation of not only Christ, but the cross that he was lifted up on. We’ve already gone through all that. I don’t want to just rehash that to death. But in third Nephi, you have Christ then, standing in the midst of the people, and who does he surround himself with?

Little children, right? But it’s like Christ came and pierced that veil. Christ came and removed that separation so that.

So that the innocent could return immediately to him, could come and partake of that fruit, right, where Adam and Eve. Where Adam and Eve were then cut off from that fruit of the tree of life for their own good, right? For the good of humanity.

Christ came to pay that price so that we can all in. I mean, even in our temple ceremonies, right, we can all symbolically return to the tree of life or to the Garden of Eden. I. To do what? Well, now is the time that we get to return to the garden of Eden to partake of that fruit that Adam and Eve couldn’t, because Christ came. Because Christ came and did that for us. And then again, let me. I’ll just finish the thought and then turn it back to you. But what I love is that there’s this idea of what we are growing within us should be what should be a tree of life from inside, too, because, like we just talked about, what does that tree represent? Christ.

And what are the fruits? What are the fruits of that? What are we told what the fruits of the spirit are?

We’re taught what charity is. We’re taught what love is. We’re taught compassion. All these things. These are all the fruits that we’re told are the fruits of the spirit within each of us. I mean, each week we have the opportunity to partake of the sacrament and to make those covenants associated with the sacrament, to eventually. What? To become one with God.

It’s. Once we look at Alma 32, I think, with the perspective of what the faith is that we’re planting within our hearts should spring forth into us becoming Christ, to us becoming one with him. For Christ to be so deeply embedded in our center, in our hearts, in our core, that our actions, that our thoughts, that all of these things naturally are the fruits of that tree of life. And again, also in third Nephi, Christ says as much. When he says, I give unto you to be the salt of the earth and saviors of Mendez, he puts that charge on us as well, that as we become more like him, it’s as disciples of Christ. It’s part of our charge to save our neighbor, to serve, to save, to be saviors of men, to be the salt of the earth or the thing that hopefully preserves the earth.

I look at that seed and that idea of faith. It’s so much more than just the process of growing a tree. It’s really. It’s really the process of growing the tree with a capital t h e. Right.

[00:41:50] Speaker A: It’s the process, or even arguably, becoming the tree.

[00:41:53] Speaker B: Becoming the tree. Have that tree. Yes.

Faith, as you’ve said so many times and has stuck with me, is such an action word.

It’s not just a belief. It’s not just a hope.

It is. Do our actions reflect, or in this case, what is the fruit of that tree?

Is it something to just look at? Because, by the way, that’s not how you tell if a tree has good fruit or not. It’s not by looking at it. It’s by taking a bite. That’s how you know if the fruit’s good or nothing. And if truly the.

Yes, this is more just about. Or this isn’t just about faith, but more just. What does your faith make you become?

How has it changed you from your core out? So, anyways, that scripture really jumped out at me and just sent me off onto a different place. But, man, it really hit home for me this weekend.

[00:42:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s amazing.

I’m so glad you shared that. There’s a lot of things in there that I actually don’t mind going back and trying to reiterate.

[00:43:03] Speaker B: Well, no, I don’t want to say I lost over this. I know, I know. I just went to, like, 1300 miles an hour there. So please go back and dissect it or correct it as needed as well.

[00:43:14] Speaker A: No, no, I. I loved what you’re saying, and I love the idea that when you’re centered on Christ as opposed to being centered on ourselves, and with that tree growing in us, that becomes our new core, our new center, our new heart, that’s the midst of us. Right? That hebrew word, it means the midst, the core, the heart of us.

And just to contrast that with what we saw in Ramyampton, and this is something you pointed out to me as you were making your observations, is that Ramyampton was a tower, not built at the front of the building, but built at the center of the building. And it only allowed one person to get up to the top of that tower. And so who is the center at that point?

And when you’re up there expressing how great you are or how great things and how great you have it, then, then are you not making yourself the center? And is that not what deviated Eve, for example, when he’s saying, like, hey, this is how God’s did it. And, yeah, God wants you to be like him, but don’t you want to what, what are your desire and, like, trying to put. And really, it’s, it’s just that subtle. And this is something, Nate, that you’ve really been pushing and teaching me through when you talk about the two great commandments and the first being to love God, and the second to love our neighbor. And, and sometimes when it goes down to the first and says, love God, it says, don’t thou shalt not have no other gods before me. And that God that most often, I think, we put before goddess is ourselves.

When we find ourselves at the center of that building and we’re trying to grow our own fruit, we find it’s just missing.

But when we can try to put Christ at the center and try to nourish his words and give room for his words and have faith, and like you say, that action of building that and whatever to where he comes alive within us. And I love that you pointed that out. I mean, verse 42 says it quite, quite clear, right? 41. And behold, it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And what kind of tree, whose fruit thereof gives you everlasting life? It is the tree of life in 42. And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word and nourishing it, that it may take root in you. Behold, by and by, you shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious. And is not how lehi and Nephi describes this, the tree of life, vision, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet and which is white above all that is white, yea, impure, above all that is pure. And you shall feast upon this fruit even until you are filled, that ye hunger not. And then get this, neither shall ye thirst. And this reminds me of Christ at the. With the woman at the well when she’s trying to get the water out. And he says, I have water that if you drink of, you will never thirst again. And what is that that he’s referring to?

And I think what it can all boil down to is not the need to try to change God into us, to try to fit God into what we want him to be, to try to change God into whatever justification or context in order to make life better for us. But how do we fit ourselves into what God wants us to be? How do we fit ourselves to where our will is aligned with his, to give room to take care of that, that all of a sudden, he does see his image in our countenance, because we are like him, and that tree is with us, and we are that tree. And if we’re the tree of life, well, Christ is the tree of life. And I know you said you didn’t want to kind of go through that, but I think real quickly we can just maybe highlight the significance of Christ being the tree of life.

When you talk about the menorah, it’s described as that tree. And it’s in revelation, chapter one, when it says, I am Alpha and Omega, and I have come to take care of the sins of the world. And there’s no confusion about who’s talking. And John turns to see the voice, and he sees the menorah and this tree of life, and he makes that connection.

And Nephi, when he says, I desire to know the meaning of the tree of life that my father saw. And the angel says, behold, and the angel’s gone. And he looks and he sees not the tree, but Christ being born.

And he says, now do you understand what the tree signifies? And, yes, it’s the love of God, for God so loved the world that he sent his son. This is the tree and the fruit of that tree. The fruit of Christ’s life was resurrection, atonement, being brought back into the presence of Goddesse.

And he is that tree. And if we can have that tree in us and grow in us to where we become that tree, are we not becoming like Christ?

Is that not the purpose of the sacrament?

So those.

[00:48:15] Speaker B: I mean, those are kind of the fruit. I do want to just highlight something, too. I do love, and I wish we had brought this up when we were talking about ramyamtum, but I.

But look at the way that that. Look at the way that that synagogue is set up and look at what we’ve been talking about with the garden of Eden and kind of physically the structure, right? You have this garden up on top of a mountain, and in the center of that is eternal life, right? The tree of life. And then again, this article brought it up. But you look at the ark, you look at the way that the ark is set up, and it’s almost. It’s almost in the same temple structure, right? On the outlandish, in the courtyard, you have kind of the lower animals, and then whatever the second level or whatever it is, you have the birds and such. And then what is kind of, again, at the center, on the highest level, is you have man and his family. And we talked about, again, the different windows or potential sources of light that could come into this ark. Something we talked about in the class was that we didn’t really.

We didn’t really mean to go there, but we’re like, it also would have been really scary to be on that ark and have just outside dead bodies just bumping up against it. And you’re like, I know, but there’s a symbolism in that, too, though, right? It’s like outside of the ark or outside of the protection of that ancient temple, let’s just say, or sacred structure. What do you have? Is you have death. You actually have turmoil and destruction and death.

And what did Adam and Eve find when they got kicked out of the garden? They found thorns. They found dirt that had to be tilled. They found death, by the way, too, when they had to leave the top of the mountain. They also eventually knew they were going to have to die. And look at what the world becomes. The idea that even the temple is a sanctuary kind of hit home. It talked a lot about Moses, speaking of the menorah, Moses seeing the burning tree. Right. The burning bush up on top of Mount Sinai, slightly down the mountain from him was what, another circle. Right. Of the priests. I think Aaron maybe was probably part of that crew. Right, and the priests. And then what was down below that? You have kind of the rest of the children of the covenant. And what do you have outside of that? A wake of death and destruction, by the way, as the children, I’m just saying it’s like you see a world outside of that. That’s death.

That’s not goodness.

And again, this brought it back to. Or look at the ancient temple. Yes, but look at the ancient temple, too. You and I went and did security service. Remember when we went and we were security guards for the. For, like the ancient. The ancient temple tabernacle. Yeah.

[00:51:07] Speaker A: In the stake center.

[00:51:08] Speaker B: But you’ve talked about how that’s set up right? Is you have a courtyard where everybody can come in to bring their sacrifices to the priest. And then what’s within the center of that? You have the holy place. Am I correct about that? Is that what’s next when you get.

[00:51:23] Speaker A: To the temple itself?

[00:51:24] Speaker B: Yes. So, so you have the courtyard, the outer courtyard, and then you have a.

[00:51:28] Speaker A: Courtyard of the Gentiles, and then the courtyard of the women, the court of the Israelites, the court of the priests. And then you get to the temple and you pass through the veil into the holy place. You pass through the veil to the.

[00:51:37] Speaker B: Holy place, the holy of Holies. And what’s at the center of that, right, is the ark of the covenant and the commandments and whatever. And you’ve brought this up. But again, correct me if I’m wrong here, but as I’ve been going through this, who is allowed into the holy of holies? Isn’t it just one person?

[00:51:53] Speaker A: The high priest?

[00:51:54] Speaker B: And it’s only, what, once a year?

[00:51:55] Speaker A: Once a year on the day of atonement?

[00:51:57] Speaker B: Okay, now go back and look at Ramyamtum. What a disgusting, like, mockery of the ancient synagogue, right? Is that in the center of a synagogue, instead of having the holy of holies, what do you have? Instead of it? You have a fake tower. You have a fake mountain. That’s only purpose is served to do what? Is to show everybody the one person that can be on top of it and how righteous they are and how much. And how, and how they’re so fake humble that they want to show the world how great they are and how humble they are. It’s like it’s almost the, it’s almost the exact opposite in mockery of what a holy of holies should be, of what the center of that temple should be.

[00:52:42] Speaker A: But the irony is it’s almost the same. Just like Satan, right? Because isn’t that tower that you’re going up, that mountain that you’re climbing, the ram emptam tower? Isn’t that meant to exalt manda? You’re walking up to the top just as much as God’s holy of holies is to exalt men. Do you want to be like God? Do you want to be exalted? Isn’t that the same thing that Satan offers?

[00:53:01] Speaker B: That’s exactly.

[00:53:02] Speaker A: It’s a cheap imitation. It’s an interesting imitation.

[00:53:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but it’s disgusting when you actually, like, think about it, because you’re just like, my goodness, like, that’s not, that’s not how, that’s not how God built his temple. That’s not how God officiated in his temple. Yes. One person was allowed to go into the holiest of holies, and you’ve said it before that you had to, like, tie a rope to the duke in case he died.

[00:53:24] Speaker A: So.

[00:53:24] Speaker B: Joke.

[00:53:24] Speaker A: Right?

[00:53:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So you could drag him out. Right.

[00:53:28] Speaker A: If he wasn’t holy, he had to fish him back out somehow.

[00:53:30] Speaker B: Cause you couldn’t go in.

[00:53:31] Speaker A: I do.

[00:53:32] Speaker B: That’s right. Anyways, that’s.

It was the Ramyamtom thing that I was like, dang it. We kind of missed an opportunity to talk about how even.

But like you said, ramyamtum is. What’s at the center is me, not. Not the right. You go to Ramyamtum to. To exalt yourself as if you can.

Anyways, all right, we can keep going.

[00:53:56] Speaker A: And. And, you know, I think it’s something we’ve got to be careful with even today, as long as we’re on the topic of Ramyamptom. And I’m just saying this. I mean, you’ve got Alma and the missionaries coming in as outsiders, and this looks to them horrific. Like, here we are. Thank goodness that we’re saved and everyone else isn’t.

I think our fast and testimony meetings, we’ve got to be careful. We do have visitors coming in from time to time to see what it’s about, what are we doing and how are we worshiping?

And we have an opportunity to walk up to the front one at a time and to share a testimony and to testify of Christ. But sometimes we get so caught up in the moment that we tend to make it more about ourselves. Or at least that’s something that we need to be careful that we’re not taking that moment to try to make it about ourselves and what we’re doing and what we’re experiencing. But how do I testify of Christ? How do I not exalt myself? But how do I exalt Christ in the process? And, you know, it’s tricky.

[00:55:02] Speaker B: Well, it’s tricky because I think, you know, my feeling on open mic Sunday as a whole, I think maybe some of my biggest beef with is it is. It does feel like a missed opportunity in so many cases. And I remember bringing, bringing investigators to fast and testimony meeting was always kind of like a crapshoot a little bit.

[00:55:26] Speaker A: Because you might be some of the best meetings.

[00:55:28] Speaker B: And that’s. And that’s what it was, is. That’s what it was, is that some of the meetings, you really felt. You really felt that we all kind of got it, which is this is our opportunity to testify of the things that we’re told to have a testimony of. And again, some of those meetings were so good. And you’re like, man, I’m so glad I was able to bring an investigator to this so that they could see, oh, these guys are christian number one.

These people are very much devoted to the idea of, you know, basing their life off of Christ and his teachings. Oh, they’re testifying of a restoration of these things. So I know where to go to find this information on the earth. Right? And you’re just like, sweet. And then some meetings, you just have to be like, hey, man, can you just completely forget everything that you just heard? Like, I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry that this is the one I brought you to. And so maybe, maybe it’s, maybe that’s where a lot of my likeness comes from. A little bit is because it’s just like, what an opportunity that I feel like it’s missed so much, so many of the times that we do it.

[00:56:39] Speaker A: But because I know we’ve all sat in meetings that have just inspired us, that we’ve just felt that and you know, it, and you’re strengthened because of it. And we’ve all sat in meetings where at the same time, just some things can be a little off putting. Especially you got some, some people coming in to see what’s going on and, and even the imitation that we were talking about between, you know, the high priest going in the holy of holies and one person going up on the Ramyhampton or Satan offering, this is how you be like God versus God, saying, I want you to be like me.

And sometimes even simple as I know this church is true. I mean, it is a true church. But looking at some of the things that they’re saying when they’re saying, thank goodness that God has saved us and not anybody else, and, and I’m not saying we should never testify that I think I said it all wrong. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to say that the church is true. I hundred percent believe that we should testify that the church is true. But sometimes how we do it, it’s just that close of an imitation between the church is true versus God has saved me and not you. And maybe the difference being is just the focus in am I centered on myself and how grateful I am that I am better than everyone else because of this, or am I focused in the christ? And humbly, I am so grateful that he has provided me with this opportunity to find salvation, and I want to share it with everyone. And it is hard. And I don’t want to be critical on that front. I just want to remind people that there’s power there and an opportunity, and we need to approach it in the right way, with the right spirit and be humble so that we don’t come across as Ramy antim doing the same thing. Because sometimes that line is very thin.

[00:58:29] Speaker B: If I said that totally, we just, we saw kind of the perfect illustration of this. Even a few weeks back when Ammon and his brothers are getting together and expressing joy and gratitude. And they were, for whatever’s worth, they were keeping themselves in check as well, which is just like, hey, let’s be careful not to become something that we’re not. And I think that ammon kind of laid it out perfectly, which is just like, hey, I’m not rejoicing in myself. I’m rejoicing at how happy this makes me. I’m rejoicing in the salvation that I have. I’m rejoicing in the salvation that we’ve been able to share with others. And I think that you’re right. That’s totally appropriate. And it is sometimes a bit of a fine line.

Anyways. All right, we can keep going.

[00:59:14] Speaker A: All right, I’m going to move on. I’m going to talk about how we nourish that tree, because I think that’s what comes next as we dive into chapter 33. And even a little bit later on, as we get into 34, they quote the prophets Zenas and zenith, which we don’t have the original words from. But thank goodness that somebody saw value in there and dragged it out, even if we don’t have the context, the idea that we can pray to always.

And I think this is a big question. In fact, I like these chapters because they address some pretty heavy hitting questions, I think one of which is they’re asking Alma, what do we do now? Because we don’t have a church that we can attend. And Alma’s quoting Zenas and zenith and saying, do you have to be at church to worship God? And I don’t want this to be an excuse of I don’t ever need to go to church again because I can worship God in the mountains, or I can worship God at the lake, or I can worship God in my own, in my own way. Right? Because again, who are we putting at the center? If the reason why I’m out in the mountains or out at the lake or out of the whatever is because I’m trying to satisfy my own desires, my own. And Satan’s providing me with that fruit to the context that I need the push to just do my will anyways, then, then I’ve shifted that, that focus. What Alma’s addressing here are people that aren’t even allowed into the church. And until you can, don’t give up. Look at his father, Alma. When they weren’t allowed to pray at all, did that cut them off from the presence of God? And don’t let yourself be cut off from the presence of God. Even if you can’t attend the church or the temple as much as you would like. How do you maintain that connection to God when you don’t have access to it? And there’s been all sorts of times throughout history when people lose access to the temple or lose access to the church. We lost connection Covid globally with some things, and yet we still found a way to maintain that connection. And I think those words are powerful here.

Don’t wait till you’re in church to worship.

The church is critical for the structure, for the organization, for the priesthood, the ability to administer ordinances and that authority to administer saving ordinances and bring us into the presence of goddess. But it cannot replace the personal connection that needs to be ongoing with or without the church. And that’s where Alma brings in these words from zenas and zenith. And Alma comes back and amulet comes back and reinforces these pray always.

The building of that tree, the nurturing of that tree comes in, maintaining a close spiritual relationship with God. That’s how we nourish the seed. If we stop praying, if we stop seeking the spirit and having revelation, then that tree is going to wither and die. And it’s not because the tree was bad, it’s because we didn’t take care of it when we had the chance.

Don’t stop praying.

[01:02:06] Speaker B: Love it. Don’t stop believing.

[01:02:09] Speaker A: Don’t stop.

The other crucial one that I think amulek hits on the head is actually 30 411.

Now, there is not any man that can sacrifice his own blood which will atone for the sins of another.

Now, if a man murdereth, behold, will our law, which is just take away the life of his brother. I say unto you, nay, and to me that’s one of the greatest paradoxes or one of the greatest, I don’t know, issues maybe that someone can look at Christianity and identify it as potentially its greatest flaw is how can God, who was all powerful and all loving and all whatever, justify the wicked because of the death of a righteous person?

And what family does that ever make sense if all of us brothers are out doing crazy, weird things and say the youngest son, the Joseph of the story of Jacob and his twelve sons, right? If his death, which by the way, is a type of Christ, right, did his death not save all of his brothers, him going into Egypt did not physically save them after all, but at the same time, is it fair that his life was stolen or taken away to make it right for everyone else? And can you count everyone else as righteous simply because one person died for them?

That’s a critical issue.

And amulet tries to explain it away and say, no man can pay for the sins of another.

But then he says, but God can. And that’s why it had to be a God that sacrificed himself, because only God can pay for the sins of the other. And I’m okay with that. I’m seeing that. But in my mind, it doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse.

So you’re saying an innocent person can’t die for me because that would be wrong. I don’t think anyone, I don’t think if I go and murder somebody and then I go to court and I’m convicted and everyone says, yeah, he’s definitely guilty, then some innocent person like my poor wife, who maybe had nothing to do with it, says, you know what? I’ll pay. I’ll pay for it. Execute me and we’ll call it good. I don’t think any court is going to let me go out and run around and risk the chance of me murdering someone else because someone who had no guilt in this is now dead. That doesn’t, doesn’t meet the demands of justice. And so Amulek saying, well, it does in this case because it was a God, in my mind, that’s saying, well, it does because this person wasn’t only righteous, he was super righteous. You’re like, wait a second, doesn’t that make it even worse? Like I killed a God over making me, like, making the person even better, that dies for me doesn’t seem to justify my wickedness anymore, does it?

[01:04:57] Speaker B: Correct.

[01:04:58] Speaker A: So. So for me, amulethemental addresses this problem head on, takes the bulls by the horn, but I don’t find satisfaction in his answer.

And I think it’s a legitimate question and it’s one that I’ve wrestled with, and I think it’s one that Christianity has to wrestle with. If we’re christians, how do we feel comfortable Christ paying our sins?

And when you talk about him being in Gethsemane and how many drops of blood did he shed for me and Mel Gibson. When he makes the passion of Christ, doesn’t he film his own hands driving the nails through Christ because he wanted to show that he had a role to play in Christ dying? Like, he’s also culpable for killing Christ because he died for his sins?

And how does that inspire me to be better? Knowing that an innocent person had to die for me and that I’m killing God. And in my mind, that breaks my heart even more.

I’ve always been taught to own up for my own sins or to confess up for my own mistakes. If I did something. It’s not fair to make my sister punished or my brother punished. I have to say I did that and do whatever I can to make it right. So how come I can’t pay for my own sins? How come my suffering gets heaped on even more to the suffering of Christ? And why is that fair? And how is God fair for letting an innocent person die and suffer and not allowing us all to carry that same weight?

And any. Any thoughts on that, Nate?

[01:06:26] Speaker B: I’m just going to say something. You did say something that I think needs to be said, though, is you said, knowing that this person was not only innocent, but super innocent breaks my heart even more. I’m like, I think that’s the purpose. I think that’s the point, bro.

I think you just said it. I think that’s the answer.

I think that that’s the. That’s where we’re trying to get with this. Is that, yes, it should break your heart even more. And isn’t that what Christ asks us to have? Isn’t that what Christ asked in return? He says, I did this, and what do I want back from you? A broken heart and a contrite spirit.

[01:07:07] Speaker A: Isn’t that Alma turning his back on the people?

I mean, is that meant to break their hearts a little bit and maybe get them to humble themselves or change? Or. I mean, isn’t that the whole purpose of the atonement? To inspire change?

[01:07:22] Speaker B: I think the.

Because what does change inevitably lead us to do?

Feed other people, serve other people. I guess the point is, the better we become, it can only be done by breaking us down, breaking that muscle down, maybe breaking that soil for the seed to be planted. I mean, that’s the cleaving, it’s the separation. It all comes back to the same thing.

Listening to you describe it made clear for me what that answer would be for me. But I don’t know. I mean, maybe that’s. Maybe you have a different perspective on that. But I think that to me, that’s kind of the obvious place, is that it had to be the most innocent person.

It had to be the super righteous person, because it should hurt knowing that we contributed to that. And hopefully, that’s the thing that inspires us to become better.

It’s why I think that during the sacrament, we have such an opportunity that sometimes missed. And I’m saying me, myself here, is that we maybe don’t put a lot of focus on the crucial part of that ordinance, which is the breaking of the bread.

Like, you have to have somebody up there tearing a body to shreds.

And that should inspire us to think, well, what does that represent?

Does that represent a whip? Does that represent a crown of thorns?

Does that represent nails and a spear while that’s happening for us, or while those young men are up there doing that?

Because that’s what. That’s what it symbolizes.

And it’s dark.

But the covenant, the ordinance, is dark. Like it’s heavy.

It should be heartbreaking.

And each week we have the opportunity to participate in that.

Do we take the opportunity to think of how violent Christ’s atonement was?

Because when we do. You just described it.

It breaks my heart even more as it’s supposed to.

That’s the point of it. Man.

[01:09:50] Speaker A: Well washed white in his blood. I mean, even the temple you look at, you’ve mentioned the death and destruction that sits outside of it. But literally outside the temple is where you were sacrificing and killing animals.

And the high priest didn’t walk into the holy of holies and clean white clothes. He walked into the holy of holies in blood stained red from the sacrifice that he offered and from the blood, by the way, he was carrying into the holy of holies to put on the ark of the Covenant.

He was washed clean, literally, through the blood of the lamb. That blood, which usually defiles, sanctified him so that he could enter into the holy of holies. It was because of the blood that he was cleaned. It was because of the blood of Christ that we were made clean.

It’s an interesting concept. And I think the atonement is so complex, so multifaceted, yet at the same time so plain and so clear and so easy. It’s just even within itself, it’s a paradox that way.

It’s something as broad as the universe to cover everybody and yet so intimate to speak to my heart, to inspire change and the one. But to save a nation as a whole or the earth and resurrect everybody.

It’s a lot of different things. And thinking about some of these questions, I think, helps us to see it from different angles, from different perspectives.

And when I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about Amulek’s question now, how is it that one man innocent can die and pay the sins for someone that was guilty? I started thinking about that a little bit.

And when we are baptized, we take upon us the name of Christ, right?

And when we perform the covenants in the sacrament, we’re taking his body on us, his blood, we’re taking his name upon us, we’re taking his spirit with us. We’re promising to act like him, to behave like him. We’re essentially trying to be like him. And he says, when the shepherd calls, I will call you by my name.

And if you respond to my name, then you’re going to be saved. If you respond by any other name, then you’re not mine.

And as I think about that, it made me think of the atonement maybe slightly differently, and maybe I’m a little skew on this, but Christ didn’t die so that Jason could be saved. Christ died so that Christ could be saved. He is the way, he is the door. He is the only one that has paid that price that is qualified, that through his merits, can get into heaven. And if I want to get into heaven, it’s not on my path, it’s not on my road, it’s not on my deal. It’s through him. He’s almost created a tunnel or a passage or a way that through him, I can be saved.

And so I change my behavior, I change who I am. And some of that impact, like you say, of thinking about him, innocence, suffering, and going through what he could to try to save me, helps me become closer to him, to relate with him, that he has empathy on me. He became like me so I could become like him. And as I plant that tree, as we were talking, and that tree starts to grow in me, and as I reach out to try to save others, I find that I have become the tree of life. That I have become like Christ. That I have found salvation not of my own merits, because I am saved, but because in essence, I have become like Christ.

That really he was the only one saved in the end anyways.

And therefore, no man comes to the father except through him. And through him we find salvation. And through him we find our independence. We find who we are. We find rebirth, but only by becoming like him. And through the way that he is opened, that only through him we can be saved, if that makes any sense.

[01:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it’s.

Yeah. That leads down a whole other discussion like that we’ve had in the past about the coverings, about Jacob and Esau, the whole thing. But yes, I’m with you.

Cool. Anything else we want to hit on?

[01:14:16] Speaker A: Ah, boy. I think we’ve probably, I think we’ve probably covered a lot of what we needed to cover it. I mean, this was a lot of faith, a lot of atonement, a lot of, a lot of powerful verses.

[01:14:29] Speaker B: Okay, well, let’s, let’s wrap it up. We are, we’re definitely, definitely putting a long one today. So we can, we can cut it short. Shorter.

Appreciate everybody listening, appreciate everybody being willing to share this with their friends and their family. Thankful for the questions and comments that we get. Please continue to send them.

You can get ahold of us at the email address. High deep dive.com.

yeah.

Let us know what’s going on.

That’s all we’ve got for this week. So until next week.

[01:15:04] Speaker A: See ya.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective.

I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here with our friend and this shows producer Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:31] Speaker B: What’s up, buddy?

[00:00:32] Speaker A: Dude, Nate. Just living the dream. How you doing?

[00:00:36] Speaker B: Doing good, man.

Doing good. Just staying busy.

Got a, you know, Spain winning World Cups or whatever those things are. Championships. All the euros, Euro championships.

[00:00:52] Speaker A: We got pretty impressive.

[00:00:54] Speaker B: We got presidential candidates barely dodging bullets.

[00:00:57] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.

[00:00:58] Speaker B: We got. We’ve had. We’ve had a lot go down over the past week.

[00:01:02] Speaker A: It’s been an exciting weekend.

[00:01:05] Speaker B: A lot going on.

[00:01:07] Speaker A: A lot going on.

[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Man, was Spain all a ruckus after the big win?

[00:01:16] Speaker A: Dude, not only after the win. After every goal. You knew it didn’t matter what you were doing. You knew when Spain scored, because that’s when the fireworks were going off and horns were honking and people were shouting. It was just pandemonium. It was awesome.

And then just at the end of the game, even more so. Right?

[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yelling, screaming, happy rejoicing.

It was cool because they set up, like, these big screen tvs in parks. They’re nothing. I shouldn’t call them that. Projectors.

[00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:01:46] Speaker A: And then just bring in, like, thousands of seats, and people are sitting there standing, watching the game. Just big community event.

[00:01:55] Speaker B: It’s awesome.

[00:01:56] Speaker A: Fun times.

[00:01:57] Speaker B: Fun times. Congratulations.

[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:03] Speaker B: I give you the credit for all of this.

[00:02:09] Speaker A: I wish I could say I was a spaniard, and it was my country that did it. Our. Our poor country. It was a sad elimination to.

It was a sad loss to Panama that set us on the wrong road, but, yeah, that was maybe one day down the road.

[00:02:22] Speaker B: I was watching. Yeah, right. All right, what do we talk?

[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Next year, world’s cup coming to us. We’re hoping for a better showing.

[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah, right.

What are we talking about tonight?

[00:02:35] Speaker A: You know, I was kind of surprised. I was just kind of plowing through Alma in my readings, and I thought, at some point, I better check to come follow me and see how far I need to read. And it was only 30 and 31, and I’d, like, been reading way too far in there because usually you have to cover, like, six or seven chapters worth of the Book of Mormon. And I’m like, wait a minute, 30 and 31? That feels a little bit limiting here. Feels like we’re just talking about really Korahor is what it kind of boils down to. But no, it’ll be good. We’re covering Alma chapters 30 and 31. And speaking of putting together your dream teams and having them represent the nation here, Alma puts together what might be considered the most potent missionary army of all of scripturedom. Right. To borrow a word that we created a while back, you’ve got ammon and omni and Himni and Emir, whatever. You’ve got Alma the younger, you’ve got Amulek, and you’ve got this group of missionaries that are going into Amulon to try to teach them the gospel. I don’t know. It’s kind of cool how they pull those guys together and they’re all united on going in there. At the same time, you have to wonder, do these guys have a family? Like, what’s going on?

How do you take so much time away from your home and your families to just go and pick up, pack up and leave? Different times, I guess.

And they did have families and they did still try to support themselves, and we know they did. When Alma’s coming back and talking to his kids, right. He leaves Gila men at home and takes his two younger kids with him. And we kind of get some of those excellent chapters later on when he starts talking about their successes, their failures, and what they can do to improve and leaves them with some wisdom before he goes. So sometimes we don’t see a lot about the family or hear a lot about the family because we’re focusing on what they’re doing. But. But these guys did have families, took care of them, and lives outside of just what’s written there in the scriptures.

[00:04:49] Speaker B: Awesome.

[00:04:50] Speaker A: So let’s start, I guess.

I guess let’s start with Korahor.

[00:04:56] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:04:57] Speaker A: And Korahor, his big thing to me is coming in and saying, you can’t say conclusively about things that are going to happen down the road. There’s no such thing as prophecy.

And so he says, you can’t say that there will be a Christ. You can’t say that he will come and pay the price of their sins. So therefore, if you can’t know of these things that are going to happen down the road, and you’re saying that they’re going to happen, then you’re wrong. You’re lying. You’re making things up to try to subjugate the people and get them to follow you and get them to listen to you. You’re lying in order to get control and to get gain.

And the interesting thing to me about his argument is if he’s saying, you can’t know of a surety of things that are going to happen.

Isn’t he saying that he knows of a surety that there won’t be a Christ?

Isn’t he also saying of a surety what will or will not happen down the road?

And so he’s kind of catching himself, I think, in his own argument, in a circular argument, by saying that that’s not going to happen.

I don’t know. That’s something that’s kind of been weird to me.

And I see that there’s a difference in him. The fallacy is, if you can’t know that something’s going to happen down the road, and you say that something will happen down the road, therefore you’re lying. And so for him, it’s an easy thing to say the church isn’t true. And he’s not trying to look at what’s going to happen or what won’t happen down the road, really. He’s just trying to find a credible reason to prove that the church is not true, to get people to turn away from the church. That’s, that’s his whole argument.

And as he’s going around teaching this and trying to pull people away from the church, and he’s teaching, he’s causing quite the stir to the point where they’re actually bringing him to the chief judges and asking him what, what should they do about it? And, and he goes into the land of Jershon. And maybe it’s worth even mentioning right here. In Hebrew, the word Jershon means inheritance.

And so when they’re looking for a place of inheritance to give to the anti Nephi lehis, they give him a land literally named inheritance or the place where they can inherit. So for what it’s worth, just an interesting little tidbit, but when he shows up in the land of Jerushan and he’s teaching them, they take him to Ammon.

And Ammon really just sends them out of the land, like, we’re not going to put up with this. And he keeps getting brought up to these chief judges until finally they take him to Alma, and Alma’s going to have this conversation with them. And that’s where we get this, this wonderful insight into these scriptures, into what’s going on.

When Korahor is saying these things about how they’re trying to, the church is trying to subject the people and take advantage of them by teaching them things that are going to happen, that they can’t know of, a surety that are ever going to happen, therefore, they’re wrong.

He’s also saying that as priests, they’re taking advantage of the people, not just in lying to them and trying to enslave them into following them in their church. But he says the whole reason that they’re doing it is so that the people can support the priests and that it is the people that are supporting the priests.

In one sense, you can kind of get that with the law of Moses.

Aren’t the people supposed to bring the sacrifices to the temple, to the priests and offer the sacrifice? And the priests are supposed to be eating these meals on behalf of the people and representative also with God in this communal meal that they’re supposed to be eating, that they are in some sense being supported by the sacrifices of the people that are bringing these offerings to the temple or bringing these offerings to the priests. And so in some sense you can, you can see where that might get distorted or where he might be coming from.

But Korahor saying these priests are relying 100% not only that, but they’re getting wealthy and getting fat and getting rich off of the richness of the people almost to the extent of like what we saw with Noah back in the land of Limhi, that they’re, they’re taxing the people, that they’re having to bring all the money and all the offerings in.

And that’s kind of an interesting argument too. I think even in today’s world at the church we do bring them tithing. We do bring fast offerings. And I think there’s a lot of people making similar arguments today that, oh, the church is just such a wealthy church and it’s getting fat off of the backs of the members and the poor members are being forced to bring all of this in.

And Alma, in trying to defend his position with Korahor, says something rather interesting. He says, you know, personally that we’re not getting wealthy off of this, you know, for yourself. And, and when he says that, he’s kind of coming at this angle of saying Korahor has firsthand knowledge. He’s like I, first he defends himself. I haven’t had, and the priest, we haven’t been getting wealthy off of this. We don’t take of their money. We sustain ourselves. We work for ourselves, we work for our own support, we take care of our own families, we provide for our needs. They’re following after the example of Mosiah. But then when he says, and you of yourself know this, how does he know that firsthand and the only way, well, I shouldn’t say the only way, but the way that makes the most sense to me is if Korahor himself was a priest at one point in time, then he would have that firsthand knowledge that the priests are not taking financial support from the people to get rich. Otherwise, how else would you know that? How do you have that inside look at the workings of it is, and Alma’s not even saying, you have to take my word for it. He’s saying that Korahor has that. And I think that makes Korahor’s position all the more interesting, because Korahor, if he knew for himself that they weren’t doing it, then why is he telling the people? And he’s intentionally telling the people something that he knows not to be true, to try to discredit or turn them away from the church. And again, you start to see revealed the real intentions here. Korahor is in this ReallY to try to tear down or pull apart the church.

And he’s in it willingly, saying things that he knows is not true. And I think that’s where it gets a little bit dangerous with him.

Some of the things that, for example, looking at one of his main arguments, you cannot say that there will be a Christ.

And he kind of backs himself into this corner a few times. At first he says there is no God.

And Alma says, you saying that there is no God? And he’ll back up and say, no, I’m not saying that there is no God. I’m saying that you cannot know that there is a God because there’s no such thing as prophecy. There’s no way you can see down the road things that are going to happen.

And if that’s what his argument is based off of, then, then if we were presenting this, for example, in a criminal court and looking at this case, let’s take a look at the evidence in the bEginning, Lehi, and where this whole family begins prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem.

And they takes his family and he departs and he leaves, and they go across the sea. And if that was the end of it, then you could argue, maybe Lehi was right, maybe Lehi was wrong. But the Nephites come across the people in Zarahemla. Mulek is the son of the king, and they witnessed firsthand the destruction of Jerusalem and that Lehi’s words were fulfilled. So if you’re saying there is no such thing as prophecy and you can’t know of things that are going to happen down the road, then how do you square up?

Lehi’s prophesying that Jerusalem would be destroyed beforehand, them leaving Jerusalem, and then all of a sudden having this happen and seeing that was fulfilled.

If you don’t believe that there’s prophecy, then how do you square Isaiah prophesying what was going to happen with Assyria? And then Isaiah prophesying that Jerusalem would not be destroyed, even though it was laid under siege and it was delivered without a single arrow being fired over the wall, just like he said. And then how do you square up again the prophecy of the destruction of Babylon, that the people are going to come back from Babylon. And so you start to have all of these instances in the scriptures, and I think this is the purpose. God says, come, let us reason together as one man with another. I will show you what I’m going to do from the beginning. Lest you say we did it by our own hands, so that you understand that I did it. So the Lord is trying to help us establish faith in his promise that he made to Adam, in his promise that he made to Abraham, that he himself would come to earth and pay the price for our sins. And so we didn’t have an argument like Korahor and say we can’t know of things that are going to happen down the road. The Lord gives us examples of prophecy to help his people believe when they see those things fulfilled, that they can’t say. There’s no way of knowing. It’s an interesting teaching, but there’s no way of knowing. WELl, now we have EXHIBit a, exhibit b, exhibit c. And I’m sure there’s lots of other prophecies within this 400 span of history and the Nephites that they can point at. In fact, we know that there’s prophesy sign, Nephi prophesies about things that are going to happen to his children. We’re going to have prophecies about the coming of the Messiah here in the nephite world. We’re going to see the destructions.

And it’s interesting that even though people see the fulfillment of those prophecies, they still have a hard time believing. Right?

Even, even though you have multiple examples. And I guess you could even look at Lehigh. Any single case you can start looking at and trying to pull it away if that’s what you want to do.

I mean, yeah, maybe Lehigh was right. There was a lot of tension, though. And you could see the writing on the wall. The Babylonians had already come and taken some of the leaders away. You could see that things were headed that way. So maybe, maybe Lehi, it was just a lucky guess, reading the times. Maybe it wasn’t prophecy. Maybe, maybe.

But I don’t know. That’s why it’s so important to be anchored in a testimony. And these things aren’t meant to convince us. But the Lord does send two or three witnesses to establish his truth and makes it so that he gives us every tool we need to be able to believe if we turn to him. And yet often we take those tools and try to tear them apart. But sorry, that’s kind of a long rant on there.

[00:16:11] Speaker B: What do you think Corhor’s motivation was, like, the PwN to pick popularity power?

Because I’m not like, what power was he looking for? Or is it a bone to pick, like you said? Cause he used to be a priest, and maybe he was looking at it from a financial thing and because they wouldn’t, like, give him the money. You know what I mean? It’s like, I’m just trying to think, because the reason, I guess I feel like it’s worth asking is you see a lot of this all the time on social media. You see it in various conversations where you have people who used to be a member of the church almost actively, because they know kind of intimately different parts of, like, you know, the practices and the customs and things like that, try to use those and manipulate those things to use, to kind of fight against the church.

And so I guess I think that I just wonder if it’s worth at least just trying to consider what his motivation would have been for trying to tear this down and if we can learn anything from that when we see very similar practices all around us right now.

[00:17:39] Speaker A: That’s a good question. I think with what we see with Korra horror is, I think he starts with a lie to the point where he himself believes it. I think he becomes his first convert.

And so at this point, when he believes it, he’s almost acting out of this, because how else do you explain this when you’ve got him going around and getting arrested, brought to the chief judge and then getting arrested and brought to the chief judge? I mean, he’s not extremely, extremely successful. He’s not pulling this huge following. He’s not.

And so you’re saying, what is this motivation? Right? And it’s kind of like Joseph Smith. If we ask the question of him, what was his motivation? Because all it ever brought him was heartache, time inside of prison, in the end, his death.

It’s a similar path of what we see with Korahor. And you look at it and say, how could he be doing this other than out of a sense of he really believed? And so I wonder if that’s the case with Korra. Horror is he truly believed the own lies that he started to create.

And I think you see that with pathological liars to where they walk themselves into a hole and they’re going to defend it no matter what. It just. I don’t know if that doesn’t really get to the root of the motivation, though.

[00:19:11] Speaker B: I don’t know, man.

I see a lot of contention and arguing, and again, a lot of it. The most you see against the most you see of people attacking members of the church, 90% of it is like, former members of the church.

And that’s why, again, like, this is when you brought that up that Korhor might have. That’s kind of where he’s coming at it with a lot of his intimate knowledge, and he’s even called out on it.

It just. I guess the reason that I want to know is, like, how do you handle having these discussions when you know, you’re arguing with somebody that has very. It’s not from them misunderstanding the actual doctrine, it’s them trying to kind of twist it.

And if at a certain point, you just have to go, you’ve, you know, you’ve made your own bed, sleep in it. But the problem that with that is, is that you, in a lot of these cases, have them stoking doubt and confusion in either other members, or you have them very actively misinforming and adding more ammo to people that aren’t members, but that are antagonistic. So I guess I’m just wondering if there is a point where you have to go like, no, I’m going to stand up and correct this.

But sometimes not understanding the motivation, I feel like, makes it feel like kind of a waste of time or a lost cause even before you’ve started. And so much of these discussions are rarely in good faith, which sucks. But it’s sometimes just hard to know when to jump into the fray and actually say something and when to just hold your peace and move on and hope that, you know, that this person isn’t screwing up somebody else’s salvation too much.

[00:21:34] Speaker A: You bring up a really good point, and I think it’s interesting you look at Joseph Smith being martyred, and, and from my understanding, the people that carried this out were people that at one time were members of the church that one time had received, even to some, to the extent of having received endowment before that. These were some of the people that were close with the prophet, and yet they turned on him and they fought against it, and they fought against the church violently. They wanted to save the world from the lives of Joseph Smith. They wanted to stop the church and tear down the church.

Almost as much as you had a passion to try to preach the gospel and help people come to the church. Now all of a sudden you feel it your responsibility, your duty to try to preach the anti gospel or try to reverse the damage and try to tear down the church from the inside or do what you can, try to pull this apart.

And I don’t want to over generalize and make sweeping statements because it’s not true that everybody that leaves the church feels this responsibility or this duty.

[00:22:43] Speaker B: Of course I’m not. Hopefully, I didn’t.

[00:22:45] Speaker A: No, you’re not. No, you’re not either. You’re not either, right? You haven’t stated it, and it hasn’t come across that way. I’m just trying to be careful of what I’m saying going forward. That it doesn’t say that. Right? Because. Because. Because some people, they do feel that. And. And it’s hard to just make that blanket judgment. Like, how do I talk to somebody in a position like this? How do I know if truly they believe what they’re saying or if they’re just saying this out of bad will? And Cora horse clays, he doesn’t really believe anything he’s saying down to the heart of it. You even get to the point where he’s struck and dumb.

And he admits, the devil came to me as an angel loose. And said, an angel of loose. I’m sorry, an angel of light and said, there is no God. Right.

Which even then, I think that explanation has just as many holes as any of his arguments do. I don’t even know if he’s telling the truth about that. How do you believe an angel from God telling you that there is no goddess?

[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:23:45] Speaker A: Where did the angel get sent?

[00:23:46] Speaker B: It’s so funny you brought that up because that has always been one of the weird things where I’m just going like, wait, that doesn’t. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Even as a kid with reading these, I was always like, I’m glad that you brought that up because that always has been a weird thing for me.

[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, God told me to tell you that God doesn’t exist. So now you can put your mind at ease and you’re like, wait a second. What?

Then? Yeah, it’s just, again, it’s just a weird circular argument with this guy that I don’t think he believes any of this, honestly. And I think Alma comes to the same conclusion. Because why does he not give him, if he’s repenting and saying, I’m sorry, Adam is wrong, why isn’t he allowed to speak again? And Alma makes that clear. He says, if at this point we were to take this away, you would keep going right back where you started from. And he doesn’t look at this as a true sign of repentance. Nothing’s changed. This guy is just trying to convince, as he has in everything. He is trying to convince people of his way. And it’s hard to understand the motives. But I’m glad you bring this up, because if you look at, there are some people, it does not matter how much you try to look at their arguments and try to, I mean, Alma attacks us very logically.

Alma comes and says, okay, well, look at the words of the prophets and what they have said and why is he turning to the prophets? Because Korahor’s main argument is that prophecy doesn’t exist.

And so if Alma says, okay, then I’m going to show you exhibit A, B, C and D, where prophets said something that was going to happen and it happened and it shows that prophecy is a real thing.

And he says, I have all of these witnesses and what do you have? The only argument to the opposite is you, yourself, your word. And you are saying, and it’s that same circular argument. You were saying that you know of a surety of things that won’t happen. You’re acting like a prophet, prophesying that there will not happen because you now saying that you know what won’t happen from a logical standpoint, he’s blown up his argument, he’s isolated anything he has to stand on, and yet he doesn’t win.

And so going back to your point, when you’re trying to engage with somebody and, and you’re trying to help them and they’re coming at this with good faith, then, then pointing out things like this opens up the way for a discussion. And you can have an edifying discussion. You can feel like you’re connecting and you can, you can disagree, but disagree respectfully, respectfully, or come away and still, you know, understand each other’s point of view, a perspective, and have a respect for each other and have a good conversation regardless of the outcome, whether they change their mind or you change your mind, you can still have a decent discussion with people in good faith.

But when somebody has no good faith and they’ve decided before that discussion even going to begin that they’re not going to change and they’re just going to keep bending and twisting and turning and won’t stand on anything.

I think from Alma we get the idea that at some point you’re just wasting your time and there’s nothing else you can do.

[00:27:08] Speaker B: I agree with you on all this. I think that what I kind of read out of this is that if it was just Korahor, I don’t think that Alma would have needed to waste any time arguing with him. But, like, what I was kind of referring to is you see this damaging other people that might be in a fragile place and trying to understand, and that’s where it becomes a lot more complicated, is all I’m saying. And it’s hard to know how vigorously and vehemently you might sometimes have to, like, come at somebody that is just being completely dishonest. And I think Alma gives a good example of when it is necessary, is like, when he sees that this person is out to not only just destroy himself, but he’s out to take others with him.

Alma looks at that and says, like, no. Like, I’m not gonna just, I’m not gonna just let that happen and comes in and I feel like does a good job.

There’s so many, I just see so many direct parallels to a lot of things that you see every day if you’re on any sort of social media. And I think that Alma’s just a really great example of how to approach those situations. But it’s a delicate line because we’re also told basically now every conference that we shouldn’t be arguing with people online, more or less. Right.

We need to be nicer.

And luckily, in every conference, we’re also told that being kind doesn’t mean that we have to be passive and not stand up for what we believe in. But it’s all, those are just some lines that you just have to figure out. I guess. I wish there was an easy answer.

[00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, kind of two thoughts on that. As you’re talking.

I look at some of the things that are happening online from, and I won’t even say it’s the church, because it’s not the church necessarily putting this out. I mean, the church is, in a sense, the churches got the LDS tools and the gospel library, and they’re trying to put out education that will help people if they’re truly trying to learn, to have the other side of the argument represented, but even outside of the church, and you can say BYU, with all of the research that they’ve done, the journals that they’ve created, that the journal articles that they go that dive into some of the interesting, complicated issues in the book of Mormon or arguments. The historicity of the Book of Mormon are things that people point out to try to shake faith. And you have these scholars coming out of BYU that are writing papers, that are putting out arguments that are trying to counter that discussion and have that discussion in a public forum. If somebody says this in a journal, well, then here’s a journal article that’s going to go back, and there’s this back and forth. There’s some interesting articles that you can see these discussions. You can see it in dialogue. You can see it in the Meridian magazine, you can see in BYU studies. And then even outside of BYU, you have different groups and organizations of people. I mean, you’ve got you and I, Nate, who are sitting here trying to do this podcast that are putting this out, and we’re not alone. There’s all sorts of people that feel this drive to try to continue this discussion in a very positive way and not coming at this to try to put people down, but try to take some of these arguments, look at what they’re saying, try to understand where they’re coming from, why they might say that, and also trying to look at it from a different perspective. Let me add some insight to why I see it this way and have that in a positive sort of way. But I think there’s a lot of people that are coming, and I say this and I’m, and I’m mentioning very visible groups, but like you say, Nate, even down into more granularity, you look at Twitter or Instagram or, or any of these social media outlooks, you have these quiet, unsung heroes that are jumping in there that are saying, okay, well, maybe some things are not being left unchecked. If a statement is going to be made that’s put out there online that can shake the faith of somebody, at least there’s a counterpoint being left on there that maybe we can do this in a positive way.

And I don’t think it’s a bad thing that you have people rising to the occasion to try to do it. I think the only caution that the church puts out there is to try to do it in a way that we’re not also blinded by our own arguments. And maybe we can fall into the trap of being Korahor where we disagree before we even go in, without even being willing to consider what they’re saying or where they’re coming from. Because if we can’t see where they’re coming from or why they’re saying what they’re saying, and we’ve already made up in our mind that they’re wrong and that there’s no other two ways about it. And we go into that argument being belligerent, then maybe we find ourselves in just as much of a trap as core Hort did. And we’ve got to be careful about how we disagree and how we’re presenting things and how we’re listening to others.

[00:32:17] Speaker B: The last thing I do think is something worth at least mentioning, only because, as I’ve read this story this time, just so many parallels to just modern communication just jumped out at me is that if, let’s just under the assumption that Korahor actually did have a lot of, like, inside information, let’s say, okay, maybe he was a priest. Let’s just work off of that assumption. He was probably very vigorous and was probably very well spoken and was probably really good. You know what I mean? He was probably a really good communicator when he was doing that job, too.

You see a lot of, you know, people, people look at, like, just on a scale of, like, left to right right. People see politics on the far left and the far right. For me, I more subscribe to the horseshoe theory, which is the far left and the far right are actually the exact same people. They’re just, they’re just one step sideways from each other. But it’s the, it’s, you have the fanatics that are just way outside of the norm or the mainstream.

But you see this religiously, too. You see a lot of people who at one time were just really gung ho, sometimes overzealous to a point where you’re just like, you know what I mean? It’s almost off putting or offensive where you’re just like, hey, read our articles of faith. We kind of believe, you know, we respect the rights of anybody to worship how, where what they may, you know, like, I’m glad you’re trying to spread the good word, but that should never be, that should never be at you going out and attacking and demeaning and belittling other people. And then when they’re, when those, when those people have their paradigm shift of, like, you know, a faith crisis, it’s like they, they just take one step sideways and they’re just as vigorously anti that religion.

I just find that it’s hardly ever do you see somebody that’s really secure in where they are, and then they maybe undergo a faith transformation and then suddenly become the gnarliest, loudest, most antagonistic person on the other side. So much of the time people kind of are who they are.

But it makes you wonder who Korihor Washington maybe before he, you know, had his, his self described revelation from an angel of light telling him that what you’re seeing in me is not true right now. So go tell everybody that. It’s just the whole thing doesn’t make any sense. But in a weird sort of way you can almost see that a lot. Again, I keep mentioning social media and online, but that’s where it’s just the most visible with the easiest access is you see a lot of people that even will give you their list of credentials. Like I was an elders quorum president and I was in the bishopric and I was blank. It’s like now your negative opinion somehow means more because you can check off a list of things that shouldn’t have even mattered. But then you go, that’s interesting. If you view those things as some sort of like a status builder, I can see where maybe the root of this problem was in the first place. You know what I mean? It’s like if you look at those things as a list of accomplishments and not a list of surface assignments, it’s like, okay, all right, I can actually kind of see the seeds of where maybe this would have gone sideways.

But you understand what I’m saying? You do see, I don’t know. I mean, again, like we all have friends and family that are in the church and that aren’t the. And you know, I find for the most part people are more or less the same person that they were inside or out as far as their level of yelling at me, I guess for a better way to put out, or.

[00:36:23] Speaker A: Lack thereof, you know? Do you understand? Do you see what I’m saying? Yeah, I do.

[00:36:28] Speaker B: Is it worth talking about or am.

[00:36:30] Speaker A: I just totally outside 100% and I almost want to take this. I do want to. And I think you’re going to like this, Nate. I want to take this into a direction of freedom of speech and discussion and should we prohibit any kind of speech.

And I’m going to circle back to this.

Let me say one thing about Korahor’s character.

One other thing that I noticed right at the end here is when Alma warns him and he says, look, you have denied that there is a God twice and you’ve asked for a sign. I say to you, if you deny God one more time, you’re going to be struck dumb. Right?

And Korahor backs up. He tries to retreat from his own argument.

And it’s interesting because here he is retreating to try to avoid this penalty, right? He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said that there was no God. And you’re like, wait a second. You’ve said and several times that there are no God, right? But he says, I never said that there was no God.

I’m only saying that you can’t know that there’s a God.

And then alms, like, strike three, you’re out. And you’re like, wait a second. Technically. And that’s what war is doing, right? He’s arguing on the technicalities. Like, technically, I didn’t deny God.

[00:37:59] Speaker B: I mean, have you ever tried arguing with a lawyer before, Jason? It’s just obnoxious because, like, you can be having the most good faith. I swear, man. I have friends that are lawyers that hopefully are listening to this because I’ve told them this as well. It’s like, stop it. You and I can be, you know, I could be having the most good faith discussion on a disagreement that we might have. Those freaking lawyers, man. It’s always like, well, technically, by the letter of this law, what is, is. And I always just go, dude, we’re not in a courtroom. I know, right? We’re not in a courtroom. You’re talking to another human being here. Stop it. Anyways, continue. But it’s obnoxious. And I’m glad that Alma finds it obnoxious as well, because it’s a.

[00:38:49] Speaker A: And I’m glad that. I’m glad that God’s the judge, right? That’s right. Because Alma’s not striking him dumb. God is. What power does Alma have to, like, magically, like, God knows his heart and he knows his instruction, and he knows that he’s doing this. And it doesn’t matter what he’s saying or how he’s technically backing himself out. Like, he’s. He gets called out on it, and he gets called out by God, and, and he struck dumb. So I just. That. Interesting. I never, I didn’t. Wait, don’t give me. If I’ve got three chances. Let me see if I can’t worm my way out to where it’s not. It’s just interesting how that happens. But I do want to go back to, to what you’re talking about in this discussion, in this debate, and because this is stuff you see all the time. Like, you say you see it in social media, you see it online. And something, you know, let’s take some current events, like what we’re seeing and what was going on right here. We had some guy climb onto a roof and shoot at the former President Trump.

And there’s all sorts of weird things about this. And I’m sure we could go down all sorts of different weird little rabbit holes on this. But here’s what’s odd to me is that this guy in social media, there are no warning signs, there are no discussions.

There is no debate, there is no extremism that we see in him. And so here you have somebody that’s middle of the road, not necessarily extreme one way or extreme the other way, who’s never expressed any discontent or any willingness to try to go shoot somebody who within himself has cooked up or gotten to the point, I don’t know. Maybe, I don’t know his motivations. But here he is stepping on a roof and taking shots at somebody and killing innocent people.

Would that have been different had he been more vocal, had he had the opportunity to express what he was thinking and what he was feeling, and had someone been on the other side of that understanding where he’s coming from and saying, okay, I can see what you’re saying, and here’s why. Here’s a counter to that argument or something you should consider, or here’s how. And he was able to have that discussion with somebody online in a conversation, rather than stoking himself up to the point that he’s ready to take extreme action on his own. And even though his speech might have been extreme, is there space for extreme speech in America to where people can express what they’re saying, or do we let them bottle it up to the point where they run outside and do something like this?

[00:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I mean, that’s, that probably would need a whole other discussion and might not be for this platform. But I mean, you know, you know, you know, I have thoughts on that, but I don’t know if this is the platform for it.

[00:41:42] Speaker A: You don’t want to go down censorship.

[00:41:44] Speaker B: I mean, you know that I, I consider myself a free speech absolutist, but I also believe that the market regulates itself if done correctly. And we also, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us as a community pushing people outside of our community that we as a community have decided not to allow into our community. And I know that that might seem like conflicting arguments, but I could very easily talk you through how they’re not. But I don’t think this is the platform for it.

Okay.

For me, let’s just keep this as much as you and I should and can have this discussion. I just, I don’t want to I don’t want to take this that way, especially in light of what’s going on in the world.

[00:42:36] Speaker A: So, yeah. I’m just looking at if. If somebody can express what they’re feeling.

I don’t. Gives us an idea.

[00:42:49] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:42:49] Speaker A: Of what they’re thinking. Sure.

[00:42:51] Speaker B: Which. Which I do believe in that.

Which I do believe in that. I. I’m not saying that, but I. Again, like this. Is this just. It’s too complex of a conversation? I don’t. I don’t.

We don’t have enough time, even. So let’s. Let’s keep going.

[00:43:07] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:43:08] Speaker B: You did a. In our. In our little prep chat, you did bring up something really interesting about the name. Is it Oneida? How do you pronounce that?

[00:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Oneida works. It’s. It’s. It’s gonna be. See, that’s actually gonna roll into next week when.

[00:43:28] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:43:29] Speaker A: They roll into. So should we save that ahead of myself?

[00:43:31] Speaker B: Okay, we’ll save it. We’ll save it for next week, because that’s a good one.

[00:43:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think.

I think that’s gonna be really good.

[00:43:41] Speaker B: It’s some of the good. It’s some of the good stuff that you probably are not getting from the other podcasts, the little things we try to make sure we’re including in there.

Anything else you want to look at this week?

[00:44:04] Speaker A: You know, this week I came across something that was kind of interesting, and it’s a letter that Joseph Smith wrote to the editor of a newspaper.

And Joseph Smith, in this letter to the editor of the newspaper, talks about why he’s writing the newspaper, and he’s a subscriber to the newspaper. And he sees that the editor is putting out there all sorts of different ideas, and he feels that it’s important for him to put in his, as he calls it, the widow’s mite. His small contribution to the dialogue, to the conversation, to what’s happening. And that’s something I really respect about Joseph Smith, and it’s something that maybe we don’t talk about or focus on is a lot of his character.

We focus a lot on the restoration of the gospel and what he did, his discourses, his revelations, doctrine, covenants, the translation of the Book of Mormon. And all of these things kind of take a large, grand center stage. But what maybe falls in the background is his visit to the White House to try to go advocate for the saints. The letters that he writes to these editors of these newspapers. In fact, it’s a letter, the Wentworth letter, that we get the articles of faith from. And in this letter to the editor, he’s talking about the importance of turning to God and repenting. And in fact, he says, it’s been 18 months when the angels revealed to me that the Lord has withdrawn his spirit from the earth. And you see that there are no more converse convert converts to the churches around here, and there’s a darkness that’s gathering as a prophet. Joseph Smith looked at this and said, what’s going to happen if the people do not repent is you will see a war here on this land like you’ve never seen before. Massive bloodshed. And. And he goes on to prophesy about the civil war in a letter that he’s writing to an editor of a newspaper, asking to have it posted in the newspaper. And is that not the role of a prophet to. To see the events, to feel the spirit, and to be able to prophesy about things that are going to happen and to advocate that we repent, that we turn to the Lord? And here he is trying to. This is Joseph Smith’s social media of the day. He’s writing to a newspaper, and it’s not just any newspaper. And his mind, this is a liberal newspaper that he’s reaching out and writing to. And the newspapers have not been necessarily friendly to Joseph Smith or to the church or to his perspective, but here he is taking on a responsibility or a role to reach out to these people and to get his side of the story, to get his version, and to put it out there. And so, looking from Joseph Smith, I think we can take some courage and some examples from that today, as much as there is a lot of things that we might come across online that could be faith shaking. What can we do to get our side of the story out? What can we do to be faith promoting, to encourage people to have a reason to believe, a reason to have hope, a reason to try to understand and to counter it, not with just blind assertions or blind faith per se, but with reason, with sound arguments, with what we’re seeing, with what we believe, and to also have that faith base, that anchor, that testimony, that spirit of prophecy, which is a testimony of Jesus Christ that Joseph Smith so eloquently shares, so taking, taking from our prophet at the beginning of the restoration, we see that. But I say, even today, on Facebook or on Instagram or on a lot of these different platforms, I see messages of hope from elder Holland, who’s sharing his daily scripture study with us. I see messages of hope from Uchtdorf, who takes time to share something online or the president, President Nielsen himself, is taking time to share things that are positive, and they’re not necessarily doing it in a combative style and looking for somebody to get in a fight with, but they’re doing it in a very positive way and leaving, like you will, editors to the letters to the editors or letters to the public to express what they see and try to give a hope or a reason to believe.

I guess that’s where I wanted to land on wrapping that part up.

[00:48:39] Speaker B: It’s awesome.

It’s awesome. And to your point, I love that Joseph Smith was a prophet to the whole world and not just the church.

I think that it’s even more a fruit of that tree, which is he was committed to trying to save the world, the land. I mean, isn’t that the theme of so many prophets, is we’re about ready to be destroyed in war, in captivity, in bloodshed.

We need to turn to the Lord. We need to correct our wickedness. We need to repent.

And was he not almost like step for step following in the line of other great prophets in trying to warn the people of the land? They need to repent or they’re going to get destroyed.

[00:49:36] Speaker A: And the irony and everything is how it ends. I think when Korahor is cast, he’s dumb.

And it’s kind of interesting that they have to write to him. The guy’s not deaf, but they write to him and he writes back, right, and explains what’s going on, what he sees. The irony of it to me is that when he goes to the people of Amulon, who you think he would be a hero among them, because he’s trying to tear down the church just as much as they were, they trample him and snuff him out. And you’re like, well, wait a second. Are they heroes of the story because they killed the Antichrist? Are they the heroes because they killed someone who had it coming, who was, and yet they’re not. Why is it that among his own people that he should have found sanctuary? Why is it that among his own following of people trying to tear down the church, he gets crucified?

In a sense, he gets killed, he gets stamped out and trampled.

And maybe there’s a message in that, too, that in the last days the devil doesn’t support his people.

[00:50:43] Speaker B: I mean, I don’t think he ever does. I mean, I think that’s, that’s one of the key characteristics of the devil, is he always leaves his, his followers high and dry.

[00:50:54] Speaker A: I keep saying Amulon and, and I’m wrong on that. It’s the Zoramites. I don’t. I don’t know. I keep crossing my wires.

It’s good.

[00:51:05] Speaker B: Don’t worry. Send us all of your emails correcting us, and then as soon as you get to this point, you’ll be like, dang it, they already corrected themselves. But that’s okay. We’ll still read the emails anyways.

We’re not going. We’re not going back through. Yeah, we’re not going back through and fixing them all.

[00:51:22] Speaker A: Knee whore. There’s just.

[00:51:24] Speaker B: There’s a lot of names. There’s a lot of names. I. I’m always forgetting the names. Anyways, um, really good stuff, Jason. Um, always appreciate the time. Is there anything else you wanted to. To put on this before we. Before we wrap it up?

[00:51:39] Speaker A: No. I don’t know. I think.

I think we’re there.

[00:51:45] Speaker B: Awesome stuff. We, uh, you can get ahold of us at high deep dive.com. we always appreciate your feedback, questions, comments, insights. Send it to us. Send it to us and we’ll read it. And we will do what we can to respond to it, either directly or as we’re recording.

Always appreciate any of you that are willing to leave us reviews, leave us comments on the various podcasting sites and share it with your friends. We really do appreciate it. And, yeah, I think that’s all we got for this week. So until next week.

[00:52:23] Speaker A: See ya.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Piper.

[00:00:31] Speaker B: What’s up?

What is up?

What is up, Jason?

[00:00:36] Speaker A: Always good things.

[00:00:37] Speaker B: That’s exactly right, dude. Only good things are up.

[00:00:42] Speaker A: Another week, another opportunity to kind of dive in and talk about the scriptures and just kind of follow up with Ammon.

[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:00:49] Speaker A: This dad. Yep. He’s the best.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: He’s great.

[00:00:52] Speaker A: You know, I think we even talked about this last week. Correct me if I didn’t, but since last week, not relating at all to our podcast or any questions about the podcast.

[00:01:02] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:01:03] Speaker A: Just other people have asked me.

It’s come up probably three or four times. Did Alma. Alma, did Ammon really cut arms off of people, or was he just disarming them? Did we talk about that? We talked about that, didn’t we?

[00:01:17] Speaker B: No, we didn’t.

Oh, we talked about him chopping arms off, right? Yeah.

[00:01:26] Speaker A: And I tried. I tried so hard to get an image created of ammon, like, swinging some dude’s arm, beating him with his own.

[00:01:37] Speaker B: Arm, because that would have been better. That would have been better episode art, for sure.

[00:01:42] Speaker A: And apparently that violates the terms and conditions of chat. GPT.

[00:01:46] Speaker B: Oh, booze and come on, chat. Stop ruining our fun.

[00:01:51] Speaker A: I mean, they gave us the gen z book of Mormon, but they couldn’t give us ammon beating people with their own arms.

[00:01:55] Speaker B: That is. Both of those things are true.

[00:01:59] Speaker A: And so I asked. I asked it to give us what it could provide for me. The best that you could and the best that you could. I was about to throw in the garbage because I saw sheep flying in the air, and Ammon looked like he was ripped off the COVID of some romance novel. And I’m like, what is going on?

But you know what? The sheep flying in the air. And that part was the COVID Yeah. I couldn’t pass on it. In the end, I had to settle on it. So if you haven’t taken a look at the artwork for this last week’s episode. Yeah, it flies.

[00:02:33] Speaker B: Worth it. I mean, it’s for sure worth it. That’s what I meant to say. It’s for sure worth it.

[00:02:40] Speaker A: I mean, I think it’s amazing, going back to the question, and it has popped up, I think, three times, four times I’ve been asked this, this week. I guess some people have been teaching or thinking that when it says cutting off their arms, it really means disarming them or knocking the weapons out of their hand. And I was asked, what, what are my thoughts on that? And my thoughts are, I just don’t see where the text bears that out. I don’t know how bringing a handful of clubs is going to be impressive to the king. Like, anybody could go grab a handful of clubs.

[00:03:14] Speaker B: Also, just taking a club away from somebody would not necessarily stop that person from attacking you. And so then you would just have ten people without clubs trying to tackle you and still kill you. Like, chopping off their arms is what stops people.

[00:03:33] Speaker A: Could you imagine them, like, looking around each other in a circle, like, shrugging their shoulders, like, oh, I guess I can’t hold my club anymore. Yes. I gotta just.

[00:03:40] Speaker B: I guess I gotta turn my head down and just mope away.

That would actually be hilarious.

[00:03:47] Speaker A: I mean, them throwing stones at a distance and not being able to hit them and watching their brothers die did not deter them. I don’t think getting a club knocked out of their hands is going to be like, well, I guess this battle’s over. We’ll see you guys later.

[00:03:59] Speaker B: I’m going to tend to agree.

[00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And I see some similarities in this. When Joseph Smith was in Carthage jail, they smuggled him a pistol and, and he had so many shots, right, so many rounds in the, in the revolver, and he fired them all into the door. A couple of them misfired, but he did hit somebody. And the person that he hit had to leave town and lay low after everything happened because his wounds would have identified him as one of the attackers. As you remember, they all painted their faces and tried to remain some level of anonymity. I think we’re going to see some parallels with that and with what happened with ammonite. When they say, like, his brother was one of the ones, I mean, how do you know? Well, he was the one missing an arm. I mean, those wounds kind of made it identifiable. And I think a major theme of this story was the misjustice that was being carried out before to where now these guys have been identified, branded, and justice is being carried out. So I’m kind of sticking to the story that it was actual physical arms.

I don’t know that the Bible made reference to arms, as we do today, saying, oh, it’s their, they’re holding a gun and their gun got knocked out of their hand. I just don’t see it that way for.

[00:05:11] Speaker B: Also, why are we trying to make the story less rad? Why would we, why would we not want the story to be as rad as it is.

[00:05:19] Speaker A: I think there is a cognitive dissonance to go back to a term we used last year in the New Testament.

With us and the shedding of blood, we are nothing around today, and. And we try to distance ourselves from it. We look at it as a very bad thing. It’s just something we don’t have that same familiarity, and we don’t realize that the world that ammon grew up in is a world of bloodshed. They constantly had to go to war to defend themselves. In the ancient world, it was as much as planting and harvesting, fighting was part of the just the annual rituals. And when someone was found guilty of a capital a crime warranting capital punishment, you didn’t have a paid executioner that did the dirty work for you. Everybody in society was supposed to participate and shed the blood of this person, which probably has a way of deterring people wanting to just kill somebody, knowing that they would have to carry out that punishment unless they were sure that that was it. And you couldn’t go to the supermarket and just buy pre prepared meat. Right? You had to kill what you were going to eat. It’s just they were a lot more intimate and familiar with violence, bloodshed, and whatnot.

[00:06:38] Speaker B: This is up until, like, the few hundred years ago, by the way, too. You said during Ammon’s time. I’m going to say up until a few hundred years ago. I mean, it’s like war. War is part of human history more than probably anything else.

[00:06:54] Speaker A: Yeah. We have removed ourselves from a lot of the gritty and sacrifice just doesn’t seem to carry the same weight, significance in our world today that it did back then.

[00:07:04] Speaker B: I was watching. I was watching one of those shows on the History channel of, like, the preppers, like, the end of the world preppers. And I actually kind of. I actually am kind of down with these dudes for the most part, because I just. I enjoy the idea that there’s still people teaching their children how to, like, pluck a chicken. But I remember the first time, to illustrate your point, the first time I was watching this, a father was teaching his two young sons how to kill a lamb for them to cook up and eat, right? Because they raise animals. And I remember watching this just going like, oh, no, please don’t show this on tv, right? And then, like, this seven year old child, I think maybe six or seven, and I have a son that’s six, and this, my poor, sweet, innocent child, doesn’t like to step on spiders, you know, what? I mean, like, I’m just saying, like, he.

[00:08:00] Speaker A: I’m the same way.

[00:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I love stepping on spiders, but other than that, like, I don’t, you know, I don’t. I’m not trying to kill anything. And watching this six year old have to kind of, like, facetain the initial trauma of taking out a knife and cutting the throat of this lamb and letting it bleed out and stuff like that, it was.

It was horrifying for me to watch this. And then, like, to your point, it’s like, of course we don’t want things to be gritty and horrific and bloody. And by the way, natural and more normal than nothing, right? Like, that’s. I hate thinking about it like that. But I’m just saying is, if we take the history of the world in context, it’s way more normal than it isn’t that somebody knows how to defend themselves physically against somebody else, that a society is way more willing to kill off the problem parts of itself. Like, that’s more normal than what is not normal. So that, I was just saying, to illustrate your point, even I found myself squeamish at somebody having to teach their young child how to kill an animal. I was just like, oh, brutal. And then I’m like, why is that brutal?

Oh, it’s because we have life. Good man. We have.

We live in a very, very peaceful time. And it’s funny to say that with as much war as there is going around the world, but even then, it’s like we still.

I rode my bike down to work today without one thought that I was going to have to defend myself against a marauding army, you know?

[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s interesting that you say, and I think that’s something that we’ve kind of been picking away at in the show over time. It seems hard with knowing what’s going on with, with Ukraine, with Russia, with Israel, with, with. I mean, every, every few years, there’s always some kind of skirmish, some kind of. And we say, well, we live in a world where everything’s going worse and worse and worse, but we’re looking at it from a very modern perspective. We try to look back at how people had it before and government sponsored, and, I mean, it’s just, we try to understand the world based off of our perception, and we apply a very modern lens as we look at the problems around us. And, and I think that’s what’s going on. I could be wrong. Maybe somebody’s got a really good argument for why it’s not. I just. I don’t see it. I haven’t seen it, and I haven’t been convinced otherwise.

[00:10:27] Speaker B: But I’ll chat GPT by Broseph Smith Book of Mormon for Gen Z also agrees with us, for whatever that’s worth.

[00:10:35] Speaker A: Did it talk about arms getting?

[00:10:37] Speaker B: Yeah, when we read through it, it was just like, yeah, this dude starts chopping people’s arms off. I’m like, all right, chat. GPT we’ll use you as the deciding vote here.

[00:10:46] Speaker A: That’s the tiebreaker. There you go. There you have it.

[00:10:48] Speaker B: Do you think the actual arms, do you think that the king would have been nearly as amazed if it was just a bag of clubs being brought in? Because you could just buy those down at the dollar store, bro. It’s just a piece of wooden.

It could be a setup breaking off.

[00:11:03] Speaker A: Branches on the trees. I’m saying, watching locks, but don’t kill us.

[00:11:07] Speaker B: Look at, look at what Ammon did.

Yeah, man. Sorry. A bunch of bloody arms is that’s that’s an impactful statement.

I’m rolling with arms.

[00:11:18] Speaker A: And you think they would have taken credit if it was just clubs? Like, look, we took all their weapons away, but, I mean, they wouldn’t they.

[00:11:25] Speaker B: Wouldn’T have even brought those before, or the king. They would have just used him as firewood.

[00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:11:31] Speaker B: All right, let’s move on.

[00:11:33] Speaker A: All right, let’s get into this week, and this week, honestly, I kind of almost want to take this a little bit different.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about by your fruits you shall know them.

And how do we know if something is the right decision? If we made the right decision and we’re given, not only are we given the prescription, if you will, the means, the way that we should judge, but we’re also given a commandment that we should judge, which I think might fly in the face of how some people have understood this right. Judge not doesn’t say judge not, but God says judge not imperfectly or judge not unrighteously. If we go back to psalms 82, and this is going to be a common theme throughout the Bible, God is saying, how long are you going to judge imperfectly? Let me teach you how to judge righteously. How long are you going to let the widows be ground down and the orphans and not take care of the people that really need your help taking care of it instead? Favoring the rich, favoring the powerful, and trying to find grace and favor with them and giving them a pass while the poor people you grind under your feet be better, be better judges.

And so the Lord says, by their fruits you shall know them. And we think about fruits. Fruits are actions. And I think we can look at this in broad strokes when we look at the restoration of the gospel and we say, what are the actions of the church being restored? Here is what the church doing creating a net positive impact in the world, or is it a net negative impact? What, what are the actions of the church? And we look at how the funds are being used to provide food for people that don’t have food, that are taking care of the poor, that are doing just, I mean, every year during the conference break, you can look at the charitable donations and the outreach and the things that the church are doing, how they always rush the helping hands after disaster. And then on a personal level. So let’s say that we’re not painting with broad strokes. You look at how individuals are changed on a regular basis, and you say, well, here are the fruits. For me, this is easy. I look at that and I say, this is good.

But I think this can get convoluted or difficult for us to try to make the right call based off of this.

And here’s where I want to go with that.

For us, coming from America, living in a land of democracy, we look at the decision that Mosiah made that said, we’re going to do away with kings, and we’re going to create a leadership of judges and chief judges, and you’re going to bring your problems to the judges, and we’re going to shift accountability. Instead of the shoulders of one man, we’re going to put the accountability back on you. As a nation, it’s going to be a people governed by the people, rather than trying to have a monarch that could potentially oppress the people.

And so for us, we look at that and say, wow, good move. We applaud it and say, that was the right decision. But now I want to kind of look at the fruits of that and see if we still see it the same way. And by the fruits of that, when Alma goes with amulek in Ammoniah and tries to teach the gospel, it is the chief judge that kicks the men out of the city. And now when the men, and not all men, right, but the men that believe in Alma and Amulek, the ones that believe in God and prophecy in the church, are kicked away from their homes, sent out, and so that their women and their children are now defend defenseless, there’s no one to take care of them. And it is the chief judge that rounds up the women and the children and executes them by fire.

And so I asked this question. Would that have happened under the monarch? If there was a king there, would they have been executed? It was the chief judge that made that call.

And so we started looking at the impact of changing the system of government, and we start looking at some of these things that happen, all of these women and children that are killed.

Was it the right thing? And when the kings are left, it creates a power vacuum.

And we see this throughout history. When the Babylonian, excuse me, the assyrian empire falls, the babylonian empire rises to fill that vacuum. When that empire falls, the Persian rises to take that spot. When they fall, the Greeks rise. So anytime you have a collapse in the power or a shift or a change in the power, it creates this vacuum. And in a vacuum, there’s this need to feel that, to rise up and to try to take that. And when that leadership is shifted and that role is put off from the monarchs, you have the rise of the nehors that are seeking power and gain. You have the rise of a Malassaid, Malachi, who wants to become a king, and have all these people vote him in as king to resubject the people unto a monarchy. And so look at the consequences of the knee horse. What did the knee horse do again? You have that same problem with Ammoniah. You have them going down into the Lamanites, along with the people of Amalasi, who were inciting the Lamanites due to this mass violence and this wars. So because of this simple decision by Mosiah to give up the throne and to put the power on the shoulders of the people, now you have chief judges that are perverting justice. You have the rise of these people trying to seek power to themselves, that are again trying to overthrow the kingdom, that are causing math, death and destruction. Was it the right move?

Are these fruits? If we’re. If we’re looking at the. The consequences, and I’m going to call consequences the fruits, then, are the consequences telling us that this was the right thing for Mosiah to do? And does that make us feel uncomfortable to even propose that question, that maybe Mosiah made a wrong call by making that shift?

And before we go too far down there, unless you want to jump in, feel free to interrupt me at any.

[00:17:45] Speaker B: Point.

[00:17:47] Speaker A: I think we ask ourselves the same question with Ammon and his brothers going to the Lamanites.

On the surface, who can say that that was a bad decision?

It was driven by good motives. They loved their brothers. They wanted to bring them the gospel. And you look at the fruits and say, hey, they brought the Lamanites to the Lord. They were converted thousands of people. Is that not good?

But when you look at what happened from there, when they converted, sure, thousands of people. But then the other Lamanites that didn’t convert it were so upset that they killed over a thousand righteous people over this.

And when they realized that what they were doing was wrong and that they wouldn’t fight back, they took their frustrations out on the Nephites and went and destroyed the city of Ammonihah.

An entire city was wiped out. And you could look at what was the instigator of this. Well, was it not Ammon coming and teaching the gospel? Would they have killed their brothers, been frustrated and left and destroyed an entire city if Ammon hadn’t gone down there and started teaching them the gospel?

And you might justify that and say, well, the city of Ammonia, they were all wicked people anyways. They had it coming. They should have gotten killed.

But after the Lamanites retreated back from there, they again started to kill their brothers, the anti Nephi Lehis. They again made plans to try to destroy them. The anti Nephi Lehis leave there, go up into the land of Zarahemla. Ammon asks Alma and the chief judge what they should do. They provide them with the land in Jerusalem. The Lamanites come in and attack the Nephites again. And it says here that this battle was the worst since Lehi left Jerusalem, and tens and thousands of people died. So in Amen zeal to try to convert a few thousand Lamanites, tens of thousands people died because of it.

Was the price of tens of thousands of people in the battle, not even counting all the people that died in the city of ammonia, and not even counting the thousands of people of the anti nephite Lehis that died.

Were all those thousands of deaths worth the decision to bring these people to the gospel? And when you start looking at it, does the fruit mean that that was a good decision, that that was a righteous tree? Or are the consequences validating the decision to go and teach the Lamanites the gospel?

And it starts making me wonder, right? Are sometimes in my life when I feel prompted or I try to go do something, if I run into obstacles or I run into whatever, and I start to wonder, did I do the right thing right?

Am I doing this right? And is it right? How do we, how do we, how do we judge that? So we started this discussion or this thought experiment with the restoration of the gospel. And I think coming back to the restoration of the gospel. Maybe we can kind of bring this full circle and take this to where I was thinking when Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, and he had that first vision, experiment, experience, and he’s tasked with the restoration of the gospel, and he goes and tells people what happened.

What are the consequences or the fruit of what happened?

Was he not ridiculed?

Was he not tarred and feathered, beaten, abused, his children killed because of the actions of mobsters and the people that believed him? Some were raped, some were chased out of their homes, were forced to walk barefoot in the snow and the ice, bleeding, suffering.

And in the end, what did Joseph Smith get for his troubles? Martyred next to his brother, who he loved.

And so we start looking at all the fruit and the consequences of him restoring the church and say, boy, wasn’t worth it, was it?

By your fruits, you shall know. And all these bad things that happened, all simply because he loved God. So how do we balance those scales? What are those good fruits that we’re supposed to be judging these from? How do we know that what we’re running into are just natural opposition and obstacles in the path versus signs that we’re running down the wrong path, if that makes sense.

And I think every one of us listening to the show, correct me if I’m wrong, or anyone participating, either here as we’re talking or listening later on as we’re going down this road, would say that because of what Joseph Smith did, we have enjoyed the fruit of it. And it’s been very positive and very great fruit.

And so as I’m trying to square all of this up in my mind, it takes me back to maybe a simple analogy of, of weightlifting.

If I go to the gym and I run and I go and lift weights, maybe immediately after, I’m not super thrilled with my decision because the consequences is that I’m exhausted. The consequences, I’m tired, I’m sore, I hurt. Was it really worth it, putting all of that into it, just to feel like beaten, worn down, torn apartheid and that I’ve just worn myself out.

But over time, because I wore myself out, because I beat myself up, I gain a greater endurance, I gain stamina, I gain strength, and I look at the fruits down the road and they compensate for what I felt. And even at the moment, and I don’t know, maybe anyone who’s lifted weights, I think, can, can understand that even in the moment, somehow you still enjoy it even though you’re beating yourself up. There’s something satisfying about pushing yourself and driving. And it’s like there’s this compensatory feeling that comes to help balance the feelings that are negative.

And when I say that when we’re asked to do something that is hard or go on a mission, and anyone who served a mission knows that as a missionary, you’re going to get rejected, you’re going to go through hard times, you’re working long hours, and sometimes you’re not feeling like you’re getting a lot back.

It feels like the spirit compensates and brings us satisfaction, joy, or feelings that help provide that positive fruit to balance the scales. And so when we’re trying to look at this, sometimes, you know, when you’re looking at a beach from a distance, you never notice the individual grains of sand. But if you pick up a grain of sand and bring it right up to your eye to where that’s the only thing you can see. Now, it’s not that you can’t see the grain of sand. It’s that you can’t see the beach. You miss everything because of that one little thing. And it’s a matter of perspective. And sometimes if we focus on all the little negative things around an action, it’s like taking these grains of sand and putting them under a microscope and studying them and staring at them to where we miss the bigger picture, to where we miss the overall. And sometimes we jump to hasty judgment. And maybe that’s why God has to keep telling us, judge better, judge better, because we keep getting caught up and focusing on the wrong things and making these little things so big that we can’t see the bigger picture? And how does the bigger picture give us a better sense of what’s right? How does the bigger picture vindicate Ammon’s mission? How does the bigger picture vindicate Mosiah’s decision to abdicate the throne to a different form of government?

And how does the spirit, in the meantime, compensate for the negative that’s going around to buoy us up and make us feel positive in the face of affliction? I don’t know. Did I. Did I spit that out? Right?

[00:25:53] Speaker B: I agree. I agree with you on this. We’ve talked about it, and, you know, my feeling on it, again, perspective is so much of this. But you did bring up something that I think should at least be thought through, which is, okay, cool, well, then, what about this thing that was supposedly good that then had just a bunch of death and murdering and destruction after it? Like, okay, cool, is that fruit that we should then be judging Ammon by? Is this fruit. We should be judging Mosiah by like, I mean, we have to be fair. I feel like, to the other side of this, right? Because this is, to me, to me, I do agree that the part of the discussion where we can say, hey, have some perspective when things aren’t great, have some big picture perspective. We preach this. I preach this all the time with at least my own personal life and in the classes that I get to teach and whatnot. I’ve been pretty open about some of the experiences that I’ve had that I thought were bad that ended up being good. It’s like, okay, cool. You just have to be patient.

But I feel like for this discussion then, to actually mean something on the other side of it is like, how long is the appropriate time to wait to see what the fruits of this are? You brought up two really great things even in context of the Book of Mormon, where, what are the fruits of ammon going and teaching and saving a small group of people only to lead to the death and killing and destructions of tens of thousands of more because of it? Or is it even fair to say because of it? Right? Like, that’s. I guess maybe that’s the answer to that question. But because we don’t, we don’t know what the alternative is because the alternative didn’t happen. What happened happened. So do you see where I’m saying it’s like, I do feel like it’s because the reason I feel like it’s important to have the other side of this discussion is because let’s make this personal. Let’s take a look at our lives. Right? Like, what?

When can we then take a look at things that aren’t going right for us in life?

When can we look at those things and have the correct perspective of judgment to go, hey, maybe this is a sign that I made a left turn when I should have made a right turn. Let me go and kind of fix the course that I’m on.

Or it’s like, well, when can we judge something as a bad fruit? Or do we just have to wait for forever to hope that it turns into a good fruit? Do you see what I’m saying? Like, I don’t think it’s fair to just say everything happening, just wait for it long enough to then be revealed as the right thing, 100%.

[00:28:40] Speaker A: And you hit on two important things on this that I kind of want to focus. And then I’m going to come back and see if I can address that question a little bit better.

One, when you talk about what we’re weighing that decision against. Right.

If Ammon hadn’t gone, and we say, okay, then. Then all these thousands of people didn’t die.

But that’s only one side of the scales. What are we balancing that with on the other side of the scales? Who knows what it would have been like had Ammon stayed behind? To your point, if Ammon stayed behind, maybe now, instead of having all of these lamanites, they’re kind of converting to the gospel. All of them get all stoked up and riled to where the Nephites are overrun completely and annihilated. And your end of the book of Mormon happens 600 years earlier than it would have happened otherwise. And it’s not tens of thousands of lives that are lost. It’s hundreds of thousands of lives that are lost. And so it’s really hard for us to make that judgment call when we can only see half of the picture. We can only see what happened because he did go, and that’s sitting inside of the weights and the balances. What we don’t see is what would have happened if we stayed behind. And all we can do is speculate that really God is the only one that can know what would have happened had it not happened. And it requires serious faith and trust in God and trying to fill in the blank to know, is it really the right thing? And I think we’ve touched on this before, because the question is, why did God save me, shach. Shadrach and Abednego, and let Abinadi die in the flames? Why did God speak to save my brother, who fell asleep behind the wheel of a tire, and my mom heard his voice and got out and checked and found him where other kids are run over in the driveway? Why? And we don’t know what’s on the other half of the scale to be able to really measure that out and see. So I’m glad you bring that up, Nate. And one of the best examples, we say, the best cases of looking at this, I think, is Mosiah abdicating the throne.

You have these chief judges, but you know what? You have one localized chief judge that executes the women and the children in the city. What if that guy would have been king over all of Zarahemla? And what if what we would have seen, like, on the scale of Noah in the land of Nephi, what if really there’s a much greater good happening in the city with Mosiah having switched it to chief judges, than what would have happened had an evil monarch stepped up to the plate. Right. We don’t have the other half of the scale. It’s not a fair comparison to say, oh, it would have been so much better had I not.

And if that’s the case and we don’t have the other half of the scale, how do we ever truly measure our side versus the other side, the status quo, or what things would have been like had we not done it? And so the other good point that you make, Nate, and this is something that you hit. I don’t want to sweep this under the rug.

Can we truly attribute some of the actions to Ammon going and teaching the gospel?

A lot of what we attribute to that one action are actually the actions of somebody else.

If Ammon’s going in and teaching the gospel, what are the consequences of what he did? Let’s focus on that. He was able to teach Lamoni. He was able to convert Lamoni to understanding. He was able to bring a lot of people to the gospel. When you look at the people that are killing the anti nephite lehis because of Ammon, can you blame Ammon for them killing it? Did Ammon tell them to go kill them?

Let’s not lay blame at Ammon’s feet for the actions of others.

And as a parent, I think we see this all the time when one of your child says, well, he made me, or, well, she made me do it. I mean, we see this all the time as parents. Right? And, like, did he really? What did he do?

Let’s not. Let’s not assign blame to somebody else for what you did. Let’s take accountability of our own actions.

And when we look at why bad things happen to people, sometimes we very quickly shift the blame to say God and say God did it. When? When, really, who’s the responsible person? God gave us agency, and. And it was this person in particular’s decision that led to those. And so we start looking at the fruits of those decisions going back down the road with Joseph Smith. Right?

Joseph Smith was killed, but who’s the one that made the decision to kill him? And what are the fruits of what they did?

And maybe let’s not assign blame where blame shouldn’t be assigned. I don’t know if I’ve hit that.

[00:33:35] Speaker B: I do. I think you hit that. I think for me, because, again, like, is with a lot of these things, I feel like for myself, I’m able to think through it and rationalize through it, right? And it’s like, oh, maybe it’s just the bigger picture. Maybe it’s just the bigger picture. The hard thing about that is, is that there is a commandment to judge righteously, and we’re told how to do that, which is by their fruits, you shall know them. Right? And so to me, there has to be some sort of, like, functional meaning in that, that we can use throughout our day to day lives.

I would think instead of just going, well, just wait for forever, just wait for forever for things to show you why it is. Right. And I do have an answer to this. My answer to this has been made a lot more clear to me, really, in the most recent couple months because I got asked to speak in church and then give a couple lessons for both elders, quorum and Sunday school, all within like a week, two weeks of themselves, right? And they, a lot of them focused on the idea, really, that revolved around elder gong’s talk from last conference, which is all things can be made for our good, right. I think that there is a profoundness in the idea that we’re not just.

We aren’t just here in this life to be acted upon, to your point, right. That this life is truly about us making things happen.

And if we’re doing it with. If we’re starting out from the right place with the confirmation of the spirit, then those fruits are good fruits regardless of what they may appear like in the moment, right. And that it’s really, it’s really not as much for us to be judging like, or, you know what I mean? Just like, wandering around from a day to day chasing good fruits. Oh, hey, that looks like a good fruit. I’m going to follow that person. Oh, hey, I’m going to chase because that’s fickle. And sometimes we don’t have the perspective and we don’t have the long term thing. In theory, if by their fruits, you shall know them, we should be following every magician down in Las Vegas that’s pulling off some dope trick because you’re like, hey, he’s using magic. And if it’s magic, then it must be something that’s unattainable by humans. We should be disciples of that person, right?

I guess my thought is, if we’re out there chasing fruits, we may be in trouble. If we’re out there growing fruits, we’re going to have something that we can actually rely on and that can actually be sustainable and hopefully something that other people can look towards as well. My thought about this is the perspective that I’ve gained is it’s so much more important to.

To be growing good fruits by our actions and letting God consecrate those things for our good, letting God magnify our weaknesses, all of those things. I feel like it’s so much more of an internal thing than an external thing. And sure, you and I, because of where we’re at with our beliefs and our faiths, I feel like it’s easier for us to look at the tree that is the church and the restoration, and we can look at that with perspective and say, oh, yeah, of course, this is good fruit. Oh, of course, this is great. Oh, look. Look at all these things, right? And we could, within 5 seconds of me pulling up Twitter, find somebody that could look at that and say, look at all of the bad fruits that this is. Look at all of the pain that this has caused certain people, maybe, right? Look at all the trauma that this, like you and I, can look at the exact same thing and judge that as a good fruit. And some might look at it and judge it as a bad fruit, which makes this, in and of itself, a fairly fickle way of making our decisions and judging whether something is good or bad. If it’s only by that you and I, you and I believe correctly, look at the restoration and look at what the church has become. We can look at that as a good fruit, but it’s because of where we are actually anchored, which is from the living water, which is from the actual roots and tree of life, right?

We have the perspective that as we go out and try to magnify our church callings, as we go out and try to minister to our neighbors and to raise good children and all of these things, right, that our actions are being consecrated for the greater good, that those things, those actions that we’re doing are actually planting seeds of good trees. And we should. And this is why, full circle back to the original point, which is if the spirit isn’t with us, I don’t think we can judge righteously.

And if we don’t have, if we don’t have that anchor, we’re playing a dangerous game.

But if we do have that, if we do have that anchor, then I think that that’s the functional day to day answer for me, which is, yes, we are absolutely charged with making judgments on a moment by moment basis throughout our day.

Should I pull out into the middle of traffic right now, even though I have a red light? It’s like no good judgment says, you should probably wait for that light to turn green. Hey, I see somebody at the end of an alley holding a chainsaw and an axe with blood all over themselves.

Maybe I should make a good judgment to walk the other direction from that person. Right. I’m just saying, like, you can get. You can get as nitty gritty of this as you want to. This all comes back to, we have to be living in a way that the spirit can be with us, because the spirit can judge those fruits better than we can naturally. The spirit can.

Can help us judge righteously more than we’ll be ever able to do by ourselves.

That’s kind of my thought on that.

[00:40:33] Speaker A: And I think there are, and I’m going to refer to these as compensatory fruits. And what I mean by that, when a mother is in labor delivering the child, it’s pain, it’s anguish. It’s not a pleasant experience.

And yet all of that is swallowed up in the joy and the love that they feel when that baby’s born and the feeling of being a parent and life and this child is yours. To me, that’s compensatory fruit. You can look at the fruits of this violent, this terrible process, but it’s swallowed up in that love. And I think that’s what you’re saying, Nate, kind of going along those same lines, right? The spirit offers us compensatory fruits. I mean, how did the binai feel?

Probably not great being scourged with, with burning sticks to death, yet knowing that he was able to stay strong through that whole thing and stay loyal to God and being, I would think, filled with compensatory fruit to the sense that he. He feels that I made it. I’m at the end, and I made it, and. And he’s going to be enveloped in this feeling of love. I I think to help us as we’re trying to balance these scales, because there are a lot of voices, there are a lot of people pointing out a lot of different perspectives. And sometimes that grain of sand can fill our full field of vision to where we don’t see anything else. And to help us deal with that is, like you say, Nate, the fruit of the spirit. God knows what the other side of the scale is carrying, and he knows where the balance lies, and he helps us make judgment. He’s asked us to judge, and he provides us with that inspiration, that feeling of love. And I think that’s why in the two great commandments, the first commandment is to love God first, because when we love God first, it gives us the perspective that we need to be able to love our fellow man second, it gives us the perspective we need on how to deal with and how to measure and how to. It puts everything else in balance. When we put God first, then we can correctly judge the way we need to. And history is full of examples of people who, in the name of God, do all sorts of things, but really they’re loving something else first. The lucre, the privilege, the honor, the glory, the whatever else, putting somebody else down. And they didn’t love their neighbor enough because honestly, they didn’t have God as their core to help them make that right decision.

[00:43:12] Speaker B: Completely agree. And just maybe for me to put the bow on it is. You just said it, though, is that a lot of times, sometimes the fruit that we need to be looking at might just be the fact that we feel faith and confidence and peace when things around us are gnarly.

That, to me, is the most reliable fruit of, for me, because that’s the one thing that doesn’t get shook by external forces. Right. That peace from within and that confidence from within that things are working out the way they’re supposed to or that I am doing the right thing or that I’m on the right path. So that fruit, I feel like, is, in my opinion, maybe the most reliable fruit to see. With that said, we, you know, we should be on guard, looking around, especially, you know, when there are people that are very sneaky or when there are situations or things that, you know, can very much sometimes portray themselves as good fruit. But it’s so funny because even in a lot of those cases, I’ve noticed, you know, and we say it all the time, is like, that dude gives me a bad vibe, or that thing. There’s something wrong. There’s a disconnect there. There’s not harmony there. At times, even when it can be a very convincing or a very persuasive situation or person that might be pretending to be, this a really great thing. But you, I think initially in those cases, still always should start with, well, how do you feel inside?

What is the spirit telling you about this situation?

And that’s still the most important and reliable fruit that you can look towards.

[00:45:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And it’s not to say there weren’t real, tangible proof fruits that this was the right thing. I mean, even in history, if you wanted to get into a purely logical debate with somebody about whether or not this was the right decision, I think you could cut through some of the weeds and some of the nonsense that gets thrown out there. If we go to Alma, chapter 23, verse 18, and they began speaking of the anti nephite Lehis, they began to be a very industrious people. Yeah. And they were friendly with the Nephites. Therefore they did open a correspondence with them, and the curse of God did follow them no more. You look at the impact. So we look at these things as having taken place in, like, a single year. But honestly, there’s, like, 14 years of time from when Ammon’s in there and before they actually have to go and try to find shelter among the Nephites. In those 14 years, crime rate drops significantly.

The open correspondence with the Nephites, you have trade. You have very prosperous people. They’re starting to get wealthy off of that trade. There’s a lot more happiness. There are some serious fruit, tangible fruit, to make the argument that this was the right thing that they did. And if somebody tries to come in this on a purely logical point of view and say, well, yeah, but look, you had thousands of people die and you had all these war and 100,000, like, wait a second.

Why, again, are we putting the blame of these innocent people dying at the feet of Ammon?

Who was the one that incited them to go and kill their brothers? Was it ammon or was that someone else? And I think too readily in life, we try to assign blame at the feet of God, or God did this or God didn’t do that when it was somebody else’s decision.

And we keep trying to convolute by pulling fruit from different sources and piling it in the scales in the basket and saying, this is why it’s not right. When, when even from a purely logical, I think. I think we could dive into the details and actually see the positive fruit and realize, if we’re honest with ourselves, that what we’re calling as fruit is actually convoluted other sources that we’ve kind of put in there because we’re looking for confirmation bias or we’re blinded by our own grain of sand in our eye that we’re not seeing the full picture because that’s what we’re looking for.

[00:47:32] Speaker B: So rely on the spirit. That’s. That’s the. The. That’s the takeaway for me.

[00:47:37] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:47:38] Speaker B: To help you. To help you judge righteously whether that be good fruit or bad fruit.

Because, by the way, too, some fruit looks really good, and then you take a bite into it, and you’re like, woof.

Like, that was not nearly as fresh as it looked like on the outside.

That’s true. Be willing to toss that fruit out. All right, let’s keep going.

[00:47:58] Speaker A: All right. Something else I thought about as I was reading through these chapters was the time and a place for everything, right? When. When Ammon comes in first off, and says, let me serve you, and he’s not interested in trying to beat the gospel message down anybody’s throat. Aaron’s, on the other hand, standing on his soapbox till he gets thrown into prison. And from prison, he’s still trying to shout this message out, right? And later, when. When Aaron is freed from prison and his brothers and they go to see Lamoni’s daddy, they go in there and they’re like, we’re coming to serve you just like Yammun, right? They’re going to try to do this. And he’s like, stop this nonsense. What are you doing? I need you to teach me. You’re not going to be my servants.

I want to know. And so in chapter three, right off the beginning, it talks about how you got this religious freedom where they can go and they proclaim the gospel. And so the time for serving is kind of past. And now you have a time of teaching, and I think it’s good to know when it’s the time to open your mouth and when it’s the time to teach and to help. And just because Ammon found success in serving, it’s because it was the right time, the right place, the right environment. Kind of going back to what you’re saying, Nate, we really need to rely on the spirit to know when it’s time to speak. When it’s time to what?

Missionaries in a world of religious freedom where they’ve been given the license to go and teach, that should be what they’re dedicating most of their time doing is. Is teaching the gospel. Those doors have been opened where maybe it’s not as important for them to just go and be a good example.

But for the rest of us that aren’t called to be full time missionaries, maybe we bear a large responsibility in serving the people around us so that those doors can be opened, so that when the time to speak comes, the missionaries can come in and teach them, or that they feel comfortable enough to ask us questions about what we believe, to ask us questions about wanting to know more, because that, you know, that the time has changed. So it’s just interesting to see how the missionary work is spread and how it goes. And there really is time and place. Not one silver bullet, unless the silver bullet’s following the spirit. Go ahead, Nate.

[00:50:10] Speaker B: The silver bullet is following the spirit. I’m just going to. I’m not going to push back all the way. But who knows? Maybe. Maybe Aaron was supposed to do that. I don’t know. Like, we can’t know. We can’t know because, like we said, we don’t know what the other side of that scale is. We can’t. And maybe that was important for other events. What I can say is this.

The spirit is the magic bullet. It’s the silver bullet or whatever, but it in more. It’s like we’re commanded to go out and call the world unto repentance.

Do you feel like the. I think the point is, is it appropriate to every week stop whoever is giving their speech in church and to go up over the pulpit and be like, I’m calling this ward to repentance? And start, like, naming names and pulling people out of the crowd and being like, I saw you last week watering your garden on. It was a non water day, and I saw this. You know what I mean? It’s like, is it our job to be going out and airing out everybody’s dirty laundry every week in Sacramento meeting? The answer, obviously, is yes.

I’m just kidding.

[00:51:16] Speaker A: What kind of spirit would we feel instantly in a situation like that, to your point?

[00:51:22] Speaker B: That’s my point, though.

My point is calling people to repentance. I think we have things like that. We kind of put our own narrow definition of what that even would be, which is, oh, that’s getting up on a mic and telling everybody in the ward all the things bad that, you know, that they’re doing right. And that’s. I don’t think that’s one. I don’t think that’s calling people repentance. My point is.

My point is to your time and place, which is like, yes, there are.

There are times in place to have conversations with people, and there are times in place to have, you know, maybe even some of these harder conversations. The good news is, is that the spirit, I feel like, will very much tell you when those things should and shouldn’t be happening. And so I’m a big believer in time and place. I’m also just not going to say that Aaron didn’t maybe have the prompting to go and be like, hey, man, you’re going to get thrown in jail, and this is going to suck, but this is actually crazy important for what’s coming. You got to go and you got a soapbox, man. You got to stand up on top of that thing, and you just got to start shouting, I’m sorry, bro, they’re going to throw you in prison. We don’t know. We don’t know that. Maybe that’s what he was not prompted to do because we don’t have that side of the story. So I’m just. I only say that we just got to be very careful not to. Not to say Ammon did it right and Aaron did it wrong. Like, I don’t know. Like, I think. I think they both probably did it right to the circumstance that they were given 100%.

[00:52:51] Speaker A: I’m glad you said that. You’re right. And I’ve been overly hard on Aaron for reasons unknown. Speaker two.

[00:52:58] Speaker B: Well, it’s hard. It’s hard not to be, considering the context of his story back to back with Ammon story, where Ammon’s story, it reads so much like the hero, the master negotiator, the whole, you know, it’s like his story reads so triumphantly where Aaron’s is just. It reads a little more brutal. Right. It just. It’s kind of abrasive, and it just reads tougher.

I’m just saying, like, I’ve learned way too many times to try to suppose, well, if only this had happened, then that would have been better, because I’m continually shown that be. To be wrong so many times with my assumptions. So that’s. That’s the only reason I even brought it up.

[00:53:42] Speaker A: I’m glad you brought it up. And, you know, it even goes back to what we’re saying about whose feet do we lie the blame at? And. And we say, okay, well, Aaron, because he did this, led him into that. Wait a second. Wait a second. What’s the difference in. And the people that Aaron went to versus the people that Ammon went to? And the people that Ammon goes to? You’re talking about an all lamanite crowd, and. And you’re going to the people that Aaron goes to. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he going into more of the land of Nephi with the Amulon people? The priests that these people had experience with Nephites before Nephites weren’t new in this situation. You got the people of Malasai over there, the Amalekites, and.

And these people were a large voice in the persecution and the driving of the killing of the Nephites. You know, who knows?

Maybe it’s not Aaron’s approach. It’s the reaction to the people that he went to and their, their experiences that drove that.

[00:54:39] Speaker B: With that said, please don’t get up in sacrament meeting and call war to repentance unless the spirit is very, very, very explicitly telling you to do it, because I can promise how off putting it’ll be to everybody else and how much. Everybody else will probably reject the other amazing things that you have to say. So if the spirit’s telling you to do it, who am I to say not to? But I have a feeling from all of the other information we have, the spirit’s probably not going to tell you to do that ever.

[00:55:09] Speaker A: Better make sure it’s the right spirit.

[00:55:10] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. You better make sure it’s the right spirit, because if not, you’re sadly probably shutting off everybody else that would otherwise be open to the other amazing things that you might have to testify of.

All right, let’s keep going.

Anything else you want to hit on?

[00:55:28] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s a. There’s a couple things here. Okay. Not. Not a ton. I think we got most of the meat out with. Yep. That was a big discussion I wanted to have. Okay. This week.

[00:55:37] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:55:42] Speaker A: As I. As I’m kind of going back and forth, there’s something I wanted to hit with, with ammonite.

[00:55:48] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:55:49] Speaker A: When he’s. I mean, he kind of gets carried away in rejoicing afterwards. Right. And I’m just kind of looking back at these chapters and making sure I’m not missing something before I just kind of skip into that.

Yeah, I. I don’t know. I think. I think we’re good to just kind of move forward with. With them. And I mean it. There’s a lot to be said about them bearing their weapons and how bright they were and trying to maintain that testimony to God that they never lifted him up again. And there’s some uniqueness in there.

These people had a history of violence, and swearing off this violence was very significant to them in this generation. Not that that’s something that would work for us, but maybe we need to find today in our lives what is something that we can bury up or what’s something that we can change for us to stand as a testimony to God that truly we were willing to walk away from our sins.

And that’s more of last week. Anyways, let me get into this week when we talk about chapter 26. And so Ammon and Alma reunite, and Ammon is just overcome with how successful this mission was. Here he has these thousands, thousands of lamanites.

And it’s not like, hey, guys, I just converted a bunch of golden investigators that were, like, knocking at the door of the land of Nephi. I said, land of Nephi. It’d be like Zarahemla, right? It’s not like a bunch of ambassadors from the Lamanites went to the land of Zarahemla. And said, can you please send us missionaries? We are so curious to know about your God. We feel like our forefathers screwed up a long time ago, and we want to make things right with you. Send us ambassadors. Right?

These were people that were eager to kill and people that you could never imagine being members of the church that ended up converting.

And maybe sometimes when we see people, maybe we jump to snap judgments and we look at, could I beat that person up? Or why?

Sizing them up in the bus? And like, man, I’m just waiting for them to give me some sort of excuse to get mad or yell or whatever, right?

Maybe what we should be doing is sizing them up in, like, how would this person work in the church? And what good could they do? What, what. What could their personality or their characteristics help contribute to the work of God? And how do we see them in the kingdom of God? And Ammon being able to see this mighty change of these people that. That maybe you looked at for a long time, like, how do we kill them? How did we offend ourselves? How do you know? What are we going to do when we get in a fight with them? Really? It was, how can I help these people and how can we use them? And how can their talents contribute to the kingdom?

Anyways, I go off and digress on this. And in chapter 26, when Ammon is just rejoicing over this, and Aaron kind of gives him a hard time, like, hey, you’re being a little boastful. How can you not be a little boastful when you’re coming back with a whole nation of converts?

How do you stem that down and turn that down a bit?

And Ammon’s trying to deflect and says, well, it’s not me, it’s God. But at the same time, God used me, didn’t he?

[00:59:13] Speaker B: I mean, I don’t know what makes this story, I feel like, actually even more important is that it kind of lends to the credibility of these being actual human beings and not just characters made up from a story, because this is one of the most human being parts of this whole narrative. When you have brothers, right? One who just had a miserable experience or is about ready, whatever. You see what I mean? One destined for the brutal side of this, the other one with the most triumphant story, maybe in the book, other than when Jesus came, right?

And of course, the ones going like, this was sweet, and the other one going like, take it easy, bro. Like, you know, and then, and then using. And then using, like, you know, and then using kind of like the scriptures to help back him up so that he can be like, you know, we’re not supposed to boast. He’d be like, yeah, but that was sweet, man. And the other one being like, sure, okay. I guess. I guess you see what I mean? It’s like, there’s. There’s a lot of, like, there’s a lot of family and human beings in this story, and I’m not trying to take away from the bigger points, but in a weird sort of way, like, in theory, they can both kind of be right. We’re not supposed to be boasting, and we’re not supposed to be doing that. And also, it’s awesome, man. When you go and you’ve put a lot of work into something and things work out the way they’re supposed to, it’s like, are you trying to tell me that. I mean, again, I didn’t serve a mission in Latin America, South America, you know, any of the. There’s a lot of.

There’s a lot of baptisms in areas that I didn’t necessarily serve my mission in. And so when we would have baptisms, like, it was a big deal, and, yeah, man, it felt awesome. And seeing something. Seeing, like, something that we worked really hard at, payoff was beautiful, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with when we were writing letters home going like, this is awesome. So and so got baptized. We put a lot of work into this. It’s amazing to see how stoked they are. You know, it’s like, I don’t know. There’s. And at the same time, it would be also kind of tacky if it was like, oh, yeah, I got ten baptisms this week. And, you know, if it was a number, I could see, you know what I mean? I guess I’m saying I can see both sides of the story a little bit.

[01:01:50] Speaker A: It is. You know, not too long ago, Alma was saying, can you sing the song of redeeming love? Right? And to me, this is ammon singing the song of redeeming love. I mean, he is overcome. He has to say something.

How can you not, when you have that much emotion running inside of you, just. Just gush forth? I mean, it’s got to go somewhere. And he’s just carried away. He’s just. He’s just emotional. He’s just emotionally overcome with how wonderful. And that’s what it feels like when the fruits of the spirit that we talked about, the spirit. How does it feel when you. When you follow the Holy Ghost and. And the Lord blesses you, and you immediately see this impact. It’s overcoming to the point Ammon’s going to pass out. It’s so emotionally charging. But in. In here, this chapter comes one of my favorite verses in the Book of Mormon. It’s actually verse 22. Ammon says, yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith. And remember. Right. Ammon was one of the ones theyre describing as the vilest of sinners. And so for him, repenting is kind of a big part of this process. He that repenteth and exerciseth faith and bringeth forth good works and prayeth continually without ceasing. Unto such is given to know the mysteries of God. Yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which have never been revealed.

Yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us, to bring these, our brethren to repentance. And I love that verse. It just speaks to my heart. And I try really hard to repent, to change, to exercise faith, to do something good constantly, to always pray that perhaps I might learn things that I hadn’t ever known before or that no one has ever known before. And that. That conviction, that faith, that knowledge could perhaps by some means help bring thousands of people to. To rejoice and enjoy that same feeling. To me, that speaks. It resonates. It’s one of my favorite scriptures of the entire book of Mormon.

And I don’t know, I feel like. I feel like Nate and our processes. Yeah, I feel like. I feel like we have discovered things that have never been seen before.

[01:04:15] Speaker B: Sure.

[01:04:16] Speaker A: I feel like we’ve seen things to be able to come back and offer a new perspective that hasn’t been considered. I feel like that’s something that the Lord offers everybody. It’s there. It happens. It has happened.

[01:04:30] Speaker B: I hope so.

I hope that we can do that. I mean, certainly things that I have never, you know, you’ve. You’ve brought up definitely some. Some things that have really given me new ways to think of things, for sure. So, I mean, I’m with you on that.

[01:04:50] Speaker A: And this last Sunday in our gospel doctrine class or Sunday school, and the teacher compared some of this to learning to pay it, play an instrument. And he asked, you know, how many people have ever learned to play an instrument before? And he had us thinking about this.

And something that kind of hit me is that it is impossible to learn to play an instrument. Correct me if I’m wrong, Nate, because you can play a lot more instruments than I can. It is impossible to learn to play an instrument without making mistakes.

[01:05:20] Speaker B: Correct.

[01:05:22] Speaker A: And if you’re not making mistake, you’re not learning to play the instrument. It’s just not going to happen. And I the same thing. Right now our family is struggling trying to learn a different language. My children never learned Spanish before. You cannot learn to speak another language without making a mistake. And if you just keep your mouth closed because you don’t want to make a mistake, you’re never going to speak the language. You have to make those mistakes.

And so when you go back to this repenting and this idea that everyone needs to repent, here’s the thing. Everybody in this life, you cannot live in life without messing up.

And that’s why we needed the savior before the foundation of the world was even laid. God knew that from the beginning.

It’s not the point to not have screw ups. The point is to learn from our screw ups, to improve, to be better, to become more like God and to live life, to experience life, to experiment life, is to make these mistakes. But through these mistakes, refine our processes, refine who we are and become more Christ like day after day after day. And that is the motivation, that is the drive to become like Christ and to be saved and then repentance.

Yep, love it.

1st 30 and I think I’m about done.

[01:06:46] Speaker B: I got to be wrapping it up on my end too.

[01:06:49] Speaker A: Okay. And we have suffered all manner of afflictions and all this that perhaps we might, by the means of saving some souls that we suppose that a joy would be full of, perhaps we be the means of saving some. They didn’t come here with grand expectations that they would convert thousands.

They knew that this was a hard mission and they knew that they were going to suffer a lot. And they were willing to put their whole lives on the line like a binadi. Okay. Remember, they’re coming right after the story of Abinadi, knowing that maybe, maybe one person, like Alma the younger’s father, Alma would listen and that it would be all worth it if one person changed. They were willing to put their lives on the line so that one person could be better, and that’s where their joy comes. And I think that’s what the gospel helps us do and motivate us to try to be our best. If it was worth it for one person, it’s worth it for us to lay it on the line for that one person. And that’s what Christ did for us. And that’s it. I’ll stop there. Nate I love it here.

[01:07:49] Speaker B: No, I love it.

Thanks Jason, for all the time and work you put into this, buddy.

I know it’s a lot. So I appreciate you. And hopefully the people that are listening know how much time and effort you put into making these episodes have good content, hopefully unique perspective. But you did bring up a good point. We are constantly trying to not just give you what you know you’ll probably be talking about each week in Sunday school, even though all of that stuff’s great and important too, but you’ll get that. So hopefully, hopefully you know how much time Jason does put into these to try to bring things that maybe haven’t been talked about and stuff in the past. So I know, I know. I’ve learned a lot. So thanks Jason.

We appreciate you listening. You can get ahold of us at the email address high deep dive.com. send us your questions, comments, complaints, even though I don’t really want you to do that. But you do have the email address so you can do whatever you want. You are agents to work freely of your own free will if that’s what you need to do. But we do appreciate any insights that you might have. We got some really great feedback this week, some great insight, so please keep sending it. We love it.

That’s all we’ve got. So until.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd. Here.

Boy. Remotely in the studio somehow. Whatever. I got to figure out what the new verbiage on that is, but with Nate Pyfer, the show’s producer, our friend in my studio. In your studio.

[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yes.

What’s up, dude?

[00:00:43] Speaker A: Dude, it’s. It’s. It’s going great. July 1 1st opened up with some serious rain.

[00:00:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I was going to say that’s still going good for you guys over there.

[00:00:56] Speaker A: Still going great.

[00:00:57] Speaker B: Great.

Yeah. We have had beautiful sunshine, so I’ll take that as well because we already had a lot of rain earlier in this year. So I’m going to. I’m going to take that.

[00:01:08] Speaker A: I was able to go enjoy the summer.

[00:01:11] Speaker B: Absolutely.

Sorry, go ahead.

[00:01:16] Speaker A: I just can say this episode, but what were you going to say?

[00:01:18] Speaker B: I was going to just say, yeah, let’s. Let’s get into it.

[00:01:22] Speaker A: Let’s dive in. This is a. I mean, I think.

[00:01:25] Speaker B: We’Ve story in the Book of Mormon. Come on, dude.

[00:01:28] Speaker A: If. If Freiburg is to be believed.

[00:01:31] Speaker B: Dude, come on. This is. This is the. This is the one story that every kid dreams of getting to give a talk on in primary.

You know, it’s true, dude.

[00:01:42] Speaker A: This is the one. I mean, this is.

For what it’s worth, I think we all love this story, the story of Ammon. And he’s powerful in just about every way. Right? It’s not just that he’s an incredible missionary. He gets to lock people’s arms off, which is kind of gruesome.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: No, it’s so dope.

[00:02:01] Speaker A: But it’s like, I don’t know, there’s just something about that that just speaks to every, like you say, every. Every boy out there thinking what it means to be awesome and a man and just like a hero standing up against the bad guys. And I mean, Ammon. Ammon does it. Protecting the sheep and caring enough to love the people. He’s. He’s just an interesting character, this Ammon.

[00:02:22] Speaker B: It’s so good. Let’s do it.

[00:02:24] Speaker A: And in fact, I’m going to take us down some speculation today, and I just want to get that out right here at the forefront before I go.

[00:02:34] Speaker B: Oh, okay.

[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I think a lot of what we try to do is present unique perspective, and it’s very much grounded in the Bible and what this means or in the book of Mormon, the scriptures, the word of God.

Try not to be very speculative, but. But try to be more informative and kind of open eyes and explain and show.

But what. What I want to dive into today a little bit is not grounded in anything, but what’s. What’s the best way to put it? Like circumstantial evidence, if you will. Like, there are some interesting things that pop up that just make me wonder that I feel are worth exploring and maybe add depth to the story.

But we can’t. We can’t say that that’s how it was or that that’s what it is. I just. I just want to kind of explore this lane a little bit.

[00:03:25] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, this is what we do. Anybody.

[00:03:28] Speaker A: This is what we do.

[00:03:29] Speaker B: Anybody that’s listened to us more than five minutes realizes, like, this is. This is what we try to understand things better by trying to paint bigger pictures than just the word for word text that is in the scriptures. So don’t be mad at us. But you probably already know what you. You knew what I was when you picked me up. As a wise man once said, or a snake. A snake once said, well, I don’t.

[00:03:53] Speaker A: Want to be a snake.

[00:03:54] Speaker B: But. No, but, dude, you knew what I was when you picked me up. Dude, it’s all right to be a snake.

[00:03:58] Speaker A: That was a great. I haven’t seen that in a long time.

[00:04:01] Speaker B: That was so good. All right, let’s see. Let’s hear it.

[00:04:06] Speaker A: Okay, so here. Here it goes. Here it comes. If you’re ready for this, I’m looking at the event. And so, for example, when Ammon comes in and Lamoni is like, here is my daughter. Marry her.

It’s kind of a little bit mind blowing that the king would be doing this.

[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:04:29] Speaker A: And I kind of go a couple different ways on this. One way is Ammon is the son of Mosiah. Mosiah was the king.

And so if here you got the son of a king, then this makes sense in the ancient near eastern context, because that’s what you did. You had political marriages, arranged marriages for political reasons, to try to strengthen and fortify positions. Now, consider this for a second. Lamoni is not a descendant of Laman.

He’s a descendant of Ishmael. And so when you look at the two kingdoms, the Lamanites and the Nephites, who’s got the right to rule? And the big discussion is, the Lamanites believe that Nephite tried to supplant it and steal it from Laman. Laman is the one who should have that? And so it’s either Laman or it’s Nephi, but it’s surely not Ishmael. Right? But yet here you have a descendant of Ishmael who’s ruling in this land, in this kingdom, and his father is a pretty significant king in the land of Nephi. And you think about these guys. They’re branching out, and you look at where the original Lamanites are. The Nephites fled from them, went and established themselves up in the land of Nephi, and then they had to abandon that as well. It feels like the newer groups are spreading, and it’s Ishmael and his family are kind of spreading up and getting more towards the fringes and the borders for the Nephites are. And so if he’s not from one of these main two lines of Laman or Nephi, having his daughter marry a son, a descendant. Excuse me, a son, that would be. No, that’s right. A descendant of Nephi helps legitimize his reign even further, because now he’s got that Nephite claim and his son’s claim, and it can bring in a lot of the strength from the Nephites to kind of help fortify and create a strategic alliance that maybe strengthens his position in the Lamanite kingdom a little bit more. So there’s political reasons behind this, and that’s where I kind of first went with this, thinking about, why would he offer this? At the same time, Ammon does not go into the land of the Lamanites immediately after the reign of the judges. Right. It’s like 14 years after. And who knows how word spreads among the Lamanites. Maybe they knew that he was no longer in power. And. And the other thing is, when Ammon approaches the king, it’s not like he is making a show of who he is. He doesn’t say, oh, by the way, I am the son of Mosiah. I am great. I am. He’s not making those claims. So how would Lamoni know that Ammon is coming from this political position to be making this type of agreement? Right. So maybe. Maybe there’s some different motives behind this. Um, it does say. And so some of this is still kind of grounded in the text. I haven’t gotten to the speculation yet. I’ll. I’ll get there soon, I promise. As we’re setting the stage, though, in chapter 17, when they depart into the wilderness, it says that they depart, and this is verse seven. Nevertheless, they departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and took their swords and their spears and their bows and their arrows and their slings, and this they did, that they might provide food for themselves while in the wilderness.

And so maybe the fact that Ammon is coming with the sword and the type of sword that the son of a king carries might even set him apart for who he is. That without even having to say anything, Lamoni would recognize him for being a man of power, wealth, or position, just based on the fact that he’s carrying his sword.

And I find it kind of interesting that Ammon is. Is defending the flocks with his sword. If. If the king took him prisoner, surely they would have taken his weapons away. And if his sword was of any value, how do we know that Ammon even gets it back to be able to go? And the guys that are coming to scatter the sheep, they’re not coming armed with swords. They’re coming armed with clubs. And. And it sounds to me like a sword would probably be viewed as a superior weapon to. To just a club.

And so there’s. I don’t know. There’s some interesting stuff in there. I wonder if Lamoni is not trying to test the nature or the character of Ammon by offering his daughter just to kind of see what his motives are. Here comes this nephite coming to live with them. Why do you want to come live with us? What is it that you’re after? And, and if you look at.

Let me. Let me say this. It feels like oftentimes we see in others the intentions of ourselves.

Sometimes we just expect people to be honest because we’re honest in nature. Or sometimes we always see a criminal, or we accuse somebody of being something because that’s what we would have done. Or we see in others our own human nature, if that makes sense. And if that’s accurate to say.

When we look at the character of these Lamanites, verse 15, there are many who were indolent people, many of whom would worship idols. And the curse of God had fallen upon them because of the traditions of their fathers. Notwithstanding, the promises, Lord were extended unto them on conditions of righteous. And they talk about these people.

And I wanted to go. Theres another verse that actually describes it a little bit better when it talks about their willingness to get gain by stealing it from other people because they weren’t willing to work for it themselves.

And. And I think about ammon being in this position, surrounded by people that were always looking for the shortcut. And I know that word’s going to resonate with you, Nate. I mean, we’ve been talking about the shortcut a lot.

For the Lamanites, it was all about the shortcut. Who can. I mean, I. The fact that they’re scattering the king’s sheep, hoping that the sheep will wander into their own yards and they can capture him so that they can get it without having to actually earn those sheep or. Or pay for it. They’re always looking for the shortcut. And so to me, when I look at Lamoni offering Ammon a position here, he’s offering Ammon a serious shortcut, because Ammon has no status as a foreigner, whether or not he’s the son of a king. He’s not in nephite territory, and he’s coming into a new nation as an immigrant. He’s got no status, he’s got no wealth. He’s got to work from the ground up. And Lamoni is testing him and offering him a shortcut into the king’s house to maybe even be next in line to see what his intentions are.

Maybe. Maybe it’s more of a test from Lamonis perspective than it is a political strategic alliance. I don’t know. But as I was thinking about this, here comes the speculation. Sorry. This is just such a long way to get to here.

What if Ammon, we remember he fought against the church, and Mosiah represented working hard for your own support, and Mosiah worked for himself.

And right after the end of Mosiah, we have Nihor, who represented the opposite extreme of we want priestcraft and the people to support us so we don’t have to support anybody.

And so my speculation is, what if it wasn’t Ammon that kicked off the movement of the nehors?

And. And the reason why I say this.

Yes, you’ve got a next generation where he’s rebelling against his dad and kind of tearing down everything that his dad does. And this does seem like an opposite thing for his dad.

But where maybe we get a little bit more evidence is the city of Ammonihah. And when it says the city of Ammonihah, it says it’s called after the name of the person that founded it. So it was named after somebody called Ammonite. In Hebrew, the ha ending to a word means towards or to. And it’s not actually part of the name. So Ammonihah would have been founded by a man named Ammon, not necessarily a man named Ammonihah. And we look at the city that was formed, called Ammonihah. It was formed next to or in the land of Melech. In Hebrew, the name Melech means king. And so if you look at Melech as the land of the king or the land of Mosiah, who is land of the king at the time, the king’s family or the king’s line, going back through generations of Nephi’s descendants, who you have this royal family and this. This royal family kind of pushing out and branching out and feeling the responsibility to establish. To create a new city. Ammon would be establishing another city named the city of Ammoniah. And you’ll also notice that after Alma’s going to leave the city of Ammoniah, he goes to another city called the city of Aaron, which is also the name of one of Mosiah’s sons. I don’t think it’s coincidence that you have two cities named after the two sons of.

They were actively seeking to destroy not just the church, but Mosiah, the kingdom, the everything that their parents had stood for. And they’re seeking to rob the freedom of the people.

And these cities were on the fringes. And so what I say is Zarahemla is not right next to where the Lamanites are, but as they start to branch out and build out, they have to go to new land. And establishing these cities closer to the fringes of where the Lamanites are, to where it’s the first city attacked. When the Lamanites come, it suggests that this is a newer city. So the timeline lines up with the city that would have been established by Ammon. Now, in the city of Ammonia, they were all nehors, every one of them? That’s what it says. And so when the city was destroyed, they called it the destruction of the Nehors. So if this city was connected with Ammon, and here’s my speculation, was Ammon a precursor or part of the founder to the Nehor movement? Was it his teachings? Was it his pushing against the church that created this movement that gets Nehor established and a big part of what Nehors are fighting for. Sorry, Nate. I’ll let you jump.

[00:14:55] Speaker B: No, just to make sure. You’re saying before he went out and did his mission, you’re saying when he was young and rebellious and a knucklehead.

[00:15:01] Speaker A: Yes. I’m wondering if before, in his rebellions, this started the movement, because Nehor comes in the first year of the reign of the judges. And for perspective, Ammon’s repentance and Alma’s experience happens about nine years before this.

And so I’m wondering if nehors are capitalizing on because they actively sought to tear down the church. And one thing that’s interesting about what Nehor was teaching is he said there is no need for repentance and that there is no sin.

Now go back to how we describe Ammon. In Ammon, it says that he was the vilest of sinners.

Why would you be the vilest of sinners? And if you start to look at that theology, if you don’t believe you ever have to repent and that there’s no sin or consequence for sin, then why not? To me, it would make sense that being the vilest of sinners would fit with the mindset of there is no need for repentance. And it doesn’t matter what you do, you can do whatever you’re going to do.

The other thing about the knee whores is the shortcut. And this is where I kind of want to take this back in. And this is where it’s going to kind of resonate a little bit. And it is what it is, right? This is speculation. It might not be the case. It might be. But I’ll tell you why I’m going here.

If. If this movement that was all about being supported by others and. And the priests didn’t have to support themselves, the others are going to take care of me. Start looking at the shortcuts that are offered to Ammon first. When Lamoni says, here is my daughter, and here’s an easy way out to where you’re going to be supported and you’re never going to have to work again. If this is resonating with the movement that, that Ammon was key in creating, this would be an opportunity for him to show that he has truly repented from that movement and then take it again. When he runs into Lamonis father and he beats his father in a duel, and he’s got the point where he can slay his father, and his father says, I will give you everything up to half my kingdom if you let me live.

This is one more temptation. This is one more offer that if Ammon was part of this mindset that creates this movement, would truly kind of check up and see has he turned from that past, or is he going to look for that shortcut where he can gain that kingdom, he can gain that wealth. And rejecting both instances, to me is showing a new creature, a new birth, if we follow that mindset. But again, this is highly speculative. I don’t know.

[00:17:43] Speaker B: All right, let me add some. Let me add some thoughts to this.

[00:17:46] Speaker A: Please do.

[00:17:47] Speaker B: One to add kind of some legitimacy to this. It does make sense why the sons of Messiah were willing to forego their potential political kingdoms and go serve missionary work. Because in theory, that would be part of the repentance process, right. They would have to be making amends for the damage that they caused.

Where alma the younger, he got to just get dragged through hell and tormented for three days. Right. He kind of paid for his sins. He atoned, I guess, if you will, for his bad doings by getting knocked out and just. Just dragged over the coals for a few days.

The sons of Messiah didn’t.

But you do actually see a lot of similar things that we can touch on later. This isn’t part of my point, but it’s funny, because when you do watch, actually, what happens with ammon going there and everybody passing out and coming back and being like, hey, I saw God, and I know it’s true. It’s familiar enough to him. But anyways, the sons of Messiah didn’t do that. They didn’t get their sins dredged back up and tormented that way.

So it would make sense that they’re like two to make amends. We need to go back out and undo the destruction that we did, and then it would, I guess, make sense that this would be the way to do it. Second of all, when it talks about Ammon being the vilest of sinners, and like you said, if we relate that to trying to destroy the kingdom of goddess, we see how good Ammon is with his words. We see how incredible he is at building bridges for good or for evil. You could see that, right? He is so good at reading a room. He is so good at winning over large groups of powerful people.

It would make sense that he would maybe be.

We kind of talked about in show preponderance, Aaron isn’t necessarily that dude. Right. You don’t see Aaron going in and being the statesman, persuasive, charming, you know, talkative person where Ammon, you watch him come in, and every step along the way, he is perfectly making his social moves, that you could absolutely see him being the ringleader of starting off movements that could be really, really destructive.

What a good person. I guess to win back over to the right side. But, you know, I guess I’m just saying to add a little bit of ammo to what you’re saying here, those things immediately popped in mind. That would add some credence to that.

[00:20:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And I want to build on that, what you’re saying, because you look at what, what did the anti Nephi Lehis, who were led by Ammon do when. When they are feeling guilty because of how much murder they committed, they go to the opposite extreme by burying their weapons and. And never wanting to commit another murder again. Take that same act and go back to Ammon and his brothers if. If they were seeking financial gain and support of the people.

And what do they do? They give up even the right to be kings, their sacrifice of the throne that was legitimately theirs. This is the first time we see this in 400 years of history, and we will never see this again in Book of Mormon history. This is singular an event where they give up the throne, but it is very similar to what you see with the anti Nephi Lehis who were led by them. It is almost like the anti Nephi Lehis are looking at them as an example and saying, let’s learn from them. What can we do to give up our poison? Just like they gave up theirs to kind of go along with what you pointed out.

It’s. It’s like they gave that up before they even had the chance to reject it again. And giving it up is one thing, but. But as you know, sometimes an addict or sometimes someone who struggles with it, you can give it up once, but you. You stumble down the road, right? And this is an opportunity for Ammon to prove again and again that this is something that he’s willing to walk away from. And it’s interesting, because we’re going to see later on that these people are led in battle, and it’s not Ammon that’s leading him. It’s Helaman. Where. Where is Ammon at this point? Or where is, you know, is he truly just melting into this servant role where he keeps saying, no, I want to be at the bottom of the pile? And why does he keep wanting to be at the bottom of the pile? Was part of this motivation because he was seeking to put himself at the top of a different pile, and he needs to vindicate himself by always being at the bottom. It just adds some depth to the story. If that’s the case, I mean, it.

[00:22:58] Speaker B: It would make sense. It definitely adds something to think about. I.

All of that checks out in my mind, but I get it. We on this podcast try to never be too definitive about our speculation and opinion, so please don’t call us heretics.

[00:23:18] Speaker A: Well, and I’m not worried about that. I just want to be clear.

[00:23:21] Speaker B: I am always.

[00:23:24] Speaker A: When I state this is. I want people to say, okay, this is because I am being clear about when. I don’t know, or when I’m saying this, is what I think versus this is what I know. I want to make that distinction. So when I say I know this, sure, it resonates.

[00:23:38] Speaker B: All right. Yeah, I think everybody gets it. Whatever.

Call us heretics. I don’t care. Hi@weeklydeepdive.com. we don’t, we’ve been called worse at this point.

Yeah.

[00:23:52] Speaker A: So it’s okay.

[00:23:54] Speaker B: Can we get into the story yet or not?

[00:23:56] Speaker A: Yeah, we can get into the story. And, you know, you bring up their personalities. You talked about Aaron being a little bit different than Ammon, and to me, but it’s interesting because Ammon, not Ammon, Aaron is the one that’s supposed to be the next king. So who’s older?

[00:24:16] Speaker B: Interesting.

[00:24:17] Speaker A: That’s the question. Right. And Mosiah asked the people who should be king, and they all vote for Aaron. Why are they not voting for Ammon? You look at how charismatic he is. Look at how emotionally intelligent he is. Look at how he is at speaking to the people. Why do the people want Aaron and not ammonite? And I think Ammon is extremely emotional. And we see this. Ammon gets carried away and lets his emotions carry him away to where he passes out. Just thinking about how happy he is or how much he’s very much, I don’t know, emotionally intelligent almost seems like an underscore on this, but he’s very emotional. He’s an emotional mandeh. You don’t see that same emotion with Aaron. He’s very logical.

He’s very direct, and he’s almost this calming, stabilizing influence for Ammon.

And so as a king, you do want that stable, that calm, not this emotionally charged person who’s just going to run out and make a brash decision.

But it seems to be the right decisions for him. He’s led by the spirit. He’s an interesting leader. I think Aaron’s the older brother, but I think Ammon’s the more dynamic of the two.

[00:25:29] Speaker B: Okay, can I speculate a little bit? I should, I honestly need just a little button that I can push that just has, when it’s, like speculation or something.

[00:25:40] Speaker A: The speculatron.

[00:25:42] Speaker B: I also, oh, man, this one, this one is gonna, this one might get us some emails. I don’t think that Ammon looked anything like Freeberg’s picture. I don’t think he looked like a muscle man. He man. I don’t think he looked like just this ripped bodybuilder wielding the sword and looked crazy rad. I think that Ammon’s entire strength was through his persuasion, through his diplomacy through his negotiating. I think that he was always thinking in very logical, but also, like you said, emotional. Like he was very, very in tune with reading the room where I think Aaron probably looked a little bit more like the Freiburg picture. And if people were voting on a king, they probably weren’t voting necessarily. They probably weren’t wise enough as a group of people, just because I don’t trust groups of people. They probably weren’t thinking, who is the best statesman here? Who is the best?

Who would negotiate the best with our enemies? And I say this because I look at the world around us now. A lot of times, a lot of people want their leader to be the person they feel like can protect them, right? The person that will be on the front lines with them. If we consider time and place. It would make a lot more sense to me that a group of people would much rather have a dude out there that looked like the Freiburg pictures, that could wield a sword, that, by the way, probably wasn’t the greatest negotiator. That was just like, hey, look, I’ll protect you. I’m going to say it like it is. I’m not, I’m not going to talk down to you. I’m not out trying to pull moves behind the scenes. I’ll, you know, I’m, I’m not saying he even campaigned, but I guess I’m just saying if, if a group of people were to look at those two, to add to your point, it also makes sense that they would maybe be looking at the person like, hey, who’s going to lead us and protect us? Who is going to, who’s going to be the person that we can feel safe behind? And I do think that this, I wanted to bring this up because I actually do feel like this adds a lot more depth to the story of ammon actually being the one out lopping off arms. I’m not saying that the dude wasn’t strong or that he, I mean, he, he very well could have also looked like the Freiburg picture. I guess all I’m saying is it makes more sense to me that his art of negotiation, his persuasiveness, his in touch, his empathy, his sympathy, his people skills were his greatest strength and not necessarily his bodybuilding strengths, where Aaron almost kind of comes across a lot more in the text as the probably physically empowered, the maybe not most persuasive dude in the entire world. Again, as we read in the text, he kind of comes into town and he’s like, check it. And everybody’s like, oh, no, you’re going to jail, right? So I don’t know. Do you see what I’m saying? So that’s a little bit of my speculation, which would make sense why a group of people might want eren to be their king, maybe more than his younger brother financially.

[00:28:57] Speaker A: And I think only wanting to add a little bit onto this, which I would say Aaron or, excuse me, Ammon, as a son of Mosiah and as a son of Benjamin, is a son of Mosiah. Mosiah, Benjamin and Mosiah all had to wield the sword and fight, right? To defend their nation. I think, honestly, Ammon would have had some training, would have had some skill. I’m not just to your point, to your point. I don’t think he. I don’t think he’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger out on the field just squashing ends. Right? Like, it’s not. It’s. It’s. It’s not the Freiburg, like, painting that we have. I don’t think he looks so much different than anyone else to where you would look at him and just be like, oh, like you say, maybe Aaron was more imposing as a figure.

I tend to agree with you on that.

[00:29:48] Speaker B: I’m just trying to put all the pieces together. And by the way, we do know Mosiah, Benjamin and Mosiah had to fight with the sword.

It doesn’t say in the text that the suns did, does it?

I mean, they didn’t.

[00:30:01] Speaker A: And so I guess aside from Ammon’s encounter with robbers.

[00:30:07] Speaker B: Exactly. Which, by the way, too, to be fair, might then lead us to assume. Okay, cool. Maybe he had some, but it wasn’t the same wartime issues that Mosiah, Benjamin Mosiah, it says in the text, had to fight with the sword to defend themselves. And again, this is all just speculation. I’m just trying to better understand the human beings in the stories and try to use as much information from the text to try to paint that bigger picture. That’s all.

[00:30:36] Speaker A: I appreciate it. I like it.

[00:30:38] Speaker B: Which I do think adds to the miracle, by the way, of potentially, of Ammon. I mean, even if he did look like the Freiburg picture and he’s out fighting off hordes of knuckleheads with clubs is still an amazing, amazing thing. If he was also definitely more of the statesman of the family and was out doing this, then you can see why when they bring all of these arms to the kingdom, the king’s going, wait, that dude just did this. I think that that would also lend a lot more, you know, information and context. To the king, being as blown away by this as he was.

[00:31:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And I’m going to go into verse 18. It says now, Ammon being the chief among them, or rather, he did administer unto them, and he departed from them after having blessed them according to their several stations, having imparted the word of God unto them or administered unto them before his departure. Thus they took their several journeys throughout the land. And it’s interesting that Ammon’s taking this role on. Ammon’s the one that’s administering to his brothers. Ammon is the one that’s giving them a blessing before they go. Ammon’s the one that’s almost kind of acting like the father figure in the absence of Mosiah before they begin their trip. And you’re like, wait a second. Aaron was the one that was pegged to be the king. Aaron was the one that people wanted to have in this spot. Why is Ammon all of a sudden rising up to be this. This character? And as I’m reading this, I’m going through this. What it reminds me of is Hiram and Joseph Smith, because I look at Hiram’s character, and. And I think people looked at him very similar to Aaron. He was a little bit older, more mature. I don’t think he was nearly as emotional as Joseph Smith. I think Joseph Smith was a lot more emotional, a lot more brash, a lot more creative, a lot more trusting in the Lord. And I think there’s reasons the Lord chose Joseph. But Joseph looked up to Hiram. Hiram was the older brother, but Joseph was the leader, and Hiram looked to Joseph for inspiration. But Hiram was very much a stabilizing influence for Joseph Smith in his life and kept him anchored where you. You’ve got that interesting dynamic between the emotional leader and the intelligent leader, and there’s balance. I’m not saying that. That Joseph wasn’t intelligent. He was extremely intelligent. But they have different strengths, and they complement each other so well. And this brother brotherhood, brothership, brother, this pair of brothers, I see an interesting dynamic there, and I wonder if Joseph didn’t relate to them as well as he’s thinking about his brother Hiram, as he’s translating this. I don’t. I don’t know. You know, I like it.

[00:33:15] Speaker B: Should we keep going?

[00:33:16] Speaker A: Yeah. There’s one last person, I think that we need to mention, and to me, this is the wizard behind the curtain, and that’s Mosiah. And he doesn’t really show up here in these stories, but it says that the reason why Ammon wasn’t slain and they said is because they knew not that the Lord had promised Mosiah that he wouldn’t be. And it says it was according to the faith of Mosiah.

[00:33:40] Speaker B: That’s right. I remember that specifically reading it, too.

[00:33:44] Speaker A: And so the impact of Mosiah, who’s. Who’s, for all we know, dead at this point, right? Yet he still has this far reaching influence, and it is because of his faith that this mission is as successful as it is, just the impact and the reach of somebody even far beyond the grave. I mean, you see Mosiah’s influence through this and what a great man he was. I just feel like it’s probably worth tipping my head to him a little bit.

[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yep, I like it.

[00:34:14] Speaker A: All right. I mean, we’ve got the story of ammon slaying the arms. I think we’re all familiar with it, but maybe we need a different take on it, a different perspective. Or maybe hear a little bit of bros of Smith’s description of how this all goes down.

[00:34:26] Speaker B: You mean the book of Mormon? Unofficial chat. GPT translation for Gen Z.

Let’s see. How about Alma, chapter 17?

There was a great one in here.

[00:34:40] Speaker A: Verse five. Was it?

[00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah, dude.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for these homies. They went through some tough times, like being hungry, thirsty, tired. They had to really grind to get through it all, you know? The best one was. Was when? Oh, yeah, in chapter or verses 31 and 32. So this ammon was talking to his homies, and he was like, yo, let’s go find those sheep and bring them back to the watering hole so we don’t get killed by the king. So Ammon’s friends were like, bet. And they followed him real quick, and they found the king’s sheep and brought them back to the watering hole. But then some dudes tried to come and scatter the sheep again. But Ammon was like, nah, let’s surround the sheep so they can’t run away. I’ll take care of these dudes. So Ammon’s friends did what he said, and Ammon went to fight the dudes that were trying to scatter the sheep. There were a lot of them. So good. So anyways. Oh, yeah, chapter 36. But Ammon was like, I got this. And he started throwing rocks at them with the sling.

He was so good. Yeah. That he killed some of them. They were amazed. This is great, dude. We just. Every once in a while, we just need to know how AI thinks. Gen Z is the dumbest people in the entire world. So this is good. Thank you, AI. I don’t believe that, Gen Z, but I’m sorry that AI thinks so.

[00:36:00] Speaker A: That verse, that first verse. First five.

Can you go back in that?

[00:36:05] Speaker B: You know I can.

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, that verse.

[00:36:10] Speaker A: That’s the one. That’s the one. That’s the one. Because it reminded me of something I wanted to bring up.

[00:36:14] Speaker B: It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for these homies.

[00:36:18] Speaker A: They.

Okay, this goes back to something we talked about last week.

I believe we talked about last week. If not, then I feel bad. The hurry up and wait, right? When we get to Alma and he went to Ammoniah, got rejected. He was on his way to Aaron. And the Lord says, go back because they’re. They’re going to destroy it. And he hurries up, right? Like he doesn’t even take time to pack food. He shows up starving, not eating for several days because he’s in that big of a hurry. But then he hangs out at Amulek’s house for many days.

And you see that same type of thing here with these guys. They’ve been begging for years to get out and go. And as soon as. As soon as Mosiah gives them a thumbs up, they run off. And then they stop in the wilderness for many days. And it’s that hurry up and wait type of thing. And you’re like, well, wait a second. Weren’t they so anxious? Why did they stop and spend so much time in the wilderness? And I think there’s some significance to that. We need to be quick to hear the word of the Lord, to answer to the word of the Lord, and be willing to go and do whatever it is right away. But just because we respond right away doesn’t mean that we have to do a rush job or that we go in unprepared or that we mess it up. And I think that time in the willingness to prepare and kind of understand what they were getting into, as much hurry as they felt it was important to the success of the journey, if that makes sense.

And I think that kind of feeds into the context. I mean, in that wilderness, it says you’re going to suffer a lot.

And I think ammon is taking that and using it to kind of build his plan going forward. Hey, these people, this is not going to be easy.

Maybe going in there and telling them outright that they’re wrong is not the best approach.

Maybe I need to kind of just ease into this and serve them and see where it comes. And I think that’s where Ammon shows his intelligence and his leadership. Right. And we kind of highlighted those differences between Aaron and Ammon.

But, yeah, that’s, that’s there.

So, yeah, we, we get the story in this story, something that didn’t quite show through with the chat GPT, I think, is something that you’ve pointed out, Nate, with as intelligent as Ammon is, you can see in him thinking ahead, the end game, it’s always about that for Ammon. He is two steps ahead because he’s thinking about what next, not what now. And you see it when the men came and scattered the flocks, verse 29. And they wept because of the fear of being slain. Now, when Ammon saw this, his heart was swollen within him for joy. And you’re like, wait, what? Who, who feels joy and rejoicing at this is my chance at a moment when everything just went south. And that’s because he’s not focusing on the problem, he’s focusing on the solution. And he’s looking at this ahead.

And something you said so well in the pre show prep is when it comes time to prepare the king’s horses. Ammon knew what he was doing.

He didn’t go in and tell the king. He wasn’t the first one in there to show him all the arms and, like, brag about himself. And, I mean, Nate, you probably state this a lot better than what I.

[00:39:37] Speaker B: No, I agree. I’m with you. I think that sometimes you read this, the text would make it seem like, I mean, you know, these are all like really big missionary scriptures, right? This is some of the. This is how we should all be doing the missionary work, and this is how to be, serve and be persuasive. And I agree with all that, by the way. But to think that Ammon didn’t know what he was doing and the dramatic effect that was basically taking place from start to finish here, it’s a naive thought.

One of Ammon’s skills is he was a really great people person, right?

The text would lead us to believe his greatest skill was knowing how to work a room, knowing how to build bridges, by the way, knowing how to negotiate, how to win people over.

When he went and chopped off all the arms, first of all, he was, you know, he was stoked and he’s, you know, he was thinking, this is definitely going to open some doors for me. And so when the dudes brought the arms back, it would have. He absolutely knew. This doesn’t look nearly as great if I’m in there taking all of it, would have still looked great, right? If he walked in, being the one carrying the arms, like, check out what I did. But it changes the.

It could have almost changed the relationship between him and the king, where the king might have been afraid of him at that point, and the king might have been like, whoa. Like, oh, you’re. You’re the dude that’s going to be my greatest warrior. But instead, you know, Ammon’s like, and what’s going to make it look even better is if I’m out here doing the work that probably no one wants to be doing, which is feeding the animals, they probably don’t smell super great. I’m going to be cleaning up the. You know, I’m going to go out. I’m going to go out and clean the restrooms right, while the governor is. I’m just saying he absolutely knew how. How dramatic of these things were going to be, by the way. I’m not saying that in a negative way whatsoever. I’m saying, bravo, young man, for doing this in such a way that it gave the king a time to look at that thing and really probably go through a lot of emotional distress and a lot of questions. He probably had to unpack a lot of that, and it was probably better that Ammon wasn’t there while he was trying to unpack all of this, the servants could say what they needed to say. Everybody was able to kind of go like, okay, here’s what it is. So that, by the way, when they did call Ammon back in, Ammon could be like, what, me? Oh, I’m just out. I’m just out doing what I said I was gonna do. Oh. Oh, they brought you these arms that I chopped off. Oh, it’s like. I know. Is that why you’re calling me in again? Please don’t misunderstand. This is a negative thing. I think that not. I think that knowing how to really impact a room and work with people and the dramatic effect, I think that’s an amazing skill and gift, by the way. I’m not even gonna say skill. I’m gonna think that that’s a gift that was absolutely needed for this situation. We’re talking a lot about instruments and tools this week, right in the come, follow me. It’s like the first thing that’s talked about, I’m like, aaron is a hammer, right? Aaron is a tuba. Where. Where ammon might be a violin. Ammon might be a precision saw, right? Like a scalpel. You need different instruments in different situations, and if you need a beautiful, melodic, emotional solo, you usually don’t have the tuba playing it. Right. So it doesn’t say. That doesn’t mean that a tuba is a bad instrument.

It just means that maybe in this situation, the Lord chose to use the right instrument. The Lord chose to use a scalpel. The Lord chose to use a, you know, a little bit more of a delicate, deliberate tool, knowing he’s, he. This is, this is a pivotal catalyst for really winning over multiple kingdoms at this point. He can’t just send in the hammer.

[00:44:01] Speaker A: And, which, by the way, Moroni, I almost see more as the hammer than the scalpel. Right? And yet Moroni, Captain Moroni, is still emotionally charged like ammon is. But again, different tools for different times. And it’s fascinating to see how the Lord has the right person for the right time and uses them to their strength. So we talked about this with Peter and Paul.

[00:44:24] Speaker B: It’s funny you said that. It was literally the two examples. I was going to bring up Peter and Paul, and I was gonna bring up Helaman and Pahoran. Like, you do have the juxtaposition, by the way, how great is it that you could have so many of these incredible people serving together at the same time? Like, you could have. You said it earlier, even when you brought up both Aaron and Ammon. It’s like this is a pattern that we see all throughout the scriptures, as you see kind of the physical arm with the people arm or the leader or the minister. Right. You see the administration and the ministry a lot kind of in combination. And Peter and Paul are a great example.

[00:45:11] Speaker A: And even Mormon picks up on this, right, when he says that he used guile to trick the king into listening to him, which I want to get back to that point here in a second. But, I mean, it’s even something that doesn’t escape Mormon as he’s writing this out. Right?

Boy, when you were describing Ammon and I was thinking about, you know, each arm he’s lopping off is almost getting him more and more excited. And as emotionally as this guy is, I almost want to see an updated Freiburg painting of this guy smiling like a maniac while whacking arms off. He should just like each one, making him more happy. This will make me even better.

[00:45:47] Speaker B: Yes. We should see if AI will give us one where he’s actually beating the other dudes with the lopped off arms. Is it too far?

Too far? All right, too far. I might edit that out. No, it’s not.

To refocus this in back of a spiritual manner, even look at the relationship with Jesus and John the Baptist, though, is like, you really kind of have the rugged. You know, you have a rugged, manly man out in the desert, wherein the. Wearing the gnarly whatever it is, like the goat skin clothes. You have the rugged. Maybe not necessarily people. I mean, he was very much ministering to the people, too. Don’t misunderstand. But it’s like you can almost even just look at the two and go where Christ was really the soft spoken, the compassionate, the people leader. It’s like even he had a companion to be, you know, to be. To be countering that. You have Aaron and Moses. You have a lot of these. You have a lot of history of dynamic duos. The dynamic duos, where they. Where their skills perfectly play off of each other.

That was it. That’s my thought.

[00:47:04] Speaker A: Like. Like Jason and Nate.

[00:47:05] Speaker B: Yeah, like Jason and Nate. Which. 01:00 a.m. i. The enforcer.

[00:47:08] Speaker A: I don’t know.

[00:47:09] Speaker B: Is it just because I can actually own guns and you’re in Europe? Like, what is the. I’ll be the enforcer. America, baby.

[00:47:17] Speaker A: You know, and sometimes it’s. Sometimes it’s even more powerful when they actually switch roles, when. When the. When the enforcer becomes the scalpel and the scalpel becomes the enforcer. Right. I mean, look at Christ when he’s not pulling punches, talking about the Pharisees, and you’re like, oh, it almost hits harder.

[00:47:33] Speaker B: You’re. You’re right. And that’s why, again, like, with John the Baptist in Christ, it’s not the exact same, because Christ is the perfection of both, both the minister and the administer. So he does embody both. But I’m even, like, at Christ’s baptism, I just love that he made it a point, and we’ve brought it up a million times that he made it the point to go, it is imperative that you and I both do this together. Salvation is you and I working together. And so that’s the only reason Peter and Paul are probably the better, you know, example of what it is that we’re talking about. More apples to apples.

[00:48:14] Speaker A: But is there something to be said about these dynamic duels? Because we just came out of Alma and amulek, which, again, is another powerful duo. I mean, we’re talking about Joseph and Hyrum, but also, look at Joseph and Sidney Rigdon, or look at.

It’s just interesting, these pairs that we have and these pairings.

[00:48:33] Speaker B: Well, and it just goes back to the idea that the Lord knows his instruments, and very much the touch of the master’s hand is a real thing, like our master can really take something that even the world might look at as worthless and be like, no, I’m going to show how I can use this for a beautiful purpose and how I can use this instrument for my work and my purpose. And in doing so, consecrate the weaknesses of this thing, or maybe take the thing that the world might not see as beauty and show you how beautiful of a thing this is. And so I think that it’s. It’s the mixture and the bigger picture of the Lord knowing how to use a tool in the most perfect way that that tool can be used to better build a kingdom, to better serve.

[00:49:26] Speaker A: A purpose and to kind of tip my hat to your world a little bit. One of the. One of the things I enjoy most in music, honestly, is, is the distortion of electric guitar and then mixing in the. The melodic harmonies of a violin and the two kind of going in with each other, or when you have all that noise and all of a sudden just stops and just a moment of silence, the loud versus the silent, it’s just. It’s interesting to have these contrasts that go with each other.

Something else I wanted to point out on this. I wonder, when the king sends ammon to go tend the flocks. Just so we’re all clear on this, and we’ve talked about this before, in ancient Israel, at least, and in the ancient Near east, tending the flocks was not a position of honor.

And so when we talk about contrast, for example, how do you go from here? I want you to marry my daughter to here. I want you to tend my flocks.

Go back to. In ancient Israel, it was always the youngest son’s responsibility, because as soon as you were old enough, you were out. You didn’t have to. This was the job that no one liked to do. David got stuck with the flocks, whereas all the brothers got to go out to. To war. And, I mean, you look at that, maybe being in the safety of the flocks is safer than going to war. But then again, David’s out there fighting bears and. And lions and whatnot, right?

You. You don’t get to stay at home. You have to wander out where the herds go, and depending on the year and how much rainfall there is, how far they need to go to forage, and you have to camp out there for long times. You’re not with your friends.

It wasn’t exactly the best of jobs. It honestly was the worst of jobs.

And not only was it the worst of jobs, to compound this, the king killed the last shepherds.

This is almost like sending someone to the front. This is like David sending Uriah to the front lines and then withdrawing his support.

And I don’t know if. If the king was offended, the ammon wouldn’t marry his daughter. And he’s like, oh, you’re not good enough for my daughter. Then here I’m going to send you out to a job that I know you’re going to fail at, where I can kill you. Or if it’s just the fact that this is a nephite and they didn’t have a lot of respect for him anyways, being a nephite coming in or what the deal is. But it is kind of interesting to kind of put that into the perspective of things. What the king was sending Ammon to do was not a mission to succeed at.

And maybe there’s a lesson in here for us when we get the short straw, we have to do something that maybe we don’t look at as glamorous or glorious yet look at how much the Lord consecrated the worst of jobs for Ammon. And this becomes maybe the crowning moment of the. Of the Book of Mormon, the exciting story for all the boys to look at and be like, wow, this was the coolest story ever. And it all started because he was willing to do the job that nobody else wanted to do. I mean, he was the. Damon was the toilet cleaner of the Book of Mormon, and he was happy doing it. And he looked at his opportunity to clean the toilets as his chance at bringing the gospel to all of these people. There’s a lesson in there, right? There’s a lesson in that.

[00:52:38] Speaker B: Do you think that this was the first time the king had killed the shepherd? Some of his shepherds or those that were supposed to tend the flocks? Because this is like a big deal to everybody in town. If you notice throughout the entire chapters, this continues to get brought up over.

[00:52:55] Speaker A: And over and over.

[00:52:56] Speaker B: Like, is the king, did he feel like he was being punished because he killed the servants that let the floss gather? And then when it goes out into town, people are like, I wonder if this is actually punishment for when the king killed those.

It’s like the king killing the shepherds previous to Ammon coming in feels like a kind of singular event because everybody around it impacted them. To me, it’s like, I guess I want to understand why that is was such an impactful thing. Because had Lamoni just been killing the shepherds all the time, that didn’t do a good job.

[00:53:32] Speaker A: No one would want to be a shepherd?

[00:53:34] Speaker B: Well, not only that, but I just don’t think people would be talking about it as much or caring about, you know, I mean, it’s like, if that was just kind of par for the course, I. It’s. It’s so funny that throughout these chapters, everybody’s thoughts immediately keep coming back to almost that singular moment of when the king finally got up and including the king himself, where it’s like, was this a thing? Where it was. Lamoni had finally gotten so mad that this was happening that he’s like, fine, I’m killing these dudes, and I’m setting a new precedent. And then Ammon came in right after. Or is this. The flocks weren’t really getting scattered all that often. And then it happened that one time kind of right before Ammon came in, and the king was like, well, I don’t. I’m. Emotionally, maybe he was just like, you know what? No way. And then he kills the dudes. All I know is that this. Him killing the shepherds before Ammon feels like a singular event because it is on everybody’s minds, including the king and the servants and the people in town.

Maybe even. I’m trying to remember if it was even some servants in the house that brought it up, but so many people brought this up. I guess I wonder if they’re. What the point of that being so on the top of everybody’s mind was.

[00:54:43] Speaker A: I think you’re right. I think it was a fairly new approach, and I think it was a very recent approach. I don’t think it happened that long before to. For it to be as fresh as what you’re saying. Right. And everybody to instantly make that connection.

I I’m. Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up.

[00:54:59] Speaker B: I just. I guess it’s. I find it intriguing. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, other than if this was one of those things where, again, everything happens for a reason, and it was important that Ammon came in right after that because of how afraid everybody else was to go do this job, you know? I guess I wonder if it’s just a setup for Ammon being able to come in and being like, look at this awesome opportunity I have to just nail this one well.

[00:55:28] Speaker A: And it plays so much into the Old Testament world, because in the Old Testament is specifically psalms 82, when it says, how long will you continue to judge unrighteously?

How long will you let the widows suffer? How long are you going to praise the. You know, unrighteous judgment is a major theme in the Old Testament.

And that’s really what’s happening here, Lamoni. What kind of kingship, what kind of leader kills the ones that are defending the sheep and lets the robbers go free?

And really, it’s the one that is taking the easy way out. We talk about shortcuts. Who’s harder to punish?

I mean, these guys I have right here in my house, I can go punish them. I can go hit them. I can do whatever I want to them, that’s easy.

But to actually try to find out who was responsible and try to take the time to investigate who did what and hold them accountable for what they did. So you have some flawed justice, and the king is responsible for administering justice in his kingdom. And here you have a king that is doing it the wrong way. He’s showing some serious weakness, and he’s judging wrong. He’s letting the sinners prevail. And you go back to the. The character of the people and the nature of the people, how the king goes. So often, that’s how the people go. And if you’ve got a people that are just taking the easy way out and trying to take abuse, it’s because the king’s letting them, because he’s taking the easy way out and not holding the right people accountable to where there’s incentive to do that. And so ammon coming and fixing it. And what’s he doing to fix it? He’s holding the actual people that are scattering the sheep accountable.

He is administering justice to the ones that are breaking the law and saving the lives of the ones who didn’t. He’s a set, a savior to those. And you talk about the word of God being quick and powerful and two edged sword, but it’s on one hand to condemn, but on the other hand to save. And Ammon is embodying this. He is holding the wicked accountable. And by doing so, his sword is literally saving the lives of the others that were not.

So. Interesting dynamics going with that.

[00:57:48] Speaker B: Love it.

[00:57:50] Speaker A: Um. Let’s get to trying to think of what would be most important to focus on.

[00:57:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we. We got time to talk about maybe one more key thing here.

[00:57:59] Speaker A: I I think, you know, we get to them passing out and the city coming to see what was going on. I. You know, I think there’s two last things I want to hit.

One is being the guile. And when Mormon says, thus with guile, ammon, he’s being wise but innocent. Trick the king into. And what did he actually trick the king into doing when Lamoni says, I will believe all your words. It almost sounds like he’s tricking him into believing the message that he’s sharing. He’s tricking him into being baptized.

And I want to correct that. And at this point, I’m not going in assumptions or speculation. I’m going to go into the facts of the matter and just kind of state this one.

The word the ammon uses when he says, the king says whatever you want, and he says, will you hearken unto my words?

The word hearken, if you go into the Old Testament and you look it up, and wherever it occurs, occurs as the english translation of the Hebrew word shemade. And if you look up the Hebrew word shema, it means literally to hear intelligently or to consider.

So what did Ammon actually trick Lamoni into doing? It wasn’t tricking him into believing. It wasn’t tricking him into being converted. What he did was he tricked him into hearing him out. So he didn’t just answer directly the question. Let me provide you with a little bit of context. Will you listen intelligently and consider the words that I am giving to you and make your own decision off of it? That’s what Ammon tricked the king into doing, is actually just listening, reasoning, and arriving to his own conclusion. And I think that’s an important distinction to make with, with how Ammon approaches this missionary work.

We’ve got a few chapters here, and so I think I. Maybe the last one that’s worth kind of hitting to highlight is towards the end when Lamoni misses the feast of his father and his father’s upset, he has that exchange. And I’m going to fast forward through all of these events and for sake of time, and just focus on the one woman that.

That didn’t pass out among all the servants.

[01:00:19] Speaker B: Abish.

[01:00:20] Speaker A: Abish.

[01:00:21] Speaker B: She’s the best, dude.

[01:00:23] Speaker A: Abish.

[01:00:24] Speaker B: I’m all in.

[01:00:26] Speaker A: And it’s interesting because in the Book of Mormon, we keep hearing the nephite perspective all the time. This is one of the most fascinating stories because it takes the curtain off behind what’s happening in the lamanite lands. And in the lamanite lands, you have a guy that had visions and was converted to the Lord because of his visions.

And Abish and this family of believers, even among the Lamanites, these things happen just like Lehi’s led out of the Jerusalem and saved. The Lord is saving his people regardless of where they are, if they turn to him. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. But the name Abish and I’m glad you remembered it, and I’m glad you pointed it out. In the Old Testament, you see a lot of av names. And Av in Hebrew means father. And so Abimelech, my father is king, Melek is king. Like we discussed, Abish is my father is man. And so this is like saying son of man, my father is a man. And where a lot of them, Abi, Jonah or Abi, a lot of times like my father is God, or the son of my father is referring to Christ or Jehovah as being the God. And I am his son. He is the ruler, he is the reigner, he is the God. And in this case, the guy that had the vision and believed names his daughter. My father is a man. And I almost wonder if the connection here is Christ is the son of man. This is like a son of man title. And the significance of son of man is that God go back to the abrahamic covenant, always covenanted to his people, that he would be born and be a man here on earth. God is a man. God became like us so that we could become like him. And what more powerful name than that? And the whole purpose of the story, when, when Lamoni believes he has a vision and he sees Christ being born as a man, and when his wife has her experience, she sees Christ being born as a man. And this is Jehovah, the great spirit, the God. And they’re being born, and he is being born here on earth to fulfill the covenant he made with Abraham to pay this price.

The whole purpose is this idea that God will become man to save us, the atonement. That’s the point. And so I look at the story of this man who saw and believed, did he see the same things that Lamoni saw? The same thing that Lamoni’s wife saw? The same thing, which, by the way, is what Lehi saw, what Nephi saw, the same thing that any of the people see that turned to the Lord is the ability to see their savior. This fulfillment of this covenant, this promise that he would be born here on earth to atone for the sins of mankind, the same covenant with Adam and Eve, the same covenant with Noah, the same with Abraham, and the same here in the Book of Mormon. And so I find some significance in that name, if that makes any sense, or if that isn’t too much of a rant.

[01:03:25] Speaker B: I don’t think it’s too much of a rant. And even as a very subtle kind of her story arc in this at least has some very loose similars to a type of Christ. Which is. Right. She’s so excited to come and tell the world this great news. I’m so excited to go and thinks that this will be the thing that really kind of helps because she had already had a conversion, right? She’s like, this is going to be the thing that finally helps everybody else see. She goes out into the world and what immediately happens, like, they twisted. They twist it immediately to be the negative thing. And it’s like the gangs almost rise up to be like, we need to come and we need to fight against this thing. And she’s just sad, right? She’s just like, wait, no, that’s like, I’m giving you the. I’m giving you a sign. I’m giving you the best news. I’m here to show you how great of a thing this is. And the people just rebel against it immediately, which is just like, what a bummer she must have been. And you could tell she was so sad. She was just like, oh, no, you guys are totally misunderstanding how great this is.

[01:04:33] Speaker A: And speaking of dynamic duos, look at her paired with Lamoni’s wife, who am and says, such great faith, I haven’t even seen among the nephites. And it’s kind of cool that you have this nod to these women in the scriptures.

[01:04:48] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I think they are a highlight of this story for me and how awesome they are. And hopefully we would be wrong not to highlight how incredible they are in this story.

[01:05:07] Speaker A: Not just them, but look at the significance of Rahab, look at the significance of Ruth, look at the significance of these women in the Old Testament stories and this idea. Elijah, as great as he is, yet he’s great because of the widow of Tishba. Like the relationship and what happens in that story. And there’s just an interesting interplay. You’ve got Jesus and as great as he is, but then you counterbalance that with Mary and some of her stories, and you have some of that dynamic duo with Mary and Martha. Even that you see that, I don’t know, it feels like the Bible has been very centric to males, and it has. But at the same time, there’s a lot of these interesting colorings, flavors, power in the story, that this is never meant just to be a book about men doing manly things. This was a book about the children of God. And there’s value. And oftentimes the sex of the female sex is left out or ignored, but yet they become the powerful ones that are brought back. It’s often the underdog, the ignored one that comes in and finds its way to the heart of the story. And really what makes that story powerful. And this was what Christ’s mission was, to find those that were outside, to find the lost, bring them in, and kind of complete the story and make it more powerful.

[01:06:27] Speaker B: To your point, in a lot of cases in the Bible, a powerful, faithful woman sometimes saves the entire people, saves the entire hebrew nation. Look at this story. Everybody’s coming in to kill everybody, right? But who is it really that ends up kind of, like, holding off the crowd long enough to save everybody that has been, you know, passed out in this situation? And it’s Monis wife? You know, that’s just like, no, no, no. This is all good. This isn’t, you know, this isn’t what you all think that it looks like. It’s like, oh, cool. She. She carries on the tradition of a lot of these powerful women figures, even throughout the Old Testament, that are coming in to save, you know, save the lives of the people that, you know, wouldn’t otherwise be saved in the story.

[01:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:07:22] Speaker B: Anything else you want to take a look at?

[01:07:24] Speaker A: I had kind of a fleeting thought kind of come in and then just kind of dash right back out.

[01:07:29] Speaker B: Love. Fleeting thoughts, dude.

[01:07:32] Speaker A: Got caught staring.

[01:07:34] Speaker B: Sorry. Anything else you want to take a look at before. Before we wrap this up?

[01:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and here’s what it was.

You know, you bring up the point of all these people coming in to experience this miracle firsthand, and even when the king himself is raised and tells the people, now, there’s significance to this. How long was the king down for? Three days and three nights. Does he not become a type of Christ in this. In this story? Right? And what kind of miracle that three days and three nights, when everybody counted him as dead and he is back, raised from the dead, and he sees God and he tells everybody, and yet you have people that still wouldn’t listen, and you run into that. And the Lord respects our agency, but what does it take? I mean, even. Okay, as great as Ammon was, as great as Ammon was at serving, and as great as Ammon was at converting thousands of people to the truth, there are people that still wouldn’t listen to Ammon. There’s people that seeing Lamoni raised from the dead, that seeing this miracle firsthand, still didn’t believe it doesn’t matter. You can’t beat yourself up and say, if only I was like ammon, I could have converted.

It’s. It’s the right place, the right time, the perfect storm. It’s not just about being like Ammon, it’s, there’s a lot of different pieces that need to fall into place. You can’t beat yourself up. We just need to be careful that we’re prepared. So when moments like this happen or when general conference happens and we hear some of the miraculous words and the powerful things that are spoken to us, we hear them and we don’t just lose it.

[01:09:15] Speaker B: Love it.

[01:09:17] Speaker A: That’s it. That’s all they had.

[01:09:19] Speaker B: I know that there’s a lot more to this story. I know that we go and we see the king, they meet him along the way. We’re going to rescue prisoners.

I know that we’re leaving out so many really great things, but this is kind of where we wanted to take the discussion. And, you know, we weren’t going to talk. We weren’t going to have this part of the book of Mormon and we wouldn’t be discussing chopping off arms and preaching to the people. Because at the end of the day, the story still rocks for us adults as well. It’s so good. And there’s, you know, a lot of extra, hopefully, insight and content there that if nothing else, hopefully we inspired you to think a little bit more about this awesome story. I wish I looked like those Freiburg pictures, dude. I need to, I need to figure out. I need to figure out something in my life so that I can look like literally every single dude that has ever been in a Freeburg painting.

[01:10:16] Speaker A: I don’t even think 1% of the population look like. No, but people in the Freeburg pictures.

[01:10:21] Speaker B: Charlton Heston apparently remember that’s, that’s who he modeled. Like every dude after was Charlton Heston.

[01:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah, but Charlton Heston didn’t.

[01:10:30] Speaker B: I mean, Charlton Heston, Charles did not.

[01:10:32] Speaker A: Look like he was big. He.

[01:10:34] Speaker B: Well, and he. No no, no. He didn’t look like those dudes.

[01:10:38] Speaker A: This was like if Charlton Heston had steroids. That’s what Freiberg paintings were.

[01:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah, baby. Yeah, that’s what I wanted.

[01:10:46] Speaker A: Charlton Heston’s almost more like your Clint Eastwood, right? I mean, he’s strong.

[01:10:50] Speaker B: Nah, he was bigger than Clint Eastwood. He was cut too, though.

I mean, we just watched Ben Hur with the kids all like seven and a half hours of that movie or whatever. And there were definitely multiple times where I was like, yeah, that, that was a dude was fit. Anyways, we appreciate you listening to the show.

[01:11:09] Speaker A: Was there anywhere you wanted to go? Nate? I just trying to be respectful of time and appreciate it.

[01:11:13] Speaker B: No, there’s. If we feel like there’s any like, things next week that we need to hit it. We’ll probably hit it next week. We want to also be respectful of your time as well.

Thank you so much for listening sharing the podcast. You can get ahold of us at the email address high deep dive.com where you can send us questions, comments, feedback, insight of your own. We always love hearing it. We always appreciate you listening and letting us know what you think and sharing this with your friends.

That’s all we got for this week. So until next week, see ya.

The conversation then shifts to the challenging events in Alma 14, where innocent women and children are martyred. Jason and Nate grapple with the difficult question of why God sometimes intervenes miraculously and other times allows tragedy to occur. They discuss the importance of maintaining eternal perspective and trusting in God’s plan, even when it’s hard to understand in the moment. The hosts also touch on the transformative power of such experiences for figures like Alma and Amulek.

The episode concludes with Jason sharing a personal story about his family’s recent move to Barcelona, Spain. He recounts a series of spiritual promptings and confirmations that led to this decision, and describes the remarkable growth and revival they’ve witnessed in their new ward. Jason also notes the symbolic significance of the abundant rainfall in the region, which he sees as a blessing in response to the people’s faith and prayers.

Transcript:

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in my studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pfeiffer.

[00:00:33] Speaker B: What’s up, buddy?

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Dude, living the dream. How are you doing, dude?

[00:00:38] Speaker B: Every week it’s starting. We’re sounding better and better, dude.

[00:00:41] Speaker A: I like it. I like it.

[00:00:43] Speaker B: You got some. You got some fast Internet at your house?

[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yes, I do.

[00:00:48] Speaker B: Downstairs. Hopefully not fighting.

[00:00:51] Speaker A: I’ve tried to kick him out of the house. My apologies, because they’re still in here. So if a fight breaks out, I guess you’re going to get to know the real me real soon. So stay t. Stay tuned, audience, as we. We. We rumble through this podcast, dude, and.

[00:01:06] Speaker B: Not even pay per view. I love this, dude.

[00:01:10] Speaker A: It’s. It’s good. It’s good.

Um, I’m. I’m actually really excited about this, uh, this week’s episode, in fact. I I mean, last night was a St. John celebration here in Spain, which is pretty wild.

They celebrate all night long, like, midnight just to celebrate John the Baptist. People jump into the sea like they’re getting baptized, and there’s fireworks going off all night long.

Really? The party starts, and it doesn’t end until, I think, 07:00 this morning. It still sounded like the city was being bombed. Like, explosions all over the place.

It’s. It’s pretty wild.

[00:01:48] Speaker B: I love John the Baptist. I’m in.

[00:01:50] Speaker A: It was. It was pretty great. And. And in the early hours of this morning, as I was trying to get back to get some sleep, I had a nightmare that we had recorded this episode without me, and I was like, oh, man, I had so many thoughts. So I’m glad that wasn’t true.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: We’ll never do that. We’ll never record it without you, Doug.

[00:02:09] Speaker A: Thanks, Nate.

Let’s. Let’s dive into it. It’s covering Alma’s chapter 13. I want to say through 17. It’s going to. It’s going to be taking us right up until we begin the story. So it’s 16. I’m sorry. 17 is next week when we’re going to get to the sons of Mosiah Ammon and his awesome journey among the Lamanites. But this one opens with 13, which, to me, is one of the most misunderstood chapters for me. As I. As I went through and reread this as a kid, I read this. I mean, I’ve read this many times through my life, right? But it talks about high priests and the people being called the high priest and how great it is to be a high priest. And I was thinking like, this is the pat on the back to the old men that sit in the ward, that, like, they’ve arrived. They’ve made it right. This is the old man’s club, like the good old boy club here in the church.

And, boy, was I wrong. As I go back and read this again, I realized how far off I was. I don’t think that’s the message at all in Alma 13. In fact, it was actually kind of eye opening for me.

And here’s what I mean by this.

In the ancient world, in Israel, Moses on, let’s say the highest office in the priesthood was the high priest.

And the high priest’s role was. Was to go into the holy of holies on the day of atonement and make atonement for the people. And so he was allowed into the presence of God. And the joke was that he would have a rope tied to his ankle just in case he walked into the presence of God in the holy of holies and wasn’t worthy. And God struck him dead so that they could reel him back out without having to go in and get all of them struck. And dead too, for not being worthy. Because it was only the high priest could enter into this place.

I don’t think that was ever actually the case. But I, you know, it just kind of grows into culture and becomes kind of the joke in jewish history.

But in order for this to happen, we go back to where it all begins, with Moses calling Aaron, and let’s look at what that process is. He’s anointed with oil.

He’s clothed in the robes of the temple.

And then he’s allowed to enter past the veil into the presence of God. That was only for the high priest to do.

And as I start to think about this, and as I read Alma’s description of this, let’s go into verse three. And this is the manner after which they were ordained, being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works. In the first place, left to choose between good and evil. Therefore, they having chose good. So for him, the requirements is you just had to choose good. Having been presented with good and evil, you chose good. And exercise exceedingly great faith are called with the holy calling, and yea, with the holy calling, which was prepared with. And according to the preparatory redemption for such. And like, well, wait, wait a second. That last line stands out to me again, according to a preparatory redemption for such.

So the high priests have a redemption prepared for them.

How does that differ from the redemption that’s for everyone else, or is it different?

And so when I start reading Alma’s description of what it takes to be a high priest, he does not mention that you had to be a male. He does not mention that you had to be an offspring of Aaron. Ancient Israel, you had to be an offspring of Aaron, and there was only one.

But here Alma’s saying, whoa, whoa, whoa. The only requirements is you had to choose good being left between the two. You have good and evil. You had to make the right choice, and you had to exercise exceedingly faith. You had to be called, and you’re called to the holy calling, verse four. And thus, they who had been called to this holy calling on account of their faith, while others would reject the spirit of God on the account of the hardness of hearts and blindness of their minds, while if it had been not been for this, they might have been as great privilege as their brethren.

So now think about this for a second, and I hope I’m not going through this too quickly.

Alma’s saying to me as I read this, everyone could be a high priest, because he says in verse four, if it had not been for this, they might have been, it might have had as great privilege as their brethren. Or in other words, this office was for everyone.

And that changes my perspective a little bit. Now go to doctrine. Covenants.

Section 84, the oath and covenant of the priesthood. What’s the purpose of the Melchizedek priesthood? Not the Aaronic. Aaronic is preparatory. Preparatory for what? Preparatory for Melchizedek. What’s the purpose of the Melchizedek? It says that the purpose of the Melchizedek priesthood, it holds the keys to the knowledge of God, or in other words, to be able to enter into the presence of God, which is what the high priest is doing, is passing through the veil, entering into the presence of God. Now, according to doctrine, covenants 84, the oath and covenant of the priesthood, it says that all were supposed to have this privilege, not just one high priest. It says, now this. Moses clearly taught and sought to bring all and notice not just men, not just righteous men, not just old men that got together and get grumpy over the years, all women, men who exercised exceeding faith, who made right choices. He said, wash yourselves, prepare yourselves for tomorrow. You’re going to come into my presence. But they would not. They said, we want somebody else to do this for us. We want a representative. In which case, in the Old Testament, the role of a high priest changed from everyone entering into the presence of God to now one person symbolically represented God.

But we talked in Lehi’s time in the book of Mormon when he left, he’s not from Levi, he’s not from Aaron. He does not descend from a line that has the priesthood. It’s not aaronic priesthood. From Lehi on, it’s never aaronic priesthood. His order is after the Melchizedek priesthood, a higher order. And so when you’re reading what Alma’s saying here, he’s not talking about a single priest, he’s talking about multiple priests. And verse nine, thus they look at that. They plural, became high priests forever.

And he talks about not just one having this role. They, all of them, anyone who was willing to make that choice. Verse eleven. Therefore, they were called after this holy order and were sanctified. Their garments were washed white through the blood of the lamb. Now, after they were sanctified, and all of their brethren could have had that privilege as well, but they would not. This is something that is much more far reaching than a single high priest, or even a single high priest quorum in a ward.

And I go back to the temple and I think about the temple. Who in the temple is washed and anointed just like Aaron was? Who in the temple is clothed in temple robes? Who in the temple is allowed to pass through the veil into the presence of God?

And I look at that. What a high priest did in ancient Israel, through the restoration of the gospel, God has restored to all of his children that are willing to exercise faith and make right choices, to be able to put themselves in a situation where they can do that. Everybody gets to officiate or present themselves in the presence of God.

Even what the sacred, most high honor priesthood calling was in the Old Testament is made available to men, women, any of God’s children today in this world who are willing to exercise faith. And I think that’s a powerful statement that maybe we don’t understand. And we make interesting arguments today about priesthood and who is it for? And think the priesthood was always for everybody. And as I started thinking about this and going down these lines, when in Moses time, the people would not do this, and they rejected the priesthood and they rejected Moses, God didn’t just take the priesthood away from women per se, but from men and women.

Think about this. The men also were not allowed to enter into the holy of holies. And the priesthood was restricted to a single line, to the Levites.

The priesthood was taken away from men and women. And in the restoration of the gospel, these priesthood blessings, this priesthood power, this authorization through the priesthood is restored.

Am I running myself into trouble on this, Nate? What do you think?

[00:11:32] Speaker B: So keep going.

[00:11:35] Speaker A: I just think it’s fascinating.

[00:11:38] Speaker B: I think that you where, I don’t think you’re running yourself into trouble. I mean, there’s been multiple talks, and I believe it’s even in the handbook. Just understanding the difference between priesthood keys and priesthood power and how those two things, even though they work so closely together in so many cases, aren’t ex, they’re not. They’re not. They can’t be exclusively.

They don’t have to be used in exactly the same instances every time. At least in the handbook, it talks about how priesthood power is absolutely necessary and exercisable by both men and women and that, yes, men administer. Right. The keys of the priesthood are the key of administering of the priesthood we have, or we believe is held by men. But like you said, even in the temple, we are, both men and women are called to be priests and priestesses. I mean, it’s in the language that we use. The brethren have been, I feel like, a lot more explicitly clear about this recently, that women absolutely take part in the power of the priesthood, in everything that they do, and we do in this church together.

I think trying to understand that those two things shouldn’t just. I guess that’s what I want to say, is that when you say the priesthood keys and priesthood power, sometimes people use those terms interchangeably, thinking they’re the same thing, but they’re not. And I, I’m not saying this from my opinion. I’m saying this literally from, like, the church handbook. So that’s. I think you’re, I think you’re explaining it perfectly. And both men and women officiate in the temple, and both, like you said, both men and women exercise and take full advantage of the power of the priesthood when they’re living faithfully and righteously.

[00:13:36] Speaker A: So, yeah, it’s interesting. And it’s not just interesting in that, you know, there’s breakdowns of the priesthood. You had to be from Aaron’s line, to be a high priest, and even then, the high priest had to meet certain stringent requirements. Levites. You have different Levites that. Some Levites are allowed to touch the Ark of the covenant. Some Levites are allowed to touch the menorah as they’re, they’re moving the tabernacle. And they have different roles. Some are responsible for the cleaning of the tabernacle for where they. You know, how it’s presented, how it’s carried, how it’s transported, how it’s cared for.

And when you talk about what responsibilities in the priesthood are brought down to today, the fact that anybody could go into the presence of God, I think it’s not just here. Let me give you a job of being able to sweep this corner of the temple, but actually the role of the high priest and being able to be anointed, clothed, and presented into the presence of God, it’s a powerful statement to me in my mind, and hopefully I’m not going, do you feel like.

[00:14:46] Speaker B: Don’t you feel like that’s what we understand and do in our temples?

[00:14:53] Speaker A: That’s 100% what I feel like. I feel like that was always the purpose, and I feel like that was God’s plan from the very beginning. From the minute that Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden, he had an atonement. I mean, it was before they were even put in the garden of Eden that Christ said, here am I, send me right. That there was always an atonement prepared to restore them back to what there was. And this is what we’re talking about as a restoration. When Adam and Eve left the presence of God, the temple became a recreation of paradise. It was the house of the Lord, where God resided here on earth, that they could pass. And think about this again. In the tabernacle, the veil had cherubim sewn into the veil of the temple. So when someone passed through the veil of the temple, they were walking past cherubim, and you had the menorah, which symbolized the tree of life. And you had the showbread, which was the bread, and the water, which is like, Christ becomes this fulfillment of this. He is the fruit of the tree of life. And going through the temple was always a trip back into the presence of God, a trip back into paradise, which was not made for just one person.

The high priest takes that role when the people refused God, not that God refused his people. And even then, when the high priest did this for the people, the high priest was supposed to symbolize all men, women that were making correct choices and exercising faith. It was representative that he would represent them passing through that veil. And in a time with the Melchizedek priesthood, that gift, that blessing, honor, if you want to call it that, has been restored to all people. To be able to exercise that.

That unique responsibility, I guess, is all I wanted to say on that dope.

[00:16:49] Speaker B: I mean, that. All right, there’s one checks out that all tracks. I feel like, for me, fantastic.

[00:16:55] Speaker A: I’m going to. I’m going to read into verse eleven. This is Alma 13, because this one also stood out to me and. And really hit me hard.

Says, therefore they were called after this holy order and were sanctified, and their garments were washed white through the blood of the lamb.

And you think about that for a second. How in the world do you ever wash something white with blood?

Bloodstains aren’t ever going to make anything white, right? And I was thinking about this, and I’m thinking about Alma talking about the high priest, and I’m thinking about the high priest job.

And the high priest’s job is to kill an animal.

And it’s not just kill an animal. Like, I’m gonna. I’m gonna put a pillow over his head and suffocate it. It’s with a knife. You’re cutting it open. And as much as the high priest is supposed to be without blemish, perfect without defect, and he’s dressed in these immaculate robes and this white linen, that white linen is getting sprayed with blood.

And think of the contrast of that red blood on that white linen. And it’s a messy job. It’s extremely messy, because not only that, but he’s supposed to dip his hands in the blood, and he’s supposed to sprinkle blood on the altar. He’s supposed to sprinkle blood on the congregation. He’s supposed to carry blood in with him to the holy of holies and put it on the ark of the covenants.

His hands are red.

And think about this in terms of ritual purity. In the Old Testament, if you were in the same room as something that died, you were disqualified. You were ritually unclean.

This is why Christ, before the atonement, as much as he went into the room and raised people from the dead, when it’s the last week and he’s preparing for the atonement, he maintains this ritual purity. Lazarus dies.

And rather than go into the tomb with Lazarus, he calls with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And in fact, he doesn’t even touch the rock. He commands or asks others to move the rock for him because it’s interaction with death or getting his hands dirty, if you will, would. Would disqualify him.

And when Lazarus comes out, he doesn’t touch Lazarus, the man who he loves, the man who he wept. He has others unfold him, and he waits so that he can maintain the sense of ritual purity. However, here’s the high priest who is killing an animal and coming face to face to death. If you have an issue of blood, you’re unclean.

Not only is there an issue of blood here with this animal, but he is putting this blood all over himself. He’s got blood on his hands. Think of the imagery of having blood on your hands and what that means. Guilty.

And yet, however, none of this disqualifies the priest. He’s actually able to go into the holy of holies with blood on his hand.

And so I go back to this verse, washed white through the blood of the lamb. The lamb is what was sacrificed, right?

And. And as much as it’s staining you red, that red stain is what purifies you.

And somehow getting guilty, getting dirty, getting blood all over your hands, was actually when you become the most clean. I mean, contrast that with.

Contrast that with Pilate, who said it, that when he washed his hands is actually when his hands became the most dirty. And here you have a high priest. When his hands are the most dirty is actually when they’re the most clean. He’s washed white through the blood of the lamb.

And remember that the high priest is supposed to be a type of Christ. It’s supposed to symbolize Christ.

And so once a year, the high priest in front of the entire congregation is covered in blood, and he enters into the holy of holies.

And I think about that. How could they miss Christ as their high priest when he comes out of Gethsemane covered in blood, when he is scourged and whipped and the thorns through his head and the head wounds and the blood. Here you have a high priest covered in blood, and yet, when he’s covered in blood, he is sanctified or cleaner than he ever was. He’s perfect.

And this is what the high priest typified.

This was their savior. And to me, what a powerful connection. For years, every year, once a year, your high priest stains himself with blood and really takes on this image of Christ, a savior, the lamb of God, who’s going to slay himself. And yet, through that stain, that blood, he’s washed clean. And Christ is the high priest who stained with blood and washes us clean and how that blood sanctifies us.

[00:22:16] Speaker B: Good stuff. Love it.

[00:22:19] Speaker A: I just had.

[00:22:20] Speaker B: Sorry, go ahead.

[00:22:21] Speaker A: I just had one last thought on that.

[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:22:26] Speaker A: I think about all of the things that stain us in our lives when we go back. Maybe the. The bloodstains that might be on us, our sins, our mistakes, and I think we’ve had this conversation, Nate, like, sometimes you wish you could have a time machine and go back and try to prevent yourself from doing something, but then, at the same time, you look back at the growth and the development that you’ve come through because of some of those mistakes. And, yes, you’re a better person from it. It’s almost like those mistakes are the blood that helps sanctify us as well, in a way. And it’s interesting that the high priest is going to the holy of holies not because he has his garments changed, but with his garments. He’s allowed to go in with those. He’s actually sanctified. We are sanctified in our stains as well, in a sense. It’s. It’s not like the atonement works by going back and erasing everything with an eraser so that they never happened. It’s not like God’s changing time and making it so that we had a perfect existence. We are saved. And I got to be careful how I say this, because this was part of the conversation with Alma and Amulek when they said, you said God didn’t come to save you in your sins. And he says, well, no, it’s not in your sins. It’s from your sins. But still, there’s some sense of permanence. Even though God forgets it, even though God forgives it, there’s still some staining or some marking that actually serves to purify us or sanctify us, if that makes any sense.

[00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I love it. I totally agree with you. I think that we.

My only thought on that would be that a lot of the things that we do that were mistakes, we’re told, can be consecrated for our good or for our benefit. And so, like you said, where blood could be. I mean, because we’re also told that we don’t want the blood of a generation on our garments if we’re not doing our jobs as priesthood holders or. You know what I mean? It’s like blood is also used as something that you don’t want on your garments in. You know what I mean? In like, a negative way by us not fulfilling our responsibilities.

So I think that maybe that’s the difference between the two. Is, has God consecrated that for our good, or is that a cleanse? Is that his cleansing blood versus, you know, the. I guess, the sins that we carry or whatever. But to your point, I agree.

And I do love the imagery of that blood that maybe started out as some. As a negative thing can be purified. Or sanctified or consecrated for our benefit and is something that we can have potentially, you know, be the thing that sanctifies us or purifies us.

[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s powerful imagery.

And Alma kind of finishes this chapter up, really just hitting on Melchizedek verse 14. Yea, humble yourselves, even as the people in the days of Melchizedek, who was the high priest after this same order which I have spoken, and I think to me, that’s the clincher.

He’s not talking about the high priest after the order of Aaron.

Aaron was the high priest, and Aaron was not the high priest after the order of Melchizedek. It was the aaronic priesthood.

That’s the difference between what Alma’s talking about. This is not one high priest to represent everybody. This is the Melchizedek priesthood, how it was before and what Moses tried to instill in the people. And often we’ve looked at the Book of Mormon as kind of a compliment to the Bible and how you went from judges to kings, and the Book of Mormon goes from kings to judges. And how you go from Melchizedek priesthood to Aaronic. Well, in the book of Mormon takes it back from Aaronic to Melchizedek, and it shows that God was willing, always willing, to restore what the people wanted if that’s what they wanted. And I think that’s what the testimony of the Book of Mormon offers to me, is when you had Lehi desiring to enter into the presence of God, how does he do that if it’s not through the Melchizedek priesthood? And he shares that with his sons, and you see Nephi partaking of that. You see Jacob up doing that, and you see this, this idea, even in Alma, that’s anyone that wants to can. And you see a people where rather than say, you do this for us, we want to be accountable for what we’re doing. We want to take this on us, and God’s willing to engage with them at that level of commitment. And so really, God is a God that’s merciful, that’s willing to meet us where we’re at, and, and ideally wants to create that personal relationship with us. It’s never him that turns away from us.

It’s when we turn away from him and try to delegate someone else to do that for us that we miss out on the blessings that he has. And that’s kind of where I came and landed on Alma 13. And to me, that just took on such a different meaning. It’s not about a group of old men that sit in the corner of church and have made it right. It’s. This is a blessing for everybody.

[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yep. It’s good stuff. Let’s keep going.

[00:27:32] Speaker A: Let’s get at Alma 14. And I know you’re anxious to talk about this, too. I think Alma 14, I mean, it’s a. There’s some powerful lessons in here. And, I mean, Alma and Amy, like, finish what they’re saying, and everyone’s angry with them, and they do get arrested, and they’re contained in this prison. And what makes it worse is we kind of get this sense that everyone that believed Alma and Amulik, as far as men go, were chased out of the city. Zezarum was run out of town, and. And while they were run out of town, it left their families defenseless. And so you have these women and children who are not being provided for, who are not being protected, and people of ammonia round them up and throw them in a fire, and it’s just a terrible slaughter, killing innocent women and children. And then they bring Alma and Amulek to testify and see what’s going on.

And Amulek is just breaking. I don’t know how you don’t break in a situation like this and saying, let’s stretch forth our hands and stop this.

And I think Alma’s feeling the same way, because he says that he wanted to, but the spirit constrained him not to.

And I think the powerful question that lies within this is why, in some cases, I mean, we can look at the example of a binadi, I think, because it fits very well with Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego. Both are scourged with fire. But Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, the flames don’t touch them. Abinadi suffers and dies.

Why is it that God stretches forth his power and whispers through the spirit, save these people, and delivers them from great travesties and others, he says, let it be. In fact, I’m going to forbid you from intervening.

And I think we even see this on personal levels with blessings, right? Why is it that sometimes God will raise somebody from the dead, or he’ll heal somebody that’s sick or give somebody the ability to walk again? And as somebody else who’s been constrained to a wheelchair all their life, who has more faith than maybe I could ever hope for, who’s pleading with God for the ability to walk again, and you look at it and say, why is God quiet or not answering the prayers? Or what’s the deal? Why is it the spirit constrains to save when at other times to not save. And I don’t know, kind of setting the stage on this. Nate, did you want to jump in right here?

[00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I can jump in.

The answer to me is I don’t know. And it’s frustrating to try to answer.

And as much as I think I know, I think we always. I think we can always, like, what do they call that? Like, armchair quarterback? It’s like we. It feels like we can. We do such a good job of having perspective with somebody else’s thing. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like, totally. Like, if I was God looking at somebody else’s issues, though, right? And it’s always. I feel like when it sometimes comes down to us trying to understand why God is quiet when it’s our prayers that we feel like may not be being answered or being heard. And so, again, to answer, it’s to answer the question in context of the scripture. You and I can look at that and go, oh, well, yeah. Later in the scripture, it also says, alma’s going, hey, these guys are going straight to heaven.

Maintain the bigger perspective here.

And I feel like that is the obvious, easy answer when it’s not us that’s getting thrown into the fire, if that makes sense.

[00:31:29] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:31:30] Speaker B: And I think that this is where I guess I would want to maybe have this discussion is what.

Is there any way to have actual, like, eternal perspective when we are in the flames? You know, the reason I suggest that this may be hard when it’s us in the flames is because you nailed it. We look back through the scriptures all the time and can say, hey, look at all of these times that God did this incredibly miraculous thing to save groups of people or to save individuals. Or we can just look at all these miracles. And admittedly, sometimes it may be hard to answer the question, have miracles stopped? Like, the big time miracles, not the, oh, hey. Like, that car almost ran me over but didn’t because I was five minutes late this morning. You know, it’s like, by the way, like, don’t misunderstand. I ride my bike to work every day, and I just know at some point some teenage kid’s gonna cream me while they’re texting, you know what I mean? But, like, so it’s like, in a weird sort of way, is like, as I’m riding my bike every day, I really do actually think, like, when I get a flat tire, I usually am upset for a minute, but then I’m kind of like, hey, you never know, right? You never know. What? What car with a teenage kid driving. Totally, right? So. So believe it or not, like, I actually can sometimes have a little bit better perspective when it comes to that. But when you look at somebody, when you look at a child suffering with, like, bone cancer at, like, eight years old, you just go, wait, what? What? You know, it’s. It’s. Those are the situations where it just. It. The human part of us, I feel like, can’t help but look at those situations and go, take all of my other miracles, just give the miracle to that person. And then if that child maybe doesn’t make it, yes, I admittedly can look at those situations sometimes and have a hard time going, help me understand why.

What I’m missing here. Like, why did that person not deserve a miracle? And again, like, I can talk through this rationally. I could. You know what I mean? Like, I can give you the obvious church answers of this, and I do really think it is about perspective, but, man, I just. I wonder if there’s at least a conversation to be had of what can we.

How can we maintain some sort of big picture perspective when we are in the midst of it? Or is that. Or is that part of our journey here? Is that part of our trial here? Is that maybe we. Maybe we have to not know and still maintain faith throughout that? Do you see what I’m saying? Like, I don’t know.

[00:34:37] Speaker A: Yes, I. You know, it’s.

[00:34:41] Speaker B: What would you have done?

I mean, it’s easy when we’re reading it as. As, like, characters in a book, right?

[00:34:50] Speaker A: Mm hmm.

[00:34:50] Speaker B: And we believe that the real people.

And, I mean, we’ve talked about this before, what would you do if tomorrow you got a call and said, hey, you need to take your youngest son up onto a mountain in Spain and kill him?

I mean, my friend, you had enough. You had enough faith to just up and leave the United States, because you were like, I have a feeling that I’m supposed to get out here. And by the way, from our conversations, it’s been amazing. You’re like, oh, yeah, I’m seeing all of the reasons. It’s paying off. I’m seeing the answers. I’m getting the answers. I’m receiving the confirmation of how. Whatever. Okay, cool. What if that same feeling hit you tomorrow and said, you need to take your youngest son up on the mountain and kill him?

[00:35:35] Speaker A: I mean, your stomach drops, right?

[00:35:36] Speaker B: That’s. I’m just saying, thinking about it, even thinking about it messes you up.

[00:35:41] Speaker A: I don’t. Yeah, I don’t think. Yeah, it just. It just makes you appreciate Abraham all the more. Like, you either appreciate him or vilify.

[00:35:49] Speaker B: That’s what I mean.

[00:35:49] Speaker A: In a weird way, somebody actually be that willing way.

[00:35:52] Speaker B: So think of now you’re in in this case, and you’re seeing all you need to do again, my brother Elaine has been giving me a really great reading list. I’m reading the book silence right now, and these catholic priests in feudal Japan are being.

They either need to apostatize or they don’t get tortured. It’s all of the christian japanese converts that get tortured and killed in front of them. It’s like, at what point? You see what I mean? It’s like, at what point you go, hey, like, for me, I feel like it would be a lot easier to be like, hey, you need to either. You need to either deny what you believe, or we’re gonna kill you. In a weird sort of way, I’m like, I think I’d be not okay. I mean, I’d be bummed out, but I think I could realistically go, you know what? I’m willing to die a martyr. I’m willing to stand on this. But if somebody were to come and say, hey, I’m actually gonna do this to your family in front of you and let you live, it’s like, oh, I’m glad. I’m glad I haven’t been presented that, because I.

I hope that I know what I would do, but I don’t. I’m just being totally honest. I don’t know.

And it’s like, I think that. I think that to truly take the most of this lesson for me is to have to actually, like, humanize these people that are in this story and not just read it as characters in a book. With, by the way, kind of the editorial review, which is. And we know that they went to heaven after.

It’s like, yeah, I get that. But, man, that’s my question. And I guess, for me, it’s just like, well, what would I have done? And I don’t. I luckily have not had to make that decision because we like to think we know what we would do.

[00:37:47] Speaker A: Sometimes it feels impossible to know what you would do without even being in that situation, right? And it seems like to me, it boils down to trusting God, and that seems overly simplistic. But at the end of the day, if God says, the heavens will open and I’m going to save him, I’m going to whatever, and you trust that he will, versus he says, no, this is going to happen, and it needs to happen. And trusting that it will. Because you look at Peter when Christ was faced with being arrested and being crucified.

And I’m putting this as kind of similar to what you’re saying with seeing someone that you love suffering in agony and about to being destroyed when they can do so much good, you can see all the good that would come from them living. And Peter’s saying, not. So we’re going to stop this from happening. And Christ saying, get thee behind me, Satan. I mean, what if Peter’s successful? What if he saves Christ’s life? And what happens to the rest of.

[00:38:48] Speaker B: Us because of it? It’s a great point.

[00:38:52] Speaker A: And I have to trust God enough to know that as much as this is going to hurt, that it does have a purpose that’s going to be for the salvation of souls.

[00:39:04] Speaker B: And I think that, to your point, I agree with you completely. I think that if we can have a much bigger picture perspective, things do make more sense.

If we do consider, hey, this life is but a short time along the way. And by the way, it takes a lot of hope and faith that that’s real, right? It takes a lot of hope and faith that there is life before this and that there is life after this. Yes. And that is a huge part of this. But with the big picture perspective, I think it is a lot easier to go.

This is only for a short time. And those that are willing to give their lives for something they believe in, we absolutely do believe.

That’s a ticket to heaven, man. Like, you did it right. I think my question always comes down to, is there anything more than, I guess, just trying to strengthen our faith now that can help us have that long term perspective when we’re in the midst of the flames?

[00:40:12] Speaker A: You know, I almost want to push back even more on what I was saying because you brought up Abraham, and I think it’s amazing that you did.

Isn’t Abraham the one that was told that Sodom and Gomorrah was going to be destroyed, and yet he pushed back against the Lord and tried to save his people? Would that be. Can we put that in a similar boat of Alma and Amulek who said, these people are going to be destroyed? And Alma says, not. So, like, would you please. I mean, I wonder, is there pleading with the Lord or going back forth or. I mean, we don’t have that privy, but. But with Abraham, we do see even a man. And maybe that. Maybe this adds some to the discussion about him being willing to sacrifice Isaac in context of what he went through and trying to save Sodom and Gomorrah? What if I perhaps can find 50 good people or 25 good people? Or just pleading to try to save someone that you can’t? And it’s not the same. It’s not apples to apples.

But when you look at Abraham’s line, don’t you see a history of people that fight with the Lord to try to get a blessing? I mean, look at Jacob.

Wasn’t it God telling Jacob, let go of me? And Jacob’s like, not so. I I mean, where do you put that Jacob fought with God and won?

Is. Is there. Is there something to be taken from that? Fighting with God and winning to save souls? Isn’t that what Jesus does when God’s like, you know what? I’m sick of it. I’m just going to wipe the earth off and says, wait, before you destroy the vineyard, let me try to save some souls, or let me try to. Hey, maybe part of that is bringing out the savior and all of us. And maybe part of this was bringing out the savior in Alma and Amulek and making them more like the savior. Maybe we look at the story and think, oh, this whole purpose was so that we could condemn these wicked knee horse and so that it all made sense when they were killed. But maybe a big part of this was. Was really completing that transformation and making amulet like his savior or making Alma like his savior or making the women and the children that were burned like the savior, because were they not the sacrifice so that others could be purified, were they not the ones? And it’s also interesting when you’re putting this back to back with Alma 13, when what we were reading about how high priests being everybody can enter into the. And so what you’re seeing is them passing through a veil into the presence of God, literally following the chapter. Talking about doing that, I don’t know. I kind of. I kind of didn’t answer your question, Nate. Sorry. I ran a different direction.

[00:42:59] Speaker B: My question all comes down to, how can we have perspective? And I think you brought up a bunch of great points.

I do think that there is something. We do believe that part of even Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac was for Abraham’s transformation, too. Right? Like, he needs to understand the pain that it must have been to have a father, have, you know, watching a child die that he loved so dearly. And, you know, you bring up a good point. It’s like maybe. Maybe Alma and Amulek had to watch this as.

As part of their purification, as part of their understanding what it must be like to see, you know, to be a God, knowing he can’t strip us of our agency, including even terrible people, you know, and that, and that God, unfortunately, has to watch innocent souls be destroyed all of the time, and, you know, has to let it happen in some of those cases because he can’t rob us of our agency.

I don’t know, man.

[00:44:07] Speaker A: It’s also kind of interesting if you think about what happens if the story isn’t there.

What happens if the people of Ammonihah just don’t repent? And Alma and amulet give up and they move on to the city of Aaron next, right? And. And maybe they’ve got Ziazrem that that joins with them, maybe some families here and there, and they. They just go. And then the Lamanites come out and just kill everybody of Ammoniah. And then, and then the people are asking, why? Why is it that these people were destroyed?

And what do you get from that? But, but when you plug this story in context of people that were willing to kill innocent women and children in a horrific and heinous way, just to rub it in the face of who used to be their chief judge, and it was by orders of their local chief judge that these things were happening. This was their justice system. This is their city that was executing this, not just a few wicked men. This was the entire governance and city participating and carrying this execution out. And think about what kind of impact that had on the rest of the NepHite civilization to see the act of this. And then they all refer to this as the destruction of nehors, because this was the band of the NeHore People that lived in this area that were willing to go to this ExtremE. And then the miraculous that every single one of them was wiped out by the lamanite army, not to the one soul didn’t survive that.

ANd yet you contrast that again. The Lamanites go into some of the neighboring areas, take captives with them, and the leader of the army goes to Alma, asks Alma, where do I go to find these guys? ANd AlmA tells him, this is where they’re going to be. This is where you need to be. The Lord will deliver them in your hands. And it says, not one single captive’s life was lost. And so the contrast of not one single person in the city was spared versus not one single captive’s life was lost.

And put it in the story of what JusT happened. ANd these martyrs, all of a sudden, their experience, I think, becomes a powerful tool to convert an entire nation to being more dedicated to the Lord and potentially saves an entire nation from the Lamanites continuing to spread into Zarahemla, into the rest of the nephite nations, to causing the downfall of entire nation. And so you look at it, and again, I mean, you’ve pointed the sound, Nate, I mean, perspective that you don’t have at the moment. Perspective that you can’t have. You can’t possibly understand how this, this group of women and children are going to possibly save an entire nation from further destruction down the road and how their sacrifices is consecrated for their good.

I guess it comes down to trusting God, which is one of the most bitter, hard things to do. And that’s why it’s called trust, is because we just can’t see the other side of it.

[00:47:10] Speaker B: Yeah, faith. Right. And, you know, as. As you should probably expect at this point, you know that I’m gonna chip in with the sacrament. The chance each week that we have to covenant to have the Holy Ghost.

Sorry, is my mic cutting out? The chance to have the Holy Ghost with us and to be our constant companion. Because that’s, I guess, my only way that I could think of being able to have any sort of peace when you’re in the middle of the storm. So doing what we can to live.

[00:47:43] Speaker A: Worthy of that, that’s such a blessing, to have the constant companionship of the spirit. I mean, that’s what it’s going to take, right? Because when we come down, let’s take this lesson on an individual basis. How do I know that what I’m praying for is the right thing? How do I know that I should be praying for success of this, that this business should be successful, versus maybe this business actually needs to die so that I can be successful in another way.

[00:48:09] Speaker B: Totally. I mean, this is the story of my life.

It’s anything.

[00:48:15] Speaker A: And I think that’s the critical difference, right? Going to hear the reason. The reason it was okay that these died versus others saved is. Boils down to, in my mind, because that’s what God said.

[00:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that’s. And I think you’re right. I think you’re right. I think that there’s. I have so much of a long way to go to be able to be, I feel like, right there to be able to do that. And there is something encouraging from this story too, which is it’s not like Alma and Amulek were unfazed by this. It’s not like they were unfazed.

And there’s, I feel like, at least a little bit of hope in there. For me to go, yeah. When I do think of this, and I have to, like, ask myself, I don’t know, what would I do? As much as I think I’d like to know what I would do, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the human part of me going, hey, maybe that’s part of. Part of having faith is that that faith has to be pushed against. And so, you know, I read this story at the same time as I’ve been reading this other book, and it kind of. Those two. Those two stories kind of collided where it’s like, oh, man, it’s not even. It’s not even the. It’s not even the prophet or your missionaries that were scared of the torture that they were going to endure. It was having to watch other innocent people endure it because of them. I’m like, man, that shook me.

I hope I would know what I should do. But seeing that both Alma and amulek weren’t just, you know, taking it stoic, they weren’t just like, oh, no problem. Everything’s all good. You know, it’s like that was. It was tearing them up, too.

[00:50:00] Speaker A: So I love that you said that. And I think that comes back to the high priest and being covered in blood.

I mean, how does it not faze you to take a little lamb that hasn’t done anything to hurt anybody in life that’s, you know, just clean, white, pure.

And to cut it while it’s screaming, by the way.

[00:50:23] Speaker B: You know, by the way, while it’s probably panicking and terrified, it doesn’t leave you spotless.

[00:50:31] Speaker A: It doesn’t leave you unstained, unmarked, unchanged.

And yet somehow, you’re washed white through the blood of that getting all over you. Somehow you’re washed white through the experience of that grittiness, that dirty.

[00:50:49] Speaker B: Good stuff. Anything else you wanted to chat about this week?

[00:50:54] Speaker A: No, I think.

I think that’s kind of the big one. I mean, we have. Yes, room’s conversion story, which is pretty powerful, and he gets sick and healed and whatnot, and maybe we can get some details in.

If Amulek is from this city, who’s to say that his family wasn’t part of those that were sacrificed? Did he have women and children? They’re never mentioned. I mean, does this. What. What happens to him and his family? Either one. It says that he was rejected by his dad and his kindred. So maybe his wife left him already for having followed Alma, and she was saved from being sacrificed. But if that was the case, she certainly wasn’t spared by the Lamanites that came in and killed everybody, or maybe they did believe and support him, in which case they were killed here. So you want to talk about what kind of mark and change this had on people? I mean, this, like you say, making these real people and talking about what they went through makes it very real.

I think that’s all I’ve got, though. I love it.

[00:51:59] Speaker B: I mean, I think that we both talked about the things that we were both hoping to talk about. So, yeah, I’m solid if you’re good.

[00:52:08] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:52:11] Speaker B: Do you. We do have a minute, and I, you know, we can edit this out if you don’t, but it would be. I love a lot of the experience that you’ve been telling me about, kind of some things that you’ve been seeing and experiencing and even some of the miracles. Is that something you would be willing to share kind of on the podcast, or is that something that you don’t necessarily want to get too much into?

[00:52:35] Speaker A: I mean, I can. I can give it a stab, and if at the end of the. At the end of spilling it out, we don’t like it, we just cut it. Right?

[00:52:42] Speaker B: I guess that’s the power of technology. People. People always just thought that I had Amy Grant just on standby so that anytime her name got mentioned, I just pushed a button and it just came in. Believe it or not, this is the studio magic, letting everybody see behind the curtain. We actually do try to edit this down somewhat after we’re done recording. So maybe just if you, dude, give us the five to ten minute recap, because I do actually think a lot of what you’ve been sharing with me is beautiful. And I actually would prefer to end this podcast on a positive note and not try to think of having to watch all of your friends and family die in a fire to.

[00:53:22] Speaker A: I mean, I’ll try to summarize this real quick. I mean, it’s something we’ve probably talked about, and a lot of people are wondering what in the world we’re even talking about. Okay, so, to give you a quick context, it was a year ago in April, actually.

I dreamed we were selling our house, and I jumped on the phone the next day, and I was trying to check out some houses in Utah. It was a discouraging experience, as some of you may be familiar with the real estate market in Utah, just not very encouraging.

And so I kind of put it out of my mind until the next day when Janessa, my wife, told me that she had a dream that she felt that in her dream. She had to tell me that we needed to move. And she woke up in her dream, but she was still sleeping. And then it hit her again. This is what you need to do. Tell Jason that you need to move. And then she did wake up, and she felt really strongly that that’s what she needed to say. She told me her experience, and I’m like, oh, man, not you, too. So that kind of started us on the thought that we needed to do something different, but we had no idea what it was. And it was a month later, when I was in Barcelona for my son’s soccer, that we attended state conference. There was a visiting elder that was there for state conference that shared a talk, and he talked about the book of Mormon. He talked about wetting your pillow at night and the power of crying while you’re praying. You don’t wet your pillow without tears.

And he said this, and I won’t ever forget it. He said, if you’re trying to figure out where you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be doing, you need to wet your pillow at night and pray to the lord and get that direction.

And then he kind of finished it up with what seemed like a random story. He said that he heard a woman crying out at a shopping center in the Netherlands. He went to go see what was going on. It was a hot day that the windows had been cracked, and she had two dogs. And one of the dogs didn’t make it from the heat exhaustion had passed away. And. And this dog, it was a pug, a little black pug. And he started doing CPR to try to revive this dog. He’s doing the chest compressions. And then he felt himself praying to the Lord, like, please save this God or this dog.

Because as you can imagine, a dog dying from heat exhaustion. Like, his face was just snotty, slimy. It just. He says to this day, he still has nightmares about this dog, but it didn’t work. He did mouth to mouth, still couldn’t save the dog. But the woman was very touched with his. This act of kindness, and asked him about his religion and what he believed. But what he boiled it all down to and how he finished his talk was, when you pray to the Lord, be prepared to kiss the pug. Be prepared to do something that maybe you weren’t expecting to do or maybe something that you never wanted to do.

And so I took inspiration from that. I went home to our apartment we were renting, and I did pray really hard, and I didn’t get an answer to the Lord. You talk about prayers and unanswered prayers and the silence in heaven right here. I was crying, praying, throwing everything out there and nothing.

But the next morning, as I was reading my scriptures, I prayed again, and I asked God, and I said, where should I read to get an answer? Where should I read to get a direction to what I need to do, where I’m supposed to be? And that’s when the answer came. And the spirit told me, it’s the story of the man that came to Christ and said, what shall I do? And he says, sell what you have and come follow me.

And of course, it’s just a story, right? But when you start thinking about that story and the spirit starts making connections, and then all of a sudden, and I realized that that’s what I was supposed to do, was sell my home, which would give me the ability to. To move out here and perhaps make a difference or do something with the Lord wanted me to do out here.

Then it was the kissing, the pug moment, like, whoa, I don’t know that I’m prepared to do something like that. I don’t know. Maybe I’m. Maybe I’m just being too imaginative. Maybe this is the wrong. Maybe that’s not what the Lord wanted me to do.

Please. Anything but that, right?

But as I started to wrestle with that and think about it and talk with Janessa about it, I mean, answers started coming, confirmation started coming, and it started to feel more and more like the right thing and what we needed to do.

And I’ll try to condense this down to just a couple key experiences on this.

As I started to pray and feel about this people here in Barcelona, I felt like the Lord was willing and ready to open up the heavens and really bless this people out here.

And there was a lot of opportunity for this people to turn to the Lord and for the Lord to bless them. And the people out here were suffering drought, really bad drought, severe drought. Hadn’t rained a lot in the last four years. In fact, in this year, it got to the point where they were installing in the hotels in the showers, devices that would turn the showers off after four minutes. To limit tourist showers to four minute showers. They had big signs posted all over the airport to try to warn tourists and keep them from using a lot of water. Their reservoirs were down to twelve to 14% full. They were out of water, running out of water.

And it was May 10 of this year. And the catholic church, this is the first time they’ve done this since 1945. Pulled out their statue of Jesus, parade it through the city, praying for rain. Desperately praying for rain. And you had this people just turning to God and really praying that the heavens would open and bless them.

And at the same time, as we were preparing for this, I felt like the Lord would bless the people with rain.

If they would turn to him, there would be something there. And I wrote it in my journal. I pulled the family aside and I asked them to pray for rain for the people here as well.

We would pray for the people here. We would pray that they would turn to God, that they would. They would repent, that we would see just miracles.

And we emailed the stake president. This was last year, I want to say October, November, September. Sometime in the fall of last year, we emailed the stake president and asked him, where should we be?

We said, we’re planning on moving out here. Where do you need us? Is really all. It was just a simple question, where do you need us? And within reading that, he emailed us back within a few hours. He said, the second I read that question, I knew exactly where you needed to be. It’s the battle on award.

And he sent us the boundaries where it was.

And so we started making preparations to come out here to the battle on award. In December, I flew out with my wife, Janessa. We went to the battle on a ward to meet the ward, and we’re talking like 50 people. Maybe it was just a struggling ward. They called it the dead warden. That’s what they called it. And I came home and I told my kids, I’m sorry. I mean, you might be the youth program. There might not be much that we’re coming to when we get out here. I mean, I’ve got six kids, so we’re. We’re almost. I mean, we’re making a big change on their. On their numbers.

And so we didn’t expect much. But when we came out here that first Sunday, I was blown away, because instead of 50 people in the church, there’s 175 people in the church, and it was standing room only.

And I came out here in the last week of May.

And so from May to December, you go from 50, 70 people to 175 people.

That’s crazy to me. And so I asked the bishop, what’s going on? What happened? And, I mean, even that first sacrament meeting, we had two talks. The first one was a sister who was talking about her experience coming back to the church. And then the second one was another sister talking about how she recently came back to the church in priesthood quorum. We had, right after priesthood quorum, we ordained a man to the office of a priest in the aaronic priesthood who in turn ordained his son to the aaronic priesthood. And they were baptized three weeks previously. And so I asked the bishop, what’s going on? And he said, you know, last week we had three baptisms, plus you had the two from the couple weeks before, plus all of these people coming back. He said, it’s, it’s been amazing to see that people are coming back to church. They’re returning to the church, we’re getting baptized. We’ve got a lot of missionaries here. That week I was able to go with the missionaries for a couple of discussions. I asked them the same thing. They said, the mission president has a philosophy that where they start to see success in baptisms, he sends more missionaries to kind of capitalize on it, strike where the iron’s hot. In our ward, we have six missionaries, six missionaries just for our ward.

And we have. We went to another baptism the very next week. We’ve got a baptism, two baptisms this weekend. Just. It’s been incredible to see, and the bishop told me, and the missionaries told me they’re actually preparing to split the ward. And when they split the ward, they’re preparing on splitting the stake. It’s just incredible to see that all the people that have been coming to the church, the growth and while that’s miraculous, to see the growth and the revival and what’s happening out here on just a small ward level, but the first weekend we got here, it rained and it rained pretty good. And I remember writing in my journal, like, hey, maybe this is a sign that we’re in the right place, that God’s blessing this people, that we’re seeing rain. But the rain didn’t stop. And from this point here, it’s rained more days than it hasn’t.

And it’s actually rained more in the month of June than it’s rained the last two years combined in just one month.

Rained more than the last two years. And so in June, the rain is extremely rare. Here in Barcelona, they get about 24 mm, on average. We’ve already passed 70. We’re not even through the month yet.

And it’s just been crazy to see the windows of heaven opening. The Lord blessing his people. And I say this not just from a perspective of the church is growing and getting stronger and seeing these people that are eager and coming in, but even to see it with other faiths, to see the catholic people out there praying to God and turning to him to try to solve their problems and parading their statue of Jesus. It just feels like there’s a lot of people turning to the Lord over here and to see these miracles, which I didn’t expect, maybe I did down the road, maybe I thought, you know, five years from now, we’ll see why it was important that we moved. I never imagined within the first week we would see what we’ve seen. So, I don’t know. Did I? Did I did. I nailed it.

[01:04:17] Speaker B: And I appreciate you being willing to share that with us. And I take a lot of inspiration every time we get to chat and you share with me all of the amazing things that you’ve got going on out there. So I appreciate you being willing to share that on the podcast as well.

We appreciate the listeners. A lot of appreciation. We appreciate the listeners to this show. We thank you so much for sending it to your friends and family.

We’ve enjoyed seeing the show expand into different countries and various things. It’s always fun to kind of look at where people are listening and be like, oh my goodness, there’s somebody listening in this country. We’re like, oh, that’s sweet.

So we appreciate, but we know that it’s because of you that have been listening and stuck with us even during a little bit of the rocky transition. Hopefully we have been able to get the quality of the podcast back to where it was when we were hanging out in a room together every Sunday night. So we’re working on it.

Any questions or comments? Always, please feel free to hit us up. You can get ahold of us at the email address high deepdive.com.

always love hearing feedback, questions, comments. We love hearing the insight that you all have as we’ve been going through these chapters. So let us have it. I think that’s all we have. So until next week.

Christ calls us by his name. The significance of Alma returning home at the end and beginning of the next year. The episode also explores themes of faith, repentance, and taking upon oneself the name of Christ. Jason and Nate discuss the symbolic significance of being born again, the process of becoming like Christ, and the powerful message of redemption. They also touch on the historical and cultural contexts within the Book of Mormon, including the implications of the land of kings and the names of places like Melech, Ammonihah, and Aaron.

Transcript:

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. A podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in my studio with our friend and this show’s producer in his studio, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:33] Speaker B: What’s up, baby boy?

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Dude, it’s good to see you again, Nate.

[00:00:37] Speaker B: It’s good to see you every week, my friend.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I know we say that a lot, but. But, you know, when you’re living on the other side of the world, it really is nice to see you again.

[00:00:48] Speaker B: A friendly connection.

[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: I’m. I’m totally with you, man. How are things going over there?

[00:00:55] Speaker A: Amazing. They’re going really good.

[00:00:57] Speaker B: Good.

[00:00:58] Speaker A: How are things going over there and the world I left behind?

[00:01:02] Speaker B: Holding it down, dude. Holding it down here in Zion.

[00:01:06] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:01:07] Speaker B: In the promised land.

[00:01:10] Speaker A: It was a good ward.

I’m sad I lost it.

[00:01:15] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it’s been fun, man.

[00:01:18] Speaker A: So anyways, the word out here has been incredible, man. I mean, I guess that’s the church. That’s the wonderful thing. You get plugged in to pull you in like family. It’s just. It’s been amazing.

[00:01:26] Speaker B: So good.

[00:01:27] Speaker A: No, nothing bad to say there.

[00:01:29] Speaker B: Good. Sounds awesome.

Let’s get it. Let’s get into it.

[00:01:34] Speaker A: Let’s do. This is Alma, and we’re going to be going through chapters eight through twelve. And really, this is going to be after he’s taught in Sarahamlet, after he’s taught in the land of Gideon, he’s going to go into the land of Melech and he’s going to go into the land of Ammoniah and run into some pretty severe opposition, and things kind of get nasty and take a turn for the worse. But he meets Amulek in the process. And these are stellar chapters. And I. And I feel like there’s a lot here that we can pick up and learn from this. Before I get too far down the road, though, there is one thing I wanted to bring up. I mean, last week we covered alpha five, and, I mean, I say we covered it. We kind of put it in with. With two different lessons. Right. And we. We did as good as we could, considering what we were doing. I feel like maybe we can just make a quick mention of one thing there. I wish we had touched a tad bit more on. And Alma, chapter five. It’s interesting when it talks about the Lord calling his people.

And this is verse 38. Behold, I say unto you that the good shepherd doth call you. Yea, and in his own name, he doth call you, which is the name of Christ.

[00:02:40] Speaker B: I’m glad you brought that up. We talked about it today in our Sunday school class.

[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah.

He says, and if you will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd, to the name by which you are called, then you are not the sheep of the good shepherd. So if you refuse to take upon yourself the name of Christ, and I mean, just thinking about that, what that means, to not be called the name of Christ.

And as I’m reading this, as I’m seeing this, what stands out to me is I don’t want to be like. I want to be like me, or I want to be like something else. I don’t want to be called that because of what that means or take that stigma or that upon me. I value my independence. I value being somebody different, being me. And I’m going to go by a different name.

That’s, to me, what it sounds like here. If you want to be called by some other name, you don’t respond to the name of Christ, then you’re not as a shepherd. And he kind of makes this black and white a bit when he says, if you’re not the sheep of the good shepherd, by what fold are you? And I say unto you, that is, the devil is your shepherd.

And so it’s interesting to me, and here’s, I guess, one thing I wanted to put on this, Nate, and I’ll let you jump in, but we.

To me, this reminds me of, anyone who tries to hold on to their life shall lose it, but he who loses his life shall find it. And coming back to this, if we try to hang on to our individuality and thinking that we need to save that, we don’t realize what we’re losing in the process.

But when we surrender to Christ, to his will, to be like him, we gain that individuality, that freedom, that agency. We still retain who we are and that us and that individuality. But even more so, I think. I don’t think taking the name of Christ is something to smash out our individuality, our personality. I think that gets only magnified when we do this. But being willing to take upon the name of Christ and act like him, it’s kind of interesting how that works. I’m sure I’m not doing it justice, but. Nate, did you have anything you wanted to jump in on that or.

[00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah. My only thoughts I would want to add to it are this, as you remember, is coming on the heels of. Do you see his image in your countenance at the end of the day, at judgment day, the biggest image I’m getting is this idea that Christ is going to know who’s his because he sees his image in us.

He will know who is part of his flock because we’ve emulated a life like him. We have done everything we can to take up his cross as our cross. Right? We have yoked ourselves to him. All of these things continue to point back. And when he just comes out point blank and says, if you’re going to be redeemed, it’s going to be because you have really, at the end of the day, become me.

And just the idea of taking upon ourselves his name even more so highlights a lot of the earlier commandments of don’t take the name of the Lord in vain. Okay, well, then what does that mean in context of us taking his name upon us? Does our behavior take upon or does our behavior take or make the name of the Lord in vain? Does our behavior put other gods before God? And I think that this, as I was reflecting back on this so much, I was thinking where this idea of, you’ve seen the meme, that kind of maybe you haven’t, that’s floating around where it’s somebody basically saying, well, I’m going to sin or live whatever lifestyle I want to because I was born this way.

And Jesus is like, well, then be born again. That’s the whole point, is to be born again.

And like you said, and I’m really glad you said this, is, I do completely agree with you that when we try to find our identity on our terms, I know I’ve seen this in my life, and I see it in friends and people around me. It’s like where we try to find out who we are on our own terms.

It really can be a very confusing kind of and at times, really fruitless journey where when we find ourselves through faith or through other anchors and through examples and through other processes, I agree with you, we still really discover who we are and what our gifts are and what our purpose is because we’re doing it through somebody who can show us, in my opinion, our utmost potential.

I just finished reading, I’m glad I finally did to Jonathan Livingston’s, Livingston Siegel. And I’m bummed that it’s taken me so long to read this, but such a beautiful sentiment in there of so many of these birds didn’t allow themselves to fly because they were unwilling to hear or understand what their true potential was.

And that hit me.

And again, we, so many times I feel like, as a church, kind of get accused of having these rules or these boundaries that hold us down or that don’t allow us full freedom. And my experience has just been completely different than that. And my experience is these. These standards that we live are a boundary that keep us from running off the edge of a cliff. And there’s actually so much more confidence and safety knowing that these boundaries are there to keep us from falling off the cliff. And therefore, within those boundaries, there’s so much more room for exploration and self expression and all of these things. And I, you know, you hear the term over and over when missionaries are leaving, you know, lose yourself in the work. And I’m like, yeah, I do believe that on some level. But for me, it’s like I discovered myself in the work. Like, I learned who I was in the process of, you know, turning my.

My priorities over to somebody else. And then the last thing I guess I just want to say to it is, and I’m. I believe this is completely true, which is if we’re doing everything we possibly can to truly live by the example of the person who we’re not only trying to emulate, but to truly become, than even the things that we do that feel like failures or that feel, you know, like.

I mean, yeah, even the hard times in our lives or even the times in our life where maybe we’re not doing a very good job of sticking to the path, but we’re still, at the end of the day, trying to make our way back. I just believe that those things are consecrated for our good. And that as long as at the end of the day, we are, we really are having a desire to still try to become the perfect example, that the failures that we have in this life are consecrated for our good, I guess, is basically the last thing I would want to say about that. And so I’m really glad that you brought that up. I do love that.

You also highlighted something that has been kind of on my mind, too, which is, and again, my last thought about this would be, you see, the term sheep somehow used in negative ways towards faithful, believing members of the church. And that’s. It’s crazy to me that any member of, or any Christian, not just even member of our church, but really any Christian would ever take offense to the name sheep or sheeple. That’s insane to me.

Everything that we’re doing is to try to become sheep. And for me, I hope at the end of the day, I’ve done enough that I’ll recognize the voice of the good shepherd and that I will be numbered amongst his flock. I’m doing the best job I possibly can to live up to the term sheep. And I don’t reject that. I don’t take offense at that term whatsoever.

I wish I was doing a better job of being a sheep because as Christ has said and used the analogy over and over and over, sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell. Dog.

[00:12:35] Speaker A: Well, and he says, your sheep just either way. Either way, your sheep. And that’s kind of the funny thing, right? It’s just a different shepherd because. Because a lot of these people that are, that are following who say they’re not following, ironically enough, are still following something.

[00:12:51] Speaker B: Absolutely.

[00:12:52] Speaker A: And I don’t know, there’s some irony in that.

[00:12:57] Speaker B: Here’s the question, too, because it basically says, to be numbered amongst Christ’s flock, you have to be born again. Right? Is what it talks about there in Alma, chapter five. And it says that if you’re not, then you.

The reward for being part of the devil’s flock is death.

Right? So being part of Christ’s flock is life. Being part of the alternate flock is death. It’s. It did beg an interesting question, because as we’ve talked about in Mosiah, the natural man’s an enemy to God, right? Like the fact that we’re, the fact that we are born in a body that will eventually die, it’s. It’s almost like you really, truly are almost born into a flock that is bound for death. That is by nature.

[00:13:52] Speaker A: Mortal, natural man.

[00:13:54] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying.

[00:13:55] Speaker A: Right, right. You’re born into a flock, you’re a sheep regardless. It’s just being born again to actually liberate yourself from.

Right. That’s the, that’s the irony of it all. And to maybe apply an analogy to this, to just kind of put a bow on it, from my perspective, is it not the string of the kite that allows the kite to go as high as it is? I mean, how high is that kite going to go if you cut the string?

[00:14:19] Speaker B: That’s exactly right. I love that analogy.

[00:14:23] Speaker A: And I love that you brought up taking the Lord’s name in vain, because I think so many times we’ve interpreted that as to use it in a sense where we’re not referring to him or to say his name in an irreverent manner, but taking his name upon us in vain, to take that name and to drag it through the mud or to not fulfill the purpose or the meaning of what that means to take his name, and I don’t want to sound overly harsh on this. I think we all take his name upon us and do things that don’t represent him well.

Repentance, it’s a process. It’s our intention and what we’re trying to do with it. I don’t think that’s going to destroy his name, just as it’s hard to be looking at a kid and being overly critical for them as they’re trying to learn or overcome mistakes. But I do love that connection on what it means to take his name in vain, particularly when you see that he calls his sheep by his name. That’s us. We are his people.

[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah, the flip on that again, bright, where it says, have you received his image in your countenance?

And I think we always think about that as, like, us looking in the mirror and seeing him where we talked about it a lot last week, where the purification of silver is the person doing the purifying, seeing their image in the silver. And so there is really. That. There is the two way street. There is. The question is, like, well, do we see. Do we. Are we seeing his image in our countenance? And hopefully, at the end of the day, he sees his image in our countenance more so than us. Right. Like, that’s the goal, that. The goal is that he’s. He sees. Last thing about that, actually, too, it did make me think of the sealing ceremony, too. Right? Where there’s, like, the mirror on both sides. It’s like. That is kind of an interesting. That is kind of an interesting thought is who else? You know, when you’re married and you. You look at the idea of eternity with two mirrors, it did make me appreciate the symbolism and the, you know, the maybe deeper metaphors of even mirrors being the thing that people are looking into, not only when they look into eternity, but hopefully.

Hopefully when a couple gets sealed, they are also seeing God in that marriage with them as well. Right? The reflection or the image.

[00:17:01] Speaker A: Well, that’s kind of interesting because you’ve got this concept of eternity, right? Infinity. That these images go on and reflect each other forever.

[00:17:08] Speaker B: Right.

[00:17:08] Speaker A: But as many different images of you as there are, how many faces do you see?

It’s just one face, right?

[00:17:18] Speaker B: That’s right. Well, unless you’re standing there with somebody, then you got the two of them.

[00:17:24] Speaker A: But. But then it’s just their face, right? Unless it’s an angle and you can kind of.

[00:17:28] Speaker B: I’m with you. Yeah, I’m with you. All right, killer.

[00:17:32] Speaker A: All right.

Yeah. Thanks for uh, thanks for exploring that with me. Uh, let’s, uh, let’s get into this week. Let’s look at Alma, chapter eight, and then first one, actually, I think there’s some critical details here that might not be fully appreciated. So I’m gonna. I’m gonna kind of read this. And now it came to pass that Alma returning. Excuse me. Returned from the land of Gideon, and having taught the people of Gideon many things which cannot be written, having established the order of the church according to that which he had done before in the land of Zarahemla, yea, he returned to his own house as Zarahemla to rest himself from the labors which he had performed. Now, there’s two things that I want to kind of hit on this. When he talks about the order, that’s something that I don’t think we can say enough about when we go. Even from last week’s lesson, Alma five, to what we’re at here, and then Alma eight, as we go forward, there’s a lot of detail in the order of things. Alma didn’t just go out there because he wanted to do this on a whim. He says, having been called of God, therefore he goes and he does this. And when he’s out here doing it, he calls priests.

God says, mine is a house of order, not a house of confusion.

There is an order to things. There is a priesthood, and there are keys, and there are callings, and there is power associated with this. And that’s kind of laid out clear. In order to maintain the integrity of the church, he has to consecrate priests because he’s authorized to do so. And he is sharing that authorization and authorizing them to maintain this stability. And that is the order of God.

I love this because God is a God of order, not of confusion. He’s not. He’s not an armchair quarterback. That’s just calling audibles, trying to fix everything that we screwed up along the way. His plan was from before the foundation of the world. He had an order established, laid out and put here and instills confidence and trust in him. And we should expect that his church is also a church of order, a church that has priesthood, that has authority, that I can’t just go baptize my kid because it seems like the right thing to do. And fun, I have to get permission from the bishop who holds those keys, because that is the order that God has established here on the earth. So just a nod to that. And then the other thing that I really wanted to get to on this one, when it says that he goes to his own house at Jerusalem, or Jerusalem at Zarahemla, to rest right from the labors which he had performed. It’s not just a vacation, as much as it might sound like, hey, everyone has to rest and recharge, which is true. And I think we can draw that conclusion and look at that point from here. But look at the timing of this. And thus ended the 9th year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass in the commencement of the 10th year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Alma departed again. So his rest at his house at Zarahemla is corresponding with the ending of a year, and soon after the beginning of a year. Now, remember that Alma’s role among the people is to be over the church. He is the high priest. It is the high priest responsibility to go into the holy of holies on the day of atonement.

And Zarahemla is the capital city of the people of the Nephites. Therefore, this is where the temple would be, that the high priest would have to perform his duty every year and to go into the holy of holies. So this small detail about him making sure he is back at his home, where the place of the temple at the end of the year and the beginning of the other corresponds with the jewish calendar. At the beginning of the year, you have Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and then a few days after that, you’ve got the Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, where the high priest would have to go into the holy of holies and perform that atonement for his people.

I love these details.

And yet it’s not like Joseph Smith is trying to throw this in our face, like, yeah. Oh, well, I want people to believe it. Here. Let me tell you why I’m writing this, because I don’t think that’s the case. These are just assumed because this is how the people are writing back. Then that is just another nod to the authenticity, I think, of the book of Mormon and the role that it has.

[00:21:58] Speaker B: That’s awesome.

Did you like, did you like in verse ten, how he wrestled with God?

I assume in chapter eight or chapter eight, verse ten. I assumed that you would appreciate some. Some wrestling language, some persevering, even if.

[00:22:14] Speaker A: You go back with Jacob. Right?

[00:22:15] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. Even if it’s not getting his hip dislocated.

[00:22:19] Speaker A: And Enos is wrestling with God. There’s a lot of wrestling happening.

[00:22:23] Speaker B: I know, but I do. But the thing is, is that I think it’s a perfect word for what is sometimes required to, you know, to get answers. And it’s not easy. And like they say, man, we used to wait. Like arcade fire says, we used to wait.

We’ve been just so bizarrely conditioned out of it that it’s. It scares me. Scares me. It scares me for me personally, even for my kids, because a testimony is not made by a quick, you know, read the scriptures, say a prayer, have everything be given to you. That’s just not the way that quality things are given to us in this world.

[00:23:07] Speaker A: And unfortunately, I think a lot of people get caught in the trap of thinking that God doesn’t love me because of these difficult things that I have to go through because my family has fallen apart or because I’ve lost my job or because, I mean, xyz, right, you could put it however you want to.

God doesn’t love me. Why do I have it so much harder than everyone else? And as you’ve pointed out, I mean, alma wrestling with the Lord. Enos wrestling with the Lord. Jacob wrestling with the Lord. You don’t think Abraham was wrestling with the decision to sacrifice his son?

I mean, who God loves.

It’s a scary thing to be in the hands of the Lord, right? That’s right.

[00:23:46] Speaker B: Who he loves. He chastens, he cleanses, he sets. He. He sets them apart. And we’ve talked a lot about what setting apart also visually refers to, so symbolically refers to good stuff. Sorry, I didn’t mean to sidetrack it. I just. I figured you’d appreciate it.

[00:24:04] Speaker A: Not a sidetrack. No, it was good. But I think also heavy on Alma’s mind, feeling the role of the high priest going into the day of atonement, performing this. This expiatory, this atonement process for the people. I think it even reflects in his teachings as he’s coming back there and pointing people to Christ and talking. You can see that. That role that he plays. And here’s the thing. The high priest is supposed to be someone without blemish. They are supposed to embody the savior. And here he is performing the act as if he is the savior himself and yet trying to turn the people to that. And now he’s coming out there and willing to sacrifice himself.

And I think you see it when he gets rejected in the land of Ammonihah and he leaves to go to the land of Aaron, and the Lord says, whoa, whoa, whoa. I need you to go back. And he doesn’t even hesitate a second, right? He turns and runs back to the land, willing to throw his life, his safety, his everything on the line. I think he embodies the savior really well that way.

[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s good. Good observation.

[00:25:12] Speaker A: Now, let’s, uh. Let’s take a look at the land, the names of some of these places. Uh, he. He goes to the land of Melech, and I think there’s some significance here. Melech in Hebrew means king.

And so this is the city.

So you suppose here, the city of the kings.

And then he goes to the city of Ammonihah, which is three days journey from the city of the king. And it says, interesting enough in the book of Mormon, it specifically calls out the name of Ammonihah, was called Ammonihah because it was named after the person that founded it. So who founded the city of Ammonihah? Well, Ammon.

And then he goes from Ammonihah to the city of Aaron. So who named the city of Aaron? Who founded that? Aaron. Well, Ammon and Aaron are brothers who are the sons of the king. So here we in the land of the kings, and Ammon and Aaron are two cities within the land of kings. Well, Mosiah was the king. He has two sons, Ammon and Aaron. I don’t think it’s far fetched to imagine that these cities were founded by Ammon and Aaron, and they kind of take that responsibility. And you look at these cities, they’re founded closer to where the Lamanites are. As the Lamanites come in, they’re going to come across the land of Ammonihah quicker than they are. The land is Arhamla. And so you think if you’re building on the fringes, you’re coming out of the land of the king to establish more territory. That’s your responsibility, or whatever the case may be.

And it’s closer, you would think that a city that’s newly founded closer to the land of the Lamanites might not be as arrogant as what these people are who say this great city cannot be destroyed. But realize this people, this area is founded by a lot of the family, the royal lines, right? Look at Amulek. Amulek, when he tries to relate with the people, his way of relating to them is, look how good I am.

Look at my lineage.

This is a very proud area that has a very rich heritage as far as descending from the king and the king’s line and the king’s family. Mosiah is a descendant of Nephi, the first king. And they share that. Mosiah doesn’t just have one kid. Mosiah’s father, I’m sure, didn’t just have one kid. Neither did Benjamin’s father.

They had the royal line, has family, extended family. This is what’s making up a lot of these areas. And when they talk about trying to overthrow the government, think about what that means. Here you have a family of status, a people of status, who are living in a land of kings, the king’s land, almost the very fact that you’re able to live in this area, setting you apart from everybody else, you have a sense of privilege or status in this area. Now, when all of a sudden, Mosiah pulls the rug out from under you and eliminates the monarchy and establishes judges and makes everybody equal, what’s your reaction to that?

And even Mosiah is worried, saying, what happens if an unrighteous person rules up? And then the people choose Aaron per se, to try to come and take the throne back, and he’s going to fall into that trap, and what’s going to happen?

He doesn’t want that to be what’s going to happen. These people, having lost their status overnight, are not super happy about this. And so when it looks about them conspiring to overthrow the government, that’s where it’s coming from. Not only is it coming from that, but you got to remember, what was Ammon like before he was the missionary going to the Lamanites? What was Ammon like when he founded this city? When he founded this city, he was seeking actively to overthrow the church, what kind of people are in the city that he founded with him?

And so you can almost see for Alma, who was walking with Ammon, trying to actively overthrow the church before he had his conversion experience, the desire, the need, the feeling that he had to try to reclaim this people, that he, in part, felt responsible for tilting them the wrong direction, for trying to overthrow the church of his father and the church of the king.

So having that context, I think, helps us better understand what’s going to happen as they go into the land of Ammonihah.

[00:30:01] Speaker B: Let’s get into the land of Ammoniah.

[00:30:04] Speaker A: The land of Ammonihah. Yeah, this doesn’t go super well. Right?

First off, he goes in, and he’s chased out. He goes to the land of Aaron. As we talked about, the lord says, look, they’re seeking to overthrow the government. You need to go back.

I want to point out how fast alma reacts.

It says that in haste, he speedily goes back to the land of Ammonihah, and he goes so speedily, you got to realize that the journeying between city to city he’s laying out, it’s like a three days journey to this city or three days. So when he leaves the land of Ammonihah, there’s no gas station along the way to resupply, to get fueled up, to get food, no hotels. It’s a several days journey till he gets to where he’s at. And when the lord says, go back, he doesn’t even resupply or take the time to, because he turns around, gets there instantly, if you will.

Okay. He doesn’t get there instantly, but instantly he reacts and leaves. And I would say so fast that when he shows up, he hadn’t eaten for several days. I think that indicates how fast his return was. He didn’t even take the time to resupply or make sure he had enough for his trip. That’s how urgent it was. And the reason I point out the urgency is because when he shows up and he meets Almulek and he stays at Amulek’s house, it says that he stays there for many days. And you’re like, wait a second. If he felt like it was so urgent to turn around and make haste to get back to that city as soon as possible, why then does it take him many days to actually begin to preach to the people? Why isn’t he preaching from day one when he arrives in the city? And I didn’t give you any kind of heads up on this, Nate, do you have any thoughts on this before I dive in, or do you want me to just keep.

[00:32:03] Speaker B: Go ahead. Keep going.

[00:32:07] Speaker A: I think, to me, the lesson I pull from this is we should be quick to respond to the Lord. Look how he calls Samuel and he says, here am I right? And he calls Abraham, and he says, here am I. Behold me. Hina knee. Behold me. We should be quick to respond to the Lord, but we also need to balance that with not running faster than we have strength. Just because he has to go back doesn’t mean he has to start teaching day zero without any time to prepare or to make sure he’s going to do the job right. He’s quick to stand up. He’s quick to return. He’s quick to be available and ready in the service of the Lord. But he’s going to take his time to make sure he does the job right in the timing of the Lord.

So when he gets there, he spends some time with amulek and I think there’s some lessons that we can learn from Amulek on this, too. Amulek says that he was not a very religious person.

He says he knew of the Lord. It was just never important to him. But he also says that he was very industrious. And by the labors of his hand, he had a lot of wealth and a lot of riches. He also enjoyed a lot of status.

And I think we may all know people like this in the church. That are members of the church. But maybe not super active in how they participate or help in the church. Or maybe they’re not even part of the church. They’re just good people. But they haven’t really put much thought into it. Or given much time to it or really participated.

But they have status, they have wealth. And that seems to be where they focus most of their attention to. And look at how powerful amulet becomes in the service of the Lord. With something as simple as an invitation.

And maybe there’s a lot of people out there who. Who are trying to live their best life. Or trying to do the best they can.

Who haven’t paid much attention to the Lord or to calling or to doing what they can. And maybe we pass over them because we don’t think that they have enough heart. Or that they put enough in it. Or that they’re going to do a good job. But all they’re doing is just waiting for the right invitation to engage.

And I think how the Lord invites them is. Is significant.

Because it’s not like the Lord invited Amulek to go and be in Alma. To go to this and to start teaching. He instead invites him to his capacity. Something that he is able to do.

Feed my sheep.

Which at the same time is not the same thing that he’s asking Alma to do is feed my sheep. And he’s asking Amulet to feed his sheep. But in Amulek’s case, it’s very literal. I’ve got a prophet. He’s coming. You have wealth, you have ability. You can take care of this prophet. Provide him with a place to stay and with food. And that’s something that’s easy for Amulek to do. Not only that, Amulek was on his way out of town to go and visit family. He had taken some time off work that he could go and be with some people. And so when all of a sudden Alma’s coming, he’s got that availability. And that time that he can spend with Alma. To talk with the prophet of God. To learn and to be prepared so that he can take that next step. So when the Lord’s calling him, he really kind of eases him into this calling. First, provide some food. I know this is something easy for you to do. There’s a prophet. I need you to house him, listen to him. And then he starts to grow in his engagement. Sometimes it’s just a simple commitment, a simple thing that we do. And as we start to engage with the Lord on a simple level, we become invested, we become interested, and our capacity to serve also grows. And you get these great leaders that really all it needed was somebody to work with them and help them engage in a way that was meaningful, that they could to grow that engagement to where they become powerful leaders.

And so maybe in the church, we don’t always need to look at the same five people and just rely on them for everything. Maybe there’s a lot of almilecs out there who haven’t shown a lot of interest, but with the right type of interest, the right type of engagement, we can grow into strong leaders as well. I feel like that’s one of the things that sets the Lord’s church apart from so many other approaches or churches in the world, is that the Lord says, come follow me. And he expects us all to engage, and he provides so many different levels of engagement and things for us to do to get us involved in his work.

All right, next.

Unless you had anything on that.

[00:36:55] Speaker B: No.

[00:36:58] Speaker A: I think it’s interesting that it says they had the power to not be cast into prison. And the reason why I think that’s interesting is because they get cast into prison. And I’m like, wait a second.

[00:37:07] Speaker B: That’s a good point.

[00:37:09] Speaker A: That’s not the greatest superpower if it’s not working.

[00:37:11] Speaker B: I mean, maybe they allowed themselves to be cast into prison, dude.

[00:37:16] Speaker A: Well, it says they did. And I’m like, well, yeah, but does that not seem like a cop out? How do they. So, to me, I wish there was more context to this. How did they know they had the power to not be cast into prison if, at the end of the day, they were cast into prison? And so it makes me think there’s something more to the story, right? Were they consecrated? Did they get an angel? Come set them apart and give them priest of blessing? And part of the words of that blessing is that you would have power not to be cast into prison. Is this Alma, as a prophet? Did he receive this inspiration and tell Amulek, we will not be. Where did the. Where did the idea come from that they couldn’t be cast into prison, at least from Mormon’s perspective, who’s writing this book hundreds of years later, and he’s looking at them, and they were definitely cast into prison. How does Mormon jump to that conclusion without this? Right. It just makes me feel like there’s more meat, there’s more to the story here than what we’re provided with in the quick summary that we have. And I think you see it in a sense, when Alma stands up and testifies to them, they get angry with him, and they seek to cast him into prison, but they can’t. Right. And so the power does show itself. It’s just kind of interesting. And I just feel like there’s something a little bit more to that than. Than what we’re left with.

All right. Alma really does a good job, lays out his testimony. But one thing that he says that kind of intrigued me is when he talks about being cast out of the presence of the Lord. And he says, the Lamanites were cast out of the presence of the Lord because of what they did. And we saw the fulfillment of that.

And that caught my attention, because where do we see the Lamanites being cast out of the presence of the Lord?

And when I think of cast out of the presence of the Lord, maybe just to kind of answer this question, I go back to Adam and Eve who were cast out of the presence of the Lord in the garden of Eden.

And I see being cast out of the presence of the Lord as quite literal, physically being removed from where the Lord resides.

And I see the temple as a restoration into the presence of the Lord, just as we had a journey out of the garden of Eden. The temple was meant to be a journey back into the presence of the Lord. You had cherubim and a flaming sword that were guarding the way, the tree of life. And in the ancient jewish temple, you had Jerobim sewn into the curtains that were meant to separate the people from the Interior of the temple. Inside the temple, you had the tree of life. In the menorah that was this candlestick that was made to look like a tree. Inside, you had the fruit of the tree of life in the bread and the wine that was on the showbread altar. And inside the temple, you had the presence of the Lord in the holy of Holies, the throne, the seat where God himself sat. And even today, in all of our temples on the wall, holiness to the Lord, the house of the Lord. This is the presence of the Lord.

And so when Alma says the Lamanites were cast out of the presence of the Lord. I think this is in direct reference to the loss of the temple, and not just the loss of the temple, but the loss of the priesthood.

The priest did go back to Lehi and his family when they first arrived.

NEpHI as their king consecrates Jacob as the priest, and Jacob is the high priest. And you’ve got this Moses Aaron type situation. Laman and Lemuel don’t get the priesthood. They don’t have the authority. They can’t consecrate priests. And even though Nephi departs into the land of Nephi with all those that will follow him, and he builds a temple, and the Lamanites subsequently take over that land and in turn get the temple. Yet Alma says they’re still not in the presence of God, even with a physical temple, a portal, if you will, a house of the Lord, where they could be back in the presence of the Lord without the priesthood, the authority to God, it doesn’t mean anything. So the temple is not a temple without the priesthood.

And the priesthood, I feel, is insignificant or meaningless without the temple, because what’s the purpose of the temple? Excuse me, the purpose of the priesthood. You have two priesthoods, a preparatory priesthood, the aaronic priesthood, which is to prepare you for the Melchizedek priesthood. And the whole purpose of the Melchizedek priesthood is it holds the keys to the knowledge of God or to come into the presence of God. Now, this Moses plainly understood and taught to bring the people into the presence of God, but they would not. And they had a priest that would do that for them and enter into the holy of holies. And so it was the tabernacle and the priesthood have always been connected with the presence of God, the garden of Eden and this restorative back into the presence of God. Losing those things for the Lamanites, cut them off from the presence of God. And the reason I wanted to go down that road is, I ask ourselves, do we cast ourselves out of the presence of God in not making use of the temple, of not going to the temple and returning to the presence of the Lord? Do we, in a sense, cast ourselves out?

All right, let’s see. Just try to look over my notes, make sure.

[00:43:05] Speaker B: Are you, are we into, are we into chapter nine of your notes yet? Are we still in eight?

[00:43:13] Speaker A: I think we are.

[00:43:14] Speaker B: Chapter nine, I was reading today, um, kind of generally in the verses of chapter nine, kind of eight through 25, a little bit, something I kind of wanted to throw at you that I think still ties back to what we maybe started with was, I love that to try to get the people to soften their hearts, they were very much in the, they very much hit, hit Home with, remember the miracles that YOur forefathers saw. And it’s funny because we see so many times the use of the traditions of YOur fathers in a wicked way. Right? Like the term, like the wicked traditions of YOuR fathers or the traditions of YOuR fathers. So usually when you see that term, I’m almost used to it being in a negative senSe. But it was interesting when Alma and Amulek are going like, have you forgotten the traditions of your fathers?

They’re referring to the good things, like, why have you abandoned, why have you abandoned the things that worked? And so it was kind of an interesting twist on that whole concept, but it really, and again, I’d love to throw this to you, too, not to put you on the spot, but I love that we started this podcast with the idea of whose name do we take upon ourselves and whose name are we going to be called at the last day. And then each week when we make the sacramental covenant, we talk about taking upon ourselves his name and then what, always remembering him. I feel like those two things really are tied hand in hand. And we’ve talked about this a little bit in the past, I think, towards, you know, I guess it’d probably be about 18 months ago, right, when we had our youngest child, and I told you how seriously our family takes the naming of children. It’s a big deal to us. We try to find family names. We try to name our children after people that we want them to look up to. You see, even when Lehi was naming valleys and rivers after his children, even his knucklehead children, it was with the hope that when those names are said, they do what they remember, right? They remember the metaphor, the lesson, or whatever it was supposed to be, that they were named after the name of Christ that we choose to take upon ourselves should be used in the same way. I feel like right is just a constant remembering of who it is we’re trying to act like, who we’re trying to become. And I know, you know, it may have gotten to kind of like a.

It may have lost its bite a little bit. But, you know, we used to have the, what would jesus do? Brace bracelets and things like that. And I appreciate that. But, man, our whole life is supposed to be that the actions that we do should be a living example of what Jesus would do.

And I feel like that. I feel like it’s why I noticed the push from the church to, we need to be calling ourselves the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, because within that title alone are so many things that we’re supposed to remember, including, by the way, our forefathers and a lot of the early members of this restored church. Right. And even the church itself, like so many things within that. I guess I’m just, I kind of appreciated the new perspective that I noticed as I was reading through those verses this week about how so much of it was a plea for them to remember the miracles that happened to their forefathers and the miracles that happened, the deliverance that they received and the protection they received and also the terrible things that happened to them. It’s like, remember these things so that it’ll soften your hearts so that the word of God can sit with you and sync with you. And again, this so much pointed for me back to the sacrament, but also the covenants that we make in a temple and the clothing that we wear and that all of these things are there for us to constantly be remembering the name that we’ve taken upon ourselves.

And hopefully, every time, every time we interact with people, hopefully they are seeing, you know, the way that we choose to remember the name that we have taken upon ourselves is by. To emulate that person in which we’re named after.

[00:48:17] Speaker A: You know, and it’s funny because we like to name our kids, like you said, lehi and nephi. Remember the names where I gave you. And we like to name our name, our kids after heroes to remind them of who they were. And latino culture, the name. A lot of times, one of the more common names is Jesus. You know, I met Jesus the other day, right? And it seems funny to us. We’re like, why would you ever call your kid Jesus? Like, there’s only one. It’s not us. And it’s almost presumptuous that you would think that you could be like Jesus and like, wait a second.

Isn’t that the whole purpose of why we’re here? Isn’t aren’t we supposed to be like, don’t we literally take his name apart?

Yeah. Why do we, why do we shy away from that in our culture? And it’s yet something that we embrace in so many other different ways, and yet they so embrace, so freely embrace that themselves.

[00:49:12] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:49:13] Speaker A: It’s kind of interesting.

[00:49:14] Speaker B: Yep.

All right. That’s all. That’s all I had to say about that.

A lot of this is always just coming back to taking upon ourselves his name and what that actually means to always remember him and what that actually means. And I feel like by doing those things, those are two things that we are commanded to do. But again, the sacrament prayer, I feel like, just continues to reveal itself more and more. How deep and really, like, you know, interconnected that covenant is.

Yes. With all of the other covenants that we make by nature. But how even with just in and of itself, why it’s such an incredible covenant that we get the opportunity to make and keep each week.

Yeah.

[00:50:10] Speaker A: Well said. And I think Alma does such a good job in these first few chapters of encapsulating that gospel. The importance of being born again, the importance of taking the name of Christ upon us, the importance of the covenants, the importance of the temple, the priesthood.

He simplifies the gospel so well, and really it just comes down to a message of repenting and pulling yourself in and trying to be more like the savior. It’s. He does, he does a phenomenal job of encapsulating that and teaching such a plain yet powerful gospel to the people.

[00:50:48] Speaker B: Anything else you want to hit on?

[00:50:54] Speaker A: You know, as I look at this, we kind of, I guess, at the end, run into Zee Ezrem and the attorneys and the weights and the measures and the system, the corruption and kind of that interesting interaction.

And as I was kind of diving through this, this last week, trying to think through this, Mormon does us a favor and tries to list out all the different money amounts and how they stack up and how they work.

And he says that a judge makes a measure of barley a day, that they’re a judge.

And I’m trying to figure out what is the value of a measure of barley?

And as specific as Mormon gets, it’s still, like, not specific enough to get there right, because what is a measure? I mean, a cup is a measure, a teaspoon is a measure, a bushel’s a measure. How much is a measure of barley? And as much as I’ve tried to kind of research this out, and here’s where it gets difficult, because measure can have different standards depending on is it a measure for how much my family needs to eat this day? Is a measure for how much is typically sold in the market? Is it a measure of how much seed is needed to plant an acre of crop? And then now we run into a different measurement. Is it an acre? Is it a hectare? Is it like, what size were they using? And we don’t have enough specifics or details in the Book of Mormon to fully understand how much barley is. Is a measure of barley. Not only that, where in the Book of Mormon is this taking place? Because I don’t typically associate barley as a mainstay crop in the rainforest with all sorts of. I mean, if it’s hard to grow barley and it takes a lot of land or it’s too wet for barley, is the value of barley a lot higher than where it would be in a more desert situation, where barley is an easier crop to grow?

What is the value on this? So it’s almost impossible to say what the measure of a barley is. But what I come back to is Mosiah’s example. Mosiah worked to support himself, and so when he set up this system of judges and rulers, and he decided to compensate a judge for their time with the measure of barley a day for their service, I would have to think, based on Mosiah’s example, that this is not an exorbitant amount of money to where they would want to get out of working, to be a judge all of the time.

But I also have to think that it would be a fair compensation. So, as I look at the measure of barley, what seems to square up is it’s more than what you would make on a manual labor for a day’s work, but it’s not more than a typical educated person would make. It would be comparative to what they would make doing something else. And so when I look at them trying to stir up cases so that they could be judging more, it’s not that they were getting rich off of it. It’s honestly that they didn’t want to do any other type of work.

It was maybe the easiness of the work, or them trying to get out of having to support themselves in another way or another fashion, I don’t know. It’s just trying to get some nature, some idea into these people and what they’re doing, the whole interaction with Zee Ezrem does get interesting, where amulet kind of reads his mind and his thoughts to where he’s going with it.

To give you an idea of how much the bribe is that Ziazrem offers amulet to deny that there is a God, you’re talking about 43 days of work for a judge. That’s about the value of this. So about a month and a bit.

So we’re talking not manual labor, but educated labor. If I were to just try to ballpark this and say that maybe $60,000 a year for something that’s average but not necessarily blue collar, it might even be a little bit higher. But just using round numbers, because 60 is divided by twelve, pretty easy. 5000 plus a little bit. $5500 to $6,000. I think that’s about what Zim?

[00:55:19] Speaker B: It’s a low ball offer, dude.

[00:55:21] Speaker A: It’s a low ball offer, but at the same time, what’s the, what’s, what’s that? What’s the amount of work that you have to do it? Nate, if I were to say, will you say that you are what would be something, comparative Lakers fan, that would pay you $6,500?

[00:55:41] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:55:42] Speaker A: To say that the jazz suck.

[00:55:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I mean, all you have to do. All you have to do is say it. Yeah. For $6,500, dude, I’d probably do it for $65.

[00:55:50] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, look at the trade off.

[00:55:53] Speaker B: Because of the sadness that I’m, that I’m subjected to every single year, rooting for the team that I love so deeply.

[00:56:02] Speaker A: I don’t think that the amount of money that Ezra is offering is.

I mean, it is.

[00:56:10] Speaker B: I know, but that. That’s probably not the story, but that.

[00:56:13] Speaker A: But it’s the exchange. Right? All you have to do is say this.

[00:56:17] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:56:17] Speaker A: 6000, 505,500, whatever the deal. $5,000 for saying one sentence. That’s it.

[00:56:23] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, yeah. Again, I think the bigger point was, is that he was, the idea is clearly trying to set up something bigger or even just to kind of needle him. Like, I mean, there’s, I, I don’t think reading the story, anybody ever thought like, oh, yeah, he’s going to take this bribe.

[00:56:44] Speaker A: Right?

[00:56:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I don’t, I mean, I just, it’s, it is, it is an interesting part. It, I think just illustrates a lot of the personalities involved in the back and forth a little bit is really what it does more than anything.

[00:56:56] Speaker A: Right. And it’s not like he’s saying, I’ll give you a million dollars to do it. Right?

[00:57:00] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:57:00] Speaker A: It’s got to be believable.

[00:57:02] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.

[00:57:03] Speaker A: But it’s still a, but it’s still a significant amount. But anyways, I mean, it’s.

I, I don’t know, to kind of wrap this up, at least from my perspective. I think we’ve covered a lot of good things here. It’s, it’s cool to see the testimonies of Alma and amulek, and it’s cool to see them double down on their testimonies. And here, I mean, we get a lot of stories about Christ in the Bible, but here you get the. I know. Type testimony that I think our culture thrives on. We have our fast and testimony meeting, that opportunity to exchange that information of what I know and how I know, and to see these men bear their witness and bear strong testimonies, it’s powerful. It’s a simple gospel. It’s a powerful gospel. And I love to hear them state what they know with their words.

[00:57:50] Speaker B: I would like to add to that the biggest thing that I have really loved the past couple weeks is all of this still kind of coming back to something that has been on my mind and what I’ve been trying to study for as I’ve been preparing for these lessons, which is all things can be consecrated for our good if we’re following Christ as much as we can. And if you look at Alma the younger, specifically in these stories, he doesn’t get to have that same experience.

And, I mean, he doesn’t get to testify of these without having the experience that he had to have. Like, when you read Alma, chapter five, and just like the wall to wall, very, very well articulated doctrine of the atonement of redemption, it’s coming from somebody that had to go through hell. It’s coming from somebody that, like, talked about the harrowing up of his sins, right. And his soul.

When you understand from the previous story of Alma the younger’s experiences, he was even, in his most knucklehead times, being prepared, I believe, to be the person that could come and deliver these sermons and that could run as fast as he could and was willing to turn around at the moment’s notice to do what he felt was the right thing to do.

So even in his darkest times, where his parents maybe did feel like failures, at the time, when he was going around fighting against everything that Alma was trying to teach at the time, right? His sons out there fighting against him, like, how could you not look at that situation and go, am I blowing this as a parent? Am I blowing this? Whatever.

This is a complete failure. And then when you go back and read these scriptures again, listen to the way that Alma talks about the atonement, listen to the way that Alma talks about Christ and about the processes of being redeemed, and you go, oh, yeah, that’s coming from somebody that went to hell and back. And then you go, oh, my goodness. I guess it’s really amazing that he went through that experience so that he would be able to testify as powerfully as he has in all of these chapters, completely unafraid and in really, like, beautiful, simple ways that, you know, we read Isaiah and the interpretations of Isaiah all the time. And I’m still just like, oh, man. Like, that’s getting lost in the weeds for me because it’s so beautiful, but it’s complicated and it’s so symbolic and whatever. Go read Alma, chapter five. And it’s like, it’s just.

It’s the meat and potatoes from start to finish of that. And so I, for 01:00 a.m. really happy that Alma had his rebellious youth. I, for 01:00 a.m. really happy that he.

I wouldn’t change it. And I can imagine that he would have agreed that he wouldn’t go back and change it if he could, because that’s what made him into the powerful testimony that he became. And that means something to me, you know, where I’m at in life and with what I’m trying to do in life.

I agree with the idea that all of these things that we’re going through currently can be used for our benefit if we are keeping our focus on God. And it gives hope to knuckleheads like myself that I am trying to be better.

And I also believe, like, okay, cool. Well, maybe I am being prepared for something that I can’t know until down the road as well. Hopefully, I can recognize that when it shows itself and be prepared to use even the times where I’m struggling. Hopefully, I can find a way to use those times to still further the work.

[01:02:15] Speaker A: Well, it’s a beautiful message. And it’s not just Alma on a personal level, but he pulls in the stories of Limhi’s people, who, on a national level, are going through what he’s going through on a personal level. Alma’s people that go through that same type of story. Right. And the experience of the Jews being carried away, captive into Babylon, being destroyed by Assyria, going through rebellious stages, is that not also the same story?

And Christ himself.

Not to say that Christ was ever rebellious, but is it not a story of a fall in the sense of his death and a rise with the resurrection? It’s his people following him, going through our own falls and our own rises that really we become. We come like him in that sense.

[01:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you. Yeah. Not rebellious necessarily, but Christ had to go to hell and back, too, you know, in the garden. Like, he. He had to feel the depths of everything as well.

[01:03:25] Speaker A: Right?

[01:03:25] Speaker B: Like, he. He had to overcome that as well, too, and.

And needed the strength to even make it through that, you know, he. And so I guess I do see a lot of the parallels, even in what Alma the younger had to go through yet. Like, yes, Christ wasn’t rebelling. But it’s like, how could Christ know everything? How could Christ know how to best comfort and support and redeem us without having to go to Helen back himself?

[01:04:00] Speaker A: That’s it. And how many times did he weep or groan within himself? And having to deal with some of the hard things that he had to deal with and how many trials, how many, you know.

[01:04:15] Speaker B: It’S intense. It’s good stuff. Good stuff. I love these chapters. This is definitely, this is definitely the part of the Book of Mormon that really kind of hits a stride for me. And I know as we’re getting closer and closer to the quote unquote war chapters, I’m like, man, there’s so much good stuff to learn from those chapters as well that I’m actually really looking forward to kind of getting into.

[01:04:38] Speaker A: So, and, you know, one of the most beautiful things just kind of, this was coming in and out of my mind as we were talking about, this is the lineage of Christ, right?

[01:04:51] Speaker B: What you look at, it’s not clean.

[01:04:55] Speaker A: It’s not clean. It’s not clean. When you got your Judah and Tamar and you got your rahab and you’ve got your Ruth and your boaz and all of these stories are beautiful stories of redemption, of getting it right after it wasn’t. And isn’t that the purpose? Isn’t that why Christ was chosen before the foundation of the world? And that almost is becoming a big theme for us as we’re going through the book of Mormon, is that Christ was plan a.

That our bumps and our bruises and our exchanges and our learning to wake up and be born again is plan a.

That there was a death, there was a fall, and that’s okay. Yep.

[01:05:45] Speaker B: Good stuff.

We really appreciate everybody listening.

It’s been fun to get back on track.

Hopefully we’ve gotten some of our technical issues worked out.

We do appreciate any chance to hear from you if you have any question or feedback. We got some great feedback after last week’s episode. You can get a hold of us at the email address. Hi. Hi. By the way. H I. Hi. Hi@weeklydeepdive.com. hi. Hi@weeklydeepdive.com. send us questions, comments, feedback we love. Yeah, listening or hearing from you and reading through your perspectives as well is way, probably way more, for me at least, than listening to ourselves talk. So please, please let us know what you’re thinking and feeling.

We really do appreciate you listening and sharing this with your friends. Jason, if that’s, if you don’t got anything else, that’s all we got for me?

You good?

[01:06:48] Speaker A: Good. All right.

[01:06:49] Speaker B: Until next week.

Transcript:

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly deep dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: You mean your studio?

[00:00:34] Speaker A: You know what? Not even remote virtual studio in presence studios.

[00:00:38] Speaker B: All right. We’re in studios. I like it.

[00:00:42] Speaker A: How you doing, Nate?

[00:00:43] Speaker B: Well, I can see you this week, so that’s also, that’s already a huge bonus.

[00:00:49] Speaker A: It makes a big difference. You can kind of like, see the body language and kind of know when someone wants to jump in or not and just kind of run with it. The quality of the show has already gone up. We haven’t even started.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yes. Thank you for your patience. We have had a, we’ve kind of had to figure this out a little bit over the past couple weeks, but I think we’ve, I think we’ve locked into something that’s going to work.

[00:01:10] Speaker A: I think so, yeah. Thanks, guys. We are dedicated to kicking the show out every week and keeping this content rolling. So thanks for paying, being a little patient with us.

I’m excited.

[00:01:20] Speaker B: Okay, let’s. I think. I think this, for this week, going to. Correct me if I’m wrong, Jason, we’re just going to hit a couple points from the week, from the episode we would have done last week, which we just didn’t have the connection to do highlights of that, and then basically just kind of the meat and potatoes of this week’s without too much fluff as well.

[00:01:41] Speaker A: Correct, correct. So that’s going to run us into Alma the younger’s conversion, the experience that he had with the angels. Really? Yeah. We’re merging two lessons into one for you guys. Try to get caught up on pace here. And then we’re also going to get into, I don’t know, I think it’s one of the most powerful chapters in the book of Mormon, Alma five, you know, and it’s a good one. Yeah.

Have you ever sung the song of Redeeming Love? I love the way he describes that. And the potent question of if so, can you now? Right? So we get some great opportunities to dive into some good scriptures. So that being said, I’m just going to dive right into it.

[00:02:23] Speaker B: Can’t wait.

[00:02:25] Speaker A: First off, we’ve just transitioned from an era in the book of Mormon of kings into an era of chief judges. And boy, correct me, did we talk about this last week? Maybe it’s an unfair question to ask you, Nate, remind me, it’s interesting to me how complementary the Book of Mormon is to the Bible.

[00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, we did talk a little bit about this.

[00:02:53] Speaker A: Perfect. When we go from kings to chief judges here, in contrast to in the Bible, them going from judges to kings, and the transition here in the Book of Mormon, this, to me, is just one more small, subtle detail. And what’s the best way to put this?

There are so many details that manifest the complexity, the intricacy of the story that would be hard to think of to include if you’re making up a book. And this is, again, one of those for me, when I look at the transition from a king, a central power, somebody who’s, who’s consolidated that power to where he’s giving that up and spreading that out to all these chief judges, it creates almost a power vacuum.

And when you see that power vacuum, you start to see all of these people rising up to feel that vacuum, to try to take on that role.

And that’s where we’re going to get one of the bigger apostates, right? This is a knee horse going to show up in here. And who’s the one that’s going to be battling Alma right off the bat when we get Amaleci. Amalekite.

[00:04:18] Speaker B: Amalekite, yeah.

[00:04:22] Speaker A: And his deal is he’s trying to get enough of the population to vote him in. And I think we’ve seen this all over the world, right, where you’ve got a democratic nation that chooses a dictator and votes him in. I mean, we’ve seen it all over these political powers here. He tried to get the vote and still lost the popular vote, and that wasn’t good enough. He takes his followers to try to overthrow and take it by force. And I don’t know, I’m rambling a little bit here. But more than anything, it’s kind of interesting to see these things taking place at a time when the king spot has been vacated and you see that swell in it, because now there is a vacuum. And people anxious to kind of try to fill that role and take that back on when he goes and fights.

And Alma kind of raises the army as his job as the chief judge to try to put this down and maintain the liberty of the people.

There’s a lot of specifics detailed in the geography of where they’re fighting, and they talk about the hills and the river Sidon and where the fighting takes place.

And it’s something that maybe we look at and like, why? Who cares? We don’t know the area we’re not familiar with the terrain. We’re not familiar with the hillside or the river. Why are these details being included? And I think that’s a valid question. They’re engraving these details in plates of gold.

Mormons not got a ton of time. Moroni doesn’t have a ton of time. And the effort that they’re taking to try to preserve these records is time consuming.

It takes space. That’s valuable. Why is it that they’re taking the time to record these? And from a military commander’s perspective, geography makes a big difference in warfare. You go look at the battle of Thermopylae, you have 300 greek soldiers holding their own against thousands of Persians. And why are they able to do that? It’s because there’s a narrow neck of land they have to defend that funnels the enemy in. That gives them an advantage to where a couple hundred can stand versus thousands. So geography plays a big role in warfare. When we get to the description of this battle, and Alma’s going to be full of battles, right? And we’re going to hear about Mormon, Moroni, and all sorts of battles that they play or that they have throughout this section of scriptures.

Geography makes a difference.

Mormon gets that, and he’s including those details to help us understand, or at least from his perspective, maybe he’s not even doing it to help us, but from his perspective, he can see this, and it’s his eyes. It’s his vision. I think these are details that a Mormon would include in a writing that a young farm boy, Joseph Smith, wouldn’t necessarily think of to try to, because it’s not overt. It’s not like he’s sitting there and saying, let me tell you why this is so important. Let me tell you how that he’s not describing it out. These are just natural things that come up in his mind because he’s trained to think that way.

And so when you start looking at the casualty count, and Alma’s side has fewer casualties than amalekai side, Alma’s playing the terrain to his advantage with where they place the river, with how they fight, with how the hillside. And so these are details in the description of the battle that I find valuable, that are very subtle in the text, for what it’s worth.

[00:07:56] Speaker B: Awesome.

[00:07:58] Speaker A: All right, let’s go on to the next little detail.

We include this army as they’re going to war, and they flee away from the people of Alma.

They end up joining with the Lamanites, and then they go back to war with the Lamanites.

To destroy the Nephites and try to use the, you know, the.

What’s the saying? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

So they team up with the Lamanites and try to start destroying the Nephites. The Nephites are wise enough to send out scouts to watch the movement of the enemy camp to see where they’re going to go so they’re not caught by surprise. They see him team up with the Nephites, and they see him come, or the Lamanite, excuse me, and they see them going in and starting to destroy the lands and all the people, the people fleeing, trying to get to Sarahamlet, and they have to turn around and try to route them and again, fight in the terrain to where they’re going to try to get an advantage and drive these Lamanites out, even though they’re significantly outnumbered when they do this.

He points out that the Nephites marked their face with red paint, and by doing that, they fulfilled the prophecy, talking about how the lord had set a mark on the people. And when they joined the Lamanites, them marking themselves and joining a marked people and whatever it means to be marked, just selected different. Highlighting themselves ended up kind of fulfilling and complying with what the scripture said, even though they were fighting the scriptures.

And I like that detail. I think it’s worth pointing it out. It feels like every time Satan or the opposers that are trying to tear down the church of God or the will of God usually end up fulfilling or bringing it about.

We see this with Satan and Adam and Eve in the garden, trying to destroy and frustrate the Lord’s work, and yet this was a critical movement in the progress of the Lord’s work. We see this in Christ and the crucifixion, the atonement, trying to frustrate the plan, trying to get them to kill the savior, and yet that’s what was needed in order to carry out the Lord’s plan. There is no such thing as frustrating it. And here these people are marking themselves to spite the Lord, and yet in so doing, they’re doing exactly what the Lord said would happen, and they’re bringing it about. And one powerful parallel I see in that is Joseph Smith in modern days, restoring the church, bringing the gospel back to earth. And here he’s translated the Book of Mormon. He’s put the Book of Mormon out there, and at the end of his life, he’s killed by a mob who’s trying really hard to tear down the church, to tear down the prophet, to destroy what the prophet has started.

And how do they do it? If you go back and you read the description of the mob, when they storm the carthage jail, they’re going in with gunpowder and oil all over their faces to try to hide their identity. They have marked themselves.

And thus, and so when we read the scriptures, and thus they fulfill the word of the Lord without even knowing it. Yet the same thing happens, like they are acting out the Book of Mormon, setting a mark on themselves to go in through and try to frustrate and destroy the Lord’s work. Yet their very action, is it not also testifying to the same pattern, the same thing that we see in the book of Mormon? It’s almost like their actions to destroy the Lord’s work. For me, at least, add one more testimony to the veracity of the Lord’s work and the way that the Lord can use those actions to validate what he said and to bring about his plan.

Is that making any sense?

[00:12:04] Speaker B: It’s fantastic insight. It. I guess I’m trying to think of this in kind of bigger picture contexts today. I got to teach a lesson on Elder Gong’s conference, talk about how God consecrates all things for our good, for those that follow him. Right. And so, I mean, the whole point of the discussion was us, you know, trying to think through, you know, so many of the hardest things that we’ve ever had to deal with. And then you look back and you go, oh, all of these things were able to be consecrated for the overall good of either our lives or lives of people around us, even the things maybe we can’t put like a fine point on part of the discussion today.

You know, we were talking about, you know, some tragedy that happened with somebody, you know, in our, in our group. And it was, it was uplifting to hear other people in the group find meaning or find, you know, a bigger positive purpose, even hearing kind of some of the tragic stories of others in the room. So I guess this is just another thing that kind of adds to something that’s been not only on my mind, but in discussion, which is even these terrible things that you look at, if you try to have some sort of a more eternal or big picture perspective on them, you see how all of these things can be consecrated for good and, and even subtle details like this. I think it’s incredible, and it absolutely is important to see and highlight these deeper connections that kind of run throughout all of the scriptures.

[00:14:07] Speaker A: And I know personally in my life, there have been moments I wish I could create a time machine and go back and change what I was going to do or do things different or not mess up. Right? And I think we. I think we tend to be a little bit hard on ourselves.

We have a goal to be better, we have a goal to be perfect. But sometimes we get stuck in ruts, we get stuck in traps, we look at it and we think less of ourselves.

And looking at this, I think we can find peace and consolation in knowing that, honestly, this is the plan.

Why was it so relevant that Christ was chosen before the foundation of the world and the whole purpose of him being chosen was so that we could have moments like this.

It’s not a mistake, it’s not a deviance from the plan. It’s not the plan being thrown away. It’s the reason there’s the plan, it’s the whole purpose. It is the plan.

And maybe instead of being so hard on ourselves or so hard on others.

[00:15:11] Speaker B: That’S what I was saying for what.

[00:15:13] Speaker A: We see in them.

[00:15:15] Speaker B: One of the. You bring up a great .1 of the questions that I had that I’ve asked myself because part of our discussion was talking about, you know, a pretty traumatic near death injury I had when I was ten, where again, you know, you and I have probably talked about it and I may have mentioned it a little bit, you know, on the recordings. But when I say near death, I mean like.

Like a threat of life type of moment. When I was saved and rescued by the amazing people up at primary children’s hospital after a couple different hospitals between Logan and Salt Lake did their best to try to neglectfully, let’s say, not kill me, but definitely not looking out for my. For my health, for my best interest.

[00:16:09] Speaker A: Oh, no.

[00:16:10] Speaker B: Anyways, we don’t need to go into all of that. But the question that I’ve asked myself and the question I even had for some of those in our class today were now, knowing what you’ve learned from these traumatic experiences and trials in your life, if you could go back and change it, would you? But if you do, you have to, one, lose all of the perspective that you’ve gained positively from it, and two, you have to deal with the unknown consequences or things that will arise because of that deviation in your life’s path. And for me, I’m like, well, I survived, I’m alive. I don’t really know. A lot of intensely deep lessons I learned from my personal injury and experience and near death experience, but part of the lesson was me reaching out to my parents and for the first time really asking them. Can you tell me what you learned from that as the parents of this child? And the, the thoughts and the feedback that I got back from them was, was so profound and incredibly emotional. And it opened my eyes to the idea that we get so hyper focused on these things through our eyeballs right through first person, that I think it’s important to also acknowledge that sometimes maybe these things that happen to us aren’t about us, man, and even what we’re reading about in the scriptures right now. Right. You could. You could very well say so many of the tragic things that are happening to these characters in these stories or early church prophets, right?

It’s not without a possibility that maybe in their lifetime they didn’t get that question answered of why is this happening to me or why is this happening to my people?

Yet you and I are talking about this a thousand years later, right? Hundreds of hundreds of years later going, wow, this is profound and it’s life changing. And it may be the thing that saves generations worth of souls.

So maybe it’s not even, I think, so many times in life, and I know this is kind of sidetracked probably from where you’re wanting to go, but I still think it’s an important discussion, which is so many things with what we’ve been conditioned to in life now and the conveniences of modern life, which is, I want it now. It’s the Veruca salt, dude.

I want the answers now.

I want to understand why or else I reject it. I want things done on my timeline, right? And so much of what I learned in preparing this lesson and reaching out to my parents and listening to some of the other stories of people in our group today in class, so much of what I took out of this is you have for me, I have to stop thinking about this as just me and go, as long as I’m doing my best to be a good person.

And in the scriptures, something popped up that I was going to send you, that it said to remember our covenants, things will be blessed for our good when we follow Christ and remember our covenants. It’s an interesting phrasing, right? The way that that’s worded, especially with what you and I have been talking about, obsessive kind of going down.

[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:20:01] Speaker B: For the past couple years.

And that I feel like I need to be more okay with trusting. Even if I don’t get the reasons why in this life, I can still trust that I’m doing what I can.

I’m doing my best to remember my covenants. I’m doing my best to be a good person and hopefully a good example.

And I can trust that if the answers don’t come for me, there was still a purpose and God will still consecrate my trials.

[00:20:41] Speaker A: It’s kind of turning into a theme, too. As we look at the book of Mormon, even with the last couple chapters, you know how it is. Sometimes we discover a theme or something that is talking about is a new Testament, right? And as we start going into the next section and the next section, it just keeps finding a way to work its way into the text, where a lot of the texts build on that same idea. And I feel like that’s what’s happening here, because we were talking about this with Amulon ruling over Noah and how wicked that was, you know, death penalty for praying and how wicked he was and an opportunity to teach. The Lamanites put in a position of power, position of authority, where he can make a difference. And he refuses to teach them anything about God, the scriptures, or the words of Abinadi. Instead, he’s teaching them how to take advantage of each other, but he’s teaching them their writing system, the words of their. The language of their fathers, to be able to read the records. And if he wasn’t there to teach them the language of their fathers, they wouldn’t even be able to read the records when they’re made available to them. I don’t know that the power of the scripture would have the same effect or impact on them without that knowledge, without that understanding. And so you can see how such a bad thing. And you might ask if you’re part of Alma’s crew, like, wait a second. We repented. We. We are listening to the words of Ben and I, trying to avoid all of these bad things that are happening to. To Limhi’s people in there with the Lamanites coming in and destroying them. We escaped. We got out. How come we’re the ones being punished? How come we’ve got the priests of Noah ruling over us? Why are they being exalted? They were the ones that were pushing the wickedness in the first place. And they’re the rulers. They’re the kings.

This isn’t fair. God’s not fair.

And why is it that we are being subjected and punished in the short run? It’s just kind of a short sighted vision. You don’t understand. You don’t see how things are going to play out and how it’s going to have an impact and how that’s going to be the tool that the Lord’s going to use to later send Ammon in to change the perspective of the people and to convert thousands to the gospel.

And it’s, oh, go ahead.

[00:23:00] Speaker B: I think it’s good perspective. We’ve mentioned this before, but even extrapolated out even more, you’ve brought this up. It’s like the Nephites were the losers at the end of the day, you know what I mean? Like they were the ones that lost.

And you’ve talked about this, how history is usually almost always kept and pushed forward by the victors.

And the point that we kind of landed on was, well, but whose records are still being read, whose people are still being studied?

Who did God still find a way to give a longer life, right if through their words and through the teachings. And so it still comes back to, I know that this is a super sidetrack and we may edit this out later, but when I was in Oakland, we got invited to the prayer breakfast. I’ve talked about this a few times because it was one of my favorite things that’s ever happened. But we got invited to the multi religion prayer breakfast that they would do where they invite the missionaries from our church. But then, you know, teachers and pastors and priests from all different kinds of different religions. And some are invited to pray. We were invited to pray. And that was sweet. Somebody invited to give a talk. But one of the first talk was it started out and we were at the table like almost like full on applauding because the person’s like, you know, in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are with God and we’re like, okay, we’re good so far. Yeah, we’re in it. And it’s like, did you know that we’re all meant to become gods? And we literally are like looking around going like, yes, yes, we do believe this. This is great. And then the guy, you know, and he goes, look in the scriptures, and he starts quoting all the scriptures like children of God and heirs to the throne and the whole thing. And we’re like, I’m back there, like, hallelujah, brother. Like, I’m doing the whole thing right? And there was definitely a lot of puzzled people in this place, but not us. I was like, bro, the Mormons are back here. We’re broing down with you, dude. Keep going. And then he’s like, you know, and then Satan came in and he’s tempting Eve and this, this whole thing. And he’s promising, he’s promising a way to become a God. And this is. And we’re seriously, back there going, what alternate reality are we living in right now that, you know, I’m assuming that this baptist preacher is going, and then he’s like, and then God’s plan got ruined. And then we were like, dang it.

We were like, we were this close. And then he’s like, and then Jesus tried to come back again and get it back on track, but we made him fail again. And we were like, oh, dang it, we were so close. We were right there. We wanted to get up and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, hold on. No, this was all part of the plan. We didn’t, you know, we didn’t, we didn’t disrupt the plan. Like, this was baked into the plan. But anyways, it ended up being kind of a funny story. But it did get me thinking, like, oh, I guess I can see if, with. If incorrect perspective, how you could come away with that, right? That God wanted this to happen and Adam and Eve blew it and didn’t make it happen. Or Jesus Christ came back and tried to save all of the world, but we killed him and we thwarted his plan again. And it’s like, oh, man. With the wrong perspective. We’re both looking at these stories, you know, these situations completely different, where we’re looking at like, no, God’s plan succeeded because of this.

[00:26:54] Speaker A: I mean, that’s the purpose of the plan.

[00:26:56] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:26:57] Speaker A: And the scriptures make it so. How many times does it say, before the foundation of the world? Before the foundation of the world? Like, this was Christ was chosen before the foundation of the world. This is not an afterthought. And, I mean, just to kind of wrap this up and take it right back where we began, I think we need to give ourselves that same flexibility. Not that we should be using that as an excuse to sin, but we should be using that as an understanding that God can make it work. In fact, it’s not frustrating. The plan. I’m not ruined because I did it. It’s not like I was doing so good, and then I threw it all away and I, and I rejected it and God, and it’s now gone and it’s garbage, and I’ve given up. I mean, that it, that is the plan. And how can I be more patient with myself and like you, you know, kind of hinted at, how can I be more patient with others, knowing that this is important for their development, for their experience, for their improvement as much as it is for mine?

[00:27:57] Speaker B: It’s one of the things that, again, when I ask my parents of what they learned from my near death experience, both one of, I think both of their number ones were be living a life worthy to give a priesthood blessing at a moment’s notice and the power of the priesthood. And I’m like, I’m completely. And that is one of the things that I feel like I have always kind of learned from that, even myself. But both mentioned showing more kindness and forgiveness to others, including, including the doctors that just got it wrong that night and would have killed me had my parents listened to them. But luckily, we’re both feeling, I mean, a direct connection with the spirit at the time. And both went, nope, that doesn’t sound right. And we’re not. That’s not what we’re doing. What’s our other options?

And, you know, it would be very easy for, it would be very easy for my parents to still hold grudges against, you know, these professionals that their job is to protect a ten year old child who clearly has something going on and not kind of being distracted or pushing it off. But, you know, something my mom brought up was something that she learned was also just be more kind and patient with people because you don’t know what they’ve had to go through to get to this point. You don’t know their experiences up till this point. And it doesn’t hurt us to show grace and to show kindness.

And it’s. And it’s amazing that that, again, like, that is something that I need to learn to be better about, I feel like.

And that that’s something that was learned from a tragic experience of mine. I’m like, oh, this is good to, this is good for me to hear this feedback. So, anyways, I just wanted to add that final thought in.

[00:29:56] Speaker A: Yeah, and, you know, there’s so many times that something happens in life that we, we wonder why, you know, child gets run over a car. Why didn’t God prevent that? Why didn’t God tell me to move him? Or why didn’t God, like, God saves people all the time? How come he didn’t save my son? Or how come he didn’t save me? Or how come. How come he allowed that to happen? Or how come. How come he didn’t send an angel to come knock on my door at the right time to keep me from doing something that I regret?

And maybe that’s not the right question.

Maybe the right question is, how can this save me or somebody.

Or somebody else? And it’s hard because. Yeah, I don’t know that it’s something you necessarily want to hear when you’re going through something like that.

[00:30:44] Speaker B: And I also don’t think it’s our job to tell people that when they’re going through it.

[00:30:48] Speaker A: No, that’s not.

[00:30:49] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Like, I agree with you. I’m only adding that in because sometimes from the third party, I feel like we do a very good job of, like, armchair quarterbacking other people’s lives. But I think that this is more, and I think that what you’re saying is that this is so much more.

Can we develop enough faith and maturity and spiritual maturity to be able to, on our own, go, what can I do so that the Lord can consecrate this trial for my good or for the good of somebody else?

[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And if I could just reframe the perspective on this, rather than it being, why? Why is this happening? Rather? This is an answer to another question. This is why we have a savior. This is why we needed Jesus before the foundation of the world, so that somebody could step in and consecrate these things for our good, so that somebody could restore this and make this right, whether it’s today, over time, or how it works, the fact that there is a resurrection, the fact that we can be put together, the fact that we could receive a body because we could not come here and receive a body were it not for a savior willing to come here and make this happen. And these are the whys to why we have a Christ, why God’s plan was so important.

And it’s not. We keep saying this. It’s not plan b. This is plan. This is God’s plan. And it hasn’t been frustrated, even in the small details and the ways that we’ve tried to throw this away.

That’s why we need it. That’s why it works. And let’s just be patient with ourselves and patient with others and use these to help us understand and testify to that.

[00:32:40] Speaker B: Great. Let’s keep going.

[00:32:42] Speaker A: All right, going. You know, I almost want to take a little bit of a tangent to talk about.

I guess it’s not a tangent because it’s part of the scriptures here. But when we knee whore is introduced and, and his, his teaching, I think, is dangerous enough that we should kind of touch on this a little bit.

And. And let’s see.

This is going to be alma, chapter one. This is almost the opposite extreme, verse two. And it came to pass in the first year of the reign of Alma. In the judgment seat, there was a man brought before him to be judged, and a man who was large and was noted for his much strength. And it is kind of interesting.

They do point out guys that are particularly large and strong in the book of Mormon, that Nephi, having been large, and there’s somewhat of a size obsession.

[00:33:39] Speaker B: I mean, dude, according to, according to our boy Freeberg, one of my favorite artists of all time, they’re all Charlton Heston clones that are like bodybuilding muscle men.

[00:33:52] Speaker A: It keeps popping up.

But to go, the thing is, they.

[00:33:56] Speaker B: Dude, I bet you dudes back then were in a lot better shape than we are. That’s.

[00:34:00] Speaker A: Oh, I’m sure they were.

[00:34:01] Speaker B: All right.

[00:34:04] Speaker A: So this, this, this large guy, much strength, verse three. And he had gone about among the people and preached to them, which he termed to be the word of God. And this is interesting. What is his version of the word of God? Bearing down against the church, declaring unto the people that every priest and teacher ought not to be popular, or, excuse me, ought to become popular, and they ought not to labor with their hands, but they ought to be supported by the people.

Now, just out of the gate going in and kind of bearing down on the church, I look at that, and sometimes the church gets steeped in tradition. Sometimes the church gets kind of steeped, and this is the way things do without really questioning much of why it is. And so when someone’s coming in and saying, wait, wait, wait.

Maybe there’s something more to this, or maybe we need to not just, isn’t this what Christ did was bear down on the church and bear down on the. Why are we doing things? I don’t know that I’m necessarily looking at this and seeing it can be wicked, but it can also be. Isn’t it good to question sometimes and to, I don’t know, inherently I don’t.

Let’s just keep going down this, that they are not to labor with their hands, but that they might be supported by the people. I mean, this is direct opposition to Mosiah, who even as king, worked and labored to support himself.

[00:35:27] Speaker B: Benjamin, too.

[00:35:29] Speaker A: And Benjamin.

But can you not see the validity of what he’s saying? If I’m taking the time to try to research, to put this together and have answers for you and present it to you, what’s my time worth? Shouldn’t I be compensated for that? Why? Why am I not being compensated?

[00:35:53] Speaker B: Can I jump in real quick?

This is, and this is why we’ve started our Gofundme for the weekly deep dive because of.

You can donate to hi at week.

Isn’t that where you’re going with this?

[00:36:12] Speaker A: No.

[00:36:13] Speaker B: Oh, dang it.

[00:36:16] Speaker A: But but I mean I look at gay. Let’s, let’s take his argument today.

[00:36:21] Speaker B: All right. I’m. Dude, you know I love going down the pre priestcraft conversation. You know. You know I’m up for it.

[00:36:29] Speaker A: Okay. But at the same time. Now hear me.

[00:36:31] Speaker B: I know. I know. That’s what I’m saying. I’m up for it.

[00:36:35] Speaker A: President Nielsen.

[00:36:36] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:36:37] Speaker A: Twelve apostles.

[00:36:37] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:36:39] Speaker A: Have dedicated their lives.

[00:36:41] Speaker B: I agree with this so far.

[00:36:43] Speaker A: And they’ve had to step away from their professions and focus their time full time to teach the gospel, to preach, to organize, to administer to set up to put together to do all of these things.

And is it fair that they should do that at the expense of their families, at the expense of their livings, at their expense of. I mean should we not support them in that effort?

[00:37:12] Speaker B: Can I.

[00:37:13] Speaker A: It’s a full time job.

[00:37:14] Speaker B: Well yes. Can I throw this out there? I mean isn’t part of what they do is basically put all of their, their savings up to that point and they’re. You know what I mean? Like they’ve all had professional careers up to this point and again I don’t know logistically how this works out. It might be worth looking at but I’m under the impression that they very much dedicate what they have built financially up till this point.

And I mean I don’t know if they necessarily. Again I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is, if there is some sort of consecration of their wealth and various things to support each other. I know. Again, I know. Or wherever that’s donated because again I do know that they get.

I do know that they get you know like their, their needs and various bills and things taken care of once they become you know a full time apostle. But they’re not, they’re not like building up some four hundred one k. I can only assume.

[00:38:31] Speaker A: Well I mean that’s a good point. I think they’re getting a stipend. I think they’re being compensated but I don’t think they’re being compensated to the tune of millions of dollars. I don’t think it’s.

[00:38:45] Speaker B: I mean when we go on, when we. When I went on a mission my parents very much paid you know a monthly you know a monthly amount and to the church and my needs were taken care of plus a little bit of money each month to eat you know and make sure my bike was repaired. I definitely was not making, I definitely was not making money from the little amount that got put into my bank account each month. So I guess maybe that’s, it’s the, it’s the question of what is it? Where do you draw the line between me starting a mega church and making millions and millions of dollars doing preaching full time versus me having my bills taken care of while I’m out preaching the gospel full time and relying on members to be fed and, you know, basically just trying to make sure that I’m appropriately allocating my bike repair money each month.

I mean, is that really what the question comes down to?

Is that the difference between, is that the difference between, you know, priestcraft and having your needs met?

[00:40:00] Speaker A: Well, let me ask you, what’s, what’s fair compensation?

[00:40:03] Speaker B: That’s what I mean.

[00:40:03] Speaker A: This is for, for a CEO. Let’s, let’s put it in this perspective. A CEO of an organization with 12 million members, that’s global, that has to administer the affairs. I mean, what’s the average salary for a CEO of a massive enterprise of this size with this wealth behind it?

[00:40:27] Speaker B: I understand that, but that’s the dangerous question that in a lot of times, I think, gets a lot of people in trouble when it comes to them trying to decide what is fair for them to have versus what’s fair for other people to have. And the answer to that question is, I mean, even when people say like, oh, you know, we use the term like they need to have a livable wage, it’s just like, well, that number changes depending upon wherever you live in the world, right? And there’s a lot of political philosophies that I abhor that the whole premise is, you know, let somebody else decide what it is you actually need. And as soon as your needs are met, then everything else needs to go to the greater good. But who’s the one that gets to judge what your actual needs are? I think it’s just a dangerous game to try to let that happen. So there’s, this is why I’m saying this. I’m always, I’m always down to have this conversation. I’m not afraid to have this conversation, I guess, is all I’m saying. Because at the end of the day, there is still a lot of, if you’re leaving this up to simply a group of people not being inspired to figure out what is fair, good luck. Right. Because there’s going to be a lot of difference opinions. The whole reason I think that this works out correctly, the way that the church does it, is because we believe that it’s inspired. We believe that it is being done in a way that’s not to try to have people chasing leadership callings in this church to try to make money and get rich because a lot of these professionals, when they were at least the apostles, were making a significant amount of money. If you realize, you know, heart surgeons and lawyers and various things like they were putting, they were, I’m sure it.

[00:42:35] Speaker A: Was a pay cut.

[00:42:36] Speaker B: Oh, that’s a well said, I guess a pay cut is. Yes, one way of putting it.

I mean, again, dude, I don’t know. For me, this all always comes back to, is like, what’s your goal? Where’s your heart at? If you’re trying to, if you’re, if you, if we are setting up leadership callings in this church to have them be profitable money making lucrative positions. Yes. That’s, it’s very easy for me to see how corruption immediately becomes a factor.

If you look at the bare minimum needs that are being paid for for the leaders of this church, I think that it would be pretty hard to argue that they’re out making money doing this.

[00:43:36] Speaker A: Well, and maybe, and maybe there’s a key in here, right when he says, and they ought not to labor with their hands, but that they ought to be supported by the people. And it almost sounds like he’s saying supported without even putting in the labor for it. And I don’t know.

You look at the amount of labor that’s performed by the leadership in the church.

[00:43:57] Speaker B: They, I mean, they travel nonstop.

[00:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Their labors, I mean, they’re working into ages where most people retire.

They’re probably putting in as much, if not more work than what they did when they were active. It’s incredible the amount of work that they’re putting into to what they’re doing. But I mean, it’s a, it’s an interesting question. And so far, when we start looking at the accusations, I guess the case that the book of Mormon is building against Nehor right now, I’m looking at it and saying, okay, we’re talking about new blood versus old blood. Isn’t there always problems with the younger generation looking at how things, and questioning the way things were done by the older generation? And at the same time, isn’t that healthy? Isn’t, I mean, look at how we’ve changed in some of our parenting styles and in some ways for the better and some ways for the worst, maybe. And, and maybe we should have a little bit of the old school into what we’re doing now. But, but isn’t there a healthy amount of pushback that sometimes that we give and is it not reasonable to expect that if you’re sacrificing so much of your time that there should be some sense of compensation or else that couldn’t even take place, how could we be supported if we weren’t, right? I mean, he, his arguments, I don’t see a problem with it up to this point. And, and this is where it even gets scarier for me if we go to verse four. And he also testified unto the people that all mankind should be saved at the last day. And that they might add, that they need not fear nor tremble, but that they might rejoice and lift up their hand, their heads and rejoice. For the Lord had created all men and also redeemed all mankind and all men. And in the end all men should have eternal life.

And, and I look at that and I think, well, wait a second, to a certain degree, don’t we also teach this as well? Do we not teach that all men will be resurrected?

Do we not teach, when we talk about the celestial, the terrestrial, the telestial kingdom, that even the lowest of the kingdoms is such a, it’s a kingdom of glory, it’s heaven. Are we not also teaching that all people to some degree are going to be experiencing heaven and are going to be saved because of the atonement of Jesus Christ?

I think a lot of times we are. And instead of teaching this hell fire and damnation and this fear and this trembling, we’re trying to focus on a gospel of hope centered on Christ, centered on what he did. There is salvation. Let’s not be so critical on people, because the Lord’s going to find a way to save all men, that it’s all part of the plan. Do we not find ourselves also teaching the same things that Nehor taught some of them?

[00:46:37] Speaker B: I mean, this is not shocking to me ever. When we read these things, what do we believe? Satan promised from the very beginning to supply the world with ample amounts of philosophies of men mingled with scripture. I mean, that’s the whole purpose of all of these things, because I am one that doesn’t believe that. The way that the evil that tries to creep into our lives, I don’t think it ever presents itself as an all out rebellion to God. I don’t think that that’s the way that the adversary approaches us, especially those that are trying to live a spiritual life or a gospel focused life, not even just our religion. But let’s just say people that are trying to live good lives and be genuinely good people, evil doesn’t try to creep into their lives by telling them, hey, give up on all of those things that you believe in and do and just do the exact opposite. That would be silly because it would be able to be the most obvious thing in the entire world that we could say, no, that’s not what we’re doing. That’s why it’s so devious is because I truly do believe that where we get into a lot of trouble within religion, within our communities, our gospel communities, our wards, our whatever, is that Satan knows that he can try to take advantage of our goodness and of our want to do good, and that’s his in. And then he can from there try to do what he can just tweak it 10% or to convince us that we our version of things and not God’s version. Look, we’re still trying to do the right thing, but we’re going to do it our way instead of God’s way. And I think that that’s always the subtle tweak. So when we read these scriptures, I’m like, yeah, dude, this is literally par for the course, man. Like, this is literally the script that we see from the very beginning.

[00:48:40] Speaker A: I might even refer to it as spiritual judo. You know, the idea that if someone’s going to hit you, that you’re not going to want to run into it or try to stop it. Right?

What was Bruce Lee saying? You got to be like the water, right? You’ve got to flow with it.

If somebody’s coming at you, instead of trying to stop them, you use their momentum, you use their energy and you pull them. I mean, you use it and just divert it enough to where it’s not going to hit you, but you use that to push them even further or use that against them. Like you say, it’s not thou shalt not kill. So now I need to try to teach you and tempt you and get you to go do the exact opposite and start killing people. No, it’s is, how can I take what you’re already doing and use that momentum to try to propel you slightly, a little bit further?

[00:49:31] Speaker B: That’s right. Slightly off course.

[00:49:34] Speaker A: That’s it. And I think that’s where we need to be careful.

When I look at Nehors teachings, he is the bad guy. Right? But how do we know he’s a bad guy? It’s not necessarily that he’s trying to get support for the teachers to use their time to teach. It’s not necessarily that he’s teaching that people are.

[00:49:52] Speaker B: That’s his.

I know, but that’s the easy in.

That’s the easy in, which is, isn’t it a good thing if we’re supporting these people instead of having them to do their thing?

Right? Like, that’s how it always, it seems like that. That’s how it always works. It’s why the word love itself is always such a dangerous word to try to base where you’re at spiritually off of, because love means so many different things to so many different people. Like that word. That word can truly be used for the best of humanity and the most manipulative and at times abusive ways. And so this, again, it’s why these case studies in the scriptures, I think, are so profound, because I can just, I literally can picture him going like, well, isn’t it a good thing if we make it easier for these good people to be preaching all, it’s like, that’s his in. And then everybody go like, yeah, we can generally agree on that. Hey, and everybody’s going to be saved. Isn’t that great? Okay, cool. Yeah, that sounds good. I can generally agree on that. And then fill in the blank and.

[00:51:02] Speaker A: You can see what’s motivating him when it gets to the point where it comes to blows and it comes to blows where he’s willing to kill over his philosophy. Right. And I think that’s. I think that becomes the true revealer of what’s driving this or who’s behind it or what spirit you’re listening to. When. When the spirit. I mean, and isn’t that the irony of it? I’m here to teach. I mean, you use the word love, Nate, and I think love is the perfect word to use in this case. I’m here to teach that God loves us and that he’s going to save all of us and that. That we are all going to be saved. We should love each other. Isn’t that a message of love? And you don’t agree with me, and so I’m going to kill you over it. What happened to the whole message of love and the whole message of I’m willing to, you know, we’re going to be saved and you’re going to be saved that you’re willing to sit there and smite on somebody? And it’s interesting when they. This is something that also pops up a few. A few times in the Book of Mormon. That just seems weird from, from, from my perspective, being removed from this time period. Verse nine of chapter one of Alma. Now, because Gideon withstood him with the words of God, he was wroth with Gideon and drew his sword and began to smite him. Now, Gideon being stricken with many years, therefore, he was not able to withstand his blows, plural. Therefore he was slain by the sword. It’s interesting to me, like, in my mind, with all the movies that we grow up with and see, like, you stab someone with the sword and that’s, like, the end of it, right? It’s just like a one and done, but in the Book of Mormon, well, no, there’s a lot of hacking and.

[00:52:42] Speaker B: Smiting in real life, by the way. I mean, that’s. That’s the thing, right? In the movies, I love black and white movies, and they would never even show blood, right? In the old black and white movies, so you never really know. It’s like, wait, did that person actually get shot, or are they dying? Or are they not supposed to be dying? It’s like, it’s so confusing, right? Because in the movies, somebody gets shot in, like, the leg and they’re dead, or they even. Or even they, like, get shot in the stomach and then they’re just dead. I’m like, well, that’s. That’s literally not how it is. Like, you’re going to just be listening video games, right? Totally. You’re going to be. You’re going to be listening to that person dying over an amount of time, and it’s going to be terrifying, and it’s going to be gruesome. Like, that’s. That’s reality. And by the way, with a sword, especially, like, yeah, dude, you are going to have to hack at somebody, and it’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to be traumatic, and it’s not going to be instantaneous. That’s real life. Like, I’m just saying the way that it just got described in the book is actually physically how that happens.

It’s not like one. It’s not like one shot with the sword, and they’re like, oh, that’s it.

[00:53:51] Speaker A: Well, and I think that really reveals the character of Nihor. Right? He’s sitting here trying to get, what is his motive? I mean, Nate, you said this.

It boils down to, what is your motivation? Why are you doing it? What is your why? And what is the why of a guy who’s willing to smite on an older man who can’t protect himself over and over and over again until he dies simply for having an old mindset that you don’t agree with? I mean, this not a great guy.

[00:54:22] Speaker B: He’s a bad dude.

Even if he had a couple good things to say.

[00:54:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, there’s a lot of fun things in this, and they talk about, you know, there’s not a law to punish somebody based on what they believe, but there is a law based on if you lie or if you steal or if you whatever, then you’re held accountable for it. And it’s interesting to see how people try to work around this, and, well, I believe, and so therefore, I can’t be punished for that. But I don’t know.

This part of the book of Mormon is kind of fun for me to read. And I like how they phrase some of these things, and they describe this time period and the intricacy of trying to deal with a new government and where the church fits in with that government, where it’s not just your king is also your prophet and it’s the spiritual guidance. But there’s this separation of state almost that you start to see between the religious versus the political kingdom, that it’s just kind of fun to see them wrestle with this and grapple with this as they go.

By the way, as we’re rolling into Alma five and as we get. I mean, we talked about this a little bit earlier with Amaleki breaking off, joining with the Lamanites, and the Lamanites coming in and Alma having to go to war. Alma gets wounded in the battle and has to sit the next one out, but he ends up being victorious.

There’s a lot of things to unpack with this. The first one that I wanted to kind of go with is think about the timeline of this connected with Ammon.

What’s going on? Ammon, at this exact moment is teaching. Lamoni is down living with the Lamanites while the Lamanites are out there attacking the Nephites.

And think about that for a second.

When Lamoni goes to meet with his father and his father can’t stand the knee fights, just realize Lamoni’s father is coming off of a smashing defeat.

Having dealt with Alma and his people and having to retreat and losing thousands of his people in the wilderness from. From battles and wild beasts that are kind of tearing them apart, that feud is really real and live and going on. It’s kind of interesting when you start to look at these stories and realize they’re happening concurrently and where they fit in with each other.

The other thing that I wanted to point out, Alma becomes, at least in Mormon’s eyes, and how he’s describing this kind of a strategic general that’s well prepared, the way he sends his scouts out to observe the movements, the way he uses the terrain to his vantage, the way he goes into battle with the leader of the other people to try to end this sooner, the way he rallies the people.

Mormon sees him, and he’s impressed with him. And I think Mormon has a lot of military training and experience. I don’t see that Alma does.

Alma comes from. From his father being the high priest. Right. And he’s going to become the high priest. He’s got an ecclesiastical background. He was kind of an apostate trying to tear down the church. But I don’t see anything in here that I don’t know. Was everybody a tactical genius? Was everybody well versed in the art of war? Or maybe more likely, Alma’s connection to the Lord allowed him to be inspired on how to position his people, on, on what would be important to do as he starts thinking these through, and how do I survive and what do I do? Lord, help me with the situation. And the Lord’s inspiring him to send scouts out or spies out, or inspiring him to make the most of the battles. When we talk about how the Lord delivers the Nephites and they’re winning ten to one, or they’re able to outpower the Lamanites, I think a lot of the reason is grounded scientifically in some of the strategies that they’re doing and how they’re using terrain, some of the situations in the environment, but also the reason they’re able to use that terrain like they are the reason they are sending out the scouts, the reason they are preparing and arming their people, is because you have a prophet in tune with the revelation of the Lord to feel inspired to make those small changes, to employ those different methods, if that makes sense.

[00:59:04] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:59:06] Speaker A: And I think the Nephites really, starting with Alma, maybe even going back with Benjamin Mosiah a little bit, I think you start to see a transition from Mosiah and Benjamin when they’re supporting themselves and everybody has to support themselves and everyone has to fight. This is how it was in ancient Israel. Everybody had to plant the seeds to put in the crops. Everybody had to go to war. But you didn’t have a standing army. It was everybody just went and fought when the time was ready to fight. But the Nephites start to make a transition to where it says that they’re arming the people, they’re providing the armor for the people. And instead of everybody having that responsibility, you almost get to where you have a standing army. And I think that’s what’s going to start separating. That’s an advancement that you see, in the nephite nation that you don’t see with the Lamanites, where the Lamanites, you rally everyone up. Okay, it’s time to go to war. Let’s go fight. The Nephites have an active military, a standing army. And I think that advancement, that change is going to lead to a lot of training, better arming, because now it’s not just what farming instruments you use. They’re used for farming a month ago, and now we’re using them in battle. It’s actually, these are dedicated to war, and this is what it’s government issued or state issued to provide better arming, better training to the people.

It’s an interesting transition, but it’s probably not worth spending more time going down that road.

[01:00:36] Speaker B: No, let’s keep going.

[01:00:38] Speaker A: All right, let’s get into Alma five. And I think this is kind of the heart of where we want to go and. And talk about atonement, to talk about some of these verses.

Before I jumped in. Did you want to say anything on that, Nate?

[01:00:51] Speaker B: No.

[01:00:52] Speaker A: Okay, here we go.

Alma, in seeing that the people were falling away from what’s happening, in a need to kind of stir them up and to try to keep them dedicated to the Lord so the Lord can continue to provide them with inspiration, with. With that edge, with that guidance, with what they need to be better in their lives is going out, and he’s going to really start preaching to his people and taking his role as high priest as the most important thing he can focus on.

And he starts with the center. He starts at the core. He starts with Zarahemla.

And when he goes to teach the people, he wants to remind them of where they came from. And, Nate, you said it right towards the beginning. The power of. Remember, always remember.

For Alma, that’s critical.

And let’s go to chapter five, verse three. I, Alma, having been consecrated by my father Alma, to be a high priest over the church of God, he having power and authority from God to do these things. Behold, I say unto you that he began to establish a church in the land which was in the borders of Nephi, and land which was called the land of Mormon. Yea, and he did baptize his brethren in the waters of Mormon. And behold, I say unto you, they were delivered out of the hands of the people of King Noah by the mercy and power of God. And behold, after that, they were brought into bondage by the hands of Lamanites in the wilderness. And I say unto you that they were in captivity. Again, the Lord did deliver them out of the bondage, by the power of his word. And he began to establish the church. And he wants to talk about this deliverance.

Verse, verse six. And now, behold, I say unto you, my brethren, that you that belong to the church. Have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers? Have you sufficiently retained in remembrance his mercy and longsuffering towards them? And moreover, have ye sufficiently retained in remembrance. That he has delivered their souls from hell? So three times just in that one verse. Have you retained sufficiently in remembrance?

That’s critical. That’s a big part of Alma’s message. I’m glad you started with that, Nate. The importance and significance of remembering.

And when I’m trying to look back at the stories and remember the Lord delivering the people of Alma from Amulon. The Lord delivering the people of Limhi from the Lamanites. The Lord delivering them. I keep seeing the real, the physical.

Where the guards fell asleep. And were able to stay asleep long enough for the people to sneak out. And where the people were able to get out of the burdens and be saved physically and as real and physical. And what we see stand out to us. As that is Alma, when we look at it, remembrance that he has delivered their souls from hell.

He’s talking about the spiritual.

These people were saved. And we look and see the physical. But the physical salvation was just one aspect of it. There was also a real spiritual salvation.

And he’s going to talk about that. These people were sleeping.

These people remember a minute, I went to go talk to them.

And they brought Abinadi to the king to have him killed. We might look at it and say it was Noah and his priest that killed Abinadi. But was it not the people that brought Abinadi to Noah to be killed? It was the people that rejected Abinadi before Noah could, before the priest could. The people didn’t listen.

They didn’t want to listen. How do you save a people that don’t want to listen?

How do you save somebody who turns away from the lord and does not remember the lord?

And that, I think, in Alma’s eyes, is the bigger salvation even than the physical deliverance that we see. Even the exodus is the big stories of them being brought out of the land and saved. Like Moses taking Israel out of Egypt. As impressive as that is, sometimes it’s the spiritual salvation that’s even more impressive. How do you wake up a people that are sleeping? And so he builds on that verse seven. Behold, he changed their hearts. Yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep. And they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in mists of darkness. Nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word. Yea, they were encircled by the bands of death. And the chains of hell and everlasting destruction did await them.

And now I ask, brethren, were they destroyed? Behold, I say unto you, nay, they were not. The bands of death were broken, and the chains of hell which were encircled about them, they were loosed.

How do we deal with somebody who’s asleep? How do we help somebody who’s turned away? I think we all know people like this in our lives. I think we all know people that we just feel like we can’t reach anymore.

Is that the greater miracle? I mean, what do we do in a situation like that?

[01:06:18] Speaker B: Oh, man. You might not like my answer.

[01:06:21] Speaker A: I love your answers. Let’s hear it.

[01:06:25] Speaker B: A lot of this is influenced, just again, about where my mind’s been for the last couple weeks as I’ve been preparing a lesson that was taught. And my answer to that question is that that’s not our responsibility. It’s not our responsibility to wake them up, man.

Our responsibility is to do everything that we can to make sure that we are, number one, living the way that we’re supposed to be, first and foremost, right. Second of all, doing everything we can to support and sustain our families and our loved ones and minister to them, administer to them the whole thing. Right.

And then really trust that all things are consecrated for our good as long as we’re doing what we can.

And the thing is, your question is, I’m not trying to be dismissive at all. I think your question’s incredibly valid.

And I just think that so much of it is learning how to let go a little bit of the idea that it is our responsibility to shake people awake like we can. I mean, truly, man, we can only do so much. But at the end of the day, I think that as long as we’re doing everything that we can to be a disciple, whatever that means, not just in words, but in deeds, right. As long as we’re doing everything that we can, I think that we have to be better about putting more of that trust back into God and out of our hands and not feeling like we need to just be in control of those things all the time. And maybe this is me just speaking to me. Maybe. Maybe this is. Maybe this is me just speaking to my experience to this point. And so I want to just be careful to not ever come across as, like, I’m not making some definitive statement as like, this is the answer. But it’s a great question. But for me, recently especially, I feel like I’ve just started understanding that question in a very different, deeper way.

[01:08:32] Speaker A: No, you make some really good points a minute. I went right to wake up the people.

And you might argue that he wasn’t even successful at that. I mean, it’s not like he might have felt turned around.

[01:08:47] Speaker B: He might have felt that, right? He may have felt that.

You never know. You and I are hoping, right, that he got a glimpse of the eternal perspective as he was being lit on fire. Right? We hope that he. We hope that maybe that was one of the mercies of God, that God was able to, in that moment, go, hey, here’s what your sacrifice is worth. We’re good. We hope.

But what if he wasn’t?

Couldn’t he, with a very short term view, look at that as a failure?

[01:09:25] Speaker A: That’s the difference. That’s the perspective, right? On the short term, you look at it and like, man, nobody even cared. You sent me out here and nobody even cared.

[01:09:32] Speaker B: And they lit me on fire.

[01:09:35] Speaker A: And they lit me on fire. Isn’t that how it happens sometimes? Isn’t it? Sometimes we feel inspired to share a thought with somebody who maybe is less than appreciative of us sharing it. We reach out, we send them an email, we send them a text, and we think, this is coming from a place of love. Here’s something that I feel like I need to share with you. And they light us on fire for it.

[01:09:59] Speaker B: That’s what I mean.

[01:10:01] Speaker A: How dare you? And you look at it and say, why did I even do it? Why did I even feel like that? Why did I even put myself out there?

But you don’t know. You know.

[01:10:09] Speaker B: And I think is you don’t know.

[01:10:12] Speaker A: And I don’t going to. What you said earlier, Nate, I think this is critical.

Is it our responsibility? I don’t think it is. I’m with you on this. Is it not God’s job to save? And he says, come, follow me. And we do what he does, and we try to save, we try to reach out, we try to help. But in the end, is it not God that’s going to redeem his people? Is it not God that’s going to help wake them up? Yes.

It’s not Abinadi that delivered them from the Lamanites.

[01:10:42] Speaker B: Can I throw this out there to add to this?

[01:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:10:45] Speaker B: There’s Jesus.

In talking to Peter made it very clear, I feel like what his expectation of Peter was when he was resurrected and came back and said, feed my sheep.

Christ’s ministry was feeding physically and spiritually. Right.

I don’t. I, what I don’t read between the lines is it’s your job to redeem my sheep.

And you might say that this is semantics or whatever, but I think that you just nailed it, which is, that’s, that’s Christ’s job. Now, it. He does call us to be saviors of men, but I don’t think that it, that’s not going to determine our salvation is how many. I don’t think there’s a checklist in the next life of how many people you were able to convince to repent of all their sins and to follow you.

Right. That’s not the goal. And the more I’ve tried to understand better what that means to feed my sheep, I feel like one. I need to do a better job of the physical aspect of that.

One of Christ’s main themes was, I’m going to feed the people following me physically, I’m going to break bread. I’m going to make sure that there is more than enough food for them to be eating, whether it’s fish, whether it’s bread, whatever it is. I think that that’s something that we need as a world to be better about and me specifically need to be better about.

But as far as, like, spiritually feeding, like, you can’t. I have an 18 month old daughter. I can’t open her mouth and just shove food in it, man, and expect that she’s gonna be like, cool, right? Like, dude, if she’s not hungry, she’s not gonna eat, man.

And the more that I try to force feed whatever that is down her throat, what do you think her feelings towards me become during those processes?

Like, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, man, I’m just trying to better understand these concepts for myself.

I’m expressing these to you here again in a very non definitive way. But this is what has started to, I, like, help me better understand what my actual calling is as a disciple, hopefully, right, as a disciple. And that is, I do need to be more conscious of the physical needs of people around me and in places that I can help, I need to. And on the spiritual aspect of it, it is not my job to convert and force feed my testimony down people’s throats. It’s not my job to force feedback somebody that is like, I’m not hungry for what you’re giving me right now. Instead, what I can do is say, okay, cool, I’m not going to put that on you. And we’re good, and we’ll always be friends, even if that never becomes any other part of the sins. But what I’m going to do is try to live my life in a way that if ever you are going like, hey, I really actually do wish I had more of a connection with that. Hopefully, people would know that. I would love to be there to have that conversation with them. Then I would love to be there to do anything I can on my part to be available if that becomes something that they are wanting to be a part of or to take advantage of.

[01:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I think we need to be in a position where we can feed his sheep.

[01:14:41] Speaker B: Yes. And that’s a better way to put it.

[01:14:45] Speaker A: And I love the way he phrases this. Right when he says, you know, and again, this is verse nine. And again, I ask, were the bands of death broken? And the chains of hell which were encircled about them, loosed? I say unto you, yea, they were loosed. And their souls did expand and they did sing redeeming love. And I say unto you, are they saved?

And on what condition were they saved? And he goes through this. And if I were to fast forward.

Verse 14. And now, brethren, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have you spiritually been born of God? Have you received his image and your countenance? And that phrase right there, Nate, let’s circle back to that. The image in his countenance, I think is worth visiting. Have you experienced this mighty change in your hearts? Do you exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you? Do you look forward with an eye of faith and view this mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God, to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body? And I say unto you, can you imagine of yourselves and hear the voice of the Lord saying unto you in that day, come unto me, ye blessed. For behold, your works have been works of righteousness. And let me fast forward just a little bit on this. When. When he says, have if you have.

Let’s see, verse 26. And now, brethren, I say unto you, my. My brethren, if you have experienced a change of heart, and if you have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can you feel so now?

And I think that’s powerful, that I think we’ve all experienced that joy of feeling like you’ve unburdened yourself, or that the Lord has. Has saved you or. Or that maybe you weren’t worthy of it and you’re beating yourself up and you feel that love of God, and it just makes you want to sing the. Sing of the song of redeeming love. It’s an interesting way of saying that.

And then he asks, can you feel. So now, if you’ve felt that before, if you’ve experienced it, are you still in a point where you can experience it?

[01:16:54] Speaker B: Do you remember?

[01:16:54] Speaker A: And can you remember? Remembrance was a huge part of this. But here’s, here’s a point I want to make with this.

Can you, can you, can you. He makes this very personal. And it’s not like he’s saying to me, hey, can Nate, can Nate sing the song of redeeming love? How’s Nate doing? Maybe you should go check on Nate. Can Nate have that? Did Nate have this? I mean, we look at this and we. It’s like President Nielsen’s talk. Instinctively, I’m trying to look at somebody else and how this applies to them, but he’s saying, do I, and how do I internalize it? How do I really save myself instead of trying to save someone else, instead of trying to wake someone else? Because if I am not myself awake, then how can I feed his sheep?

How am I internalizing this? And it’s the moat and the beam.

Do you want to talk about image of Scotland?

[01:17:59] Speaker B: Oh, you know, I love that.

You know, I love the purification of silver that they talk about in Malachi. You know, I’m all about that.

Do you want, do we have time. Do we have time to go down that road again? Old Testament, dude, you’re, you’re, you’re the.

[01:18:15] Speaker A: One with the clock. You’re the producer. You tell me.

[01:18:17] Speaker B: I mean, dude, at this point, we’re, we’re just blowing past the barriers at this point. Like, it’s.

[01:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah, but it’s like two weeks.

[01:18:22] Speaker B: I know. It is kind of two weeks and one, and it sounds a lot better than it did last week. So I’m much more okay with us just blowing past the governors at this point. Yeah. And Malachi, remember how it talks about he’s going to be a purifier of silver.

We’ve talked about this before. I mean, again, anybody that’s been listening with us since the Old Testament times is probably like, no, we already heard this, but I know there’s a lot of people listening that haven’t been with us since the OT. But I always loved the idea that the, or when I read about and loved the imagery of the purifier of silver. And when somebody was asked, it’s like, oh, yeah, you have to heat it up to burn out the impurities.

But the master knows how to not overheat it to where it actually damages and burns and makes the metal worthless.

And when asked, when do you know? When do you know that it’s pure? It’s when he. And the master said, when you can see your reflection in it is when you know that it’s purified and it’s like, man, what an awesome little nugget there in Malachi, right there at the end of the old testament. But I love that it’s, it made its way into Book of Mormon as well, image in his countenance.

[01:19:46] Speaker A: And I almost want to take this back to sacrament. I mean, we’ve, you know, I’m down sacrament.

We’ve been, we’ve been going down this lane a little bit and bringing it back to sacrament again. I want to ground this in another old Testament story. You, you bringing up Malachi. I want to bring up Jacob and Esau, and it’s such a weird story, but Jacob, in order to receive the blessing, has to impersonate his older brother.

And you think about the process that he has to go through to receive this blessing. Esau is a hunter who prepares meat. And so what does Jacob have to do? Well, in this case, he employs his mom, or his mom, rather, employs this strategy. We need to behave like Esau. We need to prepare this meat for this venison for his father.

And so you’ve got this imitation, this acting going on, and then you’ve got to dress like him, you’ve got to have his appearance. So we’re going to take this hairy Raymond, and we’re going to put it on you to have his image in your countenance, to appear like him.

And so when you get closer and he feels you, thinks it’s you, you’re taking him on you, and then you’ve got to take his name upon you and say, I am Esau.

And so that imagery to me, in order for us to receive the blessing that was reserved for our elder brother Christ, he is offering us to do what Jacob did. And Jacob, by the way, is the one whose name was changed to Israel. Do we not take that name upon us too, Israel? Are we not asked to go through the same steps, the same processes that Jacob did in calling ourselves Israel to receive a new name as well?

And so I look at the sacrament, and we’re taking his image upon us. Are we not taking everything I’m taking his body, his blood, and bringing it into me, and I’m taking his name.

And if I do this so that his spirit can be with me. So his name, his spirit, his body. What else am I lacking? Well, I’ve got to imitate him. Is that not to keep his commandments, to be like Christ, to follow him? Are those not the actions?

[01:22:15] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:22:16] Speaker A: So the sacrament itself is this process where we remember him.

[01:22:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say, don’t forget. Don’t forget that one. Because, again, are we not trying to say, are we also not impersonating him in both our actions and our thoughts? Like, keep his commandments in our actions and always remember him in our thoughts? Like, I mean, the whole point is to become him from. From top to bottom.

[01:22:41] Speaker A: That’s it.

That’s it. And we do this regularly, every week in a. This imitation game, so that we can be like him. And that’s what repentance is, is how do I align myself closer to the savior? How do I learn from what’s happening? How do I become more like him? How do I imitate him a little bit better?

[01:23:05] Speaker B: How does our behavior change to more imitate him?

Emulate. I shouldn’t say imitate to emulate.

[01:23:13] Speaker A: I like both.

[01:23:14] Speaker B: I do, too. But, you know, I just. To me, it’s like, I think that at a certain point, it’s like, you know, when you learn how to play the guitar, do you think you start by writing, you know, Metallica style riffs and, you know, I mean, but all from your own original creative genius, or do you take out the guitar, you learn basic chords of your favorite songs, of the people that you listen to. And as you begin to play them more and more, it becomes less and less about you learning other people’s songs and more and more, just about what’s coming out of you, what you are creating. And I think that’s the process of learning how to do anything in this life, right, is you first emulate or imitate a mentor or a passion or whatever that is. And once you’ve done that enough times, it really becomes an actual part of your DNA, who you are. All of those influences are expressed through you, at least in art, right? And this is the same thing. It’s like the more and more you go, as corny as the phrase is, what would Jesus do? I’m not saying corny, but you know how I mean, it’s like it became kind of a meme, you know? It’s like we all had the bracelets and the whole things, but you see.

[01:24:41] Speaker A: What I’m saying, though, somewhat loses its meaning. But there’s depth.

[01:24:44] Speaker B: That’s my point, is that there’s actually depth to the idea of, well, what would Jesus do in this situation? Shouldn’t that basically become, well, here’s what I would do in that situation, because I’ve been. I’ve been over and over and over and over practicing what Jesus would do in that situation where I don’t have to keep asking myself that every time. It’s part of who I am. It’s part of my DNA. I truly have become more than just imitate.

[01:25:14] Speaker A: And I get to know the savior through examples in my life, too.

I look at my dad and the example that he’s always been to me in the priesthood, and I feel like I know the savior better because of him, because of the image in his countenance, or my mom or. Or my family, my friends, the people I interact with, the leaders that I’ve had throughout my life, the way that they have emulated Christ. And I see Christ like aspects in their life. I come to know the savior through them. And an important question maybe to ask or reflect on who is coming to know the savior through us, who feels like they’re getting closer to the savior because his image is in our countenance. We are becoming like him. And how we support ourselves, how we take care of others, the small actions that we do, do they come to know the savior through us as well?

[01:26:20] Speaker B: Man, it’s a great. It’s a great way to just always hopefully be checking where you’re at. That’s a great, profound thought. Continue.

[01:26:29] Speaker A: I’m just going to say that I think the greatest lesson that I get from Alma here, and I think we all know this, it may be. It’s almost impossible or an act of God to wake somebody up, but the important thing is to not fall asleep in the first place. And I think that’s where we have more power. Right? I think. I think that’s what Alma is looking at and saying, how do I better keep them awake? And the critical part of that, Nate, I mean, remember, how do we always remember him? There’s a reason why the sacrament is repeated every week, whereas in the other ordinance, ordinances are a once in a lifetime experience for ourselves.

For ourselves to remember.

[01:27:14] Speaker B: Yep.

Yep. I I completely agree. I completely agree. It’s why. Yes, in third Nephi, it’s why Jesus was explicit with why he wants us to be partaking of the sacrament often, and that’s to continue to witness to God that we will always remember him.

[01:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:27:37] Speaker B: Good stuff.

[01:27:38] Speaker A: I’ve taken enough time on this. I’ll tap out.

[01:27:41] Speaker B: Okay. Awesome.

Is there anything else you wanted to hit before we wrap this up? Almost 90 minutes in, dude. But it was good. It was a good 90 minutes.

[01:27:51] Speaker A: I think I’ll spare you guys.

[01:27:53] Speaker B: No, this is.

[01:27:54] Speaker A: I just. We’re back. That’s all I want to say. We’re back.

[01:27:56] Speaker B: We’re back. That’s. That’s. That’s the. That’s our message for the week. That’s.

[01:28:01] Speaker A: Expect consistency because it will come.

[01:28:04] Speaker B: Thank you for being patient with us. We really do so much appreciate you all listening and for the patients you’ve had with us over the last few weeks. We’ve just been trying to iron out some of the technical side of this, which we knew we were going to have to work out a few of the kinks kind of when we were, you know, making the move. But we really do appreciate you sticking with us. We appreciate you sharing this with your friends. For those of you listening for your first time or for the first few times, we really do appreciate the little bit of your time, which we know is precious to let us hopefully inspire you to. To maybe uplift your day a little bit. If there’s anything that we can do, feel free to email us at the email address. Hi, deepdive.com. that is hiaweeklydeepdive.com. we do everything we can to respond to the emails, the questions, the comments. If there’s anything in particular you would like us to address or talk about with the next few lessons coming up, let us know and we will work it into what it is that we’re doing.

I think that’s it. Right? For all of the technical side of it. All right. Jason and I can see each other. I’m getting the virtual almost thumbs up. So until next week.

The main discussion delves into Mosiah chapters 25 through 28 from the “Come Follow Me” curriculum. Jason and Nate explore the roles of Amulon and Ammon in the conversion of the Lamanites, examining how Amulon’s influence inadvertently set the stage for future missionary success. They also discuss the parallels between Old Testament patterns and the governance structures in the Book of Mormon, highlighting the balance between religious and political leadership.

The conversation transitions into a deep dive into Alma the Younger’s conversion story, comparing it to Saul’s transformation in the New Testament. They reflect on the importance of recognizing and sharing personal testimonies of redemption and the power of the Atonement, especially during fast and testimony meetings.

Throughout the episode, Jason and Nate emphasize the relevance of understanding historical and scriptural patterns to better grasp the messages in the Book of Mormon and how these insights can inspire modern-day faith and testimony. Join them as they provide thoughtful perspectives and spiritual insights in their quest to deepen the understanding of the scriptures.

Transcript:

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in, let’s see, battalion of Spain remotely with Nate the great Pyfer, our show’s producer and our friend, Nate. How you doing?

[00:00:37] Speaker B: Living the dream, baby.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Living the dream. This is our first experiment recording together.

We’ll see how this goes.

[00:00:46] Speaker B: It’s gonna work.

We’re gonna definitely need to kind of tighten up some of the audio things. Some of you might notice a little bit of like, kind of like room noise, kind of just echo and stuff where Jason is, but that’s because you just barely moved into your new spot. So you don’t have furniture or anything up?

[00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve got some furniture, but honestly, mostly empty. I don’t have my couches yet. And this house is built to echo, which is not ideal when you have six kids running around the house.

[00:01:20] Speaker B: How’s it been so far, though? You adjusting all right? How’s the family doing?

[00:01:25] Speaker A: It’s been. It’s been good. The family’s been taking it really well.

It’s been amazing, honestly.

Lots of ups, a couple downs, but it’s been. It’s been good.

[00:01:38] Speaker B: Awesome. Do you want to maybe update a little bit on. I know we missed last week. Maybe you can give them just a quick word on that.

[00:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So, boy, I’ll tell you guys, anyone, anyone considering moving to Spain, just. Just know there’s going to be a lot of heartache involved with getting Internet in the house.

We still do not have Internet. We’re trying to find some workaround solutions so that we can get this podcast out to you guys.

You can get the electricity in your name on your house, you can rent a house, you can get the water, the utilities, and you can pay for all of that. But you can’t get Internet until it’s. I don’t know, it’s been a process.

You have to get a. It’s like the Social Security number, but for foreigners. And they call it the NIE number here in Spain.

And trying to get that is just a runaround and a half. In fact, we met with some attorneys on Friday who were working in that process with us, and they scanned all of our documents, got everything ready to go, and I said, fantastic. Do you want me to set the appointment now so that we can get this NIE number going and I can sign up for Internet?

And they really just almost laughed at me and they said, you can try to set that up, but it’s going to be nearly impossible. We’ll take care of that for you and we’ll let you know when we have the appointment because otherwise it’s not going to go well. I could tell you guys story after story about how this last week went and trying to chase it down, but I know we’ve got a lot to cover, so that’s just kind of the, the short of it is getting Internet and a phone service not as easy as you would expect. And even trying to sign up for a local cell phone plan, you have to have a local cell phone number in order to sign up for a local cell phone number. So think about the circular logic on that.

[00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that doesn’t, that sounds weird to me.

[00:03:35] Speaker A: It’s, it’s been maddeningly frustrating. I mean, just to give you maybe one last little insight, when we went, I was in Barcelona in the city, and I popped into one of their cell phone provider stores and got a ticket, waited in line, sat down with somebody, and they told me just outright, you will not get this until you have your Nie number.

And I said, well, how in the world do I get that? And they said, there’s a police station two blocks down. That’s where you got to go. And I’m like, I’m going to go grab it right now. So I walked out of the store, went two blocks down to the police station, and they had a sign on the door that very clearly expressed, we will not meet with you unless you have an appointment.

And they posted the website where you go to get the appointment. So I went to the website on my phone, pulled it up. I said, I’m going to get an appointment right now. We’re going to get this taken care of.

And in order to schedule an appointment, you had to have your Nie number to be able to schedule the appointment. And I about lost it.

[00:04:36] Speaker B: So are you just going to be illegal the whole time? I guess is the question, are we never, are we never getting the Internet over there?

[00:04:44] Speaker A: We’re getting the Internet. We’re getting the Internet this week. So this is a, this is a good first step, but we’re going to have even better on the next one.

[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yep.

What are we talking about tonight?

[00:04:56] Speaker A: Tonight we’re covering Mosiah, chapters 25 through 28. I’m actually stoked. We have a lot to cover. Sorry. Sorry. This is a week late, but, you know, this is spanish bureaucracy. We’ll get there.

[00:05:11] Speaker B: Sweet.

[00:05:14] Speaker A: Cool. All right, let’s kick us let’s kick us off. Let’s talk about.

Really, I want to start with the critical role that Amulon plays in some of this. So, Amulon, just to give you guys a little bit of context and reminder, he’s one of Noah’s priests, but different from Alma. He’s not a super righteous priest. And I want to kind of go back and read the description of Amulon and the priest in Mosiah, chapter 24. So I’m going to borrow from the previous weeks to just set the stage on this in verse one. And it came to pass that Amulon did gain favor in the eyes of the king of the Lamanites. Therefore, the king of the Lamanites granted unto him and his brethren. That they should be appointed teachers over his people. Yea, even over the people who were in the land of Shemlon and the land of Shimlon and the land of Amulon.

Now, think about this for a second. Amulon is a priest, and he’s a priest that’s used to, in Noah’s regime, having these big brass. Brass, I’m sorry, gold breastplates that he could just lay out on and teach the people from. Teaching is his thing.

And the king of the Lamanites has granted him a unique opportunity to teach the Lamanite people.

And we can look at what he teaches them. We fast forward in verse four. And he appointed teachers of the brethren of Amulon. In every land which was possessed by his people. Thus the language of Nephi began to be taught among all the people of the Lamanites. And they were a people friendly one with another. Nevertheless, they knew not God. Neither did the brethren of Amulon teach them anything concerning the Lord their God, neither the law of Moses, nor did they teach them the words of Abinadi.

But they taught them that they should keep their records. And that they might write one to another. And thus the Lamanites began to increase in riches. And began to trade one with another and wax great. And began to be a cunning and a wise people. As to the wisdom of the world, yea, a very cunning people, delighting in all manner of wickedness and plunder.

And so, looking at this, here you have a priest whose principal responsibility is to teach the people about God. He’s given a golden opportunity where he set responsible over all the teaching of the people of the Lamanites.

And he does not teach them a thing about God.

Nothing at all. And that’s kind of a disconnect, a weird thing that you put a priest in charge, and he doesn’t teach them about God. But Amulon even takes this one step further, because Amulon is the one that is put to rule over the people of Alma, who was a fellow priest of his. And he enacts a rule that if anyone is caught praying, they can be killed. So not only is he not teaching about God, but he is actively persecuting and looking to kill anyone that does believe in God or teach by example or pray, if that makes sense.

Not a great dude.

And yet I think that he has a critical role to play in the conversion of the Lamanites. And so I wanted to kind of start this episode by asking the question, and it’s similar to the question that we talked in our last episode, Nate, when we were looking at why was it that Alma was successful when Abinadi couldn’t find anybody to listen to him? Now, let’s take a look at this. Why was Ammon so successful as a missionary when he goes to the land of Nephi and teaches the people, when for hundreds of years, the Nephites have been sending missionaries to the land of the Lamanites and not having any success?

[00:08:53] Speaker B: That’s a good question.

[00:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a key part of it is Amulon sets the stage.

He’s not teaching them religion per se. I think he’s almost kind of a bridge between the Lamanites and the Nephites by teaching them the language.

Imagine being a missionary and going there and trying to teach people that are not on par with the language that you’re teaching. If you guys are speaking two different languages, or if you have scriptures and you want them to read the scriptures, but they don’t understand the scriptures. So go back again. I think this is critical.

It says that he taught them the language of the Nephites.

And we’ve mentioned that before when he says, I having been taught in all the language of my fathers, and it was the record of the language of record keeping.

And they make a big deal out of this when they says verse six, and they taught them that they should keep their records.

And so now if you have a missionary coming in there with records, how successful would they have been before Amulon when they can’t read those records and those records mean nothing to them, versus post Amulon, where now they can look at the records and they can see them and read them and get something out of them, or believe them for their own eyes that they wouldn’t have been able to have gotten before.

And I think they also, economically, the country is benefiting quite a bit from Amulon teaching them how to keep records because it allows their trade and their economy to grow and to prosper. To where they look favorably on the Nephites because of what they gained from this experience with Amulon. Rather than trying to teach them something that they weren’t willing to receive, they taught them something that could improve or move the dial on where they were that day economically.

And I think it’s almost a baby step that made them more receptive to listening to the Nephites messages later on. Like, look what we were able to gain from listening to the Nephites before. Maybe they have some wisdom that can help us improve in other ways as well. So as wicked as Amulon was, I think he’s critical in moving the dialogue and building the bridge that’s going to make ammon successful later on, if that makes any sense. Nate?

[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I think it’s a great point.

It’s one of those things where we talk in our church a lot about not being able to frustrate the Lord’s work, even when it might seem like things are failing on that front. And it’s like even in something like this, even though he’s probably trying to do the opposite because he’s gnarly, he is still setting the stage for future conversion.

[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah, you said it perfectly. And I think that’s what we get from the story of Adam and Eve. As much as the serpent was trying to frustrate things, didn’t he just bring about what needed to happen? Or you look at Gethsemane, as much as the devil tried to destroy Christ, isn’t that Christ’s greatest accomplishment in the atonement?

Every time Satan tries to frustrate things, it usually ends up magnifying what the lord is doing.

[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, great point.

[00:12:34] Speaker A: And I think that’s going to feed into the conversion story of Alma the Younger, which we’re going to get to here in a minute. So let me shelf that for now, and let’s go to another thought, which kind of feeds off this in a sense, too, as successful as Mosiah and Benjamin and Mosiah were as kings, because we’re going to get into a discussion in these chapters. Mosiah is trying to turn over the reign of his kingdom later on, and he wants to find somebody to rule because his sons don’t want to do it, and the people want his sons to do it, and they come up with the rule of the judges, and he mentions how good Benjamin was as a king. And he even says to the point, if you had a perfect king, it would be better that you had kings all the time. But because you don’t have kings that are always doing the right thing or always looking out for the needs of the people, we might need to balance this with these judges, right?

But in that he recalls how good of a king Benjamin was. And we can read about these kings and say, okay, in contrast to Noah Limhi zenith, you’ve got Mosiah, Benjamin, Mosiah. It’s these two great extremes. And as good as these three kings are on the positive side. Yet Benjamin loses in warfare and they lose the land of Zarahem. Like he has to go and reconquer it. And in Mosiah’s time, you have this apostasy with his own sons and the sons of Alma going about destroying the people.

And my point with this is, it doesn’t matter how good we are, we’re still going to have difficulty.

And I think that’s a common misconception that a lot of people run into with the gospel, or this idea that I did everything right, how come I’m struggling, or how come things aren’t as good as I thought. Like God.

Why isn’t it? I mean, there was a conference talk about this, where we treat God almost like this cosmic vending machine, where I said my prayers and I read my scriptures. I put in seventy five cents and I expect this drink to be popping out of the bottom. Or I expect these blessings, or God’s going to bless me with this perfect wife, or this perfect family, or this whatever, whatever, right? X, y, z.

I think we get this impression that being righteous is going to lead to a perfect life with no trials. And I think that’s a failed perception on our part. And I think this highlights that, seeing as good as these kings were, yet they still had to overcome apostasy and defeat in battle with you in the book. Yeah, the book of Revelations. If we go back and read it, I’m not going to take the time to read it now. But as you recall, it says over and over and over again, to he that overcometh, you’ll get this blessing. To he that overcometh, you get this blessing. And so the question I would want to leave with that is, how in the world can you overcome if you’re never behind, if you’re never being defeated? And so the promise, the blessings aren’t that you’ll be perfect. In fact, maybe there’s some consolation in that. The promise go back to Adam and Eve is you will fall, you will die, you will mess up. But the promise is, that’s why we have a savior before the foundation of the world. God chose a savior so that we could overcome those blessings. And the success isn’t that we don’t falter. The success isn’t that we don’t fall.

It’s because we fall.

There’s a savior, and we still can find that salvation.

Love it.

All right, let’s go into some patterns in the Book of Mormon.

When we look at Mosiah, Benjamin and Mosiah, and then we’re shifting into this rule of the judges, this fracturing, I see a similarity or a parallel in the Old Testament with the patriarchs. You have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then after Jacob, you shift into the twelve tribes, this fracturing, if you will, where each tribe, they become a confederacy.

And this pattern also becomes the pattern for the gospel that Christ sets up in the New Testament when he has his first presidency. Think of the first presidency as the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. You got your three, followed by your twelve apostles, your cormorant, your twelve, if you will.

Another, I guess, tip to Joseph Smith, if he did indeed create this book, for him to be observant enough to notice some of these patterns and subtly include them without even talking about them or trying to point this out.

I don’t know. To me, it’s just one more of these little subtle things that fit in the scriptures that give it a little bit more depth and volume. To me, as I’m reading Messiah, to see that same type of pattern in the Book of Mormon, and building on that pattern, even in the Old Testament, you can see a repeat of it with their transition, in a sense, from the reign of judges, two kings, and the very first king is Saul, followed by David. And then you have Solomon. And so again, you have these three patriarchs, if you will, over a unified Israel. And then what happens after Solomon’s death is there’s a fracturing in the kingdom, and you have all of these different kings. And so it’s kind of this similar pattern that just plays itself out a couple of different times.

And with that, I think the Book of Mormon plays a role very complementary to that of the Bible.

When we’re reading about the exodus and moses goes to JEthRo, he’s presiding over the people. He has the Melchizedek priesthood. He goes up into the mountain of God, and his role is to prepare the people to enter into the presence of God, which is the role of the MelchizEDEk priesthood. But when he comes back down from the mountain and the people with Aaron have built this golden calf, and they’ve been worshiping it, God takes the aaronic priesthood, or, excuse me, the MelchizEDEk priesthood out of the midst of the people, and he leaves them with the aaronic priesthood, a preparatory priesthood. And so you have this journey from MelchizedEk priesthood to AAronic priesthood. And in the BOok of Mormon, you’re almost reversing that story. You’re starting with an aaronic priesthood. You have the Levites and the priests in the land of Jerusalem at Lehi’s time. But because of disobedience, because of what’s going on, Lehi receives el Melchizedek priesthood, and he now prepares his family to enter into the presence of God. He has this vision of the tree of life that he shares with his children, and he invites them to come and partake of the fruit. And Nephi takes that invitation and has the same dream and enters into the presence of the Lord. And Jacob enters into the presence of the Lord. And you see this transition from aaronic priesthood to Melchizedek priesthood to where all priesthood in the book of Mormon is Melchizedek going forward, which is the reverse of what you saw in the Old Testament, where all priesthood was aaronic going forward from that moment with Moses.

So I’m starting to see patterns in the book of Mormon that take what happened in the Old Testament, and it’s reversing it almost like the second half of a chiasmus.

And building on that pattern, not only do you see that with the priesthood, but in the Old Testament, you went from the reign of judges to a reign of kings. Now, in the Book of Mosiah, you’re going to go from, in the Book of Mormon, a reign of kings for hundreds of years to transition into a reign of judges. And just bringing that back down and maybe one last little part of that pattern. In the Old Testament, you had an ark of the covenant, which was built out of gold. It was lined on the inside with gold, and on the outside with gold. And inside the Ark of the Covenant, you kept the writings of God. Scripture that was engraven on stone tablets.

In the Book of Mormon, when Moroni buries the plates and Joseph Smith later discovers it, he takes the lid of this stone box off. And this stone box is as if it were an ark of the covenant. And there’s a lot of temple imagery in this with what is being kept in the stone box with the breastplate that the priests used to officiate in with the tokens of authority. The sword of Laban with the Urim and Thummim, just like the priests have in the temple. But what you have is an ark of the covenant. And the Ark of the Covenant is made out of stone, and inside of it is the scriptures, which are engraven on gold. So you’ve kind of reversed these roles again, where the ark is now stone and the scriptures are now gold, where the Book of Mormon complements the Bible in so many subtle ways. It’s a.

[00:22:07] Speaker B: Continuation.

[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I’m just struggling with my, with my expression on that, but, yeah, it’s a continuity with the Bible or a continuation of the Bible story in a way that almost reverses it or reflects it like a mirror. Like, you see a mirror image rather than the exact image.

[00:22:27] Speaker B: It’s awesome. Great insight.

[00:22:32] Speaker A: And, you know, how would a boy in early american history, as always, right.

Find that complexity in creating a story like he did?

Hats off to him if that’s how it happened.

[00:22:52] Speaker B: Yeah. You know how I feel about that.

[00:22:54] Speaker A: All right.

I do. I do.

And I’m just going to apologize right now.

There’s obviously a difference when we’re in the studio and we’re sitting across the room and I can. I mean, we can read each other’s faces and kind of see how things are going. So if I. If I’m ever getting caught where I just keep talking, Nate, and no, man, I would normally pick up on a visual cue when you have something to say.

[00:23:21] Speaker B: Nah, dude, I’m seeing. I’m just listening. I’m just listening. It’s all good.

[00:23:26] Speaker A: Feel free to jump in and stop me and make up for anything I’m not seeing.

[00:23:31] Speaker B: I will, man. Don’t. Don’t worry. Everybody’s. Everything’s going to work out great, man.

[00:23:37] Speaker A: All right, all right.

Well, speaking of patterns and things that we’re seeing in the Book of Mormon, there’s another pattern that I wanted to point out, and this advances in the story when they all come back, maybe just a few small details, and then I’ll hit on this pattern.

When the people of Zenith, not Zanf, but Limhi, Limhi’s people and Alma’s people, and they’re all reunified and Mosiah into the land of Zarahemla. Mosiah gathers all the people to tell them all of the story. It is kind of interesting. He has them all gathered together in two separate groups, and the people of Zarahemla are in one group, and the Nephites are in a second group. So even though Mosiah is reigning over this somewhat unified kingdom, there’s details in here subtle enough that this unification might be more of an alliance than an actual Mosiah might not be directly reigning over the people of Zarahemla. They might have their own king, and he is the king. That kind of pulls them together. Even in ancient Israel, when you had a king that ruled over him, you still had a prince from each tribe. And the people of Zarahemla seem like they have still their own separate leadership underneath reign. It kind of rolls up in there. It’s interesting. They don’t have, they’re not completely gelled into one single people, from what I gather as I’m reading this text.

But they read the records, they recount what’s going on, and everything’s going good. But then it rises up to this point where the younger generation doesn’t remember the words of King Benjamin. They don’t have this firsthand experience with what happened with Limhi and Alma’s people. And they’re starting to drift further from God, and they’re starting to tear apart the church, and they bring these people to Alma. And I think it’s important also, this is in Mosiah, chapter 26, verse eight. It says, now, King Mosiah had given Alma the authority over the church.

Alma had authority.

And when they reunify with Mosiah’s people, Mosiah gives Alma the authority within that people. And you see again the separation, the role of the priest and the king.

And I think that Mosiah is going to give Alma the authority again. Makes me wonder about, did Alma come from the line of Jacob? Because the line of Jacob did go in with zenith, and it had died down in Mosiah’s rain. And now Mosiah is tipping his hat and giving him the authority over the church when he comes. But you have these two separate powers, the king and the priesthood, the church. Mosiah gives the authority to Alma. So even though Mosiah is not presiding over it, the authority still does come from Mosiah. Mosiah is this prophet, the seer, this great leader of the people. And he has the authority to. To delegate or to give that responsibility to Alma, to preside over the church, while he himself maintains the political entity or the affairs of the kingdom. Kind of under his responsibility. His role, anyhow, when they bring the people that are trying to tear the church apart to Alma, because he is the one that’s been designated by Mosiah to. To preside over the church and the land.

Alma takes that to Mosiah, and they have this interesting exchange over whose responsibility is it. Are they breaking any of the laws in the land? No. So it’s not necessarily going to fall under Mosiah, because his is the laws and the political, the legal aspect of the country, while Mosiah is, or Alma is more the spiritual or the church. So this is going to fall under, under Alma. But as we start reading the story and this interchange between the two, what it reminds me of, Mosiah and Alma remind me of Caiaphas and Pilate, because Caiaphas was the spiritual leader in Jerusalem. And you have this person going about destroying the church. In a sense, is that not what Christ is doing?

And arguably it is because it’s going to take the established religion and create a new religion in Christianity. And some might argue and say, well, Christ didn’t try to destroy Judaism. In fact, he enforced the law of Moses. He continually said, even to the lepers, go to the priest and present yourself. He continued to teach obedience to the laws of the Jews, but he did push back against the political structure, the rulers at the time. He did teach a different way, and he did teach that the Jews had gone away from what they were doing. I think there’s parallels in what Christ did in his time and what you see the sons of Mosiah and the son of Alma doing in their time. Only Christ was doing it to try to correct something that had gone astray and bring it back to the truth, where these guys are trying to take something that was right and true and in their minds, correct it and fix it by introducing apostasy into the church. But there are some interesting similarities between the two. And just as Christ is brought to Caiaphas, these are brought to Alma. Alma being the spiritual head, and he goes to the political head, just as Caiaphas goes to Pilate. And Pilate looks at this in Christ’s case and says, this is not anything legally for my jurisdiction in roman rule. I don’t have any cause to be killing this man, and turns it back over to them. And that’s what happens here with Mosiah. I have no legal jurisdiction in this. There’s no problem as far as the laws of the land go. I am turning this back over to you, Alma, to make a call as the spiritual leader, because these are spiritual issues.

The difference between Caiaphas and Alma become quite evident here in Caiaphas case.

Rather than turn to God and ask him what to do. Or at least we don’t get that impression in the account. Right? He forces the issue back to Pilate. He makes Pilate make the decision wherein Alma takes this, and he’s deeply troubled. He takes it to the Lord and inquiring of him, fasting, praying, and asking what to do until the voice of the Lord comes. And I think that becomes the clear difference between Alma and Caiaphas is in chapter 26 of Mosiah, verse 14. And it came to pass that after he had poured out his whole soul unto God, the voice of the Lord came unto him, saying, blessed art thou, Alma. And blessed are those who are baptized in the waters of Mormon. It’s the voice of the Lord.

And the difference in the leadership of the church or the spiritual leadership is when you have somebody who thinks they know best and is too proudful to go to the Lord and ask him what to do, versus someone who knows they don’t know best and continues to rely on the Lord until he hears the voice of the Lord. And in that case, it is the Lord himself that’s guiding the church as opposed to a church of. Of any man.

Any thoughts on that, Nate?

[00:31:18] Speaker B: No.

Again, I love you. Tying together the insights of the religious and political kind of partnerships that I feel like are a pattern theme throughout the Old Testament and obviously throughout the Book of Mormon. It’s interesting. How many.

When did it change to where the religious leaders became? I mean, I don’t know how to phrase the question right, because like you said, there’s. There’s always kind of. The religious leaders aren’t always necessarily over.

I don’t know, not the church, but you know what I mean? It’s like King David was like the king, but was being corrected by the prophets outside of himself. But we look at King David as he was also obviously heavily influenced by God. Moses is probably your closest to, was the leader of the church and the leader of the people. But all throughout the Book of Mormon, we’ve been kind of hitting on that theme where you have very much like a strong religious prophet, but then a king or ruler who also, it seems like, was very much guided or was expected to be guided by God.

King Noah had apparently enough authority to be appointing priests where you would think that that should be the job of a religious leader. Do you see what I’m saying? Like, there’s just kind of some weird. There’s some weird relationship things there that I’m still totally trying to understand.

[00:32:54] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s.

I’m trying to think the name of the king. In the, in the ancient near east, there’s a stella or a carving in the rock. And you actually see this quite, quite often when it talks about the king list. And they’ll say, this guy is a king because he was the son of this one, who was the son of this one, who is the son of this one. They go through their authority based on the bloodlines. And inevitably, when they get up to the top, they say, who received his authority from God.

And that’s why they have the right to rule, is because God said, this person is going to be king. He established him, he made him, he created him as king. And because God did that, now this line has their authority. It always ties back. It’s very similar. I think you even made this comment before, Nate, to our priesthood lines today when we try to say, okay, well, I received my priesthood from my father, who received it from his father, who received it from all the way, who received it from Joseph Smith, who received it under the hands of Peter, James and John, who received it from Jesus Christ. Now we can trace that lineage, that authority. And in the ancient world, not unique to Israel, but in all throughout the ancient world, their kings had to have driven that power or authority to rule over the people from God himself.

And so the king almost was a priest in a lot of cultures, they had divine authority to choose the priesthood, to choose their priests, to choose their counselors.

And in fact, maybe this is a good place to interject this. Mosiah, chapter 27, verse one.

There’s a subtle detail here that, again, I don’t think Joseph Smith ever would have invented you. Look at this in verse one. And now it came to pass. Then the persecutions which were inflicted on the church by the unbelievers became so great that the church began to murmur and complain to their leaders concerning the matter. And they did complain to Alma. And Alma laid the case before their king, Mosiah. And Mosiah consulted with his priests. Look at that last line on that, Nate. Mosiah consulted with his priest. Wait a second. Wasn’t Alma his priest?

Didn’t he put Alma in charge of the entire church? Alma had his priests and his teachers that he appointed. He did preside over the church. But even aside from that, Mosiah had his own priests as well. And you’re like, well, isn’t that confusing? If you have Mosiah and his priests and the church with their priests, what are these priests? And so to kind of take this back, to answer your question, maybe a little better. Nate, the hebrew word for priest is Cohen, but the word cohen in Hebrew means officiator, ruler, or like a magistrate. It’s someone who presides.

And so priests, yes, do preside in their office in the priesthood. But the priests of Mosiah in this case would have been like his cabinet, his counselors, his wise men that he consulted with. So even the name priest Cohen and how it was used interchangeably, could be used to represent the elders, in a sense of the one, the wise, the older people that you had in the gates that would judge the people didn’t necessarily have to be in a priesthood sense, as in the Levites or the aaronical priesthood that served in the temple. You had priests that weren’t necessarily associated with the priesthood in a spiritual sense, but were actually counselors, advisors, rulers in the kingdom. So there was a political structure that really priesthood was just authority, and the king had all the authority in the land. So it is a very interesting interplay. And for Joseph Smith to still use that word and say that Mosiah had his priests aside as separate from Alma, and those priests had a different role to us, that would be very confusing without understanding what that hebrew word meant and the context of ancient structure, the ancient hierarchy and governance, if that makes sense.

[00:37:08] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it’s.

Yeah, I’m glad we’re talking about that.

I’m sure we’ll be talking about that a lot more, too. So I don’t necessarily want to get hung up on it, but it is something I’m trying to understand better, is kind of some of those relationships where we are, you know, with the. Our church, we don’t see that necessarily at all. Right. Like, our spiritual leaders are the leaders of the church, and they have their own callings and things like that. And we very much, in our articles of faith, even state, you know, we’re subject to kings and rulers and whatnot. From a political side, we manage our own when it comes to the spiritual side of things.

So I guess I’m just trying to maybe understand the best. Like, when that changed? Was it when Christ set up his church, when he was here? You know, like, when did. When did that. When did this pattern kind of stop becoming that same pattern?

[00:38:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s a good question.

[00:38:10] Speaker B: We don’t, you know.

[00:38:13] Speaker A: Right, right. But I’m just, you know, just reflecting. I mean, even. Even Moses, first off the bat, consecrates Aaron as a priest. Right. And uses him and almost hands over a lot of the religious responsibility to Aaron while he still maintains that political leadership, governance, which is similar to what Nephi does when he has Jacob.

[00:38:37] Speaker B: Yes. Yep.

Was it when Christ set up his church after he left? Because, again, like, you don’t have really.

I mean, at that point, you know, with Peter, with Paul, with the rest of the disciples, is really kind of when you start seeing it the way that we. A lot closer to how we see it now.

[00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah.

And we live in a different time where the church. I mean, it is the kingdom of God that we talk about, but it’s not like it has a lot of political governance, does it? Right. We turn to the church for our spiritual governance, and then that second authority becomes our local rulers.

Based on the land that we live in and go. Like you quoted that article of faith, we almost have those two heads. And the church kind of tries to stay in its lane as far as spiritual guidance, but still defers to political guidance on an outside source from itself, which is kind of interesting.

[00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool. Let’s keep going.

[00:39:48] Speaker A: All right. Mosiah 20 716. And so this takes us to this vision that Alma the younger has. When an angel comes, stands before him, the earth shakes.

And this, I think we see parallels clearly with Paul when. When he’s out and the Lord asks him, why kickest thou against the pricks? And even in Paul’s case, right, he’s not the only one that experiences this vision. There’s other people with him, even though he’s the one that maybe experiences it to a greater extreme or a deeper level.

And Moses. Or Moses. Alma. And so in Mosiah, chapter 13, chapter 27, verse 13. Nevertheless, he cried again, saying, alma, arise and stand forth. For why persecutest thou, the church of God? For the Lord had said, this is my church, and I will establish it, and nothing shall overthrow it, save it. Be the transgressions of my people.

And I think that’s an interesting promise.

And I think that promises that the church isn’t going anywhere unless the church itself chooses to go anywhere. And this goes back to Isaiah when he says, where is the bill of thy divorce? Right where.

I didn’t put you off. You put me off. I didn’t turn away from you. You turned away from me. And I’ve paid a price. And I will redeem you. You’re mine. You’re my people. And the church will be the Lord’s. Unless we ourselves choose to leave the Lord. But the Lord’s not going anywhere.

And in this, when he says, if you yourself want to be destroyed. And so I want to read verse 16. Now I say unto you, go and remember the captivity of thy fathers in the land of Helam and in the land of Nephi. And remember how great things he has done for them, for as they were in bondage, and he has delivered them. And now I say unto thee, alma, go thy way and seek to destroy the church no more. For their prayers may be that their prayers may be answered. And this, even if thou wilt of thyself be cast off.

And they’re powerful words.

But what the angel has done to Alma at this point is recalled. And it sounds like two, but there’s actually three witnesses of this. When he says, remember the land of Helam, thy people, and their captivity in the land of Nephi.

And you think of the case of Alma and the problems that he had, and then also the problems of the people of Limhi and how they were also delivered. But with that, there’s a third witness, and that is the people of Zarahemla and how they were also delivered. And I think that’s powerful, because in the instance of all three Zarahemla, they lost the land to the Lamanites. They were defeated.

They fell as a people. They had fallen until Benjamin was able to reclaim the lands of their inheritance. And we saw that at the end of. Of Omni before we got into the next book.

In the case of Limhi’s people, under. Under Noah, they fell.

Their king was killed. The people were destroyed. And now under Limhi, four times, three, four times, he sent his armies to battle against the Nephites. And they lost, and they lost, and they lost.

And Alma’s people, again, they fell. And so when you look at these examples that the angel is reminding Alma of, it’s examples of people that were destroyed, people that had fallen, people that were conquered, people that were in bondage.

And I think having those three examples, in one sense, you could look at it as maybe harsh, like, you don’t think I can destroy you. Look at what happened to these people. They’re destroyed. And remember those examples. I don’t think that’s the case. I think here is actually the charity of the Lord. Alma is going to be coming from this.

It’s going to be a life changing event for him, where he is going to dwell on his sins, and he’s going to think that he’s lost, and this is going to have a profound impact on him and on the sons of Mosiah, by the way, to where they’re worried that their souls are gone.

They need, as a life preserver, not just one, but three examples of people who were lost, destroyed, and had no hope, and yet they were able to come back from that.

So that’s what I see the angels doing here to Alma, is throwing him a life preserver, as bad as this is. And I know where you’re gonna go. And your mind is going to be reflecting on all the things that you have said and done to destroy my church, thinking you were doing things for the right reason, thinking you were saving the people, or maybe turning them around or whatever the case may be, right. You get caught up in your own cause, trying to liberate everyone. And when you realize that you were wrong and the harm that you were causing, how much you beat yourself up over this, you’re going to need examples of kingdoms that were also lost, destroyed, that had no hope. And yet I was able to save them and deliver them, too. And that’s the strand of hope that Alma needed when he went through that experience to say, you know what?

These people were destroyed. These people lost everything. These people were gone, and yet God was able to save them. Why not me, too? How can the Lord save me and pull me out of the depths of despair, just like he did the people of Zarahemla, just like he did the people in the land of Mormon, or the lands thereby with Alma or the people of Limhi, how he saved them. Can he not also save this wretched soul that is me?

And you? Think of the differences between these people, right? What wrongs did they do under Benjamin? They were conquered by the Lamanites. They didn’t have any fault of their own.

What about the people of Alma, who left their sin and was trying to do the right thing, and yet they still found themselves conquered and subjected under sin? Or how about the people under Limhi, who were told multiple times from Noah, not from Noah, from Abinadi, and from Alma to repent, and yet didn’t listen. They willfully rebelled, found themselves in there, and they thought there’s no hope from them, and yet there was hope from them as well. So I think these three witnesses become powerful because you look at these witnesses, and they have varying degrees of culpability, whether you have no fault of your own, and you fall and you’re struggling, and you’re going through death or defeat, and the Lord’s going to help you because it wasn’t your fault, or whether you have all the fault in the world, and you had every chance to repent, every chance to make things right, and you refuse to listen, and you’re still stuck in the mire on this. And now you see, you need help. The Lord was still willing to dig you out and help.

That’s where I think these examples become kind of a lifeline to Alma. Knowing the angel, knowing what Alma’s going to experience and how he’s going to beat himself up, that this is going to be that lifeline that delivers him from the guilt and the gall. Like, even he’s just describes it in verse 29. My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss, but now I behold the marvelous light of God. And is this not the gospel?

I wish.

I mean, yesterday for me, anyways, today for you, or whenever it was. We come up on a fast Sunday where we go up and we share our testimonies.

I would love to hear testimonies about these experiences. Maybe I didn’t have any right being saved, but the Lord saved me. There is hope. And if he can save me, can he not also save you? Like, how do we extend that testimony? Like, these three witnesses were extended to Alma? How do we help others to see that there is salvation through Jesus Christ? How do we not also extend that hope for people who are going to be beating themselves up when they realize the truth and find out that there is a place for them and there is a plan for them and that that’s the whole purpose of things.

[00:48:17] Speaker B: Great stuff, man.

Do you feel.

Yeah, I think I was gonna kind of. I was hoping that you were gonna kind of maybe talk a little bit about a little bit of your experience so far, kind of in that fast and testimony thing. Again, I don’t want to, like, lead you or if that’s not where you wanted to go with it too much. But even per our conversation a little bit earlier today, even if it’s a slight detour, it kind of feels like it might be worth mentioning a little bit.

[00:48:49] Speaker A: Good call.

So, coming out here has been kind of an interesting experience for me.

Janessa, my wife, and I, we came out here in December of last year.

We felt like this is what we needed to do. We felt like this is where we needed to be. And so we kind of came to scope things out in December. And when we came to the ward, it was a struggling ward. There was not a lot of.

Not a lot of members, not a lot of youth. And we thought, boy, this is going to be hard for our kids, but there’s a reason for this.

And so we kind of came home and we told our kids, like, you might be the only youth in the ward. There might not be much that we’re coming to.

And we were blindsided when we got out here last week. Still hard to believe it’s only been a week.

We went to church on Sunday and they had a different building that they were meeting at, a building in their own city now.

And I was blown away because the entire sacrament room was full to the point where we’d filled it all with chairs that was almost standing room only at this point. And I was thinking, this cannot be the same ward that we were, that we were attending in December.

And so I asked the bishop what happened afterwards? And I mean, even last week before we get to fast and testimony meeting. And I promise I’ll bring this right back around to where you’re talking, Nate, with a fast and testimony meeting the week before. The first talk was a sister who had come back to the church, and she’s explaining her story about how she came back to the church and, and the Lord calling and saying it’s time to return.

And then the second talk was another sister talking about her experience coming back to church.

And then the second hour was priesthood. And the second hour of priesthood. At the end of priesthood, we ordained a man to the office of a priest and gave him the aaronic priesthood so that he in turn could give the priesthood to his son and ordain him to the office of a priest. Both of them were baptized three weeks ago.

And so the whole feel of that meeting when I came away with. What I came away with is this room is filled up with people coming back to the church and being baptized to the church. And when I asked the bishop, what’s going on, he said that they even had three baptisms the Saturday before that. So I know of at least two the Saturday before that. Then he had this three.

And then this Saturday before fast and testimony, meaning our family were able to attend the baptism of somebody else. And we were able to go to missionary discussions and hear all of these people being taught that are just interested and excited to hear more about the church.

It’s been an incredible experience to see all of these people turning to the Lord and hungry and wanting to learn more and coming to this church and seeing this, this ward just expand an incredible growth rate.

And so to take this back to what you’re alluding to, Nate fast and testimony meeting yesterday for me, we were sitting there and I was looking, we’ve got three sets of missionaries in our ward. I’ve never seen that before. Six missionaries just in our ward alone. And they all have investigators there.

And some of these two of these people, I had sat in discussions with them the last week with the missionaries were there, excited to be there. We were able to say hi to them, plus other investigators that I hadn’t even met yet. I don’t know about you, Nate. In my mission, it was almost impossible to get investigators to come into church. It happened, obviously, and we had baptisms, but it wasn’t super easy.

[00:52:37] Speaker B: But it was not easy.

[00:52:39] Speaker A: No.

But as I looked out there and I saw just handfuls of investigators coming to hear the church, and I’m listening to the testimonies that are being shared to me there almost felt like there was a little disconnect. And I don’t want to be too hard on this, but a lot of the testimonies, I think we kind of get caught in this culture, and we talk about the church, and we talk about how important the Book of Mormon is. And I agree 100%.

The Book of Mormon is the word of God, and the power is in the Book of Mormon, and you see it and you feel it.

But when we’re starting to talk, we almost.

I don’t know the best way to say this. As I’m listening to the testimonies that are being shared, they almost become what we expect culturally, but not super spiritually nourishing, if that makes sense.

I would have appreciated hearing the testimonies about the atonement of Jesus Christ, about how that light, that spirit, has helped change someone’s life, and they’ve come to know the savior better because of the restored gospel, how the scriptures take us to, they are the words of Christ. They testify of Christ, and they lead us to Christ.

I think as a new person coming to hear, listen to church and feel the spirit and see how that can help me and how that can change me. When I hear testimony of things that are completely foreign to me, that don’t tie necessarily back to Christ, there’s a little bit of a disconnect.

I don’t know. There’s times as a missionary, you worry a little bit, sometimes bringing investigators to the church, and sometimes you think, okay, what’s happening this Sunday? Maybe we should come the following Sunday. I don’t know.

[00:54:47] Speaker B: Do you ever say no? I mean, definitely. I have stories. But for another time.

[00:54:57] Speaker A: I guess the best way to put a positive spin on this and.

And this kind of sunk deep for me. It got me thinking about my own testimony, and what do I share in testimony meeting and how can that edify others? How has it edified me.

And how does my experience, my relationship with the Lord, help others to find hope, to be grounded in the Lord? And it’s not to say we don’t testify the prophet Joseph Smith, we don’t testify the book of Mormon 100%. I think we do.

The fact that Joseph Smith saw the heavens open and he saw God, and that God cares about us today enough to continue to send prophets, that gives me hope that the Lord speaks to people, to individuals that seek him out, and that he will answer prayers and that he has answered not only his prayer, but he answers my prayer.

I feel like I can relate to that.

And there’s a lot of light and a lot of hope in that. And so, I guess more than anything, just to give us the perspective of does the message and the light that we share provide others with that same sense of warmth or light that they can turn to to find comfort, to find hope, to find that line that will guide them to the Lord?

Or are we regurgitating things that we think sound important or something that we think should be expected, or something that’s going to make us sound good in the eyes of others, but not necessarily edify those who are coming to be fed.

[00:56:37] Speaker B: Killer.

Awesome. Well, we always appreciate you listening. Sorry that we missed last week. We’ve been kind of trying to deal with connection issues, but we are committed to getting it back up and running. We’ve got to definitely at least see it through to the end of this year so that we will have done all four seasons, dude, all. All four years of the. Of the church discussions. So hopefully by this time next week, we’ll actually have a much more solid Internet connection and we’ll be able to see each other while we’re kind of doing this, which I think is going to help us both feel a little bit more confident in kind of keeping the conversation normal.

Anyways, if there’s nothing else, Jason, then I guess we’ll sign it off until next week.

[00:57:30] Speaker A: See ya.

Transcript:

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.

[00:00:30] Speaker B: Hey, buddy.

[00:00:31] Speaker A: What’s up, Nate?

[00:00:32] Speaker B: I just love how over the years, that little intro has evolved, and it all has evolved around me being our friend.

[00:00:39] Speaker A: Our friend.

[00:00:43] Speaker B: Oh, man. That’s so funny.

[00:00:45] Speaker A: It’s great.

[00:00:48] Speaker B: Last week. Last week in the studio together.

[00:00:51] Speaker A: Last week in the studio. And then we change up locations a little bit.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: Let’s not blow it.

[00:00:56] Speaker A: Let’s. Let’s. Let’s knock it out of the park.

[00:00:59] Speaker B: I’m so. I’m so bummed on so many levels, but I’m also, like, in a weird sort of way, like, looking forward to be able to. Being able to do this from my, like, spare bedroom, a little home studio going forward in the future. You know?

[00:01:16] Speaker A: You know what? It might. It might even open doors for us because there’s a chance, and I don’t want to promise anything at this point, but there’s a chance. The way we do this, we could be getting some video recordings, posting it on YouTube. There’s a chance.

[00:01:29] Speaker B: Dude, you have to remember, you’re going to be recording this at, like, some, you know, insane hour in the morning. But, dude, mine’s going to be on a Sunday night at some insane hour. Dude, I don’t want to be on video.

[00:01:44] Speaker A: So you’re saying there’s a chance.

[00:01:46] Speaker B: No, I’m literally saying the exact opposite of that is that there’s no chance that that’s happening.

[00:01:53] Speaker A: All right. Sorry if I got any of you guys excited.

[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and just shut that down immediately. Nobody needs that, dude, you can listen to us. That’s exactly right.

[00:02:05] Speaker A: On the weekly podcast if you want to.

[00:02:06] Speaker B: If you want to listen to us, you can still listen to us. We’re gonna still make that happen, but we are not gonna be doing video anytime soon.

Dude, I’m gonna be.

Dude, even just like, dude, even rolling into the studio some nights to do this, I’m always just like, bro, I’m glad nobody can see us.

[00:02:26] Speaker A: Isn’t that just on brand, though? Come on.

[00:02:28] Speaker B: I mean, it is.

All right, anyways, let’s go ahead. Let’s get into it.

[00:02:33] Speaker A: All right.

This week we’re covering Mosiah, chapters 18 through 24.

And it’s kind of a lot, but it’s good.

It’s Alma, who goes off on his own to the waters of Mormon and brings in a bunch of. A bunch of people.

It’s gonna be Limhi’s reign and Noah. The end, the death of Noah. He meets his.

Ignominious. I said that right?

[00:03:01] Speaker B: Ignanimous.

[00:03:01] Speaker A: Ignatimus.

This is gonna turn into a tuberculosis type situation.

[00:03:07] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:03:10] Speaker A: Sorry if you guys don’t get that reference.

Yes. He’s gonna meet his end, and we’re going to talk about Alma’s people, and we’re going to talk about deliverance, because Limhi’s people get saved. Alma’s people get saved. And you know what? The road to deliverance is kind of unpleasant.

It wasn’t as comfortable as maybe we would hope or expect, but that’s kind of the. In a nutshell, if you will, the chapters that we’re talking about tonight.

So let’s. Let’s dive in. I don’t think I have anything else to bring up. Let’s just start. Let’s just start, you guys. All right, first off, you know, I’m going to start chapter 18, and I’m going to read verse seven. And I might go backwards here in a little bit, but I’m going to start in verse seven. And it came to pass after many days. There were a goodly number of people gathered together at the place of Mormon to hear the words of Alma. And that’s the stage I wanted to set with the very first question.

Why is it when a Benidi goes, everybody is critical of the guy?

[00:04:13] Speaker B: It’s totally. What’s going to be my first question, too. I’m glad that we’re on the same wavelength here.

[00:04:17] Speaker A: Go ahead. We don’t like him.

Send him to the king. You got to execute this guy. And then Alma, and all of a sudden, a goodly number of people. I mean, is Alma winning popularity contest that a binai couldn’t? I mean, was a binai just an outcast? Was he socially awkward?

What’s the deal with the Benidi getting nobody listening, nobody caring versus Alma?

[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, as I’ve been. It’s so funny you bring this up, because I totally am with you on this question.

Do you want thoughts on this, or do you have the answer?

[00:04:48] Speaker A: Both. Let’s dive in. Go for it.

[00:04:50] Speaker B: Does it have anything to do with.

Because the Lamanites now have already come in and started causing trouble again, right?

[00:04:59] Speaker A: I think they’re about to. They haven’t yet.

[00:05:02] Speaker B: Cause one of my answers was gonna be maybe if. Maybe if the timeline is a little suspicious, maybe the Lamanites are coming in because we gotta remember the reason that everybody was having problems with the Benidi in the first place is cause they got comfortable, right? They just won some battle. So even though. Cause my kids actually asked a fantastic question when we were talking about this just at dinner or whatever, kind of going over, you know what we learned at church today? My kids asked the question, like, why were Noah’s people okay with Noah during this time when he was taxing them, when he was gnarly, when he was, like, a creepy dude, when all of the people that he had creepy dudes too, they’re like, why would his people. Why, why? Why were they upset at Abinadi, of all people? Why weren’t they more upset at the king? I was like, that’s a great question. But I think it came back to the idea that it’s like, well, at least the king helped him win some battles. And maybe, or, you know, whatever. It’s just like they had kind of.

They were kind of high on the hog at the time and maybe felt comfortable. But the thing is, like, even that’s a great question. It’s like, yeah. Why did. Why were the people upset at Abinadi in the first place? Dude, their king was the freaking jerk in the first place.

[00:06:14] Speaker A: You know, that’s an interesting question. And when you look from a historical perspective at past rulers, and you go back to Herod, right? They call Herod Herod the Great, by the way. That’s his moniker. And I don’t think anybody reading the new testament reads the New Testament and wants to call Herod great.

But the deal with Herod is he was successful, and successful in the sense he establishes his kingdom.

And a lot of times, historians judge kings on what they’re able to accomplish. And you look at Noah, and he is accomplishing a lot of building projects, architecture. He’s building these towers. He’s lining these things with gold, construction. And so I think people are looking at him and maybe viewing him as a successful king by a lot of different measuring sticks. And yes, he is pulling in taxes, but with those taxes, he’s building infrastructure. He’s building, I don’t know, try to find equivalency to this, even with Herod, like a hippodrome or a gladiator ring or, you know, and it’s not a one to one comparison, but what he’s doing is investing in the city, and it makes them feel like they’re more wealthy people, there are more powerful people. The government has money. The government spending money. The government, as goes the government, so goes the people. And I think the people see the government, that it’s rich, that it’s powerful, and that makes them feel rich and powerful. And maybe they’re not as hard down on Noah for taking their money as what we see this after.

[00:07:55] Speaker B: And that’s what I think that. I think that’s kind of the point that we came to, which would have made it make sense then, if still then the Lamanites are coming in, you know, I mean, stealing people’s wives and kids and, you know what I mean, doing the whole thing, then it would make a lot more sense that you would have a healthy group of people break off and be like, this sucks. Maybe Ben and I wasn’t such a bad dude after all. If that hasn’t happened yet, I guess I’m confused.

[00:08:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought I could be wrong on this. I could be remembering this wrong. I thought that the people were kind of, the Lamanites were kind of picking off their, the people in the crops right on the field and starting to renege a little bit on their promise, right? And Noah sends armies out and Noah puts an end to that. And they’re looking at Noah and they’re starting to celebrate and think this guy is the greatest guy ever. Because not only are we wealthy, we have all these building projects, but we have a more superior military that can drive these guys off and he’s able to keep us safe. So they’re, they’re looking at an exchange of. They’re paying for security. They’re paying for.

[00:09:06] Speaker B: Exactly. But I’m saying after Ebenady is killed, after Ebinadi is killed, and Noah’s basically saying, hey, like, to the, to his men and stuff like that, like, hey, we’re under attack. Like leave all the wives and kids behind. Like, we gotta get out of here.

[00:09:20] Speaker A: See, that’s happening still after Alma, right? So Alma’s able to have success with the people before that happens.

[00:09:28] Speaker B: That’s why I’m confused. And this is why I was trying. This is why, as I was like trying to go through this and make sense of this, I was going, well, that would have made sense to me because then they would have lost their sense of security as well as these other things. You see what I’m saying?

[00:09:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I see exactly what you’re saying. And in fact, that’s what we see with, with Limhi. In the aftermath of everything going down with Noah and the Lamanites, like you’re bringing up, they start to ask the question, where are the people of Alma. We wish that we could join with them today. And so Alma’s actually having success pre any of this. You do have this repentant people that sees the prophecies fulfilled and want to join, but Alma’s actually able to rope these people in before they even see the writing on the wall.

[00:10:13] Speaker B: What do you think it is?

[00:10:15] Speaker A: I think there’s a couple good lessons we can learn from this. In one sense, it’s a second witness, it’s a second voice. If a banded eye is saying, this is the case, that’s one thing. But now, to have somebody, and particularly somebody who was a priest, a person in power, a person of position that you look to for answers, you looked to for information. And he has had a dramatic change to accept, to listen. It gives credence to what Binadai was saying. Now, all of a sudden, it doesn’t seem so crazy. Now, you know what? There might be something to that that is worth listening to. There’s something to be said about multiple witnesses, two or three witnesses. And that’s what happens with Alma when he finds Amulek. And now, all of a sudden, he gets more traction because somebody else is willing to say yes.

And I think the other thing that we can learn from this is Alma’s doing this in private, where Abinadi is standing on a soapbox and addressing the entire group. These are two very different approaches. And so if you have a large crowd of people gathered together, and you’re trying to teach them the words of Isaiah, you’re trying to warn them about what’s going on, all it takes is a few negative voices in the cloud, cloud crowd to drown out what you’re saying and to make it seem ridiculous.

[00:11:35] Speaker B: It’s a good freudian slip, though, considering fighting with people online.

[00:11:38] Speaker A: But, yes, that’s interesting, I think.

Even, in fact, I think what drives this point home is when King Noah is going through the rigamor with the binadi and trying to figure out what to do with him, and he sees the power of a binadi, that they can’t touch him, and he hears him testify, and he hears him say everything, and he’s afraid and wants to let him go. But the voices of the priests say, we can’t. You know? And now, all of a sudden, I think that’s what you see with the crowds that are listening to Abinadi. Even if you are influenced, even if you feel the spirit, even if you have a desire, and you say, why I want to. It’s so easy to put that little flame out with the voices of others there. And so when Alma’s going in private and talking to people, it blocks out the noise, and you’re able to cut through that noise and talk to people with them in a way that that noise isn’t going to put that little flame out.

[00:12:42] Speaker B: It’s funny that it’s. Throughout the scriptures, there’s always the dudes that are going in there, like, preaching against God, and those dudes always do really successful in big groups of people. I wonder why. It’s like. It’s funny. It’s like the opposite’s true. It’s almost like a dude. It’s like Samuel the Lamanite, right? He gets up on the wall and he’s trying to do it, and they’re shooting arrows at him. It’s like the dude’s trying to, like, preach the gospel in big groups. It doesn’t. It doesn’t usually work out that well, but it’s always that one Antichrist dude that usually has a ton of success in a big group of people bagging on God. I don’t know, that’s kind of a weird. That’s like a weird, I don’t know.

[00:13:28] Speaker A: Social, you know, that’s an interesting observation.

[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I wonder why that is. Yeah, you know what I mean? It’s like, you hear there’s always the stories of, like, early church missionaries and stuff like that, going over to England very much, trying to do kind of the soapbox thing. And, you know, I don’t know if people are actually throwing food at them, but you just, like, so many of those stories, right, are just like, everybody’s just like, get out of here.

And there’s always the one. I mean, maybe that’s kind of. Maybe that’s like, the lesson to be learned from there is that at a certain point, God asks us to go do these things. And even if we can look at it and be like, I don’t know how there is going to be anything successful from this. You go do it. Cause there might be. There might be Alma in the crowd, right? There might be the one, dude.

[00:14:17] Speaker A: You know, from my own experience, too, I know every night we try to gather the kids in for scriptures or for prayers, or in the morning, we try to pull them together, right? And it almost becomes.

You almost hate to hear that, you know, come for prayers. Come for prayers. It’s like the kids shouting from the bathroom, like, mom, I am dad, I need some help.

And. And nobody. Nobody really listens to it. Like, you can sit there and call out every. Every other minute for 15 minutes, and it just takes 15, 2030 minutes, because the people that aren’t coming aren’t coming because they’re waiting for somebody else to come. And they know if they’re not there, then it’s just gonna be wasting their time, right? So I’m not coming until they come, and I’m not coming until they. And then nobody comes.

But if I. But if I go and find the one and say, hey, we’re trying to say prayers, come for prayers. And I get them to come and then go to the next one, and the next one, then, man, it saves me, like, 1015 minutes on just gathering everybody. You go to the one. And I think a lot of what Christ did when he came was also finding the one.

[00:15:24] Speaker B: Oh, sure. I mean, as much as he spoke to multitudes, I think it’s, in a lot of those cases, the multitudes were. Multitudes were coming to him at that point.

You bring up a good point, because it also only takes one kid when you’re trying to take a family picture. You could have, like, you could have the whole family there smiling, and all it takes is one person that goes, are we done yet? I’m done taking family pictures. And then everybody starts, like, I’m telling you, like, group psychology is fascinating to me.

[00:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:15:50] Speaker B: Like, what you just brought up. It’s like, I’m trying to get them all to come and say prayers. It’s like they’re all kind of tenuously waiting for, like, something to happen. But even when you do have them all together and trying to take, like, a photo and just be like, hey, if everybody would just to stay still for 25, 5 seconds, it wouldn’t take us 25 minutes to do this. But instead, all it takes is one person going, ugh. The. The reason. The reason that this is fascinating is because we’ve talked about this, too. When. When Christ is with Pilate and he’s desperately trying to release him at this point, right. He’s really trying to convince the mob to let him go. It’s just like, it’s. You’ve, you know, you’ve seen the church produce videos. It just takes a couple people in the crowd going, crucify them, and then a couple people around them, and then everybody’s like, oh, okay, cool. Now here’s what we’re doing. It’s like. I’m just saying, like, it’s. It’s funny how. Well, it’s funny how, well, you know, the tormentors do in a mob and how hard it is to really get the mob to come around to the positive influence in a mob.

[00:17:00] Speaker A: You’ve seen it the other way around.

You’ve got somebody that’s the life of the party.

If you have a bunch of friends there, and you’re all just sitting there quietly and whatever, but, you know, if you get one person there and they can just have fun, no matter what’s going on, it’s almost contagious.

They can kind of bring life into a party. But like you say, it seems almost more often that you run into.

It just takes one person to deflate all the life out of the party.

[00:17:31] Speaker B: There’s something. There’s something interesting there.

[00:17:33] Speaker A: It’s a shoot, man. You don’t know what you’re gonna get with the crowd. And if you can focus in on the one and block out the door.

[00:17:40] Speaker B: Do you think a Ben and I would have done better if he would have just gone around knocking on doors?

[00:17:45] Speaker A: I don’t know if that was his role, though.

[00:17:47] Speaker B: I agree. I think that was gonna be my point was, is that even this discussion and kind of like the thought experiment that we’re having, or just. Or the conversation about the social.

Whatever it is, right. The social discussion, maybe it’s not as important to what God needed a Ben and I did be doing.

[00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:18:10] Speaker B: Maybe he needed him to be doing this in a crowd so that he would get taken to Noah, so that the whole thing. Right. It’s like. It’s a sequence of events that we can’t.

We can’t know what the alternative would have been.

[00:18:20] Speaker A: And I like the symbolism of Noah as Christ in the sense that he had to give his life.

[00:18:26] Speaker B: Noah or Benidi.

[00:18:27] Speaker A: I’m sorry. Abinadi think you’d be like, no, I was interested.

[00:18:31] Speaker B: I was, like, going for it.

[00:18:34] Speaker A: No, that he would go was rejected by his people, because Christ is being rejected by his people, except for a very small few that accept him, in the sense, at the very end, and does this so that a nation can be redeemed or saved.

I’m trying to look at this the other way around. Right. What happens if Ebina takes the private approach at first, rather than the crowds? And I am envisioning in my mind, if you’re knocking on a door and you’re going in and you’re talking to a family, I can almost see the person in the family saying, this is great, and I see it. Why don’t you tell everybody? Why aren’t you telling the city? Because what can I do? What am I going to do about this? You almost have to bring it out to the city to see that. No, nobody’s going to listen for the individual to not naturally go to tell the world when you see the world, reject it. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a progression there with that.

All right, next, I did want to talk about. I mean, this is where I’m going to go backwards a little bit. So chapter 18 again. But I wanted to go to verse four. And it came to pass that as many as did believe him to go forth to a place which was called Mormon, having received its name from the king, being in the borders of the land, having been infested at times or, excuse me, infested by times or at seasons by wild beasts. And there’s two things here. Verse four right there. The end of that verse is where I wanted to kind of hone in on it. But at the same time, while I’m here, it does seem kind of funny how much Mormon pulls out that the name of this was Mormon. Like, do you think he’s really trying to. I mean, it’s his name.

[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

And he says he’s doing it. He’s doing it in a good way.

[00:20:21] Speaker A: He is. He is. Where is it? Because he says, the water was Mormon, the forest was Mormon, the land was Mormon. It was all called Mormon. I don’t know. It just seemed kind of funny for me, dude.

[00:20:32] Speaker B: He was probably stoked, man.

[00:20:34] Speaker A: I bet he was like, this is his heritage. This is where it comes from. We have that whole speech from Lehi saying, I named you Nephi and Lehi because of your forefathers. And I want you to remember that. And here’s Mormon reading this. And he’s like, this is the story of where I get my name from. And he really latches onto that. I love it, dude.

[00:20:53] Speaker B: Taking pride in your name, man. I’m never gonna bag on that. I think that’s rad. I think it’s sweet. I think that I have zero issue with Mormon being stoked that it was called that.

[00:21:03] Speaker A: No, I like that he was. And it’s almost. You can see his excitement by how much he’s bringing.

[00:21:08] Speaker B: Awesome, dude.

[00:21:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Let’s go. So the end of verse four, this is what I wanted to point out, the land having been infested by times or at seasons by wild beasts. And I thought, that’s an interesting detail to include in the story. Why do they care that the land was infested by wild beasts?

And I’m thinking from a practical purpose, maybe that’s why they’re able to remain hidden because this place has got kind of a. Yeah, so a couple reasons. Right. One, it’s got a reputation. If there’s a bunch of wild beasts there. Wild beasts don’t go to areas that are commonly frequented by people.

They’re going to areas that are maybe a little bit more off the beaten path.

And the other thing, if you’re talking about wild beasts, maybe people aren’t going to be searching for people here because it’s a scary place to be trying to survive. If you’ve got predators that are out here regularly, that’s, that’s not going to go well.

But I also think there’s fresh water. It’s a, the waters of Mormons, a fresh water source. It’s just going to attract wild beasts from wherever to try to come and drink the water. You’re going to have. You’re going to have a lot of that there.

I just think that this detail is included in the Book of Mormon. For me, there’s a little bit of profoundness to this. And here’s what I mean. Symbolically having wild beasts coming to the fountain of water to get life to drink.

Symbolically in the story of these guys who are putting off the natural man, who are coming to the waters of Mormon to seek a new beginning, a new birth, a baptism, and leave the wild beast behind in the wilderness, per se.

I think there’s some symbolism there and some meaning. And I look at Joseph Smith, if you’re just making a story and you want to draw that point out and make a point of it, then why aren’t you expanding on it? Why aren’t you talking about it? Why aren’t you going? And this is why the wild beasts. Or why aren’t you like, it takes a lot of discipline, right. And if you’re not noticing it, then why are you even including it in the first place? You’re not beating the reader over the head with it, but you’re also, it’s just something subtle enough that I think some of these nuances, some of these little complexities in here, I think nod a little bit to the authenticity of the book and the claims that Joseph Smith is making.

[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that’s, I think it’s a great detail.

We talked. I sent you that little, I sent you that little thing where it talks about what is. Was it zif, something like that. Meat. And you’re just. Or the. Or not meat. The metal.

[00:24:01] Speaker A: The metal. When he’s talking about the different types of currencies.

[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah. That Noah’s collecting. And there was a little thing that was just like, oh, yeah, it’s very similar to the hebrew word that means shiny or bright or something like that. And I’m just like, dude, at a certain point, like, at a certain point, you know, a lot of. A lot of the things that I feel like people antagonistic against the church try to say is like, well, there was a lake that was kind of by the Smith’s house in a neighboring state that kind of had a name that sounded like one of the names of a character in the scriptures. And you’re like, oh, that one really got you, huh? Like that. There was other things that sound kind of like other things or whatever. And I’m like, cool, man. Well, in here, we’re referring to a type of metal that literally sounds exactly like a hebrew word that means shiny or bright or, you know, things like that. I’m like, which one of these is actually maybe more of a profound thing here? You know? Like, at a certain point, you’re just like, this is.

That’s. You’re like, that’s hard to be able to know.

Unless we’re also just going to give Joseph Smith a degree, we’re going to assume that he knows the Hebrew language that well, that he would be able to include those details. I’m just like, okay, I don’t base my testimony off of that, but it is hard for me to see details like that and then to still have people arguing, well, he also had an uncle that went to college. And you’re like, oh, okay, I guess you got me on that one, you know?

Do you see what I’m saying?

[00:25:49] Speaker A: I see exactly like, at a certain.

[00:25:50] Speaker B: Point, like, come on, Occam’s razor, right?

[00:25:52] Speaker A: The simplest explanation, it’s like, that’s some.

[00:25:55] Speaker B: Of these details that are being included. To your point, it’s like for Joseph Smith to not only be able to make them up, but to be able to be making them up on the spot as they’re being written down and not being able to go back and really kind of, like, self edit this thing over and over and over and rewrite it and kind of rework it. It’s like you have to also consider the process of the translation when you realize the miracle that is the Book of Mormon, which is why, in my opinion, still the best way to ever convince anybody of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is to have them read it. Read it. Don’t be afraid.

Because once you start reading it, the idea that it was being made up on the spot by a kid, really, a young adult. Right. This still, it’s absurd.

[00:26:48] Speaker A: And in fact, I’ve got, I’ve got two more things from this week’s lesson to kind of back that up a little bit more.

We’ve talked for any of you that were hanging out with us during Old Testament, something that we noticed, a theme that keeps, keeps popping up is how in the Old Testament, names took on significance. Moses. Moses name means to draw out. And his Egyptian, would you call it stepmother, adopted mother, who pulls him out of the water, names him because she’s drawing him out of the water.

But it’s a fitting name because Moses draws the people out, Israel out of Egypt, just like he was drawn out of the water.

And I think, you know, well, let me give you a couple more examples and I’ll come back to what I’m trying to say on this.

And the cool thing about Moses name, it’s not just that in Hebrew it means to draw out, but in Egyptian it means son of.

You see that with Ramesses Ra, Moses. Ra is the God and Moses is the son of. So the son of Ra, tut Moses, the son of toot, the son of Thoth.

And it’s a very common thing in Egypt to name them after a deity. And in Moses’s case, if we’re going off of the egyptian name, it’s the son of. And it doesn’t have a name.

And it makes sense when you’re drawing him out of the water and you don’t know who his parents are and he doesn’t have a mom and he doesn’t have a dad, I’m just going to call him Moses. He’s son of. I don’t. He’s an unknown, he doesn’t have a father.

But when Moses is out in the wilderness and he’s coming back to Egypt to pull the people out, and the Lord appears to him in the bush and he asks God and says, who shall I say sent me? And God says, I am who I am. I am the unnamed God. He doesn’t give a name.

And because you have to understand this, in egyptian mythology, the great God, the father God, had a secret hidden name that he didn’t reveal to anybody, because if you knew the name of God, you could possess the power of God. And so his name was supposed to be the secret name, the unknowable God, the unknown God, the hidden God. And now here comes Moses, and he is the son of blank because you couldn’t say his name. And now you have this battle of the gods Ra, the son of Ra. Moses ramses, versus Moses, the son of the unnamed God. His name takes on significance in egyptian, in Hebrew, and all sorts of meaning in dual nature. Just how does that come together?

And the other example that I wanted to point out was, I think we mentioned this from time to time as Ruth, the story of Ruth, because she marries a man whose hebrew name means weakly and his brother means sickly. Weakly and sickly. Ironically enough, both get sick and die.

And what mom names their kids weakly and sickly? I mean, you just have to ask that question, right?

And not only that, but they’re coming from Israel in a time of famine. And famine in Israel is often, if not always, associated with apostasy. And the commandment was that they were not supposed to marry anybody from the Moabites, and weakly and sickly take moabite wives. So we see a demonstration of israelite men breaking the laws, the commandments, going outside of Israel, turning away from God, symbolically in the story, by doing what they’re doing. But Ruth, on the other hand, is turning into God. And she talks to the mother of these boys and says, let your God be my God. And she’s coming from a position of weakness into strength, where Israel’s fading away from strength to weakness. She’s coming from weakness to strength. And so it’s fitting that in the end she marries Boaz, whose hebrew name literally means strength. And you see this interplay between Israelites and Gentiles, and one working their way out while the other one works their way in, which is significant all throughout, I mean, even the New Testament, after Christ and his teachings.

And one might ask the question, what hebrew mom would name their kids weekly and sickly, do they just assign characters names after the fact that names are going to fit the story?

But I wonder if it’s not God, his signature in this work.

To say you couldn’t control how you were going to be named, it was out of your control. And yet this happened exactly how things from before you were born, before you were conscious, before you were aware, almost as if to say he had a plan worked out before the foundation of the world that was going to work and be successful throughout your life. I see God’s hand in this, even in Moses, especially in Moses, where you have a name that’s dual in nature, that works in the Egyptian, that works in the Hebrew. But this is a common theme in the Bible. And we’ve talked about this a lot in the Old Testament. If you want to dive more into this, feel free to check out some of our old episodes.

But the reason I bring this up is because I see this play out here in the Book of Mormon. We’re running into the story right now with Gideon and Noah. The name Noah in Hebrew means rest or repose. And we talk about Noah in the Old Testament. That makes sense because he’s able to build an ark and find rest when the rest of the world is troubled and he enters into God’s rest. And there’s legends, if you go to the outside of Israel and to the akkadian legends of Upnapishtim, who was this Noah guy, he actually enters into the presence of God and becomes a God because of what he does. He enters into God’s rest, this Noah.

How do you see him enter into God’s rest instead? It’s like he is resting. He is taking his own rest, his own vacation. He is a wine bibber. He’s building breastplates of gold breastplates, breastworks of gold for people to repose on, to lay on. He has these architectural buildings, these towers, to try to defend his people, but he doesn’t even staff them right. It’s all show. I’ve built this tower to keep it safe, but he’s not willing to commit to actually putting people in it. It’s all on the show while he’s actually vacationing. He’s not going to take the responsibility to follow through. He’s resting. He’s reposing. He’s lazy.

And so here you have a man who encapsulates lazy in what he’s doing, and his name is rest or repose. And then you have Gideon, who’s going to come chop him down. And Gideon’s name in Hebrew is the hewer of the axe. Hewer to cut down. And so here comes the axe hewer. The axe is laid at the root of the tree because he’s been resting and not being diligent in keeping the commandments of the Lord. And this story kind of plays out. And in the end, Noah is almost, in a sense, chopped down like a tree and burned like wood. Just as, I don’t know, it’s interesting how these play out. And this idea of the names taking on the significance and the stories is very Hebrew. It’s very what you would expect from the Bible.

But with Joseph Smith, who didn’t know Hebrew at the time, to be able to take names and find names that work in the situation, to weave them into the story that fits just like biblical storytelling. Same thing with Lehi. If we take a little bit of a tangent on this. Lehi’s name means jawbone or ja. And ja means to be able to talk, to converse. If you have a gift of ja, a gift of. It’s like a gift of jab or gab. Gab.

And read that, knowing what Lehi means and see how many times he’s able to speak powerfully. An orator who’s able to convince his sons, just off of his speech to completely change course. He is a man known for his ability to speak, to negotiate. He’s a trader. He’s a merchant. And so it fits. So I look at some of these details, and to me, that just kind of furthers what we’re saying with Joseph Smith and pulling this record together, that maybe this record has a lot more layers of complexity to it, and maybe there’s a compelling reason for why we should be taking this serious and figuring out for ourselves if it’s true or not, just off of what we can see here in the text.

[00:35:32] Speaker B: Glad you went down that road.

[00:35:35] Speaker A: There’s. There’s one more road.

[00:35:37] Speaker B: Hit it.

[00:35:38] Speaker A: What we’re talking about. I mean, we talked about the. Okay, so this is gonna be.

It’s a small detail again.

And this is when.

Okay, let’s just fast forward through the story a little bit.

Gideon chases Noah. They go up the tower, they see the Lamanites coming, and Noah begs with Gideon to spare his life. They go down, they tell all the people to gather their stuff and run. The women and the children are slowing them down, so Noah commands them to leave the women and children behind so that the Lamanites can. I mean, it’s kind of sad and depressing, right? Like, who leaves your family behind to be slain so that the Lamanites are taking their time.

[00:36:23] Speaker B: That was the other questions that my kids asked tonight, which were just like, they’re like, you would never, like, leave us for this type of thing. And I’m like, no, what the. Like, this is. It takes. I can see why the dudes people rebelled against him when they, I think, maybe got caught up in the moment. My son did bring up a good point. My son, my nine year old was like, well, they had to do what they were commanded to do. You know? If they were commanded to do that, like, don’t they have to follow the orders of the king and stuff like that? I’m like, yeah. I mean, that was maybe their excuse.

[00:36:57] Speaker A: That’s a. I mean, that’s a tough thing. You’re right. I mean, if you have a king commanding you, there’s a sense of obligation, a sense of duty.

And there’s also a sense of, I want to survive. I want to live.

[00:37:12] Speaker B: That’s the thing, is, maybe the sense of duty was the excuse to still act selfishly.

[00:37:17] Speaker A: I think selfish is kind of the root of this. We see the nature that a lot of these people were made of, and maybe a lot of these people that couldn’t see beyond themselves were the vocal few that was making it so. The others willing to stay behind and do the right thing didn’t listen to a binadi because their voices were influencing them the wrong way. Right. But there’s one detail about these guys when they come back with their hats in their hand to try to figure this out to Limhi and his people and see if their families are still alive.

This is chapter.

Okay, this is chapter 19.

And when they come back, let’s see. The verse 21.

And the king commanded them that they should not return. And they were angry with the king and caused that he should suffer even death by fire, which we talked about. And then they come back. Verse 23. And the people told the men of Gideon that they had slain the king and the priests and fled from them farther into the wilderness. Verse 24. And it came to pass that after they had ended the ceremony, that they returned to the land of Nephi.

That’s a small word here, ceremony, but how does it fit? What ceremony are they performing? Why is it that they had to do a ceremony outside of the land of Nephi before they were allowed to enter back into the land of Nephi?

Again, I think this shows complexity in this book that I don’t think Joseph Smith would have included if he’s just writing this on his own. The idea is, if you participate in death, if you’re in a room of somebody that’s dead, in fact, this is Christ right before he does the atonement. And, you know, Christ, he enters into the same building of the woman, the girl that’s dead, and raises her from the dead. He’s willing to make himself unclean, in a sense, to perform all sorts of miracles. But when it’s right before the atonement and Lazarus is dead, he, instead of going into the room, which would have made him ritually unclean, he shouts with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

And rather than touch the corpse and unwrap it, he has somebody else do it. And he maintains that ritual purity. There is an uncleanliness that happens when you’re participating in the work of death. And more so, these people are unclean, a very different, more levels than one, is what I’m trying to say.

Not only did they kill Noah, but they killed Noah. And what I mean by that is, remember the story of David and Saul.

And Saul was not exactly the most righteous of kings. He’s kind of lost his mind. He’s making some questionable decisions and trying to kill David for all the wrong reasons.

And David, in preserving his life, has the opportunity to kill Saul, but he refuses to lay a finger on Saul because he is the lord’s anointed.

And these people, here’s the king who’s anointed of the lord, and they killed the lord’s anointed. And there’s something with that, right? Like that’s a line you’re not supposed to cross.

And so I think these people having one abandoned their wives and kids to die, it’s almost as akin to killing innocent people.

You’ve killed your king, who was the lord’s anointed, which you probably shouldn’t have necessarily done, and you’ve participated in killing for, I think, these reasons. These people felt like they needed to be ritually cleansed or purified. And the rules for ritual purification before you can come into the city and make yourself clean, is almost like a leper. You go outside the camp, you go outside the city, you go through this purification, purification process, and then you can come in and present yourself to the priest or to somebody and to be pronounced clean and to make it clean. And so when they mentioned the ceremony had to be performed before they could come back into the land, that’s where my mind goes. And I think there’s a level of complexity here that a boy not familiar with exactly how this society worked would have naturally included in a work that he’s just making up on kind of these similar lines.

When Ammon from Zarahemla comes and finds these people, they’re desperate to be baptized.

They didn’t know where Alma went. Why is it that Alma could baptize and we need to go, this is probably where we need to finish? This is probably the meat on this, too. Is Alma baptizing at the waters of Mormon and the covenant that’s happening there, and we’ll get into that in a second. But what I want to talk about is it talks about Alma having the authority to perform this. Why then is Limhi’s people not able to perform these baptisms? What happens to that authority?

And that’s another detail that I think Joseph Smith is including in here in a story that you just don’t make up Limhi, who’s anointing him? Priest. Who’s consecrating him as priest, who’s announcing him as priests. You go back to the story of Mosiah and Benjamin. Benjamin makes the announcement, Benjamin anoints him. And whatever, in this case, his father does not get a chance to do that. He’s out running away from the family, which is kind of interesting. Limhi, being his son, is ditched, is left behind. How old is Limhi even to be left behind?

Limhi is not anointed by a priest because all the priests also went with him. They have a break in continuity here. And the priests are all cut off and chased away, and the king is cut off. And so what happens to your authority? There is a break in authority. Hence Limhi’s people are looking for a lifeline authority to be able to administer these ordinances. Baptism that they don’t have. The Alma, because he was a priest, does have, and I think the Alma, not only is he a priest, when they talk about the priests, Noah let go most of his father Zenith’s priests and anoints his own. I wonder if Alma still isn’t coming through from the line, from even Limhi, Zenos priests. And the reason I say that is when they reconnect in the land of Zarahemla again, Mosiah, even though things are going well in Mosiah, with his territory, with his kingdom, with his people, still recognizes Alma and has him create the church. And like, wait a second, why is he doing that if the church is alive and well and he fights, why is Alma now all of a sudden in charge of the priesthood and anointing priests if he’s coming from this break off group? But remember, this is where it comes in. Kind of important from the book of Omni, Jacob’s line, the very last man there had a brother that went into the land of Nephi with Zenith’s company, that maintained that same line of priesthood from Jacob being anointed by Nephi. So I wonder if Alma does not descend from Jacob’s line. So when he comes back into the land of Mosiah, they look at it and say, wow, this is the original line that Nephi had anointed to set apart. Let’s reestablish and reconnect that and make this our line going forward. I wonder if we don’t see kind of an interesting reconnect with that.

[00:45:06] Speaker B: That’s good to know because we talked about this a little bit last week, because that was my question. I’m like, how did this happen without the priesthood authority being done correctly? So I’m glad we were able to clear that up.

[00:45:18] Speaker A: Yeah, just an interesting little side note on that. Love it.

One other thing. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we see Zenith and then Noah and then Limhi at the same time that we’re seeing in Zarahemla, Mosiah, Benjamin and Mosiah. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mosiah, at the end of his reign, has a speech about government and says that a king is the best thing if you have a righteous king. But if you don’t, things fall apart pretty quickly, because this is the lesson they’re learning from this group that broke off down into the land of Nephi. And you’re comparing Zenith, Limhi and Noah to Mosiah, Benjamin and Mosiah. And you have three righteous kings on one side of the coin. And you can look at them and they have all the right character and the best interest of the people in mind, and they’re serving them versus these guys. They exhibit a lot of weakness. Zenif, we see a lot of weakness. We talked about that last week with him always saying, I did this and I did that, and just kind of this self inflated sense of, I am the most important Noah. We almost see kind of this laziness that grows out of wealth and power and this decay and this reposing, if you will, where it’s kind of falling in. And I think even Limhi here, Limhi seems like a good king because he delivers the people.

He’s wise. But I think you see a lot of his youthfulness and his lack of confidence and security under Limhi. The people come to him and say, we want to go fight the Lamanites. And Limhi doesn’t say, okay, let’s go and lead his people and say, I go and fight them. Just like Noah, right? He’s or not Noah, Zenif, he’s the opposite extreme. The people said it, and so they went and did it. And he’s excusing himself from all of the actions. He’s trying to dismiss himself like, it’s not my fault. I let them do it and they lost. And they wanted to do it again, so I let them do it and they lost. You’re like, well, wait a second. Aren’t you the king? Whose fault is this? If you keep blaming the people?

At what point do you take accountability for this?

And I also see weakness in Limb high when the Lamanites come in and they make the peace treaty with the women and the children and the men that stay behind. And they say, in exchange for the peace that we’re going to establish with you, we want Noah’s head, we want him dead. And Limhi says he knows that his father was a wicked man and he knows that he should forfeit his life, but refuses to carry that out. He’s not willing to go through with it and he’s not going to do it. He’s got a blind spot for family and he’s got kind of a lack of decisiveness, being able to make a decision to being able to stand in front to be able to lead his people. So you see a pattern of weak leadership with Limhi and Zenith and Noah, contrasted with strong leadership between Benjamin and Mosiah and Mosiah. So Benjamin is pulling this experience together and learning from that. And this is the catalyst that gets them to move to a chief judge ruling system moving forward, which again highlights complexity that, I mean, where’s Joseph Smith pulling this from?

[00:48:39] Speaker B: I just said it and I’ll say it again. The best proof of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is reading the Book of Mormon and asking yourself those questions of like, could this really have been being made up on the spot as it was being dictated to somebody who’s writing it down? And the more and more we’re starting to get to see some of the old kind of original manuscripts and things like that too, and realizing that this wasn’t undergoing revisions and edits and revisions and rewrites and whatever, you’re just like, this is, it’s miraculous and it’s just such an incredible book and it’s powerful. And I love the fact that each week when we talk about this, we get to highlight these subtle details that all stack up to make just a powerful testimony of the truthfulness of this book.

[00:49:37] Speaker A: Yeah, in fact, it talks about the Lamanites making an oath with Limhi.

This is covenants. And I think covenants is kind of the next step of where we need to go with this episode. We talk about the covenant of peace that’s established with the Lamanites, and then I promise we’ll finish this with the covenant of baptism because I know we need to hit on that too.

But this again is a nod to the ancient world. And I think what we don’t realize, we’re so used to peace in our time, and we read the Book of Mormon and we think, why in the world would the Lamanites go fight them when they have this treaty? Why in the world it just doesn’t seem congruent. It doesn’t seem like it fits with our society today. But we got to understand, in the ancient Near east and the world where these guys came from, every year there was the planting, there was the harvesting, and there was the fighting. And you go out to war, it was expected. Everybody had to do this. Every male had to go out and fight. And you go fight for which country is more dominant than another. And you have vassal kingdoms that are going to be swearing loyalty to the larger kingdoms.

And they have tribute that they’re going to be paying. And this is what we see with the Lamanites. And they’re going to be leveraging tribute off of this, and we’re going to come in and show that we’re more powerful than this is especially needed coming off of defeat from the Nephites who sent their armies in and kind of pushed them back and maybe freed up some of that tributary, the tributes that the Lamanites had leveraged on them. And so to reassert dominance, they got to go in, beat them at war.

And this is what you’re seeing, this pattern of Lamanites coming in, beating them, exerting a higher tax, and then the knee fights each year sending an army. That’s a decision they have to make. Are we going to pay the tax or are we going to send an army to fight to free ourselves from the tax or even potentially leverage attacks against them. This is an annual tradition. This is what happens.

And that covenant that they’re making when it talks about the king of the Lamanites making an oath with Limhi, it’s worth mentioning, these oaths and these covenants that they made at treaties after wars involved taking animals, involved cutting them in half, and involved taking the conquered nation and requiring them to walk between those pieces of the animal in a sign that we are able to destroy you. In fact, we are saving your life, and you owe us for saving you, because we could have kept killing you, our armies could have killed you to extinction and kicked you out of the land. But because we’re being merciful, because we’re saving you, this is what you have to pay us. And if you do not pay us this tribute, then we will send our armies in. And just like these animals are dead, you will be dead also. This is covenant making in the ancient world. This is what we’re seeing here. And we’re going to see this play out throughout the Book of Mormon. And it has ties to the covenant that Abraham makes. And I know we’ve talked about that in a lot of other podcasts. I know we’re running out of time on here, so I’m not going to go, I’m not going to go into Abraham’s covenant right now. But I will say just on the Abraham’s covenant, it is probably one of the most talked about covenants in the church, but maybe perhaps one of the least understood covenants. And when you understand that covenant making patterns and who’s submitting themselves to those conditions and what they’re agreeing to do, it makes the atonement come to life and it brings Christ and even what we’re doing today in our sacrament more meaningful for us.

[00:53:08] Speaker B: Love it.

[00:53:09] Speaker A: All right, baptism and the baptismal covenant.

[00:53:12] Speaker B: Oh, baby, let’s wrap up with this. Now. You’re speaking my language, and I don’t.

[00:53:18] Speaker A: Know how much we have to speak because we did a whole episode on covenants and baptism.

[00:53:23] Speaker B: I was saying that. I was saying that because I could feel all of the people listening to this podcast groan all at the same time.

It’s just a collective, like, ugh, this.

[00:53:33] Speaker A: Is as close as we get to a baptismal covenant. This is, I’m glad we’re reading this.

[00:53:37] Speaker B: Because when we talked about this before, this was one of the, this was when I said, what is the baptismal covenant? I’m like, well, it depends on who you ask. Depends on if you ask Nephi, depends on if you ask Alma. Depends on. Depends on who you ask in all of these situations. And this is exactly what I was talking about.

[00:53:53] Speaker A: So this is as close as we get. And I see this is Mosiah, Genesis 1810. Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, and remember, this is where he’s talking about comfort. Those who need a comfort stand witness. Right. Charity. If this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord as a witness before him that you have entered into a covenant. And so here we have it, this covenant relationship, right?

But here’s the deal.

I say unto you, if this be the desire, what have you against being baptized as a witness before him, that you have entered into a covenant. So what is baptism? Baptism is a witness of a covenant that you have created.

When did you make the covenant? And it almost, to me, it almost sounds like the covenant is made, and then baptism is the manifestation of a covenant that you’ve already made. Right? But it’s not necessarily to me. I don’t see that this is necessarily the covenant in and of itself. And I’m going to fast forward because it mentions it a second time. And this is verse 13. And when he had said these words, the spirit of the Lord was with him. And he said unto Helaman, I baptize thee, having authority from the Almighty God as a testimony that you have entered into the covenant. So it doesn’t sound like he’s making the covenant. It’s a testimony that he did enter the covenant. And so at what point did they enter the covenant?

And to me, it comes back to Abraham’s covenant.

And here’s what I mean by this.

Let’s take Abraham’s covenant and branch up a little bit further on that when Moses pulls the Israelites out of Egypt and he brings them into the promised land to Canaan, what he does is he has six tribes go on one side of the valley up in the mountain, that has blessings, and then he has six tribes going to the opposite side of the valley in the other mountain, and it has cursings. And so here you have the blessings and the cursings, and it’s establishing the terms of the covenant. And then Israel passes between those two pieces. And it’s the same thing as what we see with the abrahamic covenant. When the animal is split and cut in half and divided, and you have the two pieces and it’s passing through the middle. Israel is establishing a covenant with God to be his people. And if they don’t live up to the terms of that covenant, they will be scattered and pushed aside. Just as the mountains are divided and split, they’re going to go to the north and to the south. That’s what happens when they disobey. The Assyrians come in and they’re scattered to the north, or they’re scattered to the south because they did not agree to the or they did not hold up their end of the covenant. So the people have a standing covenant that they have established with God. Abraham has a covenant with God. Moses has a covenant with them. And baptism becomes a testimony that we’re agreeing to this covenant, this covenant is made. And we talked, when we talked about covenants, that perhaps when we make this covenant, it’s almost like we’re making the covenant in sacrament. It’s almost like it’s a sacramental covenant. Because in there, we are agreeing to take the name of Christ upon us. In there, we are promised to have his spirit, and we are promising to obey. And it’s saying, this is my people. And interesting enough, when the people come into the land of Utah, having been chased out of the east, when we’re talking about the church, the latter day saints, and our time and our dispensation.

You come through immigration canyon, and you come through with the mountains being split on either side. And you’re coming into the valley that has a dead sea, just like the dead Sea that has a Jordan river, which is literally called the Jordan river leading into a fresh lake, where it’s reestablishing Israel a second time on the american continent, where we’re coming in and we’re being his people. And to be called a member of the church, to be part of his people. Baptism is the witness, the agreeing. In a sense it is, but maybe the covenant is more than that. And we talk about this covenant. I think it’s the same covenant that Moses establishes with his people. I think it’s the same covenant that Abraham makes with the Lord. It’s this pattern of covenant making.

And it’s a covenant today.

And baptism is a witness to the covenant, but maybe not the covenant by itself.

[00:58:29] Speaker B: I think you bring up a really great point, and I love this, and I love thinking through this and I love really trying to understand this deeper. You do bring up a great point, too. Didn’t Moses also part water on two sides and they passed through that, too? I mean, really, baptism is almost just as symbolic as the children of Israel passing through the sea with water on either side, like passing through a valley or like passing through the divide between those two things.

It totally tracks that the ordinance itself of baptism has very strong links to. Okay, well, then what was the covenant with Moses? What was the covenant with Abraham? And it really was kind of as simple, right. As this is you basically saying that you’re the weaker party that relies on me. I mean, even the symbolism of baptism is death, right? Death and then rebirth. Our old way does die and we are born again as a disciple or as the seed of God, of Jesus. Right. I think that I love the. I just love not putting necessarily all of our kind of, I don’t know, meanings on that. Which, again, it’s not that it’s good or bad. I just think that sometimes we couple things together that shouldn’t necessarily be coupled together. And it was really nice, even in class day, kind of starting to change the conversation of the way that we even talk about baptism, of, like, we need to stop doing the thing where we bring the kid up and be like, hey, now here’s the cleanest, purest person in the world right now. And you’re just like, well, that’s.

I don’t find that anywhere in the scriptures. I think that that’s just something we’ve kind of said so many times that we kind of just have adopted that as, like, a thing. When I’m like, man, I was told that that eight year old wasn’t accountable for any of their sins. Like, I don’t believe that just because they went in the water and came, came back up now that they’re the most perfect person on the face of the planet for that five minutes or something, you know what I mean? Like, that doesn’t make any sense, instead of going, hey, if we’re going to try to understand what the baptismal covenant is, you nailed this. I’m just amening what you said, which is maybe we need to then be learning what the covenant God made with Abraham was. Maybe we need to be spending time with Moses, covenants with God, baptism. I love the idea that it is. That’s what that covenant is. And we are just witnessing that. We are entering into that same covenant. Don’t we believe that to be saved, we need to be adopted into the house of Israel?

[01:01:24] Speaker A: Don’t.

[01:01:24] Speaker B: On some level, we acknowledge that for us to. For us to be numbered with God’s people, we need to be adopted into his chosen people, we need to be. We need to be numbered with his seed. We need to be his children.

Baptism feels like the perfect ordinance, then, to make that first step right, to say we’re part of, we are witnessing to God that we want to be part of that seed, that house, that tribe.

[01:01:58] Speaker A: In fact, two prophets are going to back up what you’re saying quite nicely.

I think it’s powerful that it’s John the Baptist that says, you claim Abraham as your father, but I say to you that God can take of these stones and raise up seed. And so you’re talking about, how is he going to be raising up seed to Abraham that’s not literally born of Abraham, it’s John the Baptist.

[01:02:21] Speaker B: What is he doing exactly?

[01:02:24] Speaker A: And Joseph Smith says, when you are baptized, you are adopted into the house of Israel. And he says, he actually even goes on to say something quite interesting. He says, if you’re already house of Israel, you don’t notice as much of a change. But if you’re not already Israel, your blood literally changes and you become Israel. He kind of goes into that a little bit more detail. But for him, baptism was being brought into Israel. And so it kind of goes along with what we’re saying. If the covenant is with my people, and it was established with Moses, it was established with Abraham, it was established with Noah, it was established with Adam, and we call it a new and everlasting. How can it be new if it’s everlasting, but it’s new for us, but it’s everlasting. It’s the same covenant that God keeps making with his people. And baptism is the door through which we enter to where we can be his people. And that covenant applies to us because he made that covenant with his people.

[01:03:23] Speaker B: I love Noah, too. The idea still, of parting, of the water. Right. Or of, like, the, you know, the separating, eventually of the water. Right. The baptism of the earth. I’m just saying, like, there’s. I love a lot of the symbolism in that as well. Continue.

[01:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And I said I didn’t want to dive too much into Abraham because I feel like we’ve talked about it a lot. But you know what? It’s worth saying, and it’s worth repeating.

If you want to understand Abraham’s covenant, go back and read Genesis, chapter 15. And you get to God telling Abraham that I will establish your seed.

And Abraham says, how will I know? And he says, prepare the covenant. Prepare the sacrifice, cut the animals. And this was a conversation he had at night, and he’s going to be sitting there all day trying to chase the flies off and keep this meat ready for when he’s preparing for himself to go between this and make that covenant with God. And when God shows up that night, it’s God that goes between those two pieces of meat. And the idea, the symbolism there is that JehOvah God, the God of the Old Testament, if your seed breaks these terms, these conditions, the blessings and the promises, I will be torn. I will be cut, bruised, and beaten to pay the price of their disobedience. And that’s the covenant that God made with Abraham, is that he himself would come in the form of man to pay the price for Abraham’s seed’s disobedience. And then go for Genesis, chapter 18, who is Abraham’s seed? He tells Abraham, you will inherit the nations, all nations. So this goes back with John the Baptist, what he’s saying, I can raise up stones through all nations are salvation will be offered to all nations through the covenant that I’m making with you. When they become your seed, when they’re born again in your house, they are qualified for this covenant that I am establishing with you. And the last point on this is Christ says, come, follow me. And where did he go? He went between those two pieces of meat. He went to Golgotha. He went to the cross. And he said to us, take up your cross and follow me.

That covenant, we are also going between there. We are also putting ourselves in his feet and doing the best we can to try to give of ourselves, give of our lives, give of what we can to try to bring. And that’s the message of Abinadi, to bring this gospel, this peace. Abinadi is willing to go all the way to the cross and die for salvation to Alma and his people.

[01:06:09] Speaker B: And that’s what baptism, the ordinance represents, is death.

[01:06:12] Speaker A: It is.

[01:06:13] Speaker B: It’s death and rebirth. It really is. It is. It is going between.

It’s separating of the waters, right. It’s still a separation, a going between things, right? Like when you break the plane. But that’s. It’s the full submersion under the water. It’s the whole thing is that. Is that there’s still all of that symbolism wrapped up in that covenant.

And again, I guess you could say, well, there’s all of the complexity of that then. And I’m kind of going, that feels, though, it just simplifies that covenant. I think for me, instead of trying to have a list of all of the things that that thing represents, like, yes, I understand that. That there is a lot of complexity in being a follower of Christ. I get that. I get that there’s a lot that comes with that. But on a certain level, at its most basic level, is I’m going to walk the same path that you walked.

[01:07:15] Speaker A: Sweet.

[01:07:15] Speaker B: That’s enough.

That’s enough. Right?

Because throughout our life, I think we understand more and more what that means. We talked about this when we. When we. When we had our bonus episode, which is you and I think understand what that covenant means, the more we’ve kind of learned and understand what it actually means to be a follower of Christ, to actually be his seed. Great. But for these kids that are being baptized, these children that are being baptized, I truly, I think that. I think that Christ is completely okay with what Alma is saying, which is, if you have a desire to love God and love your fellow men, what have you against being baptized, right? Or Nephi. This is the gate. This is the doorway to walk the covenant path. Here is the first step to get going down. That’s like, okay.

I love how simple this is. We need to, you know, I think we need to keep it that simple. We don’t need to couple it with every other ordinance that we do in the church. We don’t, you know, I mean, as far as. As far as all covenants are still tied together that point to Christ. Yes, but I guess I’m just saying, like, let’s love and appreciate the simplicity of this ordinance. I’m really glad you brought this up again, because I do think it’s worth talking about.

And I’m hoping that at baptismal talks, maybe this is what we can start explaining a little bit more, is the simplicity of this. And not a, here’s the most pure child, but you get to be this child every week when you take the sacrament. You get to get re baptized each week. And you’re like, I don’t.

As you’ve been talking about the covenants being made with Moses and with Abraham, with Noah, like, did God go back to Abraham and say, we need to continue to make this covenant every week? Or did he? Was he just like, hey, here’s the covenant. And you entered it, and I entered it, and we’re good? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’m missing something there.

[01:09:21] Speaker A: I think he says, always remember him. Right? And in the ancient temple, the flame had to always be lit. There was something that needed to be happening in perpetuity and to symbolize that this is going to keep going, that this is going to last. And I feel like the Sacrament becomes a part of that.

And we talked about this covenant was made between God and his people. It’s a covenant that’s been made and established. What we’re doing is becoming his people so that that covenant applies to us.

[01:09:53] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:09:54] Speaker A: And I can see the Sacrament, in a sense, as a renewal, a reminder. Maybe reminder’s. But the better word.

What was the original covenant that he made with Abraham? It was the dividing up of the animals, right? But you look at that altar and sacrament on Sunday, and it’s the body of Christ who was the lamb of God, who was the animal that was sacrificed, and his body is torn in half.

And not only is it torn in half and bruised and broken, and you can’t break bread without squishing it to bruising it, right? You’re breaking it.

But not only was he torn in half and ripped and torn for us, but as you’ve pointed out before, that bread coming down the aisles, and what does it do? Is it puts the congregation in between the meats. We’re going between.

We’re walking that same path that Christ walked, and we’re becoming one with him. And this is a reminder to us of the covenant that was made.

[01:10:54] Speaker B: And a witness, by the way, too, like we just talked about with baptism is a witness, right? I mean, that’s what it says. That’s what Christ asked us to do in third and Nephi. And that’s really what, even in sacrament prayers, we’re witnessing to God that we’ll always remember him, that we’ll take upon ourselves. His name keeps commandments, like. So I love the. I love the idea of the reminder of it, but I also love that it’s our opportunity to physically show and witness to God. This is who I’ve chosen to be. This is the life that I’ve chosen to live. So even more, because, again, like, I don’t think I’m with you. And by the way, I think always remembering him is a huge deal, but I don’t think that that’s enough. I love the idea that we get to, and that’s why I love the idea of baptism being a witness. That we just talked about, too, is that it’s more than just a nice reminder. It’s more than just a weekly chance to go, hey, let me reflect on the week. It’s like, I want it to be more than that.

I love that it is a chance to physically do something, to show God physically where I’m trying to be spiritually and man, I’m really glad you brought this back up again. In relation to Alma, I love the idea that it is witnessing, that I am accepting my role in this covenant. I want to be part of this.

And I love that Alma’s qualifications are. Do you have the desire to do this?

If so, come on in.

[01:12:32] Speaker A: And it’s becoming one.

I mean, God became like us so that we could become like him. He’s broken to heal us, who are also broken. I mean, we are broken.

We look at that altar and does that bread apply to him or does it apply to us?

[01:12:49] Speaker B: Well, he asks us for a broken heart and a contrite spirit. That’s his requirement of us.

Part of that sacrament is quite literally us needing to be separated, us needing to be broken.

I think I’m saying I agree with your point. It has to also be us. It can’t just be Jesus, right?

[01:13:10] Speaker A: We take his name upon us, we’re taking his body, physical body, into us, and his blood into us, and his spirit into us and saying that we will be like him. So if we’re acting like him and taking his name and his physical aspect all upon us, is that not what can be more one uniting than being him? Literally, we’re saying, we will be like you. And that’s what it means to be his people, is to be like Christ.

[01:13:38] Speaker B: Yep, great stuff. Always anything else you wanted to hit.

[01:13:45] Speaker A: On this last, last thought, and I promise I’ll be done.

What does it mean to enter that path? And it doesn’t mean that.

That everything’s all going to be fantastic.

[01:13:57] Speaker B: I think it’s the opposite. I think you’re accepting. I think that you have to go into it knowing that the path gets harder once you start to walk it.

[01:14:06] Speaker A: I agree. And if Christ is walking between those pieces of meat and asking us to follow him, and he’s being broken and asking us to offer a broken heart and a contrite spirit, I think it’s fitting that both of these stories end with them being under captivity. I mean, look at Alma and his people who split off and are spared. The Lamanites coming in. And then what happens when the Lamanites get lost? And the priests of Noah, who used to be Alma’s.

[01:14:38] Speaker B: It’s such a wild twist in the story.

[01:14:40] Speaker A: You think the irony, right?

But the reverse, it’s terrible. And they’re oppressing the people, and you think, wait, they did everything right. How come God didn’t save them from that? And I think that’s something that we often ask. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did job have to go through what he did? Why is Jonah having to go through difficult things happen? You enter the covenant path, go back to Lehi’s vision. That’s when the mists of darkness come. That’s when you start to. And that’s maybe the best thing to encapsulate all of this is Jacob’s wrestle with God. When this happens, do we hold on and persevere and earn that name? Israel, which means to persevere with God to get that name, to get that, to become like Christ. Are we willing to follow him and take his cross upon us? And life isn’t fair.

It’s going to be exacting. It’s going to require a lot of us.

Are we willing to hold on through all of that to get the blessing at the end? And the promise is, you will be delivered. Alma was delivered. Limhi’s people were delivered. The blessing on all of this is deliverance, redemption, salvation. It does come.

We just can’t expect it to happen before we go through the darkness.

I think a lot of that road that we travel gives us the empathy.

And you know what? The book of Job is a masterclass on how to help people going through afflictions. And it’s not by pointing at them and saying, you deserve this.

You know, maybe. Maybe going through what job went through it’s a little easier for us to render the kind of aid, the kind of assistance and the kind of love that the savior would have us issue having become like him.

And you know what? This is what I wanted to end on. I remembered in the Old Testament, they talk about Christ going, the covenants and God going through those pieces of meat and what it’s meant, but it’s never explicitly stated. It’s symbolic. You have to understand, what I love and appreciate about the Book of Mormon is the clarity with which it’s all spelled out that the God of this world, we’ll come and we’ll pay the price. I mean, there is. There is a level of clarity here that has been censored, edited, or just. I mean, it’s there, but it takes more work to find in the Bible than what you see here. And I appreciate the clarity.

[01:17:12] Speaker B: So funny you brought that up because, you know, I’m preparing a talk for church and it’s. It’s so funny you said that, because I have written down where I was like the Old Testament for the first time. It was nice to start seeing the way that God used patterns, symbols and covenants to very metaphorically testify of the coming of Christ. I love how the gospel specifically shows the embodiment of what all of those covenants actually meant and were meaning. And what I love about the Book of Mormon is the detail and the clarification and like, the further explanation of what so many of those things in the Old Testament, right, like the Old Testament really set this. And I’m telling you, I have this written down in my nose. It’s so funny you brought this up that I think finally, for me, all three of these clicked in that way. And it’s part of the reason that I’ve been really loving going through the book of Mormon with you, is just all of the incredible talks and explanations on Isaiah, which really have opened up understanding, I think, for scriptures that otherwise would be really, really, really tough to draw meaning out of. Right. Because even in the New Testament, we see a lot of Isaiah’s prophecies fulfilled. But even then, in just such subtle ways that clearly have, I think, kind of gone over the heads of a lot of other, you know, I’m not trying to bag on a bunch of other religions or anything like that, but a lot of the symbolic things from Isaiah have kind of gone past the understanding of a lot of other religions. I’m sorry, again, I’m not trying to be negative, but I’m saying that it’s clear that really, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints as a whole, as a people, I think we really appreciate a lot of Isaiah because whether we realized it or not, we were getting just really incredible in depth breakdowns of what Isaiah meant all throughout the Book of Mormon and really giving us incredible insight and details into what a lot of that old testament said was. So I’m really happy that you brought that up. I was having completely the same thought as I’ve been preparing for this talk, which, ironically enough, has nothing to do with the talk that I’ve been preparing for. It was just as I’ve been going through, through it, it was something that kind of came to mind. So maybe, maybe it was. Maybe it is something I need to include in my talk now.

Jason has always appreciate all the work that you put into this, all the prep that you do for this. We appreciate all of you who continue to listen.

Hopefully we can keep delivering something that makes your day a little bit better, your week a little bit better, or just helps enhance the scripture study that you’re doing on your own. We always love the questions and the comments and the feedback. It’s nice to know that people care and are listening because we love doing it. We love you guys. You can get ahold of us at the email address of hi as in hi, not h I g h as we needed to. I guess not. We needed, we found out through an email we needed to clarify hi as in hello, hi@weeklydeepdive.com.

Send us what you got. You know we love hearing it. Please continue to share with your friends.

Don’t be afraid to leave us a review, even if your review says that we need to just be camping buddies and bowling. Bowling buddies or what was it?

Was it just camping buddies?

[01:20:58] Speaker A: I think it was both.

[01:21:00] Speaker B: And we’ve, we’ve had, we’ve had some fun comments over the past. Anyways, we love you guys. We’ll see you next week. See ya.

Transcript:

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on Education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pfeiffer.

[00:00:30] Speaker B: Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Ma. Yoko. Oh, no.

Yoko ono joke there.

[00:00:42] Speaker A: How you doing this week?

[00:00:44] Speaker B: I mean, I’m making Yoko Ono jokes to start the show, so that’s how I’m doing this week.

[00:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I still don’t know if I can get a good read on that.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: You know, she just screams.

[00:00:56] Speaker A: Oh, boy.

I don’t even know where to go with that.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: I mean, there’s really nowhere to go with that.

She ruined the Beatles. You know, it’s the whole thing.

[00:01:07] Speaker A: Sad story.

[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Nah, it’s life. Whatever, man.

[00:01:12] Speaker A: That’s what happened.

[00:01:14] Speaker B: What’s up with you this week?

Just getting ready.

[00:01:18] Speaker A: Just getting ready, I guess.

I’ve got a little stone hanging out with me.

[00:01:25] Speaker B: You’re stoned? Hanging out? What?

What did you say? I’ve got a stone hanging out with me.

[00:01:32] Speaker A: A little stone hanging out with me.

[00:01:34] Speaker B: I don’t even know what that means.

[00:01:37] Speaker A: It’s when I ended up in the ER and found out I had a kidney stone.

[00:01:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that’s right. You have a new buddy.

[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah, he’s just kind of hanging in there.

[00:01:44] Speaker B: Wait, so wait, that whole ordeal’s not over yet?

[00:01:48] Speaker A: No.

[00:01:49] Speaker B: All right, what are we talking about this week?

[00:01:51] Speaker A: This week we get to talk about Mosiah.

I say Mosiah. It’s Mosiah one through three. But really it’s King Benjamin. And King Benjamin gets to kind of rally the people together and have a little speech. Benjamin’s speech.

Maybe now’s a good time to drop this little nugget.

[00:02:09] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:02:12] Speaker A: We’Re starting Mosiah, and honestly, we haven’t flipped very many pages into the Book of Mormon. Where are we at? 100 pages in, 150 pages in. Somewhere in there, right?

And there’s like, 500 pages. We’re physically really close to Nephi and them leaving Jerusalem. But for what it’s worth, we’re only 140 years away from when Christ is coming, where they left Jerusalem around 600 years. So we’re talking about 400 plus years since Lehi left Jerusalem.

These guys here in the book of Mormon, Benjamin, Mosiah. And we’re going to soon get into Ammon, the sons of Mosiah, and all of this interesting stuff, right? They are much closer to Christ and his appearance and where we’re going to get third Nephi later down the road than they are to Nephi and Lehi leaving Jerusalem.

[00:03:09] Speaker B: It’s wild to think of all of the wars and the destruction and all of the gnarliness that’s going to happen throughout all of Alma and Helaman and all of that. To think all of that’s happening in such a way shorter, condensed time before Jesus comes, where that seems like that would be the hundreds and hundreds of years.

So, yeah, it’s kind of mind blowing to put that in perspective.

[00:03:38] Speaker A: It makes me curious as to what happened in that 400 year black hole where we’re just getting these little one liners about what did or didn’t happen from these guys, which is also something else interesting.

When I look at israelite history, you have two prominent figures. You’ve got the king, obviously, who plays a very prominent role. But then you also have the high priest or the spiritual leader. And I’ll qualify that as spiritual leader rather than high priest, because sometimes it is the high priest, but oftentimes it’s a prophet and maybe even somebody outside of the system that’s kind of coming in as a prophet. But you have a spiritual leader and a political leader, and these two figureheads played a prominent role throughout the Old Testament. The Book of Mormon starts the same way. You have Nephi, and he’s going to consecrate his brother Jacob as the spiritual leader for his people. And he kind of splits this off into two sets of records.

The larger plates of Nephi are going to be kept by the kings, the annals of the kings, and they’re going to keep a more detailed record of the history of what’s going on, where the more sacred things he’s splitting off and giving to the priestly organization. Right. I’m going to have. And it’s very similar to Moses consecrating Aaron as a priest, and he’s going to be the high priest and his sons. Right? So Jacob is supposed to be representing this priestly line, the spiritual leadership for the people, where Nephi’s line is more of the political line for the administration of his people.

And yet you kind of coming off of last week, it’s almost like we’re seeing the failure of the priestly line because you just see this downfall or this.

The content is getting less in quantity. They’re writing less words, fewer words, but also, I think, significantly less in quality. You just don’t get inspiring stories or great things coming from it, where it just kind of feels like just as the people are waving into apostasy. It almost feels like their spiritual leadership is also kind of waning a bit. And to where, the very end, he has no one to hand it off to. He doesn’t have a son. And his brother went up with Zenith’s people to go find the land of Nephi, and so he’s at an impasse. What do I do? My line is dead. The priestly line dies. And so he takes the plates and gives them to the king, to Mosiah, and kind of just gives it back to these guys.

[00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, because we didn’t talk a lot last week about kind of those small books that kind of jump around because they feel kind of worthless.

Maybe not worthless. Maybe that’s a bad word to use. But relative to all of the amazing books that bookend it.

Sorry, they kind of feel a little worthless, relatively, to the treasure trove of awesomeness that we’re getting out of all the other books. So it’s like, what? Can you maybe just speak a little bit to, like, even the purpose of understanding what those books are and why they’re even in there? And is that kind of where you’re talking about that transition between the king line and the priest line of the. I just want to maybe make sure we kind of have context of what exactly you’re talking about.

[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think so. Mormon. He pulls his whole record from the large plates and the large plates, he says he can’t even write down 100th part of what was recorded there in his bridge.

[00:07:15] Speaker B: It’s kind of the king line. Right?

[00:07:16] Speaker A: That’s the king line, right. And he’s got his abridgment. And as he’s finishing this up, he discovers these small plates. And really, it’s retelling the story from the beginning that he’s already written in there.

And he looks at it and he values what’s in there. And I don’t think he’s valuing the words of some of these smaller books as they’re trailing off. I think he’s looking at the prophecies of Nephi and seeing Nephis words. I think he’s looking at Jacob and how Jacob interprets Isaiah, and he’s looking at Enos and seeing the power behind that story. And he’s saying, you know what? These are great. Let’s just. And it’s small enough. I’m not going to condense this. Let’s just put this whole record inside the plates, which works out to our benefit when we lose the 116 pages, which was lost, what I assume is a translation of Mormon’s abridgment that started at the beginning with Lehi, up to the point where we hit Mosiah and King Benjamin and Mosiah.

And so this feels as a second version of those large plates.

But rather than being abridged, it’s firsthand accounts that kind of gets dropped in there that takes the place of those missing pages. And for Mormon’s point of view, he feels inspired to do this. And I think part of that is God knowing that those 116 pages are going to get lost.

But you’ve asked me a good question of why not. I mean, obviously, he’s in the business of redacting. He’s abridging books. He’s making them shorter. Why not just cut some of these smaller books off? Right. And I see how the smaller books land when they’re talking about discovering the people of Zarahemla. When they’re talking about, they find Coriantumr. And Mosiah is able to translate from a stone the story of Coriantumr and where it came from. There’s tie ins with the book of ether. There’s tie ins with what we see with Mosiah.

And I think he’s looking at it. And how do I take this small record and tie it back into the record that I’ve already translated? And so he, I think he leaves all of those hanging there. Cause it does give a full accounting so that we’re not left with any holes. But it also has these little tie ins that kind of work to support what he’s already created and how it fits in relationship to what he’s already done, if that makes sense.

[00:09:44] Speaker B: Totally makes sense. Thank you.

[00:09:46] Speaker A: And there’s a few verses that I wanted to kind of hit to preface what we’re going with today and really circling around the people that they find in Zarahemla. Right. And so if I go back, if I go back into Omni, and then let’s go into trying to see where I want to dive in with this. Verse 14.

And they discovered a people who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there were great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla. And also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly because the. The Lord has sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass which contain the record of the Jews. So they talk about discovering this people, and they left out of Jerusalem at the time of the destruction. Zarahamlet descends from one of the sons of Zedekiah, who survives the whole babylonian captivity, takeover, destruction of Jerusalem.

And when we’re talking about this people of Zarahemla, this is just a few interesting verses that kind of stick out to me. Verse 17. And at that time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous.

And I think that’s interesting because you talk about the Nephites.

Nephi takes his people on a journey away from where they first settled, into the land of Nephi. Mosiah is going to also be doing a repeat here. You get an exodus account where Mosiah pulls all the people that are willing to listen to him, and they go out and they find the land of Zarahemla, and they kind of this people that vastly outnumber them, and they talk about how much greater the number of people are, and how they had exceedingly multiplied greater than them, and they merged together and still make Mosiah a king, which is super fascinating on two accounts.

One is, if the people of Zarahemla are more numerous, why are they conceding the right to rule to the smaller people that, by the way, are getting beat?

Why is Mosiah leaving? It’s not because he’s conquering. He’s not a conquistador. Right? It’s because he’s getting his trash kicked somewhere else. He’s fleeing for his life. So, in all accounts, these knee fights seem like a weaker party. They’re fleeing from their enemies. They’re looking for refuge. They’re the refugees among a people that’s far outnumbering them. And yet Mosiah gets the kingship on that, which is interesting.

And now, on the second account, Zarahemla can count his descendancy to the son of Zedekiah. Zedekiah was a ruler in Jerusalem. So if the Nephites are Jews who left Jerusalem, then here is somebody from the line of Judah, not Joseph Judah, who has the right to rule. And yet Mosiah still ends up with the kingship, which is fascinating. I think the reason why Mosiah retains the kingship is because of the sword of Laban, the brass plates. And really, those tokens that. That Nephi brings out, that establishes Nephi as a king, that they’re handing this tradition down from generation to generation to generation, where in Zedekiah’s, they don’t.

Who’s to believe him? He says he’s a descendant of Mulek, but what records establish that truth? And there’s a big thing with Jews on being able to declare your lineage. If a priest says that I descend from Aaron, therefore, the right of the priesthood is mine. They’ll never take him at his word. You have to show me the records that establish that even if Zarahemla is coming from Zedekiah, if he doesn’t have a written account that validates that or backs that up, he has no claim where the Nephites do. And so they make a big deal about the records that they’re bringing and how those records establish them. And I think it also gets super interesting if we go into Mosiah. So this is real quick. Yeah.

[00:14:14] Speaker B: I bet they wish they would have had some begatting going on.

[00:14:21] Speaker A: That’s a great drop. But yes, it’s a good point.

[00:14:23] Speaker B: I bet they regret not begetting now.

[00:14:25] Speaker A: Dude, they loved their begatting.

[00:14:28] Speaker B: That’s right.

[00:14:28] Speaker A: It was a significant part of the history. And there’s a reason why you see.

[00:14:32] Speaker B: That so much in the Old Testament, Zarahemla or whatever.

That’s the, that’s a, I just had to throw that in there.

[00:14:41] Speaker A: Well, and you’ll notice, you’ll notice when they introduce the people of Zarahemla, they don’t even mention that Zarahemla comes from Zedekiah.

So it’s funny because it’s an omni, right? And it’s not Omni that’s writing. It’s one of the smaller ones after him. Right. We get to, let’s see, let’s see. I want to say let’s go verse 18. But it came to pass that Mosiah caused that they should be taught in his language. And it came to pass that after they were taught in the language of Mosiah, Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his father’s according to his memory.

It’s not written down. Right. See, and how they’re recording it according to his memory, they don’t mention that he comes from Zedekiah. It’s not until later in Mosiah that Mormon gives us that insight. But the ones that are keeping the plates right here, they’re making a big point of Mosiah was the king. He could. I mean, they’re kind of highlighting these things and they’re diminishing Zarahemla’s claim and intentionally not including some of that.

[00:15:54] Speaker B: Keep better records.

[00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know what? It’s also interesting that he’s saying, well, he teaches him the language of their fathers, right?

And you wonder, how does somebody lose the language?

Aren’t you not speaking it all the time? How in the world do the plates make that big of a difference? And I think we get some clues to that when we step into this week’s reading. In the book of Mosiah, it says verse two. And it came to pass that he had three sons talking about king. Let’s see, King Benjamin. He had three sons, and he called their names Mosiah and Helyram and Helaman. And he caused that they should be taught in all the language of his fathers. This is something Enos said, I was taught in the language of my father. This is something Nephi says, being taught in the language of my fAther. What does it mean to be taught in the language of your fathers? And what does it mean to forget the language of your fathers? And I’m gonna go into verse four.

For if it were not possible that our father Lehi could have remembered all of the things to have taught them to his children, except it were for the help of these plates, for he having been taught in the language of the Egyptians, therefore he could read these engravings. So when we talk about the language of their fathers, it’s not their immediate fAther.

Who did Nephi descend from?

Joseph. And Joseph was a prominent ruler in Egypt.

And Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were born in Egypt.

What was the language of their fathers? It’s easy for us to think, oh, well, Lehi was HebREw. It’s Hebrew. But if this is the record of JosEph, it was started in Egypt and it was written in Egyptian.

And so the language of their fathers might not be Hebrew like we keep thinking it is, or we associate it with. I think the reason why they had the plates and they could read the plates is because they took the time to teach their children not just the Hebrew they spoke, but the language of their fathers, where it came from, where it all started. For them, the book of their fathers was egyptian, and they had to stay fresh on the Egyptian to be able to read the plates, to be able to have the commandments, and to be able to save the begetting, the begats.

Maybe a few more words on these people in Zarahemla.

And so, history typically is written by the winners. I think we even talked a little bit about this last week, and I think what makes the Book of mormons so unique and special, similar to the Bible, is that it’s history, not written by the political winners. The political winners. And I’m glad you clarified that. Right? Because I think that’s important that we add that clarification.

We keep thinking of these Nephites as this dominant party. And, in fact, in omni, again, verse 24.

And behold, I have seen in the days of King Benjamin a serious war and much bloodshed between the Nephites and the Lamanites. But behold, the Nephites did obtain much advantage over them.

And this is what we see all the time. The Nephites are obtaining the advantage over them. And whoever’s writing history always makes themselves out to be the winner, right? The stronger ones, we had the advantage. And there’s always a little bit of a skew or a flavor to that. We were better. We were better. We were better.

And there’s a clue to this, though.

The Nephites did obtain the advantage over them, yea, insomuch that King Benjamin did drive them out of the land of zarahemla. Wait a second.

They were kicked out of Zarahemla, too, in that 400 year black hole. Not only did they lose the land of Nephi, but when they went up to the zarahemla and discovered the Mulokites and joined with the people even more massive than them, the Lamanites pursued him all the way up into zarahemla and kicked him out of there, too. So tell me, who had the advantage over who? The Nephites never once take land from the Lamanites. They’re always losing it and shrinking and disappearing, which is interesting to me. And it’s also interesting to me when you do the math, Nephi and Sam and Jacob and Joseph and Zoram all separate and go one way, and you’ve got Laman and Lemuel on the other hand, you outnumber them. You more than double what you’re leaving behind, unless you also count Ishmael’s sons.

[00:20:53] Speaker B: That’s what I was going to say. You got to still account for some of Ishmael’s kids.

[00:20:56] Speaker A: But then you also say that Nephi took his sisters with them and their families, right? True.

[00:21:02] Speaker B: There’s unknowns on both sides, is all I was gonna say.

[00:21:05] Speaker A: There’s unknowns, but it makes it sound like more follow Nephi than stay behind, right?

[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:21:13] Speaker A: And so you look at that, and then you see Jacob says, you guys are practicing polygamy, when even the Lamanites will refuse to do that, because that was a commandment that Lehi gave them. They will only have one wife. So if you have somebody, a group of people that starts off twice as populous at the very least than another, and they’re practicing polygamy and growing at a faster rate, and then you have them discover a people that even far outnumbered them. When you’re talking about how numerous the people of Zarahemla were that outnumbered the Nephites.

And then you have this group, this original group of Just Laman and Lemuel and some of Ishmael. Whoever stayed in that group comes in and obtains the advantage over them. How are they getting the advantage of numbers?

And I think it’s a fair point to stop for a second and talk about what the Book of Mormon includes and what it doesn’t.

And what we’re getting here is all of the perspective from the Nephites. What we’re not getting here is any of the story of the Lamanites. If the Nephites come across the people of the Mulokites, and the Mulokites come across the people of Coriantumr, and we’re hearing, and by the way, when they come across the people of the Mulokites, we have an introduction of greek words into the book of Mormon that didn’t exist there before.

We don’t have greek words in the early, in the small plates. Right. When we find these people of Zarahemla, now, you’re going to start seeing Greek make its way in. And greek names. Laconius is a greek name. Some of the twelve apostles actually have greek names. And so you think about how did the Mulokites make it over to the new world?

If they’re escaping and Babylon is ruling the entire known world, they’re coming out and up into parts of the world that weren’t in the Middle east, that weren’t part of here. Greece. Greece is the closest, nearest neighbor, which is going to make its entrance into this scene.

After the Babylonians with the Persians, there’s still definitely Greeks there, and they have some interactions. They’re just not part of babylonian rule. It would make sense that they’re fleeing to the Greeks, and it would make sense that they would want to get as far away from that side of the world that they can. The Greeks are excellent navigators. They have boats, their salesmen, they have the capability. I wonder if, when Mulek leaves with whatever large party of people is going with them, if it does not include greek sailors, greek tradesmen, greek people, and that’s where you start to see greek influence come into the Book of Mormon. But going back to what we’re talking about, you have this large number of people, and you have the Nephites from their perspective. You keep seeing them run into new groups of people, and you have a 400 year gap where we don’t even get a lot of the details. What’s happening on the other side of the fence, who are the Lamanites running into? What groups are they assimilating with? Because they say, as numerous as we were, even with the people of Zarahemla, we were far outnumbered by the Lamanites. What allies were the Lamanites building with? What local people were they picking up customs and traditions and incorporating with? We don’t have any of their stories. And for me to see them outnumber in a long ways the Nephites, I wonder if they’re not coming across a lot of different groups, and there’s a lot of mixing that’s happening on the other side of the fence.

One last thought that kind of stood out to me, and then maybe I’ll tell you a story that kind of bridges this gap. And then I think we need to kind of go in strong with King Benjamin and finish up with him going back into Omni.

You would think when Nephi comes with Laman and Lemuel, it was a constant fight from the beginning, Laman and Lemuel trying to kill him and whatnot. And you would think, what would it be like if Nephi would have left Laman and Lemuel behind?

You have the Mulokites, the people of Zarahemla. They don’t have the Laman and Lemuel to balance them out and to fight against. Right?

But check this out. It’s just a small little line in verse 17.

When it’s talking about the people of Zarahemla. It says, nevertheless, they had many wars and serious contentions and had fallen by the sword from time to time.

So the people of Zarahemla, who are they fighting?

Are they having civil wars? Is it a lot of infighting? Are they also meeting with other cultures and having fights? And who else is in this land and what else is going on? It’s just interesting that they’re having a lot of wars, too, that don’t include wars, necessarily with the Lamanites. So just some perspective on that.

All right, let me kick you one story. This comes from Don Bradley. I’m a huge fan of his work, and Don Bradley has tried to piece together what we don’t have from the 116 pages that were translated. And in his research, he found an interview where somebody had talked to Joseph Smith, Sr. And asked him questions about what was in those 116 pages. And he tells an interesting story that ties in with Mosiah here that I feel it’s kind of worth dropping, if we can.

He says, it’s interesting we read about the Urim and Thummim in the book of Ether. And the Jaredites had the urim and Thummim. Jared gets it right when he carves out the stones and he sees the finger of the Lord. And then all of a sudden, Moroni has them there at the end that he’s burying in with the plates. But how did they get from the Jaredites to the Nephites? Where do we get these Urim and thummim all of a sudden making their appearance?

And the other thing is, the Liahona disappears. It was a very significant thing to help Nephi and Lehi leave Jerusalem, come over to the new world. And it was helpful for Nephi to go and make his way into the wilderness. They used it. Why did they stop using such a valuable instrument? And if it had writings from the Lord and it was the director and it was a symbol of their faith, why would that fall to the wayside? It almost seems like their version of the Ark of the Covenant. Why would they stop? Why wouldn’t that thing be used always?

So Don Bradley says that in this interview, Joseph Smith Sr. Told a story about how Mosiah was following the Liahona, and which. Which kind of jives with what we’re reading right here. Right. Mosiah is leading his people away up into the land of. Of Zarahemla. And as he’s following the liahona, it takes him to these two stones that he finds, the Urim and Thummim. And he doesn’t know what these stones are, what they’re for. So he picks these stones up, and he brings them back to the tabernacle, or the temple of God. And from behind the veil, the Lord calls and asks, what is that in your hand?

To which Mosiah responds, I don’t know. That’s why I’ve come here, to ask the Lord. And the Lord tells him that these are the urim and thummim, lights and perfections. This is the instruments that I’ve used to prepare for helping prophets, to help people. And they become interpreters. Right? Mosiah is known for his ability to translate. He translates the stone that’s written in different language, that tells the story of Coriantumr.

And this kind of sets the stage when these people that split off to go back into the land of Nephi, and they get lost and they find all of these plates, these gold records from the jaredites. They say, hey, we know somebody that can translate. It’s coming back to the story, right? And this is kind of a transition from using the Liahona to starting to use the Urim and Thummim and how the Yurim Thummim gets introduced into the nephite history. So it’s kind of an interesting story. If you want to read more about it, Don Bradley has a book, the lost 116 pages, where he tries to restructure what was in there from his scholarly research into this time period and some of the questions that he’s kind of dove into. And so it’s worth mentioning because it’s that part of the book.

All right, let’s keep going into Mosiah, and a lot of research has been done to link King Benjamin’s speech to the Sukkot festival of the Jews. And I think that’s worth mentioning because I think there’s some really accurate connections to that. The first festival we read about back in Exodus, and we can read about it in chapter 23, chapter 24. And interesting enough, Nate, this festival is when Moses gathers everybody to the base of Mount Sinai, and then he addresses them from Mount Sinai. Now, think. This is before God gave him instructions to build the tabernacle. And Mount Sinai stands in the place of a temple. So when you get KInG Benjamin here, pulling everybody together in tents surrounding the temple, it’s mimicking this early moses pulling everyone together in their tents around the Mount Sinai, and then later, they get instructions. So this is actually where MOSes gets the TEn commandments. He’s called up into the mountain, and he reveals the law, he reveals the covenant. This is the covenant process, where he reveals that to the people, and they all shout with one voice that they will obey the law, and they will covenant with moses and receive this new name.

There’s a lot of really similar parallels with what we see with KING Benjamin.

And when the Jews return out of captivity from Babylon, they choose that same festival for the rededication of their temple.

And when they rededicate it, they build a wooden structure for their prophet to stand on and announce and deliver the speech. The rededication, the law, the covenants to the people. And they’re rededicating their. Surrounding the temple again and celebrating this.

This festival of tabernacles, which is supposed to be a remembrance of when they lived in tents where they dwelt in the wilderness and the Lord taking them out of the land of Egypt and delivering them. So there’s a lot of powerful connections with this early festival. And if we go into Exodus, chapter 23, and even 24, we start reading about it. Verse 14 three times. This is Exodus 23 three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread. And the feast of the harvest, the first fruits thereof. And then the feast of the gathering, the ingathering, which is the end of the year. And that’s what the feast of the fest of the Sukkot festival, the Tabernacle festival, is, is that last feast of the ingathering at the end of the year.

Three times in the year, all thy males shall appear before the Lord thy God. And he talks about them all. So there’s three festivals where they have to make that journey to Jerusalem, to the temple. And in this case, they’re doing it to the temple in King Benjamin, where he’s pulling him in. And they have to bring offerings to sacrifice. And so we go back into Mosiah, and it says that they’re bringing the first fruits. Not the first fruits, but the firstborn for sacrifice to this. And this is chapter two of Mosiah, verse three. And they took also of the firstlings of their flock. That they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings according to the law of Moses. And it’s kind of interesting.

When they did the sacrifice at the end of the year, the harvest, there was seven days of sacrificing animals. And they would sacrifice 13 on the first and twelve and eleven and ten and nine and eight. And so it ends up being 70 animals that they sacrifice. And they’re sacrificing them for the 70 nations of the world and the country. So the Jews are not just sacrificing for their own sake or for their own salvation. It’s kind of interesting. It kind of goes back to job at the beginning of his story, where he is sacrificing on behalf of his children.

And what they’re doing is they’re sacrificing for all the nations of the world. That there might be peace, that there might be salvation. They’re bringing this into the temple, that all the nations of the world might be blessed from the temple. And so going back to King Benjamin, and they say in his time, he was able to establish peace. And so you look at the connections of him bridging the gap.

His father, Mosiah, bridging the gap with the people of Zarahemlam, becoming a king there and establishing peace. And them kind of reestablishing their land that they recapture back from the Lamanites that had driven them out. And really trying to bring sacrifices to establish a peaceful situation for them in this new world. So there’s a lot of cool little connections with that. Let me just, let me just highlight a few from Exodus 24, and then I’ll move on from that.

So in Exodus 24, and I want you guys who are listening just to be thinking about, I think you guys are a lot more familiar with King Benjamin’s speech. So think about King Benjamin as we go through this. Moses recited God’s commandments, which he wrote in the book.

Is that not what King Benjamin. I keep saying, yeah, it’s King Benjamin, what he’s doing in speech. Right. All the people answered with one voice and said all the words which the Lord has said, we will do. An altar was constructed along with twelve pillars in token of the covenant sacrifices of burnt and peace offerings. The blood of the sacrificial animals was sprinkled on the altar. Moses read to the people from the book of the covenant. The people repeated their covenants of obedience. The blood of the covenant was sprinkled on the people, kind of sealing the deal. The israelite leaders went up to the mountain where they sang, they saw God, ate and drank.

The Lord called Moses to give him the law and the commandments written on the stone tablets. A cloud in the glory of the Lord covered the Mount Sinai for six days. On the 7th day, the Lord called to Moses from the cloud.

So this, there’s a lot of connections that seem to fit with what we see with King Benjamin’s speech. And he’s coming with a new era. He’s going to take Moses, Moses, Mosiah, and consecrate him and make him a king over his people and kind of pass the baton.

[00:36:23] Speaker B: All right, that’s even funny, though. Moses and Mosiah.

[00:36:29] Speaker A: It is, right? It kind of is funny connection. And even when Solomon builds the temple, it’s going to be dedication with the Sukkot festival as well. So there’s a lot of connections there. They just lost the temple in the land of Nephi, and they’re probably going to be building a new temple here in Zarahemla. And it might correspond timing wise, right.

If this is happening earlier in Benjamin’s day and now at the end of his life and he’s passing the baton, it might be a time where they’ve just barely built this new temple and they’re dedicating it as well.

All right, maybe just a few verses to highlight from the speech, and maybe that’ll about wrap it up for us.

[00:37:13] Speaker B: Let’s do it.

[00:37:16] Speaker A: Let’s see.

There’s a few things that stand out to me, obviously. Mosiah 319. Right. For the natural man is an enemy to God and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things that the Lord seeth fit to inflict on him even as a child, to submit to his father.

And I think, Nate, that goes so well with what we’ve been saying and seeing in the last little bit. Not my will, but thy will, right? And not having any more gods in front of God even from the beginning, right? Not saying I have a better idea, but being willing to submit to what God says to do.

[00:38:12] Speaker B: This has always been one of my favorite scriptures.

Like all good scriptures, I feel like you take a different meaning from it the older you get. And it is totally true with this one as well. And it’s kind of a, there’s this kind of the irony, I feel like, of life is that you go, I have a daughter that’s eleven who is very confident that she, you know, kind of knows it all. Not in a snotty way, but, you know, like you, where you are in life, you’re like, I got it figured out, man, when I was six, man, I thought I knew everything. But now that I’m twelve, I totally do.

You know what I’m saying? You know where I’m going with this, right?

[00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:39:03] Speaker B: Because then you turn 21 and you’re like, man, when I was 16 I thought I knew everything.

Now I’ve really got it together. And when you turn 30, same thing. And I’m 40 plus now and I’m going, man, I thought I really had it together at 30, but it’s like, I’m glad I really do now. Right?

And I’ve always kind of wondered when that cycle ends.

And there’s a part of me that has concluded that we’re going to get to 85 years old or 90 and we’re gonna be like, you know what? I actually kind of had it all together at eight. You know, like maybe at eight is when I actually, when I actually knew what I needed to know, which is like, be cool to your friends.

Don’t pick on people, you know? It’s like in a weird sort of way, it’s like, at eight it’s like, still believe, still have faith without a bunch of reservations. Like in a weird sort of way, it’s like I sometimes wonder if between eight and 80, it’s so much a process of just, like, bogging down and getting in the way of all of the things that we really kind of had together as a child.

There’s, you know, we talk about the faith of a child, but what does that really mean?

And you really do see it when you start having children who really do believe you when you say, hey, this is, to me, this is what I believe, and this is what I know to the best that I can. And a child, it goes, cool, I’m all in.

That’s why you got kids that believe in Santa. It’s why you got kids that believe in the truth. They really will. When we talk about submitting to their father. Right.

Yeah.

Obedience, sure.

Which is important, by the way. I’m not dismissing that. But there’s even just faith that comes along with that. And there’s times where I think that we put some sort of badge of honor on people like you or me who go, yeah, we’ve really had to, like, work on our faith because we want to be able to understand this from a scientific level, and we want to be able to understand this from a historical level, and we do. Right? Like, you and I, we love really getting into the weeds, man, the nitty gritty of this stuff. And I remember one of the first times I ever really met you, you were given a lesson in elders quorum about how the book of Genesis really could be describing the big Bang theory. And you know what I mean? It’s like there’s. And all these connections, right? And we almost, in a strange sort of a way, and I don’t. And I’ve learned to recognize this because I don’t think it’s good, but we almost shame the idea of, quote unquote blind faith.

We almost look at that as, like, a lesser faith than ours, which has to go through, like, the.

[00:42:17] Speaker A: The fire.

[00:42:17] Speaker B: The fire.

And we almost. It’s almost a dirty word, blind faith. Right? Like, well, you have all these people that just kind of, like, blindly follow their leaders and things like that. And you or me could look at that and be like, no, not us, though. Like, we’ve really paid it off. And then I’m just like, cool, man. Like, I’m married to somebody who I wouldn’t say has blind faith. In fact, I would say has so much more of a pure, deeper faith that she has never felt the need to go, why would I need to arbitrarily go through and on my own, try to, like, poke holes in this? She’s like, my life is beautiful because of this very pure, accepting, almost childlike faith where it’s like, yeah, why would I need to go and deconstruct this thing unnecessarily? And then I go, why on earth do we shame that man?

Why on earth is that supposedly lesser than.

And this scripture has taken on a very new meaning the more I try to. Because, by the way, it does put a significant responsibility, I feel, like, on us as parents when we do have these children. I mean, as a joke, I used to tell them I knew everything, and my wife, Heather, would have to be like, don’t tell them that, because they’ll believe you.

And they did, like, all the time, like, but I would say it as a joke, and I kind of let the joke linger for a little bit too long until I had to finally start being like, hey, guys, I’m so sorry that I, like, I played that joke too long. I by no means know everything. I know pretty much everything. But, you know, of course, Heather’s just like, what are you doing? Doing, right, my wife.

But it’s crazy how you really can tell your young children, yeah, I know everything. And they can be like, sweet, okay, great. Dad knows everything. And you’re like, oh, there is a responsibility that comes with this, that I think that there’s a lot of people that probably don’t take that seriously, that it’s like when I’m trying to teach my kids and testify to my kids and raise them in my faith, and what I believe, what I love is that that responsibility or that pressure that I feel again, is that it’s like, oh, I really do then want to make sure that I’m giving them good information and that I am giving them something to do, something pure to believe in. And I kind of want to be really careful not to kind of, like, convolute that with a bunch of things that maybe are just tradition or maybe just, you know, like, I kind of want to make sure that I’m really starting with where I can look them in the eye 20 years down the road and say, these are still the things that I know to be true. And at no point did I ever tell you anything outside of the things that I deeply believe and know. And look, wherever they end up in life, they still have a path to decide on. Right?

But reading the scripture again, when it says that we need to become like a child, I think that we need to be careful of all of the things that we sometimes culturally shame, such as pure faith and maybe a lot more innocent faith. And maybe I don’t want to call it blind faith, but maybe unapologetically accepting faith, you know, without just needing to just do everything we can to try to beat ourselves up and almost try to find ways to tear our own faith down. It’s like, man, I don’t feel like that’s. I feel like that’s not what we’re being commanded to do.

[00:46:22] Speaker A: That’s some serious wisdom you’re dropping.

[00:46:24] Speaker B: I mean, I. Dude, this is just me trying to put it all together, man.

This is me fumbling around in the dark.

[00:46:33] Speaker A: But that’s some amazing fumbling then.

And, you know, there’s another term that’s become derogatory today.

Sheep being a sheep.

[00:46:45] Speaker B: Please continue down this road, because it’s funny. Cause, yes, this is another angle. I’m glad you’re bringing this up, because I would have wanted to make sure that we brought this up, but continue.

[00:46:54] Speaker A: Well, yeah, like sheeple, right? Even. Even try to tell people that are, like, sheep and call them sheeple and, like, just how you just follow. You just follow whatever. And I’m not going to be a sheep. I’m not going to be submissive. I’m not going to be meek. I’m going to be a lion, or I’m going to be whatever, right? And I’m informed, or I’m educated, or I’m.

But isn’t that what the Lord says? Feed my sheep. And if you’re not one of mine, how can I be your shepherd? I need you to be a sheep.

[00:47:23] Speaker B: Even in all of his parables, who’s he out chasing? Who’s he running up the mountain to grab? Like, it’s. Dude, he is a lamb. We are the lamb.

Sweet. Completely agree with you on this. Why do we take so much time trying to shame that when, when. If we’re truly christians, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be?

Aren’t we supposed to be his sheep? Isn’t he the good shepherd? Aren’t we supposed to be willing to go, like. Yes. Like, we’ll. We’ll stay together as sheep do, to protect each other in a group. Shouldn’t we be the ones out there trying to find the lost sheep and bringing them back into the fold? Like, all completely agree with you on this. I’m so glad you brought this up.

[00:48:04] Speaker A: Well, you brought it up. I was just continuing it.

[00:48:06] Speaker B: Well, continue, man, because I’m with you on this. 100% submissive.

That’s an ugly word these days in pop culture.

Submissive. You know what? I mean, like, oh, no, no, no. Every, every. Everything that I am in life, I need to be what? Dominant.

It’s like, what if you actually read through that scripture again, you can almost find a way that the world tries to demonize or at least shame so many of the words that we read in there because, well, that’s not the way that we should be looking at a modern person, you know?

[00:48:49] Speaker A: And you’re like, you know, and if I can say this, I think that’s why so many missed the boat on the restoration. And let me put it this way.

When Christ came the first time, they were expecting not a sheep, a lion.

[00:49:07] Speaker B: They were expecting to conquer. That’s right.

[00:49:09] Speaker A: We need someone here that’s gonna just stick it in the face of our enemies and say, I am their God. You’re wrong, and I will wipe the face of the earth off and you’re not going to be there. And instead they got Christ and they missed it.

But are we any different? If our imagination of the second coming is some mighty God who’s going to come just wipe the face off the face of the earth, of our enemies off, and like, you were all wrong, and you’re going to burn and you’re going to die, and you’re going to be wiped off. And we were right.

And here comes God. There’s this mighty, but what does he do to a 14 year old boy?

And his message is a meek, mild message. By the way, I have come. I have restored the gospel. What’s the very first proclamation to the world that the twelve apostles write is we are letting the kings, the rulers, the world knows in a very meek and humble way, the Lord has returned.

This is his gospel. This is the church of Jesus Christ.

And are we today? And by we are there a lot of people today who fall in the same trap of the house of Israel? The first time the Lord came and expecting something else than a savior and expecting that the restoration, the second coming needs to be a lot more violent. We need to overthrow all of these naughty nations, these people that are oppressing us, and just stick it to them and let them know that we were right all along, when really it’s about putting a name tag on your shirt and being humiliated. It’s about knocking on doors and having people close them in your face. Maybe it’s the same thing that happened the first time that we’re missing the second time.

[00:51:06] Speaker B: It’s really great that you bring this up. I mean, what’s been a common theme in general conference for the last two years.

Stop yelling at people.

Stop fighting. What are you doing?

If you think that it’s somebody else that needs to hear this message, you’ve missed the point of this message. I mean, that’s been the theme of the last couple, like, years worth of conference is, if you wouldn’t mind. I mean, I could tell you, too. Cause I know it by heart. Submissive, meek, humble, full of love. You know what I mean? It’s like, what does the scripture actually say? It mirrors exactly what we’re being told. I feel like routinely now, conference after conference, which, yes, is a bit of a massive tone shift from when we were young, right? Which, again, where, to be fair, like, in a lot of the speeches, maybe not in conference itself, but there was very much a tone of like, hey, man, like, come on, go out there and tell them how it is. And you’re like, okay, well, I see that there is some value in standing up for what you believe in. And I don’t think that we’re being told not to do that.

I think it’s the tone in how we’re being told to stand up for what we believe in. I think just feels like it much more closely mirrors this, which is maybe be so much more okay, to humbly stand up for what, you know, to stand where you are. And then maybe it’s not as important to be out there, you know, trying to, like you said, disprove everything with, you know, I don’t know, with aggression and with all of these things, and instead doing it with meekness and with humility. And, I mean, Christ is the perfect example, I feel like, of all of these things. And when you read through the New Testament, which I just had so much fun doing this last year, is you just look at how he handles so many of these contentious situations, and then truly, by the time he is going to basically be unjustly tried and executed, he’s not even opening his mouth in those cases. He knows he is the lamb.

Like, what are you going to. Are you going to beat up the. I mean, Christ refers to himself as the sheep, as the lamb. Why do we care so much that people use that as a term, a derogatory term towards us?

Why should we take submissive as a derogatory term, especially when it comes to us and our relationship with God, with our parents and meek and humble?

It’s like those shouldn’t be terms that we should be embarrassed by, ever.

We should strive for those things.

I hope that at 85 years old, one, I hope I live that long. I hope that at 90, I can look back and go, I had it figured out way long ago, and the rest of my life was spent blowing it, so. But I’m glad that by the end, you know, I’m glad that by the end, hopefully, I’ve been able to unlearn a lot of the garbage that I thought I was learning and maybe strip away all of that garbage back to the purest things, which, you know, it ate, which is like, love your friends.

Treat people with kindness. Don’t steal. Share. You know what I mean? Like, all of the things that we kind of did have sorted out. I look at my kids and I’m like, they can go meet friends on a playground.

They don’t judge people. They don’t realize there’s supposed to be any difference between them and somebody that looks or acts different than they do.

They’re trusting, they’re loyal.

They’re all of the things, man.

It almost makes me so sad that life is going to unfortunately beat that out of them, because it does. And there’s value in that, too, I suppose. But maybe it’s part of the reason that sometimes as we’re looking through those old photo albums and we see our kids growing up, who so much of that is amazing, we see these pictures of them as little kids, and you almost just get sad. Cause you’re like, yeah, I miss that. But I think maybe part of that that’s baked in is you’re like, man, there’s just such a happiness there, and there’s just such an innocence again. Like, not to beat this to death, but when we think of our childhoods, it doesn’t matter almost if we grew up in poverty, if we grew up in gnarly situations, like, in a weird sort of way, we didn’t know any different. And we kind of just, you know, we look back at our summer as a childhood. We’re like, yeah, man, it was great. We’re running around stuff like that and whatever, and then you can go like, oh, well, we didn’t necessarily have a ton of, like, extra money to be spending, and, like, you know, we never went hungry, but, like, we. We weren’t buying boats or anything like that. It didn’t make us any less happy as children. We didn’t. We didn’t know that we should have had to have that. You and I didn’t have cell phones. We had, like, maybe an NES or whatever it is, but I’m saying we didn’t have endless amounts of movies and video games, stuff like that, but we were crazy happy. Because, by the way, maybe at eight years old, you just accept that I’m supposed to be happy in this environment that I’m in.

And it sucks that maybe as we get older, we start getting unrealistic expectations of what happiness even should be. I’m just saying the scripture hits a lot different, man. Like when you really start understanding what the pure happiness and faith of a child actually is and you look and you go, man, that is something to strive for.

[00:57:03] Speaker A: Well, and maybe even tonight, we’re both learning from our wives as we’re going through, as we’re going through this and talking about this and kind of exploring what this means, I’m thinking back on another lesson that Janessa pointed out to me, going back to those small books that we just kind of skipped over.

And she says in there, Jerem says that he’s not going to write much, but he also talks about how really the record are just for the Lamanites because all their seed’s going to be destroyed anyways, right? And what was the prayer of Venus? What was the prayer of Lehi? Was that when their seed gets destroyed that somehow these plates, these records can be brought out and go back to their brethren and convert the Lamanites and teach them and help them and save the Lamanites. And Jeremy wife pointed out, he’s kind of approaching this from a, why do I care about them anyways? We’re sitting here engaged in constant war. They’re killing us. Why should I waste space on these plates trying to talk to a people that I don’t even care about, right? And so she’s looking at this and saying, maybe this is where the love starts to die. And that’s why you see the failing of a people is because they no longer love their enemies, right? It’s more about how can God come here and just smite my enemies, rather than what can I do to try to reclaim my enemies? And so it’s kind of an interesting thing that she pointed out to me that maybe with the failing of this nation, what failed first was love and then everything else.

[00:58:43] Speaker B: Okay, you’re nailing this and I’m gonna just lock this into what the conversation is, is a child is also forgiving, much more so than I am in my petty, bitter, you know what I mean? Like traumatized from years of whatever soul, you know, I mean, it’s like, as an adult, it’s like we can, we’re good at hanging on to grudges forever.

Isn’t it mind blowing how forgiving children are?

I’m just saying like, dude, that’s something to look towards, man. There’s a reason Jesus was like, bring me these guys. Hey, everybody around. Look, this is who you’re supposed to be. Like, hey, you pharisees and adults. And everybody’s like this.

[00:59:32] Speaker A: It’s a humbling conversation.

[00:59:34] Speaker B: It’s why I get, and again, like, I want to keep this uplifting and positive. But I will tell you, this is why I don’t. And I luckily understand why I don’t like using the phrase with kids. Like, well, how do you think that makes Jesus feel when you do that to a kid? I’m like, well, the scriptures would suggest that Jesus in this situation would probably come to you and say, hey, bro, you need to try to be like this. So maybe don’t tell this child how I feel. You know what I mean? That’s a real, that’s a massive rub for me.

To me, it’s like, as an adult, I should be able to be like, hey, this is how that behavior makes me feel. And even then it’s like, man, but I should also still, in this case, be the adult and probably have better control over my feelings than a child who’s just learning how to behave, right? I don’t like that. And it’s. And I never have. And I’m glad that, by the way, you don’t really hear that a lot too much anymore. Right? Well, when you lie, how do you think that makes Jesus feel? I don’t know. Jesus would probably come and love them and bless them and hug them and be like, hey, you’ll figure it out. Hey, everybody, you should probably be like this person, right? That’s how Jesus feels. To answer the question, I appreciate you bringing that up because, yes, as adults, we do get hurt and we let that linger. And we use that to build walls and we use that, unfortunately, we use tough times in our life. We probably not on purpose to shield ourselves from hurt and to shield ourselves from whatever. And my goodness, like, go apologize to your kid tomorrow night and see how quick they are to put their arms back around your neck and be like, no problem.

There’s something to learn from that, man.

[01:01:22] Speaker A: Absolutely.