Hank Smith:                      00:00:00             Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:00:02             And then I had this thought and the thought was, so Steve, is that your deal with Heavenly Father? You’re going to be faithful, you’re going to be good, and you’re going to be obedient as long as he’ll keep the light turned on. So as long as he’s willing to respond to your every prayer, as long as you can feel the nurture of the Spirit, as long as you can feel that wind in your sail, then you’ll be good. But if not, then are all bets off. Is that the deal you have with the heavens?

Hank Smith:                      00:00:40             Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my co-host John Bytheway. John, you have a knowledge of history, countries, kingdoms, laws of God, and man. John, as I read that verse, that’s section 93 verse 53, I thought that’s you. When we travel together, you tell me about pretty much anything. We see something and you know something about it. Especially airplanes. John, when we go to the airport, you tell me every airplane. I know that’s a big one and that’s a small one. You tell me all the numbers and the seats and probably who flies it.

John Bytheway:               00:01:15             I read Aviation for Dummies like three times, so yeah, I’ve got it down.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:19             Well, I’ve learned a lot from you over the years. John, what a treat we have today. A privilege to have President Steve Lund with us. President, welcome to followHIM.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:01:30             Thank you so much for having me. I’m a little gobsmacked here in front of two of my doctrinal heroes that I’ve learned so much from through the years.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:38             We are honored, really honored to have you. You and John have worked together in the Young Men’s organization for the last five years, just coming to the close of that. In fact, when this episode airs, you both will be in Bermuda shorts, saying, hey, we just got released.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:01:56             John is actually in Bermuda shorts right now.

John Bytheway:               00:01:58             Right now. So that’s it.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:01             We’ll want to hear some of those stories that both of you have had in serving in the Young Men’s organization. John, today we’re going to spend our time in one section of the Doctrine & Covenants section 93. It’s another one of those that you think, wow, this came from a 27-year-old, 26-year-old farm boy. What do you think of when you think of section 93?

John Bytheway:               00:02:23             There are some of those sections that, it’s like in the Come, Follow Me Manual. Why is there only one section? Because it’s 93 or because it’s 76?

Hank Smith:                      00:02:32             Mm-hmm.

John Bytheway:               00:02:32             This is one of those sections that when I thought of it and when I thought of President Lund, I thought of light. I thought of light and truth, the accumulated flashes of light that he has referred to before. This one is so theologically beyond anything that Joseph Smith by himself could have come up with that its text is a testimony of itself.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:54             I say it over and over the pen of heaven. That is what section 93 is.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:02:59             Sometimes we think of that school of the prophets as being a bunch of country bumpkins who just walked in off the farm, leaving the mule tied up outside. I help with the Constitutional Study center at UVU, went to law school. I love the context that the restoration occurred in. The School of the Prophets is not unlike what was going on in other places in the country just a few years before. These great minds like Jefferson and Washington and John Jay and Hamilton, who we sing songs about now. In their spare time, they were doing stuff like this. They were reading deeply about important stuff. They were writing letters to each other. They were trying to try to make sense of the history of governance so that they could build a country that was sustainable and based upon true principles. Some of the greatest minds of the 18th and 19th century were counseling together to lay that philosophical and doctrinal foundation for the country where the restoration could occur. The founding fathers laid the bulwarks of a society where the restoration could thrive, and then the school of the prophets to establish the beginnings of a Zion society within that community. It’s not that strange of a thing. Some of the greatest minds of our time were involved in that revolutionary creative process and some of the greatest minds of our time were sitting around in little schoolhouses in Kirtland, pulling together the philosophical and doctrinal bulwark around which the kingdom would be born.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:32             Section 93. It’s one of those where I would say if Joseph Smith only gives us this, this is the only thing we have from him. He is an outstanding, an outstanding author and prophet. Yet this is one of how many? John, you have worked with President Lund for five years. You and I have talked for a couple of months about him coming on and how excited you are. So I’m going to let you do the introduction. You can gush.

John Bytheway:               00:04:59             I will because I love this man. I just love sitting at the end of the table and listening to how witty he is.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:05:10             You’re half right, half witty.

John Bytheway:               00:05:11             See what I mean? His travels around the world are just amazing. I will read the official bio that’s online and then maybe I’ll say some stuff. President Steven J. Lund was sustained as the young men general president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on April 4th, 2020. Not much was going on in April of 2020. The pandemic was what a month before?

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:05:39             We actually were sustained in our living rooms.

John Bytheway:               00:05:44             Living rooms all over the world, with people raising their sustaining vote. How interesting.

Hank Smith:                      00:05:52             I remember that. Unlike anything else we’d experienced.

John Bytheway:               00:05:55             Yeah, that was April of 2020. President Lund’s past assignments have included serving on the Young Men General Board, which is now called the Advisory Council, as an Area 70, mission president in the great Georgia Atlanta Mission. A coordinator of the Provo City Center temple Dedication Committee, full-time missionary in Netherlands, Amsterdam Mission. We’ve seen movies about that.

Hank Smith:                      00:06:21             Best two years. Our friend Kirby.

John Bytheway:               00:06:24             President Lund, has an undergraduate degree in communications and a law degree from Brigham Young University. He has such an interesting life. In preparation for this I listened again to his Flashes of Light talk that he gave at BYU in September of 2022, available speeches.byu.edu. He talks about going into the Army. It’s not in your bio here. You’ll tell us about that. He worked as an attorney before becoming president and CEO of a large Utah based cosmetics company, currently serving as its executive chairman of the board of directors. Born in Mesa, Arizona, grew up in California. He and his wife Kalleen, have four children. You even in that talk, talked about how you met your wife. The sequence and order of events, which had a divine hand in it was really interesting and beautiful to hear. Hopefully you’ll tell us some more about that. President Lund, with all the love and respect in the world, welcome to followHIM.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:07:22             Well, thank you. What a delight to be here and be with you who I respect so much. It’ll be fun. I always love having conversations with either of you.

Hank Smith:                      00:07:31             This is going to be a great day with great material. Let me read from the Come, Follow Me manual, then President, John and I are ready to learn. Here’s how it starts. The title of this week’s lesson is Receive of His Fullness, section 93. When you climb up a ladder, Joseph Smith taught you must begin at the bottom and ascend step by step until you arrive at the top. So it is with the principles of the gospel. You must begin with the first and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. Sometimes the ladder of exaltation seems impossibly high, but we were born to climb to the top with the Savior’s constant help. Whatever limitations we may see in ourselves, Heavenly Father and His Son see something glorious in us, something godlike. Just as Jesus Christ was in the beginning with the Father, so ye were also. Just as he continued from grace to grace until he received a fullness, so also, you shall receive grace for grace. The restored gospel teaches about the true nature of God. It also teaches about your true nature and destiny. You are a literal child of God with the potential to in due time receive of his fullness. That is a wonderful way to start. President, how should we go about this?

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:08:51             We’re going to talk about the nature of God. As we keep saying, you know, Joseph’s 27 years old, he is receiving revelation, is the only answer to how it is that he can document and explain and paint this portrait of the nature of God, the purposes of this lifetime, and then how we should treat our families all in the same context. This will be fun. Let’s start out in verse one. The revelation opens with verily thus saith the Lord, it shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, calleth on my name and obeyeth my voice and keepeth my commandments shall see my face and know that I am. Now that promise at the end of that, if you’ll do these things, then that promise is spine chilling. You’ll see my face, you will know who I am. That would be kind of a good refrigerator checklist right there.

                                           00:09:46             Wouldn’t it be? Do these few things with that end result. The language there that is most interesting to me is he starts the revelation with a reality check. He seems to be saying here, now don’t be confused. This is not just poetry that I’m revealing to you here. I’m talking to you about the world as it really is the near future as it really can come to pass. There’s a reason for your existence and you’re here for these good reasons. The thing that strikes me is when he says, you’ll see my face. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that we should be striving to one day turn around and have the Savior in front of us and look in his face, or does that mean other things? In that talk that John mentioned, I talk about having been called to be an area 70, I frankly was not struggling, but I was wrestling with this notion that I had just been called and had holy hands laid on my head and established as a special witness of Jesus Christ.

                                           00:10:50             As you can imagine, I’m wondering both what does that mean? Am I up to the task? and what does it take to be in a special witness? I think I naively worried that maybe what that meant was that I was supposed to have seen the face of the Savior as a special witness. One day at a stake conference that I was presiding over, this fellow got up and said, so have you seen God? My mind quickly went to, I had a sarcastic thing I was going to say in response and then move on. That’s not a conversation you have in front of a big crowd of people, but I had an impression in that moment to tell him this event came to mind that I hadn’t really thought about for a long time. But a couple years before that, I had been on a business trip to Asia and had flown through the night, got off the plane in the middle of the night, early in the morning, pre-dawn hours in the morning, found a car waiting for me and got in the backseat and it was going to be a couple hour drive into town.

                                           00:11:48             So I took my overcoat off and positioned myself in the corner of the car and was driving through the night. I thought I’d sleep a little bit, but I didn’t. I was fascinated by I’m in this exotic country, in this exotic place and just seeing the dark contours of what was going around. I was really curious about what the landscape was. And then as the sun started to brighten the horizon, I could start to make out that we were passing along a waterway of some kind and that there were some forest over here and waterway there, and I saw a bridge coming up by now. It was brightly lit, and so I thought, well, this will be good. As we turn over onto that bridge, I’ll be able to, you know, see the landscape and see where we really are. And I was disappointed as we turned onto the bridge that that they had a, they had erected a concrete barrier all the way along the wall of the bridge, I think, to control sound.

                                           00:12:34             As we were about to move into an urban area. There was this 12 foot, 15 foot series of concrete blocks forming a barrier all along the bridge. Sat there staring at this blank wall thinking about, huh, I wonder what beautiful thing there is on the other side of that wall. I was a little bit in a stupor because I hadn’t slept in a long time in this netherland of consciousness. As we came off the bridge around the abutment there and hit a turn to go around the mountain at the edge of the lake, I found myself turning around looking and seeing a boat that was traveling under the bridge, and I kind of went, oh, that’s what I thought. I realized I knew the boat was there and I was looking back to confirm what I’d seen or to get a better look at it.

                                           00:13:21             Then all of a sudden I snapped to full conscious, thought, Now how did I know that boat was there? And in fact, I wasn’t surprised that the whole vista that was in front of me was already known to me. There was a waterway, there were a couple other boats. There was a hill with a large building up on the top of it. All of that was familiar to me, and as I thought about it, I realized that those concrete barriers, those abutments had been positioned together, but there was just a little slit of maybe a fraction of an inch in between them and every 10 feet or so, there was a little slit there, and I’d taken enough physics to know those little slits were shooting little flashes of light at me that contained information that wasn’t enough for me to put together and see anything, but my brain somehow had collated all of those little flashes of light until by the time I got off the bridge, I pretty much knew what was on the other side of it.

                                           00:14:14             Wasn’t at all surprised to see a boat and the water and the other boats and the building and a train as I recall, that was passing. I tell that story as it was becoming clear to me that when we talk about seeing the face of the Savior, what it means to know what it means to be an especial witness. That that doesn’t necessarily mean having a conversation with, but throughout my life I had seen little flashes of divine providence of miracles, incidences of my life that had happened. I couldn’t explain in any other way other than that Heavenly Father was reaching to the veil and touching me. Cumulatively I could say to this man who was asking this kind of accusatory question, I know what I know, I know because of what I’ve seen, but more than that, because of what I’ve experienced.

                                           00:15:04             I loved Alexander Dushku in general conference and on April 6th, 2024, he spoke about the same theme. He’s the general counsel of the church and he’s become my good friend. We’ve served on committees together. We talked about this afterwards. He had never read my talk, when he wrote his talk, they reinforce each other. He talked about Joseph Smith having received a vision and a pillar of light, and he knew what he knew because he saw what he saw in a pillar of light. Rather than sending us a pillar of light, the Lord sends us a ray of light and then another and then another. Everyone experiences God’s light and truth in different ways. A burst of testimony may come as a spiritual impression, a joyful assurance of God’s love. The gift to recognize the tender mercies of the Lord or more and that or more that he puts in there opens up the door. All of the varied religious experiences that can come to us that over the course of our lives accumulate, to allow us to authentically say, I know what I know.

John Bytheway:               00:16:16             I loved that metaphor because you described it so perfectly, like yeah, the car’s going by in those slits of light, you are able to see what’s beyond it. If I remember correctly, the phrase you closed with was the weight of accumulated flashes of light, which I thought, wow, that’s beautiful. What a good answer to that question. I thought, Hank good choice because President Lund talks about light and so does this section and the source of that light. I think all of us could use a journal, talk about our rays that we’ve received and that weight of accumulated flashes of light, it starts to, like you said, have weight to it.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:16:59             And people raise that talk with me a lot, and it’s because my wife refers to it as the Me Too talk is because anybody who listens to that notion, Elder Dushku’s notion or mine can say, oh wait, I’ve had that experience too. If you don’t look back, you miss it. You don’t realize, you know more than you know, you know. Like happened to me on the bridge, but that happens to me all the time. That Heavenly Father’s been educating us and training us and teaching us in these subtle ways. Elder Dushku went on to say, in the midst of that pillar of light, we too will find a loving heavenly Father calling us by name, pointing us to the Savior, Jesus Christ, inviting us to hear him. That happens to us all. We could all make a journal and we could all write that talk.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:45             Yeah, you both, I’m sure you remember 2011 Elder Ballard. Different analogy, but same idea. He said, oftentimes we’re like the young merchant from Boston who in 1849 as the story goes, was caught up in the fervor of the California gold rush. He sells everything, heads out to California. Day after day, he dipped his pan into the river and came up empty. His only reward was a growing pile of rocks. Discouraged and broke, he was ready to quit, but then an experienced prospector said, that’s quite a pile of rocks there you’re getting my boy. The young man replied, there’s no gold here. I’m going back home. The prospector said, oh, there’s gold there all right, you just have to know where to find it. He picked up two rocks in his hands and crashed them together. One of the rocks split open revealing flecks of gold sparkling in the sunlight.

                                           00:18:33             Noticing a bulging leather pouch fastened in the prospector’s waist, the young man said, I’m looking for nuggets like the ones in your pouch, not just tiny flecks. The old prospector extended his pouch towards the young man who looked inside expecting to see several large nuggets. He was stunned to see that the pouch was filled with thousands of flecks of gold. The old prospector said, son, it seems to me you are so busy looking for large nuggets that you’re missing filling your pouch with these precious flecks of gold. The patient accumulation of these little flecks has brought me great wealth. And then Elder Ballard says, the story illustrates the spiritual truth taught by Alma to his son Helaman. I think the same principle, saw it in section 93, grace for grace by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Similar idea.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:19:24             Yeah, beautiful idea.

Hank Smith:                      00:19:26             President. It seems to me that the Lord, and I don’t know how to explain how he does it with these little flashes of light or little flecks of gold, we end up with more than we would if we did have this sudden moment of what that man was looking for. So have you seen God? Where’s this one experience that you’ve had versus these flashes of light, you actually end up with more.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:19:51             Great plan of happiness is a line upon line pedagogy, isn’t it? Of course, he could reintroduce us into his kingdom and have us be there. This is where we came from. The very point of us being here is that we’re going to act by faith and that we’re going to move forward, not just prove ourselves, but learn what it is to be agents worthy of living with the greatest beings in the universe. You do that by learning as we go

Hank Smith:                      00:20:18             And as we act. Forsake your sins, come to me, call on my name. These are all little actions every day. You’ve got to forsake your sins, right? Every day you have to call on his name.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:20:30             I had an experience that speaks to me a little bit about this. We were in Africa on an assignment to, started in Kenya, went to Uganda. The area president there, Elder Ardern. We’re driving to our first places now President Lund, while we’re here in Central Africa, we’re going to teach many people and we’re going to talk about many things. One of those things will not be the children and youth program, which is what I was there to talk about, and I laughed and said, okay, explain that to me. And he said something very much like this. He said, here in these countries in Uganda, in the Congo, we’re in somewhere between Palmyra and Kirtland. We are laying a foundation here. These folks that we’re teaching are new to the gospel and they have real testimonies, but they don’t have much of a foundation in the basics of the church about faith and baptism and paying tithing, living the word of wisdom, attending church and going to the temple and spirituality and prayer.

                                           00:21:36             He says, we’ve tried really hard to go to children and youth principles about what you do on Wednesday nights. It’s just lost on them. It’s a little bit of a misdirection because what they really need is to be continuing to build that faith in Christ. And that was amazing. But we find ourselves in Uganda now. When I was curious like John, as a child, I was fascinated by the explorers, you know, that were going out to the ends of the earth to find stuff. And one of the great exploration stories was the search for the headwaters of the Nile River. It spills into the Mediterranean Sea and it’s this big river that runs off across the desert as they’re looking for where it begins. Finally, it disappears up into the jungles and the mountains. The explorers would go up there looking for where the Nile River started and never come back.

                                           00:22:27             It winds around up through Central Africa over like 3000 kilometers or something like that. They would get lost. They would get bitten by snakes, disease would kill them, mosquitoes would kill them. The native populations weren’t all that excited to see them coming around, sometimes they would kill them. The National Geographic Society in London I guess, kept sending people down there and they’re looking. Finally, they found the headwaters of the Nile coming out of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Now, I hadn’t put this together, but we do a training one night in the capital city in Kampala, and then we drive for a couple of hours on a dirt road. We end up in this other place and when we get there, the president said, you know, we’ve got a couple of hours before the meeting starts here. Do you want to go see the headwaters of the Nile?

                                           00:23:16             I said, well, yeah, yeah. We went over to the lake and there was the little excursion boats you can get on, and we went out there and sure enough, right at the mouth of the Nile River, there are these big springs that are welling up out of Lake Victoria. There are no real rivers that flow into Lake Victoria. They’re all, it’s all spring fed coming out these mountains. The water’s just boiling up all around you and it’s the most amazing thing, the most remote place in the world that discoverers looked for forever. We are in the middle of it. It was just such a thrill to me. And then we got out and we drove a few hundred yards and went to the church, like a stake center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints positioned, you know, at a place where you could almost throw a rock and hit the headwaters of the Nile River. The gathering of Israel is happening in amazing places at an amazing pace.

Hank Smith:                      00:24:05             I love that story before those of us listening who think, well, we’re so enlightened. We’re so much further along. We are living on top of generations and decades of foundation. There they are in 1830, 1831. It’s almost like stepping back into the, those beginnings of the church.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:24:28             Between Palmyra and Kirtland.

Hank Smith:                      00:24:30             They’re pioneers.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:24:32             Absolutely.

Hank Smith:                      00:24:32             First generation.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:24:34             I was just at the MTC last week. I ran into Elder McCune there, who’s the area president over in Japan and over Mongolia. He had some photos. He says, these Mongolian saints that we were talking about live way up north of the Capitol building like a hundred miles from the Russian border. Out on the steps, the Mongolian steps there, he said, their day-to-day life is very much like the life of our pioneers. They’re cooking on open fires or their life looks a lot like that, but they felt a need or a hope to connect themselves to the other pioneers that are in now in their heritage. The church’s pioneers. They did a handcart trek just like we might do out on the West Desert or up there. They’re doing it in Mongolia and there’s these amazing pictures that turns out they know how to make a handcart. And they built handcarts that looked like our handcarts except better. We’ve got photos of them walking through rice patties and out across the steps and cooking over an open fire. They took off one of the iron wheels they made for the handcarts, laid it down as a grill, and they’re cooking out on the open range like that. These are true pioneer saints who are trying to connect themselves in a visceral way with the original pioneer Saints who had very much the same experience. It’s the most moving thing to me.

Hank Smith:                      00:26:00             I often tell my students, the Lord didn’t say to Joseph, Joseph, your sins are forgiven you. I don’t want you to join any of those churches. Let’s get started. We’re going to need barcodes on the temple recommends, we’re going to need the young women’s, young men’s program. We’re going to go slow. We’re going to go slow. We’re going to build a piece at a time.

John Bytheway:               00:26:22             You guys remember Elder Bednar’s talk about the Nephites and the Lamanites and how the Lamanites at one point of time in the Book of Mormon’s story were more righteous than the Nephites. And then he quoted because of their easiness and their willingness to believe they were in such a different place. I think it was of a sobering thing to say, okay, it’s not 1830 where I am, but I love knowing that for many of these saints, they are having those kind of experiences around the world being inspired by their devotion. I mean, when I was in the Philippines on my mission, there weren’t that many places that had buildings that we had built. We were meeting in homes. One of the most impressive things some people saw about the church was my flip chart that was printed in full color. That was it. I could show them pictures of all 16 temples that we had in 1982, but for them it was in a different place. It was humbling and sobering for me. I think of Elder Bednar quoting that line, their easiness and their willingness to believe. President Nelson may be saying the same thing. These are people who are willing, this is Israel, meaning willing to let God prevail with what little they have.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:27:44             When President Nelson called me to be the young men president, he immediately brought me back to consciousness. He said, you know, this is a very important time for the youth of the church because he said, this is an important time for the church. This is that time that every prophet from Adam through the ages until today has looked forward to with great enthusiasm. A day when generations would be born, who would come with special gifts that would qualify them and enable them to be about the gathering of Israel. Ancient prophets talked about that as some future event somewhere down the tunnel of time. We don’t talk that way today because the gathering is going on right now. It’s going on in stages, but around the world to really great effect. It’s stunning how, it’s 1830 somewhere, everywhere because the missionaries are just showing up someplace.

                                           00:28:41             I was talking to Sharon Eubank one day and she said, we get two kinds of calls at the church from media. We get the call from some media that’s saying, why are you guys losing so many people? How have you become so irrelevant that so many of your kids are falling away? She says, but the other call we get from more informed correspondents is, okay, we’ve been looking at the data of church participation across the board. We want to know how it is that you are so much more effective at holding onto your youth than others, than everybody else is. We are wringing our hands and for good purpose, we don’t want to lose one of these amazing kids. I can tell you that there are twice as many young men and young women today holding temple recommends, as it were 10 years ago. There are more ordinances being performed in temples in the world today than at any time in the history of the church. Two years ago, President Oaks stood in the Mission Leader seminar and he said, good news, we are back in terms of missionary headcount. Number of missionaries serving in the field we’re back to pre COVID numbers.

                                           00:29:48             We were building and building and building. And then COVID came along and the numbers fell off because we didn’t have any place we could send them. Then they’ve come back again. He says, now we are back to pre COVID numbers. But here’s the interesting thing. So this was in June of that year. He said, as we look at the pipeline ahead, we can see that between now and December we will have net net 10,000 more missionaries surfing than we have today. And we’re at a virtual head high water mark now and he says, we’re not quite sure where those 10,000 are coming from, but there are 10,000 that we didn’t expect to see. I don’t know anything that President Oaks doesn’t know three times, but I think I know why. It’s two things. President Nelson in general conference talked to the youth and he said, it’s time, time to put our boots on.

                                           00:30:33             And these great kids are listening. But the other thing, it’s those FSY conferences where young people are coming, showing up on Monday, mad at their moms for making them come and they come under the influence of the Spirit by Monday night, they discover to their great surprise that they actually like people. By Tuesday they discover that people like them too. And that’s such a revelation to them. That takes them a minute to get used to. And by Wednesday and Thursday now they’ve been under the influence of the Spirit long enough that their compass starts to be recalibrated under the reality that there is a God in heaven and he loves me and he cares about me. And by Thursday and Friday they love him too. You’ve both had this experience as I have again and again and again. Somebody stopping me in the hallway and saying on Monday I came here as a last concession to my mom.

                                           00:31:29             I was going to quit the church right after this week. I’m not going to quit the church. I’m going on a mission. I’m not just a tourist passing through my parents’ church like I was. This is my church. He’s my Savior. The good things that go on at Young Women’s Camp and Aaronic priesthood encampments, all that combines to giving these young people an opportunity to get out of the world long enough for them to be built line upon line until true conviction and true conversion is taking place and these amazing things are happening. This year, Elder Cook gave a little presentation and he showed a a little map of the areas of the world globally. The church is divided into geographic areas, ecclesiastical areas around the world. Some areas are doing better than others in terms of baptismal rates. The lowest performing areas only saw a 20% increase in baptisms this year over year from last year.

                                           00:32:31             Everything else is north of that. The numbers are thrilling. What we’re seeing is President Nelson’s seership finding a place in the real world that Heavenly Father is gathering his people together in preparation for the Savior’s return. Elder Uchtdorf grabbed Bonnie Cordon and I suggested that we really ought to go visit some international FSYs so that we could make sure that, verify that the protocols that are working here are being employed and working there and maybe learn what we could from what are they doing there that works as we try to crowdsource the best practices of EFY. So I went into the FSY office and said, well apparently I can go anywhere in the world. I’d like to go someplace where it would make a difference to have a general officer show up maybe someplace out of the way that general authorities don’t often get. Where would you send me?

                                           00:33:24             And they all immediately said, Pakistan. I said, oh, shouldn’t we go someplace where we have members of the church? And they said, oh no, we have members of the church there. They’re having their first FSY conference. We fill out an application for a visa and got one to go and my wife and I land in Islamabad. Now this is a 95% Muslim country. It’s such a beautiful country. We land at the airport and it’s a Muslim airport is filled with Muslim people and there’s two pale guys at the end of the concourse there. The mission president and Elder Kelly Johnson of the area presidency, they took us to the mission home and I got to train their missionaries. We were walking into the mission home and the mission president leaned down and said to me, now president, you can talk to our missionaries. We’ve got them all here.

                                           00:34:13             They’re all here. You can talk about anything you want, but don’t waste a minute talking about finding people to teach because that’s not our problem here. I just laughed and said, president, that’s our problem everywhere. Missionaries are always needing to find people to teach. What do you mean? Elder Johnson said, well, this is what he means. Last Sunday, last weekend, I presided over a district conference here, a district conference in Islamabad. Now a district, you’ll know, but maybe not everybody does, that’s what happens before a stake. When you don’t have wards, you just have branches. Branches are combined together into districts that ultimately become wards and stakes. 1800 people showed up for district conference, but only 600 of those 1800 were baptized members of the church, the other 1200 are learning the gospel from these missionaries and we’re walking into the chapel and I look up 15 elders sitting up at the front of the chapel.

                                           00:35:12             There are about that many sisters that serve as full-time missionaries too, but they have to go out of the country because culturally it’s not safe for them to be there. So they come here, they come to the Philippines and to Thailand and to the United States and so forth around the world. He said that we want to make sure that as people join the church here in this unusual environment where there would be a extreme minority, that they understand the gospel thoroughly. So we require that they attend church 12 times before they can be interviewed to be baptized three months, which is the highest barrier I’ve ever heard anywhere in the world. With that people are showing up like literally in the thousands waiting for their turn.

John Bytheway:               00:35:58             Hank, can you believe that 600 of those are baptized and the rest are investigating?

Hank Smith:                      00:36:06             We need to have every member of the church bring two people who are interested in being baptized. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:36:10             That’s your ticket in. Yeah.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:36:11             It works something like that. When they said, we don’t worry about finding, I was talking to a couple of those missionaries and they said, a member will tell us that their friend at this address would like to learn more. We go to that address and we go in and there’ll be a mom and a dad and a couple of kids. We’ll go in and introduce ourselves and have an opening prayer. We close our eyes for the opening prayer and there’s four of us in the room and when we open our eyes, there’s 18 of us in the room because the kids have run up and down the hallway and saying they’re here. The neighbors want to come and learn too. It’s a Benbow farm, kind of a world going on.

                                           00:36:48             More of these good people are finding light, coming at great numbers. We drove up into the mountains outside of Islamabad. A couple of hours arrived at this little hotel resort situation in this quite a steep canyon there and were met by 386, as I recall, baptized 14 to 18 year olds who were there for an FSY conference. They told us 94% of all the baptized 14-year-old to 18 year olds in the country were there at that FSY conference. This was a feat. When we arrived there, they were doing their little poster parade thing where they divided into groups. The groups had names. They made these posters out of poster paint. They’re singing the FSY songs. They sing them in English and then they sing it in Urdu. Then they’ll sing it in English again. They’re singing the songs and they’ve got these Pakistani drums going in the background.

                                           00:37:43             They’re laughing and singing. They’re every color of the rainbow from the poster paint fight that went on in the other room while they’re making these posters. Just what you would hope for. All of the counselors were return missionary FSY counselors who had come back and were there and I’d tell you these counselors were bigger than life. I was talking to one of these and they asked me, so have you met Jabber John? I said, no, who’s that? And he said, well, you need to meet him. So they, we went and found this boy, this little 14-year-old and he said, you need to hear his story. So he’s telling me the story in Urdu and they’re translating and I was really impressed this little boy was just full of light. He says, well, the story they want me to tell is that a week ago I was walking home from school.

                                           00:38:25             I saw a fight breaking out across the street. I know what can happen in fights like that. So I started running towards home. But as I ran down the street, a bullet flies out of this crowd hits me in the leg. I collapse on the ground. An ambulance has to come take me to the hospital. I’ve lost blood. He’s telling me this in Urdu and the the Relief Society President and the branch president are translating and then at this point in time, they just take the story over because this is where they come in. We heard he was at the hospital and we rushed down there and we walk in and oh my goodness, there’s blood being drained into him in one arm and fluids in another. And they got him on monitors. He’s got an oxygen mask on his face and they’re clearly worried about him.

                                           00:39:04             He’s pale as a sheet. The branch president said it was so tense. I walked over to lighten the moment and I said, well, Jabber John and he’s awake, but you know, so he is looking at him past the oxygen mask. He says, well, jabber John. I guess that whole idea of getting on a bus Monday morning driving six hours to an FSY conference is out. Jabber John rips his oxygen mask off, sits straight up in bed and says, oh no, I am determined to go and then faints back into bed. Everybody in the room looks over there and says, brother, you’re not going anywhere. Well that was then, but Monday morning Jabber John got on the bus. With him was the branch president who had spent the weekend taking classes on how to administer IV antibiotics so they could get him through his antibiotics course before he went.

                                           00:39:54             But he got on the bus and went. In the moment the thoughts that went through my mind were these that when Lehi’s family’s conversion spiritual story was told, they wrote a book in the book of first Nephi. There are those words by a young person that said, I will go and I will do. It’s inspired us forever since. Well, I think when they write the history of the church in Pakistan, if there’s a book of Jabber John, there’ll be those words. Oh no, I’m determined to go because it’s emblematic of the whole spirit of this place. These people who are cultural minorities by a long shot to hear the gospel and they’re willing to go, they’re going full speed in Pakistan, in the Congo, in Mongolia, Uganda, all these places. It’s an amazing world.

John Bytheway:               00:40:42             It’s so fun to hear, and I’m thinking of these FSY counselors that are young adults that are returned missionaries and the impact they’re going to have on that growing place.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:52             President, these experiences that you’ve described for us, these incredible experiences reminds me of a lot of the lesson 93. It’s all about light and truth. Really that’s what you’ve been seeing all over the planet are people getting the truth and being filled with light, seeing more truth, being filled with light.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:41:13             It really is something. Verse two here of our section makes the statement, I am the light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world. I’m struck by that. I minored in philosophy while I was at BYU. I was just a communications major. I thought I’d grow up doing this. I became a philosophy minor by taking classes from Truman G. Madsen. Anything he offered, I took and then I got a minor out of that. In the world of philosophy, there’s this conversation. Some philosophers think that men are basically evil animals that have to be treated as such, and then there are those who think that people are basically good. We’d read the philosophers back and forth. I was always asking myself, so where are we on that spectrum? We know these are fallen men and that there’s a law of the jungle that pertains if we don’t civilize each other.

                                           00:42:03             On the other hand, we believe that we’re basically good. I love it that this speaks to that. This answers that question, whether we’re good or we’re not. Every man cometh into this world enlightened by the light of Christ. Wherever we are on the good-bad spectrum, we’re all pretty good. We all made a decision in the premortal world that we would follow the Savior and come here and subject ourselves to this plan. So we know that there’s a fundamental goodness about us, but in addition to that, we all have wind in our sails that moves us towards better things. The decisions we make to the contrary are against that wind.

John Bytheway:               00:42:41             Hank, when you started, you read from the manual, one of the things I love about this section is you can put it side by side with John chapter one where, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. Then you get this out, it is the most affirming, what? verse 23. You were also in the beginning with the Father. Wait, what? Who me? It’s like the Moses, Thou art my son, in the Pearl of Great Price. It’s about God, but it’s about us and our place that as President just said, we have that light and that light is the light of Christ. It’s one of the reasons I love this section. Didn’t you say that Truman Madsen, didn’t he comment a lot more on this particular section?

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:43:30             Yeah, he did. His wife Ann, I heard her say once that Truman would come home from his philosophy studies at Harvard after having wrestled with the thinkers of the day. He’d come home and say about whatever the topic was. Well, I wonder what brother Joseph has to say about that, and he would go open his library and try to get that sort of light. Often it was section 93 he was going through where so many of the great philosophical topics, not just is man basically good or evil, but a whole bunch of stuff gets covered in here, doesn’t it?

Hank Smith:                      00:44:03             Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:44:05             We did this four years ago, Truman Madsen, it was in a footnote, chapter two, footnote number 27 to Joseph Smith the Prophet by Truman Madsen. He talks about these questions. How can there come something from nothing? Answer: The universe was not created from something. The elements are eternal. Section 93, verse 33, how can Christ be both absolutely human and absolutely divine? He was not both at the same time. He received not the fullness at first, he quotes Section 93, verse 13. It’s like Section 93 ticks off these huge philosophical questions, one after another, about six of them. Truman Madsen points this out. Hank, we can point people to Casey Griffiths episode four years ago if they want to see that because we don’t want to do the same thing again here, but if you love that sort of thing, the theological burst of light in section 93 is magnificent.

Hank Smith:                      00:44:58             I think it’s Richard Bushman who said that Joseph Smith would untie gordian knots in an afternoon.

John Bytheway:               00:45:06             That’s right.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:07             Problems that people had wrestled with for thousands of years. Joseph Smith says, oh, this afternoon I received the following section 93.

John Bytheway:               00:45:16             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:16             Who better to explain it than the Lord himself?

John Bytheway:               00:45:19             You remember section 88 when he writes to WW Phelps and he writes a letter and says, Hey, I love that he doesn’t say I wrote this, because he didn’t. He said, we got this from the Lord. We got this olive leaf. Let’s study this thing I got. Wow, what’s in here? To me, that’s another testimony. I didn’t write this. I got this.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:45:40             I find that, the intellectual debate, to be so interesting. This is an interesting little footnote to me that there are historical questions we don’t know the answers to, in the gospel. And people lose their testimonies sometimes over, did this happen, this happen? I think that happened, that doesn’t make sense to me. Yet arguably the greatest historian of our time, Richard Bushman, is also a sealer in the temple and a patriarch. The guy who knows more about church history maybe than anybody on earth is a faithful member of the church. The problem that most of us have with church history, we have problems, is that we don’t know enough. Not that we know too much. One of the greatest philosophers of the restoration was Truman Madsen, who was just a wonderful teacher, but in his own right, won awards as a student and was a Harvard PhD. As he sorts out and people leave the church over the philosophical gaps that they see and the and the unknown, and yet the greatest philosopher of the restoration, he died an active member of the church and defended the faith and Joseph Smith had no greater defender. It’s a testimony of major proportion.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:49             We’ve spoken at this already at length here, but over and over in this section, this idea comes up. Grace for grace. Says when Jesus came to the earth, even he received grace for grace or line upon line, then the Lord says, you shall receive grace for grace. You’ve spoken about this already President with flashes of light. Seems like the same idea, doesn’t it?

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:47:16             Yeah, it does. It’s sort of an interesting thing. Who was Jesus? I mean, this is the creator of the, he put the galaxies in spin and then he is born in a stable. We know that He knows a lot, but who was he as a young person? If he was truly going to make true on his promise, that if we would agree to come here and be part of this grand enterprise of earth life, that he would enable our return by coming himself. His promise was, I will come. I will experience earth life with you and make it possible for you to return again. So how do you have it both ways? How does he learn and grow and still be him? Obviously, there was a time when the veil kept him from his full knowledge of what was going on in the premortal world.

                                           00:48:06             I was in the Perganon once in Berlin. There are all these sculptures of the Greek gods, the tour guide pointed out to us, look at the expressions on their faces, whether they’re sitting in quiet repose or whether they’re fighting with a csar, swinging a sword or something. Their faces are always placid, always nonplussed, no pain being shown, no exertion, no anger. These are human emotions. These are gods and gods don’t feel those human emotions. Well, the God that we know and worship was beyond mortal strength and mortal experiences, but he felt things, things that you would see in his face. He knew pain. In Peter, 1 Peter 2:22 where it says that Jesus was he who committed no sin. It was Brother Madsen who brought this to my attention. He committed no sin, but he experienced them all.

John Bytheway:               00:49:06             Wow. I think Elder Maxwell too said he suffered our afflictions before we did. Speaking to a a modern audience. What you just said reminds me of Hebrews 4:15 for we have not an high priest, Paul’s speaking of Christ, which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Felt what we felt feels what we feel. It sounds like.

Hank Smith:                      00:49:34             Yeah. I teach a class at BYU where every semester we study for a week or two, the Nicene Creed. In essence, it’s an argument that starts between Arius and Alexander. Is Christ the creator or is Christ a creation? and I’ll ask my students, is he the creator or a creation? They’ll say, well, he’s both. I’ll say, how come they didn’t think of that? How come you did? Very rarely can they answer. They’ll say, well, I don’t know. I’ll say it’s section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s Joseph Smith who received this section. Who better than to explain how he can be both the creator and a creation than himself.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:50:16             That brings then to bold relief the problem that the creeds have. The creeds were written in an exercise of trying to reconcile Greek philosophy, Greek logic, Greek syllogistic philosophy with Christian doctrine and in places where they don’t line up, then they have to fill in the gaps with some rationale. That gets you to things like the three in one God notion. So if your foundation is going to be Greek philosophy, you’re going to end up with gaps in your theology. If your foundation is theology, then you can pick and choose from Greek philosophy that which makes sense and that which doesn’t.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:57             They always laugh when I tell them the story of how Arius says that Christ was actually tempted, in reality that he was tempted. He gets attacked by a bishop there on the floor and I’ll say, do you know who it is? No, I don’t know who it is. It’s Saint Nicholas. It’s the man who becomes Santa Claus. He attacks Arius for saying that Jesus was tempted. Here we have in section 93, no, he received grace for grace. He went through the same process that you and I do. I can link the article that I give to my students on our show notes. It’s by Dr. Lincoln Blumell, John, who we’ve had on the show before. He explains it so wonderfully.

John Bytheway:               00:51:36             He was right in the middle of decking the halls with boughs of holly when that happened, no, I’m just kidding, but well,

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:51:44             He did deck someone, so I guess that’s right.

John Bytheway:               00:51:46             It’s a different kind of decking that suddenly…

Hank Smith:                      00:51:50             But look at verse 19. Jesus says, I want you to know how to worship and what you’re worshiping. I want you to know me.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:51:59             President Bonnie Cordon and I were summoned to the first presidency’s office a few years ago, so this was maybe 2022 they asked us to come and tell them how the FSY conferences were going. We’d done a full year now. They wanted an update on how’s it going, and to resource properly. Do we have things we should do differently? We went in. It was just the first presidency, Bonnie and I and Elder Uchtdorf was our apostolic leader. We had a little PowerPoint presentation that we took them through and explained things. That’s kind of a thrill to be in the first Presidency’s conference room there, the six of us. We walked them through our presentation.

                                           00:52:37             As we finished, President Eyring had a couple of questions and then President Oaks had a couple of questions, but the whole while President Nelson sat, as he often does, toward the front of his chair, leaning in, piercing gaze, absolute attention to what we’re talking about, but didn’t have any questions, didn’t have any comments. He just kind of sat quietly through nodding appreciatively. I don’t remember him making notes. I don’t think he has to make notes. He just knows stuff, remembers stuff, and then Elder Oaks finished his last question and there was a a moment’s pause and Elder Uchtdorf perceived that the meeting was probably over. He said, well, thank you, started to stand. Bonnie and I stood. Then President Nelson, you know, he hadn’t moved. He said, you must teach them to pray, which was a pretty good signal to us that the meeting wasn’t over, so we quickly sat down in our chairs again. This was fascinating to me because he sat there the whole time thinking about what do these young people need? How can I be helpful? We were talking about the FSY thing.

                                           00:53:39             We were thinking about the FSY program. He was thinking about the youth. His comment was, you must teach them to pray, to whom it is they pray and the language of prayer. Then he said something very much like, I feel that we’ve become far too casual in the way that we approach the throne of God. If we could see through the veil to who it is that we’re talking to, our father in heaven, if we could see who we were talking to, we would bring the most elevated speech and the most humble attitudes that we could muster. You must teach them to pray, to whom it is they pray and the language of prayer and then the meeting really was over and we got up and left. I’ve thought a lot about that. If you could see who it is, if they could actually see who it is that they’re talking to, we would all pray differently. I think about Father Lehi had his experience, the Book of Mormon, where he actually describes it. When he did see who he was praying to, he had to go home and collapse on his bed.

Hank Smith:                      00:54:47             It seems like the Lord brings that up. Verse 22, all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same. We live beneath our privileges. Come partake of this glory.

John Bytheway:               00:55:01             How affirming is that next verse, Hank and President, you were also in the beginning with the Father. What? Who me? I mean, don’t you have a who me moment when you read that? President, the first line of the Aaronic Priesthood Quorum theme to me is just that affirming, I’m a beloved son of God and he has a work for me to do. Whoa. It feels like that to me.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:30             John it made me think of the young women’s theme. I am a beloved daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and eternal destiny. Maybe that in some ways what President Nelson was after. They need to see who they are that they can approach the throne of God. The relationship that’s there can embolden someone through prayer, through your prayers you can feel edified and uplifted by the sense of who you are and who loves you.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:55:59             President Nelson spoke at a mission leader seminar, I think it was later that same year, but talking to mission presidents, this was the theme of his talk. I remember him saying, it says in scriptures, we should pray in our coat closets. And we always say, well, you know, that’s metaphorical, but he says there’s something real about that. You need to go to someplace like a coat closet someplace where you can close the door and be alone. Be able to focus your every attention on who it is that you’re talking to. And then President Nelson urged the mission presidents to think about the temple. When you pray that in the temple we pass through a veil and that veil is representative of the Savior. But when we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, we are literally speaking to the Father through the Savior. But having that imagery in mind of speaking to the Father through the Son in a sacred place, a place made sacred by your prayers, but that isn’t going to have somebody wandering through and divide your attention is a powerful thing.

Hank Smith:                      00:57:05             This is a very elevating section where the Lord is almost inviting us. Come up, come up, come see me. Come talk to me.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:57:14             I was reading through this, it took me back to section 78:17. I have written in my notes that Truman Madsen seems to be on our minds today because this I think was one of his favorite sections. But in the margin of my scriptures, I said, Truman Madsen commented that this is his favorite scripture that says verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children and you have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you. And you cannot bear these things now nevertheless, nevertheless, be of good cheer for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours. And the riches of the eternity are yours. That’s that line upon line concept, isn’t it? You’re children now, but I know who you are and I know what you can do. And this battle is already won. All you have to do is not give up.

Hank Smith:                      00:58:16             Both of you know of Henry Eyring Sr. maybe the greatest chemist of his lifetime. How would you like to be the greatest of something in the world? There he is going to his lab at the University of Utah, Nobel Prize winning type research. This is what he said. Our understanding, great as it sometimes seems, can be nothing but the wide-eyed wonder of a child when measured against omniscience. I love that humility

John Bytheway:               00:58:49             Like that section 78, you’re little children. There was a video made years ago called Hugh Nibley, Faith of an Observer. At the end he says, none of us is very smart. None of us knows very much, but the thing the angel’s envy us for is we can forgive and we can repent. So three, cheers. Let’s forgive and repent. That’s the end of the video.

Hank Smith:                      00:59:11             Let’s look at verse 28. I’d love to hear your comment on this idea, president, and maybe I’ll attach it to verse 39. He says, he that keepeth my commandments receives truth and light. And it seems that he’s saying, the more you live the truth, the more light you’re going to get. With that light, you can see more truth. And if you live that truth, you’re going to get more light and it can keep going and going. The glory of God is light and truth. That’s verse 36. But then he adds, the wicked one, this is verse 39, comes and takes away light and truth through disobedience. How have you seen that play out in your life or in your service in the church? We’ve been talking about these people who receive light and truth and light and truth. You can see it in them in these countries where the church is beginning to flourish. Yet the opposite can happen where people don’t live the truth that they have and they lose that light. I’ve seen that happen to loved ones. It’s heartbreaking.

Pres. Steven Lund:          01:00:15             It truly is. It turns out that testimony and conviction is somewhat perishable. We have to continue to renew. This is one of the reasons that we need to be in the Book of Mormon every day, the Book of Mormon particularly because it reminds us both of the truths of the gospel and the reality of the restoration. I like to think of the Book of Mormon as a window into the sacred grove. When you read the Book of Mormon and feel the Spirit affirm a truth that’s there, you’re learning that truth, but you’re also seeing through that text into the sacred grove. If this is an inspired book, then what Joseph said happened there is true. But if we don’t keep going back to the font, then things can fade. And even when we’re doing our best, there are times of great conviction and times of less.

                                           01:01:05             I have a brother who’s a PhD physicist and he got the brains in our family. I heard him say once that he studied in his PhD program this theory of relativity as businesses have to do. And he says, I have a testimony of this, of relativity to the length that it goes, the extent that it explains the universe. I have a testimony. But there was a time when I could walk you through the math. I could walk you through the theoretics. I could unravel the law of relativity pretty extensively. I understood it. I knew it to be true. He says, now I spent a lot of years since then and I can’t do that anymore, but I still know it’s true. I remember that it’s true. This is true of the gospel too. I have known that it’s true. I have seen those flashes of light.

                                           01:01:46             I have seen those rays of insight penetrating the veil and in my life. Sometimes I have to think back and remember that, those things in order to move on, this is the importance of covenant though. We make promises in the full light of day when we find ourselves wandering through maybe a dark patch or a place where the way is not well known or understood, we have our covenants to fall back to. I have a tender experience in my life that I don’t often talk about. When our son Tanner was sick in the hospital, contracted pneumonia, RSV pneumonia, while he was in the bone marrow unit. So he had no immune system and he had pneumonia, ends up on a ventilator and it was really grim. But he was really strong. He spent 11 weeks unconscious and a chemical induced coma in the ER on a ventilator.

                                           01:02:43             During that time, my wife and I were committed to be in with him. If I was there, she would replace me and I’d go home with our other two, three kids and then we’d go back and forth again. And we didn’t know from minute to minute whether he was going to be with us or not. And it was a pretty, pretty challenging time. I don’t tell you this, to have people feel sorry for us. Tanner is fine. He’s the happiest guy in this universe. We’re going to be okay too. We, we’re carrying, as you can still tell, we’re carrying a little scar tissue, but that’s going to heal too. We’re one hug away from being whole again. And that day is coming. But on this particular time, one night it was in the middle of the night and I was exhausted. We were all exhausted and a nurse said, there’s a little room around the corner where you can go and close the door.

                                           01:03:31             They had some little sleeping rooms there, just large enough for a little bunk. Go get a couple hours of sleep and you’ll feel better. So I went in and knelt down by that little cot and I was praying. I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or if it was by design, but I couldn’t feel the Spirit. And it seemed to me in that moment like I should have been able to. As I grappled with that, there was no relief. No matter how I approached the heavens, I was just alone in the room. Finally, after a while, I rolled up onto the cot and kind of laid there staring at the dark ceiling with my fuzzy brain and said, well, maybe that’s it. Maybe there isn’t. I mean, it’s possible I guess, that I’m talking to myself here. So what does that mean? And then I had this thought and the thought was, so Steve, is that your deal with heavenly Father, you’re going to be faithful, you’re going to be good and you’re going to be obedient as long as he’ll keep the light turned on.

                                           01:04:42             So as long as he’s willing to respond to every prayer, as long as you can feel the nurture of the Spirit, as long as you can feel that wind in your sail, then you’ll be good? But if not, then are all bets off? Is that the deal you have with the heavens? And as I talked to myself, the words that went through my head was, no, I have placed my bet, I’ve made promises. And if I never feel the Spirit again, I’m going to stay the course. I’m going to do my best. From then until now, I’ve had many, many rich, the most powerful experiences of my life, you know, have happened. But very periodically. It’s not all the time those little flashes come, well, I don’t know. I can’t even say that right now. They’re coming with huge regularity these days in my life. But there was that time when it was a remembrance that you know what? You’ve made covenants and we’re promise keepers in our family. We keep promises.

John Bytheway:               01:05:39             Wow. Thank you for sharing that. It’s not transactional. It’s like you said. No, I’ve placed my bet. I know in whom I trust.

Pres. Steven Lund:          01:05:49             Yeah. That trust isn’t dependent on new input. I don’t have to keep getting new input. I’ve received plenty. It would be a betrayal for me to be something less than I try to be today. Those realizations and that experience helped me understand the Atonement just a little bit better. We often think about the Savior on the cross in that moment when he said, wait a minute, I’m alone here. Why hast thou forsaken me? because I wonder why heavenly father, I mean, he could have very easily given me a little nurture there. Touched me with a little spark of it’s going to be okay but he didn’t and it turns out that’s been one of the more important revelations of my life not to receive one.

John Bytheway:               01:06:31             Wow. What a powerful testimony. We’re a hug away. I’ve never heard you say that. That’s beautiful.

Hank Smith:                      01:06:39             Staying in the Book of Mormon. Alma actually talks about this very thing. Listen to this. He’s talking to Zeezrom. This is Alma 12:9. It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God. He says, but if you harden your heart, you receive a lesser portion of the word. But if you don’t harden your heart, you’ll get a greater portion of the word. They that will harden their hearts to them is given a lesser portion of the word. And then this phrase, until they know nothing concerning his mysteries, this is 93:39. The wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth. Well, I’ve heard that from so many and I’ve seen it in my life that well, how can they see it this way? I know they once saw this. I was with them in the mission field. I heard them bear testimony. How can they see this now? And I think the Lord is telling us how this works, that you can actually lose the light and truth that you have currently. It’s almost like a bonfire. You have to keep feeding it.

John Bytheway:               01:07:36             I’ve got in my notes, Hank, and maybe this was from four years ago, verse 37, light and truth forsake the evil one. What if we think about some time in the scriptures and time learning to hear him every day, what we like to call holy habits and righteous routines. What if that’s really true? It’s not the check the box, it’s the outcome of time in the Book of Mormon every day that will keep the evil one away or time in prayer every day that keeps the evil one away so that the light grows, as you mentioned back to verse 28. What if that’s really true? Then that’s really motivating to keep doing that.