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

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:00:03             Of course Christ understands our struggles. He is mighty to save and he doesn’t need us to be finished. He needs us to be faithful, to keep turning to him, to keep including him and not turn away in shame. Sadly, we turn this into sometimes a thing where we feel so ashamed or maybe our family contributes to feelings of shame. That’s not what the gospel is about. The gospel is Christ’s arms extended all the day long.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:36             Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my cohost, John Bytheway, now, John, this is going to be odd because I don’t have an adjective for you today. I wanted to show you something.

John Bytheway:               00:00:49             I’m so grateful.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:51             I wanted to show you something. 1 Kings 18:21. Listen to this, John. If the Lord be God, follow him.

John Bytheway:               00:01:01             We made it.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:02             Follow him. We made it into the scripture.

John Bytheway:               00:01:04             We’re in the canon. Yes.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:06             Thank you to Elijah. John, it is a privilege today to be joined once again by someone who’s been with us before many times. It’s been a while since we’ve had her, but she’s back. Dr. Lili Anderson. Lili, welcome back. We’ve missed you.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:01:22             Thanks. I’m happy to be here and I do want to say that a lot of people reached out after I was on last and had recently lost my husband and there has been an outpouring of love and support and I know lots of prayers and I’m very grateful for all of those. So thanks to all of you.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:37             Lili has taught us many things over the last five years. I’m excited for today. John, 1 Kings, Elijah. What comes to mind?

John Bytheway:               00:01:46             There’s some big visual, huge things like with the priests of Ba’al and there’s some tiny, beautiful, powerful things, like with the widow. In the midst of this time with divided kingdoms and everything, I’m just glad we get to talk about Elijah because he showed up in Kirtland. I just love the prophet Elijah.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:06             Yeah, he bridges the dispensations, doesn’t he? Lili, what are you looking forward to today?

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:02:11             I always love Nephi’s admonition to liken the scriptures unto ourselves because if we can’t practically apply these things in our lives, they really do us no good and that’s clearly not the intent of the Lord. Always looking for personal application and an understanding of what’s happening to us in the last of the last days and how those insights that come so many times from the Old Testament can really illuminate what we are dealing with today and how to address it and strengthen ourselves. So there are four big takeaways I wanted to get out of today’s discussion, even though we could make that a dozen easily, but let’s go with these four for now. First, to understand paganism in ancient and modern times, and again, this is last of the last day’s stuff. I think it’s really interesting to see sort of a historical view of this because we often get caught up in our day-to-day studies and sometimes it’s really good to step back and see the arc of history and how God works with us and how we push back as people and humankind.

                                           00:03:15             Second point, how to stand with Christ. Of course, this is a question for every single lesson. How do we strengthen our stance with Jesus Christ? Number three, the incredible mission of Elijah. Joseph Smith talked about Elijah so much there’s no way we could even cover what Joseph Smith said about this incredible prophet. He was the last day’s forerunner of Christ, so we’re going to talk about that part of his mission as well. And then the fourth message is about the righteous use of power, which is so relevant to our current day where power, frankly, is demonized. Those are my four targets for today with lots of little detail. As John said, there are some little, little things here that are sweet and tender that we can touch on.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:04             Those who are new to our show are going to experience studying the scriptures with Lili. I guarantee they’re going to go back to the previous episodes they have missed and say, I want to do that again. John, for those new listeners, can you tell us who Lili is? Tell us all about her.

John Bytheway:               00:04:19             Lili de Hoyos Anderson is a first generation American. Her mother is French, her father is Mexican. She was born in a little border town in Texas, but soon her family moved to the Midwest where she grew up in Michigan and Indiana. When she started high school, both her parents began teaching at BYU. So that’s quite a commute. No, they moved to Provo. She graduated from Provo High School, attended BYU, graduated in sociology. After about 20 years of being a full-time homemaker, Dr. Anderson completed her master’s degree in social work. She is a licensed clinical social worker, has a full-time private practice in individual, marriage and family counseling. She later completed her PhD in marriage, family, and human development and for several years taught part-time at BYU in the School of Family Life. The Andersons have eight children. This is fun to say, Hank. They’re called the Alphabet Kids because they are Adam, Bethany, Caitlin, Dominic, Eden, Faith, Graydon, and Harper. We learned, because Lili told us they’re expecting their 40th grandchild which is amazing. She’s also working on a new book right now, working title, The Non-Victim Christian Rethinking Charity. Welcome to the program and please tell us about that new project you’re working on.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:05:40             The manuscript draft is complete. It is going to take a few revisions, but not too many because the content is finally there. And I did hit a real block after I lost Chris. I just recently have been able to get that finished and it’s been a long time waiting. It is close now to availability and we will have pre-sales available on my website. The idea of this, and it’s really hard to capture in a title because the non-victim Christian is actually a term that I came up with after thinking and praying about it because there wasn’t a term in our culture, which is telling in and of itself. The non-victim Christian is someone who doesn’t hurt others because we care too much about our relationship with our Heavenly Father. We want to be Christian, but we finally realize that God does not want us to be perpetually and chronically hurt by others.

                                           00:06:32             That’s the non-victim part where instead of going from victim or choosing victimizer, which some people do, some people just swing right past the center, I’ve taken it long enough, now I’m dishing it out. And then they feel terrible and they go back to taking it. The point of the book and I have tons of application chapters so that people can see how that works in marriage, with kids, with our extended family, even in church service, how we can be non-victim Christians and learn to establish our own safety, take personal responsibility using our agency and our accountability to not be chronically victimized and how some of our misperceptions about charity are what make us most vulnerable because we want to be good people.

                                           00:07:15             I talk about Christ as a non-victim in the book and then I culminate with how if we really take these tools that God has given us that I go to great length to exemplify and explain, then we can really channel Christlike love from a position of personal power so we are not vulnerable. Too often when we hear the prophets talk about forgive, love your enemies, forgive everybody, be peacemakers. Sometimes people wince because they’re like, I want to follow the prophet. I want to follow the Savior. But it sounds dangerous because they’re in situations where they are chronically being hurt and they’re afraid that it’s a call to continue to be hurt. It’s not. The Lord never, never endorses chronic victimization and there is so much we can do about it, but it’s a change of thinking. It’s rethinking charity and then coming back to understanding how the true and pure love of Christ really can amplify us.

Hank Smith:                      00:08:22             That sounds fantastic.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:08:24             It’s important stuff.

Hank Smith:                      00:08:26             Hey, the Doctrine and Covenants says teach one another out of the best books. That is exactly what you’re going to do with this book.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:08:32             Scriptures are the best books and I’m just going to try to make them applicable.

Hank Smith:                      00:08:37             Yeah. Lili, congratulations on finishing that despite all the hardship you’ve faced. That’s pretty incredible. Let’s start in the Come, Follow Me manual. Lili, John, and I are excited to learn. The lesson this week, If the Lord be God, Follow Him. Hey, this is perfect for us.

John Bytheway:               00:08:54             We love it.

Hank Smith:                      00:08:56             The House of Israel was in disarray. The kingdom had divided with 10 tribes forming the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the two tribes forming the Southern Kingdom of Judah, but worse than their separation from each other was both kingdom’s separation from their covenants. Wicked kings led the people away from the Lord and people wavered in their faith. In that setting, the Lord called Elijah to be a prophet. His life shows that a person can have great faith in the Lord even in bad circumstances. Sometimes the Lord responds to such faith with impressive public miracles like fire falling from heaven, but he also works quiet, private miracles, like feeding a faithful widow and her son. And most often, the Lord’s miracles are so individual that they are known only to one person. For example, when the Lord reveals himself to you through a still small voice. So well written. All right, Lili, let’s hand the reins over to you.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:09:51             I wanted to start with some of the words of Elder Bruce R. McConkie concerning Elijah. He says, “For dramatic manifestations and the visible exhibition of divine power, the ministry of Elijah the prophet scarcely has an equal.” And of course we’re going to talk about what happened on Mount Carmel and it was a light show. It was a fire show pretty exciting. He sealed the heavens, was fed by ravens, extended the widow’s barrel of meal and cruise of oil, raised the dead, destroyed the priests of Baal, called down fire from heaven on at least three occasions, fasted 40 days and 40 nights and was attended frequently by angelic ministrants and finally was translated and taken up into heaven without tasting death. Now, when they come back to Kirtland to transfer the keys into this last dispensation to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, the resurrection had already occurred so the Lord could have made them resurrected beings by then, but the mount of transfiguration was before.

                                           00:10:55             So Elijah goes off in a flaming chariot, which is going to be discussed next week as he passes the mantle to Elisha. But here we are going to talk about what those sealing keys are that Elijah transfers, which I mean, are so incredible that they really became a forerunner mark of the second coming of the Lord. Prophesied again and again. There were other things that were communicated, but what Joseph Smith was inspired to capture is in the first chronological section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which is section two. Of course, section one was added later as a forward. Section two is the first chronological section. Again, he was 17 years old and he’s getting this powerful information that has so much to do with the last days that we are living in and what we are experiencing now. It’s really extraordinary. He didn’t know what it meant for 19 years.

                                           00:11:44             For 19 years, just two years prior to his martyrdom is when it clicked. Here we have Joseph Smith’s words about Elijah and Joseph Smith said so much about Elijah. I’m just going to read here and there some things that Joseph Smith said. “Because Elijah has come in this dispensation, the fullness of salvation is again available for the living and the dead. He was the last prophet that held the keys of the priesthood in ancient Israel, and he’s talking about the keys of the fullness of the Melchizedek Priesthood. The keys of God’s power being manifest in its fullness that allows all the generations from Adam all the way to the end of the millennium to be sealed into the family of Adam and Eve. If it were not for that, this world would be wasted. And we hear that the earth would be smitten as with a curse or the earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.

                                           00:12:33             How could Elijah’s work be done anytime other than in the fullness of this dispensation that we’re in now? Never before in the history of the earth has there been the capacity, the technology, the money available to the kingdom of God to build temples worldwide. To do the family history work that we’re doing and digitize it and it’s all on computer and it’s, everything’s getting easier and streamlined so that the work can go, and of course it will continue all the way through the millennium, but we are already having that spirit of Elijah. Every time we dedicate a temple, every time we announce a temple, build a temple, dedicate a temple. Every time anybody goes and does an ordinance, it’s the spirit of Elijah that is happening. Whether they’re doing the ordinance for themselves, of course, super important. And then as we continue and do ordinances for the dead.

                                           00:13:22             Joseph Smith goes on and says, his latter day mission was to restore the authority and deliver the keys of the priesthood in order that all ordinances may be attended to in righteousness. Why send Elijah? asked Joseph, because he holds the keys of the authority to administer in all the ordinances. We just said that without the authority, the ordinances could not be administered in righteousness. And then this also from teachings of the prophet that I really like. How shall God come to the rescue of this generation? This is Joseph Smith asking how. How is God going to come to the rescue of this generation? He will send Elijah the prophet. Elijah shall reveal the covenants to seal the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers. The anointing and sealing is to be called, elected and made sure. Kind of a quick aside, but Elder Cook talked about Elijah and the sealing powers in conference this last April.

                                           00:14:15             He and Elder Holland were privileged and they were mission companions, as he said. He said that Jewish leaders request, like from Israel requested that our church helped to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Orson Hyde’s dedication of the Holy Land in Jerusalem for the gathering of the Jews. That was special. And that dedicatory prayer is available online and it’s really beautiful. So if you haven’t read it for a while, look up Orson Hyde’s dedicatory prayer. That was on assignment by Joseph Smith, of course. And it’s really beautiful. As John, you mentioned, the kingdoms are divided here in the first couple of chapters that are in our reading for this week, 12 and 13 of 1 Kings. And I want to give again this historical arc. Joshua’s conquest of King, and of course, all these dates are approximate and you can find some different takes from biblical scholars, but generally speaking, we would say that Joshua’s leading the children of Israel across the Jordan and into Canaan was around 1400 BC, give or take, 1400 years before the coming of Christ.

                                           00:15:21             King David is about a thousand years before the coming of Christ. After David is Solomon and Solomon turns to idolatry and so it’s prophesied his son will lose control of the 10 tribes. The prophet Ehaijah, this is actually in chapter 11, that’s not so much in the reading, but Prophet Ahijah goes to Jeroboam, who was in the cabinet, so to speak, of King Solomon. He goes to him and he takes his cloak and divides it into 12 pieces and gives him 10, says, you’re going to have leadership over the 10 tribes. Solomon hears about that and Jeroboam has to get out of town. What happens then is Solomon dies and his son Rehoboam, no relation to Jeroboam. Rehoboam is the son of Solomon and he’s foolish, like incredibly foolish. His dad taxed so heavily. And why? Because he built a temple and then he built a palace that was twice the size of the temple, which kind of shows where his priorities were.

                                           00:16:18             He builds all this stuff and he is taxing the people to pay for it and not only in money but in labor. When Rehoboam takes the throne, the older advisors tell him, do yourself a favor. Cut the taxes. These people are going to love you forever. He listens instead to his young buddies who all say, no, tax more. So he does. He says, my Father afflicted you with whips. I will afflict you with scorpions. Like, you haven’t seen anything yet. And that’s enough for the 10 tribes, too much.

John Bytheway:               00:16:53             What a terrible campaign slogan that is, huh?

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:16:56             Seriously. This is 1 Kings chapter 12, the end of 16. People answer the King saying, “What portion have we in David?” In other words, like, you know what? Do we really need to belong to David’s lineage here? Neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tent, O Israel. In other words, back up. We are out of here. Now, they don’t really physically relocate, but they are like, we’re done. To your tents, O Israel. And from this time forward, now we talk about kingdoms of Israel, which are the 10 tribes of the north and the kingdom of Judah, which is Rehoboam and his successors in the south.

John Bytheway:               00:17:36             Thank you for that clarification. When section two of the Doctrine and Covenant starts, it says Elijah would reveal the priesthood. We think about restoring the priesthood, but revealing the priesthood sounds like a different thing and a bigger picture type of a thing as you described it. Can you elaborate on revealing the priesthood?

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:18:02             It isn’t until, as I said, 19 years later when section 128 is revealed. That is where Joseph Smith, and this is a very exciting section. Joseph Smith, you can see how thrilled he is in the language and he says, he quotes it again and he says, I could even render a better translation than this at this point, but this will suffice because he wants to go on to the main point. And what is the main point? That there has to be a welding link, and that is this new phrase that Joseph Smith uses in Section 128, this welding link between the generations. It’s finally being revealed to him. Remember, the temple endowment isn’t till almost the end of Joseph Smith’s ministry. I mean, it is step-by-step, line upon line, precept upon precept. Now in Section 128, look at this. I mean, it is so exciting.

                                           00:18:54             Yes, he uses the term welding link in verse 18. “The whole and complete and perfect union and welding together of dispensations and keys and powers and glories should take place.” Can you see why he said such amazing things about Elijah? If you look through teachings of the prophet, there is so much Joseph Smith said about Elijah because this was a lifelong pursuit. This is his whole ministry from 17 where Moroni is finally going to tell him there’s a record, which he’s not going to get for a few years, but he’s going to know about it. But he hears first about this spirit of Elijah, this power that is going to come and then he’s kind of like, okay, okay. I’m on board. It comes little by little. And finally here in Section 128, he sees the picture, this welding link between all generations and then this is the part that is so exciting.

                                           00:19:41             I feel like there should be exclamations all through this or it should be in bigger font. It should be a bigger font in our section 128. Verse 19, “now, what do we hear in the gospel which we have received? A voice of gladness. A voice of mercy from heaven and a voice of truth out of the earth. Glad tidings for the dead.” It’s not just for them, of course, but it’s for us, but now it can be for us because it’s for them. “A voice of gladness for the living and the dead, glad tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those that bring glad tidings of good things and that say unto Zion behold thy God reigneth.” Then he goes on, “Glad tightings from Cumorah.” And he talks about all these angels who have come that have given him line upon line, precept upon precept.

                                           00:20:27             Michael, Peter, James and John, Moroni, of course, God in the chamber of Father Whitmer, Raphael, Gabriel, divers angels, Adam down to the present. I mean, he is so thrilled. It just makes me so excited to read these words every time. And then at the end of verse 21, precept upon precept, giving line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there, that’s exactly what happened to him. Just a little bit until he could see the big picture giving us consolation by holding forth that which is to come confirming our hope. I don’t know how people get through the loss of a loved one without understanding about the sealing powers. I know they do and they have various kinds of faith and light that come to them if they’re willing to receive, but it is a voice of consolation for the living and the dead. It is the foundation of our hope that God will keep his promises to all his children at whatever level they are willing to receive, but all of them being sealed up into his dominion in one of those beautiful kingdoms, all of them beautiful, all of them salvation.

                                           00:21:31             “Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause?” I actually love that so much that one of my children put it on a plaque and it hangs in my house. “Shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren, and on, on to the victory. Let your hearts rejoice and be exceedingly glad.” This is what Elijah brings us. He’s the messenger. It is the power of Christ. Through Elijah, “let the earth break forth into singing that the dead speak forth anthems of eternal praise to the King Immanuel who had ordained before the world was that which would enable us to redeem them out of their prison for the prisoners shall go free. Let the mountains shout for joy.” I could go on. That’s so stunning and this is 19 years later that Joseph Smith is like, I get it. I get it. All this trickling in of light and truth. And of course, he had his hands full with all kinds of parts of the restoration. It wasn’t like he was sitting back waiting for it to hit him on the head. He was engaged always in building the kingdom in this restored time and as the prophet of the restoration, now in this moment, he’s like, ah, I see it. Can you see it? Can you rejoice? Can you celebrate how great is the goodness of God and how generous his ways? This is why Joseph Smith is inviting all of us to join him in incredible rejoicing and consolation.

John Bytheway:               00:23:09             So that little phrase, I will reveal the priesthood, you just elaborated that maybe even Joseph at the time didn’t know how big that was. And I know one of Hank’s favorite topics is that to say, oh yeah, this is like the New Testament church, well, maybe, but everything we’re talking about right now is Old Testament.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:32             When Moroni comes, these are Old Testament prophecies. God made a promise to Abraham. Yes, we’re going to bring back Christ’s New Testament church, but what do you say? This is old time.

John Bytheway:               00:23:43             This is the old time religion.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:23:46             When I was young, we could put all the pictures of the temples on one card. It was like 12 temples, you know? And that was that way for a long time. This explosion is the spirit of Elijah. This is the spirit and the power of Elijah because of the keys that he brought back to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. Okay, it’s going to take a while, folks, but let it rip. When it goes, it’s going to go. And this is going to go all the way through the millennium. It’s now. We get to be a part of this today. This is a fracture that is a political fracture between the northern and the southern kingdoms, but it quickly becomes spiritual. In fact, the northern kingdom goes south spiritually quicker than the southern kingdom. They both end up messed up. But even though yes, Israel’s in the north and Judah is in the south.

John Bytheway:               00:24:34             The northern kingdom goes south.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:24:36             Yeah, that’s right. The northern kingdom goes south pretty quickly. And this is like 930 that the division of the kingdom happen. And when is the Assyrian capture of the 10 tribes? It’s like 721, 720 BC. 200 years that the Northern Kingdom lasts before it’s destroyed. And then the Southern Kingdom is only a little behind that, what? 586 BC is the fall of Jerusalem.

John Bytheway:               00:24:59             Babylonian, yeah.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:25:01             Now, of course, both kingdoms have a series of righteous and increasingly unrighteous kings. Every once in a while they got a good guy in there. They also have a series of prophets, of course, that are constantly preaching repentance to try to give them a chance to avoid destruction. But we see in the northern kingdom, we get prophets, like this is not a comprehensive list. There are a lot of minor prophets, but Amos is northern kingdom. Elijah is northern kingdom. Elisha also, northern kingdom. Judah, the southern kingdom has Isaiah. He’s a southern kingdom prophet. Jeremiah … And I mean, there was interaction between the kingdoms, so it’s not like they didn’t hear, but Jeremiah is the last of the prophets with Lehi in that same era. We have about 56 years that happens between the division of the kingdoms and the coming of King Ahab, who is the king when Elijah ministers.

                                           00:25:51             Ahab marries a woman from Phoenicia, Jezebel. And even if we don’t know much about the Old Testament, sometimes we know that name. Jezebel deserved her horrible reputation. She was a very wicked woman, Ahab right along with her, but she has some particular moments here that we remember. As I said, about 56 years after the kingdom’s divide, Ahab and Jezebel worship Baal, Moloch, and Astarte. There are lots of different names for these versions. I mean, Baal remains fairly consistent, but Astarte is like often referred to, I think Ashtaroth is the name that we’re going to see here Ishtar later on in Babylon and so on. They’re all the same and that is the goddess of sexuality, supposedly a fertility goddess. Baal, of course, also requires human sacrifice and then Moloch or Melech, different names and versions of names there that also mentioned in the Old Testament regularly who required the sacrifice of children.

                                           00:26:51             One of his statues was often recreated in a way that had this cavernous belly that they would make a fire in and then sometimes they would have stone arms that were held out in front of him that were at a slant so that the child would be placed on the hands of the stone God and roll into the fire. Sometimes you’ll hear the phrase pass through the fire. You have let your children pass through the fire. That’s the worship of Moloch or Melech. These were the three main idols. Of course, there were lots of little ones, but these are the three that we hear again and again in the Old Testament. Now, I want to set the stage here about what Elijah is dealing with, what is happening in this part of the world and frankly, all of the world. Idol worship is everywhere all the time, except for places where Jehovah comes.

                                           00:27:47             The covenant people are the first ones like of the Old Testament who were considered any appreciable group of monotheists worshiping one God without a stone image, God that is not captured in stone or gold, but that reigns supreme. That was a very new thing to the world. You remember how hard it was for everybody. Lot worships images. When Rachel goes away with Jacob and Leah, she has some of her father’s images that she hides. And Joshua talked about, put away your images. In Egypt, they were pagans. Paganism is the default. Now, look at how well that fits with 2 Nephi 2, which we talked about last time I was here, that beautiful verse that Lehi is saying there about, “Men are free according to the flesh. All things are given them. Free to choose liberty and eternal life.” 2 Nephi 2:27, “Through the great mediator of all men or to choose captivity and death according to the captivity and power of the devil, for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.” But then let’s go more especially to verse 29.

                                           00:28:57             No, he says, well, in verse 28, “I would that you would choose eternal life.” And verse 29, “And not choose eternal death according to the will of the flesh.” This is really important here. “The will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate, to bring you down to hell.” Okay, what is he talking about? Well, when we talk about the plan of salvation, how have we been taught to describe mortality? We say there were two reasons to come to earth, to get a body and to be tested. Well, I think we should rephrase that. I really do. Forgive me, I’m going to offer this. I mean, you can say it that way if you want to, and it’s not, it’s accurate, but I think it would be more thought provoking for us to say that we came for two reasons, to get a body and the body is the test.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:47             The evil therein.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:29:49             And now what does that mean? Because we are not people who think that the body is bad. Of course, we know God has a body and he is perfected being and without a body we can’t have a fullness of joy. So there’s a great gift in having a physical body. We don’t hate the flesh, but what is Lehi saying? It’s the appetites.

Hank Smith:                      00:30:07             Yeah. There’s a potential for evil in the body.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:30:10             So what happens? A little baby comes and cries when they’re hungry or tired or bored or, you know, messy, they cry because their appetites need to be filled. Their needs need to be filled. And of course, we take care of babies. But as they get older, sometimes they just become bigger babies. And they throw tantrums if they don’t get their way, if their appetites are not fulfilled, if they don’t have all the toys they want or all the attention they want or whatever, I’m not saying you don’t give appropriate attention. I’m saying we sometimes just create these little natural men and women who then become bigger natural men and women and they’re still used to having their appetites fulfilled. I’ve said this so many times, I probably said it last time, but you know, it’s kind of like whose side are we on? We bring treats constantly and we don’t stop with primary. We bring in young mens and young women’s, whatever. Feed them, feed them, feed them, candy, whatever.

                                           00:30:57             My thought is like, these kids who can’t go two hours on Sunday without food in their mouths and then we think they’re going to handle hormones. Are we preparing them to master the flesh? Because the flesh is the test. Who’s going to win the spirit or the flesh? Like it’s like the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. And there is a tug of war. Now God isn’t in a tug of war because he is a perfected being who has mastered his flesh. His flesh and his spirit are in perfect harmony completely together in pursuit of good truth. The immortality and eternal life of men. He is completely harmonized to all the good. But we aren’t. That’s the path. Are we going to go up that learning curve to like harness the flesh?

                                           00:31:44             And then of course, this is the King Benjamin mentioned, right? That natural man is an enemy to God. That’s what Lehi’s saying. Why? Because those appetites are powerful. So how does this tie into Elijah? Well, the pagan world is all about fulfilling appetites. It is all about do what you feel. Do what you want to satisfy, to get that dopamine hit. I mean, there was a book called Dopamine Nation. Well, isn’t that the truth? We are all about satisfaction these days. Like what’s going to give me the next dopamine hit? In our society it’s constantly do what feels good. You deserve it. Buy now, pay later. I mean, it’s all about enjoyment, enjoyment, enjoyment. And of course, Madison Avenue is always about that, but it’s, and it always has been, but it’s gotten much more aggressive and brazen. But this is paganism and this is the history of mankind.

                                           00:32:34             It’s always about the flesh. We’re here to see if we can handle the flesh and become like God or if the flesh is going to handle us. In pagan societies, the flesh reigns. It’s all about appetites being stimulated and fulfilled. When we’re talking about Israel being in apostasy, we’re not talking about they’re not going to church on Sunday. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about pagan worship, which is all about sensuality. It’s all about this manifestation of evil power over others, these human sacrifices that sacrifice their children and all kinds of sexual stuff. Every time they talk about groves and high places in the Old Testament are places where they’re doing all kinds of depraved sexual stuff, supposedly to worship Ashtaroth or Ishtar, Astarte, whatever you want to call it. Look at what Judges says. This is the beginning of the Book of Judges, chapter two.

                                           00:33:33             “And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt and followed other gods of the gods of the people that were about them, bowed themselves unto them and provoked the Lord to anger, and they forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth.” Those are two of the big ones. “And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them.” So in other words, because they didn’t cleanse the land of Canaan, and remember he told them that. If you don’t clean out the Canaanites, they’re going to pollute you. You’re going to end up worshiping their gods. That’s exactly what happened. They didn’t finish cleaning the land, so the Lord let those other neighboring people, like the Philistines or the Syrians or whomever, the Amorites or Midianites, God allowed them and not because he wanted Israel to be hurt, but because Israel was rejecting his protection.

                                           00:34:25             The others came in and took over because Israel looked pretty comfortable territory there and God couldn’t do anything about it because they had rejected his protection and he will not enable sin. If he continued to protect them when they were sinning, that’s enabling. Why would they ever be called to repentance? That’s exactly what the prophets kept saying. Come on, do this and you can be blessed, but if you don’t, you can’t be blessed. It says this in verse 14 of Judges 2, “And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of their enemies roundabout.” Now, let’s look at that verse, sold them, for a second, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Then he says, “Nevertheless, the Lord raised up Judges.” And in verse 19, “it came to pass when that judge was dead, they returned and corrupted themselves more.”

                                           00:35:09             This is the pattern that’s been going on when Elijah enters the scene, following other gods to bow before them, cease not from their doings, nor their stubborn way. This is the pattern. God would have protected them. Now, Isaiah explains what that means when that says that he sold them because look at this, it’s so beautiful in Isaiah 50. “Thus saith the Lord, where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement? Whom I have put away,” or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Like, show me the paperwork. You think I sold you? I never sold you. Behold, for your iniquities, have you sold yourselves. When it says he sold them to the Philistines or whatever, obviously it’s really a language issue. It’s, they sold themselves. And then when they were willing to come back, he would protect them. And there are times when he comes in and he sent individual judges or every once in a while there’s a righteous king and he supports them because he can bless us in our path toward him, but he cannot bless us if we’re going away from him because he would be subsidizing our self-destruction.

                                           00:36:18             And that’s why again, I think we need to understand this is the default in the world. Monotheism, the Hebrew people were an aberration. They were the exception and a very blessed people because of it, because God revealed himself to them and said, I am the true God. I am the one who has power over the heavens and the earth. I can bless you here and forever. They would not receive it most of the time. Some of them did. Elijah, there were wonderful prophets. Some men, and we find out later here, there were 7,000 that Elijah didn’t know about, and that’s got to be a round number. Who knew how many exactly, but there were others who chose to worship God and would not bow the knee to Baal. There are people, even when we feel most alone and you know what? A lot of us feel alone.

                                           00:37:04             I’ve had clients come in because they feel like they’re the only ones in their wards and stakes who are really trying to be faithful. I hear that a lot from podcast listeners and I only did one speaking assignment in the last couple years and I almost shouldn’t have said yes because I wasn’t still very energetic. The Lord blessed me and I was able to go and it was okay, but I did a Weber State devotional, Weber State Institute devotional last year and I had a lot of those kids that came up after and said, I feel so lonely. In the kingdom, this is Elijah, Elijah, but there were others out there. And I tell them, you’re not really alone. There are people who are being prepared to build Zion. They’re not the most visible ones sometimes because we do these things in the quiet of our own lives and in our own homes, hopefully, and in our families and our primary relationships.

                                           00:37:54             But if we are becoming Zion ready, we know there are some because when the time comes, there will be people who are on that path to sanctification that can build Zion and receive the Savior. So we know the gospel will never be taken from the earth. We are not alone. If we are trying to do the right thing, we may feel alone, but we are not. And it’s good to know that. It was good for Elijah to know that super important that he was given that message. When he’s ready to say, I want to die. I just want to die. Can you take me with my fathers? And the Lord is like, yeah, there are more and there are still things to do. And of course, he had this great mission to come.

John Bytheway:               00:38:30             So I wrote this down. The pagan world is all about feeding appetites. We got a body, now we’re going to be tested by those appetites. And do you know what it reminded me of is Alma to Shiblon, bridal all your passions. You’re going to have a body, it’s going to have passions, but it’s not give in to every passion and it’s not destroy your passions either. It’s a certain perfect balance of bridle, harness, control.

Hank Smith:                      00:38:56             Steer, yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:38:58             I love that sentence. The pagan world was all about, if it feels good, do it was a 1960s phrase.

Hank Smith:                      00:39:04             Lili, is that why the Lord sends a famine? He’s like, I can teach you about appetites.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:39:11             This book by John Daniel Davidson, who’s a Catholic guy, it’s called The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. That’s the subtitle, the title is Pagan America, but he talks about things that are consistent. Now think about last of the last days that we’re living in, but these things are consistent in pagan societies, moral relativism. I mean, that’s been, I mean, President Oaks talked about that when he was in the quorum at BYU decades ago where he said moral relativism is basically taught on every university campus now. And that was decades echo, as I said, but it’s been around for a long time, meaning that there’s no absolute truth, that if it works for you, that’s okay, and I can’t judge another culture because maybe they’re all great. Moral relativism, we are so past the beginnings of that. The rule of the strong over the weak, that is another characteristic of paganism.

                                           00:40:03             The individual has no inherent value. The idea that a person has inherent worth and value is Christian. That is a Christian belief. Well, it was also part of ancient Israel. It is God’s way that the individual is a child of God and has divine potential, but that is a religious belief. People want to say that, like, that’s an enlightenment truth. No, it is not. It never was. It goes right back to monotheism and particularly Christianity. Slavery is always a part of paganism. Slavery never left the world completely. And of course, we had our Civil War here in the United States and so on, but sex trafficking is huge even in the United States. There is slavery today and it is growing. So for us to think that we’re like past these things is kind of blind. And I’m not saying we should focus on the horrible things around us, but we should be aware that these are fulfillments of prophecy.

                                           00:41:00             Paganism has returned in a more modern form, but it’s the same as it always was. It’s about the appetites. It’s about power, exerting power over people who can be victimized in a number of horrible ways. Also, complete sexual license and the exploitation of the vulnerable, that is another consistent part of pagan societies and especially women and children. And then let me not forget, human sacrifice. These are the characteristics of a pagan world. The defining feature of a pagan society basically are slavery and human sacrifice and the volume of human sacrifice in pagan societies is astounding. Again, we sort of brush it off, but when the conquistadors came to what was then the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, blood was running down the pyramids. They were doing hundreds of sacrifices every day. And these were relatively smaller societies considering like how big the world has gotten. Human sacrifice and again, the sacrifice of children.

                                           00:42:05             Let me just read a couple of other things that come from that book. The coming of Christianity was not simply a prohibition of foreign cults but a call to arms. An assault upon the antique order of the heavens, a declaration of war upon the gods, plural gods, the idols, Ashtaroth, Baal, Moloch. The human race did not and could not evolve its way out of paganism. That’s what so many people think. We got enlightened. That is false. It was God given. The only way out of paganism is the light of the gospel. It is God revealing himself to his people and to all who will listen. We could not evolve out of paganism. The world was dragged out of it sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes at the point of the sword. I remember when I was young and we would travel through Mexico to visit family and my dad pointed this out in a city of Cholula, which is close to Puebla.

                                           00:43:09             It’s a smaller little city. It was a center of native worship. Catholic church wanted to stamp out the native paganism. They wanted to end human sacrifice and slavery. They really did bring the cross. And in that little Cholula place, which was the center of native worship, they built 365 churches and/or altars or sacred spots, one for each day of the calendar because they wanted to stamp out the idolatry with Christ. Again, it wasn’t pretty. It was the point of the sword, that you’re kicking and screaming, there was ugliness and faults sometimes. But really, when you see that, you can see the history of the world. It was completely pagan. Like all the continents were pagan except for ancient Israel. Then Christ comes and brings the gospel and the Jews remain monotheistic. Then you have Christianity that even though after the apostle, the ancient apostles die, it goes apostate very fast and the power is lost, the authority is lost.

                                           00:44:10             But the message of Christ, it’s the Roman Emperor Constantine who decides he’s going to be converted to Christianity. The clerics in the Catholic church, the priests and so on had, and the monks had the scriptures. They had the scriptures. Then we see the Reformation, which was all about saying, well, the Catholics have really gone astray. But the reformers really were a huge precursor to the Restoration because they made the scriptures available to the common man so people could read for themselves. You can see that Christianity starts to grow amongst the people. So now they’re not just at the behest of all the priests doing what they want, but they’re learning what Christ said, what the message of God is to man. And they push back paganism. It’s not just Catholic missionaries went, went all over, which you got to give them credit for a lot of that because many of them died.

                                           00:45:01             Then the Protestant missionaries that went to the Far East and the islands, many of them died. But they did try to send the message of Christ and they pushed back paganism. Pagan cultures are very tough. They’re unforgiving. They’re harsh. They sacrifice the vulnerable. A woman who’s not having children, she’s out. I mean, it wasn’t even her fault. It’s a harsh world under paganism. Very harsh, the vulnerable are sacrificed. So this is the world that we live in. And look, Jonathan Cahn, you know Jonathan Cahn? He’s a Messianic Jew. Sometimes they call him Rabbi Cahn because he was trained in the rabbinical tradition. So he knows the Old Testament backwards and forwards. I feel like I know the Old Testament, but not like he knows the Old Testament and not like a lot, I’m sure. I love it, but I’m not the scholar he is. He knew the Old Testament so well that when he read the New Testament, he was converted to Christ which is exactly what should happen because all the Old Testament prophets preach of Christ, all the Messianic prophecies.

                                           00:46:00             He saw the fulfillment of those prophecies when he read the New Testament. It’s like, well, it’s obvious when you think about it, he became a Christian. And now he’s the pastor of a church, does some interesting books and videos. One of them is called Return of the Gods. This is a fascinating book. He says the three, I think he calls them dimonia, which is maybe the Greek or Latin for the evil spirits of the Old Testament and it’s Baal, Asharoth and Moloch that we’ve talked about. And he says the only thing that pushed them back was Jehovah. It was temporary because when the people went, they ended up being mostly idolatrous, they were captured and destroyed. So then he says, America, he calls it like the modern Israel, which in a way it is because it’s the promised land that God prepared and hid in a way and that this was the place where the restoration could happen and all of that wonderful stuff.

                                           00:46:53             You know, America as Lehi prophesied, as long as they worship the God of the land, Jesus Christ, they would prosper. Well, America was a Judeo-Christian beginning. I mean, the beginnings of this country were clearly Judeo-Christian and we have really prospered here. But what I am going to say is that until the reintroduction of those three gods, and this is Jonathan Cahn’s point, return of the gods. He says, so America, this modern day Israel that is so protected by God, then they started worshiping Baal. He says, the sign of the bull, and we’ve got a bull on Wall Street, and he talks about the desire, you know, greed, the greed and the, you know, money as a God. Then Asharoth, which is sexuality, which as our prophets told us, this new morality, it was nothing more than the old immorality, just rebranded. And then Moloch with abortion, we’re basically throwing our children into the fires of Moloch.

                                           00:47:52             What happens when we worship pagan gods? Our hearts go cold. This dopamine hit all about the sensation, all about the appetites turns us cold. When I was growing up, I remember being tired of all the stuff on pornography. There were so many warnings about pornography. I remember kind of like, okay, we get it. We get it. Pornography bad. It was pretty hard to get back then. I mean, if you wanted it, you had to, like, make an effort. Most of us were just kind of like, why are they talking about this so much? Because, like, I never see it, but how prophetic, of course, all of that was. When I started counseling, this was pretty early. I don’t remember exactly when, but I remember meeting with a couple, mostly with the sister, the wife, but the husband came in a little bit at first too and he was cold.

                                           00:48:43             That man was cold. The things that he did to his children or how he responded to his children and certainly to his wife, it was like there’s no warm heart in this man. There’s no warm heart. And he had been steeped in pornography for such a long time and had embraced it. Now, I want to make a really clear distinction here because there’s no avoiding pornography these days. I’m not saying that that’s license to indulge. I’m saying you can’t go to the mall without seeing pornographic images. It’s all along the freeway. It’s on every commercial. When you think about these warnings and then to see this man, I remember I had two teenage boys still at home when I met with that couple. I told them about how I had once thought they were kind of overdoing the warnings on porn. Then I said, but you know what?

                                           00:49:33             I never heard this one. I never heard how cold it can make you, how it can shut down natural affection, which is what, again, the New Testament warns about the love of men will wax cold. Isn’t it in 1 Corinthians where it talks about how their consciousness could be seared as a hot iron? That’s where Ahab is. That’s where Jezebel is. That’s where a lot of these House of Israel people are. Their consciences are seared. They have gone cold. They can’t feel the Spirit. They’re not interested in the Spirit. It’s all about dopamine. It’s all about the appetites. As America has allowed for these things to come back into the culture, we are worshiping the same gods as ancient Israel did when they became idolatrous. I get excited about these parallels because I think it’s important to see patterns and to understand that Christianity is the exception.

                                           00:50:32             Think about it. If we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that has all the authority, all the ordinances, all the keys, the access to, what is it that says in Section 121, “As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri River or turn it upstream as to hinder the Almighty from pouring out knowledge upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.” Like that is stunning. Christianity being the aberration. What is it to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? It is such an incredible privilege. We are blessed beyond measure. Now, we are dealing with a world that is going more and more pagan, but people will not completely turn to the idols. There will be people who are going to become Zion ready and build Zion and receive the Savior. God is doing this gathering that we get to be a part of, but he’s doing what we can’t do himself.

John Bytheway:               00:51:38             We are supposed to be the gatherers.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:51:41             And you know, it’s a privilege to be a part of it. It really is, but he can do it on his own. I wince when people say things like, God needs us. I’m like, not really.

Hank Smith:                      00:51:51             He includes us. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:51:52             He lets us, yeah.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:51:53             He lets us help if we’re willing and then we are very blessed for being participants in this great work, but he will do his work. Nobody’s going to get in the way. We can get on the train or get out of the way, and that’s kind of what the choices are. I think it’s just so fascinating to see that this culture that we’re looking at here, sometimes we look at the Old Testament and go like, oh, that’s so foreign. It’s so different. Not really. We are worshiping the same gods in our society. Hopefully, all of us will turn away. Now, I want to say something about those who struggle with sexual addiction, pornography addictions, or just exposure to all that lewd and licentious material, which is everywhere. Of course, Christ understands our struggles. He is mighty to save and he doesn’t need us to be finished. He needs us to be faithful, to keep turning to him, to keep including him and not turn away in shame.

                                           00:52:48             Sadly, we turn this into sometimes a thing where we feel so ashamed or maybe our family contributes to feelings of shame. That’s so tragic. That’s not what the gospel is about. The gospel is Christ’s arms extended all the day long. As we ally ourselves to him, he can bring us along in our weakness, in our stumbling, in our frailties, in our failures. If we keep coming, if we keep including him and never turn away. That’s the scary thing is when people say, I can’t pray because I’m so ashamed or I feel so guilty. And it’s like guilt can help us repent, but if it takes us away from Christ, that’s not the right kind of guilt. That does turn into such a destructive avenue that Christ weeps over. He wants us to be empowered through him and to hope and know that not everything will be resolved in this life. I love that Paul never identifies his thorn in the flesh. I love that because all of us can understand where we have persistent weaknesses that wonderful men and wonderful women have struggled with weakness, but they have continued to ally themselves to Christ to hold fast to him and to keep coming on the covenant path. There’s nothing he can’t do with us if we let him.

John Bytheway:               00:54:08             I’ve said this before, Hank, but Satan will tempt you to do something or whisper, you ought to do that or just indulge in that. And then as soon as you do, he’ll start telling you what a horrible person you are.

Hank Smith:                      00:54:20             Everyone’s doing this. How dare you do this?

John Bytheway:               00:54:23             How dare you? I hope people listening will listen to what you said, keep turning back.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:54:29             It’s a great point. Elder Holland said this in his talk Personal Purity, which was kind of a reduction of his talk Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments at BYU, which is a marvelous, marvelous talk. I hope everybody will read it. This personal purity conference talk was also beautiful, slightly different and condensed, of course, but he said, “I have declared here the solemn word of revelation that the spirit and the body constitute the soul of man,” which, by the way, is a restoration doctrine. No other Christian church teaches that, that the body is part of the soul. They don’t think of the body as eternal. We’re so blessed to know that that is where we can become like God eventually as he is a resurrected man, a perfected man. We have that restoration doctrine, but it also tells us how precious both the spirit and the body are and that we have to care for both of them and not let the appetites take over.

                                           00:55:23             He goes on and says that “through the atonement of Christ, the body shall rise from the grave to unite with the spirit in an eternal existence. That body is therefore something to be kept pure and holy. If some few of you are carrying wounds”, these are the struggles. We’re in a world where we are bombarded with sensuality and sexuality and depravity. It’s everywhere. If we are “carrying these wounds and struggling with them, I know that to you is extended the peace and renewal of repentance available through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In such serious matters the path of repentance is not easily begun nor painlessly traveled.” If we’re struggling, we’re on the right path. It’s not going to be easy. It doesn’t mean we’re doing it wrong if we’re struggling or we have our failures along the way. “It’s not easily begun or painlessly traveled, but the Savior of the world will walk that essential journey with you. He will strengthen you when you waver. He will be your light when it seems most dark. He will take your hand and be your hope when hope seems all you have left. His compassion and mercy with all their cleansing and healing power are freely given to all who truly wish complete forgiveness and will take the steps that lead to it.” It’s a journey. Don’t shut him out. Just like you said, John, that’s the real betrayal. The temptation and then you’re not worthy of a savior. You’re a terrible person.

John Bytheway:               00:56:58             And if you hear that message coming, that’s from Satan. If he’s saying, just give up, just bag it, just forget it. This is too hard. You’ll never make it. Savior wouldn’t say that.

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:57:08             He, it’s not in his vocabulary and it never will be.

Hank Smith:                      00:57:12             Lili, we’ve had you for a while. We’ve covered the paganism of the day and I think you’ve shown us we live, you said you were going to liken the scriptures today. Besides the date on the calendar, it’s a very similar world that we live in. Where do you want to go next?

Dr. Lili Anderson:            00:57:30             Similar conflicts because the great thing is that this is the dispensation of the fullness of times and Elijah didn’t have the benefit of the kingdom of God moving forward in the earth. But the adversary is the same. That’s where we don’t want to underestimate him. He is the same yesterday, always. He doesn’t come up with anything new. He just repackages it. That’s where I think it’s really helpful for us to not feel so disconnected from the Old Testament people because the temptations are the same. They are packaged in more modern terms with more neon lights, but it’s the same trouble and we have the same God that they had access to. Again, we’re so blessed to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s so easy to underestimate what an immeasurable privilege that is to be living on earth at this time.

                                           00:58:28             Let’s talk about into this scene we have Ahab and Jezebel who institutionalize idolatry. It’s been there ever since the division of the kingdoms that Jeroboam set up those calves and so on. But now Jezebel orders the slaughter and it is a massacre of the priests of Jehovah. She sends out her guys to go and kill Jehovah’s servants. They kill a whole bunch. Now, we hear later here now in the later chapters of Kings that Obadiah, who was in Ahab’s court, so he had some responsibilities in the kingdom, but he was a servant of the Lord, but he had to be away on the down low. Like he’s not visible or he would be undoubtedly exterminated as well. He hides 100 priests. He puts 50 in one cave and 50 in another and he brings them food. Good man does what he can to save some of the priests, but so many are slaughtered.

                                           00:59:33             While Jezebel is the driving force, Ahab gives her free reign. For this reason, Elijah comes to Ahab and says, we’re going to seal the heavens for three years, at least. It’s a little longer than that. Some people say it could have been up to five, but I think the record here in the Old Testament tells us three and a half years that the heavens are shut and a terrible drought happens. Now for a while, Elijah is living on his own in the wilderness and ravens feed him. Imagine ravens bringing you the food that you subsist on and there’s a little brook, but eventually the brook dries up and God allows that to happen. He comes down into a town and the spirit tells him to approach a widow woman who is there at the well to get some water in order to make their, the last meal for her and her son before they die because they’re out of food.

                                           01:00:28             Elijah asks her to make that cake for himself. We don’t know much about this woman, but what a woman of faith. She’s like, well, this is it for me and for my son. But okay. If you’re a man of God, then I’ll do it for you. And the miracle happens. He stays with her and her son and the barrel of meal never fails and the cruse of oil never fails. So she’s able to continue to feed them in a humble way. Now, I want to say something here about food storage. It was brought really vividly to my attention, again, this was probably over 20 years ago. I had a young woman that came to see me for a while and one of the decisions she was trying to make was whether or not she should start dating a guy that she had dated before, but they had broken up and now he wanted to get back together.

                                           01:01:14             He was a return missionary, but he didn’t have a current temple recommend because he did have a serious pornography problem. And I said, well, is he working with, you know, path to get that back? And she said, well, his bishop’s trying to work with him and he gives him some assignments and things, but he’s not meeting with this bishop. He keeps canceling. I said, well, that’s pretty telling. What’s going on? She said, well, he says he’s so busy because his family, this was 20 years ago, but they had this bunker in the mountains with cattle stalls and like huge places, silos and stuff for grains and whatever. And he was currently too busy to meet with this bishop because he was learning from someone how to use black powder to protect the munitions that they also had stored in the bunker and tons of guns.

                                           01:02:03             Now he’s going to learn how to use black powder. You know, I had to chuckle. I’m sorry. Those things are not going to preserve him. Have we lost the plot? I’m like, his temple recommend would be more protective of him if he’s worthy of it than all the bunkers anywhere. Where is our faith? People, I hope, will do what they can to follow the council of the prophets because we try to be obedient hopefully, but the safety is not in the food and we don’t have to sweat about like, do I have enough of this or enough of that? Do what you can and then trust. Be worthy, live a covenant life. Again, we’re not going to be perfect, but if we are willing and we keep coming and we reach for the Savior constantly and we let him do his great celestial alchemy in us to turn our lead into his gold, we are protected in all the ways that matter, all the ways that matter.

                                           01:03:02             My personal opinion is if there is food storage around, we’re all going to have to bring it into the chapel, which will become bishop storehouses and everybody will share and the cruse of oil will not fail and the barrel of meal will not fail if the Lord’s purposes are that way. And if we die in the first quake, that’s okay too. If we are worthy of our temple recommends, that’s what the protection comes from. Here we are with Elijah having this, again, this is one of those sweet, quiet miracles. It’s not public, but it goes on during this time of the famine and then her son dies. Now this is interesting to me too. I mean, of course it’s a huge loss to her and she is devastated. She’s already shown great faith. She has felt the spirit of Elijah in her home, but this is kind of her breaking point.

                                           01:03:55             Isn’t that interesting? That’s what it kind of says here. And I want us to think about what happens when we’re at breaking points, because everybody hits breaking points. We’re going to talk about a few in the scriptures, but let’s look at this one. It must be 1 Kings 17. In verse 18, she says to Elijah, “What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and slay my son?” She’s devastated and here she’s been so faithful, but she’s like, really? After all this, isn’t that a familiar feeling for us? Don’t we get to these places where we say, what else do you want? I’ve tried to be so good. I’ve done all the things I know to do. And now this? Why this? Or why didn’t you protect me? Why couldn’t you have spared me this? Elijah performs another miracle and asks the Lord to bring this child back to life and it happens.