John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Professor Lori Denning, Alma 23 through 29. I love what you both said, Hank. Thanks for pointing out deep in the earth. There’s things that are so accessible in the latter days. I took a class at BYU called How to Get Published, and I wrote some articles for the New Era and some of them got published and one of them was about a pornographic magazine in the gutter when I was walking home from school. I stepped right over it, went, “What is that?” And then I realized and I went home, but for two weeks I knew that magazine was there and I still had to go to school every day and eventually it got cleaned up. I’ve shared this with some of my friends and students and I’ve told them that was my one encounter with pornography as a teenager because I grew up in a different time.

  00:56 You talked about accessible, Hank, isn’t it crazy? But I’d love to encourage them to say Heavenly Father knew the world he sent you to in 2024 and he knows you can do this. There are other things that are so accessible to our scriptures and our general conferences and everything else to help us to be strong in those hard moments because that was a different world. I mean, can you even imagine how different it is now for our young people growing up? If they have a phone, they have the whole world. They call it windows. They used to call it windows, and there’s windows you should never look in that you can open now. Crazy times, but you can do it.

Prof. Lori Denning: 01:36 You can do it. I love the symbol of them doing the physical token, the action of making that sign and that token of the covenant of burying their swords. I remember my sister-in-law, when she had little kids at the time, they were starting to use bad words at one point. She used this story and they wrote the bad words on pieces of paper and then they went on in the garden and they dead and buried them and they couldn’t use them anymore, and I was like, “That’s so cute.” I’m like, “Maybe I should bury some words.” Right? Maybe I can do something like this. But it’s a great analogy.

  02:08 If we go back to the thing we learned in the beginning how stories affect our lives, we can replay this story and become stronger in our own covenants and our own changes by living through this story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis and what they did, how they became fully converted to the Lord. If you’re ever struggling, earmark this one. This is an amazing story of bravery and conversion and change. I want to meet them someday and shake their hand and say, “Thank you for stepping up and being such a good example of Christ. Wow!”

John Bytheway: 02:43 And Mormon doesn’t say, “So you should do this.” But it causes us to internally say, “Is there anything I need to go bury?” We hear the story and it’s so powerful that we think, “What do I need to do?” Because like you said, Lori, “Maybe this is my story. What do I need to go bury deep in the earth?”

Prof. Lori Denning: 03:03 I bet you that every one of us who’s listening today is thinking of something that they should bury. We might not want to look at it directly, but I bet every one of us is thinking about something that we’re like, “I really need to bury that. That is my weapon of war. I need to get it become bright and remove the stain by coming through to bury it.” Do it. What’s holding us back? That’s what the story’s about. Go change and they are so happy when they’re done that this story is about the joy that they feel from the change, not the suffering for how hard it is to make the change. I mean, that’s the challenge. If you’re thinking about it, go do it, quick.

Hank Smith: 03:40 I have students, I’ll say, “How many of you have ever deleted an app because it was too tempting, took too much of your time?” Almost all of them will raise their hand and I’ll say, “How many of you redownload that app?” And the most of them raise their hand and then I quote Peter, I think it’s Peter, who said, “We return to our sins like a dog to its vomit.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 04:04 I hope we feel the hope that they feel, the joy that they feel, the level of conversion to the Lord that they feel, so much so that the next story happens in which they are tempted sorely. The Lamanites of the area hear about all this and they are going to go kill them, so they march out to war. These stories, they evolve and we get deeper and deeper into them because this is real life. That isn’t just, “I was converted and I never made a change again and poof I was done.” Instead, they have to change who they are, they change their name, they take on this covenant, they bury their weapons as a covenant. Then, they are sorely tempted. People are coming to kill them. This isn’t coming to chat with them or make them feel bad. They are coming to kill them, and do you guys remember what they do in Verse 21?

John Bytheway: 04:54 Alma 24:21. Now, when the people saw that they were coming against them, they went out to meet them and prostrated themselves before them to the earth and began to call on the name of the Lord and thus they were in this attitude when the Lamanites began to fall upon them and begin to slay them with the sword.

Prof. Lori Denning: 05:14 There’s something really shocking about this to me when I read this, that they leave their homes. They don’t hunker down, they go out to meet them as a people. I’m not sure why they’re doing that. I wonder if it’s to protect their families to limit it or face it head on. “If this is what’s going to happen, we’re going to go out there and face it.”

  05:39 This is one of the bravest things I have ever heard about any people ever. I am so moved by this testimony. They saw they were coming and they went out to meet them and they called upon the Lord, I cannot imagine. I can’t imagine. Who are these people? What kind of change has to have happened that you’re willing to do this? Instead of saying, “Well, I can defend myself, surely. I mean, the Lord’s not going to… Nope, I made a covenant and I won’t do it.”

John Bytheway: 06:15 It’s unusual. I don’t think it’s telling us that we should all do that, necessarily. This was in their view what they should do. We read in Verse 22, they did slay 1,005 of them. The thought that comes to mind is that famous statement of President Spencer W. Kimball. “There is no tragedy in death, only in sin.” We know they’re blessed for they have gone to dwell with their God, but yeah, it is a knock you against the wall type of a story.

Prof. Lori Denning: 06:45 Yeah, and I know in our modern times there were people that were followers of Gandhi in India that did the same thing, that they were so committed to this idea of not taking life or hurting others, that they go out in a group and get mowed down. We have people that are so devoted to their ideals. I think the story is in here to say that yes, this isn’t necessarily a prescription for what we should all do, necessarily. We see that certainly they do other things in just a few chapters, but it is saying that when we take on covenants, this is the level of conversion and hope that we can have. This is the level of change that the Lord can make in us, and the story becomes beautiful.

  07:29 They’re killed, but then the Lamanites that are killing them, they’re like, “What? These guys aren’t even fighting back.” They stop. And then those people become converted. The more people become converted of the warriors than those that had died. Now, of course the deaths are tragic. We’re not trying to downplay that. Their heroics and their commitment changed people and then generations of people, generations, and that’s what our covenants and our commitments to the Lord can do. It’s an amazing story. If I had a nickname, I would want to be called one of the people of Ammon.

Hank Smith: 08:10 Especially Lori, when you do what you told us to do, which is behold, see this, don’t look away, see this story. If you’ll just sit in this chapter for a minute, it can overcome you. Occasionally, I get to talk to a brand new convert, someone who’s just been baptized and they’re so excited and sometimes I’ve shown them that Mormon wrote a portion of his book for them and I will look at the Anti-Nephi-Lehis, say, “Look how wonderful things are. They’ve made new covenants, but then things get hard. Old friends and family might be really angry and they might come after you.” And that can help prepare someone who has made a new covenant to change that difficulty is coming. Moses Chapter 1, you’ve had this awesome experience, Satan’s going to come after you.

Prof. Lori Denning: 09:06 At the very end here, after this whole story, listen to this amazing story of conversion being fully converted to the Lord, having hope in Christ and this joy that they feel and the change that they can make. And then there’s this underscoring, right? That we just read about the people who had fallen away that had known the truth and were not fully converted, that they left and they just become embittered and so terrible and Mormon wants to give us a “Thus We See.” He wants to underscore it and highlight it and tell us cautionary tale. This story is for you in 2024, everywhere in the world. This is one of the things you want to be really cautious about, so he puts it in here on purpose to highlight. Let’s read what that caution is.

John Bytheway: 09:50 This is Alma 24 Verse 30, and thus we can plainly discern that after a people have been once enlightened by the spirit of God and have had great knowledge of things pertaining to righteousness and then have fallen away into sin and transgression, they become more hardened and thus their state becomes worse than though they had never known these things.

Prof. Lori Denning: 10:12 Caution. If you’ve had that spirit of the Lord, keep it close, keep it close, but the whole chapters before were practices of how not to let that happen. We can let our weapons be stained again and we can fall. He’s cautioning us.

Hank Smith: 10:27 I see, Lori, a theme in the Book of Mormon. You told us to watch for themes. A theme in the Book of Mormon of the enemies of the Nephites are not usually Lamanites, it’s former Nephite. They have a hatred towards the Nephites much more it seems than the Lamanites do. Do you both see that?

Prof. Lori Denning: 10:52 Oh, for sure. It definitely seems like the people that are closest to them are the ones that are the toughest. They really have a hard time. They don’t just walk away. They cannot let it go.

John Bytheway: 11:05 We see that in church history too. Who caused the most problems for Joseph Smith? Was it people who weren’t a part of the church or people who at one time were a part of the church?

Prof. Lori Denning: 11:15 Yeah. I often think about the stories of the individuals though who were really causing some of the most problems. Alma, Aaron, Ammon, Omner, Himni, they are the ones that were causing problems. Now, how much they knew and how much they’d fallen away. They’re not quite like the order of Nehor, but they weren’t good. They were definitely not trending neutral, and yet they’re these people that make these changes.

  11:42 Mormon keeps trying to emphasize that the theme that you say, “Yeah, you don’t want to fall away, here’s how you become converted, but good news, when you do stumble, look at the good that you can do like Aaron or Alma or these people of Ammon.” They become so converted that they are heroes of these stories and they change entire generations, so much so that none ever fell away. You’re right about the theme and I think it’s because a theme for our day. It’s a theme for us.

  12:12 If I went back to a story I began with about volleyball, it wasn’t a very serious story. It was serious to me then, but remember, I had to choose which side was I going to choose. Now, I was a pretty arrogant kid in my sporting history, but I was so chagrined, but what my coach had told me, “You can show up tomorrow and have a better attitude and play on the JV or don’t come back at all.” And it shook me up. I came back and I played. We were undefeated as a JV team and we had super fun and we made all these calls and these plays and we shared the gym with the varsity and I would look over across the gym and they were miserable. All they did, I swear, was laps because they were terrible and they lost every game and the coach was always yelling at them, and my little dear friends never hardly played because they were the bench warmers.

  13:03 And instead, because I chose to change my attitude and I had a coach that loved me and said, “Hey, you need to figure this out and I’m going to give you one chance.” That I could be changed. Not quite like a conversion story. And yet there are times in our lives like these stories where we get face-to-face with our foibles and our flaws and we say, “Well, you got one more chance. When you come back. You need to do it the right way.” So it worked out, and I had a really great JV league and I never played volleyball again, but I was not a naturally born volleyball player, so it wasn’t a big deal. My professional volleyball skills were not at risk because of that JV year.

John Bytheway: 13:44 See, I want people to love me like that. Now, maybe there’s a weaker kind of love, “Oh, I just love you.” But for somebody to say, “You could be so much better.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 13:56 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 13:57 That’s the kind of love that I hope I will have in my life is people are willing to call me on things.

Prof. Lori Denning: 14:04 Great, so now we’re headed out into a completely different kind of style of the chapters 26 and chapter 29, and that’s more poetry, sometimes a little bit of a dialogue. These are stories and we’ve talked about how influential they are, and yet shockingly, we’re back to basically, I’ll just call them poems for the most part. So we’re going to find the missionaries are recounting their experiences. Chapter 26 and 29.

  14:27 Let me start with a little occurrence that I had because this is shocking that I’m going to talk about poetry, which has become maybe my all time love and scripture. When I was in college the first time, I was not a superb student and I was in a Spanish literature class, so I’d returned from my mission. I went to University of Utah, and since I had learned Spanish, so many missionaries, at least take that section of my requirements out. But because you already had done the language, like learn the language, you’re taking literature classes, you’re reading books and poems and things just like you would in English class. You’re just doing it Spanish.

  15:02 So I’m in a Spanish literature class to finish up these requirements, and my professor, who at the time was a TA, so we called him by his first name. I will always remember his name was David. Sorry, David and I hated poetry. I would be like, “Ugh, I just like stories. I don’t get poetry. I certainly don’t get Spanish poetry.” It was that much more complicated. Even in class, I’ll always remember one day he says, “So we’re going to do poetry even though Lori hates it.” And I’m like, “Calls me out.” I must have just complained about poetry and now, oh, to my everlasting, I love poetry and it’s because I love music. I love the emotional connection we get with text.

  15:42 We think of poetry like in English, it has to have rhyme, right? And it’s usually the verses are all cut in. You can tell they’re not chapter and verse, not like a paragraph anymore, they’re offset. If you get something like the Grant Hardy Oxford edition of the Book of Mormon, he’s offset some. Donald Perry, Dr. Perry at BYU has an online where he has outlined the entire Book of Mormon, by the way, and it’s free and you can go get the download of his work where he has taken it and redone it.

  16:12 I like to take these when I find that there’s a poem, I’m going to tell you how to discover them, and I just do them myself, but poems usually are different. They’re like good German bread, they’re heavy, they’re dense, they’re nutritious, but you got to kind of chew on them for a while and that’s exactly what happens with a poem. You can’t blow through it, but it’s something you’re going to sit with and you’re going to meditate on or you’re going to have to really think about it.

  16:38 They’re usually short, especially Hebrew style poetry. Ancient Semitic poetry is short and it’s characterized by short little sentences of short syllables. Every word is usually impactful. Additionally, the ideas that are in there, they don’t rhyme the way that we rhyme in English, they rhyme in ideas. They’ll take an idea and they’ll repeat it and repeat it and repeat it, work through it rather than rhyme. They’re dense, they’re short, and they usually have kind of what we call parallel.

Hank Smith: 17:10 Heavy, dense and short. I think I was called all of those things in High School.

Prof. Lori Denning: 17:16 If I think of poetry, I think of its impact and the place that I’m really impactful is song. There are some of our most powerful connections to things are when we are singing, and that’s the form of a song is a poem. The most powerful emotional events, falling in love, having a child, losing your job, if you’re in a country song, wrecking your truck. They’re these most powerful things. Every time I say song, think poem and every time I sing poem, think song.

  17:48 One of the things that’s hard to sometimes express is spiritual experience or an emotion like love or feel the song of redeeming love. You’re trying to talk about redemption.

Hank Smith: 17:59 I have difficulty formally bearing my testimony because I don’t feel like there’s words. When you say, “Oh, I think the gospel’s amazing.” Well, I thought that movie was amazing and they’re not the same thing. Joseph Smith said that, “The prison of language can’t express how I really feel.” And then I was reading the Book of Revelation. We were studying in a class I was teaching, the Book of Revelation, and I saw how John uses symbols to teach like apocalyptic literature. I joined the nerdy club, used it.

Prof. Lori Denning: 18:37 You did, you just did. You used a genre name right there. Good work.

Hank Smith: 18:41 I tried to think of a way to express it in symbols, and I think I did. I said, “Have you ever been hiking and you come across a view that for a split second takes your breath away? Or, have you ever been holding a baby and the baby looks at you with those pure eyes, for a second, you’re filled with some overwhelming love? Take all of those moments. Take all of those moments that you’ll ever have in your life and combine them into a single feeling and that comes close to how I feel about the Lord, his resurrection, and the restoration, so difficult to put into words.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 19:27 No, it was a perfect example because you’re exactly trying to take something that’s complex and deep and personal and make it solid and defined and you kind of can’t. That’s when you find poetry being used.

John Bytheway: 19:41 Noticing the words that Ammon says, “I cannot say the smallest part of which I feel.” At the end of Verse 16, the words fail me. Right after my first child, my oldest daughter, Ashley was born, they took her. I can’t even remember why now, but they didn’t come back for four hours. When they handed her to me, the nurse said, “She’s not very happy with us right now.” And this little girl was four hours old and you know when you’re crying and you can’t stop? She was going like this. And I just melted. She’s got me wrapped around her little finger ever since. That was one of those moments that I cannot say the smallest part of which I feel.

Prof. Lori Denning: 20:29 Love it and I think that’s a perfect time to write a song. You’re trying to capture it and convey that emotion. Thank you, guys. Those are fantastic examples. They can be little moments in our lives.

  20:41 Also, there’s some other times when poetry is used and we’ve talked about some of them. One of them that I like is it can distinguish between something secular or worldly that is sacred, so it could be an ordinance or it could be a sacred memory or event which sets something apart. This is different, so sometimes even in the text you’re like, story, story, story, and then it’s going to set something apart. Let me show you one of them right now.

  21:08 Go to Chapter 26 and this is Ammon and he’s talking to his brothers about all these amazing experiences and then in Verse 16, there’s just this little poem right in the middle of it. He’s been talking about how the missionaries have been instruments. One of the great blessings, one of the great joys that they’ve had is that they could be instruments in the hands of God, right? An instrument like a tool, something that God has deigned to use them for, and he says right before, “And we’ve been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work.” These stories we just heard, and then right after that in 16 is a little poem. “Therefore, let us glory. Yea, we will glory in the Lord. Yea. We will rejoice for our joy is full. Yea. We will praise our God forever.”

  21:57 You can hear the cadence, it’s short. it’s compact, it has a little bit of repetition. Repetition is usually your key. If you find a lot of repetition of either words or ideas, it’s probably a poem. “Therefore, let us glory. Yea, we will glory in the Lord. Yea. We will rejoice for our joy is full. Yea. We will praise our God forever.” The parallels in rejoice, joy, praise, glory.

  22:23 Let me read it again, “Therefore let us glory. Yea, we will glory in the Lord. Yea. We will rejoice for our joy is full. Yea. We will praise our God forever.” He’s trying to say this joy and this praising to him so profound. I have a hard time trying to capture it. I mentioned that in Hebrew poetry they actually chant, so scripture is chanted. It’s the same with the Quran in Arabic as well, that the only formal way to actually read it is to chant it. Well, it has a sing-songiness, something that sets it apart. It connects on a different level. We think differently when we have to really ponder it and connect to it. We have these visuals. Like our dense German bread, we have to work on it a little bit. This isn’t Wonder Bread that you eat and you’re hungry in 10 seconds. This is going to fill you up, but it’s going to take a little work.

  23:16 It connects in a different level so that it sticks with you and one of those ways is with the cadence, the chanting. This is probably not Hebrew at this time and I certainly don’t know how they would chant it, but you can kind of get the cadence. “We will glory. Let us glory in the Lord. We will rejoice for our joy is full, for we will praise our Lord our God forever.” Probably times when you’re like, “I felt just like that. I know what he’s trying to say.” Sometimes it’s easy to blow right past them.

  23:40 There’s another poem right before that. It goes on Verses 11 and 12, there’s this funny little story. They’re talking about how great it’s been to do this missionary work, story, story, story. Ammon is like, “We have done such a great job.” And Aaron had said, rebuked him and this is Verse 10, “Ammon, I fear that thy joy doth carry thee away unto boasting.” And there’s been a lot of boasting in the past about them being prideful and then going into war and I love Ammon’s response because he’s just always the guy. I mean, he is passing out with joy. Very extreme. He responds in a poem. John, would you mind reading for us, Verse 11 and 12?

John Bytheway: 24:18 Alma 26:11 and 12, but Ammon said unto him, “I do not boast in my own strength nor in my own wisdom, but behold my joy is full. Yea. My heart is brim with joy and I will rejoice in my God. Yea. I know that I am nothing. As to my strength I am weak. Therefore, I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God for in his strength I can do all things. Yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land for which we will praise his name forever.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 24:49 Yeah, it probably doesn’t look like a poem, but look at the middle of it in Verse 12, you’ll see kind of a couplet, two lines that that’s where they’re going to rhyme. They’re going to be kind of the same idea in both the subject and the object of it, so “I know that I am nothing” and then the second one, “To my strength, I am weak.” It takes something bodily knowledge or strength. I’m nothing and I’m weak. You see how the beginning and the ends parallel? That is called parallelisms. I know that I’m nothing and the next one has three little parallels. “Therefore, I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God. For in his strength, I can do all things.” Like little stairs on this one. I won’t boast of myself, but I will boast of God and for in his strength I can do all things. Building, building, building on the idea.

  25:38 And the next one for behold, there’s our change, your view, a second, “Many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land.” Part one. Part two, “For which we will praise his name forever.” It’s very psalm like there that at the end we give God the praise. He starts saying, “I’m not boasting, I am praising, I’m praising.” It’s a little song.

  26:01 I learned another technique by Dr. Sweat. I know he’s one of our favorites. He’s one of my favorites too. He says, “Sometimes, when we can’t quite connect to text.” And this is a little bit hard to connect to, “If you’re having a hard time connecting to these poems, translate them. Write them in your own words. Take this verse and translate it.” You’re like, “Well, I don’t boast in my strength. I wonder what he’s saying there?” And then you could try it.

  26:25 In fact, I’m going to have us try that in Alma 29. I want us to try it, but you could try to translate it. What is it saying? What does it mean? And write it in your own words. It’s one of the most powerful things, experiences that I’ve had is I was teaching an institute class and he had taught that on a video I watched. I was like, “Hey, you guys, let’s try this.” And we were doing the Old Testament at the time a couple of years ago, the students loved it and they were trying to do a rap or they were trying to do it like they were real modern or something and I was like, “Whatever. It connects to you.” And then they got super into it. Just pick one verse and just write it in your own words. You don’t have to make it rhyme, you don’t have to do anything like that. Write what you would say. This may become more powerful, so keep that in mind and then let me set the stage.

  27:11 That was Ammon and the brothers all through this story. Then suddenly Alma shows up, so it’s been 14 years since the compadres have seen each other on their missions. Alma’s been in Zarahemla and we’ve read about the brothers this whole time and they show up and they don’t know if they’re still converted to the Lord. They don’t know the status, they don’t know any of these stories. They meet, they’re so glad that they’re all still disciples of Christ. Then Alma finds out, “Hey, we’ve heard about these Anti-Nephi-Lehis. And they’re like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “They’re totally true. It’s totally a true story.”

  27:43 We have this little aside from Alma, think for a second. Mormon, he’s got rooms full of play. He has to choose what to pick. We’re not just doing history and he’s chosen a whole chapter on Alma and Alma’s feelings. Can you think of any other scriptures that really tell us how people are feeling? Maybe the psalms, but they did a thing and then you’re like, “Oh, why did they do that? I don’t know.” Like you said, there was this big story hundreds of years and then a few years and then an experience and then we super slow down and we’re right into his mind and his heart and we’re just going to sit there for a minute and Mormon’s like, “I really want you to sit with this for a minute.”

  28:27 This is a gift. This is my all time favorite chapter of scripture because it is powerful. It was my missionary plaque scripture, “Oh, that I were an angel and I could have the wish of my heart.” That we see into his soul, we feel what he’s feeling. We can just feel the power of his testimony in these verses and I think Mormon wanted that to sink into our hearts. Take this chapter and sit with it.

  29:01 We’re going to take a few minutes and I want you to do Verse 1 and I want you to translate either word for word, whatever you think in your own language, what he’s trying to say or if you would use your own example. He’s going to explain what his wishes were. I think of it like this. You’ve probably heard this one. If you had a superpower, what would it be? People are like, “Flight.” “Invisibility.” Alma wants to be an angel. He wants to be a preaching angel, right? That’s the superpower that Alma wants, and I’m like, “Well, I’ve never picked that one before.” I’m always doing the flight or invisibility or whatever too, but he’s like, “If I had the wish of my heart, this is what I want more than anything else, more than riches, more than health, more than anything is to have the experience that I had and to give that experience to other people.”

Hank Smith: 29:54 He knows a thing or two about angels. Right?

Prof. Lori Denning: 29:57 He knows a thing or two about angels and he’s saying, “You know what, if I got any gift, I would want the gift that I was given and I want to give it to others.” So maybe, in your translation, it’s what you wish more than anything else. The gift that you had. Here’s what he says, and I’m just going to read a couple verses and I just want you to listen for the passion, listen for the emotion that he’s giving. “O that I were an angel and could have the wish of my heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with the voice to shake the earth and cry repentance unto every people. Yea. I would declare unto every soul as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption and they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.”

John Bytheway: 30:56 Oh, That I Were an Angel. I always think of that song and then I also think of what you both said, Alma’s thinking my life was profoundly changed by angel. Once when I was knocked flat and another time when I was coming out of Ammonihah and the angel told me, “Lift up your head and rejoice. You have great cause to rejoice and go back and go get your companion Amulek here, we have a surprise arranged for you. You’re going to find a new companion.” I want to do that. I want to do what they did.

Hank Smith: 31:29 The Book of Mormon just passed its 200-millionth copy. Can you imagine telling Alma at this moment? “You got it. You are shaking the earth.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 31:40 That’s getting me. That’s amazing. You’re right. He has this desire. He’s like, “Oh, but it’s too much to ask.” And Mormon’s like, “Hold my root beer. You’re going to change the world.” That guy that was walking around destroying the church has become this voice that changes the earth. Wow, beautiful.

  32:03 Here’s your exercise. You’re going to take just a couple of minutes. You can just take the first couple verses if you want or a couple at the end of we’re just doing one and two and I want you to translate it in your own words. You can translate the meaning or this is into words that make sense to you and then you guys are home, put it on pause, and try it yourself or as you’re driving around or doing laundry or whatever, try it in your head and see what you come up with. It is worth it. Ready, set, go.

  32:31 All right, gents, so what did you guys come up with? Are you willing to share?

Hank Smith: 32:37 I did the assignment, Alma 29, one and two and I added a little bit of three. I was trying to say the same thing that Alma said because I feel the same way. “If I could, if the Lord would give me the go ahead and the thumbs up, I would get the entire world’s attention. I would somehow open their hearts to want to believe. I would teach them all that I know and tell them all that I’ve experienced. I would use the right words. I would have the perfect dose of humor. I would have sweet timing. I wouldn’t go over my time and I would get them all to feel how I feel about the Lord and then in that moment I would turn them to him and they will hear him as I have heard him, they would become close to him as I have become close to him, but I need to be satisfied with my role in his kingdom, religion professor, podcaster, Mapleton sixth-ward gospel doctrine teacher, minister to the Barlow and Bell families, husband of Sarah and father of Maddie, Mason, Elijah, Rockwell, and Steele.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 33:40 Amen. I love it.

Hank Smith: 33:42 That was my little translation.

Prof. Lori Denning: 33:44 I love what you did because it’s very you. Hank, does it change anything about his? How you reflected on your own? What do you see in Almas now that you didn’t before?

Hank Smith: 33:54 I think that the hope is not, “Oh, these evil people. I want them to repent.” It’s, “Oh, I have something to offer that I think you’ll love.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 34:07 I love that. Thank you. Cool. Very cool. Amen.

John Bytheway: 34:11 I didn’t get as far as Hank did, but I’ll tell you what I’ve got. “I want to be part of something that can make it incredibly obvious that a loving father has a plan of happiness that can destroy all hurt and heartache.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 34:27 That is a great superpower. That’s beautiful. I love how you focused on relieving like the sorrow. You liked that motif, that theme.

Hank Smith: 34:36 I think people would want to hear that in Barney Fife like, “Oh, that I were in New York.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 34:41 Yes.

Hank Smith: 34:42 “Well, I never go anywhere without the old Roscoe, the old blue-scale baby.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 34:50 So funny. John, is there anything now that you’ve had a chance to kind of reflect on what the wish of your heart is that you see in Alma that you didn’t see before or you would call out?

John Bytheway: 35:01 It always has been a wish of mine that it was more obvious to people and I like that he says that, “If I had a voice that could shake the earth, that would really get people’s attention and then maybe I could tell them what I know and it doesn’t have to be this hard. It doesn’t have to be this sad. It doesn’t have to be so sorrowful. If you would just hear me.” That’s what I hear him saying.

Prof. Lori Denning: 35:30 Love it. That’s an exercise I hope you continue. You don’t have to do it on poetry, you can do it on anything. We try it from time to time. We naturally do it, right? We kind of paraphrase and do things, but if you want people to really get into it, go get into it, and a great exercise is to just translate it in your own words. If you speak another language, translate it into the other language and see what you come up with.

  35:51 I wanted to share a couple other things about how we think this poetry works, and I know I keep mentioning it and maybe it’s a little hokey. At the beginning of this section, I talked about how with my Spanish literature class, David’s like, “And Lori hates poetry.” And now I’m like, “I love poetry.”

  36:08 In one of my very last classes in PhD school, I have to teach a class. I was teaching on the Dead Sea Scrolls and so I have three hours of lecture to graduate students. I did the first half on what they are and how they work, but I think the power of the scriptures, when we’re in an academic setting, we never talk about it, right? It’s like we get a brand new car and we don’t put gas in it. We don’t talk about what I think that it means. I was going to change that.

  36:36 I learned to chant in Hebrew, I chanted a number of these songs. There are a bunch of different tunes that people sing today, but if you ever go to a synagogue or you go to a mosque, that’s what you hear is them singing. It captures that spiritualness like Hank you said, “I want them to feel what I feel and that’s how I feel.” And they’re trying to convey it in song. I’m not a great vocalist, so less that distract. If you’re okay, I was going to chant, see the difference by making the scriptures a song, like you said, John, “Oh, That I Were an Angel.” But since it’s not in Hebrew, I have to pick a Hebrew scripture. I was going to do Numbers 6.

  37:17 Numbers 6 is what’s called the Aaronic Blessing. You probably know it from another hymn. “The Lord bless you and keep you.” Let’s read it in English first so you know what I’m going to do. It’s the last couple verses of Number 6. There’s a famous John Rutter arrangement of the hymn, “The Lord bless you and keep you.” So the Tabernacle Choir has sung it and it was said at the beginning and the end of every day at the sacrifice. This is the blessing that the priests are giving out to the people. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace.” [foreign language 00:38:02] Does it change anything to hear it in chant?

Hank Smith: 38:42 Oh, yeah.

Prof. Lori Denning: 38:43 I think so too.

John Bytheway: 38:44 Did I hear Shalom at the end?

Prof. Lori Denning: 38:46 Yeah, “And give you peace.” It ends with peace, Shalom.

Hank Smith: 38:49 Yeah, so cool.

Prof. Lori Denning: 38:50 Good ear and then they don’t usually say the name, Lord, right? So you hear Adonai.

John Bytheway: 38:53 Adonai.

Hank Smith: 38:53 Adonai, yeah.

Prof. Lori Denning: 38:57 [foreign language 00:38:56]. That’s the power that I think the hymns give, that these poems can have, when we kind of sit with them and dig in. I think that that is something that the Lord’s inviting us and the beauty of the Book of Mormon is it’s all in here too. Sometimes we miss it and we’re like, “Well, I just blew right past it.” But if you watch for repetition, you watch for these little parallels, you watch for these little dense ideas, the Lord spoke in these same poems, when he was on the cross.

  39:29 We’re familiar with the story where he says, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” That is a direct quote from Psalm 22. For thousands of years, his people had been singing or praying that Psalm, “My God, my God, where are you? Have you forgotten me?” And there, on the cross, he responds, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” He hasn’t at all. He has been there all along and this was his plan all along that he has been there to redeem and sacrifice for us all along.

  40:05 The Lord spoke in poetry, Alma speaks in poetry, Ammon speaks in poetry and you better believe they all do. So as you go through these chapters, you find these little pockets of things just like the Savior where he is trying to convey something really powerful and spiritual to us. It’s such a blessing to have them, to sit and ponder them.

John Bytheway: 40:25 I love it. I hope that it’s just one more level of meaning in the Book of Mormon that some may not have heard of before that makes it more complex and beautiful and deeper and more complicated, but more beautiful than they may have even known.

Hank Smith: 40:44 That’s such a great place. Can I tell you, guys, the experience I had just the other day? And then, Lori, I want to ask you a final question. I was on my way to campus, BYU, and I was actually going to go through this chapter, Alma 29. As I was thinking about it on the way over, I had a distinct impression. This doesn’t happen to me every day. I don’t want to give the idea that everywhere I go, I’m getting specific direction.

  41:10 In fact, the reason I’m telling this story is because it’s unique. It doesn’t usually happen, but I’m on my way over and I think it was the Spirit. Either that or it was breakfast, said to me, “You need to talk about something with Alma 29, something specific.” I made a quick mental note that I would do it. I wanted to share it with you and our audience, and this is what the Spirit, I hope, told me to say.

  41:35 Alma, the younger is much like our college-age girls who don’t serve missions, they stay home and they do the Lord’s work at home. The sons of Mosiah are the college-age girls that we have, the young single adult girls, who go on missions and that they both do important work. We covered Alma’s work from Alma 5 to Alma 17. Then we covered the sons of Mosiah’s work from 17 here to 29, and that they both do important things.

  42:11 Now, it’s very likely, I told the girls in my class, the girls who hadn’t served missions, they prayed about it, thought about it, and the Lord said, “Nope, you’re staying home and doing… This is your part of the vineyard.” I said, “It’s likely going to be that the sons of Mosiah are going to get the fanfare, right? The wow factor.” I called it the, “Whoa, you brought Laman? You changed Lamanites? That’s unbelievable. That is crazy.” And Alma could be in the back going, “Yeah, yeah, that’s great. I went to Zarahemla, a couple people changed. I went to Gideon, some good things happened there and Ammonihah was a dumpster fire.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 42:52 I’d give up the ruling seat because it’s so bad here.

Hank Smith: 42:57 Yeah, there was just a moment there, I hope. Anybody who’s listening who the Lord said, “You’re not going.” I know many, many incredible young, single, adult girls who, for one reason or another, didn’t serve a mission. And I remember when President Monson made that announcement how excited everybody was and it felt like everybody was going on a mission. But I’ve had girls say to me, “I feel kind of like a second class citizen.”

Prof. Lori Denning: 43:29 Not everyone’s been or wanted or had the opportunity to be a formal missionary or liked their missions even if you went. We don’t all have these experiences. You don’t have to skip these chapters. You grow where you’re planted, you serve where you’re called, you don’t have to be a formal missionary. We need everybody in the kingdom. I often think of the idea of Zion. There were no poor among them. I think that means we valued everybody for what they brought. We valued all the skills that came rather than they just didn’t have any cash. If you’re a musician, we value that. If you’re a teacher, we value that. If you’re an accountant, we value that. Good at gardening? You got it. Good at administrating? Fantastic. Good with kids? We need that too. Can you drive a car? We need that. We need people that can do everything. It’s a kingdom after all, Zion’s everybody, we value, there were no poor among them, and I put an insert because we valued everybody.

Hank Smith: 44:29 Love it. Don’t you love that and how excited Alma is for their success. He doesn’t see himself as less than because he didn’t go among the Lamanites. He says, “I fulfilled my role. I played the role that the Lord wanted me to play.” And even though that people might be yelling and screaming and giving parades to the sons of Mosiah, right? He doesn’t feel one bit diminished by that. In fact, he is, as John pointed out, he says, “I’m even more happy when I think of the success of my fellow servants.”

John Bytheway: 45:03 Good for them. I’m happy for them attitude, and I’m thinking of Third Nephi 28. Jesus shows up with the 12 and says, “What is it that ye desire of me after I’m gone to the Father?” And they all spake, save it were three saying, “Well, we want to come quickly into thy kingdom.” And then he says, “Okay, when you’re 72 years old?” That’d be scary to know.

  45:30 And then the other three, “What do you want me to do?” And Verse 5, “They sorrowed in their hearts for they durst not speak unto him the thing which they desired.” He rejoiced because they were both great desires, but they were different and that was okay and I’m glad for that little story right there that it wasn’t like, “This is the right desire and that’s the wrong one.” But it was they were different and I love it because you rejoice in the thing that you desired and they’re both good things, so whew. And Hank, you’ve said it before, that beautiful phrase in the New Testament, “She hath done what she could.”

Hank Smith: 46:04 Yeah, one of my favorites. Lori, let’s say I am walking to class or I’m driving home from college to see my family or I’m folding laundry or whatever people do when they listen to our show. If you’re doing something, come onto YouTube and tell us what it is you do, while you listen? What do you hope I walk away with?

Prof. Lori Denning: 46:28 I hope that people see themselves in every point of view in the story that supports a testimony of the Lord, right? You don’t need to be the Amalekites or something like that, but I hope that you look at yourself and see how is the story about you, about Alma or Ammon or the King Lamoni or the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehis. I hope that everyone says, “These stories are my stories and I can see myself in them and I can see how the Lord has worked in my life.” And then I hope they share that with somebody. Maybe it’s put it in the comments, share it with somebody you love, tell your roommate, your spouse, somebody, but say, “I feel like I’m a little bit like this. I think Mormon and Alma wanted us and see ourselves in them and reflect on that, how that’s like Christ, and share it with somebody else.” And you can do that with the whole book.

  47:20 One of the powerful elements of the Book of Mormon is that it changes us. We talked about how that conversion unto the Lord happens, I think that more than anything else brings us closer to Christ and we know him and we become something better. We become. I spend a lot of time studying scripture and a lot of ancient scripture and mostly the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. It helps me be scholarly. It helps me untangle a knot of text and language and nerdy things.

  47:52 This book changes me. This book changes how I see the world, and it gives me hope, and I get closer to Christ and I know him better through this book than the others. One book makes me a scholar and the other makes me a saint, and that’s why I love it. There is no better book in the world. It’s powerful, it’s wonderful, it’s insightful, it’s exciting, it gives me joy, and I know it can do the same for everybody else. It makes us disciples of Christ.

Hank Smith: 48:25 So well said. Awesome. Awesome, Lori, thanks for spending your time with us. With that, we want to thank Professor Lori Denning for being with us today. We want to thank our Executive Producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and every episode we remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’re coming up on Korihor on followHIM.