John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Dr. Eric Huntsman, 3 Nephi 8-11.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 00:08 If we prematurely try to give gospel context and perspective, that almost hurts. I think of the contrasting examples of Martha and Mary in John 11. Their beloved brother has died. Jesus is tarried for four days so that He is dead and buried. Martha reacts one way, but Mary reacts another. Martha comes and says, “Lord, if thou hast been here, my brother would not have died.”

  00:33 Then she expresses faith and says “Say the word, and I know that God listens to you.” And he says, “Your brother will live again.” She goes, well, I know I was busy doing the dishes. Luke 10, I was listening because I heard about the resurrection. He’ll rise in the resurrection. Then Jesus teaches another principle, he that believeth me, he’ll never die, et cetera.

  00:33 When Mary comes to him, she says the exact same thing. She falls at Jesus’s feet and says, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died.” And she’s so inconsolable. Jesus does not start making doctrinal or Christological pronouncements. He weeps with her. There’s more than just a place or time to sit for a while. I mean, that’s why our Jewish friends sit Shiva for seven days. You don’t do anything but sit with the person who’s mourning for seven days.

  01:20 You need to let people grieve, and the best thing you could do is just put your arms around them and say you’re sorry. Let the spirit guide you when it’s time to start saying more because I think sometimes, oh, I know this divorce is terrible and I was divorced, but that was 10 years ago and now I’m happy. I mean, sometimes we run the risk of minimizing someone’s pain and suffering.

Hank Smith: 01:42 The darkness is real.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 01:43 The darkness. And these people had to sit there for three days in their darkness. In fact, even though the voice of Jesus starts coming to them, he says a few things and then it’s dark for a while, and he says a few things and then they howl for a while, and then he says a few more things and then they have some joy, but then he says a few more things, there is a matter of pacing which we are too impatient to do, to sit with the sorrow, to sit with the grief, share a few things when inspired, then back off and realize that the darkness lasts three days or a year or a lifetime. There is not, I think a panacea, a band-aid that fits everyone. That’s what we have to be careful with.

  02:28 And that’s why I think we have the scriptures because you can talk about this is what the righteous went through and then the Lord came in chapter 11, but you don’t rush to say, “Okay, that’s exactly what’s happening to you.” You let people pick up from the object lessons as John describes them in scriptures. Let them apply them to themselves.

John Bytheway: 02:48 And can we sit with you as we talk about these wonderful things on here and let you know the days of darkness are temporary and as you said, but they are absolutely real and we would never try to explain them away with a phrase or two.

Hank Smith: 03:05 There’s an article in the digital only version of the Ensign, September of 2020. This man talks about going through depression. I won’t read the whole article, but listen to this language in light of what Eric’s taught us here about 3 Nephi 8, 9, and 10. He says, “The darkness seemed to come out of nowhere. I started feeling anxious and depressed about all the unresolved issues in my life. I lost confidence in myself. I began questioning my faith. The list goes on. It seems like even small inconveniences were blown out of proportion. My good life was suddenly catastrophic. I was fighting an internal battle with demons inside my head. Darkness seemed to engulf me.

  03:49 And as these feelings got worse, I started asking myself things like, ‘What if I wasn’t here anymore? Would people even care?’ Demons in my mind would answer. No one would even notice if you were gone. It paralyzed me with fear. But while I was dealing with all this, I acted normal. I talked to my family like everything was fine. I locked away my feelings from others. I felt like I couldn’t share how catastrophic my mind was.”

  04:14 And he goes through all of the help he received from doctors and counselors and all the tools that God has provided. And then he writes this, “For so long I didn’t think it was possible to hear the voice of God’s love in the midst of depression.”

  04:32 Eric, this is chapter 8, 9, and 10, “but a little glimmer of a light from the Savior helps me hold on to hope. I opened up about my struggles I learned from friends” and then he says, “I wouldn’t have the faith and testimony that I do in Jesus Christ today if it wasn’t for that period of darkness I went through. I am beyond grateful for the light that He brings into my life that helps me defeat the demons and fears in my mind.”

  05:04 He says, “We can always hold onto the Lord’s hope and the light.” Anybody who’s out there struggling or suffering, we have the guest of all guests who has more empathy than almost any other person I’ve ever met. I hope that you can hold on. And like Eric said, we don’t know when the darkness is going to end. We just do know it, it does.

  05:26 Reminds me also of Joseph Smith history, and it seemed to me and then these three words for a time that I was doomed. I always liked those three words. It’s only for a time. You probably felt that same way, Eric, with Sam’s diagnosis, you think this is going to destroy me, but looking back you can see no, this is for a time.

John Bytheway: 05:47 As Jesus is going to say for a season. I like that phrase too.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 05:52 And we rejoice with people when they get to the light. We can’t shoot prematurely. I remember soon after Sam’s diagnosis, I was working my Thursday temple shift. I was so upset. I had some time in between sessions and I was walking the third floor and just sad. I remember saying, “Lord, all these righteous desires I had for my son that he would go on a full-time proselytizing mission and that he’d marry in the temple, and that he’d have a family. None of these things are going to happen now.”

  06:21 It turns out that Thursday was the day before good Friday. Okay, so we’re in passion week, right? The spirit came to me and said, “Well, there are lots of young men in this church who don’t do those things and it’s because of choices they make. If Sam doesn’t do those things, it’s because he didn’t have the opportunity.”

  06:39 And I said, “But he’s my only son.” And the spirit smacked me upside the head and said, “What about my only son?” Right? The day before Good Friday. I was a little abashed, and later I was reflecting on that and I wrote a little essay and I said, “So often we say we want to be more like Jesus and then the Lord allows us to have the trials and the heartaches and the disappointments that will make us more like Jesus.” And what’s our first impulse? “Lord, take these away. I don’t want them.”

  07:10 Sometimes we have to just go through. You can’t go around, you can’t go over, you can’t go under. You just have to go through. Our role as fellow saints, as friends, as sisters and brothers is to be there with people as they’re going through, to hug them, to weep with them. We’re supposed to mourn with those who mourn. We’re not supposed to talk them out of feeling bad. We’re not supposed to give them platitudes. We’re not supposed to say, “Oh, isn’t it great they’re having a wonderful reunion on this side of the veil?” We’re supposed to be sad that they’re not with us. The person’s lost.

  07:44 We have a lot to learn, and we’ll learn it together and we’ll get there. People were weeping and howling in these chapters and the Lord worked them little by little and eventually the light and the day and the morning will come and it’s going to be wonderful as we talk about 3 Nephi 11.

Hank Smith: 08:02 I loved how you pointed that out, the mourning and the wailing of the people turned into joy, praise, and thanksgiving.

  08:10 Eric, we’ve hinted at it a little bit so far, but I think we’re ready. All of our Come, Follow Me studies, all of our followHIM episodes have led us to this moment. 3 Nephi 11, walk us through it.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 08:25 What I would like to say before we start is we’re talking about a historical event that we believe and that we accept that the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ appeared to a group of the righteous as John put it last time, but also the people of Nephi described in the text.

  08:41 This is also a type of how he appears in our lives and it’s also an anticipation of how he will appear to the entire world after the great and wonderful day at the second coming. Let’s keep multiple levels of interpretation and application as we go to this. Now, I think it’s not insignificant that the Lord, and I’m sorry I keep using this casual term, touches down, but it’s almost like we have a lander, right? I mean, we’ve got something coming down from heaven and touching down at a temple in a place called Bountiful.

  09:16 And what does Bountiful conjure up for us? We think about Lehi’s family wandering through the desert for so long and they finally get to a place of plenty and wonder and where they can get ready to build their ship and go forward. It’s a land that’s prosperous, it’s a refuge. The old capital Zarahemla has been burned up. This is the backup capital if you will, but it’s also at the temple.

  09:39 And for those of us who are Latter-day Saints, particularly temple-going Latter-day Saints, the temple for us is that place where heaven and earth meet. Whether you’re going up on a mountain like Mount Sinai or you’re going up to the mountain of the Lord’s house, you’re reaching up to heaven and heaven reaches down to you, so it’s not insignificant the setting here. As we’re looking to apply 3 Nephi 11 to our encounter with the risen living Lord, I would say for me at least it is the temple.

  10:08 The other thing is we mentioned towards the end of part one that we don’t know exactly what the timing is. Both Nephi, son of Nephi, and Mormon have peppered this with some dating, but all we had in verse 18 of chapter 10 was soon after the ascension into heaven, He manifested himself unto them.

  10:25 There’s been some time here. We talked a little bit about struggles and having to go through darkness and we had those three days. We don’t know how many days after that people had to prepare and think about it, but it’s interesting to me that when the people gather at the temple in the land Bountiful verse 2 of chapter 11 says, they were conversing about this Jesus of whom the sign had been giving concerning his death. Revelation comes when we are looking for it. And we talk about thinking and pondering and here they’re talking about it and it was in this moment of really wanting to know more that this next revelation happens.

  11:04 This is the famous passage where he’s introduced by the Father first through a voice that they don’t recognize in verses 3 and 4. It came to pass while they were thus conversing one with another, they heard a voice as if it were out of heaven. They’re looking around, “Who talked to us?” But they understood not the voice. It’s not a harsh voice, it’s not a loud voice. It’s notwithstanding it was a small voice, it pierced them to the center. There’s not a part of their frame that did not quake, and it’s pierced them to their very souls causing their hearts to burn.

  11:37 This is replete with a lot of scriptural imagery. Of course, we’re thinking of Elijah after some of his darkest moments. He has fled from Ahab and Jezebel, and he’s gone down to Horeb or Mount Sinai and he’s been so depressed. At one point he says, “Lord, take away my life.” There’s an earthquake and there’s a fire and the Lord’s not in the earthquake He’s not in the fire, but then there’s that still small voice as the King James renders it.

  11:59 It’s interesting. It caused their hearts to burn and I naturally gravitate to Luke 24:32 to disciples on the road to Emmaus. They don’t understand what it’s saying, they don’t know who it is, but they’re feeling, and that’s how the Spirit affects us. Sometimes it happens with feelings first.

  12:18 Came to pass again, they heard the voice, they still didn’t understand it. And again, the third time they heard the voice and they did open their ears to it and their eyes were towards the sound thereof and they look towards the heaven and the third time, verse 6, they understood the voice which they heard and it said unto them, “Behold, my beloved son, in whom I am well-pleased and whom I have glorified my name. Hear ye Him.”

  12:44 This is so significant because this is the voice of the Father. The son is the mediator, He’s the representative of the Father. So when He’s been speaking in chapters 8, 9, and 10, that was the voice of the Son. Here is God the Father, master of all universes. Speaking to these people, of course, my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, we immediately think of the baptism, we think of the transfiguration, we think of the sacred grove. And as was the case at both the transfiguration and the sacred grove, the first vision, hear ye Him.

  13:25 Those particular episodes aren’t in the Gospel John, but I need to let my Gospel John have a role here. I have glorified my name, that is such quintessentially Johannine language. I’m thinking of John 12. This is during passion week. Jesus is in the temple. Some Greeks want to come and see him. This is what I call the Johannine passion prediction and the synoptics. Three times Jesus tells His disciples, son of man is going to go to Jerusalem and He’s going to be betrayed and suffer at the hands of the priests and the leaders of the people and he is going to die.

  13:57 Only once in John He tells the story about how He needs to lay His life down and less an ear of corn falls into the ground and dies. It won’t live. And then the voice of God speaks in the temple and says, “I have glorified it and glorified it again.” And that’s what we have here. We think from a Latter-day Saint perspective, Moses 1:39, “This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the eternal life and immortality of men,” which is exactly what Jesus has been doing, right? The last hours of his life and through the resurrection. He’s bringing about the glory of the Father, and all of that’s wrapped up into this powerful verse. All these times when the Father has directly interacted with us in this fallen world. Praising His son at the baptism, at the transfiguration, he will do this to the Prophet Joseph and the sacred grove.

  14:48 He did glorify and testify to his son in the temple according to John 12, and he says, hear ye Him. Now he’s talking to the people of Nephi gathered and powerful, but remember this book was written for us. The father is testifying to us. “Jesus is my son, hear ye Him.”

  15:11 And everything we’re going to read in these rich chapters 11-27. You need to picture yourselves as if you were at the land Bountiful that He is speaking to us. This of course is the entre act because then as we move into verses 8-12, Jesus actually descends, but verses 3-7, with the voice of the Father speaking is just so pivotal.

John Bytheway: 15:40 I’m so glad you ran through those verses. Those are the footnotes right there. If you look at footnote 7A, baptism of Jesus, man of transfiguration, first vision where that very consistent language. I heard our friend Brad Wilcox say once, and this is an application here is a perfect father talking about his son in public. Notice how he did it. I love him. I’m so pleased with him. I thought about that as a father, how do I talk about members of my family in public? Could I use that as a model? That’s an application, but I like that idea.

Hank Smith: 16:17 How do I talk about my members of my family, my spouse, my children in public? Eric, you pointed out a phrase, open their ears. That’s an interesting, I’ve never seen someone close their ears. What do you think that means?

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 16:30 Of course it’s symbolic at some level, those who have ears and will not hear, or those that have eyes and will not see, we through our obstinance or rebellion or just our ignorance sometimes refuse to hear. So it’s not like they’re necessarily making a choice to close their ears, but because of where they are in life or choices they’ve made up to this point, they haven’t been able to hear the voice of God. But you need to be willing to do that. We have to be willing to use our ears to hear the word of the Lord.

Hank Smith: 17:04 Yeah, I really like that, that there’s a choice there of do you want to hear because it’s there.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 17:09 It reminds me of Amulek. I knew but I would not know. I heard but I would not hear it. They did open their ear. They did something different, and isn’t it interesting? I mean the Father could have just spoken once while they’re not listening.

Hank Smith: 17:21 No.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 17:22 He speaks again, they’re not listening. But he apparently the repetition is significant. I mean, three is a symbolic number on its own. There’s something happening, not that we have a favorite recent general conference talk, but Elder Kearon’s talk of being relentless to how he’s pursuing us. I mean, this is that. God wants us home and the way to get us home is through His son and He’s so eager to introduce us to His son because His son is going to do it. He’s going to bring us home.

  17:56 Verse 8, it came to pass. As they understood, they cast their eyes up towards heaven and behold they saw a Man, capital M here, descending out of heaven and he was clothed in a white robe and think of all of the visions. I mean, think of Father Lehi. We’ve been anticipating this for a long time. A man in a white robe coming down and he came down and stood in the midst of them and the whole multitude turned upon him and did not dare open their mouths. They thought it was an angel, and that used to always perplex me. What do you mean? This is Jesus, obviously. But they don’t know what Jesus is going to look like and they didn’t have a three-year mortal ministry to get to know the man of Nazareth who’s going to be resurrected and then wear a white robe.

  18:39 They’ve only known the pre-mortal Jesus as Jehovah who’s been speaking through their prophets despite the prophecies of taking upon flesh and doing all those things that we’ve read, it still just must have been just so mind-boggling to them that a God was going to appear looking like a man.

  19:00 We mentioned our friend Daniel Becerra and he said that this unexpectedness of Jesus that Mormon is saying, “Don’t try to pigeonhole Jesus. He’s so much more than you can expect.” They’re just really shocked. He has to say to them, “Behold” verse 10, “I am Jesus Christ whom the prophets testified shall come into the world.”

  19:22 And I think of course, Jacob 7:11, No prophets have spoken, we may not have their records or have their testimonies, but says, “no prophets have spoken except they have testified of Christ.” And then here I am, the light and the life of the world doesn’t get much more Johannine than that. Live of the world in John 8, “Life of the world. I have drunk out of that bitter cup.”

  19:49 Now we actually tend to think about that as the Gethsemane experience and the synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Instantly, that bitter cup is mentioned in John 18 during the arrest, even though John doesn’t tell us about the Gethsemane experience. He drinks that bitter cup and taken upon myself the sins of the world in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.

  20:13 So we’ve got another one of these verses with so many familiar concepts that Jesus spoke in other contexts wrapped into one powerful verse. But what I wanted to share here was a quote I found from President Holland when he was president of BYU. He gave a talk back in 1989. Though John and I were still at BYU, called The Will of the Father in All Things was based upon this verse. “I cannot think it either accident or mere whimsy that the good shepherd in his newly exalted state appearing to a most significant segment of his flock chooses first to speak of his obedience, his deference, his loyalty, and loving submission to his father.”

  21:00 This is when it’s done. I suffered in the garden. I carried that burden on the cross. I died. I rose again, I ascended into heaven. I’m it. Your next guest will talk about how some of the Sermon on the Mounts kind of cast, so you have in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect as my father in heaven is perfect.” But now I can say be perfect even as I or your father in heaven in 3 Nephi 12:48.

  21:22 But look what Elder Holland says next “in an initial and profound moment of spellbinding wonder when surely he had the attention of every man, woman, and child as far as the eye could see, his submission to his father is the first and most important thing he wishes us to know about himself. Even the triumphant Savior, the resurrected Lord, the glorified man coming down in a white robe who’s about to say, I am the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth. What he wants to say is I suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.

Hank Smith: 22:03 That’s the only lesson he could teach. It’s going to be that one in your own times of suffering, choose the father.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 22:14 Now, of course, the multitude, they fall to the earth and they start to put things together. Oh, that’s right. King Benjamin did say that and Abinadi did say that. Nephi did say that. Oh, I see how this is working. All these things were prophesied and we were told that the Christ would show himself unto them after His ascension into heaven.

  22:31 And it came to pass, the Lord spake unto them saying, “Arise and come forth unto me that ye may thrust your hands into my side and also that you may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet that ye may know that I am the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth and have been slain for the sins of the whole world.” And I want to unpack almost every phrase there. But before I do that, I want to go back to what Daniel has said about this unexpected Jesus.

  22:59 Just as Elder Holland, President Holland emphasizes that Jesus at this moment of triumph emphasizes submission to the father. Daniel’s pointed out in his study of 3 and 4 Nephi, it’s this wounded God that is what no one’s expecting, right? They didn’t even expect him to look like a man. They thought it was an angel. And now he says, “I am the God of Israel and the whole earth.” And he says, “Oh, by the way, look at these scars I have.” This goes against Alma 11 and Alma 40 and everything we were told about the resurrection and things being put into their perfect frame.

  23:33 Let me read this quote from our friend real quickly. In the Gospels where we have the luxury of three years of getting to know the man of Nazareth, Jesus made flesh. We have miracles, we have walking on water, we have caring for people, we have all these different things. And Daniel says, “Rather than appealing primarily to the Savior’s miracles and power as proof is divinity, as the gospel authors typically do, Mormon sees evidence of Christ’s Godhood in His wounded body”. Not what you expect from after the father, the greatest being in the universe.

  24:14 Mormon wouldn’t have known this, and Nephi wouldn’t have known this. But we as readers of the scriptures, as we’ve been fortunate to receive them, of course, think of poor brother Thomas in chapter 20 of John who isn’t around when 10 of the disciples see the risen Lord in the upper room and he shows up late, don’t know where he was, shopping, I don’t know what he was doing. When he shows up and he’s like, “We’ve seen the Lord.” He’s like, “I don’t believe it until I can feel the prints of the nails in his hands and put my hand in his side. I’m not going to believe it.”

  24:43  And then of course, Jesus shows up after eight days. This is John 20:26, “Again, his disciples were within and Thomas with them then came Jesus, the door is being shut, stood in the midst and said to them, ‘Peace be unto you.’ Then said He to Thomas, ‘Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side and be not faithless, but believing.’ And Thomas answered and said unto them, ‘My Lord and my God.’ Jesus said unto Thomas, ‘Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet believed.'” And that’s why he earns this unfortunate sobriquet “doubting Thomas”.

  25:21 Remember Thomas isn’t any old disciple. He is one of the surviving 12. He’s supposed to be a special witness and in terms of being able to feel the wound marks in his side, it’s interesting to me that Acts 1, I think it’s verse 3, talks about Jesus showing himself after his passion to his disciples by infallible proofs in Greek techmerios, which means sure token. In the ancient world you break a coin in half and you give one half to your friend and you have the other half and they fit together.

  25:55 Thomas is a special witness. He’s supposed to not only say, “I believe Jesus rose from the dead.” He’s supposed to say, “I know He rose from the dead and I know He is the Savior of the world,” and that’s what these wounds represent is His sacrificial death to save the world. This wounded God is showing up and the experience that is important for special witnesses in John 20 and Acts 1 ends up being the privilege of 2,500 people.

  26:28 If we’re using 3 Nephi 11, not only as a powerful story of a historical event and also as an anticipation of a future encounter with the Lord after the second coming. But as a template of the spiritual experience we should be having in our own lives, there’s something significant going on. Are we having that encounter with the wounded God?

  26:52 But He says, “I’m the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth.” We already mentioned this in part one title page of the Book of Mormon, bringing us to acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God. And this of course goes so along with Johannine and Christology. And it says the God of Israel.

  27:13 It also says the God of the whole world. I think of John 4 after the story of the woman of Samaria who comes believe in Jesus and then runs and shares the news with her entire village and what do they do? They come, they say, “Oh, now that we’ve heard Him, we don’t believe because of your word, but we know of ourselves He is the Savior of the world.”

  27:29 A lot of people don’t know this. The word Savior applying to Jesus only appears twice in Luke and once in John to Jesus. We don’t always realize that because that’s our common way of respectfully referring to Jesus Christ without always using His name. He’s the Savior. He’s the Savior, but when it says He’s the Savior of the world, it’s taking the promise to the covenant people and applying it to everyone and I have been slain from for the sins of the world.

  27:55 This is another one of those verses that’s overwhelming. The people come one by one, verse 15, “And thrust their hands into his side and felt the prints of the nails in his hands and his feet and they went one by one and did see with their eyes and feel with their hands.” They had heard the voice during those three days of darkness, they have seen Him, the voice of God and they’ve heard Jesus announce Himself earlier in the chapter, but now they are also feeling with their hands and did know of a surety.

  28:27 See, that’s what Thomas wanted. Thomas wanted not faith. He wanted that surety and they bear record that it was He of whom it was written by the prophets that should come, this wounded God.

John Bytheway: 28:40 I’m thinking about verse 14 and this invitation, the Savior actually extends, come forth unto me that you may thrust your hands into my side and also that you may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet.

  28:56 Hank, you might know that I donated a kidney to my brother in the 1990s. I have a sizable scar on my side. I don’t show it to people. There is a level of intimacy. The Lord is inviting them. That is just amazing. To touch someone’s hands is a level of intimacy, to shake someone’s hand, but imagine having Him invite you to touch not just His side but a wound in His side, that’s amazing. That He would extend that an invitation and now that is something you would never ever be able to forget.

Hank Smith: 29:33 Absolutely. I’ve often wondered in the order of these things, because normally, it’s come feel the prints in my hands and then the wound in my side, but I wonder if these people of Nephi have no concept of crucifixion but a wound to the side, they would know. That’s a fatal wound.

John Bytheway: 29:49 Yeah. What He is inviting them to do is such a close personal experience.

Hank Smith: 29:58 That’s a little too close for me, right?

John Bytheway: 30:00 Yeah. I’ve had students “Hey, wait a minute, I thought when you’re resurrected everything’s made new again. Why does Jesus still have wounds?” How do you answer that usually, Hank?

Hank Smith: 30:13 Agency is eternal, He chooses.

John Bytheway: 30:16 At the second coming they will say, “What are those wounds in your hands?” And He will say, “Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.” Section 45 repeats the same story but says, “What are those wounds in your hands and in your feet?”

Hank Smith: 30:31 Isaiah said, “The Lord has engraven you in the palms of His hand.”

John Bytheway: 30:36 Yeah. I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands. I always think of the sign language when I… What’s that 1 Nephi 21:15, talked about these wounds. He said, this is from a talk called teaching preaching and healing. January 2003, Ensign, Elder Holland wrote, “Jesus has chosen even in a resurrected otherwise perfected body to retain for the benefit of His disciples, the wounds in His hands and in His feet and in His side. Signs if you will, that painful things happen even to the pure and the perfect. Signs if you will that pain in this world is not evidence that God doesn’t love you. Signs if you will, that problems pass and happiness can be ours. Remind others that it is the wounded Christ who is the captain of our souls. He who yet bears the scars of our forgiveness, the lesions of His love and humility, that torn flesh of obedience and sacrifice. These wounds are the principle way we are to recognize Him when He comes. He may invite us forward as He invited others to see and to feel those marks.”

Hank Smith: 31:47 You don’t have to be scared of the wounds that you get when you’re fighting on the right side.

John Bytheway: 31:51 Yeah. And if you have wounds, it’s not signs that you’re not loved. It’s signs that all of us go through things like this, but I love that problems pass and happiness can be ours.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 32:04 Now this is an interesting thing. We get the number 2,500 later of Todd Parker. Some of you may remember Todd taught forever in ancient scripture at BYU and in his old packet he calculated that if each person, see if I get this right, had only 10 seconds with Jesus, it would’ve taken seven hours. And if each person had 20 seconds, it would’ve taken 14 hours.

  32:29 And something is telling me that Jesus didn’t say, “Next. Next. Next.” Or Nephi wasn’t there saying, “You only get 10 seconds with Jesus.” Something tells me each person had as much time as they wanted to fall at His feet and feel and love, which means there must be some bending of the space-time continuum here.

  32:46 I mean, something’s going on, but once again, let’s not get hung up on the historical particularities of this. What it’s saying is each person gets this opportunity to take what is still for most of us faith and turn it into a sure knowledge of this wounded God who took upon Himself the sins of the world.

Hank Smith: 33:12 It seems that we have a one-by-one Savior, doesn’t it? We could go to the temple and baptize someone for everyone, but he wants this done one at a time, one name at a time. Each person is important.

John Bytheway: 33:26 Each marriage, each ordinance, could we just do them all at once? Nope. It’s not about efficiency. It’s about that personal Savior one by one.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 33:37 When I first started serving in the temple, we used to almost always pride ourselves on how quickly we could do the ordinances and how well we knew them. They kept saying to us, and it’s finally caught on, take your time. The words are power, the words are precious. It’s important for the patron, but it’s also the only time the person for whom you’re performing the ordinances is having that experience.

  34:01 That goes along with what you were saying, John, one by one and meaningful. It needs to be a meaningful experience. But what is the experience they have after they’ve all done this however much time it took? verse 17, “Hosanna, blessed be the name of the most high God and they did fall at the feet of Jesus and did worship Him.” Hosanna, blessed be the name of Him who cometh in the name of the Lord is what we cry at what?

John Bytheway: 34:30 Triumphal entry. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 34:30 Yeah. Triumphal entry.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 34:32 Now of course everything that’s done in the Book of Mormon, you’re talking about object lessons, John, it’s done on a bigger scale, right?

  34:37 So we had palm branches and people shouting in Jerusalem, but here we’ve got people who have felt the wounded God shouting that. And of course, what does Hosanna mean? It means save us now, Hosanna. You could also back up to the glory in Excelsis Deo, the host of heavens. In Luke chapter 2, I have another quote for you. From April 2020, Elder Gong gave a talk, Hosanna and hallelujah, the living Jesus Christ, the heart of restoration and Easter. He said, “Hosanna is our plea for God to save. Hallelujah expresses our praise to the Lord for the hope of salvation and exaltation and Hosanna and hallelujah, we recognize the living Jesus Christ.”

  35:24 You know that I spent a lot of time in Jerusalem, so I love holy week and I love Palm Sunday and we sing Hosanna all the way down the Mount of Olives. In traditional Christianity, between Ash Wednesday until Easter morning you don’t say hallelujah. I don’t know if you’re aware of that as part of Lent or being solemn. Hallelujah is a praise of joy, but it originally meant praise be to Yah, to Jehovah.

  35:51 They do say Hosanna because they’re praying for Jesus to save them and then they wait until Easter morning because they are now saying praise be to Jehovah, but it’s recognizing that this Jesus is resurrected is now revealed as God. Here, as I said, we’re having kind of our Nephite post-resurrection triumphal entry. I will follow with Elder Gong there and say Hallelujah is not portrayed here, although I just had this come to my mind. It is in chapter 20, after they have the sacrament for the second time, they shout out and cry with one voice and gave glory to Jesus so they don’t say hallelujah there, but it’s implicit that we are praising this man and asking this wounded God asking Him to save us, but we’re also praising Him. Hallelujah.

Hank Smith: 36:40 What a moment. Have you ever been in one of those moments, Eric, singing with the choir and it’s just wow, everybody’s feeling it.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 36:47 I had one and this isn’t going to sound immediately like it’s pertinent, but I hope it will be. When President Hinckley was in his final months, we had a moment when we sing in general conference, We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet. It was one of these wonderful Mack Wilberg arrangements.

  37:07 But we were aware that he had colon cancer and it wasn’t his last conference, but we thought it might be and we were all so emotional. We got a little verklempt to use the Yiddish term. I was crying and I wasn’t really singing. We have boxed lunches in between the Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon session. And during lunch I kept asking all my friends, “Were you able to sing? That was so emotional. Spirit was so strong. We were so grateful for President Hinckley and the spirit was so strong.” And everyone I talked to said I wasn’t singing.

  37:36 It’s one of those moments that we felt like we were being helped out by better singers than ourselves. The reason I bring that up, I mentioned the host of heaven with the angel of the Lord in Shepherd’s field, that first Christmas Eve sing Glory to God in the Highest. I think of the crowds on that first triumphal entry Hosanna, blessed is he that come in the name of the Lord. I think of these people saying, “Hosanna, blessed be the name of the most high God.” I think of what we will shout, sing, and feel at the second coming. That’s what I always tell my students when we prepare for that Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem.

  38:15 As I say, this is not commemorative once again, John, past, present, future. It’s not looking back to Jesus’s triumphal entry the last week of his life. It’s accepting Him as our king in our lives now and shouting, save us Lord now, but it’s certainly proleptic or anticipatory looking forward to that party. You think it’s a joyful thing seeing two or 3000 Christians come down the Mount of Olives waving palm Branches and singing for a couple hours. You just wait till all the mess our world is in right now is over and Jesus is appearing and the heavens are being unveiled like a scroll and everyone sees the face of the Lord at once and we know, “Wow. Finally. Finally, it’s over.”

Hank Smith: 38:57 That’s what gets me about this chapter, Eric, is. I don’t think they thought it was today. I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be today. They were just some incredible things that happened and they were all gathered and talking and here he is of that idea of the second coming.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 39:15 And once again not just the past, which is 3 Nephi 11 and not just the future, which is the second coming, but using this as some type of on a different scale we should seek for in our lives now. We recognize Him as our king. We recognize Him as our wounded God. We recognize Him as our Lord. We recognize Him as our friend. Are we shouting Hosanna? Are we shouting hallelujah or singing it or whispering it? Is this what we’re looking for after those days of darkness that we talked about in part one when there’s been such hard times and the Lord unveils Himself in our life now?

Hank Smith: 39:54 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 39:56 I want you to explain again Hosanna, because I’ve seen, oh, grant salvation or show us the way to be saved or save us now.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 40:05 Hosanna literally means save now. So it’s a command or a plea, so save now. Now we read into that. Save us now or we give us Salvation. I mean there are different ways of rendering that.

  40:16 By the way we’re talking in a Christian context of Palm Sunday and here in a Nephite context. When you hear it most joyfully proclaimed in a Jewish context is during the Autumn Festival Sukkot, which is called Tabernacles in our Bibles. You go down to the western wall for instance and they’re waving their branches, it’s palm and willow and they’re waving them, and they do a lot of the Hosanna psalms. You hear them, “Hosanna, Hosanna.” The first time I saw that I thought, “Oh, that was the template for the disciples at the triumphal entry.”

Hank Smith: 40:53 Oh, interesting.

John Bytheway: 40:55 How much did they know about the promise of his coming and how much they must have marveled that I got to be here today? I wonder how long that marveling went on with them. And Elder Holland in the quotation you used talked about that now is the time and you are there. He said something that dates a little bit, you’re less inclined to check the film in your camera than you are the faith in your heart. Now, anciently, we used film in our cameras anciently, but that idea of he’s there right now as you alluded to before, come to Christ, don’t worry about when He will come because if you just come to Christ, you’re already there when He comes. He’s right there now with them and He wants you to come and see Him one by one. Hard to wrap your head around that.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 41:47 We talk about one by one and how each person had that experience to feel the prints in his hands. 18-21 I’ve written in my margin Nephi 3 called. So here you are in this big group and then all of a sudden Jesus picks you out and says, “Hank, come forward.” And Nephi comes, comes and he bows before the Lord and kisses His feet. The Lord commands him to rise and He says, “I’m going to give you power that you may baptize” and you’ll have other opportunities to talk about this.

  42:22 He’s going to talk a little bit in this chapter about having no disputations and commissioning people to baptize. This may seem a little off subject but it’s connected. So yesterday on my temple shift, my first assignment was to record in the baptistry. Love so many aspects of the temple, but there’s just the special spirit in the baptistry.

  42:43 Especially these days when you see these youth just coming in in numbers. We’re there and I was watching a young man, 16, and we didn’t have enough baptizers and this kid ended up baptizing 11 people until we could get another one. And I remember thinking when some procedures had changed and they started let the young people perform proxy baptisms. I don’t know, maybe I was a old-fashioned. I’m like I used to be only endowed people who did it, and I had been reading in advance of our discussion today about Nephi being called forward and commissioned and given power to baptize when Jesus would go into heaven.

  43:24 And I thought, this young guy and he was nervous and he was given the same commission as I heard him say, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ.” Same thing that Nephi’s son and Nephi’s son of Helaman received and it was in a temple, so this is having the temple Bountiful and I don’t know for some reason I was unusually moved by that.

Hank Smith: 43:47 I wonder if when the Savior comes again, if we’re all getting ready to hear some grand new thing we’ve never heard before and he decides he’s going to speak on faith, baptism, repentance, and the holy Ghost.

John Bytheway: 44:00 Doctrine of Christ.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 44:01 In other words, the gospel.

Hank Smith: 44:01 Yeah, the gospel. It’s always interested me that Nephi was among the multitude just so humble. If I was Nephi, you both know me and how prideful I am, I would probably say, “Jesus, Jesus, where do you want me? Do you want me right next to you? Where do you want me? Do you want me in front?”

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 44:22 Kind of pushing forward to make sure he sees you.

John Bytheway: 44:24 I can’t find my name tag.

Hank Smith: 44:26 That’s me, your main man. Instead there’s Nephi, just among the multitude.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 44:34 Reminds me of that parable in Matthew where he says, “When you’re called to a wedding, don’t get a front seat, sit in the back.”

John Bytheway: 44:41 It’s better to be called up.

Hank Smith: 44:42 It’s better to be called forward than to be sat down than to be humbled.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 44:48 Well, it’s interesting that you anticipate with this next section verses 22-29 are about that Jesus comes and we’re expecting this great big thing, millennial thing, and He talks about baptism and that’s exactly what He does. The Lord called others and said unto them, “I’m giving you power to baptize and by the way, let’s not argue about how to do this.”

  45:05 And he says, there’s been some disputations but whosoever repenteth of his sins through your words, and desires to be baptized, you’re going to go in the water and you’re going to baptize him. Having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the son and the Holy Ghost.”

  45:20 And our current wording having been commissioned of Jesus Christ. It’s the 1835 Book of Commandments. They changed it from having authority to having been commissioned, and that’s just semantics. The concept is the same name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost. Then you’re going to immerse him in water and you’re going to come out of the water.

  45:38 Now remember this is different. We’ve been baptizing unto repentance since at least Alma and presumably sooner people were being baptized into repentance by John the Baptist. We even see this in the book of Acts that Paul runs to people in Ephesus who had been baptized according to John, but not in the name of Jesus Christ.

  46:00 And by the way, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Ghost and baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ are not in tension with each other because Jesus is one of those three. But we have something new going on here. It’s not just being baptized unto repentance, and of course, later your next episode I think we’re going to talk about how he establishes the church here. It’s being baptized in this new church.

  46:22 So presumably a lot of these people, certainly Nephi, son of Nephi, son of Helaman had been baptized unto repentance under the system that they had been following in the Book of Mormon up until this time. But the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost of course is something we read at the end of Matthew 28 that this is the great commission.

  46:44 Up until this point, the encounter with deity that these people had had, I mean obviously it’s the power of the Spirit, but it was the pre-mortal Jehovah, but we’ve actually heard God the Father for the first time earlier in this chapter and now we have the full Godhead completely revealed to them. We now know the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of the Son being this wounded God, the risen Lord, and we’re now being baptized with the Holy Ghost.

  47:11 But He says in verse 27, “The Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one and I am in the Father and the Father in me.” And I’d already mentioned these passages in John 10 and John 17 that have alluded to this before, “But there shall be no more disputations”. It is about baptizing them in the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, immersing in water when you have authority, and that’s how baptisms are going to be done from now on.

  47:36 And it’s not, “Oh, we’re going to talk about a simple principle of the gospel” when you have this Christophany, this appearance of Christ. Baptism is how you come to the Father, Son, and holy Ghost

Hank Smith: 47:48 Like a birth, you become His.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 47:50 Yeah. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 47:51 You’re in my family now. Eric, you’ve walked us through these significant chapters in the Book of Mormon, especially 3 Nephi 11, this majestic moment in all history. It is such a crucial belief of ours that the Lord came to the people of Nephi, that he will come again and that he can, like you said, come to each of us in our own lives. If I’ve been at home listening with my scriptures open, learning all that you’ve taught me as a scriptural expert, what do you hope I would do differently? What do you hope I would change?

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 48:29 Well, we’ve looked at that one passage in part one about repentance and conversion and repentance daily not being just about sin, but about turning our hearts to the Lord.

  48:44 What we see in all of these chapters and especially in chapter 11 is how that focus really needs to be about Jesus. John, I heard you in a previous episode talking about being converted unto the Lord. It wasn’t about being converted to the church or converted to X, converted to Y. It’s natural as a human being to think in terms of group identity and institutions and of course the church’s divine, it really is about Jesus Christ.

  49:12 Now, this is His church. It provides us the covenants and the structure and the direction, but it is here to bring us to Christ in terms of what your question started out with, Hank, for people particularly as they’re suffering or they’re in their darkness of chapters 8, 9, and 10. The day and the light is only going to come with Jesus, and it’s when we’re expecting other people or even institutions or communities to bring the day when the day is the light of Jesus Christ.

  49:47 I am Jesus Christ. I am who the prophets have testified. I am the light of the world. I am the God of Israel and the whole earth, and our response should be, Hosanna, blessed be the name of the most high God and fall at His feet. Some of this can be experienced symbolically at this point in our experience.

  50:05 When I was growing up as a younger person in the church, we didn’t talk about grace and we hardly even read the Book of Mormon, which I know sounds crazy to people today. But when President Nelson got us reading the Book of Mormon, we had to grapple with grace. We had to grapple with Jesus Christ as the main character of that book. We had to talk about salvation in ways we didn’t before.

  50:27 Throughout my adult life, I have seen us talking more and more about Jesus Christ, not the inclusion of the Father, the Spirit. This is why I think President Nelson has just stressed the name of the church so much. This is the church of Jesus Christ, and if I could just go on a hobbyhorse for a moment or soapbox, when President Nelson asks us to use the correct name of the church, I don’t think he expected us to say 10 times as often, church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  50:56 I think he wants us to say we’re members of the Church of Jesus Christ, and not just use the correct name of the church but actually start living like we are followers of Jesus Christ. Another context in other subjects, I’ve often said the most two sacred things we say in a prayer is Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the name of Jesus Christ, because that tagline in the name of Jesus Christ is so frequent and used so often in ordinances and at the end of talks and testimonies, it becomes almost disrespectful the way we say it.

  51:33 We’re not gaining anything if we use the correct name of the church or if we talk about Jesus Christ and it almost doesn’t bring a lump to our throat to say Jesus Christ, if He’s as real to us as He was to these people who felt the wounds in His hands and His feet and His side who fell at His feet. I’ve got this genetic problem with my tear ducts so you don’t have to tear up or pull a Huntsman.

  52:01 Some people, our friend Brother Lloyd Newell gets soft and gentle. I mean he channels his Richard G. Scott and other people have different styles. This isn’t about style. This is about feeling and experience. I believe the more and more people who come to know Jesus Christ, they will get through their days of darkness and they will be there for other people and they will perform the ordinances like baptism that we see here, and they aren’t going to just be performing ordinances because it’s something you got to do to get into a certain kingdom. It’s like, “Wow, let’s take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ. Let’s go to the temple, make covenants to be closer to the Lord. Let’s get the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Let’s be sealed. Let’s go to the temple to work in the laundry just because we want to be in the house of the Lord.”

  52:55 This is what our church practices. We often talk about orthodoxy, correct belief, something called orthopraxy not correct practice in terms of rules and things you got to do just right. Remember I said at the beginning of this episode, I don’t consider myself a theologian. I try to be a practitioner. I just want to experience what the Lord has for me in this life, so that’s what I would share with people.

Hank Smith: 53:22 That’s wonderful. What is it? Ether 12, seek this Jesus. Eric, we want to thank you for taking your time to be with us today. Decades of being a religious educator, having someone like you walk us through these chapters is such a blessing to have someone who’s spent so much time studying all of this and to say, let me walk you through it. We’re really grateful that you take the time to do that.

Dr. Eric Huntsman: 53:51 Well, thanks for giving me the motherload, the best part of the Book of Mormon. Amazing.

Hank Smith: 53:57 And we had one of the best educators here. You did it justice, which we appreciate. We love how much you love the Lord. It’s evident every time I talk to you. It shows on your face and in your words. With that, we want to thank Dr. Eric Huntsman for joining us on followHIM 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. He would’ve loved this episode, Eric.

  54:28 We hope you’ll join us next week as we walk through the Savior’s first visit with the people of Nephi on followHIM. Before you skip to the next episode, I have some important information. This episode’s transcript and show notes are available on our website, followHIM.co. That’s followHIM.co. On our website, you’ll also find our two free books, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament and Finding Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Both books are full of short and powerful quotes and insights from all our episodes from the Old and New Testaments.

  55:01 The digital copies of these books are absolutely free. You can watch the podcast on YouTube. Also, our Facebook and Instagram accounts have videos and extras you won’t find anywhere else. If you’d like to know how you can help us, if you could subscribe to rate, review, and comment on the podcast, that will make us easier to find.

  55:19 Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew, David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Neilson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, and Annabelle Sorensen.

President Russell M. Nelson: Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn to Him, followHIM.