John Bytheway: 00:03 Welcome to Part II of this week’s podcast.

Hank Smith: 00:07 I think for me personally, I have seen, as I’ve learned more and more about this, the value of the Book of Mormon is just increasing in my eyes. 2 Nephi 2, 2 Nephi 9, Alma 12. I’ve started reading Alma 12 the other day, and I’m like, “Wow, we know so much about this story because of the Book of Mormon.” I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that the Book of Mormon sheds… It like opens up the window here to what is really happening.

John Bytheway: 00:37 And Hank, can I make a connection because who is 2 Nephi 2. It is Lehi talking to Jacob, who later on writes 2 Nephi 9. And I love the whole backstory. Jacob, let me explain, you were born in the wilderness, you’ve seen family contention. Let me explain the Fall. Let me explain opposition in all things. Let me explain why. And then later Jacob explains it with even more detail in 2 Nephi 9. So it’s fun to see that, “Oh, that’s the same guy, Jacob, who’s learned a lot about the Fall, and fallen man.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 01:16 That’s really great. So if we go back to Genesis 3 now for a little bit, then you get this moment then when Eve, and as I like to think about it, Eve, feeling this tension, and Adam would probably pretty just easily say, “No, I understand how this works. If the fruit is offered to you, you say no.” That might be what Adam might do there. “I know the rules and I’m obedient. I’m going to follow those rules.” Eve maybe feels this tension a little bit greater. And there are biblical readers who would say it was always intended… This is a maturation story, and they’re supposed to eat the fruit at some point. There comes a time when you don’t stay in the garden, you leave the garden.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 02:04 And that’s more, again, not so much Christian or Pauline readers, as we might say it, but Jewish readers are a little bit more… They just come at that text without having the New Testament and say, “No, the idea is at some point she’s going to eat the fruit and they’re going to leave the garden. They’re going to eat the fruit and they’re going to leave the garden.” Well, so she’s got this growing tension in her, and then Satan offers her this fruit. It’s not a good image when you take the fruit out of Satan’s hand. That there’s some almost ritual ordinance, almost sacrament imagery there that we should not miss in our rush to just say everything is perfect here. I’m not sure that we want to say everything is perfect here. An analogy I like to use is if I buy… At least in our family, if I buy a car and I don’t tell my wife and I come home with it, that’s not a good thing. There’s other families where that might work really well, but not in my house.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 03:00 When you do those things… If you’re going to have children, I mean, just functionally it’s a decision two people have to make. But here Eve makes a decision that has a very permanent effect on her relationship with Adam, and she does it without Adam being present. So there’s a break here that’s caused, and then the way that I like to read it, and that I see it is that then Satan, Lucifer is trying to enhance that break when he sends her to confront Adam and try to get him to partake. But this is where the love story is enhanced. And I think in our marriage, there are these times when we’ve done something that might be hurtful to our partner, and then Eve very powerfully, vulnerably stands in front of Adam naked, as it were: honest, open, vulnerable.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 03:59 “I’ve eaten this fruit.” And Adam, I love this moment, this woman that he had first looked at and loved when God says, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” And here’s Adam and Eve, and now they’ve been apart and they come back together and Eve is being honest with him saying, “I’ve taken this fruit and I’ve got to leave the garden.” And Adam looks at her and there’s this potential betrayal, you might say, but it’s really this powerful decision that moves the story forward. I suspect if it’s me in the garden, I’m still playing with the lions. I’m never going to leave. But Eve moves, it’s this bold, courageous act Eve makes. But then it works because Adam loves her and is willing to follow her leadership and says, “I’m coming with you. We’re doing this together.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 04:50 And then God shows up. And to me, what he sets up is to restore the breach that was created there when Satan was introduced into the story. And he says, “Okay, now…” And this is just my reading of the text. “Now, Eve, you need to listen. You need to be part of this. You’re not just doing your own thing here. I know you’re highly capable and you’re linked to this man who may not always seem highly capable.” I had a woman in my ward who said to me once, “There was a time my husband had done some dumb things and this went on for a number of years where I realized I’ve been just treating him like another child in our household. I haven’t been allowing him to be an equal with me. I’d relegated him to unequal status because he had done some things that had been hurtful to the family, and there was a time I needed to change that in our marriage and now we’re equals again.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 05:45 And to me, that’s what God is saying to Eve. “You’ve got to be linked with Adam, listen to him, follow his leadership, as he has followed your leadership.” And I love Eve’s powerful leadership and that Adam’s willing to follow her out of the garden. And then God links them back together and says, “Adam, you gotta work hard here. You got to take a leadership role here. You got to be involved. You’ve got to be engaged.” And I don’t want to generalize that too much. I don’t know that that works in all of our situations, but there’s certainly some powerful potential messages there for what Eve does, how beautiful and powerful it is in this moment when she stands in front of Adam, and she’s saying what needs to happen, and Adam doesn’t “No, you’re bad and you’re wrong, and I reject you.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 06:32 Instead, he says… He’s humble enough to say, “Oh, okay. I’m coming out of the garden with you. We’re together. I’m with you.” And it’s beautiful. It’s redemptive. And then God reunites them, re-cleaves them back together by saying, “You got to rely on each other. This is marriage. It’s husband and wife, wife and husband.” So I think there’s some beauty that can come out of that. If I could maybe introduce another question that I think Latter-day Saints often ask, and that is what about these conflicting commands? And let me just add, part of that I find helpful, part of what we were just discussing, was there anything wrong? Well, there was certainly something risky. We will at least put it that way, when Eve makes that decision that maybe could have been made unitedly together.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 07:26 She’s feeling that tension, and we don’t know how this story played out, so I’m just suggesting possibilities. But if she had discussed that with Adam and they had gone to the Lord in prayer, how might that have looked different? I don’t know. But one of the things I’m doing is connecting this idea that Eve was the one in transgression that we get in the New Testament with this idea that it was a glorious decision. And I think we can have it both ways, honestly. She makes that first decision and it’s powerful, but it’s risky. It’s really risky. It’s bold, but it’s risky.

Hank Smith: 08:08 Shon, would it be fair to say that… Because I’ve had students say before, doesn’t Satan have to do this in order for this to happen? And I like what you said there, that this could be a maturity thing, that eventually they are going to partake of the fruit and the Lord plans on them doing that, but Satan came in and rushed the process or stepped in where he had no place to step in, to… I don’t know, I related it to one day I’m going to talk to my kids about the birds and the bees when they get old enough, but then somebody else comes in and decides to talk to him about that before that. Is that wrong? No, it was going to happen, but it was not your place. Is there anything to that, or am I way off?

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 08:52 Well, I actually really like that as a potential reading here, that Satan… And it’s clear in Moses, if we look, let’s go back to Moses for a second to connect with what you’re saying here. Moses Chapter 4, verse 6. “Satan put it into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God.” And then how do I understand that? Is he dumb? Does he not get how this is supposed to work? I feel like Satan would’ve known more. And the way I read, “He knew not the mind of God,” is he doesn’t understand the concepts of redemption, of love, of sacrifice. It’s not that he intellectually doesn’t get it, but he thinks he can break this apart by inserting himself. I like what you said there, Hank, prematurely into this discussion, and trying to short circuit the whole process. And he thinks this is going to work.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 09:48 And at least I like to imagine him when Eve, he’s like, “Go talk to Adam. This is all going to implode. This is going to be great.” And then Eve stands in front of Adam and is so powerful and loving and good, and Adam is so open to Eve that it actually turns the other direction. And yes, they leave the garden, but God inserts himself now in the story, because there was a plan, there was a preordained plan, there’s a Redeemer here. So let’s make sure we understand that. I love that. “Satan knew not the mind of God.” And I like that understanding that as Satan knew not the soul of God, what it means to love, what it means to be willing to give oneself up for another.

Hank Smith: 10:37 Doesn’t understand sacrifice. He doesn’t understand love.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 10:40 So he’s like, “No, this isn’t going to work.” Envy is going to win out. Jealousy is going to win out. Pride’s going to win out in Satan’s mind. Because those are the principles that he understands. And by the way, there’s a lot of evidence that he got it right, that he understood humans pretty well. But then there’s the redemptive evidence that points the other direction. And this is the battle, of course, of good versus evil. Okay, so let’s go back to what I was about to introduce, this idea of conflicting commandments, and is that fair? Would God ever do that? Students like to-

Hank Smith: 11:13 It’s a common question.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 11:13 Say, “No, the way that we’ve set this up, I don’t think that works.” And my take is that this now is a higher level agency that they’re learning. Lehi in 2 Nephi 2, he sets up that they’re given all of the things to begin to learn about agency. I like to see it as a seven-year-old. Do they have agency? Well, God has created a space where they’re protected, because they don’t fully get it, but they’re starting to get it. They’ve got opposites that they can choose between. They’ve got choices, and God has placed consequences with those choices. So they’ve got the setup there, but what they don’t have is the experience yet. So now this is a higher level between two goods. This is like one of your children has had an accident where they burned themselves and you haven’t had family prayer yet. Do you rush your child to the hospital or do you stop and have family prayer? Well, I think you rush your child to the hospital is the right decision. “Oh no, we didn’t pray as a family. Now we’ve transgressed that law.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 12:20 Or you go to the hospital and you run a red light. You’re actually liable for running that red light. And if you get in an accident, then you’ll get ticketed for running that red light. But most policemen are not going to give you that ticket if they don’t have to because they get you’re following a higher law. You’re transgressing one law. This is like Nephi not wanting to kill Laban, and God says, “You got to do this,” and he transgressed the law, you might say. And because of the transgression of that law, that’s one of the reasons Laman and Lemuel are so ticked off. We can’t go back to… We’re out of the Holy City now because you did this, but he was following a higher law.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 12:58 To me, these are decisions we have to make every day of our lives. You can’t do all of the professions that you think would be awesome. You can’t experience everything you want to experience. You can’t marry all… I like to tell BYU students you can’t marry all the people, you have to pick a person. You’re going to marry one person. And we have to make these kinds of decisions. You can’t write all of the missionaries in the world and write in your journal and cook all of the loaves of bread for everyone. We have to choose, and that’s okay. And there’s inherent… But there are consequences.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 13:33 So let’s set up this weird situation where the question is, am I going to smoke a cigarette or am I going to kill someone, and I choose to smoke a cigarette over… This is silly maybe, but I choose to smoke the cigarette. Well, God isn’t going to hold me accountable as a sin if that was the right decision, but I’ll still get tar in my lungs. I still have to leave the garden. There are consequences to transgressing a law, even if we’re not accountable. And the Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses later on says, “I have atoned for your transgression in the Garden of Eden. It’s done. You were figuring it out. You made a choice. And now we’re moving forward. I have atoned for that.” Would God do that? Well I think, yeah, that’s what mortality is. I mean, we deal with this every day of our lives

John Bytheway: 14:20 I think it’s a Mary/Martha thing too. They’re both good things. What do you do? And Sister Bonnie Parkin talked about that story and said, “It’s not like choosing whether to go visiting teaching or rob a bank. They were two good things.” Hank will laugh of where I’m going for my source, but there’s an old episode of the Andy Griffith Show where Andy’s trying to bend the rules to help somebody. And he says to Opie, “There’s a boy in a pond who was drowning, and the sign clearly said no swimming.” “Well, did you save the boy?” And Opie says he couldn’t let him drown, and he says… He has to save him. In those cases we don’t break the rules, we just bend them a little bit and to help buddy. And I thought that was a really good way to put it for a kid that there’s some competing goods there that the boys shouldn’t be swimming, it says no swimming, but you don’t just let him drown. You go in there and you swim so that you can save him. I thought it was pretty good.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 15:27 Let’s now begin to move Adam and Eve out of the garden. And if we look now towards the end of Chapter 3, there’s a couple of things that I want to point out here. One is this idea that Adam is called what I want to call the first truth of mortality in the sweat of thy face. So this is Genesis 3 verse 19, and we could look at it in the Pearl of Great Price if we wanted to. I think they’re exactly the same. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” So the first, what I like to think of as the first truth of mortality is you are going to need to work. It’s what we call the law of the harvest. Work then will be how you’re going to live and survive in mortality. It’s going to be a little different than in the garden, whereas it’s just spontaneously there. The law of mortality is you exert effort, and then that effort is rewarded.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 16:27 Now mortality isn’t perfect. Sometimes you exert effort and it isn’t perfectly rewarded, but that’s the general rule. But if we go over to the Pearl of Great Price account, and the Cain and Abel story, there’s this really interesting moment where Cain, it’s pretty clear that he wants his brother’s flocks, that he really wants them. That he’s jealous of his brother, and that functions in a lot of different ways-

John Bytheway: 16:58 It’s Chapter 5.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 17:00 Yeah, we’re now in Moses Chapter 5 or Genesis Chapter 4, so I’ve jumped forward for a moment. And there’s this moment then in Moses 5, verse 33, “And Cain gloried in that which he had done, saying: I am free; surely the flocks of my brother falleth into my hands.” So I’ve committed a sin to get what I want. And notice if you back up now to verse 31, you get what leads up to that. Cain said he was taught this by Satan. Satan came to him and taught him what I call the first great secret or lie of mortality that Satan teaches, “Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain.” So you have right here at the beginning of the account set up, I would say, in opposition to each other, God tells Adam, “You’re going to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, and Satan shows up and says, “No, Cain. You can sin to get what you want.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 18:06 And I like pausing here and just having them think about this a little bit. And I say, pick a sin, any sin… Not the one you do, because that’d be awkward, but think about any sin and how it’s actually motivated somewhere lower in the motivation, as we build towards that sin, I want to get something for nothing. And you could think of gossip that I want to use… Instead of building a relationship through love and sacrifice, I’m going to tell a secret that puts me in this position of trust with you. You could think of lying and how I want to shortcut the system or cheating to get something for nothing. You could think of breaking the law of chastity, of pornography, as this effort to click a button and I can get my brain… If you look at the brain, it looks the same way as physical sexual intimacy and marriage. Typically, though, you court someone, you get married, you do dishes, you go on dates, you raise children together. Or I can get something for nothing.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 19:14 And I have had people in my ward, I had one person say, “I don’t want the real thing. I want the fake thing. That’s way more persuasive for me. I want to click the button and just be automatically loved.” All of us do this, by the way, being seduced by this getting something for nothing where we’re looking for the shortcuts. But this idea that we want the easy path of getting something for nothing, and it weakens us as humans. We are light and truth at our very core, and when we go to sin to get what we want, it warps who we are, and then we need the redemption that comes through the Atonement of Christ and re-accepting truth, that first great truth of mortality, “I’m going to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow.”

John Bytheway: 20:07 Fantastic insight. Can I expand that a little bit, because I love the idea that those who are seeking signs in Jesus’ day, and he would say, “It is a wicked and an adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign.” And then Joseph Smith said something that at first I was like, “Whoa, what?” If you see a man seeking a sign? You may set it down that he is an adulterous man. And I remember Robert L. Millet connecting those for me once and saying, “Look, one of them is saying I want all of the evidence. I want the testimony. I don’t want to do any work. I don’t want to do any commitment to finding out. That’s the sign seeker. Show me the proof. I don’t want to do any work. The adulterer says, I want all the benefits of marriage. I don’t want any of the commitments of marriage.”

John Bytheway: 20:57 And it was the same something for nothing kind of mentality, and I had never connected that with Cain before. You can murder and get at gain. And when I’ve taught that to my classes, I’ve said how many TV shows… And I had a percentage somewhere, a USA Today article that talked about crimes committed, the number of times a violent crime or some kind of crime is committed, and in the movie, they get away with it. “I can murder and get gain,” I can do stuff and get away with it. And that lesson continues to be taught today.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 21:32 This becomes, by the way, if you’re going to go to the Book of Mormon, this becomes the foundational belief of secret combinations that we’re going to murder to get what we want. If you just look modern day at the tobacco industry and a group of people who were willing to hide the reality that they were killing people because they were getting gain. So they were willing to hide that, you’d say, a group of people, and I don’t know any of those people, so I don’t mean to point the finger too strongly there, but just more at the general choice that was made there somewhere. Yeah, we know this is killing, but we’re going to keep marketing to children because we make more money that way. This is a seductive concept, and the Book of Mormon says.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 22:15 This is the kind of concept that led to the downfall of the entire Nephite society, and I would suggest this desire to get something for nothing, you could say, it’s at the center of some of our most serious societal problems today. It will destroy a society when too many of us decide, “I want to get something for nothing.” A society cannot bear up under the weight of that burden. This is not just a minor thing. The fact that it stands here at the entrance to the biblical story and to our story of mortality, I think is a big deal that it’s here. And by the way, I gotta add, I first learned this and I expanded on it from a seminary teacher whose name’s Jack Rose. I’ve never told him that this has been an important concept for me. I wrote a paper where I included this idea and I put his name in a footnote, but got to give a shout out to him for first introducing this idea to me.

Hank Smith: 23:14 Shon, this is fantastic stuff. I automatically thought of Jesus, the temptations of Jesus, Matthew Chapter 34. Take the shortcut. Jesus, take the shortcut. And he refuses every single time. He will not take the shortcut. And we have that chance every day. Don’t take the shortcut. Be disciplined like Jesus. Be a disciple of Jesus means being as disciplined as Jesus.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 23:41 The other thing though that I wanted to grab from this storyline before we leave the garden entirely is this moment in… Let’s just stay in the Book of Moses, Moses Chapter 4, verse 27. “Unto Adam, and also unto his wife, did I, the Lord God, make coats of skins and clothed them.” Now there’s really interesting stuff going on. Some of it probably literal, but a lot of it probably figurative with clothing and covering. Many know that the Hebrew word that is translated as Atonement is kuffar and it has connections of covering. It’s both the kind of covering that happens when you smear blood, like atoning sacrifice kind of covering, but also potentially the covering that happens when we’re naked, we’re vulnerable, and then God puts a clothing that covers our nakedness, covers our flaws, covers us and gives us authority to stand in his presence again.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 24:41 So Adam and Eve do this interesting thing where they go… It’s almost like they’re dressing up like the Tree of Life. And I like it. They put the leaves on, they get these fig leaves. And that works okay. Fig leaves aren’t terribly successful. I mean, the fig leaves are okay, but they’re not very permanent. They’re not maybe perfectly effective as a covering, but they do add some color to the story. Our efforts, when honestly done, are important. They matter. It adds some variety. It adds some color to the storyline. But what we really want is God’s covering. And God is going to truly cover them in ways that will protect them, as they’re now going out into a challenging world. And what you get here is most likely it would appear to be the first death that Adam and Eve have ever encountered, as these are coats of skins, these are animal skins that cover them.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 25:42 And we might, even, as Christians, have in the Pearl of Great Price, in the Book of Moses later on, Adam and Eve know how to do sacrifice. They’ve been taught about sacrifice in the Garden of Eden before they leave, but they haven’t been taught all of the implications of what it represents. They learn that as they’re moving forward out of the garden. But they know how to do it, because Adam’s, he’s offering sacrifice out of the Garden of Eden. What does this mean? He says, “I don’t know. I was just told I was supposed to do this.” So this could be the place where God first teaches them the law of how to sacrifice and that they need to sacrifice. Now think of the beauty of the sacrificial animal then providing the skins, the garments that are going to cover them as they leave the garden.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 26:28 So that sacrificial offering then, the lamb or the animal that’s sacrificed there, covers them, Christ covers them. So they’re dressing up as the tree of life. That’s nice. They put leaves on. God puts the image of Christ upon them, the image of the atoning one to remind them who they are, to say, “This is who you’re supposed to become. I’m going to put the image of God on you. I’m going to dress you with power and authority and protection as you leave the garden now.” And then that serves as a reminder to them of their relationship with God and that they want to return back into the presence of God. Just a few possible thoughts there.

John Bytheway: 27:12 So beautiful. The idea that before he ever cast them out of the garden, they were covered by Christ is so intensely Christian. The idea of… I remember Joseph McConkie was saying, and he was always really definite about everything, but he said, “So they were covered by the lamb,” and I raised my hand, “How do we know it was a lamb? How do we know?” And he said, “It just has to be.” That was his answer. But as you said that, Shon, you’re the Hebrew expert, so I remember looking up the lexicon on coats, because when we think of coats, we think of an outer garment. But when I looked up coats, I think the word was kethoneth, that’s it. And it was an inner garment worn next to the skin. I mean, I read the definition and just went, “Wow, an inner garment worn next to the skin that goes down to the knees, rarely to the ankles, also worn by women.” And I thought, “Wow, look at that.” They were covered by this before they were cast out of the garden.Yeah. It’s that word, kethoneth. That’s really, really nice. And skins is fascinating here. ‘Or is the word for skin and it is more or less homonym with the word ’Or, meaning light.. One starts with an ‘ayin , that’s skin, and ’Or starts with an aleph is light. And the biblical authors love doing that with the Hebrew, playing with that Hebrew language. And this idea that he’s covering them with garments of light. So they’ve done the leaves. Great. But these are garments of light. And there are other implications of… Okay, is it bad to be naked? When did they start… Should they feel ashamed for their innocent nakedness? No, it’s maybe the world or Satan that makes them feel ashamed of that. But once they then have transgressed and have moved out, are beginning to move out of God’s presence then, then they really do need that covering to help them move forward. So there’s all kinds of fun things we could stick on here for another couple hours.

John Bytheway:               29:29   How did you pronounce it? Kaphar?

Dr. Shon Hopkins:           29:31   Kaphar is the verb, to cover, Kippur  is the past participle that is often translated as atonement, covering.

 

John Bytheway: 29:43 See, because I thought… It’s so interesting they tried to cover themselves. And then I read in the Book of Mormon, that if we are not… Without the Atonement, we are exposed to the demands of the law. And I think, “Oh, look at that. We could be covered by Christ or we’d be exposed.” I think I’m in Alma 34 when I say that, to the demands of the law. And I can see where the idea of being dressed is protected as being covered by Christ, otherwise we’re exposed.

Hank Smith: 30:17 I also see in Moses 4:16, when the Lord says, “Where are you?” And Adam says, “I was afraid. I hid myself.” This idea of shame and fear have been introduced into Adam’s life, and the Lord is saying, “There’s no need to hide from me. You don’t need to be ashamed of yourself.” So I like that idea of the Lord’s like, “Don’t hide from me. It’s okay. Who told you that you should be ashamed. Who told you that you should hide from me?”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 30:47 This is really interesting. We could play the what if game all day long, and we were just guessing. But if Adam and Eve had prayed about, “How are we going to follow the second commandment,” if this had gone a little different without Satan, the serpent introducing himself into the story, how would this have looked different if that relationship had moved forward, that they had understood, “Now we take the fruit, and it’s part of their communication with God as Latter-day Saints would understand this, what has to happen. And by the way, many other Christians are going to say, “What are you even talking about? The fruit? You’re reading that very differently than we do.” And we will just say that we are. But what might this have looked like? And yet there is a Redeemer that turns this story back into gold, back into what it needs to be as each of us come to him.

Hank Smith: 31:42 I can’t tell you how many of my students would, in their life, do something wrong and decide to hide from God, rather than just go… Yeah, instead of going to talk about it, it’s like, “Well, I’ll just stop going to Church. I’ll stop going to the temple. I’ll just hide from God for a while.” And I can hear the Lord saying, “Why are you hiding from me? You don’t have to be ashamed of yourself. Come talk to me.” I just think it’s a beautiful idea to think that the Lord loves you despite the things you’ve done wrong. Come talk to him. It’s okay. Come talk to me.

Hank Smith: 32:20 I remember Boyd K. Packer telling a story once where his son had done something pretty wrong. He had stolen the family car and gotten it in a car accident. And the police officer said, “Do you want to make a phone call?” And he said, “Yeah, I want to call my dad.” That he trusted that I’d made a big mistake and I need to talk to my dad about it.” That’s an automatic. “I’m not going to hide from him. He’s the one who can help me through my mistake.” So anybody listening who’s made mistakes, we’ve all made mistakes. Go to the Lord with your mistakes. Don’t hide from him.

John Bytheway: 32:55 Brother Wilcox’s talk in General Conference about, “I’m a hypocrite.” Well, you would be if you’re trying to lie about it or hide from it or say it didn’t really happen or the Church is wrong for having high standards. But if you’re owning it, you’re talking to your bishop, you’re trying to fix it. That’s not a hypocrite. That’s a disciple. I mean, that was a great moment in brother Wilcox’s talk. You’re trying to come back, so don’t be afraid of the bishop either. Go talk.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 33:25 And this emphasizes the point of just how fruitful, and I use that pun, that play on it, how fruitful this story is, and of the whatever, 5 or 10 insights that we’ve discussed here today, there are thousands more. This story will reward those who spend time pondering it. All right, well let’s just spend a few more minutes teasing out some things with the Cain and Abel story. We’ve spent a lot of time in the story of the Fall, and we’ve done some jumping into the Cain and Abel story, but there’s some fascinating things of the Pearl of Great Price that Moses Chapter 5 provides as we come out of the garden. One of the things that it adds to our understanding is that Cain and Abel are not the first children born to Adam and Eve. You don’t get that in the biblical account.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 34:21 So you’ve got verse two, you’ve got sons and daughters and they’re beginning to multiply and replenish the Earth, and Cain and Abel haven’t shown up yet. You get that they’re being taught the gospel from the beginning, and then they are teaching their children and their children are either accepting it or rejecting it. But one of the really fascinating things that you get right out of the gate, you get the consequences of the Fall, and that it introduces… When this turns wrong, when people reject the Lord and move away from the Lord, this gets ugly fast. We’ve got the first murder, we’ve got lies, we’ve got deception, we’ve got envy and covetousness. I mean, you got the Ten Commandments are showing up in a very negative way. The breaking of those commandments, you got it playing out here very quickly in Adam and Eve’s own family.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 35:18 And by the way, I suspect Adam and Eve are pretty good parents. There is a reality of agency that I think all of us have to acknowledge. We don’t want to acknowledge it. And if we’re going to take the blame for all of the sins of our children, then we get all the credit for all the good they do, and it just doesn’t work that way. We have to teach the best we can and then honor agency. And you see God-

Hank Smith: 35:44 It’s interesting, Shon, the way you’re setting this up. It’s awesome. They’ve fallen. It’s great. They’re moving forward. And then we take a very dark turn. It introduces, with Satan, in Moses 5:13, Satan came among them.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 36:02 Yeah, and if we keep going in that verse… So he’s saying, “Don’t believe what your parents are teaching.” And they actually love… They’re more interested in what Satan has to say than in what God has to say as their parents are teaching it. And this is interesting. “Men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish.” So there is, again, this carving of a middle way out where the consequences of the Fall are significant. And certainly we have these fallen bodies that crave satisfaction and were drawn that way, but it’s when we actually listen to Satan, and we’d say as, as we’re moving out of those beautiful Garden of Eden, first eight years, and then we begin to love Satan more than God. That’s then the shift to carnal, sensual, and devilish. That’s in an interesting teaching that is found here in Moses 5.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 37:03 So then let’s come into the Cain and Abel story again and do a little bit more there. I think many of us feel sympathetic with Cain that he’s bringing the best he has, and that Abel is bringing the best he has, and maybe we think, “Well Abel just got lucky.” He’s a sheep herder, a shepherd, so he brings of his stuff and God takes it. But Cain doesn’t. He brings of the fruit of the ground. And Joseph Smith has made a point here where he says… Let me just read this statement from him. “Cain offering of the fruit of the ground and was not accepted. The sacrifice of animals was instituted as a type by which mankind was to discern the Great Sacrifice which God had prepared. To offer a sacrifice contrary to that, no faith could be exercised because redemption was not purchased in that way, nor the power of Atonement instituted after that order. Consequently Cain could have no faith, and whatsoever is not a faith of sin.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 38:09 So there’s an important point here that Cain who, by the way, has been taught what it means to sacrifice, and there is a rebellion here where he says, “I want to do it my way. God, you have to take me on my terms and what I say, my personal sensitivities here, are going to rule the day,” as opposed to, “Oh, you’ve said we’re going to do it this way. Yeah. But I till the ground, I’m bringing my stuff.” And it’s like he has purposely said, “I reject that. I’m going to break that ordinance, the way that God has instituted for it to be done, because what I want to do trumps what God has asked me to do.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 38:54 And then it’s not quite so sympathetic a view that we get of Cain here, where Cain is really willful, he’s really self-vaunting. He really does want what he wants as opposed to listening to God. And then that story continues to play out, that pride and self exertion of will then leads him into a competitive relationship with his brother where this is not about their obedience to God, but it’s about being better than the person next to him. He wants what Abel has. Like the story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah, it goes from sin to sin. In fact, there’s this really fascinating moment, verse 23 of Moses 5. “If thou doest well, thou shalt be accepted.” The verse before. “Why art thou wroth? Why hast thy countenance fallen?” His sacrifice hasn’t been accepted.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 39:58 And by the way, it’s Satan who tells him to sacrifice like this, so Satan is setting this up. He’s like, “Hey, you should do this. Yeah, you should do it this way. And if God really loves you…” I’m introducing some things into Satan’s language there. It’s back in verse 18 where you get that Satan commands him. And then verse 23, his sacrifice hasn’t been accepted, and God says to him, “If you do well, you shall be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. Satan desireth to have thee.” So God is actually being really good with Cain. He’s like, “Whoa, it’s okay, but don’t be angry now. This decision you’ve made will lead you in… Sin is at the door, so come back onto my side. I’m not angry so much as that you just need to do this the right way.”

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 40:53 But what happens is we choose our own direction. We want it to be validated. And when it’s not validated, then we run down that road. Sin lies at the door. And how often has one decision in a day led to another bad decision, another bad decision, and all of a sudden you wake up late and you don’t say your prayers. And by the end of the day, you’ve robbed a bank. Or maybe not that extreme, but there is a modeling of how this happens, how we can descend in sin-

Hank Smith: 41:26 And the Lord stops, “Hey, just be humble. It’s okay. It’s okay. Just be humble. Let’s turn this around right now and it will be okay.” But he just will not… He won’t be… “Be thou humble and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand.” And he just refuses to turn this initial decision around.

John Bytheway: 41:46 I just wondered if you could comment on something. It’s so kind of interesting, kind of strange. Satan commands Cain in verse 18, “Make an offering unto the Lord.” It doesn’t say make an offering unto me, but he says, “Make an offering unto the Lord.” But the thing that I find really strange in verse 29, I’d love to hear your comments, when he sets up this oath, “Swear unto me by thy throat. If thou tell it, thou shall die. Swear unto thy brethren by their heads, and by the living God that they tell it not.” It was strange that Satan would involve the name of God in an oath to do something bad, to do something totally against the commandments of God. Any comments on that?

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 42:30 Well, I think that’s a great thing that you’re pointing to. That’s really helpful, John. And what you are seeing is the mixing and the turning upside down. It goes from identifying good as good, and evil as evil to all of a sudden it’s intermixed. And by the way, if we’re… This story is set up as a foil of the Garden of Eden story, where Satan, you can see what he’s going for. “Eve, go talk to Adam.” And yet Adam and Eve then love each other, and God, it allows God to be part of the storyline. And now we get the opposite of that storyline. “Go make an offering to the Lord and swear… You’re going to do this for him. But now swear by me, but use the name of God so that we can give it this veneer of righteousness,” but it’s actually wicked in intent.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 43:21 And we have to acknowledge just how often religion can be used for evil intent to control, to coerce. And that that is never what God’s intent is. God’s intent is to enhance agency and to encourage healthy choices that will allow people to move forward in a proper relationship with him and with each other. And you can see how Satan is just doing really clever things to twist that up and weave it all together so that it’s so hard to pull it apart and bring it back into our right relationship.

Hank Smith: 43:59 It seems to be that Satan loves to get people to mix up their friends and their enemies. That this idea, “Abel is your brother. He is your friend. He’s your teammate. No, he’s your competition. He’s your enemy.”

John Bytheway: 44:12 Do you want to comment, too, on this ironic statement that Cain makes. Says, “Now I am free,” which I guess is what Satan wants you to think when you are getting in bondage to him that you are free?

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 44:25 Well I do think there’s some… If we go back to what we were discussing before with this idea of the great secret is I can get what I want for nothing. I’ve heard people say, “Well, the moment I acknowledge this,” and there is some joy in being honest with ourselves, “But the moment I acknowledge this, I felt this rush of freedom.” And I think we want to be careful about what adrenaline rushes mean. I think someone who is addicted to shoplifting, who loves shoplifting, I think that’s how they feel every time. They want it and they’re going to get it, and then when they get it successfully, then they have that same kind of reaction. “I’m free.” But the problem of course, the irony that you’re pointing out is then it just closes things down as opposed to broadening the spectrum of… So I’m free, in other words, I got what I wanted, but now I’m less and less able, not to use Abel’s name there, I’m less and less able to make choices that will allow that to continue in healthy ways.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 45:28 And by the way, this is all Book of Moses, this is Pearl of Great Price, and just a nod to the revelatory strength of what we get here, this is profound scriptural text, revealed text, and this is deep thinking, so to speak. This comes from God, because it reveals human to nature in very powerful ways. And it continues to reward us as we go back to it and dig deeper and deeper. And Joseph Smith was a prophet.

John Bytheway: 46:00 What was he, 24 when he’s writing this?

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 46:05 I got to point out another one just for… We’ve already gone past this, but you don’t even notice what’s happening. If you go back to the beginning of Moses Chapter 5, verse 1, “And it came to pass that after I, the Lord God, had driven them out,” and later on, “He’s going to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow as I, the Lord, had commanded him.” And then there’s this shift by the time you get to verse four, “Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord from first person to third person, as they come out of the Garden of Eden now into a fallen…” And something has changed. And it’s so subtle that you miss just how nuanced and profound this text is. There’s so much going on in this text that it’ll reward us if we dig into it.

John Bytheway: 46:48 Most 24-year-olds write like this, don’t they Shon?

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 46:53 Exactly. This is so good. This is so good. Maybe the last thing that we want to talk about here is this idea that is set up here, both in the Pearl of Great Price and in Genesis, of the need for redemption. And we started off talking about the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. Well, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is one covenant that weaves itself through. So this theme that elder McConkie has talked about and that we want to reemphasize here is Creation, Fall, and Atonement. And another way of putting that is Creation, Fall, and then Redemption through covenants, and the power of those covenants is in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. And we walk this path in a daily kind of way, a week-by-week way. As a Latter-day Saint I’m saying I take the sacrament on Sunday and I’m renewed, I’m ready to go, and then by Monday morning, I’ve experienced the Fall again, and then I’m moving forward to be redeemed.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 48:05 And this is how we move forward in life. We have a new job, a new day, a new relationship, that creation stage. And then there comes a moment when we are like, “Oh, it’s not perfect,” and there’s a fall. And then God is there to carry the story forward. We are not held captive by former mistakes. God, and this is the way the biblical storyline’s going to play out, but there’s covenants that are offered and he’s going to pull Noah, and then Abraham, and of course we know before that it’s Enoch and others, into this covenant relationship.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 48:41 So one last little thing I’ll say about this, I like to say in class. I don’t need to worry about my past because of the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I don’t need to worry about my future because of the power of covenants. I know that God will be there for me because he has promised he would be there for me. And Christ is the great symbol and sign of that. I don’t need to worry about what choices I’m going to make because I’ve covenanted where I’m going to be. Repentance takes care of my past, covenants take care of my future. And through the Atonement of Christ in this covenantal relationship, we can return back into the Garden of Eden, but at a better level, at a higher level, return back into the presence of God, and he’s calling us there, he’s drawing us there.

Hank Smith: 49:31 Wow. That idea of Creation, Fall, Atonement happening over and over in our life, that is… Creation, Fall, Redemption, Creation, Fall, Redemption. I mean, look at marriage. Creation, it’s amazing, it’s perfect, it’s wonderful. Oh, wow. It’s not as perfect as I thought. Redemption. I’m missing out. The same with having a child. Look at this beautiful creation, and then it’s, “Oh, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.” Redemption. I can fix this relationship. It just happens over and over. Shon, Dr. Hopkin, this has been fantastic. I have learned so much. I think our listeners would love to hear just a little bit of your personal story when it comes to your research, your scholarship, your education, and your faith. Tell us just a little bit about your story.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 50:20 So I always wanted to do something where I could serve others. So the idea was I was either going to be a medical doctor or a teacher. And then as often happens, as missionaries are returning from the mission field, think, “Oh, I want to teach the gospel.” And that doesn’t always work out, but in my storyline, it did, I ended up being a Seminary and Institute teacher. But I always had, I was an Ancient Near Eastern Studies major, and I wanted to understand the scriptures in ways that could then help them come to life for me and for others. And Joseph Smith studied Hebrew, and I thought, “Well, I love Joseph Smith and who he was.” So the example of him as a seeker after God, and one who gave me confidence that I could seek after the Lord, and then that the Lord would be willing to reveal himself to me and his own way and in his own time motivated my academic studies.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 51:18 And I would just say over the years, digging deeper and deeper into the academic study and the study of the Bible, that it has only enhanced my understanding of the richness of what we are provided in the restoration of the gospel. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible’s such a beautiful place to see that. Who else, where else are we living out these ancient stories and they are alive and powerful and real today. We are making covenants. We’re emphasizing covenants. We are listening to prophets. As Moses said, “Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets.” And here we are in a situation where in the latter days, God is calling all of us to know what it means to communicate directly with God, so we follow prophets and we learn the prophetic gift. We gain the prophetic gift ourselves.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 52:17 And there’s there’s temple. There’s priesthood. There’s strong female leaders. There’s strong male leaders. And my study of the Hebrew Bible only serves to strengthen my confidence in the message of the restoration. I am so grateful. As I sometimes tell my students at BYU, I’ve learned about the nature of God, the most about the nature of God from Isaiah and from Joseph Smith. They’ve given me confidence that God is willing to reveal himself to me and that their mortality’s still got a while to go for me, I hope. But that quest has been rewarded. I feel that I’ve come to know God better as I’ve been guided towards him, and my confidence increased through the Restoration. And honestly, through the teachings of the Old Testament, as strange as that may sound to some listeners, this has helped me be a better man. And there’s a long way to go on that journey, but it’s only enhanced me in my relationships with others and my relationships with the Lord.

Hank Smith: 53:32 Fantastic. Fantastic. John, I think you’d agree, we’re better men, I think all of our listeners are better men and women because of what we’ve been taught today.

John Bytheway: 53:41 Absolutely. I’ve made so many notes and I’ve always… I mean, I feel embarrassed now. I had never seen what a love story this Adam and Eve, the episode of the fall was. I always thought, “Oh, that’s the Fall.” But look at the love story in there.

Hank Smith: 53:57 And the love allowed God to become part of the story. Again, just so wonderful.

Dr. Shon Hopkins: 54:02 Well, I just wanted to say how fun it’s been to be with you. And it is fun to study the scripture together. There’s so much there. And there’s more always to be discovered, and not just interesting tidbits that are academically or intellectually interesting, as good as that stuff is, but things that’ll change us, that’ll have power to change who we are. It’s so satisfying to study the scriptures together. And with two people who I have loved and admired for quite some time, it’s really fun to be with both of you.

Hank Smith: 54:35 You are very kind. Honestly, I tell my students, this is what I do for fun. I read scriptures for fun. And they kind of look at me like, “You need to raise the bar for fun.” But this is fun for us. This is our version of a good time. We want to thank you, Dr. Shon Hopkin, for being with us. We want to thank all of you for listening, grateful for your support. We couldn’t do it without you. We have some people we need to thank. Our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen. Our sponsors this year for followHIM, David and Verla Sorensen. And of course our amazing production crew, David Perry, Jamie Nielson, Lisa Spice, Kyle Nelson, Will Stoughton, and Scott Houston. We love you, our team, and we hope all of you will join us next week for another episode of followHIM.

Hank Smith: 55:29 Hey, we want to remind everybody that you can find us on social media. Come find us on Facebook and Instagram. We would love it if you would subscribe to, rate, and review the podcast, share it with your friends. That would be awesome. Go to followhim.co, followhim.co for any show notes, transcripts, any references you want. You can watch the podcast on YouTube. And of course, if you’re feeling up to it, you can read the transcript in French, Portuguese, and Spanish. So all of that is available to you absolutely free. Go to followhim.co to find all of that.