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

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:00:03 A C.S. Lewis quote that just rings true to me is “We might think that the Lord wanted obedience to a set of rules, whereas he really wants people of a particular sort.” That’s what I think Doctrine and Covenants 1 is calling us to, are we becoming people of a particular sort? Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?

Hank Smith: 00:00:26 Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith and I am your host and I’m here with my co-host, John Bytheway, the only true and living co-host upon the face of the whole earth, which with I, Hank Smith, am well pleased.

John Bytheway: 00:00:43 Yes, I am living. I can verify. Yep, I’m still alive.

Hank Smith: 00:00:47 He’s still hanging on folks. John, we are also very blessed to have Dr. J.B. Haws with us. He’s been with us before and he is a good friend and an amazing teacher. Welcome, J.B.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:01:02 Thank you. Thank you. So glad to be here with both of you. This is great.

Hank Smith: 00:01:06 We are going to have a lot of fun. Let me ask both of you as we are beginning this year’s study of the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History. As you look down the road and for our listeners, what are you hoping happens? John, let’s start with you.

John Bytheway: 00:01:19 Looking at these revelations and hearing the voice of the Lord. Who was it, Hank, that talked about the red letter edition of the Bible and how if you had a red ink edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, the whole thing would be red, almost the whole thing.

Hank Smith: 00:01:33 Yeah. J.B., what are you thinking?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:01:36 My mind went almost to the same place as John’s. I love that sense of like Elder Maxwell said, “The thundering directness of Sinai,” that we’re hearing the voice of the Lord all throughout these sections. I also love this line from the introduction of the Doctrine and Covenants, that these are real people in real situations getting real answers to prayers. That kind of concrete process of watching revelation happen is all throughout the Doctrine and Covenants and that means something for us trying to get revelation in our lives.

Hank Smith: 00:02:04 Yeah, beautiful. Speaking of revelation, one thing I love is we have the benefit of living long after these revelations and you can see the Lord laying things out a little bit at a time for the prophet and for the rest of the saints, and we see it and we think, “Oh, I know what’s coming.” He begins to even mention Zion, “Oh, the cause of Zion, the people of Zion.” And you and I are thinking, “Oh, I know what that’s going to eventually turn into.” But it’s fun to look at it and go, “Wow, they didn’t know,” as the Lord gives them a little piece at a time.

  00:02:39 John and J.B., our lesson today is entitled Hearken, O Ye People, and we’ll just have one section of the Doctrine and Covenants, Doctrine and Covenants section 1. I’m going to read from the Come, Follow Me manual and then J.B., let’s hand the reins over to you. John and I are excited to see where we go. Here’s how it starts.

  00:02:58 “November 1831, the restored Church of Jesus Christ was just a year and a half old. Though growing, it was still a little-known group of believers living in relatively small towns, led by a prophet in his mid-twenties. But God considered these believers to be his servants and his messengers, and he wanted the revelations he had given them to be published to the whole world. Doctrine and Covenants section 1 is the Lord’s preface, or introduction, to these revelations. It clearly shows that even though the membership of the Church was small, there was nothing small about the message God wanted his Saints to share. It is a voice of warning for all the inhabitants of the earth, teaching them to repent and establish God’s everlasting covenant. The servants carrying this message are the weak and the simple.” Sounds like the three of us today.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:03:52 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:03:53 “But humble servants are just what God calls for, then and now, to bring his Church out of obscurity and out of darkness.” What an opener. So J.B. with that, how do you want to take on Doctrine and Covenants 1? How do you want to introduce the Doctrine and Covenants to us because this is our very first lesson in the text?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:04:17 Oh, fantastic. I love that opener for the Come, Follow Me manual. What a well-written and well-framed and I think very exciting, drawing us in, hooking us in. Doctrine and Covenants 1 is such a great place to start not only because it is the preface, but because I think it does some things for the whole Doctrine and Covenants. It’s a place where historical context really makes this section come alive. So I think it’s worth talking about what’s happening and what’s the historical story behind this section.

  00:04:47 The other thing I love about Doctrine and Covenants 1 that I think will be great to talk about is how does it set up, how does it frame the rest of the book, the themes that will help us think about the Doctrine and Covenants throughout our study of it. Doctrine and Covenants 1 reminds us over and over again how fortunate we are to have prophets, that this is the Lord’s pattern. That the Lord works through servants and what a miracle it is to have those. Those are a couple of things that I see in Doctrine and Covenants 1.

Hank Smith: 00:05:13 The Restoration bursts onto the scene in this section, right J.B.? It is not a, hey, let’s fade this in. It’s big.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:05:21 Yeah. Well said.

John Bytheway: 00:05:23 Do you know what I love about that intro you read is that’s so good. This is a handful of people in a handful of towns with a 20-year-old prophet, but you read this section and it’s big enough for today for 17 million. You read it and you think, wow, it worked for them, it works for us now.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:05:43 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:05:44 John, J.B., almost like a patriarchal blessing where you’re going, “I’m a very small person. I’m usually pretty young. Someone gets a patriarchal blessing and here are these great big prophecies, these great big promises.” You’re almost thinking, there’s something bigger in mind here than just this small little group. So yeah, J.B., let’s do a little historical context.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:06:09 Well, I think the first thing we notice when we come to Doctrine and Covenants section 1, we’re looking at the section heading is we notice the date. This section is out of order chronologically. So comes November 1831 and it’s… Hank that great intro that you read, the church is in existence organized a year and a half earlier, and so we asked the question maybe first off, why is this section out of order chronologically when so many of the other sections were going to follow pretty much a chronological sequence. I think that is the story. This section was given as a revelation to be a preface and the Lord calls it “my preface” to this book of commandments. That’s what makes this section I think special and stand out is that it’s a place of honor as a revealed preface. The Lord wanted us to encounter this before we study the Doctrine and Covenants.

  00:07:00 How’s this coming about? What’s the setting that brings this together? Joseph Smith has been putting revelations to paper for a couple of years now, starting probably with what we have as Doctrine of Covenants 3 seems to be the first one that he dictated or wrote down or committed to paper. And so we’ve had now a collection of 60-ish revelations that have been written down.

  00:07:24 A conference that happens in Hiram, Ohio on November 1st and 2nd, 1831. So Joseph and Emma have been living for a couple of months with John and Elsa Johnson in Hiram, Ohio, and we just have to say everyone should put on their list to visit the Johnson Farm in Hiram, Ohio if you’ve got a church history trip. That is one of the all-time great church history sites. That home is just remarkable. The conference meets there, 10 elders are coming together and the high on their agenda, prime on their agenda is, should the revelations be printed?

  00:07:55 You can think about why that question is probably rolling around in their minds. These revelations are meant for the world, the message is so powerful, but they only have handwritten copies and maybe you can get a copy if you pass by someone who has a copy or if you’re in around Joseph Smith and you handwrite something. But the question is, how do we get these more accessible? Well, that also raises some questions in other people’s minds, should they be printed? Are these the kind of things that we want the world to have? Does this put us in a precarious spot with some of the bold claims in the Restoration? Are the revelations ready to be printed? Are they in the kind of format that we’re going to be happy to show to the world? So all these questions are all about in the minds.

  00:08:40 One thing I think also too was that there were some enemies of the church who were making some claims about the revelations, what was in them, and especially the kind of claims against Joseph Smith’s character and the things that the revelations were instructing people to do that simply weren’t true or don’t show up in the revelations. So perhaps publishing could exonerate the prophet and show that the rumors were false. So all of these things are in the mix.

  00:09:03 In the conference, they vote to print 10,000 copies of the revelations. That goes so well with what I think John said about this being big enough for the world. I mean this is double the print run of a Book of Mormon, the initial print run of the Book of Mormon, and you just think about what this says with the membership of the church at the time, how small they are, but what they’re thinking about looking forward, “We’re going to print 10,000 copies of these revelations.”

Hank Smith: 00:09:28 They have a big vision.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:09:30 There we go. Yeah, they really sense that this is meant for the world. And so in this conference, and maybe this is also helpful to think about Doctrine and Covenants 1, is it situates itself chronologically with a couple of other revelations of Doctrine and Covenants. So Doctrine and Covenants 67, the conversation about when the elders are worrying and maybe having some concerns about the language and are the revelations polished enough? Doctrine and Covenants 68, great instruction about whatsoever you speak by the power of the spirit is the mind of the Lord, the will of the Lord and is scripture. That comes out from the same conference.

  00:10:07 Then a testimony that the elders sign affirming sort of like the testimony of the three witnesses and the eight witnesses affirming, putting their testimony to paper that they sign the divinity of these revelations either at this conference or the day after what we now know as Doctrine and Covenants 133, which was intended as an appendix to the revelations. So we have this flurry of revelations at this conference and the decision to print 10,000 copies. And so the question comes up, and this seems to be the account we have that I think gives it the best account is a William McLellin account. He’s remembering this several decades later, but it seems to fit all of the circumstantial evidence that we have was that some of the elders were writing a preface. They wanted to introduce this book. Then William McLellin says, the others picked it, the pieces and asked Joseph Smith if he could seek the Lord’s revelation for a preface. Then William McLellin gives this great description that Joseph stands by the window and slowly dictates sentence by sentence as Sidney Rigdon writes this down. That’s the account of where the preface comes from.

Hank Smith: 00:11:17 And who is William McLellin, J.B. for those of us who are pretty new?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:11:21 This is great too because William McLellin is new on the scene and you can feel his enthusiasm. He is a new convert, a school teacher who encounters missionaries, is so thrilled, comes to Hiram, Ohio to meet Joseph Smith and also in the same timeframe he’s just had a revelation dictated for him, what we now have as Doctrine and Covenants 66. He’s in the mix part of this conference, a new convert and going to become one of the original 12 Apostles, but feeling the thrill of this. And he plays a role in this because he also, by the accounts, was the one who made the attempts to duplicate a revelation or write a revelation when others were criticizing it. What we have in Doctrine and Covenants 67 is part of that experiment and lends his voice of testimony to the revelations and the divinity of those.

Hank Smith: 00:12:13 Do you think J.B. that the Lord said, “Yeah, go ahead. Give it a try. Write the preface and that’ll help you appreciate what you’re going to get.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:12:25 Yeah. I like that reading. I think sometimes we think of this as a mark of rebelliousness or maybe even a mark of cynicism, but I think one way to read it is William McLellin feeling obedient to this instruction and feeling that maybe this is part of the way of affirming the testimony for everyone else involved. I like that reading of saying as you go through this process and realize how futile that effort is or how difficult it is that it proved to be an important mark of testimony or confirmation, maybe a way of saying it, another piece of evidence for those who participated and bolstered their willingness to affirm these revelations are special. There’s something different about them.

Hank Smith: 00:13:07 I wonder if that’s Nephi too. We went in, tried to get the plates our way and the Lord said, “All right, let’s try my way. Let’s see what happens.”

John Bytheway: 00:13:16 I love that backstory in section 67. If I can jump over to New Testament for a minute. You guys all know the story of Matthew 14 of Jesus walking on the water and them seeing him and Peter saying, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.” And he does it, and then when he saw the wind boisterous, he began to sink and I love the Elder Holland comment about, “While his eyes were on Jesus, the wind could toss his hair, the spray could drench his robes, but all was well, he was coming to Christ.” It was only when he took his eyes off the Savior and you go to section 67, and I love this, okay, your eyes have been upon Joseph and his language you have known and his imperfections you have known, this also you have known, but look at the revelations. There is no imperfection in them and then it’s this, let me write the preface and it’s whoa. That message of your eyes are in the wrong place. What are you looking at? Who in the world could have written this?

  00:14:21 You read section 1 and you just think, who could speak in the name of God that way? Because that’s not anybody’s voice but the Lord’s. To read it, like you said, J.B., “Well, I’ll give it a try and I’ll give it a try.” And then you read, “Joseph stands by the window,” as William McLellin said and gets this and it’s like, wow, listen to the authority that’s talking here in section 1. To me, that’s a really cool message of your eyes have been in the wrong place. Now, look to me and here we go.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:14:52 I love that Matthew 14 connection, John. That’s really powerful. I think this is something that we see again and again and maybe that we all have to confront as we think about looking forward to the Doctrine and Covenants. This is in a lot of ways is the Hiram Page moment, the Oliver Cowdery moment with Doctrine and Covenants 28. We have these situations where there are other claimants for revelation or people who are claiming that they’ve received the revelations as they learn outside their stewardship. And the thing that I love is again and again, the answer that comes back is there’s something different about the revelations that are coming through the Prophet Joseph Smith and they sense it. So that Hiram Page renounces the seer stone. Oliver Cowdery agrees to talk to Hiram Page and to work this out and to disavow those revelations. There was just something different they could tell. I love those repeated moments that we’re going to see in the Doctrine and Covenants story.

Hank Smith: 00:15:47 John, I’m sure this is something we’re going to bring up over and over, but Joseph Smith in November of ’31 is 25. In our world, he’s a kid. I have students at BYU who are 25. J.B., what’s Joseph Smith like at 25? I mean he’s been tutored for quite a while, but when I have read about him, he is not the Joseph Smith of 1843, 1844. Those couple of years before he dies. He is still learning here.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:16:21 Oh, yeah, absolutely. That kind of perspective is always helpful when we think about that Joseph Smith and not just Joseph Smith but all of his associates. I mean, we are talking about a group of young people who are leading this work and are engaged in this. I think it’s also worth saying he’s already faced some pretty difficult things. He’s already faced some family tragedies, the loss of children. He’s already had a lot of displacement in his life moving around a lot. He’s also already started to engage in some very big projects like the building of Zion in Missouri. And so we have sort of two church centers now.

  00:17:00 He’s living in Ohio, but through him, the Lord has called individuals to be building up Zion in the Jackson County, Missouri area. So he’s now managing two church centers. He’s on the cusp of some pretty difficult persecution that’s going to be happening in Hiram, Ohio four months after Doctrine and Covenants 1 comes, the March 1832 tarring and feathering. He’s translating the Bible. That’s one of his big projects at the Johnson Farm, and so he’s in the middle of that. That’s another thing that can help us think about what he’s thinking about. All of this time, sending out missionaries and saying, “We’re writing this gospel to the world.” Wow, it’s big. He’s 25 and the work has just really ballooned.

Hank Smith: 00:17:45 To me, remembering that makes it come to life in a way where you think, how is this possible? I look back on my 20s and think, I had no idea what I was doing, and yet here he is being used as this instrument.

John Bytheway: 00:18:01 Yeah, sitting there and going, “Let’s do, let’s say 10,000 copies.” Whoa, wait, wait, wait, what? Who do we think we are? Who does God know we are? Who does Joseph know we are and what’s coming to print? 10,000 copies? Few people in a few towns with a 20-something-year-old prophet? Well, let’s make 10,000 copies.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:18:23 That’s right.

Hank Smith: 00:18:24 J.B., do they call it the Doctrine and Covenants?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:18:28 Good question. No, the first edition of this book is going to be called the Book of Commandments. Here is kind of a replica, so small pocket-size. The idea was that they could be more transportable, easily carried by elders as they’re traveling.

John Bytheway: 00:18:43 Now, J.B., you are either André the Giant or that is a very small book. Will you hold that up again? Is that smaller than your phone?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:18:53 Definitely smaller than my phone, yes, so pocket sized. I’m so glad you brought this up, Hank, because I think we shouldn’t move too quickly past this title. This is the idea that it’s going to be called the Book of Commandments, and we see that in section 1:6, My preface unto the book of my commandments. I think it’s worth pausing on this because this word gives us a window into the way early saints thought about these revelations. To me, one of the great stories that brings this to clarity is something that Joseph Knight remembered about an interaction he had with Martin Harris. So as Joseph Knight’s remembering this, it’s March 1830s, the Book of Mormon is hot off the press. Joseph Knight is watching Martin Harris having a conversation with Joseph Smith. Martin Harris, Joseph Knight says, is carrying several copies of this newly printed Book of Mormon and he’s panicked.

  00:19:48 He said, “No one’s going to buy them. There’s an intentional boycott. People are just going to reject this.” And Martin, of course, he has a big stake in this. His farm is on the line and he’s panicked and he says to Joseph Smith, “No one’s going to buy these books. We’re in trouble.” And then he says this great line. I think in today’s vernacular we would say, “I must have a revelation. I must have some inspiration.” But he says, “I must have a commandment. I need a commandment.” What he meant was, “I need a revelation.” Joseph Knight ties this to section 19. What Joseph Smith said was, “Pay heed to what you already have, the revelation you’ve already received,” section 19. But I love that Martin Harris in this moment of need, he says, “I need a commandment. I must have a commandment.” That’s his word for a revelation from the Lord.

  00:20:37 We see that all over the early Doctrine and Covenants, the early saints kind of language is that they think of these as commandments. I like to ask myself that question, how would I approach this book differently if I think in terms of commandments, these revelations are commandments. The Lord wants us to do something. These are messages of action. I love that title. I think it’s worth us keep in the back of my mind that another equivalent for the word revelation in these sections could be commandment.

Hank Smith: 00:21:05 Almost to hear the Lord saying, “I’ve got big things in mind. Follow me on this.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:21:09 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:21:10 I love that insight, J.B., because it’s not, “Here’s a book of some sound advice. Take it or leave it.” This is a book of commandments. What’s the first word, Hank? Hearken. It’s not just hear this, “Hear it and obey it. Here it comes.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:21:27 I also love that Martin Harris attitude and I think, man, how could I have more of that? “I want a commandment. I must have a commandment. I want direction.”

John Bytheway: 00:21:36 It’s like, are you sure?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:21:38 Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:21:41 You’re going to get more than you bargained for.

Hank Smith: 00:21:43 Yeah, I need to hear it. I need to have something to have faith in. Let me hold the paper.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:21:48 In response to this conference and this decision to print 10,000 copies, John Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery take the manuscript copies of the revelations that John Whitmer mostly had been faithfully copying into a manuscript book, and then they travel from Ohio to Missouri where W.W. Phelps had been called to be the church’s printer.

John Bytheway: 00:22:10 Where the press is.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:22:11 That’s exactly right.

Hank Smith: 00:22:12 Oh, okay.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:22:13 That’s sort of our last step of moving from handwritten copies of the revelations to printed copies is that they’re going to carry the manuscript copies of the revelations to Missouri for W.W Phelps to print them.

Hank Smith: 00:22:26 These 10,000 copies they decide to print need to be printed from over a thousand miles away in Jackson County. Now, J.B., this is a big question to ask, but if I’m new to the church, new to church history, who is in Missouri? Why Missouri? First vision, New York, Emma Smith, Pennsylvania, right on the border of New York. I think in my mind as I’m reading, “Oh, they go to Ohio.” Right there in this section heading, I know they’re in Ohio, and then all of a sudden J.B. Haws brings up, “Oh yeah, we need to print this all the way out in Missouri.” I know this is a lot to ask, but what would you say is a brief background for someone who’s kind of new to this?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:23:08 Yeah. Excellent question. And that is one of the things that makes Doctrine and Covenants 1 both intriguing and interesting, but also requires a little bit of digging into the history because it comes out of order, so there’s some of the story that we have to fill in. I think you mentioned it early, Hank, is these hints about Zion that we’re going to see coming up in all of these early revelations. As we come to section 28 and then through the early 30s of the Doctrine and Covenants sections, the Lord is calling a group of missionaries to travel from New York to what we now know as is the State of Missouri, on the edge of what was Indian territory in 1830s United States. And so this group of missionaries led by Oliver Cowdery. I’m going to also include Parley P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, Jr., Ziba Peterson. They are going to travel that really long distance to the border of the Lamanites.

  00:24:03 They stop in Kirtland, Ohio area. That’s where Parley P. Pratt had been living. He had some deep acquaintances there. They meet Sidney Rigdon and Sidney Rigdon’s followers. In the matter of a couple of weeks, several hundred people have joined the church and are baptized. The missionaries that are headed to Missouri continue on. They end up in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri. Sidney Rigdon, who had joined the church in Ohio goes and meets Joseph Smith, and then Joseph Smith receives a revelation for the New York saints to gather in Ohio, so that’s why they moved to the Kirtland area. Then in the summer of 1831, Joseph Smith makes a trip to Independence, Missouri and that there are several others who are called to live there. Edward Partridge, W. W. Phelps is the printer, and the revelation is that this is Zion, the spot of Zion.

  00:24:59 So this is where we come in sections 57, 58, 59, there’s the building up of Zion, Independence, Jackson County, Missouri area, and then the church where Joseph Smith is living and headquartered in the Kirtland, Ohio area. We have these two church centers going because of the projects and the revelation from the Lord to have different people in different places.

Hank Smith: 00:25:22 So those of you who are listening, you feel pretty new to this. Don’t be frustrated if you’re a little confused what J.B. just talked about. This will play out. In fact, section 1, if we actually put it in order, where would it be, J.B., between section 66, 67?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:25:41 67 and 68 happened at the same conference. Yep, exactly right.

Hank Smith: 00:25:43 So we have a lot to learn before we understand the story that you’re telling us thoroughly.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:25:49 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:25:50 Okay. I think I can pause and say, all right, I might not know all these places and people, but eventually I will as I keep studying.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:25:58 Yeah, definitely. I think that’s a very good way to say it, is that there’s something about this section that the Lord wants us to see first, but we shouldn’t be intimidated that we don’t have the story yet because after this section, most of the sections move in chronological order, and as we work through them, we will pick up that story and then when we get to 67 and 68, we’ll say, “Oh, yeah.”

Hank Smith: 00:26:18 Okay. I really like that. I don’t like heading into things a little confused, but if I know, hey, eventually you’re going to get to know this. Maybe this is a little odd to say, but it’s almost like a movie that the opening scene is somewhere in the middle of the movie. Does that make sense? And then you’ve got to go backwards and see the whole story up to that point. So when you see that opening scene in a movie, you’re thinking, “Who are these people? What’s happening? I don’t know anything about this.” But we’re going to go back. And by the time we get back to that point, you’ll know everything.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:26:49 No, I think it’s a good analogy, and I also think that helps not any of us to feel intimidated that we’re encountering this kind of midstream mid story.

John Bytheway: 00:26:57 Yeah, it’s kind of like if you write a book, Hank, or if you write a book, J.B., you kind of know what’s going to happen, but these are revelations that are ongoing. I can see how the Lord could write a preface and say, “Let me go back and tell you what this all is, this book of commandments.”

Hank Smith: 00:27:14 Yeah. I frequently tell my students when they write a paper, don’t write your opening two paragraphs until you’ve written the paper because you just don’t know what you’re going to tell me, so write it, then come back and tell me what you’re going to tell me.

John Bytheway: 00:27:28 That’s a good way to look at the preface. Let me tell you what I’m about to tell you because it is so big and grand, this preface.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:27:36 Now, as we’re thinking about the overall year of studying the Doctrine and Covenants, I wanted to mention one resource that I think can be a great study aid for the Doctrine and Covenants and that’s the Joseph Smith Papers website. And the Joseph Smith Papers website is packed with information, but I think there’s one section of that website that’s especially helpful. So this is josephsmithpapers.org. The subheading or the tab that I think can be most helpful for the Doctrine and Covenants is the Documents Series. What the Joseph Smith Papers editors have done with the Document Series is they’ve put in chronological order all of the relevant Joseph Smith documents. That means all of the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, all of the revelations show up in chronological order and they have these fantastic brief but really thorough historical introductions for every section.

  00:28:29 Maybe the best way, the easiest way to navigate it is when you click on the documents tab, it shows you year by year, so you’ll see 1829, 1830, 1831. You can look at the date in the section heading of the Doctrine and Covenants, click on that year, find the month, and then you can click on that section. They have in the date of the revelation, and then they have in parentheses the section number in the Doctrine and Covenants. You can click on that so you can see the earliest transcript of the revelation, which is very cool to see, but then you can click the historical introduction and it gives beautiful background of what’s happening at that time. That might be a great way to get the story if you want to familiarize yourself, okay, what’s happening when this section is being revealed. That Doctrine and Covenants, the document sections of the Joseph Smith Papers website is invaluable.

Hank Smith: 00:29:16 Yeah. And these are high resolution photos. I’m zooming in here going, you can go in pretty far. You can look at the ink in the page.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:29:27 This is another thing that brings the story to life. You’re seeing these handwritten revelations being put to paper.

John Bytheway: 00:29:33 The first times they were put in English, you are looking at it.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:29:38 That’s right. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:29:39 And J.B., I love your initials by the way. J.B., what did we hear in our master’s program over and over again? “Go to original sources. Go to original sources.” What are we looking at? The source document.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:29:55 Right on. They have source notes for every document, so it’ll tell you, is this the original? Is this a copy of the original? In almost every case, the Joseph Smith Paper letters have worked to find the earliest known existing copy of these revelations, which is fantastic.

Hank Smith: 00:30:11 And I’ve noticed, J.B., maybe you already mentioned this, but I’ve got the original document on this side. And then on the right-hand side, I actually get the words. So if I can’t quite read it-

John Bytheway: 00:30:21 You can read it a little easier.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:30:23 Right. Exactly.

Hank Smith: 00:30:24 Wow, this is fun. My wife does not allow me on the Joseph Smith Papers website because I get lost for hours.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:30:33 I know. It is so good.

John Bytheway: 00:30:35 The other thing, talking about not being able to read it. J.B., will you hold up that Book of Commandments again? Did they not have eye problems back then?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:30:44 That’s right.

John Bytheway: 00:30:45 I see the church history movies and they’re singing out of hymn books that are that small and I’m like, are eye problems a 21st century thing? How did they read that stuff?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:30:58 Benjamin Franklin’s bifocals, I guess.

Hank Smith: 00:31:02 All right, J.B., that’s a wonderful resource. I hope everyone will take advantage of the Joseph Smith Papers website. And J.B., this isn’t a small project, the JSP.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:31:14 Yeah. This I think will go down in history as one of the monumental projects that the church’s history department has ever done and will ever do, and it’s been two decades and more in the making. One other tab we should mention is that they have a glossary of people and places. You can just look up anyone involved in Joseph Smith’s life, mentioned in the papers, mentioned in the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s alphabetical and it becomes this really nice encyclopedic quick reference for identifying people and places. That’s another great tab on the Joseph Smith Papers.

Hank Smith: 00:31:49 And there is a lot of them.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:31:51 That’s right.

Hank Smith: 00:31:52 This isn’t a short list. This is wonderful. J.B., John, there will be critics of the church who say the church hides things. The Joseph Smith Papers is as transparent as you can possibly be. Here is every single document we have of Joseph Smith, high resolution photos. Go ahead and take a look for yourself. I love the phrase, “You don’t need to protect the truth. It’s like a lion. Just let it out of its cage, it will protect itself.” That’s Joseph Smith. Be open and transparent. You will see who he really is.

  00:32:36 Since we’re talking about resources here, both of you, even on my Gospel Library app, I have the Book of Saints, which is J.B., maybe you can speak to that. I have revelations in context. I have podcasts, Joseph Smith Papers podcast, Saints Podcast. I think I could spend every waking minute this year studying these revelations and the history.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:33:04 And we hope everyone does. I mean, that’s-

Hank Smith: 00:33:06 Yeah, yeah. J.B. tell us about Saints.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:33:12 Yeah, Saints is a can’t miss. A lot of listeners have probably encountered it. It’s a brand new, four volume official history of the church. That is all of the things that you would expect a history of the church to have. It partakes of those wonderful characteristics that you talked about. The Joseph Smith Papers, Hank, it’s open, transparent, dealing with everything in the church’s history, but in a way that is so gripping, the narrative style. It’s written very much in story form, focusing on characters and important moments in church history. It’s a page turner.

  00:33:46 The other great thing is they’ve got it in audiobook form so you can listen to it. It’s a great way to encounter the historical story behind the Doctrine and Covenants. And Saints Volume 1 covers the years of Joseph Smith’s ministry essentially. The Volumes 2, 3 and 4 come all the way through the present. The Saints footnotes take you to so many places and so it’s a great place to start and then whatever subject you want to dig into deeper, you can find it in the footnotes. The apparatus behind Saints is really, really helpful, that kind of research apparatus.

Hank Smith: 00:34:18 I’ll just say to all of our listeners, this is a sacrifice. When we first started, John, Come, Follow Me, I thought, okay, I can dedicate some time to Come, Follow Me. I can dedicate a couple of minutes every evening, but if you really, really want to come through this year with something special at the end, you do need to take some time to do this. There’s some things you might have to set aside. You might have to set aside talk radio. You might have to set aside a little bit of sports, not much, but a little bit of sports. Whatever. You might say, “I’m going to make my car, my Come, Follow Me time. I’m going to make my laundry room, some Come, Follow Me time, my walks, my running.”

  00:35:05 I have a friend, Ray Eakins, who listened to our podcast and other gospel oriented works, while he snowboards. We’ve got the tools here, but I hope everyone listening will think, “You know what? I’m going to dedicate some time to really understanding the church and come to love, love these people.”

John Bytheway: 00:35:25 I think we could use the word “invest” some time.

Hank Smith: 00:35:28 I like that, John. And speaking of investment, John, we actually haven’t asked J.B. yet about his background. You can get a full bio of J.B. on our website or come to our Instagram, Facebook pages. You can get those. But J.B. just give us a brief background on your investment into history.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:35:51 I just can’t ever go anywhere without mentioning my hometown and so I was trying to think of a way to bring that in. Hank, you just offered me that chance. I grew up in Hooper, Utah, which is this beautiful beachfront community on the shores of the Great Salt Lake west of Ogden. Hooper was originally called Muskrat Springs in pioneer times Utah, so that’s where I just think when you live in a place that you find out the name of the town was Muskrat Springs, you think I want to know more about history. That had to be where it started.

Hank Smith: 00:36:23 We’ll have to say this. Those of you who are on YouTube, come onto YouTube if you’re from Hooper and leave J.B. a message. We’ll make sure he gets all of those. I did a fireside out there once and I think every other person asked me if I knew J.B. Haws.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:36:41 I did my PhD in American History at the University of Utah and great experience there. Such great mentors and colleagues and fellow students. I love history. I love the story of the church. I love the story of the church in its social and cultural contexts and how we see the ongoing restoration.

Hank Smith: 00:36:58 Beautiful. We should also mention that there is a wonderful woman listening. Her name is Laura. Laura, we are grateful for you. I don’t think we’d have J.B. Haws if it weren’t for Laura.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:37:09 Amen to that. Yeah, she’s my wife. My wife is an amazing person, an incredible person.

Hank Smith: 00:37:15 J.B., we’ve had you here for a little while. I’m excited. I have some background. I now have some resources. Should we jump into this section itself?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:37:25 Oh, yes. One thing I think about when I think about these little historical replicas, so here’s the Book of Commandments and then in 1835 the Doctrine and Covenants, so you can see the size difference. So the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. One thing that I think maybe will help us think about section 1 and its importance is that the orders of the sections in various editions of the Book of Commandments, then the Doctrine and Covenants has changed a lot. Sometimes they group them thematically. Now, we’ve gone to mostly a chronological sequence, but there’s been one constant. Section 1 has always been first.

  00:37:59 I think we can see why is the Lord designates it as His preface, but I think the responsiveness of the leaders as they printed these editions, keeping that constantly first matters. It prompts in us, the question is, what is it that the Lord wants us to see before we encounter the revelations? What is it that he wants us to understand about what we’re going to read? So what are some of the themes that Section 1 lays out that are going to help guide us through the rest of the revelations? I think that’s a really productive way to come at section 1 and noticing some of those things.

Hank Smith: 00:38:34 A lens almost. “Here’s your lens, this is the way you’re going to view this.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:38:38 Right. One of those is what Steve Harper, one of our great colleagues at BYU called typology of opposites. I’ll mention Steve Harper’s book, Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants, which is the top-notch commentary, takes section by section and provides great background and some really great things to think about. In his reflections on section 1, Steve notes that section 1 sets out what he calls a typology of opposites. And if you think about this section, we encounter things like Babylon and Zion. We encounter things like the righteous and the rebellious, so it sets up this what Steve calls a type and an anti-type or these contrasts between entities, between people, between mindsets. That’s going to play out through the Doctrine and Covenants is to think about choices, Zion versus Babylon, righteousness versus rebelliousness.

  00:39:38 That can serve a couple of purposes. One of those is that I think it highlights that the Doctrine and Covenants is a book where agency plays a significant role and it wants to emphasize our agency, our role, our free will. We have choices to make. These choices are really before us. This typology of opposites sets that out. The revelations are going to highlight the choices that are before us.

Hank Smith: 00:40:05 I have written in my notes here, I don’t know who said it, but section 1, “The Lord declares war on Satan. Now, you get to pick your side.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:40:15 Wow. That’s good. Let’s jump into the section. Hank, do you want to read verse 1?

Hank Smith: 00:40:21 Absolutely. This is pretty cool. Our first verse of the year, here we go. “Hearken, O ye people of my church, saith the voice of him who dwells on high, and whose eyes are upon all men. Yea, verily I say, hearken ye people from afar and ye that are upon the islands of the sea, listen together.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:40:46 I think right from the get-go, if we think about a preface setting, the thematic tone laying out, framing what we’re going to see, I think there couldn’t be a better place to start. These messages are universal. We’re hearing from the verse, voice of the Lord, his message is for everyone. He wants to reach the islands of the sea. He wants to reach everyone. His eyes are upon all of us and I think that’s reassuring, encouraging, fantastic.

Hank Smith: 00:41:10 Yeah. It tells you what he has in mind. This isn’t just for 1,500 people in Ohio and Missouri.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:41:17 Yeah. Definitely.

John Bytheway: 00:41:20 Can you imagine those who were trying to write their own preface, “Hearken, O ye people of my church, saith the voice of… ” Who would dare say something like that? And it lets you know now this was dictated from somewhere else. This was not somebody coming up with something.

Hank Smith: 00:41:39 To my church, and by the way, to the entire planet.

John Bytheway: 00:41:42 The isles of the sea listen together. I remember President Eyring beginning a talk by reading this verse once. I was sitting in the Marriott Center. I will never forget it. “Listen together.” It was a great moment. So that’s a great verse.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:42:01 I’m thinking of something that Richard Bushman said, see if I can paraphrase it, that in his biography of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling, he was talking about section 3, the first revelation that Joseph Smith put to paper, but he had such a great insight that the voice in these revelations is independent of Joseph Smith, above and beyond Joseph Smith. We just see that over and over again that this is coming from outside of Joseph Smith. And so sometimes when the revelations rebuke Joseph Smith, he includes it because he’s just recording or dictating or putting words to the inspiration that’s coming from heaven and it’s independent and above him. Then we come to this verse 2, a phrase this time around really hit me maybe in a way that I hadn’t quite noticed this before.

  00:42:45 “For verily the voice of the Lord is unto all men, and there is none to escape. And there is no eye that shall not see, neither ear that shall not hear.” And then here’s the phrase that hit me this time, “Neither heart that shall not be penetrated.” There was something intimate about that last phrase, something that just caught me a little differently than “eyes not seeing, ears not hearing,” but that every heart shall be penetrated. I think that’s both a realization of where things are going to end up. So this is certainly an apocalyptic revelation. It’s a revelation that’s talking about end times. It’s talking about wrapping up scenes. It’s pointing us towards the culmination of the Lord’s work, but I love that idea that every heart will be penetrated. This is, I think leads us to those, “Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is the Christ.” That hearts will be penetrated too, that there will be a feeling that accompanies this, that every heart will be reached in some way. That struck me as really powerful.

Hank Smith: 00:43:53 If anything else, this will get your attention.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:43:55 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:43:56 I studied the call of Isaiah. Let’s go to the Old Testament for a second. The call of Isaiah that is repeated in every one of the gospels and the Book of Acts and what’s the idea that, “Lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart and be converted and be healed.” Eye, ear, heart there again. In a positive way, understand and be healed. The Lord’s saying every heart is going to be penetrated. That stands out.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:44:29 Yeah. Thank you, John. And then maybe as we come to verse 3, this might be another place to settle back into what Steve Harper, we mentioned before about the typology of opposites. It starts with, “And the rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow.” This is heart. We feel the feelings of this, still thinking of this idea of hearts and feelings and pierced with sorrow and rebellious leads to that. The one thing that strikes me about this typology of opposites and the way that Doctrine & Covenants sets this up is in some ways it doesn’t feel totally applicable to real life situations. It’s hard to group people into one of two camps. It’s hard to group people into rebellious or disciples. Individuals are a little more complex than that. If we’re not an either or, if people just aren’t either or and it’s not easy to group, one question we might ask ourselves is, why does the Lord teach this way? Why bring up these typology of opposites? Why talk in stark terms?

  00:45:29 One possibility that I might propose is that it’s not good for looking at others. It’s not good… I mean, this is not prompting us that we should be judging others and putting people in these categories, but what it can do is it can ask us to think about our own hearts. The typology of opposites has more of an instructive value for us as individuals because we’re not in a place, it’s not our job to judge, categorize others, but we can look at our own hearts and say, if I’m honest with myself, I can confront that question. Am I in the rebellious camp or am I a disciple? Am I hearkening? Am I not? Am I headed towards Zion or am I not? And maybe this opposite, the value is in having us do some introspection in ourselves and say, “Where’s my heart?” Not that I’m classifying others, but maybe I should classify my own thoughts, intents, desires of my heart.

John Bytheway: 00:46:21 That’s great. I’m reminded of Matthew 26:22 the, “Lord, is it I?” You read this and say, does the shoe fit here? Am I rebellious or are there certain things I’m rebellious about? Maybe little things. That’s great.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:46:39 If we’re jumping ahead, John, what you’re just saying. This is verse 16, I think that there’s a connection here. I just really love this and in terms of asking ourselves questions, one question we could ask, what does obedience look like in Doctrine and Covenants 1? We’re thinking about if this is a call to action, if it’s a call to do something and if it’s setting up these opposites, gives us a choice, what does obedience look like?

  00:47:07 Oh, here’s verse 16, “They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.” That prompts the same question that John that you raised is, in what ways am I walking my own way? Are there idols that are holding my attention? Obedience looks like being able to reject that, to give up those idols, to not seek after the image of the world. That’s a verse that really calls those questions to my mind.

Hank Smith: 00:47:47 You could reverse it. You could say, to be obedient is to seek the Lord, to establish his righteousness, to not walk in your own way but walk after God. Don’t seek after the world or idols and don’t go after Babylon, don’t go after the world. I think of our listeners who are thinking, how can I be happier? How can I make my life better? That’s one way and we can all do it, is say, in what ways am I… Am I really seeking the Lord? Am I trying to establish his righteousness? I think it was Brigham Young who asked another apostle, “Whose kingdom are you trying to build? The Lord’s or your own?”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:48:29 This is such a powerful section for prompting those kinds of questions. I love how you sort of reversed that, Hank, because to say, what does obedience look like? It looks like doing these things. A C.S. Lewis quote that just rings true to me is “We might think that the Lord wanted obedience to a set of rules, whereas he really wants people of a particular sort.” That’s what I think Doctrine and Covenants 1 is calling us to, are we becoming people of a particular sort? Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?

  00:48:59 One other little tidbit that’s kind of got my mind going is, there’s a great website that everyone should know about, scriptures.byu.edu. It’s called the Scripture Citation Index and I’m sure it’s come up a lot on your show. Stephen Little and Richard Galbraith put this together. You can see every time that a verse has been cited in general conference, you can go to Doctrine and Covenants 1, and you can see how many times verses have been cited. Verse 16 is number three on the list of the most cited verses from section 1. It’s been cited 55 times. So I think there’s something that our church leaders are coming back to this verse again and again as one of the standout verses from section 1 is this idea of walking in our own way, seeking after the Lord. There’s something to be thought of in that.

  00:49:47 Maybe if we back up a couple of verses. The other thing that I find really interesting about section 1 is so many of these kind of sections of prophetic warning, I think the Lord is often more descriptive and predictive than he is prescriptive. In other words, he’s saying, these are the things that are just going to naturally happen. If you choose this path, this is what is going to follow. We read a verse like verse 13, “And the anger of the Lord is kindled.” I think that can sound maybe harsher or maybe give us the wrong impression of the nature of God, whereas I think this might be saying is this might actually just be a description of the consequences that happen when we make choices.

  00:50:35 In other words, verse 14, “The arm of the Lord shall be revealed and the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people.” That’s just the natural consequences of the choices that we’re making. “For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant.”

  00:50:56 One thing that I’ve loved about President Nelson is this reminder, helping us to see that covenants are all about relationship. What these verses in section 1 are saying is if you choose not to be in a relationship with me, then this is what’s going to happen. I’m not going to force you. I’m not a God of compulsion. I won’t force you into relationship and if you choose not to be in a relationship then I’ll allow that choice, but you’ll be cut off. Here are the consequences. And I’m predicting rather than prescribing or cursing because this is just naturally what’s going to happen if you choose not to be in a relationship.

John Bytheway: 00:51:29 Two things there. Whenever I see “will not” in the scriptures I like to ask, what’s the difference between will not and cannot? It’s not those who can’t hear the voice of the Lord. It’s those who refuse to hear. I am choosing not to hear that. Like you said, here’s the natural consequence, that idea of don’t think of a covenant like a contract. You do this, I do this, we sign, we stick it on the shelf. A covenant is an ongoing relationship where I am weak and the Savior is strong. I benefit because of that relationship. I have access to his strength when I am weak and I love that idea of a relationship because then you get the idea of loyalty in a relationship and not just some contract you throw on the shelf that, okay, you do this and I do this. We’ve heard that more recently, that idea of make sure you’re thinking of your covenant as a relationship, not just a contract. Thanks for saying that.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:52:34 Oh, thank you for that. Really nice putting a point on it too. Maybe while we’re in this section of verses, if we ask ourselves one question, well, what does obedience look like? How do we see the Lord framing obedience in section 1? Another framing principle I think is going to help us as we come to the Doctrine and Covenants is what do we learn about the nature of God from section 1 and that’s going to be something that we’re going to see just weave its way through the Doctrine and Covenants. Verse 17, we start seeing some really interesting and telling and beautiful things about the nature of God. “Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jr.” I remember an electric moment.

  00:53:22 John, I think this was in our class with Richard Bennett, a great BYU professor and historian. He called this the proactivity of God. Normally, we think about the first vision experience for example of that Joseph Smith approaches the Lord and the Lord responds, but that’s not how it’s framed in verse 17, “Knowing the calamity which should come, the Lord says, ‘I called upon my servant Joseph Smith.'” So that he was proactive. He was reaching out and you think, what do we see in Joseph Smith’s story that shows that proactivity? Well, how about his reaction when he reads James 1:5? The Lord, you can just sense he’s calling to him through that verse, other experiences in his life with his family so that the Lord is the one doing the initial calling, the reaching out. I love that indication that we have a proactive God who calls on us, allows us to respond, but he’s calling. He’s proactive.

John Bytheway: 00:54:16 I’m thinking of Elder Kearon’s phrase, “He is in relentless pursuit of you.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:54:24 Oh man, so well said. And then I also love the sense that the Lord seeing calamities and that he’s provided a way to overcome all these calamities and it starts with calling his servants and then the revelations that come and all of the things that are going to follow from that. Then we just have this great litany of results that what happened because Joseph Smith was called and what is going to come out of the Restoration.

John Bytheway: 00:54:51 You know what I love about what you just said, J.B., that proactivity of the Lord. I feel like yes, the Restoration, the First Vision. Yes, there is a God and he is real, and then it seems so much that comes afterwards is what kind of being is God, and there were some different ideas out there. All of this tells us, oh, this is what he’s like. He is relentlessly pursuing us. He is proactive. “Knowing what’s going to come, I called upon my servant, Joseph Smith.” And we learned such wonderful things about his nature as this Book of Commandments, Doctrine and Covenants unfolds.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:55:29 Yea. Hear, hear. I think this has just given us a great glimpse into those things and the kind of things that can give us confidence and instill in us hope.

John Bytheway: 00:55:41 And then it talks about us in verse 19, “The weak things of the world.” My son got some barbells and I know that I am one of the weak things of the world.

Hank Smith: 00:55:55 I noticed in verses 1 through 6, we have who he’s talking to. Then 7 through 10, what he’s talking about. And now we’re moving into the why, why we’re doing this. “I know what’s about to happen. I called Joseph Smith, here’s what can happen for you. If you listen, if you pay attention, here’s all the good things that can happen in your life.” Is that kind of a decent way to outline it?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:56:27 I think that’s a really nice outline, yeah. Underscoring this is that idea that the Lord is calling servants. If you’re an honest Bible reader, we just have to confront this. This is the way the Lord works is his pattern is to call prophets, to call his servants and then to speak to the world who he’s speaking to, what and why. That’s a nice way to break down the section.

Hank Smith: 00:56:51 I want to help you. I want to save you.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:56:55 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:56:56 I have this numbered, 10 promises starting in verse 19 and ending in verse 28, “The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones.” Two, “That man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh.” Three, “That every man might speak in the name of God, the Lord, even the Savior of the world.” Four, “That faith might increase in the earth.” It’s kind of fun to see that proactive God listing, “Here’s what I want. Here’s what’s possible.”

Hank Smith: 00:57:25 And this could be a good chance also, J.B., to really talk about. I mean, this is the first time, if you’re reading the Doctrine and Covenants for the first time, that you get this name, “I called Joseph Smith Jr.” J.B. in your studies of Joseph Smith, which I’m thinking have been pretty extensive, what have you found?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:57:47 Such a profound question, but what a beautiful one. I am so struck with Joseph Smith’s courage in responding to the revelations, his sense of his own weakness, his own humanity, but the confidence that he drew from knowing that he was on the Lord’s errand. That gave him a fearlessness that always impresses me. I am also impressed that as we’re going to see in this Doctrine and Covenants and Church History year, that when things were difficult, they faced some horrific challenges, that instead of dampening his enthusiasm or instead of causing him to pull back, he thought bigger. He was emboldened and he was still open to responding to the Lord’s command to do more projects, to expand his thinking. He was indomitable.

  00:58:45 The great quote that George A. Smith is the one who transmits this to us about being in the lowest pit of Nova Scotia and having the Rocky Mountains piled on top of him, that he would come out on top. There was something indomitable and buoyant about him, and I think that probably disposition and personality was part of that. But more than that, I think it was the confidence of knowing that he was on the Lord’s errand and that the Lord had called him. He just had that absolute faith that the Lord could make him what he wanted him to be.

Hank Smith: 00:59:14 And he calls him and all of us in verse 19, “The weak things of the world.” It’s kind of a hard thing to hear when you’re Joseph Smith or any of us, and the Lord says, “I chose you so everyone would know it was me.” I took the one that you would never think could do something like this. Reminds me of the Old Testament. Here’s Abraham, just this guy, Abraham and Sarah, just this immigrant and his wife. Look at Mary in Nazareth, just a teenager in a tiny little town, and then you have it here again, a teenage boy. I called him, this weak thing and he’s going to do something great.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:59:57 When you put it that way, it made me think of the Gideon story in Judges, where the Lord sort of intentionally diminishes Gideon’s army just so there would be no way of mistaking this on their own power. That you just cannot look at this and say that I’ve trusted in the arm of flesh and we’ve turned out well. Part of the testimony is there’s only one way to explain it, and it’s the miracle that the Lord is behind it.

  01:00:22 I think too of the context, if we think back at the historical context, so imagine we’ve got this conference happening in November 1831 when this preface comes out and there are just 10 elders. I mean, the conference is 10 elders. They’re going to be charged to go out and spread this message, and you can imagine how weak they have felt. You can just hear this preface speaking to them in their immediate circumstances of they’re feeling their own weakness and reminding them, this is what I’ve always done. This is what the Lord’s saying. I’ve always done this, and you’re going to be able to do this too as weak things.

Hank Smith: 01:00:59 Coming up in part two of this episode.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 01:01:02 Just that reassurance that we can be forgiven and that’s going to be a Doctrine and Covenants theme that we’re just going to see over and over and over how often the Lord is promising and reassuring forgiveness. And his Isaiah 1, “Scarlet things can be made white as snow.” Or Section 58, “I the Lord, remember them no more.” I mean, this is just this beautiful, complete totality of forgiveness and fresh starts.