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

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:00:04 If you were a life coach for a fraud who’s pretending to be a prophet, you would say, this thing you’re calling a revelation, it makes you look bad, it makes your primary financial backer look bad. This is not what we want. We want something that makes people think you’re a saint, that you’re perfect. What an odd move if it was part of an elaborate hoax to have sections three, five, and ten among your first recorded and published revelations in which the Lord publicly rakes you over the coals.

Hank Smith: 00:00:41 Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my co-host John Bytheway, who has embarked in the service of God. John, that’s Doctrine and Covenants 4:2, O ye that embark in the service of God.

John Bytheway: 00:00:57 I love that word, Hank. I’ll take it. I researched this once. Guess how many times embark appears not just in the Doctrine and Covenants, not just the Book of Mormon, not just the Bible, not just The Pearl of Great Price, in all of the standard works, guess how many times?

Hank Smith: 00:01:12 I know it’s more than one because I’m reading it right here.

John Bytheway: 00:01:13 One time.

Hank Smith: 00:01:15 It’s not more than one.

John Bytheway: 00:01:16 That’s the one time in the actual text. I think somebody uses it in a synopsis, but in the text, one time.

Hank Smith: 00:01:24 John, our guest this week is Dr. Rob Eaton. Rob, thank you so much for joining us. This is your second time on followHIM.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:01:32 It is and that’s surprising. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it so much because I learn so much in preparing for these podcasts. Oh, good. I rarely got a second date in college, so it is nice to be asked back.

Hank Smith: 00:01:45 John, Doctrine and Covenants Sections 3, 4, and 5, pivotal sections, early sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, and I think Section 3 is the first written revelation from Joseph Smith. What comes to your mind when you think 3, 4, and 5?

John Bytheway: 00:02:02 It’s before the Book of Mormon was published obviously, before the church is organized, Joseph Smith really gets chewed out in Section 3. It’s this really heart-wrenching time for them, so it’s very interesting. And we see that if you’re going to publish something where you really were chastised for not keeping the commandments, would you want to publish that? But like you said, let’s send this out to all the world and that’s the first one. It’s amazing.

Hank Smith: 00:02:30 That is fantastic. Rob, how about you? As you’ve been preparing for Sections 3, 4, and 5, these aren’t new to you, where do you want to go today?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:02:39 They’re not new to me, but here’s a connection that was new for me as I looked at them unitedly in concert. Joseph is called to stand as a witness in Section 5:2. He’s told that he has been called. Martin’s being prepared to be a witness, and Section 4 is really for all of us who get to stand as a witness of God at all times and all places and in all things. I see this as a wonderful trio of sections on witness preparation, if you will, for all of us as we stand as witnesses of the Savior, of the Book of Mormon, of the joy of the gospel in our lives.

Hank Smith: 00:03:16 That’s beautiful. Section 4 brings a little bit of trauma to my ears because first day in the mission field, my mission president, I got there and he said, “Elder Smith, recite for me Doctrine and Covenants Section 4.” And I was so lucky that for some reason I had this one close to memorized. He helped me through it a little bit. So any missionary who’s listening out there or someone who’s got a mission call, you might just want to go through these seven verses and commit them to memory just in case that’s your first day when you meet your mission president.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:03:51 In fact, these may be the most recited verses of scripture in the church apart from those containing the sacrament prayers. Worry sometimes they’re more frequently recited than understood, so I’m looking forward to taking a deep dive into Section 4 together today. Interestingly, it’s actually not given as a missionary section. There is no missionary work. There is no church. That’s, in fact, going to be one of my main points about Section 4.

  00:04:17 As wonderfully applicable as it is to full-time missionaries, this is really a charter for anyone who embarks in the service of God. I fear that many of us in the church miss that and think, oh, this is the missionary section, and don’t ask, how could this help me as a primary teacher, a newly called member of an Elders Quorum presidency, or simply someone who’s freelancing for God, a concept we’ll talk about today.

Hank Smith: 00:04:43 I love it. Let me read from the Come, Follow Me manual, and then Rob, let’s turn it over to you. John, I’m excited to learn from you as well. Doctrine and Covenants 3, 4, and 5. My work shall go forth. Love the opening paragraph. During his first few years as the Lord’s prophet, Joseph Smith didn’t know everything about the marvelous work he was called to do. But one thing his early experiences taught him was that to do God’s work, his eye must be single to the glory of God.

  00:05:12 For example, if the Lord counseled him to do something he wasn’t sure he wanted to do, he needed to follow the Lord’s counsel. And even if he had many revelations and power to do many mighty works, if he felt that what he wanted was more important than God’s will, he must fall. But Joseph learned something else just as important about doing God’s work.

  00:05:33 God is merciful. And if Joseph sincerely repented, he was still chosen. God’s work is, after all, a work of redemption and that work cannot be frustrated. What a brilliant way to say, all right, let’s dive into these sections. Rob, how do you want to start this? There’s a lot of names in these sections that maybe not all of our listeners know very well.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:05:59 I want to package together Sections 3 and 5 if that’s all right, because I see them as this wonderful story of a couple of God’s most elect servants stumbling, receiving divine correction, repenting, getting back up and mercifully being given second chances and standing up even stronger. In fact, I see this early experience as a galvanizing experience for Joseph that prepares him to stand tall and courageously against the tides of the opinions of men and women for the rest of his life.

  00:06:31 He learns from, I’m going to say, the stumble or mistake, but actually the Lord would call it sin. He learns from making this mistake, but gets that second chance. So we’ll start with the backstory of Martin Harris and what Gerrit Dirkmaat reminded us last time around might be better called the stolen 116 pages than the lost 116 pages. Lost is what I would’ve had happen to me. I’m sure they’re somewhere. I would find them one day with my keys and all the other things I’ve lost so many times.

Hank Smith: 00:07:01 I do remember that, Rob, four years ago, we should link that episode in our show notes because John, do you remember how adamant he was?

John Bytheway: 00:07:08 He was adamant.

Hank Smith: 00:07:09 It was stolen.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:07:12 Gerrit, he is great and that’s a great episode. I told you before the show, I was amazed at how good you guys were right out the gate with this podcast, and I love listening to that episode. He goes into even more historical detail than I’ll get into today perhaps because he knows about 10 times as much about this as I do, but we’ll get into it some. But if you want to learn more, that’s a great episode to explore.

Hank Smith: 00:07:34 We haven’t really talked about previous episodes we did four years ago, John, but we should start linking those just in case someone thinks, wonder what they said about this four years ago? You’ll hear probably quite a bit about pandemics because that’s kind of where we were.

John Bytheway: 00:07:47 That’s what we were in the middle of.

Hank Smith: 00:07:49 The scriptures change as our lives change, don’t they? What we see.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:07:53 As we tackle some of the backstory, I thought it’s worth highlighting some of the resources in the Gospel Library Church History tab that could be relevant to users all year long. Is that all right?

Hank Smith: 00:08:04 Yeah, please do.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:08:05 Go to the Gospel Library homepage and click on Church History. For me, it’s the fourth row of icons down there. And let me just ask each of you, are there any resources here that you want to make a plug for? In my Foundations of the Restoration course, one of the things we do is help students to discover each of these resources. And many of them they were superficially acquainted with, but they come to love. Any of these resources in the Church History tab that you just love and think people ought to discover?

Hank Smith: 00:08:36 One for me, Rob, John, you remember and I reference this episode often because it was such a touching time for John and I, Dr. Melissa Inouye came to talk about Mosiah 18, and she pointed us to these global histories. And it’s probably something honestly I may have not ever clicked on because I thought, well, there’s so much here, but she said, “They’re short. We wanted to make them short on purpose just so you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. They’re no longer than the Savior’s parables,” I think she said.

  00:09:09 They are brilliant. You can click on almost any country in the world and you’ll see a four paragraph summary of its history with the church. It is really fun to just go through. And I think I was sitting in an airport once and thought, well, let me go through some of these, and they were brilliant.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:09:27 By the way, if you travel, it’s wonderful to read about the history of the church in the country you’re going to. So then when you’re in Edinburgh, Scotland, rather than just hiking up Arthur’s Hill or Arthur’s Seat with hundreds of other tourists, it’s wonderful to know something about the history of the church in the country where you are. Love that one.

John Bytheway: 00:09:47 They actually published a little book called Revelations in Context. It’s on here. Really nice to know backstory of every one of these sections, and that’s what we talk about here, but that Revelations in Context is a lot more thorough.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:10:03 I find the better I understand the backstory to these revelations, the better I understand the text of the revelations themselves. In fact, that’s especially important for the Doctrine and Covenants. In the Book of Mormon and in the Bible, we get the stories. And then sometimes in the Book of Mormon, the Thus We Sees, the Doctrine and Covenants is just the Thus We Sees part. It’s the Lord’s answer to questions in so many cases or his response to circumstances.

  00:10:28 And if we don’t fully understand those circumstances, we may miss out on the original meaning of some of what he said. And I found the better we understand that, the easier it is to apply these scriptures to ourselves. We’ll see that today, especially with Section 4. Overlooking the backstory, we often overlook the original meaning of the section to jump right to the one that’s become most common today.

  00:10:51 I love Revelations in Context, and one of my students just pointed this out because I was complaining it can be hard to figure out which of the essays goes with which section of the Doctrine and Covenants. My student raised his hand and said, “Brother Eaton, it’s the icon in the upper right-hand corner.” So if you go to Section 3, there’s a little icon in the upper right-hand corner. You click on that and it takes you right to the relevant essay from Revelations in Context. A tremendous resource. Oh my word!

Hank Smith: 00:11:18 Now, Rob, this is sarcasm here. There might be some who say, “Oh, the church hides its history. There’s nowhere I can go to learn about the church’s history.” How many hours of content are on this tab that you’ve shown us?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:11:34 More than I have still listened to as somebody who teaches Foundations of the Restoration. And in fact, I learned things the second and third time I listen to and read Saints. Saints is an extraordinarily transparent, faith-building, accessible, well-written summary of church history. I’m just beginning to listen to volume four. I love Saints. If you haven’t already discovered that, I hope you will this year as we study the Doctrine and Covenants together.

Hank Smith: 00:12:03 A lot of our guests, Rob, will tell us their worry is not that Latter-day Saints will study too much church history. It’s that they’ll study too little. This tab that you’ve shown us, if you were to consume all of this church history, that’s a solid background in the history of the church.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:12:21 A couple others just to point out, but there is one church history topics and so we’ve got entries for people, for places, for events. It’s rich and wonderful. You’ve got the Joseph Smith Papers and Joseph Smith Papers Podcast. They’ve got great podcasts on priesthood restoration, Kirtland, Carthage, eight-episode series that are marvelous. And all this is collected together in one tab that I looked at in preparation for this and I thought, I didn’t realize they had organized it there and in that way.

  00:12:52 It’s historical resources. So if I click on historical resources Doctrine and Covenants 3 through 5, it’s gathered together then all these different sources that relate to this passage of scripture. A great place to go. And now the church is also doing that for us this year in a little section called People, Places, and Events in the Come, Follow Me manual, but only in the online version. Some great resources that I drew on preparing for today that I hope our listeners will take advantage as well.

Hank Smith: 00:13:20 John, if we were to tell our listeners, hey, go into this tab, Church History tab, and don’t come back to our podcast until you’ve gone through all of this. I think they’d come back and we’d be old and gray and gone. And they’d say, “Oh, what happened?” One of my favorite quotes, you’ve heard me say it before, Rob, is from Stephen L. Richards. He said, “It is good to be faithful. It is better to be faithful and competent.”

  00:13:44 I think what that is about, it’s not just I have a testimony, which obviously is wonderful. It’s I have a testimony and I know why. I know where it comes from. I know our history. It’s there for us. If you really want to become competent in the history of the church, the information is there. It’s ready for you.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:14:03 I’m so glad to be alive and teaching in this part of this dispensation where we have more information than ever before, more access to it, and a period of great transparency about church history. I love that we get to teach the Foundations of the Restoration course in which we tackle head-on historical issues that can challenge some students’ faith.

  00:14:24 I think we found that the best way to do this is to approach it honestly and within a faith-filled framework that actually leaves students coming out of that class and I hope church members coming out of this year as we know more feeling even more secure in our testimony of the truthfulness of the restored gospel.

Hank Smith: 00:14:42 John, I know you’ll agree, the more I study the history of the church, the more impressed I am with not only the Lord, but with these imperfect people who have done extraordinary things.

John Bytheway: 00:14:54 And as we talked about already, it’s like young people, they’re young adults, a lot of them with no experience in, hey, guys, let’s start a church. No, that wasn’t their intention.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:15:07 In fact, one exception to the young people part is Martin Harris. So let’s jump in there if I may.

John Bytheway: 00:15:12 Let’s do it.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:15:13 Hank and John, any thoughts on why it’s understandable that Joseph Smith really wanted to help Martin out with his request to borrow the 116 pages if he could? Why would that have been something so tempting for him despite the first answer being no?

Hank Smith: 00:15:30 I would say, one, this is the first person I believe outside of his family that believes him. Doesn’t Martin have a little bit of money to help out this poor farmer who’s been called to do something way beyond him and way beyond his resources?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:15:47 In fact, when Joseph wants to get out of town because he’s encountering more persecution, he’s got some debts he’s got to pay off, he’s able to do that only with the help of Martin Harris. $50 doesn’t sound like a ton of money in our time, but as Brother Dirkmaat pointed out last time, Joseph bought 14 acres, a house, and a barn for $200. So that was a quarter of that price.

  00:16:12 That gives you a feel for what $50 was worth. He’s beholden to Martin Harris. In fact, not only that, at some point he’s got to be thinking, we probably need to publish this book that we’re translating and that’s going to cost money. How am I going to get that done? He has no other option than Martin Harris. This is his sole financial backer. He needs Martin’s help if he’s to get the book published into the world.

  00:16:39 Certainly that could have played into his thinking as Martin makes what seems to be a very reasonable request. I’ve got to placate my wife. Can I borrow the 116 pages?

Hank Smith: 00:16:51 That’s a rough spot to be in. Like you said earlier, Rob, this is an important lesson that Joseph Smith is going to learn.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:17:00 A painful one, and therefore a memorable one. Two other factors that may have weighed in here. One is Joseph’s seen firsthand how demanding and difficult Mrs. Harris can be. She’s ransacked the Smith home looking for the plates. When Martin tells Joseph, “I really need this to get my wife off my back,” that’s a very understandable explanation. And here’s one last thing I think we sometimes overlook. I have often. Joseph is 22 at this time. Martin is 47. These aren’t two buddies.

  00:17:34 These are relative ages of a college student and a professor, a full-time missionary and a mission president. I think that age gap may have been something that might’ve weighed in Joseph’s mind too, just thinking, here’s somebody who’s older, who’s been kind to me, who believes me, who spent a couple of months helping me translate. Can’t I get a green light to give him what he’s asked for?

  00:17:57 And he asked enough times that he gets that green light on the third time reluctantly from the Lord, and then later discovers why he was told no in the first place. 

Hank Smith: 18:06:00 Being on faculty at a university, I know the difference between a junior faculty member and a senior faculty member. I’m not so junior as I used to be, but I remember saying, I really want to help this person who’s asked me for this. I really want to do what they’ve asked me to do. They’re a senior faculty member. There’s a desire to be helpful.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:18:26 But with all that in mind, it seems quite understandable that Joseph would’ve gone to the Lord three times, and yet he is reprimanded, Martin’s reprimanded. But I want to jump a little bit to the end of the story and even though we’ll talk about Martin’s shortcomings today and Martin’s sins and Joseph’s, how should we remember Martin in the end? What would you want listeners to take away about our indebtedness to Martin Harris?

John Bytheway: 00:18:54 Martin Harris lends credibility to the whole thing, and I think Joseph Smith knew that. Not only just the financial backing, he’s a respected farmer there. He’s a successful whatever that meant back then farmer. Listen, Martin hasn’t been baptized yet. It’s kind of like we remember doubting Thomas instead of courageous Thomas who said, “Let’s go die with him.”

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:19:18 Great analogy

John Bytheway: 00:19:20 And I think of Martin Harris, listen, he financed it. He came West. He never denied it. Let’s remember that about Martin. I want to remember the outcome of all this because of Martin Harris, not for this bump in the road right here because this is before he was even baptized. This is before anybody was baptized, wasn’t it?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:19:42 All of us hope we’ll be defined by and remembered for our best moments and contributions, not our biggest mistakes and sins. So I think we can extend that same mercy to Martin Harris and honor him. We’re as a church institutionally, collectively indebted to him and Joseph Knight and Isaac Morley and John Tanner and people like the Sorensens, people who’ve been prosperous and consecrated that prosperity to help build the kingdom of God.

  00:20:12 Martin Harris is really the first in the long line of people who fit that wonderful mold and we’re grateful for them. President Dallin Harris Oaks is particularly grateful for him. He says, “Having a special interest in Martin Harris,” he’s his great-great-grandnephew, “Having a special interest in Martin Harris, I have been saddened at how he is remembered by most church members. He deserves better than to be remembered solely as the man who unrighteously obtained and then lost the initial manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon.”

Hank Smith: 00:20:43 We are defenders of Martin Harris here at followHIM. Rob, if I’m new to the church, if these names are new to me, we actually haven’t told this story yet, can you give us just a brief overview of who Martin Harris is and what happened that’s leading up to this dramatic situation? John, feel free to jump in as well.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:21:06 I was going to say let’s do this Wiki style. I’ll start and you add detail as you see fit. Martin Harris is this benefactor and believer in Joseph’s words. In fact, he’s had some spiritual epiphanies of his own that were preparatory. I learned, in preparing for this podcast, things I didn’t know about a theophany that he had had just a few years before this happens. He’s been spiritually prepared and is looking for this restoration.

  00:21:33 Quick to believe in Joseph, and yet like all of us with some natural man tendencies in there, still doubting himself at times and not helped along by his wife, who quickly becomes antagonistic towards what he’s doing. And in her defense, he’s spending a lot of money and a lot of time for what, if you haven’t had confirmation by the Spirit, might seem like an outlandish undertaking that’s highly unlikely to be what it claims to be.

  00:22:01 He ends up becoming Joseph’s scribe and helping translate initially 116 pages, has this manuscript and thinks that perhaps that will be evidence that might placate his wife. Pleads with Joseph for permission. Joseph asks, is told no. Asks again, told no. Asks a third time and the Lord reluctantly says yes. He takes it home, but he’s placed under strict covenant to show this to a very small group of people and sticks to that for a while, but then forgets or deviates.

  00:22:31 We don’t know a lot about the why, but then shows it to a broader group of people. He’s not just a completely innocent victim here. He’s not kept the covenant that he’s made, abided by the terms and conditions he agreed to in borrowing the 116 pages, and eventually discovers they are gone. But as Dr. Dirkmaat noted, that they were not lost, they were stolen, and the Lord tells them as much later.

  00:22:57 Finally, Joseph, who’s in Harmony, his wife nudges him to go because Martin hasn’t come back. They’re worried. He leaves his wife under difficult health circumstances and goes and asks for Martin to come. On the designated morning, Martin finally comes and cools his heels. I mean, just not wanting to go in and deliver the bad news to Joseph. For two or three hours, keeps the whole Smith family waiting for their breakfast, finally comes in and delivers the bad news.

  00:23:25 And Joseph thinks his soul is lost. Martin believes his soul is lost. And indeed, Joseph loses privileges over this. Loses the Urim and Thummim for a season, has it taken from him until he repents adequately and has that restored. When he does, the angel, I read this just this morning in Lucy Mack Smith’s version, the angel was happy to give them back. Heaven was rooting for Joseph to make the changes necessary to get back the privileges that had been suspended for a season.

  00:23:54 They weren’t happily and angrily punishing him for his mistakes, but they wanted him to make the changes he needed to make in order to get that second chance that God then gives to both Joseph and Martin. Martin eventually comes back, gets to become one of the three witnesses. We’ll talk more about the rest of the story in a bit.

John Bytheway: 00:24:14 Oh, I’m just thinking about the historical context just because I think all of us have lost things, lost documents. But what’s the question you ask your students, Hank? Well, didn’t you save it? Didn’t you save a copy? There’s no Google Drives. This is how many hours do you suppose in 116 pages of manuscript and that’s what I think about too is the time investment it would take for that. So to let that out of your hands, it’s kind of frightening to think about, 116 pages in a document that you can’t save, that there is no copy of it.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:24:53 John, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, or Hank, but you’re right, as you’re typing something, if you ever then lost a document, even though I know I could type it again, it’s so frustrating. I worked so hard to get just what I wanted onto my computer and now it’s gone. I absolutely hate that feeling. And for them, in fact, they won’t get these 116 pages back. Although I can’t help but wonder, I’m sure Joseph gained experience as a translator and the process that was invaluable and that he didn’t lose that.

Hank Smith: 00:25:25 I think I get frustrated if I write a 116 word text and somehow lose it.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:25:31 Yes.

Hank Smith: 00:25:33 That took me so long to put together. Rob, so let me make sure I got the story straight. Last week we talked with Dr. Scott Woodward about Joseph obtaining the plates. He’s now married. He’s back in New York, and the persecution is so great. People want these plates. It’s interesting today that Joseph Smith’s critics claim he never had plates when his enemies of that day, that’s all they believe, right? That he has them.

  00:26:03 So he needs to move back to Emma’s home, which is how many miles? Over 120 miles. For us, that’s a three-hour drive, but for them it’s quite a journey. He doesn’t have the money to make the move. Martin gives him $50, like you said, to make the move back to Pennsylvania. And then Martin comes down to visit and also to serve as a scribe as they’re figuring this out. I think we talked last week, John, about Martin going to New York seeing, okay, how are we supposed to get this done?

  00:26:36 He talks to Charles Anthon, comes back, continues to work with Joseph. Rob, is Martin traveling back and forth between Harmony, Pennsylvania, which is right on the New York border. Some people might not understand how the Knights, who live in Colesville, New York, can be close to the Hale family, Emma’s family, that lives in Harmony, Pennsylvania. Well, they’re both right on the border, Southern New York and Northern Pennsylvania. So is Martin going back and forth at times?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:27:05 Looks like he’s invested a significant amount of time, maybe even more valuable than the money he’s contributed to Joseph.

Hank Smith: 00:27:11 Right. So then Martin says, “Look, things are really hard for me back in New York. Let me take these manuscript pages. They’re beautiful. They’re amazing. Let me take those back. The people who are criticizing me will be convinced that this work is amazing. It’s from God. I’ll bring it right back. I promise I’ll bring it right back,” and he doesn’t come right back. Did I get the story right there, Rob?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:27:37 Yeah, that’s my understanding, and it tells you something about how beautiful those 116 pages must have been, the stories, the texts, the teachings, that Martin thought it would be compelling enough to convince those who doubt it. It wasn’t for reasons that we’ll discover in Section 5 that the intellectual proof wouldn’t make a difference to the hard-hearted, but it must have been a beautiful, powerful text.

John Bytheway: 00:28:00 We’ve mentioned a couple of times on this podcast the name of Dick Bennett or Dr. Richard Bennett, and he’s been on the podcast. He wrote a very insightful article years ago. I think it was called Carefully Schooled in First Principles, and I had never thought of this, but Hank, you know that I love First Principles and Article of Faith 4, the Doctrine of Christ, and his whole thesis was Joseph Smith didn’t just, let’s see, what are some of the first principles?

  00:28:26 Let’s say faith. Let’s say repentance. He talks about the first vision, the faith required for that, the faith required for Moroni, and then he talks about losing the 116 pages and repentance. Joseph Smith didn’t just say, “Oh, repentance.” He lived it. He lived sore repentance and going through that. And then as they continued to translate, start over again, baptism.

  00:28:52 It was a great article thinking, oh yeah, he lived this stuff before he taught faith in Christ and repentance and baptism. And I hadn’t thought of that before, but this is a sore repentance type of episode right here that Joseph Smith was schooled in before the Wentworth Letter, the Articles of Faith were written.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:29:15 I just love the notion that all of the prophets about whom we read and whose teachings we read were spiritual experiential learners. When Mormon talks about charity, the pure love of Christ, he’s not writing from book knowledge. He has learned to love his enemies, literally in his case.

Hank Smith: 00:29:36 John, Dr. Bennett actually turned that into a book. It’s called School of the Prophet: How the Lord Taught Joseph the Gospel. He calls it the 10-year incubation period where he’s got to learn faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Ghost before he can teach faith, repentance, baptism, and Holy Ghost. And we love Richard Bennett. All of us here have great love and respect for Dr. Bennett. Can I read you both something? This is way back in 1994.

  00:30:09 Elder Holland was speaking to a group of seminary and institute teachers. It’s a talk called A Standard unto My People. He talks about the loss of these pages and what a faith promoting experience it can be to those of us who are now looking back. This is what he says. If the loss of those 116 pages was simply the disappearance of some thoughtful wisdom literature and a few chapters of remarkably deft fiction as opponents of the Book of Mormon would say, what’s the big deal?

  00:30:45 Why all this business about Joseph going through the depths of hell, worrying about whether he was going to get the manuscript back, and fearing the rebuke of God? He’s a quick study. He’s a frontier talent. He can just write some more. Listen to some of the emotion of that difficult moment. When Martin does not return and does not return with the manuscript, although Joseph was now nearly worn out, sleep had fled his eyes. Neither had he any desire for food, for he felt he had done wrong.

  00:31:11 And how great his condemnation was, he did not know. This is coming from his mother. When a fellow traveler inquired about Joseph’s gloomy appearance and the cause of his affliction, Joseph thanked him for his kindness and mentioned that he had been caring for a sick wife and child and that the child had died. As a result, his wife was very despondent, but he refrained from giving any further explanation beyond that.

  00:31:33 When pressed about the situation, Joseph replied as before, that he had left his wife in such precarious health that he feared he would not find her alive when he returned. Furthermore, he had buried his first and only child just days ago. There was another trouble lying at his heart which he dared not mention. Again, that’s from his mother. Another trouble, this is Elder Holland, deeper than those? Deeper than a wife who’s on the threshold of dying and a son who already had?

  00:32:00 How deep can such a trouble be and what could possibly be the nature of? Well, this is Elder Holland, you and I know the answer to that. The next morning, 8:00 came. Then 9:00, 10:00, 11:00. Finally, at half past 12:00, Martin is seen walking with a slow measured step toward the Smith house, his eyes fixed remorselessly on the ground. Then he pauses at the gate, draws his hat over his eyes.

  00:32:27 Finally, summoning the courage to enter the house, he takes up his knife and fork to eat a noon meal with the Smith family, but immediately drops his utensils. Hyrum Smith observing says, “Martin, are you sick?” Upon which Martin presses his hands to his head, cries out in a tome of deep anguish, “I’ve lost my soul. I’ve lost my soul.” Joseph, who has not verbalized his fears until then, springs from the table.

  00:32:54 “Martin, have you lost the manuscript? Have you broken your oath and brought down condemnation upon my head as well as your own?” “Yes, it’s gone,” Martin says. “I know not where.” “Oh my God!” Joseph clenches his hands, “All is lost. All is lost. What shall I do? I have sinned. I tempted the wrath of God. I should have been satisfied with the first answer.” He weeps and groans and walked the floor in anguish. At length, he tells Martin to go search again.

  00:33:25 “No”, Martin says, “It’s all in vain. I have ripped open beds and pillows. I know that it’s not there.” “Then”, says Joseph,” how do I return with such a tale as this? I dare not do it. How shall I appear before the Lord? Of what rebuke? I am not worthy from the angel of the most high.” Can you guys imagine Moroni? We talked about this. For years we talked about this. You can read this whole talk. We can link it in our show notes, but I want you to see how Elder Holland then talks about this.

  00:33:59 He talks about that whole scene and he says, “My goodness, that’s an elaborate little story which makes absolutely no sense at all, unless, of course, there really were plates, there really was a translation process going on, and there really had been a solemn covenant made with the Lord, and there really was an enemy who did not want that book to come forth in this generation.” Talk about a literary flair and a gift for fiction. This is called sarcasm. Those of you who are…

  00:34:29 Wait, what? Lucy Mack Smith gets an A, right along with her son. If all of this is an imaginary venture to say nothing of the terrific performances by Mr. and Mrs. Harris and the entire first generation of the church, which is only to say, which many have said before, if Joseph Smith or anyone else for that matter created the Book of Mormon out of whole cloth, that to me is a far greater miracle than the proposition that he translated it from an ancient record by an endowment of divine power.

  00:35:03 I had never thought about that before, Rob, that all of these people in this family already believe him. There would be no reason for this big dramatic scene if they’re making it all up.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:35:15 Absolutely. In fact, along those same lines, if you were a life coach for a fraud who’s pretending to be a prophet, you would say, “This thing you’re calling a revelation, it makes you look bad. It makes your primary financial backer look bad. This is not what we want. We want something that makes people think you’re a saint, that you’re perfect.” What an odd move if it was part of an elaborate hoax to have Sections 3, 5, and 10 among your first recorded and published revelations in which the Lord publicly rakes you over the coals.

  00:35:54 In my life story, I hope they don’t start with, “Here’s his major mistakes. Let’s walk through those first.” Who in their right mind would put this first unless they thought, well, it’s from the Lord. I’ve got to put it in. I mean, we’ll see that Peter, Martha, Lehi, the brother of Jared, are all rebuked publicly by the Lord, and those rebukes, that chastisement, is canonized. Can you imagine having your most severe reprimands from God being canonized for people to benefit you?

John Bytheway: 00:36:25 Do we have any idea how long this 116 pages took?

Hank Smith: 00:36:29 I’m not an expert on this, but it looks to me like it’s a period of a couple of months. And Rob, isn’t this also years of being tutored by the angel? This is a process that started way back in 1823.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:36:45 In Harmony, and if you have not been to Harmony, I just went last May, what a sacred place. You can see why President Nelson loved dedicating that restoration site. Near the home where Joseph was doing some of the translating is the burial spot for that baby. I have no idea what role that unique, terrible affliction that I’ve not experienced might’ve played in shaping Joseph.

  00:37:11 As you were reading that account and talking about the difficult circumstances Joseph was in personally at the time he then goes back to Palmyra, it reminds me of this verse from the Joseph Smith translation of Hebrews 11:40. God having provided some better things for them, and then this addition in the Joseph Smith translation, through their sufferings. For without sufferings, they could not be made perfect.

  00:37:37 It seems to me that all that Joseph experiences here is part of a refining process that helps him become the disciple he needs to be to exercise this extraordinary gift of translation that gives us this incomparable volume of scripture, The Book Mormon.

Hank Smith: 00:37:53 Rob, you’ve been studying this a long time. In your words, how does Joseph feel when he knows these pages are gone? Because for you and I and John and our listeners, oh, we know this is going to work out. Oh, Joseph, don’t worry, there’s a lot of great things coming, but he doesn’t know that.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:38:13 In fact, he fears his soul is lost. That’s why as we jump now into the text of Section 3, verses one and three must have been sweet, good news. Even though they’re followed by some severe reprimands, Joseph had to take a lot of hope from verses one and three. The works and the designs and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught. Remember, remember, I’m in verse three now, that it is not the work of God that is frustrated but the work of men. Any thoughts from either of you on why that would’ve been so comforting for Joseph to hear at this time?

John Bytheway: 00:38:48 I’m just wondering if he’s thinking, oh, there’s a backup somewhere. The way he’s talking right now, there must be a backup plan. I always love that word, the design. God has a design for us and for the work. The fact that he’s not disinterested just watching it unfold, but he has a design in mind is always comforting to me.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:39:12 In fact, in his foreknowledge, I think what the Lord wanted to come first in the Book of Mormon all along was 1 Nephi. He was not surprised by this and he paved the way for a wise purpose I know not, Mormon said.

Hank Smith: 00:39:28 Rob, I think it’s important to do what you’re telling us to do here, which is pause and put yourself in his situation. Here’s someone who’s been tutored for years and feels like he has failed.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:39:44 I think Emma said he could not be consoled. And then to discover there’s a divine safety net, that he hasn’t fallen, he’s not broken his neck spiritually, he’s going to be able to bounce back from this, well, I think this is comforting for all of us who make mistakes and sin in our journeys in life and in trying to build the Kingdom of God. I think these two verses should relieve unnecessary angst and anxiety that we experience sometimes worrying about whether we might’ve frustrated God’s work.

  00:40:14 I remember, now this wasn’t my mistake, but the first time as a young missionary in Germany, we had someone who was committed to baptism who came to church. The talks were not the talks we were hoping for in sacrament meeting. I don’t know if you’ve had that experience before. Afterwards, I was trying to find my way to this good brother to do some damage control.

  00:40:34 And before I could say anything, he said, “Gott ist unter euch.” God is among you. I’m like, yes, he is. Just what I was thinking. That’s right. Somehow with divine compensation, those talks still served as revelatory catalyst for him that this was the Church of Jesus Christ despite the imperfections of the speakers. I take some confidence and hope in these two verses to know that when I’m trying, God will make up the difference for me.

Hank Smith: 00:41:06 All three of us have been young fathers and to bury that child and then to have this, and then the Lord lets him sit there for a while, right, Rob? Lets him sit in that pain for a while.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:41:18 This is a painful preparatory period for young Joseph that I think is necessary to galvanize his resolve, to never again want to succumb to the pressures of trying to please people, but to be absolutely riveted on trying to please God. And as we get into the substance of the rebuke, we’ll talk more about that, but first, maybe let’s dwell a little bit more on this principle as we think about this pattern of extraordinary people who’ve been reprimanded publicly in scripture for our benefit, and that principle to me is simply that divine course correction is a crucial part of God’s curriculum even for his most trusted disciples, maybe even especially for his most trusted disciples.

  00:42:07 Elder Maxwell said, “The Lord is truly there to chastise those whom he loves, including the spiritually preeminent. So when we sense some divine chastisement, we shouldn’t think, I’m on God’s list of spiritual losers. But instead, the coach cares enough about me to help me improve my game. Apparently the team needs me.” Elder Christofferson said, “I would like to speak of one particular attitude and practice we need to adopt if we are to meet our Heavenly Father’s high expectations.

  00:42:35 It is this, willingly to accept and even seek correction. Correction is vital if we would conform our lives unto a perfect man.” He’s quoting Ephesians 4:13 now. “That is unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Paul said of divine correction or chastening, for whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.” Quoting Hebrews 12:6. “Though it is often difficult to endure, truly we ought to rejoice that God considers us as worth the time and trouble to correct.” We see examples there of the Lord chastening those whom he loves.

  00:43:11 For me, I have to tell you, this is one of the most difficult spiritual characteristics to develop. I’m still working on it, because my natural man is defensive and wants to justify myself. I remember a story that Elder Paul Johnson told years ago to the faculty at BYU. I actually reached out to him to get an accurate version of the story and his permission to share it. As a general authority, on one occasion, he was being corrected by a member of the 12, who had a mistaken understanding of the underlying facts.

  00:43:44 And here’s why Elder Johnson’s where he is and I certainly am not, he does not correct the record. He cares more about learning from this apostle than about looking good. And my natural man would be all about saying, “No, no, no, that wasn’t my fault. I’m not the one who made that mistake.” What he said was, “It was afterward that I realized that although the details of that specific situation were not accurate, there was an underlying personal weakness of mine that his correction addressed.

  00:44:14 I realized that if I had said something, I probably would’ve missed the lesson the Lord had for me.” That’s an amazing level of humility that I do not have, but I want to become more like Elder Johnson, more like Joseph Smith, and more like Martin, all of whom respond well to divine correction that leads to greater spiritual opportunities and growth for them.

Hank Smith: 00:44:39 Do you remember Sister Michelle Craig’s talk, Divine Discontent, where she said divine discontent leads to humility, not to self-pity or discouragement that comes from making comparisons in which we always come up short? Just a beautiful talk where she says, “It’s okay, welcome the Lord’s correction.”

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:44:59 I was listening to Adam Grant, who’s a great writer and academic, and he had written an article that successfully challenged a finding of Daniel Kahneman, who’s a Nobel laureate and just an icon in his field. Then got to sit down one day with the senior academic Nobel laureate whose work he had challenged and Kahneman thanked him and said something like, “I’m less wrong today than I was yesterday. Thank you.”

  00:45:28 That’s a great humble attitude to adopt, to welcome divine correction and say, “Thank you. I now know something about myself and how to get better and how to improve that I didn’t know yesterday.”

John Bytheway: 00:45:40 I remember listening to a talk 20 years ago by an archeologist named John E. Clark. And at the very beginning of his talk, he showed all of the supposed anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. And then said, “Our critics have done more than we ever could have,” because they pointed out all these things. Then the archeologists ever since then have found all of these supposed faults in the Book of Mormon or anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, and then he showed how answering those has flipped everything around.

  00:46:17 It was very interesting to see that, to thank the critics for pointing out stuff that would need further study and it would clarify it. Have you ever had that feeling? I will never do that again. Do you think Joseph now had this? I will never do that again. There’s a verse that I have always loved in The Pearl of Great Price, just a little comment. It’s Moses 6:55, “And they taste the bitter that they may know to prize the good.” And I think a lot of us go through that. I don’t want to feel that way again. I don’t want to do that again. There becomes a lesson in this carefully schooled in first principles.

Hank Smith: 00:47:00 In part of my dissertation research, I had the opportunity to study some Supreme Court case briefs. I just took a note of this one. This is Anthony Kennedy, who served as a Supreme Court justice. He said, “For those on the receiving end of criticism, I offer the following advice. See the criticism as valuable information about how to do better, not as a personal attack. Also, take responsibility for the criticism rather than jumping to the defensive.”

  00:47:29 And then this one jumped out at me, Rob, because this rebuke is coming from the Lord. Justice Kennedy, “Finally, see the criticism as an opportunity to work together with the critic to solve the problem. It’s not an adversarial situation.” So maybe these divine rebukes that come from the Lord, we can see them as opportunities to now work with the Lord even closer.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:47:53 Even when somebody else is mostly wrong, there’s a kernel of truth to what they said. When I was vice president of systems consolidation at a parent company for Blue Cross Blue Shield companies in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah, I had a colleague, we were peers, we both reported to the president of the company, and he chewed me out one day for 30 minutes and I felt it was totally out of line. It was the least professional thing I’ve encountered in my career.

  00:48:24 He was offended that I’d not consulted with him before doing something, felt like I was usurping his role in some way. And I had the good sense just to apologize, not defend myself, tell him I’d do better in the future. But that night as I prayed, I guess what I was hoping for was some divine affirmation that my colleague was a jerk and out of line. I’m not sure how I phrased the prayer exactly, but I think that was the gist of it, if I was honest. Lord, don’t you just hate him as much as I do?

  00:48:52 Instead, the response I got was, yeah, yeah, he was out of line. But for you to accomplish the things I want you to accomplish, I need you to do better. And that was a lesson I will never forget. That in terms of communication and avoiding unnecessarily offending some people, that there were some things I could do to be more intentional and be more careful, and I hope I’ve learned some lessons from that.

Hank Smith: 00:49:19 Wow! John, what’s the phrase someone taught us, the Lord is easy to please and impossible to satisfy.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:49:28 And it’s clear in these sections, he’s a God of high love, also high expectations. Sometimes we minimize that a little too much if we focus exclusively on God’s mercy and love and not on his high expectations and justice. He does call Joseph and Martin to task because he needs them to do extraordinary things.

John Bytheway: 00:49:48 If I could jump ahead to verse 10 a little bit because boy, you read this part, this first part, the works, designs, purposes of God cannot be frustrated. Verse four, you set at not the counsels of God. But then, boy, verse 10, but remember God is merciful. Therefore, repent of that which thou hast done, which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you.

  00:50:09 And this line, Hank, you quoted from the lesson manual, thou art still chosen. One of the tough questions that I’ve heard out there is, hey, I’ve messed up. Does my patriarchal blessing still count? And I love that line, thou art still chosen and art again called to the work. I don’t know if it answers everybody’s question perfectly, but I love the idea that Peter was called the Rock before he waffled and he’s still the Rock, right?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:50:45 And in verse nine, behold thou art Joseph and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord. We might put in our own names, thou art John, thou art Hank, thou art Rob, thou wast chosen and you’re still called to do those things in your patriarchal blessing. I love that insight, John.

Hank Smith: 00:51:03 The Lord is such a good teacher, isn’t he? Be more careful. Be more careful next time.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:51:09 Let’s read verses four through eight and fifteen and look at the substance of the rebuke and see what we learn. Maybe we can take turns reading those. I’ll do four. “For although a man may have many revelations and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength and sets at naught the counsels of God and follows after the dictates of his own will and desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him.”

Hank Smith: 00:51:35 Verse five. “Behold, you have been entrusted with these things, but how strict were your commandments? And remember also the promises which were made to you if you did not transgress them.”

John Bytheway: 00:51:47 Verse six. “And behold, how oft you have transgressed the commandments and the laws of God and have gone on in the persuasions of men?”

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:51:57 That’s my favorite line in this whole section, we’ll come back to it, probably because it’s the counsel I most need from the Lord. “For behold,” verse seven, “you should not have feared man more than God. Although men set at naught the counsels of God, and despise his words, yet you should have been faithful; and he would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary;” and even Mrs. Harris. “And he would have been with you in every time of trouble.” And then verse 15, Hank?

Hank Smith: 00:52:29 “For thou hast suffered the counsel of thy director to be trampled upon from the beginning.” Oh man!

John Bytheway: 00:52:36 Ouch is right.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:52:38 God does not hold back. In fact, later he’s got even tougher things to say about Martin. We don’t know when Martin first reads the revelation that we know as Section 3, but he certainly gets to read Section 5. He’s called a wicked man and told he needs to humble himself and repent. But before we go to how Joseph and Martin respond, what stands out to you about this divine chastisement? What lessons do you think we should glean from this painful lesson that Joseph learns?

John Bytheway: 00:53:10 I see the Lord saying, “God’s will, your will. Which one are you going to choose? If you choose mine, I will support you through everything.”

Hank Smith: 00:53:20 I just hear the Lord saying in verse eight, “I wouldn’t have left you alone. Maybe you would’ve lost Martin as a friend. Maybe you tell him no and he leaves forever. I would’ve been there for you.”

John Bytheway: 00:53:32 In every time of trouble.

Hank Smith: 00:53:34 I would’ve been there for you. I would’ve extended my arm and supported you. Why were you so worried about losing Martin when I’m standing here ready to help?

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:53:44 I think one of the most critical questions for every disciple of Jesus Christ is, ultimately, whose approval matters most to me? Whom do I want to please? For a teenager at a party, they could ask, how will my friends react if I leave? Or they could ask, how will God feel if I stay? Which question we choose determines our behavior. And here Joseph’s taught to care more about God’s approval than anyone else’s and not to go on in the persuasions of men.

  00:54:19 This isn’t just a question of good or evil. When I was applying to teach at BYU-Idaho, I was brought in as a finalist, and I prepared a lesson and I had an opener to start with. I actually felt I’d been inspired with the particular opener, and I bounced it off of my wife and my dear friend Mark Beecher, two of the teachers whose opinions I respect most in the church.

  00:54:40 And both had said, “Yeah, not that one.” I come up with a different one and both had said, “That’s great.” So the night before in my motel room, I’m practicing and I’m feeling unsettled about this new opener I’ve got. And I pray and I get this distinct impression. I gave you mine already. I gave you the one I want you to use.

John Bytheway: 00:54:59 Wow!

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:55:00 And I went with that one. Diane and Mark are saints, consecrated saints, so I wasn’t choosing between someone trying to offer me heroin and a terrible life. I was choosing between good people who had great ideas whose judgment I had great cause to respect. And yet in this case, God gave me different instructions and I felt like was almost testing me that if I wanted his help and his blessings, I needed to go with what he was asking me to do.

John Bytheway: 00:55:26 Wow!

Hank Smith: 00:55:28 Wow! Sometimes in our house, Rob, we quote Dumbledore like he’s a 13th apostle, and he makes a great statement to Neville Longbottom. I don’t know if either of you read Harry Potter, but I say it to my kids in Dumbledore’s voice, so this might sound a little bit cheesy, but he says, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

  00:55:55 That’s what Joseph had to do. He had to turn to Martin and say, “I love you. You’re my friend. And no, I’m not doing this.” And that takes a lot of courage. You can think of young people all over who have to stand up to their friends when they say, “Come do this. It’ll be fun. Come.” No, I’m not going to. You’re my friend, but no.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:56:17 It’s too bad we didn’t get Harry Potter in a spiritual setting. Harry, you cannot please God without upsetting Satan. That’s actually Elder Richard G. Scott said, ‘You can’t please God without upsetting Satan.” Elder Lynn G. Robbins said, “When people try to save face with men, they can unwittingly lose face with God.” I mean, this has been a problem for natural men and women throughout time and thus a point of frequent prophetic emphasis throughout time.

  00:56:45 You mentioned in your prior episode on this, Hank, Isaiah talking about this in chapter 51 verses 12 and 13. Behold “who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die and the Son of Man which shall be made as grass.” You’re worried they’re going to melt. You’re worried about them? Seriously? You got me here, the maker of the universe, and you’re worried about displeasing them instead of displeasing me? What are you thinking?

  00:57:08 One of the most tragic verses of scripture to me, couple verses, John 12:42-43. Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead in the previous chapter. And John writes, “Nevertheless, among the chief rulers also, many believed on him. But because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue, for they love the praise of men more than the praise of God.” Joseph has to wean himself from desiring the approval of men and women and focus laser-like on having the approval of God.

John Bytheway: 00:57:44 Hank, can you imagine, for example, if we had done an entire podcast recording… I mean, this manuscript probably took days, weeks, I don’t even know how long, 116 pages. What if we lost a two, three, four hour recording? Can you imagine such a thing?

Hank Smith: 00:58:01 Can you imagine? You know who comes to mind, John, is Sister Reyna Aburto, who was with us last when we lost her entire recording. Sister Aburto, if you’re out there, we still feel awful about that. John, she had to come back and re-record her entire episode, and she was so gracious. And that was, what, a couple hours worth of work?

John Bytheway: 00:58:25 That was a few hours.

Hank Smith: 00:58:26 We were devastated.

John Bytheway: 00:58:27 We were mortified and felt so bad and felt so bad that she had to come back and do it over again. You both have probably seen episodes of the Chosen. My favorite character in those early episodes is Nicodemus because he’s so conflicted, especially when his wife says to him, “I love our life.” Ugh! He’s presenting at Symposium. Everybody respects him, and he’s so conflicted inside. I think he’s my favorite actor so far. What you just said, Rob, is, ooh, I could be put out of the synagogue maybe my life that my wife loves. Maybe I’d be giving all that up. It made it really real for me.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 00:59:10 I love what The Chosen does in highlighting the Savior’s invitations and inventing a fictionalized one, but watching how Peter, James, John, and Andrew react to that invitation, and then Matthew, and then Nicodemus almost, but not yet. But for Nicodemus, the good news, as for Martin Harris, is it’s not the end of the story, but still it underscores the notion that at some point in our lives, we all have to decide whether we’re going to follow Jesus Christ at some social cost.

Hank Smith: 00:59:41 Steve, our founder, Steve Sorensen, one of the first times I met him, I went out to speak for his business out in California, most of whom the employees are not members of the church. And there, Steve stands up and he starts talking about Elder Uchtdorf and what he learns from Elder Uchtdorf at General Conference and he quotes from it. I looked around and here’s all these non-Latter-day Saints that are taking notes and listening to him. He had just no problem declaring who he was.

  01:00:15 This is my love. This is what I do. This is what we can all learn from this. He wasn’t telling them to convert. He wasn’t telling them that his religion was right. He was saying, “Look, here’s something I learned from this great religious leader that I had.” I took a lot of courage from that, because I had been told early on in my life if I wanted to be a public speaker, I had to either choose to be an outspoken Latter-day Saint or I could choose to be a public speaker, but I couldn’t do both because one would really hurt the other.

  01:00:45 I’ve never forgotten that moment. Those who knew Steve, he was not ashamed of teaching. In fact, at Steve’s funeral, his children, they knew that most of the people listening were not Latter-day Saints. And they all said basically the same thing, “If my dad were here and had all of your attention, he would want me to tell you about the Book of Mormon, so that’s what I’m going to do.” It was so impressive. And then I want to tell on another friend, who we all love. His name is Kerry Muhlestein.

  01:01:17 You both know how brilliant Kerry Muhlestein is. His dissertation in Egyptology from UCLA won all sorts of awards. And then Kerry had to make the decision if he was going to publicly back the church, specifically the Pearl of Great Price as an Egyptologist. He told me, he said there was a moment where I was going to hit submit on a paper and he asked his wife to come over. Do you want to hit this with me because this is going to end my credibility with Egyptologists all over the world? And they hit it together. This is what we believe. This is who I am.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 01:02:01 I actually had on a very small way, when I was on your show a couple of years ago, it included John 14:6. There is no other way. I had been dipping my toe, still am, in the waters of teaching at other universities to professors on learning and teaching and have since been blessed with some opportunities to be keynote speakers there.

  01:02:21 But it occurred to me, somebody Googling me, because they’d seen my book or seen me somewhere, the first thing they might find was my appearance on your podcast and they would listen to it and how might they respond if they heard me defending and explaining the Savior saying, “There is no other way.” And I got the distinct impression, yeah, whatever. This is the truth I need you to teach.

  01:02:45 Don’t worry about those consequences. Those don’t matter. In fact, I think one of the best ways to resist peer pressure or succumbing to the desire to be approved of others is to follow the Prophet’s counsel, to think celestial. When I have that eternal perspective, I worry so much less about the consequences in the moment. I love the post-resurrection, not his resurrection, but the Savior’s resurrection, Peter.

  01:03:12 And in Acts 4:19-20, he’s given a gag order by the Sanhedrin, who could order him to be killed just like Jesus. And he says, Yea, whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than God, you go ahead and decide. I’m going with God. And what are you going to do? Kill me? I’ll resurrect , it turns out. You got nothing on me, boys. I’m going to preach, and good luck with whatever it is you’re doing over there for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. That’s thinking celestial.

Hank Smith: 01:03:43 That is beautiful.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 01:03:45 Hank, hearing about Brother Sorensen doing that reminds me of a time when I asked the placement advisor at Stanford Law School, should I keep my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on my resume or do I need to take that off? She was not a member of the church and said, “Rob, tell me, is being a Mormon a big part of your life?” And I said, “Actually it is.”

  01:04:06 She said, “I kind of suspected that. So if a law firm hated Mormons, when would you want to find that out? I’d keep it on.” I love that advice saying this is integral to who you are. You don’t want to sneak into a law firm and then have to try to hide that. Let them know who you are. Make sure you don’t end up at a place where that doesn’t work for them.

Hank Smith: 01:04:27 Rob, you get that from Section 3. Are you on my side or are you not? If you’re with me, then be with me.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 01:04:35 I love verse 15. It may be the only place in scripture where we get this. Let me be thy director who’s calling the shots here. By the way, that’s just so critical. My wife and I had agreed on one thing. She’s from San Francisco, spent early childhood years in Maryland, and then junior high and high school years in Evansville, Indiana. I grew up in the Seattle area. One thing we had agreed on was that we would not live in a predominantly LDS area. Now we’ve spent much of our married life living in Rexburg, Idaho and now Payson, Utah and loved it.

  01:05:11 I’m grateful that at some point we stopped calling the shots and just ask God, where wouldst thou have us go? And we’ve been so blessed by letting God be the director in our lives and not trying to direct him. Again, I hope that’s the big takeaway that listeners will have is that Martin comes out amazingly well in the end and stands steadfast as a witness of the Book of Mormon to the end of his life.

  01:05:36 And that said, I had sent an email to a couple of church history colleagues about verse 12 saying, any evidence that wicked meant something different to readers in 1828 than it means today because that seems tough? They actually both came back with some interesting thoughts to say, maybe we don’t need to water that down and try to explain that away. In fact, my friend John Thomas pointed me to this recent talk by John Tanner formerly at BYU and then BYU-Hawaii, but this is fascinating.

  01:06:05 He said, “In the church, we seem reluctant to talk about sin. Typically, we speak in euphemisms that reduce sin to mistakes, errors, weaknesses, faults, slip ups, and the like.” John Tanner continues, “When we do actually speak about sin, it is in reference to discrete transgressions as if the problem is merely our individual sins. Rarely do we speak about sinfulness at all, but what needs fixing goes beyond mistakes and errors. It goes beyond even our individual sins. What we need to get right with God is deeper than this.

  01:06:37 Gratefully so is the reach and power of the at onement that Christ makes possible. Christ not only forgives sins, he is able to root out sinfulness and free us from its bondage. He not only blots out specific stains and impurities, he heals our brokenness and makes us whole. His atonement not only satisfies the demands of justice, it redeems our fallen natures. So I guess we don’t have to apologize for the Lord calling Martin wicked when he’s told us through King Benjamin that natural men and women are all enemies to God.

  01:07:10 I love what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart and through all human hearts. That was true for Joseph and for Martin, and it’s true for us. We can take some hope from the fact that the Lord calls this wicked man to be one of the three witnesses, and he will use you and me despite our sinfulness and sins when we take advantage of his merciful invitation to repent and come unto him.

  01:07:46 And in Section 5, we get that rest of the story from Martin Harris, as he and Joseph both respond well to this divine course correction. And frankly, learning to respond well to divine course correction may be one of the most important qualities for us to develop as disciples of Christ.

Hank Smith: 01:08:04 Rob, don’t you think calling sin sin helps us have clear vision to make choices? I think of Joseph of Egypt, Genesis 39. He doesn’t say, “How could I slip up like this?” He says, “How could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Because he sees it clearly as a sin, that gives him the motivation to say, “I can’t do this.”

Dr. Rob Eaton: 01:08:32 We can’t fully repent when we minimize sin, especially our own sin.

John Bytheway: 01:08:38 Well, I’ve put off the natural man, but he keeps coming back.

Hank Smith: 01:08:46 Coming up in part two of this episode.

Dr. Rob Eaton: 01:08:48 A sister in the ward who had a son with a severe case of cerebral palsy, so he was wheelchair bound. And she was a single mother and then also had other foster children. She developed some back problems, so she couldn’t get him into the bathtub alone. She had asked the bishop to ask for a couple of priests every Saturday night to help get Sammy in the tub. We show up the first night. 17-year-old boy. He’s not clinically trained. And we got to take Sammy’s clothes off.

  01:09:18 I think he got a bath once a week. Then there he is without any clothes on. We try to get him to the bathtub, touching him as little as possible. This is just way outside our comfort zone. We get him in the tub. We let her know, “Hey, we got Sammy in the tub,” and she says, “Yeah, just go ahead and give him a bath. I’m cooking dinner.” And we’re like, “What? Give him a bath? What?”