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

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:00:04 I was confronted with a new situation. I’ve raised five amazing children and things are hunky-dory, but suddenly I am a single mother having to support myself and create this new life.

Hank Smith: 00:00:27 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of FollowHIM. My name is Hank Smith and I’m your host and I’m here with my wise co-host, John Bytheway. John, I call you wise today because it says in section six verse seven, “Seek not for riches but for wisdom.” And I know you’re not rich, John, so you must be wise. My wise co-host.

John Bytheway: 00:00:49 Well, 0 out of two ain’t bad.

Hank Smith: 00:00:53 He’s neither rich nor wise, but listen, John, look at the end of verse seven, “He that hath eternal life is rich,” so you are rich, John.

John Bytheway: 00:01:03 One time I looked up in 2 Nephi 32, he says, “He have wondered what you should do after you have entered in by the way.”, in the seminary manual, it says, by the way, means on the path to eternal life, so I’ll take it.

Hank Smith: 00:01:16 You are on your way to riches.

John Bytheway: 00:01:18 I am Brother On-the-path. That’s right.

Hank Smith: 00:01:21 I am Brother On-the-path. John, we are joined today by a wonderful historian. Her name is Dr. Taunalyn Ford. Taunalyn, thank you for being here.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:01:30 Thank you for letting me come. I’m excited to talk about some of my favorite chapters.

Hank Smith: 00:01:35 I am excited, I know John is as well and I’m sure all of our listeners are. I’m going to read from the Come, Follow Me manual and then let’s turn it over to you, Dr. Ford. “In the fall of 1828, a young schoolteacher named Oliver Cowdery took a teaching job in Manchester, New York, and stayed with the family of Lucy and Joseph Smith Sr. Oliver had heard about their son Joseph and his remarkable experiences, and Oliver, who considered himself a seeker of truth, wanted to know more. The Smiths described visits from angels, an ancient record, and the gift to translate by the power of God. Oliver was fascinated.”

  00:02:13 Can you imagine both of you? Well, how did I get this job? Could it be true? Lucy and Joseph Sr. gave him advice that applies to anyone seeking truth: pray and ask the Lord. Oliver did and the Lord answered speaking peace to his mind.” And then this is the part you mentioned, “Revelation, Oliver discovered, isn’t just for prophets like Joseph Smith. It’s for anyone who wants it and seeks it diligently. Oliver still had a lot to learn, but he knew enough to take his next step. He knew the Lord was doing something important through Joseph Smith, and Oliver wanted to be part of it.” That is awesome, right? Taunalyn, how should we start?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:02:54 Oliver, he’s a year younger than Joseph Smith. He’s ready to match his energy and his enthusiasm. He’s also a seeker. He’s open for this. He’s had his own experiences with receiving revelation and he’s going to do that before he even sees Joseph Smith. And we’ll talk a little bit more in detail, but he’s a teacher and I think teachers are able to translate, so he’s kind of a natural for this when he is in the home of the Smiths, Lucy Mack says when he was asking them these questions, they were a little careful at first, but he told them at one point, “I believe I need to be a part of this. I’m feeling like I should go with Samuel when he goes in the Spring and meet Joseph.”

  00:03:50 He was that interested, and he had had that much of a confirmation. And then Lucy says at that point we told him that it was his privilege to know for himself, you can read this in Saints volume one. I love this. I’ll just read it and it comes right from Lucy Mack Smith’s own words. “Retiring to his bed, Oliver prayed privately to know if what he had heard about the gold plates was true. The Lord showed him a vision of the plates and Joseph’s efforts to translate them, a peaceful feeling rested over him and he knew then that he should volunteer to be Joseph’s scribe. He told no one.” The fact that he had seen a vision of the plates was really amazing to me that he had that kind of a witness before and all of this comes out of the Joseph Smith History and in Saints.

  00:04:48 Oliver’s background here, he’s intelligent, he knows how to write. The Lord has prepared him. If we flash over to Harmony, now of course we’ve been talking mostly about Martin Harris up till now as the scribe, a little bit with Emma as the scribe. According to Lucy, Joseph gets the interpreters back on September 22nd, 1828. So he and Emma would do a little bit of translating when they could, but they have to prepare for winter. They have been living on the farm there in this house on the Hale property. We don’t know what the initial agreement was, but there was some sort of agreement that they would buy this house or they would pay their way. They haven’t really been able to do that. Joseph’s quote, he says actually that, they were ready to kick me out.

  00:05:46 He says, “We had become reduced in property and my wife’s father was about to turn me out of doors and I had not where to go.” He said he cried unto the Lord that he would provide for me to accomplish the work whereunto he had commanded me.” And I love this. It’s just Joseph saying, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this.” And he asked for that help and it comes in the form of Oliver Cowdery. So let’s have fun for just a minute. If you guys are on Latter-day Saint Jeopardy, what is the date you’ve got to be ready to know? What was the day that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized? This is the one date if you have to know one. As a history teacher, people are like, “Do we have to know dates?”

Hank Smith: 00:06:35 This one is important,

John Bytheway: 00:06:37 Formally organized as a church, right?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:06:39 The day the church was formally organized.

John Bytheway: 00:06:43 It’s April 6th, 1830.

Hank Smith: 00:06:44 1830.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:06:45 There you go. April 6th, 1830, so we’re going to do like a flashback one year. It just gives us the contest here. We are going to back up one year to April 6th, 1829. What happens on that day? We get a record of this. In fact, in the Joseph Smith papers, there’s even a document, an agreement between Joseph Smith and his father-in-law, Isaac Hale and it’s actually written down by Oliver Cowdery and signed. And it basically says he’s going to buy this house for $200, that there was a $64 down payment that was paid, and guess who probably footed that bill? It was Oliver Cowdery.

  00:07:36 That was his money that he had been paid for teaching. The quote is that he assisted Joseph Smith in arranging some business of a temporal nature and on Tuesday the seventh commenced to write the Book of Mormon. That gives you an easy way to remember two really important dates, but it also gives us this window into the fact that the entire Book of Mormon is going to be translated, written down. It is going to be taken to a printer, it is going to be published, and if you’ve been to the Grandin Printing shop, you understand how miraculous that process was, right? And they are going to be able to hold that book in their hands in one year. That is marvelous.

Hank Smith: 00:08:31 Looking far from the future, you’re just going, “Oh, guys, oh, this is going to be a great year. What the things you’re going to see.” Yeah.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:08:39 Just going to happen in that one year. If we jump into section six, the great and marvelous work that is about to come forth, I mean we’ve all tried to write books. You guys have succeeded.

Hank Smith: 00:08:55 If that’s what you want to call it.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:08:58 It’s amazing to imagine. I remember one of my professors at BYU saying after we read some profound section of the Doctrine and Covenants or the Pearl of Great Price or something he would say, “And Joseph Smith just made that up after eating cornbread with Emma.”

John Bytheway: 00:09:19 For my own clarity, I want to make sure I understand the 116 pages, would we say then that the scribe for those were mostly Martin Harris and Emma and that’s about it?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:09:32 Yeah. Martin Harris, I’m so grateful for what he was willing to sacrifice. You can see both Martin and Oliver are going to go back and forth between this. They know that this is the work of God, that what Joseph is doing is real, but there will be moments of doubt where they will need revelations, they’ll receive those revelations. Section five is so powerful in terms of helping us understand the perspective that we should have. It also sets up this anticipation for the arrival of Oliver Cowdery. It really promises the scribe, but as we talk about both Oliver and Martin, I also want to bring in Emma just for a second. Joseph Smith III, her son said, “Mother, tell us about this. What was it like?” He wanted some confirmation at the end of her life and she said, “I felt the plates as they lay on the table tracing their outline in shape, they seemed to be pliable like thick paper and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by a thumb as one does thumb the edges of a book.”

  00:10:51 And then in answer to Joseph Smith’s follow-up question, could Father have written the manuscript before or memorized what he dictated? Emma said, “No. Joseph at that time could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon.” And then she said, “Furthermore, he had neither manuscript nor book to read from. If he had anything of that kind, he could not have concealed it from me.” And that is a wife speaking. Martin and Oliver doubted at times, but Emma never doubted that process. It’s interesting. I do a lot of studies about Christian mission and the history of Christian missionary work in the world. And one of the most important things with missionary work has been the translating of the message. The sign of Protestant Christianity was the idea that you translate the words that you don’t have to keep it in Latin, that you can translate this into the language of the people.

  00:12:05 If we think about mother tongue, a lot of times those translations have been done with women and with women in mind, and what is the mother tongue? With my job at the church history department, as I wrote my dissertation on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in India, I was able to meet three different women who had worked on the translation of the Book of Mormon. One in Hindi, one in Telugu and one in Tamil. They talked about how close they felt to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and to that process it was powerful to see that it is always 1830 somewhere in the church. This is what God does. He wants to continue this process of translation. It brings us into dialogue with his word in a way that we can then translate it for our lives. If it can become ours enough that we can translate it and find meaning, then we’re able to also share it with others.

John Bytheway: 00:13:19 A lot of us have wondered how did this work, and I know that we don’t really have all the answers, but was he looking at characters and waiting for his heart and mind, a pure revelation? Was it that that’s how it started, but as he progressed, it got different. Can you shed any light on that?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:13:38 We always have to remember that when Joseph Smith was asked, how did it happen, right? Give us details. It was what were the words? Through the gift and power of God.

Hank Smith: 00:13:48 Through the gift and power of God. Yeah.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:13:50 But what we do have, we do have from those scribes who were witnesses, who watched the process. Once they get to Harmony, and by the way, if you haven’t been to Harmony lately, you got to go again. Church Historic sites is constantly doing amazing things, but for all of you, and I know John and Hank, I know you have a global audience because I’ve been in the south of India in Coimbatore and people have said, “I watch John and Hank”

Hank Smith: 00:14:21 No, you’re kidding.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:14:22 Yes.

Hank Smith: 00:14:23 Oh wow.

John Bytheway: 00:14:24 Wow.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:14:26 The church history department, the publications’ division is what I work for, but there’s also the Historic sites’ division, and they’re doing so much to try to bring those sites to the people so that you don’t have to go there. You can actually go and see the sites and take a tour, 3D tour. Back to your question, in that home in Harmony, for the most part, the way that they have that home set up is the way that it happened. You’ll go in there and you’ll see a replica of the plates and they’re wrapped in cloth sitting on the kitchen table in this small kitchen.

  00:15:05 Joseph Smith is not looking at the plates. What’s he looking at? We’ve got the what we call the Urim and Thummim, but Urim and Thummim for us has expanded into meaning quite a lot of things. It can mean those interpreters that came with the plates that were put in the lenses. But by this time, the process that he has developed has been to put the seer stone in a hat, not because the hat is a magical hat, but because it blocks out light. I love Elder Uchtdorf’s text that he did one time when he posted on social media. Do you remember that?

Hank Smith: 00:15:47 Yeah. He’s holding the phone.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:15:50 Exactly, and the text, so a text is about let’s say 25 to 30 words. From what we can tell from scholars who have really looked at the original manuscript and watched when Oliver Cowdery was writing, writing, writing, and when he took a break.

John Bytheway: 00:16:10 When he lifted up his pen.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:16:12 It seems to about be that size of text, so what’s happening here is more of a transcription than a translation. For years in the history, we understood the word translation in a way that it didn’t quite work for us to put this as Joseph’s looking at a stone in a hat, we wanted to say, “No, he’s looking at characters and translating.” But really it’s far more miraculous to me to imagine that he was able to do what he did. I mean, it is very clear that what they had time for was for Joseph to read about 30 words, for Oliver to write it, to read it back, and then he will say, “You got it.” And then it seems that would then clear if it was written properly, if it wasn’t. Sometimes that was corrected, and we also see that words were spelled.

Hank Smith: 00:17:20 John last year as we read through the Book of Mormon, how many times did we go, “Wow.” How many times did we see some sort of intertextuality or chapter that you’re going, “If he just wrote this chapter, if that was it, he’s a prophet.”

John Bytheway: 00:17:38 Amazing. And then we would say things like, Oh yeah, that came out of a farm boy’s head or something like that because it was so deep and ancient roots in it, the way it was written or composed or it was chiastic or something. It was like, “Oh, sure.”

Hank Smith: 00:17:57 Taunalyn, our friend, Dr. Michael Wilcox, who has forgotten more books than I will ever read, he’d said something once so simple. He said, “Those who don’t think that the Book of Mormon is good writing don’t know what good writing is.” I found that to be true. When you first read it, you go, “Oh, okay, this is good.” And then you read it again, you go, “Oh, wow, it’s better.” And then you start to study and it opens up into a mansion. What did Elder Maxwell say? A mansion with room after room after room.

John Bytheway: 00:18:34 Imagine Joseph, Oliver and how they felt about Nephi when they got back to the small plates. Imagine how they felt about Alma as they were writing their words. Speaking of angels in the room, were they there? Were they helping out?

Hank Smith: 00:18:51 Were they helping? Yeah, making additions.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:18:56 When an angel comes to you and says, “I am Moroni.” And then later on as you’re translating, you suddenly read about this person’s life.

John Bytheway: 00:19:07 I know him. I’ve seen him in your life.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:19:12 I want everyone to know the beauty of the Book of Mormon is that it is not just an American text. It is also amazing to me in the global histories that we’ve worked on and that I worked on with Melissa Inouye, who you’ve had on the program who’s passed away now, it is unreal to understand how that book has changed the lives of people all over the world. It’s hard to imagine that that can resonate with other cultures and other peoples all over the world.

  00:19:53 There’s so many resources. I get excited about all the resources probably because I work at church headquarters and I know that there’s a lot of busy bees up there working. In the Come, Follow Me manual you’ve got links, you’ve got a movie. I love the movie that they have there, that they show at some of the historic sites. They show a clip of Joseph and he’s coming to the part where he talks about baptizing children is an abomination, right?

John Bytheway: 00:20:23 Oh, that part.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:20:25 That part, and then he just stops and he runs out because what happened just a few months before, they lost the first child.

John Bytheway: 00:20:36 Keep explaining what happens. What does Joseph do in that moment?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:20:40 He runs out and Emma is doing laundry and you can see him embrace her. They’re constantly in that film drawing attention to the grave that is there for that child.

John Bytheway: 00:20:53 And Joseph is running out to say, “Guess what I just learned?” All the grief they’ve had. Suddenly there’s a new light about that. That’s why I love that clip having extended family who’s lost children and what he thought and what the Christian world thought about what that meant and what he just learned and leaps from the table and in the movie Oliver’s like, “What’s happening?” Joseph just learned it and ran out to tell Emma, I am so glad you brought up that scene. It’s one of my favorites too.

Hank Smith: 00:21:34 John, Taunalyn, if someone goes on their phone, goes to the Come Follow Me manual, scrolls down on this section there is the video Days of Harmony. You can click on it.

John Bytheway: 00:21:46 Now, sometimes prophets can move mountains and sometimes prophets can move highways. The first time I was in Harmony, the highway went right through where those homes were.

Hank Smith: 00:22:02 Because they lived on the road.

John Bytheway: 00:22:04 Yeah. And you saw the John the Baptist Monument by the side of the road. I can think of three places where President Gordon B. Hinckley moved highways.

Hank Smith: 00:22:19 Yeah.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:22:19 Wow.

John Bytheway: 00:22:20 In Kirtland, in Palmyra and in Harmony. The church managed to make these miracles happen.

Hank Smith: 00:22:27 And John, honestly, they are miracle stories. Steve Young, if you know the story of Steve Young in Kirtland. Yeah, Steve, we don’t know if you’re listening out there, but if you are, we need to tell that story. Maybe we’ll have Steve come on and tell that story.

John Bytheway: 00:22:39 We should.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:22:39 Definitely.

John Bytheway: 00:22:40 There’s a YouTube of him telling the story in the T-shirt he happened to pick that day and-

Hank Smith: 00:22:46 The miracles are still happening.

John Bytheway: 00:22:48 They’re miraculous stories and I’m grateful for those miracles because now we can do what we just talked about. We can go stand in that structure in Harmony and say, this is the space where this happened and feel that.

Hank Smith: 00:23:01 And, Taunalyn, you’ve said we don’t just have to go there, is that someone in India can go online and walk basically through the site?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:23:12 Yes, you can go to those historic sites and you can see them. Ryan Saltzgiver who has done some work with Come Follow Up. He has gone and done some of the filming. He’s one of the people who worked on the global histories initially. It’s his dream to be able to bring historic sites to the world, but then also to identify historic sites all over the world. There’s places wherever you are that our history for the church was made. Those are very important as well. This is your story too. We all need to record and get it down. Jumping into the section, section six, this is given sometime after they have started the translation process, maybe a couple days into the process. And it’s clear that Oliver needs more assurance, so he’s given this blessing. It also to me in some ways feels like he’s being set apart as a translator, but that’s not necessarily what it is.

  00:24:24 When God says that, “A marvelous work is about to come forth, behold I am God, give heed to my word,” which is so powerful. The field is white. It’s all of these scriptures that we associate with missionary work. If you will ask, you shall receive and then seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion. I love being in different places in the world and seeing the church is no bigger than a ward. What is going on for the cause of Zion in your little ward is miraculous. It’s absolutely miraculous. The verse seven, seek not for riches that you joked about, Hank, but for wisdom. This ability that Joseph had, that also we’re going to read about a gift with the rod that Oliver was using. There’s a temptation to monetize these and I think with any of our talents and gifts, anything in life, there’s always a temptation to put something before the Lord, right?

Hank Smith: 00:25:40 Yeah. It’s not for John, but for me, this is a temptation for me.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:25:47 The Lord is at this moment calling their attention to, the key is establishing Zion. I wanted to talk a little bit about 11, 14, If you will inquire, thou shalt know mysteries that are great and marvelous, exercise thy gift. The idea is that I think we’ve all experienced being able to receive more light and knowledge when our goal is to bless others. I’m amazed at how much that happens and helps people. It says here that in verse 11, If “thou shalt exercise thy gift, that thou mayest find out mysteries, that thou mayest bring many to the knowledge of the truth, yea, convince them of the error of their ways. ” And then trifle not with sacred things, but in verse 14, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, blessed art thou for what thou hast done; for thou hast inquired of me, and behold, as often as thou hast inquired thou hast received instruction of my Spirit.” And I love how personal he gets here.

  00:26:57 “If it had not been so, thou wouldst not have come to the place where thou art at this time.” It was that guidance that he received that brought him to Harmony. It’s so important for him and we’re going to go into further on as we discuss that vision that he had of the plates that confirmed the testimony that Lucy and Joseph Sr. invited him to receive. In verse 16, you get this way of the Lord helping Oliver know that he knows. There’s a link there to Elder Neil L. Andersen’s Spiritually Defining Memories talk where he teaches a lot of this talking about experiences that we have in our lives that may not seem that important or consequential. But they might be actually then accompanied by an exceptionally strong spiritual experience and a confirmation of the love of God where you know that God is there.

  00:28:11 He gives this great example of a woman in France who was a young adult. She was at a beach not far from Bordeaux, France that leaders had decided to take one last swim and one of them had lost glasses and it happened to be the driver. So they weren’t going to be able to drive home if they couldn’t find the glasses. The loss of the glasses, it seemed like it would be absolutely impossible and the sister said that she doubted a bit while another sister in the group suggested that they pray. And kind of under her breath she murmured that, “Praying would avail us absolutely nothing.” But she said, “I uneasily joined the group to pray publicly as we stood waist deep in the murky water.” And then she said, “Once the prayer was over, I stretched my arms to splash someone.” I love that she was just going to splash somebody and her hand just happened to brush the glasses.

  00:29:16 It was that moment that she had this powerful feeling that she said, “God pierced my soul and I knew that God actually does hear and answer prayers.” This is Oliver having that same experience where God is saying, “Oliver, I know that you know that I gave you this answer.” I love these verses. Let’s read 15, “Behold, thou knowest that thou hast inquired of me and I did enlighten thy mind; and now I tell thee these things that thou mayest know that thou hast been enlightened by the Spirit of truth.” I like that. I think that’s helpful. Receiving revelation is a process in life. One of the things that helps me is enlightening, has something enlightened my mind. Then I know it’s the Spirit of truth, but he goes on to talk about there is none else save God that knows the intents of your heart. He continues to say the words or the work that you have written are true.

  00:30:27 I’m telling you these things so that you know what you’re writing there with Joseph as you scribe are truth. As he is a witness in this process, he’s to also in verse 19, admonish Joseph in his faults and receive admonition of him. I love verse 20 especially, and this is where we have to be all we see, this is where we got to put our name in there because thou art Taunalyn and I’ve spoken unto thee because of thy desires. The key here is God wants to speak to us.” I love Elder Maxwell’s quote about the Father and the Son are giving away the secrets of the universe, they want so badly. The key is we must have a desire and we must ask and knock, and then he says, “But treasure up these words in thy heart. Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God.” This is my favorite. “I will encircle thee in the arms of my love.” When I was in Sweden in the wintertime the sun will rise and about 11 o’clock and then three o’clock it’ll set.

  00:31:54 It’s very, very dark. We just celebrated the 13th of December, which on the old Julian calendar would’ve been the darkest night. They celebrate Santa Lucia, which is the Saint of far off Spain that makes an appearance in Sweden and becomes very important to them. When I was in Sweden on my mission, I experienced my first winter, my first few weeks I think I had my wallet stolen. I couldn’t speak anything. I didn’t understand anything and my family didn’t have my address, so this is back in the olden days when you didn’t call, so I had no word from them. I felt incredibly alone and very much in the darkness and had one of those spiritually defining memories in the sacred precinct of the bathroom where you have to go to sometimes get privacy, right? I remember kneeling down by the bathtub and pouring out my heart, feeling just a heavenly embrace. It was something that was so powerful that it was able to change the perspective and give me something to continue to return to and lean back on.

Hank Smith: 00:33:16 Taunalyn, I loved what you did there. Take verse 20 and just put your name in there. It’s a beautiful message from the Lord to each individual. “I’ve spoken to thee because of thy desires. Treasure up these words in your heart, scripture, be faithful, be diligent and keep my commandments. I will encircle thee in the arms of my love.” Don’t you love how he’s talking to Oliver individually, but he’s also speaking to any reader?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:33:44 Yeah, we can all testify to those moments that we’ve experienced where God has reached out and let us know that we are not alone, that he is there. I mean it felt like an embrace in many ways, the idea of encircling that our Father in heaven promises us versus the spiritual chains that Satan tries to capture us with. I find that I’m drawn to that in the scriptures often when the Lord will say, “I will encircle you in the arms of my love.” Whereas other things that lead us away from truth and away from light lead us into this, into these chains of limitations.

Hank Smith: 00:34:35 What a fascinating connection there. I want to go right to my search tools and look up chains in the scriptures because I’ve never thought of that.

John Bytheway: 00:34:47 I haven’t thought of the two side-by-side. Yeah, I’m thinking the vision of Enoch where he looked up and the chain veiled the face of the earth with darkness and Satan looked up and laughed.

Hank Smith: 00:35:02 So many times in the Book of Mormon, turn away from your sins, shake off the chains of him that would bind you.

John Bytheway: 00:35:09 Instead of an embrace.

Hank Smith: 00:35:11 Instead of the arms of my love. Wow.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:35:14 Yeah. I think there’s a clear contrast there that when I know that I’m feeling encircled by God’s love, I’m on the right path, when I know that something is limiting agency, limiting my happiness, my ability to move forward on the gospel path.

Hank Smith: 00:35:37 It’s not the arms, it’s the chains. What a cool contrast.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:35:41 I think too, the experience that I appreciate in section six especially is when the Lord brings Oliver’s experience to his mind again, when he says, “If you need a further witness,” in verse 22, “cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in your heart that you might know concerning the truth of these things. Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?” That is the key that the talk by President Eyring when he talks about the Spirit speaking to him and saying, “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down so that you can return to them.” This talk that I referenced, we have these spiritually defining moments so that the Lord can say to all of us, “Did I not speak peace to your mind?” And I think that’s another difference that we can see that juxtaposition between the encircling versus the binding. We can see when we receive revelation, when we receive a witness, it brings us peace and that cannot be produced by the adversary. It’s not in his wheelhouse.

Hank Smith: 00:37:07 I like that, it’s not in his wheelhouse. The Come, Follow Me Manual says, “Oliver’s experiences might cause you to, quote, ‘cast your mind’ on moments when you’ve felt the Lord was speaking to you. Have you recorded your thoughts or feelings about these experiences?” I took this advice years ago. Just started a little note on my phone. I don’t know about either of you, but I finally admitted to myself, I’m not going to keep a journal. I’ve wanted to for years and years and I thought, if I’m going to do it, I would’ve done it by now, so I’m going to do something. So I opened a little note on my phone, which I titled The Tender Mercies of the Lord. When I experience them or remember them, I can write those down. It has been a wonderful blessing to be able to go back and take a look at those and remember them.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:38:00 I love that. I’m the same way, Hank. I’m not very consistent. There’s a lot of places where we have these opportunities to leave traces of ourselves. Sometimes in a calendar I’ll monologue a little bit about a day. When I’m on my bike and I’m listening or reading the scriptures, I’m scripture-cising…

Hank Smith: 00:38:20 Scripture-cising.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:38:22 I’ll stop and I get what I feel like is some sort of piece of revelation and I’ll take the notes on my phone and I’ll just put it in there because we can come back to it and you can easily transfer those to a journal.

Hank Smith: 00:38:36 What a good idea, and just so you know, I might use scripture-cising for a really long time. John, we’re going to have to reference Dr. Ford, Taunalyn every time.

John Bytheway: 00:38:46 We go scripture-cising.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:38:48 Endorphins and the Spirit at the same time. It’s a winning combination.

John Bytheway: 00:38:56 I love what you’re showing us here in verse 24, the Lord says to Oliver, “Now behold, you have received a witness; for if I have told you things which no man knoweth have you not received a witness?” And I have in my margin, Oliver needed a revelation to tell him he’d already had a revelation.

Hank Smith: 00:39:17 That’s wonderful.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:39:18 This was a tender mercy, right? This was the Lord through Joseph showing that my prophet knows what we’ve been talking about. I can tell him.

Hank Smith: 00:39:29 Yeah, that’s almost Oliver, I know you.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:39:32 I love how the manual encourages us to write. I was talking to a wonderful sister from Japan yesterday and the humility that she had when I asked, I said, “You need to tell the story.” And she said, “No, no, no. My story isn’t important.” And I just said, “No, stories matter. Every story matters.” If we hadn’t had Lucy Smith write down what she had heard from Oliver about his experience, he explained that to Lucy and she wrote it down, we don’t have it from Oliver. We wouldn’t have that experience. We wouldn’t know that he had received this vision of the place. It matters, write it down. You are part of history. It needs to be written by you.

Hank Smith: 00:40:24 Wouldn’t you say, Taunalyn, that someone might think, “Well, I’m not Joseph Smith. I’m not Oliver Cowdery. Who cares about my story.” I don’t think they knew that they were Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, the names that are going to be talked about 200 years later.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:40:39 That’s part of the marvelous work and wonder that this would come to be what it is. Sometimes I think to myself, “Would they have any idea what it looks like in Times Square?” Those lights, I mean flash forward, put them there and then the Book of Mormon musical comes up in there.

Hank Smith: 00:40:59 They’re looking.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:41:00 Your book is going to be so famous that there’s going to be a spin-off on Broadway. I mean, what is Broadway?

Hank Smith: 00:41:09 What are you talking about?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:41:10 Anyway, you get the point, right? It’s, your stories matter. They’re crucial to testify of the work of God in the world and the establishment of Zion, and I just… oh, it’s so important that there are two people in this process that there are witnesses to this process.

Hank Smith: 00:41:33 Taunalyn and John, you’re both teachers, excellent teachers. What is the power of stories in teaching? I have noticed that I can be teaching a group of youth or my students at BYU and I can be teaching principles and giving a little bit of a lecture. “You guys, you need to do this. You need to do this.” I have their attention, but the moment it seems, that I start to tell a story, especially a significant spiritual divine story, something happens.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:42:05 It is. Stories are so powerful and I learned this especially with my training at Claremont Graduate University. I got to be there when Richard Bushman, who is one of the most important biographers and founders of the Joseph Smith Papers. But his wife Claudia, started an oral history project for women. It’s just as simple as taking as a woman and asking questions about her experience in the gospel and the power in those stories. It was just phenomenal. That’s what I based my whole research on. That was my technique that I used in my dissertation was doing oral history interviews in India and I’ve collected over 300 and some odd stories of just Latter-day Saints and how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints works in the lives of Latter-day Saints in India and the miracles that have happened. It is really helpful when I’ve been going through really bad moments. Sometimes the Spirit will say, “Transcribe an interview, listen to someone’s story.”

  00:43:21 The same thing with church history. We just listen to others. The text that I use when I teach world religions at BYU, I mostly teach at the Salt Lake Center. I teach from a text that was written by Stephen Prothero who says that religions are actually story systems. There’s crucial foundational stories to each religious tradition that make the tradition what it is. In fact, Jews will say that they need to, if you don’t tell the story, you forget what the law is. It’s all connected, so they’ll gather together at Passover to tell the story. They’ll gather together at Purim to tell the story of Esther. They’ll gather at these moments, particularly when someone can say, “This happened to me,” and we can rely on that. I know the story that Melissa Inouye shared when she was on the podcast about being able to hear other people’s stories and relate to them is like being able to have extra witnesses and extra people that can mourn with us and be together with us. We need each other’s stories. Stories help us make sense of the world too.

Hank Smith: 00:44:52 Yeah, John Bytheway is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard. What have stories done for you?

John Bytheway: 00:45:01 A story immediately makes somebody go, “What’s going to happen?” And then as you’ve talked about Taunalyn, then you’re going to apply that to me. Could that happen to me or has that happened to me? I remember somebody a long time ago saying that you could write a talk, you could divide it into hook, teach, apply, a learning hook, apply.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:45:24 Absolutely.

John Bytheway: 00:45:25 And I love the stories because you want to know what’s going to happen. Is it going to happen the way I think. I’m grateful for stories too because they hold my attention. I’ve seen Hank teach little kids, elementary school kids and just hold them all because of a story and they all want to know what’s going to happen. But documenting those stories is a list of our tender mercies. I love what President Eyring said that a journal is not for your trips and your trophies. A journal is to document the hand of God in your life.

  00:46:03 That’s what those stories do. Then you can go back and say, “Wow, God has really been involved in my life. I should not have forgotten that.” I one time asked my class, “Now what’s Passover again?” And this sister raised her hand and I just loved the way she said this. “That’s when we were protected from the Pharaoh.” And I went, “We?” Because that was her heritage and she didn’t say they, it was her story. I’ll never forget that. I stopped the whole class, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Would you say that again?” Because I wanted them to hear, I am house of Israel. That’s how she was putting it. That’s when we were protected.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:46:46 How powerful.

Hank Smith: 00:46:48 I hope everyone will really take this to heart and act right now. Pause the podcast and find a way to record the hand of God in your life to get it started because I’ve noticed the Lord says, “Oh, okay, now you’re writing these down. Here’s some more.” You can actually do that on the Family Tree app. You go to Family Tree app and you bring up your own family tree and you click on yourself. Right there, there’s a place called memories that you can hit. And then if you hit the plus sign at the bottom, at least it’s on the bottom for me, it says, you can add a document, write a story, add audio. You could just start talking.

John Bytheway: 00:47:30 If I ever want to shed a few tears, I’ll go watch my kids opening their mission calls, the little movies on my phone and watch everybody standing around erupt, and those are just fun to watch. Those are great memories.

Hank Smith: 00:47:48 Right?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:47:48 No, I find myself captivated by Family Search so often. I want to share one more quote that I’ve discovered from the team that was the writers on Saints by Nephi Anderson in the Improvement Era in 1898. He said, “The Latter-day Saint understands that this world is not altogether a playground and that the main object of life is not to be amused. He who reaches the people, and the story writer does that, should not lose the opportunity of preaching. A good story is artistic preaching.” I love that.

John Bytheway: 00:48:32 Boy, that’s great.

Hank Smith: 00:48:34 Tell your children these stories. You’re on a drive say, “Have I ever told you about the time?” And tell the story.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:48:43 So smart.

Hank Smith: 00:48:44 Yeah. All right, Taunalyn, where do you want to go next?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:48:47 All right, well, I think we read 24. I would like to look at 25 and 26 for just a second. Does somebody want to read that?

John Bytheway: 00:48:56 Section six?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:48:57 Yes.

John Bytheway: 00:48:58 I’ll do it. Doctrine and Covenants section six verse 25, “And, behold, I grant unto you a gift, if you desire of me, to translate, even as my servant Joseph. Verily verily, I say unto you, that there are records which contain much of my gospel, which have been kept back because of the wickedness of the people.”

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:49:20 I love this opportunity that Oliver is given. You have a gift to translate even as my servant Joseph, and he doesn’t ever say, I’m going to remove that gift from you. It won’t go well. He’ll say for time, let’s just keep it in the positions we’ve got it. Joseph is translating, you’re scribing. I believe that the Lord has blessed each of us with the gift, which is simply his Spirit to translate as Joseph did each day. When I am scripture-cising, I am translating. In the 1828 dictionary, the idea of translating like Enoch was translated or like John is translated is right there in the dictionary. So to transfer: to convey from one to another, 2  Samuel 3:10 is an example of this, and Webster himself gives us this link in the dictionary to 2 Samuel 3:10. It’s amazing the way that the dictionary demonstrates how immersed the people were at that time in the King James translation of the Bible.

John Bytheway: 00:50:51 2 Samuel chapter 3:10, “To translate the kingdom from the house of Saul and to set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah from Dan, even to Beersheba.”

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:51:04 Okay. There’s all sorts of interesting ways that the King James version is using the word translate. Number four is to cause to remove from one part of the body to another as to translate a disease. Yeah. Another one is change and I love that one. For me, I was confronted with a new situation. I’ve raised five amazing children and things are hunky-dory, but suddenly I am a single mother and having to support myself and create this new life. It feels to me like a translation of Taunalyn Rutherford to Taunalyn Ford. It’s been fascinating experiencing divorce in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s not the most comfortable situation, even though it’s what I felt was the wise choice at this point in my time and according to that revelation that I received, this concept of we’re constantly giving birth to a new person almost daily in many ways.

  00:52:29 So I feel like if we can use that idea of translation as change, it’s helpful to me. We don’t have to be the same person that we were five years ago. We can be different, we can be new. We can continually translate ourselves until we come into the idea of being translated into what an eternal being would be. Another idea is to interpret, to render into another language, to express the sense of one language in the words of another. So that’s what we usually think of, but we have to get to number six to get that, and then finally number seven is to explain. So when we see the word translate in the Doctrine and Covenants, in the Bible, anywhere in the Book of Mormon, because it was translated into King James English, very much 1828, mind that it had to come through, we can understand that translation is more expansive. I think it helps us to find applications in our own lives to our own stories.

Hank Smith: 00:53:40 That’s awesome.

John Bytheway: 00:53:41 I think that’s really helpful because we think of translating, take this ancient language and convey exactly the same meaning in this different language. What you’ve given us is a lot broader transform.

Hank Smith: 00:53:59 I remember this moment four years ago, we’re on the same lesson, we had Janiece Johnson with us, Dr. Johnson, who’s brilliant, and she said something so similar. In fact, I brought the transcript with me today, so I think it’s so wonderful that we have a second witness from you, Taunalyn. She says how the translation of the Book of Mormon happened. Those specifics we’ve got a lot of questions on. We don’t know. Joseph doesn’t give us the benefit of explaining it to us. He says, this all happens by the gift and power of God, but this gives us another example. I think that it should help us broaden our perspective of translation. That translation is not just this narrow translating from one language to another. Then she quotes from the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, great minds think alike. She says, “Look at translation, translated being, and that kind of translation actually comes in the definitions before translating from one language to another. He’s translating scripture for us and it is transformed into a way that we can access it.

  00:55:08 That it’s intelligible to us as mortals, like a body is translated, it can withstand the glory of God. This is taking a text or a source of knowledge. She says, changing its form so that it can be understood, and I can read in the transcript, I can see how shocked I was. “Wait, what?” And I said this, “Janiece, I’ve never made that connection. When we talk about the Book of Mormon being translated, why don’t we speak of translated beings taking something from earthly and making it holy. We’ve been a church a long time and we’re still learning what the Lord meant.” We grew up being taught and I think it’s okay that we’re still learning that, “Oh, he’s taking it from one language to another.” Yet Joseph Smith had a Hebrew tutor, a Greek tutor. He wanted to learn languages, so in his mind, I don’t think he’s saying, “I can translate any language from one to another.” It was a very spiritual making something holy. What do you think about that? That we’ve learned what translation means as a church.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:56:21 When you’re talking about Joseph learning Hebrew, why would you need to learn Hebrew if the Lord can just… But I think what we understand is that this process is, it’s a calling. I believe it is part of the ongoing restoration. The Lord gives us his words and he says, verse 20, “Treasure up these words in your heart.” How can he have us do that? Well, the one way he did that was to have his prophet translate. When they’re done with the Book of Mormon, what happens? Are they done with translation? No. Right away they translate an English copy of the King James translation. Right there we see that Joseph understands that translation is broader than just one language to another.

Hank Smith: 00:57:25 Yeah, we’re going to translate this from English to English. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:57:29 Exactly.

Hank Smith: 00:57:30 Unless he thought it was something else.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 00:57:33 We do this all the time as teachers. We read a text and then we translate it to us and our personality. I Taunalyn-ize all sorts of things all the time, but to help something be legible and to be able to hit home and into that place where it will cause change, this idea of translation as being part of the ongoing restoration. I do see this in our global histories that you can find on your Gospel library app or you can just Google global histories, LDS. It’ll be right there and you just look at it and you find whatever country you want to, and you can see who translated the Book of Mormon in this language, and one of my favorite stories is about a woman, Srilaksana in Thailand.

  00:58:29 If you know the King and I, how the king brings in the school teacher Anna, to teach them. Well, this woman actually literally grew up in that very King’s palace. No joke. She was educated in English there because of a descendant of that king. The Lord prepares her to be the one who will work on that translation, and we share a very short portion of what she talks about, an experience where she feels like she is going to die. And she talks about three beings that come into the room and lay their hands on her head and she is able to recover and continue miraculous things. Her needing to translate the word priesthood and not having a word for it. This idea of study it out in your mind.

  00:59:28 She was really working on it and at one point she actually saw a hand writing a word and she said, “I knew that was the word for priesthood.” And those stories multiply over and over everywhere you go. It’s not just when he says, “I give you and Joseph,” in verse 28, “the keys of this gift, which shall bring to light this ministry and in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” That gift continues on. I noticed more this time as I was preparing that the Lord did not let Joseph do this on his own. He never did. There was always a witness, there was always a scribe. Throughout all of his processes, there was always, as he says, a witness to establish his word. That’s such an important pattern.

Hank Smith: 01:00:24 Reminds me of Mormon 9, “God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.”

John Bytheway: 01:00:30 Speaking of witnesses, I remember an insight one of my professors shared is that after the first vision, all of Joseph Smith’s visions, there’s so many, were shared visions. So the vision section 76, Sidney Rigdon was there and here all these things that are happening, someone else was there and I love that idea that Joseph could get to the point where he had passed off the keys and everything and thought, “If they kill me now, it’s okay. The church will go on.” Because he had passed on everything and it wasn’t just one really dynamic leader, but the Lord had put a lot of people in place who knew stuff and who shared those experiences with Joseph. And we’re told, “Now it’s your job to testify of it.”

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:01:17 Yeah. I love it. Speaking of having two witnesses, in verse 30 it says, “And even if they do unto you, even as they have done unto me, blessed are ye for you shall dwell with me in glory.” So we get this foreshadowing of the martyrdom.

John Bytheway: 01:01:41 I was reading earlier in verse 29, that same thought, “If they reject my words and this part of my gospel and my ministry, blessed are ye, they can do no more unto you than unto me.” And I’m like, “That’s not very comforting at all.” Right?

Hank Smith: 01:01:57 Was that supposed to be…?

John Bytheway: 01:01:59 But then the next verse that you just read, “But blessed are ye, ye shall dwell with me in glory.” What year is this? We’re still back in 1829, huh?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:02:09 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:02:10 He doesn’t know it’s what? 15 years away.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:02:14 Yeah. That there will be two that will end up giving their life. We do know that Joseph was never selfish. It’s clear from the beginning that this is the Lord’s order of things, that we’re going to have a witness.

John Bytheway: 01:02:32 And I’ve heard it said two testators were killed in Carthage Jail and there were two others there to witness it.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:02:41 To witness.

John Bytheway: 01:02:42 Will Richards and John Taylor.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:02:45 Revelation is to Joseph and Oliver directly, but I start to hear the application of this more broadly in Verse 34. “Fear not, little flock.” But before that, I love the law of the harvest, right? “Fear not to do good. Whatever you sow, that shall ye also…” Don’t be afraid to do good. Just fear is never of God. When we are doing anything out of fear, it is not God. Love is what comes from God. “Fear not, little flock. Do good. Let earth and hell combine against you, for if you are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.” His mercy in, “I’m not condemning you. Sin no more. Go forward,” and Verse 36 is the awesome, “Look unto me in every thought. Doubt not, fear not.” And what publication of the church has that very scripture written on the back of it? Does anyone know? If you’re curious, you can hit the link to the video by Elder Uchtdorf on that. It is the best. I love it.

  01:04:00 So Elder Uchtdorf, he talks about how he and Sister Uchtdorf do their Come, Follow Me scripture study. He says Sister Uchtdorf has her computer, he has his iPad, I think, and then he said, “We both have our English and our German editions of the scriptures,” which I love, thinking about this idea of translation.

One of my favorite moments on a trip that I had to India in 2022 was talking with some young single adults and diving into the Book of Mormon. At a certain point, having them flip from their English, because the church is primarily conducted and administered in English right now, but we’ve got growing translations, I had them flip over to their Hindi version of the Book of Mormon and compare, and it was so fun. It’s so powerful to see how they were able to find nuance and new application in just going from one language to another. I encourage that and I encourage people to do that, to help the translations get better, too. We’re all part of that process.

  But I will give the secret away, that it’s on the back of For the Strength of Youth. It says, “Look unto me in every thought. Doubt not, fear not.”

John Bytheway: 01:05:28 Our friend Brad Wilcox spoke to the BYU football team before a game in 2024, and he had been honored as a teacher. They were like, “Give us some words of inspiration,” and Brad said, “Doubt not, fear not,” and the team went off going, “Doubt not, fear not.”

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:05:45 Oh, wonderful. I love it.

John Bytheway: 01:05:48 I think that was the Oklahoma State game, where at the very last drive of the game, they scored and won the game.

Hank Smith: 01:05:56 How fun. John, I don’t know if our listeners know this, but you are on the Young Men’s General Advisory Council, and Doctrine and Covenants 6:36 is an important scripture this year, an important verse.

John Bytheway: 01:06:10 Yeah. I think everybody knows that’s the theme for the youth theme for this year. Boy, so much we could unpack there. “Look unto me.” It’s easy to say, but it’s so easy to get distracted. Look unto social media, look unto what this person thinks, look unto that, and the Savior’s saying, “Nope, keep your eyes right here. Look unto me in every thought.” That’s a pretty high percentage of thoughts. How many thoughts are every thought? Boy, then to, “Doubt not, fear not,” when you think of who’s saying that, that’s really powerful. Don’t you love short, concise scriptures that are powerful like that?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:06:50 Yes.

Hank Smith: 01:06:51 Taunalyn, interestingly, Verse 36, he says, “Look unto me.” Verse 37, look at what exactly? “Behold the wounds which pierced my side and the prints of the nails in my hands and feet.” He says, “Look unto me,” but also, “Look unto my sacrifice for you.” It’s almost, “Look unto me. Look how much I love you. You can trust me.”

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:07:18 Yeah. I love Steve Harper in his Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants. He says, “This even seems visionary, perhaps beholding the risen Christ gives Joseph and Oliver courage as it had the Apostle Peter.”

John Bytheway: 01:07:35 Yeah. Hank, you mentioned earlier, you asked me to talk about shared visions, how thrilled he was when the other witnesses had beheld the plates, and what does he do? He comes home, “You do not know how happy I am. I’m no longer alone in this,” and-

Hank Smith: “In this world,” yeah.

John Bytheway: Which to me, oh yeah, he was sharing everything he could.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:08:00 It’s remarkable.

Hank Smith: 01:08:02 You can hear him almost saying, “Go have your own sacred grove.”

John Bytheway: 01:08:06 Yeah.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:08:07 It echoes Moses. Would to God that all were prophets. Give me everybody. Everyone’s invited to have this kind of a witness ultimately, as we continue to learn how to translate his words into our daily life.

Hank Smith: 01:08:26 Yeah. And Taunalyn, you’ve done that in a way for us today. Section 6 has been translated to become a little bit more holy for me. As I look through now my notes on Section 6, I’m like, “Wow, I see this more clearly,” and couldn’t that be a form of translation?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:08:43 Oh, absolutely.

John Bytheway: 01:08:44 Transformative.

Hank Smith: 01:08:47 Yeah. We still have a couple more sections here, Taunalyn. Do you want to talk about them?

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: 01:08:52 Yeah. Well, this next one, this revelation, I really appreciate what’s called the Revelations in Context. You’ll see links to that throughout the year. It’s in the library app. It’s right there. This links to the Revelations in Context about Oliver Cowdery’s gift and was written by Jeffrey Cannon, who is a colleague of mine. And his office is right next door, and so I knocked on his door and said, “Jeff, tell me all about Oliver Cowdery and how you wrote this amazing Revelations in Context.” And he said, “Well, let me explain how they came about.” He said that our boss, Matt McBride, said, “We’ve got this gift of the Joseph Smith Papers. Take the Joseph Smith Papers and make that a little more legible,” right? To put this into something that is a bite-sized nugget for us.

  What you’re getting in the Revelations in Context is solid Joseph Smith history information. Everything that’s there, you can go there, the quotes, you can find them on the Joseph Smith Papers. The background to this, I love. It’s sometime in that month, the two men were discussing the fate of the Apostle John, a topic of interest at the time. Joseph’s History records, they differed in their opinions and “mutually agreed to settle it by the Urim and Thummim.”

Hank Smith: Wow.

Dr. Taunalyn Ford: So that’s the background. What do they see?