Hank Smith: 00:03 Hello everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, we are in Doctrine and Covenants 19 this week. I thought of a story as I was reading where the Lord says, please repent, please repent. Over and over. In fact, he doesn’t even say, please, He says, I command you to repent. I command you to repent, because I don’t want you to suffer. You don’t, remember, he says, how sore you know not. I don’t want you to suffer, so please repent. I think he says command/repent, honestly, throughout the entire section. It made me think of this story. C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Great Divorce. It’s not as famous as his other ones, right? Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity. But I really like this one. There’s a lot of different stories in it . A lot more detail, but I like this single part of it. I think it’s really towards the end of the book where there’s a man who doesn’t live a good life and he ends up going to hell. So C.S. Lewis Christian believes heaven and hell. So the man ends up going to hell and he doesn’t like it there.

John Bytheway: 01:14 It’s not a nice place to visit, and I wouldn’t want to live there.

Hank Smith: 01:19 I don’t want to live there. He says it’s black and white, not a lot of color. Everybody’s pretty ornery, and there’s lots of long lines. Wouldn’t that make you think, I want to repent? I can handle burning and fire. But yeah, long lines, and ornery people and no color. Yeah. So as he’s there, he hates it there. He sees that you can take a tour of heaven. There’s like a bus that goes to heaven. Sure, go take a tour of heaven. So he gets on the bus and wants to see it. Well, he gets to heaven and he loves it there. He’s on the tour and there’s no long lines. Everybody’s pretty happy, and everything’s in color. There’s lots of color. And he just thinks, oh, I wish I would’ve lived a better life. I could stay in heaven. This is where I want to be.

  02:06 The bus driver, he says: Hey, get back on the bus, right? I don’t know if he’s from…

John Bytheway: 02:10 He’s from Brooklyn, clearly. Back on the bus.

Hank Smith: 02:14 Get back on the bus, fella. So he doesn’t want to go. And he starts walking over to the bus when an angel stops him and says, you don’t have to get back on the bus. And the man says, oh, I do. I was just visiting today. And he said, no, no, no. Do you like it here? And the man says, of course I like it here. I love it here. And the angel says, you can stay. Really? Really? I can stay. You can stay if you want to. He says, I want to. And the angel says, oh, good. I’m so glad you want to stay. You can be here. But that, and he points at his shoulder, and it’s this big red ugly lizard, which is, I can see why the book wasn’t super popular.

  02:59 And it’s sitting on his shoulder and the angel says, you can stay, but that cannot. You find out later that this represents this man’s sins. He can go to heaven, but his sins can’t go with him. So he’s got to decide between his sins and heaven. That’s why it’s called The Great Divorce, right? I’m going to divorce myself from my sins. Well, this red lizard does not want to let go. He says to the lizard, it can talk. He says to the lizard, I need you to leave me because I want to stay here in heaven. And the lizard says something like, I’m not leaving you. Do you know how long I’ve been with you? Do you know how much good times we’ve had together? Right? I am not leaving you. And it starts to grip him with some claws. And he says, ow, ow, ow.

  03:51 And the angel said, can I help you? And he’s like, well, I don’t want you to kill it. Let me figure it out on my own. Can you see this, John? I don’t necessarily want it to go away. Not yet, anyway. So he says to the lizard, listen, I really need you to go. And the lizard says, Nope, I’m not going anywhere. And the angels takes a step forward. I can help you. And when the angel takes a step forward, that lizard digs in and he says, don’t let him touch me. He can kill me. Don’t let him touch me. Listen to this, John. See if you can catch your spiritual ears here. The man says to the angel, don’t come near me. This hurts. His sins hurts when you are close to me. Isn’t that interesting? When you get close to me, this really hurts.

  04:40 And you can talk about, oh, when I go to church, when I go to the temple, I feel my sins are weighing on me. Pretty soon the bus driver starts saying, Hey, pal you got to get on the bus. And he said, hold on a minute. And the angel’s there going, I can help you. And he says, hold on. And the lizard’s talking to him. Don’t let him touch me. Hey pal, get on the bus. I can help you. Let me help you. Don’t you want to stay? I want to stay, but don’t get close. Hey, buddy, you’re getting on the bus and he’s got to make a decision, John, what’s he going to do? And he finally looks at the angel and he says, can you do it? Can you really kill it? And he says, yes, it will hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt in your entire life.

  05:26 And the man says, oh, right. Like, oh, no, but he doesn’t want to go back to hell, John. He wants to stay in heaven, and the desire to stay in heaven is now worth the pain. So he drops to his knees and he said, do it, kill it. And the angel comes over and the lizard freaks out, and it’s just shredding the man’s shoulder. And he’s screaming in pain. And the angel gets to it and grabs it and it dies, and he throws it and it’s far away. And the man looks over and his shoulder is fine. His shoulder is healed. He’s trying to grasp what happened. And he looks up and the angel is the Lord. It’s the Savior. And he said, now you can stay. And they embrace and it’s this great story. And then his sins turn into a stallion and come back and he rides it into heaven. I don’t quite understand that part, but I love the story of, it’s worth it. It’s worth the pain of repentance. Whatever that involves.

John Bytheway: 06:30 Reminds me of King Lamoni’s Father. I will give away all my sins to know thee. That was his great divorce. And Section 19 is: I’ve suffered these things for all that they might not suffer if they would repent.

Hank Smith: 06:44 So maybe you have to go see the bishop. Maybe you need to go talk to the bishop. It’s worth the pain. It’s worth the embarrassment. And I promise you, your bishop is not going to be shocked. He’s not going to cover his mouth and go.. He’s going to be there for you. Maybe you got to go talk to your parents. Maybe there’s some things you got to change. Maybe you got to change your friends. Maybe you have to change some music. Whatever it is, it’s worth the pain.

John Bytheway: 07:09 Some of those painful things.

Hank Smith: 07:10 Yeah. Well, we hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called FollowHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. We’re with Andy Horton this week. He’s been a teacher in the church for 30 years, and he really shows us some things in this section we’ve never seen before. Then come back next week and we’ll do another followHIM Favorite.