John Bytheway: 00:00 Keep listening for part two with Dr. Christopher Jones, Doctrine & Covenants Sections 37 through 40.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 00:07 Early 1832, shortly after he has this side of really solid stretch of preaching and conversion. Here Covel is again elected to his former position as president of the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church. And in that capacity, he not only continues preaching, but also begins mentoring many young preachers in the church, including two of his sons, James Jr. and Zenas James Jr. goes on to read this, to write this really fantastic scriptural commentary that goes through multiple editions. It becomes very influential in Methodist and Protestant circles, and that group of preachers that he mentored during that time also included a man named John Green, a Methodist reformer who joined the Methodist Protestant Church in 1832 and took up an assignment on the Hannibal Circuit of the Genesee Conference for the year and a half prior to Green accepting that appointment. Though he had also been investigating the Church of Christ and reading the Book of Mormon, he received that Book of Mormon from Samuel H. Smith in July of 1830.

  01:12 This is the John Green, married to Rhoda Young, who together with her brothers, Phineas, John, Joseph Lorenzo, and Brigham Young, read and studied the Book of Mormon. Phineas, Joseph and John Young, like their brother-in-law, John Green, were all Methodist preachers who, in the words of Phineas, continued to preach, trying to tie Mormonism to Methodism for more than a year before finally concluding that they must leave one and cleave to the other. Green apparently reached a similar conclusion and in spite of his recent decision to unite with the Methodist Protestant church and accept this preaching appointment had become within two months convinced of the Book of Mormon’s Truth and decided to be baptized at a special session of the Genesee Conference in October. Green’s decision was characterized thusly. John P. Green, having left the connection in an irregular manner therefore resolved that we withdraw the hand of fellowship from him as president of the Genesee Conference. Leading up to that meeting, James Covel certainly played some part in that decision. Whether Covel and Green talked about the church, whether they talked about Covel’s earlier flirtation with it, and the revelation that he received, we don’t know, but we do know that these two men knew one another and that they provide sort of contrasting examples of how they responded to this message.

Hank Smith: 02:39 Let me make sure I have this. You can help me out. James Covel, who we’ve been talking about here, comes in and out of the church pretty quickly in January of 1831 and then John Green, he decides to leave Methodism early 1832 and yet they knew each other.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 02:58 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 02:59 Wow. Wouldn’t you love to know if they had talked about this ? Wow.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 03:06 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 03:06 Yeah. I did not expect this, John.

John Bytheway: 03:10 Yeah, this is great. What was President Hinckley’s statement? Bring all the good that you have and let us see if we can add to it. Now we wish James would bring all that good that he has, but it’s good. I like that phrase. It remaineth with me to do with him as seemeth me good. And he did do good. If it invites to believe in Christ and to serve him, that’s good. By definition, I think too that what did Elder Kearon say, God is in relentless pursuit of you and of all of those that we sometimes feel some angst about, as you said Christopher beautifully, the God that I worship is not excited to punish or eager to punish.

Hank Smith: 03:53 Yeah. As you’ve been telling us this, this has made me look at almost every part of 39 and 40 now with a completely different lens. Instead of, oh, look at all these promises. Oh, what a disappointment. Even this phrase, he returned to his former principles and people, his former good principles, and his former good people.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 04:23 Exactly.

Hank Smith: 04:24 I have to confess, back when I was a young seminary teacher, I used James Covel as kind of the great could have been because he came and went so quick in the history of the church. We had no idea who he was. And you’re right John, if you don’t know someone’s story, it is easy to label them. It is easy to say, well, look at what, that’s too bad the apostate, they left. They’re gone. I’m sure they’re miserable now.

John Bytheway: 04:50 I would like to have Christopher go through that list again. One of his first issues was baptism by immersion.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 04:59 Baptism by immersion. That again, this is sort of a conjectural reading. This is a contextual reading. We don’t have a letter from John Covel saying, I rejected the message because I was told to arise and be baptized. But all I’m asking here is conjecturally, contextually what does, knowing he’s a Methodist, a Baptist in 1831 would have no problem with the commandment to arise and be baptized. To be baptized by immersion. Right. Baptists are champions of that, but knowing that he’s Methodist instead of a Baptist adds that additional insight.

Hank Smith: 05:28 It does.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 05:28 This is one area that might not have sat right with him. Right. Another one is the issue of being called on a mission far from home at his particular age, but also the individual extending that calling being Joseph Smith, who again is this young, uneducated person who lacks all of Covel’s experience and coming from a church that was formed in part on the basis of having ministers and preachers and missionaries having a greater say in where they serve.

John Bytheway: 06:00 In where they went. That ecclesiastical tyranny, I think is what I put in the notes.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 06:05 Yeah, that is, that was the phrase that they used. They decried the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Methodist Episcopal Church and formed the Methodist Society and then the Methodist Protestant church. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 06:15 You’re saying at that time he was already approximately 62 years old. He had already been preaching for much of his life.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 06:24 Yeah. 40 years.

John Bytheway: 06:26 I don’t know what the average mortality rate was back then either.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 06:31 He lives a long life into his late seventies. That’s a pretty long life for the early 19th century. He is probably looking at that call to the Ohio in 1831 and thinking, I don’t know how much longer I have out here and you want me to go spend that time in Ohio somewhere. I’ve never been far from family, far from my sons who have just entered the ministry. This is really a different world than what he’s used to.

Hank Smith: 06:56 He was in for what, a day or two? He was at the conference apparently. So sometimes we look at people like that and go, well, they’ve rejected the truth. He didn’t have a lot of experience with it.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 07:08 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 07:08 He was interested.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 07:09 Yes.

Hank Smith: 07:09 Saw it, thought about it, received a quite a blessing,

Dr. Christopher Jones: 07:12 And then have some sort of conviction. Yeah. Right. But how much did he know? How much did he understand? Absolutely.

John Bytheway: 07:18 I confronted this as a teenager because one of my best friends in high school was a rock solid Presbyterian who was living For the Strength of Youth. I don’t know if I had that pamphlet back then, but who was living a gospel standard just as well as his active Latter-day Saint friends were. And like you said, Hank, there were some Latter-day Saints who weren’t living it and he was.

Hank Smith: 07:46 Yeah, you’re going…

John Bytheway: 07:48 Yeah. And so it helped me to see that and I like how Stephen Robinson articulated that. It’s not who has your records, it’s who has your heart, who are you trying to serve? Where’s your loyalty? We’ve talked about the Come Back podcast. There’s always hope and I just hope people feel that way too. God is going to feel after people.

Hank Smith: 08:08 Right.

John Bytheway: 08:08 I have a friend who was worried about his daughter. He told me that he was struck with a Book of Mormon story of the four sons of Mosiah. The angel came and what the angel said in Mosiah 27 was not, you guys should come back to church. What the angel said was, your father has prayed with much faith concerning thee, not that thou mightest come back to church, but listen to this phrase that thou mightest be brought to a knowledge of the truth. And he was struck with that when he read it is that some will find the truth and some may go a different path, but they’ll find it and the Lord will help them find it. And I liked that emphasis. Maybe we just kind of leave it up to the Lord to guide them to find the truth.

Hank Smith: 08:55 Yeah. I’m not a psychologist here, but both of you, let’s pretend. Why are we so harsh? We sometimes speak so harshly of those who according, you know, even reading Section 40, he broke my covenant. Satan tempted him. The cares of the world caused him to reject the word, whatever it is. And here, this person or this family or this couple leaves the church. I think lessons like this can help us to calm our heart. Maybe in fear we speak harshly because we’re scared and we maybe we’re scared our children will do that. Well, they’re never going to be happy again. Just watch. They’re never… And what happens if they are, what if they turn into James Covel and just do all this good? Can we be okay with that? Christopher, now that you’ve been through this experience, how do you see that?

Dr. Christopher Jones: 09:48 Maybe I can share a little bit of my own story here. When I first did all of this research, again, this was 2009 to 2012, what I was interested in was this purely as an academic matter, purely as a historical matter. I simply wanted to know who this person was. I wanted to think about what his background told us historically, and I didn’t think much about sort of the spiritual takeaways of this, but what happened was, over the course of the next decade, as I saw more and more podcast episodes, church lessons that talked about these revelations and talked about James Covel, and I was always gratified to hear some of the research that I did being brought to bear on this and to make sure that people knew who this was. They all still seemed to end on this really dour negative note that made me begin to think, well, first off I got defensive.

  10:37 I thought, that’s not fair to James Covel. Right? That’s not fair to the guy whose life I researched. And then it was upon rereading section four that that final phrase there finally stood out to me and I thought, wait, we know what the Lord did with him. He continued to work with him and he did all of these incredible things for the remainder of his life. So this takeaway from these revelations didn’t come to me initially when I was immersed in his story. Right. Again, I approached this as almost a purely intellectual matter, and it wasn’t until I went back and read these verses carefully that that final phrase stood out to me and I thought about what it meant and what it could mean in light of what I knew about James Covel’s life. I think if I don’t strain this analogy too much, that was the Lord continually reaching out to me, helping me to understand something.

  11:25 And I got to tell you, that was a really comforting message for me. As somebody who regularly succumbs to the cares of the world, as somebody who regularly doesn’t do everything I’m supposed to as a gospel doctrine teacher, or Deacons Quorum advisor or husband or father or professor or saint who regularly, weekly, daily makes mistakes, it’s actually really, really comforting to know that God’s hand is still there, that his grace is still being extended and that he can still do much good through me. That even after I’ve made a mistake, that’s a really, really meaningful message for me as a believer, for me as a Latter-Day Saint, for me as a sinner.

Hank Smith: 12:09 Occasionally I’ll hear from a parent, I’ll say, Hey, how’s so-and-so I haven’t seen them in years? Right. How’s your son or daughter doing? And they’ll say, well, they don’t go to church anymore. Sometimes you get a little teary, they don’t really care much about the church anymore. And I’ll say, oh, you know, that’s hard. And they’ll say, yeah, you hope. And I often ask the same question, which is, are they a good person? Almost a hundred percent of the time I would say it’s, oh yeah, they’re a good neighbor. They serve, they love, their family is doing this thing. I’ve come in as I’ve gotten older to a place where I can say, I think because of the Lord, I believe in that, oh, they’re fine, they’re fine. I don’t know John, maybe we’re too nervous to allow them to be okay and to allow that the Lord to do what is good. What seems to him to be good. I can’t believe I used to read that in such an ominous tone to do with him as seemeth me good. I honestly have read it that way and I want to change my mindset that obviously we want people to remain active in the church. I don’t think anybody listening would go, oh man, you’re giving people permission to leave the church. That’s not our intention here.

John Bytheway: 13:26 No. We want them in the temple.

Hank Smith: 13:29 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 13:29 We want them to enjoy temple blessings. We’ve talked about this before. The Lord said this is my work and my glory. He didn’t say, this is your job and your glory to make sure your children know. He said, actually, this is my work. I am able to do my work. Best you can do is be willing, but I am able, I’m able. If he’s instructed us to be patient, then we can be patient and say the Lord, I don’t know how the Lord’s going to do this, but I trust him to do as seemeth him good with my loved ones.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 14:03 It doesn’t even have to be something like leaving the church or choosing to walk away or break one’s covenants. I may struggle to extend grace or even good feelings to my neighbor down the street who posts a political sign in his yard with which I disagree. And I think, how on earth could you ever think that or support that person? Right. And yet I have those neighbors and I have thought those things and I know that those same neighbors are the sorts of people that if I needed something at 3:00 AM if there was a pipe burst in my house that I could call them and they would be over in a heartbeat to help think about that as just in my day-to-day life, extending that grace and hoping that others in turn extend that to me. And the reason why is because the Lord’s extending that grace, because the Lord loves that person. Even if I struggle to find that love at times again, I hope that same grace can be extended to me by both the Lord, which I have faith it will be, but also by others.

Hank Smith: 15:02 Yeah. When it’s someone you don’t know, it’s easy to say, well, but when it’s someone you know, when it’s your child, when it’s your sister, when it’s your brother, you’re please be gentle. Right? You’re saying what Chris said in the back of that gospel doctrine class. Oh, oh, that’s not fair. Right? That’s not fair to say about that person. I think of my own sister. I don’t think she’ll mind me saying this down there in Florida, she went inactive from the church and even took her name off the records of the church and she was a kind, good, wonderful person. She took a different path and obviously I hoped, but there wasn’t a moment where I would say, well, oh, you know, we’re going to have to live without her in the next life. That’s too bad. Section 38 verse 25. Let every man esteem his brother as himself.

John Bytheway: 15:54 That’s a final judgment. We don’t get to make those. President Oaks taught us that’s a final judgment and the Lord’s in it for the long game.

Hank Smith: 16:04 So I got to tell you a little bit more about my sister. She, like I said, left the church, went inactive, completely removed her name from the records and went and lived her life. And always a good person, always a kind soul through and through. And I think the Lord was using her in his work wherever she was. At some point she decided to go to church, not to our church, but to church. She found a local Christian Church. The preacher was fantastic and she really enjoyed it. She enjoyed the choir. I remember my mother saying, I don’t know what to think about this. She really likes her Christian Church. I said, mom, this is fantastic. It’s awesome. I’m glad she’s doing it. Well, she’s going to this church. I think it was a few years where she was going. One day, I think this pastor, I don’t know what he was thinking, he must not have known her background, but he gave a message about the Mormons.

  17:06 He said that we know Mormons will not be in heaven. My sister, who is not shy, okay, she stands up in the middle of church. Oh, sorry. She said, excuse me. My father is the best man I have ever known. She said, he is going to heaven. And she grabbed her little boy’s hand and said, come on, let’s go find the Mormon church, and she left. She has since, you know, come back a little bit back into activity. I just think, let’s let the Lord do his thing. Let’s let that plan play out. And it it plays out beautifully. He did with her as seemeth him good.

John Bytheway: 17:59 She was brought to a knowledge of the truth.

Hank Smith: 18:02 Yeah. And don’t you think both of you, when we think that way that oh no, they’re cut off forever. We start to behave in a way that is towards them that is, I want to say over the top or almost a little irrational, right? Oh, you got to come back. We’re not going to have our family forever. And we say things like that. It can wound. This discussion has made me think of a quote from Joseph Smith that I love. He says, how glorious are the principles of righteousness? We are full of selfishness. The devil flatters us that we are very righteous while we are feeding on the faults of others.

John Bytheway: 18:43 And thank you for providing this feast, everybody. No. Here’s another one. Prophet Joseph Smith said in an editorial, this is so good, while one portion of the human race is judging and condemning the other without mercy, the great parent of the universe looks upon the whole of the human family with fatherly care and paternal regard. He views them as his offspring. And without any of those contracted feelings that influence the children of men causes -in small quotes because it’s out of the sermon on the Mount- his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust, he holds the reins of judgment in his hands. He is a wise law giver and will judge all men, not according to the narrow contracted notions of men, but according to the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil, or whether these deeds were done in England, America, Spain, Turkey or India. That’s the long version from History of the Church. Volume four.

Hank Smith: 19:48 I’m reading through section 39, just glancing down at it now at this promise made to James Covel about all the things that still came to pass. I read verse 13, thou art called to labor in my vineyard to bring forth Zion that it may rejoice in the hills and flourish. And then in verse 17, wherefore lay too with your might, which he did and call faithful laborers into my vineyard, which he did that it may be pruned this last time, verse 19, go forth crying with a loud voice. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. There are so many things that he went on to do. I love this merciful way of seeing this.

John Bytheway: 20:27 Hank, when I was a bishop, sometimes I used to borrow a phrase from Star Trek. Okay, hear me out guys.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 20:37 Okay.

John Bytheway: 20:38 When Captain Kirk would leave the bridge, and I suppose this is a common phrase of command in the Navies around the world, but he would say, you have the con. There were times when I used to say to the Lord, you have the con. It’s this, I knew he was better at it than I was. I could in faith hand that off and say, I’ve done the best I could figure out. You have the con. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep. So I’d say, I don’t know if me sitting here worrying is going to do the congregation any good. Probably not. So you have the con goodnight. Does that make any sense to you guys? Or is that way too nerdy?

Hank Smith: 21:24 Oh, I love it.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 21:25 Yeah. I don’t think you can get much nerdier than what I’ve done over the last hour and a half. So I think you’re good. Maybe one point I can bring up here, one thing that this conversation has made me think of at the outset, I said that I hoped that a close reading of these verses with an understanding of the history and the biography of this person, in this particular time would result in us rereading and thinking anew about these particular verses, about these particular revelations. I hope that comes across, but I want to point out again here that what really makes this reading of that last phrase of section 40 possible is coming to know James Covel. I teach a class, History 205 Introduction to family history and genealogy. And the biggest challenge I face in there initially is getting students to think about family history as something more than names and dates.

  22:26 They want to find the names, they want to find the dates and they want to take that card that they’ve printed out to the temple. Well, good, worthy goals, right? But what I constantly work with them to understand is that the commandment, to turn our hearts to our fathers, to turn our hearts to our ancestors, has to mean something more than simply scribbling down names and dates and inputting those into family search. It even has to include something more than just taking those names to the temple. As important as that work is, what I tell them is that what I actually think is that turning your hearts to your ancestors means truly coming to know them and it’s coming to know them as fully formed three-dimensional individuals who lived, who struggled, who cried, who laughed, who rejoiced, and who ultimately died. And that if we don’t do that, then we haven’t fully turned our hearts to them.

  23:25 There’s this great quote from President Joseph Fielding Smith in the 1960s, and you can imagine what computer technology was like in the 1960s. And he writes to a stake president and he says, it doesn’t matter if computers can do all of your family history work for you, it still remains the responsibility of every single Latter-day Saint to turn their hearts to those ancestors and come to know them. James Covel is not my ancestor, but coming to know him as a person, coming to know who he was, what his background was, why he was interested in the church, why he ultimately decided to leave, and what he did afterwards has entirely reshaped the way that we read these verses. And this is possible with every section of the Doctrine & Covenants. If we allow ourselves, if we take the time in our study to not just give it a quick read and then show up to gospel doctrine class on Sunday, to not just listen to a podcast episode or two about it, but to really delve deeply and come to know these people, whether that’s Joseph Smith or Emma Smith or James Covel or Sidney Rigdon, come to know who they were.

  24:36 I really think we can read the scriptures with an entirely new eyes and we can see how the Lord is relating to each of those people individually, how the words that we think is pretty boilerplate, common stuff that he seems to repeat every time he calls missionaries on a mission, right, could actually have specific meaning to those individuals. This isn’t easy work, but I think it’s really, really worthwhile work. It’s more than history for history’s sake. It’s history because understanding that history, understanding that background, understanding who these people were, brings these revelations to life and really helps us appreciate them in a way that we aren’t able to otherwise.

Hank Smith: 25:19 As you said that, Christopher, we have a knowledge of a merciful God, and I went back to section 38 and I looked at verse 14, I have a phrase highlighted. He’s saying, this is why I’m telling you these things and you are blessed not because of your iniquity, neither your hearts of unbelief. So he’s saying you are very blessed. It’s not because of your actions and it’s not because of your heart for verily, some of you are guilty before me and then this phrase, but I will be merciful unto you in your weakness. That’s the God we worship. A God who looks at us all in our weaknesses and says, oh, I love you.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 26:07 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 26:08 I will be merciful to you.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 26:10 And again, James Covel’s there, he hears that revelation. He hears those words. Does he take comfort in those even after he has made other decisions, you know, further on in life? Does he remember that message that God delivers through the prophet Joseph Smith there in January of 1831? Does he believe that God is still working with him, being merciful to him in his weakness? Whether he understands it as a weakness or not, I imagine that those are words that both he and all of us could draw strength from and draw hope from.

Hank Smith: 26:42 Yeah. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, John, you know it better than me. What takes the prodigal home? It’s not, oh, when I go home, my father’s going to be so mad at me or, oh, I need to go home because my father will be proud of me. It’s my father is so good. Even with just employees.

John Bytheway: 27:00 Yeah. It’s Lehi pleading with Laman and Lemuel with all the feeling of a tender parent. That path home was always open and available. He knew he’d be welcomed.

Hank Smith: 27:12 I know how good my father is and I’ll go home. I won’t want to be a son. I’ll be an employee.

John Bytheway: 27:18 Yeah, I’ll be a day laborer.

Hank Smith: 27:20 But he’s that good. I don’t know, maybe this is a little over the top, but I can almost hear James Covel from the other side saying to Christopher Jones, please tell my story. I want this story told.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 27:34 I will share with you one story along that line. In the weeks and months and years since the article was published in 2012, I’ve had dozens and dozens of emails from individuals thanking me for the article, thanking me for the research. Some from high ranking church leaders, two arrived, one from a very high ranking church leader and another five minutes later from a very well known public dissident of the church, and both of them wrote and I received these within five minutes of each other, and I thought, oh, that’s kind of interesting. One of the most meaningful ones arrived in my inbox a couple of years after it was published, and it was from one of James Covel’s descendants. She said that she had been doing family history research into him, genealogical research into him, and had come across my article and it uncovered this entire aspect of his life that she and her family knew nothing about. And that was a really, really meaningful connection to be able to make, to know that some of this research I had done had arrived, you know, at the virtual doorstep of his descendants, and that they had come to know their ancestor a little bit better through that research. So we never know who we’re going to touch by what we share and what we do, but it’s all part of, I think God continually reaching out his hand,  and working through us to bring about whatever good he can.

Hank Smith: 28:51 Yeah. Oh, so wonderful. Christopher, if you don’t mind, let’s ask you one last question before we let you go. We’ll occasionally hear the narrative that if you study church history, you’ll likely lose your faith. Yet here you are, you are a trained professional historian. I’m guessing you know quite a bit about the history of the church, yet I sense a believer here. That narrative kind of falls apart. In your situation, what have you seen in the history of the church that has stirred you?

Dr. Christopher Jones: 29:28 That’s a really good question. I want to say here at the outset, I think that there are very real and very difficult issues in the church’s past, and I am entirely sympathetic to those who encounter that information and struggle with what they learn, that it gets to the core of their beliefs about the church, its inspired history, the nature of prophets and prophethood and so on. I sympathize. I have struggled with those issues myself over the years, and I don’t want anybody to think it’s bad to have those questions or to ask them or to struggle with them even. I think from a historical perspective, this is me putting on my historian’s hat here, the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The history of this movement is in terms of the people that it involves, is probably best approached as a history of people doing their best to implement what God has instructed them to do.

  30:28 Okay? And I don’t mean to remove God from the equation when I say that, but rather there’s a respect for human agency there. Along the way, there are stumbles and there are falls, and there are mistakes. There are also a lot of wonderful, truly fantastic things to those that are currently in the middle of struggling. I would implore you to find a community of people who are sympathetic, who are kind, who are generous, and not just to you in your struggles, but that are also sympathetic and kind to those that you’re struggling as you learn more about. To Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, or Emma Smith or whoever that individual or whatever that event might be. There are historians like me out there that would love to be of service if we can. As I went through my own periods of struggle and crisis earlier in my life, as I encountered some of this information for the first time, some of these more difficult aspects of church history, I had a community of friends that got me through it, a community that I could ask difficult questions of people that I trusted.

  31:32 Some of them were professors at BYU, some of them were fellow graduate students, Latter-day Saints, studying this past. And I could trust them both because they knew spiritually what I was going through, but also intellectually what I was wrestling with. And that sense of community was what saved me on more than one occasion was that God placed those people in my life to help me, and I’ve tried to do that same thing for others. That’s not the question you asked, that’s not an answer to the question you asked. You asked Hank, what have I found in church history that has been inspiring or assuring or confirming of my testimony? I read the history of the church. I study it as a history of God intervening in human history and humans doing their absolute best to make sense of what it is that God is telling them.

  32:18 That is me attempting to extend grace to historical figures who are trying their best to implement the commandments of God. When you think of it that way, I see the history of the church. I celebrate it, not because it erases or dismisses or excuses the more difficult aspects of church history, whatever those might be for individuals, but because it confirms to me, it shows to me, it provides examples to me of God continually working with people. And that’s what we’ve spent so much time talking about here today, is God not giving up on people. It’s not easy because there’s a lot of people in history that did truly, truly despicable things. I don’t seek to excuse their actions. I don’t think I need to pretend like this person didn’t enslave that person or that person didn’t commit a violent crime against that person. But I can try and understand who those people were and I can try and see them as I think our heavenly Father sees us, and that is as his children, that he loves and that he cares for. Even when we make mistakes, even when we choose to follow our former principles and people, even when we don’t respond to what he’s urging us to do.

Hank Smith: 33:39 Yeah, I can tell when I’m getting nearer to God because I’m more inclined to look with gentleness on people.

Dr. Christopher Jones: 33:47 Yeah, I like that. I like that. Gentleness is good.

Hank Smith: 33:52 John, I didn’t know when we started the show, when I said that you are a blessing, a co-host so great as I have never have known that this episode would be a blessing so great as I never have known.

John Bytheway: 34:04 That’s better said, yeah.

Hank Smith: 34:06 I walk away going, I am forever changed. That’s the power of studying together, studying these revelations. These words. Don’t know if they have the episodes playing in the spirit world, but if they do, then we hope that these fine folks we’ve talked about today are happy with what they heard. We want to thank Dr. Christopher Jones for being with us today. What a treat. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and every episode we remember our founder Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We need to talk about what happens in Ohio on followHIM. Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. Do you or someone you know speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French? You can now watch and listen to our podcast in those languages. Links are in the description below. Today’s show notes and transcript are on our website. FollowHIM.co. That’s followHIM.co. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Neilson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, and Annabelle Sorensen.