John Bytheway: 00:00 Welcome to Part 2 with Dr. Ross Baron: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John Chapters 20 and 21. I’ve always thought the “I, the Lord God, did make coats of skins and clothed them,” in Moses and in Genesis. If I get the sequence right, before they were ever cast out, they were covered. They were covered by Christ, by this symbol of a lamb, which is so cool to me, to think that we take that symbol with us, that we are covered by Christ, an intensely Christian symbol. Wherever we go, we have this reminder that we’re covered by Christ. What a beautiful thing. It started so long ago that before he cast them out, “I’m going to cover you.” So I’m glad you mentioned that. It’s beautiful.

Dr. Ross Baron: 00:46 I love that. If everything is a type of Christ, I think we got to have our eyes open to the idea. Gosh, right from the beginning, John, your point is this is about the Atonement of Christ. We’re pointing to Christ, they’re redeemed by Christ, and it happened right from the get-go. In fact, John says that Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It happened before.

John Bytheway: 01:11 Which sounds so strange, but it’s like another colleague we’ve had on here, Dr. Brad Wilcox, that said the Atonement was plan A, not plan B. It wasn’t, “Oh no, Adam and Eve have made a mess of things. Now what do we do?” The Book of Mormon does the same thing, “The Atonement which was prepared from the foundation of the world,” that John does. This was always plan A.

Hank Smith: 01:35 If we could just spend a couple of minutes, I would love for both of you to comment on something. I have in my life, and I’m sure both of you have experienced this, where someone has genuinely lost their faith. Verse 21: “We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” They seemed hurt, almost as if you could say, “I really believed. I really thought it was true. I was really both feet in.” What this chapter teaches me is that we can be faithful, both feet in members of the Church and still have bad assumptions about what should happen. When those things don’t happen or, sometimes with Church history, didn’t happen the way I assume they should have happened, I do the same thing these apostles or these men do, Cleophas… I guess we don’t know who the other one is.

John Bytheway: 02:28 They’re disappointed.

Hank Smith: 02:29 Yeah, “I’m disappointed. I’m hurt. I thought it was true.” Then allowing the Lord through the Spirit to teach you, to correct your assumptions. Using scripture, let’s correct your assumptions and you’ll see that you just have the wrong idea about what should have happened. Any of that bring anything to memory for both of you? Because I feel for people who think, “Hank, I thought I really was in.” It might be something like, “I thought if I lived the Gospel-

Dr. Ross Baron: 03:04 My problems would end.

Hank Smith: 03:05 … yeah, that things would work out for me, and they haven’t. I really believed.” It’s hard to say to someone, “Well, you had a bad expectation.”

Dr. Ross Baron: 03:16 President Uchtdorf, he said, “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” I hope he wouldn’t be mad at me, but I have, “Doubt your assumptions before you doubt your faith.”

Hank Smith: 03:26 Analyze your expectations.

Dr. Ross Baron: 03:28 I’d like to embrace it. Tell me what the expectation was. Let’s have an honest conversation. A lot of time it’s the humanness of prophets or apostles or members of your ward, and I love to have that conversation. But also, the John 6 account, I don’t know about you guys, but it’s been super helpful for me to help students. You guys know the story. Jesus has fed the 5,000. They’re kind of expecting this to be the norm, and Jesus wants no part of that.

Hank Smith: 03:58 “This is going to be great.”

Dr. Ross Baron: 03:58 Yeah, “This is going to be great. He’s going to feed us every day for free.” He doesn’t want any part of that carnival. Then he says, “Except you’d eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part in me,” and then doesn’t explain it. Now 2023, we’re all like, clearly that’s the sacrament. I can imagine if I could do some emendation that they pulled Peter aside. “What? What did the Lord mean?” Peter’s like, “I have no idea.” Of course, a bunch of people leave because why? Because of that expectation. Then of course, Christ’s great question, “Will you also go away?” and Peter, “To whom shall we go?” I’ve had students go, “Well, but he understood.” No. What he understood was that Jesus was the Christ.

  04:42 Peter M. Johnson, he’s a General Authority. He’s an African-American General Authority. He spoke at BYU Idaho this year. He talked about how he joined the church when he was 18 in Alabama, and then got called on a mission to Alabama. He’s on his mission in Alabama. He’s out tracting with his companion. He’s just on fire. He doesn’t know anything about the race and the priesthood. He doesn’t know anything about that. He goes to this door, and this guy opens the door, and he goes, “How can you be a member of that church?” He’s like, “Well, what do you mean?” So he hears about the race and the priesthood thing. Freaks him out.

  05:15 He goes back to his apartment, he won’t work the rest of that day, and for two weeks he’s sulking. He won’t talk to his companion. Every night his companion says, “Elder Johnson, I love you.” He has a white companion. So finally he starts, “I just got to pray.” So he goes to the Lord. The Lord doesn’t give him an answer on race and priesthood. He says, “Peter, this is my work.” That’s it. Elder Johnson gets up, says, “Oh my word, I’m on fire again.” He doesn’t have the great reason, explanation. He just says, “I can bear witness this is God’s work.”

  05:58 So I think it’s so fascinating that, like Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou has the words of eternal life,” Peter M. Johnson, “This is God’s work. Do I have the answer to every question?” By the way, sometimes antis or people disaffected will be like, “Do you have this answer, John, do you have this answer Hank?” We’ll be like, “Uh.” What field has every answer to every question? But if you’re a Latter-day Saint and you don’t have every answer to every question, then somehow we’re deficient. Lame. That is not true. Sometimes you have to be like, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Peter M. Johnson, “This is my work.” And you can know that personally. I’m not trying to skirt hard issues, but sometimes we have to wait on the Lord. I like to say, and what we talk about in our department, is we have to hold things in fruitful balance.

John Bytheway: 06:47 Hank, I’ve heard you talk eloquently about this idea of incorrect expectations or whatever, and I ache for people that may have jumped ship based on something like that. As we all hope, the first principle of the Gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not faith in what you want to happen or maybe even faith in what your expectation is. But as Peter Johnson learned in that beautiful story, “This is my work. I’ve got faith in Christ, so I can keep going without all the answers right now.”

Hank Smith: 07:19 What I would love to see in Luke 24:21 is he died. We didn’t think he would die, but I still believe that he will somehow work this out even though I can’t see a possible avenue for him to do so.

Dr. Ross Baron: 07:34 But Hank, I would even say that the fact that they’re struggling and even though they’re going home, you can tell in their hearts they still want to believe.

Hank Smith: 07:44 Yeah, they’re talking.

Dr. Ross Baron: 07:45 They’re talking about it. Like you say, they’re very vulnerable at this point. “Man, we wanted to believe.” But the fact that they’re kind of just still there, to me says there is some belief there. This idea at the end of General Conference, April 2023, President Nelson’s last talk, “Jesus Christ is always the answer.”

John Bytheway: 08:05 Isn’t that good?

Dr. Ross Baron: 08:06 So Peter Johnson goes to the Lord, “This is my work.” Peter in John 6, “Lord, to whom shall we turn? I don’t know the answer to your question about eating flesh and drinking your blood. I don’t get that. I hope one day you’ll explain it to us,” which he of course did, “but right now I’m not leaving.” I love that. I love that.

  08:26 Let me say one other Peter Johnson’s story if I can because he shared another story. He was a stake president in Alabama. He had an ordinance worker from the temple in his temple district, come to him, slide his temple recommend to him and say, “I cannot support you as an Afro-American stake president, so I’m giving you my temple recommend back.” Now. I think that is, by the way, a great way to open a class and just say, “How would you guys respond?” You want to know how Elder Johnson responds? He looks at the brother, and he slides the temple recommend back to him. He goes, “Well, the way you’re going to know that the Lord called me is by you going to the temple. So Brother, I want you to go to the temple and take that to the Lord.” How about that? And he does. The guy ends up coming back in tears and saying, “You are who the Lord chose.” So he just turned it on him and said, “Go to the Savior because Jesus Christ is always the answer.”

Hank Smith: 09:24 I love it, when he teaches them, they almost act as if they knew it the whole time. “Oh, did our hearts not burn within us while he talked with us?” Their eyes were open. Then Verse 33, they returned to Jerusalem. They’re back into the fight.

Dr. Ross Baron: 09:39 But one thing we got to realize is he has revealed to them in eating. Again, this is a theme I brought up earlier. So in Verse 30: “And it came to pass as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it and break and gave to them.” Boom, “Their eyes were opened, and they knew him and he vanished out of their sight.” He’s revealed. I kind of think we all want to make the connection that there’s a sacrament idea here, but the idea is he was revealed to them. I’m going to say that the Savior is revealed to us in the ordinance.

  10:14 Let me make this comment based on this first, because we had in my little family with these two little girls we have still at home, we were talking about sacrament, and the girls were not kind of getting it. I used this analogy. This is a big deal in the Middle East, but it’s not as a big deal here. That is, when you eat with someone in the Middle East, you are one, you are friends. It’s a big deal.

  10:39 So I said to the girls, I said, “Lucy,” my nine-year-old, “what if I went to school and I saw you eating with Caitlyn? What would I know?” She’s like, “What?” I go, “I just see you guys afar. You’re eating together.” “Oh, you’d know we were friends.” Ah, that’s exactly right. I go, “You’re friends because you’re eating. You’re at one, you’re at one together. He’s now eating with them. He blesses you. He’s revealed to them in that.” I said, “So when we go to the sacrament, we get to eat with Jesus.” She’s like, “What?” I go, “That’s what we’re doing. So what if Jesus invited you to eat with him?” She goes, “That would be amazing.” I go, “He invites us every Sabbath.” You never want to miss eating with Jesus. You never want to miss that opportunity because it’s in that moment that he’s revealed to us. Isn’t that cool?

  11:28 “Abide with me, tis’ eventide,” this comes from these verses, and then boom, “He’s revealed to us.” Then your point, “Did not our heart burn within us while he talked to us?” by the way. So as he opened to us the scriptures, the power of godliness, Section 84, is manifest in the Melchizedek priesthood ordinances. It’s manifest there. We can have him revealed when we go participate in ordinances and covenants where we are at one with him. We never want to break that opportunity. Awesome. Anything else on the road to Emmaus? I love that you said, “So what do they do?” Boom, they turn around and they go back another seven miles.

Hank Smith: 12:10 Now, I think we could say to any listener out there who’s having doubts to use this chapter and say, what are your expectations? What thing did you hope for, did you think was going to happen or should have happened in Church history or should have happened even in your own stake? If that didn’t happen, our hearts break for you, but use this chapter as a way to say, you know what? The same thing happened to these men, to Cleophas and his companion, and they were able to work it out. They were able to work out their disappointment, adjust their expectations, and return back to the fire, I like to say.

Dr. Ross Baron: 12:47 But it’s instructive that the Savior used the Word of God.

Hank Smith: 12:51 Yeah.

Dr. Ross Baron: 12:52 When I was a new bishop, my stake president interviewed me. His name was Robert Reeves, phenomenal stake president. He came to me and he said, “Are you using the Scriptures in your interviews?” I said, “No, I’m not.” He said, “You need to use the Word of God in your interviews.” I was like, “Wow.” Totally changed everything I did. I used the text. I tried to be more like the Savior where he opens the Scriptures and helps them. So I think you’re 100%. I love that. But he used the text so that their hearts can burn. Let’s let the Holy Ghost do what the Holy Ghost can do. We got to get out of the way. Give room for the Holy Ghost to work. How’s the Holy Ghost going to work? He’s going to testify of truth, not of my favorite story, of my favorite application, but of truth. I think that’s right on.

Hank Smith: 13:42 Wow, what a great story.

Dr. Ross Baron: 13:44 Then here’s the next thing. Remember we have, the women go to the tomb first day of the week, early in the morning. We have angelic ministers. The women go and testify to others. They don’t believe. Then in this case, we have these two things. Now it says, this is interesting, Verse 33: “And they rose up the same hour, returned to Jerusalem and found the 11 gathered together and them that were with them.” Again, I keep making this point. Just not the apostles. I imagine others were with them including women saying, “The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon.”

  14:14 Now, we don’t have that in the Gospel accounts, but we do have it in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul does list Peter as someone to whom the Lord appeared on that day. So I think it’s fascinating. Luke records that. Verse 35, this doesn’t seem to be the two, “Told what things were done in the way and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.” So they say, “Oh, he appeared to others and to Peter.” Then they’re like, “He appeared to us.” They’re somewhere in the old city, I imagine, somewhere in Jerusalem at some home. Then, boom, the Savior appears. I love what happens here. “And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them,” Verse 36, and the first thing is “Peace be unto you.” Now, one of the contextual things that we haven’t talked a lot about going on here, remember that the 12, they all denied him. They all scattered. So Judas has denied him.

Hank Smith: 15:04 They all ran.

Dr. Ross Baron: 15:04 They all ran. I wonder if there’s some uncomfort… So the women go to the tomb. They’re mourning. There’s got to be some self-disappointment that they, kind of your point, Hank, with the Verse 21, like, “What’s going on? And we betrayed him. Oh my word.” But his first thing is “Peace be unto you.” If you’re Peter or you’re one of the other 12 and you’re thinking, “Wow, okay, peace be unto you.” But they’re terrified. They think it’s a spirit. Again, they don’t get it. We’re back to, “We don’t get it,” all the Gospel writers.

  15:36 Then he does this thing in Verse 39, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.” Then this imperative, 39, “Handle me and see, for a spirit have not flesh and bones as you see me have.” Now, “Handle me and see.” So he comes to the Nephites, John, this was your point in 3 Nephi 11, I always like to say the Father testified. We have the voice of the Father. Then Jesus, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ whom the prophets testified should come into the world,” 3 Nephi 11. Then the people say, “Hosanna,” and they all fall down. You could have ended it right there and thought, that’s enough. Jesus’s like, “No, everyone get up. Everyone’s got to get up.” “Handle me and see. A spirit hath not flesh and bones you see me have.” Now make the connection.

  16:22 The Prophet Joseph has asked, “How could we avoid being deceived?” All 15 year olds know this in any Sunday school class, and this is the whole, you’re going to go extend your hand, right? We’ve got to have the physical connection. We’ve got to physically know. I think what Jesus is doing, the Father testifies, the Son testifies, the people testify, but it’s not enough. You’ve got to have this physical experience with me so that you know I am the true messenger sent from the Father. How are you going to know? You’re going to feel the tokens in my hands and in my feet and in my side. That’s exactly what’s going on in Luke 24, exactly. So the pattern in 3 Nephi 11 is the pattern that went on in Luke 24.

  17:08 By the way, it’s the pattern with Thomas. Remember Thomas who doubts, and then what does he do? He doesn’t just show up and say, “Thomas, I’m here.” “Thomas, you’ve got to put your hands into my hands and into my side and into my feet. You’ve got to know it that way so you’ll know you are not deceived. You’ve got to know it that way.” A lot of people don’t realize.

  17:30 But can we go to Section 128 real quick, Section 128. In Section 128, I think it’s fascinating that there’s a verse we don’t talk a lot about. It’s in Verse 20. You guys know the background of Section 128. He’s super excited. He’s talking about the work for the dead and brethren, and go on and all these, the glad tidings. Verse 20, again, what do we hear? “Glad tidings from Cumorah, Moroni, an angel from heaven declaring the fulfillment of the prophets, the book to be revealed.” Great. “A voice of the Lord and the wilderness of Fayette, Seneca County, declaring the three witnesses bear record of the book.” Awesome.

  18:03 Now notice this: “The voice of Michael,” we know Adam is Michael, “on the banks of the Susquehanna detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light.” In other words, even Joseph apparently, if I’m reading this correctly, was deceived, and Adam or Michael had to show up and help him. “No, no, that’s not an angel. That’s Satan.” Then look who shows up very next, Peter, James and John. Peter, James, and John now in the wilderness between Harmony, Susquehanna County, they show up. Isn’t that interesting?

  18:36 Then what happens Section 129, the very next section, is, how do I know the difference between a true angel and a false angel? Well, he’s going to give us the keys whereby we can detect. So when the Savior shows up, he requires this so no one could ever say, “Well, you don’t really know.” No, no, no, we’re going to have this experience. Again, I think it’s temple related. I’m not going to say anymore about that, but I think it’s very temple related.

John Bytheway: 19:02 What happens to a society when you have 2,500 people that one by one get a witness like that? The answer is, 4 Nephi. Surely, you couldn’t have a happier people because that witness must have just changed everything for them.

Dr. Ross Baron: 19:24 Well, I can imagine family night, “Dad, tell us again. I want to hear the story again.”

John Bytheway: 19:29 I’ve just always wondered if the reason the fourth generation starts to fade after that is because, I never knew my great-grandparents but I knew my grandparents, and maybe those that were there started to die off. Because had my grandma or grandpa told me, “I was there,” and like you said, “Tell us that story again,” man, that’s going to have an impact. But maybe that generation was all gone, and that’s why the fourth generation… That’s just a guess.

Dr. Ross Baron: 19:58 I’ve wondered about that a lot, John. I think it’s interesting that when you have people like Russell M. Nelson, who’s in his 99th year, looking into the camera and bearing his witness, there’s something to it. When you have the 15 who hold the keys and by virtue of those keys bear the special witness of Jesus Christ, I think that’s… Although, I’ll tell you an interesting thing. Elder L. Tom Perry years ago came to BYU Idaho. We were up in the Taylor building. Somebody said, “Well, why won’t our dispensation go into apostasy?” That’s a great question. He didn’t even think about it for one second. He said, “Technology.” He said, “We can have the keys anywhere in the world almost instantly. Whereas in Paul’s time and in other people’s times they couldn’t. So things could drift into apostasy quickly. Whereas in this dispensation, that can’t happen.” Isn’t that cool?

Hank Smith: 20:47 No, I never thought about that.

Dr. Ross Baron: 20:49 Again, I want to let you guys know, it wasn’t like he had to go, “Um…” “Technology,” he instantly said it. I thought that was fascinating.

Hank Smith: 20:58 You’ve done a great job of helping us see that he wants people to touch him. It becomes important for us to realize that we believe in an embodied God. You both will know more about this than I do, but it seems to me that Christianity is getting away from or has gotten away from the idea that Jesus has a body at all, and yet here he is with a body. I want to get your thoughts on that.

  21:20 I was going to read something from Elder Holland, and then let you both comment on it. This is back in 2007. He said, “Sometimes Latter-day Saints are excluded from the Christian category because,” and he throws this in, “we believe, as did the ancient prophets and apostles, in an embodied but certainly glorified God.” Then he says, “To those who criticize this scripturally-based belief, I ask, at least rhetorically, if the idea of an embodied God is so repugnant, why are the central doctrines of Christianity, the incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, all three of which have to do with his body?

  22:02 If having a body is not needed or not even desirable by God, by deity, why did the redeemer of mankind redeem his body at all, redeeming it from the grasp of death in the grave, guaranteeing it would never be separated from his spirit in time or eternity?” Then Elder Holland throws this one out, “If you dismiss the concept of an embodied God, you dismiss both the mortal and the resurrected Christ.” Pretty crucial for us, it seems, from Elder Holland to understand that these chapters, Ross, that you’re walking us through, show an embodied Jesus.

Dr. Ross Baron: 22:35 I love Elder Holland there. I mean that’s Elder Holland at his ornery best, but still being loving and kind. I still remember an experience I had when I was getting my PhD at the University of Southern California with a group of other theological and philosophical students. They turned to me and said, “Oh, poor you, you believe that God has a body, right?” I said, “Yes.” They’re like, “Oh, does he have eyebrows?” trying to be sarcastic with me. I was like, “Yeah, I just don’t know what color they have.” I went to the chalkboard. The teacher wasn’t there yet, so we were having this conversation among students. It was kind of in fun, but there was a little edge to it.

  23:14 I said, “So in the end, you guys don’t think God has a body?” They’re like, “No.” I go, “Does he have a mouth?” “Oh, absolutely not.” I said, “So you guys believe God is no thing?” They were like, “Yes,” like in a chorus, “Yes.” I said, “So no thing, if we combine it, you believe God is nothing.” They were like, “No.” I said, “Well, then what is he? Why would you deny all that?” There was no answer. They just didn’t like the idea. Maybe the concern was that we were fashioning God as a mortal. I was like, “No. That’s the furthest thing from what we’re doing here. The resurrection and the Savior is embodied in a glorified, perfected, non-fallen kind of thing.”

  23:54 By the way, Section 88 Verse 15, restoration theology, “The spirit and the body are the soul of man,” so Section 88 Verse 15. Elder Holland gave, I think, the greatest talk on the law of chastity using Section 88 Verse 15 in his famous Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments talk. To me, this idea of an embodied God is distinctive Latter-day Saint theology, which on reflection and through the Spirit, the Spirit bears testimony of its truth, there’s no question.

  24:26 To your point though, Hank, touching me is not going to be enough, by the way. We’re going to also eat together. Remember, there’s the theme again, “We ate with the two on the road to Emmaus.” He says to them, Verse 41, “And while they yet believed not for joy,” they’re wondering in amazement, “Have you here any meat?” Can you imagine that? Let’s eat. “And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb, and he took it and did eat before them.” Awesome. So not only do we have to touch him, but he’s showing his complete embodiment. “We’re not playing any games here. You’re not being deceived. You’ve felt the nail prints into my hands, into my feet. You’ve put your hand into my side. Now I’m going to eat with you.” They’re going to tell people, “We ate with him.” In fact, they do do that. “We ate with him.”

  25:17 You have to understand he’s a resurrected being. This is part of those pillars where Jesus shows up, “Peace be unto you.” There’s a little reproof for the unbelief. He’s going to make him feel his hands and his feet, and then he’s going to eat with them. Again, I think the eating with him not only is a testimony of the embodiment, but it’s also the at one-ment, “When I eat with you, we are one. I accept you, you accept me, and we are together. We don’t eat with people we don’t want to eat with.” So he’s saying, “You’re my friends. We eat together.” Isn’t that beautiful?

  25:49 What does he do in 3 Nephi, 3 Nephi 17? “I got to go.” “Please don’t go.” “Okay, I won’t go.” He heals everyone. Then what do they do in 3 Nephi 18? We eat together. 3 Nephi 19, he says he’s going to show up, they go down, they get baptized, he eventually shows up. What did he do in 3 Nephi 20? We eat together. There’s that theme: We’re going to eat. That’s part of this oneness and part of the embodiment, which you talked about. I love that. You have any other thoughts about that eating?

John Bytheway: 26:18 I want to thank you for that because I’ve always thought, in one way, when we go and we see the sacrament table there in the chapel, we’re remembering Jesus’s sacrifice, his broken body and his spilled blood. But in another way, we’re remembering the Last Supper, and he’s inviting us to eat with him again. I love that you emphasize that because I always think it’s kind of both. It’s like a table of the Lord, but also, “Come and eat with me,” which is so affirming to invite us back to eat with him every week. I love the idea of that. I’ve written down, “If I see you eating with someone, what does that show me?” That is great.

Dr. Ross Baron: 26:57 I do that in class. I’ll, “How do I know?” I just use somebody in class. I go, “What if you guys saw me eating with John here? What would you guys think?” “Well, you guys are friends or you have some special relationship.” Right on. Then the other question, John, which is, I love to say this to some of the people I minister to who are less active, “If the Savior invited you to eat with him, would you eat with him?” “Oh, 100%, Brother Baron.” “He’s inviting you. Why would you not go eat with Jesus?” “Well, I’d always go eat with Jesus.” “Okay, awesome. I’ll be by to pick you up on Sunday. Good to see you.”

John Bytheway: 27:30 Luke 15, those parables of lost things that starts with, “This man receive sinners. He actually eats with them.”

Dr. Ross Baron: 27:38 That’s right.

John Bytheway: 27:40 That’s how he has to explain, “Wouldn’t this be a reason to rejoice if someone wants to come and eat with me and repent?”

Dr. Ross Baron: 27:46 We just studied in Come, Follow Me, Zacchaeus in Jericho, “I’m going to dine at your house tonight. I’m going to eat with you. Go, go make ready.” He’s like, “Yes, I want to eat with Jesus.”

John Bytheway: 27:56 It does send a sign. It sends a signal to both everyone around and to the person. We should go to dinner after this recording.

Dr. Ross Baron: 28:03 There you go.

John Bytheway: 28:03 Yeah, we should. Let’s go eat.

Dr. Ross Baron: 28:06 Can we go to the John 21 account now? John, it’s interesting. So Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, one chapter. John includes two chapters, or it’s divided into two chapters. It’s a longer account. You have 20 and 21. The 21 account is phenomenal for what it adds for the depth, so it takes some things and goes deeper. Again, we have an eating theme. We’re on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. I’m going to use Elder Holland here later in a little bit, because no one, I don’t think, has ever done this better. In John 21, so you’ve got seven of the 12. I don’t know where the others are, but you’ve got seven of the 12. They’re in Galilee, and they’re on the north side of the sea of Tiberias. Peter says in Verse 3, “I go a-fishing. And they say unto him, ‘We also go with thee.'”

John Bytheway: 29:01 “I’ll go fishing too.”

Dr. Ross Baron: 29:02 Yeah, “Let’s go fishing.” This is the coolest thing because in this common themes we’re finding in the Gospels, the commission has to come. The question has to do… “Okay, you’re resurrected. That’s awesome. I’m going to be resurrected. That’s great. What do we do now?” What you do is everything has to change now. Nothing can be the same. Again, “We’re bewildered a little bit. He’s resurrected. That’s great. We’re going to go fishing.”

  29:29 Of course, we know the story. This is another what’s called an inclusio. We’ve got the story, remember, in the beginning of John when, the same story, they can’t catch anything. Jesus is on the shore, Verse 4. They don’t know it’s the Savior. He asked them, he kind of calls out to them, “Do you guys have any meat?” “No.” “Okay, cast on the other side,” and they can’t draw it for the multitude. Then of course the Beloved says, “That’s the Lord,” to Peter, and Peter jumps in. When they get there, Verse 9, “As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there and fish laid thereon and bread.” Jesus made the meal, so we’re going to eat, but he’s the one who made it.

John Bytheway: 30:08 The Lord of the universe just cooked breakfast.

Dr. Ross Baron: 30:09 I always say, “Yeah, the galactic God of the universe just made some food for us. That was so nice of him.” So they bring the fish in. It’s this huge thing. He says, Verse 12, I love this, “Come and dine. Come and dine.” That’s the invitation to all of us, “Come and dine.” They knew it was the Lord, so he eats with them. Then the famous, “Do you love me?” Now, may I read the Elder Holland? This is from October 2012 General Conference. I’m going to read a chunk of it, if that’s okay, and maybe we can comment.

Hank Smith: 30:45 Is this where he says, “I paraphrase only slightly”?

Dr. Ross Baron: 30:48 Exactly, exactly. Then he paraphrased apostolically. I’m quoting Elder Holland. “There is almost no group in history for whom I have more sympathy than I have for the 11 remaining apostles immediately following the death of the Savior of the world. I think we sometimes forget just how inexperienced they still were and how totally dependent upon Jesus they had of necessity been. To them he had said, ‘Have I been so long with you, time with you, and yet has thou not known me?’ But of course to them, he hadn’t been with them nearly long enough. Three years isn’t long to call an entire quorum of 12 apostles from a handful of new converts, purge from them the era of old ways, teach them the wonders of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and then leave them to carry on the work until they too were killed. Quite a staggering prospect for a group of newly ordained elders.

  31:45 His apostles did witness him in his resurrected state, but that only added to their bewilderment as they surely must have wondered, ‘What do we do now?’ They turn for an answer to Peter, the senior apostle.” Then I’m jumping where Peter’s there and now they’re looking at the fish. “Looking at their battered little boats, their frayed nets, and a stunning pile of 153 fish, Jesus said to his senior apostle, ‘Peter, do you love me more than you love all this?’ Peter said, ‘Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.'”

  32:17 Then here’s, Hank, your point about his apostolic kind of paraphrase, quote, “Then Peter, ‘Why are you here? Why are we back on this same shore by the same nets having this same conversation? Wasn’t it obvious then and isn’t it obvious now that if I want fish, I can get fish? What I need, Peter, are disciples and I need them forever. I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs. I need someone to preach my Gospel and defend my faith. I need someone who loves me, truly, truly loves me, and loves what our Father in heaven has commissioned me to do. Ours is not a feeble message. It is not a fleeting task. It is not hapless. It is not hopeless. It is not to be consigned to the ash heap of history. It is the work of Almighty God, and it is to change the world. So Peter, for the second and presumably the last time, I’m asking you to leave all this and go teach and testify, labor and serve loyally until the day in which they will do to you exactly what they did to me.'” Oh my word.

  33:28 Then he says, I’ll end with this, “After an encounter with the living Son of the living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before. The crucifixion, the Atonement, and resurrection of Jesus Christ mark the beginning of a Christian life, not the end of it. It was this truth, this reality,” I love this, “that allowed a handful of Galilean fishermen turned-again-apostles without a single synagogue or a sword to leave those nets a second time and go on to shape the history of the world in which we now live,” unquote. I guess my point then in terms of this kind of outline of what all the Gospels have together is once I know of the resurrection, then there’s the commission, and the commission is then to go teach all nations. You go and you teach everyone. Remember 2 Nephi Chapter 2, “How great the importance to make these things known unto the children of men.” He was talking about the resurrection. We’ve got to go tell everyone.

  34:28 But if we go to Matthew 28, we get the most familiar of the commissions, which is so beautiful. This is, we’ll say, starting in Verse 16 in Matthew 28. “Then the 11 disciples went away into Galilee into a mountain where Jesus appointed them. And when they saw him,” this is very interesting, “they worshiped him, but some doubted.” Now, I think the word for doubt here is they wavered. I don’t think they wavered because they saw him. I think they waver because they know what’s coming. He assures them, the waverers, “All power is given unto me in heaven and Earth.”

Hank Smith: 35:07 Oh, got it, yeah.

Dr. Ross Baron: 35:08 In other words, “You know what’s coming-

Hank Smith: 35:11 “I don’t think I can do this.”

Dr. Ross Baron: 35:12 … and I don’t think I can do it.” I think he’s saying, “You’re right. You can’t. I can though. I’ll call who I want.” I think it’s the same thing with Joseph Smith. I actually think when Joseph gives the copied things from the Book of Mormon to Martin Harris to go to scholars, it might be somewhere in his heart and mind, they are going to translate. He’ll be the custodian of the book.

Hank Smith: 35:35 Someone else is going to do this.

Dr. Ross Baron: 35:36 Yeah, “I don’t know how to do this. I’m not learned.” God’s like, “I can do my own work.” Remember that? In 2 Nephi 27, twice in a row, “I can do my own work.” He’s telling the apostles here, “All power is given to me in heaven and on Earth.” So no matter what your calling or your situation in your family or whatever you’re commissioned to do as a dad or a mom or as a teenager or whatever, you’re right, you can’t do it, but God can, and he can do it and work with you. What’s the commission? “Go ye therefore, teach all nations.” Now, this is tough for them, and when we get into Acts in Come, Follow Me, and when you guys do Acts, I think they think “Teach all nations” means, “Cool. We’re going to go find Jews everywhere and teach them.”

Hank Smith: 36:19 Yeah, go to Jerusalem.

Dr. Ross Baron: 36:22 “Man, we’re going to find Jews, and we’re going to teach them.” But of course, their vision has to be expanded. This goes back to my theme, John and Hank, that even now they don’t fully get everything yet from Verse 1 to the end. So teach all nations, we now, I think, get that teach all nations literally means everyone. What are we going to do? We’re going to offer ordinances. We’re going to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Why? Because when you baptize people, when they enter into the covenant, this is President Nelson, now I have a unique bonded… I’m bound to him relationship, Matthew 11:28-30, “I’m taking upon myself his yoke when I voluntarily enter into covenant with him.” I have to be baptized. “Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, John 3:5, “you can’t enter the Kingdom of God.”

  37:11 What else am I going to do? “They’re going to observe all things whatsoever I’ve commanded you.” Then again, “I’m going to reassure you. I told you that I had all power. I’m going to be with you alway even unto the end of the world.” So now I have the commission of what we’re to do. The resurrection isn’t just a cool doctrine. It’s just not an abstract idea. It’s real. But with that reality, it brings a responsibility upon me to act in faith according to the knowledge I have and to bear that witness to others, unapologetically, absolutely devotedly, and with the Holy Ghost. That’s what we’re to do.

John Bytheway: 37:51 I don’t know if the church has paintings, that are supposed to be in every building, but it seems like in every High Council room I’ve seen, there’s a painting of the Great Commission, which is this right here, which I’ve always loved because Jesus is glowing a little bit. He’s a resurrected being. The artist is showing him bright. He’s telling them, “Now, go do this.” I love the way you said that. We offer ordinances, not just a message, but ordinances of salvation. Thank you for saying that.

Hank Smith: 38:20 I also think this message that we’ve been discussing today of the resurrection is the reason. It’s why we go to tell people, because this resurrected Lord said, “Go tell people.” I think as a missionary, I hated bothering people. They’re like, “Why can’t you guys just believe what you believe and leave us all alone?” I thought, “I’m so sorry.” I think now in my 40s I’d say, “Look, I don’t want to be here either.” But Matthew 28, the Lord said, “Go teach everyone.” If you have a problem with it, you need to take it up with him.

John Bytheway: 38:53 Nice.

Hank Smith: 38:53 I can help you do that by the way. I think the other thing it does is the resurrection helps us mitigate the pain of trials and death. I remember Joseph Smith said at a funeral, “We mourn and that’s okay. We mourn loss, but we do not mourn as those without hope.” Because of what we’ve talked about today, we do not mourn as someone without hope as that first quote you shared with us, exactly.

Dr. Ross Baron: 39:24 I was going to say, too, there’s an Elder Maxwell quote, I don’t have it in front of me, but where he said the resurrection ended the human predicament, and all our predicaments now are just personal predicaments that repentance can solve and faith in Jesus Christ. So the predicament of being separated from God, the Atonement of the Savior, and the predicament of death, separation of our spirits and bodies, the human predicament is solved. I love that idea. The human predicament, that’s done. So now I have Hank and Ross and John issues, because we’re trying to work stuff out, and with faith in Jesus Christ, because all power’s given to him in heaven and Earth, we now can overcome even our personal predicaments. But the human predicament, which philosophers and existentialists are always wringing their hands about, that part’s done, and the resurrection is the absolute witness that that is done.

  40:13 Do you remember Elder Hanks of the Quorum of Seventy? He gave a talk in April 1992, and he told a story, if I may, I love this story as it relates to the resurrection. I’m quoting, “As Easter time approaches, let me share with you the tender story of an 11-year-old boy named Philip, a Down Syndrome child who was in a Sunday school class with eight other children. Easter Sunday, the teacher brought an empty plastic egg for each child,” remember those little eggs, the egg that you can open and it’s empty, “empty little egg for each child. They were instructed to go out of the church building onto the grounds and put into the eggs something that would remind them of the meaning of Easter.

  40:51 All returned joyfully. As each egg was open, there were exclamations of delight as a butterfly, a twig, a flower, a blade of grass. Then the last egg was opened. It was Philip’s, the Down Syndrome child, and it was empty. Some of the children made fun of Philip and laughed. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘teacher, the tomb was empty.’ A newspaper article announcing Philip’s death a few months later noted that at the conclusion of the funeral, eight children marched forward and put a large empty egg on the small casket. On it was a banner that said ‘The tomb was empty.'” Wow.

  41:28 I think that was your point earlier that it gives you hope. We do mourn. We cry at funerals. Section 42 says, “Thou shalt weep for the loss of the loved one.” That’s fine. But our weeping is different. We took our first son to the MTC. We cried because we were going to miss him, but we wouldn’t have wanted him anywhere else. We were mourning because we would miss him, but we weren’t mourning because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. 2 Nephi 9:6, “Death is part of the merciful plan of the great Creator.” I love that. That’s so good.

  42:00 I had Stage 4 cancer. Stage 4 cancer is bad because Stage 5 cancer is the spirit world. So I had Stage 4 cancer. I had chemo and I had radiation, I had surgeries, but for whatever reason, I was healed. Whatever in God’s economy, I was healed. But the truth is I’m going to die. We’re all going to die. So President Nelson, back in October of 2005, then Elder Nelson, I think he made a powerful comment that we have to remember. He says, quote, “The gift of resurrection is the Lord’s consummate act of healing. Thanks to him, each body will be restored to its proper frame and perfect frame. Thanks to him, no condition is hopeless. Thanks to him, brighter days are ahead both here and hereafter. Real joy awaits each of us on the other side of sorrow,” unquote.

  42:56 My body is going to deteriorate, and I’m going to die. But because of Jesus Christ, it is the consummate act of healing. The resurrection is what heals us. That is the consummate act of healing. Then you quoted Joseph Smith, and I have my last quote, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Page 296, “All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection provided you continue faithful.” Then I love this from Joseph, “By the vision of the Almighty, I have seen it.” It’s just incredible. Again, as I started, it’s real for me. It’s visceral for me. I just unashamedly, devotedly, unapologetically testify of the reality of the resurrection, of the Gospel accounts, of the Latter-day accounts, of the prophet Joseph Smith’s accounts, it is real and it is power. And we can all know it. We can have the Holy Ghost bear witness to us that it’s true.

Hank Smith: 43:54 He is not here. He is risen.

Dr. Ross Baron: 43:56 He is risen. That’s the title, of course, of the Come, Follow Me.

Hank Smith: 44:00 As he said.

Dr. Ross Baron: 44:02 Remember what he said. Remember what he said. May the Lord bless us all that we can get it, whatever things we’re not getting, that my eyes will be opened, that my heart will be soft, and that I’ll get it, and then act in accordance with that. Then again, take the commission. We know the resurrection’s real. We’ve got to go share it with everyone, and we have to offer ordinances both to the living and the dead and gather Israel.

John Bytheway: 44:29 I just really enjoyed this. I like what President Howard W. Hunter said once, “Without the resurrection, the Gospel becomes a litany of wise sayings and inexplicable miracles, but without any ultimate triumph.” Well, he said a lot of wise things and there was some healings, but without the resurrection, what’s the point?

Dr. Ross Baron: 44:51 In a way that’s interesting, the Howard W. Hunter quote goes back to the Paul quote in Romans, “Declared to be the son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.”

John Bytheway: 45:04 There you go.

Hank Smith: 45:05 I wanted to read something from Brigham Young before we wrap up. “We talk about our trials and our troubles here in this life. But suppose that you could see yourself thousands, millions of years after you have proved faithful during the few short years in this world, and have obtained eternal salvation and a crown of glory in the presence of God, then look back upon your life here. See the losses, the crosses, and the disappointments and the sorrows. You would be constrained to exclaim, ‘What of all that?’ Those things were but a moment, and we are now here. We have been faithful during a few moments in our mortality, and now we enjoy eternal life and glory with power to progress in all the boundless knowledge and through the countless stages of progression, enjoying the smiles and approbations of God the Father and Jesus Christ, his Son.” That to me is the resurrection. We’ll give you that. It can give you that perspective.

John Bytheway: 46:04 Have you ever heard the epitaph that Benjamin Franklin wrote for himself, obviously before he died? Have you ever heard it before? He said, “The body of B. Franklin, printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be wholly lost. For it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended by the author,” the author being Christ.

Hank Smith: 46:38 Beautiful.

John Bytheway: 46:39 Isn’t that good?

Hank Smith: 46:40 That’s great.

John Bytheway: 46:41 For our listeners who are folding laundry or mowing the lawn or out for a walk or listening on a long drive, what do you hope they go away with?

Dr. Ross Baron: 46:52 I get asked sometimes… Because Hank and John, we’ve been on the show a couple times. I’ve met you guys. What you see is what you get with me. I’m a happy guy. It’s not that I don’t have trials, but I try to be of good cheer. Sometimes students will ask me, like the beginning of class, I haven’t started class yet, they’ll be like, “Brother Baron, what’s your problem? Why are you so upbeat? Why are you so happy?” I’ll say, “Because the resurrection’s in place.” They’ll be like, “What?” I’ll say, “Because there’s nothing you can do to not be resurrected.” That’s a funny way to put it. I go, “You just try and not be resurrected. You’re coming out of the tomb, you’re getting resurrected.” I go, “Jesus is the Christ, the resurrection’s in place, and the plan is true. And that’s why I’m so happy.”

  47:38 Because the ups and downs of the days, and the stock market goes up, the stock market goes down, or there’s different issues in our family, but in the end, in the end, the resurrection’s real and Jesus is the Christ. That’s what gives me joy and happiness. So the guy mowing the lawn or taking a walk or folding laundry, this is real what we’re talking about. This is real. Hank, you mentioned the word perspective. We can get mired and distracted like Mary Magdalene at the tomb where we don’t see Jesus standing in front of us. So I pray every day that I’ll have eyes to see and that the Lord will bless me, but it’s in place. That is the joy, and that is the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Hank Smith: 48:23 Beautiful. John, what a great day. Yeah, what a great day.

John Bytheway: 48:29 I got a lot of notes today. I can’t wait. I’ve got big stars next to things: Put this in my 211 class, these common themes that happened in each of the Gospels. Thank you. Thank you so much for that.

Hank Smith: 48:42 We want to thank Dr. Ross Baron for being with us today. It’s been fantastic. We want to thank our executive producer, the amazing Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen, and we always remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We got more coming on FollowHim.

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