Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast, dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John  Bytheway: 00:09 And I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:10 We love to learn.

John  Bytheway: 00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you, as together we follow Him. Hello everyone. Welcome to followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host and I’m here with my springy co-host John Bytheway. Hello, John Bytheway.

John  Bytheway: 00:33 I need an office chair that reflects that adjective-

Hank Smith: 00:35 Springy. Yes, because John Spring is in the air and it is the holidays. It is our Spring holiday. It is Easter. What a great day! Do your kids love it as much as my kids? My kids love the Easter holidays. It’s getting warm. They’re excited to be outside and to have some fun. John, I just don’t know how to express how excited we are. I’m just going to say, John, tell our audience how blessed we are today. How lucky, blessed, and excited we are.

John  Bytheway: 01:07 We have Elder Bruce C. Hafen and Sister Marie K. Hafen. And Hank, I have a personal story. I don’t know if Elder Hafen will even remember this, but when he was the provost at BYU, I didn’t know what provost meant. I thought if BYU were in Orem, maybe that title would be the Oremst.

Elder Hafen: 01:28 In Burley, Idaho, it means the Burliest.

John  Bytheway: 01:30 The Burliest, there you go. If it were in Idaho. I was reading something from Elder Hafen and he talked about young adults going through a Kirtland of their lives, excitement and building and growth and kind of a Nauvoo period where things just aren’t going right. And he talked about the experience of falling in love. I was intensely curious about that, because it wasn’t happening for me. And I don’t remember how, I must have called Elder Hafen’s office and said, “Can I ask you some questions about that?”

John  Bytheway: 02:03 And he met me at the Deseret Towers cafeteria there and spent a whole lunch with me. The fact that he would take a random student and take a whole hour and talk with me during that lunch it says a lot more than the bio I’m going to read about who Elder Hafen is. I will never forget that kindness that you showed me that day. And you fixed all of my problems in the matter of…

John  Bytheway: 02:30 Anyway, then let me read a more formal biography. Elder Bruce C. Hafen was called to the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1996. Has been a General Authority Emeritus since 2010. An internationally recognized family law scholar. And I know that because he spoke at the World Congress on Families in Switzerland in 1999. And the report that I heard was that it was interrupted by eight standing ovations. He served as President of BYU, Idaho. I make all of my students read the finest talk I’ve ever heard for young single adults called The Gospel and Romantic Love, that was reprinted in the 2002 new era during a Valentine’s issue. President of BYU Idaho, Dean of the BYU Law School, provost at BYU, two of his past books won the year’s best book award from Deseret Book, the Broken Heart in 1989.

John  Bytheway: 03:27 Many of our listeners will have read that. A Disciples Life, a biography of Neil A. Maxwell in 2002 and recently served as President of the St. George Utah Temple. Now Marie K. Hafen has taught at BYU, Idaho, the University of Utah and BYU Provo. Classes in Shakespeare, writing and, the Book of Mormon. She’s been a contributing author to several books, including with her husband, Covenant Hearts, Why Marriage Matters, How To Make It Last and The Contrite Spirit, How The Temple Helps Us Apply Christ’s Atonement. She has served on the Young Women General Board, on the Deseret News Board of directors and as matron of the St. George Utah Temple. And this part you may need to update us on, the Hafens are most grateful to be the parents of seven children and grandparents of 46?

Sister Hafen: 04:15 Yep. And I think that’s the end.

Elder Hafen: 04:18 We’ve introduced a new product line. We now have great-grandchildren.

John  Bytheway: 04:23 No kidding. That’s wonderful. And I read that bio from one of my favorite new books, Faith Is Not Blind. And you can see my bookmarks. Those are all legit bookmarks for wonderful things that I’ve used in my classes. This book has been a real blessing to me in my Book of Mormon and New Testament class is some of the insights that are there.

Hank Smith: 04:46 Very rarely John, do they have the entire religion faculty at BYU read a book, but they did on that one.

John  Bytheway: 04:52 Really?

Hank Smith: 04:53 Yeah. The entire religion faculties.

John  Bytheway: 04:55 I think one of the greatest insights in here that’s blessed me and hopefully my students, we all know the Moroni’s promise of verse four, but verse three is, “Ponder how merciful God has been since the creation of Adam down until this time and ponder it in your hearts. This fill you with gratitude.” And this idea that gratitude is the gateway to revelation was a beautiful thought to me, appreciate so much the insights in here.

Hank Smith: 05:22 Elder and Sister Hafen, welcome.

Sister Hafen: 05:24 It’s a privilege to be here.

Hank Smith: 05:26 Oh, you’re kind. We feel like we’re on the privileged side. What we want to do here today, Elder and Sister Hafen is really hand the reins over to you both. What would you like our audience to know, to feel and to hear?

Elder Hafen: 05:40 Well, thank you Hank. We’re very grateful to be here. We have the greatest respect for both of you. You have a conversational format for your show. We hope you will interrupt, ask a question, make a comment as we go along. And so please feel free to do that. When you invited us to come and talk on the Easter show, we thought, “What does the Old Testament have to say about Easter other than prophecies of Christ coming?” And then we remembered, when we started this course at the beginning of the year, the first part of it was not the Old Testament as such. It was Joseph Smith’s translation of Genesis, which has become the Book of Moses. And that is full of doctrine and perspective about Easter. That has prompted us to want to focus on the story of Adam and Eve coming from the book of Moses, which is a great treasure for the church.

Elder Hafen: 06:39 It’s probably the most significant collection of doctrines about the Atonement, as we will try to just scratch the surface on today, that we have. It isn’t as appreciated and known as much as it should be. So we encourage that and hope that what we say will nudge people to get into the Book of Moses. Maybe I could just talk about our interest in the Easter and the Book of Moses and the Savior. We’ve noticed in recent years, a lot of people are talking about the Atonement much more so than in the past. We talk about it on and on, and that’s how it should be. We talk of Christ. We rejoice in Christ, but as we have listened to this over the years, first of all, we’re really grateful because it’s in the hearts and minds of the Latter-Day Saints.

Elder Hafen: 07:25 It’s beautiful. And we cheer for that. As we’ve listened, however, occasionally we detect that we’re skimming across the surface in believing that the Atonement is somehow a word that brings everything else in the gospel together. And if you say the Atonement did this, that’s really all you need to know. And it’s certainly not bad, but there is so much more. We would like to talk about what that more is. And our basis for it, it’s the story of Adam and Eve, and that connects us to the temple. We will have a lot to say about the temple today. You asked earlier about the experiences on Easter. One of my favorite ones is being invited when I was a teenager to go with some other kids, about six o’clock in the morning on Easter Sunday, we were invited inside the St. George temple.

Elder Hafen: 08:15 We took all the back alleys, so to speak. And we were invited to go up through a couple of dressing rooms, up some stairs and up some other stairs. And I thought we were being taken captive. I didn’t know what was happening, but then we opened a little door that took us out on the balcony, we were outside. And I’ve never seen that view of St. George before. And the sun was just coming up in the east. We sang to the kids that were on the temple grounds way below, God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him might have eternal life. And you can see that affects me even after all these years, it was beautiful. It was memorable. And we will conclude some things about the St. George Temple today.

Hank Smith: 09:04 Those of us from St. George know that it’s the one true temple and that all other temples are appendages to the St. George Temple. Because I grew up in St. George and so when you start talking about that building, that’s my childhood. That’s me going for baptisms for the dead. That’s me as a teenager going to sit outside the temple grounds and just ponder and think. And so any stories that you can tell about the St. George Temple, please share. I always say, we had Kirtland, we had Nauvoo those were both warmups to the third one.

Sister Hafen: 09:37 And it got the complete deal.

Elder Hafen: 09:40 When we were called to go to that temple in 2010, we didn’t realize what was in store for us. Some years ago, I was talking with a good friend, I can’t remember the general subject, but he was always thoughtful at asking good questions. And he said, “The temples contain all these pictures of Christ. Christ is the center of the gospel. He’s the center of the temple. But the Temple’s endowment is all about Adam and Eve, who are Adam and Eve? Why doesn’t the temple endowment focus on the life of Christ?” Here we are Easter and we’re going to talk about Adam and Eve. But it’s because of the connection between Adam and Eve and the Savior. In this sense, the story of the life of Christ is the story of giving the Atonement. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement.

Elder Hafen: 10:32 Let me say that again. The story of the life of Christ is the story of giving the Atonement. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement. That’s us. We can look at them in the temple over and over and say, “That’s me, that’s the story of my life.” Good, because we’re in the temple to receive the Atonement. It’s pleasant the insights, the perspective. And so let’s talk about that a little bit. I think somewhere we will have a visual that shows a picture of the St. George Temple, that’s for Hank’s benefit.

Hank Smith: 11:06 Oh, beautiful.

Elder Hafen: 11:09 We will refer to that picture and something that kind of goes with it.

Hank Smith: 11:13 That’s where my wife and I were sealed. I should probably add that to the list of great things that happened there. She’s going to say, “There you go.”

John  Bytheway: 11:19 “What about that one?”

Elder Hafen: 11:22 Marie and I were sealed there too Hank. That was probably before you had started this show.

Sister Hafen: 11:26 Before he had started his life.

Hank Smith: 11:31 That may have been a while before me, but not too bad, too far, I don’t think.

Elder Hafen: 11:36 One of the perspectives that we took from our being in the temple and thinking about some of the questions we had was realizing that the temple gives us a cosmic eternal perspective when young people or older people would come for their own endowment. And each of us had the opportunity to talk along with either the brother or the sister, to introduce them to the temple and ask them their questions before they began their endowment. And I would often ask people if they had read the Book of Moses, most had not, and I would encourage them to read it. And it starts with this incredible perspective that Moses was given where he sees all the creations and he talks to the Lord. And nobody was talking about specifics, like what are the dimensions of my temple clothing? And it was a cosmic perspective.

Elder Hafen: 12:28 Not long ago, one of our grandchildren was going to go on a mission and she asked if we would be available to talk to her for a few minutes, just to give her some clues about getting ready for the temple. And she’s a wonderful girl, she’s full of fun and very bright. We knew that would be a great conversation. As we were talking, we decided to tell her in a word, what we had seen with that perspective, what we discovered in the temple. I asked her, “Let’s just start off with, we want to talk about the cosmos. You probably don’t know what the cosmos is, unless you think of Cosmo-“

John  Bytheway: 13:04 At BYU.

Hank Smith: 13:04 At BYU.

Elder Hafen: 13:07 But then we used this as an adjective. “Do you know what cosmic means?” And she said, “I work at a little bakery and we have some cosmic brownies. Does that help?”

Hank Smith: 13:22 Probably not exactly what you were thinking, but, okay.

Elder Hafen: 13:25 She said, “Well, yeah, there are other brownies, but those were good ones.”

Elder Hafen: 13:30 We told her what we’ve just said to you about the story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement. But as a story told from a cosmic point of view, which means sort of the eternal perspective. When we look at our difficulties in our lives, from that huge eternal perspective, they look very differently. It’s like looking back on your early childhood, however it was, if it was hard or you couldn’t understand it. You’ll think about it differently as you get older, as the gospel becomes more clear.

Elder Hafen: 14:02 We can look at the Adam and Eve since that’s the story of receiving the Atonement and say, “Look at that. Oh, they had so many hard problems.” And then we watch how the temple helps them deal with those problems and understand what to do about them and with them. And the role of the Savior in helping them with them. Adam and Eve sort of go with us through the endowment. I’d encourage people to think about that. When they go through the temple how often do you hear about Adam and Eve? It’s all the time. Including right to the end of the temple endowment. We are Adam and Eve. Let’s go back to the story of Adam and Eve. As we see it in the Book of Moses to stress again, it’s the story of receiving the Atonement.

John  Bytheway: 14:45 How do we receive the Atonement? We watch our first parents and how they received it and do what they did.

Elder Hafen: 14:51 And that story is what the endowment is about. We talked to several people during our time at the temple about architecture and the original design of that temple. That temple was, as you’ve said Hank, was the first one to be built after the Saints left Nauvoo. It was before Manti or Logan or Salt Lake as one of the church architecture consultants said to us, when he was there, looking at the temple, “This is Joseph’s temple.” And in every dimension, it’s extremely close to the design of the Nauvoo Temple.

Elder Hafen: 15:26 And it shows in the way it’s put together the path that Adam and Eve are going to walk. Somebody coming to the temple back in the early days, started with the baptism of course. Now we have baptisms and fonts for most people, but I was baptized in the St. George Temple. And when one is baptized for the dead, you start, and you mentioned it, Hank you did those baptisms for the dead. That’s the first ordinance done in the temple.

Sister Hafen: 15:53 And it’s in the basement. It’s-

Elder Hafen: 15:54 It’s in the basement. Yeah. That’s symbolic and important because every step we take after that baptism is an ascending step. President McKay once said of the temple ordinances, “It’s a step by step ascent into the eternal presence.” We’re going to walk back home. How does the walk go? Well, we go to the initiatory ordinances, and then we go to the endowment, and then we go to the ceiling room. And so it is. We’ll talk about each of those steps. Let’s look now specifically diving a little deeper. When was the doctrine of baptism first explained by the Lord? He taught it to Adam, it’s right there in the Pearl of Great Price. As we said, they were the first ones to receive it. And Adam was wonderfully inquisitive. When he was told to baptize his family and other people, he said, “Why? Why do we do this?”

Elder Hafen: 16:48 And the Lord said to him, this is in Moses 6:48 and what follows, “Why is it that men must repent and be baptized?” And the Lord answered him. This is in 6:53 to 55. “I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden. The Son of God hath atoned for original guilt. Wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children for they are whole, W-H-O-L-E, whole from the foundation of the world that is just packed with significant doctrine.” We’ll come back to that. The easy version of understanding those sentences is in the Second Article of Faith for Hank and John who are still working on the Articles of Faith, this is the one that starts.

John  Bytheway: 17:36 We believe.

Sister Hafen: 17:37 We’re all still working on them.

Hank Smith: 17:38 That we believe one. I remember this one, that we believe.

Elder Hafen: 17:42 This one says, “Men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adams transgression.” A lot of us memorized that growing up and the deeper dive said, “What does that mean? Why is it significant?” The other Christian churches they’re doing the best they can with what they have. Their understanding of the nature of mankind, men or women, the nature of men, when that people are born is that they are evil because they are stained with the sin of Adam and Eve.

Elder Hafen: 18:11 And that’s why some churches believe that the children have to be baptized immediately. If they die without being baptized, then they may be lost forever because of the stain. The Lord told Adam, there is no stain. You can see how that helps us understand, our doctrine related to other churches. How’s the restoration view of the Atonement? How do we see the purpose of the Atonement differently?

Elder Hafen: 18:36 The Lord used the word, whole. The Doctrine & Covenants section 93, says that all of us are innocent when we’re born, put those words together, whole, innocent, it’s unique. And it’s very different from evil. And it’s different from good I might say. We need the Atonement, but why? Why do we need it? If Adam’s stain has been removed from us as the Lord told Adam? Well, in the Book of Moses, where he talks about the children, they grow up and they experience a world that’s subject to sin. And we all experience it. We do sinful things. Usually when we’re young, without even knowing it, that’s why we’re not accountable before we’re eight. Then the Lord offers this further explanation speaking of Adam’s children, “They taste the bitter that they may know to prize the good.” The point there is that we learn and grow from experience.

Elder Hafen: 19:31 The Atonement is not just about erasing black marks, it’s developmental. And so Adam and Eve as they go through the rooms in the temple, it’s developmental, they’re learning, they’re growing. When they understand the sin in the garden and they repent, do they go back to the basement of the temple and start over? No, they keep going because this is part of the overall experience until they go on to Celestial life.

Elder Hafen: 20:03 I guess I could summarize with this one, because of the Atonement of Christ, we can learn from our experience without being condemned by it. We can learn from our experience without being condemned by it. In fact, mistakes and adversity can promote growth if we engage the Lord in helping us learn from those mistakes. There’s a word on this visual that talks about confirmation. We’re going through steps. You have Adam’s baptism. Then Eve’s is confirmed.

Elder Hafen: 20:36 He receives the gift of the Holy Ghost. That’s right there in the Book of Moses, it says, “Adam thus was baptized, was born of the Spirit, became quickened in the inner man. And the Lord said, thou art baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost.” So Adam became a disciple of Christ. And this goes on, this same verse or the next one says that Adam, because of his confirmation, he’s a disciple of Christ ‘after the order of the Son of God,’ which suggests to me that he also received the priesthood. Adam is now ready to begin to walk the covenant path. And we really like what King Benjamin says about discipleship, walking that covenant path. Because he explained to his people when they wanted to make their covenants to become the children of Christ and walk that path, hear what King Benjamin said to them.

Elder Hafen: 21:29 They will enter into a relationship with Christ. He’s the father of their progression, they’re new creatures in Christ. And so now what’s going to happen? In Benjamin’s council to his people, he tells them that they are going to experience hard things. I won’t try to go into all that. But when we read it, we learn about what we have come to identify as three categories of blessings for the atonement.

Elder Hafen: 21:55 The first of course is redemption. Redemption from death, redemption from sin. But there’s more. I love the way we can read an Old Testament verse that’s really clear and strong about that. Isaiah 43, Jehovah says, “I have redeemed thee, thou art mine.” And then because we are His, he says in 41 and 10, “I will strengthen thee, I will help thee.” The strengthening blessings of the Atonement come along with and after the redeeming blessings. And then the final category in our growth and in what we see with Adam and Eve, as we will explain the strengthening blessings lead to our being perfected in Him.

Elder Hafen: 22:36 If we meet the conditions, these are conditional blessings. Moroni tells us most plainly how the perfecting blessings are connected to this process. “Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him.” That’s from the closing verses of the Book of Mormon. It’s just so powerful, but he states the conditions of these blessings of the atonement. If we meet the conditions, we receive those blessings. “Come to Christ, be perfected in Him, by His grace, ye may be perfect in Christ.”

Elder Hafen: 23:09 On that path, if we’re faithful to our part of the covenants, because of His Atonement, He extends these blessings through our relationship with Him. That’s a point really worth making. Where does all this come from? Is this new stuff with the Savior? No, it’s just part of what happens when we walk the covenant path. President Nelson understands and teaches this so clearly. He said in one of his conference talks just a few years ago, “There is no amorphous entity called the Atonement upon which we may call for succor, healing, forgiveness, or power.

Elder Hafen: 23:44 Jesus Christ is the source. His atoning power is best understood and appreciated when we express and clearly connect it to Him.” That’s the end of that quote from President Nelson, and it’s beautiful. I would just add the Atonement is what qualifies Christ to give His followers these blessings. The point is that it’s because He performed the atonement that He was given, I would just say the power to extend these blessings to us, that’s His role. And on this foundation, here’s another phrase. And you’ll notice that this one will be an echo of the temple.

Elder Hafen: 24:22 Mosiah tells his people that if they will stay on this covenant path and be steadfast and immovable always abounding in good works, the Lord, God will seal you His. What? We’re going to be sealed to Christ? Yes, that’s a temple word. Now listen for this echo, that’s kind of in the mirror. The inverse image is given to us in the Book of Mormon, but we stumbled across this a few years ago. Amulek is teaching the people and he teaches them that if they choose to love Satan more than God, they will become, they aren’t born this way, but they will become carnal, sensual and devilish. Amulek said eventually then “Satan doth seal you his” striking to us, that the same words would be said. Somehow that’s really chilling to me.

John  Bytheway: 25:16 That is chilling. I’ve brought that up in my classes before, who would you rather be sealed to? When you look at that, that’s Alma 34, right?

Elder Hafen: 25:26 Yeah.

John  Bytheway: 25:27 Yes, exactly. The devil doth seal you his. I’m like, whoa, that doesn’t sound like what anybody would want.

Elder Hafen: 25:34 Well, and it’s a description of the life we’ll have John. Satan wants us to be miserable as he is. So that’s a life of misery. And what the Savior wants, to become a saint, through the Atonement that’s different from carnal, sensual and devilish, complete opposite. And then the nature of our life is joy.

John  Bytheway: 25:56 Can I go back for a second? Oh, the end of Moses 6 here. That is so great. Verse 66, “Thou art baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost.” Verse 67, “Thou art after the order of Him,” and that’s priesthood language, the holy priesthood after the order of the Son of God, but then verse 68, “Behold thou art one in me.” And when I saw that, I thought that word, that my understanding is the King James translators kind of invented of Atonement, at-one-ment, thou art one with me and ties it all up right there in verse 68. Thou art one in me. So here’s the Atonement of Jesus Christ working.

Elder Hafen: 26:37 Thank you for that one, John. To me, that’s what it means. To be sealed to Him at one.

Sister Hafen: 26:43 And if Adam and Eve are receiving the Atonement to its fullest, they are following Christ because He is the father of-

Elder Hafen: 26:52 And where do we go? We’re following Him until-

Sister Hafen: 26:54 Yes, we follow Him. I think that has some echoes. Doesn’t it for you?

John  Bytheway: 26:59 Yeah. Follow him. I like the sound of that.

Elder Hafen: 27:02 Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting, are we just going to follow Him forever? Well, there’s a destination to follow Him until what? Until we are sealed to Him and with our own sealings, then we are at one with each other, at one with Him. And of course, then new worlds open up…

Sister Hafen: 27:22 Yeah. And then we are like Him.

Elder Hafen: 27:23 Marie likes to say, “If we aren’t like Him, we can’t be with Him.” And the way we’re like Him is just what we’ve been talking about.

Hank Smith: 27:33 Yeah. Those of you who aren’t watching on YouTube totally fine. We can make these graphics available on our website, followhim.co, followhim.co, come on over and we’ll make sure that all of these graphics are available to you. So those of you who are driving, hands on the wheel, look straight forward, come find us. We’ll describe what we’re seeing for you. But if you want to come later to the website, come on over and we’ll provide these for you.

Elder Hafen: 27:59 Well, we’ve just alluded to this about where the journey goes, where it ends. And when we compare that to what we were saying, when Adam was baptized and when we’re baptized at eight. What is this journey all about? They didn’t understand Adam and Eve. They understood so little really. And then through a lifetime of learning, and discovering, and obeying and all that goes with it, they reach the point we just were talking about. That makes me think of those memorable lines from T.S. Elliot.

Elder Hafen: 28:31 “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” I think that’s how it must have felt to Adam and Eve. They’d been in the Lord’s presence to begin with. They didn’t know where they were. Just like, I didn’t know where we were in the St. George Temple as we rode our bikes around the temple, but then you get inside of it and you have that eternal perspective, the cosmic perspective, you rejoice.

Sister Hafen: 29:04 And the spirit, the feeling.

Elder Hafen: 29:07 Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a kind of witness to you, what you’re seeing. Okay. Keep going with a few more. So we’re trying to show all of the steps that Adam and Eve take on their way.

Sister Hafen: 29:16 The ascendings.

Elder Hafen: 29:17 In the St. George Temple and in really all of the temples. I’ve tried to notice as I’ve been in various temples, we ascend, we step up. Sometimes it’s only a few inches. You’ll walk up a little path, but in the pioneer temples, you would walk up a few steps to another room. You go from the world room to the garden room and then it’s terrestrial and celestial, it’s sequential. And we climb.

Hank Smith: 29:45 Elder Hafen, we just did this a few weeks ago with Jeff Chadwick. He talked about Jacob’s ladder and the idea of ascending up to God and taking those steps, the Jacob’s staircase, we called it.

Sister Hafen: 29:57 And you only have to take one at a time.

Hank Smith: 29:58 Yeah. One at a time, just a step up at a time.

Sister Hafen: 30:01 Hopeful for me.

Elder Hafen: 30:02 Well, to look specifically, one of the steps, as you mentioned, a few minutes ago, we read in the Lord’s teachings to Adam. He entered into the order of the priesthood. The temple shows that we start with the Aaronic priesthood. Of course, that’s what we know. We start with the lesser priesthood, the scriptures explain quite fully what that’s about. And then we go to the Melchizedek Priesthood.

Sister Hafen: 30:27 Stepping up again.

Elder Hafen: 30:27 Stepping up. Yeah. The Melchizedek Priesthood ordinances are essential to the disciples journey for both men and women. By which, point that out and underline it. How do women experience the blessings of the Melchizedek Priesthood? Well, in the ordinances of the Melchizedek Priesthood and the temple ordinances are among the main ones for everybody, we read in the Doctrine and Covenants section 88, through those ordinances in the temple and other Melchizedek Priesthood ordinances, the power of godliness is manifest.

Elder Hafen: 30:59 And without these ordinances, no man can see the face of God and live. And the other thing we’ll see on the visuals, whereas we kind of go up the ladder and look across, we’ve just divided these categories just to help us see the connections. The next one is principles. Looking here at the relationship between principles and ordinances. The Fourth Article of Faith says, the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are…

Hank Smith: 31:24 First, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Second repentance. John, do you know the third one?

John  Bytheway: 31:30 And it’s principles and ordinances. So faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ. Second repentance. Now ordinances, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins.

Elder Hafen: 31:41 Those three are Aaronic priesthood ordinances. They’re called the first because there are more, there are principles beyond that and the temple is teaching those to us. What are the principles that could be lined up next to the higher ordinances of the Melchizedek Priesthood? Let’s just take a couple of examples, sacrifice, consecration. Those are the principles that we think line up next to the ordinances of the Melchizedek Priesthood. As we go through the temple, we’re seeing this interaction between the principles and ordinances of both at the Aaronic level, and then at the Melchizedek level.

Hank Smith: 32:21 Elder Hafen, that is just great. This idea of first principles and ordinances, meaning there’s going to be some second, some third, some… There are more principles, ordinances. These are your beginning ones, but there’s more.

John  Bytheway: 32:33 They’re foundational that the rest of them all grow from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That clears up so much. I love the Articles of Faith in that idea of there’s so many principles of the gospel, which ones are the first principles? And that he would state it that way. Well, let’s talk about the first principles in faith in Christ. What did Elder Ballard say is a power to be reckoned with in this world and in individual lives. What’s his book. Our Search for Happiness, faith in Christ is a power to be reckoned with, but it’s the first principle then everything else follows. I love it. But these other ones, yeah, temple, I’m so glad you said that.

Elder Hafen: 33:12 Maybe we could say, sacrifice and consecration are to the endowment what the principles of faith and repentance are to baptism. You just sort of see the principles and then see the ordinances and they relate to each other.

Sister Hafen: 33:28 Yeah. They’re linked and they keep ascending.

Hank Smith: 33:30 There’s ordinances connected with the next principles that come just like the first two principles have first two ordinances, there’s going to be more principles come with more ordinances.

John  Bytheway: 33:41 I keep thinking of, was it Joseph Smith that said, “Being born again comes by the Spirit of God through ordinances,” Am I getting that right?

Elder Hafen: 33:49 I would just say as a kind of summary of what we’ve come to this point, we’ve been looking at the journey of Adam and Eve as represented through the symbolic steps and developments as they grow in understanding, they grow in the receipt of more power, as reflected in the ordinances and as shown in the way they lived their lives. We go to the temple to receive the ordinances and we leave the temple to live them. Same about the covenant of sacrifice. We learn it in the temple then we leave the temple and we go try to practice and live by the covenant of sacrifice in our families and beyond.

Elder Hafen: 34:28 And so that is how we are following the pattern of Adam and Eve, which is part of receiving the Atonement. Those are our practice sessions. We learn the principles, and then we go work on them as if you’re taking piano lessons. And it’s a lifelong process, but the growth is real.

Hank Smith: 34:46 Well I just like this idea of leaving the temple doesn’t mean, you leave what you’ve learned. This is don’t leave everything you’ve learned. And sometimes we go to the temple and we leave we’re like, “Okay. Back to real life. Back to life.”

Sister Hafen: 35:00 Normal life.

Hank Smith: 35:01 Yeah. What I was doing before, where Isaiah would say no, in the temple, you beat your sword into a plowshare. We’re changing. We’re becoming something.

John  Bytheway: 35:11 Oh, I want to restate this. This is too good. The story of Christ is the story of giving the Atonement. The story of Adam Eve is the story of receiving the Atonement. And then we go to receive these ordinances and principles, we leave to live them. That is really good stuff. And Hank, this reminds me of a quick story. I may have told before Elder John H. Groberg said when he was temple president in Idaho Falls, that he would hear people get to the front doors as they were leaving after a beautiful session and would say things like, “Back to the real world.” And he said, “I knew what they meant, but it bothered me.” And so one time when somebody was coming out and said, “Back to the real world,” he ran up to him and he said, “Wrong, only that which is permanent is real. You are leaving the real world and you are going back to a temporary world. That world out there is going to end. So come back soon to the real world.” They’re like, “Okay, thanks President.”

Hank Smith: 36:14 Yeah, Sister Hafen, let’s turn it over to you now and let you take it away.

Sister Hafen: 36:18 What I’d like to do is talk a little bit more about Adam and Eve’s experience, but a little more from Eve’s point of view. Because I’ve thought about her a lot. And if you think about them in the Garden of Eden, then at least they can talk with God and ask Him questions and learn from Him. And their relationship is I would say it’s not surface, of course, but they haven’t had hard things yet to really help them come together in a melded way.

Sister Hafen: 36:49 Once they, and she partook of the fruit and that we don’t know how much time it took between the time that Adam said, “I don’t think that I’m going to do that.” And she could see they weren’t going to have any kids if they were still in the garden. They had two principles, they had two commandments. They had to decide between. And she decided, “Yes, we’ve got to do this. Somehow, I’ve got to make that choice.” And again, we don’t know how much she knew exactly when she chose, but she had to know enough for it to be a free agency decision.

Hank Smith: 37:26 Exactly. Sister Hafen, I think 2 Nephi 2 makes this clear, right? Lehi says they could not have-

Sister Hafen: 37:35 They would have had no children. Wherefore would’ve remained in a state of innocence.

John  Bytheway: 37:41 We go past it so fast in 2 Nephi 2 but that is theological dynamite. The whole Christian world needs to know. It’s not that we could all be living in paradise today if they hadn’t messed up. So that, and Moses 5 too.

Sister Hafen: 37:55 I’ve thought about Eve because they were cast out into a telestial world. That had to be an enormous fall. I don’t think we understand how much of a fall that was for them. So here she is out there in the world, they were given a few things to cover their bodies. They must have had something that they could make a fire with. They must have figured that out. But she’s looking around thinking, food? We have got to eat. We need to fix the food? This is just entirely foreign. And I think we, as following their example, kind of grow up again at ascending, we grow up being sheltered and being nurtured. And then eventually we have to go out into the world. But hopefully with our armor on. We have talked about Adam’s baptism already. And Lehi you’ve mentioned it.

Sister Hafen: 38:51 Let’s go into that just a little bit more. Because Lehi taught them in 2 Nephi 2:22 to 24 that are probably central, but the context for their experience and ours in the telestial world, there’s that same Adam and Eve look again. So let’s look at 2 Nephi 2, you’ve already quoted. They would’ve had no children. Wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence. That’s kind of neutral, right? We get to start out neutral. And then we make our choices to go one direction or the other. They would’ve had no joy for they knew no misery. Oh, I get it. No children, no misery.

Hank Smith: 39:36 Yep.

Sister Hafen: 39:36 Sometimes you feel like that. We had one, especially that we felt like that. You don’t have any like that, do you? Yeah.

John  Bytheway: 39:44 No, of course. You two need to tell the story that you share in one of your books about someone who said, “Yay, I’m engaged. I’m at the end of my troubles.” You got to finish that one.

Sister Hafen: 39:54 Yeah. But then you have to ask what, “Which end? Which end of your troubles as you’re getting married? Which end of your troubles now that I’m married?”

Hank Smith: 40:02 Sister Hafen, I’ve always said Joseph Smith is a prophet for that one verse. If you don’t have children, you don’t know joy. And that is part of some of the greatest joys of my life, if not the greatest joys of my life. I’ve found in my children. If they’d not known children, they would’ve had no misery. And some of the most miserable experiences of my life have been involved my children. And I hate to say that. I hope they’re not listening, but it’s that verse right there is, sums it up. Doesn’t it?

Sister Hafen: 40:33 Well, and we have experienced the rejoy if you want to put it that way, because we have our first few great grandchildren. And two of our granddaughters who are both the oldest in their family, one is in her early 30s and the other one is almost 28, they each had their first little baby girl. And to see the joy for both of them is this, makes this verse just live when you see the joy that they have in those little children.

Sister Hafen: 41:06 But it reminds me too, of the doctor who delivered our first son, who was not exactly easy to deliver. And I was just gingerly walking down the hall. And he was our obstetrician as well, this uncle. And he said to me, ‘Well, how does it feel to have the easy part over with?” And I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. That was not easy.” And he said, “The next 20 years are going to be the determining harder part.” And I think Lehi had some clue about that. Because he said, “Having no joy for they knew no misery, but doing no good for they knew no sin.” They didn’t have the oppositions. There was no way that they could make choices.

Elder Hafen: 41:52 Now, Marie has kindled a memory of a conversation between the two of us years ago, when that very child she just talked about-

Sister Hafen: 42:00 We won’t mention his name.

Elder Hafen: 42:03 … was driving us up the walls. He was really a challenge. Our obstetrician had properly predicted and was just so frustrated. One day I said to Marie, ‘The Lord put Adam and Eve on the earth as full grown people. Why couldn’t he have done that with this child?” And Marie with that wonderful gift of a mother’s insight said, “I think the Lord gave us that child to make Christians out of us.”

Sister Hafen: 42:35 Yeah. I don’t know where that came from, but we found increasingly that was correct.

Elder Hafen: 42:40 So that was part of Adam and Eve’s progression.

Sister Hafen: 42:42 We often say Adam fell that men might be mortal and men are mortal that they might have joy. So this earth is to prepare us to have joy with both the mortality of it, the joy that we’ve talked about, but also through the sin, we learn without being condemned by it. If we are willing, if we make those choices. We do taste the bitter so that we can understand and prize the good.

John  Bytheway: 43:13 I like how Moses 6:48 says, it sounds so much like 2 Nephi 2, but it takes a different turn. Maybe you were going here anyway. But in 2 Nephi, Adam fell that men might be, and men are that that they might have joy, but then in Moses 6:48, it says, “Because that Adam fell we are, and by his fall came death and we are made partakers of misery and woe.” I like to say sometimes we have 2 Nephi 2:24 days. And sometimes we have Moses 6:48 days. That we might have joy, this one says, so that we might have misery and woe.

John  Bytheway: 43:49 And I think it’s so beautifully significant that 2 Nephi 2 was Lehi talking to Jacob. Jacob, you’ve never seen Jerusalem. You’ve seen your family fighting all your life. Let me explain opposition and all things. Let me explain the origin of the Fall and why there had to be opposition. And I think that’s really wonderful that Lehi’s talking to Jacob and that’s where this amazing doctrine comes out.

Sister Hafen: 44:17 Yes. And sometimes we’ll have both the misery and the joy in the same day. Yeah. Yeah. So I’d like to share an illustration of exactly what we’ve been talking about. And this is from Eve’s point of view, again, as she is experiencing what the Atonement is coming to mean in her life. What does it mean to follow Christ? Try to remember what God taught them and yes, they can pray to Him. And what do they do when they first are able? They build an altar so that they can pray. But here’s an illustration that shows Eve through a poem by Arta Romney Ballif, who was President Marion G. Romney’s sister, both an artist and a poet. And she was trying to imagine what it was like for Eve through the experience of Cain and Abel. And her honest questions, her honest experience, trying to work things through.

Sister Hafen: 45:16 As I read this poem, we see her wondering about her relationship to God, although she’s always sure that he’s there, but she’s willing to ask honest, hard questions. And it’s interesting that Sister Ballif calls this poem, Lamentation. Notice there are some symbols in this poem and layers of meaning. Symbols, such as the fruit, the fruit of her body, the fruit of the earth. The seed, the seed that will become their generations. A storm and multiply, sorrow, lots of layers of meaning.

Sister Hafen: 45:57 Let me share it. And God said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” God said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow.” Thy sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. I have gotten a man from the Lord. I have traded the fruit of the garden for the fruit of my body, for a laughing bundle of humanity. And now another one who looks like Adam, we shall call this one, Abel, it is a lovely name, Abel. Cain, Abel, the world is yours. God set the sun in the heavens to light your days, to warm the flocks, to kernel the grain. He illuminated your nights with stars. He made the trees and the fruit thereof yielding seed. He made every living thing. The wheat, the sheep, the cattle for your enjoyment. And behold, it is very good.

Sister Hafen: 47:03 Adam? Adam, where art thou? Where are the boys? The sky darkens with clouds. Adam? Adam, is that you? Where is Abel? He’s long caring for his flocks. The sky is black and the rain hammers. Are the ewes lambing in this storm? Why your troubled face Adam? Are you ill? Why so pale? So agitated? The wind will pass. The lambs will birth with Abel’s help. Dead? What is dead? Merciful God hurry, bring warm water. I’ll bathe his wounds. Bring clean clothes, bring herbs. I’ll heal him.

Sister Hafen: 47:52 I am trying to understand. You said, “Abel is dead?” But I’m skilled with herbs. Remember when he was seven, the fever. Remember how… “Herbs will not heal?” Dead? But Cain, where is Cain? Listen to that thunder. Cain cursed? What has happened to him? God said, “A fugitive and a vagabond?” But how can he do that? They’re my sons too. I gave them birth in the valley of pain. Adam, try to understand, in the valley of pain I bore them. Fugitive? Vagabond? But this is his home. This is the soil he loved, where he toiled for golden wheat for tasseled corn.

Sister Hafen: 48:52 To the hill country? But there are rocks in the hill country. Cain can’t work in the hill country. The nights are cold, cold, and lonely. And the wind gales. Quick, we must find him. A basket of bread in his coat. I worry thinking of him wandering, with no place to lay his head. Cain? Cursed? A wanderer? A roamer? Who will bake his bread and mend his coat? Abel, my son, dead? And Cain, my son, a fugitive? Two sons Adam, we had two sons. Both, oh, Adam, multiply, sorrow. Dear God, why? Tell me again about the fruit. Why? Please tell me again, why?

Sister Hafen: 50:07 Thank you Sister Ballif and thank you Eve. She was willing to ask those honest questions. I think she knew, if I can’t ask the questions of God, how can I find the answers? I think we have this experience of Eve, both wanting to know the answers, but also being willing to go out after she has the questions and live through the answers, even though they are really difficult.

Sister Hafen: 50:36 I’m looking forward to meeting her someday, to finding out from her perspective, face to face, how did she feel about living through those answers? Living through those questions? Although we do have a couple of clues, but I think what she says also in this poem, especially is that we can have these really hard and even these searing experiences and that we can find the answers through living our lives. If you want to say outside the temple, in the way that the temple teaches.

John  Bytheway: 51:21 Please join us for part two of this podcast.