John Bytheway: 00:02 Welcome to part two of this week’s podcast.

John Bytheway: 00:07 This reminds me of Stephen Robinson’s book. Just the title was Believing Christ. His thesis, as I recall was, “Well, a lot of us believe in Christ, but we don’t believe him when he says he can change us, and cleanse us, and redeem us.” There’s a verse that I, for years, went right past it because I knew what Alma and Amulek were doing with the Zoramites. They were showing them after they heard the prayer on the Rameumptom thou has made it known unto us there will be no Christ. They started quoting all these verses that said, “No, God will have a son.”

John Bytheway: 00:44 So when I read Alma 33:16, all those times, it was, “Thou art angry, O Lord, with this people, because they will not understand thy mercies which thou hast bestowed upon them because of thy Son.” I always read it in that context. See, he’s showing them that God has a Son, but I missed the powerful message in there. How do you make the Lord angry? “Thou art angry, O Lord, with this people, because they will not understand thy mercies.” What is the difference between “will not” and “cannot?”

Hank Smith: 01:16 It’s a choice.

John Bytheway: 01:17 They refuse to understand how merciful he is. “They will not understand thy mercies which thou hast bestowed upon them because of thy Son,” and that verse opened up to me. People refuse to understand his mercies.

Hank Smith: 01:31 Despite all the evidence he shows them.

John Bytheway: 01:33 Yeah, and so that just is a good one to stick in the margin there with verse 11, “How long will it be ere they believe me?”

Hank Smith: 01:41 Notice, he doesn’t say, “Believe in me.”

John Bytheway: 01:43 Believing Christ.

Hank Smith: 01:44 Lehi speaks to Jacob in 2 Nephi 2. Very beginning his message to him, he says, “You are redeemed because of the righteousness of your Redeemer.” He doesn’t say, “Because of your righteousness.” He says, “Because your Redeemer is this good.” John, you brought up Believing Christ by Stephen Robinson. I actually brought a little of that talk to share today. If you won’t mind, I’m going to give you guys two paragraphs from it. This is a BYU Devotional Believing Christ, but also became part of the book.

Hank Smith: 02:13 “To have faith in Jesus Christ is not merely to believe that he is who he says he is, to believe in Christ. Sometimes to have faith in Christ is also to believe Christ, both as a Bishop and as a teacher in the church. I have learned there are many that believe Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the Savior of the world, but that he cannot save them. They believe in his identity, but not in his power to cleanse, and purify, and to save them. To have faith in his identity is only half the process. To have faith in his ability, in his power to cleanse and to save, that is the other half. We must not only believe in Christ, we must believe Christ when he says, ‘I can cleanse you and make you celestial.'”

Hank Smith: 02:53 “Spiritually, there are some of us who are petrified by the questions, ‘Am I celestial? Am I going to make it? Was I good enough today?’ We’re so terrified of whether we’re going to live or die, or whether we’ve made it to the kingdom or not that we cannot make any progress. It’s at those times when the Savior grabs us, throws his arms around us and says, ‘I’ve got you. I love you. I’m not going to let you die. Now, relax and trust me.’ We can relax and trust him and believe him as well as believe in him. Then, together, we can begin to learn to live the gospel. He puts his arms around us, and we begin to make progress.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 03:28 That’s now about 30 years old, and my feeling is we need it now more than ever. It’s so hard to believe Christ, and I just want your audience, and I love that you have so many people that listen to you that maybe we can reach with this message because I just want people to know I don’t care what’s wrong with you. We all have something wrong with us, and we all focus on all the things wrong with us, and all the things we don’t do, and all the things we do wrong, and whatever. I don’t care what’s wrong with you. It’s not more than Christ can fix. It’s not beyond His saving and redeeming power. All you have to do is keep coming back to Him.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 04:04 However many times you fall, you just have to keep coming back. He knows you’re going to fall. He knows you’re going to mess up. He knows you’re going to murmur. Whatever else. it’s part of the plan. That’s why God sent his Son. Just keep coming back to him because you are not more than what he can fix. If he can deliver Israel from the Egyptians, if he can create this world, he can exalt you, and I testify that he can exalt you.

Hank Smith: 04:31 He’s already in the process of exalting you. He has been since you were born knowing full well the mistakes you would make. Have we said this clear enough, you guys? I think this may be the most important thing we’ve said.

John Bytheway: 04:43 After Stephen Robinson wrote Believing Christ, he wrote another book called Following Christ, and in that book, it was like, “Okay. We’ve come to Christ. Now, what do we do?” There was a line in there, which I love to share with my students where he said, “Really, the question is not, ‘Am I going to make it?’ The question is, ‘Do I want to stay?'” We are in a covenant with Christ. He is very good at keeping his covenants, and He is mighty to save, and that changes the question. I love what you said, Kerry. We think our sins can overpower the Atonement. Well, we’re in a covenant with Christ, and He invites us back every single week to renew that, and so the question isn’t, “Am I going to make it?” It’s, “Do I want to stay?” We are in the kingdom of God because we’re in the kingdom of God on earth, and he’s mighty to save. This is a great discussion, and I’ve got lots of footnotes now next to verse 11.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 05:36 I think that our answer is, again, in the story. So we’ve been sometimes saying, “Oh, silly Israelites. They complain so quickly and so on.” So I’ll just tell you this. I can remember one time taking my family across the border from Israel to Egypt, and it was 110 degree day, and we were standing out on this pavement. My thought was, “Wow. I am never going to wonder why Israel murmured again.” Right? I get it. If I were there, I would be murmuring. I have no doubt. I’m not a murmuring kind of guy. I’m sure I would be murmuring. So I don’t want to point the finger too much at them, but we do want to point out the good things.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 06:11 However many times they messed up, they kept coming back. They’re a little bit silly in this case because God says, “Okay. You’re going to go 40 years,” and they say, “Okay. Nevermind. We’ll go in right now.” God says, “No. I said you’re going to now take 40 years.” “No, we’re going in, and we’re going to fight these guys like…” “Okay, but I’m not helping you, right, because I got a new plan.” So they’re a little bit silly about it, but they keep coming back. That’s the story of the Old Testament, that however many times Israel messes up, they keep coming back, and God is always there to accept them back.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 06:43 So that I believe is another way of seeing what you were saying, John. Are you going to follow Him? Are you going to stay? I don’t care how many times you fall. That’s never the question. The question is, how many times do you get back up and try again? I don’t care how good you are at sinning. You’re not good enough to mess up. I don’t care how good you are at being a ding-dong. You’re not good enough to mess up to the point where God is not going to be able to fix this. The question is, are you going to keep coming back?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 07:15 That’s another thing that’s worth bringing up, I think. One of Satan’s favorite lies is that… Let’s say that you promised God… You’re repenting, and you said, “I’m not going to do this particular thing anymore.” Right? Maybe it’s murmuring, but whatever it is because the Israelites murmured 110 times in this story. But whatever it is, you promised God you’re not going to do it anymore, and you maybe even go five years without doing it. Then, you do it again, and you know you need to repent and come to God in prayer. But as you’re doing it, Satan has a lie he loves to tell you, and he says, “God doesn’t want to hear from you anymore. You’ve told him so many times you wouldn’t do this anymore, and you did it again. God doesn’t want to hear from you anymore.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 07:49 That is a bold-faced lie because what God says is, “As often as my people repent will I forgive them of their sins.” When you think about that, that’s a high percentage. Right? That is 100% of the time that you repent. God will take you back. 100% of the time that you’re a ding-dong and you forget to do this, or you don’t do what you should, or whatever else, God will bring you back. So the question is, will you be like the house of Israel? It doesn’t matter how punished you are, how scattered you are, how often you’ve done this, how many times you’ve messed up. Will you just keep coming back and let God gather you back to him? That’s the question for us.

John Bytheway: 08:30 That verse you quoted, “As often as my people repent,” I think that’s Mosiah 26:30, isn’t it, in the Book of Mormon? It’s like Alma’s got to set up his first church membership council ever, and the Lord is telling him, “Here’s what I do.” Look at verse 18 back in Numbers 14. The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy for giving inequity and transgression. Now, the next part of it talks about the justice area, but this first part, I underlined, “He’s long-suffering and of great mercy.” That doesn’t sound like an angry God of the Old Testament the way some people characterize him.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 09:06 Yeah, go on to verse 19. “Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now.” Right? “We’ve messed up plenty of times already, and you’ve forgiven us. Can you keep doing it?” The answer is yes.

Hank Smith: 09:24 As we’ve had this discussion about Believing Christ, I remember working this out on my own nine years ago, and I read the Book of Romans, and it was chapter three where Paul says, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and here I was thinking, “Well, I’m not celestial material. I just don’t know if I’m going to make it.” It was almost a check on my pride as if Paul was saying to me, “Do you think you’re some sort of special sinner that you somehow, your sins fall outside of the atonement of Christ, fall outside of his power?” I thought, “Well, no. I just feel like…” “What? Are you the worst? You’re the vilest of all sinners? Is that what you think?”

Hank Smith: 10:04 It really was a check on my pride to say, “You know what? I need to be submissive enough to realize I’m not a special sinner, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and that the Savior will redeem me as he will redeem all those who have sinned.” I hope our listeners are feeling the weight lifted off their shoulders and onto the Lord’s because that’s what he wants. “Come unto me, all ye that are heavy-laden. Give this burden to me. I am going to save you. You are not going to save you. I am going to save you. Trust me.”

John Bytheway: 10:38 Do you know what this reminds me of? It’s one of my favorite verses in all of the Doctrine and Covenants last year. I think it’s section 46. I want to say verse 15 that the Lord suits his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men. I mean, Satan has made it really easy to sin these days. Some of the worst things the world has to offer are easy to bring into our homes, and our smartphones, and everything else, but God knows that, and the Lord suits his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men. The 2022 conditions were different than the ones I had as a teenager in the ’80s, but the Lord knows that. He knows exactly the world he sent us to. He knows exactly the world he sent our teenagers too, and his mercies know that, and they’re suited to that. It gives me a lot of hope and comfort.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 11:29 That’s beautiful, and I like what you were saying, Hank. I think we all need to realize that we’re all average garden-variety sinners.

John Bytheway: 11:38 Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 11:39 Don’t think you’re so special. You’re just like everyone else, and Christ’s got this. Right? He sees us. He’s like, “Ugh, I haven’t done this before. That’s nothing. I got this.”

Hank Smith: 11:50 It’s got to be one of the major purposes of Alma the Younger getting so much page time in the Book of Mormon is that we’ve got a guy who goes from what Mormon calls the vilest of all sinners, the worst of the worst to a translated prophet saying, “I promise you, you fall within that spectrum.” Right? If I can do that within him, I can change you. Now, Kerry, let’s get you back on track where you were. You were in verse 19 of Numbers 14.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 12:15 Yeah. Well, and let’s do 18 and 19 because as important as this is and to know that we can be forgiven, we also need to see the other side of this coin. Right? So verse 18 as John said, God is long-suffering, great mercy, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation. Now, that seems weird to us, like why would he visit the iniquity? We get that kind of a phrase in a number of places. It’s in the 10 Commandments. I think this is what he’s saying. I could be wrong, but this is how I understand it. I think he is saying sometimes there are consequences to sins, and sometimes others pay those consequences.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 12:53 I always remember this talk by Elder Holland where he says, “There are some people who have their phase where they’re not faithful, and they leave the church, and then they come back, and it works out well for them, but what about their children they were raising during the time they weren’t faithful? Those children often pay a consequence that isn’t really fully their fault.” So I think God wants us to know we can be forgiven, but he’s saying, “Okay. Don’t think that that means you should just run out and sin all you want. Sin brings some stuff with it.” But then, look how he immediately gets back to… So he’s got to have that in the middle, but it starts with long-suffering and forgiving iniquity. Then, we get verse 19 where Moses pleads for the iniquity, and then we get verse 20.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 13:31 The Lord said, “I have pardoned according to thy word.” It’s that fast. “Okay. I’ve forgiven Israel, but…” Verse 21. “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” So he is going to talk about the glory, but then he’s still going to say, “But they’re going to have to wander for 40 years.” I don’t know if it’s exactly 40 years. That’s a number that just means a long time. Right? But the point is, “Okay. I’ve pardoned them, but they’ve still demonstrated that they need a tutoring process,” and that’s really what it is. Punishments are tutoring processes.

Hank Smith: 14:06 Right, Kerry. Even if they went to the Promised Land right now, they’re not ready to be the people they need to be.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 14:12 Yeah. Yeah. They need to become people who really do believe him. So he’s going to put them through the process that will get them to be the kind of people who do believe him so they can inherit the Promised Land and go through everything that they will with Joshua. You’re going to get a group of people who will do that because they’ve learned to do it. So he says, “That’s fine. You’re pardoned. We still need to do some learning here, and it’s going to be a long learning process.”

Hank Smith: 14:37 Yeah. Let’s believe in the Lord. Let’s believe he’ll save us. Let’s believe in the process he’s going to take us through in order for us to be changed into the person I need to be. So if it’s going to take 40 years in the wilderness for me to be changed by the Lord, I’m going to trust him and that process.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 14:58 Perfectly, beautifully said.

Hank Smith: 15:00 Kerry, this has been fantastic so far. I’m learning a lot here about the Book of Numbers, which… Come on. I can’t remember the last time I thought, “I need a little inspiration. I got to read some Numbers.” So, Kerry, where do you want to go next in our family road trip here?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 15:16 Let’s jump. We’re going to skip a couple chapters just because there are so many chapters. We can’t cover them all in detail. Let’s go to chapter 21, which is a pretty famous chapter and has a lot of things we can learn from it. We’re going to get them murmuring again. If we go to chapter 21, verse 4, and they journeyed from Mount Hor, by the way of the Red Sea to compass the Land of Edom. So let’s do, I guess, just a little bit of itinerary here.

Hank Smith: 15:37 Okay.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 15:37 They went from Mount Sinai up to Kadesh Barnea. So straight up the Sinai region, right on that border to go into Southern Canaan, and they’re told, “Now, you have to wander.” So they’re going to go east from there into the modern day country of Jordan. Right? Petra area is where they’re going to cut across into that area, and they’d like to go right through Edom, but they ask the Edomites if they can go through, and these are the descendants of Esau, and they’re told no. The Edomites say, “No, you can’t go through.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 16:08 Now, there have been other groups who’ve said, “You can’t go through,” and God says, “That’s okay. We’re supposed to destroy these people anyway, so let’s just destroy them right now.” As we keep that in mind, this is another really important thing, and I’m sure you’ll touch on this more when you get to the conquest, but we have to remember a couple of things about the battles that the Israelites are fighting with different people. One, Nephi makes it clear, and we get this a little bit in the Genesis 12 account when God says, “Your descendants are going to be in Egypt for 400 years because the Canaanites aren’t right for destruction yet.” they get a long time to be told to repent.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 16:42 Two, remember that if someone is killed, they’re just being put in the other room like we talked about, and three, it’s really, really important that the Israelites get rid of everything that leads them to idolatry. Like we said, we’re in the process of trying to get Egypt out of them, and it doesn’t help if you’re among a whole bunch of people who are also doing idol worship. It’s a little bit like if you’re a recovering alcoholic, you probably don’t want to go spend Friday nights in bars. It’s just a bad idea. So you also, if you’re a recovering idolatrer, you don’t want to go and hang out with a bunch of people who are practicing idolatry. It’s just going to be a problem for you. You have to strip yourself of all unholiness.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 17:23 That’s what God is trying to have happen here. But with the Edomites, when they say, “You can’t go through here,” God says, “Well, these are actually relatives, descendants of Abraham. We’re not destroying the descendants of Abraham, so you’re going to have to go around.” So they’re going to have to go all the way around, right? They can’t cut through what’s called the King’s Highway, which is this ridge road where they can travel easily from north to south in the modern day country of Jordan. They got to go all the way out into the wilderness, again, past Petra, past all this stuff, and then head up north from there because the Edomites don’t want them to go through, and God says, “Yeah. Well, we’re going to work with the Edomites, so that’s where you’re going.” This is what happens when you decide you’re going to have to wander instead of going straight in.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 18:05 So they’re in some pretty tough territory, and if we go to verse four… We’ve already started their journey. Partway through verse four, “And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.” This way is hard, right? Again, this is the way they have to go since they chose not to go straight up through. The way is hard, and the people spake against God and against Moses. There’s a surprise. It’s this murmuring again, and there’s a part of us that says to them, “Why didn’t you learn your lesson? Really, you’re murmuring again?” But here’s the question I have for us. Is there anyone… and if we could see all of your giant, huge audience, then we’d ask by raise of hand, but I’m just going to assume I know what the answer is. Is there anyone here that doesn’t have a sin that they’ve committed several times, and they want to quit doing it, and then they do it again?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 18:55 The answer is no. We all do that. We all do that, and so again, we see the children of Israel doing this. Don’t ever ask yourself if you’re doing what the children of Israel do. Ask yourself how you’re doing it. You’re always doing it in some way. You just have to figure out what the way is. Right? So we all have sins that we keep committing. By the way, I think this brings up another point that’s worth thinking about. Sometimes we really beat ourselves up that we’re continuing to struggle with a challenge. My question for you is, did you really think that you would be done with struggling before you got out of mortality? Because I don’t think that’s the plan. I think the plan is that you have some things that you struggle with all the way through mortality, and the question is, will you keep struggling? Not, will you get done with struggles?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 19:42 We’re going to keep doing some things. You’re going to keep doing it your whole life. You’re going to struggle to the very end of your life to not lose your temper, or to not gossip, or to not covet or not have pride, or whatever it is. You’re going to struggle with that your whole life, and that’s part of the plan. God knew you would. He just wants to see if you’re going to keep struggling. Eventually, Christ will fix that, but I don’t think he fixes everything in this life, and so let’s not beat ourselves up over that.

Hank Smith: 20:04 Yeah. Oh, Kerry, this is so important. Our good friend, Brad Wilcox, gave a talk at BYU called His Grace is Sufficient where he said, “Oftentimes, we go through the repentance process, and we think, ‘Okay. I cannot make this same mistake again. If I do, then all of that repentance was for not.'” He said, “That puts you in an impossible position.” He talks about, “Teenagers do this. When they commit the same sin over and over. Even returned missionaries, married couples. This is such a discouraging thought.” He said, “In all of these cases, there should never be just two options, perfection or give up.” He said, “When learning the piano, are the only options performing at Carnegie Hall or quitting? No. Growth and development take time. Learning takes time.”

Hank Smith: 20:48 When we understand grace, we understand that God is long-suffering, that change is a process, and that repentance is a pattern in our lives. When we understand grace, we understand that the blessings of Christ’s atonement are continuous and his strength is perfect in our weakness. When we understand grace, we can, as it says in the Doctrine and Covenants, continue in patience until we are perfected. What a crucial lesson because how discouraging it might be as a teenager. John, I know you’ve talked about this before that you thought sinning as a teenager, if you made a mistake, every single sin returns, and it’s as if you never repented, and you were terrified. Right?

John Bytheway: 21:27 Yeah. It’s the misunderstanding of a verse. I love airplanes, and I appreciate Elder Uchtdorf for this analogy of… You know it. An airliner is off course something like 90% of the time, but you just keep course correcting. If you’re going from New York to London, and you notice you’re off course, you don’t turn around, and go back to New York, and give up. You keep course correcting. You’re off course most of the time, but you keep making tiny corrections until you touch down at Heathrow, and it works. You get there because you keep, as Kerry said, just keep struggling. Keep course correcting, and you’ll get to your destination.

John Bytheway: 22:09 I needed to hear that more because I thought one of the steps, forsake this sin and never do it again, that’s my intent. I can be willing, but I’m not able. I love that the sacrament prayer says they’re willing to take upon them the name of Christ. They’re willing to keep his commandments, but we’re not able. So we keep coming back to that sacrament table, and the Lord has arranged it so that every week, we can come back and course correct again.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 22:36 That’s good, and so many of the temple recommend questions have been changed to say, “Are you striving? Are you trying?” That’s what God is asking of us.

John Bytheway: 22:43 Keep course correcting.

Hank Smith: 22:44 Kerry, it seems to me that God knows they’re going to murmur again, and again, and again, and the wilderness experience has been designed for them because the Lord knows they’re going to keep committing this sin. I just want to make sure that if there’s a teenager listening who’s struggling with pornography or something, that they don’t say, “I give up. I’ve tried a hundred times, and I’m not winning this fight,” maybe this is their wilderness experience, and the Lord knows. So to any of our listeners who struggle with the same sin over, and over, and over, please don’t think that somehow you’re not making any progress. They’re making progress through the wilderness here, right, Kerry? Even though they’re committing the same sin over and over, they’re learning, and changing, and growing, and eventually, they’re going to be ready for the Promised Land.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 23:29 That’s exactly right. So let’s keep in mind, we’re using this as an archetypal journey. So their journey is similar to our mortal probation. They’re taking the long way around, and we all do. Let’s also be clear. We all take the long way around. Nobody gets translated in 11 days.

Hank Smith: 23:44 It was only Jesus who made an 11-day journey in 11 days.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 23:47 That’s exactly right. He is the only one. That’s well said. The rest of us are taking 40 years, but for the Israelites, the journey is designed to help them become a kind of people who rely on God and believe that he will deliver them. They don’t rely on anything else because they’ve had to learn that nothing else works, and they’ve seen God deliver them enough times, and they remember it. That’s one of the real key phrases throughout all of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy is to remember it.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 24:15 So, now, they actually believe that God will do them. That’s what a wilderness probation is, and so we’re all in the midst of that, and we’re all going to have times we have forgotten, and we mess up again, and again, and again. That’s part of the process. As long as you’re still trying, then you’re actually making progress. It doesn’t matter if you have licked it already. It’s that, are you still getting back up and trying? Because as you said, this does eventually get them to the Plains of Moab where they’re going to come across, and hit the city of Jericho, and go in from there.

Hank Smith: 24:46 Yeah. So please don’t be discouraged by what you think is a lack of repentance on your part. I think the Lord understands you. He understands where you came from. He understands what Egypt was like. He understands it’s going to take a while for this process to do its thing, for this process to change you into who you want to be as well. I’m sure they get frustrated with themselves, having to learn the same lesson over and over.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 25:12 Yeah. Absolutely. We need to keep in mind that this is a growing process for them and it’s a growing process for us, but let’s look at this specific instance in their growing process because this is a symbol that’s going to get used a lot. Verse 5, they’re sick again of the manna and so on. Verse 6, “And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they hit the people, and much of Israel died.” Now, I’m guessing the fiery has something to do with the way it feels when you get bitten. It’s a burning, nasty venom that can kill you. There are plenty of snakes in that area that can kill you. Asps, and vipers, and all sorts of stuff. So we get verse 7. They realize, “Oh. Yep. Okay. This is a bad thing that happened because God is trying to humble us.” Really, let’s keep in mind, God, when he punishes, he punishes with a purpose, and the purpose is to get people to come back to him and trust in him, and that’s exactly what this is designed to do, to get them to realize we need God.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 26:07 Verse 7. “Therefore, the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us,’ and Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass that everyone that was bitten when he looketh upon it shall live.’ Moses made a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” Let’s be clear. This ends up being a symbol of Christ. John talks about that. Christ being lifted up on the cross is like this serpent being lifted up on the pole. Nephi will tell us that because it was so simple, some people just plain wouldn’t do it. Now, I love to make the scriptures become as real as possible. I find I can get them to apply to my life more and draw more strength and power from them if they become real.

John Bytheway: 26:58 You have a podcast called The Scriptures Are Real. Is that right, that talks about this very thing?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 27:04 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 27:04 It’s called The Scriptures Are Real. It is a followHIM friend. It’s a followHIM partner. The Scriptures Are Real.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 27:13 There you go.

Hank Smith: 27:15 Is this something where you just go through the scriptures like you’ve done with us today?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 27:19 Yeah, and sometimes I have people on, and I just say, “Tell a story about a time where the scriptures became real to you. What made them become real? How did you use them in your life?” That kind of a thing because I think that we can apply them to ourselves more when we feel like these are real people.

Hank Smith: 27:33 Kerry, there’s also a website you’ve told me about. What is that? What’s that website?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 27:36 Oh, yeah, outofthedust.org, where I put on all sorts of aids for understanding the Old Testament, and Abraham’s covenant, and Book of Abraham, things like that.

Hank Smith: 27:46 Okay. So The Scriptures Are Real Podcast and outofthedust.org. We want to make sure our listeners know about both of those.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 27:53 That website is dedicated towards helping people understand and have a good experience this year with the Old Testament.

Hank Smith: 27:59 Great.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 28:00 But there was a time. I just want to share a time when this story became more real to me and it helped me understand a little bit of why because I always thought, “Well, absolutely stupid that they wouldn’t look at the serpent and what…”

Hank Smith: 28:13 Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 28:13 “Okay. I’m not looking. I’m going to look down at the ground. I don’t want to…”

Hank Smith: 28:16 But you got to walk a couple hundred yards? I mean, how hard is this, right?

John Bytheway: 28:19 How hard is this to look up?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 28:21 So, it is the couple hundred yards that I realized here. So, this last summer, my ward, we did a youth conference, and we went down to Hole in the Rock down in Blanding, Utah. While we were there, this actually is a lot like the Moab-Edom area.

Hank Smith: 28:36 It’s a long journey. I’ve been out there too. You got to go down to Escalante or “Escalante” as they call it [inaudible 00:28:43].

John Bytheway: 28:42 Yeah. They don’t put the “E” on the end if you’ve been there. It’s “Escalante.”

Hank Smith: 28:46 Jacob and Audrey Sorensen live down there. I just got to give them a shout out. This is great. So tell us the story. You’re down going to Hole in the Rock.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 28:54 It’s like Moab or Edom, right? This is so much like if you’re in that area biblically, and I thought, “Well, then we got to throw in some biblical stuff for…” These are the poor people in my… poor youth of my ward are always getting these Old Testament things from their bishop that can’t avoid it. Hazard of having an Old Testament teacher for your bishop. Before we went down, I bought a whole bunch of rubber snakes, and then I got a big one, and I painted it gold. So when they woke up and were coming to breakfast one morning, they had to go through all these snakes that I’d thrown all around. Then, I had one on a pole there, right, to go through this story and teach the lesson. But as I was doing that and try to figure out, “Okay. How far out do I want to put these snakes towards their tents and stuff like that?” and I started to think about the numbers of the house of Israel.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 29:35 The numbers may be exaggerated, but we’re given like 600,000 fighting men, and so that means that’s like the men, say, between maybe 17 and 35 or something like that. So then, you’re going to estimate like that means if you want the whole population, like three to five times that or something along those lines, and you start to get into the millions of people. Right? Now, that may be more than it actually is, and the Old Testament’s more concerned with creating impressions and teaching than it is about giving accurate numbers, but still, I’m guessing you’re at least in the many, many hundreds of thousands.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 30:04 Then, I started to think, “Well, if you have many, many hundreds of thousands of people with tents, most of them are not close to the center. Some of these guys may actually have to walk like half an hour on a leg that has been bitten by a fiery serpent, and it hurts to walk on that leg to go and see that pole. That changed the story a little bit for me. Right? So it’s not the, “I’m intentionally avoiding looking at that pole.” It’s the, “Well, it might take a little bit of effort. Do you believe enough to put in that effort, even when it’s painful?”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 30:37 Again, let’s go back to the symbolism of our life and our mortal probation. There are going to be times where life bites you, and it’s going to take a little while to get to Christ healing you, and you’re going to have to walk on some pain and through some pain to get to where Christ is healing you, but you have to believe that there is something at the end of this that makes it possible for Christ to heal you. Suddenly, when that happened, this story became more real for me. I can apply it to my life more. Healing is possible, but it may not be instantaneous, and that’s how it works for us often in our life.

Hank Smith: 31:12 I love that, and I think it would help if you’re sitting in your tent saying, “Oh, it’s not going to work,” and then someone comes by and says, “No, it does work. It happened to me,” and you think, “Well, maybe I’ll try.”

John Bytheway: 31:22 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 31:22 Right?

John Bytheway: 31:22 They call that a testimony meeting.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 31:24 Yeah, that has to be happening for them. That’s right. That’s right. Now, a lot of people wonder, “So, okay. Why a snake? That’s a weird symbol, especially because we have the serpent representing Satan in the creation story.” So it turns out that in almost every culture, there are a couple of symbols that symbolize both the good and the bad. One of them is water. Water is life-giving, and it also is destructive and drowns you. Right? So water is almost always a symbol of both good and bad, and the other are serpents. It’s partially because some serpents… most are not venomous, but some are, and the venomous ones are not good for you. Let’s be clear about that. Right?

Hank Smith: 32:00 They’re not.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 32:01 So they can be a symbol for something that’s very, very bad.

John Bytheway: 32:04 Question. You know how the pharaohs, a lot of them had the cobra on their head?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 32:09 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 32:09 Their head dress, whatever. Was that a symbol of, “Don’t mess with me,” or was it a symbol of power or…

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 32:15 So the idea is that it’s a cobra that can spit. So it actually can spit fiery venom, right? That became symbolic of the ability to destroy bad forces. So this is one of the reasons that snakes become a symbol for good. Anthropologically, we would put it this way, that you try and take that, which is dangerous, and tame it, and harness it, and make it something that works for you. Actually, you do that with snakes. You can milk their venom and use it for a number of good things, including becoming tolerant of venom and so on, but it does become a symbol for good in that way. But there’s another reason that snakes become a symbol, a good symbol, and that’s because they shed their skin.

John Bytheway: 32:51 Oh, the Resurrection?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 32:52 Yeah. They become a symbol of rebirth in almost every culture because they see them leave behind the old and become new, and so they become a symbol of rebirth. Of course, that’s exactly what Christ is all about is rebirth. You can look at this in two ways, and probably both ways are correct. Satan loves to take good things and make a Satanic imitation. So is it possible that he knew that serpents were going to symbolize Christ, and so he uses a serpent to be the imitation of the good symbol, he uses that serpent in the Garden of Eden? That’s possible. It’s also possible that Christ takes that, which is bad, and bitter, and dangerous, and turns it into that, which is good, which is exactly what Christ does, right? The fall is dangerous and terrible, but it’s also good, and he takes it, and he turns it into something wonderful.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 33:39 Maybe both of those are intended. I don’t know which is the chicken and which is the egg, but I think it’s important to recognize this symbolism that both Nephi and John certainly point to that just like they raised this brass serpent up on a pole in the wilderness, and if you look to it and lived, so if we will look to Christ… and again, look how simple that is. It’s the Believing Christ thing we’ve been talking about. If you will look to Christ, you will live. That’s a fantastic symbol.

Hank Smith: 34:08 John, can you do Harrison Ford? Why does it always have to be snakes?

John Bytheway: 34:11 Yeah, see, because I’m more of the Harrison Ford school of snakes. I hate them. I hate snakes.

Hank Smith: 34:18 Yeah. Snakes? Yeah.

John Bytheway: 34:18 “Oh, that’s my pet snake, Reggie. Show a little backbone or whatever,” he says.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 34:22 Yeah. That’s right. Yep.

John Bytheway: 34:24 I want to bring up a verse because I’ve read this in Helaman. This is chapter 8, verse 14. “Yea, did he not bear record that the Son of God should come? And as he lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, even so shall he be lifted up who should come.” I’m going, “He’s talking about Moses. Did not Moses bear record that the Son of God should come?” I’m looking for it in Numbers 21, and I’m not seeing Moses explicitly say, “This is a type of the Son of God.” Do you know what I’m asking?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 34:56 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 34:56 Was this something that was a plain and precious thing that we don’t have now?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 35:00 It could be. I don’t know if it was ever in this record and it was taken out, or if this was an oral thing because we know that Moses taught lots of stuff orally that didn’t get written down, but it was passed on. Oral traditions were a very important and real thing. I don’t know exactly what it was and how it went missing, but clearly, Moses did teach that.

Hank Smith: 35:21 You can see Jesus in John 3, like you said, Kerry, clearly sees himself as the Messiah in this story.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 35:29 Yeah. Absolutely.

Hank Smith: 35:30 We talked about… or do you trust enough to walk through the pain? There’s other little things that we probably need to do that we think, “Oh, it isn’t going to make a difference if I do that little thing.” If I read my scriptures just a little bit every day, what’s the difference?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 35:47 That’s a huge one, Hank. I find so many people who have some kind of faith crisis or something like that, and for some reason, it’s exactly when they stop reading the scriptures and stop praying when really, sometimes it is as simple as… This may take a long time. It may take you, I don’t know, five years to get through your faith crisis. It may take you five months, five weeks. I don’t know. The key is keep searching for God in the midst of that, and the way you do that is by reading your scriptures and praying. It may seem like such a simple thing, you’re not going to do it, but it’s not. It’s exactly what you need to do. Don’t give up on that. That’s going on the walk to see the brass serpent. It’s one of many possible analogies for that, but it’s a key one. Keep reading your scriptures. Keep praying to God through whatever kind of garbage you’re going through. Keep doing that. That’s one way that you walk to see the brass serpent.

John Bytheway: 36:38 At the time that we’re recording this, I had just finished a couple of my courses, and the advice I tried to leave with my wonderful students was the Doctrine and Covenants section 50, verse 24. “That which is of God is light, and he that receiveth light and continueth in God.” Just those three words. Please continue in God, and if you have a time where you feel the light is getting darker or something is happening, well, you don’t disconnect from God. You continue in God. If you want more light, you got to stay connected. So continue in God, and then you’ll receive more light. You go through that faith crisis, but don’t discontinue God.

John Bytheway: 37:15 What’s the story, Hank, of… I’m sure you both know that Elder Ballard tells about one of his missionaries calling and saying, “I’m struggling with my faith, and I have all these questions.” Elder Ballard said, “Bring your questions in a week. But before that, have you been studying your Book of Mormon?” “No.” “Have you been praying?” “No.” He says, “I want you to do that” in a couple of days, the missionary calls President Ballard and says, “Nevermind. I’m good.” He’s like, “Too bad. I worked really hard on these questions.”

Hank Smith: 37:43 “And you’re going to hear the answers.”

John Bytheway: 37:45 Yeah. They talked, and at the end of the interview, President Ballard said, “What have you learned?” He said, “Give God equal time,” the missionary said. Give him more than equal time. Right? That’s what I think.

Hank Smith: 37:56 Yeah. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 37:57 But continue in God because that’s the source of light and truth. He is the source of light and truth. So you never unplug from God.

Hank Smith: 38:05 Kerry, anything else in the book of Numbers you think we should see before we wrap up?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 38:10 Yeah, there’s a story. It actually takes several chapters, but maybe we can just touch on it briefly, and it’s a little bit of a famous story whereas the children of Israel are coming through, you have some of the Moabites who have heard what happened to the Egyptians. They’ve heard about the other people that the Israelites are fighting. They know they’ve got a problem on their hands here.

Hank Smith: 38:28 They’re scared.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 38:30 They are scared, and so they want to get someone who will prophesy and put a curse on the Israelites to help them defeat the Israelites. So they go to a guy named Balaam, and it seems like he’s a Midianite. Now, remember that Midian is one of the children of Abraham through his wife, Keturah. Jethro was a Midianite. So these are people who know about Jehovah, and this seems to be a prophet of Jehovah. Balaam does. Balak, who’s the king, the Moabite king. He says, “I’ll pay you a ton if you can curse these Israelites,” Balaam, being a good prophet of Jehovah, he says, “Well, I can only prophesy what Jehovah tells me to. I won’t say more than that, and I won’t say less. Whatever Jehovah tells me, that’s what I’ll do.” But the interesting thing is that both Balak and Balaam would like for this to work out. Balak would like for the Israelis to be cursed, and Balaam would like to get the payment. Right?

Hank Smith: 39:24 Okay.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 39:24 So they go up on this mountain, and as they’re heading up, there’s an angel that’s trying to stop Balaam from coming, and his donkey can see the angel. The donkey keeps trying to go around, and he’s banging his leg up against the cliff wall or something like this. Finally, Balaam gets mad, and he’s like, “What is wrong with you donkey?” The donkey dons back and said, “Well, I’ve always been a good donkey. Have I ever caused you problems? It’s just there’s someone here trying to kill you, and I’m trying to avoid that.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 39:51 Then, Balaam is like, “Oh, sorry. Thanks for that,” and the angel tells him, “You better only do what God tells you to do,” right, and so on. So Balaam doesn’t prophecy against Israel. So Balak wants to try again. They go from one mountaintop. Now, they’ll go to another one just north of there, and he gives this prophecy about how Israel is going to be fantastic, and Balak is like, “This is not what I’m looking for.”

Hank Smith: 40:12 Yeah.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 40:13 Right?

Hank Smith: 40:13 “You’re not getting paid.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 40:15 Then, so they go to another mountain, and he gives a prophecy, that Messianic prophecy about the scepter, and the star, and so on. He’s just blessing Israel instead of cursing Israel. So I guess he doesn’t get the payment, and Balak is not happy with that, but I think it’s a great story of a prophet who was true to what God wanted him to do no matter what.

Hank Smith: 40:38 Yeah. There’s the pressure.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 40:40 Yeah, that’s exactly right. There are some other stuff that happens after this that it’s hard to know what to make of, and I think we can read into it what happens, but I’m not 100% sure. It’s not too long after this that the children of Israel are in the Plains of Moab, and it’s from there that they’ll go across into the Promised Land. Midianites and Moabites are coming in and inundating them with sexual things and with idolatry. Somehow this Balaam character is involved with that and ends up being slain by the Israelites on the Lord’s behalf with that, and it almost seems like Balaam is still trying to say, “Okay. Well, I’d still like to get that payment. Maybe the way to get it is to get the Israelites to sin so much that then God will allow me to curse them, and then I can get paid.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 41:29 Now, I don’t know. I might be reading too much into this story, but he’s involved in this somehow. Probably the reason I see this is because I’m exceptionally good at this where I… There’s a part of me that wants to do things exactly how God wants, and there’s a part of me that wants to follow my fallen nature and follow my favorite sins. So if I can just find a way to rationalize it, right, if I can find a way to say, “Well, if it works this way and we do this, then that sin is actually okay.”

Hank Smith: 41:56 “I can do both.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 41:57 Yeah. “I’m still doing God’s will, and I’m getting this handy dandy little sin.” Right? So I may be reading Balaam wrong, but I think that’s what’s happening is that he did follow the Lord, but the lure of the money was still there, and so he didn’t stay as true as he should have and was just trying to find a way to make it okay. I don’t know. I’m probably reading too much into it, but I think there’s a valuable lesson for us one way or the other. There is always the lure of the world. Always, always the lure of the world.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 42:31 When we’re rationalizing, there’s always somewhere at the back of our minds that we know we’re rationalizing. When you catch that little tickle in the back of your mind that you’re rationalizing, it’s a good time to stop and say, “Am I doing this because of the lure of the world? Am I about to try and make this happen in a wrong way, trying to pretend like it’s right, and then in the end, I’ll be slain like Balaam?” We can be good at rationalizing, and in the end, it doesn’t work.

Hank Smith: 42:55 Kerry, I can’t remember if it was you or in a different episode where we talked about the Lord inviting Moses into his presence, but he says, “Take the shoes off your feet. Meaning, I want you to come into my presence, but your sins cannot come with you.”

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 43:09 Yeah, yeah. You’re leaving the world behind, right, because that’s what’s on your feet.

Hank Smith: 43:13 Right.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 43:13 What’s on your shoes is the world.

Hank Smith: 43:14 Yeah. This is a great idea here with Balaam that you cannot have both. You cannot have both. You’ve got to leave your sins behind, even though they call to you. Even in the children of Israel. Let’s just go back to Egypt. Let’s just go back to Egypt.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 43:28 Yeah. Yep. You can’t keep the summer cottage in Babylon. Right?

Hank Smith: 43:32 Kerry, this has just been a fantastic day in the Book of Numbers.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 43:35 Who knew?

Hank Smith: 43:37 Yeah. Who knew you could have a great day in the Book of Numbers? We’ll very likely have you back this year, unless you are like Indiana Jones and get stuck somewhere in the Middle East and Egypt in some great adventure bitten by an asp.

John Bytheway: 43:50 Be careful of bad dates.

Hank Smith: 43:52 Yeah, that’s right. So where do you want to leave our listeners on this great family road trip?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 43:59 I think that’s a perfect way to think of it. Right? Numbers really is the itinerary from Sinai to the Promised Land. So from making temple covenants to getting into the celestial kingdom, and as we’ve said, it’s this archetypal journey. It is a family road trip. Right? We go on this journey. That’s who we do it with, with our family. Whether we like it or not, whether we think that’s how the plan should be or not, that’s how it works. We’re on this family road trip, and it’s not just my siblings. It’s our covenant family as well. Right? We’ve become a covenant family. I’ve made a covenant. You’ve made a covenant. We’re in this. We’re a covenant community or covenant family as well.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 44:36 So all of us together, our most immediate covenant group, which is our family, our larger covenant group, our ward, and so on, but we’re all on this road trip where we’ve made covenants, and we’re in that hard slog through the wilderness. It’s harder than it should be because we’ve done some stupid things, but the children of Israel do get to the Jordan River, which is that veil to go into the Promised Land, and then they’re going to get through there. That’s the Joshua story, right? But as bumpy as the ride is and as much as the wheels came off the RV, and this really did happen to me one time where I was draining the potty, and there were holes in the tube, and it made a mess. Right? As much as that kind of stuff happens, we get there if we’ll just keep coming back and we’ll just keep trying.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 45:20 So what I would hope is that everyone who is listening, as they read Numbers, and some of it, they’ll have to go into more in depth than we had time here because, again, it’s this huge reading chunk. Think of it as your journey, and think of the prophet as your guide, but Christ is the one who makes it possible and will deliver you, and see how you can apply that to your life, and your journey, and the journey of your family, and your covenant community.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 45:46 I believe that if we will read this with that in mind, that the spirit will whisper to us about things we need to learn from this will just make us more successful in the journey and help us get through the pain of the serpents, help us quit murmuring against God’s prophets, and help us get where we’re trying to go by believing in Christ. The Lord through the Holy Ghost will let you know exactly how that happens in your life if you’re asking him while you do this reading, and I really believe that.

Hank Smith: 46:17 We won’t say goodbye to you, Dr. Muhlestein. We’ll just say see you soon.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 46:21 Ah, sounds good.

Hank Smith: 46:22 Yep. We want to thank Dr. Kerry Muhlestein for being with us today. We want to thank you for listening. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen, and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. We hope all of you will join us on our next episode of FollowHIM.