Hank Smith: 00:05 Hello, everyone. Welcome to FollowHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m here with the incredible wonderful John Bytheway. We are doing FollowHim Favorites where we take a single question from each week’s lesson to talk about. The two books we’re covering in this week’s lesson are Ezra and Nehemiah. These are ones that I’m sure you’ve spent a lot of time in John, Ezra and Nehemiah. They talk a lot about rebuilding the temple. So the question that I get, and I’m sure you get it too, is I’m going through the temple soon, how do I prepare? What do you think I should do? What advice do you have for me to prepare to go to the temple? John, when someone comes to you with that question, what do you say? I bet there’s a couple things you say every time.

John Bytheway: 00:48 What I love from these chapters, before I answer that, is just how excited they were to rebuild the temple. This is, in a nutshell, there’s the Babylonian captivity, well, King Cyrus says, “Let them leave Babylon.” And they’re, “We’re going to go back to Jerusalem. We’re going to rebuild the temple.” I just love the feeling of excitement for that and discovering things in the Scriptures and trying to put that all together. I’m glad people are asking that question. There ought to be some great excitement for going to the temple. How do you prepare for that? You stay on the covenant path. You be where you’re supposed to be. You tell your Bishop, “I want to go to the temple.” For me, you show up at the sacrament table every week, that’s a great way to prepare. You are prepared.

John Bytheway: 01:33 If you want to learn more, because maybe you’re a little nervous. What is that? We don’t talk about it because we feel it’s too sacred. If you’re nervous about it, there’s a book our friend wrote. Tony Sweat wrote a book called The Holy Invitation. I’ve given that to my students before who are asking that same question. That I think could calm any nervousness you might have about going, because it’s something really to look forward to, expect to feel the presence of the Lord in such a wonderful place. The people who will open the doors and greet you will be so nice and so kind and so loving. When I was a Bishop, I just loved it when somebody wanted to come and get or renew a recommend. I just always had that feeling, the Lord wants this person in the temple.

Hank Smith: 02:21 Our friend, Matt Gray came onto our podcast when we talked about the ancient tabernacle, if you remember John. He had some great visuals. If a student comes to me or a young person comes to me and says, “Hey Brother Smith, I’m going through the temple soon. What advice do you give?” I usually say, “How much time do you have? How much time do you want to give to this preparation? If it’s five minutes, then watch this little film. If it’s an hour, then do this or that.” We’re going to assume you want to put hours in for preparing and not a 10 minute quick preparing. I’ll give you a couple of things. John, you mentioned our friend, Anthony Sweat, he just gave a BYU devotional called We Need an Endowment. First thing I would do if I was going to go through the temple soon is I would sit down with that devotional and I would read it and listen to it at the same time. I would walk through it carefully because of what Anthony does there.

John Bytheway: 03:17 Speeches.byu.edu, right? They could go find that.

Hank Smith: 03:21 Yeah. Yep. Our friend Alonzo Gaskill has also written a book about 75 questions and answers to prepare to go to the temple. There’s another few hours you can put in. This week we talk about the book of Nehemiah and how he says, “I’m doing a great work.” That’s part of what’s got to be in your mind, is that what we’re doing here is not something small something, “Oh, I just got to get this done so I can go on a mission or I just got to get this done so I can get married.” No, what you are doing in that temple is a great work. Let me read to you, John, Nehemiah 8:6, “And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered amen, amen, with lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.” They are understanding that this is a great work that they’re about to begin. They’re getting a sense of isn’t that what it says in verse eight, John, they have teachers there to give them a sense of what they’re doing. BYU devotional from Anthony Sweat, The Holy Invitation by Anthony Sweat. I don’t know if you know this, John, but he wrote another book called The Holy Covenants. The Alonzo Gaskill book and our episode with Matt Gray. So right there, you’ve got a few hours of preparation.

John Bytheway: 04:41 You’ve got some homework to do. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 04:43 There’s also one of my favorite YouTube channels made by a friend of mine named Daniel Smith, is called Messages of Christ. I would go and look up that YouTube channel and look up anything you can with the ancient tabernacle. What he’s done there and we’re talking millions of views.

John Bytheway: 05:04 Oh, they’re beautiful visuals on there.

Hank Smith: 05:06 The tabernacle. Yeah. Solomon’s temple explained. There’s a video called Aprons of Fig Leaves and Coats of Skins. He’s got the high priest and his clothing all laid out. He’s got Yom Kippur all laid out. Man, if you could come into your temple experience understanding all of that, well you’re prepared.

John Bytheway: 05:28 You’re going back to an ancient time. I love what you just said, Hank, because that the Old Testament was the center of everything, physically anyway, was the temple, the presence of the Lord symbolically there. The New Testament, Jesus taught in the temple. Even after he was gone, where did the apostles go? They went back to the temple. It’s so interesting to see in the restoration, how we got to build a temple and the Lord, “You got to build that Kirtland temple.” And they get kicked out. They lay cornerstones at Farr West, they get kicked out. They build one in Nauvoo, they get kicked out. Brigham Young comes into the valley, sticks his cane down, you’ve seen the movie. “Here, we build the temple of our God.” Job one, we got to build the temple because temple blessings are something you want. You want those, so I’m glad you’re asking the question.

Hank Smith: 06:13 I would say this too John, when I first went through the temple, versus when I go through the temple now, it is a very different experience just because I kept going. I kept going and I kept learning. What’s interesting is I found Ezra three to be a little bit more true now when I go to the temple than it was when I first started. It says, “They sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord because He is good for His mercy endureth forever toward Israel and all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.” And they go on verse 12, “They shouted for joy.” Verse 13, “They shouted for joy.” The more I have been to the temple, the more excited I’ve become about the temple and the education I receive. I think when I first went, it must have been like a kindergartner going to his first day of class. Just kind of eyes up going, “Wow. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand all of this.” And now, over the years, as I’ve just line by line, piece by piece, just like we get an education, I can say, “God is good. He is really good.” More so than probably I’ve ever felt before in my life.

John Bytheway: 07:29 Yeah. Some of our listeners might know the name John H. Groberg. They’ve seen the other side of heaven. Well, Elder Groberg tells a wonderful story, a book he wrote called Refuge and Reality about being the Idaho Falls temple president and hearing people as they’re leaving the temple, breathing a sigh and saying, “Well back to the real world.” He said, “I knew what they meant, but something about that bothered me.” And over time, somebody again, “Oh, back to the real world.” And he came out of his office and he said, “Wrong, you are leaving the real world. Only that which is permanent is real. Here in the temple, this is the real world. That world out there is going to end. Come back soon to the real world.” And they said, “Okay, thanks President.” I love that idea of the real world and the eternal world is what you’re going to learn about in the temple.

Hank Smith: 08:23 Beautiful, beautiful. We’ve given you a lot of homework. Go back to the beginning of this video, write down all those resources that John and I talked about and go through every single one of them. I promise you, you’re going to be prepared as ever to go to the temple, put the time in. I promise you it’s worth it. Now, you know what else is worth it? It’s our full podcast. Come over and join us. It’s called FollowHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. This week we’re with Dr. Jared Ludlow. We brought him on, he’s an Old Testament expert and he’s going to walk us through these two books, Ezra and Nehemiah. Then come back here and join us next week for another FollowHIM Favorites.