Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to followHIM, 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.

John Bytheway: 00:15 As together, we follow him.

Hank Smith: 00:21 My friends, welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m here with the amazing John Bytheway. Welcome John.

John Bytheway: 00:32 Thanks for that intro.

Hank Smith: 00:33 The amazing John Bytheway. Yeah, that’s how they should greet you every morning coming into the kitchen. And now, the amazing John Bytheway.

John Bytheway: 00:43 My kids would just roll their eyes. “Pass the milk, Dad.”

Hank Smith: 00:46 Yeah. Standing ovation. Sometimes people say, “You’re just such a great teacher. Thank you so much,” and then I go home and my wife says, “You can do the dishes.” “Don’t you know who I am?” She says, “Yep, you’re the guy who does the dishes.”

John Bytheway: 01:01 Precisely.

Hank Smith: 01:02 On our Instagram page, someone said, “I love to hear that you guys are learning too. Sometimes I think we forget that even older people or Church leaders are learning and still have so much to learn. It’s awesome to know that we are all going through the same things.” I think you and I have made that … Yes, let’s mention the older people. Thank you for that. But also, John, I think we have learned more than anyone.

John Bytheway: 01:25 Well, this is why I love doing this because it has changed my Doctrine and Covenants so far and so much, and so I feel like especially today, with our wonderful guest, I’m going to be taking a lot of notes.

Hank Smith: 01:40 Yeah. Why don’t we introduce him, John?

John Bytheway: 01:43 I will do that. Today, we have with us Dr. Robert L. Millet. And Brother Millet was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He served his mission in the Eastern States Mission. He married Shauna Sizemore. They have six children. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from BYU and a PhD from Florida State in religious studies. He worked with LDS Social Services, LDS Seminaries and Institutes, and joined the BYU religious education faculty in 1983. He served as the Ancient Scripture Department Chair and as the Dean of Religious Education. He’s done a lot of outreach with the Evangelical community and has, I don’t know, something like 60 different publications.

And I have a personal note, Brother Millet completely changed my life. I was in the JSB, the Joseph Smith Building, one day and I said, “Hey, what should I do with my life?” And he said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” And he told me about this new Masters of Religious Education program and, probably with some help from Brother Millet, they lowered the bar and let me in, which was just an amazing experience. And he has been a friend and mentor to me ever since that time, and so I’m really grateful to have him here today.

Hank Smith: 03:08 We are so excited to have you. In fact, I’m pretty nervous. I’m going to get past it, I know I’m going to get past it, but I think my kids noticed this morning. They said, “Are you recording today?” I said, “Yeah, we’re doing another podcast episode.” And they said, “Who is coming on this time? Is it Tony?” And I’m so casual with some of these people. And I said, “No, it’s a really very important” … Sorry, Tony, if you’re listening. “It’s a very important guest.” And I said, “It’s Bob Millet, Robert Millet.” And of course, my children are going, “Is that a big deal?” I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Is he like the Mr. Beast of your world?” So if you guys don’t know, Mr. Beast is a big time YouTuber that my children just love to watch. And I said, ” Yes, Bob Millet is the Mr. Beast of the Religious Education World.” So just so you know, that’s your new title. In this week, Dr. Millet, this week in Come, Follow Me, we’re going to look at seven sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, and we bring up a lot of new names. Suddenly you hit Section 30 and you’re seeing a lot of names that you haven’t seen before, names that we’ve maybe touched on a little bit in our previous episodes, but I’d love to hear your take on some of these. Let me read some of them off. The Whitmers, we know, but we have a name, Thomas B. Marsh, Parley Pratt, Orson Pratt. Is it Ziba Peterson or Ziba Peterson?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 04:41 I’ve heard it pronounced both ways. I usually pronounce it Ziba Peterson.

Hank Smith: 04:44 Ziba Peterson. Ezra Thayer, Northrop Sweet, Sidney Rigdon and Edward Partridge. Now, some of these we’ve mentioned before, but if I’m a first-time reader of the Doctrine and Covenants, this was really my first jump into Church History, I want to know a little something about these people. What can you tell us about these men and how they’ve become acquainted with Joseph Smith and this brand new Church?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 05:09 Well, if you look back on how people came into the Church, and who came into the Church, and under what circumstances, you gain an appreciation, maybe a new appreciation, for the expression the field is white, all ready to harvest. We hear that and almost always Latter-day Saints will think of it’s a great day to do missionary work, and that’s true, but I think of it too in terms of the Lord has so orchestrated things that he put people in key positions, and men and women that were raised up to do very significant things in the kingdom just happened to be here and there, and this person happened to be a good friend with that one, and suddenly you have a growing Church. And so I think these early sections are a testament or a testimony of God’s ability to see the end from the beginning and be able to put people in just the right place at just the right time.

Hank Smith: 06:04 Yeah, because it seems like all of a sudden the floodgates open, here we are three or four months in and all these key players start coming onto the scene.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 06:14 One other thought, and that is how many of these early Saints were in a mode of preparation, a mode of looking for what they often used to call the ancient order of things. You have people that are serious students of the Bible, you have people that are very prayerful. They’re searching for truth. They’re not finding it and not satisfied. That whole mindset amongst so many people, I mean and it isn’t just true here, think about later in the history of our Church, as Wilford Woodruff discovers what? 600 people praying for the ancient order of things to come back. Well, that’s what you’re seeing in the early days. In these early sections, they aren’t as filled with what we might call heavy doctrine, but they’re teaching a great lesson about the Lord’s omniscience.

John Bytheway: 07:06 I like the phrase that I’ve heard Tony Sweat use about seekers. There were just a lot of seekers back then really looking, and it’s nice to see that … Would you call it a cultural backdrop of how many people were seeking? I mean here’s Parley Pratt that goes on his own to be a preacher, but they’re all seeking something better.

Hank Smith: 07:26 Should we talk about Parley and Ziba? Do we want to talk about these as individuals? Thomas B. Marsh. This is Section 31 and 32. What do we know about these specific individuals? Is there anything unique about them that we should know?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 07:40 Most people know about Thomas B. Marsh, the bad side. They’ve heard about the milk and the milk strippings, but he’s a fascinating guy. He’s born in 1799, so he’s six years older than young Joseph. He runs away from home at age 14 and supports himself in various jobs. After he was married, he and his wife moved to Boston and it’s in Boston that he joins the Methodist church. This becomes interesting because a surprising number of Latter-day Saints had been Methodists prior to coming into the church. We baptized a lot of Methodists. And I think that says something about the teachings of John Wesley. I think it says something about how very close they were to having the fullness but they didn’t. He feels spiritually directed, Thomas does, to go West. He goes West, he stays there for a few months. He’s approached by a woman who just says, “Have you heard about Joseph Smith and the Golden Bible?” He looks into it, he goes back to Boston, talks to his wife about it, and she becomes touched the same spirit that he felt, the spirit of inquiry and interest. Moved to Palmyra in 1830 and soon met Joseph Smith. Baptized by David Whitmer. This is a man had great capabilities. This is a man who became the first president of the 12 when the 12 are called. And so it’s a man who clearly has been moved upon and prepared by the Lord.

Hank Smith: 09:22 Yeah, that’s a beautiful thing. And I remember when you go visit the Grandin Building there in Palmyra, you’ll hear Thomas B. Marsh read the book of Mormon. It wasn’t even completed. He was able to grab one of those 16 sheet sections and just read that. So already the book of Mormon is doing its work in just tiny little pieces. What can you tell us about the Pratts and Ziba Peterson?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 09:47 Parley’s autobiography is a classic. I mean this man has more revelations in a year than I will have in a lifetime. Just an amazing person. Again, a seeker, a true seeker. Born in 1807, two years after Joseph. Burlington, New York. As you read those early years of Parley, he marries Thankful Halsey is her name. He takes her to Ohio, he makes contact with, comes to know Sidney Rigdon, who at this point is a companion, co-worker with Alexander Campbell. Alexander Campbell, he and his father, Thomas Campbell, had been Scottish Presbyterians. They leave Scotland, they come to America, and as they get here, they both decide that they’re not satisfied with what they’re finding in Presbyterianism. Neither one of them like the creeds. And so Alexander in particular begins doing something else, he becomes known as a Reformed Baptist. Of course, Alexander Campbell eventually becomes what we call the father of Disciples of Christ or the Church of Christ. It was a restorationist group. They were looking for the ancient order of things. And so Sidney meets him and they come together, and they often call their movement Campbellism. Campbell was anti creedal. He would say the only creed is the Bible or the only creed is Christ. So anti creedal, anxious for this ancient order of things, but he had differences with Sidney in this sense, most people that read or know about Alexander Campbell know he’s a brilliant man, he’s a rationalist. Now, he believes in spiritual experience, but he’s very nervous about spiritual experiences, and so he’s nervous about the gifts of the spirit. These two men differ in two ways, one is Sidney believes the gifts of the spirit should exist, they should be around. There was a sentiment called cessationism, it’s still present today, where people believe that the ancient gifts died with the apostles in the first century. So they disagree over that. The other thing is Sidney took very seriously chapters four and five in Acts about the saints having all things in common, this holy economic order, and Campbell is opposed to that. And so they break, and then Sidney is going about his business as a Reformed Baptist when Parley and his group were on missions, the Lamanite mission. Parley says, “I think we ought to go to Ohio.” He meets his old friend Sidney, converts him, and then a humongous number of people come in, both from the Campbellite movement, the Methodist, et cetera, 125 or so people are baptized in that short amount of time.

Hank Smith: 12:40 And doubles the size of the church.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 12:41 It did.

Hank Smith: 12:43 In this little mission that we’re going to talk about. So what’s interesting is it sounds like a lot of these people know each other before they know Joseph.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 12:53 No, that’s right.

Hank Smith: 12:54 Yeah, and they bring each other in.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 12:55 Something as simple as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, they become in-laws. Oliver marries a Whitmer. Hiram Page is married to a Whitmer.

Hank Smith: 13:04 Yeah, and then they end up joining as families, as groups.

John Bytheway: 13:08 Let’s take a look at some of the verses in section 30, and I read the first couple of verses there and I thought okay, is this for me? “Your mind has been more on the things of the earth.” I mean right there in the proclamation on the family, it says I’m supposed to be a provider, and that occupies a lot of my thoughts and a lot of my time. I mean we have any comments on some of these things that Lord’s telling them?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 13:35 Well, in those first two verses, I mean let’s just read, “Behold, I say unto you, David, you’ve feared man and have not relied on me for strength as you ought, but your mind has been on the things of the earth more than on the things of me, your maker, and the ministry whereunto you’ve been called.” I think most historians agree that this refers to the fact that David was rather swayed by Hiram Page’s argument with the peep stone. That is he was pretty convinced there was something to this. There are really two things that could have kept David from going that way, the promptings of the spirit, or he could have talked to the Prophet Joseph about it. He did neither of those. And so consequently, David got sucked into this cultish movement that Hiram Page is involved with and the Lord is scolding him for it here. And so you have different people, Peter Whitman Jr, et cetera, that are named. Sections 28 and 30 really go together. 28 refers to the Lamanite mission, 30 refers to the Lamanite mission. So we’re talking about Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and Peter Whitman Jr. Those four become the missionaries that feel the strong need to go and preach the gospel to the Lamanites. And you can look back and say well, they didn’t have great success among the Native Americans. No, here’s another one of those situations where the Lord has them meet someone and suddenly all things break loose.

Hank Smith: 15:02 Right. And when-

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 15:00 … and suddenly all things break loose.

Hank Smith: 15:02 Right. And when we talk mission, we don’t think, “Oh, they’re going from New York out towards Independence. Independence, Missouri.” We don’t think of it as that far. This is a long way.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 15:18 It’s well over 1,000 miles that they walked. I don’t like to drive 1,000 miles.

John Bytheway: 15:25 And it was in snow. Don’t we have reports they were knee-deep in snow and stuff? It sounded horrible.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 15:32 And here’s the other thing, this is so stunning to me, these are brand new members. These are people that have just come into the church a matter of weeks ago.

Hank Smith: 15:41 And now you’re going on 1,000 mile walk for the church. And we’ve had missionaries previous to this. We had Samuel Smith going around New York, Joseph Smith Sr. served as a missionary for a small period of time. But this has got to be the first major, big-

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 15:58 Missionary ever.

Hank Smith: 15:58 … mission. Yeah. We’re going to go pretty far out to the Lamanites and it’s just that they stopped by Kirtland on the way.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 16:06 Parley Baer’s testimony of the Book of Mormon to Sydney, gives it to him, he’s converted, and then Sydney goes around to those little pockets of people and converts them.

John Bytheway: 16:16 That he knows, yeah. It’s funny, in the Come Follow Me manual, the first paragraph says no one had been a member of the church for more than six months when all this is happening. It’s like, “Yeah, good point.”

Hank Smith: 16:31 Not even the prophet himself, right?

John Bytheway: 16:33 A member of the church, yeah, formally organized church.

Hank Smith: 16:36 Yeah, the church is six months old.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 16:37 When you think about it, we have years to think about and prepare for a mission. They go on a mission after four weeks or a period of days.

John Bytheway: 16:47 Yeah. Thomas B. Marsh, “I’ve read these 16 pages and let me tell you about them.”

Hank Smith: 16:51 Yeah. There’s wonderful little snips from Doctrine and Covenants 30, and from most of these sections, that can be really applicable to missionaries today. I’ve got a nephew who was just called last night to serve in Columbia. And you’ve got this idea, “The time has come that it is expedient in me,” this is verse five, “that you should open your mouth to declare my gospel.” I love that. The time has come. It is now your turn. And that’s my nephew, Wyatt Booth, “Wyatt Booth, it is time. Open your mouth and declare my gospel.” Andrew, your son just got home, John, from-

John Bytheway: 17:27 Iceland.

Hank Smith: 17:27 … from Iceland, right. It was his time. And I love that, that the Lord says, “Now it’s your turn.”

John Bytheway: 17:34 And my daughter is in the other room as we speak, doing Zoom MTC, preparing to go to Tahiti, French speaking Tahiti.

Hank Smith: 17:46 Hopefully she doesn’t have to walk like these guys did.

John Bytheway: 17:50 Not a lot of snow in Tahiti, from what we’ve heard.

Hank Smith: 17:53 Yeah, she’s, “I was knee-deep in sand.”

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 17:57 This is one, again, we don’t a whole lot of attention to these early sections yet I want to tell you a story about verses three and four. Is that okay? A personal experience?

Hank Smith: 18:06 Please.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 18:06 When I was institute director of Florida State, it was not uncommon for the full-time missionaries to come around regularly, ask questions, often ask for scriptural passages. One day they knocked on the door. I invited them in, we’re sitting in my office and the senior companion says, “Brother Millet, can you give us a good Bible passage on eternal marriage? We have this great family, they’re just as gold as they can be, but they’re hung up on the church’s belief about eternal marriage. Can you give us a Bible passage on that?” And I said, “No.” And they said, “Do you mean no?” I said, “No.” “Why can’t you?” “Because I can’t.” And he said, “You can’t or you won’t?” I said, “I can’t and I won’t.” I said, “I can’t give it to you because it’s not a biblical doctrine. Now, we can read some things into New Testament things but it just clearly isn’t there.” And then he asked this question. He said, “Brother Millet, don’t we believe in eternal marriage?” I said, “I think we do.” And he said, “Well, how can we believe in this if it’s not in the Bible?” There’s this great moment here. And I said, “Elder, has it ever occurred to you that if the fullness of the gospel were in the Bible, we wouldn’t have needed a restoration.” And it’s like he came to earth, to light again. He said, “Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay.” And then I suggest he go and read to them from a few verses, from section 132 in the Doctrine and Covenants. His response was, “I don’t think they’re going to pay any attention to this Doctrine and Covenants stuff.” I said, “You know what? You’ve gone to teach them about a restoration, read the scriptures.” Now I say all of that because look in verse three, three and four, to what the Lord calls upon Thomas to do, ” Lift up your heart and rejoice for the hour of your mission has come. Your tongue shall be loose and you shall declare glad tidings of great joy under this generation.” If we stop there, you’d say, “Glad tidings of great joy. Where have I heard that before?” Well, that’s the message of the angels-

John Bytheway: 20:19 Luke two.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 20:20 … to the shepherds. Yeah. And so you might be tempted at that point to say, “Well, so do I go out? And I’m going to go out and preach the sermon on the Mount, I’m going to go out and preach the bread of life sermon. Am I going to go and tell Jesus’s parables?” Well, those would all be nice to talk about and preach. But look what’s said in verse four, and this is powerful, “You shall declare the things which have been revealed to my servant, Joseph Smith Jr. You shall begin to preach from this time forth. Yea to reap in the field, which is white all ready to be burned.” My old friend, Joseph McConkie used to say, “When we preach the gospel, we need stay in context.” Meaning we teach our strength. We teach our contribution. We love the New Testament and of course we love to tell people we love the New Testament, but that isn’t our distinctive message. Our distinctive message is what God has revealed through Joseph Smith and his successors. And so I think those are very powerful. It’s a very similar message to, you’ll get to it later, in section 49 regarding what Leman Copley, Parley P. Pratt, and Sidney Rigdon are not to do when they go to the shakers. You’re not to reason with them according to what you’ve been taught, they’ve been taught, or what they teach, you’re to reason with them according to what you’ve been taught by these missionaries.

Hank Smith: 21:45 That’s fantastic. It reminds me of if you go back to verse 11, when you were telling that story, “Your whole labor…” This is verse 11 of section 30. “Your whole labor shall be in Zion with all your soul and henceforth you shall ever open your mouth in my cause,” that’s this restoration, “not fearing what man can do. Not fearing what man can do.” I think a lot of the times when we say, “Well, let’s just talk about the Bible.” It’s we’re fearing a little bit of, “Oh, I don’t want to introduce these new revelations to Joseph Smith.”

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 22:17 The hesitancy. You remember the story, I’m sure you do, of David O. McKay’s father on his mission in Scotland and they’re preaching in this particular area and having zero success. They talk among themselves and they reason as follows, “What if we didn’t teach Joseph Smith and restoration right now? What if we just went and taught some new Testament Christian things.” And so they do that and people listened to them, of course they don’t baptize anybody. But the most important thing is he said, “We found ourselves wrapped in a spirit of darkness and gloom,” he said, “it stayed with us. It wouldn’t go away.” Early one morning President McKay’s father goes out to a cave and kneels there in prayer and asks, “What are we doing wrong?” And the Lord says, “You preach Joseph Smith. You go back and teach Joseph Smith.” They do so, they have opposition, but they begin baptizing people. It’s stay in context.

John Bytheway: 23:20 The three of us here I know love the Bible and have taught it, you guys more than I have, but I thank you for bringing out Joseph McConkie. He had a whole book about this, that it’s not common ground that we seek. There’s nothing common about our message. He would say, “The ground we want to get people to is the Sacred Grove.”

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 23:44 In fact, he said, “You get them there by the most direct route to the Sacred Grove.” That’s how you answer their questions.

John Bytheway: 23:50 Yeah. How fast can we get them to the Sacred Grove? And I always loved that idea that we’re not… See, we’re just the same as you, but well, actually the heavens have been opened and there is the visions and blessings of all the returning, there’s new revelation, and that’s why we’re sitting here today.

Hank Smith: 24:11 I think this goes back to our discussion with Dr. Muhlestein as well, John, when we talk about the gathering of Israel, that’s going to happen through the book of Mormon. That’s going to happen. The book of Mormon is the sign of the gathering of Israel. Israel will respond to the book of Mormon. They will. I saw that in my own mission, that people would say there was something about the book of Mormon that spoke to them. They just said, “I don’t know why I’m listening to. Everyone tells me not to listen to you, but I really like this book. I really like this feeling. There’s something about the book of Mormon.” If you throw out Joseph Smith and the restoration and teach the Bible, which we love, we love the Bible, you’re going to miss the gathering of Israel.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 24:51 Well, and we’ve lost our strength. Our strength is in our distinctiveness, not in our similarities. We certainly want to build common ground with people of other faiths. But when it comes to down to it, we have to stand up for what has specifically been given to us.

John Bytheway: 25:07 Yeah. We don’t want to fall under condemnation for taking lightly the things we have received.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 25:12 That is exactly right. President Benson’s favorite scripture, I think.

Hank Smith: 25:15 So am I correct in saying that these opening sections are all mission calls?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 25:20 Yes. This is just calling people to missionary service.

Hank Smith: 25:24 30, 31, 32, 33. As I’m reading this, I’m going, “I’m hearing almost the exact same message in all of them.” Declare my gospel, open your mouth. Declare my gospel, open your mouth. I’m just seeing these same phrases over and over.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 25:38 And by the time you get to 33, and we’ll get there in a minute, but you’ll have the Lord saying, “Open your mouth,” three different times. Open your mouth.

John Bytheway: 25:46 Yeah. I was going to ask you, Brother Millet, is there anything that we know about Thomas B. Marsh’s family? Because that seems to be a focus there in section 31, we know he was a runaway, but even down to verse five, “Wherefore your family shall live.” What do we know?

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 26:05 I’ve read as much as I can on this and no one seems to know exactly what’s being talked about there. I don’t know that he had any particular health problems or challenges in his own family. And some historians have suggested it’s his extended family, perhaps. But there doesn’t seem to be anything specifically wrong with his immediate family.

John Bytheway: 26:27 Well, and these verses, if we apply them, can bless so many as well because as we go through our callings and our experience in the church, we have times where we worry about our own families or we’re away from them a lot. And so I’ve always loved these verses, the, “I’ll take care of your family.”

Hank Smith: 26:49 Yeah. I think John, I haven’t read a mission call in a while. I know they’ve been changed. I know they get changed every once in a while. But if I remember my mission call correctly, you can probably remember it was, “You are to leave behind all temporal personal affairs,” right? You are to leave those things behind. And I think the Lord is saying, when he says the labor is worthy of his hire, that’s section 31 verse five, that’s Matthew 10 language, that’s to the apostles. “You can have the expectation that I’m going to take care of you. That I’m going to pay you in my own way.” And he calls it, “Laden with sheaves upon your back.” I don’t know if I would take that in a job. If someone says, “Hey, your salary, you’re going to be laden with sheaves,” but it sounds good coming from the Lord. If it’s coming from the Lord, I’ll take it.

John Bytheway: 27:38 Yeah. A lot of agricultural metaphors here.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 27:41 One other verse might be a bit mysterious and that’s verse 10, “Behold, I say unto you that you shall be a physician unto the church, but not unto the world for they will not receive you.” I don’t know that Thomas B. Marsh had any medical training. I think it’s clearly talking about a spiritual physician. You’ll present the gospel and it’ll have a healing blessing influence on people.

Hank Smith: 28:05 I like in verse seven, the Lord says, “I will open the hearts of the people.”

Dr. Robert L. M…: 28:09 Yes.

Hank Smith: 28:10 That’s an important point in missionary work, that you can present a message, but the Lord is the one who’s going to give the increase.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 28:19 That idea will come up again with Edward Partridge when we get to him.

Hank Smith: 28:23 Yeah, “I will open the hearts of the people.” the Lord is what is he… He says over and over in scripture, “I will go before your face.” That’s that same idea of. “I will open the hearts of the people.” Your job is to teach the message.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 28:35 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 28:36 I want to go back to verses three and four, that Bother Millet talked about and just… I tried to write a book about Christmas recently and was intrigued with that, to me, it’s kind of a Christmas phrase, “Glad tidings of great joy,” or, “good tidings of great joy,” and how often it occurs in the scriptures. And not in every case, but in many, many cases, it’s about the birth of Christ. But here it talking about the restoration. And when I looked up the word tidings, it just means news, but scripturally, it’s almost always good news. And here… And when we think of… Because we’ve heard it taught that gospel means good news and glad tidings could be equal to gospel. And here’s the restored gospel is glad tidings of good news.

Hank Smith: 29:27 I have two notes and I want to see what you think about these, Dr. Millet, section 30 verse six. The Lord does not tell you this is going to be easy. “You will be afflicted in all afflictions,” verse nine, “be patient in afflictions.” So I think it’s important for us to realize that when we’re called to the Lord’s work, this is not going to be a walk in the park. It’s going to be a walk in the snow.

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 29:54 Well, to think about where else this is said, in the book of Mormon, when the sons of Mosiah are about to go out.

John Bytheway: 30:01 Yeah, “Be patient in afflictions.”

Dr. Robert L. Millet: 30:03 Same thing. The Lord says, “You need to-“