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: 00:11 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 followHIM.

Hank Smith: 00:19 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith and I am here with my “O, Come All Ye Faithful” co-host John Bytheway. John-

John Bytheway: 00:33 Oh, come on..

Hank Smith: 00:33 “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful.” It’s that time of the year, John.

John Bytheway: 00:37 Oh, come Hank, oh, come Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:39 Yes. I could have said, “My Little Drummer Boy, Cohost,” but I went with, “O, Come All Ye Faithful.”

Hank Smith: 00:46 Hey, we want to remind everybody that you can find us on social media. Come on to Facebook and Instagram, don’t be afraid. Come find our pages. Jamie Neilson runs those. She has a bunch of extras on there. So you’re going to want … to want to find those. You can subscribe to, rate and review the podcast. If you’re like Hank, John, what could we do for you? You could subscribe to, rate, and review the podcast. You could watch the podcast on YouTube. We’d love for you to come see our happy faces. Right, John? John always says we have faces made for-

John Bytheway: 01:18 -you might like for, yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:18 Yeah. We have a face perfect for audio.

John Bytheway: 01:22 Great face for radio, right?

Hank Smith: 01:24 Yeah. You can come to follow him dot CO, followhim.co for show notes, transcripts. And you can even read the transcript in French, Portuguese, and Spanish now. Wow, we’re covering the globe here, John. We have really one final episode to talk about the Prophet Joseph Smith, before we move on to a different curriculum. So John, we brought in, I would say the world’s expert on Joseph Smith, he would say one of the world’s experts on Joseph Smith. He might even not call himself an expert, but talk to us, who’s here with us today?

John Bytheway: 01:58 We are so glad to have Dr. Steve Harper back again. I’ve got a couple of books of his on my shelf. One, that long before I really met Steve personally, I’d read Joseph Smith’s First Vision, where he talks about all the different accounts. We know there were different accounts. People heard Joseph talk about it, write it down, he wrote some and put those all together beautifully. There’s another book called, Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants, which I have used a lot this year. And so we’re just glad to have him back. And I got a bio from the Religious Education website and we’ll let him update this if he needs to.

John Bytheway: 02:38 But Steven C. Harper is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. In 2012, Steve was appointed as the Managing Historian and General Editor of Saints: the Story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was named Editor-in-Chief of BYU Studies Quarterly in September 2018, served in the Canada, Winnipeg Mission and married Jennifer Sebring in 1992, they graduated from BYU in 1994, and I love that they graduated in 1994. So was that a dual graduation, Steve, at the same time?

Dr. Steven Harper: 03:11 Yeah. She is in Art Education, me in History.

John Bytheway: 03:14 At the same time, that’s great. He has an MA, master arts in American History from Utah State, his thesis analyzed determinants of conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1830s. When you hear this, it’s going to sound really cool, he earned a PhD in Early American History from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. But it sounds… You get Lehigh, you got Bethlehem, that sounds really… But it’s Lehigh, H I G H Lehigh, like high up. He began teaching courses in religion and history at BYU Hawaii in 2000, that’s a rough assignment. Joined Religious Education faculty in 2002. I mentioned a couple of books, dozens of articles. We’re just really glad to have you back, Steven. I’m so excited and ready to take notes.

Dr. Steven Harper: 04:07 It’s thrilling for me to be with you again, you guys are doing immensely important work and the vast number of people that are paying attention are a testament to how important it is and how far-reaching.

John Bytheway: 04:22 Thank you.

Hank Smith: 04:23 Well, Steve, we are lucky to have you and I promised him I wouldn’t gush, but I just need to say… He’s going to be like, “Ah, you promised.” I just need to say the first time I saw Steve Harper speaking on Joseph Smith. My first thought was no one this good looking should be this smart. Wow, this guy knows his stuff. And I also didn’t realize he’s going to become my friend and he and his wife are as faithful and as good and as wonderful as you’d hope them to be from someone who knows so much. So I’m done gushing. That was just a quick gush. It was a mini gush.

John Bytheway: 04:58 On a previous podcast, I think, I don’t know if it was part of the recording or not. But I asked Steve, so were you on the offensive or defensive line? And he said… What did you say, Steve? I think this is kind of fun for people to know.

Dr. Steven Harper: 05:11 I can’t remember.

John Bytheway: 05:13 I think you said I was a mediocre quarterback.

Dr. Steven Harper: 05:16 Well, that was an overstatement John, that was a radical over statement. Mediocre is a compliment. That’s an insult to all the other mediocre quarterbacks out there.

John Bytheway: 05:31 Was it President Eyring that said, “There were two of us in our deacons quorum back in New Jersey and that may be an exaggeration.”

Hank Smith: 05:40 That’s funny.

Dr. Steven Harper: 05:42 I have a terrible arrogance problem and this is good for it or bad, I don’t know.

Hank Smith: 05:49 I remember you saying that in one of your talks, “My wife says I have an arrogance problem. I don’t, obviously. I don’t know what she’s thinking.” Yeah. This week, I like how the manual starts out. “We have two revelations that are separated by more than 80 years and 1500 miles.” So, who’s better to walk us through these revelations, [Section] 137 and [Section] 138 than Steve Harper. So Steve, we’re going to kind of turn it over to you and we’ll just kind of be the sideshow as we… Take us along with you.

Dr. Steven Harper: 06:22 Well yeah, Sections 137 and 138. They come at the back of the book, even though Section 137 was revealed on the 21st day of January 1836 in the temple at Kirtland, Ohio.

Hank Smith: 06:36 So we’re jumping back in time?

Dr. Steven Harper: 06:37 Yep. All the way back to the months before the dedication of the temple. And then Section 138 comes as a series of visions to Joseph F. Smith, the prophet’s nephew. Who’s now the prophet himself, aged 38, prophet just one month from his own death. And the revelation comes on the third day of October 1918. We’ll talk about the significance of that year and the weeks surrounding it. So why don’t we put Section 137 where it belongs chronologically, which would be right between Sections 108 and 109. I don’t know, I mean, certainly wasn’t part of that decision, but one thing that would happen if you did that is every footnote you’ve ever written or referenced in any manual to Sections 109 through 136 would be bumped.

Dr. Steven Harper: 07:39 So in 1976 the prophet proposed to the Saints that we canonize these two revelations and we did, so we put them in the Pearl of Great Price for a few years. And then in 1979, I think tacked them on at the end of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Hank Smith: 08:01 So there’s going to be some of our listeners who remember this?

Dr. Steven Harper: 08:04 Oh yeah, some of us were alive in those days.

Hank Smith: 08:07 Yeah.

Dr. Steven Harper: 08:07 In the old days.

Hank Smith: 08:09 John, you don’t remember this.

John Bytheway: 08:11 I was there. I was about 13 and I remember that was momentous. I mean, my dad couldn’t stay seated on the couch. He was, look at this and they even gave us a little insert that we printed on the same type of scripture paper to stick in there. I wish I had that now. I’ve upgraded I guess, but I remember that. And then I remember when they moved it to the Doctrine and Covenants.

Hank Smith: 08:42 Wow, John.

John Bytheway: 08:44 Pretty cool.

Hank Smith: 08:45 We have Church History on our podcast right now. We’re interviewing someone from Church History, we have finally come up to your life.

John Bytheway: 08:52 I was in seminary when they said turn in your Bibles and they handed us all a new one and I will never forget opening it up and seeing footnotes to the Book of Mormon in my Bible. That was a moment I won’t forget as a sophomore in seminary. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

Hank Smith: 09:10 That’s awesome, John. And you don’t look it, that’s the good thing. You do not look it, you don’t look a day over 80.

John Bytheway: 09:17 I was friends with David O, McKay and we worked on…

Hank Smith: 09:21 Well, when Wilford and I roomed together at BYU.

John Bytheway: 09:24 Yeah, so this is-

Hank Smith: 09:25 Sorry, Steve.

John Bytheway: 09:25 Yeah, we’re getting off track here.

Hank Smith: 09:28 Yeah, sorry. Go back to, so it was ‘76 and then what did you say? ‘79?

Dr. Steven Harper: 09:32 I was around then too, but John was paying better attention than I was. I remember when Elvis died I thought that was the President of the Church, I was confused about all these things. So it wasn’t as well informed or faithful.

Hank Smith: 09:50 Well, since we’re admitting things, I remember thinking Orville Redenbacher was in the Quorum of the Twelve, because he looked like Marvin. J Ashton. And I just could not tell you the two apart. So I thought, why is that Apostle selling so much popcorn? Sorry yeah, we can go through… That’s an honest mistake, thank you yeah.

Dr. Steven Harper: 10:11 Well the thing about these two revelations though they’re far separated into time is that they both address what in Christian Theology is called, “The Soteriological Problem.” And so let’s start with that, a soteriology is theology that is about salvation. Who gets saved? How do you get saved? And Christians debate soteriology endlessly. In Joseph Smith’s day there’s a serious soteriological problem, Christianity has it to this day, continues to be debated, but Sections 137 and 138 solve it. They resolve it.

Dr. Steven Harper: 10:58 The problem has three premises. And the problem is that these three premises can’t all be reconciled, apparently. Let me see if I can remember them first is that God presumably loves all His children and desires their salvation. He didn’t create anybody to be damned. Second is that salvation comes only through one’s knowing willing acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior. And then third is many, maybe most people live and die and never know, never have any idea that they should or could accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. So this is a terrible problem, is God too shortsighted or too narrow-minded or, what’s the nature of this problem? And the debates go back and forth.

Hank Smith: 11:56 Right. Sending most of His children to an eternal hell does not sound very loving.

Dr. Steven Harper: 12:04 Yeah. I remember Joseph Fielding McConkie talking about this once, he was a mission president in Scotland and he said that he spoke to a minister there about the soteriological problem, the fate of those who never heard as some people put it. And he said, the minister responded, “That’s their tough luck.” And that just makes me sick inside. I don’t worship a God of tough luck. That’s no kind of planning God and thankfully the God of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is not the God of tough luck. He’s the God of a perfect plan that resolves the soteriological problem. And there’s a great scholar named Jeff Trumbower, he’s not the only one, but he’s written the most interesting and compelling book about the history of this issue. The book is called Rescue for the Dead. Not a Latter-day Saint and doesn’t have a dog in the fight, doesn’t care that the Restored Gospel has come back. He’s interested in it as a scholar, he’s written about it, but-

Hank Smith: 13:20 What’s the book called again?

Dr. Steven Harper: 13:23 Rescue for the Dead. And it’s about the idea of posthumous salvation. Can people who have died without becoming Christian be saved? What’s the history of thought about that question? That’s what the book covers. Prestigious press, Oxford University Press, really well done. And talks about the Restored Gospel in it. But the most interesting thing I learned from this book is that the early Christians did not make the assumption that makes the soteriological problem, a-

Dr. Steven Harper: 14:02 That makes the problem, the soteriological problem, a problem. In other words, the problem didn’t become a problem at the time of Jesus. Peter didn’t have the problem. Paul didn’t have the problem. It becomes a problem four or 500 years later because Augustine and others have a powerful influence in turning Christianity to the idea that death becomes a deadline that determines a person’s salvation. That’s not in the Bible. Paul preached that baptism could be done for the dead. And he took it for granted that it was, and that it was a legitimate part of the gospel of Christ. Peter taught, as you all know, that Jesus visited the spirits of the dead so that they could be judged just as justly, as people who lived here on earth. So the first Christians, the heirs of the New Testament, don’t assume that death is a deadline that determines your salvation. It’s not this arbitrary deadline. If you’re saved by the time you die, you’re in. If you’re not, you’re out. But as you know, that becomes a determinative throughout much, if not all of Western Christianity. And it remains that way until January 21st, 1836, when Joseph Smith is high in the temple at Kirtland, he is up on the top floor in the garret office, on the far western end. He’s there with his father, with the two bishops, his counselors, some others, leaders of the Church. And they’re having a really beautiful meeting anticipating the solemn assembly that’s going to come in March and the endowment of power that the Lord has promised. And they’re praying, they’re giving each other priesthood blessings and then the heavens open and that’s how Section 137 begins. Section 137 is a text from Joseph Smith’s journal for that day, January 21st, 1836. It’s a little different in our Doctrine and Covenants because it’s been rendered into the first person. In Joseph’s journal, it’s written in third person by his scribe. “The heavens were open upon us, and they beheld,” but we published it as if it’s Joseph’s first person voice in the Doctrine and Covenants. “I beheld the celestial kingdom of God and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out, I cannot tell.” Here he’s echoing Paul who saw the heavens. I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of the kingdom of heaven will enter, which was like circling flames of fire. The blazing throne of God whereon was seated the father and the son. I saw the beautiful streets of that kingdom, which had the appearance of being paved with gold. He sees Abraham and Adam and his mom and dad. So this tells us that the vision is in the future, his father’s sitting by him in the room. So this is a preconfiguration of what will be.

Dr. Steven Harper: 17:25 And he sees Alvin, his oldest brother, who’s been dead since 1823. He’s been dead almost 13 years. Now, this causes Joseph to marvel, as our listeners may know, Alvin dies long before the Church of Jesus Christ is restored. He dies just a couple of months after Joseph learns about the Book of Mormon plates. And so as far as Joseph knows, Alvin has gone to hell. That’s what the Reverend Stockton said when he preached at his funeral and Joseph didn’t like it then, he doesn’t like it now. It seems utterly unjust and unmerciful. How could someone with Alvin’s character and disposition, his goodness be consigned to hell, just because of the timing of his death? What kind of a plan is that? What kind of a God would do that? Yeah. Tough luck, right?

John Bytheway: 18:23 Tell us a little bit about Alvin, Steve. Just for those who maybe don’t know much about him, what did they say about him?

Hank Smith: 18:28 Good idea.

Dr. Steven Harper: 18:29 He was heroic to Joseph. Joseph wrote in the book of the Book of the Law of the Lord, there’s a beautiful entry in there where Joseph says Alvin was the oldest and noblest of my father’s family. He was one of the noblest of the sons of men. My heart broke when he died. It was tough. It was tough on Joseph. Alvin was one who looked after Joseph. He was the consummate big brother. He was a great big brother. He looked after his parents. He sacrificed quite a bit. He put off starting his own family, his own marriage and so forth to make sure his parents were looked after as they aged, to make sure they had a home. And the whole family loved him. Lucy, his mom and her memoir goes on at length too about his role in their family and about his goodness to all them.

Dr. Steven Harper: 19:24 So it was heartbreaking and it was devastating to have a religious authority condemn him to hell, just didn’t make sense to Joseph. And yet he feared it was true, right? Joseph feared for a long time, that Presbyterianism was true. That meant that God was arbitrary and sovereign and damned most people to hell for no reason that you could fathom. It was his inscrutable sovereign will, said the most famous Presbyterian minister in American history. So that’s what you’ve got to work with. Even into 1836, if you’re Joseph Smith. By now, the Book of Mormon has said that unaccountable infants are not damned just because they die. But as far as Joseph knows, there’s no salvation for Alvin. There’s nothing in the Restoration to this point that says that Alvin and the millions of others like him have any chance.

John Bytheway: 20:30 Even Section 76, right? I mean, 76 came what year?

Dr. Steven Harper: 20:34 ‘32.

John Bytheway: 20:35 ‘32. And they saw-

Dr. Steven Harper: 20:36 1832.

John Bytheway: 20:37 … The heavens, but no indication of those who had died.

Dr. Steven Harper: 20:41 Yep. There’s nothing in the text that I can see that answers the question, what about those who never heard? What about rescue for the dead? So the Lord is letting this go on and the Lord must have a sense for a dramatic tension, right? This is brilliant if you’re a…

John Bytheway: 21:02 That’s a great line. What’s Alvin doing here?

Dr. Steven Harper: 21:06 You’re writing the narrative arc of the Restoration. Let’s say you wanted to give the authors of Saints, some real opportunity to have some dramatic tension and tell a true story. This is the way you would do it if you were the creator of the world. You would let Joseph wait and stew about this terrible problem, the problem of death and the disruption it causes to your cherished relationships. This is the problem that afflicts every family, every person who ever lived. It’s the awful, terrible problem of death. And one very fine scholar of religion, the British scholar, Douglas Davies has written a couple of books about the Restored Gospel. And he says that the brilliance of it is this story it gives for the conquest of death. Latter-day Saints don’t typically use those words, but all he really means there is that the theology of the Restored Gospel has a better plan of salvation that solves the problem of death than any other. And he’s exactly right about that.

John Bytheway: 22:20 Hey, Steve, I could use… I listen to Christian radio a lot when I’m driving. And sometimes, I hear that phrase that you use, “The sovereign God.” And it’s not one that we use that much and I thought, “Oh yeah, I guess that’s true.” When you use that right now in talking about a kind of a predestination philosophy, what did you mean?

Dr. Steven Harper: 22:42 This is a great question. So you will hear many Christians, especially certain wings of Protestantism, put a lot of emphasis on the sovereignty of God. And that’s an important doctrine to them because what is at stake is God’s power. And it’s oftentimes understood in terms of contingency. Is God contingent? Is God influenceable? Is there anything that could happen that could make God anything less than absolutely, completely and totally sovereign? So think about that. Yes, in control. So a person who puts highest value on that attribute of God is not inclined to like things like the restored doctrine of agency, for example.

John Bytheway: 23:48 Okay. That’s what I thought. Yeah. The idea that we can act and have free will to them is a threat to God’s sovereign entity.

Dr. Steven Harper: 23:57 Right. Who knows if it might, you know, if Hank’s decision to do something might upset God’s plans, right. Hank might be predestined to do one thing by God and then he does something else and all of a sudden God’s whole plan is upset.

Hank Smith: 24:16 He didn’t see it coming. Yeah.

Dr. Steven Harper: 24:17 Yeah. And so they can’t imagine that and they don’t allow for it. So Martin Luther wrote about, “the bondage of the will,” for example. And certainly John Calvin probably for most is those who emphasize the sovereignty of God. So it’s followers of those traditions, especially the Calvinist tradition who will not like any part of the Restoration that says, “God is passable.” Passable is another word you’ll sometimes hear. Meaning, God has passions, right? The Presbyterian Creed, the Calvinist Creed says, “God is without body parts and passions.” And Latter-day Saints know and talk a lot about, oh, “He is with body and parts. Joseph saw him in the vision,” but at least as important theologically in the earliest days is, and still is passions. Is God able to feel love? Is he influenced by love, by mercy? Are his heartstrings ever pulled?

John Bytheway: 25:32 Yeah, Enoch saw him weep.

Dr. Steven Harper: 25:34 Right. That is the foremost text of many and the restored scriptures that testify that God is indeed passable. But if so, then that may mean he’s contingent. And if so, that may mean he’s something less than absolutely sovereign. And if so, that may mean he is not God. Not at least in the Greek philosophical sense where God is the one thing that really exists and he’s wholly and entirely and completely other than us. He doesn’t have passions because that’s what humans have. That’s what the Greek gods had. And the Neoplatonic Greek philosophy reacts against that and says, that’s not God. Anything like the Greek gods of mythology is no God at all. And so the earliest Christians adopt the Greek Neoplatonic idea as an attribute that that’s how their God forms up in their imagination. And those ideas pervade early Christianity. Augustine who defines soteriology largely for the Protestant tradition has those views and Joseph Smith just breezes them in. He doesn’t know any different until the 21st day of January 1836.

John Bytheway: 27:02 And let’s let people know, Augustine is… Oh, sorry, Hank, what about the fifth century?

Dr. Steven Harper: 27:07 Yeah. Fourth and fifth century. I can’t remember his exact years, but Christian Northern Africa and the Roman Empire.

John Bytheway: 27:18 And a huge influence on Christian thought after that. So what was the book? Confessions of Saint Augustine. Yeah.

Dr. Steven Harper: 27:26 Yeah. Which is an unbelievably brilliant book. It’s so deeper, so much deeper than anything before. Everybody should at least read some Augustine and I’m not saying you’re going to figure him entirely out. He’s a complex, wonderful character. Wrote the City of God and his confessions is his memoir, his autobiography. A huge influential figure in Christian theology. He had a huge influence on the Protestant reformers and they had a huge influence on the world into which Joseph-

Dr. Steven Harper: 28:03 They had a huge influence on the world, into which Joseph Smith launched the Restoration and the Restoration is a response against and alongside and with these ideas.

Hank Smith: 28:20 Steve, I’ve heard critics of the Church say, “Oh, Joseph Smith is just borrowing from the ideas around him. He’s just grabbing from the ideas around him.” And from what I’m hearing from you and from others that I’ve listened to, these are not common ideas around him. He’s going completely opposite of some of the common ideas around him. Is that true?

Dr. Steven Harper: 28:41 Well, yeah, it’s a great question, Hank. So where does the Restoration come from? And if you’re not willing to be open to the possibility that it comes from God, then you have to explain it. It exists, right? I mean, you can’t pretend the restoration doesn’t exist. So the way you explain it is to say, “Well, it’s just in the air.”

Hank Smith: 29:05 He’s just grabbing it.

Dr. Steven Harper: 29:06 It’s everywhere. And Joseph is just clever enough to grab it and paste it together. And that works if you are not really, really interested in the answer to the question, in my opinion. But it doesn’t work if you want to know in your bone marrow where the Restoration comes from. It’s an answer that satisfies your need to know, and you can sort of put the Restoration behind you, but I can’t do that. It doesn’t work for me. Doesn’t satisfy me at all.

Hank Smith: 29:49 The evidence is just not there.

Dr. Steven Harper: 29:51 Not for me it isn’t. There’s just too much in the Restoration. I mean, I’ve read everything Joseph wrote that’s still on record, 1,588 pages of his journals, his letters. And his revelation texts are deeper than he is. They’re more profound. They’re beyond him. When he got done with Section 76, he said, “Dang.” He says, “That revelation is so far beyond the narrow mindedness of man, I am constrained to explain it came from God.” He marvels at his own revealed products. He’s not the originator of these ideas.

Hank Smith: 30:32 Yeah.

Dr. Steven Harper: 30:33 Anybody who supposes so should read his earliest autobiography. It’s easy to access. If you Google circa summer 1832 history, it will pull it up first thing. It’s on the Joseph Smith Papers website, six pages long, two sentences. And there you’ll get a sense for what it’s like to listen to Joseph Smith write his own stuff.

John Bytheway: 30:58 Two sentences, six pages.

Dr. Steven Harper: 31:00 Two sentences. Yeah, he was economical with his punctuation. He was sparing.

Hank Smith: 31:05 He was sparing.

Dr. Steven Harper: 31:07 And then if you think two and a half years before he wrote that with his own hand, he dictated the Book of Mormon in a single spring. And then if you’ll pay serious attention to the Book of Mormon, you will like Joseph say, “Dang, that came from God. There’s no chance that he is the originator.”

Dr. Steven Harper: 31:26 And I don’t want people to misunderstand. I’m not saying he’s dumb. He’s anything but, but he is not the mind that gave us the Book of Mormon or Section 76, or even Section 137. Section 137 was foreign to Joseph. He wasn’t expecting it. It caused him to marvel. He had not thought of the idea. He had not realized that the soteriological problem was based on an assumption that nobody was identifying, was hidden in plain sight, that the whole Christian world was assuming that death was a deadline that determined everything. And Jesus had to show Joseph a vision of his big brother in heaven to get Joseph to be open even to the question or to the insight to the revelation he needed. And as soon as Joseph says, “I’m marveling. How is it that Alvin could be there?” The Lord says, “Ah, I was hoping you would ask. I’ve got some restoration to do.”

Dr. Steven Harper: 32:34 The dramatic part of Section 137 is the vision of Alvin in heaven with a host of VIPs. But the most important part of the revelation, the part that’s vital, the part that Jesus wanted Joseph to know at this point, is in verses 7, 8, 9. “So the voice of the Lord came to me saying everyone who’s died, not just Alvin, but everybody who’s died in his situation without a knowledge of the gospel who would’ve received it if they had been permitted to, will be heirs of the Celestial Kingdom. And that’s true for everybody in the future in that situation too, because “I, the Lord, judge everybody according to their works, according to the desires of their hearts, not the timing of their death.” What a person does with the Savior’s Atonement when they know it is the determining factor of their salvation, and everyone will know it.

Dr. Steven Harper: 33:36 Now [Section] 137 doesn’t tell us everyone will know it yet. You’ll see that Joseph has already begun thinking that way. He wrote a newspaper article not long after this, where he said the gospel will have to be taught to the spirits who are dead. But it’ll wait until Section 138, the Joseph F. Smith, before we have a prophet who elaborates how the soteriological problem gets solved, the mechanisms that Christ put in place, the process, the plan that resolved the problem. So [Section] 137 says the problem is going to be solved. The Lord always had in mind that this would be part of the plan and [Section] 138 tells us how the problem will be solved.

Hank Smith: 34:31 Okay. So this revelation is a, I wish I had the right words. This is a ray of light that just cuts through.

Dr. Steven Harper: 34:44 Oh man, every family, every family in Joseph Smith’s time, the soteriological problem affects them personally. Joseph and Emma and their babies, the Book of Mormon was huge for them. Every family has lost to death. And this revelation is the beginning of the Restoration of knowledge that gives my family and every other family, a great big sigh of relief and praise the Lord for his great plan.

John Bytheway: 35:20 But this precedes baptism for the dead in Section 124, right? So they were so excited about that, too.

Dr. Steven Harper: 35:29 Very much so. What’s the next step? This revelation comes 1836 and then the world falls apart. Joseph ends up out of Ohio into Missouri, out of Missouri into Illinois. And just about as soon as he can, when things get settled enough in Illinois, he will restore baptism for the dead there. And that’s the trajectory for the rest of his life.

Dr. Steven Harper: 35:53 He’s implementing the knowledge and power he receives in the Kirtland Temple for the remaining few years of his life, amid a massive onslaught of opposition against him. Years ago, I remember reading an essay that said, “Well, yeah, Joseph came up with the very comforting doctrine in Section 137 because he was hurt by Alvin’s death.” And I thought that’s a non sequitur. It does not necessarily follow. That’s just a person who doesn’t believe, explaining the fact that Joseph is devastated by Alvin’s death so he invents the doctrine of redemption for the dead.

Dr. Steven Harper: 36:43 Okay, that’s one conclusion you could draw. Why not though, just as easily and more faithfully, decide every family is afflicted by the problem of death, including Joseph’s and he seeks and receives a divine revelation that is the solution to the problem? I favor the second interpretation of the same fact. I don’t know why we can’t believe that

John Bytheway: 37:11 The statement that I believe Joseph Smith made and you can tell me if I got it right, but didn’t he say, “I can taste the principles of eternal life and so can you and good doctrine taste good.” and isn’t this one as one of those that you just hear it and go, “Of course, the God that I love and the God that I worship, of course it would be like this.”

Dr. Steven Harper: 37:33 Yeah, compare that to the God of tough luck or to the God of arbitrary, sovereign will. Think about that, arbitrary will, God’s inscrutable will. There’s no method to the madness, no plan, at least not one that we can know or discern. It’s just God, in all his power, we are powerless pawns, and most of us damned to hell for reasons we can’t fathom. Some of us are arbitrarily saved. Man, if that’s God, I just want to throw my hands up in the air and quit. But that’s not the God of the Restored Gospel.

John Bytheway: 38:16 It kind of reminds me of the Zoramites. We have been elected to be saved and you haven’t, and there’s no explanation, no reason. It’s just, “For which holiness, oh God, we thank thee,” which is almost laughable when you read it. We’re elected to be saved. You’re not. And it sounds arbitrary, like you said.

Dr. Steven Harper: 38:35 Arbitrary. Arbitrariness and God seemed to me antithetical to each other. We believe in a planning God, a loving God, a capable God. The revelations of Joseph Smith do something more profound than Luther or Calvin ever accomplished in my opinion, or Augustine. Those theologians who were way smart, I mean much, much smarter than me by many times, they could not conceive, and this is partly because they’re still looking through neo-platonic Greek, philosophical lenses. They could not conceive of a God who could be completely sovereign and decide to use that sovereignty to endow his children with agency and provide a plan for them and say, “Here’s the plan. And if you decide to go this way, this is what will happen. If you decide to go this way, this is what will happen and if so, will provide a Savior and bring you back through redemption and resurrection.” That kind of God who can think of endless permutations to the plan and provide everything you need without stealing your ability to determine your own destiny, that’s a great God.

Dr. Steven Harper: 40:03 That’s why I’m a Latter-day Saint. That’s the only gospel I know that reveals a God who is powerful enough, loving enough, capacious enough, to endow all of his children with agency and still be able to say the works and the designs and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither will they come to not.

Hank Smith: 40:31 He reveals it all through a 30-something year old farm boy.

Dr. Steven Harper: 40:34 Yeah, a kid, right? A kid, he’s young.

John Bytheway: 40:39 That was beautifully articulated. And I underlined three statements in 7, 8 and 9 that kind of say, “Okay, who would have received it?” Verse 7, “Who would have received it?” Verse 8, “And according to the desire of their hearts. We worship a God who can read our hearts and knows where we’re at.” And those lines give me a lot of comfort, because I do stupid things, but the Lord knows I love him. The Lord knows I regretted that. Okay, that was dumb. I’m sorry. People don’t think maybe I’m a Christian because of whatever, but God knows I’m a Christian. Jesus knows I rely on him. He knows my heart. And I love that he could say that he would’ve received it. Well, how do you know that? Because I know men’s and women’s hearts and I can read them.

Dr. Steven Harper: 41:33 You sound like Nephi, right? “I’m a wretched man, easily beset by sins. But I know, in whom I’ve trusted.”

John Bytheway: 41:40 “In whom I have trusted.”

Dr. Steven Harper: 41:40 My God has been my support. My desires are right and he knows it. And even though he watches me sort of falter, he knows the desires of my heart.

Hank Smith: 41:52 Yeah. There’s this great moment at the end of the New Testament where Jesus says, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter, his actions have not said that I love you, if you take the denials to be…

Dr. Steven Harper: 42:03 … that I love you, right? If you take the denials to be moments of weakness. His actions haven’t said it, but Peter says, “Search me. You know everything. Lord, you know all things. And since you know all things, I know that you know that I love you.” I mean, that is, “Search me, search my whole soul, and you’ll find that every ounce of me loves you, even though sometimes my actions don’t reflect that.”

John Bytheway: 42:30 There’s just great comfort in that who would have received it. I love that. He knows us and He knows since, what 100 AD to 1831, none of this was on the Earth. He can read their hearts and it’s like, that’s being sovereign.

Dr. Steven Harper: 42:51 That’s sovereignty, right? He’s got a plan for that.

Hank Smith: 42:55 Oh man.

Dr. Steven Harper: 42:55 He’s got a plan for that.

Hank Smith: 42:57 And we can … then that penetrates, like you said, Steve, every family who has this problem. I think of those who have lost sons or daughters or a spouse to suicide and to think, “Oh, well, they must be … that action is … they must be going to hell.” And God’s saying, “No, I know them. I know them. I know them inside and out.” I just think this doctrine, this kind of sovereign God is the God that can calm your fears.

Dr. Steven Harper: 43:30 He may be the only being who knows the despair of a person who takes their own life and therefore, can relate and redeem that.

John Bytheway: 43:43 What comfort that is.

Dr. Steven Harper: 43:44 I’m heartened by that.

John Bytheway: 43:46 What comfort, a God that has justice and mercy perfectly. What comfort to know that’s the one who’s going to judge me, my relatives who have passed, those who have made mistakes. And I remember on my mission once somebody treated us really rudely, and I remember leaving and saying to my companion, I mean, I’m 19, “Do you think that was their chance?” Because you always say they have a chance. And I thought, if they believed what most people believed about us, maybe they wouldn’t want to listen to us anyway. And I don’t think that was their chance because they don’t know. And that gives me comfort too, the Lord can read that. A lot of people, it’s not what they know, it’s what they think they know that isn’t true. And the Lord can sort that out too. Great comfort in 7, 8, and 9, for me.

Dr. Steven Harper: 44:41 It’s a beautiful revelation, isn’t it? Unbelievably profound, powerful, and tastes good. It is the Restored Gospel.

Hank Smith: 44:50 I had a friend say to me once after leaving the Church, she said, “I now get to believe that everybody’s a good person. I now get to believe that non-Latter-day Saints get to go to Heaven.” And I was so frustrated going, “You didn’t leave that church because that church doesn’t exist. The church you’re describing, I’m not a part of.” Steve, you’ve said it before, Section 76 and now Section 137, Section 138, opens up Heaven and makes it huge, available to everyone who wants it.

Dr. Steven Harper: 45:28 I believe the same thing as the good sister, except exactly the opposite. I believe almost everybody’s a wretched person, including myself. An animated God from the Fall, who wants to become a Saint through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. And I believe He’s mighty to save all, as He puts it repeatedly in Section 76. And I believe that the Restored Gospel as taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only consistent theology that has Christ at the center of that redemption for everybody, and still leaves people to choose. A Universalist would say, “He’s going to save everybody whether they want to be or not.” The Restored Gospel says, “He’s going to save everybody who desires His salvation.” And to a degree of salvation that they choose, that they want. That’s pretty darn great.

John Bytheway: 46:24 That’s the Section 76 thing. And I’ve circled in verse 7, in verse 8, in verse 9 and in verse 10, the word all. “All who have died, all that shall die, the Lord will judge all and beheld all children.” That’s really inclusive. And really merciful.

Dr. Steven Harper: 46:41 Latter-day Saints tend to get a bit of a whipping for being exclusive. And then individual Latter-day Saints, like my sometimes rotten self, might deserve that. But the Restored Gospel does not teach that. That is not the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Hank Smith: 46:58 If someone were to just listen to Steve’s episodes, I mean, listen to how they connect. And we didn’t mean to do this on purpose.

John Bytheway: 47:05 Yeah. Section 76 connects to this.

Hank Smith: 47:07 Right. We did Joseph Smith’s First Vision with him and Alvin’s death with him. Then we did 76 with him. And now we’re doing 137 and 138. It’s almost as if there was a hand behind this saying, “If someone just is a Steve Harper fan, is not going to listen to any others, they’re going to get the whole thing, the whole set in those three episodes.” So Steve, we think you’re inspired. That’s all.

Dr. Steven Harper: 47:34 Well, I’m pleased to be here. And this whole thing is inspired. It’s brilliant work.

John Bytheway: 47:41 You’ve articulated some things just beautifully. That soteriological problem, this is just great. Let’s keep going.

Hank Smith: 47:49 I was going to mention that, look at verse 9, “I will judge you according to your works-“

John Bytheway: 47:54 Comma.

Hank Smith: 47:55 “… and the desires of your hearts.” According to the desires of your heart. So I’m going to find my Elder Ballard quote, it’s taking into account everything that went into your decision making.

John Bytheway: 48:08 Yeah. Well, I put a footnote there to Section 46, verse 9, which does have the word and, “According to the works and according to the desire of their hearts.” And our friend and colleague, Brad Wilcox used that in his General Conference talk about the kid who says, “I’m just too much of a hypocrite.” And he says, “Well, you’re a hypocrite. If you hide it or lie about it or blame the Church for having high standards. But if you confront it and are trying to do better, that’s not a hypocrite, that’s a disciple.” And then he quoted, I think it was Section 46, verse 9, which sounds just like this. I mean, and there’s another text in the Book of Mormon that has that idea of commandments and the desires of their hearts. And I can’t remember where it is right now.

Hank Smith: 48:51 Let me read this and then we’ll turn it back over to Steve. This is Elder M. Russell Ballard. “I feel that judgment for sin is not always as cut and dried as some of us seem to think. I feel that the Lord recognizes differences in intent and circumstances. When he does judge us,” Elder Ballard says, “I feel he will take all things into consideration. Our genetic and chemical makeup, our mental state, our intellectual capacity, the teachings we have received, the traditions of our fathers and our health and so forth.” That to me is a sovereign God, who can know all of that and make decisions based on all of that information.

Dr. Steven Harper: 49:33 That’s the God of the Restored Gospel.

Hank Smith: 49:36 I misstated that. Let me read verse [Section] 46, verse 9. “Verily, I say unto you, ‘They are given for the benefit,'” commandments.” No, see what’s given. The gifts.

Dr. Steven Harper: 49:46 The gifts.

Hank Smith: 49:47 “The spiritual gifts are given for the benefit of those who love me and keep all my commandments, and him that seeketh so to do.” And that’s a good parallel text for this, I think

Dr. Steven Harper: 49:58 One way to read these passages is the Lord saying, look, your works might be amateur or juvenile or half, but I can see the desire that’s motivating them, and I will take that into account too. That, to me, is very comforting and powerful.

Hank Smith: 50:25 Yeah. Comforting and powerful, absolutely. It calms your fears and says, “You know what? I’m willing to put my judgment in those hands. I know that that judgment will be just. It’ll be right.”

Hank Smith: 50:44 Do we want to talk about the last verse before we move on? “All the children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven.” Did they realize what that meant at this time, 1836?

Dr. Steven Harper: 50:57 They do realize what it means, because Joseph has received a couple of revelations before this. Section 29 talks about the way people become, what I call a fully developed free agent. It talks about the four components, you might say, that you have to have to be a fully developed free agent. There has to be a law in the universe that says this choice is wrong and this choice is right. You have to have knowledge of that. Just because the law exists, if I don’t know it, I’m not able to act on it of my own free will. So I have to have knowledge of it, I have to have power, I have to have the ability to choose between the alternatives. And that requires also, as Section 29 says, and 2 Nephi says, an opposition, a bitter and a sweet, some force influencing me to pick the wrong choice, as well as the enticement from the Lord to pick His. When all those things are present, you’ve got a fully developed free agent. And Section 29 teaches them. And then it says, “Children begin to become accountable.” This doesn’t happen miraculously at midnight.

Hank Smith: 52:13 12:01 AM. On their birthday.

Dr. Steven Harper: 52:14 Right. But generally speaking, around eight, kids are capable of this kind of agency and they grow into it. Then Section 68, if I’m remembering right, says Joseph, it’s age eight, when you can, generally speaking, count on kids to be able to exercise their agency, sufficient that they can choose to make the covenant for themselves. And so, at the years of accountability in Section 10, Latter-day Saints know, sorry. When verse 10 of Section 137 says, “Years of accountability,” the Latter-day Saints know that that means around age eight. And this is an incredibly comforting doctrine. There’s almost none of these families that have not lost infants or children before age eight, including Joseph and Emma Smith over and over and over. And it’s really beautiful to them, to know that their children are not damned, as much of the Christian tradition would have them be, if not for this restored truth.

Hank Smith: 53:22 Wow. This had to be fun for Joseph’s dad, who was a Universalist. He’d be like, “Oh, I was so close. I was onto something there.”

Dr. Steven Harper: 53:34 Yeah. He was onto something. He and his ancestors swung to Universalism from Calvinism, which said just about everybody’s damned by God’s arbitrary sovereign will. And then Universalism says everybody’s going to be saved by God’s arbitrary sovereign will. And the Restored Gospel says, well, it’s more complicated than that. God’s will is not arbitrary. It is sovereign. He has decided, in His master plan, to make his children agents so they get to pick for themselves whether they want to be saved or damned. It’s their will, not just His, that matters to Him, and that is the best gospel. And when Joseph, Sr. heard that gospel, he said, “Ah, that’s the one. That’s the one that tastes good. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”

Hank Smith: 54:25 Yeah. That’s fantastic. I’ve heard you say before, ” To Joseph’s mom, “Any church is better than no church,” and to Joseph’s dad, “No church is better than the wrong church.” Right?

Dr. Steven Harper: 54:38 Right.

Hank Smith: 54:38 And that’s a perfect tension for Joseph to be a part of growing up.

Dr. Steven Harper: 54:43 That gives us the Sacred Grove, the kid in the Sacred Grove.

John Bytheway: 54:48 Please join us for Part II of this podcast.