John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Dr. J.B. Haws, Doctrine and Covenants, Section One.

Hank Smith: 00:07 J.B., as we continue on 20 through 24, we get the, okay, here’s why. Here’s our why. This is what the Lord wants to do.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 00:20 Yes, I think that’s right. 20, that every man might speak in the name of God, the Lord, even the Savior of the world. I hear echoes of what Moses wanted to do, a kingdom of priests, where this power and authority is distributed as broadly as possible where everyone has access to God’s power, where everyone can speak in his name, where the Spirit can be poured out. This fits with that really beautiful universalizing impulse of the Restoration. This vision that everyone can be involved in this, that faith also might increase in the earth, that my everlasting covenant might be established, that the fullness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world and before kings and rulers. This confidence that they’re going to be able to do this and that this is going to extend broadly to all of them.

Hank Smith: 01:12 J.B., wouldn’t we say, maybe for our listeners at home that feel weak and small, that this could be a little bit of a message to you. The Lord can use you.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 01:22 Oh, definitely. That should be a take-home message of this section, is that, as President Monson put it so well, whom the Lord calls, he qualifies. This small band of 10 elders meeting in this conference hearing these words, that these words should resonate and echo with us, because every one of us is going to be called to do something that we just feel too weak to do.

  01:44 I’m moved by an image that a general authority reported this, that he came by President Spencer W. Kimball’s office soon after he was the prophet, and he was weeping. The general authority asked President Kimball, “President, are you all right?” and he said, “I’m just such a small man for such a big job.” This was after decades of being an apostle. As he feels the weight of this, it is overwhelming. I would say to all of our listeners, you’re in good company if you’ve felt this way.

Hank Smith: 02:14 If you feel like the world is really hard, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, the weight of the world feels heavy. Here is a message from the Lord saying, “Grab hold of the Restoration. I can use you.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 02:29 Yeah. We’ve just come through the Come, Follow Me year. We’ve just been finishing thinking about Moroni. This also seems to have some special poignance from Moroni because, boy, you could tell at the end of the Book of Ether, the end of the last couple chapters of the small book of Mormon, Moroni felt this. You can sense that he felt the weight of what he was being asked to do.

  02:49 In Ether 12, he’s so worried, Are the Gentiles going to mock what I’ve written? I can just sense how inadequate I feel. That reassurance from the Lord is that, You’ve done your part. Let me do my work. I give men weakness that they’re humble, and my grace is sufficient. If they humble themselves before me, weak things can be made strong. I hear him saying the same thing to us. “I’ll do my work. You do what I’ve asked you to do. I will do my work through you.”

Hank Smith: 03:17 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 03:18 That’s verse 28. Inasmuch as they are humble, they might be made strong. I love too that the Lord, just in case you forgot who’s writing this preface, he pops in verse 24. “Behold I am God and have spoken it. These commandments are of me. They were given unto my servants in their weakness after the manner of their language that they might come to understand.” He just comes right back in and says, “Just so you know, this is me.” Wow.

  03:45 Then those four more promises, which that one in 28. “Inasmuch as they were humble, they might be made strong.” Who hasn’t felt like I can’t do this when they’re given a calling? Who hasn’t felt that way?

Hank Smith: 03:59 J.B., John just brought up verse 24, “These commandments, these revelations are of me. They’re given to my servants in their weakness, in their language, so I can bring them to an understanding.” How do we see that get played out throughout church history, where the Lord uses people in their weakness and in their language? How do you bring forth a glorious work through flawed individuals?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 04:30 Such an important principle for us to chew on. I think this is a verse worth slowing down on. This, I think, sets forward some really important principles that we can think about as we encounter church history, is how the Lord works with us. First off, I find that really reassuring, that the Lord works with us where we are, that he speaks to us in our language. He wants us to understand.

  04:52 I also think that’s helpful for us to think about language and understanding as so much more than just spoken words, our cultural context, the symbols with which we work and operate, that the Lord is going to do that. So I think we’re going to see in the Doctrine and Covenants, for example, the Lord using what Joseph Smith and his associates understood, seer stones, divining rods, that the Lord uses their cultural understanding and speaks to them in ways that they will understand their cultural language.

  05:27 I think this verse is a really important verse to help us think about the presentation of the temple endowment, that the Lord wants us to understand as we think about what we know that the brethren have said, the first presidency has said about that there will be from time to time adjustments in the temple endowment, the presentation, because it fits our language and understanding. If our language and understanding changes, the Lord wants us to understand and speaks to us that way.

  05:54 This is the kind of principle that really helps us as we think about church history and the way the Lord is working with individuals, different cultures, different times, different understanding, different language.

  06:07 Why, for example, Joseph Smith felt comfortable revising the Book of Mormon for publication, or revising the revelations, because he recognizes that, as Steve Harper said, he’s not a divine fax machine. He’s putting into words the crooked, broken prison of language, as he described it, putting into words things that transcend words. So he’s trying to always come to a better understanding and better language, and as he learns more in the Doctrine and Covenants, the revised revelations to reflect that greater understanding. I think this is a beautiful way of thinking that this is all a process, that the Lord’s helping us come to understanding through our weaknesses.

Hank Smith: 06:46 Yeah, and I can take you places. One of the best teachers I’ve ever had, his name is Sterling Hilton, in my doctorate program. He had to teach me and our cohort Statistics 741. I remember thinking there is no possible way that I can comprehend this. I think of him when I read this because he would listen to us so closely so he could start to speak our language. Then you could see him develop … Almost in his head he would develop a step-by-step program saying, “Okay, now I know where you are. I know where I want you to end up. So I’m going to walk you through this step-by-step.”

  07:30 It not only taught me about statistics, which he would be disappointed I never became a statistician, but it taught me about teaching, that you have to meet people where they are or you’ll never get them where you hope they’ll be.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 07:45 Yeah, that’s so true. I’m thinking back to something that John said earlier in our conversation, especially if we remember where this section sits in relation to other Doctrine and Covenants sections. So if we think of verse 24 and have in the back of our minds section 67, “My servant Joseph you have known. His language you have known.”

  08:03 There’s some concern about what might feel like inelegant language or imperfection, or coming through Joseph Smith’s vernacular. I think this verse 24 is a reminder. It must be a corollary to that section 67 is this is how I’m working with people. I work through their language and their understanding. So don’t see that as a flaw. See that as a blessing. Then as John said so well, the Lord’s testimony, “The revelations are where the power is. Look past the language.”

Hank Smith: 08:31 Yeah. I’m working with people where they are. John, we’ve quoted it how many times on here. All the Lord has is imperfect people, must be incredibly frustrating, frustrating for him, but he deals with it, and so should we.

John Bytheway: 08:48 So should we.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 08:49 Yeah. I’m thinking about connection to section 67, this verse 24, then President Uchtdorf’s 2013 talk, Come Join with Us, where he had acknowledged that, to be perfectly frank, there have been times in the history of the church when we’ve made mistakes. He reiterates that same thing about the Lord only has imperfect people to work with.

  09:11 Then I love that he ends that sermon, that talk by going to the Bread of Life sermon in John 6. You think about people manning the multitude who just didn’t understand what Jesus was saying about I am the bread of life and what does all this mean? Then he says to the disciples, “Will ye also go away?” and Peter says, “Whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

  09:36 That to me is the section 67:24 sentiment is that this is coming through the language the Lord is working with us and our understanding, but what we see behind all of this is these are the words of eternal life, and we can feel that. We can feel that coming through.

Hank Smith: 09:52 It’s almost a bit of a stumbling block. You have to realize the Lord works with imperfect people. Once you can grasp that, there’s a whole treasure on the other side, beautiful treasures on the other side of, okay, I’ll take this in stride. Like you said, J.B., that gives me great comfort that maybe he can use me, too.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 10:14 Yeah. If we’ve ever had that moment where we have felt the Lord working through us, then that gives the confidence, yeah, the Lord is working with me, too.

Hank Smith: 10:23 Yeah, I can do pretty great things, of course, if I’m in the Lord’s hands.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 10:28 As we think about the nature of God and our own selves, I think it’s so interesting that 25 and 27, I like to contrast these two. So 25, “Inasmuch as they erred, it might be made known.” 27, “And inasmuch as they sinned, they might be chastened, they might repent.”

  10:46 This is really important that the Lord is helping us to recognize that there’s difference between errors, simple mistakes, and sinning. Sometimes I think we beat ourselves up too much just because we’ve erred. We’re human, we’ve made a mistake, there’s no malicious intent. We weren’t rebellious, we weren’t sinning. I love that the Lord treats that differently.

  11:05 He just wants to make it known. He just wants to help us be instructed. He wants us to learn wisdom. He views that differently. Maybe there’s some of us that need to stop beating ourselves up for feeling that we somehow are unworthy or somehow are rebellious or sinning or less in the Lord’s sight when he recognizes that we’re just erring. He’s just helping us learn and gain wisdom. I like that those are sort of different verbs and differentiated in here that those are two different situations.

Hank Smith: 11:33 Yeah, that is great.

John Bytheway: 11:35 Of course it’s the adversary who would want you to take your errors and think of them as sins.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 11:43 Yes, that’s true. The great accuser. That’s right.

Hank Smith: 11:47 Even there in verse 27, “They have sinned, that they’ll repent.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 11:51 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 11:52 They’ll repent. There’s room.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 11:54 There’s no hope lost at all. There is a way forward in either situation, erring or sinning. The Lord’s got a path forward.

Hank Smith: 12:03 It seems in verse 29, J.B. and John, the Lord bears his testimony of the Book of Mormon. Since we’ve just finished that study, Come, Follow Me study, I can feel that verse more than ever before.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 12:15 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 12:16 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 12:17 That Book of Mormon.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 12:19 Do you know what phrase leaped off the page at me this time? And I don’t know how I’d missed this, is at the very end of 29, that Joseph Smith’s, “Power to translate through the mercy of God by the power of God.” I think I’ve always gone to the power of God, but I never really paid attention that it was through the mercy of God, by the power of God. You think about how much mercy is represented by the translation process, by the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. I mean I love that. That’s an evidence of God’s mercy is the Book of Mormon.

Hank Smith: 12:50 And we just studied Moroni 10 with Dr. Sweat, where Moroni invites us to ponder the mercy of God from Adam to us.

John Bytheway: 13:01 To the time that you receive these things, how merciful, and then ponder it in your heart. Yeah.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 13:08 Great connection with that word mercy.

Hank Smith: 13:10 Now, J.B., the Lord says something in verse 30 that I think as Latter-day Saints, we have taken and run with. He talks about the church, “To bring it forth out of obscurity, out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, which with I, the Lord God, am well-pleased, speaking to the church collectively, not individually.” We’ve turned that into the church is true. That’s our phrase. We’ve trademarked it. The church is true. What do you see as the difference between what we say the church is true and what the Lord says in verse 30?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 13:51 What a nice setup, Hank. This is something that we all can think about. I’m really grateful actually that there has been some fantastic thinking recently about this verse and what it might mean. I’d love to highlight a couple of those things.

  14:04 I wanted to mention this book, Both Things Are True by Kate Holbrook. Kate was a fantastic historian for the church, passed away a year ago. This collection of essays has so many thoughtful things, and one of these is as good a treatment as I’ve ever seen on that very question, is what do we mean when we say the church is true and true and living? She spends an essay on this phrase. This one excerpt, I think, gets it what she says. It’s so worth the read and so many cool stories.

  14:36 “I believe that both things are true. Our church is true and it is living. It is perpetually becoming true. In this essay, I’ve explored two of my reasons for that belief, namely that the church teaches its members to seek and embrace all truth and that it calls us into true relationships with one another.”

  15:02 Isn’t that great? This idea of it’s true and living, and it’s the livingness part of is becoming perpetually more true. The thing that I love that she settles in on is that one of the ways that it’s true is that it embraces all truth. Maybe that sentiment here are a couple of well-known Joseph Smith quotes. “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism,” he said this in July, 1843, “is to receive truth. Let it come from where it may.”

  15:34 Then he also said in January of 1843, “We don’t ask any people to throw away any good that they have got. We only ask them to come and get more.” To think more expansively is to think about the church embracing all truth. That’s one of the things that makes it true and living is that we’re looking for truth anywhere. So we have a 1978 statement by the first presidency based upon ancient and modern revelation. The first presidency said, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gladly teaches and declares the Christian doctrine that all men and women are brothers and sisters, but as literal children’s spirit of eternal Father and the great religious leaders of the world such as Muhammad, Confucius, and reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others received a portion of God’s light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.”

  16:26 Maybe one more in this vein, here’s Elder Ezra Taft Benson quoting Elder Orson F. Whitney. So we have this double apostolic witness. So here’s the Elder Benson first, “God, the Father of us all, uses the men of the earth, especially good men, to accomplish his purposes. It has been true in the past, it is true today, it’ll be true in the future.”

  16:46 Then he quotes Elder Whitney. “Perhaps the Lord needs such men on the outside of his church to help it along. They are among its auxiliaries and can do more good for the cause where the Lord has placed them than anywhere else. Hence, some are drawn into the fold and receive a testimony of the truth while others remain unconverted, the beauties and glories of the gospel being veiled temporarily from their view for a wise purpose.”

  17:07 “The Lord will open their eyes in his own due time. God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous for any one people.”

  17:20 “We have no quarrel with the Gentiles.” So this is Elder Whitney in the 1920s, using the Gentiles as people who aren’t Latter-day Saints. “They are our partners in a certain sense.”

  17:32 Back to the way you set that up so nicely, Hank, is I think that we’re starting to sense that this is to not focus or to incorrectly appropriate the exclusiveness of this verse, but to say instead there are ways to think about the true and living church in the sense that we’re embracing all truth, living because of revelation, and that we should see God’s working through good people all around the world, and they’re our partners to accomplish his work.

Hank Smith: 18:00 Lorenzo Snow said, and I’ll probably bring this up a couple of times this year, John, that when we started in New York, he said we were just an infant. We had to grow and learn. That’s what living things do. They grow, they learn, they change, they adapt. They have to adjust things from time to time.

  18:20 I’m a living thing. All of us are living things. You probably look back on your past and go, “Ooh, there are some things that I would’ve done differently had I known what I know now.” I would love to hear in a testimony meeting a little more of the church is true and living. There’s something that we miss if we forget that word.

John Bytheway: 18:39 I think we have to be careful. When we have those two words together, the only true, then it sounds like every other church, therefore, is untrue. I love what you said, J.B., bring all the good that you have and let us see if we can add to it.

  18:55 One of my best friends in high school was just a rock-solid Presbyterian. Great family. He was a good kid that helped me so much. You have truth too and bring it here and let us see if we can add to it. I like that, that way of putting it.

Hank Smith: 19:14 I’ve been able to travel to Israel and have made some friends of Jews and Muslims, and thought these are fantastic God-fearing people.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 19:26 Yes.

Hank Smith: 19:27 Wonderful souls. What did you say from that first presidency statement? Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten them.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 19:37 Yeah. Certainly that God is speaking and revealing and working through them. If we think about how exciting this whole Doctrine and Covenants year and what we have to look forward to, you can think about how expansive the revelations are going to be in terms of human potential. This life and the next, we’re going to start to get a completely different view of salvation history and possibilities. This true and living church has a really important responsibility, and part of it is back in verse 22. One of the reasons why the Lord called Joseph Smith, “That my everlasting covenant might be established, that the fullness of my gospel might be proclaimed.” The church has a significant responsibility as this true and living church, and it’s expansive and big enough for the whole human family when we think of that in those terms.

Hank Smith: 20:26 When I see living there in verse 30, I think of Article of Faith 9, right?

John Bytheway: 20:32 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 20:32 All that God has revealed, now reveals, we believe he will yet reveal. There is more to come. I have yet to see Article of Faith 9 rescinded where President Nelson might say, “Well, that’s it. All the great and important things are out. We’re just going to do good and trivial from here on out.” No, it’s great and important things are yet to come.

John Bytheway: 20:53 I think it was President Nelson, wasn’t it, who gave us that phrase, a continuous restoration. This is an ongoing thing, and that’s Article of Faith 9 right there.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 21:04 Since you’re mentioning President Nelson, this was his first general conference as president of the church, so April 2018, revelation for the church, revelation for our lives. This is like a bolt of lightning when he said, “I urge you to stretch beyond your current spiritual ability to receive personal revelation, for the Lord has promised that if thou shalt seek, thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation.

  21:28 In like manner, what will your seeking open for you? What wisdom do you lack?” Then he said this line that we’ve heard in various forms when we think about Article of Faith 9, what’s to come, “Our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ will perform some of his mightiest works between now and when he comes again. We will see miraculous indications that God the Father and his son Jesus Christ preside over this church in majesty and glory.”

  21:54 Then the line that I think rings to a lot of us, “But in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” So true and living. Yes, a lot to come.

John Bytheway: 22:08 I go back to verse 26, “Inasmuch as they sought wisdom, they might be instructed.” I mean that’s James 1:5. “If any of you lack wisdom”, I’m willing to give that to you if you will seek it.

Hank Smith: 22:22 I was talking with one of my students, her name is Hannah. She was stewing over, “What do I do? I’m about to graduate from BYU. What do I do next? Do I take this job here or this job there? Am I going to end up moving away from a lot of young men in the church where I could meet a lot of them?”

  22:41 I hope it was the Holy Ghost. It isn’t something that I thought about before, but I said … It’s kind of like what you said there, John, if they’re seeking wisdom. I said, “What if you were to bring a note up on your phone, because your phone’s always with you, and you were to open a note that just said, ‘What do I do Lord?’ The invitation. I’m seeking wisdom. Tell me and I’ll write it down. I’m ready to put it in my phone.”

  23:08 John, J.B, don’t you think I need to seek wisdom? I need to show the Holy Ghost that I’m ready. I’m ready. Here’s a clean slate of paper or phone that I’m ready to receive and type out on.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 23:21 A President Nelson word that just hit me so powerfully was this idea of stretch. I urge you to stretch. Stretching is you’re tapping into muscles that maybe you don’t use as much, and you’re not being complacent. You’re pushing yourself beyond that you gain more. That really hit me. Sometimes we can get very comfortable in our religious habits, but I hear President Nelson saying, “What could you do more? What flexibility? What new heights? What new things could you do if you stretched a little bit more? What could the Lord give you if you were seeking it?”

John Bytheway: 23:56 That idea from President Nelson about stretching, it reminds me of Elder Uchtdorf talking about are you living beneath your privileges? It’s like the Lord wants to give you more if you will seek it. I love that.

Hank Smith: 24:10 J.B., as we move on here, there’s a great little sequence in 31 and 32 where the Lord says, “Look, I cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” There’s a high bar, standard here. However, “nevertheless, repentance, you can, will be forgiven, shall be forgiven.”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 24:32 I love the way it’s punctuated. I love the fact that verse 31 doesn’t end in a period. There’s something more to come. We cannot read these two clauses independently. We’ve got to have them linked. That’s what the punctuation seemed to say to me. So that he wants that to be in the same breath for us to remember, again about the nature of God, what he wants from us. Just that reassurance that we can be forgiven. That’s going to be a Doctrine and Covenants theme that we’re just going to see over and over and over how often the Lord is promising and reassuring forgiveness.

  25:04 His Isaiah 1, “Scarlet things can be made white as snow,” or section 58, “That I the Lord remember them no more.” I mean it’s just this beautiful complete totality of forgiveness and fresh starts.

John Bytheway: 25:18 J.B., I’ve never noticed that’s a semicolon there. Thank you for that. Oh, that’s good. I just marked that. This is one sentence, not two.

Hank Smith: 25:27 Mm-hmm. It seems, both of you, that Joseph Smith learned this lesson. Here is November of 1831. He said this in June of ’42. “It is one evidence that men are unacquainted with the principle of godliness to behold the contraction of feeling and lack of charity. The power and glory of godliness is spread out on a broad principle to throw out the mantle of charity. God does not look on sin with allowance. But when men have sinned, there must be allowance made for them.”

  26:05 Then both of you will recognize this. “The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls, to take them upon our shoulders, cast their sins behind our back. If you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on one another.” Beautiful language.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 26:26 That is gold. Can I add a Heber C. Kimball quote that I think lines up with this? When we’re thinking about what does the Doctrine and Covenants, and especially Doctrine and Covenants 1, teach us about the nature of God, President Heber C. Kimball said this in 1857. “I am perfectly satisfied that my Father and my God is a cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured being. Why? Because I’m cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured when I have his Spirit.

  26:53 That is one reason why I know.” Another is the Lord said through Joseph Smith, “I delight in a glad heart and a cheerful countenance that arises from the perfection of his attributes. He is a jovial, lively person, and a beautiful man.”

  27:05 I think we just feel the nature of this loving, incredibly loving, all-compassionate Father. When we start to come closer to him, we start to feel full of that just as Joseph Smith described.

John Bytheway: 27:18 Yesterday, I showed that to my students, “He is a jovial, lively person, and a beautiful man.” When have you ever heard God described that way? Again, we’re not just learning God is real, but what is he like?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 27:33 Yup, that’s right.

John Bytheway: 27:34 I was in the same room once with Elder Quentin L. Cook. He was so jovial and lively and smiley and happy. Then it dawned on me, this is Heber C. Kimball’s relative. I thought, “Oh, look at him living what Heber C. Kimball had just said.” That was a great moment.

Hank Smith: 27:56 That’s great, John.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 27:59 Because we’re thinking about, again, what we learn about God. I just want to highlight these in verse 34 and 35, “O ye inhabitants of the Earth,” 34, “I, the Lord, am willing to make these things known unto all flesh. Why? For I am no respecter of persons and will that all men shall know these things.”

  28:21 When we’re thinking about talking about God’s universal, all-encompassing compassion, he wants to reach everyone, and he thinks of all of us in the same way, no respecter of persons. His love is unbounded for every one of us. John, I’m so glad you brought up Elder Kearon. We just keep coming back to that, relentless pursuit of us.

John Bytheway: 28:41 Yeah, a proactive God who is after us.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 28:45 That’s right.

Hank Smith: 28:47 J.B., as we wrap up this section one, the Lord gives us a bit of a pep talk, like, “Okay, now that we’re wrapping up this preface,” he says, “search these commandments”, these sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, we would call them. It’s not read them, it’s search them. “They are true and faithful.” What you read is true.

  29:14 As we are moving forward through this Come, Follow Me year, J.B., going through these revelations, what would you say to us? What would you say to a listener saying, “Okay, the Doctrine and Covenants is a little bit more difficult to understand. Do you have to know some history? Do I really want to put in this time?”

Dr. J.B. Haws: 29:33 These verses can be motivating. Pep talk, a great, great way of thinking of this. I think it can be helpful maybe to say I would look for what verse 37 says I’m going to find. I’m going to look for prophecies and promises. That’s a really interesting way to navigate these sections is to say there are prophecies and promises in there. I’m going to look for them.

  29:58 One comes to my mind, and this is Doctrine and Covenants 19. I just love this promise, and the Doctrine and Covenants is chock-full of promises. Here’s one, this is verse 23, “Learn of me, listen to my words, walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me.”

  30:17 So we hear the Lord saying the prophecies and promises shall all be fulfilled. Well, I find that promise and I want that fulfilled. If we’re constantly on the lookout for prophecies and promises, then we feel the confidence that the Lord’s words will be fulfilled in our own lives, and we can experience things like peace in him, or forgiveness for our sins, or guidance, or the Holy Ghost speaking to our heart and mind. We think of all these classic Doctrine and Covenants passages. If we think of those as prophecies and promises, we can have the confidence the Lord keeps his word. They’re going to be fulfilled.

Hank Smith: 30:51 Beautiful. That’s awesome. So, J.B., we are coming to the end of our section one here. What else do you want our listeners to see before we let you go?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 31:02 A couple of things. One thing, you asked a great question earlier, Hank, about what do we see about Joseph Smith or what can we know about Joseph Smith? One thing that I think section one sets out is … Clearly it’s anywhere, but we’re going to see this again and again, is that Joseph Smith was drenched in the scriptures. He was drenched in the language of the Bible.

  31:24 That can be a good example for us. He had just grown up with the Bible being the air he breathed, and the Lord worked through him because of that.

  31:35 Section one has so many great allusions to the Bible, so many great Bible phrases that pop in there. Verses 16 to 19 is an area where just Bible phrase after Bible phrase after Bible phrase is linked together. You can look at the footnotes and see where those Bible phrases come.

  31:52 What I think that might tell us is Joseph Smith lived the principle that the Lord introduces in Doctrine and Covenants 84-85, “If we treasure up in our minds the words of life, we’ll know what to say in the very hour.” The Lord could use Joseph Smith’s familiarity with the scriptures to teach him. The more, I think, we become drenched in the scriptures, the more the Lord can use that to teach us. I love Joseph Smith’s example of what scriptural literacy can do in making us open to revelation.

Hank Smith: 32:25 Yeah. John calls it the principle of marinade.

John Bytheway: 32:28 The Parable of the Marinade. Regardless of your original intention, you will eventually become what you surround yourself with. We wrote the talk around that, but, yeah, that’s great, J.B. He was immersed in the language of the Lord there.

Hank Smith: 32:44 Just becomes who he is, becomes his vocabulary.

John Bytheway: 32:47 Yeah.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 32:47 That’s right. We’ll see that all through the Doctrine and Covenants and these great touch points with other scriptures, especially the Bible, that intertextuality. My colleague, Rosalynde Welch, at the Maxwell Institute calls them hyperlinks, little embedded things that connect us with other scriptures. Isn’t that a great analogy?

John Bytheway: 33:03 Yeah.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 33:05 That might lead into the one other thing that I think might be worth touching on, and that’s in verse 39, “For behold and lo, the Lord is God and the Spirit beareth record, and the record is true and the truth abideth forever and ever. Amen.” Embedded in this is the promise that we’re going to get confirmation. The Spirit will bear record to us that this is true.

  33:29 So I think about a talk that President J. Reuben Clark gave back in the ’50s, when he asked the question is when are the words of church leaders entitled to the designation of scripture? We remember that right at the same time as section one, we have section 68 being revealed at the same conference, and that’s verse three and four, when it says, “Whatsoever they speak, when moved upon by the Spirit, shall be the mind of the Lord, the will of the Lord, the Word of the Lord shall be scripture.”

  33:52 So we get that sense that anything the Lord’s servants are saying when they’re moved upon by the Spirit is scripture. Then J. Reuben Clark, back in his talk in the ’50s, said, “Well, how do we know if what they’re speaking is moved upon by the Spirit?” Then he says, “I have given this some thought and the answer that I’ve come to is we’ll know that they were moved upon by the Spirit when we ourselves are moved upon by the Spirit.”

  34:17 He talks about how that shifts the responsibility to us to be living in such a way that we are in tune with the Spirit and that we get the confirmation that whether by the voice of my servants or by my own mouth, it is the same, because the Spirit gives us that confirmation and the Lord will give us our own witnesses. So I love that promise coming at the end of this section.

Hank Smith: 34:39 I have a role to play in this. J.B., this has been phenomenal, as I knew it would be. You’ve been with us, I think, a few times before. The Book of James, I remember we just had so much fun with. But this, J.B., is your bread and butter, history and the Restoration. You’ve been studying it, and I hate to date you here, but you’ve been studying it and teaching it for 30 years, I think. It’s been a full-time gig, J.B. You have read and studied and taught, read and studied and taught. It’s a blessing, honestly, that the three of us have that not every member of the church can have, to make this our daily walk.

  35:19 So, J.B., if I’m a listener at home and either I’m new to the church, I just don’t have time to study all of this, I’ve got people online saying, “Oh, Joseph Smith is a terrible person,” here is J.B. Haws, as good as they come, who has studied this in depth. So, J.B., what would you tell someone in that situation? How do you feel about the Restoration and about the prophet?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 35:44 Thanks for this chance to get to reflect on that and to get to speak to that. So grateful for the platform you two are providing and the way your voices are allowing so many good things to be amplified. This Restoration is everything that we think it is and we hope it is and we want it to be, and that the work that Joseph Smith put into motion is rolling forward in miraculous ways.

  36:13 The class I teach the most at BYU is called the Modern Church. It’s 20th and 21st century church history, so it brings things up to the modern day. I cannot leave that classroom any day without feeling the miracle that is going on, and that the Lord is doing his work and that miracles are continuing.

  36:31 As Brigham Young said so well, Joseph Smith left the key, which is the key of revelation, and that has been tapped into again and again and again, and that this is the church of Jesus Christ, Richard Bushman, whom I admire so much and the historian who I think exemplifies all of this, he wrote a letter to a member of the church who reached out to Richard after Richard had written Rough Stone Rolling, the biography of Joseph Smith. Then Richard Bushman published this. He made it into a open letter, and he closes with this line. “After all these years of studying Joseph’s life, I believe now more than ever.”

  37:12 That’s what I would say to all of us is that a fearlessness to say that studying more church history I think only deepens our wonder and our marveling and seeing God’s hand. As Patrick Mason, a good friend of mine, said, don’t study church history too little and to dive into it. The more you get into it and the more we study, the more marvelous and wondrous it’s going to become.

  37:39 In my own way, I’ll say the same thing. The more I’ve studied, I believe now more than ever. The Restoration has things that both fire up the mind and settle the heart. That’s where I think is the gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness.

John Bytheway: 37:55 Beautifully put.

Hank Smith: 37:56 Yeah. Coming off the Book of Mormon year, I am struck by the miraculous divine nature of this work. The more I study the Doctrine and Covenants, the more I study the Book of Mormon, I think I could not be any more impressed, and yet someone shows me something and I think-

John Bytheway: 38:17 And you’re more impressed.

Hank Smith: 38:18 … I’m more impressed.

John Bytheway: 38:21 J.B. used the word marvelous, and the phrase that came to mind is one the scriptures use about this. This is a marvelous work and a wonder. Being part of the latter days and watching it unfold, how did we get to be here right now, guys? How did our students get to be here right now?

Hank Smith: 38:39 Our listeners, all of us.

John Bytheway: 38:40 Our listeners. Look at what we’re all involved in. What did you say, J.B.? Fires up the mind and settles the heart.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 38:47 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 38:47 Mm-hmm.

John Bytheway: 38:48 Awesome.

Hank Smith: 38:49 So well said. This is the Lord. This is the Jesus Christ of the New Testament, and we do not back down off of that. We excuse not ourselves.

John Bytheway: 38:58 I excuse not myself.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 39:01 Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Hank Smith: 39:03 This is him.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 39:03 Hear, hear.

Hank Smith: 39:04 Yeah. J.B., thank you for spending your time with us. I know as director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute over at BYU, you got a pretty busy gig over there, but we’re grateful for your time.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 39:16 Oh, I’m so glad to be with you both, Hank and John. It’s always a pleasure. It’s remarkable.

Hank Smith: 39:21 Yeah. We love having J.B. Haws here, and we at followHIM are fans, aren’t we, John, of J.B. Haws?

John Bytheway: 39:28 Mm-hmm. Love you, brother.

Dr. J.B. Haws: 39:30 I’m a fan back.

Hank Smith: 39:32 If you want to hear more from J.B. and what his team over at the Maxwell Institute are doing, J.B., where would we go?

Dr. J.B. Haws: 39:39 Great. You can find us online at mi.byu.edu. That’s maxwellinstitute.byu.edu. Since you gave me a chance to give a little bit of a plug, Maxwell Institute just released last month a series of books called Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants. There are seven books. They’re brief. Each one deals with a different theme that weaves its way through the Doctrine and Covenants. So there are some great stuff, agency, revelation, law, family history, redeeming the dead, divine aid, seeing, and then time. So there are some great themes in the Doctrine and Covenants, and those little books have just come out from the Maxwell Institute.

Hank Smith: 40:17 Oh, please, mi.byu.edu. Go support J.B. and his team over there. I’m looking at a picture of them right now. I’m going to go order mine as soon as we’re done recording here. Thank you, J.B. With that, we want to thank Dr. J.B. Haws for being with us today all the way from Hooper, Utah. One more shout out for Hooper-

Dr. J.B. Haws: 40:38 Hooper. There we go.

Hank Smith: 40:39 Hooper, Utah. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. If you’ve listened to us at all, you know that every episode we remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We are going to talk First Vision on followHIM.

  41:02 Before you skip to the next episode, I have some important information. This episode’s transcript and show notes are available on our website, followhim.co. That’s followhim.co. On our website, you’ll also find our two free books, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament and Finding Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Both books are full of short and powerful quotes and insights from all our episodes from the Old and New Testaments. The digital copies of these books are absolutely free.

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President Russell M. Nelson: 41:58 Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn to him. Follow him.