Dr. Daniel Peterson: 00:07 It reminds me of in the early days of the church, we would send missionaries out. We knew we had to preach the gospel to all the world. And so, I’ve read of stories where people would arrive on the docks in Bombay and they’d just get off the boat, preach a sermon at the docks, then get back on the boat to go on. And now India could be checked off the list. And I think the Lord has taught us since then, no, that doesn’t count as having preached the gospel to India. You’ve got to actually reach people. And likewise, we don’t do batches in the temples, you’ve got to reach individual people and teach them and baptize them. And it’s not going to be as easy as you thought. In the old days you thought, “Well, in a couple of years we can land on every island and preach the gospel at the dock and leave.”

Hank Smith: 00:54 So for baptism for the dead in the temple is about our theology of that the Savior truly cares about each individual, it’s a theological argument.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 01:05 Exactly. We are not mass people, and even people who lived thousands of years ago, he remembers them. They’re remembered, they’re important, and they had stories and we act on behalf of them.

  01:16 There was a story I wanted to tell about 1 Corinthians 15:29 that I like. This verse, there’s a really interesting story that involves 1 Corinthians 15:29, and that is when the Encyclopedia of Mormonism was being done. They really, really wanted Krister Stendahl to write an article on baptism for the dead among non-Latter-day Saints, how people viewed it. Truman Madsen knew him really well. And so he wrote to him and asked him, “Would you write this article?” And Stendahl who was the… He’d been the dean of Harvard Divinity School, he was the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm and so on and so forth, said, “I don’t have time to do this, I just don’t have time.”

  01:58 And Truman kept writing to him and saying, “Come on, it doesn’t have to be long, it doesn’t have to be involved.” And Stendahl kept saying, “No, I just don’t have time.” And then Truman said to him, and Truman told me the story, he wrote to him and said, “Look, how about this? I will write a little article about it, and you just read it through and if you’re okay with it, sign your name to it.” He says, “You really want me to do this, don’t you?” And he said, “Yeah, we really would like you to.” Because he was an eminent, eminent scholar of the New Testament and so on. And so he said, “Okay, write something up, send it to me and I’ll look it through.”

  02:29 When the article came to him, Stendahl said, “This stinks, your case is much stronger than this.” So he says, “I will write it.” And it’s just a short piece, but he basically says that the view of virtually all critical scholars of the New Testament on this verse is that what it represents is vicarious baptism of living people on behalf of the dead. There’ve been a hundred other explanations given for it, but Stendahl said, “No, that’s what it’s about, it’s a vicarious baptism for the dead.” He says, “This is a beautiful thing.” He said, “I could see myself participating in such a practice to bring the benefits of the resurrection and the atonement of Christ to the dead, to our ancestors.”

  03:15 He really was moved by the idea of baptism for the dead. And said, “No, this is what it means.” Other people will try to maneuver out of the way of that interpretation, because they don’t like it, but he’s saying, “What’s the point of this? If the dead don’t exist, then there’s no point in being baptized for them. There’s no one out there anymore.”

  03:33 And then of course he goes on to say, “Why are we in jeopardy every hour? Why do I go out and do the stupid things that I do and get myself in trouble and face opposition and so on? If I did not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, I wouldn’t do this.” Maybe you’ve had this experience, sometimes I’ve been doing things and I’ve thought, “If I didn’t really believe this, I’d be out of here. This, whatever it is I’m doing, it’s not that fun.”Tracting in Switzerland in the winter sometimes, I’d kept repeating to myself, “These are the best two years of my life. These are the best two years of my life. I’m having a good time.” But then I actually wondered, “Oh my word, if these are the best two years of my life, what have I got to look forward to?”

Hank Smith: 04:21 Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 04:22 I’d say, “The only reason I’m doing this is because I really do believe it.” And you have to ask yourself, many people probably have gone through that at that point in their lives when they’ve asked themselves, “Do I really believe this?” And if the answer is yes, then, “Okay, I’m going to go ahead and do it.” I had a friend that was called as a mission president at a crucial time in his professional life, and he said, “I wasn’t expecting it, I didn’t know it was coming.” But he said, “I had to ask myself, do I really believe this?” And I’ve been preaching consecration for all this time. So yes, I do really believe it and I’m going to go out and do this, and that’s an important turning point I think. And Paul is saying, “If I didn’t really believe it, I wouldn’t do this.”

John Bytheway: 05:07 Krister Stendahl I think is the one that I first heard the phrase of the idea of holy envy. Is that the guy?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 05:14 Yes. Yeah, don’t know if you’ll want to incorporate it or not, but it’s a wonderful story and I’ve used it multiple times in things, in my teaching and firesides and so on. When he was the Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm and it was announced that the temple was going to be built outside of Stockholm, there was controversy as there almost always is, an opposition to its being built. And finally people began to say, “Well, what does the Church of Sweden say about this?” And they tracked down Krister Stendahl.

  05:44 Now, what they didn’t know was that he had Latter-day Saint friends, he’d been out to teach at BYU or to give papers at BYU. And so he was very well acquainted with Latter-day Saints. So he called a press conference and said, “The position of the church of Sweden is let the Mormons build their temple. Why should we interfere with that?”

  06:05 But then he went on to give his three principles for looking at other religions or worldviews. I think they’re wonderful. I think the third one is especially wonderful. He said, “First of all, when you want to learn about them, don’t go first to their critics. Go first to those who love this worldview. Try to understand why they do. What is it that appeals to them, that moves them about it? You see, if you feel the need, you can go to critics later, but don’t start off that way. That’s not fair.”

  06:33 And then he said, “Always compare your best with their best and your worst with their worst. Because we’ve got villains and they’ve got saints, and you should compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. You can always pick an array of bad people that belong to that group, but every group has bad people.”

  06:51 But then his third one that I think is most interesting is, always leave room for holy envy, by which he meant look at another group and ask yourself, what is it that they do really well, I could learn something from them? He says you don’t have to give up your own beliefs, but they may be doing things where you could do better. Serving the poor, or they’re more reverent or something like that. Any number of things. And he felt holy envy for the practice of baptism for the dead. He wished that they had something like that in the Lutheran church, but in a lot of cases I’ve seen the reverent way in which Muslims treat their scriptures. And I thought, “Well, we could improve on that.”

  07:31 I remember for the first time seeing how a faithful Orthodox rabbi in Israel practiced the Sabbath. He came and his family basically lived it for the students in the Jerusalem Center. And I’d grown up with these notions about how they counted their footsteps and it was nitpicking and it wasn’t. They loved the Sabbath. They were reverent about the Sabbath. And I thought, “They’re better at this than I am.” I look at the Mennonites and how they live simply and take care of the poor and so on. Well, are we living too garishly? Too high on the hog? At least. It’s nice to be challenged by people like that to where you have to ask yourself, “How well am I doing? Could I do better?”

  08:11 And I think that’s a really important lesson. So I’ve always said this idea of holy envy, I dislike the word tolerance because it’s kind of like, I hold my nose and allow you to exist. But I like appreciation or something where I look at you and I think, “What can you teach me? What can I learn from you?” That’s much better than mere tolerance, I think.

Hank Smith: 08:33 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 08:34 Oh, I loved what you said. Just to have someone’s name be remembered in a temple reverently and lovingly. What a great contrast. Trying to erase people as a culture, as a group, or remembering them one by one in a loving … That’s beautiful. And Hank, thanks for saying the one by one thing. I was thinking of Jesus with the righteous in the new world. He could have just … can you all see me? Here’s the wounds that I have. But instead, one by one, and everything we do and the baptism and confirmation is one person at a time, and even in the temple, one at a time.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 09:14 It would be so much more efficient in the temple to just put someone in the font and say, “Okay, I’m baptizing for a million people and we’re done.” But we don’t do that and I think it’s important that we don’t.

Hank Smith: 09:25 So Vincent’s Word Studies was written by Marvin Vincent, who was born in the early 1800s, wrote 2,600 pages on his commentary on the Bible. It’s one of those on Bible hub, and this is what he writes about 1 Corinthians 15:29. I thought you both might like this.

  09:42 It says, “Concerning this expression, 15:29, about baptisms for the dead of which some 30 different explanations are given, it is best to admit frankly that we lack the facts for a decisive interpretation. None of the explanations proposed are free from objection. Paul is evidently alluding to a usage familiar to his readers and the term employed was as,” and he references Godet here, which is, Frederick Godet wrote a Bible commentary as well. He says, “As Godet remarks in their vocabulary, a sort of technical phrase, a large number of both ancient and modern commentators adopt the view that a living Christian was baptized for an unbaptized dead Christian. The Greek expositors regarded the words the dead as the equivalent to the resurrection of the dead and the baptism as a manifestation of belief in the doctrine of the resurrection.”

  10:30 He then says, “Godet adopts an explanation which refers to baptism, baptism to martyrdom, the baptism of blood.” And then this is what he finishes with. “In the absence of anything more satisfactory, I adopt the explanation given above.” So it’s almost like he was waiting for an explanation to 1 Corinthians 15:29.

John Bytheway: 10:49 In Andy Skinner and Kelly Ogden’s book, they referenced an interview between Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed and Dr. Paul R. Cheesman who taught at BYU, but this was in 1945 at UCLA, and it’s in Richard Lloyd Anderson’s book, Understanding Paul, as well. Page 413. But anyway, this was, they said, a reconstruction of the interview.

  11:12 So Dr. Cheesman, “Is the scripture found in 1 Corinthians 15:29 translated properly as found in the King James translation?” So Dr. Goodspeed says basically, “Yes.” Dr. Cheesman, “Do you believe that baptism for the dead was practiced in Paul’s time?” Dr. Goodspeed, “Definitely, yes.” Dr. Cheesman, “Does the church to which you belong practice it today?” Dr. Goodspeed, “No.” Dr. Cheesman, “Do you think it should be practiced today?” Dr. Goodspeed, “This is the reason why we do not practice it today. We do not know enough about it.”

  11:47 Well, we just don’t know enough about it. I think that, just like you Hank, the commentaries that I’ve read that are really trying to be honest, well, it really appears that this was some sort of proxy thing they were doing. It’s clear from the translation.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 12:00 I think that’s helpful because it illustrates the need for modern revelation, sheds new light on the passage and makes sense of it for us so that we can move ahead. But we never claim that everything we get is from the Bible. We don’t think it contradicts the Bible, but we proudly declare that we have modern revelations. That’s the whole point of it, is to give us things we wouldn’t otherwise know. So it’s not shocking. It shouldn’t be shocking that we claim things that aren’t purely biblical. Of course.

John Bytheway: 12:33 It’s never been easier to get on your phone and within seconds bring up a relative, somebody, one of your many millions of cousins and to be able to go and do that for it’s just that spirit of Elijah feeling of finding fathers and children is such an amazing thing that’s never been easier to do.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 12:53 No, and it may be that what we were doing before was almost a practice run and now we can really do it with electronic data management and so on.

John Bytheway: 13:03 Boy, so true.

Hank Smith: 13:04 And Dan, correct me if I’m wrong here, but Paul is definitely not giving us the ins and outs of the practice of baptism for the dead. He’s referencing this as another practice that’s saying, “We believe in resurrection.”

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 13:17 Yeah, exactly. This isn’t a treatise on baptism for the dead. He just mentions it as something that clearly his audience is familiar with. They know what he’s referring to. He doesn’t have to explain it and he doesn’t. He just says, “What are people doing this for if there’s no resurrection for the dead, it makes no sense.”

  13:34 Now, one thing I might want to say about that too, if I may, is just I’ve had some people say, “Well, it says, ‘What shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise, not all … ‘ Why are they then baptized for the dead?” And they’ll say, “See, he’s saying those people over there. Well, that they doesn’t even exist in the Greek. The Greek is just, it’s all one word. It’s hard to translate. The ones being baptized. Why are the ones being baptized for the dead doing that? It’s just one word, so it’s not a they over there, and pointing outside to some other group. Who cares what they’re doing? He’s talking about a Christian practice clearly, which he says makes no sense if there’s no resurrection.

Hank Smith: 14:15 Yeah, the they is omitted in almost every other translation of that verse, the new international version. Now, if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 14:32 So don’t see it as a group over there. He’s trying to exclude them. He’s not. If you don’t mind, maybe we’ll just go ahead a little bit. The question, verse 35, how are the dead raised up with what body do they come? He gives an example, because of course the Corinthians maybe think it doesn’t come with a body, it’s just spiritual resurrection, quote unquote. But he says, “No. Learn examples from agriculture.” These were heavily agricultural societies. Even the cities were close to their food sources, so they knew you put a seed in the ground, the seed doesn’t look like much, but it’s a physical thing and you bury it and then it springs forth in different ways into different kinds of plants.

  15:14 There are different kinds. All flesh is not the same flesh. Verse 38, God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, unto every seed, his own body. And then he describes how there are different kinds of flesh. And then the verses that Latter-day Saints are very fond of. There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There’s one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. “For one star differ from another star and glory.”

  15:44 He’s talking here about literal light I think, and brilliance and so on. But so also is the resurrection of the dead, that there will be a variety of glories in the resurrection. Of course, this is not enough to build a doctrine of three degrees of glory on, but when you get section 76, it suddenly becomes clear what is going on here and what he’s talking about. We are so privileged to have that revelation, which was not, by the way, altogether well accepted by everybody when it came.

John Bytheway: 16:11 Right.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 16:12 I don’t understand why, to be honest. I think it’s one of the most glorious revelations ever received. But there was resistance to it. And then he says, “Bodies are sown in corruption. The body sown in corruption is raised in incorruption.” That is a highfalutin word. I’ve seen one translation of this, I’m trying to remember which one it was. It says, “We bury rotting bodies and they come back perfect, incorruptible. Physical things, corrupt.” And it’s talking about that kind of corruption, but that’s not the way it’ll come forth. Sown in dishonor is we kind of want to hide a body after a person dies, after a little while, we’re kind of in a hurry to get that body put away somewhere. It will be raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power. Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. It will be a body, he’s saying, but it will be a different kind of body, not a body, which is I think what the Corinthians were leaning toward.

John Bytheway: 17:10 It has taught me a lot to see Paul use those two phrases, corruptible, incorruptible, because I feel like yeah, you’re in a time in a world where there’s death and decay and all around there’s imperfect bodies. There’s all sorts of … there’s untimely, death, disease, everything, and it’s always described as incorruptible, and we’re not going to get that corruptible body back. This resurrection is a glorious thing. It’s an incorruptible body and maybe that would help the Greeks with their notion that matter is coarse and unrefined and why would we want that? I’ve wondered if that’s what he’s trying to make sure they understand. “No, no, no. We’re not getting the old body back.”

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 17:52 Yeah, I think that’s a really good suggestion. They might’ve said, “Oh, oh, okay. So it’s not like the thing that we leave behind.”

John Bytheway: 17:59 Yeah, that we bury.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 18:01 And he’s saying, “No, it isn’t like that. It will be much improved.” Because they’re saying, “Well, we know what happens to those.”

John Bytheway: 18:07 Yeah, like verses 53-54, this corruptible must put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. So it’s not just, you get your body back, you get an immortal, glorified body back.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 18:34 Yeah. Benjamin Franklin’s tombstone inscription, something about an old book, but it’s going to reappear again in a new edition, much improved by the author or something like that.

John Bytheway: 18:45 Right. I actually read that on a previous podcast, corrected and amended by the author. It shall, as he believes, come forth in a new glorious edition. So, I love that Ben Franklin statement. Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 18:57 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 18:57 He clearly had a testimony of the resurrection.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 19:00 Yeah, yeah, he did.

John Bytheway: 19:01 Or hope of it.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 19:02 So this is a powerful, powerful chapter on the resurrection and it’s a rebuke, I think, to people who want to push it away and make it something more manageable.

  19:11 I remember we had a neighbor in Cairo when we were living there. He was a good guy, good friend, but we went to his Easter Sunrise service one year and his service was all about springtime and the flowers are out and the seasons have changed. It was cold, but now it’s warm, and the one thing he never mentioned was the resurrection of Christ, and I thought, that’s kind of more important even than the cycles of the seasons.

  19:40 I was astonished at the way you could preach an Easter sermon and never mention the event of Easter, but he did. So I was puzzled by that, but Paul says, “No, that is at the heart of what we preach. That is what it’s about.” It’s not about seasonal recurrence of warm weather and that kind of stuff. Everybody knows about that. Pagans have that too. The message of Christianity is that there is resurrection and somebody’s already done it. Not only can it happen, it has, and it will for everyone.

John Bytheway: 20:12 I’ve always wondered this because I have heard that just as there is a continuum of liberal conservative in politics or whatever, there’s that in theology as well. I didn’t know this until my mission. I thought really some people that didn’t really believe, some Christians in a physical resurrection, they thought, “Well, maybe it’s more of a spiritual thing.” Is that very common? Can you help me understand how many, are we in a minority or is it-

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 20:40 I think it’s very common, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re in a minority. Now, it depends. Maybe if you’re talking about advanced Christian thinkers and theologians, a lot of them would shy away from the idea of a physical resurrection. It’s tacky and they’re not really fond of physical bodies and don’t want them back, and it’s kind of too crude and materialistic. They want something more sophisticated than that, but I think a lot of ordinary Christians still believe in it. I hope so.

John Bytheway: 21:07 It’s hard to deny it. If Jesus says, “Handle me and see … “

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 21:11 He’s kind of making the point.

John Bytheway: 21:13 Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 21:13 This is not a metaphor, and I’m really here and I’m physical.

John Bytheway: 21:18 And give me something to eat, even.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 21:20 Yeah. He’s trying to illustrate it as clearly as he can so that people remember, it wasn’t just a ghost. Everybody could understand that. Non-Christians would understand that in the first century, but this idea that a person had actually come back from the dead, that was even news for the Jews. They expected a resurrection at the end of time. They didn’t expect one right away with somebody whose name we know, and we used to see him walking around the street.

Hank Smith: 21:47 And watched him die.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 21:49 Yeah, we watched him die. We know he was dead, and the Romans made sure of it, with the spear in the side and all that, but he was back. Amazing.

John Bytheway: 21:59 You are probably the church’s expert on Islam. You speak Arabic. I was wondering what do our Muslim friends believe about the resurrection?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 22:08 They believe in the physical resurrection. That’s an important element in the Quran. Now, they do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead because they believe, the overwhelming majority of them, that he didn’t really die on the cross, but he was assumed into heaven. But they do believe in the physical resurrection. That’s a very important principle of Islam.

John Bytheway: 22:26 Interesting.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 22:27 And the Quran insists on it over and over and over again. And Mohammed was attacked for it because they’d say, “Look, we’ve seen bodies out in the desert. We know what happens to them.” He said, “Well, that doesn’t matter. They will rise again.” So we are on common ground in that regard.

John Bytheway: 22:43 Interesting.

Hank Smith: 22:44 Dan, it seems like this whole chapter is Paul repeating over and over and over, “There is a resurrection from the dead.” He’s fighting back maybe a false doctrine that was being taught among the people in Corinth. How crucial is this in your mind to Christianity, the doctrine of the Resurrection?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 23:01 Well, I think it’s fundamental. I mean, in the earliest Christian creeds, and I mean really early ones, even the ones that appear in the New Testament, the fundamental thing is that Jesus came into the world, that he was judged under Pontius Pilate, that he was crucified in that he rose again the third day. I mean, that is the core of early Christian preaching, period. I mean, a lot of the rest is added on. It flows from that, but that’s at the heart of it. That’s the spine on which everything else hangs. So, I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of that doctrine as being fundamental to Christianity, fundamental to the early Christian preaching, and we tend to try to run from death or hide death from ourselves. Our people when they die, die in hospitals often kind of separated, segregated from the rest of us.

  23:49 Death for the ancient world was something that they saw all the time. People died at home, their funerals were conducted at home, the body lay at home and people died early. Children died. Really high mortality rate, women died in childbirth. They could not pretend that death wasn’t real or that would never happen to them. They knew it at firsthand and had all their lives. And so this message of deliverance from death was part of the really good news of Christianity to all those people that there is hope beyond the grave.

  24:20 The Greek view of life beyond the grave was dismal. If you read things like the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, you have visitations to the spirit world and the spirits are dismal. Great heroes caught in the spirit world, and they yearn for the day when they were alive, and it’s kind of a world of shadows and shades and nothing to look forward to. And Christianity comes along and says, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” We’re heading to glory, not this dismal kind of shadow world of dismal hopelessness. This was revolutionary news. It’s one of the reasons I think, that Christianity spread so rapidly. It was deliverance.

Hank Smith: 25:03 It’s the good news. This is G. Stanley Hall, an American psychologist wrote in 1915, “The most essential claim of Christianity is to have removed the fear of death and made the king of terrors a good friend and a boon companion.” You’re right, Dan. It flipped the message of the day.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 25:22 There’s a wonderful painting on a wall of a church just outside of Istanbul, a Chora church, it’s called. C-H-O-R-A. Chora. It shows Jesus, it is one of several actually, but it’s the most beautiful, I think. It shows Jesus trampling down the gates of death, the gates of Hades, and he’s reaching out with his hand on either side and lifting Adam and Eve out of their graves and the righteous out of their graves. And then underneath it, you see the gates. The door is just shattered and down on the floor and the lock cord of the door is shattered into little mechanical pieces.

  25:57 And then underneath, if you look really carefully, there’s the devil and the doors are on him, and Jesus is standing on the door, is standing on him. It represents the defeat of Satan and hell and death really beautifully. So, a wonderful little church there that dates to the 13th century, I think. I love that painting.

  26:16 That’s the great news is that Christ has come, he has liberated as he’s liberated the captives, the gates of Hades, the spirit world have been burst open and we will rise from the dead, and have a glorious resurrection, not a shadow life.

Hank Smith: 26:31 Yeah. One more thing I like to point out to my students. Dan, maybe you can comment on this. In the Bible dictionary under miracles, it says, “Christianity is founded on the greatest of all miracles, the Resurrection of our Lord.” And then this statement, “If that be admitted,” meaning if you and I believe in the Resurrection, it says this. “Other miracles cease to be improbable.” Which I think means if Jesus really did come back from the dead, then what else is he going to do? What else can he do?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 27:00 That’s pretty remarkable. If he can do that, he can do most anything. And I sometimes run into arguments from skeptics who say, “Well, ancient people just didn’t understand death.” And I say, “Oh no, they understood it better than we do.” As I say, we hide it in hospitals and we try not to have anything to do with it. Turn the preparation of the body for burials to professionals and we show up and stand by the grave or something like that. They knew death at firsthand. They were perfectly aware of the fact that people who die don’t typically come back.

  27:31 They’d seen that thousands of times and it is not like ancient people didn’t understand that. So, the Resurrection to them was just as astonishing as it is to us, not because they were ancient people who just didn’t understand reality. No, they understood it probably better than we do in a way, and yet the evidence for them was overwhelming.

Hank Smith: 27:52 It seems as if Paul is not budging on this issue of resurrection. He wants it very clear. Occasionally I might have a Christian friend who says something like, “Well, that Joseph Smith story is a little farfetched.” I’m like, well-

John Bytheway: 28:06 You want to hear a farfetched story?

Hank Smith: 28:07 Yeah. What about Jesus who died and came back to life and is never going to die again? That also seems a little farfetched. It falls right in line.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 28:21 No, it is true. You have to grant the possibility of a God. If there is no God, then none of this happened. There’s got to be some other explanation for it. But if you once grant the possibility that there is a God and then he has tremendous power, including this, then everything else makes perfect sense. But you have to accept that first premise.

  28:37 But there’s another way. You can become convinced that Jesus rose from the dead and then conclude from that there must be a God. I think the reasoning can work both ways. It’s an argument for the existence of God. I’m convinced the historical evidence for the Resurrection is really quite strong just in secular terms. And if Jesus really rose from the dead, then there you have an argument for God right there, because otherwise it can’t happen.

John Bytheway: 29:03 Back in General Conference, April of 2023, Elder Gary E. Stevenson quoted the New Testament scholar N.T Wright, who actually wrote a biography of Paul. N.T Wright said, “We should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways, in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts. This is our greatest festival.” And I thought this was really insightful. “Take Christmas away and in biblical terms, you’ll lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke. Nothing else. Take Easter away and you don’t have a New Testament, you don’t have a Christianity.”

  29:41 And then Elder Stevenson said, “We cherish the Bible for all it teaches us about the birth, ministry, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. No three words embody more hope and eternal consequence for all of humankind than those uttered by a heavenly angel on Easter morning at the garden tomb. He is risen.”

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 30:05 That’s powerful. That was music to my ears when he said that, because I’ve thought for a long time if I had to choose, it’s a little difficult, because I love Christmas and so on. But if I had to choose, I think I’d go with Easter as the most important one. And yet oddly enough, we don’t celebrate it as much. I will say to my dismay, I’ve actually been in church meetings where we maybe sang an Easter hymn, but then the subject of the sacrament meeting talks was the welfare program or something like that.

Hank Smith: 30:34 Yeah, something else.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 30:35 Oh my word. We build up Christmas so much, but why not Easter? We’ve got great Easter music and we should be singing that. But I’ve wondered if it isn’t that Christmas is so commercialized that you can’t escape it. I’ve been hearing Christmas music around a little before Halloween now, but there isn’t that much Easter stuff. And also you can get sentimental about Santa Claus and things like that, and the baby being born in the manger, it doesn’t demand a lot of you theologically, but Easter does.

  31:04 Boy, if you believe in Easter, that is quite a claim. So, it’s hard to be neutral about it, or for nonbelievers to make business out of it because it’s a very dramatic assertion. I kind of wish that we emphasized it more. Well, not kind of wish. I really wish we emphasized it more.

Hank Smith: 31:22 Yeah, I read a book a long time ago by E.F. Schumacher. I highlighted this part in the book. He says, “The modern world seems to be so skeptical about everything that makes demands on man’s higher faculties.” So, he’s talking about things like miracles and resurrection, that really demands a lot out of you. And he says, “The modern world seems so skeptical about those things.” And then he said this, “But it is not at all skeptical about skepticism, which demands hardly anything.”

  31:53 So when we talk about resurrection, there might be a feeling in our western culture, in our modern times, that believing in a resurrection is somehow … is an uneducated thing or it’s not sophisticated. And maybe I’m wrong about this, but someone might say, “I want there to be a resurrection, but maybe society is smarter than that now.” Do you know what I mean?

  32:20 Joseph Smith said at a funeral once, “We mourn the loss, but we do not mourn as those without hope.” And I think that could mean to each person, to each one of us listening today that it’s okay to mourn. But read these words from Paul. “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? But thanks be to God, which giveth us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  32:46 Both of you have lost parents. My dad passed away a couple of years ago and he was a golf professional, and I still haven’t golfed. It’s hard. I miss him so much. And that’s where we connected. That’s where we talked. So, there is a bit of a sting there still, when Paul says, “O death, where is thy sting?” I’m going, “Well, I still feel a little bit of a sting.” Our grief is mercifully only temporary.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 33:11 Well, I would say the doctrine of the Resurrection and of a glorious life after death means an enormous amount to me. And some will say, “Okay, it’s just wishful thinking.” But I definitely wish it to be true. I hope it to be true, and I can’t imagine anybody who wouldn’t, unless you simply lacked normal human feeling. I’m the last representative of my nuclear family alive. It wasn’t a very big one, but my grandfathers both died before I was born. My grandmothers both died when I was five. I think I remember them, but it maybe as recording as or pictures I’m remembering. I’m not sure. My parents both died quite a number of years ago now. And then shortly thereafter, my brother passed away. He was actually my half-brother, my only sibling, and we were extremely close.

  33:59 Now, I could handle my parents. I mean, it hurts, but my brother shocked me. We had plans for trips together and things like that, and it was very sudden, as far as I knew he was not ill. And then just suddenly one day I got a call saying he was gone. And that, every day I think about that and I think of things we want to do. My parents, they were in California, I was in Utah. So, in their last years, they were not in very good health. And so I would call them every single day, almost every day, even when I was traveling, sometimes it was just impractical. For a couple of months after my mother died, the last of the two, I still every night would want to call her. And I still every day think of things I’d like to tell them, or my brother would get a kick out of this, or my dad would love this story, something that just happened.

  34:51 And then I have to catch myself and say, “They’re not there.” I mean, I can’t call them. And then I’ve lost friends. One of my good friends, Bill Hamlin, I wrote things with, died suddenly, unexpectedly, a few years ago. He was sick for about two days and then was gone. And I’ve had dreams since then where I wake up and think, “Oh good. That was just a really miserable dream.” And then I realized, no, he actually is gone. And so for me, these people were so real, so vivid. And there are others in my life where I think to myself, “I can hardly imagine they are not there.” I mean, they are somewhere. They were too vivid to just go away. Too alive, to just go away. That’s at the heart of my desire for the gospel to be true and at the heart of my hope.

  35:39 And so to me, the temple is one of the great things in the gospel. When my brother died, I was preparing a paper. There was a conference being held on the BYU campus and I was supposed to deliver a paper at it. And I got the news that my brother had passed away, and I called up the organizer of the conference and said, “I won’t be there. I can’t do this. I can’t finish the paper, and I wouldn’t be able to deliver it.” And instead, my wife and I went to the temple. It was down in California. I couldn’t get there for a couple of days. But I remember thinking, “I am going through a ritual enactment of what my brother apparently has just done, passing through the veil and so on.” And that just moved me enormously. Now, I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine making it through this life without that hope.

  36:32 Oh, you can do it, but it would be grim. And when people tell me that, oh, they really don’t care, I just always think, you haven’t lost loved ones, because if you really love them, the thought that they’re gone, absolutely gone, that you’ll never be able to speak to them again, never see them again is just insupportable, I think. Unbearable. But the great thing about the gospel is that we have the assurance that we will see them again. I love the line from Joseph Smith about the same sociality that exists with us in this life will exist there. It’s not going to be fundamentally different. It’ll be glorified. We’ll be free of all the little quirks and the biological tics and the illnesses and defects that we have here, but it will be this warm, loving, perfected embrace of people on the other side.

  37:22 And what is the name of the song? I don’t even think about this one. It’s a hymn that I always hated. Oh What Songs of the Heart, I hated that song growing up. It seemed schmaltzy and so on. It doesn’t do the same thing to me anymore. That really is a favorite song. “When we meet once again, our dear ones who are over the way,” that hits me. And when my father died, the song kept going through my mind. “Everything passes away, change and decay, and all around I see, oh, thou who changes not, abide with me.” And I didn’t hate that song, but it wasn’t necessarily one of my favorites. It went through my mind over and over and over again when my father passed away, and later when we were in the hospital with my mother, watching her die, I thought it was stunning that over the loudspeaker system in the critical care unit came an instrumental arrangement of that hymn.

  38:14 Coincidence, tender mercy, I don’t know, but it really meant a lot to me, and that song has become one of my favorites now, because I hold onto those promises. I’ve got nobody left. Like when my brother died, I remember saying to one of my cousins, “I feel like an orphan now.” There’s nobody left from the house I grew up in. In fact, the house itself was demolished, so it’s like my childhood was erased and I have questions I want to ask about things that happened. There’s no one to ask them of. They’re all gone.

  38:45 You begin to realize that a lot of the people you care most about are no longer here. They’re on the other side, and then the other side really matters.

Hank Smith: 38:53 Yeah, absolutely. That’s perfect, Dan. Joseph Smith thought our relatives and friends exist in a place where they converse together, the same as we do on earth. “The expectation,” I like that he calls it that. “The expectation of seeing my friends in the morning of the resurrection cheers my soul and makes me bear up against the evils of life.” I think you’re right, Dan, that this expectation of resurrection and reunion is at the heart of what it means to believe in Christ.

John Bytheway: 39:24 When I was a kid and had trouble paying attention in sacrament meeting, sometimes I still have that trouble, but my mom would whisper in my ear, “Think about Jesus.” And all I could think about as a kid was, imagine the picture like one we had on our wall at home, and then my brother lost a baby. My parents are gone. You see loved ones from high school, friends that died way too early. And now when I hear the priest say, “That they may do it in remembrance of the body of thy son,” I thought, “What am I supposed to remember about Jesus’s body?” And my favorite thing to think about is that the tomb was empty. That’s my favorite thing to think about, that his body wasn’t there.

  40:11 And that gives us all the assurance that all the tombs will be empty one day. So, like you, I hope, I yearn, I believe, I feel like my parents are around, but I feel their influence more at the temple than at the cemetery. But they didn’t dissimilate into nothingness. I just feel like, no, they’re around.

Hank Smith: 40:35 Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 40:36 We went down years ago for the birth of our first grandchild in Florida. As soon as we got there, we realized that things weren’t going well. It had been a difficult pregnancy, and when she was born, nothing went well and it got worse and worse and worse until she died after four days. So, I had not anticipated. I was going down to celebrate. I had not anticipated this. I ended up presiding over a small graveside service in Florida, and I thought, “I don’t know how I’d make this if I didn’t have that assurance.”

  41:07 I remember many, many years ago there was a fellow who was the ward mission leader in one of the wards in Basel, Switzerland, and I had never served in Basel, but my companion had, and we were zone leaders. The ward mission leader. He didn’t die. His aunt died. She was not a member of the church and he wanted to know, would we be willing to come and sing at the funeral?

  41:28 We organized a missionary quartet and sang at the funeral, and it was an interesting hybrid funeral. She had asked her nephew, the Latter-day Saint, to speak at her funeral. And also the rent-a-pastor at the cemetery also spoke. And Vili, the Latter-day Saint, gave this wonderful talk about how his aunt had suffered for years. She was in pain, she was suffering. Now she was delivered. She was having a reunion with her parents and everyone else, it was a glorious occasion. It was time to be happy. He was very upbeat. And at the end when he said amen, the whole audience, almost all of whom were non-LDS, said, “Amen.”

  42:07 And then we sang Oh My Father. And I remember watching the pastor, but then he got up and gave a sermon, and I suppose he was one of these who probably didn’t believe in the physical resurrection. He gave the sermon and the whole place was draped in black bunting. It was depressing as could be. And he gave a sermon about how the chill hand of death reached out and plucked our dear departed one from this life, and that sort of thing. And he had to look down on his notes to remember her name. It was dreadful. It was really dreadful.

  42:38 The one talk was full of light and hope and happiness, that was the gospel. The other one, I don’t know what that was. That was not even mainstream Christianity of a few generations back. It was gloomy, dismal. Death is the enemy and it triumphed and there’s nothing about resurrection or a glorious life to come or anything like that. And I thought, “I have never seen a clearer illustration of the difference between faith in the Resurrection and whatever he was preaching.” It was awful. And at the end, people gathered around our ward mission leader there in Basel saying what a wonderful talk it was.

John Bytheway: 43:16 When I was seven or eight years old, my Grandpa Bytheway died. Wilfred Kendrick Bytheway. And I think it was one of the first inklings of testimony I ever had. I had never been to a viewing. That’s kind of shocking to a little kid, but I remember just such a clear impression. That’s not him. His spirit is somewhere else. That’s his body, but that’s not him. He is somewhere else. And one of the first real testimonies I ever … it was very comforting to me. No, that’s not Grandpa. They’re going to bury that, but he’s still around.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 43:53 I had an experience, and I can still see this, sitting in the parking lot waiting for someone to come out. I grew up in a part member family. My mother was marginal. My dad wasn’t a member at all, until I was set apart as a missionary. Then he joined the church. But I remember sitting out in the car on a hot summer day in Southern California in the parking lot of our chapel, and I was worried about the question of life after death. Was there one? Is this really true? And I remember the thought suddenly hit me so strongly. It was almost as if a voice came from outside of me saying, “Millions and millions of people have died and it hasn’t hurt them.”

  44:31 And I remember thinking, “That’s ridiculous, but what a silly thing. Of course, it hurt them. They died.” But I’ve thought since then, I think that was the Spirit telling me, “No, it did not hurt them. You need to know this. Millions and millions of people have died, but it didn’t hurt them.” And it was a thought that came in from somewhere else. I hadn’t remembered that until just now. I don’t think of it all that often, but I think, well, maybe that was in some ways my first bit of a testimony, something from outside me saying, “They’re fine. Don’t worry.”

John Bytheway: 45:07 I love the last verse. It reminds me of another verse in the Doctrine and Covenants. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the good work of the Lord. For as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” It’s not in vain because of the Resurrection too. So, I like that, it’s a great verse.

Hank Smith: 45:26 Yeah, great capstone there.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 45:28 Up till then, if there’s no resurrection, everything we’re doing is in vain. But at the end he says it’s not in vain because the resurrection is true.

John Bytheway: 45:36 Because of the Lord. Right.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 45:38 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 45:39 Dan, what’s in this last chapter? Is it just Paul signing off?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 45:44 It’s kind of Paul signing off. I mean, you have him, oh, at the end of verse 21, the salutation of Paul with my own hand. Apparently, he would dictate these letters to someone else and then he signs it himself so that people know it’s authentic.

  45:59 But there’s a lot of bookkeeping almost. He’s responding to questions. I think you see that in verse 12. Both of those are the same in Greek. It’s peri de, which means and now about this, and I think what he’s doing is he’s going through a kind of checklist, responding to questions from the saints in Corinth. And so he says, “Okay, you asked me a question about the collection for the saints.” Apparently, the saints in Jerusalem were really poor at the time. New Testament does say there was a famine in Jerusalem during that period. It might’ve been that or maybe persecution.

  46:34 But the saints in the other branches are putting together collections to send and help them out. So he says, “You have a question about this as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store as God has prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” So have the money already gathered. I’ll come through, I’ll pick it up, and I’ll get it to the people in Jerusalem.

  46:58 They meet on the first day of the week, which is interesting. It’s not the Jewish Sabbath. Apparently, they’re meeting on the first day of the week, which is Sunday. So he says, “Take up your collections there.” It’s just a passing mention of there being a Sunday Sabbath, which distinguishes them from the Jews. So, he’s talking about that, about his route. He’s going to pass through Macedonia, which is up to the north of Greece, and maybe I’ll stay with you. He’s been in Ephesus. He’ll stay there until Pentecost. So, Pentecost is 50 days after Passover, so sailing weather is probably better than, so he’s going to stick around in Ephesus, which has been his headquarters for about three years.

  47:35 And then it talks about Timothy, receive him, Timothy, yes, it’s Timothy. And Apollos, again, “As touching our brother, Apollos.” There again, they probably asked him a question, “What about Apollos?” So, there’s that peri de in Greek again, and as for this. So, he didn’t want to come, but he will come when it’s possible for him, and stand fast in the faith, quit you like men. Be strong. Let all your things be done with charity. He’s recapitulating that.

Hank Smith: 48:05 There it is again.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 48:07 Yeah, so that’s more than anything, what he wants to get across, is be charitable to one another. Don’t fight with one another, and there apparently has been some strife there. Well, just to close, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema.” That’s basically accursed … Maran-atha, the Lord come, is what that means, and then, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, my love be with you. All in Christ Jesus. Amen.” That note of love and graciousness that he leaves with them. He knows that he can’t get to them soon and it’s difficult travel in those days, but he’s expressing his love and hoping that they will love one another and telling them to be strong.

  48:49 It’s a simple farewell message, but it’s interesting to see all these specific people. We know almost nothing about Aquila and Priscilla and Stephanas and so on. I wish we knew more about these people. These were evidently important people in those early Christian branches. Wish we had biographies of them, but we don’t. Anyway, it’s a simple chapter, but still some interesting things there.

John Bytheway: 49:13 These are people, I love how personal this is. Say hello to everybody. He’s naming them one at a time. You ever tried to do that in a testimony meeting and then say, “I’m sure I’ll forget somebody,” or something. I remember, where is it in Acts 20 when he says goodbye to everybody and how tender that is when Paul has to leave, and it just reminds me of that. These are people, now they’re brothers and sisters in Christ, and they feel that.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 49:39 Yeah. I think it’s important to remember that these are letters. They weren’t written as scripture. I mean, they are scripture, but he wasn’t sitting down thinking, “I’m writing the Bible.”

Hank Smith: 49:52 Right. Something billions of people are going to read.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 49:53 Yeah, that’s right. He might be shocked, in fact, to realize how these letters have been treasured and interpreted over the years. He’s writing a letter to people in a branch that he used to live in, and he knows some of them, and he wants them to get along with one another and so on, and then it becomes scripture. He wasn’t writing King James English, just a Greek letter to friends.

Hank Smith: 50:15 Dan, someone who knows as much as you and yet is so kind and is so … you can speak to anyone. I’ve seen you in private conversation how amiable you are and good you are. You really live what we’ve been talking about today. What do you hope our listeners get out of these few chapters?

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 50:35 Well, it’s kind of you to say that. I wish I could claim credit for it, that I achieved it by some great moral effort. But the fact is I was raised by good people, and I’d like to think that I emulate that. My father, particularly in that regard. I think just because that’s the way I was raised, but what do I get out of it? What do I think people ought to get out of these chapters?

  50:54 I think two things that are bedrock are, one is behavioral and one is doctrinal, if you will. Bedrock, charity. Love. That this is the way we ought to live more than anything else. He doesn’t say forget the spiritual gifts. They’re valuable. But more than anything else, charity and love for one another. Getting along in kindliness with one another, being as kind and as serviceable as we can be, trying to help people. That’s what charity entails.

  51:22 And then the other is the great doctrinal principle that gives us such confidence, which is resurrection. Belief that this life isn’t a flash in a pan. That what we’re doing here will have eternal ramifications, and frankly, that developing the charitable character here will go with us into the life to come. If you want to live in heaven, then you should try to live a heavenly life, and that’s what he’s asking us to do.

  51:47 So charity and resurrection, I think are fundamental to Christianity. If you are not charitable, if you’re not loving, then you are falling far short of the teachings of Christ. I don’t want to cause people despair. We all fall short, obviously, and there are times when I’ve thought, “Man, I did not handle that as well as I should have.” That’s going to happen to every one of us.

  52:09 But then too, absolute rock-solid faith in the Resurrection and in the eternity of things, that the things that matter most will continue. They won’t just die out with our deaths or with the heat death of the universe or something like that, that humans are eternal. In fact, I’d even connect the two by saying … there’s a famous quotation that everyone knows from CS Lewis, and I haven’t looked at it in months, but I can almost do it. “It’s a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to realize that the most insignificant person you meet may one day be a person before you you would be strongly tempted to worship.”

  52:46 I think those things link up charity and resurrection here, that we should treat people with utmost respect because they’re eternal as we are, and they’re not just tools to be used, exploited, tossed out, or to be abused, but they are potential future gods and goddesses, and we should treat them with respect, with that in mind. You should try to see who this person is that you’re interacting with. If you could see that person as God sees that person or as that person may be in the future, you would probably change the way you treat that person, and you’d change the way you act.

  53:28 So I think that the two ideas, charity and resurrection are actually bound up with each other in a very real way.

John Bytheway: 53:35 I just feel a greater appreciation for the Resurrection as a doctrine. For the Resurrection, of course, but as a doctrine and why it’s important. This has really been helpful.

Hank Smith: 53:46 Yeah. Dan, this has been time well spent. Thank you for spending your time with us today.

Dr. Daniel Peterson: 53:51 Thank you.

Hank Smith: 53:52 We love having you. The followHIM podcast is a fan of Dan Peterson.

  53:58 And we want to remind everybody to go over to the Interpreter website. You can look at all the things Dan talked about with the new films coming out, the ones they’ve already done. We want to thank Dr. Dan Peterson for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen. We want to thank our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen, and we always remember our founder Steve Sorensen.

  54:19 We hope you’ll join us next week. We are coming up on Second Corinthians on followHIM.

  54:25 Today’s transcripts, show notes, and additional references are available on our website, followhim.co. That’s followhim.co.

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  55:10 If you enjoyed our guests on the podcast last year as much as we did, we think you’ll love this new collection. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew, David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Neilson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, and Annabelle Sorenson. We also love hearing from you, our friends and listeners.

Heather Nelson: 55:31 Hello, Hank and John. My name is Heather Nelson and I am what they call a silent sufferer of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is probably one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented mental illnesses out there. I have suffered with it my whole life, but this last six months I’ve had a pretty intense and horrific episode with this mental disorder, and Come, Follow Me has been the literal hand of the Savior reaching out to me. It’s been hard. A lot of the times, I don’t trust my own thoughts and my own feelings, but as I followed Come, Follow Me, and where Come, Follow Me has taken me to different scriptures, to different conference talks.

  56:23 I actually have this scripture book that I started writing in right when I started dealing with this episode, as they call them, but it’s just full of the path and the hand of the Savior, as I’ve studied Come, Follow Me. As I’ve stayed close to it, even though things were hard, I have learned, I have been taught, and above all, I have grown closer to my Savior. I’m so grateful for Come, Follow Me, especially in these last six months.