John Bytheway: 00:00:00 Stay tuned for part two with Morgan Pearson, Doctrine and Covenants sections 23 through 26.

Hank Smith: 00:00:07 Morgan, this has been fantastic so far. I’ve learned so much about Emma. What verse should we go to next?

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:00:15 This next verse is an interesting one because it can be interpreted in different ways. The Lord tells Emma, thou shalt go with him at the time of his going. Jenny Reeder talked to me when I called her this week and I was like, let me pick your brain about this. One of the big questions that came up when I put the question out on Instagram was, why didn’t Emma go west? That was next to polygamy, the second most asked question. Jenny said that she thinks that Emma took this verse, thou shalt go with him at the time of his going very seriously that throughout his life you see that Emma tried to be with Joseph where possible. Joseph’s body was in Nauvoo. Sister Freeman also talked about this on Inklings the podcast she does after her General Conference talk, she was asked this question. It was also the most asked question, I guess to her.

  00:01:18 She said that she had talked to historians in preparation for her conference talk and in talking to them, the main reason Emma stays is because Lucy isn’t going to leave. She wasn’t in good enough health to leave and Joseph’s body was there in Nauvoo. And then Sister Freeman said, one of the things that I think is so beautiful is this is a woman who understood covenant relationship, both covenant relationship with God. And then Sister Freeman says, but I love that her relationship with Lucy and the thought of leaving Joseph was so overwhelming to her that she stayed and what came of that? We’ll never know until Emma comes back and teaches us. I think that that’s an important thing to keep in mind is that there were things that were keeping Emma in Nauvoo. Scripture Central talks about this desire that she had to take care of Lucy Mack Smith, which we know was Joseph’s mother, her mother-in-law, at Brigham’s invitation.

  00:02:21 Lucy spoke at a General Conference of the church in October, 1845 and she expressed her desire to travel with the Saints West, but she said her health would not permit her to go that in poor health and crippled by arthritis. Lucy depended on the support of Emma and her own daughters, Catherine, Sophronia and Lucy, who also remained in the area for the rest of her life. And I love this that Lucy later spoke of Emma’s care for her and said that on one occasion for five nights, Emma never left me, but stood at my bedside all night long. This was not just an excuse to not go west. This was something that actually meant a great deal to Emma. I think about my mom cared for her mother-in-law in the last days of her life, and I think that that is something that daughter-in-laws do fill a responsibility to their mother-in-law.

  00:03:19 And Joseph wasn’t there to take care of her. She felt like she needed to stay then. I love this as well. In First, Jenny Reeder’s book, she says Emma was visited a number of times by members of the church from Utah. During one such visit, she told her visitors, you may think I was not a very good saint not to go west, but I had a home here and I did not know what I should have done there. I think sometimes we oversimplify Emma, we think, well, why didn’t she go west? Everybody else went west. Emma is a human being and if we take a step back and think, well, how would I feel if I had a home somewhere and I didn’t know what I was going to do and my husband’s body was in Nauvoo and my mother-in-law was in Nauvoo? I think maybe then it becomes a little bit more complicated and complex. It’s important to give her grace in that.

John Bytheway: 00:04:14 Oh, that helps me a ton to look at verse six. Thou shalt stay with him at the time of his staying. I love that. I can understand even though he was buried wanting to be close there and what’s more noble than taking care of your mother-in-law when her health is bad? So I’m going to remember that and extend grace like you said there, Morgan. That’s a great way to look at verse six.

Hank Smith: 00:04:37 I imagine Morgan, don’t you think it was probably painful for her to see her friends leave? Mary Fielding, Hyrum’s wife. I don’t think Emma’s saying, well, good riddance to all of you. It’s I’m sure it’s heartbreaking, probably never to see them again.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:04:56 Yeah, it had to be a lonely thing to then if we go on to verse seven, it talks about that she is called to expound and exhort in teachings of the presidents of the church. It says that Joseph later clarified that all sisters should seek after this gift. Then we look at what does that gift mean? What does it mean to expound and exhort? In the paper that I talked about, Jenny shared with me from the seminar that she attended about section 25. She wrote “The 1828 Webster Dictionary defines expound as to explain, lay open the meaning, clear of obscurity and interpret, which I think is probably what we would think of expounding meaning. She said, this makes Emma a theologian, a major influence in Joseph’s own ministry and development of Latter-day Saint Theology. I wonder how Joseph and Emma work together, theological ideas, ministerial messages, doctrine and restoration.

  00:06:03 We have no record of their pillow talk, but could her musings more so than her murmurings have influenced his sermons, especially before she became more publicly involved with the Relief Society? 12 years later, we’ll talk more about the hymns later, but I think Emma probably was involved early on in more of our theology than we think. Our hymns obviously influence what we believe, what we sing about is what we believe. I think she was involved in that and then in the Relief Society, she also had an opportunity to publicly expound things to the sisters of the church. Jenny continues on to exhort on the other hand, and this was the definition that I found really interesting, she said is defined as to encourage, to embolden, to cheer, to advise, to incite by words, to animate to a good deed or any laudable conduct or course of action to stimulate in one way.

  00:07:07 This seems to compliment her earlier charge to comfort her husband with consoling words of meekness. And then she talks about how a sister in the Relief Society said that Sister Smith, Emma and her counselors had administered to her and that she was healed. I think that Emma went about serving other people. You see her kind of ministering throughout her life in quiet ways. I also think this speaks to what we talked about before with the question that came in about ministering from the Relief Society president that was like, how do I inspire the sisters in my ward to minister? That’s what Emma was good at. She was good at causing women to step into their own and do what they could and that maybe is a little bit of a unique quality that she had for her time was to recognize her voice and her influence. And I think that came from section 25. That was something she had been called to do and that empowered her to do it.

John Bytheway: 00:08:13 I love those descriptions. In fact, I wrote in my margin this list, she is to be a comfort, a scribe, an expounder and exhorter. And then on the next page we’re going to see a writer, a learner, a compiler. I mean, this is a great list of using her capabilities and telling her what she can become.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:08:40 And I love that I mentioned that before that I think section 25 is the Lord telling Emma what she’s capable of and what she can become. And then later we see that blessing that Emma writes that she desires of the Lord and that I think is who Emma at that point years later was aspiring to be. If we move on to verse eight, we talked before that Emma was baptized but she was not confirmed yet when section 25 came as revelation. Oh, you have a woman who’s been baptized. Her confirmation hasn’t happened. So in verse eight it says, for he shall lay his hands upon thee and thou shalt receive the Holy Ghost and thy time shall be given to writing and to learning much. As someone who loves to write, but also has become an absolutely terrible journaler, rereading this felt like a little bit of a nudge from the Lord.

  00:09:47 President Hinckley called out that phrase about learning much and writing. He said she was to devote her time to learning much. She was to write giving expression to her thoughts. To you women of today who are old or young, may I suggest that you write that you keep journals, that you express your thoughts on paper. Writing is a great discipline. It is a tremendous educational effort. It will assist you in various ways and you will bless the lives of many. Your families and others now and in the years to come as you put on paper some of your experiences and some of your musings. I like that he says the word musings, but I think that idea of free writing and making sure that you are taking the time to write, I’m so bad about that  and I appreciate that. The Lord says to Emma, this is something that’s going to be important is to put down some of your thoughts and your writing. The question that I have though about that is, I don’t know, outside of her contribution to the hymns, it doesn’t seem like we have a ton of Emma’s words. We have the words that she wrote to Joseph. And Jenny does talk about how one thing that’s tough with Emma is that it seems like Emma’s feelings on some things change over time. And so getting a clear sense of the way she felt can sometimes be tricky, but that’s how we all are too. 

John Bytheway: 00:11:18 I’m glad that you read that about President Hinckley. And I don’t know about you guys, but I find writing is a clarifying thing when my mind is racing, writing gets it out there. Something about the act of putting it down is clarifying and really helpful. You could have chat GPT do a journal for you, but it’s probably better to write it yourself, right?  I’ve heard that there’s research that writing with your own hand does something different in your brain than even using your word processor. Wow. To write things out. I mean now that our phones can basically take dictation and even correct our grammar for us a lost art, perhaps.

Hank Smith: 00:12:06 It’s hard for me to not rely on some sort of computer help, especially just with spelling, right? If I even get close enough, Google says, did you mean this? You know me so well,  that’s exactly what you know me so well. 

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:12:22 I love that you said that. So verse nine, I’ll just quickly touch on, but then I want to come back to this thought. So in verse nine it says, thy husband shall support thee in the church. People have gone back and forth about whether that is saying Joseph in the church will provide for Emma or whether Joseph will support Emma in her calling. But there’s no doubt that both of those things I think are true. Joseph took care of Emma and made sure that she was okay. He also supported Emma in her calling and gave her a voice. I think it was important to him to allow her to have influence and like she said, some people didn’t like that. I appreciate that Joseph saw in Emma what she was capable of contributing. But going on to verse 10, I want to touch on this idea of artificial intelligence.

  00:13:18 The name of this Come, Follow Me lesson is lay aside the things of this world and seek for the things of a better. I think that this is perhaps one of the parts of this section that may be most applicable to us today. I just had a conversation this last week with a friend and we were talking about Valentine’s Day cards for our kids. I was saying I think there’s a real tendency, especially within women. And so I’d love to know what Emma thinks about some of the things that we’re up against as women today. Because there’s quite a difference. But we were talking about Valentine’s Day cards. I said the most important thing to me this year in doing Valentine’s Day cards for the first time ever with my little girl was what would she think was cool? And so I designed this cheesy thing on Canva and that was it.

  00:14:16 It wasn’t anything like super fancy. My friend said I was tempted myself to like pull up Pinterest and try to come up with things. Then she said, I just realized I wanted to see what my kids could come up with on their own without me pulling in outside ideas and used their brains. She told me that she recently taught a lesson, her kid’s elementary school class, had her come in and share something. And she had come up with this activity and she said, I had been tempted to use chat GPT to come up with something for this lesson. And then she thought, no, I want to see what I can come up with. And she said, this is the part that like kind of stopped me in my tracks. She said, do we even give our brains a chance to work for us? Or are we becoming so reliant on these tools which are great used under the right circumstance like Elder Bednar recently talked about in his worldwide devotional.

  00:15:19 These things are intended to be tools. They’re not intended to replace us and our brains and our thoughts, right?  I think that this verse is particularly important. What are the things of this world and how do we seek for the things of a better? President Nelson when he invited sisters to study this section, he said, part of this endeavor will require you to put aside many things of this world. Sometimes we speak almost casually about walking away from the world with its contention, pervasive temptations and false philosophies. But truly doing so requires you to examine your life meticulously and regularly. As you do so, the Holy Ghost will prompt you about what is no longer needful, what is no longer worthy of your time and energy. As you shift your focus away from worldly distractions, some things that seem important to you now will recede in priority.

  00:16:16 You’ll need to say no to some things even though they may seem harmless. As harmless as becoming consumed by making your kid look really great as you embark upon and continue this lifelong process of consecrating your life to the Lord, the changes in your perspective, feelings and spiritual strength will amaze you. That’s a promise from President Nelson. And the manual invites us to list the things of this world that the Lord may want us to set aside. And so my invitation, I guess to listeners would just be, and it’s something that I myself need to do, is think about what matters and what doesn’t. And why do I do the things that I do? Am I doing them just because that’s what everybody else is doing or am I doing it because I feel like it’s important and I feel like it’s what the Lord wants me to do?

  00:17:13 Sometimes our desire starts from a place that is totally pure, but sometimes we get caught up in the comparison game and the social media game. I just think that is so important. And Sister Oscarson, a couple more quotes. Actually there is another verse that was the most quoted in General Conference, but there have been a few other references to this in General Conference. And again, this is the BYU citation index, which I think is such an underutilized tool. So a couple more quotes from General Conferences past that have quoted this verse. Sister Oscarson said, I suspect we cannot begin to imagine just how magnificent those things of a better world are. Sherri Dew said, Christ provided the pattern declaring prior to Gethsemane, I have overcome the world. The only way that we may overcome the world is by coming unto Christ and coming unto Christ means walking away from the world. It means placing Christ and Christ only at the center of our lives so that the vanities and philosophies of men lose their addictive appeal. Satan is the God of Babylon or this world. Christ is the God of Israel and his Atonement gives us power to overcome the world. If you expect glory, intelligence and endless lives said President Joseph F. Smith, let the world go. And I love that idea of letting the world go.

Hank Smith: 00:18:42 Morgan, what was that website you used to get all of that?

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:18:47 That was the BYU citation index.

John Bytheway: 00:18:51 Yeah, I think we talked about it before. It’s so fun to explain it. When you explain it to people, they’re like, what? Really? That exists out there? So the website is called scriptures.byu.edu. The app is called Citation Index and it has to be updated every time there’s a new General Conference. But basically you can go through any verse in any of the standard works and if any church leader has used it in General Conference, it will pop up. And it’s really fun to look at that. You go to Moses 1:39, for example, and hundreds other verses you’ll find, wow, has anyone ever talked about this? And it’s just kind of fun to look at that. But I’m really grateful for the people that do this and that update it every six months. They have a lot of work to do after every General Conference, but you can find the most recent things that have been said about any verse using citation index or scriptures.byu.edu. It doesn’t cost anything  It’s a remarkable tool. You’ll have a lot of fun. Just go look at it.

Hank Smith: 00:19:56 Yeah. And if you wanted to read every single one from the Doctrine and Covenants, it says there’s only 29,136  That’s it. You could probably do that in an afternoon. 

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:20:09 Well, they’re actually, I was looking to see, I was like, what is the most quoted verse from this section in General Conference? And it’s actually verse 12. We’ll get to that. But one last thing I wanted to touch on before we move on from this verse. President Hinckley said, I feel he, the Lord, was not telling Emma that she should not feel concerned about a place to live, food on her table and clothing. He was saying to her that she should not be obsessed with these things as so many of us are wont to be. He was telling her to get her thoughts on the higher things of life, the things of righteousness and goodness. Matters of charity and love for others, the things of eternity in this conversation. We’re not saying that things that matter to you don’t matter.  I think all of those, many of the things that we worry about, especially as a new mom, I find myself more concerned and more playing the comparison game than I probably should. I love the idea of really boiling things down to what actually matters. It seems in the way that the Lord talks to Emma here, that maybe that’s something that women have always struggled with is how do we make sure that in an effort to care for our kids and take care of our husband, that we’re not losing focus of the most important things?

Hank Smith: 00:21:37 I have two quick thoughts. One is, look, the church is what, three months old at this point. You can tell the Lord sees the place for women in this church. Verse seven, you’ll be ordained to expound scripture, exhort the church given thee by my spirit, you are going to write and learn. I love the Lord here early on saying, look, you’re going to have a big role. Because You told us earlier, Morgan, this is my voice unto all. Verse 16. So I’m assuming that we could all take this on, that a woman in the church is to do all of these things. I just wanted to tell you a little story both of you about verse 10. I taught just in my New Testament class recently, the parable of the sower. John, you can help me out here. You’ve got the sidewalk and it’s hard to plant a garden on the sidewalk.

John Bytheway: 00:22:33 Mm-Hmm. The Bytheway side…

Hank Smith: 00:22:35 Right? Yeah. The by the wayside you’ve got the rocky soil and then you’ve got this soil with all these weeds. And the weeds take up so much of the nutrients and the all the water and the plant just can’t grow. The soil’s good, but there’s just too many other things competing for our time. So we talked about that in class and one thing the students came up with was deleting apps off your phone. Apps that are kind of weeds, they just take away your time and they don’t give anything back. Well,  we started talking about it and one girl said, I would delete an app and then I would redownload it. And she said, now I’m seeing myself like pulling out this big weed and then going and finding the weed  and bringing it back and planting it back in my soil. It was just a funny moment of, could you picture someone saying, where’s that weed? I’ve got to go grab that and bring it back into the garden.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:23:35 Don’t ask me how many times I’ve done that.

Hank Smith: 00:23:39 Deleted something and then brought it back.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:23:41 Yeah. Oh yeah. I am a classic delete for like a couple months and then redownload it. I’m an add it. So the first step is admitting you have a problem. So here we are. 

Hank Smith: 00:23:56 Lay aside the things of this world.

John Bytheway: 00:24:00 I’m glad you brought that one up because in that parable some people are like, huh? And walk away. And some come up to Jesus and say, Hey, why are you teaching in parables? And after he quotes the calling of Isaiah, he says, here’s the interpretation. And notice he names the weeds. The cares of this world right there, things of this world and the deceitfulness of riches. I think in the Mark version it says lusts of other things. They’re all weeds. That idea that things of this world reminds me of Elder Patrick Kearon came to our stake to reorganize the stake and he told a story about monkey traps. I think it was they hollow out a coconut or something. They’ll stick their hand through a small hole, but then they’ll hold onto something and in doing so they’ll make a fist and they can’t get out. Elder Kearon was so good, he asked all of us to ponder what is it that you need to let go of? The things of this world idea. Everybody sitting there is probably thinking of apps.  Yep. 

Hank Smith: 00:25:07 Apps. I could just drop. Yep. I could just drop.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:25:11 Moving on to verses 11 and 12, and we’ll kind of put these together because they’re both about the hymns you mentioned earlier. Please don’t let this section just be about the hymn book. Hopefully we have not made it be just about the hymn book, but we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about the hymns because of the contribution that Emma made and because of how important this was to Emma, this is one thing that Jenny talked to me about when I called her this week that I thought was so interesting. I had read this elsewhere, so I was asking her, I said, I read somewhere that a lot of the hymns that Emma put in the hymn book are not in our hymn book now. What we have now as the hymn book is very different than what Emma put together. So she put together two editions.

  00:26:02 The first appeared in the Kirtland Hymnal in 1836, and there were only 90 songs in this thin little booklet. Many of them were hymns that Emma was familiar with from the Protestant tradition. However, at least 26 of them were written by WW Phelps who later prepared and assisted in the printing of the hymnal. Only lyrics were written. There were no musical notes that accompanied the words to the song. So what was so interesting to me that Jenny said Brigham Young was over in Europe, he wrote to Joseph and said that these saints in Europe needed the hymns. He said, should I just put together a hymn book to print over here so that they have songs to sing? And Joseph wrote him back and said, no, no, no. Like the hymns are Emma’s thing, Emma was assigned to do this by the Lord. Brigham though because the mail system was so delayed, it took so long for the letter from Joseph to get back that Brigham had already printed a hymn book.

  00:27:14 So when the Saints came over from Europe, they had Brigham’s hymn book. We know that the hymn book is being redone right now. However, the latest edition of the green Hymn book was published in 1985. Many of the selections that Emma chose, some of them are still included in the hymn book, including I Know That My Redeemer Lives and How Firm A Foundation in the Ensign in September, 1985. It says that 26 of the hymns that were in the 1836 hymn book are included in our current hymnal. This would’ve meant that Emma and her thoughts on our theology contributed to the hymn book and the hymns contributed to the theology, if that makes sense. Jenny said that there were two hymn books, the one in 1836, and then one that was published in the early 1840s. With that in mind, going into verse 12, this is the most quoted verse in General Conference by a long shot.

  00:28:18 And I think the reason that this is so quoted is that it’s just a beautiful verse. The song of the righteous is a prayer unto me. This is according to President Oaks. The first presidency has declared that some of the greatest sermons are preached by the singing of hymns. And then President Oaks said, how wonderful when every person in attendance joins in the worship of singing, especially in the hymn that helps us prepare to partake of the sacrament. All sacrament meeting music requires careful planning, always remembering that this music is for worship, not for performance. I love that. Just last week it was announced that this little light of mine is in the new Hymn book. I think that sometimes we underestimate the power of music that is about Christ and music that is of a religious nature, not just in our sacrament meeting, but throughout the week in our homes. And I’ll tell you a story of when I was kind of rebuked. You both probably know Calee Reed.

John Bytheway: 00:29:22 Yeah.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:29:23 Calee, I interviewed her years ago and I said to her, I love your music. I listened to your music all throughout my mission. I love to listen to it on Sundays now. And she was like, well, why do you only listen on Sunday? I was like, well, because during the rest of the week I listened to other kinds of music. Essentially she said, I think it’s really important to listen to music that is uplifting and about Christ throughout the week. It’s not just for Sunday. I will tell you that I really took that to heart. Started trying to incorporate Christian music into my life other times of the week. My mom is a great example of this. She has a playlist that she’s created that is full of Christian music, not necessarily just our faith tradition, but other Christian music as well. She listens to it all the time to the point that it’s like that is the song of my mom’s heart.

  00:30:25 It has been transformative for her. She would tell you that it has changed her life. She has playlists for different things, for different times, moods, things that she’s going through. She relies a lot on that music. And I have noticed in my home with my little girls, well I’ll say this with Emma, my daughter, I have become so appreciative to the people that write primary songs about Christ because I’ve seen how when we play those songs in our home, it invites a different spirit and it calms Emma down in the car. It’s always helped her calm down and be able to sleep. There’s so much power in inviting music that testifies of Christ into our homes. And I’m sure you both have seen that in your homes as well.

John Bytheway: 00:31:19 I’m glad you mentioned your mom. I was going to mention mine. My mom and I had a chance to speak at women’s conference thanks to Hank’s sister. Her talk was a principle and lines from hymn, a principle and lines from hymn, a principle and lines from a hymn. She was one of those that no matter what happened, I mean you stub your toe on a tree. She had a song about it from somewhere. It was amazing. But those were a big part of her life. She sang in the Tabernacle Choir. I love that. That verse actually gives us something that you might not have thought of that. Whoa. Singing is a prayer. Singing is a prayer to God. The song of the righteous is a prayer. When I was on my mission once, I was sitting on the stand with for some reason with my mission president and I was saying something to Elder Broderick about the upcoming meeting, something we had to do,  President Smith, who I love and revere and adore Elder Bytheway, you wouldn’t think of talking while somebody was praying, would you? No President. Well it says the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me.  I was like, okay, thanks President. Okay,  I won’t talk during the hymns anymore. 

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:32:30 I love that because my dad always is, are you singing? Sing. He’s known for handing the hymn book over with the right page open. I think that’s a good reminder. Probably shouldn’t be chatting it up during the hymns.

Hank Smith: 00:32:46 Morgan, I’m glad you mentioned the sacrament hymn because it made me think of, there’s a little verse in Mark chapter 14, verse 26. This is after the last supper, just before the Savior goes to the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s very simple. It says, and when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Here the Savior is approaching his atoning sacrifice and they sang just before. Well look at the sacrament we sing just before we commemorate the atoning sacrifice. Maybe this feels kind of cheesy, but I like to think of us, you know, kind of uniting our voice with that group. Who sang at that last supper?

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:33:29 That’s a really beautiful thought. Moving into verse 13, it talks about cleaving unto covenants. I would tell you if there’s one thing that I have come to appreciate in my work, it has been the value of covenants. I think that if we as members of the church truly understood the power that is associated with our covenants, the power that comes through the atonement of Jesus Christ, when we choose to unite ourselves with him in making and keeping covenants, we would recognize just how lucky we are to be members of the church. But there’s a footnote in Sister Freeman’s General Conference talk that I love. She says that she packed her footnotes full. So everybody should go look at the footnotes for that talk. She said the word covenant is of Latin origin, and I’m probably going to butcher my Latin here, con veneer. And it literally means a coming together in the context of the priesthood.

  00:34:36 A covenant is a coming together or an agreement between God and man. It presupposes that God and man come together to make a contract to agree on promises, stipulations, privileges and responsibilities. Then she quotes Elder and Sister Renlund in their book, the Melchizedek priesthood, understanding the doctrine, living the principles. They said a covenant made in this manner is immutable and unchangeable. It anchors the soul. It creates a steadfast and sure foundation for future expectations. In those Relief Society minutes, one of the things that she talks about over and over again is unity. When we understand covenants and the idea of coming together, it’s our coming together with God. And when we make covenants with another person, with that other person, I think in many ways this is what made polygamy tricky for Emma. And I wanted to ask John and Hank, when you get questions from students about polygamy, how do you approach that?

Hank Smith: 00:35:43 This definitely comes up in a religion class. When I say, Hey, let’s ask questions. I think first is validating that this is tough. This is not easy. This isn’t something you say, oh, come on, don’t have a problem with that. I would be nervous if one of my students said, it’s my favorite part. It’s totally normal to be uncomfortable with that, don’t you think John?

John Bytheway: 00:36:09 Yeah. In fact, I tell my students to own your questions and wrestle with them because wrestling makes you stronger. And this is a wrestle that I’ve had and continue to have and we all do with this one. Yeah, acknowledge that this is going to be a wrestle. You’ll gain something from the wrestle.

Hank Smith: 00:36:31 I remember with our interview on section one hundred and thirty two, three years ago now, three and a half years ago, with Dr. Kate Holbrook. She was just phenomenal. I learned so much from her as we walked through that section, we could link that in our show notes. Unfortunately, Kate has since passed away. It was wonderful. She articulated it so well. You remember John, how she wanted to be just, she was careful in her words, she understood how sensitive this is. She said in the scriptures, can we all agree that the Lord uses monogamous marriages to bring about his purposes? And you and I said yes. She said, does that mean that all monogamous marriages are exactly what God wants? And you and I said, no,  definitely not. Then she said that if in the scriptures can we agree that the Lord sometimes uses polygamous marriages to bring about his purposes and you and I said yes. And she said, and does that mean that all polygamous marriages were exactly what God wanted? And we said no. It was a simple comment, but it helped me go, oh, okay. These are principles the Lord uses, however not always used in a way he would appreciate. Does that make sense?

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:37:58 Makes complete sense. And I think that’s maybe why it’s so complex is that it’s not a cut and dry easy to understand principle.

John Bytheway: 00:38:11 I’ll ask the students, let’s talk about it. What are some of the things you have come up with in your wrestle? And that’s been helpful because I love to see the faith of students saying, I know God lives, Jesus is my Savior. I’m going to answer those questions first and then I’m going to wrestle with some of these things. And they bring up the verses in the book of Jacob about if the Lord says if I will raise up seed, I’ll command my people. Otherwise they’ll hearken to these things. You know those verses. And that gives kind of a scriptural purpose. Perhaps the Lord has in mind at times. And it wasn’t what he wanted for those in the book of Jacob at the time. Interestingly, we also acknowledge that there were times the old patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, plural marriages. Okay, why could that have been, all of that discussion is helpful, but it doesn’t mean it still isn’t hard. I’m grateful Hank and Morgan, that we can try to be as transparent as possible and talk about it and say what was going on? And I’ve seen a podcast that Brian Hales does. I think he was on Church History Matters. I would just tell people, yeah, go find out what faithful scholars are saying about this and I think it’ll be helpful.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:39:28 This is something that if people want to gain more knowledge of what was going on at the time, the book first is a great resource and it’s meticulously sourced. There are additional resources that you can build off of if you are interested.

Hank Smith: 00:39:47 Yeah, Jenny is an incredible historian. She is as brilliant as they come. Let me add two more things that just come to mind. One is, I will sometimes take my students to one Nephi. Three. We’ll talk about the commandment. Thou shalt not kill and here the Lord says to Nephi, to slay Laban. And you can see how Nephi struggles. Because He’s writing this what decades after the fact and he’s almost putting himself back there saying, I did not want to do this. This is not something I wanted. He wrestles with back and forth like you said, John. And then I’ll ask my students, is Nephi a prophet? Yes. Can he do this and still be a prophet? They grew up reading Nephi. They’ll say, yeah. And I’ll say why? And oftentimes we get to the idea that the rest of Nephi’s life tells us he loves God. He’s sincere in keeping the commandments and that he truly believed, and I trust him that this was a commandment from God. And then we can take that pattern and we can apply it here in a way that everything in these people’s lives tell us that they love God and that they wholeheartedly believe that this is from God and I trust them.

John Bytheway: 00:41:16 The whole Christian faith. We also have to, if we believe in those old patriarchs and if we believe they were prophets.

Hank Smith: 00:41:25 Right? That’s what Kate was saying is can we all agree since we believe in the Bible that sometimes this is the case? John, do you remember when Dr. Maclane Heward was with us? Not this last time for the first vision, but previously years ago where he talked about when we get offended on behalf of other people. Do you remember that?

John Bytheway: 00:41:46 What an amazing idea is I think I’ll be offended for people 200 years ago.

Hank Smith: 00:41:52 Yeah. And he said, do you remember he said, be careful. He said, be careful. It’s good to go to other people’s defense. But he said, are you listening to the people that you are offended on behalf of? You remember that? Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:42:09 What? What are they saying? Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:42:10 What are they saying? I find it’s not common, at least in my experience, for people who are offended by this, which is understandable, they haven’t read what these people said. They’ve just assumed they know how they felt. That’s why I appreciate people like Jenny Reeder who have gone and seen what these people said about their experiences.

John Bytheway: 00:42:41 I love what you read earlier, Morgan, that she had written about Emma. Not trying to say she’s all this perfection or all this, but we are all complex. I think the phrase I remembered Hank from Maclane was that rather than being offended for them, let’s be inspired by them. I’d never forgot that idea. Beautiful.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:43:08 There are a few things I think that it’s important to remember when we talk about this in Joseph Smith’s time period in particular, I think things changed a bit. When the Saints went to Utah, I did an interview with a lady named Brittany Chapman Nash, who wrote a book for Deseret Book called Let’s Talk about Polygamy. In our interview, she said in Joseph Smith’s time, they tended to think more horizontally about the sealing ordinance. They would be sealed to a family member to unite those families together. So a husband and wife would be sealed and then other members of other families could be sealed. So you’re creating this network of families. Then she went on to talk about a girl who was sealed to Joseph Smith. Jenny talks in her book about how Emma’s feelings about this change over time. And so initially you see that she was cognizant of some of these sealings, says that she even selected and witnessed some of the sealings that Joseph was sealed to Emily and Eliza Partridge and Maria and Sarah Lawrence.

  00:44:19 It says both of these were sets of sisters who were orphaned and lived with the Smith family and that Emma may have seen it as extending their family under the Abrahamic covenant. But then there were others that were for Emma, Jenny says, Emma must have experienced great confusion. Joseph’s earlier revelations defined marriage between one man and one woman. And on the second floor of the red brick store, she had covenanted with him and to him alone to head their own house of Israel to multiply and replenish the earth. She could accept the idea of extending their family network with Joseph sealings to other women. She understood the continuing role of revelation, but discernment was difficult. Social norms and personal feelings are hard to remove from prophetic instruction. That sentence is really important. Social norms and personal feelings are hard to remove from prophetic instruction. Emma experienced deep emotional trauma due to betrayal, distrust, embarrassment and anger.

  00:45:20 I think that it’s an important thing to acknowledge that sentence about separating personal feelings from prophetic instruction. We see that in other things today where it’s hard when we have a personal tie to something that deals with doctrine or policy. I love Emma because of how hard she tries to understand. Somebody said, did Emma ever accept polygamy? And Jenny talks about how what we do know is that Emma was pregnant with Joseph’s child at the time of his passing. And we also know that he never had children with any of these other women. So that’s what we do know. It’s interesting if people go and read, and I think this would be a question that would come up if people go and read that last will and testament interview with Emma. She’s asked directly by her sons if Joseph had ever practiced polygamy. And I asked Jenny, I said, okay.

  00:46:31 She says no in that interview, why is she insistent that he never practiced polygamy? And she said that there are three possible reasons. One, everyone who practiced polygamy in Nauvoo was sworn to secrecy. This changed a lot once they went to Utah. But in Nauvoo, everyone was sworn to secrecy. They had made a covenant to never speak of it. And then she said two, she denied it to protect her children and she had done so their whole lives. She said she didn’t want them to worry about land and inheritances. Third, she didn’t want to get mixed up in a very public practice of polygamy that was then going on out west. She said it was all over the papers and it was embarrassing to some people. For Emma that may have been what the situation was. But I wanted to read, if it’s okay with you, Hank, when you reached out to me, I think it was because you read a piece that I wrote for LDS living and this was the last time we studied Doctrine and Covenants 25 in Come, Follow Me. So it was four years ago. I was so struck by Emma’s humanity. I feel like I put into words then probably better than I could now the way that I feel about Emma in regard to this topic. So if it’s okay with you, I’d like to read just a little bit of that.

Hank Smith: 00:47:57 Morgan, I have to tell you, you stole my thunder because I was going to quote this great author at the end and to see if you would recognize it. And so I’ll have to hang onto my quote and it won’t be as much as a surprise.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:48:10 You’re so sweet. Well, I kind of what we were talking about before that we express ourselves better in writing than we do in speaking. This is a good example of that. I wrote it like it was an open letter to Emma and I said, we know that you struggled to accept that plural marriage was in any way divinely directed and as a result experienced a great deal of anger and feelings of betrayal. This is something I have known most of my life, but what I didn’t know how much you fought those feelings of resentment and how much you wanted to understand. I didn’t know how much you took the fall, often blaming these feelings, feelings most of us would feel on your own shortcomings and weaknesses. In First, Jenny Reeder’s biography about you, she recounts the fact that you told Maria Jane Johnston, a young woman working in boarding at the mansion house, the principle of plural marriage is right, but I am like other women.

  00:49:06 I am naturally jealous hearted according to that statement from Johnson. You also admitted the need to be humble and repent. But I think that that tells us also something about Emma. I think that it gives us insight into, again, the person that Emma wanted to be because she loved Joseph and she believed that he was a prophet. But she says she was naturally jealous hearted and she needed to be humble and repent. But all of those were feelings that likely any wife would’ve felt. I hope that in looking back at Emma, that we can give her the credit that she deserves for her character.

Hank Smith: 00:49:49 Absolutely no question. I had a conversation with a friend the other day who works in the church history and doctrine department. And so this question comes up a lot. He was there with another faculty member from the same department and in some sort of forum and he said that this other professor who’s Steven Harper, he said, he’s smarter than me because someone asked about plural marriage. And Emma Smith, my friend, said he kind of hemmed and hawed and offered a couple of thoughts about how Emma felt about plural marriage. And then he said, Steve, do you want to come up? And I love historians like Jenny Reeder and we’ve had Gerritt Dirkmaat and Steve Harper. Steve stood up and he said, we don’t know how Emma felt about polygamy. We only know what others say Emma felt about polygamy. He just went right to the sources that they are very limited. History is harder than we think. Someone can make a webpage and say, look at this, this and this, and come to a certain conclusion that they believe they are absolutely right. But then you talk to a historian, a real historian who’s been trained and they say, whoa, we have this piece of information and this piece and this source. And that’s about it. Really hard to make certain you’re a hundred percent right. Conclusions like that. John, we’ve talked about this many times.

John Bytheway: 00:51:23 Yeah, that’s why I love, as you just said, Hank historians, they have certain rules. They’ll let you know, is this a firsthand account? Is this what somebody heard somebody say who heard about this? Where do those accounts fit and which ones do we give more weight than the others when you back up and are like a careful historian that way. Thank you Steve Harper. We don’t know. Maybe we will get to ask her one day, but we can only read what others said right now.

Hank Smith: 00:51:56 Morgan, is that the sense you get from Jenny that she’s careful?

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:51:59 For sure. Absolutely. Because I think that’s why it’s so impressive to me when everything is sourced so well, it’s like I’m not just sharing hearsay like here is the note that this comes from, that I’m drawing this from. That is such a skill and that’s probably why people are probably like, why does she just keep quoting different people? I am, like I said, I’m not a scholar. I have so much respect for people that have put in that work to understand the best that they can. Like I said at the beginning of this, I am a journalist, what do I do? I try to draw out what I can learn from other people. Hopefully that little bit is worth something.

Hank Smith: 00:52:45 Morgan, thanks for bringing this up and not shying away from it. That’s important. Youth today, young adults today, they want to know, they want to talk about it. John, we will be talking about plural marriage later in the year. It’s going to come up in the later sections of the Doctrine & Covenants.

John Bytheway: 00:53:02 Yeah, we’ll be talking about it later probably even with more time. But if we’re going to talk about Emma, that is a great question and I think what Morgan brought is what many people would want to ask her about it.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:53:16 It’s a tough topic. I’m glad you got more coming on it. Hopefully we at least can drive pupils to some good resources. If we move on gentlemen to verse 14, there’s a couple of things that I wanted to basically point people to. Two talks that I love under the same topic. In this verse it talks about beware of pride. The Lord warns Emma to beware of pride. Then it also talks about meekness. And I think that there have been some landmark talks that have been given on these topics that if people are looking to expand their study, one is President Benson’s Beware of Pride talk, which is a classic. He says it better than I could ever say anything here. So I just say, that’s a great talk if people want to study that more this week in Come, Follow Me. And then Elder Maxwell has given multiple good talks about meekness.

  00:54:19 Elder Maxwell gave a talk called meekly drenched in destiny and he also gave a talk called meek and lowly. And I think those two talks are amazing for people that want to better understand this idea of meekness. Meekness I think is a Christlike attribute that can be harder to understand. And then we’ll just move on to verse 15. We’ve already talked about verse 16. So this is the last verse that we’ll tackle. Sister Freeman in her General Conference talk. She said last, the Lord outlined a process of inward sanctification that would prepare Emma for exaltation except thou do this, the Lord explained to her where I am, you cannot come. And then the footnote there says, President Dallin H. Oaks taught the ordinance of baptism and its associated covenants are requirements for entrance into the celestial kingdom. The ordinances and associated covenants of the temple are requirements for exaltation in the celestial kingdom, which is eternal life, the greatest of all the gifts of God.

  00:55:30 The Lord is saying to Emma, this is how you will make it back to me. Essentially the scriptures say that is the Lord’s work and his glory. He spends all of his time thinking about how he can bring us back to him. I think this was him telling Emma, this is how you’ll make it back to me. Going back to something that I believe I quoted at the beginning of our conversation, Sister Freeman continues, if we read section 25 carefully, we discover an important progression taking place. Emma would go from being a daughter in the kingdom to elect lady to Queen and Melchisedek priesthood ordinances combined with the keeping of her covenant promises would increase her companionship with the Spirit and with angels empowering her to navigate her life with divine guidance. I think that that progression is important. I think it’s important for us to think about ourselves and our own progression, also others around us to allow other people the ability to progress. As we’ve talked about throughout this discussion, I think we have to allow Emma’s progression. We can’t judge those around us. And the Lord is telling Emma what he sees in her, which is a queen in his kingdom.

Hank Smith: 00:57:02 Morgan, I have loved this. What you’ve done is just showed us Emma Smith. Walked us through maybe her life and her feelings. It’s just been wonderful. I have a story. I don’t know if either of you have heard. There is a story that Joseph F. Smith, the son of Hyrum on his way to a mission to England, stops in Nauvoo. It’s the very first time Joseph F. Smith returns to Nauvoo since he had left when he was just a boy. Emma Smith recognizes him right away, says, I would’ve known you anywhere. She goes on to say that Joseph F. looked just like his father, Hyrum. As Joseph F. was leaving, she said something like, will you be wandering? Which was a phrase for missionary work. And he said quite a lot of that before I return home. And then Emma asks, are you fond of it? And he said, to be truthful, I would rather be home.  That’s a missionary moment, right? She says, with tears in her eyes. Someday, I hope all of us will be able to stay home with our families. Neil L. Andersen said, whether in this life or the next all will be made right.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 00:58:17 I love that story, Hank. Because I feel like it gives us wanting to be home with your family. It shouldn’t be too big of a thing to ask for. Does that make sense? I feel like that’s like such a little thing that is all that Emma wanted. I think that it’s important for us to acknowledge the sacrifices that were made by so many people for us to have the gospel that blesses our lives today. Yes, we continue to make sacrifices as members of the church, but I don’t know that we will ever truly understand the sacrifices that were made by people of Emma’s time period.

John Bytheway: 00:58:56 This has been really, really beautiful. Hank don’t you have a favorite author who said something about this also in a beautiful way?

Hank Smith: 00:59:04 Yes, and Morgan stole my thunder earlier for this great moment. So this is what I read as I’m thinking about the guest for this very important lesson about Emma, I’d, you know, of course heard of Morgan before, listened to All In. She wrote this. I remember reading it for the first time and I thought this, this is exactly what so many of us would say. So Morgan, I’m going to quote you to you. You said, Emma, your fingerprints are all over this church. They are seen in the Relief Society, the organization for which you were the first president, which is now the largest organization of women in the entire world. They are seen in the hymns of the church, which the Tabernacle Choir, one of the most famous choirs in the world has performed across the globe. Your fingerprints are seen as women exhort and teach something that remains uncommon in many religions and in many parts of the world. We are proud of who we are and proud that you came before us. We thank you for paving a path that at times was without a doubt, treacherous, scary, lonely, and confusing. Emma, we don’t know how you did it, but I think I speak for millions worldwide when I say we are so glad you did. Morgan Pearson that’s great writing.

Sis. Morgan Pearson: 01:00:39 You’re very sweet. I got emotional listening to you read it,   I’m grateful that you asked me to do this because preparing for that podcast and writing that article four years ago was really impactful for me with this section of Doctrine and Covenants. And because you invited me to do this, I feel like I’ve had a different experience with Emma this time around. I just can’t think about her without feeling tender emotions. And this time, four years ago, I was not a mom. So thinking about Emma and all that she went through with her kids, and as a mom and a wife, I feel a lot more gratitude than I did even then. Jenny talks in the introduction of her book, she says to Emma for being a part of my heavenly host as I have been a part of her earthly host. We were just doing Come, Follow me last night with my little girl and talking about the ministering of angels and trying to put it in words that a 21 month old will understand. I think that we do. We have angels that are on the other side that care about us and our wellbeing. We should care about them and their reputation, the things that are said about them, and we should protect their good name. And so hopefully today we have been part of Emma’s earthly host. I think it’s a good host to be a part of.

John Bytheway: 01:02:11 And you know, speaking of hymns, millions shall know Sister Emma again, one day too.

Hank Smith: 01:02:21 This has been a great day. So fun to learn from someone who is so passionate about a topic and has paid the price to understand it so well, Morgan, thank you. We hope that all of you listening will go and check out Morgan’s podcast, All In. She has the most fascinating people there and she lets them tell their story. It is really fun, really fun to listen to. She was kind of giving us hints as to who she’s got coming up and you don’t want to miss these. They are going to be fun interviews. And with that, we want to thank Morgan Pearson. And for a while we had Jane Pearson with us. Mm-Hmm. Our youngest guest ever.

John Bytheway: 01:03:09 Ever. 

Hank Smith: 01:03:10 Yeah. Ever.

John Bytheway: 01:03:12 Making her debut. 

Hank Smith: 01:03:13 Yeah.  One day when she comes on and we’ll say, we’re glad you’re back. With that, we want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen. And with every episode we remember our founder Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We are going to continue in these next sections of the Doctrine and Covenants on followHIM. Today’s show notes and transcript are on our website. Followhim.co. That’s followhim.co. Of course, none of this could happen without our production team. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Neilson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Amelia Kabwika, and Annabelle Sorensen.