John Bytheway: 00:00:01 Hey, everybody. Keep listening for part two with Dr. Spencer Fluhman. I’m contrasting with everything we’ve heard of some of the other traditions is that we have a God who’s disappointed in us, who’s angry with us. Here we have verse five. He’s merciful, he’s gracious. He delights To honor those. It’s not transactional. Oh, you are obedient? Here’s a blessing. It’s I love blessing my children. Then we get verse 24. We are begotten sons and daughters unto God. We know we three, how we feel about our sons and daughters. How is a God going to feel about his sons and daughters? Spencer, I can’t stop thinking of your first statement. This is a monument to the redemptive work of Christ. I want to keep viewing it that way.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:00:57 I want to highlight what you just said, John, too at the end there, sons and daughters unto God. I want to highlight that prepositional relationship between those two phrases. You just sparked a thought here. This is describing Jesus. Of course, we get a vision of Jesus here, begotten sons and daughters unto God in this context. I think this is the fatherhood of Jesus being referenced here, that there are begotten sons and daughters unto God. This pops up in the early sections of the Doctrine & Covenants as well. We’re used to talking about all of us being sons and daughters of God. That spiritual relationship with the Father, I’m not convinced that’s what this is a reference to. I think this might be a reference to Christ’s spiritually begetting us as father of our new lives in him.

  00:01:55 This isn’t a wild guess. This is an educated guess given the language of earlier sections of the Doctrine & Covenants, but I think that’s what’s going on here. This underscores something beautiful, John, that you’ve inspired in me about Christ’s centrality. Even in this description of our son and daughter relationship with deity. The Son is the Father in many ways. This is one of the key ways for Latter-day Saints that he’s the father of our new spiritual lives in him when we are covenantal bound to him, faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and so on. That one unto is worth a highlight here from me because I think it’s pointing to the Son where it could easily point to the Father as well, but I think it might be talking about the Son’s fatherhood as well. Absolutely beautiful.

Hank Smith: 00:02:52 Spencer, you’re teaching King Benjamin, Mosiah, 5:7, the children of Christ. Because of the covenant which you have made, you shall be called the children of… you think, oh, he is going to say God. He doesn’t. You shall be called the children of Christ, His sons and His daughters. This day He has spiritually begotten you.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:03:13 That’s it. I think that’s a tie here that is worth holding onto. I think that’s we’re getting with the unto there. Yeah, well done. Hank, that’s perfect. All of this beautiful language, all of this glory, all of this screeches to a halt in the next verse. This is the rhetorical equivalent of a wrecking ball to a great experience we were all having. This is a sharp turn from the sublime to the tragic to the evil. There’s purpose in it. We’ve got to take it on. We really can’t get around it. In this section, what comes next is a vision of the angel of God who fell. A rebel against the Only Begotten Son and the Father called perdition. Verse 26, heavens weep over him. He has fallen. He has fallen. Verse 27, verse 28. The Lord commanded that we should write. They can’t skip this either.

  00:04:23 We’d just as soon skip it. It’s not where we were a few verses ago. It’s a crash. That old serpent, the devil who rebelled against God and sought to take the kingdom of our God and his Christ. In verse 28 and verse 29, chilling, mood change for the whole section for me rhetorically, wherefore he maketh war with the saints of God and encompasseth them roundabout, very different feel to the section. We go from the Son to the enemy. If we are hoping for a turn, we don’t get it yet. Verse 30 expands that theme to those who he overcomes, who the evil one overcomes. Verse 30, we saw a vision of the sufferings of those with whom he made war and overcame. These are described for us. Verse 31, they know my power. Powerful phrase. They have been made partakers thereof, but they have been overcome in verse 31 there to the point that they deny the truth and defy my power.

  00:05:43 In verse 32, they’re called the sons of perdition. Verse 33. They’re vessels of wrath. I can’t imagine a more horrifyingly vivid description. They’re containers of wrath. They’re of wrath. Unbelievable haunting, heavy, dark imagery with these folks. Verse 35 continues the theme. They’ve denied the Holy Spirit after having received it. They’ve denied the Only Begotten, the Son having crucified Him unto themselves and put him to an open shame. Verse 36, we end up with fire and brimstone. My whole contextual, all that time I just spent with all of this here, I’m minimizing fire and brimstone, but in 36 we get it more accurately. They get it. They go away into a lake of fire and brimstone with the devil and his angels. If we’re left here about verse 36 forlorn, a little eyebrows raised, maybe eyebrows singed. It’s heavy. There’s a point here.

  00:06:51 The fact that we’ve gone from the Son to the adversary to the sons of perdition are all in service of what comes next. It’s pretty powerful. This is the beating heart of the vision. At least for me. I shouldn’t tell your listeners what the beating heart of the vision should be for them, but it is the beating heart for me because Joseph Smith pushed me here. This is why we’re given that vision of evil, why it’s not just skipped. Verse 37, those sons of tradition are quote, the only ones on whom the second death shall have any power. Verse 38, the only ones who shall not be redeemed in the due time of the Lord. Verse 39, all the rest brought forth by the resurrection of the dead through the triumph and glory of the lamb. Outside that small group of renegades who have known God’s power denied it and rebelled against that power.

  00:08:02 All the rest brought forth by the resurrection of the dead through the triumph and glory of lamb. What we get here is a breathtaking scope of Christ’s redemptive power. Everyone else saved, lest we miss the point. Verse 40, this is the gospel, the glad tidings. This is the gospel. This is why we rejoice in verse one. This is why the inhabitants of the earth should listen up. The gospel is this message verse 41, that he came into the world, even Jesus, to be crucified for the world, to bear the sins of the world, to sanctify the world, to cleanse it from all unrighteousness, that through him all might be saved, whom the Father had put into his power and made by him who glorifies the Father and saves all the works of his hands. The ark of the revelation of the vision. It gives us Jesus and it gives us this counter to that vision of the Son only again to come back to emphasize the breathtaking scope of Christ’s redemptive work and when he says crucified for the world, what does he mean the world?

  00:09:23 Well, the world. I mean it’s big. It’s broad. If we’re ever tempted to see Christ’s work as sectarian, is happening within our little corner of humanity only, we’ve missed this grand scope of Christ’s work. It’s the world he’s after. It’s the world he’s saving. It’s the world he’s sanctifying. It’s the world he’s cleansing except for those few in verse 43, verse 44. He saves all except them. There we have it. My shorthand for the vision itself and we’ve got a lot more to talk about. I pause here purposefully. This is the great pivot for me. This is the core for me. This is the shorthand for the vision for me is the triumphant glory of the Lamb. That’s what this is bearing witness to. Universalistic in its scope without being universalism of Joseph Smith’s day. It’s much, much more than that in the end, and we’ll see that by the end.

  00:10:26 We must not miss that core there, that core message of the extent of Christ’s redemptive work when we’re getting to three degrees of glory. We’re going to get the height here in a minute because exaltation marks the other axis. I guess I’m laying out a, of all metaphors, me and a mathematical metaphor. How in the world did this happen? but I guess I’m mapping two kind of axes for the vision. That X axis, the breadth of it is just mapped in these verses. We just read that Y axis. The height is going to be mapped here in a minute with exaltation, and we’re going to see the height here in a minute.

Hank Smith: 00:11:01 Kind of a whiplash of a good Hollywood movie, grand and then dark and then grand.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:11:09 Yeah, I think on purpose, yeah, I think on purpose.

Hank Smith: 00:11:12 It reads a little like Revelation five. Both of you know Revelation five, John is weeping. There is no one to play the role of Redeemer, and then this angel says weep not. The lion of the tribe of Judah, but he looks, it’s not a lion, it’s a lamb. John goes on to say, when the Lord, the Redeemer takes the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne or he takes his assignment as the Lamb of God, a new song is sung. Listen to the same language that you brought out. All, the world, the world, the world, all, saves all the works of his hands. He saves all except this small group. This is Revelation 5:11. I beheld and heard the voice of angels roundabout the throne and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands. Pretty high percentage description.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:12:15 Well, it’s beautiful. I glanced down at verse 44 and in light of our discussion of section 19, do you allow guests to engage in reckless speculation?

Hank Smith: 00:12:29 We’ll allow it. Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:12:30 This next point, this is just for fun. No one has to think hard about it. It’s really interesting. You get this from historians. He says, wherefore, he saves all except them. They shall go away into everlasting punishment, which is endless punishment, which is eternal punishment. Our radar just went off you and me, given where we’ve just been.

John Bytheway: 00:12:59 We just read section 19.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:13:02 We just read section 19. This is like I say, reckless speculation. I’m not counting any redemption out at this point. I’ll throw in for fun when this revelation is recorded in the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams. It originally didn’t read that way. Verse 44, it read eternal punishment and then went on in the handwriting of Joseph Smith. I kid you not. He came in and added endless punishment and eternal punishment. I kid you not both E’s are capitalized.

John Bytheway: 00:13:45 Which means? His comes from him.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:13:48 It comes from him, and then in verse 45 and the end thereof no man knows. My point here is just simply don’t count Jesus out.

John Bytheway: 00:13:58 Ever.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:13:59 Do not count Jesus out in terms of his redemptive work. This is speculative. I’m acknowledging that absolutely. Those of us who spend time on these documents, it is fascinating to see Joseph Smith’s hand, above the line, adding Endless and Eternal both in capital E’s. Given where we’ve been in on the podcast today, the ways in which our sense of things is limited and then expanded with a grander sense of Christ’s redemptive work. Fascinating. That one’s maybe a throwaway, but I can’t help myself.

John Bytheway: 00:14:38 I’ll never forget that. I’m going to capitalize those E’s. Right there, it changes it.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:14:43 Your listeners can go to Joseph Smith papers website. You can see this document. This is some secret that only the nerdiest among us had, get access to. This is right waiting for you in the Joseph Smith papers, the Revelation series. This is that Kirtland revelation book manuscript. Revelation book two. You can go and see it right there. You can see the handwriting. It’s color coded. You can see who’s writing where. It’s a beautiful little quirky moment. Caught my eye given that wrestle with D&C 19.

John Bytheway: 00:15:17 One of my favorite quirks.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:15:20 Isn’t that fun?

John Bytheway: 00:15:22 I looked up on citation index scriptures.byu.edu, section 76 verse 43. Who glorifies the Father saves all the works of his hands. You want to hear the first six results 35 times. General conference, 2023, President Dallin H. Oaks, Kingdoms of Glory, 2022, President Dallin H. Oaks, Divine Love in the Father’s Plan, 2020, President Dallin H. Oaks, The Great Plan 2019, President Dallin H. Oaks, Trust in the Lord 2019, President Dallin H. Oaks, The Two Great Commandments, 1995, Apostasy and Restoration, Dallin H. Oaks.

Hank Smith: 00:16:02 Wow.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:16:04 It’s almost like there’s a theme developing there.

John Bytheway: 00:16:07 About saving all the works of his hands and these talks. He gave those two talks in that sounded like almost two sessions in a row. They weren’t, but The Great Plan and Divine Love in the Father’s Plan used those verses.

Hank Smith: 00:16:24 If by chance President Oaks is listening, thank you President.

John Bytheway: 00:16:30 Yeah the last six citations of that were all President Oaks the most recent.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:16:35 Amazing. Yeah. That’s amazing.

Hank Smith: 00:16:37 By the way, we’ll put both the link to Spencer’s document that he’s talking about on Joseph Smith papers and those talks that John referenced. Our great Lisa Spice. She will put those on our show notes. Follow him.co. If you’re worried how do I find that kind of thing? We’ll help you out.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:16:55 Marvelous. What we get from here in the vision are vision of the degrees of glory. These are the parts that I grew up knowing were there. I had missed the forest for the following trees right here. I’d known of these descriptions of the degrees of glory, as my kids would say, they hit different with that forest in mind of Christ’s redemptive work. I read these a little bit differently now. I’ll point out some of those ways with the forest in mind.

Hank Smith: 00:17:23 Would you say if I’m a teacher this week, don’t miss verses 22 through 24. Don’t miss 39 through 44. Don’t jump into the kingdoms.

John Bytheway: 00:17:38 Yeah, this preparatory part.

Hank Smith: 00:17:40 You’re going to miss the Lord’s redemptive power.

John Bytheway: 00:17:43 That you talked about. You’ll drive right past the monument.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:17:47 Yeah. The big framework is a big heaven. We have to remember that it’s a big heaven. It’s God in Christ Jesus saving all of his children. That’s the big story. The big narrative is exactly what we hoped it would be. It is precisely what we hoped it would be. It’s God in Christ. Saving all the children. The big heaven is the big story. It is the big story. We can’t lose that X axis, that breath. I did skip past that early on. I did until the saints slowed me down, taught me why. That was it, the good kind of trouble, good scandal. Until they taught me. I would skip that because I was hurrying on my way to the degrees of glory without realizing God’s economy. The big narrative there, these degrees of glory, they fit better with that big story in mind. Verses 50 through 70, give us the vision of the celestial.

  00:18:48 71 through 80 gives us the vision of the terrestrial and the telestial. 81 through 90. We get a summary section at the end there, 91 through 113. Then a benediction we’ll finish off with. That’s reminiscent of the opening divine. We get the celestial first. We can highlight pieces here. This is the height. This is the vision of exaltation that reorients the saints. In some ways, this comes slowly to them. Some of this language to us seems very rooted in the restoration, completely in line with Joseph Smith’s teachings in Nauvoo. That garnered a lot of controversy then and since. For Christians outside the restoration, this becomes one of the divides that separates us from other Christian communities. No doubt, saints at the time didn’t read it this way. This wasn’t read with all the implications. This gets clarified and expanded and amplified by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo.

  00:19:59 Exaltation does. It appears here. The saints miss it. I don’t know how else to say it. I think it’s because the language is biblical for one thing. To them, it could be heard and read as conventional, but given the eyes that we bring to it that Joseph Smith gives us in the Nauvoo period and that Nauvoo amplification, it pops to us now. This is the vision of the celestial. We can’t forget it’s 1832. It’s years before the saints or observers start to put this together like it’s 1839 before we get any rich sense. Anyone’s paying attention to what this could mean for human potential. It’s belated. It’s a slower recognition. Where we come to it now in a lot of ways seems like the announcement of a distinctive Latter-day Saint conceptualization of exaltation. God’s ultimate intention for humanity. Verse 51, they receive the testimony of Jesus.

  00:21:11 They believe on his name and were baptized. In keeping the commandments, verse 52, they’re washed and cleansed from all their sins. They receive the Holy Ghost. Verse 53, they overcome by faith, they’re sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise. Verse 54, they are the church of the firstborn. That language church of the firstborn pops up several times in the section. It’s an amplification of Hebrews 12, a description of the heavenly city, the saints of God who have overcome. In some ways, this section of the vision reads, sounds, feels like an amplification of that Hebrews 12 language. For sure. They’re they in verse 55, into whose hands the Father has given all things. My voice inflected the all, saints didn’t see all there a reference there might be to the oath and covenant of the priesthood. In section 84, that phrase is pregnant with possibility, shall we say.

  00:22:21 It’s loaded with implication. They’re they in verse 56, who are priests and kings who have received of his fullness and of his glory. Priests of the most high after the order of Melchizedek. All of this language will be elaborated on in subsequent revelations. Verse 58. As it is written, they are gods. Even the sons of God playing on that earlier language maybe of begotten sons and daughters unto God. They are gods. Even the sons of God, 59, all things are theirs. The life or death things present to come. Verse 60. They overcome all things. The language is potent. It’s powerful. It’s soaring in some ways because it’s biblical, because it resonates with biblical language. It could have been seen by saints at the time and observers at the time as conventional, and it was like I’ve said, but given what we get from Joseph Smith, it charts a different course for human potential for Latter-day Saints than is the case with most Western Christians at least.

  00:23:39 There are strains in Eastern Christianity that are richer with language, with theology about salvation as deification, as participating in God, partaking of divine life. That’s richer in the Eastern tradition than the Western. What we end up with in the revelations of Joseph Smith and especially in his teaching in Nauvoo, is we end up with a vision for these verses and their implications that resonates with Eastern Christianity in ways, West took a different track thousands of years ago. Most of our Christian friends in the anglophone world of European descent, those Christians take those teachings of Joseph Smith as difficult as separating as even heretical. It is a separating point. This is where we get these kernels of insight into God’s intention for the exalted. This is where we get them.

Hank Smith: 00:24:43 So far in what we’ve studied this year, the Lord seems to say line upon line. Line upon line. Here it’s almost, let’s see, throws the doors open and says, I’ll explain this later. Let me show you the big beautiful vista. For example, let me ask you about one, Geritt Dirkmaat has helped us see this. Verse 51. These are they who were baptized, but yet no word of those who weren’t baptized.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:25:12 This becomes really interesting in a lot of ways. One of the critical footnotes for these degrees of glory section is section 137 of the Doctrine and Covenants because it’s a clarifying point on the vision itself. In the language that we get here from Joseph and Sidney, they certainly tweak, but our vision of the terrestrial are those who die without law. Verse 72 or receive not the testimony of Jesus, but afterward receive it. They’re honorable, maybe honorable but not valiant. In Joseph Smith’s reckoning after 1832, he spends a number of years assuming that those who die without the law or the restored law, a baptism or priesthood or however we want to articulate that, that this describes them.

Hank Smith: 00:26:11 Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:26:12 That they’re saved. They’re enveloped within the reach of Christ’s atoning work that their inheritance is a glory by comparison to traditional Protestant formulations that he’d grown up with. This is still breathtaking, but then in 1836, the deck gets reshuffled a little bit toward the side of the extent of Christ’s redemptive work as recorded for us in Doctrine & Covenants Section 137 sees a vision of the celestial kingdom and his brother’s there and he says, my paraphrase, not his language. What now?

Hank Smith: 00:26:52 Yeah. Wait, what?

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:26:54 Yeah. It’s clear how he read his own revelation in the vision that by the terms of the vision, Alvin would be provided his older brother had passed away before the restoration of authority that he had been provided for a terrestrial degree of glory here in the vision. That’s corrected for Joseph Smith, but with a really potent phrase that when combined with D&C 19 and D&C 76, D&C 137, it’s the huge karate chop on the conventional heaven hell judgment dichotomy.

  00:27:33 Those three together fatal karate chop on the older way of seeing. It says, I’m paraphrasing, those who would have if they had been permitted to tarry, which again, this injects more nuance into judgment. It qualifies hell even further or limitation even further. It underscores God’s judgment. Again, I’m glad we were shown a person when the question was judgment. I’m glad we were shown a person, a perfect person, a person filled with glory and love and power beyond our comprehension. Who could discern? Who would know? Well he would is the point of the vision. He would. Who determines if they had been permitted to tarry? All of this nuance, all of these caveats. I was tortured by these questions as a young missionary. I really was. I’m a chronic overthinker. Maybe that’s me, but I was obsessed with the question of God’s justice and mercy and what constituted someone’s,

John Bytheway: 00:28:42 Chance to hear the gospel.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:28:44 I was tortured by this as a young man. What if my incapacity as a speaker or my weakness as a conveyor of God’s message, am I walking around messing people up? Am I? What if you know my youth and my ignorance notwithstanding there are questions that are answered here. I wish I would’ve had a clearer sense then, but God reassuring, Hank, to your point, all of this, all of it, all of it matters. There is not injustice here. Taking it wide angle, the vision makes allowance for the vast variety of human experience precisely what Joseph and Sidney didn’t see in their upbringing with conventional Christian understanding, and what we get here is all of the individual details and caveats and conditions, all of that taken into account here, heaven is big and vast and varied and diverse. All of it counts and matters and is held, sanctified, glorified, lifted up and saved by Jesus. The crushing quirk of timing that Joseph had assumed had doomed Alvin to less, God says, not so fast. Do you think that some accident of chance plays in judgment? No. In a way, we’re getting God’s character revealed in all of this too.

John Bytheway: 00:30:26 Exactly.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:30:27 Is the mystery a capricious one? No, the mystery’s a beautiful one as it turns out. The mystery, yes, but it’s not capricious. It’s not unsearchable. It’s comprehensible within the calculus of God’s love. That’s what we’re seeing in these revelations. That baptism point is addressed specifically in Joseph Smith’s own anxiety, which is answered by a subsequent vision.

Hank Smith: 00:30:51 Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:30:51 Of family secured, redeemed unexpectedly. Unexpectedly. I mean, can we stop and celebrate the moments of unexpected redemptive work of God in the world? I thought this thing was broken, lost. I mean, what a beautiful moment. Joseph gazes into heaven and is surprised by what he finds there. I love it. It’s what makes me a Latter-day Saint. The way that this reveals God to me means everything to me. My own encounter of God has everything to do with the revelations of Joseph Smith, and that’s what makes me a Latter-day Saint. The God I have encountered in these revelations of breathtaking mercy and love means everything to me.

John Bytheway: 00:31:44 I love this and Hank, I’m a broken record. I actually know what a record is. I actually know what an LP is at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. Not only is God real, the first vision, what is he like? We get more and more as these sections go on. Here’s Joseph verse 51. These are they who received the testimony of Jesus, believed on his name and were baptized and maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, ah, Alvin, but wait, just wait until 137. Hey, what’s Alvin doing here?? I’m glad you said it. Spencer, who would’ve believed? Who makes that judgment? The perfect judge decides who would’ve believed. We don’t make final judgments. Thank you, President Oaks. We don’t make final judgments, but only he who can read their hearts makes that judgment. Who would’ve believed he sees Alvin there? Thank you for rounding that out. What did you call it? You got 19, 76, 137,

Hank Smith: 00:32:46 The karate chop.

John Bytheway: 00:32:48 Yeah. Here, karate chop. Here’s Section 19 I, God have suffered these things for all that they might not suffer. We’re, oh, that’s really what he’s like. He doesn’t want us to suffer and then we get all the way to Alvin who’s there smiling in this celestial kingdom.

Hank Smith: 00:33:07 I feel like section 19, Joseph says, God is more merciful than I thought. Section 76. God is a lot more merciful than I thought. Then section 137 God is

John Bytheway: 00:33:18 Boy is God merciful.

Hank Smith: 00:33:20 He’s much more merciful than I thought.

John Bytheway: 00:33:24 He’s so merciful. I’m going to capitalize those E’s in verse 44.

Hank Smith: 00:33:31 When you said, that’s what makes me a Latter-day Saint, you chose a scripture to go on your mission plaque. This was mine. Alma 26:16. As I’m reading 76, this is what comes to mind. Let us glory. We will glory in the Lord. We will rejoice, for our joy is full. We will praise our God forever. Who can glory too much in the Lord than this? Who can say too much of his great power, his mercy and his long suffering toward the children of men. Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part, which I feel. That’s the feeling I’m getting from section 76. It’s beyond our words to express how this makes a child of God feel.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:34:20 Yeah, I love it. Before we leave the exaltation verses, I want to highlight verse 61 for us. It’s a fascinating verse to me. It caught my attention years ago in the back and forth with close friends who aren’t of our faith, who are profoundly Christian, deeply Christian, the back and forth over some of these very doctrines that we’ve just been discussing of exaltation. Human potential. The question of whether or not humans could reasonably participate in the divine life in any meaningful way. I noticed this first years ago, I think it’s fascinating to see that it’s wired into the discussion of exaltation. The critique that my friend had of his sense of Joseph Smith’s teaching is that if we’re not careful, the line between God as the object of worship and anything else could be blurred. I ended up seeing verse 61 in the context of that critique.

  00:35:26 Wherefore, let no man glory in man. This is coming on the heels of the breathtaking portrait painted for the church of the firstborn into whose hands are put all things, who share glory with God himself. All of that transcendent language. Attach those who inherit celestial glory, let no man glory in man, but rather let Him glory in God who shall subdue all enemies under his feet. Almost even as it’s proclaiming the heights of human potential, a check on a twisting of that idea away from the glorification of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, almost an anticipatory guardrail against misunderstanding the giver of the gift versus the receiver of the gift. That would be the fatal flaw as of verse 61 is misunderstanding who the giver of the gift is and who the receiver of the gift is. This has reinforced a few verses later in another amplification of the New Testament, verse 69, describing the exalted.

  00:36:48 These are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood. How? By what means have they become these beings of glory of holiness Here, it’s Jesus again. These are just men and women made perfect through Jesus. Wired in to the exaltation theology of the restoration is this centering of Christ. He is centered even in that, that we cannot miss him in any doctrine. Going back to the classic by President Packer, any doctrine disconnected from Christ loses its meaning. It’s subject to distortion to the extent that it’s disconnected from the very root of Christian doctrine, the atonement of Jesus Christ that’s in there. It can’t be missed either.

John Bytheway: 00:37:59 Thank you, Spencer. Bringing up verse 61, let no man glory in man, but rather let him glory in God. I’m looking at the footnotes. They are abundant. We got 29 lines of footnotes right here in my high priest size scriptures. One of the footnotes, Hank is Alma 26:16. Your mission plaque scripture tied into that perfectly, but I’m glad you pointed out verse 69. They are just men made perfect through Jesus. Tie in, be ye therefore perfect. How is that? The only way that’s possible, Moroni 10:32, be perfected in him, not be perfect. Then you can come to him. Maybe you’ll be good enough but you’re perfected through Jesus. That’s a great text to add to your be ye therefore perfect at the end of Matthew five. How is that even possible? It isn’t possible for us by ourselves.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:38:55 We’ve gone the world behind the text. We’re now in the world of the text, but John, you’ve put us hopefully in the world that we bring to the text. I think one of the, we might call it pitfalls of discipleship, is with a vision like this of the celestial. If we imagine this apart from Jesus, it can feel like a game of spiritual achievement. That in itself it doesn’t work. So many of us have experienced that. It doesn’t and can’t work. There is no striving equal to what has just been described. Verse 95, he makes them equal in power, in might and in dominion. What? If we read 95 apart from 94, we’re in deep trouble. If we see 94, those who dwell in the presence of the church of the firstborn, they’re seen as they’re seen, known as they’re known. Having received of his fullness and of his grace.

  00:39:55 It’s the only math that works is the arithmetic of grace here. It’s the only math that can possibly work. If we read 95 apart from 94, then it’s a burden we wear every day. All that’s in front of us are our shortcomings. How could we ever get there? I can’t get to Saturday for crying out loud. How am I going to get there? I’m not getting there ever. If we see these exaltation doctrines apart from Jesus, it can be ironically stifling to spiritual life. We can even try harder. We can be more disciplined. It’s sapping because if we try and be a branch without the vine, we wither. You can’t be a branch without the vine and not wither. You’re disconnected from the source of life. That is a pitfall of discipleship that conscientiously you can want to follow Jesus, but that the distortion comes right there. How could I ever be equal in power in might… What does that even, I have no frame of reference for that. When we’re talking about me.

John Bytheway: 00:41:09 You talked about when this revelation was given, some of it was actually used in anti newspapers. I bet verse 95 was there from four years ago. I have in my notes this is a repugnant idea to most of Christianity. He makes them equal in power and in might and dominion. Then you’re saying gotta read 94 first.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:41:31 It does become noticed. Eventually we’re beaten up over distortions of this doctrine for sure, but I have gently said to my Christian interlocutors, you have a sense, understandably, in some ways it’s our fault at times that we’ve tried to earn what God has provided for us. I point you to the vision here, we’re actually the other kind of problem. Jesus is actually doing too much saving. At least be offended on the right point. We may have distorted this in well-intentioned ways.

John Bytheway: 00:42:17 Who does he think he is the Savior or something? Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:42:20 That’s what we end up with in the wide angle with that big a heaven with these kinds of blessings for the faithful, which they again in the arithmetic of striving could never earn. In that one for one equation, we end up with an anthem to Christ’s redemptive work in my mind without parallel.

Hank Smith: 00:42:46 Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:42:46 Nowhere.

Hank Smith: 00:42:48 It would be interesting for Joseph Smith to know. Let’s say he finishes the vision and then finds out, oh, in some future day, Latter-day Saints are going to be known for earning their own salvation. He might what? What? We should be the exact opposite. We should be known for section 76. These are they who are made perfect through Jesus Christ. He makes them equal in power, they received of his fullness and of his grace, his fullness, his grace.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:43:23 Yeah. Maybe it’s an important moment to sum up the vision carrying on this sense of what we bring to the text, our own questions of discipleship. John, you’ve helpfully started us in that direction. I think we could say as a summary comment here that what we get is a distinctive Latter-day Saint, it’s really fancy word, but it’s meaningful. Soteriology. This is the study of salvation. We get a distinctive Latter-day Saint sense of salvation slash exaltation in this section. It’s one that steers clear of two extremes I took pains at the beginning to lay out, and that is that human beings are passive recipients of God’s judgment. Section 76 doesn’t give us that. It gives us agency mattering a great deal. It gives us quote unquote works and that’s the language of the section. Certainly mattering a great deal. We’re nothing like passive recipients of God’s action.

  00:44:35 We are actively implicated in these gradations of God’s presence. In fact, we could say the question animating Doctrine & Covenants section 76 is proximity to God. How close do we want to be? That’s the logic of the revelation is exactly that, that the exalted have the presence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit out from there. Folks are positioned by their own actions, desires, intentions, all of it. That’s what emerges here. You’ve both mentioned some interesting predecessor Book of Mormon passages to D&C 76, but the one that might stand out to me now that I’m thinking of it is as Alma 29 that our desires figure in judgment so titanically, that’s what connects here. How close do you want to be to God? I’ve got Elder Maxwell ringing in my ears. The education of our desires is not an insignificant part of mortality.

  00:45:46 Do I want the right things? What do I want? This is a rubber hits the road discipleship question for us. D&C 88, given a few months later puts us here as well. What doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him and he receive not the gift, behold he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift. What we have tallied for us here in D&C 76, another rubber hits the road discipleship question. This enumerates God’s gifts to his children and the question for me is, what good are these gifts given if I don’t receive them? Every covenant act of obedience, every good work, quote unquote in this sense is reformatted for me as an act of reception. It’s the way I receive God’s gifts.

John Bytheway: 00:46:45 Spencer, when I was a teenager in Highland High School seminary reading this, I’m reading in verse 101, for example, but received not the gospel, neither the testimony of Jesus. I have to say this because I wonder if there’s anybody out there who thought the same thing. Verse 74, who received not the testimony of Jesus in the flesh but afterwards received. I thought, well, that’s not fair because I thought received meant they never heard it.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:47:12 Yeah. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:47:13 The special definition here is no, they never accepted it. This is just Brother Bytheway here, Corianton had four issues and Alma 39, 40, 41, 42. In Alma 42 his issue was I think it’s unjust for God to consign sinners to a state of misery. I’ve always wondered if he had what we have back then if he knew that it wasn’t endless misery. I am right with him there. It doesn’t sound just to consign people to endless misery, meaning with no end. Isn’t it interesting that he wondered about that? Alma has a good answer, but I wonder if Alma knew section 19. I wonder if he knew the redemptive power of Christ here in 76, how incredibly pervasive it is except for a handful of sons of perdition.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:48:17 It’s a great question, John. I mean, in some ways the vision presents itself as a mystery being made down as a revelation of something hidden.

John Bytheway: 00:48:26 Corianton that’s a good question, right?

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:48:29 Yeah. Corianton’s question is Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdons question, John.

John Bytheway: 00:48:33 Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:48:34 Yeah. It’s another version of the same question. If there’s a resurrection of the just and the unjust, does that do justice really? To all the vast variety of human experience and variation.

John Bytheway: 00:48:47 What they knew and when they knew it, what light they had and yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:48:50 Yeah. Corianton’s question is Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon’s question. The vision is the answer, and the answer is, Jesus.

John Bytheway: 00:48:57 I love Alma’s answer. It’s listen, let these things trouble you no more. Let your sins trouble you, which will bring you to Christ. Let his justice and his mercy have full sway in your heart. Here we are learning the full sway, to use Alma’s phrase of the mercy of Christ. It’s bigger than you think when you read this section, as you’ve so beautifully told us.

Hank Smith: 00:49:25 Spencer, I think you’ve articulated something that we probably need to hit again, and that is when we look at the terrestrial kingdom and the Telestial kingdom, that word receive not comes up over and over. It’s an active no.

John Bytheway: 00:49:41 It’s not not just hearing it. I’m not accepting it.

Hank Smith: 00:49:43 Yeah. I don’t want this. Whatever you’re offering me, I receive not. Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:49:49 When put together with Doctrine & Covenants section 88, maybe Alma 29, this one, we get a heaven with no stark duality there, no justice in that inherited sense. One scholar called it, it’s more about affinities.

Hank Smith: 00:50:05 Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:50:09 What have you resonated with? Where are you inclined? What have you become?

John Bytheway: 00:50:17 What’s the desire of your heart? What are you drawn to?

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:50:20 You get what you want. It’s a weird way of framing it. I love that word from that scholar that it’s about that the heaven that emerges here in vision is one of affinities.

John Bytheway: 00:50:31 Yeah. Book of Mormon. You’d be more miserable to dwell with a just holy God, you’re going to be where you’re less miserable. I guess.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:50:40 Yeah, and other scriptures. Light cleaves unto light. What am I cleaving to? What am I joined with? What am I united with? That brings us, again, back to vine and branches. If my desire is love and holiness in Christ, my inclination is toward the life of the disciple. These are good signs.

Hank Smith: 00:51:03 Yeah. Yeah these are good things.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:51:06 These are good things. If not, then I’m at education of my desires again. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:51:11 Education of my desires. I have a question for both of you. I sometimes see something happen in lessons on section 76 that I don’t see happen in the text. That is, Spencer, you’ve taught us that mainstream Protestant heaven is small. Hell is big. He reverses those. Heaven is huge. Hell is small. Sometimes in Latter-day Saint lessons, we swap it back again. We say the highest degree of the celestial kingdom. That’s heaven. The rest is really some version of hell. How would you say to not let that happen? Because then the message is reversed.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:52:00 Yeah. I think we’re seeking a balance there that the vision itself holds together to simply create a new heaven isn’t the point of the, you thought you had a small heaven. Well, this one is even smaller. As it turns out. That’s not the trajectory of the vision. The exaltation versus the height has to be embedded within the breath to get a full sense of what Christ is doing in the world. That helps us be less sectarian. It helps us be less judgmental. It helps us be more open and alive to what God is doing beyond the bounds of my own ward. It helps me see my neighbors in a different way. It helps me see my children who have chosen different paths in a different way. That’s all good outcomes from sensing the breadth of God’s work in the world. By the same token, I guess the other pitfall would be we don’t want to mute the exaltation invitation either. Exactly what that balance is is a good question. I love that these are in the same section, just verses apart. It’s working together because you’re right. We don’t want to ignore the rest of the section and only see the 10 verses from 50 to 70.

  00:53:17 All of it’s the economy of God in the world. By the same token, we have to hear God’s call in 50 through 70. He delights John, back to your point, as the giver of good gifts to his children, he wants to share divine life with them. He wants them to participate in divine being. That’s what he intends. That’s what’s said there. We have to be able to hold them both. I guess I’m surrendering before that mystery, but Hank you’ve highlighted an important productive tension, I would say is holding those two ideas together simultaneously. Don’t swap it back. Your point points to another good footnote for us, and if we thought a tripartite heaven was a stunning revelation of God’s love and redemptive work, it’s further subdivided later, the prophet subdivides, the celestial kingdom into three, a later revelation in the Doctrine & Covenants will do that. We end up with kind of six degrees of glory. One might wonder profitably, wait a minute. It’s as if God reckons with individuals at the level of individuals and it really starts getting breathtaking when we’re counting desires and who would have if they had tarried? Then it starts getting beautiful. It’s a great point, Hank. It really is.

Hank Smith: 00:54:46 President Oaks helped in October, 2023. Kingdoms of glory. His talk starts this way: Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are frequently asked, how is your church different from other Christian churches? Among the answers we give is the fullness of the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Foremost among that doctrine is the fact that our heavenly father loves all his children so much that he wants all to live in a kingdom of glory forever. He goes on, the revealed doctrine of the restored church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints teaches that all the children of God, with exceptions too limited to consider here will ultimately inherit one of three kingdoms of glory, even the least of which surpasses all understand.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:55:38 That is a perfect benediction on this section. It really is. Amen.

John Bytheway: 00:55:44 That was one of those talks that listed in that citation index. President Oaks has spent a lot of time in section 76. If nothing else, the lake of fire and brimstone is great for cartoons. What would you say? The lake of fire and brimstone is a metaphor, but it’s a temporary metaphor. What do you do with that?

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:56:09 That’s a great question. I mean, at very least we can say it’s vanishingly insignificant in the broad scope of the vision. It’s a point of contrast that is on its way to something else. It’s not a meaningful category within the vision itself. It just isn’t.

Hank Smith: 00:56:27 Another question for you, put on your historian hat again, who and why would they struggle with this? Yes, it goes against everything you’ve ever been taught, but that’s a good thing.

John Bytheway: 00:56:39 Other than that.

Hank Smith: 00:56:40 Is it no there’s people that need to suffer. Is that what it is? God is too merciful. I can’t handle that.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:56:49 I think it goes back to the traditionalists response to universalism. I don’t know that we’d say that. These are folks who had plumbed the depths of the vision had sorted It had wrestled it to the ground. It was new. It was challenging. It was aligned with this radical, unorthodox universalist insurgency within the broader New England religious world. The critique was it absolves folks of responsibility. It saps their initiative. It undercuts calls to repent. If they’re just, why would they repent? Why would they need to keep God’s law? All of those critiques supplied, I suspect that animated some of the Latter-day Saint critiques as well. So what’s interesting for the universalists, they don’t solve the problem of human will. They share with their critics an assumption that God would simply save everyone, period. But human will didn’t figure in their calculation. What we see in the vision here is a fuller, richer reckoning with the implication of our own choices, of our own ability to respond to God’s call.

  00:58:09 If I could build a time machine, I’d go back and I’d say, now don’t miss what’s going on here. This isn’t universalism as they had known it. This is not what we get. Like I say, lowercase universalistic in its implication, but it’s not universalism of their time. It’s not. It’s different. It holds together those contraries in a characteristically restoration way. This is the Joseph Smith method. These things that look like opposing positions somehow find reconciliation in the restoration. This is one of them. I think that’s what we’re seeing here.

Hank Smith: 00:58:46 Brigham comes to love it and others I’m sure.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:58:48 He does. He probably gives us a good spiritual pattern there. He’s like I had to wait a little. I’m an impatient person. I’ve never had time for patience is my problem. I’m endlessly curious. I want to wrestle things to the ground. I want to sort them out. What a powerful note from a former president of the church. Wait, a little. That’s worth the highlighting too, is that that’s a spiritual skill that we need to develop. The ability to know that we’re not ready yet to pass judgment on this or that, or to sort this or that.

Hank Smith: 00:59:27 Made me laugh a little bit what you said there about missionaries. How do you teach someone to repent? You better repent or you’re going to heaven.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:59:36 Yeah. This was the conundrum.

Hank Smith: 00:59:37 Spencer this has been spectacular in every way. My scriptures are covered in notes. I want to go share with my family all that I’ve learned. I’m a hundred percent certain Steve would be elated over what’s happened. I think he is. I want to bring two things together that you’ve taught us. One is how much you love the Lord and how you’ve highlighted him in this section more than any other piece. Then here you are a historian who knows the history of the church. There may be a narrative out there that, oh, you don’t want to know the history of the church. You’ll lose your faith. Yet, you know the history of the church. You brought out the beauty of the revelatory gift of Joseph Smith. Could you share with someone who is maybe listening saying, how do I connect the history of the church with my testimony of the Lord? How can I not be scared of the church’s history? How have you done it?

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:00:52 I’m idiosyncratic like everyone. We all have our own way through things. I’m not a committed, faithful, Latter-day Saint in spite of my study of our past, but because of it. I mean that for me, the history of the church reflects human life more generally. Of course, it’s complicated. Of course, there are paradoxes. Of course, there are failures. Of course, there are complexities. Of course, there are deep disappointments. That is the mortal experience. That is our ecclesiastical experience in so many ways. I have found a reservoir of insight and inspiration that is bottomless over the past several decades as a teacher and as a scholar. I haven’t found bottom and there is no bottom. It continues to be a source, an engine for me of potent questions, of answers, questions again, and then more answers. But church history for me, stretches me to see all of God’s children in the ways that he does.

  01:02:16 It stretches me to be compassionate to my own failings as I’m compassionate with others’ failings. It stretches me to be patient with God’s slow work and long game. That’s how God works. It has stretched me to be compassionate with the suffering on every side. Our history, human history reveals to me all of the things that makes God weep, but all of the things that motivates his loving action in the world as well. I see all of that. I am, at least Holly tells me slowly over time, it’s made me a better disciple, my study of our past. I’m a better disciple because of it. Not in spite of it. I’ve still got miles yet to go. I would say to anyone who’s overwhelmed, fresh courage take, God’s not going to forsake you or us or anyone now or ever, and that’s the message of the vision too.

Hank Smith: 01:03:23 Wonderful. Thank Holly for us please, for letting us steal you away.

Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:03:28 She’d do anything for the Sorensen’s.

Hank Smith: 01:03:31 That’s true. We have loved having you here. We want to thank Dr. Spencer Fluhman for joining us on followHIM. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen. We love you, Shannon. We want to thank our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen, every episode. This episode especially, we love and remember our founder Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’ve got more church history, more Doctrine and Covenants to cover on followHIM. Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. Do you or someone you know speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French? You can now watch and listen to our podcast in those languages. Links are in the description below. Today’s show notes and transcripts are on our website. Follow him.co. That’s follow him. co. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Iride Gonzalez and Annabelle Sorensen.