Doctrine & Covenants: EPISODE 28 (2025) – Doctrine & Covenants 76 – Part 1
Hank Smith: 00:00:00 Coming up in this episode on followHIM.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:00:03 Where the Calvinist Heaven was very small. The Calvinist Hell was very large. The vision perfectly inverts it. The Restoration Heaven is very big. Our Hell is vanishingly small. It’s barely there.
Hank Smith: 00:00:30 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my celestial co-host John Bytheway, whose glory is that of the sun, the glory of God, the highest of all whose glory the sun of the firmament is written of being typical. John, section 76, verse 70. My celestial cohost. Welcome.
John Bytheway: 00:00:52 I’m so bright. My mother calls me, son. Yeah, that’s the The dad joke.
Hank Smith: 00:00:56 Yeah. You’re so bright, John. I got to wear shades. John, we are joined today by Dr. Spencer Fluhman. Spencer, welcome.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:01:06 Glad to be with you both. This is great.
Hank Smith: 00:01:08 We’re going to have a lot of fun. John, section 76, I don’t know if we can overstate how important this section is in the history of the church. When you think of section 76, tell me what comes to mind.
John Bytheway: 00:01:21 When I was in high school, it was just another section in there, but the more I’ve learned about church history, this was huge. It was pivotal. I think it caused persecution. Hugh Nibley talks about, he called them the terrible questions. What it means is they’re so hard to answer. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where will I go when I die? What I love about the Restoration, this is some better answers about what happens when I die or what is my ultimate destiny than anything. That’s why section 76 for me helps answer some of those terrible questions. A wonderful flood of light.
Hank Smith: 00:01:58 I love that. Spencer, as you’ve looked at section 76, I know you’ve studied it many times throughout your career. What are we looking forward to today?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:02:08 I would say that what we’re seeing here is one of the culminating gifts of the restoration. Joseph Smith’s revelatory ministry. We get a vision of the big picture. There are lots of ways that the revelations are practical that help us day to day. Once in a while we glimpse the big, big picture. That’s what this gives us.
Hank Smith: 00:02:31 Yeah. John, I’m like you. I didn’t know. I don’t think I understood, and the more I learn about church history, it gets bigger and bigger. Now, John, Spencer hasn’t been on our show before. He’s a long time friend of mine. 15 years. I’ve known Spencer really been an admirer of Dr. Fluhman. Do you know anything about him?
John Bytheway: 00:02:54 I sure do. I have a piece of paper that knows everything. Dr. J. Spencer Fluhman is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University. A former executive director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, received a master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His research takes up the question of religious identity and the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Journal of Religion and Society, journal of Mormon History, BYU studies quarterly. Now, here’s what I loved. I read that he’s currently at work on a biography of LDS Apostle James E. Talmage.
Hank Smith: 00:03:37 Wow.
John Bytheway: 00:03:38 I wanted to ask, do you have his golfing story in there?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:03:43 It’ll show up, I’m sure John. Yeah, absolutely.
John Bytheway: 00:03:48 If I remember the details right, he’s invited to come and golf down at the Hugh Nibley Park in Salt Lake City. Heber J. Grant has already been recruited to golf down there. Elder Talmage comes down there to golf. They’re like, put down your work and golf with us. They have him address the ball. Tell him how to do a good drive. Elder Talmage takes up his back swing, smacks the ball a couple hundred yards. There’s stunned silence and they’re all, that was amazing, and he goes, well, was that a good drive? Yeah, that was a great drive. That was beautiful. So I fulfilled my part of the bargain. Yeah, you, you tried. You hit a great drive and he says, okay, I’m going back to the temple. He never played again. Yeah, I’m out.
Hank Smith: 00:04:34 Wow.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:04:35 Yeah.
Hank Smith: 00:04:36 How long have you been working on that forever. What’s the estimated time?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:04:42 Well, I wish it were on a quicker pace. I started that project years ago then had an extended administrative position at the university. I’m just reengaging with the project after eight years, essentially away from it. I’d like to have it done in a few years. It’s a big project. He was prolific. We have quite a bit more material from him as a very gifted writer, a a gifted apostolic thinker. As prolific as he was, there’s a lot to do there. It’s moving but slowly, hopefully it’ll pick up here soon.
Hank Smith: 00:05:16 I’m looking forward to that now.
John Bytheway: 00:05:19 Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:05:19 Yeah me too. A serious focused, exceptionally hardworking Englishman scientist apostle. If you connect those words, you end up with a very focused man and he was, wow. He’s unique in the trust that is placed in him before being a general authority to articulate church teaching in a really dramatic way that receives the perimeter of the church, and that’s not the only time that happens to him where he’s called upon to represent church teaching for both the saints and for a broader community. It’s really quite, that’s one of the things that’s fascinating about him is that he’s tasked with heavy responsibility before he is a general authority. Articles of Faith comes in 1899 and he’s called as an apostle in 1911. There’s quite a story there.
John Bytheway: 00:06:10 You’re going to have a lot of people looking forward to that book. Now that we’ve talked about it.
Hank Smith: 00:06:16 Now, I hope our listeners will forgive a little bit of a personal moment here, but Spencer was critical to our beginnings of followHIM
John Bytheway: 00:06:24 As a podcast.
Hank Smith: 00:06:25 Yeah. As a podcast. Spencer, if you don’t mind, let’s reminisce for a second. I hope to not get emotional when I think of our founder, Steve Sorensen and Shannon, you were right there. You were right there in the beginnings.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:06:40 This is a very, very sweet memory for me. It is poignant for me too, because my life has been touched by the vision of Steve and Shannon for sure. I was there in Santa Barbara in 2020 as a visiting professor in the religious studies department at UCSB, where Steve was the young single adult bishop. We had a number of exchanges. He was so eager for me to interact with the young people in his ward and other scholars too, but this was a passion of his. He felt like there were resources that they needed that they hungered for. Here they are getting this really fine secular education at UCSB. He wanted a parallel to go along with that education where they could get their profound questions engaged and answer their questions of faith. They can engage as well. The problem that he discerned was he said, your students and the other students at BYU are so lucky to be able to engage these questions from spiritual perspectives, from religious perspectives in the household of faith.
00:07:52 It’s harder for the students here. They don’t have that all day long. They don’t have every class that they have isn’t lit up with gospel perspectives. At the time, I was working at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute on BYU campus. He said, there’s got to be a way to amplify that for a bigger audience. Those were the wheels started turning and he said, my hunch is that the way to do this ultimately is going to be a podcast. He laid out his vision there in 2020, and I think he’d be thrilled with the listeners that come to have their own study of the scriptures amplified by scholars. I think he’d be thrilled.
Hank Smith: 00:08:30 I think he would too.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:08:31 Those first conversations really honored to be a part of those. That was great.
Hank Smith: 00:08:36 He called me in December. Brother Hank, I got an idea. Let’s talk through this. John, Spencer’s pretty crucial to you being part of the show. When Steve asked me if I wanted to be part of this, he said, what would it look like? I said, well, obviously want to have on as close as we can get to the church’s expert on this particular topic, what it is we’re talking about, but I think we need three people. The reason why I thought that is because of a show I listened to. Brent Top did a show called Past Impressions where he would interview experts on church history. As I listened to those, I noticed that when he would have two people on with him, the dynamic, the energy change, when Steve said, what would this look like? I said, I think you need three people, and he said, well, who else would you get? I said, well, John and I, we do this sort of thing all the time just sitting in airports. This moment, having Spencer here today means a lot to me.
John Bytheway: 00:09:34 Absolutely. Thanks, man.
Hank Smith: 00:09:36 We’ll just say to the Sorensen family right now, all three of us, our whole team, we love you.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:09:42 Amen to that. Yeah, no doubt. Thank you.
Hank Smith: 00:09:45 Let’s jump in. Section 76. The title of this week’s lesson is Great Shall Be Their Reward. Eternal Shall Be Their Glory. This is how the manual starts. What will happen to me after I die? Nearly everyone asks this question in some form or another. For centuries, many Christian traditions relying on biblical teachings have taught of heaven and hell of paradise for the righteous and torment for the wicked, but can the entire human family really be divided so strictly? In February of 1832, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon wondered if there were more to know about the subject. There certainly was. While Joseph and Sidney were pondering these things, the Lord touched the eyes of their understandings and they were open. They received a revelation, so stunning, so expansive, so illuminating that the saints simply called it the vision. It threw open heaven’s windows and gave God’s children a mind stretching view of eternity. The vision revealed that heaven is grander and broader and more inclusive than most people had previously supposed. God is more merciful and just than we can comprehend, and God’s children have an eternal destiny more glorious than we can imagine. Hmm. What a great opening for a marvelous flood of light, as John called it. Spencer, where do we need to start to understand this section 76? How important is it to the church?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:11:19 Yeah. My response is very, one of the lines you had there, Hank, was the saints called it the vision. It struck me when you said the words, it’s not just the saints that called it the vision. The prophet did. It seems to have occupied a particular place in Joseph Smith’s own reckoning with the revelatory experiences that he had on the earliest manuscript copy for Doctrine & Covenants section 76. It’s simply titled The Vision. It’s in the handwriting of Frederick G. Williams. Well, I will say this, and this is not insignificant. Joseph Smith’s handwriting appears on that manuscript copy. That is rare for the revelations. That is not his typical MO. His method is to dictate, to tinker with after sometimes, but on the manuscript copy of Doctrine & Covenants section 76, it simply says, the vision Joseph Smith’s fingerprints are all over it. There is a few of the verses that are in his own handwriting, which again, this is pretty unique for him.
00:12:30 To me, it’s a metaphor in a way. It’s not only title division. It’s not only got Joseph Smith’s handwriting on it, fingerprints on it. It’s the first in the collection of the revelations. We call it the Kirtland Revelation book or manuscript revelation book too. If you could look at the Joseph Smith papers online, you can see the compilation there, but it’s the first one. This is speculation on my part, but it’s worth speculating on this point. He’s told he’s commanded in the revelation to write it. It may be that the Kirtland Revelation book itself is a result of that commandment to write the vision because it’s the first one. It’s not inconceivable that he goes and has that collection purchased so that he, they can record the vision. Now they certainly have a copy made before that. This starts the Kirtland Revelation book, and the other revelations follows.
00:13:34 It is preeminent in that original collection. Wow. It’s something to pause on. Joseph Smith writes his own little gloss about the revelation when he’s dictating his manuscript history in 1839. That’s published serially in the Times and Seasons. It shows up actually right after the martyrdom, after he is killed. I’m going to read his gloss on it. He’s dictating the story of the restoration to scribes in 1839. That takes various forms over time, but this is how it reads in times and seasons for the saints. This is him talking about the vision, Joseph Smith. Nothing could be more pleasing to the saints upon the order of the kingdom of the Lord than the light which burst upon the world through the foregoing vision. Every law, every commandment, every promise, every truth, and every point touching the destiny of man from Genesis to Revelation where the purity of either remains unsullied from the wisdom of men, goes to show the perfection of the theory and witnesses. The fact that the document is a transcript from the records of the eternal world. He keeps going, I’m going to keep quoting. He doesn’t stop.
John Bytheway: 00:14:56 Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:14:56 The sublimity of the ideas, the purity of the language, the scope for action, the continued duration for completion in order that the heirs of salvation may confess the Lord and bow the knee. The rewards for faithfulness and the punishment for sins are so much beyond the narrow-mindedness of men that every honest man is constrained to exclaim it came from God. It’s so good. That’s his gloss on the vision. Couple things grab me about that. One is that it’d be a weird thing to write if you wrote it, but he’s writing it as one who’s experienced it. Who himself marvels at it. That’s what comes through there in that language is his own kind of marveling at what is contained there. I also take his cue that the effect of this is that the heirs of salvation may confess the Lord and bow the knee.
00:16:04 I can share a little bit about how I’ve come to this if you’ll allow it, but this vision is a monument to the redemptive work of Christ. It is a monument to the redemptive work of Jesus, the atonement of Christ towers over the vision and the vision towers over the revelations, and I say that as one who loves all of the revelations and have spent a career plumbing and assessing and weighing and trying my best to live to the revelations, but the vision is a towering position here. It’s worthy of our wrestling with it, and the saints wrestled with it, I guess is I’m thinking about an approach to the vision. I’m thinking a little bit about a New Testament teacher I had many years ago who I love who shaped me so fundamentally at BYU. He was so good. He would talk about the worlds of scripture.
00:17:06 He would be quick to say he’s borrowing from others, but for me, he gave me this way of approaching scripture, and for me it’s really important for the vision. There’s the world behind scripture. There’s the context. There’s the world behind the revelation. Then there’s the world of the revelation, the world of the text, the words, the structure, how those connect, and then there’s the world we bring to scripture. Those three worlds of scripture come together for me. That’s how I’ve approached it as a learner and as a teacher, and that’s how I think I’ll nudge your listeners, is to think about the vision in terms of the world behind it, the world of the text and the world they bring to the text. You both confessed to having Doctrine and Covenants section 76 kind of a one among many. I’ve just given this argument that nah, no, it’s a jewel in the crown.
00:18:04 My own confession is like yours. I did not sense that early on either as a learner and as a teacher. Incidentally, my own sense of Doctrine & Covenants section 76’s significance has grown over time. I really wrestled as a young teacher with how much the saints wrestled with it, and I couldn’t quite figure it out at first. Maybe the big story for me personally animating here is how the saints taught me how significant this actually is, how their struggle with it made it come alive for me, and I use struggle on purpose. John, you hinted rightly that this was polarizing. That’s only clear when you start to excavate the mental and theological, the religious world that Joseph Smith lived in that world. When you have that world in mind, the revelation starts to look a little different. That’s what’s happened to me over time. My own awakening to its real significance.
00:19:19 That’s kind of where I’m headed as we’re talking today, is how the world behind the text illuminates the text for us. If we finish today and we don’t have in mind the confession of Jesus and a bowing of the knee before the majesty of his atoning redemptive work, we will have missed it. If we missed that, then we’re going to have to rerecord the whole thing. We’re going to have to start over and I’m going to have to retrace our stuff because that has to come through. That was Joseph Smith’s sense of the vision. It’s certainly become mine, and that’s certainly what we all need to leave with. Does that sound like a fair way to map out where we’re headed?
Hank Smith: 00:19:59 Yeah. I think if you had my heart rate over the last, you know, few minutes, it just steadily increasing. One, your excitement for it, and two, starting to sense the saints as you read their response, as you study their lives, they teach you how significant it is.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:20:19 I mean, it’s nice to have historians around once in a while. I keep telling my kids this, there is a use. This is one of those situations where we actually, it’s nice to have a historian around because it really can be illuminating. My puzzle as an early teacher was why was this such a struggle for folks to get their minds around? So I thought, okay, so heaven has layers. Alright. Why am I reading a little mini crisis? Among the church and their neighbors in the wake of the revelation given in February of 1832, by March, this is showing up in newspapers critical of the church as a scandal. In March of 1832, a newspaper, it’s blasting the saints for heresy around the vision.
Hank Smith: 00:21:21 By March?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:21:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of one month before. This is a little mini scandal, but it’s a scandal inside. That’s what grabbed me even more. The responses inside are interesting. One that grabs our attention most often you’ll see in manuals, you’ll see in commentaries is Brigham Young. Not everyone had this reaction, I would call the revelation polarizing because some people, Wilford Woodruff for instance, embraces it. For him this resonates. It makes sense. It affirms an instinct I didn’t know I had. Brigham Young though voices for us, a really the interesting counter position. These are his words on it. This is from a sermon many years later. My traditions were such, he says, that when the vision first came to me, it was directly contrary and opposed to my former education. I said, wait a little. I did not reject it but I could not understand it. He admits to us, I couldn’t get my mind around it. I had to put it away. We’ve got evidence that it stirred up trouble in some of the branches of the church, such that there were, how to phrase it?
00:22:38 There were meetings. There were, there were conferences around the debates that came in the wake of it. What I’m going to lay out here for is are some contextual points. These are historical. If this isn’t your thing, then you’re like, my kids who glaze over after they can handle three minutes of this. If it gets to seven minutes and you can’t do it, you’re like my kids and a good, fair portion of my students. The saints belatedly, understand the heights that the vision points to in terms of the afterlife and salvation, what we call exaltation. In fact, exaltation is given here. This is the beginning of that story of exaltation. That means so much to the rest of church history. We organized all of the church’s effort around this idea of exaltation. Doctrine & Covenants section 76 does not come in a vacuum. Revelations don’t. Revelations are experienced in time, in space.
00:23:49 That’s how we experience it. They don’t come out of nothing. Revelations come out of the yearning, the experience, the deep need of human striving. We experience them that way. We articulate them that way. We understand them that way. We remember them that way. That’s how Revelation works in this world. This vision comes in the midst of a theological crisis debate. Joseph Smith’s world has been torn by the very questions that the vision responds to. I just played my hand right there. The revelation is responding to this world. It’s a world that is about the greater New England world that Joseph Smith and his family before him have inhabited. It’s a story about the theological crises of early America. It’s a story about his own family. This story is big, but it gets really personal. It’s really proximate for the Smiths as well, and that’s why there’s so much intrigue.
00:24:57 That’s why it’s a story that needs to be told. It’s a story that can be summed up with a single word universalism. It’s an ism. It’s a movement in Joseph Smith’s own time. It’s got ancient roots. It’s got European predecessors, but it’s a full-blown American thing by the time of Joseph Smith’s birth, and it exists in a world created by the Reformation, created by dominant strands of the Reformation in early America. For some of you, this is like dusting off those high school maybe bad memories of history. For some of you this, these are college points you have. Remember the Reformation is this big unruly revolt against the unitary Roman Catholic Church. The Reformation plays a bigger role in the early American world of Joseph Smith than does Roman Catholicism in both in terms of numbers and influence, but certain strands of the Reformation play an even outsized role still.
00:26:10 The strand of the Reformation that plays a big role for the Joseph Smith story are followers of a theological forebearer, a French speaking reformer by the name of John Calvin. Calvin’s ideas give rise to churches like the Congregationalist Church, the Presbyterian Church. These are the most influential churches of Joseph Smith’s upbringing. This is the old guard of New England. New England was founded by English Protestants of a certain sort. The English would’ve called them the a hotter sort of Protestant, a more intense Protestant. They were a group within the Church of England that felt like the Church of England was still too Catholic. They wanted to move it in a more radical direction for the followers of John Calvin in New England. The point was God’s sovereignty, his power, his omniscience, all those omnis for Calvin format all of theological reasoning and all of church life. For a God that knew everything and that was all powerful humans couldn’t influence that God. That God was influenceable to be influenced would be to be limited. God couldn’t be limited. He’s not omniscient. He’s not all powerful if he’s influenced by humans.
00:27:52 For Calvinists like the Puritan forebearers in New England, salvation was a drama that one experienced but did not influence. Christ’s gift was prearranged by God. It put God’s majesty on display, but in that drama of salvation, you didn’t have an active role. You had a passive role. It happens to you. It happens to you. The Puritans were obsessed with searching their souls, their lives for signs of God’s mysterious grace and mystery. My goodness. Mystery shows up here in the vision. In the language of the vision, and that’s not insignificant. Mystery was one of Calvin’s great touchstone. God is beyond you. He is a mystery to you. He is so distant and overwhelmingly other to you that the proper approach to God is fear. It’s awe. A-W-E awe for Calvin. That’s the foundation of worship is awe. That’s the foundation of godly life is that awe and fear of this mysterious, all powerful holy other.
00:29:13 Their reading of the Bible and the heaven that grows out of this theology is dualistic. It’s heaven and hell. Like Hank, you read in the intro there, it’s heaven and hell. Your hope was in Christ. It was a mystery how that came out in your life. You could experience God’s grace. Tons of debates about what that experience was, how you know it. Could you fall from that experience? Could you undo the work for strict Calvinists? No, because then you’re influencing God. If you are elected by God, if in his wisdom before the world was you were chosen to salvation, what could you possibly do to undo that? You’re going to undo what God…? It didn’t compute. There was no way in which that could compute. You’re already sensing, and your listeners are sensing, there is not a big space in here for human agency. In fact, there’s no space for human agency. Human agency is a prideful myth. I’m trying to paint a picture for your listeners here of how this sense of the here and the afterlife, how that might have worked in lives, how that might have felt in lives, why itself would’ve sparked some controversy.
Hank Smith: 00:30:36 I’ve heard you say before that not only was the turmoil going on around Joseph Smith’s community, but it was happening in his own home.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:30:44 Yeah, absolutely. What we get in his mother is we get a very saintly, very committed, very dutiful Christian believer, by the time of Joseph Smith’s upbringing is attending a Presbyterian church. She is in some senses a traditional Christian in that broader New England sense in a church that had its roots in Scottish Calvinism. That’s what you’re getting in the Presbyterian church, Joseph Smith’s paternal line, they are rowdy in this sense. They are theologically rowdy. His father, his uncle, and his paternal grandfather, Asael Joseph and Jesse Asael to his father Joseph, and then his uncle Jesse. They all in their adult lives tended toward a new revolt, an American revolt against that Calvinist orthodoxy. It was called Universalism. It pushed those Calvinist positions to one logical conclusion. If God is all powerful, all loving and patient, as we say he is, what possible point could he have in electing some? If my actions don’t influence God, if I don’t have a role of an active role in salvation, what possible reason could God have for electing some? In some ways, it turns Calvinism against itself and says, if he can elect some, why would a benevolent God not just elect all. Universal. Universal. Their universalism describes this movement, this revolt against what they perceive to be a stern, too mysterious, morally questionable decision of God in judgment. That’s the question. Why would an all loving God create something then torment it for eternity?
00:33:10 What would be the point? This was the Universalist revolt. This created, I mean, the pamphlet war was significant out of this. The war is still raging when the vision comes in 1832. In fact, it’s the next year that Universalism becomes its own church. This is the world of Joseph Smith. Hank. The way you teed us up here is to show us that this is his own family. Here is in the words of his grandfather written in 1799. See if you can follow Grandpa has internalized the logic of the universalist against the traditional Calvinist of his upbringing. This is Joseph Smith’s grandfather. It’s his dad’s dad. His dad’s dad as collected and recorded by his mother in her reminiscences about their family that she publishes later.
John Bytheway: 00:34:07 Asael. Is that how you say it?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:34:09 Asael Smith. Yeah.
Hank Smith: 00:34:10 Asael Smith.
John Bytheway: 00:34:11 A-S-E-A-L I think.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:34:13 A-E-L. Yeah. Here he is. If you can believe that Christ came to save sinners and not the righteous Pharisees or self-righteous, that sinners must be saved by the righteousness of Christ alone without mixing any of their own righteousness with his. He’s poking the Calvinist right in the eye here. This is me, not him. This is my editorial. He’s poking him right in the eye. Quote, then you will see that he can as well save all as any, end quote. In 1797, Joseph Smith’s father, Joseph Smith and his brother Jesse, both petitioned in Vermont to be exempted from their ecclesiastical taxes because they were members of the Tunbridge Universalist society. Dad and uncle are saying, we don’t want to pay taxes to the local Congregationalist Calvinist church because we’re Universalists. This is where dad’s at. His dad, Joseph Smith, Sr. for the most part, before the restoration, tended to keep organized churches at arms length.
00:35:19 For awhile he attends a Methodist church with Lucy Mack, but his dad and his brother aren’t thrilled that he is capitulating. He quits going, it’s enough, and you can read between the lines in Lucy Mack Smith’s account that it’s a real struggle for her that he’s not attending. He’s not attending church. He’s keeping traditional church at arm’s length. He’s got these universalistic ideas. I know that her pastors were and her minister were not thrilled with those ideas. We can read all this pamphlet war. What we end up with Joseph Smith is an interesting both cultural and familial tension. He writes about war of word, tumult of opinions, who is right and who is wrong. I am tempted as a historian to read that a little bit idle biographically. There is not religious peace in his own home. Mom and dad are coming at this in different from different angles. There’s no question. One of the sweet things here to note, I guess at the end of this little contextual point is that the restoration reconciled this divide within the Smith home.
00:36:41 That’s maybe a metaphor for the vision itself. because the metaphor holds together what we might take as contrary. It holds them together and it keeps justice and mercy in play. It keeps Christ’s atoning work and human agency in play. It steers a course between those extremes and holds them together. I mean, that’s what the restoration did for the family certainly. That’s what the vision does for the restoration theologically. It’s a long-ish contextual point, but it’s not insignificant. That’s why the early Saints struggled. What it ends up doing, John and Hank, is this where the Calvinist heaven was very small. The Calvinist hell was very large. The vision perfectly inverts it. The Restoration Heaven is very big. Our hell is vanishingly small. It’s barely there. We’re not quite universalists. It’s not like there’s this huge influx of universalists into the restoration. The vision isn’t just universalism.
00:38:02 There are significant distinctions, but it is universalistic in the lowercase U sense in that the heaven is very big. It is turned inside out. The traditional Christian orthodoxy of Joseph Smith’s world flipped it on its head. That’s why it was so hard to digest for the early saints. It was perfectly inside out. It was the perfectly opposite of what they were used to. Everything I had been taught to that point. That’s it. Brigham didn’t lie. He was telling us, this is not what I was raised on. The Saints really had to grapple with the implications. I think we’re still grappling. That’s one of my invitations to your listeners. If the Early Saints wrestled, ooh, let’s wrestle too a little bit with this. Right? This is good. This is great. Let’s see what the implications are here and rejoice in them.
John Bytheway: 00:38:59 The idea of predestination, I don’t think we’ve used that word yet, but that was part of it. We believe in a foreordination of possibilities, but we have room for free will in there. Somehow free will takes away God’s sovereignty in some people’s minds because God’s already determined what’s going to happen to you. That’s predestination. That was the backdrop they came from.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:39:23 It is That is the backdrop. Yeah. The idea that God had in his own wisdom elected some to salvation for us, that’s incomprehensible. Traditional, strict Calvinists are not always easy to find. Modern Christianity has wrestled with these ideas along with us. These have proven to be very difficult ideas. One of the things that Calvinists believed that this did for them was explain the human condition for them. They looked around and they saw most humans didn’t care for God or didn’t follow his commandments, for them, their sense of God’s election and the fall, it was kind of born out in the world around them. I’ve got a great Calvinist friend. We’ve talked through these things for so many hours we’ve lost track, but he said, the fall is the only Christian doctrine with empirical proof in the world. You can see it.
John Bytheway: 00:40:28 Look around.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:40:29 We can prove that Christian point. That one’s not hard to prove is the fall. In a way, predestination protected God’s sovereignty. It explained the world around why do so few people seem to follow God at all. Most people don’t care. Early American Congregationalists and Presbyterians and Baptists. Those tended to be the ones who are most Calvinists. Interestingly though, I will say this, another little fun contextualizing point in understanding Joseph Smith a little bit as mom and some of the kids are heading off to Presbyterian church. Joseph Smith is not. He is most comfortable with the Methodists. That’s the only Protestant church in Joseph Smith’s world. That gave significant space to the notion of human free will.
Hank Smith: 00:41:23 Inches him towards where he’s going to end up.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:41:27 Yeah. Or is this his instinct? Is this his affinity? We don’t have Joseph Smith’s interior world from those early years, but he does resonate there. That’s interesting. That’s an interesting understanding. Like the teenage Joseph Smith, he’s willing to go on his own to Methodist meetings rather than go with mom. He’s not just sitting it out with dad either. It gives us some insight into his own seeking.
Hank Smith: 00:41:57 I think that this point of Methodism is pretty important. How all of a sudden did these Methodists come on the scene when you had the old guard in New England? Where did these Methodists come from? They’re not universalists.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:42:08 They’re not. Yeah. John and Charles Wesley and a group of like-minded folks at Oxford and England start the movement. It’s a response to Calvinism that makes space for human will. The idea that we can respond to God’s call and freely do it, we can influence our salvation. Yeah. Of responding to that call of God and share the idea that salvation comes with God’s initiative, not my initiative. That God’s calling Calvin’s point is, if you’re called, then you can’t say no. His grace is irresistible. This is a Calvinist point. For Wesley it’s no, no, no. It is resistible. Just because you’ve experienced God’s redemptive work in your life doesn’t mean you can’t turn your back on him. The Wesleyans have this powerful sense that, yeah, you’re not passive in this story of salvation. You’re active. You’re active in it. It really is this movement in broader Reformation history, this Methodist movement, but it’s fantastically successful in the early United States and it fits well with the kind of frontiersy, pull yourself up, work your way into the wilder-. That strain of American energy and work, it fits well with that. The Methodist grow exponentially in the age of Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith, and everybody else is drawn to this.
00:43:48 Counter to that more traditional version of the Reformation. I hope these contextual points have helped us begin to see how significant the revelation was in terms of the questions that all of these saints had on their minds coming in from the various Christian traditions they had. One of the shocks to the system was that the Book of Mormon hadn’t presented this.
Hank Smith: 00:44:18 Yeah.
John Bytheway: 00:44:18 Mm-hmm
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:44:19 And here we are a couple of years into the formal restoration at the institutional church level. The saints who had been gathered, had been gathered often by the Book of Mormon, by the message of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling, but the Book of Mormon hadn’t exactly challenged the biblical dualism that they had for the afterlife. A heaven and hell sense. That’s one of the shocks to the system. If we’re careful readers of the Doctrine and Covenants though, there is a little bit of a preparatory hint of where things are heading at the time. The Book of Mormon is published in one of the revelations, this is Doctrine & Covenant section 19, we’ve already been there in the Come, Follow Me curriculum, but I want to back up and take stock for a minute of the way in which a definitely more subtle challenge to what the saints had been accustomed to and a traditional American Christian biblical framework.
00:45:32 It’s a challenge nonetheless. Doctrine & Covenants section 19. It includes one of the sharpest calls to repentance ever. The fact that this blistering call to repentance is actually prefaced by a little, I use that phrase on purpose. The traditional framework for understanding is challenged subtly and not so subtly in Doctrine & Covenants section 19, I’m going to read a little bit because it’s a revelatory forerunner to what we get in the vision. Starting in verse three, retaining all power even to the destroying of Satan and his works at the end of the world and the last great day of judgment. The idea of judgment looms large with the vision. Of course, a similar theme here, I shall pass upon the inhabitants thereof, judging every man according to his works and the deeds which he has done, and surely every man must repent or suffer for I the Lord am endless. Therefore, I revoke not the judgments which I shall pass. Woes will go forth. Then there’s this caveat, strangely in verse six and seven. Nevertheless, it’s not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.
00:46:50 When I read it to my students in pause, they’re like, now wait a minute. What does that actually mean? And again, it is written eternal damnation. Therefore, it’s more expressed in other scriptures that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men. Almost saying, I’m using this language to get your attention. It’s more expressed, but I’m, I’m getting your attention, then in verse eight. I’ll explain this mystery. Verse 10 tells us the mystery, I am endless and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for endless is my name. Eternal punishment. It’s God’s punishment. Endless punishment is God’s punishment. What grows out of this is endless and eternal as descriptions of the source of punishment, but not its duration. We end up with a temporary suffering of the wicked from Doctrine & Covenants 19. We don’t have a lot of evidence that the saints were rattled by Doctrine & Covenants, but looking back, there is a line here, Doctrine & Covenants 19 does prepare the saints for the vision in that it does limit the sufferings described. It’s not that they won’t end, it’s that they’re from God in that sense. They’re endless in that sense. They’re eternal, but the sufferings do have an end. That’s an interesting additional textual forerunner for what we get in the vision.
Hank Smith: 00:48:29 As far as you know, is that new in Christianity, was that not taught about hell?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:48:35 This was a minority position. It’s ancient. It goes ancient for sure. We get folks like Origen, Clement of Alexandria. These are pillars of the ancient church. The question for them was what would God’s point be in endless punishment? They put forward this question. It was question more than anything. Is hell better conceived of as remedial or even redemptive than punitive? Does that make sense?
Hank Smith: 00:49:12 Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:49:13 It’s a discipline, but meant to do something, but that it might be temporary. This is an old idea in Christianity, but it’s not a dominant idea. It is in no way a dominant idea. Some of your listeners are already probably anticipating some of the traditionalist responses to universalism or the limiting of hell and so on. That is, oh well, does this sap human initiative though? You have to be careful with this idea.
Hank Smith: 00:49:42 Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:49:44 It’s too easy. Is it too easy? Does it sand away God’s justice in some way? This is the nature of the pamphlet war of Joseph Smith’s own upbringing. These volleys back and forth about God’s love and God’s justice and God’s punishment versus God’s benevolence. This is how it goes, but I, I guess in one sense, I’m pointing to the fact that these ideas, they’re in the air and they have been. They pop up. I’m really grateful that we get that language of Doctrine & Covenants 19 though, because it really challenges the preconceptions that these biblically immersed early, Latter-day saints came with. That then brings to the vision itself.
John Bytheway: 00:50:29 I’ve said it before that Section 19 is one of my favorites because of some of the things it has distinction about. I didn’t say it was the punishment would have no end. I said it was endless punishment because endless is my name. What you just expressed there, he kind of has this only explanation that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men because maybe if you think of it as endless, it works on your heart a little bit more. Eternal life is not just a duration, it’s a quality of life. When we say immortality and eternal life, they’re not the same thing. Immortality means you’ll never die, but eternal life is a quality of life because eternal is his name and it’s life. God lives. One of the things that I love in the Book of Mormon, is that Alma the younger, in his awesome Alma 36 chapter on repentance, says that he was racked with eternal torment for three days, and I’m like, well, how do you have eternal torment for three days?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:51:29 Bingo. Yeah, there you go. That’s it, John.
John Bytheway: 00:51:31 That’s another little hint right there. That’s of this is a type of punishment, not a duration because he only had, I’ve had eternal punishment for three days.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:51:42 Yeah, well played. Maybe also, it’s worth noting that the call of Doctrine & Covenants 19 is that I have spared you suffering if you’ll accept my gift. That’s Christ’s plea there. It’s not like he tones down the language of suffering. He says, how sore you know not, how hard to bear you know not. Language doesn’t get at this, but the point, the redemptive point of the whole thing is I’m asking you to repent because I God have suffered these things for all, if you’ll repent, it’s like, please see the rescue that I’m offering from the effects of all of our human wreckage. Christ is rescue for all of that. If we’ll see it, and that’s what the energy and the call to repent is all about in that section 19. It’s going to be repeated here in 76, but John, I love your points there. That wordplay with endless and eternal. You’re right. We’ve got other instances here where that wordplay is significant. It’s pointing to some bigger realities. For sure.
Hank Smith: 00:52:56 Most of our listeners know, John, we’re going to have a dozen or so episodes called Voices of the Restoration with Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. There is one of those lessons with section 76 if you want a lot more history. If you’ve loved what Dr. Fluhman has done so far, which I have, come over there and grab that episode, that’s going to be out this week as well, where we get a lot of history of Ohio and Ezra Booth, and the Johnsons, everything that led up to there, but Spencer, if you could give us a little bit of February, 1832, what’s happening in Ohio?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:53:33 This gives us an opportunity to talk about the nature of revelation. We’ve got missionaries coming in and out. We’ve got meetings punctuating this late winter period. There’s a couple of reminiscent accounts of this particular experience that points to a reality about revelation that we probably need to be reminded of periodically. Sometimes I at least imagined early on Joseph Smith wrestling with things on his own, secreting himself away to find some solitude and then presenting revelations to the church. It’s not what happens here and it’s typically not what happens. These are public experiences and this is made powerfully evident by the vision. There are probably a dozen men in the room. One of the men there described it for us in a couple of reminiscent accounts. There were decades after, but it’s as good as we’ve got. We don’t have a lot of folks who describe it at the time.
00:54:32 He said that he felt the vision but didn’t see it. It’s an interesting way that he talked about it, that he could feel the power of the experience. It went on for multiple hours according to him, but it was public in that sense, but it was also public in a different sense, and that is that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon experienced the vision together. They were somewhat conversational according to these reminiscent accounts that they would ask each other. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Essentially my paraphrase, but are you seeing what I’m seeing? And the other would say, yes. They would describe then what they had seen together. The sharing of the revelatory burden is worthy of a sermon or two. Oh, I love it. It’s important. In fact, when the revelation’s copied into the compilation that’s taken to Missouri for publishing, John Whitmer copies it down as the vision to Joseph and Sidney.
00:55:37 I’ve always loved that. It’s a reminder no one felt this more keenly than Joseph Smith. His ministry in some ways was solitary and at some points lonely, but he rejoiced in councils and presidencies and the sharing of the revelatory and pastoral burden. No one rejoiced certainly like he did. We also have the unforgettable little almost throwaway line, except that none of us can throw it away because it’s too wonderful and a little bit playful is that Sidney doesn’t hold up very well through the multi-hour revelatory experience is sapped by it according to one of these reminiscent accounts. Joseph Smith with what I expect to be a bit of a twinkle in his eyes says, Brother Sidney’s not as used to it as I am. Essentially, the beautiful comment on the spiritual rigors of this experience that Joseph Smith had become more used to by this point, by his own account.
John Bytheway: 00:56:46 Spencer, I’m glad you emphasized that. After the first vision, so many of these revelation experiences were shared visions in the Kirtland Temple with Oliver Cowdery. It wasn’t just one guy leading people. It was, no I saw it too. Then the witnesses, that’s such an important thing to remember. I don’t know if it’s helpful to draw a graph of different types of revelation. You can have everything to a warm feeling or that was a heartwarming story, to some inspiration, to I actually had words come to me or then to having a revelation dictated, I guess at the top of it is a vision. We saw things and we heard things. I love this one that somebody could feel something was happening, but for Joseph and Sidney, no, we saw it and we heard it. We were conversing. You see what I see, I see the same. Write it down for me. I have a clarity of thought. If I feel like I have the Spirit, all of us are different levels of revelation. It’s an interesting thing to point out. This was up there. They saw and heard things with some of the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. It wasn’t always a vision. It was a dictation. The Lord’s telling me this.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 00:58:10 Yeah, your comment is so helpful. When I don’t experience the Spirit like I’m hearing described where maybe I’m not one who’s a visionary, I’m not seeing things. We all have varied, diverse gifts. That diversity is God ordained. It is on purpose. God has made us indispensable to each other in that I need you. You need me. Those gifts are different. They’re parceled out on purpose. We see that enacted in the Doctrine and Covenants. We see it embodied in Joseph Smith. We get different modes of divine encounter, I’ll call it with Joseph Smith. We get different types of revelatory experiences. I think that’s on purpose. I think we should be watching. There’s not one way to experience the Spirit. There’s not one way to experience revelation. It may change over time in us. You and I might have two or three that we can barely give utterance to that is so profound, but we might have more ordinary versions of revelation that we’re used to. I think that’s important for our listeners, for all of us to recognize and remember that diversity is on purpose. It makes us important to each other. God is condescending in the sense that he’s working with us across cultures, across time and space in all sorts of different ways, all sorts of different paths that we’ve taken. He adapts to us in that sense. He condescends in that sense. The varied revelatory experience. They teach a powerful lesson to us. I think you’re onto something there.
Hank Smith: 01:00:09 I just mentioned that we have our voices of the restoration episode, which goes into the things we talked about with Geritt. John, what’s happening in Kirtland? Who are the Johnsons? You know, why is Joseph Smith living out at the John Johnson home? It’s a day’s travel away from Kirtland and Hiram, Ohio, so you can get all of that there. One other tool I’d love to offer our listeners, come over to our website, followHIM.co. followHIM.co. We’ll put a link to this there, on the church’s website is a virtual tour of the John Johnson home. It’s called John Johnson Home Hidden Mysteries Revealed. What you’ll see is two sister missionaries walk you through this John Johnson home and what’s special about this one for us here at followHIM is that one of those missionaries is Sister Juliette Sorensen, who we all know the youngest daughter of Steve and Shannon. She just does a spectacular job. I think it was filmed about in 2021. We hope everyone will come over to the show notes and you’ll watch Juliette and her companion walk you through this neat little convergence of circumstances here that she’s going to give the tour this weekend that Spencer’s here.
John Bytheway: 01:01:22 Some of our listeners might remember, Elsa Johnson was the one who they’re sitting with what Ezra Booth and John Johnson, are their healings today? This is where that report is that Joseph healed her arm and this is her home. John Elsa Johnson.
Hank Smith: 01:01:40 It’s a beautiful home.
John Bytheway: 01:01:42 Yeah, it’s really nice. Even by today’s standards. Yeah, it’s very nice. Spacious.
Hank Smith: 01:01:48 Yeah. Spencer, do you feel like we’re prepared to go into the verses now?
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:01:53 We better get to the verses at some point. Yeah, that’s, that’s the risk of having a historian on. We spend so much time on context that we don’t quite get enough to text. We’ve got the great opportunity now to do just that and to dive in. What we’ll see in the section, those of your listeners who have been reading it carefully this week will notice that I’ve been calling it the vision. Joseph Smith again called it the vision. Others did as well, but it’s actually several visions and you can, you can track the language and it’s several visions, one after another and we’ll highlight some things going through. There’s a little bit of a preamble. In fact, there’s even a preface that isn’t printed in your copy. Maybe I’ll read that for fun.
01:02:45 In the manuscript version, we get this, a little preface that doesn’t make it. In a vision to Joseph and Sidney, February 16th, 1832, given in Portage County, Hiram Township, state of Ohio and North America, which they saw concerning the church of the Firstborn and concerning the economy of God and his vast creation throughout all eternity economy of God’s. A great phrase there. That’s an early American phrase that might miss us a little bit. We’re thinking what interest rates or what economy here in this early American context is more like a government of God or God’s system of governance or something. In other words, the preface that doesn’t make it in is, again, it’s big. This is God’s economy. This is God’s big vision. This is the big plan, but then what we get here, starting in verse one and going to verse 11 is a bit of a divine and preamble, I don’t know what to call it. It’s curious in terms of its voice, hard to know who’s speaking at first. It becomes we, Joseph, Sidney in verse 11.
01:04:09 What comes before that is interesting because we get the voice of the Lord in verse five, but I don’t know who verse one through four is, hear o heavens and give ear, O Earth and rejoice ye inhabitants thereof. For the Lord is God, and beside him there is no savior. It’s beautiful and profound to start this way, is this Joseph, Sidney saying here? Is this the voice of God? It’s rhetorically unclear and I don’t really care ultimately because it’s so beautiful for two reasons. One, we get rejoice right out of the gate. The vision is a cause to rejoice if we read it and at the end we feel burdened or unprepared or inadequate, we’re missing the vision. We’re in trees, not forest, and I’m guilty of that all the time and there’s some of the stuff that’s heavy in this. We get Satan in this section.
01:05:11 We get sons of perdition in this section. We get judgment in the, I suppose if we fixate on trees, we might miss that forest and the forest is a cause for rejoicing right out of the gate. Verse one, why? Because the Lord is God and beside him there is no savior. This is maybe neither here nor there, but what this reminds me of more than anything is the shema Israel. Deuteronomy six here, oh, Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. It’s a little mini catechism that Jews say twice a day, traditional Jews, say twice a day and liturgical worship. This summation, this is functionally equivalent there. This is our shema Israel. Hear oh heavens, rejoice. Why? Because the Lord is God and beside him there is no savior. It’s really, really powerful. What we get then rolling out here is an invitation. That’s for me what comes from verses one through 10 are kind of divine beckoning to come into visionary, understanding of his will and his mysteries.
01:06:26 I promise in verse five, I’m merciful and gracious to all those who fear me and delight to honor those who serve me, great will be their reward and eternal shall be their glory. In verse seven, I’ll reveal all mysteries, hidden mysteries. Verse eight, even the wonders of eternity will I reveal unto them. It’s this invitation into the very experience that Joseph and Sidney have. In a way it’s going to be repeated at the end of the section, lest we miss this invitation into seeing God’s economy is the big picture of what he’s doing. That’s what we’re getting is this invitation and promise that ends in verse 10. By my spirit, I will enlighten them by my power. I’ll make known unto them to the secrets of my will, and then we get that embodied and modeled for us by Joseph and Sidney. Starting in verse 11, we get a description of their experience and their testimony.
01:07:25 They’re commanded to do it and they do it. Bear record, what they’ve seen and heard. They hint at the spark that led them to the experience. It was the translation of the Bible. Maybe this is a place to pause and say it’s hard to understand the restoration if you’re biblically illiterate because the questions the saints come with are biblical questions. Joseph Smith’s language is biblical. He is in his own spiritual wrestle. Again, in the good sense with the Bible, the quote unquote Joseph Smith translation is this powerful engine of revelatory insight for Joseph Smith. If your listeners don’t know a lot about the Joseph Smith translation, this is a little nudge to do it because it’s hard to understand a lot of the Doctrine and Covenants without understanding this other project that he’s doing. At the same time, this project, he and Sidney are grappling with a passage from John.
01:08:30 The passage relates to judgment. They come up against a question. It’s a question that animated some of the very people that we cited before in the podcast here. These people who had, how could God be just and blank. For them, reference to multiple judgments and multiple resurrections in John led them to this instinct that heaven must mean more than one thing. It can’t be as simple as we’ve been led to believe this stark dualism of judgment saved or damned end of the story. It doesn’t work. That heaven must be bigger and broader is their instinct as they meditate upon this verse 19, they’ve got a question, they’re reading actively. They sit with their question and they’re meditating on it as a beautiful kind of class on this, right? They come across something they don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. Their instinct is, this can’t be what I thought it was. This doesn’t add up for me. That is not destructive tension for them. That is productive, revelatory tension for them. They meditate on it and in verse 19, the Lord touches the eyes of their understanding. They’re enveloped in divine glory.
Hank Smith: 01:09:58 If you wanted to have a cross reference for that, that would be first Nephi 11 verse one. Nephi has his incredible vision. It begins with I desire to know the things that my father had seen, believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me. I sat pondering in my heart. I was caught away in the spirit of the Lord.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:10:18 And that’s footnoted there. The intentionality that disciples have to muster for that space in our world, is unbelievable. The space for that is shrinking. A disciple’s life. You have to go out of your way to create space, to meditate on spiritual things. For all of us, this is probably a little bit of a spur, a little bit of a nudge again, is to say, in all my running around like a crazy person to get done everything that is pressing on my time and on my attention, do I even have the space in my life to pause on that? That is not easy to come by. You have to make it. You have to create it. But yeah, a great spur here. It’s a theological conundrum for them. How can this verse, how can this verse point to a stern judgment of heaven or hell, the way that they’ve been brought up?
Hank Smith: 01:11:27 Speaking on that, it seems to me my phone is going to decide if I’m going to go to Google or if I’m going to go to God with my questions. I can put my phone away. I can meditate and I can go to God, or I can go with maybe my first instinct, which is I’ve got all this information at my fingertips. John, your quote is in my ears, right? If you lack wisdom, ask God. If you lack information, ask Google.
John Bytheway: 01:11:56 Ask of Google, right?
Hank Smith: 01:11:57 Yeah.
John Bytheway: 01:11:58 Oh yeah, like where’s the nearest Five Guys? I always say that’s the most important question, but for wisdom, that’s different.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:12:07 The wisdoms function to prioritize, to order, to rank information for us to sift information for us, wisdom risks being lost in the information tsunami that we’re all a part of. See, that’s my worry for my students is that information everywhere, information faster than any of us can track. But what’s the mechanism that orders? ranks? curates? Spiritual lives are at risk here for us. It’s a great place to kind of read these men as meditating on this problem of eternity. What a great, what a great thing. The answer is that they behold the Son of God. Verse 20. The answer is, they behold the glory of the Son at the right hand of the Father, receive of his fullness. We can only guess at what some of this means. They struggle with language to articulate. They see the angels and then bear that testimony that we’ve had ringing in our ears.
01:13:14 Those of us who are Latter-day Saints and have been for a long time is one of the great articulations of Christian testimony in all of sacred history. To us. We hold these words dear that he lives, for we saw him on the right hand of God and heard the voice bearing record that he’s the only begotten of the Father by him, through him and of him the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof, begotten sons and daughters unto God. Sublime. It’s sublime language. We treasure it. We should treasure it. It’s worthy of parsing in all sorts of ways. It’s unforgettable in the catalog of Joseph Smith revelatory language. It’s beautiful. It’s an anchor to the vision for sure. It comes first, I think, in priority, on purpose. Their answer to the question of justice isn’t an abstract principle, it’s a being. It’s a living being.
01:14:14 It’s glorified Jesus. I can imagine all sorts of abstract concepts or framing language that I would dive into and hear the answer to. Their question about justice and judgment. Is Jesus. So profound that that’s the answer. It’s a person, it’s a divine being. We’re going to pick that up again in a bit. That’s not insignificant, that their question is, Hey, what’s the deal with heaven and multiple resurrections? How does judgment work? How does judgment relate to heaven? We’re given Jesus as the answer. Pretty beautiful.
Hank Smith: 01:14:56 Coming up in part two of this episode.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:14:59 That baptism point is addressed specifically in Joseph Smith’s own anxiety, which is answered by a subsequent vision.
Hank Smith: 01:15:07 Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Fluhman: 01:15:08 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.
