Hank Smith:                      00:00:00             Coming up in this episode on followHIM.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:00:04             Some things God withholds from us in mercy for a time. we may not see how he’s being merciful, but withholding that from us is. when we do receive something, it’s easy to congratulate ourselves and think we deserve it because we’re so good and righteous. That’s not the case either. It’s our lives are good because God is good.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:30             Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of FollowHim. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host. I’m here with my obedient co-host, John Bytheway. John, the lesson this week is titled, I Have Seen Your Sacrifices In Obedience. When I saw that, I thought that’s John. Obedient.

John Bytheway:               00:00:49             From what you’ve seen. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:51             Right, right. In public at least. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:00:53             Right. That’s right.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:56             John we are honored today to have with us Sister Brittany Chapman Nash. Brittany, welcome to followHIM.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:01:02             I’m happy to be here. Thanks.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:04             We’ve had some fun prior to recording. Well, we, John and I have had fun. Brittany’s been tolerant. We’ve been peppering her with questions about her and her background. It’s been a lot of fun for us to learn. John, the lesson this week is on sections 129 through 132. We are nearing the end of the Doctrine & Covenants. Does anything come to mind when you think of these sections?

John Bytheway:               00:01:30             Theological dynamite? Could we say it that way? There’s some things in 130 that talk about the nature of God that are pretty unique to us. I’m really looking forward to section 132 because I really wanna learn and that’s why I’m really glad we’ve got Brittany with us today.

Hank Smith:                      00:01:48             I remember my good friend, Dr. Alex Baugh. He said between 1820 and 1830, Joseph is cautious. He said between 1830 and 1840, Joseph is courageous. And then he said from 1840 to 1844, he is fearless. We’re starting to see that here in these sections. Brittany, as you’ve prepared for today, what are we looking forward to?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:02:12             Like you mentioned, these sections are riddled with interesting doctrinal concepts. We’re addressing everything from how to interact with a ministering angel to our celestial exaltation. In Doctrine & Covenants 132 we’re dealing with a lot of weighty matters. I’m excited to explore some of these concepts. Particularly I hope to share some experiences that Latter-day Saints had living Polygamously, because right there is where we come to understand the theology a little more of plural marriage, how it was lived out. That’s important for us to be able to sort of wrap our minds around the theology itself.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:56             John, do you remember Dr. MacLane Heward coming on and telling us, get to know these people instead of being offended on their behalf? Get to know them. Know their stories.

John Bytheway:               00:03:06             I will never forget that. Instead of being offended for them, let’s be inspired by them. I thought, wow, like you say Hank, that should be in vinyl on the wall somewhere.

Hank Smith:                      00:03:17             Absolutely. John, I have to tell you, when it comes to choosing the guest for a certain episode, I’m navigating it, letting it kind of flow and see what happens. This particular episode, John, I could tell you 100% I knew four years ago when we were with Dr. Kate Holbrook. I knew when we were recording who would come on or who at least I was gonna invite to come on for this episode. So this is for me, four years in the making. Now, there might be people out there who have not been planning on meeting Brittany for four years, so what do we know about her?

John Bytheway:               00:04:00             I have listened to Sister Brittany Chapman Nash’s work, but I haven’t met her. There’s a series of books that Deseret Book has produced in the past several years called Let’s Talk About, and it’s some of the tough issues. Let’s talk about it. What do we know? What don’t we know? And one of Brittany’s is let’s talk about polygamy. Brittany, I’m curious, can you tell us about that whole process of putting that book together?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:04:27             So I received the invitation to write, Let’s Talk About Polygamy when my first born child was three weeks old.

Hank Smith:                      00:04:35             You’re not busy.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:04:37             I know a huge learning curve there with motherhood and I’d done some work before working on the Women of Faith in Latter-days series, and I’d come to really admire and love the women in Latter-day Saint History and was so inspired by their stories and lives of faith, many of whom practiced polygamy. So when I was asked to write this book, you know, I was totally overwhelmed, as you can imagine with a newborn. My husband encouraged me to give it a try. Think about it. Eventually I decided, and Deseret Book was gracious in giving me a long timeline, and it took three years to write this little tiny book. One reason I accepted was because I knew it was going to be a short book and I thought, okay, yeah, I could do a short book. But little did I realize how difficult it would be to talk about such a huge subject in a hundred pages. That really required a lot of discipline in sifting through the sources and stories. You know, what’s the most important thing to include? And you really did have to think about how to use every single word because there’s a lot of material to cover, a lot of things that I wanted people to understand about the practice that I wanted to include, and so you just had to be concise and make it as accessible as possible. I really wanted people to come to understand those who practiced polygamy in the 19th century.

Hank Smith:                      00:05:57             Well, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Peter then. It is a phenomenal book. It really is. It can be life-changing, testimony changing. I loved it.

John Bytheway:               00:06:08             Yeah. Let me tell our audience more about Brittany. Brittany Chapman Nash. She’s been a historian for the Church History department for about 12 years. Even though those who are watching her saying she can’t be that old, she specializes in women’s history as she talked about. So Let’s Talk About Polygamy. That’s the book we’ve mentioned. And she also worked on the Women of Faith in the Latter-days series. She taught English in Taiwan, then she studied Victorian studies in the UK at the University of Lester. She has a a son who’s seven, a daughter who’s four. I’m just excited that we have her here. Like you said, Hank, who else would you trust to talk about this topic? Honestly, tell you exactly what we know. I’m really glad you’re here.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:06:56             Thank you for saying that. I feel like the people that I’m trusting to tell the story are the 19th century Saints themselves. Whatever I say comes from them. I’m relying on how they’ve expressed themselves because who better to talk about polygamy than those who practiced it? It’s not me, it’s them.

Hank Smith:                      00:07:13             I have learned through my years of rotating around the sun that if there’s a scandalous story, if you can talk to the person, that helps a lot more than talking to each other.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:07:27             Yes, and sometimes when we’re dealing with abstract thoughts of like, oh, I wonder what this is like, we often will go to the worst case scenario of what it could be like or think of that most scandalous story, which there certainly were in plural marriage situations. By and large that was not people’s experience.

Hank Smith:                      00:07:44             I want to hear it from the people involved. In fact, I would love if people did that to me, right? If someone said, I heard this, I’m gonna go talk to him about it rather than spread the fire. Let’s read from the Come, Follow Me manual and jump in. We already are, like I said earlier, the lesson is titled, I Have Seen Your Sacrifices in Obedience. This is how the manual begins. Through Joseph Smith, the Lord took some of the mystery out of eternity. The greatness of God, the glory of heaven and the vastness of eternity can seem almost familiar in the light of the restored gospel. Even to finite minds like ours. The revelations in Doctrine and Covenants 129 through 132 are a good example. What is God like? He has a body as tangible as man’s. What is heaven like? That same sociality which exists among us here, will exist among us there.

                                           00:08:34             In fact, one of the most joyous truths about heaven is that it can include our cherished family relationships if sealed by proper authority. Truths like these can make heaven feel less distant. Glorious yet reachable. But then sometimes God may ask us to do things that seem uncomfortable and unreachable. For many early Saints plural marriage was one such commandment. It was a severe trial of faith for Joseph Smith, his wife, Emma, and almost everyone who received it to make it through this trial. They needed more than just favorable feelings about the restored gospel. They needed faith in God that went far deeper than that. The commandment no longer stands today, but the faithful example of people who lived it still does, and this example inspires us when we are asked to make our own sacrifices in obedience. Wow. Well written and we have the perfect guess for it. Brittany, where do you wanna go from here?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:09:30             I liked the quotation that they included from Brigham Young stating Joseph Smith could reduce heavenly things to the understanding of the finite. They were trying to grapple with really big heavenly things and bring them down to a way that a regular person could understand them. We see that happening with some of the direct instructions that are given in Doctrine & Covenants 129 then on in some of these other sections. Thinking back on Brigham Young’s quote, that was something he and other early converts loved about the gospel as preached by Joseph Smith. Brigham Young in his own search had been seeking to know not just about the life of God as God asks us to live through morals and he wanted to know God in an embodied and tangible sense. Joseph Smith through revelation was able to offer those ideas to him and other converts.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:27             Yeah, taking heaven and making it somewhat what’d they use in the manual, reachable.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:10:33             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:10:33             Accessible. I can’t comprehend it, but I can see a piece now.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:10:37             Right. I kind of see some familiarity. As we’ve seen throughout the Doctrine and Covenants, some of these revelations come as a result of questions that Joseph Smith is asking. He’s seeking answers to questions and that spurs revelation. So if we look at Doctrine & Covenants 129, the questions that Joseph Smith is asking like, who are the beings in heaven? What did they look like? How can we detect false spirits? That was a sincere question that people had at the time. If we look at Section 129 answers to the questions, angels are resurrected persons with bodies of flesh and bones, like Jesus. The spirits of perfected, and just men who have not yet resurrected, so those are the beings in heaven. Then how can we detect false spirits? This kind of echoes 1 John 4:1 where it encourages people to try or test the spirits to know whether or not they’re from God. Joseph Smith offers this shaking hands test, which as a kid I always found was like, oh, okay. I have to remember this.

John Bytheway:               00:11:44             Yeah.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:11:44             In case I ever receive an angelic visitation. So he is offering this formula of how can you tell that something’s from God? The part that’s really intriguing to me starts verse eight where it says, if it be the devil as an angel of light, when you ask him to shake hands, he will offer you his hand and you will not feel anything. You may therefore detect him and know it is not an angelic messenger. And then concludes, these are three grand keys whereby you may know whether any administration is from God. How do these things apply to us who may not receive angelic visitations on the regular?

                                           00:12:25             It reminded me of an experience that I had. Well, looking at what senses are people relying on to discern whether or not a message is from God? He is using his physical senses, not feeling anything with his hand. He’s seeing something. In verse eight it says, the devil may look like an angel of light. It may seem through this one physical sense, light that it is a heavenly visitor. Through another physical sense, touch and using reason, a person could detect false spirits. As I was pondering how this could apply to me, I was thinking about the importance of reason of using our reason in spiritual things and in understanding perhaps how God may be communicating with us because that’s not a tool that I’ve always used in my life. So often I’ve depended on just one of those senses. You know how I feel to discern whether or not God is communicating with me, but I haven’t used a second sense.

                                           00:13:33             Is God speaking to my reasoning as well? To share an example to hopefully maybe will be helpful to someone. I was thinking back on a story from my young adulthood when I was thinking about what to major in in college. I was in turmoil thinking about what to do ’cause I really wanted this significant manifestation and guidance because I felt it was so critical to my future life. I first went to a small liberal arts college called Southern Virginia University for my first two years. Wonderful experience. I felt that I should major in music at that time ’cause I enjoy singing. I did that and it was a fantastic experience at SVU ’cause you’re in this cozy, lovely community. People are encouraging you and you have lots of opportunities to share your talents and you’re appreciated for your talents because at the time when I went there were less than 400 students. It was a lovely place.

Hank Smith:                      00:14:39             Yeah. I was there in the beginning too. Just a tight, tight little community that went to Subway together.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:14:48              Exactly. Then I transferred to BYU. After two years there I thought I better follow this initial prompting that I received to study music. BYU is a fantastically different experience than SVU. There’s tens of thousands of students.

Hank Smith:                      00:15:06             And you don’t know everyone.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:15:08             No. The music program there is extremely competitive. My first year there I was preparing myself to get ready to try out for the music school. It was a torturous year. I held on because I was going to follow this prompting I had received and I was relying solely on feeling and not using my reason as well. I am not speaking comprehensively to all spiritual experiences, but I’m sharing this for what it’s worth. I found by the end of the school year, I was praying not to get into the music school because it was just so competitive. I didn’t want to major in music, but I didn’t know how to get my head out of this commitment I had to this spiritual impression.

Hank Smith:                      00:15:55             Heavenly father, please take it back. Right?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:15:58             Yeah, I did not get in through the music school and I was so relieved because I felt this immense relief that I could do what I wanted, like choose my own path, use my reason. At that time in my life, I didn’t know how to detect or trust my reason because I was being pulled by emotion. I think by that point we need to be careful mixing emotion with spiritual promptings and our reason can kind of help us make that discernment. If I had trusted my reason a bit more than I did, I would have been spared a very difficult experience potentially. But the Lord makes all things for our good and for me, looking back, thinking about how God does communicate with us, I believe he appeals to both our intellect and our spirits.

Hank Smith:                      00:16:57             Brittany, you were talking about the senses right? Touch, sight and you were talking about feeling. It’s Alma 32 where Alma’s talking about the seed and it grows and he says, you will taste this light.

John Bytheway:               00:17:11             When you have tasted this light. Yeah. Which is a mix of metaphors. Usually we see the light and we taste the fruit. Here we’re going to taste light.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:23             None of us walked into our studio today and went, that light tastes good, right? Like this is good light. It tastes good. I threw that in as a cross reference. He’ll look like an angel of light. So maybe it looks but it’s not the same. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:17:38             Doesn’t taste right. I’m not discerning it. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:17:41             It’s like a painted fire. It looks right, but it doesn’t feel the same.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:17:45             It’s easy to forget that God wants to communicate with us, he wants to reach us. It’s good to seek for multiple ways that he’s trying to speak to us. It is something that takes time and experience to discern. This was one experience from my life that helped me to see more clearly how God communicated with me and that it was important to use both reason and feeling. That’s in the Doctrine & Covenants as well. I’ll speak to your mind and to your heart.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:13             Almost like a gas pedal and the brake pedal. Mind and heart. I need both of these.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:18:17             I think that’s a great analogy. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:20             Brittany, you made me chuckle earlier when you said, for those of us who don’t have these regular experiences with angels. Here’s Joseph Smith writing this out, he seems almost casual with doesn’t this happen to everybody?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:18:35             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:18:36             This is good knowledge ’cause you might use this on a daily basis and you and I are, especially when I was younger, I remember thinking, what, okay, I’ll remember this in case this ever happens. In your study of Latter-day Saint history, there’s angels.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:19:00             Yeah and people, early Latter-day Saints were receiving visitations. It was more of a spiritual gift that they sought after at the time. Yeah. That’s one way that they received messages spiritually that they were open to.

Hank Smith:                      00:19:09             Yeah, and I would imagine anyone who receives these type of experiences keeps them pretty close to their…

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:19:15             Right. Right.

Hank Smith:                      00:19:16             Pretty close to their heart. Right. I would guess that the things you’ve read about are probably in journals, letters.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:19:23             They tend to, yeah, not be in published sources.

Hank Smith:                      00:19:27             Wow. So John, this probably happens to you. You’re probably like I’ve used this.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:19:32             Yeah, probably.

John Bytheway:               00:19:33             No. In fact, what you got me thinking about was one of the things that we’ve learned this year, as the first missionaries went out in the restoration they weren’t talking about the first vision. They were talking about the Book of Mormon. Maybe that was one of those experiences. Joseph eventually had to tell how this all started, but he held that close at first. I also am reminded of Elder Bruce R. McConkie. I introduced my students to Elder McConkie because we have a lot of quotations from him and I always say Elder McConkie said something about everything. So sometimes if you can’t find a statement on it, you’ll probably find something that Elder McConkie said. He said, sometimes these experiences, and I’m paraphrasing a bit, are so miraculous they get written up in the scriptures. It’s not the typical experiences sometimes that are written up. It’s the miraculous ones and maybe for Joseph Smith, this was typical. But for the rest of us we’re, okay I’ll keep that in mind if I ever need that and probably the vast majority of us won’t.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:20:38             I think he was also responding to people approaching him and saying, how do I tell the difference if I’m seeing these angels?

Hank Smith:                      00:20:45             John, it reminds me, we’ve had two Olympians on this year, Peter Vidmar and Noelle Pikus Pace.

John Bytheway:               00:20:51             Right.

Hank Smith:                      00:20:51             And they’ve talked about the Olympics so casually. Oh, don’t you hate it when you’re in the Olympics and you get hurt.

John Bytheway:               00:20:57             And we’re both trying to go. Yeah, yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:21:01             He seems to, and some of these early Saints seem to live in a beautiful spiritual realm that maybe we all don’t live in, so we shouldn’t balk at it. We should probably say, wow, that’s amazing that you even need this instruction.

John Bytheway:               00:21:16             Yeah. I like the way the manual is introduced, that they’re gonna tell us things about the next life. What kind of beings are there? There’s resurrected beings, so flesh and blood is referring to a mortal body, one that’s capable of death, and in the resurrection, this section references Jesus saying, handle me and see. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones, so a resurrected being is flesh and bones. A flesh and blood body has bones too. That’s why it used to confuse me as a kid. A mortal is referred to as flesh and blood and being quickened by the Spirit. I don’t know what, what you guys think that means. Quickened is powered by maybe? So it’s interesting that he makes that distinction. Jesus post-resurrection was flesh and bone. Mortals are flesh and blood.

Hank Smith:                      00:22:09             Yeah, that’s interesting. Brittany, you’re the historian here so you can absolutely correct me. This section changed for me after I went through the presentation of the Endowment, angels shaking hands, detecting, you know, light from dark. Isn’t this around the same time period where Joseph is receiving revelation on the presentation of the Endowment?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:22:36             I love that you bring that up Hank. In May, 1842 is when the first endowment was presented. This section was given February 9th, 1843. At this time, people were only going receiving their endowment for themselves. So they weren’t returning back to the second floor of the red brick store receiving another endowment for a proxy endowment. You can see that it was on people’s minds. What’s the significance of our interactions with the next world of shaking hands of what these things could mean or what implications could they have? This was a good clarification for people, not just with the meaning of the endowment and how to interpret their spiritual experiences.

Hank Smith:                      00:23:22             Wow. Maybe I used to, when I was younger, kind of balk at this section, kind of go what in the world? But now I’m pretty inspired that people live in this spirituality, this time of spirituality that they need this instruction. I want to be there. I want to be in that space.

John Bytheway:               00:23:41             It reminds me, Hank and Brittany of the time in the Book of Mormon, when if these things have ceased, then has faith ceased also, and maybe you know, that’s part of that period of time. There were a lot of believers and a lot of manifestations and they had to figure out which ones are legit. I was looking in Steve Harper’s book, we’ve had Dr. Harper on the show before with context, and I loved the first paragraph and the last paragraph of what he said about section 129. Section 129 is esoteric. It can only be understood by people with temple knowledge. It’s also euphemistic. It’s no more about handshaking than kicking the bucket is about actually kicking a bucket. And then his last paragraph, part of being endowed with God’s power is the ability to discern true from false messengers. And we might even say messages. As Joseph taught, if Satan could appear in the guise of an angel without having any ability to know better, we would not be free agents. What I love about this is the Lord is telling us, I don’t want you to be deceived. I’m giving you the keys to discernment. More about discernment than about shaking hands.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:24:55             Yeah, I would agree.

Hank Smith:                      00:24:57             That’s beautiful. If Steve’s out there listening, we’ll test him right now so nobody tell him. Nobody tell him that we’re testing to see if he listens. So Steve, if you’re listening, you better text me the word esoteric. But nobody tell him. Nobody tell him, Jen, not even you.

John Bytheway:               00:25:15             Thank you for what you wrote, Steve ’cause that helped me. It’s a bigger issue than just handshaking. It’s God doesn’t want us to be deceived. I like what it says here. It’s contrary to the order of heaven for a just man to deceive.

Hank Smith:                      00:25:30             Yeah.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:25:30             I love that.

Hank Smith:                      00:25:31             Discernment. Okay, Brittany, what do you wanna do next?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:25:35             Okay, well let’s flip to section 130 here. The questions that are being asked are things like what is heaven and what meaning do our experiences and relationships on earth have in heaven? Heaven will be a familiar place to us. It’s not something to be scared of but to look forward to. If we begin with verse one, it gives a really revolutionary piece of theology, which I think is unique to Latter-day Saints. It says, when the Savior shall appear, we shall see Him as He is. We shall see that He is a man like ourselves. A lot of early church members are coming from a Trinitarian worldview where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God in three persons. The concept of seeing Jesus Christ as a man like ourselves would be mind blowing. To those like myself who are raised in the church it’s just like, oh yeah, you know, of course Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are three separate beings. To a new listener that’s striking. Even though the Savior will look like us, that doesn’t mean that He is like us. We should not consider Him an equal because He’s infinitely higher than us. He’s not on our level. We need Him and will continue to need Him and the Atonement that he gifted us. He has the ability to lead us higher and that He is someone familiar and that is a nice thought.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:17             I remember Elder Maxwell said, mercifully, he calls us his friends.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:27:23             Not by entitlement, not because we’re so good.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:27             Right. He says, any relation in where we stand next to him tells us we do not stand at all. We kneel. He is kind to bring us to speak with Him, but I like what you said there. We’re not entitled to a let’s look eye to eye and talk.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:27:46             No, it’s his condescension and kindness to us and to even give us his physical form is pretty amazing. What a great gift and trust, in a way, to us.

Hank Smith:                      00:27:55             That’s a great thought.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:27:57             If we move on to verse two, it says, and the same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, referring to heaven. Only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy. This is one of my favorite verses in all of scripture because of the reassurance that it gives me. We find so much joy in our friendships, familial relationships. What gives meaning to life, I think, is those who are loved ones who we’re surrounded by. To know that that can continue coupled with eternal glory is wonderful to think about. I think in my life there’s been a few moments where I could say, this is perfect, the people that you’re with and there’s just perfect unanimity of feeling and you feel understood and loved. There’s a few times in my life where I feel like I’ve tasted heaven and it’s always been when I am in the company of others.

                                           00:28:56             As I think also about the concept of eternal glory, I think of what grace hopefully that gives us, coupled with eternal glory. Maybe we won’t have the obstacles that prevent us from having better relationships now in our lives. Whether I think of relationships that I wish I could have a do-over with, I wish I understood that person better. I wish I had not been so prideful in my interaction. I hope that that screen of humanity of misunderstanding is taken away, that that’s part of that concept of being coupled with eternal glory. I yearn for a do-over in some situations that I’ve had with people because we are finite human beings. We don’t have the knowledge we wish we had about other people.

Hank Smith:                      00:29:48             I think this statement from Joseph Smith could have ended up in section 130 right here. John and Brittany, you both know this, friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism designed to revolutionize and civilize the world, cause wars and contentions to cease, men to become friends and brothers.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:30:11             Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Hank Smith:                      00:30:12             John, do you remember when Dr. Rebecca Clarke was here and she talked, I think 4 Nephi where she talked about heaven. She said, picture heaven. She said, you don’t picture streets, golden streets and harps or clouds. Who do you picture? Your friends, your family, people. Heaven is all about people.

John Bytheway:               00:30:33             Brittany, what a beautiful thought. How did you say that? The times you have tasted heaven, it was with people. I think they’re tree of life moments where you feel the love of God, it’s with people that you’re with. 2 is one of my favorite verses and it seems like most people in or out of our particular faith have this idea that I’ll see them again that, oh, they’re watching over us now or I felt my mom with me today, or I felt my dad with me today. For him to just come out and say it. Yep. The same sociality which exists here will exist there, is huge and I love it and I have that expectation of seeing everybody again and they seeing us in wonderful reunions. We talk about it all the time. I think I’ve told you this before, but I had a member of my ward who said, I’ve been to a lot of meetings, which we all have. Sister Marsh who loves our podcast, she said, but the meetings that have changed me the most have been funerals. One of those is it creates that expectation of we’ll see them again. I love this verse to tell us. Yep, you will.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:31:48             Another interesting way of looking at this verse from a historical perspective is it shows kind of a cultural shift of the way people are viewing heaven. They’re increasingly viewing marriage as union based on love and romance and also heaven as that our earthly ties are reflected back in heaven again. Heaven is a place where they will not only glorify God, but also continue to be with our loved ones.

Hank Smith:                      00:32:18             Brittany, I just want to sit here for a second in these little tastes of heaven that we have with people, Sara and I, when we have an evening with Lynn and Hailey or Jeff and Julie or Tyler and Alicia, those are, they fill your heart and mind and it’s just being together. It really is just being together. You’re mostly talking about your kids or talking about your work. Very mundane things. I think you’re right there. Put a name to something I’ve always felt, which is just a taste of heaven. John, we should issue a challenge out there for everyone listening to text a friend and say something like that.

John Bytheway:               00:33:01             I had a taste of heaven.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:03             Yeah, you give me a taste of heaven. Our friendship gives me a taste for heaven. Yeah. Something like that. Brittany I love it when I’ve felt something and someone puts a name to it, a description to it.

John Bytheway:               00:33:16             Articulates it.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:17             Yeah.

John Bytheway:               00:33:18             Love what you said. I have people, so do all of us, that we miss dearly. There’s this hopeful expectation of that sociality, which is a strange word I’ve only seen in one place in my life right there. That idea that no, that expectation is there will be that kind of community. There will be those moments again with the groups that we love.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:33:43             And that gives such hope to us and such meaning, way to keep us going when things are hard to look forward to. Being in that perfect state with our loved ones forever.

Hank Smith:                      00:33:57             Brittany, we’ve had two of your colleagues who have been on the show and have since passed away, Melissa Inouye, and then four years ago, the same section in the Doctrine & Covenants with Kate Holbrook. I think Joseph Smith said the idea that I will see my friends again, my family again, that is a glorious expectation. It’s not just a hope. It’s a, it becomes an expectation.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:34:21             And I think that’s probably the only way to deal with the depth of sorrow when you lose someone you love so dearly. That’s the hopeful view.

Hank Smith:                      00:34:30             Yeah.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:34:31             My heart has been full of Kate Holbrook thinking about her all day today, knowing that four years ago she spoke on these sections, how much I loved and admired her as a friend and human being. I was thinking about Melissa as well as another colleague of mine who passed away. I was thinking about my last interaction with Melissa. The last conversation we had in April, 2024. I was going to speak at Southern Virginia University to give a talk there to the students. Melissa had also spoken there and when we talked, she wasn’t talking about the cancer that she was seriously suffering with. She wasn’t talking about her hardships. She just cheerfully asked me, oh, Brittany, have you spoken at SVU yet? Remembering this conversation we had had before and I just was so struck by that to be in the midst of such suffering, but yet still remembering this silly conversation you’d had with a friend. I’m very grateful to have had those two wonderful colleagues and friends in my life.

Hank Smith:                      00:35:28             The same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there only, it’ll be better. Right? Like, wow.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:35:37             What better thought. Let’s just end there.

John Bytheway:               00:35:40             One of the things that we loved about what Melissa taught us was that we can speak of others and redeem their reputations. This tells us we’re gonna see these people again. We gotta be careful how we talk about people. That we’re gonna see again and help them redeem their reputation. That goes right along with this. We’re gonna see them again. I imagine listeners may be hearing this for the first time going, oh, really? With that kind of a, oh, I’m so glad. When you think of the infant mortality and, and all the babies that Joseph and Emma buried and everybody else, just infant mortality being high and malaria and the sicknesses, that expectation of reunions is, really?

Hank Smith:                      00:36:27             John, I had this prepared for a little bit later in our show, but I think it’s a good place to read this now. This is Parley P. Pratt when he says, Joseph told me about eternal marriage. He said, it was at this time I received from him Joseph Smith, the first idea of eternal family organization and the eternal union of the sexes in those inexpressible endearing relationships, which none but the highly intellectual, the refined and pure in heart know how to prize and which are at the very foundation of everything worthy to be called happiness. Till then, I had learned to esteem kindred affections and sympathies as appertaining solely to this transitory state, I think meaning this earth, as something from which the heart must be entirely weaned in order to be fitted for its heavenly state. It was Joseph Smith who taught me how to prize the endearing relationships of father and mother, husband and wife, brother and sister, son and daughter.

                                           00:37:26             It was from him that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity, and she had passed away, Thankful Pratt, in Kirtland, and that the refined sympathies and affections, which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love. It was from him that I learned that we might cultivate these affections and grow and increase in the same to all eternity while the result of our endless union would be an offspring as numerous as the stars from heaven or the sands of the seashore. I had loved before, but I knew not why, but now I loved with a pureness, an intensity of elevated exalted feeling, which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this groveling sphere and expand it as the ocean.

John Bytheway:               00:38:16             Boy, could Parley write, huh?

Hank Smith:                      00:38:19              I wish I could write like Parley P. Pratt.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:38:21             I know. So Parley P. Pratt had quite a few wives. He was one of the few men I think who was able to make all of his wives feel equally loved. Each of them felt very special to him and uniquely loved by him. That’s a special gift that not every plural husband had. There’s something about Parley and family relationships that you really seem to grasp and see value in.

Hank Smith:                      00:38:50             Well that’s a trailer for things to come. Brittany, we’ve had you for a while now and we’ve only covered a little bit of the lesson. What else do you want to hit in section 130? I know you’d love to cover every verse. I want to get to 132.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:39:06             We’ll jump to verse 18 where it says, whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection and if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come. And this is some great food for thought approaching this life as a training ground. We can use our time here well and view it as the great school that it is, or we can squander our time. What is unique about this life that maybe we can’t learn in heaven? The reason that we had to come here to our earthly bodies. That is one thing. One way we obtain knowledge in this life is through what we experience in our bodies. We learn so much with our bodies, discipline, doing physically difficult things, how to bridle our passions.

                                           00:40:06             Our passions can be diverse, you know, gluttony, sexuality, we’re trying to learn how to discipline ourselves. Also, illness, it’s so difficult to endure illness, to not have our bodies function the way we want them to, but that is also a huge training ground as well. I remember I had a C-section when I gave birth to my second daughter. The recovery process is difficult. For the first time, I got a glimpse into what it might be like to experience chronic illness. The difficulty that that could cause. That made me think of Spencer W. Kimball. I don’t know if either of you remember much about his legacy with illness. I’ll just jump to one quotation. He suffered with so many things beginning in his childhood with boils in his thirties, multiple heart attacks in his fifties, and then recurring throat cancer that affected the way that he spoke and as an apostle and later prophet, that’s essential to be able to speak to church members, and then in his eighties he suffered three brain hemorrhages.

                                           00:41:17             He’s dealt with these incredibly difficult physical challenges while operating under heavy responsibility in a public position. He said this, which I think of occasionally when I am feeling sorry for myself if I’m not feeling well or something. He says, have you ever seen someone who has been helpless for so long that he has divested himself of every envy and jealousy and ugliness in his whole life and who has perfected his life? No pain suffered by man or woman upon the earth will be without its compensating effects if it be suffered in resignation and if it be met with patience. Sickness sometimes is a great blessing. People become angels through sickness. I reflect on how purifying, if people let it, physical ailments can be and and that’s tough to do. That’s one thing we can learn, gaining intelligence and knowledge in this life. Eventually that knowledge will be an advantage in the world to come somehow through what it teaches us spiritually.

John Bytheway:               00:42:27             I’m glad that you brought up this verse, Brittany. I’ve always, whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. It kind of makes you wanna make a list. What else can I take with me? What gets past the checkout counter called death?

                                           00:42:47             I remember Og Mandino who wrote something like, death will unload thy cargo. Whatever you attain in this life, so it’s a fun question. What actually goes with us? You are talking about things that fit in your spirit, getting our spirit to be in charge of our body. That’s one of the things that we learn. I remember hearing a speaker a long time ago, way before Hank was born, before both of you were born before I went on a mission where somebody said, the things we can take with us are our character, our intelligence, and our relationships, and I never forgot that idea. They all fit in our spirit, our character, our intelligence, our relationships. Then he said, why is it we work so hard for things we cannot take with us often at the expense of those we can? Which was a whoa type of a…

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:43:42             Amen.

John Bytheway:               00:43:42             If we’re working hard for things that will be unloaded at that checkout counter called death. Sorry, can’t take that with you. We can take that with us. It’s fun to think of decisions. In fact, when I heard this, it was before my mission and I contemplated would a mission build character, intelligence, relationships? Absolutely. And it helped me make that decision, eternal decisions, that build things that actually I can take with me in the resurrection.

Hank Smith:                      00:44:16             It reminds me of this fun little story President Faust told. He’s quoting Elder ElRay L. Christiansen who told President Faust about one of his distant Scandinavian relatives who joined the church. He was very well off, sold his lands and stock in Denmark to come to Utah with his family. For a while he did well as far as his church and activities were concerned, and he prospered financially. However, he became so caught up with his possessions that he forgot about his purpose in coming to America. The bishop visited him and implored him to become active as he used to be. The years passed and some of his brethren visited him and said, now Lars, the Lord was good to you when you were in Denmark. He has been good to you since you have come here. We think now since you’re growing a little older that it would be good for you to spend some of your time in the interest of the church. After all, you can’t take these things with you when you go. Jolted by this comment, the man replied, well then, I will not go. Then President Faust says, but he did and so will all of us. He says, it’s so easy for some to become obsessed with what they possess and lose eternal perspective.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:45:27             Absolutely.

John Bytheway:               00:45:28             You know, one time, Hank and Brittany, Barney Fife is looking at his paycheck and he says to Andy, well look at all these deductions and this tax, and Sheriff Taylor says, you know what they say, Barn, you can’t take it with you, and Barney Fife says, well, take it with me. They keep picking at me like this. I won’t be able to go myself.

Hank Smith:                      00:45:53             It’s so much better when you do it John.

John Bytheway:               00:45:57             Even Alma said to Corianton, behold, you cannot carry them with you, and it’s a really interesting thing to think, what can we take? And the one who put it so beautifully was President Dallin H. Oaks in his talk, The Challenge to Become. What we get to keep is what we have become. That helps us understand the parable of the wise and foolish virgins too of not sharing. Boy, they were so selfish. Well, no, it’s not that. It’s that you can’t share what you’ve become. Hank, you’re really charitable. Can I have some of your lifetime of charity?

Hank Smith:                      00:46:32             Right.

John Bytheway:               00:46:33             Can’t share that, you know, so.

Hank Smith:                      00:46:34             Yeah, and I’d give it to you if I could, right? Like

John Bytheway:               00:46:37             Yeah, but it’s unshareable. We take with us what we have become.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:46:43             We take with us the knowledge and intelligence, but also obedience and diligence, the knowledge of our Savior that we have received through being obedient and diligent, so we’ve come to know the Savior in a way we couldn’t otherwise. In verse 21, it says, and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. There can be two dangers in how we read this verse. If we feel we are not receiving the blessings we want, it’s because we have been disobedient or have not hit on the perfect formula of how to pray or we’re not righteous enough to receive that blessing. But some things God withholds from us in mercy. For a time we may not see how he’s being merciful, but withholding that from us is. Second, when we do receive something, it’s easy to congratulate ourselves and think we deserve it because we’re so good and righteous. That’s not the case either. It’s our lives are good because God is good, not because of what we’ve done that makes us deserve it. Even though we certainly benefit from obeying the laws of God, that goes without saying. That’s what we’re intended to do. That provides the outlet where God can give us certain blessings. I don’t think we should go around feeling that we deserve every good thing that happens to us.

John Bytheway:               00:48:06             Was it Elder Christofferson who used the vending machine example? If I do this obedience, I get this blessing, and if it doesn’t pop out right now, I get really mad. I’m hitting the machine and everything. Where’s my blessing? Sometimes there’s a waiting period that occurs.

Hank Smith:                      00:48:24             John, I have that quote right in front of me. If you don’t mind, I’ll steal your spotlight here.

John Bytheway:               00:48:28             Yeah, share it.

Hank Smith:                      00:48:29             He said, this is April of 2022, so fairly recent. Some misunderstand the promises of God to mean that obedience to him yields specific outcomes on a fixed schedule. They might think, if I diligently serve a full-time mission, God will bless me with a happy marriage and children, or if I refrain from doing schoolwork on the Sabbath, God will bless me with good grades or if I pay tithing, God will bless me with that job I’ve been wanting. If life doesn’t fall out precisely this way or according to an expected timetable, they may feel betrayed by God, but things are not so mechanical in the divine economy. We ought not to think of God’s plan, this is what you said John, as a cosmic vending machine where we, one, select a desired blessing, two, insert the required sum of good works and three, the order is promptly delivered.

                                           00:49:18             He says, God will indeed honor his covenants and promises to each of us. We need not worry about that. The atoning power of Jesus Christ who descended below all things and then ascended on high and who possesses all power in heaven and in earth ensures that God can and will fulfill his promises. It is essential that we honor and obey his laws, and then this is I think what Brittany you were getting at, but not every blessing predicated on obedience to law is shaped, designed and timed according to our expectations. We do our best, but we must leave to him the management of blessings, both temporal and spiritual.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:49:58             It’s truth. And then in verse 22 it says, the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s, the Son also, but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of spirit. Were it not so the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:15             If we weren’t heretics before.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:50:18             I know. Yeah. It explodes the Trinity concept completely if it wasn’t already exploded in the first verse of section 130, this further clarifies how divergent it is from other faiths.

Hank Smith:                      00:50:31             If people say you’re not Christian because you don’t believe in the trinity, this verse is evidence. Joseph Smith took hundreds of years of religious tradition and exed it in one verse.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:50:46             One in purpose.

John Bytheway:               00:50:47             Have either of you ever been to maybe the Manti pageant or perhaps the Hill Cumorah pageant and had somebody hand you a leaflet that says these people, they actually think that God has a body? Well, this tradition of passing out pamphlets has a long history. There was an anti-Christian writer, named Celsus who wrote On the True Doctrine, a discourse against the Christians. This is 178AD. This is before the first creed. This is translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann. Now, this is amazing. The Christians say God has hands, a mouth and a voice. They’re always proclaiming that God said this or God spoke. The heavens declare the work of his hands, they say. I can only comment such a God is no God at all. For God has neither hands, mouth or voice, nor any characteristics of which we know. They say that God made man in his image failing to realize God is not at all like a man, nor vice versa.

                                           00:51:52             God resembles no form known to us. They say God has form namely the form of Logos who became flesh in Christ, but we know that God is without shape, without color. They say God moved above the waters he created, but we know it’s contrary to the nature of God to move. Their absurd doctrines even contained references to God walking about in the garden he created for man. We sure do. They speak of him being angry, jealous, moved to repentance, sorry, sleepy, in short as being in every respect more a man than a God. You ready you guys? They have not read Plato who teaches us in the Republic that God the good does not even participate in being. So here is a Plato follower criticizing the Christians for believing the same things that we believe today. If only somebody had prayed and actually seen God and maybe God talked to him, maybe he would point to the other and say, this is my Beloved Son, and point to the other probably using his hand. It’s interesting to think that you’re right, Hank, who’s the heretics? Well, the early Christians thought God had a body and there were anti-Christian Christians writing against that belief.

Hank Smith:                      00:53:18             Wow, John, that’s pretty cool. A little bit of what Brittany showed us in verse two plays out in verse 22 because how do you have a relationship with a God you can’t see? You can’t touch?

John Bytheway:               00:53:35             He’s everywhere, He’s nowhere, he’s… Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      00:53:39             I know among the three of us and all of our listeners, many of our listeners, that the idea of being held by God, being embraced in the arms of his love is an idea that, yeah is a hopeful expectation.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:53:53             Yeah that tangibility is something reassuring. Yeah. Like you said, we look forward to that experience.

John Bytheway:               00:54:02             The theologians, they took God’s body, they took his gender. We have been disinherited. We no longer have a Father in Heaven. You remember, probably to me the finest talk I’ve ever heard on our belief in the Godhead was Elder Holland. It was called The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He Hath Sent, he spoke about after one of the creeds that redefined the nature of God, that a monk named Seraphian fell down, grabbed his head and said, woe is me. They have taken my God away from me, and I know not whom to address or to adore. Elder Holland referenced that and I think, wow yeah. Who am I supposed to worship now? What is God like? And that’s what we’re getting right here.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:54:53             That was a yearning that Brigham Young expressed. He wanted to know God as a tangible, like, who is he? He’s not just commandments. Who is God. They felt that Joseph Smith, through his revelations, provided that insight they yearned for and we see that clearly here.

John Bytheway:               00:55:14             Where would Satan start? He would start with trying to alter the nature of God. That the articles of faith come in the same order that things were messed up.

Hank Smith:                      00:55:27             I bet you both remember President Benson’s quote, nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar his face is to us.

John Bytheway:               00:55:42             That’s my favorite quotation I’ve ever heard, period. Hank, the one you just read. Brigham Young said, we are trying to become acquainted with our Father in heaven when the fact is we are already well acquainted with him and there’s not one of us who has not dwelt in his house year after year, and he said, no other one fact will so much astound us is that we were so stupid in the body.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:05             Well, it’s already astounding me.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:56:06             That’s true. Yeah. I know.

Hank Smith:                      00:56:11             Brittany, John and I are having too good of a time here and we’re talking too much. Keep going. Keep teaching.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           00:56:18             All right. If we go to Doctrine & Covenants 131, this is an interesting section. This was not a revelation that Joseph Smith dictated word for word in the traditional sense of his revelations. This was a compilation of notes taken by William Clayton from a sermon of Joseph Smith for the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants compiled by Orson Pratt, as well as teachings that he gave to some close friends of his, Melissa and Benjamin Johnson, when he was teaching them about eternal marriage and preparing them to be sealed to each other. Orson Pratt was compiling revelations and other teachings of Joseph Smith. This was among his additions to the 1876 Doctrine & Covenants. We can think of it as teachings of Joseph Smith, but not someone writing down exactly word for word what Joseph Smith is saying. First one, it says, in the celestial glory, there are three heavens or degrees. There has been some discussion about this first verse.

                                           00:57:23             Does that mean that in the Celestial Kingdom there are three degrees of glory within that, or is it referring to simply the Telestial, Terrestrial and Celestial Kingdoms? Those three kingdoms. There’s a compelling source by Orson Pratt who was preaching in 1875. Hopefully, we’ll have some clarifying doctrine expressing exactly what we can expect in the next life with regard to this principle because we don’t have anything directly from Joseph Smith that I’m aware of that gives clarity to exactly what the Celestial Kingdom will look like in the next world. What we, our basic sense is that it’s degrees of glory. Orson Pratt in 1875 said, millions and millions that may reach the Celestial Kingdom, if they embrace the gospel that will not reach the higher order of glory in that kingdom for there are different degrees of glory even in that one kingdom. The reading of that verse has gone through different iterations through time.

                                           00:58:24             It seems most compelling to me that it implies that there are different degrees of glory within the Celestial Kingdom or within all of those kingdoms. We can view that by going back to a quotation by Orson Pratt. He was preaching in 1875 and Orson Pratt was an apostle to Joseph Smith, learned about plural marriage from him, like Parley P. Pratt in that quote that you read earlier, Hank, about learning from Joseph Smith, the order of Heaven and the role of the family in heaven. I would say that those brothers probably have a pretty good understanding of what Joseph Smith had been expressing. Orson Pratt explains that there are different degrees of glory even within the Celestial Kingdom. There will be people of all marital statuses who live in that kingdom in the Celestial Kingdom. I can provide that exact quote if you would like. It’s available online, but this particular sermon comes from the amazing transcriptions done by LaJean Carruth in the Church History Department. She has unlocked a whole world of sermons that were written in shorthand and had never been translated before, written out into longhand, so she has a gift for shorthand and has been going through these lost sermons uncovering some lovely details to give more insight into history and theology from this early time period.

Hank Smith:                      00:59:54             You are right when you said this is theological just point after point, after point of wow.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           01:00:02             Putting it side by side to what is being taught by other Christian faiths at the time, you see just how divergent it is, what people are used to experiencing in church.

Hank Smith:                      01:00:15             Yeah. God has a body. I’m married in heaven.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           01:00:20             Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:00:21             I have the same sociality. This is really fun. I find myself frequently quoting section 131 verse six, that you can’t be saved in ignorance, meaning you eventually have to learn all these things. We’ll go to the Celestial Kingdom and go, I have no idea how I got here but I’m sure glad I’m here. So sometimes like maybe today, Brittany, we want to avoid some topics like I’d rather not know about that, and I think the Joseph Smith, the Lord is teaching here. It goes back to Section 130 to gain knowledge and intelligence in this life. I’m excited for us to continue our discussion because I can’t be saved in ignorance, so I’m excited for Brittany to teach me.

John Bytheway:               01:01:07             I also love verse seven, such a fascinating idea that all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure and can only be discerned by pure eyes. Whoa, this is great stuff. What do you call this metaphysics or? It’s just so cool that we hear scripture or stories about our eyes were opened, and I just wonder if that’s what it means, a purer eye somehow can see spiritual things in a better way, but spirit is matter. It’s just more pure and refined. One of the reasons Plato did not like this idea of God having a body, if I understand correctly, is that matter is evil and coarse and unrefined in Greek philosophy. So for God to have a body, but this is talking about refined, beautiful. The resurrection is a resurrected body. It’s not like the coarse, corruptible, to use Paul’s words, type of body. Am I on the right track here?

Sis. Brittany Nash:           01:02:10             I think that’s super interesting.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:12             John, when you said, if we can become pure, we can see it. Do you remember Elisha and the young man where the young man says, we’re gonna be destroyed. Elisha prays, dear Lord, open the eyes of this young man. And he sees the, what does he see?

John Bytheway:               01:02:30             The horses and chariots of fire.

Sis. Brittany Nash:           01:02:33             Chariots. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:02:35             Wow. John. I’d never connected those.