John Bytheway: 00:00:00 Welcome to part two with Dr. Rosalynde Welch Doctrine and Covenants 71 to 75. I love that verse in third, Nephi six 12 that you mentioned. It’s touched me personally because I have former mission companions from the Philippines who have benefited from the Perpetual Education Fund. Some of them were going back to low income, low housing, low education. Because of thank you, President Hinckley and the Perpetual Education Fund, some of them were able to go back to school. Now they are paying tithing and helping the poor in a completely different way than they could before because maybe the presiding Bishop storehouse drew from the Perpetual Education Fund. I’ve always loved that verse. There are chances for learning. There’s so many that would love to learn, and we’re so blessed that we have chances. Now, what’s the BYU Pathways doing? I think they’re trying to make chances for learning so much more available for everybody in the world.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:01:07 Love that. We can be a part of that. BYU Pathways has a need for tutors virtually and over the internet who can connect with these pathway students and share their own what they have to consecrate to the storehouse, right? Their own experience, their own education, or maybe it’s face to face. Maybe there’s a child in my ward. We don’t need to be asked by the bishop or by the relief society president to consecrate. It’s good to have somebody there who can sort of sees the needs and can coordinate, but we can voluntarily on our own, see a need, see a form of poverty and consecrate, a form of resource that we have. Maybe that looks like I can tutor this child in the afternoons, or I can give piano lessons to this child who otherwise wouldn’t have that opportunity. There’s so many ways that we can give and that we can receive.

Hank Smith: 00:01:57 I wrote a book on happiness once. It sold dozens of copies, mostly to my family, but one thing I learned in the research is that money does buy happiness, but it’s actually the things we give. We find much more happiness in giving than buying for ourselves. We all think, well, this item, whatever it is, will make me so happy. It turns out it doesn’t. One researcher called it the helper’s high which I thought, well, that’s one way to identify the Holy Ghost with the helper’s high that comes when we give and serve. The Lord is wise here. This is where you’re going to find joy is in the giving. There has to be someone to receive or else we can’t give.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:02:45 Well, maybe this is a good moment to transition from the warm and fuzzy aspect of consecration. Like I said, I love the principle of consecration. It has changed my life in so many ways. It tastes good to me. There’s another side to it that sometimes can be a little harder to understand and to receive as we’ve been talking about. That is accountability. Accountability is an intrinsic part of consecration. Let’s look here at verses three to five in section 72. One of the important duties of this newly called Bishop Newel Whitney would be this, it is required of the Lord at the hand of every steward to render an account of his stewardship both in time and in eternity. For he who is faithful and wise in time is accounted worthy to inherit the mansions prepared for him of my father. Verily I say unto you, the elders of the church in this part of my vineyard shall render an account of their stewardship unto the bishop who shall be appointed of me in this part of my vineyard.

  00:03:52 Well, accountability is part and parcel of consecration. Just as consecration is practiced a little differently now than it was then those accountability opportunities are also handled a little differently now than they were then back then. Joseph Smith Papers project tells me everything I know about Latter-day Saint History comes from the Joseph Smith Papers project website, but they tell me that the elders who were called actually sent letters to Newel Whitney explaining what they had done with their time. They rendered an account of their stewardship in that way. These days, we still have opportunities to render an account of our stewardship. At occasions like our tithing settlement, like our temple recommend interviews. There are other settings where we are accountable to the bishop. Those can be hard sometimes. Sometimes they can feel a little frightening. They might feel a little intrusive. It can feel intimidating. Maybe we feel fear of judgment or we feel ashamed.

  00:05:00 Maybe we worry that we’ll lose some status in the eyes of the bishop or the ward if the account that we can render isn’t quite what we’d want it to be. I want to acknowledge that those can be hard moments. It’s helped me to realize that accountability is at the heart of this principle that I love so much. Consecration. Understanding accountability as the other side of consecration helps me to approach those moments with a different perspective. I see it now as a moment to acknowledge to the bishop and to the Lord something that I feel so deeply, which is that God has given me my life and everything that I have, and I am taking care of it for him. I love to recognize that tithing settlement or in a worthiness interview is a moment for me to acknowledge that before the Lord. When I see it that way, it really helps me a lot.

  00:06:01 It’s not the bishop checking up on us, but it’s me checking in with God about my relationship with him, about our shared project. The Lord invites us to collaborate with him and his work of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of mankind. He generously invites me to be a part of that, and these accountability interviews can be places to acknowledge that if you love consecration, but maybe the accountability side feels a little strange sometimes, remember that they come together. Fortunately, in my experience wise bishops make that very easy to remember wise bishops have always, even in those moments when I have fallen short and I haven’t been able to render the account that I wish I could, I have been blessed with compassionate, wonderful bishops who have invited me to do better, who have accepted the offering that I can give, who have not judged me, but instead have encouraged me, have invited me again into collaboration with the Lord and his work. I wish that for all the saints out there, if there are any of you who are facing an opportunity for accountability that feels scary. You don’t know if you can face it. I hope that might help. Your bishop is there not to check up on you, but to help you check in with the Lord and to help you remember your real relationship with him.

Hank Smith: 00:07:31 Yeah. Accountability does work. You’re right. It is uncomfortable. Nobody here among the three of us has ever avoided an accountability interview. Okay? Maybe one of us has avoided an accountability. Brother Smith, can you come in and meet with the elders quorum president talking about your ministering? Not this week. There’s all sorts of reasons why I can’t do it, but John, you know this quote from President Monson, when performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates. The Lord has the recipe here.

John Bytheway: 00:08:15 The spirit of those interviews, I try to remember. Moroni chapter six, we speak one with another concerning the welfare of our souls. How are you doing on this? This is how we’re doing on this. We’re going to keep trying together. It’s not you versus me, it’s all of us versus Satan. We’re just doing the best we can.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:08:38 Yeah. Well, you know, there recently was a change in our ministering practices, which you probably are aware of. It used to be that we would report the number of ministering visits that were accomplished in the ward in an elders quorum or in a relief society, but that’s not what we report anymore. Now what we report are the number of interviews, the number of accountability interviews that were conducted by the Elders Quorum president or the Relief Society president. That might seem like a small thing, but I actually think it’s a very, very consequential change because it helps us understand that accountability really isn’t just about those numbers. Accountability is about relationships. It’s in those accountability interviews that we have the opportunity to build relationships between a relief society president or an elders quorum president and the members of their quorum. It’s because that’s how Zion is built. Zion is built ward by ward. We have a global project, but it’s built locally. The person who taught me that is our shared friend, Melissa Inouye, who understood this better than any other person. Keeping in mind the global horizon of Zion is essential, but if we focus on the global and ignore the local, we will never get there. We build Zion by digging in where we are.

Hank Smith: 00:10:05 That’s beautiful.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:10:07 Maybe there’s just one more point that I’ll touch on here in section 72. That’s here at the very end, verse 24, the very end of section 72. In addition to the laws of the kingdom respecting the members of the church, they that are appointed by the Holy Spirit to go up unto Zion and they who are privileged to go up unto Zion, let them carry up unto the bishop a certificate from three elders of the church or a certificate from the bishop. Otherwise, he who shall go up into the land of Zion shall not be accounted as a wise steward. This is also an example. Amen. This is addressing the reality that the Lord needed to carefully regulate the flow of saints to Zion. He needed to make sure that not too many were going at the same time and that those who went were onboard with the law of consecration.

  00:11:02 The risk at this point in time was too many people going up too soon. As I read that, I wonder now whether in 2025 we might have the opposite problem. I wonder now whether our problem is too few people choosing to live in Zion. We’ve covenanted to live the law of consecration. There is nothing holding us back from realizing a Zion community in our wards now, and I wonder whether we realize that. I wonder whether we take that seriously. I’ve made the point a couple of times that consecration is much more than just our material means, but I want to underscore that what we choose to do with our material means does really matter. I don’t want to make it seem like that doesn’t matter to the Lord. It does matter living in equality, taking care of the poor and needy is an essential part of Zion.

  00:12:06 President Kimball understood that. If it’s okay, I’d love to read something that President Kimball said in his talk, becoming the pure in heart, which he gave in 1978. This is what he said. For many years we have been taught that one important end result of our labor’s hopes and aspirations in this work is the building of a latter-day Zion, a Zion characterized by love, harmony, and peace, a Zion in which the Lord’s children are as one, and then here he quotes from Mormon chapter eight. You may remember this is a very fiery chapter in which Moroni has words for us living in the latter-days. He says, for behold, ye do love money and your substance and your fine apparel and the adorning of your churches more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted. President Kimball goes on.

  00:12:56 This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the Zion the Lord seeks to establish through his covenant people, Zion can be built up only among those who are the pure in heart, not a people torn by covetousness or greed, but a pure and selfless people, not a people who are pure in appearance with their wonderful fine clothing. Rather a people who are pure in heart. The length of time required to accomplish all things pertaining to Zion is strictly up to us and how we live for creating Zion commences in the heart of each person that it would take some time to learn our lessons was seen by the prophets in 1863. President Kimball continues, Brigham Young stated, if the people neglect their duty turn away from the Holy Commandments, which God has given us, seek their own individual wealth and neglect the interests of the kingdom of God, we may expect to be here quite a time, perhaps a period that will be far longer than we anticipate. What President Kimball and President Young are teaching us here is that how long it takes to bring to pass Zion to build this beautiful beloved community is up to us.

Hank Smith: 00:14:17 For my students, I’ve tried to make the Abrahamic covenant as simple as possible, and I think this is about as simple as it can get, is God says to Israel the family, I’m going to give you very unique commandments. If you keep those commandments, you’ll have an abundance of blessings. With those blessings, you are to bless all the families of the earth. I wonder if today, Rosalynde, we get stuck on, I’m going to keep the commandments. I get the abundance of blessings, stop, but I’m not turning that over to bless all the families, the earth, which is what we’re talking about, consecrating.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:14:54 Consecration follows on the Abrahamic covenant. That’s right. It’s a part of that sequence.

Hank Smith: 00:15:01 Ah, it really is ours. For me, it’s easier to build Zion with everyone else around me is too like, yeah, I’ll join in on this group momentum to build Zion. It’s hard to say, I’m going to do it first. I’m going to go, I’m going to, I’m going to be the lead leader on this.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:15:23 Yeah, exactly. Hard to not keep up with the Joneses. We have this tendency to feel like my external life, the way that I live my house, my clothing, my cars, they should reflect the kind of solid established person that I am. There’s something in our brains that makes that equation that can be hard not to get caught up in that race, but it really just takes a truly pure consecrator to show us that it can be done and I have those in my life. I think of my brother-in-law who’s a bishop, it’s worth mentioning bishops not only receive accounts of consecration, but bishops are consecrators themselves. Bishops are often some of the most consecrated people that I know. My brother-in-law, Dave Sloan being chief among them, he and my sister Naomi, have shown me what consecration looks like. I will be forever grateful to them for their example.

Hank Smith: 00:16:19 My thoughts went right to section 121, verse 34, many are called, but few are chosen. Why are they not chosen or why do we not go to Zion or why do we not consecrate? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world and aspire to the honors of men that they don’t learn one lesson. That is the power of heaven. That is me. Their hearts are set so much on the things of this world and aspire to the honors of men. They want to be rich and famous. John is rich and famous and it hasn’t done much for him, so I don’t know why I am.

John Bytheway: 00:16:58 Speaking of possessions, I just spent over a thousand bucks on our 2004 Toyota Sequoia that the air conditioner blew up and broke the fan and I said to Andrew, well, whatever you obtain, you have to maintain. You may think you want more stuff, but then you have to take care of it.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:17:24 That is wise.

Hank Smith: 00:17:26 My mother-in-law would say, the more you own, the more owns you. Rosalynde, this has been fantastic. Also a little bit of a gut check.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:17:35 Good, that’s what I intended.

Hank Smith: 00:17:37 I really love the first part. The Lord’s kingdom is not fragile. Defend your beliefs. Now you’re going, and by the way, consecrate yourself to Zion and I, okay, I can do better.

John Bytheway: 00:17:48 Look at the pattern in the Book of Mormon. Build your foundation on Christ. Then they start to prosper, sometimes material and they get stuff and then they change locations. Now let’s relocate and build our foundation on our stuff somewhere else.

Hank Smith: 00:18:05 Every time.

John Bytheway: 00:18:06 Their hearts are set, like you just said, 121 on the riches of the world. Then the Lord has to send trials to start that cycle again of humility.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:18:17 Next up in our chapter block is section 73. I think today we might move past this one pretty quickly, although it’s short. It is rich though and I encourage you to chew on it deeply and see what you can pull out of it because there’s a lot to be had there, but here in this section, the Lord is instructing Joseph and Sidney that you’ve done the work I asked you to do. You’ve fulfilled your mission for a season of preaching the gospel and expounding the mysteries out of the scriptures. Now it is time to return to the translation again. It is expedient to translate again and you can continue preaching. He says as much as you can in the areas roundabout, but right now the priority is translation. With that, Joseph and Sidney turn back to the Bible Translation Project. Our next section, section 74, is related to that Bible translation project, but maybe not as directly as we might think.

  00:19:17 Although this section, section 74 fits right in here, right in the early months of 1832. In reality, it was received earlier than that probably in 1830. This has only recently been discovered by researchers at the Joseph Smith Papers project through some deep textual research it may have that Section 74 is a comment and an explanation on a Bible verse. 1 Corinthians chapter seven verse 14, and it’s possible that Joseph might’ve encountered this verse as part of his Bible revision project, but this verse in particular was not changed in the Joseph Smith translation. It’s possible that as we were talking about earlier, deep reading in the biblical text spurred a question in Joseph’s mind. In this case, it’s a question about baptism and how that should be carried out that in response to that question, the Lord gave him section 74, which is this explanation of the Bible verse.

  00:20:23 It’s a little bit of a tricky section. I’ll be honest. It’s a little bit hard and it took me some time of studying it to really feel like I understood what it was getting at, but in the original base text, first Corinthians chapter seven, verse 14, Paul is giving advice to early Christians who were married to non Jesus believers, so a Jesus believer married to a non Jesus believer. He tells them that in these spiritually mixed marriages, they shouldn’t divorce, but they should stay married if possible. He says it’s possible to have a good marriage with somebody who doesn’t believe as you do because the influence of the believing spouse will have a sanctifying effect on the non-believing spouse and the children born to that union can also be sanctified and blessed by the belief of their parent. That’s what we see in verse one of section 74.

  00:21:23 It’s just a quotation of that verse from one Corinthians. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband else were your children unclean, but now they are holy. So that’s what Paul wrote, but over the history of Christianity, this verse became a kind of doctrinal football that various Christian denominations used to debate the practice of infant baptism. Whether or not you should baptize an infant was an intense controversy in early America. We, it was also an intense controversy apparently in Book of Mormon times, because you’ll remember in Moroni chapter eight, where Mormon in very fiery language instructs us that is not appropriate to baptize infants. In the American setting, Puritans generally did baptize infants as a part of their covenant theology. They saw baptism as replacing circumcision as a mark of belonging to the covenant people.

  00:22:32 They thought that Christian infants should be baptized just as Jewish baby boys were circumcised. Then there were the Baptists. The Baptists strongly rejected infant baptism. For them, they felt that baptism should be an act of belief. Only a person who was capable of believing and professing their faith should be baptized. You had these two different views on infant baptism. The Book of Mormon and the Latter-day Saints were a bit closer to the Baptist position. We don’t believe in baptizing infants, but section 74 goes a different direction. Section 74 basically suggests that it’s not appropriate for this verse in First Corinthians to be used to justify infant baptism in modern debates, and it makes it very plain that children are holy. They are holy and sanctified through the atonement of Christ that the practice of infant baptism might inadvertently send a message that infants are not inherently saved in Christ.

  00:23:43 There are some interesting things that we can glean from this section. The main idea that I take from it is that our religious practices can teach us something. Our ordinances are also teachers. This was the fear here that if you baptize infants, you’re inadvertently teaching something you don’t intend to. You’re inadvertently teaching that there’s something wrong with infants. If they die before they’re baptized, they will not be saved. What’s so wrong with that teaching is that it minimizes the powerful effect of Christ’s atonement. It causes incredible grief and sadness to parents who might lose an infant before they’ve been able to be baptized. It’s worth noting that the truths revealed in Section 74 have been the source of an immense amount of collective relief and joy in the knowledge that infants who die, children who die young are saved in Christ. Joseph and Emma lost their first little baby.

  00:24:57 Then they lost their twins. This teaching must have brought tremendous relief to Emma as she tried to countenance the grief of those losses. My own parents have lost two little boys, Jacob and Isaac, and I know that the teachings in this section have brought them incredible joy, that those little boys are saved in Christ. They’re holy and pure by the power of the atonement and that nothing will be lost in the resurrection. They will be my parents to raise to love and to have and to hold forever, but I’d love just to read this final verse, verse seven. In section 74, little children are holy being sanctified through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and this is what the scriptures mean. I love children. I love to work with children. I work in the primary right now. I loved being a mother to babies. I love other people’s children.

  00:25:55 Children for me are the clearest window into God’s love and into the kingdom of God himself. If you remember President Holland spoke just this past conference on children. He talked about the virtues of life’s junior varsity. Do you remember that phrase? He always has the best phrases. Lifes Junior varsity. He told the story of this young boy, Easton, who was a young deacon who suffered from muscular dystrophy and who with tremendous courage passed the sacrament to his father, the bishop. In that happening, Elder Holland saw the kingdom of God realized. He said, the most beautiful images on earth are babies and children. They show faith, loyalty, purity, trust, love for the Father. He so wishes to please. This is what Elder Holland saw in little Easton, and this is what children can show us and what they can teach us about the kingdom of God. In a way, a child is a little bit like Zion. It’s meaningful that in Mosiah three, we talked earlier about the natural man being an enemy to God. Fortunately for us, our Savior loves his enemies, but King Benjamin goes on to say the natural man is an enemy to God, unless he becometh as a child, humble, submissive, and full of love. Yet as the child to the Father, we might ask ourselves why it is that children are for us a model of redeemed discipleship. What is it about children that teaches us something about discipleship that nothing else can?

Hank Smith: 00:27:43 That comparison is frequent the Lord in the community discourse. Matthew 18. That’s how it begins. Become as little children, like you said, King Benjamin become as little children. There’s a difference obviously between being childish and childlike. I’ve watched my children be incredibly forgiving of their parents, especially the little ones. That’s okay, dad, when you think, oh, dad. Dad messed up today. Sorry. That’s okay. Dad, incredibly quick to forgive. It’s genuine. They’re ready to move on.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:28:26 Yes. Their hearts are so open. They live in the present. They don’t dwell in the past. They don’t fixate on the future. They live in the present. They live in the moment. Yeah. What about you, John? I know you have grandkids. What is it about them?

John Bytheway: 00:28:42 Just the other night, as soon as one got interested in a toy, the other one came and took it. Then he became uninterested in it and this little sister came over and then suddenly he was interested again. The word that always comes to my mind is innocence. They’re so innocent and pure. Maybe that’s only possible through the atonement of Christ that we can be pronounced clean and innocent and sanctified.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:29:09 It’s a really good point that children aren’t perfect. They aren’t without flaw or without fault. They, like all of us, are born with a human nature that is susceptible to influence from our fallen world. The reason why children are holy, the reason why children are sanctified is because they are covered by the atonement of Christ. Christ’s own sacrifice is efficacious to protect and to hold children within its umbrella of safety. Nevertheless, there is something about children that we have to emulate. This is what Christ taught Nicodemus. We have to become a child and be born again. That is the only way to enter into the kingdom of God. We have to somehow cultivate in our own selves the mind of a child. As you said, John, their openness, their trustfulness, their innocence, their receptivity. Have you noticed that children are really good at receiving in the way that we’ve been talking about this kind of full open-hearted receiving? That’s about acceptance and forgiveness as well.

Hank Smith: 00:30:14 I’ve noticed also how quickly children will seek for comfort because I want to do the comforting, but how often do I go to the Lord for comfort and yet my children, they want, I want to be comforted.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:30:32 Yes. That’s exactly it. Hank, they are not ashamed of their own weakness. They are not ashamed of the fact that they need comfort. They need sustenance from their appearance. They don’t see their interdependence as a kind of limitation or fault or shortcoming like we as adults do. We want to believe that we’re self-sufficient, that we have it all figured out and that we can do it on our own. I think you’ve put your finger on it. It’s precisely children’s weakness or what the apostle Paul might call their foolishness. They understand that they don’t understand it all. They accept their weakness. They know that they need comfort and help, of such are the kingdom of heaven. If you need a reminder of what it looks like to live in the kingdom of God, go to a nursery, watch those babies squabbling, forgiving, making up, turning for comfort and for sustenance and for love to their loving leaders. That’s what it looks like to become as a little child and to enter into the kingdom of God.

John Bytheway: 00:31:39 I probably offend nursery leaders when I say this, but I joke with my class when people say, I don’t believe in organized religion. I say, well, go to the nursery. It’s not that organized, but.

Hank Smith: 00:31:53 All these, the herding cats.

John Bytheway: 00:31:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:31:58 I love it.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:32:00 One last point that’s worth making here in section 74 is returning to the original verse, verse one. Let’s read that one more time. There’s a point here I’d like to underscore for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband else were your children unclean, but now they are holy. I read this to understand that our family relationships can sanctify us and can sanctify each other. Paul is using the word sanctify here in a special. Obviously, he’s not saying that the believing wife can save her husband in the way that Christ saves and sanctifies us, but I think what he’s getting at is that the belief of one spouse can exercise a purifying and edifying influence on the members of her family. This is a really encouraging, powerful principle for those of us who live with families, spouses, children who don’t share our beliefs.

  00:33:10 Maybe they never have. Maybe they did at one time, but they don’t anymore. For those of us who live in mixed faith situations, Paul is telling us this can be a beautiful thing. You can have a beautiful relationship with each other. Your faith, the strength of your faith can bless and can lift and can help your family members who may not share your faith. I think our faith does that, and I think our love does that. My sister Gabrielle is a family therapist. I was talking to her about these verses. She says that she has observed that loving unconditionally in the way that God loves us is itself a sanctifying experience. Children make it easy to love unconditionally. Our children whom we raise from infants, our love for them is so strong. We would do anything for them. It’s a bond that can’t be broken.

  00:34:18 When we experience love of that kind, that sanctifies us, then we can exercise that purifying, uplifting influence on those family members around us who might need us. That brings me hope and encouragement as I continue to make my way. Most of us these days have a family member or a dear friend, a loved one who no longer walks in faith with us, but the relationship is precious to us. We cherish it and treasure it. It encourages me to know that my faith and my love will be of use to them, will help them, can sanctify them in some way.

Hank Smith: 00:35:03 That’s beautiful. I recently was in Nauvoo with a friend Sue Frost from down under, she’s from Australia. She walked out of the Sarah Granger Kimball home in tears because my friend Sue is a relief society president in Australia whose husband is not a member. I don’t think she knew that The Relief Society was started by a woman, Sarah Granger Kimball, whose husband was not a member, yet a great man. I don’t think we’re talking about living with someone who’s abusive and that you can be a good influence on them. That’s not what we’re talking about, but a a non-believing good man or a non-believing good woman, great things happen in those homes.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:35:52 Yes, and we can learn from them too. Any relationship needs to be a relationship of mutuality. If you go into it thinking, oh, I’m always, as we’ve been talking about with consecration, I’m always the giver. They’re always the receiver of my sanctifying influence. That’s not likely to build that trust and that acceptance. We have to realize they have gifts they can give us as well. I can learn from them. Yes, I’m going to hold onto my faith. I’m going to hold onto my love and my relationship with the Savior, but I can also learn from my unbelieving spouse. It’s that mutuality, that mutual respect, that love and that patience. That is what purifies us and lifts us together.

John Bytheway: 00:36:35 I suppose the opposite of that is you’re not welcome in this home or something horrible like that, but there’s always the, you’ll figure this out.

Hank Smith: 00:36:43 How many times have I quoted Stephen Robinson on this show? It’s not about who has your membership record. It’s about who has your heart.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:36:53 That’s beautiful.

Hank Smith: 00:36:54 Rosalynde, this has been phenomenal. I’m sad to say we only have one section left, but we are ready. What do you want to do with section 75?

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:37:03 Section 75 is going to take us out here on a wonderful high note. We’re now almost to the end of January of 1832. We’ve covered about two months over the span of these sections. Once again, we’re at a quarterly priesthood conference. This is a priesthood conference with a lot of quorum business. Have you guys ever been in a sacrament meeting where the ward business seems to go on and on and you’re like, are we ever going to get to the sacrament? We were told considerable business was done to advance the kingdom. Among other things, there were elders who were given their priesthood licenses. This is a practice we don’t carry on anymore, but in the early days of the church, when you were ordained to an office of the priesthood, you were licensed and you received a physical license. Elders were licensed. Orson Pratt was appointed president of the elders.

  00:37:55 Joseph was ordained president of the high priesthood. Among these really important happenings and advancements in the saints understanding of priesthood, there was also elders who had requested revelation for guidance in their duties. This wasn’t uncommon. As we’ve seen many times, saints will come to Joseph and say, I request a revelation. I want to know what it is that the Lord wants of me. Joseph, I wonder if he ever got tired of doing that. I don’t know, but Joseph very patiently turned to the Lord, asked for the Lord’s will. In response, the Lord spoke through Joseph. Section 75 here contains two such revelations. We receive section 75 in two parts, first verses one through 22 seems that this addresses elders who had previously said, I want to go preach the gospel. They had previously submitted their names and said, I’m ready and willing to go preach here in these first 22 verses.

  00:38:58 Those elders are assigned, companionships are assigned certain areas of service. They’re instructed on their missionary work. Then in the second, verses 23 to 30, that second section, these might have been other elders who hadn’t specifically volunteered as elders or as missionaries, as preachers, but they are also now called to labor given instructions on the different ways that they can serve in the kingdom. It’s a wonderful section, joins many other sections full of great advice about missionary work, about preaching the gospel effectively about how to image Christ when we testify of him out in the world and it’s so rich. We’ll only be able to touch on a couple of sections. One thing that really jumps out to me from this section is the necessity of hard work. Working hard, getting up every morning and getting after it again. Maybe we could just read two verses that touch on that. There are two verses from the beginning and the end of the revelation. Let’s read verses three and verse 29. I wonder, Hank, would you read verse three and then John, would you read verse 29?

John Bytheway: 00:40:15 Absolutely.

Hank Smith: 00:40:16 Section 75 verse three. Behold I say unto you that it is my will that you should go forth and not tarry, neither be idle, but labor with your might.

John Bytheway: 00:40:28 Let every man be diligent in all things and the idler shall not have place in the church except he repent and mend his ways.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:40:37 Yeah, be not weary in well doing. This is what he told us in section 64. This is a great work. The work is urgent. The time is now. Zion needs to be built and to rise in her glory. Let’s get after it. You are called at this moment to give all that you have, whether we are in 1832 or whether we are in 2025. That imperative to work hard is always with us. In fact, it’s been with us from Adam and Eve even before the fall in the garden. Adam and Eve were already given the work of dressing and keeping the Garden of Eden. Work has been part of the human condition from the very beginning, work by the sweat of our brow. I think that’s because work helps us to develop our divine nature in some way. That’s what I have to conclude is that the Lord requires us to work, gives us opportunities to work, invites us to work with him because he knows that in doing that, it will help to bring to pass his great purpose, which is the development of our divine nature, of the eternal life and immortality of his children.

  00:41:57 But the question is why sometimes we can be tempted to answer that question wrongly. We might tell ourselves, I have to get up today. I have to work as hard as I can. Whether you’re a missionary or whether you’re a mom or whether you’re a bishop or whether you are coming back to the church for the first time after years away, you wake up in the morning, you say, I have got to work for all that I am worth so that the Lord will accept my offering so that the Lord will love me and will be pleased with my offering.

  00:42:38 That can be a trap when we start to tell ourselves that we work in order to deserve the Lord’s love in order to earn his favor or in order to save ourself that we work, in order to work out our own salvation. There’s something deep in our minds that wants to tell us that story that if I work harder, the Lord will love me more. And it is true that the Lord invites us with urgency to work hard, but I don’t think it’s so that he will love us more. We know from King Benjamin that we are always unprofitable servants. We can get up. We can work ourselves to the bone. We can work frantically and frantically without stopping to try to earn back the debt that we are into the Savior. But that’ll never happen. That’ll never happen. That’s not the purpose of work.

Hank Smith: 00:43:37 Your good friend Adam Miller, taught us that love is a law, not a reward. We wanted to put it on T-shirts. That is that God invites us to take part in his work of love, not so that we can be loved or rewarded by him, but that the work is the reward itself being involved.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:44:01 Yeah. How about you John? What comes up for you?

John Bytheway: 00:44:05 My mission president Menlo F. Smith used to say, he’s 96 years old, lives in St. Louis.

Hank Smith: 00:44:12 We talk about him a lot.

John Bytheway: 00:44:13 I wonder if he’d mind if I impersonated him. Elder Bytheway, the Lord gets his work done through his people and he gets his people done through the work.

Hank Smith: 00:44:28 That’s exactly right.

John Bytheway: 00:44:29 I like that concept and we talked about this before we got the children of Israel out of Egypt. Now we’ve got to get the Egypt out of the children of Israel in the same way the work changes us. It blesses us. The Lord gets the work done through his people. Thanks President Smith.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:44:47 John. I know Menlo Smith. I was in his ward.

John Bytheway: 00:44:50 No way.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:44:51 I was in his ward in St. Louis for 10 years. He was my ministering brother.

John Bytheway: 00:44:56 No kidding. I’m so glad I brought it up. So did, did I sound like him kind of?

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:45:02 You sounded uncannily like him. That was amazing. Yes. Brother Menlo. We’ve been talking about consecration. He is an example of truly a consecrated heart. One who gives all that he has and is for our listeners. He’s a delightful person who was a businessman in candy. He was literally Willy Wonka. He made his living selling candy. Every time he came to visit us, he’d bring us the newest form of Sweet Tarts. You know how they’re always coming up with chewy sweet tarts and nerds clusters, whatever the newest form of Sweet Tarts was he brought it with us. So we loved it when our ministering brother came to visit, but he taught us so much about what a life of consecration looks like. He is closing in on a hundred right now and he is still going strong. He gets up every morning. He works hard. He understands what you both got at it because in working with the Lord in doing his work of love, in joining with him, two things happen.

  00:46:12 One is that we ourselves are changed. It is through the work that the Lord can sanctify us and can change us. And the second reason is that it is through this work that we come to know the Lord by doing his work. I come to know who he is by doing his work of love. I come to understand how he loves, the shape of his love, the quality of his love. By doing his work of love. I come to be able to love in the way that God loves. That’s why we work. We do the work of our Master, not to save ourselves, not to prove anything to anybody else, but to come to know our Savior and to become like him. That’s powerful for me. That helps me understand a little more something that we read in verses nine through 11. Let’s take a look at those verses here in section 75.

  00:47:16 Here he is giving instructions to all of the missionaries, but in particular he’s talking to William McClellan and Luke Johnson, who he’s just paired up as a missionary companionship and commanded them to go out and teach. This is what he says to them in verse 10. Call on the name of the Lord for the comforter which shall teach them all things that are expedient for them. Praying always that they faint not, and inasmuch as they do this, I will be with them even unto the end. Here he instructs them to pray always. Prayer is a part of our labor. Prayer is a kind of work and it’s a part of the work that we are called to do in this section because Latter-day Saints, we really get the be not idle. We have internalized that as written on the fleshy tables of our hearts.

  00:48:16 We know how to get up in the morning, go to the welfare farm, work hard on the service project, come home, make the meal for our neighbors, do come, follow me with our family, family prayer and then pick up the kitchen before we go to bed. We know how to labor unceasingly, but do we remember that prayer is a part of that work? Prayer is strenuous and it is urgent, but it’s a different kind of work. It’s a work of contemplation. It’s a work of stillness. It’s a work of study. It’s a kind of intellectual, spiritual and emotional labor where we’re called to exercise different faculties, to draw forth energies from different parts of our soul. Our body needs to be stilled for a moment, but our spirit is hard at work in prayer. I love that The Lord specifies, pray unceasingly, pray always. This is a part of your work. I know the missionaries who are listening out there. You do this work, you do pray, unceasingly. You pray in the morning. You pray before every appointment. You pray before you go out. You pray before you come in.

John Bytheway: 00:49:35 Pray while you’re walking.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:49:37 You pray while you’re walking. You are showing us what it means to pray unceasingly and what it means to make prayer a part of our labor and a part of our work. I love thinking about the prayers in the house of the Lord, the prayers over the names on the altars of the temple that are carried out unceasingly through the day. If you think about temples dotting the globe, then collectively as a people, we are praying unceasingly for those who need it, and that’s such a central part of the work that we do in our temples. This essential part of our spiritual work as well.

Hank Smith: 00:50:16 John has frequently used the analogy of an airplane that is off track most of the time it’s just doing corrections, and prayer can be a form of alignment.

John Bytheway: 00:50:27 That’s right. And it eventually lands on the numbers at Heathrow. How does it do that when it’s off course most of the time.

Hank Smith: 00:50:34 Keeps getting corrected. A little to the right little too far to the left, little too far to the right, little too far to the left, but you’re doing those little corrections for me. Prayer can be a you’re not perfectly aligned. Let’s come back again. You’re not perfectly aligned. Let’s come back.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:50:50 Don’t give up. Knock on that door again and again. It is a work, but it’s a restorative work. It’s a renewing work. It’s a sanctifying work.

Hank Smith: 00:51:00 J. Golden Kimball said he doesn’t walk the straight and narrow, but he crosses it as often as he can. I think that’s what he meant. Back and forth, back and forth.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:51:10 Let’s look at verses 23 to 26 because this points out an unexpected way that we can be more involved than we might have thought in the work of the Lord. He says here and again thus saith the Lord unto you, ye elders of my church who have given your names that you might know his will concerning you. Behold I say unto you that it is the duty of the church to assist in supporting the families of those and also to support the families of those who are called and must needs be sent unto the world to proclaim the gospel unto the world. Wherefore, I the Lord give unto you this commandment that ye obtain places for your families inasmuch as your brethren are willing to open their hearts and let all such as can obtain places for their families and support of the church for them, not fail to go into the world whether to the east or to the west or to the north or to the south.

  00:52:02 What’s the problem here? The problem here is that the missionaries who are going to go out to proclaim the gospel are leaving behind families. Somebody needs to take care of the families. There’s a very important work here for the saints in Kirtland to provide hospitality, lodging, support, and love for the families of the elders who go out into the world. That need is still with us. We can support the families of there are mission presidents who go out, their children and grandchildren are behind. Maybe their grandma and grandpa aren’t there to support them. Maybe there’s another grandma or grandpa who can step in to help them. You can be their surrogate grandma and grandpa. There are so many ways that we can support the families of missionaries. Now with the advent of service missionaries, sometimes we may even have the opportunity to host a service missionary in our own home.

  00:53:01 My sister-in-law and brother-in-law had a wonderful experience a couple of years ago with a young elder. His English name is Connor Green. Maybe some of our listeners have heard of Elder Green before. He has a remarkable story. He was born blind and was raised in an orphanage in China, but was adopted by a Latter-day Saint family, moved to Utah in his adolescence, then was converted to the gospel by a sister missionary on Temple Square who spoke Mandarin. She taught him in his own language. He became converted, developed a burning testimony of the Savior and a burning desire to serve the Lord himself. But he is blind. He has a significant disability. He has so many abilities. He’s an amazing musician and has the incredible ability to play the piano by ear to hear a song, then be able to produce it on the piano flawlessly.

  00:54:05 He had so many gifts to give and desperately wanted to give them to the saints. He was called on a service mission. As part of this, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Christina and Jeff Broberg were blessed to be able to host Elder Green in their home for the time of his service mission. They gave him a place to live. They helped him with his needs. They helped him with some transportation. Elder Green helped in the MTC. He served as a language teacher in the MTC where he could help those missionaries learning Mandarin. He had incredibly specialized skills there. He also served in the temple. He found meaningful ways that he could serve the Lord with his gifts and abilities, even despite his disabilities. As a bonus, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law had the incredible blessing of hosting him in their home. If you ask them, they’ll tell you about the amazing blessings that rained down on their family.

  00:55:08 Their own children developed a love for missionary work. They had a son who served faithfully on his mission while Elder Green lived with them. Another son who received his mission call recently, the spirit of missionary work, came and lived in their home, blessed them in so many ways. As saints in 2025, we still have opportunities to open our home to be hosts. Exercise this hospitality, whether it be for families of missionaries, whether it be for service missionaries or for anybody in our midst who needs a place, who needs to be received in a loving home for an evening or for a season.

Hank Smith: 00:55:49 Beautiful. What is happening with service missionaries all over the earth is you can feel it. There’s something stewing underneath that you know the Lord is planning on. This is going to bloom and blossom.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:56:07 I agree.

Hank Smith: 00:56:09 It’s bigger on the inside.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 00:56:12 It’s bigger on the inside, and as more and more young people realize the joy of service and our call to these service missions, then as saints, we will be called on to open our homes. These service missionaries, often though not always, they live with a host family. It will be on us to ask ourselves, can we open our homes to make it possible for this service missionary to serve his or her mission? Now, hospitality is not a surface thing. It’s not the question of manners and politeness and having a beautiful home and throwing a dinner party. Hospitality is really a central moral value in the Old Testament. Do you remember that story of Abraham? It’s in Genesis 18 where three strangers come to visit him. He’s hospitable. He opens his home to them. They come in and he feeds them. He entertains them. He gives them a place and takes care of them, and then it turns out, unbeknownst to him, these three strangers were angels, he had an encounter with divinity itself because he opened his home.

  00:57:22 Again and again in the Old Testament, we see that opening our hearts to the sojourner, to the refugee, to those who wander. That’s the duty of all of us who are covenant bound to the Lord, because the covenant people themselves were wanderers. The Lord’s covenant peoples were wanderers through the wilderness as they made their way to the Promised land as they came out of Egypt. Now, it’s on us as his covenant people to welcome those who need us, refugees, missionaries, anyone who needs our love, who needs our hospitality, who needs our provision and care. The Lord himself is the ultimate host. He is the one who gave manna and water in the wilderness to the children of Israel. He is the one who fed them their meals. He is the one in Psalm 23 who lays a table, spreads a table before us and entertains him. We know from the scriptures that in the last day, we’ll all come together in a great feast. We’ll come together at the wedding banquet of the Lord together. The ways that we can serve, open our home, feed and be hospitable to each other now are four tastes of how it will be when we’re all together in Zion and the Lord himself spreads the table.

Hank Smith: 00:58:42 Rosalynde, I cannot tell you how much I have learned Section 71 through 75. I know we’ve said it over and over, but they are bigger on the inside then they look on the outside.

John Bytheway: 00:58:53 Yeah, I love that.

Hank Smith: 00:58:57 They’re right in the shadow of section 76, so you might not think, oh, there’s not much here. Let’s get to it now. I’m stopping going. Okay, hang on. I don’t want to move on so fast to 76. Now I have a question for you. As you were explaining something earlier, this thought hit me. I wrote down this question, John, we invite these guests on, not necessarily because they’re smarter or better than any other member of the church, but people who have doctorate degrees, PhDs, they have an expertise. They’ve spent years on that specific expertise. Here’s the question I have. I’d love for you to comment on Rosalynde. I wrote this. How is it that the writings of a 25-year-old farmer in 1831 can be studied and explored in 2025 by a scholar with a PhD in literature, and she finds them not only inspiring, but inexhaustible? That seems to me to be miraculous.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 01:00:04 It’s marvelous, and it is a wonder. I have read a lot. I’ve read a lot of books from the 16th century, the 17th century, the 19th century. I love to read in contemporary fiction. I have read a lot and I have a pretty good taste for text. I have a pretty good sense for how they feel under my feet, how they feel in my hands. You know when you have a new baby, you get used to how they feel each day. They’re a little bit heavier and a little bit squishy. You get used to how they feel. I feel like I have that sense for texts. It truly is a wonder to me that these revelations from the Book of Mormon, which was Joseph Smith’s first revelation to Doctrine & Covenants, which is this wonderful compendium of revelations over a tremendously fertile, revelatory period for him to the Pearl of Great Price, which also captures so much of Joseph’s prophetic gifts.

  01:01:09 These texts never fail me. They are firm. They are resilient. They are fertile under my hands and under my eyes. I have a good sense for how much a book can tell me whether it will be worth it to go back to it. I have those books that I want to go back to again, because I know there’s going to be something more there, and then there are those that you read once and it’s great and you move on from there. The Book of Mormon is a book that has never failed me more than any other text that I have ever encountered or spent time in. The Book of Mormon gives back. It can stand up to any question that is asked of it. It will have an answer, maybe not a contentious answer, but it will have an answer. It will respond to whatever can be brought to it.

  01:02:04 Whatever problems I bring to it in my own life, it teaches me and shows me something about myself. It changes me when I see myself in its light. Whatever questions I bring to it about God, about Christ, about what it means to be in Christ and with Christ, and those questions are different at different times in my life. I come to the book with different wounds. Each time that I open its covers, each time it ministers to me in the way that I need. I don’t know how it does it. It’s partly the quality of attention that I bring to it, to scriptures. We bring a depth of reading, a depth of investment that we don’t bring to other kinds of books. It’s partly what I can bring to the Book of Mormon, but it’s not only that. It’s also what the book itself can do with the questions that I bring.

  01:03:05 For me, that is one of my strong reasons. The Book of Mormon is one of the pillars of my testimony, precisely as you said, Hank, the way that it has repaid 20 years and counting of sustained professional study. The way that I’ve seen even unbelieving scholars, when they come to it with an open mind, I’m not saying they’re going to be convinced that it’s an ancient record or that they’re going to be converted to the church when they approach it with an open mind, with real curiosity. They too see it that this text is living in some way, that it’s doing something that transcends the 19th century horizon in which it was produced, that it reaches outside of history and it speaks to readers where they are now. It becomes new in each moment. When it is read, there is a quality, a divine quality to this text that repays my reading that is apparent to all who approach it openly that I think is manifest.

  01:04:14 That’s how Moroni put it, that the truth of these things will be manifest unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost. The truth of the Book of Mormon seems to be more and more manifest in the world around me, right? It’s not just in the book itself that I see its truths lived out, but I see how its truths are manifest. In my experience of the world now going on 50 years, that’s a pretty long time to have looked around and experienced God’s creation, experienced his work in the world and all that. I see the Book of Mormon testifies to that truth manifest in the world around me.

Hank Smith: 01:04:58 It makes me want to give you a standing ovation. It wouldn’t be a roaring stand ovation that it deserves from a stadium full of angels. John, how did we get this? I sat down today going, I bet we’re going to see some good stuff today. And then honestly, we were 10 minutes in. I was being shone light on all these texts.

John Bytheway: 01:05:22 We’ve talked about receiving in a different way. We’ve talked about consecrating, our afflictions to the bishop’s storehouse. Basically, our afflictions can be a blessing to others. What we can minister to them when they’re going through something similar. Talked about being Zion, coming up to Zion in here. It’s all been really, really beautiful. I remember when Alma said, if you will plant the word in your heart, one of the impacts, it enlarge your soul. I feel like I’m bigger on the inside now, because you have enlarged my soul to use that great phrase today. That’s what he meant, enlarged my soul.

Hank Smith: 01:06:08 Rosalynde, you said right when we started, scriptures are a place where I can go and meet the Lord. Then you showed us how.

John Bytheway: 01:06:16 A text of meeting. meeting.

Hank Smith: 01:06:17 Yeah. That was a good way to describe what I’ve experienced today is I came to a place, section 71 through 75. Rosalynde showed me how to meet the Lord here. Thank you. We’re trying to gush and say thank you for your time and your effort.

Dr. Rosalynde Welch: 01:06:32 Thank you Hank and John for the opportunity. I’m so grateful for the work that you do. I know it touches so many. It truly has been a privilege to chat with you today about these beautiful verses of scripture.

Hank Smith: 01:06:43 This has been a privilege, all the way around. I’m sure there’s many out there listening who are thinking the exact same thing. Come on to YouTube or shoot us a message from our website. Follow him.co. Let us know where you’re listening from. We would love to share that with Rosalynde. It’s fun to know where you’ve taught somewhere in the world from Provo to Madagascar. With that, we want to thank Dr. Rosalynde Welch for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen. In every episode, we remember our founder. This is something he would’ve loved. I can hear him saying that, that what we just did right there. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why we did this. Our founder, Steve Sorensen, we hope you’ll join us next week. Kind of a big section, section 76 coming up on followHIM.

  01:07:38 Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. Do you or someone you know speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French? You can now watch and listen to our podcast in those languages. Links are in the description below. Today’s show notes and transcript are on our website. Follow him.co. That’s follow him.co. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Iride Gonzalez, and Annabelle Sorensen.