Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Dr. Joseph Spencer, 2 Nephi 26 through 30.

  00:07 Later on we’re going to hear Alma say, I just love this phrase, “If you will give place.” And that’s that, I’m going to set the evidence stuff aside for a second and I’m going to give place, even if I can no more than desire to believe. Could this possibly be true? Which demonstrates a humility in the faith, instead of evidence. I love that phrase, I got to give place. And maybe that’s what you’re talking about, Hank. We could be in danger of not giving place if we get too evidence intellectually-based on the whole thing.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 00:41 One way I’ve taught this to students on occasion, or especially like one-on-one settings where a student will come in saying, “But what about, what about, what about?” I’ll say, like, stop. Stop. Stop. Let’s just talk about an analogy for a minute. There are other things that work like Nephi is describing here. Think about love. Imagine a marriage in which you are constantly demanding signs that the other loves you before you will believe that they do. Imagine a relationship in which you are constantly trying to measure it in scientific terms. You will kill love so fast. Love is the kind of thing that you have to open a space, and it’s vulnerable and it’s complicated and it’s messy, but you can do the kind of thing that happens in Alma 32 and measure your feelings as they develop. Faith works like love, not like science. You have to be carefully attuned, open, listening, not the kind of thing that you just pull out the microscope and the particle collider and see what you can detect. It’s not how it works.

Hank Smith: 01:41 Does that tie into, Joe, what Jacob says, “To be learned is good?” Like there’s nothing wrong with having that scientific evidence-based mind, if you hearken to the counsels of God and the counsel of God here in 2 Nephi 27 is “I work according to faith.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 01:57 Exactly. Science is incredible, but it’s got its place. This is the threat of Gentile culture, I think as Nephi sees it is, science becomes the common measure of all things, that’s killing us.

John Bytheway: 02:08 That’s really good. I have found, Joe, what you’re saying to be true, in that, when I get in these evidence-based discussions, they can be fine. I don’t hate them. But when I think about my experience with the Book of Mormon, it seems light years beyond evidence-based. It’s fine. Like I’m not saying it’s not interesting. But my experience with the book has been, I think what the Lord describes in verse 26, “I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people.” It’s not a scientific work. It’s a marvelous work. And that’s how I describe it. I enjoy those discussions, but what my experience has been with the Book of Mormon, has honestly been light years beyond an evidence-based discussion.

Hank Smith: 02:55 Yeah, my experience is very similar. I’ve loved the things I’ve read that sift through evidence for the Book of Mormon. I’ve been instructed and sometimes it illuminates the text in really remarkable ways. But man, a serious close reading of the text and what it reveals about God, God’s nature, the life of faith. I’ll take that any day over all the evidence in the world.

John Bytheway: 03:17 Joe, I’ve heard you talk about Hugh Nibley before, one of the greatest scholars in our Latter-day Saint history. I remember you saying something like, the first half of his Book of Mormon research was that evidence-based, but he seemed to put that away after a while.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 03:32 He did. This was from the mid-40s until the mid-60s, so for about 20 years, he felt like the Book of Mormon was under a very serious attack and an answer was needed. And so he went looking for evidence. I think the way he used evidence was more nuanced than he’s often read as being. But he was. He was looking for evidence. Can we make a case on something like scientific grounds that the Book of Mormon can’t be excluded from the possibility of truth? But yeah, by the mid-60s, I think he felt like he’d kind of done what needed to be done in that regard, to quiet down the critics and he was very explicit about this.

  04:04 He says, “Now it’s time to do the real work.” And he spent the rest of his career reading it. And especially for him, what really drove his interest is the way it talked about questions of poverty, questions of consecration, questions of how cultures grow and develop and mature and then fall apart. These are the things, how it talks about war and peace. He was absorbed with those themes for the rest of his life. He said, “Evidence is fine, fine, fine. We did all that.” Now he says, “We’ve got to find out what this book is telling us to do and how to repent.”

John Bytheway: 04:34 And that’s the power of the words over the power of the Book, the plates. And I think most of our listeners have had those moments where they’ve sat with the Book of Mormon, and something clicks, something they zone in and, all of a sudden, the words become like your one reviewer said, “Three-dimensional, and you’re seeing new things and you’re feeling new things and your view is being enlightened and changed.” You can say something like, out of chapter 27, that the words are the marvelous part, not the plates.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 05:09 Yeah. Let me just finish out that thought, and to quote Alma again, and it’s discernible, it’s light. That sometimes something happens that gets close to evidence, because you can tell, “Well, something is happening to me. I’m enlightened. It’s a discernible thing and …”

Hank Smith: 05:30 Once you’ve had an experience with the Book of Mormon, other people’s opinion about the plates, it doesn’t have as much impact. “Well, what about the plates? What about this?” Yes, those are important questions, but I’ve experienced the Book.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 05:44 Right, and I feel that way about the Pearl of Great Price. A lot of chatter about the evidence for the Pearl of Great Price, but read the words. It’s incredible. Read the Pearl of Great Price, it’ll blow you away. What’s in there is, the words are out of this world. It’s so good.

Hank Smith: 06:04 So Joe, you’ve blown us away with chapter 27. Are we done with it or should we spend a little bit more time here?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 06:10 Let’s just say one final word maybe by way of wrapping it up, and that’s notice that we haven’t had to say a whole lot about Isaiah along the way. We’ve mentioned places where Nephi is picking up words and phrases from Isaiah, but this feels very different from the Isaiah chapters coming before this. And that’s maybe worth reflecting on just a little bit.

  06:27 Obviously Isaiah is still here, but notice that he’s not front and center. This is the first time in Nephi’s record where he’s quoted substantially from Isaiah and not told you that’s what he’s doing. Every other time he says, “Okay, now I’m going to quote the words of Isaiah.” And then boom chapters, but this is the first time that he subtly starts picking up Isaiah’s language and weaving it in.

  06:47 And it feels to me almost like what we’ve got in first Nephi and in second Nephi up through chapter 24 or so, we’ve got Nephi doing scales, but now he can just play. He’s been walking you through Isaiah, making sure it’s possible to liken him and so on. He’s quoting lots and lots of it, getting you familiar with it, but now it’s just smooth as butter. It’s weaving back and forth between Isaiah’s words and his own prophecy. He’s doing the likening in real time, rather than giving you Isaiah and then likening it.

  07:18 This is Nephi at his virtuosic best. That’s really something. We don’t have to pause and say, “Okay, what was going on with Assyria at the time to read this chapter?” We can, but here, Nephi, it’s become so integral with what he’s doing. We don’t have to dig into the details and the history and the Hebrew. We can just watch Nephi work.

  07:38 That’s the really beautiful thing, and shows us maybe what our own goal might look like with Isaiah someday, right? Can we get to the point where the words are just there and available and natural and we can weave them into the gospel as we have known it and felt it? That’s where Nephi is trying to get.

Hank Smith: 07:56 For a long time, Joe, and I still do, I really like understanding the context for Isaiah, but I noticed Nephi isn’t overly concerned with, “Here’s what’s happening with Assyria, here’s what’s happening with the southern kingdom, the northern kingdom, the kings, during Isaiah’s time.” He seems to think, “Yeah, you probably know about that, but you don’t necessarily need that background to give that something-“

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 08:20 I think that’s absolutely right. Maybe this is what he means by likening. Sometimes when we read second Nephi 25, we’ll say, “Oh, here are the keys to understanding Isaiah.” And one of them is, you got to know some geography, you know some history. It’s immensely helpful. I spent a lot of time doing that, so it’s helpful.

  08:35 But Nephi also goes on to say, “I didn’t teach that to my people.” And here he is copying chapters of Isaiah for them. He’s very explicit. If we’re going to do likening work, you don’t have to be an Isaiah scholar. Watch for the patterns, watch for the phrases, watch what we can do with them. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 08:51 Wonderful. Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with understanding those things. In fact, it can be very helpful.

John Bytheway: 08:56 Right.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 08:56 Yeah, totally.

Hank Smith: 08:58 Oh, man. So that chapter 27 just blew me away. How many times did you have to read that and how slowly did you have to go?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 09:09 This is my life.

Hank Smith: 09:11 I can’t imagine how slowly you had to go just to get that, “Wait, there’s a difference between the words and the book.”

John Bytheway: 09:17 I love it.

Hank Smith: 09:17 Me too. Me too. I’ll never see that chapter the same again. I bet you both know this. What did Elder Maxwell say? “These are like rooms with fireplaces yet to warm us?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 09:29 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 09:29 You think you’ve seen the room.

John Bytheway: 09:31 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 09:31 You think you’ve been in chapter 27. No, you actually haven’t been in that room as long as you need to yet.

John Bytheway: 09:38 That expanded view of it, it could really bless a lot of missionaries to know this is par for the course, this is what you’re going to encounter, and that’s prophesied. It could happen this way, but there will be some who will give place and will plant that in their hearts and that message of Christ in their hearts. I can’t wait to share it with my son on a mission.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 10:00 Yeah. I love the fact that Nephi, we tend to think of ourselves as very sophisticated 21st century individuals who see these problems of faith and science. Nephi saw this 2,600 years ago. Like he’s laying this out. He sees the challenge that missionaries are facing way, way, way in advance, and here we are patting ourselves on the back for being very sophisticated modern individuals.

Hank Smith: 10:19 Joe, would one of the keys be to be humble enough to say like verse 19-

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 10:23 Yeah. Got to be-

Hank Smith: 10:25 “I am not learned. I have information, but I don’t know if… I am not learned.” What does the Lord say in Isaiah? “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 10:37 I like that. Getting to the point where we can actually confess I am not learned. I like that way of putting it. I mean talking about slow reading and how carefully one has to read to see this kind of thing. It’s easy when we read the Book of Mormon, especially. When we’re reading the New Testament, we’re like, scholars, give me information. We’re reading the Pearl of Great Price. Yeah, someone’s got to help me with this Egyptian stuff. Old Testament, whole other story. But the Book of Mormon, even the Doctrine & Covenants, we need that Joseph Smith papers team to tell us what’s going on here.

  11:01 But the Book of Mormon, we tend to be like, “I know this, I know this.” But the result is, that we don’t read slowly, we don’t read carefully. We tend to move too fast, and there’s a certain sense in which we’re saying to the Book of Mormon, over and over, “I’m learned. I already know this. I already know what’s going on here.” But boy, if we can get to the point where we say, “I am not learned, I don’t know what this is saying.” Then man, we might actually slow down and it’ll teach us.

John Bytheway: 11:25 Boy, this podcast has taught me that, in an exciting way because every time I sit down in front of this camera, I think I can’t wait to see what I’m going to learn today.

  11:38 And you brought up Hugh Nibley and there was a video they made about him called Faith of an Observer, and at the end, he says, “None of us is very smart. None of us knows very much, but the things the angels envy us for is we can forgive and we can repent.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 11:50 We can repent, yeah.

John Bytheway: 11:51 And it’s a Hugh Nibley saying, “None of us knows very much. No, we’re not very smart.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 11:56 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 11:57 We just go, okay, if Hugh Nibley says that, what am I going to say?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 11:59 Right.

Hank Smith: 12:02 Yeah. That kind of humility is what the words will then come to light.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 12:05 Yeah, I think that’s exactly it.

John Bytheway: 12:07 What do they say when they go visit the Zoramites? “Well, we begin to have success among the poor.” What could that possibly mean? When we get to that part, I always ask the returned missionaries, “Does this sound familiar?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 12:21 Yeah, right.

Hank Smith: 12:23 I remember once I was being trained as a teacher, and a guy said something that I haven’t forgotten. He said, “You can tell a powerful spiritual experience has happened is, people don’t want to leave.” They’re like, “Let’s just stay a little bit longer and just sit in this a little bit.” And that’s how I feel about chapter 27, what we’ve just experienced. I don’t want to leave this. It’s been so good.

John Bytheway: 12:46 I have to throw in an FSY reference. The research coming back from these FSY conferences, most people would not expect this, but when they have asked the youth, “What did you love most about it?” They don’t say the two or three dances. They don’t say the activity, they don’t say the games. You know what they all say by far? “Thursday night testimony meeting.” And when the dance starts, they don’t want to go that way. It’s fascinating to see that the spirit is a beautiful comfortable place and we want to stay there. And there’s so many applications of that.

  13:21 I remember being in a youth conference once and after the testimony meeting, we’re sitting in the chapel, the DJ was eager to start up the music in the gym. And I remember seeing the fallen look on the countenances of some of the youth who wanted to stay in this place. And I couldn’t resist. I leapt up to the pulpit and I said, “Did you notice? Did you notice how that felt? How many of you just went, ugh, back to the world?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 13:50 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 13:51 Thank you for that, Joe. That was quite an experience, one I’ll always remember. What do we have left to see, 28, 29, 30?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 13:58 As we said earlier, these next three chapters which constitute our second original chapter in this block of text, the rest of this is Nephi reflecting on the stakes of the story he’s already just told us. In some ways, all of this feels very natural after what we’ve done, right? In chapter 28, we have Nephi saying a bit about what that day looks like, and the temptations of the culture we’ve been discussing. The different directions it’ll go and God’s countering of it over, and over, and over again. Maybe the most beautiful of these comes in chapter 28, 29. “Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received the Word of God and we need no more of the Word of God for we have enough.”

  14:35 No, no, no. You need more words. You need words, so that you can dwell with them. And then God’s beautiful response to this in verse 30, “Thus saith the Lord God, I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept. Hear a little, there a little. Blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts and lend ear unto my counsel. They shall learn wisdom. And unto him that receiveth well, I will give more.” And then all of chapter 29 reflects on that question, the response to the Book of Mormon being, a Bible, a Bible? We’ve got a Bible, we don’t need any more of that. And God saying, Are you kidding me? I’m going to give you every word I can. Dwell on this, too. Stick with that also. Make every space you can for this. You can see he’s just sitting with what we’ve been talking about.

  15:22 And then chapter 30 is his final word. This will all turn out all right in the end. There will be a final redemption. Gentiles and Israel and everyone together. He uses some of Isaiah’s most beautiful words to talk about that day and sends us off.

Hank Smith: 15:37 Back in 28, it seems that there’s a continuation of the discussion. Verse two, “The things which shall be written out of the book, shall be of great worth unto the children of men.” That’s how I feel about what you’ve shown us so far, and yet here comes the words into this culture, seven and eight, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Eat, drink, and be merry. Fear God. He will justify committing a little sin. Would you say that’s also Gentile culture?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 16:04 Yeah. The key line for me is verse five, they deny the power of God, the holy one of Israel. And they say unto the people, hearken unto us and hear ye our precept. And here’s the precept, “There is no God today. The Lord and the Redeemer hath done His work and He hath given His power unto men.” That’s the kind of culture that’s going to say, “Eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow we die.” God did His work once upon a time, God is dead today. God doesn’t have much to do with our everyday lives. Come back to the real world, we tell return missionaries so perversely. Come back to the real world, as if the work of building the kingdom weren’t the real world. But that’s the kind of picture when like, Nah, chill out. God’s going to be fine with all this. There’s nothing much to worry about here. We don’t need to take religious things so seriously. That’s the kind of situation to which the Book of Mormon has to come and correct.

Hank Smith: 16:52 You are right in that Nephi’s vision from 11 through 14, way back in first Nephi, still seems to be coming up. Verse 18, “The great and abominable church must fall.” He seems to be leaning on that initial vision still. That make sense?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 17:09 Yeah. So you see this as well, yeah, in chapter 30 in verse five, for instance, “The gospel of Jesus Christ shall be declared among them, the remnant of our seed. Wherefore they shall be restored unto the knowledge of their fathers and also to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, which was had among their fathers.” It’s almost a direct quotation from the earlier vision. This goes on in this vein. You can see it right at the very end in verses 17 and 18 of chapter 30. “There’s nothing which is secret save it shall be revealed. There’s no work of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light. There’s nothing which is sealed upon the earth save it shall be loosed. Wherefore, all things which have been revealed unto the children of men, shall at that day be revealed and Satan shall have power over the hearts of the children of men no more for a long time. And then I end my sayings.”

  17:50 This is the same move he made with his vision. Everything’s leading up to that last moment and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t tell you anything else, that’s going to be for John to do.” But he does it here again. Yeah, he’s walking us right back through his vision.

Hank Smith: 18:02 What do you think his message is here, Joe, if you had to rephrase it? I’m reading verse 15 of 28. “Oh, the wise and the learned and the rich that are puffed up in the pride of their hearts.” He’s like, “Oh.” It doesn’t seem to come across as a, “You better watch out because God’s coming for you.” It’s the, “Oh, this is exhausting.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 18:24 Yeah, I think that’s right. And Nephi’s got that tendency. I mean think of that passage, it’s in the reading for this week as well. It’s in chapter 26, where he talks about having seen his own people destroyed. This is chapter 26, verse seven, “Oh, the pain and the anguish of my soul for the loss of the slain of my people. For I, Nephi, I have seen it and it well nigh consumeth me before the presence of the Lord. But I must cry unto my God, ‘Thy ways are just.'” Yeah, Nephi seems exhausted, overwhelmed at the wickedness he sees and, yeah, I think this in chapter 28:15 is a perfect example of it.

John Bytheway: 18:55 Joe, so I want to take a Lord is it I? attitude at this. How do I personally overcome my Gentile culture? This is all I know. I haven’t lived in another culture. I’ve visited other cultures, but it’s permeated throughout the world.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 19:15 This is honestly one of the reasons that ancient scripture matters. We love modern scripture for all the right reasons and we love modern prophets for all the right reasons. There’s something about a culture that is completely foreign and me wrestling with trying to understand how they’re talking and how they’re thinking, that can help break my world open. I can be trapped in, this is just the way things are, isn’t it? But then I’m trying to read Genesis and I got to go, “So they think there’s water above the … What is going on here?” Right? But it’s enough to make me go, “Okay, I can’t think about this in modern scientific terms, so what am I doing?”

  19:53 Or I’m reading Isaiah talking about God in ways that make you wonder if human beings have agency, and then you have to go, “Whoa, okay, so agency is really important. That’s clear. But how much have I let my picture of agency be shaped by a modern culture?” Reading ancient scripture matters sometimes to get us out of our modern Gentile context.

  20:13 When you read Alma responding to Korihor and he said, “Look around you, everything testifies of a God”. No modern person would talk that way. But you read Alma and you go, “Whoa, there is a totally different way of living in the world than I experienced. Could I actually inhabit the space where even looking around, I see God?” And that gets me out of Gentile mindset.

Hank Smith: 20:34 Wow. And that’s where the scales of darkness begin to fall from your eyes, you start to see new things.

John Bytheway: 20:42 I love second Nephi 28, verses 21 and 22. “Others will He pacify.” What do you put in a baby’s mouth when they’re fussy? A pacifier. And then, “You’ll lull them.” What do you sing to a baby? A lullaby. “Into carnal security.” Was it President Harold B. Lee that talked about the test of gold, of abundance that we’ll have? And then in this, I guess what he means by carnal security, “All is well in Zion. Zion prospereth.” And then this frightening line, “Thus the devil cheateth their souls and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.” They don’t know what’s happening. They’re being led away carefully. They don’t realize it’s happening. And like you were saying, Hank, I don’t want to be that person that gets caught up with the Gentile culture with which I’m surrounded and starts doing the same thing. When the devil cheats their souls, I think the best kind of con is when you don’t know you’re getting conned.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 21:41 Exactly.

John Bytheway: 21:42 That’s what Satan does, leads you carefully. You don’t even realize it’s happening.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 21:47 Yeah. Mormon puts this on display in the Book of Helaman. In a lot of ways I feel like this is what the whole point of the Book of Helaman is, at least as regards the Nephites, because we get the Lamanite conversion and we get Samuel preaching. But the scene we get, every vignette we get of the Nephites, there is them not even aware.

  22:02 I love that scene where you got Nephi praying on his tower and the people are walking by, and they run into the city and say, “You got to come see this.” Why? Like who cares some guy’s praying on a tower. But it’s explicit on the text. They are astonished that someone could be so upset, and that’s why they go gather a crowd. That’s a scary moment where they have no idea how bad their situation is. And that’s what Nephi is describing perfectly. They’re thinking, Zion is prospering, that all is well. This is the best we’ve ever seen in Nephite culture, and Nephi’s going, “You are lost.” Scary.

Hank Smith: 22:38 Joe, you mentioned the Lamanites and I’ve heard you talk about this before. Is this something that Nephi sees, this redemption of the Lamanites? I know as I’ve heard you talk about this, it’s helped me see the Book of Mormon differently, because the Lamanites, often as we read are Nephite’s good, Lamanites bad, and they’ve become a background character against this main story of the Nephites. But you’ve swapped that sometimes in your mind, right?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 23:02 I think that’s the only way to read the Book of Mormon as it’s trying to teach us, right from the title page. The book is about the remnant of Israel and what great things the Lord has done for their fathers.

  23:13 Their fathers are the Lamanites. This is supposed to be a story about the redemption of the Lamanites. Nephi’s small plates are telling us the story very clearly of how Laman and Lemuel, we’ve been talking about this, gets separated from the presence of God. And now we get these prophecies about them being brought back. You get into Mormon’s historical books and it’s the story of the rise of a church, and then its first waves of Lamanite converts. Then the total conversion of the Lamanite nation in preparation for Christ showing up. The story Mormon is telling at the macro scale, is the story of the redemption of the Lamanites anciently. And then Moroni writes and tells the Gentiles, “You’d better repent because the Lamanites are going to be redeemed and you may not be if you don’t repent.”

  23:53 The whole Book of Mormon is about Lamanite redemption. You’re exactly right. We tend to read it as like Lamanite’s bad, but if we were to read the Book of Alma carefully, there is literally, not a single military conflict in the Book of Alma that’s started by a Lamanite. They are all Nephite dissenters, every one of them. Every one of them. This is not a story about bad Lamanites versus good Nephites. It’s bad Nephites versus good Nephites. That’s the story. Lamanites are basically just being forced into military conflicts through it. But over and over and over again, this is a story about Nephite problems and Lamanite redemption, 100%.

John Bytheway: 24:31 I put an Amazon logo up on my PowerPoint, because Amazon says, “From A to Z.” And I said that Captain Moroni had enemies from Z to A, Zarahemnah, Amalickiah, his brother Ammoron. And then it gets messed up with the Kingman, so it’s Zach. But like you said, they’re not Lamanites, they’re Nephite dissenters that caused the most problems.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 24:56 Yeah, the Zoramites, the Amlicites, you name it.

John Bytheway: 25:00 Joe, as I’m reading the Book of Mormon and I’m looking for this Lamanite redemption, where should I be careful as I walk through this? The war chapters you’ve talked about. Where else where I can go, “Oh look, I can see this redemption?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 25:13 It’s a different answer whether you’re reading the small plates or Mormon’s abridgement of the large plates. When you’re reading the small plates, if we take the focus to be on prophecy, which is what Nephi is doing, then this all comes right out. When we take the focus of Nephi’s record to be a series of illustrations of how to be good, or how to be bad, then Nephi looks good and Laman and Lemuel look bad. But if we take him to be telling a story about how we ended up with a division between these two nations, and then a bunch of prophecy about how that would be overcome already with his vision, and then further into second Nephi. Laman and Lemuel are going off the tracks. But the point is they’re going off the tracks and that’s the beginning of a scattering, and then we’ve got to watch for their redemption.

  25:54 We have to read it prophetically, rather than just narratively, or as a series of vignettes. When we’re reading Mormon’s record, I think we have to keep the really big picture and then we see what’s happening. In the Book of Mosiah, for instance, King Benjamin amazing, King Noah disaster, and those are clearly being set side by side. But King Noah’s disaster situation also forces into existence this new church on the borders that is going to outlast Benjamin’s people’s covenant that only last a generation. And this church is going to persist and it’s going to be the church that opens the door to Lamanite conversion.

  26:30 500 years without any Lamanite converts until suddenly there’s a church and now they’re converting? That’s not accidental. What’s happening with that church? Why is it that a church divorced from the Nephite national identity opens the door to Lamanites? For the first time to become a Christian is to become a Christian, not to become a Nephite. So even the rise of the church and the way that’s all being told in Mosiah, is opening that space for the Lamanites and then Alma. The Nephites are barely hanging on, but the Lamanites are converting in droves, and then Helaman, the Nephites are falling apart and Lamanite conversion. All through that story, we’ve just got to keep an eye on the Lamanites, and then the story gets clear all the way through it.

  27:10 Moroni is a little different because Moroni, he adds a couple chapters at the end of Mormon. And his Book of Moroni, though it’s important I think to note that the Book of Moroni, he explicitly says he wrote for the Lamanites. But then the Book of Ether is his book about unto Gentiles. So the Book of Ether is kind of a unique book. It’s about the Jaredites, but the Jaredites are not Israelites. They come from before Abraham. Moroni seems to be trying to write about Gentiles and then warn Gentiles, “Look, you’ve got no promise. You can go down like Shiz and Coriantumr if you don’t repent. So you’ve got to be like the brother of Jared.” right? That book is the one part of the Book of Mormon that’s not obviously going to tell us much about the Lamanites, but the rest of it, all of it, it’s all there.

John Bytheway: 27:46 Great overview. It’s really helpful. I want to look at this idea of being the covenant people of the Lord, and how He decides who are His covenant people, because I love this verse in 2 Nephi 30:2, how do you become a covenant person of the Lord? I wondered if you want to comment on that.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 28:04 Yeah, I think this is crucial. I think verses one and two together give us really important context. Verse one opens, “And now behold, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you.” So there’s a transition suddenly. He’s been talking, even though within the same original chapter here. He’s been talking about one thing and here he makes a kind of turn. So when Nephi says, “My beloved brethren.” Who’s he talking to? And if you go through his whole record, Lamanites. He’ll speak of his children and his brethren. Here, he seems to be turning suddenly to Lamanite readers and says, “I would speak unto you. For I, Nephi, would not suffer that ye should suppose that ye are more righteous than the Gentiles shall be.” So he seems to be looking to the last days and saying, “All right, Lamanite readers of the Book of Mormon. Just because I’ve been railing on the Gentiles for chapters, don’t you suddenly start patting yourself on the back, for behold, except ye shall keep the commandments of God, ye shall all likewise perish.”

  28:55 And because of the words which have been spoken, “Ye need not suppose that the Gentiles are utterly destroyed. They can repent. And then he gives us verse two, and it’s worded very carefully. “For behold, I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord, and as many of the Jews as will not repent, shall be cast off. For the Lord covenanteth with none, save it be with them that repent and believe in His son who is the Holy One of Israel.” But at a broad level, clear what he’s saying. “You got to keep the commandments. You’re not just in it automatically because of a covenant.”

  29:23 But it’s also I think important, the way he words it is still lopsided. “As many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord.” So he doesn’t say the covenant doesn’t matter. What you’ve got to do is become the covenant people, which is exactly what you were saying, John, right? How does one become the covenant people? “And as many of the Jews as will not repent shall be cast off.” Salvation, redemption is still always in the Abrahamic covenant. It’s always in Israel. It’s just a question of who ends up in Israel. Gentiles repenting can be, Nephi’s usual way of saying it is, numbered among the house of Israel.

  30:01 And, of course, Israelites can boot themselves right out of that. They can eject themselves from the community as the whole law of Moses tells us constantly. But it’s still in the covenant, so whether Gentiles find their way in and Israel finds its way out, it’s always still in the covenant, but there’s nothing automatic about that. There is a question of who will believe in His Son, repent and be a part of this?

John Bytheway: 30:23 Who’s eligible to be covenant people of the Lord? Those who will repent and believe in His Son.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 30:31 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 30:32 Gentile seems to refer a lot as we’ve talked to European nations, but if I go get my patriarchal blessing and I discover, “Oh, I’m one of those lost tribes.” Then I’m part of a covenant people of the Lord, I have a portion of that in me as far as lineage, but not as far as where my heart is. I have to repent and believe in His Son.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 30:51 Yeah, that’s beautifully put. This is a question a lot of students raise is, they’ll be like, “Wait, so the Book of Mormon keeps talking as if I’m a Gentile, but I got a patriarchal blessing.” I think the way you put it is really quite beautiful. Even if in terms of lineage, I’m Israel, there’s a question of where my heart is.

  31:06 I find it very interesting that in the Book of Mormon, it’s clear that Joseph Smith is portrayed as both a Gentile and an Israelite. On the title page, he’s called a Gentile. “The Book of Mormon is going to come forth by way of the Gentile.” But in 2 Nephi 3, he’s a direct descendant of Joseph of Egypt. Beautiful. Joseph is by lineage, an Israelite, but by culture, by nationality, by what he’s inherited, he’s a Gentile.

  31:32 That’s my situation. I’ve got a patriarchal blessing that ties me to Ephraim, but in terms of culture, I’ve inherited Gentile culture. I have to get my heart right.

John Bytheway: 31:41 So good.

Hank Smith: 31:44 That’s how we become a covenant people.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 31:46 Yeah, that’s what it looks like.

John Bytheway: 31:48 Joe, this has been a phenomenal experience. I’m having a hard time finding the right adjectives to describe, at least what I’ve experienced the last couple of hours.

  31:58 Before we let you go, I would love for you to try to articulate, I know this is difficult, what the Book of Mormon means to you, what it’s done for you, the way you think about it.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 32:09 It is a hard question. My bread and butter is the Book of Mormon. I’m literally a Book of Mormon scholar. This is my day job. And as a result, it’s so woven into everything I do and everything I think about.

  32:22 But I think I would say this. The way that Moroni words his promise in Moroni 10, I absolutely love. He doesn’t promise to us that we’ll know whether the Book of Mormon is true. That’s not how he words it. He says that the truth of it will be manifest. I like that because, one, I think the truth of something is way bigger than whether it’s true or false. The truth of it sounds like I’ve got a lot more information than that and a lot more depth.

  32:48 But two, I just really love the word manifest. The work I’ve done on the Book of Mormon for 20 years now, it’s crazy, and pushed harder and harder and harder against this book in every way I can, whether that’s historical, or theological, or practical, it pushes back. And the result is that for me, the truth of the Book of Mormon is manifest. It’s plain, it’s apparent, it’s obvious. But it’s also been really crucial to me that that is something that becomes manifest after so much work.

  33:23 We were talking earlier about not beginning from a scientific position on the book, beginning instead from faith, and that’s very much how it began for me. I felt things about the book, and so I read the book earnestly and seriously. I began from a position of faith, and then the more I have worked on it in an attitude of faith, the more its truth is manifest. For all the reasons we’ve been talking about, like, “Oh, is this Gentile culture clouding my understanding of the Book of Mormon?” I have an intellectual testimony as well as a spiritual testimony of the Book of Mormon, but I don’t think it’s a Gentile culture-driven one, because it inverts the attitude that Nephi attributes to the Gentiles.

  34:05 What you have there is, “Give me the book, then I will read the words.” I feel like it’s gone the other way around for me. I began with the words, and somewhere along the way the truth of it, the evidence, is just right there in it. Korihor is wrong to ask for a sign and then say he will go on to believe, but Jesus Christ Himself says, “Signs follow those who do believe.” That’s what it’s felt like with me for the Book of Mormon. Reading it, studying it, pushing harder and harder, reading closer, and closer, asking the hardest questions of it, and then seeing what I can find when I read it in earnest. And it turns out over, and over, and over again, I feel like it’s sign after sign after sign after sign, but all as sort of byproducts.

  34:47 What I was looking for was just understanding. But man, the conviction just deepens, and deepens, and deepens. I feel like I’ve come to the point where the Book of Mormon is the surest thing I know. It’s certainly the window on to Christ, the window through which I first saw Christ and the window through which I still view Him, so that Christ’s solidity in my life is dependent entirely on the Book of Mormon’s solidity. And I’m amazed at just how solid it is.

Hank Smith: 35:18 Joe, I just don’t have the words to tell you how wonderful it’s been to have you walk us through these chapters and to hear your testimony.

  35:25 John, I honestly can’t think of the word. The title of the lesson is A Marvelous Work in Wonder, and those are close words to what we’ve experienced.

John Bytheway: 35:34 I can’t wait for people to hear this. I can’t wait to share it myself, particularly about 2 Nephi 27. That’s really …

Hank Smith: 35:43 Yeah. Joe, thanks for spending your time with us this morning.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 35:47 Yeah, happy to do it.

Hank Smith: 35:48 We love having you. We want to thank Dr. Joe Spencer for spending his time with us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week as we finish up 2 Nephi on followHIM.

  36:09 Before you skip to the next episode, I have some important information. This episode’s transcript and show notes are available on our website, followHIM.co. That’s followHIM.co.

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President Russell M. Nelson: 37:04 Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn to Him. Follow Him.