Hank Smith: 00:00:03 Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with my hungry co-host, John Bytheway, and Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. John, we are in the book of Enos, Jarom, Omni and Words of Mormon today. I know you know the Book of Mormon pretty well. Are you hungry for this lesson today?

John Bytheway: 00:00:23 I used to think I knew it until we started this podcast, but yeah, I am and Enos hungered. It’s only one chapter, but I love what he chose to talk about. I’m looking forward to see what Gerrit says about all this. Can’t wait.

Hank Smith: 00:00:36 Gerrit, what are we looking forward to today in this lesson? Where are we going to go?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:00:40 There’s some great aspects of each of these books, especially ways that we can apply these to ourselves and there are ways that these parts of the Book of Mormon especially look forward to the Restoration and to the prophet Joseph Smith. When we can bring all aspects of the Restoration together with our study of the Book of Mormon, it’s even more exciting. We’re going to see the unfolding of a centuries-long, over a millennia-long miracle of the Lord’s foresight in bringing us the Book of Mormon.

Hank Smith: 00:01:16 John, there’s a reason we brought Gerrit on for this because no one knows church history as well as Gerrit, he’ll disagree. I would say no one knows church history as well as Gerrit, and this is quite a story. This is something that every member of the church needs to understand. John, Gerrit has been here before, but it’s been a while. We had some of our best episodes with Gerrit. What? Two years ago now? Maybe even more than that. John, introduce him for us.

John Bytheway: 00:01:43 I think I hadn’t laughed that hard at any podcast that we have before, but also we learned a ton. We’re just really glad to have Gerrit Dirkmaat back. He’s an associate professor of church history and doctrine at BYU. In fact, my daughter Natalie had him for a class and just loved it. He’s written two books about the translation of the Book of Mormon, From Darkness into Light, right? Here’s one of those. He also has a weekly church history podcast called Standard of Truth, which is a very important phrase to the Sorensen family who sponsors us. That was one of Steve Sorensen’s favorite things to recite that part of the Wentworth Letter. Gerrit, I’m so glad you’re back. I expect to have a lot of fun and a lot of learning today.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:02:25 Well, thanks for having me. I assume that the reason I hadn’t been back in a couple of years is because I did such a bad job teaching your daughter and so you’re like, “You know what? That’s it.” Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:02:34 See if you can make up for it today.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:02:35 We are not bringing him back.

Hank Smith: 00:02:37 Yeah, that first year we took anyone. I mean we were just-

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:02:40 Yeah. It was desperation.

Hank Smith: 00:02:45 John, the episode that I’m thinking of is I think every one of our listeners should go back and listen to, episode 23, our very first year, season one, I guess, Doctrine and Covenants.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:02:55 Doctrine and Covenants.

Hank Smith: 00:02:56 60 & 62 with Gerrit. He tells maybe the funniest story you and I have ever heard on this show, so we hope everyone will go find that. And then Gerrit one more time, the podcast is called Standard of?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:03:07 Standard of Truth. Yep. We started a few years ago. I think we’re in our fourth season now. We try to answer questions that people have about church history. We like to say our podcast is for people who take the gospel seriously but don’t take themselves seriously. We like to laugh around a little bit but also bear testimony and we try to answer questions that listeners have.

Hank Smith: 00:03:29 Oh, everyone, the Standard of Truth, go find it. Go subscribe. All right, let’s get started today. Let me read a little bit from the Come Follow Me manual and then let’s jump in. The lesson is entitled, He worketh in me to do according to his will, and it starts out with the story of Enos. “Although Enos went to the forest to hunt beasts to satisfy physical hunger, he ended up staying there all day and into the night because his soul hungered. This hunger led Enos to raise his voice high that it reached the heavens.

  00:03:57 He described this experience as a wrestle before God. From Enos, we learn that prayer is a sincere effort to draw near to God and to seek to know his will. When you pray with this intent, you will more likely to discover as Enos did, that God hears you and truly cares about you, your loved ones, and even your enemies. When you know his will, you are better able to do his will. Like Mormon you may not know all things, but the Lord knoweth all things wherefore he worketh in you to do according to his will.” That’s a great opening paragraph. Gerrit, where do you want to start? How should we go about this?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:04:32 I think a lot of times when we think about Enos, the thing that first comes to mind is I’m pretty sure I can’t pray all day. I think almost everyone who’s been in either a new church calling or they’re going on a mission, they’ve thought, “You know what? I’ll pray like Enos.” You get about 15 minutes in and you’re like, “I’ve got another nine and a half hours before I get to the nighttime here, and clearly I’m not as righteous as Enos.” But I love his conversion story. Enos isn’t an apostate. It’s not like he’s sons of Mosiah out trying to destroy the church, but he hasn’t been converted. He’s an unconverted member if you were to say that. You have to think that Jacob’s holding family home evening and stuff, you have to think that Jacob’s really trying to teach the gospel and yet it hasn’t had this overwhelming impact on him yet. One of the first things I take away from this because I have teenage children is this is a way to try to make myself feel better about being a poor father.

  00:05:35 You’re trying to teach them the gospel, you desperately want them to feel the spirit the same way you feel the spirit. And it’s sometimes very painfully obvious that they do not nor do they care to at this time because I want to go play Fortnite with my friends. What comes to his mind is the words that his father has said. I mean how frustrated Jacob must’ve been. Here’s my son. Come on, I’m the prophet. My son won’t get on board. He won’t fully accept this, but in his quiet moments, those questions about who am I? Why am I here? Is this stuff true? What’s the purpose of this life? Those are the types of questions that all humankind at some point is going to ask.

  00:06:26 And maybe your 15-year old isn’t ready to ask that question of the universe, but there will come a time at some point that they will. One of the things you take away from this is that parents continue to try to teach the gospel to your children even if it seems like they’re not fully embracing it because at some point they’re going to have a question and the words that you’ve spoken, the studies that you’ve done that will be something for them to grab ahold of the same way Enos did here.

Hank Smith: 00:06:55 That’s fantastic. I like this phrase, nurture and admonition. It seems that Jacob has this correct, I wouldn’t even call it a balance, but his high love and a high expectation, nurture and admonition. I love you and I also I’m going to hold you accountable. I care for you. I also have high standards. I like that nurture and admonition. You don’t have to choose between one or the other. I hope you’re not like, “I’m all admonition. Well, I’m all nurture.” And I wouldn’t even say balance in both. You can be both high love and high accountability.

John Bytheway: 00:07:29 I just love in verse four, my soul hungered. How do you get people to that place and maybe the Lord does that through trials even or all of a sudden you really want to know. It’s like my body hungered for a refreshment, but how do you bring people to my soul hungered? That’s a real intent. That’s that Moroni 10 phrase. My soul hungered, what’s going on here and what do I do and I love that Enos just has one chapter, but it’s so important. Let me tell you the wrestle I had before I received a remission of my sins, like, “You need this too. Let me tell you how it worked for me.”

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:08:06 I certainly didn’t pray all night, but I had an experience when I was in high school. It was when I was a teenager, I was 16. It was something similar where I felt this hunger. Now again, my parents had taught me the gospel and I was never doubting it or rebellious, but there were certainly a lot of things that mattered more to me in my life than going to church. The Nintendo would’ve just come out. There’s all kinds of things that I could have spent my time on while I was at the time with a group of friends that had just started doing things that I knew my parents were teaching me weren’t right. It led to a conflict where I was going to be forced to choose between my friends. I mean I didn’t want to, I love my friends. This sounds like a made-up story because I’m from Idaho, but I drove my car to a field one night. It was a potato field.

Hank Smith: 00:08:56 Frankly, that’s shocking.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:08:58 It’s the only field, so it sounds like I’m making that up, but I had that experience where I desperately wanted to know and the reason why I wanted to know was if this isn’t true, it’s not worth losing my friends over. It’s not worth having people make fun of me over if it’s not true. I certainly didn’t pray all night, but I knelt down in that potato field and I received a powerful, powerful witness that Joseph Smith was a prophet and honestly receiving that powerful testifying witness, it changes your priorities, it changes who you are and John said different things bring us to that hunger, but I think the Lord is always willing to give us that answer when we are ready to cry out.

Hank Smith: 00:09:47 Enos says, “The words which my father spoke concerning eternal life and the joy of the saints.” That’s an interesting phrase because we often talk about eternal life, oh, it’s going to be so great after, but Jacob seems to talk about the joy you can receive now. It reminds me of King Benjamin. He says, “Consider the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God.” That’s Mosiah 2:41. I’ve often thought Gerrit that as parents we probably ought to exemplify that happy state. You’re almost a walking billboard to your kids of this is what it’s like to live the gospel and if you look miserable, why would your child say, “Oh, that’s what I want.” If you’re an ornery, angry human being and you keep the commandments, the commandments are not for me.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:10:36 I agree. Everyone’s going to have rough times and everyone’s going to struggle with different things. It’s hard because there are days that you’re just… Things don’t work out. At the same time, at least for me, the gospel provides me a sense of peace because the larger questions in life are never the questions that I have. The how are you going to pay a bill? How are you going to get this done? How are you going to do that? Those are the temporal questions of life that I may find a way to solve them, I may not, but the questions of eternity are the ones that I already know the answers to.

Hank Smith: 00:11:13 That’s settled.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:11:14 Yeah. And I think that that brings a level of peace and it brings a level of happiness. I love life and I love to laugh and I love to joke around, I love to be around other people. I credit all of that to the gospel because it teaches me who I am and who other people are and what the purpose of life is and why the gospel is so important.

Hank Smith: 00:11:34 Gerrit, could you speak to something just really quick? I know we’re going to have listeners out there looking back on their life saying, “Oh, I should have been a better parent. I should have had more nurture. I should have had more admonition. I should have been happier.” For someone who’s thinking that like maybe me, right now I’m sure John’s not. John has zero regrets as a parent. Right John? How would you speak to someone right then who thinks, “Oh, I should have been so much better?”

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:12:00 Well, first of all, we are all desperately flawed individuals. I know it seems like that the family next door has it all figured out and they’re having family home evening every night of the week and every one of their kids has gone on three missions and they’re all married twice in the temple. The reality is we’re all sinners. We came to a fallen world. We chose to come to this fallen world knowing that we would mess up all kinds of things. One thing we should get from the Book of Mormon is everyone has agency. I remember very well, I was probably the type of person that no one ever wanted to talk to when Angie and I were first married and didn’t yet have kids because I would see people with kids I’m like, “You should probably just put a limit on their screen time.”

Hank Smith: 00:12:52 So easy to parent. Yeah.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:12:54 The easiest parenting you’ve ever done is someone else’s kids before you have any. And then you have your own children and you realize the things that work with one won’t even work at all with the other one. There’s no giant recipe book that tells you exactly how to turn out. And look at the Book of Mormon. Look at these amazing prophets who are speaking directly to the Lord and their children are falling away. Their children are unconverted. It’s not because Mosiah didn’t decide to share the gospel with his sons. The reality is in this fallen and broken world, Mosiah was probably asking the same question too, “What more could I have done? Maybe I should have been a little bit stricter on this, or maybe I…” I think that the Lord knows the effort that we’ve put in and he also knows our regrets. He also knows that we wish we had done better. Anyone who has any self introspection at all looks back on their life and says, “Man, I could have done a lot of things differently,” but that’s hindsight.

  00:14:03 As historians, it’s great to be a historian because you always get to be right. It’s like the greatest thing ever because you already know what’s going to happen and so you get to look back on the past and be like, “Well, they probably should have done this.” It’s perfect. It works out great because you already know what’s going to happen. And none of us has that roadmap in life. I would say don’t be too hard on yourself and remember, God is a God of miracles. God is a God who will use your faith and prayers to move things in a way that will bring eventual happiness, and I believe that God will miraculously change the lives of our children and in part because of our faith.

Hank Smith: 00:14:48 The Lord I think sometimes says to me, “I’m that good. I can overcome your parenting on your children. That’s how good I am.”

John Bytheway: 00:14:59 Like you said, just look at the Book of Mormon. Look at the families in here and the ups and downs they have. I’m so glad you mentioned that, and it’s like don’t miss the fact that King Mosiah and the high priest Alma and the four sons of Mosiah are the ones not just knocking mailboxes over, but they’re out trying to destroy the church. Imagine their feelings, what was going on with them. So yeah, it starts out that way and I love that my soul hungered, think the footnote, yeah, it takes you to the blessed, they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness.

  00:15:33 It doesn’t say blessed are the righteous. When your soul hungers, you’re hungering and thirsting after that, and I think it’s good to be at that point where you want that and I think Enos was at that point, so I really love this story. Some of my memories of really thinking about God, were being on camping trips and seeing the stars at night and I wonder if getting out in the wilderness made Enos, I’m going to set down my bow here and I’m going to pray because it’s so beautiful out in the wilderness.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:16:04 There’s at least something to the fact that he’s by himself. He doesn’t have to figure out how to put down his iPhone the way that some of us might have to. Enos isn’t doom-scrolling on Facebook, but no doubt as the son of the leader of the people, there was always something going on and there was always people around and there was always commotion and that by going out when you have time to think, then these kinds of deeper thoughts come in. I mean as CS Lewis who talks about in the Screwtape Letters that Satan does some of his best work keeping thoughts out of people’s heads, if you can fill up things with all kinds of commotion and business, then you never have time to think more deeply on things. And for Enos, whether it’s the stars in the sky or whether it’s just I am somewhere where I’m by myself, no one can see me, there’s no one judging, oh, there’s Jacob’s son going to pray in front of everybody. It’s just me, and he thinks about those things and goes to pray.

Hank Smith: 00:17:11 I often connect to verse four, my soul hungered with verse 17, my soul did rest, and then you can use those as bookends and say, “Okay, what happened? How do you go from a hungry soul to a restful soul?” Look in between those two verses. It’s an easy exercise for children or students to just say, “Oh, here’s this prayer, forgiveness, praying for others, unshaken faith.”

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:17:34 The next verse gives us part of that answer to that, and I often think, what was it like for Joseph Smith to translate verse five because it mirrors Joseph Smith’s own first vision experience with what Jesus tells him. So in verse five, there came a voice unto me saying, “Enos thy sins are forgiven thee.” When you go to Joseph Smith’s 1832 account of his first vision, this is his earliest account, the one that’s written in his own handwriting about this. He says, “I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying, ‘Joseph, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee.'”

  00:18:18 I often wonder when Joseph translates those words, did this hit him that Enos just had this same experience that I had and you know what? I was out praying in the woods. I was out praying, asking an answer, and the first thing that Jesus said to both of us was your sins are forgiven, and I think that is what brings peace. Joseph is actually going to say that my soul was filled with love and for many days I could rejoice with great joy and the Lord was with me in the aftermath of the Lord telling him his sins were forgiven.

Hank Smith: 00:18:56 He calls him by name just like he does with Enos. The Lord spake unto me, calling me by name, I know who you are and I forgive your sins. Interesting in verse four, Gerrit, he says, “Mighty prayer, supplication for my own soul.” It’s a great definition of prayer, and what does Joseph Smith say? “I knelt down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God.” That’s a different prayer than a rote Heavenly Father.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:19:20 It’s very much an open communication and a hungry soul is desperate for answers, is willing to do anything to get those answers.

Hank Smith: 00:19:30 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:19:30 I love that parallel with Joseph Smith’s first vision, the calling by name, the seeking forgiveness. I’m glad that that other account of the first vision mentions that and it just reminds me of is it Section 64, I the Lord forgive sins, just a sermon in a sentence.

Hank Smith: 00:19:48 John, I remember Section 64, our guest, it was Mike Wilcox who called God a delightful forgiver.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:19:54 I love the fact that in the Enos story you see a real life playing out of the Tree of life vision that Lehi has. So you have Enos desperately desiring, he takes the fruit, he receives forgiveness, and then what’s the next prayer that he prays? It’s for his brethren, it’s for his family. The first thing he wants is I want to know for myself. As soon as he is done with that, he then is, to use the Lehi vision phrase. He’s casting his eyes round about to find his family, to pray for his brethren and he prays for the Nephites because he wants them to have this. And then it’s expanded one more step out beyond that where he’s now praying for the Lamanites and receives the assurance that this record is going to come forth to them.

Hank Smith: 00:20:49 Gerrit, could you speak to someone who has a hard time forgiving themselves? I mean verse six, Enos says, “I knew that God could not lie.” The Lord told him he was forgiven and he accepted that. Elder Callister has said, “Some people are harder on themselves than the Lord is.” Of course, we need to repent and be cleansed by the Atonement, but there’s no right ankle bracelet that says 2008 sin.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:21:12 It’s a good thing.

Hank Smith: 00:21:12 You’re on probation.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:21:14 If that was the case, we’d all be wearing ankle bracelets.

Hank Smith: 00:21:18 In your experience, how does someone say, “I’ve been forgiven of my sins, I can sweep that away, my guilt was swept away?” Enos says.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:21:28 I appreciate the fact that of the things that Hank thinks I’m an expert in it’s sinning and trying to repent and that’s the reality.

Hank Smith: 00:21:36 That’s why I invited you. I thought, who’s our-

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:21:38 Who can we have on? Who is a sinner? Oh, I don’t care. If anyone knows repentance. It isn’t a funny thing that Satan gets us coming and going and when we commit sin, he spends most of the time telling us that what we did isn’t even wrong. Justifying it to ourselves, telling us that we’re totally fine, everything’s great. It’s not really a sin. I mean everyone else is doing it. I mean, come on, what else was I supposed to do? I mean, whatever kind of excuse he can give. And then the other half of the time once you actually accept your sin, once you accept that I have done wrong, then immediately turns to, “Well, you’re worthless. You’re horrible.”

Hank Smith: 00:22:20 Shame.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:22:20 “You couldn’t possibly have the love of God anymore. How could someone like you who has a testimony commit that kind of a sin? Jesus doesn’t want you anymore.” When you hear those whisperings, that is not the Lord. There’s only two great powers in the universe, President Woodruff said. The reality is if you’re hearing whisperings in your mind that are not coming from Jesus, they’re coming from the adversary and it’s the evil spirit that teaches the man not to pray. It’s the evil spirit that teaches people that they can’t repent. Some sins are more grievous than others.

  00:23:00 If you have sins that need to be repented of through the process of confession and repentance and you haven’t done that. Well, then yeah, you’re probably going to feel like you aren’t fully clean because you didn’t go through the process that our Lord outlined in the restoration of his church. The questions even further than that, you’re asking what about people who’ve even done that? What about people who’ve even gone through all the steps and they still can’t forgive themselves for what they’ve done? We need to show mercy to ourselves in order to fully show mercy to other people. In order for us to fully be able to extend that healing hand to someone else, we have to be able to know what it’s like to actually have our sins, though they’re red as scarlet become white as wool.

  00:23:55 Every single person who has ever lived on this earth is a sinner and is going to desperately have to have the Atonement to be saved. Now, whether our sins are great, whether they are little, whether they are massive, whether they’re so small that no one even thinks of them, every one of us at some point has to have the Atonement to be saved. And I would hope the people listening, if you have gone through the proper steps of repentance and you know that you are a changed person, let it go. Let that anxiety, let it be put towards serving and helping someone else. Every time you think to get down on yourself because of something in the past, take that moment and say, “I’m going to call somebody right now who I know needs some help. I’m going to go visit somebody who I know is struggling. I’m going to do something that’s for someone else.” And I feel like those feelings might, they might dissipate.

Hank Smith: 00:24:57 I love it.

John Bytheway: 00:24:58 Gerrit, I love what you said about it’s the sequence that Enos prays for things. Verse four, he prayed for his own soul. Then verse nine, my brother and the Nephites. Then verse 11, my brother and the Lamanites and then verse 16, the records. I love how you equated that to Lehi’s dream, how he looks around. There’s a statement that Joseph Smith said that I’ve always loved that demonstrates this. He said, “Love is one of the chief characteristics of deity and ought to be manifested by those who aspire to be the sons of God. A man filled with the love of God is not content with blessing his family alone but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race.” And you can see that with Enos, myself, my brother and even my enemies, and then it’s the records. I want the whole human race to be blessed.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:25:49 Another Joseph Smith teaching on this. One way we can determine how close we actually are to God is how we feel towards other people. If all of our teaching and learning and studying doesn’t make us love other people, it isn’t very helpful. And so Joseph In 1842, he says, “It is one evidence that men are unacquainted with the principle of godliness to behold the contraction of feeling and lack of charity.” If you don’t have love for other people, then however Godly you think you are, well you’re not. He says, “The power and glory of godliness is spread out on a broad principle to throw out the mantle of charity.” God doesn’t look upon sin with allowance, but when men have sinned, there must be allowance made for them. All the religious world is boasting of righteousness, it is the doctrine of the devil to retard the human mind and retard our progress by filling us with self-righteousness.

  00:26:55 The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more are we disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls to take them upon our shoulders and to cast their sins behind our back. I feel like Enos’ conversion because it was a real conversion, instantly went to I want to give compassion to other people. And Joseph is teaching this as well, that when you’re converted, yeah, you’re going to want to roam the whole earth to bless everyone else. You are going to desperately want to extend mercy to others. Another place when he is teaching the Relief Society, he says that suppose Jesus Christ or the angels should object to us over a little thing. We must have mercy and overlook small things. And it really is one of Joseph’s most favorite topics that he teaches on. He teaches about repentance and mercy over and over and over again.

  00:28:01 And frankly, the restoration that the Lord reveals through him is a gigantic expansion of the Christian understanding of the mercy of God that it is not a few select people who just so happen to be born at the right time and just so happen to be born with the right Christian parents who just so happened to hear about the Gospel that can be saved, but this plan is universal. This plan is for everyone and everyone is going to have a chance at that salvation, not just the lucky few. The atonement that Joseph Smith is going to be teaching about, the Lord’s atonement is so encompassing and so expansive, and I mean I think we get a little bit of an insight in it here from Enos. He immediately feels just how expansive that power of that Atonement is.

Hank Smith: 00:28:59 John, I’m guessing a talk has come to mind knowing you so well from Elder Holland. It’s called, Remember Lot’s Wife. He goes into this idea of forgiving yourself and also being merciful with others. This is a long quote, but I’ll try to be fast. Elder Holland says, “Let me pause and add a lesson that applies both in your life and in the lives of others. There is something in us, at least too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life, either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. It’s not good. It’s not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the atonement of Christ.”

  00:29:37 He says “it happens in marriages. I can’t tell you,” he says, “the number of couples I have counseled who when they are deeply hurt or stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window pane of their marriage. When something is over and done with when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the son of God himself died trying to heal.”

  00:30:08 And then he says this just a little bit later, “Dismiss the destructive and keep dismissing it until the beauty of the atonement of Christ has revealed to you your bright future and the bright future of your family and your friends and your neighbors. God doesn’t care nearly as much where you have been as he does about where you are and with his help, where you are willing to go.” I mean the whole talk is fantastic. I can’t see Enos coming home to Jacob and telling him this experience. “I’m forgiven of my sins” and Jacob says, “Well, I don’t know.”

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:30:38 Yeah, remember when you first started dating? I don’t know.

Hank Smith: 00:30:41 Yeah. Let’s talk about the things you’ve done, things you’ve said to me. I don’t know if you’ve been forgiven of that. One way I can know, Gerrit, if I’ve been forgiven of my sins is how I feel about other people, what I hope for them.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:30:55 Look, it’s hard. I’m a broken, sinful, mortal person as much as anyone else, and it’s one thing when someone hurts you, maybe they didn’t mean to, but they still did and it was thoughtless and it was careless and it was wrong, but then there are those who deliberately hurt you. There are those who know full well that what they’re doing is going to hurt you and they’re fine with it. And how do you reconcile that? And look, there’s so many different situations, there’s so many different places where people are at. Hopefully, ultimately, I can get to a place where I can extend the same level of mercy and forgiveness that I want my father in heaven to extend to me. When we’re talking about someone else who’s wronged us, we always want to judge them on their worst day. We take their worst day and we say that’s who that person is.

  00:31:53 They are this, this is them, and yet when we are on our knees begging God to forgive us, begging for God to accept us into the celestial kingdom, man, we desperately want God to judge us by our best day. We desperately want to say, “I know that I messed up here and I know I messed up there, but eventually I got it right.” I mean that’s the great part about the plan of salvation is the person who’s making the final judgment call is perfect and not like us and will extend as much mercy as is possible to be extended.

Hank Smith: 00:32:34 Interesting phrase, how Enos describes it in verse 11, I prayed unto the Lord with many long strugglings for my brethren the Lamanites. I don’t know if he’s like, I prayed with love for the Lamanites. I struggled to pray for the Lamanites, but I labored in diligence.

John Bytheway: 00:32:51 And he wrestled too. I hope people will find the Walter Rane, R-A-N-E painting of Enos because this artist captured what it would look like to wrestle and struggle in prayer. My son is the captain of the wrestling team. It uses every muscle and I imagine Enos spent every spiritual muscle he had in this wrestle.

Hank Smith: 00:33:15 That’s great, and isn’t that son about to go on a mission? Where’s he going?

John Bytheway: 00:33:21 Yeah. Timothy opened his call a couple of weeks ago to the Uruguay Montevideo West Mission, so we’re really excited about that.

Hank Smith: 00:33:29 Maybe he can say to people like, “You have to let me teach you if I can pin you.”

John Bytheway: 00:33:32 Yeah. That means you have to hear the first lesson. You know what I love here is almost Enos’s surprise. I mean it sounds to me like surprise in verse seven, how is it done? Really? How is it done and the answer because of thy faith in Christ whom thou hast never before heard nor seen. Faith in Christ is so important. We ought to make it, I don’t know, like a first principle of the gospel or something.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:34:00 Or something like that.

John Bytheway: 00:34:01 You know what I mean? Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:34:03 It ought to be. If they ever put you in charge, John, make sure you put that in the articles of faith. I think that is John, I’m glad you brought that up. That seems to be the center point of the story. Prayer is important, forgiving others is important, but how is this whole thing done? Verse eight, because of thy faith in Christ.

John Bytheway: 00:34:19 It’s almost in disbelief, really? How did you do that? And I hope that people that are struggling with this question we just had will do what Elder Bednar suggests. Get yourself a new blank copy of the Book of Mormon. Go through it this time and find every time it says something about God’s mercy or God’s forgiveness. Don’t get your information from Satan because he can lie. Go to sources that only speak truth like Sheri Dew says, get your Book of Mormon and read every time it talks about mercy and forgiveness and read that through and watch what happens.

Hank Smith: 00:34:54 Wonderful.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:34:55 One of the aspects of the plan of salvation that I think is underappreciated by Latter-day Saints, and in part it’s because maybe we don’t fully understand what other Christians believe about salvation and hellfire and damnation is that as President Oaks said in the last general conference that with exceptions too few to mention, every child of God is going to because of the atonement of Jesus Christ eventually inherit a kingdom of heaven. We often think things like, if so-and-so doesn’t repent, well then they’re not going to heaven. Well, actually, Doctrine and Covenants section 76, Joseph Smith’s revelation that he receives is that the Atonement is such because we are all God’s children because we all kept our first estate. That even those who don’t repent in this life, yes, they will suffer for their sins after this life, but it is radical Christian theology that Joseph Smith receives from the Lord that the Atonement is such that even those who are horrible sinners, who refuse to repent in this life,

  00:36:17 that at some point by the time of the end of the resurrection they will be resurrected and they will go to a kingdom of glory, a kingdom that Joseph describes as a kingdom of bliss. In fact, the celestial kingdom, as he says, is so great and so glorious that you can’t comprehend it unless God opens the heavens and shows it to you. We are not a religion that believes that everybody around us is going to be writhing in the agony of an eternal hell forever. The Atonement is so all-encompassing that there will be an eventual peace and happiness for everyone, but we’re concerned with that eternal life that Enos was praying about and exaltation. How do we become like our Heavenly father? That’s the purpose of the church. It’s the purpose of God to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. The purpose is eternal life, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not mercy outside of that.

Hank Smith: 00:37:27 John, how many times have we talked about so far this year? It is by grace that ye are saved. You’re saved by the merits and mercy and grace of the holy Messiah. I think it was Stephen Robinson who said, “Mercy is only mercy because it’s undeserved.” The moment you deserve mercy or the moment you earn mercy, it’s no longer mercy. It’s justice. It has to be undeserved.

John Bytheway: 00:37:49 And king Benjamin. Are we not all beggars? That’s saying the same thing. We are all in the position of a beggar, but we have a merciful God. Thank heavens.

Hank Smith: 00:38:00 Gerrit, we talked to Dr. Bowen about this last week, but I wanted to get your take on it because Jacob and Enos use similar terms. Verse 11, he says, my faith began to be unshaken. Same thing that Jacob said, I could not be shaken. How do you get to that point? If someone were to say to you, “Dr. Dirkmaat, I want to get to the point where my faith is unshakable.” Because here you are, you’ve read pretty much all there is to read about Joseph Smith. It’s your career-

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:38:30 Right. It’s my job so-

Hank Smith: 00:38:32 I shouldn’t give you too much credit for it.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:38:33 Yeah. No.

Hank Smith: 00:38:34 But how do you get to the point where, oh, that doesn’t shake my faith?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:38:38 Wow, if I had the absolute formula for that, I’d bottle it and not sell it because I’d want everyone to have it. I’d give it away for free. Let me speak for myself. I’m not a prophet. I’m not Enos, so I don’t know exactly what his experience is. I’m reminded in the New Testament of the experience that after Jesus feeds the 5,000, this is John chapter six that look, this is the ancient world and in the ancient world there is no social safety net, so the question on the minds of nearly everyone in the ancient world, every day that they woke up is, where can I get food? Am I going to have enough to eat today? You would be living in a perpetual state of hunger almost. When Jesus performs these great miracles where he miraculously creates the bread, there are so many people who ate that bread or heard about that bread who stopped seeing the forest for the trees, who instead of saying “This is clearly the Messiah,” they started saying, “Hey, there’s a way we can get bread here. I’m not going to be hungry anymore.”

  00:40:00 And when they come to Jesus and Jesus starts to teach them the more difficult doctrine that he’s the bread of life, anyone who eats this bread, the bread that I created just like Moses in the wilderness, the people who ate manna, they’ve died, but this is the bread of life. The response from his disciples, it’s not from the crowd. The response from the disciples is after that time, many of them go away and don’t follow them anymore because they couldn’t see how Jesus helps them temporally now and Jesus is speaking about something that’s after this life. It was a hard saying for them. Look, it was especially hard in the ancient world because the entire purpose of religion in the ancient world was for the gods to help you. Now, God’s supposed to give you what you want now.

  00:40:55 You don’t sacrifice a goat to Jupiter because you’re hopeful that you’ll go to the Elysian field someday. You do it so that Jupiter makes your crops grow now that you do it so that your son comes home from war now. The whole point of religion is this world and when Jesus comes along and says, “The point of this life is the next life” Man. It is radical, radical theology that most people cannot even comprehend. Jesus is teaching something that no one else has taught, that’s impossible to understand, and many of the people who were his followers said, “I can’t believe.” But when he turns to the apostles and says, “Will thou go away also?” Peter’s response is I think what our response needs to be, “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life and we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ.”

  00:41:55 The way to make faith unshaken is to focus like a laser on the Holy Spirit testifying to you that Jesus is the Christ and that Joseph Smith saw God. The way to have your faith shaken is to allow details of how God unfolds his plan to become more important than God’s plan. People get shaken because I don’t know, I was doing my family history and I saw that my great-great-grandmother, she was married to three different men in her life, when we went to the temple I mean we sealed her to all three of those men, but I mean of course she can’t be married to all three of them in the next life, so which one do you think she’s actually married to? It just seems weird that we don’t really know, but I found her journal and it says that she really loved her second husband more. I think that’s the one.

  00:42:49 We whip ourselves into a frenzy desperately trying to figure out exactly how God is going to make everything right to the point where say on the question of sealings or marriages, people might even lose their testimonies because they can’t figure out how sealings work. And the great tragedy of that is the only reason why you even have a question about who’s married to who in the next life is because Joseph Smith is a prophet. The moment Joseph Smith stops being a prophet, you don’t have to ask that question anymore because the answer is nobody, because marriage doesn’t exist in the next life for any other Christian. Why do we believe it exists? We believe it exists because Joseph Smith’s a prophet. I don’t want to say you don’t want to be inquisitive that you don’t want to ask questions.

  00:43:51 My entire life and career is based upon asking questions and trying to get back to sources, trying to figure out how things happen. Joseph Smith was asking questions. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “How did this work? I want to know more about this.” But we have to keep a focus on the fact that the only way you can know anything about God is through the Holy Spirit. That’s it. It’s the only way, and when the Holy Spirit testifies to you that Jesus died for your sins and that this is God’s restored church, okay? I may not know exactly why the Kirtland Safety Society fell. Does that change the fact that Joseph Smith saw Jesus? I don’t know exactly how marriage is going to work in the next life. Does it change the fact that Jesus died for us? Those questions are still good questions, but we can’t allow our questions to dominate the things that the Holy Spirit’s already testified to us. That was way too long of an answer to that question.

Hank Smith: 00:45:02 No, I’m right with you. The two questions that need to be answered are, one, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? And two, do you believe that same Jesus is the force, the power behind this book? To me, it feels evident, obvious that Jesus was resurrected, and then anybody who’s studied this book so far with us, John, I don’t know how you’d see that He is not the source of this material, of this book. And those are your two questions. Now, like you said, Gerrit, everything else can be interesting and you might not know for a long time, and then you might find out one day and go, “Oh, wow, what an interesting thing,” but I come back to my base.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:45:42 Joseph Smith has something, he has plates. The reality is this book is something that comes from somewhere, and that’s why it’s so important to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon not only teaches us about Jesus, which is essential, but there are all kinds of people all over the world, wonderful Christians, who are doing great things to help others in this world who have strong testimonies of Jesus. Latter-day Saints have a different understanding of that Jesus, because of the Book of Mormon and because of the revelations that Joseph Smith received. We talk so much about it because those two important questions get answered, Is Jesus really my Savior? If this book is true, then Joseph Smith is a prophet and this is really God’s church. That means that exaltation is a thing. It means that these revelations that Joseph gives to help us understand what this life is about, that the Lord gives to Joseph Smith, that they teach us what we need to do in order to become like our Heavenly Father.

Hank Smith: 00:46:58 I think J. Reuben Clark said it’s latitude and longitude. Once you have both of those, you can pinpoint where you are, but you got to have both.

John Bytheway: 00:47:05 We’ve mentioned this talk before, but Elder Lawrence Corbridge, Stand Forever, answer the primary questions. You got secondary questions? We all do, and that’s fine. Answer the primary ones and put them in perspective with the secondary ones.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:47:19 Yeah, I love that, John, because I mean, I feel like that all the time. If you think you are frustrated that you can’t find answers to all of your church history questions, it’s literally my job. Imagine how frustrating it is when I have a question about some church history thing and all I do is study it all day long and I still can’t find an answer to it. It is a natural, natural thing to wonder how things happen, and with our limited understanding, our limited intelligence of what happened in the past to say, “Boy, that doesn’t really sit quite right with me. There’s got to be more to that story.” I’m sure there is. At the same time, it doesn’t change the core focus. Did Jesus die for our sins? Did he restore his church on the earth?

John Bytheway: 00:48:11 I feel like if I could add words to the scriptures, okay, don’t smite me, like Abraham three, “I will prove them herewith to see if they’ll do whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” I want to add, “Even when it doesn’t make sense,” I’m going to see what they will do when they don’t have the answers. I’m going to see what they’ll do when it doesn’t make sense because somebody brings up something like that and I’m going to go, okay, so Jesus didn’t visit the Nephites and the Lamanites in the new world? Because where I always go back to. No, he did.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:48:41 It’s an odd thing, honestly, and it’s part of our humanistic rationalistic worldview that we have today. It’s a weird thing that there’s actually an expectation.

John Bytheway: 00:48:53 Everything has to make sense.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:48:55 Yeah. That you don’t have to believe if you can’t fully understand why you’re doing it, and there’s no evidence in scripture of that case, there’s literally none. And yet you have people constantly saying, “Well, that doesn’t make sense to me.” Yeah, get in line. It didn’t make sense to Abraham. It didn’t make sense to Adam. It didn’t make sense to Jacob. It didn’t make sense to Joseph Smith. Things don’t make sense. It’s funny because I will sometimes pejoratively be called by antagonists of the church. They will pejoratively call me a sheep and yeah, yeah. It’s almost like that’s what Jesus is looking for.

John Bytheway: 00:49:39 I think that’s what he wants. I think he’s the good shepherd.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:49:44 You’re just a blind sheep falling. And I’m like, first of all, obviously I don’t want to do this in certain situations. I’ve done it where again, just because it’s my job, not because I’m special or I’m smart, I’ve read like 10 times more on this stuff than whoever this antagonist person is, so I’m not blind at all. Yeah, I’m a sheep, but I’m a sheep because I’m going to follow the Lord because it’s the Lord and I don’t have to know. It’d be great to know, but I don’t have to know.

John Bytheway: 00:50:16 And that’s part of the test of life. What will you do when you don’t know, when you don’t know everything?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:50:22 It really is the test of discipleship. I always say the test of your discipleship isn’t whether or not you are sharing the general conference talk that just so happens to perfectly align with your political and social beliefs. The test of discipleship is, are you sharing the one that’s totally opposed to what you personally think? We can’t turn the church into an extension of our political social arguments that we make. We have to do the opposite. Ultimately, for people to be unshaken in their faith, they need to get to a point where I follow the prophet no matter what, and if I don’t agree, I follow, and if it makes sense, I follow, and if I don’t want to follow, I follow. And yeah, that’s scary to people because it means, well, I’m giving up my agency. No, you are choosing with your agency to say, I am going to follow God’s representative.

  00:51:21 Well, what if he’s wrong? Well, then God will know that I chose to follow his prophet and it will be accounted unto me for righteousness. My job is to exercise faith in the Lord’s prophet regardless of the evidence that I have. I hear a lot of people say the opposite. I hear a lot of people say things like, “Well, you’ve got to figure all this out for yourself.” Sure, you do need to receive an answer, but you’re not going to receive an answer that, oh, yeah, here’s where President Nelson got it wrong last week, but luckily I have the answer.

Hank Smith: 00:51:57 Gerrit, we now come to a fascinating part of the Book of Mormon where we fly through history-

John Bytheway: 00:52:02 Fast-forward.

Hank Smith: 00:52:03 We just hit fast-forward. Is the fast-forward button still around, John? Do they still have those?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:52:08 You just put it on double speed, triple speed, just like people listening to my podcast.

Hank Smith: 00:52:11 Yeah, that’s what it does.

John Bytheway: 00:52:12 And the pitch doesn’t go up like it used to. It used to go… And now it just stays. Yeah.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:52:17 It’s everyone just talks really fast.

Hank Smith: 00:52:20 Gerrit, how do we want to cover these, I don’t know, three centuries of Jarom and Omni?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:52:26 It is a fascinating aspect of the internal aspect of the record, which we’re going to talk more about with Words of Mormon. Because there’s actually two sets of records that you get into these books of Jarom and Omni. You get a reticence for people to write in them in part because there’s another record. This is probably like me not wanting to write in a journal because I’m… Well, my wife’s keeping a journal and I mean she’s going to be more honest anyway, that there’s another record so I don’t have to do it. It is fascinating. You wonder what are the things that were not recorded here or that were recorded that we would have if we had the book of Lehi? Because we take things like Jarom verse four, “There are many among us who’ve had many revelations for they’re not all stiff-necked, and as many as are not stiff-necked and have faith, have communion with the Holy Spirit, which maketh manifest unto the children of men according to their faith.”

  00:53:27 There’s a lot going on, but you take verse two, he describes, these plates are teeny. There’s not a whole lot of room, and we already know it’s being recorded somewhere else, “So as these plates are small and these things are written for the intent of the benefit of our brethren, the Lamanites, wherefore, it must be that I write a little, but I shall not write the things of my prophesying.” So Jarom was prophesying something. We don’t know what it was, but he was prophesying. “Nor of my revelations,” Jarom received revelations, no idea what they are. “For what could I write more than my fathers have written? For have not they revealed the plan of salvation? I say unto you yea, and this sufficeth me.” That’s obviously a great deal of humility there with Jarom, but also a clarity that the plan of salvation has already been outlined here. “Even though I’ve received revelations and I’ve prophesied,” it’s still all the plan of salvation. It’s all right there.

John Bytheway: 00:54:25 That is the one verse that I just love. If they’ve revealed the plan of salvation, that sufficeth me, and I think sometimes our kids, our critics, they look at the church as a list of rules. No, the revelation is the plan, and then the rules have a context because there’s a purpose behind commandments and covenants. But the plan, we’ve heard so many talks recently, what is the plan of God and the word plan doesn’t even appear once in the King James Bible as Hugh Nibley pointed out. It’s like looking at a library as, oh, that’s a place where you can’t talk and missing everything else that’s in there. No, don’t think the church has a list of rules. The gospel is the plan, and then all the rules have a place and a context, but the glory of it is Heavenly Father has a plan.

Hank Smith: 00:55:17 Gerrit, what happens next in Omni is even faster. I mean, we have Omni, but the book’s not really Omni.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:55:23 Yeah, Jarom’s basically like Shakespeare compared to the book of Omni. He’s waxing poetic there. When you get to the rapid succession of people who have the plates in the book of Omni, now it’s still called the Book of Omni because they’re still following that. Whoever speaks first, basically in the book, they get the book named after them, so that’s why I always want to try to write a forward to someone else’s book. Hopefully they’ll name the book after me, but-

Hank Smith: 00:55:49 Yeah, Omni’s definitely not the one who writes the most in this book.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:55:52 No. He puts something in there and then he passes it down and passes it down. One thing that becomes clear in both Jarom and Omni is that the act of passing these smaller plates down is an act of passing a prophetic mantle. This is something that needs to be passed and needs to be passed and needs to be passed. It is funny to see them spend more time saying why they’re not going to write than, I mean you could write something. Instead, you spend two verses saying that you’re not going to write anything. You could have said something else, but again, I think it’s because they’re keeping a larger record.

  00:56:30 Verse 11, the record of this people is engraven upon the plates, which is had by the kings according to the generations, and I know of no revelation save that which has been written neither prophecy wherefore, that which is sufficient is written, and I make an end. Now that’s Abinadom, that’s making that statement, but again, the fact that there’s another record that there’s these larger plates is clearly causing them to hold back and to say, “What we have here is already here, and I was told only to write things that are new here,” basically is what they seem to be saying.

Hank Smith: 00:57:05 It almost seems like they’re running out of room.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:57:08 It sure does.

Hank Smith: 00:57:09 They’re like, “Hey, I don’t know how to make new plates.”

John Bytheway: 00:57:13 It’s such a pain to engrave. I’m just going to be really short today. I love the name Abinadom. I think that was the name of the Nephite Sports Arena was called the Abinadom.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:57:27 The Abinadom. Sounds like the one that King Noah would’ve had unfortunately. One of the fascinating things about Omni is this is the first place in the Book of Mormon. If you’re reading from the beginning where you learn that there are other peoples that are involved, the title page of the Book of Mormon is a spoiler alert, but if you’re already moving through reading the book itself, it’s really just the Lamanites and Nephites, Lamanites and Nephites, Lamanites and Nephites. Until you get to Omni, you learn something that actually affects all kinds of the remaining stories in the Book of Mormon, both geographically with names, but also with people.

  00:58:13 You’re going to learn something that you weren’t quite aware of at first because if you’re Nephi, you simply assume that everyone in Jerusalem is destroyed. So when you get to Omni verse 12, there’s a couple of cool parts about this. He says, “Behold, that we’ll speak unto you somewhat concerning Mosiah, who was made King over the land of Zarahemla.” Okay, Zarahemla, you’re actually having introduced here something brand new. Well, it’s a good thing that he was made the king over Zarahemla. Thank you for-

John Bytheway: 00:58:47 What’s that? What’s that?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 00:58:48 …ever heard of that? Yeah. What an amazing king he must be. He knows there’s context on the larger plates, so he maybe doesn’t feel like he has to go into all that context, but he is providing this story here. Who was made king over the land of Zarahemla for behold, he being warned of the Lord that he should flee out of the land of Nephi and as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord should also depart out of the land with him into the wilderness. First part about this that I think is applicable, the Nephites have been living in the aptly named land of Nephi since Nephi separated from his brothers. This is hundreds of years, 300 years roughly, that they have lived in the land of Nephi and Mosiah is told by God they need to leave. Guess what? The people who are faithful leave with them.

  00:59:45 How applicable is that to Latter-day Saint Restoration Theology, and I’m not just talking about coming to Salt Lake. In January of 1838 in Kirtland, Joseph Smith receives a revelation. It’s not in the Doctrine and Covenants, so I can’t point it to you. You can go to Josephsmithpapers.org and you can find it there where Joseph receives a revelation that commands all of the faithful saints who are still in Kirtland because Kirtland has now become a nest of apostasy and lawsuits and threatened mob violence and all kinds of things that are going on. Joseph receives a revelation that all of the faithful that are in Kirtland need to leave and go to Missouri. There are some who say, “Yeah, I’m not. Thanks. I’m not leaving my house. I’m not walking a thousand miles to Missouri.” The worst part about walking a thousand miles to Missouri is that when you get there, you’re in Missouri. They didn’t have air conditioning. Okay? I mean it’s… To all of our listeners in Missouri, it’s not a current,

John Bytheway: 01:00:46 This is the frontier at the time.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat: 01:00:48 But the reality is in all seriousness, they’re being asked to give up everything and walk a thousand miles. Thousands of them do it. Thousands of them say, “Okay, I’m from Ohio. I grew up in Ohio. I’ve been here since the church was first in Ohio. I’m going to go where Joseph tells me to go.” Verse 12 really is this incredible leap of faith. For technical purposes, it’s also the reason why the Book of Mormon becomes very confusing for the next several books because the Lamanites take over the land of Nephi. It was always, as a kid, I was like, this is the weirdest thing ever. Why are the Lamanites living in the land of Nephi? Because I was like, “Oh, we went up to the land of Nephi to preach.” Seems like you could just turn around and you’d be doing that if you’re the Nephites, wouldn’t you just already be there?

  01:01:33 No. Because they were there and they leave because they’re warned. And it came to pass that he did as according to the Lord commanded him and they departed out of the land into the wilderness, and as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord, they were led by many preachings and prophesying. So again, the people have to make this step of faith to follow the prophet, and when they do, they then get further details and they were admonished continually by the word of God, and they were led by the power of his arm through the wilderness until they came into the land, which is called the land of Zarahemla, and they discovered a people who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there was a great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla, and also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass, which contained the record of the Jews.

  01:02:28 Behold, it came to pass that Mosiah discovered that the people of Zarahemla came out from Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah King of Judah was carried away captive into Babylon. At the end of this prophetic journey they don’t just find other people, they find other Israelites who had also been brought out of the land of Jerusalem. This is going to be the focal point now of the entirety of the rest of the Nephite civilization surrounding this land of Zarahemla where Mosiah and his followers, because they were faithful, because they heeded the word of God, end up in this place where they are far more supported, where they’re far safer from the Lamanites. And also where they are able to make massive conversions to the church of God because the people of Zarahemla didn’t take plates with them. Not only had their religion become corrupted over the 300 years, their language had become corrupted.

  01:03:35 They had to teach them their language in order for them to be able to communicate with one another. And I don’t know how difficult a process that was, but you can find a linguist who will explain to you that over the course of 300 years in isolation, a language will change pretty quickly. It introduces this, we often call them Mulekites, these people that come out from Zedekiah. The first inklings we have also of the Jaredites is the Book of Omni. It is the spoiler alert central of the Book of Mormon. It just starts dropping bombs about things that you’re going to be spending most of the rest of the time in the Book of Mormon because it talks about Coriantumr who had been with the people of Zarahemla and that he was the last of that Jaredite civilization that we don’t really know anything about yet, but we’re going to learn a whole lot about going forward.

  01:04:28 The foreshadowing there is great, and then of course you get this introduction to King Benjamin. This is an important introduction in part because we don’t get an introduction of King Benjamin from the Book of Mosiah. The book of Mosiah starts off in the middle of a story, and I’m sure your next guest when they talk about the book of Mosiah will say that Mosiah is the only book that starts in the middle. It doesn’t say, “Let me tell you about Benjamin.” It just starts with Benjamin being the king. Omni and Words of Mormon give you this lead-in of who King Benjamin is that we frankly wouldn’t have otherwise. I love this parting words that Amaleki is going to give. He says, “And now my beloved brethren, I would that you should come unto Christ who is the holy one of Israel and partake of his salvation and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him and continue in fasting and praying and endure to the end. And as the Lord liveth, ye will be saved.”

  01:05:39 That is a beautiful summary of how it is we can follow that plan of salvation, this idea of enduring to the end, this idea of offering our whole souls, of being willing to give up everything to Christ. Well, maybe he’s not one of the more well-known prophets in the Book of Mormon doesn’t even have a book named after him, but what he has to say is very powerful.