John Bytheway: 00:01 Welcome to part two with Krystal and George Pierce, The Book of Ether, chapters 1-5.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 00:08 They have gathered all of these things together. They’re on their way to the Promised Land, of course on the way they enter into what we call a Promised Land Covenant. This fits in with other versions of Promised Land Covenants that we’ve already seen.

Dr. George Pierce: 00:24 We can think of a covenant as a solemn two-way promise. As we see it in scripture, we have one party promising they’re going to do something, and then God promising that he’s going to do something. Think about Abraham. So Abraham and his family, their part of it is to have Jehovah as their God to follow Jehovah’s commandments and walk before him. God’s part of that is to give them property, so the Promised Land to give them posterity to make sure they’re going to have children, prosperity, to bless them and bless those who bless them. We see in the Book of Abraham, part of Abraham’s Covenant is that he’s going to have the priesthood reside in his lineage as well. And of course the Mosaic law, it’s a covenant between Israel and God as Moses restates it in Deuteronomy; it’s about when you get into this land, then you should follow God’s commandments so that you can prosper and that you don’t forget God, and if you do, then the danger is that you’ll be removed from the land.

  01:20 We see the same thing happening in chapter 2 as the Jaredites are moving. It says in verse 7, “And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise, which was choice above all other lands, which the Lord God had preserved for a righteous people. And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whosoever should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when the fullness of his wrath should come upon them.” Serve God and prosper in the land; don’t serve God and get swept off. Does it sound familiar? Absolutely. We see it throughout the Book of Mormon. If we go back to 2 Nephi 1.

  02:03 Lehi talks about, “That we have obtained a land of promise, a land which is choice above all other lands,” so there’s our phrase again. “The Lord hath covenanted this land unto me and to my children forever, and,” this is important, “also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. And he has said that as much as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land; but as much as ye will not keep my commandments, ye shall be cut off from my presence.

  02:28 We see that throughout the Book of Mormon. This covenant gets reiterated. Nephi talks about it, Lehi talks about it, Jarom talks about it, Ammoron talks about it, King Benjamin talks about it, Alma the Elder and Alma the Younger both talk about it. Mormon talks about it, and then Moroni is going to talk about it right here in this chapter as well when he inserts his editorial.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 02:47 Yeah, it’s great because he sets up this Jaredite covenant, which predates the Lehi covenant of the promised land. I love it. He jumps in verse 11, and he says, “And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles.” He says, Guess what? You are also under a promised land covenant just like the Lehites, just like the Jaredites. In verse 12, he says, “This is a choice land,” using the same words, “Whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage and from captivity, if they serve Jesus Christ.” He says, “Hey, Gentiles,” and like we had talked about before, this is a Gentile book here. He’s saying, “You see that there’s a Jaredite covenant; you see there’s a Nephite covenant. You are also part of this promised land covenant.” We know what happens to the Jaredites. Spoiler alert, they don’t keep the covenant in the end; they lose the land, the Lehites, the Lamanites, the Nephites.

  03:49 They don’t keep the covenant; they lose the land. Moroni is saying, “You do not want to be the third group of people to lose the land because you break the covenant. I’m telling you these things because I want you to learn from them, and I want you to change what you’re doing so that you don’t end up in the same way they do.” I love how Lehi says, “Anyone who’s brought to this land is under this covenant.” And then he says, “Guess what? Everybody who’s brought to this land is under this covenant.” It’s important that we recognize that and we learn from the Jaredites and the Lehites about that.

Dr. George Pierce: 04:28 That ends in them destroying each other, and that could easily happen to us. I want to look at verses seven and 14. The Lord says, “All right, we’re going to build these barges. We’re going to cross some waters, then when you get across those waters, you’re going to get to another big set of waters. Don’t stop. I want you to keep going to the promised land.” That’s in verse seven. Then you come down to verse 13. They came across, they got to the sea, and they stopped for four years. This is the one thing; he said, “Whatever you do, don’t do this,” and then that’s the one thing they do. He doesn’t pray for four years; apparently, whatever he did, he didn’t call upon the name of the Lord, and so he and the Lord have a talk. When you say that in verse 14, I found that fascinating that the Lord says, “Okay, this one thing, just don’t do this one thing.” That’s the one thing they did. It reminds me of Elder Holland and John; you can help me out. All God has to work with is…

John Bytheway: 05:26 Is imperfect people. That must be terribly frustrating to him but he deals with it, and so should we.

Hank Smith: 05:32 It just seems like a parent to a child.

John Bytheway: 05:36 “You had one job.”

Hank Smith: 05:37 Yeah, don’t stop.

Dr. George Pierce: 05:41 The one thing they weren’t supposed to do, they did, and it ended up then in a pause for four years, four years of stopping, and what are they going to do? They’re going to plant crops. They’re going to get into this routine of daily life, and if they would’ve kept going, they wouldn’t have had the pause, and we wouldn’t have had that chat between the Lord and the brother of Jared for three hours out of the cloud chat. That chat.

Hank Smith: 06:06 He chastened him. I wonder what that looks like where the Lord says, “Can I talk to you?”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 06:12 It’s interesting how he brings up the covenant in these following verses. He says, “Remember, I’m going to take you to this land, and you promised that you were going to do these things; you forgot.” A couple of the problems they had got through them through praying, through crying out to the Lord. Now he’s telling them, “Never stop; if you stop praying, this is the way that we’re communicating, and if you want to make it to the promised land and be successful, you got to keep doing that.”

Hank Smith: 06:43 That’s interesting. You forgot to do the one thing that you learned from chapter one.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 06:48 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 06:49 A God who chastens is a God who cares. He doesn’t walk away and say, “Oh, fine, forget it.”

Dr. George Pierce: 06:54 Those whom He loveth, he chasteneth.

Hank Smith: 06:56 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 06:57 Yeah. That’s a God who cares and is coming after him, and that’s one of the greatest impressions I had during our whole Old Testament year, was this is a God who is relentlessly coming after us and trying to get us home again.

Hank Smith: 07:10 One thing I find interesting about human nature is he forgot to cry unto the Lord that he knows that it works, but he still didn’t do it, and that just seems so human that, “I know this works. I know prayer works. I’ve had experiences where prayer works, and yet I didn’t pray for quite a while because I remembered not to call upon the name of the Lord.” I like the humanness of chapter two.

Dr. George Pierce: 07:34 We talked about the fact that they have a crisis in the confounding of language. They have a crisis in where they’re going to live. The third crisis that we identify within these chapters is the crisis that the brother of Jared then brings up when the Lord talks to him about building the barges; he brings this up in verse 19, he says, “And behold, O Lord, in them there is no light; whither shall we steer? And also we shall perish, for in them we cannot breathe; save it is the air which is in them; therefore we shall perish.” This is the crisis. How are we going to have air to breathe? How are we going to see anything? What’s going on here? To go back to our conversation, the brother of Jared forgetting to cry unto the Lord; maybe in that four years they didn’t have what they consider to be a crisis, which that’s a real lesson.

  08:23 If he’s only crying to the Lord when there’s a crisis and not when things are normal and mundane during those four years, then that’s a problem. That’s something that the Lord would need to chasten him about. As we can recognize that chastening that’s related to compassion, it goes back to Ether chapter one, the Lord having compassion on them. We have this crisis. How are we going to breathe, and how are we going to see anything? It’s valid. In verse 20, “The Lord said unto the brother of Jared: Behold, thou shalt make a hole in the top and also in the bottom; and when thou shalt suffer for air, thou shalt unstop the hole and receive air. And if it be so that the water come in upon thee, behold, ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood. The Lord gives him the answer, so I have students that are like, “Well, is it for them to be able to turn over and over in the sea?” And I say, “Would you really want a barge full of bees turning over and over and over on you?”

  09:12 Probably not. I’m not sure what the birds are doing at that point and the aquarium, so it’s not like that picture that we get from the cartoons or something else in our minds. It’s simply a matter of physics. Pop the top, get air, close the top, pop the bottom, get rid of your refuse, and it works. They’re not from a maritime culture, so they’re like, “Okay, that makes sense,” but what’s really great is when we get to the light, he cried again to the Lord, saying in verse 22, “Behold, O Lord, wilt thou suffer that we shall cross this great water in darkness?” And this is where we get then the Lord says to him in verse 23, “What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you.” That would also be dangerous, by the way, “For ye shall not go by the light of fire.”

  09:59 And we get this at the end of verse 25, “Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?” For the first part of the crisis about air, the Lord’s like, “Okay, here’s the solution,” and in the second part the Lord says, “Okay, what do you want me to do?” It’s for them to figure out. When we think about their responses to these crises, we talked about the first one being they simply just ask and they have to trust that God knows what’s best for them.

  10:25 A second possible response is that they ask then if it’s not going to go away to be able to survive and thrive with a hope for a better future, and then in this response we see them basically asking God for instructions. And God is then going to flip the script and ask them what do they think is best. Elder Holland had this quote in his book, Christ and the New Covenant. He said, “Clearly the brother of Jared was being tested. God had done his part. Unique, resolutely seaworthy ships for crossing the ocean had been provided. The brilliant engineering had been done. The hard part of the construction project was over. Now the Lord wanted to know what the brother of Jared would do about incidentals.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 11:06 When we think of problem-solving, that is a divine attribute to try to be able to solve your own problem with the help of the Lord. I love how he says, “You’re going to come up with an idea. You’re going to come back to me, then I’m going to help you out because you understand me. You know what I am capable of. You know that I will help you.” The brother of Jared comes up with a plan, and this is in chapter three. His plan is to molten out of a rock 16 small stones. This is great because it doesn’t say the Lord teaches him how or anything, and we do know that they were making a form of glass in Mesopotamia at this time, so this is not out of the ordinary to take crushed quartz and sand and mix it with things to make this. So he knew how to do that, and then he asked the Lord to touch the stones to put light in them, and then you have to think, “How in the world did he come up with that idea?”

  11:59 There is a related story that has to do with Noah’s Ark and the way Noah’s Ark was lit. That might be where the brother of Jared got this idea. There is a Jewish legend that when God created light, he put it in a stone; he gave it to Adam when Adam had to leave his presence so he would always have the light of God with him in this stone, and Adam passed it down from prophet to prophet to prophet until it got to Noah. Noah used it to light the Ark. Part of this idea comes from the word that in the King James version of the Bible that’s used as a window where it says, “He put a window in the Ark.” The Hebrew word is tsohar, which just means light. It doesn’t mean window.

  12:46 Some people think that this stone was used by Noah, and eventually, the legend goes, it was passed down to Moses, who used it in the tabernacle. Perhaps because this is just after the flood, the story of the Tower of Babel, that the brother of Jared understood that God could put light in a stone to help his prophets, to help his people, but what’s great about this is before he asks the Lord to touch the stones, he gives this amazing testimony about his knowledge of the leadership, divinity, and power of God.

  13:23 In verse two, he acknowledges, “We are weak. You are holy and dwellest in the heavens.” Right? Talking about the divinity of God. “I understand you’re way up here and you’re perfect and we’re way down here and we’re imperfect, but you love us and you never give up on us,” and I think that’s part of the chastening. He’s never going to stop trying to get us to be like him. In verse three, he says, “You have been merciful to us. You have been turning away your anger; you have been guiding us and leading us this entire time.”

  14:01 Verses four and five. He says, “I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man; touch these stones.” Verse five, “We know that thou art able to show forth great power.” He testifies that he knows that the Lord has the power to help them and the love and mercy, and compassion to help them as well. His entire plan is based on his knowledge of the leadership divinity and power, which is the opposite of the tower and what the tower stood for, and it’s beautiful that he testifies of this.

John Bytheway: 14:42 One time I was speaking somewhere with my laptop and a PowerPoint, and my laptop, in the middle of my talk, decided to do an update. Then I knew what the Lord meant when he said, “You can’t have windows.” Oh, okay, so get a MacBook Pro, but the thing that you just said that I thought is so cool is footnote 23A.

Dr. George Pierce: 15:16 No. It was good. That was good. You can’t have windows.

John Bytheway: 15:18 Thanks for laughing at my joke, guys. You cannot have windows, for behold, they will crash in the middle of your fireside.

  15:26 So Ether 2:23, “What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows.” Footnote 23A takes you to Genesis 6:16, where, as you just said, is the story of Noah. I want to tell you the footnote on Genesis 6:16 because this is so cool on the word windows, so footnote 16A says, “Hebrew, tsohar. And then this line, some rabbis believed it was a precious stone that shone in the ark.” He perhaps went to the scriptures, another story, to get an idea of what to do to get light. I also love the idea of the Lord touches things and fills them with light. I remember hearing somebody speak at a marriage seminar and saying, “We should do what the brother Jared did. Ask the Lord to reach down to touch our marriages and fill them with light.” I thought that was a beautiful metaphor.

Hank Smith: 16:27 I just love Ether chapter two. Like you said, Krystal, you could spend a lot of time here. I’ve noticed in verse 16 he’s like, “I built the barges according to the instructions of the Lord.”

John Bytheway: 16:38 I did what you said.

Hank Smith: 16:40 I did what you said, and there’s some serious problems.

John Bytheway: 16:47 I don’t mean to be critical. There’s some design flaws in here.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 16:52 Yeah, were the plans complete or not?

Hank Smith: 16:55 Yeah. He says, “Lord, we don’t have light; we can’t steer, and I guess we could do both of those, but we can’t breathe.” And I like what you both said there that the Lord says, “All right, here’s some specific things you could do that’s for the air. Steering, I don’t even want you to worry about it. I will bring you out of the depths, and then what you both said, What do you want to do?” To me there’s so much we can learn there. Sometimes we want the Lord to tell us what to do. I know my young adult students do, “Lord, tell me what career you want me to have. Tell me who to marry. Tell me how many children to have. Tell me what to do.” And sometimes the Lord tells us, “Here’s what you need to do about the air issue.” Sometimes he says, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it,” but I think oftentimes the Lord says, “What do you want do? Bring me an idea. I can make that work.”

John Bytheway: 17:53 Mahonri could have said, “Listen, one day you’re going to have this verse that says, if any of you lack wisdom, ask of God, and I just did and you said, go figure it out.”

Hank Smith: 18:03 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 18:05 And this to me sounds very section nine: “Go study it out in your mind and come up with something, and then ask me what I think.” I love that idea of you doing the work. Our friend Tyler Griffin, he wrote a book called When Heaven Feels Distant, and he said, “This story shows a pattern of three different types of answers we can receive when trying to solve problems.” Number one, exact instructions. Okay, that’s for air. Number two, activation of agency. Okay, what do you want me to do? That’s for light, and then what you just said, Hank, the steering part, I got this. I’ll take care of that. Tyler said, “Answers from the Lord do not always fit neatly into one of these categories, but these variations can help us make better sense of our own situations. At first thought, we may prefer most of our answers to fall under the don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it category.”

  18:56 “However, this type of interaction is best for small children.” Okay, but I like that. “Adults grow less when God takes care of everything without any effort on their part. The next instinctive preference might be step-by-step instructions for how to solve our problems. If that were always the case, however, life would begin to feel so prescriptive it could lose much of its interest and significance. Thus, our Heavenly Father often answers us with, “What would you like me to do about that?” I had never seen that before until I heard Tyler talk about-

Hank Smith: 19:33 Those three answers.

John Bytheway: 19:33 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 19:33 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 19:35 And how sometimes we prefer a different method than what the Lord gives us for our own growth.

Hank Smith: 19:42 Yeah. Don’t you all think though that the Lord is almost saying, “You’re the child of a creator. Create.”

John Bytheway: 19:49 Go figure it out.

Hank Smith: 19:50 Let’s do something. Yeah, go figure it out. Bring me an idea, and then the best part is, to me, he brings him his idea, and he says, “I can make that work. Bring me this idea. I can make it work.” I do that with my lessons as a gospel teacher. I create it, and I’m like, “Lord, light this up because it’s not very good. Do something.” And then students will come up after class, “Oh, Brother Smith, that was so good that really…” And I’m going, “Thank you, Lord.”

  20:22 He touched it, and he made it work. This is such an encouraging idea. Don’t you think I’m not paralyzed with, “What does the Lord want me to do? Tell me what to do.” It’s I’m going to get going. I’m going to start moving forward and say, “Lord, can you light this up for me?” There’s better ideas out there, I’m sure, but the Lord says, “I can do that. Yeah, let’s make that work.” Do you think the Lord right back in verse 16 gave him bad boat instructions on purpose? Because he knows the brother of Jared struggles to come back. He said, “Here’s these boat plans,” and then he waits for him.

John Bytheway: 20:59 Yeah, you’re not going to stop praying this time.

Hank Smith: 21:02 He comes back, and he’s like, “Oh, yeah. I think there’s been a mistake, right? The bad boat plans.” You both look what the Lord has in mind. He has much more in mind than boats.

Dr. George Pierce: 21:13 Yes.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 21:14 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 21:15 He wants him to come back so he can say, “What do you think we should do?” And then this vision, this beautiful vision, opens up. I just wonder sometimes we do exactly what the Lord wants us to do and we think, “This isn’t working.”

John Bytheway: 21:29 And the Lord says, “What did you learn? What did you learn?”

Hank Smith: 21:31 Keep coming back, keep coming back.

Dr. George Pierce: 21:33 Part of that growth we see in his response to the crisis, and it’s partly for us too: ask God for instructions, but then go problem solve and take action. That’s part of it. God knows that he’s growing. “Come back to me, grow some more. Come back to me, grow some more.” Then when the brother of Jared comes back to him and says, “Hey, I got 16 small stones.” And I know, as he says in verse five, “I know that you can light them up because I know that you have all power.” And he uses that word power twice there: “You have all power, and you can do whatever you want for the benefit of man, and we know that you can do this and you can show forth great power, which looks small, but you light them up.” That’s like, “Oh, he’s really grown.” Right?

  22:15 He really understands what’s going on here because we see the result of that in chapter three, honestly, verse six. “And it came to pass that when the brother of Jared had said these words, acknowledging God’s power, Behold, the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger. The veil was taken from off the eyes of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord; and it was as the finger of a man, like unto flesh and blood; and the brother of Jared fell down before the Lord, for he was struck with fear.”

  22:38 What do we get? We get when he has a right understanding of God’s leadership, of his divinity, and his power. He follows the instructions, he goes forth, he seeks an answer, he problem solves and he comes back to the Lord. Having grown that far in faith that when the Lord does reach out his finger to touch those stones, the brother Jared sees it, and in fact, as we know from the rest of the chapter, he is ushered straight through the veil, and the Lord even says, “Because thou knowest these things,” in verse 13, “You are redeemed from the fall; therefore ye are brought back into my presence; therefore I show myself unto you.”

  23:11 The brother of Jared with the right view of the nature of God in contrast to what’s going on at the tower is able to see the pre-mortal form of Christ. The Lord says, “I can’t even keep you out of the veil. This is how far you’ve grown.” Right? The Lord says to him, “Never have I shown myself like this to anybody.” And we know that the Lord has shown himself to people before this. We see it in scripture, in Genesis and Moses, and Section 107 talks about this, but Elder Holland again comes through and says, “It’s about showing himself in this manner without my volition, solely by the faith of the beholder.”

Hank Smith: 23:49 I love the pep talk he gives the Lord in verse five, “Lord, you can do this.”

John Bytheway: 23:55 “You’ve got this, Lord.”

Hank Smith: 23:57 As if the Lord is going, “Well, I didn’t think I could, but thank you for that.” I tell my students at BYU that they can go to the Lord and say, “Lord, help me get married; you can do this. I believe. Even you can get me married.”

Dr. George Pierce: 24:15 As long as they have the faith of the brother of Jared, then yes, the Lord will do that.

John Bytheway: 24:19 That was one of my trials. I was 33 years old when I got married. When the Lord answers these prayers in different ways, there was a lifeline verse for me during those years. It’s really easy to remember. Can you guys remember 11111? Okay, good, so that’s section 111, verse 11, “Be as wise as serpents and yet without sin,” and this sounds kind of like a I’ll take care of it thing. This is the Lord talking, “I will order all things for your good as fast as ye are able to receive them.” And Krystal, that’s your story at school: “I’ve got this; I will order things for your good, and I will judge when you are able to receive them.” That was a lifeline for me. I love that verse. That’s the leadership of God that you taught us, George. “He’s got it, and he’ll order all things for your good because he’s a compassionate, loving God.” Anyway, I had to throw that in because of what you just said, Hank.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 25:19 I love that he wants us to figure out things for ourselves sometimes. Clearly he thought the brother of Jared was at this point where, “Hey, you can do this. You can figure this out.” That steps up from the very beginning where they just say, “Please don’t confound our language; please take this burden away.” Now all of a sudden to the point where he’s like, “You’re going to figure out…” and like I said, problem solving is a godly attribute. God’s trying to teach us how to be like him. In order to do that, he says, “Okay, here’s a problem. I want you to try to solve it with my help, of course, always coming back.” He says, “I know you can do it; I believe in you. You can figure it out.”

Hank Smith: 25:58 Krystal, what you said about problem solving, President Monson, I just love this: “God left the world unfinished for us to work our skill upon. He left the electricity in the clouds, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged, the forest unfelled, the city’s unbuilt. God gives to men and women the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted, the music unsung, the problems unsolved that we might know the joy and glory of creation.”

  26:31 That to me is Ether two and three. “You can do this.” And George, I love what you said. As we look through Ether 1-5, we see spiritual growth, line at a time. And pretty soon he’s having this spectacular vision. Do any of you see, and this isn’t something we need to go into detail about; I see a bit of an endowment ritual here. He sees the finger of the Lord; he sees the hand of the Lord. They have this little interview, and the Lord says, “Do you believe? Yeah, you believe. Do you want to come into my presence? Yes. I wanted to come into your presence. You’re redeemed from the fall. You’re brought back into my presence.” When I go through an endowment session at the temple, sometimes the thoughts of the brother of Jared come up.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 27:16 Yeah, I like that idea. He’s basically, however you want to look at it, either pulled through the veil or bursts through; as Elder Holland says, “thrusts through the veil.” I really like that; I never thought about it that way. This is the point we’re all trying to get at. We’re all trying to get to this point where we’re able to come through the veil. Either we’re being ushered in or we’re going through ourselves, or maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Hank Smith: 27:43 I have the same book that you all do from Elder Holland, Christ and the New Covenant. I have this written in Ether: “Once and for all, it was declared that ordinary people with ordinary challenges can rend the veil of unbelief and enter the realms of eternity.” Man, this story is so beautiful that this normal human person, can grow like you’ve said, George, and have the most beautiful spiritual experiences. And that gives, I think, hope to everybody listening that we all have made mistakes. We’ve all forgot to pray for four years or whatever that looks like in our own life, and the Lord says, “Don’t give up. Don’t give up. You’re going to make it; keep at it.” And then this incredible vision, this incredible blessing.

John Bytheway: 28:29 What did we just learn about what God is like? That’s what I love. It’s not just that he’s real, but what’s he like?

Hank Smith: 28:35 George and Krystal, that setup has really helped me. What you told us about the tower and how the opposite is playing out through these opening chapters.

John Bytheway: 28:44 Yeah. Look how he just got brought back into the presence of God.

Hank Smith: 28:48 Which is what the tower wanted, right? They wanted the presence of God.

Dr. George Pierce: 28:52 As we see, it’s not through the means that they were thinking. It’s not about building a structure or a ladder; it’s not about providing for his needs; it’s not about containing him in a box. But the brother of Jared knows, that’s an accurate verb there because Moroni uses that term when he talks about this in chapter three in verse 19, “Because of the knowledge of this man, he could not be kept from beholding within the veil.” The brother of Jared knows specifically God’s leadership. He knows God’s divinity and love. He knows God’s power.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 29:29 That’s what we’re all trying to do. We’re trying to get back to the presence of God because of the fall; we’re out of the presence. We’re trying to get back to the presence. And this is teaching us; this is one of the ways how you can prepare yourself to go back to the presence of God is understand who he is, what he is, why he does the things he does, and to become more like him. Clearly, the brother of Jared was prepared. This is a way we can get prepared.

  29:53 I also love what happens next. I mean, you think, “Okay, he sees the finger that’s incredible, mind-blowing, and then he gets to see the whole form of the Savior.” That’s incredible and mind-blowing, but it doesn’t stop there. It actually gets to the point where in verse 25, “The Lord shows the brother of Jared all the inhabitants of the earth which had been, all that would be, and he withheld them not from his sight even until the ends of the earth.” Says, “You can no longer be kept within the veil; you’re going to see everything. Everything that ever has been, will be, is now, people, places, things, events, everything.” Just a little while ago we were talking about the brother of Jared being chastised for not praying, and now all of a sudden we see this growth. It’s so incredible.

Hank Smith: 30:45 So encouraging.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 30:46 Yeah. How far he comes in just a few pages for us. For him a bit longer.

Hank Smith: 30:52 Yeah.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 30:54 Maybe the Jaredites here, this is a little bit of course of a hint of how Jehovah really works, that really it was always meant to be for everybody. Everybody’s meant to go back into the presence of the Lord, no matter who they are.

John Bytheway: 31:08 I love how the Lord over delivers; the brother of Jared just saw all the inhabitants of the earth, which had been and also which would be, and all I wanted to know is what to do for light. He gets all of that. It reminds me of Joseph Smith. I just wanted to know what church to join. Holy cow. Look what has happened since then. A teenage boy says a prayer, and we are all sitting here today talking to each other. The Lord over delivers.

Hank Smith: 31:38 What did he say? Many other things he said unto me, which I cannot write at this time. It just kept going. It’s almost as if you ask the Lord for a spoon and he gives you the whole house. “Wow, thank you.” I like that. Talk to me about this principle. He gave him boat plans that didn’t really work, but he went back to him. Had he never gone back, had he said, “See, I told you this whole God thing doesn’t work,” but he says, “I got these plans from the Lord; I’m going to go back.” I think there’s a lot of people in a position like that. “I did what the Lord asked me to do. I lived the way the Lord asked me to live, and still this thing, this problem, this massive thing happened.”

  32:27 Maybe you decide; I’m going back to the Lord and to ask him questions. John, we get letters from wonderful people who say, “Living the way I’d hoped the Lord wants me to live, and this tragic thing happened. What does that mean?” We all have those Ether 2 moments where we decide, “Am I going to go back to the Lord? This didn’t seem to work.” I’m going to go back to the Lord and like you said, George, “I have more for you. Come back.” Can I ask you both a question, as you’ve read through this, why does the Lord ask so many questions?

  33:05 He knows the answer to these things yet, Verse 23, “What do you think I should do?” Verse 25 of this chapter two, “What do you want me to prepare?” And then he comes over to chapter three, verse seven, “Why did you fall down?” Chapter nine, “Did you see more than my hand?” Verse 11, “Will you believe what I shall speak?” Verse 15, “Do you see that you’re created in my own image?” Question after question after question, the Lord asks the brother of Jared. Which is fascinating to me because usually we think the questions go in one direction. The questions go from me to God, and instead God is turning around saying, “Let me ask some questions this time.” Any thoughts on why the Lord asks questions that he already knows the answer to?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 33:50 I think he wants us to figure it out for ourselves. I feel like this is exactly the way the Savior taught. When somebody would come to him with a question, he would respond with a question. Somebody would ask him about, “Who is my neighbor?” And he says, “Well, who do you think your neighbor is?”

Hank Smith: 34:06 Yeah.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 34:06 This is a way that he’s teaching us. Because he knows what we know, he already knows that. But do we know what we know? Sometimes he’s pulling it out of us. “You know how to solve this problem. You know the answer to this question already. And if you can figure it out for yourself, then you’re going to grow and realize that you’re capable of doing so many more things than you think you are.”

Dr. George Pierce: 34:33 It’s this glimpse that we get into God as a heavenly parent. As earthly parents, we kind of see that same sort of pattern, but it really drives the message home. It’s for you to answer to me so that you know that you know you’re going to grow through this.

John Bytheway: 34:49 The angel that visits Nephi, is it 13 different look statements in 1 Nephi 11? I think. “Look, what do you see? Okay, now what do you see? Look, what do you think that is?” It helps Nephi put it all together in maybe the same sort of way instead of, “Okay, I’m going to show you a bunch of stuff. Pay attention, take notes.” Instead, “It’s look; what do you see?”

Hank Smith: 35:10 I really like that.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 35:13 It reminds me of a few months ago, my brother passed away very unexpectedly. Other people had passed away in my life, my grandparents and others, and I had always felt prepared, even though you never are fully prepared, but this was the first time ever in my life I felt unprepared for the passing of someone so close to me. It brought me to the point where I had to really think about: do I believe in the Resurrection? And I don’t know why before this I had always just been like, “Of course I believe in the Resurrection. Of course I’m going to see my grandparents again.” But with my brother, who is only a few years older than I am, I thought, this is real. It really made me have to turn to the Lord and say, “Why did this happen? Do I believe I will see him again? Do I believe I have something to look forward to in the future?”

  36:16 And I remember throughout this process consistently having to go back to him. Even when I get to the point where I’m like, “I figured this out. Of course I’m going to see him again.” Because of the Savior and then falling back into that deep dark again thinking about, “But why is he gone now?” That was something that I really had to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth again, and it really made me realize I have some work to do in fully understanding, seeing our loved ones again, and that I want to be prepared and ready to see him again and how much I love and miss him, and even though he’s not here physically, he’s always around me spiritually. For me, this is something that I’m still working through and still trying to figure out.

Hank Smith: 37:04 It sounds like Ether 2:24, “You will be in the midst of the sea. Mountain waves shall dash upon you, but I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea.” You see that again in chapter six, up and down. Thank you for that, Krystal.

John Bytheway: 37:22 I remember S. Michael Wilcox talking about the fact that the one thing that he wanted us to know about the barges is that they were tight like unto a dish. It’s okay if you go down in the depths because you’re watertight, and I’ll bring you out again.

Hank Smith: 37:40 As we move forward into chapters four and five, this is one of the biggest letdowns where Moroni says, “All right, I wrote down the entire vision of the brother of Jared,” and you’re thinking, “All right, here it comes.” He says, “The Lord told me, write it all down and seal it shut.” Oh. What are you thinking here as you looked up chapters four and five?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 38:03 Well, it’s interesting because, of course, I love bringing in Isaiah here, Isaiah 29:11, where he prophesies about this. He says, “The vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed.” Very succinctly, he says, “Well, how do you describe what the brother of Jared saw? All.” The vision of all he says, “But it’s sealed.” It kind of begs the question of why have him write it down if it’s not helping us in any way because it’s sealed, so will it ever be unsealed?

Dr. George Pierce: 38:34 So Joseph gets the plates, and there’s a portion that’s sealed. “And why is it sealed? Are we ready for it?” And that’s a question in and of itself. Are we ready for a vision of everything of the past, present, and future? I don’t know, but the Lord tells us about those things. So even if we don’t know what’s actually in the sealed portion as Moroni has been commanded in chapter four, to write it down and seal it up, verse six, “The Lord said unto me,” to Moroni, “They shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity and become clean before the Lord. In that day that they shall exercise faith in me, saith the Lord, even as the brother of Jared did, that they may become sanctified in me, then will I manifest unto them the things which the brother of Jared saw.”

  39:14 Will we ever get the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon? I don’t know, but what he’s talking about is revelation. He even goes on to say, “Even to the unfolding unto them all my revelations, saith Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of the heavens and of the earth, and all things that in them are.” We have the encouragement that we may not know what’s in the sealed portion that Moroni writes down in the Book of Mormon, but we can be privileged to having that revelation through Jesus Christ by exercising faith.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 39:46 Yeah, and bringing in Isaiah again this line upon line precept. Yeah, someday you will have these revelations, but for now you’re getting piece by piece by piece as you’re ready to hear it and receive it. That takes us to chapter five, where Moroni, I love when he steps in again, he says, “Now I, Moroni. I’ve written these words according to my memory; I’ve told you the things which I’ve sealed up; therefore, touch them not in order that you may translate.” Then you have to pause and say, “Wait, who’s he talking to? Who’s he talking to here?” He’s talking to Joseph Smith; he’s talking to the translator, and I can’t imagine being the prophet and translating along, and then all of a sudden, “Whoa, this is directed to me. This is about that huge sealed portion; it’s the brother of Jared’s vision. I’m not supposed to translate it. I’m not even supposed to touch it at this point.”

  40:39 Maybe it would be exciting that he’s addressing him. Maybe a little disappointing that he doesn’t get to unseal it, but then in the very next verse he says, “And behold, ye may be privileged that ye may show the plates unto those who shall assist to bring forth this work.” And that was probably massive to Joseph. He finally now gets to show the plates to in verse four, it talks about three witnesses, and that would’ve been incredible to hear that. That he gets to share what he’s been experiencing with others.

Hank Smith: 41:18 I know you both teach in ancient scripture at BYU, but I’m guessing you know a little church history. Who are these three? What are their stories?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 41:26 In Joseph Smith history, it tells us that the three witnesses are Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris. They were all able to witness the gold plates. Now, what’s interesting about these three is we do know that all of them at some point either left the church or were excommunicated or had problems with Joseph or other parts of the church, but none of them ever denied seeing the gold plates or ever went back on their testimony of the Book of Mormon, no matter what happened in their lives. That’s incredible because this is meant to be a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the gold plates. No matter what happened to these three, that was always clearly a part of who they were.

John Bytheway: 42:14 Yeah, we’ve been talking about we’re all imperfect folks, and even the three witnesses were imperfect folks. Sometimes we dwell too much on Martin Harris losing the 116 pages, and that’s before he was even baptized. Well, do we believe in baptism for the remission of sins?

Hank Smith: 42:31 For the remission.

John Bytheway: 42:33 I just have a soft spot for Martin Harris when I study church history.

Hank Smith: 42:36 Yeah.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 42:36 So does President Oaks, I think.

Hank Smith: 42:41 Yeah, President Dallin Harris Oaks, yeah, he probably… For these three and their families, their time away from the church is difficult, and Oliver comes back to the church. Martin comes back to the church, but David Whitmer never does. He and Joseph Smith had a serious, serious falling out, and we’ll talk about that more next year, but let’s push that aside, that difficult consequences for them and their families, and just acknowledge that the three witnesses leaving the church is the best thing that could have happened for the Book of Mormon.

  43:11 Now, they have every reason to throw the light on this big charade. They can say, “Look, he’s lying the whole time. I’m not even a part of the group anymore. In fact, they’ve kicked me out.” That’s kind of what happened to the Whitmers from Farr West. Through the rest of their lives, they testified of seeing the angel and seeing the plates. As I talk about the Book of Mormon, as I teach the Book of Mormon, students will say, “Why are we so limited on who can see the plates?” Because that seems like such an easy way to show people, “This is true. Here, take a look. Take a look for yourself.” Why is he limited to these three and then to the eight witnesses later?

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 43:57 For me, it ties a lot back to faith. Faith is not knowing everything perfectly. If everybody was able to see the plates, where’s the faith?

John Bytheway: 44:08 I like in Ether 3:9 where, “And the Lord said unto him: Because of thy faith thou hast seen.” I love sequences. Look at what has to happen first before you see; just like you said, Krystal, it’s not, “I’ll show you the plates so that you will believe. Oh, no, that’s not the order of things.” Because of your faith, you will see. It’s going to require all of us to have faith without seeing them, but my goodness, read the book. Read the book, and you’ll be going, “Whoa.”

Hank Smith: 44:41 That’s an interesting idea, John, because Jesus didn’t show his resurrected body to everyone. He wasn’t walking the streets of Jerusalem. It was a limited group of people who saw that, and then they go testify to others. It seems like the plates are very similar.

Dr. George Pierce: 44:57 To tie all the threads together, they needed to have faith in order to even have Joseph inquire of the Lord, as he says in Joseph Smith history, to know if they might not obtain the privilege of being these witnesses. So they had to have that faith before they were shown, but I also think it goes to the knowledge of the Lord, in which he perfectly knows what people are going to do. He’s not going to impinge on our agency, but he knows that Oliver’s going to have problems with Joseph. He knows that Martin Harris is going to have problems with Joseph. He knows that David Whitmer is going to have problems with Joseph. Maybe in the Lord’s omnipotence, these three are the witnesses; these three are the ones who end up leaving the church, two of whom end up getting rebaptized; none of the three of them, as we talked about President Oaks, would say this too yet to the end of their lives; not one of these witnesses deviated from his published testimony or said anything that cast shadow on its truthfulness.

Hank Smith: 45:54 I think that’s great. I go back to our discussion, John, 2 Nephi 27, “The difference between the book and the words of the book.” Do you remember that?

John Bytheway: 46:02 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 46:03 The Lord says, “The book isn’t the important part; it’s the words of the book.” Sometimes we want evidence before we’ll move forward, and the Lord says, “That’s not how I work.” The Lord doesn’t want convinced people; we could put the plates in the Church History Museum, everyone comes over, we have Krystal go read them, says, “Yep, this is Egyptian. Yep, this is what it says,” and everybody’s convinced. But that’s not what the Lord wants. I think his end goal is converted people. The plates may convince you, but it seems that the text converts you. If the Lord really wants us to be like the brother of Jared, a Gentile like unto the brother of Jared, this was all about faith and growth. Faith and growth. Now enter into my present. So doesn’t that seem very similar that the Lord says, “No, no, no, no, no. You want it backwards; you want evidence, so you move forward. I want you to move forward so I can give you these spiritual experiences.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 47:04 Maybe if you saw the plates, then you would think you were done, and that’s it. You saw them; they must be real. That’s great. Maybe you wouldn’t read. Like you were saying, focus on the important part, the actual translation or what the plates say. I do really like that idea. This makes you go further. It really pushes you to take that extra step to know, “What’s on the plates? What do they say?”

Hank Smith: 47:29 Seeing the plates would be a miraculous experience, but I don’t know honestly if it would be greater than the experiences I’ve had reading. This year, the aha moments we have had just in this little podcast and then my own personal reading in my own study from my classes, the clarity that comes while you’re reading the moments of, “Wow,” I just don’t know if the plates could do that, could give you those moments that you can have while you study. Just with the Pierces, what they’ve walked us through here, I’ve had moments of, “Oh,” and that to me is better. I don’t know, seeing the plates would be amazing, but I don’t know if it would be like what we’ve experienced.

John Bytheway: 48:11 Laman and Lemuel wanted to see things, and when they did, when they actually saw, they said, “I don’t know how you did that; those are cunning arts. You’ve deceived our eyes.” They literally said, “You’ve deceived our eyes. We don’t believe our own eyes.” And maybe that’s what would happen. You work some mystery and deceived our eyes. When you look at the content, you think, “Where did this come from? That has such power to move so many people to do amazing things.” Like George, who is a convert to the church. Having you sit here with your background and your knowledge and showing us things in the book.

Hank Smith: 48:55 So let’s talk about this just a little bit: George and Krystal, the text; that’s where the power is, the Holy Ghost that comes through the text. I think Joseph Fielding Smith said that “The Holy Ghost can weave the truth throughout the fibers and sinews of the body.” Now that, that’s a different experience. Seeing the plates, I don’t think could do that. Tell our listeners, I think they’d be interested in not just these five chapters, but what’s your experience with this book? Try to put it into words. I know that’s difficult to do, but try to put into words how you feel about the book. The whole thing.

Dr. George Pierce: 49:32 My experience with the book and with the text itself, as I started to look at it, I approached things like I normally do academically. I had to look at things and say, “Oh, yeah, this matches up with what I know.” Sort of an ancient near Eastern setting, and these things have parallels, whether it’s Mesopotamia or Egypt or when Nephi’s talking about coming out of Judah, and I go, “Oh, yeah, this makes sense.” Then the further I get into it, the more I look, and I saw, “Oh, this is how people act anthropologically, it doesn’t matter if it’s ancient near East or not. This is how people act in general in societies.” Sort of like lining up. Honestly, I think the heavens open more by looking at this text, and every time I see it, including preparing for this podcast, there are moments in which, like I said, the heavens open and you get this sort of spirit.

  50:32 You go, “Oh, that just makes sense. And I know this from my background I understand this part of the Old or New Testament, or I understand this thing from anthropology, or I understand this thing from archaeology, or I understand this bit of language.” Opening up, wave upon wave of like, “This makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense.” And academically for me, and this is part of my testimony, it had to make sense here before it could make sense here. That was part of the great thing for me about reading it when I got baptized; I’d only read up to Helaman chapter 12. Since then, I’ve read the rest of it, the good parts 3 Nephi 11, but even reading up to that, it made sense, and it made sense in my mind of the truthfulness of the message, and the message was our need for Jesus Christ. And since then I see little bits like when you have two cities in the Nephite controlled areas, in the war chapters, and they’re competing and they’re both technically described as port cities.

  51:31 That’s part of my dissertation is about competition between ports and how that works, “This is all in the Book of Mormon, and this makes sense.” Joseph isn’t inventing this wholesale; this is how people behave. I see things like when society collapses in 3 Nephi and they go back to chiefdoms or little bands of people, and when we study societies, we see this is what happens, “Joseph would’ve had no idea about this.” So to me, it testified of this realness to the book that made sense in my head, and then it took me when I visited Krystal, when we first started dating, her parents took me to Temple Square, and we went to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and at the time they were showing the Prophet of the Restoration.

  52:22 And this, by the way, is months before Elder Holland’s famous conference talk, and you’ll recognize this as soon as I say it, but I watched that film, and Hank, you and I have been there together when he is hauled out in the middle of the night in the John Johnson Farm in Hiram, Ohio, and he’s tarred and feathered, and then the next day he continues to preach.

  52:44 It struck me when I watched that film, and I said, “Why would you ever go through all that if none of this were true?” And that’s when it finally made sense in my heart, right? That’s when the text in the book finally made sense in my heart is I said, “Why would you ever do this? If it weren’t true, you wouldn’t bother.” That’s part of the beauty of the text for me is that it all makes sense academically, archaeologically, anthropologically, sociologically, linguistically, and then it makes sense spiritually that it is truth. And even without the plates, because I think I myself would be disappointed if I saw the plates. I’d be like, “Oh, really?” Because that’s how I felt when I saw Stonehenge, by the way, no offense. I still have the moments of heaven opening, receiving revelation, and learning who Jesus is and learning who I am in comparison to him and who I can be as he tries to help me out on this covenant path.

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 53:34 I love it because when we first became friends, we had decided that we were from these two different faiths, and we wouldn’t try to convert each other, but we could talk openly about our beliefs. I wanted to learn more about Baptists. He wanted to learn more about Latter-day Saints. Because of that, it opened this way of us being able to talk about everything, and I do remember he used to dig in Israel and I used to dig in Egypt, and so we’d separate, and I remember coming back from Egypt one year, and he said to me, “I read the Book of Mormon.” Out of nowhere, I mean, it shocked me, and I remember I said, “Why? Why?”

  54:13 Because it was so shocking to me. I loved it because one of the first things he said to me is, “I didn’t find anything in there that contradicted what it says in the Bible.” And he said, “I believe in the Bible, and I believe what the Bible teaches about Jehovah and about Jesus Christ, and the Book of Mormon is a testament of that, and the Bible is a testament, you know the Book of Mormon.” And I remember that. I thought, “Wow, this is coming from somebody who really knows the Bible.” But that actually strengthened my faith to actually hear him say that. I love that that’s how he describes what the book means to him. Even after all this time.

Hank Smith: 54:49 I have noticed as we’ve been studying it this year, John, that I can see why Alma says, “O that I were an angel.” I would just beg everyone, “Just read it; forget about what you think you know about it. Just read it. Just read it. You’ll see what we see.”

John Bytheway: 55:08 When we first started, we were talking about the Tower of Babel, and I don’t know how true this is in mainstream Christianity, but I think there’s a lot of stories that people think are fables that, “Well, there was no real garden of Eden.” It’s fun to see the Book of Mormon is testifying of the Bible when it uses stories like Noah in the Book of Ether talks about; their barges were like Noah and the Tower of Babel, and I love that the Book of Mormon is saying, “Actually, that Bible is true.”

Dr. Krystal Pierce: 55:39 This goes back to the idea of the tower. We talked about how the people were trying to bring God down when in reality God’s always trying to pull us up. He’s constantly trying to pull us up, whether we want to talk about his level of divinity or pull us out of the deep, the dark, the places where we’re at, and we just have to let him. If we open up and we let him do that, then we can do amazing, incredible things like the brother of Jared did.

Hank Smith: 56:08 John, what a great day. I have nowhere else to write in the Book of Ether. I’m like running off the side of the page.

John Bytheway: 56:18 Yeah, you too can rend the veil. I love it.

Hank Smith: 56:22 Thanks both of you. Doctors Pierce squared. Well, we want to thank Dr. Krystal Pierce, Dr. George Pierce for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and every episode we remember our founder. He would’ve loved this, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We have more lessons in the Book of Ether on followHIM.

  56:50 Today’s transcripts, show notes, and additional references are available on our website, followhim.co. And you can watch the podcast on YouTube with additional videos on Facebook and Instagram. All of this is absolutely free, so be sure to share with your family and friends to reach those who are searching for help with their Come, Follow Me study. Please subscribe, rate, review, or comment on the podcast, which makes the podcast easier to find. Thank you.

  57:17 We want to thank our incredible production crew, David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Neilson, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra and Annabelle Sorensen.