Hank Smith: 00:04 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m here with the amazing John Bytheway. followHIM Favorites. We’re going to take a tiny portion of this week’s lesson, which is in John 1, and talk about it.

  00:17 John, I want to read to you a scripture from John 1 and see what you think. It’s verse 38. Jesus sees these two disciples of John the Baptist. One of them turns out to be Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. They’re following Him because John the Baptist said “That’s the lamb of God,” so they’re following Him. He turns around and says, “What seek ye?” and they said, “Where do you live?” It’s kind of a funny question. “Where dwellest thou?” Then He answers, “Come and see.” This is one of the first things we hear from Jesus during His ministry, “Come and see.”

  00:50 How do we do that today, John? How do we come and see?

John Bytheway: 00:54 Oh, there’s so many things I like about that. It wasn’t just “Sit down, I’m going to talk to you,” but it was, “Come and see for yourself.” Reminds me of Nephi wanting to see what his father Lehi saw. The angel comes and he says, “Look, look.” I think there’s 13 different look things that he just shows Nephi.

  01:09 I just have a friend who had an experience with that come and see that was so good. You can’t see this because the camera’s pointing this way. But if I turned it around, looked up, you would see a picture of my friend Derek O’Malley and me are standing in front of an F-16. That was one super fun day in my whole life when I got to go up in an F-16 and went past Mach 1. That was something I’d never done before, even in my car.

  01:41 How did Brother O’Malley join the church? Was he born at church? No, he was driving northbound on I-15 and saw a billboard with a picture of the temple and three words. Guess what words, Hank?

Hank Smith: 01:53 Hmm, come and see.

John Bytheway: 01:56 Come and see. He went down to Temple Square and walked into the visitor center, walked into that room where that beautiful Christus statue is. I can’t remember exactly how he described it, but it’s “I need to look into this.” He felt something there. Come and see. He came and he not only saw, but he felt and he wondered and he investigated the church and became a member of the church. I think Brother O’Malley now is like a general.

Hank Smith: 02:24 That’s awesome.

John Bytheway: 02:24 I get to text him sometimes because you’re really close with somebody when they invite you to sit in the back seat of their F-16.

Hank Smith: 02:31 Yeah. How many times did you throw up on that?

John Bytheway: 02:34 I only threw up three times, Hank. I was so tough. I love that Jesus would use such a simple phrase, just “come and see.”

Hank Smith: 02:42 We could use it, too, don’t you think, in our efforts to be a missionary when you’re talking with your friends saying-

John Bytheway: 02:47 “What do you guys do in your church?”

Hank Smith: 02:49 Yeah. “I went to Young Men’s and Young Women’s last night. I went to our activity,” or “I went to sacrament meeting” and someone, automatically, “What’s that?” “Come and see.”

John Bytheway: 02:59 “Come and see.”

Hank Smith: 03:00 “Yeah, you’re invited.”

John Bytheway: 03:01 “Do you have any friends here? Would you like to have a couple of hundred more? Come and see.” I love it.

  03:05 So those words of Jesus, I think so simple, but so… “I could tell you about it, but come and see and then you’ll not only hear, but you’ll feel and you’ll receive impressions.” So yeah, there are a lot of levels we can look at that. But I love that one of my friends had an experience with a billboard that just said, “Come and see.”

Hank Smith: 03:23 That’s awesome. Then we find out one of those disciples is Andrew and he immediately goes, finds his brother and says, “I have seen, I have seen. Now you come and see.”

John Bytheway: 03:32 “We found the Messiah. Come and see.”

Hank Smith: 03:33 “We found the Messiah. You have got to come and see this.”

  03:36 So we hope that all of you, anybody listening, come and see when it comes to anything that has to do with the Lord. We hope you’ll come and see our podcast, the full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. We think you’ll like what you see when you come on over and join us there. Then join us next week for another followHIM Favorites.