Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we explore the weekly Come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, and Nat, here with me in the studio, actually is my friend and the show's producer, Nate Pifer. He's been out and about traveling and he will join us again next week for the conversation. But for today, I'm flying solo, so let's dive into this Doctrine and Covenants. This week's lesson is 66 through 60. Excuse me, 64 through 66.
[00:00:36] And starting us right off the bat, in fact, verse two is where is where I want to begin.
[00:00:43] Just pulling it over here so I can read. It says, for verily I say unto you, I would that you should overcome the world.
[00:00:51] Now just a minute. That. That seems like a tall order, doesn't it? I mean, if you were to ask somebody to do anything for you, I guess you might as well shoot big, right? I want you to overcome the world.
[00:01:04] I don't know, it just. It just seems like a tall order.
[00:01:08] So that caught my interest and I wanted to. To see if we could understand exactly what this means.
[00:01:13] What. What is the Lord expecting from us and how is he planning on helping us with this? Or does he. What does this entail?
[00:01:21] To start off, I tried to find context for this commandment or for this desire for this expression to overcome the world.
[00:01:30] And overcoming the world is a phrase that shows up in the Bible only in books written by John.
[00:01:37] So if you go to the Gospel of John, it's there. If you go to the letters, the epistles by John, it's there. And if you go in the book of Revelation, it actually shows up several times within the book of Revelation.
[00:01:48] So it's a saying expression that John is very familiar with that John uses, but does not show up really anywhere else.
[00:01:57] The New Testament was written in Greek. And so the word that John uses, it's the same root word where we get Nike from the idea of victory.
[00:02:09] I want you to have victory over the world. I want you to beat the world. I want you to be the champion.
[00:02:15] This idea, this competitiveness, just like how we see Nike today and this idea of victory.
[00:02:23] But what I like about doctrine and covenants is it was not written in Hebrew, it was not written in Greek. The Lord revealed doctrine and covenants to Joseph Smith in English. And we don't have to guess at what a word means in different languages or look at the context of it. And so in this case, Given the history of this idea of overcoming the world in the sense of victory, in, in here, it doesn't say I would that you should be victorious with the world, I would that you should conquer the world. But I like the choice of words with overcome.
[00:02:58] And to me the idea or the sense of overcoming is in order for you to overcome, you have to do almost come from behind, like an underdog story, right? If you're going to overcome, it's because you're already behind and you're going to overcome it by passing it up or you're going to overcome it by, by coming from behind and coming out from behind. I guess for lack of explaining that better. I know I'm just kind of repeating the same thing over and over at this point.
[00:03:28] But this idea to him that overcometh shall receive these blessings. To him that overcometh, this shall happen. And I want you to overcome the world.
[00:03:37] So if we understand this idea of overcoming up, what about the world?
[00:03:44] What is defined as the world? What exactly is it that we're supposed to be victorious or that we're supposed to come off conqueror? What is the world?
[00:03:53] And this got me thinking, this has some interesting thoughts for me.
[00:04:01] In the sense that if we're conquering the world, does that mean that God is only interested in saving a very small amount of people? That the world he's going to throw away and only save the elect, the ones that overcome the world.
[00:04:20] And going back to Lehi's vision, this great and spacious building and you see all of these people mocking and scorning from the windows and the high and the lofty, then I know oftentimes it can feel like the world is against us and that sticking by our guns or our standards, that we will be overcoming the world even though the whole world wants us to fail and is God damning the rest of the world for the sake of the few.
[00:04:44] That is where this scripture seems a little bit problematic to me. Is God willing to throw away the world for the sake of the few? Is that really how things are set up? I want the world to go to hell and I want you to come out of the world and a few choice people to be saved while everybody else burns.
[00:05:04] And that doesn't seem like an idea that meshes well with the concept of an all loving God.
[00:05:12] And in fact God says that even going back to John, the same John who tells us that he wants us to overcome, the same John says, for God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, not God so loved the few.
[00:05:31] God did not so love a few of his elect children, so he sent his son to save them. But for God so loved the world and he wants to save all of his children. Ideally, for all those who come unto him are going to be blessed, for all of his children are the ones that he loves. It's not that only a few are going to be resurrecting. He says that everyone will be saved from death because of his son, Christ. Right. And the atonement.
[00:06:00] He's wanting that gift to be a gift for all children. Why else is missionary work so important?
[00:06:07] Why is he trying to convert the world over if he was only interested in saving a few?
[00:06:15] So that's where this message seems a little bit conflicted to me, and that's where I wanted to dive in this week. And that's what I wanted to explain. Hopefully I've provided enough of an introduction for you guys to kind of get your minds thinking about this a little bit. Maybe at this point you have a few ideas of what that means to overcome the world. And if so, I would love to hear them. In fact, anyone out there listening to the show, if anything that we're talking about or I'm saying, and it strikes a chord with you or you think of something that you would like to share, you wish you were here having that discussion with us. We would love that discussion to continue on outside of the frame of the podcast, not just in the show, but we would love to talk about this, see your perspective here, what your insights are. And I know a lot of things you guys are picking up, that's not even a part of this show. And I would love to know what those are. So if at any point you want to participate in the conversation, have the discussion and continue it on offline, send us an email. Hieeklydeepdive.com and we would love to continue that discussion, to email you back and forth or call you up or talk or just, I don't know, it's fun talking about the gospel, but getting back to this point, who is the world that we should overcome? And as I was thinking about that question and having a hard time with this idea of the entire world is just thrown away and we only want a few people and there you have to overcome everything. And maybe the concept that everybody is created, in a sense, to create opposition for the few that are going to be arising above it, it just didn't seem to jive with me very well.
[00:07:57] And I thought about this.
[00:08:00] I'm a father of six kids and sometimes I get self conscious when I'm out and about, right? When I live in a world where so many people have so few children and you feel like you're being judged for your decision to have a lot of kids, or you feel like maybe you're being criticized because of the choices that you make. And this can go on both sides of the spectrum.
[00:08:27] Sometimes people might feel criticized.
[00:08:32] A mom, for example, that feels that it's important for her to work.
[00:08:38] And if she's working outside of the home, in a community where a bunch of moms are working in the home and that's what she feels she needs to do, maybe she feels criticized by the world around her in the sense that she is not where she's supposed to be. Whether that's true or not. There's that sense or that feeling that that's the case. Then here's the interesting thing to me on this. I don't know that anyone is particularly being judgmental on this. I don't know that anyone's judging me for having a bunch of kids or anyone's judging a mom for having to work or not having to work or whatever the case may be.
[00:09:20] Sometimes I think it's all imagined and it makes me think this great and spacious building that's talked about and the people that are scorning and laughing and pointing fingers, perhaps most of them don't even exist outside of our own perception.
[00:09:36] And it's not to say that there is not criticism in the world and that there's not harsh people that are judging each other. But I also feel that like a lot of times, we are our own worst judges. We are our own harshest critics. And the choices that we make can sometimes make us feel, make us feel like.
[00:10:03] Like the world's looking down on us. Whether that is the case or whether that's not the case, it's the sense or the feeling that we can get.
[00:10:11] And so it would be interesting to see what if this world is not so much actual people that are condemning us, but our own insecurities, our own self conscious thoughts where we think the whole world is looking at us or being critical of us, when maybe the people around us aren't even thinking about us because they're too busy being insecure and worried about how people are looking at them. At the same time, there's this world, this idea of our perception of the world, our own insecurities judging us or being critical of what we do, whether that decision be overly zealous, righteously or underly zealous way. We feel like we're being criticized for not being as righteous per se, in either case, in either extreme, you run into the same problem.
[00:11:05] So I thought that was interesting.
[00:11:10] It's not to say that there is not persecution for being righteous, for choosing the right, for following Christ, for being a Christian.
[00:11:19] In fact, something that I did want to bring up, this episode, something that really opened my eyes. As I was teaching biology last semester, I came across an article published by Stanford University in 2017 is entitled Religion and Science.
[00:11:36] And in here they did a survey.
[00:11:39] They conducted surveys. Well, in this article, they referenced. Excuse me, I shouldn't say they did a survey. They referenced several surveys that were done. One of the surveys conducted and they found that nine in 10 adults. So 90% of adults living in the United States, 90% believed in God, however.
[00:12:01] And that's a high percentage, right? 9 out of 10, 90%. However, in academia, only 7% believed in God.
[00:12:12] Now we've seen this.
[00:12:19] When the statistics and the numbers don't match up. There's something called the Hardy Weinberg principle, the Heidi Weinberg equilibrium. So you can look at, in science, you can look at what, what percent of the population should have certain characteristics or certain traits based on their genetics, assuming everything is in equilibrium.
[00:12:42] And when you look at the numbers and say, okay, based on this population, it should have this many that are this or this many that are that.
[00:12:51] The only reason why it doesn't have that is because one of these five different things are out of equilibrium. The five things being that there is natural selection. If there, if there's no natural selection, we're in equilibrium. If there is natural selection, that means one group is being selected as favorable as passing on its traits while the others are not being selected as much. So those favorable traits are being passed on at a higher rate. Whether that's natural or whether it's sexual selection in that people choosing mates are looking for specific traits that they want to pass on, that these are more attractive than others.
[00:13:30] So the population is skewing towards these traits that are found more desirable.
[00:13:35] So, so there's two of these are selection.
[00:13:39] One of these is migration. If you have large amounts of population coming in or large amounts of population going out. So migration can affect the equilibrium, it can change things up.
[00:13:50] The other is if you have a small sample size, if you have a very small sample size, then it's not wide enough. It's like flipping a coin, right? If you flip a coin, it's supposed to be 50, 50 heads or tails. But if you only flip it three times, then inevitably the closest you're going to get is 66%. Assuming that you get two of one and one of the other, you could get 100%, 0% at worst. And at best you would get 66% and 33% thereabouts. Right.
[00:14:23] So you can't just rely on a few small coin flips to tell you what the actual percentage of getting each one is going to be. You have to do it a large amount of times.
[00:14:33] And then the last one being if there's any mutations that entered into the population, mutations can change things up. So if there's no mutations, no migration, no. No selection, whether natural or sexual, and no, it's a large enough sample size, if you have all of those in play, then the population is considered in equilibrium. It's not changing, it's static. It's what you should expect.
[00:14:58] Well, looking at this, if 90% of adults in America believe in God, then you should expect that potentially 90% of adults in academia believe in God, that the numbers should match. And when they don't match, then it points to something being out of equilibrium. There's a bias. There is something happening, and this bias is something that we are very familiar with. As you've looked at prejudice, racism, something that's a hot topic in our country today, you look at the percent of the population that are represented by different ethnic classes or groups or racial backgrounds, and then you look at the colleges and you look at the workplace and you say, does it match? They say, no, it's not matching. There's a bias. How do we overcome that bias? And so programs are made to try to incentivize or try to push or try to counter the bias by getting a larger amount of the underrepresented groups in.
[00:16:04] Well, while our government is doing that, we're trying to combat racism and we're trying to combat biases that exist in our society today. Definitely there are biases.
[00:16:14] One bias I feel that we have missed is a bias towards Christianity, towards people that believe in God.
[00:16:23] So according to these surveys, again, going back to the science and religion, and I hope you kind of understood where I was going with that, Hardy Weinberg. Just the sense that because there's 90% of adults that believe in God in the U.S. but only 7, and note, I'm not saying 70%, I'm saying 7. 7. Only 7% of people in academia believed in God according to the survey.
[00:16:48] That's a huge discrepancy.
[00:16:52] There's absolutely bias going on in a Similar survey of scientists from 21 elite universities in the US 5.4% believed in God, 5.4%.
[00:17:08] When you have 90% believing God in the adult population and then you go to the scientists from 21 elite universities, you would expect that about 90% would believe in God if it matched the population in General. But only 5.4% believe in God.
[00:17:26] So trying to understand what's going on here, they started to dig in deeper and ask some questions. In this, in this article they said that. The article responds responds with in the US quote in the US percentage of atheists and agnostics and academias is higher than the general population. A discrepancy that requires an explanation.
[00:17:53] One reason might be a bias against theists in academia. Theist, for those who don't know, theist is anyone who believes in God.
[00:18:01] So if only 5.4% believe in God, then they're saying that there's a good chance that you have bias against people that believe in God. In academia, when sociologists were surveyed whether they would hire someone if they knew the candidate was an evangelical Christian, 39.1% said they would be less likely to hire the candidate.
[00:18:25] This bias also bore true for Mormons and Muslims.
[00:18:32] Another article cited in the Stanford article found that non religious participants believed that theists, especially Christians, are less competent and less trustful of science.
[00:18:43] And the idea is because of this, understanding this thought, people are avoiding hiring anyone that believes in God to fill academic and science positions because they feel that they're not as capable or competent.
[00:19:02] Is there bias in America for those who follow Christ?
[00:19:08] And I wouldn't have thought so, but when you look at 90% of the population believing in God and less than 10% of the academic and scientific professionals believing in God, then there's something going on.
[00:19:25] There's something, there is bias, there is prejudice. So it's not to say, even though I'm saying that perhaps a large part of the large and spacious building is an imaginary our own self conscious, our own prejudices, our own worries, our own inadequacies.
[00:19:43] A lot of it might be imagined. But putting that aside, a lot of it might also be real.
[00:19:51] There are definitely obstacles that people have to overcome because they believe in God.
[00:19:58] So yes, when he says overcoming the world, there are things that need to be done to overcome the world.
[00:20:07] There's been a little bit of a rift between science and faith which I don't know should necessarily be there. It's interesting how far we've come because you look at the founding fathers of Science, not the United States. Sorry, I should be clear. You look at the scientific revolution, you look at the 1600s, the 1700s, and you look at these great minds, Tycho Brahe, Isaac Newton, Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo. You go through all of these guys that were ahead of their time, absolutely brilliant, responsible for ushering in this new period of learning and critical thinking. And their take, if you look at them, without exception, you look at them and their view was that science was an acceptable form of worship.
[00:20:58] That the reason why they were performing science, the reason why they were studying math, the reason why they were learning, what they were learning was as a form of worshiping God, because they felt that God had created all of this and that his order, his creation. To understand it, to understand it, how it worked, was to show respect, was to show reverence for the Creator, and ultimately was a form of worshiping the Creator and something many people might not be familiar with.
[00:21:31] Isaac Newton actually published more on religious topics and scripture interpretation than he did on math and science combined.
[00:21:43] Deeply.
[00:21:44] He spent a lot of time studying the Scriptures and trying to understand them.
[00:21:50] Deeply religious.
[00:21:52] And that's where science started to where we get to today, where now there's a bias or a prejudice. If you believe in God, you're not viewed necessarily as fit to be able to represent science, to be able to proceed. And you might have a hard time getting into school, you might have a hard time being able to get jobs in academia based on that belief.
[00:22:20] So anyways, enough, I'll say on that subject. I do think that there are real world obstacles that we have to overcome in order to overcome the world. It's not just in our head.
[00:22:36] And the last thought I have on overcoming the world actually comes from Soren Kierkegaard.
[00:22:44] This guy was brilliant. He lived around the same time as Joseph Smith.
[00:22:50] And he wrote a book, one of my favorite books of all time, called Fear and Trembling.
[00:22:56] And it's an expose, a dive, looking into faith. What is faith? And it centers around the idea of Abraham sacrificing Isaac as this ultimate example of faith.
[00:23:15] And he gives props to Abraham because he believed in the absurd.
[00:23:23] And this idea that somehow he knew he would have Isaac, even though he was going to sacrifice Isaac, was absurd, was insanity. You cannot have Isaac if you're sacrificing him.
[00:23:39] And he believed it. God promised him that he would have a son. He promised him that his seed would be as numerous as the sands of the sea, more numerous than the stars would be the seed of Abraham through Isaac. So he believed God.
[00:23:58] But when God asked him to sacrifice it, he didn't give up on believing God. He didn't just say, yeah, I figured maybe it'll be the next life. God's going to bless me with this. No, he somehow believed that by sacrificing Isaac, yet somehow God would fulfill his promise and he would still get Isaac. And he referred to this as a belief in the absurdity.
[00:24:25] And where Soren Kierkegaard really, and I hope I'm saying that right, his name, where he really talks about this is this idea that faith separates us from the world and God. In the scriptures in the New Testament it says if a man does not hate his father, his mother, his sisters, his brothers, then he's not fit for the kingdom.
[00:24:48] And Kierkegaard talks about this and saying, you know, this is scripture many people avoid, they don't want to talk about because it's such a hard scripture, scripture. And you try to explain it away and say, oh well, if you don't like him as much as you love God. And he says no, at some point there's something more here. There's an idea that God can isolate us from the world and take us that further step in helping us, I guess, in a sense overcome the world, where he pits us against the world, not saying that the world is necessarily evil.
[00:25:24] And in some cases maybe it is almost viewed as the opposite. And I'm sorry if this isn't very clear, I hope I'm making sense on this. I don't have Nate here to balance me out and keep me stable right now, so bear with me.
[00:25:40] He gives us some examples alongside with Abraham. But I mean, as we've mentioned, Abraham first off, if someone today were to do what Abraham did, would we praise him and look at him in the same way that we look at Abraham?
[00:26:00] Because today the scriptures vindicate Abraham.
[00:26:04] They talk about Abraham being the father of faith, the father of all righteousness.
[00:26:09] We look at him almost as another Adam, the father of our race.
[00:26:13] And the Scriptures vindicate him. But what if the scriptures didn't say anything about him? What if we had a modern day person? What if after preaching a sermon about Abraham, someone went home and sacrificed their son because that was the best they had to offer God?
[00:26:31] Would we look at him the same way as we would Abraham?
[00:26:36] Would probably commit the person to an asylum or lock them up.
[00:26:41] What, what makes what Abraham dude did acceptable?
[00:26:46] And yet if anyone were to try to follow in his footsteps, we would look at it as insanity.
[00:26:55] Why is it that we give Abraham the credit that we give him. And what is God doing? In a sense, he's taking everything that would make us fit in society, make us feel acceptable, and pulling the rug out from under us. And one of the examples he gives is the example of Mary.
[00:27:16] When Mary was betrothed to Joseph, and she was, before she got married to Joseph, as you know the story, she became pregnant with the son of God, with Jesus Christ.
[00:27:31] And an angel came to her and told her that Gabriel came and brought the message of God to her that she would be the mother of God here on earth, that she would give birth to Christ.
[00:27:47] Why did the angel come to her?
[00:27:50] And why did she keep these things in her heart and hold them to herself?
[00:27:55] And what would that do to her relationship with essentially everyone else?
[00:28:02] Why didn't Gabriel go to her family, go to the people, go to the prophet, go to the king, go to all of Israel and say, hey, this woman is going to be the mother of God. She hasn't committed adultery. I just want to clear this all up right here. This is an act of God and she will be bringing Christ into the world.
[00:28:24] So that's what's going on. Don't be critical of her.
[00:28:28] That's not how it worked. The angel went to Mary and said, this is what's going to happen. And the Spirit came upon her and she became pregnant with the Son of God.
[00:28:39] And then what?
[00:28:41] She would have to live with people looking at her and questioning her.
[00:28:48] Would you.
[00:28:49] Would you believe if a girl told you today, I didn't sleep with anyone, I just got pregnant. This is actually God's child.
[00:29:01] It alienates her even from righteous people. In a sense, this idea that what God asks us to do sometimes puts us at odds with everyone else. Not that everyone else is wicked, not that the world needs to be damned in order for us to overcome the world. But sometimes God has a way of isolating ourselves from the world and trusting us on an individual level to do the right thing, even if everyone else says it's wrong?
[00:29:40] And do we trust God more than everyone else? Or do we fall back into the crowd and trust everyone else to tell us if we're doing the right thing?
[00:29:51] How hard is it to keep the commandments? But sometimes, how much harder is it to do something that everybody else views as sin but God wants you to do, like sacrificing Isaac? Or what if God were to tell you, I want you to go play sports on Sunday where everyone else were to look at you and say, that's a sin.
[00:30:16] But did God isolate you from the group to see if you trusted more in him than in everyone else around you.
[00:30:28] And Joseph Smith says that everyone is going to have to go through an Abraham experience.
[00:30:34] And when he said that, I don't think that Joseph Smith is referring to the fact that everyone is going to be asked to sacrifice their firstborn son, or that everyone is going to be asked to sacrifice something that is most important to them. Instead, I look at this as everyone going to stand in a position where doing the right thing might not make sense to anyone else around them, and they can't rely on the comfort and the safety of everyone else to do what is right, but they have to rely on God and show that they're willing to go through it no matter what everyone else thinks of them.
[00:31:15] And to try to wrap this up, I hope this makes sense.
[00:31:20] I'm going to read a little bit from the story here on Fear and Trembling from Soren Kierkegaard.
[00:31:30] He says the true Knight of Faith is always in absolute isolation.
[00:31:37] The false night is sectarian.
[00:31:40] And then I'm just going to skip to a line here just ahead of that.
[00:31:44] It says, the Knight of Faith, on the other hand, is the paradox.
[00:31:49] He is the individual, absolutely nothing but the individual, without connections and complications. This is the terror that the puny sectarian cannot endure.
[00:32:01] Instead of learning from this that he is incapable of greatness and plainly admitting it, something I cannot but approve, since it is what I myself do, the poor wretch thinks he will achieve it by joining company with other poor wretches.
[00:32:14] But it won't work at all. No cheating is tolerated in the world of spirit.
[00:32:20] A dozen sectarians link arms. They know nothing at all of the lonely temptations in store for the Night of Faith, and which he dare not shun because it would be more terrible still were he presumptuously to force his way forward.
[00:32:35] The sectarians deafen each other with their clang and clatter, holding dread at bay with their shrieks and a whooping Sunday outing like. Like this thinks it is stormy.
[00:32:48] Excuse me, I'm just gonna go back and read that. The sectarian deafen each other with their clang and clatter, holding dread at bay with their shrieks and a whooping Sunday outing like this thinks it is storming heaven believes it is following the same path as the Knight of Faith, who in cosmic isolation hears never a voice, but walks alone with his dreadful responsibility.
[00:33:16] As for the Night of Faith, he is assigned to make himself. Excuse me. He is assigned to himself alone.
[00:33:23] He has the pain of being unable to make himself intelligible to others, but feels no vain desire to show others the way.
[00:33:33] I think it's great, the way he puts it, the way he describes it in these instances, that God isolates us and tests us and proves us on an individual level.
[00:33:49] And I think this is the sense of overcoming the world.
[00:33:55] Do we still do the right thing?
[00:33:59] Even if the right thing is at odds with everyone else, even if nobody else understands why we're doing it and what we're doing, do we still do it?
[00:34:08] Even if it's absurd, even if it doesn't make sense, Are we still willing to take that step and to follow God when nobody else understands us, understands what we're doing or why we're doing it?
[00:34:23] And look at Christ who stood on the cross, who was not above this at all when he says, abba, Abba, Lama Shabbatani, God, God, why hast thou forsaken me?
[00:34:39] Even in that moment when he's sitting on the. Standing on the cross, being crucified, and feels like the whole world has turned their back on him. And he says, even to the point where God has turned his back on him.
[00:34:52] And in that moment of absolute isolation, when nobody understood what he was doing at the time, even though it was prophesied thousands of years before to thousands of years after, he does it, even if nobody else understands what he is doing, even if nobody is there for him, even if he is all alone, he does what he feels is right, then he follows through.
[00:35:19] And this is a powerful concept, a powerful idea.
[00:35:23] I think when he's talking about overcoming the world, it's not so much that the whole world is damned, as much as we cannot be saved, because as a group we all did the right thing and now we're all good. We can't link hands and be saved on the merits of others.
[00:35:41] Salvation is a very individual one on one. What do we do?
[00:35:46] And we can fill. We could fill hours talking about this. And I'm going to kind of wrap this up and be brief, but the last point here that I want to make is if salvation is on an individual overcoming the world, doing the right thing, regardless of whatever, why then are we commanded to meet often?
[00:36:07] Why do we have church?
[00:36:09] What is the purpose of all of that if we're saved based on individual merits, not on a collective group?
[00:36:17] And I think that church and families are so critical to the salvation because they give us the tools, the strength, the what we need to help us deal with those challenges as an individual.
[00:36:35] The church isn't the one going through those trials.
[00:36:40] But they do provide strength and support and succor to those who are, so that when they do, they can have a better chance at getting through it on their own as an individual. And maybe just to wrap it up, an example of, say, for example, if a woman has lost her husband, a widow, and a lot of people can feel that loss, but at the end of the day, they're not there. They're not the ones that are not with their loved ones. They're not the ones that have to see and fill that void and go through that challenge.
[00:37:22] Yes, they can support, yes, they can help, and yes, they can do all sorts of things. But that individual is the one that deals with the challenge, that deals with the experience, and that finds that strength within themselves to get them through that moment, even though they receive support and love from all those who are around them. So it is critical that we do have church. It is critical that we pray and love and support each other. But I think in here the Lord is saying, overcome the world. Not that the whole world is wrong, not that the whole world is wicked, but that we as an individual will be tested, proved and tried.
[00:38:01] And maybe we will believe in what seems absurd to everyone else.
[00:38:05] Maybe those around us will judge us for not being pious enough, for not being religiously extreme enough. Or maybe those around us will judge us for being too extreme or too pious. Or maybe those around us, maybe those around us will always look at us as if we're not doing the right thing.
[00:38:24] But what matters is within us and what God has asked us to do. And sometimes God will put us on the outskirts of everyone else, to where nobody understands us.
[00:38:35] Not our mom, not our brothers, not our sisters. But we stand in isolation to the world. Then at that point, what matters most to us and how do we show it? And making God first.
[00:38:48] That's what I think he means by overcoming the world.
[00:38:50] All right, that's enough on that. I'm sorry.
[00:38:54] I could spend all day talking about that.
[00:38:57] Let's move to the next point. I wanted to talk about when they say that verse three. Let's look at it. There are those among you who have sinned. But verily I say, for this once, for mine own glory and for the salvation of souls, I have forgiven you of your sins. And I think it's important that he mentions here for this once, I have forgiven you for your sins. Because I think if not, we would look at it and say, I'm forgiven, right? For good, right? Forever. I Think kind of like our kids on road trips, are we there yet? Are we there yet? And a lot of us are anxious to know, did we make it yet? Are we done yet?
[00:39:45] That's why the doctrine of calling an election made sure is so attractive to us. If we could just get a stamp saying, yes, you've done it, you're done. Oh, all of the stress, all of the anxiety, all of the load is off. I've got it.
[00:39:59] But he's not saying, because he knows us, he knows our will. We would be like, oh, sweet, I'm done. Did you hear that? It's in the book. God said it, I am forgiven of my sins. But he says, no, no, no, wait, I've forgiven for all your sins this once.
[00:40:14] So I think that is kind of an important little side note, or else we would tend to run with it and take it a little too far.
[00:40:21] But he also says, for mine own glory and for the salvation of souls, have I forgiven you your sins? Not necessarily because of anything on their part. And so when he says that, for this once, I wonder if he's not saying, for this once, I'm willing to look past your sins for the benefit of others.
[00:40:42] And why this struck me as interesting. You go back to King David. David's story is one that has intrigued me all of my life, one that scared me.
[00:40:52] And I remember thinking, you know, the righteous little me, would I ever let that person down when I got older by making wrong choices? Because I knew how much I loved God as a child, just like David is neat as a young man, as he was, and how things went for the worse later on. It's a story that's scared me ever since.
[00:41:13] How could you do that?
[00:41:15] But anyways, David, at the end of his life, after he had done all that he had done, he stood up, being filled with the Spirit and preached to Israel.
[00:41:28] And I have to wonder, how could it be that this man, who had done such a grievous sin in murdering an innocent man in order to sleep with his wife and to hide the fact that he had slept with his wife, how could the Spirit be with this man at the end of his time? So I almost go back to this verse and then look at it. It says, for this once, like, I am willing to look past your sins this one time for the sake the salvation of souls, I have forgiven you your sins for mine own glory.
[00:42:01] Not to say that he is permanently forgiven or that God is going to forgive everything he has done, but for this once, for the salvation of souls because you fill the role that you fill and because these souls need their King to speak to them in this moment and give them this I am going to look past your sins and the Spirit will be with you and you will preach to help people. I don't know As I read this verse, I wonder sometimes in my own life I know I'm not perfect, and I know I'm not always doing the best I can. But sometimes I'm called to help or to give blessings or to bless the lives of others. And I wonder if the Lord doesn't strengthen me and help me to perform my duty or to do his will.
[00:42:45] Not necessarily for any righteousness on my part, but he's willing to look past all of my ignorance and my mistakes for the benefit of the souls that are relying on me for help.
[00:42:56] Anyways, I thought that was interesting how they classified or how the Lord didn't just say all your sins are forgiven like he has in some other instances, but he's saying, just this once and for my glory and for the salvation of the souls, I'm going to forgive you. I'm going to give you the Spirit at this time. But it is important that you repent and that you always seek to have the Spirit all right. And talking about what in the world is going on as far as not having the Spirit or sins or problems going on. Doctrine Covenants 646566 There's a lot of hard feelings towards the prophet Joseph Smith.
[00:43:34] He traveled to Missouri. He got his revelation that Missouri was going to be the gathering point and the center place. And they looked at it and said, that is the far West. That is right on the border of Indian territory, the outskirts of town. That is rough country.
[00:43:49] Why in the world would that be the center place where God is desiring to gather things?
[00:43:55] In hindsight, we look at it and say, yeah, it's the center of America. It is the center place. If the American continent was this new Zion, this new Jerusalem, and going back as this looked at the city that would extend thousands of miles up above the Earth. I almost look at that more as this idea of Zion starting in such a small little place, spreading to the entire continent where this was the center place as we've talked about the center place being the center place of the whole world as it grows from the American continent and fills the entire Earth. That's how I look at it, as the city that's growing outwards. Anyways, it was a sacred center or a center place, but for them then it was Rough country, and it didn't seem like a very promising deal. And then Joseph Smith, receiving this revelation that's critical of them, sailing past everybody in boats and not opening their mouth and preaching, says, no, you should be on foot and going in and preaching as much as you can. Meanwhile, Joseph Smith is riding in a stagecoach and passing through all of these places. And so the people are being a little bit critical of him, saying, if this is the revelation, then why do you get a free pass? Why are you not being subjected to the same things as us?
[00:45:07] And so it says, I will be merciful unto you, for I have given unto you the kingdom. And the keys of this mysteries of the kingdom shall not be taken from my servant Joseph Smith through means which I have appointed. While he liveth, inasmuch as he obeyeth mine ordinances, there are those who sought occasion against him without cause.
[00:45:27] Nevertheless, he has sinned. But verily I say unto you, I, the Lord, forgive sins unto those who confess their sins before me and ask forgiveness for those who have not, and ask forgiveness who have not sinned unto death.
[00:45:42] So the Lord's saying, yeah, he did sin, but I am merciful and I'm forgiving him, and he's my servant. And that's really between me and him, not between me and you, or you and him. That's between us.
[00:45:54] And there's a couple things I take away out of this. One, as we sometimes can be apologetic, looking back at our history, we try to whitewash everything in this idea that there was no sin. We look at Joseph Smith and he could do no evil, or he could do no wrong.
[00:46:09] Or we look at our prophets and our leaders today in this idea that they can't say anything wrong, they can't do anything wrong. They are these perfect people.
[00:46:18] And if our testimony is built on the infallibility of Joseph Smith or any other prophets or leaders or apostles that we have had since then, it is built on the wrong foundation.
[00:46:31] And it will crumble when we find out that they were not perfect, when they find out that they made a statement, a mistake, because everything is built on this foundation, it will shake us at its core and cause us to wonder, to doubt, to potentially leave behind everything that we believe because we built our foundation on the wrong thing. Our foundation should be built on Christ and the atonement, not the perfectness of anyone else.
[00:46:59] As it says right here, Joseph Smith, he has sinned. Nevertheless, he has sinned.
[00:47:07] He is not perfect. He was not meant to be perfect. That wasn't his role.
[00:47:13] And so when we go back and we try to defend the prophet, or we look at all the stages, you know, there could be some mistakes that he made, there could be things that he did. He wasn't a perfect person. And maybe more importantly, he doesn't have to be a perfect person.
[00:47:29] And we shouldn't be pointing out all of his mistakes. Neither should we be dismissing all of them and saying that that never happened, and saying that that makes or breaks our church or that makes or breaks our faith. That's not what it's based on.
[00:47:43] Our faith is based on Christ calling prophets and apostles today to guide us. Not that they're infallible, but that they receive the Spirit of God and that Spirit reveals to us truth that will help us return to our Father.
[00:47:59] Here God continues. He says, my disciples in days of old sought occasion one against another and forgave not of one another in their hearts. And for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened. And it's true. You go back and read the New Testament sometimes it seems very petty at times because it's, it's. They would ask them, God, who's the greatest in their kingdom? And, and can I sit over on your right hand side? And can I have this seat? And God's constantly telling him, look, don't put yourself at the top. If you're sitting at a table, go sit in the lowest seat.
[00:48:31] Because it feels a lot better if the host of the table says, hey, you come sit up here with us, or come sit here in this exalted seat. That feels a lot better than to say, oh, you're not the guest of honor. This seat is saved for someone else. I need you to sit down there. So be humble and don't try to make yourself better than others. And your worth is not based on the righteousness of others around you. Some people looked at Joseph Smith and found fault and found sin like they did the early apostles, to the point where they almost felt better finding their fallibility, finding their problems and pointing them out and making a big deal about it. And they would hold it against them. I'm not going to listen to them. They did this and it's wrong.
[00:49:21] It reminds me of the story of the prodigal son who wouldn't be excited to see somebody who had made mistakes come back.
[00:49:31] And to be humble and to want to start all over and want to fix it, that is the most exciting, refreshing moment, fulfilling, absolutely wonderful.
[00:49:45] But if you're so focused on the sins and how they left, and if you Define your worth based on what you didn't do. Compared to them.
[00:49:59] It's just like building your foundation on the wrong foundation. It's all going to crumble. It's not going to work well for you.
[00:50:05] And maybe that's what the prodigal son's brother had such a hard time with. When he looks at it, his worth was established in the sense that at least I didn't squander all my money. At least I didn't go away. At least I wasn't wicked.
[00:50:19] And those things. Yeah, I'm glad he's grateful that he didn't do those things, but those are not what make him valuable.
[00:50:26] The differences from us are not what makes us better than anyone else is because we didn't do what anyone else did.
[00:50:35] It's where we're centered on what we've done. And if somebody else decides to center their life on Christ and add value to it. But all the better. Going back to the parable when Christ would pay people different, different times of the day, they would come starting working, but at the end of the day, he paid them all the same price. And the ones that were there earlier felt robbed. Hey, I've been here all day. How come I got the same price as those that didn't?
[00:50:58] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are you upset? You got paid a day's wage. What was agreed a fair price, what you were supposed to be paid. How come you cannot be grateful for somebody who worked at the very last hour, for an hour that they were able to find work and get paid a full day's wage too? Why couldn't you be grateful for them? It's not their fault they weren't there all day, right?
[00:51:22] If he finds them and gives them that opportunity, can't we rejoice in that? They were able to receive a full day's wage even though they weren't able to work a full hour?
[00:51:32] Why is it that sometimes we feel like we get robbed if somebody else gets it good?
[00:51:43] How come people cannot be happy for something somebody else got?
[00:51:49] And when we're not and we're looking at it and trying to find fault and tear people apart, it's the wrong plan. It's the wrong route.
[00:52:00] We need to find a way to be happy for the success of others and know that our worth is not based on other people's right or wrong decisions.
[00:52:12] And be happy for people when they make right decisions and not look for occasion to hold things against them, to hold them back, or to beat them up over their life choices.
[00:52:26] A person's worth is not the sum total of all their right and wrong choices that they've made.
[00:52:34] And maybe I'm not saying that right or very concisely, but as I was looking at that, I couldn't help but think that way and feel that way.
[00:52:43] The last thing I wanted to share before I finished off this podcast was in episode. Let's see, section 66. 60, yes, 66.
[00:52:57] I thought this was absolutely fascinating.
[00:53:00] William McClellan wanted to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.
[00:53:06] And he's already had an interesting introduction to the prophet Joseph Smith. He had fallen and tweaked his ankle over a log, really kind of messed it up. And he asked Joseph Smith to heal him. And Joseph Smith healed his ankle.
[00:53:21] And then later to satisfy his curiosity, I guess, I don't know, he went to the Lord and he prayed. He had five questions that he wanted God to answer for him and he wrote them down and he came to the Lord with them.
[00:53:39] And then he went to the prophet Joseph Smith and he asked him, not telling him anything about the questions or his previous prayer or anything like that. He just asked Joseph Smith as a prophet to seek God's will concerning him. What should he do?
[00:53:56] And section 66 is the revelation that Joseph Smith received in answer to William McClellan's petition.
[00:54:05] And he gave him this revelation and it answered all five questions that William McClellan had satisfactory to to his needs, his desires. He notes that all five of his questions were answered satisfactorily from this single revelation. And at that point he knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet with very sure testimony to the fact that he left the church, he had fallen away.
[00:54:32] And even on the outside, and even all that was going on, he could not refute that Joseph Smith was a prophet and held.
[00:54:40] Held to that belief that Joseph Smith had actually been called of God. So this had a very powerful impact on him. And you never know how you're answering prayers and the little things that you do and how the Lord works through others.
[00:54:58] I got back from girls camp this week and one of the testimonies that a girl had shared really, really touched me.
[00:55:05] They had the course, a challenge course where they had to put a blindfold on and walk along a path led up by a string. So they would hold onto this rope or the string, this cord, and they would work their way through.
[00:55:17] Well, this girl had gone all sorts of different routes and turned around and almost walked all the way through the course, backwards to the beginning and got turned back around. But she went through the whole entire thing and got done. And when it was all over and all done and we were headed to the next event, one of the sisters there went and put her hands on her shoulders and said, I just had to tell you that you took the longest route out of anyone here, the most difficult route. You wandered through this whole thing all over the place.
[00:55:49] And that was about it. I thought, okay. It is kind of interesting that she would tell her that. Well, at the end of camp, in the testimony meeting, that girl stood up and she said, you know, she has been going through a lot of interesting things in her life at that point. A lot of trials, a lot of questions, a lot of struggles.
[00:56:11] And the Lord spoke to her in those moments when having somebody come and lay their hands on her shoulders and tell her, I just had to say, you went the hard route. You've gone through all of these things.
[00:56:22] It spoke to her that this experience was exactly like the experience that she was having in life, and that God was aware of that and that this was a tender mercy, that that small inspiration was an answer to this girl's prayer. Even though I don't know that anyone would have been aware of that. I mean, from us, it probably looked a little bit silly on the outside perspective to see her kind of winding around through this whole thing. And little did we know the Lord was preparing her and providing her with very spiritual, powerful insight and individual relationship and knowledge and understanding.
[00:57:04] So I really enjoyed these sections.
[00:57:07] I feel like God's message to us is to be strong, that he does know, he is aware of us and he is hoping for all of us to succeed, that he will be patient with us.
[00:57:23] But just as he is patient with us and as he is forgiving everyone according to how he will forgive, we must be patient with everyone else.
[00:57:34] I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive. But of to you, it is required to forgive everyone.
[00:57:41] So my takeaway from this is, let's not be so critical of other people going through their circumstances. It might be easy to laugh at somebody that's going through a course and taking their time, but little do you know what powerful thing might be going on. Or we might see somebody doing something to us that we look at and say it is just wrong. And yet they are doing what they feel inspired to do in that moment and getting strength because of it, and they are overcoming the world.
[00:58:13] Anyways, next week we will be diving into Doctrine and covenants, section 67, and Nate will be back in the studio lightening things up and making it fun. So until next week.
[00:58:27] See ya.
