Mormon 1 - 5

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly Come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here with our friend and this show's producer, Nate Piper. [00:00:32] Speaker B: What's up? [00:00:33] Speaker A: Hey, Nate. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Hey, buddy. You ready to bring. You ready to bring the heat today? [00:00:40] Speaker A: I'm ready to bring the heat, man. [00:00:42] Speaker B: You've been excited about this. I'm excited to hear where you want to go with this thing. [00:00:46] Speaker A: I am excited about this. You know, it's fun. It's fun. I'm glad we're doing this podcast again together. I'm glad we're talking about the Book of Mormon. Last night, I was able to do a discussion. Discussion. The missionaries invited me to go to an inactive member's house and meet with them. And they asked me to share how the Book of Mormon has impacted me in my life. And because of this week's lesson, come follow me. And what we were talking about, I was actually able to put that in words in a way that I've never expressed before. That just kind of hit home hard for me, and I liked it. I liked it. We'll share it. I'll get to there. [00:01:29] Speaker B: Can't wait to hear it. How did the lesson go overall? [00:01:34] Speaker A: Went really well. Went really well. She's recently been coming back to church. She used to serve. Used to serve. She served a mission before, and she was remembering some of the experiences she had on her mission. And it was good. It was a good night all around. [00:01:51] Speaker B: It's awesome. Love hearing that. Love hearing all about that. [00:01:56] Speaker A: So there's a lot of good things happening in the church, man. Sometimes we get caught seeing some of the negative things that happen and people that are frustrated or upset. But it's fun to be at a point where you're seeing so many people coming into an excitement, excitement. Returning to church and getting baptized. Conference talk, talking about Christ coming again. There's a lot of excitement. It feels like in the church today. And well, there should be. I think we're an exciting time. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Dope. What are we talking about today? [00:02:30] Speaker A: So this is Mormon chapters one through five. And to kind of lead us off into this, I feel like Mormon. He goes in chapter one. It kind of gives us his background. What's. What's his name? So I don't say this wrong. Anthony, you know those names that you see. [00:02:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I never know how to. I never know how to pronounce. [00:02:49] Speaker A: Amaron. I don't even Know where I was coming with that? Amaron approaches Mormon and. And you know, you're a young guy and he sees him, that he's. He's sober and charges him with, with keeping the records. Later on he has to go and get the plates. Right. But what's impressed me with this, excuse me, where I kind of see this, is in the world we live in today, in streaming shows and watching shows and episodes. In the beginning of an episode, you kind of have your review what happened in the last episode or what happened in the last couple seasons. And sometimes they like highlight something that's going to play into the episode that you're watching. So they want you to kind of remember it because it's been a while since you've seen it and they kind of recap that. [00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I always appreciate that, by the way, because I can never remember how shows finished. [00:03:51] Speaker A: Right, right, right. If we're streaming them back to back, you have the skip button, which is nice. You just kind of skip it because you know exactly what happened. But if it's been a while, it's good to kind of have that reminder that recap. And for me, Joseph Smith is the recap of Mormon. And here's what I mean by that. Mormon and Joseph Smith have so much in common with each other. Mormon, I think we talked about this at the beginning of this year. Mormon is named after his father. The name of his father is Mormon. Joseph is named after his father, whose name is Joseph. Both of them, at a very young age, 10, 11 years old, relocate, in Mormon's case, from the land northward, going down to the south. In Joseph's case, they had the crop failure and they had to relocate upstate New York to where he's going to be in a position to have these experiences. Both of them are visited by a prophet from a previous dispensation that says they're going to receive the plates at a future time. In both Mormon's case and Joseph Smith's case, they don't get the plates right away. In both cases, the plates are buried in the hill that they have to go and pull them, extract them out of the hill. When Joseph goes to the land, upstate New York, it's recently, following his leg surgery, he had the operation where they had to clean out the marrow. And I think most of us familiar with that story, but he wasn't walking super well. Right. And when Mormon goes into the land, it says his father carried him into the land southward. And it just small little detail that just kind of sticks out in my mind. As I'm, as I'm reading through these, both of These in their 14th, 15th year saw Jesus Christ. Mormon talks about, in his 15th year, he saw the Lord, which is another comparison with them. Both of them are charged with the responsibility of Scripture. Mormon is the one who puts the whole Book of Mormon together and Joseph Smith is the one who translates it. Joseph Smith also writing Doctrine Covenant said Joseph Smith is responsible for more scripture than Alma Mormon, Moses, he's created a lot. Very prolific, but very similar with Mormon in those instances. So I feel like it's kind of cool. And they both kind of have in connection. Moroni, the Son of Mormon, is the one who's also going to visit Joseph Smith and lead them into the plates. Kind of this bridge between the two Mormons, if you will. It almost feels like Joseph Smith is picking up where the other one left off or diving back into it. To me, it ties the two generations together. The Book of Mormon being buried in the ground. And now it's coming out and it's just like, here's a recap of where we left off. And then diving back into exciting times when the Book of Mormon is published and the Gospel is restored and Christ is preparing to come back to the earth. So for what it's worth, maybe it's just me looking at all these little details, but I feel like that's almost like an incredibly good segue into our dispensation that links us to the Book of Mormon and makes kind of this continuity as we kind of relate to the Nephites in the Book of Mormon. All right, I'm going to turn the page. And this to me is kind of another thing that got my mind reeling. This is chapter 2, verse 10. And it came to pass that the Nephites began to repent of their iniquity and began to cry even as it had been prophesied by Samuel the prophet. And just that phrase right there. The Nephites began to repent of their iniquity when we did our Come, follow me as a family. This caused some questions to come up with the kids, because you look at verse 13. But behold this my joy was vain, for their sorrowing was not unto repentance. Like, wait a second, what do you mean? Did they repent or did they not repent? Verse 13 says that their sorrow was not to repentance. Verse 10 says that their sorrowing repent of their iniquity. And, and so that was a question my kids asked me is, well, how come it says that they repented if they didn't actually repent. And. And that's a good question. And I don't think. I don't think this reads well in English to say that they repented and then say, psych, no, they didn't repent after all. Either. Either very poorly written or it just doesn't. It doesn't read well. And I don't know if Joseph Smith writing a book on his own in English would put something so contradictory in there and say this book is perfect and put it out to print. But what it does read well is considering that Mormon says that he wrote this in Hebrew, you go back to the word that's translated as repent in Hebrew, and there's actually two words. The first word that's translated as repentance literally means to sigh, like ah. And it's the noise that you make. And it comes to mean repentance because it reflects the sorrow that you feel, the regret or the remorse. So. So it repented him is. Is in. Is how we read it in English, but in Hebrew, using that word, it means ah. That's the realization that strikes right more of that expression of remorse, regret, or that something went wrong. And that's how I actually read this in verse 10. And it came to pass that the Nephites began and they say, repent of their iniquity. Their iniquity caused them to, like, just realize that things are not going well. And the reason I think that reads so well because you go to the next phrase and began to cry, even as had been prophesied. And so cry is also a verbal expression. So you're talking about sighing and crying, and you keep going through these verses and you really get that sense that what he's saying right here, although it's been translated to mean repent, I think it's the other Hebrew word that's more saying they've had this realization, this expression of regret, of remorse. They're crying, and it says in verse 12, and there began to be a mourning and a lamentation to all the land because of these things. Again, these are verbal expressions that matches using this word that signifies a verbal expression. And then the other word for repent in verse 13, but behold this my joy was in vain because they're sorrowing. And again, saying sorrowing matches that definition of the previous word, was not unto repentance. And here I feel we use the second Hebrew word, which is shuv, which means to change or to turn. And so I think two words in Hebrew, and both of them, you go back in the Hebrew Bible. And you look at them in every instance, both words are being used and translated as repentance. But we're losing that double meaning. That double. The double, I guess, meaning is the right way to say that in one sense, the regret, the remorse, the man, this isn't right and I'm not feeling good about it. But really the completion of that is. And because of that, I have changed. And that becomes the discussion for this week's Come Follow me. Godly sorrow versus just sorrowing because you got caught or because you did something wrong. And if you don't actually repent, then what's the value? And so we say repent. It can mean if you don't actually feel bad, then what's the value? Well, you can feel bad and still have no value. If I feel bad, but it doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing, then I can still, in that sense of the word, repent and feel bad, and feel bad and feel bad, but never change. Then I've never truly repented. So how we define repentance today doesn't incorporate those two ideas as much as when they were two separate ideas back then. Is that making sense, Nate? Complete fantastic. I think understanding that background and reading these words of Mormon, it reads so much smoother. And we understand it, I think, better coming with that context, which, which makes a good argument that the Book of Mormon was written originally in Hebrew as opposed to just somebody writing it down in English. And one could argue. So as we were talking about this with our family and come follow me. And I was discussing, you know, well, these two words and these different meanings, my daughter brought up an interesting question. Then she said, well, what Joseph Smith translated with the power of God, how come God wouldn't have just given him a different word to use rather than repent? And it's a good question. I think repent is still an accurate word. You go to the Old Testament, repent is still used for that word in all of these instances, to say that something is correct, it's a correct word, but with a context, it might not be the best word. And when we talk about what it means to have been translated by the power of God, what I asked her is, what about all of the power of God in today, in the visible world that we see the things around us? How does God preach the gospel? Is it not with missionaries? Are missionaries preaching the gospel 100% the best way possible? Is it always done without flaw, without mistake or perfection, just because it's the word of God or it's translated by the power of God doesn't mean God himself was sitting on the other side of the of the stones giving him the exact words. How do we know that God on the other side of the veil is not doing his work the same way that he's doing it on this side of the veil? How do we know that God hasn't called a representative to represent him to help with the translation work on that side, who is providing him words that fit in the best context and to kind of follow this argument down the road and then I'll give it a break. So I'm not talking all the time. When we say Jehovah, we know what that name means. We know who we're talking about to say Jehovah. And Jehovah is a word that we use in the scriptures all the time. And Jehovah, I say that and you know that I'm referring to the Lord. However, the word Jehovah is an invented and made up word in Hebrew to not say the Lord's name out loud. As you're reading the scriptures, you were supposed to replace it with Adonai, which meant Lord. They took the vows from Adonai and put it in the consonants of the Lord's name as a reminder of the people on how they were supposed to say that name every time they came across it. And if they were just straight up read it, they wouldn't be reading his name on accident. They would be replacing it with the syllable saying a different name. Jehovah became a made up word that didn't exist in the Old Testament, but we still use that name, that word, because that's the word we understand. That's what resonates with us. What matters is not the vehicle of communication but the message that's conveyed. Are we able to understand it and how is that communicated with us? Does God going to have to sit down and explain to us all of the semantics and the differences and why and this and that and then we never even get the message because he spent all of his time trying to explain away the delivery. Or is it more important to use what we know today in a quick sort of way to flash this is what that means? [00:16:04] Speaker B: I think it's another really important reason that we use a word like this is so that kind of like in the Old Testament and like the Hebrew Bible, when you have, when you don't give like all of the vowels of a word, if you replace the vowels differently like we've talked about, it can end up Meaning, a different word. And sometimes those different words both add a different perspective or context. So I just also think that it's really important to remember this is the way that God has kind of always spoken to his people, or this is the way, which is there are words that can have two different meanings or deeper meanings. And trying to read or understand what is being said with both of those meanings can add really incredible insight and depth and perspective to it. So I'm glad that we weren't given like that. We get words like this or instances like this where we have the opportunity to try to understand the point from different perspectives. [00:17:11] Speaker A: I love it. And, you know, the best way to probably wrap this up is with parables. The example of Jesus using parables. He could sit there and try to explain to death the verge that the parable of the 10 virgins and the wedding feast. And oh, by the way, do you understand that? Or this or that or this or that? Or really quickly, do we understand what he meant by be prepared, be ready, be looking? And as we start diving in and understanding the background and the context and the history and the culture and how things happen, it becomes layers and layers. So I love what you said, Nate. There are layers to the teachings of Jesus, and doing it this way is an invitation for us to take it past the surface and understand the layers behind it. And it becomes rewarding when we see that deeper meaning or make those connections and validates what we already believed. And it reminds me of what he says. You receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. We first believe him, and then as we start to dive in, we get nourished and fulfilled and rewarded in those deeper layers. [00:18:21] Speaker B: Dope. Let's keep going. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Okay, now I'm gonna. I'm gonna turn the page again and feel. Feel free to stop me if there's any. [00:18:31] Speaker B: I love where you're going, man. I'm. I'm stoked where you're, where you've been hitting. So I'm trying to kind of stay out of the way a little bit. [00:18:38] Speaker A: You're good. You're good. And I think. I think with what I said last and what I'm going to say next is going to provide me with the context to be able to kind of answer the question of. Of what the Book of Mormon means to me and what I was able to express last night, and that is something that's always somewhat bothered me in the Book of Mormon is why were the Nephites destroyed and the Lamanites preserved? And I don't know if that bothers me so much. I mean, history is going to happen. But maybe what bothers me is the explanation that always pops out of it and the idea that, oh, it's because the Lamanites didn't know better and the Nephites did. So the Nephites were wiped off the face of the earth where the Lamanites like, it's not your fault, it's your parents fault. Like, no, no, no fault. I don't know, there might be something there and there might be something to that, and I don't want to just discredit that outright. But why this has bothered me is when Christ came, there were no Lamanites and Nephites. Everybody believed, everybody understood, right? And there was a willful rebellion again among the Lamanites just as much as there was with the Nephites. And so I look at this and I think from a parent's perspective, a kid gets in trouble and they're like, well, what about my brother that did this or that? And you're trying to teach that one person, you're like, don't worry about your brother. I'm trying to teach you, don't worry about your sister. I need you to focus on what you did and I'm trying to help you. I'll work with them later. What I'm trying to do is make this about you. And so I look at this and maybe it's not right for us to be doing comparative of why were these ones spared? And maybe spared isn't even the right word, but what kind of brought me some resolution and some peace with this discussion of why the Nephites were destroyed actually comes from Mormon chapter three. And it's, let's see, I gotta make sure it is three. Mormon cries repentance. The Lamanites go to battle with the Nephites. And here's another little side note real quick. I find it fascinating that the Lamanites actually write Mormon a letter. Like, hey, so you know, in the next year we're going to come and attack you. It's not like tomorrow we're going to surprise. Like, let me give you plenty of time to be prepared for when we come. It doesn't seem like proper warfare, but they do. I mean there's, there's honor there and the Lamanites write the letter. And maybe it's not even from an honor perspective, maybe it's from an advantage. We want to pull all of them out into one place to try to wipe them out. One fell swoop, right for Whatever reason. And you actually see this tradition passing on even in Native Americans throughout history, that they would send notices into warring tribes and let them know that their intentions and their plan. They wanted to battle for various different reasons, right? But just a small side note that I found interesting as it's going here, but when the Lamanites came to battle, Mormon defeated them. And then he defeated them again. And then they had this pause for like 10 years. And the Lord spared the people. And in this pause, Mormon had hope that the people would see that the Lord had saved them and would repent and would be spared. But the people didn't. And in fact, the people wanted to take the fight to the Lamanites and go and chase them. And not going down to the history of what happened. This one story became very significant to me about the atonement. And here's what I mean by this. What is the greatest thing about the atonement? Is it the resurrection? Is it that it pardons us from our sins? Like, what makes the atonement so neat, so special? What is the single greatest thing about the atonement? And I've come to the realization I would have before, years before, whenever before, I would have easily said the greatest thing about the atonement is that it forgives us for our sins. And I would argue today, after reading the story here in Mormon, that the forgiveness of sins is not the greatest value of the atonement. In fact, it's probably the most trivial aspect to the atonement. And here's what I mean by that. The Lord, in a sense, compare him delivering the Nephites from death, from battle, or whatever, as a forgiveness of sins. He forgives them and gives them peace and delivers them. And then what happened? They did not change. And that's what we're calling repentance. And we're basing this definition off of repentance of what we saw in Mormon Chapter two, because they remorsed, they sighed, they expressed regret, but it wasn't to the point where they were going to change. So here, let's say that the Lord cleans the slate. I am going to forgive you and give you one more chance. And this goes back to the discussion in the New Testament, the woman who was caught in adultery, and the Lord forgives her of her sins. And you were quick to point this out, Nate. This is something that you've always noticed and you've been really good at saying, but he also said to her, go thy way and sin no more. The forgiveness of the sins is one aspect of it. The sin no more or the changing is another aspect of it. And in the Nephites, if we say that there's forgiveness that happened and the Lord spared them and delivered them, and say that, we're going to compare that to a forgiveness of sins. If the Lord today, through the atonement, forgave me of every sin I have ever committed, what a wonderful gift, what a wonderful blessing. But it would be meaningless, trivial, and a waste of time if again tomorrow I do the same things wrong. How good is it to be forgiven of my sins if I keep repeating them and repeating them and repeating them? Oh, I was forgiven, okay, but. But then I never learned to get past them. Then no amount of forgiveness is ever going to save me. So to me, the single greatest aspect of the atonement isn't the forgiveness of sins. It's the enabling power to change who I am. The atonement allows me to become like Christ. The forgiveness of sins is important only if I can move past my sins. Because if not, then I'm just going to be right back stuck in the mud, mired again, and of what value was it? So I think resurrection is amazing. I think forgiveness of sins is amazing. But I think the ability to change who I am, the enabling power of the atonement, is the greatest aspect of it. [00:25:55] Speaker B: I'm totally with you on this. Let me throw out a question to you and see maybe some of your thoughts on this. Do you think that we sometimes conflate repentance and sanctification? Or should those two things basically be considered one process? Because that's kind of what I've been thinking about. And I taught in church last Sunday, and although I'm not thrilled with, like, how I. How well I was able to articulate or present the ideas, what I wish I had been able to kind of discuss better was the idea that is there a difference between repentance and. Especially if we look at, in kind of the framework of change and then the sanctification of the Spirit, or is that. Or is it the same thing where it's like once we change, that is the sanctification process. Do you see what I mean? Because when you. You've been kind of talking about repentance as our sins being forgiven, and I guess I'm wondering. I'm with you. Kind of as like, maybe our mistakes being forgiven is maybe the least important part of that. I'm with you. And if repentance actually is change, then once we actually change and become more like him, then what is the I guess, what is the purpose of the Spirit other than, I guess, to just forgive us of our pastors? Do you see where. I'm kind of wondering, it's like, is there a difference between the two? And if so, like, where do you see that difference? [00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, good question. I don't think repentance is forgiveness of sins. [00:27:45] Speaker B: I'm with you on that. Which I didn't used to think, though, because I think that we sometimes just. That's what we. I think that we sometimes maybe conflate the two a little bit of like, repentance being. And maybe not conflate, but maybe it's like we see repentance as we've learned it as the entire process of feel bad, you know, do the whole steps or whatever, and then in the end of that, your sins are forgiven. And so I guess. I guess. You know what I mean? It's like, I guess I'm wondering why in the Scriptures it always refers to the importance or the need of the Spirit to be the thing that actually sanctifies or cleanses or if that is all just part of the same process. I don't know. I'm just trying to, I think, better understand repentance outside of the entire process of something that includes all the way from feeling bad to being, you know, having the Holy Ghost come and, you know, purify us. Or is repentance really its own process of change? I don't know. [00:28:58] Speaker A: It's a good question. And I don't know if I. I don't know if I've got all the answers on this, but I'm going to muse a little bit. I'm going to just kind of think through this out loud. When you say sanctification, I think about sanctification and what that word means. And sanctify to me means to make holy right. And the word interesting enough, sacrifice, if you go back to the roots Latin, sacer, to make holy, sorry, and facio was to make. So to make holy sacrifice makes holy. And so when we're talking about sanctify as making someone holy, I think there's a sacrifice involved in that. When you go back to the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln goes to Gettysburg and delivers the Gettysburg Address, and he says, we are here to sanctify this field, to dedicate a portion of this battlefield because of the sacrifice of the people of what they've done here. But he says that we cannot dedicate, consecrate, sanctify this field more than the blood of those who was spilt the sacrifice that was made was far more effective at sanctifying this than mere words will ever be. And so I'm thinking about this in that context. And when we talk about being made holy, Christ says something interesting when they call him good. And he says, no one is good but the Father, he says, I'm not good. And if we take good in the sense of holy, is Christ saying he's not holy, but in the end he becomes sanctified after his sacrifice, after what he has done, he reaches that. Then is sanctification for us the process of becoming like the Father, just as it was for Christ? Is it the process of becoming like Christ just as he became like the Father? Is sanctification coming through those sacrifices of me, laying aside that aspect of me and in a sense crucifying it, that I'm not going to be like that anymore. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to give up this. I'm going to become like this. I'm going to. And then is sanctification the process of becoming holy and becoming more like the Savior until that perfect day when we are like the Savior and we see his image in our countenance, Is that sanctification? [00:31:35] Speaker B: So maybe. Yeah, and I'm thinking through this with you, too. So maybe sanctification is the entire process. Maybe it'd be better said repentance and then purification, maybe that's kind of the role of the Spirit is the purifier, right? So as we change and as we, as we over time learn to become more and more like Christ, the Spirit is there to purify or be the thing that actually cleanses our past mistakes or our imperfections. And maybe sanctification is the thing that maybe houses both of those parts of the process. I don't know. Is that. [00:32:17] Speaker A: You bring up a really good point. Because, I mean, as much as we'd like to say, is it becoming holy? I mean, I'm talking about endgame, final product, getting there in the long run. But there's got to be something on a more regular, recurring basis. And you talk about the role of the Holy Ghost to the baptism by fire, which is sanctifying us in a sense, right? It is purifying us, the purification by fire. And maybe it's a sum of all of these small sanctifications that lead to a greater sanctification in the end. And we talk about something on a small scale versus a large scale. And maybe some of that sanctification or that purification comes in our state of being in our mind and who we are. Because there is a sense of unrest when I feel like I need to do something to fix what's happened and go back to what Mormon's talking about in the two different definitions of repent in Hebrew. Maybe that sigh, that feeling that's on my mind, maybe sanctification is arriving to the point where because of a change that I have done, I no longer have cause to sigh. And the Spirit purifies me of that in my soul, in my being, in my mind, so that my mind isn't troubled about that anymore. It's not. It's been burned out of who I am. And maybe, you know, to your point and what you're saying, sanctification would seem to follow repentance. Repentance is the step that I can take to be ready so that the Spirit can cleanse me, so that that no longer troubles my soul and that marries the two concepts of repentance together. That's that sense of sighing plus that sense of changing. And when I've changed, the Spirit unburdens me of that feeling of regret or sighing that comes with what I did wrong. [00:34:18] Speaker B: I like that. I like that. I think maybe more than separating them. I think it's just like you said, kind of the next step, the inevitable step in that process. It did make me think of something too, which is why faith, I think, is the first foundational principle of the gospel, which is because why would we repent if we didn't have faith that the Spirit could cleanse us of that? And so I do like still trying to understand and love the idea of repentance and purification as they obviously are part of the greater whole, but trying to understand each of the stages or roles in that process differently. I like it. It's inspirational. I get it. I think I'm trying to better understand repentance because it's always the first thing, right? That the prophets are always coming and telling people is repent and not necessarily just fall on your knees and pray and ask forgiveness, right? But repent is so much more complicated than that. And the idea of having faith that if you do change that it's for a purpose, that it's worth the change. Because by the way, change is hard and especially when it's changing things that we are comfortable with. You know, big picture, we all kind of have like our pet sins, right? We all, we all have either of commission or omission, I'm going to add. But there are times where we kind of get comfortable to. So repenting in that case has to be more than just feeling bad about something and asking, you know, or saying I'm sorry. And so I think that adding and understanding repentance from that deeper process makes a lot more sense to me. And then having faith. Because by the way, the purification that is out of our hands, repentance is within our capabilities, right? Like we have it within, we have it within our possibility to make the physical changes, to make the mental changes, to make the, you know, the big picture changes, to become a different person that is within our power to do. And not to say that every part of change is within our power. I mean, it's why we rely so much on the Spirit to help us change things that maybe we can't do on our own, but that's an action that we can at least engage in, is trying to become better, trying to change, trying to fix something. The thing that we can't do is purify ourselves. We can't sanctify ourselves. Right. And I think that I love kind of thinking through this and talking through this and I appreciate you being willing to take the time to do that. And that is, I love the aspect of how faith has to play into that. Knowing that by doing that process over and over and over, we will hopefully be able to see the blessings of that in our day to day lives. But at the end of the day, like I've never seen the other side, you know what I mean, in a vision or anything like that. Like, I don't know, I don't know exactly what that's going to look like after we die. And therefore, like I'm, I. But I will continue to have faith that Christ will do what he says that he will do, which is if I do everything I can, if I come to him with a broken heart, if I do everything within my power to change, to become more like him, he has the power to fix all of those things that still at times haunt me at night, right? Like the regrets from life and the awareness that I have a lot of things that are not right and that I need to, you know, be forgiven for if I'm ever to be able to, you know, to achieve what we're all, I guess, trying to achieve after this life. So at the end of the day I can have faith and see the blessings and see all of the things that continue to, I feel like, prove that I have put my faith in a good place. But ultimately, I don't know for sure. I will have faith though that in the next life. This isn't all just for nothing. [00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah, We've talked about the word covenant before from. From its Hebrew roots. And cutting a covenant, something that stood out to me is actually going with the English word covenant and it's. And its Latin roots, because covenant, I don't know that it. We understand what it means in English, but. But the root I, we don't have that English sense of what it means. The word itself, and it comes from the Spanish, the Latin cone is with the venant is veneer, or to come. And so it's to come with. It's two parts come together to find an agreement. And so what you described just now, Nate, when you talk about the two parts of this, the faith and the repentance, still, that's only half the equation, right? We have faith that the Lord will release our guilt, will cleanse us, will purify us, that it'll be enough. And that's his part that he brings to it. And I love the covenant relationship that we have with him, because all throughout the Scriptures, what we're reading is the two parts that there's so much I can do, but without the Lord, it's not going to be enough. And yet as much as he can do and send his son and whatever, if I don't repent, it will never be enough to save me either. I go to the work that a farmer does, and how much labor does it take to clear the field of all of the rocks and the obstacles, to break up the soil, to make it soft enough to be able to plant the seed, to dig the furrows, to put all the work into preparing his property, preparing the garden, the crops for his year, to be able to provide for his family, to take care of them. Yet for all of the work that he does, dunging it, digging it up, preparing it, planting the seed. If it does not rain, he'll never get anything out of there. And so they would do their part and then rely on the Lord, that he would send its rain. And even still, if the Lord sent the rain and then the seed was in there and it starts to grow, and yet the cricket comes in and just devours everything, then what? And that's outside of his control too. And so the Lord rebukes the devourer for your sake, right? And this idea that the relationship with the Lord, this covenant relationship, really takes on responsibility from both parties. Here's what you do. And if you do everything you can, I will send the rain, I will rebuke the devourer, but what good is it sending the rain and rebuking the devourer if there was never any crops that grew up in the first place. And this relationship becomes very. I mean, he's described it how many times as a marriage relationship. And we talk about a marriage and how it's two people learning how to come together and both figuring out how they do their part to sustain and support the other one to make that work. And that's the relationship we have with the Lord. [00:41:53] Speaker B: Love it. [00:41:56] Speaker A: So, so to kind of take this with. With where it brought me to the discussion last night when, when they asked the question, what, what does the Book of Mormon mean to you? And. And this member that had been recently coming back to church was remembering. She. She. She answered the question first and was sharing how. How she would invite investigators to read the Book of Mormon. And she would notice changes in them as we're talking about repentance, the ability to leave behind addictions, and a lot of the changes that they were making as they prepared for baptism and starting this covenant path of following the Lord. And that was an easy natural segue for me when I started thinking of the value of the Book of Mormon in my life in light of the discussion that we've had so far to this point. Nate, the value of the Book of Mormon to me is that it allows me access to the atonement. And what I mean by that is, as I read the Book of Mormon, it inspires me to change. And that change, that enabling power, like I said, that to me is the most valuable aspect of the atonement. Because if it was just all about forgiveness of sins, then why are we playing this game? It forgave my sins, and then what I have to learn how to change. And so for me, as I read the Book of Mormon and I feel the spirit and I feel a desire to be better, and I look and I start to understand things differently. It fundamentally changes who I am. It changes my perspective, it changes my outlook. It changes how I behave, how I treat my kids, how I treat my wife, and how I do business, or how I try to be and talk with people. And those changes. That, to me, is the value, is the book has a way of tying me into the atonement because I feel its power working in me and changing my life. And those changes is the atonement at work. I do get forgiveness of my sins, which is great, but not only do I get forgiveness of sins, but I get the power I need to try to leave some of those sins at the door and be someone better. And take that next step. So for me, the value of the book, it's not just that it restored the gospel, which it did, right? It's not just that it was the proof that Joseph Smith was the prophet. It's not just the miracle of the restoration. The Book of Mormon is an incredible book for all of these reasons, but for me personally, the Book of Mormon has made the atonement of Jesus Christ accessible because it has fundamentally changed who I am and continues to change me on a day to day basis. And so going through Mormon, and it's odd, right? I'm learning this through a people that couldn't change. And you would think, well, all these people that were changing and all these people that were changing, and yet it takes a people that at the end of the day could not repent for this message to kind of sink in with me and for me to kind of understand what this means. And I guess that's the point. I guess sometimes you learn from the good examples, sometimes you learn from the bad examples, but the value is being able to learn. Love it. [00:45:42] Speaker B: Anything else you want to hit this week? [00:45:47] Speaker A: You know, maybe, maybe it's worth talking about the anger that they felt and letting that emotion rule over them, right? When we start talking about addictions and why people can't change, we have the ability to rule over our emotions or allow our emotions to rule over us. And when the Lamanites win a battle and they take the Nephites women and children, because sometimes the army withdraws, a strategic withdrawal. Whatever the case, I find a more defensible place and the women and children are taken hostage. We've read this all throughout the Book of Mormon. And what happens? They try to negotiate a prisoner exchange, or they try to find out where the prisoners are being held, and then they try to go in and free, liberate the hostage, set them free and get them back. But rarely are the innocent people actually executed in any of the battles that we've read about. Yet all of a sudden here, when the Lamanites chased the armies out and the women and the children are left behind, defenseless, they sacrificed the women and children to their gods, which becomes something so abhorrent to the Nephites. And I wonder how much of that is hating themselves because they weren't able capable of defending the people that they loved most. That this happened. And then part of it is the wrath that they have in. They knew that God lived. And in their minds the gods of the Lamanites were not the accurate and the correct God. And So by sacrificing their women and children to these false gods, that was blasphemous. And I think there's a sense of this righteous anger, or at least justifying their anger, even if that's not what God wanted them to do, and being, what's the word for it, like, wholly upset about what's going on. We've talked about this before, the atrocities in the past that have been committed in the name of religion. You have a sense of not being able to complete your deal. You have a sense of being upset because it's a false church, it's a false religion. You have a sense of anger because these were innocent people that couldn't take care of themselves, that were killed, that needed to be revenged. And so all of these emotions and these feelings, who's to blame the Nephites for feeling this intense feeling that they felt? How many of us would also fall into a trap that. I don't care what you tell me, I am going to kill that person for what he did to my family. I am going to kill that person for what he did to my country, take my freedom away, take my family away, then do it in a false God. I don't care what you say. I am not going to stop until. Until they're dead and. And Mormon. To be able to stand separate from this when all of this is going on and not get caught up in the fervor, not get caught up and be ruled by these emotions, to look at it and still be able to pull away from that, I think says a lot for the kind of character that he had and who he was. I think it's hard to blame the knee fights for feeling what they were feeling. But it's, you know, there's a lesson to be learned here for us even. How do we pull away when some injustice is done and not let our emotions rule us and fire off a quick response and condemn someone to hell and censor them or just want to make things right in the name of justice, in the name of holiness, in the name of doing what we think is the right thing. Do we sometimes get carried away by emotion? [00:49:41] Speaker B: Yes, is the answer. We do. [00:49:46] Speaker A: We. We do. [00:49:48] Speaker B: I just, I had a, I was having a friend with a conversation with a friend yesterday here at the studio. And, you know, we were talking about how, you know, it is hard not to want to respond to perceived injustices, by the way, even if it's, like, accurate. And we, you know, I, you, you, you brought up the question just now is like you know, if somebody comes and kills your family, it's just like, well, that's fairly extreme. And if that were to happen, I would hope that God would understand and sympathize with the human side of you. If the human side of you said, I need to go get revenge, like I, I'm not going to be the one to judge. That is all I'm saying. Bring this down to a smaller scale though, right? I mean, how about at the family dinner where everybody doesn't necessarily agree on, you know, religion or politics or whatever it is, or sports team and maybe things get heated and some things get said. You know, this, the woman that I was talking to, she said she was really good about, you know, she, she had some people and say some things that I feel like she would have been fairly justified in responding in kind, but instead she responded kindly, which was, and she said, you know, the Christ like thing. And I kind of jokingly said, but just remember, Jesus also flipped over the table, you know, but I was saying that sarcastically because out of the many instances in Jesus life, that's really the only case we saw it. And by the way, I don't get the sense from the story that he flipped over the table because somebody said something mean to him or said something that he didn't like. So even when I brought that up, I'm admitting I was bringing it up sarcastically because obviously that's not the same thing as it is. So to your point, there are some of us that get emotional and see perceived insults and wrongdoing towards us and have the instinct to return in pretty much the same way. But I'm admitting that that is something I need to work on. That is something I need to repent of after the election. [00:52:16] Speaker A: I'll say we've had this conversation. All emotions are divine. All emotions are divine and they have their place. Right? Look, look at Elijah who put together, who put to death all the priests of baal. [00:52:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's, that was, that. [00:52:33] Speaker A: Was real and heavy. When the Israelites come into Israel after leaving Egypt and they have to execute. [00:52:41] Speaker B: Killing everybody, killing everybody. [00:52:44] Speaker A: There's, there's, there's, there's times when the Lord asks you to. Right? But, and even Nephi having to execute Laban after he tried to get him and his brothers executed and, and carrying out justice, and, and it's, it's interesting when you go and you read the law of Moses, you don't have a separate executioner that takes care of the dirty work for you. It's the people that have to lay their hands on an innocent. Not an innocent. Hopefully not an innocent. A guilty person, and that's convicted to death. It's the people that have to commute that sentence. And so I think the key comes into. It's very simple. It's what Christ taught. It's his gospel. It's doing what the Lord asks us to do. Did the Lord say, defend your people to Moroni? Absolutely. The title of liberty and ripping the coat and riding it on there and raising the armies and getting the people to do what they needed to do. But why were they doing it? They were doing it because that's what the Lord asked them to do. And when. And when those emotions which are healthy, because that's how we protect each other, that's how we stay alive. That's how we become like God, who defends his people, who sends armies, who sends floods, who sends. Whatever it is. But when we are not controlling those emotions, but let those emotions rule over us, and we become disconnected from God to where we're no longer doing it because that's what the Lord asks us to do, but because we're governed by something that we can't control, and we're not making those decisions. We've surrendered our liberty. We've surrendered our freedom. We're not fighting for our freedom anymore. We gave that up. How do we maintain those emotions and maintain our freedom? And I think it lies into being connected to the Lord, who has, from the very beginning, promised our freedom. In the beginning of his plan. He came and died so that we could be free to choose. [00:54:52] Speaker B: I love it. I'm glad that you put that on. That if we become slave to our own emotional responses, that that is maybe one of the most destructive things that we can do. Being. Being impulsive is something that we're counseled to be the opposite of on multiple occasions. So. But to be fair, children are also insanely impulsive and emotional and reactive, and we're told to become like them. So all I'm saying is that after the election, I'm going to be a lot calmer. I'm. I promise. [00:55:30] Speaker A: Hey. Hey. I promise. Do you think Moses wasn't impulsive when he threw the stone down? No. Off the mountain? [00:55:40] Speaker B: Yes. And to be fair, Moses in his impulsiveness was also part of the reason that he wasn't able to apparently go into the promised land or whatever because he was finally so sick and tired of those knuckleheads. [00:55:55] Speaker A: Do you think he had, like, go back up into the mountain and get it again? He's like, oh man, why did I break them? [00:56:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that is actually hilarious. Oh, man, I got to go back up in the mountain again. Look, a lot of people were impulsive. We're doing our best, man. We're doing our best. That's all I'm going to say, too. We're doing our best. [00:56:15] Speaker A: That's the beautiful thing about the scriptures. And I think it's so important that the first story in the Bible after the creation is a story about where we screwed it up, right? Like the very first story, man is introduced and right off the bat he nails it in the wrong sort of way. He messes up, right? Isn't that the point? The point is we came here and we're learning how to not mess it up. And we're going to mess it up and we're going to let emotion rule over us. And that is the atonement, and that's why we have it. Christ wasn't plan B, he's plan A. And he's done that so we can, we can learn and we can improve and we can become better. And that's. I don't know. This week's reading has really, I think for me, brought me a lot closer to the atonement as I, as I read these scriptures. [00:57:06] Speaker B: Fantastic. Anything else you want to hit? [00:57:09] Speaker A: You know, there's, there's, there's something to be said and I'm going to wait on this one. I'm just going to tease it and that's, you know, Mormon talks about how no one would listen to him and how disappointed he was. But we're going to get into later sections here. I call them sections, later chapters, later books. When Moroni starts reading letters from his dad and his dad is teaching the congregation about not baptizing infants, and his dad's teaching a congregation of people that he calls like, super righteous. And you're like, wait a second, what happened? Mormon's got this super righteous crowd that he's teaching, yet here he's like, there's not a dang person in the world that will listen to me. And we're all going to hell. And I had to step down because nobody was going to listen. It's interesting. Did Mormon have pockets of people that did believe? Was he able to have some followers that followed him? Were these people separate from the Nephite population? Who are these righteous people? And that's just something to think about and tease out there. Because it's in this reading, in a sense that Mormon's like, I give up on everybody and there was no one. But then when we get to Moroni and we start reading about the guy that he was, he wasn't just on an isolated the only righteous man in the world. He's talking about these congregations of people that he's actually praising. So I don't know if this is in the 10 years of pace that he thought they were good and then they showed their true colors and he's like, dang it, I give up. I don't know. It's just interesting to think about. We'll readdress it when we get a little bit later. [00:58:41] Speaker B: Okay, awesome. Appreciate everybody listening. Only got a few weeks left for the rest of this year for the Book of Mormon so we're going to enjoy kind of wrapping this all up. We always appreciate your questions, comments. You can get a hold of us at the email address higheeklydeepdive.com we love you, we appreciate you. Be happy, be healthy, go vote. And yeah, until next week.