In this episode of the Weekly Deep Dive Podcast, join hosts Jason and Nate as they explore Alma chapters 30 and 31 from the “Come Follow Me” curriculum. Discover lessons from Alma’s confrontation with Korihor and the gathering of a remarkable missionary team. Whether you’re seeking spiritual insights or just a unique perspective on this week’s topic, tune in for an enriching and thought-provoking conversation.
Transcript:
[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 shows producer Nate Pyfer.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: What’s up, buddy?
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Dude, Nate. Just living the dream. How you doing?
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Doing good, man.
Doing good. Just staying busy.
Got a, you know, Spain winning World Cups or whatever those things are. Championships. All the euros, Euro championships.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: We got pretty impressive.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: We got presidential candidates barely dodging bullets.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: We got. We’ve had. We’ve had a lot go down over the past week.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: It’s been an exciting weekend.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: A lot going on.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: A lot going on.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Man, was Spain all a ruckus after the big win?
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Dude, not only after the win. After every goal. You knew it didn’t matter what you were doing. You knew when Spain scored, because that’s when the fireworks were going off and horns were honking and people were shouting. It was just pandemonium. It was awesome.
And then just at the end of the game, even more so. Right?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yelling, screaming, happy rejoicing.
It was cool because they set up, like, these big screen tvs in parks. They’re nothing. I shouldn’t call them that. Projectors.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: And then just bring in, like, thousands of seats, and people are sitting there standing, watching the game. Just big community event.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: It’s awesome.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Fun times.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Fun times. Congratulations.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: I give you the credit for all of this.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: I wish I could say I was a spaniard, and it was my country that did it. Our. Our poor country. It was a sad elimination to.
It was a sad loss to Panama that set us on the wrong road, but, yeah, that was maybe one day down the road.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: I was watching. Yeah, right. All right, what do we talk?
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Next year, world’s cup coming to us. We’re hoping for a better showing.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
What are we talking about tonight?
[00:02:35] Speaker A: You know, I was kind of surprised. I was just kind of plowing through Alma in my readings, and I thought, at some point, I better check to come follow me and see how far I need to read. And it was only 30 and 31, and I’d, like, been reading way too far in there because usually you have to cover, like, six or seven chapters worth of the Book of Mormon. And I’m like, wait a minute, 30 and 31? That feels a little bit limiting here. Feels like we’re just talking about really Korahor is what it kind of boils down to. But no, it’ll be good. We’re covering Alma chapters 30 and 31. And speaking of putting together your dream teams and having them represent the nation here, Alma puts together what might be considered the most potent missionary army of all of scripturedom. Right. To borrow a word that we created a while back, you’ve got ammon and omni and Himni and Emir, whatever. You’ve got Alma the younger, you’ve got Amulek, and you’ve got this group of missionaries that are going into Amulon to try to teach them the gospel. I don’t know. It’s kind of cool how they pull those guys together and they’re all united on going in there. At the same time, you have to wonder, do these guys have a family? Like, what’s going on?
How do you take so much time away from your home and your families to just go and pick up, pack up and leave? Different times, I guess.
And they did have families and they did still try to support themselves, and we know they did. When Alma’s coming back and talking to his kids, right. He leaves Gila men at home and takes his two younger kids with him. And we kind of get some of those excellent chapters later on when he starts talking about their successes, their failures, and what they can do to improve and leaves them with some wisdom before he goes. So sometimes we don’t see a lot about the family or hear a lot about the family because we’re focusing on what they’re doing. But. But these guys did have families, took care of them, and lives outside of just what’s written there in the scriptures.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: So let’s start, I guess.
I guess let’s start with Korahor.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: And Korahor, his big thing to me is coming in and saying, you can’t say conclusively about things that are going to happen down the road. There’s no such thing as prophecy.
And so he says, you can’t say that there will be a Christ. You can’t say that he will come and pay the price of their sins. So therefore, if you can’t know of these things that are going to happen down the road, and you’re saying that they’re going to happen, then you’re wrong. You’re lying. You’re making things up to try to subjugate the people and get them to follow you and get them to listen to you. You’re lying in order to get control and to get gain.
And the interesting thing to me about his argument is if he’s saying, you can’t know of a surety of things that are going to happen.
Isn’t he saying that he knows of a surety that there won’t be a Christ?
Isn’t he also saying of a surety what will or will not happen down the road?
And so he’s kind of catching himself, I think, in his own argument, in a circular argument, by saying that that’s not going to happen.
I don’t know. That’s something that’s kind of been weird to me.
And I see that there’s a difference in him. The fallacy is, if you can’t know that something’s going to happen down the road, and you say that something will happen down the road, therefore you’re lying. And so for him, it’s an easy thing to say the church isn’t true. And he’s not trying to look at what’s going to happen or what won’t happen down the road, really. He’s just trying to find a credible reason to prove that the church is not true, to get people to turn away from the church. That’s, that’s his whole argument.
And as he’s going around teaching this and trying to pull people away from the church, and he’s teaching, he’s causing quite the stir to the point where they’re actually bringing him to the chief judges and asking him what, what should they do about it? And, and he goes into the land of Jershon. And maybe it’s worth even mentioning right here. In Hebrew, the word Jershon means inheritance.
And so when they’re looking for a place of inheritance to give to the anti Nephi lehis, they give him a land literally named inheritance or the place where they can inherit. So for what it’s worth, just an interesting little tidbit, but when he shows up in the land of Jerushan and he’s teaching them, they take him to Ammon.
And Ammon really just sends them out of the land, like, we’re not going to put up with this. And he keeps getting brought up to these chief judges until finally they take him to Alma, and Alma’s going to have this conversation with them. And that’s where we get this, this wonderful insight into these scriptures, into what’s going on.
When Korahor is saying these things about how they’re trying to, the church is trying to subject the people and take advantage of them by teaching them things that are going to happen, that they can’t know of, a surety that are ever going to happen, therefore, they’re wrong.
He’s also saying that as priests, they’re taking advantage of the people, not just in lying to them and trying to enslave them into following them in their church. But he says the whole reason that they’re doing it is so that the people can support the priests and that it is the people that are supporting the priests.
In one sense, you can kind of get that with the law of Moses.
Aren’t the people supposed to bring the sacrifices to the temple, to the priests and offer the sacrifice? And the priests are supposed to be eating these meals on behalf of the people and representative also with God in this communal meal that they’re supposed to be eating, that they are in some sense being supported by the sacrifices of the people that are bringing these offerings to the temple or bringing these offerings to the priests. And so in some sense you can, you can see where that might get distorted or where he might be coming from.
But Korahor saying these priests are relying 100% not only that, but they’re getting wealthy and getting fat and getting rich off of the richness of the people almost to the extent of like what we saw with Noah back in the land of Limhi, that they’re, they’re taxing the people, that they’re having to bring all the money and all the offerings in.
And that’s kind of an interesting argument too. I think even in today’s world at the church we do bring them tithing. We do bring fast offerings. And I think there’s a lot of people making similar arguments today that, oh, the church is just such a wealthy church and it’s getting fat off of the backs of the members and the poor members are being forced to bring all of this in.
And Alma, in trying to defend his position with Korahor, says something rather interesting. He says, you know, personally that we’re not getting wealthy off of this, you know, for yourself. And, and when he says that, he’s kind of coming at this angle of saying Korahor has firsthand knowledge. He’s like I, first he defends himself. I haven’t had, and the priest, we haven’t been getting wealthy off of this. We don’t take of their money. We sustain ourselves. We work for ourselves, we work for our own support, we take care of our own families, we provide for our needs. They’re following after the example of Mosiah. But then when he says, and you of yourself know this, how does he know that firsthand and the only way, well, I shouldn’t say the only way, but the way that makes the most sense to me is if Korahor himself was a priest at one point in time, then he would have that firsthand knowledge that the priests are not taking financial support from the people to get rich. Otherwise, how else would you know that? How do you have that inside look at the workings of it is, and Alma’s not even saying, you have to take my word for it. He’s saying that Korahor has that. And I think that makes Korahor’s position all the more interesting, because Korahor, if he knew for himself that they weren’t doing it, then why is he telling the people? And he’s intentionally telling the people something that he knows not to be true, to try to discredit or turn them away from the church. And again, you start to see revealed the real intentions here. Korahor is in this ReallY to try to tear down or pull apart the church.
And he’s in it willingly, saying things that he knows is not true. And I think that’s where it gets a little bit dangerous with him.
Some of the things that, for example, looking at one of his main arguments, you cannot say that there will be a Christ.
And he kind of backs himself into this corner a few times. At first he says there is no God.
And Alma says, you saying that there is no God? And he’ll back up and say, no, I’m not saying that there is no God. I’m saying that you cannot know that there is a God because there’s no such thing as prophecy. There’s no way you can see down the road things that are going to happen.
And if that’s what his argument is based off of, then, then if we were presenting this, for example, in a criminal court and looking at this case, let’s take a look at the evidence in the bEginning, Lehi, and where this whole family begins prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem.
And they takes his family and he departs and he leaves, and they go across the sea. And if that was the end of it, then you could argue, maybe Lehi was right, maybe Lehi was wrong. But the Nephites come across the people in Zarahemla. Mulek is the son of the king, and they witnessed firsthand the destruction of Jerusalem and that Lehi’s words were fulfilled. So if you’re saying there is no such thing as prophecy and you can’t know of things that are going to happen down the road, then how do you square up?
Lehi’s prophesying that Jerusalem would be destroyed beforehand, them leaving Jerusalem, and then all of a sudden having this happen and seeing that was fulfilled.
If you don’t believe that there’s prophecy, then how do you square Isaiah prophesying what was going to happen with Assyria? And then Isaiah prophesying that Jerusalem would not be destroyed, even though it was laid under siege and it was delivered without a single arrow being fired over the wall, just like he said. And then how do you square up again the prophecy of the destruction of Babylon, that the people are going to come back from Babylon. And so you start to have all of these instances in the scriptures, and I think this is the purpose. God says, come, let us reason together as one man with another. I will show you what I’m going to do from the beginning. Lest you say we did it by our own hands, so that you understand that I did it. So the Lord is trying to help us establish faith in his promise that he made to Adam, in his promise that he made to Abraham, that he himself would come to earth and pay the price for our sins. And so we didn’t have an argument like Korahor and say we can’t know of things that are going to happen down the road. The Lord gives us examples of prophecy to help his people believe when they see those things fulfilled, that they can’t say. There’s no way of knowing. It’s an interesting teaching, but there’s no way of knowing. WELl, now we have EXHIBit a, exhibit b, exhibit c. And I’m sure there’s lots of other prophecies within this 400 span of history and the Nephites that they can point at. In fact, we know that there’s prophesy sign, Nephi prophesies about things that are going to happen to his children. We’re going to have prophecies about the coming of the Messiah here in the nephite world. We’re going to see the destructions.
And it’s interesting that even though people see the fulfillment of those prophecies, they still have a hard time believing. Right?
Even, even though you have multiple examples. And I guess you could even look at Lehigh. Any single case you can start looking at and trying to pull it away if that’s what you want to do.
I mean, yeah, maybe Lehigh was right. There was a lot of tension, though. And you could see the writing on the wall. The Babylonians had already come and taken some of the leaders away. You could see that things were headed that way. So maybe, maybe Lehi, it was just a lucky guess, reading the times. Maybe it wasn’t prophecy. Maybe, maybe.
But I don’t know. That’s why it’s so important to be anchored in a testimony. And these things aren’t meant to convince us. But the Lord does send two or three witnesses to establish his truth and makes it so that he gives us every tool we need to be able to believe if we turn to him. And yet often we take those tools and try to tear them apart. But sorry, that’s kind of a long rant on there.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: What do you think Corhor’s motivation was, like, the PwN to pick popularity power?
Because I’m not like, what power was he looking for? Or is it a bone to pick, like you said? Cause he used to be a priest, and maybe he was looking at it from a financial thing and because they wouldn’t, like, give him the money. You know what I mean? It’s like, I’m just trying to think, because the reason, I guess I feel like it’s worth asking is you see a lot of this all the time on social media. You see it in various conversations where you have people who used to be a member of the church almost actively, because they know kind of intimately different parts of, like, you know, the practices and the customs and things like that, try to use those and manipulate those things to use, to kind of fight against the church.
And so I guess I think that I just wonder if it’s worth at least just trying to consider what his motivation would have been for trying to tear this down and if we can learn anything from that when we see very similar practices all around us right now.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: That’s a good question. I think with what we see with Korra horror is, I think he starts with a lie to the point where he himself believes it. I think he becomes his first convert.
And so at this point, when he believes it, he’s almost acting out of this, because how else do you explain this when you’ve got him going around and getting arrested, brought to the chief judge and then getting arrested and brought to the chief judge? I mean, he’s not extremely, extremely successful. He’s not pulling this huge following. He’s not.
And so you’re saying, what is this motivation? Right? And it’s kind of like Joseph Smith. If we ask the question of him, what was his motivation? Because all it ever brought him was heartache, time inside of prison, in the end, his death.
It’s a similar path of what we see with Korahor. And you look at it and say, how could he be doing this other than out of a sense of he really believed? And so I wonder if that’s the case with Korra. Horror is he truly believed the own lies that he started to create.
And I think you see that with pathological liars to where they walk themselves into a hole and they’re going to defend it no matter what. It just. I don’t know if that doesn’t really get to the root of the motivation, though.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: I don’t know, man.
I see a lot of contention and arguing, and again, a lot of it. The most you see against the most you see of people attacking members of the church, 90% of it is like, former members of the church.
And that’s why, again, like, this is when you brought that up that Korhor might have. That’s kind of where he’s coming at it with a lot of his intimate knowledge, and he’s even called out on it.
It just. I guess the reason that I want to know is, like, how do you handle having these discussions when you know, you’re arguing with somebody that has very. It’s not from them misunderstanding the actual doctrine, it’s them trying to kind of twist it.
And if at a certain point, you just have to go, you’ve, you know, you’ve made your own bed, sleep in it. But the problem that with that is, is that you, in a lot of these cases, have them stoking doubt and confusion in either other members, or you have them very actively misinforming and adding more ammo to people that aren’t members, but that are antagonistic. So I guess I’m just wondering if there is a point where you have to go like, no, I’m going to stand up and correct this.
But sometimes not understanding the motivation, I feel like, makes it feel like kind of a waste of time or a lost cause even before you’ve started. And so much of these discussions are rarely in good faith, which sucks. But it’s sometimes just hard to know when to jump into the fray and actually say something and when to just hold your peace and move on and hope that, you know, that this person isn’t screwing up somebody else’s salvation too much.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: You bring up a really good point, and I think it’s interesting you look at Joseph Smith being martyred, and, and from my understanding, the people that carried this out were people that at one time were members of the church that one time had received, even to some, to the extent of having received endowment before that. These were some of the people that were close with the prophet, and yet they turned on him and they fought against it, and they fought against the church violently. They wanted to save the world from the lives of Joseph Smith. They wanted to stop the church and tear down the church.
Almost as much as you had a passion to try to preach the gospel and help people come to the church. Now all of a sudden you feel it your responsibility, your duty to try to preach the anti gospel or try to reverse the damage and try to tear down the church from the inside or do what you can, try to pull this apart.
And I don’t want to over generalize and make sweeping statements because it’s not true that everybody that leaves the church feels this responsibility or this duty.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Of course I’m not. Hopefully, I didn’t.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: No, you’re not. No, you’re not either. You’re not either, right? You haven’t stated it, and it hasn’t come across that way. I’m just trying to be careful of what I’m saying going forward. That it doesn’t say that. Right? Because. Because. Because some people, they do feel that. And. And it’s hard to just make that blanket judgment. Like, how do I talk to somebody in a position like this? How do I know if truly they believe what they’re saying or if they’re just saying this out of bad will? And Cora horse clays, he doesn’t really believe anything he’s saying down to the heart of it. You even get to the point where he’s struck and dumb.
And he admits, the devil came to me as an angel loose. And said, an angel of loose. I’m sorry, an angel of light and said, there is no God. Right.
Which even then, I think that explanation has just as many holes as any of his arguments do. I don’t even know if he’s telling the truth about that. How do you believe an angel from God telling you that there is no goddess?
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Where did the angel get sent?
[00:23:46] Speaker B: It’s so funny you brought that up because that has always been one of the weird things where I’m just going like, wait, that doesn’t. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Even as a kid with reading these, I was always like, I’m glad that you brought that up because that always has been a weird thing for me.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, God told me to tell you that God doesn’t exist. So now you can put your mind at ease and you’re like, wait a second. What?
Then? Yeah, it’s just, again, it’s just a weird circular argument with this guy that I don’t think he believes any of this, honestly. And I think Alma comes to the same conclusion. Because why does he not give him, if he’s repenting and saying, I’m sorry, Adam is wrong, why isn’t he allowed to speak again? And Alma makes that clear. He says, if at this point we were to take this away, you would keep going right back where you started from. And he doesn’t look at this as a true sign of repentance. Nothing’s changed. This guy is just trying to convince, as he has in everything. He is trying to convince people of his way. And it’s hard to understand the motives. But I’m glad you bring this up, because if you look at, there are some people, it does not matter how much you try to look at their arguments and try to, I mean, Alma attacks us very logically.
Alma comes and says, okay, well, look at the words of the prophets and what they have said and why is he turning to the prophets? Because Korahor’s main argument is that prophecy doesn’t exist.
And so if Alma says, okay, then I’m going to show you exhibit A, B, C and D, where prophets said something that was going to happen and it happened and it shows that prophecy is a real thing.
And he says, I have all of these witnesses and what do you have? The only argument to the opposite is you, yourself, your word. And you are saying, and it’s that same circular argument. You were saying that you know of a surety of things that won’t happen. You’re acting like a prophet, prophesying that there will not happen because you now saying that you know what won’t happen from a logical standpoint, he’s blown up his argument, he’s isolated anything he has to stand on, and yet he doesn’t win.
And so going back to your point, when you’re trying to engage with somebody and, and you’re trying to help them and they’re coming at this with good faith, then, then pointing out things like this opens up the way for a discussion. And you can have an edifying discussion. You can feel like you’re connecting and you can, you can disagree, but disagree respectfully, respectfully, or come away and still, you know, understand each other’s point of view, a perspective, and have a respect for each other and have a good conversation regardless of the outcome, whether they change their mind or you change your mind, you can still have a decent discussion with people in good faith.
But when somebody has no good faith and they’ve decided before that discussion even going to begin that they’re not going to change and they’re just going to keep bending and twisting and turning and won’t stand on anything.
I think from Alma we get the idea that at some point you’re just wasting your time and there’s nothing else you can do.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: I agree with you on all this. I think that what I kind of read out of this is that if it was just Korahor, I don’t think that Alma would have needed to waste any time arguing with him. But, like, what I was kind of referring to is you see this damaging other people that might be in a fragile place and trying to understand, and that’s where it becomes a lot more complicated, is all I’m saying. And it’s hard to know how vigorously and vehemently you might sometimes have to, like, come at somebody that is just being completely dishonest. And I think Alma gives a good example of when it is necessary, is like, when he sees that this person is out to not only just destroy himself, but he’s out to take others with him.
Alma looks at that and says, like, no. Like, I’m not gonna just, I’m not gonna just let that happen and comes in and I feel like does a good job.
There’s so many, I just see so many direct parallels to a lot of things that you see every day if you’re on any sort of social media. And I think that Alma’s just a really great example of how to approach those situations. But it’s a delicate line because we’re also told basically now every conference that we shouldn’t be arguing with people online, more or less. Right.
We need to be nicer.
And luckily, in every conference, we’re also told that being kind doesn’t mean that we have to be passive and not stand up for what we believe in. But it’s all, those are just some lines that you just have to figure out. I guess. I wish there was an easy answer.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, kind of two thoughts on that. As you’re talking.
I look at some of the things that are happening online from, and I won’t even say it’s the church, because it’s not the church necessarily putting this out. I mean, the church is, in a sense, the churches got the LDS tools and the gospel library, and they’re trying to put out education that will help people if they’re truly trying to learn, to have the other side of the argument represented, but even outside of the church, and you can say BYU, with all of the research that they’ve done, the journals that they’ve created, that the journal articles that they go that dive into some of the interesting, complicated issues in the book of Mormon or arguments. The historicity of the Book of Mormon are things that people point out to try to shake faith. And you have these scholars coming out of BYU that are writing papers, that are putting out arguments that are trying to counter that discussion and have that discussion in a public forum. If somebody says this in a journal, well, then here’s a journal article that’s going to go back, and there’s this back and forth. There’s some interesting articles that you can see these discussions. You can see it in dialogue. You can see it in the Meridian magazine, you can see in BYU studies. And then even outside of BYU, you have different groups and organizations of people. I mean, you’ve got you and I, Nate, who are sitting here trying to do this podcast that are putting this out, and we’re not alone. There’s all sorts of people that feel this drive to try to continue this discussion in a very positive way and not coming at this to try to put people down, but try to take some of these arguments, look at what they’re saying, try to understand where they’re coming from, why they might say that, and also trying to look at it from a different perspective. Let me add some insight to why I see it this way and have that in a positive sort of way. But I think there’s a lot of people that are coming, and I say this and I’m, and I’m mentioning very visible groups, but like you say, Nate, even down into more granularity, you look at Twitter or Instagram or, or any of these social media outlooks, you have these quiet, unsung heroes that are jumping in there that are saying, okay, well, maybe some things are not being left unchecked. If a statement is going to be made that’s put out there online that can shake the faith of somebody, at least there’s a counterpoint being left on there that maybe we can do this in a positive way.
And I don’t think it’s a bad thing that you have people rising to the occasion to try to do it. I think the only caution that the church puts out there is to try to do it in a way that we’re not also blinded by our own arguments. And maybe we can fall into the trap of being Korahor where we disagree before we even go in, without even being willing to consider what they’re saying or where they’re coming from. Because if we can’t see where they’re coming from or why they’re saying what they’re saying, and we’ve already made up in our mind that they’re wrong and that there’s no other two ways about it. And we go into that argument being belligerent, then maybe we find ourselves in just as much of a trap as core Hort did. And we’ve got to be careful about how we disagree and how we’re presenting things and how we’re listening to others.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: The last thing I do think is something worth at least mentioning, only because, as I’ve read this story this time, just so many parallels to just modern communication just jumped out at me is that if, let’s just under the assumption that Korahor actually did have a lot of, like, inside information, let’s say, okay, maybe he was a priest. Let’s just work off of that assumption. He was probably very vigorous and was probably very well spoken and was probably really good. You know what I mean? He was probably a really good communicator when he was doing that job, too.
You see a lot of, you know, people, people look at, like, just on a scale of, like, left to right right. People see politics on the far left and the far right. For me, I more subscribe to the horseshoe theory, which is the far left and the far right are actually the exact same people. They’re just, they’re just one step sideways from each other. But it’s the, it’s, you have the fanatics that are just way outside of the norm or the mainstream.
But you see this religiously, too. You see a lot of people who at one time were just really gung ho, sometimes overzealous to a point where you’re just like, you know what I mean? It’s almost off putting or offensive where you’re just like, hey, read our articles of faith. We kind of believe, you know, we respect the rights of anybody to worship how, where what they may, you know, like, I’m glad you’re trying to spread the good word, but that should never be, that should never be at you going out and attacking and demeaning and belittling other people. And then when they’re, when those, when those people have their paradigm shift of, like, you know, a faith crisis, it’s like they, they just take one step sideways and they’re just as vigorously anti that religion.
I just find that it’s hardly ever do you see somebody that’s really secure in where they are, and then they maybe undergo a faith transformation and then suddenly become the gnarliest, loudest, most antagonistic person on the other side. So much of the time people kind of are who they are.
But it makes you wonder who Korihor Washington maybe before he, you know, had his, his self described revelation from an angel of light telling him that what you’re seeing in me is not true right now. So go tell everybody that. It’s just the whole thing doesn’t make any sense. But in a weird sort of way you can almost see that a lot. Again, I keep mentioning social media and online, but that’s where it’s just the most visible with the easiest access is you see a lot of people that even will give you their list of credentials. Like I was an elders quorum president and I was in the bishopric and I was blank. It’s like now your negative opinion somehow means more because you can check off a list of things that shouldn’t have even mattered. But then you go, that’s interesting. If you view those things as some sort of like a status builder, I can see where maybe the root of this problem was in the first place. You know what I mean? It’s like if you look at those things as a list of accomplishments and not a list of surface assignments, it’s like, okay, all right, I can actually kind of see the seeds of where maybe this would have gone sideways.
But you understand what I’m saying? You do see, I don’t know. I mean, again, like we all have friends and family that are in the church and that aren’t the. And you know, I find for the most part people are more or less the same person that they were inside or out as far as their level of yelling at me, I guess for a better way to put out, or.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Lack thereof, you know? Do you understand? Do you see what I’m saying? Yeah, I do.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Is it worth talking about or am.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: I just totally outside 100% and I almost want to take this. I do want to. And I think you’re going to like this, Nate. I want to take this into a direction of freedom of speech and discussion and should we prohibit any kind of speech.
And I’m going to circle back to this.
Let me say one thing about Korahor’s character.
One other thing that I noticed right at the end here is when Alma warns him and he says, look, you have denied that there is a God twice and you’ve asked for a sign. I say to you, if you deny God one more time, you’re going to be struck dumb. Right?
And Korahor backs up. He tries to retreat from his own argument.
And it’s interesting because here he is retreating to try to avoid this penalty, right? He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said that there was no God. And you’re like, wait a second. You’ve said and several times that there are no God, right? But he says, I never said that there was no God.
I’m only saying that you can’t know that there’s a God.
And then alms, like, strike three, you’re out. And you’re like, wait a second. Technically. And that’s what war is doing, right? He’s arguing on the technicalities. Like, technically, I didn’t deny God.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: I mean, have you ever tried arguing with a lawyer before, Jason? It’s just obnoxious because, like, you can be having the most good faith. I swear, man. I have friends that are lawyers that hopefully are listening to this because I’ve told them this as well. It’s like, stop it. You and I can be, you know, I could be having the most good faith discussion on a disagreement that we might have. Those freaking lawyers, man. It’s always like, well, technically, by the letter of this law, what is, is. And I always just go, dude, we’re not in a courtroom. I know, right? We’re not in a courtroom. You’re talking to another human being here. Stop it. Anyways, continue. But it’s obnoxious. And I’m glad that Alma finds it obnoxious as well, because it’s a.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: And I’m glad that. I’m glad that God’s the judge, right? That’s right. Because Alma’s not striking him dumb. God is. What power does Alma have to, like, magically, like, God knows his heart and he knows his instruction, and he knows that he’s doing this. And it doesn’t matter what he’s saying or how he’s technically backing himself out. Like, he’s. He gets called out on it, and he gets called out by God, and, and he struck dumb. So I just. That. Interesting. I never, I didn’t. Wait, don’t give me. If I’ve got three chances. Let me see if I can’t worm my way out to where it’s not. It’s just interesting how that happens. But I do want to go back to, to what you’re talking about in this discussion, in this debate, and because this is stuff you see all the time. Like, you say you see it in social media, you see it online. And something, you know, let’s take some current events, like what we’re seeing and what was going on right here. We had some guy climb onto a roof and shoot at the former President Trump.
And there’s all sorts of weird things about this. And I’m sure we could go down all sorts of different weird little rabbit holes on this. But here’s what’s odd to me is that this guy in social media, there are no warning signs, there are no discussions.
There is no debate, there is no extremism that we see in him. And so here you have somebody that’s middle of the road, not necessarily extreme one way or extreme the other way, who’s never expressed any discontent or any willingness to try to go shoot somebody who within himself has cooked up or gotten to the point, I don’t know. Maybe, I don’t know his motivations. But here he is stepping on a roof and taking shots at somebody and killing innocent people.
Would that have been different had he been more vocal, had he had the opportunity to express what he was thinking and what he was feeling, and had someone been on the other side of that understanding where he’s coming from and saying, okay, I can see what you’re saying, and here’s why. Here’s a counter to that argument or something you should consider, or here’s how. And he was able to have that discussion with somebody online in a conversation, rather than stoking himself up to the point that he’s ready to take extreme action on his own. And even though his speech might have been extreme, is there space for extreme speech in America to where people can express what they’re saying, or do we let them bottle it up to the point where they run outside and do something like this?
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I mean, that’s, that probably would need a whole other discussion and might not be for this platform. But I mean, you know, you know, you know, I have thoughts on that, but I don’t know if this is the platform for it.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: You don’t want to go down censorship.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: I mean, you know that I, I consider myself a free speech absolutist, but I also believe that the market regulates itself if done correctly. And we also, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us as a community pushing people outside of our community that we as a community have decided not to allow into our community. And I know that that might seem like conflicting arguments, but I could very easily talk you through how they’re not. But I don’t think this is the platform for it.
Okay.
For me, let’s just keep this as much as you and I should and can have this discussion. I just, I don’t want to I don’t want to take this that way, especially in light of what’s going on in the world.
[00:42:36] Speaker A: So, yeah. I’m just looking at if. If somebody can express what they’re feeling.
I don’t. Gives us an idea.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: Of what they’re thinking. Sure.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Which. Which I do believe in that.
Which I do believe in that. I. I’m not saying that, but I. Again, like this. Is this just. It’s too complex of a conversation? I don’t. I don’t.
We don’t have enough time, even. So let’s. Let’s keep going.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: You did a. In our. In our little prep chat, you did bring up something really interesting about the name. Is it Oneida? How do you pronounce that?
[00:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Oneida works. It’s. It’s. It’s gonna be. See, that’s actually gonna roll into next week when.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: They roll into. So should we save that ahead of myself?
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Okay, we’ll save it. We’ll save it for next week, because that’s a good one.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think.
I think that’s gonna be really good.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: It’s some of the good. It’s some of the good stuff that you probably are not getting from the other podcasts, the little things we try to make sure we’re including in there.
Anything else you want to look at this week?
[00:44:04] Speaker A: You know, this week I came across something that was kind of interesting, and it’s a letter that Joseph Smith wrote to the editor of a newspaper.
And Joseph Smith, in this letter to the editor of the newspaper, talks about why he’s writing the newspaper, and he’s a subscriber to the newspaper. And he sees that the editor is putting out there all sorts of different ideas, and he feels that it’s important for him to put in his, as he calls it, the widow’s mite. His small contribution to the dialogue, to the conversation, to what’s happening. And that’s something I really respect about Joseph Smith, and it’s something that maybe we don’t talk about or focus on is a lot of his character.
We focus a lot on the restoration of the gospel and what he did, his discourses, his revelations, doctrine, covenants, the translation of the Book of Mormon. And all of these things kind of take a large, grand center stage. But what maybe falls in the background is his visit to the White House to try to go advocate for the saints. The letters that he writes to these editors of these newspapers. In fact, it’s a letter, the Wentworth letter, that we get the articles of faith from. And in this letter to the editor, he’s talking about the importance of turning to God and repenting. And in fact, he says, it’s been 18 months when the angels revealed to me that the Lord has withdrawn his spirit from the earth. And you see that there are no more converse convert converts to the churches around here, and there’s a darkness that’s gathering as a prophet. Joseph Smith looked at this and said, what’s going to happen if the people do not repent is you will see a war here on this land like you’ve never seen before. Massive bloodshed. And. And he goes on to prophesy about the civil war in a letter that he’s writing to an editor of a newspaper, asking to have it posted in the newspaper. And is that not the role of a prophet to. To see the events, to feel the spirit, and to be able to prophesy about things that are going to happen and to advocate that we repent, that we turn to the Lord? And here he is trying to. This is Joseph Smith’s social media of the day. He’s writing to a newspaper, and it’s not just any newspaper. And his mind, this is a liberal newspaper that he’s reaching out and writing to. And the newspapers have not been necessarily friendly to Joseph Smith or to the church or to his perspective, but here he is taking on a responsibility or a role to reach out to these people and to get his side of the story, to get his version, and to put it out there. And so, looking from Joseph Smith, I think we can take some courage and some examples from that today, as much as there is a lot of things that we might come across online that could be faith shaking. What can we do to get our side of the story out? What can we do to be faith promoting, to encourage people to have a reason to believe, a reason to have hope, a reason to try to understand and to counter it, not with just blind assertions or blind faith per se, but with reason, with sound arguments, with what we’re seeing, with what we believe, and to also have that faith base, that anchor, that testimony, that spirit of prophecy, which is a testimony of Jesus Christ that Joseph Smith so eloquently shares, so taking, taking from our prophet at the beginning of the restoration, we see that. But I say, even today, on Facebook or on Instagram or on a lot of these different platforms, I see messages of hope from elder Holland, who’s sharing his daily scripture study with us. I see messages of hope from Uchtdorf, who takes time to share something online or the president, President Nielsen himself, is taking time to share things that are positive, and they’re not necessarily doing it in a combative style and looking for somebody to get in a fight with, but they’re doing it in a very positive way and leaving, like you will, editors to the letters to the editors or letters to the public to express what they see and try to give a hope or a reason to believe.
I guess that’s where I wanted to land on wrapping that part up.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: It’s awesome.
It’s awesome. And to your point, I love that Joseph Smith was a prophet to the whole world and not just the church.
I think that it’s even more a fruit of that tree, which is he was committed to trying to save the world, the land. I mean, isn’t that the theme of so many prophets, is we’re about ready to be destroyed in war, in captivity, in bloodshed.
We need to turn to the Lord. We need to correct our wickedness. We need to repent.
And was he not almost like step for step following in the line of other great prophets in trying to warn the people of the land? They need to repent or they’re going to get destroyed.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: And the irony and everything is how it ends. I think when Korahor is cast, he’s dumb.
And it’s kind of interesting that they have to write to him. The guy’s not deaf, but they write to him and he writes back, right, and explains what’s going on, what he sees. The irony of it to me is that when he goes to the people of Amulon, who you think he would be a hero among them, because he’s trying to tear down the church just as much as they were, they trample him and snuff him out. And you’re like, well, wait a second. Are they heroes of the story because they killed the Antichrist? Are they the heroes because they killed someone who had it coming, who was, and yet they’re not. Why is it that among his own people that he should have found sanctuary? Why is it that among his own following of people trying to tear down the church, he gets crucified?
In a sense, he gets killed, he gets stamped out and trampled.
And maybe there’s a message in that, too, that in the last days the devil doesn’t support his people.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: I mean, I don’t think he ever does. I mean, I think that’s, that’s one of the key characteristics of the devil, is he always leaves his, his followers high and dry.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: I keep saying Amulon and, and I’m wrong on that. It’s the Zoramites. I don’t. I don’t know. I keep crossing my wires.
It’s good.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: Don’t worry. Send us all of your emails correcting us, and then as soon as you get to this point, you’ll be like, dang it, they already corrected themselves. But that’s okay. We’ll still read the emails anyways.
We’re not going. We’re not going back through. Yeah, we’re not going back through and fixing them all.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Knee whore. There’s just.
[00:51:24] Speaker B: There’s a lot of names. There’s a lot of names. I. I’m always forgetting the names. Anyways, um, really good stuff, Jason. Um, always appreciate the time. Is there anything else you wanted to. To put on this before we. Before we wrap it up?
[00:51:39] Speaker A: No. I don’t know. I think.
I think we’re there.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: Awesome stuff. We, uh, you can get ahold of us at high deep dive.com. we always appreciate your feedback, questions, comments, insights. Send it to us. Send it to us and we’ll read it. And we will do what we can to respond to it, either directly or as we’re recording.
Always appreciate any of you that are willing to leave us reviews, leave us comments on the various podcasting sites and share it with your friends. We really do appreciate it. And, yeah, I think that’s all we got for this week. So until next week.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: See ya.
I enjoyed it yall. You were spot on!
Thanks!!