In this episode of the Deep Dive podcast, Jason Lloyd and Nate Pyfer discuss the Book of Mormon’s “dream team” of Nephite heroes: Moroni, Lehi, Teancum, and Helaman. They explore how these warriors stand out as consistent and unwavering heroes, in contrast to the more flawed figures found in the Old Testament. The hosts reflect on the literary significance of the Book of Mormon’s portrayal of these heroes, who do not fall from grace but maintain their righteousness and strength through to the end of their lives. This distinction, they argue, offers a powerful example of perseverance and faith that resonates with readers.
The episode also delves into the human nature of these heroes, emphasizing that even though the text may present them as larger-than-life figures, they were still real people with struggles and vulnerabilities. The hosts draw parallels between the Nephite heroes and historical figures like the Founding Fathers, noting how their dedication to righteousness and selflessness makes them worthy of admiration, despite their human imperfections. The conversation weaves together themes of leadership, the fine line between strength and weakness, and the divine purpose that drives the actions of these characters.
Finally, Jason and Nate explore the broader implications of the Book of Mormon’s stories, discussing the contrast between the kingmen and freemen, the importance of personal responsibility, and the danger of giving up freedoms for the sake of security. They highlight how these themes remain relevant in today’s world, encouraging listeners to be vigilant in their own lives and to strive for the same kind of righteous leadership and heroism demonstrated by the Nephite warriors.
Transcript:
[00:00:15] 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, discussion, discussions. I don’t know. We go either way.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: What’s up, baby? You know, in the studio.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: In the studio. It’s always fun to be here with you, Nate.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Thanks, buddy.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: I’m just excited. I’m just beaming with joy. It’s another day, it’s another opportunity to talk about the scriptures. The book of Mormon just fills me with happiness. Happiness. Happiness is the word.
I like it. I like it.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, then let’s do it.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Let’s do it.
You know, we’re back into the adventures of Moroni, and can we just take a second to acknowledge how awesome Moroni lehi Tiankum Helaman.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: The Dream team.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: They are the dream team. Right?
And there’s a part of this when you’re reading the Old Testament. David has his warriors, and David’s. He’s out on the lamb trying to not get killed by Saul, and he has his followers, and then later he becomes king. And it’s almost like, you know what? I wonder if that’s not where Arthur and the roundtable even comes from. You’ve kind of get this legend of this kingdom and his guys that are just unstoppable, and they go through the heroes, David’s heroes, and they talk about how many men they slain with the spear and how awesome and incredible they were.
And yet, for all their amazing powers, prowess, and skill, they seem to fall. David falls.
And it’s just. It gets kind of messy towards the end. And it’s sad to see your heroes fall. But when you look at the book of Mormon and here you have your. Your heroes, and these guys are heroes to the end, or at least that’s how they’re portrayed. And you don’t see them. You don’t see them fall.
You see Tiankum die, but he dies in a flame of glory, right? I mean, going out, making a difference, and ending the war. It’s just kind of cool to see these guys and to see heroes that are heroes not just for a brief spark, but consistent through the end of their life heroes. It’s kind of fun to see.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Is there something fundamentally, I don’t know, wrong with that from a narrative standpoint? Does it make the Old Testament dudes more relatable to human beings? I’m just saying, from a narrative standpoint or, like, a literary standpoint, is there something wrong with Moroni’s dream team? Or should we just accept it and love it and just be all in, all in man? Me too. It’s not that I’m not going to, but you know what I mean. Sometimes we say, when we were reading the Old and New Testament, there was a lot of discussion on how it was nice to read, or at least not nice, but comforting to read, that there are other human beings that are just fallible human beings as well. Or is this a story where we can go? Because, by the way, too, I look at the reason I bring this up. We talked a little bit about. And we talk about it a lot, you know, of my profound love and respect for the founding fathers of this country.
And they weren’t perfect people either. They weren’t. And they, as just human beings.
And the reverence that I still have for them, for them stepping up to their callings that I believe are divinely inspired makes it so. Their imperfections as human beings is something that I couldn’t. I don’t think about ever. It doesn’t make it right or it doesn’t make it wrong. For me, it’s like, sure, it’s wrong. Let’s even just say that, fine, the human parts of these men were human, not right or wrong. They were human.
And I still just love reading. Like, when I read, I think, 1776 for the first time and just cried the whole time, you know? Cause I was just like, what an incredible group of human beings. And I guess I’m just saying, I know that we have a. From just a literary perspective.
We don’t. I mean, we got to see a little bit of Moroni’s hot headedness, but other than that, we kind of don’t. We’ve kind of. They’ve moved beyond human beings almost. They’re almost just. They’re just superheroes. I mean, it’s the avengers.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: It kind of is.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: But I guess I’m just suggesting maybe it’s still an awesome thing and also something worth remembering that even though we only got to see a little bit of a glimpse of it with Moroni, that they probably were still human beings, too. And that would hopefully provide hope that we can be awesome as well. Knowing that, yeah, we only get to see, you know, history is.
You say this all the time. History is written by the victors, right? History is written by the winners.
And that’s something important to consider when you learn of history, is that the winners wrote it.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: And you see, and maybe that’s why Morones stands out so much, is, you see, some of his human nature.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: But it makes me like him more, for whatever’s worth.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah. You see that he’s one of us, and we can imagine ourselves in there. And for what it’s worth, when you talk about comparing the Old Testament heroes and the book of Mormon heroes, I’ll say this.
Who remembers Jaso Beam? Right? Yasho beam. Who’s talking about him?
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Did we ever.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: I mean, it’s. Did we talk.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: I don’t know who that is.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: A lot of these guys get, like, one verse and that’s it, and they move on.
And yet every, you know, I don’t think there is a member of the church or anyone who’s read the book of Mormon who doesn’t remember the name Tiankum or Lehi or Moroni. I mean, these guys, I mean, we.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: All have friends named Moroni. I’m sure it’s probably true. I’m just saying I only bring that up because as much as. And I’m all in, by the way, too. I’m just saying there was something very human about reading about David that was heartbreaking.
But there was a profound warning almost in his story, which is as great as they are, they’re susceptible to for just as gnarly of a fall. And that still didn’t mean that Christ didn’t come through his lineage. I’m just saying there’s so much more I feel like, as a human being, to kind of get from that story where as great of a read as this is, and like I’m reiterating, I am all in, it’s at least maybe important to remember that there was, even though we only caught a glimpse of it a little bit with Moroni, that these men probably had struggles, too, and probably had to learn, and their rise to greatness could have been born from earlier. I mean, at least Alma’s a perfect example.
We got to kind of see Alma as a knucklehead, Alma the younger, we got to see him as a knucklehead.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: And senior.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: And senior. That’s right. We got to see them in their worst and in their best with some of these. With some of these war stories. And maybe it’s just because there’s just too much to tell that it’s not necessarily worth.
Maybe there was editorial decisions along the way to go, hey, it’s not really worth trying to go into all of the human nature part of this.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: I’ve got two thoughts on this.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: I don’t want to beat this to death. I’m just saying, it’s like, when we talk about these dudes, you brought it up, and it’s like, these dudes are like the shiny dudes that you put on the movie poster.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: You’re right.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: And sometimes I’m just like, hopefully that doesn’t make them out of touch.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I don’t feel like they are. But I’ve kind of got two thoughts on this.
In Hebrew, they have a literary device where they build, and they have the ability to build a. And to climax. And. And the build is, for example, the seven deadly sins. Six things that the Lord hate. Yea, seven are abominable. And so you look at that. Six in the first line is. Is met in parallel with seven in the next. And what. What’s it doing? It’s stepping it up. It’s building. And hate means one thing, but an abomination, that’s. That’s even worse than hate. Right? That’s.
It’s stepping it up. So what you have is a build, a build up to that. When they list the seven sins, now, this is the climax. And so it’s a literary device that they use. And they don’t just use it in poetics and poems, like what we see here, but in stories and in themes. And so when you talk about these guys falling, look at how many times you have a man who was great because of a weakness. A vulnerability, we’ll call it.
And, you know, vulnerability is an interesting word. And let’s take this back to the root, to the beginning, to where it all starts, when Adam and Eve find themselves naked. And the word naked doesn’t just mean without clothes, but it means vulnerable.
Exposed.
He finds himself vulnerable. He finds himself exposed because, how do I say this? What’s the pattern? Adam falls because of Eve.
And then you’re going to build with this. What happens later on. Samson, Delilah. What happens later on. David, Bathsheba, what happened? And it’s encapsulated in the book of proverbs when it talks so much about the value of what they call the perfect lady or the wise woman. Right? And how important it is to make a choice of who you’re going to spend your life with and not be sleeping with the woman who’s with another man or not be sleeping with the woman who’s going to lead you down dark paths. And they just keep kind of building this. Even throughout the book of proverbs, it hits this climax that the whole purpose of this. And they just keep hitting you over the head with temptation and fall. Temptation and fall. And you keep seeing these people fall after fall after fall. And why are they falling? Because they’re giving in to a weakness, a vulnerability or something that they have. And so, yeah, when you talk about this and we see these guys fall, I think that’s part of a larger pattern. I think that’s part of a larger message, and I think it’s part of an overall, be careful of your weaknesses. Be careful of those things that can cause you to fall, because you can see how that builds. You can see how even in the story of David, you see the building with a very small step, not being where he’s supposed to and looking for what he is and just see it build to the climax becomes now his fall.
And so I think in the Old Testament, you see a lot of falling. And I think it’s part of a message, part of a warning, part of a whatever. And so going back to the literary structure in the book Mormon, I think it’s almost refreshing to not see the fall. I think it’s refreshing to see a building in an opposite way, a building in a sense of I’m building in my ability to listen to the Lord, I’m building in my ability to follow the promptings of the spirit, and he is strengthening me to where the climax becomes rest.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Redemption.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Redemption, salvation. And so it’s a different kind of build and climax than what we get. It’s not this harrowing. I need to be careful that I don’t fall. It’s more of this peaceful I’m building to.
And it’s all about the land of promise. It is all about the land of promise. And lest we say that the whole Bible is just about falling, Abraham and his whole promise was about the land of promise, about his seed being able to inherit the land, there’s a lot of parallels even with that building and climax with salvation. But to kind of take this back, you see these heroes in a very different build and climax, but this building climaxes to the entering into the rest of the Lord.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Love that.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: And then the last thought, and I just have to throw this in there because you make the connection with the founding fathers.
Does not Moroni bring interesting parallels to Washington?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Totally, yes.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: And here you have him justified by pahoran to take martial law, execute anyone who’s not on board, bring the army into the land and put himself as the supreme ruler in the land.
Who wouldn’t want Moroni to lead your country and to consolidate all of that power underneath himself and to have control over the entire country, governments, and yet to set it all aside when he’s.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Done well, because they didn’t want it.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: He didn’t want it.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Neither of them wanted to be a dictator or ruler. And that’s, I think, maybe why they were so qualified. Because they were righteous and they didn’t, that was their superhuman power, is that they didn’t want the. They didn’t want to be a ruler. They didn’t want to be the dictator, which is actually a superhuman power because power corrupts. And the desire to rule over other people, as we learn about, is just part of human nature. And so when you can find actual superhumans that want to do the right thing without needing that, it’s why having a king is probably still the best form of government. If you can find a righteous king, right, only person left. I trust Jesus.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: But you have here in this section the king men versus the free men.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: And your king men are not the righteous dudes.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Of course not.
I know I’m not. Dude. You can call people whatever you want. Antifa calls themselves anti fascist. It’s the most fascist group I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Other than maybe the Nazis.
It’s a pretty close call. Needless to say. You can call yourself whatever you want. I’m saying a king is still the best form of government. If you have Jesus as your king or King Benjamin.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: King Benjamin did a pretty fantastic job.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: I’m just saying, like, there’s people. But even then, it’s because they kind of had the superhuman power of not wanting to just rule over people and instead go out and grow their own food and enable people. Yeah, enable people to have freedom and choice and all of those other things. Anyways, I don’t want to go off on that tangent. Yeah, no, no, it’s the kingman and the free men. Yeah, whatever. It’s like names are names.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: Let’s get into the kingman and the Freeman. Before we do, though, I just want to make sure, when I’m painting broad strokes in the Bible and talking about Adam and his fall and comparing it with Samson and comparing it with David, I just want to make sure I’m nothing. I’m not out there saying, you’re not.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Saying that’s an apple to apple.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: The women are the devil.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: And I don’t want to sit there and blame the fall of great men on women.
I don’t feel like that’s the point of the Bible. And I just want to make sure I’m clear I’m saying that you can’t.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just sticking my foot in my mouth at this point.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: I didn’t get that impression. But let me, as the observer of this, put the bow on it, which is.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: This is more of like, the symbolism in this is of a somebody giving into a desire. It’s not necessarily even like a man and a woman necessarily. The theme is, is if a. Any person continually over and over, gives into a desire over fulfilling their calling or doing the will of God that leads to fall. That’s. This is the fact that, to be honest, I think the reason it’s used so much in the Bible is because it’s the most obvious.
It’s the most obvious situation that everybody can go like, oh, yeah, dudes. We all know kind of what dudes fundamentally want.
It’s just base humanity. Therefore it just makes it an easy. I feel like it’s an easy symbolism to follow along. No matter who you are. You can go like, yeah, I guess that makes sense why David would be out doing that or why Samson’s out doing that. And I. Yeah, this. We’re not, we’re not saying that even the comparison is.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to be blaming the victim. What I want to be saying is you’ve said it. Well, it’s giving in to our own selfish desires that’s encapsulated behind these stories. But what is it? What does it all boil down to? And this is what we’ve seen, and this is what we’ve said, thou shalt have no other God before me, there it is. And when I am that God, or my will or my desire is not in line with God’s. But I’m going to put all of the attention into what I want instead of what God wants. And that becomes, first, I’ve put another God before God, and that’s myself. When you make yourself a God, when you give in to your own desires, your own pleasures, your own passions, and you don’t have the self control, I think that’s the overwhelming message that the Bible is trying to get through our heads, is how do we put God’s will first? And that’s what Christ is the culmination of. Not my will, but thy will, the self control, the temperance, and the ability to align ourselves with God. And you mentioned it as Benjamin put off the natural man, what a great king. And he gets that message and he shares that message. And I think the Book of Mormon offers us a different perspective in some sense, as we see some of these people fulfill it, and it makes us love them, to see them hang in all the way to the end and that we don’t see our heroes fall. It’s important.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: And I don’t think that this is breaking news, but we historically kind of know what lead to a lot of the downfall of men, and that that’s our carnal desires. And this is why I’m just saying, like, I also don’t think that we need to sugarcoat the fact that this is why these stories, we all can kind of go, yeah, yeah, I kind of get that. Because we all are, like, we’re all not too dumb to understand. Like, this is. I’m not breaking news on this. No, we kind of know what dudes want. Okay, I’m sorry.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: I’m sorry.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: But it’s like, at the same time, we’re not blaming anybody other than we’re also just acknowledging the reality. Okay.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: We can’t sugarcoat this so much that we avoid the whole.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: And by the way, too, for whatever it’s worth, it’s why, if any of you that are new listening to this show, we did an entire special episode on the book songs of Solomon from a very symbolic, like, there’s a reason why this book is actually important is because it’s. It fundamentally is used as a descriptor of how much God loves us and what joy is and what hopefully ultimate paradise would be written in terms that human beings can kind of understand and go, yeah, actually, I kind of get that. Right.
We also don’t. Yeah, I also want to make sure that you realize we’re also not running away from, like, the simple fact that, yes, God uses a lot of intimate imagery, language and imagery in talking about his relationship with us. And so whatever, all of this, we believe that these are written in terms that we can understand in relationships that we can understand. So there’s that point of it, too. All right. I just want to make sure that we also aren’t just trying to totally escape that side of it either.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Okay? So I’ll give you a choice at this point.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: We can dive into Freeman Kingmandeh, or we can dive into Gila, men’s warriors. I feel we’re going to talk about either or. Right. Which one do we talk about first?
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Do we want to talk about the Freiburg painting first, or do we want to talk about.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Let’s go, Freeberg. Freeberg always wins.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: There is no way the Heman that Freeberg painted in the greatest of all Freiburg paintings in the old blue book of Mormons that we all used to read back in the eighties and nineties, there’s no way that 2000 of those dudes wouldn’t win every battle that they were ever thrown into.
Thus, it removes the miracle a little bit. I’m sorry, Freiberg. You know, my love for you is so true and deep, but there is, we have to remember that, that these dudes are the priests that are blessing your sacrament each week and the deacons walking up and down the aisle. And this was, I had heard this analogy at a little retreat I had been to, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking of it ever since, that sometimes the art removes the miracle a little bit and go look at that Freeberg picture and go like, yeah, of course none of these dudes were hurt. And then Sunday, when the, when the deacons are passing the sacrament up and down the aisle and the teachers are sitting by the door wanting to play on their phones and the priests are up at the table doing an awesome job of blessing the sacrament and fulfilling their priestly responsibilities, consider that it was 2000 of those dudes, and then appreciate how great this story actually is. All right.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: As I was listening to you describe that, the thoughts that came into my mind was like, coming across an army of 2000 Samoans doing like, the haka dance.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. I’d be like, I would be like, of course.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: That’s exactly right.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Well, that’s what the picture is. All these, all these dudes where I’m just like, yeah. It’s like, it’s like those dudes. I’m like, yeah, I’m not, I’m not fighting those dudes. No army’s going like, yeah, we’ll beat those guys up. Those dudes. 2000 of those dudes.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It’s important we look at, you know, how far down the reign of the judges we are, and it’s not that much far down from when Ammon’s going out there and teaching them. I I mean, we could look at it, I don’t know if it’s much more than 1516 years from, from when they’re there. So you look at these, these guys that didn’t take the covenant of burying their weapons, maybe there were some boys that didn’t do it at the time that were left home that maybe you can get some that were in their twenties. But it seems like a lot of these boys are teenagers.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Fine, let’s say 20 and younger. Let’s say 25 and younger.
Let’s even say 25 and younger.
For those that have ever been in a young single adults ward or a student ward at BYU.
I’m sorry, like this doesn’t make the story that much better. You know what I mean? Like it doesn’t make it that.
Let me put it this way. It doesn’t make it any less miraculous like it is. It’s a miracle that 2000 of these dudes didn’t get killed.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
And it goes back to what we were talking about even last week when we were talking about Joseph Smith at a young age. We were talking about Nephi at a young age.
Moroni is commanding troops at 25. He’s obviously maturing throughout this process and getting older. But the guys that are coming in are younger than him and they’re commenting. So if you’ve got a commander at 25 who’s leading the armies and that’s okay or that’s what’s happening, you don’t look at these guys and say, oh, they were super young. If they were also 25, they’re not young for their age. If they’re the same age as the commander of the army.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: No, that’s a great point.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: You’re looking, you’re looking at mostly guys. I’m saying there might be a few that peaked into their twenties. But to your credit, Nate, you’re looking at the people that are preparing the sacrament, that are blessing the sacrament.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Not even to my credit. Again, it was brought up at a retreat that I went to, but it has stuck with me ever since.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: But it does change the way you read the text and the way you envision it because like you say and like what you’ve learned, we are so much influenced by art and we get this idea and we have these visions of these guys marching out there.
And it changes quickly in your mind when you imagine a bunch of, a bunch of 14, 1516 year olds, anybody.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: That’S ever served in a youth program or been around a youth program just.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: With the collar of their shirts hanging.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Up, hanging up the tie, and you’re just like, oh my goodness. But even just think of how hard it is to wrangle young people at a combined young men, young women activity. Like that’s the other thing too, is that you’re also, you’re also, you know what? There’s more miracles than we’re even like giving these dudes credit for. First of all, the fact that you were able to wrangle 2000 anybodies, let alone teenagers at oldest early twenties, the fact that you were able to get 2000 of them to listen to orders and march and do all of the stuff and even go out to fight in the first place.
Again, when you reconsider all of this, you look at the Freiburg picture and it’s like they’re marching in perfect lines and they’re holding the flags and they’re doing the whole thing.
It’s like, can you imagine a combined young mistake, young men, young women’s activity? And you’re gonna get 2000 of those kids marching in a straight line. Like all of this is miracle, man. All of this is miracle from start to finish. And by the way, like, kudos to the dudes that are the kids that are out even doing this in the first place. I’m just saying like, it’s when you realign the visual of this, the story gets so much better.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: And I also kind of like Helaman’s arc in this because Helaman, as you recall, he didn’t even go on the mission to the others. Alma had him kind of taking the administrative role in the church and he takes over the plates and he is the spiritual leader, the spiritual guider, not necessarily out there going and fighting. In fact, when the people of anti Nephi Lehi, who become the people of Ammon, want to go and fight, he’s the one that’s standing up and talking them down. Don’t do it. You’re not going to break that covenant. I don’t want you to break that covenant. He is their spiritual leader and he is there trying to stand them down.
There’s also something subtly going on here as well with names, as you take on a different name. And the people of anti Nephi Lehi taking on different names to show that they have become a new people.
But even if you notice these 2000 stripling warriors, as we call them, stripling, meaning young, what name do they take upon themselves? And Helaman calls them his sons, but they call themselves Nephites, which is interesting, right? They’re taking upon themselves the name of the Nephites and becoming this people to go and fight with them.
But Helaman, feeling this love for this people that he has shepherded as a spiritual guiding father, wants to assure the protection of this small group of boys. And I don’t think he’s going out there expecting what’s going to happen. Because when he gets there, Antipas, who’s in charge of the affairs of the nephite armies and that portion of the land dies in that first battle. When the anti Nephi Lehi, the 2000 stripling warriors, are being chased and they have to turn around and fight. And antipas falls. And now everybody looks to Helaman for leadership. And here the spiritual administrator leader who’s been shepherding the flock is having to develop stratagem, work with the military commanders, organize them underneath themselves. And you kind of see this arc, and you’re reading this letter from his perspective, and I don’t see him as this natural moroni. I almost see him.
I don’t know the right way to put this. I mean, he does a great job because he leans on the Lord, but it almost doesn’t even feel like it’s a natural role for him. He’s reluctant. Yeah. And he’s trying to piece it together and what an incredible job he does to actually, in the end of his story, take the land of Manti and push all of the Lamanites out of that entire sector of land and hold through. And it almost feels like a game of risk, you know? You know, in risk, and you start rolling those dice and you’re spreading your troops out, and you just win this massive victory. But when you’re done, there’s only, like, one guy in every single territory. And, like, maybe one manti’s got, like, two guys in it. And you’re like, oh, dear. I. You come to that realization that you spread yourselves a little bit thin, and it won’t take much for the entire Lamanites to just stamp through your. He’s got that moment right. He’s captured it, but he swallowed up. He punched up, he hit higher than he ever should have. And now he is stretched thin, and he is a little bit terrified of what this means for that part of the land. And now all of a sudden, you’re not having Zarahemla send reinforcements, and you’re not even getting food.
The job for the people who are not on the front lines is to be making sure you have supplies, making sure you have food, equipment, clothes.
You’re refreshing these people and sending out reinforcements, and that stops coming. So not only are you spread thin, but there are no little troops working their way out to your front. And he finds himself kind of in that terrifying moment where he sends that letter to Moroni.
I like Helaman’s arc. And when it’s all done and said, what does he do? He steps right back into the role that he was, and he steps back into the role that his father vacated. And he’s out there teaching the gospel and going right back to, you know, that was never what he wanted to be, and he did it. And the Lord magnified him and what an impressive job he did.
And sometimes the Lord uses us outside of our comfort zones. And it’s okay.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: It’s great. Love it.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: All right.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Trying to think also, it’s just awesome that those young kids were just like, nah, we’re gonna do this. I mean, that’s also impressive.
I mean, that’s. Again, I hate having to just belabor this, but any of that have ever tried to get young men or young women? I’m just saying to really just step up. But, you know, you will find that the more you challenge young people, I do think the more they’re willing to step up to that thing. But also, having taught at a high school and as you have, it is sometimes hard to get people to be fired up to do their homework, let alone grab a sword and go fight adult men who are twice as big as they are, just wanting to cut them down.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: So if they could respawn, they would be all over that, right? Yeah, exactly. Put me in, coach. Put me in, coach. There’s no, there’s no.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: It’s not a video game.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: This is not. Yeah, there’s no respawning at this point. And the miracle of them being delivered surely is a miracle. Right. You’ve got thousands of people dead and not one single one of them who has fallen. But it’s also interesting that it says yet there was not one of them that wasn’t hurt.
They received wounds. Some of them had even passed out on the. On the battlefield because of their wounds. They were. Some of them were pretty gravely injured.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: You don’t come out of it unscathed.
And sometimes maybe we look at this story, and as miraculous as it is, maybe we get. Maybe we get unreasonable expectations that I am going to come out of the. Of the other side unscathed, just. And think, well, they didn’t die, so I’m not going to be hurt. And there’s a little bit of difference between dying and hurting. Right. Because I’m sure those guys were terrified.
Well, they acted valiantly, but at the same time, think of the emotions and what they went through, and think of the emotions of having to kill people who potentially they even share relationships with being lamanites. Maybe they knew them previously. Maybe there’s extended family that didn’t come with them when their fathers left the land of anti Nephi Lehis.
And having to shed blood, having to take lives. You’re asking a lot for people to do, to emotionally process and go through what they did.
It’s a lot. They take on. And I don’t know that just because they didn’t die doesn’t mean they weren’t changed. It doesn’t mean they didn’t experience a lot. Doesn’t mean that they did.
Yeah. It was a very transformative period for them, and I don’t think they came out unharmed, unscathed.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: That’s right. I mean, but that’s. That’s real. That’s. That’s human. And, like, you are making the point that we go through our things, and even when we do get an assist from God, it. We usually don’t come out of it unchanged. So I think that’s very human as well. All right, let’s keep going.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: All right.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Did you want to talk more about those dudes? I’m sorry, unless I didn’t. I don’t want to move you on. Unless that’s. Unless you had more that you had.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Wanted to know we can move on. I don’t. I don’t.
I don’t know. I. I feel like. I feel like a lot at this point. We could dive in and really, it’s just going to be narrative. We’re just going to be retelling the story that you guys are already reading at home.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: All right, let’s get into the king, men.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Let’s get. Let’s get into the king. Menta.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Hang on 1 second.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Check.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: Check. All right, I’m back. Sorry, my mic died for a minute. All right.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s. There’s some interesting.
I don’t know the way to call it politics, right, or what’s going on here. We’ve seen that ever since King Mosiah steps down and changes it to a reign of the judges.
And I don’t even think the reign of the judges. Correct me if I’m wrong, we’re only, like, 30 years into this.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: That’s not a lot.
I mean, there’s really not a lot of space between now and from that moment and Jesus coming. I mean, there’s the same timeline wise. You know, we talk about how, like, the first of. What is it like from Nephi until Mosiah is hundreds years. Yeah, hundreds of years. And from here till basically third Nephi, 100 years. 100 years. Yeah. So, so much of this is just getting really pushed in here.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Condensed 30 years of history. And in that 30 years, we’ve already seen, I would say, three major groups trying to reinstitute kings.
They want their king. They want their king. In the Old Testament, how many times they. We want a king. We want a king.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: That’s right.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: And you would think, why would you surrender power to one man? How does a king man get so much support?
If you’re saying I want to be king, well, what about him? Doesn’t he want to be king? Or he, how do you consolidate all of the king man under one banner? Is kind of a fascinating thing for me to think about.
And I think one thing that we maybe miss when we talk about kings is we think of a king as there’s one king and it rules over everybody. But honestly, I mean, think about all the cities that are mentioned here. A king requires sub kings.
And that’s the promise, right? Like, if you support me, and this is a lot of the lower judges, people that are in power that are supporting this, but they can see how things are administered and they think, you know what? I should be ruling over this. Or, you know, they have a little bit of a taste of that authority, that power, and they want, they want more. And maybe it bothers them that they, that I think they even say that a lot of them were the lower judges, that they have higher judges that can step over them or that doesn’t go their way. And how do they get more, consolidate more of that power? Well, if I support this guy and he’s promised me that I can be ruler over this, and now all of a sudden you have all of these promises, and if I am in king, guess what? You’re going to be my this and you’re going to be. And there’s a lot of promises of power that are being shared around and sent to where we’re going to change the government, but we’re going to change it in our image. And there’s a place for you here where you can do this in your image. And it’s just, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting take. And I think a lot of times this is where it gets scary. Today, I think the king men are honestly promising a better reality and that they’re going to fix and address a lot of the issues that the people are dealing with under a false pretense. And there’s a lot of that in this chapter.
Let’s look at the letter exchange between Ammoron and Moroni, and maybe we can get back into the king men. But even in this sense, when Amoron writes Moroni and says, hey, I’d like to exchange prisoners, Moroni’s happy as can be about that. He’s like, I want to exchange prisoners, but it changes. It’s funny, Moroni just throws all of his fury into this calling him a child of hell and all of this unholy war. And I’m going to arm my women. I’m going to arm my children. How do you think Amoran’s going to react?
And it’s interesting because it becomes a very emotional letter, but letting his emotions fly gets Amoran to respond and spew out a bunch of very interesting things about how he says the right to reign is with the Lamanites, and that Moroni’s father and the Nephite’s father stole that from them.
And so they’re going to just take what’s rightfully theirs. But the whole fascinating thing about this is what comes out. Amaron says that he is a descendant of who?
Zoram, who your fathers unrighteously pressed me, you know, I’m not even supposed to be here in the first place. And so wait a second. Here you have someone who’s Zoram, who’s supposedly neutral in this, and he’s accusing the Nephites of stealing the right to reign from the Lamanites, his older brother.
But. But what? But what did Amaleki, his brother, do? Did he not steal the right to reign? To reign. He went into the land of the Lamanites, and he stole the right to reign from the Lamanites. It’s not a lamanite that they have on the throne. It’s a zoramite who’s neither a nephite or a lamanite. And to have him trying to conquer the Nephites so that he can sit on the throne, and he’s trying to take the right to rule from Nephi and take the right to rule from Laman and consolidate under him, who has neither. And yet his claims to the Nephites is, you guys stole the right to rule.
You guys are the ones that took it. And we’re just trying to set it right. We’re just trying to give it back to the Lamanites. The Lamanites are the ones that should be ruling all the while while he’s. He’s stolen it. And. I’m sorry. I’ve just kind of wrapped myself into this. No, I mean, it’s interesting, this rant.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: I don’t think it’s a rant of. Keep going.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: It’s. It’s. It’s. It’s weird. How?
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Let me. Let me throw this out there. Okay, so let’s. Let’s not even go back this far. Let’s just go back kind of like medieval ish times.
What. What purpose or what reason would any citizen ever want to have a king? Like, why? Why would you have a group of people like, let’s not. Let’s not even look for the power hungry people. Let’s just look at your everyday common citizen. What good does it do them to have a king?
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Stability.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Okay? Safety. Stability.
We can have confidence that we’re not just living in anarchy.
What does that then usually require of those people?
[00:42:17] Speaker A: They’re surrendering everything.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: I’m sorry. Let’s just say it.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Agency in exchange for security, right?
[00:42:24] Speaker B: Not even agency. Money, food, all kinds of things, really. Their lives.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: You’re giving up some freedoms.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: You’re giving up a lot of freedoms for something else. Okay? So innately, we also want a king. We believe we have a king. Jesus, right? Christ is king. You see it everywhere when you’re driving down the streets of oakland and it’s written on the neon signs, Christ is king. Right? Like, we also have a desire to have a king, too, for probably the same reasons. Right? Stability, safety. What are we willing to give for that?
[00:43:05] Speaker A: And everything.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Everything. Money. We pay tithes. Money, hopefully our lives. All of those things, right?
I think that this is where, again, it’s just worth highlighting the, just that razor thin line of one way of doing things versus another way of doing things. And this is a pattern that we’ve harped on for years at this point. And so I don’t necessarily want to, again, like, go all the way down that, but human nature is, we want a king.
What that requires, though, should help us determine which king we’re going to be putting our trust and faith into. Right. And for us, we as christians feel like we have that answer.
Not having a king is a harder way. Like, it is. It requires a lot more because you look at our form of government like, yeah, man, you need to be involved.
Unless you ultimately do just want to turn over your freedom to a system that you’re just like, oh, okay, I guess I’m a subject now to this system.
But for those citizens, even in a democracy, let’s just say, or a republic or a representative sort of government, it requires us even the simple act of voting, of actually spending some time to try to read up on the policies of others, right? All these things. So I’m just saying, like, I’m almost trying to approach this from the.
From not the power hungry people’s part of this. Like, you did a great job. I do feel, of illustrating, like, yes, there is, there is also a desire in people that when they see a chance to rule over other people, you see this in professionals. You see this in all kinds of things. That’s human nature. I’m talking about the large swaths of us that are going what you have to, what you, what you are required to sacrifice for having an unrighteous king, dictator, whatever that is, is not worth the.
Is not worth it. When you compare it to. Yes, it does take a little bit more work to show up to a freaking city council meeting every once in a while and to, and to be involved in your local politics and to be involved in your national politics as best you can, you know?
And by the way, that in a lot of circumstances means that you also need to be willing to donate your time and to.
I’m just saying, it’s like it takes a lot more work to self govern than it does just to be like, well, here’s a king.
But when you look at what it is, look at every. Look at what the easy way always turns out to be, and that’s a loss of freedom. That is subjugation. And that ends up being usually a lot more hellish and a lot harder of work than taking the right way, which might feel like the hard way up front, but allows you to maintain freedom and maintain your.
I mean, look at the title of liberty, your right to free speech, your right to practice a religion and safety for your family. And so I think that my, the only angle I just wanted to at least point out was, let me just add in, because this is kind of the chapters of the book of Mormon, do this. My pitch, to be involved in your community, be an aware citizen, do what you can. And for anybody listening around the world, yes, we all live in very different political climates, but, like, I would just, it’s once again an encouragement to be like, do the hard things, or the things that may feel like that. They’re the hard things now, because as you just see as patterns throughout the scriptures, as patterns throughout human history, is like, once you give away that right or that power to somebody else to make those decisions for you, it compounds itself and nine times out of ten becomes hell.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: You know, Brigham Young said, if we’re going to be king of kings, it’s because we’re going to be father of fathers.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: I love that.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: And as you were talking and I started thinking about this as kids in our homes, isn’t it very similar to what we would imagine a monarchy to be, as our parents are the ones that kind of rule over us, in a sense, and we don’t feel like we have a lot of freedoms, but what are we getting in return, we’re getting our meals, we’re having a roof over our head. Our needs are protected, and we’re given an environment in which we can explore and learn and not feel worried about being encroached on. Right? That safety, that sense of security, those.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: Boundaries actually are very safe and securing for young people, whether they realize it or not.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: But yes, and as we grow up, we want someone who’s going to solve all of the problems for us because as kids, that’s mom and that’s dad. Or maybe it’s even a lot more mom than it is dad because he’s always mom, mom, mom, right? And you hear that name called out almost like a curse word at some point because you hear it so often, right? And it’s hard to get away from it. But you’re always looking for them to solve the problem for you. But at some point, a parent’s job is to help a child learn how to solve the problems for themselves and enable them to take on that personal, that personal accountability, that personal responsibility to become the next generation of kings and queens.
Because what are they going to have to do now? They’re going to have to solve those problems for somebody else. And at some point we make a transition from where we’re always looking for someone else to solve those problems for us to where now all of a sudden we’re looking on how to solve those problems for somebody else.
And it’s an interesting transition in that accountability. And, and I guess when we start talking about that, aren’t we all KInG Men? Don’t we all want to be kings? Don’t we want that for our kids is to stop relying on somebody else to solve everything for you? Stop looking to the government to have all of the answers or stop looking to your parents to be able to. At some point you have to move out of the basement. At some point you have to start providing for yourself. At some point you’ve got to have a family and take on that responsibility. And so it is interesting that line that you bring up. We talk about the king men and the difference between Christ enabling us to become like him versus I will save everyone.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: That’s right.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: I want you to be, I will be responsible and I will save everyone and I will save everyone’s problems and nothing, one person will be lost. And that’s more. The kingman that we’re coming across in the book of Mormon is I will take care of this. I will make peace with the Lamanites. In fact, I’ve broken the deal with them here in Zarahemla, we will give them the city, they’ll win the war and we will save it. So none of your kids have to go fight anymore and you don’t have to keep sending food out. And I will solve all of your problems and so that you don’t have to worry about a dang thing because I am the king and not one will be lost.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: I’m so happy that you brought up this parallel because what was, look at the plan from the very beginning.
Heavenly Father’s way was the hard way in theory, right?
You’re going to have to do this and you’re going to have to take this and you’re going to have to take personal responsibility and you’re going to die. And not all of you are going to make it back the hard way in theory, right. Satan’s way was visually the easy way. Like you said, I can make it, so whatever. But what did he require?
The only thing that we truly have of our own, and that’s our agency.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Everything.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: Aren’t both requiring everything?
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. And it’s a great point.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: Yes, it’s a razor thin line.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: This is the point. Right. And it’s once you start, once you start observing the world around you and seeing in so many instances where everyday people really do want somebody else to solve all their problems for it, it really starts to make it a lot more real when you go, yeah, of course, a third of the hosts of heaven could have possibly bought into this, especially when you use the terms like love and safety and all of these things. It’s like, sure, Satan’s plan.
I can absolutely see that debate in the pre earth life of like, well, don’t you love everybody? Wouldn’t the loving thing to be to do to make sure that everybody makes it back? Sure, like, yeah, like, yeah, maybe the sacrifice you’re giving up of like your agency and all of these things. Sure, I understand the thing, but you’re doing it out of love, out of safety. We’re making sure that everybody’s safe. We’re making sure that everybody, you know, of course, that’s the pitch.
The pitch isn’t like, worship me and I will take everything from you and here is your little breadcrumb that I’ll give you because that’s really what it is. But the idea is it has to be sold differently.
I’ve been sending you all those little things. I’ve been really diving into Milton Friedman a lot lately, and I am sad that he’s always just been in the periphery.
And I’m really digging into it. And so many of his lectures and his debates and his interviews that I’ve been really listening to is so much of the pushback because he’s truly a very capitalistic minded economist. And so much of the pushback and the questions are always framed in such a way of, well, what do you do about the child that’s hungry? Well, what do you do about the.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: You know what I mean?
[00:53:29] Speaker B: It’s like, it always is an argument to immediately attack the most, by the way, pure fundamental goodness in people. Well, what do you do about this? Well, what do you do about this? What do you do about this? And you could look at somebody who was a realist, I feel like, like Milton in these cases, and simply brings up the. There is two sides to every equation, the receiver and what is required from the giver or what is taken from somebody else. It’s like there’s a natural law in heaven that there is two sides to an equation. There is no such thing as free lunch is basically how he says it, right? And, man, it’s like just the simplicity and just the profoundness of that is just really has been weighing on me quite a bit as I’ve been really digging into this. But you push that all the way back to the beginning is that there’s not free lunch, man. And it’s just not. It’s a universal principle.
Somebody has to pay for it.
In the two plans before this life even. It’s like Christ was saying, I’m willing to pay for that. I’m willing to do those things. But here’s what I require of you. That’s a fair exchange. Well, not fair, but it’s an exchange. It’s more than fair to us.
It’s grace, it’s miraculous. It’s something we could never pay back. But at least there is the two sides to that equation explained in detail so that we understand the terms of the deal that we’re making. If you look at Satan’s plan and how so many similar plans like that are sold to us in this life, we’re only told one half of the equation.
The other half of the equation’s still there is my point, and it is razor thin even now. And it’s why you see a lot of, in theory, intelligent, sensible people giving into the emotional draw of, by the way, from a good place and a lot of occasion of I want to help other people, I want to love other people, you know, all those things. Then you go, okay, cool. At least just at least then acknowledge the other side of what that means for me. I am willing to live a harder life, quote unquote, maybe a financially less secure life, whatever that is. If it means that I get to maintain my freedom, I’m willing to. I am willing to live within a system that goes, I am going to provide a public good, and here’s what I’m going to require as payment back for that good, with the risk of maybe people might not want the surface that I’m willing to offer, and then that means that I’m going to have to then find another way to benefit society to make that money in return. See, that’s the equation that I am willing to live in.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: I love that you went here. I love that you went here. And I got hung up on when you talked about the equation of Christ and saying that perhaps it isn’t balanced, but it’s got to be a balanced equation. And I think about what Christ gave for us and what is it? Is it not a life? Is it not life eternal? Is what we get out of that is our life. So what does he ask in exchange if that’s going to be a balanced equation? Don’t we have to give our life? And does that not is. That’s what he says. If you lose your life, you find it on both sides of the equation. It’s life. I am willing to sacrifice my life for the life that you are going to give me. And therefore both sides of the equation are balanced with the life I give up and the life that you give me that keeps that. That’s what makes it fair. And so many times we try to cheat that. We try to hold it back. And I am going to try to get the life that you’re offering me, but I am going to retain the life that I have and not give up what I have. And then you find that you lose it because it’s not a balanced equation.
Anyone who seeks to keep their life, we’ll lose it. There is nothing that we can keep.
Anything that we gain in this life, when we die in the grave and where does it go? And we lost it all. We gave it all up. And what did we get in return? We lost it because we tried to keep what we had. The price we have to pay has to be equal to the price that Christ had to pay. I have to be willing to give up my life just as he was willing to give up his life in order for this to be a fair exchange.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Love it.
Not sure how we ended up here, but I’m glad we did. Oh, it’s the kingman Freeman, the fine line between the two.
But again, I know we’ve probably already covered this enough, but something that it did remind me earlier of when you were bringing up the idea of Kingman being in a lot of us, is that there is such a funny allure to ruling over your neighbor, even.
It’s a shockingly human base instinct, and I don’t know why that is. I don’t know what, I don’t know, other than that’s just something for us to have to overcome. But it’s just shocking to when you go even some of these old school, you know, not even that old school, but some forms of government that very much are terrible and that you have a dictator and basically subjects to that dictator.
So many of those people got into power, they needed to get into power by still winning over the minds of a large amount of people. Like, there is still power in numbers physically.
And even regimes like Mao and Stalin and a lot of these people, they still had propaganda arms for them as well, because they still needed to rule over the minds of a massive amount of citizens to stay in power or to even get into power in first place. And so much of that was so much of the way that those dictators were installed were kind of appealing to the sides of a large group of people to be like, you will be the powerful ones in this new system. Like, yeah, I’m your leader, I’m your reluctant leader, I guess I’ll be the face of this. But together we can overthrow the whatever it is, right? We can overthrow the powers that be or we can overthrow whatever. And if you don’t think that that still exists now, even in a country like ours, it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying when you see still the appeal to that side of human nature, of, well, we want to maintain our freedoms, but if to do that, we might have to maybe take away other people’s or other citizens. Like, that’s a worthy excuse for doing it. And you’re just like, I’m just saying, as humans, keep your head on a swivel. That’s all I’m saying. Just keep your eye out when you see these things crop up, take warning, that’s all.
[01:01:22] Speaker A: When you talk about it being a kind of a base instinct or drive that humans have as trying to examine it in myself, and I ask myself the question, like, do I want to rule over my neighbor? And I’m like, heck no. That seems weird. Like walking in there, knocking on the door and telling them what? That, like, that seems absurd. But as I start thinking about how this comes about and how we see it and how it is, I think it comes from, honestly, the divinity in us, the divine nature, because what do we try to do is we try to control everything around us, right? It doesn’t matter how hot it is, because I’ve got air conditioning and I’ve controlled my environment, I try to control the weather, I try to control.
And so it’s our desire to organize, to create order, to trick structures, to control the variables around us. And it’s not that we want to necessarily rule over our neighbor, but it would be nice if we knew how they were going to, or if we could take that variability out of our lives and start to create structure and organize, organize chaos and organize chaos, which is very divine. It’s the creation, it’s the divinity in us that seeks to control, but in an unrighteous way.
[01:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah, but it’s also the devil in us, too. I’m just saying, like, that’s the fine line between the two, because it’s also the demon in each of us that’s saying, I will save you all, and here’s what I require. I’m goddesse.
That’s the fine line between the two.
[01:02:53] Speaker A: And to me, it’s kind of interesting, and maybe I’ll just wrap up with this. I know we’ve probably gone over, it’s been a good discussion, it’s been fun.
I think, of the difference between cells and viruses.
And a cell is just doing it, still living its life, collecting its resources, and it has to divide and create new cells, and it takes in the proteins and it pulls it in, and it builds the protein, it builds the structures. The DNA is a very complex structure, very complex system, but it’s organized, it’s order, and it’s living in a very precise, exact way. And then you have a virus which also has a little strand of DNA, a code, but it has no ability to create. It can’t reproduce itself, it can’t create more of itself.
All it can do is try to leach onto a cell, inject that code in there, and get it to where it gets to the core system, that brain, and replace it, or inject that DNA in there to where the cell now buys in on that idea, and the cell starts recreating and producing the virus for the virus, because the virus has no ability to produce itself, right? And that cell starts to produce the viruses and mass produce it until the cell gives up its life, loses it and dies. And what happens when it dies? It ejects thousands if not millions of these little viruses that go on, again trying to capture the cells around it. And this is kind of a weird tangent to even go down. If you want to cut it out, you kind of keep going. But I think that’s what’s happening with this mindset.
This approach is, it’s not sustainable on its own. There is no life. You look at that equation and it’s I am keeping my life without giving anything. I can’t reproduce, I can’t create, and yet I want it all. I want to keep it all, the.
[01:04:45] Speaker B: Willy Wonka, I want it now.
[01:04:49] Speaker A: And so the only way I can reproduce is by capturing or corrupting or trying to get others to follow by this. And they’re theirs.
I don’t know. I went down it.
[01:05:02] Speaker B: No, I’m with you. I’m with you. But again, this is back to the discussion of like the Kingman versus the Freemandez.
It’s like, as there is also a very, I remember when I asked you the question, this is like, what do King men, what is a population that want a king usually want? And like you said, it’s the idea of safety, which by the way, they were getting attacked all the time. But in theory, right, safety, stability, all of these things. And what did that usually end up requiring is a loss of freedom or whatever. In theory, it’s like you can’t tax something that’s not being made or not being created. And the Freeman in this case, somebody that I would consider myself of, the mindset is that we’re willing to go, hey, we’re willing to give up of some of that stability. We’re willing to give up some of those things in order to create and feel like we have the freedom to create what we want to, too. I actually think, I think that your point was well made, even if we don’t have to necessarily pinpoint specific examples of how you, again, unfortunately see this in the world around us. But I mean, look, the theory is, this is not a political podcast, but we are very much into chapters of this book of Mormon where you see very direct parallels and symbolisms to the world that we live in. And we’re told that this is a book meant to describe our time. So it’s the only reason we’re kind of getting a little bit more into the weeds with it during these chapters.
[01:06:38] Speaker A: So it’s fascinating, these chapters, because in these chapters, you’re taking on immigration.
When you have the anti Nephi Lehighs, they’re coming in.
And yet you’re also taking on these checks and these controls. What happens when they take the wine into the prison to get their prisoners out and they all get drunk? And so what, the Lamanites try to replicate that and what are they doing? They’re not just accepting everything. They’re not just taking in everything, but how are they controlling it? How are they. How are they being wise in how they’re administrating and how they’re administering? You have issues of government.
You have issues of people seeking control, people wanting to give of themselves freely to serve and help in exchange for this freedom, this God, this liberty, versus people that want to take everything from everyone to be that source of liberty, that freedom. It’s just a very complex set of chapters and just kind of interesting to read in light of today, right? How do we apply the scriptures to today?
[01:07:41] Speaker B: Keep your head on a swivel. That’s how. Just keep on the lookout.
If you see these things popping up around you, be like, hey, I’ve seen how this plays out. I’ve seen this before. That’s what it is. That’s the point we’re trying to make. All right, dude, good discussion. Good discussion.
We got some good stuff coming up in the next few chapters. Good news is that any of you that have read the book before know where we’re going and know that, yeah, we. This is. This is all part of. But you know what? This is a good point, too. I’m gonna make this point.
[01:08:12] Speaker A: Let’s make it.
[01:08:14] Speaker B: What is you have the turmoil and you have the wars and you have governments and you have politics, and you have all of this, and you have cunning and you have the secret combinations. You have all of this. And then what comes after that?
[01:08:29] Speaker A: Christ.
[01:08:30] Speaker B: That’s right.
Let’s just. Let’s just. Let’s just know that we’re told that this book is for us in our time and that there’s a parallel there, too. So if nothing else, can we all. Can we all look forward to the future with hope going, hey, we at least do know how this ends.
[01:08:53] Speaker A: Can you do something for me?
[01:08:54] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:08:57] Speaker A: Can you look up Broseph’s?
[01:08:58] Speaker B: Oh, you know, I can.
[01:08:59] Speaker A: I just. I’m just curious. When Moroni is just tearing into Pahoran and, like, you guys are on your thrones in the stupest, this.
[01:09:08] Speaker B: Wait, what chapter is that? 30.
[01:09:10] Speaker A: I want to say it’s 60.
[01:09:11] Speaker B: 60, not 30. Sorry.
Because that was from last week, right?
[01:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s this. We. We jumped ahead when we went into the Pahorn Moroni letters.
[01:09:21] Speaker B: No, we did it.
[01:09:22] Speaker A: Yes, we did. It’s right here in chapter 60. 59. Moroni and Pahorn were introduced last week, but they’re their exchanges this week.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: All right, whatever.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: But it’s okay because we needed to talk about it last week.
[01:09:32] Speaker B: All right, what is it, 61?
[01:09:35] Speaker A: I want to say 23 or 20. Oh, man, 20.
[01:09:39] Speaker B: One’s good.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah, let’s. That’s 21 is where.
[01:09:43] Speaker B: Do you really think the Lord is just going to magically save us if we don’t even save ourselves? How can we just sit on our butts and do nothing?
There are so many people around us that are doing nothing. Even our comrades are dying left and right. Are you really going to sit around and do nothing, too? Yo, do you really think God’s gonna give you a pass for just sitting around and watching all this crazy stuff happen? Nah, man.
God already got. God already said you gotta clean up your act on the inside before you clean up the outside. You feel me? Unless. Unless you start repenting for all of the messed up stuff you did and actually start doing something productive, like sending food, people to people to help us and heal them out so we can reclaim our land. Well, we might as well just give up the fighting, the Lamanites, until we get our own house in order. Especially our messed up government. Amen, Broseph Smith. Especially our messed up government. There you go.
[01:10:39] Speaker A: Thank you.
[01:10:41] Speaker B: I’m gonna leave some of my boys here to keep things in check.
[01:10:44] Speaker A: Whoa.
[01:10:48] Speaker B: And I’m book of Mormon for Gen Z. Unofficial chat. GPT translation for Gen Z. Brose of Smith.
[01:10:56] Speaker A: One last little thing. This isn’t even a big thing. It’s just a stupid little thing. When I looked at the timeline of events, and Helaman, when Amaron asks for a request of exchanging prisoners, is actually before he requests the exchange of prisoners from Moroni. And I’m thinking, man, what a failure Amoran must feel like when he requests the prisoner exchange from Helamana. And, you know, he’s desperate. He’s got his supply lines, and he’s trying to keep people alive. And even in Helaman’s case, it says that he’s not even keeping women and children like he was a Moronius. They’re only keeping the chief captains of the soldiers, and still their resources are strained, and he loses it. Like, helaman’s like, nah, we’re good. We’re just going to go take this on our own.
And then to run into the same thing with Moroni, like, hey, let’s exchange prisoners. And Moroni is all excited. And then Moroni’s like, you know what? Screw you. We’re going to do this on our own. And he goes in and, I mean, how deflating is that? You just got it handed to you on both sides. He was not amalekiah. He was not as effective as his brother was. You could see that the Lamanites were struggling.
I don’t know why I had to throw that in. I just felt like it was.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: We appreciate everybody that listens to this podcast, appreciate you sharing with your friends.
Always appreciate the comments, the feedback, questions, critiques, reviews, all of the things. We appreciate it.
Insights.
[01:12:30] Speaker A: We appreciate you, Nate. We appreciate making your studio available. I just heard allowing us to come in now. Dude, I just hear recording this thing.
[01:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe people don’t appreciate that.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: Thank you.
[01:12:42] Speaker B: Maybe they shouldn’t, is what I’m saying. Maybe they shouldn’t appreciate that. But we do it anyways. So thanks for listening.
I think that’s all we’ve got. So until next week.
[01:12:50] Speaker A: See ya.
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