In the final chapters of the Book of Mormon, Moroni crafts a subtle yet profound testament that mirrors one of the most fundamental patterns in sacred literature: the motif of fall and return centered in temple worship. It is no wonder Moroni, who wrote this great cap to the Book of Mormon, would play such a significant role in reintroducing mankind to the presence of God in the restoration today. Hope you enjoy!
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 in a studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: How are you, buddy?
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Dude, it’s good to be back. It’s good to be recording again. It’s good to be talking about the scriptures.
I’m excited.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Okay, Okay.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: I like it.
I like the book of Moroni. I have a new appreciation for Moroni after this week, and I’m actually excited to get into that.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I’m excited to hear.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: I’m excited to hear what you got.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And I’m. And I’m sorry.
I thought. I thought things would be, like, a little bit quieter here at the house, a little calmer.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Dude, listen, man, if. If we’ve learned nothing from this podcast. This podcast is about family, dude.
Nobody. Nobody listening. Nobody listening is going to be upset that you have happy kids running around in the background doing their thing.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Hopefully they’re happy.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: They sound happy. They don’t sound like they’re fighting. Let’s just put it like that.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I do have kids, so for. For you at home listening that.
Welcome to the show.
Hello from my kids.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: It’s part of our lives, dude. It is what it is, man.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Hopefully they don’t make a loud appearance tonight.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: All right, well, let’s do it. Let’s get into this.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: All right, so this is. This is going to be another merge episode where we’re taking. When blending the Moroni. So there’s two lessons, right? We. Last week, we. We didn’t quite get together to. To record. This week we. We’re pulling it in and we’re going to blend. So it’s Moroni. It’s going to be one through nine. And it’s interesting. They did this. They left Moroni chapter 10 as a single lesson to be handled in its single week by its own, and they combined the other nine chapters together. No, that’s not true. I’m combining the other nine chapters together. They. They broke it down a little bit different. I believe it was 1 through 6 and then 7 through 9, and we’re. We’re gonna just blend them together. And it’s not bad that they blended one through six, because you look at chapter one and super short four verses, Moroni saying, you know, I thought I’d be dead, but I’m not, so I guess I better write some More not dead yet.
Man, that’s a. That’s a great reference.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And I have already put my marker in.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: I’m getting better.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: I’m getting better.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: I’m getting better.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: No, you’re not.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: You’ll be stone dead in a moment.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Me too.
For me, is where it starts getting interesting. In chapter two, you talk about the conferral of the priesthood.
And I feel like it’s important to note.
I’m just going to read chapter two because it’s so short. The words of Christ which he spake unto his disciples, the twelve whom he had chosen as he laid his hands upon them.
And so I want to focus on this for a second. A lot of the Book of Mormon is addressed to us, is addressed to a wider audience, as addressed to the public, addressed to everyone needs to repent.
These words here, and it’s important to notice this, are the words that Christ spake unto his disciples.
And it’s not the disciples like everyone that followed Christ. It clarifies this which he spake unto his disciples, comma, the twelve whom he had chosen. So they’re using disciples to talk about the 12 apostles. And so this is a select, small group of people. It’s not the large group.
And so I’m going to explain why this is important here in a minute, but just first, let’s take a note of that. Verse 2. And he called them by name, saying, you shall call on the Father in my name in mighty prayer. And after you have done this, you shall have power that to him upon whom you shall lay your hands, you shall give the Holy Ghost. And in my name ye shall give it. For thus do mine apostles.
And so we’re talking about priesthood to be able to confer the gift, the power of the Holy Ghost.
And when we say give the Holy Ghost, I’m going to refer to that as the gift of the Holy Ghost. It’s not just any priesthood. It’s important to notice that this is Melchizedek priesthood.
And there’s a reason I’m going to hit on that too, because chapter two, it’s small. That’s it. It’s right at the end of the chapter three is going to talk about the man in which the disciples who were called the elders of the Church ordained priests and teachers. And they prayed to the Father, they laid their hands on them, and they talk about how they ordained them. And you’re talking about the authority, the ordination and priesthood. And then we get into the sacrament. The sacrament prayers are outlined in chapters four. And chapter five.
And so the beginning of the book of Moroni.
Is not this section of book necessarily intended for the whole general audience of everyone, but that this was the words which Jesus spoke to the twelve, conferring upon them authority, giving them the priesthood, and then it’s also the administration of the priesthood.
Now. 6.
This is where I find it interesting. This is where. This is where I start to see the genius that is moroni. Verse 1. And now I speak concerning baptism. Behold, elders, priests and teachers were baptized, and they were not baptized, save they brought forth fruit that they meet, that they were worthy of it. And as I read that this week, this made me pause.
Why does Moroni say elders, priests and teachers were baptized?
Wasn’t everybody baptized? Why does he specifically call out these offices? And it makes it even more strange when you realize that the guy is writing on plates.
Doesn’t it take a lot less room to just say everybody needed to be baptized and nobody came unto Christ unless they were baptized, and no one was baptized unless they brought forth. So why not only is he saying that the priesthood, but specifically calling out each office, the elders, the priest and the teachers were all baptized.
So that made me think a little bit this week, and I kind of stewed and stumped on that for a bit. Why is it so important that he’s mentioning baptism for them?
And I’ve heard people posit different theories, like maybe even there’s a double baptism. You know, they got baptized in the church, but then they had to get baptized again in order to be elders, priests and teachers. I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t. I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about.
As I was.
And Nate, feel free to jump in at any point if you have something.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I am. I know you can’t see me today just because my Internet’s being a little bit funky, but I will for sure jump in. But I am anxiously awaiting where you’re going with this. It’s very interesting so far.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: If there’s anything you need to just jump in, just jump in. But talking about thinking about this, the elders, the priests, and they’re baptized, what I thought of was the path of leadership in the church is the same path as discipleship.
When Jesus came here on earth and began his ministry, he began it with baptism. That was the first thing he did. Before you get to his teachings in the Gospels.
And you’ve also pointed out, Nate, when Christ came to the Americas in third Nephi, chapter 11, what’s the first thing he did to begin his ministry here was baptism.
And if he is being the teacher, the Savior, the great, the God that we all follow, there was no, there was no alternative route. He had to go through the same things that we had to go through. There is no exceptions.
And having leadership, all have to follow the same path of discipleship to be leaders.
I think that’s part of the message. And this is something that I’ve been stewing on a little bit, and this is something that I think has come up in our conversations and in this podcast several times in the past. Nate, when we talk about Christ using the same terms that we use to define Christ, to define us.
And what I mean by that is when we call him the Lamb of God and we refer to him as the Lamb of God because he was the Passover lamb that was sacrificed on Passover, that we would be spared from death, that we would be saved.
And then when he pulls Peter aside and says, feed my sheep and feed my lambs, and he gives the parable of the shepherd that would leave the 90 and 9 to go find the One and lay that lamb on his shoulders and bring him back.
And what’s he doing? In the Gospels we read this, he keeps referring to us as the lamb. We’re the ones that have all, like, sheep gone astray. We’re the ones that are lost. We’re the ones that need to be fed. We’re the ones that need to be taken care of. And in fact, it refers to Christ in those terms as the good shepherd who takes care of the lambs.
So we’re becoming what we referred to him as. But then he says, I need you to be the shepherd. Go feed my sheep. Go take care of your sheep. And he’s taking on all of these names, but he’s applying those same names to us. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve had.
And I say we referring to the history the.
Of, of mankind is that we keep trying to put barriers between us and God. We can’t be like him or, you know, he’s. It’s. It’s sacrilegious to even think about that. We, we try to put these limits, these barriers and separate us from Him. But that was the whole thing that Christ came to do was, was, was passed through those limits and erase them. That the veil was rent at his death to bring us back into the presence of God. That’s the purpose. We can be restored to the presence of God. And he is coming and saying, I Am like you and you are like me. And we are all in this together. We are the same. There’s something unifying about that. So when I look at Moroni’s message here in verse one of chapter six, and he’s talking about the elders, the priests, and the teachers being baptized, and he’s transitioning. This first one is a transition. So the first chapters, chapter two, chapter three, four, five, were all chapters that focused on priesthood, starting with Melchizedek working to ironic. They are priesthood chapters. Chapter six starts off with priesthood, talking about elders, priests and teachers, but transitions from priesthood to the general membership when they talk about baptism and they’re going to start going through. If you read the rest of this chapter in chapter six, it starts talking not so much about the priesthood’s responsibility, but the church’s responsibility. Go to verse 5. The church did meet together oft to fast and to pray, to speak with one another concerning the welfare of their souls. Verse 6. And they did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. And you go through this chapter and there’s a transition. So chapter six, verse one is the bridge that links the priesthood talked about in chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 to the general membership of the church. That’s now going to be the focus in chapter six, seven and eight.
Does that make sense?
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yes. Can I add maybe a little bit more to this, too?
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Please do.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Because a lot of what we were talking about this week in our elders quorum lesson was about different stages of holiness. And you and I kind of talked a little bit about this just privately over text, about holy places versus things sanctified and made holy by God. But a lot of the talk in that, it talked about that exact transition, but where it was the opposite direction, where Moses comes down off of Mount Sinai with the commandment from God to do what?
Come up and see him, or he’s coming down. He’s going to be in your midst.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: Hey, everybody here.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Find my people, wash them, make them clean.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Wash them, make them clean. Because I’m coming.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: My presence.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yep, that’s exactly right. So Moses came down having been sanctified, right? Both from the holy place that he was, but also being in the presence of God. He comes down and says God’s plan is quite literally to have you be holy because he is holy. I mean, his word’s not mine, right?
We talk a lot about the things that we do to separate ourselves from God. Well, we are the only people that continue to find ways to put limitations on what he actually means by that.
God’s whole purpose of having Moses come down was said, prepare everybody, because now all of you are going to do that. And they said no, because they were afraid, which I think is an important detail. But they then had to rely on specifically the priesthood to do what? And that is to be actually the separation between them and God, right? So you actually had to then have degrees of separation of holiness. The priesthood was called the priests. The high priest was the one that could enter the holy of holies. You had to have sacrifices done outside of the temple to prepare even for that. But basically the children of Israel had to rely on somebody between them and God to do the sacrifices for them, et cetera, Right? So this is when Christ came just to highlight the point, as I think it talks about in Hebrews, he then was the high priest, right? Christ himself was the one that then made it so that we could, through his sacrifice, through his name, be directly connected back into the presence of God again. And I think that the, you know, the big picture point that I’m trying to highlight to, or emphasize that you. You already said, but I’m really just trying to put a fine point on is, is what happened after Christ died is that men themselves again begin to put separation between us and God. I mean, it’s funny because it’s. It’s man and fear that continue to not want to buy in fully to what God has on multiple occasions throughout the scripture said, which is, I want my people to be holy because I am holy. Be like me, become perfect like me.
Come unto me and I will, you know, I will bring you back to the presence of God. Everything that God continues to say is, be perfect like me and like my father.
And all that men continue to say is, that’s scary, or we can’t do that, or let’s have another human being be kind of the go between for us instead of us just directly connecting to God ourselves. And when you read, even now, like at times, when you see people argue about this in social media forums or on, you know, I mean, debates and things like that, is that there’s always a limitation that we want to put onto God of what he really means by that.
When he says I command, when he says, I am the shepherd and the lamb, and then he says to us, be good shepherds. Feed my sheep, feed my lambs.
We go, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, hold on. Or when he says, I want you to inherit everything that my father has, we go, oh, that sounds nice. But we know that that doesn’t mean actually everything because, you know, because we can’t possibly. There’s only one person that can. You see what I mean? Like, we. We are the ones that. I just.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: I just.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: I don’t know.
I don’t know how much more clear and direct God has to be about this. When he directly says, I want you to be one with me.
Like. Like God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are one. I want you to be one. If you are not one, you are not mine. Come be one with me. It’s like, at a certain point, I just don’t know how much more direct this commandment can be before we actually just believe him or we just have to flat out say, well, we don’t actually believe what Jesus says. When he says that we can be perfect like him and that we can inherit everything that his Father has. And he.
I mean, it’s like, fine, just say that. You don’t. Just say that. You don’t believe Jesus when he says that he can make you perfect like he is, that he can give you everything that he has.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: You know what I mean?
[00:18:20] Speaker A: I don’t know.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Do you see what I’m saying?
[00:18:21] Speaker A: I see what you’re saying 100%.
When Jesus says, come, follow me, and it’s something that he said a lot in the New Testament, I believe it shows up over 15 times. There’s seven unique instances in which he said it.
And most of the instances he said it in a very personal way. He’s talking to Peter or he’s calling.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Somebody the rich young man or whatever it is.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yes, the rich young man. And a lot of times the person is actually anonymous, where we don’t know who they are.
They don’t play a significant role. So he’s talking to the apostles who are going to lead the church. He’s talking to general members, if you will. I don’t know if we can call them members at the time, because at the time Christ is practicing Judaism.
But followers, we’ll say general followers who are not necessarily leaders. He’s talking and inviting them to come follow me. In fact, in a group setting, he invited the entire group to come follow him. And he’s talking to potential converts, people that aren’t members or following. And he’s making this invitation that really he’s. He’s doing it to all.
And. And I think the question is, where are we supposed to follow him to? Where is he headed? Where is he going?
And. And Christ was the great high priest. It refers to him as the Great High Priest. Several times in the New Testament, the high priest was a type and an image of Christ.
And I don’t think it’s coincidence that he dies on Passover. We’ve talked about the ramifications of that as a prop prophecy of when he was going to die, how he was going to die. But there are, there are three Jewish holidays in which the, the men were required to show up at the temple and Christ shows up and he is crucified.
Leading up to Passover is one of those events.
But then he shows up at the end of the year around either on the Sukkot festival, which is another one of these events in the Jewish holiday is when he’s showing up to the Americas and we start tying his events to this sacred calendar. What was he supposed to do at this time of year? Well, this time of year is when the High priest goes into the holy of holies, into the presence of God. And what did Christ do when he first shows up after he dies? And he tells Mary, touch me not, for I have not ascended to my Father.
He is the high priest and he is going to transverse that veil and he’s going to enter into his Father’s presence. So when Christ says, come, follow me, and I ask the question, where, where are we supposed to follow Him? I. I say that it is to the presence of God. Because where did Christ go? He is seated. Seated on the right hand of the Father. That’s where Stephen saw him. He was headed to his Father’s presence as the great High Priest. He was entering into the holy of holies. When Christ says, come, follow me, he meant all the way into the presence of God, to be with God. That, that’s, that is our destination.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Completely agree.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Completely agree. And he, by the way, it was the same thing. It was the same thing that Jehovah invited them to do in the children of Israel to do in the Old Testament too. I’m just saying it’s like, this isn’t a new, this isn’t a new concept.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: This is a new.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: By the way, it was to the same place, really.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: And it says it so clearly in Doctrine Covenants 84.
If anyone at home wants to go and read that, the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood, and it talks about the Aaronic Priesthood being preparatory. Preparatory for what? It’s preparatory for the Melchizedek priesthood, the Greater Priesthood and the preparatory for what? That’s it. That’s it. The Aaronic Priesthood holds the keys to the administering of angels.
And the Bishop is the one who presides over the Aaronic priesthood. He holds the keys to the ministering of an angels. The Hebrew words, the Greek word, the same means those who are commissioned, those who are sent. He extends callings, he asks people to speak in the ward. He, you know, he is in charge of who gets called. The primary, the ministering, the ministration, the ministering in the ward. The ministering of angels is under the direction of the bishop at the ward level. And all of that is preparatory to prepare its members for the ordinances of the Melchizedek priesthood which are administered in the temple. And the ordinances of the Melchizedek priesthood contain the keys to the mystery of God or the knowledge of God, which is further described as the presence of God, to be in God’s presence, to know him, to return to his presence. And so the gospel, the church is all meant to prepare us, just like Moses, just like you stated so well, Nate. And it says it in Doctrine Covenants 84. Now this Moses plainly understood and taught the people, prepare yourselves, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, and tried to get them to enter into the presence of God. So I’m so glad you went down this road, Nate, because when I read the Book of Moroni and I start to see, and this is why it mattered, that he starts with the Melchizedek priesthood and then he leads into the Aaronic priesthood, and then he transitions into baptism and the general membership of the church. And then what you’re going to find is he’s actually going to transition out of the general membership into the world, the outside world, and he’s taking this journey. What he’s done is in the final chapters of the Book of Mormon, Moroni has crafted a subtle yet profound testament that mirrors one of the most fundamental patterns in sacred literature. And it’s the motif of the fall and return centered in temple worship.
This is, this is the temple in Moroni. And this is what I mean by this. Or don’t let me run over anything. If you had anything to say, Nate.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: No, I’m, I’m. I’m all in. I have some. I have some thoughts after you’re done with this, but it’s just to continue on what you’re already saying.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Okay, now, to go back to the ancient temple, we have our holy of holies and then we have our holy place and we have our courtyard.
Everyone can come into the courtyard.
And in the courtyard you have to offer sacrifice. That’s where the altar is, the basins that you have, the water to wash. And sacrifice is required before they can go into the temple. Now, not everyone can go in the temple.
Well, all of Israel can come into the courtyard. In fact, Gentiles can even come. They have the court of the Gentiles can come into the courtyard.
But for those that are priests now can step into the holy place, and only one person, the holy of Holies, can enter into there. And so the space gets more and more restrictive as you go in. And what Moroni is doing as he presents his book is he’s starting with a more restricted space when he’s talking about Christ only speaking to his apostles. It’s a very small, narrow audience, and it’s actually in the presence of God, who’s talking in chapter one, Christ.
And now as you start to step out from that, after you get out of the words of Christ, and how do you step out, away from the ordinances of the priesthood which are meant to return us into the presence of Christ? Now you get to the Holy Ghost is going to be speaking and preparing the people. You get into baptism, you’re getting into the membership of the church, ministering to each other, showing love to each other. And I’d like to look at this as comparative to the holy place of the temple, which is outside of the Holy of Holies. And then once you get outside of the holy place, now you’re into the courtyard, right? I look at this as the outside world. So I see this as chapters two through the start of six, priesthood, holy of Holies, comparative six through nine, the holy place, general membership of the church. And then you take it through 9 through 10. The audience has changed. It’s not the 12 apostles, it’s not the members of the church. Now he’s talking about the outside world, and now he’s talking about everyone else. Now he starts to level with them and say, this is what you need to do. When you’ve received these words, we get Moroni’s promise, pray about these. This is. This is how you start to come into this. And there’s such a powerful separation between Chapter 8, when Mormon is talking to his son Moroni in the letter, and they’re talking about the members and what’s going on in the church, who Mormon, by the way, calls the peaceable followers of Christ who have hope in obtaining the rest of the Lord. They’ve obtained that.
And now contrast that with chapter nine, which just details the atrocities, the atrocities committed in war. And he refers to these people. In fact, I’m just going to pull it up real quick and read it. It’s Just so dark compared to the, the, the. The faithful people, the joy and the light and the bright and the. Whatever else. Right? This is what he says.
And now behold my son. I fear lest the Lamanites shall destroy this people, for they do not repent. And Satan stirreth them up continually to anger one with another. I’m laboring with them continually. I speak the word of Lord with sharpness and they tremble in anger against me. And when I use no sharpness, they harden their hearts against it. I fear that the Spirit Lord has ceased driving with them. For so exceedingly do they anger that it seemeth to me that they have no fear of death. They have lost their love one towards another. They thirst after blood, revenge continually. And now my son, notwithstanding the hardness of their hearts. And he talks about having to labor, but he talks about husbands and fathers, these women who are the slain, they feed upon the flesh of their husbands. And just these abominations and these horrific things that are happening.
What a stark contrast with the messages that Mormon was, was sharing with Moroni just previous.
So I, I look at this path from the presence of God, priesthood ordinances, general membership of the church to the outside world, and it reminds me of the Fall.
This is the Fall.
And it’s, it’s super vivid because Moroni is living it. He is describing the fall of the Nephites, just like the fall of Adam and Eve, the descent into sin, the descent into darkness. But not only is he describing the Fall, and he’s describing it as an outward journey out of Eden. So if you go back to the story of Adam and Eve cast outside of the Garden of Eden, in fact, let me pull up because it would probably do some justice to describe this in terms of even how Donald Perry has described this.
Donald Perry has noted that Eden was not merely a primeval garden, but a prototype sanctuary, a sacred setting that prefigured all future temples. By establishing patterns of divine presence, sacred boundaries and ordinances, Eden laid the groundwork for how humanity could understand and approach God. The temple patterns reappear through scriptural tradition. And as we go through the Moroni, we start to see this. But we got to understand Eden as a type of prototype temple. Eden’s role as the original temple provides crucial context for, for understanding this fall and this return.
Donald Perry says the garden was not a sanctuary built of cedar or marble. For it is not necessary for a temple to possess an edifice or structure, but rather it was an area of sacred space made holy because God’s presence was found There this divine presence was manifest in a remarkably direct way. God walked about in Eden using the same Hebrew verbal form, the heath Piel of Halek, that would later describe divine movement within the tabernacle and temple.
This was a. This was a sacred place. And when they were kicked out, they had to go out eastward, so that going back to the temple was a trip back into Eden, back into Paradise. And the temple faced the east, and it would be a westward journey to go right back into, at the very rear of the temple, the holy of holies. It’s a return to the presence of God.
Do you want me to. Want me to go down a little bit more details on how that works, or do you want me to.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you feel like I. This stuff’s super interesting. So if you feel like.
[00:31:57] Speaker C: If you feel like that’s where we’re.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Going, I’ll just highlight maybe a few key temple features, if that helps. If not, let me know and we’ll just kind of go back to Moroni on this. The physical features of Eden established patterns that would be reflected in all subsequent temples. The Tree of Life stood at the center of the garden, just as the Menorah stood at the center of the temple.
You also have, coming outside of the Garden of Eden, the river that split into the four streams that watered the whole earth. Because it was a river that flowed out of Eden. Eden was called in the book of Ezekiel, the Mountain of God. It was elevated. Water doesn’t run uphill, so it was set on a mountain setting, Eden. The temple was supposed to be built on the Temple Mount, and it was supposed to be an elevated place outside of the temple. You had your basins of water, your lavers where you could wash, and the water was associated with it. The Garden of Eden had cherubims that guarded the way to keep people from entering. To partake of the Tree of Life. The temple had cherubim either engraved in the walls or the curtains separating the rooms in the holy space, so that only people that were allowed to pass through the cherubims would be allowed to re. Enter into Paradise. And so Eden, paradise lost, was encapsulated in the temples. And temple worship always has been and is today in our religion.
The path that one stands as a hill that we look out at the temple and we see it as a reminder of what we lost. We see paradise when we look at that temple. We should see the holy mountain, the mountain of God, and it reminds us of where we came from. That’s where God dwells. That light source, that light on a hill, house of the Lord, holiness to the Lord. And I know you’ve got thoughts on that, Nate, but that is the house of God. That’s where he was and we used to be with him back in the time of Adam, when God walked in the cool of the day with man here on earth. It reminds us of what we lost. It reminds us of that paradise, that goal and what we’re striving for. But it’s got a dual function. In one sense, it’s reminding us of what we lost, but in another sense, it’s restoring us back to the presence of God. And as we prepare to enter into the temple by first making sacrifices and second making covenants and promises. And that covenant path directs us to the temple where we can be returned into the presence of God. The temple is the place in which we can be restored to his presence. So returning back to the story of Moroni, he is walking out of the temple, starting with the presence of God, Melchizedek priesthood, shifting to Aaronic priesthood, shifting to members, and then shifting to the outside world. And this should remind us a little bit of the temple ceremonies as we’re walking out of the presence of God, being cast out of the Garden of Eden and the responsibility. It’s not only is he showing us the fall of his people in the pattern, but he is setting the path whereby we can return to the presence of God. Because he’s laid out the roadmap of how we go back to it. Follow Moroni, starting at the end, chapter 10. Now, when you have received these things, consider them, ponder them. Ask God if they’re not true. Trust the Spirit. The Spirit will guide you. Sacrifice. A broken heart and a contrite spirit. Where does sacrifice happen? Happening in the courtyard of the temple. You’re laying those on the altar, you’re sacrificing it to prepare yourself for the covenants, the Aaronic priesthood, baptism, to be a member of the church, nurturing each other, to be able to prepare yourself to go into the temple to have these Melchizedek priesthood ordinances that will restore you again into the presence of God. This is what it’s all about. And it amazes me that Moroni captures this in his book, the way he set it out.
[00:35:50] Speaker C: Good stuff.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: Reading too much into that. Nope.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: The pattern also stays true too, with what we just got done reading and ether and really throughout the whole book, which is.
He starts with the innermost of the inner vessels first. He starts really with.
He describes what a cleansed Inner vessel, actually, in theory, would do. Not in theory, but in practice would do. Which is make it so that we can qualify then to be in the presence of God again. And so still the pattern of cleansing the inner vessel and then working your way out, the pattern holds true here too, as well. I just wanted to hit that.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: That’s a great point.
And you talk about an ether.
It’s a phenomenal point, because how does ether begin? Is it not Jared, the brother of Jared, coming up the mountain and the Lord piercing the veil with his hand? And is it not starting with the presence of God as they start to. It’s interesting.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And then they work their way in the boats into the storm.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Yeah. He starts with the spirit of. Or not the spirit of God, but the Lord coming and dwelling upon a rock before him. Right. And he’s carried away in a vision. And he sees God sitting on his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels. And he sees the Son of God descending and giving him a book. And it starts in the presence of God. It starts like Adam and Eve in the beginning with the presence of God.
I. It’s. It’s something that we’re always. I don’t know, we talk about the promised land, we talk about where we’re headed, and. And I think something a lot of people miss, and I don’t think we miss it in our church. Grateful for the restoration of the Gospel. I’m grateful for Joseph Smith’s insight, is that our destination is not somewhere we haven’t been. It’s where we started.
This is a restoration.
It’s all about a restoration. Christ came to restore us to the presence of God, to bring us back to paradise, not to visit someplace we’ve never been before. We are strangers in a foreign land, hoping to return from where we came. Whether you start with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and start counting from there, wanting to get back to paradise, or you take it a step back further to leaving the presence of God to come here on earth to receive our body and wanting to return to live with him in the end. It’s a circle.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: Love it. The point you kind of just brought up, that made me think of that, too, which is where I kind of thought you were going with it, is that we talk a lot also about a promised land, kind of in a physical sense. But Lehi, in theory, left the promised land. Right. To come to America, by the way, which we believe is also a promised land. You know what I mean? I think that this comes back to the Idea of holiness, again, which is what God sanctifies is holy, and what God sets apart is holy. What he separates is holy.
And so when you talk about, well, where’s our journey going? Well, it’s to go to the places that God has set apart. I mean, ultimately into his presence. Right. Is to reunite and become one with Him. But I like the idea of not getting too caught up sometimes in, you know, that we need to end up in a specific physical place.
No, we need to end up in the physical places that God has set apart, which are temples, which are our homes, which are the other things that we dedicate to him ourselves. Right.
Something that I know that we had talked about in the past, but it really came home as I was kind of preparing for this lesson about holiness, is that in the courtyard where the priests or those who were set apart were doing sacrifices, apparently they wore the saying holiness to the Lord on a gold plate, on a headband.
And the same saying that we have on the outsides of our temple was worn physically by those set apart or made holy by God while they were performing the sacrifices. And I think that, you know, the obvious connections there. I’m sure I’m not, you know, you don’t need me to connect all of those dots for you. But something that just came really profound to me as I was going through this is understanding the different things that are holy and the different ways that that term was used in the Old Testament. Yes, we talk about the temple being a sacred place. We talk about Mount Sinai being a sacred place. But we need to do what we need to, to sanctify ourselves so that we are also a temple that the Spirit of God can dwell in and continually do what we need to do, I guess, to cleanse and sanctify ourselves as well. And so back to the point that you’re making is like, well, where are we following him to? Well, we can be in the presence of God now, maybe, maybe not. Maybe not in exactly the same way every time. But when you have God dwelling within you, aren’t you in the presence of God? Aren’t you one with him in those moments? Like, we should be striving every day to be cleansed and feel the spirit so that we can be one with God, not just at some arrival point, but continuously.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And you’ve.
You’ve talked about, you know, having a member of Godhead with us, and you’ve talked about it in powerful terms. Right. Like, we sometimes dismiss the Holy Ghost as not being a God or not being as great like, oh, the Holy Ghost is great, but if only I could be in the presence of Christ or the presence of. When he’s just as much a God as God the Father or Jesus Christ the Son.
According to Jesus.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: I mean, according to Jesus, he is.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And to take that one step further, right. When we talk about our body being a temple, and I don’t think it’s a temple just because it can house the Holy Ghost, but kind of along the lines of what you’re saying right now, Nate, is because it houses our spirit and we are God’s, we keep trying to draw that line. I’m not as good as. But do we really understand the Spirit housed within us and our divine nature and where we’ve come from and where we’re heading? Because we are God’s children of a God.
And Christ keeps trying to say, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to bring you to that. I’m trying to make you one of us. This is where you came from. This is your destination. This is where you’re supposed to be. This is what you’re.
I mean, it’s the whole point of the gospel.
[00:43:10] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Which I think to the point of why there’s so much emphasis on cleansing the inner vessel is because really, when you take that all of the way and you go, if our bodies are this temple are this house where God can reside, you saw how upset it made Jesus when that temple was defiled. You saw how. You know what I mean? It’s like it’s the one time, at least in the scriptures, for the most part, that you really see Christ upset enough that he starts flipping tables. You know, it’s like. Because at the end of the day, what is it doing other than blaspheming.
[00:43:53] Speaker C: A temple of God? Right. What is it?
[00:43:55] Speaker B: If we’re taking upon ourselves the name of God and we’re defiling these temples, aren’t we quite literally disobeying the first commandment and. And putting other gods before ours or the second commandment? And I might be getting them mixed up.
[00:44:12] Speaker C: I guess.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: You see, the point I’m making is that. Is that you can understand why cleansing the inner vessel is such an important thing to God. Because it’s like, yeah, God didn’t want his temple defiled. He didn’t want the house of the Lord treated in that sort of a way. And then when we just take, you know, when we take this all the way through its logical end, it’s like.
[00:44:35] Speaker C: Yes, you should treat Your body as.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: A temple, as a house that God can dwell in.
Do you feel like I’m taking that too far?
[00:44:48] Speaker A: No, I don’t. I don’t think you’re taking it too far. I think I’m right there with you.
It’s.
It’s interesting when you try to take away that. What does it do.
What does it do when you don’t think you can be like God? When, when it’s not about that is all of a sudden the expectations are drastically lowered, which, by the way, is.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: A safe feeling for a lot of people.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: It’s a safe feeling. But what, what does it change if I don’t feel like I have to stretch for something? If I don’t feel to change, then. Then what’s happened?
Then I’ve blown repentance clean out. Because what. What’s the point of repentance if I don’t have to improve? If I don’t have to be better?
[00:45:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Why. Why even have repentance? What’s faith and repentance even for?
[00:45:46] Speaker C: This is, this is the exact point.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: I’m saying is, is that. Is that when you have.
[00:45:51] Speaker C: When you have the higher expectations like.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: You, you then can fail, basically. Do you know what I mean? It’s like you now run the risk of not being able to make it. And for a lot of people, that’s. For everybody that I know of. That’s kind of a scary thought is that. Is that you might not be enough.
[00:46:10] Speaker C: Or do enough, you know, and therefore.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: It’S a lot safer and convenient and easier and less scary to basically be.
[00:46:19] Speaker C: Like, well, no, I can be good.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: But I can’t ever be that great.
[00:46:25] Speaker C: You’re just like, like, well, that’s, that’s you saying that.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: That’s not God saying that.
[00:46:31] Speaker C: So anyways, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to derail your point there.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: You didn’t derail anything. And it just, you know, it reminds me of something we’ve even talked about earlier. Not tonight, but in the show, a different episode, right? We talked about the different gifts of the atonement or the power of the atonement. And, And I can say, what good is the gift of resurrection if I have to resurrect as a damned being, I can’t repent, right? If there’s no repentance, then why would I want to resurrect and live forever in hell? That sounds like a terrible gift. Just let me stay dead, right? But what good is the gift of repentance if I can’t change because if I repent and repent and repent, and God says, okay, look, I’m going to free you from all of your sins. You’re perfect, you’re spotless. You’re done. Fantastic. What a wonderful gift. Thank you, God. And then a week later, a day later, a month later, whatever the case may be, I’m back just as desperate as I was before because I haven’t been able to change all the way like I would like to.
And it’s not. What good is repentance today if I’m not perfect?
The gift of repentance is just as senseless to me as the gift of resurrection. Without the enabling power of the atonement to change me when I can change and become better and improve, and there’s going to be a lot of patience with that because it’s not all happening in one day, but as I improve, then repentance means something. Because there’s hope that I can be better enough, that one day I’m not going to have to repent of that anymore, because I don’t do it anymore. I am someone different today than I used to be. When you couple the enabling power of the atonement to change with the gift of repentance with the gift of resurrection, then you have an atonement. Anything short of those three, I don’t see how that would work. I don’t see the beauty or the divinity or the God in something that robs us of any of those three gifts.
[00:48:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I’m with you.
I’m with you. Cool. Let’s keep moving on.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Moroni to me, has been incredibly valuable in seeing that pattern, walking us through the fall of his people. And literally he’s talking about the fall of the people. But to actually see them crumble and fall is one thing. To have him describe the loss of it from Melchizedek to Aaronic to members too.
It’s a pattern that I never picked up on before. And I love being able to include the temple in this discussion. I think a lot of us, we would love to see the temple talked a lot about in the scriptures to see the ordinances to validate what we’re doing in our temple today.
But those are sacred ordinances that aren’t discussed openly with the world. What does come across and what is preserved is like what we’re seeing here with Moroni today is like what we’re seeing in doctrine and covenants with Moses. This Moses plainly understood and sought to bring people back to the presence of God. And that is what the Gospel is all about. And he tried to prepare them and bring them back to the presence of God. And this is how you do it. So I value that from Ronai, and that was kind of my takeaway there. Something I want to bounce to that I feel like is intriguing is I’m going to step back in time, back in time. Back a few chapters now to Moroni, chapter seven.
And. And this is a letter that Mormon writes to Moroni, that Moroni includes here and verse three, Mormon addresses the people like this. Wherefore I would speak unto you that are of the Church, that are the peaceable followers of Christ, and that have obtained a sufficient hope. Now notice those words.
It’s not you have hope, it’s you have obtained, done, accomplished, you have obtained, check it. A sufficient hope by which you can enter into the rest of the Lord from this time henceforth, even till you shall rest with him in heaven. Which sounds to me very much like the.
What. Where.
What am I trying to say with this?
The calling and election made sure is what it sounds like to me.
You’ve obtained a subscient hope. You can enter into his rest. From this time henceforth, you shall rest with him in heaven. That’s what it sounds like.
Who in the world is Mormon talking to?
That’s what I want to know.
[00:51:37] Speaker C: Tell me.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: It’s an interesting question and to. To kind of dive down this road. I’m even going back to Mormon’s book because Mormon, Mormon to me is going to. Is going to make this question even harder to answer.
But I think it’s worth answering. I think it’s worth asking anyways. And I’ve got thoughts on it, but here we go. So Mormon.
And I’m going to go to chapter now. Let’s start right towards the beginning, chapter two.
And it talks about Mormon wanting to teach the people.
Okay, we got to go back to the Book of Mormon, Mormon’s book and chapter one to try to get the context of what I’m trying to lay out here. Verse 15.
Because I mean, Nate, Mormon, I’m guessing, is writing this later on his life because Moroni, I mean, he’s older and he’s got a letter from his dad. I have to assume that Moroni is old enough to be reading this letter.
And so if Moroni’s a little bit older or Mormon’s a little older and he’s sending this to his son and his son’s reading it, when would it be? Because everything I see from Moroni’s writing is talking about how everybody is in darkness. Everybody has turned to bloodshed. There’s no reasoning with them, they’re angry, they’re killing each other. And so I try to look at this and say, when was it possible that Mormon could have written these words? And so I think maybe earlier on in his life, maybe there was a time. And so Mormon chapter one, verse 15 and I being 15 years of age and being somewhat of a sober mind, therefore I was visited of the Lord and tasted new the goodness of Jesus. And we, we talked about the parallels and similarities with Joseph Smith on this.
But verse 16 and I did endeavor to preach unto this people, but my mouth was shut. Not only was his mouth was shut, and I was forbidden that I should preach unto them.
So from the age of 15, he was forbidden to preach to the people.
And verse 17 but I did remain among them, but I was forbidden to preach unto them because of the hardness of their hearts. And because of the hardness of their hearts, the land was cursed for their sake. So again I asked the question, who in the world is he talking to that he found peaceable followers of Christ when he was forbidden to even preach to the people because of how bad they were? And I’m telling you, I don’t think they got better and then a lot worse.
I don’t think that they, they were so bad at 15 he couldn’t talk to them that maybe at the age of 20 or 30, they were all of a sudden really good. And the Lord said, okay, teach them all you want. And so good that they were going to be not only good Mormon call them peaceable followers of Christ. Can you really characterize the Nephites of this period of time as peaceable followers of Christ that had obtained a hope, the calling of election, made sure that they would enter into the rest of God? Do you really think that could have applied to them for a short period of time of one or two years?
So again I asked the question, who in the world is Mormon talking to? It seems so inconsistent with what we’re reading that it causes me to wonder, to think, to pause.
And, and again I’ve asked this question, who was he talking to? And I’ve had some people suggest maybe he’s just talking to his family. And again, where in the world did he even get family from? If you’re 15 years old and you’re forbidden to preach to a people that willfully rebels and you can’t even, you can’t even talk to the gospel, are you going to build? Are you going to be comfortable enough to marry someone from there and try to teach them. And this is a weird one for me. This is a weird one for me.
[00:55:46] Speaker C: I’m interested in seeing where you landed.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: Are you ready? Because this is going to be something that’s a little bit far out there even for me.
[00:55:55] Speaker C: Oh man, I need my ufo. I need my X file sound again.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: I’ll have to find it.
[00:56:01] Speaker C: All right, I’m ready.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: I wonder. And I can’t even take credit for this. Somebody else had actually landed on this night. And if I find who it was, I’ll credit it in here. They mentioned the possibility and the more I think about it, the more logical and reasonable it appears to me.
What if Mormon was teaching the Anti Nephi Lehis?
Now think about this for a second because you would think that they’re all just blended together and they’re all about to be destroyed and those people don’t even exist.
But, but go back to Alma when they’re talking about the Anti Nephi Lehi’s. I believe it’s in chapter seven. I could be wrong.
Mormon, you remember, is putting this book together and he talks about the decision that they made to bury their weapons, to follow Christ. And he says, and they were righteous even until the end.
Who else can say that except for somebody who was alive at the end?
And he says, even until this day.
So according to Mormon in Alma, the Anti Nephi Lehis were still righteous even up to the end times.
So what happened to the Anti Nephi Lehis? If we, if we remember right, the Anti Nephi Lehis were first went from the land of the Lamanites to the land of Jershan where they got the land of their inheritance.
But then the Nephites needed the land of Jershan to place their armies there to try to protect them. So they relocated the Anti Nephi Lehis into the land of Zarahemla.
After a time of being there in the land of the Zarahemla, the Anti Nephi Lehis departed into the land of the north and they were never heard from again.
They physically, geographically separated themselves from the Nephites were a separate distinct people that don’t show up in the records anymore.
And, and to make this even more interesting, go back to the Book of Mormon, the small Book of Mormon inside the Book of Mormon.
When we read about Mormon’s life before he saw the Lord at the age of 15, it says that his father carried him, verse six. And it came to pass that I, being 11 years old, was carried by my father into the land southward Even to the land of Zarahemla. So where did Mormon come from?
Mormon was living somewhere up in the north and he was carried by his father down into the land of Zarahemla to the Nephites where he became a Nephite commander.
So he’s a Nephite commander. He’s fighting in the wars very young age. He becomes a commander of the armies. And then it gets to the point where they want to take the war because they’re successful, down into the Lamanites and fight them.
And he separates himself. He says, I’m not going to take a part of this. I don’t want to go. I’ve told you not to. You’re going to do it anyways. They lead out their excursion and they lose. And not only lose, but they get slaughtered. And Mormon steps down from guiding them and disappears. Where does he go? I think at this time and just trying to piece this together, I can’t say this is conclusively yet, but to me it makes sense if he goes back to the land northward to be with the people that he was with who are peaceable followers of Christ where he can get married, where he can raise a family, where he can have Moroni and where he can teach. And now you start to get where the content for Mormon chapter seven, Mormon chapter eight are coming from as he’s speaking to followers of Christ.
And in Moroni it’s even making these interesting distinctions that the Lamanites will put to death any. And it says Nephite who will not deny the Christ. But they don’t say anything about Anti Nephi Lehis or Lamanites. They are specifically targeting the extermination of the Nephites. The Anti Nephi Lehis are not part of this war and they don’t have that obligation to go down and protect a violent, bloody, a bloodthirsty, warmongering, wicked people like they did before, where the people were willing to lay down their life and die and defend them.
It’s interesting now if you go back and you read again. So Mormon 7, Mormon 8 are, excuse me, Moroni 7, Moroni 8 are Mormon’s letters to Moroni as he’s writing about teaching the people. But Moroni 9 Mormon has changed locations again and he’s back heading up the troops. And the letter he writes to Moroni, he says, I hope to see you again soon. I think Moroni is still young. I think he’s still being raised in the land northward and his father is down back commanding the troops until. Until Moroni is old enough to be able to come down and join him in the fight for his people. I think it kind of jives and makes sense.
[01:01:32] Speaker C: That doesn’t seem that crazy to me.
[01:01:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:01:36] Speaker C: I don’t know. I wouldn’t have needed my X Files music for that.
[01:01:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:01:40] Speaker C: I like it, but.
[01:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:42] Speaker C: I mean, I’m just saying, like.
[01:01:45] Speaker B: That.
[01:01:46] Speaker C: Doesn’T feel like it’s some huge stretch.
[01:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah. It seemed a little out there when I first started.
[01:01:54] Speaker B: Why? But the more I’m missing, maybe I’m.
[01:01:56] Speaker C: Missing why that should sound crazy to me.
[01:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I don’t know. I always just kind of grew up with the assumption that I almost just saw them as Nephites. Right. And they just must have died.
[01:02:08] Speaker C: Yeah, they kind of just assimilate and.
[01:02:11] Speaker A: They’Re not mentioned anymore. And so you think, well, if they’re not mentioned anymore, they obviously don’t exist. But here’s the thing about the Book of Mormon. Where does it talk about the Mulekites? It only talks about them where they interacted with the Nephites. You don’t hear about their history before they get there. You don’t hear about their history even afterwards. You know nothing about the Mulekites unless it was their interactions with the Nephites. This is the Nephite record. And the same is true about the Lamanites. I can’t tell you any of the things about the Lamanites, their cities, where they were, how they lived, anything, unless it directly interacted with the Nephites. That’s the only extent I get.
[01:02:53] Speaker C: That’s a really great point that I think that is kind of obvious when you say it, but you don’t really ever think about it like that. Which is why I think, by the way, too, to. The reason that I think that that’s such a great point is that a lot of people, I think, sometimes try to poke holes in the Book of Mormon. Being like, well, this makes that whole. This whole area of land feel like such like a small.
You know what I mean? Like, it tells the story of, like.
[01:03:22] Speaker B: A really closed loop.
[01:03:24] Speaker C: And you’re like, well, sure, if you assume that these are the only people that are living over here for the entirety of the Book of Mormon, you’re just like. When you consider this is such an actual small record over such a large period of time, then you’re like, oh, yeah, what you just said helps even make that make just a lot more sense as well.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s a very big focus on this. When we tend to apply this to everyone. When Mormon says that he was forbidden to preach, it wasn’t that he was forbidden to preach. It says he was forbidden to preach to them, referring specifically to the Nephites. He wasn’t forbidden to preach, period.
[01:04:07] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:04:09] Speaker A: When it talks about. And their land was filled from east to north to south to west, just full of buildings. That’s not to say the Lamanite land or the Antonio. That’s their nation.
This was the land of the Nephites, and that’s how they talked. The land of this, the land of that. The land was always very specific to a group of people not talking about the entire world.
It’s very similar to what you get in ancient Near Eastern cultures when we conquered from sea to sea. And what they’re saying makes it sound like they’re talking about the entire world and say, I’ve conquered the entire world and the entire world of this people. The entire world of. It’s qualified. It’s qualified. And this matches a pattern of what we see on a larger scale.
[01:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that.
[01:05:09] Speaker C: I mean, yeah. Like, to me, it’s.
[01:05:11] Speaker B: I.
[01:05:11] Speaker C: Everything you just described actually makes a ton of sense.
[01:05:16] Speaker A: Oh, good.
[01:05:18] Speaker C: Anything else you want to hit before.
[01:05:19] Speaker B: We wrap it up this week?
[01:05:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, the sacrament prayers are here. I’m sure we could have a lot of fun talking about the sacrament, but I feel like we’ve already been down that road. I’m not going to go there tonight.
What I did want to talk about, and it’s funny because I. I read this and I almost just read the opposite.
It’s. It’s like. It’s like, you know those exercises where you. Where you stare at certain colors for. For a long period of time or whatever. And then you look at a white piece.
[01:05:52] Speaker C: Yeah. The American flag. I love that thing, dude.
[01:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I look at this and it’s in Moroni, chapter seven. And. And even though I’m reading one thing, I’m actually almost kind of visualizing another.
And what I’m talking about is, can a man being evil do that? Which is good at the face value? You sure hope so, right? Because if not, then what’s repentance for? You think of if an evil man can’t repent, then there’s no salvation. There’s no great point, whatever that.
[01:06:24] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[01:06:25] Speaker A: I don’t think that’s. Here’s.
[01:06:28] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:06:29] Speaker A: I’m just going to read a few verses and I. And I think I can actually break this down in just two small, simple examples and hopefully kind of explain where I’m seeing these contrary. These complementary colors.
[01:06:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:06:43] Speaker A: Verse 5. I remember the word of the Lord, but saith, by their works, you shall know them. If their works be good, then they’re good also. And for behold, hath God, or God has said, if a man, being evil, cannot do that which is good. For if he offereth a gift or prayeth unto God, except he do it with real intent and profiteth him nothing, for it is not counted for him as righteousness. For behold, if he, being evil, giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly. So to try to find an example. And I’m talking about an evil man not being able to do something. Right? But like I said, I’m seeing complimentary here.
If. If I have a child or somebody who has the pure intentions or the best intentions to try to do something nice for me.
And. And you know what? We don’t even have to go through a child, because that’s almost like punting and making it too easy.
Say, Nate.
[01:07:39] Speaker C: Oh, do you.
Oh, okay, I’m ready.
[01:07:45] Speaker A: Do you have any allergies, Nate? Do you have any. Do you have anything that is just something you hate?
[01:07:50] Speaker C: I mean, there’s plenty of things that I hate, but let’s see. Allergies, I don’t do well with anesthetic.
[01:08:00] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[01:08:02] Speaker C: But not peanuts or anything. I love peanuts, man. I eat those things all day.
I might not be the best example here.
[01:08:10] Speaker A: This might not be the best example. All right, I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I’m gonna see complimentary on this one again. And. And you said you love peanuts and you can eat them all day, and I’m gonna pretend like you said that you can’t eat peanuts and you hate those.
[01:08:21] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:08:23] Speaker A: And even that. I’ve probably just blown this all out of the water.
[01:08:26] Speaker C: I’m ready, though. Now you gotta see it through.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: If I. If. I’m thinking pretty highly of you, mate. And I’m so happy with everything that you’ve done, and I just wanted, like, make this Christmas season special for you. And I prepare this whole big thing of, like, peanut butter bars. I know your wife makes, like, the best peanut butter bars.
[01:08:49] Speaker C: She does pumpkin bars, but. Yeah, keep going.
[01:08:52] Speaker A: Oh, dang it.
[01:08:53] Speaker C: You’re good. Keep going, though. So you made me these. You make me these things, dude. You make me these because. Yeah, peanut butter bars.
[01:08:59] Speaker B: I like it.
[01:08:59] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:09:00] Speaker A: And I bring them over, and you’re like, dude, I can’t eat these. I’m allergic.
Do you hate me for it, though? Right? Like, could you. Could you really be mad at me, or do you look at that, man? Like, man, I really appreciate the thought that he tried to do that, even though totally freaking dropped the bomb.
[01:09:20] Speaker C: One, I could never hate you, and two, I totally know what you mean. You’re just like, man, that’s so cool that. That, dude, I’m not going to be able to eat these.
[01:09:26] Speaker B: But that’s so.
[01:09:28] Speaker C: Rather this dude thought of me to do this. Yes. That’s how I would approach that.
[01:09:33] Speaker A: And I think that’s how we would approach a lot of these things. If it’s a good person with good intentions and they’re honestly trying to help us, it’s hard to get mad at them, even if what they did ends up hurting us.
[01:09:46] Speaker C: Okay, let me ask you one. Let me ask you one, because you said it was punting. What if your kid, who is a fantastic artist at six years old, says, dude, my dad tells me how great of an artist I am all the time. I am going to go paint his.
[01:10:03] Speaker B: Car with this key.
[01:10:06] Speaker C: I’m gonna. I’m gonna. I know he. His favorite design is this smiley face that I draw at kindergarten. I’m gonna go put that on the side of his Bronco. Now what do you do?
[01:10:17] Speaker A: Nate, that actually did happen.
[01:10:18] Speaker B: What?
[01:10:20] Speaker A: It was. It was Hannah.
[01:10:21] Speaker C: No.
[01:10:22] Speaker A: And her friend.
[01:10:23] Speaker C: No.
[01:10:23] Speaker A: They drew what on the side of the Suburban with rocks?
[01:10:27] Speaker C: Oh. I mean, but did the picture look good?
I mean.
[01:10:31] Speaker B: Here you go.
[01:10:31] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:10:35] Speaker B: Okay, now that we got that.
[01:10:37] Speaker C: Okay, great. Now, see, now we’re using real examples now. Now tell me where you’re going with this.
[01:10:42] Speaker A: But. But at the same time, whether or not I’m happy with the results, I don’t think my child’s a hellion, and I don’t think she’s going to hell. She. If. If. If. If. If she knew better and. And she did it to, like, make me mad.
[01:11:00] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:11:01] Speaker A: Then that would be one thing, right? Yeah, but. But. But the. But the fact, like, you understand where people are coming from, and I know the saying that hell is paved with good intentions.
[01:11:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: And. And that goes against with what I’m trying to prove here. But. But what I’m. People who are honestly just happy trying to do the right thing. Can you be mad at them if it’s an honest mistake, if they didn’t mean to and they’re going out of their way to try to fix it, or they’re very. Because they never meant to hurt you from it? Can you really be mad if there was not one ounce of evil in them? They’re just trying to do the right thing or something that they thought was helpful.
[01:11:45] Speaker C: I see what you mean. I’m with you.
[01:11:48] Speaker A: And here’s what I want to land on.
For me, it’s easy for me to have that kind of mercy on a neighbor, a daughter, a friend, a family member, whoever. Just like. You know what? I get it. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. It didn’t turn out super well. But I see where you’re coming from, and I just. I’m super grateful for that. I can look past that, but for whatever reason, it’s hard for me to imagine that God can look past that with me when I do something wrong. And I’m like, oh, man. And we start to think of we as evil. But can we really be that evil if we just didn’t understand, we didn’t get it. We were trying to do the right thing. So a lot of the things that we count as sins because we’re. We’re trying to teach ourselves that we have to repent. We’re trying to teach ourselves to be accountable. We’re trying to become like God.
But. But sometimes to take a step back and see ourselves as I imagine God sees us, because that’s how I see someone else.
Then can an evil. Just like an evil person?
And, you know, I’m trying to mount the. I’m trying to stick the dismount here. And I almost think you have to have a second example when you talk about an evil person.
Like, if an evil person is trying to do something good, say someone that hates you, that’s actively trying to ruin you, that’s. That’s doing everything and going out of their way to try to make everyone hate you, to sway public opinion against you, to get you fired, to do whatever to whatever. Whatever. If that person shows up, rings your doorbell. Nate. And gives you a $20 bill and smiles at you, where’s your mind?
[01:13:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I would think that they probably used it as toilet paper.
[01:13:49] Speaker B: Before they brought it over.
[01:13:51] Speaker A: You can’t trust them. You don’t even want to accept it because you don’t know where that’s going to lead you. And you’re suspicious of it, and you just can’t give them any. There’s no leeway.
And. And so that’s the. That’s the. That’s the complimentary image I see with this is sometimes I think we’re overly hard on ourselves.
But remember that God sees us the same way we see each other. And if we’re genuinely just trying to do good.
It’s not. It’s not a pass. It’s not saying you don’t have to do anything at all.
But it’s saying, look at someone who’s really out there and getting out of bed each day and trying. Don’t you want to give that person a little bit more leeway and chance to get it right and a little bit more information and context so they can do better the next time and a little bit more patience and development to try to help them come along? I just think these verses give me perspective to see myself as God sees me and to be patient with myself as I try to be who I can become. If that makes any sense.
[01:14:59] Speaker C: It totally does. I like that. I want to throw.
Because I have two examples from the scriptures that I would like to see. And dude, I may totally just edit this out.
I’m even going to leave me. I’m leaving me saying that I might edit it out. Even if I do edit it out, I will literally, if we edit it out, come back and be like, nope, I edited it out.
Because let me throw you two examples that I think that sometimes we use.
[01:15:26] Speaker B: As.
[01:15:30] Speaker C: A good person, in one case, purposefully making a bad decision supposedly for the greater good. And that’s. There’s a lot of people that think that Eve in the garden basically was like, didn’t just make a mistake, but like, very deliberately showed like a superior wisdom in taking the fruit, knowing that she was disobeying, but because she also knew at the same time it was for the greater good one. I’m going to tell you, I don’t necessarily buy that line of thinking, but I’m interested in seeing if this works into your example at all.
[01:16:15] Speaker A: So you want me to apply this logic to Eve.
[01:16:17] Speaker C: I’m wondering if this is if. Because some people, some people, to me, it’s like this. Your example makes more sense the way that you just described it in the case of, she’s going, no, she made a mistake and God had patience with that. And even though there was natural consequences, still found ways to make everything possible for them to come back from the mistake. To me, it’s like, that makes a lot more sense in the way you describe it. And that’s the reason I thought of it. Because some people try to. To say, no, Eve was fully aware of what she was doing, but made the bigger picture decision that I should disobey. Because me seeing the big picture, I know that that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. And I’m like, oh, man, that would almost doubt to me, would almost go.
[01:17:05] Speaker B: To the opposite of.
[01:17:06] Speaker C: You know what I mean? To me, it’s like that almost would be the inverse of that. And that would be like, oh, then you actually had bad intentions and made a mistake, or not even a mistake, but almost deliberately disobeyed. And therefore that almost takes away. That almost takes away from the mercy of God and the patience of God and the humanness of Eve, going like, yeah, I just, I made a mistake and luckily God loves me enough to help me fix it. You know what I mean? It’s like it almost changes that relationship in a way that I don’t.
[01:17:38] Speaker A: Like, I hear what you’re saying, and, and I think, I think it’s an apt example of. If we look at this as. I knew that we had to do this and that God’s plan wasn’t going to work, therefore I did this, does that not put her in the same light as somebody before we came here that said, I have a better plan. Yes, I know, better than God, and I’m going to make sure nobody gets lost.
Who, by the way, was the one that was trying to get her to follow in the first place?
[01:18:10] Speaker C: Yes, that’s, that’s, that is where I come out on that.
[01:18:12] Speaker B: I was just, I, I just thought.
[01:18:14] Speaker C: Of that as we were going through. And, and here, let me throw you my second example.
Judas.
You know, Christ needs to be crucified and he needs to go through that process to fulfill the plan, right? To fulfill the atonement. There. I’ve seen arguments made that part of the reason that we should, I don’t know, maybe show more, I don’t know, patience and sympathy to Judas is.
Could Judas have used the excuse? Well, you can’t be mad at me because I’m just part of fulfilling the plan. I’m doing what had to be done for the plan to be fulfilled. You know, why condemn me? Why condemn me for basically just playing my part in the plan?
And it is interesting because what was Judas excuse of why he was upset at Christ in the first place or what? You know, it was like, oh, well, we’re not using the, we’re not distributing, you know, the funds, you know, or whatever it is. And so in a similar thing, it’s like, I look at that and I’m like, well, that language also is very similar to another person also present before this life and in a garden, which is. I’m just doing what has always been done. You know what I mean? Like, hey, look, you need me to fulfill Part of this plan too. Why condemn me for it? I’m like, I wonder if there’s kind of a little bit of a crossover into that parallel as well. Of like, well, yeah, this might not be the right thing that I’m doing, but in the bigger picture it has to be done. So don’t condemn me for just helping the plan move along. I don’t know if that one’s as close to the Eve one as I was thinking, but those are at least the two things that kind of popped up in my brain when we were talking about what the flip side of that would be of a destructive motive supposedly doing. I mean in both of these cases, destructive things. But they could argue, well, it’s for.
[01:20:24] Speaker B: The greater good or well, it’s for.
[01:20:26] Speaker C: The, it’s for the bigger picture part of the plan being fulfilled. I don’t know.
[01:20:31] Speaker A: Or even take it a step further back. Right. I mean, you’re circling the bush with Satan himself.
[01:20:40] Speaker C: There you go. Yeah, you’re right.
[01:20:42] Speaker A: And saying that I am going to save all of mankind, isn’t that a good thing? If you’re saying that I can save everyone, isn’t that a good gift? Did he have the best intentions to begin with?
And could you?
[01:21:01] Speaker C: No. I mean that’s the way to really nail the flip side of somebody making a mistake with good intentions. And it’s hard to be mad at them. You can see why God would hate evil and the embodiment of it. And that is as the embodiment of evil going, I’m going to, under the guise of a good gift, do the most damn damning, destructive possible thing to your children.
[01:21:33] Speaker B: Like that’s.
[01:21:34] Speaker C: You just nailed it.
Yeah, you nailed it, not me. That is the ultimate example of, well, what’s the opposite?
I would venture to say that most people in our life don’t have the most evil intentions. I think humanity is a general like, dude, there’s some really terrible people. But it’s hard to imagine that in our day to day lives we’re ever really going to encounter truly like an evil person giving us a good gift.
Because that doesn’t usually happen.
[01:22:07] Speaker B: Right?
[01:22:07] Speaker C: Like that’s just not reality.
Instead though, you kind of nailed what you do see more often than not. And we’ve talked about this before, but I think that it’s always worth bringing up. Especially even in that example of like.
[01:22:19] Speaker B: The pre earth life.
[01:22:20] Speaker C: It’s hard for me to think that Satan is able to convince such a massive amount of people to be led astray under the guise of hey, everybody, let’s just rebel against Father. Let’s. I know he wants us to do this, but let’s. Trust me, my plan’s better. Don’t worry about the details.
[01:22:39] Speaker B: I’ll figure it out.
[01:22:40] Speaker C: Come on, let’s just rebel. Like, I have a hard time believing that that was the pitch.
The pitch to me makes so much more sense, is, hey, we love all of our family. Why wouldn’t we want anybody from our family not being back with us if.
[01:22:56] Speaker B: We really loved everybody? Love, love, love, love.
[01:23:01] Speaker C: If you truly loved your brothers and sisters up here, why wouldn’t you make sure that they make it back under any circumstances?
[01:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
[01:23:09] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. We do have to kind of go against this plan that we’re being presented, but it’s worth it if it means that we all get back. You see what I mean? Like, that’s supposedly a good gift, right?
It’s being presented as a good gift, at least under the guise of love and niceness and kindness and all of these other words that we strive for as a culture. But I don’t think actually understand what they mean.
And I think that maybe that’s the. You’re kind of helping me. Kind of answer the question, which is, yeah, maybe. Maybe it’s not necessarily like an evil person come over to your house and giving you a hundred bucks. Dude, if an evil person came to my house and was like, hey, man, here’s a million dollars, I’d be like, that’s actually a pretty dang good gift. Like, I don’t know. You know what I mean? Like, no strings attached.
[01:23:55] Speaker A: I’ll take it. But wouldn’t you wonder what the script is? You would wonder, but do the thing is, fine.
[01:24:00] Speaker C: But the scriptures, okay, the scripture is, though, not about wondering what the gift is about. The thing is, I think you’ve really helped me kind of sort out where the point of this actually is, which is if somebody is from an evil place, they’re probably presenting you a gift as if it’s good. And therefore, you need the spirit to help you go, hey, man, well, what’s the catch?
And in every time that Satan’s presenting all of these supposedly good things, there’s always a catch, man. There’s always another side of that equation.
[01:24:36] Speaker A: Dude.
I’ve come across.
I think I come across this and the world that we live in with social media, with influencers, and what is our motive? What are we trying to do? I mean, you and I, Nate, we’ve got a podcast, and it’s not like we have the greatest following in the world, but we’re not.
[01:25:05] Speaker C: I beg to differ. Our following is the most awesome in the entire world. Our numbers.
[01:25:09] Speaker A: I’m sorry, I’m not talking about quality. I’m talking about quality.
[01:25:11] Speaker C: I know you are, but I’m just making sure to still give a shout out to all the people that do. Listen, dude, the thing is, for two dudes that are just doing this, our numbers are fine. Like, that’s, that’s definitely like.
[01:25:21] Speaker A: But, but at the same time, like, we, we don’t have any ulterior motives. We’re. We’re not sitting here trying to promote products and, and get our name out there and, and make a bunch of.
[01:25:30] Speaker C: Money or any money. Yes.
[01:25:32] Speaker A: And, and, and I’m not trying to slam anyone, that is by saying this. And, and if I, if I stick my foot too far in my mouth, feel free to bail me out or just edit this out completely.
But I feel like. And, and what I have seen is there are some people that do prey on the faith of others in, in ways that I don’t believe that the church is true. I stopped believing the church is true a long time ago. But I’m going to stay in the church because the church gives me an audience.
[01:26:04] Speaker C: There are people.
[01:26:05] Speaker A: What I’m going to do is I’m going to talk to the, to the church and I’m going to use that audience and I’m going to sell them products to help them leave the church.
[01:26:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:26:16] Speaker A: Because I want to provide them with a service that really is. It’s my gift is what I’m doing.
And what is their gift and what are they selling and what are they getting out of this is. That’s my income. Even though I don’t believe the church, even though I don’t follow the church, I’ve got to stay in the church because that’s where my bottom dollar is. That’s where.
Go back to the New Testament when they’re teaching the gospel and they’ve got their statues. And he says you can’t pray to statues anymore and you’re talking about the bottom dollar. And so now all of a sudden, you’ve got to shut that down or fight it. There are people whose bottom dollar is based off of profiting from the members of the church and not in a constructive let me build your faith sort of way. But how do I help you find the door? And I’m going to keep praying on the church to try to get as many people out as possible because that’s where I can make my Quick buck.
[01:27:12] Speaker C: There are some very high profile things even going on kind of very publicly right now with people that do specifically that. I mean, there’s.
And not, I mean, one that actually, you know, obviously made the news and stuff like that is you had, you know, what’s her bucket, the psychologist that’s going to prison, you know, and the whole thing. But, but very much literally kind of marketing her whole pitch to church members as like, hey, couples therapy and this stuff like that. But having had some friends, very close friends of mine, have their lives basically completely upended by this person. You just go like, oh, okay, cool. Like, but you said it, right?
[01:27:52] Speaker B: It’s like.
[01:27:53] Speaker C: But it’s under the guise of like, well, I’m pitching my product to the church members and using that to kind of like build trust in what it is that I’m selling. But I mean, you have a lot of people right now that aren’t even necessarily doing anything illegal like she was, but that very much use their high profile to yes, do things that are very, very, very against the doctrine of the church and very destructive to the church that are.
But like you said, Stan, I think that that’s a really great example. I mean, and the thing is, like, I, I would still even personally be like, yeah, cool. I don’t even then don’t think that they’re probably necessarily doing it to be evil. But at the same time, like, this.
[01:28:37] Speaker B: Is why you have to have the.
[01:28:38] Speaker C: Spirit of discernment is so that you can. You personally, so that me and you can look through those things and just go like, oh no, it’s not right.
[01:28:46] Speaker A: And this is where we need to land on this, Nate. And I’m going to read verse 15:16. Because you said it, man, you said it. For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge. Wait, what?
[01:28:58] Speaker C: Say it again, baby.
[01:28:59] Speaker A: Say it loud and clear. Given unto you to judge.
[01:29:03] Speaker B: Correct.
[01:29:04] Speaker A: That you may know good from evil.
[01:29:06] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:29:07] Speaker A: And the way to judge is plain. That you may know with perfect knowledge as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the spirit of Christ is given to every man that he may know good from evil. Wherefore I show unto you the way to judge for everything thing which inviteth to do good and to persuade to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ. Wherefore you may know with the perfect knowledge it is of God. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then you may know what the perfect knowledge it is. Of the devil. Now. Now, as I was reading this, Nate, there’s one word that stood out to me even. Even bigger than judge.
And. And that is thing.
When I go back and read this, that you may know with the perk that he may.
Where am I at the way to judge for every thing which inviteth to do good? And the reason why thing stands out in my mind is it’s not person.
And I have to wonder. I mean, you gave the example of Eve, you gave the example of Judas.
And I can easily judge the actions and say if this was what God said not to do, or if this is in rebellion or look at the consequences, did this persuade people to believe in Christ? Or this. The actions themselves, I think are a lot easier to judge than the people themselves.
And so going back, and maybe there’s the kicker that when we’re talking about judging everything, because you know what? We are all going to be at one point in time riding on the car, so to speak. Right. In thinking we’re doing the right thing and pursuing it with all of the energy we have.
We’re actively destroying something when we think we’re creating a work of art and that’s a wrong thing. And most of us, like you said earlier, have all the best intention in the world and don’t realize what we’re doing is so destructive. And when we come to that realization, boy, we sure hope that repentance is there for us and that there’s a way that we can escape that. And it takes us back to the atonement. So why write off the person and judge them as evil when what Moroni is saying here is to judge the thing? We can look at it and we can censor the action. We can say that that is wrong and we can say this needs to stop and this behavior needs to end. But. But maybe that’s as far as we should go. Because before we write people off, even Judas himself, how do we know his intention?
Was he trying to prove to the world that Christ was the Savior by. By setting him up in a position. I don’t know. I don’t know his thoughts, I don’t know his intent. And it’s hard for me to judge him knowing if he’s right or wrong. Because I don’t know why he did what he did, but I can tell you what he did wasn’t right. Sure.
[01:32:10] Speaker C: And the thing is, I think that to your point, it’s the same thing with the example of Eve as well, which is from all information we had.
Yeah. Like the Pitch to her was, hey, you want to become like, God, right? I’m like, oh, that is a good thing. You know, it’s like. I’m just saying, it’s like, I think that. I think that her intentions are actually a lot more innocent than some huge, elaborate plot to be like, well, I know that I have to disobey because this and this and this and this and this.
[01:32:39] Speaker B: It’s like.
[01:32:41] Speaker C: I think it’s a totally. I think it’s so much more human and innocent than that, personally. So to your point, like, that’s kind of where I just wanted to close that loop a little bit on that.
[01:32:52] Speaker A: I. I agree with you on that, too. I mean, if she’s. If she’s saying, my eyes have been open, I see things, I understand. It sounds like she’s coming to a realization of how that’s going to work out. Not that there was a lot of preconceptual.
[01:33:07] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:33:07] Speaker A: Plotting is how it appears to me.
[01:33:10] Speaker C: I’m with you completely on that. Yeah. And that’s why. That’s why, to your example, I just. I wanted to put a couple actual examples to the point that you were trying to make. So I’m glad that we had that discussion. And I don’t think. And I don’t think. And I don’t think I’m going to edit it out.
[01:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, good. I. Glad it landed better than the first time.
[01:33:30] Speaker C: I. Dude, they wouldn’t have even known that there was a first time had you not just said it. All right, everybody, there’s your studio magic trick. We tried this. We tried this section once before. Yeah, exactly. Right? We tried this section before, and we. We. We wanted to nail it a little bit better. So you wouldn’t have even known had Jason not blown my cover.
All right, we need. We need. We need to wrap it up. What do you got?
[01:33:54] Speaker A: We’re done.
[01:33:55] Speaker C: Okay, everybody, we appreciate you listening. What. What were you going to say?
[01:34:00] Speaker A: Ron? I. Man, I love the way he’s done it, dude. He’s powerful, man.
Quiet guy in the background, but, man, he nailed it.
[01:34:08] Speaker C: Did nail it. I’m with you. Appreciate everybody listening. We’ve only got a couple more episodes left before the end of the year. I’m going to be doing so much traveling that please be patient with us. We’re doing what we can to make sure to get them done, but we will for sure be doing at least two more before the end of the year, I believe is kind of the schedule. So if you have any questions, comments, you can get a hold of us at. Hi weeklydeepdive.com thank you for listening. We love you. Have a great week. Happy holidays in advance. And until next week.
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