Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - 3 Nephi 8-11 Part 1 • Dr. Eric D. Huntsman • September 23 - 29 • Come Follow Me

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

How can we apply Jesus’s visit to the people of Nephi to His Second Coming? Join Dr. Eric Huntsman as he focuses on one of the most critical events in human history and how it informs our moments of darkness and disaster.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM39ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM39FRGerman: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM39DEPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM39PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM39ESYOUTUBEhttps://youtu.be/Z2BQdW7KPTQALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 Part I  -  Dr. Eric Huntsman06:31 Dr. Huntsman bio08:26 The focal point of the Book of Mormon12:18 3 Nephi 8:1-4  - Nephi son of Helaman14:17 3 Nephi 8:5-18 - Terrible, natural disasters20:45 3 Nephi 8:19-25 - Great darkness and disasters27:24 3 Nephi 9:1-22 - Christ’s pronouncements32:54  Arm of justice, arm of mercy35:35 Divine violence41:40 Creation obeys the Creator46:21 Anticipatory sacrifices50:10 Jesus beacons us to return to light53:34 3 Nephi 10:21-22 - Persevere  through darkness55:33 3 Nephi 11:1-10 - Contemplation and revelation1:01:02 Jesus will gather1:05:18 3 Nephi 18 - The People of Nephi and the sacrament1:08:37 - A painful story paired with hope of the Savior1:22:47 End of Part 1 - Dr. Eric HuntsmanThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith, I'm your host. I'm here with my co-host, John, by the way, who I will describe as 3rd Nephi 8 verse 5, there arose such a co-host such as one has never been known in all the land. We're also here with our friend, Dr. Eric Huntsman. John, we are in 3rd Nephi 8 through 11. These are the pivotal chapters of the Book of Mormon. I've been looking forward to this all year. What are you thinking going into this?

How did these people get the chance to be there? Maybe they thought that same thing, that they happened to be there at that time when the Savior would come. It's fun that we've got Eric with us today. I thought who would be willing to take on these chapters because they are big. Yeah, probably many people have read many, many times these chapters. You're so right, John. This is a darkness to light chapter. And it is heavy and important and sacred, yet uplifting

and powerful and fun. There's so much here. I was going through all my friends to bring on for this week. I felt very guided to Dr. Eric Huntsman. Eric, what are we looking forward to today? You've been planning this for a long time. Where are we going to go?

I felt like I struck the lottery in getting these chapters. It really is the center of the Book of Mormon. We have, as John said, a lot of material to cover. It divides neatly into two parts, chapters 8-10, which interestingly enough, were one chapter in the 1830 original edition of the Book of Mormon. That would have been chapter four before it was broken up into our current chapters and verses. It has the destructions that happen

with the death of Jesus and then the voice of the Lord speaking in the darkness and then speaking further in chapter 10. But then as we move into what had been chapter five, which went through 11, 12, 13, we have chapter 11 where the resurrected risen Lord touches down at the temple in Bountiful. That may be where we divide things between our two parts, do eight, nine, and 10, probably our first part. If you're someone who doesn't always finish sec part two,

please come back because chapter 11 is where the real, real meat is going to be. Some of you will recognize this book. This was President Benson's talk, a witness, and a warning, and if you don't mind, there was something particularly for chapters 8 through 10 for this first part that I was really impressed by. He says, in the Book of Mormon we find a pattern for preparing for the Second coming. A major portion of the book centers on a few decades prior to Christ coming to America, so that was the chapters before it as well. By careful study of that time period, we can determine why some were destroyed in the terrible judgments that preceded his coming and what brought others to stand in the temple in the land bountiful and thrust their hands into

the wounds of his hands and feet?" We are dealing with such tumultuous times right now, and I'm not saying the Second Coming is tomorrow or 10 years or 20 years, but then Elder Oaks once said on a talk on the Second Coming, whether the Second Coming comes because of the unexpected appearance of the Lord or our own unlooked-for death. I mean, we could all have our last day today. We need to prepare ourselves. I think that's what President Benson was saying. Let's look at how the people in the first part of Third Nephi dealt with the challenges

and sacred combinations and the wars and the upheavals and the collapse of government. And then the chapters we're looking at in part 1, 8, 9, 10 how do you deal with cataclysms which President Benson says actually anticipate or a type of the cataclysms that will come before the coming of the Lord. Have faith and joy because when that's over whether you're there in the flesh or you get to have a ringside seat on the clouds when Jesus comes again we will all have our own third Nephi 11 experience and we'll talk about this in part two but when the multitude comes and feels the wounds in his hands and his feet and

We'll talk about the parallels with Thomas and John 20, but I can't help but think of elder Bruce McConkey I just read his biography, his famous, famous final testimony, what was it, 1984, where he said, I will know no better then than I know now. And in the coming day, I will kneel at his feet and I will wet his feet with my tears and I will feel the wounds. That's the point.

And I don't wanna get all kind of sensationalistic too much with the second coming aspect, because this is something we can apply now. When we look at the scriptures, we look at what we call exegesis, trying to understand what a text meant to them there then. And then what a lot of us as religious educators really do, trying to pick up on liking the scriptures to ourselves, is what I call exposition. What does it mean to us here now? As I was reading these chapters, I kept thinking of another fancy word, a proleptic interpretation,

looking to the future. Not them there then, not us here now, but everyone here then? Or better, apocalyptic, and once again, not to overdo the second coming thing. When we look at the book of Revelation and the title revelation in Greek Apocalypse this means uncovering unveiling. It's not just about the future It's also symbolic interpretation that can be us here now One of the best ways of reading the book of Revelation is what do we learn? It's not the details of the disasters and the things that happen when Jesus comes again It's the unveiling

of Christ in His majesty and seeing Christ as the major figure in history. That's what I hope we will do, particularly in 8, 9, and 10, is that we will see, okay, what is the darkness we're experiencing? What are the trials we're experiencing? Can we hear the voice of the Lord speaking to us Can we hear the voice of the Lord speaking to us and preparing us for part two for 3rd and 8th, 11, when we will in one form or another, in one place or another, have the same experiences all those people have done? Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. To everyone listening, you know we have two parts.

And occasionally someone will listen to part one, but just doesn't get to part two. And you can't do that with this episode. You've got to carry on to part two. Part one is the lead-up to this supreme event. John, Eric has joined us a couple of times in the past but let's introduce him. Yeah, we're so happy to have Dr. Eric D. Huntsman back with us. Now, I have a habit, at least when my church meetings start at the right time, of watching the Tabernacle Choir every morning on Sunday mornings at 930s. I see Eric all the time singing in the choir. Some of you might, or hey, I've seen that guy before. Yeah, I was at 19 years in the Tabernacle Choir. And sometimes as others are singing in English, he's singing in the original Greek and Latin.

No, I'm just kidding. But he received a bachelor's in classical Greek and Latin from BYU and then ancient history at the University of Pennsylvania, a master's, and a PhD in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. And already you can tell from some of the things he said, this guy knows his stuff. He's been teaching at BYU in religious education since, what was it, 2003? Yeah, so I started BYU in 1994 in classics and then chose to transfer to ancient scripture in 2003 because as much as I love everything Greek and Roman,

what I really love is Jesus and I wanted to teach the New Testament. Wonderful. We mentioned this last time, I think, but Eric wrote an Easter book called Greater Love Hath No Man. Also, he gave a talk in one of those BYU speeches in 2018. It was hard sayings and safe spaces making room for struggle as well as faith. A landmark talk. Go to speeches.byu.edu.

Hank, we are blessed to have Dr. Huntsman with us. Thank you for coming back, Eric. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Normally, we interview Eric when he's in Jerusalem. He likely will be in Jerusalem when this episode airs, but we have him in Utah right now, so we thought we'd grab him just before he goes. Eric, I'm going to start in the Come Follow Me manual. The title of this week's lesson is Arise

and Come Forth Unto Me. It starts this way. Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world. With these words, the resurrected Savior introduced Himself, fulfilling over 600 years of Book of Mormon prophecies. This is Elder Holland. That appearance and that declaration constituted the focal point, the supreme moment in the entire history of the Book of Mormon. It was the manifestation and the decree that had informed and inspired every Nephite prophet. Everyone had talked of him, sung of him, dreamed of him, and prayed for his appearance. But here he actually was. The day of days, the God who turns every dark night into morning light had arrived.

With that, Eric, let's jump into this significant lesson in the Book of Mormon. I want to share my personal feeling. As someone who, once again, using that funky term exegesis, I consider myself not a theologian but an exegete in that I work scripture. But above all, I consider myself a practitioner. I live the gospel. I try to experience it. What I was moved by in that 3rd Nephi 11 passage section of text is that we come to know Jesus by personal revelation. So yes, we have 600 years of

prophecy. We come to a knowledge of Jesus by reading scripture and what our mothers and fathers and missionaries and friends and teachers taught us. But at some point we have to have a land bountiful experience where Jesus appears in our lives. And whether it's symbolic or just by the power of the Spirit or one day in a very real sense, the veil will be pulled back and He will be in our lives. There are some prices that have to be paid and some experiences that need to be weighted through. And that's why part one of our visit is on chapters eight, nine, and 10. What I'd prefer to do is move through the text, try to pace ourselves and go section by section,

what we call pericope by pericope or paragraph by paragraph, and make sure we don't miss anything. To build up the way Mormon intended for us to read it. Let's walk through it verse at a time. Eric, could you explain, you used a phrase and the first time I ever heard it, I heard a perfect rhyme with the word Jesus. But then I learned exegesis doesn't have the name Jesus in it.

It has a different thing. Can you give the average exegesis isegesis, because exegesis sounds like an ex. Ex Jesus person. That's right. It comes from a Greek phrase, which means to lead out. It's letting scripture speak for itself. It's trying to lead out what the meaning was,

reconstructing as well as we can what the original author intended and how the original audience would have understood it. Now you mentioned isagesis or in Greek we'd say asagesis. That means leading in or reading in and that's sometimes a mistake we make where we impose on scripture what we think it means. Sometimes we cherry pick or take a verse or two out and we do what's called proof texting. That's why earlier I mentioned this term exposition, which comes from the Latin expression which means application, which I think as religious educators and students of the Gospels, that's what we really want to do. We don't want to read into Scripture what we think it means. We want to take what Scripture means and apply it to

ourselves. I often say try to take what scripture means and apply it to ourselves. I often say try to understand what the passage meant to them there then, and then under the guidance of the Spirit once you have the principle or the idea, try to responsibly apply it to us here now. Right, this first section, verses one through four of chapter eight. In my margins, I divide my scriptures up and you can't see it here, but I draw lines in between the paragraphs or the pericpies as we call them and I label in the margin who later in 3rd Nephi 11 will be chosen as one of the 12 Nephite disciples and he was the one who was keeping the record and Mormon wants us to know that this record that he was drawing

from as he tells just a hundredth part of what Jesus said and did was reliable and it was true. And it's interesting how he describes Nephi, the son of Nephi, the son of Helaman. He was a man of many miracles. He was a man who was attentive. He was a man who loved the Lord. This will come out as we talk. My specialty in New Testament scholarship is the Gospel of John. And at the end of the book of John, a later editor adds two verses, this is John 21, 24 and 25, talking about

this beloved disciple, the way we use to understand the source or the original author of the text, John, the son of Zebedee, one of the three inner circle of Jesus' apostles, says, this is the disciple which testified of these things and wrote these things and we know that his testimony is true. Mormon is doing, at the outset of our reading today, exactly what that later editor did for the Gospel of John. You can trust this. This is a person who knew the Lord and was loved by the Lord. He showed it by his life.

He showed it by his ministry. He is going to give us information about what is happening. That's verse one. And then it times it the 30 and third year and the people are looking with earnestness for the sign which had been promised by Samuel the Lamanite. We read about that in the book of Helaman. But there was doubtings and disputations in verse four. Isn't that interesting? When you have a time of doubtings and disputations, your answer is to hold on to the records that are just and true, to the sources which are reliable. And then we move into the first big cataclysm in these chapters. This is verses five through 18, which I have labeled terrible natural disasters for three hours. Of course, these have all been prophesied and it wasn't just Samuel the Lamanite.

Zenos, an unknown Old Testament prophet who was on the brass plates read about this. First Nephi 19 had prophesied of these disasters at the death of the Messiah. Nephi himself several times. And then of course, we've mentioned Samuel the Lamanite in Helaman 14. They shouldn't have been surprised. This had been prophesied and then let's read from the text some of these disasters as they happened. Verse 5, there arose a great storm such as one had never been known in the land and there was also great and terrible tempest and and there was terrible thunder, inso much that it did shake the whole earth, and then there are lightnings in verse 7. The city of Zarahemla takes fire in verse 8. The city of Moroni sinks into the depths of the

sea, and the earth was carried on the city of Moroniha." Now it's easy enough to say these are horrible destructions, natural disasters. We see more of these today than we would like to. But the ancients would have seen this in a very particular way. I've mentioned wind, I've mentioned fire, I've mentioned sea, I've mentioned earth. And the way the ancients looked at things, these were the four primal elements. You have wind, earth, fire, water, and those elements which constitute the building blocks of creation are being undone. We mentioned Elder Macconkey's final testimony. I'll just paraphrase it. When he talked about the darkness that covered the earth in the Holy Land for the last three hours of Jesus' suffering on the cross. He said something as if the very God of nature suffered

and indeed he did. In ancient Nearsha mythology they believed that the world was created when this primal figure called Tiamat, this Mesopotamian female goddess figure, was killed by Marduk and chaos was overcome and the world was organized. Well that's weird but echo of what we know is true. Creation is not out of nothing, ex nihilo, it's an act of organization and we know the Father did that through the Son and we will actually see Christ identify himself that way as the creator of heaven and earth in a moment, but at his death that all comes apart. There's an interesting phrase in Colossians 1-17. It's this Christ-him we call it where the Paulian

author has reproduced in Greek for his audience this hymn praising Jesus and it says in verse 17, he is before all things and by him all things consist Which what does that mean in the Greek? It means all things hold together They're not just organized by the word the Son of God. They're maintained and we read in Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants that Christ is the power that Organizes and holds the universe together Symbolically what we're seeing is at his death that's being undone. Now it's not undone all the way, clearly. I mean this is symbolic, but it's to help understand that who they're gonna meet

in chapter 11, the Creator has died. The light of the world is stuffed out, there's gonna be darkness. Creation looks like it's being undone. Look at some of these other verses. There was more great and terrible destruction in the land northward. The whole face of the land was changed. More thunderings and lightnings. But look at verse 13. The highways were broken up and the level roads were spoiled and many smooth places became rough. Now that seems to be an echo in a reversal of Isaiah 44. The rough places will be made smooth and there'll be a way prepared in the wilderness for the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist does that. Everything

preparing for Jesus to come at his death is being undone. These very real physical cataclysms and disasters are even more important symbolically in what they're showing about Jesus. Verse 17, the face of the whole earth became deformed because of the tempest and the thunderings and the lightnings. We read other times the rocks that had been solid are found in seams and broken. Well, what is Christ? We're in that wonderful little saying in Matthew 7, the wise man builds his house upon the rock. Christ is the sure foundation. And in this moment of his death,

the very foundation of the world, if you will, is broken up. Really quite striking in my opinion. Maybe it's like a teacher here saying, I can't get their attention. This will get their attention. Yeah, yeah. This will get everybody to stop where they are and listen.

This is one of the things that's so interesting about the Book of Mormon, because the signs that appear in the New Testament are done an overdrive in the Book of Mormon, right? You have three hours of darkness at the crucifixion, but here we have three days of darkness. And we'll read about the details in a moment. It's a vapor. I mean, it's physical. But likewise, at his birth, it wasn't just a star in the heaven. It was light for three days. What was the reason for that? Was it because the house of Lehi had different promises? It was the promised land? I think it was as much for us as it was for the Book of Mormon peoples. I mean, that was another thing President Benson always said. They didn't have Mormon's book. It was written for us. I'd wrote a book on the miracles of Jesus years ago, and of course the miracles were

real and happened as the scriptures laid them out. But what's even more important about those miracles is what they symbolize on greater things. Healing blindness represents showing spiritual sight, healing deafness, opening our ears to the words of the Lord, overcoming physical death. If you're the daughter of Jairus or the widow's son or Lazarus is representing overcoming spiritual death and being healed physically is being healed spiritually. That's what's going on here. These were real terrible cataclysms that as you say were waking the people up, but they're

even more important for us symbolically. And the question is, can we understand or see in the disasters which we unfortunately sometimes witness and or experience in this life, can we see what the Lord is trying to say to us? Are we able to see in the experiences we unfortunately sometimes have, the voice of the Lord. Let's go to verse 19. So this next chunk of text, which is 19 through about half of 23, I call Great Darkness upon all the face of the land.

It's interesting because you've got, once again, these kind of scriptural echoes. Darkness was the ninth plague of Exodus in Exodus 10. But even more so as we've already mentioned, the last three hours Christ was on the cross, Matthew 27, 45 it's Mark 15, 33 and Luke 23, 44, represents that the light of the world is being snuffed out. And then of course the people who have experienced these things, they start to mourn. And let's read that. This is second half of verse 33.

There was great mourning and howling and weeping among all the people continually. Yea, there were great groanings of the people because of the darkness and the great destructions which had come upon them. And in one place they were heard to say, oh, that we had repented before this great and terrible day. And that's a very Old Testament image. Joel uses that for instance. Then would our brethren have been spared?

Verse 25, oh, that we had repented before this, once again, great and terrible day and had not killed and stoned the prophets and cast them out. Then our mothers and our fair daughters and our children would have been spared and would not have been buried. They're talking particularly about the city of Moroniha that had been buried. Then as we slip into chapter 9, they're left in darkness to sit with the loss and the pain, which is interesting because so often when we do have a loss in our own lives, there are those dark hours, days, sometimes weeks afterwards, where we feel alone. Where is the Lord? And you have to wait for that understanding and that comfort to come. Well, Sammy the Lamanite said exactly that this would happen.

Somebody would say, oh, that we had repented before this great and terrible day in in Helaman 13. I love Sammy the Lamanite. It's the only Lamanite sermon that we have written down. To see his prophecies come true is exciting, but he saw this coming. When we talked about the darkness and that clearly picks up on that image we know from the Gospel of John that Christ is the lie of the world. Look at verse 22, there was not any light seen, neither fire nor glimmer, neither sun nor moon nor stars, for so great were the mists of darkness which were upon the face of the land. Conversely there's this beautiful passage in section 88, not that we have a favorite passage of the Doctrine and

Covenants, but if we did one of them would be section 88. It's talking about the light of Christ which shineth, that proceedeth from the presence of God and fills the immensity of space. But then it has this beautiful passage that says, he is in the light of the sun and the power by which it was made. He is in the light of the moon and the power by which it was made. When my daughter was little, I used to take her outside and she'd look at the moon and I'd read this to her and say, he's in the moon and the light of the moon. And she'd go, Jesus! You you know Jesus is up there. All those things which are basically just reflecting the light of Christ all go dark. This powerful symbol that

without Christ as I mentioned earlier things don't consist they don't hold together without the creator there is no light without Jesus and all those things go to heart. I have a question for both of you about verse 22. That uses a phrase that Lehi's dream uses, the mists of darkness. When you read Lehi's dream in 1st Nephi 8, it's all Lehi. When Nephi sees it though, he sees Lehi's dream with the life of Christ, they actually mention Mists of Darkness before his coming.

It sounds like it's a symbolic thing and it's a real thing that happens right here too. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Thanks for pointing that out. I mean, what we're seeing is the Mists of Darkness that are always in the world and that we all have to pull through and hold on the iron rod. Without the iron rod, you're overwhelmed by the mist of darkness. In this period, we're given a taste of what the world would be like without Jesus. And I think it's meant to be a warning image.

It's only three days long, but it's letting us know what eternity could be like if Jesus were not there for us. And perhaps, Eric, that's why Mormon goes into such detail about how dark it was. He could just say it was really dark, but he keeps going. They could feel the vapor of darkness. There was no light because of the darkness. There's no candles, nor torches, nor fire kindled, not even with their exceedingly dry wood. That always has made me laugh as if we're thinking,

what about the exceedingly dry wood? He says, not even the exceedingly dry wood. Yeah, we'll try the somewhat dry wood. No, we'll try the really dry wood then. No, try the exceedingly dry wood. Maybe that'll light. Some of our friends that are really into Book of Mormon geography and try to localize this,

we'll talk about, well, this could be a volcanic eruption. Just the other day I was listening to an earlier episode. It was about chiasm, John, and you were talking about how wonderful a chiasm was in Alma 38, I think you were talking about. You said, as cool as that is, let's not focus on the structure over the message, the content. And that's the thing. Yeah, it may have been among other things, tempest and whirl. Yeah, it may have been among other things, tempest and whirlwinds, there could have been a volcanic eruption which was smothering people with carbon monoxide and ash, but that's not as important as that there's nothing you can do to overcome the darkness. I'm glad

you brought that up because it's not the stars and the moon and the Sun aren't giving their light. There's nothing you can do to overcome it because you're exceedingly dry wood, you can't light. You can't light your lamp because without Jesus, it's hopeless because all those things are reflecting Jesus. Yeah, for getting into Mormon's head, I remember hearing my friend Ryan Sharp say, okay, we get it, it's dark. But as I start to look, I'm going, the symbolism you're talking about, without the Lord, you might think, oh no, I could figure it out. I could get some light somehow. And Mormon's making it clear there was no light without him. Boy, when God does an object lesson,

wow. And I thought as a young father, you can't light wood you can't cook Well, what do you feed your kids? You've got three days of this where you can't cook you can't see when he wants to make an impression Boy, can he make an impression without literal light for three days? You start to think of how necessary it is to have the light of the world the spiritual light as well it is to have the light of the world, the spiritual light as well. Now, if chapter 8 is the destructions and the darkness and chapter 11 is what we want to get to, the appearance and the revelation, 9 and 10 are transitional because the people are still in the darkness, but the voice speaks to them. You get the hope. In chapter 9 verses 1 through 22, I've labeled this section

Christ's pronouncements to the people, and then I've subdivided that. The first section I want to look at is verses 1 through 12. The voice of Christ chronicles the instructions among the Nephites. In a moment, we're going to see that as Christ describes himself in the darkness, he's going to start using a lot of phrases that are familiar to us. Once again, Mormon and Nephi wouldn't have had these records, but they're familiar to us from the New Testament, I would say, because the same spirit is inspiring the writers and Christ is the one speaking in both cases. We have a friend, Daniel Becerra, who's written about 3rd and 4th Nephi, and he's had a

really interesting quote that I just wanted to share with you real quickly. Because as Jesus introduces himself to the people, and we'll talk a lot more about this when he appears in person in chapter 11 and once again describes himself further, he uses all these familiar phrases, a lot of them parallel with what is said about him and that he says in John. But every once in a while, there are some things that are going to be surprising. But I want to have this quote in the background as we move through chapters 9 and 10. Daniel says, Mormon invites disciples to allow Christ to defy their expectations.

He presents to us a Savior who resists easy categorization, who blurs the boundaries between humanity and divinity, between father and son, between male and female, between individuality and relationality. As much as Jesus, the man Jesus, was Jehovah in human form and if he loved the chosen, he knew his friends and his friends knew him and he's relatable, he's still Jehovah. And he makes God more comprehensible and more relatable. But this is why I love the Gospel of John so much. It shows how Jesus was still divine and our finite minds cannot completely understand him. There are going to be some tensions as he is presented as fully God here.

I mean, this is one of the things that's so interesting about the Book of Mormon and why I like it as a Johannine scholar, you know, the Gospel of John, first few verses, and it begins with the word and the words of God, and the word was God, and that always kind of makes people go tilt. Are you talking about he's not God the Father? What is that? What's saying he's divine? What does the title page say? Show that Jesus Christ, the eternal God, manifests himself to all people. I remember when I used to teach Book of Mormon more frequently, I would start to talk about the title page purposes and after we had talked about the great things God has done for our fathers and mothers and bring us to

knowledge of the covenants and said and bring us to knowledge of Jesus Christ the and you know the freshman shout, son of God! I'm like, nope, eternal God. And in part two, when we read Jesus introduce himself as the God of Israel in the whole world, this is what you have to be aware of. Yes, we've come to know Jesus well from the gospels and in the book of Mormon, we've come to expect things from him from the prophecies, but he's still going to be

that Jesus that defies expectations. That's more than you can possibly comprehend. But I want to have that in the background as we work through these passages. I was struck by the fact that in verse two, you have a triple woe. Verse one says, there's a voice heard among all the inhabitants of the earth upon the face of the land crying, woe, woe, woe unto this people, woe unto the inhabitants of the whole earth. Now, a triple woe only happens twice that I could find.

2 Nephi 28, we've had that, but Revelation is 8 13. And remember, woe is kind of a cry of indignation and judgment and warning. I'm thinking of Christ pronouncing woes upon Betsaida and Corazine and Capernaum. Woe unto the scribes and Pharisees in chapter 23. There's certainly precedent for this, but he's letting us know that there's some judgment here. And this is what's interesting. As I've mentioned John We love the New Testament Jesus we think because that's the Jesus who's loving and kind and good and people

Understand or misrepresent the Old Testament Jesus as being this God of judgment Reality is the most common descriptor of Jehovah in the Old Testament is chesed loving kindness If you think Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so as the old gospel song went, read the book of Revelation. You have a choice. You can have the loving-kind, healing Savior or you can have the God of judgment. In fact, to kind of take that old saying, Jesus loves me this I know, Zarah Hemless, toast you know. I mean, we've got a book of Revelation Jesus in Chapter 8. We're going to get the Gospel of John Jesus in Chapter 11 and following, and then in Chapter 12

of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus, Matthew 5 through 7. And it's an interesting thing to take the Revelation Jesus, the 3rd Nephi 8 Jesus, before you do the Gospel of John and Matthew and third Nephi 11 Jesus, because you realize what's there if he isn't the loving Savior. I have circled the pronouns on the first 12 verses, as you said. Sometimes when there's a natural disaster, it's dangerous for us to say, oh, that must be a punishment from God or something. We have no idea. And even Jesus cautioned the 12 about that.

Do you think that tower at Siloam that fell, he wanted to say, but here it is so explicit. Verse three, Zarahemla, I burned that with fire. Verse four, Moroni, I caused to be sunk. Moroni, ha, I covered with the earth. What I love about this is he's saying I did this, but then in verse 13, he says, okay, oh, all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me and repent of your sins and be converted that I may heal you? I have a line in my margin that points to the earlier verses and says arm of justice and points after 13 and says arm of mercy. It says it in verse 14

mine arm of mercy is extended toward you. Yeah and in a moment I want to look at that next section 13 and following because you have this idea that you're spared because you're more righteous but we also have to be careful with that because natural disasters do take righteous people. We know that those who are spared are among those who are more righteous. They're not all the more righteous people. There's something else in verse 2 if we go back to our whoa whoa whoa verse. There is a verse that has haunted me since I was a little boy. For the devil laugheth and his angels rejoice because of the slain, fair sons and daughters

of my people. Actually, this would have happened chronologically long before. Moses 7, this is the vision of Enoch, this is Moses 7 26. Enoch beholds Satan and he had a great chain in his hand and unveiled the whole face of the earth with darkness and he looked up and laughed and his angels rejoiced. I don't want to indulge in this too much. We don't want to become all exorcist or omend or indulge too much in diabolic things. But one of the things the scriptures make clear, and we had this earlier in Nephi, there

is no Satan. I am not the devil for there isn't one. Satan doesn't want people to believe in him because he's more effective when he's stealth. The scriptures make it clear there is an adversary, that there is an opposition. Just as we're having Jesus in his role as just judge revealed in chapters 8, 9, and 10. We're also having what I call the unmasking of Satan. It is a reminder that this is a war. It's a spiritual war. And that's why we have to hold on to Jesus and the rod.

Eight and nine, these are tough chapters. Well, one of the reasons I invited Eric is because of his understanding of biblical studies. For those who would like an in-depth look at divine violence in the Book of Mormon, there's an article by that name. Andrew Smith, who we all know, dealing with difficulty in Scripture, divine violence in the Book of Mormon. We can put a link in our show notes to that. One part of his article of Dr. Smith's article caught my eye. part of his article of Dr. Smith's article caught my eye. He quotes Terence Fretheim, a Lutheran theologian. He talks about divine violence in the Bible and then Andrew Smith,

he relates it to the Book of Mormon. And this is just one part of a wonderful article. He says, in pursuing divine purposes, God does not act alone, but works with what is available, with human beings as they are, with all their foibles and flaws. Frathheim also stresses that this violence must always be understood in the context of violence as perpetrated by mankind. In other words, God never acts violently first. Similarly, Frathheim is also clear to point out that divine violence is never an end unto itself.

It is never uncontrolled, blind, or capricious, but rather always has a purpose. He then quotes another Walter Bruegman. He says, This judgmental violence may be reduced to one thing. God's use of violence, inevitable in a violent world, is intended to subvert human violence in order to bring the creation along to a point where violence is no more. In other words, whenever God acts violently, he does so not only to stop or punish human violence, but also does so in a way that promotes, teaches, or ensures a move of humankind generally away from such violence. And then he goes on and says,

would the violence of 3rd Nephi 8 and 9 lead to the Zion of 4th Nephi? Great article, Andrew Smith. Shout out to Andrew, Dr. Smith. Well, as dark as this has been with destructions and cataclysms, and no light, and devils laughing, and divine violence. John has pointed our minds forward Let's start to transition out With verses 13 through 22 with that arm of mercy because that's when things get better Let's look at verse 13. We've already mentioned this all you that were spared because you were more righteous than they will you not now? Return to me and repent of your sins and be converted that I may heal you?"

And I've circled return and repent, converted and heal. Those are the four words I circled in that verse. Return is interesting. Of course, we don't know what the language is like at the time of Nephi, the son of Nephi, the son of Helaman, but maybe it was originally still based on some kind of Hebrew, at least the recording languages. But in Hebrew, in the Old Testament, shuv means to return. Turn to the Lord. Now, of course, that's also how they describe repent. But in English, repent, we think of that as feeling sorry. But President Nelson's talked about this. And in the Greek,

it means metanoia, or actually means to change your mind, to think more like the Lord. It's not that we're always bad every day and have tons of things repent of in terms of guilt every day, but we need to turn to the Lord fully every day. We need to be converted. It's all about this healing. This is what we're going to talk about from now on. Turning to the Lord, having a new heart, turning to the Lord, having a new heart, being forgiven and being healed. Look at verse 14, verily, verily I say unto you, and by the way in the New Testament Gospels when it says verily, verily I say unto you, in Greek it's amen, amen, lego, humine, amen, amen I say to you. And we say amen at the end of something to say I agree, but whenever Jesus speaks in the Gospels he says amen first. In fact I saw one translation

says I'm telling you the truth this is the Jesus we know and how he teaches in the New Testament barely barely I say unto you come unto me you shall have eternal life what come unto me you think of Matthew 11 28 my great arm of mercy is extended to you and whosoever will come in will receive and blessed are those who come unto me this is almost a knee-fight the attitude before we even get to chapter 12 right when they have that word blessed if you come unto me you will be blessed and this is when it's gonna be light from now on friends behold I am

Jesus Christ the Son of God. I created the heavens and the earth and all things that in them are. He says this is my name, Yeshua. I'm the guy who saves. That's what the name Joshua means in Hebrew. Christ, I'm in the Shiach or the Christos, the anointed one. I am the Son of God. I created the heavens and the earth and I'm thinking of the opening lines of John here, everything that was in them. I was with the Father from the beginning. Again, I'm still channeling John 1 there. I am in the Father and the Father in me. John 10, 27 through 32, or the intercession prayer, John 17, 21, and in me has the Father glorified my name. In one verse, Jesus has basically

done the gospel jump, okay? And this is a voice speaking in the darkness. This is the light of the world and he's back. He's still in the spirit world, but he's in, you know, organizing things in section 138, but he can multitask and he's getting them ready for what we're going to see in chapter 11. I came unto my own and my own received me not. Once again, this is an echo of a very famous passage in the Gospel of John, which says, this is John 1 11, he came unto his own and his own received him not. I don't know what reformed Egyptians doing or what Nephite was doing but I know what the Greek was doing what says he came into his own in Greek it is a dia neuter plural he came to his own things and his own a dioi masculine plural nominative his own people received him not and the reason I've always been moved by that passage in John is that his creation always obeys him

Even when he says fall on that city burn that city drown that city Isn't it heal him in 12 or Mormon interrupts and he talks about how the dust move with hither and thither at the command of Almighty God but men harken not and In the Gospels Jesus commands, you know, water to become wine and it does it. The elements obey Jesus, but people have not. And the scriptures concerning my coming are fulfilled. And as many as have received me to them, I have given to become the sons of God. We're still channeling John here, verse 12, chapter one, as many as received him to him, he gave power to become the children of of God, techno in Greek, it says sons of God and King James. But of course that in

Messiah 5-7 or 27-25, ethno 3-14, is the sons and daughters of God. He has come to give us the power to become the children of Christ. And in me is the law of Moses fulfilled." But that's an interesting literary device in Scripture. It's not just the beginning and the end. The technical term for this is a merism, M-E-R-I-S-M. It's the beginning and the end and everything in between. That's why in the book Revelation you have the seven seals undone, different dispensations. Jesus is the operative figure throughout history. The ethical principles of the law of Moses were never done away with. They were deepened.

But there were certain ritual practices that were done away. You shall offer unto me no more the shedding of blood. Your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away. I will no longer accept your sacrifices, your burnt offerings shall be done away. I will no longer accept your sacrifices, your burnt offerings." Because those things were anticipatory of the great atonement of Jesus Christ. Verse 20, ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

This is Psalm 51 17. We talked about Psalms a couple of years ago together. Remember Psalms sometimes have synonymous parallelism, but sometimes they have this called synthetic or climactic parallelism. The second expression is deeper. So when it says a broken heart, your heart is broken. Contrite seems kind of weak in English, but in Hebrew it meant crushed. Your heart's broken, but your spirit is crushed. You have to be completely pliable and who so cometh unto me with a broken heart and a

contrite spirit will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost even as the Lamanites because their faith in me at the time of their conversion were baptized with fire and the Holy Ghost and they knew it not. Now there may have been many instances where Lamanites were converted and had a baptism of fire. It's a little ironic it says they knew it not because I'm thinking of Helaman 5, 43 through 48 when Nephi and Lehi, the sons of Helaman, were in the prison. And remember the darkness overcomes the prison, but then the fire comes. Those Lamanites knew there was fire because they were surrounded by it. But this passage meant so much to me, my senior year of high school. I was in Jackson, Tennessee and all my born-again

friends, my evangelical friends were trying to get me to be saved and they were talking about this experience you had to have. I realized you can have the baptism of fire and not necessarily have had some kind of Big Bang experience. We've got the Big Bang saw on the road to Damascus, big bang experience. We've got the big bang saw on the road to Damascus, Alma, the younger. You've got these huge experiences. When I used to teach this I'd say you've got those big bang conversion experiences, but most of us have steady state experiences. I'm using models of the universe here and where your testimony grows slowly over time.

I'm actually the oscillating model of the universe. I've had these little explosions, these little bangs, as well as the constant one. But it's really interesting because we're going to have, it's beyond our time together, but when you have some fire immersion experiences in Bountiful, we're going to see some symbolic representations of the baptism by fire. You've got Pentecost in Acts 2, but those are more important symbolically for not just the purifying power of the Holy Ghost and the cleansing power of the Holy Ghost, but the enlightening and the bright power of the Holy Ghost, if that

makes any sense. I hope, reassuring for those who cannot claim they've had a Big Bang conversion and they can't think of a time when they were just completely overwhelmed with the Spirit because there were some Lamanites at least. They were baptized with fire in the Holy Ghost and they knew it not. Eric and Hank, these verses, it's so intriguing to me that before he even showed up in person, he is saying, no more shedding of blood. I just think that's fascinating. And like he said, what was that word you used? Those sacrifices were anticipatory. They were pointing them to the great and last sacrifice. I wonder the level of confusion these good folks would have when it was all of a sudden, no more that. Now, I want you to bring a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I loved what you said,

a crushed spirit. The sacrifice is you. You bring yourself now, which I'm sure they were like, how do we do this? This must have been amazing. I wanted to comment on what you said at the end about being baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost and didn't know amazing. I wanted to comment on what you said at the end about being baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost and didn't know it. I've always thought if you're immersed in fire, you would probably know about it, right? Here's what President Ezra Taft Benson said. This is a talk called A Mighty Change of Heart from the October 89 Insign. He said, we must be cautious as we discuss these remarkable examples, though they are real and powerful, they are the exception more than the rule. For every Paul, you've talked about that, wrote to Damascus, for every Enos, for every King Lamoni, there are hundreds and thousands of people who find the process of repentance much more subtle, much more imperceptible. Day by day they move closer to the Lord,

little realizing they are building a God-like life. They live quiet lives of goodness, service, and commitment. They are like the Lamanites, who the Lord said were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not. And here's another one from Elder D. Todd Christofferson. He said, you may ask, why doesn't this mighty change happen more quickly with me? You should remember that the remarkable examples of King Benjamin's people, Alma and some others in scripture are just that, remarkable, not typical. For most of us, the changes are more gradual and occur over time. Being born again, unlike our physical birth, is more a process than an event.

And engaging in that process is the central purpose of mortality. That's from May 2008, General Conference. Remember that great talk Elder Bednar gave about the painting of the harvest he has on his wall, that had the little brushstrokes, gold and brown and whatever? That's always comforting his parents because you know our attempts to have family prayer and family meeting lessons, but it's the consistency over time and some of you heard me talk about this before, but one of the great gifts the Lord has given me for someone who is a nerd and gets too deep into exegesis, not ex Jesus John, but exegesis and all the complexity of scripture.

My son's disability has been such a gift because with Sam, we talk about simple principles of the gospel. The time I spent with him over two decades now, just teaching the basics are paying off. That young man has been converted little by little and he has such strong, simple faith now. And that's why I was talking about the Big Bang conversions as opposed to steady state. And I'm in the middle to be honest. I'm giving you a third option, what I call the oscillating one, because then they go up and down. But I have these little explosions. I can point to three or four experiences in my life that were pretty significant. Just to be grateful to the Lord for those, I had an experience in high school when I really came to know and love the Lord and have a testimony of him. I had an experience in

my mission that was transformative. I had experience in graduate school and those have kind of been anchors to me. They do happen and I think we're grateful when we do have some special experiences and we write them down and we share them with our family and close friends when it's appropriate. As you've been teaching us Eric, I'm seeing the contrast that Mormon is making the dark dark times where it feels like there is no light at all. He made that pretty clear to it gets better. It gets better. Here's the voice of the Lord. Return, come to me. I am light and life. You imagine the two things they're worried about right now are light and life. I can offer those things. And then of course, we're coming to the climax in 3511. I wanted to read to you something from an author. This is one

of my favorite authors. He says this, the psalmist proclaimed weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Each of us has nights and days of weeping in this life. We all experience loss and pain in its various forms. Almost all of us have lost a loved one. Many of us have lost dreams and hopes. All of us are at risk of losing health and abilities. Yet even in our loss, or darkness I would say, we can experience peace and joy. We are promised peace in this world and eternal life in the world to come. Christ came that we may have life and to have it more abundantly. This is the next paragraph from this author.

I have written and spoken elsewhere about the greatest loss and heartache of my life, the autism diagnosis of my son Sam. Although he was not formally diagnosed until he was four, he had clear developmental delays and challenges with emotional self-regulation from the time he was a baby. We were frantic when he began to regress. He stopped smiling. He wouldn't let us hold him. He began to lose some of the little language that he had had. On the day he was finally diagnosed, the child we thought we would have and the dreams we had for him died. But with early intervention, the help of trained specialists, prayers and inspiration, we have seen miracles small and great. You can see the light coming back.

He was started to smile again. He learned how to receive our love and better express our own. In March of 2015, I ordained him a deacon and he faithfully passes the sacrament and we know that Sam is now giving priesthood blessings. While our worries for the future remain, we have love, testimony, and support, and we have much room for joy. So many of us, Eric, go through that same thing of, this is so dark. Is this ever going to get better? 35, 9, 10, and 11, they come. That was from a wonderful BYU devotional called, and John, you've already mentioned it,

Hard Sayings and Safe Spaces, Making Rome for Struggle as Well as Faith. Eric Huntsman 2018. Yeah, I think we even had pictures of Sam when he was vacant expression as a baby and that picture when he was ordained deacon and then I think graduating from Tempe or something. That one verse that I love from the Psalms that weeping endureth for the evening but joy comes in the morning. That's what we're about to do as we close up this section and get ready for part two because that will be the day when Jesus comes and that can happen for all of us. I just wanted to close chapter nine and then we have a few things to say about chapter 10. Look at this verse 21, I have come unto the world

to bring redemption unto the world to save the world from sin I think of John the Baptist in John chapter 1 and he talks about behold the Lamb of God who Taketh away the sin of the world and isn't that interesting it's singular He's not talking about individual mistakes or transgressions or sins as we often think of it. It is the entire fallen mortal state That is what Jesus has come. And then verse 22, Therefore who repenteth, who changes their heart, who turns back to the Lord, and cometh unto me as a little child. Think about all those wonderful examples in the scriptures, in the gospels where Jesus, you know, says suffer little children to come unto me. For such is the kingdom of God. for the little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of God. Behold, for such I have laid down my life and have taken it up again." John 10, 18, Jesus says, I have power to lay it down again

and I have power to take it up. The synoptic gospels and the speeches of Peter and Paul throughout the rest of the New Testament often portray either the Romans or the Jews killing Jesus and God raising him from the dead. But with high Christology this portrayal of a divine Jesus and John We realized he would not have died if he had not allowed it It wasn't the crucifixion that killed him. He laid down his life and he has power to take it up again Therefore repent and come unto me all ye ends of the earth and be saved for repent and come unto me all ye ends of the earth and be saved." Eric, we have so many listeners out there. We hear from them all over the world who are in their own dark times.

John, how often do we hear from people who I just lost my teenage daughter in an accident. I just lost my spouse, just got a cancer diagnosis. So dark. And I think what you're showing us here, Eric, is the light is coming. It is coming. And that's the perfect verse, 3rd Nephi 922. Repent, come to me. I can give you what you're looking for. I can give you light in life. Well, with chapter 10 of 3rd Nephi, we start to wrap this part up and are getting ready for chapter 11. The Lord leaves them for a while. There's silence in the space for many hours. Everyone's astonished. They stop lamenting

and howling, and I guess they're introspective and thinking. And it's when in that moment that they're pondering, it's almost like they're ready for some more now They're kind of reflecting on what the voice has spoken to them it says the voice came again to the people and Says verse 4 oh you people in the great cities which have fallen who are descendants of Jacob who are the house of Israel How oft have I gathered you as a hen would have gathereth her chickens under her wings and nourished you." That, of course, is something Jesus says final week of his life. It's in Matthew 23, 37, this idea of a mother hen gathering her little chickies under her wings trying to protect them.

That's such a powerful image. It's interesting that in the Old Testament sometimes almost maternal images are used for God. It's not always father or paternal images and this happens quite a bit in the New Testament as well. I'm going to have a passage later in this chapter that is echoed in John, but this idea of Christ in this loving, nurturing way, gathering her chickens under her wings. And our friend Daniel, when he talks about this, it goes on as this, how oft, how oft, how oft. And you can almost imagine a mom who's tried so

hard to protect and teach and take care of her child, and that child just done the wrong thing and she doesn't give up. How oft have I asked? How oft have I tried? How oft have I begged, how oft have I tried, how oft have I begged, how oft have I loved you. Such a powerful image. You wouldn't, but I'm still here trying to gather you. I'm still here ready to protect you. Verse six, if you will repent and return to me

with full purposes of heart, I will shield you with my wings. I'm interested in those times in Scripture where the Lord identifies with the feminine. Think of the woman who lost the coin, the hen, a female sheep being shorn, a nursing mother, a woman giving birth. He's used that many times. It's always interested me. Any thoughts on that? Jesus represents the best of both genders. He's loving and he's nurturing. Now, the reason I call that a cultural construct,

in my family, Elaine and I have kind of exchanged things. She tends to be disciplinarian, she's the one who handles problems, and I'm the one who hugs little babies and I miss my children when they were small, and I tend to be really nurturing and loving. And that's fine. Jesus is a good model of that.

I think that's empowering for female saints, female disciples to see themselves reflected in Jesus. And it's not, he's the strong priesthood leader. He's the nurturer, he's the carer, he's the one who loves. And there are strong women. So I think there's a reason that the scriptures are so consistent with that. And in fact, if you look forward to the last part

of verse 10, it's after he said this, the people began to howl and weep again in verses eight and nine and 10, the earth stopped shaking and so they calmed down. And it says, their mourning was turned into joy and their lamentations into the praise and thanksgiving unto the Lord Jesus Christ their Redeemer. And the reason that verse made me think of what you were just sharing, Hank, is a wonderful passage at the end of the farewell discourses in John 16. This is Jesus realizing that within hours his friends are going to be distraught and heartbroken when he's taken and crucified and dead.

He says, A woman when she is in travail, when she's in labor, hath sorrow because her hour has come. But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world. And those of us who have children and have been with wives when they've given birth, you see this odd transformation as a difficult labor. I remember the first time they put Rachel in Elaine's arm. Elaine's just changed. She was so happy to have that baby in her arms. Jesus on the one level

is saying in that John 16, 21 passage, your sorrow is terrible now, but it's going to be like when that little baby's put in your arms, and it's going to be joy. But I also think it's self-referential, and that's why your idea that sometimes maternal images are used with God and Jesus in particular obtains, because Jesus' sorrow and pain is going to be worse than anything. But the joy for the child that's brought into the world is us when we get eternal life. Does that make sense? So Jesus is the woman struggling to bring forth the child in pain, but when we as delivered

and redeemed and saved and exalted are put in his arms, he's going to have joy. So I think that passage is on two levels. The people here, among the Nephites, their sorrow was turned into joy. And we also have this transformation of the Judge Christ about to be turned into the Savior Christ, if that makes any sense, as we start to shift into chapter 11. I have in my margin because I love this idea of Jesus being the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's a gatherer. So look at verse 4. Now if I have my English class right, how oft have I gathered you? I put present tense. Verse 5, how oft would I have gathered you? I put past tense and verse 6, how oft will I gather you?

Past, present and future, he is a gatherer. And then I see us, past, present, future, ye would not. The end of verse 5. We don't like being gathered, but past, present and future, he is a gatherer and he wants to turn our mourning into joy. And he's relentless and he won't give up. And that's how one way he's the same yesterday, today and forever. The people have changed their lamentations into joy and suddenly the voice says, the scriptures have been fulfilled and you've been spared because you're more righteous. And he mentions earth, fire, wind, almost sounds like 70s band earth, wind and fire. So earth, sea, fire and the world wind are talked about the four elements, all of the creation being unsettled. And since he's

mentioned prophecies, look at verse 14, and now, whoso readeth, let him understand. He that hath the scriptures, let him search them. That's actually the middle of Mark 13, which is the Mount of Olives discourse in Mark. It's interrupted and says, whoever's readeth, know this. And so he's saying, if you're reading the scriptures, know that this is what's happening. And he that has the scriptures, let him search them. And I, of course, thought of John 539, which is a problematic passage. This is a great example of exegesis versus exposition. When we look at that in English, search the scriptures for them you think you have eternal life,

they testify of me, we usually use that passage as a proof texture, as a mandate. You should be studying your scriptures. But actually, the context gives you a different exegesis. It says in Greek, you're searching the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in Scriptures, but the Scriptures are testifying of me. And if you look at the context of chapter 5, it's his opponents, the Jewish authorities. So they're spending all their time in dusty tarot scrolls. They're reading their Hebrew text and they're not seeing Jesus. He's saying the Scriptures testify of me. So when it says search the Scriptures, it's not just do your 10 minutes, your 20 minutes, your half hour scripture reading every day. Use the scriptures as a way to find me. The prophets have talked about me, here I am,

pretty soon I'm gonna be there, and Mormon then jumps in and he has a final statement at the end of chapter 10. Says at at the end of the 30th and 4th year, this is verse 18, the people of Nephi who were spared, they are starting to pour out their hearts for the blessings that have come upon them, in so much that soon after the ascension of Christ into heaven, he did truly manifest himself unto them, which is of course 3 Nephi 11. That soon is interesting. I have seen lots of conflicting opinions as to how soon this happened. I think it's safe to say at least 40 days later because the people have time to get to Bountiful and they have time to think about it and prepare. But what's important is the

ascension of Christ. Remember what the angels said to the disciples in Acts 1 when Jesus ascended, this same Jesus who you've seen go up into heaven in same manner will he return. Now of course that's speaking of the second coming, but when Jesus descends, touches down if you will, the temple bountiful in chapter 11 using President Benson's rubric of this is a type of the second coming, his descent to bountiful is like his second coming. So that's what's important from that verse is not the actual timing, but he's gone up and in that same way he's going to come down

and look at verse 19, showing his body unto them and ministering to them and an account of the ministry shall be shown here after basically chapters 11 to 27. Showing his body is interesting and this is where I want to start in part two as we talk about this appearance. There's something really powerful about showing the body and we'll talk about the opportunity people had to actually feel the body. But one of the things that always struck me, I'm getting ahead of ourselves again, in 3 Nephi 18 I think is when Jesus first administers the sacrament Lord's Supper among the Nephites. He says, the bread is in remembrance of my body

which I have shown to you. Now using the New Testament Last Supper accounts as a template, we usually think of the body broken, the lifeblood spent, the different sacrament hymns we have, and so we think of the broken body, but the body he showed the Nephites was a resurrected body. The sacrament is not only commemorative looking back to his sacrifice, I would argue it's anticipatory looking forward to that great messianic banquet after the Second Coming. Just as the risen Lord is appearing to the Nephites, the Lord Jesus after the second coming is going to be with us. When we take the sacrament, yes, as I told Sam, think back to the Last Supper and Gethsemane and crucifixion, but also look forward with joy to the future when we're all together for that great

messianic banquet. In fact, I would argue, when you're talking about past, present, future, John, I would say the sacrament's all three. Yes, it's commemorative and that's what we usually focus on. It's the past. It's present in a very real way because we, like the disciples in the upper room, are gathered together to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. And we are a family at that moment, bearing witness that we accept Jesus. But it is proleptic, that fancy word I used earlier. It's future looking, and we're looking forward to the second coming when we will be with that resurrected Jesus. We've got exciting stuff as we do 3rd Nephi 11.

We're talking about a historical event, the visit of the risen Lord. That is symbolic, as President Benson suggests, of the second coming and the kind of experience we will all have with him when he comes again. Eric, I am trying in my conversations about the Book of Mormon to stop saying when Jesus appeared to the Nephites. Now, he did, but it's not entirely accurate. In April of 2023 general conference, President Dallin H. Oaks changed one word in the midst of his talk. He said, after his ministry in the Holy Land, Jesus Christ appeared to the righteous on the American continent.

And I had that epiphany. Look, it says in verse 18 that there were those who had been called Lamanites. The dividing line about who was there to see Jesus and who wasn't was not on cultural or racial lines. It was upon wickedness and righteousness. That's important. I'm going to try to always say Jesus appeared to the righteous in the New World. Yeah, exactly. This is beginning of chapter 11. It says the multitudes gathered of the people of Nephi, and I wish I could give credit where credit is due. I can't remember who said this. The multitudes gathered of the people of Nephi and I wish I could give credit where credit is due. I can't remember who said this.

Someone pointed out, it's not Nephites, it's people of Nephi. We're no longer using Nephi versus Lamanite language, but now we're more inclusive. Anti-Nephi-Lehi, they were ethnically Lamanites, but they consider themselves as if they were of Lehi and Nephi's lineage. The righteous is a great way to put it. Textually, we could say even what we have from Nephi, the son of Nephi and from Mormon suggest that it's wrong to talk about Nephites as opposed to the Lamanites here.

Eric, before we go on, I want to ask you and John, you too, about what you would say to our listeners who are in really dark places when they're in their thirty-five eights and nines right where there is no light there. One of the most devastating stories I've ever heard both of you remember this Elder Holland told the story back in 2016 about a man named Troy Russell. This is the story the Elder Holland told. My friend Troy Russell pulled his pickup truck slowly out of his garage on his way to donate goods to the local desert industries. He felt his back tire roll over a bump. Thinking some

item had fallen off the truck, he got out only to find his precious nine-year-old son, Austin, lying face down on the pavement. The screams, the priesthood blessing, the paramedic crew, the hospital staff, they were, in this case, to no avail. Austin was gone. Unable to sleep, unable to find peace, Troy was inconsolable. It reminds me of what we've read a little bit in 3589. He said it was more than he could bear and that he simply could not go on. Later on in the Deseret News there was an article about Brother Russell that on his Facebook page he had written a letter to his son. He said exactly two years ago, this is back in 2017, I think when he wrote this, exactly two years ago at about this exact time, my heart was

completely broken. And in my limited perspective at the time, never to be repaired. All joy in life was gone. And I had no idea what to do. All I wanted was to wake up from the nightmare of losing you, hold you in my arms, let you know how much I love you, and never let you go. But in that darkness, Troy told of finding a note in his son's church pants that said, in his son's church pants that said, remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. And he goes on to talk about the light he's seen through prayer and trusting in the Lord. We have listeners who are in their own 35 eights and nines. How do we help someone see that 3511 is coming?

I can think of a friend who I know right now who is going through a very painful divorce. The heartbreak you see in her eyes and on her face, I guess there is a time to sit for a while, but I want to let them know he's coming. The light has come. Coming up in part two of this episode. We had a moment when we sang a general conference. We thanked the O God for a prophet. It was one of these wonderful Mack Wilberg arrangements. But we were aware that he had colon cancer and it wasn't his last conference but we thought it might be.