followHIM - 1 Corinthians 14-16 Part 1 • Dr. Daniel C. Peterson • Sept 4 - Sept 10

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

How important is the doctrine of the Resurrection of the dead? Dr. Daniel Peterson examines the essential doctrine of Resurrection and how the Saints in Corinth were invited to covet the gift of prophecy.Please rate and review the podcast which makes it easier to find.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/new-testament-episodes-31-40/YouTube: https://youtu.be/-zjY61K603g?si=GR1wSFvxeB_YZpNPFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15G9TTz8yLp0dQyEcBQ8BYThanks to the follow HIM team: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 DesignAnnabelle Sorensen: Creative Project ManagerWill 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, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm here with the awesome John, by the way. Hi, John. Hi, Hank. John, we're in our third lesson in 1 Corinthians this week. We have an amazing guest with us. As we've been watching Paul address city after city, I'm noticing that he's quite the encourager. And then he gives these doctrinal exposes. What are you noticing about Paul? What are you looking forward to? Today, I'm really looking forward to this whole chapter on the resurrection and arguing that there's going to be a resurrection. I was thinking, Hank, about the messages in our recent general conference and how many I looked at my wife, like, listen to all of these talks

about Easter and the importance of Easter and Easter should be bigger than Christmas, and this idea that without the resurrection, there wouldn't be a Christmas. There wouldn't be a Christianity, perhaps. So I'm looking forward to that a lot. Like I said, John, we have an incredible guest with us. He's been here before. His name is Dr. Dan Peterson. Dan, what are we looking at with Paul's message to the saints in Corinth? Well, maybe a little bit of background about the city to which he's writing. I've called it a navy town. It was a port town. And cities like that have reputations often deserved.

Sailors put into port and they're looking for some wildlife and nightlife and so on. And the city of Corinth was known for that. It had a port on each side. It was right at the narrow isthmus of Corinth. So you could get to two different seas by going overland. If you were willing to do that, it was hard. But in ancient days, it might be better than sailing one of those coast-hugging boats that were always running aground and losing all their cargo and their men. So it was a bit of a wild town, but the Christians had an outpost there, a branch in the city. But it seems to have been sort of under siege all the time by the moral attitudes. So some of what you get in the Epistle

to Corinthians, the first one, first one that we have, by the way, there seems to have been another that's lost. And I sometimes wonder what would our Christian friends do if we were to discover that first epistle to the Corinthians, the real first epistle? Would they say, nope, the Bible is complete. God breathed. That's it. We don't want any more. Don't care if it's from Paul. But if we found an indisputably authentic Pauline letter, man, I think most of us, certainly Latter-day Saints would say, wow, fantastic. But I sometimes wonder if you have the dogma of the Bible alone and the Bible as we have it alone, no new books, if that wouldn't cause a problem. So we know there was a letter before this one, but this is the first one we have. So Paul had been there. He'd spent some time in the city.

He knew it. By now he's living in Ephesus, but he's aware of problems in the branch. So he's trying to deal with those. And we don't know what the makeup of the branch was. I'm sure there were some Jews in it, but there may have been some people from pagan backgrounds in it as well. Their views of life after death and resurrection and so on were very different. That's why he's addressing some of those questions, I think. And it's quite clear he's responding to questions. You see that in the 16th chapter, which is otherwise kind of a throwaway chapter in a way. There's not a lot of doctrine in there. He's greeting people and personal notes and signing his own signature.

It's clear that someone else wrote the epistle for him. And then he writes the last little bit so that people know it's authentic. But he'll say, now, as for this, and as for that, it's kind of like he's ticking off a list of questions that had been sent to him. So as for Apollos, as for this, as for that. So he's winding down and he wants to make sure he covers everything that they had written to him about. But this is a great letter. And the nice thing is it's pretty much undisputed. There are some where they argue, was this really Paul or was it not? But 1 Corinthians, just about everybody says yes. And it's also pretty early, 55 AD, maybe 54, somewhere in there. And he'd spent somewhere around 49 or 50 into 51, possibly, in Corinth. He's writing to a place that

he knows in a branch where he kind of knows the people and he knows the problems. We've seen Paul cover divisions, moral behaviors, spiritual gifts, and now coming up on resurrection, the gift of tongues and resurrection. John, before we go any further, let's introduce Dan to those who haven't met him before. He joined us last year for some of our chapters in Genesis. Yeah, I think he joined us twice last year in 1 Samuel too, I think. And so we're thrilled to have him back. He's got a great radio voice. I'll try to talk lower when I introduce him. But Daniel C. Peterson has a PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA.

He's a professor emeritus of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he founded the university's Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, formerly chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, member of FARMS, and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. I have to add, I had two cassettes called Understanding Islam that I just wore out in my car. They were so helpful. So we're very grateful to have you.

Welcome back. Well, it's good to be here. Thank you for having me. One of the things that we did at the Interpreter Foundation is put out a film called Witnesses, and then a docudrama that went along with it called Undaunted, Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. And then on the Interpreter website, some little short videos, seven to 12 minutes

long. And we're involved now in a new project. We're calling it Six Days in August about the succession crisis after the death of Joseph Smith and the confrontation between the Twelve and Sidney Rigdon and that momentous decision that was made by the church to follow the Twelve. How do people access those things? The docudrama and the theatrical film Witnesses and Undaunted are actually available on, I think, Living Scripture and I think Amazon Prime. And then the Insights things are free.

They're just on the Interpreter website. Garrett Dirkmaat, for example, does a lot of those. Dan, I'm glad you brought up the 12 on the other side of the world because, John, I was just there. I took a group out to the UK and we ended in Denmark in the Glaucesex Ward. And I had some people come up afterwards. I met Freddie, Chris, Yorkham, Cecilia, and John. I ran into one of the Sorenson sons out there. The nephew of our

executive producer, Shannon, her nephew, Chris, was serving as a missionary in that ward. So it was just really fun to make that connection. There I was on the other side of the planet, and there's people who listen to us. So I want to just say thank you to all of those in that ward, and then anywhere else in the world. Thank you so much for taking your time to listen to us. I was on a trip myself on an Alaska trip and had a couple there who are missionaries at a prison. And one of the approved podcasts these inmates can listen to is Follow Him, and they do. And it was just so nice to hear that. So we hope there's a lot of hope and healing that's coming out of here. But it's so exciting to hear that. And it made me grateful for the Sorenson family, just how many people approached me. The secret sauce is our guests. So Dan, let's turn it over to you. Where do you want to start

here in this third lesson in 1 Corinthians? The assigned chapters for this are chapters 14 through 16. But I'd like to say something about chapter 13, because I think it helps to make sense of what he's saying and what Paul is saying in 14. Chapter 13, of course, is the really famous chapter on charity, or if you will, love. And he says, look, you can covet all sorts of gifts, especially tongues. He's already talking about the gift of tongues there. He says, you know, if I don't have charity or love, then it's worthless. There's no point to it. And without charity, nothing really matters.

He's trying to build communities of loving Christians. And apparently there's been problems in Corinth. There's been strife and disagreement and people dividing against one another and so on and so forth. And that's a problem you can imagine in early Christianity. Heck, it's a problem in can imagine in early Christianity. Heck, it's a problem in the church today in small branches. I was going to say, good thing that never happens around here, right? No, I'm sure every missionary who's been out in small branches knows there have been cases where people have had disagreements and it's really hurt the branch or hurt a ward or something like that. Wards or branches divide up, take sides.

And that's what Paul is trying to get people not to do. And especially, these are all very young Christians. I mean, this letter is being written in the mid-50s. So Christianity is not quite a quarter of a century old. And in places like Corinth, it's younger than that, I'm sure. So he gives them this lesson on charity, which I think, remember, the chapter divisions are not original. So the discussion in chapter 13 should blend right into chapter 14, where it says, follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy. That is a direct continuation of the thinking he's been doing in chapter 13, where he says, you know, the most important thing is love. And then chapter 14, he's saying, look, the gift of tongues is wonderful. He even says at one point,

I myself speak in tongues. I've done it probably more than all of you, but it's not the most important thing, especially if there's no one there to interpret it. If you're just speaking what sounds like gibberish to everyone else, then what good does that do a branch or a ward or a congregation if there's no one there to interpret what it means? Whereas prophecy, and I think we need to understand what he's talking about here is simply inspired speech. It isn't necessarily predictions of the future, or then it certainly isn't necessarily in Corinth. It isn't the head of the church or an apostle prophesying. It's just someone speaking under the influence of the Spirit. It's what we would hope we would get in our meetings every week, if, you know, ideally. But he says that is preferable to speaking in tongues because people can understand it, because it edifies.

Literally, edify means to build up. It builds up the saints, where just standing and speaking funny words, if there's no one to interpret them, nobody knows what they mean, that doesn't do a whole lot of good. So that's a gift I want you to do, covet prophesying more than tongues. And before that, he said, covet the gift ofying more than tongues. And before that, he'd said, covet the gift of charity more than tongues. So tongues is good, but not the best. He wants things that benefit the saints. And there's just a couple of things here that I might point out. In verse 11 of chapter 14, it says, therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

Now, don't think of Conan here. That's not what this is about. The word barbarian had a specific origin in Greek. It means a foreigner, but it was the Greeks. For the Greeks who believed they were the center of the world, Everybody anciently thought they were. So, you know, the Jews are the Jews and everybody else is the goyim, the Gentiles. So the Chinese were the center of the world. Everything outside is barbarians. In Iran, they were Iran, the good guys. Everybody else was Turan, the bad guys. Same thing for the Romans, the Greeks.

The Greeks thought everybody who didn't speak Greek was just going around speaking gibberish, and they imitated them, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, like that. So they become known as the barbaroi, because all they're saying is meaningless gibberish, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. So that's what barbarian here means. If he speaks and no one can understand him, then it's like he's a barbarian speaking gibberish. And I'd be a barbarian here means. If he speaks and no one can understand him, then it's like he's a barbarian speaking gibberish. And I'd be a barbarian to him because he couldn't understand me. That's what's being said there. But then it says in verse 16, if you bless with the spirit,

how shall he that occupies the room of the unlearned? King James English, difficult. How can a person who doesn't understand it, that's basically what it's saying, how can he say amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? And this is one of the first mentions, by the way, that early Christians said amen. It's a Hebrew word, meaning it's sort of like it's true or it's established, let it be so, I suppose.

But we now know that they said amen at the end of utterances. That's interesting because we do too, and they did anciently. But it is kind of funny to say amen at the end of something you don't understand. I served for a while in the BYU Foreign Language Ward. I was in the bishopric there. We had apartments full of Chinese speakers, Japanese speakers, sometimes Arabic, always French, Italian, Spanish, German. Some of those languages I can handle well enough to know if they made a mistake in the sacrament prayer. But it always amused me when the Chinese speakers would say the prayer and then they'd turn to me. Had they done it properly?

Did I say that right? Yeah. All I heard was the amen at the end. They might have been doing commercials for used cars or something. I had no idea. I just thought it was hilarious. So my saying amen at that was kind of meaningless. I mean, it was procedural.

Then they moved forward, but I thought, I really don't know what you said. So that's what he's saying here is if you're speaking a language that no one understands, how can they say amen? How can they agree or endorse what you've said if they don't know what you've said? So his concern here, again, it flows out of chapter 13, I think. He wants to build communities where people love one another and they build each other up. And he says, you know, for that, the gift of tongues is relatively not as important, especially if there's no one to interpret it. Then, okay, it's kind of dazzling. It's a show-off piece, but it doesn't do anyone any good. So

seek to speak inspired utterances to have the Spirit with you for utterances in your language that you're benefiting the other people in your world because you love them, because you have charity for them. Dan, let me see if I get this right. So Paul is saying we could have a church where nobody has charity towards one another and everybody speaks in tongues, but his priority is we need to be kind, uplifting, edifying, and not that speaking in tongues is wrong, but let's prioritize prophecy, uplifting language. Yeah, I think that's exactly what he's saying, because his concern is the health and well-being

of these little branches of the church, the tiny branches of new Christian converts. And he wants them to be benefited by their meetings. And speaking in tongues isn't the most effective tool for doing that. I bet you both remember this. President Hinckley, talking about retention, do you remember this? He said that every new convert needs three things. John, do you remember this? Oh, yeah. A friend, so charity, a responsibility, and nurturing. Nourished by the good word. Yeah, nourished by the good word of God. That's really hard to do. I mean, just take a practical case today. If you have a new member

who speaks only Chinese, who joins an English-speaking ward, you've got to find some way to nourish that person with the good word of God. Make sure that person has a copy of the scriptures. Find somebody who can speak Chinese. Otherwise, that person's going to be lost after a few weeks or months sitting there having no clue what's going on the likelihood is that they won't be able to stay faithful yeah because you need that spiritual nourishment every week john how did you as a bishop make sure that everyone was getting spiritual spiritual nourishment every week it's a great question that lessons, the teachers can always be edifying. I loved what you said about to edify is to build, like the word edifice comes from the same, doesn't it?

You know, we could have a doctrinal debate and doctrinal ping pong, but that's not very edifying. I love the verse 19 here. Yet in the church, I had rather speak five words with my understanding that by my voice i might teach others also than 10 000 words in an unknown tongue i thought yeah yeah what a great phrase and i was thinking about like four words that have been so powerful wickedness never was happiness or or five words i the lord forg Lord, forgive sins, and some of those sermons in a sentence that even in a few words can have such power. And I love that verse, what benefit is 10,000 words that you can't understand? I should have said that to my dad when he listened to opera, and I couldn't understand. But that is Paul's concern. And so that's why I think chapter 13

really goes along with it quite well, because he's laid out that for him, the most important thing, apart, I suppose, from faith in Jesus, he wants you to be a Christian with charity. But other than that, he wants you to have love. He wants us to be loving to one another. If you're a doctrinal whiz, but you are unloving, even if you serve, but without love, grudgingly or self-righteously or demanding credit, that's not what he's wanting from you. He's wanting real love and loving action and so on. So he goes right directly to this question of, I suspect there were people in the branch maybe who were showing off, trying to show off with spiritual gifts. And he says, don't do that. Speaking in tongues.

Yeah. This is really for serving the people around you. It's not about you. Someone told me once, a mentor a long time ago, it's kind of a simple example, but he said, when you teach, when you speak, are you trying to bless? Are you trying to impress? That's going to make the difference in your lesson. Are you just trying to impress people or bless them? As a young man in a BYU ward or something, it was hard not to get out of your mind that really cute girl on the fourth row when you're speaking in sacrament meetings. She's going to be impressed.

Yeah. Boy, she's going to see what a spiritual giant I am. That is not the proper motivation for this. Right. Isn't there a parallel in the Doctrine and Covenants to this very thing about if someone's going to speak in tongues, there will be someone to interpret tongues? Yeah. And quite often that was the case. We hear of experiences with the gift of tongues. We don't hear about these quite in this way so much anymore, although I have heard of them.

But in the early church, there was a fair amount. And actually, I think Joseph Smith actually rebuked it a little bit, that it was just some people got out of hand with it, and it's like maybe a competition. And Brigham Young was the same way. Brigham Young, one of the things I've learned in researching him for this new film project, Brigham spoke in tongues. You know, we see him as the practical man of action who would never, you know, never indulge in that nonsense. But he did speak in tongues. In fact, Joseph Smith saw him speak in tongues when they

first met. And Joseph began to speak in tongues. He'd never seen it in the church before. It was Brigham Young, I think, who was the first one to show Joseph Smith the gift of tongues in this dispensation. That's kind of amazing. But Brigham would have been the first one to tell you, don't stand there speaking in tongues while your neighbor needs food. That wonderful time when he gets up in conference and says, my sermon for the day is go out and save the people on the plains. There are people in the handcart companies who are strewn out there in the cold. I'm not going to give you a sermon or read scriptures to you. I want you to get out there and help them. He was a practical man, and spiritual gifts are fantastic. They're desirable. They accompany

believers, but charity is more fundamental. That seems to be the first line of 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. As they're having this discussion of what are the best gifts, and Paul caps it off with tongues is really showy and you can impress people, but without charity, it's meaningless noise. Yeah. I think that's an important lesson. And being a great scriptorian or great speaker or running a good youth program, these are all great things. But if you're unloving,

then you're missing out on a central element. Starting with verse 27 of chapter 14, 1 Corinthians, if any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two or at the most by three, and that by course, and let one interpret. This almost reads to me like a passage from the church handbook of the first century. So if you're going to do it, do it this way. This is how it should be done. If there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church and let him speak to himself and to God. Let the prophet speak two or three and let the other judge. In other words, these are not the prophet of the church, but these are inspired leaders in the local branch. Let them speak two or three, let the others judge. If false doctrine

is taught, then you've got to be the local authorities there for the very practical reason that Paul isn't there. And communication is poor in those days. So it's up to the local branches to maintain orthodoxy and make sure that things that are taught in their congregations are sound. If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. If somebody else has got an inspired saying, don't drown him out, don't fight. For you may all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Judge purportedly inspired utterances by inspiration.

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints. This is like guidance for running church meetings. Here's the order that we follow. Don't everybody speak at once and watch out. Let the inspiration rest upon you to separate wheat from chaff, false doctrine from true doctrine. I haven't been in too many cases where the bishop had to stand up and say, well, thank you very much, brother so-and-so, but that was not correct. I have seen one or two. But in that case, the bishop is, we hope, speaking as a prophet in that sense, that he has the

inspiration of God with him. He understands the doctrine. And if it's necessary, he or someone has to say, well, I think that was not right. But even doing that, they can do so with charity, right? Yes. He would say, and keep my chapter in 1 Corinthians 13 in mind. You don't do it harshly. You rebuke betimes, that is, at the appropriate time, but then show afterwards an increase of love. Do it as gently as possible. I've seen cases where people were corrected in church, and that was it for them.

They were offended and never came back. I have a sort of distant relative like that who came to pass the sacrament as a teenager. He was dressed inappropriately. Somebody really lit into him for it, and he never passed the sacrament again. That just hurts. And I think, man, that could have been handled differently, and he might still be, and his children might be in the church, but not now. That reminds me of watching 17 Miracles, and who was it that stood up?

There have been some murmuring, Levi Savage. Yeah. Yeah. And Levi Savage became a hero after that movie, but he got, if the movie is accurate, he got called out in front of everybody. Yeah. And there are times when you should just say,

eh, it's not that significant. It would cause more hurt than do good. And so I won't say anything. There are times when you have to say something, especially if you're in a leadership position, but you should do it prayerfully, humbly, as gently as possible to get the job done. Remember the greatest of all these is charity. This idea of with the orderly conduct of a meeting, who presides? When I was a student at BYU, and you guys probably

won't remember this, maybe you will, there just seemed to be this trend. It was happening at youth conferences and stuff where during a hymn, a few kids would excitedly stand up. I think I want to stand during the hymn and some other kids would see it and they would stand up. And it happened a lot. I don't know if that rings a bell with either of you, but I was in the Marriott Center and I think I was in an elders quorum presidency as a student and same thing happened. We've got maybe 17 stakes there or something of elders quorum presidencies and so forth. And during the opening hymn, a bunch of people just stood up and I'll never forget what happened because it was then Elder M. Russell Ballard got up and he looked at the audience and with great charity, he said, may I teach you a principle, watch the presiding authority. So some of you stand up and do this, but I want you in the future

to watch the presiding authority, because he never stood up. And I think part of this gets to that idea of presiding. Who's presiding? I think so. I think that's a very apt story. The fact is that our church meetings are conducted according to an order. And you've traveled a lot. I've traveled a lot. You know that you sometimes go to a ward where you don't speak the language. It's a very foreign culture. The thing is, you can feel at home almost immediately, and you know they would if they came to your ward because you know what's going on.

You know the order of presiding, the order of the service, and so on. That's a marvelous thing. It's amazing to me that given the fact that the church is led by lay people, not trained for the ministry, that around the world you'll find such uniformity. And so I can feel at home in a ward in Guatemala or in Hong Kong. I walk in and I immediately know where we are in the program, what's going on. I can figure out pretty quickly who's conducting, probably who's presiding, and the sacrament is passed in much the same way.

I really love that, actually. We're no more strangers or foreigners, even if we're wandering around the world. This discussion on charity reminds me of a little poem I learned. We have the nicest garbage man. He empties out our garbage can. He's just as nice as he can be. He always comes and talks with me. My mother doesn't like his smell, but then she doesn't know him well.

So we can be kind. What is it President Monson used to say? He never let a problem to be solved be more important than a person to be loved. Yeah. Yeah. Really important. So love is fundamental. And that's one of the things that I hope people would say about Latter-day Saints as they come into a ward and that they feel it's a real community, that these people love and care about one another. Whenever I hear about our image nationally and internationally, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not good. What I'd really love us to be known for is loving kindness, charity. If that were our image everywhere, man, the world would be converted, I think. But I want it to be the reality, not just a PR image.

And I think to a large degree it is. I mean, I feel at home among Latter-day Saints, and they are kind. Do you remember Elder Robert D. Wells years ago? He wrote a little book called Hasten My Work. He told the best story. This kid's in a bus. I think it was in Wyoming to go to college. He gets out of the bus. He's walking up the street to the church, and he's in a bus. He's off. I think it was in Wyoming to go to college. He gets out of the bus.

He's walking up the street to the church and he's in a suit. He sees a guy in front of him in a suit and thinks, oh, he's probably, I don't recognize him. He's got to be new at the school. Runs up, catches up with them and says, hey, you going to church? Yeah. Well, you want to go with me? Sure. So they go into a sacrament meeting.

He finds out he's new at the university. They sit down and after sacrament meeting, he says, so where are you going next? What priesthood do you hold? The young man says, huh? Are you a priest or an elder? He says, I don't know what you mean. He said, are you a member of this church? No. He said, oh, but you sang the hymns. Yeah, I knew it. You had a book. Well, you took the sacrament. It was like the lastpper, right? And he says, why did you come with me? He said, oh, you were just so nice to me. I thought I'd come with you. If you're new in a town and you don't know the people, to have a friend is so important.

It is. I will say when we moved to Cairo many years ago, that branch in Cairo became our lifeline. You're in this enormous foreign city, very foreign and very chaotic. And, you know, to have that branch, we, we instantly had friends when we arrived in, in Cairo within a week or two, because we, we knew each other, we understood each other. And I remember at one point, the head of the program that I was in, which is a very competitive sort of elite Arabic studies program said, we admit people every year from different universities across the countries. But if I had my preferences, I would take people who are Latter-day Saints, and he was not, I'd take people who are Latter-day Saints over people who are not,

even if their scores on the admitting tests were a little bit lower. And I said, why? And he said, because you have this group here that keeps you sane. We have people come over every year from other schools, and they can't handle the city, and they drop out, and they go back home to the States. But he said, you've got friends. You arrive here instantly. You've got a safety net, people to show you around and help you feel at home. And he said, we've never had a problem with one of you folks because you have that social safety net. It was absolutely true. I felt for people who arrived in Cairo and knew nobody and had nowhere to go.

We had 50 friends almost instantly. And they'd say, oh, can we help you? What do you need? We'll show you where to go to buy this or where to go to get this done, things like that, and instantly. And Latter-day Saints take that for granted sometimes. But if you move to a really foreign city, boy, you don't. It's really helpful. One of the things that is most interesting and most controversial about Paul altogether, and 1 Corinthians 14 in particular, is the verses 34 and 35. Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn

anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. Now, this has caused a lot of heartburn for a lot of people, and especially nowadays, understandably so. And so the question is, what do we make of it? Well, here's one nice answer from a Latter-day Saint point of view. Whatever the origin of this policy in first century Corinth or first century Paul, it is not the policy of the church today. We have living prophets and apostles who don't teach this and they have every bit the same authority that Paul had. So we don't have to worry about it. No one knows exactly why Paul is saying this. In fact, in chapter 11, verse 5, he does talk about women praying and prophesying. So it's a little

difficult to tell exactly what his policy was. But there was probably a prejudice against women speaking, preaching in public religious services. Certainly women were subordinate to men in first century society everywhere, in Jewish society, in Greek society, Roman society, everywhere. They didn't have the rights that men did. And so this may simply reflect Paul's time that culturally it was inappropriate for a woman to speak in a public gathering like that. And Paul was just saying, it's okay, follow that policy. But we're not bound by it today. And I think that's really absolutely wonderful. So women speak in general conference and routinely in sacrament meeting. The bishop doesn't do all the preaching in church.

Lay members of the ward do the preaching in church, and about half of them are women. So in fact, even though we have a male priesthood, half the preaching in the church is done by women. Roughly half, I would guess. Our worship services every week are divided between men and women, and both contribute. In footnote 34b there, the JST changes the word speak to rule, which softens that a bit, and more about keys and presiding, perhaps. But Hank, what does the manual say? There's a great statement out of the manual here. It said, in Paul's day, there were different expectations about how women

participated in society, including church meetings. Whatever the teachings in 1 Corinthians 14, 34, and 35 meant in Paul's day, they should not be understood to mean that women cannot speak and lead in the church today. President Nelson said to the women of the church, we need your strength, your conversion, your conviction, your ability to lead, your wisdom, and your voices. The kingdom of God is not and cannot be complete without women who make sacred covenants and then keep them, women who can speak with the power and authority of God. That's a great statement, and that's exactly the way we see it, that the church led entirely by men with only men speaking and so on would be deeply wounded, and we'd be losing half the strength of our membership. And I'm glad you mentioned 1 Corinthians 11 5, every woman that prayeth or

prophesieth, but clearly this can't be what Paul meant if earlier he's talking about women that pray and prophesy. So that helps us go, we got to look at these two together and figure out what's happening here. I'm excited to look at 15 because I'm so curious about what the Greeks thought about the resurrection or what they thought about our bodies or whatever, and how Paul had to overcome that and how he teaches so strongly here about the reality of a physical resurrection. Should we dive into 15? Yeah. Corinth was a pagan Greek city. And so as I think I've said, we don't know exactly who was in the branch. We don't have a membership list or anything like that, but I'm betting there were

some Jews. They would usually be the nucleus of the preaching in a new city because Paul and others would go to the synagogues and preach. But then you would start getting Gentiles, people from non-Jewish backgrounds. And they'd bring with them the baggage. All of us bring baggage with us, but they'd bring with them the baggage of Greek ideas about life after death, which mostly did not involve physical resurrection. They involved living on as a spirit in the spirit world after death. Hades, they called it. It's not hell. It's just spirit world.

And you'd be there in this kind of attenuated form as a spirit being. But Christianity came along preaching that the physical body is good. Think of the verses in Genesis. God looked upon the world and said, it is good. He likes the physical world. He's not opposed to it. Greek thought sometimes was the physical body is evil, or at least it's a nuisance. Plato's idea was, he says in one of his dialogues that philosophy is the study of death. Now, it sounds morbid, but it's not what he meant. He meant you're trying to act as if you're a disembodied spirit. Think purely rationally.

The body, we have to drag the carcass around for a while, but who wants it back when you die? Well, the message of Christianity is you do and you'll get it back. We will be physically resurrected. So I think that's one of the reasons that people in Corinth were denying the resurrection. They just, well, bodies are, all sorts of things go wrong with them and so on. So we'll be purely spiritual when we die. That's what it was really meant, that Jesus rose from the dead in spirit form, and Paul is saying,

no, no, no, that's not what we teach. So he opens with these stirring words, which are really important on a whole lot of levels in chapter 15. Brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received and wherein you stand, by which also you're saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. And then he gives this list. This seems to be, some people argue, maybe a creed or something. He might be quoting a formula. In any event, he's telling what he preached to them when he was there at the end of the 40s, beginning of the 50s.

And he said, it's also what I received. He says in verse 3, So this is taking it back to a really early stage. I think this is really important. received. He says in verse 3, I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received. So this is taking it back to a really early stage. I think this is really important. Paul was converted within a year or two, max, of the death of Christ. And then he visits with the apostles. We know that from scattered clues and acts and Galatians and so on. He met with Peter. He interviewed him to find out everything he could about the story that he was now called upon to preach. That goes back to something like 34 AD. He's saying, this is what I was taught. Why is this important? Because some people say, well, the idea of the resurrection was a late legend that grew up, you know, maybe even into the second century, who knows. And

Jesus was an ordinary peasant preacher. And then the stories grew up about his rising from the dead. No, the evidence internal to the New Testament itself is that that grew up within at most a year or two. That's not a lot of time for a legend to develop. And he's talking about eyewitnesses, people who'd met the risen Jesus. So this takes the story of the resurrection back really early.

That doesn't prove it's true, but boy, it wipes out the argument that it's a late legend that grew up, sort of folklore, the telephone game, that sort of thing. It just gets better and better as the years go by. The evidence is it's right there from the start. And that's the reason, of course, that Christianity survives and prospers. You read the early chapters of Acts. The apostles are hiding out, demoralized in the upper room. And then all of a sudden, they're out preaching. And they keep getting arrested and beaten. And the authorities tell them, you do this again, we'll arrest you and beat you again.

And they basically say, well, you do what you've got to do. We'll do what we've got to do. And they're fearless. You know, you, you do what you've got to do. We'll do what we've got to do. And they're fearless. You know, you, you murdered Jesus, but we're preaching you rose from the dead. You have to ask, so what happened? Well, the obvious explanation is something powerful happened. They got stronger. Yes. World history is full of little messianic groups that failed because the leader gets killed. But boy, that's not what happens with Christianity. He got killed, but then he's back. And that would,

I think, have a really powerful impact on you. Do you fear death in the same way? No, because you know that it's just a gateway. So he says, I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received. And then this formula, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures. It reminds me of Joseph Smith's statement, the fundamental principles of the gospel are that Jesus died, that he was buried, he rose again. I mean, this is at the heart of it. If this isn't true, then the rest of it is basically worthless.

You can have the good basketball games. You can have a good youth program, girls camp, boys camp, that sort of thing. It's all well and good, but the heart of it is gone. And the really great glorious news, the kernel, the core of it is gone. And then he lists off these witnesses. He was seen of Cephas, that is Peter, then of the twelve. After that, he was seen of above 500 brethren at once. So we don't know where that was, but maybe in the Galilee during the ministry up there, post-resurrection ministry, of whom the

greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James and of all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen of me also as one born out of due time. Then he says, I'm the least of the apostles. I'm not worthy to be one because I persecuted the saints of God. That list of witnesses interests me. You know, the idea that there are 500 witnesses, some have died. That's probably what it means. Some have fallen asleep.

Some have died, but most are still around. He's kind of implicitly inviting them. If you doubt me, ask them. There are living witnesses today, and they will tell you, we saw him. This is not a matter of philosophical arguments or interpreting the scriptures. We saw him. We are witnesses of him. And this is a very, very early list. So people are still alive. Many of them are still alive at this point. Peter is still alive, very early list. So people are still alive. Many of them are still alive. At this point, Peter is still alive, and the other apostles mostly are still alive. What interests me, though, I think, is one of the things that's not there. There's somebody

missing from the list. It's the women at the tomb. They're not there. We don't know. We can't get into Paul's mind, but I'll offer an explanation, a suggestion for why. Paul is a trained rabbinic lawyer, and he knows that the testimony of women was not acceptable in courts in Judaism in the first century. So he's not going to list the women, which is in a way a faith-promoting idea for me, because I'm thinking, why are we told in the Gospels that the women were the first ones at the tomb? Couldn't they have picked a better witness if they're just making this up? Have Peter be there or some reputable male or something. But it's the women. Why? Because that's how the story actually happened. And you can't just arbitrarily re-identify the first witnesses at the tomb. Remember that women come back to the apostles

and their words seem to them as idle tales. They would say, well, you know, women, they're emotional, they're hysterical, they're really involved in the story, but we'll go and see because we don't fully trust what they had to say. And that was the pervasive first century attitude. You can read in Jewish law books from just after that about how women can't be allowed to testify because they're not reliable, they're too emotional, and that kind of thing. And that, I think, is why the women are not in this list. Their absence just screams out at you because he's presenting a list of reputable legal witnesses, not these women. They wouldn't count. So it wouldn't make sense for the gospel writer to put these women as the first witnesses if they're making it up. If they're just making it up, they're going to

pick someone else. I mean, you can make up anybody, but they choose it to be the women because it was the women and they're telling the story as accurately as they can tell it. And well, they might've even wished, darn, wish we had better witnesses than these women. But that's how the story happened. And so that's how they tell it. So that strengthens my confidence in the reliability of the gospel accounts, that it's women at the tomb, because ideally from their standards, you wouldn't have made it that way. They have no choice. So to me, that's a powerful argument for the authenticity of the story. There are other things where sometimes Peter and Paul are shown arguing. I always think those are good arguments

for the authenticity of the story because you don't want your heroes arguing or squabbling. That doesn't look good, but you tell it because that's what happened. These are honest accounts telling the truth as best they can tell it. So it enhances my confidence in the New Testament accounts rather than damaging it. I think that that early list is really important. It has the appearance in Greek of something you would memorize and recite, which means it's older than the letter, that Paul is quoting something. And Paul is saying, this was what I was told back in 33, 34 AD. And this is what I preached to you in around 50 AD. And think about it. That is within two decades or less, maybe even within a year or two of the resurrection of Christ, the death and

resurrection of Christ. That means this notion out there, and I hear it from pop critics all the time. Oh, you know these stories grow up after time and they get bigger and better and he's resurrected from the dead and that sort of thing no they're very early these are eyewitness accounts and they circulate early which for a historian anyway that's what you want the earlier the sources the better dan let's keep going here walk us through the rest of this chapter. We're not done with resurrection, right? Oh, by no means. And Paul makes it clear that resurrection is at the heart of his message and from his point of view, at the heart of Christianity. Verse 12, now, if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you

that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen? And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised.

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, yea, yet in your sins. Then they also which have fallen asleep in Christ, that is those who've died as Christians, are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, because we have this silly delusional hope, and it's not true. So there he's laying out some of the negative implications of saying that Christ isn't risen from the dead. We're false witnesses because we say he was. He did rise from the dead. And Paul, of course, saying, I've seen him and others saw him. He includes himself as the last of that list, but others have seen him and he was physically raised from the dead. That's the point, of course,

in Luke, where he has them touch him, and he eats in the Gospels to show that he is a physical corporeal being. This is not just a ghost. But Paul says, look at the implications if you deny this. Think about this. The heart of the Gospel is gone. Christ wasn't raised from the dead. You're yet in your sins. You haven't been atoned for. And everybody that you've loved that has died, they're not coming back and they won't rise from the dead. He goes on to say, but Christ is risen from the dead, because of course, for him, it's not a question for debate. He knows. And so he testifies that he became the first fruits of them that slept. By man came death. Of course, he's talking about Adam.

By man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. So fundamentally, he bears his testimony to them and says he is risen from the dead. And this is what flows from that. It's glorious. And in the end, the last enemy that shall be destroyed, he says in verse 26, is death. Death will be destroyed because of what Christ did. But there's some other passages that are interesting along the way. Verse 23, every man will be resurrected in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming,

then come at the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall put down all rule and all authority and power. And it's interesting that he delivers the kingdom up to God. Well, it makes most sense to me to read that as they are two separate persons. The right half of my brain will give it to the left half of my brain or something like that. That's not what he's talking about. They're united. Yes,

but they're not the same God. He'll be subject to the father. He will deliver everything up humbly to the father. This is what Lucifer did not want to do, but what the Son will do, that when everything is successful and everything is wrapped up, he will hand it over to the Father as an offering to the Father, meaning the Father is a different person.

Then we get to the very famous verse that Latter-day Saints love, and I have a little story to tell about it. He's saying, you know, if the dead don't rise, then what's the point of what people are doing in verse 29? Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead? What's the point of this? President Hinckley and others have talked about how the fact that temples are a symbol of our commitment, our belief, our knowledge, our certainty of a life beyond the grave. Yeah, we're putting our money where our mouth is, right? And a lot of it these days, we're building a lot of temples. It's because we really are confident that the ordinances done in those temples matter for

people who passed on. If they don't, then these buildings are useless. They're worthless. But we know that these ordinances have efficaciousness. I went through the temple just the other day, and this has occurred to me multiple times before. Happened to go through in this case for a man who was born around 1824 in the Punjab in India, which was kind of interesting to me. But I remember thinking at a couple of points, you know, how often has this man's name been spoken aloud? Or how often has he been thought about in the past couple of centuries? Not very often. I mean, I don't know that he was a great leader or anything like that. The idea of the temple is to lovingly remember everyone who has ever lived and act on that person's behalf in service. That's an afield, but I thought in some ways that the two great symbols

of the past century or two have been the temple and the concentration camp. The concentration camp existed to erase people, treat them as members of groups, treat them as numbers, exterminate them, and so on.

And millions of people have died in those camps, labor camps and re reeducation camps and extermination camps. In the temple, we remember individually, not in batches, individually, everybody that we can find who ever lived. And that person is remembered and officiated on behalf of. To me, that's a wonderful thing. I mean, it's the exact opposite, the divine opposite to Satan's plan of exterminating people and reducing people to nothing. Everybody is remembered. Theoretically,

I could take John to the temple and baptize him for every man who's ever died. Just en masse. Real quick. Yeah, en masse. But the Lord would say, nope, we're going to do this one by one. Please join us for part two of this podcast.