followHIM - 2 Kings 17-25 -- Part 2 : Dr. Joshua M. Sears

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

Dr. Sears returns to discuss the righteous King Hezekiah and King Josiah and the impact of the Rabshakeh trying to tear down the faith of King Hezekiah and the remaining Israelites in the Southern Kingdom. We discuss what types of voices we choose to listen to in times of difficulty.Please rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/old-testament/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive ProducersDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing & SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsKrystal Roberts: French TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-piano

Welcome to part two of this week's podcast. Who do I trust? What is my faith? What confidence is this wherein I have trusted? We had to just reach deep down. And it's not about, do I go to church or not? Or do I fulfill a calling or not? It's really deep down. What do I believe? When push comes to shove and I'm against the wall and I have no options left, what do I believe? I had a moment like this on my mission. I got back to my apartment at night and got a phone call from

someone, a missionary at the office that said, Hey, the mission president's been trying to reach you all day. Where have you been? And he said, okay, stay next to the phone. I'm going to have him call you. And I hung up the phone and I sat down and I thought, what could this be about? And then it hit me that the only example I had seen in my mission of where the president unexpectedly calls someone is from a death in the family, and he's got to notify you. So I don't know if I was jumping the gun or not, but I was convinced someone in my family had died. So I sat there just in shock, and I pulled out a photo of my family that I had in my scriptures to show people. And I was just looking at my mom, my dad, my brother, Mark, Colin, Alec, trying to think,

who is it? Which one of them is dead? And minute after minute ticked by and I'm thinking, how am I going to react when he tells me about this? And you got to understand, I'd had no deaths in my family up to this point. Even my grandparents are all alive. So I'd never had to experience that or process those kinds of emotions before. And now I was a hundred percent convinced in a few minutes, he's going to tell me either that a parent or a brother has died. And so I'm kind of spiraling and I'm just thinking about everything. I haven't seen these people in months and months either. So that made it worse. And this thought suddenly just struck across my brain. Do you believe that if they're dead, that they'll be resurrected? Do you really believe that you'll see them again? Or are you afraid that this is it and you'll never see them again?

And it was one of the scariest thoughts I think I'd ever experienced in my life because just asking the question, Ope makes you vulnerable. What do I really believe? Wherein is the confidence? Wherein I have trusted? And there was, I don't know how long this was. This whole period of time was just kind of weird. But I sincerely asked myself the question, and I suddenly had the self-realization, I do believe that. I 100% believe in going to see them again. I may be sad, but I know I'll see them again. It's going to be okay. And I sincerely, truly to my core believe that. And realizing that I did believe that was such a relief. And it was kind of a defining moment in my life where the gospel wasn't theoretical. I really had to truly deep down, what do I believe? It's not my parents anymore. It's what do I believe? And I realized based on the spiritual experience I have had and the spiritual experience as

I've seen on my mission, I, I completely believe that it's going to be okay. And again, it was such a, just a flood of relief knowing that I do believe that and knowing that it would be okay. And a few minutes later, the president called and it turned out no one was dead. It was something else. So that was okay. But you had this moment. You know, that was a moment where I really learned something about myself. And I think a lot of people have gone through similar things where it's a process of kind of self-discovery and learning. I know other people where they have that moment and they realize that their faith is

wanting. And that's something that they don't feel good about. And they realize I need to do something about this. I need to build my faith. I need to seek the spiritual experiences because I can't say with confidence that I have that faith in those things. And we all go through that differently. And there's different times when that comes and we have different journeys there. That's fine. But these moments do come where you have to ask yourself, it's not theoretical anymore. It's not abstract theology. Push comes to shove here. Do I believe the gospel? And am I willing to put my money where my mouth is or put my family's life on the line? Right. That's what Hezekiah was facing here. You've got second Kings 19 is this setup of I've got a prophet pulling me one way.

I've got an enemy pulling me the other way, and I've got to decide who I believe, who I'm going to go with. Trust is the issue here. And we go through this today. I've got people I know from my wards and my friends who have listened to voices undermining trust in the prophet and they've left the church. It breaks my heart when that happens, but these voices are very sophisticated and they're very powerful and very influential. And often, honestly, they'll make a lot of accurate points. The rabbi Shekeh had history on his side. He has destroyed all these places. Maybe Hezekiah made a mistake.

And the way that he claims he's acting on God's side today. How many times do people say, don't listen to the first presidency because they've got this wrong. But what the position I'm advocating is actually what the Lord wants. I hear that argument all the time. People be like, don't listen to what the first presidency and the 12 say about the Lord's standards of chastity, because not only those stand, the prophets getting those standards wrong, those standards hurt people. Therefore you should listen to what I have to say about this. And actually the Lord backs me anyway. Or on the other side, you might get people saying, don't listen to what the first presidency in the 12 has said about prevention of disease, because they've got this wrong and their counsel will actually hurt you.

So listen to what I have to say. The Lord would back me up in the end. You know, whatever the issue is, there's a lot of them, people trying to undermine trust in the first presidency in the 12 and the promises of the Lord. And we're all deciding what voices are we going to listen to. It's interesting that the youth theme this year is the Proverbs 3, that trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not unto thine own understanding. And this royal, what did you call him?

Royal steward is reasoning with his own understanding and trying to get them to use their own understanding. And it's interesting how many he's saying not to trust here. And I love how brief Isaiah is. Don't be afraid of the Assyrians. He's looking you eye to eye and you've got to decide who do I trust here. Wow. It's a great story. Yeah.

And I don't think Isaiah's revelation needs to be long here because like we see in the book of Isaiah, he's ready to give him plenty of revelations about this. So all he needs to do is restate what's been said. You don't need a new revelation here. Just trust in the revelation that's come. Josh, wouldn't you say that we're all going to be in Hezekiah's position? I think that's what we're getting to here is that we're all going to have rabshakehs in our life. We're all going to have prophets. And look what Hezekiah does. He receives all this information, lays it out in front of the Lord. And verse 15, Hezekiah prayed. Verse 14, where does he go, Hank?

He went up to the house of the Lord, spread it before the Lord, and Hezekiah prayed before the Lord. And isn't that great that when he's in this crisis moment, he goes to the temple. And then this is such a beautiful prayer. I think this is one of the most sincere, heartfelt prayers you could find in scripture. When you consider all that this guy has on the line. Verse 15. O Lord God of Israel, which dwells between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone. Of all the kingdoms of the earth, thou hast made heaven and earth.

This is testimony that he's bearing right here. Lord, bow down thy ear. And here, you know this is testimony that he's bearing right here lord bow down my ear and here you know what's writing on this prayer he's pouring everything into this open lord thine eyes and see hear the words of sennacherib which hath sent him to reproach the living god and then this is interesting he actually in prayer, responds to the logic of the Rabshakeh voice. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire. So he acknowledges that a lot of what the Rabshakeh has said is actually true. You know, it's not all made up lies.

I meet so many people that are having like a faith crisis. They've read something on the Internet about something a prophet did or something from church history. And they'll come to me and partly they're hoping that I will disprove whatever they've said and said, no, that's just fake anti-Mormon stuff. What are the assumptions you're making about this fact? For example, people might say, well, this prophet said something wrong and therefore he can't be a prophet. They don't realize their assumption is that to be a prophet, you always have to do everything perfectly. They don't question that assumption. My assumption is that prophets don't have to do that. My framework is prophets are humans.

They make mortal mistakes, but they're still prophets. They're still the Lord's mouthpiece when they speak as a prophet. We approach the same historical fact with different frameworks and come away with different conclusions. So often this is a matter of evaluating what our assumptions are and bringing a faithful framework to the question, not a framework of doubt or disbelief. So I think Hezekiah does that here. He and the Rabshakeh both agree on the fact that the Syrians have a track record of destroying these other nations and that their gods didn't do anything to save them. But he questions the assumption, the framework that the Rabshakeh brings to that. The Rabshakeh assumes their gods are powerless in the wake of the Assyrian gods and their army. So their gods were too powerful,

not powerful enough to save them. But Hezekiah's framework is actually those weren't even gods. So destroying those countries proves nothing. So he says that here in verse 18, they have cast their gods into the fire for, and here's his different framework for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone, therefore they have destroyed them. So I love how he agrees with the Rep Shikha on the fact, but changes the framework to interpret the fact. And that's a powerful model for us too. So many problems get better when we use the correct framework. In verse 19, he finishes the

prayer. Now, therefore, O Lord, our God, I beseech thee, save thou us, save us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only. So this closing petition, again, with closing with testimony. And I think that's his closing powerful plea. Please save us. And the verb there in Hebrew is yashah, means to save, to deliver, to rescue. And interestingly enough, this is in the root of Isaiah's name. Isaiah's name, Yeshayahu, means Yahweh or Jehovah.

Yahweh is the Hebrew pronunciation of Jehovah, is salvation. Yahweh saves. So Isaiah's name is that message. And also in the name Joshua, Yehoshua, has the same thing. Basically,'s name is that message. And also in the name Joshua, Yahoshua has the same thing. Basically Yahweh is salvation. And just as a fun little connection here, the name Joshua, between the Old and New Testaments, there's a shortened version of the name that becomes popular, Yeshua, instead where you take off the Yahweh part and just leaves the word salvation there. And then that becomes the name, of course, of the Savior, immortality, salvation.

That's why the angel says to Joseph in Matthew, you shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people in their sins. There's a word play there because Jesus' name means salvation. And what is he going to do? He's going to save. So as he prays to the pre-mortal Jesus Christ here, Jehovah, to save them, I kind of like that connection. He's like, you're Jesus. Do this Jesus thing. Save us. We need help. And all of us, and we might not have Assyrians on our doorstep, but all of us

have those prayers. Save us. We're desperate. We've tried to do our best. There's nothing else we can do. No one else can save us. You're the only one left. Please save us. Josh, something I never realized is that Hezekiah also has the weight of, I did this, right? I rebelled against the king of Assyria. I'm partly to blame here. This isn't just about me trusting in the Lord, but this is about me. I made a mistake. I don't even know if it's a mistake, but I'm partly to blame for this situation. Whether he was to blame or not, I imagine how many times he second guessed his political decisions here and what it's brought upon his country. Now, of course,

the book of Isaiah, Isaiah frames it as he tried to preach repentance. The people were wicked and he tried to warn them and this is the consequence. So it might not all be Hezekiah's fault. That doesn't mean he doesn't feel the weight as the king of all the death and destruction. What is the Lord's response here? This is epic. 2 Kings 19 may be one of my favorite chapters of scripture now that you've showed us all this. 2 Nephi 20 has the same story. So in verse 20 now, Isaiah comes to Hezekiah.

And interesting, he doesn't send messengers this time. He shows up in person and he kind of says, Hey, guess what? You passed the test. And he gives them a much longer revelation. So short revelation before that's all you're going to get, you know, to balance in your, your trial of faith here. But now that you've passed the test and you've proved that you believe to your core in Jehovah and you're going to trust him no matter what, here's a longer revelation that'll come to you now. And this is what the Lord says. And then the revelation starts in verse 20

and it goes all the way to verse 33. So it's a long revelation. And it starts off in verse 20. Isaiah said to Hezekiah, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, that which thou has prayed to me against the Nacrib king of Assyria, I have heard. A good testimony, right? God hears your prayers.

Anyway, we don't have to read the rest in detail, but it's mostly a long thing about how he's going to destroy the Assyrians who have blasphemed against him. And then verse 29 and 30, he starts talking to Hezekiah again and talks about, you are going to regrow here. Judah is going to survive. There's to be this righteous remnant that will survive the destruction and will regrow. And he promises that in verse 30, the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward and bear fruit upward. Tie that back to Isaiah 6 or 2 Nephi 16, where Judah was described as a tree that's going to get chopped down, but Isaiah is told, you know, that 10th will survive. There's going to be the holy seed whose substance and life is in it that will regrow. Isaiah loves using this tree imagery to describe Judah and the branches. And then in verse 31, the Lord promises, for out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant and they that escape out of

Mount Zion, the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. He finishes in verse 34 by promising, I will defend this city to save it for my known sake and for my servant David's sake. That's a reference back to what we were reading earlier in 2 Samuel 7, where he promises David, no matter what, your descendants will rule on the throne. I'm never going to change the dynasty up. So since Sennacherib is planning to end the Davidic dynasty, I'm not going to let that happen. That's part of that promise to David here. So that's... I love this. And I think it's significant that Hezekiah says this prayer to the Lord, but it is answered through the prophet. I love that that tells us we can trust living prophets. The prophet says, the Lord heard your prayer and here's what he said.

Then actually the revelation's over. And in verse 35, we return to narrative and it tells us how the Lord saves them. And it came to pass that night that the angel of the Lord went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians, 104 score and 5,000. And when they arose early in the morning, meaning in the JST, those who were left, the survivors of the Assyrian army arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So then they took the Assyrian army, tucks tail, and they flee back to Assyria. Just like Isaiah had predicted in verse 36 and 37, the king of Assyria eventually gets his comeuppance back home because his own sons murder him. And so I love that you brought up that extra biblical source where he said, yeah, I had

Hezekiah pent up like a bird in a cage because that's all he could do. He surrounded Jerusalem, but he never got in because of this miracle. And I think that's without trying to be one of the more humorous verses. When they arose, they were all dead corpses. I didn't know the JST had tweaked that a little bit. Yeah, it's not in the footnotes there, but the grammar is weird because it's like, well, are the dead people seeing the corpses? So Joseph Smith clarifies that no, it's those that were left looked around and wow, most of our army is dead. It sounds like they woke up dead. You're like, you know, and so you get this miraculous last minute, you know, intervention right there against all odds. There's the other side of be not afraid of the Assyrians. I have a scourge prepared and 185,000 like that.

In 2 Nephi, it picks this up. So 2 Nephi 20 verse 12, wherefore it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and upon Jerusalem, meaning when he's used the Assyrians as a tool to punish the wicked and do what he needed them to do, then I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his high looks. So the Assyrians don't get off the hook. They think they've been doing this because they're so powerful, but it's only because the Lord has let them. And when they've done what he needs them to do, then he's going to punish them for their own cruelty. Now, I want you to say that again, because I want to make sure I remember it. So the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, however you say it, goes back and his sons kill him.

So this is 2 Kings 19.37, last verse of the chapter. He's worshiping in the house of this pagan god, and then two of his sons strike him dead. Is this because he wasn't successful or just, you know, family infighting? Just political intrigue, I think. It doesn't say. I think in context of this story, it's just there to show you that that prophecy is fulfilled and that God took care of him there. We don't know what the sons were thinking, but I imagine there's some family dysfunction there. There's a great paragraph in the Bible dictionary under Assyria, and it reads to me like a movie

trailer. All Palestine now lay at the feet of the Assyrian. One man alone, the prophet Isaiah, who had never ceased to warn the Judeans against their vanity and their reliance on Egypt, remained undaunted and encouraged Hezekiah not to surrender his stronghold. And then it just says briefly, the prophet's confidence was justified. A great disaster fell on Sennacherib's host, and he was obliged to return to Nineveh. So he's obliged. Obliged. Yeah. I think I'll go now. 185,000 soldiers are dead. Let's go home. That's a great line. The prophet's confidence was justified. And I think we're going to, throughout history in the latter days, see that again and again. Oh, Josh, this has been awesome.

And we still have another story to go, right? With another king. Yeah. Actually, then there's a short Hezekiah follow-up here in chapter 20. So Hezekiah, like we've talked about, is amazing. He is. My sister-in-law, Kimberly, told me that she named my nephew Hezekiah because she admires just how he was so steady and righteous with bad generations before him and bad generations after how he does this. His story though in chapter 20 gets a little bit more nuanced and complicated. So first in chapter 20, this is now like the epilogue to the Hezekiah story. He gets sick and Isaiah tells him, you know,

set your house in order because you're about to die. And then Hezekiah says a prayer where he asked the Lord to extend his life so he can keep doing good and things. And then Isaiah says, okay, the Lord has heard you and he's going to give you 15 more years of life. So that's all good so far. In the version of the story quoted in the book of Isaiah, it adds this lengthy prayer of thanks that Hezekiah gives. So that's beautiful there too. You don't get that in Kings, but, but then things take a bit of a turn at chapter 20, verse 12. You've got Babylon, which right now is not the superpower. Assyria still is, but Babylon's a relatively minor kingdom. They're a vassal of the Assyrians, but in a hundred years, they're going to be the big, bad empire. They're starting to come on the horizon here as being more important

in the geopolitical scene. And you've got these Babylonians who heard that Hezekiah recovered from a sickness and they send letters and a present to Hezekiah, like some ambassadors show up. Sorry, Josh. John said crumble cookies. They delivered some crumble cookies. Happy that you're okay. Yeah. Yeah. So they send letters and a present and they show up to Jerusalem. And in verse 13, it says Hezekiah hearkened unto them. And apparently this is a mistake as the rest of the story will show. Something about hearkening unto them is not good. And then it says that he goes and shows them everything like that's in the palace and all the treasures and everything that he has, the nice stuff, the gold, everything. He shows them a complete tour.

Isaiah comes to Hezekiah after and is like, who are those guys? And Hezekiah tells him. And then Isaiah says, what did you show them? And Hezekiah says, I showed them everything. And then apparently this is bad. Again, he shouldn't have done that. And Isaiah makes this prediction that someday the Babylonians are going to come here and take all the stuff that you just showed off to them. And they're going to carry it away

to Babylon and there's going to be nothing left. And they're going to take away your sons all to the palace of the king of Babylon. So this is a prediction of the Babylonian exile in a hundred years. And then 19 Hezekiah is like, well, good as the word of the Lord, at least it won't happen in my days. That's kind of what he says right there, which also doesn't put him in a very flattering light. There's different ways you can read what he's saying there, but it- You should be concerned. Yeah. A lot of people understand it to be this unflattering thing.

Well, at least my days will end fine and it won't happen till after my time. So at the very end of Hezekiah's life, there's this kind of negative story where he messed up. It's kind of tied to the Babylonian exile. It's going to kind of precipitate that or foreshadow it at least. So this is an interesting thing because it's a reminder that as good as Hezekiah was, he wasn't perfect. Which is a follow-up to our lesson on, you know, you should listen to your church leaders and the prophet. This is also an important caveat to that. That that doesn't mean that they're going to be perfect and not make mistakes. And in fact,

the book of Isaiah develops that line in an interesting way. So if it's okay to jump out of 2 Kings and go to Isaiah chapter 9. First seven verses of Isaiah chapter 9 talk about the birth of a Judahite king who's going to be like amazing. It talks about the land's going to be in darkness, but we're going to see a great light. He's going to break the yoke of the burden, the rod of the oppressor. He's going to help out these warriors. Verse six, for unto us a child is born,

unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment Now, a lot of biblical scholars think that in kind of initial reading, this might have been in context referring to Hezekiah. He's finally a good king who's born.

The Judahite government's going to be on his shoulder, and he's going to setzekiah. He's finally a good king who's born. The Judahite government's going to be on his shoulder and he's going to set things right. He's going to get rid of the oppressors, have people worship the Lord, and he's going to bring in this golden age. And so you encounter this in the book of Isaiah. By the way, the story of Hezekiah is both before and right after this. So it's set right in context of the stuff all about him. However, later in the book of Isaiah, in fact, Isaiah 36, 37, 38, 39 are simply quoting second Kings 18, 19, 20. So it quotes the whole Hezekiah narrative there. And it's almost like the story sets you up to think Hezekiah might be the fulfillment of this prophecy because notice at the end of Isaiah nine, seven, it has this closing

line. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. There's only one other place in the scriptures where you get that line. And it's here in the second Kings 19 story again, which is in Isaiah as well, where God promises Hezekiah, I'm going to save Jerusalem. I'm going to get rid of the Assyrians and the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. That's 2 Kings 19.31. It's the only two places where that line appears. And biblical authors, typically, if they stick a strange line in places like that,

they want you to see the connection. So you read in Isaiah 9 about this king who's going to come and rule forever and usher in the golden age. And then you see that line there about the zeal repeated in the Hezekiah story. And it sets you up to think, oh, maybe this is the guy. He's going to do it. Hezekiah is the guy. But then by the end of the Hezekiah story, the things take a turn and you find out, no, his kingdom's not going to last

forever. The Babylonians are going to come destroy it ultimately. And you realize, oh, shoot, Hezekiah's not the guy, at least not fully. He kind of started off as that. He did a lot of the stuff that this prophecy says, but ultimately his throne isn't lasting forever and there's no peace without end. He blew it on the last lap. And so it sets up you then to see Hezekiah is not the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy, but he can be a type of the person who will come and ultimately fulfill that prophecy. He's a foreshadowing of the person who will do this and not stumble at the last lap. The person who will be perfect, the person who will rule on the throne forever,

the person who will finally set everything right permanently. And of course, that's the Savior. And that's why, you know, we love to read those lines at Christmas, because this is about Jesus even more so than Hezekiah as the Savior does that. And the reminder that if you've got a human leader, as good as they might be, they're eventually going to disappoint you. Hezekiah is a reminder of that too. If you look hard enough or wait long enough, whether it's Joseph Smith or your bishop or somebody,

they're going to disappoint you eventually. They're not perfect. But the Savior, of course, is going to do everything that they can do but perfectly, and we can trust him not to stumble and let us down. I have a question about the very last verse of 2 Kings 20. Some of our listeners may have been to Hezekiah's tunnel before and have walked through that. That last verse seems to indicate this is about Hezekiah's tunnel. Was that tunnel where they tunneled from a spring outside of the walls of Jerusalem as they

existed then and brought them into the pool of Siloam, was that a direct response to the threat of the Assyrians or to just any war? We think so. They were getting their water source for Jerusalem from the Gihon stream outside the walls, and they knew if they get sieged, we will be cut off from our water source, and it didn't last very long that way. So apparently anticipating that this might happen, they built this underground tunnel to connect to the water source and then lead the water underneath the wall so that they can get access to it from within the city if they're cut off from the outside. So they're digging the tunnel from the outside and from the inside and underground, they have two separate tunnel diggers picking and picking and picking through the rock until the tunnel meets

in the middle. And then the water is able to flow between the two. It's a great story if you've been there and you'll see it on the maps in our Bible maps, you'll see a little red dotted line for Hezekiah's tunnel to bring the water in. So that was anticipation of a siege. That's why he built that. That's our best guess. Yeah. Because it guarantees that we have access to water inside the city, assuming we can't get out. The situation of the people here in Jerusalem and the choice they have to make, it reminds me a lot of Elder Bednar's talk from the April 2022 General Conference. It was, but we heeded them not. He gets that line from the story of Lehi's dream and the mocking and

taunting of those in the great and spacious building and how those who grasped the iron rod and ate the fruit of increases our capacity to heed not the many distractions, taunts, and diversions in our fallen world. For example, faith focused in and on the Lord Jesus Christ fortifies us with spiritual strength. Faith in the Redeemer is a principle of action and of power. As we act in accordance with the truths of the gospel, we are blessed with the spiritual capacity to press forward through the challenges of mortality while focusing on the joys the Savior offers to us. And I thought that was such a wonderful thought about how we're in the same circumstances today. We have distractions, mocking, taunts, and diversions, people trying to tell us not to trust in the Lord, not to trust in

the church, and focusing on the joys of the gospel and our Redeemer helps us be able to sift through those distracting and the taunts and the diversions from the true voice we should be listening to. Wow. You mentioned social media and President Nelson also, what was that statement he made? If most of the information you get comes from social media, your ability to feel the spirit of the Lord will be diminished. And the same sort of, who are you heeding type of a question. And I love that Lehi says three times in a row, the tree by which I stood, it's like, I'm staying right here type of thing. This is what I'm staying focused on. Josh, how do you say Rob Shaka? I think the way it's normally pronounced is Rob as like as one word and then Shaka, Rob Shaka. At least that's how the Hebrew does it. And I listened to it. This is one of the

ones I listened to on YouTube and that was the most popular pronunciation I heard. For everybody listening, Josh, this has been just so great. We are all gonna have Rob Chiquet's in our life. There are lots on social media texting you, the taunting, the how can you possibly believe in this? Don't listen. Go to the Isaiahs of your life and listen to them. Go to the temple like Hezekiah did and lay it before the Lord.

That's so beautiful. Pray. Oh my goodness, Josh, this has just been moving to me. So then after Hezekiah, we move on. 2 Kings chapter 21, we're going to go through just fast here. It has the reigns of Hezekiah's bad son, Manasseh, and his bad son son Amnon, who it just mostly spends its time talking about just how wicked these guys were. And it catalogs all the different ways that they were wicked. Manasseh here, it says he was actually so wicked and led the people to such wickedness that it kind of set Judah's doom, that now they're kind of a ticking clock. You can delay the fall of Judah with righteousness, but it's the way the narrator presents it's here.

We're moving towards that now because he set them on such a bad trajectory. And Josh, would this be about the time Lehi's parents are maybe alive in the Southern Kingdom? Are we getting close to Lehi's moment? This is right in there. So Amnon's son, Josiah, reigns from starting about 640. So I'm assuming by that point that Lehi is alive. He's living the life, yeah, about this time. So it's hard to say, you know, depends on how old Lehi was. This is when Lehi comes on the scene. So this is the world he's born into. They've heard about how great Hezekiah was,

but his sons are not doing well. Josh, the story we just read about Hezekiah, does that play into the idea the people of Jerusalem say to Lehi, Jerusalem can't be destroyed. Yeah, that's another great Book of Mormon connection. Laman and Lemuel say this. Nephi says they didn't believe that Jerusalem, that great city could be destroyed. And there's other hints of this in the Bible too.

There seems to be a sense among people that Jerusalem is invincible, that you can get attacked, you can go through hard times, but that God won't let it be destroyed because his presence is there, the temple is there, so that he will ultimately save it in the nick of time, at least. And you had a very dramatic example of that in Hezekiah's day, and that may be directly fueling this idea that Laman and Lemuel and likely many others had that no, Jerusalem can't be

destroyed. God would save it again. It was within their recent memory, recent history anyway. Yeah. They don't understand. This is all based on how righteous you are, you know, and calling on the Lord for aid and trusting in him. It's not a safe zone. Who comes next? So then we get Josiah. And Josiah is one of the most important kings in the history here. In fact, we talked about the Deuteronomistic history earlier, going from Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, this stretch of books that tells kind of a complete story. And Josiah appears to be important in the story for a lot of reasons. And one hint that you get that he's extra important,

more than these other kings, is if you go in your scriptures back to 2 Kings 13, you get a prophecy of him like years and years and years and years and years before he comes on the scene. So 1 Kings 13, to kind of backtrack to a previous week here, you've got a verse 1, a man of God, a prophet out of Judah by the word of the Lord goes unto Bethel. So you've got a prophet from the southern kingdom of Judah goes up to the northern kingdom of Israel to Bethel, which is one of these two shrines that they had to worship Jehovah. But from the perspective of the south here, they're bad. So this prophet goes up to Bethel and he talks to Jeroboam. This is Jeroboam I. So he's the first king of the northern kingdom, and he's the one that set up these worship sites at Dan and Bethel. So this prophet goes up there to talk to him. And in verse 2, he talks not to Jeroboam, but actually – I find this funny.

He talks to the altar that Jeroboam built as if it were a person and can hear him. And he cries to the altar and gives a prophecy. O altar, O altar, altar. Oh, altar, altar. Thus saith the Lord. Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David. So that's the royal family of the other kingdom. Josiah by name. So he's named here, not just generic prophecy.

And upon thee, meaning upon you, the altar, shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee. So he gives this prophecy that in hundreds of years, there's going to be a king of the line of David born Josiah, who's going to come here and all you bad priests that are now doing stuff on this altar, he's going to kill you here and burn your bones on the altar, thus desecrating the altar. And he's going to kind of destroy this site. So way back here, you get this foreshadowing that you as a reader, the narrator is telling you, watch out for this Josiah guy. He's going to be extra important. None of these other kings are ever prophesied about by name coming and doing something. Josiah is. So when we finally get to him in the narrative, we should be going, Ooh, that guy, I've been waiting for this.

I remember him being talked about earlier. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that seems to be important about him is I mentioned that the that guy i've been waiting for this i remember him being talked about earlier yeah yeah and the other thing that seems to be important about him is i mentioned that the deuteronomistic history seems to be written in stages just like in the book of mormon mormon writes an initial history and then moroni comes along later and adds a bunch of stuff to it and kind of stretches it further and put stuff at the beginning and all that so similar similar thing going on here, a very popular common scholarly take on the formation of the Deuteronomistic history is that the initial draft was written during Josiah's reign, perhaps by his administration or under his patronage.

And that originally part of the point of it was to show the history of the country back from Moses and culminating with Josiah as like the climax of the story that they understand Josiah to be the best King they've ever had. They said that, and that he finally does everything right. And now we're finally going to have this golden age where we're going to be great and that he's the climax and he's the end of the story. The second edition of this later kind of then moves the story further and deals with how, you know, things didn't go as they had thought. But there's a lot of things in these books that make more sense if you understand them being written during Josiah's reign, rather than someone who knows

about the exile and the destruction that's going to happen later. So that's how they're trying to tease apart these layers. All right. So that means this guy is really important. So let's look at his story here. So chapter 22, verse one, the guy is only eight years old when he starts to reign. And that's because his dad got assassinated prematurely. I guess all assassinations are premature, but he dies prematurely. So Josiah is eight years old when he's on the throne. And in verse two, it points out he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, walked in all the way of David, his father. So again, that's language saying that he worships Jehovah, not idols. Because David did have other problems, but that's the most important thing that the authors of Kings are focusing on. And he turned not aside to the right hand or the left.

That's Deuteronomic language. That's what Deuteronomy says to do. Don't turn aside to the right or to the left. So we get Deuteronomy language peppering all this stuff again. And so then we get the story here. So it says that in the 18th year of his reign, or the 18th year of when he's around, anyway, he decides to repair the temple because apparently it's fallen into disrepair under the stewardship of the previous kings. So he has his servants take a bunch of money that they've got and go deliver it to these workers in verse five. He says, and let them give it to the doers of the work,

which is in the house of the Lord to repair the breaches of the house. So he wants to repair the temple and kind of restore it to its former glory. That immediately tells you where his kind of thought is, right? If you're supporting the temple and temple work there, you're doing the right thing. And that leads to this discovery. So you've got this guy in verse eight, Hilkiah, the high priest, and he's in the temple and he reports, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. So this thing is, it's the Sefer HaTorah, the book of the Torah, the book of the law. Later, it's also called the Sefer HaBerit, the book of the Torah, the book of the law. Later, it's also called the Sefer Habarit, the book of the covenant. So he finds some kind of book in the temple. And apparently this is something that nobody had known about before this discovery. It's hidden in the temple

somehow. Under a floorboard or something, they were. So he finds this book and he brings it to Shaphan the scribe. And then that guy brings it to King Josiah and says, yeah, we found a book in the temple. And then they read it out loud to the king. And so in verse 11, it came to pass when the king Josiah had heard the words of the book of the law that he rent his clothes. So his response to hearing it is to tear his clothes, which is an expression of being upset, really sad. And apparently, based on what he talks about in the rest of the story, the reason is he hears this book and he realizes that they have not been doing the things that the book of the law says you're supposed to be doing.

And the book of the law talks about the punishments and consequences of not keeping these commandments. And he realizes, oh no, we are in major trouble because we have not been doing what we should. So he is upset. How did this get lost? Is there any theory on this? Because it seems like Hezekiah knows the law, right? Or are we saying this had been- Yeah.

So we've had two kings between us and Hezekiah. So the assumption is maybe that either these wicked kings that we've had for a while, because you got to understand Manasseh, despite being the worst guy, Hezekiah. So the assumption is maybe that either these wicked kings that we've had for a while, because you got to understand Manasseh, despite being the worst guy, he has like the longest reign ever. Look at 21 verse one. He reigns 55 years. Like more than half a century has passed between us and Hezekiah. It's a long time. This is one of those places I mentioned that kings lets you see how it doesn't always, it's not like bad guys always get punished right away and good guys always don't get blessed right away. Manasseh is an example of that. So in Kings, he's the most wicked king and yet he has the longest, most peaceful reign of

any of these guys, which doesn't seem fair, right? But in Chronicles, because the chronicler doesn't feel like that sends a good message, he adds a story not from Kings where Manasseh was bad and then he got captured and lived a life in jail for a while that humbled him and he repented. And then he got back to his throne. And so the jail time shows him getting punished and then repenting and being good for the rest of his life shows why his reign was so long. So the chronicler kind of fixes all that for you. The point here is he reigned a long time. So we have had more than half a century pass since Hezekiah was on the scene. So there's different theories on what's going on with this book. So was the book hidden because the bad kings would have mistreated the

book? And so it had to be refound in the temple? Or was it simply locked away in a closet and no one cared to go look for it until we have no one read their scriptures? Does the idea of oral tradition play into it? They remembered things orally? You figure that they know about some kind of laws because Josiah thinks he's doing what he should do. But when he reads this book, he fears, oh, wow, there's a lot more we weren't doing. And that's what makes him panic here. Now, there is a scholarly theory that actually the book was not found by Josiah, that he actually wrote the thing and used it to justify the reforms he's going to make. But that's not the scriptural presentation. So I'll just stick with what it says in second Kings right here. But just to throw that out that that's how some people read it.

So he wanted to make a bunch of changes. So he, Hey, look, we found this book. So, Oh, look, we found a book. So that's the way some people see it, but that's not, of course, how the second Kings is describing it. Now, what is this book? Some people have seen this as being like the five books of Moses. It's the whole Torah book? Some people have seen this as being like the five books of Moses, that it's the whole Torah the way we have it today. But other people propose that maybe what he has found is just Deuteronomy. And the reason for that being, again, we've already seen that Deuteronomy is having a big influence on how this 2 Kings is being written. But more than that, when you look at what Josiah does in response to reading this book, what he does is straight out of Deuteronomy.

And the language used to describe how he does it is also language straight out of Deuteronomy, like much more so than the way things are described in Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers. It's Deuteronomic language. So that's led to the suggestion that this book of the law is some kind of form of Deuteronomy. That's specifically what he's responding to. So it's hard to say, but that's kind of in the air there. And he's going to do an extreme makeover here. It's a good way to put it. Yeah, we call it the Josianic reform, right? But the first thing he wants to do is talk to a prophet

to find out, is it too late or can we still fix this? And the interesting thing is the prophet he goes to is not in fact a man. It is a woman named Huldah. So in verse 14, Huldah the prophetess. So the word prophetess in English there, the Hebrew is simply the feminine form of the word prophet. So prophet's a Navi and the feminine form is Navia. So it's just mean it's the female version of the word prophet right there. So interestingly, he goes to her and there's other prophetesses in the Old Testament. So this isn't exceptional, but it is kind of rare.

He goes to her and says, can you inquire of the Lord and see what's going to happen? Because we've been so bad. And then she sends a message back in verse 15. Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel. So again, a female prophet speaking in the name of the Lord. Tell the man that sent you to me. And then she gives a prophecy. And it goes all the way to the rest of the Lord. Tell the man that sent you to me. And then she gives a prophecy and base it to summarize. It goes all the way to the rest of the chapter.

So to summarize it, she says, Judah still is going to go down eventually. However, because you Josiah have been righteous and you're trying to turn things around, the destruction is not going to happen in your days. You'll have a peaceful reign. The problems are going to be delayed. Verse 19, because thine heart was tender and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord. So she's saying, because you've tried, there's going to be a delay in route here for Judah. And I like that, Hank, because it says you humbled yourself before the Lord when thou heardest what I speak in the scriptures there. I like that idea that we might not be living life perfectly, but as we listen to and read

the scriptures and we recognize the difference between what the scriptures are teaching and something in our own life, and we humble ourselves enough to conform to what the scriptures teach, that the Lord recognizes that and says, you know what? It doesn't matter what you did in the past. I am pleased that you're now making the change now that you know better. That's awesome. And this can be a great model for us. Study your scriptures when you see something in your life that's not aligned with scripture. So let's make some correction.

And then we can run through chapter 23 fairly quick, but basically it's his reform. First, he goes out in verse two and he gathers all the people, drew some together and says, okay, we're going to have a covenant renewal ceremony, everybody. And it says he gathers all the people, drew some together and says, okay, we're going to have a covenant renewal ceremony, everybody. And it says he gathers all the people and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant, which he found in the house of the Lord. I don't know how long that took, maybe a few hours. But then the king stood by a pillar and he made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord, to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and with all their soul,

and to perform the words of the covenant that were written in the book. And all the people stood to the covenant. So everybody's kind of agreeing, okay, we're going to take it from the top. We're going to do this right from now on. By the way, the Come Follow Me manual, if you go on to this week's lesson online, it'll take you to a video the church made about Josiah, and it films this whole scene, and it's kind of moving, right? It's a 12-minute video, and you see all the people standing and making the covenant, and they agree to get rid of the foreign gods and the idols and the sacrificing

babies and the other stuff they're doing and all the bad stuff. Then the rest of the chapter has Josiah going up and down throughout the territory where he's got influence, and he breaks down the high places, he gets rid of the idols, he destroys the bad priests that are doing the bad things. And it's sure to mention in particular that he goes to the place that was prophesied about in first Kings 13, he goes to Bethel and he, he kills the bad priests there and burns their bones on the altar. Like that prophecy had said. And then it even alludes back to that earlier story, because as he's burning all this stuff, he notices a sepulcher nearby. And in verse 17, he says, what's that over there? And the men tell him in Bethel, oh, that's the sepulcher of the man of God, which came from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou has done against the altar of

Bethel. And then unlike the other tombs, which he's kind of raiding and burning all the bones here, he says, okay, leave and burning all the bones here he says okay leave that guy alone sounds like he was a good i like that guy he prophesied about me and then in verse 21 they have this big passover feast the king commands all the people saying keep the passover as it is written in the book of the covenant now remember in deuteronomy like we mentioned passover is a big national celebration everyone should come to Jerusalem, do this together at the temple. So that's what they do here. I'm going to mention like this was the best Passover we've ever had.

That's so interesting to me that they hadn't done that. How many years did that say they hadn't done the Passover? It says they hadn't done it in verse 22, from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel. Well, it says not necessarily they hadn't had any Passover. It says they hadn't had such a Passover. So maybe it was like the best way death they'd ever done.

Oh, okay. Josiah really makes some huge changes that probably affected Lehi, correct? In his life? This would have been in Lehi's lifetime. So Lehi would have been around during all the reforms. Josiah was his king. I don't think maybe as Latter-day Saints, we don't realize how important Josiah is to the stories we have.

If I can bring out a little Spencer W. Kimball here, I've got the teachings of the presidents of the church, Spencer W. Kimball manual here. And I thought this was interesting. President Kimball actually says the story of King Josiah in the Old Testament is a most profitable one to liken unto ourselves. To me, it is one of the finest stories in all the scriptures. And then he goes on to explain what he loves about this. Sometimes it seems we take the scriptures too much for granted because we do not fully appreciate how rare a thing it is to possess them and how blessed we are because we do have them. We seem to have settled so comfortably into our experiences in this world and become so accustomed And then I love this thought he says here. It is a common thing to have a few passages of scripture at our disposal, floating in our minds, as it were, and thus to have the illusion that we know a great deal about the gospel.

In this sense, having a little knowledge can be a problem indeed. I am convinced that each of us, at some time in our lives, must discover the scriptures for ourselves, and not just discover them once, but rediscovered them again and again. So I love that analogy from the Josiah story, the rediscovery of the scriptures, how deeply it moved him, how earnest he was trying to keep the commandments as he found them in the scriptures and the profound impact it had on these people here. And for us, I love President Kimball's invitation to have a similar experience. Access to scriptures is not our problem today. They're on our phones, they're on our shelves, but opening them up and actually reading them and feasting on the word of Christ,

that's the real challenge. And when we do, it can be like a rediscovery as we find that there's a feast waiting for us that maybe they haven't had in a while. They actually made a movie years ago called How Rare a Possession. And I think it comes from that President Kimball's

statement. We don't understand how rare a thing it is to possess them. So yeah, I love what you said. Having scriptures is not the problem today. How many languages? And right on our phone, you can in the morning just say, hey, read me this chapter and your phone will do it. It's amazing. As an update to President Kimball, I loved 10 years ago, Elder Christofferson in conference gave a similar talk where he talked about William Tyndale, the Bible translator who gave us the English Bible, and then he was killed for translating the Bible into English. And Elder Christofferson made the point that in Tyndale's day, the problem was access to the scriptures. We have a very different problem. It's just people don't open up the books.

Actually, my second son, my first son is Josiah. My second son, his name is Micah after the biblical book, but his middle name is Tyndale. Wow. Because I wanted him to always remember that to treasure. There was a time when we did not have access to the Bible. And we can't take that for granted. Because just like Judah gets so off course when they're not reading the scriptures, in our personal lives, it's easy to think I'm on course. But if we're not in the scriptures every day giving us that spiritual feast, it's easy by degrees to get off course.

Josh, I wanted to name my twins Wycliffe and Tyndale, and I got vetoed by my wife. Got voted down. Yeah. I have that exact talk in front of me. So we have two witnesses here, Josh, because I wanted to bring this up. Elder Christofferson says, this is April 2010, the blessing of scripture. In Tyndale's day, scriptural ignorance abounded because people lacked access to the Bible, especially in a language they could understand.

Today, the Bible and other scripture are readily at hand, yet there is a growing scriptural illiteracy because people will not open the books. And then this statement I wanted to get for you all. Consequently, they have forgotten things their grandparents knew. Yeah, I think that's great, Hank, because when my son was born, we named the baby Josiah, right, after this king. And then I was surprised all the friends, family, ward members who ask, oh, what's the baby's name? Josiah. And they're like, who is that?

Where'd you get that name? You know, no one had any idea who he was. So I hope all the follow him listeners and those following come follow me in the schedule now, learn about Josiah, know who he is, and we'll combat the scriptural illiteracy. There is on BYU TV on demandand a movie called That Promised Day. And it's about putting together our LDS edition of the Bible. And I'll tell you, you really grow an appreciation for being able to open our Bible and to see footnotes to the Book of Mormon and the Bible Dictionary and JST editions in Hebrew. And that has helped me a lot to appreciate what we have. footnotes to the Book of Mormon and the Bible Dictionary and JST editions in Hebrew. And

that has helped me a lot to appreciate what we have that promised day on BYU TV On Demand. It's really a good documentary. I agree, John. In fact, in my Bible classes at BYU, I will watch about 20 minutes of that documentary and show them because it's the day when I want to teach them how to use their LDS scriptures, right? Here are the footnotes, here, the chapter headings. But to me, rather than just telling them, oh, those are there and they're helpful. The documentary shows them, no, there was a time when these didn't exist and we had to come up with these and that helps them appreciate what a blessing it is to have them. It's such a cool story. It was a completely new footnoting formatting system that hadn't been tried to have each verse have the A, B, C, D start

over again and then to do the triple columns at the bottom. It's really fun to see how all of that developed and to know there's a lot of work that went behind what you see at the bottom of every page. I love that documentary in conjunction with the other one on BYUtv is Fires of Faith about the Bible, which goes back in time to William Tyndale and the other English translators. So that gives you kind of the full history here of how many people have sacrificed to give us the word of God so that we can read it today. Elder Christofferson in that same talk said, surely with this blessing, the Lord is telling us that our need for constant recourse to the scriptures is greater than in any previous

time. May we feast continuously on the words of Christ that will tell us all things we should do. It's not just a blessing to have it, but it's also the blessing itself is a message from the Lord saying, you need to return to this over and over and over. Elder Christofferson says, scriptures are revelation and they will bring added revelation. And why wouldn't you if that power is available right there? Yeah. John, sometimes I think if I was the adversary, I couldn't get you to do something evil, but I could distract you to where you never spend time

in scripture. Yeah. Elder Richard G. Scott said, Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction. Well, let's bring the story to a close now. So 2 Kings 23, 25 summarizes Josiah by saying, and like him was there no king before him that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like him. Now I mentioned before, you know, this theory that this history was written in stages. You get like the Mormon stage and then the Moroni stage. So there's one way that some scholars read this is that 2 Kings 23, 25 is the original ending.

By the people who didn't know about Babylon coming. Yes. Remember that it's written during Josiah's lifetime and where everything is building towards him. You have the prophecy foreshadowing him and he's setting the model. This is how you should do it. And we've done it wrong in the past, but now we finally arrived. And they end right here with this statement. And then the history is done. But of course, then history keeps going.

And then some. So then the theory would be that you have a few decades pass and then you get like a Moroni figure who finishes some additional narrative and maybe goes back and adds some stuff earlier. And one of the things that happens, if that's how it happened after the first edition of this, is that Josiah's reign comes to an unexpectedly horrific end. So in verse 29, it talks about the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is coming up and he's traveling through Josiah's territory to go up to Assyria. And Josiah rides out there to stop him from going through Judah. And it says that the Pharaoh slew him at Megiddo when he had seen him. And the servants carried

Josiah in a chariot dead from Megiddo and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him. And after all the buildup, all the prophecies, all the chapters on Josiah, that's kind of like, whoa, that took a turn. And it's interesting. There's no explanation here to why did God let Josiah die? After all that, he did nothing wrong. And so possibly if this is written not that long after Josiah's reign, somebody feels like they need to update the story and finish it, but they still have not had time to process this and figure it out. So they don't even bother to try to explain this. It's just a tragedy. They describe it matter of factly, and then they move on because they don't know what to do with this. Interestingly enough, Chronicles, since it's written much later, you know, it's had more time to think about this. It actually adds an explanation.

It suggests that maybe the Pharaoh going up through the country that God wanted Pharaoh to go where he was going. And Josiah made the mistake of interfering with God's plans. And that's where he went wrong, made a mistake there. But so that's Chronicles trying to figure it out later. But the King's version here, the earlier one, it's just like, yeah, moving on. We don't know how to do it. They were not particularly allies at this point with Egypt or anything. The problem seems to be that Josiah tried to stop the Pharaoh, and that's where he got

in trouble. There's a bigger political picture going on, but it's not important for the narrative, so they don't give us the details. Boy. Josh, I was going to say, it's so interesting that the initial ending could have been 2 Kings 23, 25, because that seems like a beautiful ending. Cut, credits, let's move on. It's almost like you said

with Moroni, how many times does Moroni finish the Book of Mormon and then says, well, I haven't died, so I guess we're going to have to continue the story. Yeah. And Moroni at first doesn't think he's going to write that much. So rather than start a new book, he just tacks on stuff and keeps the Book of Mormon going a couple more chapters. If someone came after this and would decide, okay, I'll just add a little bit to the end of 2 Kings here and bring it to my point of time, that's kind of what Moroni did. So how do they explain the fall of Judah? After Josiah dies, his son Jehoahaz is made the king, but he doesn't last very long because the Pharaoh comes back and gets rid of that guy and puts his brother Jehoiakim on the throne because

he apparently had agreed to work with the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh thinks he can call the shots now. And then it's the beginning of the end because Jehoiakim, he ends up having to be a vassal to the new Eastern superpower, which is Babylon at this point. Babylon's conquered the Assyrians and now they're doing the exact same thing. You know, pay us taxes or we'll come destroy you. Babylon once was a vassal of Assyria, rebelled and took down Assyria. Now they're doing the same stuff that Assyria had been doing. But then in verse 24, verse one, in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Jehoiakim became his servant three years. So that means he's the vassal. And then he turned and rebelled against him. And we know how these kind of stories end.

So then Nebuchadnezzar is upset that he broke the treaty. So he starts marching on Jerusalem. And it appears that as he's coming to invade, Jehoiakim dies and his son Jehoiachin takes over and becomes the new king. And then Nebuchadnezzar takes that guy and exiles him to Babylon, Jehoiachin. So this is like verse eight now of 24. In verse 24, 11, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against the city and his servants to besiege it, but he's not going to completely destroy the city yet. The king that's on the throne now didn't rebel against him. That was his dad. So he's like, well, maybe I can still work with your family here if you promise to behave in the future. So he exiles Jehoiachin to Babylon and he picks his

uncle, Jehoiachin's brother, and makes him the king and makes him promise that, you know, he'll keep up the vassal status there. So look at verse 24, verse 15. He carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon and all his family. And then look at verse 17. And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, his father's brother, king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah. And that should make your Book of Mormon bells ring. Oh, the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, that's when Lehi starts prophesying. So we're right there. 1 Nephi 1, verse 4.

Yep. And Lehi's prophesying, So we're right there. First Nephi 1 verse 4. Yep. And Lehi is prophesying, you guys are wicked. You need to repent or Jerusalem will be destroyed and the inhabitants carried away captive into Babylon. So then back in 2 Kings 24, look at verse 20. It says that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. So he also broke the vassal status. And this time Nebuchadnezzar is like, look, I've had it with you guys. You keep rebelling. I gave you a chance before. So this time you're toast. I'm going to level your city. And in verse chapter 25 is now the last chapter.

That's exactly what he does. In verse six, he took the king. So that Zedekiah. And then in verse seven, he slew all the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Again, kill the royal family. That's standard procedure. Now we know from the Book of Mormon that one of Zedekiah's sons escaped. That's Mulek. Helaman 8, 21. Yeah.

I'm sure that's a fantastic story, but you know, Kings doesn't know about that, you know, the kid that got away. Right. Right there. It just says all of them were killed. And then he gouges out Zedekiah's eyes to blind him. So the literal last thing he ever sees is his kids getting killed. Wow, the ancient world. And then he carries Zedekiah as a prisoner to Babylon where he's going to die without posterity. And then in verse 9, Nebuchadnezzar burns the house of the Lord.

So the temple is destroyed and he burns the king's house. That's the palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. He burns everything. And in verse 10, he breaks down the walls of Jerusalem. So Jerusalem now is completely leveled. And then in verse 11, he's going to carry away a bunch of the people that are left. In verse 12, he leaves a few there, but he exiles a whole bunch of people over to Babylon where they're going to be in captivity.

And in verse 21, kind of summarizes it. So Judah was carried away out of their land. So this is the start of the Babylonian captivity. It's kind of brutal stuff. Okay, but the way the book ends is really interesting. So go to verse 27. Now, do you remember though, Zedekiah is carried away with all his kids killed. So he's not going to have any more kids.

But there was one other king that was exiled to Babylon, right? Jehoiachin. So he is the guy, he was Josiah's grandson. So remember he was exiled and then we didn't hear about him. He's just exiled. He's taken captivity. But verse 27 has this little coda at the end of the book that picks up that guy's story. Verse 27, it came to pass in the seventh and 30th year of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the 12th month on the 7th and 20th day of the month, there's a new king of Babylon who did lift up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison and he spake kindly to him. And in verse 29, he changed his prison garments and he did eat bread continually before

him all the days of his life. And then it even in verse 30 ends by talking about his daily food ration. So you've got to understand why this is the ending. You got to step back and see all sorts of big pictures here. So Jehoiachin himself is going to die in captivity. He's treated better. He's not in prison, but he's going to die over there. But what this little coda tells us is that whoever is like the Moroni writing at the end of it all and adding the updates at the end here, he knows that Jehoiachin is still there in Babylon and he's alive and has a pretty good life,

which means presumably he could get married and have children, which means the Davidic heir is still out there somewhere. There's a descendant of David still out there. And, you know, it's this little ray of hope that maybe, just maybe, this story is not over yet. God promised David that his posterity would never die out. That some of one of his descendants would rule over the throne of Israel forever. And, you know, the country was destroyed. The temple is destroyed.

The palace is destroyed. The walls are leveled. There's no more country. But God's promise to David can still come to fruition because that heir is still out there somewhere. And so it ends with kind of this little ray of hope that maybe not all is lost. Josh, you said that you watched Marvel with your kids. Doesn't that look like a little bit of a after the credits scene? Post-credits scene credit scene yeah that's a good

way to look at it that there's still something's gonna come something's gonna happen that's davidic line is still we're gonna set you up for the next movie yeah i'm gonna write that down and you know in chronicles again since chronicles is written later than you know our last version of this chronicles pushes the story even further. It actually describes everybody coming back from exile and they rebuild. So Chronicles covers that. But this one ends here. So this is apparently as far as the final editor knew, but he knows enough to know maybe not all hope is lost because that is out there. And I love that little ray of hope at the end after what was a pretty bleak couple of chapters, because it shows again that God's got a long game. He's not making promises to these

people and then everything is going to be ruined. In fact, even though they're wicked and they had some major setbacks and all sorts of destruction and calamity, they can't ultimately thwart God's plans. He's always going to find a way to still use Israel to accomplish his purposes, no matter how bad they blow it along the way. He's playing a long game. He's got these plans in place. I think the theological idea at the end here is that God is still in charge and he's moving the chessboard in ways that we can't comprehend and with the sight that goes beyond what we can see, but he's going to make everything turn out the way it's supposed to be. That's awesome. Holy cow, John, this has been fantastic. Great day.

Oh my goodness. Josh, you're such a good teacher just the way you describe things is just superb honestly superb and i know good teaching thanks like i watch a lot of teachers oh i'm just kind of sitting here like i don't want it to end josh this has been amazing amazing and i'm sure everyone listening agrees. This has just been a spiritual, scriptural feast where you've taught us the story, but also shown us incredible principles. We would encourage everyone, by the way, I should have mentioned this earlier, that we did an episode with you on the book of Genesis. Do you remember that, John? That was such a great day. So any of you who haven't heard that, go back. Not only will you learn a lot about

the book of Genesis, but you'll hear Josh and his testimony at the end of that episode. Josh, to wrap up this week, what should we take away from everything we've studied here in Second Kings? What's your major takeaway? What do you hope our listeners get from this? I guess we've been studying a national history, you know, Israel and Judah, and seeing how God accomplishes his purposes with these big groups of people across many centuries. Take these lessons, make it a

little more personal for a second. It's just been on my mind a lot recently. What difficult times a lot of people go through. We've talked about having Christ's disease of faith and deciding who we trust and everything in this episode. And I just want to bear my testimony that we can trust our Father in heaven and our Savior Jesus Christ. I have friends and family I talk to where it looks like promises will never be fulfilled, patriarchal blessings are never going to come to pass, and happiness that people look for won't ever pan out. I really believe that Heavenly Father, with Israel and Judah, sees our lives in a long game, and he knows what he's doing, and we can trust him. One of my most favorite quotes from the prophet Joseph Smith comes as he talks about this confidence we can have that God will fulfill every promise made to us. Joseph Smith taught, those who have died in Jesus Christ may expect to enter into all that fruition of joy when they

come forth, which they possessed or anticipated here. Again, those who have died in Jesus Christ can expect to enter into all of that fruition of joy when they come forth, which they anticipate possessed or anticipated here. And Joseph continues by saying, I'm glad I have the privilege of communicating to you some things, which if grasped closely will be a help to you. When earthquakes bellow, the clouds gather, the lightnings flash, and the storms are ready to burst upon you like peals of thunder. Lay hold of these things, and let not your knees or joints tremble nor your hearts faint. For what can earthquakes, wars, or tornadoes do? Nothing.

All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection, provided you continue faithful. By the vision of the Almighty, I have seen it. And I just hear the power there in Joseph's words. That man knew loss and he knew suffering. but he saw and knew perfectly that every promised blessing can be ours, whether in this life or the next. So if you're going through one of those times right now, please do not give up. Trust that heavenly father will help you.

We have the testimony of the prophets and the witness of people like in the Bible there who went before us, that God will not abandon us or forsake us. We'll have these Hezekiah last minute miracles come into our lives and it might come later. It might come sooner, but heavenly father is someone we can trust. We can have confidence in our trust in him because he will never break trust

with us. So I just want to share that testimony in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. John, by the way, how'd we get this job? This is just great. I've always loved these stories. I love them more. Thank you, Josh. You've helped me and strengthened me today. Thank you. Yeah, me too. Isaiah said, be not afraid. We want to thank Dr. Josh Sears for being with us today. And this isn't the last time we've seen him.

We'll have him back. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorenson, and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorenson. And we hope all of you will join us next week. We have another episode coming of Follow Him. We have an amazing production crew we want you to know about. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Nielsen, Will Stoughton, Crystal Roberts, and Ariel Cuadra. Thank you to our amazing production team.