followHIM - Doctrine & Covenants 88 : followHIM Favorites with Dr. Anthony Sweat

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

My friends, welcome to Follow Him Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I'm the co-host of a podcast called Follow Him. And every week we like to do a small little clip called Follow Him Favorites, where we pick out our favorites from this week's lesson. This week we're in section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I'm here with my co-host, John, by the way,

and you might notice a third person on our first Follow Him Favorite. We're including our guest for our longer podcast, Dr. Tony Sweat. So welcome to the both of you, John and Tony. I'm so happy to be on Follow Him Favorites. It's like I get to be a first time again, first guest again on your... That's true. You are our first podcast guest. You're now our first Follow Him favorite guest. John, we're in one section, section 88.

You get to tell us your Follow Him favorite. This is hard. There's 141 verses here and picking one wasn't very easy, but I know that both of you have heard stories and I've heard stories about people that seem to have a light in their eyes. In October of 2005, you can look this up, President Faust gave this talk and he told a few of these and there are dozens of them. But he talked about students at the BYU Jerusalem Center, how difficult it was to get permission to build that place and so forth.

And he said one of our friends in Jerusalem, you know, after we made this agreement that the students wouldn't proselyte, they wouldn't go around and try to share the gospel in Israel. That was something they're not supposed to do. But what if he said, one of our friends in Jerusalem wrote us and said, okay, we know your young people aren't going to proselyte, but what are you going to do about that shining in their eyes? And I said, it was so interesting. Let's look at verse 11. There's a lot of things about the light of Christ here and how he is the light of everything. Verse 11 says, the light which shineth, which giveth you light is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings. And you've probably heard stories like that yourself.

And I think when you get older, you recognize it in so many people. You see the young people that we work with and you see, look at that, look at that wonderful sparkle in their eyes. But I think it's really a thing. There's just too many stories, including some in general conference about how that's a thing. There's people that have this light in their eyes. My brother-in-law, John, is a Secret Service agent. And at one point, he was assigned to the Olympics here in Salt Lake City to do security. And he said the agents, the other agents from all around the country, when they came with him, they would say things like that to him they'd say what is it with the people here everyone here has just got this like glow this aura you know and uh they said i i see these you know beautiful women with with with you know seven seven little ducklings behind them following them around they're like what is it with these people here? And, and Derek would be like, I, I don't know, you know, they, they're just section 88 verse 11. Yeah. They're doing

their best. Um, my follow him favorite is going to come towards the end of the section and versus one 18 and one 19. I'm kind of stealing this from Dr. Sweat in our full podcast. The Lord talks about, um, and those of you who are either just been through the temple or who are about to go through the temple, I hope you'll take time to listen to the full, the full podcast. Cause Dr. Sweat really shows us the temple in these, in this section, but he, he, the Lord says, I want you to seek wisdom from the best books. Well, for my kids, my little kids, the best books are the Harry Potter books. They love, if they were going to say, oh, the Lord wants us to study Harry Potter. That's what they would get out of 118.

My little daughter, Hank, sorry to interrupt. When my daughter was little, she was like eight and she read Harry Potter for the first time. We found a little sign that she put up in her room that said, read Harry Potter. It will change your life. Yeah, right? It was, yeah, that's exactly my kids. Well, if you, those of you who are Harry Potter fans, if you remember the Order of the Phoenix,

the Order of the Phoenix was a special group picked out among people to fight against evil, right? That they were going to make it the kind of their full-time thing was going to fight the evil force of Lord Voldemort, right? Well, in verse 119, the Lord kind of starting this school of the prophets, which will eventually turn into kind of the temple endowment. He calls it a house of order. That's not necessarily meaning like organized and things are in their right place, but this house or this temple is going to put you into an order. So if you've ever dreamed of being part of the order of the Phoenix, this is going to be the

closest you're going to get to it. The Lord is inviting you into a group to fight against evil, and He wants you to be a part of it. Dr. Sweat, you get to tell us your follow Him favorite. All right, I'm going to key off what Hank just said. Look at verse 118. The Lord tells these people at this time, As all have not faith, seek ye diligently, and teach one another words of wisdom. That is just a great line. I'm doing a double favorite because you also need to connect it to verses 79. He tells them to learn of things in the earth and under the earth.

Oh, no, the Lord just said, learn like geology. That's nerve wracking. Things which are, things which must shortly come to pass. Economics, the things which are at home. Wars, you know, international relations. things which must shortly come to pass, economics, the things which are at home, wars, you know, international relations. The Lord is telling us here, He wants us to learn. He wants us to grow. And kind of, I guess maybe what I'd say to you is, sometimes in the church we say, we like to say like, you hear people say, I felt the Spirit. I really feel the Spirit. You don't hear people saying often, I thought the Spirit, or I think the

Spirit. My friend Scott Woodward up at BYU-Idaho likes to talk about this. Remember the Lord says, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, one of the things the Lord wants us to do is to enlighten and expand our minds. So don't separate those into two things of that the Holy Ghost is all just emotional or affective. It's also intellectual. And the Lord, He can expand your mind, but He also wants you to expand your mind. Joseph Smith one time said, Mormonism is truth. And another time Brigham Young said, Mormonism is truth. And another time, Brigham Young said, Mormonism embraces all truth. Wherever we learn it, wherever we get it.

So you doing well in school, you studying, you learning, you growing your minds is also part of growing your spirit as well, is what I want to say from section 88. That's really nice. I remember reading a book by Henry Eyring senior, where he talked about his chemistry. You know, he's a, he's a, should have been a Nobel prize winning chemist. And he felt that that was part of the gospel. His chemistry work was, was discovering truth. Study, study is worship. Like it's, it's part of it. Yeah. That's, that's a beautiful that's a beautiful idea and we all know that you can get an a without getting an education so don't get us started on that it's not about getting a good grade as much as it is learning it's about expanding your mind so

next time like you're if you're like reading something or doing homework or watching a good national geographic documentary which i know most of you do on friday nights at 7 p.m If you're reading something or doing homework or watching a good National Geographic documentary, which I know most of you do on Friday nights at 7 p.m., and your parents say, what are you doing? Say, I'm worshiping. Yeah. I'm expanding my mind, like it says to do in Section 88. I'm thinking the spirit.

I can hear my kids using this against me on bedtime. Do you not want me to worship? Do you not want me to worship? Do you not want me to read Harry Potter about Order of Phoenix and change my life? And be part of the fight against evil? That's fine. I'll go to bed, Dad. Well, it actually says in this section, cease to sleep longer than is needful.

Retire to thy bed early. That's right. So yeah, I'll be using that quite a bit. And then your kids can go off on a discussion of how early is a relative term. Great. Now you just gave it to them. Thank you. Which side of the international dateline? Yeah. Yeah. It's early somewhere, right? Well, we hope that you'll join us on our full podcast, but if not, come back next week

and we'll do another follow him favorites. Big thank you to Dr. Sweat for being with us today. Thank you.