followHIM - Easter -- Part 2 : Elder Bruce C. Hafen & Sister Marie K. Hafen

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

Elder Hafen and Sister Hafen return. Easter, Part II.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 Producers/SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: MarketingLisa Spice: Client Relations, Show Notes/TranscriptsJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Rough Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Transcripts/Language Team/French TranscriptsAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to part two of this week's podcast. Again, Moses gives us some perspective in chapter five. When Eve does answer those questions, well, it's described as she heard all these things and was glad, saying, were it not for that transgression, were it not for our transgression, we never should have had seed and never should have known good and evil and the joy of our redemption. But when did she start to understand this? It took an angel coming to them at the altar. And they'd had children before this, right? With Cain and Abel. And these questions, the angel taught them. When the angel asks Adam, of course, why does thou offer sacrifice? What does he say?

I don't know. But God commanded, so I'm going to do it. And the angel said, this thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the only begotten. So the angel teaches them the plan of redemption. Everything we've kind of been talking about. I love that the explanation came after the obedience for Adam. I love that idea. Okay, as soon as I understand everything perfectly, then I'll go with it.

We're never going to go with anything. We're never going to move forward. But I'll do it. And then the explanation came. I love do it. And then the explanation came. I love that sequence. Yes. And Eve here did have to act initially in the garden. More from maybe, would you call it a woman's intuition connected to God?

Whereas often, and not always, but a man thinks kind of front to back logically. And like you said, I'll fulfill those commandments. You just tell me what they are and I'll do it. Sometimes a woman has to act without knowing exactly how things are going to turn out with the faith that we've talked about. But the faith in Christ, as we've also talked about, the faith in Christ and his mission. I can't help but share something from Elder Maxwell about this kind of experience. Give me experience, because we know that it's only through experience, through learning from

experience, growing through experience, that we can become like him, we can grow. So Elder Maxwell once said a little satirically, how can you and I really expect to glide naively through life as if to say, Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made thee what thou art. Then let me come and dwell with thee and fully share thy joy. What was he saying? Of course, he was saying we can't do that. We can't do that.

So what does the atonement have to do with this part of Eve's power growing with this part of her experience? It's the angel's visit. And I think that painting by Walter Rain may be up now, the painting of the angel with Adam and Eve at their altar of sacrifice. And what do you see here in the faces of each of them? And I realize our audience who's listening can't see their faces, but maybe they can access a picture of this painting on your website. You see in the angel's face, he's not scolding them. He loves them. You can see it in his attitude, in the way his head is tipped a little bit to the side. He's teaching them. He wants them to understand. And we see that in Adam's face.

And we see in Eve's position, her support of Adam, but we also see that she's getting answers also for herself, that these answers are coming to her. So their attitude is one of learning, of reaching, of stretching. We want to understand. We want to live more. And I also liked what Eve said in Moses 5 and 11, that they wouldn't have known the joy of their redemption and the eternal life, God's life, which God giveth unto all the obedient. He doesn't say, as you've said, John, the obedience is so important and the hard lessons help us to learn. He's giving it to all the obedient, not to all the perfect,

because we're not complete. I like to think of perfect being complete. Again, not to all the perfect or complete, but to all those who are obedient, who are becoming. We're moving from terrestrial to terrestrial to celestial. We're moving through redeeming and strengthening

and perfecting aspects of the atonement. We can see the strengthening blessings that the angel was giving to Adam and Eve so that they could go on living their life, having that core within them, that even within the really hard experiences, they had the assurance, they had that core testimony that God is with us, Christ is with us, they will help us. Alma 7, 10 and 11, and he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses and the infirmities of his people. That has become a very communicating verse to all of us. Why? That Christ may know how to succor his people. Not that he's going to take our experiences, even the most difficult ones, away, but he knows how to succor his people according to their infirmities. Eve learned this. We have a friend now who's learning this who is beginning chemotherapy for cancer today.

And even though in her cancer, it's an abdominal cancer, there is extreme pain and suffering. She always has had the core there that Christ is there. God is there. Yes, I have questions. Why is this lasting so long and why is it so painful? But I know he is there. I know that he knows where I am and he will answer my prayers. She has great faith that the chemo that she's in will reduce tumors so that then she can go into surgery and work through the cancer. And if it means I'll serve on the other side, okay, okay. But if it means I'll be here, I want to serve. I don't want to be on the sidelines. I want to serve. So she is an example

of receiving the atonement in her life. And she's a temple goer, an avid temple goer. She understands Eve's experience and how if we follow Eve and follow him, looking at Eve as an example that we receive the atonement. Grateful that you mentioned that experience, Marie, because that experience illustrates what we've been, what we discovered in the St. George Temple and what we're trying to capture and reflect. Just what we saw. So we just want to share it. We know many people have seen it. After we, one of the first times when we put some of these ideas together, and we didn't think they made much sense, but they made sense to us. So, we practiced them on some of our children, and not too long ago.

And can you guys understand this? just to ask that after that rehearsal session, one of our kids who has an MBA said, hey, when you make a chart like that, you don't start at the bottom where it says baptism and you go up to the ceiling. You've got that backward. You've got to start with the important stuff and go down. I'm glad that the Lord didn't have any help from an MBA in deciding where should we start. After that session, one of our kids who has had the most puzzles, I think, about the temple, she said to us afterwards, kind of quietly, she said, I think I see a pattern here.

It's the one that Marie just talked about. As you go through step by step, the ascent, you know, the covenant path, it's up. And you gain strength along the way. Knowing that process, she said it just helped. Things kind of make sense about the temple now. And that's really what it has been for us. I understand now and I didn't before. And that's how it has been for us.

Well, just one last step. Were Adam and Eve sealed in the temple? What do you think? Yes. It was probably an outdoor temple. There's some good evidence. The marriage between Adam and Eve is sort of a textbook answer about what a marriage is. And isn't it interesting?

It's just one more example of how the story of Adam and Eve is the story of receiving the atonement, including the blessings of eternal marriage and sealing, which the atonement makes possible. Experience that comes to mind. Marie and I had been talking kind of constantly about things like this. I suddenly realized when my secretary said, hey, you're supposed to go do a sealing. I went up to the sealing room. Could have been the one where you were married, Hank. I looked for your fingerprints. Yeah, it was the one right off were married, Hank. I looked for your fingerprints. Yeah, it was the one right off the celestial room there.

Yeah, that's the one. Up the stairs again, symbolically, up the stairs. And as I walked in with all these ideas on my mind, I saw this beautiful bride and groom, and after we had chatted a little bit, I invited them to come to the altar. And as they came to that altar, suddenly it clicked for me. I learned in the temple what an altar is for. It's for prayer. It's for covenants. It's for ordinances.

And they all interact. Sacrifice. Yeah. And the one they were going to sample that day, it suddenly just came to me. What? Oh, I see what's going on. So I just continued with my thinking by what I said to them as they came to the altar and we kind of began to talk a little bit about it. I just found myself saying to them that an altar was the place in the Old Testament where

the Lord's people were told to offer the firstlings of the flock. That picture that we had just a few minutes ago shows Adam and Eve kneeling by an altar, and there's some evidence of an animal on that altar. So I mentioned that, and I said, but that's not what you're doing today. You're doing what Christ asked the people to do after he had been resurrected. The Savior said to the Nephites in 3 Nephi 9, he no more wanted sacrifice. He had completed his sacrifice, but that didn't mean that the law or the principle of sacrifice was done. He said, now I want to have from you the sacrifice of an animal was really a symbol of the Lord's offering his son as a sacrifice on that altar.

But after the Savior's sacrifice was completed, he asked for a different kind of sacrifice. And it has struck me that when he says, I want a broken heart and a contrite spirit, I think that's Christ. He is the symbol. He's offering himself. James E. Talmadge said in Jesus the Christ, he died of a broken heart. Literally. He's the sacrifice. So when he asked that of us, we're the sacrifice. And so I found myself saying to this couple, you're going to sacrifice yourselves by making a covenant today to do that. You're sacrificing in two directions, one to the Lord and the other to each other. That's really

what this marriage is about. It's kind of like a triangle. You know, you've got the bride and the groom in the two corners, and you're both going to offer everything to the Lord, but you're also looking for ways to sacrifice yourself to each other. And look at the triangle. As you ascend to God's presence, the closer you come to him, the closer you come to each other. It's the great at-one-ment, all coming together at once. That's kind of the completion for them in their experience. It was the completion in one sense, the introduction in another of what Adam and Eve's pattern was.

For all of us, we come to the ceiling and what do we have to do to get there, to live the covenant? We do what Moroni said we have to do to receive the blessings of perfection. This is Christ's perfecting blessings that he can give us because of the atonement and our obedience. Deny yourselves of all ungodliness, he said in chapter 10 of Moroni. Love God with all your mind and strength. Then are ye sanctified, perfected in Christ. We become like him by emulating him. That happened to Adam and Eve. It happens to anybody who follows Christ this far. If you notice the painting, there's kind of a vertical line that goes from the lower left to the upper right. On the left side of that is the angel and this brilliant light, like the trees

are being consumed. It's the light that he brings, what he's going to teach them. And we have Adam and Eve in the mud of the earth, of this mortal world. And it's such a wonderful symbol of what the angel is bringing them that they can become. They can rise through the mud. And because of the mud, they can rise to that light that the angel is bringing and become like the Savior, like the angel. So this doctrine, to pull ourselves out of the mud with his help, through his strengthening power, we draw closer, we become at one with him. This doctrine encourages us in our continual striving to strengthen our own marriages. We all need to keep working on that. It's okay. It's part

of the process. It's related to the example of the Savior's perfecting power. As I read about charity in Moroni 7, I love being told that this is the gift he gives to all of the true followers of Christ. It's part of what happens when we follow him to the end of that part of our journey. We become like him enough that we receive the gift of charity. He is the most charitable of all. He tells us what charity is, the pure love of all. He tells us what charity is. It's the pure love of Christ. And when we are possessed of it, as Moroni teaches us in chapter 7, we're like him. Well, that's a tangible receiving of the atonement. I mean, it's bestowed.

Yes, right. Which he hath bestowed upon all those who are true followers. What does it look like? Well, the love which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers. What does it look like? Well, the love which he has bestowed upon all who are true followers of his son, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him. I think that might mean we will recognize him. And you have to be like him to recognize him. We shall see him, that we may be purified even as he is pure. And then Adam and Eve's journey is complete. They've ascended through all these steps. The temple is what helped them get there, step by step, increasing their understanding, giving them strength, giving them the keys that unlock the further doors, those ordinances, covenances. So thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about these things that make for a

happy Easter for us. What a blessing to be in the temple and to have that constantly on your mind and have these things line upon line have come to you. It's so beautiful. I was thinking as you were talking about obedience and sacrifice, how those aren't very popular words in culture today. But the thing that will, oh, I can't wait to share this with others, that idea of here's me, here's my spouse, here's God. And what did you say, Elder Hafen, as we get closer to each other, the Lord gets closer to us. As we get closer to God, we get closer to each other.

Yeah, it's like this equilateral triangle. We get closer to God, we're simultaneously getting closer to each other and vice versa. And he is part of the covenant. I think your book, Covenant Hearts, the marriage book, was it you, Elder Hafen, that talked about the difference between a contract marriage where each party gives 100% and a covenant marriage where God is part of the covenant. And boy, that triangle, that's just beautiful. I will never forget that. Thank you. I didn't realize it at the time being young, you know, and in love. What a privilege it is to begin a marriage at an altar.

This relationship is beginning on sacrifice, not just sacrifice of my wife and I to each other and to God, but the ultimate sacrifice. We're starting this marriage on the atonement of Jesus Christ. That's going to be our foundation from here on out. To me, I didn't realize it at the time, of course, because I was dreamy and just thought it was the greatest day ever and thought I'd won the lottery. But now looking time, of course, because I was dreamy and just thought it was the greatest day ever and thought I'd won the lottery. But now looking back, I think, oh, that's how we began it all. That's where our strength comes from as a couple is from the grand sacrifice on that altar. As Amulek said, the great and last sacrifice, right? That all of the previous animal sacrifices

were pointing to. Can I make one little more comment about Adam and Eve in that regard? Because I think when Adam and Eve needed to explain to the Lord why they had partaken of the fruit, what did Adam say? The woman thou gavest me and commanded that I should stay with her. And then you just see them growing. You see their relationship growing just exactly the way you just said. Through understanding more of the atonement, they grew together. They understood each other. Their experiences brought them together in a way that they couldn't have been brought together in the garden until you have Adam saying, Eve, my wife. I mean, it's a very different attitude that he shows later. And you can just see them both growing because of the

atonement, because of the attitudes, because of their understanding and their agency and what their agency would produce. Elder Hafen, in 1979, I was one year old and you gave a talk at BYU called Love Is Not Blind. That talk, it was given to me, I remember, by my friend Lizzie Jolly. She was my TA at the time. She said, have you ever read this talk? And I said, no, I don't think I ever have. And I picked it up and it changed my life.

Now I'm assuming that Sister Hafen had a lot to do with that talk. So I'm going to ask this of both of you, even though you're the one who voiced the talk. I'm sure she informed quite a bit of that. The talk, I don't even know if you remember it, but the idea was as a Latter-day Saint, we have to have our eyes open. We have to see reality. We have to see the difficulties that we've talked about today. And at the same time, we have to have our hearts open. We can't close our eyes. We can't close our heart. We have to have our heart open to God. And even though we'd see the realities of this life, the difficulties of this life that we all are facing in different ways, how do I keep my heart open? I'm going to mention Faith is Not Blind because I think that is exactly

the context for the book. If you start out innocent, then you have complexities, you have the difficulties you've talked about. They open your eyes. They give you nuance. They give you color. If you learn from them, they're really good. But you can't climb to level or stage three without having your heart open because you're not willing.

You're not willing to make the climb, to do the hard work that takes you to stage three. And you also don't experience then the absolute surety that he is helping you make that climb. So level three then, stage three is worth it because it's informed. Like you said, it's proven, it's tried, it's burnished, it's beautiful, but you don't experience that until you're willing to make the climb until both your heart and your mind are open. So you see that a stage three is wonderful. It's worth, as Sherry Dew said, it's worth the wrestle. So it's worth the work. There's a story about you serving a mission as I think in Germany. Is that right? Yes.

A brand new elder who had decided he had found a woman to teach. And you said, no, you haven't. I promise. Right? Because your eyes had been open to the realities of missionary work. This is much more difficult than a brand new missionary thinks. I was in stage two. I had a terminal case of stage two.

Yeah, which is my eyes are open. This is real. My shoes are worn out. Yeah. Yeah, my shoes are worn out. I've dealt with complexity. I've had prayers not answered, and I get it. But you don't want to stay there.

You don't want to stay in stage two. The rest of that story, which is in Faith is Not Blind, because it's an unforgettable story for me. He persisted. He hadn't written down the address. He couldn't remember the name. He'd been tracking with another new missionary, and I just rolled my eyes. So what are we going to do?

Just sort of wander around for a couple of days and call it good. He just felt for sure that the witness of the spirit was that we needed to find that woman. And he was sorry he hadn't written down the name and the address. He started doing that after this. You'd think if you were going to teach someone, you'd write down their name and their address or something about them. So, after climbing up and down stairs for- Wasn't it five floors? She remembered on the top of the floor.

Right. She's on the top floor. I remember that part. And they have the names right by the doorbell. So, if you would, if we can just go find her, how would that be? You could talk to her. Yeah, and you speak the language. I don't. Yeah, you can tell her. After all this labor, he saw the name by the door, Wolfard. And this woman opened the door a little bit and he whispered to me,

that's the lady, talk to her. So about 40 years after that, Marie and I were in the Frankfurt, Germany temple in a sealing room with that woman. Wow. The sealer was her husband. All of their kids were in the room. They'd all been married in the temple to other Europeans. And I just sat there thinking, I don't want to just be a skeptic. I'm glad to have learned the realities of missionary work, but I can't be so committed to skepticism and, you know, sort of not getting in a big rush.

I need my heart to be open. At the time I wrote the talk in 1979, that really originally was a Rick's College, now BYU-Idaho devotional. I had felt in my role with the students that there were lots of them kind of wide-eyed and innocent and in stage one. And it's Adam and Eve. You know, that's the classic example of these three stages. You're in the garden. You're, you know, you're so innocent, naive. And then you're tossed out of the garden.

And it's rough. It's stage two. They try to do the best they can, and they offer a sacrifice, and they don't know why. But I'll do it anyway. Here comes the angel. We've talked about that. And then they say, oh, because now they're in stage three, and they get it. And they understand it.

That was a long time ago, but the principles are the same. But to come back to your original question, how do you keep your heart open? And that would be to apply to the internet age. You have doubts, you have questions, as people have sometimes asked us. So we're not supposed to doubt, that's wrong. These are from people usually who are doubting, and as doubters, you know, I was a doubter about that missionary experience. So, Elder Maxwell wrote to one of his, I think it was to one of his grandkids, it's in a letter, grandkids had asked him about doubt. And he said, doubting can either strengthen or weaken our faith, depending on our supply of meekness. Sounds like Elder Maxwell, doesn't it? And so, to have that attitude, which

is reflected in the quote that Marie read to us, we're not meek. If we're not, then all the other tools for dealing with questions and problems are not going to be very helpful. That's maybe an oversimplified answer, but. Questions and doubts can be really good. Yeah. And one of Elder Maxwell's favorite combinations as he got to know people, we would sometimes talk about that. And I could tell from the examples that he used. His favorite combination in a person who was growing and going to university life and had lots of gifts and potential, he would say the combination is brightness and meekness. I like that too. And I think that says, sure, to answer your question, if you can be meek about, well, what is meekness? It opens a door to a whole gospel subject.

Then the more you understand, the better. Yeah. Brightness and meekness. Wow. What, what a great day. We want to thank Elder and Sister Hafen for being with us. What a beautiful day. Thank you both. We want to thank all of you for listening and we want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorenson and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorenson. We hope all of you will join us next week as we return to the Old Testament on Follow Him.