followHIM - Genesis 1-2, Moses 2-3, Abraham 4-5 Part 1 • Dr. Rebekah Call • Jan. 12-18 • Come, Follow Me

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

How would your understanding of the Creation and Fall change if they were meant to teach us about growth, unity with God, and reliance on Christ rather than science of shame? Dr. Rebekah Call explores the symbolic beauty of these stories, showing how the Fall was part of God’s “Plan A” and how Christ’s Atonement lovingly covers our inadequacy and restores our connection with Him.YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/sZf2I-_pl3MALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIM.coFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookBook of Mormon: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastBMBook  WEEKLY NEWSLETTER https://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletter  SOCIAL MEDIA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 Part 1 - Dr. Rebekah Call1:12 Episode Teaser4:26 Bio8:10 Come, Follow Me Manual9:09 Life as creation13:17 How we approach texts16:58 Figurative or literal19:20 Differences and contradictions22:50 A narrative lens24:01 Liminal spaces27:30 Adam doesn’t begin as name31:39 The birth of moral awareness34:17 Retranslation Genesis 338:28 A personal example41:26 An example from the Book of Mormon45:05 A lamb, grace, and sin47:05 A coat of skins and to be covered51:23 Primary and secondary emotions54:44 Being uncovered58:20 Unspoken prayers1:02:18 How does Jesus abide in us?1:03:41 Nephi mourns1:07:42  End of Part 1 - Dr. Rebekah CallThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications DirectorSydney Smith: Social Media, Graphic Design "Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

I'm really goal-oriented. I work really hard. I'm high achieving. I could see. All of a sudden, it was like, I do it because I'm just trying to somehow match up. I'm trying to be enough. I'm trying to not let people down. I was having this day where I was praying and sort of meditating. And I was like, I'm never enough. No matter what I do, I am never enough. And I can't do it anymore. There were words that came into my mind that said, Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hink Smith. I'm your host. In the Beginning was my co-host. John, by the way. John, I don't know if you recognize those few words. They're from Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning. I know you're not that old, though. I thought it was a baseball reference, in the big inning, because I used to play Little League Baseball. All right. I'm just going to tell everyone right now, do not turn this off. I promise. those jokes are few and far between john we are honored today to have with us dr rebecca call dr call thank you for being here i am very happy to be here thank you for having me talk about being on call john we are talking genesis the creation genesis one and two also some chapters in moses and abraham what comes to mind we did this four years ago a couple of things first of all Don't look at the creation accounts as the scientific explanation for things. It's probably trying to teach something else.

The thing that I love about this and the thing I love about having Dr. Call on today is what our theology does for Eve. That's what I'm so excited about. Changes everything. What have we heard before? The Book of Mormon sets the record straight on Eve. Dr. Call, as you've been preparing for today, and we know that you have not just been preparing for this, this, but you've been studying Hebrew in the Hebrew Bible for a long time. What are we going to do today? What are you looking forward to? Well, we have some things that I'm very excited to talk about

today. The first thing I want to talk about is ways that we can approach the scriptures that help us get more out of them. I'll actually touch a little bit on what John just said. We take the creation not necessarily as scientific record, but what are other ways that we can approach the text that help us really learn from it and really be fed spiritually by the text without necessarily having to align it to science or other things. That's the first thing I'd like to do. The second thing, I would like to talk a little bit about the fall, what we understand about the fall and take a little bit of a different perspective on it and how that really centers Christ in the fall. The third thing is I would like to look at Eve, look at the woman in the garden, and some

potential new translations of help meet and how that helps us understand Eve and women at large a little bit better. Because in a lot of ways, certainly we get this when we go to the temple. Since we get to see ourselves as Adam and Eve, Eve becomes this prototype, the model by which we get to understand women. And Adam becomes the model by which we get to understand men. It's one of the reasons it's really important that we understand the creation and garden accounts because it does have so many echoes in how we see ourselves and our relationship to God and our relationship to each other. I'm already looking forward to this. I was before we started. I like what you said there, both of you. We don't have to compare the creation account as given to us through

what science understands Genesis, because it's apples and oranges. They're not remotely the same thing. I think science can help us understand how the earth was created, but this is why. Why was the earth created? Probably, Rebecca, I'm guessing you can help us understand the setting in which the book is written, because that's going to make a difference. What are their neighbors saying? What is Egypt saying about creation? What is Babylon saying about creation? And does that impact how this story is told? Dr. Call comes highly recommended from many of my friends. When I say many, I mean many. I could say 40, because in 40 in the Bible is many, yeah, multitude. But our audience might not know a lot about Rebecca Kahl.

This bio, this one might be a little long. I don't know how we're going to cut this back. How many different languages should we do it in? All right, John, what do we have? Rebecca Kahl was born and raised in southeast Idaho, received a bachelor's degree from BYU in English linguistics, a master's in the Bible and ancient near east from, wait for it, Hank. Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Of course. That's a name that's going to come up in the scriptures. And the Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University. Right now, Rebecca teaches history and religious studies at Utah State University. Jerusalem. You studied about Jerusalem, in Jerusalem, and you speak Hebrew. Yes. It was a pretty incredible experience. I have to say, being in the land where things happened really changed the way that I read the scriptures because all of a sudden when I read about Jesus and the sermon on the Mount, it wasn't some sort

of setting that I'm making up in my mind for how it could have happened and what it might have looked like. I'm seeing, in my mind, Mount Arbel, which looks right over the sea of Galilee. Another example is when it says, oh, Christ, he walked from Nazareth down to Jerusalem. When you think, okay, he walked, it was a while. But when you're there and you get into the Judean hills and everything is just up and down and up and down. I mean, Jesus was in shape. He's walking miles and miles of hills. He lived in mountainous terrain.

It's not necessarily that it changes what principles I can learn from the text. You don't need to go to the Holy Land in order to get a testimony of Christ. It enriched so much, getting to study these things and then go visit the dig or the site where it happened and going to the western wall and seeing the archaeological park by the temple. it just so much enriched my own understanding and visualization of the scriptures. Wow. That sounds wonderful. Rebecca, you'll love this story then. About a year ago, I was there with a group. An actual Sea of Galilee storm hit right when I was there. Pulled trees down. I took video for John saying, this is actually happening. Look at this. Yeah. Look at this happening. Now you're right. You don't have to go there to have a testimony of Jesus. there's something about seeing it. If you can see it, it ought to count for something.

Rebecca, I've heard from many friends that you can converse in quite a few languages. If you don't mind, tell our listeners, what could you speak if you had to? Or what could you try to speak? What could you read? I speak modern Hebrew and I also read biblical Hebrew. I speak German and I can get around in French. I will admit my French is not as strong as my German. My mission language was Cantonese. When I came home from my mission, I learned some Mandarin. So Mandarin's another language that it's not great, but I can get around.

I'm currently working to learn Spanish, much more intensively. It's a language I can get around in, but it might not be pretty. I'd say those are probably my stronger languages. And then I do have some reading. I'll need a grammar and a dictionary. But I can slowly translate Acadian, some Greek, and some Latin. Of course. Wow.

Rebecca, why don't you tell us why you're learning Spanish? Is that an important thing to you lately? It is an important thing to me. I'm getting married. I'm engaged, and my fiancé is half Panamanian. Half of my new family connections are Spanish speakers, and it's really important to me to be able to communicate with them. I want to have good relationships with them. If someday we're blessed with children, I would want them also to be bilingual because that's part of their heritage. You could say on Mondays we do Cantonese, on Tuesdays we do Spanish, on Wednesdays we do French. Yeah, that's wonderful. Should we talk about the creation? The Come Follow Me Manual starts this way.

Because the world around us is so beautiful and majestic, it's hard to imagine the earth when it was without form and void and empty and desolate. One thing the creation story teaches us is that God can, over time, make something magnificent out of something unorganized. That's helpful to remember when life seems chaotic. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are creators, and their creative work with us is not finished. They can make light shine in dark moments in our lives. They can fill our emptiness with life. They can transform us into the divine beings we were meant to be. That's what it means to be created in God's image after his likeness.

We have the potential to become like him, exalted, glorified, heavenly. What a wonderful way to start. With that, Rebecca, where do you want to go? We have three books of scripture today, Genesis, Moses, and Abraham. Before we jump into the text, I actually want to digress just a little bit. When you're reading the Come Follow Me introduction, it talked about God creating. We talk about God creating the world, but I think also each of us is in the middle of creation right now. My life is in process of being creative.

I'm living my life as I'm going. and if I'm choosing to live that with God, then God also gets to be creating in my life. Sometimes it's easy to forget that the creative process is messy. Go to any pottery studio, go watch a painter, or go watch the construction of a building. The process of creation is inherently messy. A lot of times in my life, when I'm like,

man, I feel like my life is really a mess right now. I'm not holding things together. This fell through the cracks. I made this mistake. I think it can be helpful to remember that God created the world and that was a messy process and look what we have. Look at the beauty that has been given to us in this world. Sometimes the messiest moments aren't because something is wrong. It's because creation is happening. It needs to be messy. There needs to be stuff added in and stuff taken away and stuff trimmed and shape and that's really beautiful. However messy our lives are, we're in the middle of

creation. Everything is in process. I feel like my boys were sent to Earth to enforce the second law of thermodynamics or entropy that things go from order to disorder. And they were sent specifically to enforce that. I've occasionally walked into my son's room and said, here is matter unorganized. Exactly. Rebecca, this is wonderful. If I'm sitting at home, I can think it's okay that my life, my house, my apartment, it's okay that it's messy. Yeah. It's more than okay. That's the plan. There's one of the lines in the temple that I really love where this might not be an exact quote, it's a paraphrase, where Elohim says to Jehovah, if Adam and Eve partake of the fruit and the fall happens, then they will get to learn by experience to know the good from the evil. That that's the whole point, that we get to be here. We have the privilege to be here to learn by experience. And if I look back in my life, when I have experiences that teach me good from evil, that almost always means I made a mistake, that something

got messy. Those are my most valuable learning experiences because that's how my own moral awareness can be expanded, that I can see, I can have a greater perspective, a greater view that hopefully is slowly, slowly, slowly, transforming to become more like God's view. The plan is that things get messy because guess what we have the greatest cleanup squad of eternity on our side I love the line in Moses 655 and they taste the bitter that they might know to prize the good that's experience and I'm grateful that line is there here's another line John Alma 42 17 alma to his son how could we repent unless we sin we came here to repent Rebecca, we are off to a fun start. Keep going.

Repenting really is anything that brings us closer to God. Repenting is when I forgive someone, and repenting is when I take a moment in my prayers to actually have this moment of connection where I feel a connection with God, and repenting is when I pay attention when I read my scriptures, and repenting is when I go to church and when I minister. That's all repenting, because it's bringing me closer to Christ. When Alma, how could we repent except we sin, that is actually this gift that we're allowed to mistakes that we sin in order to help us see, I am not as close to God as I want to be. So then we can engage with Christ. So Christ helps us change who we are. Yeah, that's wonderful.

It helps you breathe easy. That yes, you and your children and your grandchildren are going to make a lot of mistakes. And it's all part of the plan. It's all part of the plan. To begin with, one of the things I'd like to talk about are the ways that we can approach the texts that help us get more from our scripture study. A lot of times we look at scriptures and the answers we get or the interpretations we get might be very different at different times in our lives or in different situations. That doesn't mean that other interpretations are invalid or that they're wrong or they're not things we can learn from them. It just means that's not necessarily where we're standing. Some of the interpretations that I'm going to play around with here, I am not saying that

these are the be all end all interpretations. And sometimes interpretations will appear to contradict. The reason why I bring this up is because we have multiple accounts of the creation. And actually, they don't all agree. Sometimes they flat out contradict each other. Genesis says some things and Moses says some things and Abraham says some other things. Then if you go to the temple, the temple says some other things. They're not the same.

I actually think, and this is my opinion, that when we say, okay, well, this one must be the standard. and here's how Genesis is wrong, and throw away some of those differences, we actually miss out on things we can learn from. Tying in with what John said before, I am not sure that we should always be taking the text literally. I think especially the creation account has so much to teach us allegorically. When we have three or four different ways of telling a story, maybe there are three or four hundred different ways we can understand each of these stories. and they might have each different gems of wisdom to give us and that we don't have to make them harmonize perfectly. I actually find this to be really beautiful

because we read in the scriptures that God speaks unto humans unto man according to their own understanding. I love that God has multiple ways of saying things and multiple ways that we can interpret wherever I am, God has a way to reach me. God has infinite numbers of children who each have a unique experience and a unique perspective. then that means God needs infinite numbers of ways to reach people.

I don't see having differing or even contradicting interpretations as being bad. It just means that's another way that God can reach people. Wonderful. And apparently he wants us to know this story. Apparently he really does because we have it over and over. Over and over again. An experience I had that I think illustrates this point. I remember sitting in, this is several years ago,

I was sitting in a Sunday school class. It was during a Book of Mormon year, and we were reading about Lehi and his sons. There was one person who stood up in class and said, I love reading about Lehigh's parenting and what he did with his children and how he went and he spoke to them and exhorted them, like with all the feeling of a tender parent and just helped me do this with my children. Really beautiful testimony. And then this other sister said, you know, I was reading the story of Lehigh. I read about what he was saying to Laman and Lemuel, and I just thought, gosh, it seems like Lehii is constantly harping on them

and he's constantly criticizing them, and he's constantly picking on them. And I could kind of feel most of the class going, we shouldn't talk about Lehigh that way. But then this sister got to her point, and she said, and as I was reading, I realized I'm picking on my teenagers all the time, and that's why my relationship with them is not what I want it to be. They don't want to talk to me because they feel like I'm always harping on them.

In that moment, I thought, okay, actually, the point is not, was Lehigh a perfect or not parent? And can we pick apart as parenting? things, that's not actually the point. The point is that two different people read the same text and two different people got exactly what they needed from it. There are so many ways that we can read the text and that we can learn from it exactly where we are. That's wonderful. As I teach the Bible, Rebecca, I'll have students who raise their hand and ask if they should take something literally or figuratively. We talk about the balance there. Here is the creation account. The seven

creative periods, a garden, tree, fruit. Should I take that literally or figuratively? And I like what you're saying here, which is there's maybe not a correct way to take it. There's perspectives that you can take. And of course, we want to be informed. Someone who speaks Hebrew can help us be a little more informed. Yes. We can recognize that there are different perspectives and that my perspective, because I grew up in a certain place and a time speaking a certain language in a certain religious tradition and a certain culture that will influence my perspective and some of that is inherent that each person is going to have their own perspective some people's perspectives might be more similar than others but i also think that we can learn to try on new

perspectives because we can get more from the text it can be dangerous and this is really to your point hank that maybe not everyone does this i know at times in my life i have there can be the temptation to have this sort of either or one has to be right and one has to be wrong And I think we miss out when we do that Instead of saying this one has to be right And this one has to be wrong We can say, okay, well, what can I learn from this one? What can I learn from this one?

What can I learn from this third one or this fourth one? Because they might not all say the same thing And maybe the interpretation won't hold up in every aspect of the story But you can look at it and get a gem from this portion. Henry J. Iring and Joseph Fielding Smith wrote back and forth about the age of the earth. It is so funny, because they were friends. They disagreed on the age of the earth.

Finally, they're talking in Elder Smith's office, and he says, we talked for about an hour. This is Henry Iering. He explained his views to me. I said, Brother Smith, I have read your books and know your point of view, and I understand that is how it looks to you. It looks a little different to me. He said as we ended, well, Brother Iring,

I would like to have you come and let me talk with you sometime when you are not quite so excited. And then later on, he says, is he a prophet? Yes, I just happen to disagree with him about the age of the earth. As we're talking about scripture and how scriptures might actually say really different things. Sometimes when you read scriptures, scriptures might even appear to say different doctrinal statements that might not align, that might not always harmonize well with doctrinal statements elsewhere in the scriptures. So what do we do with that? At times I've had the sort of reflex to just say, well, and try to explain away the differences. Where I am now is I don't try to explain away the differences. I just let them be different from each other. As a scholar, I do religious studies, which is the academic study of religion itself, how religions change and develop and social factors and economic and political factors. One of the things any religion you study that is a constant in religions, is that they change. Even a Latter-day saint, a member of the church today, if they were to be

transplanted, they'd time travel back to the time of Joseph Smith. Even though we've studied that history, it would be very foreign in a lot of ways. There are elements that would be completely different from our current worldview and the way that they're understanding the text because it was a different time and a different culture. Religious change happens and it's necessary because cultures and languages change. It's a testament to us because we believe that we have a relationship with a living deity who has a church that is a living organization. We call this the true and living church. So it's living. It needs to grow and it needs to develop. Seeing that as we read scriptures that sometimes they say different things, they don't always harmonize, to me just says,

okay, people are receiving revelation for their time and their day. There's small changes that build on each other. And that's why if we were to be transplanted to the time of Joseph Smith or transplanted to the time of Christ, we would see things happening that we go, I don't recognize this. Is this the same religion? Yes, it's the same religion in the same way that I can show a baby picture of me at six months. And it looks quite different from me now because I am living and growing and changing. And religions also need to live and grow and change. So we see that in our scriptures, that we have these books. The Bible is a compilation of books written over centuries from people who are speaking different languages and different cultures and different

locations. We should expect that they're going to say different things. The Bible is not univocal. Many different people, many different times and places. There are going to be contradictions. That's very healthy. Try to learn why that author said that thing and why this author said this thing. I love it. It's an exegetical way of reading the scriptures. Let the text say what it says. We have the Book of Mormon mentioning everlasting punishment. Then we have the doctrine of covenants coming out and saying, I didn't say the punishment would have no end. I said it was endless punishment because endless is my name. And there's further light knowledge in the doctrine of covenants than I think the prophets had in the Book of Mormon. And I got to be okay with that.

Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, John Keith Erickson was with us, Dr. Erickson. And he said that Wilford Woodruff stood up and said something that kind of contradicted Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. He said, yes, it does contradict them because we now know more. We know more than we did then. It will continue to be that way because we're getting this further light and knowledge. Rebecca, we are having a lot of fun so far. Let's keep going. So now, let's go ahead and start talking about the text itself. One of the perspectives I would like to explore is reframing how we're understanding the creation and fall narrative as a whole. As I read the creation account, it occurs to me, first of all, that the fall was inevitable. No matter what, the fall was going to

happen. That was according to God's plan. What would have happened if Adam and Eve never ate the fruit? And they would have just been stuck in the Garden of Vine. I mean, we find this in Second Nephi. There would have been no progression. There would have been no children. They wouldn't have had knowledge. Yeah. They could have just stayed there forever, which to me kind of looks like a problem in the plan. Yeah. But if God's like, okay, you got your choice. And then is he just sitting in the back going like, please, please, please. With that as the background, I'm going to pull out some elements of the account that show how I really think that it was a failsafe plan. The story itself illustrates a fail-safe plan for human development.

In order to do this, let's talk a little bit about liminal spaces. Okay. A liminal space, liminal, comes from the Latin meaning threshold. It's an in-between place. If I'm standing on the threshold of the door, I'm neither in the room nor out of the room. I'm in between. A liminal space is any place it's in between. So, for instance, the birth canal, that baby is neither a feet.

nor an infant yet it's it's in between it's being born or in Hispanic culture there's the kinseniera when a girl turns 15 there's this week long celebration and at the beginning of the week she's a child and at the end of the week she's a woman in between she's kind of neither it's this in between temples are really liminal spaces they're in between they're this place where the sacred the divine gets to come meet the profane the earthly the human and it's this meeting place where They're not in heaven, but they're not quite earthly either. They've been consecrated. They've been separated, dedicated to be different from the rest of the land around them. They are liminal spaces where we get to go in and have this sort of transference of power because it's another thing we find in liminal spaces. There's usually some sort of process that happens where the person upon exiting the liminal space is different somehow. They've been imbued or endowed, shall we say, with certain powers or knowledge or responsibility in order to go and fill a new function upon leaving. As I describe this, you're like, oh yeah, that's exactly what we do in our temples,

except this is used academically to describe other liminal spaces in time. These are patterns that we see. The Garden of Eden functions as a liminal space. Now, a few of the characteristics of liminal spaces are that non-liminal beings or entities are not meant. to stay in the liminal space forever. God's permanent residence is heaven. He comes to temples, but God doesn't stay in temples forever.

He's not just hanging out in an easy chair in the celestial room. Humans are also not meant we go to the temple, but then we are always meant to exit back into our own life, having gained more power and to live that life. We're not meant to just live our whole life in the temple. Liminal spaces are, first of all, always meant to be temporary. Second of all, liminal spaces have very, very clearly defined boundaries, distinctions. For instance, if we look at the Solomonic temple, Solomon's temple that he built, you have the

outer court, you have the holy place, which is a court that's surrounded by the outer court, and then in the very center you have the Holy of Holies, and these are different degrees of holiness, you don't accidentally go from the outer court into the Holy Place, or from the Holy Place into the Holy of Holies. It's so well defined. You know when you're in the Holy of Holies versus the holy place. This very clear definition, these demarcations, the marking of boundaries, we find starting from the very beginning of Genesis 1. Actually, we find the same thing in Moses and in Abraham. The first thing God starts doing, he says, let there be light, and then he separates. He makes boundaries between the light and darkness. He separates the light from the darkness. He

He separates the seas from the dry land. He separates, he makes heavenly bodies and then separates the days and the seasons and the day from night and seasons and months and years. He separates the different types of plant life into categories. He separates the different type of animals into categories. He is making demarcations. When God creates the humans, there's a couple interesting things that happen. If we look in Genesis chapter 1 verses 26 and 28, especially verse 27, I'll read this.

It says, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. The word it says for man, it gets translated as man in the King James. But this Hebrew word is Adam, and literally just means human or humanity. It's a singular word. This is the word that later on becomes the name, Adam, Adam, Adam. But in Genesis 1 through 3, it's never used as a name. It's always. So when it says Adam, in Hebrew, it's literally the human.

So it's that God said, let us make human or humanity in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. God created the human in his own image. In the image of God, he created he and then the word here that gets translated him is just a pronominal suffix that refers to either him or it. So he created the human. Male and female, he created them. There are especially Jewish theologians who read these verses and they say, okay, hang on a second. Is this saying God created a man? Or is it saying God created humanity male and female? Or is it saying God created, and here's where there's

some Jewish scholars, he took male and female and put them in one being. If allegority, we look at this imagery, you have two entities, male and female, in one being. Then in chapter two, when the woman is separated, they're separated out into two flesh. And the first thing that the human, the Adam, Adam, says is, this is bone of my bones and flesh in my flesh. This is why a man needs to leave his parents and cleave to his woman so they can be one. Because what it's saying is we were one and now we're separated into two and we need to be one again. I'm not saying this is the only way to read the text. I think there are things we can learn from the text about unity and how we treat each other. So you have a liminal being that means it could belong indefinitely in the Garden of Eden.

God starts forcing. No, you don't get to be liminal. What that means is you need to be able to make your own distinctions. You have to have moral awareness to make distinctions. Then you cease to become liminal, at which point you do not belong in the garden. If we jumped to chapter two, it says the Lord God created the human, and in verse 16, puts them in the garden, and it says, and the Lord God commanded the human, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. We often talk about how Adam and Eve were told to not eat the fruit of the tree, and they were also told to multiply and replenish the earth, and so we have the contradiction.

I'm not sure that it can be seen as a contradiction. I don't know that it's always overt because they're commanded to multiply and replenish the earth back in chapter one. It's never mentioned in chapter two, which is where they're commanded not to eat of the tree at fruit of the tree. And if Adam and Eve are really innocent, do they understand that the two are not mutually compatible? I don't know. However, in the Hebrew in chapter two, there is a contradicting command. that does not come through in translation. I'm going to re-translate chapter 2 verse 16 and the Lord God or Jehovah Elohim commanded upon the man saying you will definitely eat from every tree of the garden but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil do not eat of it for in the day you eat of it

you will definitely die. It's introduced by saying this is what God commanded you will eat of every tree That is an inherent contradiction Because if you tell someone You must eat of every tree And don't eat of that tree You can either eat of every tree Which includes that one tree Or you cannot eat of that tree

In which case you're not eating of every tree If you give a person a conflicting command A person who has potential For reasoning, for reasoning thought Eventually that person is going to realize There's such thing as choices There's such thing as consequences. Not all choices are made equal, and I need to choose.

And the moment they realize this contradiction, you have the birth of moral awareness. The fruit of the tree is just sort of the thing that it's a launch pad, but regardless, the plan happens. The second thing is in verse 18. Lord God says, it's not good that the man should be alone. I will make a help meat for him. And then he doesn't separate them into the two humans. Instead, he says, okay, great, here are all the animals and you need to name them all. I don't think this is Adam going around and being like, okay, you're a rover and you're fluffy and you're Bessie.

This is the human looking and saying, okay, what makes a tiger different from a lion different from a leopard? What makes those different from cows and goats and sheep? And what makes all of those different from me? You have this birth of the awareness of self. you have the awareness of others, you have the awareness of category, then God separates into the two beings. If we look at it this way, the plan is fail safe. The plan always was that the humans leave the garden and go make messes in this world we made for them to make messes. What I love about this reading is that that means if it was like inevitable they leave the garden, that means Jesus is

always planning. It wasn't, well, in case they make a mistake, we got a Redeemer. It's like, no, no, no. We've got a Redeemer ready to go. We have to make sure they can get into the position that they can go learn through experience to know the good from the evil and have messy mortal experiences because that's what we do. We make mistakes and then we can learn. We have to make sure that that actually happens. Again, I am not saying this is the only way to read the text. I am saying it is a fruitful way because it can help us learn things about the Savior, it can help us learn things about choice and accountability, can help us learn things about moral awareness,

which I think is exactly what this text is written to do. One of the things that becomes really interesting is that there's this question, if, no matter what they're leaving the garden, then what is the serpent doing? The serpent's trying to get him to eat the fruit of the tree. And I don't think actually the serpent necessarily cares about the fruit of the tree,

because if we read what the serpent's saying, suddenly the serpent is functioning in a different role. I'll read partially King James, and I'll retranslate a little bit. This is Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman,

yea, hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden. Now, I want to retranslate the last part of this verse. Because in English is sort of this very neutral question, you know, did God say this? in Hebrew there's this particle off which is this sort of intensifying question particle what it does in the Hebrew it says and he said unto the woman did God really say you shall not eat of every tree of the garden so that's the first thing the second thing that the serpent says

if we jump to verses four and five the serpent said unto the woman you shall not surely die because for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be open and you shall be as gods knowing good and evil. What he said is true. The moment you make a choice, you're going to gain moral awareness and you're going to know good and evil. But what's the effect of the serpent's words? Everything the serpent says is designed to sow mistrust.

The serpent puts a breach. He breaches the trust between the humans and God. Also the effect of this is that he breaches the trust between humans. So you have this unity. Again, you have like the man and woman being one and then separate it and they're meant to be one again. You have humans who are one with God and separated from God and we need to be one with God again. And then what does Satan get, what is the serpent doing here? The serpent is making it so that there is less unity. The problem of the fall is

not that we sin. It's not that we make mistakes. That's part of the plan. It's a part of life that we sin and make mistakes and that we have suffering and sickness and death. But that's actually the plan. So it's not really the problem. What is the problem of the fall? It's separate. It's disunity. It is contention. If we go to 3rd Nephi 11, that's the doctrine of the devil, is contention, is disunity. What is the first big sin? That there is so much disunity between brothers that one brother kills the other. If we go to 3Nephi 11, where Christ says, and again, this is going to be a little bit different reading from the way it's often read, Christ says, I will tell you my doctrine, and this is the doctrine which the father has given me. I used to always read this and be like, oh yeah, the doctrine's baptism. But as Actually, he says, this is the doctrine the father has given me. And he says, I testify of the father, or I bear record of the father. The father bears record of me. The Holy Ghost bears record of me. That's the first thing. Christ says, this is my doctrine. The doctrine is, we're unified. Then he says, he talks about baptism. And what is baptism? Baptism is when we make a covenant so we can have the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is a member of the Godhead to dwell in us to help us be unified to God. What Satan is doing, what the serpent is doing, in Genesis 3 is sowing disunity. One other scripture jump I'm going to make. If we go to Ether chapter 3, where the brother of Jared, he has the 16 stones, he asks Christ to touch them, Christ touches them, and he sees the spiritual finger of Christ. And he says, how can this thing be?

I didn't know you had a body. Show yourself to me. Then in chapter 3, Ether chapter 3 verse 11, the Lord said unto him, believeest thou the words which I shall speak. He answered, yea lord i know that thou speakest the truth for thou art of god of truth and canst not lie i know you're honest and i will believe i trust everything you'll say and then when he had said these words the lord showed himself unto him and said because thou knowest these things ye are redeemed from the fall because you fully trust me you are redeemed from the fall i think it's possible to read the whole fall narrative as there's a whole bunch of negative things that we view as being really negative sickness and death and suffering that are actually necessary. They're not the problem of the fall.

The problem of the fall is that we're no longer unified with God and we're no longer unified with each other. I love it. What is the thing that will bring us back to unity or at one? It is the at onement. What does Jesus pray for in his intercessory prayer? That they may be one as we are one. So I really like that perspective. Rebecca, what if I were to give an example like this? Let's say I say to my daughter, Madeline, when she's a little girl, Madeline, I want you to go out and live your dreams. But don't cross the street.

Eventually, she's going to have to say, hey, if I really want to live my dreams, I'm going to have to cross the street. It has to happen. You wouldn't expect her to be 60 saying, well dad i want to live my dreams but you said not to cross the street as she is working through this here comes the adversary and who says you can't trust him right and now she's questioning whether she can trust me or not but he didn't cause her to fall he he sewed all this distance between me and my daughter she eventually would have come to this inevitably on her own that's a great analogy

because if your three or four-year-old daughter does not trust you, then horrible, horrible things can be consequences of that. Look at any portion nearly of recorded human history. We can see the tragedy that comes from people not being unified. Firstly, the first priority is to be unified with God and second to be unified with each other. Look at wars, look at suffering, look at starvation, because people aren't trusting God enough to say,

you know what? I'm going to trust enough to share this with my neighbor. I'm going to trust God enough to give up my selfish desires for power and ambition. I'm going to trust God enough, whatever the answer is, right? There are a lot of different ways this can play out. So much of the human-caused suffering in the world. This is not necessarily disease and old age and death and these sorts of things. But a lot of the human-caused suffering would be remedied if people, could, as Joseph Smith says, have a correct understanding of the nature and characteristics of God, then to be unified with that type of God. Because we can make an image of God and then be unified with it, and that's not necessarily going to solve our problems. But when we understand God,

Christ, as being this person who was so committed, so committed to unity, so committed to growth and development and second chances that he literally died for it, that's the kind of God you can become unified with, that then transforms you into being the kind of person who is willing to extend that grace to other people. Look at the adversary, inserting himself into the equation. I'm having this relationship with God, and he wants to derail that relationship. I can think of another Book of Mormon example if you want one. I asked my students, okay, so Jesus appears, 2,500 people gain an incredible personal witness of Christ. What happens to community when there's 2,500 with that kind of a witness?

The answer is 4th Nephi happen. Fourth Nephi, at least the first half, right? It's the contention thing. Mormon's explaining it going, he says four times, there was no contention. And then he goes on and maybe people who think, well, maybe they didn't have in-laws back then. He says, no, they were married and given in marriage, and there was no contention, as if to preempt our question, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people. And it was such a lasting impression, such a lasting impression that even though Christ only came to that first generation, it was multiple generations, this is a couple hundred years before this effect wears off. That's how powerful Christ is.

That's his transformative power. Rebecca, go with me in another area, and let's explore here for a minute. I think the adversary, as you showed us, so's disunity. And he does this to Adam and Eve. To shame people, God does not want to see you. God does not want to talk to you. I see that with the young people. They think, I did this wrong, or I did this wrong, or I sinned.

in this way and God does not want to see me. God, I can't pray. I can't go to him and almost this run, hide from God. Now that is the ultimate disunity, hiding from him. You can't trust him. He doesn't want to see you. We can take that and put it back, really centered in the Genesis account or the creation account because this one is where there's a lot of alignment between the multiple accounts. What's interesting is that the humans, they take the fruit, they have all of a sudden see, we made a choice and there's consequences and we did the thing we said we were not supposed to do, and they're ashamed. So they try to cover themselves. In the King James says they took fig leaves and made aprons. But the word in Hebrew that gets translated as an apron

never means apron anywhere else. It has multiple different meanings, but the most frequently translated use for this, the most frequent context that this occurs in, is that this is some sort of strap that gets used to tie on a sword or armor. They're arming themselves, which I think is interesting when we feel ashamed. We want to hide. We put up defensive walls. We become defensive. We're ready to fight to protect ourselves. They're trying to cover themselves and protect themselves, but not effectively. What is God's response? God's response is, essentially, and I'm doing some extreme paraphrasing here, come and show yourself to me and let me cover you. What I think is beautiful about that is that the Hebrew word, kaffar, is the word to cover, and it is also the word to

atone, so that Christ comes and covers our shame. That's not something that we are capable of doing on ourselves. We can defend ourselves in our shame. But if we want atonement, if we want covering? That is something that God, that Christ, is ready to do. What does God cover them with? He covers them with coats of skins. Realize that at this point, in the story, Adam and Eve are living in a garden where there's no death. They've never seen death. Where is this coat of skin coming from? I don't know. Maybe God is coming down and taking a lamb and slaughtering that lamb and taking the skin and saying, I will cover you with this. I don't know if we can get much more stronger symbolism for Christ's atonement. You have this skin that is going to now protect you. Atonement that becomes

something you wear. It's an embodiment of intonement that they're putting on their bodies. When we look at this as a plan in which it is intended for us to come and learn through experience, and that means to make mistakes, that's the whole point so that we can go. grow, then all of a sudden if you're envisioning a God who's waiting for you to slip up so he can come out with a lash, that's a very inconsistent God. Adam Miller wrote a book, Original Grace, really fantastic book, and he talks about when we view God as being like waiting to punish us, that viewpoint is actually showing that we believe that sin is original and grace is a response to sin. Rather than saying God is a God of grace, and sin is a state that we're living in

now, we're living in a fallen state, but the whole plan was made from grace, rather than saying, oh, well, now we've got problems. We better have some grace. I don't think that's what God is saying. We have this God who is full of grace and full of mercy and God's justice, which is to make bad things good and good things better. Justice is also working together with mercy and grace to do this. When we feel ashamed, we think, oh, God doesn't want to see me. No, God so, so much wants to see us so that he can really be with us, like the Immanuel, God with us, that he can be with us in our suffering. Because suffering, again, I think is not the problem. Suffering is an inevitable part of life.

And Christ wants to be there with us in our suffering to help redeem us through our suffering. sister annette dennis i thought oh i loved this paragraph i think it's april twenty twenty four when adam and eve partook of the fruit and had to leave the garden of eden they were given coats of skins as a covering for them it is likely that an animal was sacrificed to make those coats of skins symbolic of our saviors own sacrifice for us i remember asking one of my professors josephilly mcconkey said a lamb was sacrificed and i raised my hand and I said, how do we know it was a lamb? And he said, it just has to be. So that was his answer. Continuing Sister Dennis, kaffar, as you just said, is the basic Hebrew word for atonement.

And one of its meanings is to cover. Our temple garment reminds us that the Savior and the blessings of his atonement cover us throughout our lives. As we put on the garment of the Holy Priest at each day, that beautiful symbol becomes a part. of us. I loved the idea of being covered by the lamb. And they were covered before they were ever cast out of the garden, which I also think is beautiful. Yeah. Really, I think that's the ultimate protection. The Adam and Eve are trying with their... To cover themselves. Right. And to protect themselves. So they're getting ready to defend. Ultimately, they're not capable. We are not capable of protecting ourselves from the things that life will throw at us. I can't protect myself. Maybe in 20 years I'll get cancer. I can't protect myself from

that. You know, maybe a close family member of a friend will be killed in a car accident. I can't stop that. The protection comes from having a relationship with Christ. It won't stop those things from happening, but it can protect us from becoming bitter and having really horrible lives. Who would not want to be covered by Christ every day? Coats of skins. we think of coats as an outer garment, but what is translated as a coat? Katonet, it's like a tunic. It's a shirt-like tunic for either men or women. Oftentimes, a tunic, if you're looking at ancient dressing patterns, that's not the thing you're wearing on top, like what we would call a coat. That's the thing you're wearing underneath. So you've got that, and then you might have other robes and things or belts that you put over that. But that's the thing you're wearing next to your skin very frequently in more ancient clothing times. Can you say the word again? Because I want to be able to remember it.

Yeah, it's catonet. You'll see it printed like catoneth. That's how I've seen it, yeah. Usually the letter that gets written as th, nowadays is pronounced just as a t. I made a screenshot of that word once on Blue Letter Bible, and I just loved it. An inner garment worn next to the skin, which comes down to the knees, rarely to the ankles, worn by both men and women. And I just went, oh, wow. That is accurate. The coats of skins were not outer coats in English.

They were inner garments. Love it. Rebecca, here they're walking and talking with God. Then Satan comes and soes disunity. You can't trust him. there's this verse I'm over in Genesis 3 verse 10

Adam where are you I was afraid that's an interesting point that almost like Satan was able to convince them to be afraid of God I want to throw an idea out of both of you

it seems a big part of the restoration from what we studied last year John was the Protestant view of God in Joseph Smith's day was, God is going to burn. It's going to burn most of the human race. And here comes Joseph Smith saying, actually, God is, he's really good. He's merciful. Wow, he's even more merciful than I thought. Wow, he's even more merciful than I thought. Do you see that introduction of fear as an important piece of this story? Yes. I do see it as being a really important piece. I don't have the official, like, scientific terms, but they have like base

emotions. I think they're called primary emotions and you have secondary emotions that usually come as a response. And so primary emotions are things like anger or fear or sorrow or happiness. These are the primary emotions. And then secondary emotions might be things like frustration or excitement and you feel happy and it might morph into excitement or you feel angry. And it might morph into excitement or you feel anger and then it might be turned into frustration or irritation or things like that. These primary emotions, I was reading, it was some psychological. So this is why I, and that's out of my field. So I know I don't have all the citations for it. But what I remember from what I read is it said that these primary emotions are very, very powerful motivators. People do things motivated like

fear is a major one. Anger is a major one. Sorrow. love is another primary emotion. So you've got these things and what motivates us to do things without thinking things through, to behave irrationally, to sort of block off, to go into that fight or flight mode where we're not even engaging with a person anymore. You're engaging with an idea. You're engaging with an idea of who you think that person might be or how you think that situation might play out. We see this in interpersonal relationships. We see this in marriages.

You see it in sibling friendships with parents. to child relationships, as I'm preparing to get married, finding it, listening to podcasts about communication and reading books. One of the things they'll talk about is they say, pay attention. When you're talking and something happens and all of a sudden, like one thing happened and you just like react. On a scale of one to 10, it was like maybe a 2.3 and you react on like a level 9. You're not engaging with what just happened. You're engaging with whatever fear or anger or primary emotion response you have from whatever happened when you were a kid or what happened with your dear friend who never speaks to you anymore. We're complex beings. We have layers. Satan, the serpent, comes and soes fear because now Adam and Eve are not actually interacting with God. They're interacting with their idea of God. It's an image of God. There's a separation in the relationship. That's not an authentic relationship. If you want to have a an authentic relationship with a person, you actually need to connect to who they are, not who you

think they are. I've noticed in the work I've done with young people, even not so young people, it's fear and shame. I did this thing wrong. I haven't gone back to church since. Yeah. Or I'll be judged. Or God probably does not want to talk to me. I've even heard young people say, you know, I'm disgusting. I'm awful. They call them names. I like the Lord asking in verse 11. Who told you that? Yeah. What's your source on that? Where in the world did you get that? Can I get a citation on that? Who told you that you're disgusting? Who told you that you're no good? Who would want you to believe that? What's interesting is when he says, who told you that? Because he says, I was afraid because I was naked. And what is being naked? It is

is the state of being uncovered. Adam and Eve are in the end of chapter two. It says they're naked in front of each other and they were not ashamed. They're not ashamed because they're unatoned, but there's nothing that needs to be atoned. When they gain moral awareness and they realize there's choice and consequences and we make mistakes and we're not perfect and this whole idea of this is going to be a fallen existence, comes crashing down onto them and all of a sudden they're like, oh, I'm not atoned. I've got to hide that. I have to hide the fact that there's nothing making up for my inadequacies. Then when God comes and says,

who told you, there's a no atonement for you? Who told you there's no one to cover you? Because that's not accurate. Christ is here to cover you. He's got you covered. The nakedness, that unatoned state, becomes covered. What is the opposite of being covered?

It's being exposed. Listen to Amulek. This is like, wow. Thus, mercy can satisfy the demands of justice and encircles them in the arms of safety. Think of garments. You're circled about. While he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice. So amazed that he would use that word when we're not kaffared. Let's add an ed to the word kaffar. I like it. I don't know about either

of you, but I've had moments where I'm saying my prayers. I'll hide certain topics. And the Holy Ghost says, Do you want to talk about that? No, but I hope you'll bless the missionaries. Well, what about that? Well, please bless my family. We try to hide our topics, right? Our vulnerabilities, like, oh, I don't really want to talk about that. That hurts.

That's painful. I don't really want to do anything about that. So I'll hide it from you. It's almost funny. Like, we're going to hide from God. Really? You're going to hide from God. Right.

That's the thing. Is this even possible? yeah yeah building on what you're saying hank if we go to matthew six this is a sermon on the mount and this is right before christ teaches the lord's prayer and he talks about don't be like the hypocrites and he says verse seven but when you pray use not vain repetitions as the heathen do for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking verse eight be not therefore like them to them for your father knoweth what things you have need of before you ask him. I used to think there's vain repetitions, like, don't say the same thing over and over again. So I was like, okay, well, what if I'm actually feeling that? But I won't say the same thing over and over again, right? No, it's saying, make this a sincere prayer. God already knows what you need. If you know you're talking to somebody who already knows it all, who already knows what you need, how does that change what you're saying? How does that change what you ask for?

And I think that can really change our prayers, that the vain repetitions is not bothering to maybe engage with our deepest selves when we pray. Yeah. Speaking of that idea of God knows what we need already, Romans 826. Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. For we know not what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. sometimes a prayer is oh and the Lord gets it yeah I remember once having a blessing and in the blessing it said heavenly father hears the prayers you did not know you prayed this is years ago that I had this blessing and I've thought a lot about that how often are we in our hearts

praying for things that we don't even know we're praying for and God hears those two I think that's really beautiful it is speaking of exposing your to the Lord. Not hiding, just saying, this is what happened. This is what it is. This is what I'm dealing with. I'm human. I'm what scientists call alive. This is Elder Kiran. God's intent is to bring you home. I'm sure you both remember this. He says, he did not cast away the woman with the issue of blood. He did not recoil from the leper. He did not reject the woman taken in adultery. He did not refuse the penitent no matter their sin and he will not refuse you or those you love when you bring to him your broken heart and contrite spirit your nakedness we might say from genesis that is not

his intent or his design nor his plan purpose wish or hope no he does not put up roadblocks in barriers he removes them it's almost like satan put the disunity in and he's saying the lord is trying to come to remove the walls that we put up. The hiding we did, the aprons we made. He does not keep you out. He welcomes you in. His entire ministry was a living declaration of this intent. It reminds me we had Dr. Garrett-Dirk Maudan, and he said the mindset of the churches at the time of Joseph Smith was, we're going to save you from hell. And then Section 76, Joseph discovers hell is not what I thought it was. It's a temporary abode. the mindset today is, well, actually, God is there to bring to pass your immortality and

eternal life. Just completely different way of looking at it. Save you from hell? No, actually, God's here to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life. His elder Kieran would say his plan is one to bring us home, not one to keep us out. Don't hide in our shame. Let ourselves be fully exposed. I actually think that that is a key step to receiving Christ into our lives. I know there was a time this was several years ago when I saw my whole life put out before me and I realized I'm really goal oriented. I work really hard. I'm high achieving. I could see all of a sudden it was like I do it because I'm just trying to somehow match up. I'm trying to be enough. I'm trying to not let people down. I was having this day where I was praying and sort of

meditating and I was like I just can't do this anymore. I'm never enough. No matter what I do, I am never enough and I can't do it anymore. There were words that came into my mind that said, of course you're not enough. You are never meant to be enough. Jesus is enough. So stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on Jesus. I remember even being on my mission,

so this is even years earlier, preaching Jesus, but not necessarily feeling Jesus in my life. I have a lot of perfectionist tendency. So I was trying to do it all myself. fast forward to when I was praying and you know you're not enough you're never meant to be enough Jesus is enough after I had that experience I started feeling that maybe instead of fighting against the fact that I'm fallen and not enough I just acknowledge it I am not enough I am fatally flawed I am inherently weak I am inherently fallen that this is who I am not necessarily saying that

to be like, well, fine, just do whatever. But to use it as a starting place to say, okay, this is who I am, and if I now focused on the Savior, how does that change? How do I let the Savior abide in me? How am I every single day trying to open myself so that the Savior has a place to abide? As I do that, I started finding that I was changing. It was a course of a few years, but I remember after I'd had that experience and trying to really have the Savior abide in me, and let there be the Savior's grace in my life. After a couple years, I remember one day realizing I didn't feel guilty all the time. I wasn't beating myself up all the time. And it wasn't because I was focusing on not beating myself up all the time internally. It was because I stopped focusing on my

inherent inadequacy, which is there. I acknowledge it. It's there. But I focused on Christ. That's what Christ is about. He's about healing that. He's about when you have an infinite gap that separates you from God. There is nothing I can do to bridge an infinite gap. I can do all the stuff and I'm still going to be about three millimeters into eternity, like of infinity. Christ bridges the gap because Christ is the only one infinite enough, big enough to bridge that, to make that God with us, that abiding, that unity that we can have with God. It's actually a really crucial step to say, okay, I will be completely exposed before Christ and let him do what he does.

Now, I think we can see this. Second Nephi four, Nephi's been writing his record. You know, he's an old man and he's writing his record and he seems pretty put together the whole time as he tells this story. And then he gets to the point where his father dies and he's going to tell the part where he separates from his brothers, right? This has happened decades earlier, but he's writing about it. He falls apart a little bit.

He does. I'm not enough moment. Yeah. Oh, wretched man that I am, my heart's sorrows because of my flesh, my soul grieves because of my iniquities I am encompassed about by the temptations and sins, which easily beset me. I don't stand a chance. My heart groans because of my sins. As he turns it around and he turns to God almost in his, like you would say, he just

fully exposes himself to God saying, this is who I am. isn't this sad, right? And then this phrase, John, you might have already quoted it. He starts to quote all this good stuff about what God has done for him. And why should I yield to sin? Why should I give way to temptation? Awake my soul, no longer droop in sin. And then this phrase has new meaning to me, Rebecca, because of what you've taught us.

He says in verse 33, Lord, Will thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness? There it is again. Kaffar. Cover me. Mm-hmm. Not just with Kfar, but this encircling with the robe, but also with things like the sacrament,

where we're literally eating emblems to remember Christ. And it strikes me just how embodied it is. This is not just something that we say, oh, I believe in my heart. It's something we do. do physically. And it's not even just an action that we do. It is something we put into our bodies or on our bodies. There is a very embodied sense to this. It's one of the things that I love about our doctrine that at the same time that we acknowledge that we live in mortal physical bodies that are

fallen, at the same time, these bodies are also a vehicle for our salvation. Yes, they're mortal and fallen, but they are also sacred and holy and divine and they are gifts. We get to do things with our body, to take Christ literally into our body and to take when we partake of the sacrament and to put Christ onto our body as we wear our garments because we're not disembodied brains or disembodied spirits that need to return to God. We are souls combined. It's another type of unity, that we have this unity, that we get to work with this body toward our exaltation and toward our salvation. Coming up in part two.

Then I wrote a poem that is from her perspective, after Abel has already been killed. In my mind, she has Seth as a baby, and she's holding and sort of singing this song to Seth. I'm going to briefly walk you through the lyrics because they're all grounded in different research or different traditions. Like I've got some things here from Hebrew tradition and Jewish tradition and I've got a couple of Hebrew words. So I'll explain that and then I'll sing the song for you.