followHIM - Genesis 18-23 -- Part 1 : Dr. Daniel C. Peterson

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

How do the ancient Near Eastern traditions regarding hospitality affect the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah? Dr. Daniel Peterson explains how Abraham, Lot, and Sarah learn to trust the Lord and wrangle some of the more difficult passages regarding Sodom and Gomorrah.Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/episodesFacebook: 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 EditorAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsKrystal Roberts: French TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow him. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my salt of the earth co-host, John, by the way. John, you are the salt of the earth. And the reason I bring that up is because I didn't want to say pillar of salt. I wanted to say salt. Hold that thought, folks. Yes. Hold on to that. Hold on to that thought. We're excited to be back. We're going

to be in the book of Genesis. And John, both you and I are a little starstruck today. Tell our listeners who's with us. We are so happy today to have Dr. Daniel C. Peterson with us. I've listened to him, read his blogs and everything on Interpreter Foundation and everything. So we are so thrilled to have Dr. Daniel C. Peterson with us today. And let me give you, our listeners, some information. He's an emeritus professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University. And I think, Hank, I've told people, I think the church's expert on Islam would be Dr. Peterson. I don't know who else that could possibly be.

100%. Yeah. He was born and raised in Southern California. He received a bachelor's in classical Greek and philosophy from BYU. Studied for four and a half years in Jerusalem and Cairo. That's so cool. Earned a PhD in Near Eastern languages and cultures from UCLA. Has been a professor of Islamic studies in Arabic from 1985 until retirement

in just last July of 2021. The founder and until 2012 director of BYU's Middle Eastern texts initiative, which published dual language additions of classical Arabic works. I served in the Switzerland Zurich Mission, where they have the finest chocolate on earth. I'm just inserting that. For nearly 10 years, a member of the Gospel Doctrine Writing Committee of the church, served as a YSA bishop for a ward adjacent to Utah Valley University. He's a former chairman of the Board of Farms, which you remember the Foundation for Ancient Research in Mormon Studies research and Mormon studies and

the author and editor of numerous books and articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics. And since 2012, the president of the interpreter foundation, I hope you will find that a website. He and his wife are the executive producers of the foundations witnesses film project. Oh, I brought my DVD because I went and saw the movie in the theater and bought the DVD. And this is this is part of our box of approved Sunday movies to watch. I went to the Interpreter Foundation's website.

Wow. I did not know how much is here. I mean, this is it's interpreterfoundation.org. Do you want to tell us just a little bit about that before we? Yeah, the Interpreter Foundation was begun in 2012, August of 2012. And we have, amazingly, we have published at least one article every week online, and they're free, every Friday since August 2012. It's nearly 50 volumes of material, and it's all available online for free. And we've done this movie and the docudrama that's about to come out. And, you know, there are

things on all aspects of the scriptures and related topics. So we try to deal with issues that not always, we're not always trying to defend the church against criticisms. But when there are criticisms, we try to take them on straightforwardly. We're not afraid of any topic. And if there's a concern, then we'll try to address it. So it's there's dozens of articles. Isn't it amazing in our day and age, the availability of gospel resources? I can't imagine telling Brigham Young or telling Wilford Woodruff about this. Yeah. No, there's so much, in fact, that I can't keep up with it. I mean, if I want to get ready for a come follow me lesson, I think, well, look at all the relevant LDS helps. I can't. I don't have time. There's not time in a week to do it. Which is a good problem to have, you know, as opposed to having nothing and being totally on your own when you're trying to deal in some cases with Isaiah or something like that. That's why I think this is nice to be able to talk about this because a lot of saints are eager looking for things, but they don't know, where are these guys coming from? What's their angle? What's their, you know, can I trust this? And we can say, Hank, yeah, you can trust Goat Interpreter and you can trust that. This is great content. Faithful scholars, faithful scholars.

We just love Brother Peterson, how, like you just said, we're not afraid to take on a topic. And that straightforwardness is kind of characteristic, I think, of you and that site as well, which is awesome. Yeah. Well, you know, my confidence is the church is true. There's no criticism out there that's going to be lethal. You know, there may be some where we don't have a good answer yet, and maybe that'll come in a few years. I've seen that happen, you know, where I didn't have an answer for a while, and then suddenly something comes along, and I think, my word, that's it. That settles that issue. I can remember once being hit by an issue, probably when I was a teenager, and I realized, I'll bet there's nobody around my neighborhood, not my bishop, nobody I know, who knows anything about this.

And you suddenly feel all alone. Like this is the first time, this is totally irrational, but this is the first time that this issue has ever come up and I don't know what to say. And then I began thinking about, it actually had to do with the witnesses, now that I recall. And I began thinking about Richard Anderson's book on the witnesses, which I had just read. And sure enough, there was a passage of about five pages that dealt with specifically that issue. It just, when I read the book, it hadn't meant anything to me. And I kind of, you know, breezed through it. When I came back to it, I thought, he nailed it.

There was no reason for being worried about that issue. He'd already dealt with it. But not everybody, you know, is aware of that book or the equivalent in any given issue. And so the goal is to try to help them. I don't want people to feel like they're out there twisting in the wind and that nobody has an answer because somebody probably does. Dan, we want to turn this over to you.

Genesis 18, where do you want to jump in? How do you want our listeners to, what might be some skills they need to approach this text? Anything like that before, any prelude before we read? Yeah, 18 through 23. Well, you know, I think one of the things that people need to appreciate about these chapters is one of their themes is hospitality. And let me give you a little background to that from Middle Eastern perspective. Hospitality is really important in traditional Middle Eastern cultures. And by traditional, I'm meaning here, not the Babylonians, but the Bedouins. I mean, the really oldest,

in some ways, the oldest form of Middle Eastern culture. Even today, one of the greetings that you have in Arabic when people come, and I don't even know that the Arabs think of this, they'll say to you, Ahlan wa sahlan, you know, welcome. Well, Ahlan wa sahlan comes from two words. Ahlan means kinfolk and sahlan means a flat place, like a good campground. And so what you're saying to people when you say Ahlan wa sahlan, like welcome to my house, is you've come to family, and this is a good place to camp. You should spend the night here. And that's what you see when the Lord and his two accompanying angels come to Abraham. He's out there in the plains of Mamre, or some translations say by the oaks of Mamre or the terebinths of Mamre.

He is eager to have them come in, And he wants them to stay with him. And this is classic Bedouin hospitality. And it's a really important thing. There's a poem from pre-Islamic Arabia who says, you know, I'm not servile in any other way, but when a guest shows up, I'm his slave. Anything for the guest. And they really believed that. And you would sacrifice almost anything rather than allow harm to happen to the guest. And they really believed that. And you would sacrifice almost anything

rather than allow harm to happen to your guest. That's, you know, there's this really terrible story that comes up later in this section of Lot offering his daughters to protect the visitors. We're aghast at that. And it probably says something about, you know, sexism in the ancient Middle East. But it also, and I think they would have meant it to be read as, he is so desperate to protect his guests. You know, he is honor bound. It will be a disgrace to his family forever if he allows harm to happen to his guests while they're with him.

He will give up anything, including his children. There's, again, a Middle Eastern poet, Imran al-Qaes from the pre-Islamic period, who leaves his weapons with someone while he goes off to do something. And the enemies of that man come and besiege the castle in which Imran al-Qaes' weapons have been stored. And the master of the castle says, you know, he's not here. Where is he? I won't tell you. Well, let us in. You know, no. Give us his weapons so is he? I won't tell you. Well, let us in. You know, no.

Give us his weapons so that you can't have them back. No. Well, we've captured your son who was out here hunting. We've captured him. We'll kill him if you don't let us in. He says, well, you know, I don't want you to kill my son, but you do what you have to do. I cannot allow you to violate the relationship between the host and the guest. I mean, it's that important to them.

So I think you're seeing that here with Abraham. He's dwelling in a tent. He is in that way a classic Bedouin. And you notice he comes out. He bows. He touches his forehead to the ground. You know, please stay with me. And it's this strong sense of honoring the guest, especially, I think it grows out

of the fact that you're out in the desert and this really inhospitable area. And when a guest comes straggling along, he may need help. And, and this is mutual protection. You hope for it too, if you're in trouble and, and there's a person out there. And even if he's your enemy, if you come in under his roof, he will not harm you while you're his guest. He's on a bound and it would be disgrace forever if he did anything to you. I'm putting that against Ben Franklin's fish and guests stink after three days, right? Totally different culture than what we're used to. There's a wonderful section about this in a film that was done years and years ago. And I should have looked it up. I don't remember where it is.

It's been posted again in a cleaned up form. It's called The Faith of an Observer about Hugh Nibley. And there's a really moving scene toward the end of the film where he retells the story of Abraham in the desert from a Jewish apocryphal source. And Hugh gets emotional. He tears up telling a story about how Abraham is not only welcoming to the guest, he's out there. It's a terrible, burning hot day, dusty, the wind blowing horrible. And he is looking for stragglers in the desert. He says, I will not eat until I've helped some poor soul out here in the desert. And that's when, according to that Jewish apocryphon, that's when the three travelers come and he's given the gift of his son and so on. It's not just an arbitrary thing, according to that story.

It's rewarding Abraham for his faithfulness and his hospitality, his sheer goodness. But it's striking to hear Hugh tell that story because he just chokes up. It means so much to him. So as we're coming into these chapters, that's something that definitely keep in mind

is why they're behaving the way they are is because of how seriously they take hospitality. Hospitality. Yeah. It means more than just, you know, putting out a nice party spread. It's taking care of the guest, providing the shelter. You notice some things like, he says in verse 4 of chapter 18,

let a little water, I pray you, be fetched and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. The idea of washing the feet leaps out at me. Because in the ancient world, especially for travelers in the desert, that's no mere formality. That's something you do to refresh them. They're dusty and dirty after traveling out there. And that was a ritual practice, but a real practice throughout the ancient world. A friend of mine did a master's thesis, I think, on welcoming formulae in Homer. And he's looking at the Odyssey and wherever Odysseus goes, when he is received into a great house, they wash his feet, they wash him, give him a bath, anoint him with oil, and give him fresh clothing.

And I think that ought to ring some bells with some people when you're entering a great house, that this is something that is done. And it goes back to very real-world things. Two, just a small thing. He runs to Sarah and says, make ready quickly three measures fine meal needed, make cakes upon the hearth. And she's probably making pita bread. Later on, I noticed with Lot, he talks about unleavened bread. That's probably what it is. It's the same kind of bread that Bedouins make today. It's kind of like modern-day pita bread or almost like a tortilla on a flat stove. When she makes cakes, I don't think we should think of, you know, Betty Crocker. Right.

So, but he's showing real honor to them. He runs and he gets a young calf. Now, you don't do this for just anybody. You're not slaughtering your herd all the time. But when guests come, you do. And so he gets a good calf and dresses it and gives them. He takes butter, which is probably leaven, which is really more like yogurt. They still use it in the Middle East for cooking and in stews and things like that.

So, you know, there's a lot about this that still rings true in the Middle East. If you visit a Bedouin encampment, although the Bedouins are no longer quite what they once were. I remember taking a group of BYU students out to a Bedouin camp. We were told we were going to have a Bedouin experience. And I have to admit, I got a little suspicious when I could see a TV antenna poking out of the Bedouin tent. And when the Bedouin chieftain came out in an Izod T-shirt, I thought, this is not quite Abraham. But still, you know, some of those attitudes remain. Yeah. And these three men in verse two, what would we say?

We would say if someone were to say, who are these people? Yeah. Well, I think it's pretty, one of them is clearly identified eventually as the Lord and two of them are angels. Uh, and at one point then the two angels go on and the Lord seems to exit the picture. You know, when they go to Sodom, it's just two, we don't know what the Lord has done. One of the things that's striking to me. Is the continuum between humans and deity. That they're described as men. They're clearly not ordinary men.

And at what point Abraham recognizes that. I don't know. Eventually he's bargaining with him. About the fate of Sodom. He's got to recognize. Not just three ordinary travelers. travelers passing through the desert. This is something remarkable. I don't know when he notices that. When he first starts, you know, in verse three, my Lord, he addresses one of them as my Lord.

He's not addressing as Yahweh or Jehovah. It's just a respectful term. But at some point, he realizes this is unusual. And one of them is clearly the Lord appearing in human form with two angels. That's pretty good stuff. And I think for some of our fellow Christian friends, it's a bit of a problem, poses a bit of a challenge. How does the God of the universe, who's without body parts or passions, appear in the form of a human being? I guess he can do anything he wants, but it seems a little curious. So, yeah, this is a divine visit.

It's a remarkable visit that he entertains God and two angels out there in the desert. It's a theophany. Yeah, I guess so. And they ate. Yeah. It makes me wonder, well, you know, again, this is deep doctrine. I can't answer it. Who is the Lord in this case?

He's eating. And in Luke, he shows that he's physical by eating right but he's eating here yeah um and so it's it's pretty astonishing but they've come for a very practical purpose and i think this is time for abraham's blessing to be fulfilled he's to have a son and so one thing that i like about it is it shows how the Lord intervenes not only on massive, the massive cosmic scale, but also on very personal levels. Sometimes this is about one man and one woman having a baby and the Lord and two of his angels come down. Now, Abraham is an important guy.

I grant that. But still, begetting and bearing children is, it's not altogether unusual. You know, it happens. And so they're coming down for that. The unusual thing, of course, here is the advanced age of Abraham and Sarah. So, you know, when Isaac is born, Abraham is a hundred years old. Pretty amazing. They immediately begin asking about Sarah and he says she's in the tent, which fits modern Middle Eastern ideas.

The woman is sort of withdrawn. We see this in the West as sexism, but in the Middle East, it's often regarded as treating the woman as a kind of hidden treasure. She's, she's not to be gawked at by ordinary strangers. So, well, there's a house in Cairo that I really like called the Geyer-Anderson House, which is a traditional kind of upper class, aristocratic, Islamic home. And there's an area where the guests would gather, and then there's an area upstairs behind Mashrebeah screens from which the women could listen in on the conversation.

They would not come out and mingle with the guests, who would be all men. And so she's in the tent, and the tent is kind of her sanctuary. And so he begins to talk to abraham knowing that sarah can hear says you know i'll visit you again about this time next year i think is what he's saying and sarah your wife will have a son by then and she hears it and because she's so old she laughs within herself it says she didn't laugh loudly but this is the lord he knows she says, after I'm waxed old, you know, come on, really? And the Lord says, why'd she laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed, I will return unto thee. Verse 14. And Sarah denied. This is kind

of embarrassing because she's lying now. Well, in a way, she's telling the truth. I don't think she laughed out loud, but she denied saying, I laughed not. She was afraid. And he said, nay, but thou didst laugh. You can't fool me. But he's made this promise, which will then be fulfilled. And so that's a remarkable thing as well. And then we shift to Sodom and Gomorrah, a very different story. It's interesting.

In our last lesson, we talked about they knew this blessing was coming, this seed, but they had tried to do some different things themselves, right? With Hagar, with, you know, maybe this is what God wants me to do. Maybe what this is God wants me to do. Maybe this is what God wants me to do. And no, no. Right? That's not it. That's not it. This is how it's going to happen.

And I think that's often the case that the Lord will tell us to do something. He doesn't necessarily tell us how it will be accomplished. Right. Sometimes he eventually will intervene because we're dumb and we're not doing it right. He'll finally say, no, no, do it this way. But sometimes he just says, do this. And then it's up to the leaders of his church or the bishop or whoever it is to figure a way to do that or a head of a family. You know you're supposed to do it, but how you do it is kind of up to you.

We're not puppets and we're not led at every step. So, yeah, they know it's coming, but so far it just hasn't seemed to materialize. And I'm 100 years old now. How is this going to happen? I just can hardly imagine it being fulfilled. It's a very human story, right? Yeah, it is. We know we have promises.

We know there's blessings, but it doesn't seem to be playing out maybe like we thought it would. Well, and I think that's one lesson I've learned over my life, that sometimes when things have been fulfilled, I've thought, oh, so that's how it was going to happen. It's not how I pictured it. But now that I can see it, I get it. And I think that happens a lot of the time. The Lord knows what he's going to do.

But but, you know, it won't necessarily come on our schedule or the way we imagined it. Yeah. And this being the original little family here of of the faithful, maybe it's you should expect this. If this happened to the original family, all of you should probably expect this type of situation. Doesn't Isaiah say, look unto the rock from which you were hewn? Look to Abraham and Sarah. Yeah. As a kind of a model to life.

They are a model. And I think that we should be constantly thinking of Abraham and Sarah as models in many regards. And they were set up to be that. So we're regarded constantly as the children of Abraham. There's a reason for that. So you said now we switch over. Yeah. And, you know, Abraham's still in the picture because the men rise up.

They're looking towards Sodom. And Abraham comes along with them to bring them on the way, it says. And then the Lord says, you know what? I'm not going to hide what I intend to do from Abraham because Abraham is going to be a great nation. I trust him. All the nations of the earth will be blessed in him. I'm going to tell him. I know that he'll command his children to live my commandments.

So the Lord says, you know, I've been hearing complaints from Sodom and Gomorrah about oppression and wickedness. Hearing complaints. I like that. And I'm going to go down. And it's interesting because he says, I'm going to see whether they've done according to the cry of it. If not, I'll know. So it's interesting. I don't think it's really the case that God doesn't know, but he's going to do a very

serious thing. And so he will be a personal witness against them. The God himself will be. And so the men turned from thence. Yeah. Dan, don't you think that's a good principle of I've heard this? I better go find out for myself. Yeah.

It's just a good human principle right of i better not just believe what i hear how many cases have i seen or experienced or been involved in or frankly probably even done myself where i've trusted a report and then found out the report wasn't true um you know that the bad things I was hearing about somebody within 15 minutes of meeting that person, I think none of this was true. Nothing like that. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's just a good human principle here with the Lord's trying to give us a good example. I remember an administrative decision that was made.

A good friend of mine, he just committed one of the cardinal sins of an administrator. He did not seek out other accounts of that incident and he should have done that you never make a decision if it's going to be a serious one based on one report from one person or something like that you you know because sometimes they're just unjust there's two sides to every story there really is yeah and then but i won't point the finger at that person because i've done it myself and we maybe all have yeah but the lord says i'm going to be a witness myself but the lord stays there and the two men go off the two angels whoever they are go off towards sodom and then you have this wonderful uh bargaining session between Abraham and the Lord. And I don't think it's so

much that the Lord really is being bargained down, but I think he's allowing Abraham to demonstrate his compassion. Abraham is the father of the faithful, as he's often called, and the friend of God, and he's a righteous man. But he's saying, you know, don't destroy this city. If you can find even a few righteous, and how about 50? How about 45? And he gets it down finally to 10. Yeah. And the Lord says, okay, I won't destroy it for 10.

The trouble is when he gets there, when his servants get there, they can't find even 10, which means it's a really bad place. But, you know, this bargaining again is, I just get a kick out of it. It is Middle Eastern in a way. I still remember a case where I took a family that were visiting Cairo once out to a shop in the bizarre area of Cairo, Khan al-Khalili. And they found something they wanted. I don't even remember what it was. Say it was $100. I can't recall. And, you know, they bargained with the guy. And finally, they decided, no, it's a little too expensive. Now, we won't get it.

And then I think two days later, it was Monday, we were going to be taking them to the airport. And they said, you know, that thing at the bazaar, we really do want it. And we'll even be willing to pay a hundred bucks for it. Is it near the airport? And I said, well, it's kind of on the way. I mean, if you promise to be quick, we can go there. I said, okay, let's. So we take him there. And I knew the shopkeeper just a little bit. And they said, okay, okay, we'll take it. A hundred bucks. He said, no, no, no, you can't do that. I said, what do you mean you can't do that? He says, you have to bargain. And they said, we don't have time. And he said, okay, then I'll do it for you.

I say $100, and you say no more than $60. And he did the bargaining on both sides and brought them to about $80, somewhere in between, and then sold it to them. And he says, there, now wasn't that better? And I thought, man, you guys have just had a cultural experience. This shopkeeper left some money on the table because bargaining is part of it. That's wonderful that maybe this is coming from that culture that still exists today. I'd never thought of that before.

Yeah. So, you know, it's this back and forth between the Lord and Abraham. Hey, can I bring the price down a little bit you know will you will you spare them for this but at 10 he decides i better leave off i've i pushed it too far uh and the lord says yeah i'll spare him for 10 and then ultimately he can't spare them at all i read this and i feel like man i'm in a middle eastern bazaar here only this it's not the shopkeeper with a tourist. It's the Lord with Abraham. But, you know, does the Lord really, is he really affected by Abraham? Maybe. I don't know exactly how that works. But I think it's a good opportunity for Abraham to demonstrate his worthiness.

His posterity is not going to bless just Israel, but all the world. So his concern is for everybody, even the city of Sodom. He wants to save them if he can. And that's why he is who he is. I use this when I teach the Book of Mormon about, well, if you cast out the righteous from among you, you know, then this place is going to get leveled. And it sounds like a similar principle that even if there's a few righteous there, the Lord says, I won't destroy it. But I've always loved verse 25, because it sounds like Abraham is showing God how to be God, you know? Yeah. Hey, that be far from thee.

Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Do you know, haven't you read the handbook? You're supposed to be like this. And you can imagine he'll say, well, I'm just dust and ashes. I mean, how do I dare speak to you? And there's that. But he is speaking with the Lord. And I like the phrase at the end of 22, but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. I think the standing before the Lord may be important here. because in the traditional court of the oriental monarch,

the proper pose before the monarch is on your knees, forehead to the ground. I mean, you look at the standard prayer postures in Islam. When they touch their forehead to the ground, that's the time-honored gesture of a Middle Easterner in the presence of an oriental, desperate oriental lord. And Abraham is standing before the Lord. When Gabriel is asked who he is in the Annunciation, he answers, I am Gabriel. Oh, and when he says, when Zechariah says, but this is impossible, I am old.

And Gabriel responds, I am Gabriel. I don't care if you're old. I'm old. I'm responds, I am Gabriel. You know, I don't care if you're old. I'm old. I'm Gabriel. I'm Gabriel. And I stand before the Lord. I stand in the presence of God. And when he says, I stand in the presence of God, it means he's a member of the divine court.

He's not just some slave. He has status. And Abraham here, I think Abraham in a way, with the three visitors and God, Abraham is being made a member of the divine council in a way, temporarily. The divine council is at that tent in the desert in the southern part of Israel. In Amos 3.7 when it says, surely the Lord God will do with nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants, the prophets. The word secret is sod, which is richer than just secret. It means something like something discussed in a secret council. It's like the prophets are invited into the council.

They at least get bits from the council that they can then reveal to people on earth. I think that's what Abraham is getting here. He is a member of the council. He's involved in a discussion with God about the decision of the council. Dr. Sears, Josh Sears told us that even once Jeremiah says to a false prophet, you haven't been in the council. I was at that meeting. You weren't at that meeting. Exactly.

So where do you get off, you know, letting out what you say are the secrets of the council? You don't know them. You don't even come to the meetings. Yeah. And I feel like Abraham, it sounds like he's getting more and more humble because he's very bold and he's standing, but he's okay. I'm nothing but dust and ashes. And then finally, okay, don't be angry.

I'm going to speak just one more time in verse 32. And peradventure, I guess means suppose, right? It's a King James way of saying, well, suppose guess, means suppose, right? It's a King James way of saying, well, suppose there's this many, right? Yeah, maybe. I don't know if that'll be true, but what if? You're not going to destroy it for those 10 people, are you? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, so the standard is pretty low.

Sodom doesn't have to pass a high bar. But it fails. So that tells you how bad the place was. So here we get to Sodom. And here again, I want to say, there's something else going on. Again, I think it's that hospitality issue as well. The men of Sodom want from these two visitors when the two angels go to Sodom. But they want it by force. And they want to humiliate and dishonor the visitors.

That's a violation of every human rule of not only hospitality, but just general human interaction. You just don't do that. So contrast the hospitality of Abraham in the preceding chapter with the attitude of the men of Sodom, who when these guests come, what they want to do is violate them. Compare it even with Lot. Lot begins the chapter very much like Abraham. He's sitting in the gate, and when the strangers come, he says, come to my house. I'll feed you. You can wash your feet. I mean, it's very much like Abraham in the preceding chapter.

And then by contrast, come the men of Sodom. So where are they? And Lot is saying, no, no, don't do this to these men. You know, they've taken refuge in my house. Don't do this. It's a violation, yes, of we would say of the laws of nature. I mean, it's wrong. But it's also a gross violation of hospitality rules that are really important and that Abraham

and Lot have just illustrated. Yeah, people become objects. Yeah. Right? gross violation of hospitality rules that are really important and that Abraham and Lot have just illustrated. Yeah. People become objects. Yeah. Right. I want to use that. Yeah.

Yeah. Treat people like things and things like people. Yep. I think that's one of the things that would have offended people in the ancient Near East. No wonder the cry of Sodom has been coming up before the Lord. This is a rotten city where the first thought they have when two strangers come into the city is let's abuse them. It's a terrible place. And I would bet that it had happened to strangers before who had the misfortune of coming through Sodom and sought to put up for the night out in the middle of the desert.

I mean, if you know where Sodom probably was, it's at the southeastern end of the Dead Sea, pretty miserable territory. If you're coming through there and it's late in the day, you haven't had any water and you need some shelter, you go into Sodom to get those things. And then it turns out to be this violent criminal town, the horrible place where you may not come out of it all right at all. So the Lord is sick of it and he sends his angels to take care of it. It's interesting that Lot lives there, isn't it? Yes.

I've always wondered what in the world would possess you to live in a town like that? So he's brought out of it and maybe he needed to be brought out of it, you know, before he succumbed to it. He evidently hadn't completely, but he's raising his kids there. I think, okay, not a good choice. One of the worst places on earth you could possibly raise them. I think if you look at footnote 8a, there's a Joseph Smith translation. I'm looking in a commentary here.

The Joseph Smith translation explains that the citizens demanded both the visitors and the daughters, but Lot refused both. All of this evil, the Joseph Smith translation adds, was after the wickedness of Sodom. Yeah, much more edifying. This is a really horrifying story on a lot of levels. Isn't that part of the Old Testament, Dan, is they just share the details? You know, they have a very different attitude toward these things than we do. Where Mormon says, I don't want to tell you. I don't want to tell you. I don't want to hurt your spirit. Maybe they had a different, very different attitude toward a lot of these matters than we do.

I mean, I can imagine. I grew up in the city. If you grew up on a farm, some things just come across differently to you. If you grew up with flocks and herds and you're always trying to get them to multiply, well, you know, you have a little different attitude from a young age. You know, and I remember a Latter-day saint woman friend of ours who was the wife of the branch president cairo they lived in yemen for a while and she was invited sometimes to all women gatherings sometimes on the eve of a wedding she would just come away stunned the conversations were quite different than you would hear among latter-day Saints on an evening before a wedding.

So, a little bit on the earthy side. So, yeah, maybe none of this needs to be shared with the kids. Yes. A little bit on the earthy side. But, you know, this whole chapter, there's a whole lot about this chapter that's pretty awful, you know. But he eventually leaves. And the men kind of have to take it into their own hands, the visiting angels. They reach out and they grab Lot and pull him back into the house.

And then they smite the men outside who are staggering around trying to find the door they no longer can. And then they tell him, look, you need to get out of this place right away because we're going to destroy it. And I don't know if the decision had been made to destroy the place until this event. They're kind of there as the intelligence gatherers. Well, they've seen for themselves now. So the decision has been made. We're going to smite this place. So you need to get out and you need to get out quite a distance. But he goes to his sons-in-law and they say, yeah, you know, you're joking.

This is, you're not serious. So they don't go. And then the angels take him and then he lingers. I like verse 16. Well, he lingered. The men laid hold upon his hand and upon the hand of his wife,

upon the hand of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful unto him. And they brought him forth and set him without the city. This is not a time to linger. No, I'm thinking he's looking around, you know, maybe, well, should I take this? And should I pack that? I say, just get out. Okay. If nothing else, we'll take you by the scruff of the collar and just the scruff of your neck and drag you outside and plant you outside the city. Get out. What an interesting principle. I do that with my own sins where the Lord says, get rid of that sin.

Let me linger here for a minute. I will. I will. I'll leave. I'll leave. Just let me linger here for a minute. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's a good moral to draw from this. When the Lord says, get out, get out. Yeah. Now, if you receive that kind of inspiration or that kind of commandment, quit, don't, don't linger. The fact is a lot of us, you know, there's the famous prayer supposedly of St. Augustine. Oh Lord, make me chaste, but not yet. Give me a few weeks or months and then I promise I'll get my act together. But the Lord means now. And I think this is, again, a good lesson for us to learn,

that you shouldn't linger. The longer you hang around, the more likely it is you're going to start taking on the coloration of your environment. The Lord's like, we are leaving. I'm going to grab you by the neck. I'm going to yank you out of here see i kind of picture it this is probably not fair but lot and his family suddenly just being plopped down in the middle of the desert looking around kind of blinking and said

how do we get here you know just now move um there's a great verse in revelation. I think it's, I want to say like revelation 19, where the Lord looks at Satan's kingdom and he says, get out of there. My people, it's a revelation 18 verse four, come out of her, my people that you be not partakers of her sins and receive not of her plagues. It's really a get out now. Yeah. Get out of Babylon plagues. It's really a get out now. Yeah. Get out of Babylon right now. Elder Maxwell used to like to talk about people who,

you know, they want to have a house in Zion, but they like to keep a vacation home in Babylon too. So you can't do that. Exactly right. Linger. Linger. I stay by the tree of life,

but I weekend at the great and spacious building. And then I, then I come back. Yeah. So, you know, he I weekend at the great and spacious building, and then I come back. Yeah. So, you know, he used to ask the question, and others have, too, how many people are active and how many people are valiant? There may be a distinction there. It's an important one. We have to ask ourselves, which group do I fall into?

Yeah, I'm there on Sundays, but am I really paying attention? Am I really into this, or am I just kind of there? And so leave the world behind. Doesn't mean withdrawing into a monastery, nothing like that, but really making a decision. You know, there's a line from, I'm trying to think, C.S. Lewis, who says that the Lord has promised to speak with us face to face, but one of the problems is we have to decide which face is ours. A line that I've always loved from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, purity of heart, he said, is to will one thing. If we're double-minded, as James says, then we're unstable. Purity of heart is to will one thing, to really be focused.

But it has to be focused on the right thing. I'm sorry, I'm going to go a little bit astray here or far afield. But there's an essay by Bertrand Russell, of all people, famous atheist philosopher of the 20th century. Don't hear him quoted in church very often, but I've quoted him. But he talked about once, he had an essay on the two most impressive men he'd ever met. And one of them was Vladimir Lenin. He rode with him for 24 or 72 hours in a train car. And he was deeply impressed by Lennon, but not positively.

He said his impression was that Lennon was totally devoted to his idea of the revolution in a way, totally incorruptible that he, he said he would have without hesitation leaned over and cut my throat and let me bleed to death on the floor of the train car. And it wouldn't have bothered him a bit. He said he was unnerving, uh, that, and that's a kind of purity of heart, but it's not the bothered him a bit. And he said it was unnerving. And that's a kind of purity of heart, but it's not the kind the Lord wants. It's got to be purity of heart focused on good things, not evil things. I like that. Wow.

Yeah. That would be a little disconcerting to sit in a train car right now. Yes. I think I'm not going to sleep on this train. Yeah. They're told not to look back. And there again, this story about Lot's wife is an odd one. But the idea of not looking back, we can take that as a metaphor very, very clearly and easily. Leave Babylon and don't look back.

Leave Sodom and don't look back. Don't keep thinking, man, it would have been nice. Oh, you know gee i miss x y and z no just make a clean break she looks back and it's turned into a pillar of salt whatever that actually means i don't know there are sort of salt pillars around that part of the uh the dead sea because it's a really salty lake and it's it's gone through various periods of expansion and contraction. It's in a deep contraction right now. And it's left pillars of dirty salt all around the area and it stinks really badly.

But I can imagine that that's what they're thinking of when they think of this passage. We had a bus driver pull over and point and say, there's Lot's wife right there. So I think there's maybe a spot where there's a particular pillar they like to... Yeah. Some of them are about the height of human beings. I mean, they almost look like people. You can see people in them. It does sound like a kind of a harsh punishment

to become a geographic formation all of a sudden for just looking. I was so excited to ask Dr. Peterson this because isn't there a hint in the Koran that she didn't just want to go back, but she actually went back? Yeah, there is. Yeah, that she went back and she's punished for that. Yeah, that's a Muslim tradition. It's not just a glance. We think that's too harsh. But my heart's really there. I liked that place.

I had a nice house. I had lots of good stuff, and I'd rather be there. Like Laman and Lemuel always saying, Gee, I wish we could be back in Jerusalem. They never really left in their hearts. And look what happened to them. So I've always thought along the way, by the way, you know, Lehi has warned that they might wander off and be lost or something.

And I think, would it have been so bad? But he's a father, right? He cares about Laman and Lemuel. But he brings them along and look what they do. Well, I always wondered, couldn't Nephi just say, you know what, you guys are right. Lehi, I'll take care of him. You guys go back. I'll stay with them. Because, I mean, he sees what they're going to do to his posterity. And that might have been a temptation for me to say, you're right. Dad's off his rocker. Just go back. I'll take care of Sarai and Lehi. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, you like this area. I think that they probably were attracted to South Arabia. The Great and Spacious Building, I think, was an old South Arabian skyscraper. They still have them in Yemen. They had to go behind Yemen through the desert to

get to the Old world bountiful. Because I think Lehi was afraid they might have stayed in Yemen. Well, hey, would that have been so bad? Let him stay. Nice place here. You know, you might want to just buy a house. And don't come with us to the new world. I guess we better bring along the opposition and all things brothers. And

that one looks like it fit you perfectly. That one's great. That one's spacious. Yeah. Try that. Hey, John, I wanted to share a story from that talk from elder Holland. It's called remember lots wife. And if, uh, if our listeners have time, I definitely would, would, uh, I'd take time for elder Holland this week. If you've never read that, I would listen to it as well. You know, it's elder Holland. It just, uh, the way he speaks and he, he, he shares this one story. He says, I remember one fall day, I think it was the first semester after our marriage in 1963. So this is way back in the 1900s. I don't know if you guys remember the 1900s, but 1963, he said, we were walking together up the, up the hill past the major building. This is, um, he and his wife on the sidewalk that led between the president's home

and the brim hall building somewhere on that path. We stopped and wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into life that day seemed so overwhelming and the undergraduate plus graduate years that we still anticipated before us seemed monumental, nearly insurmountable. Our love for each other and our commitment to the gospel were strong, but most of all the other temporal things around us seemed particularly ominous. And then he said, I turned to Pat and said something like this, honey, should we give up? I can get a good job, carve out a good living for us. I can do some things. I'll be okay without a degree. Should we just stop trying to tackle what right now seems so difficult to face? He said, in my best reenactment of Lot's

wife, I said, in effect, let's go back. Let's go home. The future holds nothing for us. And then he quotes Pat, grabbed me by the lapel and said, we are not going back. We are not going home. The future holds everything for us. I like that idea of, uh, the, the past is better than the future. Like Lot's wife, right? Uh, let's go back. Let's let's for the future. Isn't, isn't going to be good. Uh, where he's like, and that's part of his, his talk here. So I would encourage everybody to go listen. Yeah. That's the remember Pat's husband story. Well, you know, I can imagine that Lot and his family maybe felt, look, we'd made a home in Sodom, you know, curious place, but we'd made a home there and we had to abandon it. And we

were actually kind of forced out. These angels grabbed us and hauled us out. We've got nothing. And, you know. And now what? We're out in the middle of the desert. I mean, wow, this is real progress. And again, if people have been there, if they've seen pictures of it, this is desert that makes Nevada look like a tropical rainforest. I mean, it's really serious desert. And so you've got to be thinking, again, what have we gotten ourselves into? Where are we going to go from here?

Interesting that you bring up Lehi and Sariah, you know, this, we're leaving and we're leaving what, you know. What they've always known. Yeah. They had to abandon everything. Laman and Lamel, this is the land our fathers gave us. And I just feel like when they were uprooted from their land, they lost part of their identity. And I've always wondered if that's why Jesus just keeps telling you are my when he finally shows up in the new world, you are my sheep.

You are house of Israel because they their real estate meant more than just we're going to move here. We're going to move there like we do today, you know, right? Well, that's a really interesting thought. And yeah, I mean, I've sometimes thought I'd like to rewrite First Nephi from the standpoint of Laman and Lemuel, just because I think I can understand their complaint. You know, come on, we're comfortable here. We lead a pretty good life. We're well off. And our dad has these crazy religious notions and he wants to abandon everything.

And I think if we demonize them and just say, oh, they're evil, we aren't learning from them. Because if we were in that situation, wouldn't we have been tempted to react the way Laman and Lemuel reacted or the way possibly lot and his wife reacted i'm comfortable here i don't want to leave yeah yeah so what are the odds what are the odds this is going to be destroyed come on this city withstood the assyrians yeah and when fire and brimstone comes out of heaven this is not something that happened regularly. They weren't anticipating that. That's not on the forecast. Siri said nothing about this today. Hey, John, I've got one to share with your kids. Are you ready? A primary teacher said, the Lord commanded Lot to take his wife and flee into the wilderness. And his wife looked back and became a pillar of salt. And the little student said,

but what happened to the flea? His wife and flea. So share that one with your kids, John. I'm sure it'll get a good groan. We talked about earlier. Please join us for part two of this podcast.