followHIM - Genesis 6-11, Moses 8 -- Part 1 : Dr. Krystal Pierce

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

Can we bend God's will toward our own? Dr. Krystal Pierce shares her expertise about postdiluvian culture and shares insights into the archeology of ziggurat temples, the tower of Babel, the Flood, and the sociality and calling of Noah.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, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I am your host. I'm here with my floodingly handsome co-host, John, by the way. I bet you know what we're going to talk about today, John. You are floodingly. Yeah, I have no idea what floodingly handsome means. I'll just take the flood part and figure. I think I made that up. So let's jump right into this.

We're talking Genesis. We need Bible experts when we talk Genesis. So tell us who we have with us today. We do. We're so excited to have Crystal V.L. Pierce with us. And it's just fun to read her bio. I get all excited because I just love ancient Egypt stuff. Crystal V. L. Pierce was born in Logan, Utah, raised in Taylorsville, Utah. She has also lived in California,

Idaho, and then it gets really cool, Egypt, and Israel. She received a PhD in Egyptian archaeology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA, and an MA and BA in Near Eastern Studies from UC Berkeley. She has taught classes on Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA and UC Berkeley. She has participated in archaeological excavations and surveys at sites in Egypt and Israel. She's currently the head registrar for the Tel Shemron excavations in the Galilee region of Israel and the chair of the Archaeology of Egypt session at the American Society of Overseas Research. She and her husband, who is Professor George Pierce, have two children and live in Vineyard,

Utah. And also, I just want to make sure people know, she just is the co-editor with David Seeley of a new book called Approaching Holiness, which is a compilation of chapters about Old Testament teachings, which is pretty brand new, isn't it? And I'm so excited that we have scholars like this that will help us when we want to dive a little deeper. Do you have that book, Crystal? Can you hold it up for us or something?

I do. It's right here. For our visual learners. Roaching. There it is. Wonderful. We're so glad to have you. And I'm so excited to talk about some of this stuff today.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I have to say, John, before we start, that I don't know if we've ever had a husband-wife as guests, have we? I don't think so. And so Professor George is coming on later on in the year. He is slated to join us. So hopefully that will happen so they can be our first ever couple. What's it like having two Bible scholars in the same house? Is that... What's breakfast like? I mean, that's crazy. You know, there are pros and cons to it. On the upside, we understand each other, each other's careers and jobs. And we go and

dig in the summer together. We take the whole family. And on the other hand, that seems to be all we talk about. Every conversation is about archaeology or Israel or Egypt or, you know, the Book of Mormon. Well, we are excited to have a Bible scholar with us to talk two major Bible stories, the flood of Noah and the Tower of Babel. I've heard you say it. I would normally say Babel, the Tower of Babel. How come we say Babel sometimes? I'm not actually sure why we say Babel. I think because we say Babel sometimes? I'm not actually sure why we say Babel. I think because we say Babylon and, you know, it's also connected to our word Babel, you know, this idea of like gibberish or speaking like a baby.

So I'm not exactly sure why we say Babel. How do you help your students approach ancient text in an appropriate way? Right. Because we want to understand these people on their terms, in their context, but yet we want to apply it to us. It seems like we struggle a lot with just the Old Testament in general, and we seem to kind of want to put it in a separate, different place than, say, the New Testament or the Book of Mormon, that God seems angry angry or it's all

about justice and there's not a lot of mercy. One of the first things I tell my students is that the Old Testament fits in perfectly with all of our other scripture. Honestly, and I hope by the end today that we see that the Old Testament and the flood narrative and the Tower of Babel narrative are all about mercy. They're all about mercy, even though there's a lot of destruction and corruption and sin that's happening at the same time. So I usually tell my students, be open-minded when it comes to the Old Testament. A lot of times, I think we come in with these preconceived ideas about how God should act or how righteous people should act.

And when it doesn't quite match up, then sometimes we struggle. And another part is I say, you know, we're pretty far separated from the time of the Old Testament. It's a different time, a different place, a different culture. And so it's going to be harder for us to understand it. It's going to be more foreign to us than some of the other books of Scripture. I wish I knew like a percentage or I could see a pie chart, but how many in mainstream Christianity would pass off the story of Noah and the flood as maybe a fable and not really a literal event? We from modern Scripture think, oh, we think this really happened.

It's interesting because I do think that we, in the past, we've taken a very literal approach to the Bible, and that was considered the only faith-based approach. And now today, we've started to realize that there are many faith-based approaches to the Bible. I mean, just even talking about the flood, for example, you can believe in a global universal flood that was a miracle, and that's fine. You can believe that it was more of a regional flood. So when they talk about the world or the earth, they're talking about their world, the world that they knew. And, you know, there's

evidence of, you know, flood deposits in Mesopotamia and other places. And that's also a faith-based approach. And this is kind of going back to this idea of be open-minded about things. We'll get into this with Genesis 6. It mentions there were giants on the earth, which I think a lot of us would immediately say, oh, this is mythological. It can't be true. But if you actually go in and look at what the word means and the context and where else it appears in the Bible, you start to realize, oh, there are other interpretations to what a giant actually is. So I love that we can accept different points of view, even though I think we struggle with

that. We want a nice, tidy package. We want this means this, and it can mean nothing else. But that's not how scripture works, right? That's not necessarily how these things work. No, that's great. I find myself saying a lot to my students. I'm not as smart as you guys, but things like, well, one school of thought

is this, another school of thought is this, and maybe another school of thought is this. Next topic. Like you're not helpful, brother, by the way. I do it too. I say, okay, my job is to give you all the information. And then your job is to go home and think about it, pray about it, study it, and come up with what works for you and what strengthens your faith. And it might be different than the person sitting next to you, because we're all different people. And of course, we're going to have different, and we have to be okay with that. It's okay that we might interpret something differently than the next person.

Crystal, this is the one that gets to me when students say, well, I just don't think the flood was scientifically possible. And I'll say, well, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Well, yeah. I'm like, okay. Yeah. It's not that the flood has to be literal, has to be figurative, has to be regional. We're just saying it can be any of those, but don't all of a sudden put boundaries on a God of miracles anyway, right? Exactly. And I hate sometimes that sometimes science, I feel like it's used as some sort of weapon, you know, against religion or religion is used as some sort of weapon against science.

And I just, it seems crazy to me because, you know, God invented science, right? He is science. So, you know, and it's okay that sometimes things don't make sense. People sit down and try to figure out the logistics of the flood, you know, how much water would be needed and how many animals and how much time and all of these things. And, and they say, you know what, the logistics, they don't work out. So it was a miracle. Like, are we okay that sometimes we can explain it scientifically, that maybe we also don't have a full understanding of science yet?

You think about 100 years ago, what they would think of us today, us doing this podcast right now. That's a miracle. That wouldn't be science or technology, for sure. Yesterday, I'm talking real time on p-day to my daughter in you know uh tahiti real time when i was in the philippines in my own lifetime uh a letter took two weeks to get home wow um wow and you know in one generation it's just like this is crazy having your companions peek in, hey, how are

you guys? It's just really fun technology. Yeah. And Crystal, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't think the writers, the authors of Genesis had science in mind. Oh, one day they're going to wonder about, you know, these giants. How this actually happened. Yeah. And that's the thing is like their audience, they only gave enough information that their audience would need and they knew their audience. And, you know, if we're talking about the ancient audience and so they're only going to give bits and pieces. And so they threw out a word like giants, their audience immediately knew what that meant. But for us, we're like, I have no idea, you know, so we actually have to go and research that. One thing I love is even Nephi

says his people struggled with understanding the Old Testament and Isaiah. And they were only separated a couple of, a few hundred years from Isaiah. We're millennia from that. So if they struggled with it, and I love because he actually gives advice. He gives three pieces of advice for understanding the old Testament better. And, and so I, I always share those with my students. Sometimes we start from a place we already know, and that's fine too. You read a story, you pull something out of it. You use the spirit and personal revelation to get a message for yourself.

And that's perfect. Sometimes you got to do a little bit more than that. Sometimes you kind of have to research what was the ancient author trying to teach his own people. And that takes a little work. And Nephi says, there are three things you can do to better understand the Old Testament and Isaiah in particular. He says, the first thing is study their way of prophesying, their way of worshiping, their way of doing religion, including things like the law of Moses. We are so far removed at this point from the law of Moses. I think it's hard for us to understand that. I love it. He says, understand their things, which I always, you know, take to mean their culture, you know, their,

their language, their history. And then the last thing he says is, study the regions. Use a map when you're going through the Old Testament. Geography, yeah. Yeah, geography. And I love that he gives us advice. It's the same advice we can use to learn about ancient people and the context and these important things. This is exactly why we bring people like you on, Crystal, Bible scholars who can teach us what's the context of this? Who is the ancient audience?

How do they use these terms? You know, you can. You can go into the scriptures on your own and get a lot out of it. For me, there's something about worshiping God with all your might, mind, and strength. I want to be more competent in scriptural language. I'm going to quote my friend Anthony Sweat here who quotes M. Russell Ballard. So it's like quote of a quote. Tony writes in his book, Seekers Wanted, I assume that if you're reading this book, you are academically minded. But to those who may be skeptical about turning to academic scholars for religious learning, I share the following from President M.

Russell Ballard, quote, consult the works of recognized, thoughtful and faithful LDS scholars. I think he actually put a picture of Crystal right here. She is a recognized, thoughtful and faithful LDS scholar. President Ballard continues, we should ask those with appropriate academic training, experience and expertise for help. This is exactly what I do, President Ballard says, when I need an answer to my own questions that I cannot answer myself. I seek the help from my brethren of the Quorum of the Twelve and from others with expertise. There's a phrase that goes around a lot that we maybe take too far.

Don't drink downstream from the herd. Get it from its true source. But that doesn't mean we ignore what faithful scholars have said. I can't even tell you how blessed I've been by sitting at Ed Week and listening to people and taking notes as fast as I can about their journey through the scriptures and about insights they can give me. Is that putting the scriptures in the back seat? Of course not. It's helping me understand the scriptures, and I suppose maybe the phrase faithful scholars is helpful there.

But I think that's what Tony was saying. I think that's what President Ballard was saying. We've got this Bible dictionary here. Who wrote that? Faithful scholars. These manuals we're using. If it was only the scriptures, we wouldn't have a manual. What are these manuals for?

To give us insight, backstory, everything that we're talking about today. Is that fair? Yeah, I think so. Do you remember Dr. Muehlstein? When our very first episode of the year, he talked about a covenant community. And we, you know, individually, we can't know everything, but as a community, we can sure know a lot if we'll listen to each other. So anyway, just a shout out to everyone who likes having our expert on. I sure love it. I learn a lot every week.

I feel like one of my jobs as somebody who has studied the ancient Near East is to really try and make a connection between today and then. If I can bridge that gap for people who understand today, if I can bridge the gap so that they can connect these people who were real people with real lives. And they struggled just like we did. They had questions too. They're trying to raise their families and be good. And if I can connect those two things, then I feel like it can be really, really useful. Yeah. I think so too. Elder Maxwell said, find relevancy in antiquity. So we're glad you're here to help us with that today. I think some of our struggles with the Old Testament, I think we get caught up a lot in the what or the how, as opposed to the why things are the way they are. And, you know, I think an example of this is sacrifice, right? Under the law of Moses, they were sacrificing

animals. And I think it's difficult for us to connect with that. This idea of this physical, visceral, almost dirty thing that they did, sacrificing these animals to thank God or as a part of repentance or to ask for a blessing. And so sometimes I think we put that away and think, I just can't understand that. And it's done and it's gone. Because we know when the Savior came, He said, you're not going to sacrifice animals anymore. But He said, you're still going to sacrifice. It's just a new sacrifice now. And now the new sacrifice is this broken heart and contrite spirit. And how we sacrifice might be a little bit different. How they did things under the law of Moses or the Old Testament, but why they did it never changes. That never changes. We still today sacrifice

to give thanks to God. We sacrifice for repentance. We sacrifice to get blessings. And so this is another big thing that I try and teach my students. Look for the why. Look for that instead of being caught up on, wow, they did things so differently from us. I just can't connect with that. And that's just, it's a different way, I think, of looking at things and focusing on something that we can connect with. Yeah, that's just full circle back to the flood. Stop trying to figure out the particulars of volume of water and when and how much was covered, but why did this happen? What was God teaching? I've said this to my class. Animals are like cash, you know? So it's like kind of paying your tithing, but they burn it. How would you feel if you just take cash to the

bishop and they just burn it, right? That's the idea of sacrifice. And at least when we sacrifice, it's going towards like, well, I'm going to help build this temple or I'm going to help. And I guess maybe the priest ate some of it, but the idea of here, I'm going to take this valuable thing and we're just going to burn it. Right. But that was part of it. Yeah. And it's great because it was different animals for different people, depending on what they could afford. And even those who couldn't afford an animal could just bring flour. They could bring a cake. And so I love that even with us today, our sacrifices all look different, completely different from each other. And even for them, it was the same. You sacrificed what you could. It still counted. It still was the same.

I like that sort of connection too. Let's start with a little bit of background here. So we can get some idea of like where we're at when we get to Genesis 6. As we go through Genesis, we've already had a few major, we'll call them major falls and survivals and comebacks. So in Genesis 3, we had the fall of Adam, the fall of humanity, the fall of Eve, kind of the fall of all of us, but they survived and there's a comeback. There's a way to come back from the fall, right? It's made very clear. We can overcome spiritual death. We can overcome physical death.

And so we can survive that. When we get to Genesis four, there's kind of the fall of the family and what happens with Cain and Abel in this real introduction of real evil and sin. But they survive that. There's a comeback from that. And we've all sort of experienced probably falls in our family, too. And now we get to a different type of fall. When we get to the flood and we get to the tower, we get the fall of society. We get our first real glimpse of widespread corruption and sin and destruction.

But we have to remember, that's not what it's all about. What it's about is some people survive this. Noah's family survives this. Jared's family survives this. So how do we, when we experience our falls, our floods, our towers, how do we survive? How do we become Noah and Jared at the end? And not those who were swept away in the flood or lost their language or, you know, were scattered after the tower. And I think that's kind of the point of these two narratives, these two stories. Society falls, but you don't have to.

Yeah. And even when you're surrounded by wickedness and you feel like you're all alone, you can survive. You could make it. And we'll see too that with the help of God, that's how they survive. And we'll talk about this as we go. But with chapter six, we really begin with talking about reasons for the flood, you know, documenting the advance of sin and the spread of sin. And that's kind of where we're going to start with. Let's just jump right into Genesis 6 here and take a look at verse 2. So, verse 1 tells us there are a lot of people on, you know, on the earth at this point. In verse 2, we see one of the first problems they start to have is that

the sons of God start marrying the daughters of men. And this can kind of be confusing. For them, they would have understood exactly what that meant. Oh, I know what a son of God is or a daughter of, you know, men are. But for us, we kind of have to dive a little bit deeper to kind of get an idea of why was this a problem? So, if we look up where sons of God appear elsewhere in the Bible, and this is a technique I think anyone can do. Look up this phrase, sons of God, see where it appears and see if it can add to your understanding of this. So, it's not just the sons of men saw the daughters of men, it's the sons of God. You're making a distinction. Yes, yes. So, we have the sons of men saw the daughters of men. It's the sons of God. You're making a distinction.

Yes, yes. So we have the sons of God and the daughters of men. And so they have this distinction between it. And in Genesis right here, we don't get a lot more information here. We just know it was a problem and it added to the spread of wickedness. I'm glad you pointed out the phrase. I went right past it. The sons of God saw the daughters of men.

Thank goodness that we have extra scripture. I'm going to call it that, extra scripture. Because we have the Pearl of Great Price, we have the book of Moses. And this is where we're going to pull in Moses 8. So, Moses 8 is basically the Joseph Smith translation of Genesis 6. And what I love about the Joseph Smith translation is sometimes it corrects incorrect information. Sometimes it replaces. Many times it just adds information. It says, okay, here's what we have in the Bible. We're going to clarify a little bit. We're going to add a little bit more. And so if we turn to Moses 8, and we look at verse 13, and we're going to kind of refer to

Moses 8 as we go through today. We take a look at verse 13, we find out that Noah and his sons hearkened unto the Lord and gave heed and they were called the sons of God. Noah himself was a son of God. Because if we look up sons of God elsewhere in the Old Testament, sometimes it refers to angels. Sometimes it refers to angels. Sometimes it refers to a specific line of people. But now we find out Noah was a son of God because he listened to God. And if we go back even further in Moses, in Moses 6, the very last verse, we find out Adam was a son of God. And then is the important part. He says, anyone can become a son of God. If you are following God and following the commandments and hearkening, as it says to him, then you're a son of God or a daughter of God.

That works too. So that's a, this is a crystal. This is a definition thing. Because we would say everyone is a son or daughter. Everyone's a son of God. Yes. Yes. is a son or daughter of God. Everyone's a son of God. Yes, yes. But we're talking about behaving like one, becoming one, like, oh, God can make descendants of Abraham out of these stones.

If you're Abraham's seed, you should do the works of Abraham, kind of like Jesus said, right? Yeah, so we're all sons and daughters of God, right? We were all created by him and therefore we're his sons and daughters. And this is sort of like more of a behavior thing. Are you behaving like a son or daughter of God? And if you are following God and his teachings and commandments and his son, then you are behaving like a son or daughter of God. And they're saying the problem here is that people who weren't behaving like a son or daughter of God were marrying those who

were. And so it's not necessarily, if we want to try and translate this in today's terms, it's not necessarily, we should never interact with anyone outside of our faith. It would be really hard to spread the gospel and gather Israel if that were the case. But it's really a warning on, you know, people influence each other. People have an effect on each other, who you're around, who you speak to. And just kind of a warning that in the same way that righteousness can spread from individual to individual, wickedness can spread too. And so, this is warning here. This is one of the ways they're showing us that wickedness was spreading during the time of Noah. It's these men who were supposed to be following God went Noah, who were considered righteous and who were considered daughters of God,

these sons of men who were not hearkening to God, it says, claimed to be following God, claimed to be sons of God, claimed to be doing the right thing. And this also led to confusion and not necessarily that if you sin and you'll cause someone else to sin, but if you have incorrect ideas about things and you share them with others, then these things can travel and they can corrupt our view of God, for example, which it seems to be a major issue during this time. Yeah. So it does. It looks like verse 13, 14, 15, kind of, you would insert them into that Genesis 6 between verses like 1 and 2. Exactly. Yeah. So, in verse 21, we find out that they're calling themselves the Son of God, even though we know that they haven't been listening and hearkening to God. And so,

we get this real mix of people who are wicked or calling themselves righteous and saying, no, we have the correct ideas, which we see all across scripture. And this is really just a warning of these ideas spread. And so, just be careful who you surround yourself with. And I love this. I feel like this is almost like this, the sort of teenage story with your parents where they say, now, are you going to hang out with a good group of friends or not? It's true. And I think sometimes we forget that as adults that we need to be careful. And this is really just to show us how this wickedness spreads. And we read that the Lord actually kind of tries to curb this. He realizes that the wickedness is becoming so widespread that it's sort of taking over society at this point.

And in verse three, you know, this is his comment on that. My spirit shall not always strive with man. He says, there can be a time where my spirit leaves because of wickedness, that you lose my presence. And one thing I love is this word strive here. You might think, what does that mean? If you actually look it up in Hebrew, the word here is to be strong. And so it's almost this idea of if you lose the spirit, you're going to lose some strength. You're going to lose some spiritual strength, maybe even some temporal strength. And so one thing he decides to do, if you look, he says, the days are now going to only be 120 years for man.

And so it's almost as if he's trying to curb the wickedness by giving a sort of lifespan reduction here. And if you think about the chapters before this, we get his great-grandfather, Methuselah, living over 900 years. And the patriarchs do continue to live longer than 120. But it's almost like the Lord is saying, you're mortal. You're mortal. And you got 120 years or less. And like Alma says, this is your probationary state. This is the time to prove yourself. And you're wasting it with what happens.

That's interesting. So up to this point, and who knows if we're talking literal or figurative, but this idea of you're having a really long time on the earth, but that means evil is a long time on the earth. So we're going to shorten this down a little bit. Which could be seen as mercy too. I try to give you a better chance by making your lifespan shorter, maybe. But I am fascinated by this idea. What was wrong with them marrying the daughters of men? Because they probably could have been called daughters of God as well, and they should have been looking for the daughters of God. Is that what we're saying? Well, it's kind of what we read in Moses. It kind of puts

in a little more information. So, Noah was considered a son of God because he listened to God. And his daughters were daughters of God because they listened to God. But the problem was they married those who weren't listening to God, the sons of men. And so once they married them, I don't know how you would say this, you know, their behavior changed. They were influenced by them. They were affected by them. And then they changed from daughters of God to daughters of men at that point. So it's just a way of talking about somebody as being, I mean, really honestly, righteous or wicked. And it shows it's easy to move back and forth sometimes, right? Depending on who affects you, who influences you.

You know, like I said, in verse 21, it says they called themselves, you know, the sons of God, even though they were acting like the sons of God. And maybe that's part of how they were able to, you know, connect with the daughters of God. Say, no, we're sons of God too. We're doing what we're supposed to. And then eventually, everybody, it seems like, except for kind of Noah and some of his family, turn into this, go over to this wickedness. And it's the same with the other side, with Zion. Zion starts with one person and then can spread out from there to an entire community. And it's, I mean, this is an absolutely true principle, Crystal, is we become who we spend time with. We eventually act like them and think like them. And it's just, it's kind of this,

we marinate in our friends. It's pretty obvious to me that my wife keeps me pretty steady, right? Because she's steady. So here I am trying to do what's right, and I want to marry someone who is trying to do what's right, because then we can both help each other do what's right. Yeah. And we should make it clear that this isn't, righteousness isn't equated with, you know, membership in the church. You can be a member of the church and not necessarily be acting like a son or daughter of God. And so it doesn't mean that you should never affiliate or associate with anyone outside of the church. You know, like I said, that would really cause some problems for spreading the gospel. But, you know, be careful, be aware of who you're around and surrounded by. John, didn't you give a talk on this once, the parable of the marinade?

I did. I love the idea of you soak in something, you become that. Elder Bednar talked about pickles and immersing yourself in the gospel and how they made pickle brine and stuff. But I was thinking of Dallin Bayliss, this great singer that we have in the church who has played Joseph Smith and others in so many of our church movies. He said his mentor told him, regardless of your original intention, you will eventually become what you surround yourself with, which is a good argument for being careful about the influences in your life as we've all been talking here. And then also, Crystal, the other principle I'm seeing here is verse 21, that people may claim to be something they're not. Behold, this is Moses 8, 21. We are the sons of God. Have we not done all this? But they're not repenting.

It says in verse 20, Noah is calling on people to repent. We're doing great. We're eating and drinking, marrying, giving in marriage. We're the sons of God. They hearken not unto the words of Noah. So there's something there about listening to your prophet, right? Your current prophet. Absolutely.

Yeah, well, it happened in Jesus' time. They looked at their genealogy instead of their behavior. And we can claim Abraham as our father, therefore all's well. And Jesus is like, yeah, you know, if you were the sons of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. It was an expectation more than just a fact on your pedigree chart. Yeah, and we all have this divine heritage, right? We're all sons and daughters of God, but are we behaving like sons and daughters of God? I was just going to kind of come back to this idea of, you know, the Lord was trying to

curb this wickedness, and one of these ways was to limit the lifespan. But it's interesting. So, to kind of put this in an ancient Near Eastern context at this point, we have a lot of texts that talk about people searching for immortality, people traveling around, trying to find a plant or, and you know what, we don't even have to talk about the ancient Near East specifically here. We could talk about Arthur searching for the Holy Grail or Ponce de Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth. There's this constant, at this point in time in the ancient Near East, people are trying to find immortality themselves. And so we get this idea of God's kind of saying like, no, this is a mortal life, right?

This is separate and different. This is your time to prove yourself. And immortality comes through other means. Immortality comes through resurrection. They're kind of wasting their probationary state. And the Lord is saying, you almost get this reference, eat, drink, and be merry thing here, right? They say, well, we've been doing all of these things, searching for immortality in a different way. Like we have this text about a king named Gilgamesh. And this is a text goes back to about 2000 BC. He's searching for immortality,

travels all over the place and trying to find maybe a plant he could eat. We see this connection here with God saying, no, you're, you're misunderstanding the point of life. You're misunderstanding that you do have the opportunity to live forever, but a lot of that is based on what you do now and here. And immortality comes through the Savior and resurrection and repentance and the atonement, as opposed to something you get in this life through a plant or a cup or a fountain or things like that. So it was an issue. We know it was an issue in the texts, not only in Genesis, but in our outside texts as well.

That's fascinating. Crystal, that's fantastic. And I can see it in myself. I can see it today around me. We're seeking immortality, whatever I can to stay young. We're still doing it today. And the answer is still the same. Go to the Lord.

Go to the Lord for your immortality. But there's got to be a supplement somewhere we can take that will. Well, it's almost like we're not searching for immortality in the sense of going to live with God and the next stage of life and existence and more of let's prolong this mortality forever. Which when you think about it, you're like, would we really want to do that? But that's kind of where these texts and these things are kind of saying, like, let's live forever in this life and not prepare that there's anything in the future. Genesis 6, 3, when the Lord says, and yet his day shall be 120 years, he's doing what you said, which is saying, look, there's a cap on this. Yeah. And he says, you're flesh, you're mortal. It's temporary.

You're mortal. You need to accept that and realize that you need to change the way you're living. And so he tries, and this is a constant, I think, through the Old Testament is he's going to send people like Noah and prophets and others to warn the people, to try and prepare them, to tell them to change before the punishment and the consequences and things come. So that's a huge thing. That's the mercy. Destruction never comes without a warning. The flood, they were warned of the flood.

They knew that it was coming and yet they didn't prepare. And we'll talk about that. But I definitely want to talk about verse four because I've already mentioned the giants here. And this is something that we're reading and we're like, okay, I can think this makes sense. And then you get to the giants and you think, what in the world are they talking about giants? There are so many websites and books you can use to say, what is this word giant? Where does it come from? Or, and this is an even better thing to do, look at where else this word appears in the Bible. Where else does this word appear? And what's great is this word also appears in

Numbers 13. And there it's used to describe some of the inhabitants of Canaan and that they were giants and we were grasshoppers. Sort of to put things in perspective that they were these huge warriors, heroes who could fight. And we were tiny little grasshoppers. I love it. That's what it says. And they're scared. They're worried. We're possibly not necessarily talking about giants in the sense we would think of giants, but in the sense of huge, large, heroic warriors, like Goliath, for example. A lot of times what we find with these is the people that are fighting against the giants are smaller or seem insignificant or feel not ready or prepared to fight against something like this. And so this is kind of how we interpret these giants here. And in Jewish tradition, this is referring of how we interpret these giants here. And in Jewish tradition,

this is referring to kings and rulers during this time, that they were oppressive, oppressive kings and rulers. We do find out if we turn to Moses 8, 19, that these giants actually tried to kill Noah. So in verse 18, right? Giants on the earth, they sought Noah to take away his life, but the Lord was with Noah and the power of the Lord was upon him. And this is another common theme. Of course, rulers, kings, those who have power and control the giants try to either cast out the prophets or kill the prophets, make them go away because they're not teaching what they want to teach and what they want to support. And we see this happen with Noah too. I was reading somewhere, is it, what is the Hebrew Nephilim?

Yeah, so Nephilim. Thank you. So, the, that's okay. So, im, this I am. Yeah, i had the emphasis on the wrong syllable no you're good you're fine this kind of helps i think sometimes is the the i am on the end in hebrew makes something plural typically so we're talking about yeah yeah exactly or like cherubim or something like that. The root word here is to fall. And so, it literally means the fallen ones. And when you think of, I love kind of looking at it in the sense of giants and the higher you are, the harder you fall, the further you fall when you fall, right? You know, it's this idea that there were these greats who had a ton of power, who had a ton of control, and they're

oppressing the people. And so now it's kind of spread just from righteous people turning wicked. Now we get the influence of wicked leaders. And this is a big theme in the Book of Mormon as well, that whoever is your leader, your ruler, your king has an effect on the people, whether it's a righteous effect or a wicked effect. And now we find out that these giants, they're trying to kill the prophet, even though they're giants, they can also be toppled by the grasshoppers. So this is kind of a common message you think of David and Goliath. Sometimes we feel like a grasshopper and we're fighting against giants. And they have the power and the control and maybe the wealth and the status. And we feel like we can't.

But we read here, Noah had the power of God with him. We also can have the power of God with us. David had the power of God with him and was able to fight and beat his giant as well. So, don't read giants like huge people. I was thinking of the phrase that we use, oh, these men were titans of industry. Well, they were the same size as the rest of us, but we call them that. It was kind of a metaphor. These guys were giants in their military influence or power or something like that. Is that fair? Yeah. And strength is too. I think we could talk about

physical strength to physical prowess. And, you know, Goliath is said to be very tall and large and not necessarily a mythological giant that's, you know, 50 feet tall type of giant. In the story you're referencing in Numbers 13, it's Joshua and Caleb who don't see themselves as grasshoppers because they say the Lord is with us, right? Fear them not. I'm not scared. I'm not scared of these giants. I'm ready to go because I have God with me. Yeah. And so I love this idea that, you know, you might feel like a grasshopper, but God can make you a giant. God can make you feel like a giant and be able to fight your battles, whatever those battles are, whatever the giants are. So we've kind of seen how there's widespread wickedness and it's continuing on. And now it's

even, it's at the top. And of course the top is sort of having an effect on the people. And Noah, at this point, even though the giants try to kill him and silence him, he continues on and he warns the people and he preaches to the people. And this doesn't show up in Genesis 6. We actually have to turn to Moses 8 for this information. And so if we look at verse 19 and verse 20 and 21, we find out that the Lord commands Noah to go out and declare the gospel. So Noah calls on the people to repent, but they don't listen. And then we've already talked about verse 21. They give these excuses for why they don't need to repent. This is very common. I love

that we actually have this in Moses, that Noah was a prophet who went out and preached repentance. He said, you're sinning. You got two options. You either stop sinning and you repent and you receive God's mercy, or you keep on sinning and sinning and sinning, and there will be consequences. There will be punishment. That's what happens. That's how the law of justice works.

And he says, but you have a choice. You get to choose between the two. And so I love that we actually have this here. Prophets are sent to warn us. We have many examples of prophets in both the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon who sort of appear out of nowhere, give their message and then disappear or they're killed. And a lot of times it's to warn the people of destruction coming. I think of Lehi, for example, in the Book of Mormon, tried to warn Jerusalem about what was

going to happen. They throw him out. It's the same with Samuel. We get it with Nephi. Abinadi. Yes, absolutely. And we get it here with Noah. He tried to warn the people that destruction was coming. He even warned specifically about the flood as well. So, if we go up to verse 17, he talks about this. He knew that, you know, the Lord said, I will send in the floods. It's pretty specific that Noah actually knew what was going to happen. Sometimes we struggle to connect with these prophets of the Old Testament who kind of come preaching doom and gloom and sin and wickedness and destruction. And we kind of focus on those things. And we think our prophets, our modern prophets today don't do that.

They don't preach doom and gloom and destruction and sin and wickedness. I mean, some of them I think might come pretty close. It's not necessarily exactly what they're saying, but kind of why they're saying it. They're meant to warn us. So I like to think of times when President Nelson, for example, tells us to do something. What is he warning us about? What is he preparing us for? And I think one of the greatest, most recent examples of this is several years ago, he started talking about focusing on a home-centered church. Work on your worship at home. And even to the point where we lose our third hour and we start worshiping at home and this come follow me and doing all of this work.

And then not too long after that, we get this pandemic. A lot of us got to the point where we couldn't even go to church. We had church completely at home. And I think those who listened to the prophet and worked on how do I bring the spirit in my house? How would I study the gospel and the scriptures with my family? How do I focus? We're a little bit better prepared when that hit. And the others who kind of saw, oh, I get an extra third hour on Sunday to go home and take a nap or something, maybe we're less prepared. Even though he didn't come straight out and say, the flood's coming, the pandemic's coming, he prepares us and warns us in other ways.

And so we have to listen very carefully, I think, to what they're saying. I would say two things. One, don't be surprised when a prophet tells you to repent, right? I think that's a theme. Don't be shocked when President Nelson says, hey, we're doing a couple things wrong. We've got to do them better. Well, how dare he? And then second, I remember October conference of 2019, he said, and I don't even know if he knew what he met, but he said, in six months, we're going to have conference again. It will be unlike anything you've ever experienced. And here we were six months later, unlike anything we'd ever experienced. And I think his first Hope of Israel talk, take a break from social media. And then his last talk was, if most of the information you get comes from social media, your ability to feel the Spirit will be diminished. I mean, those are warnings. Crystal, that's a good point. We try to compare them one to one, but I mean, they're all doing the same thing. They're all trying to prepare us.

They're trying to get us through mortality, get us back home, get us back home to Heavenly Father. And so we can pull this out from Noah. We can pull this out from President Nelson. We just have to listen really carefully. And sometimes we look back in hindsight and say, wow, that's exactly why he said that. And other times we may not understand for a long time why we're asked to do something. So there's a little bit of faith and trust there. I think that's

definitely involved. Let's talk about the real reasons for the flood. Because when we think of the flood and we think of such widespread destruction and death, it wasn't only people who died. It was the animals and the plants. And that's horrific when you think about it. And I think sometimes we view the flood sometimes less seriously. And this is why Noah and the Ark is a children's story. We buy the Ark and the animals and Noah and things like that. And we don't tell them the other side, well, everybody actually dies who's not on the ark. So sometimes we don't take it seriously. And of course I, I bought, I have Noah's ark things for my kids. It's something that either we don't take it seriously or we take it so seriously that we think, how could a loving heavenly father do this? How could a loving Jesus Christ do this? There's this disconnect and we can't get it. We're going to look at verse five. So chapter six, verse five, it says, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

That's crazy. That statement right there. We're not just talking about bad behavior and actions. It says every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts. And so we're talking about a change of heart to wickedness, to evil. And that translates, of course, into behaviors and actions. It's like completely possessed. Yeah. Getting to this point almost where there's no return. I think of the Book of Mormon too, where at one point he says, I see that their time had passed.

The grace of God had passed for them, which you would think, oh, this would never happen. If you die in your sins in this life, the time's passed for this mortality. And now you're going to have to deal with it on the other side. And so we see the wickedness is something more. It's more than just people doing bad things. It's taken over their hearts, their thoughts, their minds, everything. One of the original problems were people marrying and having children and the effect it had on these children. This wickedness, it gets passed down.

Yeah, I can't imagine it. I can't imagine growing up in a world like that. I think of Mormon and Moroni and their lives and what they were surrounded by. It's incredible. But the upside is always that they survived and they stayed faithful. And even though Noah was surrounded by wickedness and the rulers are trying to kill him and he's losing friends and people like that to wickedness, he still stays faithful. And I think that's what we're meant to take out of the story, not the focus on those who are destroyed, although there's mercy in that too. So we're going to talk about that too.

If we jump down to verses 11, 12, and 13, we get some more information about what's going on here. We do read that violence, the earth was filled with violence. The word here in Hebrew referring to violence, it actually sort of encompasses both a physical violence and a psychological violence as well. Physical abuse and psychological abuse. So, they not only were sinning and their hearts had been taken over by evil, but they were destroying each other. They were destroying each other.

They were hurting each other. They were killing each other physically, mentally, emotionally. And we know that when sins are committed that involve other people, those are taken very seriously. And so we find out this is a major problem. This is, it's a huge problem at this time. And it gets to the point where something needs to be done. A change needs to be made.

This change, this destruction is incredible. It's huge. It's horrific. What's interesting is if you look at verse 11 and 12 they both use this word corrupt the earth was also was corrupt before God and the word corrupt here in Hebrew is the same word used it's the exact same word as the word translated as destroyed down later in verses, verse 17. And so we have this level of corruption, right? This level of destructive sin. And the only answer is a level, the same level of destructive punishment. And that's where we're at at this point.

And it's interesting that it's the exact same word that's used. It's almost as if they chose this massive destruction. Exactly. Exactly. Punishment to match the level of corruption. Exactly. And we know that when we sin, the punishment fits the sin, just like repentance fits the sin. It's not necessarily always going to be the same process or maybe even the same level. And at this point, if you turn it around and think about, wow, everyone and everything had to be punished for the sin, that tells you what level of sin we're talking about, widespread sin and

corruption. And it permeated everything. It kind of had reached a critical mass at this point. When you say violence in verse 11, was it the idea, were you talking about the idea of abuse? Murder and, you know, killing and every kind of violence. And that's kind of like this, this word in Hebrew, it covers all violence, violence against people, violence against animals, physical violence, other types of abuse, everything. It covers everything, all types. Yeah. That's interesting because then the flood covers everything. Yeah. And that's, I think that's the point. Sin had covered everything so that the flood needed to cover everything.

And that's why I think the same word is used. The earth was so corrupt that it, you know, the only way to fix things was widespread punishment and consequences. But it's not just about justice too. I wonder if there's a word play or am I just seeing something? Moses 8 has Noah saying, believe and repent of your sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ or the floods will come. So you have two choices. You can be covered in water or you can be covered in water. It just depends on which one, right?

Yeah. Which type of, yeah. Which water do you want? You know, he's not the only one that talks about the flood as a baptism too. This shows up in the New Testament and we'll get to it, that the flood was more than just the law of justice being enacted. That there was a merciful cleansing that was going on as well. We turn to Moses 8 again, and you already kind of brought this up in verses 23 and 24. He goes out to preach again. He continues preaching. And I love this, that he doesn't just hide out, you know, he's already, they've already tried to kill him. He could just go hide

out and wait things. He's realized how far it's gotten that there's maybe, maybe he even knows there's nothing he could say or do to change things. He still keeps trying. And at this point, I love that he teaches, like you mentioned about baptism. I mean, what we might consider the basics of the gospel, faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, and going back to these basics, he still tries. He keeps trying. And this is another example of we're given so many chances before the punishment and the consequences come. We have so

many merciful chances to repent and stop what we're doing before the justice is enacted. I like that. They sought to take away his life. He continued preaching. And John, you love first principles. This is a John, by the way. I was just going to say, there they are, verse 24, believe, repent, baptized, Holy Ghost. And if they're really first principles, then they really are first principles and they ought to show up and they do. Yeah. And I love it. He goes back to the basics. He says, Hey, this is, this is still what you need to do. And I love that you connected this baptism and the floods and, and we'll talk about that. And, and I love that you also,

it was connected before that the flood was kind of representative of God's tears of him weeping for what, for what had happened. We know, of course, that Enoch saw the flood. He saw the ark. He saw Noah. He saw all these things and commented on them. But let's get to that. Let's talk a little bit about God's grief here. So if we go back to Genesis 6 and we look at verses 6 and 7, we get some strange language here. It says it repented the Lord that he had made man

on the earth and it grieved him at his heart. And then it says, you know, the Lord said, I will destroy man for it repenteth me that I have made them. And seeing the word repent with the Lord is, I think can be a little confusing. Of course, you know, we're not saying he needs to repent or even, I don't even think we can say that he regretted making humans or that he thought it was a mistake, right? I don't think this is, this is what this means at all. And we do get a little more information in Moses 8, as well as the Joseph Smith translation of Genesis 8, 15. There it kind of says, it sort of switches it to, it repented Noah that he had created man. And of course, Noah needed to repent. There's something a little bit different going on here. And this word that's translated as repent here. So it's a Hebrew word,

Nacham. Nacham is such a great word because it appears all over the Old Testament. And every time it appears, it's translated in a different way. So people struggle with its meaning. And actually what's great is this word shows up in the Book of Mormon too, as the place where Ishmael was buried on the way to the promised land. He was buried in Nahum. Half of this word means grieving, sadness, mourning, being in pain. And I think this makes sense that both the Lord and Noah would feel this. They would feel sadness at not only the wickedness, but with the flood as well, that it had come to this, that this widespread punishment was coming. But the other side of Nahum, and this is why

people struggle with it because it almost seems like the opposite. It also means to be comforted. It also means to be consoled. It also means to feel content. I think people struggle because they say, how can you feel sadness and comfort at the same time? How can you be mourning, but also feel consoled? I think a lot of us have actually felt that. Someone passes away, for example, there's a sadness and grieving and mourning, but there's also this other side of thinking about that's not the end for them. They've moved on to the next thing. They've lived a righteous life or they've been released from pain or discomfort of this life.

And we don't really have a word in English for this, I think. Feeling sad but comforted. And that's what this word means. It works in the Book of Mormon, too. It's where they buried him. And immediately after that, it says his daughters mourned for him. I heard it pronounced, you know, Nahom. But say it the way that you just said it.

So, Nahom is kind of how it's spelled. This is sort of the, you know, the English version. But in Hebrew, it's Nahom. And it's crazy how it has these meanings. And to me, it's the perfect example of, you know, also a balance of justice and mercy. That justice comes just in the same way that because we die a physical death, that's sort of the justice side of the fall. But we also find comfort in death because we know we can overcome it and we can overcome spiritual death and physical death. And I think this is how Noah and the Lord are kind of viewing

this. The flood is justice, but it'll also be mercy as well. And we'll talk about the different ways that it represents mercy. It's interesting to me, Crystal, that it would be translated as repent, because in our view, repentance is that idea of to be sorry and to be comforted. Yeah, yeah. To be sorrowful for my sins, but comfort through the atonement of Christ. Yeah, exactly. You know, to feel sadness or grief about it, but hope. Yeah, I think that's the perfect way of looking at it. And I think that's what Noah and the Lord are feeling here. Noah's feeling like, I'm sad that the flood has to happen and that this wickedness has happened, but I have hope after the flood, something even better and more amazing is coming, which is the same way I think we feel about death too. You know, we're sad people are gone, but we know they're in this new, amazing next phase. I really like this word now, nah, nah-kum. Is that how you'd say it?

Yeah, and you can say nah-hum or nah-hum or anything like that. That's fine too. I like knock-um, it's like knock's fine too. I like, I like knock him. It's like knock him over. Knock him. Yeah. I mean, sometimes sorrow seems to kind of knock us over,

but that's my dad joke for you. Hey, good. You are learning. Mom joke. We'll go with mom joke. She is a apprentice in the dad joke. I was thinking of Alma the elder when he finds out his son has been struck down.

What does it say? He's actually like excited. He's happy. He knew that the veil of unbelief was being taken from his mind or something. His father rejoiced. He knew that it was the power of God. Interesting. Mosiah 2720, Alma the elder.

There's a great Walter Rain painting that shows the four sons of Mosiah carrying Alma. And it's so funny because mom is looking down like, oh no. And dad is looking up like, all right. So, you got your knock-em right there. You got both meanings right there. Yeah. I love it. I mean, it was an answer to his prayers. You know, when the angel says, you know, I've come because your father has been praying and here I am. We want to talk about sometimes hitting rock bottom causes us to start over again and see things again. And at this point, man, society has hit rock bottom and needs a fresh start, needs a cleansing, needs a renewal. One of the major mercies I want to talk about is what happens with Noah and his family.

And one of my favorite verses, in fact, I'll just say it's my favorite verse in Genesis chapter six, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And it's like mic drop. That's it right there. Noah found grace. Why? Why did he find grace? Why was he able to survive the flood?

And we have so many verses, both in Genesis and Moses that talk about how he was just. He did all the Lord commanded him. He hearkened to the Lord. He gave heed to the Lord. He listened and he paid attention and he did. He followed the commandments. And this was the way leading up to it that the Lord said, we will save Noah and his family and some of the animals.

And this is, this is a lot of mercy right here, but kind of my favorite part about this mercy is he doesn't let Noah get off easily. He doesn't just say, Hey Noah, I'm going to save you from the flood. I'm either going to remove you and your family from the earth and let you

come back or put you in this airtight seal cave. He's like, no, sorry. You know, you get mercy, but you, you're going to work. You're going to prepare for the flood. You know, it's coming. So I'm going to have you just build this ark, this enormous ark, find all of the animals, put them inside and make sure you have enough food and fresh water for a year. We know they were in the ark just over a year. He instructs Noah how to prepare. And I love that, like sort of likening this to ourselves in the way that sometimes mercy is God just pulling us out of a trial, making something go away. But more often, God says, here's something you can do to get out of this trial.

Here's something you can do to get out of this trial. Here's something you can do to survive the trial. And that's mercy too, right? Sometimes it's about helping ourselves get through things with the help of God. And I love this happens with Noah too. He doesn't get an easy out here. It's difficult. Good point. He becomes best friends with the guys at Home Depot for a

long time. Yeah, it takes work. You know, it takes work to follow the prophet. It takes work to work through repentance. And grace is always there. It's always there. But we know that we also many times got it. We need to do some work to make sure things come out right. Can I relate maybe the story of building this ark? We're going to get to this, I'm sure, Crystal, to I'm going to create a home that's safe from wickedness. Yeah. And that's merciful that the Lord has told me, hey, President Nelson, create a home that is centered in Christ so you can be safe from this wickedness. Kind of like building an ark. It takes a lot of work to build a home like that. Make a protective structure around you. Yeah, definitely. And it's about other people

too. Noah built the ark, not just for himself. He built the ark for his family and these other animals and everything that came in. So sometimes too, it's about building arks for other people to try to save other people as well. And once again, we talk about this effect we have on each other, whether it's good or bad. For Noah, it was about saving just more than himself. So with the ark, really what I want to kind of talk about is the main questions I usually get about the building of the ark and kind of clear up some things.

So in verse 14, it says, make the ark of gopher wood. And so you always get a lot of questions about this gopher wood. And I think as a kid, I was picturing, oh, these are the trees that gophers gnaw on. And which is, it's not accurate at all. That's not what gophers do at all. But this word gopher is actually, you know, that's me as a kid figuring things out, a beaver gopher cutting down this wood for the ark. The animals helped build the ark too. So, you know, in reality, this word... The gopher's over there.

But this word gopher is actually just the direct transliteration of the Hebrew word. The Hebrew word is gopher or goper. And this is the only place it appears in the entire Bible. We throw out gopher wood because we actually have no clue what kind of wood it was. And some people guess cypress or some other forms of wood. Tell our listeners what a transliteration is, because I love that idea. A lot of times a transliteration occurs when we don't know how to translate the word. The word in Hebrew is gopher. So, we just literally leave it in gopher because we're not sure what the translation into English should be.

We have this in the Book of Mormon, too, with the curulums and the cumoms, right? That's probably the original language there. And among our many translators and compilers and narrators and redactors, someone didn't know what it was. And so they left that in there. And this happens a lot in a lot of texts. We come across words we just don't know and we leave it in. Could we say that Deseret is a transliteration and honeybees is the translation of the word? Yes.

Yes. That would work. That would help people. So I love that. Gopher wood, they just used, that's the sound of it. So we're just sticking it there. Yeah. Gopher.

Yeah. And it was important enough to include it. Maybe Noah just said, hey, just go for some wood over there. Yes. I think I've reached my limit of dad jokes. Sorry, Hank. Go for some wood. I'm thinking you guys might need to write a dad joke book just on Genesis.

Just on today. Bible. Just so you're ready. Just on today. So people can pull this out. It would be a resource for people. Please join us for part two of this podcast.