followHIM - Isaiah 40-49 Part 2 • Dr. Terry Ball • Sept. 19-25

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Dr. Terry Ball returns to discuss the omnipresent love of the Savior and how He never forgets nor forsakes his children. He also shares his journey as a scholar, missionary, father, and Saint.Please rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.co/old-testament/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannelThanks to the follow HIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Executive Producers, SponsorsDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsIgor Willians: Portuguese Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-h

Welcome to part two of this week's podcast. Now, when Nephi quoted these chapters 48 and 49 to his brother, and again, the twofold purpose was one, that they might know more of their Redeemer. And the second was that they would know how they're going to be gathered, these people who've been broken off. The last part of chapter 49, I think, addresses that question of how he tends to gather his people in a powerful way. And I think Latter-day Saints especially love this last part because it speaks much that makes sense to us. If you talk to many of our Jewish brothers and sisters, you'll find that a lot of them are what we call secular Jews, meaning they're non-observant. I saw one estimate that says that in the nation of Israel, it's about 70% secular

and 30% observant. Levels of observancy vary widely from mildly observant to ultra, ultra observant. But often when you talk to a secular Jew and ask them why they are not observant, why they don't go to synagogue and worship, one of the things they will frequently say is that, well, God died in the Holocaust. It was such a terrible thing, and our God forsook us. He didn't care for us. And so he's dead unto us because of that. Here in chapter 49, it's almost as if Jehovah anticipates that mentality, starting in verse 14. But Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me. My Lord hath forgotten me.

Well, we could say God allowed the Holocaust to happen, so he's forgotten me. He died in the Holocaust. We love the intimacy and the beauty of the way Jehovah tries to assure them that he hasn't forgotten them. Verse 15, can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have engraven thee upon the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually before me. I think when you read graven thee upon the palms of my hands,

one of the things we think of is the wounds of crucifixion that he received and manifests when he needs to testify of who he is and what he did. Gosh, do you have any thoughts about what he might mean when he says thy walls are continually before me? I was just going to ask you that because I love to teach this when Nephi teaches it. And one of the blessings we have with our modern scriptures is we have two sets of footnotes on Isaiah. We have those in the Book of Mormon, and we have those here. And in the Book of Mormon, in 1 Nephi 21, when it says, Graven thee upon the palms of my hands, it takes us to section 45 of the Doctrine and Covenants,

where they will look upon him and say, what are those wounds in your hands and in your feet? Kind of the Zechariah, is that 12, 6? So the piercing part is there. Thy walls, I've always thought, is that a reference to Jerusalem, the holy city? I haven't forgot you. I haven't forgotten Jerusalem. The walls around the temple, maybe? Yeah, that certainly makes excellent sense.

Some people say the walls may be our obstacles or challenges, and he's aware of them. And with Isaiah, it might mean all of them. Yeah. Some think of the idea of covenant nails, where you take a piece of soft clay and shape it into a spike, and then you use a reed stylus and write into it the terms of agreements that you've made in business. Then you fire it, and then you stick it in the walls of your place of business as a reminder of the terms of the covenants or agreements you've made. In that case, then, it would be your covenants. I remember my covenants.

However you understand it, there's no question that God hasn't forgotten them. Where this gets especially exciting for Latter-day saints is starting in verse 18, down through verse 23. It's a little bit difficult to make sense of. You have to read it several times, but let me share with you one way that I understand this, that's been a blessing to me, and hopefully will be to the listeners. In speaking to those who thought that God had forsaken them, these covenant people who felt like they've been cast off and God isn't doing anything for them. He says to them in verse 18, So you people who think I've forgotten you,

there will come a time when there'll be a whole bunch of people who will come to you and you'll put them on like a bride putting on her wedding outfit. It goes on to explain how many will be in this group of people that will show up. Thy waste and desolate places, in verse 19, the land of thy destruction will even now be too narrow by reason of these inhabitants. They that swallow thee up will be far away, and thy children, the children

which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the others, shall say in thine ears, this place is too straight or narrow for me. Give place to me that I may dwell. In other words, this huge group of people is going to come to you. There are going to be so many that there's not going to be room for you all. All these people who are your children, you thought you lost them all, but here's all these people who are recognized as your children. And you're going to look at them in verse 21 and say, Who hath begotten me these? Seeing I lost my children, and desolate a cat be removed to and fro.

Who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone. These, where have they been? So there's this idea that you people think that God has forsaken you. The time will come when there'll be a huge group of people who will come. They will be a witness to you that God has not forsaken you. They'll be recognized as part of the covenant family. And you're going to say, whoa, we didn't know about you. Where did you come from?

Which begs the question is, who are these people who are going to show up and be recognized as part of the covenant family and be a witness that God is still working to redeem and save his children? Who are they? The answer in verse 22 thus say the lord behold i will lift up my hand to the gentiles and set my standard to the people by the way the word translated the standard there's the same word as enzyme i will raise up an enzyme amongst the gentiles now they're gentiles but who comes flocking to the standard is raised up amongst the Gentiles. Now they're Gentiles, but who comes flocking to the standard is raised up amongst the Gentiles. They shall bring thy sons in their arms and thy daughter shall be carried upon their shoulders and kings and be thy nursing fathers. So the whole question is who are these latter day people who then show up, are recognized as part of the covenant people, begin to gather scattered Israel,

and are a witness that God is still working to save his children. And as Latter-day Saints, we think, that's us. The Doctrine and Covenants identifies those, speaking of Latter-day Saint members of the church, as those who are identified with the Gentiles. We're called Gentiles because we're not Jews, but we're certainly part of the house of Israel. Now, if you go back to verse 18, think of the imagery there again now. You people who think I've forgotten you, lift up your eyes. Here comes this whole group of people

and you're going to put them on like a bride does when she's putting on her wedding outfit. So when does a bride usually put on her wedding outfit? The day of the wedding, yeah. Before the marriage. When the bridegroom is coming. And consistently throughout the writings of Isaiah, the bridegroom is? Jehovah, and the wife is Israel. And so this idea is that when these people show up and you accept them as part of the covenant family, you're getting ready for

the coming of the bridegroom. And so as we read this, I think we get the idea then that this is a prophecy in answer to Nephi's point that I want to show my brethren how they're going to be gathered. God has a plan. In the last days, he's going to raise up a covenant people out of the Gentiles who will gather the scattered covenant people, witness that God is still working to save his children. They will be stewards of the covenant and prepare the world for the coming of Christ. The image of them picking up people and carrying them is a beautiful idea.

These missionaries out there, I will pick you up and carry you because you feel forgotten. You feel forsaken and forgotten. I think chapter 49, Terry, to me, this could be a micro level as well. Someone who feels like the Lord has forgotten them to go through Isaiah 49 line by line and realize it might not happen the way you think it's going to happen. It may look like a failure, but it's really going to be a glorious victory. He has not forgotten you any more than a mother could forget a newborn. I think that's probably the greatest example of someone who cannot forget something else is a mother forgetting a newborn.

It does not happen. And yet they may forget, but I have not forgotten you. Your situation is in front of me. I understand you. I'm ready. And I have people prepared to help you. I am preparing people to help you. Do you feel like that's a message of chapter 49 maybe on an individual level that's a beautiful way to look at it yes indeed and certainly chapter 49 fulfills that twofold

purpose that nephi had in quoting it it teaches them about the redeemer who will come and conquer sin and death and it teaches him about how he's going to gather his broken off and scattered people in the last days through these latter-day Gentiles amongst whom he will raise the restored gospel. This is one of my favorite verses in all of scripture is that verse 16. And when I teach it, I love to ask my students, do you know the sign language for Jesus? And for those of you watching on video, it's touching the palms of the hands like this, one and then the other. That's the sign language. Yes.

And I like to quote this and then touch my hands like that. I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands. And then it's always a fascinating discussion to throw it out to the group. When Jesus came to the righteous in the new world, he wanted them to come and witness the marks in his hands and in his feet. But I thought when we're resurrected, all of that is healed again. It's always a fun discussion. Why would he want those wounds to remain? It's always a fun discussion to say, well, he wanted them to know who he was. He wanted them to know he was the fulfillment of this prophecy. And Elder Holland talks about the fact that it's the wounded Christ who comes to save us. And I think it's Elder Holland, as well as Joseph Fielding Smith,

said they believe those wounds would ultimately be cleansed, but he carries this reminder of us in his hands. It's kind of a beautiful way to think of it. And I thought it might be good to talk to our listeners about kind of a definition of Gentiles, because I love this idea. I know that you two have also been to the Western Wall, and there's this part of me that one time when I went, it was the beginning of the Sabbath, and I felt this anxiousness to just go, I'm part of the house of Israel too. I wanted to tell them that I'm one of those Gentiles, but I got my patriarchal blessing and it told me that I'm part of the house of Israel too. And that you have more with you than you can imagine.

And I guess that's one way to look at these Isaiah verses that you're breaking forth on the right and on the left. Where did these come from? Well, these are these Gentiles who have now discovered through their patriarchs that they are also house of Israel. And we are with you. We're part of you. Gentiles, my understanding is, and help me, Brother Ball, is it just means the nations and we kind of in the book of mormon use gentiles a lot to mean kind of the european nations that will come over to the new world once the nephites and the lamanites are gone am i right on that yeah the word is goyim and sometimes the kjv translator translated as

nations and sometimes they translated as gentiles the identity of the Gentiles is a moving thing. Anciently, you were either of the 12 tribes of Israel or you were Goyim. You were of the nations or the Gentiles. After the northern tribes of Israel were carried away and scattered in 721 BC, in the minds of the Jews, they were the last of the Israelites. So there's a paradigm shift. It's no longer, are you Israel or Gentile, but are you Jew or Gentile?

A dichotomy. Yeah, the others are lost. The problem with that is that means that a lot of people who have the blood of Israel in them are called Gentiles because they're not Jews. Moreover, what it means to be a Jew starts to be a moving target as well. It can be a genealogical, biological distinction. But also, if you're living in the political kingdom of Judah, you're called a Jew. If you convert to Judaism, you're called a Jew. Lehi calls himself a Jew. But what is he genealogically?

He's from Manasseh. Yeah, from Joseph. Yeah. So when you read prophecies about the Gentiles, it's always helpful to say, well, how is the term being defined in the day of the prophecy's fulfillment? So, are we Gentiles? Well, from the Jew-Gentile perspective, yes. But are we Israel? And from a genealogical prospect and from a conversion and theological way, we're Israel. Depends on who you ask. Yeah. And because of the scattering of Israel, the blood of Israel has been scattered throughout much of the world, all through the world. When one receives their patriarchal blessing, in most cases, it is not assigning lineage, it's declaring lineage.

Meaning that somewhere in your genealogy, there's some of that Israel in you and maybe many of the tribes. But the blessings and responsibilities are yours by virtue of heritage, which is declared by the patriarch and your patriarchal blessing. That's why you can have people from different tribes in the same family. And that happens on occasion. So yeah, I remember this statement from Bruce R. McConkie in talking about Joseph Smith. He said, Joseph Smith, the literal descendant of Judah and Joseph, was the Gentile through whom the gospel was restored. Anyone who knew Elder McConkie know that was a great imitation. That's pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah. So are we Gentiles? Are we Israel? Most certainly. The Book of Mormon says the Gentiles who accept the gospel are numbered among the house of Israel. That's the phrase it likes to use. I like to say they are recognized as part of the covenant family. And that seems to be what's happening in 49.

I would love our listeners to take time in chapter 49, especially those of you who feel lost and forgotten. It's chapter 49, verse 14. But Zion said, that's you. The Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me. There's a great talk way back in 2012. It was a long time ago, I don't know if you can dust off the 2012 shelf. This comes from Linda Reeves, Linda S. Reeves, who was a second counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency at the time. She talked about her and her husband. Recently on a trip, they were in a museum and we found that they had a guide and her name was Molly, a lovely woman in her seventies. No children,

never married. She was an only child and her parents had been deceased for many years. Her closest relatives are two cousins who live on another continent. When you think of someone who could feel forgotten, this Molly, the tour guide, could feel that way. Then Sister Reeves says this, suddenly I was overwhelmed with the spirit testifying to me almost as if Heavenly Father were speaking. Molly is not alone. Molly is my daughter. I am her father. She is a very important daughter in my family, and she is never alone. Sister Reeves goes on at the end of the talk, and she says, just as the Lord had testified to me that he has not forgotten his precious daughter, Molly. I testify that he has

not forgotten you. Whatever sin or weakness or pain or struggle or trial you are going through, he knows and understands those very moments. He loves you. He will carry you through those moments. He has paid the price that he might know how to sucker you. Cast your burdens upon him. Tell your heavenly father how you feel. Tell him about your pain and afflictions and then give them to him. Search the scriptures daily. There you will find great solace and help. And then she quotes the savior here from Isaiah.

Our savior asked, for can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands. I have commanded none of you should go away, but rather have commanded that you should come unto me that you might feel and see. Even so shall ye do unto the world. And then she says, this is our charge. We must feel and see for ourselves and then help all of Heavenly Father's children to feel and see and know that our Savior has taken upon himself not only our sins, but also our pains and sufferings and afflictions so that he can know what we feel and how to comfort us. I mean, just a powerful statement.

You have not been forgotten, even though it may feel like it. Isn't that the essence of chapter 49, Terry? Even though it may feel like it's not a victory, it really is. It's not coming in the way you thought it was going to come, but the victory is coming and the victory is much bigger than you thought. I love that assurance that it gives you to know. It's always nice to know that you're going to be a winner in the end. Yeah.

You know, I love BYU sports, but I can't stand to watch the Cougars lose. So if I think there's a chance they'll lose, I don't watch it live. I have to record it and watch it afterwards so I don't get too upset. Then I don't feel so bad if there's a bad call or a misscoring opportunity. I think it's okay. We're going to win in the end. I want to know the end. 49 kind of lets you know, yeah, we're going to win in the end. There'll be some struggles along the way. I've always thought of Nephi and sharing this with his people, because I just feel like, and help me with this, Terry, that when they lost their real estate, they lost part of their identity. And they are suddenly on the other side of the planet, considering themselves on an isle

of the sea. And I thought, what a wonderful thing to read Isaiah and say, hey, we are still house of Israel. We have that obligation as well as that blessing, and we have not been forgotten. And I just wonder if that was in Nephi's mind to say, this is still us. We're in a different area code, but the covenants still count. And we've still got to be who we're supposed to be. That's a beautiful way to summarize it. Yeah. I think that's a big part of the reason why Nephi loved this chapter so much.

Delighted in it. Yeah. It's just the hope. Cause I can see how easily the temptation, it would feel like, Oh, we've just been tossed aside a couple thousand miles. Do the commandments count on the other side of the international dateline?

Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is still who we are. And we were scattered, not because we're wicked, but to preserve us. And we have got to keep our covenants as covenant Israel. I mean, I think that's what Nephi's doing. And John, I would add verse 22. The rescue is coming.

The rescue party is coming. I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles. They will carry you home. And boy, Nephi saw that. He wants to see Lehi's dream, and he gets a lot more than he bargained for than Lehi's dream when he sees 1 Nephi 13 and 14. Verse 23 there in 49, by the way, where it talks about kings being nursing fathers and nursing mothers. That sounds like a wonderful thing. It might be helpful for the readers as you go on in that verse. It makes the statement that they'll bow down their face towards my feet and lick the dust off of my feet.

That doesn't sound like a real fun activity to me. When Jacob quotes this and talks about it in 2 Nephi, he makes a distinction about two groups of Latter-day Gentiles. Those who accept the gospel and share it and gather scattered israel those are the nursing fathers and nursing mothers and then there's another group who fight against the church of the lamb of god and against the covenant people this is in second nephi six and he says those are the dust lickers and i find some comfort in that i'd rather be a nurse than a dust licker yeah that sounds like eating ashes, but not much better. You know, there's some interesting imagery in 48.

We haven't talked much about it yet. Could we go there for a minute? Please do, Terry, yeah. The first part of 48 reads a lot like it would have come out of the first part of 35, the first 35 chapters, I should say, because there's a lot of rebuke and warning here. He starts off by really yelling at the covenant people who would come forth out of the waters of Judah, or as Joseph Smith explains, the waters of baptism, but they're being hypocrites. And he says, I'm going to give you prophecy because you're stubborn.

Your neck is an iron sinew and your brow is brass and so forth. And they're committing all kinds of apostasy and worshiping idols and all that kind of stuff. That sounds like something out of the first 35 chapters. But he returns to the last 27 chapters theme with starting in verse 18. I'm wondering what you make of this imagery. You feel the pleading here. Oh, that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments. That's 48, 18. Then had thy peace been as a river and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea and thy seed had been as the sand and the offspring of thy bowels like the gravel thereof, your name should not have been cut off nor destroyed from

before me. Oh, if you had just hearkened to my commandments What do you suppose he could mean by that imagery? I really looked at that, and I was intrigued that in my closet, do you guys remember ancient compact discs CDs I do remember CDs I had relaxation CDs that were waves of the sea or white noise like a river interesting and that this was actually to help you to feel calm your peace could have been like a river that beautiful sound of a babbling brooker of white noise or that constantancy of the waves of the sea. I remember once I got to stay overnight in Hawaii and have that sound of the waves all night.

The constancy of that. That's why I love that idea that we actually have CDs that give those sounds to help us relax. Peace like a river and waves, a constant like the waves of the sea. That's what I thought of. How about you, Hank? I read this and I go, oh man, the commandments are the way to go. Wickedness never was happiness, but righteousness can be a lot of happiness. I thought the same thing as you, John, is that your righteousness can be just constant, just unstoppable.

Like the ways is just one after another all night long, right? There is a certain confidence that comes from keeping the commandments and a certain peace that can't be found in any other way, even when things are going wrong. And I remember when I was a young man in high school, I was six foot two and weighed 120 pounds. And I was as homely and uncoordinated as I was tall and skinny. I had two brothers who were great athletes and I was just so different than them. I had a terrible inferiority complex. Then I got over it. I realized it wasn't a complex at all I was genuinely inferior it was it was just so many things I wished I could do that I would never be able to do but I realized that although I had no control over being handsome or coordinated or anything of that sort I could choose to be righteous that's something could do. That was such a great strength to me. They'd say, you're ugly, and your mom dresses you funny. And I'd say, yeah, but I'm righteous.

I'm okay. That's one kind of peace. The word peace, it's from the Hebrew root that we sometimes say it in shalom. It's the same root. It means an absence of violence. But you might know that it also means wholeness and completeness. This idea of likening this peace and perfection to moving water, it's not unique to this passage, is it? You think about when Christ met the woman at the well outside Samaria, remember?

He asked her to give him water to drink, and she says, I perceive you're a Jew and you're asking me, a Samaritan, to give you water. And what's going on here? He decides to seize upon the teaching moment and says, well, if you knew who you were talking about to, you would ask me to give you water and I give you living water. And she thinks he's talking about water, but really he's talking about water. And I picture him pointing to the well and says, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I give them shall never thirst again. And then remember the second part of that? It'll become a fountain of springing up. Well in you.

Yeah. So the idea is, is you've partaken the water that I give you. Not only is your thirst satiated, but you've partaken of the water that I give you. Not only is your thirst satiated, but you become a source of water as well. I'm the fount of living water. You partake of what I have to give you and you become a source of living water. This water that's ever flowing and moving. Living water was water that was important. It's water that's used for purification and sanctification. You would carry living water in Old Testament times and a two-part compartment vessel that had connections between it so the water could be moving. There's an association

between moving living water and being like our Heavenly Father. I think we see it in the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenants. Remember, it says, if we let our bowels be full of charity towards all men and let virtue garnish our thoughts unceasingly, and then shall what? Your confidence will act strong in the presence of God. The Holy Ghost will be your constant companion. The doctrine to the priesthood will distill upon thy soul like the deuce from heaven. Your scepter will become an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth. And thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion.

And without compulsory means, it shall flow unto thee forever and ever. There's something associated with moving living water that's associated with being like our Father, the fount of every blessing. And I think that's hinted at in the next verse here when it says, and we're going back to that, O that thou harkest my commandments, then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness like the waves of the sea.

Thy seed also had been as the as the sands of the sea, where does your mind go? Abraham. Yeah, this promise that you will have eternal posterity, eternal increase. Some people would think that that's hyperbole when Abraham's told he would have seed as numerous as the sands of the sea. But if you have eternal increase, that's not hyperbole. That's understatement. In the 131st section of the Doctrine and Covenants, when it talks about becoming like God and the attributes of God, not 131, 132, the end of verse 19, speaking of those who've entered the new and everlasting covenant of marriage and kept their covenants, it said, the gods which are set there to their exaltation and glory in all things as hath been sealed upon their heads which glory shall be a fulfillment and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever

then shall they be gods because they have no end one of the most distinguishing features of coming like our father in heaven is that we have eternal seed or eternal increase. So I wonder if this is one place from the scriptures that we can teach this idea about man's potential to become like God. If we hearken unto his commandments, then we become like him into our perfection, our righteousness, our wholeness, our completeness is continuous forever. It flows like a river in the ways of the sea. And we have eternal increase. See, there's numerous of the sands of the sea. Anyway, I love the imagery in the passage.

And that's one way to understand that makes good sense to me. Beautiful. John, as people come up to me, I don't know what they say to you, but they just say, I'm so grateful for podcasts, the different guests that you bring on. It gives me so much hope. I feel good.

As we've been going through this with Terry, I'm seeing the very opening verse, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. And then as we just keep going, he says, I will renew your strength. This is Isaiah 40, 31. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles.

41 again, verse 1. I will renew their strength. The Lord will not fail, nor be discouraged. 41.10, we've already read. Fear thou not, I am with thee. Be not dismayed, I am thy God. I think this section could be something that people could go through and just, what do you call those, John?

Sermons in a sentence where they could just go through and mark these beautiful phrases. I will not forsake you. The Lord says, I have not forgotten you. And especially the one we spent time on, can a woman forget a child? I mean, this is the most extreme example. No. And I have not forgotten you. I've engraven you on the palms of my hands. They shall not hunger nor thirst. So what do you say? And this is my question, what do we say to those who are listening today, Terry, who are struggling to know that God knows them and loves them? I think that's got to be one of our major messages today, don't you think? If there's one thing we want to get across today, it's the Lord loves you.

He knows you and hasn't forgotten you. And that he has the power and the knowledge and the presence and the love to save and redeem you. We can have that faith. And in fact, that is his whole work and glory. That's God's work to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life. When you have that perspective and that hope, you sure deal with the challenges of life from a different perspective. There's a different purpose to life. You have a goal. You know how to get there.

You know why you're here. It can give you such hope. And I suspect that for most of the listeners and certainly for all of us, there's been times when that hope has really come to our rescue. What a blessing. I love what Terry has pointed out to us, how these chapters begin and how beginning in about chapter 40 takes this different tone, because I think the Lord is kind of focusing on these. Could I say it like this? Some promised outcomes, some promised results.

And when we're in the middle of a trial, I'm trying to remember, Hank, Emily Freeman talks about the middle. What do you do in the middle? And sometimes when you're in the middle of the trial, these kind of verses about outcomes can be comforting, that the Lord's going to do what he does. This is what he does. He's a healer and hang on to those promised outcomes because they're coming. And the terms that Terry has given us, he's omnipresent, he's omniscient, and he's

omni-loving and hang on, those outcomes will come. But right now, I'm looking at Isaiah 48.10, I have refined thee, but not with silver. I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. I wrote in my margin, could you choose me to be somewhere else? It doesn't sound very comfortable to be in a furnace, but what's he doing? I'm for my own sake. I'm going to refine you. And the refining is uncomfortable. But maybe we read this and hopefully we get a testimony of the outcome the Lord has in mind for us. Our friend John Hilton said, there's the devastation of the Friday the Lord dies.

There's the magnificence of the Sunday that he's resurrected. But what do you do about Saturday? The Saturdays is the hard part. Was it Elder Werthlin who talked about that, going through the Saturdays of life? Yeah, well, he just said, Sunday will come. Focused on that promised outcome. Yeah. There are rare people who appreciate the refining. God's so good at

making sure we have the experiences that are necessary to refine us. I remember, I love what it says in the 101st section of Doctrine and Covenants when Joseph is trying to comfort the saints who've been driven from Jackson County, and they have to be chastened and tried even as was Abraham. Here we are, D&Cnc 101 this is verse 2 i've suffered affliction to come upon them wherewith they have been afflicted consequence of their transgressions yet i will own them i love that imagery god's going to own us they shall be mine in the day when i shall come to make up my jewels i love that imagery that we we can be part of Christ's treasure chest. That's an Isianic phrase, by the way, too.

They make up my jewels. Therefore, they must need to be chastened and tried even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son for all those who will not endure chastening but deny me, can't be sanctified. But sanctifying is part of the Saturdays that are so hard. Sometimes we can go through our Abrahamic tests, and it's not as painful if we just make the right choices early on. I think of King David that we've just been studying recently in Come Follow Me.

You think about what King David's Abrahamic test was. It had to be Bathsheba. If he'd never thought of her again, he probably would have passed his Abrahamic test and the refining wouldn't have been nearly as difficult. But he, for some reason, thought repentance wasn't worth it. And so he compounded his sin and created all the trouble. And like you said, John, if he'd just turned and never walked away,

he would have passed his test. We would have always thought that his big test was Goliath. But Goliath was nothing compared to Bathsheba, huh? Yeah. And dealing with his own lust. Oh, man. I remember as a teenager when, what? That's the same, David? Oh, just feeling kind of a gut punch that later in life he went through that. Hank, could I share something from Elder Scott? Please. This has blessed me so much, and I've used it a lot, about Elder Scott. In October of 1995, he gave a talk called Trust in the Lord.

He said, when you face adversity, you can be led to ask many questions. Some serve a useful purpose. Others do not. To ask, why does this have to happen to me? Why do I have to suffer this now? What have I done to cause this will lead you into blind alleys. It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather ask, and listen how different these questions are, What am I to do? What am I to learn from this experience? What am I to change? Whom am I to help? How can I remember my many blessings in times of trial?

Willing sacrifice of deeply held personal desires in favor of the will of God is very hard to do. Yet when you pray with real conviction, Please let me know thy will and may thy will be done. You're in the strongest position to receive maximum help from your loving father. People in my own ward right now that are dealing with health challenges I can't even imagine and relate to with themselves, with loved ones. Having those questions change. Okay, what do I need to learn? What would you like me to do with this, Lord? Who can I help in the middle of this?

What do I need to change is, like Elder Scott said, very hard to do. But the focus changes a little bit when we rely on God for these good outcomes that Isaiah is talking about in these chapters. You know, I think that's true not only for the hardships and trials that come from health issues or employment issues or the loss of a loved one. I think that same paradigm can be applied when we have these challenges that come in the form of crises of faith, something from church history or something culturally or politically or socially that raises difficult issues that could challenge our faith. There are a lot of hard questions out there that can challenge your faith. If you follow Elder Scott's example, you let your faith inform the question, and you come up with answers that feel right and are right. But if you let the question inform

your faith, you end up in the wrong place. I've watched so many who struggle with their faith lately, and it seems like they're those who just naturally let their faith inform the question, and they end up right. There's others who let the question inform their faith, and they start to question their faith. And we've heard a lot about this lately, but in a lot of ways, faith really is a choice. If you choose to believe, you can find so much that informs and affirms your faith. If you choose not to believe, there's lots of people give you reasons not to believe. Sister Sherry Dew's book, Worth the Wrestle, it have confronted a difficult question, wrestled with it, and came back stronger. That's why I love the word wrestle,

because wrestling is an incredibly strenuous event, but you come back stronger. How did you say it, brother? I love that. Let your faith feed the question. There's an answer. I'm going to go find it. I'm going to wrestle with this and let the Lord help you with that wrestle. And I'm trying to remember the name of the sister. I was at an event with a sister. She was a single sister. People had said to her, how can you continue to serve in your calling?

I think she was on one of the boards of the church. When you're single and it's such a family church, and she said, well, I can be just as childless and just as single outside the church, or I can be in the church where I find so much peace and happiness, and I can be single and childless in the church where I find this much peace and happiness. I thought, what a great answer. I could be outside the church and still be single and childless, but I have found God here. And so I'm staying and I'll deal with my challenges with God's help. Anyway, I love that answer.

Thanks to both of you. We want our listeners to walk away uplifted and healed. And I think these chapters of Isaiah, you probably won't understand every verse, and that's okay. You'll come back to it again. This is why we do this every four years. In fact, we get it every two years

with at least those chapters in the Book of Mormon. Come back over and over, and eventually you'll get it. Terry, I'm sure it took you a long time to pick up on everything Isaiah was saying. I haven't done that yet. I'm still learning. Yeah, still going.

Terry, I think our listeners would be interested in hearing a little bit of your story. So here you are, very educated Latter-day Saint, multiple degrees in archaeobotany. I mean, that's the coolest degree I've ever heard of, archaeobotany. That's so fun. Terry, one of the things that I've ever heard of, archaeobotany. That's so fun. Terry, one of the things that I have on one of my PowerPoint slides, which I just thought was so interesting with your knowledge of Hebrew and also of botany, was in Isaiah chapter, is that Isaiah chapter 5 or 2 Nephi 15, where he speaks of my beloved hath a vineyard and a very fruitful hill. And I've heard it as Isaiah's only parable.

Some people have said that, but he says, I did everything. I took the stones there out. I built a hedge. I built a tower. I planted it with the choicest vine. And I looked that it should bring forth grapes and it brought forth wild grapes. Wild grapes, yeah. Would you please share with us what Isaiah really said there instead of wild grapes? Because I get a kick out of it.

Well, you know, the annual grape harvest in time of Israel was a time of great celebration because grapes were so critical for their sustenance and their economy. And grapes grow wonderfully there. With just a little bit of irrigation and cultivation, they produced just wonderful, wonderful grapes. And apparently they would sing grape harvest songs when they would harvest the grapes. In Isaiah chapter 5, Isaiah seems to take what was a common grape harvest song, and he twists the words of it just a bit to teach a lesson to the ancient covenant people. It certainly applies to the modern covenant people. He's kind of like

being an Old Testament Weird Al Yankovic, if you know who that is. And so as he does this, he talks about how the well-beloved, who we understand is Jehovah, makes, as you so well summarized, John, this wonderful, wonderful vineyard. And he plants it with the choicest vine. The Hebrew there is the word zorek, which refers to the very best of their grapes. He does all these things for it to bring forth this wonderful crop. And instead of bringing forth a wonderful crop, it brings forth what the King James people translate as wild grapes. Grapes will grow wild in the Holy Land, but wild grapes are not like cultivated grapes. They're smaller, drier, a little more sour, not the same as sorak, as the really good grapes. And so he's going to be really disappointed

that it brought forth wild grapes. The word translated as wild grapes is the Hebrew word be'ushim. If you look up the word be'ushim in the Brown, Drivers, and Briggs Hebrew lexicon, it tells you that the root of that word literally means worthless stinking things. So it's not that they brought forth an inferior quality of grapes.

It brought forth something totally unexpected. Totally worthless. Yeah, and you can feel the frustration of the master when he says, what more could I have done in my vineyard that I've not done? When I looked at it, it should bring forth grapes. It brought forth Be'ushim. Worthless stinking things. Yeah.

I remember we'd taken a group of students to a biblical garden outside Jerusalem called Ne'uketimim. And we had this sweet little Jewish girl. We were up on a tower overlooking a vineyard they had in their biblical garden. And she was going over this chapter five thing. And she says, look, it should bring forth grapes. And it brought forth. And all my kids said, worthless stinking things. She looked a little embarrassed.

She says, well, I know that's what the word means, but we prefer to think it brought forth immature grapes. That's a euphemism. You wonder if God ever looks at us when we have access to all the covenants and looks at us and says, oh, Hank, Be'ushim, Be'ushim, Be'ushim. No, not Hank, but maybe Terry. No, man. It almost feels like the Lord is saying, what else did you want me to do? I put you in Utah for crying out loud. There's a thousand temples around you.

You got prophets and apostles an hour away. And I get worthless stinking grapes. One of the first papers I published was on botanical imagery in Isaiah. Isaiah has more than 300 botanical images in this thing. And when you live in an agrarian society, you're just naturally going to use plants a lot to teach. Yeah. Something people understand, right? Yeah. Well, let me tell you how I became an archaeobotanist, seems how you asked. I did my undergraduate in secondary education and you had to have a composite degree. So I chose botany because I've always loved plants. And then I did

the seminary pre-service because I wanted, my first choice was to be a seminary teacher. My second choice was to be a physician. And my third choice was to teach high school science. So I tried to cover all the bases with my undergraduate education. Fortunately was hired to be a seminary teacher. So I did my master's in ancient Near Eastern studies, which is kind of a Hebrew archaeology history kind of degree. And I decided to combine the two into my doctorate and do archaeobotany of the ancient Near East. Those two kind of seem to come together. As I first got started, my advisors taught me about a particular plant microfossil that's called a phytolith. It's a little tiny subcellular piece of opal that takes the shape of the cells in which it was created.

And he said, you know, people say the Book of Mormon can't be true because it speaks of barley and wheat in the New World before Columbus. They all say, everyone knows there's no such thing as pre-Columbian wheat and barley in the New World. And yet the Book of Mormon speaks of it. At the time Lehi's family left Israel, barley and wheat were important cultivars. They'd been grown since Neolithic times, and they'd become so dependent upon human intervention, they couldn't exist without human planting and sowing and that kind of stuff. And so bringing the wheat to the new world, they would have subsisted on it, but during the war years, they would have lost it because they weren't cultivating it the way they can.

And you'll see that shift in the Book of Mormon as you read through it, that the wheat and barley start to diminish in the text. But he said, what we need to do is get someone who can find these phytoliths, which persist for hundreds of thousands of years in the new world that predate Columbus, because you can date them. They have carbon occlusions that allow you to date them. And then we can show that there's wheat and barley here before Columbus. So that was my initial PhD study was working to create a way to identify wheat and barley phytoliths. When I first started, you could only tell the grass from a non-grass phytolith. But using computer-assisted image analysis and scanning electron microscopy and statistical

analysis, I developed algorithms that allow us to identify wheat and barley phytoliths right down to the species level with about 80% accuracy at species level, 90% at genus level. And so I was getting ready to publish my dissertation and then start looking for wheat and barley in the new world when they discovered carbonized barley seeds in New Mexico that predated Columbus. So I got scooped. Everyone now knows that wheat and barley predate Columbus and nobody questions it. But at the time it was a big question. So that's why I got scooped. Everyone now knows that wheat and barley predate Columbus and nobody questions it. But at the time, it was a big question. So that's why I got into archaeobotany. I was working with these plant microfossils from archaeological excavations.

And I spent my scientific research in that discipline. Terry, I have a joke that's kind of related to archaeobotany. Sister Miles, I met her on a church history tour. She said, when the leaves all fall off of a tree, who do you call? The elders quorum to rake it up. But who puts the leaves back on the tree? And she said, that is the Relief Society. Relief Society. At great personal risk, I promised I would tell that joke on the podcast. That's so bad I could tell it.

Here's one of the same genre. If the devil were to lose his tail in Utah, where would he have to go to get another? I have no idea. He'd have to go to the state liquor store because in Utah, that's the only place where it's legal to retail evil spirits. My word. Terry, I think there's a myth out there among some Latter-day Saints that the more education you get, the less likely you are to believe and have faith. Yet here is someone with advanced degrees and decades of teaching. How have those two worlds combined for you? How has your faith and your education helped one another? You know, that's not so much of a myth that the more

education you get, the less religious you are. There have been studies done at BYU and outside of BYU where they've looked at the effect of higher education on religiosity, which they define as whether or not you pray, you keep the Sabbath, you give alms, you give service, you read scriptures. And those studies have consistently shown that for most faiths, the higher education you have, the less likely you are to be religious. The one outlier, well, one of two outliers, but the main outlier is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And in the church, the higher education you have, the more religious you are likely to

be. And the correlation coefficient, the R squared, is very, very high. Before I retired, that's been a number of years ago, we had one of the authors of that study come and do a faculty forum for us to talk about that phenomenon. But the truth is that faith supports truth and truth supports faith and that my studies have informed my faith and my faith has informed my studies. And they go hand in hand. So it's not surprising to me. It's only natural that the more education you get, the more you're going to understand and appreciate the truths that the gospel brings. That's been my experience. This notion that you

can't be a scientist and a religious person is also silly. There are many, many faithful scientists. In fact, I've published a paper on faith and science that just reviews many great scientists talking about their faith and the role of God in their research. And those two disciplines aren't exclusive, aren't mutually exclusive. A lot of faithful scientists. That's beautiful. I don't know if that answered your question, but. Yeah, I think our listeners just need to know that, hey, look, we have very, very educated

people in our church and they are all in. They're believers. Maybe one last question. What do you say to those Latter-day Saints who are still, Isaiah is Brussels sprouts? I just don't get it. I just don't know what to do. I'm sure you've had students say that to you before. I hear you have a great love for it. Any parting thoughts for those who are thinking, oh, I want to get it. The Savior himself says, study Isaiah. And I would say, I think of all the prophets I've studied, Isaiah gets it, probably more than almost anybody else. So what do you say to those Latter-day Saints who are

struggling? I don't know that I know the answer for all of them that I know for me, the answer came in following the Savior's admonition to search these things diligently, not reluctantly or haphazardly or quickly, but to spend the time to carefully look at it. Let the Spirit guide you. I don't think you need to know Hebrew to come to love this prophet. I don't think you need to be a biblical scholar. You just have to have a heart that wants to know and love God and to spend the time with the text. You've experienced, and we've all experienced times when you're reading scriptures and those marvelous, delicious moments when you start to learn beyond the words.

And that happens as you read carefully and you ponder. I don't think there's anything more important to serious scripture study than disciplining yourself to pondering. I define pondering as the act of asking questions and then thinking about the answers. Something wonderful happens when you read a passage and ask, how would I say this in my own words? What would I teach my children out of this? What could this mean to me? How was it fulfilled anciently? How does it apply to us today? You know, when you start to ask those questions, then you start to get feelings that enter your heart and thoughts that pop into your mind and it becomes this delicious discovery, aha experience, rather than the ho-hum, I've got to

trudge through this. And that can happen. It's disciplining yourself to search diligently, taking time to ponder, and the love grows. That's been my experience, and I think for many others as well. Can I ask you one more question, Terry? I just think it's fascinating that when Nephi gives us his kind of four keys for understanding Isaiah, like after he quotes that huge block of Isaiah chapters, 2 Nephi 12-24, the first eight verses in 2 Nephi 25 give us these keys. And I know Bruce Armaconchi has 10 keys, but Nephi's got these four. And one of them, he says, in that day, they shall understand them. And I would love to get your take on why is it in our day that Nephi says, we will understand Isaiah? What do you think? He saw our podcast, John. Of course, that's got to be one.

That's an interesting observation because many of us would want to excuse ourselves from understanding Isaiah by saying, well, it was written by an ancient prophet for an ancient people. But Nephi certainly begs to differ. He says in our day, we should understand them better

than in any other dispensation. Previous generations. I don't know all the reasons, but some of them is, first of all, we're able to study Isaiah through the lens of the restored gospel, the fullness of the gospel. They haven't had an every dispensation. We also have the teachings of living prophets,

and we also have the benefit of historical hindsight. So we have prophetic foresight and historical hindsight. So that's helpful to us as well. And we have ready access to Isaiah. Most of us carry Isaiah around in our pockets. There's never been a dispensation that's had more access to scriptures than us. And we have ways to look at so many resources

to supplement our understanding, Bible dictionaries and topical guides and gazetteers and the restoration scriptures. Plus, we live in the time when Isaiah's prophecies find the most complete and full fulfillment and application. You know, there are so many academic worlds who think that it's not correct to try and find modern-day applications to fulfillment for the Old Testament or Isaiah's writings in our own life. I hope none of our listeners buy into that. I believe it is important to understand ancient fulfillments, interpretations, and applications for the prophecies, but it's equally, if not more

important, to find interpretations and applications that fit our day. That's why Nephi told us to liken Isaiah to ourselves. And it's just's why Nephi told us to liken Isaiah to ourselves. And it's just as much as a disservice to the text to not look for applications in our day as it is to not understand the application in the ancient world as well. They're both really important. It's so critical. I think Isaiah and our Heavenly Father are pleased when we read a passage and think about how does this apply to us. Nephi models that perfectly, doesn't he? So often he'll take a passage and I know he understood exactly what it meant to Isaiah's people and sees it applying to his own people. You see that when he quotes

about the Ariel prophecy and the voice of those that speak from the dust, you know. He sees that. Isaiah 29, yeah. He knows that that's applying to Jerusalem. He knew Ariel, the city where David dwelt, but he also saw it being fulfilled perfectly by his own people and applies it. So it's not wrong. It's not wrong to repurpose or to apply and liken the scriptures to ourselves and learn from it as well. What a blessing to have the Spirit to help us in that lightning to ourselves as we do that. That's beautiful. I don't know. Was that your thoughts on that as well, John?

Exactly what you said. We will see it happening around us. We will have more help than ever before from, as you said, we have prophetic insights into it, commentaries. We live where we can carry it around in our pocket. I thought exactly those, and I was just curious what you thought, because I thought, when have we ever been better equipped than we are right now with all the help we have? We're kind of getting to the point where we're left without excuse, except for just taking the time and pondering, as you said. I just wanted to have a real scholar comment on that. That was great. Well, we want to thank Dr. Terry Ball for being here.

Thank you, Terry, and for bringing your decades of experience to help us and our listeners. I have learned a lot. I have taken a lot of notes going through these chapters. And thanks for the encouragement to study Isaiah because we have more episodes of Isaiah coming up on Follow Him. So you'll want to join us next week. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorenson, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorenson. And we hope you'll come back. Like we said, more Isaiah coming up on Follow Him. Thank you.