followHIM - Moses 7 -- Part 1: Dr Avram Shannon
Episode Date: January 22, 2022What will spur the Saints to build Zion? Dr. Avram Shannon joins Hank Smith and John Bytheway on the podcast and discusses the commandment to build Zion and how it parallels the City of Enoch and is a...n antitype to Cain’s city. The Savior’s return to Zion, the end of contention, and who will build and reside in Zion are all discussed in this compelling episode.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.
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Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their
Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We
love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow him.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. I'm your host, Hank Smith, and I'm here with my almost translated co-host, John, by the way. John, to me, you are almost
translated.
Telekach matalachash, kashchalemekhata.
Almost translate that.
That's not what I meant. we're talking about enoch today
i was like what's he doing and have it been translated correctly
yeah hey um welcome uh everybody to follow him john we get to spend our entire day in one chapter. And so I had to find someone who could teach us,
I mean, all, how many verses here? 69 verses of Moses chapter 7. Tell us who's with us here.
Yes, I'm very excited today. We have Dr. Avram Shannon with us. He was born in Quantico,
Virginia, spent most of his young life in Virginia.
He served his mission in the Oregon-Portland Mission
and then Washington-Kennewick Mission after the mission was split.
Dr. Shannon earned a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern Studies
from Brigham Young University,
a Master of Studies in Jewish Studies from the University of Oxford,
and a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
with a graduate interdisciplinary specialization in Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean from
Ohio State University. And he and his wife, Thora, have seven children.
When I tell my students, you know, when they have questions about Judaism, I say, you know,
if I don't know, I know who I can ask.
It's Dr. Avram Shannon.
So give us a little bit of that.
I'm sure it might come up through our discussion today, but your mom grew up Jewish, right?
So the whole story is my great-great-grandmother.
So her great-grandmother was Jewish, okay?
And came to the United States.
And then it's hard to be Jewish in America. And so they Christianized after about a generation.
And then my mother converted back to Judaism as an adult. And she was actually pretty Orthodox.
She went to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio so not Ohio State but Ohio University down in Athens
and after she finished her degree
she either was going to go to New York
and join the Chasidim
the auto-orthodox Jews
in New York
or she was going to go to Seattle
to go to the University of Washington
for a graduate program
she chose to go to Seattle rather than go to the University of Washington for a graduate program.
She chose to go to Seattle rather than go to New York. She moved into an apartment. There were
I think seven girls in the apartment. Six of them were Latter-day Saints.
And she was number seven. She actually, for a while
there, she was going to shul on Saturdays. And then she
did 10 church with Latter-day Saints on Sundays.
They gave her a calling because she could direct music.
So she was directing the music before – she was asking for about two years.
So she converts, and then Avram is a very Jewish name, I assume.
Yes, Avram is a very Jewish name.
And so it's funny because all my kids,
I was actually, I was talking to my kids this morning about this, actually,
all of my siblings have scriptural names. So there's Joshua, there's me, Samuel, Luke,
and then Soraya from the Book of Mormon there is my sister. Avram being, it's the Hebrew form of
Abram. Stephen Ricks, you know, the Hebrew teacher here over at BYU calls me his
Judeo-Celtic friend because of my names. Judeo-Celtic.
That's so great. Avram, this week is our first Come Follow Me lesson in which we are,
we're just in one single chapter, Moses 7. So how do you want to take us through this?
We'll hand the reins over
to you. Okay. So Moses 7 is really interesting. The book of Moses is JST Genesis. It's an extract
of Joseph Smith's JST, which is important to us because it's not really a standalone book,
right? Sometimes we treat the book of Moses like it's, you know, but it's just pulled out of
Genesis. But Moses 7 is intriguing because it's one of those few portions in the book of Moses
that doesn't have strong background in Genesis, right? You know, you read Moses, Moses 2, Moses 3,
those are creation accounts and stuff, which we talked about previously. Most of it is just, I mean, Genesis with a few changes here and there.
But again, Moses 6 and 7 here, which I think is part of why the Kampomi focuses on this,
is because, you know, you have Genesis here, you have Genesis and Moses together.
Here, really, you've just got the book of Moses, which is important for us.
Because as Latter-day Saints, Enoch's kind of a big deal for us Latter-day Saints.
You know, I mean, he was extremely important in the early Restoration.
He's extremely important to Joseph Smith's self-understanding as a prophet, right?
We don't have the Doctrine and Covenants anymore, but, you know, back in the day,
in the early sections, when they had sort of the code names that they would do for, you know,
for the various figures in there, one of Joseph's was Enoch. Joseph was identified in Revelation
as Enoch. A couple of verses in Genesis are the Genesis for Moses chapter six and seven. Is that right?
That is right. So it's Genesis 5, 21 through 24. And it's part of this larger part where you have,
you know, description of so-and-so lived so many years, begat so-and-so,
and lived the amazing years after that, and then died, right? It's this genealogical table. And
again, in Genesis, the primary purpose is to get between sort of Seth and Noah. But in the middle there,
there's this weird little bit. It says, and Enoch, this is verse 21 of Genesis 5,
and Enoch lived 65 years and begat Methuselah. Okay, so far, exactly what we expect.
Yeah.
And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah 300 years and begat sons and daughters.
Okay, there's that walk with God. That's a little bit different. All the days of Enoch were 365 years, and Enoch walked with God
and was not for God to took him. One of the things is, as Latter-day Saints, we're kind of spoiled
sometimes because Mormon holds our hand a lot. Mormon kind of walks through, explains what he's
doing, explains what his sources are, explains why he's doing it. Mormon kind of walks through explains what he's doing explains what his sources are
explains why he's doing it mormon kind of walks us through things um the biblical authors and
editors don't do that they presume that we're kind of already insiders as we read this stuff
there's no explanation about what it means to walk with god in genesis
as latter-day saints we're predisposed to read it positively because we have the book of Moses.
There's actually a rabbinic source about Enoch.
Enoch has kind of an intriguing mixed tradition in Judaism.
There's some parts of Judaism that really like Enoch.
There's other parts of Judaism that's like, eh.
Basically, they say, you've got two kids.
And one kid is always obedient, stays next to you, does everything you ask. And one kid runs
everywhere around the store and is always touching things and pushing things. And you can never find
them. And basically, they ask, which of these two kids are you going to make hold your hand?
Yeah. Okay, okay.
It's the one that, you know.
Enoch walked with God because he was all over the place.
That's how they understand it.
Exactly.
Oh, interesting.
Mormon and the biblical authors reminds me of like a tour guide.
You've got Mormon, the tour guide, who's explaining every little detail.
And then you've got this biblical tour guide who's like, oh, that was Enoch. Yeah, he walked with God. All right, let's keep going.
Let's keep going.
Wait, what?
No, it's true.
So Joseph Smith gets to these four verses and then something happens?
Like with Moses 1, he has this visionary revelatory expansion to Genesis. Again,
the equivalent there, you know, you start there in 6, right? Again,
you're going straight on through, right? Moses 6, 17, Seth, Enos, Canaan, Mahalil,
Jared, and then, you know, and then Enoch. Yeah, right in verse 25, Enoch lives 65 years
and begat Methuselah. Yeah, that's verse 21 of Genesis.
Exactly. It's directly with Genesis.
And then, yeah, then it changes.
Introduce this narrative. And Enoch lived 65 years and began, you know,
and journeyed into the land among the people. And as he journeyed, so you have this call narrative
right in the middle there. And so what Joseph does through Revelation is the JST here,
is he basically expands the Enoch story and explains.
So what does it mean for you to talk with God?
Why was Enoch not?
What does it mean that God took him?
What does it mean when God took him?
What does it mean for these things?
So, yeah, four verses becomes, I can't even count them all here.
It's not a hundred verses of material.
Maybe a little more than that.
I'm going to write that down.
Four verses becomes 100 plus.
Yeah.
The JST, it tends to be expansive vis-a-vis Genesis, of course.
But this is one of the places where you really see that expansion happening extensively.
It's very clear from Genesis that Enoch doesn't die because everybody else does,
right? I mean, the formula is, and so-and-so lived so many years, many sons and daughters,
and died. Seth, Cain, and Jared. So it's very clear, whatever's happening in Genesis,
Enoch isn't dying. It breaks the formula there. So there is something weird there,
which by the way, is why Enoch becomes, in certain parts of ancient literature, he
becomes kind of this...
Because he's the one in the list that didn't die.
Right.
Bibliotepters then and now are heavily attuned to weird things in scripture, right?
And that's going to be...
I call them the knobs in the text.
When you're reading along, you kind of hit something and you're like, I got to figure out what's going on here.
Those become places where you're going to get the most sort of interpretive explanation and exploration.
And that's true of JST too.
The Lord gives the most sort of revelation on the knobbiest places in the text.
The knobbiest.
Avram, is that the only mention of Enoch in the Bible?
Is these four verses in Genesis?
No, he's mentioned twice in the New Testament.
So he's mentioned once in the epistle to the Hebrews, and he's mentioned once in the ep of Hebrews which is up there in chapter 11 in what's
again, the great table of faith
you know, by faith they did all these things
he's there, by faith he was not
so again, Hebrews actually
understands
what's going on there in Genesis, very similar to what the letter of the saints would
there's nothing there that's kind of weird for us
there's no city, we'll get to the city in a second
the city is distinctive to the book of Moses
so kind of our most important part of the Enoch narrative, because it feeds so much I was talking about in the book of – in Enoch as a figure, you find actually there's a whole subcategory of Enoch literature.
There's a whole subcategory of ancient stuff that's about and from and sort of through Enoch.
So when is this – when is this – these books – when are these found?
Where do they come from?
Are they called the Book of Enoch?
So one of them is, okay?
Scholars kind of call them one – first Enoch, second Enoch, third Enoch.
But that's just because we're trying to work through them in terms of our – again, they're not ancient designations.
The date of composition is probably – the Enochian tradition really flourishes between about 1 BC – 100 BC, rather.
So about the 1st century BC and about the 4th century AD is kind of the flourishing of sort of this Enoch literature.
The biggest and most famous is probably 1st Enoch.
That's the one that Jude quotes there in the New Testament.
The Lord comes with 10,000 of his saints.
That 10,000 of his saints, that comes from Jude, coming from 1st Enoch.
That's our earliest one.
So the book of Enoch is, or the 1 Enoch here,
and actually all the Enoch stuff,
is part of this kind of,
one of the things we think of
as we think about the process
of our scriptures coming together,
it's worth noting that in the ancient world,
we didn't have, especially originally ancient world,
we didn't have books, right? The Bible wasn't a book. It was a, primarily, ancientness was primarily a
scroll technology. And so, and so you had scrolls. Hey, by the way, we're, we've come back to
scrolling. We have. Yeah, we scroll down now. And it's funny because the book is a superior piece of technology.
You can put your finger in.
You can find things easier.
But we took a step backwards.
Back to scrolling.
Back to scrolling.
Okay, sorry.
Sorry, I cut you off.
Keep going.
That's a valid point.
That's why we went to books, right?
So the funny thing is, is that when you have books, the question's
different with scrolls. Because scroll, we actually had these archaeologically, and scrolls,
you just had scroll cases. And so, it wasn't whether, you know, so you had a copy of Isaiah,
and it was in a scroll. And you had a copy of, you know, the five books of Moses or whatever,
you had your Pentateuch, your Torah, and it was a scroll. And the question, and you had your book of Enoch and it was a scroll. And so you had these,
these very, and so, and so there was not as much need to determine what was the books that were,
you're going to read because you just, you just collected them and they were just part of a sort
of divine library. But the move to a codex technology, the move to books,
suddenly the question becomes, what do you put between the covers?
What gets to be there and what doesn't? And so there's all this stuff that's circulated in the
ancient world, scriptural, quasi-scriptural, whatever, that didn't make the cuts.
So along the way to the creation of the Bible as we know it, books got pushed off by some group or another and the first, second, third Enoch, these books got left behind.
So for the Enoch stuff, again, Enoch's really intriguing because again, it was not included
because there were questions about authenticity.
There were questions about – again, there's another class of sort of apocryphal Enoch material and between our Enoch material in the Book of Moses.
There are connections.
We find the weeping God.
We find Enoch has visions.
We nearly thought that was a big deal.
We find some names.
There's a Mahijah figure who we connected to the Mahujah in in our Apocrypha Enoch stuff.
There are a couple of places where that,
but there are lots of places where it's very, very, very different.
The way they treat angels, totally different.
You know, that is a notion, you know, humans, angels, gods,
are the same kind of being, different spiritual ideas.
Nowhere do you find.
Angels are a separate class of created being.
There's no city.
So the connection to say, oh, this is neat.
There are other places where you say, this is totally different.
This is not a Latter-day Saint scripture.
Okay.
Well, so this is why this is wonderful, because we feel, you know, this is reliable.
Our Moses chapter 7, 6 and 7 about Enoch for us is, no, this is Scripture.
This is, we can count on this.
Avram, let me ask you a question.
Josh Sears talked about this when we had him on, when he says, listen, the JST sometimes gives us back ancient texts that was once written.
And sometimes it's, it's just new revelation.
Um, would you say, um, that's going to be, I, maybe it's impossible to say what Moses six and 7 is? So again, the question always is, and your point would be impossible to say, the question always is, what's your criteria?
I.e., how would you tell?
How would you know?
Yeah.
Right?
Without access to an actual ancient text.
You couldn't know.
You literally cannot tell.
You cannot say, yes, this is definitely ancient because we don't have anything to check it against.
Okay?
Now, with the Enoch material, we do have ancient texts.
And there are some connections.
I already mentioned these, right?
You know, the weeping God and things like that.
You know, if I had my tie, I'd throw it over my shoulder.
That's how I let my students know that I'm, you know, kind of just spinning my
wheels here for a second. But we can definitely say 100% Joseph Smith seems to tap into an Enoch
tradition that has continuity with other traditions from the ancient world. Whether that was originally in Genesis or not, we cannot say. But it's very clear that
Joseph Smith taps into something that has ancient connections. And for me, at that point, again,
there's nothing that proves Joseph's prophetic, but the Holy Ghost. But for me, that makes Joseph making it up no longer the easiest answer.
It provides space for restoration.
So I do think that there's, again, I think there's an authentic Enoch and there is space here for Joseph, um, tapping into something that's very ancient.
Yeah.
I think our listeners are going to be interested in that. I think they would say, does this mean that Joseph, you know, without having the materials that later scholars have, got it, wow, really close to right in a lot of places.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
If Joseph is guessing, he's guessing exactly right.
It's kind of the –
The world's greatest guesser. Oh, the way I would – it's the same thing. It's kind of the – The world's greatest guesser.
The way – it's the same thing with Abraham's stuff.
There's places in the book of Abraham that are very much – especially Abraham 1 that only fit in kind of second millennium BC material there.
And again, if Joseph's guessing, he's guessing exactly right with that.
Wow.
Well, it just – it kind of makes you wonder what other backstories are there that we don't have.
If from four verses in Genesis, we can get all of this, I wonder who else they went by kind of quickly in Genesis that has more that we'll get someday.
Yeah, I know.
And it's actually a really key thing because, of course, one of the things that's intriguing just generally in reading scripture is learning that their issues are not our issues.
When you realize that the authors and editors of most of the Old Testament were Judahite priests and scribes, suddenly you understand why the emphasis on priests and temples and Judahite kings, and i.e. their perspective feeds into,
it's part of why we get, I suspect,
why we get more Josephite material in, say, the Book of Mormon.
I was just reading the other day, you know, Moroni and the tradition of,
you know, as this cloth is torn, you know, the whole Joseph thing.
We've got these extra Joseph traditions in the Book of Mormon,
which makes sense because the Book of Mormon authors are Josephites.
Are Josephites.
Wow, that's great.
That's why they're focused.
You mean like Joseph of Egypt-ites.
Yeah, Joseph of Egypt.
Yeah, yeah.
They're descended from Joseph.
Like Lehi comes from, yeah.
Lehi comes from Joseph, he learns.
And then we learn from Alma that he comes through Manasseh. And so we would expect traditions about Joseph in a text like the Book of Mormon that we wouldn't expect from the biblical text.
The biblical text is written by Judahites from a Judahite perspective and from a Levitical priesthood perspective.
And so being aware of that, I think John's point is really good there.
Being aware of that then helps us understand what is in and what's
not. And of course, Joseph in the latter days is coming here. And one of the things the JST
definitely does, the JST is a Bible for Latter-day Saints. It's a Bible for the restoration.
The JST takes the Bible and says, look, this book still matters, and this book still matters for you guys right now.
And so the Enoch material, especially with his emphasis on the building of Zion,
is going to be something that the church needs right now.
A very latter-day theme that we talk about a lot. Yeah.
Right. It's something that mattered deeply to Joseph.
I was going to say, in the Doctrine and Covenants last year, almost you have the church organized, and then they start talking about Zion, the cause of Zion.
And was this coming from his work in the JST, at least some of it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Again, it's worth noting that, you know, these Genesis chapters, he's translating these in like June and July of 1830, right?
This is immediately after the restoration
and the establishment of the church in these latter days.
So this is directly feeding into what he's doing,
what he's thinking about in his prophetic mission
and his prophetic self-understanding.
So seven, of course, builds right off of six.
One of the things to remember, of course,
as you read scripture,
is that chapter and verse
divisions are artificial. They are almost all of them not original to the text. If you go back to
Joseph Smith's original translation manuscripts, there are no chapter or verse divisions in the
book of Moses. Those are put in by actually Brother Talmadge in 1902, 1902 image, version of this.
So Moses 7 begins with a continuation of Moses 6.
Moses 6 is all framed in terms of teachings to Adam.
That's one of the key things.
And that's really important as we think about what's going on then in Moses 7, because
Enoch's, the Enoch materials, actually, it's almost a bridge between,
in the same way, again, remember that chapter Genesis 5 is trying to get from Seth to Noah.
Noah's still a huge important deal.
And so Moses 7, even with the Enoch material, it's Enoch bridging us between Seth and Noah
or between Adam and Noah and Enoch providing this covenantal bridge between our first parents and between, again, because one of the things that Genesis is going to do, and actually Moses 7 is going to set up for this, Genesis understands the flood as new creation.
The world is newly created.
You get a new creation. The world is newly created. You get a new covenant. And so it's
pushing us there in this attempt of bringing us through that.
So he says, verse 1, right? Behold our father Adam
taught these things. And many believed and become the sons of God.
And many believed not. And this, by the way, this is part of, this is a major theme.
Major theme in the book of Moses is this notion of the two ways.
This idea that there are sort of two ways, actually there's dominion,
two ways to pick. You've got the devil's way, you've got
the Lord's way, you know, Cain
versus Abel, you know, those who believe, those who followed, sons of
God, daughters, and again, those who believed, those who followed, sons of God, daughters.
And again, it's always framing this in these dichotomies, which is – You can choose one or the other.
Right.
There are two ways to do this.
Okay.
And then Enoch, again, he begins to prophesy.
And so we have sort of two prophecies in the Enoch. And it's worth noting here, especially as we're here in Moses 7, say, 3 through – we'll go 3 through about 9.
You've got all these place names, right?
Shum and Canaan and Heni and Omner and Shem and Haner and Hananiah.
We, of course, have no idea where these are.
And we can't know where these are. They're not attachable to place names. And this is important because of that verse about
Canaan there in verses six through eight. One of the things, of course, that people in the church,
but especially people opposed to the church,
have done with the Pro-Great Price
is they've used it to justify
their racist readings and things, right?
Or to accuse Latter-day Saints of being racist.
And of course, there's some discussion
about blackness and things here.
But it's worth noting,
these are not the Canaanites
from later in the Bible,
first of all. Okay, so these are not the Canaanites in the land. Again, when Abraham
comes to the land of Canaan, when we get to in a couple chapters in Genesis, these are different
people. There's also a tendency with this to, again, because of historical things and whatever,
you know, there was, even in the church, and it's not
just, it's not unique to Latter-day Saints, but, you know, to connect, say, oh, well,
person of African descent couldn't have priesthood because it ended from Cain, and the point
of verse is like this here with that.
But of course, Cain is not Canaan.
And so this is not talking about the descendants of Cain.
I get sort of period, full stop.
There's actually no discussion of Cain and priesthood anywhere in the scriptures.
Not here.
Not in the book of Abraham.
There is nowhere in scripture where Cain is discussed in connection to priesthood.
Which is part of why the church now, again, disavows, it says, any explanation that described dark skin as a sign of God's disfavor.
Okay, so this is Enoch.
He's prophesying and the Lord says, prophesy to the people of Canaan.
But this is pre-flood, so we shouldn't connect these to the Canaanites that we're going to hear from in a few weeks.
When we get into Genesis 11.
Right.
And neither should we connect them to Cain.
Both sides, just separate them out.
Since we don't know what any of these things are, we actually don't know what they're doing.
Like I said, the ancient texts did this all the time, right?
They're always talking about things that make sense to them that don't matter to us.
But I do think, and this feeds into what's going on there.
As we go to 10 and 11, that's, I think, where the real meat of this chapter begins.
In 10 and 11, again, the Lord says, go to this people and say to them, repent.
Lest they come out and smite you.
We'll talk about that for a second.
And he gave me a commandment that I should baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son,
which will the grace and truth and of the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of the Father and the Son. And this is particularly important.
This is probably where I would begin, where I would break, is probably here at 10.
Because this is what begins the beginning of, we have sort of three things going on in 7.
And the first of those is the establishment of Zion.
And,
and really,
and this is of course,
is part of why this has a resonance for Latter-day Saints.
So this is,
this is the message that the Lord says,
this is Enoch.
This is the message I want you to give.
Exactly. And what I find so compelling about this is this tells us the principles on which Zion is established.
Sometimes as Latter-day Saints, as we talk, we get this notion that there's some kind of special dispensation of doctrine or something that the Lord has to give us before we can establish Zion. The principles on which Zion was established by Enoch are repentance, faith, baptism.
It's nothing particularly special.
There's no particular change that we need to have in order to establish Zion.
And this is something I find very important because we sometimes use that as an excuse
not to try and establish Zion.
Elder Christofferson gave a great talk called Come to Zion.
But one of the things he points out is that we have a responsibility as Latter-day Saints to build Zion.
That's part of what we are supposed to be doing. And the reason I love this here in Moses 10 and 11 is it reminds us that we're not waiting for something special to build Zion.
We have the tools right now that we need to build Zion.
Yeah, I'm seeing all first principles here, aren't you, John?
Verse 10, repent.
Baptize in 11. Holy Ghost in 11.
13, and so great was the faith of Enoch, yeah.
Enoch's going to, he's going to start the message of how we're going to build Zion,
and it's going to be the same things you and I hear today.
That's right. Building Zion is not some kind of special extra thing that the Lord's people
get on top of. It's God's work, period. I mean, it's get on top of it. It's,
it's God's work period.
I mean,
it's,
it's the principle of the gospel.
It's,
it's,
it's,
it's the fundamental,
again,
doctrine and covenants.
We've been just talking about this last year.
Doctrine and covenants frames,
consecration from Zion in terms of the law of celestial kingdom.
I mean,
this is,
this,
this is what God wants us to do.
He wants his people to be one.
And the foundation here is,
I mean,
yeah.
If you just
read 10 through 13, you'd have 2 Nephi 31 and 3 Nephi chapter 11 and all these, this is how we're
going to, if you really want to be part of my work, here is what you want to do. Repent, be baptized,
receive the Holy Ghost, repent again in verse 12.
Verse 13, have great faith.
I love the prevalence of first principles in all of the scriptures.
If they really are the first principles, then they really are the first principles.
And we should expect to see them, and we do.
Can I, Avram, just ask you one more time?
I think it was a really interesting point you made. So, I put in my margin, did I write this right? A pre-flood Canaan, not related to the post-flood Canaan.
That's right.
So, they just decided to name it that, post-flood, but we have no idea why or... We don't have... Part of the problem, of course, we don't have the underlying language for any of... So we don't know what this looks like.
Is this the same?
Is it Kanaan again, like you have in Genesis?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
There's two or three letters that can have an A vowel on them.
And there's two or three...
You know, there's a couple of Ks.
You've got a K and a Q in in or k sounds in hebrew i would not even be comfortable saying this is even the same name
it might be but but then it certainly might not be yeah yeah and latter-day saints would
maybe have a tendency to read this and go oh this is obviously the people of cain and this is the
same cain and where abraham goes and look here here's the blackness that came upon the children of Cain,
and all of a sudden we're making connections that the scriptures don't make.
That's right.
We always need to be very, very, very, very, very careful about systematizing scripture.
One of the things we do as Latter-day Saints is we're trying to circumscribe all truth
into one great whole. That's what we're trying to do. But sometimes we forget when we do that,
that scripture is definitionally, it's ad hoc revelation, right? It comes to certain people
at certain times and you can make connections. So, I'd love what you, it might not even be the
same word, even though to us, it looks like exactly the same word.
That's interesting.
So, Enoch wants to build a people.
This sounds, you know, this sounds a lot like Joseph Smith and even our day.
He wants to build a people who center their life on God and give themselves to God.
So, what's the rest of his message?
What are we going to do next? Yeah. I mean, and the beauty of this and the beauty of Moses 7 is, of course,
Joseph Smith wanted to build a people who followed God and were one heart.
President Nelson wants to build a people who follow God or are in one heart. Enoch did it.
And so really the great beauty of, or rather God did it through Enoch even, the great beauty of Moses 7 is we have a Zion success story.
And those unfortunately are few and far between in scripture.
But here we have a success story.
And again, you have to accept the land and things like that.
But really that brings us into, you know, 718.
This is our Zion verse, right?
And the Lord called his people Zion because they're of one heart and one mind and dwelt in righteousness, and there was no poor among them.
And again, in that great talk by Elder Christofferson, Elder Christofferson suggests, first of all, he points out, and I think this is really important.
The Lord doesn't make his people Zion.
He doesn't make them one heart, one mind.
He doesn't drive the poor among them.
He doesn't make them to own righteousness.
After they have become one heart, mind, after they have an unlimited poverty, after they have done these things, then the Lord says, and now you're Zion.
Zion is something that we do.
It's not something the Lord does to us.
The Lord called his people Zion because they were already one heart and one mind.
They were already dwelling in righteousness.
There were already no poor among them.
And I think that's so key.
Yeah.
That word, the Lord called his people.
The Lord didn't make his people Zion.
The Lord called his people Zion because they chose it.
And we might say they applied the principles of Zion.
They became of one heart, of one mind.
They worked on being united and repenting and all of the –
Right.
Applying the gospel together.
I mean, there's still obviously grace in this, right?
I mean, obviously, you can't repent without Jesus' grace. You together. I mean, there's still obviously grace in this, right? I mean, obviously you can't repent without Jesus' grace.
You know, I mean, absolutely.
Can you remember, recall the reference, Elder Christofferson?
I want to put it in my margin.
That was...
The talk's called Come to Zion.
Elder Christofferson gave it in October Conference of 2008.
It's one of the great talks on Zion.
It's just powerful stuff, Elder Christofferson, there.
One thing I learned last year by
studying the Doctrine and Covenants that I don't think I'd
ever really seen before is the Lord
says,
here's Missouri,
go build Zion.
And they're so worried about the
place and their enemies
and he doesn't seem overly concerned about
the place or the enemies.
It's always about the people.
He's like,
he said,
I can take care of your enemies and the place is ready for you.
It's about your hearts that I,
that's the difficult part for,
for the Lord.
Cause I'm not going to force this on you.
Cause the moment I force you on you,
it's not Zion.
Yes.
And it's kind of actually funny there,
Dr.
Good.
And I'm funny and it's funny in a sad way.
I mean, you know, I mean, the Lord makes it very clear. It's like, this is your fault, guys. Missouri was all your fault. The Lord does not let us off the hook for that. If you remember all the way back in Moses 5,
and it's also there in Genesis, right?
Remember Cain, Cain's a farmer, Cain's cursed,
and this is very clear once again, by the way,
the curse on Cain is that he can't farm anymore.
That's very explicit from scripture.
Cain's curse is he can't farm anymore.
But what does he do?
He goes and he builds a city.
And he calls the name of that city.
This is Moses 5.42.
And Cain knew his wife and she conceived him bare Enoch.
So Cain also has a son named Enoch.
And he also began masoning his daughters.
And he built a city.
And he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.
And it's
a place of...
Well, it's a place of industry
and secrimination, so, like
every other city, basically.
So you have these
two cities build up, these two cities
of Enoch. That's right. How fascinating.
And the Book of Moses does a comparison.
Instead of
saying, oh, cities are all
bad, which, again,
you could make an argument for that
in terms of what's going on there
in Moses 5. Instead
what Moses does in Moses 7
it says, but look what you
can do with cities if you do them
God's way. Look what
a redeemed city looks like.
So, Enoch, city of Enoch is the city the way God wants cities to be. One heart, one mind,
no poverty. Cain, city of Enoch is the way that every other city in the world has ever looked
like. People try, you know, it's Korah or Doctrine. I mean, two combinations are fundamentally
fruited in this notion of everyone prospers according to their genius, and you don't need anybody else. And again,
fundamentally, Cain kills Abel because Cain sees Abel as an object, not as a person.
And so, you have these – again, this comparison the Book of Moses is making between
we have a city of Enoch here, this is the wrong way to do it. We have a city of Enoch here, a city of holiness, Zion, this is the right way to do it.
So how – I mean, I guess this is such a big question, but how'd they do it?
Like, I mean, we want to do it.
Here's the Zion success story.
I think many of the – obviously, the people listening to our podcast are going, hey, I want to live in Zion.
I have this, I have the quote from Elder Christofferson here.
We will become of one heart and one mind as we individually place the Savior at the center of our lives.
I've noticed for me personally, Avram, that I'm like, yeah, I'm ready for Zion as soon as everyone else is ready for Zion.
I always tell my students, I always say, Zion as soon as everyone else is ready for Zion, right?
I always tell my students, I always say, Zion would be super easy to build if it were just me.
You know?
But of course, the key point, and this is actually the real struggle with it, is there is no Zion without everybody else.
Zion is definitionally a community of faith.
And again, we saw this amply in our Doctrine and Covenants here this last year.
But sometimes we say things like, oh, you know, I know the church is true, but not the people in it.
Right. But one thing that Zion reminds us is there is no church without the people in it.
There's not some kind of super special magical church out in heaven that we're kind of sending to.
It's just us.
And it's the same thing with Zion. Zion's just us. Fundamental. One,
Eric Christopherson, that talk suggests that we need all three of these things to build Zion.
Any one of these is a great thing. Any one of these is hugely part of what God wants us to do. But to be a Zion people, we need to keep the commandments to dwell in righteousness.
We need to have that kind of unity that the Lord wants us to have.
We need to have it so that there are no poor among us.
We have to eliminate poverty.
And again, Elder Kershaw said that.
He says, the Lord has measured individual societies
by how well they take care of the poor and needy among them.
Every time I read that quote, I'm like,
whoo, how am I doing?
This reminds me of like thinking about how to answer that question,
is 4th Nephi.
Yes.
There was no contention.
It says four different times,
because the love of God which dwelt in the hearts hearts of the people and it mentions there were no poor.
So fourth Nephi one is kind of another,
we,
we did it.
We created a Zion because of the love of God,
which dwelt in the hearts of the people.
It says,
yes,
we divide the world into categories,
right?
Male,
female,
black,
white,
Latter-day Saint,
non Latter-day Saints, gay, straight, all, white, Latter-day Saint, non-Latter-day Saint, gay,
straight, all these various categories that we, you know, these various identities. And it's not
that these are somehow wrong, right? One of the things that I love about Zion is Zion takes
everybody. I mean, you think about how the Lord's created this world and you look, you just go
outside and you look at people, right? You go to whatever, you go to your classes, your wards, and you see how many different kinds of people the Lord has created.
How many people there are in this world, and I love it.
It's clear to me the Lord loves all of us.
But what we do is we take these categories, and then we treat people like objects.
We treat them, and again, this is back to 2 Nephi 2.
Lehi reminds us that the Lord created things to act and things to be acted upon.
And fundamentally, core horror doctrine, fundamentally secret combinations,
is treating people like things to be acted upon
rather than as things to act.
Honestly, Facebook's the anti-Zion.
You know, they said we don't agree with or whatever.
And suddenly, suddenly they're an object.
They're no longer a person.
And then we act on them.
And rather than saying, oh, wait, no,
you're a thing to act, not a thing to act about.
Fundamentally, Cain killing Abel was Cain deciding that Abel was something to be acted upon rather than something to act. And for me, as I think about building Zion, fundamentally,
it's about learning to treat people the way God treats them, which is like people.
Yeah. When I use a hammer, I don't think about how it feels.
I don't think about, right, if it's going to be sad, I'm going to use it.
Until it's worn out, I'm going to get a new one.
But that's not people.
I was just looking for it, but this reminds me, because I use a verse when I teach Book
of Mormon about, look, they're treating people like things and things like people. It's Mormon 839, where this is Moroni taking over his father's record.
But he says, why do you adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, the needy, the naked, and the sick?
And I want to add, who have life, to pass by you and notice them not.
You're treating things like people and people like things.
It sounds to me like Mormon 839.
And we'll see this later on.
The one thing that makes God really, really mad
is his children hurting each other,
his children mistreating each other.
Back to Hank's question there about how do we do this.
Sometimes you look at it and say, man, this is hard. And we just stop trying. We look around and we say, you know,
and part of it, you know, we disagree, right? There's no contention in the land back here,
our fourth Nephi example. But of course, no contention does not mean no disagreement.
Everybody doesn't think the same in Zion.
But the secret is learning how do you get there?
How do you learn to disagree in God's way?
Because part of it, and this is another key thing about this, about consecration, about the cause and about each and every one of us.
The consecrated, I have different gifts than my wife, than my children, than my students, than my bishop, than my Relief Society
president. I have different gifts than, you know, the consecrated Avram Shannon is not the same
as the consecrated Hank Smith or John, by the way. Sometimes Latter-day Saints, we get this notion
that we have to give up our individuality if we build Zion. To be one means we have to give up our individuality if we build Zion.
To be one means we have to give up what makes us think of the us.
And one thing I think is very clear and very important is in Zion,
you are the most like you, you will ever be.
Because remember, God has always known you and he loves you for it.
It's you he wants. And so the consecrated you is still going to be,
and it's going to be the most like you, you could possibly be.
This is the object. What did Jill Smith call it? The object of that we should all be looking.
The cause of Zion is the most important thing, he says.
Yeah. And we should be thinking about this all day, all night. But for me, I'm the one, and this is going to be a problem, is I'm ready to build Zion. But I look around me, I'm like, well, no one else hold my efforts off until everybody everybody's bringing to the table.
That person that we're looking at and saying, oh, well, they're not building Zion, so I won't either.
Maybe they are at this point.
Maybe that's what they have to give.
And it's not our job to say, yes, you're not doing it, or I'm not doing it.
We say, okay, this is what you're giving.
Here's what I can give.
Let's do this all together. Because the whole point of Zion in some ways is
there are lots of things that I can't give a hundred percent in.
I'm just, I just, there are things that I'm really good at, things I'm not really good at.
There was one time I was a ward clerk. I had to do the friends of scouting.
Friends of scouting.
And I collected the money. I was the clerk, but nobody had trained me on how to do the Friends of Scouting. Friends of Scouting. And I collected the money.
I was the clerk.
But nobody had trained me on how to deposit the money.
So I sat on it for a year until it got audited.
And they found the envelope with all of the money and pledged it.
And Bishop said, what is this, Brother Shannon?
And I said, I didn't know what to do.
It was fine. We got all the pledges we in it was fine they got them out everything turned out okay in the end are you ever gonna
cash that check right and somebody could look at that and say well he's not building Zion
but of course what I needed was somebody to come and say, let me help you. And fundamentally, I think for me,
the real question about building Zion is to ask, how can I help? Let me help.
Wow. So it's the idea of, I'm not going to worry if so-and-so, if Shannon or if Peter is building
Zion, I'm going to worry if I am building Zion and I'm going to
give my full efforts and, and assume the best in, in others. It's this notion of, you know,
getting what you deserve, right? None of us go, we deserve, right? It's not so bad as all that,
but we're so concerned sometimes with fairness. And one of the beautiful things about the gospel of Jesus Christ is it's
fundamentally unfair.
If it were fair,
we'd all go to hell.
So many of the parables,
especially the laborers in the vineyard,
the prodigal son is,
is looking sideways instead of,
Oh,
look,
I got,
I was paid.
It was,
well,
Hey, what about, Hey, Hey, I was paid. It was, well, hey, what about, hey, hey,
wait a minute. It's looking sideways and comparing. And that's what, isn't that what
C.S. Lewis said? It's the pride isn't pleasure in having something, but having more of it than
the next man. Yep, exactly. Interesting. People will ask me, you know, when do you think the
second coming is going to be?
And over the years, my mind has become, I think the Lord's waiting on us.
He's like, I'm ready when you're ready.
You want to build Zion?
As soon as it's there, I'll be there.
And so we're waiting for him.
He's waiting for us.
So what would you say if someone listening said, okay, I'm in, I want to build Zion.
What do I do?
I think what Elder Christofferson says is, okay, start with you, your family, your word, and your stake.
Start with your circle of influence.
And look for ways to help.
The secret to building Zion is just to go and build Zion.
We talk ourselves out of it.
We say, oh, we can't do it.
Oh, we can't whatever.
And say, no, no, no, no, we can do it. If nothing else from this experience,
us talking together comes to any of your listeners,
my firm testimony that we can build Zion right now.
We have all the tools and all the ability.
We can do it.
And I would say the real secret is just to do it. Repent of your sins. Help other people.
Look for people who need your help. Again, find a way, however you want to do it. This is not
about politics, but we have to eliminate poverty. Find a way, however you think is the best way to do that, that's fine.
I have my opinions about how I think I would do it.
But honestly, this notion of we cannot say, oh, well, they're just poor, whatever.
We have to find a way to eliminate poverty.
So find ways to help people who are less fortunate than us.
Or if you're the poor, find ways to be helped.
As we've been talking about Zion, scriptures keep coming to mind
that, I mean, it's just over and over, right? Jacob too. It's the pride in your hearts and
your sins, your sexual sins that are keeping you from God. Then King Benjamin, right? You're
turning away the poor. You're not keeping the commandments.
So we can build Zion.
Repent of our sins.
Find ways to help those who are suffering.
Yeah.
That's it.
Right.
Again, obviously, that's not it because we'd have done it yet, but that's it.
The church has re-articulated the mission of the church.
Do you remember the days of President Kimball?
It was proclaim the gospel, perfect the saints, redeem the dead.
And then President Monson added, take care of the poor and needy.
And now the newest handbook has it, live the gospel, care for those in need. I like that it just says,
sometimes somebody that is wealthy by some measure is in need.
So it's live the gospel, care for those in need.
Let's see, live, care, invite all to come unto Christ and unite families for eternity.
And, you know, that could be one way to answer,
how do we create Zion? Live the gospel,
care for those in need, invite all to come to Christ, unite families for eternity.
Back to Joseph Smith and the idea that, you know, the cause of Zion is the object.
This is what the church is organized for. This is what the restoration is for. It's to build Zion. And so if you want to build Zion,
live the gospel,
do the things you're asked to do,
help each other.
And Avram,
I like what you said earlier.
This isn't about money.
It's about hearts,
right?
Because you could say,
oh,
if we just had enough money,
we'd make everybody equal,
but that wouldn't change anybody's heart.
Yes.
They were of one heart and one mind.
Because of their hearts, there was no
poor. It wasn't, there was no poor, so that
changed their hearts. Yes.
Would the Lord be pleased, even if our hearts were changed
and there were no poor among us? I think he would.
I absolutely think the Lord would be absolutely happy
if we could eliminate poverty without changing our hearts.
But that wouldn't be Zion.
Alec Christofferson says, to build Zion, you've got to have all three.
Yeah, this is great stuff.
And it has to be by choice, right?
Because I could say, well, let's force everyone to be of one heart and one mind and take care
of the poor.
But is that Zion? Well, again, back to 2 Nephi 2 for a second,
and things to act and things to be acted upon.
What makes our doctrine work is the fact that we are agents.
I mean, 2 Nephi 2 is what?
It's about the atonement.
But it's no mistake, when Lehi started laying out the atonement,
he lays out first this notion of choice,
and having choices, and being able to choose.
Agency is fundamental and foundational to Latter-day Saint doctrine.
So we're choosing Zion in a way.
We have to choose Zion.
We have to choose to become Zion-ish.
Yes.
Yeah, it has to be chosen.
Because, you know, why doesn't the Lord just make us then?
If he wants Zion so bad, make us.
Well, if he made us, it's not Zion.
Righteousness is only righteousness if it's freely chosen.
Yeah, freely given, freely received.
That's Paul's phrase for it.
So we all just kind of sit and stare at verse 18 for a while.
My dissertation advisor once asked, once told me, he's like, we talk about, you know,
writing dissertation and he's like, you know how you get around Astra Sovereign?
One bite at a time. You know how you build Zion? One heart at a time.
One brick at a time.
One brick at a time. You just, you just do it. And I really think for me, that's the real secret is,
is we just, we just got to do it. I'll go get started in my way and I'll hope people choose to do it in their way or join me in my way, help me out.
Or even I'll presume that they're doing it in their way.
Oh, I like that.
I'll presume that they are.
I'll presume that we're doing this together.
And I'll move forward.
And I'll move forward.
Mother Teresa. Yeah. Right? Yeah, exactly. zoom that we're doing this together and i'll move forward and i'll mother teresa yeah right
in my sphere of influence i will do good yeah i don't have a reference for this it's just one of
those i've heard that mother teresa had said uh we're not called to be successful in all things
we're called to be faithful in all things and we're all faithfully trying to build Zion. I like that
idea. I wanted to mention one more thing that I had written in my scriptures. I have no idea
where it came from. I just wrote it down years ago, but under where it said, and there was no
poor among them. We've been talking about poverty. I also put that everyone is valued. I don't see someone as less valuable to Zion because of fill in the blank, the way they look, how much money they have, anything at all. Any characteristic of them, I don't see them as less valuable. There is no poor among them, meaning everyone is valued. I have no idea why I wrote that in or who told me to do it, but.
And I think it feeds on what we talked about a little earlier is the problem is the comparison.
Definitionally,
no poor among them means no rich among them,
but we're not talking about monetary amounts here.
We're talking about everybody having what they want and need.
Sufficient for their needs. Sufficient for their needs.
Sufficient for their needs.
And again, part of this is why it's so hard, right?
I mean, you know, there's so much we want.
I was doing the Ten Commandments in Hebrew once, just, you know, just working through it.
And, you know, there's that great bit about, you know, thou shalt not covet.
And of course, you know, we're like, covet?
What's covet mean?
The verb there means thou shalt not want.
And it's a really, like, oh, that's much harder suddenly, God. That's much harder.
My house currently, I would love a larger kitchen. My kitchen is currently terrible to cook in. I just, I just, it's one of those things where every day I'm cooking and I'm like, why did I think this was a good idea to move here? I love the cook or whatever, but I don't know that I need very many more bedrooms than I already have.
Even what I want and need differs from person to person.
And so having no poor among us is not saying there's one standard for what that means, but it means that nobody feels the want.
Nobody feels like they don't have enough. Both economically, spiritually,
physically, whatever. Nobody feels like they are outside of the community and they are outside of
what it is. This is such a fantastic discussion. So Alvaro, we looked at one heart, we looked at
one mind, dwelt in righteousness, right? What does that phrase mean to you?
Well, of course, dwelt there means to live or to stay or to sit, right? It's this notion that there's some things that are specific to building Zion. Again, being one heart mind, united according to the law of the social kingdom, eliminating poverty, making sure that everybody feels wanted.
But of course, the God of Jesus Christ is fundamentally relational.
And that's just the fact that it's no mistake that the two great commandments are love God and love your neighbor.
They're fundamentally relational in that sense.
And fundamentally, building Zion then is about those relationships.
And one heart and one mind, no poor among us, is about our horizontal relationships.
Doing righteousness is about our vertical relationship.
Our relationship with God.
Our relationship with God.
And so fundamentally, I think that this key notion of both loving God and loving each other is how you build Zion.
And you've got to have all of it to build Zion.
Elder Christofferson, Zion is Zion because of the character, attributes, and faithfulness of her citizens.
If we would establish Zion in our homes, branches, wards, and stakes, we must rise to this standard. There's no other way to do
it. We must rise to this standard. It will be necessary. And here's the three you were talking
about. It will be necessary, one, to become unified in one heart, one mind. Two, to become
individually and collectively a holy people. Three, to care for the poor and needy with such
effectiveness that we eliminate poverty among us.
We cannot wait until Zion comes for these things to happen.
Zion will come only as they happen, as we choose them.
It's very daunting.
It's very powerful.
But again, Elder Christopherson, more than anything else, he says,
but it's something that we can do.
Yeah.
When I hear about President Monson giving up his vacation days to visit the 90 widows in his ward, or when I hear about George Albert Smith.
He made them all turkey dinners, yeah.
Yeah, George Albert Smith, who took his brand new coat off at the Humanitarian Aid Center and set it on the donation table.
And we have so many stories of people who, of amazing men and women who are doing this,
who have dedicated their life to the Lord and they've overcome selfishness.
John, do you remember the quote that was shared with us from Edward Partridge?
Do you remember?
Edward Partridge, who basically was in charge of Zion for a long time, said,
I have torn myself from the affection of this world's goods.
This world.
Yeah.
I have torn myself from the affection of this world's goods.
I, man, I wish I had it right in front of me.
I can, I can, I remember writing it down in my doctor and covenants and just thinking
about that.
How do you tear yourself?
But I mean, we have example
after example, after example, don't we Avram of people who have decided that they're going to do
it. Just to my ward last week, there was a brother who was giving a talk and told about
an experience as a teenager where his dad had bought a pair of new shoes and they were walking
downtown somewhere. And there was a guy there who had no shoes.
And this brother took off his shoes
as a teenage boy,
took off his shoes and gave them to this man.
And then they went and they bought
a much less nice pair of shoes for that.
And I'm like, I mean, literally,
there are stories of saints
giving the shoes off their feet.
It's powerful.
All right, let me tell you a story.
This was on NPR. So not the
desert news. This was a national public radio said, and this is back when you could say Mormon,
a Mormon Bishop in Taylorsville, Utah went to great lengths last Sunday to teach his congregation
a lesson. David Musselman disguised himself as a homeless person and walked around outside the church before the service.
He said, quote, the majority of the people of my ward just ignored me and went to great lengths to not make eye contact.
Some stopped, gave him an apple, crackers, or $20.
Quote, I was most impressed with the children.
The children were very eager.
They wanted to reach out and help me in some way.
He was also told by several members of his ward to leave the property.
I had some people that went out of their way to let me know this was not a place to ask for charity and I was not welcome.
Sorry.
We're still trying here.
Bishop Musselman told only his second counselor
that he would be disguised as the homeless man.
He purposely walked into the front of the chapel
and sat in the front row
at the beginning of sacrament meeting.
After his counselor's talk,
the bishop had the counselor lean forward
across the stand
and whisper he wanted to say a few words.
The second counselor informed the congregation, quote, brothers and sisters, this homeless man would like to say a few words.
Sorry, I just describing him that way.
This homeless man.
This homeless man.
Not this man. After receiving a few wary looks, Bishop Musselman walked to the stand behind the pulpit and began thanking the people for the kindness they showed.
He talked about some of the money he had received and said he wanted to give a portion of it back as a token of appreciation.
He asked where the bishop was so he could give the money to him.
When no one spoke, Bishop Musselman took off his wig and
glasses to show that he was, in fact, the ward's bishop. Listen to this. It had a shock value I
did not anticipate. I really did not have any idea that the members of my ward would gasp as big as
they did. Some started crying. Others said nothing. Many came forward to
apologize for their indifference to the bishop at the end of the service and announced they wanted
to do something to atone for their actions. Musselman said, I felt horrible that they felt
so horrible. But he said, I believe the experiment was more potent than any sermon I could have given on the subject.
It did have the effect I'd hoped it would have.
Then he said this, I learned something that I was not expecting.
We don't always have to give money or food.
But if we really believe what we say we believe, shouldn't we smile and make eye contact and allow everyone a little bit of human dignity?
We need to treat them like people.
Like people.
And not like objects.
Yeah.
And the other part of the children.
Isn't that interesting?
Right?
What did the Savior say?
Except you become as this little child, you will in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.
Can you imagine telling the bishop to leave the property? this little child, you will in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.
So can you imagine telling the bishop to leave the property?
And then afterwards, he's the bishop.
You're like, hey, remember what I said to you about, yeah.
People would start crying.
They just felt so indicted at that point.
Wow.
I mean, King Benjamin, when you're in the service of your fellow beings, you are in the service of your God.
Avram, we've spent a lot of time on one verse.
We've really, but every family, I would maybe say every family who's listening, spend some time in Moses 718.
Talk about it with your kids.
What does it mean? Talk about what you can do to build Zion right now, because you can do it right now.
Just sit down and say, what can I do? Just anything to build Zion. Absolutely.
Please join us for part two of this podcast.