followHIM - Mosiah 18-24 Part 2 • Dr. Melissa Inouye • May 20-26 • Come Follow Me

Starting point is 00:00:00 Before we begin part two, a quick note that the story of Sister Joy D. Jones following a prompting is actually a story that Sister Jones attributed to Lauren Dalton's mother. Welcome to part two with Dr. Melissa Inouye, Mosiah chapters 18 through 24. I was thinking about Elder Christofferson again, that talk, Why the Church? Because that's about why we form communities of saints. And he said the most wonderful thing in there. He said, we're not striving to conversion to the church. And I confess I've used that language before.

Starting point is 00:00:35 Oh, he was a convert to the church or whatever. But I've noticed in the Book of Mormon, it is always converted unto the Lord. And I think it's 3 Nephi 28, 23, where it says they were converted unto the Lord and were united with the church of Christ. And you see those as our conversion is to Christ. It's not to the church, to the institution. Our conversion is to Christ. And then we unite with the church. That's our community of saints. I'm really grateful he pointed that out. Ever since then, I've noticed how often the Book of Mormon speaks of converted unto the Lord. Never converts to the church, but converted to the Lord, then we unite with the church.

Starting point is 00:01:14 I really love verse 30 in chapter 18. It's where it says, all this was done by the waters of Mormon. And the forest that was near the waters of Mormon gave the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon. How beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer. So they were being converted to Christ in that place. And because of that beautiful spiritual experience, the physical place is beautiful to them too. I love that you introduced that at spiritual experience. The physical place is beautiful to them too.

Starting point is 00:01:46 I love that you introduced that at the beginning. Everyone could probably identify their waters of Mormon where they came to this knowledge. And it's that, what do we call it? A happy place? Where's your happy place? Yeah. Maybe not just a laughter place,

Starting point is 00:02:01 but a joyous, peaceful place. You see some of the paintings of the waters of Mormon, and they're absolutely gorgeous. These beautiful settings. But that's not what it says. It doesn't say that the waters themselves are beautiful. It says that the waters are beautiful because of what happened there. They're beautiful to the people. I know neither of you are affiliated with me when I go off the rails a little bit, but I have a theory that I want to share.

Starting point is 00:02:32 And it's just that it's just a theory. But the fact that Mormon put his own name in here, one, two, three, four, five, six times in one verse, makes me think that perhaps he wants us when we hear this name Mormon, and it's okay to say that word, right, John? This isn't the waters of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is the waters of Mormon, that perhaps when we hear that name, he wants us to think of this place. Here's my theory, and both of you can say, Hank, you're off the rails, and I'll have to ask Mormon one day. I have to wonder if the book of Mormon was named after the waters because of what may happen with the book of Mormon. I have a little backup here. This is Joseph B. Worthland. He said, just as the land of Mormon became beautifully sacred

Starting point is 00:03:25 to those who came to the knowledge of their Redeemer, so the Book of Mormon becomes divinely sacred to the people who read it and come to the knowledge of their Redeemer. How marvelous, he says, that the Book of Mormon, the most powerful instrument upon the face of the earth today for bringing all who will heed its message to the knowledge of their Redeemer, should bear One more paragraph from him. Whenever you think of the Book of Mormon or hear the name Mormon, I hope you will remember the sacred significance of a holy place, a place sanctified by the spirit. I think it's a fun idea to think that Mormon named his book, the Book of Mormon, after the place rather than himself. Just a thought, John. I like it. What's the reference for that? I'm sure people would love to, that's a conference talk? No, it's a book entitled Heroes of the Book of Mormon.

Starting point is 00:04:21 I know that that book, those chapters were not just conference talks put together, but each of them wrote chapters about a favorite Book of Mormon hero. It was Elder Nelson at the time wrote about Nephi. I'm glad you told me that because that's a beautiful way to think of it. Thanks. For me, I can't think about the place without also thinking about the people gathered there too. So that's just a beautiful way to think about the Book without also thinking about the people gathered there too. So that's just a beautiful way to think about the Book of Mormon as an instrument of gathering. Whenever I've read this chapter, I've thought of a talk from President Eyring back in October of 2008. And I always think of this example.

Starting point is 00:05:03 I don't know why it hit me. He talks about hearts being knit together in love, and he gives an example of how we can do that. He says, quote, that leads to another principle of unity. It is to speak well of each other. For instance, suppose someone asks you what you think of the new bishop, which is interesting because I, John, Melissa, I have a brand new bishop, Bishop Rich Lewis. President Eyring says, realizing that you see others in an imperfect light will make you more likely to be a little more generous in what you say. That will help you look for what is best in the bishop's performance and character. The Savior, as your loving judge, will surely do that as he judges your performance and mine. And then he said something that stood out to me. He said,

Starting point is 00:05:52 as you speak generously of people, you will fill unity with that person and with the person who asked your opinion, not because the bishop in this example is perfect or because the person asking you shares your generous evaluation. And then this statement, we always speak of being grateful to the Lord. I think it's pretty rare we talk about the Lord being grateful for us. But President Eyring said right here, it will be because the Lord will let you feel his appreciation because you chose to step away from the possibility of sowing seeds of disunity. What an interesting thought that the Lord is grateful for you when you choose unity. That's like Jesus says, as you've done it to the least of these, you've done it unto me.

Starting point is 00:06:41 Jesus is saying, thank you for appreciating me and these different people. I just wanted to point out verses 32 and 33. Hank, would you like to read that? Sure. This is Mosiah 18, 32. But behold, it came to pass that the king,

Starting point is 00:06:59 this is King Noah, having discovered a movement among the people, sent his servants to watch them. Therefore, on the day that they were assembling themselves together to hear the word of the Lord, they were discovered unto the king. And now the king said that Alma was stirring up the people to rebellion against him. Therefore, he sent his army to destroy them. This just raises for me the specter of religious freedom that a lot of Latter-day Saints face in parts of the world

Starting point is 00:07:30 where Christians are either not well thought of or where the Latter-day Saints are viewed by Christians as a kind of satanic cult. For example, in Kenya, for a long period of time before the 1990s, like the late 1980s, there were large groups of Latter-day Saints throughout the country, but we didn't have recognition from the government because other Christian groups had gone to the government and said, don't let the Latter-day Saints become official. They're bad. For a while, they could only meet in their homes. They couldn't

Starting point is 00:08:06 have official meetings. They fasted and prayed for the day when they would be able to get government recognition. And they did this by having a rolling fast so that somewhere in the country, someone was fasting at any given time. They kept it up for about a year and a half. So after a decade of petitions in February 1991, the saints finally were able to be officially registered with the government of Kenya. A rolling fast. Yeah, isn't that crazy? It was very hardcore.

Starting point is 00:08:39 They were super focused as a people. And I think fasting is a beautiful way to be unified because you feel it so viscerally, like everyone's stomachs are growling at the same time. There are many examples of Latter-day Saints who have to live in situations that are repressive of their religious participation, often due to misunderstanding

Starting point is 00:09:02 as much as to malicious government persecution, especially if you live in the United States where there are Latter-day Saints senators and presidential candidates and people who are well-known in pop culture or something like that. It's quite a different situation. In many places, it's really hard. You could lose your job, you could lose your business partners. There's quite a high cost to pay for being a Latter-day Saint. And this scripture bringing to mind the scepter of the king, the kind of political power arrayed against them, it reminded me of that. Hank, when we asked that question about how do we help in a global church, I had no idea what Melissa was going to say. And what a great answer.

Starting point is 00:09:53 Go read these stories because those stories you're telling us, I keep thinking of the phrase first world problems because when I went to the Philippines on my mission, I had left with the mindset, yeah, we have these three cars, but they're old and they're beat up. And my Filipino friends didn't have any cars. I just realized I had spent a lot of my life complaining about my blessings, not complaining about my problems. I'd been complaining about my blessings. When you hear stories like that, it's so humbling. You feel your heart stretching out to these members of our faith out there doing their best in those kind of circumstances. So I'm excited to go to my gospel library and do that. So, John, one more time. I go to my gospel library app.

Starting point is 00:10:32 I click on church history. Church history. And there towards the bottom, global histories. I click on that and here's an alphabetical list of all these countries that I could read about. I could spend a lot of time here. Yeah. Because sometimes we look and we say, wow, those guys in the early days of the church, they had our time. Well, it's the early days of the church in some place in the world, in lots of places in the world right now. That's sobering and humbling to realize. I love that. What Alma says to them at the Waters of

Starting point is 00:11:06 Mormon, I was writing, making kind of a bullet pointed list, coming to the fold of God. I thought that's a group thing. Being called his people, that's a group thing. Bear one another's burdens, that's a group thing. Mourning with those that mourn, that's a group thing. Comforting those who stand in need of comfort, that's a group thing. Iforting those who stand in need of comfort. That's a group thing. I know that oftentimes we look and we love the fact that Jesus invited the people to come one by one and that baptism happens one by one and temple blessings happen one by one. But look at how many of these are a group. And then standing as a witness of God. Okay, that sounds like an individual thing.

Starting point is 00:11:49 And entering into a covenant to serve God and keep his commandments. That's an individual thing. But I love that both of them are there. We are covenanting by ourselves as individuals, but we are part of a group. I love what's not in this list. It doesn't say anything about how many callings you're going to hold or reading lots of books or becoming a scholar. And it reminds me of the Savior saying, this is how men will know you're my disciples if you have love one to another. And I see that same thing in that list. I love that, John.

Starting point is 00:12:18 We are part of a covenant community. We hear that phrase a lot. Yeah. Melissa, that insight of God has abandoned me, but no, look at all the people around you. Look at all the people around me. That was, I will teach that different forever. I love those moments. Melissa, I think we could spend the entire time in Mosiah 18. This is one of those chapters that honestly go verse by verse, word by word, and you can learn so much. And there's so many chapters like that in the Book of Mormon,

Starting point is 00:12:52 but let's keep going. 19, 20, 21, 22, we have these people, people of Limhi, the people of Alma, both falling into terrible situations. Then you have Limhi's people getting out of bondage with the help of Ammon, who we heard about earlier in Mormon's flashback technique, and also Alma's people as well. So how do you want to approach this? Yeah, this is like an action-packed set of chapters. I have some funny markings from my missionary days in the scripture here. In chapter 19, verse 7, it says, Now the king cried out in the anguish of his soul. I note in the margins, even wicked kings have feelings.

Starting point is 00:13:39 This is a very interesting chapter. And you're right, there's a lot of losing and a lot of winning. This episode with the Lamanites and the wives and children is a little interesting chapter and you're right there's a lot of losing and a lot of winning this episode with the lamanites and the wives and children is a little interesting i think are they using human shields here or the woman just super awesome i'll read it there were many that would not leave their wives and children this is verse 12 but had rather stay and perish with them and the rest left their wives and children and fled and it came to pass that those who tarried with their wives and children caused that their fair daughter should stand forth and plead with the lamanites that they would not slay them and it came to pass that the lamanites had compassion on them for they were charmed with

Starting point is 00:14:17 the beauty of their women i feel like there's something missing here i'm sure it wasn't just like the beauty of the women it was the guts for these young women to just stand in front of the overtaking attackers and say, if you want to get to my family, you have to get through me. That's pretty amazing. You think the men should have stood in front? What do you think? Yeah. This does seem like a cowardly thing to do. Maybe they were just vastly outnumbered and they knew that there was no way they could pull it off. Like through actual strength of arms, you had to have a charm or maybe just like surprise. I just wonder when those families got back together, how much marriage counseling had to go on.

Starting point is 00:15:07 Right. Verse 12, do I think about my family? Do I think about what the king said? Wow. I don't know what kind of loyalty they had to the king, what kind of loyalty they felt to their wives and families. But I read it like, what? Leave your wife and children and run yeah and they do feel terrible about it after yeah and they burn the king yeah it's good to

Starting point is 00:15:35 see that sometimes bad people get punished king noah gets his comeuppance here but then it contrasts with some other parts of these chapters. When Limhi's people are captive and they're enslaved, basically, by the Lamanites. Sometimes good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. But it can be really frustrating when the King Noah's of the world aren't getting their comeuppances. And the people who are just trying to follow Jesus are having such a tough time. Chapter 21 says, it came to pass that after many days the Lamanites began again to be stirred up in anger against the Nephites and they began to come into the borders

Starting point is 00:16:17 of the land round about. Now they durst not slay them because the oath which their king had made unto Limhi, but they would smite them on their cheeks and exercise authority over them and began Verse 5, And now the afflictions of the Nephites were great, and there was no way that they could deliver themselves out of their hands, for the Lamanites had surrounded them on every side. Sometimes it's tough to be in that situation where you feel like you're just not winning at anything in the world. And it says they tried to fight back a couple of times. It doesn't really work. And in verse 14, it says, They did humble themselves even to the dust, subjecting themselves to the yoke of bondage, submitting themselves to be smitten and to be driven to and fro and burdened according to the desires of their enemies. And they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility. And this is very interesting.

Starting point is 00:17:18 It says in 15, was slow to hear their cry because of their iniquities. Never the Lord did hear their cries and began to soften the hearts of the Lamanites. They began to ease their burdens, yet the Lord did not see fit to deliver them out of bondage. This is a kind of interesting point in the story where the people of Limhi are becoming more and more humble. And I think when you're more humble, you're more open to God's power

Starting point is 00:17:44 and more vulnerable to God's mercy. But interesting that it says the Lord was slow to hear their cry. What do you think that means? Is it kind of like when you tell your kid not to do something, they don't do that, it's dangerous. And then the kid does does thing and the kid gets hurt and then you run over and you're taking care of the kid but in your eyes you're saying i told you so perhaps it's that they were in such a sinful place that coming back to into tune with the lord took so long they maybe thought it was oh God's not hearing our prayers, but perhaps it was, you've got to get yourself back in a position where you can recognize answers to prayers. Slow to hear their cries because they had been slow to hear him. I don't know. Maybe

Starting point is 00:18:41 it's like, I want to make sure you get the point. Because I see in verse 4, and I think read this with your spiritual ears, there's no way they could deliver themselves. I mean, us. Like deliverance stories of Moses and everything. Who's the deliverer? He wants to make sure they know, I'm going to deliver you. There is no way out of this on your own. And I think he wants them to see God is your deliverer. You know what's fascinating about this? If you put yourself in Limhi's position, he has tried to fight his way out of bondage. He has sent men to go look for Zarahemla.

Starting point is 00:19:29 They've come back telling him Zarahemla has been destroyed. This has got to be a hopeless moment. I've exhausted every option. There is no other option. And then what a relief it would be to have Ammon show up and say, you know what? Zarahemla hasn't been destroyed. This is just my own personal question. In verse 13, it sounds like they've given up.

Starting point is 00:19:54 They humbled themselves to the dust, subjected themselves to the yoke of bondage, submitting themselves to be smitten, to be driven to and fro and burdened. And then in verse 14, it sounds like they have this spark of hope in God because now they're crying to God for deliverance. This is just my total personal experience. I don't have anything to teach here. I just have this conundrum as a cancer patient, which is sometimes you just have to accept the hard things of the world. You have to accept the indignities of disease and the things that are painful.

Starting point is 00:20:42 They're just part of the world. And it seems like my beautiful friend Kate Holbrook, who was also a guest on this podcast, if anyone in the world should be saved because of their good works and the things that they can do in the world, it should be Kate. But cancer is cancer. The question is, I sometimes wonder if it's unreasonable to ask God to always deliver us. God would know if what's reasonable or not reasonable. And it's hard to not ask, honestly. But I think this is a very kind of beautiful and human passage because in verse 13, I see something that I recognize, which is they're just trying to grapple with their situation. Sometimes it feels like you just have to live with what you have for a while.

Starting point is 00:21:44 It strikes me as a very rich and true kind of account of these people and their struggles. I had a friend, Chris Clark, who was diagnosed with ALS back in 2014, 2015. He ended up passing away in 2020. When I'd see him, he was cheerful. He had his days, of course, where he was mourning. But if you go all the way to Mosiah 24, verse 15, they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord. Very much Chris Clark-esque.

Starting point is 00:22:19 I remember asking him, how are you doing this? And he said something similar to what you just said, Melissa. He said, it got better when I accepted my path. Instead of looking at everyone else's path, wishing I had their path, I just looked ahead and said, this is my path. And he said it wasn't easier, but his heart calmed. So I think there is something to what you said of accepting, right? Accepting this is my situation. And instead of fighting reality, I radically accept. And that's always balanced with this radical hope, which you just can't get rid of. But I think that it's there and that it's here in the scriptures is very real.

Starting point is 00:23:16 I noticed this little two-word phrase, but I think it only shows up twice in the Book of Mormon. It says, by degrees. Mosiah 21.16 says, the Lord did prosper them by degrees. And then, John, where's the other one? It's in the war chapters, right? Yeah, it's when Lahontai is poisoned by degrees by the servant of Amalickiah. I saw that too and thought, oh, there's that phrase, by degrees. By degrees. We have one situation where they're prospered by degrees and the other situation where he's poisoned by degrees. That's an interesting little parallel that maybe the Lord prospers us by degrees and the adversary will poison us by degrees. It's a slow process in either direction. In the next verse, it's interesting to think of King Noah and then his son, King Limhi, and to get hints about his character. In verse 17, there was a great number of women, more than there was of men.

Starting point is 00:24:18 Therefore, King Limhi commanded that every man should impart to the support of the widows and their children that they might not perish with hunger. And I'm thinking of the pure religion verse, James 1, 27, pure religion and undefiled before God is to visit the widows, the fatherless in their affliction. What a contrast between, oh, no, here comes danger. Run away from your wives and children. Here's Limhi. I'm commanding you to look around your community. And this isn't Alma's community. This is Limhi though.

Starting point is 00:24:56 And impart to the widows and the children. What a contrast. It's interesting that later on in verse 33 of that same chapter 21, it says they wanted to be baptized, but there was no one who had the authority. It's interesting that later on in verse 33 of that same chapter 21, it says they wanted to be baptized, but there was no one who had the authority. And Ammon declined doing this thing, considering himself an unworthy servant. Therefore, they did not at that time form themselves into a church waiting upon the Spirit of the Lord. That also reminds me of, again, groups of people who find the church

Starting point is 00:25:22 and gather together, but the circumstances aren't right for them to form a church yet. Kind of beautiful. They're waiting upon the spirit of the Lord. When you guys think about this, how do you keep the different Ammons straight in your mind? In my mind, I used to call this guy Ammon the Explorer. I heard Eric Huntsman called him Ammon the Scout because he kind of knew the way back to Zarahemla. And he knew the way to get from Zarahemla to the land of Nephi. This is not Ammon the son of Mosiah.

Starting point is 00:25:58 That one comes later. Yeah. Can I show you something and ask you both about it? See what it sparks in you. If you go back all the way to Mosiah chapter seven, King Benjamin has died and his son Mosiah is now king. And the people of Zenith, they left 80 years ago. That's a long time ago for a group of people to have left. I put it next to chapter 7, verse 1. All of a sudden, Mosiah is desirous to know about the people that left. It's been 80 years, and then suddenly he starts to think, what happened to those people? Well, at that exact same time, where we are in chapter 21, verse 14, Melissa just pointed out, they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility, and they did cry mightily to God, even all the day long,

Starting point is 00:26:54 they did cry unto their God that he would deliver them out of their afflictions. I wonder if those two things are tied together, that the prayers of these people sparked an idea in Mosiah. What is happening to those people that perhaps were being shown here, the prayers, how they get answered? It says the Lord was slow to hear their cries. Maybe it was Mosiah. Maybe I ought to go find out what happened to them. It reminds me of President Kimball. Often the Lord answers our prayers through others. My grandmother was born in Salt Lake City in the 1930s. At the time, there weren't a lot of

Starting point is 00:27:41 Chinese families in Salt Lake City. But as it happened, even though there was actually also quite a lot of racism in Salt Lake City at this time, one of their local neighbors, the Soderbergh family, befriended them, became their family companions. They had a kind of symbiotic relationship. My grandma's dad was a vegetable farmer, and this was during the Depression, so there's no jobs. The Soderbergh boys paid for their missions by working for my great-grandpa in his field. They shared a cow. The Soderberghs got the cream and half the milk. And then the Jew family got the other milk. My grandma's last name is Jew, J-U. They were really good friends. They stayed in touch with each other

Starting point is 00:28:23 for a long time. It was through them that my grandmother's family joined the church. And then as that kind of older generation passed away, we lost track of each other. I just heard stories about them. I didn't know any actual Soderberghs. One day in, I think, 2021 at a MHA, Mormon History Association conference in Park City. I was getting my lunch, and the volunteer had a tag that said Joseph Soderborg. I'm like, oh, Soderborg. And I said, wow, my family used to know some Soderborgs, and they were a Chinese family. And he said, Ju Jin? You're Ju Jin's family? It was the right right sort of work so I just feel like something brought us

Starting point is 00:29:06 together and since then we've been able to re-establish those connections with the family and it seems quite important I guess for our family history like a relationship that kind of lasted generations there's this long kind of period where we're not together but for some reason you know during the pandemic maybe we're all like looking for more connection feeling a little unmoored than we were able to find each other i recently heard joy jones speak who is president of the general primary she told the story about how during her presidency, she said, okay, Lord, I'm going to try this prompting. I really need direction. And so I'm just going to tell you, if I feel a prompting, I'm going to do it. And then like, pretty soon thereafter, she is doing laundry or in the middle

Starting point is 00:30:00 of some sort of task. When she has this prompting to call this woman she's like okay well maybe i'll finish my task and then she's like oh no no no no i'm gonna do it so she jumps on her phone she calls the person the person picks up sounds very unhappy hello yeah okay bye um she's like well maybe that didn't go so well. But a few days later, the woman contacts her and says, why did you call me like at that time? And she said, well, I just felt that maybe I should reach out. And the woman then explained that she had been thinking on that very day of killing herself. She was really depressed. She was thinking of killing herself.

Starting point is 00:30:42 And she had just vowed to God, unless some sort of miracle happens, this is it. I'm going to be gone by the time my husband comes home. And then the phone rang and it was Joy Jones checking up on her. She said that she was kind of angry in the moment. That like, was this the miracle? But just because President Jones was willing to be receptive and willing to act at that moment, then her call could come right when her friend was wondering, does God care about me? Does anyone care? Very similar to this. Limhi's people. There's nobody out there who can help us.

Starting point is 00:31:22 And so they pray and here they show up. It might take a while. What do they do with him? They put him in prison. Yeah. Because they don't know who he is. They don't know who he is. So they toss him in jail. That's what happens when you try to serve people and go help them. They take you and throw you in jail. So Melissa, Limhi and his people get back to Zerahemla, but we have another group of people who are in the land of Helam. This is Alma and his people, the ones who used to be at the waters of

Starting point is 00:31:52 Mormon. They're in their own terrible situation. What do you see as useful in Alma's situation? I feel bad for them because here they are trying to live their covenant community and the wicked priests and the Lamanites happen to come across them. You're like, oh, think of worst case scenario. And it happens. They get to this beautiful place. Even has, how do they describe it? A land, even a very beautiful and pleasant land, a land of pure water. Sounds dreamy.

Starting point is 00:32:30 Yeah. And then this crummy person named Amulon shows up through his various machinations eventually. And the people of Alma are also put into bondage. It says in chapter 24, verse 8 and 9, it came to pass that Amulon began to exercise authority over Alma and his brethren and began to persecute him and cause his children to pursue their children. For Amulon knew Alma, that he had been one of the king's priests, and that it was he that had believed the words of Abinadi and was driven out before the king, and therefore was wroth with him, for he was subject to King Laman. Yet he exercised authority It's a quick story, which has a lot of 180s.

Starting point is 00:33:21 They find this beautiful place, and then they encounter the bad guy of King Noah's priests, and then they are put into bondage again. I think this is very famous. We talk about this a lot. Verse 24, 14 through 15. It says that God helped them by making them strong

Starting point is 00:33:39 and lightening their burdens. Does someone want to read verse 14 through 15? Okay, Mosiah 24, 14. And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage. And this will I do, that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter,

Starting point is 00:34:03 and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions. And 15. That's very impressive. And they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord. That's very impressive that in the middle of such a difficult situation, they were able to see themselves as still being in God's hands and able to accept that. These are two chapters I frequently refer to when someone asks, why, why I was trying so hard to be good. Why does this happen to me? Section 121, 122, 123 to come to mind, but Mosiah 23 and 24, I put in that same category. It's not like Amulon and the Lamanites were looking for these people. They were lost and just happened. You would think the Lord hates me, right? There's no other possible explanation. Why did it have to be Amulon? Yeah. The word that I have circled in verse 15 is all.

Starting point is 00:35:19 Because usually I'm pretty good with some of the will of the Lord. Yeah. Hank, when you mentioned cheerfully, they had to submit to all the will of the Lord. So here's Joseph Smith, Liberty Jail. I think it could be the last verse in 123 where he says, Therefore, beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power. There's that cheerfully. And then may we stand still with the utmost assurance to see the salvation of God and for his arm to be revealed. And I love this idea of you do what you can do, and then that's all you can do. You

Starting point is 00:35:58 wait for the Lord's arm to be revealed. But as we've read here, sometimes he waits. I'm okay in submitting to some of the will of the Lord, you know. Did submit cheerfully and with patience. That's also really hard. Yeah. Melissa, let's say there's someone listening who is struggling. You know what? I was trying to live a good life, and I got hit with incredible suffering.

Starting point is 00:36:38 It's one thing for John and I to say, yeah, this is what you got to do. But you are in a rough spot. What would you say to someone on their commute? I have a friend who told me he's recovering from a stroke and so he listens to the podcast as he has to learn how to walk again. What do we say? Is there anything we can say? I think we can just say yeah, that's a big deal, a big task.

Starting point is 00:37:08 Yeah. This story does turn out pretty well in terms of divine intervention. Just a few verses down on verse 17. Right away, God says, okay, I'm going to deliver you out of bondage. And then in verse 19, in the morning the Lord caused a deep sleep to come upon the Lamanites. Yea, and all their taskmasters were in a profound sleep. That's super awesome because it looks like

Starting point is 00:37:34 they didn't get them drunk or slip sleeping pills into their morning tea. That's like a real out-of-the-blue sort of miracle. It still goes well. I always remember the talk that Elder Holland gave recently. It was the second general conference during the pandemic, and he said, for every Lehi and Nephi who were saved from fire by their faith, we have an Abinadi who dies in fire for his,

Starting point is 00:38:06 and for every person who's healed instantly, we have someone else who's got to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Elijah, who called down fire from heaven, he had to go a period of time where he was fed by a raven, which is not a lot of food. The point of Elder Holland's talk was to be that we can feel abandoned when we're in these difficult straits and there's no parting of the Red Sea. There's no 21st century crickets and 21st century seagulls, as Elder Holland put it. But he says we can know that God has our best interests at heart and that prayers will be answered, though not necessarily

Starting point is 00:38:54 on the time scale that we want them to. I just find his acknowledgement of that really comforting. Again, it feels to me like a kind of witnessing. We can see in the scriptures how some things go well for people and they get out of their bondage through this cool miracle. And at other times they stay there a lot longer than they would have liked to. That's what's so wonderful about the scriptures is that they don't always present us with an ideal world. There are so many mistakes that people in the scriptures make. They say that at the very beginning of the Book of Mormon, the title page of the Book of Mormon,

Starting point is 00:39:30 and the preface says, you know, if there's mistakes, it's on us, it's on people, not on God. But it's also beautiful because in the scriptures you can find people like Job or like the people of Alma here who did really hard things for longer than they would have liked. Back in Liberty Jail, the son of man hath descended below them all, that lesson of man.

Starting point is 00:39:55 Elder Holland, he said it is significant that it is the wounded Christ who comes to us and is evidence that bad things happen even to the pure and the perfect. Yeah, the worst things happened to the most pure and the most perfect. Yeah. Elder Holland, in that same talk you referenced, Melissa, says this path to holiness and happiness here and hereafter is a long and rocky one. It takes time and, and I like this word, tenacity to walk it. There's power in thinking, I can do this. This will not beat me. I will keep going. Yeah, it's impressive. And that's

Starting point is 00:40:38 why also from a historian's point of view, it's so important that people write their own histories. I mean, what we're reading here, a primary source for this was someone's history, someone's personal account of what happened, which was there in the records, which was then edited and summarized by Mormon, the editor. We have to remember that we are the primary sources for the next sacred set of scriptures. Our life experiences and the things that we go through are sacred in the same way that the experiences of the people that we read about in these pages are sacred, because the scriptures are a record of God's dealings and

Starting point is 00:41:17 relationships with people. When we write about that and how we navigate that relationship with God. It's really important. When we are reading, for example, Abinadi's amazing sermon, who wrote that down? It was Alma. I don't think Abinadi was in a position to write it down. It says that he rehearsed things that Abinadi had taught. Somehow he remembered that masterful sermon and the quoting of Isaiah and everything and wrote it down. I got to do better in my journal, I'm thinking to myself right now. Especially you're talking to a historian here, John.

Starting point is 00:41:58 Yeah. Do you have any stories about a caste system in India? My colleague, Tanalin Ford, who coined the term, is always 1830s somewhere in the church, is the one to talk to about that. She has written a paper where she talked about marriages. It's quite common for Indian Latter-day Saints to have arranged marriages. For example, a young woman will go on a mission. When she comes home, her family will have arranged a marriage for her to a nice Latter-day Saint man, and they get married. a branch president, someone who is from the Dalit or the so-called untouchable class might be called to be the stake president, or someone who's in the Brahmin class might make a particular point of cleaning the bathrooms when it's time to clean the church, because that's something usually not done by people of that caste. The churches in India tend to be based on caste.

Starting point is 00:43:08 So if you're a certain caste, you go to this Methodist church. If you're another caste, you go to that Baptist church. Our church is quite countercultural that way. It was the first time that I had a problem with cultural accommodation. I say the history of Christianity in China, and it usually works out that the groups that are best able to adapt Christianity to local religious practices,

Starting point is 00:43:36 those are the ones that succeed. But here, I'm like, do I really want our church to adapt to the caste system? It doesn't feel right. I don't think that really fits the gospel. But it is tricky because it is seen as a kind of cultural insensitivity. Wow. Yeah, that is fascinating.

Starting point is 00:43:59 Melissa, as we finish up these chapters, anything else for a member who's listening and saying, how can I be more like Melissa? Oh, you don't want to be more like me. And take on my trials and difficulties with tenacity and with faith. And you said before, this doesn't always look like a big smiley face. That's not what this is. Mm-hmm. Well, I was struck by the second to last verse of Mosiah 24.

Starting point is 00:44:35 They've been delivered. They snuck past the sleeping guards. They got into a place. The Lamanites were chasing them. But God said, don't worry, I'll stop them. The lamanites were chasing them but god said don't worry i'll stop them that the lamanites were chasing you and you're going to be all good so they're golden and 24 it says and it came to pass but they departed out of the valley and took their journey into the wilderness so i like that as a little spatial reminder that even when we finished one chapter in our lives we have to keep on going and we're always going into the wilderness we don't know everything

Starting point is 00:45:14 we don't have a map for how our life is going to go or a map for what's going to happen in the world there's a lot of wilderness i guess in, in life. There's these valleys, which can be good for some things. It was a beautiful place. Too bad they became in bondage there. But then it came time to leave the valley. So I guess what I'm just saying is, yeah, the wilderness is cool and beautiful. I love hiking in the wilderness, but as anyone knows who spends time there, things can really go wrong. But without being willing to go into places where things can actually go wrong, then we'll never experience the beauty of the world or the beauty of humanity or the beauty of a life in the spirit. That's ultimately what we signed up for when we came,

Starting point is 00:46:09 was to have the agency to live in this magnificent world where all sorts of things can happen. I love the Book of Mormon because of the teachings that it gives me about what it means to live in community. My whole life, the church community, my family community, have been the things that have kind of made me who I am. And I love our particular spin on what it means to be baptized and to follow Christ, which is in the Book of Mormon in these chapters that we read today. I think it's so transformative that we are able to become a covenant people

Starting point is 00:46:50 and make those covenants vertically and horizontally with each other. And I love the church because of the opportunities that it's given me to discover my limitations and ways in which I am uncharitable and ways in which I'm ignorant, as the more I learn from my fellow Latter-day Saints, including the wonderful people in my ward and also including the people whose stories I now work with on a daily basis. I just learned that for some reason, the Spirit is speaking to people all over the world. For some reason, the Spirit is leading people into the church. For some reason, we can feel these incredible connections amongst each other, amongst ourselves.

Starting point is 00:47:36 And I think it's so unique and beautiful. You know, I was thinking, Melissa, of you and your challenges that you're going through right now. And to hear your testimony and spirit through all of that is really amazing. Thank you. Oh, it's been so fun to talk about the scriptures with you. Thanks for having me. Every one of our listeners will be absolutely blessed by this. We'd love to know where you're listening from. Since Melissa is a scholar, Global Church, come on to YouTube and tell us where you're listening from. I think all three of us would love to hear from all of you, wherever you are, from Provo

Starting point is 00:48:16 to Madagascar. Let us know where you are. With that, we want to thank Dr. Melissa Inouye for being with us today. It has been an inspiring joy to have her here. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorenson, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorenson, and every episode. We remember our founder, Steve Sorenson. We hope you'll join us next week. We're going to continue in the book of Mosiah

Starting point is 00:48:45 on Follow Him. Before you skip to the next episode, I have some important information. This episode's transcript and show notes are available on our website, followhim.co. That's followhim.co. On our website, you'll also find our two books, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament and Finding Jesus Christ in the New Testament. find anywhere else. If you'd like to know how you can help us, if you could subscribe to, rate, review, and comment on the podcast, that will make us easier to find. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Nilsen, Will Stoughton, Crystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, and Annabelle Sorensen.

followHIM - Mosiah 18-24 Part 2 • Dr. Melissa Inouye • May 20-26 • Come Follow Me

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