followHIM - Why did God give conflicting commandments to Adam and Eve? : follow HIM Favorites

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

The followHIM Favorites episodes now entail Hank Smith and John Bytheway answering Come, Follow Me study questions from the youth.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Follow Him Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I'm here with the amazing John, by the way. You may have noticed that Follow Him Favorites this year is looking a little bit different. Instead of doing what we did last year, we're going to try something new. We're going to try answering some commonly asked questions, mostly from our younger audience, from our youth, YSAs, young married students. So John, the question for this week's following favorite we received from a teenager is just, and I'm sure you've had this question before in class. I know I have, which is why would God give Adam and Eve two conflicting commandments? That doesn't sound like God. Like, why would you do that? So John, how would you answer that? Oh, you know, this is one of those where in 100 years from now, a couple of other guys will be doing a follow him favorites and the same question will come up.

So it's kind of like there's a lot of schools of thought. And a lot of times I like to use that phrase. Well, here's one school of thought. Here's another. And then I don't tell him which one because I don't know. But one school of thought on this was President Joseph Fielding Smith was kind of, if you wish to remain in the garden, then I forbid you to partake of that. If you want to weigh the consequences, then you can. And how much did Adam and Eve know?

Did they know that they had to do this in order for life to come? So those are all questions we don't have all the answers to. But that's one of them that I'm aware of. If you want to remain, then don't do that. And so then they could reason with themselves, oh, so if we want to progress so that man may be, maybe we do that. Exactly. Exactly. I've heard other people say he's given them conflicting commandments, knowing that eventually they're going to keep their,

they're going to grow up. So it's like, I've heard someone say once, it's like saying to your, your six year old child, you know, stay in the yard, don't cross the street and also go live your dreams and make something up.

Right. Go. You're good. This is what you're going to do down the future. You know, eventually they're going to do down the future. You know eventually they're going to leave the yard and cross the street. No, all of your dreams must be contained in this yard, right? Yes, yes. So it's the idea of we tell our kids, yeah, keep the rules, keep the rules, keep the rules.

By the way, you're going to leave here and you're going to go do wonderful things. And you're going to go travel the world, right, without us. But never go anywhere without me so the idea of maybe it's a maturity factor uh that that eventually he knows and in fact uh doesn't the lord say to adam and eve don't partake of the of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil for in the day that you eat of it right it's not like if you eat of it it's when that happens i know you will consequence when that happens here's It's not like if you eat of it, it's when that happens, I know you will. Consequence. When that happens, here's what's going to happen.

You will, yeah, you will become mortal. You will, you will die. And I've even heard it said that, you know, sometimes there's a choice between a couple of good things. That's the Mary and Martha story. Should I help serve everybody or should I sit and listen at the feet of Jesus? Both of those are wonderful things. It's not, should I go see my ministering brother or should I rob the bank? It's, should I do one of these good things?

And I think Adam and Eve had to weigh both of those. And life will be full of those kinds of things for us too. I remember on our podcast, you shared the idea of the lake says no swimming, but if someone's drowning out there. I can't save him because it says no swimming, but if someone's drowning out there. I can't save him because it says no swimming right there. So yeah. Which one would God want us to do? So it's the idea of don't partake of the fruit of knowledge of the tree of good and evil.

And then Adam and Eve look at it and go, well, if we want to have a family, we're going to have to do it. If we want to obey, multiply and replenish. Yeah. So there's some new things to think about when you're trying to answer this question. Yeah. And one day we'll talk to Adam and Eve and they'll be like, you were way off. Yeah.

Just so you know, both of you. You were way off. So join us next week. We're going to take on another question. If you have a question, feel free to come to our social media, come to Instagram, come to Facebook and give us a question. You can also go to followhim.co, followhim.co, submit a question there. We'd love to hear from you. What questions do you have? We want to at least attempt to answer them. And we hope you'll join us next week for Follow Him Favorites. Thank you.