Follow Him Podcast: Dr. Matthew C. Godfrey: Episode 30 Part 1 : Doctrine & Covenants 81-83

[Music] 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 today's episode of follow him my name is hank smith i am your host i'm here with my refreshing co-host the master teacher john by the way welcome john hank we got a comment why is hank always talking up john by the way he is amazing john people have asked me they said is he the same in person as he as he seems i'm like he's better in person uh hey i just want to make sure everybody knows that you can find us on social media on instagram and facebook you can rate and review the podcast we'd love you to do that also uh you can go to follow him dot co follow him dot co and you can get transcripts and show notes and all you need there so um we hope you'll hope you'll join us now john um i've been looking forward to today for a long time um i i i've looked up to our guest's work uh and his resume for a long time tell us who we have yeah i'm i'm excited for this too i i just think uh every time we have somebody on it's so fun to hear the very backgrounds of of the people that we get to talk to and such an interesting background today and it just i love that it adds to uh to the testimony that so many people from so many different backgrounds uh are our brothers and sisters i just love this so today we are talking with matthew godfrey and he's the general editor and the managing historian of the joseph smith papers project now that right there is is just huge pr previously he said i worked for eight years as a historical consultant with the company historical research associates uh head of the company's history division from 2006 to 2010 and president of the company from 2008 to 2010 he has a phd in american and public history from washington state university he's the author of listen to this book hank religion politics and sugar subtitled the mormon church the federal government and the utah idaho sugar company 1907-19 and a co-editor of the earth will appear as the garden of eden essays in mormon environmental history he's also authored essays published in the public historian agricultural history pacific northwest quarterly the journal of mormon history byu studies quarterly and mormon historical studies and hank you have a book that we both have hold that up and tell us about that book that matthew's uh editor of i think one of the editors yeah matt thank you so much for being here by the way oh you bet thank you for having me i i really admire what what you guys are doing and just i'm grateful to be here i reached out and i was kind of you know crossing my fingers saying come on say yes and uh you are so kind so kind to say yes because we know you're very busy now the book that john was talking about is is this book no brother joseph um uh this is um how what's this project been like matt yeah so that book uh so it was just published by deseretbook in march and um myself matt grow and eric smith were all general editors of the joseph smith papers project and have been for a number of years and we decided that because the joseph smith papers is a project that's really more geared towards scholars than it is towards general church members we were thinking of ways of how how can we get some of the findings some of the discoveries that we've made about joseph smith to a larger general public and so we decided that we would ask numerous scholars both those working on the joseph smith papers uh you know professors of church history and doctrine from byu others that that we knew to just write very short essays about what they've learned about joseph smith and who he was as a person from the joseph smith papers and so we we put that together it was a pleasure to read all of the essays they're they're just so full of insights into joseph smith as a person and we're just really really pleased with it yeah i i've been reading a few essays every day and it's uplifting uh and it's real um it's just been uh this is turning into one of my one of my favorites you know this is where i personally like to get my history i like to get it from historians um and some people might say that well you know a historian is not necessarily you know something that you have to rely on in getting your history we have plenty of what i would call and i got this from uh dr dirk mott uh we have plenty of what he calls pseudo-historians online pseudo-scholars online what would you say to someone who says no i get my history i get my history online um versus i get my history from published historians sure yeah i mean i mean there there are some good things that you can get online but i think um when you're studying church history when you're studying any aspect of history really you know there are people who have been trained to be historians just like you have people that have trained to be doctors you have people who have trained to be attorneys as much as i love my brother who was in the church education system for a number of years if i was getting sued over something i would go to my brother who's an attorney and not to my brother who's a seminary teacher because my brother who's an attorney has had you know the the background and the training in that and i think the same can be said for historians when you go through the graduate program in history master's degrees and and phd's in history you get exposed to what the historical method is how to try to write history objectively to be aware of biases both your own biases the biases and your sources you're able to better kind of see that there are always two sides to every story there's not just one side um and so it's it's just a way i think that historians are able to look at sources to be able to put those together to make an argument that i definitely you know think it is more beneficial to uh really read from those who have had the training amen i i think that uh there are as as matt just alluded to there's rules of scholarship there's tools that scholars use there's going to primary sources and i think as we all become more critical and when we read we hear facts and then we hear conclusions based on the facts and i'm grateful there are when i pick up a book like this no brother joseph that there is i can trust these scholars to use those tools and rules of scholarship and that makes me go okay this is a trustworthy source there's the good there's the bad we know these weren't perfect people but uh but i can trust this and that makes such a difference and matt you didn't come on here to sell books and i didn't even tell you i was going to do this but the book is no brother joseph and i'm telling anyone who is listening if you truly want to know who joseph smith is unless you have certain conclusions you want about him right this is who he is this book is who he is who he was we're so glad to have you matt and and thank you for for that contribution you've made to the to the whole church well thank you i i appreciate that and and i hope people will get you know a good depiction of who joseph was not just that he was a prophet but that he was a real human being too that he went through challenges and difficulties and trying to be a father and trying to be a husband and he's doing all this while he's trying to restore the church and it's just pretty pretty amazing when you look at it yeah yeah there was one about the the loneliness of joseph smith i can't remember who that one was by but man that that that specific essay and there's there's i don't know how many essays uh there's a lot we should mention hank how many of the people that we've had on the podcast are contributors to this stephen harper and tony sweat and derek uh garrett dirk mott denise johnson jenny reeder so so good anyway let's get should we get into our lesson this week we're studying sections 81 82 and 83. matt let's go back as far as you want and help give give some context let's get the history that our listeners need to need to know before studying these sections the the thing that i think is interesting with these sections as you're mentioning it's not like they're very long you know they're three relatively short sections in the doctrine and covenants but the historical context for these sections are very important and are very detailed too so there's there's actually quite a bit to talk about so that people can better understand what's going on in these sections so two of these sections especially deal with consecration and with the saints trying to practice the law of consecration which of course was given to them in february of 1831 and what is section 42 of the doctrine and covenants and the sections also deal with building up the city of zion and those two things the law of consecration building up the city of zion how the saints are going to do that but the lord also in section 57 in the doctrine and covenants has told william w phelps that he needs to plant himself in missouri and be a printer to the church and he tells sydney gilbert that he is both to be an agent of edward partridge so help him buy land as well as he's supposed to establish a store in independence and so with with those two things the printing endeavor that's supposed to be going on in independence the store that they're supposed to establish there the saints start to wonder about okay how are we going to finance this um joseph smith and el and some other elders meet in november of 1831 they decide they want to print a compilation of joseph smith's revelations which will become known as the book of commandments that's to be printed out of missouri and once they figure out how much money it actually costs to buy enough paper to print 10 000 copies they decide yeah let's cut that back a little bit we're only going to print 3 000 copies so you have that going on as well that they're trying to uh print this compilation of joseph smith's revelations so again the question comes up how are we going to fund all of this and so these three sections also deal with kind of the temporal aspects of the church how do you get enough money to be able to do the things that the lord has told you that he wants you to do so in november of 1831 as as joseph smith and others are talking about what they need to do to publish the revelations the lord gives another revelation to joseph smith where he appoints six men to be what he calls the stewards over the revelations and those six men are joseph smith sydney rigdon oliver cowdery john whitmer william w phelps and martin harris and so they're appointed to be the stewards over the revelations what this means is that they're the ones that have oversight over the publication of the book of commandments and they soon become known as the literary firm that's kind of the title that's given to this organization of of these six men who are supposed to oversee this publication so you have this literary firm that's established to do that but then again you still have this store in missouri that they're trying to buy goods for you have new okay whitney who is a store owner in kirtland and he's called to be a bishop in the church in december of 1831 and he's told that his store should serve as a storehouse for the church as well just like the store that sydney gilbert is supposed to build in independence will be a storehouse so two new okay whitney's store is supposed to be a storehouse and so there's these questions of okay how do we organize this like how do we manage these different temporal ventures that that are going on and so in section 82 of the doctrine and covenants we see the lord giving instructions about how he wants these different things to be managed now this begins section 78 which you've talked about previously in that section joseph smith sidney rigdon and newell k whitney are told to go to zion and to sit and counsel with us with the saints and to establish a firm while they are there and so joseph and sydney and new okay whitney travel to missouri in the spring of 1832 they hold a council of high priests and elders on april 26 and april 27th of 1832. and in that council of elders joseph smith receives what is section 82 in the doctrine and covenants which tells them that they need to form this firm to manage the mercantile and publishing endeavors of the church so that's kind of the background for section 82. um one of the things that you need to keep in mind and this is another kind of theme that comes up with these three sections is that the background that i just laid out for section 82 if you read section 82 as it currently is in our doctrine and covenants you're going to say what in the world is he talking about there's nothing in there about a firm you know there's nothing in there about publishing and mercantile endeavors and the reason for that is that when the revelation was first given the earliest copies that we have of the revelation say that joseph is supposed to organize this firm to coordinate the publishing and mercantile endeavors but when they prepare the revelation for publication in the 1835 doctrine and covenants they actually decide that they need to try to provide some protection for the people who are members of this firm so that creditors didn't come after each member of the firm and so when it's published they take out the true purpose of what the firm is they just say that it's an establishment that will take care of the poor and the needy which ultimately is you know what the united firm was supposed to do but it's not as specific as the original revelation was and they also change it so that it's not referred to as a firm but it's referred to as an order and so this is where we get people talking about the united order because of these these changes that are made so united firm united order kind of same thing same thing um but it is important to note too that when we think of united order today we oftentimes think of what brigham young instituted in the great basin after the saints moved there and that's not the same as this united firm that's established in section 82. the united firm was an organization of nine church leaders um who each had their different stewardships over either the mercantile or publishing endeavors of the church and they were supposed to work together to manage those things and there's and there's some things going on if joseph smith doesn't have enough going on um he's got ezra booth to deal with and what's happening there right yeah he's got ezra booth to deal with so ezra booth i think as you've talked about before you know a member of the church for several months had been a methodist minister converted when he saw joseph heal elsa johnson's arm he's one of the ones that's commanded to travel to missouri in the summer of 1831 he's told that in section 52 and he's just kind of a malcontent the whole time that he's traveling he gets mad because joseph and sydney ride part of the way in a carriage but yet he has to walk and why should i have to walk if they get to ride in a carriage and he gets to independence and he looks around and he says this is like this rough frontier community this is where we're supposed to build zion you know this doesn't seem like a place where zion's going to flourish so he gets upset about that and so when he gets back from missouri uh he decides that joseph smith isn't a true prophet that the church isn't for him he leaves and he begins publishing a series of letters in the ohio star that are highly critical of joseph smith that disparage and mock the church because ezra's intent is to try to drive people away from the church and so these letters are published in the ohio star and so the lord tells joseph and sydney rigdon in january of 1832 that they need to do some damage control with this they need to go out and try to refute some of the things that ezra is saying so you have that going on you have joseph and sydney working on the translation of the bible they're in hiram ohio at john johnson's home and they're working they're going through the bible uh asking questions getting revelations based on those questions you know making changes based off of inspiration and you know that leads to some great sections in the doctrine and covenants like section 76 that come because of their work on this but the funny thing is is you know we we look at what joseph and sydney are doing on the joseph smith translation we look at section 76 and we think boy you know where would we be without this work you know joseph's just pouring out all of this new light and knowledge that the lord's giving him about the bible about the afterlife and we we look at that and we rejoice in it but there were some people in hiram who looked at some of the things that joseph was revealing including section 76 and they thought it was blasphemous they thought that you know who is this you know young kid who's proclaiming that he knows what's going on after this life and so there begins to be some opposition to joseph that comes about in hiram and so in march of 1832 um so just about a little over a month after joseph and sydney see the vision of the celestial terrestrial intellectual kingdoms a mob attacks uh joseph and sydney as i mentioned joseph's staying in the john johnson home with emma um he's there with um his daughter julia and his son joseph they're both they're twins so they're both about 11 months old joseph murdoch the baby has the measles at the time and so he and he's you know up in the night anyone who's had a baby who's sick you know what nights are like you know they're they're just awful and so emma's been up with the baby joseph's been up with the baby and in the middle of the night this mob bursts into the house you know they kick the door in and they grab joseph they drag him out of the house they take him to a field they try to force poison into his mouth they beat him they ultimately tar and feather him you know which was a way back in this time that was just kind of a way to humiliate someone to try to show people that this person is not a valued member of society at the same time they take sydney rigdon out of his home and they drag him to a field as well and as they're dragging him along the ground you know his head is hitting rocks and it really you know does some damage to sydney um and takes him several days to recover from this as it takes joseph several days to recover as well and one of the great things about this you know if there's anything great that can come out of such a horrific incident the next morning you know joseph's been up all night when he goes back to the john johnson home and emma sees him she about faints because she at first thinks that the tar that's on him is blood and that he's just this bloody mess but then she has to spend the rest of the night trying to take the tar off of him which is a very painful process and so she's got this sick baby with the measles she's trying to get joseph cleaned up i mean just you know if if you want to think about a night from hell i think that would be a night um but she's able to get joseph cleaned up and the next morning he goes and he preaches a sermon in the sunday meetings which is remarkable in and of itself i mean if it was me and i just got beat up and had tar poured over my body i think i'd be like i think the lord will understand if i take a break this sunday you know i i'm not sure i need to go preach but joseph felt strongly that he needed to do it and so he preached and according to some accounts members of the mob were actually in the congregation that he's preaching to and you'd have to think that they are feeling pretty sheepish about that you know knowing what they had done to him and then seeing him still stand up and testify about the truthfulness of the gospel do we know anybody in the in the group yeah simon's writer i believe was in there um boy probably not booth himself probably not booth himself oh booth wasn't no he wasn't living in hiram at the time so in terms of of the skin as far as we know when they're taking off the tar and they're trying to scrape it off it does take skin off at the same time so i think wherever the tar was on him you know his skin would just be raw from taking it off so i mean incredibly painful um it's it's hard to kind of imagine you know what what that would be like and it affects joseph for the rest of his life he says that the attack left him with a an issue with his side he never really specifies what it is but uh if you know about the fight that william smith has with joseph in 1835 when they kind of get into it as brothers do and william tackles joseph and joseph says after that you know this trouble that i've had with my side since the mob being flared up again because of what you did to me so it's something that he's he's he deals with for a long time um in terms of sydney rigdon there are some scholars that believe that he had enough trauma to his head uh during this attack that it did change his personality a bit and we think that might have been something that was a lingering effect from this attack um but i mean he stays you know close friends with joseph for several years after this it's really not until the 1840s that you see kind of a divide creep up between joseph and sydney um but there are historians who believe that it did have a lasting you know effect on him uh because of the damage that he sustained in the attack i i think too um i wanted to ask you um we we often refer to taking joseph smith out of his home with the murdoch twins there right there and everything but sydney was he also did they also break into his cabin and didn't he also have is it five children in there at the same time yeah i don't know how many children he had at that time but they did break into his home just as they did you know where joseph was living and i mean you know with with joseph smith's children you know they're they're babies they're 11 months old i doubt that julia murdoch remembered that attack but i think sydney had some older children and you have to think that would be fairly traumatic too to see this you know happen to you to your father but that's the other thing that i didn't touch on either is that because the mob left the door open in the johnson home after they took joseph out then joseph murdoch's exposed to that cold night error and it's just a few days after this that he dies and when you think about this um that's a fairly traumatic thing for joseph and emma in part because they had already lost three children and then here you have joseph murdoch dying as well so you know that's four out of joseph's first five children that have died and it it's interesting because when joseph um when he's on his way back from missouri uh in 1832 he writes a letter to emma and this letter is just so poignant he talks in there about hearing from martin harris that hiram smith's daughter had passed away she was not quite yet three years old when she died and joseph talks about this in his letter to emma and then he says i think we can in some way sympathize with him and i think what a grand understatement you know of course they could sympathize because they'd lost for their own children by this time so you know when you're talking about everything that's going on in joseph's life it's not just the bible translation it's not just trying to build up zion it's not just getting these revelations it's trying to deal with opposition it's trying to deal with the deaths of his children all of this is going on in the spring of 1832 when these revelations are given and it's just astounding to me that joseph can carry on and you know do something like establish the united firm this like temporal thing when he has all of this personal turmoil that's going on at the same time and he's young he's 26 or 27 years old 26. i mean i can see someone well mature saying oh we've got to keep going i used to i was 27 i'd i'm i'm i'm out yeah you know hank if if he was deceiving the people if if that's what was that wouldn't you at this point say this is not worth it i forget it never mind no yeah it's a testimony to what he believed and and it's um i don't want to say this wrong it's amazing to me that the lord is like yeah we gotta keep going here we go we gotta keep going um uh anyway i just i it makes me appreciate these sections so much more when you just realize the the the like you said that the turmoil the anguish going behind this i and i don't think anyone uh i i just think it's very difficult to fathom burying a child when i hear about someone who has it's it's an experience that they've described to me as a a pain that they never knew existed and to have very four of five children by this time in your life i i can't i i just my i can't my mind can't comprehend it if you read hiram smith's journal entry about the death of his daughter it'll break your heart because he essentially says in there mary expired in my arms such a day i've never before experienced and you can just feel the pain that this hurt it didn't matter you know how many children died each one was so painful for them and and i have to say you know in this too it's important to remember that emma's going through all of this at the same time as joseph is and what strength she must have had because a week after this mobbing happens joseph and sydney and newell k whitney leave for missouri and you know that emma's still grieving the death of her child she's probably still traumatized from what happened in the home and yet she has enough faith to tell joseph okay you know the lord wants you to go to missouri so you need to go to missouri and i i mean just such great admiration for emma as well who's enduring all of this too absolutely i think uh that it's nice to point out section 81 hiram ohio section 82 jackson county missouri that that's part of this back story that you've just mentioned when he had to go and when he goes this isn't you know sometimes i'll leave for the for the weekend or i'll i'll have somewhere to go speak and i hate leaving for a few days i just hate leaving the family you know and this is not a few days if you're going to go to missouri you're going to be gone uh what six to eight weeks yeah he was gone about two and a half months and part of that is and we we can talk about this too when we get to it but part of it is as they're coming home from missouri uh there's an accident that happens with the stagecoach that they're riding in and new okay whitney ends up breaking his leg in several places and he can't travel and so joseph sends sidney rigdon back to ohio but then joseph stays with newell k whitney in this little town greenville indiana for about six weeks until newell's leg is well enough so that he can travel and i think about that because you know joseph's anxious to get back home um to emma he he says as much in this letter that i was talking about that he writes to emma he talks about how much he misses her how much how much he misses julia his daughter and yet he's a loyal enough friend that he's not just gonna leave newell k whitney by himself to recover he's gonna stay with newell even though it's a great inconvenience to him to do so and i think that speaks a lot about joseph's character as well this um this book that we were talking about earlier no brother joseph that's part of the the title perspectives on joseph smith's life and character and i think you just showed us a piece another piece of thousands uh that there are of the who the man was this is a an incredible person i john i would i would want to stay with you brother i would i would i i would i'd probably i'd probably hire out a live-in nurse for you and i'd say john look i got this nice i'm going home [Laughter] yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't i might not expect it to but at least you could call i mean i i don't know what the post office was like back then uh but how could joseph communicate with emma um and even let him let her know that i got to stay with the duel his leg is broken i mean all of those things make everything take longer and be more difficult you know yeah but thanks hank i appreciate that if i break my leg i'll call you yeah don't don't ask me i'll text you well this is great to get some some backdrop it's really helpful and why don't we let's take a look at some of the verses of section 81 matt and what would you like us to see here well i think the first thing that is important with this section is the section heading says um the revelation as it stands in our doctrine and covenants today says that it's to fredrik j williams but when the revelation was first given it was actually given to a man named jesse gause who is probably not familiar to most latter-day saints i don't think and so i i think it's important to know a little bit about who jesse was um and why this revelation was given so jesse was a relatively recent new convert and i say relatively because at this point in 1832 basically everything is a new convert to the church you know um but he had been baptized probably towards the end of 1831 or the first of 1832 uh he had been involved with us with several different religious traditions up to this point um he had been a member of the society of friends what we would call the quakers for a period of time he had family who were members of the shaker religion and so jesse had actually joined the shakers as well um in ohio but he joins the church again like i said late 1831 early 1832 and we don't really know a whole lot about his relationship with joseph smith but evidently joseph considered jesse um to be kind of a rising star there was something about jesse that appealed to joseph and so in march of 1832 joseph calls jesse as well as sydney rigdon to be counselors to him and when they're established as counselors this forms what is called at the time the presidency of the high priesthood which is kind of the forerunner to what we would call the first presidency today and so this presidency the high priesthood comes about you know is if you're thinking about the organization of the church you know that joseph smith was appointed to be the first elder of the church oliver cowdery was appointed to be the second elder when the church was organized and then there were other individuals that were appointed to various priesthood offices you know elder priest teacher deacon and in november of 1831 joseph gets a revelation and this revelation is part of what is section 107 today and in this revelation he's told by the lord that he needs to establish a president over the different priesthood offices and the lord says in this revelation that there needs to be a president over the high priesthood as well or over the high priests but this isn't just any you know you know kind of president calling as we would think of a president of a quorum today because the revelation also says that the president of the high priesthood would be a prophet a seer a revelator would be like unto moses and so you can tell that this is a you know pretty substantial thing and so in january of 1832 at a conference that's held of the church in amherst ohio joseph is appointed to be the president of the high priesthood to have this calling and so then just a few weeks later he appoints jesse gause and sydney rigdon to be his counselors to him um so jesse is one of joseph's counselors and this revelation comes in march of 1832 at a time when jesse's also serving as a scribe for joseph he's helping out a little bit we think with the translation of the bible endeavor so he's been helping joseph out and then he receives this revelation um section 81 that kind of talks about what the duties of a counselor are now the reason why our version of the revelation today doesn't have jesse's name in there is because we don't know everything that happened with jesse we know that he went with joseph smith to missouri on this trip that we've been talking about in the spring of 1832. we know he went on a mission with zebedee coltrane in august of 1832 and then the very next time that he appears in the historical record is in joseph smith's journal for december of 1832 where it just says that brother jesse was excommunicated and we don't know what happened um there's there's nothing that that says what jesse did we don't know if maybe he just fell away maybe he went back to the shakers we just don't have any good information about that but because he's excommunicated this leaves joseph without a counselor and so in january of 1833 fredric g williams is appointed to be a counselor to joseph and before section 81 is published in the uh 1835 edition of the doctrine and covenants um oliver cowdery goes through and he crosses out jesse's name and he writes fredric g williams name above it and so when the revelation is published it's published as a revelation to frederick g williams and i think this may indicate that joseph and oliver and other church leaders saw this revelation not as something specific to jesse but more about what does it mean to be a counselor to joseph smith and so they felt comfortable putting frederick's name in there because of that yeah he just he just disappears jesse goes he's just gone yeah frederick g williams he was one of the early converts of those of the four original original missionaries right they come through from new york to kirtland yeah when oliver caldery is appointed to lead the mission to the lamanites and so he and parley p pratt zyba peterson uh peter whitmer jr come to kirtland and yeah frederick g williams is one of these early individuals that is converted and after he's baptized he says hey i want to join you guys and so he actually goes with oliver and the others um to the unorganized territory beyond missouri's western border where they preach to a few indian groups and then he's with them when they come back into missouri as well he's a go-getter right yeah i want to go with you i want to go out there we're ready to go i feel bad for jesse i wonder what happens to him any record of like him dying somewhere him yeah we do have a record about that um so jesse he lives for a few more years after this he dies around september of 1836 and at the time he dies he's living in chester county pennsylvania which actually is a location where the church had a uh branch uh the brandywine branch was in chester county i don't know if jesse uh knew any of the church members living there at the time he just he really does kind of disappear from the historical record um and so we don't know a whole lot about him what happened to him but he does live until about 1836. um well let me say a little bit too about freddie g williams we've talked a little bit about him about his conversion how he went with oliver cowdery he was a thomsonian physician at the time so he practiced medicine according to the thompsonian method which was like using a lot of herbal medications those those types of things um he'd been ordained a high priest in october of 1831 and for much of 1832 he worked as a scribe for joseph smith and so if you're familiar at all with joseph's 1832 history um the first account that we have from joseph of the first vision when that's copied into a record book much of it is in joseph's hand and the rest of it is in frederick williams hand so he's working as a scribe for joseph for much of 1832 before he's appointed to be a counselor to joseph i remember dr harper telling us that was his personal favorite of the accounts of the first division um though it's not the most uh what would you say uh you know literary flowing uh he it's he said it's it's kind of raw so frederick g williams had a part in that i guess he did yeah and i i would agree with steve on that i ate the 1832 history i i love it in part because it's such a personal account of what that vision meant to joseph personally not just in terms of you know ushering in the restoration but in terms of you know i was forgiven of my sins you know i realized that jesus christ's atonement is real so i love it for that too so we're saying having more than one account is wonderful aren't we it's great to have more than one account you get it's not a much better no you get just such a more well-rounded picture of what the first vision was what it meant to joseph smith uh what led him into the grove in the first place so i i'm actually really happy that we have four accounts from joseph i wish we had more from them as well one thing that i think is interesting in this section in section 81 is verse 2 where it's talking about joseph smith it says unto whom i have given the keys of the kingdom which belong always under the presidency of the high priesthood and i think it's interesting because when you read that and it reads you know presidency of the high priesthood i think we tend to think oh that means that the keys belong to the first presidency but i think what the lord is saying i think he's using presidency here to refer more to the office of the president of the high priesthood so like you might say joe biden was elected to the presidency of the united states and i think they're using the term presidency here in that same way and so it's saying you know the keys of the priesthood belong to the president of the church which is kind of how we you know that's that's how we understand it today that the president the prophet holds all of the keys and then can delegate those keys um to others so i think that's that's an important point i wonder if matt that comes into play when sydney thinks he's he's the one to take over in 1844 if uh if he's thinking it was us you know it was the group of us that received these keys when it you're saying no this is joseph which i think you're right on there i mean he mentions joseph by name you know in the end of verse 1 unto whom i have given the keys of the kingdom which belong always unto the presidency the office of president of the church but i wonder if if sydney was kind of using that claim i think certainly was and it does get a little bit muddier because in 1833 there's another revelation that's given in march where it says that sydney rigdon and frederick williams are equal in holding the keys of the kingdom to joseph but i don't think that necessarily means that they could operate separate from joseph i think that's saying that because they are members of the presidency the high priesthood of the first presidency then when they operate with the president with the prophet then they're all kind of holding those keys but i don't think it means that you know sydney could go do whatever he wanted to with the church that frederick could go do whatever he wanted the keys still reside in the prophet i also really like verse 3 and 4 because i think this teaches us a lot about callings and about the blessings we can receive from callings and about the blessings that other people can receive um when we do our callings because essentially they're you know he's telling frederic g williams and jesse gals here in this verse he's saying this is what you're appointed to do i want you you know to pray vocally in public and private i want you to proclaim the gospel and then in verse four it says and in doing these things that will do the greatest good unto thy fellow beings and will promote the glory of him who is your lord and i think you know for me as i've looked at callings that i've had in the church when i've fulfilled those in a way that i think is pleasing to the lord you know i it's it's funny because right now i'm i'm serving in a bishopric of a ysa award and i'll be perfectly honest i'm an introverted person i'm definitely not an extrovert it's hard for me at times to get to know people and a lot of people who serve in you know ysa awards and ysa stakes are not introverts they're extroverts and that's one reason i think why they're there because you know they can interact with with the youth and just to be honest i've had kind of a tough time over the last few months being in this calling where i think am i good enough to do this am i adequate enough um am i really serving the ysas and in the way that that i could be and you know i've talked about that with my wife a lot and she just says you know just be who you are you know you can't be anyone else the lord knows your personality he knows what you're like and yet he still wanted you in this calling so there's someone uh whose life you can bless in this calling and maybe it's only a few people um but i think you know for me that's kind of been an eye-opener that you know kind of what president monson has said before that the lord you know whom the lord calleth the lord qualifieth and we may get called to things that are hard for us and we don't feel very good at adam but if we do our best you know we will bless the lives of others and we may not even see that it may not be something that we are that we're ever aware of but here the lord tells us it will be for the greatest good and i firmly believe that yeah i remember once i was i'm an extrovert and i was called to be the financial clerk to the bishopric and i mean you don't do a lot of talking to people right i mean it was mostly uh and this was back in the day before you know you could pay uh your tithing fast offerings online so it was a lot of sitting there you know by myself or with another clerk or a member of the bishop rick and just counting and enveloping and things and i i thought i should i want to teach i want to be let me be out there with people but i learned so much i learned about church administration i i got to become closer with the bishop who really was um it was really neat to to to the things he taught me so yeah i think you're right on there i stood in the office which i had been appointed i i like just the phrase the greatest good there because i think that there's a lot of things that we could do which are good i but uh there are so many other what's the greatest good and i think that's a question a lot of the early sections of the doctrine and covenants were remember all the whitmer brothers what what should i do joseph and what did he tell him go proclaim the gospel and i see that in verse three and that is the greatest good go cry repentance that's the greatest good that you can do so it's a good question that all of us want to know what what will have the most impact what will do the most good and then to take the lord's direction on that and to believe him uh is is the part where even if you're feeling like why am i in this calling well this is because this is what i was called to do and for for now this is what the lord wants me to this is the greatest good i like that yeah i personally have always loved verse five um stand in the office which i have appointed unto you and then in every calling we can do these three things yeah sucker the weak whether you're the financial clerk or the ysa bishop in the ysa bishopric or uh i don't know what you're not a high council i think john you can all of us in whatever calling we're in can do these three things sucker the weak lift up the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees we could be looking for people in our ward uh in our branch who are who are just needing a lift right needing a help uh i think i don't know in every calling of the church we can be doing yeah it sounds like ministering there anybody can can uh all of us are called to minister to each other and that's it reminds me of the the baptismal covenant in mosiah 18 that alma the elder gives them you know morning those that more comfort those who stand in need of comfort it's kind of others focused which i like yeah when i when i read that and i hear you know lift up the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees it brings in my mind like an image of someone who's just run a marathon you know and maybe someone who's not well suited to run a marathon and as they're going across the finish line they look just look like they're going to collapse you know from from what they've done and i just think like spiritually in our day-to-day there's so many people that i think are spiritually in a you know in in a way where they're about ready to collapse and if we can just you know lift them up if we can help strengthen them if we can just provide a smile or a hello or how are you doing or a text that lets them know that we're thinking about them i think you know how much strength can we give someone who really needs that uplift and who really is struggling spiritually because i think a lot of us are you know there's just something i don't know if it's covet i don't know if it's just the days that we're living in the contention you know the polarization of society but i feel like a lot of people are spiritually struggling and we really need to take that that verse to heart i think i i would add you can use your social media account to uplift and strengthen people there's just so many ways we can do it was it um i think it was dr hewer john who said come on these missionaries walked 800 miles to missouri we can walk 800 feet over to our neighbors and check in on him he's like we can do it i know we can yeah um and it's interesting too that these these phrases here when people are really touched by it's usually this kind of way touched by somebody remembered me somebody served me it wasn't uh so and so shared this really cool scripture in a talk and i love that but people remember when they were remembered somebody reached out somebody texted me and that's all of us can do that so i like that too you know just kind of going along with that something when i was a teenager you know probably around 17 years old or so i remember struggling with some things and you know wondering if the lord loved me you know if i was good enough for the lord and one sunday you know i'm sitting in my front room just kind of having some of these thoughts and there's a knock on the door and i open it up and it's my bishop and i don't remember what he said to me um i remember you know talking to him about some things but i really can't remember what he said but i will i will never forget that he came by that he acted on a prompting to come by and that helped me to know okay the lord is aware of me and he does love me and so it is you know very simple things sometimes that we do that can really lift someone up um just i i he'll hate this that i'm talking about him but we've had alex ball on the podcast before and um when my father passed away just uh recently this last march um alex came to my house and uh when i answered the door i was surprised to see him and he said well i said alex what are you doing he said well i was on my way home now i know alex lives north of byu and i live south of byu so unless alex takes a very very strange route home he was not on his way home um he he took you know a long drive out of his way came over and just said i've been thinking about you i brought some goodies over for the kids and we sat in my doorway and chatted for you know just 10 15 minutes and uh he then he walked away and i watched him drive away and i thought oh i needed that i needed that it did that really just gave me a boost that i really needed today so sucker the weak lift up the hands that hang down and strengthen the feeble knees i promise you anyone listening there is someone close to you who who fits that description um and we can go find them isn't it interesting too that those phrases this isn't just you know in this revelation the lord says the same thing in isaiah 35 3 he says the same thing in hebrews 12 12. and so this must be important to the lord that we're there to support each other and there to help those who are feeling weak if he's repeating it you know and almost all of the standard works i mean matt said as simple as just sending a text saying you're thinking about someone um let's put this into practice right now let's not wait but make sure you come make sure you come back yeah because you want to hear the rest no that's great i just think it's never been easier i i mean i was in the car the other day and thought about somebody my hands were firmly at ten o'clock and two o'clock but i could say hey siri send a text to and say this i'm thinking about you and and it's it's so easy today to to check in with folks and see how they're doing it's not i mean it's never been easier right and yeah don't say i don't send me letters i was at ten and two i was driving safely but i can talk to my phone and it'll do nice things i remember in um cs lewis's screw tape letters where the you got a a devil character writing to another devil character uh he said the thing you want to do is get them to to think about doing service in other continents that other people on other continents need their help and have them forget about their neighbor right that there's you know the the service is always so far away um i've always thought about that right that if everyone just helped their neighbor uh what does the lord say the earth is sufficient there is enough please join us for part two of this [Music] podcast

Channel: Follow Him Podcast

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Length: 58min 47sec (3527 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021