Follow Him Podcast: Episode 14, Part 1–Easter with guest Dr. John Hilton III

[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 my friends welcome to another episode of follow him my name is hank smith i'm here with my incredible co-host john by the way welcome john you're talking about me oh that's good yes that's very kind thank you john can you uh introduce our friend yes we have john hilton iii with us and uh hank we've known john for years um i think you may have known him longer than i have i'm going to just pop in um so i think i actually have technically known you longer because when i was a byu student i came knocking on your office door byu saying do you have any tips for how i could write a book or speaking i'm sure you had hundreds of people like me but you treated me so kindly you were so nice and polite yeah anyway so just throwing it out there john i've been uh grateful for you for decades oh yours i you are you're so nice i'm glad that that you remembered me being a nice guy yeah i was gonna say when i did that in college john said get out of here why do you kids keep bothering me wait that's great uh john hilton iii was born in san francisco and grew up in seattle he served a mission in denver and received a bachelor's degree from brigham young university where he met his wife lonnie and they have six children now this is the fun part they have lived in boise boston mexico miami china and jerusalem john has a master's degree from harvard and a phd from byu both in education he is currently a religious professor at byu john has written several books including the founder of our peace and considering the cross and i think those two are the most most recent the cross just came out john's biggest claim to fame was in high school he won a pizza eating contest by eating 22 pieces of pizza i mean if if you didn't feel like there's credibility here i hope that sealed it that in full disclosure they were smallish pizza pieces of pizza but but still it's something to be uh that's good and john you mentioned jerusalem that is an experience to sit there and to sing there is a green hill far away and to look out the window and say it's not that far it's right there yeah it's just uh amazing it's hard to get through the words when you're right there looking over uh old jerusalem and you you got to experience that for a year yeah it was beautiful wonderful it's fantastic now before we go any further i have to tell a couple of stories um and and this is these are just important stories that's so unlike you hank there is no one as as brilliant as john hilton he they're so he's so great they made three of him his actual name is john hilton iii i've known john for oh it's probably been 15 years we went to a subway to get lunch and no one on the other side of the counter spoke english and i'm trying to order and all of a sudden my friend john hilton starts speaking uh spanish to these to these workers and uh and i said well how come you speak spanish you didn't service a spanish-speaking mission and it was like it was a revelation to him he was like i know uh and i said well how come you how come you know spanish and he said i wanted to learn spanish so i learned it uh it was probably within that year sometime i hear him i overhear him speaking chinese with somebody and i said wait what you speak chinese and he said yeah i wanted to speak chinese so i learned chinese and i i you know sometimes someone might say well you know intelligent people don't believe in god intelligent people don't whatever fill in the blank they don't they don't do the whole faith religion thing find me find me someone as intelligent as john hilton iii um and we can have that discussion uh because he is not only intelligent he is kind he is he is everything and his wife lonnie is even better uh so uh john do i feel like i did that justice did i did i over you know that one one thing that you left off hank is that as we walked out of that subway there was someone who was asking for money and you gave them some money and treated them kindly and that's something i always remember like that's something about your character some people work on learning languages and other people just be developed christ-like attributes so you know a little something for everyone yeah i i was just looking for ways to look good i actually planted that guy outside i'm like you uh john let's talk uh this week's lessons a little bit different for come follow me uh we're gonna step away from the doctrine and covenants for a little bit and talk about easter talk about the atonement and resurrection of jesus christ um john you just wrote a book on this this is why i i in fact this is why i invited you on the on the podcast today you just wrote a book on this called considering the cross how calvary connects us with christ maybe let's just start there john and see where we go uh tell me what uh i know that this book was a couple of years for you just thinking about it and then doing the research uh tell me what spurred you to this and what you learned so when i was in the jerusalem center i was one day talking with one of my colleagues and you know this is kind of like byu religion professor fun talk where like so what do you do when you teach the atonement of jesus christ how do you teach that and as we were discussing this one of my colleagues said why do you think in the church we always focus almost exclusively on gethsemane as the place where christ atoned for our sins and i was just thought well i don't know because that's what the scriptures say probably like and and i realized in that moment that whenever i taught a lesson like you know so this week we're probably all studying maybe different episodes in the life of christ in this last week we're probably focusing on the last supper gethsemane and i realized that when i did these kinds of things i tended to jump straight past the crucifixion and go to the resurrection and i came across a quote from president james e faust he said any increase in our understanding of the savior's atoning sacrifice draws us closer to him and that really stood out to me any increase in any aspect of christ's atonement is going to pull us closer to him and i realized that so to speak there was some low-hanging fruit with respect to calvary and the crucifixion this was just an area of christ's atonement that i had kind of glided by and as i started to investigate i found that there are scriptures that talk about jesus christ suffering for our sins in gethsemane there's one in the book of mormon and one in the doctrine and covenants so two total there's at the same time more than 50 passages of scripture that talk about jesus christ dying for our sins and that's we've seen them over and over again just this year the doctrine and covenants it's in section 18 it's in section 21. we'll see it in a week or so in section 35 it's just over and over again jesus christ emphasizes i was crucified for the sins of the world and so when i realized that i thought wow there's kind of a mismatch between what i've been focused on and what the scriptures are teaching and so anthony swett who you know and has been on uh the podcast he and i did a survey of some students at byu and we asked about 800 students although christ's atonement was a process where would you say jesus mostly atoned for our sins and in the first round we gave students two choices either gethsemane or calvary and 88 of students selected gethsemane so someone said hey that's kind of unfair you should have given them a third choice of equally in gethsemane and calvary so we surveyed a separate group of about 800 students and same question although christ atone was a process where would you say he mostly atoned for our sins gethsemane calvary or equally in gethsemane and calvary and even with the choice of equally in gethsemane and calvary 58 of people said gethsemane only so this was a signal to me that i'm not the only person who's tended to focus almost exclusively or maybe primarily on gethsemane but as i as i dived into you know we're so focused on joseph smith this year with uh come follow me joseph smith actually in his writings and sermons he never talks about jesus christ suffering for our sins in gethsemane he only mentions gethsemane one time and that's in the context of christ doing the will of his father but there's more than 30 times when he talks about christ being crucified and several of those are specifically about him dying for our sins i think in my experience as a teacher and maybe you'd say the same thing john by the way maybe you'd say this as well is that during the course of a class on the savior's life i am building and building and building to this moment right i'm building to this atonement moment and for me personally i just kind of realized this as you've been talking i will hit that moment in gethsemane and i will talk about calvary but it's on the downhill side it's on the we've hit our moment and now we're going you know we're hitting maybe you know post climactic moment and i think i do teach the the calvary but it's on that i don't know that other side of of okay we've already hit our big moment would you say that that other teachers do that or is it just me this this podcast has has ended up being all the things hank does wrong podcast um but but do you feel like you used to do that as well maybe i think what john said is is right there's uh when we learn the meaning of gethsemane that's olive press and we we as john said okay we've got it in luke that he bled at every pore and that's it right and then in restoration scripture we have it in king benjamin in mosiah 3 and doctrine of covenant section 19 and so maybe because of that we feel some oh look what we have in restoration scripture that's only mentioned once in the in the book of luke is that he bled from every poor and and i love what you're doing john with suffering for our sins dying for our sins and yet we separate those too much because it was all part of the same process is that fair yeah and you just mentioned separating it out i think that's maybe a common misunderstanding people will say well jesus suffered for our sins in gethsemane so he overcame spiritual death in gethsemane and then overcame physical death on the cross and elder gerald lund calls that a doctrinal error that that to try to separate it out like that just isn't actually right yeah it was all the atonement can can we say that the atonement didn't happen here or there but it was all i mean i'm in my mind remembering and you've done so much research on this um i think it was elder bruce reconque saying the horrors of gethsemane returned on the cross is that accurate yeah so elder mcconkie did say that and even more recently president nelson he describes all the things christ experienced in gethsemane and then he said that all this suffering was intensified as christ was cruelly crucified on calvary's cross that's an important that's an important yeah quote there john i had not i had not heard that so to go back to what you were saying so i do this like and this is what i recognize this was kind of like the turning point for me it was to say i i am i'm building up in gethsemane is the climax first like without doubt that's yeah i go back and look at my powerpoints from like five years ago when i was teaching and that was for sure the case and i'm sure that you and i and john were not alone and i don't want to say to any teacher listening you you did it wrong let's just say hey let's improve yeah let's improve that's a that was a great method at the time but let's improve let's let's adjust and to be clear it's not saying that gethsemane isn't important gethsemane is supremely important it's just there's maybe another aspect of the savior's atonement that we haven't fully appreciated or studied so um john you've talked a lot um uh just with me personally about the cross itself that somehow maybe this is maybe there's a tie in maybe there's not you can correct me that we don't focus on calvary as a doctrine because we don't focus on the cross as a symbol um maybe maybe we shy away from the doctrine of you know what happens on the cross because of the fact that we as latter-day saints have shied away from the cross as a symbol tell me about what you've what you found there so i mean to me it makes me think of a pac a parable from elder packer where he talks about how a merchant found a precious pearl and it was so amazing he wanted everyone to see it so he made this great box to showcase the pearl and when everyone came to watch it he was so sad because they focused on the box instead of the pearl and in a way i think you can say that the crucifixion of jesus christ is the pearl and the cross as a symbol is a box and maybe some people adore and worship the cross as a symbol and that's not good and maybe some of us have like completely shied away from the image of the cross and said oh that's bad i don't want any part of that and as a result we know we don't look at the pearl the crucifixion of jesus christ so i mean just just a quick backstory that to be honest with you i didn't know a couple of years ago is that in the 1820s as the restoration is taking shape catholicism is not a prevalent religion in the united states in fact in the palmyra area there's no catholic churches jose the joe smith story he says the methodists the presbyterians he never says what about the catholics it's just not on his radar it's not part of the cultural context what i didn't know is that in the 1820s the cross was primarily a catholic symbol protestant churches like baptists presbyterians methodists they didn't use the cross as a symbol and that was going back to the protestant catholics split off a couple hundred years earlier so they don't want to be seen as catholics so they're not using the cross correct so as as joseph smith is kind of making decisions about you know building church buildings and would you put a cross on it it wasn't really a that would be a catholic thing it wasn't a christian thing and so that that was an interesting data point for me was to see that there's a culture that that our church is growing out of right american protestantism is sort of the cultural my lou that joseph smith is surrounded with and that doesn't have the image of a cross but there's massive catholic immigration to america and the 1840s through 60s and that leads to christians broadly in america adopting the cross as a symbol of their faith so by the 1870s you have well-documented statements saying something like the cross is no longer denominational it's a christian symbol and even amongst latter-day saints during the late 1800s and early 1900s there are times that the cross appears it appears in some church buildings not frequently but occasionally there's in house in latter-day saints correct in latter-day saint church buildings um oh just i want to make sure i saw this illustration in your book on the spine of a european printed doctrine and covenants and what was there on the spine yeah there's so on the 1852 doctrine incumbents there's crosses on the spine and and yeah there's other examples bh roberts of the 70 has across on his tombstone several latter-day saints both men and women posed for formal photographs wearing crosses or cross earrings and and just to be clear i'm not suggesting that we need to all go out and buy cross necklaces or anything it's just interesting to see historically there wasn't a stigma with it in the 1950s uh through the 70s there's a couple of statements from church leaders that suggest that it would be in poor taste for members to wear a cross no one ever forbids it it's never forbidden there's no commandment saying don't do it but i think that's where we really get this cultural aversion to the cross and of course in 1975 president hinckley tells the story where he's taking a protestant minister through the mesa arizona temple and the minister says well if you're a christian church how come i don't see a cross in this temple and president hinckley says well for us the cross is a symbol of the dying lord and we worship the living christ and so i think that those kind of things would be what maybe some listeners are thinking about right now well yeah of course we don't use the cross and maybe the crucifixion isn't as important because we worship the living christ i think where you're going this is an important discussion because it affects the doctrine which is what's most important what are we what are we understanding about the savior and the atonement and let's not have this the symbol and cultural um changes with the symbol change our doctrine and and to shy away from the crucifixion am i reading it right exactly so you can wear a cross you cannot wear a cross you can love it not like it great but let's not let that distract us in fact in the same talk from president hinckley that we were just referring to he says we must never forget the price christ paid on calvary and so that's that's so important i just just earlier this week was teaching uh my class and i was in third nephi 27 and i thought oh john will love this i'm sure you know which one i'm talking about but you know this is that chapter where the disciples are meeting and what should we call the church and jesus appears and how be it my church save it be called in my name but listen to verse 13 14 behold i have given unto you my gospel and this is my gospel which i have given unto you that i came into the world to do the will of my father because my father sent me and my father sent me that i might be lifted up upon the cross and that after i had been lifted up upon the cross that i might draw all men unto me that as i have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the father to stand before me to be judged of their works whether they be good or whether they be evil and i could go on but i thought look at that john i'm sure loves this verse in kind of look here's the savior himself saying this is important and just with that you know as i as i initially was kind of finding this out and i would kind of share in small groups and kind of test test out the ideas i was working on someone said well maybe the reason why people focus on the cross is that it was a when they say people like christians generally focus on the cross because it was a public experience but gethsemane was more of a private experience so fewer people know about it but then i and so i thought oh okay but then i thought well actually jesus christ describes his experience in gethsemane one time in doctrine covenants 19 but on more than 20 occasions in scripture he talks about his death just like the verse that you just read and so if anyone knows a lot about both gethsemane and calvary it's the savior and he himself is personally emphasizing over and over again that he was crucified for our sins that being lifted up on the cross draws us to him there are so many and i'm all of a sudden all these references are coming to mind like uh i think in nephi's vision he said i saw him lifted up on the cross he says nothing about gethsemane not that it's not important again but he talks about the cross when the savior talks to nicodemus he shares the serpent moses serpent in the wilderness story and says he'll be he'll be lifted up i wonder if um you know as we sometimes want to differentiate from mainstream christianity that we kind of said well they have the cross that's theirs we'll take gethsemane that's that's gonna be ours right that's how we're gonna be different and maybe that was important in the 1960s or 70s that might have been needed at some time but that's not what i hear our church leader saying today i don't hear an us versus them mentality it's let's have all good people unite and and maybe on that i mean like if we just could take a missionary moment when i and i'd love to hear your guys experiences when i was a full-time missionary in colorado if i saw someone wearing a cross it was kind of like oh you know that's that's like other they're different whereas now if i was a missionary and i saw someone wearing a cross i'd be so excited i go to them hey i see that you believe in jesus this is incredible i've got this book here and jesus himself says my father sent me that i might be lifted up upon the cross let's talk about our mutual feelings of excitement about the savior's sacrifice on calvary right someone is publicly declaring themselves to be a christian and we're like oh no how weird uh where now we'd be more uh you're right john i'd be excited i'd love to see the cross from our discussion and uh people are just getting your book but i mean i've i've had these discussions with you for a long time now uh and i get more and more excited to see people with the symbol of the cross kind of announcing what who they believe in we will be having dr robert millett on the podcast at one point i know he wrote a book called what happened to the cross and other doctrines but i think they chose that as a title and i i was so intrigued because i thought i had never seen anybody saying don't use a cross but i remember oh well um and kind of what would you say common knowledge or conventional thinking well we are all about the living christ and and so forth and i remembered something that robert millett had taught me and that was that uh because he had done a lot of writing and thinking about the doctrine of grace and he said at one time he asked his dad well don't we believe in grace and he's his father said no because the baptists do and uh and and since that time we've seen a lot of helpful discussion about what did nephi mean second nephi 25 23 and uh and brother brad wilcox's talk his grace is sufficient all sorts of things to say wait a minute this has always been what's in the book of mormon and i hope that we can i like to tell my students hey we've only had this book for less than 200 years we're still learning you know what's in our own revelation kind of and do you think that we just mentioned that it's kind of differentiating ourselves but i'm right with you i see somebody with a cross and i go wow they believe in jesus isn't that great and and i mean i think john you shared with me earlier as well some experiences you've had listening to christian talk radio i don't know if you want to share anything about that yeah i have and and uh condemning those who are offended by the cross and that put us in that group yeah this is an area where we don't need to have there doesn't need to be any friction we totally believe that jesus christ died for our sins in fact that verse that you quoted earlier hank from first nephi 11 i neep i saw that christ was lifted up on the cross and slain for the sins of the world so there's no doubt that this is actually a bridge building point uh for us and other christians john maybe one reason and i can see this in myself is that you know part of the come follow me manual uh this week it talks about jesus christ accomplished a perfect atonement i have i have little ones and uh maybe it's maybe it's my aversion to violence um that i that i can focus on gethsemane and maybe not on the cross how do you as a father how do you go about teaching the cross to your children without i don't know do you find it might be emotionally scarring like all right let's all sit down and watch the passion of the christ together right like what how do you how do you teach it in a way that um is true to it but yet not too graphic what's age appropriate this is just one experience when i was a young father we had the gospel art kit and we'd kind of flip through the pages and i would always flip past the crucifixion and you know just jump from gethsemane to the resurrection and i remember my son saying like what's that like go back to that and he was really curious and interested in the crucifixion image and i'm sad that i didn't take advantage of that opportunity to teach my son because there it was a teachable moment that i was more worried about than he was and i'm not saying that all crucifixion imagery is important or even appropriate for children of all ages i do wonder if maybe there's sometimes that we we maybe miss an opportunity a little bit cautious yeah maybe is that your son that's on a mission now yeah exactly well you did okay you did hopefully it didn't scar him too much one other thing just to i know like to think about i remember president eyring one time saying something to the effect of we need to take advantage of opportunities to teach small children that they're at their most teachable face prior to eight years of age and so in some ways what better time to help root in their hearts the power of christ's atoning sacrifice in gethsemane and on calvary and um just recently a friend showed me something that her son who's five years old had made and it was a picture of the crucifixion and she had her son had made jesus smiling on the cross and she said oh why is jesus smiling and her son said because he's so happy to sacrifice for you and me so i do think that at least some little children and every parent's gonna know their own child best some little children it may be helpful definitely uh maybe not watching the passion of the christ but to you know to see some of these other images and to talk about it and to read some scriptures together i think could be a very spiritually powerful opportunity um also i think something john that that parents could do and i forgot about this is that you talk about the crucifixion symbolism in the gospel around us right in the gospel our children are already experiencing tell us about the connections you've made there with just the gospel that our children are already experiencing well i mean one for example is the ordinance of baptism so in romans chapter six paul makes it very clear that baptism is a symbol of the death burial and resurrection of jesus christ so that's an opportunity to talk about the total commitment that jesus christ manifested to each of us he was so all in he gave his life for us or the sacrament is another opportunity where jesus said eat this bread in remembrance of the body which i laid down for you we see that in our recent come follow me in doctrine and covenants section 27. and my blood which was shed for you and and in the scriptures the phrase shedding of blood always refers to death it's the death of an animal or in this case the death of the savior um one little nugget in first corinthians chapter 11 paul is talking about the crucifixion and the sacrament and he says that as often as you take the sacrament you show and it's spelled s-h-e-w it's kind of a weird word you've written like what does that word mean well if you look it up it means to proclaim or testify of so he says as often as you take the sacrament you are publicly testifying of the death of christ and i think that's another really just every not every day but every week opportunity to think about and commemorate the savior's sacrifice i was telling my kids that i i think of the the sacrament table not only as kind of a reminder of the last supper where it was first kind of so it's like a table of communion of but also as an altar because we're remembering the body and the blood of christ there and i i don't know if that'd stand up to correlation but i think of both of those those ideas here's the the priest breaking bread in front of us and the fact that the the way we do that is in the front of the room every week for everyone to see why are we seeing a sacrament hymn that he was bruised and broken and torn for us on calvary's hill i mean that's is that him 181 and why why then why while we're singing i think that all means something to help us remember um his death and he he died for us but it's i love that it's kind of both it's the last supper and it's an altar and i like i said i don't know if that's that would pass correlation but it went well in our own little home evening lesson [Laughter] john with that thought that you just said about it's both um going back to the idea of well wait don't we really just worship the living christ and i think that we we i don't think i know we 100 do worship the living christ at the same time we also worship the loving christ and jesus christ himself personally defined his greatest act of love as his crucifixion he said greater love has no one than this that a man lay down his life for his friends that same idea is found in the book of mormon as well so to me it's not an either or it's it's not well we either have the living christ or the loving christ it's both you can't have one without the other this is this is wonderful um john for us weirdos out there who really like just information i i want to learn did you did you learn anything in your writing about the act of crucifixion itself that you didn't know before i actually remember one day i was just eating lunch with some colleagues and it just dawned on me that everything i knew about crucifixion came from movies primarily the lamb of god and the testaments because those were some of the only movies that i had seen that had crucifixion imagery in it and i thought i'm pretty sure that there's a whole science around this and there have i mean thousands of pages have been written about what we know from archaeology uh one or two kind of little interesting uh details is i've always kind of seen this image and probably a lot of you have seen as well where jesus is nailed to the cross and the thieves on either side are tied to the cross and i've had people ask well why were the thieves tied but jesus was nailed and of course that picture is just based on the artist's imagination in reality both nails and ropes were used in crucifixions so it could have been either or we know that in the savior's case he was nailed to the cross because of the prince and his hands and his feet another interesting detail is that the best evidence suggests that crosses were much smaller than we sometimes think of occasionally in a movie you'll see like a pulley system and they're like hoisting up the cross really high but oftentimes it appears that the cross was maybe only a foot maybe two feet taller than the person who's being crucified which has a different effect if you think about your eye level with the crucifixion and so when you're there at the cross and jesus says these powerful seven final statements it's not that he's distant and far away if you're near the cross you're almost at eye level with him wow did this happen did this happen often john did the did the romans did the romans invent crucifixion is this is this something that i should even i should even ask no it's a great question so the the historical origins of crucifixion are a little bit murky clearly the romans perfect the practice the greeks and maybe the persians before them have some type of crucifixion and even uh kingdoms before that are impaling people so something that's similar to a crucifixion um has been happening for centuries before but but clearly the romans the way that we think of crucifixion perfect the practice if we could use that terrible term but um but yeah and you know a lot of times i think people don't want i'm kind of shying away from this topic because i think probably a lot of listeners are about like let's turn this off right now okay let's let's move on a little much um but you know we hope that jesus christ understands our pain don't we we talk about well the savior understands our pain we're never going to understand the pain he experienced in atoning for our sins but we can understand a little bit about the physical realities of crucifixion so maybe since we want him to understand our pain it might not be too much for us to understand his pain oh john i've never thought of that and i love you for that that you ever had moments john by the way where you think i'm never gonna forget that yeah i want him to understand my pain why don't i try to understand his well as best i can right as best i can like you said before hank there's an aversion to to violence it's it's hard to tell your little tender hearts and minds and your children uh this is what they did to people because it's why would you do that to someone uh and so i can i can understand that and on the other hand i like the way you put that john that we need to understand what uh he went through as an expression of love and patience with us and you know i we're talking from maybe our perspectives and i don't know all the intimate details of your lives in your children's lives but my guess is all of us are relatively sheltered um however some people have experienced terrible tragedies in their life victims of horrific abuse terrible things yeah and i remember reading um the account of one woman who had like her she had experienced horrible betrayal and she felt alone abandoned therapy didn't help and she said that in one moment of her darkest hours she saw christ on the cross in her mind but it wasn't the sunday school image it wasn't jesus with a bit of blood it was the real deal that she saw like the truly anguished suffering christ and that's when she realized this jesus understands me so maybe for some of us the scarred up jesus it is a terrible image and we can't look at it but there might be some people for whom it's an image of comfort and solidarity and says okay this person really understands me uh you i know you both have read corey ten boom's book the hiding place one of the sad things that she describes uh while she's in the nazi prison camp is the how the prisoners are forced to strip down every week and the guards inspect them and it's humiliating and then all of a sudden she has a realization that jesus was probably naked when he was on the cross we don't depict that in artwork but that was seems to be most likely the custom of what happened at the time and all of a sudden she didn't feel ashamed anymore and again that's that's a image that we don't really want to talk about and dwell on but for someone who's in a very difficult dark place that moment was powerful for her and so i think that yes we want to be cautious and careful but there may be some for whom the full understanding of what christ experienced could actually be healing well and i think of the phrase uh that i i think uh is in your book as well is that he descended below all things and this helps us to know that no matter what we've been through he's descended below all things and it it's it's hard to talk about but uh as as you said yeah somebody can say he will know what i've how i felt you know all of this has made me think of this quote from joseph smith that i have always loved listen to this he says the things of god are of deep import and time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out thy mind o man if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation that's what we all want to do here we want to lead souls unto salvation must stretch as high as the utmost heavens and then this part john from what you've talked about about this is difficult to discuss it's difficult to go and and look at this but he says and you must search into into and contemplate the darkest abyss you must search into and contemplate the darkest abyss and the broad expanse of eternity thou must commune with god he says and to me as you were talking about you know this is a difficult thing to go into but there are people who experience these dark abyss type you know things in life and uh the savior's there you he he is there with them uh so i think what you you've given me insight after insight after insight here is there anything else on the crucifixion john before we i we want to talk about the the resurrection of christ of course because that's our easter message but is there anything else that you feel like our listeners could benefit from talking about the crucifixion for me one of the a lesser-known character is this barabbas who it's kind of the choices between jesus and barabbas and i'm kind of here thinking like well duh it's obvious choose jesus right like this is a no-brainer but but if we maybe go back and think about historical context many of the jewish people don't like the roman authorities they want an insurrection they want a rebellion and that's actually why pi uh why barabbas has been arrested he's a revolutionary right he's a rebel against rome and so maybe some of the people in the crowd are thinking to themselves hmm jesus seems like a nice guy but what's he really doing to overthrow rome barabbas like this guy's on the front lines like maybe we should get him out of there and and it'll help us and and i think that for me in my life i can kind of liken this to am i seeking for spiritual salvation or a temporal salvation maybe in some ways in my life i have a choice between jesus and barabbas a choice between a worldly a spiritual approach with jesus and a worldly approach with pilate and sometimes my tendency is to just go with okay well great this is what the world is saying versus no no like there's something that's more important here even though i've got this kind of special goal my goal might not be focused in the right area how can i align that to jesus that's a little lesson that for me is always stuck out with barabbas um what are some of your paying jobs what are some of your favorite lessons that's excellent i had an experience just this just this last um this last month uh some people who who follow me on social media might know that i've just had to deal with plenty of um deaths lately and i i you know i'm a pretty happy guy uh just in general uh but it's been yeah it's been a it's been a load to carry and i it was someone a friend who was who was texting me maybe it was you john was it you that said even jesus yeah someone it was you even jesus had someone carry his cross for a while and that really struck me it really did i you know i i'm still not gonna let you help but it's still it struck me that there could be a lesson there of allowing someone to help you with your burden even jesus the greatest of all allowed someone to help him yeah and it's especially powerful thing like jesus created simon right like jesus is the creator of the world and for the creator to let his creation help him wow that's powerful yeah and to me that's it's very humbling uh because i know we we focus on being a self-reliant people right we are self-reliant self-reliant but maybe jesus wants us to see this moment of there are times when it's okay it's okay to hand this burden off and uh i've had awesome friends awesome simons in my life uh who have come to just take a burden away from me and it's been really beautiful makes me want to do that for others when i can well i think that uh the statements on the cross the the thing that is always uh to me i guess it would be the the pinnacle would it be is my god my god why hast thou forsaken me as if i didn't see this one coming uh and of all the people that i thought you know and elder holland has talked about this that the father was probably never closer but somehow so that his victory would be complete for that moment left and and uh so that he would even know what it was like to feel uh forsaken in such a a dark abyss type of of moment that's one thing and then the other thing that i just love to show my students because it it was a iai for me was when jesus said it is finished and then in in i think it's matthew 27 the jst down below because i always thought i was focused on the suffering and i always thought it is finished the it was about my suffering and he says it is finished and the jst adds four words thy will is done and i thought even then the savior was focused on doing the father's will and not even his own suffering but on doing the father's will and that part just makes me go wow because i think i'd be focused on my suffering and he was still focusing on doing the father's will and when you think about what he said pre-mortally thy will be done and now he's saying thy will is done wow what a moment um for that little jst forward edition just makes me go wow even then and then when he came to the the righteous in the new world first thing out of his mouth i've done the will of the father from the beginning i think wow you know one thing that i've i've um i've taught as the savior enters the garden of gethsemane i ask my students um when we see him he says to his friends my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death and i'll ask my students when have we ever seen him like this when have you ever seen him like this in our entire semester studying his life has he ever been someone to turn to their friend and say i am i'm so depressed i feel like i'm going to die i something you know something is happening and then he goes forward into the garden and he falls on his face and now i'm going to learn to connect this all the way to calvary that he's crying out god you know where are you dr hilton you said perfectly that we'll never we'll never understand it like it it's it's it's a it's outside of our scope of understanding but something is happening that is even kind of mind-blowing to jesus something is happening that he has never experienced before and i think it was elder maxwell who said even he with his unique intellect had it was outside of almost his scope of understanding and when it hits him it is he was so amazing yeah he was he was amazed and what would it take to amaze jesus right here's a here's a being who has seen a lot done a lot and yet he's going wow i am i'm kind of shocked by the by the weight of this so as much as we if someone says to me well what happened in there what happened i want to know what happened i want to know how in this amount of time this happened i don't know i don't know but i can tell you that it was enough to scare the most powerful the most powerful being that we know of it was enough to shock and amaze him i think that's a really tender point we talked earlier about people who are going through really intense struggles um we we've got the seven statements of christ on the cross and then the eighth from the joseph smith translation but in matthew and mark there's only one statement and it's the one that you mentioned my god my god why have you forsaken me and that's where it ends that's the end of christ on the cross there's no it is finished in matthew or mark and so i i think it's okay for us to linger a little bit on that despair the anguish falling on his face in gethsemane to know that when we are in a dark moment he understands he's been there he knows what it's like to be utterly completely alone i think that maybe our listeners might want to find elder holland's comments i think the talk is called and none were with him if that rings a bell and something else i just want um maybe our listeners to because it seems like in the gospel accounts the the the matthew mark luke and john um it's like they were written after the fact but jesus talked routinely about this is what i'm going to do and it seems only the women understood you know she's doing it for my burial right isn't that true when they and and it's like after the wait a minute he did say that and i think there's a couple of verses i just go wow where jesus says okay um let's go back this is a rough translation let's go back to jerusalem the son of man will be betrayed by the hands of sinners and will be crucified and he set his face toward jerusalem like okay let's go and i'm thinking i am jonah in that moment i am heading to joppa right uh they're going to do what to me and jesus is like let's go and i think wow look at the courage he knew he was going to be crucified and he set his face toward jerusalem and i think maybe it's important for listeners to know that maybe even as late as peter drawing his sword they were expecting more of a political deliverer it's definitely clear that there were different types of expectations for a messiah and at least among many jewish people they were expecting a temporal deliverer so jesus the suffering savior that's not the person they were expecting isn't it paul that talks about the to the greeks this is foolishness you don't have a god who dies that's not a god who suffers and dies what kind of a god is that right we have like an immortal god he's amazing he's like incredible a criminal dying on a cross like that's terrible that's so shameful that that couldn't be a god yeah well a couple of verses from the book of mormon that i'd like to add i remember one that uh i can i can still remember elder nilay maxwell some time when i was younger listening in general conference and having him quote this verse first nephi 19 9 and the world because of their iniquities shall judge him to be a thing of naught wherefore they scourge him and he suffereth it yea and they smite him and he suffereth it yea they spit upon him and he suffereth it and then because and i love this because i've often thought what helped him through it what was deep in his heart that was letting these people do this to him and it kind of answers it here because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men and look he loved us he's patient with us and then section 19 i have suffered these things for all that they might not suffer that is an incredibly loving message i would prefer to take this myself than to have you suffer isaiah 49 or first nephi 21 um zion hath said the lord hath forsaken me and my lord hath forgotten me but he will show that he hath not for can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb yea they may forget yet will i not forget the o house of israel behold i have graven thee upon the palms of my hands thy walls are continually before me so one of the one of the chapters in my book is called the loving christ and if it's okay hank and john i'd love to just make a free pdf copy of that chapter and put it into the show notes because i think that that that concept of a loving christ and how that helps build us a bridge with other christians is really important would that be okay can we put that in the show now absolutely if there's one thing that john by the way and hank smith love it's free stuff so we will we will take it and i know i've read that there's different meanings of that graven but i love to show my students the sign language for jesus when i read that which points to the center of the palms one after another i have graven thee upon the palms of my hands and this is something john had loved your thoughts on why did jesus choose to retain uh the one i thought resurrected beings were all perfect again one note on that verse i have graven thee on the palm of my hands the the thee is singular it's you it's not you all wow and that's i think that is a powerful moment he says i know you your name everything about you graven on the palms of my hands and i don't know all the reasons why the savior has chosen to retain his resurrection scars but i think that maybe one reason are because it's a sacred symbol both to him personally and to us of the love that he has there's the zechariah 12 reference where at the end of armageddon is that right what are those wounds in your hands

Channel: Our Turtle House

Views: 15,792

Rating: 4.8941798 out of 5

Keywords: Come Follow Me, John Bytheway, Hank Smith, follow Him, D&C, Doctrine and Covenants, CFM, Come follow me, Easter, John Hilton III, Dr John Hilton III

Id: FQJZysAsBdU

Length: 50min 39sec (3039 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021