Follow Him Podcast: Episode 14, Part 2–Easter with guest Dr. John Hilton III

welcome to part two of this week's podcast let's move forward now uh dr hilton i i've heard you say this before that we often jump from friday crucifixion to sunday resurrection um and we skip saturday but you like to talk about saturday why i i love saturday because it's in the middle right so you've got yesterday's tragedy and tomorrow's triumph but now we're in the middle and i feel like so much of our lives metaphorically speaking is saturday right we something bad has happened maybe it's going to be resolved we hope it's going to be resolved but it hasn't been resolved yet so i i love lingering for a moment with the women at the tomb this is huge this is not a little thing because so often when people are going through tragedy we talk about the future it's gonna be okay because such and such i know we mean well uh but for me personally who is who has seen a lot of difficulty over the last six months um i i'm not overly concerned about the future like i believe too i'm with you i i believe that the future is going to be great my concern and my pain as long and along with i know many others is not that we don't believe it's it's in the right now the right now is hard and if we don't stop and say the right now is hard i think we can be too quick to just tell people it's gonna be okay it's gonna be okay is that what i'm hearing yeah exactly so i mean think about moments that we we almost gloss over entirely like taking christ's body down from the cross what did that look like what did that feel like mary magdalene's there mary the mother of jesus is there what's in their hearts they go to the tomb he's buried what's running through their minds and and i think a key is that they don't leave town they stay near the tomb and they come back sunday morning um so is it okay if we move to sunday now john i was someone who would just have five minutes of silence on the podcast and just let us all kind of let it just marinate no um so so as we as we go to sunday i don't know exactly how everyone wants to approach this but i do want to kind of throw out a resource that's changed the way i view the resurrection and it's doing a side-by-side study of what matthew mark luke and john teach about what happens at the garden and beyond the garden tomb and beyond and i um i i know that you both have studied this quite a bit and it's interesting that although the the core message is the same in all the accounts right the tomb is empty women are the first witnesses jesus is alive there's subtle differences that maybe when you start to notice them bring out these great insights and spiritual nuggets that at least i had never noticed before so so again in in the show notes i'll give you a side-by-side handout that you can use i think this would be a great family home evening or a good sunday afternoon study time to just kind of carefully read what are the little subtle differences and similarities in these accounts and what do i learn from them because there there's so much i know we'll spend some time unpacking it right now but even if we had three hours devoted to this segment we couldn't really unpack all there is to offer in matthew mark luke and john's teachings of the resurrection in fact let's start unpacking um because one of my favorite things to show my students is that in the gospel of mark in the original gospel of mark you never see a resurrected lord um if you go to the end of the gospel of mark and you see the women are there at the tomb now i've i've heard something john and you can tell me if this is incorrect or not but in jesus's day women could not be legal witnesses yeah so there are there are restrictions on women in terms of their ability to testify in public court settings and here the savior i think does it on purpose maybe to show listen here are going to be my first witnesses i think elder talmadge said uh that jesus christ is the greatest defender of women to ever live right and this is one indication that he doesn't care about um the the legality of a woman's witness he is going to those are going to be his first witness is a group of women but when you get all the way down to 16 8 it says this and they went out quickly and fled from the sepulcher for they trembled and were amazed neither said they anything to any man for they were afraid you can uh look right there that is the original ending of the gospel of mark um it just ends right there talk about a a bad ending um and it might be a good ending for some you know i've heard a lot of new testament scholars say no this is good because but for me personally i like a nice tie the bow ending and this is a leave you hanging ending or you're going what happens what happens right and almost as if um mark if you if you were red mark or heard mark read to you you might say i got to know what happens right it was almost left as a cliffhanger it's almost i i've always thought what if we did this as missionaries we did a kind of a gospel of mark approach and said joseph prayed and in the light he saw to find out more please go to we'll come back next week and share with you yeah like what what did he see what did he see so it's almost as if mark is kind of leaning leaving them hanging there anything on the gospel of mark john that you want to talk about so i one thing that i think really is interesting and i don't know if this is intentional or not but but throughout the gospel of mark there's several times where jesus does a miracle and then he'll say don't tell anybody about it and now here at the end the young man at the tomb tells the women go tell people about jesus and they don't tell it's a reversal and i wonder if it's meant to be sort of a literary irony right and now it comes to you and me the you and i the reader we are left in the tomb that's where that's where we end and mark we're there and it's kind of like okay well if the women don't go tell who's going to tell who's going to share the message who's been along for the ride the whole time me so am i going to now keep the secret or am i going to go spread the good news of jesus so i love that short ending yeah it does seem to not be a i would say john i don't think this is a mark condemning these women he's he's um using a literary device here right uh because i'm sure these women eventually told a lot of people matthew's gonna highlight that for us um yeah so see right every every gospel is gonna give a slightly different portrait but i think especially in mark and i like how you said that it was probably heard mark was most likely a performance right people are hearing mark not reading it and so now that dramatic note i think actually is a powerful witnessing moment for me as a disciple to say okay what am i going to do it is i just i when i if i watch a movie with a bad ending it leaves me uncomfortable maybe that's the whole point to leave you a bit uncomfortable uh and say you gotta you better go find out more you better yeah there's there's more to this than you realize instead of tying it all up nicely mark was most likely written first right john so let's go to the matthew account which has its basis most likely in the gospel of mark you know one one little subtle difference so we we were just talking about the women at the tomb if you look in verse 8 matthew 28 8 it says they departed quickly from the sepulcher with fear and great joy and did run to bring his disciples word i love that phrase they did run hank you're a runner john i don't know if you're a runner i only run if i'm being chased which is rarely so you're a swimmer but it but think about like i mean if i had this kind of news to share how fast how far could i run and i can almost feel the adrenaline uh in these women as they're running to share the good news of jesus christ and maybe that like that's something for me do i metaphorically speaking am i running to tell people about jesus christ am i hiding my light in a bushel i'm like oh yeah well this weekend you know i did this on friday i did this on saturday and and i don't talk about church because i i'm not running metaphorically speaking to tell people the good news yeah do you feel like you have good news because this was this is good news this is good news this is change your life news and i've got to tell you um and then uh it seems like the author of the gospel of matthew is saying let me give you a little bit more than mark gave you would you agree that he's saying okay let me let me uh those of you who are reading my account of things i'm going to give you a little bit a little bit more which to be a first century reader would be really fun um to to get an you know a second account it says that jesus meets these women and tells them that they he is going to meet um his brethren which i assume to be the apostles in galilee which is a three-day journey away from the tomb and that's how matthew's a little bit a little bit different um in in my point of view in that you have him appearing we're gonna go ahead and look at luke and john here in a second but he's in jerusalem he's around that area appearing here it's go to galilee go back home and i'll and i'll see you i'll see you there so that's i don't know that they're going to go back home anyway but to go back home having the anticipation of he's going to appear is is a is a beautiful idea let's go home then let's take the journey you know as we think about the fact that they came and jesus tells the women directly go tell my brethren it's interesting that the message to the apostles is coming from these women that christ is commissioning and oftentimes we think that revelation always comes from the top down and it is true that we are led by a prophet and we need to follow the prophet's counsel and teaching 100 at the same time in the history of the church sometimes great ideas have come from other sources right aurelia rogers has the inspiration to start the primary program and she takes her ideas and shares it with the president of the church and then it becomes the primary program that eventually we know and love today the welfare program also started as a steak program and then it came up and came to the whole church so this is this happened so and i just think it's okay for us to pause and and reflect for a moment that christ's original message as a resurrected savior is to women and and that's important and he's calling them to be witnesses to his apostles hmm i think that's a beautiful idea and i oftentimes i think we like to take latter-day principles and ideas and kind of force them onto the past when we can be comfortable that things weren't exactly the way we have them today the end of the gospel of matthew it doesn't seem to be focusing on wow he's resurrected it seems to be focusing on the apostles go go teach right almost as if this fact that this person came back from the dead is just a side note to the commission to these um to these apostles in fact i think in the in the mtc as it was redone a few years ago there is now a beautiful big sign in the mtc with the great commission of matthew 28 uh go ye therefore and teach all nations um is do you think the god the author of the gospel of matthew has this in mind because um the first century christians needed to get out there and spread that message and so he's kind of telling them that yeah that's a clear emphasis right we've got to spread the good news and right after that so so as you called it the great commission there in verses 18 and 19 and then in verse 20 at the very end he says lo i am with you always even to the end of the world and i think that's a powerful message to go along with the idea that when as we're sent out to preach the gospel jesus is with us always and he's saying that even as he's bidding them for well he's right like all right get out of here go teach the gospel but i'm always with you and actually if you remember the very beginning of matthew in matthew chapter one when it talks about christ being born it matthew refers to a prophecy from isaiah saying that his name shall be emmanuel meaning god with us so here now at the beginning and end of matthew there's this message jesus is with you and i love that to think about us on the great commission sharing the gospel we're not alone the master of the vineyard is laboring with us oh yeah that's that great jacob five reference right um and you guys both know my personality and how odd i am but i often tell my students well when i was on my mission people would ask why can't you just leave us alone great believe what you believe i'll believe what i believe why do you got to come knocking on my door and i think as a as a 19 year old i was oh i'm so sorry or so it didn't mean to disturb you we'll we'll go our separate but i think now as an older as an old man i would say something like listen i don't want to be here either but you take it up with him because this is he asked me to matthew 28 go ye therefore and teach all nations so if you're if you are have a problem with this i i honestly wouldn't say this but if i in my mind i would be thinking if you have a problem with this take it up with him because it's his commission to his followers go and teach go and spread the gospel so um i i think as a missionary if a missionary is maybe hearing this they might have confidence in in what they're doing that you are following the master's commission to go and teach and yes some people might be bothered but he didn't say that he didn't say go and teach all nations but don't apologize when you bother them yeah he was he was this is a straightforward message i love where this is going now i i'm excited to see uh when i when i saw and they did run it it uh i don't know it just reminded me of in the book of mormon when jesus was with him and then he said i'm coming back tomorrow it says there were people who are up all that night to gather others to be in the place where jesus said he would appear on the morrow and i think if you knew he's going to be here tomorrow and you didn't have a phone or telegraph all you had was your curl arms and cool moms or your horse how hard would you get around the coupons kid let's go we gotta go tell everybody i love just the idea of how hard would you work to make sure your family was there so i like that yeah that john that is such a good idea it reminds me of uh luke 2 right and the shepherds made haste yeah right let's go let's go tell everybody okay let's turn our sights on the third account let's go to the gospel of luke where luke adds a story he says something very similar to both matthew and mark if you read in luke 24 he talks about uh the angels the tomb the women he adds a little piece of information that we don't get in matthew and mark and that's in verse 12 about peter himself hmm going to the sepulcher uh but then we get a whole new story um that we haven't heard before before we go to the news story if i can just highlight um one one little question in verse five that's also unique to luke it's the phrase uh why seek ye the living among the dead is the question that the angels ask the women and i i know that you both have been to jerusalem several times and uh we all enjoy going there when i was living in jerusalem i would love to go to the traditional place of christ death and resurrection and i i remember the last day i was so sad i was like how am i going to keep coming closer to christ when i'm back in america you know and it's not the same as living in jerusalem and this was the line that came to my mind why seek ye the living among the dead jesus has risen we i mean i hope that we all get to go to jerusalem like it's a fantastic experience but we don't have to walk where he walked to walk closer to him now and and just that idea that he's risen and we don't need to seek him in jerusalem per se i mean great if you get the chance but we can seek him now in our lives i think that's a a little powerful question that the the angels bring out here in luke oh john you've really touched my heart there um one regret my father passed away this last month and uh one regret regret i have is i i never got to take him to jerusalem we had always talked about it and uh he was a caretaker for my mother so you just healed my heart a little bit there that we don't need to see jerusalem it is a beautiful experience but we don't need to see jerusalem it reminds me also of a woman who said that she was sitting at her young daughter's uh uh grave side and uh she felt the the holy ghost speak through in the words in the voice of her daughter to her uh i am not here don't seek me here if you want to be closer to me go to the temple go to the temple that is that is where i i am and so i i like that i like that um this idea of that christ is very much alive and very active uh in our lives and in the church so luke tells us this story that we don't get anywhere else it's one of my absolute favorites um in scripture i say that a lot about scripture but it really is it really is one of my absolute favorites and that's the road to emmaus uh what do you what do you want to talk to us about you both of you this is an important one to me personally because we have this uh one of the biggest uh pieces of art in our house was jesus on the road to emmaus and my dad loved to show us what the artist did and uh and then tell us the story how he drew near to these two men walking and they didn't their eyes were holding it says they didn't know who he was and they were have you a stranger around here have you not heard what's been going on and then jesus opens up the scriptures and tells them everything and and uh when he when he leaves he is like well come and eat with us i can't remember exactly what they said but uh they they say abide with us and i've always thought does the hymn abide with me come from that verse abide with us this even tide and and so we sing that but jesus leaves and then they say did not our hearts burn within us as he walked and talked with us by the way and we love that in our family for that reason alone but i love when that recognition comes hey wait a minute who was that and our hearts burned we felt something while he talked with us and uh and i don't know if we even know uh who those two disciples were is there another gospel that speaks of these two and gives them names no there's there's only one named here his name is cleopas and then the other one some new testament scholars have said it's got to be luke i don't see any evidence for that but i have heard that uh that that the other one might be luke what what say john hilton yeah same same was same with you said we don't know who the the second person is some people have maybe suspected that it's a female disciple as well we just don't know for sure i love this story as john said they are walking uh and it's a long walk right we're talking you know there what if you have your footnotes with you it used to be in kilometers uh but then someone said why don't they just speak american uh and i think it says what now uh seven miles is that's a long walk i don't know about you guys but uh that's in steps i guess we're now talking in steps we're talking you know and this is this is going to be 20 000 steps um so it's going to take a couple of hours and i you know jesus is there with him they don't know that it's jesus i i love that i hope it comes i hope it's a standard feature in all resurrected bodies the ability to be have other people's eyes holding i've joked with my students i hope this just isn't a jesus upgrade uh because that would be i would spend the the first half of the millennium just scaring my friends right you two i'd be so what did you think of your friend hank right and then and then they say well he wasn't my favorite see it was me the whole time i told you but my favorite is that they say he says why are you why are you both so sad and they say do you live under a rock right uh jesus of nazareth that's the greek right the greek is that yeah yeah there's a loose translation from the group i've read the papyri and yeah it is do you live under a petros yeah um so there are there are some jokes that only we will we will get um but uh they said and this tells me that everybody's talking about jesus right they're saying there's no the only stranger that doesn't know about this you don't know about this this is a big deal uh and then they make this statement and maybe you guys um stop me if i if i skip something you want to look at but they lost their faith in verse 21 we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed israel right and to me this just speaks volumes and i'll ask my students what's wrong why did they lose why did they lose their their faith in in jesus and usually the students will say something like he didn't do what they assumed he would do the political deliverer thing right they they had some made they had made some assumptions or had some expectations of him that he did not meet and when he did not meet them instead of challenging their expectations they they doubted him and i see this happen so often with friends students and others who lose their faith because they set up an expectation for god or for even joseph smith or they have an expectation and who knows where they got it these men probably got this from tradition they were probably taught this at some point they probably maybe even had read the scriptures and had made this assumption from reading scripture i don't know but it was a bad assumption and my favorite part about this is that the savior takes he says that beginning at moses i assume they mean genesis he takes what we would call the old testament and opens it up to him and he corrects their assumptions using scripture and i have asked my students if you ever feel so inclined and i have done this i'll say something in my own prayers lord if i if i have a an assumption or an expectation that is just false it's just will you help me correct it as i study the scriptures uh and i'll tell you both that it's happened there have been times where my own personal expectations for things i remember one student said i just don't know if i believe in god anymore because i'm not married and i said um where where did you get that ex he said don't you think if god loved me i'd be married by now and i said no like where does that say in the scriptures when thou reaches the age of 20 and six if thou art beloved thou shalt be wed right it does not say that anywhere and i said where did you get that expectation uh and he was really great about it he said you know i don't know i just i guess i just made it up well i i think it's i think john has already talked to us about it there there is the law of retribution in the old testament the law of the harvest in the new and we talk about those all the time but there's a saturday in between right and concerning the marriage thing just just talk to me about it i was way into menace to society territory before i got married but and i'm thinking about the beatitudes were so interesting because it was blessed are the present reality for they shall be and there was a future possibility and he sent them all home in the middle of their saturdays because uh and so i liked that idea and i think that we all have that idea of law to harvest but there's some patience required in the middle and that expectation i know that our friend sherry dew said once that if all that were required for getting a husband were fasting and praying and going to the temple i would have nephi's lined up at my door she said and so there again is a an expectation um so i i like that idea of we're we're in the saturday i'm gonna remember that for a long time and and i think just like a helpful like quick expectation reset is to go through our scriptural heroes right so abinadi super faithful burned at the stake mormon works his whole life to protect his people he's murdered moroni lives the vast majority of his life completely alone so there should be no expectation that if i'm righteous everything's going to work out jesus himself yeah right jesus himself um look at his life there should be no expectation of i live the gospel and i get everything i want right so speaking of jesus though this is one of the things i think is so cool about that verse you pointed out in verse 21 we had hoped he was the one but i guess he wasn't and they're losing hope in the very moment jesus is with them yeah and and how often maybe is that true for us right like i'm like i'm giving up like i don't feel connected to god here i'm right here right now yeah and so if any of our listeners are feeling that we had hoped maybe not i testify jesus is walking with you now he's there and maybe we can't feel him maybe heaven feels distant sometimes but that does not mean he's not there yeah so many times and i don't want to say this is an all the time thing but whenever i have talked to a a friend a student who is struggling has doubts often i'll say often not all but often it is based on some sort of expectation they have um they'll say something like i just found out that the book of mormon has had changes in it and i said yeah i i knew that too that's awesome right and they had an expectation that somehow if the book of mormon had changes it wasn't true a woman said to me once and it really was a soccer mom we were at a soccer game and she was a mom and she came up to me and she said she said brother smith don't you think if the church were true it would be it would be bigger and i said what do you mean and she kind of thought thought it through and explained to me and she said don't you think it'd be bigger and i said um well that's not what i see in the scriptures you know and i talked about you know nephi saying i saw you know many are called few are chosen i saw the saints of god and they were few uh just so often we we are we're basing our faith on bad expectations and i think when president uchtdorf said doubt your doubts i i don't want to put words in his mouth but to me i hear analyze your expectations right analyze those first before you doubt your faith uh and it's it's been something that's worked um worked for me and i think i am so typical of these guys when it all gets worked out they say we knew it the whole time right did our hearts not burn within us i never doubted for a second right i was i had it with me the whole time by the way jesus vanishes again i hope that is standard resurrection body uh ability don't you guys like if i can change my appearance and vanish i will have a wonderful a wonderful uh afterlife i just i will i will spend the first you know few millennia just doing those things i want to highlight it in chapter 24 verse 36 so as the disciples are now eating as you mentioned earlier hank in jerusalem jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said peace be unto you and and you can look at these next few verses as far as a proof of jesus having a physical body in the resurrection and that's a powerful point i also just love that at least in english we see the first word jesus says is peace and when the angels announce christ's birth to the shepherds they say peace on earth so from the beginning his birth here in the resurrection everywhere in between jesus wants us to be at peace and i love that message why is john so different than the other three gospels matthew mark and luke and then you have this well here's all brand new stuff yeah so i think uh 93 of the gospel of john is unique to john and so you're right there is a difference in uh early christian fathers were talking about this and and suggesting that john was aware of the earlier details being recorded and so john wanted to write a spiritual gospel kind of having a different focus in the gospel of john we see jesus portrayed a little bit differently he's more divine he always knows what's going on for example in the garden of gethsemane if we are watching a video of it we almost always see judas betraying jesus with a kiss and that happens in matthew and mark but in john jesus takes control of the situation and as the guards approach he says who are you looking for and we see a jesus who's in complete command and i think john wants to maybe highlight some of the divinity of jesus christ that maybe isn't as fully fleshed out in matthew mark and luke yeah i've also noticed that you get a lot of up close and personal accounts of jesus in the gospel of john where you get a lot of sermons in in both mar or both matthew and luke you get jesus in one-on-one conversations with nicodemus the woman at the well with his own mother with pilate uh here in the resurrection a lot of one-on-one conversations let's jump into the resurrection then as a told by john uh and since we have two john's here now we're on a third john this is overwhelming for me uh but what do you both see in the resurrection account as given in the gospel of john in luke chapter 8 we see that mary magdalene has seven devils inside of her and jesus cast them out and i don't know exactly what it means to have seven devils inside you but it's clearly not good right and i'm definitely not saying it's mary's fault right and it could be something spiritual emotional it could be a physical ailment who knows but the point is it's not good i like i like this um having seven devils in you is not good not good a message from the church of jesus right like i think we're safe i think they're on the safe side on that one so then jumping ahead to john chapter 20 um as jesus appears first to mary magdalene and it's john chapter 20 verse 16 she's remained at the tomb after peter and the other disciple have left and jesus saith unto her mary and she realizes it's jesus and so to me that is a great message of hope so if here's mary with seven devils in a low difficult state now she's the first human witness of jesus christ and it's hard to think of a higher spiritual state or calling or opportunity than to be the first human witness of a of the resurrected jesus that's amazing and so i i love that story to see mary magdalene go from a dark place to a beautiful place and that's a message of hope for those of us who are feeling like we're in a dark place right now oh that is really nice you know um john teach us about verse 17 so jesus says uh mary she turns she knows who he is her whole life changes in one word and it's her name um i've always had i shouldn't say i've always had when i was in primary i just really hated the fact that jesus could not or that mary could not touch don't touch me don't touch me in fact i really i i remember pressing my primary teachers on this why why can't she touch him we don't know hank just don't ask anymore i'm like no this is a problem what is he like a like a a cake that if you touch him he might collapse like what's the problem why can't she touch him we don't know hank we just know that she can't uh john teach us become my primary teacher from long ago and tell me about verse 17. well i mean we can first look at footnote 17a the joseph smith translation changes it from touch me not to hold me not which has a really different connotation and it would be interesting to be a filmmaker i love the chosen series i can't wait till we get to this part in the chosen i wonder how they'll choose to film it for all we know they've embraced for some time and now jesus is saying like okay don't hold on to me i've got to go in and actually i think we can tie this back to what you said of expectations mary has maybe some type of expectation in her mind jesus you're back you're going to stay with me now and jesus says well well don't hold on to me and in fact if you think about it in john this is the first post-resurrection teaching that jesus gives don't hold on to me and maybe we can see in that i've got a different vision don't don't put me in your box right i've got a bigger plan i've got some ideas and it's going to be amazing yeah have you ever i asked my students this have you ever been in a hug where you're hugging someone and they say they say hey i gotta go now and you say okay and then you just keep hugging them right uh you know you're going off on a mission or going away to college or something and your mom is just hugging you and you're saying okay i gotta go okay right and they don't let go uh and we don't know first we don't know for sure the images but but that we don't know for sure what the image is but what you just said hank that that resonates with me i i feel like that's more what we're seeing rather than uh can't touch this kind of uh yeah yeah hey mary you gotta let me go i know you don't want to but you gotta um okay let's keep going john gives us a lot on the resurrection tell me tell me more uh what you see in this last uh chapter and a half one of the things about john 20 i feel like we've had so much fun in this podcast talking about hey can we be a little bit easier on martin harris can we be a little bit easier on sidney rigdon can we be a little bit easier on thomas i just it's almost like this is too good to i really want this to be true but until i see him i mean that's how i i'm kind of feeling like maybe the poor guy no it's doubting thomas for the rest of eternity i mean for rude that's not the jst we call him doubting thomas now i mean and we don't we don't talk about denying peter you know it's just somehow poor yeah in john 11 thomas says we're gonna he's gonna go to jerusalem he's going to die let's go die with him how come we don't call him die with him thomas brave thomas courageous courageous thomas yeah maybe we identify with the doubting side instead of the i will go and do side i don't know um but i wonder with people if we remember them for their highest moments or their lowest and and what would we like to be remembered for you know and and so if we're going to do unto others let's let's remember unto others as we would like them to remember unto us to massacre an old phrase and this and this goes i think for me personally it goes with people in the past uh that we love so oftentimes we love to judge the people in the past uh for their lowest moments they're not even here to defend themselves right they can't even make a case for themselves uh and we can choose to say you know what i'm gonna remember you for your your high your high moments i'm going to at least try to be charitable in that way and one other quick thing if we were to go back to luke chapter 24 11 when the women come back and say hey you know jesus is risen it says for all the disciples are saying their word seemed to them as idol tales and they believe them not so thomas isn't really unique right and saying like oh i'm not going to believe i mean everyone else was also it's kind of like what you said with the people that admits like oh yeah our hearts were with us we knew the whole time right but yeah but here we're seeing in john this kind of highlight that that thomas doesn't know so he's singled out in a way yeah when jesus says uh you know thomas blessed are you because uh blessed are they that have not seen and yet believed jesus probably isn't talking about the rest of the apostles there right because they're like oh that was me that was me the whole time he's going no none of you right they all you all thought it was idol tales thanks for bringing that up john yeah you know one little thought before we go on to 21 is so jesus says thomas blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed and then the narrator says the things that i've written these things are written that you might believe jesus is the christ the son of god and that by believing you might have life through his name i think a lot of us have heard elder mcconkie's last testimony where he says i won't know any better than in a coming day when i kiss the lord's feet than i know now of who jesus is and maybe we felt like wow that's elder like that's elder mcconkey that's that's an incredible level i could never get there recently president m russell ballard said that every member of the church can have an apostolic like witness of jesus christ and the in doctrine and covenants section 46 we'll be there in a couple of weeks the very first spiritual gift listed is to know through the holy ghost that jesus christ is the son of god and that he was crucified for the sins of the world so i hope that as we read john 20 and hear these experiences that we don't just think oh yeah that's for them or that's for the super high level people president ballard said we can all strive for an apostolic like testimony of jesus christ and i hope that that's i mean the author of john is telling us that right these things are written so that you'll see and believe hmm that is that is just absolutely beautiful john i i love john's admission i think it is in ch back in chapter 20 where he admits we did not know look at chapter 20 verse 9 for as yet they knew not the scripture that he must rise again from the dead what seems so obvious to us was not so obvious to them and even probably even in writing it after the fact they make it even more obvious in their writing than it probably was i find in my new testament class i have a frequent guest speaker by the name of elder jeffrey r holland and he joins us via video of general conference he tells this wonderful story of kind of adding some backstory to this maybe and of peter saying i don't it's been great but i go fishing and they say okay we'll go with you and uh if you haven't seen that go find elder holland talking about that he says there i think he said at the beginning there's not a group i identify more with than these apostles or that i feel more sympathy for trying to figure out how to what are we supposed to do now i i don't know that was amazing um i go with fishing okay we'll go with you and then he says and they caught nothing he says something no fisherman ever wants to admit they caught nothing and then he calls them children in verse five and kind of repeats an event that had happened when he first met peter um so i i love that uh find find the talk so we can share the reference because the first great commandment i want to say october of 2012. and one other little paraphrase that he does in there is he basically says peter why are we having this conversation again right like i've already called you one time and sort of the message is if you've had an encounter with the risen lord your life is never going to be the same and i think that that's true for us on other levels right like if i'm doing church right or if i have a powerful spiritual experience i can't just go back to how things were my life has to be different jesus is calling us to do something new i can't tell you often i've shared this with my uh students who've returned from missions and sometimes just kind of go back to old habits and old ways and old music and back to the boats and yeah and i think the lord would stand at the edge of the sea going what what are we doing what are we doing yeah uh and i think it's elder holland in the same talk who says listen um you're gonna leave these nets a second time and go change history don't act as if that didn't happen or if it's oh well you know it's over now um this these these what does he say these 11 fishermen go on to change the world in which we now live and they do they they are the messengers from here on out uh what do you think about this conversation between jesus and peter that he asks him three times about about do you love me what do you think john well one of the things that we often will focus on is the three times peter denies jesus and now these three times he's kind of affirming his faith in jesus and i mean i i love that idea it's it's also kind of amazing for us to just step back and say this is so cool that they're even having this conversation back in mark chapter 16 where we began one of the things that the young man specifically says to the women is go tell peter and we're just thinking like of course peter's going to be the chief apostle like of course you got to tell peter but imagine that you're hearing this story for the first time the last time we heard about peter before the resurrection is when he denies jesus three times and then he's out of the story line so you and me as the original readers if we've never heard the whole story we're probably thinking like wow too late for peter he's kicked off the lord's team right you know you deny him like you're gone but how amazing that jesus is saying to peter i think in essence with these three questions you're still on my team and i love that for me because i'm i'm peter right i'm a disciple who's trying and i'm nowhere near as good peter is but i'm still failing all the time and jesus is still saying hey don't worry you're on my team i need you come feed my sheep come work with me i love this i love this because there are uh people who feel like a major major mistake disqualifies them forever and and peter's mistake um you know sometimes people say oh it's a commandment oh it's a mistake we don't need to go there we can do that at some other time but if it is a mistake it is a big one um and you might think that's it right and i remember president hinckley talking about this he said i those of you who have fallen by the wayside or made a bad decision or you know done something you never thought you would do i hope you'll take comfort from peter who rose above this and became a mighty witness of the risen lord so i think another message from this is um that you you you cannot be disqualified from from the lord's work if you want to be come back in how forgiving and wonderful is he to welcome you back in um and let you move forward so the very last verse in the book of john many other things which jesus did that which if they should be written everyone i suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written and so in that i try can you can you make room for another testament of jesus christ i mean that's what i want to say could it be possible to make group for another one but i also know that we have what's critical and essential and we have enough to exercise our faith in in the lord jesus christ so i i like that and i'm i wish we had more at the same time i have a question for both of you just about easter um we've been just diving into the scriptures here for the last few hours and i have loved it uh but i love to just sit back for a minute and and talk to talk to me about what you know in the in the come follow me manual uh the principle the very first principle they list is just three words long jesus christ lives talks about the witnesses the many many witnesses of his resurrection that we've had including joseph smith's in doctrine covenants section 76 what in your lives has the knowledge the witness of the risen jesus done for you i like to tell my students this is a big deal a belief in the resurrection is a game-changing belief it's not uh well i believe i believe you know pineapple belongs on pizza that's not a game-changing belief but a belief in a resurrection of jesus christ this you know jesus of nazareth this man from history that is a a life-changing belief and it's a big one this isn't a little belief i heard you teach a class on the resurrection one time and you pointed everyone to the bible dictionary entry under miracles where it basically says if you believe in the resurrection then every other miracle ceases to be improbable you know if someone who believes in jesus said to me will you really think god flooded the earth do you really think you know jonah spent three days in a whale i'm not sure whether those are symbolic or not but to the idea that they would say well that's kind of outside the realm of of you know scientific explanation i'm going wait wait wait do you believe in jesus yeah do you believe jesus was resurrected yeah okay once you believe in the resurrection of jesus 14 year old boy having a vision receiving gold plates that's nothing right that that's that's actually right in line with that belief right the guy walks on water i think it was um dr mike mckay who who gave me this great statement he said if you look at all the scriptures you should never look for jesus in the likely you should look for him in the unlikely because everything he does is unlikely and the story of joseph smith and the other things we've talked about this year are all in the realm of unlikely but not out not for him uh tell me what the belief in the in the resurrection is done for you both so for me the first thing that comes to my mind is my grandfather john hilton the first who passed away about a month before i was married and i was close to him he lived in provo i was going to school at byu he met my then girlfriend now wife lonnie before my parents did like we were just close and tears were shed and their sadness at the passing of a loved one at the same time i realized that i did know that the resurrection is a true principle i did know that i was gonna hug my grandfather john again and for me a knowledge a deep seeded knowledge of the resurrection is one of the best things in our lives to bring peace that we we know at the out front jesus wins we don't have to worry about everything that's going to happen between here and the end of the game because ultimately jesus wins and it is going to work out and for me that just brings so much peace john i know uh your mother passed away recently just uh in january right um talk about the the resurrection uh and easter for a minute if you would yeah sure um i was saying to she passed away it was in december so it was just another aspect of 2020 uh that in my personal history that i'll think of along with earthquakes and everything else but but yeah she uh um it was one of those one of those times when uh do i have a testimony or don't i and coming from deep inside me was i do because cause uh i'll have my mom again and she was a one of the most saintly people ever and i'll have my dad again and um so we would not be here we wouldn't be talking about any of this if it weren't for that event uh what would we if jesus had remained in the tomb would we be here having a podcast oh what would we even it would just be another person in history that maybe said some interesting things um like other philosophers but look what happened he actually appeared again for the first time ever and take all the philosophers and great thinkers of the world but did any of them ever come back and have many people see them and then you see you start reading the book of acts what happened to these apostles because they are like i don't know to me it's like they are different people they are fired up they are power they are fearless after this and you see what happened well what happened was the savior was resurrected and i thought if we could reset the holidays i think easter would be bigger than christmas and that's not up to me but easter should be a lot bigger christmas is oh boy it's coming but easter is look he did it he did everything he said he was going to do and uh so yeah i do have a testimony that that tomb was empty and because of that i'll have my mom again i'll have my dad again we will all have our loved ones again because jesus rose from the dead john that is i don't think you can overemphasize what you said about um the apostles i i remember listening to a new testament scholar he was a believing new testament scholar and as you all know not all new testament scholars are are believers believers and but they're they're they're very brilliant people who we love to learn from um but this believing new testament scholar said give me another explanation for the lives of these apostles right that if if jesus hadn't been resurrected why in the world do they go back to jerusalem the very place where everyone would know he wasn't uh to teach go to galilee go go to india go somewhere else if you wanna if you wanna go and you know and profess this uh this this fake event don't go to the very place where he died where people could actually produce a body where they could you know they could produce uh witnesses uh so i i just think this is the lives of the apostles to me as someone who loves to just think logically at times at times um is the lives of the apostles is to me a massive evidence of the resurrection that you there is no other explanation for right you might say well they did it for fame they they all died um they all were martyred they all left their families to teach right there's no fame in this as john said before would you want to stay in jerusalem where the chief priests have people killed to believe like you do right and the government did you want to go back there and they were fearless and as we see there in john peter got a hint of the kind of death that he would have yeah and uh yet he's a fireball after this and he is the rock jesus called him the rock long before all of this happened but boy he lived up to that didn't he you know this has to me this ties so well and you guys can help me with this this ties so well to the story of the book of mormon um my friend corey andrews and i we were on a church history tour once and we started just talking about the comparison between the savior coming out of the tomb and the book of mormon coming out of the stone box and there you know there are so many comparisons that you can make but just like the savior coming out of the tomb and the book of mormon coming out of this stone box um you know both have 11 witnesses we have the eight and the three and we have the listed 11 apostles we have a woman named mary who sees jesus we have mary whitmer who tells her story uh right there's just so many you know just fun parallels that you can make with that story but both are a game-changing belief a belief in the resurrection changes your life the next one is a belief in the book of mormon and the restoration changes everything they're both really game changers and i think we can tie this together beautifully uh that they are both yeah unlikely but they're both true um and uh to me it's it's absolutely um not just wow but it's also it touches my heart as someone's who's been like you said john just losing uh losing someone you know before losing um someone i loved to the other side uh easter to me was was candy uh and it was you know springtime which i love you know get the weather gets warm and uh but now easter to me has taken on a new [Music] a new um uh just a an all-new meaning it's not a holiday it's now a holy day uh because of what it represents that will happen for all of us the christian doesn't just say christ lives he says i shall live right um and i to me just to me that it it it what did uh what did i think it was stephen harper or tony sweat who told us with just a couple of swipes joseph smith cut through theological gordian knots right um and to me this is one of those that that one of the questions through all the ages of time is you know job's question yeah if a man die will he live he live again and then job awesomely says uh what what do you say though this worms destroy this body in the flesh you know i will see god he had a testimony of resurrection before it had happened we've had a long discussion today uh and um it has been uh just so uplifting uh i am i am grateful that that those who had not heard of the name john hilton the third before now know it because i've known it and had and had that you know friendship and just that strength of character and testimony in my life for a long time and now a lot of people do um john as a scholar uh you you you know only write to latter-day saints but you write to what is called the academy um and you do into your prolific at both everyone at byu knows that john hilton can produce scholarship and devotional work unlike anybody else really unlike anybody else someone is as brilliant as you and you believe i just want to know more about that for me i think it really goes back and is deeply rooted to the book of mormon my grandfather that we've talked about a little bit john hilton the first he did wordprint studies after he retired he became a statistician at brigham young university some of you may have heard of wordpress it's basically statistical analyses that show that the book of mormon was not authored by joseph smith i definitely would not base my testimony of the church on word friends right but like i grew up hearing about word prints and chiasmus for my grandfather it was all really interesting and and i actually found that there's a lot of intellectual basis for a testimony right the lord will speak to us in our minds and in our hearts but much more than word prince and cosmis and other little you know kind of intellectual proofs of the book of mormon i remember when i was 18 years old my what were then called home teachers came to my house and they shared a quote from president benson where he said if you seriously study the book of mormon a power will flow into your life and so i decided to take that invitation up and and to seriously study the book of mormon and my life did change i felt the power from god flow into my life and so the intellectual proofs are nice but ultimately it's a testimony of the book of mormon as the word of god that has fueled it and really been it's kind of a cliche but it's really been the key stone of my testimony because if the book of mormon is true then you know joseph's best of prophet because why would you have a false prophet translate a true book that just doesn't make sense and if joseph smith is a prophet then the church he started is true because why would a true prophet start a false church and if the church he started is true then it's led by a living prophet today and so for me everything then is centered on the book of mormon and because it's the word of god i can have confidence in everything else that cascades from that john by the way uh another episode of come follow me is in the books tell me how i just like to know how you feel at the end you always make me feel good oh phil i feel great i i was thinking we have some pretty tender feelings close to the surface um all of us surrounding recent deaths and things and when i was in the holy land of just a really fine i believe protestant gentleman said something so interesting outside the garden tomb he said you know you can go in there you won't find jesus in there he said but if you come out bring him out with you and introduce him to some of your friends he said a lot of people want to leave him in the tomb and i just remember thinking that is what a lot of the world has done that oh the whole resurrection thing that was a myth he was a great moral teacher but he's probably still in some tomb somewhere and i like the way that he said and that's i mean it reminds me of something similar a lot of people want to leave the baby jesus in the manger and leave him the baby jesus instead of the one who grew up and started to teach and then someone to leave him in the tomb and i don't know i just it's been a fun uh couple of hours to talk about as you said this game changer that he's not still in the tomb and he's risen as he said i just love it my friends thank you for joining us on this episode thank you to dr john hilton iii and thank you to our producers steve and shannon sorensen thank you to our production team david perry lisa spice jamie nielsen thank you all so much for your help we hope you come back next week and join us on another episode of follow him you

Channel: Our Turtle House

Views: 11,689

Rating: 4.845614 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: _52Cy-kYdTo

Length: 61min 2sec (3662 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021