Follow Him Podcast: Episode 30, Part 2–D&C 81-83 with guest Matthew C. Godfrey | Our Turtle House

welcome to part two of this week's podcast between 81 and 82 is april 14th 1832 and we've been talking about all these terrible things the church is going through but something really good happens on april 14th 1832 at least for me personally and i know john for you too uh a man uh i think it's uh two families joined the church uh the youngs and the kimballs what can you can you tell us a little bit about them matt so yeah in april of 1832 brigham young hebrew c kimball of the late kimball miriam young or baptized that by the way matt has has a little bit of impact on the church i just the future of the church wouldn't you say they're just a little just delicious yeah the great thing about this is that you know what happens in april 1832 is actually the culmination of a couple of years of work and so so samuel smith in 1830 goes on a mission he takes the book of mormon with him back into the eastern united states and he meets brigham young's sister rhoda who is married to john p green and he leaves the book with rhoda and john and they read it they're intrigued by it and they share it with others around them and so rhoda shares it with brigham it's shared with heber c kimball at the same time too heber's you know brigham's best friend and so that they become familiar with the book of mormon in 1830 in the fall of 1831 there's missionaries that come to menden new york which is where brigham and heber were living and they preach the gospel to them brigham and heber hear this they're intrigued by it and i think this is interesting because it kind of shows uh brigham and heber who they were as individuals so they hear the gospel preached evidently there wasn't a branch in mendon at the time or a congregation of saints at the time because brigham and heber after these missionaries have talked to them they decide well we need to go see what this church is like in action and so they travel to columbia pennsylvania um with their wives and they spend about a week there attending church meetings talking to church members again just kind of trying to see what does this look like in the lives of people who are actually living these principles and they like what they see what they see there now they like it so much that after brigham gets back from pennsylvania he decides that he's going to go up to canada where his brother joseph is because he wants to tell joseph about this and so he goes up there he tells joseph about what he's experienced and joseph young thinks yeah this this sounds great and so he comes back with brigham they come back to menden and um in the spring of 1832 brigham's baptized and like i said shortly after that his wife miriam is baptized as well hebrews kimball and valet kimball are also baptized around the same time so they're baptized in april of uh 1832 unfortunately not long after that brigham's wife miriam dies leaves him with two young children so he actually moves in with heber and valet they kind of take him in to help take care of the children and in the fall of 1832 heber and brigham decide that they want to meet joseph smith because they haven't met him up to this time and so they travel to kirtland and when they get to kirtland they're told that joseph's out chopping wood um in a forest and so they go out to the forest they see joseph there chopping the wood they talk to him as he's doing so and brigham young's later history says about this experience he said here my joy was full at the privilege of shaking the hand of the prophet of god and i received the sure testimony by the spirit of prophecy that he was all that any man could believe him to be as a true prophet and so this kind of launches brigham and heber c kimball on the path that they will take that like you were saying hank is pretty influential on the church um you know kimball's told when he's ordained an apostle he's told that millions will be converted at his hand and you can read that and say what millions you know that's that's just an exaggeration but then you think about all the people he baptized on his two missions to england and you think about all their descendants and i think that could very well run into the millions of people who are in the church because of hebrews kimball and brigham young we're actually starting a project right now in the uh publications division of the church history department where we're going to publish a collection of brigham's letters to the saints to kind of show you know why did people follow him what what was it about brigham that um attracted the saints to him and so as i've been going through some of his letters in the 1856-1857 time period it's interesting because you do get the brigham young who's kind of bombastic and kind of you know laying down the law but there are a lot of letters where he's just there's a much softer side of him where he's telling the saints you know um just just do the best you can and and don't worry about this and you know try to follow the spirit and so you can see from some of these letters that there is kind of a different side of brigham so i i would probably say you know read both of them and just kind of reach your own conclusions about brigham from them well i someone asked me the other day if you could sure choose any moment in church history to witness what would you witness besides you know the the the big ones i said oh let's knock out those the big ones i said i would love to see that moment that joseph smith and brigham young meet right because that's a coming together of of two people and heber c kimball who are um who are gonna change history uh and impact all of our lives so i'm glad we i'm really glad we mentioned that um so they don't meet when they're baptized they meet later in the year well matt let's let's go into the the uh text and the content of section 82 maybe first you could tell us specifically what who's this revelation for and where and then we can get dived into the text yeah so this revelation comes at a council of high priests and elders that joseph smith holds in missouri in april of 1832 it's a council that he holds specifically because the lord has told him in what's section 78 in the doctrine and covenants the lord told them you need to go to missouri and you need to sit and counsel with the saints there and so joseph and sydney newell k whitney jesse gause actually accompanies them on this trip too they go to missouri and they have this council of high priests and elders and what joseph is supposed to counsel with the saints about is this establishment of an organization that can supervise and manage the publication and mercantile endeavors of the church and so they talk about this at this conference and section 82 is revealed to joseph smith in this conference and i think there's really kind of four main components of this revelation so the first part acknowledges uh the necessity of forgiving other people and the importance of doing that and that stems from a very specific incident that has occurred prior to this revelation being received so when joseph goes to missouri in july of 1831 when he first goes there and he gets the revelation that that's where the city of zion is supposed to be he's also told in that revelation that edward partridge who's the bishop of the church he's supposed to move to zion and he's supposed to supervise the purchasing of land and the distributing of inheritances and as edward started to think about what land to buy in jackson county he and joseph got into an argument about this and they apparently were arguing over what parcels of land were the best to buy edward wanted to buy certain parcels joseph and oliver cowdery thought that there was a different area that was better suited for the church and so they have i think a pretty heated argument about it um as a side note if you're reading in section 58 in the doctrine and covenants there's a couple verses in there where it talks about edward partridge needing to repent and those verses are referring to this disagreement that he and joseph have so they have this disagreement and sidney rigdon believes that edward has insulted joseph smith in this and so after joseph and sydney go back to ohio in the fall of 1831 sydney actually procures charges against edward partridge for insulting the prophet and there's a council that's held in missouri in march of 1832 where they consider the charges edward is very penitent about it he says according to the minutes of this meeting that he feels sorry for the argument he has ever since it happened and he hopes that joseph can forgive him of this and it seems like joseph was able to forgive him but sydney wasn't and even after this council is held sydney still just can't put this behind him and so at this council of elders that's held in april of 1832 joseph takes edward and sydney and essentially helps them to reconcile with each other and to forgive each other and so when you have these first initial verses in section 82 talking about the necessity of forgiving the importance of forgiving it's related to this disagreement that edward and sidney rigdon have been having for quite some time and their reconciliation for this uh matt i remember reading in uh the no brother joseph book there's an essay on joseph smith's ability to forgive almost to a fault uh that he was just so quick to forgive and that's interesting sydney sydney's still upset and he wasn't the one he wasn't the one being yelled at right yeah yeah joseph he always i i think some of this stem from the fact that joseph had kind of a quick temper and sometimes when his temper would show he would always feel bad after and he'd always go and apologize to the person and so i think because joseph recognized that he needed forgiveness at times i think he was very willing to extend forgiveness to those around him so the the second part of the revelation is this instruction to form the united firm this organization to supervise uh the mercantile and publishing endeavors and the lord says in this section you know he lists by name the nine individuals who are supposed to uh be the members of this united firm and it's interesting when you look at the nine individuals who are named each of them has a very specific stewardship over something in the church so you have the six men who are the members of the literary firm the six who are the stewards over the revelations in addition to those six you have uh the two bishops in the church so edward partridge and newell k whitney who are responsible you know edward for purchasing land in missouri newell's responsible for keeping a store in kirtland and then the ninth member of the united firm is sydney gilbert who again is the one who's responsible for the store in independence so so you can see very clearly why the lord says these are the nine that need to be the ones coordinating these efforts because they're the nine that had the responsibility the stewardship over publishing and over uh the church's storehouses and the lord tells them in this uh in this section in this revelation the lord tells them that they need to bind themselves together and he's speaking there i think both in terms of you know kind of spiritual binding together but there's also a very practical temporal binding that he's talking about here where he wanted them to enter into a legal bond with each other so that each of them were responsible as a collective whole for you know the mercantile and publishing endeavors and so they do that there's we have minutes of a meeting of the united firm that's held after this where they say that william w phelps is supposed to be the one to draft this bond this legal agreement that they're supposed to enter into and i think that's important kind of as a backdrop for the verse that i think many church members know from this section and that's where the lord says i the lord i'm bound when you do what i say but if you do not what i say ye have no promise and so i think as the lord's kind of telling them you know i want you in a very real practical sense to be bound together i think he's telling them too and you need to realize that yes i don't enter into a legal bond with you but i am just as bound to do what i've said that i will do as you are bound to do what you say that you will do legally after you've entered into this bond and so i think that's that's important to consider just how serious the lord takes it that when you do what he says he has to bless you he's bound to bless you for those things um which kind of reminds me you know when king benjamin's talking in uh to the nephites in mosiah and he talks about how you know you can never get out of the lord's debt because whenever you do what he says he blesses you and those blessings just multiply over time and so you're always going to be in the debt of you know our lord and savior jesus christ and our heavenly father because of that that's great matt is there's another verse that i think a lot of people have used to kind of beat themselves up and that's verse seven and i wonder how much of verse seven we can say was specific to this context um this has been a throw up your hands verse for some of my students well look if i sin again all the former sins return and i'm probably going to sin again maybe in the near future and uh well it sounds like i have to be perfect did you have a is part of this specific to this situation uh or do you know what i'm asking yeah so yeah it's interesting because for me i i kind of read that verse not so much as a verse of discouragement although i can see how you could read it that way but as a verse as to where the lord's saying you know essentially in verse six he's saying you know there's no one on the earth that's doing good everyone's gone out of their way but he's saying but even with that you know i forgive you when you repent i forgive and just you know go on with your life and do the best you can and i'll be there always willing to forgive when you repent um so i don't know if the former sins has a specific application here if they're you know if the lord's telling sidney rigdon and edward partridge um you know if you can't put this behind you yeah if you get in another fight that the former sin returns i and in fact i don't even really know what that would mean i don't know how how that would work maybe he's just telling them look in order to build the city of zion you need to be unified and if you can't be unified with each other if you're going to keep fighting with each other you're never going to be able to create that unity maybe it's something like that that the lord's saying here yeah i have a completely different uh thought on that john than than students who hear that going oh all my sins come back and i think we've i think we've probably taught that wrong in the past as teachers saying well if you sin again all of those sins come back i think there's a warning here of of this idea of don't go back to you know don't go back to your sins what does um paul say we return to our sins like a dog to its vomit the savior gives a a parable in matthew chapter 12 about a man who who gets rid of an evil spirit but doesn't fill his life with other things his house with other things and all these other evil spirits come come back so i wonder if the lord is saying here i'm not going to forgive you stay away from sin because if you go back to sin all your bad habits will come back all of the you know don't don't let that happen instead of i'm going to hold you accountable again for every other sin i would love to see that that taught differently i because john i don't think that encourages i don't think that's a very encouraging thought is it that well you repented you did really well oh you did it again all your former repentance is it's like it never happened right that's a discouraging thought yeah that and that's why i like what you said the the the parable you referred to is in is in the footnotes there it's a it's a good thing to read along with that and uh and i i'm thinking of visiting mosiah 26 and as often as my people repented i forgave them and it's as we talked about in a previous podcast you repent relentlessly right and i hope this isn't uh discouraging when you think well i'm probably gonna sin again aren't i well yeah probably and so will i but look look how merciful the lord is and i i like the first part of it i will not lay any sin to your charge go your ways and sin no more and and i think he knows we will uh that we'll make mistakes but provision has been made for that as well anyway i yeah i do wish we could teach that better because i don't want that to be a discouraging verse yeah and oh how frustrating for for anyone but especially a teenager who is trying their best to stop whatever habit they have and eventually i think you're right john you just like i can't i can't i i give up right i'll take the telestroke kingdom because i just can't you know do this so um well it kind of it kind of makes repentance sound like a one-time thing i think that's why it can be scary it sounds like it's that i gotta i gotta do this one time because if i if i don't make it this one time and live perfectly thereafter it's all for naught it's all gonna come back and that's why i think it's a can be a scary verse for some john i think you're right here that there are so many other verses in the doctrine covenants and other places in scripture where the lord talks about how quick he is to forgive and to forget our sins um that this verse if someone someone were to use it as hey if you sin again you're now guilty of all those former sins i think that would be taking this verse out of context and be doctrinally incorrect i would like to believe this is more about um you can sin and still be loyal to christ and relying on on christ uh as your savior and i think returning maybe to a sinful life is maybe a different thing than committing us in and i i'd like to believe it's more about loyalty to christ than living morally perfect which none of us can do and won't do for the rest of our lives and i think that that is taking everything else into context uh with this yeah i wonder if he's almost saying something like but unto that soul who stops repenting you're you're on the wrong track right keep repenting maybe going back to a book going back to a sinful life and it and if you take this and con and this is what i love about having the standard works we have so many places to look to get an overall picture of things and not take one verse and make it the whole gospel right or beat ourselves up with it we take a lot of verses and put them all together and the one that i mentioned let me grab my my uh book of mormon go to mosiah 26 30 and i seem to remember in a in an institute manual it it actually put this verse and that verse together and and said uh you know look look at them together and see what you think so let's see mosiah 26 30 a and as often as my people repent will i forgive them their trespasses against me and ye shall also forgive one another your trespasses uh that that verse verse 30 is awesome in fact the student manual the book morm student manual says every young person should have this verse memorized as a source of hope yeah so if i had to pick one i might pick this one but i also don't want to think i can deliberately sin over and over and maybe when we put these two together we can get some some wisdom with that with a little inspiration very good very good yeah i like this idea of you know one single verse cannot cancel out hundreds of other verses about the lord's forgiveness well i think a third kind of large theme that comes out of this is the importance of kirtland ohio in the scheme of things and how it relates to the city of zion so the lord says you know in this section starting in verse 12 and talking about how this united firm would be managing these mercantile and publishing endeavors both in zion and in kirtland he says in verse 13 i've consecrated the land of kirtland and mine own due time for the benefit of the saints of the most high and for a stake to zion and so kirtland at the time you know if you're looking at what the church looks like at this time you have a large body of saints who are in missouri trying to build the city of zion there but you also have a large body of saints who are in kirtland and then you have throughout the eastern united states you know smaller congregations what what we would call branches that exist but the two main locations for the church are in kirtland and in missouri and when the lord first told the saints that they needed to go to kirtland back in january 1831 and what's now doctrine covenant section 38. he said that kirtland would be a temporary place for members of the church to stay until the lord identified where the new jerusalem was um well the new jerusalem of course has been identified at this point it's in jackson county where a lot of the saints are but the lord also told the saints in doctrine and covenants section 51 that he had consecrated kirtland for a little season until i the lord shall provide for them otherwise and then in september of 1831 another revelation section 64 the lord says that he would retain a stronghold in the land of kirtland for the space of five years and so you kind of see you know over time that the lord is regarding kirtland as a fairly important place for the saints to gather and here he says it's supposed to be a stake of zion it's supposed to be something that supports the building of the city of zion in jackson county and so we see this play out um throughout the church's history that there remains kind of these two locations of where most of the saints are living in the united states up until 1838 and that finally you know in 1838 because of persecution dissension other things going on in kirtland you know joseph smith is forced to flee kirtland and he comes over to missouri and that kind of leads to an exodus of the latter day saints from kirtland and so they're there you know roughly for about seven years that a large body of saints are in kirtland which is a little longer than the five years that the lord said in september of 1831 but not a great deal longer than that so you kind of see the playing out of this that kirtland does serve as a support to the building of the city of zion for a number of years um and then you know the saints gather to missouri of course everything happens in missouri that you know you'll you'll be talking about later and then the saints end up in in the navy area but i think this just kind of highlights the importance of kirtland and the lord's plans so for from 1831 through 1838 we've got two centers yeah of the church and it's not a short distance between the two that's the thing you can't shoot an email over to edward partridge saying hey do this i think we've talked about this before john but if it's like hey we need some direction from joseph on this we'll send a letter and maybe a month later a month two months later we'll get an answer that's interesting matt when you said that five years that gets you just past the dedication of the temple yeah right yep maybe the lord's like that's what we needed yep jesus keys are there we can move on well and it kind of shows that you know the lord really is in charge because he's commanded the saints at this point to build a temple in jackson county which they never really get started on but it's not going to be until you know december of 1832 that he's going to tell them to build a temple in kirtland as well and what's one reason why they need to build a kirtland or a temple in kirtland because the lord knows what's going to happen in jackson county they're not going to be able to stay there but they're going to need a temple they're going to need this endowment of power that they get in the temple um so it's just interesting to see how everything kind of unfolds so that was verse 13 you mentioned that i have consecrated the land of kirtland in my own due time for the benefit of the saints for a stake of zion it's not it's not zion itself it's a stake of zion yeah and then verse 14 for zion must increase and then we're speaking of not just a state of being but we're speaking of missouri there right yeah yep yeah and it's strengthened and it's interesting too because sometimes people talk about you know this period of time um and when the saints are in clay county about you know the stake in zion but there's no stake in zion z zion is zion and the stakes are the locations outside of zion that support it's building up that's it's an isaiah word isn't it stakes yeah enlarge her borders and you and the stakes and that's how we get this that's why we call them stakes today is yeah from these revelations which i would think come from the idea that that isaiah brought long ago yeah you can kind of think of zion as being the tent and so the settlements in missouri are the tent and then these other congregations of saints are the stakes that help support the tent and keep the tent in place matt are these nine are they all gonna stay there in missouri no so some of them are in missouri some of them are in ohio so joseph smith of course will be in ohio he doesn't move to missouri until 1838. sydney rigdon will be in ohio newell k whitney will be as well uh martin harris is in ohio as well and then you have edward partridge sydney gilbert john whitmer oliver cowdery and william w phelps are all in missouri okay but that's one of the kind of interesting things about this united firm that's set up is that it not only so kind of get getting ahead a little bit the united firm only lasts for about two years and then it's disbanded in 1834 in section 104 in in the doctrine and covenants but for those period of two years when it existed not only was it managing kind of the church's temporal affairs but it also kind of served as a de facto board of directors for joseph smith you could say and what i mean by that is that whenever joseph wanted to get information about what was going on in missouri he would send letters to the members of the united firm in missouri and so you can see that joseph considered this administrative body as being a little bit more than just responsible for you know purchasing goods for the storehouses or overseeing the the printing operation he considered those men who are in this organization to kind of be the leaders of the church and so you know he's writing to edward partridge and john whitmer and oliver cowdery and and others to get intelligence about what's going on in missouri and so it really does kind of serve as kind of a key leadership organization for the church for about two years okay until we get uh that's about the time that the 12 come in as well yeah so it disbands about a year before joseph establishes the quorum of the 12. um but what does happen is in february of 1834 just a couple of months before the united firm is disbanded joseph establishes the kirtland high council and the high council actually starts to take on more of the responsibility for supervising temporal things um so it's really the kirtland high council that kind of fills fills the void of the united firm that's interesting you can kind of see this they're dealing with it but the church is going to grow so they're going to have to adjust you know adjust the who's in charge of what and how and then it's just going to do it again and then it's going to do it again yeah i love to see it i love to see it grow and i love to see them adjusting is there anything towards the end of the section that's that stands out to you as um i mean he does talk about them being equal managing their stewardships for the benefit of the church improve upon your talent right um every man seeking the interest of his neighbor which is something we already touched on earlier you know about how important it is to serve those around you and this is kind of also explaining how the united firm was supposed to work and so just kind of briefly they were hoping that when they published the compilation of joseph's revelations that they would be able to sell those that those would generate money that they could then use to purchase goods for the storehouses of the church now the storehouses could be used like members of the church who were poor in a need could go to the storehouses and get goods there but it was they were also you know for-profit stores as well and so they would sell goods to people too and so as they sold goods in the storehouse they hope that would generate money that they could then use to help support the printing efforts so it was kind of this symbiotic relationship between the two which never actually really worked out that way which is one reason why the united firm was disbanded because once the saints are kicked out of jackson county um in 1833 they don't have the storehouse there anymore but they're still responsible for the debts that they entered into to buy the goods for the storehouse and they don't have the printing operation um as well and so that kind of throws a wrench into the whole thing the united firm falls into quite a bit of debt and that's why they decide to disband it in 1834 um but then the other thing that that's important for this is that the idea was that if there was anything um any profits that were created through these things that were not needed for the poor and the needy or to run these storehouses or the printing operation that those who were members of the united firm could draw on those to support their families because they really were i mean their full-time job really was the church at this time and so that was the other hope that somehow by doing these things they could provide for the necessities that their families had and you know by managing their stewardships wisely i do find it interesting too in verse 22 where the lord says make unto yourselves friends with the mammon of unrighteousness um where i think he's basically saying you know we have a church here you have to have money to operate the church and all of the different things that we have going on and so you're going to have to go out into the world uh you're gonna have to at this time get some loans for things because the church just doesn't have the money to to fund these things and so he's telling them that it's okay to do this at this time because they need funds in order to make this all happen okay so it looks to me like if you look at section 83 still in missouri section 84 he returns back to kirtland so this trip to missouri gives us these two sections 82 and 83 so what's 83 all about so 83 also kind of has its roots in the law of consecration and trying to define further what would happen to a woman whose husband had consecrated his property but had been died and also what would happen to uh children who were orphaned how they would be taken care of by the church as well and we don't have a lot of good background behind this section what we do know is that the couple of days before this section was given to joseph smith he had traveled from independence to kaw township in jackson county which is about 12 miles away and he had gone there because the colesville saints so saints who were from colesville new york had moved to kah township and many of these individuals were joseph's good friends people who had supported him almost from the beginning um like the knight family and and others now it's possible again we we don't know this for sure but there were at least a couple of women among the saints in cot township who were widows so phoebe crosby peck and anna slade rogers both of them their husbands had passed away and so perhaps in kind of associating with them joseph had started to wonder yeah what what would happen if somebody consecrated their property to the church and then died what would happen to their widow to their surviving spouse and you have to remember that in the 19th century at this time women did not have a lot of rights essentially when they married they gave up all their rights to property to their husband um if their husband died they had what was called a dowager's right which was a right to a third of the property but that was essentially it and if you think about it when the law of consecration is revealed in section 42 it doesn't say anything about what happens you know if if someone who's consecrated property has died and so you'll note that when this revelation begins section 83 that the first verse says verily thus saith the lord in addition to the laws of the church concerning women and children and so he's kind of saying in addition to what i've already told you in section 42 let me clarify a few things here and so then he goes into the fact that if um somebody dies that a woman can still have right to that property that's been consecrated to the inheritance that has been given and that all children have claim on their parents for their maintenance until they are of age but essentially that those who you know children have a claim on their parents and if you don't have parents if you're orphans then the storehouse of the church and the church would take care of you in those conditions so i see this as kind of like a very practical revelation kind of dealing with how the law of consecration works and how the church should take care of those who are widowed or orphaned at the time that's one of the main reasons why the law of consecration is given to take care of the poor and the needy and the lord seems to constantly be reiterating to the saints that you need to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves that that's really what it means to be a saint to have charity that you look out for those who need your help it seems like you wrote the the come follow me manual here matt it says what do you learn from section 83 about how the lord feels about widows and orphans do you know anyone in this situation who would benefit from your love or care i remember when my sister um her uh her husband uh made some decisions that took them that he left and i remember her saying i you know i she didn't want help she kept saying i i don't need help from the church i'm fine i'm fine and i said in a way i know that your husband's not he didn't pass away but he's of he's not helping he's gone he left you are you could be considered a widow so when i read this i also think of just of of single mothers right not maybe that their husband has passed away but their husband has walked away and that we need to be there i mean how many single mothers are there in this church that are um that are doing it all right that are raising kids on their own working as well and how how we could we could support them is um i think is is i would think is crucial to the chur to the lord what do you what do you what do you both think about that i have two sisters that are single mothers and i and they got backbones of steel and hearts of gold they are just something else i think one of the things that is so crucial is you're a single mom and you have boys to be able to take them to church and have the boys see uh see uh men at the church that are um committed and that are striving to live the gospel so that they can look and see uh role models if if dad is gone they can be strengthened by that and see uh to model what manhood might look like for them i think that's a wonderful thing that the church can provide is a sense of community when sometimes there's uh something missing in family so i'm glad you said that when i think elder cook just talked about that in this last general conference um where he talked about bishops and yeah and he talked about you know his own experience where his father wasn't active and they moved to a new new place and uh or a new ward and a member of the bishopric when a father and son's outing was coming up you know invited elder cook to come with him to that yeah that's right and that you know that had a great impact on elder cook that this man would care enough about him to try to do that and then he talked about how not long after that this member of the bishopric passed away at a you know at a pretty young age and then his family benefited from other uh leaders and others in the wards stepping in and and helping uh him to raise raisins children as well beautiful yeah this to me is is you don't have to look very far i don't think for a a single mother or a child who needs an adult figure in their life to to bless them i can't imagine uh anybody listening today going i don't know any of those right i remember my like i said my sister she did not want help and i had to i had to somehow convince her that this is why we have these fast offerings for people like you right and she just she said no i'll we'll be fine we'll be fine and i said this is exactly who it's for the storehouse shall be kept by the consecrations of the church and the widows and orphans shall be provided for right that's exactly who it's who it's for um so sometimes part of this is allowing yourself to be served by the church well there there were times when i was a bishop when i i didn't offer things i just told people things we are taking care of that uh and uh cause i i felt inspired to because some people who would never ask for any help um really needed it but wouldn't would feel so uncomfortable asking if i just kind of had to step in and say uh we're taking over yeah oh we want to help you here so that was that was some of the joys of being a bishop when somebody was so faithful and and didn't want to ask for help but you knew they needed it and you could step in and say let the lord's storehouse help you and maybe if your family doesn't look like the the perfect family that you don't that maybe you feel like you don't belong in the church right when there's only one parent there and you you absolutely do that's what this that's what this is about matt i'm glad you brought that up it does seem like a practical type thing well what are we legally going to do oh i wanted to mention one thing and see what you thought he says in verse 3 if the woman the the widow is not faithful they shall not have fellowship in the church right they're not going to be in the church they chose to leave it but they get to keep their land um i i see in that verse the lord saying we're not going to force anybody to stay in the church by threat you know well i can't leave the church because i'll lose my land and the lord is saying no no no we're not going to do it that way there is no force to stay in the church for this woman who you know perhaps might leave it and to me that is uh that's a testament to the lord's love of agency uh he won't force anyone is that am i reading that correctly we all i mean i'll just say for me i need to remember better that my relationship to the church has no bearing on my value in the eyes of my heavenly father that he loves me regardless and always will love me no matter what it is that i do i get asked quite a bit you know how working on the joseph smith papers has affected my testimony and sometimes when i'm asked that question i think the assumption on the part of the person asking it is that it's had a negative effect on my testimony um and actually nothing could be further from the truth i grew up in a family where history was present my father has a phd in history my mom has a master's degree in history um and so joseph smith in history was just kind of always around me but i felt like i didn't really know a lot about joseph smith until i started working on the joseph smith papers and i've spent almost 11 years now working on the on the project and it's just been a real privilege to be able to delve that deeply into joseph smith's life i've learned a lot about joseph as a person about joseph as a prophet and one of the things that i've learned is that joseph really wasn't that different from you or i um i think sometimes we think that this great prophet of the dis of this dispensation was just in constant communication with god and he certainly had you know grand visions like the first vision and the visitation of jesus christ to him in the kirtland temple just really just extraordinary spiritual experiences but i think those were the outliers and that most of the time he was getting revelation the same way you and i get revelation to his mind and to his heart and he had to struggle at times uh in moments where he was asking god questions and god wasn't giving him answers and he had to kind of do the best that he could until the lord saw fit to reveal more to him and so that's made joseph smith a much more real person to me and it's increased my admiration for him tenfold because i just look at myself and i think if i was in that situation right now and was trying to establish a church and lead a church at the same time that i'm just trying to deal with normal ordinary life i don't think i could do that but joseph smith could and of course a large reason why he could is because the lord supports those that he calls and and puts in in those positions but i just i my love and respect for joseph smith has just grown so much and i look forward to the day um you know when i pass on from this life and i hope i can meet him i hope he'll think that we've been fair to him with the joseph smith papers that we've depicted him in a way that is accurate to who he was as a person and i just i know now more than ever that he was a prophet of this restoration and that the lord did an extraordinary work through him thank you so much thank you i just uh i i personally i love the joseph smith papers project not necessarily because i'm going to read every page of those massive books uh but because of um what would he say in section 89 uh because of evil and conspiring men we're gonna do the joseph smith papers project so you can know him you can know him who he was and and who who what his character was john how did we get this lucky how did we get this blessed to do this hank i i think about it all the time this has totally changed my doctrine of covenants and i thought i'd read it before but every one of these sections now i've got notes all over and and it's really helpful i think i've got a better backdrop of the history and that helps but i'm constantly reminded how young these people were in this restoration and and as matt was talking about the personal responsibility you must feel matt i hope joseph feels we've treated him fairly i'm like wow yeah cause you're part of the getting these papers out and but i'm so glad matt that you are you're seeing that his um character come through and uh and i love the project too and thank you very much i really enjoyed this i've learned a lot too from both of you i a lot of great insights so i just really appreciate it that was a lot of fun we want to thank all of our listeners uh we this would not be happening without you and it seems like we're we're gaining more and more of you so welcome to our audience we're grateful for you we want to thank our executive producers steve and shannon sorensen um we have a great production crew john and if we don't mention them we would we would be very um uh because they do the work uh we have the easy fun part yeah yeah david perry does so much work on this podcast lisa spice i i i yeah i can't i can't tell you i just wish i could i could somehow just list off all the things lisa spice does for this this podcast jamie nielsen in social media kyle nelson uh who who just donates so much of his time and energy to us will staughton who has to hear the long versions of these and and edit them and and we love him and uh we have maria hilton who works on our show notes and our transcriptions so just uh we we love our team and we want to thank them and we hope all of you will join us for our next episode of follow him [Music] you

Channel: Our Turtle House

Views: 11,886

Keywords: followhim, followhimpodcast, follow him podcast, churchofjesus christ, church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, ourturtlehouse, our turtle house, hank smith, john bytheway, forgiveness, doctrineandcovenants, doctrine and covenants, comefollowme, come follow me, gospel study, scripture study, fhe, family home evening

Id: 4UVGV_W5LfI

Length: 54min 11sec (3251 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021