The following transcript is intended to aid in your study. However, while we try to go through the transcript, our transcripts are primarily computer-generated and often contain errors. Please forgive the transcripts’ imperfections.
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Segment 1
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I just have to read the intro from the Come Follow Me manual for this week's episode 'cause it's awesome. It says this, in the miserable heat of August, 1831, several elders were traveling back to Kirtland from the land of Zion in Missouri. The travelers were hot and weary, and tension soon turned into quarrels.
It may have seemed like building Zion a city of love, unity, and peace was going to take a long time, unquote. Now listen, as soon as I read Miserable Heat. I knew exactly what they were talking about. Growing up in Missouri, I can remember that miserable, humid hair won't go straight. June bugs darting at your head, sugars in the grass and bites on your legs.
Summer heat. I can also remember the never ending shades of green from all the trees. The way the humid air smelled the lightning bugs at night, girls camp testimony meetings, and that youth conference heat. That to me, my 16-year-old heart was indeed Zion. Today's discussion of doctrine and cabinet section 64 through 66.
We get to discuss what it takes to build Zion, and thankfully it doesn't include heat. Unless you don't repent, then it's gonna be really hot. Welcome to the Sunday, on Monday Study Group, a Deseret Bookshelf plus original, brought to you by LDS Living, where we take the Come Follow Me lesson for the week, and we really dig into the scriptures together.
I'm your host, Tammy Uzelac Hall. If you're new to our study group, please follow the link in our description and it's going to explain how you can best use this podcast to enhance your come Follow Me study, just like my longtime listening friend, Laura s Scen. Hello, Laura. Now my favorite thing about this study group is each week we're joined by two of my friends.
Sometimes it's just one, and this week is one, and I am so honored and thrilled to introduce you to Steven Harper. Actually, I should say Dr. Steven Harper 'cause you earned it. Hello, how are you? Great, Tammy. Thank you very much. Oh, it always makes me a little nervous because my brother, who's a real doctor, says I have to, there's a minimum threshold I have to at least be able to take out someone's [00:02:00] appendix before I should be able to be called doctors.
So I'm not there. But. Okay, well, well, you know what? I'll give you some, some grace on that one though. It's funny 'cause my doc, my daughter wants to be a pediatrician and I was thinking about getting my PhD and I said, you know when I get that you're calling me doctor? And she's like, no, I'm not. It doesn't count.
And she say she's 17 and she already has an opinion. So it comes with a territory. Okay, listen, for those of you who are listening, you just have to know this about Steven Harper if, because. Here's what I love about him. First of all, he's very awesome and kind. We did a little event together at Deseret Book and that's when I met him and I asked him to be on the podcast and he was so gracious.
He's like, yeah, you bet. And I said, okay, well what sections in all of the doctrine cabinets do you want to talk about? And it blew my mind 'cause I would've expected him to say Section 76, which is the Degrees of Glory, or Section 88, which is the olive leaf, like just the big chapters. And for me, when he said 64 through 66, I'm like, what even are those sections?
And so I can't wait to hear what you have to tell us, but here's what you wanna know about him. He's a professor of church history at BYU. He was the executive director of the Wilfred Woodruff Papers, which as you remember last week, our guest, we had Christie Wheelwright Taylor on, and so she is all about the Wilfred Woodruff papers.
For six years he was the managing historian and the general editor of Saints I. For 12 years, he was the volume editor of the Joseph Smith papers, which we refer to often, and he has several books. But the one, his most recent book I highly recommend is called Wrestling with the Restoration, why This Church Matters.
And I'm actually gonna ask him that question when we're done today, why this church matters. So stay tuned for that answer. But are you ready to have this discussion, Steven? I'm, I can't wait. Oh, this will be so fun. Okay. If you wanna know more about him, check out his bio and you're gonna want to, 'cause you get to see maybe, hopefully a fun picture of his family, his wonderful wife, Jennifer, who I've met.
And she is lovely. I, I tried to talk her into coming on this podcast, but [00:04:00] she is, she respectfully declined, but she would've been awesome indeed. Uh, you can, you can find that bio at lds living.com/sunday on Monday. So grab your scriptures. Let's go to section 64 through 66 and grab something to mark your scriptures with and let's dig into these sections.
Okay, Steven, right out of the gate, tell me. What did the Holy Ghost teach you as you prepared for this discussion? That is a fun question I've been thinking about, and there are a couple of things, nothing earth shattering, but I've been reading a history of Amish Christians while I've been contemplating this visit with you, and I've also been learning a little bit more about moral foundations theory and things like, uh, that, that are related to that.
We don't have to talk about the details of that, except what has happened is while those things are in my mind, I've seen things in section 64, 5 and six that I hadn't seen before. Wow. Um, and maybe I could say I've felt things that I haven't necessarily felt before. So Section 64, as you know, has the Lord's Law of Forgiveness in it.
And, um. I know that law, I could have, you know, paraphrased it pretty accurately. I could have done a clinical job of teaching it. Mm-hmm. But, uh, learning about the Amish, and especially about this tragic, um, event that happened years ago in a town in Pennsylvania where, um, some, uh, kid, the Amish kids were at school and a gunman came into the school and, uh, sent the teachers and the boys out and then killed several of the girls.
Mm-hmm. And the Amish, these are Amish children and their parents and members of their [00:06:00] community immediately with, without prompting, without having to be told and, and without any, there's, there's no public there. They didn't do this for PR or anything else. Their immediate concern was for the gunman and for the family of the gunman.
And they were at the home, uh, of that person offering comfort and, um, you know, what we would call ministering. They were, they did it immediately. And, and while they were so, so deeply grieving, and this is forgiveness in action, and I think I still and many people, uh, are, are sort of in, yeah, okay. In theory, I accept the Lord's law of forgiveness.
I, I am required to forgive everyone and he will forgive who he will. He, he's the one with whom I'm tole judgment. Yeah. Uh, I, I get that and I can explain it, but again. What I've been learning is I've got to go to a whole other level with that if I am to really grasp what the Savior can do for me, right?
A, a heart that holds animosity and grudges and so forth is not a healed heart. It's not someone who's taking full advantage of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm grateful for that lesson. I, I, I haven't certainly learned that all the way, but I've had a great experience preparing, um, while preparing for this.
It's been impressed on me in a different way. I'm grateful for that. So, wow. Thank you for making that relative connection to our day in your scriptures. Next to section, section 64, go ahead and write [00:08:00] Law Lord's Law of Forgiveness. Let's title that so that we can remember this really brief answer from you.
Steven. I just wanna know, why did you choose these sections? Well, you cannot go wrong in the doctrine covenants. Um, this every section is a problem solution, right. Of some kind or other. Mm-hmm. So, um, it's like a mystery. It's like being a detective. And when you figure out what the problem is and then see how brilliantly the Lord is addressing it and solving it, it's, it's endlessly interesting.
So you could, we could pick any sections have a lot of fun, but one reason is because these ones, it's, it's sort of the very reason that you noted, right? Well, these are just mundane ones. These aren't the rock stars in the book. Yeah. And then what we can notice is that there are no mundane sections in the doctrine covenants.
So, uh, these ones have an interesting conflict running through them. Uh, certainly 64 does, and conflict's always interesting. Uh. Especially, especially it's when it's in other people's lives. I'm eager to study it and, uh, see if I can find clues and, uh, insight truth for my own life to help me manage my own conflicts, inner conflicts inside me, and interpersonal conflicts as well.
Oh, that is awesome. And that's what makes you a historian. But I love when you said, I love to understand people's conflicts and find out what's going on. 'cause then I'm like, oh yeah, I kind of like that too. But probably more on like a penny, penny way. Getting into the nitty gritty, like, Ooh, what's going on?
So this is gonna be a fun discussion of these sections. So let's do this. We are gonna, in the next segment, we are just gonna dive into section 64, just verses one through 25 and see what we can learn about the conflict and why the Lord felt like it was so important to talk about forgiveness. We'll do that [00:10:00] next.
Segment 2
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All right, we are in section 64 and Steven teach us verses one through 25. Okay. This is, uh, we're in danger here of going three hours on the next 25 verses, so I'll try to, I'll try to be efficient, but my students, when we study the doctrine covenants, we mark them, we annotate the sections, and one of the ways we do that is, is we use colored pencils or highlighters to highlight different kind of text.
Doesn't matter, you speaking my language matter. It doesn't matter what colors you use, but one of the things we do is pick a color and dedicate that to commandments. Anytime the Lord tells us to do anything or not do anything, we, we dedicate a color for that. And so notice that the very first word in this one is a commandment.
The first verse is clear, full of, of commandments. So the first thing the Lord tells to do is look, see, or behold in the terms here, and then to hear, right, uh, um, harken and hear. And then the next commandment is, receive my will concerning you. Mm. So to paraphrase verse one, see, hear, receive what I'm about to give to you, I'm just about to tell you my will.
Now, the situation here is that Joseph Smith and about 30 others, uh, were commanded by the Lord in section 52 of the doctrine comes to make their way from Ohio to Missouri. They were supposed to spread out, preach the gospel all along the way. When they got there, they were supposed to learn more from the Lord about their inheritance, Zion in Missouri.
And they were supposed to lay the foundation of [00:12:00] it to begin building it. And the Lord called several of them to, to actually plant there, so to, to go, go get their families and then stay put in Zion to begin building it. This, this includes Sidney Gilbert who we're gonna read about in this revelation. So, um, that mission went pretty well.
But then as you, uh, noted, as we started off today, we had some trouble actually realizing Zion. We found out we're mere mortals. And, uh, after the party in Zion and the dedication of the land for the holy city and the site for the temple in New Jerusalem, we started home and we were hot, and we were tired, and we were hungry.
We were on the river, we were canoeing down the Missouri River. That was scary. Mm-hmm. Um, and so our fears and anxieties and frustrations got the best of us. And we started to find fall with each other, started to bicker, complain. And Oliver Calgary got, uh, uptight and corrective about that and, and Joseph too.
And so we end up, uh, capsizing at least one of the canoes, and we end up on the riverbank sort of fighting with each other. And finally, finally, there's a revelation that comes and, and helps us reconcile. Okay, now we made it all the way back to Ohio. And those hard feelings, to some degree, are still lingering, right?
Bishop Partridge has overcome his, he stayed behind in Missouri to do the Lord's work there that, that the Lord commanded. But Ezra Booth. Isaac Morley and others have made their way back to Ohio, along with Joseph Smith and Section 64, especially. This first chunk is about those [00:14:00] festering feelings that they have for each other.
And so it's that, that the Lord is addressing when he says, listen and look and receive my will concerning you. And the first thing he tells them after that is, I have overcome the world. I will have compassion on you. When, when our ears are attuned, when we're seeing and hearing what the Lord has to say into this situation, one of the first things we notice is that he's modeling for them how to rise above this petty, uh, set of grievances that they have against each other.
And one of the things we notice is he does not gloss over their sins. Not even Joseph Smith's sins. Right. He's not saying you guys are not in the wrong, he's not exonerating. Joseph Smith. Yeah. Joseph had his share in this conflict and the Lord acknowledges it and he says, look, I will have compassion on you.
Yeah. You sinned. Sure. But I forgive sins. Verse four, I will be merciful to you. I've given you the kingdom and the keys. The mysteries will not be taken away. The keys of the mysteries we might think of as something, uh, we don't know about yet, or something still mysterious to us. It really isn't that it, this is a lot more like the Lord saying the uh, uh, authority and responsibility for, uh, for bringing the temple back in fullness.
That's a job I've given to Joseph Smith and it's gonna stay with him as long as he stays with me. Wow. So the Lord is, is here saying, okay, Joseph Smith is sinful, a mere mortal. He doesn't, he's not flawless. And I know that very well. That's not a surprise to me. And, um, [00:16:00] the Lord requires forgiveness, uh, of Joseph Smith to forgive those who've trespassed against him.
And he requires those, uh, who, you know, he requires Ezra Booth and Isaac Morley to also, um, forgive and be forgiven. And he tells us here that he requires forgiveness of all of us, of anyone who has wronged us in any way. It's an absolute rule, and most of us are inclined to find exceptions in that rule or loopholes in that rule or postpone.
The, the work of forgiveness. And that's understandable. I'm not, I'm not trying to find fault with anybody 'cause I'm stuck in this rut myself. But that doesn't diminish that the savior is crystal clear On this verse nine, he says, I say to you, you ought to forgive each other. The person who does not forgive stands condemned before the Lord.
There remains in them the greater sin. I, the Lord will forgive whom I will of you. It is required to forgive everyone. And then the Lord tells us how we can, how we can do that. You can say in your hearts, let God be the judge here. Let God be the judge of this. I'm not able and I don't need that burden.
Let me throw that burden of being the judge onto the Lord and let him I. Do the hard work of sorting this out while I do the hard work of, of forgiving and being forgiven. Mm-hmm. So it's really such a beautiful, um, section that is quite difficult for many of us to do. We, we probably know somebody who models this just wonderfully well.
Right. And again, as I mentioned before, I've been reading about, uh, [00:18:00] Amish, the history of the Amish, uh, Christians. And they often model this very beautifully and very well. They're pretty, uh, persecuted people. And then, uh, tragically, tragically had a mass murder in their, one of their communities in Pennsylvania that they knew how to forgive immediately and did it immediately.
It didn't, they didn't have to build up to it. Or do some highly unusual thing for them. Their default setting because of their faithfulness to the Lord's gospel was to worry about the soul, the welfare of the person who had committed the atrocity, uh, whose life was also taken in it, and then especially about the family, the suffering family of that person.
Wow. And so I've been, uh, deeply moved by that. I can tell that's amazing how you've connected that to these chapters and it really is humbling for us listening to your words about the Amish and then about our own experiences in our lives where we need to forgive and just how blunt the Lord is with forgiveness.
Like there's no wiggle room in these commands and I love that you encouraged us to find a color. I did. My color now is going to be green 'cause that is the color for me to go and do. Like when you're at a a stoplight and it turns green, just go. I love that you're doing that from here on out. I'm gonna color all the commandments and look for them in green.
So thank you for encouraging us to do that. That was awesome. Okay, so in the next segment then. He gives the law of forgiveness. And then he also talks to us about tithing and a few other things. So Steven's gonna help us understand verses 23 through the LA end. 'cause we just have to cram so much in it.
Makes me sad. You're right. I wish we had three hours. That would've been awesome. So we'll do more talk of section 64 in the next segment.
Segment 3
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[00:20:00]
All right. We are still in section 64 and we're gonna pick it up in verse 23. Talks a little bit about tithing. Can you explain these verses? They seem a little damning and maybe they're supposed to be, I don't know. I'll do my best to explain them. Uh, it's not, it's not possible to understand them unless we're grounded at this point in the law of consecration that has come before.
Mm-hmm. Um, when the Lord says tithing or tithe in verse 23, he's talking about consecration. He's doing it in a, an Old Testament context, right? These early saints will hear Intertextual references to the book of Malachi when they read this revelation or hear it. God is the sue reign, he's the sovereign, and he covenants with, with people who need his help, right, who are dependent upon him in every way.
And in ancient Israel, you are dependent on God to make it rain. You don't eat if it doesn't rain and you don't, you right? You need fertile soil and you need protection from your enemies. You need, uh, God's blessing upon you so that you can even have posterity and especially have joy in your posterity and above all, you need God's dramatic intervention if you are ever gonna have any hope of regaining his holy presence.
You can think of, I'm sure you're thinking of the Hebrew word shaah, right? Oh yeah. The presence of God. There's nothing better, uh, for a covenant Israelite than to come into the presence of God. And, and even if that's just the symbolic trial run that points us to the ultimate of all blessings, which is returning to God's presence, well, all of that is backdrop for [00:22:00] this revelation.
And ancient Israelites and modern Israelites are, um, commanded to covenant with this God, to be, to give all they have. Love this God with all your heart, my mind, and strength, and love each other as yourselves. Mm-hmm. Well, those two commandments also underpin the specific instructions in doctrine Covenants 42 to consecrate of your property for the support of the poor.
Thou will remember the poor and consecrate of thy properties for their support. Whatever you have to impart into them with a covenant and a deed that you won't break. Right. These are Old Testament terms renewed and restored in the latter days, and the only way Anciently or modernly to establish Zion.
To build Zion, to build a heavenly city, a holy place, a place that God will, uh, be willing to inhabit, a place where we could come into his presence. The only way to do that is for us to love him so much that we love his children, that we would consecrate our lives to him, that we would dedicate our whole souls to bringing to past God's will and God's purposes.
Mm-hmm. If we understand that, we'll understand the second half or really the whole section of 64. If we don't understand it, we'll probably misread. For example, tithing there does not refer to a 10th of our income that we put into an envelope. We make an online donation that's included in it, right? But that's not the whole thing we're talking about here.
With the concept of tithing, it could be read much more like covenant faithfulness or consecration. Hmm. I like that so much. And as you were talking, one of the things I love is you also say it in an interview back when you do section back. [00:24:00] When we study section 42, there's an awesome video of you talking about the law of consecration.
And one of the things you said in that interview that really struck me was you said the law of consecration was set up for us to love God and then love God's children. And I wrote that in my scriptures and you beautifully gave the example of that and taught us that through section 23 and all of these verses in here in in the doctrine and covenants.
'cause I looked right at verse 34, the Lord requires the heart and a willing mind and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days and everything you said. Leads up to that verse for me, because you're right, we do depend on him for everything and we are asked to, to return, give him everything back, but it is to help us love him and then love our fellow man.
And so what a great backdrop for those two verses. 'cause I remember always reading and thinking, wow, if I don't pay my tithing, I will be burned at his coming. But I love, it's even bigger than just 10%. It is the covenants that we literally make as endowed members of the church and how important that is.
So thank you for explaining those. All right, carry on. Anything else in these verses you wanna point out? It's worth noting that this is one of several sections that has an apocalyptic overview to it. Uh, it's, it's informed by apocalyptic concepts and ideas, and that means that it might be difficult for us to understand we are modern people, we have modern assumptions, and that includes the ways we think about, uh.
Just about everything. And so when God or his prophets speak to us in apocalyptic terms, we are prone to misinterpret. And so one of the way, one of the specific ways we can see that is you'll notice that the Lord is saying, look, there is only today and tomorrow. That's all there is. Oh yeah. Tell me about that.
That's characteristic of apocalyptic. Uh, is it apocalyptic is a genre of writing or thinking, especially of [00:26:00] prophetic writing or, or revelation giving. Right. The Lord is capable of talking to a modern person like he does in Section 57 where he says, yeah, Joseph, tell Bishop Partridge that the site for the temple is a few blocks west of the courthouse in Independence, Missouri.
Mm-hmm. That's the way you talk to a modern audience. Uh, a modern audience is historically and geographically sort of grounded in this world, we think pretty linearly. We think in terms of liter, uh, pretty literal meanings. Well, in apocalyptic you use symbols or types. Um, you characterize things in distinct, just black and white.
Right there, there's two choices, two ways. And the Lord is perfectly capable of understanding nuance and talking in terms that a modern person might relate to better. But his chosen, uh, method of revealing and speaking through prophets for much of history and much of our scripture is apocalyptic. And it it behooves us therefore, to learn his language, right, to learn, to understand that language that prophets often speak, and that the Lord speaks through them.
So notice, for example, that. In verse 23, the Lord says it is called today until the coming of the son of man. This is the Lord sort of giving an apocalyptic 1 0 1 lesson to us who don't speak it. He's gonna say until the Savior comes again. I'm gonna call that period of time today. And once the savior comes again, I'm gonna call that tomorrow.
He's simplifying it for us. In other words, he says, as long as it's today, it's a day of preparation. Get ready for tomorrow, today. Mm-hmm. Right? And one of the ways to do that is to, uh, sacrifice and consecrate that'll sound very familiar [00:28:00] to our audience. Right. Keep the covenants you've made to sacrifice and consecrate when today it's too late to do that tomorrow.
Today is the day to make him keep the covenants of the Gospel of Christ. If you believe me, he says in verse 25, you will labor while it's called today. Right? This gets us back to your point about hearkening right from the right, from the get go. Uh, the ancient prophets don't distinguish, as you said, you taught me this wonderfully between hearing and doing.
You haven't heard the Lord until you're doing what the Lord, uh, commands, right? Yeah. In that sense, that's cool. So we need to understand that there's the proud and the wicked on the one hand, and there's the repentance and the faithful, a covenant faithful on the other, right? The Lord divides it up into these stark categories, and that's characteristic of apocalyptic.
Also this, no, this term, Babylon. Mm-hmm. In verse 24, he does not mean literally. The, the, the place Babylon. He means Babylon as a type. It's a, it's an archetype of wickedness. He could have said Rome, he could have said Las Vegas and, and done that kinda work, uh, with it. And I, I don't mean to be misunderstood or might be people say, well, I know some really lovely people in Las Vegas, so do I, we'd be missing the point if we, we didn't get that.
You evoke a, a place that's associated with wickedness and you, the Lord is making a point about righteousness and wickedness by evoking that he understands also that there are lovely, wonderful temple going people in Las Vegas or even in ancient Babylon. That's good. That makes sense. Yep. I like that a lot.
That it's a type. I love this apocalyptic wording. Is there any more, what else is there in section 64 for that kind of wording? [00:30:00] Uh, yeah. So, um, uh, very much in verse 24, the burning, right? Uh mm-hmm. Today, tomorrow, Babylon, Zion. These, these contrasting archetypes, those are the clues that you're talking about.
Apocalyptic writing. Yeah. So it's today, it's tomorrow. There's people who have the heart and a willing mind. Those are the people you can build Zion with. And then there's the rebellious, uh, and the, uh, the wicked, the proud. Those who do stubbornly, those are the ones that will be burned up in verse 24. Say it The Lord of hosts.
I will not spare any that remain in Babylon. Absolute terminology, right? Blanket statements. Uh, this is characteristic of apocalyptic writing. And people might get, um, a modern person might get worried about that, and they might say, well, let's see now exactly how much percent does the Lord require of me so I don't get burned.
At the day of coming and, and that's to miss the point, right? That's to put 'em modern. The, the point here, the takeaway is make and keep covenants. Mm-hmm. And a person who has made covenants and is working to keep them is righteous and redeemed and rescued. And they are on the good side of the God of Israel.
They are the ones who are, receive all the covenant blessings, protection, prosperity, the presence of God, prosperity in their promised land. Right? It will rain on their crops. Uh, they will eat the good of the land of Zion in the last days. What is the Lord? What is what is required for that? The Lord wants your heart and a willing mind, so.
People might say, well, how much do I need to pay? Or, or how, how many rules do I need to keep before God loves me and I, I'm okay with him. All you need to [00:32:00] do is to offer him your heart. Mm-hmm. And to have a willing mind. Right. You don't need, you don't even need to be perfect at either of those things.
It's just a decision that you're gonna decide to be on the side, the covenant side of the God of Israel and his battle for righteousness, right, for prosperity for all. In September, September 11th of all dates, 1831 is section 64. That date wouldn't have meant to them what it means to us here now, but there's a battle going on then just like there is now.
Right. This is a country where some people are owned by other people. And there are people being, including covenant remnants of Israel being driven out by the President of the United States and his allies. Mm-hmm. Right. And, uh, you've got the Lord speaking into this culture war and saying, that's not how Zion goes.
That's how, that's wickedness. That's the proud. And they who do stubbornly and the Lord, uh, envisions a completely different kind of world. And he calls his Zion. Yeah. And Zion is where we're of one heart and one mind, and we dwell together in righteousness. Righteousness is another term for covenant faithfulness.
Oh, I like that. And there are no poor, and it's not because they've been driven out, it's because poverty has been eliminated. Mm-hmm. Because God people love God and each other enough. To make sure that nobody has to live in, in poverty. It's a, a very similar world that we're in and frankly that's because it's the world as it's always been.
Yeah. Ever since we left Eden, [00:34:00] uh, there have been conflicts and people have thought they, uh, deserve and others don't. And we've, uh, divided ourselves up and we've made sure we have fine twined linen so that other people know we're better than them. And this, it, that's sort of the nature of our fallenness.
Mm-hmm. And here the Lord is telling us, well, I'm gonna burn that world up and I'm inviting you to leave it behind and go to Zion. And if we do that, we'll be saved from the fire. And if we don't, we'll be consumed. Yeah. Wow. Steven, I have so appreciated this covenant discussion In these verses, you've reframed all of them for me so much, and especially going into verse 35, highlight, cut off and just highlight that and put a little note by it and just put Old Testament covenant wording and I can, I'm so excited when we get to the Old Testament to talk about cutting covenants and what that actually meant and what it meant to make a covenant in Old Testament time.
But it does have to do with being cut off and cutting covenants in Hebrew. It's called OT Beit. But just put a little highlight there and know that that is covenant wording and it falls in line with everything that Steven has taught us. So thank you. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so in the next segment we are gonna dive into Doctrine and Covenants section 65.
Segment 4
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All right, Steven, hit it. Section 65. It's only six verses what could it possibly teach us? Yeah, right. Um, I had a really cool experience with Section 65 as an undergraduate student at BYUI got a really beautiful privilege to assist the editors of the journals of William e McClellan. They were preparing his journals for publication.
The [00:36:00] University of Illinois Press and BYU studies collaborated on the publication and that meant that Professor Jan Ships, um, was invited to be one of the editors, and she worked out at, uh, an arrangement with Professor John Welch or Jack Welch, uh, law professor BYU then, who was the editor in chief of BYU studies.
So together they were doing very close and careful readings of McClellan's documents, including six journals, but also, uh, some revelation manuscripts. And one of the revelation manuscripts that McClellan had was Section 65. And Oh wow. Uh, his includes a little more detail. There's some more of a header on it.
And that helped us know the, the, um, the meaning of this revelation in a way that we hadn't known before. It gave us a little more insight because McClellan heads this revelation, a revelation on prayer. And then he specifically says it's about Matthew, the Lord's Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew. And so, um, one of the things we notice in it is that the Lord is teaching us how to pray and what to pray for.
And it is an amalgam of lots of scripture. It's amazing how well the Lord knows scripture and pulls from, pulls from all kinds of scripture and, and laces them together. And it's like a DNA strand. It's just remarkable what he can do with the scriptures. So one of the most important things to learn here from this revelation is that it's evoking the prophecy of the book of Daniel about a stone that will roll forth and fill the earth, and that this stone is the kingdom of God.
We sometimes think of this as a snowball. That's not the way Joseph Smith thought of it. [00:38:00] Joseph thought of it as a grindstone and, and many of us are not familiar with a grindstone, but, um, it's not a snowball that's rolling down a mountain. It's, it's a stone that's turning. Sort of on a sideways axis, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually fills the earth.
And the Lord says that our prayer should be that this kingdom should go forth the kingdom of God or the the church of Jesus Christ upon the earth. It should go forth. And there's a very specifically rationale for the reason that the kingdom of God should go forth on the earth. My students, uh, and I, we use a different color for rationale.
Oh wow. When the Lord, when the Lord is explaining why, um, and he does this often in the revelations, we wanna pay super close attention to that. So, uh, again, the colors are arbitrary, it doesn't matter. But this semester we're using red for rationale. So let's notice carefully, um, in verse six. The rationale for praying and working for the Kingdom of God to go forth in the earth.
Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come. President Nelson gets this right. He's been emphasizing to us, uh, in recent years. It is our job to help prepare the world for the second coming of the Savior. The church of Jesus Christ exists to prepare the children of God for the second coming of the savior.
Section 65 tells us that that should be our prayer. We should pray for that on our knees, and we should get up and make it happen. We should go to work. May the kingdom of Heaven, may the church of Jesus Christ go forth [00:40:00] so that the world is prepared for the kingdom of heaven to come. And then that's not the end.
That's all means to the larger end. That thou oh God, may be glorified in heaven. So on earth. Here you can hear the echo of the Lord's prayer in the gospel of Matthew, so that thine enemies may be subdued. For thine is the power and glory forever and ever. Amen. This is a prayer that the kingdom of God may come and deliver us from evil and overcome the wickedness of the world in which we live.
This is a prayer, uh, for the promise of the, of the book of Isaiah, that our children will grow up without sin under salvation. This is a prayer that ends, uh, that that ends in all of the terrible problems that we face on earth today. Mm-hmm. Being resolved by the coming Christ. And so section 65 is a prayer.
That is teaching us how to pray and what to pray for. What are the most important things? I sometimes get frustrated and even disgusted with my own prayers and sometimes others when we, we say, you know, please Lord, help us get home safely. That's a heartfelt prayer sometimes, but, you know, the prayer to get home safely should be a lot more about, get back into your presence safely.
Right. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I mean, there are approximate priorities. You know, I hope I don't get sick this flu season or whatever, but man, we are missing the boat if we think that that's all God is, is doing for us. He's got a bigger plan in mind, and that is to restore us to his presence, uh, to establish a holy city and society.
Cities [00:42:00] establish Zion on the earth. Have a place here that's not a filthy cesspool where people take advantage of each other in any way they can and in every way they can, as much and as often as they can. Mm-hmm. That's, that's things have gone wrong and God will come and set them right. And our prayer should be, let us do the work that is required to prepare for that day when he will come and set things Right.
That's what Section 65 teaches us to do. I have a question for you because, okay. So you teach religion down at BYU. The nature of the beast is that you are in your scriptures all day long, living it, loving it, everything. I wanna know, what does it look like for every day, Stephen Harper, to prepare for the second coming?
It's mostly telling other people what to do and how to do it. Yeah. And then, uh. Getting caught in the thick of thin things as Elder Maxwell used to say. There's committee meetings to attend to and, uh, you know, all kinds of important things, um, like sporting events and, uh, whatever else. Uh, some, some book or article.
And, and, uh, so in other words, I don't, I don't want to, uh, be thought of to be superhuman or anything. I'm struggling just to make sure I get my prayers said and my scriptures read, and, uh, to try to be more and more Christ-like, more and more forgiving. I pray every day that myself and my family will have more faith in Christ, more hope in Christ, and that we'll receive and reflect more of the pure love of Jesus Christ.
I. I'm quite worried about the crisis of isolation and loneliness. Mm-hmm. And especially the way it's [00:44:00] affecting my family. And I pray that we can be friends and that we can have friends. Um, and so I'm also quite worried about the history of the world we're, we're at, as you may very well know, we're at, in the western world, in the industrialized world, we're at the tipping point or past it where, uh, nations begin to descend back into chaotic and self-destructive modes.
It be, it comes because we get selfish and we put off. Marriage, we put off childbearing. We, in other words, we are on the verge of the calamities, that the prophets have foretold that section one foretells, and also that the proclamation to the world on the family says are coming. And because of the ways we've treated prosperity and peace and, uh, how we have not established Zion yet, but we've, um, we've self indulged to a point where we've brought, uh, some destructive things.
So I, I'm, mm-hmm. It's talking about things I don't know much about here, except I, I guess day to day my, uh, life is to worry about. How to establish Zion in this world. That's exactly what Section 64 was about. Yeah. Thank you. I, I, I really appreciate that, especially the way you talked about your prayers and praying that your family and your loved ones will come to know Christ.
That was beautiful. And you're right, this epidemic of isolation and loneliness is, it can only be solved through the Savior and through Zion and through this law of consecration, we've been asked to live loving God and loving others. [00:46:00] So thank you, Steven. Okay, we still have another section, section 66, and there's a lot in there too.
So in the next segment, Steven's gonna teach us what we need to know about that section.
Segment 5
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All right, here we go. Section 66, what do you got for us? This is. In some ways the most interesting section in the book, and I kind of mean on purpose to be a little provocative about that. Right. Good, good. Not many people out there. Who, if you said, okay, you know, tell me the most interesting, most important section in the doctrine covenants.
Not many people would say 66. Right. And, uh, I use it to make this point because the more we know about what's happening behind the scenes, the more interesting these sections become. So even the ones that seem in inapplicable to us or sort of mundane, are very, very important. We can learn a lot from them.
In this case, a young school teacher named William McClellan, who's recently been widowed, his wife and his infant are buried in Paris, Illinois, where he had been teaching school. Cynthia Ann was his wife and she most likely died. Or shortly after her child was born because of the way they're buried there together.
So he's heartbroken and he's searching for the truth. He wants something to give meaning and purpose to a life that is characterized by, uh, the mundane and by death and the devastation that it, that it brings to our relationships. He's like so many other people, in other words, in his time and place and throughout time and space, and he happens to hear that there are two preachers on their way [00:48:00] through town and he's eager to hear what they have to say.
So he rides his horse to the Sugar Tree Grove where they're gonna preach, and he listens to Harvey Whitlock teach the gospel, the plainest I ever heard it in my life. He says, and then he listens to David Whitmer, say, I am one of the witnesses of this book, the Book of Mormon. I've seen an angel. Joseph Smith translated this book by the Power of God, you're invited to read it for yourself and come to know for yourself.
And that's of course what William McClellan does. He reads the book, he compares it with his Bible. He says, after all the examination, searches and researches, I was bound as an honest man to acknowledge that the truth and validity of the Book of Mormon and that I had found the people of the Lord. So he gets baptized by Hiram Smith, whom he also interviews and other book of Mor witnesses, and he just barely misses meeting Joseph Smith in Independence, Missouri, right?
He follows the missionaries to Independence. Uh, and Joseph has been there and done his work and is headed back to Ohio by the time William McClellan arrives. But McClellan, uh, then goes to Ohio and he meets Joseph Smith for the first time in October, 1831 at a conference. Then he walks home with Joseph from that conference.
Joseph's home at this point is with Elsa and John Johnson, where he and Emma and their twins live in Ra, Ohio. And McClellan goes with him and has some profound experiences on the way. Um, and all the way on the way back from Missouri to Ohio. McClellan has a secret longing for more light, more knowledge, more, uh, answers to really intimate and probably like very personal questions.
He never tells us in a historical record what they are, but he does say that he asked God five secret questions and without Joseph having any knowledge of them. He says, I desired it as a testimony of Joseph's inspiration. And this is [00:50:00] 18 years after the fact. He says, 17 years after he says, I consider it to me to this day.
Evidence I cannot refute. He says that in section 66, the Lord answered every question I lodged in his ears to my full and entire satisfaction. Now, that gets even more meaningful when we recognize that for the last 10 years of his life, uh, I, I don't mean the time of the revelation. I mean, of those 17 years later, the past 10 years, William McClellan has been a bitter antagonist against Joseph Smith.
So frustrated with, uh, and unwilling to obey the restored gospel as it comes through Joseph Smith. And this is a recipe for how to be miserable. And, uh, he was miserable. Wow. And it didn't have to be that way, which is the sad part of this story. It didn't have to be that way. I'm, I'm really interested in the way the Lord addresses William McClellan in section 66.
I'm interested. It's the whole revelation could be thought of as, as an iuso, uh, a passage where we begin with one idea, we close with that idea, and then the sandwich in the middle of it is sort of the, the, the substance of that idea. Well, the idea is that Jesus is William's redeemer and the first person voice of Jesus Christ, he says, I'm your redeemer.
Right? Thus sayeth the Lord unto you, my servant William McClellan, blessed that are you. And as much as you've turned away from your inequities and receive my truth, sayeth the Lord, your redeemer, the savior of the world, even as many as believe on my name, I, I think that beautiful music, right? Oh Lord, my redeemer, and mm-hmm.
You don't want me to sing that or we'd ruin the whole program, but you get the idea. And then of course, the [00:52:00] revelation closes. The same testimony, the same truth, thus sayeth the Lord your God, your redeemer, even Jesus Christ. Amen. This is not an abstraction. This is not the redeemer of the world or the redeemer of Israel alone.
This is William McClellan's Redeemer, right? William feels like he has been, um, he's a fallen mortal. He is subject to sin and death. And, um, the Lord says, yeah, you are. And I'm your redeemer. I've bought you back from sin and from death, and I've set you on a course to eternal life. A crown of eternal life.
Verse 12 says, and so this is a revelation that's extremely, uh, high on William McClellan's potential. It's true that he's a fallen mortal. It's true that he is tempted, uh, to be adulterous. He's tempted by material acquisition. He's tempted by, uh, having a, a good reputation among his peers. He's, he wants to be good for all the right reasons, and he wants to be good for some wrong reasons as well.
And he wants to be bad for some wrong reasons as well. And the Lord takes that whole package and talks about it in the most positive and wonderful terms and promises William a crown of eternal life. And, uh, it's all because Jesus is his redeemer. This is a very beautiful text. I, well, I've just barely recent.
I mean, I've been studying this intensively, this text for 30 years and, and even just recently, I've seen more and more of this redeeming love. Jesus Christ in the text. It does not write William off from the beginning as a lost cause, right? Mm-hmm. It doesn't [00:54:00] say, look, I know how this story ends. I know you're gonna right.
Paint a nasty to Joseph Smith for, for a long time at the end of, of his life and yours. So I'm just, I'm not even gonna talk to you, or I'm gonna only say, uh, the bad things about you, William. Instead, the Lord says, you are redeemable. I love you enough to sacrifice infinitely for you. I'm your redeemer and let's work together.
So he gives William some 20 commandments as I count them, and the very first one is repent. Yeah, William, you are clean but not completely clean yet. Therefore, repent of the things you're still doing that are not pleasing in my sight. I'll work with you. I'll show you what they are. You and I can be in covenant relationship together, right?
Mm-hmm. When William got baptized in Independence, Missouri by M Smith, he made a covenant with his Heavenly Father to take upon himself the name of Jesus Christ, his redeemer, and Jesus ever after. As long as William wanted to stay in that covenant, Jesus will stay with him and bring him along and help him overcome.
And William often does fantastically at that. He struggles and he strives and he loves God and he serves God and others and he overcomes. But there are other times when he gives up, he gives in and he just doesn't keep going. Now that's the same as to say he's like any of the rest of us. And um, the problem, sad problem is that McClellan then when he ultimately decides, at least in terms of his mortal life.
He decided he was done trying to keep the commandments in this revelation. Wow. And he spent, spent the last 30 or 40 years of his life just trying to rationalize away his bad behavior, trying to blame things on Joseph Smith and [00:56:00] others instead of owning his own sins and repenting and, and coming clean.
And that might happen to us too. Yeah. I mean, if we choose, if we make his choices, we'll do the same thing for all of us. There's a gap between how we believe, what we believe, and how we behave. And that gap is, causes a great deal of discomfort. And we're only happy if that gap is manageable and and so forth.
You know, relatively small and we're miserable if that gap is big. If it's big, we will try to make it manageable by. Changing what we believe or changing how we behave or some of each. And William tried, successfully tried changing how he behaved. He came to Christ. He made the covenant. He, he became an ally Christ as his redeemer.
And that worked every time he applied unto it. Every time he acted on the gospel at work, he tell his life is so well documented. He tells us that it worked. And it's also sadly, the case that he eventually decided to change what he believed, uh, in degrees, um, to accommodate his bad behavior. Now, the problem for William is he could not ever come to believe that Joseph Smith was not the Lord's Revelator in October, 1831.
His evidence was too great. Yeah, he could not refute it, and he knew, and that made his life. Pretty miserable when he chose not to, uh, follow the revelations. You, Steven, you were not wrong. Section 66 is now the most interesting section in the book, isn't it? That was awesome. You have to read it and say, what are his questions?
What are, what's he worried about? Yeah, that's exactly it. Like when I read that five questions, I [00:58:00] thought, well, maybe I cannot wait to dig deeper into section 66. This would be so much fun to teach to teenagers, knowing all of that history, showing 'em the picture of Richmond Jail, giving 'em all of that, and then having them dig into section 66 to see what the Lord had to say like you had me.
That was awesome. Wow. Okay. Everyone who's teaching this section, this might be the section you wanna focus on, just 66 to have everyone in your class share what they found because that history was rich and I, I love everything you taught about the gap that, that this is section 66 really is a good chance for all of us to consider what that gap looks like between what we believe and how we behave.
So thank you for teaching that. Okay, so we have one more segment. And in the last segment, I'm gonna ask him that question and I think you're gonna wanna know his answer. We'll do that next.
Segment 6
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So here's my question for you, Steven, and it goes back to the book that you wrote. And this is what I wanna know because the name of your book, your recent book, is again, wrestling with the restoration, why This Church Matters. So my question is, Steven, why does it matter and why do you stay? Because listen, you know everything about Joseph Smith that they're, I mean, there might be, you'll probably say there's more to know, but you know more than all of us.
And when people find out stuff about Joseph, they're like, I didn't know these secrets and that's why they've left the church. I have loved ones who've left for that reason. Why do you stay and why does this church matter? Well, thanks for asking. This is, uh, I think about this question every day. Mm-hmm. Um.
So, you know, as you know very well, it's, um, there's, um, people are leaving religion generally. Mm-hmm. Christianity specifically, and that includes leaving the restored gospel. That's not new. I mean, that's happened from the beginning, but it's [01:00:00] also the case that we're witnessing a relatively new phenomenon.
Right. It's, there's interesting, uh, modern and current dynamics in this situation that are interesting to study and analyze and think about. Um, I'm interested as a scholar of religion and I'm also intensely interested as a religious person myself, and most interested as a father of youngsters. Um, by youngsters, I mean, 30 to 20.
So not, not so young, but, um, you know, I'm, I'm very interested in the world that my children. Their spouses and families inhabit, and that my students inhabit. They're facing different challenges than I did at their age. And so I'm not, I don't know, firsthand. And so I'm, I wanna study and learn. There's a lot of good resources for that.
Certainly among them. I do not want to neglect the scriptures themselves and what the Lord is teaching us through his living prophets. Um, I find that the prophets are ahead of schedule, right? Uh, the scholars are sort of newly aware that, uh, there's this decline in religiosity. Um, all kinds of related factors to that.
And, uh, I find in my interpretation of, of the facts of these things, I'm more and more impressed that the prophets were ahead of the curve in saying, this is where we're headed and let's, let's. Act on it. Let's be proactive about it. Um, I wish I had been a little more attentive. I feel like I could have served my children a little better, um, at the beginning of the information age and the beginning of the cell phone age and so forth.
If I had been more aware, more attentive, and probably, probably all parents [01:02:00] have those kinds of, of feelings of, sure. So why do I stay? Why do I stay regardless of what anyone else does? My answer to that goes back to the gospel of John Jesus asked that question. The day after he fed the multitudes miraculously, right?
Yeah. Treats thousands of people miraculously, and that is the coolest thing they've ever seen. And they walk all the way around the lake to meet him again the next day. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's what he did yesterday. Well, I can't imagine what he is gonna do today. Well, the next day he meets them and he gives them an absurd, irrational, uh, discourse, uh, uh, that just makes no sense whatsoever.
And by the end of the day, he's driven almost all of them away. Right? Oh, there's no free food and he is talking crazy. Mm-hmm. Uh, he's talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. And, uh, modern Saints might sort of tell a story about that. We might rationalize, oh, he is making some beautiful points about sacrament.
And maybe, but it sounds to me like what he's doing is, um, putting them to a test. Right? He's asking them, why do you stay? And as you know, uh, it's not long before almost all of them are gone except just a few. And then he puts a pointed question to those few, are you gonna go away too? And Peter says, there's nowhere else for me to go.
You are the Christ. You're the son of the living God. You have the bread of eternal life. There's nowhere else for me to go. That's exactly how I feel about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I don't stay reluctantly. I stay joyfully and wholeheartedly because the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is the drink of cool water.
It's the bread of life. It is the answer to my most heartfelt longings. It is, [01:04:00] uh, it is the redemption of myself, and it is the ceiling of the same sociality that exists among me and my loved ones here. There except there will be coupled with eternal glory, which I do not now enjoy. And there is no other version of the gospel of Jesus Christ or any other theology in the world today that offers me that promise of sealed relationships to the people that I love most, uh, for all eternity and, and the restoration of my relationship to my heavenly parents.
There's no other theology that offers me heavenly parents. Mm-hmm. And none that seal me to them. So people, uh, you know, as you do, I know of people who are disaffected from the faith, people who are deeply hurt by some experience, or other people who've been abused by a family member or even a, a priesthood leader who have like, just incredibly difficult, uh, challenges and dilemmas to deal with.
And it's, it's, I, I'm not discounting or. Making light of the wrestles and the struggles. And I also don't, I'm not even, it's not up to me to judge anybody for what they decide to do, but I also would like to be, uh, I'm not going anywhere. I guarantee that. And I would like to help, uh, everyone know no matter what has happened, the place for healing and help is in the covenant with your Heavenly Father, mediated by the Lord Jesus Christ.
His church is the place for healing, for help, for redemption, for for sealed social relationships that end in exaltation. So I'm staying because we have refreshments. We bless them so [01:06:00] that they'll be nutritious to us. I don't stay for that reason. I don't stay because we have the greatest music. I wish I secretly sometimes say, and I'm not, I'm not even entirely insincere about it.
I would love, uh, an electric guitar and a drum set. Yeah. In worship services. Uh, that's just a personality thing, right? It doesn't have anything to do with eternal truths or powerful covenants and redemption through Christ. So my point here is that around the surface, these things that don't matter that are preferences or cultural or whatever, I don't love everything about church culture.
Mm-hmm. And the point is, so what? Yeah. Uh, who, who does and who would, and that's not a requirement. And it has really nothing whatsoever to do with ultimate things. And the stuff that does have to do with ultimate things, those answers are best found in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Nobody else has, uh, the answers as profound and powerful as the restored answers to where did we come from?
Why are we here, and where can we go next? And no less than the, uh, Anglican Minister and, and Professor of Religion, Douglas Davies, uh, British Scholar has written, uh, multiple books about the restored gospel and how it relates to Christian theology generally. And he has said repeatedly, I'll tell you that the restored gospel, these aren't his exact words, but he says, Latterday Saint Theology has a better story for the conquest of death.
Than anyone else. And all he is saying there is a, a different version of what I just said. Mm-hmm. A better, a better [01:08:00] heaven, right? Yeah. Heaven inhabited. Um, there's a Christian minister who I admire and who talks about evangelical versions of heaven and he says, you know, it's, it'll be okay that we're not married in heaven because we'll love everybody and everybody will be in heaven there with us that we love and we'll, we'll love everyone in the same way.
And I think, okay, but that's not, that's not nearly as good for me as Joseph. The revelation through Joseph Smith that says that same sociality that exists among us here, the same kind of social relationships we have here will perpetuate there. And even better than that is doctrine cuffs 1 32 that says if a man marry a wife.
The two of them are true and faithful to that new and everlasting covenant of marriage. Then they rise in the resurrection to their exaltation and then shall they be gods? They have all power and eternal lives will be their inheritance. They will have their children forever. That is the better version that Professor Davies is talking about, and that's why I'm a latter day Singh.
Wow. Steven, thank you so much and I just want a second witness to what Steven said. I. About why I stay also is the same reason. I'm so grateful that you referenced that story in John, because that is my go-to. And I love when he says, will you leave also? And then they just that response, well, who would we go to?
Where would we go? And I, I am a lifer. I'm staying and I, and just like you there, are there things about the culture of the church that I don't like? You bet there are, but that's why I stay, is to help change that culture a little bit. And I think section 64 through 66, the way you taught that about being covenant keepers and having a willing heart and having a, and being willing and having, just [01:10:00] keeping covenants and loving God and loving our fellow man, I'm with you.
I just, I believe it with all of my heart and I'm so grateful that my foundation was started with the knowledge that God lives, that he loves me. That's the thing I believe the most. I always say at the end of every episode, Stephen, that you are God's favorite. Because I believe that every one of us are God's favorite.
And I think the lesson for me so far in the doctrine covenants this year is how consistent God is with saying to us, I see you and I love you, and I have so many cha. I'll give you so many chances. Just follow me. And he's just consistently saying that in almost every section. I get it. I'm there with you.
And I just love that a loving, heavenly Father and a savior who just adores us. And so, yeah, I'm with Steven. That's why I stay. And it's, it's the best thing. It's just great. So thank you Steven. Thanks for your time today. I appreciate you. Thank you Tammy. I appreciate you. It's been fun to visit with you.
Yeah, really. I'm grateful for the good work you're doing for for many people. Same with you. And please go read his book. You will not regret it. Why this church matters. I think that's something everybody needs to really contemplate and make a decision about, uh, as evidence from our discussion today. So that gap, that is so cool, everything you taught me.
So thank you Steven. That's it. That's the end of our discussion. Thank you both very much. It's been a pleasure. Oh my goodness. That was so good. That was so good. Ha. I don't even know what question I'm gonna ask on Saturday. Maybe my question will be for everybody is for those who are listening, what is a reason that you stay?
I, I really feel like I love that we ended with that there was so much goodness in this episode. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Steven Harper for paying the price, because that was a great discussion. So. Go follow us on Facebook and Instagram and answer the question. We usually post it on Saturday and comment on the post that relates to this question.
You can get to both our Facebook and Instagram by going to the show notes for this episode at ldsliving.com slash Sunday on Monday [01:12:00] and go there anyway, because it's where we're gonna have some links to references as well as a transcript of this whole discussion. So go check it out. The Sunday on Monday Study Group is a Deseret Bookshelf Plus original, brought to you by LDS Living.
It's written and hosted by me, Tammy Uzelac Hall. And today our awesome study group participant was Dr. Steven Harper. And you can find more information about this friend at LDS living.com/sunday on Monday. Our podcast is produced by Cole Wissinger and me. It is edited and mixed by Cole Wissinger, and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom.
Thanks for being here. See you next week. And remember, you really are God's favorite.