Scott Woodward:
The End of the World as We Know It.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s going to get bad.

Scott Woodward:
If you know this, if you know the framing, that the framing is the Exodus story, then this whole section is going to be different.

Casey Griffiths:
You don’t go from the type of world we live in now, which is enmeshed in sin, is corrupt, to the type of world that will exist in the Millennium. It’s going to be bad, but I’m going to fix it. God doesn’t give up on anybody that has any chance of repenting and coming back into the fold.

Scott Woodward:
It’s the conclusion of the entire Creation story.

Casey Griffiths:
So stay tuned. It’s going to get good.

Scott Woodward:
How are you doing, sir?

Casey Griffiths:
Just a little overwhelmed at what we have to look at today. This is a lot. I’m not complaining. This is dinner, right? This is the main course.

Scott Woodward:
This is a feast.

Casey Griffiths:
There’s some good stuff in the Doctrine and Covenants, but this is where it starts to get real good, like, dense, dense, dense theological material.

Scott Woodward:
Something has shifted in the substance of the Doctrine and Covenants. We are now in Section 29 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Casey, this is our very first eschatological revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Casey Griffiths:
I’m going to pause you, Scott, because that is a big word, and I’m not even sure I can pronounce it correctly. Eschatological. To our listeners, this is a huge word. College professors love to use huge words. It makes us feel more ambidextrous. So can you pause for a minute and just explain to, to those of us that are less theologically grounded than you what eschatological actually means?

Scott Woodward:
100%, but I dare you. Anyone who’s teaching this section this week, I just challenge you to use the word eschatological. Just nerd out. In fact, just use a little nasal, like, and say, This is our first eschatological revelation. You know, just see what your class does, see what your kids do, how they look at you.

Casey Griffiths:
Random people should drop the word eschatological into their conversations. Like, you should be there having dinner with your kids and be like, boy, I was thinking about the eschatology. See, I can’t even say it. The eschatology…

Scott Woodward:
Eschatological. Yeah, eschatological.

Casey Griffiths:
Eschatological. You, you’ve lost me. Anyway, work it into a conversation and we will send you a nickel. That’s not an actual promise. We won’t do that. But, but hey, if you do, mental, mental high five.

Scott Woodward:
With all that buildup, what does this word mean? So eschatology is the branch of theology that studies the end of times, like the end of the world as we know it. So millennial stuff like heaven and what happens, you know, after the end of this age. You know, so eschatology. And so this is the first eschatological revelation because it deals with all of that for the first time. None of the first sections have really gone into detail, maybe Section 1 a little bit, maybe Section 2, a tiny. But this one, boom, full bore, Casey, full bore. It’s really doctrinally rich. Like, it’s the first revelation to speak about the gathering of Israel, the Millennium, post-Millennium, the sanctification of the Earth after the Millennium, and all life on it. It’s the first revelation also to go really deep backwards and talk about, like, premortal existence of mankind, to speak about the fall of Satan and his angels, among other things. It’s the first revelation to talk about agency, some really important kind of fundamental, foundational, doctrinal things. So ancient past as well as the future, the future-future, which we call the eschaton. And the study of the eschaton is eschatolo… I messed it up, too.

Casey Griffiths:
You’re struggling to say it.

Scott Woodward:
Is, is eschatology, and so. Anyway, fun word we’re introducing here. It’s a, it’s a college word, Casey. This is a college word. So let’s do this. So now, by the way, this is a perfect moment to talk about the influence of the Joseph Smith translation project we’ve been talking about Joseph has just gotten into and its influence on the Doctrine and Covenants. Right, Casey?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s what we’re seeing here. This, this is an example, case in point of a revelation that came because of really rich doctrinal questions that Joseph is asking and the other members of the Church are asking him, which leads to a really rich theological section of the Doctrine and Covenants. So where’s this coming from? Why are people asking these kinds of questions?

Casey Griffiths:
Well, before we get to the context, too, let me say really quick here, this is the first of several eschatological sections.

Scott Woodward:
It is.

Casey Griffiths:
Harold B. Lee, once upon a time, was talking about the signs of the times, the end of the world, things we’re all concerned with. And he had this reading list, and his suggestion was, One, read Joseph Smith—Matthew. That is the Savior prophesying about end times. But then all the next ones that he wanted everybody to read were in the Doctrine and Covenants. It was Section 38, 45, Section 101, and Section 133. You could argue that Section 29 is the precursor to that. But like you said, it’s the first great section that deals with the signs of the times and the last days, the eschatological concerns. All of that, like you said, lines up heavily with Joseph Smith’s project to translate the Bible. If you’re looking at your introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants and you’re seeing where the sections were actually received, there is an overwhelming number that are received between 1830 and 1833. For several reasons, Joseph Smith gets really busy after 1833. That’s when the Missouri persecutions happen, and temple gets dedicated and he starts getting kicked out of places where he’s living.

Casey Griffiths:
The major factor is this is when he’s translating the Bible. And so he’s studying the scriptures, and when you study the scriptures, there is a resulting flow of revelation that you can’t get any other way. And this is Joseph Smith starting his great project to study and translate the Bible, which we’re going to try and define for you here.

Scott Woodward:
The kind of questions Joseph asks when he’s doing the Joseph Smith translation are much more doctrinally rich than the questions he was asking earlier, right. Questions about, like, how could this person help in the the restoration, or how can Oliver help with the translation of the Book of Mormon? Or what about the Lamanite mission, right? These kinds of things. You know, what about Hiram Page’s stone? What about… You know, we’ve talked about a couple of these. These are kind of proximate, really interesting questions, but they’re not really doctrinally rich questions. Now we get some really doctrinally rich questions because Joseph’s nose is in the Bible and he’s asking really hard questions. Or in this case, right, today, you’re going to tell us a little bit, he’s producing new scripture in the, from the JST, and Church members are going to start asking questions about some of that, so. Really fun.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Drop us into the context here.

Casey Griffiths:
It’s around September 1830. The second General Conference of the Church is going to be held in the Peter Whitmer Home in Fayette, New York. And some days prior to this conference, Church members began to gather to Fayette, and as they did so, conversations start to occur about things they’re really interested in. So questions they have with the Book of Mormon, questions from the Bible. We’ve noted in some of our earlier podcasts that it seems like a lot of Church members were really interested in the city of Zion, the new Jerusalem that was going to be built upon the American continent. And it’s during these conversations, because we, we sometimes forget the Church is scattered in three branches around New York and Pennsylvania, that everybody gathers together, and then the Spirit really starts to get poured out. So the way this is introduced by Joseph Smith is he explains that a group of six elders and three Church members were engaged in these kinds of discussions. And there arose, it appears, two scriptural issues which they did not fully understand and about which they could not agree. And you have an issue or a question that you can’t understand, and there’s Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths:
He’s a revelator. You’ve got to great source. So they go and ask Joseph Smith, and that brings about Section 29. But here’s the two issues that it seems like they were wrestling with, okay. The first issue was probably a prophecy that’s given by Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon during his resurrected ministry among the descendants of Lehi in the Book of Mormon. So Jesus prophesies this, that in the latter days, the fullness of the gospel would be given to the Gentiles. And we need to define that term a little bit. It seems like in Book of Mormon conversation, a Gentile was someone who was not clearly of Jewish or Lehite ancestry. So not from the, the people that wrote the Bible or the people that wrote the Book of Mormon, who would then take, these Gentiles, take it to Lehi’s seed and the Jews in fulfillment of the Lord’s ancient promise that Israel would be gathered and that they would receive a land of inheritance. So Jesus said that to the Jews, they would be given the land of their forefathers, the, the land of Jerusalem. And to Lehi’s descendants, they would be given a land of inheritance somewhere on the American continent.

Casey Griffiths:
Those Gentiles who had received the gospel, Jesus explained, would come into God’s covenant with Israel and be numbered among those of Lehi’s seed who would receive their land inheritance in the Americas. So highly relevant to these early members of the Church who see themselves as the Gentiles who now have this profound record that they’re supposed to take to the house of Israel, which in their mind is the, is the Native American people and also the, the Jews. So the Lord continues in his prophecy that these converted Gentiles will “assist the remnant of Jacob,” meaning Lehi’s descendants, “and also as many of the house of Israel as shall come, that they may build the city, which shall be called the New Jerusalem. And then shall they assist my people,” Jesus says, “that they may be gathered in who are scattered upon the face of the land unto the New Jerusalem. And then shall the power of heaven come down among them, and I also will be in their midst.” That’s 3 Nephi 21:22-25.

Scott Woodward:
Church members at this time are seeing themselves as the Gentiles spoken of in the Book of Mormon. Is that what you’re saying?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then Lehi’s seed are the Native Americans, And then the house of Israel is everybody else. How, how are they seeing the house, house of Israel here?

Casey Griffiths:
It seems like they, they are open to the idea, especially because the Book of Mormon presents it, that there’s lost tribes of Israel. But they also tend to focus, narrow focus on the Jewish people and what their, what their fate is. So Native Americans or the remnant of Jacob or the Lamanites is another term that they would commonly use for them, even though there’s a big intermingling that happens in 4 Nephi. Doctrine and Covenants 28, which is received around the same time, that’s the section right before, confirms this belief by calling Oliver Cowdery to go on a mission to the Lamanites or the Native Americans on the western border of the United States. And most Church members understood that at some point they would unite with the Native Americans and together with others of the house of Israel, they would be the ones that build the New Jerusalem on the American continent as the gathering place for God’s scattered people, all in preparation for Jesus to come down among them and be in their midst, according to this prophecy that’s in the Book of Mormon. I think we sometimes sleep on the prophecies Jesus made in the Book of Mormon, honestly, and this is kind of a big one.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, and they’re obviously fixating on this because it seems to feature them, right, the Gentiles who’ve received the gospel in the latter days, the, the record of the Nephites and Lamanites, and now their job is to take this to them just so they can have the gospel? No. So they can partner with Lehi’s seed in building the New Jerusalem, which is, I wonder if that has something to do with why the Lord said in Section 28 that the, the New Jerusalem is going to be on the border by the Lamanites, which would be a perfectly situated spot where both the Gentiles on the one hand and the Lamanites, on the other hand, could build together a New Jerusalem. I wonder if the…

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Geography there is, is significant because of what that meant in the 1830s, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. The place that they’re eventually going to build Zion, Independence, Missouri, is right at confluence between…

Scott Woodward:
Right there.

Casey Griffiths:
The European settlers who they see as the Gentiles and the Native Americans who they see as the, the Lehite descendants, the remnant of the house of Israel. So Jesus makes this prophecy, and he also tells them that once this has occurred, Isaiah’s words, so we’re going back to a prophecy made by Isaiah, would be fulfilled where he wrote of how God’s people would come to see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. That’s 3 Nephi 16:16-18.

Scott Woodward:
When they’ll see eye to eye. Okay.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So that’s, that’s one factor at play in receiving Section 29, and a large chunk of the section deals with this idea of the gathering of Israel and the covenant God made with them. So when John Whitmer writes an introduction to Section 29, he’s the Church historian, he records a lot of these. He said that these six elders and three Church members understood from the way they read the scriptures that the time had come that the people of God should see eye to eye, that Isaiah prophecy, a reference to Jesus quoting that. And they were feeling like it was time for this to happen. It was time to be fulfilled. So were they accurate? That appears to be the first issue addressed in this revelation. Like, is it time for this to happen?

Scott Woodward:
So is it time for the prophecy to be fulfilled when Jesus said, The Gentiles will team up with the descendants of Lehi, and together they will build the New Jerusalem? That prophecy? Is it, is it time?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And it fits with, with our understanding. The Church members were very anxious about the New Jerusalem. About… Let’s get this going. You can admire their zeal because the Church is only a couple of months old, but they’re, like, raring to go. So the second scriptural issue that they were arguing about, John Whitmer’s words, or “they saw somewhat different upon,” was the issue of the death of Adam. That is his transgression. So this probably comes out of another factor at play, and that is Joseph Smith’s beginning work on his translation of the Bible.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, so where, whereabouts is Joseph in the Bible translation? Help us see that. What’s happening there?

Casey Griffiths:
As As early as June 1830, Joseph Smith has begun what the Lord regularly refers to as the translation of the Bible. That’s the word that the Savior uses. You can find this in places like Doctrine and Covenants 37:1 or 41:7 or Section 45:61, Section 73:3, Section 93:53. The word he uses is translation. But we want to be cautious here, and we did a whole series on what this means, that the Bible translation was not a conventional translation in the sense that they were looking at Greek or Hebrew manuscripts. I think Joseph Smith was very open that at this point in his life, he didn’t know Greek or Hebrew. He does learn both of them later on. But this is not a translation in that sense, from one language to another.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, it seems like Joseph is more like rephrasing and reworking and reframing biblical text under inspiration. That’s kind ofwhat he means by translation. As long as you understand that, then, then we’re good, right.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. Kent Jackson, who we interviewed a couple of months ago, uses the phrase recasting. It’s like you’re, you’re taking what’s there and you’re reworking it. On the Joseph Smith Papers website, they call it the biblical revision, which sounds sort of blasphemous-like. We’re going to revise the Bible. But that was part of it. The Book of Mormon meant to introduce this idea that plain and precious things had been removed from the Bible, and the Bible had been tampered with. And most people do agree there’s parts of the Bible that’s missing. Joseph Smith was reworking the Bible text under divine inspiration and with prophetic authority. And Joseph Smith, later on, is going to say that he views this work, the Bible translation, as a significant, his words, “branch of my calling.” So it’s a big deal to him. And that is affecting the doctrinal conversations, too. There’s revelations being received. These revelations are now found in the Pearl of the Great Price, the Book of Moses. So during this time, from June to September, Joseph Smith has been working on translation for Genesis 1 through3, and at least a part of 4, which ultimately becomes Moses 1 through 5 in the Pearl of Great Price.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, because Moses 1, we would consider it like Genesis 0, right? Because Moses 1 is like an entirely new chapter added.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, it’s like a, like a whole prologue to the book of Genesis.

Scott Woodward:
So Moses 2 corresponds with Genesis 1 and so on. It’s kind of one chapter off. Okay. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. So whole new chapter, Moses 1, but then chapters 2 through 5 parallel Genesis 1 through 4. And this is some rich, rich stuff. So Moses 1 adds to the biblical story, like you said, kind of Genesis chapter 0, includes an account of encounters that God had with Moses, and that Moses had with God that includes the, the time period shortly after his divine call at the burning bush to lead Israel out of Egyptian bondage. But it seems like before he goes and performs the Exodus. The Lord’s filling him in on the backstory. Then chapters 2-5, like we mentioned, parallel Genesis 1-4, and that includes the account of the Creation of the Earth, placing man and woman into the Garden of Eden, the story of the Fall, and Adam and Eve’s mortal experience after they were driven from the Garden of Eden. It’s something about this issue on the death of Adam and his transgression in Genesis 3 and Moses 4 that these six elders and three Church members differed on and wanted to gain understanding for. So this is what John Whitmer writes. John Whitmer, the Church historian, says, “Therefore, they made it a subject of prayer and inquired of the Lord.”

Casey Griffiths:
This is together with Joseph Smith, “and thus came to the word of the Lord through Joseph the seer.” So that is a lot of context. But they’re dealing with some heady stuff and some deep stuff. And it’s important to know, like, this also marks where the Joseph Smith translation starts to have a big impact on the revelations Joseph Smith is receiving, which, like you mentioned, makes things more rich, more dense, and more doctrinal.

Scott Woodward:
Verses 1 through 6 are kind of an introduction. If you can break it up in your mind like this. And then verses 7 through 21 are the, are the Lord’s response to the first scriptural issue that you brought up about that Book of Mormon Prophecy of Christ. Verses 22 to 30, you can mark it out in your scriptures if you want, are kind of a narrative bridge over to verses 30 through 50. 30 through 50 is where the Lord responds to the second scriptural issue about the fall of Adam. And throughout this revelation, as is often the case, the Lord is going to give generously more information than these members initially asked for. It’s part of the serendipity of God.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
He often will give more than what you ask for. With that kind of framing, let’s dive in here. This section begins with verse 1, as all sections do, Casey. But this particular verse, I think, gives you a sense, a hint of where God wants to go with his answer. Listen to this, verse one. He says, “Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Redeemer, the Great I AM, whose arm of mercy has atoned for your sins.” The titles the Lord is using for himself in here are a little subtle nod to the content of Joseph’s recent Bible translation work.

Scott Woodward:
So recall, for instance, that Joseph had recently translated Moses 1, right, which, like you said, Casey, it includes that time after his call, but before he actually goes and, like, delivers Israel. And remember that it was during that call where in chapter 3 of Exodus, the Lord introduced to, himself to Moses as, I am. “I am that I am.” Right, Exodus 3:14, which is the title the Lord is using here in verse 1. He hasn’t used that yet in the Doctrine and Covenants. This is the first time, which is a clear nod to the Exodus story. This is going to be a really important thing to keep in mind as we read this section. Furthermore, remember in Moses’s call, if we fast forward over to chapter 6 of Exodus, that the Lord says, quote, “I will bring you out from the Egyptians out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments.” Casey, that’s the very first time in scripture where the word redeem is used to describe God’s actions, which in this context refers to emancipating slaves from bondage, right. The word redeem means to rescue, to help someone out of their bad situation.

Scott Woodward:
This idea of his stretched out arm and great judgments, right, this kind of flex, God’s going to show his power. He’s going to flex, and we know what happens. He does plagues of destruction, right, plagues that only seem to target Egyptians and not House of Israel people. This is God flexing. This is God using his power to deliver, to redeem Israel from bondage, right. And so throughout the rest of the Old Testament, when we the word redeem, we should think of this story. That’s what Israel did, right. Sometimes today, when we read the scripture, we read Old Testament passages, and we come across the phrase redeem or, like, redeemer of Israel, we instantly want to go to Jesus’s atonement, don’t we? He’s our redeemer for my sins. That’s true. We just got to hold on for a second because we’re getting ahead of the story there. The original use of the word is a reference to this, God redeeming Israel from bondage, from captivity and power of the Pharaoh in Egypt, right, like. This is what is happening with the word redeem. And so when Isaiah talks about the Redeemer of Israel, it’s a nod to the power of Jehovah to deliver Israel from bad situation. Now, is that relevant to his atoning sacrifice?

Scott Woodward:
Absolutely. They’re going to parallel, actually, and this is on purpose. This is a deliberate parallelism with God, which we’re going to talk about. Anyway, we’re only on verse one, but this is essential to, to set up what the story he’s about to show, because if, if you know this, if you know the framing, that the is the Exodus story, then this whole section is going to be different, and it’s going to be, I think, original intent here. So let’s, let’s do it. All right. So what’s this got to do with section 29? Well, so using the titles, your redeemer, the great I AM, the Lord is now coupling here the narrative force of the Exodus story with the even greater redemptive narrative of his atoning sacrifice. Note, that, that last line he said was, “Whose arm of mercy hath atoned for your sins.” Here we go. We’re starting to bridge between these two, and they’re going to play off each other, the rest of this section, the original redemption story of Israel from the bondage of Pharaoh and the second redemption of Israel from the captivity and power of death, hell, and the devil, right. Ultimate redemption. It’s a not either/or redemption.

Scott Woodward:
It’s a both/and, right. Just as the Lord gathered ancient Israel after their deliverance from Egypt to their promised land of Canaan, so the Lord says in verse 2, note it, that he “will gather his people” in our day, “even as many as will hearken to my voice and humble themselves before me and call upon me in mighty prayer.” This redemptive Exodus motif of emancipation and gathering now starts framing the Lord’s responses to both of the scriptural issues that were raised by these nine Church members, that both the, the prophecy of Jesus and the issue of Adam. They thought they were probably asking two different kinds of questions, but the Lord here is going to blend.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, he’s going to weave them together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, kind of, like, answer them both. It’s really masterful what happens next. Let’s keep going. Verse 3 through 6. The Lord addresses them directly, and he tells them that “your sins are forgiven you,” which is why they’re receiving these things, and that you “are chosen out of the world to declare my gospel with the sound of rejoicing as with the voice of a trump. “They are to lift up their hearts and be glad because he says, I’m in your midst. I’m your advocate with the Father, and it’s his will to give you the kingdom. And regarding their questions that they just asked, he says, “Whatsoever you shall ask in faith, being united in prayer, according to my command, you shall receive.” And so to honor their faithful questions, the Lord now begins to to give them really cool answers. So let’s go to verse 7. In response to the first scriptural issue about Jesus’s prophecy in the Book of Mormon, the Lord says in verse 7 that, quote, “Ye,” you, church members, “ye are called to bring to pass the gathering of mine elect,” whom he defines as those who “hear my voice and harden not their hearts. Wherefore,” he continues, “the decree hath gone forth from the Father that they,” that is, the elect, “shall be gathered in unto one place upon the face of land.”

Scott Woodward:
Aha. So the Lord is affirming here what these nine Church members had suspected, both that they were among the Gentile converts in the latter days whom Jesus prophesied would help gather his scattered people, and that the central gathering place, which he called the New Jerusalem in the Book of Mormon, would in fact be upon this land. So he’s starting to comment on this prophecy in rather interesting and insightful ways. But instead of singling out just the Native Americans that need to be gathered, right, the Lord simply says that this gathering will be for all the, quote, “elect who will hear him.” All right? So you get to choose if you hear him. And in so choosing, you choose if you’re elect. Maybe we’ll talk more about that coming up. But the purpose of this gathering, he further explains, is, quote, “To be prepared against the day when tribulation and desolation are sent forth upon the wicked. For the hour is nigh and the day soon at hand,” he says, “when all the proud and they who do wickedly shall be as stubborn, and I will burn them up, sayeth the Lord of hosts.” Those are the words of Malachi, you might recognize that which Jesus also shared with Lehi’s seed following his New Jerusalem prophecy in 3 Nephi 25.

Scott Woodward:
And this will happen, he says, so “that wickedness shall not be upon the earth anymore” in preparation for the long-prophesied of day when “I will reveal myself from heaven with power and great glory with all the hosts thereof, and dwell in righteousness with men on earth a thousand years, and the wicked shall not stand.” So now we’re starting to get into some eschatology.

Casey Griffiths:
This is, you know, Second Coming stuff. He’s bringing in the Book of Revelation, which, you know, a lot of people obsess over because of its eschatology. Sorry. I still can’t say it. But yeah, yeah, when you’re quoting Revelation, you’re bringing in the idea of last days, destruction, things like that. Keep going.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. John the Revelator said in Revelation 20, he says that Christ will reign on Earth for a thousand years with his people, and the Lord just confirms that here. He’s like, Yep, thousand years. That’s correct. Furthermore, the Lord goes on and explains that “at the day of my coming in a pillar of fire,” which, by the way, is another phrase exclusively used in the Exodus story, Casey, when the Lord led Israel at night in a pillar of fire. Look for this all throughout this section, right. He says, “At that day of my coming, the resurrected Twelve” apostles whom he chose in Jerusalem, are going to help him judge all righteous people, whom he calls “the whole house of Israel.” The righteous are the house of Israel. This is going to play into some things a little bit later. So hold on. “For a trump shall sound both long and loud,” the Lord continues in verse 13, “even as upon Mount Sinai.” Now he’s not even doing an allusion. Now, he just explains explicitly this is a reference to the Exodus story when the Lord brought them not just out of Egypt and we stop there like the Prince of Egypt does, right?

Scott Woodward:
Stops at the Red Sea. The actual Exodus story continues and they go down to Mount Sinai. And that’s really the highlight. That’s really the climax of the story is when he takes them to Sinai and there’s this trump that sounds long and loud and the Holy Mountain shakes, the whole mountain shakes and the people are afraid. And then they hear God’s voice and he gives the Ten Commandments. And these are the terms of the covenant to be his covenant people. And Moses will ask the people, Will you keep these, these words, these commandments that God has given you? And they say, Yes. And there we have it. I think it’s Exodus 24, where we now get a covenant people. So Sinai is really like the, the climax of the Exodus story. So this language, just notice how the Lord is saying here, “A trump shall sound both long and loud” at the Second Coming, like it did at Mount Sinai, he says explicitly here, quote, “all the Earth shall quake, and the righteous dead will come forth to receive a crown of righteousness and to be clothed upon, even as I am, to be with me, that we may be one.”

Scott Woodward:
So instead of just a mountain quaking, there’s going to be a trump that sounds that shakes the earth. Maybe this is symbolic, probably, that awakens the dead who are resurrected, at least the righteous dead. So just as ancient Israel was redeemed from Egypt and led down to Sinai to become God’s royal, holy leaders in the land of Canaan, so at Jesus’s Second Coming, will Israel be redeemed, but this time not just from Egypt, they’re going to be redeemed from death, and they’re going to be crowned with righteousness to both be with and to be one with Christ in the millennial day. So this is like redemption story 2.0. Okay, Casey, right? This is like, the original redemption story of Israel from Egypt is almost like a type in shadow of, like, the ultimate redemption of Israel, which is so cool. But the Lord says, “Before this great day shall come, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall be turned the blood, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and there shall be greater signs in heaven above and in the earth beneath, and there shall be weeping and wailing among the hosts of men.” This is a reference to that tribulation and desolation the Lord mentioned back in verse 8, that is to be sent forth upon the wicked prior to Jesus’s Second Coming.

Casey Griffiths:
That seems to be a major part of the Exodus motif was that there’s a major change coming, and I’ll lead you to a better place, but there’s going to be some unpleasantness.

Scott Woodward:
Particularly upon the Egyptians, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, like the Lord targets them. And again, if we’re going back and forth, kind of flip in your mind back and forth as we read Section 29 between the original Exodus story, we’ll call that small-scale redemption, and then, like, the ultimate redemption story, large-scale redemption story of us from death, hell, the devil, wickedness, corruption, right. That redemption story is going to be like the original redemption story, the small one in Egypt, only, like, grand scale, global scale. For instance, look at this. In verses 14 to 21, he describes this tribulation and this desolation in, like, so much vivid detail. Listen for the echoes of the plagues of Egypt from the first redemption story while simultaneously weaving in other biblical prophecies to the same effect. Like, for instance, when he says the sun shall be darkened, think about that. Did that happen in Egypt with the plagues? Oh, my word, it did. Right, it did. Exodus 10, like, literally the sky went dark, right. The moon will be turned to blood. Okay, that’s a prophecy originally from the Book of Joel. He’s weaving that in here. Maybe that echoes what? The, the Nile River being turned into blood in Egypt, perhaps. Maybe he’s blending those two together.

Scott Woodward:
I don’t know. The stars shall fall from heaven. That’s a prophecy originally given by Jesus in the New Testament. That’s perhaps an echo of the fire that fell from the sky in one of the Egyptian plagues, right? In Exodus 9:24. Then he goes even bigger. Did anything like this happen on a small scale in the original story? He says, quote, “And there shall be a great hailstorm sent forth to destroy the crops of the Earth.” Global, that’s what’s going to happen. Maybe metaphorically, not sure. But did something like that happen in the Egyptian plagues?

Casey Griffiths:
Oh, yeah, yeah. This is all paralleling everything that’s in Exodus, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And then comes the next verse, which is, which freaked me out as a kid when I read these verses. Well, this next verse in particular said, “And I, the Lord God, will send forth flies upon the face of the earth,” like Exodus 8, when the flies come and swarm the Egyptians. Only this time, he says, “They shall take hold of the inhabitants thereof, and shall eat their flesh, and shall cause maggots to come in upon them.” Oh my word. Verse 18. That is, that is gruesome, Casey. Is it really going to happen exactly like that? I don’t know. But what we can tell for sure is he is riffing really hard off of that original Egyptian redemption story, and he’s just, he’s expanding it really big. He’s saying, Local, it’s going to be like that. Macro, big scale, global scale, right.

Casey Griffiths:
This is some of the most visceral stuff in the Doctrine of Covenants. Like, I take a look at verse 19. It talks about a worse plague than the boils and blisters of Egypt. He says, “Their tongues shall be stayed that they shall not utter against me, and their flesh shall fall off their bones and their eyes from their sockets.” Like, I remember reading that as a kid and thinking, this is scary stuff.

Scott Woodward:
There’s nothing exactly in the Exodus story, the plagues that do that, right. That like you said, this is worse than the boils and the blains. This seems to be ripping off of a prophecy in Zechariah. Zechariah said that the wicked will have a plague come upon them where their flesh, quote, “shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.” So it’s Exodus story, and then it’s like all the worst prophecies from the Old Testament.Like, it’s all woven together. It’s like, it’s going to be bad for the wicked. This is going to be bad for the wicked. “And it shall come to pass, that the beasts of the forest and the fowls of the air shall devour them up. The great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall be cast down.” Again, think of Pharaoh, right? Pharaoh’s nearly-omnipotent army was cast down into the waters of the Red Sea. Only this time, he says it’s not going to be by, by water. He says it will be “by devouring fire,” which is how Ezekiel described it. All of this worldwide, not local, worldwide plague-like destruction will come to pass, the Lord explained back in verse 17, “because of the wickedness of the world.”

Scott Woodward:
The Lord here defines wicked. I think this is really important. Simply as those who, quote, “will not repent.” Highlight that, underline that in verse 17, circle it. Wicked means those who refuse to repent. It’s not those who sin. That’s all of us. All of us sin. But those who refuse to repent, like, they, they persist in their iniquity, to use a Book of Mormon phrase. They’re rebellious against God and his commandments and don’t have any remorse over that, right. That’s the group that is called wicked. And therefore, he says, “My blood shall not cleanse them if they hear me not,” which is again an echo of the first redemption story. Remember where the homes were covered by the blood of the lamb in the Passover element of this. And only those who, who applied the blood of the Lamb were spared having their firstborn killed. And so, again, he’s invoking the blood imagery here of the Exodus story. If you want my blood to cleanse you, then hear me, hear my voice. Back to verse, you know, at the beginning, verse seven, Those who hear my voice are the elect. So hear me, hear me. It seems like some of our prophets and apostles have been doing some campaigns about hearing the voice of the Lord lately.

Scott Woodward:
Have you noticed that Casey?

Casey Griffiths:
Right. This is dark stuff, right? This is scary stuff. But I try to emphasize with my classes that you don’t go from the type of world we live in now, which is enmeshed in sin and is corrupt to the type of world that will exist in the Millennium without some major change, and change is painful. And change is painful. And so, you know, I’ve always read these apocalyptic passages and asked, Well, how literal is this? How bad will it actually be? I don’t know. I don’t know. It sounds like it’s pretty bad for the wicked. But at the same time, too, he prefaces all this by saying, I’m trying to gather you as a hen gathers its chicks. He’s trying to basically motivate us to stay close to him, just like a baby chick would with a mother hen, so that we will be safe from all this. So it’s scary stuff, but the introduction suggests that, no, if you’re close to me, I’m going to protect you. It’s going to get bad. So I hope that this also provides a little comfort and solace in a world that feels like it’s kind of spinning out of control at all times.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Like the very clear action item here, which is very accessible to all of us, is hear my voice. Hear me. Don’t rebel. Don’t be wicked. Don’t persist in your iniquity. Repent. And my blood will cover you, just like those covered their, their doors in the Passover story and were safe from all the destruction and devastation. You too can, can have that, that promise. How literal is all of this going be? Will there really be flies that, like, eat the flesh off of our faces and that kind of stuff? It’s like, Oh, my word. I don’t know either. Casey, I’m with you, but I think my brain is going over to Section 19, verse 7. My brain is shifting over there. The Lord tells us there in a pretty rare moment, he tells us in verse 7 of Section 19 that sometimes he uses strong language to, quote, “work upon the hearts of the children of men.” And he’s not always really literal with some this kind of threats. Right, the particular in Section 19, you remember, was eternal damnation, which he says, well, I use that phrase, you know, it’s more express, so it works on the hearts of the children of men. The thing he wants us to do, Section 29 is saying, is hear my voice and repent, okay.

Scott Woodward:
If you don’t, it’s going to be really, really, really, really bad. How bad? Okay, let me invoke all the imagery of the plagues of Egypt. Let me invoke all the prophecy of Joel and Zechariah and Ezekiel about all, right, like… He’s invoking the worst of, of destructive imagery to underscore the significance of our repentance. And so I think it’s safe to leave it there, not try to get into the weeds of literal, not literal, but I think his motive is obvious here, wouldn’t you say?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. He’s trying to motivate them to gather and repent. And this is pretty motivational, right?

Scott Woodward:
I’m kind of feeling motivated. Yeah, yeah. The point in another light, a good, good phrase we could, we could highlight is in verse 21. The point is that “abominations shall not reign.” In the millennial era, only righteousness will reign. Like you’re saying, there has to be some pretty big shift between where we’re currently at and the time when abomination is no longer on earth. So the Lord is saying there’s going to be some cleansing. There’s going to be some removal of those who will not subscribe to the Lord’s program. They will need to be removed before him and the house of Israel rule and reign on this earth.

Casey Griffiths:
Again, we don’t go from that kind of world to the millennial world without some major change, and change can be painful and unpleasant. So if I’m getting you right, first part of this revelation answers that first question about the gathering of Israel, the building of the city. The Lord is saying, this is going to be another Exodus, which is a way of saying it’s going to be epic, but it’s also going to be messy. But hang in there and stay with me and I’ll keep you safe.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, because remember, the end of the original Exodus story is that they make it into the Promised Land, a place where they can build their temple, a place where God could come and dwell with them, potentially, right. That same thing is happening again. Just now, he keeps emphasizing global. This is global. Let’s gather you to the Promised Land of the Millennial Kingdom of God and be prepared to rule and reign in righteousness with God there as a holy people, as a kingdom of, of priests and priestesses, right. He used that language in Exodus 19, and he’s going to use it again to talk about those he wants to rule with here. So very cool. That’s the answer to question number one, right?

Casey Griffiths:
So in verse 22, it seems like he kind of picks up and creates a bridge, which is going to take us to the second part. Verse 22 to 25, for instance, he starts pointing us beyond the Millennium. The Lord says, “When the thousand years are ended, and men again begin to deny their God, then will I spare the earth before a little season, and the end shall come, and the heaven and the earth shall be consumed and pass away, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, for all old things shall pass away, and all things shall become new, even the heaven and the earth and the fullness thereof, including both men and beasts, the fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea.” And I like this a little bit better than the dark apocalyptic stuff. I love the phrase, All things shall become new, because this is sort of him, like, circling back from even earlier than the Exodus story in the Bible to the Creation story. Like, this is the conclusion of the Creation story that Joseph Smith has been working through and translating in the Bible.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
The Creation will be fully completed when the fullness of all the workmanship of God’s hands will be eternally renewed.

Casey Griffiths:
And he says, not one hair, neither mote, shall be lost. So he seems to be saying, it’s going to be bad, but I’m going to fix it. It’s going to be okay. And ultimately, everything will end up exactly where it’s supposed to be, and all that was lost will be restored.

Scott Woodward:
The bad is just meant to shake the kingdom of the devil, right. It’s meant to shake the wicked so that he can redeem as many souls as are willing to hear his voice and come unto him. But this glorious promised land on the other side sounds quite enticing and quite amazing. And that’s where this whole story has been going from the beginning, which is so cool. This is the, the final, I like how you said that, it’s the conclusion of the entire Creation story to enter into the Earth’s rest.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, so it’s going to be bad, but eyes on the prie. It’s leading to a new Creation, a new renewal of everything. In fact, he says, “Before the Earth shall pass away, Michael, mine Archangel,” who we’re going to spend the second half of the revelation talking about, “shall sound his trump, and then shall all the dead awake.” That is all the dead who were not already resurrected by that time, “and they shall come forth even all, and the righteous shall be gathered on my right hand unto eternal life, and the wicked on my left hand, will I be ashamed to own before the Father. Wherefore I will say unto the wicked, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed,’ into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” So again, we’re building towards something here, and it’s going to be the eventual, you know, separation of heaven and hell, the people that are brought into God’s presence, the people that are cast out of God’s presence.

Scott Woodward:
He used the phrase “everlasting fire,” again, Casey. Do you think he’s using that to work upon our hearts a little bit?

Casey Griffiths:
Maybe. I mean, yeah, that passage in Section 19 kind of hit me this time, too, where he does say, like, I’m using these phrases because they, they motivate people.

Scott Woodward:
They’re helpful. They’re useful. And then leads to a verse which a lot of people have speculated about. I don’t know that we need to spend a lot of time on it, but the Lord says, “Now, behold, I say unto you, never at any time have I declared that they,” meaning the wicked, “should return. For where I am, they cannot come, for they have no power. But,” the Lord cautions, “remember that all my judgments are not given unto men.” Thus, leaving the point ambiguous as to whether or not the wicked who are cast into everlasting fire with the devil and his angels will ever actually have another chance to be released from that torment, to be given further opportunities for empowerment, to one day be where the Lord is. And so he leaves that door slightly cracked, but he says, I’m not telling you. I’ve never said that they’ll ever come back, but I also haven’t told you everything. So kind of he teases a little bit there and just leaves it right there. And that’s fascinating to me. I don’t know why he did it like that, but it’s interesting.

Casey Griffiths:
I just like that he kind of leaves the door open because there’s this finality sometimes in language surrounding judgment. But you generally see that the Lord is about second chances, and he leaves the door open and then gives another chance and another chance, another chance. I just sort of lean towards that direction that God doesn’t give up on anybody that has any chance of repenting and coming back into the fold.

Scott Woodward:
Is this a nod, possibly, to those in Joseph’s day who are more of the Universalist bent?

Casey Griffiths:
Joseph comes from… His dad is a Universalist. And I also think that Joseph Smith just had a sunny disposition and was optimistic about people generally. And maybe I’m transferring this onto the Lord, but I just think that the Lord sees potential in people, too, and wants to give them a chance. So that’s kind of the bridge, right. Between part one, part two. It’s kind of neat that in the second line of verse 30, the Lord almost imperceptibly transitions towards this second discussion about Adam and his fall. He says, “The words have gone forth out of my mouth, even so shall they be fulfilled, which words are the first shall be last, and that the last shall be first in all things whatsoever I have created.” And he’s going to play off this phrase and take us into the discussion on topic two, which apparently has to do with Adam and Eve and their fall and exactly what it means.

Scott Woodward:
Okay, so let’s dig into that. So there’s this fun playoff of words of the first shall be last and last shall be first, first-last, last-first formula. And he applies that to Creation, which is super interesting. Let’s pick it up here in in verse 31. He says, “For by the power of my Spirit created I them,” mankind, “yea, all things, both spiritual and temporal.” First, he says, he created things spiritual. Secondly, temporal. This, he says, was the beginning of my work. Then he says, he made them first temporal, and then secondly, spiritual, which he says is the last of my work. What does the Lord mean here? What’s he saying? Okay, so let’s quickly just define the words spiritual and temporal. That’s really helpful in this context. Temporal just refers to things which are bound by time and are not eternal. So they’re temporary, right. Spiritual, therefore, refers to things which are eternal and not really timebound. And so it’s interesting because in Moses 3, that Joseph has just recently translated from Genesis 2, the Lord explained quite clearly that he made, quote, “Every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.

Scott Woodward:
“For I, the Lord God, created all things of which I have spoken, spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth.” So that’s interesting, right. He said, Even before he caused it to rain upon the face of the earth, I, the Lord God, created all the children of men, and yet not a man to till the ground, for, he explained, in heaven created I them. Like in a state where they couldn’t die, a state that wasn’t temporal, a state where things weren’t temporary yet. And there was not yet flesh upon the earth, neither in the water, neither in the air. And so spiritual creation, maybe we could define it as creation in heaven, in a premortal, pre-temporal state of existence. So verse 32 here, the Lord is saying that he first created all things in an eternal, non-timebound state prior to and in preparation for putting these things into a natural, temporal, non-eternal state of creation. And that is what he says was the beginning of my work. And then once these things have come into this natural, mortal, temporary state, his design is to then bring them again into a spiritual, eternal state, but modified, better even, right.

Scott Woodward:
This, he says, is the last of my work. And so those verses have been confusing to a lot of people, Casey, including me, but with some careful reading, some careful work. And a reference back, you notice what we just did there, a reference back to what material Joseph Smith had just been working on in Moses 3. We start to understand the picture of what the Lord is saying here. So this is an example of some verses that are kind of dense, and you got to read them slowly. But when you read them slowly and use the appropriate cross-references, bam, it’s starting to make some sense. Then the Lord briefly clarifies that “unto myself,” that is, from his perspective, “my works have no end, neither beginning,” he says, “wherefore all things unto me are spiritual.” But he is here distinguishing between temporal and spiritual that you may understand, he says. I’m only making that my distinction because that’s how you guys think. Because you have asked me, he said, and are agreed. But he explains that ,quote, ” Not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal, neither to anyone, including to Adam, your father, whom I created.”

Scott Woodward:
This is interesting. Now we’re.now we’re Starting to come to the Adam question, and we’re starting to understand God’s perspective and how he looks at everything. He says everything’s spiritual in a way to me, and also how he views commandments. This next verse is really crucial. This is verse 35, he said, “I gave unto him,” Adam, “that he should be an agent unto himself, and I gave unto him commandment, but no temporal commandment gave I unto him, for my commandments are spiritual.” That is, they’re designed with eternal purposes in mind, right. “They are not natural nor temporal, neither carnal nor sensual.” close quote. Now, that’s an important perspective, I think, to remember about God’s commandments. These are not designed to be really pleasing to the carnal, sensual, natural part of our natures, right. In fact, they’re calculated to, I think, go exactly against some of our natural tendencies, right, to prepare us for the spiritual realm, the eternal, non, never-ending realm. And so that’s worth just kind of sitting back for a minute and maybe going on a walk and thinking about that, right. God’s commandments are designed mind to push against my carnal, sensual, natural nature and to prepare me for a different kind of existence.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and he’s kind f going against this dichotomy. Like he says that we tend to think in. You know, we’ll say stuff like, Oh, we’re not physical beings having a spiritual experience. We’re spiritual beings having a physical experience. And it seems like the Lord here is saying, No, you know, you might want to separate your commandments into temporal and spiritual categories, but I don’t do that. A commandment like the Word of Wisdom, which is sometimes spoken of as being a temporal commandment, is really spiritual.

Scott Woodward:
I think the Lord says this is a temporal commandment, but he’s speaking to us so we can understand it.

Casey Griffiths:
I think he’s laying some important groundwork here, too, for further revelations, like the law of consecration, which sometimes people assume is financial and therefore temporal, but it’s really spiritual. Like let me share this little quote from Howard W. Hunter. President Hunter said, “There are some who ask why the Church is concerned with temporal affairs. The Church is interested in the welfare of each of its members. This interest, therefore, cannot be limited to men’s spiritual needs alone, but extends to every phase of his life. Social and economic needs are important to everyone. Man also has need for physical, mental, and moral guidance. Our lives cannot be one-sided, nor can we separate the spiritual from the temporal.” Then he quotes Section 29 and says, “The Lord makes no distinction between temporal and spiritual commandments, for he has said that all of his commandments are spiritual.” That’s an important framework to kind of have, that when you’re doing something like moving a family into their home, you might think this is just physical labor, but there’s a spiritual component to everything that we do physically as well. That’s worth pondering on your walk tonight.

Scott Woodward:
Go on a walk, ponder on these things. That’s worth having a really interesting discussion with if you’re teaching a class or… How are the commandments of God, all of them calculated to help us become something that maybe we’re not right now if we resist God’s commandments, to help transform us into something that is more fit for the spiritual realm? Okay, the Lord, he now goes squarely to the Adam question. He says in verse 36, “And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil,” the Lord here interrupts himself, by the way, to explain that, quote, “The devil was before Adam.” That is, before Adam was placed into his timebound body and placed in the Garden of Eden, the devil, in the premortal spiritual sphere of creation, quote, “rebelled against me, saying, ‘Give me thine honor,’ which is my power,” God says. “And also a third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency. And they were thrust down,” that is, down to this earth. “And thus came the devil and his angels. And behold, there is a place prepared for them from the beginning,” the Lord explains, “which place is hell.”

Scott Woodward:
But instead of sending the devil and his angels to this hell immediately after their expulsion from heaven, the Lord curiously allowed them to be here on the earth to tempt mankind for a season so that his purposes for mankind in this temporal state could be accomplished. He explains this in verse 39. Follow this. He says that “it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men.” God, in, in a way, he wants this. Otherwise, “they could not be agents unto themselves, for if they never should have the bitter, they could not know the sweet.” Fascinating, right? So the Lord placed the devils which rebelled against him here on earth so that they could tempt us as part of the necessary conditions for the full exercise of our agency and for us to be able to discern true sweetness from the bitter. Wow, this is a theological nugget here.

Casey Griffiths:
This is rich stuff, right. Because he’s dealing with the problem of evil. If God is good, then why do bad things happen? Why is there evil? And for a lot of situations, the answer to that question is because there’s agency. You know, if a person has agency, that means that there has to be a good choice and a bad choice. And unfortunately, people make bad choices, and that causes a lot of the misery and suffering that we experience here in the world.

Scott Woodward:
This is the first time in the Doctrine and Covenants we have the word agency, and that we learn anything about a premortal, like rebellion of Lucifer.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And that’s not coincidental because guess what Joseph Smith had just got done translating? Moses 4. Moses 4 talked about this very thing. And so again, we’re seeing the interplay between the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible and the insights we’re now getting in the Doctrine and Covenants. In fact, I’d say this part of Section 29 is the Lord’s commentary, like an expansion on the biblical story that Joseph is just translating. Right, so like I said, God’s giving him way more than the people ask for, these nine Church members who are asking particular questions. The Lord’s like, Well, you asked about this, so let me, let me tell you this much a bit, like way more than they were asking. But he’s going to get around to their original question. It’s almost like, I’ll answer the questions you should have asked. Bless for your cute little question. Now, because you opened the door, I’m going to try to give you more. And it’s just typical of his character.

Casey Griffiths:
He knows how to lead a good discussion, doesn’t he?

Scott Woodward:
He does.

Casey Griffiths:
Let me add one thing here first, too. A lot of people talk about the fall of Adam. I mean, in the temple, that’s the primary story that’s told. Moses 4 is such a valuable text when it comes to understanding the fall of Adam because it adds in this little four verse prologue that explains exactly what the Lord is talking about here in Section 29 about the rebellion in heaven, about how Lucifer fell and became Satan, the adversary. This is such an important part of the story leading up to what happens to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The story makes a lot more sense when you know kind of the first act of this play, this story that he’s telling.

Scott Woodward:
Our listeners know that you and I are very big fans of context, right?

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And this is giving some pretty important theological context to the Fall’s story. So yeah, well said. Okay, so all right, back to Adam here. Verse 40 continues, “Wherefore it came to pass that the devil tempted Adam, and he partook of the forbidden fruit and transgressed the commandment,” about not partaking of that fruit, “wherein he became subject to the will of the devil because he yielded unto temptation.” Okay, this is an important point. Note that through Adam’s action of yielding to the devil, he became subject to the devil. Here is Adam’s agency, right. Adam is placing himself, and in this action, also placing all of his descendants, into a condition of bondage, bondage to the devil, from which they will need to be, here’s the operative word, redeemed. They need to be redeemed from this condition, right. And so the Lord says that he, quote, “caused that Adam should be cast out from the Garden of Eden from my presence because of his transgression, wherein he became spiritually dead,” which he defines as, quote, “the first death or the first separation from God.” “But behold,” the Lord goes on to explain, “I, the Lord God, gave unto Adam and unto his seed that they should not die as to the temporal death or the death of the mortal body until I, the Lord God, should send forth angels to declare unto them, repentance and redemption through faith on the name of my Only Begotten Son.”

Scott Woodward:
So here again is that vital theme of redemption in this revelation, right. But now we’re talking about we’re talking about redemption of the human family here. We’re talking about redemption from the power of the devil and death and hell, right. By repentance and faith on the name of Christ, angels declared to Adam and his seed, redemption from their subjection to the devil in their state of spiritual death was now possible. “And thus did I, the Lord God, appoint unto man the days of his probation,” the Lord says, “that by his natural death, he might be raised in immortality unto eternal life, even as many as would believe.” So here’s what the Lord meant back in verse 32, about making temporal things spiritual as the end goal of his work. That is, when fallen mortals repent and believe in Christ as their redeemer, they now qualify to ultimately be raised from death by him in immortality unto eternal life, the spiritual non-timebound eternal Godlike existence. We call that eternal life. And they that believe not, he says, will be resurrected, quote, “unto eternal damnation,” a spiritual non-timebound, eternally damned existence, “for they cannot be redeemed from their spiritual fall,” he explains, “because they repent not.”

Scott Woodward:
Given these options, we might wonder why anyone would choose not to repent. Right, that seems to be what this is about. Like as we to Earth, we’re going to face opposition, we’re going to face challenges, and God’s going to give commandments, and we’re going to know the way that has been taught by angels to escape from this bondage and the bondage that will inevitably come after we die into the captivity and power of the devil. The way to escape that is to accept Christ, repent of our sins, take upon ourselves his name. That seems so straightforward. Why would anyone not do that? Well, the Lord answers right here. He says, “Because they love darkness rather than light, and their deeds are evil.” So what you love matters.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
What you love matters. The wicked will receive their just desserts from the one they chose to obey. That is the devil, the Lord saying here. Really interesting, right, the way that he’s laying it out. Like, if you choose to love the Lord and serve him and hear him and repent, you’re going to be okay. But if you start to fall in love with darkness, it’s going to be hard to do the God way.

Scott Woodward:
It’s going to be hard to exercise faith in Christ and repent because you’re going to start to love darkness more than light. And that is a path that, you know, leads to a self-imposed prison. It’s going to lead to the captivity of the devil. So a really interesting message here.

Casey Griffiths:
This is one of many times in the Doctrine and Covenants where he sort of teaches that sending people to various degrees of glory to heaven and hell is not punitive. He’s sending them to the places that they love, that they embrace. In Section 88, he’s going to say, You abide the law of the kingdom in which you will reside. If you’re living the telestial law, you’ll probably be happiest in the telestial kingdom, and so on, and so forth. But he’s not doing it to be punitive or mean. He’s genuinely, like, explaining to you what you are and what you love, and then trying to suit your needs with that. It’s not trying to be mean. Now, I really like that once he’s gone through all this redemption, he does explain that there are two groups of fallen mortals that have special qualifications for redemption. I’ve got a personal stake in this, but he says the first group is little children whom the Lord says, They’re “redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten.” This is all in the Book of Mormon. Mormon was really bugged by this because of the baptism of little children, which had started to happen.

Casey Griffiths:
This is an unconditional redemption by Christ because, as the Lord explains, “they cannot sin, for power is not given to the Satan to tempt little children,” at least “not until they become accountable before me”. Lord says this is according to his will and his pleasure, so “that great things may be required at the hands of their fathers,” suggesting that parents are responsible to teach children the intelligent, righteous use of their agency during this period when they’re not subject to Satan’s temptation. So there are groups, and I used to say to my classes, this doesn’t mean that, you know, because you made it past the age of eight, you’re evil or you’re the B-team or anything like that. He just has this provision set aside for little children. And again, we could speculate, does this mean that they were more righteous in premortality? Does this mean they’ve already proven? We don’t know.

Scott Woodward:
Like if they, if they die before they…

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, if they die before the age of eight, yeah, are they more righteous? A second group, which qualifies for special redemptive conditions the Lord describes, “that hath no understanding.” That probably is a reference to people with mental disabilities, people that are completely ignorant, though, by the end of Joseph Smith’s ministry, there’s going to a system set up for people that never hear the gospel in this life. But it starts to emphasize this principle of it’s not an arbitrary judgment. It’s not like… He takes into account what you know and what you don’t know, because only those “having knowledge have I commanded to repent.” So where much is given, much is required. This is, again, emphasized all throughout the Doctrine and Covenants that the Lord judges people based on the level of the understanding they have. He doesn’t punish somebody who doesn’t know that what they’re doing is wrong.

Scott Woodward:
So again, the wicked, right? The wicked are those who are willfully rebelling and are willfully using their agency to turn toward their love of darkness and not give heed to the Lord’s voice that invites them to change and repent and keep commandments that the natural man doesn’t like to keep in order to help refine us to become something prepared for a better, higher sphere than this one. That’s good. So little children and those who don’t know. Why did you say you have a personal stake in this, Casey? I’m curious.

Casey Griffiths:
Oh, well, I have a son that has autism. You know, all throughout his childhood, we dealt with the question of how accountable is he? Right to the point to where our bishop, you know, when he was eight, came and said, Do you think he needs to be baptized? And we were like, Hey, you’re the bishop. You’re the judge in Israel. What do you think? And he said, Well, I leaned towards thinking that he should be baptized. And you know, we spent a little time in prayer, and we felt like that was the case. And he was baptized. And, you know, autism is a spectrum disorder, so it can be very severe in one person and almost unnoticeable in another person. As my son grew up, I think the wisdom of that decision has been affirmed over and over again, you know. Today, he’s a student at BYU. He’s doing relatively well. He’s not the best student in the world, but he does have this level of accountability. But I also look at him and understand that the current body that he’s in might be, not be able to fully understand and grasp the law. And I’m just so grateful that the Savior made provisions for people like that.

Casey Griffiths:
You know, those, those people have a special place in my heart.

Scott Woodward:
Special redemptive conditions. That is the content of Section 29.

Casey Griffiths:
What controversies, Scott, do you think people could bring up in Section 29?

Scott Woodward:
One of the ones that might be more generally applicable, I’ve heard bother people over the years, is this idea that back in verse seven, what we’re trying to gather, the people we’re trying to gather, are the elect, right.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s almost this potentially, like, elitism issue. And those who will be saved are called the house of Israel, right. There’s the house of Israel, then there’s everybody else. And the house of Israel are the ones who are going to be saved.

Casey Griffiths:
So are… They’re chosen ones. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths:
It kind of feels elitist. It feels exclusive. And so I think that’s an issue that might be worth chatting about for, for a minute here.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah. And in some Christian faiths, you know, this has been expressed as predestination, the idea that some people were just chosen to be in heaven with God, that they’re the ones that are saved, and God knows all things. It goes back to that, you know, open theism versus closed theism debate we had a couple of weeks ago, which is, you know, how far do we take God’s foreknowledge? For me, I’ve never thought this was elitist, to be honest with you. Here’s my thinking. So I think verse seven actually answers the question, right? You’re called to bring to pass the gathering of mine elect, for mine elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts. So what’s the standard for being elect? It’s that you hear God’s voice and don’t harden your hearts. And it seems like that is something that everybody is capable of doing. You can choose to do that. So you choose to be elect. That’s the way my mission president used to explain it to us is we’re searching for the elect, but the elect are the ones that choose to hear God. And that’s really anybody. There’s nothing elitist about that. Everyone has that capability.

Scott Woodward:
I like that. So you choose to be chosen. You elect to become the elected. I agree. I think that’s, I think that’s dead right. I think that leads over into that second issue, right, that only Israel is saved, right. He mentioned earlier that the Twelve will judge Israel, and Israel will be, will be saved. In the Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi and in 3 Nephi, and you’re not going to believe this, but it’s chapter 30:2 in both of them, and so. 2 Nephi 30:2 and 3 Nephi 30:2. It teaches the same concept that anyone who repents, whether you’re a Gentile, it doesn’t matter. If you repent, you become the covenant people of the Lord. And if you don’t repent. That doesn’t matter if you’re like blood, Israel, you’re not the covenant people of the Lord. And the covenant people of the Lord have a name, and the name is the house of Israel. In other words, what was originally a title of a certain family group, a certain lineage group, the house of Israel, the descendants of Jacob, has become a title for all those who have received Christ, repented of their sins, and come unto him, right. They’re now his covenant people. They are now Israel.

Scott Woodward:
So to say that Israel are the only ones that will be saved is, I guess in that sense, accurate, right. But again, back to your point, you get to choose if you want to be part of that group. If you want to repent and come unto Christ and be his covenant people, then you’re in. You can. You’re welcome to. All are invited.

Casey Griffiths:
Let me quote Russell M. Nelson there. He gave a talk where he discussed covenants, and he’s talking about the seed of Abraham. So even further back than Israel, there’s the blessings given to Abraham and Sarah. He says:

Russell M. Nelson

Some of us are the literal seed of Abraham. Others are gathered into his family by adoption. The Lord makes no distinction.

Casey Griffiths:
And we think that’s a fair portion of the human race, right? That are literally descended from Abraham. He says, “Together we receive these promised blessings if we seek the Lord and obey his commands. But if we don’t, we lose the blessings of the covenant.” So there’s a prophet basically saying, yeah, there’s the literal and the adopted seed of Abraham, but the Lord doesn’t make any distinguishment between the two. So in my mind, I’m okay with there being a royal family of the Earth as long as anybody can join the royal family, as long as it’s not determined based on your lineage or your bloodline or any nonsense like that that’s been pursued forever and ever. If a person can join the royal family and receive it because of merit, then I’m all on board with having a royal family. That seems like the type of meritocracy that the Lord has in mind.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. In fact, royal is the word he used in the original redemption story, right. When he brought Israel down to Mount Sinai, he said, I brought you here to make you a holy nation, a royal priesthood. He calls it a kingdom of, like, priests and priestesses. That’s a royal priesthood. Peter will riff off of that, and that continues to be the theme used to describe those who will be saved. They will be part of that royal group. Kings and queens is, is a scriptural phrase. It’s a group of people, and prophets and apostles in our dispensation have emphasized this over and over again, that those who inherit the celestial kingdom will be kings and queens, priests and priestesses to God. That sounds royal. That sounds pretty elite. But the catch is anyone can join. It’s up to you.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, anybody that qualifies. So that’s a nothing burger in my mind. Could I spring maybe one more controversy on you spontaneously?

Scott Woodward:
Go for it.

Casey Griffiths:
Right at the end, and we hinted at this, I think, in our discussion, but the idea that little children and those without understanding are automatically saved. Is that fair? Does that mean that if a child’s really righteous, they’ll die before the age of eight? But, you know, if they still have things that they need to work out, they live past the age of eight. Therefore, Scott, you and I are on the B-team because, you know, we’re in, we’re in our 40s or something like that. Is that a controversy? Because I have had students come up and say, like, How come they get a free ride? And is it a free ride? Are we missing something here?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, and to complicate the question, what about verse 39, where he said, The devil needs to tempt people so that they can be agents to themselves so that they can taste the bitter, otherwise, they can’t know the sweet. What about little children who die before Satan can tempt them. They don’t get that quote-unquote opportunity, right? So what about, what about that? What about the exceptions to verse 39, which I think you’re highlighting here. That’s a great question, and it sounds like the Lord has taken that into account. He’s made provisions for just such people. I don’t think there’s any declaration of merit, though, I don’t think he’s saying, and I’ve never heard that taught authoritatively, that if you died before the age of accountability, you were premortally way more awesome, way more awesome than people who have to have a mortal probation. Like, I don’t think that’s a fair or like a wise theological conclusion.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, and it seems like it’s a big leap, right? I mean, Jesus lived to be 33, and Joseph Smith lived to be 38. We don’t think they’re part of the B-team. At the same time, too, your point of, well, you have to experience temptation from Satan. I mean, in premortality, Satan was active. We could have experienced temptation there. And maybe that’s where they experienced that. I don’t know. I used to try and explain this to my classes by saying, Hey, I had a roommate who tested out of 12 credit hours because he served a mission where he spoke Spanish and I served an English mission. Maybe people in premortality tested out of this life. But again, you’re saying there’s no doctrinal foundation for that. What do you think?

Scott Woodward:
Definitely not. Yeah, there’s no basis for that kind of conclusion. You can think whatever you want. You can believe whatever you want. But when it comes to, like, doctrine, like you want to make sure it’s grounded in scripture, right? And there’s just nothing that leads us to that conclusion. What we do have, our verses like we just read at the end of Section 29 that say, There’s a special redemption for children who die before the age of accountability. That’s the facts, right? That’s the facts. Now, people want to make lots of inferences upon those facts, and people are welcome to do that as long as the day is, but it’s just, you just have to acknowledge that this is my thought, this is my opinion. And I don’t think we can stop our species from doing that, Casey. We like to speculate. We love to speculate.

Casey Griffiths:
We like to do it.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, it’s good, clean fun. But just so we’re clear, right, we shouldn’t get dogmatic about those kinds of thoughts, right. Jesus says, I got them, I got little kids, and I got those who don’t understand, I got them.

Casey Griffiths:
And I’ll add that that is an incredibly comforting fact to families that have lost children, to families that have children that are born into bodies with disabilities. I’m really, really grateful for this teaching. And I’ll add one other inference, and I don’t know what you think about this, but a significant portion of the human race has died before the age of accountability. That means that the plan works pretty good because a big chunk of humanity is saved under these conditions as well. And it’s really not our right to say, Well, how come? Or act like we’re being unfair. Like if somebody else gets a blessing, it doesn’t really harm us. Our task is to pursue the course of life we’ve been given and to live according to the test that we’ve been assigned to and maybe not ask questions. Though, I will say this came up in a seminary class once, and we left where we were, like, with the question hanging like, Oh, well, you know, we don’t really know, so let’s don’t speculate. I had a young lady come up afterwards, and I was really touched by this, but she said, you know, In my patriarchal blessing, it actually says that I chose to come to Earth, you know, that I wanted to be here.

Casey Griffiths:
And so I don’t know. Did she test out of this life? But she volunteered to come and assist and help others. Again, it’s speculative, but it was a good moment with me and one of my students.

Scott Woodward:
What we know for sure, right, the facts that we can sink our teeth into right now is if you’re old enough to understand this message from Section 29, you are in the group that needs to figure out what to do with your flesh and the temptations around you and decide that you’re going to hear God’s voice voluntarily. You’re going to repent of your sins. You’re going to come to Jesus. That’s in your power. You can do it. That’s a great choice. And in so choosing, you’re choosing to be in what you read at the beginning of this section, the first half, that beautiful, redeemed Earth, right, the glorified, sanctified, renewed Earth. To be part of that group, that’s the price. If you’re willing to pay it, come into the redemption story.

Casey Griffiths:
Yeah, well said. Consequences of Section 29, Scott, go ahead.

Scott Woodward:
I guess I would just summarize the contribution of Section 29 at kind of a high level here, right, that this revelation outlined two related stories of redemption in response to two cool scriptural questions that people were asking of the scriptures. First, as we covered, verse 7 through 21 outlines the story of the redemption of Israel in the latter days from the, let’s call it the bondage of their scattered condition to the promised land of their inheritance with the Lord during his millennial reign. Right, we get that story, kind of camera 1, first half. Camera 2, verses 30 through 50, outlines the story of the redemption of the human family from the subjection of Satan in a state of spiritual death, which came as a consequence of the Fall to their promised land of eternal life on this renewed, sanctified earth. So there, they kind of converge these two stories. In both stories, the condition for being redeemed by Jesus is ultimately just being willing to repent. And in both cases, those who don’t hear the word of the Lord, his voice, and that won’t repent, who resist that, who won’t believe in his redemption, they end up suffering the most.

Scott Woodward:
They end up suffering the most, with the exception of little children and those who have no understanding. It’s ultimately up to each of us individually, whether we’re going to love Christ and keep his commandments or choose to love darkness and persist in committing evil deeds. Theologically rich, Casey. Theologically rich because the questions were theologically awesome.

Casey Griffiths:
It highlights the point to me that the best commentary on scripture is scripture. And so next year, when people are reading those narratives about the Creation and the Fall and even about the Exodus, I hope they’ll keep in mind that the Doctrine and Covenants has the Lord literally commenting on those things and making these profound comparisons and explaining things that really, if you’re not using your footnotes and you’re not cross-referencing, there’s so much that we have to help us understand and appreciate and apply these divine and profound truths.

Scott Woodward:
Not too bad for the first eschatological revelation of the Doctrine and Covenants, Casey.

Casey Griffiths:
And more… I’m never going to be able to say this. So more Second Coming, end of times, eschatological revelations to come. So stay tuned. It’s going to get good. Thanks, Scott. Until next time.

Scott Woodward:
We’ll see you then.