Psalms 49–51; 61–66; 69–72; 77–78; 85–86 Part 1 • Dr. John White • August 24-30 • Come, Follow Me

Started partying quite a bit and I got kicked out of my fraternity for partying too hard. My parents had already paid the room and board and I didn't tell them right away because I was embarrassed. There's a lot of shame associated with that.

But I began to read the Bible seriously for the first time in 1987, as a sophomore in college.

I remember coming in touch with God's mercy because I didn't think God could forgive me for the stuff that I had done. Hello my friends, welcome to another episode of follow-up. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my door keeping co-host John by the way. John now. I know that doesn't sound like a compliment, but it really is. Listen to this verse. Here's Psalm 84 verse 10.

“I had rather be a door keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tense of wickedness. Isn't that beautiful?”

I thought you were saying "dorky" at first, but it was "dorky keeper." That might have worked, but this one I think is a little bit better.

I'm kind of both, so my "dorky" door keeper. John, we are privileged today to be joined by Dr. John White.

Dr. White, if it's okay if we call you John, welcome to follow him. It's good to be here with you all. It's going to be a great day. I've been waiting for this one for quite a while. I think our listeners are going to be so interested. Not only in what Dr. White has to teach, but in his story. Let's talk about the book of Psalms, John, by the way, what are you looking forward to today? One of the things I remember from four years ago is Eric Huntsman, and how he called the Psalms a response. It was not so much a revelation. These are words of men responding to God, and I feel that. I think that's beautiful. You know, I've had many students through the years. When we talk about the sacrament, they'll say,

"I just leave the hymnbook open and read through the lyrics." It's such a sacred time. Dr. White, John, what do you want to do today? What are you hoping to do? Well, I'm really excited to show how this block that we're going to be looking at. I'm not sure if you all had planned this, but it opens and closes with one question.

What can ransom a soul from the grave? Then how it answers it? Then the second, I think listeners will really enjoy discovering at the very center of the Psalter.

The book of the Psalms is Mercy, and what that means for anyone who might be struggling, some people think that maybe God is more disappointed in them, and I think Mercy will speak a word to them.

“Lastly, as we study this, I'm hoping it goes from simply meditation that the prayer book of the Bible, that's what a lot of people referred this to this as,”

would become part of their prayer life. I know for me that's been significant in my own spiritual formation. I love that the end in Psalm 86/11 talks about that our prayer life should be such that it unites our heart with God and fear, as far as reverence. And that's to me the destination of discipleship. What it means to be a follower of Jesus. I go from, oh, this will be interesting to, wow, I'm excited in less than a minute of what John tells us we're going to do today. Now, before we go any further, rather by the way, what do we know about Dr. White?

Dr. John White joined Brigham Young University from Baylor University, where he served for 14 years as a tenured

“associate professor of practical theology and ethics, director of the Graduate Chaplaincy program,”

and co-founder with his wife Cindy of the Faith and Sports Institute. An interdisciplinary scholar, he brings moral theology ethics and practical theology into conversation with sport, chaplaincy, medicine, business, and culture with a focus on character formation, applied ethics and bodyment, discipleship, and moral agency. He's published widely as engaged in multiple writing and research projects, and has led nationally recognized initiatives

that integrate faith, spiritual formation, and adolescent development, gearing to PhD in theological ethics from the University of Edinburgh. As a research fellow at B.O.E.S. Maxwell Institute, he contributes to the scholarship grounded in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ through research, writing, mentoring, and collaboration. And I want to ask what people might be thinking, what brought you from Baylor to B.O.E.U.? That's a great question. Do we have two years

to talk about it? That's how long the investigation started. I think you've had Dr. Janaine

I was presenting a paper. Dr. Nelson was mentoring a former student of mine, Elizabeth Perkins.

“She just got married, Elizabeth Bounds. All that to say, she was there to really encourage and”

support her. She was doing her post-doc at Baylor and at Harvard. That was a part of the session at the end of the session. We connected through Elizabeth as far as what I was researching and working on. And I didn't tell people this for a while because I didn't know what to make of it. Because I'm a theologian and we work with oftentimes empirical proof. We're trying to support and corroborate claims about God. But while she was speaking, there was a light over her. I didn't want to tell her

after about a month or two, but I said, hey, I just want you to know that day that you were there,

I was focused on this light that was above you. And she goes, there was no light above me. And I

said, yes, there was. When I began to then read about the restored gospel, learning about the role of light and illumination, I often wonder if I was supposed to see this because I was supposed to catch my attention to what this person was going to talk about to me was more than just academic scholarship, but it was about something had eternal consequences. That alerted me. We began this conversation. I visited BYU six times over the next year and a half. This investigation really

got serious. I began to ask some big questions. It began to not only just rearrange the mentor furniture of my intellect, but it began to rearrange things just spiritually for me. There was an illumination that was happening there. I couldn't deny it. It was arresting. It was surprising.

“And I think it was Charles Dickens that talks about. He said that Mormons have visions and see”

things in a world where technology would tend to dispute those kinds of things. And as a theologian, I didn't expect to see those kinds of things. It shocked me and opened my eyes to begin asking more existential questions about who am I, where am I heading, those kinds of things? Well, I'm excited to hear more of this story. I know Janay. We know Janay well here on the show. We love Janay. Janay, thank you for bringing us Dr. White getting this process started.

John, by the way, this is quite a story. Yeah, miraculous. I mean, I want you to be able to tell the story how many years now has it been since you had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I converted in 2024 at the Sacred Grove, then I was baptized in 2024. So just last year in October here in the Greater Provo area. Just October. Wow. For any member of the Church, theologian coming from Baylor. This is an extraordinary story. And I'm sure people want to hear it.

Let's jump in. I'm going to read from the Come Follow Me Manual. Then, John, we want to be taught. The title of the lesson this week is "I will declare what he has done for my soul." Sounds like it's going to fit really well. The writers of the Psalms share deeply personal feelings in their poetry. They wrote about feeling discouraged, afraid and remorseful. At times, they even felt abandoned by God and some Psalms carry a tone of frustration or desperation.

If you've ever felt that way, reading the Psalms can help you know that you aren't the only one, but you'll also find Psalms that can encourage you when you're having such feelings, because the Psalms also praised the Lord for his goodness, marvel that is power and rejoiced in his mercy. They knew that we are burdened by evil and sin, but that the Lord is good and ready to forgive.

They understood that having faith in the Lord doesn't mean the old never struggle with anxiety,

sin or fear, it means that you know who to turn to when you do. So, well, written.

“Alright, John, how do you want to start? I'd like to start with a question who is God?”

And the Psalms spend a lot less time telling us what to do and more about showing us who God is. That means that what we ought to do should always be in agreement with who God is as far as doctrine when I thought about my own walk with God. Sometimes I'd shrunk God. He's kind of this resident policeman or he's this law giver. He is that, but he's more than that. He's a managing director. He's the big man upstairs. We even hear athletes say that sometimes. The Psalms really

could get at this and help to reframe the way we see and know God. When I started to invent this investigation, I started reading everything. In fact, my wife said early on, why are these more books coming in through Amazon? And I stopped. I remember where we were at in the kitchen. I said, what, I needed to let you know something. This was shocking to her. It's still shocking to her, as far as the decision. But I said, I'm seriously thinking about converting. I felt like it was

Nicodemus going to Jesus that I didn't know where this was going to end. So, I was careful

then they would see this kind of like flirting with things and why are you exposing your mind to

those kinds of things? I discovered this quote by Joseph Smith and says, if men do not comprehend the character God, they do not comprehend themselves. So, what we see here is that our comprehension of God leads into our comprehension of ourselves. And even John Calvin said this in the book of his institution, he says, he's not sure what comes first. Knowledge of God or knowledge of self. What's beautiful about this? As we grow in our knowledge of God, we grow in our knowledge of self. As we

grow in our knowledge of self, we grow in our knowledge of God. And you see this all through the book

“of Psalms. This understanding of God is something that I think we all wrestle with and we get our”

portraits of God from our culture, from our upbringing. I mean, ideally God set it up to the family should be the ideal place where we get a perfect portrait or a good portrait, a good vision, a good

window to God. But when we all come from families that are less imperfect and so it doesn't always

work out that way. And I know for myself, that was a challenge. Some of the things I wrestled with early on. I had a father that did the best he could, very successful CEO, but he struggled with alcoholism. Well, I knew sometimes when I was coming home, what dad was going to show up? Was it the successful competent social dad that everyone knew or was the dad sometimes at the way he decompressed as he would have a drink? That had me early on to become very hypervigilant. My view of God was

one that I didn't think I ever really measured up. I was never good enough. My dad was very exacting at times to give you hope. Our vision of God will help crystallize our visions of ourselves.

“Hopefully those will become more and more in correspondence and alignment. That's what I wanted”

to start with, big picture. Then I want to talk about how to read the Psalms and then we're going to jump into the actual Psalms and get it some themes and get into dissecting some of the verses. I'm sure your list is no that there's five books of the Psalms echoing the five books that we see in the Pentateuch by Moses. Book one, two, book three, book four, book five. What we're looking at is if these Psalms fall in towards the end of book two through book three itself. Verse 15 of

49, "But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave for he shall receive me," say La. Then, 86, 13th. This is what we close with and it answers it. "For great is thy mercy toward me and thou has delivered my soul from the lowest hell from the grave." We start off with this question and we get an answer there. Scholars talk about that rhetorical devices, an inclusio or a book in it envelops this whole section that we're studying. I like what the Anchidious Tradition says

at the center of the Psalter is 78, 38 and the middle verse. Arguably people say this is the center. If you go right to the center of the whole book of Psalms it says this in verse 38. But he God being full of compassion for gave their niquity. So mercy is literally in the middle of the book. And that shouldn't surprise us as later they say. You see even though that doesn't function technically as a chiasmos, but we see in Alma 36. Lister's will know John Welch. He's well known

for this observation that we see at the center this phrase by Alma. Oh Jesus, Thou Son of God have mercy on me. So in both testaments of Christ, when the structure folds in half, mercies in the crease. Mercies in the crease, I mean we have crisis in the crease. When we come to the Psalter there's a triple register. So I did my dissertation on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St. Augustine and John Paul II. Careway T. I was, that's his name before he became Pope.

And Bonhoeffer calls the Psalter the prayer book of Jesus Christ. He has an interesting

“way of setting this up that I think should register with our listeners. He talks about”

there's really three lenses when we read the Psalter. First there's the historical

David's praying. I mean these Psalms many on the matributes are David. But then he talks about the Christ praised these Psalms. When you look in the New Testament, he was Jewish. So his piety was such that he was raised in the Psalms. So the book of Psalms. Finally, the third retcher is that we prayed the Psalms. And I like what one great early church theologian said. The Psalms are like a mirror to the person singing them. And you said the last,

was it Huntsman Eric Huntsman we saw in here? I feel like the Psalms are anatomy of the soul. John Calvin said that that when we look at the Psalms, we see the emotion. I think the Psalter is wanting us to know that we have a God who will take anything to, I mean he's there. He's our parent. He wants to hear from us. In fact, one could argue that those who haven't learned to express their anger to God oftentimes then find ways to act that out that might be

inappropriate. I think at the Psalter we want to recognize that there's something significant there that God is speaking as much for us in the Psalter itself. It's considered to be the center

That's the Mazarites would say maybe it's verse 36, but most people last scholar say it's verse 38. He being full of compassion for gave their equity and I'm making my own footnote right now

“to section 64 verse 7. I the Lord forgive since. I just love that's what I do.”

John, it is so fun to hear you quote the book of Mormon. You've been a member of the church for it hasn't been a year and you're quoting Alma like it's just off the back of your hand. I just take a quick tangent and tell us about the book of Mormon. I have in my ring here this was my commitment ring to God to the restore gospel of Alma 3228.

When I got my first book of Mormon I had obviously some pre-understanding didn't give much

credibility to it. In fact people often say don't read the book of Mormon and don't pray with Mormons. It'll change your life or God will change your life through them as witnesses. I started reading the book of Mormon and I just started seeing my studies were preparing me for this a long time ago. So I did my dissertation. I told John John Paul the second. He's written this

“Magnus opus of theology of the body. As a former athlete and still want to be athlete,”

I've found so much life in the body because of the pain that was in my family growing up. Well I did a deep dive on this. Theologically to understand that the body is a visible

explanation of an invisible reality of divine and spiritual. That came home when I began to read

the book of Mormon and I began to understand, for example, that God the Father consists of flesh and blood as we read in D&C. A God the Father has a face. The work I was doing about human understanding and materiality and physicality began to make more sense even as far as theologically. As I began to read the book of Mormon, I saw how this book like Alma 32, the verse that I have here as the verse 28 talks about that if you just exercise a particle of faith, what the word does if you get

a portion of it to you, just a little bit in a large and a light and it'll swell. It'll taste delicious. I remember this language standing out to me. I began to come in contact with God through the Book of Mormon. It changed my life. How can people say that this doesn't have authority, that this isn't true? I think for so many people is because they're not an insider. They have chosen not to read it. They've accepted secondary tertiary witnesses. If I was to get to know you,

John by the way, or Hank Smith, I would go directly to you eventually. I hope I wouldn't just continue to find out about you through others. The same thing is we have to go directly to the source

“and begin to investigate it and begin to read it and begin to own it for ourselves. And that's what”

happened with me at the Book of Mormon. It began to convict me, persuade me, and through witnesses like Janae, it was Iron Sharpen's Iron. It was unconventional, but I think God chose another scholar to witness to me as a scholar. It's interesting, I'm in the Neil Maxwell Institute. Elder Maxwell talks about that academic scholarship is a form of worship. He comes up with this title of Disciple Scholar. I needed Disciple Scholar. She was a missionary to me, though she wasn't necessarily

a missionary and what she said, but she was a missionary and what she did and who she is. I think there's a general conversation on this, right, as far as becoming a missionary. But nonetheless, through the Book of Mormon and through just multiple witnesses. In fact, I got to the point folks when I would call or text, Matt Seely, or Janae, or others, or email them like, "Are you guys talking to each other?" Because it's like these coincidences that are occurring,

but they're miracles. I finally had to throw my hands up and cry out, "O Lord Jesus, Son of God,

have mercy on me." I began my pilgrimage to fully trust in this and put my full weight and say, "Okay, this is legitimate. I need to live according to its principles and precepts." You're speaking John by the Waste Language. You start quoting Alma 32, "What does Alma say? I'm so joyful. My soul is leaving my body, right John? By the way, I just watched you." I'm listening through the eyes of my father who joined the church at age 24,

and some of the things that he described. It's just fun to hear how he had a book of Alma. That's great stuff. Alma 32 is one chapter of how many chapters that exude light and goodness and logic. Alma's going among the zoramites and saying, "Let me tell you what faith is and then as you describe, it'll be delicious to you. It'll enlighten your mind." Well,

Yeah, I really think so. John Paul II talks about the body as a sign. It's a sacrament.

It's supposed to witness a something beyond it. But not to empty the body as just a receptacle or container, but it has value in it of itself, and it takes on that value as it's joined to a soul. And our theology would say the spirit, the person, equals the soul. I spear in the body, equals the soul. You mentioned the zoramites. That is a part of my testimony too. Perfectionally, I was going through some challenges. It bailer. Compel humility.

Happened to me. You'd like to voluntarily choose humility. That's kind of the way that God gives grace to the humble and opposes the proud. But I found myself struggling so things and God

humbled me. But that humbling was preparing me then to receive the restored gospel. The conditions

in my heart weren't ready yet. Well, the soil needed to be tilled and cultivated. There's more organic language you even see in Alma 32, right? Compel is the word to a seat. It had to grow in me. It was good fresh soil that was being prepared independent before I met Dr. Nelson, anybody else. I was going through some difficulties. That just shows me God's divine choreography, God's divine providence. Now, this is so much fun. Keep going. Where do you want to do next?

I just want to say a little bit about the kinds of songs because when we're reading any kind of literature, we wouldn't need what we referred to as the genre, the kind of literature. You don't read Paul, diadactic literature, the way you read poetry. It has just as much meaning, just as much

“truth at theology in it, but you need to know the kind of literature you're reading. Let me dip my”

tone to this little bit. There's wisdom Psalms that I briefly referenced with Psalm 49 asked what money can do at the grave. We're going to come back to this song because I think it's really important. They that trust in their wealth none of them can by any means redeem his brother. There's penitential Psalms. Psalm 51 is the most famous one. Perhaps the greatest repentance prayer ever written. Then there's individual lament. We see in Psalm 86. That's a textbook case of you. A lament has

a dress, complaint, a petition, a trust, a vow, a praise. And then there's communal restoration. Psalm 85 will vow, not revive us again. Verse 6, there's praise and thanksgiving. In fact, I really believe that as you read the book of Psalms, it's teaching us. It's spiritually training us with the right language of how to even praise God. How to thank God. The best way to praise and thank someone is to find something about them that's specific to their attributes, specific to their

person. The Psalms, for example, come in here. I would declare what he had done for my soul. What Eric Huntsman said, there's a response to God. We're responding to the great things that

“God in rehearsing. Those are remembering those. That's a key idea in the book of Psalms remembering.”

And there's the royal messianic Psalms. You see in Psalm 72 is pointing past Solomon to Christ. Psalm 69 is quoted of Jesus more than almost any other Psalm. The only other Psalm quoted more as Psalm 22. Psalm 69. He references it a lot in His ministry. And then there's historical Psalms. Like Psalm 78, we see the drama salvation, almost like a sermon that's being preached and rehearsing and revisiting God's great plan of redemption. I can remember Hank in our new Testament year

seeing Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. All of these things really pointing to Christ. I mean, doesn't Psalm 22 start. My God, my God, why has that forsaken me? I like to put those up there in my classes now and say, here's the old testifying of the new year that Psalm 22 and is a 53. Jesus says, these are the things. What does he say? Is it Luke 24 which testify to me in the law

“and the prophets end in the Psalms? Yeah, that's why Bonhobra talks about we want to have”

a historical understanding of Psalms. That's too David. But then, as you said, it kind of finds it's fulfillment. It's Christological Ark is Jesus himself that he's using these Psalms. He's teaching us the significance of this as far as our inner own piety information. Yeah, that's awesome. Wonderful. What's we doing next, John? I was going to talk a little bit about how Hebrew pro-tree works. Hebrew poetry is not rhyme as far as sounds. It's rhyme is in thought. The key

device that it's used in Hebrew poetry is called parallelism or you have two lines in the

second line that sharpens and interprets the first line. Let me give you a couple examples.

So you see synonymous parallelism and 61 one. It says, "Here my cry, O God, then it says, attend unto my prayer." So it restates this cry. He's attending. He's not only hearing, he's visiting us, like he's close to his near to us in these prayers. Then you have antithetical contrasts from 66, 18 to 19. It says, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. But

have synthetic, which teach me the way, O Lord, unite my heart to fear thy name. So it's advancing.

“What does it mean to be taught God's way? Well, it should form something in us that actually”

brings together our hearts and reverence in God. And then there's what's called climactic parallelism. This kind of works like a staircase. Psalm 76, 16, the water saw the, O God, the water saw the, they were afraid. This is the power of, and even the use of creation and nature in the book of Psalms. As a theologian, we talk about different ways that God has chosen to reveal Himself. There's general revelation and that's something that's universal. Everyone can come in contact with that.

But then there's special revelation and that's specifically through the gospel to people. There's conditions that need to be satisfied to be able to understand that. And that's, for example,

faith, repentance, and baptism, as far as the restored gospel. Would we see something similar

or say in the book of Isaiah? What came to mind when you were talking about parallelism was though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Then he repeats the idea. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. I mean, to say it, then I'm going to clarify it and clarify it with different metaphors. This is the beauty of poetry, right? It's pregnant with meaning and you can keep coming back to it. As you understand something literally,

you know, metaphors are bifocal utterances. You have the literal understanding of something, but then you have the figurative understanding of it. You can't understand the figurative until you understand the literal. This is the problem sometimes. People just jump to the figurative and spiritualize it. But you really don't understand the literal so that you know what actually crosses over what does it? Not everything about a metaphor, image crosses over. So if I say that

John, by the way, when he gets up in the morning, he's like a bear. Well, we need to figure out literally what are bears like when you wake them up? But he has hair on him and he has teeth like a bear. We would just get it like he's startled. Maybe he's a little upset or something like that. That gets us to the emblematic then that part of parallelism. This is where you have image plus meaning my soul thirst is for thee and a dry and thirsty land. You understand the soul and

thirst and this apart's dry and thirsty land. Then you see your frame, right? Like in a song, you see a chorus that repeated. He has only my rock and my salvation, 62 to verse 6. When you see your frame, this is important. It continues to repeat something and this case to understanding if we find ourselves in unstable and difficult circumstances unpredictable, we need to latch on to the fact that God is our rock and our salvation. What does it mean for him to be a rock? Well,

he's not in there. He's not dead like a rock, but he's stable. He's strong. He can support us. John, obviously, you've done a lot of research on the way Hebrew poetry works, the Hebrew

“language. Did that have any influence as you were investigating the church?”

Yeah, it's sure did. Early on, when I was given my first book of Mormon, I eventually read the

whole book of Mormon for as baptized. I feel like that was kind of an important, perhaps obligation that if I was going to step in the waters of baptism, take on the name of Christ. I need to understand these scriptures. Early on, I started reading in particular the book of Heelman, and the Hebrew language they talked about this evolved consecutive. It's what advances the narrative and it came to pass, and I saw that in the book of Heelman, I saw that in the book of Mormon,

and I was just taken by that. I was like, well, this resembles the Holy Bible itself. It was those kinds of connections, those kinds of relationships. It dawned on me, began to disarm me, or maybe I would have had kind of a defense that more of an apologetic, to say this can't be the word of God. I began to allow that truth that insight to penetrate my heart and awaken to me that, okay, wait, there's something spiritually different about this book,

and it's not like other literature out there. It's the well, it's like the literature of the Bible. It's holy. It's divine. It's inspired. Wow. If I understand, right, Vov is like the letter V in Hebrew, or has that sound like David is Daleth, Vov Daleth? David? Yeah. What is a Vov consecutive story? It was just fascinated that that's an element. It's the syntax grammatically that moves the story forward. It'll say, and this happened, and this occurred. So it's a sequence. It moves the

narrative along. Is it the end? It came to past type sequencer. It's a prefix and it says like,

“and he will remember, and he remembered, and he observed. A past tense narrative sequence may”

begin with a perfect verb followed by a number of consecutive imperfect verbs, and Adam knew Eve is white, and then she can see it and then she bore came. Interesting. It's moving the narrative along. There's a lot of verses in the Book of Mormon that begin with the word "and", which is

that Jesus gives and blessed are that, and blessed, it adds the end in front of each of the

“Beatitudes. Is that 3 Nephi? 3 Nephi, 12. The Beatitudes all start with an end. It connects them together.”

I need to read you both something. This is from our episode on Heliman 1 through 6. If you go to follow him.co, you can read the transcript of our episodes. This was at the very beginning of our episode with Dr. Janay Nelson. She says, I have to tell you guys, as I was preparing for this podcast, I reached out to a friend of mine from Baylor, who's a Theologian, not a member of our faith. I asked him if he would be willing to read Heliman 1 through 6, and then give me his insight.

It was so fun hearing his feedback. I mean, he could have done this in any part of the Book of Mormon, but he was like, "That's Hebrew structure. You see this in the Old Testament. You see this in the New Testament." I'm like, "Yeah, it's almost like this is written by God." She goes on to talk about it. When you said that about the Book of Healman, I thought, "I've heard this story before." How wonderful. Let's keep going. Let's look at Psalms 49 to 51 and 61 to 66. There's a couple of themes

that bring those sections together. First, we see the sacrifice God actually wants. God needs nothing

from us. What is he asked for? A broken heart. Psalm 51. It's really getting at this ordering of desires. This fits very well with the general conference talk by President Oaks on Desire. He talks about desire. Starts with ranking your priorities, and then those priorities, result in choices, and those choices, result in actions. Let's jump into Psalm 49. The central claim here is wealth and status cannot purchase deliverance from death. But God alone can redeem the life of the one who

“trusts Him, rendering merely earthly security and illusion. This is really important. nowhere”

in the Bible is at a tacking wealth. Because in the New Testament, it's not money is the root of all

evils. The love of money. But Psalm 49 is considered a wisdom Psalm because He starts off saying

all ye inhabitants of the world, both low and high and rich and poor together. This is universal summon. This is something everyone can understand. Then even use the language. This is a parable we need to unpack this. Versus six and eight, you get that the ransom is something no one can pay. Let me read that to you in verses six to eight. They the trust and their wealth. None of them can by any means redeem his brother nor give to God a ransom for him. For the redemption of their

souls precious and its seethas forever. The word used here is kind of a legal payment that buys back a forfeited life. It has economic imagery. Jesus talking about in Mark chapter eight, what will it profit a man? What will a man gain? If he inherits the world but loses his soul, Psalm 49 seems to be in the background here as he's talking about that. Then we'd know two chapters later. He says the son of man came to give his life a ransom for many. So there's

that ransom idea that we find in Psalm 49. The ransom no one could pay. Of course, was the son of man who did pay it. Then you see verse 11 and 17. This I'm going to bring in an in a locket here and another conversation partner here because it's really important for us to understand verses 11 and 17. Many commentators see wealth as an immortality strategy. It's a coping mechanism for death. How are we going to outlive death? It's going to be by accumulating, even use the words,

house a shell continue forever. They'll call their lands after their own names. I mean,

“universities do this, museums do this. You put your name on it and that's how I'm going to be remembered.”

One commentator says this behind the human fascination of wealth is a denial of death. It is an immortality strategy. There's a famous book that won a Pulitzer Prize. His name is Ernst Becker. He wrote the denial of death. He talks about this immortality strategy's immortality projects. All kinds of projects that we can get co-opted in to think that this is how we're going to live forever. It could be wealth, fame, legacy. This is significant that the Psalm is dismantling this.

Helping us to recognize the only thing that lasts forever is one who's found in a proper relationship with God. And he's the one who's going to redeem you. Look at verses 14 to 15. Here we have something that's antithetical to Psalm 23. Death is the shepherd versus the God who receives. Let me read that too. Like sheep, they are laid in the grave. Death shall feed on them. But God

grave for he shall receive me. This is considered kind of an anti Psalm 23. The self-sufficient,

they get a shepherd all right. But it's named death. The pivot here is that this verb receive is the same verb that's used with Enek and Genesis 524 that he has received. He was smashed, taken up in Elijah 2 Kings 2. Some scholars think this is an early imitation because we don't have it developed in the Old Testament like we did in the New Testament. An early imitation of hope beyond the grave. And the hope beyond the grave is that God will receive a God will redeem as God will

purchase us. This obviously has quick parallels and resonance with the book of Moses. And chapter 7, we know that Enek has whole city received in the God's bosom. Psalm 49 glempses with the restoration

“narrates here. Jacob is preaching the Psalm right here as the only way to be redeemed is infinite”

tournament. Nothing else will suffice. Nothing, finite, can ransom a soul has to be an infinite

tone of the covers everything. John, I have to read you just a little bit of this article. And here it is. And I don't know who many of these people are, just you know. It says Brian Johnson swallows more than 100 pills every morning. Larry Ellison has written checks totaling 430 million to laboratory studying why human cells decay. Jeff Bezos quietly backed a $3 billion start-up built around one premise that aging is a disease and diseases have

cures. These are longevity billionaires, a new class of ultra wealthy individuals who have decided that dying is a problem money can solve. So what do you think? Is dying a problem money can solve? The Psalmist takes that on. If you trust in your wealth, you can't ransom out of death. You can't

pay God off. I like what Billy Graham said that you've never seen a curse with a you haul behind it.

“You can't take that wealth if you, but I think it's important. It's not as if the Psalms are”

saying the problem is with wealth. It's more orientation to this that it can become a God's substitute that we expect wealth to be able to do something salvationally, or salvifically. They're only God can do, only God can purchase and redeem us. Isn't that fascinating that it's still going on today? Oh, yeah. Got a defeat death. What did you call wealth as an immortality strategy or project? And this this song goes on to say that the great equalizer for everybody, whether you're

wealthy or poor, is that we all die like animals. This is language from ecclesiasties. The inexorability and the ability of death. You're not going to escape this. There's no get out of death free card or anything like that. It doesn't care how much money you have. Yeah, I mean it's it's indiscriminate. Exactly. I like how Psalm 49 uses the language of money of ransom or redeemed to be bought back, but then it shows, but the only one who can do that is is called a redeemer, but it's not

with money. It's with laying down his own life, which as I guess the point of that. That's a great insight. There's the irony there. It's going to use economic language to say money won't work. There's a currency, but it's God's currency. Yeah. Come up to God. What's this going to take? How much? I've got my check. Do you even know? Yeah. We see that in Psalm 50, right? People come to God with their sacrifices. He goes wait a minute. He's going to use heaven as his witness. God is the

prosecutor in Psalm 50. We're in the dock. See us, Louis talks about God in the dock. In this case, it's reverse. We're in the dock. He's saying, I own all the cattle on a thousand hills. There's nothing you can give me. I'm the owner. I'm the creator of those kinds of things. If you're trying to buy or purchase or kind of a transactional religion or somehow you can pay homage and get God to show favor to you by something that you offer him, then you've gotten this mixed up. I love this.

We talked about this last week. Job says, "Naked came out into this world and they could go

“I out of it." What does verse 17 say when he diet, he shall carry nothing away. That's why”

Lord President Oaks emphasis on becoming. We can only take what we have become. Somehow our testimony fits in our spirit, which we get to take with us. And when what we've become fits in our spirit, for the rest, the checkout counter called Death will unload our cargo, right? Here's Ralph Waldo Emerson. Saro makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect, the wise, no nothing. I loved what you said. Well, if there's an immortality strategy,

I'm going to beat this somehow. I'm going to, I'm going to beat this with my millions.

There was a Yale scholar who was a critic and was not a believer in the Restore Gospel.

“He said this about Joseph Smith related to Death. I think it's profound. He says,”

this is a religion that most vehemently and persuasively defies and denies the reality of death.

What's powerful about that is it's not as if we, Joseph Smith, don't believe there's such a

thing that death that does exist, right? But he reframes it that it's a doorway inside an eternal covenant. It's not the wall that defines life. We have an exit strategy and the way that that strategy gets to us is to the atonement. In fact, in a funeral, Joseph Smith said, we mourn the loss. But we do not mourn as those without help. Yeah. Amen. That's First Corinthians 15. We're the most pity people if there isn't such a thing as the resurrection. We don't have real hope.

Are we going to stay in 49? Do you want to keep going, John? We're done. We're done 49.

Psalm 50. This is where, as I've already alluded to, God takes the stand. He's seen as this

covenant judge. We see that he really desires heartfelt thanksgiving and a war or ethical faithfulness over ritual sacrifice. That can easily get detached from any kind of covenant commitment or loyalty. Verse 12. This is the language of covenant lawsuit. This is heaven and earth. The summoned as a witness. We see that in verse 4. And the defendant is the congregation. It's us. And the fatal error is verse 21. Valve thought us that I was all together such and one as die self.

We've confused this. And the way that we can maybe quit pro quo each other right if I do this, you'll do this for me. You can't do that with God. If I were hungry, I would not tell the for the world is mine and the fullness thereup that Lord owns all of this. If we really understand this, it should have us come into the world. It's excited to know and serve God because we recognize that we operate from this position of a steward. We're caretakers. We have responsibility

given to us. We can be advocates for all of creation. We should look after creation. The Lord owns all of that. The same way praise, whether we complete praises is by thanking God. And that brings joy to God and to us too. God doesn't need our praise. We need to praise God. It does something to us. Yes. We're seeing how great thou art not because he's wondering. It's waiting. Come on, tell me. Thank you. But because it's like a spontaneous expression of

gratitude for all he's done for us and given us and that we can be saved when we do stupid things. How great thou art? I'm so grateful. I like that.

“It completes it. That's what Lewis said. So to use a praise not merely expressed but completes the”

enjoyment. You connect your joy to the giver. You connect your joy to the one who gave you the gift. And you say thank you. It's gratitude when God asks us to praise him. It's, I want you to bless your own life. It sounds like the Lord doesn't it saying, I want you to do something that'll help you. I'm a good parent, right? Right. This is for your good. Good point. Here was your mistake. You thought that I was like you. I just like, but I love that. That's a pretty fatal error.

I am not manipulated. And we see that as far as the problem of idolatry, the story is kind of like what's the story about black beauty. This is a story about trust and betrayal. I think it sounds start self-designate. I think the whole Bible is a story about trust and betrayal. idols or whenever we take something that's a created good and we elevate it to be a rival or

on par with God. The problem is the created good itself. We're supposed to like good food,

good friendship, but we make that as a substitute. We begin to assign worth and value that's reserved only to God for those things. Worth, worship. Yeah, that's the old English word is worth

“ship. Yeah. John this has been incredible. And we're only two Psalms in here. So what should we do next?”

We're going to turn to perhaps one of the most well-known Psalms. Psalm 51. I refer to my conversion into parts. The reason why I do that is because when I'm talking to non-LDS folks, they're like "Wait a minute, you were a follower of Jesus. You taught it a divinity school, seminary." Psalm 51

that we know that he accepts us because of his loving kindness, because of his compassion. So I was in college. This is a very ironic story. I had been on a three-year experiment to find life. My mom and dad had separated on and off. My dad was struggling with his alcoholism. I found a number of Sarah get gods, but I got to Indiana University and I joined it for eternity. I was really trying to fit in to be accepted and I had this father wound, this

father hunger. I needed love and affirmation. Started partying quite a bit and I got kicked out of my fraternity for partying too hard. My parents had already paid the room in board and I didn't tell them right away because I was embarrassed. There was a lot of shame associated with that.

I began to read the Bible seriously for the first time in 1987 as a sophomore in college.

I remember coming in touch with God's mercy because I didn't think God could forgive me for the stuff that I had done. About a year so after that I started to write bikes with a number of

“cyclists that were Christians too and they began to share Jesus with me. I'll never forget.”

It was very competitive in order to go on this, you had to get an endorsement by your local campus minister. I knew I was starting to ask God questions so I sat down with this gentleman in a library cafeteria at Indiana University. He went through the plan of salvation with me, talked about God has a wonderful plan for your life. You've even probably heard of this. So I'd read in the Bible that God loves me and forgive me, but I didn't understand how that all related

to the person of Jesus and his work and his sacrifice, the Atonement. And he said, "Would you like to transfer your trust from yourself for your eternal destiny to Jesus and

what he had done on your behalf and offers you this free gift?" I said, "Yes, I would. I've never heard

this." He said, "Well, you can pray a prayer." He says, "The prayers at magical, the language we use then," we said, "This is how you get saved. The trust, not the prayer." So I prayed that prayer. And that began my journey with Jesus. I then went on staff for 18 years with a campus ministry. In fact, I was doing a vangeny discipleship on college campuses just like 18, 19-year-old LDS missionary, right? That was my first conversion. And then my second conversion came almost 30 years

later through the witness of many people. And the reason why I talk about two conversions is because I want people to understand that the second conversion completes it. It's the fulfillment of it, the same way you have the old covenant and the new covenant. It's all part of the progress of

“redemption. I needed to be completed. And X-18, the gospel more perfectly. And that's what happened”

to me in my conversion. I had found the restore gospel being expounded to me and then eventually my missionary lessons that I went through. And it completed what started. The good work the God started at Fyclines 1-6. God began a good work and you will bring it to completion. And it is bringing the completion there. But the completion is an ongoing. So it's not like I just stop this growth. It's a eternal progression. It's fantastic. Absolutely worth. Psalm 51 was

significant because I didn't know that there was a God who could forgive me. I love Psalm 51. It's really the liturgy of the broken heart. The big idea here is that true restoration with God requires not ritual compensation from mighty change of heart that we see in the Book of Mormon, offered in genuine contrition. This is attributed to David. And I think we probably shouldn't whitewash this. David didn't just commit a sin against Bathsheba as far as a

“adultery. There's a lot more that went on here. David's life is really kind of a tragic figure.”

If you want to think of an Aristotle talks about what makes a tragic figure, is that you didn't expect this person. They were kind of the hero and they fell. For David, he abused royal power, he exploited, he engineered death, and he was about to cover up. Then he's greeted by Nathan and it zeroes in on him and he has no excuses. My sin, he says in verse 3, is ever before me. David is not a defense attorney in this. He's not trying to defend himself. He's coming clean.

The first key point here is a verb that we see in Genesis. Let me read that. Says,

"Createn me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me." One commentator says this, "Many of the prayers for help often talk about change my situation, so then I can praise you." But this commentator goes on to say, "No, this is a prayer that says, "Change me. I am the problem." The verb used there for "Createn me." Clean heart is the same verb that's used in the book of Genesis. I think this is important. We never want to separate the doctrine of creation and redemption.

The God brought us into mortal existence. David doesn't ask for a pair. He asks for creation. That's pretty profound. And I mentioned to you that this is what you see in Moziah, as far as his mighty change of heart, and the Old Testament is really the cradle of conversion of something that God creates, not something that we renovate ourselves. Yeah, I like this because the Book of Mormon teaches it too. Nobody changes their own heart.

They get to a point where they realize I can't do this myself. And then they say, "God created me, a clean heart. If you can create me, once you can create a new heart in me." So I really like that distinction there. The important things that have to be done in us can only be done by God with his help.

“Yeah. I love that. And you know, this is another thing people say, "What did you have to”

edit or change when you became a latter day saint?" And I say, "Well, one of the things I think is a misunderstanding for a lot of people in the outside, they accuse us one, they say we're not Christians, but they say that we're guilty of works righteousness." And I just say, "What book are you reading?" It's not in the Book of Mormon folks, but what it does, it understands it takes serious that God only does relationship through covenant.

Once you frame it that way, covenant always involves promise and obligation.

Think about a marriage relationship, it's all built on promise. I promise to do this, but you never actually did it, you know, duty or obligation to it. That would be a license for abuse. You could just say, "Well, I promised you." Or the flip side of it's all about obligation and no promise.

“That can be a form of legalism. But God does both. We bind ourselves to Him. He binds His”

self to us, and that's a beautiful portrait of how all relationships ought to be done. Even friendships, healthy friendships, they're about promise and obligation. Do you have responsibility to them? You have an indebtedness to them, based on the good things in gratitude. You're not trying to pay them back for that. And obviously, we're utterly dependent upon God,

so we could never pay them back. What's the scripture that I'm Mozayah to? Always be unprofitable

servants. You can't put them in your debt. Just so you know, I've still playing catch up here, as far as I'm trying to read the book with you. But I love this whole passage when we understand the reception of God's mercy, and we trust in it. The Psalm is saturated with joy vocabulary here. In verses 8 through 12, and Elder Redlin has a talk on repentance, joyful choice. And that's another thing that was new to me, but I don't fear repentance in the rest of our gospel. In fact,

the repentance is a gift to restore and return me. Keep me on this every renewing return to God. Before I always start repentance, it's like, oh man, he must be really bad if they're repent. But as you grow closer to God, you start to see things in your life, and he allows you, I mean, think it when you first trust. If he showed you everything in your life, you'd probably freak out, like there's no way. But he's slowly, and you start to grow, and you're understanding

of holiness. You start to recognize, whoa, you're out of the people, holy. You start to recognize where you fall short. But that's just this constant progression, and that salvation is in a scent that we want, even the Psalms of the scent right about going up with a clean hand and pure heart. We are sending to God. Repentance is built into the logic as a resource of the good news of the of mercy. I like what you said before, you mentioned that some perceive that we are trying to earn

our salvation, but the way you put it, say that again, it's because they see that making a covenant as a work or something. I think a covenant, it's two sides of the same coin, and God only does covenant involves promise and obligation. People on the outside of our faith will see that we emphasize duty in responsibility. Well, that's a healthy relationship. You have obligations. What they don't hear us talk about is that it's equally about what jump starts this whole thing

and why we have a response of obligation, responsibility, is because God's initiated. He's the one who's moved. Another verse that's inside my ring here, I have Psalm 32, 28, I have first John 4, 19. We love because God first loved us. What's reflexive? It's a response to God's love.

In fact, every command in the Bible is always a response to indicative. Look at the Tink

Mammots. Remember, I brought you out of Egypt. That's promise. That's grace. Now, here's how

“you ought to live in this relationship with me. You should have no other God's inform me. You should”

not commit adultery, right? So his vertical responsibility, horizontal responsibilities, Jesus says, "Come unto me, command, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's promise. That's grace. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10 for by God's grace." And then it says that you've been

over and over. Covenant relationship is always conditions and unconditioned. God unilaterally

says this, but then there's a response to it. I'm looking in my, these are my dad's scriptures, Psalms 50 verse 5. He's got it underlined. Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. This is just what you're saying right now. It sounds like. That's the next point. In Psalm 50, you see what you just said verses 16 and 17, the broken heart answers Psalm 50, and becomes the law of sacrifice versus 16 and 17. The sacrifices of God

are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, that will not despise. That's 51, 17, it's a response to the Psalm 50 that you just read. That's beautiful. Great segue there.

People will remember reading in the book more than before Jesus appears personally,

they hear a voice in 3rd Nephi chapter 9, and he says, "No more animal sacrifice. I am the great last sacrifice." What I want now is a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I hope people are noticing. Hey, that is articulated right there. He's still quoting Psalms. For the young people that are

“listening, the best way I heard a broken heart, because I thought as a teenager, a broken heart”

is what all those love songs on the radio were about. Every country song you've ever heard. Yeah, exactly, but a broken heart, what do we call the process of taming a wild horse? Breaking it. It's a heart that submissive to its master. Is the way I try to remember it now,

a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I'm giving my heart to God. I can't do this myself clearly.

So I'm going to have a broken heart and a contrite contrition repentance spirit. So that's kind of in that book of Mormon. And hey, if you don't mind me asking, John, what other things in the book of Mormon jumped out at you, I'm just so fascinated by how you would see that through the lens of your background and experience. Yeah, well, it's a big question. It was a fancy word that theologians use and they talk about this

inter-textual witness. It's just what you just did there. In my notes, as you said this, the next thing is 3 Nephi 9, 19 to 20. I was like, no way. I started to see this witness within the quad, within the scriptures. Catholics have other books too. When you start to understand that there's a course of witnesses here, and that if you read the book of Mormon and the Bible together, it only strengthens your faith. My son, surely after me, converted and I baptized him two months after me.

“He struggled because he was told, and I think this was with the best of intentions, but he was told”

that the book of Mormon is more important than the Bible. I said, John, we don't believe that. There are an complementary relationship. The Bible is not a substitute. The Book of Mormon is not a substitute. Joseph Smith went into the grove because of a Bible verse. James 16, that led him to then get the plates. If one could argue no Bible, no Book of Mormon, no Old Testament, no New Testament. Now, one would be careful about saying this is not as if God couldn't have shown up to Joseph Smith

independent of the Bible. He can do what he wants. He can reveal himself. They work in harmony. I started to see that as a began to read the Book of Mormon as a way. This kind of idea is an echo here in the Bible, and I started to put them together, and then I got Book of Mormon from Janae, and I started to look the cross-references and that really helped me again. I started seeing this early on. When Jesus before he leaves, it says he expounded all the scriptures in one.

“I write crazy things in my margins. I didn't just put a underline. I put, can I get tickets for this?”

I like to hear that lecture. He's going to expound all of the scriptures in one, and maybe what we're seeing is some kind of intertextuality. Yeah. I tell people the Bible, it's cliff notes to begin with. Are you telling me that you can read through the Sermon on Mount 5 through 7 in a few minutes? I guarantee that Jesus preached longer than a few minutes. People wouldn't have come and sat and listened to someone in authority like that. It just didn't

work. Why wouldn't we want other scriptures to strengthen that testimony that voice? So I love it. Do we have a quad? We should be thrilled to get more, and we want more. But about the pro-great price that Dr. and Covenants, could you look through those? Oh, I love the Dr. Covenants. Prior to coming to the restored gospel, I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. We have the Book of Common Prayer. I see the Dr.

Bible and Thomas Cranmer, and when he put together, it gets at the liturgy, the procedures of

the church, the prayers of the church, and the Dr. Covenants has kind of that organizational that makes all revelation. I continue to find that the Dr. Covenants is illuminating as the Book of Mormon. Now there's parts of it that I'm still trying to figure out because it seems kind of administrative. Even that 3 Nephi 9, that same idea is found in DNC 59, isn't as far as this sacrifice and the Lord of a broken heart and contract. Yeah. Then what was profound to me,

and this is another litmus. I wasn't going to convert that they don't get Jesus right. I just think

“it's beautiful that is that every 1.7 verses in the Book of Mormon you have Jesus, something like that?”

2.2 in the New Testament, in 1.7 1.8 was it Susan East and Black, it did that initially, that research. It has a high Christology? No, I love that. Yeah, you're speaking my language. Exactly. What I love about Psalm 51 is that every sacrament, meaning, is Psalm 51 offering. Oh, I love it. I was so convinced of having the Eucharist. I think it should be every Sunday. Guess what? Didn't miss a beat when I came to the Restore Gospel. Yeah, I didn't like,

I don't know if I could have got over that because I was in the Baptist tradition for a while, and it was sometimes quarterly. I say this all with all sensitivity and respect, I just seemed like Jesus said we should do this as often as we gather. This is a remembering it's supposed to be going on. The sacrament, meaning, really is Psalm 51 practice. Sounds like you came home. Carl Rotter, he's a Catholic. He talks about anonymous Christians.

I was an anonymous LDS. I was in Cognito. I just didn't know it. Now, this is one thing that longer I go. I'm so certain of this witness. I totally believe it. I'm all in. This is my background, too. I'm an all or nothing kind of person that can get you in trouble sometimes. I really like desserts. Once I said, yes, I'm not turning back and God just continues to reinforce this. Sometimes I feel like this is just too good to be true. It's like I went through the wardrobe,

“lying with your wardrobe. I went through. I see now. I see things. I remember the first time”

I got glasses. I might friends would say you're squinting. I remember I couldn't see very well.

My biology teacher brought to my attention as well as to my friends. I got glasses. The first thing

I recognized is like, whoa, look at the veins on the leaves of the trees and I feel like that's what happened to me when I came to restore gospel. I started to see things marked eight as far as the blind man's healing. My first conversion allowed me to see men were like trees. I could see things. So it was real. The second conversion was I once was blind, but now I fully see. Beautiful. In high definition. Yeah. Yeah. Verse 11 of 51, notice that he wants the spirit to stay,

says, "Take not thy Holy Spirit for me." This is one of only two Old Testament names of the Holy Spirit. The other one is an Isaiah 63, 10 through 11. One commentator says, "This is stunning." He says,

“"The Spirit is present with the sinner during confession, acting already to create the clean heart."”

God's visiting him. He's present there. You see the democratization of the spirit of the New Testament. We saw the spirit more. Just kind of this annoying thing coming on leaders and prophets and Moses says, "Oh, I wish everyone had this." Here we have the spirit and relation to repentance and didn't want the spirit to be taken from him. The Book of Mormon does that same thing.

The natural man is an enemy to God, has been since fall of Adam, will be forever, never,

unless he yields to the enticing of the Holy Spirit puts off the natural man and becomes a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord. The Holy Ghost seems to be almost a vehicle for the toning power of the Lord to enter into my heart. Don't take that from me. That's beautiful. Romans 8 says, "The Spirit testifies with our Spirit." That word, children got it. This is where John Calvin got this right. He says, "You can have all this revelation from without, but you need

this internal revelation. You need the convicting. You need the paraclype, the counselor, the language we use in their store gospel, the Holy Spirit is a companion. He takes up shop, he resides in us, and we need that every day. We don't want to do anything that would push the Holy Spirit away. Bonhoeffer and his prayer book of the Bible, Bonhoeffer was a theologian in Nazi Germany as a part of the Nazi resistance and he had a underground similar and thick and

of this way, because the Psalms are prayer book of the Bible. It's a part of the regiment of training

seminarians. He says this on the penitential Psalms. He goes, "Jesus prays for the forgiveness of sins, yet not for his own, but ours, which he has taken upon himself precisely in this, is shows himself to be the true Son of God." This is back to that triple register that Bonhoeffer talks about. David, praise it and guilt. Christ, praise it and carrying ours. That's Alma 7, 11 through 13. If you think about it, and we pray it as both in guilt and for Christ to carry ours.

If you think about it, only two people can praise Psalm 51 with complete honesty. The worst of sinners, we all fall short of the glory God and the sinless one who took the sin upon him. At the sacrament table, you kneel between both of them. We kneel as sinners. We take on the name

“of Christ. That's why I think the sacrament in DNC 7779, I take a journal every sacrament”

for a meeting, every Sunday. There's this practice that I learned while I was a seminary professor at the Divinity School at Baylor, and it's called "Lectio Divina." It's really this slowing down and paying attention to the words of Scripture, and perhaps the Spirit is going to impress this idea on me. I take that lens to the whole sacrament meeting, not just whatever is red, whatever the prayers are, but I'm looking for the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I'm writing it down,

and I can tell you that I get met just as much in the hymns and the sacrament and the testimonies,

“like this threefold witness is going on there. I remember when I went to church to my parents”

before my first conversion, it's church's boring to me. I mean, I can go without it. I don't want

a miss church now. Wherever I'm at, I was just in Madrid with a number of BYU students took them over there for this big conference we were doing, and we presented multiple papers and a great opportunity for these undergraduates. We went to a sacrament meeting in Madrid. It was all in Spanish. This is something I prayed. Let's talk about the Holy Spirit showing up. I said, Lord, I just would ask that one person with speaking English. This woman got up. She looked out there. She goes,

she said it in Spanish. First, I didn't know this until she came up and talked to us afterwards,

and she commenced to speak in English. And afterward, I said, "You're an answer to my prayer." She goes, "I looked out there and recognized that there's some new folks and maybe they don't know

“Spanish, and I'm going to give my testimony and English." I mean, that's just how God works. It's beautiful, isn't it?”

Coming up in part two, they knew I was working and going back for the BYU and they were really excited for me. The last night before we fly home, the next day we go out as a group. And they've seen that I'd stop drinking. I mean, this group would like to go to pubs. They'd seen these outward changes of me. The Lord said, "You're going to tell them tonight." I was like, "I don't think I can tell them. I just don't think I can do it. This is going to be so hard."

But I thought, "This is true that I need to testify."