Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - Alma 13-16 Part 1 • Eva Witesman • June 24 - 30 • Come Follow Me

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Dr. Eva Witesman continues examining the differences between God’s power and peace versus man’s attempt at terror and control and how the kingdom of God provides safety for all people.SHOW NOTES/TRANSCRIPTSEnglish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM26ENFrench: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM26FRPortuguese: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM26PTSpanish: https://tinyurl.com/podcastBM26ES YOUTUBEhttps://youtu.be/mdfWTiY4O9EALL EPISODES/SHOW NOTESfollowHIM website: https://www.followHIMpodcast.comFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookWEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletterSOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE00:00 Part I  - Dr. Eva Witesman02:02 Introduction of Dr. Witesman02:48 Lesson introduction05:21 The temple endowment08:12 Coercive power vs. sharing power10:31 Foreordination and Dr. Witesman shares a personal experience18:13 Alma 13:13-Chiasmus 25:58 Wrestling with difficult ideas29:02 Mechizedek and the power of God33:02 Melchizedek vs. Nehor35:12 Alma 13:7 - Eternal power38:55 Alma 13:28 - Compare D&C 12142:04 Alma and Amulek and Liberty Jail43:04 Alma 14 - Exposition on ordinances and repentance46:01 Alma 14:6-13 - Zeezrom’s guilt and teaching to all47:11 Alma 14:8 - An important moment50:45 President Johnson on sisterhood of peacemakers54:52 Women in the scriptures and violence against women 58:30 The gospel teaches humility and peace1:00:29 The experiences of women and violence1:04:15 End of Part 1 - Dr. Eva WitesmanThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name's Hank Smith, I'm your host. I'm here with my humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love, and long-suffering co-host John, by the way, and our guest, Dr. Ava Weitzman. John, we are in the last part of basically Alma's reactivation tour through all of these cities. What have you learned so far? What are we looking forward to? Wow, what a difference a different area makes. Alma 5 was Zarahemla, gave them that spiritual checklist we talked about. Alma 7, he goes to Gideon, they're doing great. He gives them prophecies about Christ,

and then he goes to Melek briefly, and then to Ammonihah. This is a scary place, and some really frightening things happen here. We get to see how he and his newly reactivated companion, wouldn't you say that about Amulek, living beneath his privileges, how they react to this whole thing. It's a sobering, powerful story. Matthew 18 Excellent. John, like I said, we have Dr. Ava Weitzman with us. She's from BYU, gave an incredible BYU devotional a few years ago. What are we looking forward to today? Where are we going to go?

Ava Weitzman In chapter 13, we're going to talk a little bit about the temple and the priesthood and what that looks like. In 14, it gets a little heavier. We're going to talk about the role of women and children in times of war and peace and the role that they play and what that looks like in societies. In chapter 15, though, we come back to the miracle of repentance. We're going to really focus on that and then we'll end really on that high note entering into the rest of the Lord. WONDERFUL. I'm really looking forward to this even though we're taking on some very difficult chapters.

I think there's a lot to learn. John, Dr. Weitzman has never been on our podcast before. We are so lucky to have her. We better give her an introduction. Yes, we are lucky to have her. Dr. Ava Weitzman is a professor in the BYU Marriott School of Business where she studies government and nonprofit management and pro-social business. She's the director of the Ballard Center for Social Impact, which develops the faith and skills to solve social problems.

And as you mentioned, Hank, in 2017, she did a BYU devotional on women in education, which has basically gone viral. It's been viewed by a global audience. And her talk there is being included in an anthology of influential LDS speeches published by Illinois University Press. We're really glad we caught her to be able to come and join us today. I'm happy to be able to come and join us today. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I was so excited when she said, yes, John. I emailed her. We'd never met. I heard that devotional, had shared it with my daughter up at BYU-Idaho. And I thought, well, why don't I give

it a shot? And she responded, this is exciting. Ava, let me start with the Come Follow Me manual and then let's find out where you want to take us. This is how it starts. It says, In many ways, life in Ammonihah had been good for both Amulek and Zeezrom. Amulek was a man of no small reputation, with many kindreds and friends and much riches. Zeezrom was an expert lawyer who enjoyed much business. Then Alma arrived with an invitation to repent and enter into the rest of the Lord. For Amulek, Zeezrom and others accepting this invitation

required sacrifice and even led to unbearable adversity. But of course, the story doesn't end there. In these chapters, we learn what ultimately happens to people who believe in the power of Christ into salvation. Sometimes deliverance, sometimes healing, and sometimes things don't get easier. But always the Lord receiveth his people up unto himself in glory. Always the Lord grants power according to our faith in Christ and always that faith gives us hope that we shall receive eternal life. As you read these chapters and we get to study them with Dr. Weitzman, you can take comfort in these promises and you may come to understand better

what Alma meant when he spoke of entering into the rest of the Lord. Man, I love these opening paragraphs of the manual. With that, where do you want to start? In the introduction, one of the things that you talked about is the power that the Lord grants to his people. And I really think that that's where we're being dropped into Alma's discussion of that power. If you look at chapter 13, there's actually the beginning of this exposition on God's power and on the plan of salvation

and all of these beautiful things. It actually starts in chapter 12. I think that's important in part because toward the middle and end, he's talking about the Garden of Eden, he's talking about the fall, and he's talking about the plan of salvation that was created from before the foundation of the world. And the reason that I think that's useful when we start chapter 13, verse 1 says, and again, my brother and I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord gave these commandments unto his children. We're going forward from the time of Adam and Eve that was referenced in chapter 12. And part of the reason that I think that's helpful

is because the pattern of this exposition follows the pattern of the temple. So I want to quickly go to the description that the church provides about the temple endowment, which is the title of this webpage that they have to prepare people for what happens in the temple. And one of the things that says is during the ordinance, talking now specifically about the endowment, during the ordinance, events that are part of the plan of salvation are presented. They include the creation of the world, the fall of Adam and Eve, the atonement of Jesus Christ, the apostasy and the restoration. You'll also learn more about the way all people can return to the presence of the Lord. That outlines these things

that we learn in the temple and that we study in the temple that are part of that covenant that brings us power. In these chapters, you see Alma talking about each of these things more or less in turn, clearly not the apostasy and restoration because those haven't happened yet. This to me is deeply connected with the temple. In verse two, we get very quickly introduced to ordination. They refer to it as the order of his son, meaning the son of God, Jesus Christ's order, but it's also referred refer to it as the order of his son, meaning the son of God, Jesus Christ's order, but it's also referred to later here as the order of Melchizedek. And one of the things that I want us to think about as we go through and we look for these

temple patterns and we look for the power of the Lord, the Alma is teaching us how to access is that there are actually two orders that are represented in these chapters. One is this order of the Son of God or after the order of Melchizedek and the Melchizedek priesthood in the way of that. And the second is the order of Nihor. And Nihor, if you remember, came and went in Alma chapter one. This is the very first year of the reign of the judges. Who shows up as opposition? Well, Nihor is there to demonstrate the counterpoint to what this beautiful society is trying to create. And he basically creates and presents an alternative doctrine. And even though he comes and goes, and this is like a decade ago in the history of this people, he comes and goes in chapter one but still ten years later in

chapter 13 his teachings still live and there are these people who are living after the order of Nihur. We want us to pay attention to the contrast between the way that the people are being taught after the order of the Son of God as compared with the order of Nihur. And when we do that, usually what we're focused on is the doctrinal differences, things like sin matters and repentance matters in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It matters that there was a fall and it matters that repentance is necessary and that the atonement was prepared. But in the order of Nihur, not so much. They believe that they'll be saved in their sins and that there's no additional action necessary.

And so usually we sort of focus on those doctrinal differences. I want to actually focus, especially because of what happens in the next couple of chapters after Chapter 13, I want to focus instead on a concept that I was introduced to by some readings that I did actually through a series of women scholars. So I can't take credit for these ideas, but I think they have an amazing application here. And that is the distinction between power over, which is a coercive power or a dominant power, a power over other people where you can reduce their agency in subservience to your own, as compared with power with, which in this case includes power with others or sharing power through ordinances

where you're doing missionary work, you're sharing the power of the priesthood, you're sharing access to ordinances and covenants so that people have the ability to do the third type of power, which is power to, and that is the power to, in this case, do the will of the Lord. Those distinctions become very helpful as we look at the behaviors of the people of the Order of Nihur as compared with Alma and Amulek and the teachings that they're providing. I want us to have that a little bit in our background, those two things, different ways of thinking about power. There are two different powers that play here, and we're seeing a contrast between them, which is very instructive. And we're in the context now of the doctrines of the temple and of the ordinances of the

temple and their connection also with the Melchizedek Priesthood. Matthew 1 One thing I've never seen that you just showed me is this Adam and Eve to Melchizedek. That is temple written all over it and yet I never saw it written all over it. That's a fantastic insight because this chapter 13, as I've taught it before, for students it's like this kind of comes out of nowhere. Why all of a sudden start talking about Melchizedek? But that's a natural flow if you're thinking of the temple. I love that. Yeah, exactly. It's helpful too. When you start in verse one, I would cite your minds forward. For us though, it sounds like we're going backward in time. So you were saying I would cite your minds forward and this is from Adam and Eve to Melchizedek? Awesome. Great. If we look at verse three, we start talking about foreordination and foreknowledge of God, but also agency at the same time. I'm going to read the

verse. And this is the manner after which they were ordained, being called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God on account of their exceeding faith and good works in the first place being left to choose good or evil. Therefore they having chosen good and exercising exceedingly great faith are called with a holy calling. Yea with that calling which was prepared with and according to a preparatory redemption for such." There's a lot there. And the main point that I think he's trying to make is look, this plan, including the ordinances and the powers that come through covenant making, we're part of the plan.

This is the plan of salvation. This is how we access the atonement of Jesus Christ. Again, Jesus Christ hasn't been here yet at this point in time. This is all pointing toward the coming of Jesus Christ and the eventual atonement which will take place. And he's teaching them how to access this. And he's saying this was all the plan from the beginning. And of course, we know that both men and women were present in the great Council of Heaven where this plan was revealed. There are some really beautiful things about that doctrine. But I think one of the things that people often get caught on and hung up on is how

can this foreknowledge of God coexist with agency? How can he know from before I was even born what I'm going to do and prepare this for me and tell me that I am going gonna have access to these covenants, if he doesn't know what I'm gonna choose. I'd like to tell a story from my own life that helped me get kind of a different perspective of how sort of time and agency work. It's temple related. I have four living children, one of them is adopted. And the story of my daughter's adoption and actually our experience in the temple for me completely reshaped the way I think about the knowledge of God and for ordination and

agency. Owen and I had a question. He had a job offer in Washington DC, which is my favorite city in the world. It was a job offer with the federal government, which we're both trained in public administration. So this seemed like the perfect thing. This is right after our master's degrees. We're really excited about this and we're praying about it and there is zero clarity coming to me about this and whether or not we should take this job. Nothing. For months. It was actually a really stressful time because we're trying to make plans for after graduation and I can't move forward because it wasn't no answer. It was like an active discomfort. I really

felt I needed some kind of answer. So Owen and I decided to go to the temple. We fasted and prayed and we lived in Indiana and there was no Indianapolis temple at the time. So we drove down to Kentucky, attended the temple. As we were leaving, we were in the parking lot and he said, well, did you have any insights, any revelation, any inspiration? And I said, well, I did, but it's kind of weird. And I was like, did you? And he's like, yes, but it's kind of weird. So remember the question that we had was, you know, should we take this job in DC? So I was like, did you? And he's like, yes, but it's kind of weird. So remember the question that we had was, you know, should we take this job in DC? So I was like, okay, I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. He's like, okay. So we're like, one, two, three, we told each other and we both had had the same impression that we needed to adopt. I mean, two witnesses.

And that was not the question that we came with. And we both clear as day, we need to adopt. That's actually pretty credible. Isn't it neat? Yeah, I love that part of the story. And that's not even like the big agency and for ordination part. We started the adoption process through one route and felt really guided in that process and we started working through that route. And then about halfway through that process, we felt like we needed that process and we started working through that route. And then about halfway through that process, we felt like we needed to change and go a different

route. We switched agencies, changed the entire path and approach to adoption and went down that path and ultimately got chosen to be the parents of our daughter by her birth mother. And later, I would realize that the trajectory that her birth mother. And later I would realize that the trajectory that her birth mother was on at first was the first path that we were walking down. And at some point she discovered an ad for LDS Family Services, which no longer provides adoption services, but she found an ad in the Thrifty Nickel in Indiana

and decided to contact LDS Family Services. She's not LDS. Decided to place her child for adoption through this alternate route. And that's the route that we ended up going. So this is how we ended up being connected. Fast forward a year through all the adoption processes and everything. And we're in the temple and we're kneeling across the altar with our daughter being sealed to her. When I tell you, this is so hard to explain and so hard to describe, but when I tell you that that ordinance shifted our timelines and made that child ours. The miracle of that moment, I can't even really put it into words. For a moment, brief moment, I could see the eternities in these like different parallel universes where our agency and her birth mother's agency had put us on this timeline.

agency and her birth mother's agency had put us on this timeline and I could see how there could be a foreknowledge and I could see how the Lord who knows all and has everything before him at all times could see multiple paths and that there could be guidance in that agency but still complete choice on our part and complete choice on her part and yet the on her part. And yet the power of those covenants in that moment changed reality in a way that made our daughter our daughter. Her birth mother still has a beautiful place in our hearts and in her heart and in her life. And that's not something that can be taken from her, but this was added to us as this miracle. When I read this verse now, after having had that experience, I can see that foreordination doesn't mean taking away the opportunity to have agency,

or a foreknowledge doesn't take away that agency, our view, our mortal view is so narrow. We're not understanding the fullness of how powerful agency actually is and how powerful and broad and eternal the view of our Father in heaven is. What a story. Oh that is such a touching story and a perfect explanation of how those two principles that seem to go apart from each other, God's foreknowledge and my agency, they seem to be almost a dialectic. How can they both be true at the same time? John, we've said this before, that the Lord is playing 5D chess, moving the pieces around. And I would say the Lord is playing 5D chess and all the pieces have agency.

To me, that is a God I can worship. That reminds me of that idea that I remember Elder Neil A. Maxwell describing the macro plan of salvation composed of billions of micro, and our Heavenly Father managing the intersections. That's an evidence of that. How he does that, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. One of the really cool things about Alma 13, there's also chiasmus here. It does start in verses one and two, and then it folds in on itself to verse 13 with the central point of Melchizedek's people repenting and obtaining peace, and then it sort of unfolds out.

From what I know, chiasmus is a form of parallelism, almost makes something easier to memorize because once you memorize the first half, you have pretty much to memorize the second half. You would have the first point and the last point being the same and the second point and the second to the last point being the same. And it keeps going on that pattern all the way to a center point, which seems in a lot of cases to be the main message. The beginning and the end lead to this center point. John, how am I doing? end lead to this center point. John, how am I doing? Good. It's you repeat either words or phrases or ideas in a certain order, A, B, C, D, E, and then repeat them in reverse order, E, D, C, B, A. And the center point, as you said, is most important. And the Greek letter X is chi in Greek. And if you were to draw a chiasmus, you kind of see it going this way and then that way again. So I think that's why they named it a chiasmus. We'll be looking at more as we go through

the Book of Mormon. It's evidence that this is an ancient text. Perfect. John, Ava, how did we do? I think you did great. And that's really helpful because this is the sort of lesson that I had heard. I mean, I'm not a scholar of ancient scripture. So the only way that I know these things is that I've had great seminary and institute teachers talk about this or repeated in gospel doctrine and that sort of thing. So I appreciate you taking that moment and being that teacher. Part of the reason that that's so interesting to me isn't the scholarly piece of it or even that it provides additional evidence of the Hebraic origins of the language that's being used here and translated for us in English. But

that structure and learning to watch for those poetic devices in the scriptures actually helped me through a really challenging moment in my life as I was pondering the temple ordinances. This is a half a lifetime ago for me, so I was in my early 20s and I'd just been through the temple for the first time. And there was a part of the ordinance that was sort of stuck with me and I was trying to figure it out because my initial reaction to it was not overwhelmingly positive. It was something that I needed to make a matter of study. I was studying pretty constantly on this one single topic. I remember this moment so clearly. I was on a UTA bus in Utah. The public

transit is UTA, Utah Transit Authority. I was riding the bus studying my scriptures. I was reading in 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about women and the role of women in synagogues. This was very closely related to some of the issue that I was having. So I was just really trying to parse what Paul was saying here. This was 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And this is not usually recognized as something that has a chiasmic structure. But as I was looking at, there are a lot of poetic devices that he does use. It does a little bit actually fold in on itself with that same structure that John described it, but it's not a formal chiasmus. But if you look at it when it folds in on itself to identify the very most important message, the final key moment,

basically the center of it all, the center of this entire disposition on women and their roles in the synagogues and what they should and shouldn't do or what they should and shouldn't wear was that women had power and authority. That's what it folded in on. And again, it wasn't a perfect chiasmic structure, but I was watching for that because I was looking for meaning in these scriptures and I was trying to ask the Lord to guide me through this struggle that I was having with something that I was experiencing in something that I just wanted to be easy and beautiful. And the temple is beautiful, but it's not always easy. There's a lot of layers to it and a lot of study and a lot of levels of revelation that can happen there. And this was very early in my temple journey. I would say that that moment was amplified then by the Spirit, so that I'm weeping on

the bus as I'm reading my scriptures. But the Lord in that moment testified to me that there is power and authority in womanhood and that there is power and authority in these covenants and that I as a woman have access to those things. That for me was a huge turning point because my Father in Heaven and I had this relationship where He was directly telling me, mediated by the scriptures and amplified by the Spirit, this message about my own worth and my own role in this grand scheme of our Father in Heaven. There are a lot of things that people talk about that are challenging for them, especially around gender issues. And a lot of women in the talk about that are challenging for them, especially around gender issues.

And a lot of women in the church have moments like I had where there's something that isn't sitting right. What I've found is that that moment for me has become one of the bedrocks of my testimony because I know that when I am struggling with something, I don't necessarily have to figure the whole thing out or fix it, but what I do need to do is turn to my Father in heaven for guidance on what's true and what isn't true, and who I am and whether or not he knows me.

He has never failed, never failed to remind me that I am loved, that I am valued, and to give me the patience am loved, that I am valued, and to give me the patience in some cases that I need and the wisdom in some cases that I need to be able to work through those hard things and those big questions. And I've had a lot of big questions. I think sometimes people think that women just sort of ignore a bunch of stuff and that's like how we're okay in the church. And that has not been the case for me. I have faced every one of these questions head on and that has been the pattern for me is that the Lord will provide me with some insight that completely

reshapes the way that I'm thinking about whatever the issue is or whatever the question is and it's always centered on his love for me and my value and my worth as a daughter of God. That's some incredible humility there. I've noticed that if I want the Spirit to show me things as they really are, I have to be open to the idea that I don't see things as they really are. The fact that you're sitting down saying, maybe I'm missing something, what am I not seeing? And then the Holy Ghost can say, let me show you. John, you've said before that if you lack information, you can go online. Ask of Google. But if you lack wisdom, that's an entirely different question.

If you lack wisdom, go to God. As Ava just said, I had to go to God. Ava, I like that you owned your questions. I don't think wherever being told, forget your questions or set them aside, you can own them. You can focus on what you know, as Elder Holland would remind us. Start with what you know, as Elder Holland would remind us, start with what you know, wrestle with those questions. Eventually, maybe they'll have an experience like you did. Thank you for sharing that. That's a testimony of it's okay to have questions and to wrestle with them. Lylea I will also say that many times these have

not been, I open the scriptures and the answers right there and it was easy. Some of these have been multiple years long wrestles before God. I really resonate with those scriptures of how I'm wrestling before God because I've definitely experienced that. So this is not an easy thing in many cases. And as we work through the chapters that we have for today, we're going to see more things like that, hard things and hard things in particular for women. And some of these things are just not okay. We're going to see here in a moment war crimes against women and children, and those things are not okay. But turning to the Lord over time, he can provide us with the wisdom that we need to be able to progress. Ava, could you tell us what it was in 1st Corinthians 11

because I'm sitting here looking at it. Is there a particular verse that jumped out at you? The specific verse was in 1st Corinthians chapter 11 and it's verse 10 that really struck me in that day, in that moment. And that reads, for this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. You can sort of see where I was seeing that reflective, chiasmic structure where verse nine before it says, neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man and afterward, nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither woman without the man in the Lord. So it's not exactly the same,

but you can see there's sort of this mirror image. Those structures, they don't appear in every chapter of the scriptures. It's exciting to me that we have one in Alma 13, especially because I had this experience where understanding that tool helped me in that moment to find that verse. And in this case, it's talking specifically about ceremonial clothing worn in synagogues, similar to ceremonial clothing worn in temples. And here it's describing that as a reflection of power. That's fantastic. I hadn't seen that before. I'm being taught a lot here today. When I've thought of chapter 13, I frequently look at how Alma explains that these priests that were ordained and he explains why they were ordained in verse 3, they were called

and prepared from the foundation of the world because of their great faith and their good works. And then he seems to point out when you see someone like that, like I would see President Nelson, who is the high priest, and he was prepared from the foundation of the world according to foreknowledge of God because of his faith and his good works. And I think that Alma is saying that is a symbol of Christ himself who was foredained before the world was on account of his exceeding faith and good works. I like that idea that you know when the high priest used to walk around the tabernacle in the ancient days they would think oh that's Jehovah come among us. Yeah I really like that and later we discover that Melchizedek was referred to as the Prince of Peace when he

was reigning under his father. So that's why he was a prince. He was the king and he was ruling, but he was ruling under the authority of his father. They referred to him as a prince. But what he did was bring peace and repentance to his people. And it's also really interesting in some of the accounts of Melchizedek elsewhere in the scriptures, particularly if you look at Joseph Smith translation of Genesis or you look at the Pearl of Great Price, we learn a little bit more about Melchizedek. This is a man who was like quenching fires and closing the mouths of lions and he had all of this power to do miraculous

things in the name of Jesus Christ with the power and authority of God. And then ultimately, how did he use that power? And this is what Alma also teaches in Alma 13. What he teaches and what he brings about is repentance and peace. And the other thing that they do, and this is one of the hallmarks of the priesthood, and one of the ways that it differs, for example, from the Order of Nihur and from the idea of power over

is that the priesthood is used to share power. And in many power structures, there are hierarchies where the idea is that you actually want to hoard power. You want to reduce the number of people who have access to power, and you want them to be subservient under you. And the priesthood is literally the opposite. The purpose of the priesthood is to serve others. Jesus Christ talks about that those who would be chief should be the servant.

It's almost like you take the entire hierarchy and you flip it upside down. A hierarchy in a power over structure, the kind that we see with Nihur, the kind that we see in other kinds of worldly structures, in the priesthood is actually flipped upside down in a way that creates more power for more people. Everyone has the potential, if they're righteous and willing to keep these covenants, everyone has the potential to have access to that same power with God and with one another to create Zion, to gather Israel,

to make and keep covenants, to create peace, and the power to do the will of God. This is such a wildly different power structure from something like we see with the nihors, which is all about coercion, all about violence, all about getting rid of threats, reducing agency, trying to focus on one viewpoint. There's no pluralism here. These are vastly different approaches. I love the idea of priesthood actually being the antidote to those hierarchical coercive structures that if we can teach more people this, we can share this power with and this power to and the power with is power with God and the power to do his will and we can

let go of power over. And in fact if we look in the Doctrine and Covenants and we learn about how the priesthood is to be exercised, we hear that power over is how to end priesthood. Amen to the priesthood of that man. It's over. But power to and power with is how the priesthood is to be exercised. I think a lot of times people see a hierarchical structure in, for example, the organization of the church, but it's actually flipped upside down. And instead of power hoarding, the people who would be the greatest among us, our prophets and apostles, are doing nothing but serving us and trying to empower us to get the power that they hold and the keys that they hold literally to as many human beings as

possible, which is the opposite of a traditional hierarchy. Wow, I remember hearing that President Hinckley was in his office usually by 5 a.m. His last day at the office was a Thursday, I think it was. He was there first. He got ill, didn't come in on Friday and passed away on a Sunday. Talk about giving and giving. I love what you said there, that flip. Also this antidote almost to the order of Nihor, this order of God,

kind of versus the order of Nihor, it comes up, I think in verse six, the holy order of God to teach his commandments under the children of men that they might enter into his rest. That seems to be the exact opposite of the order of Nihor. There are no commandments. There's no purpose for them because there's no repentance needed. I love that explanation at servant leadership versus and I think Jesus tried to teach that with the 12th too, as you mentioned, washing their feet and serving and flipping that upside down. We see this phrase foundation of the world

a lot in the Book of Mormon and I suppose it's the most common way that the Book of Mormon hints at the pre-mortal existence. But in Alma 13, we've got also the first place. Do you think that of the world, because of their exceedingly good works, right? We were like, well, when is that going to take place? Elder Maxwell and President Packer had both referred to the plan of salvation as a three-act play and that right now we're in act two. And that there's no happily ever after that's reserved only for Act 3. When I see verse 5, in the first place they were on the same standing with their brother. And see, that's an Act 1 type of a thing. When I read things like this, it just makes me ask the question, why am I here now? Why are my children here now? I guess that goes back to Eva to our micro plan of salvation, like your adopt a daughter,

that that was all figured out by an omniscient Heavenly Father. It's making me think about verse 7 also, where it talks about this high priesthood being after the order of his son, which order was from the foundation of the world, being without beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity according to his foreknowledge of all things. So this suggests that the priesthood, while it was created there at the foundation of the world in Act 1, it's also eternal. It's an eternal power, an eternal law, has no beginning, has no end, certainly is not contained within that mortal act too, because it's

without beginning of days or end of years, which obviously are mortal constructs in the way that we think about them. We got to be on earth and be rotating around the Sun for those things to be happening. This really ties in this continuity of the priesthood and the access that it provides to the eternal atonement as well, and how fascinating that eternal atonement happened in the middle of Act Two here on earth in this mortal space. I'm glad you mentioned that phrase, without beginning of days or end of years. I picked up a Who's Who in the Bible book. It was a Reader's Digest publication, and

I specifically picked it up because I wanted to see what they would say about Melchizedek. They call him an enigmatic figure because they're not sure what kind of being Melchizedek is because it says he is without beginning of days or end of years. But the JST changes that to say that his priesthood, the priesthood that he held was without beginning of days or end of years. It seems in the Book of Mormon they understood that, and here is Elmas saying this high priesthood was without beginning of days or end of years. He modeled the righteous use of the priesthood so well, what's that section 107 that we call it the Melchizedek Priesthood now, to avoid too frequent repetition of the name of the

Son. R. And John, I remember last year when we went through the book of Hebrews, that author seemed to understand Melchizedek, the symbol he was of the Savior. But you're right for the rest of the Bible, he's not there. But Alma seems to have a significant understanding of who he is. I have a tendency to find a little bit of humor in Scripture. In Alma 13, I've chuckled just a little bit and I'm sure I'm off on this, but Alma seems to tell this story of Melchizedek and Abraham and how Melchizedek goes to a wicked city and commands them to repent and they all repent. And it's almost like he's saying, I'll play the role of Melchizedek, Amulek, you play

the role of Abraham, and why don't you people play the role of the city that repents? Why don't we do play the role of the city that repents? Why don't we do that little role play? It doesn't work, but I've always thought that's kind of a funny moment where he says he went to this wicked city and they repented. How about we try that? Yeah, I think it's accurate actually. I mean, I think it's a pretty interesting reflection of like why is he invoking this story here? Why is he telling this? And there is kind of a, they all lived happily ever after. He was the Prince of Peace. And like, look what we could have

if you just follow these instructions. And some of them do. They don't all convert and it doesn't all end up beautiful and peaceful the way it did for Melchizedek. But I definitely see that parallel. I've thought it, why can't we do what they did? That's what I thought. I like the way you put it better, but let's do what they did and I'll be Melchizedek. I'll be Melchizedek, you be the wicked city. How about that? Yeah. If we jump down to verse 27, Alma's actually really pretty explicit about his desire for

this people to be like the people of Melchizedek. He says, I wish from the inmost part of my heart, ye with great anxiety even unto pain, that ye would hearken unto my words, cast off your sins, and not procrastinate the day of your repentance, but that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually that you may not be tempted above that which he can bear, and thus be led by the Holy Spirit becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love, and all long suffering."

And there are echoes of what we hear in the Doctrine and Covenants in describing the priesthood. There are echoes of that here as well. This is not powerful, dominant, chief kind of language. This is what the priesthood of God invites people to do and how they would behave. And he's really inviting everyone to this repentance and trying to bless them really with that through the commandments and through these ordinances that he's really describing these very temple parallel teachings. I have this thought from Elder Uchtdorf I've always loved. It's April 2010. I think this was

back when we had the priesthood session of general conference. He says, as priesthood bearers and representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must serve others in a manner consistent with his example. That's exactly what you're saying here, Ava. And then he says this, there is a reason that almost every lesson on priesthood at some point arrives at the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenant. That seems what you're saying is that the world's, I guess, hierarchy is being flipped. And the Lord in just a few verses provides this master course on priesthood. No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood. And you're right, this list is so close to that. Only by persuasion,

long suffering, gentleness and meekness and love unfaithful. That matches almost Alma 1328. I'd never seen that before. When you have some time, and I would invite all of you to do this, look at the parallels between Alma 13 and section 121, because there are many, many of them. And actually some of chapter 14 is reflected there as well, but it's two completely different people in chapter 121. We're talking to Joseph Smith and the experiences that he and the early saints are

having. But we're about to transition to Alma chapter 14, where we see horrible crimes committed in process of this conflict between ideologies. A similar conflict was happening at the same time that section 121 is revealed and the messages from the Lord and through the Lord are actually remarkably similar in both of those. We're not going to walk through all the specific parallels, but if you're looking for some extra credit, that's a really engaging comparison to draw between those two chapters of scripture. Wow, I'd never seen that before either. Look at Alma and Amulek are imprisoned. And yet here is almost the exact same language that comes out of Liberty Jail.

False accusations. So good. The people in peril. And even we're going to come back in a minute in chapter 14, there's a warning that's provided by the Lord in section 121 that actually ends up coming to pass at the end of the chapters that we're going to talk about with the desolation of the Nihors in chapter 16. So we're going to come back to that a little bit.

There are some fascinating parallels between the experience of Alma and Amulek here and Joseph Smith and the early Saints in section 121. That's incredible. John, you've been holding out on me. You've seen that before and I... Nope, nope. This is so great because it does, it fits. All of a sudden these chapters are taking on new meaning for me. Ava, we've only gone through 13. We've only made it through one. I know. I know. As we shift into Alma Chapter 14, we start to see what the response is to this beseeching by Alma, this beautiful exposition on ordinances and repentance and peacemaking, and this appeal to history like this is possible. It's possible to take a society like yours and make it a peaceful society. And all we got to do is pay attention to this pathway and these ordinances and understand that these are privileges that we've been promised since before the foundation of the world. And will you please join me in this? And the goal is to ordain people to this priesthood and to invite them into that work of community and of peacemaking and of meekness and of service to one another and righteousness and

forsaking sin. There's some good news at the beginning of Alma 14, and we're going to take that good news where we can get it because the first thing that we see is that after he had made an end of speaking unto the people, many of them did believe on his words and began to repent and search the scriptures. This process of conversion, this invitation to conversion starts to work. The problem is in verse two, we see the more part of them were desires that they might destroy Alma and Amulek for they were angry with Alma because of the plainness of his words to Zeezrom. And they also said that Amulek had lied unto them. And if you follow the footnote there, they're referring to a difference in doctrine. The way that they interpret the doctrine is that people will be saved and they don't have

to repent. And Amulek is teaching that they do have to repent and forsake their sins. And so that's the lie that they're referring to and had reviled against their law, which again is based on these principles of Nihur's order and that doctrine and also against their lawyers and judges. So they're angry at this point. Again, it's the more part of the people. So we want to focus on that first part. There's a bright, shiny moment that we have where it's like people are called to repentance. The spirit is working

on their hearts and they're studying the scriptures and they're questioning their law and looking back at the scriptures and doing their own study and saying this doctrine that Alma and Amulek are preaching actually is our law. That is actually what's recorded here and not how it's been interpreted for us by these lawyers and judges after the Order of Nihur. But that is a threat to the power structure that exists here. And the more people liked the Order of Nihur, they start to fight at this point. And we're going to come back to this in chapter 15, but verse 6, we see Ziezram's role in this. So Ziezram is the person that's like the primary audience that Alma's talking to. There's a larger audience that's learning this, and we see also from chapter 14 that the women are also being taught these principles. We'll come back to that

one in verse 8. But here in verse 6, Ziezraam is astonished at the words and he starts to see what his way of doing things has created. And he starts to have this desire toward repentance for himself, but first he's feeling guilt. And this term harrowed up under a consciousness of his own guilt comes back again in chapter 15. And I don't know about you, but that phrasing being herald up with the consciousness of your guilt is also in the conversion story of Alma himself, how he describes it. We start to see Ziezram here feeling these pangs of guilt and what have I done and recognizing his own sin, which of course

you have to do before you can repent. You have to turn inward and realize what you've done. And so he starts to feel that guilt and feels that metaphorical encircling about by the pains of hell. He's now saying, no, listen to these guys. They're actually right. And he starts to try to fix this and people call him crazy. He gets pushed aside. Verse 8, they brought their wives and children together and whosoever believed or had been taught to believe. So I want to pause there for a second. Even though in verse 13, he's consistently addressing the brethren and it specifically says he's talking to Ziezrim and he's talking to the brethren. It's very clear from verse eight that women were included in the

teaching. It may not have been in that specific recorded speech, but they were taught the same things. Anyone who had been taught to believe, all the women and the children, they caused that they should be cast into the fire. And they also brought forth their records, which contain the Holy Scriptures and cast them into the fire also that they might be burned and destroyed by fire. This is a moment that I think any time that we have studied this chapter in the Book of Mormon is not a space that we like to dwell on, especially in Sunday school. What usually ends up happening is that we zoom forward to Alma and Amulek, who are brought to this point and shown this atrocity that is happening, the women and the children and the scriptures and the fire. Amulek is seeing this and he's

saying, Alma, we have this power of God. The Lord has allowed us to use this in other circumstances and miraculous ways to bring these miracles to pass. Let's use our power to stop this. And that's usually where we focus. And we're going to come back to that because that moment is important as well. But I want to stay here in verse eight for a second, because this isn't an isolated event. It's not an isolated event even in the Book of Mormon. So if you look at Mosiah chapter 10 verse nine, you've got women and children this point in the Book of Mormon. So this is not an isolated incident. And I think looking away too fast does a disservice to our world. Because violence against women and children is happening now too. This isn't a one verse in the Book of Mormon kind of thing. This is something that we witness. I mean, I can

name at least a half a dozen active conflicts in the world right now where we have documented abuses, not only of just civilians generally, but specifically targeting women and children because of the psychological effects that this has and the effects that the long-term effects that this has on communities. It terrorizes and demoralizes populations. It destroys social and family bonds. It creates control and intimidation. You start to get into when you've got all the women and the children, these are the people with the power to create future generations. This is next to genocide. And we see these things today. So I don't want us to look away too fast. Because what happens with Alma and Amulek is that Alma says, yes, the Lord has the power to stop this, but he's telling me not to. And the Lord has

a purpose here. It's his power and I can't use it without his authorization. And he is constraining me here. That's where this story goes. This, what happens in verse eight, today would be considered not only a war crime, but also crimes against humanity. Like this is, this is the worst of the worst. There are still crimes like this that happen. In targeting, in particular, the women, it's important to understand what power it is that women hold in society that's often not necessarily recognized. I've mentioned that power of creation, the potential of perpetuating additional generations like continuing society, that rests on the shoulder of women. But family bonds as well, the ability to maintain family relationships and all the strength and stability in a society that comes through these families,

women are absolutely core to that. And then there's this other layer that President Johnson recently talked about. It was the head of International Women's Day. This was this year in Brussels, Belgium, and she gave this beautiful speech where she talks about the need to empower women globally because and these are her words now, we can achieve what no government can, a sisterhood, a global sisterhood of peacemakers. So she specifically talks about the role of women in a society of creating and maintaining peace. This act of war is not only psychological warfare and not only next to genocide, but it's also an attack on the peacemaking power of women that is cutting at the very core of this new penitent society that's just a fledgling at this point.

The speech that President Johnson gave is not available in full at present online, but there are some amazing excerpts from it that are available through the church newsroom. And I want to read a couple of these quotes because they're so powerful. She says, conflict and ensuing violence always harm the most vulnerable, including women and children. It destabilizes economies and households. It increases inequality, including gender inequality, and it keeps women from using their innate gifts

to cultivate peace. Imagine, she said, what would happen if we, as women in leadership roles, could unleash the full power of women to transform their personal inspiration into organized action? And imagine the opposite, a reality in far too many communities, a world where women live in fear of social persecution and official restrictions, stifle their expression of conscientious belief and prevent them from assembling to worship and organize to provide mutual support. In such an environment women's collective capacity to address complex problems and lift society is vastly diminished and individual hopes and

aspirations are dashed. That's another thing that we're seeing here is that there wasn't a freedom of religion or a freedom of religious expression present in this order of Nihor. You can't have a pluralistic society when your entire premise is that you want to maintain all of the power yourself. Your ideas have to be right. Your way of thinking has to be correct. All of that power has to be centralized. The idea that we might be empowering these women and children, empowering these priesthood holders, giving them these ordinances and giving them the tools of peace is a threat to this society. That speaks to this larger concept that President Johnson talks about, where we have this opportunity through the choices that we make as individuals to create peace and prevent not just contention, but also war

and not just war, but also the kinds of atrocities that we see here. Even in my own Book of Mormon classes, I'm like, okay, let's skip ahead. It's super uncomfortable to sit there. Uncomfortable is not even the right word. It's horrifying. It is horrifying. Think also about this. So as a woman studying these scriptures, in the entirety of the Book of Mormon, there are six named women. And just so that you have some sense of how different that is from like the Old Testament and New Testament, depending on who's counting and how they're counting and what counts as a name or whatever. If you add up Old Testament and New Testament,

you've got somewhere between like 100 and 180 named women in the Bible. In the Book of Mormon, we've got six. You've got some other women like this were mentioned, right, usually in groups of people or named as a spouse of someone else in the scriptures. But as a woman reading these scriptures, I'm always looking for where are the people who look like me, right? Like, where are the women? And to have this be one of those rare instances that I see myself. We all want to see ourselves as Alma and Amulek and we jump there and we're like, okay, let's get that prophetic perspective and let's see what the Lord tells them as a comfort to them. That's not a lot of comfort to those women. And as me putting myself in the scriptures and seeing myself in one of these rare references

to women, it's hard. Harder yet is when we skip over this experience too fast and pretend like this isn't an active, real thing for women today. This happens not only in war settings where we've got these huge genocide types of things or war crimes, because that's also happening around the world, but also in a microcosm in many homes. This is happening, violence against women in our society at large. Most women have some proximity to violence or sexual assault that either they've experienced or someone they know has experienced. I want to point out that when we move too fast away from that, that's hard as a woman because I feel like those experiences and my proximity to them and the

very real danger that the world can pose to me is missed. And that's part of why I want to sit here with it for a minute, because it's not just one isolated verse. It's a very real experience globally and individually for many of us having that moment and saying, what has your experience been and what can we do to make your experience better? This is an opportunity to say, I see here in the Book of Mormon the example of violence against women. I acknowledge that in our community there is on many different levels of severity, violence against women.

What can we do to help alleviate that experience for you? And one of the things that I would say, like if I'm asked that question, right, one of the things that I would say is some of the very things that Alma has been teaching in chapter 13. Create a culture of meekness and love and patience and shared power in yourself and in particular the men around you. That's what you can do. I don't need you to go fight for me. I don't need you to go beat anybody up. I don't need you to bulk up and walk with me everywhere that I go. I don't want to live like that.

I want to live my life and I can live my life better in a community of men who are living this gospel, who are not engaging in a power over paradigm, but are engaging in a power with and a power to paradigm and are humbling themselves and constantly repenting. That's what you can do. Turn inward and share that culture with as many, again in particular, men as you can. And that's what we need here. Back in chapter 13, verse 18, Melchizedek did establish peace in the land in his days. Melchizedek didn't rule and force peace. He established a culture of peace. When we hear about the promises, the ultimate promises in Act 3 of the priesthood and its blessings, that power is described as flowing without compulsory means. It's not a power over when we talk about kings and queens and priests and priestesses, and we talk about ruling and reigning.

We're not talking actually about power over. We're talking still about this agency. You won't have to force things because we will all share this culture of peace. That's part of how we can be joint heirs. And there can be so very many of us. We're all invited to that. There can be so very many of us because we're not trying to rule over each other. We're trying to participate in this eternal gospel of peace.

Power with. You mentioned if I were asked that question, what am I after? What's my experience with? what has been your experience? I've lived a relatively safe and beautiful life, but even so I remember, for example, in my college days, walking with my roommate to our car. And it was dark. We'd been out in the evening having dinner and we were headed back to our car and it was dark. We'd been out in the evening having dinner and we were headed back to our car

and I remember experiencing fear as we walked the block or two to our car. And I don't know how often you've talked to women about their experience of like walking through parking lots. Many of us have either been taught to do this, but we'll take like our keys, like our house keys and like stick them in our hands. And we're actually taught these things. You need to constantly be vigilant. You need to constantly be protecting yourself. It gets even more sobering when

you realize that much of the violence perpetuated against women isn't the attacks of strangers on a dark street corner, although that also happens with more regularity than any of us would care to admit. But a lot of this is happening through relationships and intimate partner violence. And that happens at a variety of levels of coercion, where again, a power over paradigms sets aside things like agency and consent and is really about what can I gain and how can I take from this human being. I live in a beautiful safe supportive relationship. I love being in my marriage and it creates more of me than I would be otherwise but together we exist in this culture where on a day-to-day basis that's my reality.

That's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable like verse 8 is uncomfortable. It's maybe not quite as uncomfortable as verse 8. Verse 8 is pretty horrific. But that is the reality that I live in on a day-to-day basis. It's sad that it seems when societies are falling or are in a fallen place towards the end of the Book of Mormon, and it's Moroni 9 verse 19. And these words are familiar. They delight in everything save that which is good, and the suffering of our women and

children upon all the face of this land doth exceed everything. Yea, tongue cannot tell, neither can it be written. It seems during a time of war, the men are gone, there seems to be famine that goes with it, with agriculture not being tended to and so forth. And that idea is repeated again as the society collapses at the end of the Book Mormon, that who suffers the most are the women and children. Is that a happy addition that you want to be doing? Yeah, no, no, no. We'll make it to hope and peace. It's going to be a minute, but we'll get there. Coming up in part two of this episode.

I was born to parents who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My grandparents on both sides were members. I'd learned this stuff all of my life, but until that moment, until I had experienced for myself the redeeming power of the Atonement, I wasn't changed. And that changed me.