Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: Helaman Scholarship with David Gore

Rosalynde Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast. My name is Rosalynde Welch and I'm joined today by Dr. David Gore. David is a professor in the communications department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is interested in questions about the relationship of religion and public life and that was very evident in his book, The Voice of the People: Political Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon, which he published with the Maxwell Institute in 2019. And if you've been following along, you'll remember that I spotlighted a chapter from this wonderful book in a recent episode on the Book of Alma. So, Dr. Gore, welcome to the podcast today.

David Gore: Good morning Rosalynde, thanks for having me.

Welch: Today we're going to be talking about some highlights of the scholarly literature about the book of Helaman. And David, as you and I started to talk about this, at first our thought was like, there really hasn't been that much written about Helaman. But then, as we started to dig a little deeper, we found that what has been written is very, very rich. And so, in the end, we're going to attempt to cover five pieces today, all of which are really strong and insightful.

There's gonna be a couple of names that you'll start to recognize that reoccur in our conversation today. You'll hear the name of Kim Matheson, who is my colleague here at the Maxwell Institute, and Joseph Spencer, whose name has been prominent throughout this podcast, a colleague here at the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. Both of these scholars have really dived deep into the Book of Helaman. And so they are the ones who have produced much of the scholarship that we'll be discussing today. But we'll get a little bit of diversity in there as well.

So Dr. Gore, you'll start us off now by walking us through a really interesting and insightful piece about the overall Book of Helaman called Narrative Doubling and the Structure of Helaman by Kim Matheson. So take it away.

Gore: Yeah, that's right. Thank you, Rosalynde. So I want to emphasize that, you know, some of what I'm going to say here are our Kim Matheson's words, but it's also my summary of what she said here in this wonderful piece. She argues in the piece that Helaman, the book of Helaman traffics in buried texts that disclose signs and covenants that make explicit the latent Lamanite frame that undergirds the book of Mormon as a whole.

What she means by that is that the text of the book of Helaman brings together the work of two main prophets, Nephi and Samuel. And they both give signs relative to the prediction of Christ's future advent in the Americas, but it also provides it to us in a relatively dense structure. The book of Helaman is dense, and Matheson argues that the book proliferates parallels that are often presented as doubles. This is what she means by narrative doubling.

This problem of doubling, she says, is exemplified by the way characters, objects, and social groups come in twos or in pairs in this book. There are two murder chief judges. There are two examples of Lamanite conversions. There are two examples of buried objects, of slippery treasurers, of angelic ministrations, and so on. And then, of course, these two sermons by Nephi and Samuel, which are kind of the culmination of the narrative of the book.

So where she compares Alma's parallels in the Book of Alma as being tidy and disciplined, she says that Helaman's parallels are seemingly erratic and suggests that the structure of the Book of Helaman is influenced by the subject matter of the text. In other words, yeah, go ahead.

Welch: So, yeah, I'll just jump in because listeners will remember that I talked about this with Kim on an earlier episode and we talked about the structure of the Book of Alma and how, as you just alluded to, it is very tightly structured where the first half and the second half mirror each other in these very specific ways. So you come into the Book of Helaman maybe expecting something as symmetrical and elegant and neat as that, but instead what you find is this kind of almost seeing structural elements that look like each other but don't quite match up and don't really come together in the kind of elegant balance of Alma.

Gore: Yeah, that's very well said. And Matheson makes a lot about this collapsing of a stable narrative in the Book of Helaman, because what she's arguing is that the book is narrating a story about the rise of secret combinations and ultimately the subversion of the law among the Nephites, which manifests itself in this narrative instability in the text, which I think is a very sophisticated argument and one that makes a lot of sense when you read Kim's explanation of it. But it may be the first time you read the Book of Helaman or the first several times you might not notice this happening in the text.

And so she argues quite rightly, I think, that the Book of Mormon history is presented in a way that's both describing the erosion of Nephi's society, but also trying to stop that or prevent that erosion from happening at the same time. And so it's quite a complicated task that is set by these historians, chiefly Mormon, but also his reworking of the histories of all the other writers in the Book of Mormon, which is again to account for this problem in Nephite society while also trying to halt the problem at the same time.

So my favorite part of this piece by Matheson is when she talks about mirroring, which she uses as a metaphor about visibility. When you look in a mirror, there's a reflective surface that doubles your image in a way. It reproduces the entirety of the image that is looking in the mirror, but also makes that entirety open to a gaze. And she argues that this is a tool that Nephi uses to reveal the traits of those who adopt secret combinations. When you look in a mirror, your own self is presented back to you as an object for your own inspection. And Nephi Burkey says, or Matheson, sorry, Nephi, Matheson says, sets these secret combinations against themselves. He does this to disrupt their operation without re-inscribing their logic. So, and this is a really complicated thing because what ends up happening in the story of Helaman 9, when Nephi essentially tells us about the murder of a chief judge, is that he now looks like he's implicated in the murder. Like he's part and parcel of the secret combination. Like the first logical conclusion to hear is of him laying out this political script is that he's involved in a conspiracy himself to organize the murder so that he can reveal it. Which is exactly what you would expect the Gadianton Robbers to do. But of course, that's not what Nephi's doing. What Nephi's doing here is using the power of prophecy to show an image of the Nephites to themselves so that they can see who they really are and the kind of things that they're really allowing to happen in their society. And so...

Welch: And I think that's such an insightful image that she uses, because the scourge of the Gadianton robbers was precisely that they were hidden, hidden from the Nephites themselves, right? The Gadianton robbers were an evil that came internally from Nephite society, but it was hidden from most of Nephite society. So in this incredible image that has just stuck in my mind, she shows Nephi in this famous sermon.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: And I sort of started to think about it as a kind of magic mirror that could reveal what was invisible, right? You think of, like a magic object from Harry Potter or something, right? Like a mirror that can reflect what is invisible. And so she holds that up to the, he holds that up to the Nephites and they see reflected the invisible rot and evil at the heart.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: of their own society. Which is shocking because for so long, the Nephites have seen themselves as in opposition to the wickedness represented by the Lamanites. So this is a huge revelation to them that actually the more pressing evil is inside ourselves. And had they responded righteously, this might have prompted a whole...

Gore: That's exactly right.

Welch: …reorientation of their self understanding, but tragically, it seems not to have much effect on them in the end.

Gore: Yeah, and that strikes me as one of the most powerful reasons why we need to read the scriptures is because they help us see ourselves more clearly. In understanding and seeing God more clearly, we're able to see ourselves more clearly. And that distance between ourselves and God is what I think the Book of Helaman is designed in many ways to help us understand.

And Nephi does this so effectively, as I said, that the people think that he's actually playing their game in its entirety, that he is conspiring with unknown allies to stage murder and to leverage that violence in a bid for power himself. And so Matheson writes that the result of Nephi's confrontation with secret combinations is curious both for the ambivalence of its outcome and the persistence of mirroring themes in the narrative aftermath.

In other words, what she says here is that mirroring is a consistent and deliberate type of doubling that's always leveraged against Nephite wickedness in a way that's calculated to disrupt the invisibility of these secret combination tactics. And I just love that idea that this metaphor of visibility that reveals what's invisible, but what's understood, because it's clear that the Nephites understand that murder and intrigue and secret combinations are operating in their culture and their society behind the scenes, but it's something that they are not really ready to see in its entirety. And Nephi really brings it to the forefront of that.

And I think Matheson does a really nice job of holding up this mirror for us to help us see the text in a way That reflects both what Nephi is doing in the text to show the Nephites to themselves but Matheson's saying, arguing--I think quite rightly--that this text also helps us see ourselves more clearly And in illuminating this vision of ourselves we come to understand the need that we have to uh to repent first and foremost, but also to recognize or seeing ourselves the possibilities of our own tendency to not see the aspects of ourself or the aspects of our society or culture that we would rather not see, right? This idea of you know avoidance and this desire to not want to know the truth about ourselves that we often I think is and often It's it's a consistent theme or element in human nature, right? That we want to live in denial. And Nephi is not letting us live in denial.

And I think Matheson is showing quite rightly why the text of Helaman also doesn't allow us to live in denial of these truths about our nature. And that becomes, I think highlighted quite strongly in Helaman 12 when Mormon really tells us what we're like. He says, we're unsteady and we're foolish and our hearts are inconsistent and so on and so forth. And I think that really allows Mormon to lay bare very clearly the true nature, the sinful nature of human nature, that sinful aspect of ourselves, but also in order to cause to repentance and to help us see the higher possibilities of our nature, as William James would say.

Welch: That's right. That's right. The book of Helaman, sometimes we skip over it because we've just gotten through Alma, which is very, very long. We're about to get to third Nephi, which is where the good stuff happens. And so we can skip over Helaman. It's a little bit of a shorter book, but it is so important because these exact themes are illustrated in more evident ways in the book of Helaman than anywhere else.

The Lamanites are converted, sort of reconverted, because we saw back in Alma 19, the original foundation of Lamanite Christianity, but there's this kind of mass conversion of the Lamanites in Helaman 5, and conversely, the Nephites just sink lower and lower and lower. And if you don't understand this great reversal that happens at this point in the Book of Mormon, you can't understand the main message of the Book of Mormon for our latter days, which is how is it that societies decline?

And as I alluded to earlier, you know, if you were to ask a casual reader of the Book of Mormon what happens to the Nephites at the end of the story, sometimes people will say, oh, there was a kind of a genocidal eradication of the Nephites by the Lamanites, and they'll kind of say they were destroyed by the Lamanites.

But in reality, as the Book of Helaman makes very clear and Mormon makes entirely explicit, the Nephites were destroyed not by the Lamanites, but by the secret combinations of the Gadianton robbers that hollow out their society from the inside. And so the message of the Book of Helaman for us is, you're getting distracted if you're looking outward to these external enemies. The problem is inside of you.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: Inside of us as individual people and inside of our own communities and our own society. And we see tragically how the Nephites just can't wrap their mind around that. They won't look in the mirror that Nephi is holding up to them and they continue, you know, focused on these sort of inherited external rivalries.

Gore: I think that's a crucial insight. Yeah. I mean, I think we should never underestimate the human capacity for self-denial and for a lack of self-awareness, quite frankly. And I think that's really what this text is trying to help us see.

And also in the midst of that, you know, the overarching theme to the Book of Mormon is, as Mormon states on the title page, to remind us that we're not cast off forever. That despite, despite our internal divisions, despite our tendency to corruption, despite our tendency to sin, there's still this possibility, this condition of repentance, this possibility that we can achieve our higher nature through the Atonement of Christ. And so it's always a hopeful narrative at the same time that it's narrating this tragedy of epic proportions, right? So we have to always keep those two things in check with each other.

Welch: That's right, that's right. And they're not just like two things that are totally separate, they're related because as King Benjamin lays out so beautifully--and we’ll return to Benjamin later--it's only, we can only achieve our potential as children of Christ after we have fully recognized that we are unprofitable servants and that there is a part in us that is an enemy to God. And it's only after, and by retaining in remembrance this kind of essential humility…

Gore: Yeah, that's right.

Welch: about who we are, that then we can have our hearts changed and experience the adoption and becoming sons and daughters of Christ. So these two messages of the Book of Mormon, the tragic and heavy one and the hopeful and buoyant one, they're actually one and the same or they're part of the same spiritual process.

Gore: That's right. Absolutely. Yeah.

Welch: Well, thank you. It was such an insightful article. I really, really recommend it. Kim Matheson's Narrative Doubling and the Structure of Helaman. One of the things that I really value about sort of scholarly work on the Book of Mormon is when a scholar can make something memorable to me. The Book of Mormon is a long book and it's a complicated book. And even though I am sometimes termed a scholar of the Book of Mormon, I am not too proud to admit that sometimes I forget parts of it, and it can be hard to keep all of the characters and the storylines straight. So, what happens, sometimes when I read an article about the Book of Mormon, I might actually in the end, I might kind of forget the actual technical argument that was being made. But sometimes something that they, something that the scholar has analyzed or clarified…

Gore: Yeah. Sure.

Welch: will just become very memorable in my mind. And that helps me then to create a mental structure that I can begin to keep straight all of the characters and themes in the Book of Mormon. So from this article, it's the magic mirror that Nephi holds up to his people, revealing to them the rot inside themselves.

So with that really helpful distinction in mind, let's zoom in now for a minute on this first chapter in Helaman. And I'm going to do that by way of a chapter from this great book. It's called Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon. It was written by John W. Welch and published by the Maxwell Institute back in 2008. I will just say for transparency's sake that John Welch is my father-in-law, who's an amazing father-in-law and also an extremely important scholar of the Book of Mormon. And this book, Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon, is really a pioneering study in the sense that there were...

Gore: Indeed.

Welch: was no previous and there has been no subsequent attempt that I know of to read the Book of Mormon through the lens of the Nephite legal system. Now that's of course just one out of many ways to read the book, but it's a very insightful one. Methodologically, this book is the heir of Hugh Nibley and it's--of early Hugh Nibley and his early project of kind of textual historicism. And so this book, Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon, is…

Gore: Mm-hmm.

Welch: consistent with the apologetic project of the FARMS institution. So Welch is looking to show how the legal cases that appear in the Book of Mormon are consistent with pre-exilic Israelite jurisprudence, how the Book of Mormon is at home in an ancient legal setting, and that helps to kind of bolster the Book of Mormon's own claims for its historicity.

Welch himself is an attorney and a scholar of law, so he's read very widely in biblical law and comparative law, and that is the lens, the scholarly lens that he brings to bear on this project. And he points out a couple of really important basic things about Nephite law and jurisprudence. One of those, of course, is that the law of Moses is the primary legal framework throughout the Book of Mormon. It's the foundation of Nephite law and their legal system all the way up until 3rd Nephi when Christ comes to fulfill the law. Of course, it's likely that the version of the law of Moses on the brass plates may have been slightly different from what we have in our Bibles today and no doubt the Nephites understood the law differently and practiced it according to their own understanding.

But what's especially remarkable about Nephite observance of the law is that they do it in light of their knowledge of Christ. So they simultaneously understand and preach the efficacy of the atonement of Jesus Christ for salvation, but they meanwhile continue to strictly, they say, strictly observe the law of Moses, understanding it as a kind of teacher and a moral advisor that will prepare them and teach them to be ready to recognize and welcome Christ when he comes.

In that sort of the foundation of Nephite law, the law of Moses, but the most consequential legal moment in the Book of Mormon probably comes in Mosiah 29 with Mosiah's legal reforms, where he moves, famously, the Nephite system of government from a monarchy to a judgeship, which would have changed no doubt the procedures of Nephite law very drastically. And we see that play out. In fact, much of the rest of the action of the Book of Mormon, including in the Book of Helaman, is about the repercussions of that change. But the underlying corpus of law was still understood to be the law of Moses, with two important exceptions. One was that Mosiah legislated that there could be no persecution on the basis of conscience.

Gore: Mm-hmm.

Welch: And then he also vested some legal authority or some judicial authority in the voice of the people themselves, which of course is the title of your book. So there's a way in which now the judges have to be responsive to the popular will of the people as expressed in these bodies of citizens.

So that's sort of what we can know from the text about the Nephite legal system. Beyond that, we have to do a lot of inference. But it's interesting to look at specific cases in light of this background.

And so he zooms in on the case of Paanchi, who is maybe a lesser known character here from the first chapter of Helaman. We open the book of Helaman, the chief judge Pahoran has died, and he has three sons who are vying.

Gore: Mm-hmm.

Welch: to take over the office of Chief Judge. They are Pahoran, Paanchi, and Pacumeni. And so the voice of the people speaks and Pahorin is elevated to the position of Chief Judge. Now the problem with any system of popular sovereignty is that there's going to be losers. And the problem of losers is one that plagues the Nephites.

Gore: That's right.

Welch: And so, Pacumeni, he's a good loser, but Paanchi is a sore loser, and he cannot accept the results of this. And so, he rallies his partisan followers, and the text says he is “about to” lead them in a kind of seditious act of rebellion when he is apprehended, taken, and then, according to the voice of the people, is tried and is ultimately executed.

So that is the narrative story that we have about Paanchi and the case of Paanchi. So the central question in this story, Welch suggests, is whether or not it was illegal under Nephite law to criticize the chief judge or even talk about overthrowing the government. Was it enough just to talk, or did a person have to call for or actually commit some specific overt action before the inciter could be tried and convicted of conspiracy? Could a person be punished according to the law for expressing mere intent?

So to answer this question, Welch goes back and with great erudition, he reviews ancient law from all the way back to Egypt, pre-exilic and post-exilic Israel up to Roman law to show a kind of broad shift in ancient understandings of this question.

Earlier, the sort of earlier understanding was that there could be criminal liability for mere incitement without active help or involvement. Over time, around the time in fact that these events were taking place in the Book of Mormon, a new understanding was emerging in Israelite law in which merely to plan something without actually doing it, was not deserving of punishment.

So that puts us with this question here. What is happening with Paanchii? Mosiah has made it clear that a person can't be punished for his thoughts or beliefs alone. So how much actual aid or help or action is needed before a person could be indicted and executed? Did an actual rebellion need to begin? Or was it okay if it was just about to begin?

And so what we see is that as the text tells us, Paanchi was about to incite this rebellion, but was stopped before he carried it out and then subsequently was convicted and executed. So Welch infers that Nephite law recognized the imminent incitement of rebellion as a completed crime. Or at least Paanchi’s case would have solidified that precedent if there was some question around it earlier on. And you can imagine how this kind of collective memory of figures like Amlici at the beginning of the Book of Alma and Amalikiah would have encouraged the people to try to nip these rebellions in the bud early because they know what happens when they're allowed to flourish. And so…

Gore: Mm-hmm.

Welch: what Welch concludes is that the conviction of Paanchi by the voice of the people reveals a decision that is consistent with an older, more traditional Israelite framework, right? Including that it's enough just to plan and incite people, even if the actual rebellion had not been carried out.

There's a kind of secondary question, which is why was this case decided according to the voice of the people and not by the chief judge? And he suggests a couple of reasons. One is that the law may not have been fully decided yet. And so Pahorin felt that it was prudent to let the people weigh in on it. Otherwise he could be accused afterwards of deciding sort of dubiously in his own favor. Or it's also possible that since the very matter at hand was the installation of a new chief judge, that his appointment was still contested in some way and that legal authority in this interim would have reverted back to the voice of the people. So we see how important it was, these institutions of popular sovereignty were deeply rooted in Nephite society.

Gore: Yeah, we know so little about the mechanism whereby these, if you want to call them referendums or appeals to the voice the people are made, we don't know enough specifics about how that relates to the judge's interpretation a lot to be able to answer those questions definitively. But I think those hypotheses are very provocative and insightful because I'm sure something's happening here in uh... you know the kind of corruption in some sense that's existing in their society and also that they're willing or not willing to tolerate.

Welch: Yeah. So this, you know, this piece is a good example of a particular moment in Book of Mormon scholarship, the kind of textual historicist moment. And to me, it shows how fruitful that lens really can be, because Welch has drawn out a lot of detail that I never would have thought to even really ask about or notice, but by bringing these larger questions to bear and by putting it in ancient context,

Gore: Absolutely.

Welch: He draws a lot out of the text.

If there's something that jumps out of it that kind of speaks more personally to me as a believer and as a reader of the book, it would probably be thinking about the aftermath of this moment. So what happens is that Pahoran, son of Pahoran, ascends to the chief judgeship. He's famously assassinated by Kishkumen.

And so then after that moment, with Paanchi having been executed, Pakumani, the third son, then ascends to the chief judgeship, and he then is killed as well in a Lamanite attack that happens soon after. And so at that moment, we see the chief judgeship revert back to the house of Alma as Helaman, the son of Helaman, the son of Alma, ascends to the judgeship. And that tells me something about the family of Alma and the house of Alma. First of all, this was a thankless job. It was perfectly clear how dangerous it was to take this position. But Helaman was willing to do it, I think, out of the kind of sense of obligation and public spiritedness that his family embodied. And he didn't seek the position. He was asked to take it, and he carried it out with justice and equity.

Gore: Indeed. Dangerous one, yeah.

Welch: So it leaves me feeling grateful and inspired by the ethos and kind of the family culture of the House of Alma down through the generations, where they are in the midst of a wicked and deteriorating society, but they don't give up on it. They're willing to continue to serve it and to do their best despite the sort of difficult outlook ahead, and with great unselfishness and with great justice and persistence. They stick with their people and do what they can even on a sort of sinking ship.

Gore: And that really, I mean, I think that highlights again, a theme that goes all the way back to King Benjamin and King Mosiah about the role of a righteous leader, that you really do have to offer yourself as a sacrifice in many ways, in terms of your time and your energy and your willingness to take on difficult assignments, to bear those patiently. Um, and, and to, to also bear the criticisms that are lobbed against you, uh, despite the fact that you're doing a job no one else wants to do, you're also criticized for not doing it to the way that other people would want you to do it. So there's all manner of grievances that one has to bear if one wants to be a leader of any society. And certainly Nephite society was no exception to that. And as you mentioned, I mean, Helaman himself is saved by one of his servants from an assassination attempt. So it's even worse than just the normal burdens of leadership in his case. And so...

I think it does speak to a quality of character there in the leader's willingness to bear those burdens is significant. The fact that they're willing to take those things on and carry them despite both the damage to themselves, the danger to themselves, and also the burden of just doing it. It's impressive.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, it is. Well, and that's a nice transition to the next piece that we're going to talk about, which is, here's where you'll see that name again, Kim Matheson Berkey's brief theological introduction to the Book of Helaman. And it's a really wonderful short book, as all of them are, I highly recommend it. Her reading of Helaman chapter 12, which is a sort of an anomaly here in the Book of Helaman, because in this chapter, Mormon--we've seen him pop out from behind the curtain a couple of times so far in the Book of Helaman and to kind of give us the lesson that he wants us to know. He wants us to see, you know.

Gore: Yeah. That's right.

Welch: what--he foreshadows a lot, right? Like, this is going to be really bad when the Gadianton robbers first emerge, and then he wants to comment on God's mercy in receiving all who will come unto him in baptism when there's a great expansion in the Nephite church.

But here in Helaman 12 he steps out for an entire chapter, or what we have today as an entire chapter, in the Book of Mormon. And he's lamenting, as you alluded to earlier, the unsteadiness of the human nature, in particular of the Nephite human nature, who as soon as they are blessed by the Lord, they become prideful, and they turn away from him, and they take credit for the blessings that they have. They begin to create structures of

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: domination and hierarchy and to persecute those who are below them on the ladder. And so then the Lord has no choice but to chasten them. So he's lamenting this cycle that he is seeing in Nephite history.

But there's an interesting part of this chapter where he starts to focus on the earth itself. The earth itself as a kind of mirror of the instability in human nature and in Nephite society.

Gore: Mm-hmm.

Welch: It starts right about verse seven or so, and it continues through about verse 18. And so, so Kim zooms in on these verses and she makes the very, very interesting suggestion that this section may have been some kind of a preexisting hymn about the earth, and that Mormon has come across it and loves it and has seen a way that it's thematically resonant here. And so he's inserted it here in the middle of this chapter. She notes that Mormon typically doesn't use really poetic language. So to see these poetic structures of parallelism and doubles and comparison alerts us to the fact that this may be a different kind of source that he's inserted here in the middle of this chapter. And I think that's really fascinating.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: Even beyond that though, thematically it is so interesting. So she points out that the earth has been sort of profoundly unstable throughout the Book of Helaman. From earthquakes that tumble the walls of the prison where Nephi and Lehi are imprisoned in Lamanite territory to the soil that begins to swallow up buried treasures, the earth starts to come into motion in the Book of Helaman, leading up of course to the cataclysms that we'll see in third Nephi. So it's like the earth is just starting to wake up.

So she notes a kind of progress in this hymn at the beginning of it talking about just the dust, starting with small surface phenomena. “For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither to the dividing asunder at the command of our great and everlasting God.”

Increasing cycles and scopes to the colossal movements at the very center of the earth. So we see this kind of increasing intensity of the earth's movement and agitation. But the most important, or to me, most fruitful thing that she does here is to trace these pervasive connections to King Benjamin's address throughout this hymn to the earth. And so she says that if the text's structure and tone were meant to imply that Mormon is incorporating an ancient source, the text's content suggests that he modifies that source after the pattern of King Benjamin. So this is a kind of version of King Benjamin's address for a different moment. King Benjamin was famously speaking at the beginning of the large plates. If we read the Book of Mormon in dictation order, then that's the beginning of the book. Here, Mormon is taking up these same themes, but from a place of ending.

Gore: Mm.

Welch: So where Benjamin has this kind of wonderful optimism, Mormon has a real pessimism. And so we can see Mormon's song here as a kind of despairing lament version of King Benjamin's address. So she points to a couple of specific moments.

In verse six, Mormon mentions creation. Creation, of course, is a really important theme in King Benjamin's address. For King Benjamin, creation signifies God's mercy and his love and his generosity in continuing to renew us and create us and sustain us from breath to breath from the beginning. For Moroni, on the contrary, as we see in verse 6, humans don't want to acknowledge their own creation. So creation is a sign or the sight of human pride and willfulness, and their refusal to acknowledge God as their creator.

In the sort of order of creation, the universe as we have it, again, for Benjamin, this conveys mercy and grace, God's love, in sustaining the world and our life in it from day to day. For Mormon, the order of creation conveys God's judgment. In some ways, Mormon kind of describes the negative version of Benjamin's instructions. Benjamin says, you know, we are always unprofitable servants because the very moment that you do good, well, in the beginning, God gives you life. And so if you try to pay him back for that life, he blesses you immediately. So you're still in his debt. And for him, of course, this is a wonderful thing because it's the very condition that can create in us the character of somebody who is saved in Christ. So this is a wonderful thing to recognize.

For Mormon though, he describes what happens when you break bad in that moment of recognizing your unprofitableness. For human, for the natural man that Mormon describes, as soon as we receive those blessings from God, we forget God.

Gore: Mm.

Welch: And we start to lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that we deserve what we have and that we've earned it ourselves and that we're entitled to use it as we want and we have no obligation to share it with others. So Mormon here kind of specifically shows us the reverse of the mechanism that Benjamin describes.

Both of them bring up the idea of dust. And once again, for Benjamin, acknowledging that we were built from dust is a wonderful and generative thing, because it's the very condition that allows us to come unto Christ and be saved in him. But for Mormon, when he mentions dust in verses seven to eight, it's a reflection of his despairing and his pessimistic view. And it's a condemnation of human frailty.

And then finally, the question of wealth, right? What we do with our wealth is central to King Benjamin. And of course, just as we are all beggars with respect to God who gives to us generously, regardless of our merit, we then are required in the same way to give what we have to those who ask of us regardless of our judgment of their merit.

In the Book of Helaman though, we see something very, very different. And I love how Kim walks us through that. And it all goes back to Adam and Eve in the garden. So Adam and Eve's first recorded act was to partake of a forbidden fruit, to take ownership of a natural resource in an inappropriate way. And that's why both the earth and humanity fell together. So there's this kinship between the earth and humanity. And that's why the earth can be this kind of profound mirror of our own spiritual state. So in Genesis, then of course, Adam and Eve are...

Gore: Mm.

Welch: are sent out into the lone and dreary world, but they're told to work. They're told to work to till the earth and to by the sweat of their brow earn---by the sweat of their brow… I almost made a King Benjamin type mistake right there. I said, earn their own living, but of course we don't earn our own living. Work they must, but the gifts come to them from God through the cultivation of the earth.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: So what we see in the Book of Helaman is this kind of grotesque distortion of that commandment. Instead of sowing seeds and reaping nourishment, they are sowing violence in bodies and blood. They're burying their gold and silver instead of their seeds, hoping that it will return to them again, but only of course to find that this is a barren…

Gore: Mm-hmm.

Welch: crop and that they will in fact spiritually starve if they expect to survive on the fruits of their money alone.

So I find this to be such a profound and subtle interweaving of the themes of Benjamin and Mormon and just to throw into real relief the sad--and as she says, kind of grotesque--state of Nephite society at this stage in their history, where the kind of agriculture that they are engaged in is the absurd planting of gold and silver in the expectation that this is going to yield some kind of nourishing life.

Gore: Yeah. It's a really interesting way to think about the Earth as an agent. Um, because as you're mentioning, as you're talking there, I'm thinking about how, you know, the Earth is obviously an agent of provision of bounty of overflowing, you know, a thing that's contained in a container that overflows itself, so to speak, but it's always constantly giving forth life and prosperity and beneficence to the people that live on the Earth, obviously to us Earthlings.

And yet it also is a site of judgment because the way that those gifts are used by us is what can bring us into condemnation or into freedom and liberation as well at the same time. And so in a way, the earth is doing what the earth does as an actor here, but it's the condition of our hearts that determines what element or aspect of that gift-giving life-giving force that the earth gives to us provides for us that we see. What judgment do we make of it, what use do we make of it? And that's the piece that comes back to us again, and that determines whether the earth is going to act as this, again, a life-giving mother or a judgment against us, right?

Welch: That's exactly right. And that's, and I appreciate you bring that up because you helped me crystallize, I think, what is the, what I drew that was most powerful to me from what Matheson points out here, which is that what Benjamin sees as God's grace and mercy, Mormon sees as God's judgment, but really they are one and the same.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: to make of it. But God always gives us good gifts. Our Earth Mother always gives us good gifts. The question is, can we see them and will we receive them?

Gore: Exactly. Mm-hmm. And even his judgments are good too, if we can accept those and make room for those in the sense that we're willing to change. How we're receiving these gifts, what use we're making of them. We have to be open to that possibility too, that his judgments can help us be good or be better than we were before. Yeah.

Welch: And you see at crucial points you see the Nephites miss that off-ramp, right? They're on this highway to destruction and they have moments where they could have seen that. They could have received the judgments and they could have taken them to heart but they just keep on speeding past off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp. Yeah, oh absolutely, yes.

Gore: Mm-hmm. That's right. Yeah. Just as we occasionally do as well.

Welch: Well, moving forward now through the book of Helaman, I'll turn it over to you to walk us through a really interesting--we've talked about the prophet Nephi and his iconic sermon of judgment to the Nephites from his tower. And then as a kind of counterpart to that, at the end of the book of Helaman, we have the iconic sermon of Samuel the Lamanite on the wall. So let's turn our attention now to Samuel the Lamanite.

Gore: Okay. Yeah, that's right. I think Samuel is a very neglected figure in the historiography of the Book of Mormon and in our understanding of the Book of Mormon. I think there's lots of different reasons for that potentially, but in this beautiful book, Samuel the Lamanite that you, I believe edited by Charles Swift, that was published in 2021, there are a number of great pieces there that help us gain a new perspective on Samuel and to understand the kind of work that he's doing and why it's so crucial to the whole text of the Book of Mormon and our understanding of what's happening there.

And one of these chapters by Joe Spencer is just an ingenious reading of only five verses of the text from the sermon by Samuel. Helaman, chapter 14, verses 15 to 19. And Joe is, I say ingenious because what he does is such a close reading of a text that many of us have read hundreds of times, but that when you pay really close attention to the grammar and to the punctuation even and to the way that the words are put together, it highlights a really profound understanding of what Samuel is doing here in this text.

And so Spencer uses these verses to show Samuel's highly detailed conception of spiritual death and how Christ's death brings to pass both the physical resurrection and the conditions of repentance, the possibility that we can be brought back into the presence of the Lord. All of that is relatively uncomplicated stuff in these verses if you read them on a surface level.

Until Spencer starts to pick apart the grammar of this particular text, and here he reveals that Samuel is mixing the subjunctive place and the indicative mood in his sermon to illustrate the higher possibilities that work in Christ's at-one-ment on our behalf.

What does that mean? Namely, Christ's death is necessary in a way that resists its being reduced to a worldly or a historical event. It's necessary in a cosmic sense. It's necessary in a spiritual sense, on a level that's greater than just the historical. And yet, it would be a mistake for us, as Joe points out. To say that Christ's death is therefore merely an eternal idea. We go, going all the way back to Plato, we have this concept that the eternal is represented by the ideal, by ideas. And of course, the example of Christ's death and suffering on the cross and his subsequent resurrection happened in the real world. There are matters of fact, there are matters of history, but there are also matters of fact and history that have an eternal gravitas, an eternal weight to them.

And so if we want to say this another way, Samuel's Christ experiences a sort of necessity that cannot be said to stand wholly outside of time, just as he willingly goes to his death in an event that cannot be said to stand holy inside time. This is a really beautiful insight that Joe is bringing out in this distinction between the place and the mood of the language that Samuel's using to make his argument here about Jesus.

What ultimately Joe draws from this is that the division of Christ's experience, both inside and outside time, is something like the division that each average human being experiences in the gap between what we know and what we do. I'm sure that we're all familiar with this experience from our own, as Joseph says in section 121, from our own sad experience.

I know a thing, but I don't do it. And this happens on so many different kinds of levels, both from omission and commission and so on, that we have this gap, we experience this gap very painfully at times, as human beings, between what we know and what we do. What we know exceeds what we do. And there's a gross mismatch here between, our knowledge of a thing and our actions relative to that knowledge.

And in Samuel's words, this leads to condemnation. We're condemned because--we're condemned by what we know and the gap between what we know and what we do. Now, Joe takes a really beautiful theological reading here of this text and helps us to see that what Samuel's teaching us here is that he doesn't want us to simply force our actions to align with our ideals. He doesn't want us to force our actions to match what we know.

As if that were even possible as human beings. No, that's the way of misery. That's the way of increasing our suffering by laying burdens upon ourselves which we're not capable of carrying as human beings.

Welch: Yeah. Just sort of like white knuckling towards perfect obedience. If I can be perfectly obedient, then I'll be fine and then I'll earn my own salvation. Yeah.

Gore: Exactly, yeah. That's right, that's right. That somehow we rely upon ourselves in essence in that act or what's described in the Book of Mormon as the management of the creature. If I can just discipline myself in such and such a way, then finally my actions will match what I know. And so what Joe wants us to understand instead is the condition of repentance, which amounts to an enhanced understanding of the human condition.

And if I can read just a paragraph maybe or two from this essay at the end of Joe's essay, he says,

“What organizes and orients the division of the human being confronted with Samuel's words is straightforwardly a potential misalignment between knowledge and action. What ultimately brings one to the second death, Samuel says, is knowing these things and not doing them. Helaman 14:19. Here the average human being finds herself divided between being a passive subject of knowing and being an active subject of doing. Inasmuch as one fails to repent, it seems the non-coincidence of these two ways of being a subject becomes a pathway to misery. What one knows exceeds and overstretches what one does, and the mismatch leads rather directly to condemnation. Divided from oneself with theory, knowing, and practiced doing, situated on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gulf, one finds no possibility of wholeness or of reconciliation.

Now, it absolutely must not be imagined that Samuel thinks one must work to force one's actions to align with certain known ideals as if it were even possible for one's all too human efforts to yield anything like goodness apart from God. What one knows, Samuel makes clear, is just the conditions of repentance. Indeed, Samuel states explicitly that his purpose in coming up upon the walls of the city is to ensure that his hearers know the conditions of repentance, that what one might know while not doing something is the conditions of repentance indicates that what one must do is specifically repent. In short, what Samuel wishes his heirs to know is the conditions of repentance and what he wishes them to do is to repent. And what he worries about is the possibility of knowing these things and not doing them. He apparently worries about those who know the conditions of repentance, but do not repent. And this is the kicker, the misalignment between knowing and doing.

The division between the passive subject of knowing and the active subject of doing is not that between the knowledge of heavenly moral ideals and a practical life always and necessarily lived without achieving those ideals. It is rather a misalignment between knowing that repentance is the condition for the possibility of escaping the second spiritual death and failing to repent. Here is elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, all we can do is repent.”

And this is where I think Joe makes this beautiful conclusion. It may in fact be only in repentance that what human beings know and what human beings do can genuinely find reconciliation or genuine wholeness. I love that because that theological conclusion draws together in a really powerful way an understanding of ourselves and an understanding of the gift of what Christ's at-onement does for us by making it possible for us to be reconciled to God.

Jesus also helps us reconcile ourselves to ourselves, helps us reconcile ourselves to our families and to our friends and to our immediate connections, to the members of our wards and stakes who we might not see eye to eye with, we might have disagreements and challenges with. All of that can be reconciled as Jesus reconciles ourself to ourself, helps us understand that in the act of repentance, in the act of seeking God's help to achieve what God wants us to achieve.

We reconcile this gap between knowing and doing in a perfect way because it makes it possible for us to know that we should repent. And when we actually do repent, we're matching our actions with what we understand. And that's one of the few places in life where we actually can do that. So it's a beautiful insight, I think, that Joe pulls out of these five verses of Samuel.

I wanted to go on and talk about this other piece as well by Kim Matheson and Joe Spencer, “Great Cause to Mourn: The Complexity of the Book of Mormon's Presentation of Gender.” And this piece was published in 2019 and there's a number of really insightful chapters in this book as well. But this one in particular about Samuel draws out again the way that Samuel's is a crucial figure Matheson and Spencer call him a lone voice sounding in the wilderness of the volumes marginalized and elsewhere in the text actually Terrell Givens describes Samuel the Lamanite as the preaching of a new world John the Baptist.

So we have some really key insights in this text, Americanist Approaches, about Samuel. But Matheson and Spencer wanna pick up especially on the way that Samuel presents himself as a marginalized figure, a Lamanite preaching to Nephites about their neglect of the commandments and also about their sexism and their racism ultimately.

And so here we have this racially marginalized person attempting in a call to repentance to bring the plight of the sexually marginalized to the attention of the majority. And he does this through the reworking of a biblical text. And specifically that text is Matthew chapters 23 and 24 that Samuel quotes from extensively in his sermon, especially in third in Helium at 15.

where he's reworking Jesus's direct condemnation of the Jerusalem leadership, as well as his apocalyptic discourse, often referred to as the Olivet Discourse, into a condemnation of Nephite patriarchy and racism. So the opening verses of Helaman 15, when read closely by Matheson and Spencer, shows the borrowing of images from the sermon of Jesus, and they illustrate how Samuel stages a critique of the Nephite mistreatment of women and why that provokes an apocalyptic crisis. Without denying that there's something essentially sinful that is morally or ethically reprehensible about racism, Samuel implicitly warns against reducing religion to ethics by valorizing the radical act of faith and affirming the God who watches out for the religious faithful even in ethically compromising situations. In other words, Samuel can present himself as one who has suffered from the racism of the Nephites, but he also doesn't present himself as only the victim of their racism, but also as the beneficiary of God's grace in compensating him for that harm.

And so this is a very delicate but powerful argument that Samuel's presenting here, that he's criticizing racism with a kind of theological hopefulness.

Matheson, Spencer, call theological hopefulness a conviction that God can make good even out of morally reprehensible racism or morally reprehensible bads of all kinds. And that's really the beautiful thing that I think Santa's inviting us to trust the Savior with this capacity to turn for good our suffering, our disappointments, our losses in life.

And so I think that's a really profound aspect that the entire Book of Mormon is trying to teach us too, that it's presenting again a history of gross immorality, including sexism and racism and violence of epic proportions. And then at the same time, it does this in order to present us with criticisms of this immorality. But these criticisms are sometimes subtle and not always readily apparent, like what we're supposed to do with the criticism, like...

Welch: Thank you.

Gore: because it's not always straightforwardly clear that these harms and these evils are always corrected by God. But the point here is, of course, and I think that actually parallels what's true in our own lives too, that when we suffer injustices of any kind, it's not always clear that God has our back and he's gonna make the justice come out in the end. Sometimes we have to question that for a long time, and we wonder about where or when that justice is gonna flow down like a river. And we look for it, we wait for it, we long for it, we pine for it, and we suffer for want of it. And yet at the same time, we can still have faith in God's grace and in his goodness towards us. And that's, I think, our task is to learn how to read the Book of Mormon carefully enough to attune ourselves to how it critiques social and political questions at the heart of 21^st-century life, at the heart of our own experiences, so that we can see those experiences more clearly in the light of the possibility of God's grace prevailing at long last.

And so we have that faith, we have that trust, and we wanna develop it, and that's ultimately what Samuel's calling us to do in these chapters by showing us the plight of those who suffer. He helps us put our own suffering into perspective. He helps us remember that our suffering can be compensated for by the gifts and graces of eternity and of eternal possibilities. And that's, I think, a beautiful reminder of the kind of faith that we need to be able to endure the challenges that life brings to us, which are often unjust and unfair. We often suffer in ways that we don't deserve. And sometimes, we always say--yeah, sometimes we bring that on ourselves, it's true, but sometimes even the things we bring on ourselves causes suffering that's greater than what we deserved.

So that you know, we always have to keep in mind that the magnitude of the difficulties of life can be compensated by an infinite and eternal atonement and that that ultimately I think is a theme that runs through the Book of Mormon again and again As I said earlier, we're not cast off forever. Whatever, whatever injustice is--whatever Sufferings that we're experiencing as a consequence of our own behavior or because of the misbehavior of others, and the injustice is committed upon us, they can all be compensated and worked out in the end by loving God and will be by loving God. And that's what Samuel's telling us and teaching us. And I think that's a beautiful idea there. And I love the way that Kim and Joe are able to highlight that Samuel is taking on the perspective of the marginalized and those who suffer more than others.

Because I think ultimately, when we look at, when we look at life as a political and social problem, we see that suffering is not equalized. It's not equal. And there needs to be some mechanism for righting the wrongs that exist in the social and political worlds that human beings create.

And that mechanism is also the atonement of Jesus Christ. It isn't just about our personal lives. It's also about our social and political realities that God does not want us to be saved only as individuals, but as collectively, as families and as friends and as congregations, and ultimately as nations. That the story in the Bible in particular, at the end in Revelations is that the fruit of the tree of life is for the healing of the nations. It's not just about the healing of our own personal experiences. And it needs to be about both, or otherwise it isn't enough.

It isn't enough to fix what's wrong with the world.

Welch: And it's so powerful that it is Samuel who in his body and in his embodiment of difference, he can testify with a kind of credibility and power to this issue that no other prophet can. Of course, readers of the Book of Mormon who have read from the small plates and then throughout the Book of Mormon, by this time if you've been paying attention, you'll know that the Lord has a special plan in mind for the salvation of

Gore: That's right.

Welch: the Lamanite remnant. And that in fact everything that's being written is headed for that purpose: for the salvation of the Lamanite remnant. So God has got their back.

Still though, that promise, which should be so hopeful and faithful, it can come off as a little glib when it's spoken by somebody else, right? It can be sort of like minimizing--like, yes, you know, Lamanites, you're suffering now, you're being mistreated by the Nephites, but don't worry, it's all going to be fine in the end.

But when Samuel voices that, it comes from a total, it has a different force to it, right? Because

Gore: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Welch: He has experienced it. He knows what it is. And so when he expresses faith that in the end, the Lord in his tender mercy will gather and recompense his people, that has real moral force. And of course, the great question that it raises is, what would it be like if we had a sermon by a Nephite woman, an equivalent sermon by a Nephite woman? Because these are the twin ethical problems that bedevil the Nephites, right? Is their racializing, otherizing of the Lamanites and then their treatment of women. And of course, as one consequence of that, we don't have too many women's voices recorded in the Book of Mormon. Thank goodness for people like Jacob and Lehi and Samuel who recognize their plight and who bring it to our attention. And it would be far too quick.

Gore: Yeah, that's right.

Welch: This is part of what Spencer and Matheson want to show is it would be far too quick to say, oh, the Book of Mormon, because it contains few women's voices, it has little of substance to say about the problem, about women themselves, or about the problem of sex-based discrimination and oppression. It actually has quite a lot to say if you look carefully.

Gore: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think we can't emphasize enough that phrase you just uttered, if you look carefully. You have to look carefully at this text in order to understand the way that it's helping us critique Nephite civilization as well as ourselves. It's always bringing it back into, what is my relationship to people of other races? What is my relationship to people of other genders and sexes and so on. Because if I'm not attuning myself to that in an appropriate way, then I can easily miss both the insights of the book itself, the text, but also the way that it teaches me to be in the text of my life, right? In the textual relationships that I'm embedded in every day.

Welch: Just as we were talking earlier about how Nephi holds this mirror up to Nephite society to show them what is hidden inside of them. And at a larger level, that's precisely what the Book of Mormon is meant to do for its modern Latter-day readers is to be a kind of magic mirror that we look into and we see ourselves. Wonderful. Well, David, as we're moving towards the end of our time together, we always wrap up these podcasts by sharing a scripture that has been personally significant or meaningful to each one of us in some way. So I'll let you go first. Would you share with us a scripture that's been meaningful to you?

Gore: Thank you. I would love to. And as I was rereading the Book of Helaman a couple of times in preparation for this podcast today, I was reminded of an experience I had as a young missionary when I was serving in the England Manchester Mission in the Whitefield Ward. I had an occasion on a very clear, sunny summer day to be invited over to the home of a member of the Whitefield Ward who was on his deathbed. And this was a really touching experience as a missionary to be able to go and visit this longtime member and to sit next to him as he laid in his bed. And he asked us to read the story of Nephi praying on his garden tower. And I remember reading that story to him. And then he said, and then isn't there a part where he prophesies about the death of a, you know, the chief judge and I said, yeah, that's the next chapter. So we read that chapter with him as well. So we sat on this afternoon, one day on my mission and read these chapters, Helaman seven through 10 roughly. And I remember this brother was, I think it was maybe three or four days later that he passed away. And so, we knew that he was suffering and it was towards the end. And he laid in his bed with his eyes closed as we read to him and just listened to us.

And it was one of the most touching experiences of my mission. I remember feeling like I had really done something worthwhile, even though it was such a small gesture that we knew where this chapter was in the Book of Mormon and we read it to him. And I subsequently was always puzzled by why he wanted us to read that passage to him at the end of his life. And I think maybe I have an insight that might be relevant to that, answering that question.

In particular though, I want to just read a couple verses of Helaman 7 and then one verse of Helaman 10. In Helaman 7 verse 6, Nephi is reflecting upon the wickedness of the people, how they allow the wicked to go unpunished because of their money, and they rule and do according to their own wills that they can gain glory and the glory of the world and so on.

And then we learned this about Nephi, that this great iniquity had come upon the Nephites in the space of not many years. And when Nephi saw it, his heart was swollen with sorrow within his breast. And he'd exclaim in the agony of his soul, this prayer that he wishes that he could have been born in an earlier time when the world wasn't so wicked. He wishes that his days could have been in those days of joy that are recounted in other histories, as he says.

And he says, but I'm, I'm filled with sorrow because I'm consigned to these days. And then he goes upon this tower in his garden and he prays and over people hear him praying and they gather and they start bringing people together to listen to this prayer. Why is he lamenting so strongly the wickedness and the downfall of his people? And, uh, he rises up from his prayer and he tells them exactly why. He says it's because you're wicked and you need to repent and you've allowed these things to come into your society and into your hearts and into your lives that is causing such mourning and lamentation in me. It's broken my heart to see the way that you've fallen. And then of course, we know that he prophesies about the death of the chief judge being murdered by his brother. And he goes on and there's five people that run to the scene and so on and so forth. And we're familiar with that story as it plays out. And then Nephi narrates it.

But then what strikes me really profoundly here is in Helaman chapter 10 verse one, at the end of this prophecy about the death of the chief judge and at the end of this intrigue and murder and coming to light and so on and so forth and people becoming converted. Some people believe that Nephi's a prophet and some people are still convinced that he's in on some kind of conspiracy and so on and so forth. It says, “it came to pass that there arose a division among the people, in so much that they divided hither and thither, and went their ways, leaving Nephi alone as he was standing in the midst of them.”

I love this image of a kind of a politically raucous, almost a mob, verging on a mob, all swirling around him and they're all taking sides on what kind of person Nephi is. And then they all just kind of walk away and Nephi's left standing there. I love that image because it made me think that maybe the reason why this brother wanted us to read this passage was because, not because of Nephi's condemnatory language so much against the sins of his people, but because Nephi understood, he knew where he stands. He here was a righteous voice in the midst of great wickedness. And I think about that a lot, you know, whenever I go to a big city and I see all the people that are moving around the traffic and the noise and all the people doing all the things they're doing, I sometimes wonder what, what relevance can the gospel have to everybody here? And why is it that not everybody's ready to listen to it or to embrace it when it seems so much a fulfilling part of my life? I think about that and I think that's kind of like this image of Nephi standing there and everybody's swirling around him. They go their separate ways. He knows where he stands and he's firm and undaunted in the way that he stands there and his recognition that despite the mourning and the suffering that's caused by the wickedness of others, he's gonna try to be righteous. He's determined to be righteous and he's determined to live up to, to a kind of commitment to the Lord that ultimately recognizes that only by faith and repentance and by Christ can we be saved. And I think that's a beautiful image there that's depicted in that story of just Nephi being Nephi.

He's being righteous in the midst of all the wickedness around him, and I think that's an admirable thing, and one that gives, I think, should give great hope to all of us.

Welch: Well, and I wonder, you know, it's such a striking image of him standing there, absolutely alone. And thinking about your friend, you know, death is something that we, each person has to walk through alone. We, almost every other thing in life we do together, especially the things that are of most consequence, as we’re sealed together and as we give birth. But death is something that we have to walk through, a door we have to walk through, by ourselves. And I, I wonder whether that image of.

Gore: Yeah. That’s right.

Welch: Nephi on his own but secure in his relationship with the Lord. I wonder if that was powerful to your friend.

Gore: There you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, thank you.

Welch: Well, I wanted to share something that actually is related in a lot of ways. And I think it helps us understand how it is that Nephi came to be the person that he was. And that's looking back here to Helaman chapter three.

You know, something about the Book of Helaman that we haven't touched on too much yet is kind of the socio-cultural and technological progress that was happening during this time. It was a time of incredible expansion, prosperity, they expanded drastically up into the land northward, they developed new forms of building, they developed a shipping industry, and honestly the time comes when there's a kind of freedom of travel and interaction between Nephites and Lamanites that has never been seen before. And all of this creates great prosperity, which is awesome, right? It's great. We like to be prosperous, and we should try to alleviate poverty whenever we can.

Gore: Yeah. Certainly.

Welch: But I can imagine that--this text kind of gives this sense of, kind of ferment and crazy busyness and constantly doing something new and this intense focus on growth, on novelty, and on wealth. And so within that, where does the gospel come? Where do the prophecies of Christ come? The time is drawing very, very short. And yet in some ways, it seems as though the Nephites have never been less focused on Christ. And of course, that's what Nephi and Samuel are here to do, is to try to refocus them on that.

But it's in this kind of, in this culture of self-focus and intense focus on what humans can do for themselves, that we see the household of Helaman stand out.

Gore: Mm.

Welch: in such a different way. And it just, the home and the family that Helaman manages to create is a kind of countercultural enclave. I just imagine walking through the doors and having a totally different feeling from what is happening in the world outside. So I'll read here in Helaman

Gore: Mm.

Welch: take on him the danger and the burden of the chief judgeship. And here's what we read. “Nevertheless, Helaman did fill the judgment seat with justice and equity, yet he did observe to keep the statutes and the judgments and the commandments of God. And he did do that, which was right in the sight of God continually. And he did walk after the ways of his father, in so much that he did prosper in the land, and to came to pass that he had two sons. He gave unto the eldest the name Nephi, and unto the youngest the name of Lehi. And they began to grow up unto the Lord." And it's such a wonderful phrase.

And I've read the scripture many times, and I'm sure that you have as well. But this time, having a better sense of how different it was inside their home than in the outside world helped me to appreciate even more what Helaman achieved. And of course, I wish we knew about his wife because I'm sure she had a lot to do with it as well. But we learn a little more about how it was that Helaman succeeded in creating such a different environment and ethos inside his own home--that is, in Helaman chapter five--we see it is by focusing relentlessly on Christ.

Gore: Absolutely.

Welch: And when everybody else around them was focused on this life and living the good life here and now, he in his home was teaching his sons the ancient messianic prophecies about the coming of Christ. Even in the church itself, it's interesting, and you can't read too much into it, but the Nephite church had been exploding in this time of great prosperity. It was very good for the church, at least in terms of numbers, but it's fascinating that never in that description of the growth of the Nephite Church does it talk about the messianic prophecies of Christ. And you wonder if people were just joining the church because it kind of became the thing to do, right? To get ahead and to be a part of the society. And then of course we see that following the growth in numbers there was a big crash as contentions within the church destroyed the fellowship, contentions based on class stratification.

But within the home of Helaman, it's possible, we see what can be: that these private and protected spaces can be carved out where we can share together our faith in Christ and our confidence and trust in His coming. And as I alluded to earlier, that doesn't mean that we become kind of like fundamentalists who seal ourselves off from the world, because Helaman never gave up. He was willing to take that position and his sons were as well. Nephi, you know, takes the judgeship for himself and then--and then leaves it, but only leaves it to go preach and to convert. And so they give themselves to this sinking culture, but they are strengthened internally by their focus on Christ that was nurtured in this protected space of their, of their home and their bonds of family love.

Gore: Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful insight, you know.

Welch: Yeah. Well, David, this has been a great conversation about the book of Helaman. As we found, there has been lots that has been written on it, lots to explore, so many insights, and it really genuinely points us towards Christ, both textually in Third Nephi that's knocking at our door here and also personally for us as readers and believers. It holds up a mirror.

Gore: Yeah.

Welch: shows us that we are unprofitable servants, but reassures us that when we turn to Christ, we can find life in Him through repentance.

Gore: Yeah, amen to that. Thank you, Rosalynde, for your work on this podcast. It's been enjoyable to listen to and appreciate all you're doing to bring us together.