The Book Of Mormon Challenge
Rank #1: The Story About "HOW" We Got The Book Of Mormon. How it went from Gold Plates to the Book of Mormon ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell. I want to welcome you guys back to the Book of Mormon Challenge podcast. I am super excited for today’s episode. I apologize to those who have been waiting. It has taken a while. It’s interesting how when you try to move forward on important things like this how many things get in the way. So today, I got my kids ready for school, I woke up early this morning to get all the outlines prepared, got up, got my kids out the door to school, and then now I’m back in here recording this before I’m allowing myself to go into the office and get started on my day, to make sure you guys have it. Because I keep wanting to dive into 1 Nephi Chapter 1, I’ve got the entire episode all prepared and ready, and there’s so much exciting stuff I want to share with you. But I felt like there was a preamble, something I needed to give and share with you before that. And it’s the story of how we actually got the Book of Mormon. I’m sitting here in my office, and I have as you know, one of the original 5000 books that was printed here. And I’m not so much going to go into how the book was printed and published and things like that, that’s not the purpose of the podcast. But how did we actually get it? Every time I share anything with my friends who aren’t members of the church, they are confused, “So what is this? A new Bible? A new translation?” And not matter how many times I explain it they always get confused. So I want to kind of go through the details of the story and it’s one of the most amazing, insane, cool stories in the history of the world, yet nobody seems to talk about it very much. So I wanted to share it because I think it’s important. And my goal, in fact, my entire goal of this podcast, I think I’ve told you. There’s a couple of reasons, one is to get me to really get back into studying and learning and trying to find out the most amazing things from the Book of Mormon. But number two is to get you excited about the Book of Mormon. It’s not so much me telling you my commentary on the Book of Mormon, that’s not my goal. My goal is to talk about it in a way that gets you so excited after you hear the episode that you have to go and open it, you have to read the next chapter or the next verse. If I can do that, then I’ve done my job correctly. So I figure the best thing I can do today is get you so excited that if you haven’t got the Book of Mormon yet, you’re like, “Alright I’m going to go and just buy one, I’m going to go order it online.” Whatever you need to do, you’re going to get one and so you’ll actually open it and start reading it. So that’s my goal today, just to get you pumped by….because the back story about how it came to be because it really is fascinating. And hopefully you’ve listened to some of the earlier episodes, I talk about the history and all those kind of things. If not, please go back to the very beginning. I’m trying to, all these episodes kind of build on each other. So make sure you’re listening to them as you go. But this story is really, really cool. If you listened to a couple of episodes ago, I talked about Joseph Smith and his first vision. So if you remember that, I’ll kind of recap it really quickly. As a 14 year old kid he was confused and trying to figure out which church to join, and he went and he prayed and had a vision where Heavenly Father and Jesus came to him and said, “Don’t join any of the churches.” And he was like, “What? I never even considered that.” And they’re like, “Yeah, don’t join any church. None of them are here and you’re going to be an instrument to help bring back my true church here on the earth.” So he has this vision and he goes and tells his family about it, tells other people and he thinks that everyone is going to be excited to hear that Heavenly Father and Jesus came to him, and what actually happened was the opposite. He was lucky to have his family and people close to him believe him, but most of the people in the community didn’t. And he was persecuted really heavily. He was, his family was, and it was a really, really difficult time for the next few years. If you can imagine as a young boy having this vision and then not hearing from Heavenly Father again, you’re like, “What happened? Did I do something wrong?” You know, what’s the next step? So that’s kind of where this part of the story picks up. It’s Joseph Smith wondering that same thing, what’s the next step? So most of this podcast is going to be coming from two different things. One is Joseph Smith History. I went through the history and found some really cool parts of the story to tell. And the second one is a talk given by President Russell M. Nelson, who is the living prophet of the church today. This is a talk he gave called A Treasured Testament. He gave it a long time ago, I don’t know, 1992. So a long time ago, but it kind of tells the back story and shares some of the amazing insights, some amazing quoting of stuff from that as well. The goal of both of these things is to get you so excited to open up the book and start reading with me because the next episode we are going 1 Nephi Chapter 1, and we’re finally going to be diving in. So what happened, in Joseph Smith History he was talking about how there had been a space of time between the first vision and he was trying to figure out what to do. And he said during that time, you know he was a young boy. He was a teenager, and as most teenagers, I’ve got two boys, twin boys who are going to become teenagers here in about two months or three months from now. And he started just doing what teenagers do and he said, “I frequently fell into many foolish errors and displayed the weaknesses of youth and foibles of human nature. I’m sorry to say it lead me to diverse temptations offensive in the sight of God. But in making this confession, no one needs to suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sins, a disposition to commit such was never in my nature, but I was guilty of levity and sometimes associating with jovial company, etc. Not consistent with the character of which ought to maintained by one who was called of God, as I had been.” So can you imagine that? You’re a young kid and you see Heavenly Father, you see Jesus, but then you’re a teenager and you’re doing stupid stuff and whatever, but always having that guilt of, I should be better. I know better than this. But continually falling back on those ways. And I don’t know about you, but I have those things all the time, where I feel like our Heavenly Father has blessed me so, so greatly, yet I do stupid things. I’m like, “Why am I doing this? I should be better than that.” And I think he felt the same way, obviously. He goes on and said, “I often felt condemned for my weaknesses and imperfections.” So that’s kind of how he felt going into this. So it’d been I think 3 or 4 years after the first vision and he was like, “Alright, I need to find out where I fit with God.” And hopefully all of us have this conversation. It’s a scary one, it’s one that sometimes I don’t think any of us really want to go ask because you might find out and that can be kind of scary. But Joseph Smith thought, I’m going to find out what God thinks. Am I doing okay? Where am I at with him? So he goes on to say, “I betook myself to prayer and supplication to the Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and my follies. And also for a manifestation to me that I might know of my state and standing before him.” Can you imagine going to Heavenly Father like, “Okay, so I need to know my state and my standing. How am I doing? Am I doing good, am I doing bad?” something that I’m sure we’re all super curious about, but man, that’s a scary thing. What if he told you? What if he was like, “Man, you’re doing a horrible job Russell.”? But he did that. But first, he asked for forgiveness of his sins, “I know I’ve not been doing what you, I haven’t been living up to what I believe what you want me to be, so I’m asking for forgiveness. And then I want to know my standing. How am I doing? What should I be doing? You came to me, what now? Obviously you don’t come to everyone, what was the purpose, and what should I be doing?” He goes on to say, “I want to know of my state and standing before him, for I had a full confidence in obtaining a divine manifestation as I’d previously had one.” Can you imagine, he’s like, “I’ve had a vision before, I’m probably going to have one again.” He just believed it that much. I think most of us, we forget of the miracles we’ve had in our life and we just kind of pass them off, whereas he was like, “You know I had a miracle last time, he came and visited me. I think he’s going to visit me again. Let’s go pray.” And he did that, which is such a cool thing. So much faith, I wish I had that faith like that. So he went in there and asked for forgiveness of his sins, he prayed to know his state before God and what happened next is amazing. What happened next is an angel came and appeared to him in his room. And the angel’s name was Moroni. So those of you guys who don’t know who Moroni is yet, you know obviously the word Mormon from the Book of Mormon. So Mormon was the last prophet, one of the last prophets in the Book of Mormon and he had a son named Moroni. Moroni was the last one who was kind of writing all the history and he was the last righteous person in the land at the time, so he had been entrusted with these Gold Plates. These are metal pages that they had been etching in their history for 600 years of what was happening with them and with God, it was their journals. So he had all of these, they called them Gold Plates, where they were metal pages and they all had all these things etched in them. So Moroni had these and before he died he went and buried them in a hill so that nobody could find them. But they were a history of his people. So that’s kind of who Moroni was. So he’s sitting there in bed praying to find out his standing before God and all the sudden this angel appears to him. And the angel’s name was Moroni and Moroni started talking to him. And the first thing Moroni tells him is, “Hey, just so you know Joseph Smith, my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindred’s and tongues, where there should be both good and evil spoken among all people.” So you imagine that, an angel comes and just so you know, if you start on this mission, your name is going to be used for good and evil. So people who love you are going to think that you are the greatest thing in the world, and the rest of the world is going to hate you and think you’re an evil, horrible person. Can you imagine stepping into your mission, you know at this time he was, I don’t know how old he was at the time, but still a teenager, maybe 18-19 years old or something like that. And say, just so you know if you decide to go on this mission, your mission should you choose to accept it is this thing and your name is going to be used for both good and evil. So then he goes on and says, “Okay, there was a book deposited, written on gold plates, giving the account of the former inhabitants of this continent and the source from whence they sprang.” He also said, “That the fullness of the everlasting gospel is contained in it, as delivered by the savior to the ancient inhabitants.” So he said, there’s these gold plates that I buried up in the mountain. He said that on these’s plates are record of the ancient Indians, the people who used to live here in America. And it talks about when the savior came to them. He said that, “I buried these in the mountain and I also, because I know that you don’t know how to speak the language that we wrote in, there are also two stones and silver bows, and these stones fastened to the breast plate constitute what are called the Urim and Thummim.” And he says, “The Urim and Thummin are what were called seer stones, these stones are what would constitute seers in ancient or former times, and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating this book.” So he didn’t know what these were, but he said, “There’s these seer stones, if you look through them you’ll be able to translate the Book of Mormon, they’re also buried in the mountain.” And he kind of explained the whole thing. So I’m sure Joseph Smith is like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cool. There’s these buried gold plates in a mountain and there’s these seer stones. If I look through the stones I can translate this ancient language.” This is, I don’t know about you, but this is better than any movie in the history of the world. So the angel’s telling him this stuff, then after that the angel starts quoting him scriptures. So he’s quoting him scriptures from Isaiah and Malachi and all these things. So he’s quoting these scriptures and he quotes the scripture and he says, ‘This is about to be fulfilled.” And he quotes another scripture and says, “This is about to be fulfilled.” And he quotes another one and says, “This is not yet fulfilled, but it’s soon going to be.” So the angel is like telling him, all these things these ancient prophets wrote about, like Isaiah, all these people, they testified that in the coming days, in the future, these things are going to happen. He’s like, all those things are being fulfilled right now. You are the literal fulfillment of all these prophecies of all the prophets up until this point. Can you imagine being this kid, sitting here thinking I’ve read Isaiah, I’ve read these people, I’ve read these words and what they were talking about was happening. I’m experiencing this right now. Can you imagine that? Imagine yourself as a kid going through this. So he goes through the things, he shares all these things, and at the end of it, then the angel leaves. So Joseph is sitting here in bed going, “What in the world just happened? An angel visited me, told me about these gold plates, these really cool Urim and Thummim, seer stones, I’ll be able to translate this book. Then he started telling me all these, quoting these scriptures and telling me that all this stuff is actually happening right now and it’s coming true. And he’s telling all this stuff….” And as he’s thinking about it, pondering and meditating about it, all the sudden the light comes back in the room and the angel appears again. So the angel appears a second time and then tells him the exact same thing. And he’s like, “What in the world?” So he tells him the exact same thing as the first time. So he’s like, okay I get it. He listened to the whole thing, and the second time the angel added something, he said he informed him, “There’s going to be great judgments which are coming upon the earth and great desolations by famine, sword and pestilence and these grievous judgments should come upon the earth in this generation.” So he said that and then he left again. So the first time he comes and tells the story and leaves. The second time he comes again and tells the entire story again and then he’s like, “Oh by the way, in the very near future the whole world is going to be roght with desolations, famine, sword, pestilences and the grievous judgments are coming upon the earth because this is a wicked time and a wicked place we live in.” and then he leaves. Can you imagine, Joseph Smith is probably like, “What? An angel came to me twice. You just told me again that all the fulfillment of all these prophecies are happening…” and he’s sitting there thinking about it, and guess what happened? The same messenger came a third time. He said he gave him the exact same message again, but this time he added a caution, and this is what he said, “The same messenger at my bedside and I heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same things as before, and this time he added a caution to me telling me that Satan would try to tempt me in consequences of my indignant circumstances in my father’s family.” Because Joseph Smith’s family was really poor at the time, “To get the plates for the purpose of being rich. This he forbade me saying I must have no other object in view of getting the plates but to glorify God, and must not be influenced by any other motive than that of building the kingdom. Otherwise, I would not get them.” So he comes back and tells the whole thing and says, “Oh by the way, these gold plates are worth a ton of money and just so you know, you are going to be tempted like crazy from Satan to sell these things because you are poor and you are broke and if you try to use that for any purpose like that, if you even think about it, you’re not going to get them.” In fact, in another spot he actually says, “You’ll be destroyed if you try to use them for anything else.” Can you imagine this angel telling you, just be good or you’re going to be destroyed. I don’t know about you, but that would scare me a lot. So he gets the warning, be careful what you do with these because it really, really matters. So then the angel leaves again, and that’s when it ends. So now he’s sitting there, and he’s laying there in bed and all the sudden the sun starts coming up and he realizes, “I’ve been talking to this angel the entire night.” So he gets up and he’s like, “I gotta go to work in the farm.” So he runs out, starts working in the farm and he’s super tired, he hasn’t slept all night and his dad notices how tired he is and says, “Go back home, go take a nap, go get some sleep.” So he’s walking back to the house and he’s jumping over this fence as he’s going back to the house and he passes out, literally falls on the floor and just goes unconscious. And a few minutes later he wakes up, and guess who he sees when he wakes up? The same angel again. And the angel tells him the same message again. The entire message. Then after he tells him the message, then he’s like, “Go tell your dad what I just told you.” I wonder if he was just like, “Dude, I spent the entire night with you. Why wouldn’t you have told your parents about this?” So he tells him the whole message again and says, “Go tell your father.” So Joseph Smith gets back up, walks over to his dad and is like, “Alright dad, this is what happened, a messenger came…” and tells him the whole thing and his dad, and this is so telling of the relationship this father and son had, his father told him, “This is from God. You need to go do exactly what the angel told you to do.” So the angel had told him in the vision exactly where the gold plates were at, and they were in a hill called Hill Cumorah, which happened to be right by his house. I wish I had time, I wish I had enough time to have researched this ahead of time, I wanted to but I just ran out of time and I wanted to get this episode out. But it’s interesting, all the things the lord had to do to get Joseph Smith to end up in Palmyra, New York next to the Hill Cumorah. His family wasn’t born there, he wasn’t raised there, they were born somewhere else. And there were all sorts of insane things. There was a volcano that erupted that made their family crops die, which made them go bankrupt, which made them move their farm three or four times to eventually get to this spot hundreds of miles, I don’t know how far away, hundreds of miles away from where they were born and raised to this farm that happened to be next to the exact same spot where angel Moroni, where Moroni before he was an angel, where Moroni had buried these plates. So the lord had moved their family and shoved them to this spot, boom, so they were in the right spot to be able to go and get those plates. So Joseph Smith knew where, he’d seen the vision of exactly where it was at, so he walked over to the Hill Cumorah and found the spot where those plates were at and let’s see if I can find where it says….its talking about the Hill Cumorah, he said, “On the west side of this hill, not far from the top under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates deposited in a stone box. The stone was thick and rounding in the middle and on the upper sides, and thinner towards the edges so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edges all around were covered with earth.” So imagine this, Joseph finds this spot and he’s like, “This is it, this is the spot.” And then he started digging it out. So it says, “Having removed the earth, I obtained a lever which I got fixed under the edge of the stone, and with a little exertion I raised it up, I looked in and there indeed I beheld the plates and the Urim and Thummim, and the breast plate, as stated by the messenger. The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box lay two stones cross ways over the box and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them.” Can you imagine that? You have these visions and then you go and you find this rock, you move the rock and then boom, in there, just like the angel had said, there are these gold plates, and there’s the Urim and Thummim to translate, everything is there. I can’t even imagine, as a teenaged kid, can you imagine find that? That’s like the greatest treasure in the world. So the first thing he does when he sees it, is start grabbing it to pull it out. That’s the first thing I would do, I need to touch it. And he started to grab it and he said, “I made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by the messenger and was again informed that the time for bringing them forth had not yet arrived, and neither would it until four years from that time. But he told me I should come to that place in precisely one year from that time, and that he would there meet with me, and that I should continue to do so until the time should come for obtaining the plates.” So he’s like, “don’t touch these plates, you’re not allowed to.” And he’s like, “Ah, but I want the gold. This is so cool.” And the angel’s like, “Don’t touch it. You gotta come back next year.” So he goes on to say, “Accordingly, as I had been commanded, I went at the end of each year and at each time I found the same messenger there and received instructions and intelligences from him at each of our interviews, respecting what the lord was going to do and how in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days.” So every year for four years he goes back, the angel talks to him again, sends him away. He comes back and keeps doing this for four more years. So for four years he gets to learn about him, see him. I’m sure, can you imagine how much curiosity he’d have, “What is on these things. I want to read them so bad.” Okay, then fast forward a little bit later, after four years, he says, “The length of time had arrived for obtaining the plates and the Urim and Thummim and the breast plates on the 22nd day of September 1827, having gone as usual at the end of another year, to the place where they were deposited. The same heavenly messenger delivered them unto me with this charge, that I should be responsible for them, that if I should let them go carelessly or through any neglect of mine that I should be cut off. But if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them until he, the messenger, should call for them, that I should be protected.” So I’m going to trust you with these gold plates, but if you lose or you neglect them you will be cut off. I don’t know exactly what cut off means, but it does not sound like very much fun. So he finally gets the gold plates and the chance to take them, and there’s rumors. Because he’s been talking about this, he’s told people an angel came to him, there’s gold plates, he told people about it and people didn’t believe him. But they thought, “Well, if he does have gold plates then we want them.” And the persecutions that came from that point forward were insane, people trying to steal them and trying to murder him. There are so many stories that I just don’t have time to tell you guys today, but it’s crazy. But I do want to share a little bit about the translation process, because this is the coolest part. This is why this book, again I’m holding in my hand right now, one of the original 5000, why this book is so exciting. Because imagine this, if somebody told you there was this book that was inscribed upon golden plates that the ancient American’s told their stories, their dealings with God, the talked about God, when Christ came to them, and the entire history of their life, and if you read this book you’ll understand Jesus, and Christ and salvation better than anything else on earth. And it’s all on these gold plates. And to be able to read it you have to translate, and there were these little seer stones that you look through and as you look through them you’ll see the character and it will tell you what the actual word needs to be and be able to find out and decode this book and find out what it is. If someone told me that, I’d be like, “I have to read this book. This sounds like the most exciting, interesting, fascinating story in the history of world.” And it is, yet hardly anybody in the world knows about it. That’s what us, as Mormons are always talking about. “If you understood what’s in this book you would go crazy. If you knew what was here, if you realized what we had to go through to get this.” Imagine Joseph Smith going back for four years and seeing these gold plates and wondering what in the world is on there. These have been protected for thousands of years from the world and now today they are, the lord is telling me let’s bring these out. Aren’t you curious what’s on there? Aren’t you curious, all the revelations, all the prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi, all these prophecies where the angel came back and said, “Look, this is the literal fulfillment of that prophecy. Isaiah was talking about this moment right here.” Aren’t you curious what he’s talking about? What’s actually inside the book? I don’t know how you couldn’t be curious. It drives me wild when people are like, “Oh, well I’m not going to read it.” It doesn’t make any logical sense to me whatsoever, even just out of raw curiosity. What in the world could possibly be in here? Especially when you have people like me where it’s literally changed their life. If you look at, I can’t even tell you happiness…everything…if you know me and follow me and wonder, “Man, why is Russell so happy?” This is the foundation of why. So I don’t know how much more of an endorsement I can give than that. This will bring you more peace, security, happiness….I don’t even know how…it’s everything I’m saying and a whole much more. It’s insane. So I’m hopefully getting you excited to like, “What was on those gold plates?” Aren’t you curious? With that said, I’m going to jump over to this talk from President Russell M. Nelson that he gave back in 1992 because there are some quotes I’m going to share from this. So I’m going to read some parts because it’s going to explain how the translation part worked. Because if you think about this, Joseph Smith was a young boy, he had no formal education, he could barely read, and he had in a very, very short period of time, and I’ll explain that here in a second, had to take these gold plates that were written in some ancient language that most people didn’t even know at the time, and he had to translate them into English, and he did the whole thing in less than three months. So how is that even possible? Now me, as an author I’ve written two books, those who know me, I’m writing book number three right now, just for me to write a book, it takes me four or five years of research, one year of actual writing, and my books aren’t even that good compared to this. This book is weaving out 600 years of history from multiple different civilizations, inside the book there’s all sorts of proof elements. One of the things in here is an ancient type of Hebrew poetry called Chiasmus, I’m probably going to pronounce it wrong, chiasmus, which is this really cool ancient type of poetry that we didn’t even find out about until well after the Book of Mormon was published and then scholars found out about this thing. You go back to the Book of Mormon, the entire book is laced with this amazing poetry where sometimes it’s within four or five versus, sometimes its wrapped within 20 or 30 chapters to be able to see the whole hierarchy of this poetry that’s been built into the book. All these things that there’s no way that Joseph Smith or any human could have done that, unless they lived at that time, actually doing it. Anyway, there’s so many proof elements, but none of those matter. My goal, again is not to get you to prove any of this, other than to read it and pray and ask God, because he’ll tell you. But just to get you excited and intrigued. Alright I’m going to jump into this talk. So the first thing that Russell M. Nelson said, he said, “I’m intrigued that Joseph Smith, an unschooled young man in rural America could have translated this Semitic language mix into the English language. The unlikely scenario relates to Isaiah’s remarkable prophecy. In Isaiah Chapter 29, Verse 14 he said, ‘I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and wonder.’ This, the becoming forth of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the church, this is the marvelous work and wonder that Isaiah was prophesying about, that the angel Moroni came back and said, “Look…remember Isaiah was talking about a marvelous work and wonder that’s going to happen in the last days, this is it. It begins today.” Can you imagine that? I’m going to go on and keep reading this. It says, “Truly this latter day work is precisely that. Think of the short time that Joseph Smith took to translate the Book of Mormon. Working from April to June of 1828, Joseph translated the first 116 pages that Martin Harris later lost.” So kind of the back story, and I’m going to actually share this story when we get a little deeper in the Book of Mormon, there’s a huge miracle around it. But they translated the first 116 pages, it was called the Book of Lehi. And when you read the Book of Mormon you’ll notice there’s not Book of Lehi. Where’d the Book of Lehi go? And Lehi was the father of Nephi. So they translated the first 116 pages and Martin Harris got all excited and begged to be able to show his family so they could justify all the money, time and effort he’s spent on this. And Joseph Smith went and asked the Lord, said, ‘Hey can Martin Harris show his family these pages?” and the lord said no. And then Joseph Smith told Martin Harris, Martin Harris was like, “Please.” And they went back and forth and kept fighting and praying and finally the Lord is like, “Fine, go do it.” So he did and he lost the pages. So they were going to start retranslating and the Lord’s like, “No, no, no. I told you not to give it to him, you did, you sinned, you are losing the power to translate for a season.” So he took away his ability to even translate for a while, then they started retranslating it and said, “Look, we’re not going to re-translate that because if you do, Satan will use that as a tool to get people to not believe in this work. So instead you’re going to start on this other book,” that was kind of an afterthought, that was called the Book of Nephi, and again, I’ll tell you that story when we get to the Book of Nephi. It’s a similar story, but it’s written by Nephi, Lehi’s son. So the first 116 pages are lost and we’ll never, we never have had a chance to see those unfortunately. So that was the first translation, then they started over and it said, “Joseph began translating again on Tuesday, April 7,1829 with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe. The manuscript was completed eighty-five days later, on June 30 of that year.” So 85 days, they translated the entire Book of Mormon. I don’t know about you, but it’s taken me more than 85 days just to read it, let alone translating it from an ancient language. “Of course, not all of that time was spent working on the translation. The prophet and his scribes all took time to eat, to sleep, to seek employment, to receive the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods, to make at least one and possibly two trips to Colesville, 30 miles away….” Which again, they didn’t have cars back then, so 30 miles is like 500 miles now days. “…to receive and record 13 other revelations that are now sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, to move from Harmony to Fayette, to acquire the Book of Mormon copyright, and to begin making arrangement for the publication of the Book of Mormon. Conservatively estimated that left 65 or fewer working days on which the prophet and his scribes translated this book, which contains 531 pages in its current edition.” Alright that’s 8 pages per day. “Consider that when you translate a book from another language or as you try to read at your own schedule of the Book of Mormon.” It said, “Oliver Cowdery testified a few days later, ‘these days were never to be forgotten. To sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened with the utmost gratitude of this bosom.” Can you imagine that, sitting there as Joseph Smith is translating this book by the gift and power of God? He said, “Those were days never to be forgotten. To sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven.” So cool. It said, “Day after day I continued, uninterrupted to write from his mouth as he translated the history of a record called the Book of Mormon.” He goes on to say, “The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known, yet we do have few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote: ‘Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light, and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principle scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power man.’ Can you imagine that, he just got the gold plates, they’re in this hat or something, and then he pulls it up so there’s not light shining in there and he’s got this stone and he looks down and he looks at the character, which is like, imagine ancient reformed Egyptian, right, a little thing. And he puts the seer stone over it, and below the seer stone it’s like, “This is what that word or that phrase means.” He would say the word, he’d write it down, and it would disappear and he’d go to the next word. I can’t even imagine how cool this is. This is better than if you guys watch those movies like National Treasure or something, where they’re trying to decipher the secret message from the founding fathers. This is secret messages from God. This is secret messages from his prophets on ancient America, aren’t you curious what he said? I hope you are. Alright, let me come back in here. So Emma Smith, this is Joseph’s wife, it says, “Emma Smith, who acted as an earlier scribe for Joseph gave this account in 1856: ‘When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it, as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names he could not pronounce, or long words he spelled them out, and while I was writing them, if I made any mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them down at the time. Even the word Sarah he could not pronounce at first, but had to spell it out and Ij would pronounce it for him. ‘When he stopped for any purpose at any time he would, when he commenced again, begin where he left off wiout any hesitation, and one time while he was translating he stopped suddenly, pale as a sheet, and said, ‘Emma, did Jerusalem have walls around it?’ when I answered yes he replied, ‘Oh I didn’t know, I was afraid I had been deceived.’ He had such a limited knowledge of history at that time that he did not even know that Jerusalem was surrounded by walls.” I got chills just sharing that. Can you imagine, he’s reading stuff and sharing it and he’s discovering it as we’re discovering it and we’re reading it. He’s asking Emma is that actually true? That is so cool. It says, “On another occasion Emma recorded: ‘The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen tablecloth which I had given him to fold them in. I once felt of the plates as they thus lay on the table, tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book.” “Although the prophet would polish his skills over the years, Emma acknowledged that Joseph possessed only rudimentary literacy at the time he translated the gold plates.” This is coming from his wife, who loves him. I can imagine most husband’s spouses are willing to tell the true story about who the person actually is. So this is what Emma said about Joseph’s ability to actually do something like this. She said, “Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon. And though I was an active participant in the scenes that transpired, it is marvelous to a me, a marvel and a wonder, as much so as to anyone else.” So his wife is like, there’s no way he wrote this book. I love him but he’s not that smart. He couldn’t even dictate a coherent or well-worded letter. So it’s just, it’s fascinating. So as you go on here, that kind of gives you kind of a glimpse of what happened as they translated this book. And then the story afterwards, again, I could spend 20 podcasts just pre-setting up the book, but I want to get into the book. But after that they had it translated right, so it was written out and then they had to go and there is a whole story about how they got EB Grandin to actually print this book that I’m holding in my hands right now. They went and had to get it typed so they had to get the money for it. If you look back in the day, they didn’t have type writers or printers, they had to get every letter, letter by letter, THE, print it out and stamp ink on it, and they’d stamp that onto a piece of paper and cut the bindings, sew it together. So when I look at this book and I open it up and I look at the ink and how it’s so hard to read in some areas and I look at the bindings how they’re hand sewn together. I look at the sacrifice that went into this, but not just that. The translation that happened prior to it, and then to get this book and all the people trying to steal the gold plates from him and eventually, the angel took the gold plates back. And then they get the book, get it printed, get it out there, and then they thought, “Man, everyone in the world is going to freak out when they see this. They’re going to be so excited. Can you imagine the miracles that happened for us to get this thing.” And they gave it out to the world initially, as you know, the world didn’t just runningly accept it. People did, but not everybody. And to this day it’s still, Satan fights against it so hard because he doesn’t want it to get into people’s hands. But as you read the Book of Mormon, in this talk he shares like 30 different amazing things about the Book of Mormon, but there’s one that I want to stress because it’s the key. I think that the biggest tragedy to me is that Christians who are great Christian people who are scared to read it or don’t want to read it, or whatever it might be, and we’ll get more into those reasons as we dive into the book, but I want all my Christian brothers and sisters to feel comfortable with this. So this is one thing that President Nelson talked about, he said, “The Book of Mormon reveals that Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary is literally the son of God. No book of scripture bares more solemnly the weighty burden of that testimony than does the Book of Mormon. It’s pages contain nearly 4000 references to Christ using more than 100 different titles for him. His holy name is mentioned on the average of once every 2.8 verses. No wonder this book has been designated another testament of Jesus Christ.” So anyone who’s scared like, “This is going to take away from the Bible. Or this is going to take away from Christ.” Or whatever, no. This is another testament of Christ. The whole purpose, the whole focus of this book is to get people to believe in Christ, to get them to turn their heart to Christ. It is the most amazing proof we have that our savior came to this earth, that he died, and he was resurrected again. I promise you that if you read it and you ponder about, and you pray about it, you don’t have to take my word for it, you don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. But if you pray, if you read and you pray about it, our Heavenly Father will tell you it’s true. I had an interesting talk yesterday with one of my friends and he said that there was someone who lives by us, who as a young boy became a member of the church and got baptized and then left. He hasn’t been back to church for, I don’t know 50-60 years. And he was going and he was trying to get him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and find out what he once knew. So finally the guy said, “I commit, I will read the Book of Mormon and I’ll pray about it.” And he’s like, “Cool.” So he came back a week later and said, “How’d it go?” and he’s like, “Well, I spent 3 hours online researching the Book of Mormon and I didn’t feel good.” And he said, “Well of course you didn’t. What were you reading about it.” And he kind of told him, and he’s like, “you’re reading people who hate the church, who hate the Book of Mormon. How do you think you’re going to feel.” And he’s like, “I didn’t feel good about it.” And he said, “How about this, I want you to take a different challenge. This time spend 3 hours actually reading the Book of Mormon and then tell me how you feel.” That’s the test. When you read the book you will feel the Lord’s spirit, you will feel the Holy Ghost, you will feel the feelings of God because this book is from him. Don’t read about the book, that’s my one fear of this podcast , you’re going to listen to me talk about the book and then you’re going to base your judgments based on that. Please don’t. My only goal of this podcast is to get you so excited that you go and you open the book and you read it. And if you read it you will feel that, I promise you that. You’ll read it and you’ll feel it and then pray about it and ask God if it’s true. Don’t take my word for it, don’t take anyone’s word for it because that’s not the goal. The goal is not to convince you of anything, the goal is for you to read it, to feel it and then to pray and ask God. And then if you do, it’ll change your life. I promise you that. It’s changed my life, it’s changed millions of other people’s lives around the world and it’ll change yours as well. Alright to end, I want to end actually reading part of, the ending part of this talk from President Nelson and then I want to share my testimony as well. But I thought he did such a good job kind of summing this up. He said, “It is a book that the Lord Jesus Christ has personally testified to be true. In the form of an oath, the Lord said, referring to the Prophet Joseph Smith’s work, ‘He has translated the book, even that part which I have commanded him, and as your Lord and your God liveth it is true.’ So that was in Doctrine and Covenants section 17 verse 6 where Jesus Christ himself testified that the Book of Mormon is true. He said, “you know well that this promise that the Lord offers to the readers of the Book of Mormon. If you do these last commandments of mine, which I have given you, the gates of hell shall not prevail against you, for my grace is sufficient for you, and you shall be lifted up at the last day. “The Prophet Joseph Smith declared and his successor, President Ezra Taft Benson, has reaffirmed that at the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. It is a treasured testament of truth. It is the prophesied sign that the Lord has commenced to gather Israel and fulfill his covenants. “ So I just want to testify to you, just like the angel did when he told Joseph Smith when he came three times in the night and again the next day, and then every year for the next four years. He said that all of the prophecies from the old testament, all of the things that Isaiah and all these prophets wrote about, that were going to happen in the last days, they’re happening. It’s happening all around you. And Satan’s going to deceive you and try to get you blind to it by keeping you busy and I feel this in my life every single day. There’s so many things that are happening. So many things fighting for our time, good things that are fighting for our time, it’s hard to keep our eyes open enough to look for the truth. But it’s there, it’s right in front of our eyes. It’s been restored. There was a boy who was humble enough and worthy enough to pray and get Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to come to him. He then, through the gift and power of God was able to go and find these Gold plates, this old record of people who lived here on the ancient American Continent. People who actually had a chance to see Christ and feel the wounds in his hands and his feet and put all those things in their record. He was able to translate them by the gift and the power of God. They weren’t translated 10, 50, 100 times by tons of different people. It was translated once. So this book in my hands that I’m holding today is the exact same thing that came, went from the prophets here in ancient America, right into the Gold plates, then from one translation being put here in this book. So when you read this, you know it hasn’t been changed, hasn’t been manipulated. It is literally the words of God. And what’s interesting is that the ancient prophets who wrote this, this book was not for them. They didn’t have a chance to see it right. As you read through the book you’ll see, they were writing this book, the Lord commanded them and said, you’re writing this book. It’s not for you, it’s for a future people who need to have this book. This book will turn their hearts back to God. So they’re like, I’m not writing this for my people, I’m writing it for you, whoever is reading this someday in the future. I’m writing this for you so you’ll know what happened to us, so you can protect yourself and you can protect your families. So it was written by ancient American prophets for me and for you, specifically for today. Specifically for us to get through the challenges and the trials and tribulations and all the amazing things that Satan’s throwing at us today, this book was written to protect us and to save us and to bring us closer to Christ. He is our savior, he is our messiah, he is our God and he’s our king. I testify to you that this book will draw you closer to him than anything else on this planet. And I want you, I pray that you read it and that you feel it. And if you do that, like I said, your life will be changed forever, just like mine has. So I want to share that with you on the end of this episode, and get excited because on the next episode we’re going to be diving into 1 Nephi Chapter 1. So if you don’t have your Book of Mormon yet, go and get one. If you go to bookofmormonchallenge.com there’s a link where you can get a free one. Or you can go to Amazon, I’m sure you can get a free one on Amazon. Just get a copy of it because I want you to start reading this together with me, otherwise what’s the point of all this work I’m putting into it, right? So we’re going to go to 1 Nephi chapter 1. This is the way that the game is going to be played. I’m going to tell you about 1 Nephi Chapter 1. I’m going to get you so excited, so fired up, and so pumped to read it and then I’m going stop and I’m going to leave you hanging and that’s going to drive you to go and actually read it. And that’s how this podcast is going to go moving forward. I’m going to get you excited about what’s happening, what to look for, the magic, the secret messages, all the amazing things that the Lord has weaved into these verses that if you’re not careful you’re going to miss it. I’m going to set those things up so you can look for them and you can find them so when you read them you’ll have these amazing spiritual moments where you’ll be reading something and it’ll hit you. And for everyone it’s going to be different. Everyone’s at different times and points in your lives. And some things you’ll read and it won’t make sense, and some things you’ll read and you won’t be ready for it. But some things you’ll read and you’ll sit there and be like, how in the world did this prophet, and it could be Alma or Nephi or Leman, not Leman, Helamin or Moroni, how did they know? How did they know that I would be struggling with that today? They literally, they must have put that chapter in for me. They must have put that verse. That phrase must have been for me. They saw our day and they must have known that was for me. You’re going to have those experiences and it’ll be the most amazing, spiritual, coolest things, when those things happen. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I promise you that if you will read this book with me, and dive in there and study it, and you’ll be looking for those things, and you’re praying for answers to your prayers, as you read them, you’ll find that these prophets hid things in here specifically for you, things that you may have read in the past, or other people read and it didn’t touch them, but when you read it, it will hit you differently than it has hit anybody else in the history of time. And you’ll know that scripture was specifically written for you. And that’s what’s so magical about this book. I hope that you take me up on the challenge and you dive in and you read it and you enjoy it. With that said, I will end this episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for listening and for participating. I will see you guys on the next episode when we jump into 1 Nephi Chapter 1.
Rank #2: The #1 way to protect yourself from sin.... As you start this journey, the adversary will try to keep you from reading and praying. This episode will give you the #1 way to protect yourself from sin so you can get your prayers answered. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you back to the Book of Mormon Challenge podcast. I hope that so far you have been taking the challenge, you have been reading, you have been praying and you have been trying to get an answer. I actually want to apologize, it’s been a little while since I’ve done an episode and honestly, it’s interesting, whenever you try to do something amazing in your life, and hopefully this is kind of a metaphor for you guys as well. It feels like the adversary wants to try to stop you. And it’s crazy how the more I want to do this podcast and get in the right state and have the right spirit and all those kind of things, the more temptations and trials and things come up in my life that try to keep me from doing it. And I’m sure for a lot of you guys it’s going to be similar as you try to go on this journey and try to read. The adversary is going to do everything in his power to keep you from actually doing it, to keep you from reading, to keep you from concentrating, to keep you from praying, to keep you from asking. And that’s just kind of his pattern.I felt it, I know that so far since I’ve launched this podcast a lot of amazing things have happened, some huge amazing conversations have been opened with people, it’s just been powerful and amazing. But as soon as anything amazing starts happening, the adversary tries to stop it. So I am here to kind of re-commit and to re-push forward and to be more consistent for you, but also for me as well. Also, just kind of, I’m going to make a couple of changes to the format, so I want to kind of explain that to you here. So this is going to be kind of the last big foundational episode for a while. I’m going to keep doing the bigger ones that are like 30 minutes to an hour, when I get excited about a topic I want to deep dive and go there because there’s tons of stuff I want to share. But moving forward, I want to make sure that, sometimes the bigger episodes take me a lot longer to think through and get the notes and stories and get everything perfect, and then obviously praying to make sure I have the spirit, all those things to be able to deliver it to you and I don’t want to keep that from progression and momentum. So what I’m going to be doing, I’ll keep doing some of the longer ones, like this, where we deep dive into things. But after this one I’m going to start jumping into shorter episodes. And the goal with the shorter episodes, honestly is, my goal with the whole podcast is just to get you to read and to pray. That’s it. I want you to read the Book of Mormon and I want you to pray. If I can get you to do that then I’ve succeeded, because that’s my only goal. So as I shift from the episodes moving forward, you’ll notice I’m going to be picking, for example, it might be 1 Nephi: chapter 1. And I’m going to go and study deep into the commentary and figure out the coolest, most exciting things possible that I can do to get you excited to read chapter one. That’s my goal. Then chapter 2 I’m going to go and find the best, most amazing, most exciting things and preset the story and get you so excited that you have to go and read it. And I’m kind of good at this in my marketing background, at getting people hooked and excited, so my goal is to hook you, give you a story and then push you to go and actually read each of the chapters. So that’s kind of the game plan. So I’m excited. Next episode will be coming out in a couple of days and we’ll keep moving forward a little bit faster on those. And again, my goal with this is to get you into the book, reading and praying. So that’s kind of the goal. After the last episode we talked about how to get your prayers answered. I got so much good feedback from all of you guys and I appreciate it. But honestly, the biggest feedback I got from people and it’s also interestingly enough, the same thing that I struggle with the most and so I wanted to address it in this episode. The title of this episode is called “No more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.” So the biggest question, the biggest problem people were messaging me with were, “Russell, I want to read and I want to pray but I don’t feel worthy. I don’t feel like I can get an answer.” Or “I know that I’m not living right in my life, and I struggle to repent and I don’t know how to do it.” Or “I’ve tried to repent but I’ve fallen back in and the things that I try to do right, Is in and I make the mistake again.” Or all sorts of things like that. “I want to do good Russell, but I keep making mistakes and because I make mistakes I don’t feel worthy to actually pray and get the answers.” And like I said, that’s the pattern, what the adversary wants to do. As soon as you try to take a step towards the light and towards truth, he will immediately bombard you with everything he can to distract you, to make you sin, to make you feel guilty, to make you not feel worthy because those are the feelings and the thoughts and things that will keep you from reading and praying. So first off, I want to give some context and some things to kind of help you guys with, because it’s something I have struggled with my entire life. I think I’ve been on this planet for 38ish years now and I struggle with this on a daily basis. So I know I’m not alone, and if I am alone then this episode is for me. But if I’m not alone, then hopefully this will be for you as well. Alright, some of the context to this and what, honestly it’s the thing that, not frustrating. That’s not the right word, but the thing that I struggle with the most is I want to do good. And there’s a scripture in Mosiah and I’m going to read it and it comes back to the title of today’s presentation. Again, the title is “No more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.” So in Mosiah 5:1,2 if you’ve read the Book of Mormon, there’s this amazing king, his name is King Benjamin. He’s about to die and before he dies he gets all his people together and he starts preaching to them, kind of his last message, “What can I do to help you guys to make sure you’re going to succeed in life, you’re going to be good people, you’re going to be able to return back to God?” And in this speech if you look at verse 1 and 2 of Mosiah Chapter 5 this is what he says, “And now, it came to pass that when King Benjamin had thus spoken to his people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken to them. And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yeah, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. “ I remember reading that in seminary when I was a kid and thinking, “Oh my gosh. As I soon as I get the spirit, as soon as I know it’s true, the most amazing thing is going to happen to me. I’m never going to have the desire to sin ever again.” That’s what I interpreted this, King Benjamin’s people heard his word, they were excited. They were like, “I’m going to do this.” And it said they had no more disposition to do evil but to do good continually. So I always thought that as soon as I repented, as soon as I was right, that I would have no more desire to do evil, but I’d only want to do good. And then suck us into the real world and guess what happened, I felt the spirit, I wanted to change, I did change. But what shocked me, what surprised me was that all the sudden my desire to do evil did not go away. Actually let me step back, my desire to do evil did go away, but my….how do I explain this right? I didn’t want to do sin, but I still sinned. I still got tempted, I had temptations, I had trials, all these things that pulled me back into sin. So while I had a disposition to do good continually, I didn’t want to do evil, I still sinned. And I kept sinning and I kept sinning and it was so hard and so frustrating. In fact, to this day I still struggle with this. I know, I think all of us have our temptations, our sins that we struggle with. And while I have desire, I’m going to point my life, I feel similar to how King Benjamin’s people felt. I have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. But I want to add dot, dot, dot, yet I’m still tempted like crazy and I fall way too often. That’s how, if it was me writing the scripture, that’s what I would have said. “Russell has no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually, yet for some reason he’s so weak he keeps screwing up, therefore he’s yet to be perfect.” That’s how I felt and I remember being frustrated by that and if you read in Matthew, Matthew 26: 41, in this scripture he’s talking about this, he says, “Watch and pray that y enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.” When I read that I was like, okay, that’s how I feel. I’m willing, my spirit is willing to do it, but my flesh is weak. And I was like, I’m frustrated, how do I….. I don’t want my flesh to be weak. Why am I so weak? And it’s funny, if you look at our problems, our issues, it all comes down to our flesh, our body. It’s the temptations of the body we struggle with. So our flesh is weak, even though our spirit is willing. Our spirit wants to do what’s right, but then the problem is our flesh. And as I started thinking about this a lot I realized that if you look at our lives here on Earth, what is the big test? We come to Earth, we have a chance to be here, we get these bodies, these amazing physical bodies and then our goal is to see what we’re going to do with them. So if you look at what is the big test? The big test is 100% to do with our bodies. What are we going to do with these bodies? If you look at the commandments and everything, all of the commandments, everything leads to either how you’re treating your own body, or how you’re treating other people’s bodies. So if you look at the commandments or the rules or whatever you want to call them, it’s like what things we put into our bodies. There’s codes of health that the Lord’s given us, there’s things that we’re not supposed to do to our bodies. We’re not supposed to injure ourselves, we’re not supposed to do things like that. Then how we treat other people’s bodies, thou shall not murder, thou shall not commit adultery. It’s the big great test, if you want to look at the big secret of what is this life about, it’s that. How are we going to treat our own bodies and other people’s bodies. So we’re given these bodies, this flesh that’s weak, that wants to do sin, wants to do these bad things and the spirit wants to do what’s right. So the big conundrum, the big problem, the big struggle, the big thing that we’re fighting with is, what are we going to do? Are we going to give into the flesh or are we going to stay strong with the spirit? So I want you guys thinking about that, it all comes down to this. How we treat our bodies and how we treat other people’s bodies. All the commandments somehow tie into that. Either the sins I’m making against my own body, or the sins I’m making against other people’s bodies. There’s not sins against other things, it’s all tied to those, to our bodies. When I realized that I’m like, oh my gosh. I have to figure out how to be able to control, how to be able to control my flesh, how to control my body. So for me, that created an obsession with personal development. If you know anything about me or my background you know that I’m mildly obsessed with this. I built a big company that teaches entrepreneurs marketing and sales and things like that, but really in that journey over the last decade and a half of my life I’ve become obsessed with personal development. How do we develop ourselves? How do we control our habits, our problems, our mindset, our energy, all these kind of things? So if you ever came to my office and you saw, I’ve got a bookshelf with hundreds of thousands of dollars of books and courses teaching personal development. It’s become an obsession with me. I think it stems back, the reason I have that obsession is because it comes back to this problem right here. I have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually, yet for some reason I keep messing up. So I’m like, I need to keep personally developing myself so I don’t mess up. What is it going to be? So I could go on for days teaching personal development strategies and things like that, but there’s a couple of principles and processes that had the biggest effect on me. And I think that when I took repentance, how do I forsake my sins, how do I repent, how do I try to do what’s right? And I took these lessons I learned inside of personal development, the blend of those two things, is what’s helped me to be able to control my flesh and to be able to do what the spirit actually wants me to do. And again, I’m not perfect. In fact, this episode is specifically for me to help remind me of these things. But it has been a huge help to me, and I hope it has helped you as well as you’re going down this journey. Because if we’re not careful, as soon as you start the path forward and start trying to do good, I promise you that temptations, the whirlwinds, the trials, all this stuff is going to beat on you because the adversary does not want you doing the right thing. So if I can give you guys some information and some stuff that helped me, hopefully it will help you guys as well on this journey. So that way you can go and you can read and you can feel the spirit and you can pray because if you do that, your life will change forever. We have to break free of the sins of our body if we’re going to be able to do that. Alright so the thing I want to share with you, and again there’s so much good stuff I could talk about but the thing I think is going to be the most impactful for you is something I learned from Tony Robbins. And if you know who Tony Robbins is, he’s a 6’7” giant, he was on infomercials all throughout the 80’s, if you’ve seen the movie Shallow Hal, he was in Shallow Hal, but I became a friend of his, me and him became friends about 10 years ago. I had consulted for his business and then I was in, I spoke at a couple of his events, he spoke at 2 of my events, I spoke at one of his events last month, so we’ve got a really good friendship and respect for each other. But I remember, there’s so many good things that I learned from Tony, but one of the ones that had the biggest impact on me was at the very first event I went to of his. He started talking about this concept that he called the six human needs. And I’m going to kind of go through it with you guys, but for me, when I understood this, this had probably the most profound effect on me, my relationships, my spouse, my…more so than anything else, so I wanted to share with you because when you understand this process, it gives you guys the tools you need to not only have the disposition to not do evil, but to do good continually, but it gives the framework to be able to resist the temptations and be able to protect yourself and your family so you can actually do what’s right. Okay, so six human needs, this is kind of the concept I want to teach about, and I wish I had a whiteboard I could show you and I could map this out and it’d make more sense. But maybe as I’m explaining it, if you have a piece of paper out, try to write these things down and it’ll make more sense. So the six human needs, there are four needs of the body and there’s two needs of the spirit. I’m going to spend most of the time today talking about the needs of the body because that’s our goal right now, how do we overcome the body? I’ll touch upon the needs of the spirit because they’re important, but I’m not going to focus on that during this podcast. So there’s four needs of the body, a couple of things to understand before I explain what these four needs are. First off, if you in any circumstance of your life, three of these four needs are met, it causes a physical addiction inside of your body. So if you get three of these four needs, you get a physical addiction. So that’s the number one thing to understand. The number two thing to understand is that you’ll notice that two of these things are opposites and the other two are opposites. So it causes this weird conundrum where it’s like I need this and I need this but those two things are opposite, so because of that it causes all sorts of craziness that creates this amazing life that we live in right now. So if you’re writing these things down, the first need of the body is called certainty. Every single one of us needs certainty. So write down the word certainty if you have a piece of paper out. Certainty. We want to feel certain. I want to feel certain that when I come home at night my wife’s going to be there. I want to feel certain that there’s food on my table. I want to feel certain that there’s a paycheck coming home every day. We crave and we need certainty. So that’s the first human need. The second human need is the exact opposite of certainty. It’s variety. I need to be entertained, I need new stuff happening, I need to be… I get fired up and I have variety and excitement with things that are happening. So the second thing our body craves is we need variety. We need certainty, but we also need variety. So that’s need number one, and that’s need number two. Now need number three, this one is significance. I want to feel significant, I want to feel good about myself. When I walk in a room I want to feel good about myself, I want to feel good about my accomplishments, I want to feel significance. So significance is the third human need. Now if you look at the opposite of significance, significance is all about me, me, me, me, I want to feel great about myself. The opposite of that is love and connection. I want to show love and connection and affection towards somebody else. So that’s the fourth human need, love and connection. So if you go write these down you’ve got, certainty and variety. Then you have significance and you have love and connection. And again, certainty and variety are opposites, significance and love and connection are opposites. So hopefully you’ve written those down. I’m going to kind of take you guys through an exercise that when he explained this to me, it just made so much sense. Remember earlier I mentioned that if any situation any three of these four needs are met, it will create an addiction, a physical addiction inside your body, inside your flesh. For example, think about, for those who are married think about your spouse. For those who aren’t married yet, think about the last time you went on a date with somebody. So you meet this new person and you go on a date with them, and what happens? You’re out on this date and there’s variety, the first time you’ve been with them, you don’t know them that well and you’re asking them all these questions and there’s this variety and excitement. And that person, if they like you back, they start asking you questions and all the sudden, “oh my gosh, I feel significant.” You feel significant. “They care about me and they’re asking me questions about who I am.” And you feel that. And then the third one is at the end of the date, you take them to the doorstep and they give you a hug and a kiss and boom, you feel love and connection. And boom, what just happened? Variety happened, significance happened, and love and connection happened and all the sudden boom, that fast it creates a physical addiction, we fall in love with that person, we start dating them and eventually get married and it’s amazing. What happens with most people after they get married? What happens is all the sudden now they are married to that person because they’re craving certainty because they want the fourth human need, they want certainty. So they get that certainty, that person is married, they’re going to be home when I get home. But then what happens? Certainty starts driving our lives, and now variety disappears. Now I no longer want to go on dates with my wife, I no longer do things. We’re certain, but the variety goes away. Year one maybe there’s still variety, year two and by year three and four and five or by year seven, which is when most people start having their marital issues, variety is gone. You have tons of certainty, no variety. So that’s gone. And at first your spouse loves you and talks about you all the time so you have all this significance and you feel special and all this stuff, but eventually the more you’re around someone, the less significant they make you feel, you make them feel because you’re not as enamored with them because eventually you’ve heard all their stories a million times and you’re like, “Yep, it’s the same person I wake up to every single day.” Suddenly that significance goes away and a lot of times love and connection drifts as well. What happens is all those things start falling apart and you lose that addiction to the body and that’s why a lot of times marriages fall apart. For some people, and I have friends who have gone through this and it’s a horrible thing, their marriages start falling apart because this physical addiction goes away. They lose variety, they lose significance, and now maybe they have certainty and love and connection, but they lost the other two. But that physical addiction goes away. And then they go to the office and they start working, and some people become workaholics, this is something I struggle with. I go to work and what happens? I go to work every single day and I sit at my desk and I feel certainty, I know exactly what I’m going to do every single day. And then I’m creating cool things, I feel really excited, I get this variety, it’s amazing. And then people who listen to my podcast or read my emails or see my facebook comments or like my instagram things, I feel significance and I get love and connection from my customers. And all the sudden I’m getting four of my needs met and boom it creates this huge addiction and becomes a work addiction. And sometimes because we’re not getting our needs met at home, we start shifting and get our needs met at work. Maybe we get our needs met at the gym. Some people start going and start working out and every single day they go and work out and they get this certainty working out, plus they get the variety, “I’m working out chest today, and triceps and new exercises, new things, new people.” People check them out, “Man, you’re getting strong, you’re looking good.” You’re getting love and connection and all the sudden all your needs are met at the gym and because you’re not getting them met at home you start shifting to the gym and get your needs met there. It’s interesting. Or, and this is kind of the really negative side of it, is somebody goes to the office and their spouse is, they’ve got certainty with their spouse but variety, significance, love and connection are starting to wane, but they’ve got a secretary or they’ve got somebody they need at work and that person all the sudden thinks they’re interesting and starts asking them questions and they get this significance. And then they start flirting with that person and they get variety and love and connection and boom, that’s how divorces happen, that’s how affairs happen because these needs are met somewhere else. So it’s interesting, and it’s not just in marriage though, it’s in all aspects of life. Some people go to school and they love it, because they go to school and they wake up every morning and get certainty. They get the variety of learning new things, they get significance of getting A’s on their test, they get love and connection of their study groups and school becomes an addiction. I’ve got family members who have got 800 doctorate degrees because they’ve got this physical addiction to school. Drugs are the same way, right. Drugs, you take this drug and you know with certainty you’re going to feel a certain way, plus you get the variety of the amazing things that happen from the drugs, you get the love and connection of the people you’re hanging out with, you’re significant, and it causes a physical addiction. Same thing with food, every time you eat food, you get certainty of I’m going to feel full. But then you get the variety, like last night my wife and I went to sushi, I got the variety of this roll and this roll and it was amazing. And then I’m sitting there talking with my spouse and I get love and connection with the people I’m at dinner with and boom, it creates a food addiction. It doesn’t matter what you struggle with, all of us have different things, but if you understand it all comes down to this. Our body is creating addictions when three of these four needs are met. And then we fall out of addiction when some of these things are not being met. And one thing that Tony said was amazing, when he said it, it was amazing. He said, “if you look at this, there was never a marriage that ever ended where all of the needs of somebody were being met. There’s never been a kid who strayed if all their needs were met.” If you look at family life, and this is something I’m hyper aware of with my kids. If my kids are getting all these needs met at home, they’re getting significance and love and connection and variety, and certainty in the home, they’re not going to leave. It’s when they start losing that addiction that go and start going after drugs or other friend groups or things like that, because they’re craving these needs and they have to get them met somewhere. So people will give up their values, they’ll give up their beliefs, they’ll give up everything in order to get these needs met somewhere. And that’s what’s fascinating as humans. We will give up everything to get these needs met. You will get these needs met one way or the other. So if you’re not getting them met in one aspect in your life, you’re going to get them met somewhere else. It happens, we can’t exist as humans without it. Our body is weak, we must have these. So when Tony told me that, he said, “No marriage ever ended when all the needs of the spouse are being met.” So my wife and I sat down and said, “Okay, how do we protect our marriage.” I said to my wife, Collette, “Collette, do you have certainty?” and she’s like, “Yeah, I feel totally certain you’re going to be here.” I’m like, “Cool, do you feel variety?” She’s like, “Well, not like we used to.” I’m like, “Oh no, variety’s down. Do you feel significant?” And she’s like, “Yeah, yeah. You do a good job.” I’m like, “Do you feel love and connection?” I’m looking at this like I need to create an addiction with my wife with me. How do I light her up? How do I give her variety so that she’s excited? How do I give her certainty so that she feels certain? How do I make her feel significant? How do I give her love and connection? Because there’s been no marriages ever ended where the needs of the spouse have all been met. And the same thing comes back to my wife. She’s asking, “How do I make you feel certain Russell? How do I give you significance? How do I give you love and connection?” With my kids it’s the same thing. When I’m looking at my kids I’m like, “Okay, how do I make sure my kids feel all of these things so they get the physical body addiction here, inside of our home?” For those of you guys who are trying to figure out, how do I get my kids to go to church, how do I get the people that I’m steward of at church, how do I get them connected? It’s the same thing. When people are bored out of their minds at church they’re not getting their needs met, they’re going to leave, they’re going to go do different things. But if you’re in church and you get this certainty of knowing something, you get the variety of learning new things, you get the significance of being able to share, if you get the love and connection of people in the congregation, people you’re around, that’s what gets people to stick, because it creates a physical addiction there. So for you, I want you thinking about, think about the things that you’re addicted to in your life. What TV shows, what foods, what exercises, what people? And start looking at this, are my needs being met by these people? And then look at things that are good that for some reason aren’t the way that you want them to be, and think about are my needs being met there? And it’s like, man if I struggle to go to church, if I struggle to read scriptures, if I struggle to whatever your issue is, my guess is because you’re needs aren’t being met somewhere else, so you’re going there to get those needs met. So for me, this was the big secret, the big aha, understanding this. I started looking at my life and started realizing the reason why I keep going to my pet sin, the reason I keep having these issues is because my needs aren’t being met here, therefore I’m trying to get those needs met over here. When I became aware of that, I started saying, okay I need to figure things out. I’m going to talk about, I’m going to come back to this in a second, but first I want to talk about one more thing because I know some of you guys I left you with a cliffhanger. So those are the four needs of the body and then there are two needs of the spirit, and most people unfortunately never get to the needs of the spirit, because they’re so focused on trying to get the needs of their body met. But the needs of the spirit, number one is growth. So I need to grow, I need to learn, I need to expand. And then number two is contribution, I need to help other people. So those are the needs of the spirit, growth and contribution. So after the needs of the body are met, that’s when typically you start shifting from me, me, me, looking at your own internal desires, to shifting to external. I need to grow and contribute. So growth and contribution are the two needs of the spirit. So those are the six human needs. So the next thing I want you to think about is looking at the things you’re struggling with, looking at yourself and saying, “I have no more disposition to evil but to do good continually, but I keep struggling, because this is where I keep going. I keep falling back into this thing.” And then start looking, “Why am I doing that? What’s the addiction? This thing that I’m looking for, what’s the addiction it’s causing?” It’s creating certainty….look at all the things, “Oh my gosh, it is creating addiction, I keep going back to it.” And then say, “Why am I going there? Where are my needs not being met? Is it with my spouse? With my family? With my church?” whatever the thing is. If you’re struggling at work, I see people all the time they get burned out. I ask why they’re burned out and when I look at it, the reason why they’re burned out is because these needs aren’t being met. It’s not because they’re tired. Our bodies and our minds can handle more, but it’s because we’re not getting the addiction, we’re not getting the needs met in that spot, so we fall away. When our needs are met, we don’t fall away. If you’re getting burned out at work, it’s like what’s happening? I’m losing my variety, I’m losing my certainty, I’m losing my significance, I’m losing my love and connection, which one of these is fading? Then it’s like, lets double down and create that. Alright, some of my notes here. So again, no kids ever strayed if their needs were met. So look at your children, how can I make sure their needs are met? No marriages ever ended when all of their needs were met. So look at your spouse, look at your significant other, how can you light them up, how can you make sure that their needs are being met? And then the last one is for you. What needs are not being met? If you are sinning, it needs your needs are not being met somewhere else, somewhere positive. What happens is we shift from here’s the positive…because it’s not necessarily bad to get our needs met, in fact we have to have it. Our bodies are built in this way where we have to have these four things. So it’s not a bad thing, it’s just that if we’re not getting them in wholesome, good spots, then we’re getting them from wicked, evil things. It transitions. So it’s like, how do I break the addiction over here and how do I create the addiction with the positive things. So start looking for yourself. I’m looking for significance, that’s why I keep going to this issue. I’m looking for love and connection and I keep going to this issue. How do I get it with the positive things? I’ve got a friend and he’s an LDS author, well, he’s not an LDS author. He’s LDS and he’s an author of an amazing book. His name is Ben Hardy and he wrote a book called Willpower Doesn’t Work. It’s interesting, as I’ve been on this journey in my life trying to figure out how in the world to break myself of these temptations because I want to do good continually, I’ve studied a ton about willpower and I’ve read a lot of books on here’s how to do willpower. And what’s interesting is I read Ben Hardy’s book, he talked about when he was going in to get his doctorate, PHD or whatever his big degree was, his goal was to study willpower. And as he got into the study of it, he realized, oh my gosh, willpower actually doesn’t help. It’s not as white knuckle-ness and hoping we die before we break any sins. That’s not willpower, that’s not a way to live. Instead what he found is the only thing that actually has a measurable effect on change is actually changing your environment. Changing the things around you is what makes it easier. An easy example of this is your house. If I’m trying to lose weight and I walk in the house everyday and my cupboards are filled with cookies and ice cream and donuts, you’re not going to lose weight, it’s impossible because the environment will not let you do that. But if you come and take all that stuff out and you throw it in the garbage and you replace with actually healthy stuff, you change the environment, it becomes really easy to lose weight. Same thing in all aspects of life, in business and relationships, you change the environment, you change your life. So what I want to give you through that lens, if I want to break myself of these sins I keep struggling with, it’s not going to be by me white-knuckling trying to “Don’t look at bad pictures, don’t talk to bad people, don’t take that thing.” It’s going to be you changing the environment in a way where your needs are being met somewhere else in a positive way. So become hyper, super conscious of this. The biggest thing I learned from Tony, when you become conscious of something and aware of it, then you can change it and affect it. So for you guys, now that you’re aware of it, now you can affect it. Now you can make that change for yourself. So change the environment and then make sure these needs are being met in a positive way and that your body is not going to desire and pull to this other thing, and it’s going to make it so you can focus on doing good continually because you’re getting your needs met by doing good. So create an environment where your needs are already being met. Create an environment for your kids where your needs are being met. Create an environment for your spouse, for your marriage where your needs are being met. I’m talking about a physical environment. Look around you, look how things are set up, what’s your room look like? If you’re trying to figure out and read your scriptures, where are they at physically? Where are they at? If you’re trying to break yourself of a TV addiction because you’re getting your needs met, you’re certain your show’s going to be on, your favorite show. Variety of what’s the story line today, the love and connection of sitting there watching with your spouse. Boom, it’s an addiction instantly, TV. If your TV is in your room and it’s keeping you from doing the right thing, you have to change the environment. You have to rip the TV out of the thing and throw it away. You need to create an environment where your needs are going to be met. When you do that it takes this pressure and this strain off of you trying to go and, the pressure and strain gets taken off of the thing you keep falling back into. Does that make sense? So all of us has these addictions, all of us have these temptations, all these things that we’re struggling with. So I’ve given you some tools to understand how to beat it, how to change your environment, how to change these things so the needs of your body are being met in positive ways as opposed to negative ways. So that’s the first thing. The second thing, I want to share with you a story, kind of a metaphor that hopefully help you understand why it’s worth it. Now I taught an Elders Quorum class about a year ago and did this example for them and it was pretty impactful and I want to share with you guys. And I wish I could, again, if you were in front of me I could be even more impactful. So I need you to imagine this for a minute. I want you to imagine right now that in your hand you’re holding a silver ounce. I’m kind of a nerd so I collect precious metals, gold and silver and things like that. But if you look at one ounce silver coin, I want you to hold that in your hand and kind of envision this is a one ounce silver coin. I’m going to tell you a story about silver because when you understand this it’s pretty powerful. So if you look at a one ounce silver piece right now, and it fluctuates, everyday it’s going up and down, but as of today it was $18.49 when I was looking at it online. One silver ounce is worth $18.49. I can go to any pawn shop in America, I could take that silver piece in and they would give me $18.49 back for it. That’s the value of one piece of silver. Now the interesting thing about silver, silver holds its value. So if you look back at the US monetary system, when we first started making coins, we actually put silver inside of the coins. It wasn’t 100% silver, but there was silver inside of them. So 1964 was the last year that quarters and stuff had silver in it. So 1964, if you find a quarter from 1964 or earlier, there’s actually silver inside of there, and it was worth what that silver was actually worth. So 1964 if you went to buy a gallon of gas, guess how much it cost? It cost 25 cents. So that’s how much it cost to buy a tank of gas in 1964. Now fast forward to today….actually sorry, let me step back. If you were to take that same 1964 quarter and you were to go to a pawn shop right now and give it to them and say, “Hey, here’s a 1964 quarter, there’s silver in here.” The pawn shop owner would say, “yes, there is.” And what he would do is actually give you $3.34 for a 1964 quarter, because that’s how much silver is actually inside one of those quarters. So they will actually trade you that. Now what’s interesting, if you look at today, if you were to actually drive by the gas station today, guess what? A tank of gas cost about that much, about $3.34, for that same quarter. So that means in 1964 a quarter bought a tank of gas, the silver equivalent of a quarter cost a tank of gas and today that same amount of silver still buys a tank of gas. So you look at inflation and how that stuff works, the value of silver is the same today as it was in 1964, as it was in 200 BC. Silver holds its value throughout time. Now I want to take you to a dark night in Jerusalem where Judas went to betray our Savior. And if you know the story, he traded the savior for 30 pieces of silver. So if you look at that, what’s one piece of silver worth today? Now, obviously I don’t know what size his silver was, but if you look at a silver coin today, as of this morning it was worth $18.49. If you look at 30 pieces of silver, it was $554.70. So Judas traded Christ for the equivalent, this is not $554 in Judas’ time, which is worth $18 million today. No, no. The value of the silver that Judas traded Christ for back in his time was $554.70. How many of you guys would have happily given Judas $554 to leave Christ alone and not take him to his crucifixion. It’s amazing. 30 pieces of silver. Now, when I did this lesson the first time, I actually had 30 pieces of silver on the desk and I looked at those things and I said, “Look guys, 30 pieces of silver, that’s $554 in Judas’ time, that’s what he gave up for Christ. How many of you guys think that’s ridiculous?” And everyone’s like, “No, $500 to give up Christ, that wouldn’t be worth a million dollars, ten million dollars.” I said, “I know.” Then I stopped and said, “I want you to look at this.” And I picked up one piece of silver and I said, “Right now what’s the value of what you’re addicted to instead of following Christ? This one piece of silver is worth $18.49, for some of you guys this is an addiction to TV. Some of you guys this is an addiction to pornography. Some of you guys it’s an addiction to drugs or alcohol or whatever your sin is. Everyone’s got different things, we all struggle. And anyone who tells you otherwise is not telling you the truth.” And I said, “What would you do to not trade this piece of silver for Christ?” So I wanted to give you that object lesson, and hopefully it makes sense explaining it this way. It’s just I want you to understand that each of those coins is these little pet sins, these little things we have to give up. And we’re giving up so little for so much. $18 worth of silver, $554 worth of silver is what Judas gave up Christ for. What’s the value of your sins? Would you give up those things for Christ? That’s the power I want you guys understanding behind here. And that’s the whole vision of this podcast for me and for you. Reading the Book of Mormon is important. It’s going to change your life, it’s going to change your vision, but when it all comes back, it’s coming down to Christ. He died for us, he died for our sins. He paid the ultimate price, the ultimate penalty so that we could someday return to live back with him. And right now, the thing that’s keeping us from that, are these little pesky sins, these little things, these temptations, these trials, these things we have that are holding us back. I don’t know about you, but as I listen to this podcast, my goal is similar to King Benjamin. I want to message you guys later and I want to find out. That’s what Kind Benjamin said, I’ll read it from Mosiah 5:1,2 again, he said, “And now, it came to pass that when King Benjamin had thus spoken to his people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken to them. And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.” I want to come out and ask you guys, you’ve been listening to this podcast, you’ve been reading the Book of Mormon, you’ve been praying, how do you feel? I want you to say, “Russell, I feel different. I feel no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. All these things I’m doing right now, they’re keeping me from Christ, they’re keeping me from following him. I want to give them up. I don’t want to give up Christ for the equivalent of $554 that Judas gave him up for.” That’s how dumb it is, think about how stupid and how petty most of our sins and temptations are. They’re ridiculous, yet they’re keeping us from Christ. Judas gave him up for money, $554 in today’s dollars, that’s it. What are you giving him up for? Think about that for yourself. Now that you understand that, make this challenge real for you. Because it’s the difference from struggling and it’s the difference from actually having that impact on your life and your family’s life forever. So if you listen back to the last episode we talked about how to get your prayers answered, and I think one of the biggest concerns most of you guys had was, “I want to but I don’t feel worthy. I don’t feel in a place where I’m clean.” And I understand that. So my challenge to you and my test to you is to go back and listen to this episode and figure out, okay I need to change my environment so my needs are getting met in positive ways, and when I do that, I’m not going to keep falling into sin and falling into these things that are pulling the spirit away. I’m going to feel worthy because I’m doing what’s right. When you mess up, that’s okay. We all are going to mess up, repent and then look at the environment. What do I need to change to make sure this doesn’t happen again? What are the things I need to do to make sure my needs are being met here in my relationship or my family or my church or whatever it is, the rock, the thing that you need to be able to be successful, how do I make sure my needs are being met there? And if they’re not, how do I make them met? If I’m in church right now and I’m bored out of my mind and I’m like, “I’m not going to go church anymore, I’m bored.” You look at that and say, “How do I create more certainty in church? What is it that I need to do? How do I create more variety in church? Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s not them. Let me come to church and let me, what can I do to light this up? How can I get more love and connection at church? Maybe I’ve been waiting for people to come talk to me, but maybe I go and talk to them? Maybe I create love and connection that way. How do I create an addiction in the positive things in life, so I don’t create an addiction in the negative things?” And that’s the goal, that’s the goal of this podcast, that’s the goal of everything I’m doing right now and I hope you guys take me up on the challenge. If not, I’m going to keep drilling this into your mind every single day until you do, because I promise you when you do, it’ll change your life. I’m going to end with a quote from Ezra Taft Benson, the same one that we have at the intro of the podcast, he said, “There is a power in the book…” he’s talking about the Book of Mormon, “There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of it. You will find greater power to resist temptation, you’ll find the power to avoid deception, and you will find the power to stay on the straight and narrow path. When you begin to hunger and thirst after these words, you will find life in greater and greater abundance.” I promise you that if you do this challenge, if you follow me and you do it, you will change your life. With that said, what’s going to start the next podcast episode, I’m starting on 1 Nephi, chapter 1. And I want you guys to jump in and listen to it and I’m going to do my best to get you so excited that you’re going to go read the book. Now if I get you to listen to the podcast and think it’s cool and not read the book, it means I failed. The podcast is not a replacement for the Book of Mormon. It never has been, it never will be. In fact, if you look at it that way, then everything I’ve done here not only is a failure, but it’s pulling you away from it. And if that’s the case I will stop this podcast and I will delete immediately, because that’s not my vision or my mission. My vision and my mission with this is to get you enough belief and enough hope that you will open the book and you will read it, because like Ezra Taft Benson said here, the second you begin a serious study of the book there will be a power which will flow into your lives, the moment you begin a serious study of it. You will find greater power to resist temptation, which will bring you closer to Christ. You will find power to avoid deception, which will bring you closer to Christ. You’ll have the power to stay on the straight and narrow path, which will bring you closer to Christ. Do not, you guys, give up the relationship with your savior for 30 pieces of silver. $554 in today’s dollars, that’s what he gave it up for. Don’t give it up for your sin. Don’t give it up for the thing that’s holding you back. Change your environment, get your needs met and then let’s go and let’s change your life, let’s change your world. I promise you guys that if you do that, life will become better for you in all aspects. With that said, go to bookofmormonchallenge.com, take the challenge, we’re still working on the app, we’ve got a couple of other cool things coming out for you guys as well. I hope you enjoy it, I hope you take the challenge and I will see you next week when we start diving into 1 Nephi, Chapter 1.
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