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Mission prep, part two
S3E17 · The Beginnings of the Apostasy (formerly premium content from JSR)
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Standard of Truth · Season 3 · Episode 17 · 1:11:36

The Beginnings of the Apostasy (formerly premium content from JSR)

Paul's letter to the Galatians suggests the apostasy in Galatia began, as Richard puts it, the second Paul turned around and walked out the door.

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The question ·

When did the apostasy begin, and how far did it go?

Richard

To help missionaries prepare, Richard and Gerrit release the first premium episode of Joseph Smith and the Restoration on the free feed. It starts not with Joseph but with the great apostasy, since you can't understand what was restored without knowing what was lost. Gerrit explains how Catholics and Protestants each see church history, why authority matters so much to Latter-day Saints, and how Christians have treated beliefs like Arius's as heresies. Then he walks through Paul's letters, where Paul marvels that the Galatians have left the gospel so soon and the Corinthians are doubting the resurrection. Gerrit lands on the idea that if this was happening in Paul's own lifetime, the loss of truth started early, and sincerity alone doesn't make anyone right.

Who comes upPaulPeterJamesJesus ChristAriusMartin LutherJoseph Smith
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Mission prep, part two

Richard explains why they're releasing a premium episode on the free side for future missionaries.

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, it's going to be a little bit different. As we said last week, that this is missionary calling season. It's my favorite time of the year. It's a lot of fun. And my son is preparing to serve a mission in Peru, and I have another son that's on a mission right now in Barcelona.
Gerrit If you have any more people go on a mission, you're not going to be able to make your house.
Richard Actually, having them go on a mission has saved me so much money. The amount of food that they ate, the things that they... It's been great. We're saving tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Gerrit It's a new financial plan for you and yours. If you are having a hard time making ends meet, send your kids on missions.
Richard So as we're helping our son prepare for a mission, there's lots of things. There's the temporal things and getting in the visa paperwork and buying all of the things. And it's a fun and great time. And sometimes, I know this was the case for me at least, is that lost in some of that is some of the spiritual preparation that happens. And obviously, reading Preach My Gospel, reading the Book of Mormon, doing the mission prep that maybe your ward or stake are doing, these are all fundamental things to help you prepare. But we wanted to help to do some things to help missionaries prepare, as I was working with our son Rigdon on this. And we identified a bunch of episodes, old episodes that we felt are really valuable for him to understand more about the restored gospel. One of the things that we've been doing on some of the premium episodes, there's one particularly on the apostasy that was I think the first Joseph Smith in the restoration episode that we did, that my son listened to and really enjoyed and helped him gain a deeper understanding of what was being restored by the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Richard And so in this particular episode, we're going to just play the Joseph Smith in the restoration episode that talks through the apostasy. Heavy with Paul, we go heavy with his...
Gerrit Where Paul is any Protestant has ever wanted to be.
Richard Absolutely. And so we hope that you enjoy this episode as we make it, put on the free side for everyone to be able to listen to. And we hope that you sign up for our newsletter where we will have links to all of these episodes that are coming out that we would also recommend for anybody preparing to serve a mission wherever they might serve.
Gerrit The only question is now, is my mom is going to probably, she's going to probably call me when she listens to this episode and say, I think I've heard this before.
Richard She's a premium member.
Gerrit That's what I mean. Oh, yes. In fact, I'm pretty sure she signed up multiple times. And I really should, as a good son, figure out how to cancel the third and fourth time that she's done it.
Richard It's interesting. My family, different tact. They say, hey, can you send me the link to the Google Drive where you house these so I can listen for free? Very different, our families.
Gerrit Yeah, interesting. I need your family to support the podcast the way Renee supports the podcast.
Richard Thank you, Renee. We hope you enjoy this premium episode again.
Intro Welcome to Joseph Smith and the Restoration, a Standard of Truth podcast production. In this podcast, host Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc will discuss the events of the Restoration in the order they occurred. Listeners will follow Joseph Smith as he rises from the obscurity of a poor farm boy to the prophet of the Restoration. They will learn of the trials and triumphs, the miracles and misery of Joseph Smith and early members of the Church.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to Joseph Smith and the Restoration, part of the premium content of the Standard of Truth podcast productions. Thank you so much for signing up, for joining us, so that we can have a deeper conversation about church history. And in this podcast in particular, what we're going to do is we are going to chronologically work our way through the history of the Restoration. I don't know how long this will take. I think it will depend on how much detail we put on different things. We're obviously going to leave some things out unintentionally, or maybe we're just not that educated. And we'll maybe spend time on things that people love, maybe times and things they wish we didn't. But the idea is to kind of provide a method of learning about the history of the Restoration of the Gospel, and in particular Joseph Smith, in a chronological way that flows forward so that you can come back each time we drop a new episode and you've gained a little bit more of this path, this miraculous path of God's unfolding of the Restoration through Joseph Smith.
Richard That's one of the things we received a pretty decent amount of feedback that people wanted, or they learn this way, and kind of the way that we read the Book of Mormon, if I understand the context of what's happening, it helps me to understand a little bit better what's going on. And so that's what we wanted to provide here. And so we wanted to actually start with Joseph Smith and the Restoration, with Moses.
Gerrit Richard's being a little facetious, but- Not much. Well, part of the problem is when you talk about the Restoration, one of the great questions is, well, what is it that Joseph Smith is restoring? And, you know, I've mentioned this on the Standard of Truth podcast. One of the more fascinating things to me when I meet with people who are struggling with their questions of faith, questions of church history, is just how little people consider the radical nature of what it is that we believe. Sometimes people become disaffected by the church or struggle with some of the aspects of its history, and they think that what is taught in the church can be found other places where they assume that it can be. It is not an uncommon thing for someone to believe in the pre-existence even after they've left the church.
Gerrit Well, the great contradiction is that the only reason why you believe in a pre-existence is because of the church, is because of Joseph Smith. Sometimes, I mean, look, we're all humans and we all want to have our cake and then eat it too. We all want what it is that we want, whatever makes us comfortable. But when it comes to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so many of our doctrines and beliefs are completely opposite, separate, far different from Christians in the traditional sense in the world. And those differences matter. They matter because they are the crux of why it is we believe what we believe. I know it's easy to get bogged down every Sunday in thinking that what we really believe is whether or not we should have sang a rest hymn with as much time as we had left.
Gerrit The things you focus on, on the minutia on an everyday level, sometimes we lose sight of what it is we actually have. Also, because of the internet world that we live in, we often are confronted with the things that we don't have, the things we don't have knowledge about. Why don't we know how marriage will work in the next life? I don't know. I don't know why that hasn't been revealed. We don't know exactly how ceilings are going to be adjudicated in the next life. Prophets have said, we don't know how it's going to work. And yet we so desperately want to know how it's going to work, that sometimes the fact that we don't know causes us to question the very thing that we were asking the question about. If you, because you don't know how ceilings will work in the next life, stop believing that Joseph Smith was a prophet, well, then you no longer even need an answer to your question.
Gerrit Because the only reason why you believe that ceilings exist in the next life is because Joseph Smith was a prophet. It's an example of a unique doctrine of the restoration that makes us who we are. It's central to what we believe. It's not just a simple thing or a throwaway thing. It's a central aspect of what we believe, and it is rejected by every other person out there that calls themselves a Christian. So, in part, as we study the restoration, we want to talk about what it is that other people believe, not because we want to mock them, not because we're saying, oh, look at how wrong they are, but because I really believe a depth of a testimony is at least in part delivered when you recognize what it is that is the alternative, when you realize that, yes, there are questions that you can't answer, but here are some questions that no Christian can answer, but that you have an answer for.
Gerrit No one has an answer to every question, and maybe that's a fitting place to start our discussion of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, because he comes to God with a question. In order to set the table though, Richard was only slightly mocking me by saying that we were going to go back to Moses.
Richard Well, it is funny.
Gerrit In the pre-production meetings, when we say pre-production meetings, why don't you tell, Richard, why don't you tell them what that consists of?
Richard Well, it's mostly 20 years of Gerrit's research while I'm eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich saying, what are we going to talk about?
Gerrit And he was very desperate to get the Polynesian sauce. Yeah, it was very... I mean, when we discuss this, you know, where do you start? Because the point of Joseph Smith's question that day in the Grove is the utter confusion that he saw around him in the religious world. In his multiple accounts that he gives of the First Vision, one of the things that is pretty consistent is there are lots of people that keep telling me one thing and then lots of other people who keep telling me another thing. Why? Why is it that there are so many different beliefs and where does that originate from? And so we are not going to be exhaustive. I know that that's what you paid for. You paid for me to put you to sleep while you were driving. But in fact, we're not going to be exhaustive. We're going to kind of give an overview of some things and with other things we'll spend more time on them because they matter more.
Gerrit I think a great place to start, whenever you're talking about God is the great apostasy. What a great place to start. The loss of faith.
Richard Just as a quick aside, it is possible that we don't actually get to Joseph Smith for several months.
Gerrit I want you to just keep holding out hope that eventually, we mentioned them today.
Richard We did, it's true.
Gerrit You know, one of the great contradictions, I mentioned this in one of our Standard of Truth podcasts recently, one of the great contradictions inside of Christianity is that the Protestant world, and most Americans are more familiar with Protestant theology than they are with Catholic theology, but in the Protestant world, one of the main arguments of Protestants, one of the main arguments of Martin Luther and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli and many other reformers, was that the Catholic Church had become corrupted. One of their primary arguments is, when Jesus taught this, it was right, and you guys went and started selling indulgences. One of the primary arguments is, there was truth that has somehow been fallen away from. Now Protestants don't argue that there was some kind of priesthood power and authority that was eventually taken from the earth, in part because they don't argue that there's anything that like hands on head passed down authority.
Gerrit Authority comes from belief, which is an easy position to take when you no longer believe that any ordinances are saving. Once, of course we're still going to do baptism, but once you get to the point where you say, baptism does not save you at all, then does it really make a difference whether someone who was properly ordained baptized you or Uncle Bill baptized you? And we're assuming at this point, Uncle Bill isn't an ordained minister, right? What difference would it make when the baptism itself is nothing but a symbol to God of your devotion to him? It's not saving. You don't have to be baptized to be saved. So one of the great contradictions that you see in Christianity, and maybe this is part of what Joseph saw too, is Protestants are adamant, adamant that the Catholic Church went astray.
Gerrit And they are simply trying to restore, reform the Church back to what it was originally from Jesus. So you don't have to have too long, you want to find a Baptist agreeing with you as a Latter-day Saint, have a conversation with them about the Catholic Church being an apostate group. A Baptist will readily agree, if you start the conversation with, so do you think the Pope is really Christ's vicar on earth? I'm going to go out on a limb and say your Baptist friend is not going to say that he is.
Richard It's pretty fair, aren't you?
Gerrit Yeah, right. So you actually agree with your Protestant friend that somewhere along the line, the church went a different direction.
Richard So then it's almost a matter of when did it and how far did it.
Gerrit Now, in Protestant theology, the how far doesn't really matter, because once you start to say that authority doesn't actually exist. Now, of course, again, if you happen to be a Methodist, thank you so much for paying for the premium content, subscribing to this podcast, you are dedicated to your anti-Mormonism. I mean, you have sought them out through the holes in the nests. You have ranged the earth. You know what? You almost thou persuadest me to become Methodist, if that's what you're doing. But because Protestants reject the idea of hands on head, lineal, passed down authority, their argument is going to be, well, authority comes from properly believing in Jesus and having faith that you're saved by the grace of Jesus.
Gerrit And so I don't need the church to do that.
Richard I had this represented to me on my mission for the first time when they talked about a royal priesthood, and I interpreted it to be, yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. And then they said, yeah, no, that's what I'm saying.
Gerrit Right, because one of the key aspects of the Reformation, which we'll spend more time on, don't worry, is this rejection of lineal hands on head priesthood. In fact, I would guess that that's one of the least understood aspects about Latter-day Saint theology that members of the church don't themselves understand in a difference from other Christians. Because you'll hear Latter-day Saints say all the time, you know, we believe you have to be baptized by authority. Well, a Protestant hears that phrase and they're like, yeah, of course, someone who has faith has to baptize you. No, I mean, like, someone has to give you authority. Yeah, yeah, I mean, people aren't just grabbing people off the street and throwing them in the bathtubs. It's not like Richard getting bar mitzvahed in New York, where someone's just driving an RV around.
Richard He was a rabbi.
Gerrit Well, right.
Richard It wasn't some strange dude.
Gerrit Okay, well, but Richard was, he was drive by bar mitzvahed.
Richard It's true. Sixth Avenue, New York in a mitzvah tank.
Gerrit It was just there.
Richard It was there, yeah.
Gerrit But it was a pretty nice RV?
Richard It was very nice. It was about a 40 footer.
Gerrit Yeah, maybe I need to get bar mitzvahed. Yeah, and can I borrow this for the weekend? At any rate, this is something that's not very well understood. And hopefully, as we talk about the Reformation and the way that it unfolds, it will help a Latter-day Saint listening understand this divide between what they believe and what their Christian friend believes. Because we actually make it a big deal. We actually make a big point. I thought, I tell you, when I went on my mission, you know, first of all, I thought anyone would listen to me ever. That's what I thought before I got there. Very soon after I got there, I realized, oh, wait, this is just a never-ending series of people pronouncing profanities at me while they slam a door in my face.
Richard And if you are a young listener, missions are great.
Gerrit Please go on a mission.
Richard They're absolutely wonderful.
Gerrit I wouldn't be doing this podcast if I didn't go on a mission.
Richard 100%.
Gerrit If you want your own podcast someday, you got to go on a mission. If you're a young listener, please. But this concept of authority, I thought would be super persuasive to people. On the off chances that people let us teach them, I would like lean into it. I'd be like, and then Joseph Smith, I guess I didn't have a deep... On my mission, I had a deeper voice. On my mission, it was, and then Joseph Smith received authority. I thought that that would really click with people. And it never did. It never did. And you know the definition of insanity, is you just keep expecting different results. I always thought when I tell them about John the Baptist, and Peter, James and John coming back, they are going to be hooked. And they all kind of looked at me with a vacant stare, and blinked, and asked what the score in the Packers game was.
Gerrit I mean, it just wasn't the deciding factor I thought it was. And part of the reason it wasn't is because when I say authority, when I say power, it means something entirely different than what my Christian friend means when they say it. They don't believe that there are any saving ordinances. So therefore, you certainly don't have to have any so-called authority handed to you by someone confirming you on your head or ordaining you to perform those ordinances. Why would you? Ordinances are authoritative in as much as you have faith in Jesus. And if you have faith in Jesus, then that's all that actually matters. So on the Protestant side of things, there's already a gigantic gulf between Latter-day Saints and where they're at, because one of the things that Joseph Smith is going to learn, even before there's a church, is that baptism is not just what we do because God told us to, that baptism is essential for salvation.
Gerrit There hasn't been a Protestant saying that baptism is essential for salvation since, you know, in the 300 years following Luther, at least not one that was accepted by the rest of the community. All of the mainline Protestant groups, Lutheranism, Congregationalism, which is what Puritans were, Anglicanism, which is the Church of England, which is what most early American settlers were, and especially in the South, Episcopalianism is what you call it today, in America is what you call it. They don't call it that in England. They're still a little angry that we stop calling it Anglicanism. But don't worry, there's almost no Episcopalians left in America, so it makes no difference. Baptists who are frankly an offshoot of Congregationalists, but if you're a Baptist listening again, thank you very much for your subscription. I appreciate you really digging in, and I'm not saying you're anything like Congregationalists. I'm saying that Roger Williams was a Congregationalist before he left and founded the Baptist Church in America. That's what I'm saying.
Gerrit And then even with Methodists, all of them see Baptism as important. In fact, it's literally the name of the Baptist Church, adult Baptism. Baptism, when you are making a personal demonstration of your covenant and commitment to Jesus, to the world, is a very sacred and special thing to a Baptist. But if you ask him or her, does that Baptism save you? If they know their catechism of any kind, if they know it anyway, their doctrine of their theology, they'll say no. The only thing that saves you is faith. Well, what if I wasn't baptized? The thief on the cross wasn't baptized, was he? And today, thou shalt be with me in paradise, right? On the other side of the spectrum, you have a billion Catholics in the world. And on top of that, millions and millions and millions of people who follow the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
Gerrit So whether it's Armenian or Russian Orthodox or now Ukrainian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, there's multiple Orthodox churches that broke off from the Catholic Church many, many years ago, where they still claim that ordinances have to be performed by authority and that that authority is passed down linearly. So Latter-day Saints are actually much closer to Catholics in that regard. And you might have found, if you've ever tried to share the gospel with people, that it's sometimes easier to share the gospel with someone who's Catholic, because they believe there are certain sins you can't do, right, that you can't do this, you can't do that, I have to live a certain way. They believe that there are things you have to do to go to heaven, and they believe that things like baptism and confirmation aren't just outward signs of your inward commitment, but that they're actually essential for heaven.
Gerrit You don't have to argue with a Catholic to convince them that baptism's essential. No one's ever been teaching a Catholic in a missionary setting where the Catholic person was just like, I just can't come to terms with the fact that you have to be baptized. I've never even heard of that. Why are you in my house? You might have had that conversation with someone who is a Protestant. You might have had that conversation with someone who's a Pentecostal who absolutely believes in baptism, but when you're saying, I have to be baptized to be saved, I don't have to do anything except have faith. That's the only thing I have to do. Those are pretty far apart. So on the Catholic side of the argument, the argument would be, well, what do you mean that there was an apostasy? For Protestants, they're saying, look, there's obvious falling away from the truth, but now we're going to have an argument as to which degree there was. What were they wrong about?
Gerrit What? Okay, I get it, you don't like indulgences, but what about this? I get it that you're not okay with transubstantiation, but what about this? For a Protestant, they can say yes, but anyone who believed in Jesus all throughout that time, anyone who had the proper thought that faith in Jesus saves me, they were the real quote unquote church. And the Catholic Church was just this false organization that had grown up around the church. Individual salvation, individual authority. On the Catholic side of the ledger, the argument would be what is your evidence that there was a falling away from the truth? I mean, I get it that Martin Luther doesn't like indulgences, but you Latter-day Saints are claiming that there was a great apostasy. You're claiming that there was a wholesale departure from the Church of Jesus.
Richard And I heard many, many times, upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and therefore, how could it be possible?
Gerrit Or, I mean, it's interesting because Catholics would say God would not have allowed his church to go into apostasy. And Protestants would say God would not have allowed errors to have been entered into the Bible. So both, it's very funny, right? I mean, now, of course, a Protestant will say that, but for 1500 years, the Catholic Bible had the Apocrypha books in it, and God didn't stop that. You know, where were you on that one, God? I mean, I get it now. I mean, it's always easy to, you know, hindsight's 20-20, Martin Luther, but did God just not care about people getting the false, you know, scripture in 1100 AD? 1100, he didn't care. He finally started caring in 1517. You can see part of the problem with both of these dichotomies on both sides is there is essentially an argument that God couldn't have allowed there to be either an atrophy of scripture or an atrophy of authority, that both of those could not have occurred.
Gerrit They're both arguing for different reasons, but they're arguing it. Now, Christian scholars, who are not necessarily Christians themselves, let me rephrase that. Scholars who study early Christian history, one of the things that they see as a myth is the myth of this proto-orthodoxy or early orthodoxy of what the Catholic Church and what Christianity would eventually become. The way that heresiologists, men like Irenaeus, who wrote about the heresies in the early Christian Church, they saw heresies as derivations from what was the proper truth. So you have the proper truth, which is on down the line, everything, Peter and Linus, and just keep going down the line with popes and the doctrine is pure and everything is great.
Gerrit But once in a while, you have these crazy guys like Arius who come up and say, wait a minute, I think God created Jesus. And the way it's presented is that you have the truth, which is the trunk of your tree, and you have this wild offshoot branch from the trunk. Now, there's a reason why Catholics want to present their history that way, because that means they've always been the trunk. And you're always defining heresy as, are you what I am? Nope, heresy. And it makes it very easy. Like it's very simple.
Richard It's what I do.
Gerrit Yeah, that's how we, frankly, it's what we do in the Latter-day Saint Church all the time too. Like, well, are you a Latter-day Saint? Well, no. Okay, well then I guess you weren't baptized by authority. No, no, I was. Are you a Latter-day Saint? No. Okay, well, then I restate. Heresy, no, you weren't. Heresy, no, but you weren't baptized by authority. Why I say that this is something that it's a contested space is scholars of early Christian history instead argue about it might actually be more beneficial to. Say early Christianity than it is early Christianity. Instead of saying, oh, this is what everyone believed, well, why exactly do we believe that everyone believed that? I understand why a Catholic argues it. A Catholic argues it because Peter became the first bishop of Rome and gave his keys to the next bishop of Rome, and they were passed down, and that's where it came from.
Gerrit But as a historian of early Christianity, why would I believe that everyone believed the same thing? Now, think about our world today. We have the internet, we have television, we have radio, we have the printing press, we have books, we have subreddits, we have all kinds of things.
Richard We have premium podcasts.
Gerrit We have premium podcasts that maybe people try to cancel after listening to one episode, and they find out that no, no, you're not getting that money back. We have all kinds of ways of delivering content, and yet look at the radical diversity of thought that exists. Think about your own congregation, in your own ward. I want you to think right now, everyone in your ward, you know that man or woman who is so right wing in their thinking, like that they are certain that Rush Limbaugh was a communist because he wasn't right wing enough, right? You also know someone in that same congregation who is so left, when they found out that Bernie Sanders had a vacation home, they called him a sellout, right? That they are so far, they can't even, that Bernie isn't even, he's not even, he's dead to me, right?
Gerrit And they are in the same ward and they have radically different beliefs. It's not because they are not listening to the same general conference. It's not because they are not reading the same Book of Mormon or reading the same Bible. They all have access to the same stuff on churchofjesuschrist.org. Well, why do they have such radically different beliefs? Now, I was mentioning politics rather than religion, but I think we also know that too. Everyone knows someone in their ward who is a really great person, and yet they have one belief that they've expressed to you or from the pulpit or every time they bear their testimony that is not what the Church actually teaches. Well, how did they get that false belief? Where did it come from? Do you think they woke up one day and they're just like, you know what? I'm going to start believing in heresy. That's what I'm going to do. I've decided I'm going, you know what?
Gerrit I'm going the other way. The problem with heresies, right? The problem with them is that when people believe them, they obviously don't believe that they're heresies. They think they have a proper understanding. No one, well, no one in their right mind, I guess. I'm going to make a little bit of a caveat for crazy people. But no one in their right mind knowingly believes something that they know is false. That would be a tautology, right? If I came to know that what I believe was false, then I would stop believing in it. That's the expectation. I mean, if I believe that when I turn the light on in this room that the light will come on and I flick that switch, but there's not a light bulb in the light and no light comes on, I probably am going to abandon the belief that flicking the light back up and on and up and on that eventually light will come into the room.
Gerrit I change my belief because, oh, there isn't a light bulb, so I guess it'll never become light. Save some miracle. I think that that's an important thing to understand. There are a multitude of various different Christian beliefs that come out of the early apostolic times in the church. And you're thinking, well, really? I mean, how could there be so many different beliefs that come so quickly? Probably one of the great places to go, if you're ever wondering, if you're ever in a discussion with one of your Christian friends about whether or not there was apostasy in the early church, a great place to go is Galatians. Galatians is one of the letters of Paul, and I think you get a really good sense of, now, this is the very opening of the letter. Now, Paul has preached in Galatia. He's been the instrument of having many people baptized.
Gerrit I don't know how many Paul actually baptized. Of course, he is very keen to say that...
Richard He's padding the numbers for Peter.
Gerrit Well, Paul's calling in to the district leader and saying, yeah, yeah, no, we have 15 discussions.
Richard So many discussions.
Gerrit No, no, they were all Gentiles. The way that he opens this letter should really give pause to the idea that many Christians have that, no, no, when the apostles were there, everyone believed the right things. Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which were with me unto the churches of Galatia. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from the present evil world according to the will of God and our Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Now, Paul has mastered the management technique of opening with some praise.
Richard It's a compliment sandwich.
Gerrit Yes, but Paul decides to make his compliment sandwich of a very thin slice of bruschetta and almost an entire ham underneath that very, very paper thin, wafer thin beginning of the compliment. But he does start with, you know, grace be to you and peace from God the Father. I don't know why Paul tells them peace be to you and then begins what he has to say. You know, I pray that God gives you his peace. God hates you. I mean, he doesn't say that, but he's very angry. I mean, and so when he opens, that's like the beginning of the letter. When he first starts to actually say something outside of the niceties, it's verse 6. I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
Gerrit But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you, then that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so I say now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you, then you have received, let him be accursed. How do you think Paul feels about what's going on in Galatia?
Richard So this is one of my all time, because I envision what's happening here, right? That Paul was, he was preaching a message. And so when did the apostasy start in Galatia? The second Paul turned around and stepped out.
Gerrit Paul was like, I'm on my way to Thessalonica. What are you guys doing? I just left. I mean, frankly, the reality of Paul's letters are not that, wow, you guys are all just doing a great job.
Richard Yeah, you're killing it. Your home teaching numbers are way up.
Gerrit I mean, think about the purpose of the writing of Corinthians. Okay, Paul has again preached to the Corinthians. And there's a pretty fundamental thing for Paul about Jesus. And that is that he was resurrected. It's a big deal for Paul. Now, remember, Paul was a Pharisee, right? And Pharisees believed in the resurrection. So this was a pre-existing belief for Paul. Back when he was Saul, when he was Saul the persecutor instead of Paul the apostle, right? But that wasn't a belief he had. He didn't have to change the belief in resurrection, in part because Jesus appeared to him, and Paul was certain of the resurrection. But in teaching these Greek Gentiles, the Gospel, who loved to embrace the idea of Jesus being God, they were very loathed to embrace the idea of resurrection.
Gerrit Now, when Paul went and preached to them, I'm pretty sure that he said, guys, Jesus was resurrected. And then Paul left. What happened in his absence? They weren't having arguments about, do you think Jesus was resurrected on the third day and then came out on the third and a half day? Do you think that maybe that when Jesus was resurrected that all of the same molecules, which they didn't believe actually existed because they didn't know what molecules were, but whatever they decided to call that, each part of him came back and it was all back to normal? Or do you think his body decayed before that happened in any way? They weren't having these kinds of arguments about the manner in which the resurrection took place. They were having arguments about the resurrection not occurring at all. That's not because Paul came and said, you know what, I'm going to hold back. The most important part of the gospel to me is the resurrection.
Gerrit I'm not going to talk about it. You know what, let's talk about whether or not you should purchase meat that was sacrificed to idols. That's my number one. And then second, we'll move on. Obviously, it was a key part of Paul's message. Even agnostic historians of the early Christian church, even they acknowledge Paul is adamant in all of his writings that the resurrection is a physical, real resurrection. This is not some kind of spiritual thing where Jesus just spiritually got raised up to God and we're all going to be spiritually raised up to God. No, no. For Paul, the historical record is very clear. He believes like the Pharisees before him in that valley of bones from Ezekiel and bone joining bone and sinew joining sinew and people getting their bodies back.
Gerrit That was a really, really difficult concept for early Greek Christians because they came from a worldview in which the body was maybe not necessarily an evil thing, but the body is what allowed you to do evil things. The body was corrupt. The body was an issue. I mean, there were even some radical Greek philosophers who advocated suicide. Why? Well, because now you're outside of your body and the body is a problem. Why would you be limited by having a body? A body constrains you. Why would you want it back? People associated the body with suffering. They associated the body with disease. They associated the body with limitation. So you can see why a Greek Christian who just learned about Jesus, oh my goodness, Jesus is the only God. Jesus is the great God.
Gerrit Jesus did these miracles. That's incredible because that's how they're hearing the stories, Jesus' miracles. They might say, well, wait a minute, what do you mean he got his body back? Why if he's an all-powerful God, why does he need a body? That's the best part about being an all-powerful God. You don't need a body and can still do everything. And so you can see that when you go to 1 Corinthians that Paul, he spends much of this letter trying to help them understand. You know, there's other parts of the question. He's answering questions about how to worship. He's answering questions about marriage and how marriage is supposed to be. But it's in chapter 15 that he reiterates this. This is 1 Corinthians 15. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which ye also ye have received and wherein ye stand, which ye are also saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain.
Gerrit I always thought this verse is a very odd one, especially for Calvinists. Now, we'll talk later. Don't you worry. We'll spend some time on Calvinism. But the entire essence of Calvinist thought is that God predestines who is going to be saved. And therefore, anyone who has faith has faith because God gave it to them. And because they didn't do anything to get their faith, God gave it to them and God doesn't make mistakes, they can't fall from that grace. How could they? They did nothing to merit it. God didn't give them grace because they were wonderfully great people. God gave them grace because he could. And so he did. That's it. So if you didn't do anything to merit grace, then how could you lose it? How could God make a mistake? And yet, by which ye are also saved, if? Well, that's a problem.
Gerrit So now my salvation has an if statement. If ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye believed in vain. Well, that's a pretty big contradiction in terms, because you can't actually believe and have faith in Jesus in vain if God gave you that faith. Paul is suggesting that it's more than just saying that you believe or having that belief. And the way that a Calvinist theologian would deal with this is, well, what Paul means is that you thought that you had belief, but you didn't actually have belief. Now, that's not what the verse says, right? So now we're just putting new words in the Bible, but that's what the response would be. For I delivered unto you, first of all, which I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Paul seems to have his first principles and ordinances of the gospel pretty tight. Jesus died for your sins.
Gerrit Jesus was resurrected. And please pass the hummus. I mean, at this point, that is the fundamental of what Paul was teaching. Jesus died for your sins, and the same Jesus who died for your sins was physically resurrected. And then after he was resurrected, to prove the point that he was resurrected, Paul starts listing all the people that saw resurrected Jesus. He was seen of Cephas, Peter, and then of the 12. So he's seen by 13 people at that point. Well, Peter is part of the 12. So he's seen by Peter, and really they see...
Richard Minus Judas.
Gerrit Yeah, but before they call Matthias. Maybe. I mean, well, when they see him above the 500 brethren at once, that was after Matthias. So you can read 1 Corinthians 15 and try to come up with your own count. Please email us with your count of people who saw the resurrected Jesus. The resurrected Savior, according to 1 Corinthians 15. After that, he was seen above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain under the present, but some are fallen asleep. And after that, he was seen of James, and then, again, I'm guessing, of all the apostles. Paul is making a list of all of the appearances of Jesus. Why? It's not to prove that Jesus died for people's sins, which is the first part of his argument. It's the second part of his argument. These Greek Christians are more than willing to believe that Jesus died for their sins, but they're unwilling to believe that physical resurrection either occurred for Jesus and certainly wouldn't occur for them.
Gerrit So what does Paul do? Last of all, he was seen of me also as one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that I am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace was bestowed upon me and was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me. Therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed. Now, if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Paul's getting right to the meat of it here with the Corinthians. What I preached to you was that Jesus died for your sins and that he was resurrected. And the reason I'm writing to you is I'm now hearing that there are lots of people among you saying that there is no resurrection, even though that's the whole point of what I said to you.
Gerrit And if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen? Oh, so you're saying there's no resurrection of the dead? Oh, maybe just Christ was resurrected. Maybe that's what some people were saying. And if Christ be not risen, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is vain also. This is the reason why a historian will say, look, resurrection is not a passing detail to Paul. He's saying if you don't believe in the resurrection, you don't believe in Jesus, period. There is no Jesus without resurrection. What makes Jesus Jesus is resurrection. I'm sure an evangelical listening to me right now is excited about that. And again, thank you for signing up for the premium content. Yay, and we are found false witnesses of God. This is verse 15. Because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if it so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised? The contradiction, the very argument that there can't be a resurrection of the dead, Paul's, the entire religion we're talking about is based upon raising someone from the dead.
Gerrit How could you possibly believe that people can't be raised from the dead when the entire point of believing in Jesus is that he was resurrected? You can see Paul's, it's very frustrating. You can feel the frustration. Logically, your argument that people can't be resurrected has no logical basis because the only reason you believe in resurrection is that Jesus was resurrected, right? And the whole point of Christianity is Jesus resurrected. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain. Ye are yet in your sins. Because remember, they're embracing the fact that Jesus forgave them of their sins, but not that of physical resurrection. Paul's response is, you don't get forgiveness of your sins with an unresurrected Jesus.
Richard And to your point, this is being preached to people that are followers of Paul.
Gerrit Paul is writing a letter, he says, to the church in Corinth. This is not a letter to the people who are praying to the unknown God at the top of Mars Hill. This is not a letter to the Gentiles. This is not Paul trying to like, hey, I know you worshiped Zeus last week, but have you thought about Jesus? It could happen. These are people who are Christians. This is why Paul is so frustrated. I feel like Paul is like me. Well, no. Okay.
Richard No, no, no.
Gerrit No, no, no.
Richard No, no, no. No, no, no.
Gerrit No, at this point, no. Paul is an apostle, I'm not. Paul had authority, I didn't. Paul had real experiences with Jesus. I am a lowly piece of garbage. I need everyone to understand. All right, fair enough. In the smallest nth degree, I understand a tiny portion of his frustration when I will talk to people who are certain that Joseph Smith is not a prophet and also certain that they will have a marriage in eternity, that marriage will exist in the next life. That's a pretty big contradiction because the only reason why you believe in marriage existing in the next life is because Joseph Smith revealed that. So you see, it's pretty contradictory to say, oh yeah, Joseph Smith, absolutely false prophet. Everything he said was false. Nothing he said was true. Yeah, I believe that we're going to be married for eternity.
Gerrit Right? Paul is feeling the same frustration You don't get to just pick and choose what part of Jesus that you believe in. You're a Christian because you believe in Jesus. And believing in Jesus means believing that he was resurrected. He goes on. I'll finish his rant here. Then they which are falling asleep in Christ are perished. Now he says, if Christ be not raised and your faith is in vain and you are in your sins and they which have fallen asleep in Christ, so the people that you thought were saved because they believed, they've perished if there's no resurrection. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. That is one of the most beautiful things in the entire New Testament. And frankly is, it encapsulates what it is to be a believer.
Gerrit It had more power back then because these Greek pagans, former pagans that he was preaching to, these new Greek Christians, that's exactly what religion was to everyone in the ancient world. In the ancient world, the point of worshipping Zeus was for Zeus to do something for you right now. There was no heaven. There was no happy hunting ground. There was no, I mean, even in the best of afterlife scenarios that are presented in the ancient world, they're all pretty terrible. None are as good as mortality. So when you worshipped Athena, you didn't do it because I can't wait for Athena to take me to some Greek celestial kingdom. You worshipped Athena because I want my crops to grow now. I want my bread to be sold at the market for a high price now. I want my son to come back from battle now.
Gerrit The point of worshipping gods in the ancient world was to get immediate blessings. That's why Jesus was so radical. Because when he comes, the point of worshipping him is the next life. In the world, you will have tribulation, but fear not, I've overcome the world. Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break through to steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. The point of Christianity was that you weren't going to get those blessings until, not the ultimate realization, until the next life. That's why Paul says, if in this life only we hope in Christ, if the only reason why we worship Jesus is for him to give us good presence, like an intergalactic Santa Claus while we're alive, then we are of all men most miserable. Because we're making all kinds of sacrifices that pagans aren't making.
Gerrit We are following all kinds of rules, we're following all kinds of commandments, we're doing all kinds of things, not because we're going to get a blessing in this life, but because we believe in a blessing in the next life. So, I love that phrase from Paul there, that if we have in this life only to hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. As Paul continues, he says, but now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. It's very important to Paul. It's not just that Jesus was resurrected. He's the first fruits. He's the beginning, like the first apple of the harvest. Everyone's going to be resurrected. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. As an Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Sometimes that verse is taken to read as a spiritual rebirth. Oh, as an Adam, we all die spiritually. That's clearly not what Paul is saying.
Gerrit He is saying, like Adam was a mortal and he died, and so we all physically die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. Now, why do I spend a little bit of time on this with the Galatians and the Christians? We could spend some time in Thessalonians as same. Paul is arguing that there are people that are preaching false things. The point is this. For Christians would argue that God would not have allowed his church to go into apostasy. What is their evidence of this? When we read the New Testament, almost every letter of Paul is one lengthy, repeated, what are you guys doing? I was just there. You stopped believing in the resurrection? This isn't like deciding to not have the teachers prepare the sacrament on Sunday.
Gerrit You stopped believing in the resurrection? It was there a week ago. We went to that nice Mediterranean cafe, don't you remember? And now you're saying that there is no resurrection? He's riding to the Galatians. I marvel. Paul is stunned. I was just there. How could you possibly believe these heresies that you believe? And so now you need to ask yourself this question. If when Paul, arguably and not even arguably, the greatest missionary of all time, right? Sorry for those of you who are like...
Richard Wilfred Woodruff?
Gerrit Wilfred's going to give him a run for his money, but Paul is converting thousands, right? In fact, they did a survey of... This just shows you how, frankly, stupid historians are, but they did a survey of early Christian, not early Christian historians, but a survey of historians of Western civilization. And they asked them, who are the most important people in Western civilization? And in that survey, this was about 10 years ago, Paul came in ahead of Jesus. Now, you can see why that would be a problem, right? Well, you know, there's not really a Paul without Jesus, so don't you have to make Jesus... And the argument from those historians, and I'm not saying I agree with it, please don't write in, I don't agree. You can still write in. Just don't write in angry about that. At least be angry about something I've actually done. There's plenty. Or, you know what, let's change it up. Let's be angry about something Richard said.
Gerrit I've said plenty of stupid things. Becky, I need you to write it. I need you to write it about something Richard has done. Paul, the argument being that, you know, Christianity wouldn't have become a global religion without Paul. Because Paul traveled and took the gospel everywhere, took it to the Gentiles before Paul. It wasn't going to the Gentiles, right? And so that he had greater impact, because Jesus was local, you know, Jewish preacher, preaching of a coming kingdom. Paul made Christianity mainstream, eventually led to the adoption of the Roman Empire and the founding in the Western world of a Christian, a Christendom. So it's at least arguable, and you'd find historians to back you up, that Paul is the greatest missionary in Christendom, that he did more to spread the gospel than literally anyone. He certainly had a greater impact in his spreading of the gospel than literally anyone.
Gerrit If Paul, the greatest missionary in the history of ever, is preaching to people, converting them, and the very next communication he sends to them is, what the heck is wrong with you guys? I marvel, how could you have left the resurrection? And that's all just in Paul's lifetime. In Paul's lifetime, it appears he is constantly battling with these forces of entropy that are trying to pull away from the gospel that he taught and add different ideas in. So the question becomes, if Paul, the greatest missionary, the apostle, along with the Quorum of the Twelve that was there at the time, if Paul and the other apostles are desperately struggling to contain false teaching and ideas while they are alive, what do you think happens when they are not?
Gerrit Is the person who comes after Paul just like a way better teacher than he was? Like Paul couldn't contain the heresies, but you know who can?
Richard Cletus.
Gerrit Cletus. Everyone has always said that. You know what? I guarantee Linus has got it. I'm not saying that there weren't great Christians, and please don't misunderstand my discussion here. I'm not saying that these people aren't believers. Paul recognizes that these Corinthians are believers. They're just believing in wrong things, and he's trying to contain that wrong understanding. And so I think that's kind of the way to think about the growing apostasy in the years after Jesus. In some ways, not everything was restored. We know this from Doctrine and Covenants, Section 124. Joseph Smith is told that in the Nauvoo Temple, God was going to reveal things that had never been revealed since the foundation of the world. So when we talk about it being a restoration, it doesn't have to mean that there were ward mission leaders in Jesus' church.
Gerrit The restoration is the restoration of the authority to act in God's name in His church. It's the restoration of true beliefs that perhaps were once taught or maybe hadn't ever been revealed, but in any case they're being authoritatively taught by a prophet of God. The restoration is not that every single thing we have in the church today. I once was talking to a very snarky person who was on their way out of the church who said it's not like something to the effect of, he said, I didn't see church librarians in Jesus' church. He was being snarky about the fact that that was the calling that he had held. Well, you know, it's Jesus' church. Oh yeah, where's the church librarian? He wasn't very good at arguing. But at any point, at any rate, the idea isn't that every single thing that's in the church today was literally in Jesus' church.
Gerrit You know, Jesus is, you know, is going to suffer the crucifixion only three years into his teaching. The apostles are going to all be murdered roughly within 30 to 40 years outside of John of Jesus' resurrection. If Paul, the greatest of all the apostles, when it comes to preaching, the one who's done the most, Peter might hold the keys, but Paul's the one out there. These are the people that Paul brought to baptism. If he can't contain their false ideas, and he's desperately trying, we know that he's written even more letters than we have in the Bible. He references other letters that he wrote. Then what do you think happens when there is no Paul? When there's more people, but less control. There's more believers, but less control. There's no longer a Paul the Apostle who can say, I talked to Jesus.
Richard Separated by more distance over more area.
Gerrit So even more cultures, even more ideas, even more opinions, and no Paul. Now what? Now there's no Peter. Now there's no Thomas. Even though there will be people who will later write pseudepigraphical false Gnostic Gospels about them, claiming that that's what Peter said. The reality is it's not after Paul and after Peter and after James that there is this move away from what Paul was teaching. Paul's writings clearly indicate he thinks they're moving away now. He is struggling against this movement away from true doctrine while he's alive. And we can't really point to the great Christian theologian that came right after him that would have stemmed that tide.
Gerrit You know, a century later you can get to Origen and Justin Martyr, but you only have to read a little bit of Origen, well, a little bit of Justin Martyr to realize he isn't Paul, right? And nor does he have the breadth that he did. Origen is another story. Maybe we'll talk about him some other day. But for this first episode of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, I think it's important that we establish that it's not a crazy thing to believe that God would allow the church that Jesus set up to go into apostasy. It's in fact what you would conclude reading what's in the Bible. Just reading the letters of Paul, the conclusion you'd have to come to is Paul is really struggling with trying to keep people to believe the right things. What's going to happen when there is no Paul? Now, of course, a Catholic would argue, well, what happened is we got that doctrine a little bit more streamlined, and we got everybody on the right page, and we got rid of a bunch of heretics, and we burned a few, and we staked another, and we got it to where there's no more heresies.
Gerrit A Protestant would argue, well, Paul was a true Christian, and there were always people who had the right faith in Jesus. It had nothing to do with popes, and nothing to do with bishops, and nothing with anything. It was just that there were always people who had proper faith, and because they had proper faith, they were the Church of God. So there was never an apostasy away from the Church Jesus set up, because the Church Jesus set up was just, do you believe? Those are wildly varying arguments, obviously. And yet in both cases, they don't take into account what Paul is clearly laboring under already. And not just Paul, James in the Bible as well. The Epistle of James is not everybody's doing great. You guys are killing it. This is amazing with how well you're living Christianity. Great job. The Epistle of James is you realize you have to actually do things right.
Gerrit You don't write that to someone who's doing something. You don't write to someone who is already visiting the sick and the elderly and saying, why don't you ever visit the sick and the elderly? You're saying that to them because they're not doing it. The reality is with such a rapid spread of Christianity, with no real easy way of an organized central control of the theologies, there's no correlation. There's no churchofjesuschrist.org. There's no handbook of instructions. There's no salt lake that people can go to to ask a question. And eventually, there's not even any apostles. There are men and women who are desperately trying to live the Gospel the way they think it's right. But again, all of you and I know people in our lives who are really well-meaning, who are really sincere in what they believe, and they're totally wrong.
Gerrit Sincerity in and of itself is not evidence of being right. You can be absolutely sincere and absolutely wrong. Those two things can be the same. So as we talk more about it in this podcast, we're going to talk about the unfolding doctrines that come up in the absence of these apostolic leaders in the Church. And what happens with them and how that will eventually lead to the Reformation. And that Reformation will eventually lead to the Prophet Joseph Smith having his question. Thank you so much for joining us.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

Actually, having them go on a mission has saved me so much money.

RichardBanter

Well, it's mostly 20 years of Gerrit's research while I'm eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich saying, what are we going to talk about?

RichardBanter

No one has an answer to every question, and maybe that's a fitting place to start our discussion of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, because he comes to God with a question.

GerritInsight

And they all kind of looked at me with a vacant stare, and blinked, and asked what the score in the Packers game was.

GerritBanter

But no one in their right mind knowingly believes something that they know is false.

GerritInsight

And so when did the apostasy start in Galatia? The second Paul turned around and stepped out.

RichardBanter

There is no Jesus without resurrection. What makes Jesus Jesus is resurrection.

GerritInsight

The point of worshipping gods in the ancient world was to get immediate blessings. That's why Jesus was so radical.

GerritInsight

Cletus. Everyone has always said that.

GerritBanter

Sincerity in and of itself is not evidence of being right. You can be absolutely sincere and absolutely wrong.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
While the apostles were alive, everyone in the early church believed the same things.
God would never have allowed the church Jesus set up to fall into apostasy.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Paul marveled that the Galatians had left the gospel "so soon." Even the greatest missionary couldn't stop false ideas from creeping in during his own lifetime.

"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." For Paul, there is no Jesus without the resurrection.

Many beliefs people keep after leaving the Church, like a premortal life or eternal marriage, come only from Joseph Smith. Knowing how unusual our doctrine is can deepen a testimony.

Sincerity alone isn't evidence of being right. You can be completely sincere and completely wrong.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
The audience: Gerrit's mom (and Rachel's mom)Renee is a premium member who signed up multiple times, while Richard's family asks for the free Google Drive link (3:30).
Missions as a financial planRichard is saving "tens of thousands of dollars a month" in groceries with two sons gone (1:11).
Pre-production meetingsTwenty years of Gerrit's research while Richard eats a Chick-fil-A sandwich, desperate for the Polynesian sauce (11:24).
Starting with MosesJoseph Smith and the Restoration may not reach Joseph for several months (6:06, 12:58).
Drive-by bar mitzvahRichard's mitzvah tank on Sixth Avenue, a 40-footer Gerrit wants to borrow for the weekend (18:31).
Thank you for your premium subscriptionGerrit thanks dedicated Methodist, Baptist and evangelical listeners for paying to hear themselves discussed (16:20, 22:00, 49:48).
Paul's district leader call"Yeah, yeah, no, we have 15 discussions," padding the numbers; the compliment sandwich is a paper-thin slice of bruschetta over almost an entire ham (36:19, 37:21).
Cletus has got itPaul couldn't contain the heresies, but surely the next bishop of Rome could (62:58).
Write in angry about RichardGerrit asks Becky to write in about something Richard has done instead (59:39).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
General ConferenceGeneral Conference talks that cite a scripture read in this episode.

In General Conference

Talks from the latest General Conference that cite a scripture this episode reads or names on air
October 2026 General Conference · cites 1 Corinthians 15:20–22Jesus Christ Is the Great Deliverer!Elder Kevin J. HathawayElder Hathaway testifies that Jesus Christ is the great deliverer and that the question for the faithful is not whether He will deliver, but how and when.October 2026 General Conference · cites 1 Corinthians 15:20–22Courage Born of Our Faith in Jesus ChristElder Neil L. AndersenElder Andersen welcomes President Rosemary Chibota, who joined the Church at 17 after reading a pamphlet about Joseph Smith, and teaches that spiritual courage, born of faith in Jesus Christ, has always been required of disciples, from Moroni to today.October 2026 General Conference · cites D&C 124Integrity and Virtue Lead to HappinessElder Quentin L. CookElder Cook teaches that integrity and virtue sustain disciples on the covenant path, recalling the inscription that inspired young David O.

Summaries, themes and lessons for every talk are on What Did They Say?

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Deep dives the episode points toward
Read Galatians 1 and 1 Corinthians 15 straight through, and email the show your own count of the witnesses of the resurrected Christ (47:37).
Arius, Irenaeus and the trunk-and-branch picture of heresy: how scholars of early Christianity question a single "proto-orthodoxy" (28:37).
Why Greek converts struggled with physical resurrection, and the Greek philosophers who saw the body as a prison (42:36).
What D&C 124 says about things "never revealed since the foundation of the world," and how restoration can also mean new revelation (62:58).
SOT Litner · S3E17.