The Angel Raphael and Other Ninja Turtles

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 erstwhile friend, the rock in the center of the river that will not be moved, recovering from his horrible disease that made him sound like he smoked seven or eight cigarettes at a time, as well as seven or eight packs a day. Professor Richard Gleadoon.

Richard Oh, oh, what an intro. Gerrit, hello.

Gerrit Still a little bit of raspy over there.

Richard I got a little raspy, a little Susan Estridge still in my throat here a little bit. It's a little bit of a phlegm, but I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me back for another week.

Gerrit I do appreciate it. It's not like this is like American Idol where I'm like auditioning new people to be on.

Richard I really felt like it was.

Gerrit Oh, okay. So you know what? I need you to still feel that edge. You could be replaced at any moment. Do you know how many people I know who actually have their PhD in hand? I could bring them in whatever and they could fill this, they could fill in the spot.

Richard Well, Gar, that's great. Um, it'd be a real shame.

Gerrit You seem very unconcerned.

Richard Well, the zero dollars an hour I make, I'd be tough to replace.

Gerrit It's funny that we've only put in four years into this podcast and yet still, still getting paid the same amount.

Richard I appreciate the internship that you allow me to be a part of.

Gerrit Well, that'll be worth college credit someday. Now, not for your PhD, but for some other non-accredited.

Richard I'll take something at UVU, go Wolverines, and I'll make that happen. Well, Gerrit, we do have something for the Phebe Draper mailbag. I did, a couple of people, my wife Namely, she told me that I needed to tell an additional story from the Peru trip that you surprised me with last week.

Gerrit I just hope this involves some kind of food poisoning.

Richard It does not. So, we're going to the Arequipa temple. By the way, we just talked with my son, and you were here for that, and he's doing the return missionary thing where he's not able to remember words, and he's using Spanish words all the time.

Gerrit This is the son who's in Spain. He's on the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, essentially on a better vacation than his dad will ever be on. Pretty funny. He's working hard, but they just did a video chat, and multiple times when he wanted to say what, he said Como, and Richard decided that he was gonna put a stop to that. You're not going to just start pretending you don't know English words.

Richard It's the scene from Monty Python, Search for the Holy Grill, when he tries to stop his son from singing.

Gerrit Yeah, his son keeps trying to turn it into a music, and he goes, nope, you're not gonna do a song on me. I want a certain special, nope, nope, nope. That's what it was like.

Richard Anyway, so we're getting into the taxi. We're having to break up the family, because we can't get a taxi big enough for everybody. And so I've got a couple of my kids with me, and now I don't speak Spanish. My Spanish, I mean, I've got a 13,000 day streak on Duolingo, but that doesn't mean anything. I can't speak Spanish at all. And so I say to the taxi cab driver, just because of my limited Spanish and because also he's very Catholic. I mean, there are crosses everywhere.

Gerrit There's probably like incense burning in the...

Richard There's saints, there's, yeah, I mean, it's...

Gerrit There's candles lit in the taxi.

Richard Yeah, it's very... He's very, very Catholic. And so I tell him, I say, el templo de los mormones, right? The Mormon temple.

Gerrit So you're thinking that they'll...

Richard It'll be easy. He'll know what a Mormon is. He'll know what a Mormon temple is. And so he says, mormones, like indignant, like mad at me. I'm paraphrasing. Anyone that speaks Spanish is offended by the way I'm currently speaking Spanish.

Gerrit Well, they'll let us know.

Richard They do.

Gerrit The best part about any language mistakes that we make on the podcast.

Richard English or otherwise.

Gerrit English, Spanish, German, it doesn't matter. I'm beginning to think that at least several hundred of our listeners only listen so they can email in to tell us when our pronunciation is off or when we leave something out that they want us to say. I mean, so for those of you who are fluent in Spanish, you're about to have a pretty exciting time. Go Richard.

Richard Yeah, so he says, Mormones. No es Mormones. Tu nombre es la iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los otomos dias. El templo de la iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los otomos dias.

Gerrit So he indignantly corrected you and said they're not called Mormons. Yeah, Mormons.

Richard Your name is not the Mormons. You are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I will take you to the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And like I did the entire week, lo siento. I'm very sorry.

Gerrit So President Nelson's address has swept every nation.

Richard It's sounded in every ear.

Gerrit It's visited every climb, and even Catholic taxi drivers in Lima. Or wait, no, what temple did you go to?

Richard This was in Arequipa.

Gerrit Even taxi drivers who speak no English know the right name of the church.

Richard It was very, very funny. There was one other funny thing is that as we're there, and people would ask me my name, I would introduce myself as Dirk. And then my last name was Ermano Moss. So I was Dirk Moss to everyone that.

Gerrit So you're just trying to further the three Nephite connection to the term Dirk Moss.

Richard 100%. Yeah. And Ermano Moss was here, yes.

Gerrit So we would like, anytime anyone does any charitable act privately and quietly, sign your name Dirk Moss.

Richard That's what I'm saying.

Gerrit We want this to be a worldwide flood of people doing good, kind acts.

Richard But Gerrit. No one ever get the idea who it was. There was no Dirk Moss. There had never been a Dirk Moss.

Gerrit No Dirk Moss had ever gone to Peru.

Richard So anyway, I was the only one obviously laughing at that. Our podcast isn't huge and ought to keep us so but.

Gerrit Or anywhere else.

Richard Anyway, it was very nice, very funny. Gerrit, now if I could jump into the Phebe Draper Palmer Brown mailbag, and I will be the Palmer Brown I've been dropping off and ancestors have let me know that, hey, I'm from the Palmer side, right?

Gerrit Let's return to our theme of, we have lots of listeners who want to be critical. First of all, if you want to listen to the podcast to be critical, we are giving you ammunition.

Richard Yeah, boy, this is the podcast for you. Don't listen to Follow Him. That's very well done.

Gerrit Don't listen to a podcast that has producers and or is funded. Or good. You want to listen to this podcast.

Richard You're making it seem like that's the reason it's good. No, there's more reasons than that. Anyway, the Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag. Hi, Dr. Dirkmaat and Professor LeDuc. And she spells it L-A-D-U-K-E. That, by the way, that is the way that I write it. When I go to the temple to do initiatories, because then they pronounce my name correctly, LeDuc.

Gerrit You spell your name incorrectly at the temple.

Richard Because otherwise it's Duluchi, it's Ludic, it's Laduk, but L-A-D-U-K-E and I space it. So L-A and then space in capital D-U-K-E, LeDuc. You know what? Yep, that's it.

Gerrit So they're just emphasizing the law a little bit too much?

Richard Yeah, it was just fine. How about Dirkmaat, what are they doing?

Gerrit Well, so I was gonna say there are no combination of letters in the English language, no spacing that could ever be done, no amount of repeating my last name to any temple worker anywhere that could get them to even come close to pronouncing it correctly. And I mean, every time I ever go, let's say I'm gonna go do some initiatories. Well, I already know that this is going to be the conversation. What's your name? It's brother Dirkmaat. Darkmaat, Dirkmaat. Drakmaat, Dirkmaat, Drakmaat. Drakmaat.

Richard It's Drakmaat. Drakmaat sounds like a place I'd pick up radishes in. In Greece. The only radishes.

Gerrit Yeah, I'm at the Drakmaat. Do you want any, perhaps something made out of some kind of oat cereal? Is there some muesli I could get for you at the Drakmaat? But yeah, I don't have the luxury. I'm well aware that, I mean, at this point, even if I was at a temple in the Netherlands, I believe even they would be like, what kind of a name is this? Drakmaat? Yeah, what is this, Drakmaat? It's Hennet Drakmaat? They'd get the first name right.

Richard Anyway, so this email comes to us from Brenda. I wanted to thank you both for the work that you do in creating this podcast. I was born and raised in the church. I have struggled to gain a testimony of Joseph Smith. For a long time, I ignored it because I was afraid if I went digging, I would find out that Joseph Smith was a fraud and it would turn my life upside down because it would make me question everything as an active, happy member of the church. More and more, I was feeling like I really needed to find out. And so I started studying. I read Saints Volume 1 and it didn't really help, so I put it off to the side again. Then my friends, Nicky and James, told me about your podcast. I started listening and with the context you give, it made me understand things so much more. It didn't take long for me to realize that it was not out of the realm of possibility for Joseph Smith to be a prophet and for him to have received and translated the gold plates. We visited some church history sites this past summer, and it gave even more fuel to that beginning flame.

Richard This past Sunday at the Worldwide Relief Society broadcast and testimony meeting, when I was bearing my testimony, I felt for the first time that I could testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It was an amazing moment for me. Thank you so much for putting the information out there in a humorous, simple way. We're often, simple is our, yeah, that's our work.

Gerrit That's our tagline.

Richard That's right.

Gerrit Maybe not very funny, but they certainly are simple-minded.

Richard Very simple. You are making a difference, sincerely. Brenda, PS Richard, if you ever want to visit your Mission Stomping Grounds, we would be happy to host you. We are in Menifee, California. Menifee Steak, I was there for nine and a half months.

Gerrit Well, you know it well.

Richard I know it very well. Sun City, California, it was a retirement community. We would regularly have dinner at 3.30 and couldn't track after seven, but they were up to get their newspaper at 3.30 in the morning. Anyway, love Menifee. Brenda, thank you so much for the wonderful-

Gerrit Well, what an awesome, I mean, first of all, Brenda, thank you for sharing your testimony with us. I mean, the fact that you put so much time and effort into trying to believe, man, I wish everybody would do that. Okay, so I have some questions and I'm just not so sure. I don't know if I believe, but I love how, first of all, you were hesitant because you cared about your testimony. We shouldn't be desperate to run into the garbage water of antagonism that is put out by enemies of the church when we have a question. And I love that you went to, I'm gonna read the Saints line. That's a lot of work. That's not, I mean, hopefully you listen to it on tape because then it's not as much reading, but I mean, it shows that you have a desire to believe.

Gerrit And I'm, you know, we are grateful that hopefully that in some small way, the podcast did help, help you think about things in a different way. And of course that's kind of the whole point of what we do is I can't convince anyone that Joseph Smith was a prophet. Because the only way you can know that is through the Holy Spirit. But sometimes we set up barriers and roadblocks. I wish that everyone took the route that Brenda took. And that was, I really want to believe and I want to make sure I take the steps where I can believe. Rather than the other way around, I meet people all the time who do the exact opposite. I want to find out how it's not true. And surprise, surprise, when they go on the internet and ask someone why it's not true, there's a whole bunch of self-proclaimed experts who are more than willing to tell them that it's not.

Gerrit So thank you, Brenda, for sharing that. And thank you for being faithful. Thank you for persevering. We don't always get our answers right at once. We don't. Anyone who has been a member of the church, either their whole life or just last year they were baptized, every person who really believes will at some point have questions that they can't answer. And that's why it's so important that we take the time to try to nourish our testimonies the way that our prophets and apostles have told us to.

Richard Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, Brenda, thank you so much. Now, Gerrit, I believe that when we ended last time, we were in, we had just started with one of the Ninja Turtles and we were about to...

Gerrit We had teased, you know, we talked about Gabriel, who's not one of the... Right now, someone's already typing email to us. Gabriel's not one of the Ninja Turtles. I know that Gabriel isn't one of the Ninja Turtles. Yeah, he's not a rat, more of a mongoose. But we talked about, from a listener's question, about these angelic beings that had come. And a listener had asked about, you know, how do we know that Gabriel, the angel Gabriel, is Noah? And so we read the Joseph Smith document that described that. And then their further question was, you know, what do we know about Raphael? So we had to cut the podcast off at that point because we'd already been running long. And Richard began to pontificate on the red ninja turtle named Raphael.

Richard Well, like I said, Leonardo leads. Donatello does machines. Raphael is cool but crude. But Michelangelo, he's a party dude.

Gerrit Which turtle was your favorite when you were a kid?

Richard So I did, I also, I liked Michelangelo.

Gerrit Yeah, Michelangelo was my number one.

Richard I mean, he was always hitting that pizza hard.

Gerrit He was like Cowabunga. I mean, he was a surfer for a turtle, which is surprising.

Richard And growing up in rural Idaho like we did, we could relate to that.

Gerrit We were constantly surfing on canals.

Richard You worked for a pizza company.

Gerrit I did, well, I've worked for a pizza company. I mean, yeah, the Ninja Turtles were a big part of my young life. Yeah, I even had some of their toys.

Richard Oh, of course.

Gerrit I think my mom still has some of them. I think Gerrit's mom, Renee, we need to go over to her house to see if she has some Ninja Turtle toys. I guarantee she still does. She's very good at keeping the toys that were the most popular.

Richard So you're suggesting that this Raphael that we're going to be talking about today is different than either the Renaissance Painter or possibly the Ninja Turtle?

Gerrit I assume that 98% of our listening audience went directly to the Renaissance Sculptor and Painter.

Richard I don't think our audience did.

Gerrit 2% went to the Ninja Turtle, and then whatever's left of 98 plus 2 is what went to the Angel Raphael. So the question about it, it is a little bit more difficult than the Gabriel Noah one, because in that one Joseph Smith directly says, Noah is Gabriel. That's how we know. Just like Joseph directly says that Michael is Adam. Now you do have some people who try to speculate on it, because it certainly seems that the way that it is written in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 128, is that these angels are returning keys. Each of them declaring their keys. So there have been various speculations over the years, and as you know, we love speculations. That's what we do.

Gerrit But just back to D&C 128, this is from the original letter that Joseph wrote to the church and has later canonized. The voice of Michael the Archangel, the voice of Gabriel and of Raphael, and of diverse angels from Michael or Adam down to the present time, all declaring each one their dispensation, their rights, their keys, their honors, their majesty and glory, and the power of their priesthood. Giving line upon line, precept upon precept. And so at least the implication is, Raphael isn't just an angel who's like, hey, Joseph, you should go right through the trees rather than left. I mean, he's not, I guess he's not the Cheshire cat, Raphael.

Richard Where do you want to go?

Gerrit Well, I don't really know. It doesn't really matter which way you go if you don't know where you want to go. But it at least suggests that there was some kind of power authority that Raphael, just like Noah and Michael, delivered as part of the restoration. So that led, as led to different speculation, I know that Elder Bruce R. McConkie, again, very hesitatingly, he did not declare this is what it is. He suggested the possibility that since each of the other people that are mentioned are people who had a dispensation, right? So Adam starts a dispensation, Noah starts a dispensation that he suggested possibly it is Enoch because Enoch has a dispensation because they're each declaring their dispensation, their rights, their keys. That was at least the way he reasoned, but again, he was super hesitant about it.

Gerrit He was not like, you know, let me tell you it was Enoch all day long. You know, it was a speculation. Now Raphael is incredibly opaque to most Latter-day Saints, but the terminology and the name would have been far less opaque to Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith's time because there is an angel, Raphael, that is mentioned in what was Scripture in Joseph Smith's time, and that is the Apocrypha. So there's a couple of places in this non-canonical literature where there is an angel, Raphael, that's mentioned. Now it's non-canonical literature, so what I'm saying is this is not a definitive thing either, but it's at least possible that part of the reason why Joseph isn't asking the question, hey, who's that Raphael guy, is it's certainly not a, it's not a lightning bolt out of the blue the way it is to you and I.

Gerrit And so there's two non-canonical sources that discuss multiple archangels and discuss the talk about the archangel Raphael. Now, one is a little bit more problematic than the other. Both are kind of fun. Which should we start with?

Richard Fun.

Gerrit The fun one?

Richard Yeah, that one's fun.

Gerrit The fun one?

Richard Yeah, that one's fun.

Gerrit That one's longer. So in the Bible that Joseph Smith would have read his whole life, and in fact, every Christian would have read their whole life, included the books of the Apocrypha. So I know in your King James Bible today, there isn't the books of the Apocrypha. We have an entire series on this, don't we?

Richard We do.

Gerrit It's like first season, second season.

Richard Yeah, you talked about the dragon.

Gerrit Bell and the dragon. Bell and the dragon. So we discussed the Apocrypha and also Joseph Smith's decision, well, the revelation given to him, to not translate the books of the Apocrypha.

Richard Well, so, I mean, he made the decision after he got the revelation. It's like, hey.

Gerrit Yeah, well, once he gets the revelation, outside of the 116 pages, when God tells him, you better not do this, that's what he does. But, you know, D&C 3, a little bit not, you know. So, hey, can I let Martin Harris have the pages? No. But what if I really, really, really want him to have the pages? No. So truthfully, what if he really got the pages? You know, so there's a little bit of, but Joseph doesn't seem to push the Lord on things like that, except for there is one other time that Joseph pushes the Lord on that. Joseph is desperate to know all throughout his life on the Second Coming. When the Second Coming is. And he's asking and asking and asking, and eventually the Lord says, look, if you were to live until you were, you know, 82 years old, that, you know, that should suffice to you. The son of a coming and the son of a man won't be before that, but doesn't tell him when. But Joseph really wants to know. That's a pretty good thing to just think about a little bit here.

Gerrit The Prophet Joseph Smith, who saw the celestial kingdom in vision on at least two occasions, but actually more occasions, who knows more about the gospel, the keys, the restoration and Jesus than literally anyone who has lived in our dispensation, who communes with God on the regular, he is desperate to know when the Second Coming is actually going to happen and God won't tell him. So probably the guy with the YouTube channel who's pointing out what cities the eclipse is passing over doesn't also know that. I mean, I know that everybody wants to, because we believe in the Second Coming, we all want to get hyped up about stuff like that, but that's not how God gives his knowledge.

Gerrit He doesn't give it to people who did the math and added up the different number of horns on the things and the feathers and then figured out exactly what year it was. God has prophets. And so Joseph has that experience of asking and asking and asking, and then he's going to stop. And so my point in bringing that up is that for Latter-day Saints, I would guess the vast majority of Latter-day Saints have never read the books of the Apocrypha. That would have been the exact opposite in Joseph Smith's day, because although Martin Luther, when he first translated the Bible into German, because the Bible had only been in Latin up to that point, the Catholic Bible had been in Latin, although Martin Luther put question marks around the Apocrypha, because he knew they weren't part of the original Hebrew Bible, he didn't remove them from the Bible.

Gerrit So when Joseph is reading the Bible as a kid, the books of the Apocrypha are in the Bible the same way that the Book of Ruth is in the Bible to you today. It was something that was part of it and it was taught from it. Now, as Protestants became more and more and more anti-Catholic, which is hard to believe because they started anti-Catholic, but as the fervor, especially around the Second Great Awakening, that wave begins to crest, because certain Catholic doctrines were best defended by the books of the Apocrypha, there was a huge movement among Protestants to remove the books of the Apocrypha from the Bible. And as I said, we have a whole, is it two episodes on this? Three? I don't know.

Richard I think two at least.

Gerrit Yeah. You can go back and find them. They're called, you know, funny enough, Apocrypha. And we go into detail on that. But as to the question about Raphael, Raphael as the name of an angel would not have been completely unfamiliar to Joseph Smith. Because the Bible he would have been reading as a kid, the King James Bible, had a translation of the Apocrypha in it as part of the Bible. And it's not until later, in fact, it's contemporary to Joseph Smith, in the late 1820s, that Protestants start removing the Apocrypha books from the King James Bible. Well, one of those books that they removed is the Book of Tobit. You're probably very familiar with Tobit, Richard?

Richard Oh, yes. Yes, it's very good. I read it right after the Lord of the Rings series.

Gerrit No, not The Hobbit. Yeah, and really The Hobbit is kind of a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, isn't it? It is, yeah.

Richard But this was still also written by JRR. Tolkien, though, was it not?

Gerrit No, it was not. In fact, it's not entirely certain when it was written, but...

Richard Who do they claim wrote it?

Gerrit Well, Tobit. The words of the... I mean, I don't know what they called the Book of Tobit.

Richard Well, it's just like, you know, Tobit was written by...

Gerrit My name's Gary, but I'm going to call this the Book of Tobit.

Richard I mean... So how did Tobit know Jesus? How did he...

Gerrit Well, this is from the Apocrypha.

Richard Yeah, I know, but who... Oh, I see, yes.

Gerrit Yeah, so this is...

Richard This is before Jesus.

Gerrit Yes. So... That went very poorly for me, by the way. Yeah, well, I mean, it's not like we have production meetings.

Richard You didn't mention the Book of Tobit before.

Gerrit I didn't.

Richard I asked very stupid questions.

Gerrit Our production meeting today consisted of Becky making us some awesome Navajo tacos.

Richard Talking to Andrew.

Gerrit Yeah, well, Richard actually made the scones for the Navajo tacos.

Richard Well, Passover's coming up, and I felt it was an appropriate meal for...

Gerrit Tacos?

Richard Well, the unleavened part of the... . of the Navajo breading part.

Gerrit I see. You're just prepping.

Richard Yes, it's coming.

Gerrit I'm surprised we didn't have matzah soup. But... The Book of Tobit is of a family, centered around a family from the diaspora, from the 10 tribes that were taken away into Assyria. And so, in particular, they are from Naphtali.

Richard Oh, there we go.

Gerrit Yeah. Okay. And Tobit is the father involved in this book, but he is... The primary character in the book is actually his son. And he's going to be the person that you hear about most, but his son's Tobias.

Richard Oh, I assumed.

Gerrit Which is where the name Tobias gets... I mean, you've probably heard people name Tobias. Because this used to be part of the Every English Speaking Bible. It's still in the Catholic Bible. Sure. Tobit's had a rough time of things. Things haven't worked out. The Book of Tobit really focuses on almsgiving and doing charitable work for the poor. Essentially, Tobit has given away all of his property and things have gone poorly for him to the point where he has almost no money. It's a classic Tobit movement. Well, if you're Tobit, what are you going to do? You're giving things away. Your name's Tobit.

Richard You've got to get friends somehow.

Gerrit Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. So there's a place in the book, it's in the second chapter, where Tobit is going to have a horrible misfortune. And I knew not that there were sparrows in the wall. The wall of my courtyard being polluted and my face was uncovered. And I knew not there were sparrows in the wall and mine eyes being open, these sparrows muted warm dung into mine eyes. And a whiteness came into my eyes and I went to the physicians, but they helped me not. Moreover, Achiacharus did nourish me until I went to Olemius.

Richard Well, the whiteness is the bird poop, obviously.

Gerrit Well, it makes him go blind.

Richard Well, that's gonna happen.

Gerrit I mean, both of his eyes at the same time?

Richard Oh, you've got a very precise...

Gerrit Sparrow? Yeah, I mean, he probably would have not been as impressed by that part of the Sermon on the Mount.

Richard No, no, if a sparrow falls, I wish a sparrow would fall.

Gerrit Oh, oh, really? Let's not talk about sparrows and things falling. So he is very much, I mean, he's blinded. And look, blindness is a very big deal in the ancient world, because at that point, you no longer have the ability to work. There's not accessibility for people in the ancient world. So much of his money is gone. He's given away a bunch of his money. And then the Book of Tobit kind of gives us a little bit of a third person omniscience, where Tobit and his wife, they pray, and they ask God to bless them and to help them. You know, he actually prays for death. He says, Take me out of the earth that I may hear no more reproach. Thou knowest, Lord, that I am pure from all sin with men, and that I never polluted my name, nor the name of my father, in the land of my captivity. Oh, sorry, that's actually not him.

Gerrit That's another character who's making that quote. But also, I'll save that one. I'll save that one for a minute. Chapter three of Tobit says, And Raphael was sent to heal them both. Because there was a woman who was suffering as well. That was the woman I was quoting. To scale away the whiteness of Tobit's eyes, and to give Sarah the daughter of Raguel for a wife to Tobias, the son of Tobit. So, the story is going to go on, that it's surrounding this. Tobit doesn't have any money, but he remembers that he'd left ten talons of silver in the city of Ragis, part of this Assyrian Empire, and that he has family members that are there, and so he wants his son Tobias to go to Ragis and get his silver back for him. But he doesn't want Tobias to go alone. Tobias is their only child, and so already things have gone really, really, really bad.

Gerrit You're blind. We don't have any other children that are left, and so we need Tobias to come back, but we also need that money. Interesting to some of the phraseologies here, right? You can kind of get this. This is not, you know, this is roughly contemporary to the time period of when Nephi would have been writing. At least that's the time period. Notice the phraseology here when he says, I need you to go to Rages. Fear not, my son, that we are made poor, for thou hast much wealth if thou fear God, and depart from all sin, and do which is pleasing in his sight. Tobias then answered and said, Father, I will do all things which thou hast commanded me.

Richard How about that? It'll go and do.

Gerrit But how can I receive the money, seeing I know I'm not? So his dad's like, hey, I need you to travel further into the Assyrian Empire, go to the city of Rages, find our relative who I left all this silver with, and just say, hey, I need all that money back, my dad's blind. I mean, that's basically, and so he tells Tobias, Tobit tells Tobias, go to the market, go find somebody that can travel with you. And he went to seek a man and he found Raphael that was an angel, but he knew him not. So Raphael is appearing as a young man to them, but is in fact an angel. So they don't know that he's an angel. In fact, he's even going to have a separate name. He's going to give them a different name. Tobias tells him, hey, I need to go. And Raphael says, well, I'm actually from your same tribal lineage.

Gerrit He tells him his name is Azarias. I am Azarias, the son of Ananias, the great of thy brethren. And so he goes and meets Tobit and Tobit's like, okay, this sounds great because now he's not just traveling with a stranger. He's traveling with a family member, you know, an extended family member. And so they begin to travel. Well, they're going there. This relative that has this money, his name is Raguel. And Raguel has a daughter and things are, you know, if you thought the sparrow was a little much for the blindness, well, Raguel's daughter has, she's been unlucky in love, let's say. He's tried to marry her off, but apparently there's an evil demon that prevents her from ever consummating the marriage.

Gerrit So she's actually been married seven times, seven times. All seven times, the night of the wedding, the man drops dead. At this point, you would probably think this could be, this is a dateline, right? I mean, she's married, I mean, it's essentially the so I married the axer.

Richard They keep going on these cruises and the husband comes up missing.

Gerrit The first time your husband drops dead on your wedding night, that's very unfortunate. The second time, huh. The third time, you're going to jail.

Richard The seventh time.

Gerrit Yeah, the seventh time, which almost makes me wonder, were the Sadducees who were quoting, you know, to Jesus to tempt him about marriage, right? Were they thinking of Tobit when they said this? Because this would have been in circulation at the time. When they said, you know, she married a brother, he died, they didn't have any children, married another brother, he died, you know, and all seven of them were married to her. I wonder if, were they making an opaque reference to Tobit as the story of this woman who was married to seven different men and had children of none of them.

Richard My understanding is 100% yes, that's what they were referencing. My study of it.

Gerrit Your study of it. Has suggested that is how many years have you studied Tobit? Years.

Richard Just based on the questions that I've asked, it's obvious. Well, a lot of times. Who wrote Tobit? Well, Tobit did, Richard.

Gerrit So don't worry, Azariahs slash Raphael, who's still traveling incognito as an angel, you know, starts talking up to, tells Tobias, hey, when we get there, you know, Raguel has a daughter who you should be married to because, you know, you're in the same clan, you're in the same tribe. And, you know, word has traveled, however, to Tobias that anyone who marries her is going to die. Raphael is like, nope, don't worry about it. We're going to, we have a way to fix that. They are going to, they catch a fish, and it must have been a gigantic fish because this is how it is described. They went on their journey and they came down in the evening to the River Tigris. So it kind of gives you an idea of where they're at in the Assyrian Empire. And they lodge there. And when the young man went down to wash himself, so he's going to go bathe in the river, a fish leaped up out of the river and would have devoured him.

Gerrit That, I mean, that's not a small fish, right? And the angel said to him, take the fish. And the young man laid hold of the fish and drew it to the land. And the angel said, open the fish and take the heart and the liver and the gall and put them up safely. And so the young man did as the angel commanded him. And when they'd roasted the fish and ate it, they both went on their way. So again here, Tobias, not only did he say to his father, essentially, I will go and do, this is a very weird request. Hey, why don't you cut out the liver and the heart and the gall and just hold on to that? So he asked the question, why did we take these things, the heart, the liver, and the gall? And he explains that they're going to burn the heart and the liver and the gall as an incense and it will drive away this evil spirit that is killing all of the people that marry this woman.

Gerrit So they go there, they meet, and it becomes, they fall in love. I mean, they both want to marry one another, both Sarah and Tobias are worried that, well, if we do, you're going to die. In fact, here's another phrase that might sound familiar to you. Raguel leaped up, so again, this is the father who has the daughter, whose husbands die. He leaped up and kissed him and wept and blessed him and said to him, thou art the son of an honest and a good man, because they found out who his dad was, that his dad was Tobit. But when he heard that Tobit was blind, he was sorrowful and he wept. And likewise, Edna his wife and Sarah his daughter wept. Moreover, they entertained them cheerfully. And after they had killed the ram of the flock, they set the store of meat on the table, then said Tobias to Raphael, because again, Raphael is in disguise. Brother Azariah, speak those things of which thou didst talk to on the way and let this business be dispatched.

Gerrit So he communicated the matter with Raguel. So here Azariah is like, Hey, we think we have a way for your daughter Sarah to marry Tobias here without it being a problem. I should also say another kind of an interesting parallel is that when Tobias goes away, Tobit's wife is pretty upset about it. She said, this is our only son, and you're sending him off with some stranger just to try to get us money? I mean, we should love our son more than we love money. So it's actually kind of a, it's a pretty cool quote that she gives. But at any rate, so they fall in love, they get married, or they go to get married, and this is exactly what he does.

Gerrit He does what Asariah's horse Raphael told them to do. But this is the other verse that I think is kind of interesting from the King James, right? So he communicated the matter with Raguel, and Raguel said to Tobias, eat, drink and make merry. So that phrase from, eat, drink and be merry. For it was me that we should marry my daughter, nevertheless I will declare unto you the truth. I have given my daughter in marriage to seven men, who died the night they came in unto her. Nevertheless, for the present, be merry. Look, we can celebrate right now, just so you know the track record is not very good. So, as this marriage unfolds, Raguel, Sarah's dad, he is so certain, I mean, this is his eighth time, okay? So, he actually has his servants go dig a grave that night. So, they have the marriage ceremony, everything's great, and they go into the bridal chamber, and Raguel's like, all right, let's go dig a grave.

Richard It's like the scene from The Office in the Schrute family, when they do their marriage ceremony, they do it while the husband and the bride and groom are standing in their own graves.

Gerrit Right, yeah, very similar. So yeah, I mean, I don't know if the office creators are big readers of Tobit.

Richard Oh, you can see it. You can see it.

Gerrit It's everything's laced.

Richard It's just throughout, yeah.

Gerrit It's everything's laced.

Richard It's just throughout, yeah.

Gerrit It's kind of like a beautiful mind with the strings all heading to it. So he does, he has him, he went and made a grave and said, I fear lest he also be dead. But he did as Raphael told him to do. They burned the fish liver. They create this incense and it drives the evil spirit away. And then it says that Raphael chased the evil spirit, apparently that night, to the uppermost parts of Egypt and then bound him hand in foot.

Richard So there's an artist version of that where Raphael binds the demon. It's by, I assume it's Jan Steen, but I assume maybe it's Jan Steen from the 1660s. I have the link to the image here. Yes, so you can see. It's not exactly how you describe it, but Raphael's really given it to the demon.

Gerrit I mean, because he's an angel, but again, they still think he's just a person.

Richard So in this one, though, Raphael has got the full wings going.

Gerrit Well, because as.

Richard Because they want you to know.

Gerrit As he's acting in an angel capacity. That's correct. So Raphael is going to go back with Tobias, and he's actually going to heal Tobit. So now Tobit's no longer blind. Of course, they're all excited that Tobias left, you know, single and came back married, and then he also brings back the silver that he's supposed to bring back. Everything is great. And finally, in the chapter 12 of Tobit, Raphael is going to, he's going to, he's going to reveal himself. Now therefore, when thou didst pray, and Sarah thy daughter-in-law, I did bring the remembrance of your prayers before the Holy One. And when thou didst bury the dead, I was with thee likewise. And when thou didst not delay to rise up and to leave thy dinner and to go and cover the dead, thy good deed was not hid from me. But I was with thee. And now God has sent me to heal thee and Sarah thy daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.

Gerrit And so they're all shocked that this young man who they thought... So Raphael is almost always depicted as being this young man because that's how he's described. Is he young in the painting? But also the wings, you know.

Richard The wings and he's... Looks like he's stabbing a demon.

Gerrit Yeah, well, he bound him and took him to Egypt. Well, he already ran to Egypt. He bound him there. He goes on, you know, after he tells him that, he says, They were both troubled and fell on their faces, for they feared. But he said, Fear not, for it shall go well with you. Praise God, therefore. And so Tobit, you know, is healed. He has the money back that he was supposed to have. And really a big portion of the Book of Tobit is talking about how you need to give your substance away. Even when he's telling Tobias, he tells Tobias, anything you have, you need to give to the poor. You need to always, always do alms, essentially. So it's a very, you know, he's going to prophesy a little bit, Tobit is, about how Jerusalem is eventually going to be restored. So you can see why there's a lot of aspects of this that would appeal to Christians reading about it. It's eventually going to be removed from Protestant Bibles. It's still in the Catholic Bible.

Gerrit But there's no doubt that Joseph Smith would have read that.

Richard But it doesn't really say who that...

Gerrit No, it doesn't. So it gives us an eye... The Book of Tobit gives us a further understanding of what the Christian world would have thought when they read the word Raphael in Joseph's letter. But it's not canonical and it's not definitive and it certainly doesn't say who he is. Now, the other apocryphal book, it's not part of the Apocrypha, but it's another book written at roughly the same time that wasn't a part of the Apocrypha, is the Book of Enoch. This is another book that's a Jewish apocalyptic book that's actually, it's believed it was revered by the Essenes who were living in the Dead Sea community at Qumran, right? So Raphael factors prominently in that as well. This is a, you know, the Book of Enoch is a very interesting book for whatever reason the people who decided to make the movie about Noah with Russell Crowe, when was that?

Gerrit Like 10 years ago or so? Yeah, something like that. Probably one of the worst religious movies I've ever seen in my life.

Richard I never saw it.

Gerrit Wow, so you haven't seen it.

Richard Well, I heard a lot of reviews like what you said, and I believe I just started working on my dissertation 11 years ago.

Gerrit Right, and so you should be done sometime around 2057. But they use the Book of Enoch, this apocryphal book, because it talks about, you know, the angels as being these different creatures and that they are, you know, the watchers. And in that book...

Richard By the way, 2014, you were spot on. How about that? Ten years ago.

Gerrit How about that? You know, a broken clock's right, you know, twice a day. There are a whole bunch of angels that are referenced as these angels are actually causing the problems in the Book of Enoch, right? So the angels begin to, you know, fraternize with the mortals. And so that actually causes the problems that they have in the Book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch is in circulation at the time the New Testament is written. It's not part of the books that are part of the books of the Apocrypha, but there is one place that the New Testament prophets appear to be quoting the Book of Enoch, and that is in the Book of Jude. I'm guessing you're a Jude aficionado?

Richard Yes, love the Book of Jude. Love the song, love the book, love everything about it.

Gerrit Hey Jude, you're such a short book. I mean, it is, it's just one chapter. You never have to worry about how many chapters of Jude are we going to read. But Jude's interesting because it talks about Michael the Archangel in it, right? So Michael factors prominently, the end times factor prominently in it, and it, well let me just read part of Jude to you, and you'll understand why there's this scholarly belief there connected. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these sayings, saying, so he said, Enoch prophesied of these sayings, saying, The old Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and all of their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Gerrit Boy, how many times can Jude get the word ungodly into one verse, right? So let me just read that again. Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and all of their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. That's from the Book of Jude in the New Testament. If you go to the Book of Enoch, in Chapter 1, this is what it says in the Book of Enoch. And behold, he cometh with ten thousand of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all and to destroy all the ungodly. And to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness, which they have ungodly committed and all of the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Now, those aren't just paraphrasing one another, right?

Gerrit I mean, it's clear that the author of Jude is clearly quoting from this Apocryphal Book of Enoch in this. Now, Raphael is certainly not the main character of this the way that he is in the Book of Tobit. Is this the most boring thing we've ever done?

Richard Oh no, we've done way more boring stuff. That doesn't say that this isn't boring, but I'm just saying that we've done way more boring stuff.

Gerrit On a scale of boringness, how boring is this?

Richard Well, you just got Raphael was binding, going to Egypt, grabbing up a demon, binding it up in the photograph.

Gerrit Well, you know what? It is a miracle.

Richard In the photograph, they have kind of, looks like it's over like almost a grill, like Raphael's going to roast up the demon, and Tobias is just so excited to not be dead with, you know.

Gerrit And Tobit can see.

Richard Yeah. Well, Tobit's not actually in the image.

Gerrit Well, anyway, Raphael is one of the angels that's mentioned. So Michael, the archangel, has already mentioned, but it talks about how some of these angels, in the Book of Enoch, talks about how some of these angels led astray the children of men. In chapter 9, it says, And then Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel looked down from heaven and saw much blood being shed upon the earth and all the lawlessness being wrought on the earth. And they said to one another, The earth was made without inhabitants, cries the voice of their cryings up to the gates of heaven. And now to you, the holy ones of heaven, the souls of men make their suit, saying, Bring our case before the Most High. And they said to the Lord of ages, Lord of lords, God of God, King of kings, God of ages, the throne of thy glory standeth unto all generations of the ages, and thy name holy and glorious and blessed be upon all ages. So they are recognizing this great sin.

Gerrit Thou seest what Azazel, I can't pronounce it, Azazel, Azazel. Not to be confused with Azariah, which was Raphael's good name as a fake mortal.

Richard Often confused.

Gerrit Often confused, but Azazel.

Richard Look, who among us has not confused those two as they're talking about?

Gerrit Every time I say the word Azazel though, I want to say Azrael from the Smurfs. Do you know who Azrael is?

Richard Oh, of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Gerrit The cat that is trying to eat the Smurfs.

Richard Or Gargamel. Gargamel is the bad guy.

Gerrit But his cat is named.

Richard Azrael.

Gerrit Azrael.

Richard Azrael.

Gerrit Azrael.

Richard I believe that's right.

Gerrit Yeah. Which is not the same as Azazel.

Richard I believe that's right.

Gerrit Yeah. Which is not the same as Azazel.

Richard But do you think that the makers of the Smurfs also read the Book of Enoch?

Gerrit I'm sure they read the Book of Tobit. Have they read the Book of Enoch? That could be a bridge to far.

Richard But the Book of Enoch, just to confirm, it's Apocrypha of the Apocrypha. It's OLI. It's outside looking in.

Gerrit It is a book that is in circulation, clearly being quoted by Jude in the New Testament. It's a book that's in circulation at the time of Jesus. I mean, again, most scholars believe written sometime around 300 BC. Of course, if Enoch wrote it, it's much older than that, right? But that's what a scholar would say. It's not canonical, and it wasn't part of the Apocryphal books that were included in the Jewish canonical writings at the time. So it wasn't part of the Hebrew Bible, and it wasn't part of the books that made up the Apocrypha. So it doesn't make its way into the Septuagint, but it is in circulation. So it's outside looking in. So Raphael is one of the angels that's mentioned there. And then he does, you know, the Lord says to Raphael, bind Azazel hand and foot. So again, that's the same thing that Raphael did in Tobit, right?

Gerrit Bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the darkness and make an opening in the desert, which is due to El, and cast him therein, and place upon him rough and jagged rocks and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever and cover his face that he may not see light. And on the day of the great judgment, he shall be cast into the fire and heal the earth which the angels have corrupted. So the reason why it was so frustrating to watch the movie Noah because the person doing it decided that they would read the Book of the Watchers, part of the Book of Enoch, and then make the movie on that instead of, I don't know, Genesis. We have this giant canonical book in front of us that talks all about Noah and the ark. You know what? Let's go to the non-canonical one that people don't know that has a much more screwed up story in it.

Richard With rock monsters.

Gerrit With rock monsters. Well, so in that argument of Enoch, it's evil angels that have corrupted all the children of men. And that's why the good angels, like Raphael, have to bind the bad angels as a zeal, hand and foot, and keep them from polluting the world anymore because of wickedness. And of course, this judgment is going to have to extend where all the wicked are going to be destroyed. And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Again, this is called the Book of the Watchers. Uriel, one of the holy angels who is over the world and Tartarus. Raphael, one of the holy angels who is over the spirits of men. Raguel, just very similar to what we had in the Book of Tobit, but as a man, now an angel, one of the holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of luminaries.

Gerrit Michael, one of the holy angels who is set over that part, best part of mankind and over chaos. Saraqael, one of the holy angels who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit. Gabriel, one of the holy angels who is over paradise and the serpents and the cherubim. And Remiel, one of the holy angels whom God set over those who rise. So, Raphael, his name implies healing, the healing of God. And Tobit has that capacity. He's going to heal Tobit miraculously. Now, all this is to say, we don't really know what Joseph Smith sought of Raphael. I mean, this is a little bit too long to go. But I mean, Joseph doesn't himself elaborate on who he thinks or who Raphael, since it sounds like he appeared to him, who that was. In much the same way, we don't actually know, you know, who the Elias is that appears to Joseph, right?

Gerrit So we, you know, Moses, Elijah and Elias appear, and they all give keys, but Joseph doesn't specify who that is that gave those keys. But the Book of Tobit, certainly, and to a lesser extent, the Book of Enoch, would have been in circulation and would have been much more familiar to Joseph than they were to us, because at least the Book of Tobit would have been in the very Bible he was using to translate the translation of the Bible. Now he doesn't translate the Apocryphal books, but he would have been familiar with them. I know that that's a long way to run. I guess to say we don't really know, but I wanted you to know what we do know about Raphael. And of course, Raphael is considered a holy angel by Catholics worldwide. In fact, there are actually even a few, very few Christian groups who accept the Book of Enoch as scripture, Ethiopian churches that do, but very, very few.

Gerrit And then most Protestants reject the Apocrypha taking the line of Martin Luther who said, you know, might be some good stuff in there, but it's not scripture because it's not part of the Hebrew Bible. For us, the whole point of this conversation is to highlight what President Nelson had talked about. It may not seem like that. It may seem like... It sure doesn't. It may seem like what we were talking about was whether or not the demon's gonna get another person. Is he gonna get his eighth man? But keys and priesthood authority are central to the restoration of the gospel. What sets Latter-day Saints apart, as President Nelson said in the last conference, is priesthood, keys and authority. And it's not just that we think that authority matters, which is already a gigantic thing, because in the Protestant world, there are no ordinances that are essential for salvation.

Gerrit And since there's no ordinances that are essential for salvation, arguing about whether or not someone has the authority to do it seems like arguing about whether or not your car has tires when the car is actually a pumpkin. What difference does it make if the car has tires, if it's not even a car? What difference does it make if someone has proper authority to baptize or to perform a temple ceremony, if in fact you don't believe any of those ordinances are efficacious or that any of those ordinances are required for salvation or exaltation? And so the question our listener had about who these different angels were is a pretty spot on question because they're responding to President Nelson repeatedly reminding the saints that we are not just some social club.

Gerrit This isn't just a political party. This isn't just a social club that you hang out with. This isn't just a group of friends that get together. This isn't some man-made organization that just decides what its doctrines are going to be. It's the kingdom of God on earth. And we can only go as far as revelation has been given to our prophets to know where we are to go next. But our current prophet has stressed over and over again, temple covenants, the ceiling ordinances are essential to exaltation. And that we need to bind ourselves to those temples. Maybe we don't know who Raphael was, but whether we know who Raphael was or not, we know that the prophet Joseph Smith had multiple angelic visitors come to him.

Gerrit And in defiance of every Christian understanding that there is, those resurrected beings. They give keys to Joseph, Peter, James and John. And you wouldn't think it, but because there's a lot of easier ways if you're going to attack the church, right? Primarily you just say, well, what about polygamy? But actually there's a substantial amount of Christian antagonistic literature that focuses on the fact that Latter-day Saints believe that angels were men who were then resurrected, who then come and deliver their keys in the resurrected flesh to Joseph Smith. In fact, I was reading one, I mean, because you know, that's what you do on your off time is just read, you know, what's this anti-Mormon have to say?

Gerrit And they were quoting the story of Lazarus in the Bible to say, we know that Joseph's lying when he says that, you know, Moroni was a resurrected being who came to visit him because God said in the story of Lazarus in the Bible, the rich man in Lazarus, that there's a gulf affixed and you can't ever cross it. And so if someone who is dead came back to Joseph Smith, that would be violating what Jesus said. That was their, that was their argument. I'm not saying it was a good argument. I'm saying this was the argument they were made as they were trying to say that. And then they also said, by the way, there are no such thing as keys. Mormons invented that, right? Aside from the other places where they're mentioned in scripture, but we invented it. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. And hopefully everyone has experienced a spiritual bump from conference and you can keep that going in your life. Just a little bit better today than you were yesterday and hopefully a little bit better tomorrow than we are today.

Gerrit And just look forward with a brightness of hope because we are on the Lord's side.

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.

The Angel Raphael and Other Ninja Turtles

Corrected by a taxi driver

Russell M. Nelson, on using the Church's correct name

Saints, Volume 1

D&C 128:21

Bruce R. McConkie, suggestion that Raphael may be Enoch (source not named on air)

D&C 91

D&C 130:14-17

Book of Tobit 2:10 (King James Apocrypha)

Book of Tobit 3:17

Book of Tobit 4:21 and 5:1

Book of Tobit 5:4 and 5:12

Matthew 22:23-28

Book of Tobit 6:2-5

Book of Tobit 7:10-11

Book of Tobit 8:3

Jan Steen painting of Raphael binding the demon, 1660s

Book of Tobit 12:15

Jude 1:14-15

1 Enoch 1:9

1 Enoch 9:1

1 Enoch 10:4

1 Enoch 20 (Book of the Watchers)

D&C 110

Luke 16:26

What did the Catholic taxi driver in Arequipa correct Richard about?

Percentages said on air

Putting numbers to words

What this episode talks about more than usual

Names said most

Signature words