It’s fun to be reading the scriptures and suddenly have something entirely new jump out at you, like it’s never been there before. We hope we find some of those surprises today.

You can also find it on any of these platforms by searching for Meridian Magazine-Come Follow Me.

Maurine and Scot Proctor have taught Book of Mormon for many years in Institute and have spent extensive time in the Arabian peninsula, following Lehi’s trail. They are the creators of a foundation that has sponsored a multi-year archaeological study of the best candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful in Oman. They have written a book on the Book of Mormon, as well as immersed themselves in the culture, history, and geography. of the scripture.

Join our study group and let’s delve into the scriptures in a way that is inspiring, expanding and joyful.

Maurine

Do you know how many times the word “plan” shows up in the Book of Mormon? 66 times! How about in the Old Testament—only three times, and none of these is talking about the plan of salvation. The New Testament has no mention of “plan” at all.

Scot

Hello, we are Scot and Maurine Proctor and this is Meridian Magazine’s Come Follow Me podcast where today we are talking about 2 Nephi 6-10, called “O How Great the Plan of Our God”. We are so happy to be sharing a scripture journey together with you. We’re just pleased you’d spend this time with us. We’re getting to be friends with you.

Maurine

It’s fun to be reading the scriptures and suddenly have something entirely new jump out at you, like it’s never been there before. We hope we find some of those surprises today. You can find the transcripts to the podcasts at latterdaysaintmag.com/podcast. That’s latterdaysaintmag.com/podcast. A new podcast comes out every Friday for the Come Follow Me lessons that begin the following Monday.  

Scot

Thank you, by the way, to those who jumped in and became paid subscribers to Meridian.  We so appreciate your support. These are the last few days of our voluntary subscription drive—you can help by going to latterdaysaintmag.com/subscribe that’s latterdaysaintmag.com/subscribe 

Just one quick note on geography before we jump into the lesson. Of course, as we began 2 Nephi, Lehi’s family had arrived on the west shores of the Promised Land. This means they came across the Pacific Ocean. They called that first place they lived, the Land of their First Inheritance. After Lehi’s death, and because of Laman and Lemuel’s intent to murder Nephi, he took those who would go with him and traveled inland to a new home that they called the Land of Nephi. The Land of Nephi is in the southern part of most of the action of the Book of Mormon.  We’ll try to give you little tips like this as we go along through the book, so that you understand a little something about the geography from the text of the Book.

Maurine

So back to the plan. Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “One of the great blessings flowing from…latter-day revelations is the crucial, doctrinal framework known as the marvelous plan of salvation, the plan of happiness, or the plan of mercy.” Whatever you call it, “it represents the ‘great plan of the Eternal God’ without which mankind would unavoidably perish.”

Scot

In 2 Nephi 9, where we are going to spend all of our time today, Jacob said “O How Great the Plan of our God” (2 Nephi 9:13).  Think that without the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, we would not have the precious perspective that there is a plan, backed with goodness and intention and joy. 

Maurine

To understand just how much it means to know, from the restored gospel, that there is a plan, I just think of some books I have read, whose authors claim that life is pointless, random, chaotic, meaningless suffering. That one piece of information—that there is a plan transforms everything. 

Scot

Elder Maxwell again said, “Most human misery represents ignorance of or noncompliance with the plan.” Mortal misery will not end without compliance to the plan. That is why, according to Elder Maxwell, “the Lord, who has freely shared this vital knowledge with us, has urged us to teach the fundamentals of this plan ‘freely’”.

Maurine

You would never want to keep such good news to yourself.  Of course, the very center of the plan is Jesus Christ, in whom there is no darkness. Elder Maxwell said, “It matters very little what people think of us, but it matters very much what we think of Him.”

Scot

Elder Maxwell said, “In His selfless plan, the Lord doeth nothing save it be for the benefit of the children of men (See 2 Ne. 26:24). He labors, lovingly and constantly as Moses and Jeremiah declared ‘for our good always’ (Deut. 6:24; see also Jer. 32:38-40)…Thus, even when we truly learn to love God, we must humbly acknowledge that He loved us first (See 1 John 4:19).” (Elder Neal A. Maxell “The Great Plan of the Eternal God”, 

Maurine

I don’t know any chapter in Holy Writ that lays out the great plan of our God better than 2 Nephi 9. We see this great contrast of misery and joy, lost and found. Designed for us was this path of taking us from spirit children of God through a developmental course to share his attributes. Elder Maxwell, “Life turns out to be just what one would expect of a deliberately constructed proving and tutoring experience which features opportunities, choices, and deprivations. Furthermore, there is no way around—the only way to go is through!” And all the time we have a longing for our heavenly home that is real. “When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.”

Scot

This plan of happiness involves being saved from two deaths. Jacob says, “O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit” (2 Nephi 9:10). “Grasp of an awful monster” is such a powerful image, and should be.

Sometimes we take for granted how hopeless our position would be without our Savior. 

Maurine

Because Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, we inherited a legacy of physical death. Of course, Adam was told that if he partook of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die in that very day, and he did! A day to the Lord is 1,000 years, and, though the Bible tells us that Adam died at the age of 930, Joseph Smith tells us in the Joseph Smith Translation paper manuscript, that he lived to be just a few days shy of 1,000 years.

Scot

As Adam and Eve’s children we inherited death. Our bodies come with limited warranties and we die. But that is not the whole story. We are saved from physical death by the Savior’s infinite atonement. All will be resurrected. It is a free gift. “O grave where is thy victory? O death where is thy sting?”

Jacob teaches 

“Save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption…The first judgment [death] [would have] remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more” (2 Nephi 9: 7).

Maurine

The way we make sense of the loss of the family and friends we have lost is to know that they will rise, a gift from the Savior. We’ll hug our daughter and parents again, enjoying their full presence.

“O the wisdom of God, his mercy and grace! For behold, if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more. And our spirits must have become like unto him and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from presence of our God, to remain with the father of lies in misery, like unto himself” (2 Nephi 9:8,9).

Scot

I know of no place else in scriptures that spells out so clearly what would happen to us if we could not be resurrected, saved from death.  Because of the Savior, the grave shall deliver up its dead.

The Savior’s atonement has also opened the door for us to be saved from spiritual death. Let’s just take a moment to define that. Spiritual death is being cut off from the presence of God. Why would that happen? Because no unclean thing can enter God’s presence, the first moment we sinned, the first inclination toward selfishness or resentment or weakness, we would have been shut out and doomed. 

Maurine

Because of our Savior’s love and grace, not only does the grave yield up the dead, but those who repent and are the spirits of the righteous can have their sins washed away in Christ’s blood. They can become clean again and enter the Lord’s presence.

“O how great the plan of our God! “For…the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous, and the grave deliver up the body of the righteous; and the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible, and immortal: (2 Nephi 9:14). The Savior is in every way, not just our hope, but our only hope.

Scot

Elder Neal A. Maxwell characterized the Savior as “utterly incomparable in what He is, what He knows, what He has accomplished, and what He has experienced…. In intelligence and performance, He far surpasses the individual and the composite capacities and achievements of all who have lived, live now, and will yet live!… He rejoices in our genuine goodness and achievement, but any assessment of where we stand in relation to Him tells us that we do not stand at all! We kneel!” (Elder Neal A. Maxwell, “O Divine Redeemer” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1981/10/o-divine-redeemer?lang=eng) 

Can we in any way be casual about this?

Maurine

We mentioned that the great plan of our Lord is about being lost and then being found, misery transformed to joy. It reminds me of a story that we wrote about many years ago when we interviewed Janeen and Terry Dennis, the parents of Josh Dennis, who as a ten-year-old, was lost in a mine for five days. I remembered when this happened because I was so heartsick. How could any little boy survive this ordeal? Was he starving, terrified in the dark? Had he fallen in a mine shaft? So let’s tell the story. 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1981/10/o-divine-redeemer?lang=eng

Scot

It was already dark when Josh Dennis’s scout troop had finished setting up camp and were squeezing their way in small laughing groups into the Hidden Treasure Mine in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains in that September, 1989. The mine was a chaotic labyrinth of shafts, chutes, pockets and tunnels on six different levels that wound some eight miles into the mountain. Since the scouts had been armed with safety rules and flashlights, the adventure loomed not as dangerous, but enticing, a scout’s dream come true.

An engaging and tow-headed ten-year-old, Josh was still a Blazer and technically too young for the camping trip, but with his scoutmaster Dad, Terry and three other boys, he trekked down the long, black mine shaft where the flashlight beams played off the rough walls and the chatter and hooting of other scouts echoed. Then, Danny, a visually-impaired scout, who was disoriented by the long shadows and dark corners could go no farther. “I’ll take you out,” Terry volunteered. “Do you want to come with us, Josh?” Josh hesitated only a moment before he shook his head, saying he’d go ahead with Cary and Tyler.

Maurine

Josh turned to tag along behind the other scouts, who, not realizing he was planning to follow, had moved fast. They were already a long way ahead, threading their way deeper into the mine without him, their voices growing dimmer. Turning back, Josh saw that his father, who had taken the flashlight, was already out of sight with Danny. Josh focused his eyes on the scouts’ flashlights ahead, and hurried to catch up. He thought if he moved quickly enough, he’d be with them soon. However, in an instant they turned a corner, and their light disappeared, leaving him utterly alone in the blackness.

He started back toward the entrance again, blindly groping his way down what he was sure was the tunnel. Without any light he was immediately disoriented. The farther he went, the more confused he became, and he stopped for a few minutes until it fully hit him. He was lost and he was worried, though not panicked. At that instant, he knew by instinct what to do. “Dear Heavenly Father,” he prayed. “Please help me to be all right.”

Scot

Josh continued feeling along the wall, yet he didn’t seem to be coming any closer to the mine entrance. No distant light offered any hope. Several times he stumbled against broken planks, and he sloshed through unseen puddles that froze his feet in the chilly air. He covered a distance and still no hint of the mine entrance. 

Finally, he took a turn that led him up a slope. How steep it was he couldn’t tell, but at last he settled on a ledge to wait for help, certain now that he couldn’t find his way out alone. Josh hunched down against the cold wall and prayed again, a little boy’s whispered words in a silent cave, “Help me.”

Maurine

Nobody seemed to know where Josh Dennis was. When Cary and Tyler emerged from the mine, he wasn’t with them, and Terry, growing more anxious with every passing moment, started asking every cluster of scouts that emerged from the cave, “Have you seen Josh?”

They said he wasn’t in the mine; they said he wasn’t in camp. Everyone was questioned and faces were blank. Terry was sure Josh was still in the mine somewhere, and so the scout leaders, some of them expert rappelers, went back into the mine searching pockets and crannies, dropping ropes down chutes and climbing down to check every forgotten hole. Josh, who apparently hadn’t gone that far into the mine, now seemed somehow to have vanished.

Scot

By two thirty a.m., the Tooele County sheriff had been notified and some search and rescue were on site. By morning, 40 people were searching for Josh, questioning and questioning again everyone there. “Who last saw Josh?” It was all to no avail. Terry hoped Josh would be found before he had to notify his wife, Janeen, but as the desperate hours passed with no sign of Josh, it was clear she had to be told.

Maurine

Long-time Tooele County resident and history buff, John Skinner, heard about the little boy that was lost in the Hidden Treasure Mine Saturday evening when he arrived back in town from Montana. Since John’s grandfather had been the superintendent of the mine, and he had grown up exploring its hidden recesses, somebody at the sheriff’s office thought he might have a map. He reported to the sheriff’s office immediately volunteering his help, but a deputy said a map had been found, and everything was under control.

“Have you found him?” John asked. They hadn’t, and he wondered how things could be possibly under control. How is it that they couldn’t need his help? He decided to go up to the mine and see for himself, but only made it up to Stockton where the road was blocked. No, they didn’t care how well he knew the mine, he wasn’t needed there.

Scot

By Sunday, the entire nation knew about the ten-year-old lost in a mine in Tooele, Utah, and the news reports were grim. Not a trace of the boy could be found. Many were becoming sure he wasn’t in the mine, but had wandered off somewhere into the gulches and draws of the surrounding mountains. Gas stations and convenience stores sprouted signs, “We love you, Josh.” The Dennis home and yard were covered with yellow ribbons. Dogs had been brought to the mine to sniff out the youngster, and people everywhere wished their imaginations didn’t travel so vividly to a black hole where a terrified little boy lay thirsty, freezing, and starving.

In priesthood that Sunday morning, John Skinner was praying for Josh, and something kept telling him that he had to get up there, that he had a key to finding the boy. He took a drive one more time to Stockton and one more time was stopped. If nobody needed John Skinner up by the mine, why did he feel so urgently that they did?

Maurine

Each hour that passed lessened Josh’s chances of being found alive, and Janeen and Terry knew agony. During the day Janeen could keep her composure, but she lay awake crying all night.

 As Sunday turned into Monday, whenever John Skinner had a moment, he prayed for Josh, and the news media reported that few people still assumed that Josh could be in the mine. Searchers had combed every inch of it, their ribbons strung back and forth in multiple colors marking the places probed. Nothing. Today the search was opened for volunteers from the community to comb the surrounding hillsides. The numbers swelled, and Janeen Dennis’ eyes anxiously scanned the hillsides looking for a flash of blue that could have been Josh’s coat. 

Scot

But John Skinner, who still pushed with the sense that he could find the boy, was not allowed near the mine. Having been turned away twice on the Stockton side of the mountain, he hatched an idea. He decided to go up the mountain on the Ophir side on a different unguarded road, and then go into the old Buckhorn mine which he knew connected with the Hidden Treasure.

Once in the Buckhorn, it took him hours to wind his way through the nooks and crannies of the abandoned mine. When he got to the place where the two holes joined, fallen timbers and rocks made it too dangerous to cross. He was foiled again.

Maurine

As John came down the mountain on Monday night, he stopped for a soda. On a napkin, he drew a picture of the mine for a waitress and pointed out the place the thought Joshua Dennis was lost. She asked what scores of his friends had asked, “You’ve got so much knowledge; why don’t they let you help them?”

John couldn’t rest. He prayed, and he felt all but compelled to try again. On Tuesday, he finally made it up to the camp, and it was his worst encounter yet. “I know this area. I know the mine,” he pled with authorities. “If you don’t leave now, we’ll escort you out,” a deputy told him.

Scot

That night the newspaper read “Hope Fading Fast for Local Boy Lost Four Days,” and Janeen and Terry, with hearts sinking, began to plan Josh’s funeral. Some were saying that shortly the entrance to the mine should be blasted shut so that nobody could ever be lost in there again, It was a bad night for John Skinner, as a discouraging cloud sunk over his spirit. He kept praying about it, and three areas of the mine kept coming to his mind. 

When the television reporters said that authorities were becoming certain that Josh Dennis must have left the mine and gotten lost or met with foul play, John shook his head. He can’t have gotten out of that mine with no lights. He’s got to be in there. Maybe if he’d been less aggressive about it, they would have let him help. But now his involvement seemed hopeless.

Maurine

John hardly slept that Tuesday night, tossing and turning and praying. When he awoke on Wednesday morning, he had an entirely new feeling. He was going to go up there, no matter what, and find Josh. As his wife later said, “Wild horses wouldn’t have stopped him.”

Wednesday was the last day of the search. A Utah Power and Light team from Carbon County, with high-powered, sophisticated experience in mine rescue, had been called onto the scene on Tuesday, and still the ten-year old had not shown up. Team member Ray Guyman had vowed, “If that boy is in there, we’ll find him.” Now, even his determination was waning as their repeated searches turned up nothing.

Scot

The UP&L team was standing by a truck, scanning a map of the mine. when John Skinner approached them, “Have you looked in the resolute stope?”
     “You sound like you know this mine,” one said.
     “I do. My grandfather used to be the superintendent here.”
     “We’ve needed you. Where have you been? Would you mind coming in with us for one last sweep before the rescue efforts wind down?”

It was 2:00 in the afternoon when Janeen, Terry, and their bishop and his wife knelt around the bed in the hotel room pleading through tears with God for Josh’s life. Janeen said, “It was a prayer with real intent. and you could feel that it connected.” At that same hour, John Skinner finally got into the mine, and while some who followed scoffed and went off different directions, Ray Guyman and Gary Christensen followed John.

Maurine

They went to the first of the three places that John had been impressed to look. Nothing. They went to the second place. Nothing again. As they went to the third spot in the mine, they were talking and calling, “Josh, Josh,” and suddenly Ray Guyman, who was deaf in one ear said, “Shh. Did you hear that?” They became still and listened. A faint cry came, “Help.”

Different colored ribbons hung everywhere, showing that the area had been checked and rechecked by scores of people. How could the little boy have been missed? But the cry came again: “Help.”

Scot

Cold chills went down John’s back. He’d always known it. The boy was alive. For five days and nights he had held on. Neither terror, nor dehydration, nor hunger had taken him. Josh had seen their light and was able to answer. They climbed up a thirty degree angle, and Gary Christensen was the first to get him, a little boy sitting on a ledge with ruffled hair and a dirty face.

He had sunken eyes from dehydration and rocks in his hands because in his dreams he was eating a hamburger and drinking Sprite, but no sight could have looked better to three rescuers than Josh Dennis. “We’ll take you out to your Mom and Dad,”

Maurine

Josh had been utterly lost. The plan was to blast the mine shut, entombing him inside. But one man, John Skinner, saved Josh because over and over again he was moved to try and get into that mine, and though he was thwarted at every turn, he could not be restrained. 

We tell you this story to make vivid our predicament and utter need for the Savior, whose gift to us is unparalleled. Are we lost in a mine without the atonement? Much worse. Without the atonement of Jesus Christ we would be utterly lost for eternity, unable to ever again enter the presence of God.  

And like Ray Guyman—the Lord can and will absolutely hear even our faint cries; and like John Skinner—He has already gone to great lengths to find us. The Lord is tenacious and true.    

Let us never take it for granted in the push and shove of every day. Let us not be satisfied to play small and think that being good enough is good enough. The Lord offers us so much more.

Scot

We show our love for the Savior by accepting his gift and repenting. Jacob says, “And he commandeth all men that they must repent” (2 Nephi 9:23) President Russell M. Nelson says it this way, “When Jesus asks you and me to ‘repent,’ He is inviting us to change our mind, our knowledge, our spirit—even the way we breathe. He is asking us to change the way we love, think, serve, spend our time, treat our wives, teach our children, and even care for our bodies. Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is regular, daily focus on repentance. Repentance is not an event; it is a process.” 

Maurine

President Nelson continues, “When we choose to repent, we choose to change! We allow the Savior to transform us into the best version of ourselves.” (Russell M. Nelson “We Can Do Better and Be Better” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2019/04/36nelson?lang=eng

I think, Scot, when we are told to repent, we are not always sure what that means. As children, we are told that if do something wrong, we should repent. We think of actions or words that could have been better. I hit my sister this week or yelled at my friend. I will repent. 

We may come to think of repenting as something someone else needs to do—the bank robbers, the drug dealers, the wife beaters. Or it may involve something that is terribly clear that we have done. I shouldn’t have yelled at that driver who cut in front of me. 

How can I repent daily, when I am not sure that I did something really wrong today? Am I supposed to repent of what I am?

As we grow spiritually we understand that repentance is about the condition of our soul, our hearts because our words and actions spring from that. Repentance is about mining your soul.

Scot

You can see that in the Sermon on the Mount, where the Lord does not so much give us a task list of things to do, but describes how to be. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart.

You can hear that emphasis on the condition of the heart and how to be in the sins listed in 2 Nephi 9. “When they are learned, they think they are wise” (2 Nephi 9:28). So this is intellectual pride, believing your ideas trump God’s commandments. “Wo unto the rich..who despise the poor and persecute the meek” whose “hearts are upon their treasures.” 

Maurine

“Wo unto the deaf that will not ahear…Wo unto the blind that will not see… Wo unto those that worship idols”. Jacob describes the “awfulness of yielding to the enticements of that cunning one” (2 Nephi 9: 31,32,37, 39).

The Lord describes a sin common to us all in the Doctrine and Covenants. “They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way and after the image of his own God” (D&C 1:15,16).

Scot

Look at this general principle. You can’t solve a problem, unless you can precisely define it. How can you repent effectively unless the Lord helps you understand your own weaknesses and how you are divided from Him? You can’t repent when you are blind and do not see what is wrong.

One word for sin in scripture, translated from the Greek is hamartia, which means missing the mark. It is an error resulting from ignorance, an error of judgment, a flaw in the character. How am I missing the mark? We think of the rich young man who came to the Savior and asked “what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” When the Lord answered to keep the commandments, the young man said, “This I have done from my youth. What lack I yet?” (Matt. 19: 20)

Maurine

What lack I yet? is an important question to ask so you can understand what the Lord sees. Jacob again,

“O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it (2 Nephi 9:20)

How could we have a better counselor to move us from weakness to strength, from sin to reconciliation, from darkness into the light?

I remember once talking with the Lord during the sacrament about something that concerned me in my character and I asked, “What lack I?” and He answered with something surprising, something much different than I was focusing on.  It was a weakness in me that was dividing me from Him, and I didn’t see it, until I asked the question. 

We learn in Ether, “And if men come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness” (Ether 12:27). This is a profound blessing. 

Scot

Like a man bent over under a load that’s too heavy, we go through life collecting wounds, resentments, disappointments—often in ourselves, mistakes, misunderstandings, and the Lord comes along and takes those off one at a time as we are willing to give them to Him. Your weaknesses and shortcomings have not surprised Him. He already took them upon Himself in Gethsemane and He wants to set you free.

Now, this chapter, 2 Nephi 9, gives an image of the atonement that is specific to the Book of Mormon. It is that the atonement is a covering. It comes from the KFR. It is like the root of keffiyah. If you have seen pictures of men in the Middle East in a long flowing head scarf, that is a keffiyah.

What does the atonement cover? It covers your nakedness. What does it mean to be naked? It means to be exposed, to be fragile, to be far from the atonement, to be vulnerable, to be unprotected from your enemy who is Satan and sin.

Maurine

Thus, we hear Nephi in his psalm in 2 Nephi 4 cry out, “O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness.” We get the sense here of a divine embrace, that also covers our nakedness and vulnerability. What a loving image that is to be encircled in His robe. This, is, of course, being held in a Divine embrace, the Lord’s very arms around you because you are beloved.

Mormon, of course, says, if they had repented “they might have been clasped in the arms of Jesus.” In Alma, we hear they might have been “encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love” (Alma 26:15).  These are all images of the atonement. 

Scot

Amulek wrote, “Mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety. (Alma 34:16).

Lehi said, “But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell;  I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love” (2 Nephi 1:15).

Again this image that the atonement is to be encircled in the arms of love and our nakedness is covered.

Maurine

The scripture that summarizes this best of all is in 2 Nephi 9:14, which is a description of all of us standing before the judgment bar. Jacob said at that time, “We shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, and our uncleanness, and our nakedness.” That is a description of the unrepentant. They are figuratively naked before this judgment bar—vulnerable because they are guilty and unclean.

But then Jacob describes those who have repented. “The righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment, and their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even the robe of righteousness.” They are clothed with purity and the robe of righteousness because they have accepted wholeheartedly the atonement and their opportunity to repent. 

Scot

We read in the scriptures about being clothed with power, clothed with purity, clothed with immortality. That robe that clothes us is the atonement of Jesus Christ, given in the most personal, loving way, with that divine embrace.

Some people supposed that repentance is all about punishment or pain. In actuality it is about release and growth and realization of your higher nature and joy. 

Maurine

I believe the day that we become most overwhelmingly thankful for the Savior is the day we truly realize that we cannot do any of this alone. Without Him, we just run in place.

Scot

Thanks for being with us today. This is Scot and Maurine Proctor of Meridian Magazine’s Come Follow Me podcast. We just love studying together and we love you. Thanks to Paul Cardall for the music that begins and ends this podcast. 

Next week will be 2 Nephi 11-25, “We Rejoice in Christ”. We’ll be digging into Isaiah. Please join us.

Maurine

See you then.