Meridian Magazine--Come Follow Me Latter-day Saint Podcast

Children can tell the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt. We know it well, with nasty brothers, slave dealers, false accusations, pits of despair and drama galore. What’s most important about this story, however, may not be obvious, and that’s what we are talking about in this episode.

We remember well those

events and carry their magnificent hope with us. One night Scot and I were trying to photograph an olive tree on the Mount of Olives, not far from Gethsemane, to represent the Savior in the garden. It was dark and gradually a hush and then silence fell over our world where we worked alone. Because it was dark, these photographs took several minutes, and we worked alone on that mount for nearly three hours, hoping to capture a stunning photograph. We remembered how Elder Jeffrey R. Holland had described the Savior’s atonement. “We celebrate the gift of victory over ever fall we have ever experienced, every sorrow we have ever known, every discouragement we have ever had, every fear we have ever faced—to say nothing of our resurrection from death and forgiveness for our sins.”

Daniel C. Peterson, retired professor of Islamic Studies and founder and editor-in-chief of the Interpreter Foundation, and producer of the film Witnesses, joins Scot and Maurine to explore Moses’s profound encounter with the burning bush and the charge he was given to confront Pharoah with the message to “Let my people go.”

March 16-22

When Joseph became vizier of Egypt, second only to Pharoah and wearing his ring of authority, he also got a new name that doesn’t exactly roll off our English-speaking tongues. It is Zaphnath-paaneah and what it lacks in clarity, it more than makes up in its meaning which is “savior of the world.” Yes, his starving family will come from Canaan, hoping to buy the corn that Joseph has stored in Egypt, but his name signifies even more than that. We’ll tell you in this episode.

March 9-15

Children can tell the story of Joseph being sold into Egypt. We know it well, with nasty brothers, slave dealers, false accusations, pits of despair and drama galore. What’s most important about this story, however, may not be obvious, and that’s what we are talking about in this episode.

March 2-8

The story of Jacob in the Bible has all the elements of high drama. True love thwarted, family division, a deceiving father-in-law, a tight escape. If it was a movie you’d want to watch it, but it’s much better than a movie because overarching all, it is the story of the covenant in the lives of real people.

March 2-8

In the chapters in Genesis that should be about Isaac, he hardly shows up. He plays a surprisingly passive role, which leads you to think how much we’re missing in his story. After all this is the son, who willingly went with Abraham to be sacrificed and therefore was a similitude of the Savior. This is the son his parents longed for through decades, and then, when we might get a chance to meet him, he is whisked off the stage.

February 23-March 1

I remember the first time I visited the massive, ancient building erected by Herod the Great in Hebron. He had it built over the Cave of Machpelah more than 2,000 years ago to mark and protect the sacred resting place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. I walked into the building as a ten-year-old with a covering over my head and my parents, brothers and a number of friends at my side. There was one place where you could go to your knees and carefully look through a brass grate and see into the cave below. A small lamp was burning there. A feeling came over me at that moment, not only that this was a sacred place, but that I was connected to Abraham. He was my direct-line grandfather. I have never forgotten that moment.

February 16-22

In Genesis, we soar through the stories of generations in a few pages, as if we were flying thousands of feet above them and getting the merest glimpse. Then suddenly we drop for a closer view for many chapters of one man and his family—Abraham.

February 9-15

The greatest potential for danger is one that we cannot afford to close our eyes to and miss. That is the growing wickedness around us that is seeping into our lives without announcement or warning flare. It just crawls on clawed feet into the hearts of ourselves and our children, as quietly as that asteroid did that swept close to earth. But wickedness is not a near miss. It is targeted, upon us, and more destructive than we have ever supposed.