General Conference October 2026 Recap and Analysis

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to our General Conference live stream with Informed Saints. My name is Jasmine Rapley. We're here tonight with Neil Rapley and Steven Smoo, and we are going to break down all of the fun things of General Conference, probably the most controversial of which being that gambling is no longer allowed for Latter Day Saints. Or was it always not allowed in the first place? It drew up a lot of interesting conversations online, but there were a ton of talks that were noteworthy for a variety of reasons. So tonight we're just gonna break down what our thoughts were, analyze some of the noteworthy messages that we liked and highlights and things we thought were noteworthy. But of course, there is no General Conference without conference memes. So I'm going to share my screen here, and we'll start off our conversation with some humor. Let's see you guys see that. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Memes for a General Conference back in, like, the 1830s, 1840s. [00:00:57] Speaker A: Stephen, you. [00:00:58] Speaker C: I know you can remember before there were memes for General Conference. We're not that young. [00:01:07] Speaker A: All right, so you guys see my memes there? All right. I thought AI had gotten better than this by now. I thought this was hilarious because that's pretty good on the organ. [00:01:16] Speaker B: Good, good. Solid start. [00:01:19] Speaker A: I saw this one floating around. It's kind of a crib off of President Nelson's. Think Celestial from. [00:01:24] Speaker C: It's a throwback. [00:01:25] Speaker A: But, hey, here at Informed Saints, we stand the Book of Abraham. And so I am all about this. [00:01:32] Speaker B: Absolutely colabian. Excellent. Yep. [00:01:36] Speaker A: We've got this one because Elder Kieran started off his talk with an aviation analogy. So I think, Neil, you shared this one in our chat. [00:01:46] Speaker C: I. I did. Oh, man, I feel like another good Star wars one would have been. This is getting out of hand. Now there are two of them. [00:01:56] Speaker B: I was gonna say this. This meme has some deeply disturbing implications because isn't the rule of two for the Sith? So, like, one of them is Darth Maul, the other is Darth Sidious. So who's the evil? You know, like. No, that's good. Good quality meme. [00:02:11] Speaker A: And then we've got. Now we're getting into the gambling memes. There are a lot of them. I wish I included the best ones. But betting on BYU isn't gambling because there was a BYU game that very evening. [00:02:22] Speaker C: The. The priesthood session. This. This time was the BYU football game. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, man. Did everybody see all. All those in favor? Kate and Baylor. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Oh, I meant to include that in this slide deck. It was a video, so I'm like, oh, I've got to download that video later. But there's probably was the best. It's gone viral. It's got several million views. But like their reaction to every guy once they were listening to that and they're just devastated that, you know, they're not. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, go check them out. All those in favor? They're on all the different, you know, platforms, whatever. I saw it on Instagram, but you can find them everywhere. It's. It's very good. [00:03:00] Speaker A: Here's from our friend Alejandro Rodriguez Kish stock after Christoffinson's talk. Okay, so Elder Christofferson did talk about the spiritual dangers of gambling, but I, I am super curious. Like, is there any way for Kelshi or Giraffe kings or FanDuel to like see a dip spin, specifically in Utah? Like, would they even see a little blip there? I would love to know. I think it'd be fascinating. [00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. [00:03:25] Speaker A: And then this one is like a bet on what will D. Todd Christofferson say during his October 2026 talk? You know, the irony. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Yes. I've seen a couple like that where it's like, yeah, putting bets on Elder Christopherson's talk or, you know, things like that. Very, very self ironic and self referential. Pretty good. [00:03:46] Speaker A: Those were just a couple of the means that I gathered last minute. But did you guys have any. See any humor online that you thought were particularly noteworthy? [00:03:55] Speaker B: Oh, you know, it's all kind of a swirl in my brain trying to pay attention and also seeing all the 50 million memes flying around. I. I guess I will say I'll give a shout out to the Ward radio after party that I was able to attend last night. And I guess I represented informed saints there. There are a bunch of influencers, you know, from all over. It was a fun little party. We did some improv. [00:04:24] Speaker C: Did you. [00:04:26] Speaker B: There was. Sorry, go ahead. [00:04:28] Speaker C: Well, I was just gonna ask if you got a chance to talk to the Catholic guy that was there. Trevor Tomesh I think is his name. [00:04:35] Speaker B: No, I'm. I'm afraid not. But yeah, he. He finished. So this Catholic guy on Twitter was like reading through the whole Book of Mormon and live tweeting it, and he finished reading it last night, so I didn't get a chance to talk to him, unfortunately. But talk about humor. There was a lot of fun, sort of some comedy, some improv, some fun stuff like that. So when that goes up, check out Ward Radio's channel. I. Jasmine, you were mentioned several times. [00:04:58] Speaker A: Many people were like, oh, no, I'm so embarrassed. I couldn't go then. Gosh dang it. Well, I do regret not going. [00:05:04] Speaker C: Well. Well, you know, I took the time [00:05:07] Speaker B: on me to go. No, just kidding. [00:05:09] Speaker C: I had to. I had to attend the priesthood session, AKA the BYU football game. There was. That's where my loyalty lied. I'm sorry, Carden. Maybe next time. [00:05:22] Speaker B: But. But that was a lot of fun. So check that out when it gets uploaded here probably in the next couple days. Check out Ward radio. There's some fun general conference related stuff that we joked about there. [00:05:31] Speaker A: As far as general overall thoughts on conference, there were four sessions this time, so there wasn't any fifth general session. There wasn't a priesthood session, there was not a women's session. And this has been the case for the last few conferences that they've kind of just defaulted to reducing it to four sessions. So that meant I think there were probably around 30ish talks total. We heard from a variety of different people like always. We heard from the 12 apostles, we heard from several women leaders. We heard from a variety of 70 and the Sunday school presidency. I don't think we heard from the young men's presidency this time, but we did hear from one person of the Sunday School presidency. But overall I saw a lot of themes of personal tragedy and how to deal with that. Neil, you mentioned that you noticed a lot of taking the name upon us, the name of Christ taking upon us. I noticed a lot of like standing up for truth, but with kindness. Maybe that's because that's the message I needed to hear. [00:06:31] Speaker C: And there was a lot of that. I feel like, yes. [00:06:35] Speaker A: And so there are a lot of great themes. But I do want to dive into Elder Christofferson's talk first because that was the most talked about online. [00:06:44] Speaker C: Let me. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Well, actually I don't really have anything to show Elder Christopherson. You know what he looks like. He basically said, I, I feel, can [00:06:52] Speaker B: you help me out? [00:06:55] Speaker A: I would pull up like an image of him because I just, I made a slide deck of just like all the speakers. But he said he felt like the prophet Jacob in the Book of Mormon of, you know, not being able to speak the peaceable things of the kingdom but having to take a hard topic. And because soon as presidency, as soon [00:07:11] Speaker C: as he said he feels like he's the prophet Jacob before he even just the moment Jacob came out of his mouth, I was like, oh no, oh no, this is going to be spicy. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Same feeling, Neil. I thought it would be like, is it going to be like abuse in the church? That's a hot topic thing, you know, [00:07:27] Speaker C: is it going to be, what's this, plural marriage? [00:07:30] Speaker A: I thought he was going to talk polygamy because Jacob talks about polygamy, but [00:07:37] Speaker B: instead, brothers and sisters, it's coming back. Polygamy is here again. Don't. [00:07:43] Speaker A: And so he said he felt like Jacob because he had to, you know, tackle a hard topic, that of gambling. And this is noteworthy because it had been about 20 years since the last general conference talk. President Hinckley spoke about the dangers of gambling in the 2000s, before smartphones really were a thing, before FanDuel and all these sports betting apps were a thing, or prediction markets were a thing. Gambling was pretty much limited to things you did in Las Vegas. Slot machines, poker, blackjack and lottery tickets you could get at your gas station. So the landscape was very different. [00:08:15] Speaker C: So it was. I have very strong memories of that talk because it was April 2005. I was a senior in high school and some friends of mine and, and I. Well, some friends of mine had started to play poker a lot and I had started to get involved in that too, like, oh, like, hey, they're having fun, they're playing poker. And I had grown up in a house where, you know, we didn't do that kind of thing. And, and you know, we had been taught not to gamble and stuff like that, but we weren't ever betting anything. We were just playing cards and we were just playing like Texas hold' Em and stuff like that. And, and then he gave that talk. And I remember, I probably won't get the exact wording down, but I do remember he even said something to the effect of, like, even if you're just playing for fun and you're not putting any money on it, like, just like having that appearance of, you know, participating in gambling is, is, you know, you should avoid even doing that kind of thing. And so like, I stopped and, and as far as I'm aware, most of my friends stopped. The kid who had, who had actually gotten the poker chips and everything, he gave them away. Like it was a big, it was a big kind of wake up call. But so I am, I tell that story because I am sympathetic to all those in favor and all the other, all the other Gen Z kids right now who are, who are having to make a big adjustment here and, and are having to repent. It's, you know, I went through it as a teenager. It's. But it's about time. I was a little surprised. I've been expecting to talk like this for about two years I've been thinking it might be coming soon, so. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Well, you're not the only one who has been expecting a talk like this. McKay Coppins, a lottery saint who's also a writer with the Atlantic. He recently did kind of a deep dive story on his experience experimenting with gambling as a latter day saint. And I was so excited when he got cited in this talk because I ended up being able to interview him on my channel. And one of the things he talked about in my interview with him on this story was that it's been 20 years since our last conference talk on gambling, and it feels like it's increased so much, has become so much more pervasive that I think we're due for a conference talk. So he predicted it. It happened. Way to go, McKay. But one of the things that I. So there's two issues that I've been seeing pop up around this. One is there's kind of been a divide among, like, wait, you guys have been gambling this whole time? Hasn't this always been against the church rules? What's your problem? And then the counter of that being, hey, we haven't had a conference talk in 20 years. And, you know, these sports betting apps weren't a thing back then. So that negotiating like, is, has this been allowed? Has this not been allowed? Is this a new rule? Should people have known better? But then also, there's been a conversation online about gambling versus investment, Is investing gambling, Things like that. So which one of those topics should we tackle first? [00:11:13] Speaker B: Let's tackle the investing thing. Because I saw so much of that and it was so dumb. It was so annoying. I. I don't know what to tell you. If you genuinely don't understand the difference between recreational gambling and investing in the stock market or the, you know, the. Or things like that, like, I don't know how to help you. They. They're so night and day different from each other. Yes, it's true that all investing has an element of risk to it, right? Nobody denies that. But like, the whole point of investing is you are increasing value in something for everybody else. That's investing in the thing, right? That's gambling. It's. It's zero sum. One person wins and one person loses, and there's no value you're adding to it, right? It's all for yourself, or it just goes back to the casino. So, like, I don't know, man. I don't want to get too much into it, but I'm just kind of like, do. Are we really not smart enough to know the difference between these, I mean, frankly, I think it's bad faith. A lot of these guys that are saying this, like, I just gonna totally. [00:12:08] Speaker A: Criticism does seem to be coming more from like critics of the church who are feeling like, oh, the church is being hypocritical to tell us not to gamble when they've been investing billions of dollars in Stockport portfolios. When I don't think it's an apples to oranges. I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison. [00:12:22] Speaker B: No. And I would say, again, I'd go even further and say I just, they're just being mad for the sake of being mad about something. How could you possibly get mad at President Christophson saying, guys, it's not good to gamble? Like, everybody knows that gambling is whatever the entertainment value may derive from it or whatever. There's so much research on like the predatory nature of like state lotteries, on like poor or you know, low income people, things like that. Like there are so many bad things to gambling. I can't conceive of a single like objection people would have to a President Christopherson was saying, except for the fact that like your bad faith about this, you just want to be mad and criticize him. [00:12:57] Speaker C: Well, I do think there are, there are two things I think I would say and overall I agree. I think the difference is it's pretty clear taking risks is not the same thing as gambling. Even though like in our casual language we might say, oh man, that's a gamble to do that or whatever. Right. Like risk taking and gambling are, are not the same thing. Obviously risk is involved in gambling, but the, the prediction markets have deliberately tried to obscure the distinction between investing and gambling because that's how they've tried to brand themselves. Basically is you're trading futures, you're, you're trading, you know, you're, it's like trading stocks, but you're trading futures, you're trading predictions. And so they've kind of tried to blur that line because then they try to work around like anti gambling laws in different states to say, hey, no, this is legal because it's not gambling. So there's that aspect to it that's kind of part of this, I think part of. For anyone who might be sincerely confused, that's a, that's a factor. And then there is just like I do think there are genuinely some aspects like day trading and stuff like that can basically be like it. And I don't know that much about day trading. But, but from what I do understand, like you're you're trying to chase, you're trying to chase like big gains and, and, and dump stock really quickly and things like that. You're just making rapid trades and, and you're trying to guess what's going to take off. And it's basically kind of gambling in, in a lot of ways. And so, and I've seen a lot of people kind of talk about that. I do think obviously there are beyond like what gets explicitly addressed in, in President Christofferson's talk, like there are additional vices along the lines of gambling that you should be wary of. Right. The reality is, and in fact this is what this was talked about, I think when they rolled out the new for Strength of Youth. Right. We can't ultimately itemize every potential sin, so recognize the principles behind what President Christofferson is teaching. And if you have investment practices that are basically gambling because it's day trading or whatever the case may be, then that's, that also falls under, you know, under the same principles. And you should stop doing that too. Right. Like we can extend these principles to other things and recognize. Yeah, it does apply in other places, but this is the main, you know, I think there's a reason his focus was on gambling and sports betting and prediction markets because that's, that has been a serious problem. Right. [00:15:25] Speaker B: Can I, can I just read very quickly to go back to what I said here about like how like blitheringly obvious it is that like state lotteries have serious negative consequences to them, especially for like lower income people. This is a very simple Google AI overview. Economic and financial harm, regressive spending burden, displacement of essential needs. Spending on lottery tickets often replaces spending on basic necessities like food and rent. Wealth extraction, retailers and ticket machines are heavily concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods, etc. Predatory marketing problem, Gambling risks, broken promises for public funding. The list goes on and on again like they are just not comparable. Yes, Neil, I think you're totally right. Investing can become a form of gambling if you're doing it improperly or if you're, if you're, if the risk is like insane, you know, compared you're being, [00:16:15] Speaker C: you know, unnecessarily risky and things like that or. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, but do you think that the, do you think that the Mormon corporation tscc, do you think that they're seriously like seriously risky in their, in their investing? You know what I mean? Like the big complaint people have is that the church is too successful in its investing. Right. Clearly, like that's not the problem is that they're just throwing money to the wind. Right. If anything, they're doing it too good for people. So anyways, I just think that's, I [00:16:39] Speaker A: had someone in my Twitter responses say things like, oh, I used to have some kind of relationship with people who worked for these betting companies and they are very predatory in the way that they design them in the sense that they're like they're looking for whales or people that will spend a lot of money on these apps and lose a lot of money on these apps. And, and they continually try to think of ways that they can target them better in their advertising, keep them on the app more. And so I, I think it's pretty predatory. But also I lost my train of thought. So. Proceed. [00:17:11] Speaker B: We beat the horse to death. I think it makes sense. But yeah, those are some good points too. Jasmine. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Oh, well, the, well, one other thing I, I remember found my thought again that McKay Coppins talked about was the potential for corruption that gambling has, especially with sports betting. Because like you can be, you can easily introduce the incentive for bribes now is you, are you going to convince a megastar multi million contract NBA player to like miss a free throw because of a bribe on Kalshi? Maybe, maybe not. But like, what about a college student who isn't making money doing his sport at this moment that would love to go professional one day if he was presented with a ton of money to miss a shot or to make a specific shot from a specific place because there are a bunch of bets on there. Would that be tempting? Maybe. And, and so I think there's just like a slippery slope there. [00:18:00] Speaker C: There have actually already been two scandals in the NBA with, with players taking money to, to manipulate outcomes and faking injuries and things like that. At least two different. There's one guy who's already, he's been banned for life from the NBA. He wasn't, he wasn't a megastar. He was, you know, kind of a low tier, you know, role player. But he's, he's been banned from the NBA for life because he got caught doing that kind of thing. And back in the 90s, there was a big scandal with a referee actually getting caught taking bribes and you know, officiating a different way because of how he was bribed and, and you know, because what people wanted to be the outcome because of how they were betting on it. Right. And you're just, you know, you're, you're really, there is huge possibilities of risk, stuff like that at every level. You know, once you start opening this sort of Once you start participating in. In gambling and, and the. The way the NBA has just gotten in bed with it has been. And other professional sports leagues has been disappointing as a. As a sports fan to me. [00:19:11] Speaker A: Well, also the World Cup, I mean, that recently happened, and Argentina kind of went into the World cup being like, yeah, great, you got your World Cup. Let's get another one. But very quickly, it was like, oh, no, it's rigged. Argentina is getting a lot of favoritism from the refs. And the just instant ability to believe that, I think partially can be attributed to just how pervasive these betting apps are. Like, they know that there's massive incentives for influencing outcomes of games, whatever that might be. So it's pretty. It's pretty dangerous. Though as an Argentine myself, I'm a little biased doing some of those narratives. Jasmine, One of the things. [00:19:49] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:19:51] Speaker A: About sport setting in particular, it's one thing to think of gambling as bad. Like, oh, you got to go to Vegas. There's like cigarette smoke everywhere. Like, there's scantily clad women. Like, all. The whole environment looks more obviously seedy or immoral. I don't know. My camera's going out of focus. But with sports betting, I think it introduces an element of control or perceived control for a lot of these people, because especially if you're a sports fan, you have a certain level of expertise that you feel you possess over the outcomes of these games. Like, I follow these players, I follow this team. I know their strengths. I know the team they're up against. I know the weather conditions. Therefore, I am more equipped to create an informed prediction when the reality is that it's still always the house wins. Like, you might win a lot of bets over your time, you might feel skilled. But the reality is breaking even on these sports betting apps is, like, really, really hard to do. Even, like, usually you're always going to be at a loss, and that just leads to addiction. It leads to losing your savings. It leads to behaviors where you're hiding things from your family. Like, it just doesn't lead to good places. [00:21:00] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. And look, as a sports fan, I sit there, I watch the ads, I see the. The stuff come up, and there's all kinds of stuff where I'm like, you know, that. That that's probably a pretty good bet. Like, I. And then it's so tempting, right, because you think you know the sport well enough that you can. You can. You can really predict stuff. But you. You start multiplying those predictions, you might get one or two Right, right. But you start multiplying it. You start doing it across a whole season, and odds are you're. Yeah, breaking. If you're breaking even, you're, you're, you're getting lucky. Right. It's. It's pretty fortunate. One of the things about President Christofferson's talk specifically that I appreciated is he talked about how, yeah, there might be, you know, not everyone who, who, who, who chooses to participate in gambling is necessarily going to get addicted and go down this dark path. Right. People can, like, casually gamble and, and, and things like that, and they're okay, you know, that, that happens, I guess. But he talked about how you should consider how your actions might affect others. Right. And, you know, someone who might not be able to control themselves sees you and you're an example to them, and you're doing a little gambling here and there, so they, they say, oh, it must be okay. And then they end up not being able to control themselves. They end up getting addicted, and they end up, like, throwing their, their life away because of it. Right. And, and I think that's a, That's a really valuable thing. It reminded me, I can't remember it, where in. I think it's in either first or Second Corinthians where Paul talks about, like, eating food that had been offered to idols or whatever. And he's like, yeah, I mean, in and of itself, maybe it's not a bad thing, but you've got to, you know, you don't want to do something that might give people the wrong impression or, you know, you know, avoiding them for them. Yeah. Be a stumbling block for them. And there was actually someone on Twitter just a couple days before conference. At least that's when I saw it. His name, his Twitter handle is Kirk Rollins. He's kind of an interesting, interesting commenter on Latter Day Saint things. He's. He, he identified. He says he's not a member, but he, he likes a lot of things about the church and doesn't like some things. I don't know. But he talked about the Word of Wisdom, and he talked about how, like, you put 10 people in a room and you give them alcohol and eight out of ten are probably going to be fine, but two of them are going to end up as alcohol addicts. And you don't know until you get in, until you get the people in the room, you don't know which two that's going to end up being. You don't know if you're going to be one of those two or if you're going to be one of the eight. But more importantly, whether you're one of the two or the eight, even if you could be one of the eight, who could handle your alcohol, fine. The reason you, you live the word of wisdom and you commit to doing that is to be a support to your brother, right. Your, your, your, your fellow saint who would otherwise spiral into alcohol addiction. Right? You, by, by having this whole enclave of people who don't drink, you're just creating this environment where people feel like, okay, that's normal, they don't feel that pressure and, and so they don't have to worry about it. Right. And, and that's kind of the same principle that, that President Christopherson was teaching with the gambling is, hey, we're just, none of us are going to do this because we don't want to create an environment that leads, that causes some people at least to go down this treacherous path. Right. We're going to make it socially normal just to not do it at all. [00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah. One question that has come up is, is was this talk warranted and does this represent, like, new counsel from the church? Obviously, President hinckley taught this 20 years ago that gambling is bad, but sports betting is a very different form of gambling. Prediction markets, a very different form of this. And so many young men, I mean, all those in favor kind of highlights how pervasive this really is, even among, like, active, believing, practicing Latter Day Saints. Like, a lot of people have been wondering, like, wait, didn't you know gambling was bad? Like, why was this something that was confused to you? And, and, and I think part of it is just that sports betting and prediction markets just, like, looks very different than traditional gambling was. And so there might have been confusion there, but I don't know. Are all those in favor? And all those, all, all of the young men who are struggling with gambling, are they idiots because they didn't know this earlier or, or what's going on here? [00:25:23] Speaker B: Well, I, I, I seem to recall that somebody on their Instagram, at least, they said, did you guys hear President Hinckley's talk? And I think it was Cade responded and said, I was four when President Hinckley gave that talk. Right? Like, so, no, what I see happening here, and I see one of our commenters saying that, you know, Pope Leo talked about this a year ago, and it's like, well, yeah, like, and President Hinckley was talking about it in the 90s and in the early 2000s. I remember, I'm old enough to remember when President Hinckley was saying this in general conference and what kind of a, oh, big deal, you know, oh, gambling. Oh my gosh. You know, so like, this is not the first thing like, oh, President Christopherson woke up yesterday and decided to talk about gambling. Right. What I see happening here is we are now in a new era where, as he said, you have a casino in your pocket at all times. Like that, that's unprecedented. Like Neil said used to be you have to go and go get a lottery ticket or drive all the way to Vegas or Wendover if you're in Utah, right. Like, and go to some seedy casino or whatever. Now it's just like omnipresent with your smartphone. So what I see President Christofferson doing is reaffirming the core principles that President Hinckley taught. Like kind of beat for beat, all the same arguments that President Hinckley made. I, I recall him making President Christopher made, but specifically tailoring it to the new digital era of gambling. Right. So that's how I kind of read this and kind of how I see it. And no look, no shade to Kate and Baylor. They're our friends. We love them. Right. We're not here to pick on them. But they are kind of representative of this new generation of young men who grew up not knowing. It's kind of like the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, right? Growing up not not knowing. President Hinckley or what he said, we're not calling you stupid guys or that you're bad or whatever. It's just, it's understandable, right? Like kind of with these, with this lapse of time, there's a little bit of amnesia around some of these things that the church has taught or the past church leaders taught. So it was a good way to re. Emphasize and reiterate this. [00:27:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I just would reiterate my own experience. Right. I had just been like, I literally, like just within a few weeks of when President Hinckley gave that talk, had started to get into playing Texas hold' Em and, and stuff like that. And you know, being an 18 year old or a 19, I was, well, I think I was 17. I, I turned 18 in May. I turned 18 that May. So I was 17 year old. Like I had, I wasn't so like self aware enough to realize that there was maybe a broader trend going on and, and that's, and I was participating in that. But you know, I had been taught not to gamble and not to play poker and things like that. But I, you know, I was a 17 year old kid and my friends were doing it and I wanted to do it. And so, you know, I started to get into it a little bit and so I, I don't want to be too hard on, on especially young men. If you watch sports, if you're into sports, I'm telling you right now, it's been an absolute onslaught for the last few years. Every commercial break, and it's not just during the commercial breaks during like the, the, the pre game show and the halftime show, you've got, you've got the commentators talking about different bets and parlays and things like that that they're, that they're making or they're trying to plug and encourage. And all of the networks, ESPN has their own betting app. All of the networks. Every, every like sports show you might enjoy watching, commentary show you might enjoy watching on YouTube from, from YouTubers and stuff. They have sponsorships from these sports betting apps. If, if you are into sports, you have been inundated with this for like the last several years. And I mentioned it earlier, I've been expecting a talk like this for about two years. And my reason for doing that is I was at a BYU football game and, and people around me were placing bets and talking about the bets they were placing and it was right there to BYU football game. And I was, I was a little taken aback by that because I thought, you know, and it wasn't people younger than me, it was people, you know, my age or older. Thereabouts was definitely people who could have remembered President Hinckley's talk. Right? And I thought, man, you know, it's been a long time since gambling has come up and there is this new element to it. There is this new wrinkle to it that wasn't around when President Hinckley spoke. So I started to think then I was like, you know, I'll bet we hear, oh, I bet. I, I just, I, I started to think we're, we're about. Do we're going to hear something in conference soon about this issue. [00:29:37] Speaker A: I mean, and again to emphasize that we're really not trying to hate on people who have been gambling. Like a lot of these people were young when President Hinckley gave that talk. Yes, this has been in the church's handbooks and it's in, been in the church's guidance here and there throughout those years. But we're just in a new world and everyone's got vices and sometimes the prophets call out yours and sometimes they call it someone else's. I've been Seeing lots of tweets of people being like, yeah, I know the guys are having a real hard time with. With the. The prophets calling out gambling, but just you wait until they start calling out those smut novels or, like, the energy drinks or the dirty soda. Like, you know, there's lots of little vices that are completely liable to get called out in general conference. And. But. But we don't necessarily expect it. Like, we don't expect the profits to call out every little cultural trend. They want us to be guided by good principles, but, you know, sometimes they feel like it's important to call something out specifically. So. Yeah, well, we. [00:30:33] Speaker B: We have a super chat real quick. We can read. And yes, I have a. I have a story I can say if we want to wrap up the gamb. This is Brandon, the anime guy. Let me make sure I got his name right. Yeah, Brandon, the anime guy who gave us a whopping five bucks. Thank you very much, sir. Mr. Brandon. He says President Oaks talk today was very enlightening. How to seek knowledge while staying grounded to the church. He gave a similar talking conference in 1971. Yeah, we'll for sure get to President Oaks talk, I think. Right. [00:31:00] Speaker A: Well, I figure we might as well just dive in now since he gave us that super chat, we can highlight President Oaks his talk, and then we can kind of just do rapid fire [00:31:07] Speaker C: and we can kind of jump when each of us. [00:31:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So he talked at the end of Sunday morning session. The prophet spoke. He also spoke at the end of Sunday afternoon, but it was just very brief. Buried testimony. Come to the Salt Lake Temple next year and church is true. But this one, yeah, he talked a lot about, like, doubt, dealing with doubt and questions in the church, which I thought was interesting because so often in general conference, the trend had been like, questions are good. We love questions. But the word doubt kind of had somewhat of a stigma around it. Like, it had an added element of skepticism. And you're already out of the church. But President Oaks here is embracing both words basically to encapsulate, like. Yeah, whenever you're questioning the faith, whether that's questions or doubts, like, it's kind of this big umbrella like that is welcome. There are great ways to go about pursuing truth. Ultimately, the best ways to get close to Jesus Christ. But we can pursue secular sources of knowledge, spiritual sources of knowledge. They're not necessarily incompatible. It's just all about how we go about it. So I love that because I love. I mean, all of us, we're all here doing apologetics, like answering the tough questions, figuring out how to defend the church, how to reconcile our testimonies with challenging topics. So this talk I was all over, but I also. I must have missed this reference because I was busy and distracted and stuff. But I saw a lot of references of people saying, wait, did President Oaks just promise that we're going to get new scripture someday or. Yeah, that we're going to get revealed new scriptures. So I thought that was fun. [00:32:35] Speaker C: I. I think I missed that too. But he did reinforce that, you know. You know, he talked about Jesus coming to the Americas and, and saying, hey, you're the other sheep that I have. But then he also says, and I have other sheep also who are not of this fold. And I'm. I'm obviously not quoting Third Nephi exactly right. But. And he talked about how he's going to go visit them. And it's been a long time. Neal A. Maxwell actually used to make reference to. To this and say, yeah, we're getting more script [00:33:08] Speaker B: scriptures. He talked about famously. [00:33:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been a while since we've had anybody talk about that. But yeah, he basically said, yeah, we've got more ancient. More ancient scripture is coming. Not just like more future revelation, but there's going to be records coming forth in the last days. Right. So obviously, very exciting stuff. [00:33:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that stood out to me. I kind of low key was expecting announcement of new canonized material. I got pretty excited. I had friends text me, like, do you think we're gonna do scripture? Sadly, that did not come to pass. But I will say President Oaks was saying this in the context of God speaking to all of his children. He quoted the Book of Mormon how, you know, he gives his word unto all people. He. And he remembers the isles of the sea. You know, things like that. So it was this very universalistic kind of message that President Oaks was reiterating that the Book of Mormon has. So that was kind of some of the context for. For why he said that. Unlike you two, I actually did pay attention to President Oaks. Thank you very much. No, I'm just kidding. I thought it was great. It was exciting. I loved it. I also think we could. We should talk about. Because this is our whole raison d' etre at Informed Saints reconciling faith with science or faith with scholarship. Right. There was a big emphasis on that in his talk that. And yeah, one of the lines he said, I'm trying to remember specifically, he says this is like a close paraphrase due to the ongoing nature of science and our sometimes incomplete Knowledge of religion. There may appear to be conflict, but the answer is to draw closer to Jesus Christ and to continue searching, prayerfully, reading scriptures, etc. Etc. So I'm like, hey, that's great. That's what we're doing here at Informed Saints. Right. Is trying to. [00:34:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:45] Speaker B: Towards greater understanding with both academic and spiritual means that we have. So I loved it. I thought that was great. [00:34:51] Speaker A: We should invite President Oaks on the show to talk about that. Right. [00:34:54] Speaker B: Shout out to President Oaks. You are welcome to come on Informed Saints anytime you want. President Oaks. [00:34:59] Speaker C: We would gladly have President Oaks on. Absolutely. [00:35:04] Speaker A: Well, let's jump to some other talks that people may have liked. I'll start off and then we'll go to Neil and then Stephen of just like highlight a talk you really wanted to have us discuss here real quick. But I'm going to kind of do two. But they're going to be really brief. Basically the two talks that are going to enhance my own temple prep curriculum. I love teaching temple prep and I love getting people prepared for the temple. [00:35:27] Speaker C: And. [00:35:27] Speaker A: And there were two talks that are just gold. One is, wait, I'm going the wrong way. Let's find it. President Elder Gong. Elder Gong made a fantastic quote in the Saturday morning session of General Conference. He was talking about first. He started off with an amazing dad joke. Why did the temple workers cross the road? To help the people on the other side. Super cute and cheesy, but his whole thing was about building a good temple culture. But. But what I loved was hearing the temple clothing itemized in General Conference. He said, when possible, consider saving for and buying your own ceremonial temple clothes. Cap or veil, robe, sash and apron. As we reverently care for and use our own temple clothes, our children and grandchildren can see we love the Lord in our temple covenants. Love that. I love the principle behind it. I think that absolutely. Being able to show our children, like launder and iron and take care of our temple clothes shows our children that we love the temple and that they can see that and they see how visible the temple is in our lives. Absolutely. But I also love that we have a quote of an apostle, like itemizing what those ceremonial clothing pieces are. It's going to be great for temple prep. The other one that I loved, I don't even know if I got to this point. Yeah, no, I don't have it. Sorry, guys, I forgot to put Elder Bednar in here. But Elder Bednar, my goodness, I loved that talk because he. First of all, I think his analogy of credentials works really well, for explaining concepts like symbols and tokens that you can have a passport and you can go to a country. But this person, he told the story of a guy who went to a country and he brought his passport, but he didn't take care of his passport. And so it was like very physically damaged. And they couldn't really read the picture and the name. And so he was denied entry to the, the country. And he kind of used that to say like, our ordinances and our covenants are like the credentials to help us get back to God's presence. But it's not just like physically having that passport. You have to actually believe it, you have to take care of it. And a. I think that pushes back a lot on the criticism. I hear that like, oh, you just need handshakes to get into heaven. And that one drives me crazy. Because no, it is not about knowing handshakes to get into heaven. It's about believing in and living the covenants, the ordinances and the ceremonies that surround those covenants and ordinances are symbols to help us remember them, they're symbols to help us internalize them. But it's about what's in our heart, it's about taking care of that. So I thought that was great. But then also the whole discussion on sealing was amazing because at least when I initially heard the talk, I had never remembered someone talking in conference about ceilings being both a horizontal and a vertical. I've heard this concept discussed that you, when you get sealed, you are having a horizontal relationship with your spouse, but you're also getting a vertical relationship with God. That's not terribly uncommon metaphor. A lot of people talk about it like a triangle. Like this is a three way relationship, one with your spouse and then with God. And that forms a triangle. And the closer you get to, to God, the closer you get to each other, stuff like that. But what I thought he was very explicit and clear in how he was explaining that the vertical relationship with God is not just you're getting close to God and it's you're being sealed into his family. This kind of is what Jonathan Stapley in his work has talked about, like heaven being a network of relationships and heaven being fabricated by the sealing connections that we have with each other and to God. And so when you're sealed, you're being, you're not just being sealed to a person, you're being sealed into God's family, you're being sealed into the celestial kingdom in some ways with the ratifying spirit of promise. And so this, okay, bring Some. [00:39:10] Speaker B: I got some jasmine. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Oh, excellent. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Ready? Let's see. Let's see if this will pop up. Ta da. [00:39:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:17] Speaker B: Look at that. We just got a IRL in real time reiteration of Orson Pratt's diagram of the kingdom of God there, where you notice it's both. You have vertical and horizontal axes going on here in the ceiling. So sorry to cut you off. I just thought I would flash this for our viewers who may not have seen this before this was published. What, like 1850s or something like that back in the day? [00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And in some ways, this concept was so much more understood in the early days of the church than it even is now, because a lot of the concept of sealing was around sealing into God's family. Sealing. Like, that's why we need to create this welding link that connects the generations because we're trying to connect us back to God. [00:40:01] Speaker B: 1847. So even earlier, just a few years. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Oh, beautiful. But then in subsequent generations, we've put a lot of emphasis on the husband and wife relationship. Like the more romanticized version that, like, oh, you're in love, you get to be together forever, which is definitely a beautiful part of it. But sometimes we underplay that vertical ceiling part. And what that does is clarifies a lot of people who struggle with divorce, who struggle with, like, I was faithful to my covenants, my spouse wasn't. And now I feel like my eternity is just like, shattered and broken. And a lot of people, after they deal with a civil divorce or they deal with infidelity, people break their covenants. They want to pursue getting the ceiling canceled as well, because there's such a deep sense of betrayal from that person. You want to just separate yourself from that person, which is a totally understandable, very relatable impulse. But often church leaders will, you know, make you think really seriously about breaking that ceiling covenant. And they'll sometimes even discourage you from canceling that ceiling unless you're about to be sealed to someone else. You found someone to be sealed to. Because I think this. It's this concept President Elder Bednar has talked about, that the horizontal relationship may sever when someone is unfaithful with their covenants, but the vertical one is still intact. So if you have been faithful to your covenants, you are still sealed into God's family. You're still sealed into the celestial kingdom. You're still sealed into this. This idea of being the network of heaven. And so you don't necessarily want to cut off the blessings that are associated with that. You know, you. You don't be too hasty. You know, consider it very carefully. Now, obviously we know the atonement's real. Jesus is going to make everything better in heaven, and so things will work themselves out, all the messiness. But I think that brings a lot of clarity to people who have struggled with, well, I want to get separated from this person that hurts so bad. Why won't you let me cancel my ceiling? This is kind of part of that conversation anyway. That was, that was my favorite talk. [00:41:54] Speaker B: That's great, Jasmine. The only thing I'll add to that is I appreciate that Elder Bednar is reiterating. I don't want to, like, go say full nuance, bro, or whatever, right. With how ceiling works, but he's just acknowledging the complexity with how this works in real life. I think it was Ty Mansfield that pointed this out in one of his fair presentations back in the day that really struck me was saying that we, for a long time in the church have imagined, like ceiling and marriage and temple. Marriage is like the nuclear family, the post war nuclear family. And like, that's it, right? Like, that's as far as our families can be together forever. Kind of, you know, ethos goes, is the post war nuclear family. And point out, like, historically, you look at stealing practices, even look at the church's current stealing practices, it is a much more expansive vision of what sealing entails. The, the nuclear family. I'm a child of God. Kind of stuff you learn in primary, like, that's kind of the core element, but it's way more expansive. And so I think that's what Elder Bednar was trying to clarif while also acknowledging there is complexity to it. So I'm, I'm with you, Jasmine. I thought it was great. [00:42:56] Speaker A: All right, Neil, what was a talk that you thought was just a banger? [00:43:01] Speaker C: Well, before I, before I do that, I want to point this out because I'm probably the only one in our group that's, that's going to care enough to point this out. But we did have two, two former BYU and NFL players speak at General Conference today. And I think unless there's maybe an older era when this maybe happened, I think that's the first time there's been two. We had, you know, Gifford Nielsen, the former All American quarterback and Houston Oilers quarterback, was, was also a, a 74 from like 2013 to 2024, and he overlapped with Vice Kahima for a while, but I don't think they ever spoke at the same conference. So Vaisa Kahima, Saturday morning and then we had Gabriel Reed, the second counselor in the Sunday School presidency Sunday, Sunday afternoon and also that's first session, last session. So it's almost like an inclusio of NFL players speaking at General Conference. Anyway, I actually really liked Vai Sikahima's elder, Elder Sikahima's talk where he told the story of his maternal grandparents who. There was an apostle coming to speak in Tonga and they were on a different island within, within the Tonga Islands. And so they were trying to get. They, they, they went on this kind of epic journey to try and, and be there present for this apostle and they, they lost, they had a, they had an infant that they were traveling with and it, and he, and he died tragically during the process. And it was a very sad, very difficult sacrifice that they made because they wanted to hear the words of an apostle. And you know, he contrasted that with today where it can be so easy to take for granted how readily available the words of the prophets, seers and revelators are. And, and how we should really, we shouldn't take it for granted. We should appreciate and we should be willing to commit and to sacrifice to be able to. We should always cherish the fact that we have words of living prophets. Right. And so I thought that was a [00:45:16] Speaker A: really good talk, a moment to admire. I didn't notice this while he was giving the talk, but look at that pocket square, like the triple there. That's really nice. [00:45:24] Speaker C: That is, that's very, very nice. Very classy. Very, very well done there. He's actually, he was on the 1984 national championship team at BYU, so he's probably. I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's the first national champion college football national champion to probably speak at General Conference. I would guess, though I don't know, maybe they used to have like Edwards would speak at conference sometimes, so maybe, maybe he spoke after 1984. The other talk though. Well, there were lots of other talks. I really liked Elder Gilbert's talk in the last session about the importance of, of preaching truth and love. Actually very much in line. You, Jasmine, mentioned Ty Mansfield or maybe it was Stephen who mentioned Time Ansfield, very much in line with the, with the Deseret News article that Ty Mansfeld wrote a number of years ago. Well, maybe it was only last year, I don't know, not too long ago, I guess I thought that was good. But also Sister Runia from the first session, she talked a lot about suffering and trials and things like that. And I liked the, the metaphor she gave that the gospel is not the umbrella that protects us, though obviously living gospel principles can be protective and can prevent a lot of, you know, can prevent you from making bad choices that are going to cause suffering in your life. It can certainly do that. But the gospel isn't meant to be the umbrella. It's the rock, right? It's the rock that holds you steady that you can. You can be firmly planted on even as. Right, you go to Helaman 5, right? Helen 5:12. Even as the storm beats down upon you, right? You're going to. You're going to experience rain. You're going to. The storm is going to come and everyone's life is going to have these kinds of moments. And the gospel is this rock that you can build on. I also liked, she said that our suffering. She talked about how suffering is not. It's not a detour from our path, it's what gives the path purpose. Right? And I feel like in today's world, there's often. There's often this tendency to treat suffering like. [00:47:43] Speaker B: And. [00:47:43] Speaker C: And we should try to reduce suffering, right? It's a noble thing to try to reduce suffering. But sometimes if we look at good and evil or good and bad purely through the lens of suffering or reducing suffering, we miss the point, right, that some, like suffering and sacrifice is part of the mortal experience for a reason. It's part of what we're here to experience, and it's part of what is refining us and making us godlike in the long run. [00:48:12] Speaker A: I think that she said that based on how we respond, like becoming godlike requires suffering is kind of a message. [00:48:19] Speaker C: I heard from that, from the things that make it hard. Right. So, yeah, those. Those were a couple of mine. I mean, we could talk about so many others. There's so many great talks. [00:48:30] Speaker A: Well, let's. Let's throw it over to Stephen. What's one or two that you want to talk about real quick? [00:48:34] Speaker B: Okay, I'm going to share my screen because this is a. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Jasmine, for unsharing. Okay. I want to show this picture because it's fantastic. There he is, the man himself, Elder Patrick Kieran, gliding through the air. I learned a new thing about Elder Kieran today. I had no idea that he learned how to fly glider planes when he was a young man. [00:49:01] Speaker A: I had no clue. That was awesome. [00:49:03] Speaker B: That's kind of amazing, honestly. And, yeah, hence the meme about the master and the apprentice, I guess. Right. So I really liked Elder Kieran's talk about spiritual lift. Jesus lives to lift he said, and he used the metaphor of lift and drag or lift and sink rather to lift up airplanes or to make them fall to the earth. And of course, the metaphor was for Jesus lifting us through his love and through his atonement and sin, weighing us down, sinking us down, causing us to crash. But among the things Elder Kieran talked about was. Here are some of the quotes they have. At the heart of our faith is the glorious truth that we have an adoring father in heaven. That's a good adjective. An adoring father in heaven whose son our Savior loves to lift. So, you know, it was just one of those things where it's like, you know what? Mormon Jesus really does love us all, doesn't he? I know that we get a hard time from other Christians, especially like Calvinist evangelical types. Right. You know, Mormon Jesus is a false Jesus. I'm like, I'm going to take Mormon Jesus over Calvinist Jesus any day of the week. And it's because of talks like these. Right. That really reiterates the fact that it, yeah, Jesus really is like, you know, he's looking out for you and his whole purpose is to lift you up and not to send you to hell or whatever. So I thought that was great. Very heartwarming, very wholesome, very nice and grounding. What was else. What else was going to say about Karen? Oh yeah, here's the thing about Elder Kieran, Guys, we need to sign a petition right now. We need to hand it to President Oaks. We need to have an audiobook version of Jesus the Christ read by Elder Karen. James E. Talmage, of course, was an Englishman. So like the closest person we're gonna have to like sounding like Elder Talmage is going to be Elder Kieran. Could you imagine James E. Talmadge's exalted literary English being narrated by Patrick Kieran? Come on, guys, it's. It's a no brainer Deseret book. Let's get on this. Let's get Patrick Karen to narrate Jesus the Christ. So I, I really. [00:51:01] Speaker A: Okay, so I actually have an update on that. I have an update on that on Twitter. There's a Derek Anderson who's pretty active on Twitter. He's got a big podcast called Divot, but he's the son of Elder Anderson, Elder Neil L. Anderson. And on Twitter someone was saying, hey, I'm once again humbly requesting that Elder Kieran narrate a reading of the Book of Mormon for everyone in the world to download and hear. And Derek Anderson retweeted and Responded. I can confirm an in person request was made today. He said he would happily trade his current role for that one. We explained, I explained that he'd need to do both but we could negotiate just the Old Testament so I'm hopeful. [00:51:39] Speaker B: That's funny. That's really funny. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. [00:51:42] Speaker C: So how many people, how many more people do you think would listen to the Book of Mormon on audiobook if we had a British narrator, you know we, that this is an important missionary work thing. We've got to, we've got to do it. [00:51:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't know. I. That's just one that sends out to me as is Elder Kieran loved his talk. I don't know if you guys know at Elder Karen, but that I'd say that's about what I have to say about him. [00:52:09] Speaker A: It was super good. I'll put a plug in for Elder Cooks just because he talked about the loss of virtue in society and how it is still needed. And that's a topic I haven't heard in a while. We haven't heard like a chastity, modesty, you know, garnish thy thoughts with virtue in a while I feel like. And so this was a welcome talk but this is still a very important and I shout out to the BH Roberts foundation, they've done research on moral foundations theory and I find it interesting that you know, Elder Cook talked about it in terms of like a loss of virtue in society. But in some ways it is a loss of society's value in things like purity and sanctity. Which if you look at moral foundations theory this is like put forward by Jonathan Haidt and other psychologists. It's like okay, humans have a fundamental five values that are like core to their being. Things like harm versus care, fairness versus reciprocity. Like are things equal? Are things fair in group versus loyalty, authority versus respect and purity versus sanctity. And they found that. Or the B.H. roberts foundation found that if you tend to be liberal in your views, then you're going to put a lot of emphasis on the virtues of care and versus harm. You don't want an institution that does harm to someone if and you also care a lot about fairness are things equal but you don't value very much things like purity and sanctity. Whereas if you're socially conservative you tend to have a more even distribution of those values. And they did some research with Latter Day Saints finding that former Latter Day Saints again put a lot of emphasis on the care and the fairness values. Very little on the authority, the loyalty, the purity. But current Latter Day Saints have a more even distribution and they put a lot of emphasis on purity and sanctity. So I thought that was interesting that Elder Cook has noticed this shift in society that we've been losing the interest in virtue, but that's also reflected in moral foundations theory. [00:54:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I really like Delder Cook's talk as well. I thought about, I thought about highlighting that one and yeah, I feel like you just don't, not just in general conference, but in general. You just don't hear virtue talk other than like in the negative context of like virtue signaling on, on social media or whatever, this performative sort of thing. You don't really hear talk of like the importance of virtue. And those are the kind of things I feel like I grew up hearing a lot about. And I grew up feeling like it was pretty like common ground, that people, no matter what they believed or whatever, agreed, like, hey, this is, this is good and important. Now I feel like it's really kind of seen as like this conservative coded sort of thing. If you do talk about it like, oh, you must be like far right if you think, you know, having virtue is important. But you know, I, I do think there's something that's been lost in society there and it's an important thing to emphasize, obviously. [00:55:13] Speaker A: Does anyone want to talk about other Clark's talk? Because that was awesome. [00:55:18] Speaker B: Elder Gilbert? Sure. Yeah. [00:55:21] Speaker A: Sorry, Elder Gilbert, not Elder Clark. Elder Clark. [00:55:24] Speaker B: Elder Clark Gilbert. Wow, you're on first name basis with him, Jasmine. Jealous? [00:55:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought his talk was awesome. I'll try to pull up a picture. [00:55:33] Speaker B: Well, yeah, while you're doing that, Jasmine, I do have to say, listening to Elder Gilbert, I think that his talk, which was full of spite and venom and bigotry, I think it really confirms that portrait of the Salt Lake Tribune made about him a little while ago as this, you know, tyrannical, authoritarian, this unfeeling, cold person. No, I mean, come on. Like, how can you not love this guy like, he is, he is oozing genuine love and affection and concern for the people that he is ministering to. And that's the one that you also mentioned you kind of felt a little called out about, right, Jasmine, about speaking truth, but speaking it in love or something like, so, yeah, no, I, I, I thought that was great. I don't, I don't know what you're thinking is about that, but yeah, it was a great way to kind of wrap things up. [00:56:24] Speaker A: I just felt like it was A very balanced approach. Like, this isn't the first time this concept has been iterated. Elder Holland has talked about this, Elder Oaks has talked about this. That, like, you know, the first commandment versus the second commandment, truth versus love and compassion. Like, these aren't incompatible values that we're talking about, but so often we treat them as if they are. If you are loving, then you are capitulating on truth or you're endorsing someone else's practices. Whereas if you are standing up for truth, it must mean that you're not being a compassionate enough, loving enough, tolerant enough. And so they're pitted against each other. But we are called as disciples to strike that balance. And I felt the way that he articulated his talk was very balanced. Like, I think he threaded the needle really well of, like, don't misunderstand me. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you are endorsing their behaviors. And just because you are standing for truth doesn't mean you don't love them. And you. We need to make sure that we are constantly working hard to achieve that balance. And again, I felt called to repentance. Not that I'm like a terribly aggressive person online necessarily, but, like, in. In this. In. In this niche. Like, we're always defending the church. We. I love the church. My default is to stand up for. For the small guy, the church, and to try against, you know, the world who seems to always beat up on us. And I want to stand for truth and righteousness. And so sometimes internally, I feel like the need to defend sometimes outweighs my need to love and be compassionate. That is like a weakness of mine. And. And so while I try, when I'm publicly speaking, to be very conscious of that balance, sometimes I don't always strike the balance right? Sometimes I don't always strike the tone. [00:58:02] Speaker C: Right. [00:58:02] Speaker A: And I mentioned on Twitter that, like, on Friday, I literally recorded, edited, packaged, was ready to go, a video where I was responding to an ex Mormon. But, like, after I finished recording it, I just, like, had this nagging feeling like. Like, I don't know if I did that. Like, I don't know if I framed it right. I don't know if I. Like, I felt like I was maybe a little too harsh, so I ended up not publishing it. And now that I saw this talk, I am glad I did because I do feel like I need to make sure that I'm just, like, ever diligent in not just externally or publicly, but also internalizing the idea of wanting to be compassionate and Loving. Even when standing for church. [00:58:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I thought his talk was great. Yeah. And, yeah, that's really well said there. And it's hard, it's hard to, to balance both of those things because, like, look, let's just be candid. Let's be honest. Sometimes you don't feel a lot of love for the people that you're. You're. You have to engage with or you. You want to engage with in this arena. And that is, that's something we need to repent of. Right? We need to, we need to remember that even, even the people who are fighting against our faith, they're ultimately brothers and sisters, they're ultimately children of God. And, and the goal, what we want is we want them to, we want them to repent and, and, and, and turn to Christ and, And, you know, hostile engagement isn't necessarily gonna help be conducive to maybe making that happen. And, you know, obviously, whether that will or won't happen is beyond our control anyway. But still, we wanna, we don't wanna be a barrier. We don't want to be an obstacle to anybody feeling like they can either come back into the fold if they're a former member or if they're not a member, feeling like they can't join because, you know, everyone hates them or whatever. Right. So it's. It's tricky. How do you, how do you, how do you do that? It's hard, obviously. But yeah, I, I felt very much like those were. It was some really important counsel from Elder Gilbert. [01:00:14] Speaker A: So we have been here for an hour. [01:00:15] Speaker B: Speak for yourselves. I just want to say you two can speak for yourselves because I, of course, have never had this problem of being too mean or being too smilky with people on the Internet, of course, very much. I have always been impeccable with my choice of words and my rhetoric and my snarky. No, just kidding. Totally agree. It's a great reminder for all of us in the online sort of apologetics, podcasting world to lead out with that Christ like love, like you were saying and like Elder Gilbert was saying. [01:00:43] Speaker A: So we've been here for an hour. So final lightning round of talks that you guys liked. Any final ones? And also in the comments, let us know of any, Any additional talks that you thought were just absolutely noteworthy. We haven't covered some so far yet. Neil, Stephen, any thoughts? I've already covered the ones that I [01:00:59] Speaker C: thought were the best. I do just want to. [01:01:01] Speaker B: I don't have any more. Go ahead, Neil. [01:01:03] Speaker C: Well, I just wanted to quickly highlight Jeremiah Morgan. Elder Jeremiah Morgan. Oh, yeah, that was cool. He's a convert from the community of Christ. He didn't say that. He, He. [01:01:14] Speaker A: He ended. [01:01:14] Speaker C: He explained that he came from a Book of Mormon believing. Another Book of Mormon believing. Joseph Smith believing faith. But if you go look up his bio on, on the, on the Church News, it has a thing about him where it says that he was from the. From the community of Christ and is. And. And he talked about the covenants that his ancestors in Kirtland and Nauvoo had made, being part of what called him back. Right. And, and what blessed him and stuff. I thought that was a really great talk. [01:01:47] Speaker A: 100. And I don't think, I mean, I haven't confirmed it for sure yet, but I don't think we've ever had a general conference talk from a convert from the community of Christ. Correct me if I'm wrong. I couldn't find any other examples, but, like, that's kind of cool and historic. Yeah, I mean, someone, when I, I tweeted that someone did say, like, oh, well, Lucy Mack Smith gave a general conference talk in 1845. But, like, they weren't. We hadn't really split yet, so that doesn't really count. [01:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah, she didn't come out West. [01:02:14] Speaker B: Doesn't get founded then until the 1850s. [01:02:17] Speaker C: Yeah, she didn't come out west, but I wouldn't count her as someone who had, like, left and was now part of a separate branch at that point. And she even, like, died before. [01:02:28] Speaker B: She basically died before the RLDS Church was organized, I want to say. [01:02:31] Speaker C: Yeah, and. And she, she even. She even, like, she. I think she talked about. I, I've actually read that talk, but it's been a while. But she, like, even talked about, like, she knew they were going west and stuff like that. And she talked like she was one of them. Like, she didn't talk like she was an outsider. So. [01:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:51] Speaker A: But I love this talk because he talked about generational covenants, that it was just like the covenants of his ancestors from Kirtland and Nauvoo that, like, he felt the pull. He. It drew him to the restored gospel. And I thought that was so cool and how comforting for people who have loved ones who have walked a different path, who have left the church. And that was the same topic of Elder Rasband's talk, talking about how to deal with those who leave the church. How did you navigate that? And he basically made the point to love them, like, sometimes in our efforts, like, our desire, because we love These people, and we love the gospel, we want to just like cling tight and cajole them and coax them and force them back to church. Sometimes those actions can drive a bigger wedge, whereas we just need to love them. And you've never failed. There's no such thing as failure unless you stop loving. If you give up loving, that's the only way you can fail doing this. And ultimately, like our. Our covenants that we make are powerful, more powerful than we sometimes give credit for. And Jesus Christ is powerful. So if anyone's going to draw them back, it's going to be through the love of Jesus Christ that we can extend to them. And you never know where it will lead that will eventually draw them back to the covenant path. So I loved both of those addresses that it just gave a lot of comfort and clarity of. Okay, if someone leaves the church, what am I supposed to do? Cling to your covenants and love. [01:04:09] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. [01:04:12] Speaker B: I'm seeing lots of commenters saying they liked Elder Alfred Kiyongu. I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly. Elder Dube, Brother Farnes, Young man, General president. That reminds me, I would be remiss if I don't. If I did not mention our. Our boss, Kirk Magleby at the Ancient America foundation compiled this list for me to read. Foreign born speakers in session or by session and conference. 3 out of 8 for Saturday morning, 4 out of 10 for Saturday afternoon, 5 out of 9 for Sunday morning, and 4 out of 10 for Sunday afternoon. So basically almost like half of them are. [01:04:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it was very diverse. Yeah. [01:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. [01:04:55] Speaker A: Wonderful. Yeah, I saw a lot of commenters talking about LG Bass talk. He's such a passionate speaker. I love it. It was so good. Well, thank you guys for commenting about all of your favorite talks. And that was kind of our recap analysis of the talks we felt was most noteworthy. But you can expect the General Conference talks, the text and the transcript of them to come up in the next few days in the Gospel Library app. The actual recording of General Conference should be already available on the church's or the General Conference YouTube channel. But it'll just be like just the big giant session. So if you want to have the individual talks, they'll be coming out over the next next couple days and weeks. [01:05:33] Speaker B: I think they're already up. As a matter of fact, I'm looking at my YouTube playlist. They're on individual talks already on there. Yeah. So go check it out on the General Conference YouTube channel. [01:05:43] Speaker A: I know that when I first listened to General Conference, it's kind of like a rush. I mean, I'm paying attention because I make content about it. So I try to pay attention, but it's still just, like, all a blur. And so I enjoy the following weeks and months afterwards to just, like, listen to the conference talks while I do my makeup in the morning. Things like that. Remember, God loves you. You can study deeply, believe boldly, the church is true. General Conference is awesome, and we hope you had a great General Conference weekend. Thank you guys, and we will see you next time.