Shalom. Welcome back to Scripture Central to our last lesson on the epistles this year.

These beautiful letters of John are some of the most beautiful letters of all scripture.

The message that John gives us is the discipleship and hope all come through the principles of love.

And then we've also got the little book of Jude,

and it's filled with warnings and exhortation. That's written by the brother of the Lord,

the half-brother of Jesus. You can see here on my chart, if you've got online, either the

handouts, which are all available through the archives, or through the Come Come Follow Me on Book of Mormoncentral.org

or scripture central.org that we don't know exactly when these letters are written probably

well after Paul's third mission when John has moved into Ephesus because Paul served in

Ephesus for three years as the leader and John then, we're told by history

comes and establishes the church there, and we know that he's very close to those saints

in the book of Revelation.

We assume that these letters of John are from John the Beloved because of some things that

were said by our prophet, Joseph Smith.

However, they are unnamed epistles, second and third letters

are unnamed. However, they do share the same style and vocabulary. So we just assume that John uses

the word elder instead of his name. And this should not surprise you. Remember, he lives in a day and age

where you don't refer to God by his name. And in his

gospel, he never refers to himself by the name of John. He never refers to Mary by the name of Mary.

You know, I just feel like this is very consistent with the John-inning literature not to say his name.

In fact, if he said his name, I'd be a little more worried about it than otherwise.

In First John, this beautiful epistle is a poetic sermon. He's writing it to his spiritual

...