The lectures on faith teach that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things

never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary until life and salvation.

But how much can we be asked to sacrifice?

For Abraham, he seemed to have been asked to sacrifice in a myriad of ways.

First, he placed his faith on the altar by waiting for a child with his wife, Sarah.

Second, and more famously, God commanded him to sacrifice his long-awaited son, Isaac, on a literal

altar. How can we approach this as modern Latter-day Saints with the context of ancient

near-eastern history and culture? We'll discuss that, and more, on today's episode of Abide,

a Maxwell Institute podcast.

My name is Joseph Stewart. I'm the public communication specialist at the Neely Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.

Christian Heel is a research follow at the Institute.

And each week, we'll be discussing the week's block of reading from the Church of Jesus

Christ of Latter-day Saints Come Follow Me curriculum.

We aren't here to present a lesson, but rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture

block, so as to help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify

Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage

the world of religious ideas.

And today, we are joined by one of our research assistants, Aaron Garner, who studies

ancient Near Eastern Studies

and Comparative Literature here at BYU.

Aaron is from Raymond Alberta, and upon graduation plans on going to grad school to further study

in ancient near eastern studies and comparative literature.

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