How many times have you gotten to the extensive sections on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and stopped reading, or skimmed over, or skipped over entirely?

I confess that I have done this myself and have also seen new investigators and new members of the church also struggle, even if they came from a background where they read the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament.

So how can we get to the point where we are getting more out of these sections

and fully appreciating the beauty that we can find therein,

where the prophets of the Old Testament are speaking to us in our day in the Book of Mormon?

We'll talk with Professor Joseph M. Spencer, a professor of ancient scripture

here at BYU, to learn more about Isaiah in the Book of Mormon and how it can benefit us in our

personal study. My name is Joseph Stewart. I'm the public communications specialist of the Neil A. Maxwell

Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Christian Hill is a research fellow

at the Institute.

And each week we discuss the week's block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ's 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 and their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ

and engage the world of religious ideas. Today we are joined by Dr. Joseph Spencer, a philosopher,

theologian, and assistant professor of ancient scripture here at BYU. Dr. Spencer is the editor

of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies and a leading scholar of the book of Mormon. He's a prolific author and among his recent works are The Vision of All, 25 lectures on Isaiah

and Nephi's record from Copeland in 2016, and First Nephi, a brief theological introduction

published by the Maxwell Institute in 2020.

He has recently completed a monograph on Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, which is currently

under a review with the University of Illinois Press. Dr. Spencer, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks. Glad to be here. We are thrilled to have you here. And just want to start with a quick

overview of what we're looking at today, which is Isaiah 58 through 66. What's happening in these

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