Hello and welcome to a joint podcast. This is the Meridian Magazine Come Follow Me podcast and the Scriptures are Real podcast. And I'm one host, Carrie Mulesine, and I'm so happy to be also with Scott and Maureen Proctor, the host of the Meridian magazine Come Follow Me podcast. So it's just good to be with you again, Scott and Marine.

Well, we're excited, too.

There's nothing really quite so fun as unpacking the scriptures that sometimes might seem mysterious to us.

So we hope it'll be a day of exploration.

Well, and what could be more exciting than to study Isaiah?

I think so many people in the church over the generations have struggled with Isaiah,

but Nephi promised that in our day we would be able to understand Isaiah. And so maybe this

discussion and these discussions throughout the church of Isaiah is part of that prophecy that we'll begin to

understand Isaiah in our time.

So, Carrie, let me start out with a question for you.

Isaiah chapter 40 starts out with this beautiful, comfort ye, comfort ye my people,

sayeth your God.

And then he says, speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry into her that her warfare

is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of the Lord's hand

double for all her sins. So that is an amazing thing to say that the warfare is accomplished.

What is what time frame is this talking about?

Because I think most of us today feel like we're smacked up in the middle of a great war.

Yeah, yeah, we do. But you're right, there's an important historical context here. We're at a really

key juncture in Isaiah. Maybe in terms of Come Follow Me as well.

I hope that our audiences have been having a good experience, that we're getting to understand Isaiah more than ever before.

And hopefully with the great study we've had, the historical background we did like a month or so ago helped us to get that.

But let's just remind ourselves that the Assyrians at this point had scattered the Northern Kingdom.

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