The Testing one, two, three, testing one, two, three, this is Radio Free Mormon, on the air, broadcasting behind enemy lines.

Tonight's episode, How Joseph Smith came up with the olive tree allegory.

Now, most of you know that the olive tree allegory to which I refer is found in the book of

Mormon. More specifically, it is found in Jacob, Chapter 5 in the Book of Mormon. It is also the

longest chapter in the book of Mormon. So we're going to be

talking about this olive tree allegory today, and we're going to be giving ideas as to how it was

that Joseph Smith likely came up with this allegory and what his sources were for coming up with

this allegory. Here is the title screen for today's show. It's episode 17

in the Mormon Sunday School series. In Radio Free Mormon, it is episode 3,4.9. It is titled

Mormon Sunday School with Radio Free Mormon, so you know that it's not supposed to be a faith-promoting

podcast. This is not faith-promoting. This is knowledge-promoting. This is a truth-prom. This is not faith promoting. This is knowledge promoting. This is a

truth promoting podcast, not necessarily faith promoting. Where you learn stuff, you're never going to

hear in regular Sunday school. So that should be another clue. How Joseph Smith came up with the

allegory of the olive tree lesson number 17. Let's get going on this, this shall we this is going to be a lot of fun

here's our title slide how joseph smith came up with the allegory of the olive tree now i'm going to give

a synopsis of the olive tree allegory right now i went back and i read jacob chapter five yesterday

i read it carefully i made a number of notes.

I'll be sharing some of that with you today. But we can synopsize this very easily.

It's not always easy to comprehend what's going on in Jacob chapter 5 because it is a bit sprawling.

It's a bit wordy. But if we take the 20,000 foot view, it is a play in four acts. And each of these acts is relatively simple to remember. Act one, Israel is a tame olive tree who grows old and the branches begin to decay. Branches from wild olive trees, those are of course the Gentiles, branches from wild olive trees get grafted into the mother tree.

By the way, I'm going to continue to refer to this original tame olive tree

that represents Israel as the mother tree throughout because it gets a little bit confusing

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