Welcome to the recent speeches podcast presented by BYU speeches

featuring inspiring new devotional and forums given each week on BYU campus.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU speeches wherever you get your

podcasts or by visiting speeches dot BYU.edu. This devotional address entitled, The Entire Church Shall Take Hold of Christ,

was given on June 4th of 2024 by Alice Ann Crandall, then an associate professor of public health in the

BYU College of Life Sciences. It's good to be with you today. And the past few

weeks people have been asking me what I'm going to talk about and it's been a surprisingly hard question to answer not because I didn't know but it's been a little hard to say.

And so I've just been telling people different things like, well I'm

going to talk about let's make BYU great again, a discussion on critical race

theory. Or maybe we can do abortion or any of these other hot topic issues. But instead

I settled on a scripture from Isaiah and in that day seven women shall take hold of one man

saying we will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel only let us be called by

thy name to take away our reproach. So now you think I'm going to talk

about polygamy or the end of times. Why out of all of the scriptures that I could have chosen, did I choose this verse?

For years I found this verse perplexing, and I didn't like the interpretations that I heard or that I could come up with myself and

they didn't really ring true to me. Now since it's a verse from Isaiah there's

likely many ways to interpret it but but I gained new insights about this

scripture when I read a book by Dr. Alonso Gascal of BYU's religious

education called the Lost Language of Symbolism. He explains some possible symbols in this verse that led to an

interpretation that has since made it one of my favorite scriptures. So first let me give a little primer on the ancient symbolism that Isaiah might have been thinking of when he wrote this verse.

The number seven is often used in the scriptures to symbolize completeness, wholeness, and spiritual perfection.

Sometimes in scripture, the church is referred to as a woman or bride. One man may be a reference to Jesus Christ. From the

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