239 chapters. 6,604 verses. Roughly 267,000 words. Fold them all in half, and three different measurements — middle chapter, middle verses, middle words — land inside one continuous story: a converted people burying their swords in the earth. And the two words at the book's precise center? "Children of." In episode three, Mike and Maggie fold the Book of Mormon like a mirror and look at what the whole record was built to frame.

Along the way: what a chiasm is (you can just call it a fold), why the book's stated purpose comes true in miniature at its own middle, what "Anti-Nephi-Lehi" might actually mean — including the facing-mirror proposal and the cheek pun the text seems to be smiling about — the honest negative result on "Nephi," the matching fold at the exact center of Revelation where the accuser falls, and why the mathematical heart of "the new covenant" looks point-for-point like Jeremiah's definition of one.

Scriptures: Alma 24–27; Alma 36; Alma 23:16–17; Mosiah 5; 3 Nephi 27; Revelation 12:8–11; D&C 84:54–57; Exodus 24:7; Jeremiah 31:31–34.

Next time: the promise kept — the Savior's suffering came in two presses. A garden named for an olive press, and a winepress.

Hosted by AI voices Mike and Maggie, generated from the writings of David and Leslie Ann. Personal reflections; not official positions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read the essay at theword.love/essays/the-people-at-the-fold.

"It is better that one man should perish..." — "It is expedient that one man should die for the people..." Two nearly identical sentences: one spoken in a dark street in 600 BC, the other by the man arranging the death of Christ. In episode two, Mike and Maggie walk to the front gate of the Book of Mormon, where a tare was planted on page one — and trace what that seed becomes across a thousand years.

Along the way: the only two people in scripture who "shrunk" and "would that I might not" (and why one killed while the other drank the bitter cup), Alma's gauge reading in Nephi's chest, the voice that says the ways have run out versus the God who prepares them centuries early, the sword of Laban's long shadow to Cumorah, the buried swords at the book's beating heart, Captain Moroni's furious letter and Pahoran's beautiful reply, and why weeds becoming wheat is the reason we're forbidden the sickle.

Scriptures: 1 Nephi 3:7; 1 Nephi 4; 1 Nephi 9:5; John 11:50; D&C 19:18–19; Luke 22:43; Alma 32:28; 2 Nephi 5:14; Alma 24:11, 18; Alma 48:17; Alma 61:9; D&C 10; Matthew 13:24–30.

Next time: the Savior's suffering came in two presses — a garden named for an olive press, and a winepress.

Hosted by AI voices Mike and Maggie, generated from the writings of David and Leslie Ann. Personal reflections; not official positions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More at theword.love.

The Lord said the tares are the children of the wicked one — and He told us exactly who that is: the father of lies. So what are his children? In our first episode, Mike and Maggie trace a family tree through Matthew 13 and John 8 and find that the tares are lies that look like truth, sown into a field that is the whole world.

Along the way: why the seed is the word of God (and what Alma's "true seed" test reveals), how the word was sown into every nation and tongue, the three loves that form the Lord's own threshing floor, the sickle clause, the promise that all things are consecrated for our good — and why, by 1829, the field was already white.

Scriptures: Matthew 13; Luke 8:11; John 8:44; Alma 32; Alma 29:8; 2 Nephi 29; 2 Nephi 28; Matthew 22:36–40; Moroni 7:19; Acts 10:34–35; 2 Nephi 2:2; D&C 1; D&C 4; D&C 38:12; D&C 86:1–7.

Next time: a tare walks into the Book of Mormon before Lehi's family finishes leaving Jerusalem — one sentence, spoken at night, that the entire thousand-year record wrestles with.

Hosted by AI voices Mike and Maggie, generated from the writings of David and Leslie Ann. Personal reflections; not official positions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More at theword.love.