“And the King Went Up into the House of the Lord, and All the Men of Judah and All the Inhabitants of Jerusalem with Him, and the Priests, and the Prophets, and All the People, Both Small and Great: And He Read in Their Ears All the Words of the Book of the Covenant”
(See 2 Kings 23:1–30.)
Dr. Ellis T. Rasmussen wrote:
“With administrative skill, King Josiah launched a great reform involving all the people and the leaders. He led out by teaching them about their covenants with God and renewing them. He caused all the idolatrous facilities to be destroyed, including the infamous altar at Beth-el set up by the first king of northern Israel—thus fulfilling a prophecy about it (2 Kgs. 23:15; 1 Kgs. 12:25–29; 13:1–2). Yet in burning the bones of former idolatrous priests of the place, he identified and honored the bones of a man of God (1 Kgs. 13:23–32). In that same eventful year the Passover was celebrated as it had not been celebrated for centuries (2 Kgs. 23:22–23). Finally, the spiritualists and their abominations were put away, and the land was cleansed for the first time in centuries. But the pendulum swinging from evil kings to good kings had not stopped. The Lord knew that Judah would revert to evil after Josiah’s death and be destroyed because of it (2 Kgs. 23:26-27).
“It is tragic that the zealous Josiah lost his life in a vain attempt at intervention in international affairs. Perhaps he feared the rise of Egypt more than he feared the decadent Assyria against whom the king of Egypt was going to fight. As it turned out, Assyria was overthrown and Nineveh conquered by Babylon three years after Josiah’s death [Bible Dictionary, “Chronology”].
“The death of young Josiah after thirty-one years of remarkable action must have been a bitter disappointment for the righteous people in Judah. It may well have hastened the resurgence of unrighteous forces that dominated the last two decades of that nation. Quite understandably, the prophet Jeremiah lamented the death of the righteous King Josiah (2 Kgs. 23:29–30; 2 Chr. 35:24–25).”
(A Latter-day Saint Commentary on the Old Testament [1993], 322–23.)
Randal S. Chase spent his childhood years in Nephi, Utah, where his father was a dry land wheat farmer and a businessman. In 1959 their family moved to Salt Lake City and settled in the Holladay area. He served a full-time mission in the Central British (England Central) Mission from 1968 to 1970. He returned home and married Deborah Johnsen in 1971. They are the parents of six children—two daughters and four sons—and an ever-expanding number of grandchildren.
He was called to serve as a bishop at the age of 27 in the Sandy Crescent South Stake area of the Salt Lake Valley. He served six years in that capacity, and has since served as a high councilor, a stake executive secretary and clerk, and in many other stake and ward callings. Regardless of whatever other callings he has received over the years, one was nearly constant: He has taught Gospel Doctrine classes in every ward he has ever lived in as an adult—a total of 35 years.
Dr. Chase was a well-known media personality on Salt Lake City radio stations in the 1970s. He left on-air broadcasting in 1978 to develop and market a computer-based management, sales, and music programming system to radio and television stations in the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. After the business was sold in 1984, he supported his family as a media and business consultant in the Salt Lake City area.
Having a great desire to teach young people of college age, he determined in the late 1980s to pursue his doctorate, and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah in 1997. He has taught communication courses at that institution as well as at Salt Lake Community College and Dixie State University for 21 years. He served as Communication Department chair and is currently a full-time professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.
Concurrently with his academic career, Brother Chase has served as a volunteer LDS Institute and Adult Education instructor in the CES system since 1994, both in Salt Lake City and St. George, where he currently teaches a weekly Adult Education class for three stakes in the Washington area. He has also conducted multiple Church History tours and seminars. During these years of gospel teaching, he has developed an extensive library of lesson plans and handouts which are the predecessors to these study guides.
Dr. Chase previously published a thirteen-volume series of study guides on the Book of Mormon, Church History, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The series, titled Making Precious Things Plain, along with four smaller study guides on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the story of the Nativity, and the final week of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice, are designed to assist teachers and students of the gospel, as well as those who simply want to study on their own. Several of these books are also available in the Spanish language.
