Peppermint Patty

8 minutes ago, Eschaton said:

Has Dan ever done apologetics? I'm just familiar with his social media stuff, which isn't apologetic in nature. 

Maybe you might feel better with the term “educator” instead?

30 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I looked for a date on the article in the link but didn’t see one, which makes me wonder how new it is. The phenomenon it discusses is not; the Witnesses and the Adventists have been out-drawing the Latter-day Saints for quite a while now. 

It looks like the article came out last week on November 28, 2022.

David G. Stewart, Jr., of UNLV who operates the cumorah website published an article last week showing the Jehovah Witnesses and Adventist missionary programs are having more success in finding converts than the LDS. He gives some reasons and possible solutions. Has anyone read this article? Thoughts?

“Trends point to continued underperformance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compared to its competitors. While a range of possibilities exist, the default path is for further decline of growth rates. The LDS Church is unlikely to regain its former growth trajectory. Prospects of becoming a major world faith have faded and are likely beyond reach.”

http://jmssa.org/stewart/

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Oh, that is horrific

18 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

A record made by Nephi, a godly man of old …

Make it stop!

Craig, that’s a very inspiring story. I agree with Calm and hope you will seriously consider sharing this to a wider audience.

I know a couple of missionaries that didn’t see a lot of success in the mission field even though they were great missionaries. I think your story can serve as a reminder and encouragement to many LDS and returned missionaries that you never know what fruit your efforts might bear, even 50 years later.

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Plagiarism unfortunately isn't practiced only by the young and inexperienced.

Some excellent scholars have been guilty of plagiarism. The most tragic case I can think of in recent years is that of biblical scholar Peter T. O'Brien, who wrote five acclaimed NT commentaries and had all of them—his entire life's work—taken out of print and pulped because he failed to attribute sources correctly. He's 86 now. He will never come back from this.

In a better world, Elder Bednar would acknowledge his error and apologize, but that isn't the Church's way. So, we get the usual deflections and excuses, and the messenger is duly shot.

Maybe this time will be different. Elder Bednar could just offer a quick apology for any oversight and pledge to do better. I hope there are no further deflections, excuses or shooting the messenger. I guess we will soon see.

It would be a genuine miracle if someone could finish Skyrim in under a month. After a year of playing this I’m about ready to give up.

I think more people are leaving now than in the past, just based on personal experience. My best friend of 23 years and her husband just left the church. Our children grew up together. I don’t know how to approach her about so right now we just pretend like nothing happened. 😓

19 hours ago, Fether said:

Here is what the REAL issue is…

It isn’t lore  friendly.
 

Toy story 1 takes place in 1995. Buzz light year was supposed to be a starwars equivalent for the toy story universe. 
 

There is NO way a movie released in 1995 would have been as widely accepted as StarWars if it had a gay kiss

I don't know. When Star Wars first came out, there was an incestuous kiss between Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker. The Star War's trilogy did pretty well at the box office.

If there is any hesitancy among LDS to attend other religious services it might have deep roots in the notion that God told Joseph Smith that all creeds were an abomination in his sight (JosephSmith-History 1:18-19).

6 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

I have it on pretty good authority that he is skeptical of Hebraisms that are not involved with names. Names appear to follow a different logic in the translation--or so I think he thinks.

I want to know what makes you the authority on what this Brant Gardner fellow thinks. 🤡

On 6/6/2021 at 7:42 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

I saw the film yesterday at a big screen Cinemark theater.  Lots of people there.

The director was Mark Goodman, writer Mitch Davis, and it is rated PG.

There was a lot of beautiful location filming, and valuable use of historical sites.  The actor playing Joseph Smith looked very much like photos and paintings we have seen, but perhaps not so imposing and physically as powerful as Joseph actually was.

Writer Mitch Davis, who did an excellent job on "The Other Side of Heaven" I & II, and who is an experienced writer-director, dropped the ball on this one.

Davis should have worked with a serious historian in order to come up with a better, more accurate script.

For example, in the scene in which Joseph returns to the forest to retrieve the plates from a hollow log, he should have wrapped them in a farmer's smock -- which would have been substantial -- rather than the light-weight shirt he appeared to use.  In another scene (below), Joseph and Martin are depicted with cloth divider between them.  The best information we have is that there was no such divider, and no reason for one.

In this same photo (in the monitor on the right) one can see Joseph holding a black hat.  Witnesses consistently describe the hat as white, and that Joseph placed his face into the hat in order to block out the light.  In this film, Joseph never puts his face in the hat, but dictates with his face, as shown here.

Joseph was primarily successful because he surrounded himself with men of strength and character.  In writing his pious script, Davis seemed to miss that aspect in each case:  Martin Harris was a substantial, successful farmer.  He did not get that way by being a bumbling fool and henpecked husband.  A scene with him on the road, consulting with experts in New York City and en route might have been helpful.  Oliver could have been depicted as he actually was, a very smart young man, who rightly thought of himself as far more sophisticated than Joseph.  David Whitmer was a powerful and opinionated character who thought that anything Joseph did after producing the Book of Mormon was heresy.  He was a distinctive influence on Restorationists through the time of his death and beyond.  All three witnesses were very independent minded, which makes their story all the more potentially interesting.

Robert, I just saw the movie and your criticism's are valid. I wanted to see more character development for the 3 witnesses. Their characters were undeveloped and shallow. In real life the witnesses were very complex and interesting individuals. I wanted to see real characters and not just shallow cardboard cutouts.

12 minutes ago, SteveO said:

That assumes missionary work begins and ends with full time missionaries.  It does not.  My point still stands that at no prior time did life shut down so completely and abruptly and widespread as it did in 2020.  Not even during WWII.

Steve, you should read the article I posted in my comment above. Missionary work was shut down from 1939 until 1945 during WWII. At least in 2020 there were tens of thousands of missionaries still converting people through online means. The internet and social media were obviously not available during 1939-1945.

18 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I don’t have any information at the ready on that. 
 

But I did find this regarding the Church during the 1918 flu epidemic. It says meetings were canceled in October through December. No information about missionary work, but I’m guessing if meetings were only canceled for three months, that missionary work curtailment wasn’t as extensive then as it was this past year. 
 

https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/blog/the-church-is-more-than-a-meetinghouse?lang=eng

Scott, I was able to find this article about missionary work in WWII. It looks like LDS missionaries were evacuated starting in 1939 from all foreign countries until the end of WWII in 1945:

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4542/

15 minutes ago, SteveO said:

It was probably as robust as the industrial sector and general economies in each respective year...

Steve, I could be mistaken but I was under the impression all missionary age men would have been subject to the mandatory military draft during the years of WWII? And, I don’t think many countries would have accepted our missionaries had that not been the case? Large parts of the world were at war with each other.

8 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I’m old enough to remember the Vietnam War. I recall some years in the. ‘60s when quotas were imposed upon wards limiting the number of missionaries that could be called, but I don’t remember missionary work being curtailed on anywhere near the scale we’ve seen this past year. 

Scott, during WWII what was our missionary program like compared to 2020?

8 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Wouldn’t that have been intuitively predictable, given the COVID mess we have endured? 

I think a good comparison would be to look at the numbers from 1919 and 1920. Those were the years the Spanish Flu was in full pandemic mode.

Also, you could look and compare the numbers during the years of WWI and WWII when we didn’t have much, if any, missionary program and many nations were completely shut off from access. Similarly, the Korean War or Vietnam years.

It was a great interview. Thanks Smac. I haven’t read Don’s book yet but I plan on it. I’ve only heard good things about it.

My only complaint is that Don is wearing the same shirt he wears in the Witness film trailer.

Don, please PM me your address and I will send you a couple of different interview shirts. 🙂

Stemelbow, was that video really from Kwaku El?

Anyone here who hasn’t watched the video I would highly encourage you not to. It’s very violent and disturbing. 
 

it has a soldier that is named FAIR beating to death with a bat in gruesome detail a soldier named John Dehlin.

It is one of the most gruesome and disturbing things I’ve seen. Please do not watch.

I sincerely hope that FAIR and Kwaku El had nothing to do with this video.

17 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Have you been putting the continent on stuff you mail? Do you just say it goes to Europe and expect them to guess the nation?

Maybe this explains why Ahab’s relatives in England never receive the Christmas presents he’s been sending for years.

8 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Heh. The power of the unchallenged “given.” Now that we “know” the world will end in 10 years, time to rush headlong into the New Green Deal (TM). Better start retrofitting or replacing your house. 

Scott, are you trying to tell us you’re starting a new 10 year countdown clock? Mike Reed will be happy. 😁

From an academic perspective I wonder if it would be better for Kent Jackson to base his upcoming paper on the hundreds of examples in Professor Wayment’s paper, rather than just the 16 examples?