The Nehor

*The Last Judgement* “Did you do all that you could do?” “No.” ”Then…….Buh-bye”

It is not the best method of scriptural exegesis. A lot of it assumes that prophets of the past were secretly sneaking in coded phrases and the like that their contemporaries would understand one way but people in the future, often millenia in the future, are meant to understand them differently. The writer of Matthew inserting prophecies (most of which are not prophecies) fulfilled by Jesus all over the place is one particularly egregious example. American End-Times Evangelicals thinking the Book of Revelation and snippets all over the Old Testament are all about THEM is perhaps even more egregious. LDS are not immune to this. I do wonder if the church survives for 1000 years and there is no messianic return what strange meanings and interpretations will be pulled from the Doctrine and Covenants and Book of Mormon and thought to be direct instructions to the people of that time specifically or will be seen as a “dualistic” writing with coded prophecy for their day.

I meant he copied the whole resurrection of a bunch of people story. We are talking about a bunch of other people being resurrected and seen “by many”. What prophecy of the Old World was this fulfilling?

This quote from a polygamy denialists in that article is amazing: *spit take* LOL, even LMAO. “Joseph Smith’s words are filled with rapturous radiant benevolence and poetic genius and he probably farts out rainbow unicorns that sing angelic symphonies. Brigham Young’s words are gruff and jarring and are like nails on a chalkboard and farts out demons that will give you a wedgie and steal your lunch money.” Yeah, sure buddy.

It won’t stay stocked. Being a “state within a state” is really really creepy. Also if all that becomes scarce mass starvation follows. The Church’s organization won’t keep functioning. It is spread out all over the nation and the breakdown of transportation would destroy it. I suppose it might work in a Second Coming situation if the 90%+ of the population is mass murdered by Jesus on His return. That might wipe out enough people that subsistence farming might be enough to feed the population even without electricity and fuel. If that is the purpose though I don’t think I want to live to see the Millenium. Rent-takers are a blight on the economy. It is the idle eating the bread of the laborer writ large. That kind of passive income doesn’t come from nowhere. I have my doubts that this large-scale growth in Africa will continue for much longer. Maybe raise the Global South to the living standards of the rest of the world? Sounds like a better solution to me.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! It is the Great Replacement theory that “the other” is going to replace us unless we mass produce pure blood babies!

Autarky is the economic system of complete independence from external inputs. The closest state to autarky today is probably North Korea. It was also the goal of such states as Nazi Germany, Maoist China, the Soviet Union, and Francoist Spain. Not exactly a winning group there. Also the idea that this kind of self-sufficiency is possible in a church is silly. They need electricity and fuel to keep the whole thing going. They don’t own the entire means of production. There are way too many inputs into the process. The independent yeoman farmer ideal that Ezra Taft Benson seemed obsessed with was a myth even in his own time.

LOL, no. I just know how humans actually think and don’t imagine that “foreigners” are a hive mind bent on world domination because of conspiracy theory nonsense.

Not a good translation. Same problem. These are not making exclusivity claims about divinity. They are arguing that our god is the bestest and most powerful and the others are weak by comparison. It is a standard boasting thing. You can find prayers to polytheistic gods that do the same thing talking about how wonderful this god is compared to all others and that compared to this god they are nothing. Monotheism came later depending on how you categorize the Trinity as monotheism.

The “personal relationship with Jesus/Christ” concept is a very modern concept that seeped into the Church from Protestant faiths, mostly American Evangelicalism.

Not really. I would think that would be such a huge event that forgetting to write about it would be madness. You had a cataclysmic disaster and a voice came out of heaven talking about it. Then the dead walked and taught many people. Yeah, that would be important. The most miraculous event of all those three and it wasn’t limited. It happened to “many”. I mean the cynical take is that the writer forgot about this prophecy earlier in the text and now they are filling a plot hole. Also seems like the whole idea was just copied from Matthew.

No they don’t do that part. Virtually no one is having children as part of some kind of racial or demographic struggle. That is conspiracy nonsense that is reducing a group to a hivemind fixated on some long term plan for domination and denies the people in that group personhood as unique individuals with agency making reproductive decisions. This is conspiracy rubbish designed to make people fear and/or hate the supposed group that is going to displace them or whatever. It is good for winning elections and selling things but bad for society as a whole. And does this somehow result in a net gain for them after factoring in the 18 years of labor needed to raise the child? Probably not.

Those are both rape.

Rich people tend to commit very different kinds of crimes. Still, should probably get rid of richness while we get rid of poverty too. LOL, no. Just no. Governments for virtually all of human history have not been trying to end poverty. The idea that governments exist to help all the people they rule over is a very recent idea. Also for most of recorded history even if you had somehow equally distributed wealth that equal distribution would have been above but not that high above subsistence levels. In a bad year it would have been below subsistence levels. It lead to inaccuracies to take the kinds of governments that exist today with their priorities and push them on pre-modern societies. Governments exist primarily to inflict violence on enemies and control or channel or mitigate internal violence (usually by inflicting violence).

I don’t believe that part of the Matthew account at all. That is bigger than any miracle or even the resurrection of Jesus and it doesn’t show up in the first gospel? Nah, that is a legend that was added later.

I wouldn’t cast it as Persians vs. Iranians. I would like to see the regime in Iran fall but the current US talk about intervention isn’t helping and I wish we would butt out. Few things give a faltering regime legitimacy than opposing an intrusive foreign power. I worry intervention even if in support of the protests may doom the protests. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” - Stephen Miller "These are the iron laws of the world. We're a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.” - Stephen Miller This kind of rhetoric has me worried about what they will do next. The United States largely prospered under the status quo system of restraining aggression. Now we are the aggressors and think the law of the jungle is our guide. Our position on the world stage as a leader and defender has been lost, possibly forever.

Minneapolis doesn’t have all of those. Or is this a non sequiter about the alleged fraud in Minneapolis suggesting that if fraud is possible in regards to a program that having such a program is fruitless and shouldn’t exist. If so, we should really disband the military. And the government in general. If it is about Minneapolis’s alleged fraud I am pretty sure the solution is not to send in ICE agents to stop the fraud but that is what the government is doing suggesting that the supposed fraud is just a pretext to harass immigrants and political enemies. You know, like authoritarian governments do to rally support.

This sounds way too much like a modern General Conference. Also worried that he is going to hurt his jaw doing that.

I’ve heard this song and dance before. The people of Iraq yearn for freedom. If we eliminate Saddam it will usher in a golden age. The people of Afghanistan all hate the Taliban If we take out their government they will build a brighter tomorrow as a US ally. The people of Vietnam dislike communism. If we help them defeat communism they will remain staunch allies against communist states. Add in rosy predictions for what toppling leftist leaning regimes all over the world during the Cold War would accomplish. Many of the same politicians that justified Iraq in these same terms are using the same explanations. WHY DO WE KEEP BELIEVING THEM? I’m sure many Venezuelans are hopeful. Will it be enough so that this violation of all of the norms of international law and looting the nation of Venezuela will go well? And why are we saber rattling with Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and (sigh) Greenland at the same time? All this from a President who ran on not getting us into quagmires and burned allies and wrecked things trying to pull out. Also pulled out a lot of the benign stuff like all those US aid programs saving tens of thousands of lives. Why does the one intervention he really wants have to be in a resource rich nation while his public remarks are salivating over all that oil? At least in Iraq we pretended oil wasn’t one of the main factors. The talk of liberation rings through all forms of imperialism. The British and the French loved these narratives. The United States really drank in all this “enlightened” interventionist rhetoric from the worst president in US history. Yeah, I am still mad at you Woodrow Wilson! Your fault! Your condescending desire to be the messiah of world piece. You racist segregationist halfwit! You delusional wackjob! You primed the pump for over a century of “enlightened” interventionism! Without you probably no authoritarian communism. No Nazis, no fascists, no Soviets. YOU FOOL!!!!!!!!!! Yes, I am saying Teddy Roosevelt should have gotten a third term. Edit: To be clear I hope I am wrong. I hope that despite all the incompetence involved in this endeavor that somehow the regime is put down and a democratic government installed that will avoid being looted by US oil companies and navigate a course leading to a brighter future for the people of Venezuela. I just think the odds of this happening are incredibly low.

Sounds like a trauma response. That kind of response is (sort of partially) genetic. The currently prevailing paradigm is that our brains have trauma response mechanisms but until trauma happens they are dormant. If a response is needed with any regularity it can become a coping mechanism and a response in situations that are not truly traumatic. The brain just thinks it might be traumatic. A kind of defense reaction.

Universal healthcare including greater access to contraception and reproductive health care, subsidized or free childcare, democratization and overhaul of our education system, and real social safety nets. That would make a good start.

It is poverty. It is all the poverty. We should work on fixing that.

This assumes that God is speaking directly through Paul and Joseph Smith and doesn’t show that Paul was preaching about salvation for the dead. If showing that this specifically was being taught requires a book of scripture that wouldn’t exist until over 1,000 years later then it wasn’t being taught in Paul’s letter by itself. If Paul was trying to teach that he was incompetent.

Nobody said that it was the “only” reason. You are misrepresenting in order to be hypbolic. The people you are backing, hope this helps. See, I can do misrepresentative hyperbole too!