bluebell

Good advice. I think you can also call the bank and put a stop on it, but you might have to wait until it's "pending". That usually costs money though.

I think the advice for civil violations is likely different than for criminal violations.

It’s hard to say. In the Old Testament fasting is always voluntary. The people had access to food, but voluntarily chose not to eat. Such as when Moses didn’t eat before going up to the mountain and eventually receiving the 10 Commandments. Your question made me curious, so I looked it up and according to ChatGPT, the first instance of fasting in the Bible, I’m thinking where the word is used, is in judges when the Israelites fast because they lost a battle. But I don’t know if we can trust ChatGPT on that. In the book of Mormon, it sounds like fasting is always used in combo with prayer and seeking favor from God or supplication. It doesn’t sound like it was typically caused by a lack of food or famine, but that’s after a very cursory exploration of the idea. There’s probably more and better information available out there on the topic.

I remember a few years ago in my Stake they were having a really bad drought. The Stake is mostly agriculture, farmers and ranchers, so it was a big deal. The Stake president asked everybody to fast for rain and a break from the record high temps, and then the day after the fast the temperature was like 105 and no rain in sight. A little while later, the Stake president told us he had shared this experience with a visiting GA. The GA said “well, it never hurts to ask” That’s my opinion as far as fasting and prayer goes. We do our best not to ask amiss, but we always leave it in God’s hands and work to accept his will.

Thanks for explaining your thinking on it.

Can you explain in what ways you see them as similar?

I wouldn't report them either, and for the same reasons. The "I wouldn't report someone for speeding or unpaid parking tickets either or any other civil legal matter" reason was the first 'why' that came to my mind as well.

That's one of my favorites. I love when they mix actions/sci-fi and humor together.

Agreed. The plots of the movies out right now all seems to be violent, dark, or ideologically driven. I miss just going to the movies and being entertained, and leaving feeling happy.

Since there is no way to get away from the light of Christ, I don’t think such an experiment would be possible (leaving out it being completely immoral to do that to a child of course) but I agree it would be very interesting to know how a human would respond with only neutral or negative influences. I’ve always wondered.

I think it comes from Roman 3:10 and the teaching that there are none righteous but God, and that an unrighteous person is incapable of doing good without the influence of righteousness. The whole 'fruit of the tree' thing, and how an unrighteous person cannot produce good fruit, left to their own devices.

Are they worried that religious teachings against homosexuality etc. might be classified as hate speech?

I agree, it wasn't an afterlife as we would view it, but it was an afterlife, where choices made during mortality directly impacted the state of the soul after mortality.

That article was written by Elder Lund, and he's actually refuting the idea that tries to separate salvation from exaltation, and explains that though it was a popular way for some Latter-day saints to deal with Paul's teachings, it's not correct. The quote you shared above from the article is actually located under the heading "Inadequate Explanations". He even quotes Elder McConkie to double down on incorrectness of the idea that the term salvation used in the scriptures doesn't mean exaltation: It's a very long article and most of it is relevant but since it's not possible to quote all the parts discussing salvation by grace, I'll quote one of the last paragraphs:

It depends on what part of Judaism you’re talking about. During Jesus’s time the Sadducees believed that the spirit died when the body died, but the Essenes and the Pharisees seemed to believe in an afterlife. And some believed in a blissful afterlife for the righteous.

We’d still have to ask, what works could we do to save ourselves?

Same here

It's anecdotal for sure but I've never felt that Rod was a liar. Maybe better to just assume it happened (or remain neutral on it) while addressing reasons that one experience isn't indicative of the majority.

That is such good news!

Agreed. It leaves open some important questions like, are we saved before we can have faith in Christ? Are we saved before we can repent? Are we saved before we can covenant with Christ through baptism? The theology just doesn't work, in my opinion.

I think it would answer some issues with that verse but open up new questions and problems. For example, it could be said to imply that we are saved by Grace automatically, without any input or agency on our part.

I think Calm's point is that some Christian denominations (such as Trinitarians) don't keep their definitions inside the group. They want to apply them globally. It's fine if Trinitarians want to define a Christian as only being Trinitarians, for example. But their definition applies only to them. They aren't the gatekeepers of who is a Christian or not. But really, I think the difficulty with this conversation is that you seem to be coming at it from a perspective of 'theology determines salvation' while latter-day saint teaching focuses more on 'being a sincere follow Christ determines salvation because all sincere followers of Christ will eventually get where He wants them to go." I think you've set your sights too small, pitting one denomination's theology against other with the winner being the one that gets to go to Heaven. That is a uniquely protestant perspective that doesn't translate to latter-day saint theology very well. In our belief system, every person who is honestly and sincerely seeking to follow Christ will be saved because they will sincerely try to do all things that He commands them to do, both in this life and in the next. For example, if Christ told me that I needed to be a Trinitarian to be saved, and I was a sincere follower of Him, then of course I would do that without a second thought. Does that mean that I'm only going to be saved because I finally conformed to evangelical theology? Heck no. It just means that I can continue on the path that I was already on, but now with more truth to help me walk it. If evangelicals have a truth that I need to also hold in order to follow Christ better, then I will embrace that truth because it is true, not because I have to agree with evangelicals to follow Christ. And I will be saved because I embraced Christ's truth, not because I finally conformed to EV theology. Likewise, if Latter-day saints have truth that sincere evangelical followers of Christ need to also hold in order to follow Christ better, then we believe they will embrace that truth as well, for the same reasons that we would happily embrace all the truth that they have. It's another step on the path that they are already on. It's not about conforming to your theology or you conforming to mine, it's about both of us sincerely working to conform to Christ, wherever we find Him or wherever He leads us. If we do that, then we are saved. Full stop.

The Life of Chuck Very weird. Rated R because the middle act has a woman who says a bunch of F words when she's mad about something, but for no other reason that I can figure out. It's about a man named chuck and the timeline of the movie runs in reverse, starting at the end and moving to the beginning. I can't say much more because it will spoil the plot. I enjoyed it because I'm a sentimental person and it's in that lane. It's more a reminiscence of life than about any specific thing. Again, it's very weird.

I love Brad Wilcox's explanation of Christ's "part" in our salvation that he shared in his book "His Grace is Sufficient" (the title is a quote of a verse in the Book of Mormon, @Jay 4 Christ).

Do you consider creating AI generated messages for those who have died to be different than what this video does, which is a sermon actually written by JS, but with an AI generated video of him saying it?